Oh! Henry 1 - Curious Case Of A Badmaash Pen

 

It was a scorching day in Rajahmundry. The summer had been particularly unforgiving that year, and no one felt the heat quite like the city’s postmen. The endless cycling in a thick cotton safari suit was bordering on torture. Yet, one such postman pedaled on, making his routine pickup from the offices of Ratnam Pen Works. However, this parcel was no ordinary consignment. It carried the protagonist of our story: Ratty.

Ratty wasn’t just another writing instrument; he was the first Swadeshi pen, destined to write history rather than just record it. Crafted from fine Karnataka Ebony and born with a silver nib in his mouth, Ratty was proudly brown - a stark contrast to his foreign-made competitors.

Ratty’s journey took him to the doors of a humble yet powerful figure. At the Sabarmati Ashram, he was greeted with a smile as the Mahatma picked him up to write a letter to Ratnam, thanking them for this "excellent instrument of expression." While his first words were of gratitude, life had grander plans. Ratty didn’t remain a mere spectator; he became an active participant.

In 1942, barely seven years old, Ratty drafted a series of speeches in multiple languages that triggered the Quit India Movement. It was a major milestone. They say strict parenting leads to rebellion, but for Ratty, rebellion became a virtue early on. His first decade was tough but monumental, his ink flowing against an oppressing class and his greatest bully: The Sword.

1947 changed everything. Not only had Ratty helped bring a nation together, but he had also proven his superiority over the blade. At the tender age of twelve, he witnessed the greatest experiment the world had ever seen, inking pages that would shape the lives of billions. But as the saying goes, "Happy endings are just stories cut short."

Ratty’s Father - who happened to be the Father of the Nation - was mercilessly killed. Six months shy of his teens, Ratty became an orphan.

He was soon moved to a government orphanage for goods that once belonged to important people - a place polite society calls a museum. Life in his teens lacked the thrill of his childhood. The spirit of rebellion ended where the six-inch glass ceiling began. Visitors looked at him with the same detached awe they reserved for the spectacles sitting next to him. Uncapped, he lay there with a dull silver nib and a dried spot of ink, begging to touch paper, desperate to bleed words once more.

Just as the days began to blur into a meaningless series of hours, a young man wearing a face of disillusionment entered the museum. His Press ID card brushed against the glass compartments as he drifted past the artifacts. He almost walked past Ratty, but something made him turn back.

The thing about complex human emotions is how we project them onto objects. The dull silver nib with its sad spot of ink drew the man’s attention; he saw a reflection of himself in that small, shiny speck of ebonite. In that moment, Ratty found a new home.

While his teenage years had been stagnant, rebellion crept back into his early adulthood. Through that worn-out silver nib now flowed facts in the form of news, shaping the belief of a young nation. He was often seen clipped to the white pockets of this journalist, becoming the talk of the town.

But time marches on. The year is 1975. Ratty has entered his 40s, and his new "father" isn't so young anymore either. Whispers spread across the nation: a few of Ratty’s counterparts have signed a piece of paper putting limits on what Ratty is allowed to write.

Ratty is enraged. He does everything but stop. Memories of his childhood resurface, channeling the "Views of the Voiceless". But just as his words reach the people, he faces a strange encounter - someone he thought was a trouble of the past. Ratty is brought before The Sword. Only this time, it is the Sword of Justice.

"Phew, different guy," Ratty exclaims, preparing to explain his case.

But before he can finish, a sentence is read out to him: "According to Section 124A of the IPC - the Indian Pen Code - you are charged with sedition, which amounts to Imprisonment for Life."

"The Swords do get to have the last laugh, don't they?" Ratty mutters with a dismayed smile.

Imprisonment is tough, but it is tougher when you have a glorious past. Ratty finds his new home in captivity, chained to the desks of public institutions like banks. As dichotomous as it is, he still gets to write, though his prose is now limited to the tedious details of withdrawal slips.

A small placard reading "Please do not take the pen with you" sits at the base of his deathbed.

"We won't trust you with a pen, but you should definitely trust us with your life's income" , are Ratty's final, ironic thoughts.

He lies on the counter, chained and weary, staring across the table at a currency note being handed to a banker - staring into the eyes of his First Father, printed on the paper he is no longer allowed to write on.

Stray Thoughts 4 - So How Exactly Did We Get Here

Growing up, I was an avid reader of Amar Chitra Katha comic books (in the absence of other entertainment, one forgives terrible paper quality). As I flipped through those pages, I couldn't help but wonder what made these people - who looked exactly like me - such absolute badasses. How did they walk the same roads, eat the same food, and bargain just as aggressively as I do, yet end up so distinct? Was I missing something? How is one marked for such greatness, and why don’t I see it around me anymore? Has greatness become as obsolete as skinny jeans and men wearing three-quarter pants (gladly)? If so, I have seriously missed my ticket.

In the summer of 1911, a middle-aged nurse in New York likely asked herself similar questions (minus the skinny jeans commentary) as she made her fifth midwifery call to the suburbs. The sight of a home struggling to hold itself together, let alone feed another newborn, moved her enough to take up arms against the clergy in a battle that became the "Every child a wanted child" movement. Margaret Sanger became a voice for those who had none, or were too young to speak. For the first time, public contraception, abortion rights, and child protection entered the halls of power, sparking what we now call the liberal movement. Interestingly, in 1992- decades after the movement met its primary goals - the Justice Department noticed a peculiar, steady drop in violent crime. Subsequent investigations offered the final feather in Sanger's cap: modern family planning had done more to curb crime than state enforcement ever could.

On December 17, 2010, Tarek al-Tayeb Mohammad Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor harassed by police for simply trying to make a living, likely faced that same internal questioning before self-immolating. His act posthumously ignited the ‘Arab Spring,’ arguably giving the 21st century its own defining set of revolutions. TIME Magazine named ‘The Protester’ its Person of the Year, as the Spring swept across North Africa and continued to inspire revolutions throughout the decade, right up to recent uprisings in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Sudan.

Nicolae Ceaușescu, a slick-haired communist, likely thought he was marking himself for glory on October 14, 1967, when he signed Decree 770. Intended to boost Romania's "productivity" and labor access, the decree outlawed birth control and abortion while restricting women's rights to education and work. Long story short, over the next 20 years, Romania’s capital productivity dipped by one-tenth, while the only things that went up were "reproductivity" and poverty (it rhymes for a reason). Riddled with debt and crime, Romania trotted into chaos. In 1989, in a final bout for his throne, Ceaușescu appeared before an enraged public - a generation of deprived kids known as the "770 Babies," who now had muscles and guns. In his bid for greatness, he lost his objectivity, and shortly after, his life.

Some might argue that the Amar Chitra Katha analogy doesn't fit modern change-makers - that today's heroes often act from a bubble of relative comfort rather than ancient asceticism. While many in those comic books may have subscribed to giving up worldly pleasures for devotion, I am certain there are just as many contributions by those who simply acted on what they felt was right, creating a massive ripple effect. Change is rarely a single-act play; it wouldn't reach the grand stage without the curtain droppers, the lighting folks, and for that matter, even the audience.

Book Review 1 - India Grows At Night (Gurcharan Das)

 

I. Initial Thoughts

Before I dive into this, I just want to say it out loud - I absolutely love elephants. There’s something irresistibly charming about these odd-bodied, unapologetic, big-brained giants that makes me think, “Maybe gaining a few kilos isn’t such a bad thing after all.”

What makes elephants even more fascinating, though, is their uncanny resemblance to India - the very nation that shelters one of their largest thriving populations. Both are vast, emotional, unpredictable, and audible only to those attuned to their hard thuds and mellow murmurs. And yes, before you roll your eyes, I’ll be linking some random elephant facts later - entirely unnecessary, mildly bewildering, but hopefully entertaining.

Now that we’ve had our fair share of flora and fauna, it’s time to slip into my serious swimming trunks and wade into deeper waters. This time, I find myself turning the pages of yet another book on India -  but not one written by a passing political commentator. This comes from a man who has lived through India’s transformations, from the red-tape-choked corridors of the License Raj to the fizz and frenzy of the 1990s cola wars: Gurcharan Das.

A champion of intellectual honesty and a master of conveying layered ideas without hiding behind verbosity, Das stands out in India’s literary landscape. What draws me further into his work is how seamlessly he weaves mythological reflection with modern dilemmas - exploring everything from statecraft and governance (India Unbound) to morality and human frailty (The Difficulty of Being Good). His writing doesn’t just describe India; It makes one want to look out of the window.

II. What is India Grows At Night all about

"India Grows at Night,

When the Government sleeps"

Hidden in plain sight, these lines are to the book what brandy is to wine - a distilled elixir left for the palate. The book largely deals with the Indian growth paradox - the steep, exponential curve of FDI and perception that post-1990 India witnessed, and the slow trot of a large yet weak government trying to keep pace.

Much of its early chapters explore the idea of a weak state and its historical footing in modern, medieval, and ancient India. Das threads together insights from the Subas of Mughal rule, the provincial discretion of the British Raj, and the rise of an opulent federalism in modern Indian democracy, weaving a narrative that traces the long-standing existence of a fragile state in the subcontinent.

With the stage set for a battle of ideas, the Indian story begins to unfold into what many call “The Indian Miracle.” First-hand accounts testify to the resilient and dramatic economic rise of a nation transformed by the liberalization efforts undertaken by the Centre in the 1990s. These narratives make a compelling case for the potential and acumen of its people, capturing the rise of IT hubs such as Bengaluru and Gurugram, and the steady stabilization of markets across the country. And just as when all seems fun and games, the book presents you with the horror that surpasses 5 Nights at Freddy's - Indian Public Infrastructure. While the reader upto this point is sensing an easy road ahead, Das hits us with the conundrum that slides along with the Indian Miracle,  A State that is trying hard to keep up and only pushes the disparity further. The reader is hit with mind boggling numbers and statistics as well as lived experiences pertaining to the state of Government Infrastructure and its rusted machinery, one that further pays an ode to the vigor of its people, almost asserting that The Indian Miracle is working despite its government. 

As the final chapters arrive, the book almost leaves the reader with a couple of questions to ponder on - If India has grown despite its government, can the dilemma of disparity be covered with tighter government control? If India can come this far with a weak and big government, how far can we go with a strong and compact one?

III. My Two Cents

India Grows at Night is a captivating and surprisingly fun read. While we're all told not to judge a book by its cover, this one’s is strikingly prophetic. The image of a middle-class family navigating rough territory on a single bike speaks volumes, perfectly capturing the book's central theme: the tenacious rise of an aspirational class fighting to get ahead in a system that barely acknowledges its existence.

Das kicks things off with what sounds like a startling contradiction, describing his work in the prologue as "a liberal case for a strong state." It sounds absurd, right? Yet, the book masterfully unpacks this paradox. It argues that the delicate balance between two such opposing forces - liberal politics and a strong state-isn't found in ideology, but in a simple, guiding principle of any healthy democracy: responsiveness.