Earlier this week, I watched Barack Obama on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Obama, the first sitting US president to appear on a late-night talk show, was at his wise and witty best.
This was a rerun of the show that first aired in June. Both the social and mainstream media had a field day recounting how Obama slow-jammed his presidential term, practically skewered Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and then, in a kind of a farewell gesture (his presidency ends on January 20), mock-wrote thank you notes. Most, however, missed talking about the more important thing he said. The world, he said, has never been less violent, healthier, better educated and more prosperous.
It was when he repeated this view more recently at the White House Summit on Global Development that it came to notice. Some said the president was being naïve and wondered which planet he was talking about. One US national security professional went to the extent of saying that it appeared as though Obama was living in the virtual reality world of The Matrix.
Indeed, it's a definitive and challenging statement to make in a time of suicide attacks, when terrorism has made life increasingly unpredictable. And so, in the age of instant reaction, when pausing to ponder can leave you behind in the game, it is natural to promptly declare that Obama was talking through his hat.
I, too, have been questioning his view in my head, turning it over and over again. Are we better off than we were yesterday? Look at our home. Aren't Dalits still victimised? But then, don't they also have the power today to fight back and assert themselves, or least have voices on their side powerful enough to get Parliament to debate the issue?
Yes, women still remain at the receiving end of the worst kinds of violence. But can we deny that things have changed for the better? I remember those days of Doordarshan when we got to see one movie a week - that is, if power didn't play truant. And I remember wondering why every time a woman was "defiled", she was expected to leap off a cliff, slash her wrist or quaff poison in shame. Our popular cinema epitomised this idea, over and over again. And, have we forgotten those days when she was, whether a princess or a pauper, expected to burn on her husband's pyre?
Also, are we not a healthier nation today, with a life expectancy up from around 40 in 1960 to about 65 now?
Some of my childhood memories got terribly shook up recently when I read the back stories of a few of the most popular nursery rhymes that we still sing to our children. Take, for example, "Ring Around the Rosie" - the current-day "Ringa Ringa Roses". It is said to be inspired by the 1665 great plague of London. The "rosie" is the rash from the plague and the "pocket full of posies" are the flowers stuffed in the pocket to cover up its stench. And the last line, "Ashes! Ashes! (or the present-day "Achoo! Achoo!") We all fall down" - well, the plague killed nearly 15 per cent of the country's population.
Similarly, "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", written in the 1730s, is believed to be about the tax imposed on wool and carries racial connotations. Towards the end of the 20th century, some schools even banned it. Then, "Three Blind Mice" apparently refers to the reign of Bloody Mary and a group of Protestant bishops, who, "blinded by their faith", conspired to overthrow the queen. She got them burned at the stakes.
There are many other such much-loved poems which have now got me thinking that thank god we don't live in those times anymore. True, it is not Utopia yet. Obama didn't say it was. And given the kind of people we humans are, it never will be. But, whatever we might say or think, how can we deny that the world has constantly been striving to be a more civilised, equal and healthier place, despite the challenges being thrown its way by forces that would want otherwise?
Yes, it is a slow, arduous, long, long journey which demands that we push on relentlessly. But if we are to get anywhere, we have to teach ourselves to stop and reflect before we react - in spite of the temptation of the "likes" and the "retweets".
And then, perhaps, we will also have fewer Shobhaa Des dissing people and ideas without so much as a second thought.
veenu.sandhu@bsmail.in
