I have become horridly fascinated by the Donald Trump circus. It should be ticketed entertainment, except it can’t be, because it isn’t entertainment really—too many lives and livelihoods on the line. But I am staying up late and checking the morning headlines in the US compulsively, the way I used to stay up to watch StarPlus drop the latest episodes of Anupamaa, back in the good old days when Anupamaa used to be good.
I guess my fascination is to do with the fact that the US is supposedly the gold standard. This is what we are all striving to be. This is democracy in all its glory—the golden land where just about anybody, no matter their faith, gender or ethnicity, has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A country with a free, fair press, empowered institutions providing checks and balances, unbiased courts, college students and comedians who routinely take a dump on the government, and entertainers who win Oscars even after fearlessly exercising their freedom of speech. A country where black men and women of half south-Indian origin rise to fill the highest posts in the land.
Of course, it has its flaws—wokeness, loneliness, mental and physical health issues, a tendency to poke its nose in the business of other countries—but even then, when our democracy is grown up it’ll be like the US, we’ve all thought, starry-eyed, at some point or the other.
Imaging: Deni Lal
But now the words of Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz’s bitingly satiric ‘Tum Bilkul Hum Jaise Nikle’ (written in 1996 in response to the rising communal violence in India) are sounding in our ears as we stare open-mouthed at our TVs, trying to process America’s meltdown and its crazy backward stumbling towards a hallucinated ‘great’ past.
Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle,
Ab tak kahan chuppe thhe bhai,
Wahi moorakhta, wahi ghamanpan,
Jisme humne sadi bitaee.
(Hey, you turned out to be exactly like us—where were you hiding all this time, buddy?
The same foolishness, the same arrogance, In which we squandered centuries.)
Later in the poem she says:
Ulte paon chalte jao,
baram-baar yahi dohrao,
Kaise veer-mahan tha Bharat,
Kitna aalishaan tha Bharat!
(Keep walking backwards into the past, keep repeating the same, single slogan
O, how brave and great was India!
O how glorious was India.)
When I first read the poem, I had been amused by it, but it is only now, when I see the US obscenely desecrating its own hallowed ideals, that I realise the poem came from a place of deep pain and betrayal.
Yes, we have betrayed every idealist in Pakistan with our narrow, hate-filled anti-Muslim rhetoric, and, yes, the US has betrayed every idealistic Indian with its stupid white supremacist rantings. We can all do so much better. How did we end up hating our own citizenry and rubber-stamping stupid, self-harming policies like demonetisation and reciprocal tariffs?
The MAGA lot seems obsessed with land grab—Canada, Greenland, Gaza, but what they’re failing to grasp is that they are surrendering priceless moral high ground with every narrow, extortionist statement that comes out of their piggy little mouths. Oh, and their ‘golden’ visas? Not going to work. Why should rich people come to America? America was built by poor people who came to America because they wanted to become rich. It’s called the American dream. It’s a global dream and any hungry young achiever in the world is entitled to dream it. America had better start ‘america-ing’ again. Or, it will lose the only thing that made it great.
editor@theweek.in