BackWhen in Rome, do as the non-Romans do
Gladiators, renaissance, and the philosophy of intolerance
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I have only been away from India a few weeks, but there is no end to the steady flow, and I should say torrent, of bad news. My bookie Galabhai has gone missing and my bootlegger Ramchandra has been busted, and his stocks confiscated. Talk of hitting a fellow where it hurts. I feel like the Congress leadership on 16 May. All is despair and joy has left the world.
Now I always knew that this new dispensation would bring some bad news even for us Gujaratis. But that the disaster would approach these apocalyptic levels even I was not prepared to admit. If we are not allowed to lose money on irresponsible wagers and then find consolation in Scotland’s finest, what is the point to this life?
Can these be the achche din, or good days, I was so unambiguously promised? Faiz Ahmed Faiz said Yeh dagh-dagh ujala, yeh shab-gazidah sehar/Woh intezar tha jiska, yeh woh sehar toh nahin (this stained morning is not the achche din we awaited). I’m not sure what subject Faiz was moaning about but his pain levels clearly approached mine.
In despair my mind turns to thoughts of conspiracy. Could this be my old friend Amit practising his dark arts? Must remember to be careful (Galabhai, pela bija number par phone karjo).
The first Roman emperor, Augustus, lost three full legions, more than 15,000 men, led by the incompetent general Varus, to the Germans in an ambush in Teutoburg forest in 9 AD. This severely disrupted Rome’s manpower and according to some it permanently stopped military expansion. For years later, Augustus would, according to Suetonius, scream in his sleep—“Varus, give me back my legions!"
I feel like saying that to our emperor, but for some reason “give me back my bookie—and also my bootlegger" doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Given that I am abroad and unable to do anything about it at the moment, it is well that I spend my days going about my lack of business. Back in Rome I thought I should give gladiator school a go, mainly to confirm if the Romans were still as tough as their forebears had been. The instructor made me sign a waiver in case of serious damage and asked about insurance. I was immediately concerned for him and asked if he had insurance as well. I explained to him that I belonged to the martial race of Gujaratis (we having fought inflation) from the ancient and noble city of Surat. He had not heard of it, and we moved to the grappling and the wrestling. In the end I was wrong to have been concerned and he held his own (truth be told, he also held my own).
After this little distraction, I was off to see the art that one had only read about or seen in documentaries.
The little Florentine Republic produced or patronized Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Brunelleschi, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Botticelli, Vasari. A gathering of talent and genius in one city unmatched in history. Until, that is, New Delhi got Uma, Smriti, Nitin, Arun, Sushma, Rajnath and child prodigy Amit. A feast for both the eye and the intellect.
Anyway, I got a private guide to take me through the history, but the accent and the droning delivery put me off so that I was distracted by the crowds.
When I switched back on, the guide was talking about a name that was respected, loved, feared and hated—Modici. A name that struck awe and terror in the heart of both colleague and adversary. He said the renaissance took on momentum and was realized fully in the time of Modici.
What was this renaissance, I asked. He replied that it was a sort of revivalist movement. It yearned for a culture which, though long dead and belonging to an idolatrous age, was brought back to replace the thinking of modern times. Why, I asked, not unreasonably. He was offended. Because it was better and actually perfect, he said, particularly its philosophy and its science. The philosophy had the essential ingredient of intolerance, and the science produced such magic as replacing the heads of boys with those of animals. It had also invented test-tube babies.
Modici, the guide said, was crucial to this renaissance. He took on the awful Italian dynastic power. He was the hero of his mercantile republic in some sort of religious civil war in which many were killed. At one point it got bad for Modici and he offered himself in sacrifice if he was found guilty. I thought I had heard this story before somewhere, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Anyway, finally the evil Catholic power was defeated by Modici, the people rejoiced and it all worked out well in the end. Or so I thought, anyway. The guide felt Modici had been given dangerous levels of power by the republic. All democracies were susceptible to demagoguery, he said, including yours.
Now I naturally objected to such sanctimonious lecturing. Look, I said to him, the messianic tradition is not native to India. It is the Semitic people—Jews and Muslims and Christians—who needed saviours because they lived in a desert land and in desperation looked to messianic solutions. We were Hindus from a riverine culture and had never succumbed to the idea even of one god, let alone one man.
He was not convinced, and as I left, he whispered behind me—“beware of Modici..."
And so on to Venice, to see one of the great republics of history.
Goethe in his Italian Journey (on which trip, according to Luigi Barzini’s The Italians, the poet “left no petticoat unturned") wrote that Venice’s boatmen sang lines from Tasso and Ariosto. In Venice, a spectacular city, I was looking forward to this singing but got muzak from Kenny G. instead. The bad news, as I said, continues, but I am told that all things pass.
Galabhai, fear not, I shall return, as Douglas MacArthur said to those in the Philippines. Or, if the culture you incline to is low, as Arnold Schwarzenegger said: “I’ll be back."
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