Noted retired officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and writer, Avay Shukla, has said that India could be becoming a nation of duffers and that “we’re evolving back to the neanderthal stage”.  According to Kashmir Media Service, in an interview with renowned Indian journalist to Karan Thapar to mark the publication of his recent collection of blogs called ‘Holy Cows and Loose Cannons: The Duffer Zone Chronicles’, Avay Shukla, said, “It is clear that the Indian side of the LAC is one big duffer zone all the way to Kanyakumari.”

He also says: “Other countries evolve for the better, we have been consistently doing it for the worse, and are proud of it.”  This new collection comprises some fifty essays on a variety of different subjects but in each instance the Avay Shukla brand stands out. They are about our peccadilloes, our idiosyncrasies, our prejudices, our vices, our foibles and our misdemeanours. Some of them are serious, many are satirical, several are simply great fun to read.

Avay Shuklais infuriated by Indians who suddenly turn against Indian Muslim culture and heritage. Of them he writes: “They have suddenly discovered God and find that He can only be a Hindu. After growing up on Mughlai food, listening to ghazals and qawalis, conversing in a language that has as many Urdu words as Hindustani, swooning over Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Waheeda Rehman, saying wah wah to the poems of Ghalib and Gulzar … they have now concluded that these are evil influences, they threaten our Hindu sanskars and girls and the whole lot must be banished.” 

Avay Shukla is also eloquently opposed to Resident Welfare Associations who have started trying to determine how their members must live and think. Of them he says: “They are gradually becoming the self-appointed gatekeepers of morality, culture and political discourse … the time is not far off when these busy bodies may determine what their members eat, how they dress, to which Gods they pray … why they may even insist that all their members vote for a particular party.”

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)