New breed of hangers-on appears along with genuine social activist : Special Report - India Today

10/01/15 8:26 pm

Archive Special,Report August,15,,1989

The jholawala syndrome

New breed of hangers-on appears along with genuine social activist
Simran Bhargava with Chidanand Rajghatta in Bangalore February 16, 2013 | UPDATED 11:38 IST

"He's a walking contradiction, partly

true and partly fiction."
- Kris Kristofferson
Long before there were Yuppies and
Puppies, there was a truly home-spun
figure already doing the rounds. Not
restricted to place or community, he belongs to us all: the jholawala.
He is the one in the protest march, raising his clenched fist against "these bloody
multinationals". He is the one in the bookstore gazing on mournfully at Pablo
Neruda and Michel Foucalt as he fondles his three-day-old stubble. He is the one,
who, if he has two pyjamas, will proudly wear the one with a hole in it.
The jholawala is a professor, researcher, drop-out, theatre person, smalltime film
maker, socially concerned journalist or simply unemployed. He is an intellectual
in an intense love affair with poverty. For a jholawala, a jhola is a purely physical
need: anything will do as long as it can be hung on the shoulder, leaving his hands
free to hang on to buses or to raise in protest marches.
The jholawala is found in libraries,
canteens, second-hand bookshops,
European film festivals and art galleries.
In Bombay, he is at the Jehangir Art
Gallery.

Jhola Jokes
What do you say when the
Jholawala gets a fit in Rome?
Jholius Seizure.
What's a Jholawala romance?
Maila Majnu.
In Calcutta, he is in the College Street
What do you call the Jholawala who
Coffee House. In Madras, he is known as
ran away from bloodshed?
a thuk-bag intellectual (some say
The Jholawala Bhagh incident.
ineffectual). And in Delhi, the tribe hums
What does the god fearing
in the 1km area around Mandi House.
Jholawala say when he sees liquor?
The jholawala is usually in the midst of a Hey Rum.
How did the Jholawala pass?
hot discussion. He is the thinking man's
With top Marx.
answer to the Puppy (prosperous urban
Punjabi) and he almost always belongs to How did Jane Fonda devise her arm
exercises?
the broad, broad Left.
By watching Jholawalas during
protest marches?
But now, as one admitted: "We are
confused. We don't know what to do with What is the Jholawala song?
I'm a jholi good fellow.
glasnost, perestroika and the Chinese
crackdown."
Tholawalas exist in groups and the look on their face is earnest. A genuine
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/new-breed-of-hangers-on-appears-along-with-genuine-social-activist/1/323796.html

Page 1 of 5

New breed of hangers-on appears along with genuine social activist : Special Report - India Today

10/01/15 8:26 pm

jholawala must have a cause - Silent Valley, Narmada Dam, pavement dwellers or he can't exist. As thousands perished during Bhopal's lethal gas leak, many
jholawalas took birth. "They are the ones who make a difference," said an
observer. "I take my hat off to them."
Several jholawalas, in fact, first rose during the Naxalite movement in the late
'60s. They were marked by their passion and violent activism. They got beaten up,
left colleges and went underground. When they resurfaced, they could no longer
adjust to society. The originals are still floating around and have given rise to
hundreds of imitators, nouveau-jholawalas, who are turned on by the romance of
it all but are, thankfully, spared the heat and hardship.
The real jholawala worked: the pseudo one makes sure someone sees him working
- or what's the point? He is the one in the fringes, gingerly putting his toe into
mainstream activism, and backing away, scared: ultimately, it's just too hot to be
committed for long.
The pseudo jholawala is also into guilt trips in a big way. Above all, he lives a life
marked by intensity, a search for angst. He is tortured by the unfairness of it all:
the unfair distribution of wealth, exploitation of the workers and the greed of the
moneyed classes. He will try and infect others with this guilt too.
Today's jholawala ranges from the grass root
(working in villages) variety to the up market
(attending seminars on foreign films) type. He is
rarely into local issues like civic amenities but
he can always be rounded up for protests
against dams, eucalyptus trees and American
imperialism: a full-time jholawala can in fact be
tested by the number of blisters on his feet. He's
also found hanging around World Bank for a
grant to lecture in America on the perfidies of
multinationals.
A jhola has him prepared for any eventuality: a typical jhola would contain
Charminar cigarettes, a 15-day-old clipping from The Guardian, an old issue of
The New Yorker. A toothbrush because you don't know where the sun will rise the
next day (a comb, however, isn't necessary).
A People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) study on something. A book to read at
the bus stop and a couple of refills (but no pen) to write with.
Although they hate Ronald Reagan's and George Bush's America, jholawalas
learnt a lot from the US in the '60s:
Vietnam, peace, love, feminism, Marxism, thisism, thatism. An ideal jholawala is
some part flower child and genuinely believes that love and peace are important.
Nowadays, though, Marxism is out and environmentalism is in: one
environmentalist jholawala refuses to build a little fire even in the middle of
winter "because the earth's resources are getting depleted". And he will not drink
tea - "because tea-pickers are exploited".

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/new-breed-of-hangers-on-appears-along-with-genuine-social-activist/1/323796.html

Page 2 of 5

New breed of hangers-on appears along with genuine social activist : Special Report - India Today

10/01/15 8:26 pm

Recently, a band of jholawalas was seen outside the US library in Bombay-the

American consulate was too far away - protesting against the depletion of the
ozone layer, and the Alaskan oil spill. They were also heard shouting:
"Imperialism nahin chalegi, nahin chalegi" and "US hands off Nicaragua".
Many young people begin their careers as
jholawalas in college with the disturbing
questions: Who am I? What am I here
for? What is the purpose of life?
Jholawalaism starts from that poignant
search for self. Next, the jholawala reads
Kafka, Sartre and Camus (one read Ayn
Rand by mistake).
These are heady, intoxicating days fired by idealism and radicalism: life is
measured in coffee spoons. A lot of time is also spent talking about relationships.
Many jholawalas spout poetry at this stage: "I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear
the bottoms of my trousers rolled.''
This phase is marked by intensity, passion and midnight discussions on how the
USSR is superior to the US. Parents of rich kids look on indulgently during this
period: "Oh, my daughter is a socialist."
Being broke - "Poverty is my birthright and I shall have it" - is considered
fashionable during college. The story goes about one rich jholawala boy who
wanted desperately to belong - however, wealth came in the way. So, he would
leave home in his car - and then switch, half-way, to a bus.
A jholawala doesn't give a damn about clothes, just as long as they are shabby and
don't match. He is the antithesis to the Puppy. Never, never would a jholawala
wear a safari suit or a gold chain. He is also allergic to knickers, especially khaki
ones.
He would quite proudly admit that he has not had a bath for a week. Ditto for
shaving. He would often wear glasses - even if he doesn't need them. These days
jholawalas are making a beeline for gamchas - which they wear like scarves or
simply drape over their shoulders.
A jholawala rarely owns a vehicle. He
walks or rides buses since that gives him
time to think. As a result of that and his
chronically broke condition, he has
discovered a variety of small eateries
where he has immense rapport with the
waiters.
Many heated discussions take place here:
recently in a Bangalore establishment,
after they had finished their bi-two coffee (one coffee and two jholawalas share it),
a fist fight broke out between two jholawalas: one of them objected to the
denigration of Stalin in recent days.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/new-breed-of-hangers-on-appears-along-with-genuine-social-activist/1/323796.html

Page 3 of 5

New breed of hangers-on appears along with genuine social activist : Special Report - India Today

10/01/15 8:26 pm

Generally, jholawalas are big drinkers - rum and water if they're paying for it, and
anything else if someone else is. This is done while listening to old Hindi film
songs, moaning the end of the black and white era. They have little knowledge of
western pop: they genuinely believe that Madonna is Christ's mom.
A jholawala also has a thing about his mother tongue: talk to him in English and
he'll reply in Hindi. Of late, when jholawalas want to say 'no', they say 'naa re'. He
will also use only Hindi abuses saying: "Why should we use theirs when we have
so many of our own?"
A jholawala's house is spartan but messy: books and papers are strewn in careful
anarchy. Although he is suspicious of money, a jholawala spends lavishly on
books. Or he simply steals them. One jholawala confessed that he stole
Presumptions in the Cold War by Leo Bogart (a book on media imperialism) from
the university because, as he put it: "This book was gathering dust since August
1982. The university didn't deserve it."
A genuine jholawala must be familiar with existentialism. A high level jholawala
would try Nietzsche and Kierkegaard (one brought along Proust on a picnic). He
would not have read Wordsworth but would have dissected and re-dissected
Mallarme, Rilke, and Rimbaud.
Despite the intellectual stuff, a jholawala doesn't mind a sneak preview of the
latest Playboy (which he will explain in terms of carnal, temporal philosophy). He
has a few other plebeian tastes: he likes Jaya Prada, Goldie Hawn and Dimple
Kapadia and not Shabana Azmi and Meryl Streep. (This goes with his reverse
snob image: smoking beedis, using datun, and lapsing into Hindi abuses).
Incidentally, he should've seen Battleship Potemkin, Rashomon and Pather
Panchali, 17 times each.
In recent times, jholawalas have loved films by CostaGavras and Thomas Alea. They talk about this scene in
Alea's The Housewarming where a party is going on in
a South American sugar plantation: five minutes are
spent just stirring the sugar in the cup. Many
jholawalas have spent half an hour discussing this five
minute scene.
For some reason, all jholawalas are turned on by South America: discussions at
parties have ranged from the debt trap, rate of inflation in Argentina to the
destruction of rain forests in Brazil. One worried jholawala, at 22, landed up at
Berkeley (the hotbed of American jholawalaism), surfaced in demonstrations
against the CIA, helped with a concert to raise money for Nicaragua - and was last
seen, disappearing into Guatemala on a Rockefeller grant.
A jholawala is often part of a study circle, where everyone sits on the floor, having
an intense discussion after every page of The Economic and Political Weekly.
These days, hot jholawala discussions have centred on how to stop bricks from
getting into Ram Janmabhoomi.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/new-breed-of-hangers-on-appears-along-with-genuine-social-activist/1/323796.html

Page 4 of 5

New breed of hangers-on appears along with genuine social activist : Special Report - India Today

10/01/15 8:26 pm

Other jholawalas run - or subscribe to - small, underground video libraries that

rent out revolutionary films. One highly academic jholawala's favourite song was
Ek Do Teen Chaar, but since it didn't go with his Pather Panchali image, he only
allowed himself to hum it when no one was around.
There is a great sense of camaraderie among jholawalas but there are also subcultures and jealousies. A typical statement about an ex-jholawala friend would
be: "Saala fraud hai. Doordarshan ke liye film bana raha hai." (He is a fraud. He
is making a film for Doordarshan). Like other human beings, jholawalas too are
vulnerable to love.
The lovers probably met at a relief camp during riots or in a protest march led by
Swami Agnivesh. Jholawalas in love take long walks among ruins, have a civil
wedding (or simply live together) and then go for a honeymoon to more distant
ruins like Mandu, near Indore.
Jholawalis, incidentally, hate perfume (they prefer ittr), love Germaine Greer,
Sylvia Plath and have read all of Simone De Beauvoir's memoirs. Both, Mr and
Mrs Jholawala are familiar with The Hite Report and have been witnesses at
several court marriages.
At around age 30, the jholawala starts getting fidgety: it is just too tiresome to go
on living like a starving artist in a garret. Said one: "Now you want what everyone
wants - family, comfort, security." He, however, continues his love for the jhola
from his armchair.
But now, there is a major problem looming on the jholawala horizon: the tribe is
panic-struck. There is fear of disintegration. More and more younger people are
giving up jholas for the three things jholawalas hate most: Materialism, Maruti
and Michael Jackson.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/new-breed-of-hangers-on-appears-along-with-genuine-social-activist/1/323796.html

Page 5 of 5