India, Dec. 8 -- Is Punjab hurtling towards the unsteady perch between governmental arrogance and public apathy? The question is obviously alarmist and a definitive answer to it may itself be arrogant and to some extent subversive. Therefore, a direct answer is best avoided - at least today. But it should still worry us that a question such as this should at all be up in the air. But up in the air it is, going by what one sees and reads in the media. And an even bigger worry is that the question itself doesn't worry us: it is as if people are permanently in a brace position, ready to accept anything as 'the new normal." 'Normal' normalcy feels like a grandmother's lullaby. And how sad that even normalcy has come to feel like an achievement! And the signs of despair are not limited to Punjab nor to the over-abused realm of politics and politicians alone. In fact, politicians thrive on whatever people are willing to buy even if they blame the salesman for what they prefer to buy. Why should a salesman mind the blame as long as you are happy buying his wares? This rigmarole would have been bad enough. But the cancer runs deep. It's as if some malevolent toxins had entered the veins, arteries and capillaries of India's collective psyche, turning each organ of its body into an enemy of every other organ. Never since the holocaust of 1947 has our society seemed so ready and happy to self-explode. And that holocaust was not real for my generation: we had merely glimpsed in our parents and grandparents' voices of sad guilt. And as we age, we don't want our children and grandchildren to hear the same sad guilt in our voices. But the screen in front of our eyes is not a smooth spectacle. It's as if India's social data has been corrupted and badly hacked-up, leaving us with a vandalised socio-political screen. All we watch there are ghastly headless figures running frenetically in all directions and baying for human blood- night and day. This is not the India we grew up priding ourselves on. Surely, something has gone terribly wrong somewhere. And worse, most people seem to exult in the situation as a triumph of nationalism. And what do you do when confronted with this weird reality in front of us - that we no longer bother even to 'blame' others for venomising the country's soul. We are proud to 'take credit' for this ourselves. Imagine this on social media these days: When someone accuses the other of communal violence or injustice or indiscrimination, there is not even the courtesy of a denial. Instead there is a chest-thumping triumphalism. And here and there, one hears desperate but well-meaning cries for help: India must be saved from Indians. In Punjab, the eighties and the early nineties were a foretaste of this ghastly reality. Awww! Punjab!! So, there is hope! "That grief has passed; so will this!" Maybe, we can look back and retrace some of the steps we had half-taken. Parkash Singh Badal had lived a marginalised existence since 1980. He was no one's favourite when insanity howled our midnights dumb and our days were hiding like some frightened orphan kids. Idling away our winter afternoons in his unkempt Sector-9 house lawns, I remember asking him, "Will Punjab live again?" He looked at me and smiled the saddest smile I had ever seen him smile. "Yes. Peace will return, and before peace, harmony. Nothing can beat people who value peace and harmony." I wasn't so optimistic - not then when the only language our streets spoke was the Klashnikovs. But slowly Punjab stirred, then awoke and sat up. Suddenly, peace and communal harmony did not sound like a hackneyed political slogan. It was Punjab's cri de Coeur - a cry from every mother, every sister, every bride's heart. For 20 years after that, we forgot that Punjab ever had a split voice. For over a decade and a half, Punjab sang soft melodies of understanding, love, harmony. No one noticed. I almost forgot. That behind all this lay two things - rarely high profile, seldom valued but never dispensable: conviction and commitment. Conviction - that Punjabi spells love and harmony. Commitment - to stick with the unfashionable, in-ostentatious perseverance with the simple belief - that the path to glory does not lie through glory. It lies through low profile commitment to the boring mission of never letting people forget that people matter, and that they matter only when they speak one voice - and that happens only when the interests and welfare of one segment of people align with the interests and welfare of every other section. Badal was not a philosopher nor an intellectual nor a poet nor a saint nor a teacher nor an engineer nor a labourer nor a shopkeeper. But he had something that few others had: a respect for what he was not. And better than any philosopher, intellectual, poet or teacher, he understood that it takes all of them to make Punjab what it is. Punjab always knew this. Badal merely reminded it whenever he thought that Punjab was perhaps forgetting Punjab, and preferring to look at only one of its limbs as its entire body. No one understood this better than Badal. But now, everyone, except Badal, needs to understand and value this - everyone in Punjab, everyone in India. More than anyone else, it is people in his own party who need to understand and remember this - to forget their laceration and to rise above the thoughts of settling scores when they get an opportunity. Sukhbir Singh Badal is fond of claiming that Shiromani Akali Dal symbolises and safeguards the interests of not just a party but of the Panth and of every Punjabi. This is a nice talk to talk about. His test will come when he has to walk what he talks. His father's birthday today is the best time for him and others in his league in Punjab politics to dedicate or rededicate themselves to politics for every Punjabi, including his opponents. And one hopes that hope walks on legs faster than reality. Punjab needs harmony - communal, social, political and regional....