Courtesy the Delhi tragedy, Congressman HKL Bhagat slipped quietly away on Saturday Oct 29th. I've never had much use for that simple-minded exhortation not to speak ill of the dead, and in Bhagat's case I have even less use for it. At one level, I'm glad my world is free of this creep; at another, I am angry that he never faced justice for his role in the 1984 massacres of Sikhs -- documented in inquiry after inquiry, case after futile suppressed case.
Nevertheless, his death on that sad Saturday was a good reminder of those massacres from 21 years ago this week. Not Bhagat and not anyone else of any consequence has ever been punished for them, and you can bet your last anna that nobody ever will.
And I was reminded particularly of Bhagat when I read headlines about the Saturday blasts in the papers the next day. For example, the Indian Express called the blasts "New Delhi's worst terror strike."
I have personal experience of the horror and sorrow of that evening, and mourn each of those nearly 60 dead Indians. But I would like to know how Saturday qualifies as a worse "terror strike" than what we remember Bhagat for: almost 3000 dead Indians over a few days in November 1984. How is a count of 60 worse than one of 3000? Why does any recounting of terrorist incidents always omit that horrible one, besides others?
I'll have more on this soon. Meantime, never RIP, HKL Bhagat. Good riddance, but your evasion of justice for 21 years is a blot on us all.
October 31, 2005
October 30, 2005
Mother, gone
We were buying tickets at the Delhi Metro to go to the Red Fort for the sound-and-light show when I got a call from Bhopal: "Go home right now, there are blasts all over the city!" We returned our tickets and went home, to the accompaniment of Diwali firecrackers all around us. Half an hour later, I took the Metro after all, this time to go visit the hospitals. My account of some of what happened over the next few hours is up on rediff.com, here. (I hope to have some more soon).
Comments welcome. After all, I already have this one in response to it:
Comments welcome. After all, I already have this one in response to it:
- Dear Mr. DSouza
In view of these terrible blasts in New Delhi on the eve of the Hindu
festival, Diwali, for once the media should blame the handiwork on the
Islamic terrorists that have mushroomed in India thnaks to the
pseudo-secularist attitude of the politicans and the constant minority
appeasement by people like yourself, given the fact that you are a minority
so would not be surprised if you owed your allegiance to the god-damn Church
rather than Indian constitution.
People like Sonia Gandhi and others should be burnt alive for trying to
destabilize India, I am confident that you bloody semites, muslims and
christians are in this together to target hindus, but never forget that if
we have people like Mahatma Gandhi, we also had people like Maharana Pratap
and Guru Govind Singh , whenever India, Hindusim or the Hindus are under any
threat , there have been these great sons who have laid down their lives
whilst vanquishing the maleechhas , yes that is a term that we use for all
non-hindus as you guys use words like kafirs and heathens for us . The day
is not far that inspite of the violence in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts
of the country when India would be rid of all you inferior people.
Damn Allah, Damn the Quran
Damn Jesus Christ bastard, damn the bible
You bloody bastards who have no sense of humanity and patriotism and have
the guts to mess with the hindus, when we awake we shake the whole world.
damn the islamic world, damn the westertn christian crusader nations.
October 27, 2005
Threat, renewed.
This started as a comment ... I'm getting the sense that my post on GDP has set off some scrambling out there. I plan to followup to it when I get myself a longish time at a PC. Which is not just now on my swing through Rajasthan, unfortunately. But I will get to it. (Another threat, Abi).
One point: I wrote about GDP. Not GNP.
One point: I wrote about GDP. Not GNP.
Untraceable depths
Excerpts (not always verbatim) from an exhibit at a museum I visited this morning. I have seen this exhibit before, but I think something like 25 years ago; and I think it was actually put on display some ten years before that. As may be obvious on reading it.
***
NEXT 80 YEARS AS SEEN BY "ELECTRONIC ORACLES"
At the Rand Corporation in California, a set of computers known as the "electronic oracles" forecast so accurately that even the US Government comes to them for advice ... So far, the results have proved the computers to be uncannily accurate. These computers have been looking far into the future. ... The scientists have drawn up a list of predicted events right up to the year 2050 as given by the computers.
1970: A space station with a crew of ten men will be orbiting in space.
1975: Complete automation in homes, with robot housemaids. Temporary scientific base on the moon.
1978: Manned spacecraft complete reconnaisance flights around Mars and Venus.
1980: New submarines capable of diving to untraceable depths.
1985: Blind people will use miniature radar. Manned landing on Mars.
1990: Equipment manufactured on the moon using minerals mined on the spot. Mars has a permanent manned station.
2000: New universal language created. Elimination of hereditary defects in human beings.
2020: Manned landing on one of Jupiter's moons, flight around Pluto. Arctic will be made fertile and productive. "Linking of minds" between man and computers will be achieved.
2025: Old age will be arrested by chemical means. Commercial traffic with bases on Moon and Mars. Telepathy will be common place. Wars will be psychological tug-of-war affairs.
2050: Manned flights outside solar system. A system of propulsion based on anti-gravity will come into use.
***
Boy, those Rand men and their incredible forecasting machines! They got everything up to 2000 right! Now I can't wait to link my mind with the nearest computer, only 15 years left. Hope my mind lasts that long. And if I could only trace those damned submarines...
***
I'm guessing some of you will know where this museum is. Hi to you guys, and eat your heart out.
At the Rand Corporation in California, a set of computers known as the "electronic oracles" forecast so accurately that even the US Government comes to them for advice ... So far, the results have proved the computers to be uncannily accurate. These computers have been looking far into the future. ... The scientists have drawn up a list of predicted events right up to the year 2050 as given by the computers.
1970: A space station with a crew of ten men will be orbiting in space.
1975: Complete automation in homes, with robot housemaids. Temporary scientific base on the moon.
1978: Manned spacecraft complete reconnaisance flights around Mars and Venus.
1980: New submarines capable of diving to untraceable depths.
1985: Blind people will use miniature radar. Manned landing on Mars.
1990: Equipment manufactured on the moon using minerals mined on the spot. Mars has a permanent manned station.
2000: New universal language created. Elimination of hereditary defects in human beings.
2020: Manned landing on one of Jupiter's moons, flight around Pluto. Arctic will be made fertile and productive. "Linking of minds" between man and computers will be achieved.
2025: Old age will be arrested by chemical means. Commercial traffic with bases on Moon and Mars. Telepathy will be common place. Wars will be psychological tug-of-war affairs.
2050: Manned flights outside solar system. A system of propulsion based on anti-gravity will come into use.
Boy, those Rand men and their incredible forecasting machines! They got everything up to 2000 right! Now I can't wait to link my mind with the nearest computer, only 15 years left. Hope my mind lasts that long. And if I could only trace those damned submarines...
I'm guessing some of you will know where this museum is. Hi to you guys, and eat your heart out.
It's the fatigue, stupid
My MidDay column, in print last Monday but I've had time only now to find it and link to it -- here. Comments welcome.
October 24, 2005
Is this ten?
Train to Jaipur, and a blind vendor saunters through, selling cards, inflatable pillows, chains, locks, toys, you-name-it. What we do name is nailclippers, which we have foolishly forgotten to pack. He promptly reaches down to a specific spot in his array of wares and pulls out two or three for us to examine. How does he do that?
Anyway, we choose one. Ten rupees, he says. It later turns out to be so blunt that he should have paid us ten rupees to take it, besides which my fingers still hurt from being mauled by this instrument of torture, but I won't mention all that.
We give him a ten rupee note. He sniffs it, feels it, then turns to a guy in the next compartment and asks, "Is this ten rupees?"
The guy in the next compartment nods his head, then realizes nodding won't do, so says "Yes."
Then he buys something and hands over a note. Will the guy ask the next guy over to confirm its authenticity? And the fellow after that ... ? Does the vendor cascade like this through the train?
Anyway, we choose one. Ten rupees, he says. It later turns out to be so blunt that he should have paid us ten rupees to take it, besides which my fingers still hurt from being mauled by this instrument of torture, but I won't mention all that.
We give him a ten rupee note. He sniffs it, feels it, then turns to a guy in the next compartment and asks, "Is this ten rupees?"
The guy in the next compartment nods his head, then realizes nodding won't do, so says "Yes."
Then he buys something and hands over a note. Will the guy ask the next guy over to confirm its authenticity? And the fellow after that ... ? Does the vendor cascade like this through the train?
October 20, 2005
The inefficiency boost
Voltage stabilizers, anyone? In rural or small-town India, but also often in large metropolises like Delhi, these relatively expensive devices are indispensible. If you operate a refrigerator, a computer, a stereo or other such electronic gadget, a stabilizer is an insurance policy against damage. You'd be a bozo not to use one.
So, given the huge market for knick-knacks you want to protect with stabilizers, making stabilizers is a profitable enterprise. Sure enough, there are several brands out there. In fact, it's safe to say that the stabilizer business makes a steady contribution to the economy.
But think some more: why do we need stabilizers in the first place? Because the voltage of the electricity that's supplied to us fluctuates wildly. That happens because of inefficiencies in the generation and transmission of electricity. In India, we are so used to these fluctuations that we don't even think they are abnormal: we simply buy stabilizers and use them like any other consumer product. Hell, they are just another consumer product.
We likely also don't think, as we buy stabilizers, that we are pumping up the GDP of the country, which we are. But if we did think of that, we might find a small perversity here. Since we tolerate inefficiency in one part of our economy -- the generation of electricity -- we need devices whose production and purchase shore up another part of our economy.
Too simple-minded a view for you economists out there? But this is essentially what is happening. A whole industry, for a wholly unnecessary product, has grown out of inefficiency. What's more, if our electricity supply ever did become stable -- a goal worth striving for, certainly -- that whole industry will become redundant.
Put another way, inefficiencies boost the economy. Correct those inefficiencies, which we should, and we damage the economy.
Look at your voltage stabilizer in that odd light. (But before the voltage dies down and snuffs it out).
Now all of us are infatuated with the GDP. Asking for votes, political parties will promise "rapid" or "double-digit" yearly increases in the GDP, as if that is an unquestionably desirable thing. Yet GDP is really only a measure of market activity: money changing hands. Every single money transaction adds to the GDP. This has become the barometer of the health of a nation. The greater the GDP, and especially the faster it grows -- the more transactions happen that pump it up -- the better a country is said to be doing.
No wonder political parties promise to raise it.
But all the infatuation leaves the stabilizer questions unanswered: how is it that we must consider inefficiency as a positive influence on the economy? Should we not account for the kind of transactions made? Should there not be some totting up of the costs to the country of certain sorts of market activities?
Look at it like this. You buy a computer. Doing so, you add to the GDP. Days later, the unstable electricity supply in Sheikh Sarai fries your sleek machine (which once happened to me here in Bombay). You either repair it or buy a new one. Whichever you do, you add to the GDP. This time, you are wiser: you buy yourself a stabilizer as well. With that purchase, you add to the GDP again.
Instead of just one purchase, you have made three, all of which feed the maw of the Indian GDP. You have contributed, three times over, to making India's economy a booming, vibrant one; to making India itself prosperous.
Why, you may wonder, are you also three times as annoyed?
***
Postscript: Meant to say, I will follow this up with some more exploration of the GDP and possible alternatives.
So, given the huge market for knick-knacks you want to protect with stabilizers, making stabilizers is a profitable enterprise. Sure enough, there are several brands out there. In fact, it's safe to say that the stabilizer business makes a steady contribution to the economy.
But think some more: why do we need stabilizers in the first place? Because the voltage of the electricity that's supplied to us fluctuates wildly. That happens because of inefficiencies in the generation and transmission of electricity. In India, we are so used to these fluctuations that we don't even think they are abnormal: we simply buy stabilizers and use them like any other consumer product. Hell, they are just another consumer product.
We likely also don't think, as we buy stabilizers, that we are pumping up the GDP of the country, which we are. But if we did think of that, we might find a small perversity here. Since we tolerate inefficiency in one part of our economy -- the generation of electricity -- we need devices whose production and purchase shore up another part of our economy.
Too simple-minded a view for you economists out there? But this is essentially what is happening. A whole industry, for a wholly unnecessary product, has grown out of inefficiency. What's more, if our electricity supply ever did become stable -- a goal worth striving for, certainly -- that whole industry will become redundant.
Put another way, inefficiencies boost the economy. Correct those inefficiencies, which we should, and we damage the economy.
Look at your voltage stabilizer in that odd light. (But before the voltage dies down and snuffs it out).
Now all of us are infatuated with the GDP. Asking for votes, political parties will promise "rapid" or "double-digit" yearly increases in the GDP, as if that is an unquestionably desirable thing. Yet GDP is really only a measure of market activity: money changing hands. Every single money transaction adds to the GDP. This has become the barometer of the health of a nation. The greater the GDP, and especially the faster it grows -- the more transactions happen that pump it up -- the better a country is said to be doing.
No wonder political parties promise to raise it.
But all the infatuation leaves the stabilizer questions unanswered: how is it that we must consider inefficiency as a positive influence on the economy? Should we not account for the kind of transactions made? Should there not be some totting up of the costs to the country of certain sorts of market activities?
Look at it like this. You buy a computer. Doing so, you add to the GDP. Days later, the unstable electricity supply in Sheikh Sarai fries your sleek machine (which once happened to me here in Bombay). You either repair it or buy a new one. Whichever you do, you add to the GDP. This time, you are wiser: you buy yourself a stabilizer as well. With that purchase, you add to the GDP again.
Instead of just one purchase, you have made three, all of which feed the maw of the Indian GDP. You have contributed, three times over, to making India's economy a booming, vibrant one; to making India itself prosperous.
Why, you may wonder, are you also three times as annoyed?
Postscript: Meant to say, I will follow this up with some more exploration of the GDP and possible alternatives.
Outlived its purpose
Here is the final shortlisted essay in the Citizens for Peace/Indian Express competition on the theme "A Secular Rethink." Lakkan Naqvi, from Delhi, won second prize for this effort. Congratulations, Lakkan!
Note: Shashi Warrier's first prize winner. Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta's third prize winner. The three other shortlisted essays: Sultan & Rehmat Fazelbhoy, Paresh Kumar, Amit Gawde.
Note also that these are the English entries that were shortlisted. Would a Hindi blogger out there like to post the Hindi ones?
With no more preamble, over to Lakkan.
***
Secularism is dead: Long live India
I avoid making friends with Muslims who show a “special” interest in me because I also happen to be a Muslim. I also avoid making friends with Hindus who want to improve my comfort level by talking about their other “Mohammedan friends”. The ones who express surprise because we do not “look” like Muslims should count themselves lucky that I do not have their blood on my hands. My wife usually tells them that we have forgotten to carry our horns. And I simply detest people who bare their secular heart because I find them a shade more communal than the Muslims who show a “special” interest in me or the Hindus who have other “Mohammedan friends”.
There are certain words and phrases that lose their original meaning to reflect change. The word Harijan was coined by Mahatma Gandhi to give a touch of dignity to the country’s underclass. It was a very sensitive coinage. Its usage is now banned. The Dalits are happy with their new identity. Call them Harijans and you will have Mayawati gunning for you.
I believe the concept of secularism, for whatever it stood for, too has outlived its purpose. Gandhi was perfectly right in publicly using religious metaphors to establish communal harmony in the tense period before the partition-cum-Independence of India. The constant reference to “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issai, apas mien hain bhai, bhai” did help bring down the level of communal tension generated by the British, the Muslim League and the Hindu Maha Sabha in equal measure.
Today we are being asked to share the once sacred secular space with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Veer Savarkar, both votaries of the vicious two-nation theory! Dear countrymen, I plead with you to with folded hands to support me in demanding that secularism in its present mutilated form should be officially given a quiet burial and allowed to rest in peace. Please do it before the butcher of Staines and the Fuhrer of Gujarat raise their hand in support of secularism.
I am certain that my mother was not promoting the Congress-coined and State-sponsored concept of secularism when she helped two Sindhi refugee boys, Lachchhoo and Chandu set up a grocery store in a mixed-locality in Lucknow shortly after partition. Neither was she trying to establish Shia-Sunni harmony by helping Khalil Master set up a tailoring shop. She is still around and at 90 as intellectually involved in condemning Bush for brutalising the planet as she is in the affairs of the socially disadvantaged sections of people around her.
Our parents were not promoting secularism by not stopping us from darting across the road to Krishna Bhavan for the evening aarti. Neither did Panditji make us aware of our otherness. We enjoyed playing with the cute little bells that he gave to all the devotees. I suspect we always got a larger helping of the Prasad than others. Evidently there was nothing in the scriptures against Shia Muslim kids taking part in the puja.
The residence of the family of Babu Mahabir Prasad Srivastava faced our house. Every Holi our father would lock himself up in a room because he didn’t like getting drenched in colours that took days to wash. For Bhola and Veeru, Babuji’s nephews, we played the Trojan Horse to let them in where father was hiding. Thereafter we went all over the neighbourhood spraying everyone with colour and shouting “bura naa maano Holi hai”. We did all this and more not because we wanted to display our secular ideals, but because in those happy times we were not ever made aware of the difference in “their religion and ours”.
Perhaps we are a rare family, which did not allow our religion to dominate our conduct. Moharram in our native village Mustafabad (Unchahar) is more a cultural experience than a religious observance. Take away Mir Anis and his marsisyas, describing different facets of the Karbala tragedy in simple Urdu verse and we shall have to reinvent our observance of Imam Husain’s martyrdom.
No, I do not have any rational answers to why we did not react like other families even if someone married outside the religious fold. I do not think there are many Muslim families that accepted a Chitpavan Brahmin, a Rajput Christian, a Chinese, an American and Sunni girls as daughters-in-law. I can count at least one Sikh, several Hindu and Sunni sons-in-law in our family. It is not that there were never any murmurs of protest. They were always muted. My father was a consistent conscientious objector and did not bless mixed weddings with his presence. However, once the dust was settled the non-Muslims became as much a part of the family as the “regular” sons and daughters-in-law.
But why have I brought in my family in the debate on secularism? Because we represent the rarest of rare exception. I wish the rest of India was as flexible in relating to other cultures and faiths as we are. Unfortunately it is a long way from happening. What worries me more is the perceptible backward movement into our respective communal ghettos. We shall be making a terrible mistake if we ignore the objective reality. My family is still largely untouched by the communal virus. But beyond our domestic comfort zone is a very, very disturbing picture.
The village communities that were untouched by the communal virus seem to be buckling under the influence of the politically sponsored hate campaigns during the past two decades against religious minorities. What makes me worry more is the change in the social perception of the educated, upwardly mobile urban youth, who once used to flirt briefly with communist ideology before succumbing to temptations of the market forces! The Sangh Parivar’s vicious propaganda against the Muslims, and lately Christians has managed to breach the centuries old secular shield of the villages and influence urban Hindu youths. Not surprisingly their hate campaigns gave Muslim madarsas undeserved legitimacy.
The secular space is now sought to be appropriated by the political lumpen. The process started immediately after Independence. I can give a thousand reasons, by quoting chapter and verse from the data on communal violence compiled by the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy, to make secular India hang its head in shame.
The anti-Sikh riots, the Babri Masjid-related acts of communal mayhem, the Bombay blasts, the Gujarat pogrom are just a few out of the countless instances of the secular State’s failure to provide the promised security to “we, the people of India” from the enemies of civil society. The day is not going to come in the lifetime of our grand children when the likes of L. K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Narendra Modi, Bal Thackeray, H. K. L. Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar etc will be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an honest man and secular too boot. So is Sonia Gandhi. However, which one of them will take responsibility for the entry of the Shiv Sainiks, in recent times, in the Congress? It is the continuing compromise with communal elements that is responsible for the present mess. The political leadership should have banned all forms of public display of religion after Independence. That is what secularism is supposed to do. A secular State’s primary function is to provide equal private space, without let or hindrance, to both believers and non-believers and come down ruthlessly against those who try to violate this cardinal principle.
What will become of India if secularism is discarded? This question is best answered by a counter-question. What was India before secularism was adopted as State policy? India is the only country that allowed all the religions of the world to grow and flourish on its soil. This happened much before the birth of secularism. Simply put, to be Indian is to be secular. By the same logic the votaries of communalism, or those who seek to create religious or sectarian ill will are not Indians. They are enemies of the State and should be charged with treason and hanged.
Raghupati Sahai “Firaq” summed up the essence of India in this verse –
Sar zameen-e-Hind par aqwaam-e-alaam kay “Firaq”
Karvaan bastey gaye, Hindustan bantaa gaya.
Note: Shashi Warrier's first prize winner. Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta's third prize winner. The three other shortlisted essays: Sultan & Rehmat Fazelbhoy, Paresh Kumar, Amit Gawde.
Note also that these are the English entries that were shortlisted. Would a Hindi blogger out there like to post the Hindi ones?
With no more preamble, over to Lakkan.
I avoid making friends with Muslims who show a “special” interest in me because I also happen to be a Muslim. I also avoid making friends with Hindus who want to improve my comfort level by talking about their other “Mohammedan friends”. The ones who express surprise because we do not “look” like Muslims should count themselves lucky that I do not have their blood on my hands. My wife usually tells them that we have forgotten to carry our horns. And I simply detest people who bare their secular heart because I find them a shade more communal than the Muslims who show a “special” interest in me or the Hindus who have other “Mohammedan friends”.
There are certain words and phrases that lose their original meaning to reflect change. The word Harijan was coined by Mahatma Gandhi to give a touch of dignity to the country’s underclass. It was a very sensitive coinage. Its usage is now banned. The Dalits are happy with their new identity. Call them Harijans and you will have Mayawati gunning for you.
I believe the concept of secularism, for whatever it stood for, too has outlived its purpose. Gandhi was perfectly right in publicly using religious metaphors to establish communal harmony in the tense period before the partition-cum-Independence of India. The constant reference to “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issai, apas mien hain bhai, bhai” did help bring down the level of communal tension generated by the British, the Muslim League and the Hindu Maha Sabha in equal measure.
Today we are being asked to share the once sacred secular space with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Veer Savarkar, both votaries of the vicious two-nation theory! Dear countrymen, I plead with you to with folded hands to support me in demanding that secularism in its present mutilated form should be officially given a quiet burial and allowed to rest in peace. Please do it before the butcher of Staines and the Fuhrer of Gujarat raise their hand in support of secularism.
I am certain that my mother was not promoting the Congress-coined and State-sponsored concept of secularism when she helped two Sindhi refugee boys, Lachchhoo and Chandu set up a grocery store in a mixed-locality in Lucknow shortly after partition. Neither was she trying to establish Shia-Sunni harmony by helping Khalil Master set up a tailoring shop. She is still around and at 90 as intellectually involved in condemning Bush for brutalising the planet as she is in the affairs of the socially disadvantaged sections of people around her.
Our parents were not promoting secularism by not stopping us from darting across the road to Krishna Bhavan for the evening aarti. Neither did Panditji make us aware of our otherness. We enjoyed playing with the cute little bells that he gave to all the devotees. I suspect we always got a larger helping of the Prasad than others. Evidently there was nothing in the scriptures against Shia Muslim kids taking part in the puja.
The residence of the family of Babu Mahabir Prasad Srivastava faced our house. Every Holi our father would lock himself up in a room because he didn’t like getting drenched in colours that took days to wash. For Bhola and Veeru, Babuji’s nephews, we played the Trojan Horse to let them in where father was hiding. Thereafter we went all over the neighbourhood spraying everyone with colour and shouting “bura naa maano Holi hai”. We did all this and more not because we wanted to display our secular ideals, but because in those happy times we were not ever made aware of the difference in “their religion and ours”.
Perhaps we are a rare family, which did not allow our religion to dominate our conduct. Moharram in our native village Mustafabad (Unchahar) is more a cultural experience than a religious observance. Take away Mir Anis and his marsisyas, describing different facets of the Karbala tragedy in simple Urdu verse and we shall have to reinvent our observance of Imam Husain’s martyrdom.
No, I do not have any rational answers to why we did not react like other families even if someone married outside the religious fold. I do not think there are many Muslim families that accepted a Chitpavan Brahmin, a Rajput Christian, a Chinese, an American and Sunni girls as daughters-in-law. I can count at least one Sikh, several Hindu and Sunni sons-in-law in our family. It is not that there were never any murmurs of protest. They were always muted. My father was a consistent conscientious objector and did not bless mixed weddings with his presence. However, once the dust was settled the non-Muslims became as much a part of the family as the “regular” sons and daughters-in-law.
But why have I brought in my family in the debate on secularism? Because we represent the rarest of rare exception. I wish the rest of India was as flexible in relating to other cultures and faiths as we are. Unfortunately it is a long way from happening. What worries me more is the perceptible backward movement into our respective communal ghettos. We shall be making a terrible mistake if we ignore the objective reality. My family is still largely untouched by the communal virus. But beyond our domestic comfort zone is a very, very disturbing picture.
The village communities that were untouched by the communal virus seem to be buckling under the influence of the politically sponsored hate campaigns during the past two decades against religious minorities. What makes me worry more is the change in the social perception of the educated, upwardly mobile urban youth, who once used to flirt briefly with communist ideology before succumbing to temptations of the market forces! The Sangh Parivar’s vicious propaganda against the Muslims, and lately Christians has managed to breach the centuries old secular shield of the villages and influence urban Hindu youths. Not surprisingly their hate campaigns gave Muslim madarsas undeserved legitimacy.
The secular space is now sought to be appropriated by the political lumpen. The process started immediately after Independence. I can give a thousand reasons, by quoting chapter and verse from the data on communal violence compiled by the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy, to make secular India hang its head in shame.
The anti-Sikh riots, the Babri Masjid-related acts of communal mayhem, the Bombay blasts, the Gujarat pogrom are just a few out of the countless instances of the secular State’s failure to provide the promised security to “we, the people of India” from the enemies of civil society. The day is not going to come in the lifetime of our grand children when the likes of L. K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Narendra Modi, Bal Thackeray, H. K. L. Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar etc will be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an honest man and secular too boot. So is Sonia Gandhi. However, which one of them will take responsibility for the entry of the Shiv Sainiks, in recent times, in the Congress? It is the continuing compromise with communal elements that is responsible for the present mess. The political leadership should have banned all forms of public display of religion after Independence. That is what secularism is supposed to do. A secular State’s primary function is to provide equal private space, without let or hindrance, to both believers and non-believers and come down ruthlessly against those who try to violate this cardinal principle.
What will become of India if secularism is discarded? This question is best answered by a counter-question. What was India before secularism was adopted as State policy? India is the only country that allowed all the religions of the world to grow and flourish on its soil. This happened much before the birth of secularism. Simply put, to be Indian is to be secular. By the same logic the votaries of communalism, or those who seek to create religious or sectarian ill will are not Indians. They are enemies of the State and should be charged with treason and hanged.
Raghupati Sahai “Firaq” summed up the essence of India in this verse –
Sar zameen-e-Hind par aqwaam-e-alaam kay “Firaq”
Karvaan bastey gaye, Hindustan bantaa gaya.
October 18, 2005
Monkey business, goat too
Mahashweta Devi, winner of the Jnanpith and Magsaysay Awards, is a feisty lady with a definite twinkle in her eye. A few years ago, several of us journalists -- curiously, I was the lone male -- made a trip with her through rural Maharashtra. Over breakfast on the steps of a rest house near Phaltan (Satara District), we asked her some random questions. She answered the first few, but without warning turned away and sniffed: "Are you interviewing me? Where are your notebooks? Why should I answer your questions?"
Sniffed, but with a definite twinkle.
Still over breakfast, she told us how, in her youth, she once contracted to supply 15,000 monkeys for medical experiments in the USA. Collected from the wilds of MP, she arranged to bring them to Bombay. Unfortunately, any simian emigratory plans were stillborn right there: the American ship which was to ferry them was not allowed into the harbour for some unknown reason. After much wrangling, the puzzled creatures were released in the Western Ghats.
Months later, Mahashweta Devi found herself listening to a recounting of the affair from an uncle who didn't know she had played a part in it. "Only a Bengali could have thought up such a mad scheme," the uncle spluttered. "And do you know, there was a woman involved!"
So our trip began with this monkey story. It ended, with a certain cosmic symmetry, with goats. Chanda, a friend from university, runs a farm outside Phaltan where she breeds goats. She hopes to improve the area's goat population in several respects. One of those: increase their yields of milk. Another: promote twinning, or the tendency to produce more than one offspring at each birth. Multiple goat kids are a better use of resources than single ones.
We could see that for ourselves when we met three such kids, all just a couple of weeks old. One, a single kid, was clearly larger than the other two. But that pair, twins, together weighed more than the single one at birth and continued that way.
The reason for all this is that traditionally, the women in village families own and care for goats. A better breed of goat -- with more milk, more offspring -- therefore benefits women directly. That benefit was -- is -- Chanda's goal.
Seeking that better breed, Chanda imported several embryos of a South African strain called Boer, to cross with desi goats. The embryos have since grown into magnificent specimens, brown and black and white, complete with long flowing beards. Chanda named two of the finest "FW de Klerk" and "Nellie", for Nelson Mandela.
Symmetry, did I say? The previous year, Mahashweta Devi had her Jnanpith award handed to her by Mandela himself. He asked her, she told us with another twinkle, if he could keep the cheque.
Sniffed, but with a definite twinkle.
Still over breakfast, she told us how, in her youth, she once contracted to supply 15,000 monkeys for medical experiments in the USA. Collected from the wilds of MP, she arranged to bring them to Bombay. Unfortunately, any simian emigratory plans were stillborn right there: the American ship which was to ferry them was not allowed into the harbour for some unknown reason. After much wrangling, the puzzled creatures were released in the Western Ghats.
Months later, Mahashweta Devi found herself listening to a recounting of the affair from an uncle who didn't know she had played a part in it. "Only a Bengali could have thought up such a mad scheme," the uncle spluttered. "And do you know, there was a woman involved!"
So our trip began with this monkey story. It ended, with a certain cosmic symmetry, with goats. Chanda, a friend from university, runs a farm outside Phaltan where she breeds goats. She hopes to improve the area's goat population in several respects. One of those: increase their yields of milk. Another: promote twinning, or the tendency to produce more than one offspring at each birth. Multiple goat kids are a better use of resources than single ones.
We could see that for ourselves when we met three such kids, all just a couple of weeks old. One, a single kid, was clearly larger than the other two. But that pair, twins, together weighed more than the single one at birth and continued that way.
The reason for all this is that traditionally, the women in village families own and care for goats. A better breed of goat -- with more milk, more offspring -- therefore benefits women directly. That benefit was -- is -- Chanda's goal.
Seeking that better breed, Chanda imported several embryos of a South African strain called Boer, to cross with desi goats. The embryos have since grown into magnificent specimens, brown and black and white, complete with long flowing beards. Chanda named two of the finest "FW de Klerk" and "Nellie", for Nelson Mandela.
Symmetry, did I say? The previous year, Mahashweta Devi had her Jnanpith award handed to her by Mandela himself. He asked her, she told us with another twinkle, if he could keep the cheque.
Sex ratio reaction
Harini wonders what to call it. Charu has more. The numbers they quote first got some attention in late 2003, when the then Health and Family Welfare Minister, Sushma Swaraj, released a booklet called "Missing", put together by the UN Population Fund and her Ministry.
Last year, I wrote this article about the booklet and some of its implications.
It brought me responses and retorts from various naysayers and doubters. Like Charu has got. But among them was this gem, which I thought I'd share verbatim:
Last year, I wrote this article about the booklet and some of its implications.
It brought me responses and retorts from various naysayers and doubters. Like Charu has got. But among them was this gem, which I thought I'd share verbatim:
- If you consider the onslaught of islamic and christian barbarians that invaded my beloved motherland, having a girl child became more of a liability for the parent, constanly in the fear of her abduction and rape and the social punishment that ensues.
Hence they were not totally wrong in desiring for a male child.
You're following an agenda that is certainly detrimental to Indian interests. You're that combination of a communist/socialist and christian bigot.
Question of dishonour
Got a carpenter to do some work for us a few years ago, a smiling articulate sort. In the middle of the job, he vanished for a few days. When he returned, he was full of apologies. "I've been roaming the whole of Gujarat," he told us, "me and my uncle. We were looking for the son of some relatives of mine. He has run away from home with a girl. When we find them," he said with a hint of pride, "unko jaan se maar daalenge" ("we will kill them").
When we got over the shock of hearing these violent words from this usually genial and bantering fellow, we asked, why? "Hamare khandaan mein yeh love-marriage shove-marriage sab nahin chalta hai!" ("We don't allow love-marriages in our community!") I stared at him open-mouthed. He went on, "Yeh hamare khandaan ki izzat ka savaal hai." ("This is about the honour of our community." Actually izzat doesn't translate well; it is a word that means honour and respect and "name").
I asked: "Unko maar daalne se kya tumhare khandaan ki izzat badh jayegi?" ("If you kill them, do you improve the honour of your community?") He repeated quietly: "khandaan ki izzat ka savaal hai."
I've been thinking about the man in recent times. In Delhi last week, a businessman shot his own daughter dead because she married a man she fell in love with. His own daughter! No mention in the reports of khandaan, but I have no doubt the word izzat was buzzing around in his fevered mind.
How do you shoot your own daughter?
And not long before that, the actress Khushboo got into the bad books of the protectors of what you might loosely call Tamil izzat. She had the temerity to suggest that premarital sex was OK, and the virtues of virginity at marriage are overstated.
Boom! Here was an attack on Tamil culture and values! Once, Tamil film fans took to Khushboo so much that they actually built a temple to her. But now, she was abusing Tamil culture by condoning premarital sex. She had better return to that non-Tamil place she came from, whichever it was.
Hey, if premarital sex rubs Tamil culture the wrong way, I'm willing to bet it's being rubbed the wrong way hundreds of times a day in the leafy lanes of Chennai alone.
People do what comes naturally -- fall in love, make out, that sort of thing -- and you can be sure there will be others who feel dishonoured. Others for whom some apparent "culture", something called "khandaan ki izzat", matter above all else. Matter so much that they are willing to rage against a much-loved star, willing to kill much-loved family members.
This is "izzat"? I'll take the dishonour, thank you.
When we got over the shock of hearing these violent words from this usually genial and bantering fellow, we asked, why? "Hamare khandaan mein yeh love-marriage shove-marriage sab nahin chalta hai!" ("We don't allow love-marriages in our community!") I stared at him open-mouthed. He went on, "Yeh hamare khandaan ki izzat ka savaal hai." ("This is about the honour of our community." Actually izzat doesn't translate well; it is a word that means honour and respect and "name").
I asked: "Unko maar daalne se kya tumhare khandaan ki izzat badh jayegi?" ("If you kill them, do you improve the honour of your community?") He repeated quietly: "khandaan ki izzat ka savaal hai."
I've been thinking about the man in recent times. In Delhi last week, a businessman shot his own daughter dead because she married a man she fell in love with. His own daughter! No mention in the reports of khandaan, but I have no doubt the word izzat was buzzing around in his fevered mind.
How do you shoot your own daughter?
And not long before that, the actress Khushboo got into the bad books of the protectors of what you might loosely call Tamil izzat. She had the temerity to suggest that premarital sex was OK, and the virtues of virginity at marriage are overstated.
Boom! Here was an attack on Tamil culture and values! Once, Tamil film fans took to Khushboo so much that they actually built a temple to her. But now, she was abusing Tamil culture by condoning premarital sex. She had better return to that non-Tamil place she came from, whichever it was.
Hey, if premarital sex rubs Tamil culture the wrong way, I'm willing to bet it's being rubbed the wrong way hundreds of times a day in the leafy lanes of Chennai alone.
People do what comes naturally -- fall in love, make out, that sort of thing -- and you can be sure there will be others who feel dishonoured. Others for whom some apparent "culture", something called "khandaan ki izzat", matter above all else. Matter so much that they are willing to rage against a much-loved star, willing to kill much-loved family members.
This is "izzat"? I'll take the dishonour, thank you.
October 17, 2005
Winning essay
Just found that the winning essay in the Citizens for Peace/Indian Express "A Secularism Rethink" competition is in the Express: Shashi Warrier's Children of the same god. (Shashi Warrier is a novelist whose "Hangman's Journal" is a small treasure).
Third prize winner, Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, has her essay up here.
Well done, Shashi and Uma!
I'll post the last shortlisted essay, LH Naqvi's second prize winning effort, in a couple of days.
Third prize winner, Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, has her essay up here.
Well done, Shashi and Uma!
I'll post the last shortlisted essay, LH Naqvi's second prize winning effort, in a couple of days.
Quake help
It's unlikely you haven't heard about it already: but if you haven't, or even if you have, please visit South Asia Quake Help. News and appeals and opportunities to help, after last week's major earthquake.
A third essay
The third shortlisted essay in the recent Citizens for Peace/Indian Express essay competition on the theme "A Secular Rethink". This one is by Sultan and Rehmat Fazelbhoy of Bombay. Congratulations, Sultan and Rehmat!
***
A Secular Rethink: Rekindling the Rainbow of Hope
Sitting down to write this essay takes me back to my college days and the tremendous fervour generated by our leaders, with Gandhiji at the helm, to strive peacefully for freedom from the yoke of British rule. The nation wanted to take charge of its own destiny!
A choice came our way : migrate to Pakistan, the new land of opportunity for our "victimized" community (so our Muslim League leaders proclaimed). Many families and neighbours known to us opted for the adventure and the vision of an Islamic State, a picture which had little appeal for us.
Why then did our own family and relatives consciously choose to stay back in secular India? With all the drawbacks and struggles imposed by over emphasis on religion in public life, it has been, in retrospect, a most rewarding and heart warming decision to remain here.
There are two prominent features in our extended family: we are not orthodox in our practice of Islam. And two, there have been a large number of marriages with spouses from other religions and countries. Many have been and are fascinating persons, integrating well with our culture and our family.
This has encouraged us to think more of ourselves as citizens of the world, members of the human community, hoping that mankind could some day live on a borderless planet. At the same time we took pride in our country and wanted India to be a beacon light to the rest of the world as an example in harmonious and composite nationhood.
But then came the vote gathering yatra to Ayodhya, with the support and participation of prominent political parties. Some even idolised Hitler as a super patriot!
"India is primarily for Hindus", was vociferously proclaimed and a Ram Temple would be the ultimate offering to bring peace and prosperity to all citizens. In the process, then and subsequently, many lives have been cruelly lost, and tragedy has needlessly struck many a family who were solely interested in earning their daily bread with integrity and hard work.
The Muslim clerics and leaders were certainly not guiltless. They wrongly preached the superiority of the Muslim over all others, and misinterpreted the meaning of jihad, generating animosity against the majority community. They overlooked that in its true meaning, jihad is the inner battle of each individual against the negative and evil features in his or her character.
This is the theme Prophet Mohammed gave to the people of the world for all time:
It seems we are increasingly forgetting in our daily lives and interaction with our fellow beings the lofty messages of our many religions and spiritual sages and scholars. To mention a few: Vivekananda, Dr S Radhakrishnan, Gandhiji, the Prophet of Islam who shunned worship and pictures of himself, stating that he was only the Messenger of Allah; also the voices of Jesus. Buddha, Zarathustha, Guru Nanak and so many others, and all the Holy books -- the Gita, the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Guru Granth Saheb and other scriptures.
A little over twelve months ago, we in India set a supreme example of our secular Constitution: a Hindu voting majority, a Christian leader of a major party, a Muslim President to officiate at the swearing in ceremony of a Sikh Prime Minister -- above all, a peaceful change of guard at the highest levels. India had demonstrated, like no other nation in history, THE STRENGTH OF A COMPOSITE SECULAR CULTURE IN A DEMOCRATIC ENVIRONMENT!
This one event beckons us to look ahead to what each one of us should be doing to make the dreams of our independence struggle come to greater fruition in the time ahead. Each of us, whatever our caste and creed, has the same kind of blood in our veins, and the Almighty has been extremely fair in giving everyone an absolutely equal 24 hours per day to do what we want to with our gift of life from Him.
Yes, talent and intellect have been unevenly distributed. At the same time they are generously sprinkled amongst ALL citizens -- just look at the composition of our cricket, hockey and other sports teams to realize that when merit is the criteria, every community has much to offer.
Music is another unique example. Audiences of all faiths gather at concerts by Lata Mangeshkar, Amjad Ali Khan, Asha Bhosle, Bismillah Khan, Ravi Shanker, Zubin Metha and so many others. Many are enchanted by the lilting rhythms of A. R. Rehman. Talent from across the border in Pakistan has also been much appreciated here for the likes of Abida Parveen and Mohsin Raza. All without any thought of their religious background.
Again, in the field of IT business, the two best known names are Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji, whilst the Tatas and the Birlas have made a mark in a wide spectrum of industries.
Why then stifle initiative and the flowering of talent by narrow mindedness, when the intention should be not to dominate or destroy, but with full utilisation of all available skills and resources, to win the overwhelmingly difficult battle against poverty? Let us then rethink our overall concept of secularism, much maligned by the prefix of 'pseudo' given by some political parties, to insinuate minority appeasement.
Let us now, more than ever, move over to its wider meaning of a COMPOSITE society, with equal rights and justice for all. Let us take pride in the multifaceted nature of our culture and inheritance, the result of healthy assimilation over centuries, a marked feature of Hinduism at its very best.
Let us be devoid of unhealthy passion, or anger at past historical events, and aggressive questions of caste, gender and creed -- the Taj Mahal and the Ajanta & Ellora caves are equal in their grandeur, and are neither Muslim nor Hindu but magnificently Indian!
These give an insight into the talents we have nurtured as one of the oldest civilizations, talents equal to the best of any other nation. Again we have so much uniqueness in each community that enhances the beauty of the tapestry that is composite India .
Let us all be religious, better still spiritual. Let us teach ourselves to consider our beliefs to be a private matter, and not an advertisement label to wear each time we move out of our homes. In creating mankind, the Almighty did not speak of differences of gender, caste, faith, blood groups, etc. Instead HE unhesitatingly gave to one and all the peace of a scenic sunset, the fascinating variety in nature and the animal world, and the elevating experience of being high up in the Himalayas.
HE remains ONE and our several religions are but so many roads to a common destination. Let us pause a bit and look backwards into history -– which of the ancient empires, or the recent one of Hitler, has survived once the cancer of hatred has entered the body politic?
Yes, a change of heart is sorely needed in the attic of the minds of many of our religious clerics and the political class at all levels. We need a wider sense of comradeship with all our people, stricken and bewildered as they are, searching for some way of escape out of the ruins and poverty around us.
Let us broaden the definition of secularism as not only primarly focused on freedom of worship, but more spiced up with joy and pride in our COMPOSITE culture. Let us unstintingly love our common Creator, and along with Him, the life He gave us, joining hands with neighbours and friends in laughter, tolerance, helpfulness, service and good fellowship. Let us work towards banishing hatred and cruelty, a utopian dream for an imperfect world.
This then is the rethink we envision and in all earnestness pray that it happens. Let each one strive to help our nation move forward towards the grand potential that is India, a vibrant home of many mansions, secular and happily composite, where there will be room for all to live in justice, peace, prosperity and freedom ...
***
Said President Abraham Lincoln's foremost opponent in the American civil war, General Ulysses S. Grant: I believe that our Great Maker is, in His own good time, preparing the world to become one nation, speaking one language of love and peace, when armies, navies and killer weapons will no longer dominate and be no longer required ...
Sitting down to write this essay takes me back to my college days and the tremendous fervour generated by our leaders, with Gandhiji at the helm, to strive peacefully for freedom from the yoke of British rule. The nation wanted to take charge of its own destiny!
A choice came our way : migrate to Pakistan, the new land of opportunity for our "victimized" community (so our Muslim League leaders proclaimed). Many families and neighbours known to us opted for the adventure and the vision of an Islamic State, a picture which had little appeal for us.
Why then did our own family and relatives consciously choose to stay back in secular India? With all the drawbacks and struggles imposed by over emphasis on religion in public life, it has been, in retrospect, a most rewarding and heart warming decision to remain here.
There are two prominent features in our extended family: we are not orthodox in our practice of Islam. And two, there have been a large number of marriages with spouses from other religions and countries. Many have been and are fascinating persons, integrating well with our culture and our family.
This has encouraged us to think more of ourselves as citizens of the world, members of the human community, hoping that mankind could some day live on a borderless planet. At the same time we took pride in our country and wanted India to be a beacon light to the rest of the world as an example in harmonious and composite nationhood.
But then came the vote gathering yatra to Ayodhya, with the support and participation of prominent political parties. Some even idolised Hitler as a super patriot!
"India is primarily for Hindus", was vociferously proclaimed and a Ram Temple would be the ultimate offering to bring peace and prosperity to all citizens. In the process, then and subsequently, many lives have been cruelly lost, and tragedy has needlessly struck many a family who were solely interested in earning their daily bread with integrity and hard work.
The Muslim clerics and leaders were certainly not guiltless. They wrongly preached the superiority of the Muslim over all others, and misinterpreted the meaning of jihad, generating animosity against the majority community. They overlooked that in its true meaning, jihad is the inner battle of each individual against the negative and evil features in his or her character.
This is the theme Prophet Mohammed gave to the people of the world for all time:
- O people, remember that your Lord is One. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab. Also a black has no superiority over a white, nor does a white have any superiority over a black, except by virtue of piety. Indeed the best amongst you is the one with the best character.
It seems we are increasingly forgetting in our daily lives and interaction with our fellow beings the lofty messages of our many religions and spiritual sages and scholars. To mention a few: Vivekananda, Dr S Radhakrishnan, Gandhiji, the Prophet of Islam who shunned worship and pictures of himself, stating that he was only the Messenger of Allah; also the voices of Jesus. Buddha, Zarathustha, Guru Nanak and so many others, and all the Holy books -- the Gita, the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Guru Granth Saheb and other scriptures.
A little over twelve months ago, we in India set a supreme example of our secular Constitution: a Hindu voting majority, a Christian leader of a major party, a Muslim President to officiate at the swearing in ceremony of a Sikh Prime Minister -- above all, a peaceful change of guard at the highest levels. India had demonstrated, like no other nation in history, THE STRENGTH OF A COMPOSITE SECULAR CULTURE IN A DEMOCRATIC ENVIRONMENT!
This one event beckons us to look ahead to what each one of us should be doing to make the dreams of our independence struggle come to greater fruition in the time ahead. Each of us, whatever our caste and creed, has the same kind of blood in our veins, and the Almighty has been extremely fair in giving everyone an absolutely equal 24 hours per day to do what we want to with our gift of life from Him.
Yes, talent and intellect have been unevenly distributed. At the same time they are generously sprinkled amongst ALL citizens -- just look at the composition of our cricket, hockey and other sports teams to realize that when merit is the criteria, every community has much to offer.
Music is another unique example. Audiences of all faiths gather at concerts by Lata Mangeshkar, Amjad Ali Khan, Asha Bhosle, Bismillah Khan, Ravi Shanker, Zubin Metha and so many others. Many are enchanted by the lilting rhythms of A. R. Rehman. Talent from across the border in Pakistan has also been much appreciated here for the likes of Abida Parveen and Mohsin Raza. All without any thought of their religious background.
Again, in the field of IT business, the two best known names are Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji, whilst the Tatas and the Birlas have made a mark in a wide spectrum of industries.
Why then stifle initiative and the flowering of talent by narrow mindedness, when the intention should be not to dominate or destroy, but with full utilisation of all available skills and resources, to win the overwhelmingly difficult battle against poverty? Let us then rethink our overall concept of secularism, much maligned by the prefix of 'pseudo' given by some political parties, to insinuate minority appeasement.
Let us now, more than ever, move over to its wider meaning of a COMPOSITE society, with equal rights and justice for all. Let us take pride in the multifaceted nature of our culture and inheritance, the result of healthy assimilation over centuries, a marked feature of Hinduism at its very best.
Let us be devoid of unhealthy passion, or anger at past historical events, and aggressive questions of caste, gender and creed -- the Taj Mahal and the Ajanta & Ellora caves are equal in their grandeur, and are neither Muslim nor Hindu but magnificently Indian!
These give an insight into the talents we have nurtured as one of the oldest civilizations, talents equal to the best of any other nation. Again we have so much uniqueness in each community that enhances the beauty of the tapestry that is composite India .
Let us all be religious, better still spiritual. Let us teach ourselves to consider our beliefs to be a private matter, and not an advertisement label to wear each time we move out of our homes. In creating mankind, the Almighty did not speak of differences of gender, caste, faith, blood groups, etc. Instead HE unhesitatingly gave to one and all the peace of a scenic sunset, the fascinating variety in nature and the animal world, and the elevating experience of being high up in the Himalayas.
HE remains ONE and our several religions are but so many roads to a common destination. Let us pause a bit and look backwards into history -– which of the ancient empires, or the recent one of Hitler, has survived once the cancer of hatred has entered the body politic?
Yes, a change of heart is sorely needed in the attic of the minds of many of our religious clerics and the political class at all levels. We need a wider sense of comradeship with all our people, stricken and bewildered as they are, searching for some way of escape out of the ruins and poverty around us.
Let us broaden the definition of secularism as not only primarly focused on freedom of worship, but more spiced up with joy and pride in our COMPOSITE culture. Let us unstintingly love our common Creator, and along with Him, the life He gave us, joining hands with neighbours and friends in laughter, tolerance, helpfulness, service and good fellowship. Let us work towards banishing hatred and cruelty, a utopian dream for an imperfect world.
This then is the rethink we envision and in all earnestness pray that it happens. Let each one strive to help our nation move forward towards the grand potential that is India, a vibrant home of many mansions, secular and happily composite, where there will be room for all to live in justice, peace, prosperity and freedom ...
***
Said President Abraham Lincoln's foremost opponent in the American civil war, General Ulysses S. Grant: I believe that our Great Maker is, in His own good time, preparing the world to become one nation, speaking one language of love and peace, when armies, navies and killer weapons will no longer dominate and be no longer required ...
If it don't fit
And now, a bit about the blues. If I was asked to list my top ten songs of all time, I'd put down Roop Tera Mastana, and after that I'm willing to bet most of the entries would be blues-based. Case in point: "I Believe I'm In Love", by the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Something elemental about the blues, and I'm hardly the first to make that observation, so don't congratulate me. Perhaps it's the rhythm, or perhaps the way the chords follow each other in that simple sequence that just sounds so right. Or perhaps it's the improvisation that's invariably part of a blues-based song.
I don't know, I just listen.
In the '50s, a whole generation of musicians discovered the blues and used the chords in that joyous music genre we came to love as rock and roll. Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and the Big Man himself, Elvis: each churned out huge hits, and almost every one was built on the blues.
But before the 50s, the blues was primarily black music, sung in beer joints and piano bars across the American South through the first half of the 20th Century. In fact, in being expressive of the black American experience, blues has no parallel. There are blues about work and unemployment, railways and migration, the Depression, the war. And, as every blues fan quickly realizes, a remarkably high proportion of blues is about ... sex.
Bashfulness prevents me sharing the lyrics of some of these lusty classics here. But the titles will bring a smile to your lips, I promise.
So in 1935, Lucille Bogan whooped and hollered her way through "Shave 'Em Dry", an exuberant song that will still startle you with its outright bawdiness. Bo Carter sang "Banana in Your Fruit Basket" in 1931. "The Best Jockey in Town" was a Lonnie Carter hit, also 1931, exploiting that staple of sexual imagery, the rider on a horse. Lil Johnson, a singer who positively rejoiced in her use of outrageous lyrics, recorded "Hot Nuts" in March of 1936, and followed up with "My Stove's in Good Condition" a month later. The Mississippi Sheiks made hits of "Driving That Thing", "Ram Rod Daddy" and "Bed Spring Poker". The last is a relatively complex song that likens sleeping around to a poker game played on the beds of neighbours. Aletha Dickerson, singing as Barrel House Annie, is responsible for "If It Don't Fit (Don't Force It)", and let's face it, there could hardly be better advice, no?
And in June 1939, Lilly Mae Kirkman turned out "He's Just My Size", after which her blues recording career nosedived (nosedove?) into oblivion. Though to be fair, it was probably the war that was responsible, rather than a sudden outbreak of Victorian prudery.
So prevalent were all these songs about sex, that black blues singers began calling smut in song lyrics "blue". (I've always wondered, but never managed to confirm, if that's where "blue films" comes from). And, curiously, March was the most popular month for recording such songs. Something about the onset of spring, no doubt.
If their uninhibited performances -- that comes through even on the scratchy old albums -- are any indication, these singers clearly delighted in their naughty titles, their lyrics that left nothing to the imagination. "The impression is one of a powerful life-force, an optimistic sexuality charged at times with a challenging aggressiveness", wrote blues historian Paul Oliver. The energy and the songs were the singers' own expression of primal, explicit human emotions. Because blues is like that: elemental and simple, primal and emotional, naturally sexual.
So when Joe Ely belts out his "Mustta Notta Gotta Lotta", you know just where he's coming from. "Please understand me, everything's all right, I just mustta notta gotta lotta sleep last night!"
Oh yeah Joe, of course everything's all right!
Something elemental about the blues, and I'm hardly the first to make that observation, so don't congratulate me. Perhaps it's the rhythm, or perhaps the way the chords follow each other in that simple sequence that just sounds so right. Or perhaps it's the improvisation that's invariably part of a blues-based song.
I don't know, I just listen.
In the '50s, a whole generation of musicians discovered the blues and used the chords in that joyous music genre we came to love as rock and roll. Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and the Big Man himself, Elvis: each churned out huge hits, and almost every one was built on the blues.
But before the 50s, the blues was primarily black music, sung in beer joints and piano bars across the American South through the first half of the 20th Century. In fact, in being expressive of the black American experience, blues has no parallel. There are blues about work and unemployment, railways and migration, the Depression, the war. And, as every blues fan quickly realizes, a remarkably high proportion of blues is about ... sex.
Bashfulness prevents me sharing the lyrics of some of these lusty classics here. But the titles will bring a smile to your lips, I promise.
So in 1935, Lucille Bogan whooped and hollered her way through "Shave 'Em Dry", an exuberant song that will still startle you with its outright bawdiness. Bo Carter sang "Banana in Your Fruit Basket" in 1931. "The Best Jockey in Town" was a Lonnie Carter hit, also 1931, exploiting that staple of sexual imagery, the rider on a horse. Lil Johnson, a singer who positively rejoiced in her use of outrageous lyrics, recorded "Hot Nuts" in March of 1936, and followed up with "My Stove's in Good Condition" a month later. The Mississippi Sheiks made hits of "Driving That Thing", "Ram Rod Daddy" and "Bed Spring Poker". The last is a relatively complex song that likens sleeping around to a poker game played on the beds of neighbours. Aletha Dickerson, singing as Barrel House Annie, is responsible for "If It Don't Fit (Don't Force It)", and let's face it, there could hardly be better advice, no?
And in June 1939, Lilly Mae Kirkman turned out "He's Just My Size", after which her blues recording career nosedived (nosedove?) into oblivion. Though to be fair, it was probably the war that was responsible, rather than a sudden outbreak of Victorian prudery.
So prevalent were all these songs about sex, that black blues singers began calling smut in song lyrics "blue". (I've always wondered, but never managed to confirm, if that's where "blue films" comes from). And, curiously, March was the most popular month for recording such songs. Something about the onset of spring, no doubt.
If their uninhibited performances -- that comes through even on the scratchy old albums -- are any indication, these singers clearly delighted in their naughty titles, their lyrics that left nothing to the imagination. "The impression is one of a powerful life-force, an optimistic sexuality charged at times with a challenging aggressiveness", wrote blues historian Paul Oliver. The energy and the songs were the singers' own expression of primal, explicit human emotions. Because blues is like that: elemental and simple, primal and emotional, naturally sexual.
So when Joe Ely belts out his "Mustta Notta Gotta Lotta", you know just where he's coming from. "Please understand me, everything's all right, I just mustta notta gotta lotta sleep last night!"
Oh yeah Joe, of course everything's all right!
October 16, 2005
All in the chromosomes
To begin with, at least, my robot was a dodo. I had carefully constructed a rather limited environment for her: she was surrounded by trees and morsels of food. (For no clear reason, I thought of it as ras-malai). Once I turned her loose in it, she could do one of three different things: move in a random direction, bump into a tree, or swallow any food she found. That's all. So she bumbled around doing them, without any discernible method to her moves.
I watched her roam, wondering if she would learn some lessons. I was penalizing her every time she crashed into a tree, rewarding her when she found food. Would this carrot and stick treatment work? Would her movements become more purposeful than her initial clumsy meanderings across my screen?
Screen, yes. For this was a simulated robot, an "@" on my computer screen. She lived her strange little life among simulated trees and simulated food, also on my screen. She was the product of some amateurish dabbling I once did in an intriguing area of computer science: genetic algorithms.
Why "genetic"? Just as living organisms evolve to become better at their tasks, at the business of living itself, computer models based on genetic algorithms -- my robot, for example -- evolve to become better at doing things.
At least, that's the theory.
My "@" babe was, in essence, a collection of simulated chromosomes. In some ways, that mirrors us. Our chromosomes encode our physical and character traits. We differ from each other because the information in our chromosomes differs. That is, you're shorter and more intelligent than I am because your chromosomes are different from mine. A simplified view of things, no doubt, but there is a lot of truth in it.
So in my robot's collection of chromosomes, some were sensitive to food: they reacted when she found some. Others reacted to bumping into trees. The way she was programmed, the chromosomes influenced which direction she chose to move.
To begin with, of course, none of the chromosomes favoured any direction. But if the robot found that a particular direction tended to have more food, her food chromosomes would evolve to favour that direction. And if, while heading north for example, she kept running into trees, the tree chromosomes would evolve to favour directions other than north.
This was the interesting part of the exercise: that the chromosomes evolved. In my little model, they did so in different ways. One mechanism was crossover, in which two chromosomes exchanged parts of themselves, spreading their individual traits around. Another was mutation: a random change in a chromosome. Think of this as the effect of a sudden disease, or of introducing a totally new individual into a population.
A third mechanism was reproduction, in which two chromosomes joined to produce a new one. Preferred here were the fitter chromosomes: both for reproduction itself as well as for passing on traits. With the food chromosomes, this meant that it was chromosomes that showed a preference for some direction -- because the robot had found food in that direction -- that were generally chosen to reproduce. They also passed on that directional preference to their offspring, reinforcing the robot's
preference for that direction.
So you see, I was consciously choosing the better chromosomes and propagating their traits. Call it eugenics if you like, call it fascism. After all, she was my robot, on my computer.
Now trees and food were all over the screen. But some areas had more food, others had more trees. I set "@" down in the middle of this bleak landscape, blind. She started by picking a random direction. If it led to a tree, her chromosomes made it slightly less likely she would choose that direction again. If she found food instead, she would tend to favour that direction a bit more. Every two or three steps, all the chromosomes evolved using one or more of the mechanisms above. Also every two or three steps, she would stop and choose a direction again.
So did it work? Not at first. But after a long time, after much tweaking and experimenting, I found my jaunty little robot becoming noticeably better at avoiding trees and finding food.
You might say, she showed some intelligence in her movements.
So I switched off the computer and went off to get some real ras-malai. There's only so much intelligence I'm prepared to take from symbols on my screen.
I watched her roam, wondering if she would learn some lessons. I was penalizing her every time she crashed into a tree, rewarding her when she found food. Would this carrot and stick treatment work? Would her movements become more purposeful than her initial clumsy meanderings across my screen?
Screen, yes. For this was a simulated robot, an "@" on my computer screen. She lived her strange little life among simulated trees and simulated food, also on my screen. She was the product of some amateurish dabbling I once did in an intriguing area of computer science: genetic algorithms.
Why "genetic"? Just as living organisms evolve to become better at their tasks, at the business of living itself, computer models based on genetic algorithms -- my robot, for example -- evolve to become better at doing things.
At least, that's the theory.
My "@" babe was, in essence, a collection of simulated chromosomes. In some ways, that mirrors us. Our chromosomes encode our physical and character traits. We differ from each other because the information in our chromosomes differs. That is, you're shorter and more intelligent than I am because your chromosomes are different from mine. A simplified view of things, no doubt, but there is a lot of truth in it.
So in my robot's collection of chromosomes, some were sensitive to food: they reacted when she found some. Others reacted to bumping into trees. The way she was programmed, the chromosomes influenced which direction she chose to move.
To begin with, of course, none of the chromosomes favoured any direction. But if the robot found that a particular direction tended to have more food, her food chromosomes would evolve to favour that direction. And if, while heading north for example, she kept running into trees, the tree chromosomes would evolve to favour directions other than north.
This was the interesting part of the exercise: that the chromosomes evolved. In my little model, they did so in different ways. One mechanism was crossover, in which two chromosomes exchanged parts of themselves, spreading their individual traits around. Another was mutation: a random change in a chromosome. Think of this as the effect of a sudden disease, or of introducing a totally new individual into a population.
A third mechanism was reproduction, in which two chromosomes joined to produce a new one. Preferred here were the fitter chromosomes: both for reproduction itself as well as for passing on traits. With the food chromosomes, this meant that it was chromosomes that showed a preference for some direction -- because the robot had found food in that direction -- that were generally chosen to reproduce. They also passed on that directional preference to their offspring, reinforcing the robot's
preference for that direction.
So you see, I was consciously choosing the better chromosomes and propagating their traits. Call it eugenics if you like, call it fascism. After all, she was my robot, on my computer.
Now trees and food were all over the screen. But some areas had more food, others had more trees. I set "@" down in the middle of this bleak landscape, blind. She started by picking a random direction. If it led to a tree, her chromosomes made it slightly less likely she would choose that direction again. If she found food instead, she would tend to favour that direction a bit more. Every two or three steps, all the chromosomes evolved using one or more of the mechanisms above. Also every two or three steps, she would stop and choose a direction again.
So did it work? Not at first. But after a long time, after much tweaking and experimenting, I found my jaunty little robot becoming noticeably better at avoiding trees and finding food.
You might say, she showed some intelligence in her movements.
So I switched off the computer and went off to get some real ras-malai. There's only so much intelligence I'm prepared to take from symbols on my screen.
Looking Some Thing So different
Nuggets from recent newspapers.
***
Hindustan Times Classifieds: under "Health & Physical Fitness" are a whole lot of ads for Bombay-based masseurs. A sampling:
Very nice. Only, what's this about soft English? Does "Celebratly" qualify as soft English, and what does it mean? And I'm not sure I really want to know, but anyway: what's this Frozen Matter that we must Feel?
***
Attached to an Delhi article about home theatre systems is a photograph of a couple, man has a remote pointed at a screen on the wall. Screen is filled with an underwater scene, fish and anemones. In the foreground, between the man and woman, are two wineglasses and a third glass with what looks like cut lemons in them.
Caption for this photograph reads, in full: Wineglasses have huge bowls so that when we toss our head ba.
The fools! As you see, they truncated the sentence, which should have read: Wineglasses have huge bowls so that when we toss our head baa-baa black sheep.
***
Small ad in Delhi paper, "EXPLORE EXPORT POTENTIAL IN UKRAINE". This is about an international trade fair there at the end of this month, "a golden opportunity to explore potential of your product."
And the cost of putting up a stall at this fair? The Package cost is kept as Rs 1.70 lacs for 9 sq. mtrs. Space (or only 9 sq. mtrs. space at Rs 90,000).
Good! What a golden opportunity! I'll take 9 square metres, please. What was that price again, Rs 273?
Hindustan Times Classifieds: under "Health & Physical Fitness" are a whole lot of ads for Bombay-based masseurs. A sampling:
- Relax Full Mind & Body. Russian Indian S. African European. Male/Female Available. Any Time Anywhere.
- MUMBAI BEAUTY As Never Before At Your Doorstep. Hi Profile Models. M/F Available.
- SELECTED MODELS. High class soft english spoken. INDIAN, RUSSIAN, EUROPEAN, M/F Masseurs Available.
- HIGH CLASS MASSAGE SERVICES. Full range of world class Beauty Services. R U Looking Some Thing So different Quick Services.
- CELEBRATLY OFFER. 5-7 Hotel Guest. International Model Available. Soft English Speaking.
- Feel Frozen Matter. Decent, Elite, Beautiful, Indian, Russian, M/F Masseurs Avail.
Very nice. Only, what's this about soft English? Does "Celebratly" qualify as soft English, and what does it mean? And I'm not sure I really want to know, but anyway: what's this Frozen Matter that we must Feel?
Attached to an Delhi article about home theatre systems is a photograph of a couple, man has a remote pointed at a screen on the wall. Screen is filled with an underwater scene, fish and anemones. In the foreground, between the man and woman, are two wineglasses and a third glass with what looks like cut lemons in them.
Caption for this photograph reads, in full: Wineglasses have huge bowls so that when we toss our head ba.
The fools! As you see, they truncated the sentence, which should have read: Wineglasses have huge bowls so that when we toss our head baa-baa black sheep.
Small ad in Delhi paper, "EXPLORE EXPORT POTENTIAL IN UKRAINE". This is about an international trade fair there at the end of this month, "a golden opportunity to explore potential of your product."
And the cost of putting up a stall at this fair? The Package cost is kept as Rs 1.70 lacs for 9 sq. mtrs. Space (or only 9 sq. mtrs. space at Rs 90,000).
Good! What a golden opportunity! I'll take 9 square metres, please. What was that price again, Rs 273?
October 14, 2005
An introduction
Nearly every day, I marvel at it. My friend Amin spent his childhood on the streets of this throbbing city, sleeping on railway platforms, cowering in fear from police lathi-blows, eating what he could find wherever. Just the usual, really, just like thousands of other kids here.
But then a few thoughtful people touched his life, and Amin found a way up and out of that squalor. If you meet him today, you will find it hard to believe, as I find it hard to believe, that he had the childhood he did. He has left the tough times firmly behind, and has a remarkably positive outlook on life. Amin now runs a taxi service and has a growing list of clients -- people who are so touched by his warmth and generosity that I really should call that a growing list of friends.
So I'm honoured and delighted to introduce you to Amin and his Sneha Travels. If you need the kind of services he offers, you won't find a better man.
But then a few thoughtful people touched his life, and Amin found a way up and out of that squalor. If you meet him today, you will find it hard to believe, as I find it hard to believe, that he had the childhood he did. He has left the tough times firmly behind, and has a remarkably positive outlook on life. Amin now runs a taxi service and has a growing list of clients -- people who are so touched by his warmth and generosity that I really should call that a growing list of friends.
So I'm honoured and delighted to introduce you to Amin and his Sneha Travels. If you need the kind of services he offers, you won't find a better man.
Train fair
So I'm sitting in the manager's sputteringly airconditioned cubicle in a branch of a public sector bank. There are two other men in the room. One is the manager, sitting in a large chair. The other is the guy I'm supposed to see, to hand over my application form for internet banking at this institution. He's busy trying to send a fax, so the manager asks me to sit until he's done.
On the desk in front of me -- right below my nose, in fact -- is a sheet of paper. Forgive me, someone up there (if you are up there), but I can't help glancing at it as I sit there. It's a "travel expenses claim form", filled by the guy I'm waiting to speak to. It's for travel expenses incurred on three days that he stayed late to "attend to system maintenance problems". This guy seems to be the resident computer Mr Fixit.
Anyway. In his handwriting, the form says "Train fair [sic] from office to home"; the amount he claims is Rs 316 per day, for a total of Rs 948, though he has totalled it to Rs 949.
Just as I'm wondering where he might live in this city that he has to pay Rs 316 for a train journey there, the man finishes sending the fax. The manager reaches across the desk, picks up the sheet and swivels around in his chair to face him. In Marathi, he says: "You can't write that amount!"
Just as I'm silently applauding the manager for catching what looks like a seriously inflated claim, he goes on: "Look, I'll give you the numbers you can write." And on the back of the form, he writes down three numbers: 186, 194 and 197.
In all this, both men are oblivious to my presence.
"You'll have to choose one of those," the manager says. "Put any one of them down on the form and give it back," he goes on, "and I'll approve it."
On the desk in front of me -- right below my nose, in fact -- is a sheet of paper. Forgive me, someone up there (if you are up there), but I can't help glancing at it as I sit there. It's a "travel expenses claim form", filled by the guy I'm waiting to speak to. It's for travel expenses incurred on three days that he stayed late to "attend to system maintenance problems". This guy seems to be the resident computer Mr Fixit.
Anyway. In his handwriting, the form says "Train fair [sic] from office to home"; the amount he claims is Rs 316 per day, for a total of Rs 948, though he has totalled it to Rs 949.
Just as I'm wondering where he might live in this city that he has to pay Rs 316 for a train journey there, the man finishes sending the fax. The manager reaches across the desk, picks up the sheet and swivels around in his chair to face him. In Marathi, he says: "You can't write that amount!"
Just as I'm silently applauding the manager for catching what looks like a seriously inflated claim, he goes on: "Look, I'll give you the numbers you can write." And on the back of the form, he writes down three numbers: 186, 194 and 197.
In all this, both men are oblivious to my presence.
"You'll have to choose one of those," the manager says. "Put any one of them down on the form and give it back," he goes on, "and I'll approve it."
October 13, 2005
Fragrance of biryani
One more shortlisted essay in the recent Indian Express/Citizens for Peace contest on "A Secular Rethink". This one is by Paresh Kumar, who turned into a blogger (at, naturally, Pareshaan) after he wrote his essay.
Congratulations, Paresh! (For the essay, not for blogging). (Well, for blogging too).
Congratulations, Paresh! (For the essay, not for blogging). (Well, for blogging too).
One fallout
Last July, I wrote this here about a particular entry in Wikipedia. The point was that for me, the greatest value of Wikipedia -- this freely editable, constantly updated work -- is not so much the knowledge contained in it, but what it says about the ways of the world.
It's good to find that the particular entry I referred to in that July piece is now much more comprehensive and useful than it was at that time. But in the meantime, there's another Wikipedia entry that's, again, worth a look.
Yes, I've just stumbled on the Wikipedia entry for IIPM.
And it turns out that this is the latest weapon in the ongoing war against IIPM, a war in which I too struck a small blow. If you watch the entry, you'll see it evolving all the time, and don't miss the discussions about this evolution either.
After that July piece, someone wrote to tell me that Wikipedia is "rock-solid" and "authoritative." Well, good. But when it is explicitly turned into a weapon in a Web battle, when the whole tone of this entry -- despite the use of words like "claims" and "alleged" -- is critical of IIPM, I'm reminded of what I said was Wikipedia's greatest value to me. Not the knowledge contained in it, but what it says about the ways of the world.
So yes, for that reason it is invariably fascinating to read Wikipedia. But no, when I want authoritative or rock-solid information about something, I'll be looking elsewhere.
That's one fallout of using Wikipedia as a weapon.
It's good to find that the particular entry I referred to in that July piece is now much more comprehensive and useful than it was at that time. But in the meantime, there's another Wikipedia entry that's, again, worth a look.
Yes, I've just stumbled on the Wikipedia entry for IIPM.
And it turns out that this is the latest weapon in the ongoing war against IIPM, a war in which I too struck a small blow. If you watch the entry, you'll see it evolving all the time, and don't miss the discussions about this evolution either.
After that July piece, someone wrote to tell me that Wikipedia is "rock-solid" and "authoritative." Well, good. But when it is explicitly turned into a weapon in a Web battle, when the whole tone of this entry -- despite the use of words like "claims" and "alleged" -- is critical of IIPM, I'm reminded of what I said was Wikipedia's greatest value to me. Not the knowledge contained in it, but what it says about the ways of the world.
So yes, for that reason it is invariably fascinating to read Wikipedia. But no, when I want authoritative or rock-solid information about something, I'll be looking elsewhere.
That's one fallout of using Wikipedia as a weapon.
Fine print again
Early this morning, the Air Sahara Boeing 737 that has disrupted flights in and out of Bombay for three days (!) was finally extricated. When it landed on Sunday, this plane could not stop before the end of the runway and rolled 500 feet further, into the grassy area beyond. There it stayed for over 72 hours.
Passengers on the flight were naturally upset. After it stopped in the grass, some of them had to jump off, all were asked to run from the plane for it might explode. One family is planning to sue the airline. "I asked an airhostess to hold my daughter," the Hindustan Times quotes the young mother saying, "but she didn't respond. She was trying to save herself."
Passengers on other flights were naturally upset too. They circled the airport for hours, and often didn't land anyway. "We were No. 13 on the landing list," writes one such passenger in the Hindustan Times, and eventually "the flight lived up to its unlucky number" -- running out of fuel, it landed at Ahmedabad. Therefore, "no wonder India is the way it is."
Be all that as it may. What intrigues me most about this episode are the several photographs the papers have carried of the stranded aircraft. You see dozens of men and lots of equipment surrounding it. Clearly they are hard at work trying to figure out how to save the plane.
But you also see at least three men sitting on chairs in the shade afforded by the left wing. In the shot I'm looking at (HT October 11 front page), one man has his legs up, his head lolling back. Clearly he's asleep.
Who are these guys, what are they doing, and how did they get this particular job?
Passengers on the flight were naturally upset. After it stopped in the grass, some of them had to jump off, all were asked to run from the plane for it might explode. One family is planning to sue the airline. "I asked an airhostess to hold my daughter," the Hindustan Times quotes the young mother saying, "but she didn't respond. She was trying to save herself."
Passengers on other flights were naturally upset too. They circled the airport for hours, and often didn't land anyway. "We were No. 13 on the landing list," writes one such passenger in the Hindustan Times, and eventually "the flight lived up to its unlucky number" -- running out of fuel, it landed at Ahmedabad. Therefore, "no wonder India is the way it is."
Be all that as it may. What intrigues me most about this episode are the several photographs the papers have carried of the stranded aircraft. You see dozens of men and lots of equipment surrounding it. Clearly they are hard at work trying to figure out how to save the plane.
But you also see at least three men sitting on chairs in the shade afforded by the left wing. In the shot I'm looking at (HT October 11 front page), one man has his legs up, his head lolling back. Clearly he's asleep.
Who are these guys, what are they doing, and how did they get this particular job?
In some soup
In his fine On The Rez, Ian Frazier writes of the time he spends on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation ("Rez") -- one of the poorest spots in all the United States -- with his friend Le War Lance. Le belongs to the Oglala Sioux, and is the kind of grasping, story-telling, barnstorming, larger-than-life character that you never imagine can actually be real.
Here's a vignette from the book. Frazier is driving Le around the reservation, and at one point Le directs him onto a dirt road that goes up an embankment. Frazier writes:
Here's a vignette from the book. Frazier is driving Le around the reservation, and at one point Le directs him onto a dirt road that goes up an embankment. Frazier writes:
- I walked to the top and concluded my car couldn't make it. As I turned to go back, several dogs at a house beside the hill saw me and set out for me at a run, barking and growling with their teeth bared. I walked quickly but did not run, fearing to enrage them further. I calculated that our paths would converge just about at the car. I was a few feet from it and they were a few yards from me when Le heard the racket, stuck his head from the car door, and growled a word at them in Sioux. His growl was throaty and loud, like that of a dog much bigger than they. The dogs stopped so fast they left skid marks in the mud, and then ran yelping back home. The word Le had said to them sounded familiar. I asked him what it was. He said, "I said to them, 'Wahampi!' It means soup. ... Dogs on the reservation know the word wahampi because they know they might end up in some soup themselves. Eat a dog once in a while, it teaches the other dogs a healthy respect."
October 12, 2005
Alive and well
My review for Time Out Mumbai (Oct 7-20) of Ethan Casey's Alive and Well in Pakistan (Penguin India, pp 269, Rs 275).
***
Say it up front: Ethan Casey's book is a disappointment. I read it in the hope of learning how Pakistan is different from every other country out there. I did learn something, but not very much. This is essentially the detailed diary of a man who keeps his eyes open in the foreign country and takes copious notes on everything around him. Of course, that's a very good recipe for an insightful book. Except that somewhere between recipe and this finished product, the insight got left out.
So this book remains the detailed diary. Being so, you run into detail again and again that says nothing. What do we learn about Pakistan when a father describes his kids and Casey reports: "The younger one, he beats up the older one, and the older one cries and runs away"? I mean, I'm all for that old journalistic adage, "Don't come back without the name of the dog!" But there's such a thing as too many names of dogs. Too many little vignettes like this. You get the feeling Casey has just cut and pasted from his copious notes, without much of an attempt to streamline it all with some analysis, the reflection that those notes deserve.
And that impression only gets beefed up with the errors; at times as if someone was typing furiously from handwritten notes. What else might explain "caring chicken tikka" where I suspect Casey meant "eating chicken tikka"? Or "black beard and bait" rather than "black beard and hair"? Why didn't an editor catch these?
There are plenty of characters in this book, ranging from tennis partners to motorcycle riders to a German woman who is married to a Pakistani. Casey relates his encounters and conversations with them at length, so much so that the book is arguably a long series of conversations. Yet the characters don't become characters, if you know what I mean. Casey does "plunge into Pakistan", as Ahmed Rashid is quoted as saying on the cover. Yet I'm left wondering, why?
Say it up front: Ethan Casey's book is a disappointment. I read it in the hope of learning how Pakistan is different from every other country out there. I did learn something, but not very much. This is essentially the detailed diary of a man who keeps his eyes open in the foreign country and takes copious notes on everything around him. Of course, that's a very good recipe for an insightful book. Except that somewhere between recipe and this finished product, the insight got left out.
So this book remains the detailed diary. Being so, you run into detail again and again that says nothing. What do we learn about Pakistan when a father describes his kids and Casey reports: "The younger one, he beats up the older one, and the older one cries and runs away"? I mean, I'm all for that old journalistic adage, "Don't come back without the name of the dog!" But there's such a thing as too many names of dogs. Too many little vignettes like this. You get the feeling Casey has just cut and pasted from his copious notes, without much of an attempt to streamline it all with some analysis, the reflection that those notes deserve.
And that impression only gets beefed up with the errors; at times as if someone was typing furiously from handwritten notes. What else might explain "caring chicken tikka" where I suspect Casey meant "eating chicken tikka"? Or "black beard and bait" rather than "black beard and hair"? Why didn't an editor catch these?
There are plenty of characters in this book, ranging from tennis partners to motorcycle riders to a German woman who is married to a Pakistani. Casey relates his encounters and conversations with them at length, so much so that the book is arguably a long series of conversations. Yet the characters don't become characters, if you know what I mean. Casey does "plunge into Pakistan", as Ahmed Rashid is quoted as saying on the cover. Yet I'm left wondering, why?
A shortlisted essay
I promised to post here the shortlisted essays in the recent Citizens for Peace/Indian Express essay competition on "A Secular Rethink". Here's the first of those, by Amit Gawde of Pune. Congratulations, Amit!
***
I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
Fifty-eight years of freedom.
I am grateful to my ancestors, my freedom fighters and all those people who had fought for my country and freed her. I am a new breed of "Indian". Thanks to our culture that stresses on knowledge, India is at the threshold of becoming a technological superpower. I find people from all over the world coming down here, and respecting me, and my kind for doing seriously good work in every sphere of activity.
And yet, I find that all my brethren aren't happy. I still find bitterness, sadness around me; and tears from the past that haven't dried as yet. But fifty-eight years is a pretty long time.
Today - Part I
The situation is grim. Certain vested interests are still following the tactics of the Raj - to divide on the basis of religion. Religion has become a commodity that is being sold in our cities, towns and villages, and vote banks are the institutions, which exchange votes with power. Political power. And like shepherds, these vested interests carefully keep their herds intact by wielding the staff when a rebellious animal tries to make a dash. Once in a while, these herds are told stories of wolves and dogs that the shepherds protect them from, and how dangerous the outside world could be. The seeds of mistrust are sown and watered. Animals multiply. The mistrust of all other creatures is passed on genetically. And yet, its not that their life is a bed of roses. Most of the animals in a herd are fleeced for as long as they can be. And when they're done with them - it's the knife. But animals being the dumb things that they are - go on with their grazing and ruminating. The garlanded painting of Jawaharlal Nehru is a piece of furniture in the halls of Power; the hallowed halls which his words haunt.
Today - Part II
But that isn't the coin - its just one side of it. On a day to day basis, I see religion differently. I see what Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan meant to say, when he said: Religion is behavior and not mere belief.
I need several people in my life, apart from my family, of course. I need Glenn D'Cruz, the punctual paper delivery boy, for my daily dose of newsprint. I need Sachin Jadhav for my veggies and greens. And though the veggies are good, one has to watch him like a hawk, lest he slip in that odd rotten tomato, or a dried bunch of coriander! Mr Balwinder Singh - the milkman, and his bovines, give me my morning cuppa to go with the newspaper. He's getting old though, and his son - Lucky, often drops in with the milk-can. And I've noticed that on those days, my tea tastes better!
Sometimes, I give my motorcycle for its periodic check-up. At such times, I need the public transport system to take me to my destination. I'm afraid that I have never known the names, or the religions of the drivers or conductors. This may be because of the simple fact that one can only do so many things. For example; it is beyond me to handle the change, hold my wallet, my handbag and look out for pickpockets at the same time! And irrespective of their religious status, I reach my destination almost every time; apart from when the bus breaks down!
Coming back to my motorcycle, D'Mello's garage has been attending to our vehicles since years. And yet, they often end up charging me for some problem or the other that I never knew existed. As I grumble and settle the bill, I find a Mr. Diaz expressing his disapproval of a botched up repair job. And yet, I return to his garage, the next time my mobike stutters. I wonder why?
Everyone bends his head in front of Mr. Ramzan Ali, the barber. He is my informer for Bollywood's latest gossip, or the latest election results, or simply the one person who knows the reason for Sachin Tendulkar's elbow problem. He calls my father "Chacha", although he may be just a few years younger! And even with a dozen barbers or so, we invariably wait till he's free to attend to us.
I need my tailors to dress me up. Rose tailors, with Iqbal, the young assistant writing numbers as fast as he can, which the owner, Mr. Patil reels off. A chat with him often almost ends up with him berating the Maratha youth, that has no initiative or dedication, that took him to where he was - namely, the top, in a voice that carries all the way to the desk, where his son would be dozing off! As I smile, he introduces me to his daughter, who he assures me, would manage the affairs of his establishment in the future. Now this, I have to see!
I also need my friends: Ashutosh, Aminder, Jimmy, J.K.Rowling(!), Kuldeep, Milind, Mrunalini, Ninad, Rubin, Sameen, Trupti and others. (In alphabetical order). Sticking to me through thick and thin, and fighting with me every now and then, irrespective of anything. And now that I think of it, neither our families, nor we, ever looked at one another, through a lens that distorts, or in a mirror that reverses. We used our own eyes, our interests and our intelligence to bind us. We fight, as friends may, but then we patch up and never let things out of hand. Respect and tolerance can take you long way, in case of such inter-personal relations. And this is the norm in most cliques, rather than an exception.
Secularism: The Keystone
What I want to say is very vague, formless to my eyes also! Like a vapour, I see it floating above my head, and I shall now try to bottle it.
It is fear of the other religion that makes us act the way we do. Communal hate crimes, or communal intolerance is rooted in fear. And as Emerson would put it: Fear always springs from ignorance.
It is the interpretation of the fore-mentioned vested interests, that drives us on to kill and maim our brethren. There is a simple solution to this: transparency. Everyone should get a chance to see what the others are up to. So be it guided tours to vedashalas, madarassas, convents and similar institutions of learning of all religions, or any other method that is able to tell our herds that the world is not filled with wolves and dogs alone, but consists of similar other herds as well.
Harmony is essential - for a musical instrument to be a part of a symphony! If any instrument decides to speak out, or rebel, or try to drown out the other - then the whole thing falls on its face. In my humble opinion, I am the world, but all the people I come into contact with, populate it. My life is complete only when every single one of them is there with me. There are bound to be disagreements, as two vessels make a clang when they meet. However, it is also true, that empty vessels make most noise. A person who hasn't a job in this world, but to try and mis-interpret what the other has to say, is bound to create communal strife. What is important, is to silence such a person through gentle persuasion, and re-education. "A single stick is easier to break than a bundle of them", was what my elders have often told me. So why be myopic and break the bundle?
We must learn to question, to use our brains and think for ourselves, if we are to be truly secular.
"And just how are we to do that?", asked Rubin, exasperated.
"Well, charity begins at home, and so we start with our own families", I heard Sameen say.
"Hey Rubin, Vasudaiva Kutumbakam, man!", said Mrunalini.
"Hey don't give me that 'The whole world is my family bilge' ", said Rubin.
"Nice, bro! I can't believe it that you actually understood what Mrunal said!", said I.
" Well, there's a lot of things that you don’t know about! ", sniggered Rubin, with the rest of them nodding in silent approval.
"Et tu Brute!", I say in desperation, as I see Ninad nod with the rest of the guys.
As we laughed, I guess that each one of us was contemplating what the other had to say. There may be doubts and disagreements, in fact there MUST be. But the real test of our friendship is secularism. Of us accepting what the other has to say, without being partial to anybody or any religion in particular.
"So lets start from today!", said different voices, in offbeat unison.
"Well, I agree, that I don't know a lot of things, but I am just as ignorant as the rest of you!", said I.
"Point taken", said Rubin, as we walked towards our class.
"Hey, I'm definitely cleverer that the rest of you ignoramuses", said Jimmy, "so don't you try to get me down to where you are!"
We laughed as we went into the classroom. As we opened our books, we heard Ashutosh sum it up succinctly: Who's got the time for checking out the religion of the guy/girl sitting next to you? All that matters is that he/she be good enough to lend you his/her notes when you need them!
This is my world, my perspective. There are bound to be disagreements - in fact somebody MUST disagree with what I have to say. But in such a case, I have to respect the other's point of view, as must the other person. Tolerance is my synonym for secularism. The keystone to my bridge over life.
I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance.
Fifty-eight years of freedom.
I am grateful to my ancestors, my freedom fighters and all those people who had fought for my country and freed her. I am a new breed of "Indian". Thanks to our culture that stresses on knowledge, India is at the threshold of becoming a technological superpower. I find people from all over the world coming down here, and respecting me, and my kind for doing seriously good work in every sphere of activity.
And yet, I find that all my brethren aren't happy. I still find bitterness, sadness around me; and tears from the past that haven't dried as yet. But fifty-eight years is a pretty long time.
Today - Part I
The situation is grim. Certain vested interests are still following the tactics of the Raj - to divide on the basis of religion. Religion has become a commodity that is being sold in our cities, towns and villages, and vote banks are the institutions, which exchange votes with power. Political power. And like shepherds, these vested interests carefully keep their herds intact by wielding the staff when a rebellious animal tries to make a dash. Once in a while, these herds are told stories of wolves and dogs that the shepherds protect them from, and how dangerous the outside world could be. The seeds of mistrust are sown and watered. Animals multiply. The mistrust of all other creatures is passed on genetically. And yet, its not that their life is a bed of roses. Most of the animals in a herd are fleeced for as long as they can be. And when they're done with them - it's the knife. But animals being the dumb things that they are - go on with their grazing and ruminating. The garlanded painting of Jawaharlal Nehru is a piece of furniture in the halls of Power; the hallowed halls which his words haunt.
Today - Part II
But that isn't the coin - its just one side of it. On a day to day basis, I see religion differently. I see what Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan meant to say, when he said: Religion is behavior and not mere belief.
I need several people in my life, apart from my family, of course. I need Glenn D'Cruz, the punctual paper delivery boy, for my daily dose of newsprint. I need Sachin Jadhav for my veggies and greens. And though the veggies are good, one has to watch him like a hawk, lest he slip in that odd rotten tomato, or a dried bunch of coriander! Mr Balwinder Singh - the milkman, and his bovines, give me my morning cuppa to go with the newspaper. He's getting old though, and his son - Lucky, often drops in with the milk-can. And I've noticed that on those days, my tea tastes better!
Sometimes, I give my motorcycle for its periodic check-up. At such times, I need the public transport system to take me to my destination. I'm afraid that I have never known the names, or the religions of the drivers or conductors. This may be because of the simple fact that one can only do so many things. For example; it is beyond me to handle the change, hold my wallet, my handbag and look out for pickpockets at the same time! And irrespective of their religious status, I reach my destination almost every time; apart from when the bus breaks down!
Coming back to my motorcycle, D'Mello's garage has been attending to our vehicles since years. And yet, they often end up charging me for some problem or the other that I never knew existed. As I grumble and settle the bill, I find a Mr. Diaz expressing his disapproval of a botched up repair job. And yet, I return to his garage, the next time my mobike stutters. I wonder why?
Everyone bends his head in front of Mr. Ramzan Ali, the barber. He is my informer for Bollywood's latest gossip, or the latest election results, or simply the one person who knows the reason for Sachin Tendulkar's elbow problem. He calls my father "Chacha", although he may be just a few years younger! And even with a dozen barbers or so, we invariably wait till he's free to attend to us.
I need my tailors to dress me up. Rose tailors, with Iqbal, the young assistant writing numbers as fast as he can, which the owner, Mr. Patil reels off. A chat with him often almost ends up with him berating the Maratha youth, that has no initiative or dedication, that took him to where he was - namely, the top, in a voice that carries all the way to the desk, where his son would be dozing off! As I smile, he introduces me to his daughter, who he assures me, would manage the affairs of his establishment in the future. Now this, I have to see!
I also need my friends: Ashutosh, Aminder, Jimmy, J.K.Rowling(!), Kuldeep, Milind, Mrunalini, Ninad, Rubin, Sameen, Trupti and others. (In alphabetical order). Sticking to me through thick and thin, and fighting with me every now and then, irrespective of anything. And now that I think of it, neither our families, nor we, ever looked at one another, through a lens that distorts, or in a mirror that reverses. We used our own eyes, our interests and our intelligence to bind us. We fight, as friends may, but then we patch up and never let things out of hand. Respect and tolerance can take you long way, in case of such inter-personal relations. And this is the norm in most cliques, rather than an exception.
Secularism: The Keystone
What I want to say is very vague, formless to my eyes also! Like a vapour, I see it floating above my head, and I shall now try to bottle it.
It is fear of the other religion that makes us act the way we do. Communal hate crimes, or communal intolerance is rooted in fear. And as Emerson would put it: Fear always springs from ignorance.
It is the interpretation of the fore-mentioned vested interests, that drives us on to kill and maim our brethren. There is a simple solution to this: transparency. Everyone should get a chance to see what the others are up to. So be it guided tours to vedashalas, madarassas, convents and similar institutions of learning of all religions, or any other method that is able to tell our herds that the world is not filled with wolves and dogs alone, but consists of similar other herds as well.
Harmony is essential - for a musical instrument to be a part of a symphony! If any instrument decides to speak out, or rebel, or try to drown out the other - then the whole thing falls on its face. In my humble opinion, I am the world, but all the people I come into contact with, populate it. My life is complete only when every single one of them is there with me. There are bound to be disagreements, as two vessels make a clang when they meet. However, it is also true, that empty vessels make most noise. A person who hasn't a job in this world, but to try and mis-interpret what the other has to say, is bound to create communal strife. What is important, is to silence such a person through gentle persuasion, and re-education. "A single stick is easier to break than a bundle of them", was what my elders have often told me. So why be myopic and break the bundle?
We must learn to question, to use our brains and think for ourselves, if we are to be truly secular.
"And just how are we to do that?", asked Rubin, exasperated.
"Well, charity begins at home, and so we start with our own families", I heard Sameen say.
"Hey Rubin, Vasudaiva Kutumbakam, man!", said Mrunalini.
"Hey don't give me that 'The whole world is my family bilge' ", said Rubin.
"Nice, bro! I can't believe it that you actually understood what Mrunal said!", said I.
" Well, there's a lot of things that you don’t know about! ", sniggered Rubin, with the rest of them nodding in silent approval.
"Et tu Brute!", I say in desperation, as I see Ninad nod with the rest of the guys.
As we laughed, I guess that each one of us was contemplating what the other had to say. There may be doubts and disagreements, in fact there MUST be. But the real test of our friendship is secularism. Of us accepting what the other has to say, without being partial to anybody or any religion in particular.
"So lets start from today!", said different voices, in offbeat unison.
"Well, I agree, that I don't know a lot of things, but I am just as ignorant as the rest of you!", said I.
"Point taken", said Rubin, as we walked towards our class.
"Hey, I'm definitely cleverer that the rest of you ignoramuses", said Jimmy, "so don't you try to get me down to where you are!"
We laughed as we went into the classroom. As we opened our books, we heard Ashutosh sum it up succinctly: Who's got the time for checking out the religion of the guy/girl sitting next to you? All that matters is that he/she be good enough to lend you his/her notes when you need them!
This is my world, my perspective. There are bound to be disagreements - in fact somebody MUST disagree with what I have to say. But in such a case, I have to respect the other's point of view, as must the other person. Tolerance is my synonym for secularism. The keystone to my bridge over life.
Sensitivity and arrival
What is it about accepting aid when great disasters happen? Why is it always so politically fraught? After the tsunami devastated the Tamil Nadu coast last December, India announced that it would not accept aid from abroad. Many Indians were thrilled with this decision, clinging to it because it proved to them that India had become a player on the global stage, whatever that means. By the tens of thousands, lives were devastated, but no matter, we had "arrived".
Today, when a quake has ravaged Pakistan, it's that country's turn. President Musharraf wants foreign financial assistance, and appreciates India's offer of help, but says there are "sensitivities" involved. Therefore, it will take Pakistan a few days to "decide" about the Indian offer.
Which seems like a roundabout way of saying, simply, "No! Thanks, but no!"
I always wonder: when such decisions are made, are the victims of the calamity consulted? I mean, remember Arko Dutta's searing shot of the wailing woman on the Nagapattinam shore? Did some high up Government official go up to her and say: "You'll be proud to know, we are refusing aid from abroad!" In much the same way, remember the photograph of Pakistani rescue workers trying to pull from the rubble a visible victim of one of those building collapses in Islamabad? Did one of Musharraf's aides yell down to him: "Hang in there, we're aware of the sensitivities involved in accepting aid from India!"
I imagine those things didn't happen. Why?
The only sensitivity should be to the victims of tragedy. Yet nationhood is such a prickly issue, it overwhelms even great tragedy. Which is a tragedy by itself.
***
POSTSCRIPT: General Musharraf has changed his mind, I'm glad to find out. Here's one report about Indian relief material arriving in Pakistan. Good news, and I'm glad to be eating my words on this score.
Today, when a quake has ravaged Pakistan, it's that country's turn. President Musharraf wants foreign financial assistance, and appreciates India's offer of help, but says there are "sensitivities" involved. Therefore, it will take Pakistan a few days to "decide" about the Indian offer.
Which seems like a roundabout way of saying, simply, "No! Thanks, but no!"
I always wonder: when such decisions are made, are the victims of the calamity consulted? I mean, remember Arko Dutta's searing shot of the wailing woman on the Nagapattinam shore? Did some high up Government official go up to her and say: "You'll be proud to know, we are refusing aid from abroad!" In much the same way, remember the photograph of Pakistani rescue workers trying to pull from the rubble a visible victim of one of those building collapses in Islamabad? Did one of Musharraf's aides yell down to him: "Hang in there, we're aware of the sensitivities involved in accepting aid from India!"
I imagine those things didn't happen. Why?
The only sensitivity should be to the victims of tragedy. Yet nationhood is such a prickly issue, it overwhelms even great tragedy. Which is a tragedy by itself.
POSTSCRIPT: General Musharraf has changed his mind, I'm glad to find out. Here's one report about Indian relief material arriving in Pakistan. Good news, and I'm glad to be eating my words on this score.
October 11, 2005
Fine print zindabad
What I do, and will keep doing till my eyes give out, is read the fine print. Because that's where you learn things. And two days ago in Delhi, I found some choice fine print indeed in a full-page ad in the Hindustan Times. Cut it out -- with several others -- to post here at some point. But on returning to Bombay last night and catching up with my mail, I find it is more relevant than I might have thought.
So here are those lines, right now. In the ad, they appear immediately below five different rankings ... well, you'll get the drift:
My free-ranging translation:
Fine print. As I said, it teaches you things. In this case, as I read these lines I knew that I need not read one other word in the ad. (And I didn't). The fine print told me all I need to know about IIPM. Which is to say, that age-old lesson: when you abuse others, you do nothing so much as prove that the abuse fits you best of all.
"Inferiority complex" and "intellectually dwarfed". Right. Tell us more, IIPM!
There's plenty of uproar over IIPM and what it has been up to in recent days, so much that I know I don't need to explain here. Except to say this: legal notices from IIPM, in response to criticism, are entirely to be expected. In one way, they serve the same purpose as fine-printed abuse. They prove that the criticism fits.
So Gaurav, good for you. You did a gutsy thing.
Though I'll say this: when Sushma Swaraj swore to shave her head if Sonia ever became PM, I wished Sonia had called her bluff instead of famously renouncing the chance. What I wouldn't have given to see Swaraj shorn.
In much the same way, I wish you had called those laptop-burner-wannabe's bluffs. What I wouldn't have given to see them burning their laptops. Like the abuse and legal notices, it would have said very little about you or IBM. It would have said everything about them and IIPM.
***
Note: No link to IIPM website above. They get no hits on my account.
So here are those lines, right now. In the ad, they appear immediately below five different rankings ... well, you'll get the drift:
- IIPM believes that it is the #1 B-School in India in terms of COURSE CONTENT, GLOBAL LINKAGES & INDUSTRY INTERFACE. The above rankings don't reflect the same due to the inferiority complex and intellectually dwarfed unquestioning attitude that the industry and the media have developed towards the IIMs over the years. Through its various academic, research, global and industry consulting activities, mentioned in this ad, IIPM aims to make sure that the industry and the media develops the intellectual ability to come out of this unquestioning attitude and accept the reality, very soon. [Non-italics mine]
My free-ranging translation:
- We're ranked so poorly that we have to scrounge around to find some rankings, however obscure and meaningless, that we can actually put up here in our full-page ad. That need to scrounge annoys us no end. So we want to point out -- in a font so tiny we hope you won't read it -- that we're not ranked second-rate because we are second-rate, but because everybody else in the world is second-rate. In fact, they have an inferiority complex and are intellectually dwarfed. And if you believe that, you're just the kind of dude who's going to be thrilled with our course. So what are you waiting for? Sign up!
Fine print. As I said, it teaches you things. In this case, as I read these lines I knew that I need not read one other word in the ad. (And I didn't). The fine print told me all I need to know about IIPM. Which is to say, that age-old lesson: when you abuse others, you do nothing so much as prove that the abuse fits you best of all.
"Inferiority complex" and "intellectually dwarfed". Right. Tell us more, IIPM!
There's plenty of uproar over IIPM and what it has been up to in recent days, so much that I know I don't need to explain here. Except to say this: legal notices from IIPM, in response to criticism, are entirely to be expected. In one way, they serve the same purpose as fine-printed abuse. They prove that the criticism fits.
So Gaurav, good for you. You did a gutsy thing.
Though I'll say this: when Sushma Swaraj swore to shave her head if Sonia ever became PM, I wished Sonia had called her bluff instead of famously renouncing the chance. What I wouldn't have given to see Swaraj shorn.
In much the same way, I wish you had called those laptop-burner-wannabe's bluffs. What I wouldn't have given to see them burning their laptops. Like the abuse and legal notices, it would have said very little about you or IBM. It would have said everything about them and IIPM.
Note: No link to IIPM website above. They get no hits on my account.
Many trees
Here's what I wrote for rediff.com, about a certain Guinness record. As always, comments welcome.
October 07, 2005
Indifference, then respect
Uma's prize-winning essay has generated a good deal of comment that I've wanted to reply to. Here's some musing on secularism, triggered by one phrase in those comments.
***
Many angry people have written me angry notes about holidays. The lack of "Hindu" holidays, they say, is one more insult to Hinduism, one more reason Hindus "feel under siege" in this country. And they rattle off various occasions that should be holidays but are not.
Now you might note that our calendar is already crowded with holidays for occasions like Holi, Diwali, Janmashtami, Dassehra, Navratri and Ganesh Chaturthi, with many regional variations. But if you "feel under siege", that argument won't convince: if every single day of the year was a holiday, you would still unearth insults.
So me, I wonder how giving people more days to laze at home amounts to respect for religion. For anything.
And when I wonder like that, my thoughts lead inexorably to one conclusion: "equal respect" for all religions -- which is how we came to have our various religious holidays -- is a myth. Or put it this way: secularism, defined as equal respect for all faiths, is a myth. It cannot work. Pursued like that, it will necessarily produce disgruntled men digging around to find insults to their faith.
Thus: here an article that pokes fun at Bombay Catholic habits "insults" their faith; there a comment about the Prophet by a disreputable American Baptist evangelist abuses Islam; in that corner sit the fellows totting up denigration in the calendar.
The idea of equal respect for all faiths is a close cousin to the idea of pleasing everybody. Some genius saw fit to warn against that second idea. "You cannot please everybody", remember? No four words are truer. Unfortunately, nobody has warned us against attempts to respect all religions equally. So we try, and try again with well-intentioned, if muddle-headed, purpose -- and manage only to annoy ever more people.
Time for a change, I suspect. And perhaps for this radical thought: one way the state can truly respect all religions is by offering them none.
Let me quickly say that I am not advocating mass conversions to atheism or agnosticism. (Though frankly, we agnostics don't care one way or another). What I am questioning is the idea, sold to us by men like Nehru and Gandhi, that secularism means equal respect for all religions; more, that a state can achieve that. Sarva dharma samabhava: we heard it from them and from successors who aren't half the men they were anyway.
But today, as the secularism they yearned for crumbles into failure and hatred, when "Nehruvian secularism" itself is a bad word, we can only conclude: it was an exercise in futility.
Or let me put it this way: to the state, secularism must mean an equal indifference to all religions. Or it means nothing.
Just two implications at random here, of such indifference.
One, leaders will refrain from pious statements about our "vaunted" secularism every time we spit on it as in Gujarat in 2002. They must clutch at such straws because we are so profoundly disillusioned with what passes for secularism. Changing the way we look at it might spur us to punish rioters and hate-mongers, instead of settling for empty slogans. Which, in turn, would give secularism new meaning.
Two, the state shuns anything to do with religion. No Satyanarayana Pujas in public sector offices; no interference in religious institutions; no Haj subsidies; no observances of any kind at the start of Government-sponsored functions. And in particular, not one religious holiday on the calendar. You are welcome to do these things -- on your own time. Want to observe your Easters or Ids, Patetis or Diwalis? Why, you can do so by using one or more of, say, fifteen optional holidays employees are entitled to take through the year. The state will recognize just one holiday, August 15 (though I have reservations about even that one).
This way, we undermine the whiners who comb the calendar for insults. When nobody gets official holidays, nobody can claim disrespect.
And that hints at the true benefit of such a view of secularism. You don't foster respect by trying to cater to every faith. As we see, that breeds moaners and ill-feeling. Respect comes instead from being firm and fair. And to me the best way to be so, where religions are concerned, is for the state to stay away from every single one.
People balk at separating church and state so explicitly. They think it negates some deeply-felt human need for religion, or amounts to godlessness. Wrong. It means neither. Such separation, maintained strictly in a country filled with diversity, is how secularism can find meaning and relevance.
Now that's worth some respect.
Many angry people have written me angry notes about holidays. The lack of "Hindu" holidays, they say, is one more insult to Hinduism, one more reason Hindus "feel under siege" in this country. And they rattle off various occasions that should be holidays but are not.
Now you might note that our calendar is already crowded with holidays for occasions like Holi, Diwali, Janmashtami, Dassehra, Navratri and Ganesh Chaturthi, with many regional variations. But if you "feel under siege", that argument won't convince: if every single day of the year was a holiday, you would still unearth insults.
So me, I wonder how giving people more days to laze at home amounts to respect for religion. For anything.
And when I wonder like that, my thoughts lead inexorably to one conclusion: "equal respect" for all religions -- which is how we came to have our various religious holidays -- is a myth. Or put it this way: secularism, defined as equal respect for all faiths, is a myth. It cannot work. Pursued like that, it will necessarily produce disgruntled men digging around to find insults to their faith.
Thus: here an article that pokes fun at Bombay Catholic habits "insults" their faith; there a comment about the Prophet by a disreputable American Baptist evangelist abuses Islam; in that corner sit the fellows totting up denigration in the calendar.
The idea of equal respect for all faiths is a close cousin to the idea of pleasing everybody. Some genius saw fit to warn against that second idea. "You cannot please everybody", remember? No four words are truer. Unfortunately, nobody has warned us against attempts to respect all religions equally. So we try, and try again with well-intentioned, if muddle-headed, purpose -- and manage only to annoy ever more people.
Time for a change, I suspect. And perhaps for this radical thought: one way the state can truly respect all religions is by offering them none.
Let me quickly say that I am not advocating mass conversions to atheism or agnosticism. (Though frankly, we agnostics don't care one way or another). What I am questioning is the idea, sold to us by men like Nehru and Gandhi, that secularism means equal respect for all religions; more, that a state can achieve that. Sarva dharma samabhava: we heard it from them and from successors who aren't half the men they were anyway.
But today, as the secularism they yearned for crumbles into failure and hatred, when "Nehruvian secularism" itself is a bad word, we can only conclude: it was an exercise in futility.
Or let me put it this way: to the state, secularism must mean an equal indifference to all religions. Or it means nothing.
Just two implications at random here, of such indifference.
One, leaders will refrain from pious statements about our "vaunted" secularism every time we spit on it as in Gujarat in 2002. They must clutch at such straws because we are so profoundly disillusioned with what passes for secularism. Changing the way we look at it might spur us to punish rioters and hate-mongers, instead of settling for empty slogans. Which, in turn, would give secularism new meaning.
Two, the state shuns anything to do with religion. No Satyanarayana Pujas in public sector offices; no interference in religious institutions; no Haj subsidies; no observances of any kind at the start of Government-sponsored functions. And in particular, not one religious holiday on the calendar. You are welcome to do these things -- on your own time. Want to observe your Easters or Ids, Patetis or Diwalis? Why, you can do so by using one or more of, say, fifteen optional holidays employees are entitled to take through the year. The state will recognize just one holiday, August 15 (though I have reservations about even that one).
This way, we undermine the whiners who comb the calendar for insults. When nobody gets official holidays, nobody can claim disrespect.
And that hints at the true benefit of such a view of secularism. You don't foster respect by trying to cater to every faith. As we see, that breeds moaners and ill-feeling. Respect comes instead from being firm and fair. And to me the best way to be so, where religions are concerned, is for the state to stay away from every single one.
People balk at separating church and state so explicitly. They think it negates some deeply-felt human need for religion, or amounts to godlessness. Wrong. It means neither. Such separation, maintained strictly in a country filled with diversity, is how secularism can find meaning and relevance.
Now that's worth some respect.
Personalized sevedage
Random notes from some weeks of travel.
***
P James is all over Chennai. I read his name in Kilpauk, Adyar, Saidapet, Egmore, T Nagar, Besant Nagar, RA Puram, Alwarpet, Chetpet ... untidy large black letters, advertising "P James Magic Show xxxxxxxx" (the number).
Did James himself wander the city with a paintbrush? Or did he pay someone to do it? Either way, is the magic business bringing in enough money to justify it? Or wait, did all this graffiti just appear by ... magic?
Send me a note if you're on the lookout for a magician (who isn't?) and want the number. Alternately, if you're in Chennai, just wander about. I guarantee -- or rather, P James guarantees -- that you'll see those black letters within 20 minutes.
***
What's with the "Marrybrown" Family Restaurant on Nungambakkam Road in Chennai? Where'd that name come from and what's it supposed to mean?
***
T-shirts that went by:
***
Sign in large black handpainted letters -- not P James -- on Miller's Road in Bangalore: "NOT URIN HIRE".
***
The two women on the side berths on my train from Chennai pull out a number of books as soon as we get rolling, and I mean "as soon as". They also have a number of forms, or questionnaires, in Hindi. For hours, they pore over the books, consult each other in hushed Gujarati, then write things on the forms, filling them up and starting on new ones. Hours and hours. I catch the title on one of the forms, and get a little bit of an idea what this is about. It says, Mahavir Shabd Prashnavali.
Then they take out another book to consult, and this one is called Aapt Maniyaan.
Then they pull out a new form to fill, and this one is called Devendra Prashnavali.
In between, they lunch on sandwiches filled with some bright orange stuff; then snack on rotis and pickle.
At precisely 8 pm, they pack away their books and forms and start singing to each other.
In the next compartment, a young girl in Tshirt and pedal-pushers is reading Ayn Rand's "The Atlas Shrugged."
P James is all over Chennai. I read his name in Kilpauk, Adyar, Saidapet, Egmore, T Nagar, Besant Nagar, RA Puram, Alwarpet, Chetpet ... untidy large black letters, advertising "P James Magic Show xxxxxxxx" (the number).
Did James himself wander the city with a paintbrush? Or did he pay someone to do it? Either way, is the magic business bringing in enough money to justify it? Or wait, did all this graffiti just appear by ... magic?
Send me a note if you're on the lookout for a magician (who isn't?) and want the number. Alternately, if you're in Chennai, just wander about. I guarantee -- or rather, P James guarantees -- that you'll see those black letters within 20 minutes.
What's with the "Marrybrown" Family Restaurant on Nungambakkam Road in Chennai? Where'd that name come from and what's it supposed to mean?
T-shirts that went by:
- She Smart and Original and auth. Personalized sevedage seams of the inside of gay origin trade mark THE L.O.R.
- Intelligence is insufficient BROCKLYNNNY for me to bo oxcellent.
Sign in large black handpainted letters -- not P James -- on Miller's Road in Bangalore: "NOT URIN HIRE".
The two women on the side berths on my train from Chennai pull out a number of books as soon as we get rolling, and I mean "as soon as". They also have a number of forms, or questionnaires, in Hindi. For hours, they pore over the books, consult each other in hushed Gujarati, then write things on the forms, filling them up and starting on new ones. Hours and hours. I catch the title on one of the forms, and get a little bit of an idea what this is about. It says, Mahavir Shabd Prashnavali.
Then they take out another book to consult, and this one is called Aapt Maniyaan.
Then they pull out a new form to fill, and this one is called Devendra Prashnavali.
In between, they lunch on sandwiches filled with some bright orange stuff; then snack on rotis and pickle.
At precisely 8 pm, they pack away their books and forms and start singing to each other.
In the next compartment, a young girl in Tshirt and pedal-pushers is reading Ayn Rand's "The Atlas Shrugged."
October 06, 2005
Rethink, revisited
I read a few hundred essays on secularism recently. Came away humbled by the experience. Three thoughts about this.
1) The essays flooded in from every corner of this land. Well, I don't recall any from the Andamans or Lakshadweep, but everywhere else. Many from Pune, strangely enough. But truly, every distant and not-so-distant nook and cranny of this country.
2) It's impossible to overstate how much the word, the very concept, seemed to mean to people. This was clear from the passion in their writing; in the postal entries, it was also clear from the way people drew things on their sheets of paper and so on. And this meaning the word had went both ways -- there were enough people who made the passionate case that secularism was dead, or phony.
Nevertheless, there was something moving about the passion. There was a sense of anguish in the essays, a feeling that in the debate over secularism, in the great disillusionment with Indian secularism, we were in danger of losing something essentially Indian, something vital to our idea of ourselves. There was a sense that an emerging India has to have that essentially Indian thing, whatever it is, at its core.
It's impossible to overstate how moving it was to understand this.
3) Many of the essays did not have grand ideas, detailed prescriptions. Instead, they had ordinary, simple ideas. Yet they were no less profound for being simple. That was another glimpse into how much the idea of secularism meant to so many people.
So congratulations again to the winners. Uma has already posted her essay. I will soon put up here the essays of Shashi Warrier and LH Naqvi, and perhaps the other shortlisted ones.
1) The essays flooded in from every corner of this land. Well, I don't recall any from the Andamans or Lakshadweep, but everywhere else. Many from Pune, strangely enough. But truly, every distant and not-so-distant nook and cranny of this country.
2) It's impossible to overstate how much the word, the very concept, seemed to mean to people. This was clear from the passion in their writing; in the postal entries, it was also clear from the way people drew things on their sheets of paper and so on. And this meaning the word had went both ways -- there were enough people who made the passionate case that secularism was dead, or phony.
Nevertheless, there was something moving about the passion. There was a sense of anguish in the essays, a feeling that in the debate over secularism, in the great disillusionment with Indian secularism, we were in danger of losing something essentially Indian, something vital to our idea of ourselves. There was a sense that an emerging India has to have that essentially Indian thing, whatever it is, at its core.
It's impossible to overstate how moving it was to understand this.
3) Many of the essays did not have grand ideas, detailed prescriptions. Instead, they had ordinary, simple ideas. Yet they were no less profound for being simple. That was another glimpse into how much the idea of secularism meant to so many people.
So congratulations again to the winners. Uma has already posted her essay. I will soon put up here the essays of Shashi Warrier and LH Naqvi, and perhaps the other shortlisted ones.
October 05, 2005
Bangalore scum
Got this forwarded to me by a Bangalore friend while I was in that city yesterday; it was only today that I was able to speak to the person concerned, Nimish Adani. But I was glad to see that today's Bangalore papers carried his news prominently. I was also glad to hear from Nimish when I called that he was on his way to the railway station for an inquiry into this horrifying incident, and that the press was going to be there in force.
All I can add is what I said to Nimish on the phone: please pursue this to the end! Don't let the scum go.
The rest of this is in Nimish's own words.
***
I would like to bring to notice a certain injustice that I have subjected to at the Bangalore Railway Station (Majestic). On September 30 (Friday), 2005, I had been to the station to see off my fiance and her mother. They took the Karnataka Express (Train #2627) to Jhansi at 6:30 pm.
On my way out I was asked to present my platform ticket by a railway official. On producing the same, the TT turned around and told me "What if I say that you haven't given me the ticket?" Before I could react, he along with his colleague pushed me into the adjacent enquiry cabin and physically manhandled me. I was slapped several times, my spectacles were grabbed and deliberately crushed by foot, and my phone was flung away from me. The RPF comprising of one RPF and four constables, appeared on the scene. The surrounding public was whisked away. None of the railway police officials cared to listen to me and they started hitting me indiscriminately with lathis. They dragged me out, and all the 4 constables continued hitting me with lathis from Platform 1 to Platform 3/5, till we reached the station master's cabin. Racist abuses and threats were made on the way. At the station master's cabin, I was told that I have been charged with a non-bailable offence and would be behind bars for 15 days.
Not for a single moment was I allowed to speak. All of a sudden a stranger came to the scene and he claimed that he was there to help me. Having lost all my physical strength and mental senses, I was happy to see some sort of help. He, claiming to be V Srinivas from Infosys, talked to the officials and the railway police in Kannada. He told me that the only way I was to get out was if I was willing to pay my way through. Being in no state to make a rational choice, I gave him my ATM card and pin. He took one of the RPF chaps along with him and said he would clear the matter. He returned some time later saying that everything was okay now.
I was asked to sign a statement which said that I hit the police and TT in a drunken state. I refused. Finally, they pressurized me to write that I did not produce a platform ticket when asked. I wrote the same and then V Srinivas took me out of the station. He joined me in an auto and took me to the ICICI ATM at Anand Rao circle. He withdrew Rs. 15000 from my ATM and got back. he took the cash under the pretext that while helping me he had left his wallet in the train he had left behind and that he would return the same through his ICICI Internet account. Having broken down mentally I did not realise that I was being cheated. He then took me to a Samsung showroom and tried purchasing a cellphone worth Rs. 18500 with my card. It was only then that I realised what was happening. I grabbed my card back, caught him by the collar, snatched my cash that lay in his pocket, and got into a running auto.
I have now realized that all of this was a plan. There is a strong nexus between the railway officials, the railway police and the fraudster. The railway officials identify a victim who they think is well-to-do, the RPF beat that individual till he has no physical or mental well-being. Then this fraud chap comes on to the scene, takes advantage of the situation, and takes all your cash away. Also, this series of events generally occurs on the last day of the month as they know that the salary gets credited on this day. (This strikes me now because the self-proclaimed Infy employee, V Srinivas, clearly asked me whether I had received my salary. He said that he just wanted to find out if there was cash enough to tackle the case.)
Now three days hence, I have tried to run from pillar to post. I have been forced to miss office hours in my effort to get justice. But I don't want to give up the fight midway. ...
Also, please pass this email to all the people who reside in Bangalore, so that they don't fall into the same trap.
Nimish V Adani
All I can add is what I said to Nimish on the phone: please pursue this to the end! Don't let the scum go.
The rest of this is in Nimish's own words.
I would like to bring to notice a certain injustice that I have subjected to at the Bangalore Railway Station (Majestic). On September 30 (Friday), 2005, I had been to the station to see off my fiance and her mother. They took the Karnataka Express (Train #2627) to Jhansi at 6:30 pm.
On my way out I was asked to present my platform ticket by a railway official. On producing the same, the TT turned around and told me "What if I say that you haven't given me the ticket?" Before I could react, he along with his colleague pushed me into the adjacent enquiry cabin and physically manhandled me. I was slapped several times, my spectacles were grabbed and deliberately crushed by foot, and my phone was flung away from me. The RPF comprising of one RPF and four constables, appeared on the scene. The surrounding public was whisked away. None of the railway police officials cared to listen to me and they started hitting me indiscriminately with lathis. They dragged me out, and all the 4 constables continued hitting me with lathis from Platform 1 to Platform 3/5, till we reached the station master's cabin. Racist abuses and threats were made on the way. At the station master's cabin, I was told that I have been charged with a non-bailable offence and would be behind bars for 15 days.
Not for a single moment was I allowed to speak. All of a sudden a stranger came to the scene and he claimed that he was there to help me. Having lost all my physical strength and mental senses, I was happy to see some sort of help. He, claiming to be V Srinivas from Infosys, talked to the officials and the railway police in Kannada. He told me that the only way I was to get out was if I was willing to pay my way through. Being in no state to make a rational choice, I gave him my ATM card and pin. He took one of the RPF chaps along with him and said he would clear the matter. He returned some time later saying that everything was okay now.
I was asked to sign a statement which said that I hit the police and TT in a drunken state. I refused. Finally, they pressurized me to write that I did not produce a platform ticket when asked. I wrote the same and then V Srinivas took me out of the station. He joined me in an auto and took me to the ICICI ATM at Anand Rao circle. He withdrew Rs. 15000 from my ATM and got back. he took the cash under the pretext that while helping me he had left his wallet in the train he had left behind and that he would return the same through his ICICI Internet account. Having broken down mentally I did not realise that I was being cheated. He then took me to a Samsung showroom and tried purchasing a cellphone worth Rs. 18500 with my card. It was only then that I realised what was happening. I grabbed my card back, caught him by the collar, snatched my cash that lay in his pocket, and got into a running auto.
I have now realized that all of this was a plan. There is a strong nexus between the railway officials, the railway police and the fraudster. The railway officials identify a victim who they think is well-to-do, the RPF beat that individual till he has no physical or mental well-being. Then this fraud chap comes on to the scene, takes advantage of the situation, and takes all your cash away. Also, this series of events generally occurs on the last day of the month as they know that the salary gets credited on this day. (This strikes me now because the self-proclaimed Infy employee, V Srinivas, clearly asked me whether I had received my salary. He said that he just wanted to find out if there was cash enough to tackle the case.)
Now three days hence, I have tried to run from pillar to post. I have been forced to miss office hours in my effort to get justice. But I don't want to give up the fight midway. ...
Also, please pass this email to all the people who reside in Bangalore, so that they don't fall into the same trap.
Nimish V Adani
Still seated
In the row immediately in front of me, there's an older couple, a man who looks like their son, his wife, and the younger couple's little daughter, about 4 years old and screaming nonstop, wordlessly. Screaming so loudly and steadily that everybody around tries hard not to look at the family. Instead we all look elsewhere, or down at the meals on our fold-down trays, anywhere but at the kid, carefully neutral expressions on our faces.
The little girl has the faint but unmistakable look of Down's, especially in her bright but unfocused eyes. When she first starts screaming, her father picks her up and passes her across the aisle to her grandfather, who cajoles and scolds alternately, the last with his hand poised threateningly, which only results in more screaming. Unable to pacify the girl, grandpa passes her back across the aisle, and pa passes her on to his wife in the window seat.
This back and forth happens once or twice more, and then there's a little to-do because the tyke has wet the little pants she is wearing. Grandpa stands in the aisle, holding the girl with one hand and trying to pull her pants off with the other, while the seated father points helpfully at possible spots on the garment to tug at. She screams some more, and then she is suddenly sitting in the aisle, still wordless and with grandpa's hand again threatening.
The pass-off happens again, grandpa to father who moves her over to the mother. This time ma decides to take her for a walk. She gets up, struggling to keep her balance in the slightly unsteady plane, and to keep the girl's head from bumping against the overhead bins, and she struggles past her seated husband's knees, which he does not so much as move aside. Let alone stand up to let his wife pass into the aisle.
Her face is turned towards me as she squeezes out. Not even the pallu of her pale pink sari, pulled carefully over her head, can mask the sad weariness in her face.
She and her daughter walk past me -- my neutral look still in place -- the screams like a train receding into the distance. But through them, I hear two other things.
First, the mother's quiet voice, in Gujarati: "You're disturbing everyone."
Second, the PA system, in mechanical and strident English: "Direct access message number one. This is a fasten seat belt announcement."
The plane lurches. In the seat in front of me, the father picks up a magazine. We're still half an hour from Bombay and somewhere behind me, I hear screaming.
The little girl has the faint but unmistakable look of Down's, especially in her bright but unfocused eyes. When she first starts screaming, her father picks her up and passes her across the aisle to her grandfather, who cajoles and scolds alternately, the last with his hand poised threateningly, which only results in more screaming. Unable to pacify the girl, grandpa passes her back across the aisle, and pa passes her on to his wife in the window seat.
This back and forth happens once or twice more, and then there's a little to-do because the tyke has wet the little pants she is wearing. Grandpa stands in the aisle, holding the girl with one hand and trying to pull her pants off with the other, while the seated father points helpfully at possible spots on the garment to tug at. She screams some more, and then she is suddenly sitting in the aisle, still wordless and with grandpa's hand again threatening.
The pass-off happens again, grandpa to father who moves her over to the mother. This time ma decides to take her for a walk. She gets up, struggling to keep her balance in the slightly unsteady plane, and to keep the girl's head from bumping against the overhead bins, and she struggles past her seated husband's knees, which he does not so much as move aside. Let alone stand up to let his wife pass into the aisle.
Her face is turned towards me as she squeezes out. Not even the pallu of her pale pink sari, pulled carefully over her head, can mask the sad weariness in her face.
She and her daughter walk past me -- my neutral look still in place -- the screams like a train receding into the distance. But through them, I hear two other things.
First, the mother's quiet voice, in Gujarati: "You're disturbing everyone."
Second, the PA system, in mechanical and strident English: "Direct access message number one. This is a fasten seat belt announcement."
The plane lurches. In the seat in front of me, the father picks up a magazine. We're still half an hour from Bombay and somewhere behind me, I hear screaming.
October 03, 2005
254,464
Perhaps you remember I wrote "Watch this space" at the end of this.
Well, it's done! Yesterday Oct 2, just before 4 pm. BITSunami, with many others, take a bow! Wish I could have been there, watching it happen with the other BITS buddies I've been meeting in TN. Over 250,000 saplings, wow!
More when I get a chance.
Well, it's done! Yesterday Oct 2, just before 4 pm. BITSunami, with many others, take a bow! Wish I could have been there, watching it happen with the other BITS buddies I've been meeting in TN. Over 250,000 saplings, wow!
More when I get a chance.
October 02, 2005
A Rethink
CITIZENS for PEACE celebrates the completion of its essay competition on the theme A SECULAR RETHINK.
Sunday 2nd October, 4:30 pm, Little Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point, Bombay.
The bi-lingual essay competition was held in collaboration with the Indian Express and attracted as many as 600 entries from across India. CfP and the Indian Express plan to make this an annual competition.
At the prize distribution function, the two prize winning essays (Hindi and English) will be read out, and there will be a discussion among some of the judges and organizers about some of the issues the contest raised. CfP will also release a booklet that contains the shortlisted essays in both languages, as well as excerpts from several other entries.
The judges were:
(English)
Anu Aga
Nalini Malani
Sudheendra Kulkarni
Ramachandra Guha
Samar Harlankar, Resident Editor, Indian Express
Dilip D'Souza
(Hindi)
Anjum Rajabali
Ashutosh Gowarikar
Shikha Trivedi
Tarun Vijay
Kumar Ketkar, Editor, Loksatta
Rajni Bakshi
Third prizes go to:
(English) Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, Bombay
(Hindi) Chandan Kumar Srivastava, New Delhi
Second prizes:
(English) LH Naqvi, New Delhi
(Hindi) Pratibha Misra, Varanasi
Winners:
(English) Shashi Warrier, Coimbatore
(Hindi) Bhanwar Meghwanshi, Bhilwara
Congratulations to all six, and to all those who sent in so much thought-provoking material.
Sunday 2nd October, 4:30 pm, Little Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point, Bombay.
The bi-lingual essay competition was held in collaboration with the Indian Express and attracted as many as 600 entries from across India. CfP and the Indian Express plan to make this an annual competition.
At the prize distribution function, the two prize winning essays (Hindi and English) will be read out, and there will be a discussion among some of the judges and organizers about some of the issues the contest raised. CfP will also release a booklet that contains the shortlisted essays in both languages, as well as excerpts from several other entries.
The judges were:
(English)
Anu Aga
Nalini Malani
Sudheendra Kulkarni
Ramachandra Guha
Samar Harlankar, Resident Editor, Indian Express
Dilip D'Souza
(Hindi)
Anjum Rajabali
Ashutosh Gowarikar
Shikha Trivedi
Tarun Vijay
Kumar Ketkar, Editor, Loksatta
Rajni Bakshi
Third prizes go to:
(English) Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, Bombay
(Hindi) Chandan Kumar Srivastava, New Delhi
Second prizes:
(English) LH Naqvi, New Delhi
(Hindi) Pratibha Misra, Varanasi
Winners:
(English) Shashi Warrier, Coimbatore
(Hindi) Bhanwar Meghwanshi, Bhilwara
Congratulations to all six, and to all those who sent in so much thought-provoking material.
October 01, 2005
As good as
John Feinstein's A Season on the Brink is about the Indiana University basketball team's 1985-86 season. Now if you know anything about college basketball in the States, I bet two words are in your mind already, and those two words are "Bobby Knight". And sure enough, the book is really about the Hoosiers' mercurial, brilliant, abrasive, hard-driving coach. Still only two-thirds of the way through the book, I wonder already at how any young player stands for the kind of pressure Knight brings to the game.
And yet, how do you motivate young men to practice hard, play hard, get up for even the gimme games? Knight's answer to that is fear. No doubt there will be people who will argue with that. Yet it's hard to argue with Knight's stellar record at Indiana, both in terms of graduating his players and winning games. Just one example of that last: in his first thirteen years as coach, Knight's Hoosier teams put together a 99-12 record in home Big Ten games.
The next season (1984-85), of course, they went 3-6 at home in the Big Ten. That terrible season, of course, was the reason Feinsten chose to follow the team in 1985-86 and write this book.
But this is not a review of the book. This is the third Feinstein book I've read (A March to Madness and Hard Courts) are the others. Excellent, both. But even so, and even though this one is apparently "the best-selling sports book of all time", it's getting me just slightly irritated, as irritated as I've ever been with a book, and I've finally figured out one reason why.
It goes back to something I used to notice, watching sports -- and especially college hoops -- back in the States. There'd be these play-by-play guys -- colourful Dick Vitale, sometimes -- and they'd be talking about some guy who just made a particularly good play, and this is what they'd say: "You know, this guy is as good a point guard as anyone in college ball" (or "in the conference", or "in the country"). And they'd nod to each other in appreciation.
And I heard this once, twice, innumerable times, and I began thinking, why can't they use a superlative and be done with it? Why not just say, "this guy is the best"? Or if he isn't really the best, why not just say, "this guy is up there, he has potential", something like that? After all, it's not as if someone's going to take them to court over such opinions. Yet it was almost as if they were hedging their bets, saying something about this player in this game that they could say again about someone else in the next game, three days later.
"As good as anyone", give me a break.
Feinstein's book is full of this stuff. "Each was about as good an athlete as Knight had ever recruited." "Louisville, as it was to prove in March by winning the national championship, had as much talent as anyone in the country."
Well, excuse me, but if Louisville won the national championship, it's a good guess that they had more talent than anyone in the country. Why not just say so?
And yet, how do you motivate young men to practice hard, play hard, get up for even the gimme games? Knight's answer to that is fear. No doubt there will be people who will argue with that. Yet it's hard to argue with Knight's stellar record at Indiana, both in terms of graduating his players and winning games. Just one example of that last: in his first thirteen years as coach, Knight's Hoosier teams put together a 99-12 record in home Big Ten games.
The next season (1984-85), of course, they went 3-6 at home in the Big Ten. That terrible season, of course, was the reason Feinsten chose to follow the team in 1985-86 and write this book.
But this is not a review of the book. This is the third Feinstein book I've read (A March to Madness and Hard Courts) are the others. Excellent, both. But even so, and even though this one is apparently "the best-selling sports book of all time", it's getting me just slightly irritated, as irritated as I've ever been with a book, and I've finally figured out one reason why.
It goes back to something I used to notice, watching sports -- and especially college hoops -- back in the States. There'd be these play-by-play guys -- colourful Dick Vitale, sometimes -- and they'd be talking about some guy who just made a particularly good play, and this is what they'd say: "You know, this guy is as good a point guard as anyone in college ball" (or "in the conference", or "in the country"). And they'd nod to each other in appreciation.
And I heard this once, twice, innumerable times, and I began thinking, why can't they use a superlative and be done with it? Why not just say, "this guy is the best"? Or if he isn't really the best, why not just say, "this guy is up there, he has potential", something like that? After all, it's not as if someone's going to take them to court over such opinions. Yet it was almost as if they were hedging their bets, saying something about this player in this game that they could say again about someone else in the next game, three days later.
"As good as anyone", give me a break.
Feinstein's book is full of this stuff. "Each was about as good an athlete as Knight had ever recruited." "Louisville, as it was to prove in March by winning the national championship, had as much talent as anyone in the country."
Well, excuse me, but if Louisville won the national championship, it's a good guess that they had more talent than anyone in the country. Why not just say so?
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