The Fall of the Wall:Camus, with help from Kafka and Molière

I don't remember what I was doing when I first heard the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. I was familiar with the wall largely because of reading of John le Carré's classic "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"(1963).

Some people say 'the fall' restored the light in Eastern Europe.

Did it?

I always felt Václav Havel was a poster boy for anti-communist brigade.

Therefore, I was surprised to read him saying:

"...It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly. Older people experienced their first joys in that time, and it shapes their remembrance today. There are objective grounds for this nostalgia because the communists cared for the individual from birth to death, something that has gone missing today..." (Newsweek, October 9, 2009)

Gerard DeGroot says:

"...In Eastern Europe, the people wanted communism's fairness but also capitalism's riches. The incongruity of those desires eventually eroded communist regimes but has since produced ironies worthy of Tolstoy. Freedom did not bring justice...

...When light was restored, East Europeans emerged not as heroes but as flawed human beings. They are indeed just like everyone else.

As Poland's Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski once warned, one gang of robbers replaced another.

"Free elections," Constantine Pleshakov concludes, "do not necessarily lead to more freedom. . . . The free market can impoverish a nation as effectively as central planning." How true.

Today, the Czech Republic is a leading producer of pornography, while Sofia and Gdansk market themselves as destinations for stag weekends. Half a million Poles live in Britain, causing the British jokingly (and not so jokingly) to complain that they should take their work ethic and go home. That's not quite the simple beauty that starry-eyed romantics in the West envisioned in 1989..." (November 1, 2009)

Did Rambo Ronald Reagan's speech on June 12, 1987:"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" bring down the wall?

Gerard DeGroot again:

"...The real story, minus the comic book hero, is more complicated -- and interesting. Reagan still plays a role, but as diplomat, not Rambo. His contribution came in accommodation; his willingness to talk to Gorbachev gave the Soviet leader the confidence to break molds. Gorbachev, furthermore, did not tear down the wall; he merely suggested that change would be tolerated.

The events themselves were played out by a cast of thousands in Budapest, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw and Bucharest. There was no script; this was an improvisational drama conceived by Camus, with help from Kafka and Molière. The Soviet Union came to the realization that its empire was no longer affordable. Like other imperial powers, it cut and ran, leaving colonial subjects to sort things out for themselves. Chaos naturally resulted.

...Events were shaped by "the logic of human messiness." The regimes in Eastern Europe were destroyed not by monolithic force, but by myriad human beings reacting impulsively to the freedom of possibility. Watching from afar, we saw what seemed like neat little dominoes falling. In fact, what happened was as capricious, and messy, as a tornado.

Chance played a huge part..."


Artist: Robert Weber, The New Yorker, Nov 27 1989

Do Most Soldiers Just Want to Get Home in One Piece?

Erich Maria Remarque in “All Quiet On The Western Front":

“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

George Orwell in "Homage to Catalonia":

"One of the most horrible features of war is that the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."

Arundhati Roy:

"...Sometimes the most rabid people calling for war, calling for Pakistan to be nuked, etc, are those who live far away, who will not have to suffer the consequences of what they're saying. You see it all the time in the Letters columns of magazines and newspapers..."

Recently in India, 10th anniversary of the Kargil war was observed. Many 'celebrated' India's 'victory' there.

On September 1, 2009, the world observed 70th anniversary of the start of the World War II.

The Greatest Generation is a term often used by Americans to describe the generation who grew up during the deprivation of the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II.

While reviewing "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy" by Antony Beevor, Dominic Sandbrook says:

"...Despite all the patriotic American nonsense about the "greatest generation", Beevor shows that there were remarkably few heroes. There were rarely "more than a handful of men prepared to take risks and attack," he says; most men just wanted to get home in one piece and "somebody else to play the role of hero". Surveys showed that if a few broke ranks and fled, the rest would follow; in most engagements, as many as half never fired a shot..."

(The Observer, Sunday 31 May 2009 )

JONATHAN SUMPTION on "Finest Years" by Max Hastings:

"...Max Hastings’ views about the British army in the second world war are well known, and are pungently repeated here. Its ranks were filled with ‘many men willing to do their duty, but few who sought to become heroes.’ Its leaders, with a handful of exceptions, were risk-averse blockheads, devoid of imagination or initiative..."

(Spectator, September 16, 2009)

Back home, consider the third battle of Panipat that was fought on January 14, 1761.

Many high-profile commanders of Maratha army just wanted to get home in one piece and somebody else to play the role of hero.

What about India's battles since 1947? Are they tales of only courage and bravery?

For me, Haqeeqat(1964) remains the only authentic war tale told by the Hindi cinema since 1947.


Artist: Pat Oliphant

For more pictures of Pat Oliphant click here

So oft in cultural wars, the disputants rail on in utter ignorance

John Godfrey Saxe's (1816-1887) poem on the famous Indian parable "The Blindmen and the Elephant" concludes like his:

"...And so these men of Hindustan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong.

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!"

In 21st century Maharashtra, I see all around, men of Hindustan, first disputing loud and long, and then fighting 'theologic' and cultural wars, railing on in utter ignorance.

Vasant Sarwate's वसंत सरवटे cover of Lalit Diwali 2009 ललित दिवाळी is based on world famous M. C. Escher's woodcut print "Sky and Water I", first printed in June 1938.

The original print is reproduced at the end of my commentary and Sarwate's picture is embedded at the bottom of the post.

Wielding a sketch pen in one hand and a sword in the other, the artists in Sarwate's picture are ready to slit each other's throat to make their own perception prevail.

In fact, the sketch pens in their hands, which look more like spears than drawing instruments, seem so ferocious that they remind me of a chilling scene from Batman (1989) when the joker proves the adage "the pen is truly mightier than the sword"!

Killer weapons in their hands make a poignant comment on the current intolerant environment towards art (and artistic freedom) and history in Maharashtra.

No wonder Shiv Visvanathan observes: "Three great modernised societies in India — Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat — are deep in the throes of rightist groups who use bans as a way of sustaining politics."

(Some people say Bal Thackeray and Raj Thackeray are artists first and then politicos. I wonder if the two artists in the picture are them because both claim to understand "Marathi culture" better than the other.)

Have the artists from Sarwate's picture seen the "elephant"?

Commenting on his own picture Escher said: "In the horizontal center strip there are birds and fish equivalent to each other. We associate flying with sky, and so for each of the black birds the sky in which it is flying is formed by the four white fish which encircle it. Similarly swimming makes us think of water, and therefore the four black birds that surround a fish become the water in which it swims."

This print has been used in physics, geology, chemistry, and in psychology for the study of visual perception.

I guess it's the first time it has been used in a cartoon.

To appreciate full esthetic value of 'Sky and Water I', see a short film by National Film Board of Canada on youtube here.


Artist: M. C. Escher, "Sky and Water I", 1938


Artist: Vasant Sarwate, Lalit Diwali 2009 ललित दिवाळी

(notice Sarwate's use of colours instead of Escher's B & W, warrior on the left is made of curves and one of the right of straight lines, only top three rows have fish-water/bird-air...)

Click on the respective years to see Sarwate's covers of Lalit Diwali 2008 and 2007.

You are Not-out, David Shepherd

Watching a good cricket test match is like reading a good novel. Many actors and situations.

One such actor was the late David Shepherd.

I enjoyed watching David Shepherd as much I did watching players.

I remember a test match in Melbourne, Australia in December 1999.

It was Brett Lee's debut test.

Peter Roebuck wrote: "This was a day to remember, a day on which Brett Lee made a startling first appearance in his country's colors and Sachin Tendulkar stood alone at the crease defying formidable odds with courage and skill.

It was a glorious confrontation between old and new, mighty and promising, an expression of the great gifts of the game, the brilliance of batsmanship, the excitement of pace and the powers needed to reach the gods. Meanwhile, a superb leg-spinner (Shane Warne) also bowled with artistry and cunning as he pursued his own landmark. It wasn't a day to have stayed in bed. There haven't been many better...

...When Tendulkar reached his 100, the entire crowd rose in acclamation. His dismissal, caught on the boundary, brought the crowd to its feet a second time.
It had been the perfect day. The visiting champion had scored a century. And a new fast bowler had arrived on the scene."

That was India's first innings.

In second innings, his back against the wall, Tendulkar was playing Shane Warne beautifully but a touch nervously.

In the end Warne prevailed by getting him out LBW.

David Shepherd was the umpire. He had watched the confrontation of the two masters from the close and probably made the correct decision in the end.

While Shepherd enjoyed two masters at work, I enjoyed three!



picture courtesy: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Is 'Positive Thinking Talk' in Marathi TV Serials a Cheap Import from USA?

Joseph Conrad: “The fact is you want more scepticism at the very foundation of your work. Scepticism the tonic of minds, the tonic of life, the agent of truth- the way of art and salvation.”

While surfing cable TV, I often pause on Marathi channels, showing sitcoms, to find out what they are upto.

Every now and then, I meet a character that says: "Everything will be OK/ it will all get sorted out/ All will work out in the end."...In fact, these must be the most spoken statements in a Marathi soap.

Almost every character- hero/villain, old/young, male/female, rich/poor, being borne/dying, healthy/sick, Brahmin/Dalit, Hindu/Muslim- ends up saying it a few times during his/her life time in the drama.

Is this behaviour part of Marathi / Indian culture? I am not sure because I have not heard this with so much frequency in real life?

When I read Marathi books or watch Marathi cinema of previous eras, these smiley-faced talkers, bleating sentimental cant and wishful thinking, are hard to find.

From where do they come? USA?

BARBARA EHRENREICH:

"GREED — and its crafty sibling, speculation — are the designated culprits for the financial crisis. But another, much admired, habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking...

...Positive thinking is endemic to American culture — from weight loss programs to cancer support groups — and in the last two decades it has put down deep roots in the corporate world as well. Everyone knows that you won’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you’re a “positive person,” and no one becomes a chief executive by issuing warnings of possible disaster...

...Americans did not start out as deluded optimists. The original ethos, at least of white Protestant settlers and their descendants, was a grim Calvinism that offered wealth only through hard work and savings, and even then made no promises at all. You might work hard and still fail; you certainly wouldn’t get anywhere by adjusting your attitude or dreamily “visualizing” success...

...When it comes to how we think, “negative” is not the only alternative to “positive.” As the case histories of depressives show, consistent pessimism can be just as baseless and deluded as its opposite. The alternative to both is realism — seeing the risks, having the courage to bear bad news and being prepared for famine as well as plenty. We ought to give it a try."

(NYT, September 24, 2008)

MEGHAN COX GURDON

"...As Ms. Ehrenreich disapprovingly explains, positive thinking has saturated not just American religion but also corporate life and popular culture, and it is rapidly soaking into modern psychology. The problem for her is that people who are insistently reciting inspirational phrases won't hear the siren's wail in time to save themselves. Ms. Ehrenreich cranks her indignation up highest when aiming at the bankers, economists, bureaucrats and business honchos whose near-hallucinatory positive thinking, she believes, has pushed us all to the brink of economic collapse..."

(WSJ, OCTOBER 11, 2009)

Another example of the kind of Marathi that gets spoken in Marathi soaps:

तू कसा आहेस? (how are you?)
मी बरा आहे. (I am OK.)
तू कशी आहेस? (How are you?)
मी बरी आहे. (I am OK.)

Marathi people never greeted like this as long as I remember! Maybe they do now.

Bambooque of Avadh Punch would confirm our status as America-returned, newly-made gentleman & noisy Jee-Huzoors pretending to have forgotten our native tongue during our brief stay in America. He would describe us as "the personification of false hopes, the embodiment of extravagant expectations and the incarnation of utterly vain delusions."

I don't mind conversations about Marathi TV serials but I wish there were no conversations in them!



The Spectator

A New Adjective in Marathi: Ambedkar

James Fallows writes on The Atlantic:

"..."to Obama" -- has gained currency among some Japanese youths.

Explanation:

"obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think "Yes we can, Yes we can," and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose)...

...The absorptive-and-transforming power of the Japanese language is indeed one of its charms..."

When I read it, I thought:

why couldn't we be creative with the name- Ambedkar?

If Japanese care to lean about the achievements of B R Ambedkar- and they are no less than their favourite Gautam Buddha- what meaning will they assign to it?

Here is an attempt in Marathi.

The legend of Bhageeratha says because of his tireless efforts, the river Ganga descended to earth from heaven. It was considered an impossible task. To honour this, in Marathi, such efforts are called: Bhageeratha efforts भगीरथ प्रयत्न.

I have never forgot following lines of poet Namdev Dhasal since I read them in class X, thirty four year ago.

सूर्यफुले हाती ठेवणारा फकीर हजारो वर्षानंतर लाभला
आत्ता सूर्यफुलासाराखे सूर्योंमुख झालेच पाहिजे
('आत्ता', नामदेव लक्ष्मण ढसाळ, गोलपिठा, १९७१ )

[After thousands of years, we met a fakir who handed to us sunflowers
now we must become sun-facing like sunflowers

('Aatta', Namdev Lakshman Dhasal, Golpitha, 1971)]

Ambedkar's task was harder than that of Bhageeratha because in 1891- the year he was borne- growing, plucking and handing over the sunflowers, in the total darkness that engulfed the Dalits of India, was possible only in the dreams.

And yet, he did it. Therefore, let us call such efforts: Ambedkar efforts आंबेडकर प्रयत्न.

Who is the Greatest Indian Bilingual Intellectual?

Matthew Arnold:

"We are often told that an era is opening in which we are to see multitudes of a common sort of readers, and masses of a common sort of literature; that such readers do not want and could not relish anything better than such literature, and that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable industry. Even if good literature entirely lost currency with the world, it would still be abundantly worth while to continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never will lose currency with the world, in spite of momentary appearances; it never will lose supremacy. Currency and supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the world's deliberate and conscious choice, but by something far deeper, -- by the instinct of self- preservation in humanity."

Ramachandra Guha has written an essay that

"interprets the rise and fall of the bilingual intellectual in modern India. Making a distinction between functional and emotional bilingualism, it argues that Indian thinkers, writers and activists of earlier generations were often intellectually active in more than one language.

Now, however, there is an increasing separation of discourses – between those who operate exclusively in English and those who operate in the language of the state alone.

The decline of the bilingual intellectual is a product of many factors, among them public policy, elite preference, new patterns of marriage, and economic change."

(Economic & Political Weekly, August 15 2009)

While reading Guha' essay, my thoughts strayed to arguably the greatest bilingual intellectual of India: Sant Nāmdev (c.1270-c.1350 CE)

He wrote in Marathi, Hindi and Punjabi. Sixty-one of his compositions are included in the Guru Granth Sahib.

Oh my word! He knew how to write!

One of his Hindi abhangas:

एकै पाथ र धरिए भावो। दुजै पाथर धरिए पावो।
जे एहु देवा तो ओहु भी देवा ॥

(a stone makes a step on which we plant our foot, another stone makes an image of god in which we put our faith and worship it. Both are really stones. The difference is in belief.)

Namdev's resume is still not finished!

M V Dhond म वा धोंड argues that it was Namdev who created one of the most enduring 'myths' of India- Lord Vitthal.

Namdev animated Vitthal. Vitthal started walking and talking.

Namdev dragged Vitthal to the homes of his devotees and made him do menial work for them.

[ऐसा विटेवर देव कोठें! ("Aisa Vitevar Dev Kothe!") 2001]

Namya's poetry will never lose currency with the world, in spite of momentary appearances; it never will lose supremacy. Currency and supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the world's deliberate and conscious choice, but by something far deeper, -- by the instinct of self- preservation in humanity.

This is how I saw the following picture: the artist (say Namdev) creates the myth (say Lord Vitthal) and the myth in turn places a laurel wreath on the artist's head. (Vasant Sarwate is a big fan of Steinberg. I should ask him.)


Artist: Saul Steinberg, The New Yorker, Jan 6 1962

Can one remove the picture of Jew and put in the picture of Muslim?

The Times of India October 21 2009: 'Maharashtra fast turning into a right-wing terror hub'

In March 2009, it was reported: The Tokyo publisher East Press is launching a series of 28 manga versions of important European and Japanese literature. Dostoyevsky is among the bestsellers, along with Dante, Kafka and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

From time to time, many prominent people in Maharashtra espouse the cause of dictatorship. They want a blank slate once again.

Therefore, it's no surprise that Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' sells well in Maharashtra. In most book exhibitions at Pune, I find it displayed.

My father's maternal uncle was a big fan of the Führer. Apparently he had a large picture of Hitler hung in his room at his Sadashiv Peth, Pune home during the World War II.

The Times of India reported on February 1 2009:

"...The Fuhrer's political manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is a well-thumbed book in India even though it is banned in many European countries...

...It's well-documented that early Hindu nationalists such as Vinayak Savarkar and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar were deeply impressed by Nazi ideology.

Their political descendants, including the BJP's L K Advani and the Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray, have publicly referred to Hitler's ideas and strategy...

'If they grow stronger they can play the part of Sudeten Germans, alright. But if we Hindus in India grow stronger, in time these Muslim friends of the league type will have to play the part of German-Jews instead. We Hindus have taught the Shakas and the Huns already to play that part pretty well. So, it is no use bandying words till the test comes. The taste of the pudding is in its eating.': V D Savarkar, Hindutva ideologue, in Hindu Rashtra Darshan, 1949

'If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.': Bal Thackeray, Shiv Sena leader, quoted by Mumbai newspapers before the 1992 riots

L K Advani's prison diary, based on his days of confinement during the Emergency, has frequent references to Hitler's Mein Kampf. He compares fascism with the 'draconian laws' that Indira Gandhi had imposed on the nation during the Emergency in 1975. Advani's book has a specific section titled 'Anatomy of Fascism'. The book also has references to other fascists like Mussolini of Italy and Franco of Spain."

The Times of India reported on October 2, 2009:

"...a comic version of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's notorious political manifesto has become a hit in Japan - with sales of 45,000 copies since last November.

The manga book describes both Hitler's autobiography and his infamous Nazi manifesto in the unlikely form of easy-to-read comic pictures and captions..."

Bal Thackeray was a cartoonist first before he became a politician. Therefore, he may appreciate Manga Mein Kampf even more.

For an accomplished graphic artist like him, it may be even easy to substitute the pictures of Jews with Muslims!

Little Man You only Hope to Know!

Like last few years, I was looking forward to Madhukar Dharmapurikar's मधुकर धर्मापुरीकर Diwali greeting.

I wasn't disappointed.

For me calendar 2009's theme has been John N Gray's "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" (2002).

One of the quotes I liked from the book is by Joseph Brodsky: "...should the truth about the world exist, it's bound to be nonhuman."

Therefore, I was delighted to see that the greeting was consistent with the theme.

See the picture below. (To view 2008 card, click here)

The picture made me nostalgic. At a public garden in Miraj, a few decades ago, on a mild sunny morning, three of us and our parents had a photo session. There was no one else other than us and the photographer.

Were there birds? I don't remember but surely no albatrosses or seagulls!

Although the family in the picture seems to be enjoying their presence, what are birds there doing?

Do they want to fit in the frame? Are they swooping down on the junk strewn at the beach? Are they enjoying irritation of family dog? Is this a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1963)?

R K Laxman once described how dozens of crows sat without a sound on overhead cables during the entire reception of Prince Charles in Mumbai.

Does a poet have an answer?

Walter de la Mare?:

"Over these unremembered marble columns,

birds glide their old remembered way.

Dive in red gold setting tide and write dark alphabets on evening sky

whether an epitaph, chorus or strange augury

little man you only hope to know!"

Here is hoping for happy Diwali 2009!



Artist: Norman Thelwell (1923 - 2004)

Lucky me. I didn't send a letter to Har Gobind Khorana

Dr. Jayant Narlikar replies in long hand to every letter he receives.

My childhood was spent taking pride in Har Gobind Khorana, an Indian American molecular biologist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968.

Luckily I never sent an e-mail or a letter to him.

The Times of India reported on October 14 2009:

"...Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has expressed disenchantment with people from India "bothering" him "clogging" up his email box and dubbed as "strange" their sudden urge to reach out to him.

"All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails," he said...

..."There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect...

...He expressed anguish over "all sorts of lies" published about him in a section of the media..."

Maybe he could have used technology to filter out the messages he did not wish to see, the way commoners like me do. Instead, he chose to attack the well-wishers in public.

Why do educated Indians have this overwhelming urge to take pride in Indianness found anywhere in the universe, from knowledge of Sanskrit to Obama administration to NASA to Slumdog to Chicken Tikka?

Does Nobel prize matter? (Henry James, W H Auden, J L Borges, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Nabokov, M Proust, L Tolstoy, M Twain, and E Zola among many others never won literature Nobel!)

Does a person of Indian origin winning it matter?

I will never understand.

Pune is lucky to have Pigs, Cows, Donkeys, Crows, Dogs & Goats

G. C. Lichtenberg: "That man is the noblest creature may be inferred from the fact that no other creature has contested this claim."

Every morning I walk past two big stinking garbage heaps located on the main street of a Pune suburban where I live.

They are less of garbage dumps and more of zoos in early morning hours.

Crows, dogs, cows, pigs, donkeys, goats and, I am sure, rodents, roaches and other forms of life feast there.

The other day I saw the donkey herdsman driving away cows saying to himself how his donkeys deserved to eat there more than the 'bloody' cows.

Poor cows- who are never accompanied by their herdsman- stood there confused, not knowing what to do next!

MICHAEL SLACKMAN writes from CAIRO:

"...It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president...

...But the crisis should not have come as a surprise.

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods...

...“They killed the pigs, let them clean the city,” said Moussa Rateb, a former garbage collector and pig owner who lives in the community of the zabaleen. “Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.”..."

(NYT, September 20, 2009)


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, August 2009

I just looked towards Beautiful Boy- Rajan Bala

I have read and liked many Indian cricket writers.

N S Phadke ना सी फडके, V V Karmarkar वि वि करमरकर, K N Prabhu, Raju Bharatan, Mihir Bose, Sunil Gavaskar, M A K Pataudi, Ramachandra Guha...but no one came close to Rajan Bala- who passed away on October 9 2009- in appreciating the game, which perhaps is a proxy for life.

His "All the Beautiful Boys" (1990) remains one of the best books I have read. I must have read it dozens of times since 1993, the year I bought it.

When he interviewed (chatted with?) people connected to the game, he brought the best out of them.
When I read the quotes attributed to M L Jaisimha, Gundappa Vishwanath, Eknath Solkar, Erapalli Prasanna, Chandu Borde in his book, I thought - my god, they all are as erudite as Ian Chappell or Sunil Gavaskar!

Here are a few examples of his writings:

"...Tauseef the Pakistani on a death trap of a wicket in Bangalore must have realised that Sunil (Gavaskar) was a different class of a player. I remember one ball which was pitched short and changed course- did not turn. It bounced straight on and over Sunil's shoulder. Sunil had read it all the way, It was the mobile front foot which enabled him to avoid the ball. It was incredible..."

Why do you need a TV when you have a description as graphic as that?

"...It was the only time I have seen a fast bowler in a Test match resort to bowling to widish bouncers in order to prevent a batsman getting a single. The West Indians wanted to deprive Vishy of his second century in two Tests and get at Chandrasekhar, the last man. They succeeded. That was Andy's (Roberts) ultimate tribute to Vishy..."

How he evokes the drama in a diminutive man humbling one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time bowling on a helpful wicket.

"...One of my best moments off cricket watching was a defensive stroke in a Test match. This was in Madras. India were playing Pakistan and Imran Khan was bowling to Sunil Gavaskar. Imran dung the particular delivery short. It was not a bouncer but one which forced Sunil to get on his toes and defend. Sunil did just that. He was on his toes, on the back foot, left hand tight on the bat handle, right hand removed, both hands wide apart, and standing absolutely sideways. The ball hit the bat fairly high and then virtually rolled down the length of the blade to drop passively at Sunil's feet. Imran, on his follow-through, applauded the batsman..."

Isn't there so much to cricket than just runs, wickets and catches?

"I remember M L Jaisimha waiting under a big mishit at the edge of the boundary. The ball seemed to be suspended in the air for ever so long. Some one hundred and forty thousand eyes were focused on the ball and the man, in turns. Jaisimha positioned himself and finally, after what seemed an eternity, grasped the ball with both hands and closed his eyes. Seventy thousand hearts heaved a collective sigh of relief. the scoreboard registered unemotionally, G. Sobers caught Jaisimha bowled Chandrasekhar. One more Test dismissal.
For a full and agonizing minute Jaisimha was the loneliest man in the stadium, the mammoth and magnificent Eden Gardens..."

World is a stage!

"All the four spinners, Chandra, Prasanna, Bedi and Venkat, who benefited from Ekky's (Eknath Solkar) catching prowess, have readily sung the man's praises. Chandra said: "He gave me great confidence. Considering the pace I bowled at, and also the fact that the ball could have deviated either way, Ekky must have been genius to even react to some of the deflections." Bishan Bedi said: "If he did not go for one that popped, I was quite convinced that the batsman had not got his bat to the ball. His anticipation was uncanny." Venkat said: "I always believed that I was a capable catcher. But he could really catch." And Prasanna said: "If my delivery had the right loop and the ball turned, I just looked towards Ekky."

To judge if the show put on was worth it, I just looked towards Rajan Bala.

Going Insane with MADhukar!

Indian Psychiatric Society, Western Zonal Branch is organizing their 40th annual conference on October 9th, 10th and 11th 2009 at Nanded, Maharashtra. The theme of the conference is Women’s Mental Health.

A novel feature of the conference is the exhibition of cartoons- on the subject of mental health- by artists around the world.

Creative writer and a renowned critic of the art of cartooning, Madhukar Dharmapurikar मधुकर धर्मापुरीकर, is in-charge of the exhibition.

Dharmapurikar has created a booklet, for private circulation, ‘Delight in Madness’, that contains all the cartoons that will be exhibited…and more.

The booklet says: Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. Dharmapurikar proves it. He has gone in his usual possessed (insane?) ways to create these 66 pages that celebrate insanity on every single page!

It's said Ludwig Wittgenstein's intellectual brilliance and erratic behaviour provided Bertrand Russell with an opportunity to meditate on the link between logic and madness.

The same 'mad' Wittgenstein has said: 'The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that makes the problem disappear.'

The participants of the conference (and their patients!) will realise that their problems have disappeared, albeit briefly, when they read this book.

They say: good is the enemy of great. Dharmapurikar is never happy with just ‘good’. He wants perfection not only in his ideas but their execution. His last book, ‘Reshalekhak: Vasant Sarwate’ (a compilation of Vasant Sarwate’s cartoons from the defunct weekly ‘Manoos’ माणूस), is a testimony to that. This book is an encore.

Psychotherapist and essayist Adam Phillips says he hates the 'intrusiveness' of psychoanalysis, that 'most people are essentially private and the demand to articulate oneself is quite often a strain, and, in the process, can be a diminishment.

At the bottom of this post see a picture from the booklet.

Poor peahen already feels so diminished before she even has opened her mouth.

This indeed is the mascot image of the conference whose theme is : Women’s Mental Health!

Adam Phillips also says: “I don't have theories, I have sentences. I don't want people to come away thinking, this is what Phillips thinks about X or Y. My wish is not to inform people, but to evoke things in them by the way the writing works. That, I value. Ideally, I want the books to return you to your own thoughts.”

If so, ‘Delight in Madness’ will not disappoint in your journey of returning to your own thoughts.


Artist: Robert J. Day, The New Yorker, December 22 1962

How Google books can save me from becoming Bibliokleptomania

I have a confession to make. I have stolen atleast one book from a library in Mumbai where my cousin worked in early 1990's.

The book is 'Ravindranath: Teen Vyakhyane' by P L Deshpande 1980 ('रवींद्रनाथ: तीन व्याख्याने', पु. ल. देशपांडे).

Why?

I was in love with the book, it was out-of-print and I thought, like most Marathi books, it would never get reprinted.

(It since has. A few times. But the fear was valid. It took 'ages' for Rutu Chakra ऋतुचक्र by Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत (1956) to get reprinted. I often pestered the publisher- Popular Prakashan- about it.)

Courtesy Dennis Drabelle, I came to know that "bibliokleptomania is a term for the bad habit of stealing books not for profit but because you love them, take pride in them, must have them". (The Washington Post, September 27, 2009)

On September 7 2009, it was reported:

"...Google today defended its plan to scan and publish millions of books online, telling a European Commission hearing it made access to information on the Web more democratic...

Dan Clancy, architect of the Google program, defended the project on Monday, saying it stemmed in part from the group's ambition to allow Web surfers to find out-of-print books...

..."You can discover information which you did not know was there," Google's engineering director said. "It is important that these (out-of-print) books are not left behind. Google's interest was in helping people to find the books."

An author at the hearing also spoke in favor of Google.

"The settlement mostly only affects out-of-print books," said James Gleick, one of a number of writers who sued Google and later settled the action to let it scan old books and print them online.

"For us who are authors of out-of-print books, it brings our work to a whole new audience."..."

Indeed.

So many dead Marathi authors would be brought to life if Google publishes their out-of-print books.

Majority of Marathi books published are not easily accessible to a commoner like me because they are out of print and most libraries that perhaps stock them are dying.

Just a couple of illustration.

V K Rajwade, Riyasatkar Sardesai and Vasudevshastri Khare were three great historians. They wrote for a lay reader as much as scholars, almost only in Marathi. Once they were middle-class household names. Their work was hotly debated.

(btw- Recently historian Prof. Dipesh Chakrabarty wrote to me: "...But I think the American situation influences us...in the US professional historians usually write only to be read by one another and a clear distinction exists between "popular" and "academic" histories...")

Today, other than a few of Rajwade's books, all the books they wrote are out-of-print.

One of the most important book from 20th century Maharashtra, "Sudamyache Pohe Arthat Sahitya-Battishee" by Shripad Krishna Kolhatkar ('सुदाम्याचे पोहे अर्थात साहित्य-बत्तिशी' श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर), first published in 1902(?), is not available in an unabridged form today.

I can give a hundred such examples.

I like Google's objective: You can discover information which you did not know was there.


‘An excellent weekend, thank you. We went to a literary festival. I burned many books.’

Spectator, September 2009

Thank you Miraj for giving us Ordinary, Boring, Eventless Days

140th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi

य दि फडके:

"...जाती-जमातींमध्ये सुसंवाद निर्माण करण्यात त्यांना अखेर अपयश आले. जे साध्य गाठण्यात त्यांच्यासारख्या महात्म्याला अपयश आले तेथे त्यांच्यापेक्षा खुज्या माणसांना यश येणे शक्य नाही...भारतीय राष्ट्रवादाला तेव्हा सूडभावनेने पछाडलेले होते तसेच आजही पछाडलेले आहे... "

(नथुरामायण, १९९९ )

Y D Phadke:

"...He in the end failed to establish harmonious dialogue among different communities. Where a Mahatma like him fails to achieve the objective, anyone shorter in stature can never succeed...Then Indian nationalism was infected by vindictiveness the way it is infected today..."

(Nathuramayan, 1999)

A.G. NOORANI:

"TWO provinces of British India sealed the fate of India’s unity. One was the United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh. The other was Assam. Both were ruled by the Congress. In both, the party rejected partnership with the Muslim League...

...The Congress rejected the very idea of grouping – the only concession to the League which had accepted the Plan – and wrecked it. Partition followed inevitably. That was the stand of the entire Congress. It was Gandhi who gave the lead. Others, Vallabhbhai Patel included, followed. Nehru alone cannot be blamed..."

(Frontline, September 12-25. 2009)

I lived in Miraj मिरज for first twenty one years of my life. Miraj was good to us.

Sure I got bored of it towards the end of my stay there because at the age of 21, I did not appreciate what Arun Shourie has once said: "...So many things in my life-good things, as well as things that could have devastated many-have happened because of accidents. So I do not make long-term plans. In that respect, I have learnt something from the Buddha's teachings, from life, and from Anita, my wife. She has taught me that given the sort of things that can happen, we have to be content with, indeed thankful for, an ordinary, boring, eventless day."

Miraj had considerable Muslim population and although there were a couple of riots of other kinds, I never witnessed a single religious riot there.

We had Muslim teachers, Muslim friends, Muslim fruit and newspaper vendors, Muslim bus conductors, mother's Muslim glass-bangle vendor (कासार)...Urus in front of the dargah of Samsuddin Mira Saheb used to be bigger fun than Navratri and Ganesh Chaturthi. (By the way on Oct 1 2009, Wikipage on Miraj does not mention the dargah in the list of 'Religious places' at Miraj!)

Sure some Muslim Mirajkars supported Pakistan team during India-Pakistan cricket matches and were proud of Zaheer Abbas. Today many Hindu middle-class and wealthy Indian-British support Indian team during India-England cricket matches and are proud of Sachin Tendulkar.

But I never thanked Miraj for giving us many 'ordinary, boring, eventless' days.

In September 2009, Miraj was hit with religious violence that disrupted normal life of ordinary people for more than a week. The violence also spread to neighbouring Kolhapur especially Ichalkaranji.

The Times of India reported on September 14 2009:

"...Meanwhile, the Sangli police have launched a probe into the events that led to the violence which first broke out at Miraj on September 2...

...At the centre of this probe is the video CDs of the violence at Miraj. The CDs found there way on the internet as well as mobile photo clippings..."

Pudhari पुढारी reported on September 27 2009:

"...दरम्यान, दंगलीस कारणीभूत असलेला शिवसेनेचा शहरप्रमुख विकास सूर्यवंशी अद्याप बेपत्ता असून, पोलीस त्याचा कसून शोध घेत आहेत."

"...Meanwhile, the man responsible for rioting, Vikas Suryavanshi, the city-chief of Shiv Sena is missing and police are searching for him."


The Asian Age, September 7 2009

At Pokhran-II, did they swear or remember Bhagavad Gita?

Many Indians have a soft corner for J. Robert Oppenheimer because he knew Sanskrit! Maybe it's like having Indian-Americans in Obama team.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson: Suckers!

Oppenheimer supposedly thought: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." (verse 32, Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita) after he saw the first nuclear explosion "Trinity" on July 16, 1945.

It reads in Sanskrit as follows:


"Kalo Asmi Loka-ksaya-krit Pravardho, Lokan Samartum iha Pravattah"

Did he say it?

“...According to a colleague, however, what he actually said was, ‘Now we’re all sons-of-bitches.’…”

(Judith Flanders, Spectator, January 23, 2008)

K. Santhanam and Ashok Parthasarathi say in The Hindu on September 17 2009:

"Several inaccuracies in the claims made by BARC and in the articles published in the press, including The Hindu, on Pokhran-II need to be corrected. We have hard evidence on a purely factual basis, to inform the nation that not only was the yield of the second fusion (H-bomb) stage of the thermonuclear (TN) device tested in May 1998 was not only far below the design prediction made by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), but that it actually failed..."

So what happened at Pokhran-II?

If the test "failed", no one could have said either "Now we’re all Sons-of-Bitches" or "Kalo Asmi Loka-ksaya-krit Pravardho, Lokan Samartum iha Pravattah"!

But if this failure was hidden from the nation, aren't ordinary Indians entitled to say: "sons-of-bitches"?

I'm a respectable Social Democrat. I sort of like Pawar, Thackeray U, Chavan, Munde, or Thackeray R.

Dr. B R Ambedkar:

“Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic...

On the 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality...

..How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?
How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If
we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril...”

In year c2009, India ranks 94th in the Global Hunger Index of 119 countries in 2009. More than 27% of the world’s undernourished population lives in India while 43% of children (under 5 years) in the country are underweight –much higher than sub-Saharan Africa. An estimated 40% of growth ended up in the pockets of 1% of the population.

Sadanand Menon:

"So, more Indians go to bed hungry today than they did on the eve of Independence sixty two years ago. The per capita calorie intake, experts say, has dropped to what it was at the end of World War II..."

(Business Standard, September 18, 2009)

Maharashtra assembly elections are upon us and, thanks to content starved media, they have generated usual excitement.

Balmurli Natrajan writes:

"Indian Electoral Democracy: The Only Game in Town...

The all pervasive importance given to the electoral aspect of formal democracy in India hides the inefficacy of institutions of democracy and governance as they exist today. In some sense, elections are used as tools of legitimation by the ruling classes of policies that are inimical to the interests of the majority who vote...

...Elections in India generate feelings...what we will call “a feel-good” moment or story. But like all substances that claim to calm,this too wears out quickly. But until then some do feel good...

...the poor choose an option not from all possible options but from what is given to them and in the context of a set of interests and preferences that are shaped in the political cauldron of “group interests” and “identity” which are themselves functions of such varied factors as state policies, conditions of political-economy, and power.

Consider this – a recent survey by the Centre for Media Studies in Delhi reports that about 37% of people below the poverty line and about 22% of people belonging to the general category are bribed to cast their votes...

...Indian electors (and politicians) belong to a social belief system in which voting is the attempt to break a spell that has brought misery and bad luck upon them. For the poor (as it is for most of the so-called middle-classes too), a powerful person (rather than a brutal system) is what separates them from going to bed hungry or sustaining a vision of hope to survive another day. After all, every political analyst, popular and scholarly, has agreed that elections have become one of the biggest family businesses in India...

...Democracy in India is vibrant because the poor can vote out politicians. Is not this a cause to celebrate? This gets to my next point. It also reminds
me of Oscar Wilde’s quip: “We are all lying in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars.”

Elections are superbly useful legitimation tools since any first past the post winner can claim all kinds of “mandates” even on the slimmest majority and under the most undemocratic conditions for elections..."

(Economic & Political Weekly, July 18, 2009 vol xliv no 29)

Where does all this reflect in art? Where is a book like the one mentioned in para below? 'Mumbai Dinank' by Arun Sadhu ('मुंबई दिनांक', अरूण साधू) was a good attempt in Marathi in the past.

Bill Sheehan while reviewing 'BLOOD'S A ROVER' by James Ellroy:

"..."Blood's a Rover," like the volumes that precede it, is clearly not a conventional thriller. It is, rather, a rigorously constructed, idiosyncratic novel that uses the materials of crime fiction to examine the forces that have shaped -- and warped -- our recent history: racial tension, ideological warfare, greed, corruption and unbridled fanaticism in all its forms. Ellroy's bleak, brooding worldview, his dense, demanding style and his unflinching descriptions of extreme violence will almost certainly alienate large numbers of readers. But anyone who succumbs to the sheer tidal force of these novels will experience something darker, stranger and more compelling than almost anything else contemporary fiction has to offer..."

(The Washington Post, September 22, 2009)


Artist: James Stevenson, The New Yorker, 21 May 1960

When I see the picture above, I remember the following quote of Ingmar Bergman:

"I've a strong impression our world is about to go under. Our political systems are deeply compromised and have no further uses. Our social behavior patterns, interior and exterior, have proved a fiasco. The tragic thing is, we neither can nor want, nor have the strength, to alter our course. It's too late for revolutions, and deep down inside ourselves we no longer even believe in their positive effects. Just around the corner an insect world is waiting - and one day it's going to roll over our ultra-individualized existence. Otherwise, I'm a respectable Social Democrat."

When will our Cartoonists Evolve?

V S Naipaul has called Bal Thackeray a failed cartoonist. (India: A Wounded Civilization,1977)

The Times of India reported on August 6 2009:

"Arrested Pakistani gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab asked his lawyer if anyone would tie him a rakhi on Wednesday — the day of Raksha Bandhan. To which, Abbas Kazmi, his lawyer, said, ‘‘If some one treats you like a brother, she will surely come and tie a rakhi.’’..."

Raj Thackeray, a cartoonist and a politician, thought of a cartoon based on this.

"Bhratmata (mother India) approaches Kasab with a rakhee in her hand and, instead of tying it on his wrist, strangulates him with it."

I was saddened by this.

More so because I had guessed what Mr. Thackeray would say before he said it. (Only my son is a witness to that.)

When will our cartoons and cartoonists evolve?

Reviewing comics artist David B's masterpiece 'Epileptic', RICK MOODY says:

"...Less well observed is the relationship between literature and comics. While there are worthy precursors, to be sure, the ascent of comics into the realm of the literary began in earnest in 1986 with the publication of Art Spiegelman's ''Maus.'' And with Chris Ware's ''Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth'' (2000), comics and comic artists became unavoidable in literary circles...

...In short, ''Epileptic'' constitutes something new: a graphic intellectual history. A design-oriented history of ideas. There are entire dreams illustrated here in a disturbing and rococo illustrative style, with interpretations included, as if David B. were channeling Jung's ''Memories, Dreams, Reflections'' or Freud's writings on the oneiric...

...But just as the graphic novel has borrowed from the acute observational skills of the great literary writers of the past, so ''Epileptic'' borrows from the great cultural and intellectual archeologies of French nonfiction of the last 100 years, while remaining both accessible and moving..."

(NYT, January 23, 2005)



"Yes, he's my son...He's just not feeling well."

भो पंचम जॉर्ज, भूप, धन्य धन्य!

In last post, we visited the first decade of 20th century. Will continue there a bit longer...

Then my mother's mother, Manu Karandikar, sang following song at her school, praising and well-wishing her emperor- George V of the United Kingdom- almost every day.

I remember having heard a few lines of it from her mouth. (She spoke such witty, stylish Marathi)

भो पंचम जॉर्ज, भूप, धन्य धन्य ! विबुधमान्य सार्वभौम भूवरा ! ॥
नयधुरंधरा, बहुत काळ तूंचि पाळ ही वसुंधरा ॥
शोभविशी रविकुलशी कुलपरंपरा ॥ध्रु।॥ नयधु।॥

संतत तव कांत शांत राजतेज जगिं विलसो ॥
धर्मनीति शिल्पशास्त्र ललितकला सफल असो ॥
सगुणसागरा, विनयसुंदरा ॥१॥ नयधु।॥

नीतिनिपुण मंत्री तुझे तोषवोत जनहृदंतरा ॥
सदा जनहृदंतरा ॥
राजशासनीं प्रजाहि विनत असो शांततापरा ॥
असो शांततापरा ॥२॥नयधु.॥

समरधीर वीर करुत कीर्तिविस्तरा ॥
पुत्र पौत्र सुखवुत तव राजमंदिरा ॥
सौख्यपूर्ण दीर्घ आयु भोग नृपवरा ॥३॥नयधु.॥

भो पंचम जॉर्ज, भूप, धन्य धन्य ! विबुधमान्य सार्वभौम भूवरा ! ॥ नयधु.॥

Manu-tai was in illustrious company.

Kushwant Singh writes: "...Tagore composed and sang Jana gana mana (which later became India's national anthem) in honour of King George V..."

Wikipedia informs: "George was the only Emperor of India to be present at his own Delhi Durbar, where he appeared before his Indian subjects crowned with the Imperial Crown of India, created specially for the occasion...King George V and his Queen sat on golden thrones under a golden umbrella on 11 December 1911 when they proclaimed that the capital of British India would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi..."

The Durbar was an extravaganza of pomp but fortunately it was the last one.

I wonder what my grandma would have made of following information about her emperor.

Margaret MacMillan while reviewing 'Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires and the Road to the First World War', by Miranda Carter:

"...George was sent away from home at an early age to join the navy where he spent a miserable, sea-sick time. He was frightened of his father and resented his ill-concealed affairs. He adored ‘motherdear’, who alternated between stifling affection and cheerful neglect. When his beloved older brother, Eddy, died suddenly of pneumonia he found himself to his dismay the heir to the throne. (He also found that he had a fiancée when his parents decided that there was no point in wasting the work that had gone into arranging Eddy’s engagement.) ‘Oh such a piteous, good, feeble, heroic little figure,’ was Max Beerbohm’s assessment of one of George’s first appearances as king in 1910...

...As for George V, as constitutional monarch and an inexperienced one at that, he had virtually no power at all, less even than his grandmother Queen Victoria or his father Edward VII...

...Carter shows how hereditary monarchies made their contribution to the disaster. It’s enough to make one a republican..." (Spectator, September 2, 2009)

Artist: William O'Brian, The New Yorker, 12 October 1963

No, it was a loot, mam!

C V Joshi's Bheema Shaligram, Plague in Pune, Swine Flu

I recently read 'Rahat-gaadagan' by C V Joshi (1892-1963) ('रहाट-गाडगं', चिं. वि. जोशी).

Marathiworld.com describes it as a collection of Joshi's humorous articles. It's anything but that.

It's a novel written wryly, perhaps inspired by Laxmibai Tilak's 'Smriti Chitre' (लक्ष्मीबाई टिळक, स्मृतिचित्रे).

R K Narayan almost certainly never read or met C V Joshi.

Or did he? I find a lot of similarity between their humour.

Narayan's first novel, Swami and Friends, was published in 1935. By then, C V Joshi's main character- Chimanrao- was well established in Marathi.

Although, 'Rahat-gaadagan' was first published in 1955, it describes the first decade of 20th century.

It is a story of Bheema Shaligram nee Ainapure (borne c1889, married c1899, motherhood c1902, widowed and head shaved c1904, death ?), a Brahmin woman, who now is running her own mess (dining hall). The story is in her own words.

I really enjoyed the book. It easily is one of the best Marathi books I have read.

It also is a social history of the period- Narmada-river with crocodiles, Gujarat, Mumbai, Pune, trains, trams, the misery of Indian women, Marathi musical theatre...and dreaded plague.

Unlike R K Narayan, C V Joshi shuns sex completely.

An example: Bheema's husband performs roles of female characters in a theatre company. A lot of people, including his close family, make fun of him for that. Bheema herself doesn't like it. She might be even suspicious of his virility, particularly because her family was cheated into this marriage.

And yet Joshi completely omits any reference to consummation of their marriage and makes Bheema pregnant in due course!

The swine-flu epidemic that has visited Pune in the summer of 2009 makes the book even more interesting and eerie.

Below I have given three small passages from the book and their translations.


"Like each year plague epidemic had started in Pune. I had completed five years of my stay in Pune and every year plague began after Diwali and continued until Maha Shivratri. First you heard of a rat dying, and then you came to know -in either Bhavani Peth or Magalwar- some woman or man dying of plague..."


"..an acquaintance contracting plague and then the news of his/her death next day arrived. 'Daily-count' would start with four-five infected and three-four died to gallop to two hundred infected and one seventy-five died. There used to be instances when the entire family would contract plague and, since no one survived it, their valuables would be looted by the neighbours.
Almost all the educated people used to go and stay in the huts built on the grounds of Chaturshringi; but we, from old Tapkeer Galli and Phadke's Bol, were not quitters. Our priest Tamanna Charya used to laugh at the people who got scared of plague and ran into the jungle. He would say: Pune's deity, Kasba's Ganpati, was protector of Kasba, old Tapkeer Galli and Phadke Bol and hence his carriage- rat- would never cause any harm to its owner's favourite children."

"My father-in-law's friend Marutirao came to our house without wearing a headgear. My husband was lying in bed and my brother-in-law was sitting nearby doing accounts of the school and private tuitions. Without taking a seat, Marutirao said: "Vasu-Bandu today I am in deep trouble. My brother-in-law came from Koregaon yesterday carrying plague infection and has just died. It requires minimum of eight people to carry him (to cremation ground); but who will volunteer to carry the one who has died of plague! If you both come, it will be a great help to us."

Just substitute the word 'plague' with 'H1N1'...So much has changed in Pune in last hundred years and yet so much is the same!

Will more vicious H1N1 become annual fixture on Pune winter calendar i.e. from Diwali until Maha Shivratri?


Bheema-aajee Shaligram nee Bheema Ainapure (भीमा-आजी शाळिग्राम, भीमा ऐनापुरे) busy with her job much later in her life (c 1950's).
Artist: S G Joshi सीताराम गंगाधर जोशी

(Vasant Sarwate has done a moving appreciation of unsung S G Joshi's art in his book "Parakee Chalan", 1989. The picture above is from the same essay.)

यथा मनुष्यं च मोबाईलं च

One of my favourite shloka श्लोक from Ramayana रामायण is:

"यथा काष्ठं च काष्ठं च समेयातां महार्णवे। समेत्य तु व्यपेयातां कालमासाद्य कंचन।
एवं भार्याश्च पुत्राश्च ज्ञातयश्च वसूनि च ।
समेत्य व्यवधावन्ति ध्रुवो ह्येषां विनाभवः ॥" [2/105/26, 1/105/27]

(In a great ocean, two logs meet, they come together;
after some time they separate.
Similarly wife, son, relations and wealth come together and then after some time they start going away from each other because their separation is pre-determined.)

But this doesn't apply to the man and his mobile!

Reuters reported on August 1 2009:

"A mobile phone lost at sea for four days washed up in perfect condition in Taiwan after drifting 37 km (23 miles) and was discovered by a park lifeguard who tracked down the shocked owner to return it, the finder said on Friday.

Yu Hsin-leh of Taipei lost the phone on July 24 while snorkeling near the Taiwan port city of Keelung, Taiwan's United Daily News reported..."

Look at the picture below.

It's s if Yu Hsin-leh's phone screamed- "Guess where I am!" and was found!


"Guess where I am!"

Artist: Paul Wood, Spectator

Hurry to proclaim Victory in the face of Failure?

Recently, in August 2009, I watched a program on Discovery Channel about the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

It was done candidly. There was no attempt to hide any fact or to protect any one.

No surprise that heads rolled at NASA after the inquiry into the disaster.

Recently former Defence Research & Development Organisation scientist K Santhanam claimed that the 1998 Pokhran-II test was a ‘fizzle.’

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: “A wrong impression has been given by some scientists which is needless. Mr. Kalam has clarified that the tests were successful.”

Homi Nusserwanji Sethna: “What did he (Kalam) know about extracting, making explosive grade? He didn’t know a thing. By being a president, he appeared to wear the stature. He relied on atomic energy to gain additional stature.”

On India's moon mission, The Hindu reported on August 29 2009:

'Ten months after it was launched, India’s maiden moon mission, the ambitious Chandrayaan-1, came to an abrupt end today after ISRO lost communication with the spacecraft, cutting short the dream odyssey that was expected to last two years.

"The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft," Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, M. Annadurai, told PTI.

However, he said: “It (Chandrayaan-1) has done its job technically...100 per cent. Scientifically also, it has done almost 90-95 percent of its job"'.

Why this hurry to proclaim victory in the face of possible failure?


Artist: Tony Auth

Nimdu Kirana Gharana, namdu Kirana angadi

Bhimsen Joshi once famously told Gangubai Hangal: Nimdu Kirana Gharana, namdu Kirana angadi.

(Yours is Kirana Gharana, mine is kirana shop).

(Frontline, Aug. 01-14, 2009)

This is a very moving example of appreciation of Gangubai Hangal's music and Bhimsen Joshi's self-deprecating sense of humour.

But I have yet to read a better appreciation of music- even any art- than that done of Maujuddin Khan's Bhairavi by Govindrao Tembe.

Read it below. I am unable to translate it into English.



['माझा संगीत व्यासंग', गोविंदराव टेंबे, 1939 ('My Study of Music' by Govindrao Tembe)]

Oh how I wish I were there...I may not have understood the music but I sure would have cried!

Notice how little this writing is influenced by English. This is native brilliance expressed in the language of Laxmibai Tilak.

Another virtue of Tembe's entire writing is the absence of self promotion or 'I'.

In the passage above 'I' enters very reluctantly: "...Mistakenly my hand touched tanpura's string...".

Remember, Tembe himself was a giant in the field of music. N S Phadke has called him the architect of Marathi Natya Sangit. I have still not heard better popular music than his compositions for Sangeet Manapman (1911).

Little wonder M V Dhond gives this piece of Tembe a seat at the literary high table occupied by Jagannath Pandit, Bhavabhuti and above all Dnyaneshwar.

['ज्ञानेश्वरी: स्वरूप, तत्वज्ञान आणि काव्य', म. वा. धोंड, 1980 ('Dnyaneshwari: Swarup, Tatvadnyan Ani Kavya' by M V Dhond)]


Govindrao Tembe (1881-1955)

picture courtsey: Shree. Shankarrao Ghorpade, Kolhapur

Tiger-infested Nallamalla or Human-infested Earth?

While reporting Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S R Reddy's accident, The Times of India's headline on September 3, 2009 reads: "YSR's chopper goes missing over dense Naxal & tiger-infested jungle."

Tiger-infested?

The Free Dictionary gives meaning of 'infested' as "To inhabit or overrun in numbers or quantities large enough to be harmful, threatening, or obnoxious."

Have tigers 'infested' Nallamalla forests?

Why not be more humble when we took almost 24 hours just to find out what happened to the chopper of Y S R Reddy- one of the most important men in Indian public life?

If anyone indeed is infesting anything, we humans are infesting earth.

In her latest book 'The Year of the Flood', Margaret Atwood has written about a near future in which mass murder may be the best way to save the world.

Mass murder of humans.

That, of course, will be role reversal because so far- for other species- we have been mass murderers.

Michael Crichton in 'The Lost World' :

'"Human beings are so destructive," Malcolm said. "I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase."'

Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay in their book "What We Leave Behind":

"Industrial civilization is incompatible with life. It is systematically destroying life on this planet, undercutting its very basis. This culture is, to put it bluntly, murdering the earth. Unless it's stopped -- whether we intentionally stop it or the natural world does, through ecological collapse or other means -- it will kill every living being. We need to stop it."

Why did liberal D G Godse sketch for V D Savarkar's book?

V D Savarkar: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations."

In early 1970's, I read '१८५७ चे स्वातंत्र्यसमर', लेखक: स्वातंत्र्यवीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर ('1857's War of Independence' by Swatantryaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, first published in English in 1909 in Great Britain).

I really liked it. In the past, it had moved likes of Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose.

In 2007, it was published again. I came across it on August 28 2009.

I am trying to re-read parts of it. I am not liking it.

The best part of the book is wonderful line drawings made by D G Godse द ग गोडसे. They were not there in the edition I had read earlier. Godse made them for the book's 1947 edition that was published by Phoenix publication, Mumbai.

Here are two of the drawings:

They just sum up what in the end 1857 was: Hangings and Shootings.

D G Godse was a diehard liberal, a great proponent of composite culture of India. All of his literary work reflect that. The two-nation theory would be Godse's worst nightmare.

Then why did he draw for Savarkar's book?

One possible reason: Savarkar's rabid anti-Muslim views were formed much after, post-Andaman, he wrote this book. Maybe this was Godse's way of appreciating a part of Savarkar. The same part Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose had highly appreciated earlier.

(Most intellectuals of Maharashtra have struggled with dilemmas Savarkar poses. Even great historian Y D Phadke य. दि. फडके couldn't escape them.)

Second possible reason: Godse could work with authors he did not really like. For instance, there was no love lost between Vishram Bedekar विश्राम बेडेकर and him but he created the beautiful cover of Bedekar's award winning book: 'एक झाड आणि दोन पक्षी', १९८६ (Ek Zad Ani Don Pakshi, 1986). For me, the cover is better than the rest of the book!

Returning to 1857...

Geoffrey Moorhouse:

"...There was savagery on all sides in 1857, while at home Lord Palmerston wanted to see Delhi deleted from the map in reprisal for what had happened there. Atrocities against the British were also committed at Kanpur, where women and children were butchered without mercy, too, which guaranteed the appalling retribution that followed when the rebellion was put down.John Nicholson, who became a cult figure among his native troops (they thought he was an incarnation of Vishnu) and his fellow countrymen, proposed "a bill for the flaying alive, impalement or burning of the murderers of the [British] women and children of Delhi"; and one of his soldiers (a Quaker, no less) habitually bayonetted sepoys while chanting Psalm 116. That's the one that begins "I am well pleased: that the Lord hath heard the voice of my prayer"..."

(November 11, 2006, Guardian)

Khushwant Singh:

"Indian scholars are not the only falsifiers of events. British historians indulged in it with equal zeal. Take, for instance, the Revolt of 1857. While the British call it the Sepoy Mutiny, Indians describe it as the First War of Independence. In fact, it was more than a mutiny of some sepoys of the forces of the East India Company. And it was by no means a war of independence waged by oppressed Indians.

A vast majority of Indians were opposed to it and large numbers of Indians helped to suppress it. Its Muslim supporters wanted to restore Mughal rule and bullied a reluctant Bahadur Shah Zafar to become their leader. Even the poet, Asadullah Khan Ghalib, kept a respectable distance from them. Hindus who rose in rebellion were led by their erstwhile rulers who had been ousted by the British. The credit for making 1857 the year of India’s First War of Independence goes largely to the pseudo-historian, Jawaharlal Nehru..."

History Lies in the Eyes of the Beholder

Movie "Inglourious Basterds" featuring Brad Pitt is based on events of World War II.

Kate Williams writes about it in Spectator:

"We are fast forgetting how to be guilty about the past...

...And now we have Inglourious Basterds, vehemently promoted and polarising the critics. To the accompaniment of pumping rock music, (Brad) Pitt shouts the importance of ‘murder, torture, intimidation and terror’ as he encourages his Jewish-American troops to scour occupied France for ‘the German’ and leave him ‘disembowelled, dismembered, disfigured’. ‘The German has no humanity,’ he declares, in a film that has much in common with a violent computer game. War is a joke, thrilling but ultimately empty entertainment..."

Partition of India killed, by some estimates, one million people and yet it is not adequately present in the school text books of Maharashtra.

I thought I was a keen student of history in school and I didn't know much about it.

My son, who is currently studying in class X, doesn't know much about it either.

But currently, thanks to Jaswant Singh's book and his expulsion from the BJP, it rages in mainstream media.

Yesterday, I came across following passage in my son's history book:

"...Collective farming was a novel feature of Joseph Stalin's first 'Five Year Plan'. In order to ensure success of his idea, he used coercive methods and millions of peasants were forced into joining the collective farms. Great progress was achieved. Russia emerged as a powerful country. But all this was done at the cost of liberty of the people."

[from 'Modern World (History)', Standard X, 2007, Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, Pune-411 005]

They could have got away with this rubbish in 1974-75 when I was in Class X.

Now we know better than "done at the cost of liberty of the people."

J. Bradford DeLong:

"...Call those political leaders whose followers and supporters have slaughtered more than ten million of their fellow humans "members of the Ten-Million Club."

All pre-twentieth century history may (but may not) have seen two members of the Ten-Million Club: Genghis Khan, ruler of the twelfth century Mongols, launcher of bloody invasions of Central Asia and China, and founder of China's Yuan Dynasty; and Hong Xiuquan, the mid-nineteenth-century Chinese intellectual whose visions convinced him that he was Jesus Christ's younger brother and who launched the Taiping Rebellion that turned south-central China into a slaughterhouse for decades in the middle of the nineteenth century...

...By contrast the twentieth century has seen perhaps five people join the Ten Million Club: Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kaishek, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao have credentials that may well make them the charter members of the Thirty Million Club as well--perhaps the Fifty Million Club..."

On page 55 of the said text book, they have a picture of Lenin.



Look at the following picture.

The couple should send the photoframe to the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. In the next edition of the text book, the board may use the new picture of Lenin.


Artist: Eldon Dedini, The New Yorker, 27 November 1989

Will the Monument of Shivaji Ask for Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses from Anywhere in India?

Pudhari dated August 26 2009 'proudly' declares:

proposed Shivaji monument in the Arabian sea will be taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Such comparisons are odious. But now that one has been made, I wish to take it further.

Inscription on the Statue of Liberty contains these lines:

'..."Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"'

Will the Monument of Shivaji ask for tired, poor, huddled masses from anywhere in India?

Or will we do the same thing that Americans are doing in the picture below?



'They turned her on her side and made her a fence.'

Artist: Mike Luckovich

Staying on the topic of monuments...

James Lamont wrote:

"...The Rajya Sabha, or upper parliamentary house, recently heard that 35 of the country’s centrally protected monuments had disappeared. The list stretches from Assam in the north-east, where the guns of Emperor Sher Shah have vanished, to Karnataka in the south, where a prehistoric site near Mysore has been swallowed up..." (FT, August 10 2009)

Remember 'सह्याद्रीची चोरी' लेखक: रमेश मंत्री ('The Theft of Sahyadri' Author: Ramesh Mantri)?

When mountains are stolen, why not monuments?

Vithoba, The Third Man

You can tell, I am drunk on just concluded Ashes.

They say when a team fields a position of third man- and not forward short leg or gully- in cricket field, they are defending.

MICHAEL J. YBARRA has reviewed "The Third Man Factor" By John Geiger in Wall Street Journal dated August 23 2009. Read it here.

He says: "...Accounts of experiencing a supportive presence in extreme situations—sometimes called the "third-man phenomenon"—are common in mountaineering ­literature...

...The Third Man represents a real and potent force for survival," Mr. Geiger writes, "and the ability to ­access this power is a factor, perhaps the most ­important factor, in determining who will succeed against seemingly insurmountable odds, and who will not." Mr. Geiger, however, is at a loss to explain why some can access this power and others can't...

..."Imagine the impact on our lives if we could learn to access this feeling at will," he says. "There could be no loneliness with so constant a companion. There could be no stress in life that we would ever again have to ­confront alone." In the meantime, we have Facebook."

Has any one given better expression to the phenomenon of "The Third Man" than saint-poet Tukaram तुकाराम?

"जेथे जातो तेथे तू माझा सांगाती । चालविसी हाती धरूनिया ॥१॥
चालो वाटे आम्ही तुझा चि आधार । चालविसी भार सवे माझा ॥धॄ॥"

"Wherever I go, Thou art my companion । Having taken me by the hand Thou movest me ।।
I go alone depending solely on Thee । Thou bearest too my burdens।।"

Read the complete poem / abhanga here.

Millions and millions of poor and downtrodden in India have succeeded against seemingly insurmountable odds over centuries. For them, life is a bitch but they are not bitter...

Why?

They are being helped by The Third Man.

Let my Facebook prosper or perish but hope my Vithoba never leaves my side...

Moral High Ground, Infosys and Gold-In-Sacks

John Gapper:“a lot of people used to think that Goldman Sachs ran the US economy. Now we know it does”.

And what is good for US economy is good for Infosys, darling of Indian media and middle-class. They wanted its chairman, Narayana Murthy, to become the president of the republic.

Infosys chairman always takes moral high ground in public with utterances like:

"Infosys will never touch a tainted company like Satyam...", "Infosys will never do anything unethical..." etc.

It's always definitive, and never: "But real life is messy and real people are complicated" or,
as Lucy Kellaway put it, "There is only one way of capturing the truth of this world, and that is satire. The truest business programme yet made is not The Apprentice. It is The Office."

Infosys’s corporate office has conference rooms named after famous scientists like Albert Einstein and Ramanujam but not after Seneca and Kabir.

Seneca would have gently informed to the occupants of conference room: "What is man? A vessel that the slightest shaking, the slightest toss will break. A body weak and fragile." And Kabir would have reminded that the idea of modern secular India is anchored in the solid foundation laid by the Bhakti Saints.

Reportedly one of Infosys's client is Goldman Sachs.

I wonder what Mr. Murthy thinks of having Goldman Sachs as a client after reading what Paul Krugman said on August 3 2009:

"...some institutions, including Goldman Sachs, have been using superfast computers to get the jump on other investors, buying or selling stocks a tiny fraction of a second before anyone else can react. Profits from high-frequency trading are one reason Goldman is earning record profits and likely to pay record bonuses...

...But suppose we grant that both Goldman and Mr. Hall are very good at what they do, and might have earned huge profits even without all that aid. Even so, what they do is bad for America...

...It’s hard to imagine a better illustration than high-frequency trading. The stock market is supposed to allocate capital to its most productive uses, for example by helping companies with good ideas raise money. But it’s hard to see how traders who place their orders one-thirtieth of a second faster than anyone else do anything to improve that social function...

...For example, high-frequency trading probably degrades the stock market’s function, because it’s a kind of tax on investors who lack access to those superfast computers — which means that the money Goldman spends on those computers has a negative effect on national wealth...

...Neither the administration, nor our political system in general, is ready to face up to the fact that we’ve become a society in which the big bucks go to bad actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us poorer."

If Goldman Sachs indeed is guilty as charged, I wonder how Infosys can escape a part of the blame.


Artist: Stuart Carlson, July 16 2009

Book Banning, Author Expelling

Today started badly for me.

I began it reading Jagmohan: "...Look at the Indian Parliament. What an uninspiring spectacle it is. The 14th Lok Sabha, for example, had about 100 members who were involved in criminal cases — 30 of whom had been charged with murder, dacoity, rape and extortion. Could an institution, dominated by such men and women, provide a national environment conducive to the realisation of Sri Aurobindo’s great vision?"
(The Asian Age, August 19 2009)

Then it became worse.

A little while ago, one of the most upright members of the 15th Lok Sabha- Jaswant Singh, has been expelled from his party- the BJP.

For writing a book.

This is what I wrote on August 17, 2009 about "JINNAH: INDIA-PARTITION-INDEPENDENCE"
by Jaswant Singh at India Today website:

"I haven't still read the book. But going by excerpt, it has potential to become one of the best book written by an Indian politician.

T S Shejwalkar argues in "Panipat 1761" (available in English and Marathi both) that the third battle of Panipat was fought to save the Mughal empire ( and the then 'secular India') and that the Marathas were sacrificed for the cause.

He further argues that if J L Nehru had shown willingness for similar sacrifice, India may not have been divided in 1947.

Future historians will find it hard to condone J L Nehru.

And why aren't more people in BJP (and in its allies like Shiv Sena) as sensible as Mr. Singh?"

I liked the book excerpt because of following passages:

"...The cruel truth is that this partitioning of India has actually resulted in achieving the very reverse of the originally intended purpose; partition, instead of settling contention between communities has left us a legacy of markedly enhanced Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or other such denominational identities, hence differences. Affirmative action, reservations for Muslims, other castes and communities unfortunately does not dissolve those identities; it heavily underscores them, waters their roots, perpetuating differences through the nutrient of self interest being poured constantly in separateness. Reservation results finally in compartmentalising society, hence ultimately in fragmenting national identity. That is what 'special reservation' for Muslims in India did...

...There are now no more points left to score; all have already been scored, no great issues of partition left to resolve, except one: an inability to understand what, after all, did this partition achieve? Other than constant pain and the suffering of crores of humans, all around, which has now finally moulded itself into a kind of a sealed and an abrasive continuity...

...The partitioning of India is the defining event of the twentieth century for this entire subcontinent. The searing agony of it torments still, the whys and what-fors of it, too. We relive the partition because we persist without attempts to find answers to the great errors of those years so that we may never, ever repeat them. Also, perhaps by recounting them we attempt to assuage some of our pain..."

Jaswant Singh's book has been banned in the state of Gujarat.

Indians have always had difficult relationship with books.

A G Noorani said in Economic & Political Weekly December 1, 2007 :

"Book banning is a civilised form of the vice of book-burning which is a sure symptom of fascism. India has a formidable record of book banning. As with much else, independent India simply took over the habits of the British raj."

A formidable record of book burning too?

According to the late Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत, Indians burnt down Bhasa’a भास play “Pratima प्रतिमा” because they didn’t like it.

Bhasa wrote ‘Pratima’ based on the life of Rama.

(Source- Easy Conversations: With Durgabai by Pratibha Ranade ऐसपैस गप्पा : दुर्गाबाईंशी, लेखक प्रतिभा रानडे, 1998)

Hope Jaswant Singh has written his own book...

Following cartoon appeared after the publication of L K Advani's tome- “My Country, My Life” in 2008.

The guy throwing away the book in disgust is A B Vajpayee.


Artist: R K Laxman, The Times of India, March 27, 2008

Poor India! No Walter Cronkite, no Jon Stewart

I live in Pune and I am more scared by media than the flu. I sure look like a guy in the picture below saying: "but...but...I didn't know the flu caused permanent impotence..."

Reason?

Manish Kakkar wrote on Yahoo India News on Aug 12 2009:

"Two welcome developments over the last couple of days have come as some relief to a beleaguered nation beset with anxiety about swine flu. First, the government of India announced a scale-up of the response to swine flu and spelt out a series of strategic steps it intends to take in concert with the state governments. Second, at least some sections of the media have scaled down the level of alarmist reporting and have sought to douse the prevailing panic among the public...." (CNN-IBN is trying to belong to this section.)

The Hindu reported on August 5 2009:

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Bombay High Court order directing the Chief Secretary, Maharashtra government to submit in sealed cover the report of Pradhan Committee which probed `26/11 terror attacks’ in Mumbai...

...the CJI wondered “what is the use of giving details when the High Court itself says give the report in a sealed cover. What is the advantage? Can the court prevent it {terrorist act}? Why should all such information be provided to the court, is it to have discussions in television channels.”

Mr. Salve said, “we all know about the impending danger and the threat perception. But these secret issues can’t be disclosed to the court.” He recalled the live telecast in the news channels of the 26/11 security operations which was reportedly used to guide the terrorists.

It would result in insecurity and create panic among the public."

I don’t know much about And-That's-The-Way-It-Is Walter Cronkite but Americans seem to miss him badly.

I don’t know if we ever had his counterpart in India: a deeply trusted figure on radio or television.

Indian radio was always state owned and hence thoroughly discredited.

Print media in India, in the past, had a few Walter Cronkites. But now...

When Ramachandra Guha recently argued in his address “Ten reasons why India will not and should not become a superpower” at the Aspen Institute in New Delhi, one of the reasons he gave was "supine media". (FT, July 15 2009)

Ayaz Amir wrote in Dawn, December 2 2005:

"IT takes a good two hours in the morning going through a stack of Pakistani newspapers. It takes about half an hour to go through the leading English dailies that you get in Delhi...

...You read them and you get to know more than you probably would want to about happenings in the film or fashion industry. But if you want to know a bit about events in the rest of the world you would have to seek some other fountain of knowledge.

You can’t blame television for being chatty and entertainment-driven because that’s how television sells. But you would expect newspapers to be slightly different. No such luck with Indian papers which, driven by the great forces of the market, have been dumbed down to the point where they are indistinguishable from any other consumer product...

...There’s no point in singling any newspaper out. By and large, they all look like tabloids out of Bollywood, devoted primarily not to anything as gross or insulting as national or international issues but to some form of entertainment...

...Sounds morbid, doesn’t it? Yet comparing it to the Bollywoodization of the Indian media, the conscious pursuit of blandness and mindless entertainment even by such standard-bearers of the Indian press as the Times of India and the Hindustan Times, you wonder which is the more insidious, such over-the-top passion as to be found in Pakistan or the complete loss of passion, at least as mirrored in the press, you see in India?..."

Lucky America. She still has Jon Stewart.


Artist:Nate Beeler, July 20 2009, The Washington Examiner, Washington, D.C.

For more pictures of Nate Beeler, go here.

The Battle of Black Hair: China 9, India 3!

Jonathan Fenby says in his article “China’s empire must end reliance on one man” (FT July 12, 2009):

“…Habits stretching back to imperial times influence the behaviour of the nine men in dark suits with uniformly full heads of black hair who make up the ruling standing committee of the politburo…”

Men...Dark Suits...Full Heads of Black hair



So boring.

India doesn’t have “the ruling standing committee of the politburo”.

Therefore, I decided to analyse the status of the top nine Indian political figures on gender, attire and head-hair.

Here is the result:

Name, Gender, Attire, Hair

Sonia Gandhi – female, saree or salwar-kameez, strands of grey hair

Rahul Gandhi- male, kurta-pyjama, full head of black hair

Manmohan Singh- male, kurta-pyjama, balding grey hair

Lal Krishna Advani-male, dhoti-kurta, balding grey hair

Mulayam Singh-male, dhoti-kurta, grey hair

Mamata Banerjee –female, saree, full head of black hair

Narendra Modi- male, kurta-pyjama-saffron shawl, grey hair

Mayawati – female, salwar-kameez, full head of black hair

Nitish Kumar –male, kurta-pyjama, grey hair



I take India's diversity any day.

If a Swine could Talk, we could not Understand Him!

Ludwig Wittgenstein: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

John Aspinall: "It's clear that Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time with lions."

Sudhir Tailang seems to have understood this swine in Pune...


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, August 2009

In India, can an Ad-Campaign turn Soda Pop into the new Tobacco?

India Today July 20, 2009 reports:

"...The health profile of urban India shows an underlying trend toward improving life and health...

Urban Indians are getting slimmer. Excess body fat ratio compared to muscle mass has come down by 11 per cent in the last 10 years.

...the number of urban Indians eating out more than twice a week has dropped by 11 per cent...the larger picture is upbeat..."

Elizabeth Kolbert says in The New Yorker July 20 2009:

"...Eric Finkelstein is a health economist at a research institute in North Carolina. In “The Fattening of America” (Wiley; $26.95), written with Laurie Zuckerman, he argues that Americans started to put on pounds in the eighties because it made financial sense for them to do so. Relative to other goods and services, food has got cheaper in the past few decades, and fattening foods, in particular, have become a bargain. Between 1983 and 2005, the real cost of fats and oils declined by sixteen per cent. During the same period, the real cost of soft drinks dropped by more than twenty per cent...

...Today, soft drinks account for about seven per cent of all the calories ingested in the United States, making them “the number one food consumed in the American diet.” If, instead of sweetened beverages, the average American drank water, Finkelstein calculates, he or she would weigh fifteen pounds less..."

Press Trust Of India reported on July 9, 2009:

“Economist Amartya Sen, business tycoon L N Mittal and Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi are among the members of a high-level panel headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted to advise the Government to draw upon experience of the best Indian minds abroad for a two-way engagement…”

Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi on PM panel...



Artist: Steve Breen January 2003

"Our fries now have 50% less fat"

"Great"...

Will India ever put tobacco-type pictorial warnings on the bottles of soda-pop?

I Found Out in November 2008; Not in July 2009

For me, Indian coastal defense was humbled by a bunch of terrorists in November 2008.

If it were Shivaji (1630-1680)'s defense forces, there would have been severe consequences for some people responsible for it.

On July 26 2009, India launched the first nuclear-powered submarine, "Arihant" or "Destroyer of Enemies", built on its soil, asserting itself as a world power by joining just five other countries that can design and construct such vessels.

Pudhari reported on July 29 2009 that some people from the Jain community have objected to the naming of nuclear-powered submarine as "Arihant".

They say a warrior who wins the enemy easily gets defeated against evils of soul / subjects of senses. He is unable to win the worldly emotions or passions.

When Muni Vardhaman (599 – 527 BCE), one of the first pacifists world saw, attained omniscience, he was named Mahavira and called ‘Arihant’, one who destroys the enemies of thy self.

Mahavir Arihant was a true "Prince of Peace". Not like Andrew Carnegie.
"Andrew Carnegie gave millions for peace
and libraries and scientific institutes and endowments and thrift
whenever he made a billion dollars he endowed an institution to promote universal peace
always
except in time of war." (John Dos Passos)

FT reported on July 30, 2009:

"India has plans to add about 100 warships to its navy over the next decade as it seeks to modernise its armed forces, and develop its low-cost shipbuilding capabilities..."

We will need many names. But Arihant, I feel, is not one of them.



(click on the picture to get a larger view)

Artist:'B.C.' Johnny Hart (1931–2007)

The Idea of Justice: Warren Anderson, the American and Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani

Amartya Sen:
"Justice is a complex idea, but it is very important to understand that justice has much to do with everyone being treated fairly."

(talking to The Times of India about his book "The Idea of Justice" that was published in July 2009)

Most Indians want Ajmal Kasab to be hanged.

Quite shockingly for me, many of them, including Ms. Kavita Karkare-the widow of Mr. Hemant Karkare, want that to happen publicly.

Kasab committed his crime on November 26, 2008. Just over 8 months ago.

Mumbai attacks were responsible for "killing at least 173 people and wounding at least 308".(source: Wikipedia)

Bhopal gas tragedy happened on December 2, 1984. Almost 25 years ago.

Wikipedia informs: "The first official immediate death toll was 2,259. A more generally accepted figure is that 8,000- 10,000 died within 72 hours, and it is estimated that 25,000 have since died from gas-related diseases."

Warren Anderson was the chairman of Union Carbide.

Business Standard reported on August 1, 2009:

"A local court today ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to arrest former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson and produce him without delay, prompting survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy to celebrate on the streets.

On the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984, Union Carbide Ltd had spewed methyl isocyanate, a lethal toxic gas, killing thousands of people and maiming thousands of others. Anderson, besides Union Carbide, is a prime accused in the case and was proclaimed an absconder in 1992 after he refused to appear in the court despite several summons..."

Let me narrate an interesting account of an old lady from Emperor Aurangzeb’s time (reign 1658 - 1707).

This is taken from historian and Persian/Urdu scholar Setu Madhavrao Pagdi’s सेतु माधवराव पगडी Marathi book “Bhartiya Musalman: Shodh and Bodh” (Indian Muslims: Search and Lessons) Parchure Prakashan Mandir ,1992.

“An old lady took a complaint of extortion against a district collector to the emperor. Emperor ordered the money to be returned to the old lady.

Few days later, the old lady returned and complained that not only money had not been returned but also she was being harassed and hence suggested that the collector be transferred. Emperor signed the transfer order.

Little later the old lady again came back with another compliant that not only new collector continued to harass her but was demanding money from her because he felt her payment to his predecessor was part of ‘Hapta’ (periodic bribe) and hence he too was entitled to it!

On hearing this, Aurangzeb asked the old lady to pray to god that he sent her another emperor...

Khaphikhan, Aurangzeb’s well-known biographer, says that the emperor did not punish either of the corrupt officers.

Khaphikan also says that corruption among revenue officials was rampant and the officials who were sent from the emperor to check these practices were also equally corrupt! “

Artist: Helen E. Hokinson, The New Yorker, May 2 1942

Never Found in Translation that is Lost in the Neglect of One's Own Heritage

Government of Maharashtra plans to erect 300-feet high statue of Shivaji Maharaj in the Arabian Sea, facing the Marine Drive, in south Mumbai.

Never mind neglect of existing world-class monuments in Mumbai itself: cave temples of Jogeshwari and Mandapeshwar, not to mention sorry state of countless forts and other historical places in Maharashtra.

Read more on this in the essay published by Frontline July 31, 2009 here.

I came across this beautiful line from Thana Gazette (written by a Brit?) in the said essay: “Kanheri is the only rock-cut monastery in western India that has the feeling of having been, and of being ready again to be, a pleasant and popular dwelling place."

...Sir, you may check in because your room is ready...For last hundreds of years!

If we inherit a place like this, shouldn't we be leaving one behind? Isn't that in our contract with our grandchildren?

Remember, the Jogeshwari caves, the Brahminical caves belonging to A.D. 520-550, are the first rock-cut cave temples built by Hindus in the country.

But we are happy chanting: Garv se kaho hum Hindu hai!!! (Say with pride we are Hindus)

When people don't preserve their own glorious heritage, how can we expect them to import great books from other cultures?

Recently on Guardian's website, I found "The top 100 books of all time"
I have not read majority of them but I wondered how many of them have been translated in Marathi.

For someone like me, translation was important because most books from the list, I read first time, were in Marathi. For example, I have read a number of Stefan Zweig's books in Marathi because my father Gopal Dutt Kulkarni गोपाळ दत्त कुलकर्णी had translated them from English.

Translation of great books in a language enriches it. In Marathi, Sane-guruji साने-गुरुजी, who himself translated many books from foreign and other Indian languages, sought such enrichment.

Read a related post that appeared on this blog earlier.

As per my knowledge only following books from the top 100 have been translated in Marathi.

I will be happy to correct this list. ('?????' denotes it probably exists.)

1> Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories (I have read in Marathi first)

2> Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice ?????

3> Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote, (I have read in Marathi first)

4> Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories

5> Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations ?????

6> Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea

7> Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House

8> Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala, (Read in Marathi)

9> Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC), (Read in Marathi)

10> Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales ?????

11-13> William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello

14> Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels, (Read in Marathi)

15> Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500) (Read abridged version in Marathi)

16> Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana, (Read in Marathi)

Just 16 out of 100? Not even passing marks!

And for criminal neglect of our heritage as depicted in the picture below? Negative marks!


Seepage and water stagnation at the Jogeshwari caves

(picture courtesy: Frontline, July 31 2009)

Haunting Beauty of Leela Naidu. And my mother.

"माधुर्यामुळे सतत ऐकावेसे वाटते पण उत्कटतेमुळे असह्य वाटते, असे तुझे संगीत! तुला मृत व्यक्तीला जिवंत करता येत नसेल, पण मृत दिवस मात्र तू पुन्हा जिवंत केलेस!"

(आँर्फियस, "पिंगळा वेळ", जी ए कुलकर्णी, १९७७)

"wished to be heard constantly for sweetness but unbearable because of intensity, such is your music! You mayn't raise the dead, but you brought to life the dead days!"

(Orpheus, "Pingala Vel", G A Kulkarni, 1977)

This blog is turning out to be an obit page.

But it can't be helped. Ms. Naidu of Anuradha(1960) was so dear.

Earlier when Leela Naidu sang:

"haye re wo din kyon naa aaye
jaa jaa ke rrutu, laut aaye

zil-mil wo taaren, kahaa gaye saare
man-baati jale, bujh jaaye
haye re wo din ...

sunee meree beenaa, sangit binaa
sapanon kee maalaa murazaaye
haye re wo din..."...

Leela Naidu, Balraj Sahni, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Ravi Shankar, Lata Mangeshkar, Shailendra, Nasir Hussain, Jaywant Pathare at their best...it was surreal.

Since January 2006 when I hear it, I remember my mother.



My mother, Jyoti G. Kulkarni nee Shakuntala V. Bhate (1937-2006), 1957

Pune's Bamanhari Bhaskar Chandavarkar is Dead

In 1980's, I watched Ghashiram Kotwal घाशीराम कोतवाल thrice. Once at NCPA, Mumbai and twice at Kalidas Kalamandir, Nashik.

I was addicted to Kotwal's music.

I bought its music album (a double cassette) that I still have it. I could recite most of its songs. I can manage a couple of them even today.

"श्रीगणराय नर्तन करी, आम्ही पुण्याचे बामण हरी..."

On July 14 2009, I said on this blog:

"I always thought Nilu Phule नीळू फुले would have been a much better नाना फडणवीस (Nana Fadnavis)- a historical character tormented by his often losing struggle with sexuality- than मोहन आगाशे (Mohan Agashe) in विजय तेंडुलकर Vijay Tendulkar's Ghashiram Kotwal).

It might have given an opportunity to 'Kotwal' to become a dark comedy instead of just great entertainment."

Well, it was a great entertainment largely because of its music director Bhaskar Chandavarkar and choreographer Krishnadeo Mulgund. Both are now dead.

Kotwal belongs to them. Thank you, Sir.

Where is India's Naji al-Ali?

"...शब्द म्हणजे निव्वळ तोंडचा वारा; त्यांना रक्त नाही की मांस नाही, पण एखाद्या प्रेषिताचे आत्मसमर्पण मनावर सतत आदळत राहिले तर त्याच्या रक्ताची अमर नक्षत्रे होतात, त्याच्या शब्दांत विश्वाचे हुंकार ऐकू येतात... "

(यात्रिक, "पिंगळा वेळ", जी ए कुलकर्णी, १९७७)

["...Words are only wind from the mouth; they have neither blood nor flesh, but if a messiah's sacrifice keeps banging against mind then his words turn into immortal constellations, in his words we hear rumbles of the universe..."]

(Yatrik, "Pingla Vel", G A Kulkarni, 1977)

I am greatly fond of many Indian cartoonists.

I feel Vasant Sarwate is one of the greatest creative talent to come out of Maharashtra in 20th century.

We also have/had Abu Abraham, R K Laxman, Ravi Shankar, Sudhir Tailang, O. V. Vijayan, Bal Thackeray, K. Shankar Pillai...

But we in India surely never had any one like visionary Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali.

I saw his cartoons on July 11 2009 for the first time in my life. And it was like watching Pablo Picasso's Guernica.

In the West, people ask: Where is the Dickens, the Steinbeck for our era? I ask: Where is Naji al-Ali of India?

In 1987, al-Ali was shot in the head in London. He was not even 50 years old.

Michel Faber has reviewed a book on al-Ali-"A Child in Palestine : The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali"- for Guardian July 11, 2009.


Faber says about this picture: "...the pen stands upright, its nib doubling as a candle flame. It's a potently simple image, yet complex: the dripping wax suggests sorrowful tears; the pen's upright balance is perilously unsupported, like the Palestinian state itself; yet the backdrop of night sky, with its foully obscured moon, seems to reference the Amnesty International catchphrase about it being better to light a candle than curse the darkness..."

A child in the picture is figure of Hanthala/ Handala, the barefoot child who silently watches all the evils perpetrated in the Middle East.

What do we call a child who silently watches all the evils perpetrated in India? Has she been conceived yet? Will she look like Balkrishna from picture here?

"...Hanthala became phenomenally popular in the Arab world, spawning a Garfield-like industry of coffee mugs, T-shirts, keyrings, and so on. But instead of a spoilt fat cat, here was a ragged witness to atrocity and political betrayal."

I have put together a collage of al-Ali's caption-less pictures sourced from here. I didn't understand a few of them because they carry Arabic script in the captions.


(click on the picture above to get a larger view)

Each of them is a gem. As Faber puts it: "awesomely sad and tender images"

What if Hanthala turned around and locked eyes with us? The thought is scary. I am not ready for it.

Why was Naji al-Ali (and Hanthala) killed?

"...Reportedly, he'd recently been warned by the PLO to "correct" his attitude to Yasser Arafat - a warning to which he responded by lampooning Arafat once more..."

A variation by me on G A Kulkarni's words quoted at the top:

"...चित्र म्हणजे निव्वळ हातचा वारा; त्यांना रक्त नाही की मांस नाही, पण एखाद्या चित्रकाराचे आत्मसमर्पण मनावर सतत आदळत राहिले तर त्याच्या रक्ताची अमर नक्षत्रे होतात, त्याच्या चित्रांत विश्वाचे हुंकार ऐकू येतात... "


("...Pictures are only wind from the hand; they have neither blood nor flesh, but if an artist's sacrifice keeps banging against mind then his pictures turn into immortal constellations, in his pictures we hear rumbles of the universe...")

On an Eclipse Day, You can see Jayadratha's Flying Head!

On July 22nd, I went at 6:30 AM on my balcony to see what another solar eclipse meant. It was cloudy and raining. No sun alright but the sky looked weirdly dark. Birds and dogs were curiously quiet.

Slaying of Jayadratha in Mahabharata always puzzled me as a child. What did Lord Krishna do to block the sun?

We know the famous line from Bible:'And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.'

Here god was creating darkness.

"...Then Krishna otherwise called Hari, possessed of ascetic powers, that lord of all ascetics, having taken recourse to Yoga, created that darkness."

I admire the creativity of writers of Mahabharata.

How cleverly they embedded one of the most important celestial event in an animal's life on earth in their immortal tale!

When Arjuna decapitated Jayadratha with an arrow, the sky would have looked weird and animals quiet. What a setting for an unfolding epic tragedy.

"...During that terrible carnage resembling the slaughter of creatures at the end of the Yuga, in that deadly and fierce battle from which few could escape with life, the earth became drenched with gore and the earthy dust that had arisen disappeared in consequence of the showers of blood that fell and the swift currents of wind that blew over the field. So deep was that rain of blood that the wheels of cars sank to their naves..."

(The Mahabharata, Book 7: Drona Parva, Jayadratha-Vadha Parva)

(btw- I don't get to read such graphic violence in Marathi translation of Mahabharata!)

Yesterday we had to turn to TV for a glimpse of the eclipse. I didn't like it.

Should I have gone to a place where I could watch it in the sky?

Therefore I admire the New Yorkers in Alan Dunn's picture below. They prefer the real thing to The Hayden Planetarium.


Artist: Alan Dunn, The New Yorker, July 7 1945

Imitating Rajesh Khanna, we walked with Neil and Buzz!

For a nine year old, 1969 was: Hindi movies:Talash (particularly its promos of scantily dressed dancers in champagne glasses from page 2 of Maharashtra Times), Waris, Anjaana, Shatranj, Ansoo Ban Gaye Phool, Ek Phool Do Maali, Do Raaste and Aradhana; passing away of P K Atre and Dr. Zakir Husain; Gandhi Centenary (so many mandatory, boring cultural programs in Gandhi's memory at school).

And cricket.

India lost the Nagpur test match to New Zealand in October.

It was a national calamity. There were rumours that our cricketers were too drunk to walk on cricket field on the last day October 8. Another rumour was that M A K Pataudi, India's captain, was too busy wooing Sharmila Tagore to concentrate on his cricket.

This loss was more than redeemed by beating strong Australian side in December.

Now I understand even following events happened in the same year: India's first credit card Diners card was introduced, the first Indian-built Centaur rocket was successfully tested, Dadasaheb Phalke award was instituted. ("The Indian Millennium AD 1000-2000" by Gopa Sabharwal, 2000)

I don't remember July 20, 1969 but it changed the scene. They say: For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck.

So was India.

Moon, Apollo spacecraft and its crew- Neil Armstrong, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, Michael Collins were every where.

Many forts children built in Maharashtra during Diwali festival had the theme of Apollo mission. Ganesh festival pandals exhibited moon landing scenes.

Cartoons, jokes, films, plays, literature -popular culture as a whole- started referring to the landing. Mr. Armstrong became as popular as Rajesh Khanna!

No NRI complained why Gayatri Mantra was not chanted on the moon when it was reported that Buzz Aldrin gave thanks to God by the taking of the Holy Communion on the moon.

There was a sense of urgency to dump the old practices, now that we had reached the moon.

Some experts in India predicted that faith in astrology would wane because moon, which plays such an important part in a horoscope, was now soiled by a mortal man.

Nothing like that ever happened. Astrology remains more popular in India today than ever before. For some prominent scientists(?), astrology and vastu-shastra have become branches of science!

I personally like the moon mission because it eventually gave birth to Buzz, a co-hero of Toy Story films.



Paul Krugman says:

"...Indeed, manned space flight in general has turned out to be a bust.

The key word here is "manned." Space flight has been a huge boon to mankind. It has advanced the cause of science: for example, cosmology, and with it our understanding of basic physics, has made huge strides through space-based observation. Space flight has also done a lot to improve life here on Earth, as space-based systems help us track storms, communicate with one another, even find out where we are...

...Yet almost all the payoff from space travel, scientific and practical, has come from unmanned vehicles and satellites..." (NYT, February 4, 2003)

In 2007, Gerard DeGroot wrote a book “Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest”

"...DeGroot came to share the view of many people today, that Apollo was a $35bn ego trip - an outrageous waste of money that should have been spent addressing problems on Earth. For him, Neil Armstrong’s “small step” on to the moon achieved nothing for mankind beyond a brief burst of media-generated euphoria..." (Clive Cookson, FT, March 9 2007)

"...In fact, it turned out the Russians were far behind the US in space expertise, a fact Kennedy only discovered in office. It was too late by then and the space monster he had unleashed began devouring money faster than any other federal programme. Kennedy might have stopped the rot, says DeGroot, but was assassinated. After that, 'the space programme became a homage to Kennedy and, as such, untouchable'

The US lunar quest was, therefore, 'an immensely expensive distraction of little scientific or culture worth', a grand futility from which the US space agency Nasa has never recovered. It is hard to disagree with this assessment.

DeGroot, a sharp and witty writer, has prepared his case assiduously, though for my taste he overstates it badly, wilfully ignoring the romance and chutzpah of what was, after all, the 20th-century's crowning human achievement..." (Robin McKie, The Observer, 3 February 2008)

"...But Dark Side of the Moon underestimates many positive aspects of Apollo. One was the psychological impetus given to the embryonic environmental movement by seeing our fragile blue-and-white planet from the moon. And Apollo gave a huge long-term boost to scientific innovation by inspiring a generation of schoolchildren to study science and technology. Their enthusiasm did not wane when the moon landings ended, and in subsequent decades many became high-tech innovators and entrepreneurs..." (Clive Cookson)



"What's happening to us, John? People will soon be going to the moon, and we don't even seem to get out of the house any more."

Artist : Richard Decker, The New Yorker, 19 April 1958

Why should Luckier Zoozoos be Angry and Ashamed?

Joe Leahy says in FT June 25, 2009

“A study funded by the Asian Development Bank found that, by early last year, India had 50 billionaires who together controlled wealth equivalent to 20 per cent of gross domestic product and, reportedly, 80 per cent of stock market capitalisation… Per capita income is about $1,000 (€715, £625), but many in its population of 1.1bn scrape by on much less...

…“This concentration of wealth and influence could be a hidden time bomb under India’s social fabric,” warned the report….”

If indeed it is 'hidden time bomb under India’s social fabric', it has been there for centuries!

From "The Mughal World" by Abraham Eraly, 2007

"...At the height of Mughal splendour under Shah Jahan (reign 1628-1658), over a quarter of the gross national product of the empire was appropriated by just 655 individuals, while the bulk of the 120-odd million people of India lived on a dead level of poverty."

Drawing on Indivar Kamtekar‘s work, SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR wrote on 60th anniversary of Bengal Famine :

“…Above all, the business class flourished. The war (WWII) required unprecedented quantities of every sort of manufacture. Lack of shipping constrained competition from imports. The price of cloth rose five-fold before the colonial state imposed price controls: its top priority was to encourage production, not worry about janata cloth. Business fortunes were made, and new giants like Telco and Hindustan Motors emerged in this period. Tax evasion was widespread and not seriously checked by the authorities. Indeed, some businessmen defended tax evasion as “patriotic” non-cooperation with the Raj!…

Kamtekar says, “In a situation where franchise was based on property and education, they (the rural poor) were not on the provincial voters’ lists. Although many died on the streets of Calcutta, none actually belonged to the city. City dwellers were safe, covered by various food schemes: it was the rural poor who came to the city to die. For all their misery, they remained marginal (to the political scene). The dead were not articulate actors in the theatres of modern politics. The Great Calcutta Killing of 1946, when 5000 people were slaughtered, threatened the Bengali bhadralok, and a furore followed. But the children of the Bengali Renaissance were unharmed by the Bengal Famine...

The Great Bengal Famine was a colossal human tragedy, but, cynically, no cause for political panic. Those who died could not even be counted properly, because they counted for so little.”

This is a harsh indictment of the class that led our independence movement. It suggests that it was no accident that Mahatma Gandhi was also a personal friend of G D Birla.

According to the Direct Taxes Enquiry Committee of 1958-59, not a single Indian was convicted of tax evasion in the decade after Independence. The situation has not improved since. ”

(The Times of India, AUGUST 20, 2003)

Recently, I read about Michael Harrington’s “The Other America”:

“…Harrington argued that Americans should be angry and ashamed to live in a rich society in which so many remained poor. “The fate of the poor,” he concluded, “hangs upon the decision of the better-off. If this anger and shame are not forthcoming, someone can write a book about the other America a generation from now and it will be the same or worse.”…”

(Maurice Isserman, NYT, June 21 2009)

Americans should learn from Indians. Most of us have never felt ashamed.

Why don’t the poor in India rise in 'revolt' or have never 'revolted'? I have no clue.

Perhaps they are inspired by Saint Namdev संत नामदेव.

Namdev tells his god- Vitthal विठ्ठल-who is wealthy:

"Nama says at your home gold & money and at our home your name."

"नामा म्हणे तुमचे घरीं सोनें दाम। आमुचे घरीं तुमचे नाम।।"



courtesy: Vodafone Zoozoo campaign

Nilu Binder is Dead

I lived in Mumbai continuously only from mid-1983 to mid-1987 but I got lucky.

I watched नीळू फुले (Nilu Phule) and लालन सारंग (Lalan Sarang) perform सखाराम बाइंडर/ बाईंडर (Sakharam Binder) at साहित्य संघ ,गिरगाव (Sahitya Sangh,Girgaum) from the first or the second row.

I have yet to see a better performance than that on either Indian stage or Indian cinema's silver screen.

I understand he felt emotionally exhausted after every performance of Binder. Why not? I felt devastated watching him just once.

I always thought Nilu Phule would have been a much better नाना फडणवीस (Nana Fadnavis)- a historical character tormented by his often losing struggle with sexuality- than मोहन आगाशे (Mohan Agashe) in विजय तेंडुलकर Vijay Tendulkar's घाशीराम कोतवाल (Ghashiram Kotwal).
It might have given an opportunity to 'Kotwal' to become a dark comedy instead of just great entertainment.

Cinema, unlike theatre, is predominantly director's medium. Unfortunately, for Mr. Phule and us, Marathi cinema did not have great, and not just good, directors while he was active. (How many great directors Marathi has produced anyway?)

He still gave memorable performances in movies like पिंजरा (Pinjara), सोंगाड्या (Songadya), थापाड्या (Thapadya), सामना (Samana), सिंहासन (Simhasan), लक्ष्मी (Laxmi).

My favourite is चोरीचा मामला (Choricha Mamala), brilliantly acted by Phule in the company of another brilliant but under appreciated actor: ललिता पवार (Lalita Pawar).

He always had something interesting to say. I wish he wrote.

He was an atheist like तुकाराम Tukaram: "आहे ऐसा देव वदवावी वाणी । नाही ऐसा मनीं अनुभवावा ।"

कमलाकर सारंग Kamlakar Sarang, talented director of Sakharam Binder, has written passionately about Phule in his autobiographical book बाइंडरचे दिवस (baaindarache diwas),1984.

Supreme Court of India, How about Blowing from Guns?

The Times of India reported on July 7, 2009:

"Hanging by the neck till death would continue to be the mode of execution of condemned prisoners, Supreme Court (of India) said on Monday refusing to entertain a PIL seeking replacement of the ‘cruel and painful’ method with the ‘lethal injection’, a method practised in the US.

"How do you know that hanging causes pain? And how do you know that injecting the condemned prisoner with a lethal drug would not cause pain?" asked a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam..."

The court is right. We don't know.

But can we trust the judgment of very learned Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779–1859)?

“Elphinstone did not hesitate to order the (Brahmin) ringleaders (of a plot to murder all the Europeans in Pune) to be blown from guns, observing that this method of execution ‘contains two valuable elements of capital punishment; it is painless to the criminal and terrible to the beholder’.”

(Philip Mason. “Men Who Ruled India”)

If we do, the following picture requires a small correction. Instead of tying the convict to the stump, he needs to be put in the barrel.

You still don't need additional staff!

And does the executioner have a sense of humour like Daulatrao Shinde दौलतराव शिंदे (1779 – 1827), the king of Gwalior state?

He ordered execution of his own commander-in-chief Narayanrao Baxi नारायणराव बक्षी by launching him into the sky, with the help of explosives attached to his body, to make a pun: "बक्षीचा पक्षी केला" ("Made bird of Bakshi")! (source: Marhati Lavani by M V Dhond, 1956 मर्हाटी लावणी, म. वा. धोंड)

After reading Mountstuart Elphinstone, I feel Daulatrao was a kind man. He could have chosen to crush Bakshi by elephant, the way Baji Rao II chose to deal with Vithoji Holkar विठोजी होळकर in April 1801, and let Holkar's corpse remain in the street near his palace for 24 hours so that he could enjoy watching it from window.



'Due to staff cutbacks...'

The Spectator

Amitabh Bachchan, We Just Fall Apart

Mr. Bachchan, 66, is unwell.

His blog has these beautiful lines from his father's Madhushala:

बनी रहें अंगूर लताएँ जिनसे मिलती है हाला,
बनी रहे वह मिटटी जिससे बनता है मधु का प्याला,
बनी रहे वह मदिर पिपासा तृप्त न जो होना जाने,
बनें रहें ये पीने वाले, बनी रहे यह मधुशाला।।

On July 8 2009, he writes there:

“…I was due to travel out tonight but a small problem has arisen. I developed a pain in the stomach much like the one I got last birthday. And it happened just when I was getting set to leave from London. So I travelled home in order that I may be in a climate that understands my condition, rather than stay back in alien country and subject myself to a medical from those that are unaware of my history. I drove straight to my doctor on arrival late last night and after some external physical examinations was subjected to CT scans this morning. The results do not show anything, but the trouble exists, albeit in a much smaller scale than the last time. Some more tests have been advised tomorrow. I have therefore postponed my travel until there is a fix on the problem and a possible line of treatment. I would not want to get moving again and land up in unknown territory and end up in hospital. Its disturbing to be in such state. Frustrating that despite extreme care a repetition of this problem keeps occurring…”

It makes sad reading.

Note: “Frustrating that despite extreme care a repetition of this problem keeps occurring.”

Why?

Dr. Atul Gawande has tried to answer it in the New Yorker April 30, 2007:

“…The idea that living things shut down and not just wear down has received substantial support in the past decade…

Today, the average life span in developed countries is almost eighty years. If human life spans depend on our genetics, then medicine has got the upper hand. We are, in a way, freaks living well beyond our appointed time. So when we study aging what we are trying to understand is not so much a natural process as an unnatural one. Inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity…

If our genes explain less than we imagined, the wear-and-tear model may explain more than we knew…

Nonetheless, as the defects in a complex system increase, the time comes when just one more defect is enough to impair the whole, resulting in the condition known as frailty. It happens to power plants, cars, and large organizations. And it happens to us: eventually, one too many joints are damaged, one too many arteries calcify. There are no more backups. We wear down until we can’t wear down anymore…

I spoke to Felix Silverstone, who for twenty-four years was the senior geriatrician at the Parker Jewish Institute, in New York, and has published more than a hundred studies on aging. There is, he said, “no single, common cellular mechanism to the aging process.” Our bodies accumulate lipofuscin and oxygen free-radical damage and random DNA mutations and numerous other microcellular problems. The process is gradual and unrelenting. “We just fall apart,” he said…”


Therefore,

बनी रहे यह मधुशाला...It will perhaps

बनें रहें ये पीने वाले....Never



‘Never bite old people, son, they all taste of statins.’

The Spectator, 2009

Indian Men: The Bliss of Losing the Self

Disclaimer- I very much belong to this species.

V S Naipaul: “The outer world matters only in so far as it affects the inner. It is the Indian way of experiencing…”

Sudhir Kakar: “We Indians use the outside reality to preserve the continuity of the self amidst an ever changing flux of outer events and things. Men do not, therefore, actively explore the world; rather, they are defined by it. It is this negative way of perceiving that goes with ‘meditation’, the striving after the infinite, the bliss of losing the self; it also goes with karma and the complex organization of Indian life.”

(“India: A Wounded Civilization” by V.S. Naipaul, 1977)

Naipaul on Mahatma Gandhi:


(Double click on the picture to get a larger view)

Ashok Shahane on the journey of Saint Namdev संत नामदेव (c.1270-c. 1350 CE) from Maharashtra to Punjab, contrasting him with Marco Polo, al beruni, Ibn Battuta .


अशोक शहाणे Ashok Shahane (नपेक्षा, Napeksha 2005)

(Namdev however was not self-effacing at probably the most important event in his life: Sant Dnyāneshwar ज्ञानेश्वर taking to salvation (Samadhi) in 1296 CE. It's only because of him we know so much about it.)

‘Prabodhankar’ Thackeray on our habit of not documenting, contrasting it strongly with the British habit, practised by men like James Grant Duff:


"रंगो बापूजी" , केशव सीताराम ठाकरे ऊर्फ प्रबोधनकार ठाकरे, 1948
(“Rango Bapuji” by Prabodhankar Thackeray)

Nothing surprises me since I learnt this:

SN 1054 (Crab Supernova) was a supernova that was widely seen on earth in the year 1054. It was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days, outshining the most brilliant stars in the heavens.

Dr. Jayant Narlikar in his book “The Scientific Edge” (Penguin Books India 2003) has a chapter titled “The Search for records of the Sighting of the Crab Supernova”. It describes Herculean efforts put in by his team to locate any record of this grand celestial event in Indian historical records, including popular literature. Sadly, they failed.

Nothing Found Against Gays Even at the Bottom of an Ocean!

The Hindu:

“In a landmark judgment, the Delhi High Court on Thursday struck down the provision of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalised consensual sexual acts of adults in private, holding that it violated the fundamental right of life and liberty and the right to equality as guaranteed in the Constitution.

Gays present in the court room hailed the judgment and greeted one another with hugs.”

(July 3, 2009)


Artist: Michael Crawford, The New Yorker, July 6 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #199

My caption:

Judge:“Hey fanatic, I knew you wouldn’t find anything in nature against gays even if you scraped the bottom of an ocean. On the contrary, it's likely you saw some fish displaying homosexual behavior.”

Sanskrit, That’s Why You is Dead

My 15-year-old son enjoys learning Sanskrit. I too liked it at his age.

In school, I read and reread a story- there exist a couple of variations on this- of Kalidasa.

It ran something like this:

“A poor Brahmin enters Dhara- the capital town of King Bhoja- where Kalidasa lived. He aspires to visit the court of King Bhoja and earn a prize on demonstration of his knowledge of Sanskrit.

It’s an early winter morning. He sees a young woman drawing rangawali in front of Kalidasa's house. Poor Brahmin thinks she is not adequately protected against the winter chill and asks her- in Sanskrit- if she is not afraid of getting harmed by the cold.

She answers that she is not being hurt by the cold but by the faulty grammar of the poor Brahmin.”

Then I thought- very smart. Now I say: What hubris!!!

In Sanskrit, the exchange in Dhara reads as follows:

“
अपि शीतं ते बाधती इति
सा अवदात
ना तथा बाधते शीतं
यथा बाधती बाधते

api shiitaM te baadhati iti
saa avadat
na tathaa baadhate shiitaM
yathaa baadhati baadhate”

[api shiitaM te baadhati iti= does cold bother (trouble) you?

saa avadat = she said

na tathaa baadhate shiitam = no, cold doesn't bother (trouble) me in that manner

yathaa baadhati baadhate = just like the word 'baadhati' bothers (troubles)

baadhati is incorrect usage and the correct usage is baadhate ]

Over the years, I have heard native speakers of Marathi teasing native speakers of Kannada when they speak Marathi. Even some big names in Marathi literature have fallen prey to this temptation in their writings.

It's so vulgar.

When I lived in Kolkata, Bengalis encouraged my wife and me to speak Bengali without any fear.

And finally English. It's as flexible as a Chinese gymnast.

Michael Skapinker writes in FT June 15, 2009:

“…But in their study “Was/were variation: A perspective from London”, Jenny Cheshire and Sue Fox of Queen Mary, University of London, write that those who say “you was” have history on their side. “You was” is hundreds of years old.It has been used in many parts of the English-speaking world…

… But there is no single standard of correct grammar. “You were” would be as much of a howler in some (non-Bangladeshi) parts of east London as “you was” would be in this newspaper…

… In his book, The Fight for English, David Crystal says: “The only languages that do not change are dead ones.”…”

Why didn’t Sanskrit change? Are today’s Indo-European languages, that are native to India, changing fast enough to survive the onslaught of Hindi?

Look at the picture below...She is concerned about his grammar...Is he talking dirty in Sanskrit?


Artist: Zachary Kanin, The New Yorker, May 25 2009

For more pictures of Zachary Kanin, click here.

Delayed Monsoon to affect Sowing and Throwing!

Artist: P.C. Vey, The New Yorker, June 29 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #198

My caption:

“Our boss, Ajit-the-Lion, told us to throw this baby out with the bathwater at a place where he can sleep with the fishes. Damn monsoon! Even dams have dried up.”

Stench and Scent of a Woman

Neil Young:

"A Man Needs A Maid"
...
I was thinking that
maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby
for her to stay.
Just someone
to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals and go away.
..."

Only for "to keep my house clean, Fix my meals and go away."? Not necessarily.

Recently a high profile Hindi film actor has been accused of a brutal rape of his maid.

I am reminded of a scene from Marathi film "Simhasan सिंहासन" (1980):
An elderly man douses his maid (played by Sushma Tendulkar सुषमा तेंडुलकर ) with perfume before sleeping with her. At the end of the act, he calls her a prostitute and 'pays' her with a used saree of his wife.

Dousing with perfume!

On the other hand, Napoleon sent word from the thick of battle to Josephine that she should abstain from washing now that his return was nigh.

R K Narayan:

"I smelt my wife's letter before opening it. It carried with it the fragrance of her trunk, in which she always kept her stationery- a mild jasmine smell surrounded her and all her possessions ever since I had known her."

("The English Teacher", 1946)

In "The Simpsons" episode (Production code: CABF05 Original Airdate on FOX: 14-Jan-2001), a prisoner asks Marge Simpson: "Can I smell your dress?"

बा. सी. मर्ढेकर (B S Mardhekar):

दवांत आलिस भल्या पहाटीं
अभ्रांच्या शोभेंत एकदां;
जवळुनि गेलिस पेरित अपुल्या
मंद पावलांमधल्या गंधा.

(# 25, "मर्ढेकरांची कविता", "Mardhekar's Poetry", 1959)

Forgive my translation:

"You came in early morning dew
decked up like clouds once;
went past me planting
fragrance of your tender steps."

Vijay Mallya’s Next Generation Flight

Artist: Drew Dernavich, The New Yorker, June 22 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 197


My caption:

“This year she is on the ramp. Next year she will also be in Kingfisher Calendar.”

Did Alexander the Great exult like Shahid Afridi?

Indian media- to drive up ratings- inform us every little useless detail about Indian cricketers and their WAGS but thankfully they don’t bother about Shahid Afridi. Therefore, I don't know if he is married or not. When he spoke to Nasser Hussain after the match, he did not bring in his family either. He just spoke about the god, the country, the captain and the team.

Regardless of his marital status, if I were a girl or a gay, I would be falling head over hills in love with Afridi!

When he stood exulting after taking a wicket, see picture below, running his fingers through thick black hair, it looked almost surreal.

In that setting, Bollywood's Big Khans would have looked like sideshows.

This was cricket for the sheer joy of it.

“……It said a great deal for Smith that he did not allow the misfortune to throw him off balance. Bowling more carefully, he delivered the rest of the over to the order. Five balls went down, each of them swinging into the batsman. Three of them Troughton was able to leave alone, as they swung across his body and down the leg side, making Deacon leap and stretch to stop them from going for byes. True, Troughton played carefully, once going right up on his toes to bring the ball down on to the pitch in front of him with the straightest of the bats, dropping his wrists and slackening the fingers round the bat handle.

The seventh, aimed straight at the middle stump had Troughton driving across the line trying to work it away to mid-wicket. It moved off the pitch again, but this time in the other direction, touching the outside edge of the bat as it went and winging its way chest high to Gauvinier at first slip- a straightforward, finger-tingling slip catch.

He flung the ball high in delight- for himself, for Norman, for the ball, for the catch, for the score and for the sheer joy of cricket”

(John Parker “The Village Cricket Match”(1977) from cricket anthology “The Joy of Cricket” Selected and Edited by John Bright-Holmes)

Afridi reminded me of Mohinder ‘Jimmy’ Amarnath of 1983, another carefree cricketer. And not a slave to big money.

David Hopps (Guardian) says: “…To term Pakistan cricket indomitable is not to deny its essentially unstable nature. It is unconquerable only in its passion for the game, but the flames of that passion burn fiercely, bringing delight and recriminations, success and failure. The one constant factor is the fervour…”

When will Indian cricket get back its fervour?


Photograph courtesy: Anthony Devlin/PA

Did Alexander the Great exult like this on the bank of Indus/Sindhu River?

June 21, 2009

Kings: Larry and Yayati

On May 21 2009, Jon Stewart of ‘The Daily Show’ asked 'degenerate' Larry King if he was sucking life out of the child he is shown kissing on the back cover of his latest book!

75 year old Mr. King has been married eight times to seven different women.

Mythical king Yayati, according to Dowson's Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology, was a man of amorous disposition, and his infidelity to Devayani brought upon him the curse of old age and infirmity from her father, Sukra.

(Yayati has appeared on this blog before.)

This curse Sukra consented to transfer to any one of his sons who would consent to bear it. All refused except Puru, who undertook to resign his youth in his father's favour.

Did Yayati suck life out of Puru?

Is Mukul Shivaputra modern day Diogenes?

गोविंदराव टेंबे (1881-1955): "एकनिष्ठेने दीर्घ काल संगीताराधना करणाऱ्या व्यक्तीच मुळी प्रतिष्ठित पोषाखी समाजात दुर्मिळ असतात." (माझा संगीत व्यासंग, १९३९)

Govindrao Tembe: "In a well-dressed established society, rarely there exists people who loyally worship music over a long period of time." (My Study of Music, 1939)

Tembe hated radio. And then, we had television!!!

There has been hue and cry in media about Mukul Shivaputra, a gifted Hindustani classical singer and the son of Kumar Gandharva, when he was found begging. He has been known to live a reclusive life.

Urban middle-class India's attitude towards poverty and begging is- like most things in their life- identical to that of Anglo-Saxon attitude.

I wonder how we may treat Ashwatthama, Buddha, Gorakh Nath, Kabir, Tukaram... if any of them were to ring our apartment's bell today.

Or Diogenes.

"...Diogenes (412-323 BC), the story goes, was called a “downright dog,” and this so pleased him that the figure of a dog was carved in stone to mark his final resting place. From that epithet, kunikos (“dog-like”), cynicism was born.

Diogenes credited his teacher Antisthenes with introducing him to a life of poverty and happiness — of poverty as happiness. The cynic’s every word and action was dedicated to the belief that the path to individual freedom required absolute honesty and complete material austerity.

So Diogenes threw away his cup when he saw people drinking from their hands. He lived in a barrel, rolling in it over hot sand in the summer. He inured himself to cold by embracing statues blanketed with snow. He ate raw squid to avoid the trouble of cooking..."

(SIMON CRITCHLEY, NYT, April 1 2009)

Is Mukul Shivaputra modern day Diogenes?

"The Tonight Show" with Raj Thackeray?

Jay Leno is history. At least for now. Long live Leno, especially first 30 minutes of his show.

USA is lucky though. It still has Bill Maher, Jon Stewart.

I have already regretted the absence of Jon Stewart like figure in Indian media. Read it here.

It was not always like this.

India once had Avadh Punch and Shripad Krishna Kolhatkar श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर.

In USA, Leno did not let American leaders, celebrities, sports persons, media, corporates, murderers, lawyers, judges, doctors, devices, technology, food, clothes, dogs, cats get away with their hypocrisy and pompousness. Like Maher, Leno thought America's most important battle cry was not coming from Iran or Afghanistan but from their kitchens.

I particularly liked his dislike of mobile texting and twitting.

In India, the closest we get to Leno, Maher or Stewart is Cho Ramaswamy. But Cho is 75 years old and hosts no TV program in English or Hindi. (Recently on national news, Cho was at his best explaining tongue-in-cheek why M. Karunanidhi must find a suitable role for his daughter Kanimozhi.)

These days I find 40 year old TV-genic Raj Thackeray playing Cho's role in Marathi for people of Maharashtra.

I don't agree with Thackeray's methods but on many everyday-life issues he talks a lot of sense.

Mr. Thackeray is very fond of political cartoons, particularly the art of David Low but finds no time for his passion. I hope some day Raj Thackeray will host a TV show in Marathi. It will entertain me. And who knows, may further his political career.



Cho Ramaswamy

When Food & Violence Combine, The Godfather is Borne

Bijoy Bharathan in Asian Age May 9, 2009:

“When food and sex collide…The new commercial for Hardee’s burger, a hit on YouTube features model Padma Lakshmi suggestively biting off chunks of a burger, that’s dripping with sauce.

…Alyque Padamsee, the CEO of AP Advertising Agency says, "The trend of combining food and provocative imagery is not entirely new. The world-renowned Häagen-Dazs ice cream features very risqué situations where the actors sensuously enjoy an ice cream. It’s only a fad that’s seeing a revival right now. But it will soon fade away as food is primarily about gastronomic appeal and not sex appeal as shown in many ads these days."…”

I don’t think this will ever fade away.

The Godfather-I and II had lots of violence but not much sex. In the movie, gangsters eat all the time. They even have time to explain a recipe. Food replaces sex in the well-tried recipe of commercial success: sex and violence.

I have always felt that director Ram Gopal Varma missed a trick in Satya (1998). He could have shown his gangsters eating lots of yummy roadside food in Mumbai before blowing out other people's brains.





"Goli Maar Bheje Mein"(Satya, 1998)...but only after eating yummy roadside Vada-pav or pav-bhaji

Mice Speak: Living is Obligatory; so, too, is Dying.

The NYT editorial on June 5 2009:

"Over the years, scientists have developed many strains of genetically modified mice, many of which incorporate human versions of similar mouse genes. But there is something different in a recent experiment performed at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Scientists there have created a strain of mouse that contains the human variant of a gene, called FOXP2, associated with several critical tasks, including the human capacity for language.

What makes this different is how fundamentally human — and unmouse-like — language really is. Something essential to us, something defining in our species, has been implanted in a rodent.

FOXP2 happens to work pretty well in mice...

...And there is another question hovering over this experiment: Just how alien to themselves do these transgenic mice become? To that question, scientists are bound to find no answers, until, perhaps, mice can speak for themselves."

बा. सी. मर्ढेकर, # २१ , "मर्ढेकरांची कविता" (B S Mardhekar, "Mardhekar's Poetry", 1959)

पिपांत मेले ओल्या उंदिर;
माना पडल्या, मुरगळल्याविण;
ओठांवरती ओठ मिळाले;
माना पडल्या, आसक्तीविण.
गरिब बिचारे बिळांत जगले,
पिपांत मेले उचकी देउन;
दिवस सांडला घाऱ्या डोळीं
गात्रलिंग अन् धुवून घेउन.

जगायची पण सक्ती आहे;
मरायची पण सक्ती आहे.

उदासतेला जहरी डोळे,
काचेचे पण;

मधाळ पोळें
ओठांवरती जमलें तेंही
बेकलाइटी, बेकलाइटी!
ओठांवरती ओठ लागले;
पिपांत उंदिर न्हाले ! न्हाले !

Translated from the Marathi by Vilas Sarang विलास सारंग:

Mice Died in the Wet Barrel

Inside the waterlogged drum, the mice are dead,
Their necks hang, wrung by nobody.

The necks hang, and lips meet lips
Without desire.

Poor bastards lived in holes,
And, with a hiccup, died in the drum.

Day spilled into gray eyes,
rinsed their limbs and genitals.

Living is obligatory;
so, too, is dying.

Melancholy has disquieting eyes;
they are glass ones, though.

Even the honeycomb
brimming on their lips
is merely foam rubber!

Lips nuzzling lips:
O the mice are douched in the drum!
the mice are douched!



Artist: Paul Noth, The New Yorker, June 8 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #196

My caption:

“The poet is right. They are saying: Living is obligatory; so, too, is dying.”

Ian Chappell, Isn't this a kinda Tampa?

I always suspected that many Australians were racial. The way many Indians are casteist.

Sure, the official Indian delegation again blocked all mention of caste at the UN conference against racism in Durban in April 2009. But we all know they are the same.

e-Media in India are reporting every single violence against any non-white immigrant in Australia. The Asian Age reports on June 3, 2009: “Crimes against Dalits on the rise across country. A total of 06,942 incidents of murder, rape and other crimes were reported in 2008 in UP.”

Let us leave India out at the moment.

Will Australians stand up against this hate in their country?

I am counting on Ian Chappell, the best cricket commentator by some distance for my taste.

In Ashley Mallett’s book “Chappelli Speaks Out” (2005), there is a chapter titled “Tampa and the 1968 Australians.” It talks about Chappell’s involvement in social causes such as the campaign against refugee detention centres.

IAN CHAPPELL on Tampa:

“Anyhow, I'm living this reasonably quiet life and suddenly the 'Tampa' crisis had blown up. I'm sitting there in front of the television news and watching all those people on the 'Tampa', and I'm thinking, "This is terrible. "No matter what you think about protecting the Australian borders, these are human beings and you can't just treat them like that .I was getting really angry.

The games that I've played in my life are very good tutors in teaching you what is fair and what is unfair. And that was offended by what I saw with the Tampa crisis. I just thought, That's not fair. In cricketing parlance, it was like cheating -that I felt that those people, the refugees, were being cheated out of a fair go. Anyhow, I'm railing at the television set, and my wife, Barbara-Ann, she said, You know, bad things happen when good people do nothing. And that sort of jolted me a little bit. I thought, "I'm not gonna do a lot of good sitting railing at the television set…”



Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, June 2 2009

Journey of Sharad Pawar from May 1999 to May 2009

The letter sent by Sharad Pawar to Sonia Gandhi on May 15, 1999:

“…But our inspiration, our soul, our honour, our pride, our dignity, is rooted in our soil. It has to be of this earth. Soniaji you have became a part of us because you have all along respected this. We therefore find it strange that you should allow yourself to forget it at this crucial juncture. It is not possible that a country of 980 million, with a wealth of education, competence and ability, can have anyone other than an Indian, born of Indian soil, to head its government.

Some of us have tried to initiate and open broader discussions on this issue within the party. It is an issue which. affects not just the security, the economic interest and the international image of India, but hits at the core pride of every Indian. Unfortunately this initiative has been thwarted at every stage…”

p.s. The number 980 million now stands considerably upgraded to 1,130 million!



Artist: Danny Shanahan, The New Yorker, June 1 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #195

My caption:

Sonia: “Sharad-ji, Have you started using western motifs just to please me? What happened to inspiration, soul, honour, pride, dignity that are rooted in your soil? But I will be happy only when you merge your party with the Congress.”

Severed Heads: Govind Pant Bundela, V Prabhakaran and near miss Nguyen Van Thieu

p.s After I published following post on May 29 2009, this was in the papers on June 25 2009:

"Despite pledges to protect South Vietnam, former US President Richard Nixon privately vowed to "cut off the head" of its leader-Nguyen Van Thieu-unless he backed peace with the Communist North, tapes released on Tuesday showed..."

One more fan of severed head.

Post that was published on May 29, 2009:

William Faulkner: “The past is not dead; it is not even past.”

The Sri Lankan military has released pictures of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran which it says prove conclusively that he is dead.

Those parental-guidance-suggested pictures are insufferable.

M.R. Narayan Swamy says:

“…The Indian Army once intercepted a wireless message from him (Velupillai Prabhakaran ) asking a colleague to kill two rival Tamils and deliver their severed heads to him…”

(“How a guerrilla chief grew drunk on blood”, Asian Age, May 20, 2009)

‘Severed-heads’ have always been with us. They brought another sorry episode from history to my mind.

In December 1760, Atai Khan, working on the orders of Ahmad Shah Abdali severed the head of sixty-plus years old Govind Ballal Kher aka Govind Pant Bundela, a Subedar of Maratha, and sent it to his boss- Abdali.

Abdali 'presented’ it to the head of Maratha army, Sadashivrao Bhau. This act surely dented the morale of Maratha army badly. On January 14, 1761, it was trounced in the third battle of Panipat, a sort of Vietnam of Maratha empire.

On May 19, 2009, the Sri Lankan military was adjusting the corpse for cameras to photograph the head that looked severely damaged, if not almost severed.

Atheism: Tukaram, Simone Weil, India's Ministers

On May 22 2009, six ministers out of twenty in India's latest central cabinet did not take oath in the name of God .

They are in excellent company.

तुकाराम Tukaram (1608-1650):

"आहे ऐसा देव वदवावी वाणी । नाही ऐसा मनीं अनुभवावा ।" (4205)

Forgive my translation:

"say in speech god exists, experience in mind he doesn't."

Simone Weil (1909-1943):

"An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.”

What did Mamata Banerjee Burn Down?

Humour was an integral part of Indian elections.

Even when the Congress party was sweeping election after election in Southern Maharashtra, as a school/college boy, I was entertained by graffitis, songs, handbills, posters and slogans.

Cow-dung (more of buffalo actually) was thrown at the rival's posters and graffitis. It was considered the ultimate humiliation , next only to the loss in election.

Jan Sangh candidate usually lost his deposit and his posters/graffitis collected a lot of dung in every election but the party showed more tenacity than what it shows today. Its leaders were incorruptible. They reached every middle-class home (In Pune, I haven't met a single BJP candidate of my constituency in last 10 years). Even Congress leaders in power that included giants like Vasantdada Patil वसंतदादा पाटील were very accessible to ordinary people. There was a good fight on display.

When Bapusaheb Jamdar (of Congress?) lost an election, people shouted: "पैसा पसरला, बापू घसरला." ("Money was spread but Bapu slipped over it.")

Of late in Pune, there have been almost no posters, no songs, no graffitis during elections.

Therefore, I was thrilled to see following graffiti.

In the picture, instead of factory, I see oversized egos of Prakash Karat, stock-market-bhad-me-jay A.B. Bardhan, D Raja and other sundry communists like Mohammed Salim.


Anti-industry: CPI(M) graffiti in Nandigram features Mamata

Artist: Unkonwn Picture Courtesy: Sandipan Chatterjee, Outlook, May 18 2009

Lalu, Mulayam, Paswan, Amar, Deve On All Fours

A G Noorani writes in Frontline May 22, 2009:

“…Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru wrote on February 20, 1941. He added: “Those in high authority in India and in England think now that Congress have dealt a mortal blow to the very spirit of democracy in India, a view with which I am not wholly in disagreement. Indeed, I may say that my criticism against the Congress during the years during which it was in power was that it was building up its strength as a party dictatorship. It was not interested in other matters or in developing a true democratic spirit. It was intolerant of criticism and difference of opinion. It alienated large sections of people. The applause and the shouting of the so-called masses went to the head of the Congressmen…. If the rest of the country has got to suffer, it must pay the penalty for its lack of courage… ”



Artist: Leo Cullum, The New Yorker, May 25 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #194

My caption:

“Lalu, Mulayam, Paswan, Amar, Deve- who ever you are- I appreciate your efforts to prove your loyalty to Soniaji. Particularly, your this posture has been historically very appealing to the Congress honchos. But the answer is still NO.”

Manmohan Now Needs No Refresher Course in Getting Puppeteered

Artist: Victoria Roberts, The New Yorker, May 18 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 193

My caption:

Sonia: “Manmohan, remove those strings. You are already trained for my act and now you don’t need any refresher course in getting puppeteered by outsiders."

Water Saw Her Lord and Blushed: Dnyaneshwar and Richard Crashaw

Dnyaneshwari ज्ञानेश्वरी(c 1290) is the first great book written in a modern European or an Indo-Aryan language.

Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (c 1308-1321), Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” (1380-1400), Sarala Dasa’s “Mahabharat” in Oriya (second half of the 15th century), Madhava Kandali’s “Ramayana” in Assamese (14th century), Tulsidas’s Ramacharitamanas in Hindi (1574-1577) all came later.

Dnyaneshwar ज्ञानेश्वर (1275-1296) writes:

"आणि गंगा शंभुचां माथां। संकोचली जेवि पार्था।
तेवि मान्यपदे सर्वथा। लाजनें जें॥" (16-203)

It describes the feelings of river Ganga as she landed on Lord Shiva's head on her way to the earth from heaven. She first felt very shy and then she blushed.

Cana is best known as the place where, according to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus performed his first public miracle, the turning of a large quantity of water into wine at a wedding feast.

Richard Crashaw(c.1613-1649), English poet, describes it thus:

"The conscious water saw its God, and blushed (original in Latin: Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit)."

Even in Throwing Shoes We Indians Only Imitate

I have lost the count of number of shoes that were thrown at various public figures in India over last several weeks.

My 15-year-old son recently observed: Even in this we are copycats.

Wardrobes of India’s glamorous ramp-walkers began to malfunctions only after Janet Jackson incident.

The most popular programs on Marathi TV are often where young singers, even school-going kids, sing old Marathi songs, just imitating the original singers.

Muzaffar Ali (The Times of India, May 3, 2009):

“…The West invaded India with technology and ideas through multinationals and their hidden persuaders, the advertising agencies. With this came a new form of entertainment — the movies. Hollywood began to make inroads in the metros and small-town India and Bollywood emerged as a hybrid product — aping the West but with one eye on mofussil audiences. In the process, we created one of the world’s largest markets for the Hindi film product. This became more and more formidable, more monolithic, typecast, formula-based and predictable. It promoted obscurantism, violence, vulgarity, vengeance and ultimately, a male-dominated one-dimensional and over-the-top form of celluloid expression…

… First, we need to universalize ourselves. We need to find our roots.”



Artist: Jack Ziegler, The New Yorker, May 11 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #192

My caption:

“Has a guest on his show kissed Jay Leno on the lips or had a wardrobe malfunction?” (A question that was asked on India’s talk show)

Feel like Going Back to School

As I have said earlier the late P L Deshpande, wrote about other entertainers- Bal Gandharva (legendary large-hearted Marathi stage artist), masters of Hindustani classical such as Kumar Gandharva; Bhimsen Joshi; Mallikarjun Mansur; Vasantrao Deshpande among others. But he never wrote about Hindi films and their music.

What a loss. Of Pu La and his fans!

Looks like NCERT has learnt from this.

Outlook magazine April 27 2009 reports:

"...The ncert is now trying to bring in mainstream Indian films with political and social themes to enable students to have a wider understanding of political history and emerging socio-economic scenarios...

...Of the nine chapters in the class XII political science text book, eight have a movie suggestion. The 1973 Garam Hawa is featured in the chapter on ‘Challenges of Nation Building’. The Balraj Sahni-starrer Haqeeqat (1964) based on the 1962 Sino-Indian war, which portrays the struggle of a small group of Indian soldiers, is part of ‘India’s External Relations’. The Amitabh Bachchan-blockbuster Zanjeer that depicts the struggle of an innocent police officer against the system is included in ‘Challenges of Restoration of the System’...

...The Om Puri and Naseeruddin-starrer Aakrosh, a powerful tale of exploitation and miscarriage of justice, and the Satyajit Ray classic Pather Panchali, a portrait of life rich in experience, but lived amid poverty, are under ‘Politics of Planned Development’..."

Students indeed should learn how bad any war is and I think there is no better place to start the process than watching Haqeeqat. Similarly, Aakrosh (1980) will tell them more about fairness of Indian judicial system than any thing else...

Many aspects of good Hindi cinema are highly under appreciated.

अशोक शहाणे Ashok Shahane writes



(नपेक्षा, Napeksha 2005)



Aakrosh 1980

Swine Flu: Harbinger of New Cosmic Cycle?

Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay in their book "What We Leave Behind":

"Industrial civilization is incompatible with life. It is systematically destroying life on this planet, undercutting its very basis. This culture is, to put it bluntly, murdering the earth. Unless it's stopped -- whether we intentionally stop it or the natural world does, through ecological collapse or other means -- it will kill every living being. We need to stop it."

Wikipedia: “Varaha is the third Avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, in the form of a Boar…The avatar symbolizes the resurrection of the Earth from a pralaya (deluge) and the establishment of a new kalpa (cosmic cycle)…”


Artist: Farley Katz, The New Yorker, April 27 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #191

My caption:

“...Now I know...you are no ordinary piglets but the third Avatar of Lord Vishnu. I understand once you reach the earth, you will spread a flu pandemic and usher in a new cosmic cycle.”

Say No to Arun Bhatia because he calls Pune “Poona”!

Niall Ferguson:

“…Without the British Empire, there would be no Calcutta; no Bombay; no Madras. Indians may rename them as many times as they like, but they remain cities founded and built by the British…”

“Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World”, 2003)

On a TV program that was telecast on Marathi news channel IBN-Lokmat on April 21, 2009, Arun Bhatia, a candidate for Pune Loksabha seat, was heckled by studio audience because he called the city of Pune by its old and legitimate name: Poona.

And on the same day I read following in NYT:

“Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says:

… The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common…”

Chinese government wants people to change their names to suit the national database!

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar observes in The Times of India (April 19, 2009):

“…The Indian economy grew fast in the last five years, but remained far behind China’s. India’s big population makes its GDP look big, but also means it has the largest number of poor people, infant deaths, maternal deaths in childbirth, and highest child malnutrition in the world. India cannot end Maoist violence in 160 of its 600 districts or insurrections in Kashmir and the North-East. The Indian state looks weak and incompetent even as the Chinese state looks strong and competent…

… India scarcely matters. It is still a country that instinctively seeks aid and foreign concessions. On the international scene, it is a taker, not a giver. China, however is now a giver. In the proposed expansion of the IMF’s lending, China has offered to supply $40 billion, against $100 billion from Japan and possibly the US. India does not figure in this giver’s list — it would rather be a receiver.
Even as China gets hyphenated with the US, India is getting re-hyphenated with Pakistan via Islamic militancy…”

The last word belongs to अशोक शहाणे Ashok Shahane:


["मुंबई नगरी बड़ी बांका" 1997] ( नपेक्षा, 2005)

Changes at Lakshmi Temple on Wall Street

Wiki informs: "Contrary to popular belief, ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand."

Well poet B S Mardhekar didn't know this. Or chose to ignore it. And hence he compared the god to an ostrich in following lines:

"राव, सांगतां देव कुणाला,
शहाजोग जो शहामृगासम;
..."

[बा. सी. मर्ढेकर, # 43, "मर्ढेकरांची कविता" B S Mardhekar, "Mardhekar's Poetry", 1959]

If god doesn't behave like ostrich, maybe her worshippers...

Artist: Robert Leighton, The New Yorker,April 27 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #190

My caption:

"They are changing the carrier of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity and wealth. Remember it always symbolizes her worshippers."

Pipe Down? Think Again. Your Leg, if not Life, Depends on it.

A few weeks ago, I started feeding crows on the balcony of my house and since then I have got a glimpse of their complex society.

No wonder crows are believed to represent our ancestors. (btw-I hope my mother is among those who visit me every day!)

They say the sound of vehicle horns scare the crows away. Even here they are like me!

I was amused to read in FT (April 7, 2009) Amy Kazmin’s article “Engineer makes big noise”:

“In India, one of the most used components of any motor vehicle is the horn. Drivers navigating livestock, pedestrians, animal-drawn carts and motor vehicles lean heavily on their horns to express frustration, if not to clear a path. Trucks are emblazoned with the slogan “horn please”.

Responsible for much of India’s distinctive road noise is Roots Industries, a small private company that is also the country’s biggest hornmaker…

…Throughout most of 2008, Roots ran three shifts a day, six days a week, turning out 400,000 horns a month for its home market and for export…”

Amy Kazmin should also have said- Horn is used in lieu of break.

These days my only hope while walking or driving on Pune roads is: Let vehicle driver be kind enough to honk.

Because I don’t expect him

to drive on the right side of the road,
follow traffic signals and speed-limits,
show courtesy to elders and children,
use unadulterated fuel,
have vehicle certified for pollution laws,
possess third-party insurance policy and driving licence,
keep safe distance between two vehicles,
carry no more than certified number of passengers,
showing hand or lamp directional signals while driving,
park vehicle responsibly,
use reverse horn sparingly
…


Artist: Frank Modell, The New Yorker, March 22 1958

RTO Pune Collaborates in Great Voodoo Experiment

The Times of India reported on April 8, 2009:

“PUNE: City police commissioner Satyapal Singh on Tuesday lambasted the Regional Transport Office (RTO) over its process of issuing driving licences, saying the organisation was doling out "licences to kill".

Speaking to mediapersons at a press conference here, Singh said, "The RTO issues driving licences. But these are not driving licences, they are licences to kill. About 80 per cent of these licences are issued through agents. Due to this, the rate of fatal accidents is high in the city."

Singh alleged that over 12,000 autorickshaws and about 550 private luxury buses in the city were plying without proper permits. "The police cannot take action against these operators. That power lies with the RTO," he said.

Singh said that barely 150 of the 700 private buses in the city had permits. "The others ply on temporary permits, which is not permitted. Some 12,000 autorickshaws in the city are plying without permits. These rickshaws should be scrapped," he advised…”



Artist: Drew Dernavich, The New Yorker, April 20 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #189

My caption:

“...Voodoo is that easy. Now you do it, lying down to begin with. In this experiment, you represent the spirit of Pune. For every pin you stick in yourself, Regional Transport Office, Pune will issue one licence."

How would Shivaji Raje Bhosle react to this?

Marathi film "Mee Shivaji Raje Bhosle Boltoy!" (मी शिवाजी राजे भोसले बोलतोय!) is supposed to be doing well at the box office.

I have not seen it. But I have a fair idea what it is about.

For Asian Age (April 13 2009), Dippy Vankani reported:

"The anti-corruption unit of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) says that it is the Maharashtrians, who are sub-letting the maximum number of flats that they get in Central government colonies in Mumbai. This is because these people have another home in Mumbai, but still take a government flat for the extra income from rent..."

I wonder if the sequel of MSRBB will rationalize this. It may.

Piano as an Aquarium Bar

The Times of India (April 10, 2009) has reported passing away of Shakti Samanta without mentioning "An Evening in Paris"(1967).

This was like omitting "Hamlet" from Shakespeare's obituary!

The music of "An Evening in Paris" was composed by Shankar Jaikishan.

Shankar Jaikishan and R D Burman were arguably the most prolific users of piano in Hindi cinema. (It was R D who composed one of the greatest piano songs of Hindi cinema: "pyaar diwaanaa hotaa hai, mastaanaa hotaa hain
har khushee se, har gam se, begaanaa hotaa hain" for Shakti Samanta's Kati Patang [1970] )

I just love piano: its look- majestic like an elephant- and its sound.

Piano was embraced by Indian film industry in 1930’s. Keshavrao Bhole केशवराव भोळे at Prabhat प्रभात was the first to use instruments such as the piano, the Hawaiian guitar and the violin in his compositions.

I have seen a lot of pianos in Hindi films but little of them in real life.

There are so many hummable Hindi film songs where a hero or a heroine is banging away at the piano (to be precise: pretending to do so as almost none of them knew/knows how to play it), onlookers are standing or moving around with a glass in their hands, the story is galloping forward.

Recall Brahmachari (1968):

“Dil Ke Jharoke Mein Tujko Bithakar
Yadoon Ko Teri Maein Dulhan Banakar
Rakhoonga Maein Dil Ke Paas
Mat Ho Meri Jaan Udaas,
Dil Ke Jharoke...”

Piano has always seemed a lot of real estate for me because I have lived largely in small houses. Therefore, I have always wondered: What else can it be put to use?

Here is an idea: aquarium-cum-bar.


Artist: P. C. Vey, The New Yorker, April 13 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #188

Obama Seeks Manmohan Singh’s Advice on Paul Kroogman

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2008:

“The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM…” (The Times of India)

Business Standard:

"USA's President Barack Obama: He (Manmohan Singh) has been doing a wonderful job in guiding India even prior to being the Prime Minister along the path of extraordinary economic growth. That is a marvel, I think, for all of the world," the US President remarked, apparently referring to Singh's pioneering role in India's economic liberalisation..." (April 4, 2009)

Evan Thomas writes:

“Paul Krugman has emerged as Obama's toughest liberal critic. He's deeply skeptical of the bank bailout and pessimistic about the economy…

…, he has been critical, if not hostile, to the Obama White House.
In his twice-a-week column and his blog, Conscience of a Liberal, he criticizes the Obamaites for trying to prop up a financial system that he regards as essentially a dead man walking. In conversation, he portrays Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and other top officials as, in effect, tools of Wall Street…

… says Krugman, "the White House has done very little by way of serious outreach. I've never met Obama. He pronounced my name wrong"—when, at a press conference, the president, with a slight note of irritation in his voice, invited Krugman (pronounced with an "oo," not an "uh" sound) to offer a better plan for fixing the banking system…” (Newsweek April 06, 2009)


“Dr. Singh, before we talk about Pakistan, I want your advice as a well respected economist. Is Paul Kroogman a nikamma (useless) economist?”

The Spell of the House-Breaker may not always Work

Vedas are interesting, lively books. Here is an example.

RIG- VEDA Book vii. Hymn 55. VASTOSPATI AND INDRA:

THE SPELL OF THE HOUSE-BREAKER

[The hymn appears to be made up of three unconnected pieces. The first verse is addressed to Vastospati, the guardian god of the house. Verses 2-4 are addressed by the spirits of Indra's worshippers to one of Yama's dogs who would prevent there entering the home of the pious dead. Sarama, the hound of Indra, was the mother of the two spotted watch-dogs of Yama. Verses 5-8 form a sleep song. It was recited by thieves and house-breakers to put people to sleep.]

5. Sleep mother, let the father sleep, sleep dog , and master of the house.
Let all the kinsmen sleep, sleep all the people who are round about.

6. The man who sits, the man who walks, and whosoever looks on us,
Of these we closely shut the eyes, even as we closely shut this house.

7. The Bull who hath a thousand horns, who rises up from out the sea
By him the strong and mighty one we lull and make the people sleep.

8. The women sleeping in the court, lying with- out, or stretched on beds,
The matrons with their odorous sweets 1 these, one and all, we lull to sleep

('THE RIG- VEDA and VEDIC RELIGION WITH READINGS FROM THE VEDAS' BY A. C. CLAYTON

Author of The Paraiyan (Madras Government Museum Bulletin), Gangai's Pilgrimage, T-he Tamil Bible Dictionary, etc.
CHRISTIAN LITERATURE SOCIETY FOR INDIA, LONDON AND MADRAS, 1913)


Artist: Charles Barsotti, The New Yorker, 6 April 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #187

My caption:

“Oh, My god! He is either Greek or Roman. 'The Spell of the House-Breaker' recited in Sanskrit has not lulled him to sleep.”

The Battle of the Shivling: Bringing Down the Pride of Sovereignty to the Level of Petty Life

In India, nepotism and dynasties are thriving like never before.

Maharashtra will see many sons, daughters, nephews of the high and the mighty contesting the Lok Sabha elections. Many will emerge triumphant.

If people are wise, why do they elect them?

Walter Bagehot, 19th-century editor of The Economist, has the answer:

“… people like to see a family on the throne because it brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life”.

Here is an example of that.

Business Standard March 28, 2009 has reviewed “MADHAVRAO SCINDIA: A LIFE Author: Vir Sanghvi and Namita Bhandare.

“…The Scindia shivling is a flawless emerald, the size of an egg. Legend has it that Mahadji Scindia would wear it under his turban when the Gwalior army went off to battle because it always brought good luck and victory.

That was many decades ago but since then it has always been part of the puja ritual performed by every reigning maharaja and maharani. The monetary value of the emerald is, of course, incalculable, but to the Scindias the emerald has always been a symbol of the family’s good fortune...

[A]s relations between the Rajmata and her son plummeted, the emerald became the focus of a new battle. Suddenly, Vijayaraje decided that she wanted it back. After all, it had been part of her puja when her husband had been alive.

No, said Madhavi Raje. It was her duty as Maharani of Gwalior to worship the shivling to bring good fortune to the Scindias and for the protection of her husband. In any case, the puja was made auspicious only when it was done by a married woman.

The stand-off persisted till Vijayaraje demonstrated that she was not only a Rajmata, she was also a politician.

Fine, she said, if that was Madhavi Raje’s attitude, then she would embark on a fast unto death. She would break the fast only when the emerald was handed over.

A worried Madhavrao decided that a fast unto death by the Rajmata would evoke [sic] too much public attention and embarrass the Scindias.

“Just give her the shivling,” he pleaded with his wife. “Do it for my peace of mind.” Reluctantly, Madhavi Raje complied, perhaps in the hope that it would eventually be returned to her or to her son as an inherent part of the family’s legacy. But after the Rajmata’s death, the shivling was taken into posession by Usha Raje, Madhavrao’s elder sister. Madhavi Raje says Madhavrao did ask Usha Raje to return the emerald. “Maybe if she had returned it, my husband would have been alive today,” she rues.”
”


Artist: R K Laxman, The Times of India, 11 September 2006
”


Artist: Everett Opie, The New Yorker, July 23, 1960

The Restored Commandments are in Mandarin

China Daily on March 25, 2009:

“The nation will continue buying US government debt but pay close attention to possible fluctuations in the value of the assets, a vice-governor of the central bank said yesterday.”

The Wall Street Journal on March 13 2009:

“Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern over the outlook for the U.S. government debt China holds, urging Washington to take effective policies to restore the American economy to health.”

In “History of the World, Part I” (1981), Moses (Mel Brooks) is shown coming down from Mount Sinai after receiving the Law from God. When announcing the giving of the reception of the law to the people, Moses proclaims “The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen...” (whereupon he drops one of the tablets, which promptly shatters) “Oy...Ten! Ten Commandments! For all to obey!” (source: Wikipedia)

The dropped tablet has now been restored.



Artist: Danny Shanahan, The New Yorker, March 30 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #186

My caption:

“It says in Mandarin: You shall buy US government debt.”

Was Anand Yadav Terrified?

"...even though fifty years have passed since natives have taken power, instead of becoming fearless, people feel increasingly terrified..."

from य दि फडके "नथुरामायण" Y D Phadke "Nathuramayan" (1998)

अखिल भारतीय मराठी साहित्य संमेलन All India Marathi Sahitya Sammelan has little to do with मराठी Marathi literature but, like elections, has everything to do with entertainment.

Therefore, I like it to continue every year until I die.

This year डॉ. आनंद यादव (Dr. Anand Yadav) first 'withdrew' (for the first time in the entire history of books?) his book-'संतसूर्य तुकाराम' (Saint-Sun Tukaram) and then gave up his chair of presidency.

Yadav got lucky. Neither his house was burnt. Nor was he lynched.

If he were a Brahmin and had written about Shivaji शिवाजी the way he did about Tukaram, he (along with Brahmins like me) would be pushing the luck too far.

For Prospect Magazine April 2009, Kenan Malik has talked to Hanif Kureishi about the Rushdie fatwa and why no one would write such a book today.

‘“Nobody,” Kureishi suggests, “would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses, let alone publish it. Writing is now timid because writers are now terrified.”…

Despite Kureishi’s brush with Islamism, he never saw The Satanic Verses controversy coming. “I first read The Satanic Verses in proof copy. I didn’t notice anything about it that might rouse the fundamentalists. I saw it as a book about psychosis, about newness and change. The 1980s was an age of fusion—in music, in food, in literature. The Satanic Verses was part of that postmodern fusion.” Even when the protests began, he didn’t take them seriously…

Kureishi does not even remember the book-burning. “It didn’t register,” he says. “Only with the fatwa did it become clear how serious and dangerous it was. It seemed mad to imagine that someone could be killed over a book. I was flabbergasted. How could a community that I identified with turn against a writer who was one of its most articulate voices?”

The Rushdie affair, Kureishi believes, transformed not just his own work, but also “the very notion of writing.” The fatwa “created a climate of terror and fear. Writers had to think about what they were writing in a way they never had to before. Free speech became an issue as it had not been before. Liberals had to take a stand, to defend an ideology they had not really had to think about before.” How have they borne up to the task? “The attacks on Rushdie showed that words can be dangerous. They also showed why critical thought is more important than ever, why blasphemy and immorality and insult need protection. But most people, most writers, want to keep their heads down, live a quiet life. They don’t want a bomb in the letterbox. They have succumbed to the fear.”’


Passage from Dr. Anand Yadav's withdrawn book

Posturing of Prakash Karat while Watching a Mao-esque Great Leap Forward

David Pilling says in FT March 18, 2009:

“India’s messy democracy works rather well:… China’s murderous Great Leap Forward shows that unchecked authoritarian states are even more prone than messy democracies to make catastrophic mistakes. Indian democracy, as the strong performance of some of its better-run states demonstrates, is perfectly compatible with good governance and fast growth. The hope for next month’s elections is that these qualities can somehow emerge victorious at a national level, however clamorous and baffling the process.”

T N Ninan says in Business Standard March 21, 2009:

“new CPI(M) website was launched on Wednesday, a couple of days after the party’s election manifesto was released. The manifesto is notable in that it does not promise outcomes (what rate of growth, how much increased equality, what level of reduction in unemployment, etc), but makes a list of random observations without any coherent framework: give the states more rights, protect the public sector, offer everyone guaranteed employment, etc…

From the third largest party in the Lok Sabha, this is a document that shows little thought, devoted to endless posturing so that it does not have to offer serious solutions.”



Artist: Mick Stevens, The New Yorker, March 23 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #185

My caption:

“Listen light-weight…I am Prakash Karat…I am impressed by your Great Leap Forward. Would you be a prime ministerial candidate of our yet-to-be-named front?”

Now Showing: Amitabh’s Uranium

In India, the most talked about element in year 2008 was uranium. Panacea to all our problems of national security and energy.

DRAKE BENNETT (NYT March 8, 2009):

“When it comes to press coverage, uranium does pretty well among its peers on the periodic table. Surely strontium or seaborgium or even manganese would kill for its name recognition. But how well do we really know the element in whose long, mushroom-shaped shadow we all live? If someone handed you two rocks and asked which was uranium, would you have any idea how to tell?

Probably not. For most of us, uranium is an abstraction, more like a vitamin or a gigabyte than like, say, copper. We know it is important, and we know more or less what it’s for, but it’s not something we’d recognize by sight.

With “Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World,” the journalist Tom Zoellner sets out to rectify that lack of familiarity. Part history and part travel narrative, the book presents the atomic age not through its scientists or grand strategists, but through its raw material: an undistinguished-looking ore, more common than tin, whose destructive power when refined is hard, even today, to imagine. As Zoellner writes, “A single atom of uranium is strong enough to twitch a grain of sand. A sphere of it the size of a grapefruit can eliminate a city.”…”

Uranium deserves to be featured in a blockbuster Hindi film: “Amitabh’s Uranium” (inspired by Mackenna's Gold , 1969)


Artist: Alain, The New Yorker, 8 March 1947

Was Holi-2009 Safer?

BBC reported in March 2008:

“A Delhi-based NGO has organised a campaign against drink driving in the city to ensure a safer Holi festival. Activists say thousands of people die in India in road accidents during the two-day festival.

Holi is the Hindu spring festival, when people typically spray each other with coloured water. It is also when traditionally people take alcohol or drinks laced with bhang - an intoxicant derived from the leaves and buds of the cannabis plant.”


Artist: David Sipress, The New Yorker, March 16 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest # 184

My caption:

“Mr. Holmes, I swear all these Dancing Men died on the road, not here. This is where they lay in wet clothes before my bouncers got rid of them.”

Humans made Fire 790,000+ Years ago...

Humans made fire 790,000+ Years ago and it has been useful ever since.

For instance, more than 100,000 young women were killed in fires in India in a single year, and many of those deaths were tied to domestic abuse, according to a new study published on Monday March 02, 2009.

Business Line reported on November 9, 2008:

"...In rural areas (of India), firewood and chips is by far the most important energy source for cooking. There has been no change over the years — as many as 75.4 per cent of rural households primarily depended on this source in 2006-07, against 75.5 per cent in 1999-00...Surprisingly, 41 per cent of urban households in Kerala depend on firewood and chips, followed by Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh (35-36 per cent) and Rajasthan (34 per cent)..."

Reuters reported on October 26, 2008:

"A new study shows that humans had the ability to make fire nearly 790,000 years ago, a skill that helped them migrate from Africa to Europe.

By analysing flints at an archaeological site on the bank of the river Jordan, researchers at Israel's Hebrew University discovered that early civilizations had learned to light fires, a turning point that allowed them to venture into unknown lands..."

Maybe.


Artist : Robert Kraus, The New Yorker, July 1960

Park Your Nano Right in Your Drawing Room

The Times of India March 3, 2009: "Bookings for Nano will start from March 23: Tata Motors has advanced the booking date for its Nano, touted as the world's cheapest car, in India by three weeks,"



Artist: R K Laxman, The Times of India, September 1 2007


Artist: Tom Cheney, The New Yorker, 9 March 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 183

my caption:

"I told you: our neighbour's drawing room was right above our bedroom."

India’s Lazy Cats Start Building Pyramids in My Drawing Room

Artist: Victoria Roberts, The New Yorker, March 2 2009 Cartoon Caption Contest 182

My caption:

"I know election fever has gripped India. My fat lazy cats have started building pyramids in my drawing room.”

Why Mahatma Gandhi didn’t find History Very Useful

Historian T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर (1895 - 1963) argued that Mahatma Gandhi didn’t have much use of history. (Preface to “Panipat 1761”, 1968)

I always wondered why.

After reading John Gray's "Straw Dogs" (2002) I have found a likely reason.

"...If we truly leave Christianity behind, we must give up the idea that human history has any meaning...In India, it was a collective dream, endlessly repeated. The idea that history must make sense is just a Christian prejudice."


Artist: George Price, The New Yorker, 14 August 1948

Unclaimed $1,456 B in Swiss Banks may soon help Indian Democracy

FT reported on February 20, 2009:

“As many as 52,000 American customers hid UBS accounts from the authorities in violation of tax laws, a US government lawsuit against the Swiss bank alleged on Thursday.

The Department of Justice filed a suit seeking to force UBS to disclose the holders of accounts with about $14.8bn in assets.

… UBS reached a landmark settlement with the US government in which the Swiss bank admitted having enabled clients to evade taxes, agreed to pay $780m in fines and turn over about 250 client names to the US…”

PRAFUL BIDWAI wrote in Frontline Feb 13, 2009:

“…Indian businessmen have stashed away billions of dollars in bank accounts abroad. According to a recent report attributed to the Swiss Banking Association, the estimated amount is an astronomical $1,456 billion, higher than the deposits from all other countries put together…”

India may not get $1,456 billion but even the fine amount of $780m looks pretty good.

Timing couldn’t be better because the impending Loksabha elections will surely deplete $1,456 billion considerably.

But spare a thought for an unknown Swiss banker handling Indian accounts. He may lose part of his bonus.

(Since 2001, Mike Luckovich has drawn a few brilliant cartoons of Osama bin Laden and his partner. Here is the latest one.)



Artist: Mike Luckovich

M F Husain Draws Statue of Liberty in Oscar Gown

The Asian Age of Feb 24, 2009 has printed the tribute of M F Husain to A R Rahman.

Mr. Husain has drawn Statue of Liberty tastefully, in Oscar gown, wielding Tanpura. She is displaying her considerable assets alright but not nude.

I wonder if he could have shown similar taste drawing Seeta. Read more about it here.


Artist: M F Husain, The Asian Age, February 24, 2009

Crouching Housing, Hidden Sanitation and Slum Dog Billionaire

I am happy for SDM but have always felt that good art needs no certification. Rabindranath would be Rabindranath- Dnyaneshwar ज्ञानेश्वर of Bengali-without the Nobel.

A R Rahman may be very good but Indian cinema has created many similar musical giants since Kundan Lal (K.L.)Saigal. (Wasn't he the tallest of them all?)

David Pilling has written "Can slumdogs become millionaires in India?" in FT February 18, 2009.

He says: "...Why are there no slums in China? China is better run than India, with more powerful city mayors who build basic infrastructure to support wealth-creating migrants. Indian politicians court the rural vote. Corruption corrodes infrastructure plans, though some states, such as Gujarat, are improving. China is authoritarian; when workers are no longer required, they can be shipped back to the countryside. A registration system maintains a strict distinction between urban and rural citizens. Democratic India must not go down this route. But it can learn from China by providing clean water, sewerage and basic housing...

...One critic of the film said it was “inconceivable” that a tea-boy from the slum would be allowed on to a television quiz show. Until that changes, India will only progress so far."

So what Mr. Pilling? Watching "Boot Polish"(1954) and listening to its soulful music, people of this country had tears in their eyes and great hope in their hearts and they have clung on to them since then.

And then we will have SDM-II aka SDB. It will eclipse Godfather-II.



Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, February 24, 2009

Indian Pantheon: More Pillars and Assortment of Lesser Areas

Prof. P V Indiresan, Former Director Indian Institute of Technology Madras

“…it is proper for us to enquire why we built temple halls with a thousand pillars a millennium after others had mastered the design of the arch…”

Times of India, November 25, 2008:

“One in every three urban Indians lives in homes too cramped to exceed even the minimum requirements of a prison cell in the US. If that sounds shocking, check this out: In the past 50 years, both the number and proportion of Indians living in homes with a per capita space of less than 100 square feet have gone up substantially. In fact, a majority of Indians have per capita space equivalent to or less than a 10 feet x 10 feet room for their living, sleeping, cooking, washing and toilet needs.”


Artist: Sidney Harris, The New Yorker, 23 February 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest # 181

My caption:

“Remember, we are building Indian Pantheon...use many more pillars, cut down on area and insert terms like carpet area, built-up area, saleable area in the contract.”

Nighty Purge Campaign in Pune?

When I was growing up in Miraj, it was quite common to see middle-class men walking out in pyjamas.

This blog has already commented on a similar habit of today's Pune residents. Read it here.

Therefore, it was quite amusing to read a report in Business Line on December 14, 2008:

"Community leaders in Shanghai are trying to break up the love affair of some city residents with walking outside in their pyjamas, state media has reported.

The Rixin neighbourhood committee in the city's north-east has begun a campaign to discourage residents' longstanding habit of wearing pyjamas out of their bedrooms and on the streets, the state-run Youth Daily reported.

"We're telling people not to wear pyjamas in the street because it looks very uncivilised," community official Guo Xilin was quoted as saying.

The Shanghainese habit of wearing pyjamas in public emerged alongside China's economic reforms over the past 30 years as it became a sign of prosperity, because it meant people did not sleep in tattered old clothes.

For a still visibly large number of Shanghainese, wearing pyjamas outside has become more a way of life than a fashion statement, and to outsiders, the phenomenon is part of the city's charm.

Guo, however, called pyjama-wearers "visual pollution" and a public embarrassment to the city.

But some residents still argue wearing pyjamas is perfectly acceptable.

"Pyjamas are also a type of clothes. It's comfortable, and it's no big deal since everyone wears them outside," a retiree surnamed Ge was quoted as saying.

Rixin's pyjama purge campaign is not the first of its kind - in the 1990s Shanghai officials put up signs and ran education campaigns to tell people not to stroll around in night gowns.

The campaign's managers eventually gave up."

I wonder why there are no such campaigns in India.

Artist: Barbara Shermund, The New Yorker, 18 Apr 1936

The Greediest Generation has made Traffic Deadlier than Terrorism

Earlier I asked: “What is Deadliest at Pune. Traffic,Temple Queues or Terrorism?”

The answer still is: Traffic.

Black humour now has mushroomed on the subject. Times of India Mirror reported on Jan 1 2009: "Death has a five day week...almost". You are less likely to get killed on a Pune road on Thursdays and Sundays.

Not just that. Times of India reported on December 17, 2008: drowning,poisoning, fire, by falling, electrocution, lightning strikes, due to firearms are also deadlier than terror.

"According to the Planning Commission, the social cost of road accidents in India stands at Rs. 55,000 crore annually. This constitutes 3% of the country's GDP." (Times of India, December 12, 2008)

The cost of terrorism is certainly less than 3% of GDP.

Marathi news daily Pudhari पुढारी reported on Sunday December 08, 2008:

“Pune has 2400 (road) accidents in a year involving 450 deaths.”

Considering this stat, terrorism- even of the latest kind- is a side-show.

Shame on us! The Greediest Generation.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN said in NYT on December 07, 2008:

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation,” that classic about our parents and their incredible sacrifices during World War II. What I’ve been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? “The Greediest Generation?” “The Complacent Generation?” Or maybe: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card.”

Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today…”

Should be.

But I don’t see them anywhere. Most of the middle-class kids I see are highly conformists. They want to drive their own vehicle- a big one at that.

Carl Sagan has said:

“…Some of the habits of our age will doubtless be considered barbaric by later generations- perhaps for insisting that small children and even infants sleep alone instead of with their parents; or exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life; or keeping pets; or eating animals and jailing chimpanzees; or criminalizing the use of euphoriants by adults; or allowing our children to grow up ignorant.”

India is already guilty of “…exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life …”

If Sagan were to be alive and visit Pune now, he would have surely included “keeping public transport paralysed while encouraging more and more private vehicles on lawless roads of Pune” to his list.



‘So do you fancy staying in and getting obese or going out and getting murdered?

The Spectator 2007

My caption:

‘So do you fancy staying in and getting obese or going out and getting killed on a Pune road while driving?’

Vasant Sarwate Celebrates Birthday with a Dazzling New Book

On February 3, 2008- his 82nd birthday- a new book of Vasant Sarwate was published: "रेषालेखक वसंत सरवटे" ,संपादन: दिलीप माजगावकर / मधुकर धर्मापुरीकर, राजहंस प्रकाशन, 2009 (“Line-writer Vasant Sarwate” edited by Dileep Majgaonkar / Madhukar Dharmapurikar).

Read more about the event here.

It’s beautifully produced and attractively priced- just Rs. 125.

Suhas Palshikar in his brilliant Marathi essay for “Samaj Prabodhan Patrika April-June 2008” asked:

“गरिबांना भुक्कड सुविधा पुरवणं आपल्या लोकशाहीला कसं परवडतं?

(How can Our Democracy Afford to Provide Third-rate Services to the Poor?)

Well, Sarwate has raised and answered such questions related to Indian democracy from 1947-2009.

Most of the pictures are eternal. They just prove once again why Sarwate is arguably the greatest creative artist Marathi language produced in 20th century. (btw-His nearest competition: Laxmibai Tilak, Shripad Krishna Kolhatkar, C V Joshi, Arun Kolatkar, Acharya Atre, Master Vinayak, Kumar Gandharva (लक्ष्मीबाई टिळक, श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर, चि वि जोशी, अरुण कोलटकर, आचार्य अत्रे, मास्टर विनायक, कुमार गंधर्व)).

In Marathi intellectual world, there is little appreciation of visual arts, let alone that of subtle art of cartooning.

Even the title of this book is biased towards writers and blurbs on the back cover- both Vinda Karandikar विंदा करंदीकर and S P Bhagwat श्री पु भागवत disappointing with their platitudes- don't do any justice to Sarwate's talent. (I know how tender S P Bhagwat gets appreciating B S Mardhekar's बा सी मर्ढेकर poetry.)

Why don't these guys remember Ajanta or Halebidu or Jagte Raho or The Simpsons watching Sarwate's pictures?

Maybe सदानंद रेगे Sadanand Rege would have with a poem titled: "सरवटे गोंधळ घालतात- नाथांचा आणि लाथांचा!" (Here I remember his poems on Keshavsut's केशवसुत death and D G Godse's द ग गोडसे visit to Mastani's grave.)

A O Scott observes: "...I have long been of the opinion that the entire history of American popular culture — maybe even of Western civilization — amounts to little more than a long prelude to “The Simpsons.”"

Clearly a new paradigm needs to emerge in Marathi criticism to fully appreciate the art of Vasant Sarwate.

In a masterly essay on James Thurber, Paul Johnson writes: "...A score of his published cartoons are masterly, and five in the highest class in history. When I contemplate them, I sometimes feel that after a lifetime of studying and practising art, I know nothing about it..."

Surely, I know nothing about it but I hope Sarwate soon gets his own Paul Johnson.


"...I feel miserable by this arson. Our bright secular tradition has once again been blackened..err..I mean, bright secular tradition has been blackened..."

Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे, 1970, First Published in Manoos माणूस Weekly

Concentrate on Fruit, Not Skeleton

Michel de Montaigne “On Cannibals” (1580)

“I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts, but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults rightly, we should be so blind to our own. I think there is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead; and in tearing by tortures and the rack a body still full of feeling, in roasting a man bit by bit, in having him bitten and mangled by dogs and swine (as we have not only read but seen within fresh memory, not among ancient enemies, but among neighbors and fellow citizens, and what is worse, on the pretext of piety and religion), than in roasting and eating him after he is dead.”

Nandan Nilekani (2008):"...leaving apart his (Narendra Modi's) Hindutva and all that triumphalism and Gujarat riots and all that, I think, in terms of what he's done on governance, it's remarkable. And I think there's a tendency to ignore that. You know, either you are for him or you are against him... Bush kind of argument. It's not that. I mean, the reforms he has done are exceptional. That's all I'm saying...."



Artist: Paul Noth, The New Yorker, February 9 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 180

My caption:

“It was Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi who taught me that for collective prosperity of our country an entrepreneur like me should learn to concentrate on the fruit and ignore the skeleton. Therefore, I am for both- the fruit and the skeleton.”

What Colour Chakra should we Pin on India's Terrorised Common Man?

TYLER E. BOUDREAU (NYT, January 26, 2009):

“THE Pentagon’s recent decision not to award the Purple Heart to veterans and soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress has caused great controversy. Historically, the medal has gone only to those who have been physically wounded on the battlefield as a result of enemy action. But with approximately one-third of veterans dealing with symptoms of combat stress or major depression, many Americans are disappointed with the Pentagon’s decision; many more are downright appalled…

…I suggest we call this medal the Black Heart. Certainly the hearts of these soldiers are black, with the terrible things they saw and did on the battlefield. Certainly the country should see these Black Hearts pinned on their chests.”

In India, many ordinary citizens suffer deep physical and mental wounds when they get caught in mindless violence of one kind or the other.

What colour chakra should we pin on their chests?



Artist: Zachary Kanin. The New Yorker, February 2 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest # 179

My caption:

Doctor: “…I was attending an international conference at the Hotel Intercontinental Grand, Mumbai on January 21. Then, I drove down to Karnataka via Belgaum to be with my smartly dressed daughter at a Mangalore pub on the evening of January 24. Finally, I was the chief-guest at a function of a Nashik Municipal Corporation school on January 26."

Escaping Indian Jail is Easy. It’s Indian Sewer…

Frontline, January 16, 2009 reports:

“HUNDREDS of contract workers engaged by local bodies and water supply and sewerage boards in major cities and towns to clean underground sewers virtually walk into death traps. A large number of them die instantaneously after inhaling noxious fumes in the sewers. Others die a slow death from respiratory and neurological ailments. Human rights organisations and trade unions have time and again criticised the inhuman practice of employing people in hazardous jobs such as these. Most people employed for the dehumanising work are Dalits…”



Artist: Tom Cheney, The New Yorker, January 26 2008, Cartoon Caption Contest #178

My caption:

“Because I am wealthy and networked, breaking an Indian jail is never a problem. However, it’s Indian sewer that I dread.”

Still Mastani’s Future is Bright?

I woke up on Sunday January 18, 2009 morning to read to my horror that Mastani’s मस्तानी samdhi/mausoleum/grave at Pabal पाबळ has been destroyed.

The tragic love tale of Mastani and Baji Rao-I पहिला बाजीराव is a fine example of composite culture of India. Many have attempted to narrate it but no one has done it better than the late D G Godse द ग गोडसे who died seventeen years ago this month.

No doubt his Marathi book- truly a labour of love- “Mastani” (पॉप्युलर प्रकाशन , Popular Prakashan, 1989) contains a lot of speculation but it is because so little is mentioned about her in contemporary reliable sources.

We may never catch the vandals/ tomb-raiders who destroyed her final resting place in 2009 but Godse produces strong circumstantial evidence to get to the 18th century "killers" of Mastani: Baji Rao-I's younger brother Chimajiappa चिमाजीअप्पा and their mother Radhabai राधाबाई.

In a Marathi letter to me, appended here, Godse argues that Mastani was the victim of Brahmin-Stalinism of 18th century Maharashtra.

Godse describes Mastani’s samdhi so movingly in his book. I have enclosed the relevant page from the book here.

Aside: Godse’s labour of love moved poet सदानंद रेगे Sadanand Rege so much that he wrote a poem on the subject of Godse’s visit to Pabal!

If D G Godse were to be alive today, he would have felt devastated. He might have interpreted vandalism of her samadhi as a sign of her continued persecution almost 300 years after her death. I wonder if he would have still maintained optimism expressed in his line: "तरीही तिचे भविष्य उज्वल आहे!" "Still her future is bright!"

(click on the pictures below to get much larger view of them.)



Mastani samadhi-Before vandalism and After

(source - "Mastani" by D G Godse, पुढारी Pudhari January 18, 2009)



(Description of Mastani's Samadhi by D G Godse)



D G Godse's letter dated 1991 that has that immortal line "Still her future is bright!"

Times of India, a Patriot and Harold Pinter, a Traitor

I was moved by Michael Henderson’s obit of Harold Pinter:

“…Lord’s was in its midsummer majesty that afternoon. There was the lovely three o’clock murmur of a thousand conversations, and on the field England were making short work of a poor West Indies side. Best of all, Pinter had gathered around him four great pals who shared his love of the game: Gray, Stoppard, Harwood and Hare.

Seated behind the box’s glass partition, with a glass close to hand, and never empty, Pinter hardly missed a ball, because he was watching Brian Lara, the star batsman from Trinidad, who to his craftsman’s eyes represented something of the nobility he had admired in previous generations. One thought of the line Pinter put in the mouth of young Marcus Maudsley in the village cricket scene in The Go-Between: ‘Such elegance and command!’ Every stroke of Lara’s prompted some purr of acknowledgement, as Pinter saw in his mind’s eye all the days he had spent at that special place.

Returning to the box after spending an over or two elsewhere, I found him standing with his back to the cricket, about to address his friends. This time he was not talking about cricket. ‘Do you know,’ he asked them, ‘what I consider to be the most beautiful line in all literature?’ …

…Simply this: ‘That beautiful evening Compton made 70.’…” (The Spectator, 29th December 2008)

And then I read Times...

A report in The Times of India January 15, 2009 is headlined: ‘Hayden greater than Sachin.’

“ Donald Bradman - the unquestioned supreme deity of batting - said Sachin Tendulkar reminded him of himself more than anybody before or since. You might think Sachin can, thus, safely consider the No. 2 slot in a list of all-time greats his for the taking.”

Notice the impunity with which TOI is manipulating Bradman’s words.

Report continues: “But you would be wrong, or so says the ICC. Sachin isn’t even in the top 20 Test batsmen , according to new ICC "best ever" ratings.”

The report does not mention who those “top 20 Test batsmen” are. Therefore, I decided to find out more. I found it here.

ICC website very clearly says: ICC Best-Ever Test Championship Rating. Note it does not say: “ICC Test Championship Rating of Players.”

It is an attempt by the ICC to rate the best-ever test-cricket patch of a player. That is why Donald Bradman’s entry reads:

ID Rat. Name Nat. Career Best Rating
1 961 D.G. Bradman AUS 961 v India, 06/02/1948

If the ICC wanted to only rate players, there was no need to include the period and the opposition.

Look at following two entries:

20 916 S.M. Gavaskar IND 916 v England, 30/08/1979
26 898 S.R. Tendulkar IND 898 v Zimbabwe, 21/02/2002

It means Gavaskar’s 1978-79 patch was ‘better’ at number 20 than Tendulkar’s in 2001-02 patch at number 26.

But why did I bother about this? Isn't newspaper business only "yelling about the axe murder"?


Artist: William Steig, The New Yorker, 21 October 1933

What did the Three Wise Men First Discover at Satyam?

“In a swift action to salvage the beleaguered Satyam Computer Services, the Centre on Sunday set up a three-member board by nominating HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, the former Nasscom president, Kiran Karnik, and the ex-SEBI member, C. Achutan, as independent directors to take charge of the Hyderabad-based IT major and chart out the future course of action…”
(The Hindu, January 12, 2009)



Artist: Leo Cullum, The New Yorker, January 12 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 177

My caption:

“His internationally reputed auditors have certified that what he is wearing are shoes and that they are the same size.”

Satyam Saga’s Taken My Mind Off Pune’s Vanished Winter

Winter that was supposed to have arrived in November 2008 has yet to visit Pune as of January 11, 2009.

Pune’s winter was once reputed to bring pinkness to a fair skin.

This topsyturvy of weather has brought illnesses into my family.

However...



‘At least the meltdown’s taken my mind off global warming.’

The Spectator

My caption:

“At least the Satyam saga’s taken my mind off Pune's vanished winter."

India’s Leaders are Not Impotent!

हिंदुह्रदयसम्राट शिवसेनाप्रमुख श्री बाळासाहेब ठाकरे: "आणीबाणी पुकारा. नपुंसक आणि भडवे देश काय वाचवणार?" (सामना, डिसेम्बर २१, २००८)

Emperor–of-Hindu-hearts Shiv-Sena-Chief Shri. Balasaheb Thackeray: “Call emergency. How can impotent (leaders) and pimps save the nation?” (Daily Samna, December 21, 2008)


Artist: Mick Stevens, The New Yorker, January 12, 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 176

My caption:

“His fans have done this becuase I wrote: I don’t know about pimps but how can they be impotent considering growing clout of dynasties and burgeoning nepotism in every walk of Indian life?”

Graham Greene Wanted Tickets to “A Massacre in the Punjab”

Greene is my favourite author. I have really liked some of his books: The Honorary Consul, Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party, The Quiet American, Travels with My Aunt, The End of the Affair, The Other Man.

Greene was a complex character. Paul Theroux says:"...Greene was insecure, needy, insatiable, interested in variation and always willing to have a go...this compulsive sexuality seemed to shape the pattern of his life, his travel, his fictional subjects and his faith. Obsessive and easily bored, he was incapable of being sexually faithful to any woman. He reveled in being a wanderer, an eavesdropper, a stranger. His sexuality both depressed him and relieved his gloom. It damned him in his own faith, made him a sinner and filled him with remorse, made him say things such as ''I've been a bloody fool'' and ''I've betrayed very many people in my life'' and ''I wish I didn't have so much to be remorseful about.''..." (NYT, October 17, 2004)


India hardly figures in his books. On Jan 4 2009, I learnt why.

Pankaj Mishra has reviewed “GRAHAM GREENE/ A Life in Letters /By Edited by Richard Greene” (NYT Jan 4, 2009)Mishra writes:

“…In August 1947, a few months into an affair with Catherine Walston, the American wife of a Labor M.P., Greene planned a trip with her to India, which was then in the midst of a bloodbath set off by the British decision to divide the country along religious lines. “If we get to India,” he wrote to Walston, with whom he had recently taken a more sedate holiday in Ireland, “it will be odd — the exciting thing in exciting company. I have a feeling that even being in a massacre in the Punjab (I enclose a good account of one) won’t really be as exciting as sitting on a cliff watching for salmon.”

This assignation in the midst of mass murder didn’t come off. Richard Greene (no relation), the editor of this volume, gives no explanation. In any case, salmon-spotting was not Greene’s thing…

...“When we are young,” Fowler says in “The Quiet American,” “we are a jungle of complications. We simplify as we get older.” This was certainly true of Greene, whose letters in later life show him becoming a first-class tourist to revolutions: “Now I’m off to Nicaragua (as the guest of the Sandinista government) to light a small fire under the fool Reagan.” Though covering a vast period of personal and public turmoil, “Graham Greene: A Life in Letters” traces, quite astonishingly, no refining of sensibility and intelligence. The increasingly exotic settings merely underscore how the mind of this most famous of Englishmen abroad was fundamentally never really broadened — and may have been narrowed — by travel.
”

If they were just dogs getting slaughtered in the ring, Greene wasn’t interested!


The New Yorker

TV Reporters to Wield Sword-Mikes

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, a media consultant, observed in Business Standard on December 30, 2008:

“…several Hindi films have been adding a television crew and a reporter to their stock of scenes. Often the reporter is a bimbo, asks silly questions and falls for whatever is fed to her. Don’t blame the films, they are just taking popular perception and adding it to the script, as they have for years.

If content is the heart of the news business, then media owners and editors need to start worrying about what they should be doing to fix the reputation of the people generating it. It took businessmen three decades to move out of the frame as villains. God knows how long journalists will take.”



Artist: Drew Dernavich, The New Yorker, 5 Jan 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest 175

My caption:

“We decided to make some changes after Mumbai attacks. New amphibious suit will enable our reporter to jostle her way in air, water or ground and shove this sword-mike into any face."

Samuel Huntington’s Crystal Ball

What does year 2009 hold for us?

The father of “The Clash of Civilizations” Samuel Huntington has just died more than fifteen years after he wrote it.

I have just finished reading William Dalrymple’s book “White Mughals” (2002).

I loved the tragic tale but don’t agree with the author's inference: “…As the story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa shows, East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have mingled in the past; and they will do so again.”

Mingling is fine but anything more I have my doubts. Dalrymple has not produced strong enough evidence in five hundred plus pages to convince me otherwise.

Fouad Ajami attacked Huntington’s “The clash” in 1993.

“… I wrote my response with appreciation, but I wagered on modernization, on the system the West had put in place. “The things and ways that the West took to ‘the rest,’” I wrote, “have become the ways of the world. The secular idea, the state system and the balance of power, pop culture jumping tariff walls and barriers, the state as an instrument of welfare, all these have been internalized in the remotest places. We have stirred up the very storms into which we now ride.” I had questioned Huntington’s suggestion that civilizations could be found “whole and intact, watertight under an eternal sky.” Furrows, I observed, run across civilizations, and the modernist consensus would hold in places like India, Egypt and Turkey…”

Fifteen years later, Ajami would say: “…Huntington’s thesis about a civilizational clash seems more compelling to me than the critique I provided at that time.

…And Huntington had the integrity and the foresight to see the falseness of a borderless world, a world without differences. (He is one of two great intellectual figures who peered into the heart of things and were not taken in by globalism’s conceit, Bernard Lewis being the other.)

I still harbor doubts about whether the radical Islamists knocking at the gates of Europe, or assaulting it from within, are the bearers of a whole civilization. They flee the burning grounds of Islam, but carry the fire with them. They are “nowhere men,” children of the frontier between Islam and the West, belonging to neither. If anything, they are a testament to the failure of modern Islam to provide for its own and to hold the fidelities of the young.

More ominously perhaps, there ran through Huntington’s pages an anxiety about the will and the coherence of the West — openly stated at times, made by allusions throughout. The ramparts of the West are not carefully monitored and defended, Huntington feared. Islam will remain Islam, he worried, but it is “dubious” whether the West will remain true to itself and its mission. Clearly, commerce has not delivered us out of history’s passions, the World Wide Web has not cast aside blood and kin and faith. It is no fault of Samuel Huntington’s that we have not heeded his darker, and possibly truer, vision.”

In 2008 we certainly saw riches depreciating and Indo-Pak 'love' growing stale and in Samuel Huntington’s crystal ball our future contains more pain than that just coming from ulcerated tooth.


Artist: Alain, The New Yorker, 7 March 1936

Let Ajmal Amir Kasab Stay in the Hell of an Indian Jail

Debate is raging in India on the subject of terrorist Kasab’s entitlement to legal assistance.

If Nathuram Godse नथुराम गोडसे- the killer of Mahatma Gandhi- was entitled to a lawyer and a 'grand' speech (the speech that still motivates Hindu extremists), why not Kasab?

Ram Jethmalani has the most interesting take.

He says: “…If I had been a judge I would not sentence Kasab to death for a different reason. It is only by remaining in the hell of an Indian jail that he would realise that what the Mullahs told him is false.

Long stay in an Indian prison will detoxify him of all the superstitions and illusions instilled into him. Those who did it surely deserve a sentence of death if caught.”

This sounds like the Hindi film villain Ajit’s rationale on why someone should be thrown in the tank of liquid oxygen: Liquid will not let him live, oxygen will not let him die!

Hell indeed comes in many forms.


‘I never expected hell to be as bad as this.’


The Spectator