The Taj Mahal could be "a bloody hurdle in the middle of the road"

"Scientific American" July 2007 has an article by Steve Mirsky “An Earth Without People -A new way to examine humanity's impact on the environment is to consider how the world would fare if all the people disappeared”.

It is based on “World without Us”, a new book by science writer Alan Weisman.

“According to Weisman, large parts of our physical infrastructure would begin to crumble almost immediately. Without street cleaners and road crews, our grand boulevards and superhighways would start to crack and buckle in a matter of months. Over the following decades many houses and office buildings would collapse, but some ordinary items would resist decay for an extraordinarily long time. Stainless-steel pots, for example, could last for millennia, especially if they were buried in the weed-covered mounds that used to be our kitchens. And certain common plastics might remain intact for hundreds of thousands of years; they would not break down until microbes evolved the ability to consume them.”

“If all human beings vanished, Manhattan would eventually revert to a forested island. Many skyscrapers would topple within decades, undermined by waterlogged foundations; stone buildings such as St. Patrick's Cathedral would survive longer. Weeds and colonizing trees would take root in the cracked pavement, while raptors nested in the ruins and foxes roamed the streets.”

It reminded me of a program “The Future Is Wild” (year 2003 joint Animal Planet/ORF (Austria) & ZDF (Germany) co-production) which was shown in India on Discovery channel as- “Past is Wild Future is Wild”

In Vasant Sarwate’s वसंत सरवटे picture below, today’s sheep, coming across a milestone, are saying: “who knows why men erect a bloody hurdle of such a stone right in the middle of the road”

In a world without us, a lot more animal species of tomorrow will be expressing similar feelings-"bloody hurdle in the middle of the road"-about all our grand monuments, including recently announced Seven Wonders of the World!



Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे Source : "Savdhan! Pudhe Valan Ahe!" Mauj Parakashan 1990-19997

Twisted Construction, Intricate Compounds and Linguistic Hell

My 13 year old son Jaydutt Kulkarni goes to an English medium school at Pune and struggles, like most of his classmates, with Marathi language syntax- called Shuddhalekhan-“chaste writing”- in Marathi. My wife and I express horror seeing some of his bloomers. He does not make such mistakes writing English. Surprisingly, he does not make them in Hindi too. Mind you, we all speak Marathi at home and live in Marathi speaking neighbourhood.

Therefore, I wonder what the real problem is. Has it anything do with the structure and/or teaching of the language?

D D Kosambi has an interesting take ("An Introduction to the study of Indian History", Popular Prakashan, 1956-2004) on grammar of mother language of Marathi - Sanskrit.

“…The founder of Sanskrit grammar was Panini, who combined the efforts of many predecessors with his own profound observations to give us the oldest scientific grammar known anywhere in the world….Nevertheless Panini killed all preceding grammatical systems, nearly killed further development of the language…
Floridity became increasingly a characteristic of Sanskrit so that the use of twisted construction, intricate compounds, innumerable synonyms, over-exaggeration make it more and more difficult to obtain the precise meaning from a Sanskrit document…

The distinction between Sanskrit and Arabic in this respect should also be considered. Arab works on medicine, geography, mathematics, astronomy, practical sciences were precise enough to be used in their day from Oxford to Malaya. Yet Arabic too had been imposed with a new religion upon people of many different nationalities. The difference was that ‘Arab’ literati were not primarily a disdainful priest-caste. Those who wrote were not ashamed to participate in trade, warfare, and experimental science, not to write annals…”

“Intricate compounds” remind me of a scene from Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940). The scene is tyrant Hynkel making a long speech and his secretary typing up just a couple of words; then saying just a couple of words only for her to type furiously many paragraphs.

Vasant Sarwate’s वसंत सरवटे picture below is equally funny. The boss has started dictating a Marathi letter to his secretary and instead of airing some meaningful matter, has ended up explaining how every single letter of every single word should be written.

Is this linguistic hell? I am sure at least my son currently feels it that way!



Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे (Source- “Khada Maraycha Jhala Tar….!”, Mauj Prakashan, 1963 – collection of his cartoons from 1950 - 1962)

Twelve years ago, everything was twelve years ago…..sigh…..Nostalgia

Nicholas Carr:

Nostalgia is nothing new. It has been a refrain of art and literature at least since Homer set Odysseus on Calypso's island and had him yearn to turn back time.

(The New Republic, September 2 2011)


Vilas Sarang has written another brilliant book in Marathi-“सर्जनशोध आणि लिहिता लेखक” (Pursuit of Creation and Author Engaged in Writing) (Mauj Prakashan 2007). The book is a collection of author’s literary essays.

I disagree with Sarang on few issues he discusses in the book. But I agree with him on a lot more. He is arguably one of the best literary critic since 1950s anywhere in the world.

Sarang does not rate most Marathi literature of 20th century very highly. Particularly writings of popular authors like P L Deshpande.

In his earlier book (“Aksharancha Shram Kela”, Mauj Prakashan 2000), Sarang explains why P L Deshpande’s translation of “The Old Man And The Sea” is so ineffective. (Deshpande doesn’t understand Hemingway’s ‘and’).

In this book, Deshpande is at the receiving end for another reason-NOSTALGIA.

Sarang says: “Pu La’s most writing invokes nostalgia”. Sarang explains why nostalgic writing is so popular.
“One doesn’t need to do anything to remember! Memories collect easily and effortlessly. Another reason is, to recall one doesn’t need to think. One is freed of thinking and headache arising from thinking! There is a comfort in nostalgia……Nostalgia is popular with readers too because even their brains feel at ease. One can be lost in resplendent dreams of past. If Karl Marx were to be alive today, he would have said ‘Nostalgia is society’s opium‘ ”.

Sarang feels such nostalgia-loving society is regressive, focussed on the past.

Sarang fails to mention another aspect of nostalgia’s popularity: Rich and increasingly culturally dominant community of Non-Resident Marathi Speaking Indians who seem to thrive on nostalgia.

Gurcharan Das has summed it up on May 6, 2007:

"“…there is something a little sad, I find, in my encounters with non-resident Indians. I don’t quite know why. They are successful. They have lovely homes and bright children who go to the best schools. Most have fitted in confidently and some have assumed positions of leadership in their adopted countries. But there is something missing at the core.

I often lecture abroad and run into Indians in the strangest places. The more exotic the city, the more we are drawn to each other. They invite me generously to their homes where they only want to talk about India. They ply me with samosas and hungry questions about our recent economic rise.

Usually, I discover that their memories are frozen, and they hide a shame of a fearful past that forced them to leave home. India has, meanwhile, moved on. Their poignant heart-weariness for their lost homeland leaves me in gloom…

… Indian NRIs are bourgeois to the core …their nostalgia is not for an abstract India but for a definite place and time…

...The prize, even of a lovelorn NRI life, seems liberating. There was a time I used to believe that I am a citizen of the world. I used to say that a blade of grass is the same anywhere. Now I think that each blade of grass has its own spot from where it draws its strength. So is a man rooted to a land from where he draws his faith and his life. But there is also a struggle to extricate ourselves from our pasts — from family, obligations and the “curse of history”.”


Artist: Charles Saxon The New Yorker 9 Sept 1961

What’s a girl’s marriageable age, asks SC

This is Times of India’s headline on July 13, 2007.

India’s Supreme court asked this question to the government after listening to a petition!

“The seeds of confusion lie in provisions of Child Marriage (Restraint) Act, 1929, Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the exception to rape in Indian Penal Code and Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.

The Child Marriage (Restraint) Act, 1929, says a child is a person, who if a male, has not completed 21 years of age, and if a female, has not completed 18 years
The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, says a female has to be 18 years before she can legally marry

However, the Indian Penal Code, while defining rape in Section 375, exempts a person from this charge if he has forcible sexual intercourse with his wife who is above 15 years of age

Under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1986, a child means a person who has not completed the age of 16 years and a minor means who has completed the age of 16 years and not completed 18 years

The Indian Majority Act says a person is a major if he/she has completed 18 years
"

Anecdotal evidence from Pune suggests to me that girls, even from middle and upper-middle class, get married early. I wonder why. Is it because they are reaching puberty early? Don't they wish to become economically independent before they say-'I Do'?

Earlier, I used to see few qualified and/or good looking girls who never married because they had financial responsibility at home and/or they did not meet some one suitable and/or they were pursuing a career goal.

Not any more. Now I see such women only in politics. Mayawati, Jaylalita, Mamta Banerjee etc.

I thought we had come a long way away from the times of Vasant Sarwate’s वसंत सरवटे picture below where a girl is asking her friend: “you say you have enrolled in a college, couldn’t arrange it this year too,is it…”



Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे (Source- “Khada Maraycha Jhala Tar….!”, Mauj Prakashan, 1963)

The End of Vaccines?

The last chief of the Maratha Confederacy, Pune-based debaucherous Baji Rao II (1775-1851) has gone down in the history as one of the first high profile person in India to get vaccinated (with golden needle?) against smallpox. The British doctor was paid Rs. 2,000 in 1807 for administering it! (Source- “Peshvekalin Maharashtra” by Vasudev Krishna Bhave)

During my childhood (almost more than 150 years after the royal insertion above), the only vaccination we knew was still only against smallpox. First such exercise has left two big marks at the top of my left arm.My son has been administered tens of vaccinations against plethora of ailments such as measles, diphtheria, and polio etc. The Indian government runs high profile polio vaccination campaigns using Hindi film celebrities

But of late vaccines seem be generating one controversy or the other.

Recently,while in India Dr. Atul Gawande told Outlook magazine (Jul 09, 2007) :”…. In order to eliminate polio, or 25 years ago to eliminate smallpox, you start out with a problem that is endemic everywhere. Investing the public dollar in such programmes makes a lot of sense because you have millions of people at risk. But in order to get from a few hundred cases of polio, which is where we are today, to having zero cases, you have to spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And then people start to say—why should we spend all this money here, when you can take care of a malaria problem that affects millions?”

Laura H. Kahn writes in “The End of Vaccines?” for “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 13 July 2007”:
“….The latest vaccine controversy is the concern that vaccines containing thimerosal, particularly the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine cause autism…
Around 5,000 parents are suing the vaccine manufacturers because they believe that the vaccines caused their child's autism. If the plaintiffs win, it could have a profound impact on the availability of vaccines in the future.

Even without the lawsuit, the supply of vaccines has been dwindling. According to the 2003 Institute of Medicine report, "Financing Vaccines in the 21st Century," the number of vaccine manufacturers has decreased from 25 to 5 companies over the last 30 years. This trend developed because vaccines frequently generate lower revenues than drugs and not all insurance plans include them. In other words, the vaccine production and distribution infrastructure is crumbling, and shortages are occurring. If this lawsuit succeeds, there is a good chance that no one will remain in the vaccine business. It has been easy to forget what life was like before vaccines. Untold numbers of people suffered and died from infectious diseases that can now be prevented. It would be a tragedy if we return to that era.“

Do you know what life was before vaccines? Check the picture below...




Artist : Whitney Darrow,Jr. The New Yorker 22 Apr 1933

Europe- from Jurassic Park to Disneyland?

European Union completed 50 years in 2007.

What next for Europe?

Walter Laqueur has recently written a book titled “The Last Days of Europe, Epitaph for an Old Continent”. It says:
“Given the shrinking of its population, it is possible that Europe, or at least considerable parts of it, will turn into a cultural theme park, a kind of Disneyland on a level of a certain sophistication for well-to-do visitors from China and India…..What appears impossible is that the 21st century will be the European century, as some observers, mainly in the United States, claimed even a few years ago.”

I really hope it becomes benign Disneyland.

Europe inflicted unprecedented pain on world through its empires and wars until mid-20th century. White European man has arguably been the cruelest beast to walk upon this planet.

For better part of recent human history, Europe sure looked like another well known theme park- Jurassic Park gone awry.


Artist: Patrick Chappatte March 22, 2007 http://www.globecartoon.com/

The wealthy always take what they want

FT has publihsed a review of Joe Studwell’s book “Asian Godfathers”. by Victor Mallet .

Nothing about businessmen these days surprise me but it still made me shriek. Sample this:

“The first and most fundamental myth he explodes in this tour d’horizon of the billionaire businessmen of Hong Kong and south-east Asia is the self-serving notion that the godfathers were in some way responsible for high economic growth in the run-up to the 1997 financial crisis and for the recovery thereafter…

But his myth-busting is as merciless as it is enlightening. Does Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man, work as hard as the myth of the toiling Chinese tycoon suggests? Yes, if you count playing golf, arriving at the office at 10am, checking the press to see if anyone has said anything nasty about you, holding a business lunch and having a massage or two as hard work…

he puts the tycoons firmly in the context of contemporary Asian politics, arguing the wealthy have merely taken advantage of the lamentable failure of the region’s politicians to regulate economies for the benefit of society as a whole.The disadvantaged are not only the labourers on low wages but also the middle classes, punished by high costs for cartel-provided goods and often cheated of their share of profits if they are foolish enough to invest as minority shareholders in godfather- controlled listed companies.”

Read that again….. the wealthy have merely taken advantage of the lamentable failure of the region’s politicians to regulate economies for the benefit of society as a whole…..

Isn’t this true of India as much as any other country in the region? Was even Mahatma Gandhi manipulated by Birlas and Bajajs and other Khadi wearing tycoons?

Based on Indivar Kamtekar’s State and Class in India, 1939-45, a harsher indictment of the Indian business class was presented by SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR in his August 2003 Times of India article “Independence & the Bengal famine”.

“…In Britain, the upper classes sacrificed much for the war effort and there was social levelling. But in India, the propertied classes benefited enormously from the war, while casual labourers suffered terribly. The Raj needed to harness the Indian upper classes for the war effort, and so pampered them while placing crushing burdens on the poor. The Bengal Famine was an outcome of this arrangement…

…. Above all, the business class flourished. The war 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! But the very scarcity that helped the propertied classes hit casual labourers. It also hit pensioners and others on a fixed income. The real wages of factory workers declined 30% between 1939 and 1943. By contrast, British real wages rose 49%, a levelling up. The rural landless in India were the worst hit. They had neither access to the new urban jobs or rationed urban supplies. Ranging from a quarter of the rural population in Bengal to over half in Madras, they bore the brunt of spiralling prices…

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.”


Artist: William Steig The New Yorker 2 July 1960

Was CIA behind all of India’s problems?

That is what Mrs. India Gandhi had us believe in 1970s. Elite institutions were supposed to be infiltrated by CIA agents.

For example, a few Marathi authors and newspaper editors were rumored to be on CIA’s payroll. “Thanthanpal”- the late Jaywant Dalvi once worked for USIS. I guess he was ‘confirmed’ CIA agent! Ed Fisher’s picture below was no exaggeration at all. Elephant troubles like recent ones in Kerala would have been easily blamed on CIA.

If allegiance to America is a criterion for being a CIA agent, most upper middle-class people in India have always been so because children and close relations of many of them have emigrated to US. They don’t need any extra payment for that!

India Today July 16, 2007 screams “How China Duped Nehru-
Recently declassified CIA documents present an account of China’s gameplan of intrigue and deception that led to the 1962 Sino-India war”
Looks like CIA has lost none of its influence!

Are we going to believe all that CIA tells us? Or the story is important only because it embarrasses Sonia Gandhi- granddaughter-in-law of Nehru? How will we take to another likely headline: “How India duped Pakistan- Recently declassified CIA documents present an account of India’s gameplan of intrigue and deception that led to division of Pakistan in 1971”.


Artist: Ed Fisher The New Yorker 3 Oct 1964

Fire and Pollution Got Invented Together!

Coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is responsible for nearly 40 percent of American emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Although Americans stopped burning coal in their homes in the 1930s, in locomotives in the 1940s, we Indians continued to use them.

We used coal for cooking at home until mid-1970s. I remember how coal in a big gunny bag was delivered (by Shivaji on handcart) and stored. I knew very well how to clean,load and fire a coal sigri. I still miss brinjal, sweet potato and bhakri (jowar/ Sorghum roti) baked on coal fire. Even rice tasted better.

While coal fired food made it to our tongues and hearts, coal fired locomotive made it to our dreams. Although I saw Satyajit Ray’s “Pather Panchali” (1955) much later, we lived the famous scene of the film- children come face to face with the train-many times before. Our favourite place to while away time was Miraj station’s shunting yard. I still smell cocktail of steam and coal fire.

JEFF GOODELL’s "Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future."
“…Coal has a number of virtues as a fuel: it can be shipped via boats and railroads, it's easy to store, and it's easy to burn. But coal's main advantage over other fuels is that it's cheap and plentiful. There are an estimated 1 trillion tons of recoverable coal in the world, by far the largest reserve of fossil fuel left on the planet. And despite a run-up in coal prices in 2004 and 2005, coal is still inexpensive compared to other fuels. In a world starved for energy, the importance of this simple fact cannot be underestimated: the world needs cheap power, and coal can provide it.

In a world that is moving toward energy efficiency, coal is a big loser. Alternative energy guru Amory Lovins estimates that by the time you mine the coal, haul it to the power plant, burn it, and then send the electricity out over the wires to the incandescent bulb in your home, only about 3 percent of the energy contained in a ton of coal is transformed into light. In fact, just the energy wasted by coal plants in America would be enough to power the entire Japanese economy. In effect, America's vast reserve of coal is like a giant carbon anchor slowing down the nation's transition to new sources of energy.

Al Gore was one of the first American politicians to take global warming seriously, and anyone who takes global warming seriously is not a friend of Big Coal. Coal industry executives knew that if Gore was elected, regulations to limit or tax carbon dioxide emissions wouldn't be far behind. So Big Coal threw its money and muscle behind George W. Bush, helping him gain a decisive edge in key industrial states, including West Virginia, a Democratic stronghold that had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in seventy-five years. After the disputed Florida recount, West Virginia's five electoral votes provided the margin that Bush needed to take his seat in the Oval Office. President Bush made good on his debt. Within weeks of taking the oath of office, Bush began staffing regulatory agencies with former coal industry executives and lobbyists.”


Artist: Joseph Farris The New Yorker 14 March 1970

“Sarpa Dosha” of Sachin Tendulkar & H D Deve Gowda and “Manushya Dosha” of Poor Snakes

India’s ex-Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda did a daylong ‘homa’ at his residence on July 4 to ward off ‘sarpa dosha’ reports Times of India July 5,2007.

“The six foot rat snake’s visit to his house on June 15 seems to be haunting him. The fall-out Gowda feels the negative publicity his family has been getting in the last few days must be due to this snake. For the homa, 101 priests along with their family members from Ahobila mutt in Chennai were specially invited.”

Remember another high profile “sarpa dosha” afflicted personality?

On May 8, 2006 , India’s larger-than-life cricketer Sachin Tendulkar performed the 'sarpa samskara seva' at Kukke Sri Subrahmanya Temple , a ritual that took about half-an-hour. He also performed another seva 'ashlesha bali', which is for the general well-being and good health of the player and his family. Spiritual mentor V S Nayak told Times Of India that Tendulkar's ancestors had accidentally killed a cobra but not performed the necessary rituals. This had led to the 'sarpa dosha'. Nayak said the rituals were needed for a person's well-being. He said there was no place other than Subramanya where it could be performed. "Sachin should have performed two more poojas. But due to lack of time, he will perform only these two important sevas," Nayak said.

Others reported: the master blaster's loss of form and injury problems were traced to adverse planetary positions for which corrective rituals took place.

Gowda’s puja was not televised while Tendulkar’s was on almost all news channels.

When I lived in Bangalore, I had witnessed a longer than six foot snake slowly making its way from just outside our gate to somewhere inside the garden, chasing perhaps frogs and rodents. I was spellbound by that glorious site. I did not know I had to do “sarpa dosha” after that.

I wonder if snakes should do “manushya dosha” so that humans turned more sensible.


Artist: E L Shoemaker The New Yorker 28 Oct 1933