Languages that are understood all over the Country

U.R. Ananthamurthy says (India Today, August 20, 2007): “The only two languages that are understood all over the country are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.”

He could as well have added one more- Ganga (Ganges) because he himself touchingly says:
“My grandfather, deeply religious and orthodox, would never have said something like “I am an Indian” in his whole life. Yet India was still an idea, a concept derived mostly from her rivers. When he drew water from our well and poured it over his head he recited a mantra which prayed that the waters of the Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada and Kaveri be present in the well-water of our home and sanctify him… Both globalised, rootless modernity and ferocious, fundamentalist communalism will weaken the Puranic sense of unity that is present among the people of India.”

My son, my wife and I might have stopped chanting names of rivers while bathing but I remember my mother doing it. I think it’s a beautiful tradition.

Business Standard September 04, 2007 says: “The Ganges figures on the list of the world's ten most endangered rivers, according to a report of the World Wide Fund for Nature. But the Ministry of Environment and Forests has claimed in Parliament that the quality of water has improved since 1985, when the first Ganga Action Plan (GAP) was launched… The World Health Organisation says that an estimated 114 towns release waste into the Ganges. The Centre for Science and Environment, which brought out a report on polluted rivers last year, has said the claim does not hold ground because the hardware created under the GAP is inadequate.”

Let us hope the government is right.

Julian Crandall Hollick has recently written a book “Ganga”. Business Standard has reviewed it.
“……how come Indians venerate the Ganga so much and yet seem bent on destroying it with such vigour with their pollution, dams and other acts of the most frightening vandalism?
Hollick has also taken the trouble to speak to many scientists whose views would not otherwise become known to the lay public. They appear to confirm what the godmen have been saying about the Ganga — that, thanks to the amount of dissolved oxygen in it, not to mention other things like its high rate of aeration and its amazing ability to retain dissolved oxygen, it is something of a scientific marvel.”

Do you want to read Hollick’s book?

Artist: Helen E. Hokinson The New Yorker 22 Feb 1947

Obelix: These Archaeology Professors are Crazy!

Obelix, my most favourite 'Asterix’ character would certainly say this after reading what Asian Age September 3, 2007 reports:

“ "What we have found here proves that the Gauls were much more civilised than we thought," archaeology professor Matthieu Poux, who is heading the dig, told the Sunday Telegraph. "Until now Gauls for the French were people who lived in huts among the trees, frightening people. Parents will threaten to send their children to the Gauls if they did not go to sleep. But we have discovered large buildings and public spaces which prove there were Gauls of considerable social standing," he added.

Making a case for revision of the image of the Gauls in the comic book series, Poux is quoted as saying,"The Asterix albums will need to be completely rewritten, as they are based on the typical image of the Gauls which has been passed down through the centuries, one of a prehistoric man who lives in the forest. " However, there is resistance to the idea of revising the Asterix stories to reflect the new historical findings.”

Who has not been seduced by R K Narayan’s Malgudi,a South Indian village? Well, we all know most Indian villages are hellholes for the poor and the Dalits, far from romantic Malgudi.

Graham Greene created perhaps imaginary Greeneland full of tormented characters.

And finally, Springfield. A O Scott recently (NYT July 27,2007) wrote: ‘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.” ‘. Where is Springfield on the map?

It doesn’t matter.

Asterix literature- perhaps based on fiction- needs no revision. Let us remember that Goscinny and Uderzo never gave "the village we know so well" a name.


Artist: Goscinny and Uderzo

Hope when Celebs Dress Down, they don’t meet a Gunman

When I read history of British occupation of India, “jail” keeps popping up. Tilak, Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Nehrus, Azad and many, many more. Their lives seem to be revolving around jails.

What did people who visited them wear? Histories seem to be silent.

Year 2007 seems to be a throw back to the old times. Jails are back in news- on front pages, prime time news and live television.

Times of India August 25, 2007 reports: "The Supreme Court on Friday saved former actor Monica Bedi, recently acquitted in a passport forgery case, from embarrassment by directing the information and broadcasting ministry to stop TV channels from telecasting her photographs taken secretly in a bathroom in Bhopal jail."

Celebrities are inside jails and visiting jails.

Asian Age August 31, 2007 reports: “Celebs dress down for jail visits, Stars and their family adopt a de-glam look for court and jail visits”.

A dress designer says: “I believe Katrina (Kaif) was appropriately dressed in a tunic and jeans because it projected a fusion look without appearing dowdy. Even Priya’s (Dutt) choice of fabric-Khadi was apt since she is a politician. But instead of wearing flowing kurtis, these ladies could have opted for simple but well-cut ones where they look chic- after all they are celebs and everyone’s eyes are going to be on them…

When item queen Rakhi Sawant made her recent unsuccessful trip to the Mumbai prison, the otherwise scantily clad actress was dressed soberly fully covered, and even had her spectacles on”

I hope when celebs dress down, they don’t meet a gunman…



Artist: Peter Arno The New Yorker September 20, 1947

A Barber who Shaves you in Silence, without Drawing a Word from your Mouth or sharing any Gossip, and Cursing no one, is not a Barber at all

Guardian September 1, 2007 has reviewed Orhan Pamuk's “Other Colours: Essays and a Story”.

I was delighted to read Pamuk dwelling at length on barbers of Istanbul because my own relationship with barbers has been exciting. In early years of growing up, I hated their sight but since then I have always been aroused at the thought of visiting them. Indian films, particularly Marathi ones, have always portrayed barbers in all their colours.

Pamuk says: “…In those days Istanbul boasted many humour magazines, of which Vulture was the most distinguished; because their embroideries of news and enlargements of urban myths offered the fullest expression of this spirit of resistance, they were available in all barber shops of my childhood. Today, there is always a television blaring, drowning out older channels of communication and so greatly reducing the power of gossip and resistance in the city's coffee houses and barber shops; it should not come as a surprise that, with the advent of television, the golden age of Istanbul's humour magazines, which once enjoyed a combined circulation close to a million, also came to an end. (Years later, when I went to a barber shop in New York and saw that the men waiting to be served were given not a humour magazine but a copy of Playboy, I was not terribly surprised.) …….

When I was a boy waiting my turn at the barber shop, flicking through the pages of Vulture, stopping now and again to study locally drawn caricatures of citizens aghast at the prices of things, enjoying jokes about bosses and their secretaries, stories by the popular humorist Aziz Nesin, and cartoons lifted from western magazines, my ears were always alert to the conversations around me. Of course the topic discussed at the greatest length was football and the football pools. Some, like Toto, the head barber, would, as he moved among the three customers in the three chairs, offer up his thoughts on boxing or the horses, which he played from time to time. His barber shop, which bore the fanciful name Venus, was at the end of the passageway across the street from our house in Nisantasi. Toto was a tired and sulky man with white hair, and the other of the two older owners was irritable and bald, while the third owner was in his 40s and sported a thin Douglas Fairbanks moustache. I remember he was less interested in chatting with his customers about high prices, new shops in the neighbourhood, singers and stars of the day or domestic politics than he was in discussing international affairs and the state of the world…

… Once, after a customer had had his shave, taken off his apron, allowed the boy to comb his hair, given out his tips, and left the shop, the Fairbanks moustache-sporting owner, who had shown him such courtesy and deference only moments earlier, began to curse this man's mother and his wife: this was how I discovered that the adult world was populated by duplicitous types whose anger was deeper than anything I had known in my child's world. At the barber shops of my childhood, they used scissors, huge clippers they would angrily toss away when they didn't cut well, combs, cotton balls to keep hair out of the ears, cologne, powder and, for the grown-ups, cutthroat razors, shaving cream, shaving combs and white aprons. Today, apart from a handful of electric appliances - like the hair dryer - the tools have not changed much, and this must remind us that though Istanbul writers have never recorded their traditions, these barbers (who have been using these tools for centuries, gossiping as they work) must have been speaking in the same way for just as long…

Barbers also performed circumcisions and other small surgical procedures, some in their coffee houses and others in separate establishments: this gave them a central importance in Istanbul society..

That was when I understood that a barber who shaves you in silence, without drawing a word from your mouth or sharing any neighbourhood or political gossip, and cursing no one, is not a barber at all.“

At Miraj, until I turned nine or ten, Gangaram Gaikwad would visit our home to give us a crew cut. Later it was our turn to visit him once a month. Gangaram was a dapper looking young man who looked less of a barber and more of a photographer or a tailor. Gangaram’s shop, run jointly with his grim looking elder brother (he looked like a guy on the left in picture below), used to be always crowded and, even if it wasn’t, elders always jumped the queue to push us back. I remember some times it used to take hours to get the job done.

But all along Gangaram never stopped smiling, Radio Ceylon hummed and local gossip sizzled. I remember the late Vasant Pawar’s (one of the most talented music director of Marathi film industry who died young) daughter used to frequent the place to chat up with Gaikwad brothers and occasionally play cards.. 

For our monthly visit, we were incentivised with a rupee or two to buy peanuts for our return journey but I guess the real incentive was spending time at Gangaram’s shop, listening to adult gossip!


Atist: Frank Modell The New Yorker August 27, 1960

Just One less Made-in-China thing?

Reuters reported on August 29, 2007:
“Sand storms in northwest China are reducing sections of Great Wall to mounds of dirt and may cause them to disappear in about 20 years, state media said on Wednesday.

The Great Wall, which was chosen last month as top of the new seven wonders of the world, snakes its way across more than 6,400 km (3,980 miles) and receives an estimated 10 million visitors a year.

More than 60 km of the wall in Minqin county in Gansu province, built in the Han Dynasty which lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD, had been rapidly disappearing……….

The Great Wall, which the United Nations listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987, has been rebuilt many times through the centuries, and many sections of it have suffered serious damage from weather erosion and human destruction.”

Death of dinos or a “man-made” destruction, following lines of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” always come to my mind.

“ My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”


Artist: Michael Shaw The New Yorker February 16, 2004

Were we Bean Counters even before Wheat Domesticated us?

Wheat prices have been on the boil for a while now. Since March 31 this year, they are up by almost 52% in international markets.

Business Standard (August 28, 2007) has a headline: “Wheat prices jump to all-time high”. A day later it changed to: “Wheat may rise 15% by Diwali” with a subtext “India has to pay a heavy price as govt bungles on imports”.

Wheat is reigning supreme. Thanks to both shortages and rampant speculation. Much like crude oil.

Richard Manning wrote “Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization” in year 2004.

Manning claims (Atlantic Unbound | April 1, 2004) : “… tribes—particularly hunter-gatherer tribes—live in a way that is fundamentally sustainable, whereas the social system that developed with the advent of agriculture has spawned inequality and famine, and has had an immense environmental impact in a period of time (about 10,000 years) that pales in comparison to the history of human life on the planet (about 4 million years)…

One view is to say that all the damage we see on the planet is the result of our numbers, and of human nature—and that agriculture is the worst symptom of the human condition, because it has the greatest impact on the planet. In this analysis, we don't blame agriculture—we blame humans.

But I don't think that's the full explanation. This gets a lot richer when you look at co-evolution: it's not just human genes at work here. It's wheat genes and corn genes—and how they have an influence on us. They took advantage of our ability to travel, our inventiveness, our ability to use tools, to live in a broad number of environments, and our huge need for carbohydrates. Because of our brains' ability, we were able to spread not only our genes, but wheat's genes as well. That's why I make the argument that you have to look at this in terms of wheat domesticating us, too. That co-evolutionary process between humans and our primary food crops is what created the agriculture we see today….

The biggest problem with agriculture—and civilization—seems to be the surplus it creates....

Since civilization began, surplus has been with us. A kind of "blind need for excess" has been driving our culture in exactly the wrong direction. It creates stratified societies. The CEO of a corporation makes a thousand times more than one of his workers. That kind of disparity doesn't exist in any other type of species. And that would suggest that we haven't gotten any better at handling surplus—in fact we've gotten worse at it.

Dealing with surplus is a difficult task…”

Yes indeed and that’s why we need bean counters, accountants.

But the question before us is: Did all this start even before agriculture?


Artist: Sam Gross The New Yorker January 11, 1993

The Clock of the Long Now promises to teach us to Wait for the Cuckoo to emerge

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth.

It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis.
"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

Greatness like the cuckoo does not come often.

Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, and Zoroaster were all present in 5th century BC. No single person probably met all of them-except in Gore Vidal’s “Creation”- but they sure inhaled the same air together.

Shakespeare, Cervantes and Tukaram created the greatest literature of their respective languages-English, Spanish, and Marathi- in 17th century.

We need patience to wait for the cuckoo to arrive. We use word “great” so easily because we have lost the sense of long. Let us face it. In our short life we may never come across new greatness in most fields of our civilization. And even if we think we have it amongst us, time may prove us silly.

The Clock of the Long Now promises to teach us to wait for the cuckoo..





Artist: Mike Luckovich

Bring on Bambooque of Avadh Punch because we still are "England Returned, newly-made gentleman & Noisy Jee-Huzoors"

The Economist ((Oct 28th 2004) said:
"In the 1830s, Lord Thomas Macaulay was a member of the British Supreme Council in India. His comments on Indian culture and scholarship still rankle. “The whole native literature of India and Arabia,” he asserted with the confidence of one unable to read any of it, was worth but a single European library shelf. Few Indians would want to stick up for this supercilious English xenophobe."

One can understand imperial arrogance at the height of the empire.

But what about we ‘literate’ natives? Do we think any differently than the Lord? And if so, is that knowledge part of our learning?

Sadly, I don’t think so.

When I read Vinoba Bhave विनोबा भावे, Sane-guruji साने गुरुजी, V K Rajwade वि का राजवाडे, D G Godse द ग गोडसे, Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत, M V Dhond म वा धोंड- all almost exclusive writers in Marathi-I realize that a large part of our native knowledge is not part of any of our curricula.

Therefore, I was not surprised but ashamed to learn TODAY- 71 years after its death and 47 years after my birth-the existence of “Avadh Punch”, a weekly started in Lucknow in 1877, that raised wit and humour to new heights. (Source: Wit and Humour in Colonial North India by Mushirul Hasan)

“The Avadh Punch, a weekly from Lucknow, under the stewardship of its formidable editor, Munshi Sajjad Husain, was published from 16 January 1877 till its closure in 1936. Virtually the first Indian newspaper to publish cartoons as we know them today, it provided a platform for some of the greatest comic writers in Urdu literature.

Inspired by, and like the London Punch (1841-2002), it became a household name notable for dignity, geniality of satire and good taste....

Such was the popularity of the Avadh Punch that, by the end of the 19th century, 70 Punch papers/magazines had appeared from more than a dozen cities across the nation. Each of them reflected mainly on British rule from the experiences of over 300 million Indians with a long and proud past, but who were subjugated by force of arms and by commercial and diplomatic duplicity. Equally lampooned were those who abandoned their own inherited cultural and intellectual legacies in preference of Western models.

Wit and humour as pacifist tools of devastation constituted an apt response to the situation.“

“……Born in Masauli, a tiny village in the Bara Banki district of Uttar Pradesh and educated at Aligarh's M.A.O. College, Wilayat Ali (1885-1918) was a product of that era, though perhaps the least known today. One of the countless young men immersed in the impassioned debates that raged in his youth, he wrote mostly in English under the nom de plume "Bambooque". Reflecting the political mood of the age — an active, self-confident spirit — his articles eminently represent the period and ensure to them an enduring quality. His clear-cut convictions on a large number of issues mark him out as a writer with robust common sense. That he has strong personal convictions adds to the charm and force of his writing.

Why was he different from others? In plain and simple terms, he mocked at British rule and ridiculed it in skits and sketches, while many of his contemporary activists held forth from public platforms. His political pursuits were serious, and yet their expression was humorous and satirical. True, he was neither the greatest master of English prose to spring from his community, nor was he expected to generate a large following as a journalist. What he did remarkably well was to stimulate the imagination of his readers in Comrade, the most popular newspaper during his lifetime. And this he did not only in special cases where minds similarly attuned used his articles creatively but also amongst the widest circle of his readership. He did not write much in Urdu, but the few essays that he published demonstrated the skill to express the nuances of a modern mind and sensibility.

…he ridiculed the loyalists who exercised a restraining hand on the Muslim League activists, and made roaring fun of the mongrel culture that had evolved in India under British rule. In much the same vein, the articles published in Awadh Punch had derided the "newly-made gentleman" and their new-fangled ways in a unique and original style.

….Bambooque followed this golden rule. As a result, his approach is patient and fair, his outlook sombre. He was a good observer and writer who learned much from what he saw.

In his gallery of caricatures are the British who brought with them imperialistic arrogance and a powerful sense of cultural superiority. He described the "Title-Hunting" association of "Noisy Jee-Huzoors", the "gaudy survivals of a half-forgotten past, those living anachronisms who have made Oudh." He observed the "England Returned Barrister" desperately aping the sahibs in manners and speech, and pretending to have forgotten his native tongue during his brief stay in England. He describes the "England-Returned" as "the personification of false hopes, the embodiment of extravagant expectations and the incarnation of utterly vain delusions."

Specimens of the Baboo culture in India — from the patwari to the deputy collector and the honorary magistrate — are comic both in their servility to their white superiors and their arrogance towards the common people. Their pliancy, as indeed their sense of superiority, received a great number of attractive illustrations at Bambooque's hand. "The Hon'rary Magistrate", he jibes in one of his columns, "is the apotheosis of intellectual inanity, and an official recognition of native imbecility." What the author is saying is that if a man occupies an important position he incurs a responsibility, and is accountable to the people for his public conduct.

Read, furthermore, the sarcasm poured on the "Natural Leader", the indictment of politicians, and their depreciation. They are portrayed as self-seeking, lacking in courage, accurate judgement, clear expression, and the gift of social compunction and of equanimity. Their public pronouncements abound in platitudes and well-worn expressions, and their public conduct fails to meet the expectations of those they are expected to serve. In short, the politicians seeking official patronage fail to create an impression upon the public mind owing to their defiance of the elementary counsels of good sense. Bambooque's criticism is sharp and pungent, but without being limited to the leader. He extends his criticism to the patronage system developed by the colonial bureaucracy. “

Barbie Defaults on Her Mortgage for Docking Station

LOUISE STORY’s “Barbie Gets Another Accessory: An MP3 Player and More Stuff on Her Web Site” (NYT July 23, 2007) announces: “…Barbie has a docking station.”

Can she hang on to it in these times of “sub-prime crisis”?




D Murali says in Business Line (August 19, 2007):”…. Now, what are the lessons from the crisis? This sub-prime mess raises two very important issues. One, the way banks lend money willy-nilly to people without properly checking their credentials; and two, the absolutely pathetic rating process used by the rating agencies. While both are hazardous to the system, the latter raises issues of moral hazard because the rating agencies profited massively from rating these residential mortgage backed securities.”

Allan Sloan:: “…..It’s really amazing: Most of the loans to substandard creditors borrowing 100 percent of the purchase price of homes they couldn’t afford were rated the same as GE and the federal government. That makes no sense. But the money rolled in, and Wall Street — by which I mean the world’s biggest and most important financial institutions — didn’t care about the real world or ask any questions. It was too busy making money, and cashing bonus checks generated by subprime-mortgage profits…..”

Don’t we all know how banks in India have pestered us for last few years to take any loan from them?

Poor Barbie. She was tempted to take the loan for her brand new docking station. Now she finds barbarians at the gate to repossess her new asset!

"BAD NEWS, HONEY, I'M AFRAID BARBIE DEFAULTED ON HER MORTGAGE. THIS MAN IS HERE FROM THE BANK TO FORECLOSE ON THE DREAM HOUSE"

Published : Asian Age August 20, 2007

Why women button their clothes from the left, and men from the right?

Until I read review of Robert H. Frank's book "The Economic Naturalist" in July 2007, I had not even noticed that women button their clothes from the left, and men from the right! Let alone knowing the reason.

Surprise, surprise neither my wife.

By the way, I did not know this either- "bars give away peanuts and sell water because peanuts are very salty and make people thirsty." Water or booze?

"Take the positioning of buttons on clothes. Why are they on the right for men, and the left for women, especially since, for the 90 percent of the population who are right-handed, it's much easier to do up buttons from the right? It's because when buttons were introduced in the 17th century, they were affordable only by the wealthy. As rich men then dressed themselves, they did so from the right; whereas wealthy women were dressed by servants, who preferred to button them up from the left. The custom continues today, even though fewer women are dressed by servants, because there has been no incentive for the fashion industry to change it."

In Indian art-books and movies-some of the most sensual situations are when a woman asks a man to help her with wearing of a blouse, which typically has buttons on the back, or when she requests him to fasten necklace's hook on the back of her neck.


Artist : Garrett Price The New Yorker 22 Nov 1947