Problem of the Night Before i-pill

Watching TV in India with kids is getting trickier by the day.

You may avoid programming having steamy sex scenes of human beings (can’t avoid those of animals though thanks to NG and Animal Planet) but what about ad spots during even live coverage of cricket matches?

For a while now, we have been watching an advertisement of i-pill, a single-pill emergency contraceptive.

I think availability of such a pill as an over the counter drug would have made R D Karve र धों कर्वे very happy.

Now even Karve would have no solution for a problem below!


Artist: Marisa Acocella Marchetto The New Yorker 26 July 1999

Not with a Whimper but a Bang

T S Eliot wrote “The Hollow Men” in 1925.

The poem ends with following much quoted and copied words:

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

This blog has already visited starless sky on October 2, 2007. Read it here
I Should Learn to Look at an Empty Sky unless……..

(Please note I took some liberties with that post because “What will the scientists of the future see as they peer into the skies 100 billion years from now? Without telescopes, they will see pretty much what we see today: the stars of our galaxy. The largest and brightest stars will have burned up their nuclear fuel, but plenty of smaller stars will still light up the night sky. The big difference will occur when these future scientists build telescopes capable of detecting galaxies outside our own. They won’t see any!”)

Scientific American India March 2008 has cover story: “The End of Cosmology”.

Authors Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer claim:
“…Thus, observers of the future are likely to predict that the universe ultimately ends with a localized big crunch, rather than the eternal expansion that the cosmological constant produces. Instead of a whimper, their limited universe will end with a bang…”

Ironically, according to Wikipedia, when asked if he would write these lines again, Eliot said ‘no’:

“One reason is that while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone's mind. Another is that he is not sure the world will end with either…”



100 billion years in the future |
Successor to the Milky Way is a ball-like supergalaxy. Earth floats forlornly through its distant outskirts. Other galaxies, moving away from us faster than light, have disappeared from view.

Picture courtesy: Scientific American

IPL is Not Rape of Cricket but a Promise of Million Mutinies

Vinod Mehta has called IPL and/or its auction of cricketers “the rape of cricket”. (Outlook March 10, 2008).

“…The BCCI is a destructive body determined to kill cricket. If anyone is planning a coup d’etat against it, count me in. The present lot must be removed before they inflict further damage. Meanwhile, all cricket lovers must hope the IPL is a complete and total flop. And the people who conjured up this dreadful scheme are badly burned.”

National leaders of all hue from Gurudas Dasgupta to Bal Thackeray via Sharad Yadav have already lambasted IPL, some of them calling for its ban.

I disagree with all of them as far as IPL is concerned.

While growing up, I played and watched gulli sports from kabaddi to cricket and I strongly feel that people should get an opportunity to play/participate in a sport locally. And those who do should make reasonable living out of the same.

Fan like me should get an opportunity to see a sporting action on a local ground and not just on TV. I have always enjoyed watching a gulli game far more than the one on TV.

IPL and ICL are those opportunities.

Many people have called auction of the players vulgar.

If it’s so, most other things should also be called vulgar: Highly educated people changing three jobs in two days for more money, film stars charging obscene money to inaugurate shops, TV serials propagating pseudosciences, citizens changing nationality like soiled clothes, goons lynching poor labourers because they don’t speak a particular language, society at large that holds the poor criminally responsible for their position, news media that will catastrophize anything they can, people that worry about their own children but don’t feel hurt or pained when they see others’ children exploited or treated badly…

I feel IPL is likely to give huge opportunity to young people from weaker sections of Indian society to make it big. It is a promising tool to promote social mobility in India. Today BCCI may be controlling this localization of Indian cricket but tomorrow may throw a lot of surprises at it.

If a boy enjoys his cricket, is prepared to work hard for it, cannot afford expensive higher education, with a bit of luck, he needn’t study his textbooks.

Therefore, following picture is no exaggeration.


Artist : R K Laxman Times of India February 25, 2008

Who's Going to Plunge Us into Fascism Today?

There are number of things that bother me about today’s Maharashtra.

Following is the most disturbing.

PRAFUL BIDWAI wrote in Frontline March 14, 2008:

“…not a single major leader of Maharashtra – from Deshmukh to the Nationalist Congress Party’s Sharad Pawar, from State Congress chief Prabha Rau to Home Minister R.R. Patil – has condemned Raj Thackeray’s campaign of crass chauvinism or his goon tactics. They have not uttered a word against the intimidation and beating up of scores of working people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They have been silent on the MNS’ glorification of all that is Marathi and its nauseating condemnation of the culture of the north. Although the progressive and secular intelligentsia has spoken out, the politicians’ silence is revealing.

The top leadership of the United Progressive Alliance too has chosen to refrain from deploring the MNS’ hate campaign. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken to frequent exhortations to crush and eradicate “the virus” of “left extremism” (naxalites). But not once has he spoken in a similar vein against right extremism, which has caused far greater destruction to this society and posed a much more virulent challenge to its constitutional-democratic order. Leave alone “crush” the forces of vicious nativism and xenophobia such as the MNS and Shiv Sena, Manmohan Singh does not even talk of restraining, discouraging or combating them. About his expression of solidarity with the terrorised victims of the recent hate campaign, the less said the better.

This is creating a peculiar polarisation along narrow ethnic-linguistic lines…”

Jonah Goldberg defines fascism as:

“It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.”

Please note words- uniformity of thought and action and ominous warning- “Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.”

Artist: Perry Barlow The New Yorker 14 September 1940

India’s Present-day Society Lacks the Desire to See Every Child at School

Prof. Krishna Kumar, Director of the NCERT was interviewed by Frontline dated March 14, 2008.

“….There is plenty of evidence to say that India’s present-day society lacks the desire to see every child at school…

… Education is a long-term investment. To make such an investment generously, one needs faith in the future and the hope that we will get there. For appropriate investments in education we also need socio-political imagination and a social consensus on certain basic ideas, such as the idea that every child matters. In our country such a consensus has yet to emerge. Far too many people still believe that only the so-called bright or smart children matter and deserve education of the best quality.

Also, a lot of people perceive education as a private concern, in the sense that they worry about their own children but don’t feel hurt or pained when they see others’ children exploited or treated badly. In such a social ethos, any government will have difficulty in pushing radical educational reforms…

… In every area, from science and maths to social science and language children must be given a space to reflect, ask questions, wonder, and probe sources of knowledge outside the textbook…

If progress in examination reform has been slow, the case of teacher education is worse. The sector is facing a grim situation, with rampant commercialisation on the one hand and a lifeless, uninspiring B.Ed. curriculum on the other…

… Teaching profession is in a deep crisis today and in certain parts of the country it is in a shambles, with unqualified, part-time para-teachers serving in place of professionally committed teachers…

… We live in a very divided society. People just defend themselves and their own interests in everything. [Points to bottled water on the table.] We even drink different kinds of water, and education is like that. It all depends on class, caste, gender. For at least two decades there has been a high value placed on education even by the poorest. But the system has not evolved to the point where their children get the attention they deserve.”

I, me, myself culture of India's non-poor.....


'Look, we've discussed all this. If it gets the kids into a decent school, it's worth it...'
The Spectator 2008

Nana Patekar नाना पाटेकर, Are You Qualified To Speak on These Matters?

“Lisa: While I was gone I got some really good advice from Paul and Linda McCartney.
Homer: Rock stars. Is there anything they don't know?”

[3F03] “The Simpsons” “Lisa the Vegetarian” by David S. Cohen Directed by Mark Kirkland Production code: 3F03 Original airdate in N.A.: 15-Oct-95

Pudhari पुढारी on March 3, 2008 reported:
” Nana Patekar supports Raj Thackeray राज ठाकरे.”

There is no problem with that.

Problem is with the reasoning Mr. Patekar has given for his action: “If son of the soil is not acceptable, why the formation of linguistic states and why we need domicile certificate.”

To equate the language struggles of the 1950s with the current agitation- targeting lowly paid, largely poor North Indians- is a cruel joke.

The current agitation reminded me of “The Hungry Tide: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh” based on a true story of a group of poor immigrants to Sunderbans who in the name of environment protection are chased away by Bengali bhadralok. Another example is the slaughter of poor North Indian immigrant workers by militants in Assam.

No doubt language is the first and fundamental element of human identity. But the goals of the language struggles of the 1950s were not narrow, short sighted and hence they didn’t target only one group of minorities. Those struggles therefore remain, in terms of social composition, popular participation, and moral fervour, perhaps the most significant social movements of independent India.

While attacking bhadralok Amartya Sen’s book “The Argumentative Indian” for its omission of language as a theme, Ramachandra Guha observed:

‘…The most striking omission, in terms of theme, is that of language, a matter of vital importance to India and Indians. (The word does not rate an entry in what is a fairly extensive index.) Whether or not premodern India was “multicultural”, as Sen claims, it was certainly multilingual. From the Mughals in the north to the Nayakas in the deep south, royal courts featured multiple languages of discourse. Some of the greatest medieval poets and composers wrote their songs and verses in three or four tongues. At least in the towns, the common folk were also conversant with several languages.

Of course, across vast stretches, and particularly in the countryside, a particular language predominated. But no one language held sway across the subcontinent. It was as a bow to the massively multi-lingual character of the nation-in-the-making that the Congress, under Gandhi’s lead, decided to form provincial committees by linguistic zone. From the 1920s, the Congress PCCs were based on language – Oriya, Marathi, Kannada, etc – with their respective jurisdictions being at odds with (or cutting across) the provincial boundaries of British India. When independence came, the Congress leadership reneged on the promise to form new states based on language. The Congress rank-and-file revolted, taking the masses and activists of other parties with them. Across the country, popular movements broke out calling for the formation of linguistic states. Bowing to public opinion, Nehru conceded the demand.

The language struggles of the 1950s remain, in terms of social composition, popular participation, and moral fervour, perhaps the most significant social movements of independent India…

…When, in 1962, the scientist J B S Haldane told an American journalist that he happened to be “proud of being a citizen of India, which is a lot more diverse than Europe, let alone the US, USSR, or China, and thus a better model for a possible world organisation”, he had its linguistic diversity principally in mind, along with its diversity of religions, cultures, diets, apparel, etc.

…To say that language is constitutive of human identity would be an underestimation; it is the first and fundamental element of human identity. Pakistan broke up, and Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unending civil war, because its rulers and thinkers disregarded this fact. That India stays together as a multilingual state is a tribute to its traditions of heterodoxy and pluralism, as well as to its political democracy, where at least this particular set of disputes was finally settled by reasoned argument and negotiated compromise…”

Can we please have "reasoned argument and negotiated compromise" instead of loud, hysteric dialogues of a bad jingoistic Hindi film?

Pity No N S Phadke ना सी फडके to Describe New Cricket Record

On March 1, 2008, South African opening batsmen Graeme Smith and Neil McKenzie broke the Test world record for the best opening partnership set by Indian openers Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy on January 7, 1956. It was the first ever Test series between India and New Zealand.

Brief scores:

India (1st innings): 537-3 decl (M H Mankad 231, P Roy 173, P R Umrigar 79*)
New Zealand (1st innings): 209 all out (B Sutcliffe 47, S P Gupte 5-72)
New Zealand (2nd innings): 219 all out (J R Reid 63, J G Leggat 61, S P Gupte 4-73, M H Mankad 4-65)
Result: India won by an innings and 109 runs

I had a lesson in my school text based on Phadke's masterly essay describing Mankad-Roy's record breaking achievement of 1956. Reading it was such a thrill.

N S Phadke ना सी फडके (1894-1978)- one of the highest paid Marathi authors- was a lousy novelist for my taste.

But Phadke was a pioneer when it came to writing in Marathi on cricket. See a related post here.

I also enjoy reading many of his short essays on various subjects. His essay on Bal Gandharva (बालगंधर्व) is also masterly.

Phadke once imagined that the 'time-man' कालपुरुष was ferrying all books in a boat with a limited carrying capacity. As time goes by and new books keep loading, the time-man is forced to discard books of lesser quality. Phadke obviously hoped that the time-man would keep a few of his books on board.

I am afraid all of Phadke's novels have now probably been thrown out by Kalpurush! Read Vilas Sarang's essay in Marathi on this here.

Almost none of his books has survived the scrutiny of either popularity over long time, like Sane Guruji's Shyamchi Aai (श्यामची आई ), or critical taste.

[Phadke would hate this comparison with Sane Guruji because he has written scornfully about Guruji's literature. See साने गुरूजी पुनर्मूल्यांकन, संपादक: भालचंद्र नेमाडे, १९९९ पृष्ठे: ३७-५७ (Sane Guruji Revaluation, Editor: Bhalchandra Nemade, 1999 Page: 37-57)]


Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy,India v New Zealand, 5th Test, Madras, January , 1956

Scratch it!

Asian Age informed on February 2, 2008: “Scratching does ease the itch you get.”

Big deal. As if I didn’t know this.

Well, what they mean is that scientists now have found reasons why scratching is pleasurable.

In 1978, I was infected with scabies खरूज, king of all skin ailments in India. I got it from my dear friend “Ravya“ R E Bedekar. I very well knew that scabies was contagious but took no precaution. In no time, scabies had spread even to my genitals.

For few days it was still not diagnosed. Home remedies were being tried.
Then I saw our family Ayurvedic doctor – (Dr. Adivrekar). He asked me if I had visited any hooker or, if not, if I wore clothes of someone who did. It was a bad time to receive the diagnosis. My mother had just undergone a major operation and was still in the hospital.

I felt scared.

To get second opinion, I saw our family allopathic doctor (Dr. Sathe) who immediately diagnosed it- to my lasting relief- as scabies and prescribed me a white lotion (I forget its name but will recognize its smell even today) and some tablets. My sister helped me apply the lotion.

Venerable education expert Dr. Chitra Naik- who along with her husband J P Naik have done so much to promote education in India- once told her television interviewer that she always carried skin ointment while traveling to villages because it acted as a passport to a home in rural India where at least one member of a largish household suffered from scabies!

At a global IT giant where I worked, I always admired gall (pun intended!) of a very senior manager who scratched his genitals, in full view of everyone he was talking to, without a care in the world. I was always amused, never angry by his action. I understood his compulsion!


Artist: Peter Arno The New Yorker 13 June 1931

Are Historical Films Inspirational or Just Plain Nuisance?

While talking to Newsweek March 3, 2008, Israeli author Amos Oz said:"...The past doesn't just play a role; it almost dominates this region. People remember too well and too much. Both Jews and Arabs carry deep, dramatic injuries."

Historical Hindi film Jodhaa-Akbar has created a stir in India. On February 27 2008, there was chaos in the town of Sangli. (Of course, I take every report in Indian news media with a big pinch of salt because as Steve Salerno said the mainstream news business is so unaccustomed to dealing with issues at any level of complexity and nuance that they’re wont to oversimplify their story to the point of caricature.)

Supporters of the film ask us to forget the history on which purportedly it is based and just to focus on film’s cinematic values. (I then wonder why use names like Akbar & Jodhaa or Bajirao & Mastani. Why not use Zeenat-Imran or Gangubai-Balwantrao?)

They also say history is never objective and hence should be “used” to further “good causes” like Hindu-Muslim unity.

Prime Minister J L Nehru too probably would subscribe to this view.

"...All of which shows how little Nehru understood India and the communal question which tore it apart. His arrogance and ignorance contributed not a little to the tragedy. During the First World War, socialists were dismayed to find the working class as nationalistic as any other in place of the solidarity which theoreticians accepted. Sixty years after Independence we face not only the communal question but also caste divisions…"

(A.G. NOORANI “Path to Partition: A witness’ account” Frontline, October 19, 2007)

Historian T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर (1895 - 1963) argued that even Mahatma Gandhi didn’t have much use of history. Shejwalkar also wished that Nehru and Gandhi studied Panipat 1761 in any detail instead of him!

(Preface to “Panipat 1761”, 1968)

Inspirational history excites me too. Occasionally it moves me to tears. Amartya Sen is a leading exponent of it.

But does it work and for how long?

While reviewing “GOD’S CRUCIBLE /Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215 “ By David Levering Lewis, ERIC ORMSBY observed:

“…Thus, as Lewis notes, “sumptuary laws required that non-Muslims display badges and that clothing worn by dhimmis be distinguished from that worn by Arabs.” Non-Muslims were not allowed to ride on horseback without a permit, or to bear arms. Moreover, for sound fiscal reasons, conversion to Islam was not warmly encouraged since non-Muslims who converted were no longer required to pay the head tax on which state revenues depended. Though well aware of the overly rosy picture often painted of Muslim Spain, Lewis sometimes accepts it himself. Nowadays, we know all too well that the enforced wearing of badges to signify religious affiliation is hardly a sign of tolerance. That was true in Muslim Spain too…”

So was medieval tolerance, where conversion to Islam was not encouraged, anchored to the state revenues and not to some exalted value system? Even in India?

Reviewing “IDENTITY AND VIOLENCE/ The Illusion of Destiny” By Amartya Sen, Fouad Ajami said:

”… Sen works with the anecdote: His potted history is tailored for interfaith dialogues. He writes of the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who, when forced to emigrate from "an intolerant Europe" in the 12th century, was able to find "a tolerant refuge in the Arab world" in the court of the great Muslim ruler Saladin.

But this will not do as history.

Maimonides, born in 1135, did not flee "Europe" for the "Arab world": He fled his native Córdoba in Spain, which was then in the grip of religious-political terror, choking under the yoke of a Berber Muslim dynasty, the Almohads, that was to snuff out all that remained of the culture of convivencia and made the life of Spain's Jews (and of the free spirits among its Muslims) utter hell. Maimonides and his family fled the fire of the Muslim city-states in the Iberian Peninsula to Morocco and then to Jerusalem. There was darkness and terror in Morocco as well, and Jerusalem was equally inhospitable in the time of the Crusader Kingdom. Deliverance came only in Cairo -- the exception, not the rule, its social peace maintained by the enlightened Saladin…

… Inspirational history can go only so far; it will not bend to Sen's good cheer.”

In an earlier post, I noted how the Nizam’s army slaughtered cows in a temple complex in Maharashtra. I also mentioned how Chitpavan Brahmin chieftains of Maratha army looted Hindu shrines around the same time.

But there is a crucial difference between the two.

To say, Marathas didn’t slaughter pigs in mosques would be very simplistic. But by and large they didn’t disrespect shrines, holy books and women of other religions. Until 1857 at least.

In the eyes of most Hindu readers of Indian history this difference perhaps makes some Muslim rulers evil and their Hindu counterparts – much like today’s politicians- corrupt and incompetent but not evil.

India owes a lot to Sufism. People consider ways of Sufis parallel to the ways of Bhakti saints. Like saints, Sufis are considered other-worldly and hence neutral to the politics of their time. (I would argue that most Bhakti saints were not other worldly at all.)

William Dalrymple claimed: “…Sufis succeeded in bringing together Hindu and Muslim in a movement which spanned the apparently unbridgable gulf separating the two religions. To this day, while Muslims usually predominate at Sufi shrines, you also see huge numbers of Hindus, as well as the odd Sikh and Christian. Here for once you can see religion acting to bring people together, not to divide them. In modern India, Sufism is not something other-worldly so much as a religious force that demonstrably acts as a balm on India's festering religious wounds…”.

Historian Setu Madhavrao Pagdi सेतु माधवराव पगडी, expert in Urdu and Farsi, studied sufism and wrote a book on the subject: सूफी संप्रदाय , तत्वज्ञान आणि कार्य (Sufism – Philosophy and Work) 1953. While acknowledging the debt of great sufi saints, he argued that sufis fully co-operated with the policies of aggressive Muslim rulers. He further said that many sufi shrines- he personally visited them- were built by demolishing Hindu temples.
(Jeevansetu जीवनसेतु, 1969)

With luck inspirational history may help create good cinema like Mughal-E-Azam(1960) but I wonder if it can ever work as a social balm.

Artist: J B Handlesman The New Yorker 26 February 1972

To India Goes the Award for the Most Celebrity Obsessed Culture

I couldn’t watch academy awards function this year after an hour. It got so boring.

I never watch any Indian film award function. At last count there at least are a dozen of them. This year even my wife doesn’t wish to watch any of them. They all look the same...muck like gowns at academy awards function...parade of celebrities. Rate at which Indian media are busy fabricating celebrities is scary.

A. O. SCOTT has written an excellent essay “Are Oscars Worth All This Fuss?”. (NYT February 24, 2008).

“…I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I found myself hoping that the strike (the Writers Guild strike) would shut the Academy Awards down; that for once, in a year of such cinematic bounty and variety, appreciation for the best movies could be liberated from the pomp and tedium of Hollywood spectacle. ..

… So I am not against the Oscars, any more than I’m dismissive of the Salesman of the Year or the Employee of the Month, or opposed to lavish annual trade association conventions for actuaries or ophthalmologists. But I am nonetheless bothered by the disproportionate importance that the Academy Awards have taken on, and by the distorting influence they exercise over the way we make, market and see movies in this country. The Oscars themselves may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is as dangerous as it is ridiculous. ..

… In the past it was frequently safe to assume that any relationship between the Oscars and artistic quality was coincidental. The academy was never supposed to be hip, daring or responsive to what was newest and most risky in the world of cinema. It was just what its name implied: the mainstream, the establishment, the old guard. Sometimes, yes, the best picture prize would actually go to the best picture, but more often the academy’s neglect of a film was a reliable index of its merit. The good judgment not only of critics but, more important, of independent-minded, adventurous moviegoers has traditionally been measured by its distance from the consensus of the movie industry.

And that, it should not be forgotten, is what the Academy Awards represent: the self-assessment of a self-interested, self-involved professional clique…

… In the old days it was more often the opposite: the academy would belatedly gild the lily of commercial success with a shiny finish of ersatz class. This vulgarity was the saving grace of the Oscars. It was not necessary for film lovers to take them seriously or for media outlets to cover them like presidential campaigns, with horse-race reporting, sober analysis and war room spin doctoring. A bit of perspective is needed. The wonderful thing about the Academy Awards is that they are fundamentally trivial. To pretend otherwise is to trivialize movies.”