Our Sharakka Joshi, Kittur Chennamma and their Kannada

As a blue-blooded Western-Maharashtrian I know so little about Marathwada (मराठवाडा)- region that produced Dnyaneshwar (ज्ञानेश्वर), Eknath (एकनाथ) and where Ajanta Caves are located- and Vidarbha (विदर्भ), land of Bhavabhuti (भवभूति)!

It's like a Marathi saying "सिटीपोस्टा पलीकडे पुणे नाही आणि पुण्यापलीकडे महाराष्ट्र नाही!" (There is no Pune beyond City-post and no Maharashtra beyond Pune!).

However, I know a bit about many other parts of India and my most favourite region is North Karnataka, erstwhile 'Bombay Karnataka'.

And it is not just about some of the finest artistic talent of India it produced-Annasaheb Kirloskar, Bhimsen Joshi- I like his spoken Marathi as much as his singing, Kumar Gandharva, Gangubai Hangal, Mallikarjun Mansur, Basavaraj Rajaguru, Sawai Gandharva, G A Kulkarni, Setu Madhavrao Pagdi, Girish Karnad...or places like Badami and Gol Gumbaz...

For sure, it has a lot to do with Sharakka Joshi (शारक्का जोशी), our neighbour in Miraj (मिरज), who pampered us with excellent idlis, dosas, a kind of dadpe-pohe (दडपे-पोहे) and appe (अप्पे), mande (मांडे ) and kadabu (कडबू )...(I didn't much like her Chitranna though)... Not to mention their family's delightful Kannada-Marathi. (When I started reading Gurunath Abaji Kulkarni 'GA', I was already familiar with the format of his language because Sharakka's husband- Gurunath- used to speak the same!)

But probably deeper reason for my affection is well summed up by the late Shankarrao Kirloskar (शंकरराव किर्लोस्कर) writing a letter on his last days in Ghataprabha in Karnataka, away from Pune and Marathi:

"...लोकांचा स्वभाव आपल्याकडच्या पेक्षा सौम्य त्यामुळे मला अगदी घरच्या सारखे वाटते." (...people's nature is milder than our people's and hence I feel totally at home.)

['एक संपादक... / एक लेखिका...' संपादक:डॉ अंजली सोमण, 2009]

As a 13-year old, I was exposed to this 'mildness'.

I have already written about our family's trip in 1974 to North Karnataka here. As trains shut down, we were forced to take state transport buses. As expected the buses became overloaded. There sure was some pushing and shoving but the most common Kannada phrase we heard from our co-passengers was 'Swalp-sari' (स्वल्प-सरी) "move just a little". Almost poetic, like in Japan!

We learnt a few words of Kannada interacting with Sharakka's extended family. In 1981, I thought I was familiar with the language.

Later in the year at IIT Madras hostel 'Alaknanda', when I first heard a bunch of Karnataka guys conversing in Kannada, I was confident that I would get a sense of their topic of discussion.

I did not understand a word! Likely reason: They were from Mysore-Karnataka and were speaking in Mysore-Kannada.

Frontline (September 09, 2011) has published an interview with M.K. Raghavendra, film critic, researcher and author.

It made tragi-comic reading for me.

"...Old Mysore includes Bangalore, Mysore, Kolar, Tumkur, Chitradurga, Shimoga and Hassan but not parts like Bellary and Coorg. The subject matter of Kannada films and the heroes of Kannada popular cinema are always people who come from Old Mysore. It is not possible for a Kannada film hero to have a romance with someone from Raichur or Gulbarga...

...Look at a more recent super-hit film, Mungaru Male [2006]. I think the Kannada hero does not marry the Kodava heroine simply because Coorg is not part of Old Mysore. There were other reasons given in the film, but they were simply unconvincing. It's very similar to Aamir Khan not marrying the white heroine in Rang De Basanti [2006]. You cannot have a romance between somebody from the nation and someone from outside because the nation draws a line around itself.

Similarly, Kannada has to draw a line around the region which is of Old Mysore. Since it draws this line, someone from Coorg will be outside the nation...

...Linguistic reorganisation did not create language unity in the way it was anticipated. I think it is fairly evident in Andhra Pradesh as well when you discuss Telangana. This means that language identity is not as stable as it is made out to be. After all, why is a commercial industry obliged to enlarge the territory of the Kannada nation? But linguistic reorganisation did intend to do this. The demand for linguistic reorganisation did not come from Mysore but from other territories that lay outside Mysore.

Look at the political leaders in Karnataka. Most of them come from Old Mysore. And look at the state of development, north Karnataka is backward when compared with Old Mysore. Even a film like Schoolmaster (1958) – an early classic which challenged caste identity – could not enlarge the Kannada nation..."


Courtesy: THE HINDU ARCHIVES and The Frontline

This beautiful picture is of B. SAROJA DEVI as Kittur Chennamma.

Wiki informs: "Chennamma was born in Kakati, a small village in the wealthy kingdom of Kittur, which stood around 5 km north of Belgaum in Karnataka."

Chennamma, a great Indian whose statue stands at the Indian Parliament Complex in New Delhi, surely spoke North Karnataka dialect of Kannada, the one spoken by our Sharakka, her family and many of the fellow great Indians named in this post.

Most likely she knew some Marathi because she was married to Raja Mallasarja of the Desai marathas family that ruled Kittur which had large number of Marathi-speaking subjects and Kittur was part of Maratha empire for a while.

Rani Chennamma, Artist: unknown, Courtesy: Blog Journeys across Karnataka

So what language do we hear in the movie 'Kittur Chennamma', 1962?

According to M.K. Raghavendra: "...Old Mysore has usurped Kannada cinema, and there is no such pan-Kannada feeling if you look at Kannada cinema. I'll give you a couple of examples to argue my position. Look at Kittur Chennamma [1962], a film about Chennamma, a freedom fighter who led a rebellion against the British in 1824. She came from somewhere near Belgaum, but if you look at the film, you have Chennamma who speaks [the] Mysore [dialect of] Kannada but the treacherous ministers who betray her to the British speak Belgaum Kannada."

(Frontline, August 27-September 09, 2011)

(An anonymous reader of this blog has disputed this claim of Mr. Raghavendra in October 2011. Please read a comment below.)

I am sure Sharakka, 'ordinary' homemaker, watched the film. I wonder if she noticed this glaring contradiction, if there existed one.

And even if she did, I guess, she was too cultured, too tolerant to mention it. A blue-blooded North Kannadiga!

If Anant Pai features, can Vasant Sarwate be far behind?

On Feb 3 2010, I asked on this blog: When will Google Feature Vasant Sarwate Doodle?

I think I was being realistic.

Today Sept 17 2011, Google doodle features Anant Pai on his 82nd birth anniversary.

Read my tribute to Pai-uncle dated Feb 25 2011 here.




Courtesy: Google Inc.

Gautam Rajadhyaksha, A Plastic Surgeon without a Scalpel!

Henri Cartier-Bresson:

“The most difficult for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt”

For last few years, I kept seeing Gautam Rajadhyaksha (गौतम राजाध्यक्ष) quite regularly on TV.

I always thought many (not all) of his subjects went to him (or invited him) to appear more beautiful than they actually felt they were- he was a kind of 'plastic surgeon without a scalpel' for them - or to make a statement to the world that they had now 'arrived'.

They succeeded big time.

He praised most of his high profile subjects. But when Mr. Rajadhyaksha spoke about the late Nutan (नूतन), it was quite different.

I remember reading his statement that you don't require a 'camera angle' for a face like Nutan's. No 'surgery' required there. What praise! No one, I guess, described Nutan's beauty more poignantly than this.

I also remember him describing the shoot of Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan together- when they were supposed to be warring- when all three of them had good fun together.

But looking at Mr. Rajadhyaksha's body of work at the time of his death, I am not sure if he did full justice to his talent.

I have not yet thrown away a few past issues of 'Filmfare' magazine because they feature Mr. Rajadhyaksha's work on his celebrity subjects. Most photo-portraits done by him are hagiographic. And there is not a single image that will haunt me for the rest of my life unlike a couple of images below. They are all glossies in the end. In and out.

"Camus's good looks and sex appeal, wearing a trench coat with upturned collar and the ever-present dangling cigarette"
Artist: Henri Cartier-Bresson

I always thought Mr. Rajadhyaksha's work was commerce first and then art.

I have already quoted Vasant Sarwate writing on Dinanath Dalal:

"...it can be deduced from his writings that despite huge popular and commercial success Dalal wasn't very happy internally...he wanted to pursue only classical art by giving up commercial art entirely...he couldn't quite do it but because of this burning desire his commercial art undoubtedly was touched by class...And it is a great fortune of Marathi literature and art."

Although we too feel fortunate to have enjoyed Mr. Rajadhyaksha's work, did he feel like Mr. Dalal?

Truman Capote once described Mr. Cartier-Bresson who was a big influence on Satyajit Ray as:

"dancing along the pavement like an agitated dragonfly, three Leicas swinging from straps around his neck, a fourth one hugged to his eye: click-click-click (the camera seems a part of his own body) clicking away with joyous intensity . . . "

Mr. Cartier-Bresson photographed artists, writers, politicians, actors, from Matisse and Picasso to Marilyn Monroe; John F Kennedy to Che Guevara; Sartre, Bellow and Pound. Yet many of his photographs have nothing to do with famous people or world events. His gift was to find in everyday situations – a child throwing a ball, a man jumping a puddle – serendipitous visual connections that came together to express something of the experience of being alive. (Liz Jobey, The Guardian)

Did Mr. Rajadhyaksha point his camera at "everyday situations"? Imagine him shooting teeming masses of Mumbai. Would he have left behind a treasure trove like the one by Mr. Cartier-Bresson?

Artist: Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Museum of Modern Art

Shanghai, 1948, shows people storming a bank for gold in the days before the Communist forces arrived.

And Slowly We Got Back to Hating Everyone after Second 9/11...

John Gray:

"...the only genuine historical law is a law of irony."

Noam Chomsky:

“the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the United States succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s ghastly regime in office. The dictatorship then installed the Chicago Boys—economists trained at the University of Chicago—to reshape Chile’s economy. Consider the economic destruction, the torture and kidnappings, and multiply the numbers killed by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, and you will see just how much more devastating the first 9/11 was.

Pankaj Mishra:

More than 30,000 people, nearly 10 times the number of those killed on 9/11, have died, and many centres of folk Islam destroyed, in terrorism-related attacks in Pakistan during the last decade of the war on terror. Yet Pakistan, a country with 170 million people, is little more than a shadowy battleground in the western imagination, a security and strategic imperative rather than an actual place with flesh-and-blood human beings and long histories.

AHMED RASHID:

"PERHAPS the greatest promise made after Sept. 11 by President George W. Bush and the British prime minister, Tony Blair, was that the West would no longer tolerate failed and failing states or extremism. Today there are more failed states than ever; Al Qaeda’s message has spread to Europe, Africa and the American mainland; and every religion and culture is producing its own extremists, whether in sympathy with Islamism or in reaction to it (witness the recent massacre in Norway)." (NYT, Sept 10 2011)

Like many other tragic events in my life, I vividly remember what I was doing when we saw first pictures of second 9/11 (of 2001) attacks on CNN.

First I thought it was an advertisement knowing Hollywood's penchant for disasters. It was surreal.

It kind of prepared us- TV viewers- for Mumbai attacks of 11/26.

TV was a big player in making 9/11 what it became.

And yet, on 9/11, there was no YouTube video, Facebook page, Twitter feed. Cellphone cameras did not exist.

Was it a good thing or bad?

DAVID FRIEND in WSJ on August 29 2011:

"In retrospect, one can only imagine how the assaults of 9/11 might have been absorbed and magnified in the age of the smartphone, WiFi and streaming video. How might the attacks have further traumatized us had the technology existed to allow real-time visualizations of the deaths of thousands of innocents? How differently might the international community have reacted—or might historians have judged the actions of al Qaeda—had workers, trapped inside the World Trade Center, used the cameras on their hand-held devices and computers to record scenes of atrocity and carnage, then beamed those photos and videos to their families?
Instead of a panoramic view of mass murder, witnessed from a distance, would we have seen individual lives extinguished one by one, and irrefutably, in the here and now? And to what end? How, one wonders, would we have handled such images, given the breadth of the horror and the unspeakable depth of the loss?"

This is very valid because even today it is eerie to watch reconstruction of events in a film like United 93. I get sick to my stomach thinking what if I were on that plane. Would I be an activist or just thinking alone about all those who gave me so much without expecting anything in return?

But life went on. Athough some of us didn't come across any weird jackets, we re-started laughing soon after 9/11.

Artist: Leo Cullum, The New Yorker, October 1 2001

(For more pictures of the late Mr. Cullum, visit http://www.cartoonbank.com/)

Bob Mankoff says about this picture:

"With the publication of Leo’s cartoon, our cartoonists could all exhale, catch their breaths, and try to do what they do best, make people laugh, not as a distraction from the times, but as a comic reframing to make them more tolerable."

Not much after Sept 11 2001, however, I knew this would not change anything very significantly. As always many people and businesses profited from this tragedy.

Woody Allen said it best:

"As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 - it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral - not important. History is the same thing over and over again”

Frank Rich of The New York Times went even further:

"...We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating.

Indeed, if we go back to late 2001, the most revealing news story may have been unfolding not in New York but Houston — the site of the Enron scandal. That energy company convinced financial titans, the press and countless investors that it was a business deity. It did so even though very few of its worshipers knew what its business was. Enron is the template for the decade of successful ruses that followed, Tiger’s included...."

And soon we were back to normal- hating everyone.

Artist: Bruce Eric Kaplan, The New Yorker, November 12 2001

(For more pictures of Mr. Kaplan, visit http://www.cartoonbank.com/)

Now twin towers are gone but we have towers of books on 9/11.


Courtesy: The Spectator, UK, Artist: ?????

Robert Mankoff of The New Yorker brought tears to my eyes in Sept 2011 while answering "Is there one image or scene that evokes that day (9/11) for you?":

"When I couldn’t get into the city, I went to see my mother in Queens. She was very old and very sick and dying, drifting between sleep and a drugged wakefulness. She had no idea what had happened. I turned the TV on and the buildings just kept falling over and over again. I explained how the towers had been destroyed, and this is what she said: “Thank God no one got hurt.” Ah, as if."

We may continue to avoid those buildings that "just keep falling over and over again" but when James Thurber observed that we couldn't escape "the inevitable doom that waits in the skies", he did not mean enormous, fuel-laden, crashing jumbo jets of 9/11!

Celebrating Birthdays to make the City Uglier

The Times of India, September 5 2011, Pune edition, Front page:

"Garbage has been piling up around the city for some time now and the situation has only aggravated during the ongoing Ganesh festival..."

There are many ugly aspects of urban Pune.

The ugliest of course is overflowing and stinking large garbage heaps located on the main streets of Pune suburbs.

The second most ugliest is: banners erected to observe birthdays of local leaders.

Birthday celebration still remains an alien concept to me. In my childhood, birthday was such a personal and quiet affair. Only Lord Rama's, Lord Krishna's and King Shivaji's birth anniversaries were celebrated with festivity.

I wonder who the first Indian leader- other than former princely rulers- or celebrity was to celebrate his/her birthday under public glare. Didn't they feel shy?

Courtesy: Pudhari (पुढारी), April 14 2011

Why do Maharashtra's Cartoonists Spare their Targets? Naji al-Ali, Ali Farzat...

Monica Osborne:

Germans may not have been aware of every aspect of Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews and eliminate political dissenters, but they had an acute understanding of the diabolical nature of his vision, and instead of acting against it they sometimes laughed about it.

(review of 'Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany' by Rudolph Herzog)

I often feel that activists (and international celebrities) like Arundhati Roy are lucky when it comes to freedom of expression in India because the Indian state makes sure that they are not touched by anyone. They also are financially secure if not wealthy by Indian standards.

But when it comes to common man, he has to constantly look over his shoulder to write or say something that may ruffle feathers of fundamentalists of all hue in Maharashtra.

I am sure a few of Maharashtra's cartoonists feel the same way. They would have taken on these forces if they felt secured. The mock would have run amok. They would have drawn their targets panzers...err pants down.

On July 26 2009, I wrote about legendary Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali here who was shot dead on August 29, 1987.

Now The New York Times reports "Political Cartoonist Whose Work Skewered Assad Is Brutally Beaten in Syria":

"BEIRUT, Lebanon — Masked gunmen severely beat Syria’s best-known political cartoonist on Thursday, breaking his hand and leaving him to bleed on the side of a road in Damascus, activists said.

The attack came days after the artist, Ali Farzat, published a cartoon showing President Bashar al-Assad hitching a ride out of town with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, who was toppled from power this week..." (August 26, 2011)

The Guardian had rightly asked in July 2002:

"Favoured by Syria's new president (President Bashar al-Assad), Ali Farzat, leading cartoonist and popular newspaper publisher, seemed to have a licence to mock. Can it last?"

In India, many political and social activists have been attacked or even killed but luckily for cartoonists they seem to have been spared so far. Also, as said earlier, cartoonists too play safe.

I had not seen the work of Mr. Farzat. I saw it on Guardian's website.

The pictures are absolutely wonderful. Even those which I don't fully understand.

See one of them below.

On tele, 'Mushy Love in the time of Torture'? Look at the right foot and the right hand of the captive. They lie severed on the ground!

Absolutely gut-wrenching. Brings home the power of the cartoon as a medium.


Artist: Ali Farzat

From 'Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany' by Rudolph Herzog:

Jokes told by German Jews-

How many types of Jews are there? Two: optimists and pessimists. All the pessimists are in exile, and the optimists are in concentration camps.

The Gestapo is about to shoot some Jews when the commanding officer walks up to one of them and growls, “You almost look Aryan, so I’ll give you a chance. I wear a glass eye, but it’s not easy to tell. If you can guess which eye it is, I’ll let you go.” Immediately, the Jew answered, “The left one!” “How did you know?” asks the Gestapo commander. “It looks so human.”

Monica Osborne:

The Holocaust is a tale, among other things, of the most staggering breakdowns of ethical responsibility. Neighbors turned on neighbors, and people closed their eyes to atrocities committed on a daily basis—evil was everyday and commonplace, an idea that is critical to Herzog’s premise, which is that the jokes told in Nazi Germany by ordinary citizens reveal the extent to which they were also responsible for the terrors committed by Nazis on behalf of the state. Herzog is accurate in his assessment that when we laugh at Hitler, we “dismiss the metaphysical, demonic capabilities accorded to him by postwar apologists” and others who would have us believe that Hitler’s capacity for evil was not human. Laughing at Hitler might have been a way back to ethical responsibility, because inherent in the laugh is an acknowledgment of just how frightening the human capacity for evil can be.

गंगाराम चिंतामण तांबट: The Hidden Marathi Artist In A British Archive

ROBERTA SMITH:

Art historians rarely rest, and the world is generally a better place for their exertions. Scholars of the great painting traditions of India, for example, have taken knowledge of their subject to new levels in the past few decades, with their assiduous combing of documents, deciphering of inscriptions and scrutinizing of artworks.

Their immediate aim has been to name the names of Indian artists and identify their creations, pinning down as never before who did what, where and when. Their motive has been to dispel the long-held view, especially in the West, that these often small, transcendent works were made by unlauded artisans toiling away in monasteries and imperial workshops. (Putting Names to the Greats of Indian Art, Sept 29 2011)

On September 23 2007, I wrote "Perhaps Beautiful but Surely A Fraud: Thomas Daniell’s Painting of Peshwa Court."

I wish to revisit that post.

D G Godse (द ग गोडसे) informs us that Sir Charles Warre Malet, British ambassador to Peshwa's Pune court, has praised Gangaram Chintaman Navgire-Tambat's (गंगाराम चिंतामण नवगिरे-तांबट) work and some of Gangaram’s work apparently is still preserved in Malet’s estate.

['Ek Darbar Chitra ani Charitra' (एक दरबारचित्र आणि चरित्र) included in his book ‘Samande Talash’,1981 (समंदे तलाश)]

Tambat's work is preserved alright but NOT in Malet's estate anymore.

Tambat must be first Marathi artist (painter) whose work has been clearly attributed to him. We must thank 'wily' Sir Malet- who was one of the architects of eventual demise of the Maratha empire at the hands of the British- for this.

Yale University has organised a seminar "Gangaram Chintaman Tambat: The Hidden Indian Artist in a British Archive" on October 12, 2011 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM Speaker/Performer: Holly Shaffer.

It's an opening lecture for the exhibition "Adapting the Eye." Visit image sheet of the exhibition here.

"...Adapting the Eye explores the complex and multifaceted networks of British and Indian professional and amateur artists, patrons, and scholars in British India in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and their drive to create and organize knowledge for both aesthetic and political purposes...

...A pivotal figure in this rich cultural interchange was the highly accomplished Indian draftsman and sculptor Gangaram Tambat, who drew on both indigenous and European artistic conventions; his remarkable hybrid drawings are juxtaposed with works by British artists, including William Hodges, William and Thomas Daniell, Robert Mabon, and James Wales."

I wish to reproduce two pictures of Mr. Navgire-Tambat courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection. These drawings on paper were commissioned by Malet and the British artist James Wales.


How many better drawn Rhinos have you seen? Me none.

(A Rhinoceros in the Peshwa’s Menagerie at Poona, Nov. 1790, 1790, watercolor and gouache, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.)

If you have been to an old-style gyms - तालीम or व्यायामशाळा in Maharashtra, I am sure you know how good this is.

(Three Jeyties Exercising, ca. 1792, watercolor and black ink on paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.)

There are two more drawings of Mr. Tambat in the image sheet:

1> View of Parbati, the Hill near Poona occupied by the Temples at which the Peshwa frequently Worships, 1795, watercolor and graphite with pen and brown ink on paper.

Luckily for us we can still recognise Parvati in this drawing. But for how long?

2> The Temple at Ekvera, ca. 1793, grey washes, watercolor and chalk on six joined sheets of paper.

This is a wonderful drawing, inviting me to the temple one more time, to come and observe it closely, with the help of Mr. Tambat's eyes.

This is all great but the question that bothers me is: When will Pune university hold the exhibition of Pune's own son Gangaram Chintaman Tambat?

When Indian People would like a word with their Members of Parliament...

Indian lawmakers keep talking about people... how they are their sole representatives etc.

Well, Indian people decided to meet them in Delhi in August 2011.

Brilliant J B Handelsman, creator of UK Punch's 'Freaky Fables', about whom I have already written, in January 2010, here has captured that moment...Talk of prescience of cartooonists.

Focus your attention on the senator's face...is he scared?

Artist:(the late) J B Handelsman (1922-2007), The New Yorker, October 19 1998

का अण्णा हवासा पण अक्का 'नकोशी'? Why desire Anna but Akka 'Nakoshi'?

Raina Lipsitz:

Today, we don't make movies about women that are even worth fighting about. Whenever I'm dispirited by the crassly sexist ethos that governs Hollywood (as well as television, politics, and the corporate world) today, I think of "Thelma and Louise" and remember a time, not so long ago, when women were allowed to be human, if only in the movies.

Both words Anna and Akka have entered Marathi lexicon from her elder sisters - Dravidian languages- Tamil, Kannada, Telugu.

1> My mother (1937-2006) a person with a very liberal outlook in most social matters was really pleased, even proud, when my sister, my brother and I all had a male child as first born.

2> My wife pointed out to me long time ago that many middle-class couples she knew, majority of them Brahmin, living in India, had only one child if it was male and two children if their first child was a female!

(By the way my sister, my brother and I continue to have only one child!)

On the front page of The Times of India August 24 2011, following two news items of appeared:

1> "Parents rush to name their newborn after Anna: Anna’s magic has given birth to a new trend in Madhya Pradesh. At least 22 newborn children born in MP’s Damoh district between August 16 to 22 have been named after the Gandhian campaigner in one district alone..."

2> "GENDER BIAS:
In fact, ‘Nakoshi’, or a similar-meaning ‘Nakusa’, are the names of as many as 222 girls aged up to 16 as identified by the district health administration in the villages of Satara. The department, which is continuing with its task of identifying such girls, has begun the process of renaming them...

,,,“Most of these girls were the second or third girl child in the family, when all their parents were hankering after was a boy,” said Satara district health officer Bhagwan Pawar. “What’s more, most of the parents seem to have no qualms about having named these girls ‘Nakoshi’ or ‘Nakusa’, saying the names only expressed what they felt when the child was born.”
Speaking to TOI, the mother of a girl named ‘Nakoshi’ said: “We longed for a male child. When our fifth child also turned out to be a girl, we named her Nakoshi,” she said nonchalantly...

,,, As per the provisional figures of the 2011 census, Maharashtra’s child sex ratio declined to 883 in 2011 from 913 in 2001 — a sharp fall of 30 points. The child sex ratio in Satara district is 881"

I wish Anna were a lady with a name 'Akka' (अक्का). Maybe people would have named their Nakoshi as Akka.

Learning from Sant Janabai & Simone Weil: Restoring Dignity to Menial Labour

Today Aug 24 2011 is 68th death anniversary of Simone Weil.

I had to know who Ms Weil was when I read her this quote some time ago: “All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.”- reminiscent of कालमूलमिदं सर्व भावाभावौ सुखासुखे॥ (महाभारत १/१/२४७) [Mahabharat 1/1/247: Living and death, happiness and sadness all originate in time.]

Simone Weil, pictured above, believed that the only antidote available to the sickness of the modern world caused by up-rootedness is a social order grounded in physical labour. Read a memorable essay by Peter Foges here.

Great Bhakti poet Janabai (c 13/14th century), a Dalit, worked all her life as a maid, doing all kind of menial work.

I don't know if Janabai would agree with Ms. Weil or not but she used to unite with her Lord Vitthal while doing her work and not while praying. In fact, she felt it was her Vitthal who was doing all her work.

This is what Janabai said:

झाडलोट करी जनी । केर भरी चक्रपाणी ॥१॥
पाटी घेऊनियां शिरीं । नेऊनियां टाकी दुरी ॥२॥
ऐसा भक्तिसी भुलला । नीच कामें करुं लागला ॥३॥
जनी ह्मणे विठोबाला । काय उतराई होऊं तुला ॥४॥

[When Jani swept the floor, her Lord (Chakrapani) gathered up the dirt.
Carried the basket over his head, to dump it in the distance.
infatuated by the devotion, started doing lowly work.
Jani says to (Lord) Vithoba, how do I thank you enough.]

"दळिता कांडिता । तुज गाईन अनंता ॥१॥
न विसंबे क्षणभरी । तुझे नाम ग मुरारी ॥२॥
नित्य हाचि कारभार । मुखी हरि निरंतर ॥३॥
मायबाप बंधुबहिणी । तू बा सखा चक्रपाणी ॥४॥
लक्ष लागले चरणासी । म्हणे नामयाची दासी ॥५॥"

(As I mill and pound the grain । I sing your name the Infinite ॥1॥
I don't pause even for a moment । as I chant your name Murari ॥2॥
I make this my daily task । Hari on my tongue incessantly ॥3॥
You are mother-father brother-sister । you are my friend Chakrapani ॥4॥
My attention is focused on your feet । says the maidservant of Namdev ॥5॥)

"Weil herself was preternaturally a worker by brain, not by hand. Small, myopic, physically awkward and weak, it is difficult to think of anyone less suited to toil in a factory, workshop or field."

We don't know about physical qualities of Janabai. Maybe even she too was "small, myopic, physically awkward and weak". But that didn't stop her from embracing her daily backbreaking routine as a kind of communion with her god.

"Weils's uncompromising attitudes, disheveled physical appearance, monotonous voice and lack of almost all conventional social grace did her few favors, but she eventually managed to find employment in a steel plant, an experience that proved physically, emotionally and spiritually shattering. It seared her like a branding iron."

For Janabai, my guess is, such an experience would have been "physically, emotionally shattering" but not "spiritually".

“What a factory ought to be” Weil wrote to a friend, “is a place where one makes hard painful but joyous contact with real life. Not the gloomy place it is.”

I don't know if Janabai has called her workplace "gloomy". And even if she had felt it to be gloomy, she would have called upon Vitthal to help her as she does here:

'' सुंदर माझे जाते गे । फिरे ते बहु टेके गे।
ओव्या गाऊ कौतुके । तू ये रे बा विठ्ठला ।।
जीवशीव दोन्ही खुंटे । प्रपंचाचे नेटे गे।
लावुनि पाची बोटे गे। तू ये रे बा विठ्ठला।।''

(My lovely grindstone, how sweetly it spins
as I sing your praise, Come to me, Vitthala

Twin poles of World and Spirit, are the smooth wooden handles
my five fingers grasp by turns, Come to me, Vitthala)

"At the same time the spiritual Simone was becoming increasingly mystical and Christian —she drew close to the Catholic Church in her later years, but resisted the final baptismal step. This led her to crave release from academia and the abstract life of the mind and lose herself in obedience. Like early medieval mystics, Saint Teresa of Avila or Saint John of the Cross, she prayed that her individuality be obliterated by the necessities of toil, that her intelligence might be extinguished through punishing physical fatigue. At times she turned for solace and inspiration to the Bhagavad-Gita and other sacred Hindu texts. (Did she read Janabai?) These notions—anathema to left-wing French intellectuals then and now—became her vocation. Like Leo Tolstoy, she saw a connection between physical fatigue and spirituality, and hoped, however foolishly, to have a religious experience on the factory floor. “Physical work” she wrote in her best known book Gravity and Grace, “makes us experience in the most exhausting manner, the phenomenon of finality.” Workers, she wrote, “need poetry more than bread, and religion alone can be the source of it.”

Perhaps the purest expression of Weil’s mystical notion of the sanctity of physical labor comes at the end of her essay “La Condition Ouvrière,” published, as were most of her writings, long after her death. “If man’s vocation is to achieve pure joy through suffering, manual workers are better placed than all others to accomplish it in the truest way.”..."

Peter Foges says Weil "hoped, however foolishly, to have a religious experience on the factory floor".

I don't think it was foolish at all. Going by Janabai's experience, Weil was on the right track.
Artist: Lee Lorenz, The New Yorker, October 30 1971