Darling of Unmodern People...मध्ययुगीन राधा ही बावरी!

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times, June 27 2012:

"...For all the technological innovations, the groovy new Bat cycles and codpieces, superhero movies just recycle variations on gender stereotypes that were in circulation back in the late 1930s, when Superman and Batman first hit. The world has moved on — there’s an African-American man in the Oval Office, a woman is the secretary of state — but the movie superhero remains stuck in a pre-feminist, pre-civil rights logic that dictates that a bunch of white dudes, as in “The Avengers,” will save the world for the grateful multiracial, multicultural multitudes. What a bunch of super-nonsense."
 

The Economist, February 15 2001:

"...Dipankar Gupta contends, justly, that India's fascination with western gadgetry and lifestyles has not brought modernity. You can subjugate women and make a weapon of religion just as well with a mobile phone as without one, probably better. True modernity, Mr Gupta writes, entails adhering to universal norms, upholding individual rights, making the state accountable. His book pleads with India to put modernisation in place of “westoxication”..."

महेश एलकुंचवार, लोकसत्ता, August 17 2013:

"...ढिसाळ, बेजबाबदार, बौद्धिक आळशीपणा, नाठाळ, स्वत:मध्ये बदल न करणारा आणि संयम हरवलेला ही मराठी माणसाची लक्षणे सुमारपणातूनच आली आहेत...अभिरुचीची ही घसरण सुरू असून अभिजात म्हणजे काय हेही आम्हाला कळत नाही..."

I stopped watching any Marathi and Hindi TV soap operas more than a decade ago.

This does not mean I am against them. I might have been once but not now. They are popular and, other than creating considerable employment, they serve a useful purpose: Serving senior citizens.

Maharashtra has a large and growing population of middle-class senior citizens. They now live longer and (at least bodily) healthier. While it's often easy to say, one should read books, there is a limit to how much one can read with a weakening eyesight.

A similar argument can be made about even chatting or walking. Public parks have almost vanished from the most of urban Maharashtra. Even suburban roads are un-walkable because they are serious-accident traps. There is no public transport that is economical to use and not dangerous. In places like Pune, auto-rickshaws refuse the fares for short distances with impunity. All this severely restricts senior citizens' movements beyond immediate neighbourhood.

There are no card/carom/chess clubs in the vicinity.

How do people kill time from about sunset to until they sleep?

Answer: Watching soap opera channels including Marathi news channels because the latter are as 'entertaining' as the former. 

(I know a couple of people who get withdrawal symptoms if they don't watch their soaps. I also know some who watch the same episode multiple times in a 24-hours cycle.)

Look at the picture below. Aren't they well served by Marathi soap operas?

Artist: Vasant Sarwate,  Lalit, Diwali 2007 (वसंत सरवटे, ललित, दिवाळी)

David Foster Wallace has said: "TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."

Therefore, those who watch  "vulgar and prurient and dumb" serials are not vulgar and prurient and dumb in all their interests.

My wife- Anju (अंजु)- too hardly watched any TV except extremely funny 'CID' on Sony channel. (CID is really funny, in fact currently the only genuinely funny program on Hindi-Marathi TV. Just watch some of the CID jokes on FB.)
 
A couple of months ago Anju started watching 'Radha Hi Bawari' (राधा ही बावरी), a Marathi TV serial. I asked her why.

She said she liked its theme of romance of over-thirty professional, well qualified girl- Radha (राधा)- with a younger, ingenuous, lowly-educated boy- Sourav (सौरव), her husband.

And then one recent morning, she announced: she would not watch it any more. I once again asked her why.

She said she was sick and tired of the way Sourav was constantly denounced by his wife and his motherly sister-in-law for "not doing anything worthwhile".

My wife felt why Sourav should do "something" as long as he was a good sensitive person, a potentially good homemaker and, above all, loved by Radha. As a qualified doctor, Radha was making enough money to lead a happy life. Did they ever fear that they might destroy Sourav in the process of remaking him? Couldn't they change Sourav with their love? Couldn't they be little less shrill?

Having seen glimpses of the serial along with my wife, I completely agree with my wife. The serial  reinforces the stereotypes of 20th century: a man / husband/ father should earn money no matter what...otherwise he is not a 'man'.

Artist: Emily S. Flake,   Courtesy: brain pickings

The rate at which Sourav is being pounded by his close ones, I think,  he needs to see a psychiatrist very soon. Of course, that will never be shown because seeing a psychiatrist is perhaps for the sissies!

I have Dipankar Gupta's 'Mistaken Modernity: India Between Worlds', first published 2000.

I have always liked what the book basically does: "issues a damning indictment of the "westoxicated" elitist Indian middle class, and shows how unmodern the people of this class are in the very areas in which they are considered to be modern".


Akash Kapur wrote about it in The New York Times, July 29 2010:

"...Mr. Gupta was referring to a particularly superficial version of modernity that he believed was taking root in the nation — one defined more by Western consumer habits and lifestyles than by adherence to a cosmopolitan, tolerant set of values and democratic norms.
He pointed, for instance, to the persistence of caste bias, oppressive traditions and historical inequalities in a nation where ownership of washing machines, cars and other material trappings of global capitalism was increasing. He argued that in many ways India was an unmodern nation..."

courtesy: the owner of the copyrights to this image and the author of the book

p.s I write on September 27 2013:

Loksatta, September 26 2013:

" वीस वर्षांपूर्वी, उपग्रह वाहिन्यांच्या उदयकाळात आलेल्या बोल्ड नायिकाप्रधान मालिकांची जागा आता सोशिक, दुखी नायिकांनी घेतली आहे. आजचे प्रेक्षक काळाच्या वीस वर्षे मागे आहेत, असे वास्तव टीव्ही-चित्रपट निर्माती अश्विनी यार्दी यांनी बुधवारी परखडपणे मांडले...उपग्रह वाहिन्यांवरून सुरुवातीच्या काळात दाखविल्या जाणाऱ्या मालिकांचा प्रेक्षकवर्ग समाजातील उच्चशिक्षितांचा होता. त्यामुळे तेव्हा हसरतें, तारा अशा मालिकांमधून बोल्ड नायिका प्रेक्षकांच्या पसंतीला उतरल्या. सन २००० नंतर उपग्रह वाहिन्या सर्वदूर पसरल्या. शहरीच नव्हे तर निमशहरी ग्रामीण भागातील प्रेक्षकांना समोर ठेवून मालिका बनवणे क्रमप्राप्त ठरले. आज बोल्ड नायिकांना प्रेक्षकवर्ग नाही. मालिकांमधील नायिका या मान खाली घालून राहणाऱ्या, दुख सहन करणाऱ्या व सोशिक रंगवल्या जात आहेत, असे यार्दी म्हणाल्या. भरजरी कपडय़ांमध्ये घरात वावरणाऱ्या, किचनमध्ये सतत राबणाऱ्या, स्वयंपाक बनवत राहणाऱ्या, कुटुंबियांमध्ये आग लावत असलेल्या व्यक्तिरेखा प्रेक्षकांच्या आवडीनुसार दाखवल्या जातात. त्यांच्यात बदल केलेला प्रेक्षकांना रुचत नाही. वेगळ्या विषयांवरील, गंभीर मालिका आपटतात, अशी खंतही त्यांनी व्यक्त केली. किचनमध्ये तयार होणाऱ्या पदार्थाची प्रक्रिया विचारणारे, सोफासेटचे कौतुक करणारे आणि भिंतीवरील चित्र का बदलले याची चौकशी करणारे अनेक फोन आणि पत्रे येत असतात..."

Among New Lilliputians, Nothing Pisses Me Off...Who Am I?

Jonathan Swift:

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
 

Eugène Ionesco, 'Rhinoceros', Act III, 1959:

"...Oh, how I wish I was like them! I haven't got any horns, more's the pity! A smooth brow looks so ugly. I need one or two horns to give my sagging face a lift. Perhaps one will grow and I needn't be ashamed any more - then I could go and join them. But it will never grow!...

...My hands are so limp - oh, why won't they get rough! My skin is so slack. I can't stand this white, hairy body...

...I should have gone with them while there was still time. Now it's too late! Now I'm a monster, just a monster. Now I'll never become a rhinoceros, never, never!...

...People who try to hang on to their individuality always come to a bad end! Oh well, too bad! I'll take on the whole of them, the whole lot of them! I'll put up a fight against the lot of them, the whole lot of them! I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way until the end. I'm not capitulating!"

Paul Hunter on 'Gulliver's Travels' in 'The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift', 2003:

"Here deformity, defecation, and sexuality become repugnant reminders of our absurd and grimly limited physical selves, and (whatever they tell us about Swift’s psychological fears, prejudices, and personal hang-ups) the exaggerated physical features of the narrative’s human population ground our tendencies to elevate our belief in ourselves as above it all."

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, The Hindu, August 15 2013:

"...I do not intend to explain anything which our Parliament might have done or not done, either. We set it up with great arman (longings), arzu (wishes) and a sense of abru (self-respect). But when I see the way Parliament functions or, perhaps I should say, the way it does not function, it fills me with shame. Parliament is accountable before it is ‘Hon’ble’. It is obsessed by its honour when it should be absorbed in its duties.

And everywhere, money is King. Not the voter, not the Constitution, but money. When something or someone is King, what becomes of the Republic? From the roadside vendor who has to pay a regular mamul in some hundreds of rupees to the giant Corporate that bribes its way to contracts with so many zeroes that I cannot count, we are now become a Jamhuriyat-i-Naqad, a Republic of Cash.  

We have become a soulless people, a people without self-confidence, without morale. A nation that does not have any ideals cannot survive..."

 विलास सारंग: "…काही असलं तरी 'विविधज्ञानविस्तारा'तील निनावी लेखकाने 'गलिव्हर्स ट्रव्हल्स' ची कादंबरी म्हणून थोरवी सहजप्रेरणेने  ओळखली, हे प्रशंसनीय आहे… "

( 'वाङ्मयीन संस्कृती व सामाजिक वास्तव', 2011, पृष्ठ: 14-15)

Vilas Sarang: "...In any case an anonymous writer in 'Vividhdnyanvistar' recognized the greatness of 'Gulliver's Travels' as a novel with an easy-inspiration, this is laudable..."

('Vangmayin Sanskruti v Samajik Vastav', pages: 14-15)

Mr. Sarang here is arguing that an anonymous Marathi writer (probably writing in 19th century)  realised the greatness of Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' ahead of the most of the British literary establishment that was trapped in 'naive realism' and even refused to call the book a novel. 

For me, Swift's book is indeed one of the greatest books ever.

George Orwell writes in his essay on the book  "An examination of Gulliver's travels".

"...The Lilliputians also have various social and legal institutions (for instance, there are old age pensions, and people are rewarded for keeping the law as well as punished for breaking it) which Swift would have liked to see prevailing in his own country. In the middle of this passage Swift remembers his satirical intention and adds, ‘In relating these and the following Laws, I would only be understood to mean the original Institutions, and not the most scandalous Corruptions into which these people are fallen by the degenerate Nature of Man’:..."

We all know, in the book,  Lilliput is England and Blefuscu is France..."the original Institutions, and not the most scandalous Corruptions into which these people are fallen"...so maybe Lilliput is also 21st century India!

 Artist: Robert Kraus (1925-2001), The New Yorker, August 18 1956

One meaning of lilliputian is 'petty' and that is what we are turning fast into, if Salman Rushdie is right. 



The Independent, UK quoted Mr. Rushdie on August 11 2013:

"I do think that one of the characteristics of our age is the growth of this culture of offendedness. It has to do with the rise of identity politics, where you're invited to define your identity quite narrowly – you know, Western, Islamic, whatever it might be. Classically, we have defined ourselves by the things we love. By the place which is our home, by our family, by our friends. But in this age we're asked to define ourselves by hate. That what defines you is what pisses you off. And if nothing pisses you off, who are you?"
 
Rushdie ascribed the new hatred to the fall of Communism and the rise of religious fanaticism, among other things.

"Instead of there being one Iron Curtain, there became lots and lots of little enclaves with people fighting to the death about their own little mindset or their own tribalism. And then religious fanaticism happened, which is not only Islamic. In India, there is the rise of Hindu nationalism, and in America the increased power of the Christian church."

As I watch news television in India, I realise how true all this is. We have little enclaves of  religion, language, region, caste, sub caste, economic class, gender, power...Increasingly, Indians are being asked to define themselves by hate.

Artist: Robert Kraus (1925-2001), The New Yorker, October 6 1962


The two cartoons by one of my favourite cartoonists, the late Mr. Kraus, on the subject of 'Gulliver's Travels' are as moving as the book itself.

Can We Broken Statues Escape Tragic Flaws?...लेखनातील ट्रॅजिक फ्लॉ

James Thurber:

"Even a well-ordered life can not lead anybody safely around the inevitable doom that waits in the skies."
 
Burton Raffel:

"Aristotle’s definition of “tragedy” is supremely applicable to both Othello and to his wife.“The change from prosperity to adversity should not be represented as happening to a virtuous character,” Aristotle explained. Nor “should the fall of a very bad man from prosperous to adverse fortune be represented.” In other words, no one who is consistently “virtuous” can be the central figure in a true tragedy, but neither can anyone who is utterly without virtue play such a role. Aristotle spoke of the virtuous figure’s downfall being caused by “some error of human frailty”; this has come to be called the “tragic flaw.” And, again, there can be no doubt that Othello, like King Oedipus and a host of tragic heroes after Oedipus, presents a striking instance of exactly that nature. Oedipus is arrogant, wrathful, rash, but has no awareness that he suffers from any of these fatal imperfections. Othello is a social simpleton,a military bull in a civilian china shop, and similarly has no idea of these crucial deficiencies. Both men are resplendent heroes, and both fall like broken statues." 

जी ए कुलकर्णी :

"...सार्या आयुष्यात तांडेलाला आपण तांडेल का झालो हे समजले नाही. रात्रंदिवस अस्वस्थपणे विचार करणार्या समुद्रालासुद्धा, अनंत काळ जाऊन देखील, 'आपण समुद्रच का झालो?' याचे उत्तर अद्यापही मिळाले नसेल!"

 ('इस्किलार', 'रमलखुणा', 1974)

विंदा करंदीकर, 'राजा लिअर':

"गर्जा वादळांनो, थोबाड फाटेपर्यंत! करा आक्रोश!
करा गर्जना!
हे जलस्तंभांनो आणि तुफानांनो, सोडा फूत्कार
आमचे मनोरे भिजून जाईपर्यंत, आमचे पवनकुक्कुट
बुडेपावेतो!
विचारवेगाने संचार करणाऱ्या हे गंधकाग्नींनो,
ओकाच्या वृक्षांना दुभंगून टाकणाऱ्या
वज्रांच्या अग्रदूतांनो,
माझे शुभ्र डोके काढा होरपळून, चराचर कापवणाऱ्या
हे विद्युतगर्जने,
हा पृथ्वीचा सघन गोलाकार, कर सपाट एकाच
तडाख्यात!
टाक फोडून निसर्गाचे साचे, कर नष्ट एका दमात
सगळे बीजद्रव्य
ज्यातून निपजते ही जात कृतघ्न माणसांची..."

Sally Satel:

"Summoning an array of anthropological evidence, (James Q.) Wilson elaborated on the idea that our moral sense is innate, acquired not through learning but through evolution."

Lucy Coats:

"I like the story of Nyx, and the fates. Nyx was the goddess of the night and her cloak covered the night sky. She had three daughters who were the fates. I love the story of the fates: Klotho, Atropos, and Lakhesis, who weave the tapestry of life. They’re the ones who decide what your fate is going to be, so they snip the thread if you’re going to die. I just love the mystery of it."
 
Actor Amruta Subhash (अमृता सुभाष) writes in Loksatta, July 27 2013:

"...कारण मी जर तसं करू शकले तर माणूस म्हणून माझ्यात 'फ्लॉज' नक्कीच असतील पण ते शेक्सपिअरच्या नायकासारखे 'ट्रॅजिक' उरणार नाहीत!"

(...so if I can do that as a human I will continue to have 'flaws' but they won't be tragic like that of heroes in Shakespeare's plays!)

It's hard to believe that this comes from an alumnus of National School of Drama, New Delhi and one of the better actors of Marathi stage. (Is it because of all the 'acting' in dumb TV serials?)

There are two questions that arise from Ms. Subhash's statement:

1. Should we avoid tragic flaws?  2. Is it in us to avoid them?

Let me start with the second.

Tragic flaw is defined as  "(hamartia from Greek hamartanein, "to err"), inherent defect or shortcoming in the hero of a tragedy, who is in other respects a superior being favored by fortune." 

(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008.)

If it is "inherent defect or shortcoming", Ms. Subhash, how do you avoid it? Only by not being born!

If you are born, can you avoid being the hero in a tragedy? 

No, because tragedy comes from the encounter of human will with fate / destiny and every human is a 'hero' in her life's story.  

And  can we escape the encounter with fate / destiny? No, because we can never know about the last sorrow?

John Gray says: "The last sorrow cannot be told. If the dead could speak we would not understand them. We are wise to hold to the semblance of tragedy; the truth unveiled would only blind us."

And we can't escape the last sorrow because as Simone Weil says:  “All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.”

Where does Ms. Subhash's optimism, so widespread among talking heads of  Maharashtra, come from?  

This thinking is not native to India. It comes mainly from Socrates.

John Gray explains:  

"In the Greek world in which Homer’s songs were sung, it was taken for granted that everyone’s life is ruled by fate and chance. For Homer, human life is a succession of contingencies: all good things are vulnerable to fortune. Socrates could not accept this archaic tragic vision. He believed that virtue and happiness were one and the same; nothing can harm a truly good man. So he re-envisioned the good to make it indestructible. Beyond the goods of human life – health, beauty, pleasure, friendship, life itself – there was a Good that surpassed them all...."

("Straw Dogs")

As quoted at the beginning even "Aristotle spoke of the virtuous figure’s downfall being caused by “some error of human frailty”..."...the truth is we simply don't know about either our frailties or fatal imperfections...and how can we eliminate something we don't know?

Let me know turn to the first question: Is "tragic flaw" all that bad so that we avoid them if we can? 

The Economist, July 15 1999:

"...“Dr Strangelove” was, of course, a stepping stone to “ 2001: A Space Odyssey”, the modern classic by which he is best remembered. The story of evolution, from Darwinian apes, through homo sapiens to a new kind of star child, it is astonishingly highbrow for a mainstream movie. How did Kubrick get away with it? By introducing a sub-plot involving a computer named HAL9000, who distrusts man's ability to explore space and takes firm steps to frustrate the mission. This is the element of conflict, without which any drama is incomplete. But is HAL really a “baddie”? Or more of a Shakespearian hero—a great mind whose inability to trust man's intellect is its tragic flaw"

Artist: William Steig, The New Yorker, February 21 1970