Even A Milder Syphilis उपदंश Played a Roll Shaping Indian history

Pam : Didn’t Ben Franklin have syphilis? (The Office - Season 3, Episode 14, 2 February 2007)

Walter Isaacson: No. Franklin had the gout and kidney stones, and he died at 84 of a ruptured lung artery, but he never had a venereal disease.

Pam’s question could be asked about a few historical personalities from the Indian subcontinent too.

NYT April 29, 2008 has an article on syphilis by MARLENE ZUK:

“…The new research suggested that syphilis originated as a skin ailment in South America, and then spread to Europe, where it became sexually transmitted and was later reintroduced to the New World.

The origin of syphilis has always held an implied accusation: if Europeans brought it to the New World, the disease is one more symbol of Western imperialism run amok, one more grudge to hold against colonialism…

… Detailed records of syphilis infection start appearing in Europe from 1495, and a fearsome disease it was. Smallpox was called smallpox to distinguish it from the great pox, syphilis, which evoked this description from Ulrich von Hutten in 1519:
“Boils that stood out like Acorns, from whence issued such filthy stinking Matter, that whosoever came within the Scent, believed himself infected. The Colour of these was of a dark Green and the very Aspect as shocking as the pain itself, which yet was as if the Sick had laid upon a fire.”…”

Jared Diamond: “…when syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall off people’s faces, and led to death within a few months. By 1546, syphilis had evolved into the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today.” (Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997)

Michael Crichton: “…You can carry tuberculosis for many decades; you can carry syphilis for a lifetime. These last are not minor diseases, but they are much less severe than they once were, because both man and organism have adapted…” (The Andromeda Strain, 1969)

This adapted syphilis might have accosted a few prominent personalities of 18th century India.

T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर says in his classic Panipat 1761:

“Ahmad Shah Abdali probably had a disease like syphilis and so too was the case of Najib khan”.

Shejwalkar also speculates that some Maratha chieftains (most names he quotes are Brahmins) too might have suffered from the disease. These bigwigs married multiple times and also kept mistresses. One reason, he argues, they married very young girls late in their life because it was believed an intercourse with such a girl would rid them of the disease. The other possible reason was hypothesized increase in virility that came after mating with such a girl.

It is worth noting that all these Maratha bridegrooms left behind very young widows.

Even today that belief exists in parts of India: “… having sex with a ''fresh'' girl can cure syphilis, gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases, including the virus that causes AIDS.” (The New York Times May 11, 1998)

My caption for picture below would read: "Hey Syphilis, Congrats now you look leaner but stronger.”


Artist: Dana Fradon The New Yorker 29 August 1959

An Entry for The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest #146

I don't qualify to participate in The New Yorker's "Cartoon Caption Contest" because I am not a U.S. resident age eighteen or over.

Here is my entry anyway.



Artist: Leo Cullum The New Yorker May 19, 2008

“By the way, on your TV did you see live the naked woman whose pictures were sent to us by Spirit, Nasa's Mars explorer?”

See a related previous post here.

Does 133 Years Old Tradition of Recipe Books in Marathi Encourage Cooking?

For Lalit ललित April 2008, Sharad Gogte शरद गोगटे has written a delightful essay on a long history of cookery books in Marathi.

I am fond of food. More accurately talking about food as my metabolism- after years of abuse- gradually falls apart!

In English, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has done some of the best writing on the history of food.

“…We think thin and we get fat…Mealtimes are our oldest rituals. The companionable effects of eating together help to make us human. The little links which bind households together are forged at the table. The stability of our homes probably depends more on regular mealtimes than on sexual fidelity or filial piety. Now it is in danger. Food is being desocialised. The demise of mealtimes means unstructured days and undisciplined appetites.

The loneliness of the fast-food eater is uncivilising…

…The raw food movement is not a healthy alternative..The raw movement is not a solution, but part of the threat, dividing families by taste and diet…

…So the family mealtime looks irretrievably dead. The future, however, usually turns out to be surprisingly like the past. We are in a blip, not a trend. Cooking will revive, because it is inseparable from humanity: a future without it is impossible. Communal feeding is essential to social life: we shall come to value it more highly in awareness of the present threat. There is bound to be a reaction in favour of traditional eating habits, as nostalgia turns into fashion and evidence builds up of the deleterious effects of snacking…

…We seem incapable of socialising without food. Among people who like to enjoy other's company, every meal is a love feast. We eat to commune with our gods. The discreetly lit table is our favourite romantic rendezvous. At state banquets, diplomatic alliances are forged. Deals are done at business lunches. Family reunions still take place at mealtimes. Home is a place which smells of cooking. If we want relationships that work, we shall get back to eating together. Along the way, we shall conquer obesity: if we stop grazing, we shall stop gorging. “ (September 14, 2002 The Guardian)

I have enjoyed Jaywant Dalwi’s जयवंत दळवी writing on food in Marathi more than pornography.

First Marathi book on the subject of cooking was published in 1875: soopshastra सूपशास्त्र by Ramchandra Sakharam Gupte रामचंद्र सखाराम गुप्ते publisher Raoji Shridhar Gondhalekar रावजी श्रीधर गोंधळेकर price Rs. 1/25. Over next fifty years six more editions of the book came out. Price remained unchanged.

(सूप “soop” is a Sanskrit word meaning a kind of curry or an accompaniment in an Indian meal.)

The book has 107 recipes. For our kitchen quite a few of them-like कोरफङीचा मुरंबा (jam of aloe vera)- are now extinct.

During the period 1888-1890, a ‘recipedia’ titled “soopshastra” सूपशास्त्र by Ramkrushna Salunkerao रामकृष्ण साळुंकेराव, 4 volumes, 06 books, 2500 pages was published. It had recipes from many parts of India and the world. (2500 pages must be a kind of world record that still stands!)

As this long history suggests, do middle class Maharashtrians enjoy cooking?

I cannot resist temptation to paraphrase The Economist:...As porn is to sex, so the recipe books are to cooking. The more people read, the less they do it.


"soopshastra" सूपशास्त्र by Ramchandra Sakharam Gupte रामचंद्र सखाराम गुप्ते

They could be talking about कोरफङीचा मुरंबा (jam of aloe vera) as well:


Artist: Peter C Vey The New Yorker 30 November 1998

R K Laxman Agrees With George W. Bush! Jared Diamond Doesn’t

American President George W. Bush:

“Worldwide there is increasing demand. There turns out to be prosperity in the developing world, which is good. It also, however, increases demand. So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle-class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle-class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.” (May 2008)

Jared Diamond:

“…The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does…” (January 2008)

R K Laxman did some research among Indian poor and discovered:


Artist: R K Laxman The Times of India May 7, 2008

Can Language Overpower Caste in Maharashtra?

STEVE LOHR said in The New York Times (March 23, 2008):

“…The demise of the old technology is confidently predicted, and indeed it may lose ground to the insurgent, as mainframes did to the personal computer. But the old technology or business often finds a sustainable, profitable life. Television, for example, was supposed to kill radio, and movies, for that matter. Cars, trucks and planes spelled the death of railways. A current death-knell forecast is that the Web will kill print media.

What are the common traits of survivor technologies? First, it seems, there is a core technology requirement: there must be some enduring advantage in the old technology that is not entirely supplanted by the new. But beyond that, it is the business decisions that matter most: investing to retool the traditional technology, adopting a new business model and nurturing a support network of loyal customers, industry partners and skilled workers…

… To survive, technologies must evolve, much as animal species do in nature. Indeed, John Steele Gordon, a business historian and author, observes that there are striking similarities in the evolutionary process of markets and biological ecosystems. Dinosaurs, he notes, may be long gone, victims of a change in climate that better suited mammals. But smaller reptiles evolved and survived, and today there are more than 8,000 species of reptiles, mainly lizards and snakes, compared with about 5,400 species of mammals. ..”

Mr. Raj Thackeray, a marketing wizard, knows what is true of technologies is also true of ideologies.

Few years ago his uncle Mr. Bal Thackeray increased his party’s focus on Hindutva. The nephew has been quick to seize the opportunity. His speech on May 3, 2008 is an example of clever positioning of his party for upcoming polls.

However Raj Thackeray has not accounted for one major hurdle in his calculations: increasing role of caste in the politics of Maharashtra. During no other period of 20th century, caste became as vicious in Maharashtra as it is today. In the past state or national level leaders from Maharashtra never so openly espoused caste.

Even saint Samarth Ramdas continues to be a target. See cartoon below from year 1969 and news item dated May 2008 from Marathi newspaper Pudhari .

Debate still rages if indeed Samarth, a Brahmin, was Shivaji’s guru or not. We are ready to live with many other myths that masquerade as Indian history but not this one. The news item below says experts from reputed institutions (fearing backlash) are refusing to give their views on the subject.

It’s never enough to know that these two greats were contemporaries and by far the best writing on Shivaji has been done by Samarth.


Old Lady: “Why doesn’t someone prove by doing more research that Samarth was not a Brahmin? At least that will save him from more opprobrium.”

Artist: वसंत सरवटे (1969) "सरवोत्तम सरवटे" संपादक: अवधूत परळकर, लोकवाङ्मय गृह 2008

Vasant Sarwate (1969) sourced from his latest book "The Best of Sarwate" editor: Avadhoot Paralkar, Lokvangmay Gruh 2008

When Amitabh Bachchan and Infosys Don’t Fit In

Amitabh Bachchan and Infosys once were celebrated “outsiders”. Now they are the establishment, the environment.

Therefore, when they speak like outsiders, we should take notice and wonder if a change is in the offing.

Amitabh Bachchan:

“…Where are our real heroes? Have we become so enamoured of sheer fame, wealth and privilege that we hold this up as transformative for a culture as rich in heritage as ours?

Where is the maturity in our free society that we must glorify such an empty vessel as myself for admiration? I acknowledge the role of inspirational individuals to cultivate our dreams and hopes as a community, but why is there so little public concern about the delicate point at which inspiration becomes reified into mindless and infantile idolatry? Icons remain legitimate as long as they do not become idols. And what sort of power do we really worship in our endless compulsive listings and rankings of our fellow citizens? Power lists seem to me a kind of destructive new confabulation of our cultural obsession with hierarchy so catastrophically manifested in the caste system.

We need to get over this and move on. Have we become so frivolous and superficial in the last 60 years that we have become blinded to undifferentiated power, that it is enough of an end in itself? Power is potential, not an end in itself. What do we plan to do with ours, newly found?

Yes, people would at least feel gratified that there has been some progress towards alleviating the terrible suffering of all forms of poverty that have plagued our population, both material and cultural. But we still have a long way to go. Is this really a time to rest on our laurels?
“
(The Times of India April 28, 2008)

T V Mohandas Pai, Director, HR, Infosys:

“…Are we creating a civilization of morons where aspirations are a beauty parade? Where the inspiration is to wear revealing dresses to class and keep sending SMS. There is something happening…intellectual activities are coming down, the vigour of an intellectual debate is coming down. Are there no great thoughts, no great ideologies, are we becoming a consumerist society?…”

(Business Line, April 13, 2008)


Artist: Edward Frascino The New Yorker 24 December 1979

Life Imitates Art. Sudhir Tailang and Raj Thackeray.

India’s union health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said in the Rajya Sabha that the polio virus was transmitted only in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which were dogged by poor sanitation, filthy drinking water and high population density. He added that the transmission of polio virus was taking place because of the heavy migration of people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

This was a godsend to cartoonist Sudhir Tailang and politician Raj Thackeray.

Tailang was first off the block.


Artist: Sudhir Tailang Asian Age May 1, 2008

Raj Thackeray followed on May 3, 2008:

“…Health Minister Ramadoss says polio epidemic spreads from Uttar Pradesh and this (Amitabh) Bachchan campaigns for polio dose in Maharashtra. Go and give two drops there (in Uttar Pradesh)!"

(Pudhari, May 4, 2008)

Dialogue with Iran using Interpreters!!!

The Times of India May 2, 2008 :

"The recent visit by Iranian president Mohammed Ahmedinejad has not gone down well with the US, for obvious reasons.

But, Iran is an important actor in the region, one that India must have an independent dialogue with in the interest of regional stability and its own strategic and economic interests..."

As for US not happy, IDGRA. (I Don't Give a Rat's Ass)

But what about dialogue with Iran? In which language?

Wikipedia informs: “For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian/ Farsi was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent; it took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in South Asia and became the "official language" under the Mughal emperors...”

This blog has visited Farsi a few times. See them here.

Most relevant being Shivaji’s command of the language

Look at the picture below.

The head of Indian state- very north Indian to boot- talking to the head of Iranian state with the help of interpreters!

It would have been impossible to imagine this in 1857.

Will this happen to British or American English? One day for sure. Indian English is on its way.


Picture Courtesy: Asian Age April 30, 2008

Lions Feast: Next Change at The Great Indian IPL Circus

Not Hindi cinema but cricket may just become the biggest entertainment of 21st century South Asia. Read a related post here.

Pakistan cricket captain Shoaib Malik has reportedly said: the Indian Premier League is threatening Bollywood’s popularity across the border.

Michael Crichton (Timeline, 1999):

"Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused - everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century.”

"In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.”

The Times of India (April 24, 2008) reported:

“Watch lions feast in Gir, for a price:

SASAN: The setting sun has painted the sky a bright red. But, for a group of wide-eyed tourists, it's a different red that's attracting their attention. A bloodied buffalo is being torn apart by two lions while two cubs join in.

This is right in the middle of the lion country, just 25 km from Sasan, the core of Gir lion sanctuary that is the last refuge of the endangered Asiatic lions. At Babra Virdi, around 8 pm, the feast was on. So was the show as tourists, including some foreigners, watched in wonder.

The show is managed by locals by luring the lions with a live bait and costs anywhere between Rs 2,500 and Rs 10,000 for a group of five close to the core area. This is not an isolated incident. Lion shows are a rage in Gir, with several touts organising these shows in and around the forest. They are usually drivers of tourist vehicles who are hand-in-glove with forest department staff. These touts even have business cards and offer you a package which includes a meal while the lion is having a banquet…”

For Roman emperors "Panem et Circensus", literally "bread and circuses", was the formula for the well-being of the population, and thus a political strategy. This formula offered a variety of pleasures such as: the distribution of food, public baths, gladiators, exotic animals, chariot races, sports competition, and theater representation. It was an efficient instrument in the hands of the Emperors to keep the population peaceful, and at the same time giving them the opportunity to voice themselves in these places of performance.

The-great-Indian-IPL-circus today has the mix of exotic animals, sex (American girls), sports competition (cricket), food and gladiators (Harbhajan Singh slapping Srisanth).

They may add lion feasting to the menu.

Picture Courtesy: “Pudhari” April 26, 2008 and rediff.com

Triumph of Idiot Culture, Manufactured Controversy, Sensationalism

There is a huge controversy in Maharashtra, including its legislative assembly, over a banner where Union minister Sharad Pawar’s picture is printed above that of medieval King Shivaji.

See the picture below.

This might have hurt sentiments of many but I thought the real debate should be how Sharad Pawar and his party have badly let down the ideals of Shivaji, arguably the greatest ruler of Indian origin.

I remember Carl BERNSTEIN’s words:

“…But I think the really important trends in journalism in the last 25 years are basically the dumbing down of media what I called in a cover piece for The New Republic in 1990 the triumph of idiot culture, manufactured controversy, sensationalism, shouting from the left and the right as if this were real news and real information.

In this cacophony truth, the best obtainable version of the truth, which is really what reporting is that snapshot at a given moment of where an event and the facts stand when reporting is good that's getting lost in this noise and, as Bob says, in this rush to get stuff out. Who the hell knows what's right and what's right and what's fact and what's context and what's not? …”

Inder Malhotra said in an op-ed piece “The debasement of Parliament” (Asian Age March 7 2007):

“…Thanks perhaps to my lucky stars, it has been my privilege to cover India’s apex legislature — for long years on a daily basis — since the first meeting of the "provisional Parliament" in February 1950. Until then the Constituent Assembly used to double up as the Central Legislative Assembly, too. The first Lok Sabha, elected in 1952, quickly attained such high standards of debate and decorum as to win the nation’s deep respect and wide international acclaim…

… Meanwhile, with lungpower having taken precedence over brainpower and raucous shouting replacing reasoned debate, wilful and repeated disruption of parliamentary proceedings inevitably followed. Sadly, the ruling Congress Party, with its massive majority achieved in 1971, became a partner in this disgraceful downhill slide…”


Picture Courtesy: Pudhari April 3 2008