Chairman, Press Council of India: I have a poor opinion of most media people

Jean Dreze, Amartya Sen:

"...India’s recent development experience includes both spectacular success as well as massive failure. The growth record is very impressive, and provides an important basis for all-round development, not least by generating more public revenue (about four times as much today, in real terms, as in 1990). But there has also been a failure to ensure that rapid growth translates into better living conditions for the Indian people. It is not that they have not improved at all, but the pace of improvement has been very slow—even slower than in Bangladesh or Nepal. There is probably no other example in the history of world development of an economy growing so fast for so long with such limited results in terms of broad-based social progress.

There is no mystery in this contrast, or in the limited reach of India’s development efforts. Both reflect the nature of policy priorities in this period. But as we have argued, these priorities can change through democratic engagement—as has already happened to some extent in specific states. However, this requires a radical broadening of public discussion in India to development-related matters—rather than keeping it confined to simple comparisons of the growth of the gnp, and naive admiration (implicit or explicit) of the high living standards of a relatively small part of the population. An exaggerated concentration on the lives of the minority of the better-off, fed strongly by media interest, gives an unreal picture of the rosiness of what is happening to Indians in general, and stifles public dialogue of other issues. Imaginative democratic practice, we have argued, is essential for broadening and enhancing India’s development achievements."

Nicholas Taleb

"....journalism may be the greatest plague we face today- as the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification".

“To be competent, a journalist should view matters like a historian, and play down the value of information he is providing…Not only is it difficult for the journalist to think more like a historian, but it is, alas, the historian who is becoming more like the journalist.”

Carl Sagan

“The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. “

Kanti Bajpai, The Times of India, October 14, 2011:

"But seriously, most Indian television news is a disgrace. Production is shocking, the viewer is assailed by 'breaking news', and there is almost nothing about the news behind the news. Investigative reporting usually consists of a reporter in the 'field' - the field being a major Indian city - waving a piece of paper around claiming that he has got access to a top secret internal government memorandum. If you look at the eyes of the reporter and the anchor, you cannot help the feeling that neither of them knows very much or cares very much about the issue. Television is largely theatre, and it is theatre they are determined to deliver."

It was great fun reading Press Council of India's chairman Justice Markandey Katju's views on Indian journalists in The Times of India Nov 1 2011.

"The general rut is very low and I have a poor opinion of most media people. Frankly, I don’t think they have much knowledge of economic theory or political science or literature or philosophy. I don’t think they have studied all this...

...Indian media is very often playing an anti-people role. It often diverts the attention of the people from the real problems which are basically economic. 80 per cent people are living in horrible poverty, unemployment, facing price rise, health care (problems).”

I feel sorry for Mr. Katju because he seems to be overlooking a golden rule: this business of journalism is about pure entertainment.

As Nicholas Taleb says:

“Most journalists do not take things too seriously. After all, this business of journalism is about pure entertainment, not a search for truth, particularly when it comes to radio and television. The trick is to stay away from those who do not seem to know that they are just entertainers and actually believe that they are thinkers.”

Some hope is implied in Mr. Taleb's statement for newspapers. Like in this quote of Isaac Chotiner: Newspapers have changed considerably in the past two centuries. They currently stand as one of the very few barriers to a media universe that is comprised of almost nothing but outbursts and opinions.

But some of the newspapers I see regularly are nothing but "outbursts and opinions" wrapped in commercial advertisements.

As far as television news: ALESSANDRA STANLEY- "In today’s television news market, that cable network and its stars are like the financiers they cover: media short-sellers trading shamelessly on publicity, good or bad, so long as it drives up ratings. There isn’t enough regulation on Wall Street, and there’s hardly any accountability on cable news: it’s a 24-hour star system in which opinions — and showmanship — matter more than facts."

But what about some of those high profile TV anchors interviewing national and international political/business leaders, sportspersons, writers, film-stars and other celebrities?

Taleb: “The interview is illustrative of the destructive aspect of the media, in catering to our heavily warped common sense and biases… (Interviewer) might even be someone of the utmost intellectual integrity, his profession, however, is merely to sound smart and intelligent to the hordes. ”


Artist: James Stevenson, The New Yorker, July 21 1980

Will we ever get as lucky as the gentleman in the picture above? "No news tonight." If we do, I won't be interested in knowing 'why'.

I agree with diagnosis but disagree with the medicine Mr. Katju has in mind and I quote:

" He also said he had written to the PM demanding that the Press Council be given “more teeth’’. Only last month, Katju had said in another TV interview that he would not shy away from using the “danda” to rein in erring journalists."

'Danda' won't work. It reminds me of 'The Emergency'. People's education may work. In the long run.


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, November 2 2011

Dileep Pardeshi- When Marathi Language Teacher was a Hero to Middle Class

Anon:

"Can't believe we officially have 7 billion people on Earth...yet the top news is Kim Kardashian's marriage"

Stephen Marche:

"Celebrities are not appendages of our society anymore; they are the basis of our communal lives. Literature and architecture, art and politics, are at most sidelights—small, ancient alleyways down which fewer and fewer minds wander. Pop culture has long since left the word culture behind to become the primary way we understand the world."

Pauline Kael:

“When we championed trash culture, we had no idea it would become the only culture.”

Marathi writer Dileep Pardeshi (दिलीप परदेशी) died recently.

He taught higher Marathi at division A on ground floor of Class 12th Science at Willingdon College, Sangli in year 1976-77.

I was in division B on first floor and I don't remember who taught Marathi to us because I bunked most Marathi periods! But I used to hear about his teaching from my friends in division A. Almost no one bunked his class.

Today I miss Pardeshi-sir and so should all those who love Marathi literature because he certainly created love for Mararthi literature among his pupils, many of them just 16-year old studying science and aiming to become engineers and doctors.

As I write this, he reminds me of a long-lost era when a 'mere' teacher of Marathi language was a hero to a large number of middle class students.

And the fact that he dressed stylishly and, if I remember correctly, kept fairly long hair added to his appeal.

A lot of his students, including many pretty girls, from classes 12th to Master of Arts doted on him. (And boy, didn't we feel jealous?)

Does this happen these days in our ad-backed celebrity hell also known as Marathi urban midddle-class popular culture? I doubt.

I have not read his single book in entirety and never thought much of him as a writer. I never tried to meet him even after I (probably) topped the college in Marathi that year beating 12th arts students.

He was a great fan of G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी). (Who wasn't then?)

Here is a letter by him to G A:

courtesy: "Priya Jee E Sa. Na. Vi. Vi.", 1994 (प्रिय जी. ए. स. न. वि. वि.) edited by G A Kulkarni's cousin-sister Ms. Nanda Paithankar (नंदा पैठणकर)

Henry aka गुणाकार...oops गुणाकर

Today November 4 2011 is 63rd Death Anniversary of Carl Anderson, creator of Henry aka गुणाकर.

I have already expressed my love for Phantom (comics) here.

A side attraction of those comics books was one page comics of Henry. In Marathi (मराठी), it was titled as 'Gunakar' (गुणाकर). It used to be printed at the beginning or at the end of the main comics.

Until recently I couldn't figure out how Henry became 'Gunakar' in Marathi. Confusion was even more when I used to read it as 'Gunakaar'(गुणाकार) meaning multiplication in Marathi!

If indeed it were to be 'Gunakaar' (गुणाकार), the English word should have been Asterix!

Artists: René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo

Now, I understand that 'गुणाकर' in Hindi means very gifted ('अत्यंत गुणी').

Because Henry is mute, there was nothing much to translate!

Art Baxter says about Henry:

"One never sought out the HENRY strip on the funny pages (when it was still on the funny pages that is). It was read after the favorites. It was read simply because it was there. The fact is, it was never good but it wasn't terrible either. Yet, we were compelled to see what the bald headed, ass-faced boy was up to that day."

I agree. I read it after the main story of 'The Phantom' or 'Mandrake the Magician' or 'Flash Gordon'.

"Henry is autonomous in the SATURDAY EVENING POST strips. HENRY would not pick up a regular cast of characters, all with no proper names, only titles: the mother, the dog, the bully, the little girl, until it became a William Randolph Hurst comic strip. The SEP HENRY is similar in many ways to the LITTLE RASCAL/OUR GANG comedies of the same era. That is children free from the tyranny of an adult presence (mostly). Children navigating the world as best they can with the knowledge and experience they currently possess. Sometimes they get things right, often get things wrong, and frequently come up with solutions to problems unique to their limited experience. Necessity is the mother of invention with funny surprising results."


Henry is carrying a case of milk bottles on his head. "Sometimes they get things right". Henry has because milk after all builds strong teeth, bones and muscles.

Does this make Henry very gifted 'गुणाकर'?

But if he drops the case...he "often gets things wrong."

Forty Heads of Henry

Diamond Jubilee of S D Phadnis's Spell- Mohini

George Orwell:

"In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is 'good' ... Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion."

It is hard to believe that we are celebrating diamond jubilee of 86-year old S D Phadnis (शि. द. फडणीस) designed covers of Diwali number of visionary Anant Antarkar (अनंत अंतरकर) founded Marathi magazine Mohini (मोहिनी).

cover of Mohini Diwali 2011 (The posting of this art is for scholarly and educational purposes. Please visit http://www.sdphadnis.com/)

He first did it in year 1952 and he has done it every year since!

Norman Rockwell, whose influence I clearly see on Phadnis's art, during his 50-year career with The Saturday Evening Post, painted more than 300 covers.

Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे), SDP's close friend, has done every cover of Marathi magazine Lalit's (ललित) Diwali number since 1964.

Sarwate writes on characteristics of SDP's art in 1990:

"जरुर तेवढाच तपशील, चित्रातून म्हणायच आहे ते पाहिल्या बरोबर, बिनचूकपणे पाहणार्याच्या ध्यानात येईल अशी चित्रातील मांडणी आणि डोळ्यास आल्हाद देईल अशी रंगरचना"

(Only necessary details, composition of the drawing done in a manner one grasps accurately what is indended to be convyed as soon as one sees it and colour composition that pleases the eye")

Specifically on Mohini covers by SDP, Sarwate wrote in 1970:

"रंग हे फङणीसांच्या चित्रांच एक महत्वाचं अंग आहे हे त्यांची 'मोहिनी'वरील चित्रं पाहणार्याच्या सहज लक्षात येईल. आल्हाददायक रंगसंगती त्यांच्या चित्रांना स्वप्नमय, तरल स्वरुप देण्यास फार मोठी मदत करतात."

(Colour is an important component of his pictures is pretty obvious to those who look at his pictures on the covers of 'Mohini'. Pleasing colour compositions help big give his pictures dreamlike, subtle quality.)

This is how Sarwate draws his friend at work:

['Sahapravasee' (सहप्रवासी), 2005]

Notice how well Sarwate has captured the above qualities of Shi Da's drawings in picture-in-picture.

See my previous post on Shi Da here.

George Orwell has also said: "If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia?… I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and…toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable."

To Orwell's list of 'trees, fishes, butterflies and…toads', I would add Shi Da Phadnis's pictures.

I still love them as much as I first saw them as a kid. If 'a peaceful and decent future' materialises, it will be a bonus!

And I hope I will continue to enjoy the sight of anyone combing his/her hair looking into a scooter's mirror and not just of that couple with sunny smiles from Mohini Diwali 2011's cover.

Bhau Padhye, A Mavali: Loveable Rogue or Lumpenproletariat?

Today October 30 2011 is the 15th death anniversary of Bhau Padhye (भाऊ पाध्ये).

Kathryn Schulz:

"...the lazy man’s “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” is “Fuck this shit.”...In The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson argues that okay is “the quintessential Americanism” and “the most grammatically versatile of words.” Okay. But surely it has a rival—or a compatriot—in fuck. Wherever it originated (the jury is out), the F-word has flourished in our adolescent American soil. And pace Bryson, its grammatical versatility cannot be topped: You can use it as noun, verb, adverb, adjective, or interjection, not to mention in any mood whatsoever, from exultation to rage..."

('Ode to a Four-Letter Word/ And I don’t mean "okay."')

Jason Flores-Williams:

“Hipster culture today is harmless culture. And that’s an epic tragedy because being hip used to mean that you were heroic and dangerous. That you waged war on soullessness and greed through art and resistance. Being hip meant that you wanted upheaval in society. Being hip meant you were intense lower class, not detached upper class. Being hip meant being revolutionary.”

दुर्गा भागवत: "'लेखकराव' म्हणून इतरांना नावं ठेवणारे स्वतःच लेखकराव होवून बसले"

[Durga Bhagwat: Those who teased others as "establishment-writers" themselves became establishment-writers (insiders)]

The one guy who never became one- Bhau Padhye.

(Contrast this with, from another field, some one like Mr. Sunil Gavaskar, once an enfant terrible of Indian cricket, is now the establishment.)

The title of this post contains a Marathi word मवाली ('Mavali'). Mavali translates as rogue/ hooligan/ hoodlum/ ruffian. One meaning of 'rogue' is 'something or someone different from what is normal or expected'. Indeed, if anyone, Bhau was different.

Recently I came across following.

Economic and Political Weekly dated July 31 2011 has an essay by Juned Shaikh: "Translating Marx: Mavali, Dalit and the Making of Mumbai’s Working Class, 1928-1935"

'The Communist Manifesto' was translated into Marathi as 'Kamyunista Jahirnama' (कम्युनिस्ट जाहीरनामा) in Meerut jail in 1930-31 by Gangadhar Adhikari (गंगाधर अधिकारी) a scientist who had completed his PhD in chemistry from Berlin University in 1926.

The Jahirnama’s classified people in the city of Mumbai into the categories of such as kamgaar, Mavali and dalit.

"Adhikari used the term “mavali” to signify the lumpenproletariat. Mavali, a moniker for people from the hilly regions of western Maharashtra in the Bombay Presidency, signified categories of people prone to create law and order problems for the colonial police. In his explication of key words to the Marathi edition of the Manifesto that was published along with the Jahirnama, Adhikari characterised the Mavali as a class below the working class, who were “paupers” and lived in the city’s slums...Destitute and unemployed workers, paupers, and the lumpenproletariat are a step below the kamgaar varga on the social ladder...

He translated a passage from Das Capital to explain this point further:

"उद्योगधंद्यातून काढून टाकलेले लोक मोठ्यावस्तीच्या शहरातून गर्दी करुन राहतात; व गुंड, दादालोक, मवाली म्ह्णून प्रसिद्धीस येतात. उत्पादन क्रियेची व यांची कायमची फारकत झाली असते; असे लोक अर्थातच पैशा करीता वाटेल त्या प्रतिगामी पक्षाला स्वताला विकण्यास मागे पुढे पहात नाहीत. (The paupers who have been fired from work live in crowded slums in cities and become famous as criminals- (mavali). They have been permanently separated from the means of production and therefore these people do not think twice before selling themselves to counter-revolutionary forces for money).

Mavali indeed is a very complex term.

My affection for Bhau Padhye has been expressed a few times on this blog. One such instance is here.

Recently I read Mr. Narayan Bandekar's (नारायण बांदेकर) interview of Mr. Padhye here.

Agreeing with his high-profile and vocal critic Acharya Atre (आचार्य अत्रे), Bhau admits he is a rogue (मवाली).

"'वासूनाक्या'वरील आचार्य अत्र्यांच्या लेखात मला 'मवाली' म्हटलं व भटकळांनी बदनामीचा खटला करण्यास मला मदत करण्याचं आश्वासन दिलं. पण मला वाटलं, आचार्य अत्र्यांनी मला ही बेस्ट पदवी दिली. माझी वास्तव जीवनातील प्रतिमा का आली कुणास ठाऊक- मी घर उघड्यावर टाकलं नाही एवढ्यावरून-? बाकी सगळं केलं, (म्हणजे बाई, बाटली वगैरे!) मला वाटतं- माझा चष्मा, शोशन्नाचं सामाजिक कार्य आणि समाजवादी बॅकग्राउंड यामुळं ही गफलत झाली असावी. तुम्ही विश्वास ठेवा किंवा ठेवू नका, पण कॉलेज जीवनात काही मुलींनी मला खरोखरच 'मवाली' ठरवलं होतं!"

(Acharya Atre called me a rogue in his article on 'Vasunaka' and Bhatkal promised help to file a lawsuit for libel. But I thought, Acharya Atre has really given me a very good title. I don't know why my image in real life was formed- just because I never abandoned the house- did everything else, (means alcohol, women etc!) I think - my glasses, Shoshanna's social work and socialist background- they created mixup. You believe it or not, but in college life some girls indeed concluded that I was a rogue!")

Now this 'rogue' quality of Bhau is captured so beautifully in following 'cool' picture- spiky hair- more like Havells : Shock Laga ad- on head, wrinkles on forehead, beedi dangling from mouth, glasses, his horizontal stripe little short shirt exposing his crotch, hands in pockets, slightly bent right knee, a bunch of chest hair, and don't-give-a-damn attitude...

(Bhau would have surely liked my reference to Havells ad! For him life was sum total of all that happened around him. There was nothing higher or lower.)

Artist: Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) from 'Nivadak Thanthanpal' (निवडक ठणठणपाळ ),1969

ERIN MCKEAN has said: "We like to think that human languages should be more like computer-programming languages: logical, orderly, efficient and goal-oriented. But they are more like our own DNA: complicated and full of junk information but at the same time gloriously mutable, able (for good or ill) to give rise to new living forms." (WSJ, August 10 2011)

Bhau played his part in the process of Marathi's mutation and while doing it, I think, he never sold himself to counter-revolutionary forces for money. He always remained orthogonal. And many Marathi lovers are luckier for it.

प्रलयकाळी टीरेक्स जाती। तेथे पर्गाटोरियस वाचती ॥Tyrannosaurus Rex goes, Purgatorius lives.

I have been watching Animal Armageddon on Animal Planet this month, October 2011.

First of all it is very humbling. You watch, 65 million years ago, a small mammal Purgatorius, our ancestor, hanging on to her dear life and you realise what all you need to worship in animal kingdom beyond elephants, snakes and cows.

Second I imagine if the likes of Dnyaneshwar (ज्ञानेश्वर), Tukaram (तुकाराम) and Shakespeare knew these extinct animal kingdoms and their annihilation, their imagery would have been even more colourful.

For instance, this is how Tukaram describes the importance of being small (and humble):

तुका म्हणे बरवे जाण| व्हावे ल्हानाहून ल्हान|| महापुरे झाडे जाती| तेथे लव्हाळे वाचती||

(Tuka says become smaller than small. In a deluge trees are washed out but grass survives.)

Tyrannosaurus Rex goes, Purgatorius lives.

As I watched the documentary television miniseries, I realised that, with luck, I would dodge an animal armageddon in my lifetime.

But yesterday, on Laxmi Pujan day, as I heard and saw crackers being burst so savagely around me, I felt many birds and animals must feel that this indeed was the armageddon of their life.

Deep down, even I can't escape that feeling.

My ancestor Purgatorius

Picture courtesy: Wikipedia

p.s. 'प्रलयकाळी' (cataclysm / universal devastation) is one of my favourite Marathi words. Why? Read this.

In Praise of Street sweepers

Today is Lakshmi Pujan, Ashwin Amavasya Shake 1933 (लक्ष्मी पूजन, आश्विन अमावस्या, शके १९३३)

Wikipedia: Lakshmi Pooja, or the worship of the goddess of wealth, is the main event on Diwali in North and West India. It is extremely important to keep the house spotlessly clean and pure on Diwali. Goddess Lakshmi likes cleanliness, and she will visit the cleanest house first. This is also the reason why the broom is worshiped on this day with offerings of haldi and kumkum (turmeric and vermilion).

R S Sharma:

"Buddhism did not deprecate manual labour. In a second-century sculpture from Bodh-Gaya, the Buddha is depicted ploughing with oxen."

('India's Ancient Past', 2005)

Martin Luther King Jr., 1954:

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well."

P L Deshpande (पु ल देशपांडे):

"उषा: तुम्हांला सगळ्याचाच मझा वाटतो.

काकाजी: पहिलं नीट म्हणजे बराबर मझा दिसतो. इंदूर स्टेशनात एकदा एक भंगी दोन लंब्या झाडू घेऊन कचरा काढीत होता. उषा, अरे ऐश्या झाडू फिरवीत होता, की तुझ्या सतीशला बॅट देखील फिरवता येणार नाही तशी."

("Usha: You think everything is fun.

Kakaji: If you look carefully, you notice fun alright. At Indore station once a street-sweeper was sweeping using two long brooms. Usha, the way he was brandishing broom, your Satish won't be able to wave a (cricket) bat.")

['Tujhe Ahe Tujapashi', 1957 (तुझें आहे तुजपाशीं)]

(If you like Pu La's Kakaji, you may want to read this.)

Artist: Eldon Dedini (1921-2006), The New Yorker, October 7 1961

चाफा मात्र फुलतच राहतो, Champak Goes On and On: Lyrical, Tragic, and Comic

चाफा मात्र फुलतच राहतो, Champak Goes On and On: Lyrical, Tragic, and Comic

Today Oct 18 2011 is 8th death anniversary of my Tai Mavashi (ताई -मावशी ). And I lost my second mavashi- Kumud (कुमुद)- on October 1 2011...Now, including my mother and their mother, all four of them, I like to think, are together. Wherever.

Once I wanted to escort these three Bhate (भाटे ) sisters on a jaunt to Mahad (महाड), their beloved native town, instead I accompanied each of them to crematorium...This is growing up!

कवी गोविंद (1874-1926) (Kavi Govind)

सुंदर मी होणार, आतां सुंदर मी होणार!
सुंदर मी होणार । हो। मरणानें जगणार।...

...जुनी इंद्रिये, जुना पिसारा.. सर्व सर्व झडणार हो..
नव्या तनुचे, नव्या शक्तीचे.. पंख मला फुटणार हो..
सुंदर मी होणार.

There is so much hope in the poet's words above...Death will remake him, get rid of his disability and make him beautiful all over again...easily one of the most memorable poems in 20th century Marathi.

After seeing my Tai-mavashi for the last time at Kolhapur (कोल्हापुर) crematorium on the banks of Panchganga (पंचगंगा), I looked at the evening sky...

It had never looked that beautiful.

What was I doing at that goddamn crematorium instead of looking at pretty girls of Kolhapur at Rankala (रंकाळा) and Mahadwar (महाद्वार ) road, or making plans of which movies to see, or where to eat outside: what we always did while visiting her in the past, when R D Burman song "Yeh shyam mastani" (ये शाम मस्तानी) from 'Kati Patang',1970 never stopped playing?

Sure, death might have made my mavashi more beautiful- it wasn't obvious though- but what about the sky in real life that was even more beautiful than usual after her death? Evening was still graceful (ये शाम मस्तानी) but now in a creepy way.

Can we reconcile this?

Not Mark Twain. He thinks it's a mockery:

“I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable mother!—five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! … Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery."

Not C T Khanolkar (चिं.त्र्यं.खानोलकर) either:

आणि आकाशाकडे बघून त्याने गर्जना केली :
बाप्पा तुला क्षमा नाही
वाड्यावरची माणसे दोंदे वाढवतात
माझ्या काश्याचे पाय जातात
चाफा मात्र फुलतच राहतो

[I have quoted these lines of CTK as I recall them from, I think, a दीपावली (Deepawali) magazine's diwali number from 1970's. Errors if any are regretted.]

Maybe George Santayana:

“Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence."


Artist: Helen E Hokinson (1893-1949), The New Yorker, March 15 1941

Champak like begonia goes on and on...

A E Housman:

“For Nature, heartless, witless Nature
Will neither know nor care”

Sexual Repression, Awaaz Diwali ank, Donald McGill and George Orwell

Michel Foucault:

"If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets established law; he somehow anticipates the coming freedom." ('The History of Sexuality', Volume I, 1976)

Germaine Greer:

… in the 21st century pornography is as ubiquitous as religion once was. Its sadomasochistic stock in trade is still the same. No sexual revolution will happen until the role of penetration as a mechanism of domination is obliterated, until it makes no sense to snarl at anyone: "Get fucked", until "fucked" does not mean "ruined".
Sexual culture is so protean that we can hardly generalise about it; parents' attitudes are different from their children's and their children's attitudes may be different from one another's; kids in one school bus will be shocked and horrified at what is going on in another. Sex is simultaneously suppressed and commoditised. Its expression is both covert and blatant. Nowadays, masturbation is supposed to be good for us and yet "wanker" is a word of withering abuse. When sex is a duty, it palls; when it is absolutely forbidden, it becomes unbearably exciting.

'Woman Carrying Load' Artist: Unknown Indian, Period: 6000 BC or later Location: Bhimbetka rock shelters, Near Bhopal, MP (courtesy: 'Prehistory' by Irfan Habib, 2001)

दुर्गा भागवत:

"गोंड लोकांच्या मध्ये मी काम करीत होते, तेंव्हा त्या गोंड बायका मला म्हणायच्या की, गोंड बायका चोळी घालत नाहीत म्हणून त्यांची वक्षःस्थळं भरदार असतात. शहरी बायकां सारखी विसविशीत नसतात. तुमची सीता आमच्या गोंडवनात आली. तिनं आमच्यासारखी चोळी टाकली. तिची वक्षःस्थळं भरदार झाली. आवडली आमच्या रावणाला. पळवली तिला...त्यात काय?...अशी त्या गोंड बायकांची कथा. मला हसूच आलं."

[Durga Bhagwat: When I was working among Gonds, those Gond women used to say to me that Gond women didn't wear Choli (blouse) and hence their breasts were firm. Not soft like urban women. Your Seeta arrived in Gondwana. Like us she stopped using Choli. Her breasts became firm. Our Ravana liked her. He abducted her...what big deal?...this is the story of those Gond women. It made me laugh."]

[“Aispais Gappa: Durgabainshi” by Pratibha Ranade ("ऐसपैस गप्पा : दुर्गाबाईंशी" लेखक: प्रतिभा रानडे), 1998, page-50]

Artist: Donald McGill (1875–1962)

George Orwell was not sure if Donald McGill was a real person or simply a trade name but he wrote a memorable essay on him in 1941.

Mr. McGill was a British graphic artist who drew funny pictures featuring attractive young women, fat old ladies, drunken middle aged men.

In short, he was a cartoonist.

Poor Mr. McGill was prosecuted in 1954 on the charge of breaking the 'Obscene Publications Act 1857' where he was found guilty and made to pay fine and costs. 21 of his cards were either banned or withdrawn from sale. There was a kind witch-hunt against him, and it was all so sad.

[By the way, such a law in India too has played havoc with artistic freedom, harassing artists like B S Mardhekar (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर).

My father's first social novel 'Dhoka! Hamrasta Pudhe Aahe' (धोका! हमरस्ता पुढे आहे)- written at the age of just 25- was dubbed 'obscene' but, unlike Mardhekar, he wasn't prosecuted. D K Bedekar (दि. के. बेडेकर) was one among few who stood by him, Jaywant Dalvi (जयवंत दळवी)was one among many who attacked him. But the incident scared off my father- he was almost broke and had a young family to support- from exploring creative, daring themes in his future work.]

Orwell writes on McGill's portrayal of attractive young women:

"...Here one comes back to the outstanding, all-important feature of comic post cards — their obscenity. It is by this that everyone remembers them, and it is also central to their purpose, though not in a way that is immediately obvious.

A recurrent, almost dominant motif in comic post cards is the woman with the stuck-out behind. In perhaps half of them, or more than half, even when the point of the joke has nothing to do with sex, the same female figure appears, a plump ‘voluptuous’ figure with the dress clinging to it as tightly as another skin and with breasts or buttocks grossly over-emphasized according to which way it is turned. There can be no doubt that these pictures lift the lid off a very widespread repression, natural enough in a country whose women when young tend to be slim to the point of skimpiness. But at the same time the McGill post card — and this applies to all other post cards in this genre — is not intended as pornography but, a subtler thing, as a skit on pornography. The Hottentot figures of the women are caricatures of the Englishman's secret ideal, not portraits of it. When one examines McGill's post cards more closely, one notices that his brand of humour only has a meaning in relation to a fairly strict moral code...."

Orwell doesn't want these pictures to vanish because he says once their kind of humour used to be integral to the literature but because serious literature now has no place for it, we need it stand-alone.

"...Their existence, the fact that people want them, is symptomatically important. Like the music halls, they are a sort of saturnalia, a harmless rebellion against virtue. They express only one tendency in the human mind, but a tendency which is always there and will find its own outlet, like water...

...In the past the mood of the comic post card could enter into the central stream of literature, and jokes barely different from McGill's could casually be uttered between the murders in Shakespeare's tragedies. That is no longer possible, and a whole category of humour, integral to our literature till 1800 or thereabouts, has dwindled down to these ill-drawn post cards, leading a barely legal existence in cheap stationers' windows..."

Orwell considers them "ill-drawn".

I don't.

Now go back to the picture of Donald McGill above.

Indeed, they are wonderful!... I mean lady's pearls...I mean McGill's pictures!

The picture reminds me of a very popular Marathi magazine 'Awaaz'(आवाज) that has been published every Diwali since its inception in 1951.

It was founded and edited first by Mr. Madhukar Patkar (मधुकर पाटकर) and, after his death in 1996, by his son Mr. Suhas Patkar (सुहास पाटकर). (Mr. Suhas too is no more. He died in October 2010.)

I must have seen the magazine first time in 1970's.

I liked it only for its naughty 'Fold-In'/ 'window-pictures' (In Marathi: खिडकीचित्र) featuring women with "breasts or buttocks grossly over-emphasized". I don't think I ever read a single article or short-story from the magazine.

After reading Orwell, I wonder if Awaaz's pictures at one time "lifted the lid off a very widespread repression" in a middle-class Maharashtrian society where sex had always been repressed since Victorian era, and that the Awaaz's pictures were "not intended as pornography but, a subtler thing, as a skit on pornography", and that this "brand of humour only has a meaning in relation to a fairly strict moral code."

And hence today when- thanks to internet- pornography is widely and almost freely available, when sexual mores are changing fast and nudity is widespread, has Awaaz art lost its calling?

Also, the operative word 'at one time' in previous para is important because Awaaz does not mean or will mean anything to my 17-year-old native Marathi speaking son and most of his 'Marathi' friends.

The artist who created Awaaz art for a long time was Mr. Chandrashekhar Patki (c 1933-2008) (चंदशेखर पत्की).

I read that Mr. Patki used to like the art of Henry Boltinoff (1914–2001), Bill Wenzel (1918–1987)- a master of drawing a voluptuous, sexy, innocent girl-, Mario Miranda but was never influenced by them. I wonder if Patki saw McGill's pictures.

Sadly, for this post, I couldn't get hold of Patki's big colour window-picture from his heydays. But see the one below and you will get an idea of his art.

Caption- Man's wife to her female domestic: "Doctor has asked him to take rest. Therefore, you need not come for eight days!"

Now a picture of one of Patki's favourite Mr. Wenzel

caption: "Hmmm...with a neighbour like that, I'm sure I can get you an extra $2000!"

Artist: Bill Wenzel

I can easily see this Wenzel's picture getting printed in Awaaz Diwali 2011 as a 'window-picture'- that is you don't see the lady below her shoulders until you turn the page- with a caption in Marathi that may run something like this:

"हं...अशी शेजारीण, मग काय आणखी वीस लाख मिळवून देतो तुमच्या बंगल्याला!"

Steve Jobs- from Bazzar to Cathedral, from Kabir to Michelangelo

Kabir:

कबिरा खड़ा बाजार में सबकी मांगे खैर
ना काहू से दोस्ती ना काहू से बैर
ना काहू से बैर ज्ञान की अलख जगावे
भूला भटका जो होय राह ताही बतलावे
बीच सड़क के मांहि झूठ को फोड़े भंडा
बिन पैसे बिन दाम ज्ञान का मारै डंडा

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra:

"Kabir's a disruptive voice which stands in opposition to everything you cherish and hold dear, from your worldly possessions to religious beliefs. Kabir might not have been a nice man to know..."

Robert Skidelsky:

"Jeffrey Sachs's diagnosis of America's ills understates the deleterious effect of globalisation. He doesn't question the economics or morality of offshoring American production abroad, regardless of its consequences for American jobs or real wages, simply saying that the winners should compensate the losers. Not only has this not happened, but it is increasingly unlikely to happen, because globalisation has greatly increased the political clout of the winners. Since the 1980s owners of capital have enjoyed not just a big rise in pre-tax earnings, but a substantial cut in tax rates, taking inequality back to levels last seen before the first world war."

Mike Daisey:

"Apple’s rise to power in our time directly paralleled the transformation of global manufacturing. As recently as 10 years ago Apple’s computers were assembled in the United States, but today they are built in southern China under appalling labor conditions. Apple, like the vast majority of the electronics industry, skirts labor laws by subcontracting all its manufacturing to companies like Foxconn, a firm made infamous for suicides at its plants, a worker dying after working a 34-hour shift, widespread beatings, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to meet high quotas set by tech companies like Apple...

...Mr. Jobs’s magic has its costs. We can admire the design perfection and business acumen while acknowledging the truth: with Apple’s immense resources at his command he could have revolutionized the industry to make devices more humanely and more openly, and chose not to. If we view him unsparingly, without nostalgia, we would see a great man whose genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world will not be seen again in our lifetime. We would also see a man who in the end failed to “think different,” in the deepest way, about the human needs of both his users and his workers. "

(The New York Times, October 6 2011)

Vaclav Smil:

"Some 130 years after Edison’s remarkable creation of the electricity system, there still remains no doubt about the fundamental and truly epochal nature of his contributions: the world without electricity has become unimaginable. I bet that 130 years from now our successors will not be able to say the same about Apple’s sleek electronic devices assembled from somebody else’s components and providing services that are not fundamentally different from those offered by competitors. I have no doubt that the world without iPhone or iPad would be perfectly fine."

Mourning over Mr. Job's death turned little hysterical in Indian media. Reminded me of Princess Diana's death.

Rod Liddle:

"This is the generation (born between 1955 and 1985), which has bequeathed to the world reality television, the cult of the celebrity, first-person confessional journalism and the mass hysterical emoting at the funerals of people they have never met, let alone known. I suppose, if we were to grope for a reason, we might say that it was the first generation for a very long time which lived without the depredations of war and thus the prospect of imminent death; which threw off the notion of a higher authority than itself and was schooled in the art of self-expression rather than the acquisition of knowledge."

I have already thanked Mr. Jobs for PC with GUI and 'Toy Story'. That apart, what kind of change, if any, Mr. Jobs brought to our lives?

To begin with, reading Mr. Liddle's words above and Mr. Job's own thoughts- quoted in previous post- on death, he made us think about 'the prospect of imminent death' at least for a day.

Let us now turn to materialistic aspects of change.

Peter Thiel:

"The economic decoupling of computers from everything else leads to more questions than answers, and barely hints at the strange future where today’s trends simply continue. Would supercomputers become powerful engines for the miraculous creation of wholly new forms of economic value, or would they simply become powerful weapons for reshuffling existing structures — for Nature, red in tooth and claw? More simply, how does one measure the difference between progress and mere change? How much is there of each?"

Mr. Thiel's article should really be an eye-opener for many.

David Brooks says: "A person born in 1900 began with horse-drawn buggies and died with men walking on the Moon..."

All my grandparents (and my wife's) were borne around 1900 and had that ride but for my generation it has been far less exciting.

I feel most of what Mr. Jobs did since his return to Apple was 'mere change'. And that's why I find it ridiculous when people compare him to Thomas Alva Edison.

Thiel: "The era of globalization improved living standards by making labor and goods cheaper, but also hurt living standards through increased competition for limited resources. Free-trade advocates tend to think that the first effect dominates the second."

I don't.

I have expressed on this blog my increasing inability to connect to young strangers, or even not so strangers, in urban India because their ears are always stuffed.

And I hold Mr. Jobs partly responsible for this.

Dr Aric Sigman argues that the growth of electronic media – computers, iPods, mobile phones, video games – as "the most significant contributing factor to society's growing physical estrangement"

or Roger Scruton:

"...Michael Bull draws on the “cultural theory” of Horkheimer and Adorno to argue that, thanks to the iPod, urban space has in many ways ceased to be public space and has become fragmented and privatized, each person retreating into his own inviolable sphere and losing his dependency upon and interest in his fellows. This process not only alienates people from each other, it enables people to retain control over their sensations, and so shut out the world of chance, risk, and change..."

What made Mr. Jobs?

David Brooks says in The New York Times, Oct 6 2011 :

"...Look at the Steve Jobs obituaries. Over the course of his life, he combined three asynchronous idea spaces — the counterculture of the 1960s, the culture of early computer geeks and the culture of corporate America. There was LSD, “The Whole Earth Catalogue” and spiritual exploration in India. There were also nerdy hours devoted to trying to build a box to make free phone calls...The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing..."

The counterculture. Do we have it today?

Susan Sontag said: We live in a culture committed to unifying greeds…..everyone on the planet feeding at the same trough of standardized entertainment and fantasies of eros and violence….How one wishes that some of its (the iconoclastic spirit of the 1960s) boldness, its optimism, its disdain for commerce had survived……

Here is one of us trying rather pathetically to 'escape' our culture...



Artist: Stuart Carlson

I read Mr. N R Narayana Murthy has called Mr. Jobs “Michelangelo of the computer era”. It made me chuckle.

I associate Michelangelo with a cathedral and I once saw in Mr. Jobs iconoclastic Kabir who is associated with bazaar, far away from a cathedral.