Sakharam Binder सखाराम बाईंडर and the Basic Middle-Class Hunger for Property

Writing Vijay Tendulkar’s विजय तेंडुलकर obit, Girish Karnad says:

“…Then came Sakharam Binder. It's not only Tendulkar's best play, but one of the masterpieces of Indian drama. When first performed, several political parties united to demand a ban on the play, and it had to be rescued by the courts. Its critics claimed to be scandalised by its overt sexuality. But one suspects that Tendulkar had once again hit a raw nerve, the basic middle-class hunger for property as a guarantee of security, and the ruthlessness this hunger could unleash. Lakshmi, a perfect embodiment of Hindu womanly virtues, manoeuvres a murder to keep the roof intact over her head, invulnerable in her sense of moral rectitude…” (Outlook June 2, 2008)

This angle I had never thought.

As real estate prices climb relentlessly in Pune, everyday one hears sordid stories of greed, corruption, moral decay and crumbling family values. Duryodhana’s following words don’t sound all that far-fetched: “The Pandavas will not receive even a needle- point of territory,"

In 1980’s, I lived in a Bombay where girls fell in love only after ascertaining where the suitor’s property was located. Western suburbs upto Andheri were preferred over eastern ones. I had no chance because I had neither! Now I joke about it, then I felt castrated.

Now, the whole of urban India is Bombay.

I mentioned ancient India by quoting from the Mahabharata. Let us turn to an example from American history.

WILLIAM HOGELAND said in NYT December 27, 2006:

“…In 1763, George III drew a line on a map stretching from modern-day Maine to modern-day Georgia, along the crest of the Appalachians. He declared it illegal to claim or settle land west of the line, all of which he reserved for Native Americans.

George Washington, a young colonel in the Virginia militia, instructed his land-buying agents in the many ways of getting around the law. Although Washington was not alone in acquiring forbidden tracts, few were as energetic in the illegal acquisition of western land…

… By the early 1770’s, George Washington had amassed vast tracts to which his titles were flatly invalid. The Revolution rectified that. With British law void, Washington emerged from the war with his titles legal by default…”

Jonathan Yardley said in Washington Post May 18, 2008:

“…Not merely did George Washington want the capital on the Potomac, he also "was determined to place the capital close to the Eastern Branch, today known as the Anacostia River, virtually across the Potomac from his own estate at Mount Vernon." Washington believed that the Potomac was fated to be the essential connection between the Atlantic and the rapidly growing West -- he didn't know, or more likely didn't want to know, that for most of the year much of the Potomac is unnavigable -- and "he stood to make a great deal of money" from a capital on the Potomac, a useful reminder that the motives of the Father of His Country were not always pristinely patriotic…”


Artist: Bruce Erik Kaplan The New Yorker 17 January 1994

Shiva’s Wrongful Depiction! The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest #148

I continue NOT to be a "U.S. resident age eighteen or over". So here is my entry by stealth.



Artist: Drew Dernavich The New Yorker June 2, 2008

Proposed Caption: “Hindu fundamentalists have threatened to burn this down because of Shiva’s depiction next to an unknown woman instead of his consort Parvati.”

Shit- a WMD at Work in Myanmar 2008…Panipat 1761…

For NYT May 19, 2008, ROSE GEORGE writes:

“IT’S the rainy season in Myanmar. It’s also cholera season. When Cyclone Nargis arrived two weeks ago, the waters it unleashed destroyed houses and killed people and livestock. The storm also devastated other things that haven’t made the headlines, but that can mean the difference between life and death: toilets. Even before the cyclone, 75 percent of Burmese had no latrines. Like some 2.6 billion other people worldwide, they do their business by roadsides, on train tracks or wherever they can. But the few latrines that did exist in the Irrawaddy Delta are now flooded or flattened, and their contents have seeped into already filthy waters.

So what? There are other priorities, aren’t there? Food, shelter and clean water are what aid agencies emphasize. But human excrement is a weapon of mass destruction. A gram of human feces can contain up to 10 million viruses. At least 50 communicable diseases — including cholera, meningitis and typhoid — travel from host to host-in human excrement. It doesn’t take much: a small child, maybe, who plays in soil where people have been defecating, then dips his fingers in the family rice pot. The aftermath of a disaster like Cyclone Nargis — with masses of weakened people on the move — is a communicable disease paradise…”

This blog already has a post on the status of sanitation in urban India of 21st century. See it here. What chance did then a brutal battle location almost 248 years ago have?

For a period of 2.5 months in late 1760 to January 14, 1761, Maratha army camp- approximate 200,000 people strong- was forced to stay put in an area of about 15 miles long near Panipat. It could never change its location even once unlike their enemy army of Ahmad Shah Abdali that changed its own location 3 times.

Unfortunately today there are few letters available that were sent from the Maratha army camp during this period because most of the sent ones were captured and destroyed by the enemy.

T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर has described the kind of difficulties Maratha army probably faced- foul smell, polluted and inadequate water (Rs. 1 per pot!), famine like food supply, lack of clothing to protect from severe and unusually wet North Indian winter, undisposed rotting corpses of soldiers who died in skirmishes etc. A lot of people and cattle died due to starvation and disease.

Foul smell, polluted and inadequate water? Surely human feces, a WMD, got deployed.

“…In our sanitary, plumbed lives, the toilet — an engineering marvel — removes waste out of sight and out of mind. As Steven Pinker recently wrote in “The Stuff of Thought,” the vocabulary of excretion has sneaked in and taken the taboo place previously held by religious words, and this switch parallels the rise of sewers and the sanitizing of excrement. A substance common to us all, and as vital to life as breathing, has become unspeakable, and particularly in the polite and powerful circles that could do something about its deadly effects…

…This year, the International Year of Sanitation, is a fine time to address a pointless and damaging conversational taboo. Solving sanitation is about more than semantics. But our refusal to talk about it says something about us, and none of it good.”

Not every one refuses to talk about human excrement though.

Vinoba Bhave used to say “प्रभाते मलदर्शनम” (In the moring sight feces) rephrasing the last line famous Sanskrit shloka

कराग्रे वसते लक्ष्मी:
करमूले सरस्वती ।
करमध्ये तु गोविंद:
प्रभाते करदर्शनम्।।

(At the tip of the hand resides Laxmi, At the root Sarasvati,
At the centre Govinda, in the morning sight hand.)

Not too long ago in India, during early years of my childhood, human soil was carried manually in carts. If Americans (and during Nixon administration it was entirely plausible) came looking for WMDs in India then news ticker in the picture below could read…

"White House says latest attacks prove Indira Gandhi has human carts of mass..."


Artist: Michael Crawford The New Yorker 8 December 2003

Bollywood also is a Dog-doesn't-Return-Other-Dog's-Phone-Calls

Woody Allen: “Show business is, is dog-eat-dog. It's worse than dog-eat-dog. It's dog-doesn't-return-other-dog's-phone-calls.” (Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989)

Hindi film industry writer-director Vikram Bhatt has started writing a weekly column for The Asian Age. He has something interesting to say and tries to say it honestly.

The last time I really enjoyed an insider’s view was when the late Vijay Anand wrote or spoke. (btw- It’s a great loss of all Hindi film lovers that Vijay Anand never wrote a book on his art.)

In his latest column “Enjoy it while the phone rings” on May 18, 2008, Bhatt writes:

“…That is the life of people in the entertainment industry. Sometimes they are dying for the phone to ring and at other times they are busy ignoring calls…

… The cellphone is also a very good idea to find out where you stand in the scheme of things. Like a success and status check. The struggling actors, directors and other technicians will not get a response from almost anyone. They might as well not message or call…

…The successful can call anyone and text anyone…

… I remember being in an actor’s house once and the phone kept ringing and he said "Oh god! This damn phone keeps ringing." A senior producer who was also sitting there smiled and said, "These are beautiful problems son. Enjoy them." What he was trying to say was enjoy it while the phone rings. Answer the calls. Enjoy being wanted because in every stars or important creative person's life, sooner or later the phone will stop ringing and then every half an hour you will check your phone for missed calls.

Then you don’t even have to withhold your caller identity. All that will be left will be to deal with your new unwanted entity.”


artist: Lee Lorenz The New Yorker 27 February 1960

Excesses on Display at Swargate, Pune Herald Mad Max 2

George Miller’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) is my favourite film. The film portrays a world running out of oil.

“…The end of the world, it seems, is a sprint to decide who can consume the very last drop of oil. Which is why, despite the bizarre cast of characters and outlandish setting, it's hard to shake the feeling that The Road Warrior could happen, or at least start to happen, any day now…” (Popular Mechanics, March 2008)

If we wish to preserve for future generations what a world awash in oil looked like, we will do no better than documenting a day at Pune’s busy junction- Swargate. For me, every visit to Swargate is surreal where every square inch is occupied by machines devouring hydrocarbons while trying to kill me!

I have watched Swargate almost every month since the beginning of year 1999 and I can easily say it never looked and felt so bad and hopeless. It’s Mad Max 2 in reverse. Swargate has become an example of what we should not allow our cities to become.

Martin Wolf tells us “The market sets high oil prices to tell us what to do” (FT, May 13 2008):

“…Here are three facts about oil: it is a finite resource; it drives the global transport system; and if emerging economies consumed oil as Europeans do, world consumption would jump by 150 per cent. What is happening today is an early warning of this stark reality. It is tempting to blame the prices on speculators and big bad oil companies. The reality is different.

Demand for oil grows steadily, as the vehicle fleets of the world expand. Today, the US has 250m vehicles and China just 37m. It takes no imagination to see where the Chinese fleet is headed. Other emerging countries will follow China’s example. ..

… The market is saying that we must use more wisely resources that have now become more valuable. The market is right.”

What can people at Swargate do if they have not yet heard anything from the market or chosen not to hear anything?

The only long term solution for this mess is a reasonably good public transport that encourages people of all social strata to use it. Pune’s public transport stinks. It’s easily one of the worst of major cities in India. I know it because I use it regularly.

You also need people who are ready to make small sacrifices for the larger cause. Young working middle-class people should try using public transport at least one day in a week. Today very few do and hence they don’t complain about it with as much intensity as they do about bad roads, lack of parking space or even stray dogs.

Result: almost each middle-class Pune household has as many vehicles as number of family members.


The Spectator

Anglo-Saxon Jurisprudence - Cartoon Caption Contest #147-The New Yorker

I continue NOT to be a "U.S. resident age eighteen or over". So here is my entry using stealth.


Artist: Jack Ziegler The New Yorker May 26, 2008

caption proposed: “Now isn’t in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence it is not acceptable to shape the crime to fit the suspect?”

Vijay Tendulkar विजय तेंडुलकर -A Passionate Lover of Cartoons- is Dead

He was probably the only modern Marathi ‘great’ who appreciated the art of cartooning. No one else- e.g. P L Deshpande पु ल देशपांडे, Jaywant Dalwi जयवंत दळवी who were humourist themselves- came even close.

Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे acknowledges the contribution of Tendulkar brothers- Vijay and his elder brother Raghunath- shaping his vision and art.

Apart from Sarwate, Tendulkar was very fond of the art of young cartoonist Abhimanyu Kulkarni अभिमन्यु कुलकर्णी. In a Marathi letter to Abhimanyu, he wrote :”…the way a good bowler bowls six good balls in an over, sometimes your cartoons are in an issue of Lokprabha लोकप्रभा…”

Like Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत, Tendulkar liked the work of Natyachhatakar Diwakar नाट्यछटाकार दिवाकर, the most under rated writer in Marathi.

I like a lot of what Tendulkar wrote but his play “Kanyadan” कन्यादान and his essays on Raj Kapoor, Baba Amte बाबा आमटे, his own father, the theatre of the absurd and the death row inmates remain my favourite.

In “Kanyadan” (Giving away of daughter in marriage), he exposes hypocrisy of upper-caste Maharashtrian middle-class.

Tendulkar was fearless the way he took on Bal Thackeray बाळ ठाकरे and other politicians without batting an eyelid. See a related post here.

I will miss you Tendulkar-sir because…

"...पोटावरच्या बेंबीचा बिनबाहुलीचा डोळा म्हणून उपयोग करत पोट पोसत-वाढवत मुरादाड आयुष्य न काढता खरे डोळे चेहर्यावर असतात याचे तुम्ही भान ठेवलेत..."

"...Instead of using bellybutton on stomach as pupil-less eye to grow-inflate tummy and lead insensitive life, you were always conscious that the real eyes were attached to the face..."

(जी ए कुलकर्णी G A Kulkarni यात्रिक (A Pilgrim) पिंगळावेळ (Owl-time) Popular Prakashan 1977).

There must be a commotion wherever Vijay Tendulkar now has gone …


Artist: Ronald Searle The New Yorker 12 November 1966

This picture has no caption. If I were to give one...

"She like Vijay Tendulkar is so beautiful but watch out for her claws!"

Trading Lacks Something Spiritually: Closing Averages on Human Scene

So said Bill Perkins, one of the founding traders of Centaurus Energy Advisers, a hedge fund of about two dozen market makers – many formerly of Enron – that has reaped billions by betting on record-breaking prices in gas and oil. ( FT, May 14, 2008)

Thank you, Mr. Perkins for reminding me.

Just the day before I read this:

Ingmar Bergman: “…it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.”


Artist: Dana Fradon The New Yorker 19 January 1976

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.