Damn, Why didn't I smoke? Because I like that in a Man. And a Woman

Anthony Daniels: "Back in the old days, intellectuals used to smoke. Indeed, anyone who didn’t smoke couldn’t be a real intellectual, and a cigarette, held at an angle on the lower lip by dried saliva, added immense depth to anyone’s thought. It’s not surprising, then, that old philosophy books tend to smell like ashtrays..."

The Times of India headline on Sept 16 2010: "Antibiotics in most honey brands: study"

I regret not to have ever smoked. Every time I see an old English or Hindi film, I notice people smoking with so much style that I envy them.

Even an idiot gets a personality smoking.

The other day I was watching C.I.D. (Hindi film, 1956).

When Dev Anand playing police inspector informs his boss K N Singh that he has found a cigarette butt discarded possibly by the murder suspect, Singh- all style- retorts: "In Bombay there live forty lac people and perhaps ten lac of them smoke."


‘You have a lighter — I like that in a man.’

courtesy: Spectator, July 2010

And if I had taken up smoking, I surely wouldn't have cared about surgeon general's warning- "skull and bones" besides a dead body- because, not just honey, but most of the stuff I now consume- air, water, milk, fruits especially mangoes, green vegetables is so polluted anyway. (I know because they taste so different from what they did during my childhood.)

Talk of fresh air: Although my base was Doom Dooma, Assam, I used to travel often between Kolkata and Dibrugarh from 1989-1991. When I went to Kolkata, I often got unwell. On my return to Assam, as my pickup car took a left turn from the airport towards our way to Doom Dooma, just one long deep breath in that air used to cure me of all nagging coughs and colds.


Artists: Brant Parker (1920–2007) and Johnny Hart (1931–2007), Jeff Parker

R G Gadkari's Sindhu, A Hitchcock's Blondes

I read Ram Ganesh Gadkari's (1885-1919) (राम गणेश गडकरी) "Ekach Pyala" (एकच प्याला) when in school.

I had mixed feelings. I was deeply stirred by its melodrama and use of Marathi but I also felt it was a tearjerker. (Read a related post on Ekach Pyala here.)

Play's protagonist Sindhu सिन्धु made a deep impression on me. But I wasn't attracted to her. I thought she was like many middle-class, largely Brahmin, women I came across in Miraj.

There was one very fair skinned, twenty plus, sharp-featured, five-yard saree-wearing Chitpavan Brahmin woman who passed by our house almost every day.

Wherever, any time of the day, she saw cow dung lying on a street, she stopped in her tracks, lifted it in her right palm, positioned that palm over her right shoulder, dung facing sky, and carried it to her house.

I thought Gadkari's Sindhu was like her except the length of saree as Sindhu surely wore nine-yard one.

How wrong I was!

I realised it when I read M. V. Dhond's (म. वा. धोंड) 'Chandra Chavathicha', 1987 (चंद्र चवथिचा; In English- "Fourth Day Moon").

Dhond uncovers, what Gadkari doesn't do overtly, attractiveness of Gadkari's Sindhu.

For instance after a long separation from her husband Sudhakar, Sindhu, whose marriage is not that old, is looking forward to mating with him. She is humming a suggestive song to herself.

In short: Sex is on her mind.

Dhond reasons that the 'fourth day' also implies the last day of a woman's monthly menstruation cycle, when having suffered variously, including even lack of bath, on account of prevailing social customs, women looked forward to a reunion with their husbands.

I was fascinated by this. Now, Sindhu started to look like many attractive middle-aged married women one comes across.

It reminded me of Hitchcock's presentation of his blondes Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren.

Why?

Hitchcock: You know why I favor sophisticated blondes in my films? We're after the drawing-room type, the real ladies, who become whores once they're in the bedroom.

Truffaut: What intrigues you is the paradox between the inner fire and the cool surface.

Hitchcock: Definitely...Do you know why? Because sex should not be advertised...because without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless. There's no possibility to discover sex.

[Interview: Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Tuffaut (Aug/1962)]


Kim Novak, "Vertigo"


Artist: Raja Ravi Varma, "Lady in the Moon Light"

Is she Gadkari's Sindhu? And is that the fourth day moon?

Does Marathi have any Third Culture?

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: "...It is also refreshing, and possibly redemptive, to be reminded of a time when scientists composed poetry—as Charles Darwin's polymathic grandfather, Erasmus, did praise of steel—and when the idea that agronomy and geology and metallurgy were as vital and as exciting as any of the arts." (WSJ, July 30 2010)

W H Auden (imagining what the Athenian might say about the West): "Yes, I can see all the works of a great civilization; but why cannot I meet any civilized persons? I only encounter specialists, artists who know nothing of science, scientists who know nothing of art, philosophers who have no interest in God, priests who are unconcerned with politics, politicians who only know other politicians."

Marcus Chown: I started by asking (Carl)Sagan what he preferred: science or science fiction? Without hesitation, he replied: "Science." I asked him why. "Because science is stranger than science fiction."

The late G D Madgulkar's (ग. दि. माडगूळकर) [1919-1977] Marathi essay titled "Hello, Mr. Death" (हेलो मिस्टर डेथ)-or something similar- became a big hit. It described his near death experience.

Now Madgulkar was a very good lyricist but I always thought the essay was all baloney.

The Times of India May 31 2010:

"Afterlife episode or just a brain tick?: Patients who have had a near-death experience often report walking towards a bright light, or a feeling that they are floating above their body - a sensation that has long been interpreted as a religious vision and confirmation of afterlife. Experts now claim it's a surge of electrical activity triggered by the brain in the moments before death, apparent from a study of the brainwaves of dying patients..."

I have read about poet Vinda Karandikar (विंदा करंदीकर) talking about his wife dying peacefully. Is there anything like 'peaceful death'?

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG: "Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death?

...What we're addicted to, it seems, is the belief that we can micromanage death. We tend to think of a ''good death'' as one that we can control, making decisions about how much intervention we want, how much pain relief, whether it's in the home or the hospital, who will be by our sides. We even sometimes try to make decisions about what we will die from. This can be valuable, as when a cancer patient with little hope of survival, like Goldie Gold back in mid-July, rejects debilitating chemotherapy. But often, our best-laid plans can go awry. Dying is awfully hard to choreograph..." (NYT, Aug 7 2005)

Such writing gets away without any critical scrutiny in Marathi because it has largely lacked what C P Snow defines as The Third Culture.

Snow's thesis was that the breakdown of communication between the "two cultures" of modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

Are Marathi artists afraid if they stride two cultures they would spread themselves too thin? Like Leonardo da Vinci from the picture below who strode them all!


Artist: Warren Miller, The New Yorker, May 7 1966

Now, We Don't want Hindi Speaking Cows!

Sadly now defunct but delightful Marathi periodical 'Amrut' (अमृत) used to have two interesting columns.

One was called 'Mudrarakshasacha Vinod' (मुद्राराक्षसाचा विनोद) (humour arising out of an error in printing) and the other was 'upasanpaadakaachyaa dulakyaa' (उपसंपादकाच्या डुलक्या) (winking of a sub-editor of a newspaper).

They were kind of Jay Leno's "Headlines" on "The Tonight Show".

The following is neither.

But I was still really amused by the tone of following news item from Pudhari (पुढारी) July 14 2010.

Its headline reads in English: "Nuisance of Rajasthani red cows in Ambegaon".



What next Maharashtra? Going after Russian speaking Siberian Cranes?

The Man who saw the Sun put to sleep Anjali, Aristophanes, Agathon...

Adam Kirsch:

There's no reason to think that Xenophon's dull moralist or Aristophanes's comic foil is closer to the real Socrates than Plato's philosopher -- rather the contrary, since Plato was the closest to Socrates of any of them. But the three portraits are a reminder that we have no direct access to the real Socrates, whoever he was. We have only interpretations and texts, which both reveal and conceal -- just as ancient Athens has exercised such enormous sway on the imagination of the world based solely on the texts and images it left behind. (September 7 2011)

Tim O'Brien:

"The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination."

Philosophy need not be boring.

Try Woody Allen. Try Vinda Karandikar's (विंदा करंदीकर) ‘ASHTADARSHANE’ (अष्टदर्शने). Try some of G A Kulkarni's (जी ए कुलकर्णी) stories...
(Read my argument here.)

In a masterly essay 'Divine comedy', one of the best of the past decade for me, in Prospect May 2007, Julian Gough said:

"...In Plato's Symposium, Aristodemus, a bit pissed, has just woken up to find

'… there remained awake only Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates, who were drinking out of a large goblet that was passed around, while Socrates was discoursing to them.

Aristodemus did not hear all the discourse, for he was only half awake; but he remembered Socrates insisting to the other two that the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy, and that the writer of the one should also be a writer of the other. To this they were compelled to assent, being sleepy, and not quite understanding what he meant. And first Aristophanes fell asleep, and then, when the day was dawning, Agathon.'

..."

So was Socrates boring?

The Economist dated Dec 17 2009 in an article "Socrates in America/ Arguing to death" says:

"...The trouble was that, although his students, including Plato and Xenophon, who passed on Socrates’s conversations for posterity, saw him as noble, much of Athens did not. Instead, many Athenians detected an underlying arrogance in Socratic irony. Socrates thus resembled, say, the wiser-than-thou and often manipulative comedian-commentators Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in today’s America. Those who agreed with him found him funny and enlightening. The rest found him merely condescending."

Now, I will certainly prefer my Socrates like Jon Stewart!

Instead, almost a decade ago, I saw much hyped Marathi play 'Surya pahilela manus' (सूर्य पाहिलेला माणूस) c 1999.

I did NOT LIKE it one bit. It bored me to death. The only thing worse, featuring Dr. Shreeram Lagoo (श्रीराम लागू) for full length, I have seen is a Marathi film 'Jhakol' (झाकोळ) produced by Dr. Lagu himself!

My wife, Anjali, slept almost during the entire duration of it. She woke up only when very good looking Socrates, played by Dr. Lagoo, came down with a thud while calmly relaying bits of wisdom. (Later Anju would vow not to go to any play of my choice in future!)

Apart from boredom, I thought it had another problem.

Alexander Provan writes:

"...Socrates, whose trial and death Critchley describes as marking the beginning of philosophy, could hardly have died as Plato says he did, calmly relaying bits of wisdom to his followers even as the poison gripped his veins, seeing as how hemlock tends to induce vomiting and violent convulsions as it courses through the body and stills the organs..."

(review of 'The Book of Dead Philosophers' by Simon Critchley, October 20, 2009)

In following cartoon, have Aristophanes and Agathon stabbed Socrates because he bored them? Or were they all participating in a reality TV show?


‘Well, that’s the first part of the selection process out of the way.’

Courtesy: The Spectator


Artist: Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787

Will Jayant Narlikar One Day Write Marathi Sceptical Essays?

John Gray:"Science fiction was once driven by a faith in human ability to change the world. These days, the genre seeks to expose the illusions of everyday life."

I have enormous respect for Jayant Narlikar (जयंत नारळीकर).

I have most of his Marathi books (a few of them little boring). I read whatever I come across written by him.

He has been a great science popularizer in Marathi and has led a campaign against superstitions and astrology. He has proven himself to be an institution builder and is famous as much for his integrity and honesty as his science.

He is humble and reportedly lives a simple life.

He has appeared on this blog a few times earlier.

Narlikar has started writing for The Asian Age. His first article there appeared on April 28 2010 on the subject of The Large Hadron Collider(LHC).

Narlikar is irritated by the media hype created by LHC and wonders if stands for 'large hype creator'.
He is right. Even Marathi news channels go into tizzy talking about LHC.

Will people in media ever behave differently because of Narlikar's essays?

I have been reading 'Sceptical Essays' by Bertrand Russell. John Gray has written a preface to it.

Gray says of Russell: "...As reformed he believed reason could save the world. As a sceptical follower of Hume he knew reason could never be more than the slave of the passions. Sceptical Essays was written as a defence of rational doubt. Today we read it as a confession of faith, the testament of a crusading rationalist who doubted the power of reason."

(As I said earlier, Vinda's 'Ashtadarshane' (अष्टदर्शने),2003 remains moth-eaten without David Hume.)

Electronic media is a business where passions masquerade as facts. Reason can never trump passions there.

The next question is: Will readers of Narlikar behave differently?

Narlikar has often expressed his unhappiness (disgust?) over continued popularity of pseudoscience of astrology. (At Miraj, where our next door neighbour was an astrologer, I witnessed how even very poor people went to him to seek divine intervention for very complex problems in their lives.)

John Gray says:"...As a sceptical philosopher, Russell knew that science could not make humanity more rational, for science is itself the product of irrational beliefs..."

In Russell's own words:"...The great scandals in the philosophy of science ever since the time of Hume have been causality and induction. We all believe in both, but Hume made it appear that our belief is a blind faith for which no rational ground can be assigned..."

Do those who believe in astrology innately know this?

Not everyone believes in Joseph Conrad's (or G A Kulkarni's जी. ए. कुलकर्णी) sceptical fatalism.

And even if they do, some of them probably still try astrology - like prayer or voodoo- as a last ditch effort to control their fate.

People have always danced to the tune of miracle, mystery and authority. Religion provides them.

And so do many others like LHC.


Artist: Stan Hunt, The New Yorker, July 28 1986

When Samarth Ramdas and Aurangzeb met! Time- Classified, Place- Classified!

(double click on the picture to get a larger view)

Caption reads in English- Aurangzeb: "This is brilliant, Samarth! I understand, for all your life, you spied for me and were on our payroll; but until the end even I never got to know about both! Secrecy has to be maintained like this!! Bravo..."

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

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

I have extended Sarwate's caption as follows:

Aurangzeb continues:"...In fact, I have also learnt that a few years back you went into a dream of a guy called James Laine, in order to motivate him to write a book on Shiva...Alas I wish I knew how easy it was to fight Marathis off each other. No need of money or maidens. Why did I die a sad man on Deccan soil for them? Just a book or a statue would have done the job...By the way, you are lucky, Laine hasn't thanked you for the motivation."

p.s.

Please note that Samarth Ramdas (1608-1681) and Aurangzeb (1618-1707) probably never met. At least, I have not read about such an event. However, there were efforts made in the last century to malign Samarth Ramdas. Vasant Sarwate is looking at such attempts comically.

Samarth Ramdas continues to be a hugely popular figure among masses of Maharashtra. He also is one of the greatest writers in Marathi.

Hope Infosys is NOT like Micosoft

Martha C Nussbaum:
"If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful, docile, technically trained machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person's sufferings and achievements."

ASHLEE VANCE: "Microsoft’s engineers and executives spent two years creating a new line of smartphones with playful names that sounded like creatures straight out of “The Cat in the Hat” — Kin One and Kin Two. Stylish designs, an emphasis on flashy social-networking features and an all-out marketing blitz were meant to prove that Microsoft could build the right product at the right time for the finickiest customers — gossiping youngsters with gadget skills.

But last week, less than two months after the Kins arrived in stores, Microsoft said it would kill the products." (NYT, July 4 2010)


The Founder-Chairman of Infosys Technologies, Mr. Narayana Murthy is very fond of Microsoft and Bill Gates. On TV, some day in 2010, he looked very proud when he said that his son worked as a fellow at Microsoft.

The history of the PC shows that very few innovations originated within Microsoft. All the company has done is roll them into its operating systems and drive their popularity - often leading the companies that did invent them to their demise.

How is India as a country doing in innovation?

Business Standard:

"For a nation that prides itself on jugaad, the North Indianism for spunky innovativeness and lateral thinking, it can’t be comforting to find it has slipped in the global innovation index. How far India has gone down in the Insead-CII innovation index is difficult to say since this year’s rank of 56 out of 130 countries compares with last year’s 43rd position out of 107 countries — China is also down six places, though at 43rd, it is ranked above India..." (March 5 2010)

How is India's IT industry doing in innovation?

Sunil Mani writes:

"India is variously described as a knowledge-based economy in the making, thanks essentially due to her high economic growth and the role played by knowledge-intensive sectors such as information technology in spurring and maintaining this growth performance. This paper looks at the empirical evidence on whether this is indeed the case since the reform process began in 1991. A variety of conventional indicators are analysed and their movements over the last two decades or so are charted to draw some firm conclusions. The results show that instances of innovation are restricted to a few areas such as the pharmaceutical industry. Further, increasingly most of the innovations in industry are contributed by foreign firms operating in the country...

...In short, it may not be incorrect to draw the conclusion that India’s pharmaceutical and IT industries are becoming innovative, although domestic enterprises are more active innovators only in the former while it is the MNCs that are active in the latter..."

(EPW, Nov 14-20 2009)

Domestic IT enterprises are NOT ACTIVE INNOVATORS but pharmaceutical enterprises ARE ACTIVE INNOVATORS. No wonder they like Microsoft.

DICK BRASS who once was a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004 wrote:

"...Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.
As a result, while the company has had a truly amazing past and an enviably prosperous present, unless it regains its creative spark, it’s an open question whether it has much of a future."

(NYT, February 4, 2010)

When some day in near future, as Mr. Murthy's flight is ready to land as depicted in the picture below, will he notice absence of Microsoft around him?


Artist: Ward Sutton, The New Yorker, April 2010

Who says there is NO money in Marathi?

I like the size of the cheque- INR 82 lacs- that is being returned to Marathi Sahitya Parishad by the people who organised "akhil bharatiya marathi sahitya sammelan" (अखिल भारतीय मराठी साहित्य संमेलन) at Pune in March 2010.

Read the news-item in Marathi here.

Marathi indeed has grown up. Just 18 more lacs and we shall have 8-digit figure.

Poor Marathi writers. Read a related post here.

To me, this Pune resembles, more and more, Ghashiram Kotwal's Pune by every passing day.


Artist: Robert Kraus, The New Yorker, December 29 1962

If Barack Obama is a Muslim, so was J L Nehru!

According to Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 18 percent of Americans recently polled believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.

I have often wondered how similar, many prosperous Indian middle-class and right-wing Americans are: Obsessed with Islam and mosque. Babri or WTC. One demolished, one yet to be erected.

I was privileged to attend Narhar Kurundkar's (नरहर कुरुंदकर) many public lectures in Miraj during yearly Vasant Vyakhyan Mala (वसंत व्याख्यान माला) in later half of 1970's. [Our teacher Vasantrao Agashe (वसंतराव आगाशे) worked tirelessly for the event every year.]

Once Kurundkar told his majority Brahmin audience that he was now going to praise Mahatma Gandhi knowing fully well that his audience disliked, if not hated, Gandhi! (Kurundkar was a staunch Gandhian but he was happy that Pakistan was created.)

As I have noted earlier, in Brahmin Marathi middle-class homes, seldom a family gathering perhaps passes without tongue-lashing at either Muslims or North Indians or affirmative-action or all of them.

If a Pew poll were to be taken about J L Nehru among Brahmin Maharashtrians in late 1940's, 18% would surely have said Nehru, and even M K Gandhi, were Muslims!

While reviewing "Voyager" By Stephen J. Pyne, Prof GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS notes with disappointment:

"...It remains to be seen whether today's intellectual legacy will be as impressive. The signs of late have not been encouraging. Witness the recent statement by President Obama's appointee to head NASA, Charles Bolden, who said that his "perhaps foremost" mission is to "engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."..." (WSJ, July 19 2010)

I wonder why Mr. Reynolds doesn't find this encouraging. Sure, many Muslims already know this. But isn't a bit special for them to hear it from the chief of NASA?

If such a statement were to be made by NASA chief about medieval India's contribution to science and technology, he would become a household name. After all isn't NASA more popular and respected- who can forget hoopla over Indian-American Kalpana Chawla's travel in space shuttle Columbia- here than it is in US?

I think Charles Bolden's statement is one of the most matured statements I have read made by a Westerner in high position in recent times. It will surely help US build bridges to Islamic cultures.

As for achievements of Muslims in science, math and engineering, read S. Frederick Starr.

"...In AD 998, two young men living nearly 200 miles apart, in present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, entered into a correspondence. With verbal jousting that would not sound out of place in a 21st-century laboratory, they debated 18 questions, several of which resonate strongly even today.

Are there other solar systems out among the stars, they asked, or are we alone in the universe? In Europe, this question was to remain open for another 500 years, but to these two men it seemed clear that we are not alone.

They also asked if the earth had been created whole and complete, or if it had evolved over time.

Time, they agreed, is a continuum with no beginning or end. In other words, they rejected creationism and anticipated evolutionary geology and even Darwinism by nearly a millennium. This was all as heretical to the Muslim faith they professed as it was to medieval Christianity.

Few exchanges in the history of science have so boldly leapt into the future as this one, which occurred a thousand years ago in a region now regarded as a backwater. We know of it because a few copies of it survived in manuscript and were published almost a millennium later. Twenty-six-year-old Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni, or al-Biruni (973–1048), hailed from near the Aral Sea and went on to distinguish himself in geography, mathematics, trigonometry, comparative religion, astronomy, physics, geology, psychology, mineralogy, and pharmacology. His counterpart, Abu Ali Sina, or Ibn Sina (ca. 980–1037), was from the stately city of Bukhara, the great seat of learning in what is now Uzbekistan. He made his mark in medicine, philosophy, physics, chemistry, astronomy, theology, clinical pharmacology, physiology, ethics, and even music. When eventually Ibn Sina’s great Canon of Medicine was translated into Latin, it triggered the start of modern medicine in the West. Together, the two are regarded as among the greatest scientific minds between antiquity and the Renaissance..."

Remember Omar Khayyam (1048—1131) was a poet, rebel and astronomer!

It was he who developed a calendar which had an error of one day in 3,770 years (superior to the Gregorian calendar with an error of one day in 3,330 years). It was based on his amazingly accurate determination of the length of the year as 365.242199 days. The length of the year is currently 365.242190 days... (from Justin Marozzi's review 'Omar Khayyam: Poet, Rebel, Astronomer /His own man' by Hazhir Teimourian for The Spectator, 21st November 2007).

Was he also a tent maker?


Artist: Ed Fisher, The New Yorker, 26 March 1990

My caption: Your calendar is a miracle Mr. Khayyam- but actually I asked you to drop by so we could discuss my daughter's horoscope. They say Mars there may cast an evil eye on her marital life.

p.s This post was published on August 22 2010. And I came across following cartoon on August 24 2010. We waste reams of paper only to discover a Luckovich! Isn't he a modern master? Look at the eyes of the Indian and American frogs in a well...err pot. They reflect their attitudes.


Artist: Mike Luckovich