The Auto Nightmare of Kerala

I sometimes wonder why the atmosphere in Kerala is so charged with hostility. Is there something wrong with us Keralites? Or am I being overcritical about our own state and people? You know a case of grass being greener on the other side?

Do we need to change?

This hostility – I see this everywhere. But a sector where it is tangible, palpable is that of the autorichshaw service in Cochin and Mid-Travancore districts.

As a working woman who does not use her own vehicle, I used to depend a lot on autorickshaws. I once engaged an auto from the railway station in a small town in Mid-Travancore. As we approached the destination, the ride became bumpy – in more sense than one. The road was full of gutters and the driver became more and more angry with every inch of the distance we covered. And abusive too. At one point he turned around and snarled at me, demanding to know why I hadn’t warned him about the road. I told him meekly that I hadn’t been aware of the condition of the road. Just then I spotted my colleague to whom I was to hand over a parcel. She was standing at her gate. I gave her the parcel without alighting from the auto. Seeing the autowallah’s ferocious expression, she looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Get down, have a cup of coffee.”
“No”, I said. “Have a lecture now”
“OK”, she said, looking uneasy.

And the return journey started. He continued his offensive. Nasty, foul, insulting tirade against me continued till we reached the gate of the college where I worked. I got down and asked him,
”How much?” I knew how much that distance would cost but thought I’d pay him for the damage to the vehicle he had been harping on in the course of his ranting. He switched off the motor, leaned back in the seat, looked at me venomously and retorted
“How much do you think?”
“This distance would usually cost me twenty rupees. But I’ll give you what you want because of the road condition”
He stepped out of his auto, his body language like that of the Undertaker in WWW, and sneered
“You people. What do you care about us? After the petrol and maintenance, we get nothing out of this business”.

I could feel my temper rising. I wanted to tell him the road was not my fault, his business was none of my concern. He should learn to talk more politely and that he was behaving like a barbarian. But I said nothing of the sort, ‘cos we were outside the college gate and I didn’t want my students to see me getting into an argument that was bound to be devoid of dignity. I took out thirty rupees, but he wouldn’t accept the money till he had had his say.

My iron control snapped. To date, I am happy I did what I did instead of indulging in a shouting match. I got back into the auto, and told him to take the auto to the Police Control room. That brought him to his senses for I could see a startled expression cross his face fleetingly. Then he changed his tactics. He turned to a passer-by and started a sob sob tale about the woes of an auto driver and how people like me added to his miseries. I was astounded. What on earth is he trying to do, I wondered.

Fortunately for me, the passer-by happened to be a casual employee in my college. His name was Martin. I asked him to get into the auto to go to the Police station. “You can be a witness”, I said, “Not that I need a witness in this case”. Martin instantly obliged. Our man stood there for a moment looking at us. Then,
“Get down”, he said gruffly. He looked at me and asked, “You admit we too have to live, eh?”

Was he trying to offer an explanation for his behaviour? Anyway, if he was, it made no sense to me. For the life of me, I simply couldn’t understand how I stood in the way of him and his livelihood.

I stared at him, trying to keep my face as expressionless as possible. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

By then, there was a small audience which embarrassed me. Mine was a familiar face in those parts.

And then Rev. Sr. M, my colleague, appeared from somewhere and asked me what the confusion was all about.
“This gentleman has been insulting me from the moment the auto turned into the road leading to Mina’s house. He hasn’t yet stopped. If this is not harassment, what is?”
“But Ammey (That’s how the nuns are addressed), that road was terrible”, butted in that auto driver.
“But why do you insult this teacher for it?”
“I wasn’t insulting”, he lied. “I told her, most courteously, that the road was bad and it was she who started yelling at me!!!!!???” And then very triumphantly
“It’s her word against mine!”

I was furious. “Are you going to take the auto to the Police station. We’ll settle the matter there”, I told him. He didn’t move. I asked Martin to go into the College office and phone for the Police (This happened before the cell phone became common).
Rev. Sr. M intervened. “Leave it, Molly”, she said.
“No. I’ll see that he never drives an auto again – at least not in the near future.”

Apparently, the auto driver had no nexus with the Police,’cos he turned to Sister M and said “What does she want to harm a poor helpless auto driver like me for?”

By then, I realized that I had become the villain of the piece with a section of the small audience. A few autos that were passing by had stopped and the drivers joined the crowd to watch the drama.

My resolve crumbled for some reason. All I wanted was to get away from there and get to work. And Rev Sister M was so persuasive. “File a complaint, and it’ll be a big pulivalu (meaning it’ll be like holding the tiger by the tail). It’ll drag on. You’ll have to keep going to the court. Do you have the time for it? And then that clinching question. “Is it worth it?”

I asked Martin to settle the fare with him, got out of the auto and walked into the college without a backward glance.

But the episode spoilt my day. Left such a dirty taste in my mouth.

I haven’t been able to figure out why the man behaved like that. This incident is but one of the many many unpleasant brushes I have had with the autowallahs in Kerala. Being left with no choice, I have learnt to take it in my stride. I have learnt to deal with it. If I am charged four times the actual fare, I pay it, knowing fully well I am being cheated. If they refuse to be engaged because the distance is too short for the kill, I move on and look for the next auto, and the next and the next - - . That’s much easier than hauling him over the coals; it's much easier than belligerently asking him why the government has issued license to him. or reminding him that I can bring him to justice, if I so wished. This way, I can keep my BP normal.

But I don’t stop wondering - Why do they treat the passengers so shabbily? Why do they look upon them with such hatred and enmity?

I sometimes get the feeling that they take an instant dislike to anyone who earns a livelihood doing anything other that driving autos. And if the passenger happens to be a woman – and a working one at that- they throw all pretence of civility to the winds.

God’s Own Country.

Am I a Feminist?

Tag ed by cris

I once got into trouble for confessing that “Feminism is not my cup of tea”. Ever since, I nod emphatically in agreement when asked it I am a feminist.

Am I a feminist?

I guess all women are that, without quite realizing it. By nature, I don’t make a song and dance of it, and am quite indulgent to male chauvinism wherever and whenever I have to deal with it. I don’t get very vocal or hyterical but keep my cool and usually have my way without any friction. You can say that I'm one hell of a survivor in this patriarchal world!

But there were a few occasions when I chose to stiffly resist the entrenched gendered thinking. On this one occasion that i'm about to talk about in this post, it was in the domestic front, and the fury and intensity of my reaction to a typical situation were , at that moment, inexplicable even to me. Looking back I think what provoked the full activation of the feminist in me was my anxiety not to pass on the legacy of male chauvinism to the next generation. As a woman, that’s the least I could do for our sex.

On that particular day, my help had not turned up.

We had a huge compound with every tree under the sun in the front yard, and, if the fallen leaves were not removed twice a day, the yard would look like the Sleeping Beauty’s palace compound when Prince Charming came a hundred years later to wake her up with a kiss (would some one like to offer a feminist reading of that tale?).

I started cleaning the compound. My daughter, as was usual when the help didn’t turn up, came out, took a broom and started sweeping from the othe r end of the compound. I insisted she go back to her books as she had a test that day. The poor kid went away, looking very guilty and feeling very sorry for me. A few minutes later ,my seven year old son Mathew came to the verandah, and seeing me clean the compound started to help me. This was the first time I saw him at this work and was pleasantly surprised to see he was doing a good job of it. I allotted a portion of the yard to him and together we continued clearing the compound. Just then, his grandfather, a octogenarian came out into the veranda and was heading for his armchair when he noticed Mathew sweeping. I saw him stare incredulously and then go back into the house.

A minute later, his grandmother came, all upset and ordered Mathew to stop what he was doing.
“Go in Mathew, Don’t you have anything to study?”
“No.I’m helpimg amma”
“I’ll do it. Why should YOU do it”(don't miss the emphasis on 'you')
“Why shouldn’t he do it?”, that was me. Why was I reacting like that, I wondered. Why was i creating an unnecessary situation early in the morning?
“He’s a boy”. I coulldn’t believe my ears.
By then, Mathew had dropped the broom and had started back ”Mathew”, I called. “Finish what you are doing”
He came back and picked up the broom.
“Give the broom to me, Mon”. His grandmother was very diplomatic. ”I love doing this. Let me do it”
“There’s one more broom, amma”, I persisted. “Use that if you want to sweep”.
“We don’t need three people to do this”
“There’s enough compound for four people”.
She turned to Math and very gently told him to run inside and have the boost that’s kept ready on the dining table.
“Mathew can have his Boost after he finishes the portion allotted to him”
“But, but, he’s a boy, Molly. Boys shouldn’t be doing this”
“Where in the Bible has Jesus Christ stated thus?”, I asked quietly, unkindly. But I had to say it. I had to make a point. And Christ. I believe . is the greatest feminist ever.
She gave up, and went into the house, looking very worried about how she is going to convince her husband that there’s nothing wrong with a boy sweeping the compound.
My feminist blogs: http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2008/04/bringing-up-nazrani-girl-child.html;
http://brokenmuse.blogspot.com/ - except Deshamsam ?10%, the peoms have feminist themes, written during that phase in my life(and every woman's life) when resentment of the "man's world' turned me temporarily into a third rate poet.

Am tagging
chinny
Mathew
Sujatha
cj
Deepak
Strange that i have three males on my list? Well, their views on "FEMINISM' will complete the picture :-)

INDIA'S OBAMA - A CLARIFICATION

I think some of my blog visitors got me all wrong. What I meant about India's Obama was not an Indian citizen with attributes that correspond one to one with Obama's. Expecting to find someone like that is as ridiculous as desiring it. Most certainly, I was not talking of an Indian with cross national lineage, or a law degree equivalent to a Harvard law degree or or or or or - --

What I had in mind was the 'Obama Impact' which I would define as

• a nation being inspired to rise above a historical prejudice fundamental to its psyche
  
• the people being inspired to put their country above all other divisive interests
  
• a people being charged with enthusiasm and energy at the prospect of correcting the mistakes of the past
  
• a people being inspired to cast away cynicism and to believe in the possibility of their participation in the governance of the land
  
• the youth being inspired to believe in a great future for their country

My take on Obama is informed by the unusual nature of the campaign which involved people of all age groups and all walks of life. My source was not just the media. The blogs were a real eye opener and I realised that Obama is an impact, a movement. People talk about how happy they were to contribute to this campaign, people who were averse to contributing to political activities.

To see the Obama impact, one has to only go back to the 'we can' chant, the like of which I haven't seen anywhere. Black and white, red and yellow and brown - all were chanting without any inhibition. A leader with that kind of hold on the people can take difficult but momentuous decisions.

That's the impact. We dont know how he will perform as a president, what policies he will make, how he will deal with international issues. But those are not the issues here.

The issue is the Obama Impact. It's all about the curing of a nation of its cynicism and restoring faith in the system. It is uniting a people not with narrow nationalism, but with patriotism.

Is there a person in India who can do it? That was the question i posed.

Apparently, i didn't make myself clear. I dont know if I am making myself clear now.

On Being Absent Minded

Ever since I remember, I was absent minded. As a child I was terrible in this aspect, and the cover-up operations of my forgetfulness related escapades were even worse.

My father once asked me to switch on the geyser in the bathroom and open the tap so that the plastic tub (not bathing tub – a huge tall bucket which we called tub) would be filled with hot water when he came for his bath. As I opened the bathroom door, I saw my face in the mirror above the wash basin. I stood there making faces at myself for sometime and then came out forgetting all about the geyser. Exactly 15 minutes later, he called me again to remind me to switch off the geyser and close the tap. (He was such a meticulous person that it’s a mystery to me even now how I didn’t inherit even an iota of that quality). I rushed to the bathroom and did what I was supposed to do 15 minutes earlier, and as I turned around, I saw him standing at the door of the bathroom staring at the empty tub.

Perplexed, he asked,” What happened?”
“I don’t know”, I lied. “Water stopped, I think”
“It’s not good for the geyser (it was not a storage geyser & not the automatic cut off type – this happened some 40 years back). It’s dangerous too. Might cause shorting in the house.”
Then, “Hereafter, you better remain in the bathroom till the tub is full”.

God’s punishment for lying, I told myself.

The next day, around the same time, I was asked to switch on the geyser and remain in the bathroom and keep a watchful eye over the flow of water from the tap. I switched on the geyser, took an Enid Blyton’s Noddy book, and sat in the dressing room reading. Half an hour later, my father came in to find me engrossed in the book and the tub overflowing.

“The tub is over flowing”. He sounded angry.
“It wasn’t a minute back”, I lied through my teeth
“Why? Did the water stop like yesterday? It takes only 15 minutes for the tub to get filled”
“Yes”, I lied again. “Water stopped again”
“Did you switch off the geyser then>
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“Suddenly it started flowing again”
“What could be wrong?” he was puzzled. “Maybe something goes wrong when the water channel becomes hot”.

After his bath, he switched on the geyser to fill the tub for my mother, and waited to see for himself the symptoms of the geyser’s malady. He made me wait with him. But nothing happened. In fifteen minutes, the tub was full, and he appeared relieved.

“Strange”, he said.
“Strange” I agreed.

***

Absent mindedness has been my faithful companion through my life. There were a few times when the two of us nearly set my house on fire, or brought it dangerously close to the brink of disaster. And there were times when I was able to see the strangest spectacles when this faithful companion chose to assert himself - like that day when I put a round bottomed vessel of water on the stove and forgot all about it. After some time, we got a strange smell of molten metal, and I suggested to my husband and children that it might be coming from the dyeing unit of the Bombay Dyeing factory in the adjacent compound. Lunch time came around and I went into the kitchen. I’ll never forget the sight that greeted me. The round vessel had changed its shape and looked like the perfect female figure – and there it sat on the flame like a woman sitting on a pyre. And the flame had acquired a supernatural hue, bringing to mind the biblical burning bush!

***

But one absent mindedness related episode I would like to completely blot out from my mind happened at the turn of this century. It was a Saturday, and my cook hadn’t come. So, I got into the kitchen to make quick biriyani. The black elastic broad hair band I used to wear to prevent hair from falling into food, was nowhere to be seen. Just then my eyes fell on a huge notice my mother-in-law had brought from the church. The hats the chefs in TV programmes wore came to my mind and I made a cap out of that notice and placed it on my head. I knew to make only one type of hat – the conical dunce cap. I fixed it on my head with a couple of slides and started cooking.

The door bell rang.

I forgot all about the dunce cap on my head. I opened the door, and there stood the newspaper agent with the bill. He looked at me and his expression changed abruptly. He looked flabbergasted and was staring at me as though he had seen a ghost.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, totally perplexed.

“Nothing”. He said, his eyes darting towards my head. And then I remembered my topi. Immediately, I ducked behind the door. Then, realizing that he was waiting there, I stuck out just my head from behind the door and told him to wait while I got the money.

Guess I was too flustered to remember that the problem was with my head and not the rest of me. The man, by now had a strange expression in his eyes. With eyes like saucers, he looked at my head crowned with the dunce cap peeping out from behind the door. I thought he looked nervous. AS I walked to my room to get the money, I looked out of the small window overlooking the stairs which led to my first floor flat. And I saw the man running down the steps, three steps at a time, as though the very devil was after him.

He sent the newspaper delivery boy the next day with a note for the money. Ever since, that became the arrangement to collect the payment for the paper.

India's Obama - Priyanka Gandhi Vadhera

Please read through before you decide on bouquets or brickbats.

Why Priyanka Gandhi Vadhera?
(Some of the references I make by way of illustrations might appear trivial. But, Ms. Priyanka Gandhi Vadhera is not a public figure and has kept a low profile, and so I had to go by the available evidence).

I. She has conducted herslf with extreme dignity to date. She is a very poised, level headed and a confident person.
2. The Nehrus continue to have a national appeal. In fact, they have more of a national appeal than regional. This will help people to rise above the narrow, parochial obsessions that are threatening the unity of the country. There are many regional leaders with excellent political track record, but they have only a rgional following. A country like ours with its hetrogeneity will find it difficult to relate to such a person.
3. She does not carry the baggage of controversies or scandals.
4. She is young enough for a long innings ahead.
5. She has proved to be a person with an iron will. Remember the way she took charge of matters when Rajiv Gandhi was assasinated, how she cleared within a matter of minutes the official hurdles regarding helicopter etc to bring his body to Delhi.(Source - magazines that covered the assasination)
6. Yet she is a gentle soul with a forgiving heart. Her visit under utmost secrecy to the prison to meet Rajiv Gandhi's assasin, was probably to come to terms, after all these years, with the brutal killing of her father. It is so important that a leader is not vengeful.
7. After her studies, she took up a job as a teacher in a school, probably because she wanted to experience the real India outside the palace gate.
8. She works hard for the constituencies of her mother and brother. She works at grassroot level in these constituencies and is familiar with the terrible level of deprivation in rural india. She is a much loved figure in UP.
9. She dislikes sycophancy. Soon after the UPA came into power, an official in the secretariat was suspended for spelling 'Vadhera' wrong on an invitation card. Priyanka immediately had the suspension withdrawn, and is reported to have expressed her displeasure at the party having gone that extra yard to please the Gandhis.
10. She is a person who does her roles -both social and public - to perfection.
11. She has politics in her blood.

One often hears wishful thining that Priyanka would join politics, as she has the fire and guts of Indira Gandhi and a passionate commitment to democracy like Nehru. At this point of time, an icon with this particular combination of qualities is what the country needs.

There was a time when I was a hardcore critic of Indira Gandhi. But older and wiser now, and terribly distressed at the way the country in being splintered by megalomaniacal politicians, I backtrack on all my criticism of Indira Gandhi, and recognise the fact that we need a strong person at the helm, a person who can fire the imagination of the people enough to make them forget their differences, a person who can promise change from the votebank and communnal politics which is rending the country apart and a person who has the courage to address the problem of the rampant corruption pervading the country. The Bofors fiasco would have taught her the important lesson that Caesar should keep himself above blame.

If anyone can bring the misled youth back into mainstream life from communal politics and class war, I think it is Priyanka. She has the charisma, dignity, courage and mass appeal.

Priyanka, it can safely be assumed, is well versed with Nehru's and Indira Gandhi's socialist leanings, and Rajiv Gandhi's initiatives which brought liberalisation and technological progress into India. Sonia Gandhi's choice of Dr. Manmohan Singh is a continuation of the good work done by Rajiv Gandhi, as also the desire to have a clean and competent man at the helm of affairs in the country. It is only natural to assume that coming from this political family, Priyanka Gandhi has been ivolved in the debates and deliberations in connection with the choice of Prime Minister after the last general elections.. There were also reports at that time that ascribed to Priyanka the decision taken by Sonia Gandhi not accept the PM’s post. So, inexperience is not an issue where she is concerned. Though she has yet to launch herself into the political arena, she has the political moorings required for a leader. Remember, Rajiv Gndhi was a novice in politics when he became the Prime Minister.

Yes. Priyanka Gandhi is the person who can turn things around for India. I was once a loud critic of dynastic politics. But in the case of this young lady, being the daughter of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, the grand daughter of Indira and Feroze Gandhi and the great grand daughter of Jawharlal Nehru and great great grand daughter of Motiilal Nehru should not be considered a disqualification. Sometimes. grooming and breeding come in handy.

India's Obama - Part I

Yesterday, CNN/IBN conducted an sms poll on “Who is India’s Obama?” The preferred names were Rahul Gandhi, Lalu Prasad Yadav & Narendra Modi!! I have my reservations about all three of them. Coincidentally, the last name was already slated as the Obama of India in an exchange I had with a co-visitor of a particular blog I read regularly. The idea was so scary that I ran for my life!

I suppose the answer to that poser is derived from one’s perception of the President –Elect of the USA.

So, what does Obama represent?

The issues that were hotly debated in the US election campaign had no role in shaping my take on Obama. Like that of my compatriots, mine also was an outsider’s academic interest in the fresh and new star that rose in the American horizon, and dominated the imagination of America for over a year.

I suppose experiencing Obama as a voter is very different from watching him from across the seven seas from an Asian country which has one thing in common with the USA – a fierce possessiveness about its democracy.

And this is not all. Many factors inform the individual’s perception of a world leader, and these factors differ from person to person.

As a person whose academic engagement with the political fact of the Empire was more than two decades old, I reacted the minute Obama's victory was confirmed with the comment ,“The Empire strikes back”. Knowing that I had a bee in the bonnet about this issue, my husband smiled indulgently, but a minute later said, “Come to think of it, you are right”. Call it colonial hangover, if you wish (all Indians are afflicted by it but not many admit it). The race superiority theory which is axiomatic to the Imperial discourse about the white destiny to rule and civilize, had been exploded. Jesse Owens did it some decades ago on a smaller scale; but Obama’s victory had an important difference. Owens' was a one man’s effort. The just conducted US election was an emphatic statement of a nation, which brings me to my next point.

Colonization is a dual process. It involves the colonizer and the colonized. Decolonization too, similarly, is a dual process. Both the victim and the perpeterator have to be cured of the colonial complexes. Otherwise decolonisation is not complete or comprehensive. Thus it is that I claim that the people of the US released themselves from the psychological bondage of the imperial rhetoric by giving a resounding victory to Obama – it was a deafeningly loud acknowledgement that colour is but skin deep. It was a major step in the intellectual and psychological decolonisation of America. The effect was cathartic. Once a nation unloads an oppressive burden from its mind, the peace that follows is a near bliss, and an atmosphere charged with positive energy is created, which, in this case, should prove to be the ideal soil for the Great American Dream to strike roots in its unpolluted form . We in India share that joy with the people of the USA and wish them a fast recovery from the economic crisis under their new President.

The long and short of it is, it was the decolonization of an imperial people that was evidenced by the election . (The nature of the US colonialism is not the same as Britain’s and the other European colonial powers, but can be considered under the same umbrella despite the difference).

Now to come to the question of Obama.

He is a person who has his finger on the pulse of the nation ripe for change, and ashamed of the big bully image created by successive administrations.

Equally important, he recognized the fact that America has a CONSCIENCE, which had been lying dormant for a long long time. During his election campaign, Obama had the courage to awaken that collective conscience, and transform that force into a concerted clamour for change. The change was bound to be painful. It was bound to call for sacrifices and adjustments in a consumerist society. He realized that the people of the America were willing to take up the challenge if they had an honest man to lead from the front.

That man was Barak Obama.

And he caught the imagination of the people by using a rhetoric outside the existing one.

The success of Obama lies in his diagnostic acumen which enabled him to detect the ills of the American polity, in his courage to address these ills and inspire the nation, particularly the youth, to take up the challenge.

That’s my take on Barak Obama. I had to have a theory on what is Barak Obama in order to decide on India’s Obama, which is what my next post is about.

Guess who my choice is?

India’s Obama has to be honest, courageous, charismatic, a person with national appeal, therefore not parochial. She/he has to have fire in the belly, should be a humanist with a forgiving heart, and should unite the nation, salvage the people’s faith in the democratic systems, inspire the people groaning under the poor governance of self seeking politicians, boldly address the class, caste and creed divides. She/he should inspire the nation into craving for moral uprightness.

There comes a time in the life of every nation when it craves for change. When a Messiah comes with a promise of change, the nation will embrace him warmly. We saw it happen in the US. India too is ready. But who is that Messiah?

I appeal to my blog visitors to respond with their choice before my next post. Would be nice if you could get your blog circle also to respond.

Obama and The Indian Media - Snippets

The inevitable has happened. The conscience of America has asserted itself. Obama is, among other things, the American voters’ emphatic apology to the world for the wounds inflicted on it under the banner of ‘making the world safe for democracy’.

We hope things will be different from 2009 January.

The Indian media has been covering the election very enthusiastically. Its reaction to Obama’s election is quite fascinating. Here are random samples of it.

Let’s begin with the Ernakulam MP Sebastian Paul who was the expert commentator for one of the Malayalam channels. He felt that through Obama’s middle name, Saddam Hussein had his revenge on Bush and the Republican administration! To hear a Marxist talk of Saddam Hussein’s SOUL finding peace now, was indeed funny! He, as also Karat and the other commentators of Kairali Channel, took a few potshots at PM Manmohan Singh. They wondered what the PM would do now that the party of India’s “best friend’ Bush was voted out of power. It was, they felt, the people’s verdict on Bush’s international and domestic policies. The Ernakulam MP was very positive about Obama, but chose to keep his fingers crossed. He hoped it would not be like the Janata government’s fiasco after it was voted into power with great expectations after the Emergency.

The anchor person put a strange question to Sebastian Paul.
“Suppose the whole world were to participate in this election. Do you think Obama would get such a massive victory?”
Mr. Paul came up with the typical leftist answer. “Yes”, he said. “Obama stands for the oppressed people of the world. He represents the concept of liberation”.

There was this journalist (I didn’t get his initials right-so shall keep his name out) who thought that Obama cannot make much of a difference. He felt that the only thing that can pull USA quickly out of the recession is a boom in the arms industry. So the threat perceptions around the world would have to be kept very high. "Obama may not be able to resist the pressure from the arms lobby which decides the foreign policy of the USA”. Very cynical, I thought.

He felt that Obama’s victory was the verdict of his countrymen on Bush’s failure – in Iraq, in the Arab- Israeli peace negotiations, in Iran and in east Europe where he could do nothing against Russia’s high-handedness.

Mr. T C Srinivasan felt that Obama’s victory should be partly ascribed to Bush’s success in internal security. There were no attacks after 9/11. So there was no need felt for a tough President.

All the persons interviewed agreed that the recession was responsible for the undecided voters casting their votes in favour of Obama. These were negative votes-against Bush’s economic policies. And McCain’s statement that he was a babe in economics was badly timed.

Sara Palin's conservatism, many thought, frightened away the moderates among the Republicans.

All eulogized over Martin Luther King’s dream coming true. All the channels played and replayed the "I have a Dream" speech. However, the references in Malayalam to idea of "Black", was not well handled by the media, particularly when they appeared in the headlines. The racial angle could have been handled a little more delicately, I thought.

Regarding Indo-Us relationship, no one had anything substantial to say. Sebastian Paul felt that India never figured in Obama’s election rhetoric till June 2008, notwithstanding a Gandhi picture on the wall of his office. Most felt that whenever India did figure in his speeches or interviews, he said nothing to get really excited about. On the other hand, his references to India caused a few eyebrows to go up. Media never misses a chance to remind us about Obama’s campaign memo referring to Hillary Clinton as “that democrat from Punjab”. “New Delhi is starkly absent in his vision of a larger Asian framework. There is no Obama talk of India in the UN Security Council” (V. Sudarshan)

Obama’s last minute remarks on Kashmir has left a lot of people confused. There was talk about a possible shift in the US attitude to India, and a couple of commentators expressed hope that the traditional US policy regarding Kashmir will be adhered to. Many remembered that Obama was a critic of the Nuclear Deal. There are references to Obama “moving the poison pill amendment to address his proliferation concern”. V. Sudarshan of Indian Express quoted from Obama’s letter to the PM Manmohan Singh about his desire for ‘greater collaboration with India on nonproliferation issue” as “one of my highest priorities as president”. He feels Obama is not as “predisposed to Delhi as his predecessor who personally intervened many time in the tortuous passage of the 123 to keep the deal alive”. Obama’s conservatism on this issue “will tell on the implementation 123”. Needless to say, Marxists, who have already begun sneering at Manmohan Singh, are eagerly waiting to see the Deal run into trouble.

Sudarshan is anxious about Obama’s position on Kashmir. “More worryingly, Obama sees Kashmir being in the way of Pakistan effectively dealing with America’s central front in its war against terrorism in Afghanistan”. Referring to Obama’s article in Foreign Affairs(July/August 2007), he writes, ”Parsed properly, Obama seems to think that Kashmir needs to be resolved as an incentive for Pakistan to do a better job fighting al-Qaeda…..How quickly does Obama think he can persuade our Pakistani friends to cut their link with Kashmiri secessionist? In the first two years of his presidency? The notion itself is so excessively simplistic and so like a campaign speech but has that touch of dangerous naivety that bears watching how this develops.”

I would have shrugged this off on account of my skepticism about the New Indian Express, had it not been for Obama’s s statement on Kashmir hours before the election.

But we in India want to be optimistic like our Finance Minister Chidambaram who, when asked by journalists about outsourcing soon after Obama’s election, said that a comment here and a comment there before the elections should not be taken seriously. “Once he studies the situation, he’ll realize that in this interconnected world, such drastic steps cannot be taken”.

Obama and Kashmir.

Why should Kashmir figure in Obama's election speech? Don't know how Am-Indians feel about it but we out here are getting a little jittery. The Government at the Centre, still in the grip of India - America bhai bhai euphoria, is playing it down as the the product of the high excitement on the eve of the elections. But why drag Kashmir in? and speak of it in the same breath as Afghanistan? Is his understanding of the issue flawed? The BJP has started going hammer and tongs after Obama. The Kashmiri separatist groups are ecstatic.

Many who ( like me ) put this nation above evrything else are confused, and a wee bit anxious. Why Kashmir as the last stroke before the people go to the polling booths? It is our internal matter. And wherever the US has stepped in, they've left behind a mess.

For the first time since Obama entered the election fray, I began to wonder at the significance of his middle name.

The Anatomy of Modern Anglophiles

(Rumaging through some old papers, I came across this piece I'd written a more than a decade ago. I remember it was a journey in the local train in Mumbai from Bandra to Churchgate in the company of a group of young convent educated ladies with magnficent mastery over the English language that inspired me to write this piece)
They come in all shapes and forms. But the classic specimen usually wears her hair short, hoping, perhaps, with the severing of locks can be effected a cut off from the traditions of the culture she was unfortunately born into. However, time and again, she discovers to her embarrassment and ( irritation too), that roots cannot be severed as easily as the mane, for shoots keep sprouting up from some stubborn, hidden roots much faster than her hair grows back.

She speaks English taking immense pains to keep the vernacular flavour from tainting her impeccable language. A votary of the concept of Standard English, she’ll brook no arguments about standard being out and differences being in. Should you dare merely hint at such an outrageous idea, she’d immediately plunge into a heated defence of the sacrosanct nature of the English language with such indignation that it’d silence you forever. And so there she goes waiting for an “S” to be trapped among vowels so that she can go ZZZZing over it while looking down with celestial contempt at her riff-raff compatriots who are too preoccupied with expressing themselves to worry about preserving the Anglo-Saxon quality of a language thrust upon them by a quirk of history. She struts around, poor girl, too pleased with herself and her flawless English to detect the merriment she arouses among those around her who are twisting the language, sometimes stretching it out of shape to accommodate their Indian sensibilities which they respect more than the alien tongue.

And the most distinguishing quality of a present day anglophile is her withering scorn for anything Indian.
”What? Indians write novels in English?” She goes into peals of laughter.
“Rushdie? Oh, he has been in England all along.
“Seth? Well, he was in Los Angeles.
Roy? Mmm, she’s been out of India at least.”
“Indian journalism in English? huh! A disgrace! Indians should stick to the vernacular,”
“Haven’t Indian English journalists brought down governments, caused many an eminent head to roll, exposed scams and kickbacks?”
“So what? Their language is not up to the mark”
Which mark, one does not dare to ask.
And Indian cinema? Poor thing. If not for her superhuman efforts, she’d have retched all over the place.
“Cinema is a western medium”, she manages to stammer out. “Indian film makers can never be comfortable with it”. With a final heroic attempt to contain nausea, she declares that Indian should give up the idea of making movies.
“Plenty of English movies in the market. Dub them”. Mustering courage from her swooning condition, you venture to say,”We are not conditioned enough to enjoy them all that much. We like a little bit of running around the trees with music in the background, a little bit of romance, a dash of mush”
Oh, the pitying contempt in her eyes for the poor Calibans!
And the plight of music in India? How it makes her flesh crawl! When Beethoven thunders, her eyes close and she gets transported instantly to wherever he is at the moment. When the Spice Girls screech, she thrashes around in sheer ecstasy. Let not a Lata Mangeshkar or an Udit Narayan interrupt. Her ecstatic sway would come to an abrupt full stop and her nose would go up, up, up----the sky is then limit. An expression of supreme indifference would mask her countenance.

Did I say she hates everything Indian? Allow me to withdraw that statement. 'cos she doesn’t, you see. She likes everything ethnic – even if it is dried cow dung used as tablemats. You see, Europeans like all these ethnic stuff. Like them, she too believes that India’s glory lay in the remote past. Nothing of the present is really worthwhile except these relics from the past.

Cocooned in western rhetoric, these creatures head westward when they develop wings. If the westward pilgrimage fails to materialize, they seek out those with feathers of the same hue, and flock together.

This is a vanishing species. Thank God for his little mercies

The US Elections - Mallus Respond from Kerala

I have this terrible habit of listening to conversations conducted loudly in public places. Of late an issue which figures prominently in such conversations is the US elections. Everybody seems to be talking of Obama and Palin and Mc Cain these days – and all the time. I think after Kerala’s newly discovered terror links, this is the most talked about issue.

Biden rarely appears in these dialogues of the all knowing Malayalee. The few times I‘ve heard his name mentioned are when similarity is pointed out between the orthographic form and sound of Obama-Biden and Osama Bin- Laden. A meaningless similarity, I know, but a strange one. Some people go off tangent, and launch into a laboured explanation of that strange but true similarity, even suggesting that Obama deliberately chose Biden for his name, for evoking that association through the sound! That’s the clever and complex thinking process of the mallus for you!

Guess we mallus down here have only a very very superficial understanding of the campaign issues. And it is shaped by what the media chooses to feed us with. Here are some excerpts from the commonly heard remarks on the US elections:

Overheard in the train – a heterogeneous group:
“Obama win? No chance? Once these yanks get into the polling booths, who knows where they’ll put the INTO(x) mark?”(Agathu kayriyaal pinney, aarudey pallakkitaanu kuthunnadhennu aaru ariyunnu?). He spoke in that typical unrefined tone, bringing down his clenched fist emphatically on his open palm, mimicking the act of actually casting the vote.
”Yes. Yes. You are right. The Bradley effect”. A little embarrassed by the belligerent language and body language of his travel companion, this person was trying to redeem his dignity with his high sounding words and a somber demeanor.

Another group’s discussion. They are youngsters – not the IT types, but the conventional addicts of Malayala Manorama and Week and Outlook and Vanitha and Deshabimani and Mathrubumi weekly and and - - “Wish Obama would win. Then I’d call America a true melting pot culture”. That was a young girl among them, on the way to the office.
“It’s like Mayawathi becoming the Prime Minister” Her male friend and colleague, I think. He was a youngman with a buji bag. And then the conversation got diverted to Mayawathy’s prime ministerial aspirations, and the issue was discussed with considerable heat, with the focus on the impossibility of her dreams coming true in India with its caste equations.

“McCain stood a good chance – till he chose that political novice as his running mate. He was trying to win the women’s vote. Velukkaan thechathu paandaayi, poor chap”.
“So what? If Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi, who knew nothing other than how to make chappathis, can rule Bihar, why not Palin? She’s the governor of a State, at least”.
“Ugh! Of Alaska! What sort of governance is needed in that deep freezer? It’s like being the governor of a refrigerator. If Rabri was the queen of the kitchen, Saramma is the queen of the refrigerator. That’s all the difference. Ha!”

WE happened to sit near a bunch of IT youngsters in a restaurant and overheard this: “If Obama wins, we’ll be hit. He’s going to stop outsourcing”.
“Oh, Bullshit. He can’t. American Corporates will have to shut down if he does that. He says such things to get white votes. Nobody really believes him.”
“Hope you are right”
“Of course I am right”. And he plunges into a harangue on the world being a global village and the interdependency of the economies, and how the Asian youth make the world go round, while all his companions listened to him in all earnestness.

Then, in the lobby of a hospital, I overheard this conversation among an academic looking group. They spoke as though they had spent all their lives researching on the Obama-McCain tussle, and each of them spoke with finality, but in well modulated tone. “Obama’s lineage –parambaryam- is suspect. Don’t think he is the right person for the most powerful seat in the world”.
“Oh. I don’t think that matters. After all he is a product of the Ivy League”.
“Athilonnum Kaaryamilla (That’s nothing)”. and then that awful adage”Attayey pidichu methayil kidathiyaal kidakkumo?” (An untranslatable idiom but goes something like this. If you put a leech on the mattress, will it adjust to its soft comfort?)
But the person who had the last say was an aloofish looking person with a long thin face. “Obama or McCain”, he said with supreme contempt. “It makes no difference. That country is run by certain lobbies and institutions. If either of them goes against their interests, they’ll b knocked off”.

A gloomy silence fell and I was called into the doctor’s room before it was broken.

To Whom Did the Dung Belong?

Vijayamma dropped her broom and came up to me and said that she didn’t feel well. I noticed that she was talking through her teeth and immediately recognized the classic symptom - locked jaw. The girl had tetanus.

I panicked. I was all alone in the house with this young girl who helped out with the domestic chores, and I was not keeping too well myself. Fortunately, she lived in the colony adjacent to our compound and I asked her to go home immediately and ask her aunt (the girl was an orphan) or some relative to accompany her to the hospital. To make sure her people got the message, I called out to her aunt over the wall and asked her to take Viyajamma to the hospital as she had contracted a dangerous, life threatening disease.

I waited anxiously for some news. After more than an hour, I heard the gate open and ran out to see Vijayamma staggering in all by herself. Apparently, she had gone to the General hospital alone. I helped her on to the sit-out where she collapsed. I noticed that her fist was closed tightly over a piece of paper. Pricing open her fingers, I pulled out the chit given by the hospital. It said that she was administered a TT injection but she needed to be taken to the Medical College Hospital without any delay.

I ran to the wall and called out to her aunt, and told her that Vijayamma had collapsed and should be hospitalized immediately. I guess the panic must have made me shout, for in a minute, my compound was full of people, the residents of the colony who were in some way or other related to Vijayamma.

I gave Vijayamma’s uncle money for a cab and immediate expenses. The minute he got the money, he called out to for help to carry her.

“Where are you taking her?” I asked. “Leave her here till the taxi comes”.

“No sir, we’ll take her home now and take her to MCH when I am free”.

I was furious and scared. Guess it showed in my voice when I barked at him to run for a cab, which he did immediately.

Soon Vijayamma was on her way to the Medical College Hospital accompanied by her uncle and aunt with whom she lived.

But the people in my compound did not leave. I noticed that they were engaged in an animated discussion. Some of them looked belligerent. Then a couple of men walked up to me and said:

“This looks like villu vaadam (arrow disease, as tetanus was referred to in Malayalam, as the patient, during the seizures, raises their torso in the shape of an arrow).

“Yes. It is tetanus”

“Isn’t it true that it could have come from her stepping on dung? She has cracks on her heels? “

“Quite possible”. I replied.

And then, with a hardened expression on his face, one of them asked me

“Which dung did she step on? The dung in your cowshed or on the streets?”!!!!

It took all the discipline I was taught to put a lid on my inner fury. I almost blurted out that it was my grandfather’s dung, but then my breeding came to my rescue. Instead, in a controlled voice which did not conceal my anger, I asked him where all this concern was when she went to him and all the people standing there, asking them to take her to the hospital. Then, I quietly asked them to clear out which they did.

Yes. That’s the typical Kerala attitude. When it comes to duties, we are real shirkers. But when it comes to claiming our rights, we’d go as far as checking the DNA of dung to extract from the employer!

By the way, Vijayamma survived.

Out of the Mouth of Babes - -

My little niece Amala was a super entertainer. As a child, she always ran. I think she didn’t know how to walk. And she ran like a big bouncing ball – never straight. And the little girl had a tongue right round her neck. She used to come up with such startlers that every time she opened her mouth in the presence of strangers, we used to get nervous. Like that day, when she stood leaning against her mother, looking with deadly calm at an elderly aunt whose one eye was permanently closed. Little Amala’s silence was like the calm before the storm, and I began to get nervous. And then, she raised her right arm slowly and deliberately, in a Heil Hitler fashion, folded her fingers except the index finger which she pointed in the aunt's direction, - and dropped the bombshell. “Looks like our chicken’s eye,”, she announced loud and clear. (One of our hens had died the previous day of some disease. It had gone around with one eye closed for a couple of days before it died). “What did she say”, asked my aunt, whose ears not quite tuned to the American twang. I don’t remember how my sister got out of the situation.

She was a little older when the family, sitting around the dining table, were discussing Morarji Desai’s urine drinking habit. Suddenly, I noticed that deadly calm settle on Amala’s face, and waited. No tension this time ‘cos only the family was there.

And then it came. “Ichayan”, said Amala, addressing my father in that typical musical tone reserved for him. “I have a doubt”. There was that full stop in her tone and expression at that juncture. She looked very serious. “ How did he drink his urine? Directly or indirectly?”

My father nearly choked over his food laughing.

What are you doing, my son?

‘What are you doing, my son?’
‘Counting crowns.’
‘Crowns? What crowns?’
‘King’s crowns.’
‘Where are the crowns?’
‘Can’t you see?
The rain is making them’.
She looked where he pointed
At the water rising where each drop fell
And saw the crowns
King’s crowns
Thousands of them

I wrote this piece to be published anonymously in the college magazine, in a page dedicated to versification on rain. Most of my students guessed it was my piece ‘cos I used to relate this little episode where my 4 year old son opened my eyes to the crowns that rain drops made - to prove the point that all of us are born poets but our creativity falls by the way side in our struggle with this business called life.

I wonder if my son still sees the crowns!

All About A Dog

I hate dogs but I loved Lincoln – maybe ‘cos he was around in my childhood. He was a dachshund plus something else, jet black and smooth and silky.

I remember the sleepless nights I spent thinking of his predicament after his death for, one day, I was told in the catechism class, that animals have no souls and so, they will not attain eternal salvation. I felt very depressed the whole day. At night, I couldn’t sleep! I kept seeing my siblings and parents and I having a splendid time up there in some place in the skies while Lincoln---sigh! Where would he be? “He will be over once he dies. You see, he has no soul. That’s what distinguishes man from animals”, the catechism teacher told me the next day. I was crestfallen. I wished God had given dogs souls.

There were days when I found it hard to believe that Lincoln had no soul. He followed us around wherever we went. He looked up at us listening when we spoke to him and seemed to understand whatever we told him. How can he not have a soul, I wondered. Guess I was too young to understand that intelligence was not soul.

Like the cliché goes, he was the very epitome of loyalty. My brother and I were, once, silent audience at a grown up conversation which began with the ingratitude of man and ended up with numerous anecdotes on the gratitude of man’s best friend – Dog. During the course of the conversation, someone remarked that the only thing that’ll make a dog bite his master is disturbing the animal when it is eating. My brother and I looked meaningfully at each other. Both of us had made up our minds to test the veracity of that statement.

Thus it was that the next noon, the two of us sat near Lincoln while he was eating yellow rice with plenty of meat stuff in it. Both of us had short sticks in our hands and we started jabbing him from both sides. Grrrrr--- he went, but continued eating. Our jabs must have got painful for he started looking at us and barking shortly. We would move back when he did that and then again close in on him when he went back to his food. This went on for sometime. Then I put the stick into his plate and started pulling it away. The poor dog looked up at me angrily, baring all his teeth and grrrrrrrrrrimg away to glory. I was thrilled. It’s working, I thought.

Just then, Vasu, the odd job man, passed by, not very close to us, carrying water to the estate bungalow. He had two big square tins filled with water in his hands, which he held by the cross bar fixed across it, and one tin balanced on his head. I did not notice him ‘cos I was busy trying to pull Lincoln’s plate away from him, and had almost succeeded it doing this despite the fact that he was trying to hold it back with his front foot. Just then, Lincoln looked up at me angrily, leapt forward and made mince meat of Vasu’s calf.

All hell broke loose. People arrived from all over with sticks, air guns, lassoes to deal with the rabid dog. Somebody expertly threw the lasso round his neck and tied him tightly to a pole, without allowing any rope length to enable him to dodge the thrashing. And then the blows started.

I screamed then. So did my brother. Together we jumped between the dog and the angry men and scared women. Our confession tumbled out. People dropped their sticks and walked away, throwing disgusted glances at us.

Poor Lincoln was released. He quietly went back to his food and finished it, while the two of us stood there looking at him guiltily.

Soon summons from amma came from the bungalow. We were made to watch the first aid being given to Vasu who was to be taken to the hospital which was some distance away. And then the two of us were made to sit in two deep chairs while all the elders of the family, towering intimidatingly over us, took turns to give us angry lectures.

For days, the picture of Lincoln trussed up and beaten haunted me. But the poor chap held no grudge. He continued to follow us around like before.

Religion - Not a Site for Violence

(This is a revised form of my response to a blog. Nothing original is these random reflections, but I still choose to post them, braving charges of mouthing platitudes and tinkering around with truisms. I do this ’cos we live in times when clichés need to be stated, defamiliarised. Familiarity breeds contempt, and when great truths are contemptuously dismissed as clichés, they need to be reinstated. Truth never becomes irrelevant simply because they are hackneyed. So here I go - - )

All religions are expressions of man’s search for the infinite. This search in not done in an ethereal vacuum - but down here, on the earth, on the ground, on the soil of our day to day life.

The first step towards the realization of the infinite is purging the mind of negative emotions and filling it with love - love of mankind.

If we negotiate our way through the peripherals of religions, we will arrive at the great truth that the core values of all religions are the same. There is no space in this core for violence and inequity. They are gross elements that adulterate the magnificent endeavour of mortals to reach out towards eternity. They can never be part of any religion, part of this search for the infinite. The presence of these elements with the label of religion attached to them can be ascribed to flawed interpretation and practice of religion.

A violent Christian should relinquish the label ‘Christian’. So should believers of other religions. The greatest disservice to religious teachers/teachings is to inflict injury on fellow human beings in the name of religion. Christians did it for a long period of time. The leaders have apologized several times for the crimes against humanity in the name of religion.

Indians too proselytized. Buddhism spread in the eastern part of Asia through the agency of Buddhist monks who took upon themselves the task of spreading the great man’s teachings. But how peacefully this religion was disseminated! Not a drop of blood was shed in the process. Buddha’s insistence on ahimsa was adhered to with great passion by his messengers.

Hinduism did not have a history of violence in the name of religion. Our ancestors were the ideal practitioners of religion. Religion was practiced as it truly should be – as a way of life. Hinduism was a way of life.

Alas! Those were glorious days. Hindus achieved long time back what followers of other religions are still striving to achieve. But, sadly, instead of perpetuating the great tradition of being model practitioners of religion, Hindus are now making the mistakes committed by the followers of other religions, mistakes which the rational and enlightened among the other religions are trying to rectify. What an irony!

And what a great disservice to Hinduism and to our proud, glorious tradition.

The New Indian Express for a Theocratic India?

The New Indian Express adopts a very clever strategy - its editorials go that extra mile to project a secular image of itself. At the same time, it gives huge and prominent spaces to anti-minority intellectuals like Gurumurthy and Francois Gautier to propagate the communal agenda and divide the people. What is the purpose of this doublespeak?

God knows what fancy rate the paper gives a cantankerous journalist like Gautier. This Frenchman’s simplistic and shallow readings of Christianity and Hinduism, and his seeming sympathy with the ill treated majority is reminiscent of the age old dirty game played by the imperialists to divide and rule. What surprises me is the way the New Indian Express is playing into the hands of this incurable imperialist. Or is it t hat the paper is using Gautier for a straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth type of an impact to secure its communal agenda? His recent article has let loose a lot of hate responses, both in the daily and on the net.

Wonder what this paper is up to. Why is it indulging in these nefarious divisive games? Is The New Indian Express laying the foundation for a theocratic dispensation for India?

Salaam Bombay. And Kerala? Sorry. No Salaam

I was in Mumbai in the 1st week of this month. I was astounded at the success achieved by the city in upgrading the infrastructure to cope with the huge population.
It’s quite possible that my stay in Kerala for a year and a half could be the reason that Mumbai fascinated me like never before. After all things shine by contrast.
And what a contrast it is! Mumbai and any city in Kerala.

Is it fair to talk of the two in the same breath? Can the gigantic financial capital of India be put on the same scale as the cities in the tiny state of Kerala?
Well, why not? After all, Kerala is supposed to be the first and best state on many counts, and is placed on par with the developed countries as per all sorts of national and international surveys?

What impressed me about Mumbai was the way the city has been cleaned up. From 1999 when I left Mumbai after my first stint there, Mumbai had changed visibly in 2004 when I returned for my next spell there. Flyovers had come all over the city, easing the traffic. The pollution level had come down drastically with taxis replacing diesel with LPG.

Now, the point I am trying to make is – Is it possible to bring about a change of this nature in Kerala, the most enlightened state in the country?

A highway planned by the previous government was sabotaged by the opposition for political reasons.
An overbridge in Kochi remains incomplete for God knows how long.
Flyovers in Trivandrum too stand like withered stumps of discarded development projects. And one of them is tainted with the blood of a Japanese contractor who made the mistake of not doing his homework on Kerala before he signed the contract with the Kerala Government. Wonder why no one told him that Kerala is a place where nothing happens, nothing can ever happen.

This last week’s visit to Mumbai filled me with a tremendous admiration and respect for the Mumbaikers. The waste of this huge city with its astronomical population is managed magnificently. Mumbai, which supports a population almost half the size of population of the whole of Kerala, has found a way to clean up the city and mange its waste. All those vegetable refuse that used to pile up along the roads near Dadar and other main markets, the plastic waste and rubbish heaps were conspicuous by their absence. It would do well for Kerala to send a team to Mumbai and study how this mammoth task is being achieved. The clean streets from Colaba to Andheri brought to mind the miserable rubbish heaps on the streets of Kochi. On my own, I made random inquiries of how this is managed in Mumbai. It seems, in addition to corporation workers, the tasks of waste disposal and cleaning the streets are given to private operators.

Can u imagine the mayhem that would be let loose if the private player is permitted to pick up a broom to sweep the streets in Kerala? Our service sectors with their dog in the manger policy spell the doom of the state.

Yet another issue I’d like to touch upon with some hesitation (hesitation ‘cos it amounts to admission that I used the public rest room in Mumbai) is the condition of the rest rooms in Mumbai. I was pleasantly surprised to find them clean, convenient and not stinking in the malls. But you could have knocked me down with a feather when I discovered that a public toilet (which I was forced to take on account of being caught in a traffic jam) near a busy station on the western line was in a usable condition!!! Considering the volume and the type of the consumers – migrant population who live in shanties, workers, and travelers- these restrooms were clean! In the sense, it was not in a condition that’d make one feel the need to jump into a tub of boiling detol water as soon as one reached home. My experience in the rest rooms of hotels and even resorts, were often unpleasant in Kerala. And the public toilets in Kerala? I’d rather die a thousand deaths than get into any one of them.

Again, the question arises as to how the mighty Mumbai city with its massive heterogeneous population managed to convey a sense of civic responsibility to its denizens. How come this cannot be achieved in the highly literate Kerala with its people who are eternally sniggering at the people from other states for their lack of hygiene- both personal and public?

Kerala is truly a queer and bizarre place. One cannot find any logical explanation for what it is.

Mischievous Forwards

I got many forwards after the attack on Christians began in Orissa. The immediate forwards emphatically talked about how tolerant and secular Hindu India is, how tolerant India is ‘cos Indian culture is Hindu culture. They pointed out that India has had Muslim Presidents, Christian Defence Ministers, a Muslim on the board of trustees of a Hindu temple, Muslim chief ministers, that post Godhra riots are blown out of proportion while Hindu pundits predicament in J&K is soft pedaled, that subsidy is given to Haj pilgrims while none to Sabarimala pilgrims, that Muezzin calls are permitted, and how 85% of Indians – the majority population- craves for what 15% gets. This and more. Much more. I don’t contest any of these. In fact, I agree with every claim and am proud to belong to a model secular state.

But I did not forward these forwards as requested. I deleted them instantly.

And then another set of forwards started burdening my inbox. This time they listed out the number of Christian Churches destroyed, details of people who lost lives and property in the anti Christian riots; they pointed out that there is no relief organized for xians in refugee camps and that xians organizations are not allowed relief operations while they were most active & effective during the Orissa floods; they highlighted how 15 million students of all castes and creeds pass thru xian educational institution every year-but the percentage of conversion is nil. They talked of how there are laws in place against fraudulent conversion, but no cases of false & fraudulent conversion were filed or proved. This and more. Much more. I don’t contest any of these. In fact, I agree with every claim and am proud to belong to the Christian community.

But I did not forward these forwards as requested.I deleted them instantly

For I believe that the net should not be used to polarize the nation. It amounts to serious misuse.

Speaking the truth but not the whole truth, then interpreting them to inflame passions – that’s mischievous. I do not want to be a party to this virtual propaganda which is doing no good to this beautiful nation that is mine.

Let's use the cyber space in a responsible manner.

Jai Hind.

How Come My Face Remained Intact

I remember it was a Saturday during the Gulf war ‘cos my brother and I were discussing over breakfast how permitting the US warplanes to refuel in India amounted to a shift in India’s Foreign Policy and might tempt Saddam Hussein to direct his Scud missiles towards India. After breakfast, my brother retired to the guest room which was a level lower than rest of the apartment, and I went into the kitchen to cook for the week.

The maid came in and went straightaway to the narrow space in the far end of the kitchen to do the dishes while I put the pressure pan on the stove with moong dal in it. Then I thought I’ll watch the morning movie for a few minutes and settled down in the reclining chair. I must have remained there for fifteen to twenty minutes when it suddenly struck me that the pressure pan hadn’t whistled. So I got up quickly and went into the kitchen. What I saw then was one of the strangest sights I’d ever seen.

The pressure pan was shaking like a space rocket about to take off. And then, it really did take off!! It raised itself up slowly from the gas stove, went up a couple of feet ever so slowly and then took a right turn. By now it was out of the kitchen platform.

If I had any sense in my head, I’d have run for my life, for I’ve always been told that a pressure cooker or pan which indulges in strange behaviour is the most dangerous thing on earth. But this strange inexplicable phenomenon fascinated me and I went forward towards it, spell bound by the pan suspended in the air and shaking and moving as though it had a life of its own. And my maid – strange woman that she is – was blissfully unaware of the phenomenal event that was happening next to her. She kept at the dishes, singing the latest Malayalam hit song out of tune.

And then it happened. The weight of the pressure cooker came off the nozzle like a bullet and whizzed past my head (it missed my head by the skin of the teeth), crashed into the wall, bringing down a huge chunk of the plaster off the wall. The minute the weight left the pressure pan, the dal in the pan (thoroughly cooked) started spurting out at the speed of light, at my face and head through the nozzle; and the pan crashed to the floor with a deafening explosive sound. The pressure pan then started spinning like a top at full speed on the floor while I looked down at it with fascination, and continued to be sprayed with the yellow cooked dal.

The maid, in the meanwhile, had run to the end of the kitchen and clung to the wall, her song turning into a wail. The pressure pan rotating at high speed on the ground, soon began to slow down while, like an idiot totally devoid of common sense, I stood over it, fascinated - and continued to be sprayed with dal coming out of its nozzle. Hearing a sound, I turned my head to the entrance of the kitchen and saw my brother standing there, eyes popping out of his face (like Jim Carey’s in Mask. 0ops! forgive the anachronism) and his jaw dropping incredibly low ( like Carey’s again but without its manipulative power). He had rushed to the kitchen to grab me and run out of the house. He thought Saddam’s scud missile had targeted Kochin! That was when he saw me with the yellow stuff plastered on my face and head, and simply couldn’t make out what had happened.

Soon the neighbours from the ground floor and the adjacent houses started shouting out to us from the compound, wanting to know what had happened. None of them had the courage to come up to find out for themselves. They later told us that they thought that the gas cylinder had exploded and were looking out for fire and smoke and panicky screams.

Ok. Once I came to my senses, I found my own solution to the mystery of the pressure pan taking off as though it had a will of its own. I knew enough physics to know that the pressure trapped in the pan and which was trying to escape weighed more than the pan itself. They say this can happen when you cook dal in a pressure pan.

But how come my face did not have burn injuries? With all that cooked liquid dal spraying at my face straight from the pan at boiling point? Unless someone gives me an explanation, I shall continue to believe that it had everything to do with this habit of mine for years, of waking up in the morning with the words: “God, protect my near and dear ones and me from all dangers, diseases and evil”

Globalisation Of Higher Education

(Leafing through an old College Magazine, I came across this article I'd contributed. Thought I'll post it , 'cos I still hold the same views. Read on, if you have the patience. It's long, I warn you)

Some time back I attended a seminar on Higher Education vis a vis Globalization. A premier educational institution in the state had hosted it. The two-day seminar proved to be a very disturbing experience. It was revelation of how rhetoric can take a right about turn before our very eyes without us noticing it.

The meeting began with chief convener’s introductory speech on the ‘higher education Sector’. Yes, like public sector, private sector, energy sector, heavy vehicle sector, we now have higher education sector! Like all “sectors”, we have the producer, the stakeholder, the consumer, the commodity, profit and loss, and the eye ever straying to the bottom line!

During the entire course of the two-day seminar, no one spoke the social problems thrown up by globalization. No one spoke of the implications of globalization in a developing country like India. No one spoke of marginalization as an inevitable fall out of globalization. Not a word about formulating a Higher Education policy with the agenda to deal with the inevitable creation of a section of humanity that is likely to fall by the way side in the new order. No one had anything to say about redefining the function of higher education in India against the backdrop of the mammoth human crisis thrown up by the implementation of the triple slogan of liberalization, privatization and globalization.

But discuaaions revovled around the possibility of churning out youngsters capable of starting off with six-figure salary. God, when did this reduction of Higher Education to an industry take place? Needless to say, one does often see the product selling style of marketing education in the newspapers and at educational exhibitions. But this seminar was a platform provided by an institution which once took pride in giving leadership in inculcating social values though education; and to hear education being discussed in the language of trade and commerce alone, in paper after paper, by speaker after speaker – well , it came as something of a shock; it becomes hard to digest the fact that within the hallowed portals of this institution, all those noble thoughts associated with higher education were conspicuous by their absence, and education was allowed to be equated to mere technical expertise!

The modus operandi was interesting. Politicians and bureaucrats with their own axes to grind stole the show with their grand eloquence. While the minister waxed eloquent on his grand plan of transforming Kerala into an IT savvy state which can throw up that much valued human commodity for export, one bureaucrat spat fire and brimstones, and in high astounding terms spoke of the magnificent castles in the air that children should be taught to build, because in this cyber age these castles need no longer remain airy ones.

The outcome of the two-day programme was the ratification of the theory that mass production of highly competent professionals was the ultimate aim of higher education. All the teachers from the various colleges who came to attend the seminar were mesmerized by the sight and sound of the celebrities. No protests were raised from dissenting quarters for fear of being branded or ridiculed. Creation of individuals sensitive to human issues, social responsibilities of education -I shudder to think of the ripples of merriment that the very suggestion of these concepts would have generated in that charged atmosphere.

The papers presented by participating teachers dealt with the nature of higher education, the methods of teaching in the context of the IT revolution, globalization etc, etc. Excellently researched papers and well presented. But no one had anything to say of steering education, both higher and lower into a direction that would take the students in to the heart of terrible human issues that India of this century is bound to be beleaguered with on account of the inevitable course of liberalization that she had to take. No effort was made to enlighten this elite gathering of intellectuals on the danger of the chosen mode of development. No one drew attention to the deliberate and systematic attempts by the consortium of global corporates, to condition tastes and norms in order to successfully commodify cultures, women, poverty, everything. No mention of the need for a game plan to create a discerning mind in the younger generation in order to enable them to see through the discourse that assaults them from all sides. No word of caution against neo colonialism. Instead, all such fears were dismissed with celestial contempt as quixotic shadow boxing.

The seminar was a terrifying experience. If guardians of the high values of education speak this language and discard the other, it is time for genuine worry as to where civilization is headed. At that seminar, a silent consensus was arrived at on the definition of higher education as a tool for creation of human commodities for survival in the new order where many are bound to go under. After all isn’t that the law of nature, the survival of the fittest ? And social values are man made not nature’s or God’s, aren’t they?

The Delhi Blasts - On Treating the Disease

I know a group of people whose refrain after each series of bomb blasts is “Narendra Modi - that’s what the country needs”.

I strongly disagree with them. The effectiveness of every action should be judged by its long term results. Did the state engineered post- Godhra riots rid Gujarat of terror attacks? Most certainly not. In fact Gujarat, unfortunately, seems to figure on the hit list of terrorists, if one is to go by the turn of events since Godhra.

There was a time when I seriously thought that if BJP could discard communal politics, it would be a welcome change from the Congress which has grown into an effete political force on account of compulsions of coalition politics and appeasement policies. But after the communal riots in Orissa and now Karnataka (BJP ruled states), BJP at the centre is an absolute no no. The BJP ruled states believe in denying space to non majority groups. That denial, it appears, is to be achieved by elimination in installments. Hardly an ideal situation in a pluralistic democracy like India. One does not cease to be an Indian simply because she/he is a Christian or Muslim.

I suppose, in this context, it is necessary to talk about the code of conduct of minorities in a secular political set up. If conversion by allurements by Christian missionaries is practiced, it should be stopped. Gurumurthy recently wrote a piece in The New Indian Express on the Orissa riots, laying all the blame at the door of Christian missionaries who converted the Panas(an SC community) and turned them against the Kandas ( a Scheduled Tribe community) who did not get converted to Christianity. Now, how much of truth there is in this claim is a matter of dispute, for, Gurumurthy has a remarkable capacity of twisting facts and figures out of shape to rationalize his Hindutva agenda (http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2006/12/gurumurthyism.html) . But if we are to give credence to the proverbial wisdom that there is no smoke without fire, this matter needs to be investigated. If there is some truth in what Gurumurthy says – that conversion is setting tribes against each other – the issue needs to be taken seriously and addressed. And addressed by Christian groups who must take a decision not to indulge in unethical conversions by dangling attractive compensations for conversion. So also the Muslim community. The leaders should do some serious thinking on how Islam could be fitted harmoniously into the Indian cultural setting. But, most importantly, the minority groups should not indulge in anything that offends the sensibilities of the majority group. I think the former owes that much to the latter who have been infinitely tolerant of differences. The Minority Rights should not to exercised in any way that is detrimental to the peace and harmony of a secular society

I look back with nostalgia at the days when one did not have to be apologetic about belonging to a minority religion. I’m not talking of some remote past but a past in Kerala, very much present in my memory. On several occasions, I have been embarrassed by my friends whom I knew as my classmates in the seventies, telling me that I survive in India with no rights denied cause of the goodness of Hindus. I do not question this but there was a time when we took each other for granted, never saw ourselves as Hindus or Christians or Muslims but as friends and Indians.

Is it possible to recapture those days? A disease can be rooted out and cured only if the diagnosis is proper. It is imperative that representatives from all creeds in India sit together, admit mistakes, make earnest promises to change and take a solemn oath that “we are Indians first”.

Or India will be broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.

Women's Liberation - Kudumbashree Shows the Way

Saw an interesting picture in the newspaper today – a women’s pancharimelam team from a Kudumbasbsree unit welcoming the Health Minister Ms P. K. Sreemathi to the Tourism and Trade Fair.

It was an extremely pleasing sight. So different from the usual thalapoli walk comprising ladies dolled up in traditional Kerala sarees, looking pretty and walking ‘gracefully’, thereby endorsing the age old image of woman as an ornament, a seductress, the creature whose very rationale for existence is to bring joy and fulfillment to the man, the family and society – the frames into which are fitted the devadasi, the gazal dancer, the courtesan.

I don’t think these entrenched images have changed fundamentally in any part of the world. I was disappointed to see Michelle Obama dancing - for the white female electorate, was it? I would have liked to see her doing something more relevant to the role of the would–be consort to the most powerful man in the world – it’d appear that dancing and charming are only the roles that suit her, the woman. A President’s wife or a janitor’s wife, the story is the same.

Surely women are capable of less frilly roles too. The kudumbasree is a superb example of that. The cities of Kochin and Trivandrum would stink and be a breeding a ground for life threatening microbes if not for the fantastic service rendered by the kudumbasree in waste removal. Where the corporation and the municipality have failed, the kudumbashree has stepped in. It is the awakening and experience of the women power – sthree sakthi - that is seen in this picture where the kudambasree women chose to welcome the minister, not with thalapoli but with drums that are always associated with the strong, male of high utility value.

It’s time that women from the more privileged classes too made conscious efforts to break themselves free from these controlling images brewed long years back in the cauldron of patriarchal values. That liberation can come only when they experience the self esteem that the kudumbashree enjoys, a self esteem that is born of a realization that women can address and tackle not only women’s social and economic problems as they do, but also those of the society. The innovative self help banking system that they follow, their success in turning society’s problems into opportunities for themselves and service to the society, have enhanced their sense of independence and self esteem.

Which, I guess is why they didn’t line up in the Kerala kasavu sarees, holding thalipolis and walking seductively.

This reminds me to a function I attended in Florida sometime back. The Malayalee teenaged girls donned the kasavu saree, loaded their heads with jasmine flowers and walked up the aisle with the talapolis. What struck me was the most ‘unladylike’ movement of these young girls who had spent all their lives in Levis and Bermuda shorts. It looked awkward to me at first, particularly when one of them, impatient with the saree getting in the way, kept on hitching it up! But, as I watched them, I felt a certain sense of relief rising from deep within me. That ‘graceful’, seductive, annnanada(swan walk) is not something a woman is born with. It is imbibed from the air she breathes. Yes. No one is born a woman; she is made one.

I am not trying to say that these young teenagers are a liberated lot. Only, they have not been influenced by the Kerala concept of “how to be a lady” –at least, at that superficial level. As they weren’t trapped and trained in the ‘womanizing’ clothes, they hadn’t fallen victim to the images that control and shape the mind through the agency of the traditional attire.

Black Coffee and Milk - The Nazrani Obsession with Colour

I have always hesitated to write on the colour issue. But a comment from Silverine to my last post emboldened me. These youngsters, they are very courageous and often point out to you the road to be taken!

It was in the early seventies. I was, once, waiting for my friend in the parlour of a college hostel. Three ladies – all above fifty – came in and asked for Susan.
“Which Susan?” asked the parlour maid.
“A fair girl. Very fair”
The parlour maid nodded and disappeared.
One of the ladies recognized me.
“Aren’t you so & so’s daughter”
“Yes”
“What course are you doing?”
I told her. All of them got excited.
“Hey! Susan also is doing the same course, same year. Do you know her?’
“Yes”
They looked at each other, and then all of them, in unison. moved forward to the edges of their chairs and, in a conspiratorial tone, one asked. ”Is Susan beautiful?”
I remained silent. ‘Cos Susan was not my idea of beautiful.
“But I heard that she is very, very fair?”
“Yes. She’s milk white. That’s what we were told”. That in an accusing tone.
“Yes. She is milk white”, I agreed.
All of them looked relieved.
“So she must be beautiful”. Just then, in walked Susan and I saw all the three faces of the visitors go radiant with joy. Apparently they had come to take a peek at the girl proposed for a relative's son.

This Nazrani obsession with colour is inexplicable, particularly since there are some very very dark Nazranis too. And the similes used to describe colour are uniform across the tribe -”as dark as ebony” for the very dark, ‘milk white’ for the extremely fair. A husband wife team with one extremely fair & the other very dark is referred to as “black coffee and milk”. In the Trichur region, beauty is equated with skin colour. You can have a snub nose, thick oversized lips, buck teeth, mere slits for eyes but yet be beautiful if you are milk white. On the other hand, you can have finely chiseled features of a classic beauty and yet be “not really desirable for my son”.

In the seventies, when I was branded as belonging to the “incorrigible younger generation”, my group of friends (we considered ourselves modern & more enlightened than the rest of mankind) rebelled – in our private debates - against this colour obsession. The very fair was derogatively called ‘vella paatta” (white cockroach). Our relatives from Trichur, in their typical blunt manner dismissed this as a “sour grapes” approach.

I don’t think things have changed much even today. Each time parents inform us about the marriage of their sons, the first information is about the colour. And a light skinned girl always lends a lilt to the voice of the prospective in-laws. We often hear such statements as “she is so fair, yet they are demanding a fat dowry –and that too for that karamban”!

A couple of years back, I attended a social function in Trichur. I was caught in a group which was very excitedly discussing the effectiveness of Chakolas Fairness cream. How serious they were!
”You know Champaka? I saw her yesterday. She has changed a lot. Become soooooooo beautiful (read fair). I asked her what she did to herself. She is using Chackolas fairness cream”
“Really (four voices in unison-high pitched with excitement)
“Yeeeees. Pearl. Why don’t you ask your daughter to use it? After all she is of the marriageable age”
“As if my daughter isn’t fair enough”. Pearl indignantly.
“Don’t get me wrong Pearl. Of Course your daughter diamond is fair (Pearl smiles), but if she uses Chakola fairness cream, she will become fairer. If it has made Champaka fairer, it'll do miracles with Diamond?

Pearl looks happy. “Shall write to her immediately – Actually Bangalore has darkened her complexion - and these young girls, they are so careless about their colour. They are always in the sun. I ask her to carry an umbrella. She won’t. She says her friends will call her a mallu and tease her. But I have sent a sunscreen with 60%SPF and remind her every day to use it when she goes out. She is coming next week. Wonder (looks anxious) if she has become dark”.
“Yes, yes. These youngsters. They don’t realize that if they become dark, everything is over for them”.

That was when I realized that I better move out of that group before they ask me to try out Chakola’s Fairness Cream.

Shall conclude with a chota episode about my efforts to lighten my complexion. Succumbing to pressure from my dear ones, I went to a beauty parlour to get a facial done on the day before I was to attend a wedding in Trichur. I took my 5 year old son along as there was no one at home to baby sit. Not wanting to leave him alone in the lobby of the parlour, I took him along inside. Before the facial began, I talked to the beautician at length about the safety of using bleach on the face. She was a good talker and convinced me that bleaching is a must and will not harm my facial skin.

The next day, during the reception, I was making light conversation in the company of a large number of relatives when out of the blue, with no provocation whatsoever, my son announced loud and clear, for all the world to hear, that I'd put bleaching powder on my face the day before. Numb with horror, I kept mum. “Bleaching powder?” someone asked. “Yes, bleaching powder. I saw it, I saw it, I saw it, I saw her do it”. Then, angry that someone should question the veracity of his statement, he turned to me, and pointing his index finger at me, asked “Isn’t it true, amma? Am I not speaking the truth?”

The Nazrani Conundrum

Who are these Syrian Christians of Kerala. also known as Nazranis? Where did they come from? Who converted them?

A sudden identity crisis, it’d appear. But no. No crisis or loss of identity as far as I am concerned. It hardly matters to me whether my ancestors were Namboodiris, or Arabs or Red Indians or apes. I care two hoots about who converted my ancestors 20 centuries ago. It has no relevance to my existence today. And I think this holds true for most Nazranis.

Then why these queries?

I was casually going thru a book on Kerala history. A chapter titled “Kerala Polity and Life of the 16th & 17th Centuries” has a section on the Syrian Christians of Kerala, where it is stated that Christians were - - -well, read for yourself: 'The vast majority among them were vegetarians; rice, curry and milk being their main items of food. Beef eating had not come into vogue !!!!!!!!! (Exclamation marks mine).The Christians as a class were also not addicted to drinks during this period' !!!!!???? (Exclamation and question marks mine). You could have knocked me down with a feather! It is not just a common joke but also a practice that the Nazrani rushes to the meat shop after the Sunday mass. There is also some truth in the saying that he chooses the church which has a meat shop in the vicinity. And to think that he descended from vegetarian stock!

Ok. This bit of information drove me to the net to find out more about the “vegetarian” Syrian Christian. And there I came across a riot of contradictory opinions, views, theories. Most of them were presented with intense heat. The controversy revolves round the questions of the original caste of the Syrian Christians and about St. Thomas, the apostle having come to Kerala at all. The meat eating habit of the Syrian Christians was used as evidence for both groups to prove their points. I shall, for convenience, call these warring netizen groups the Naboothiri Origin Group (NOG) and the Non Namboothiri Origin Group (NNOG).

The NOG were less vociferous- either they did not feel the need to prove anything to anybody or they didn’t have evidence that’d hold water.

The NNOG -they go livid a t the very suggestions that Nazranis have Namboothiri (Kerala Brahmins) origins. Their proofs:
Brahmins migrated to Kerala only after the 4 century AD. How then could St. Thomas convert them in 1st century AD? How can a nonexistent group be converted? Mmmm. They have a point there.

The NOG counter this argument with a quote from A. Sreedara Menon that ‘the first batch of Brahmin immigrants came to Kerala in the 3rd century BC itself, immediately following the advent of the Jains and the Buddhists. It may be recalled that the period coincided with the Mauryan age in the history of North India when a conscious policy of acculturation or dissemination of “the superior material culture of the Gangetic basin” was pursued by the Mauryan State’. Well, there the NOG has a walking stick to lean on. When ST. Thomas came, the Brahmins were around to be converted.

But the NNOG swear that the Christians were beef eaters and Namboodiris, the Brahmins of Kerala who came from North India where the cow was worshipped did not eat beef. In fact, they claim, the beef eating communities in Kerala were ostracized by the Namboothris. Pre-empting the theory of western influence after the Portuguese efforts at latinization of Syrian Church in Kerala, NNOG vow that a centuries old cultural habit of beef abstinence cannot be changed overnight by laitinization.

Now, the NOG won’t take this lying down. Again they quote A. Sreedhara Menon that ‘The advent of the Aryan immigrants (post 4th century) brought about other significant social changes as well. There was a change in the dietary habits of the people. The use of beef and liquor which was common even among the Brahmins in the early Sangam Age now came to be looked upon as taboo. Those who used beef had now some social stigma attached to their class. The continued use of beef by the panes was perhaps one of the factors which brought about the decline of their social status’. So the NOG aver that the Brahmins too ate beef before the second wave of Brahmin migration, after which they gave it up while the Nazranis continued, as they were already Christians and there was no taboo attached to beef eating in the Christian way of life.

But NNOG insists that this is the clearest proof that the Nazranis are Panas converted and not Brahmin (Namboothiri)converts.

And thus the controversy rages on - --

While the Nazrani continues to eat beef. After all pedigree is no substitute for beef.

And so back to the questions: Who are these Syrian Christians? Where did they come from? Who converted them?

A humble simble group whose paternity cannot be traced?

Some of them, particularly from certain parts of Kerala, are a shade lighter in complexion than the average Malayalee. And so the plot thickens and adds substance to the theory or (oral tradition?) that the Nazranis have decended from the by blows of the Christian traders from Middle East or Rome or Greece.

If that is true, what a fall is there my dear fellow Nazranis. You and I and all of us fall down while theories and theories flourish over us!


My posts on Nazrani:
http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2008/04/evolution-of-nazrani.html;
http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2008/04/bringing-up-nazrani-girl-child.html

Death Penalty in a Civilised Society?

Amidst all the gloomy headlines that greet us everyday, was one with a difference. It went thus: IRAN TO SCRAP DEATH BY STONING. (The new Indian Express, Aug 7, 2008)

That was good news. Countries associated with draconian, hideous, ‘savage’ laws and penal measures are beginning to look at them from a humanitarian angle. But this set me thinking. Who or what is to decide what mode of execution is brutal enough to warrant the epithet “inhuman” or acceptable enough to earn the label ‘civilised”? Why is it that stoning to death creates a moral revulsion in us, the inhabitants of the so called modern, civilised, progressive, liberal society?

Public hanging, public beheading, crucifixion and stoning to death must have had, at the outset, an exemplary purpose, and as such are specifically devised to terrorise the onlookers into deterring them from committing similar crimes. The more brutal, the more it strikes terror in the hearts of the onlooker. For the victim of public execution, there is a denial of dignity in death which can be as painful as the pain of execution. Of these, perhaps stoning and crucifixion are a degree more cruel in terms of the duration of suffering involved in the slow death of the victim. In its actual modus operandi, being stoned in public and by the public is akin to lynching. The faceless fury of the mob adds an element of humiliation to the horror and pain of the punishment. Again, the right to dignity in death is denied.


To come to the query raised earlier, I guess it is the attitude to the criminal that forms the basis for branding the mode of administering capital punishment as human or inhuman. The traditional society(read non progressive, non liberal. noncivilized), holds the attitude that a person condemned to death, from whom has been stripped the right to existence, has no more claim to the rights enjoyed by the living men of the world he is about to leave behind. That world, it is believed, is under no obligation to respect the life and dignity of the condemned person. For, the criminal has forfeited all his rights as the member of the society the minute he commits a crime which warrants death penalty. He is like a dead man walking.

The modern state takes pride in respecting a person’s rights till the last living moment. Efforts are made to make death as painless as possible. The last wishes of the condemned person are respected and he is given a wholesome meal and access to religious solace before execution. But does all this make execution a pleasant experience, or the mode of administering the death penalty less brutal or primitive? Hanging or electric chair or lethal injection is no less obnoxious than the aforementioned methods. They do not enable the person to conquer the bitterness of death. Most certainly, we cannot use the term ‘civilized, to these modes of killing, or for that matter, any mode of killing. For killing – and that’s what Capital punishment is – is immoral, brutal and primitive. I would call all death penalty officialised/legitimized murder.

Capital Punishment is immoral and unethical. Who has a right to take away from another person his right to existence? No judge or jury or tribunal or court can appropriate the authority to condemn a human being to death. Period.

Death penalty is objectionable also on account of the flaws in the justice systems. No legal system is flawless. It is no impossible task to frame an innocent person with a crime deserving capital punishment. It can happen that the defence is unable to prove his innocence in the court of law. It is also possible that a guilty person can get away with murder in the existing system. In other words, the judicial systems of modern states are so ridden with loopholes that miscarriage of justice is a possible eventuality and a common enough happening. This being the case, the state must abolish capital punishment in order to obviate the possibility of an innocent person being deprived of life for a crime she/he did not commit.

Those who disagree can argue that capital punishment is a deterrent and is, therefore, necessary to reduce crimes. Well, I beg to disagree with that argument. From time immemorial, death penalty has been there - all over the world. But man has always killed and looted, and broken every commandment handed down to Moses – and he continues to do it.

Abolition of death penalty in every country in the world would be a major landmark in the human evolutionary process. For that would amount to the official abdication of the right of governments to violate the most fundamental of all human rights – man’s right to life and existence.

Have another post on this issue: http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2006/12/death-penalty.html