Slumdog Millionare Should not Have Won the Oscar?

Netizens have received the Slumdog Millionaire’s achievements with mixed feelings. Opinions are divided almost 50/50 between those who feel the film deserved the accolades it received and those who feel it didn’t. Now the print media has begun reflecting the views of those who believe that the film got more attention than it deserved.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so am not in a position to talk about its merits. But the logic that informs the negative responses deserves to be looked into. Take a look at this excerpt from the link I have given at the bottom of the page.

Other than Slumdog, I have seen only one film out of the other four nominated. But I've read about all of them. The one that I saw is The Reader. The subject is far more intellectually challenging, emotionally moving and morally disturbing than Slumdog can ever hope to be. - - - -
But look at the themes of the other movies that were nominated this year. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the love story of a man who is born as an extreme geriatric and keeps getting younger and dies as a newborn. Only for a brief period of time are the man and his beloved around the same compatible age. Of course it's an impossible concept and completely unbelievable, but it's a high concept. Milk is about the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the United States; Frost/Nixon about the first interview disgraced US President Richard Nixon gave, to has-been TV journalist David Frost. For both of them, it is a chance for redemption, for a somewhat sane life. These are all big themes. I am not doubting Slumdog's quality as a film in any way. Danny Boyle is one of the most talented directors around. But comparing Slumdog to The Reader is almost impossible. It's like comparing A Christmas Carol to Great Expectations.

Scrooge won, little Pip lost. But that's the way it has been with the Oscars

Interesting, isn’t it? But the reference to “a high Concept” and “big themes”, and the purportedly reductive comparison of Slumdog Millionaire to A Christmas Carol betray the grip on the author of certain notions of canonicity and high culture.

If the problem cited is with the execution of the film, I have no arguments against it. But that’s not the case. He writes: I am not doubting Slumdog's quality as a film in any way. Danny Boyle is one of the most talented directors around,. So that’s not the issue. The issue is the theme of the movie. It’s a problem with the size and height of the theme.

Now, who is to decide how to hierarchize the quality and importance of themes? True, the reverse development of Benjamin Button is strange, curious, interesting and daring. The predicament of a gay public figure in Milk and the intense moral drama of Frost/Nixon are sensitive, challenging and intellectually appealing themes.

What about the theme of Slumdog Millionaire? Is it trivial? A social problem best swept under the red carpet of the Oscar venue?

On two scores, the comparison to Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol is appropriate. 1. In Victorian England, the novel revived a new interest in the spirit of Christmas which was being reduced to a mere bash by those who enjoyed the fruits of the Industrial Revolution. 2. Though a fantasy tale, it was a emphatic censure of the social evils thrown up by the Industrial Revolution. In a fabular style, The Christmas Carol poses the question to the conscience of Victorian England turning a blind eye to huge marginalisation of human beings. And the question is one that is hugely relevant today, in these days of a corporate friendly mode of development across the globe. And the question Scrooge puts to the ghost is “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer Scrooge gets is “Yes. You are.”

Well, Slum Dog poses the same question. Is that question any less relevant than how challenged people or gays or the privileged deal with their life situations?

Is the issue of sixty percent of a city’s people living in slums something that can be dismissed on account of its lack of intellectual appeal? In what sense is it not a high or big theme?

Or is it that, by Hollywood standards, it is a low budget film?

What/who decides the height and size of a theme?

Aren’t we Indians angry because the film defamiliarizes the ugly reality of the underdogs of our society? Because it causes the film to fall off from the eyes of us, the twenty first century Scrooges?

http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20090224/1241/top-it-shouldn-t-have-won.html

Stray Afterthoughts on India at the Oscars.

I was waiting for the euphoria to die down somewhat.

It feels great. We always knew that AR Rahman was a rare genius. I love music but have little or no knowledge of its science. But one doesn’t have to be a music academic to know that AR Rahman is the rarest of gems. I can never forget the first the first time I heard Chinna China Asai in Tamil. I was checking university papers. The song stunned me into inaction, suspended all my senses except that of hearing. It was nothing like I’d ever heard before. The novelty of it – the sounds and their management, the sound of water?, a brook tripping over stones? all captured in a harmony that I was sure would suspend the motions of the stars. Such was the total effect. It was incredible. Listening to Chinna Chinna Asai for the first time was an experience - of a sensation coursing through my blood; it was not just an act of listening to a composition. It was like being part of a hitherto unheard harmony of strange sounds descending from another galaxy. When Ar Rahman tamilised Beethoven in Thiruda Thiruda, I was bewildered, dazed, and ecstatic. The space between systems of music seems to collapsed totally.

Now, of course, the novelty has worn off.

However, we didn’t need an Oscar to tell us what AR Rahman’s place was in the world of music. But we are happy that he got this recognition.

But it took an Oscar and other international awards for Pookutty to make us realize that the ‘technicians’ are/have to be artists par excellence, that there is a high degree of aesthetics involved in the role of these technicians. I remember, more than twenty years ago, my very intelligent niece Anita was very vociferous on this issue. Strange, it took a quarter of a century and an Oscar to make me realise how truly she had spoken.

Both the Oscar award winners carried themselves with extreme dignity and confidence at the function and after.

But our own dear Anil Kapoor. What on earth got into him! On several occasions he made us go red- eared! But what took the cake was his excited declaration ('Guess who came on the stage after the best movie was announced?' Anil Kapoor -) that Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russel came to the stage to congratulate the Slum Dog team, that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt came to his house(?), “they didn’t know who I was, they didn’t even know I'm an actor - - –“!!!??? He was incoherent with excitement.

Oh, he embarrassed us, to say the least. Why doesn’t he realize that the adulation of millions of his countrymen is a greater recognition than a few Hollywood stars shaking hands with him?

And so back to my pet theme. When will we recover from this colonial hangover?

Thank You, Resul Pookutty.

I come from a country and civilisation that gave the world the word that is preceded by silence and is followed by more silence. That word is 'Om'. So I dedicate this award to my country," said Kerala-born sound technician. This is not just a sound award but a piece of history that has been handed over to me.

Thank you, Resul Pookutty. Not just for the Oscar, but for going out there and proclaiming to the whole world, and to India in particular that he is an Indian, he is proud to be an Indian and that the Indian heritage is his too, despite being a Muslim.

He went a step further. He dedicated the Oscar to India as a gift on the day of the great festival of Sivarathri which India was celebrating while the Oscar function was going on.

He represents the true spirit of India , that secular backbone of the Indian psyche which holds this country together despite the concerted efforts of agents with petty political agenda to polarize this great nation on communal lines.

His speech took me back to my college days when we were Indians first.

Thank you Pookutty. May your tribe increase.

Two Great Men - Dr. Aiyyappa Panikar and

This is my third post on Dr. Aiyyappa Panikar. While searching for something else I came across a synopsis which I had written on a bibliography card (!) as demanded by the great man who was then the Director of the Institute where I did research. As I was writing it down with shaking clammy fingers, a fellow Research Scholar told me this story.

Dr Aiyappa Pannikar (AP) was a very demanding Research Guide. He only had to look at a page to detect the grammar errors! His eyes need only to run down the pages of an entire assignment for him to ascertain the quality of the work. If he was in a foul mood, he would tell you in harsh language what exactly was wrong with the paper – whether it was puerile, simplistic, superficial, biased, judgmental, lacks cogency and consistency, or whatever. If he was in a pleasant mood, he would tell you the same things in the most humorously sarcastic language that you will laugh at yourself. Either way, it was an education – a rare one that you will always treasure for it was a clear and emphatic discourse on what research should or should not be.

So, one of his students – it happened to be a nun –once went into his room which was adjacent to the Research Scholars’ room (he was not the Director then – it happened long before my days at the Institute). The Research Scholars’ room and Dr. Panikar’s room, on the first floor, had the corridor on one side and, on the other side, huge half French windows over looking a stretch of vacant plot with trees and wild growth. One would not dare to venture into that plot for fear of snakes and insects. It was as dangerous as going into Dr Panikar's room with a badly done assignment. The Research Scholars’ desks were placed against these windows and they sat facing the windows.

So, this nun announced that she was going to submit the first chapter of the first draft of her thesis and went out. Five minutes after she left the room, the research scholars facing the window saw A4 papers floating over the vacant plot like so many kites out of control. They quickly asked each other to check the papers on their desks to see if their papers were blown off the desk by the ceiling fan. Nobody had lost anything. They were wondering what it could be. Some one said it could be from the desk of the professors’ rooms, all of which had these windows on one side. As they were discussing, one of the scholars spotted the sister walking gingerly into the plot, looking up furtively to see if anyone was watching from the Research Scholars room. All of them kept themselves out of sight ‘cos they realized what had happened, and didn’t want to embarrass her. Apparently, Dr. Panikar had flung the papers out of the window.

The poor sister picked her way through the overgrown grass and thick vines, praying, no doubt, to St. George to keep her safe from reptiles. Occasionally, she would shoot a quick glance at the windows. The Research Scholars watched the entire operation keeping themselves out of sight. Soon, there was only one more sheet of paper to be picked up. It was right below the window of one of the Research Scholars. As she bent down to pick up the paper, he threw down the cigarette he was smoking so that it fell near her paper. She jerked her head up to the window to see her fellow Research Scholar wave out to her with a sweet smile.

That Research Scholar with none other than the late Dr. Narendra Prasad, who later became a famous actor in Malayalam.

GUILT

I was reading in the Yahoo news the reaction of boys who live in the slums to The Slum dog Millionaire.

‘After watching Slum dog Millionaire with intense concentration, barely moving from his cross-legged position on the floor, 12-year-old Vijay Kumar, a rag picker around Old Delhi railway station, grinned: "I really enjoyed it. It shows my life, the way children like me eat and sleep together, how we live”’

‘Asked if the film was 'true', they exclaimed 'yes!’ That's what slums are like, that's how the police harass us, that's how some boys get into crime or glue-sniffing, that's how middlemen approach us and ask us to entice children to be sold to gangs, that's how we share our food and help one another’.

I’ve lived in Mumbai for almost six years. I still go to that big city on and off. Yet, if you ask me about the ‘street urchins’, I’ll hardly be able to tell you anything about them. After reading this bit of news I made an effort. A serious one to recall some contact or conversation I had with them. A couple of instances came to my mind but looking back at those made me feel ‘not good’. Did it take a Britisher(I have not yet seen the movie) to open my eyes to that terrible reality for which, I too, as a citizen, is responsible, which, I too could have seen if I had opened my eyes wide enough?

A brief conversation I had with a boy was way back in 1999. The cab in which I was travelling had stopped at the traffic signal at Peddar Road. I saw the cover of a thick book pressed against the window of the cab, which I rolled down ‘cos I wanted to buy the book. The boy – about 10 or twelve- was repeating mechanically “STAREPORT, SO RUPIYA (Star Report, 100 Rupees). Hundred rupees was dirt cheap for a book on Kenneth Star’s investigation into Clinton’s sexapades, which was released in the US just the previous day, and I opened my purse. The boy’s eyes lighted up. But my friend who was travelling with me in the cab asked me not to buy it. Though she spoke in Malayalam, the boy got a clue that she was dissuading me from buying. ‘Stareprt, so Rupiya’ he raised his voice. There was plea in it. ”Madam. Hundred rupees only, madam, hundred Rupees only” he begged. “Don’t buy it Molly. It’ll be sleazy. Your children will read it if you take it home”. I hesitated. By then the boy was pleading in both English and Hindi. The signal changed and the car moved with the boy running along with the car repeating “hundred rupee only madam, only hundred rupee”. I looked straight ‘cos I couldn’t buy it even in I had wanted to. The taxi had gathered speed and I had to fish out money from the wallet in the hand bag. So I turned deaf and blind and sat back as though the boy did not exist.

There was an almost identical experience at a signal at Bandra. This time, he had a bunch of beautiful fresh roses for a mere Rs. 15. I had opened my handbag to look for the wallet when the same friend told me that the flowers are stolen from the graveyard. Something about that put me off and I repeated my performance at the Peddar Road signal. This time too, as the taxi gathered speed, I turned deaf and blind and sat back as though the boy did not exist.

I do not know how I’ll explain my self to the Almighty when the day of reckoning comes.

These are but a couple of incidents, and they point to an unpleasant truth that I am living in an oasis of plenty amidst a wasteland of hunger and want. Don’t the oases have a tradition of keeping their resources open for the hungry and thirsty and shelterless travellers?

Disturbing questions which I push aside - for I want to continue to violate the tradition of sharing the oasis with the less fortunate travellers of the desert!

But these seizures of guilt return over and over again – only to be to be calmed and controlled by the drugs of convenient theories and pragmatic philosophies.

Babuchayan, My Brother

On February 1, 2005, Babuchayan passed away. He was Father Abraham to the world, but to us, he was Babuchayan, our brother. He was the eldest and I, the last but one in the family of eight. He joined the seminary after graduation, but used to come home twice or thrice a year, and whenever he came, it was always like the old times.

Sure he was intelligent, but was not the most brilliant of human beings. But he reached heights that are denied even to the most brilliant of the brilliant. Both in worldly and otherworldly achievements, and also in the hearts of the people he dealt with.

Being the first born, he was intensely conscious of his position and responsibility. But that couldn’t suppress his joie de vivre. Like those occasions when we siblings cracked jokes that a priest was not supposed to appreciate. He would hoist that very serious look on to his countenance to mask his struggle to contain laughter, and would admonish us like a good priest should, till one of us told him something like “Come on Babuchayan, you better laugh or your sides will burst”. His control would then crack and he would dissolve into helpless laughter, and in the intervals of the paroxysms of merriment, he would say ”Naughty jokes, you must not crack such naughty jokes”

One of my earliest memories of him goes back to the time I was around 5 or 6. The radio was in his room, and for some reason, he disapproved of my sister listening to it for too long. I still can’t figure out if this is on account of patriarchal hangover or because he thought she should be studying. On this occasion, he had gone out for his evening walk. My sister sneaked into his room to listen to the radio, keeping me posted in the balcony to announce his return. As soon as I saw him open the gate, I ran in and informed her, and she quickly switched off the radio, ran into her room and buried her head in her books. Babuchayan came into his room, and immediately put the back of his four fingers on the radio (like we check the temperature of a person), and then marched into my sisters room.
“Were you listening to the radio?”
“No. I was studying”
“Then how come the radio is hot?”
“I don’t know”
To me,” Was she listening to the radio?” I was too young to have learnt the art of saying white lies, and blurted out the truth.
He shook his index finger at her saying, “Just you wait. I’ll tell amma”.

I have fond memories of him which take me back now to an afternoon in the drawing room of our house where my brothers and I were having post lunch gossip and fun session. One of my brothers asked me to get something to eat from the larder. I came back with a large plate full of laddoos, and all of them pounced on it. Then Babuchayan made an announcement.
“For one week we’ll give Molly some rest. We won’t make her run errands. Even girls need a break”, he said.

I wanted to fling myself on him and give him a bear hug but, he, being averse to any such demonstrations of affection, would have jumped up and run for his life had I tried. So I limited myself to just clapping my hands joyfully and looked gleefully at the disapproval writ large on the faces of my siblings closer to me in age. That one week that followed was bliss. That’s when I got an inkling as to what it feels like being a male child in a Nazrane family!

After his ordination, he was posted as the assistant parish priest in a big parish in the Nilgiris district. He was so earnest to do, to the best of his ability, his duty to his Lord and Master that he visited all the homes of his parishioners twice, on foot, within the space of six months, at the end of which period he fell ill with over exhaustion.

His next appointment as the Vice Principal and then the Principal of a boy’s school in the diocese brought out the dynamic person in him which we had not seen before. He had a major role to play, right from getting students for the school in the year it was founded to its development as one of the most innovative schools in that town. He was the first to introduce yoga, computer courses, and classical Indian dance in boys’ schools in that district.

In the late 80s he organized a national Chess tournament in the Nilgiris District. He got the public sector banks and companies to sponsor it. Young Viswanath Anand and the then big names like Dibayendu Barua and Manual Aron were some of the participants. Difficult to think of a priest, even today, taking such initiatives.

He was the member of the Lions Club. He encouraged his teachers too to take membership in clubs. I got this information from a teacher who worked with him. As we stood outside the IC unit two days before my brother died, he told me this:

“I was a shy person from a remote village in Tamilnadu. A month after I joined, Father arranged to have me inducted into the Rotary Club. Seeing my reluctance, he explained ‘You are good at your work but you need some more exposure when you deal with the type of students who come to this school. Besides, it’s good for your growth too’”. He continued “He made me what I am today. You talk to the other teachers who worked with him. They’ll also tell you similar stories’

From the conversation I had with the stream of visitors who came from his diocese and school in Nilgiris, I came to know, for the first time, of the enormity of the monetary help he had been giving to individuals, both lay and religious, and to institutions, after he rook leave from the diocese to work in the USA. “No one who approached him for help was turned away”, his close friend, a priest, told me.

All this was news to us siblings ‘cos he never told us about this. I now wish I had known this. May be then there would have been another dimension to the great regard I had for him – you know that special reverence that we always have for an altruistic person. To me, he had always been my brother Babuchayan, always generous with advice and admonitions, laughing uncontrollably at the jokes we cracked, scolding me for giving up the music lessons after seven years of training – scolding me not just once when I did it, but every time he saw me in the 35 years after that.

“You should not have stopped”, he said rolling his eyes in his typical angry way. “To be able to play piano is such a rare thing in our country. If you had perfected that skill, you could have made plenty of money giving lessons and helped people in need with that extra money. Besides, it is a kala. No. you should not have stopped. You should not have stopped” Almost the same words each time he saw me all those 35 years after I took the decision to stop getting trained in piano.

Last September, I started music lessons again, after 35 years. As I was going for the first lesson, I remembered his words and found myself thinking wistfully that had he been around, I could tell him. I smiled to myself thinking of his reaction and his “you should not have stopped” encore.

In the funeral address delivered by the officiating Bishop from his diocese, there were repeated references to the enormous monetary contribution my brother made to various worthy and humanitarian causes in the diocese. We siblings looked at each other. Why we were kept in the dark, I wondered. A true follower of Christ, I guess. The left hand should not know what the right hand was doing.

During his hospitalization, all who visited him from Nilgiris spoke of his ‘innocence”. Strange word, I thought, to describe a 66 year old person. But yes. He was that. Innocent. Not really a man of this world in many ways. He thought the world was a good place and a good person could do good things if he set his mind to it. He didn’t know how to hide his feelings. He was so transparent that you would know if he was angry or happy or nervous or amused or tense or embarrassed. No. Babuchayan could never conceal his feeling. Childlike. That’s what he was. A simple, honest, straightforward, innocent person with a tremendous drive and confidence in himself which made him rush in – with success too- into areas that the average person would hesitate to tread.

When he was finally laid to rest in Kochin, we, his siblings, stood around the grave, our feelings under iron control and maintaining a poised demeanor. As the casket was lowered, suddenly his colleagues from the school and his friends from the diocese where he worked burst out in unison. loud and clear into a Tamil song, tears streaming down their faces!!

That’s when I realised that they have seen a side of him which we siblings didn’t get an opportunity to see. There was much more to Father Abraham than the Babuchayan we knew and loved and still miss after three years.

Uncle Sam, Mind Your Own Business , Says ?

The Iranian president’s call to the United States to ‘stop interfering in other people’s affairs’ is indeed a legitimate demand. US has manipulated the rise and fall of governments across the globe, created Frankensteins like Al Qaeda for one, played and plays yoyo with oil producing Middle East countries, has supported dictatorship against democratic countries, has aggressively bulldozed their way into every region that threatened its economic interests and made ‘making the world safe for democracy’ a pretext for all these activities. This, by now, is declassified information. Yes. The US has interfered/interferes in ‘other people’s affairs’. No doubt about it.

But isn’t the Iranian President making such an allegation akin to the pot calling the kettle black?

When Palestine and Israel fight, and Iran throws its weight behind Palestine with the threat to push the Zionists into the sea, doesn’t that amount to interfering in other people’s business?

When Salman Rushdie, a British novelist, writes a book and Iran issues a fatwa for his head, isn’t that interference in other people’s business? When Rafiq Tağı writes an article in the Azeri newspaper and Iran issues another fatwa for his head despite the legal action taken against him by the Azeri government, isn’t that interference in other people’s affairs?

When Iran instigates and supports Shia rebellion against Iraq and the other governments of the countries of which they are citizens, isn’t that interference in other people’s affairs?

A question to the president of Iran.What is the criterion for ‘other people’s affairs’?

Slum Dog Again - An American Point of View

This is a comment from a regular visitor (an American girl) to my blogs who rarely posts comments. This time she chose to do it . I thought I'll post it as a blog instead of a comment. It gives a fresh point of view. I think being too close to the scene, we tend to get sensitive to the point of losing our objectivity. This comment was quite an eye opener for me.

I was waiting for the slum dog millionaire blog. I had two thoughts from the "westerner" perspective.

But first of all, I absolutely loved this movie. I felt like I'd been through the entire gambit of human emotion by the end. I cried, I almost threw up, I shrieked in horror, I cried and cried some more. An Indian friend remarked to the effect that there was my two hours of social awareness. Was it my favorite Indian movie? No. But, one of my top 10 movies of all time? Yes. Anyway, I think the reason it was so popular is not bc it was a look at "India's dirty backyard" or a reality TV show of India. But, for the same reason that many of these films /novels/stories are famous. For the same reason we love Odysseus, Edmond Dante, Jean Val jean, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela etc. etc. This movie captures the true human spirit. The ability to overcome the most dire circumstances and rise above it all. Not to mention that the sound track was great!!!

However, back to the two points that are kind of interesting.

1) The title "slum dog millionaire". From your blog it sound like "dog" is a very derogatory term in India. You many say to yourself. Yes, obviously. But, in American culture the word "dog" is used quite differently. Calling someone a dog in one of the inner cities in America is like calling them "brother". So a gangster type would say "what's up dog?" to a good friend, followed by a hand shake and a hug. Now obviously in the movie this was used in the derogatory sense. But, I think that it was named this way to make it popular in western culture. When I first saw "slum dog millionaire" I didn't even look at it, I just assumed it was about drug deals in inner city Detroit or Chicago, movies that I don't particularly care for, but are very popular in America.

2) This is a movie that I kept thinking about for days and days after. So the "social awareness" aspect obviously had an effect. So a few days after I saw the movie I was talking to my Indian friends about the movie. The aspect of the movie that they just couldn't believe was that the couple kissed at the end! I almost fell over...with the abuse, the torture, the corruption, the conditions that people lived in...you couldn't believe they showed two people kiss?

The Slum Dog Debate - Ruminations

Mushrooming issues on the Slum Dog Millionaire, blown, as usual, out of proportion by the media have let loose a barrage of blogs and forwards. I don’t mind the former but the latter - -can’t ignore them since they jam my inbox.

I spoke to a couple of people -both in the US – who saw the film-one in the theatre, the other at home. Both were raving about it. One admitted she couldn’t watch a few scenes – kept her eyes closed. The other, a little younger, had no complaints. I asked them about the Bachchan’s ‘underbelly’ comment. They echoed Irfan Khan’s views that if there is an underbelly, shoving it under the carpet doesn’t make it non-existent. One cannot wish away nor will away certain things.

Now about the originator of the ‘underbelly’ comment. It is surprising that such a politically correct person like MR. Bachchan should have used the idiom ‘‘underbelly”. Even idioms have to be used with discretion. When the issue is sensitive, and the referent is the underprivileged and the deprived who are struggling not just to survive, but also to celebrate life despite the rough deal life doled out to them, one should refrain using a word which, viewed outside its status as an idiom, refers to an offensive image - revolting part of the animal anatomy here. Bachchan may not have thought too much about the word underbelly as he, like a person at home with the language, would have thought only about total lexical output of the term. But he ought to have learnt a lesson from VS Achuthanandan’s recent “dog” episode (Dogs seem to dog India of late). The man was using a Malayalam idiom to mean an emphatic ‘no one’– an idiom used very commonly in Malayalam. But the referent being a person who died a hero’s death, and to whom the whole the whole nation was passionately grateful, the “dog’ ceased to be viewed in the context of the idiom. To make matters worse, in translation it was all the more offensive, in the absence of a similar idiomatic expression in thee English language.

Now, the social activist Nicholas Almeida has taken up the grouse of the Dharavi residents who are bristling at being referred to as Dogs. Legitimate anger and protest.

Let’s not forget that it is not their fault that they were born to live in a slum. Nor can we appropriate the credit for being born in a privileged class. Some unseen hand decided it that way. The least we can do is to refrain from using derogatory terms to refer to the less fortunate. What is underbelly to Bachchan is life to them. This terrible disparity in wealth ownership should make us hang our heads in shame, for we enjoy at their cost. There is no law of economics or philosophy that can counter this truth.

But one word in defence of Bachchan. he made this comment in his blog. Blogsphere is private sphere.

Now regarding the allegation that the movie is trying to project a saleable image of India, I can’t comment on it till I see it. But this I know. Any one who makes an India based English movie or an Indian who writes in English will be accused of catering to the western stereotyped expectations about India. In some cases this is true. In some, it is not. But the fact remains that when we write a novel in English, or make a movie in English, we become subliminally conscious of the takers – the English speaking audience and the English movie viewers. There is a possibility that the writer/movie maker will become, not quite realising it perhaps, vulnerable to the market trends. I suppose economics has a large part to play in this. The investment in the project might go down the drain if she/he ignores the market.

So what am I saying? That all Indian writers in English and the filmmakers in English who make India based movies never present empirical truth? Well. I don’t mean that. I am only saying that one can expect to find an element of stereotyping in such films. That is inevitable. But the question is, is it deliberate distortion to please a western audience? The answer is linked to the purpose of the project. Is it success at the box office, or an honest effort at a truthful represention of the writer's/movie maker’s perception of the truth about India? In the case of the former, both the movie and the book will not hold attention. In the case of the latter, honesty will pay, despite the fact that her/his perception of India is his/her own, and not necessarily the empirical truth.

Now the question arises as to what is the truth about India or any issue for that matter? Where does truth lie? Well, no one has patented truth. No one has a proprietary right over truth. Like Gandhi said, it is like a many faceted diamond and a seeker of truth can handle only a few at a time.

My experience of India is different from that of a resident of Dharavi or a farmer who struggles with the weather gods in Tamilnadu, or a Toda tribal of the Nilgiris or the middle class urban dweller of the metros or the reeking rich living all over the country or a British film maker whose knowledge of India began with textbooks. All these experiences of India are true. Our perception of truth is shaped by our experience of it. We should therefore be large enough to give as much space as possible to an artist who tries to represent India the way he/she perceives it. Artistic truth is reality as perceived by the artist and representation of it in a truthful fashion. About the market place, if an artist decides to present truth in a manner that provides aesthetic pleasure but refrain from distorting the truth as he has internalized it, no one should complain. The sum total of all these representation will take us a little near the truth.

Remember Keats’ words. “Truth is beauty, beauty truth”. Reality as perceived by an artist, if represented honestly, is truth. This truth cannot but be beautiful. It cannot but give aesthetic pleasure. That’s the purpose of art.

Just one more thing. Bachchan today gave voice to a sentiment I have always felt strongly about. “Oscar is not the ultimate recognition”, he said. Yes. I have always wondered why our film makers spend such huge amounts at screening and other Oscar winning extra theatre activities to get this recognition.To win an Oscar, I guess we will have to approximate the grammar of our movies to that of the western movies. Why on earth should we compromise so much to win an Oscar. I can mention any number of Oscar winning movies which I wouldn’t like to see a second time. Is there a greater recognition than a movie running house full in Indian for months?

Finally, the media behaviour with the crew of The Slum Dog Millionaire. One particular channel really took the cake with the anchor person repeatedly asking Danny Boyle about his feelings about India, about experience of movie making of India and, and, oh,she went on and on and on. The way she was trying hard for something good about India to fall from the lips of this rather reserved film maker, she reminded me of a starving cat waiting for a bottle of milk to fall so that she can lap up the spilt milk,. And the Indian members of the crew were drooling over him till his ears turned red.

We Indians! Ugh! How many eons must pass before we get over this colonial hangover?

Ishk-a-lami

The rhythm would have made even the pillars of Stonehenge shake off their burden and break into a frenzied jig. So how can I be blamed for not making any effort to rein in my head bobbing up and down, going forward and backwards in keeping with the rhythm of that number?

The doors of the other three apartments are usually left open in the evenings when I walk (not briskly) up and down the corridor between the apartments for an hour and a half. My ipod is my regular companioin during this exrcise. Am usually acutely conscious that my friends would be looking out into the corridor. No matter how stimulating the song blaring into my ears, I take special care to walk like a nun pacing the floor deep into her prayers.

But on that particular day, the doors of all the four apartments were closed. I vaguely remembered a conversation among us in which it was mentioned that on a particular date, we(those in my apartment) would be the only people on the floor as the inmates of the other three wwould be away. As I entered the corridor and noticed that all the doors were closed, I closed the door of my apartment too, and started walking. As usual, I switched on my ipod.

The first song was Ishk-A-LLami.

What a rhythm it had! And I walked up and down the corridor, my head bobbing up and down keeping time with the rhythm of the song.

And then I started singing along.

Before I continue, I must confess that my baritone voice with just about an octave range is not made for singing. I had been warned of this on several occasions.

Allamiiii, I crooned, nevertheless; I didn’t understand what the words meant or what language it was - Arabic, Hindi, Urdu or ?, But it didn’t matter. I knew the lyrics without knowing the meaning. And sang my heart out, stretched my voice way beyond its permitted, possible range. I really let my self go. Up and down the corridor I went, my head bobbing up and down like the handsaw of a carpenter or back and forth like his hand plane, or from side to side like the pendulum of a clock – all in medium fast motion.

The song was about to get over and I was approaching my end of the corridor – and I really and truly freaked out before the grand finale. My neck was making creaky sounds from the unusual flurry of violent activity. And my voice was raised till I could hear it above the ipod’s full blast. I reached the end of the corridor. I hope that other than my head, the rest of me was behaving itself like a well groomed and disciplined nazrane female, for , on reaching the end of the corridor, I whirled around and –

God! Three pairs of eyes were looking out of the apartment doors on the other end of the corridor. Two to my right and one to me left. All three of them had strange expressions on their faces which I couldn’t decipher. But if I were to put a name to that expression, it would be the same for all the three faces.

I stood rooted to the spot, dumb for a second. Then I recovered. I held out the ipod to them and with what must have been an idiotic smile on my face, I told them “pattu, Pattu’ (song).

They looked at each other, perhaps to see how the other was reacting so that they too could follow suit. But no one reacted, no change of expression on their faces. Then, they nodded to my ‘pattu, pattu’ and quietly withdrew their heads into their respective apartments and closed the doors.

I went into hiding for the next 10 days.

During which period my husband met them severally.
“Molly not here?” asked my friend when she saw him in the lift.
“Yes, she’s at home,”
“Don’t see her these days. I miss her. She’s such a jolly person”. My husband was surprised at this remark from an otherwise reserved person.

Another day, he saw the husband-wife who had also seen me in action.” Molly not at home?’
“Yes.”
“We don’t see her walking in the corridor these days”, said my male neighbour.
“She’s such a bubble of joy”. That was his wife.
My husband was really startled by this sudden interest in Molly and her bubbly nature.

I guess they were sending feelers to him hoping some information would fall out of his mouth about me having been sent somewhere for irregular behaviour management.

Ellarum Padathilekku - A KAPITAL joke

For more than a year now, the Government of Kerala has been making an earnest effort to revive interest in agriculture and restore it to the former glorious days. The effort reached a highpoint yesterday with the CM and his cabinet colleagues making a song and dance of planting paddy saplings to usher in the paddy cultivation project.

The joke of the century, I should say – the commies trying to revive an activity that requires dedicated and disciplined cooperation from the labour force!

I hate prophets of doom. And I hate myself for being one when I say that
large scale agricultural can never again be revived in Kerala. Unless

• the unions are dismantled
• draconian laws are put in place to deal with truant workers
• and draconian laws are enforced to ensure that labour interests too are protected.
  
  Unless these steps taken, no sane person will want to plant even as many sapling as the CM did yesterday. No one will invest in a big way in agriculture knowing fully well that agriculture in Kerala was destroyed, not by errant weather Gods but by unionised labour and its manipulation in a manner totally hostile to the success of any farmer-entrepreneurial activity.
  
  And these commies are responsible. Kuttannad, the once granary of Kerala metamorphosed into a wasteland, thanks to the commies playing dirty populist vindictive politics.
  
  Some poor souls, being saddled with paddy fields , continue to engage in cultivation with all its unsurmountable problems. But with last years bumper crop going under water because of the party workers manipulating the use of harvesting machines to make a quick buck, they suffered mammoth losses. They are now completely fed up.
  
  What in god’s name does the govt. think the people of Kerala are? Fools? Does the government think it can induce selective amnesia in the people to forget the deep hurts that fester in the collective consciousness of the people?
  
  Let the government rein in their unions. Let the government give assurance to protect the farmers from the rowdyism and clout of the party workers and the unions.
  
  The day any government does that, that day Ellavarun padathilleku project will succeed.
  
  The present culture in Kerala can be summed up this way:
  
  He who walks hates the one who rides a cycle.
  He who has a cycle hates the one with a scooter.
  He who has a scooter hates the one who has a car.
  He who has a car hates the one with bigger car.
  He who has a car hates the owners of lorries and buses but unlike the earlier cases, are helpless ‘cos the lorries and buses have the backing of mafias and unions.
  
  He who who works hates the employer/mothali.
  
  The hater is the all powerful ’exploited' proletariat.
  The hated is the ‘privileged’ bourgeois
  
  In such a hate filled unproductive ambiance how can any one invest in cultivation which involves a special bonding of all stakeholders?
  
  The commies need to apologise to the people of Kerala for introducing this highly unproductive hate- work culture into Kerala.
  
  Now, is DR. Jekyll trying to rein in the Hyde, the monster of his own creation, who has been on the rampage, destroying everything that comes in his way.
  
  Are the Marxists, by any chance, suffering from pangs of conscience? Are they, after all, trying to apologise for the predicament they have brought the state to?
  
  If they truly want to do it, let them set up commandos to shoot Mr. Hyde down before the monster completes his destructive spree started a few decades ago.

Israel invites Jehovah'a Wrath - Again

The Jewish scriptures too insists only on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But Israel has gone way beyond the eye and the tooth. With them it’s genocide for rockets.

Doesn’t Israel understand that an eye for an eye was a law meant to limit violence in a culture which practiced “a tribe for an eye”?

Anyway, who is Israel to punish? The chosen people? If so, what were they chosen for?
The answer: To follow and propagate the Ten Commandments which, essentially, is a comprehensive and pithy testament of human rights.

Today, Israel is violating every one of those commandments. Violation of the Sixth commandment amounts to a violation of all others.

And Israel feels morally justified doing so.

Shameful!

The fundamental laws – every one of them - of human/international relations in a civilized society are being violated by Israel. Equally offensive is its cavalier attitude to the sufferings of victims, the Palestinians.

Survival of the fittest, it says, justifying this attitude. But that’s jungle law. Not law of a civilized world. The highest mark of civilization is its commitment to the survival-of-the-weakest creed. That’s what all religions are about.

Let Israel not claim the partnership of Jehovah in its genocidal project. No Jehovah will sanction murder of the helpless and the weak.

Israel is guilty of breach of trust too.

It ‘conceded’ to free elections in Palestine, with a promise to negotiate with the elected government. The people of Palestine elected Hamas. Gave them a thumping victory.

And, Israel went back on its word.

Refused to deal with a ‘terrorist’ group.

With the Big brother on its side, it started the divide and destroy process – started aiding the rival Fatah group. Palestinians became a divided people. But, Israel’s deadly enemy Hamas remained in control in Gaza.

A make shift truce was agreed upon between Hamas and Israel.

Then, Palestiniam rocket attacks began.

Sure that’s not right. But one should ask why Palestine started this assault.

Israel it did everything in its power to make existence impossible in the densely populated Hamas controlled Gaza, blockading food, medicines and the other necessities of life. People starved. Children died. Hospitals could not function for lack of medicines.

Israel did something else too. Went into Gaza and killed 9 Hamas militants.

Why is the world so outraged when a wounded people struggling to keep themselves alive, send rockets to draw attention to their terrible predicament?

Has the world forgotten how it had looked the other way when Hitler went berserk, and had to salve its conscience by creating the State of Israel, thereby letting loose an era of horror on the world in the form of terrorism? The friends of Israel owe it to the international community to find an amicable solution to the Palestinian problem before Hamas officially internationalises its militant activities.


And a reminder to Isreal.

“May they administer true justice and show mercy and compassion to one another. May they not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In their hearts, may they not think evil of each other” (Zech 7. 9-10). Thus says the holy book that all of Israel read after a day of pounding the Palestinian territory, and killing and destroying, and creating orphans and widows, and leaving babies clinging to mothers lying dead!.

May they not oppress the widows or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Listen, Israel. That’s what the Lord thy God says.

Have you, Israel, forgotten your diasporic existence of twenty plus centuries? Have you forgotten what it feels like to be homeless, like the Palestinians feel now?

Have you forgotten the holocaust of the forties? Aren’t you indulging in the same crime against humanity in a different mode?


Do not forget the lessons of history. You will face Jehovah’s wrath again.

For just indeed are His ways.

One Bindi - My Talisman against Communal Horror

I normally carry a strip of bindis in my toilet kit when I travel-but this time it so happened I forgot to take any. I had only the one I wore on my forehead.

That bindi proved to be more precious than silver and gold to me. It was to contribute to my sense of safety during those few days I spent stuck in a room in a hotel in Vadodhra.

It was 27 February, 2002. I had traveled to Vadodra for a break from work, and to spend a week with my husband who was on official duty there.

I do not know if that date means anything to you at the first glance, but I flinch at the very mention of that date. A type of fear surges through me. I distract myself instantly by forcibly pegging my thoughts on some nearby object that my eyes fall on. With a fair amount of success, I push away the date and its reaction from my thoughts, and stay them from hovering around in my conscious mind; but banish them from my subconscious or the unconscious – no. That’s impossible. Unfortunately, fear and its cause cannot be uprooted and cast away that easily from those inaccessible regions of the mind.

Why do I remember it now? Yesterday, The Rosebowl Channel screened Mr. & Mrs. Iyer. The intended main focus of the film may be human relationships, but for me it is the background - the post-Godhra riot- that appealed to me.

‘It’s so easy to kill a man”, says Meenakshi after she sees, through the camera zoom lens, blood gushing out from the slit throat of a Muslim.
In the course of this conversation Jehangir Choudhary (a Muslim) says, “I’m alive today because you gave me a name – MR. Iyer”

What’s in a name, asked Shakespeare. Everything, I say. When Mr. Jehangir Choudhary was temporarily bestowed the name ‘Mr. Iyer’, his life was spared.

Six decades back, a group of people known as “the Jews” were gas chambered en masse; another known as Pundits were threatened, killed and driven out of their homeland in Kashmir. Charles Darney, though a good man, was condemned to be guillotined, simply because he carried the burden of the name ‘Everemonde’ (A tale of two cities).

In 2002 March, thousands were killed in Gujarat, because they belonged to the category named Muslims.

In this world of ours, nomenclature is all. It can decide whether you have a right to existence or not.

The idea is so powerfully brought out in Mr. & Mrs Iyer. Meenakshi, a South Indian Brahmin, is the very epitome of extreme conservatism. But another dimension of her personality - that of an instinctive humanitarian – emerges when, in a moment of crisis, she temporarily lends the object most revered by a woman of her breeding, namely, the name of her husband, to a man whose religion and cultural habits are so diametrically and irreconcilably opposite hers.

The movie is the surest statement that caste and creed are but cultural truths which a human should be willing to give a secondary position to in the face of a humanitarian crisis. Meenakshi becomes a true Brahmin when she decides to save a life – even at the cost of subversion of cultural values.

It’s not birth which makes one a Brahmin – but deeds.

Now back to the post-Godhra riots. The burning of the train carrying pilgrims to Ayodhya was a terrible, condemnable tragedy. The culprits should have been brought before the law of the land and severely punished by the state machinery. But the state decided to do something else before the culprits were apprehended. It decided to organize a systematic decimation of the tribe of the culprits –men, women, children. And the modus operandi? Kill, burn, loot and rape. All with silent official sanction.

Terrorism is bad. But state engineered terrorism strikes terror in the hearts of the citizens, as it did in mine when we were stranded in Vadodra, waiting for things to normalize.

I thanked God I had at least one bindi. I stuck it on the mirror everyday and took it out and wore it every time I came out of the room. I became anxious when the gum became weak from over use – kept on feeling my forehead to see if the bindi was there in place. I belonged to the minority and was in a state which had officially/unofficially let loose a reign of terror on the non- majority. The centre too played along – it took more than three days for army’s flag march to begin.

Will I become a victim?

At the bottom of my commitment to secularism, there is, I guess, this constant fear of being unsafe in my country to which I belong, and which belongs to me.

So I treasured the bindi - it was my passport and visa to survival. Given the choice, I’d forget those terrible days when we sat in the lobby of the hotel while people like me were killed, assaulted and raped out there; when the smoke of arson clouded the distant skies day and night; when the conversation in the lobby revealed truths best left unsaid.

And there is a picture that continues to haunt me after so many years, a picture which makes me indulge in Modi bashing whenever I can, a picture which made my heart sink into unknown depths of depression when Modi won twice after that. A picture that prevents me from applauding Modi’s huge success with the development agenda.

After the army arrived, my husband and I used to venture out into the roads after sunset, and after the curfew was lifted. I made sure I had my bindi on my forehead. We saw the army trucks plying, with soldiers holding guns and looking grim. That was a pleasant, welcome sight.

But there was another that I cannot get over – not even after so many years.

Groups of Muslims – sometimes a large joint family(once I saw a four generation group), sometimes several families moving in clusters, walking silently through the streets of Vadodra, with cloth bundles in their hands. Apparently, they were fleeing to safer areas unaffected by the riots.

They had death in their eyes.

Confessions of a Compulsive Housewife's Wife

You’d have guessed from the title that a compulsive housewife need not necessarily be a woman. Compulsive housewife syndrome is an obsession with cleanliness, tidiness. Is it pathological? Guess it can become that if it is not self regulated. But in most cases (at least in the ones I have seen), these compulsive housewives do not graduate into pathological cases like Howard Hughes.

By the way, all of above is my theory – mine alone. If you look up the site on this syndrome, the information may not coincide with my definition. What the heck? No one has monopoly over definitions.

I’ve had the privilege of being the confidante of a person whose husband is a compulsive housewife. Her story is truly attention-grabbing.

She first noticed this quality of her husband a week after her marriage, after they got back from all those tiresome visits a newly wedded couple has to undertake. She noticed that her husband had an excellent collection of books. His reading habits seemed to be very much like hers. She took out a book from the wall cupboard in their room, in which all the books were kept neatly arranged. The book was on the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It was forenoon and he had gone out, and she started reading. Lunch was announced and she kept the book face down on the writing table in the room. A couple of hours later, she came back to the room to continue reading. The book was not where she’d left it. She searched all over the room and finally found it in the shelf, in the exact place where she had taken it from. Of course, her husband had come back in the meanwhile.

She took the book out again and continued reading. He had gone out again. After a few hours, she left it face down on the table and went for a shower. After the shower, she came into the room to find that the book had disappeared from the table again. This time she went straight to the shelf and found it there, in the exact place where she had taken it from! Of course, her husband had come back in the meanwhile.

She was irritated.

“If you put the book face down, it’ll get spoilt. Besides, why litter the table? Keep it back in the shelf after you are finished with it”, he told her.

She took the book again the next day when he went out. Lunch was announced and she folded the corner of the page to mark it, and left it on the table. Soon after lunch, she came back to the room to find the book missing from the table again. She found it in the shelf again, in the exact place where she had taken it from! Of course, her husband had come back in the meanwhile.

“If you turn down the corner of the page, the pages will get dog eared”, he explained. “Besides”, he continued, “why litter the table? Keep it back in the shelf after you are finished with it “

“Then how do I mark the page?”, she asked, ignoring the last statement.

“Use book marks”, said he, maddeningly calm.

The next time he came back, he handed her a stack of book marks! He had actually spent money on them. She used two of them. The rest she discovered recently, more than two decades after, while she was doing spring cleaning. That’s when she told me this story.

She thinks her insistence on reading books her way (refusing to use the book mark, keeping them face down, not putting them back each time) had a curative effect on him. She admits he is a very sensible person with truckloads of common sense, and he loves her very much and realised that the reading habit of his wife was not a reason to destroy domestic peace and jeopardize a marriage.

She had this story of how she once made a glass of lime juice for her husband when he cam back from the office on a hot afternoon. There were 6 lemons in the fridge, and she took one, washed it, left it on the kitchen platform, and went to look for the knife which she used to keep in the work area ‘cos the kitchen platform was low and accessible to children. When she came back with the knife, the lemon was missing from the platform. She thought she had misplaced it and went to take another one from the fridge. She then noticed that all six lemons were in the fridge and one of them had water on it, as though washed. She instantly knew what had happened. She took the lemon and came back to the kitchen. This time, the knife was missing. Clinging to the lemon, she went in to the work area, and found the knife there, in the exact place where she usually kept it.

She lost her temper.

Clinging to the knife and the lemon, she went to where her husband was relaxing under the fan, and screaeaeaeaeaeaeamed - - - - -

He grinned sheepishly.

He had this good habit of laundering his own clothes, ironing them and stacking them neatly in the shelf. When she came to know, soon after marriage, that he preferred washing his own clothes, she jumped with uncontrolled joy (mentally). But as a dutiful wife, she offered to wash his clothes.

“No. I’ll do it. I consider it an invasion on my privacy for someone to wash my clothes.”

My friend was the envy of all her friends. She never had to bother about his clothes. He used to even launder her clothes(in the washing machine, of course), put then out to dry if she allowed him to do it, iron them and then be after her to put them by in her cupboard – ‘cos he couldn’t bear to see the place littered with clothes. She had no complaints.

‘Cos it suited her.

When they were accommodated in a suite for a month during a business trip, he used to wash his innerwear himself once a week (he always carried one dozen of each. and even after one year’s use, they always looked as though just out of the shop shelf!). He didn’t trust the guest house dhobi with them, despite the fact that he had gone up to the terrace (where clothes were laundered) to check out if there was proper infrastructure to launder clothes hygienically.

“Why don’t you give the inner wear also to the dhobi?” she asked him. “You have satisfied yourself he does his job very hygienically”
“He might mix it with the other guests’ clothes. It’s inner clothes. I might dhobi’s itch (!!??).”
“But he assured us he washes each set separately”
“That’s what he says. Who knows what he does? Besides, he might wring them hard and spoil the elastic (!!??)”
“OK”, she shrugged. “It’s just that you carry so much work home that this washing becomes a burden”
“No, problem. I enjoy it (!!!???)”

It so happened he came back from work with a fever. The bucket was full of innerwear soaked in the best detergent available in the market.

“You are not well. Shall I wash them?” she asked.

He scratched his head. Then sat down on the cot thinking.

“Shall I wash your clothes?” she repeated.

He looked at her thoughtfully. She could see him weighing the matter in his mind. Unable to make up his mind, he scratched the back of his head briskly, looking undecided, worried and deeply thoughtful.

And she lost her temper (she was already worried about the fever –there was chikugunya all around)

“Listen!” she exploded. “I’m not asking you permission to activate a nuclear device. All I’m asking you is if I can wash your dirty underwear!”

Startled by the sudden explosion, he looked up. They stared at each other for a second and then burst out laughing.

From the Wrong Side of the Desk

“Attendance please,” I said writing the date on the page. I was sent to teach Comm Skills to the geography batch of the Pre degree students ( batch of 100 and no public address system for the teacher).

I was shaking life a leaf – inside. But I put up a bold front and breezed into the lecture room looking (I hope) cool as a cucumber. Beverly, the junior most teacher who got her posting a day after I got mine, had resigned her job because she could not handle the law and order problem in this class. So I was next. You see, I had wonderful colleagues in my department who believed that a new hand should be baptized in fire. And the Pre-Degree II batch was allotted to me. And thus it was that I happened to find myself looking down at those hooligans (sorry, but that’s the most apt word in my vocabulary to describe them), notorious in the college for their insolent, arrogant and disorderly behaviour.

How did they get away with it? Well, those who led from the front in that class were daughters of prominent citizens of that little town, and the college authorities would rather give the teacher a dressing down than wield the rod on those students.

That particular year there was another unfortunate development too. The university made attendance compulsory, and a system was put in place which monitored the attendance of the students every month, on the basis of which communication was sent to the parents with warnings about disqualification in case of poor attendance. The result – all the unruly elements, who in the normal course wouldn’t come to class, were present for all lectures, and gave vent to their frustration by indulging in loud comments, guffaws – blowing to the winds all semblance of discipline.

AS I walked into the class, I could feel the hostility. It was tangible. Audible. I felt like a gladiator thrown into a den of lions, all waiting for me to make the first move before they tore me to pieces.

You bet I was NERVOUS. No. Not nervous. I was petrified.

Like I said earlier, I walked into the class with the attendance register and text book. I stepped on the platform and kept the books on the lectern. I saw that the wood on the lectern was wet where my cold, clammy fingers touched it.

The girls were screaming. Yes screaming. One called out to another from one end of the room to the other. Someone cracked a joke loud enough for five rows of benches to hear and all the five benches of students laughed loud while others asked, ”hey, what is it?’ and “tell us, no?”

“Silence please’, I said. No mike and my voice was drowned in that medley of noises coming from the other side of my desk. I almost thanked God for all that noise, or those girls would have heard my knees knocking against each other.

But the noise continued – noise that should not come from a class room. Just then, I noticed the duster (you know the one which looks like a shoe brush). I took it and banged it on the table, continuously, without a let up. I was scared as hell but there was something else boiling inside me. Anger. Sheer primal anger, kept under iron control by fear. I do not know how this deadly combination expressed itself on my face, but soon the class began to fall silent. I did not stop banging the duster till there was pin drop silence in the class.

See, this is how it worked. Because of the offensive sound of the duster banging, the girls looked in my direction, and then I noticed that their expressions were changing the minute they saw my face. I wonder how I looked. What a pity we can’t see our own faces.

Soon the students were silent. Absolutely silent. The only sound was me banging away on the table with that poor duster. The sound was horrible and I stopped.

“I don’t know how effectively I can teach you comm. skills, but I sure can teach you some manners. One more word from you and you’ll learn a lesson you’ll never forget in your life”. That was me. I couldn’t believe it. Is it really me talking like that? Where did I learn to talk like that? To be honest, these thoughts actually flashed through my mind as I (poor me) stood before them, glaring (?) down.

“Attendance, please”. I said

Silence.

“Number 701”, I coaxed (God, even today that number makes my heart trip with nervousness!)

"Present ma’am"

Silence again.

"Continue", I said.

One girl gets up.”Ma’am, can I call out my roll number? I’m 702. You said you’ll teach us a lesson of we open our mouths”

I was flabbergasted, but took care that my feelings didn’t show on my face”.

“Sit down”, I told her. Then I announced “Please give your attendance in a disciplined ladylike (I shouldn’t have used that word) manner. Ok. Continue’

Silence again.

"OK, 703 is absent. Continue”, I said.

One girl jumped up. "I’m 703, Ma’am"

"Why didn’t you call out your number?"

"I did, ma’am. But I did it in a lady like manner", she said, looking as innocent as she could.

“Please answer your attendance loud enough for me to hear”, I announced to the class again.

“Continue”

Like a loud clap of thunder came the next number 704. I literally jumped out of my skin, dropping the pen.

The class dissolved into their previous mood. Laughing, clapping each other on their backs. I saw girls turn around to congratulate 704.

At that precise moment something snapped inside me.

I left the lectern, walked to the front of the teacher’s desk, leant on the desk for moral and physical support, and shouted as loud as I could.

"Keep quiet". I said, "KEEP QUIET” (How I had underrated my decibel capacity)

Again the girls saw something in my face (what was it, I have never ceased wondering), and fell silent. I looked up 704’s name in the register and my heart sank. Her name was Lynette Pereira (Name changed). I’d heard that name mentioned several times in the Staff room. She was the daughter of a doctor with a lot of political connections. The college authorities valued this connection and the girl knew it.

I knew it too. What should I do, I thought desperately. Since I had come this far, I thought, going forward was easier than backward.

“Lynette Pereira, please stand up.”

She stood up. I was terrified. The insolence and the arrogance on her face made me want to follow Beverly's path. As usual, I prayed. Intensely. Jesus, why do you put me such situations, I asked fiercely, silently.

I wonder what my facial expression was like.

Patiently, in a well modulated and polite tone, I said ”Lynette, please apologize to me, then call out your number and sit down’.

She looked me straight in the eyes, unblinking and said.”Ma’am, how do I know your idea of normal, acceptable loudness?”

That did it. To hell with this job, I thought. Yes. If I throw her out of the class, I’ll get thrown out of my job. My people will be upset. This is one of the best colleges in South India, I heard them say, and you have got yourself dismissed. You are in the marriage market, they would say. If they enquire about you in the college, how do you know what report the college will give about you?

For a split second, I hesitated. How am i going to back off, I wondered. I looked at her face – and what I saw there made me blow all caution to the winds.

She had a sneer on her face!! And hardly seventeen, she was.

“Lynette”, I said in a controlled but firm voice. “You either apologise or leave the class room. And if you leave the class room, I’ll see that you come back only after a month’s suspension”. (What am I saying, I thought, who’s going to suspend her? I’ll be dismissed, and not she suspended.)

Lynette did not move. She stood there like a rock, looking at me coldly defiantly.

“Lynette, I’ll give you five minutes. Apologise or leave the class room. I mean business about your suspension”.

She didn’t move. I took my watch off my wrist (Is this really me, I thought. Am I capable of such dramatics?), held it in my right hand and stood there leaning against the desk, looking at the dial of the watch – and scared stiff.

There was pin drop silence in the class. Can they hear my heart pounding away and my knees knocking against each other? Can they hear that terrified sob trapped in my throat?

“One more minute, Lynette, and if you don’t leave the class, I’ll leave – straight to the Principal’s room”

She didn’t bat an eyelid, but stared at me hard and cold.

Five minutes were over. I tied my watch on my wrist, picked up my belongings from the desk, stepped down the platform and walked to the door.

As I crossed the door and stepped into the corridor, I heard a big commotion in the class room, and the sound of students squealing. I looked back into the class room and saw Lynette jumping over the desks, over the heads of seated students. In a matter of seconds, she stood before me, blocking my way and literally spat a “sorry ma’am” on my face.

That was enough for me. The situation was defused. My face was saved. I heaved a huge mental sigh of relief.

I accepted the apology graciously, and walked back into the classroom.

As 2008 Gives Way to 2009 - Random Reflections

Poised between the dying year and the one about to be born, the mind looks back and forward with mixed feelings. Looking back wouldn’t have been so painful had it not been for the terrorist attack on Mumbai on 26th November. The hangover of 26/11 clouds the anticipation of the New Year. The inane rhetoric from the South Block gives no cause for cheer. One would have felt much better if there had been a visible beefing up of internal security. Instead, we have the senseless needling of Pakistan, and indulging in blame game to detract attention from the Home Ministry’s lapses. If a house in not in order, the enemy will creep in. Is something being done? Will the plans for internal security never leave the anvil and get operationalised? The citizens wonder and worry while Ministers churn out plans and schemes. We, the people, need to be assured of our safety if we are to welcome the New Year with hope and without fear.

Further west, in the Middle East, Israel has started pounding Gaza strip. The human casualty has crossed 300 hundred. The Israeli Govt. has promised more. I’d always had a soft corner for the Jews. But now the questions which my mind had refused to entertain earlier, break through the barricades and challenge me. Why should the Palestinians bear the brunt of Hitler’s crime? Why didn’t the world community carve out a state in Germany to house the Jews? Aren’t Palestinians entitled to a homeland?

Guess it’s the cumulative anger against this injustice that is symptomatic of the defective worldview of the NATO, and is at the root of the Middle East trouble, that caused the American president to be the target of the footwear missiles recently. What a telling statement that was! Strangely enough, no one seems to be outraged! Isn’t that significant? That’s one image that I’ll always associate with 2008.

There is yet a world gearing itself for December 31st midnight. Fireworks will brighten up the midnight air. Church bells will ring announcing the arrival of the New Year. Bottles will be opened and Champaign sprayed over the big and small gatherings as TV screens flash live images of the hands of the Time Square clock joining to greet the New Year. The world will celebrate the arrival of the New Year. Yes. It calls for a celebration. Life is to be celebrated. But then, something nags at the back of the mind, and I pause and search my mind in order to put my finger on what’s bothering me. Suddenly it surfaces. I remember the images I saw in the news channels a couple of hours ago - of corpses of Palestinians who too must have looked forward to celebrate the birth of the new year, of the agonized women of Palestine, weeping and angry and protesting against the merciless Israeli attack.

And Israel says it has only begun!

Wonder why I have become so sensitive. Palestine is so far away.

Wish you all a Happy New Year!

The Encounter with Death - Why blog?

Playing cat and mouse game with death is no great fun – even if , at the end of it, you emerge the victor. The feeling at the end of the game is not exactly like that of a world heavyweight champion after the decisive fight. Probably because it is an unevenly matched fight. And it's more serious. Deadly serious. It's a matter of life and death with no referee to blow the whistle at the sign of danger or foulplay.

So, how does one feel at the end of the game? Well, you are left with a desire to delete the whole episode completely from your memory. Permanently.

You try hard to make a perfect erasure. You physically put out of sight the items associated with the days you spent battling with the killer disease. You throw yourself into all sorts of activities which leave you with very little time for memories. But memories don't need time space to surface. Like Aladin's genie popping up at an accidental rub of the magic lamp, some bits of memory surface without any warning, and grin down at you saying gruffly 'heh heh, thought you could get away from me, eh? No way". And you are caught completely off guard.

You tell yourself there are heartwarming memories too - like that unexpected cool breeze on a hot, humid summer's day. But then they are constantly stalked by that menacing genie - or is it that one cannot exist without the other? like twins - not identical - born of the same womb?

It’s like a chequer board of nights and days where memory with me the pieces play (forgive me, Omar Khayam :D).

Ever since I regained my health, I’ve been engaged in this task of playing the catch-me-if-you-can game with that stalker genie. Then one day , Chinny, my friend came along.

Now, I had never let her into my secret and very personal battle with that monster. But she is a sharp one, and has this ever-active high and sensitive antennae that plumb human emotions instantly, very accurately. She saw through my bluff and bravado.

The way out is to write about it, she said. “Just write", she said. “As and when you feel like it. Don’t write to publish. Carry a diary with you, and write when you feel intensely”

I took her advice.

Has it done me any good?

Oh, yes. It has. I can now include oats in my diet without memories of chemotherapy triggering off a wave of nausea. I can now put on those clothes I had once put away for fear of resurrecting the ugly genie.

I think Chinny’s therapy worked.

And now, I have decided to blog my jottings. Some one suggested I publish. Initially I thought it was a good idea. Then doubts assailed me. Who on earth would want to read the not-so-pleasant stories of a nonentity who fought cancer, because she was left with no choice but to fight it?

Besides, publishing means a lot of hard work. It requires a perfection that blog does not require. Publishing is engaging with the public sphere whereas blog is essentially a private sphere, and optionally public. The difference is huge. Blogging makes no demands on me as a writer. It requires no chronology, no style sheet, no rules of grammar. It gives me the power to withdraw the whole or part as an afterthought.

So why take the risk and effort of publishing when I can be the lord of what I blog? (Should i have said 'lady of what i blog'?:D)

I have begun to post the story of my encounter with cancer under the blog name Rage to be, which can be accessed through ragetobe.blogspot.com or pareltank.blogspot.com.

My first post is on the doctor who treated/is treating me – Dr. V P Gangadharan. I chose to do this just to emphasise the truth that for a person suffering from the most dreaded disease of our times, it is important that the doctor who treats is both a competent professional and a sensitive human being.

Christmas 2008

The story of Christmas

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke Chapter 2 verses 7-14

So that's what Christmas is all about. GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST. PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN.

Note that there is no tribalisation of peace and goodwill. Those are the birthright of every people who walk the earth at all times.
Let no one be put off by the 'city of David'. Every new born needs a recognised local habitation. That's the way of the world. It does not mean that the city or people of David have proprietorship over peace and goodwill . They are for all human beings.

Today's newspapers are shedding tears over the toning down of Christmas celebrations around the world on account of the global meltdown. Let's not add to this flood of media tears. If the one whose birth we celebrate was born in a stable, penury is no sin. In 2008, let the world celebrate Christmas the way it should be ideally done. Low key, no splurging in the name of a person who walked the earth teaching the virtues of penury; let it be an occasion to recall his frequent reminder about the maya like nature of glitter and pelf.

For the world trembling before the threat of violence generated by hatred, this is an occasion to recall that he had only one message. The message of love. His rhetoric did not provide for hatred and violence, murder and mass murder? This is the occasion for the world to remind itself that to kill and conquer in the name of this person who preached 'love unto death', is a gross disservice to him.

So what is the message of Christmas? The parable cited below gives the answer in no uncertain terms.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?". "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" asked Jesus. The man answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" In reply Jesus said: (the parable starts here) "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead with no clothes. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." Luke, chapter 10, verses 25–37

So, let us not us shed tears that global meltdown has decreased our purchasing power. Instead, let us be the good Samaritan and keep our eyes wide open today for those with less purchasing power than us.

Peace to you all.

Happy Christmas

Chandy Cooks Dinner

I'd always known that my nephew Chandy is extraordinarily brilliant. But I discovered yesterday that his brilliance was not confined to academics alone.

He is brilliant in the kitchen too.

On a two week vacation from work, Chandy came to spend a couple of days with us. In his typical quiet unobtrusive way he said, “Ammai, if you want, I’ll cook dinner”
“Wonderful”, I said.

I was happy but a little apprehensive. I told my cook that my nephew was taking care of the dinner, and suggested that she keep a standby dinner ready before she leaves, just in case.

At 4 PM, Chandy in his usual, quiet much-ado-about-nothing manner came to me with a list.

“Ammai, these are the things I want. What’s in the house and what do I have to buy”

He sat there scoring off whatever he didn’t need to buy. Then he went out to buy them.

He came back in half hour, left the purchases in the kitchen and went in for his shower.

I began to get nervous. It was five o clock. Does this guy know how much time cooking takes? I went into the kitchen and washed the chicken and left it to drain.

Ten minutes after that, I saw Chandy walk into the kitchen with his laptop.
What on earth is going to do with the laptop, I wondered. Then I heard music coming from the kitchen.

I waited for him come to me asking where the things were kept. He didn’t turn up. I was planning to go in when he called me, and hang around and clean up the mess untrained people create as and when it was created so that the kitchen wouldn't look like the Armageddon.

I waited for half hour. Chandy did not seek my help. Does he know he has to rinse the vessels before using them? Does he know dhanya powder from garam masala powder. Getting a little jittery, I went into to see what he was up to. Virtual cooking? Thank God I'd asked the cook to have something ready in reserve.

I saw him chopping onions as though he was born chopping them. The chicken was deeply marinated in curds with reddish tinge. And the music played in the background.

Pretending I wanted the recipe, I asked him what he'd added to the curds.

“Only chilly powder and salt, ammai”
“From where did you get chilly powder?”
“There” he said, pointing to the shelf where it was usually kept.

How did he know where it was kept?

I hovered around, talking about music and other stuff – excuses to monitor him and help him.

The boy did not need my help. He knew where everything was kept. He knew all the rules of hygiene. He knew that if he didn’t clean up the mess immediately, the kitchen would look like a battlefield. He knew his way about in the kitchen.

And he moved around, quietly, confidently. By 8.30 pm a fabulous dinner was ready. He set the table and the spread was complete with a delicious raitha.
The chicken curry was simply out of this world. Said it was a Pakistani preparation customized to the Kerala palate. The chilly paneer was simply divine.

“Where did you learn to do all this, Chandy?”

He answered with his sweet unassuming smile.

He is truly a genius. I guess for a PG electronic engineer from BITS Pilani, holding important engineering position in one of the best Oil companies in the world, making a few dishes neatly is mere kid’s play.

And I make such a song and dance about cooking!

I got a little nervous cooking breakfast for him this morning. Didn’t dare to ask him if the food I cooked was tasty.

I have decided that hereafter I shall carry my laptop to the kitchen when I cook fancy dishes. Cooking to the sound of music, I guess , will make them taste exotic.

Chandy is on my blogroll. Twenty Five thoughts.

Beware of Gurumurthyism and Gautierism

Words. More dangerous than bullets and bombs. Terrorists bank on the power of words to expand their cadre. The lone survivor of the Mumbai carnage was inducted into jihadi by a CD he bought from the roadside of Karachi. Decades back, words turned a whole nation’s value system topsy turvy resulting in the worst holocaust in modern times – in Hitler’s Germany. People in positions of influence – be it activists, politicians or journalists- must be held accountable for irresponsible rhetoric that trigger off violence.
Following the Mumbai carnage, Gurumurthy went on the rampage. In this, he had an able(?) lieutenant in Francois Gautier, that French “friend “of India. With his bigoted logic, Gurumurthy churned out a disgusting piece in The New Indian Express titled ISOLATE TERROR, DO NOT SECULARISE IT!(The NIE, Dec. 1, 2008). Here, he rightly points out the knee-jerk reactions of the government of India while the terror was on. If he had stopped there, it would have been OK. But then he forays into his usual anti-secular ravings in his perverted, hate filled but brilliant language throbbing with his customary revulsion for non-Hindu Indians. Referring to the PM’s rather strange invitation(or summons? that’s what it sounded like to me) to the ISI, Gurumurthy says: Did he(Manmohan Singh) think that the ISI has suddenly shed its enmity and turned its admirer under the secular leaders Sonia Gandhi, a Christian, and himself, a Sikh?
His tirade continues. It is the Indian Polity’s inability to say plainly that Islamic terror is a global phenomenon, and it is extending itself into India through global Islamic network. Result, instead of isolating terror, the national political discourse began secularizing it. And then in his usual God-is-love-love-is-blind-therefore-god-is-blind type of logic he goes on and on, hammering the secular forces in India for not coming down heavily in thoughts, words and deeds on Muslims. The article concludes with Terror stands secularized, not isolated in secular discourse! How will India fight terror with this cerebral paralysis?

What on earth does this fanatic want? Charge Indian political discourse with virulent communal sentiments? Posit a communal worldview as the ideal one for India? Does he realize that the demolition of Babri Masjid is the start point of the entry of jihadis in India? Does he want the government to harass Muslims in India, isolate them and start a communal war in the country? Does he want to see normalcy in the country completely destroyed so that predictability on a day to day basis is forever banished from the life of every Indian? Is that his idea of Ramrajya? Why doesn’t he understand the government(be it BJP or Congress) is always skating on thin ice and every patriotic citizen should refrain from making this task more difficult for them? Well, how can he when his brain in infected by communal bigotry leading to cerebral paralysis, which has rendered one portion of his thinking process non-functional?

The day after this article appeared came another one from Francois Gautier titled SONIA’S PRESENCE IN DELHI IS COSTING INDIA DEARLY (The NIE, Dec 2, 2008). Very much in bad taste on account of the very personal attacks on Sonia Gandhi, the atrticle gives the impression that this French man is trying to out herod herod to please this newspaper which has hired him, paying, no doubt, an obscenely fat fee in order to recruit a white man to lend greater credibility to its communal agenda. Gautier indulges in a litany of I accuse Sonia, which despite its mischievous intent, is uproariously comical by its very ridiculous, puerile melodramatic tone. For a sample:
I accuse Sonia of being responsible for the tragedy of Mumbai
I accuse Sonia and her govt.of having made NSG the laughing stock of the world
I accuse Sonia of having her Christian and Western background, in four years, divided India on religious and caste lines in a cynical and methodical manner
I accuse Sonia of weakening India’s spirit of sacrifice and courage - - -
I accuse Sonia of always pointing the finger at Pakistan when terrorism in India is now mostly homegrown.
I accuse Sonia of being an enemy of Hindus - - -
I accuse Sonia of taking advantage of India’s respect for women -
I accuse Sonia for exploiting the Indian Press’ obsession with her
After this hilarious litany fit for high school declamation contests, Gautier goes on to make vitriolic personal attacks on her.

Not that I am fan of Sonia Gandhi, but this is bad journalism. Will some one tell The NIE, that readers are discerning and when an obsession becomes a paranoia with a journalist, the reader only goes tut tutting in pity?

Why is NIE wasting its space on such maniacal assault on secularism while its editorials go tom tomming secular ideals? Why this Janus like position?

If the NIE wants to divide the country along communal lines, it should rope in journalists who know their job better, and do not lower the quality of the paper. Or is it quality at the altar of Hindutva?

Previous posts on Gurumurthyism : http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2006/12/gurumurthyism.html