THE GULLIBLE MALLUS AND THE POLITICAL IAGOS

I wished mother earth would open up and swallow me when i read this story in THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS yesterday.

The burden of the story is this: Lakhs of rupees is being given to head load workers as ‘nookucooli’ by the KERALA MINERAL DEVELPMENT CORPORATION LIMITED (KMDCL) as per the agreement arrived at between the LDF government and the head load workers unions. Both the LDF and UDF were equally enthusiastic about doling out taxpayers money to the workers for sitting around and doing no work – ‘cos sand mining cannot be done manually. It is being done mechanically. But the head load worker cannot be denied his wages and so the net result is “175 workers were coming everyday to the three points of Kava, Aanakal and Myladipuzha to sign the register. According to the conciliation agreement, the workers will be paid wages for 25 working days in a month. The KMDCL had to pay wages amounting to `52,500 a day and `13.12 lakh a month. “ (THE FULL STORY IS PASTED AFTER THE POST). WHOSE MONEY ARE THE POLITICAL LEADERS – BE IT THE LEFT OR Oommen CHANDYS – gifting away? Why do we, the tax payers allow ourselves to be so criminally vandalised?

Speaking for myself, i have slogged it out for thirty years to earn my bread and to pay the government its taxes. Doesn’t the government owe me anything? Isn’t the government accountable to me? Shouldn’t it ask my permission before it gifts away my hard-earned money to a bunch of lazy bones to get their political support?

I am angry with myself for having been taken for a ride by politicians whom i put into power to take care of my interests. I am angry with myself for doing nothing about it except make some useless noise in the blogsphere.

Impotent rage is frustrating. Isn’t there anything i can do? Except throw up my hands in sheer helplessness? Why do i call myself ‘educated’ when i just sit back and allow myself to be looted by a bunch of good for nothing self seeking politicians and their goons? Nobody hears the gnashing of my teeth at being caught up helplessly in this callous political power game.

I feel cheated and feel worthless that i can do nothing about it.

I’m sure every honest citizen shareS my feelings.

Isn’t there ANYTHING we can do?

*****************

WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM THE SAND MINING MESS?
A Sathis Who will benefit from the sand mining mess?
A Sathis
Express News Service
First Published : 21 Oct 2010 04:21:54 AM IST
Last Updated : 21 Oct 2010 11:24:32 AM IST

Which Front will get the benefit of the sand mining and related works being done at the Malampuzha, Chulliyar and Walayar dams in Palakkad district during the elections to the local bodies?
In general, the answer will be the LDF or the UDF. Whoever wins, the real winners will be the hundreds of workers at the dam site. Lakhs of rupees is being doled out to 175 workers as wage at the rate of `300 a day for no work being done by them thanks to the ‘nokku coolie’ promoted by both the LDF and the UDF.
This is a perfect example of the lack of will on the part of the government to put its foot down by saying that wages will be paid only when sand is being mined from the dam.
“The decision to pay wages for no work being done is a political one and we are helpless,” officials of the Kerala Mineral Development Corporation Limited (KMDCL), which was engaged in mining sand from these dams, said.
In spite of knowing the fact that manual labour be of no use for the mining and sand loading, the LDF Government had decided to involve hundreds of labourers for the work. Opposition Leader Oommen Chandy had also a hand in the decision. The government had forced to work out a compromise agreement because of the protest from the local head load workers against loading of the mined sand mechanically. Finally, it was agreed that each of the registered 196 workers will be paid `300 a day and the workers would be engaged in sundry work like removal of bushes and setting up of bunds. The end result is huge losses for the KMDCL.
The KMDCL is now facing losses on two fronts in Malampuzha. Around 80,000 square metres of sand, which was mined and put on the banks, was submerged in water. Three heaps of sand kept at a height of 16 metres were completely submerged in water. A part of these heaps has already been washed away.
Moreover, 175 workers were coming everyday to the three points of Kava, Aanakal and Myladipuzha to sign the register. According to the conciliation agreement, the workers will be paid wages for 25 working days in a month. The KMDCL had to pay wages amounting to `52,500 a day and `13.12 lakh a month.
Already, public sector undertakings like the profitable Malabar Cements have provided a loan of `5 crore towards the working capital of the KMDCL for sand mining. Currently, the KMDCL is selling sand mined from the Chulliyar and Walayar dams to the public at `990 a square metre. In Malampuzha, the bad condition of the Aanakal-Malampuzha road is causing hindrance in removing the sand. A section of the locals protest against transporting sand through the road demanding that the government should repair the road first.
However, KMDCL sources say that some elements are preventing the removal of the sand to help the sand mining lobby at Bharathapuzha. The KMDCL officials said a basket of sand in Thiruvananthapuram cost `120 while in Malampuzha it was being sold for `30 after being filtered. They said that the road was repaired twice, once by the KMDCL and another time by a Kozhikode-based society.
In Chulliyar, apart from the sand removed by the KMDCL, the local block panchayat had provided 22,000 mandays of work last season under the Mahathma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), a Central scheme. The LDF was ruling the local block panchayat.
It remains to be seen whether the LDF or the UDF will benefit from the whole mess.

Annual Fete and Cashew Nuts

‘Molly, i hear that you get the best cashew nuts in Kerala – and cheap too”, said Mother Peter, our HM, arching her eyebrows , enlarging her large blue eyes and shaking her wimpled head vigorously up and down in that typical European style. ‘Write to your father and ask him to send us some for the fete’.

It was to be my first fete about which my friends had raised such expectations. It was a two day event hosted by our school for which the little town of Pondicherry looked forward to the whole year. The school was St. Joseph de Cluny. It was the headquarters of the Cluny convent in India. In Pondicherry, besides the convent, it had two schools – English medium which was going from strength to strength and the French medium with it dwindling population. There was an orphanage too and we boarders were not allowed to mingle with them, though in the same campus.

I joined Cluny in the first year of high school – in the 9t standard. Ever since i joined in June, I’ve been listening to the boarders raving about the annual fete. They spoke about the happening in the previous fete. Most of the conversation was about some boy or the other who could on those two days gain entry into the tall walls of the convent which guarded the chastity of the wards entrusted to them with a fierceness which, at times, was almost comical. At every opportunity, the nuns warned us about the Romeos who waited at the corner of the street.

The streets in Pondicherry are absolutely straight and were cut at regular intervals at 90 degree by equally straight roads. The Cluny convent was spread over three campuses. From the boarding to refectory, we had to cross the street. From refectory to school, we had to cross another street. The Romeos knew our routine, and the fact that the nuns were paranoid about punctuality made it easier for them to wait punctually at the street corners to catch a glimpse of and exchange smiles with their crushes.

Among the senior boarders there were two groups – the ones who had boyfriends and the ones who did not. I belonged to the latter though i had sneaking admiration for those who had the guts to have boyfriends. Now let me get this clear. The ‘boyfriend’ in those days did not mean what it means now. The girls had not spoken even once to their Romeos. All they did was to look down the street and smile at the boy whose looks they liked. And then they would go ‘steady’ with them, i.e., faithfully smile at them whenever they crossed the road. Sometimes the boy would wear a kerchief tucked in the collar. When his girlfriend crossed the road the next time, she would tuck in a kerchief in her collar (our uniforms were collared), and then their eyes would lock and they would smile. And the day would be made for them.
During the recreation time, the girl would talk with high excitement about the kerchief. She would blush and smile and bask in the comments of how handsome the boy was. All of us would laugh and giggle and tease.

I remember the handkerchief episode cos it landed me into trouble. The nuns knew that i was new and uncorrupted and therefore could be used as an agent. The boarding mistress once called me and spoke to me about this and that and without my quite realising it, the conversation veered to the boyfriend topic. In all innocence, i let her into the handkerchief incident and who’s whose boyfriend. She then gave me a French chocolate which i rushed to share with my friends who immediately got out from me what had happened. They ridiculed me for walking into the nun’s trap and yelled at me and called me James Bond and Mata hari and ostracised me. When they got their dressing down from the nuns along with the punishments like cutting out bi weekly walks on the beach(where the Romeos tore down on their bikes with silencers off), they got downright nasty with me.

I was very very miserable cos i had no intention of getting anyone into trouble. My friends from the no boyfriend group consoled me, and taught me how to evade the interrogation of the nuns. I have never walked blindly into their trap after that, but it took a long time for to gain entry into the boyfriend group.

The fete was the time when all these roadside Romeos got entry into our fortress. They quickly found out in which stalls their girl friends were and used to hang around there.

The middle campus which housed the convent, refectory and the orphanage was the site for the fete. The Pandal as the huge semi open auditorium was called, and the playground which he orphanage girls used accommodated the stalls which sold items brought/bought/donated from France. Then handicraft items, embroidered kerchiefs, tea cosy, and delightfully beautiful things done mostly by the orphanage girls were sold at exorbitant price. Things sold like hotcakes. The stalls were manned by us, students of English medium school. Sometime the crowd was so heavy that me with my over protected Nazrani upbringing used to panic. Sometimes tempers rose, for the young crowd was not free from inebriation. Commotion would immediately bring the members of the discipline committee (made up of big shots in the local community), and they would put their foot down. That’s when commotion arose and people flared up. Once this happened right in front of my stall. My partner in the counter had a street corner boyfriend who had been hanging around the whole day, smiling at her and buying things from our counter. In the afternoon, after lunch, he had apparently helped himself to some French liquor. Then he became bolder. He asked my partner for a clandestine date and she was horrified.

‘”i didn’t know you were such a rotten person”, she snapped at him.

“What did you think you were doing when you smiled at me every day?” he asked.

‘I didn’t think you were the type who would get fresh”, she said, getting scared.

‘Fresh? all i asked you was to come with me for a cup of coffee”, he said

Then she said something which made even me want to laugh.

‘You are a very bad boy’, she said, almost sobbing.

By then someone had reported the exchange and the watch and ward arrived and threw him out.

After the fate, for the rest of the year, she stared at the tip of her shoes whenever she crossed the road.

Now to get back to the cashew nuts (i got carried away by memories, sorry), i wrote to my father who promptly send 5 kilos of roasted cashew nuts of the best quality. It arrived four days before the fete. I instantly became the pet of the nuns. Five of us high school students were picked to pack cashew nuts. We put 8 pieces of cashew nuts each into small plastic packets and stacked them on a tray from which the junior boarding mistress took each of them and sealed them with a contraption I’d never seen before. Because of her presence, we couldn’t pop even one piece into our mouths. However, when the work was over, she took some broken cashew nuts which she apparently had sorted out, and gave half a handful to each of us.

These packets would be put on a tray which would be carried around by the students who were members of the JVC Club. The trays were suspended from the necks on pretty satin ribbons. I so wanted to do that duty but as i was not a JVC club member, i was denied the chance. Each packet was sold for Rs. 5, which in the mid sixties was considered to be an atrocious price.

The big day arrived. Being my first year, i was not given stall duty, so i generally went around with my friends and bought things and delicacies and French chocolate drink.

On the second day, my parents sprang a surprise on me by landing up for the fete. They were on their way to Velankanni, and decided to see me and the fete about which i had been raving and for which had asked for more pocket money for the month. Besides, my father had sent cashew nuts (for which he had paid less than Rs. 100/including parcelling and shipping charge). All these had made him curious about the event. So they decided to reroute the trip through Pondicherry.

My mother was simply horrified at the crowd through which her 14 year old daughter was running around freely. She called me and asked me to remain with them. With a protective arm around me, we went around looking at stalls.

My mother always had a fascination for embroidered stuff and so i took her to that stall. She was so taken up by what she saw that she started buying up, despite the fancy price. Both of us were engrossed in selecting the items. After the purchase, we turned around, looking for my father. And lo and behold, there he stood taking out Rs.5 from his wallet. The JVC volunteer (known for her aggressive marketing ) with the cashew nut tray suspended from her neck with colourful ribbons beamed at him as she took the money from him, and handed over a tiny packet of cashew nuts .

Then holding up the packet for me and amma to see, he winked, smiling from ear to ear.

Obama at it again.

Education arms race with India and China! That’s the latest verbal gymnastic by the President of the USA.

Ever since he settled comfortably/uncomfortably in his official chair in the Oval office, Obama has been harping on the threat posed to America’s future by ‘those’ Indians and Chinese. This othering of this particular group with its ubiquitous presence in the USA which has been reeling under recession, is a dangerous trend. Obama’s first outburst in December 2009 coincided with the beginning of assaults on Indian students in Australia. This had caused many a moment of anxiety to Indians who had someone close to them studying in the USA. Obama’s repeat performances make us suspect that he is trying to unite a racially divided country – create a dangerous nationalism - by whipping up a sort of xenophobia. The strategy of creating a Barbarians (substitute Indians and Chinese) - are -coming type of scare among American youth in order to motivate the latter to go to school could trigger off the revival of the dot buster phenomenon.

Guess the president is hardly concerned about such insignificant issues, but his indiscretion causes fear in parents for the safety of their children slogging it out in the universities of the USA, or pursuing careers there.

Yesterday’s newspaper carried reports of Australian government’s anxiety that there is likely to be a reduction of 80% students from India this year. The huge financial loss is a matter of serious concern for them.

When is India going to wake up to the reality of the shameful lacuna in the field of higher education in the country? There is no shortage of brilliance here. The basic infrastructure for education is well in place. It is in the field of research that we are shamefully behind even many Third world countries. It is the quest for excellence in this field that drains our country of aspiring students and professionals. It is not just a brain drain. It is a gigantic economic drain too.

Now that the Bill for the introduction of foreign universities has been tabled in the Indian Parliament, universities like Virginia Tech, Georgia Institute of technology, Lancaster University have already commenced talks on the setting up of campuses in India which will follow the same system as in their countries, and will award UK/US Degrees. The government should expedite matters to enable not only the setting up of these universities, but also their smooth functioning. The Education Minister should stand by his promise of creating a customised regulatory framework separate from that of the existing state aided Universities. A sort of SEZ should be created in order to keep them free from the reservation policies, unionism and the bureaucratic controls that give rise to frustrating delays, and corruption.

India should set up her own research centres of excellence too, and ensure smooth functioning without government interference, trade unions meddling, campus politics and corruption.

Centres of excellence in research are already there in plenty. Collaborative and twinning systems are already functioning smoothly. But these are a mere drop in the ocean of the burgeoning aspiration of the twenty first century India gearing itself to take on the world in this Knowledge era. The State should participate in this effort to set up these centres of excellence in research. With the foreign players on its soil, we can rise to meet the new competition as also be a competitor who gives them a real tough run for their money.

We know the government can find money to invest in tertiary education and research Centres, if it has the political will. The helium balloon of the commonwealth opening ceremony can vouch for it.

It should also give incentives to corporates to establish academic research centres.

Let us, for goodness sake do everything we can to give our aspiring youngsters the facility they so badly require. We most certainly have the resources.

What ARE we waiting for? We don’t have all the time in the world!

The blog comments I reject

It does not matter to me whether my blog visitors don’t see eye to eye with me, or if they ridicule me or my understanding of the issue i deal with or my style. In fact i like comments which reflect such views and i publish them unless they use terrible obscenities or they hurt religious sentiments, customs and practices.

I do get such rejectable comments once in a way.

The two categories of blogs that generate such comments are the ones on Amitabh Bachchan and Narendra Modi.

All my posts on Modi have generated dirty comments. Some are so filthy that I’ve laughed out loudly (sorry. I’m not easily shocked though it is ladylike to be so, i know). In fact it’s a comment on Modi that got automatically published that prompted me to activate comment moderation. But that hasn’t caused me to budge one millionth of an inch from my position on Modi. I cannot drool over his development politics. For me his unofficial official stamp on carnage cannot be compensated by the paradise he might have turned Gujarat into. Two thousand odd people who were snuffed out were denied the right to life in democratic india. To me what happened post Godhra is comparable with the crackdown on Tinaman square. Modi’s re-elections after Godhra are reminiscent of the mass support that brought Hitler into power. Yes, i am a Modi basher – tho an armchair one. I believe it’s my responsibility to be at least that, for i enjoy the fruits of democracy. I owe it to my country. But post Godhra slaughter made me realise man never learns from the lessons history teaches him. That’s why history repeats itself.

Some tell me i am over reacting. But i say no. But i react more than others in my part of the world because i was in Vadodhra when it happened. Some of the images still haunt me.

But the foul comments to my Bachchan blogs are really funny. Most of them are written by those who apparently are not competent in handling the English language. Unfortunately, i don’t know how to get into those comments and do an expletives deleting act, so i reject the whole comment. I get a feeling most of those expletives (an understatement, believe me) are used without a knowledge of the meaning of the word used, or the part of human anatomy that some of the words signify. If i publish them, you’ll laugh your guts out. All such comments are anonymous, but i know their authors are not Malayalees. A Malayalee might get his English wrong but never his obscenities in that language.

My blog which generated such comments, ironically, was not actually on Bachchan, but on a bad piece of journalism on the retake of Sholay. Apparently, they didn’t get the point. They thought i was trying to establish that Mohanlal was a better actor than Bachchan!

Why do these two categories generate such strong emotion, i wonder. I think it’s because both Modi and Bachchan have achieved god like proportions with their fans. Fooling around with deities can win the teeth gnashing wrath of their followers.

After all it’s a very painful experience to be made to realise that your gods have feet of clay.

Thou Shall Not Bend

‘You must not bend”, said my doc. I had gone to him ‘cos of back pain – something a person like me fighting a deadly disease should not ignore.
‘Not even to pick up something from the floor?’, I asked.
‘No’, he said quietly. ‘It’d be nice if you use a walker at home. When you go out, use a walking stick’.

The doc is a soft spoken man of few words and he seemed appalled that the instruction he had given three years back - not to bend - was not taken seriously.

'So it shall be', i told myself. ‘I shall not bend. Nothing to get panicky about’, i said to myself. ‘After all he said i could walk, travel, climb stairs.

But soon i realised that life without bending is not easy. Just imagine you can't bend to scratch your little toe when it itches!

After i got back from the hospital, I was taking the newspaper to my room when i dropped it. I started to bend when a shout stopped me. “Don’t bend, molly” yelled Sunny, my husband who was watching me from the top of the stairs. He came running down and picked up the paper for me and put the walking stick in my hand. ‘Use this’, he said, ‘it’ll remind you that you are not supposed to bend.’

Later in the day, wishing to make myself useful, i decided to help to set the table. The dish in which we served fancy dishes was in the cupboard below the kitchen platform, and leaning on the stick i started to bend down, “Miss, Miss Miss, don’t’, screamed Shiny who looked after me during my treatment. ‘I’ll take it. Don’t bend. Please go and sit at the dining table. I’ll manage on my own’.

Well, so much for my effort to be of help.

The next day I began to feel a little depressed. The implication of not bending at all hit me like a ton of bricks when i dropped my medicine strip and my eighty four year old mother-in-law rushed to pick it up with ‘Molly don’t bend, DONT bend. I’ll pick it up for you’.

Believe me life isn’t easy at all if you have to depend on people to pick up what you drop, to take something out of the lower racks of the fridge, wardrobe and book shelf.

I’ve got to find a way out, i decided. My son said he’d look if robotic hand is available in the US. But then I’ll have to wait till he comes. Till then i didn’t want to keep calling people to help me every time i need something which requires bending.

I looked down at my stick. IDEA! I snatched a chiffon dupatta from the hanger and dropped it on the floor. I then carefully slipped the stick under it and lifted it slowly. Half way through it slipped down. I tried again. It fell when it came almost within reach of my free hand. ‘Damn’, i muttered to myself (I’m not the cursing type – at least not the easily cursing type). i tried again – without success. I didn’t give up but tried again and again and again. I looked around to see if there were any spiders that could inspire me. I should have tried with cotton duppatta first, my common sense admonished me, and i cursed myself for being over ambitious. But by then it became a matter of prestige for me to pick up that colourful chiffon duppatta with my walking stick. i kept trying and trying and trying. And then it happened. It remained on the stick till i raised it high enough for my hand to take it!

Now i can pick up a lot of large and flexible objects with the help of the stick. But things like pencils, pens, spoons still pose a problem. Am sure eventually I’ll be able discover the technique of picking them up from the floor with the walking stick.

I have also found an easy to way to take things out from low shelves. Initially i tried sitting on a low stool but it became a pain going to where the stool was, pushing it with my stick to the site of operation.

Again i sat down and thought. IDEA! Yes, an idea can really change your world. As a kid and a teenager, I had learnt Bharatanatyam. So i was pretty flexible though not exactly anorexic. That day, when it was time for the evening news, I decided to switch on the TV myself instead of calling for help.

The plug point was just a feet above the ground. I could have switched it with my walking stick but i had misplaced it and everyone had been looking for it since morning with no success. So i decided to try out the Bharatanatyam technique. I went close to the switch, bent my knees keeping my body erect like the way Chandrika teacher taught me decades age and yippee! I switched on the TV without anyone’s help, and without the help of even the walking stick ! I felt grateful to my mother who is no more, for bulldozing me into each dance class all those years back.

The time came for me to go home to Trivandrum where Sunny was staying alone during my treatment in kochin. I felt pretty excited as much about going back to the familiar place as about having my husband around to do the bending tasks for me.

Then disaster struck, though of a temporary nature. Sunny sprained his back and was absolutely bedridden. Sitting helplessly in kochin, i looked up at the Almighty and asked, ‘Hey mister, what have you against me?’ ‘Nothing dear lady’, he seemed to say. ‘Just leave it to me. I’m here to take care of things’
‘Ok, sir”, i said shrugging my shoulder resignedly. But it made me feel better.

When we reached my apartment in Trivandrum, Sunny was waiting supported by a walking stick! I looked at him and burst out laughing.
“Am much better now’, he said. ‘Can move about, but cannot bend. Bending causes excruciating pain”.
‘So ‘m better off than you. I have no pain’
That doesn’t mean you should bend”, he said rather sternly.

Later in the day, we wanted to watch TV. The switch point was again a feet above the ground. I had started walking towards it with my walking stick poised to press the switch with it when i saw sunny bending his knee in that classic Bharathanatyam pose till he could comfortably switch on the TV!

Now i think i know how the basic pose of Bharatanatyam originated! An ancient Indian method of dealing with sprained back must have caught the aesthetic eye of some innovative artist who saw the beauty and the possibilities of the human body as it lowered itself at the knee keeping the torso erect.

The Media Menace

For the past few days, the media was full of what would happen when /if the Ayodhya verdict is announced. TV channels flashing news, breaking news, newspapers carrying banner headlines – both indulging in speculation of a future that might never happen – rather that would not happen if the media did not provoke, subtly coerce and tease the aggrieved (allegedly aggrieved) parties into violence.

The media is behaving with absolutely no responsibility. The build up for Ayodhya began a month back. What is it trying to do? Reminding the warring sects to get their weapons honed for the unleashing of violence? Is this the media’s way of ensuring them that it has whipped up feelings and has created expectations and the ideal climate for bloodshed, and so it now the turn of the two communities to meet the expectation built up by it?

In 2006 January when Arjun Singh tried to raise the reservation quota in the IITs and other premier educational institutions, the coverage of the issue by Rajdeep Sardesai and his channel was dangerous and objectionable. The visual of the burning Goswami (the self immolation in protest against Mandal) was played over and over again as though to invite some misguided youth to take cue from him. Sardesai was literally jumping around with excitement – like a predator which had a taste of blood and was waiting with excitement for some prey to take the bait.

Looking back, i feel that if the media was totally banned from the precincts of Taj –nay, if there was a total ban on reporting the updates on the terror attacks in Mumbai, the NSG would have done a much more efficient job without the media taking away the surprise element from the rescue operation. Remember, Arnab Goswami got vicious and nasty at the government’s move to block the media from reporting? and te government buckled in to the ire of Times Now!!

The Indian media needs to be reined in. it should not, as it does now, put business above the country. Responsible journalism is what India needs at this juncture. The country is going through difficult times. Media should not make it worse by giving Kashmiri separatists, terrorists groups and Maoists the free publicity they seek. Cutting off publicity for these terror groups is akin to choking off their life breath. Sensationalising their terror activities is just what they want.
I believe in the freedom of speech but if this freedom is used to help seditious groups and terror elements hell bent of breaking up India, it is time something was done about it.

Incidentally, after that entire hullabaloo created up by the media, i get a pleasant feeling that the commonwealth games are going to take place without any serious hiccups.

Related blog: Kerala – a Media Constructed Image?

A letter to the Editor - ignored by The New Indian Express.

The following post is my letter to the editor of The New Indian Express in response to an extremely offensive article by one Ms. Alexandra Delaney, an English lady, who confesses that, while in Kerala, she pretended to be a French national in order to be spared the torture of having to listen to “Kerala English”. Needless to say, my letter was not published. I admit i overreacted – but then, insults always provoke strong, emotional reaction.

Forgive me, my blogger friends, for imposing this trashed letter on you. You see, i spent half an hour writing this. Why waste the effort, i thought - - -

Unfortunately i couldn’t locate the Ms Delaney's letter on the net.

PS A blog visitor located the link.

Dear Sir

I found Ms. Alexandra Delaney’s article titled English in Kerala or Kerala English? (TNIE, Sept 23) not only offensive, but factually incorrect and totally lacking in knowledge of the situation in which English is taught in the schools in the state.

Let me begin by reminding Ms.Delaney that English is not our mother tongue. Our mother tongue is Malayalam. We have the necessary communicative skills in our mother tongue, and look upon English as a utility object. Yes, call it mercenary attitude if you like, but I feel no need to be apologetic about it. We do not feel obliged to speak the language the way it is spoken by the native speaker of English or to keep pace with the changing idiom of English as it is spoken in England. Why should we? The Keralites with their “Kerala English” which makes Ms. Delaney’s flesh crawl have made their presence felt indispensably in the English speaking world. We have been able to extract the benefits of the language to the hilt. That’s enough for us. We have our mother tongue to fall back on, and Kerala English to communicate with other non-Keralite friends. Let Ms. Melaney suffer no heartburn on account of our deficiency in handling spoken English.

Now to come to some points she has raised: the stress pattern. Contrary to what she has said, in no state in India do the speakers of English use the stress pattern of British English. All Indians distribute stress evenly over all the syllables in the word. Perhaps a handful of those who do use the British stress pattern have had their education in the premier schools in the country or outside India. In this context I would like to ask Ms. Delaney if the American English follows the British stress pattern.

I do not agree with her that the “rigid implementation of teaching material and the purely text book teaching” is responsible for the “poor speech” of those she has this grouse about. There are a lot of issues regarding the teaching of English at school level in Kerala about which she knows absolutely nothing. I don’t intend to go into the issue here. It’s too unwieldy. But the lady’s pronouncement on what is wrong with the teaching of English in Kerala afforded me a lot of merriment (hope this usage doesn’t make her want to "scream"). I do hope she will refrain from behaving as though she is the last word on the system of education in Kerala which is complex with both social and political implications.

I found the following statement totally unwarranted: what is surprising, however, is the confidence with which Keralites speak English, despite being considered as confused and incorrect to outsiders. Well, that was a really nasty statement to make. It amazes her that with grammatically incorrect English and entirely unsuitable vocabulary, we Malayalees are able to communicate with each other in English. What on earth is her problem? That her mother tongue is being distorted? Well, let me assure her that we have not signed contract with the British to maintain the purity of the English language and keep it free from the influence of our language. We do not think being able to speak English like the native speaker of English is the ultimate achievement in life. The language has its uses as the medium of communication for official purposes and career advancement, and for communication with the outside world. That’s it. We have enough knowledge of English to do well in our life and careers anywhere in the world.

If the lady doesn’t like being asked her "good name", and from "which place" she comes from and “how she likes Kerala food”, I think she had better think of packing up her bags. We don’t intend to change our way of speaking English to please Ms. Alexandra Delaney.

Kochuthresiamma P J
Thiruvananthapuram

Here's the original article.

http://expressbuzz.com/biography/english-in-kerala-or-kerala-english/209179.html

National award for Bachchan - for what?

Amitabh Bachchan’s performance in Paa wins him national award for acting! :-)

It would have made plenty of sense if the award was for fancy dress.

Am sure the poor Big B himself is embarrassed to be caught up as the protagonist in this national joke.

I don’t know if i can i call it the national blunder of the decade? We have to wait for the completion of Commonwealth Games to know which is the greater /worse blunder.

But it beats me - what on earth were the jury thinking when they zeroed in on Bachchan’s performance in Paa for best actor award? Did they redefine the concept of ‘acting’ and exclude emoting with facial expression from the definition?

I think they owe an explanation to the nation about the criteria for this ridiculous ,howler of a choice.

The Tragic Dismissal of Professor T J Joseph - a teacher's point of view

The sacking of Prof T J Joseph disturbed me just as it had all right thinking people of the state. I was itching to write about it but my usual hesitation to criticise the church held me back till now. Now i can no longer rein in my feelings of extreme distress.

I am a college lecturer myself, and so i understand how things happen in a college, how the question papers are set.

Paper setting is not an easy job. Even without all the political correctness we have to worry about, it is a difficult job. A lot of time, thought and planning goes into it. The questions have to cover the entire portions allotted, it has to focus on those portion that were not covered in earlier exams, the portion covered in the earlier exams cannot be ignored though. Besides all this the paper has to be impeccable, factually and language wise. A teacher spends a very long time taking care of all these, and is very careful. But despite all the efforts, errors creep in. After all, it is human to err and teachers are human. A teacher is not a perfect human being, a veritable storehouse of knowledge, who never ever makes a mistake in life or in the class room. She is one who strives to be that, gets half way through in that direction and is always aware that there is a long way to go still.

But a teacher is imperatively a person who knows how to deal with the knowledge at her disposal in order to impart it as education to the students. Hours of preparation goes behind every lecture.

Now coming to Prof TJ Joseph, we must admit it was foolish on his part to use the word Mohammed in that particular context. But i am absolutely sure that he did not mean the Prophet. Why on earth should he take the trouble to offend the sensibilities of a community? He should know fully well what the consequences would be. The mistake he made was that when he chose the passage, he did not factor in the truth that there are certain elements in the community who are fanatical and who suffer from an intense sense of persecution mania. These people feel that all the world is out to insult Islam which is simply not true.

The professor was being naive. He thought , and rightfully so, that Mohammed is just a name, and that simple explanation was enough for him to use that name in that unfortunate passage he picked up from the books prescribed for reading in the syllabus. If he had used the name Joseph or Matthew or Paul or Alphonse(all Christian saints), or even Emmanuel(which is Christ’s name), this problem would not have snowballed into such a huge issue. In fact it would not have been an issue at all. No one would have noticed it, cos after all what’s in a name? That must have been his logic.

Believe me, sometimes a teacher’s logic, clouded by academic considerations alone, falls short of politically correctness. It does happen. I know it. Even if someone points this out, we tend to stick mulishly to our view. At that point of time, the mind thinks that it is ridiculous that a perfectly innocent statement should be so wrongly interpreted. In our foolishness, we think such ridiculous interpretations should not happen. This must have been how the professor’s mind worked. “If i’m asked, i can always say i didn’t mean the The Prophet”.

Needless to say, the easiest thing would have been to change the name. But the poor man did not think it important enough.

It is true that the question papers are submitted to the office and the Principal is the official approver of it. But it is simply not possible for the Principal to go through them. Nevertheless, when something like this happened, he should have owned up the responsibility and apolgised to the community for an unintentional offence, instead of washing his hands of the poor teacher and sacking him. What loyalty can the institution expect hereafter from its teachers again?

It is very obvious that the enquiry by the management was not a fair one. The simple logic is why should a teacher with an impeccable record of 20 odd years, who led a totally innocuous and noncontroversial life to date, to whom his job was all important indulge in the dangerous act of antagonising a community and thereby jeopardise his job, his safety and that of his family? He would NEVER do it. And the management knows it.

The management has come up with some atrocious statements:
The DTP operator had pointed it out to the teacher about the use of the forbidden name. Well, since when is a DTP operator to decide what a teacher should do? Of course, in this case the DTP operator was more worldly wise, but education is a degree different from worldly wisdom, and teachers, the dispensers of education sometimes tend to be idealistic and short on worldly wisdom. Society should be a little indulgent towards teachers. It would have been nice if it departed from its usual practice of treating this category of people as punching bags.

Secondly, the management has stated that it is willing to take back the professor if the Muslim community forgives him!!!! What does it mean by Muslim community? Isn’t the group of muslims who were among the first to donate blood to the victim of this terrorist act part of that Muslim community whose pardon the management is seeking? Let the management define term ‘muslim community’.

The Muslims do not need forgiven the Professor. Why should they, when they have not taken offence or have any grudge towards him? The management is doing a disservice to the community by identifying these lumpen, fanatic group as the representative face of the Muslim community which is as sane and secular as any other community in the state.

This appeasing attitude is most shameful. I would have expected the management to live and act by the principles they swear by – Christ’s principles. I wish the management of Newman college would go back to the Bible and find out how Jesus Christ the founder of Christianity and the Lord of love and forgiveness and compassion would have reacted in this situation.

The management has no mind of its own? It does not have its own sense of right and wrong? No discerning power? Does it need to take lessons on love and forgiveness and compassion from an external agency? Is this management which runs an educational institution so starved of values and a sense of fair play – and courage?

What a shame! What a terrible shame!

I dreamt of Brutus and Mark Anthony in Kerala

I had a dream some years back. A strange dream it was. Why I should have dreamt of Brutus and Mark Anthony, I haven’t the vaguest idea. I had’nt thought of them/spoken of them around that time. Yet I dreamt about them.

I do not remember what Brutus had said. But I do remember seeing Brutus standing tall a erect, in the fatigues of a Roman soldier, earnestness and sincerity writ large on his face, speaking in a rather stiff, baritone voice with no dramatic intonation whatsoever. The blue shirt, green shirt, red shirt head load workers of Kerala who were listening to him were moved to tears, and quite unembarrassed about it.

The only words of Brutus that i recall is the oath he administered to the assembly, which the huge crowd of head load workers, with their right arms stretched out, repeated after him with a thunderous resonance. Here’s the oath:

WE THE HEAD LOAD WORKERS OF KERALA SHALL HITHERTO EARN OUR SALARY. WE SHALL NOT CLAIM NOKUCOOLIE. WE SHALL NOT OVERCHARGE FOR THE WORK WE DO. WE SHALL NOT USE ABUSIVE LANGUAGE.WE SHALL NOT THRUST OUR SERVICE ON PEOPLE. WE SHALL AMEND OUR BODY LANGUAGE. WE SHALL LEND DIGNITY TO OUR LABOUR BY PUTTING OUR HEART AND SOUL INTO OUR WORK AND PASSIONATELY ABIDING BY THE WORK ETHICS SPELT OUT BY OUR LEADER BRUTUS AND BY OUR COMMITMENT TO THE NEW AGENDA.

Wiping their eyes with the red thorthu on their shoulder they sat down and waited for the next speaker. In walked Mark Anthony. There was something wrong with the way he looked. I remember thinking in my dream, “hey, this guy is a fraud’. His face was exactly like Richard Burton’s – light eyed, light complexioned and receding forehead. That was OK. But he wore a shirt the front portion of which had two colours. On the left of the placket was red and on the right, blue. The sleeves were green and they were rolled up half way up the biceps. The red thorthu was on his head in the form of a cocky turban. He wore an atrocious lungi folded over well above the knee and tied over his ribs. Some striped inner wear almost reaching his knees was peeping out cheekily.

He walked in with a slovenly gait, a beedi smoking from his fingers. The crowd greeted him with boos, but quite unfazed, he walked up to the mike, put his right elbow on the lectern, took a deep drag on the beedi and blew the smoke in circles and watched them as the circles dispersed and disappeared into the air. The boos died down and the crowd too watched the circles forming and then becoming ill defined and disappearing.

Soon silence fell. Mark Anthony threw away the beedi and looked at the crowd with one end of his lips lifted in a crooked, scornful smirk.

‘So’, he said, ‘comrades, you are giving up your rights, eh?’

Silence greeted him.

‘Eh, eh eh?’ We went on without raising his voice too much.

‘You fickle minded fools’, he roared abruptly, making the audience sit up with a start. ‘You traitors’, he continued roaring.’ You have betrayed the blood, sweat and tears of generations of thinkers and leaders who laid down their lives, suffered torture at the hands of brutal police toeing the line of the bourgeoisie, to win you the rights to earn a living without working. And now you stupid proletariat, you want to work?’

‘You want to work? You want to live by the sweat of your brows? You want to earn you salary? Then GET OUT OF KERALA. YES’ he roared ‘GET OUT OF KERALA’

'Your leaders first struggled and fought, then pressurised all governments to wrest the sacred right to earn a fat sum without moving your little finger, and now you want to throw that right away? Ugh, ugh, ugh?’ He snorted into the mike.

‘No comrade, no’, shouted the audience.’ No’.

‘And what is this new agenda? New goal that Brutus put into your silly heads? Increase production? Whatever for? Why should you care about the size of the cake so long as you are assured by your unions that you get your share of the cake, EVEN IF THERE IS NO CAKE. Where in the world are there workers who get every month without fail their share of a nonexistent wealth ?’

‘Nowhere, nowhere., yelled the crowd.

‘Yes, nowhere in this world. Remember, nowhere. Only in Kerala. That's why it is called God’s own country. We earn without sweating. Don’t you know “thou shall live by the sweat of your brows" is God’s curse on Adam when the latter was driven out of Paradise where they did not have to work? Work is a curse. A punishment. Your leaders redeemed that lost paradise where man could eat, drink and be merry without working. That’s the paradise which God made for Adam and Eve. Your leaders have outsmarted governments, why even God himself to create a paradise for you here in Kerala, and now you want to throw it away? You want to throw it away, ugh?’

‘No, No’, they yelled.

‘Down with the traitor Brutus’, someone yelled.

‘And’, thundered Mark Anthony, ‘if Brutus has put the idea in your minds that the absence of generation of wealth in this paradise will throw cockroach in your Kanji (literal translation of Malayalam idiom meaning ‘deprive you of your livelihood’), let me tell you this. With more than 2 million malayali NRI’s slogging it out outside India, we the labour class will never starve.’

Thunderous applause.

‘Long live money order economy’, yelled Mark Anthony waving the read thorthu which he had ripped off his head with flourish.

LONG LIVE MONEY ORDER ECONOMY, shouted the crowd

I woke up with a start at the sound of the alarm clock. It was early morning. I had to board Madras Mail at 6.15 am after cooking breakfast for the family and packing lunch for my husband and two children. I dragged myself out of the bed thinking ruefully “Why wasn’t I born a head load worker?”

It was just another day and then - - - - - -

I felt an icy hand clutch at my heart, squeezing my life breath out, as Sunny, my husband said “Molly, I can’t read. Everything looks blurred” .We were in the car, on our way to work, he to his bank and me to my college. I’d noticed that he had been alternating between fiddling with his glasses and adjusting the distance of the Economic Times ever since he got into the car.

“But you were reading the newspapers very comfortably in the morning”, I managed to choke out, desperately trying to keep panic out of my voice.

“Yes, I had no problem then, but I did have a problem when I was trimming my mush”
I remembered that he had told me that he couldn’t see properly as he was levelling his moustache.

“Don’t let it turn out like the case of pandan and manian”, I had joked then. Cos I didn’t take it seriously. Thought it was just one of those things.

Sunny stopped trying to read Eco Times and looked ahead. “I can’t read the hoardings too. They are also blurred”.

I wanted to cry, but I kept calm. A couple of months earlier, my mother-in-law’s vision had deteriorated alarmingly overnight. “Macular degeneration”, the doc had said, “part of ageing process”.

But surely there’s an age for it, i thought. Sunny was too young for it.

This thought hung between us but we didn’t say it out loud. I knew the same thought was going on in his mind just as he knew what was on mine.

“Let’s go back and see a doctor”, I suggested.

“Maybe it’ll improve once I’m in the office”.

Both of us were silent till we reached my college.

Half an hour later, Sunny called to say he is returning home and will pick me up on the way. I called up my son Mathew who was at his college in Mumbai itself and told him to ask his local friends about a good eye specialist.

When we reached our apartment in Pareltank Road, Mathew was waiting for us in the garage, looking scared. The poor chap was never good at camouflaging his feelings.

I’ve fixed up appointment with a doctor at Dadar. 7oclock”, Mathew said.

During lunch, we avoided the topic that was uppermost in our minds. The conversation was strained, but we managed to maintain a semblance of normalcy.

By 6 o’clock when we started for Dadar, I was a nervous wreck, though I put up a brave front. I went around taking care of trivial things like checking if the iron was switched off, windows were closed – all just to keep panic from rising and consuming me.

At the eye specialist’s, both Mathew and I barged in to the consultation room. The doc didn’t like it, it was obvious but, I guess, our collective tension was so tangible that he sensed it. He decided not to make an issue of it.

After a brief consultation he checked Sunny’s glasses. Then he asked Sunny to sit in the patients chair and tried lenses of varying power. The first lens which were close to the one Sunny was using made not much of a difference. He tried two more sets and then picked lens which were apparently of much higher power. He placed them in that eye gear.

“I can see much better', Sunny said, a slow grin spreading over his face. I looked at Mathew and he was also grinning like a zany. I didn’t realise I too was doing the same. The doc soon decided on the lens, and gave the prescription.

“When did you last change your glasses”, asked the doc.

“Some four years back”

The power has jumped dramatically”, said the doc.

“But he read the newspapers without any problem this morning”, I blurted out.

“Guess it’s the case of over strained eyes suddenly giving way – like an over strained body is capable of pushing itself by sheer will power, but breaks down completely when the body resources reach their nadir point”, speculated the doc.

‘Have you come across any case like this before?’ I asked.

“No. I must admit it is strange that the power should increase so much in so short a period. It needs to be investigated”, said the doc.

I told him about his mother's eye. The doctor said nothing and kept a poker face."Anyway, get a new pair of specs. He can work with it. Let's wait and watch for a week".

WE placed order for the glasses and returned home. We were silent on the way home. Though we were relieved at the temporary solution, an uneasy feeling of a vague fear hovered in the atmosphere.The term "investigation" kept nagging my thoughts.

After dinner, Sunny as usual sat up leaning against the headboard of the bed and switched on the TV. In a minute he switched it off, took off his glasses, gave them to me and lay down.

“Might as well sleep. I can’t see anything. Everything is blurred”

I felt that fear landing on me once again. I decided to check my mail on the computer which was placed on the computer table near the bed. The computer table had three shelves and the telephone was on the top shelf. As I was about to place the glasses next to the phone, I saw another pair of glasses identical to the one he'd just handed to me.

Heavens!! That was Sunny’s glasses!! The one near the phone!

I looked at the one i held in my hand and suddenly things fell into place.

Both of us once had spectacles with identical frames. But I had discarded my pair a year earlier when I bought a pair with progressive lens. Actually, i hadn’t exactly thrown the glasses away but had kept them in the kitchen to be used there.

I could feel a huge weight lifting from my chest. But I wanted to be sure.

“Sunny”, I called him.

“What”

“Can you sit up for a sec”

He sat up. I switched on the TV and then handed him his pair of glasses, which had been sitting quietly near the phone since morning, totally oblivious of the whole dark comedy that was unfolding in our home.

He looked puzzled but obliged me by putting it on.

And then he let out a big shout followed by
I CAN SEE!

Mathew came running from his room to find me laughing and crying and Sunny suddenly transformed to his old light-hearted self.

“I can see, Mathew, i can see”, he said, a little too loud still.

I have no words to describe the expression on Mathew’s face.

By then I had figured out what had happened. In the morning, after checking the mail, Sunny was about to go into the shower when the telephone rang. It was a long conversation during which he had absentmindedly removed his glasses and kept them near the phone.

Meanwhile, I was in the kitchen with my kitchen glasses on, packing lunch when the door bell rang. It was Sunny’s colleague Mr. D from across our flat who wanted to have a word with my husband. As I was going in to call Sunny, I had taken off my kitchen glasses and had put them on the dining table. Sunny was still on the phone. I told him Mr. D was waiting and then hurried to get ready.

Meanwhile, Sunny saw MR. D out and as he walked past the dining table, he saw my glasses which he mistook for his. That’s how trimming the mush became an ordeal.

Listening to my explanation, Mathew’s ecstatic expression began to metamorphose into one of indulgent disgust. “You guys are quite a pair”, he muttered as he walked back to his room, shaking his head in disbelief.

Mistaken identity can give rise to a comedy of errors, but, believe me, mistaking one spectacle for another can take you through the most complex and traumatic of tragic emotions.

Carriers of Oral Tradition

This topic suggested itself to me yesterday when I came across a reference to Chanson de Rolland. The very mention of the epic and I found myself in the midst of a royal banquet in honour of Charlemagne emprior (Malayalam corruption for emperor . Tho’ chakravarthy is the word, this is the term my story teller used). A little hungry boy runs into the hall and snatches the hors d’oeuvre from the emperor’s table and dashes out. The emperor orders the boy to be brought in and soon discovers it is none other than his nephew Rolland, whose mother had been banished from the kingdom. The exploits of Rolland then came to me in snatches. I remembered the sense of horror that gripped me at the image of Oliver with his body full of cuts and scratches from the battle being dropped into the well of salt. The Saracens were the villains, I remember, and Charlemagne’s army that Rolland joined was God’s favourite. I remember the final scene of the epic where Rolland, knowing he is about to die, breaks his sword to smithereens, knocking it again and again on a rock. He did not want anyone else to use his precious sword!

The above details may not be accurate for many reasons. It is recaptured from memory of the story I heard as a child from Cicily thathi (thathi is a word for sister among a certain community of Kerala Christians), the seamstress who’d been around in my house ever since I remember. I must have been around 5 or 6 when my brothers and I, with our mouths hanging open at the sheer power of her story telling , sat in front of Cicily thathi as she embroidered delicate flowers on the bed sheets or pillow covers or table cloth or sarees.

Thathi told us a lot of other stories too. Of those, I was fascinated by the story of Pulomaja, the virtuous princess who guarded her chastity fiercely.

The source of her Charlemagne stories was the verses of chavittu nadakom, a Christian art form popular in rural kerala in those days. She was a voracious reader who read novels, magazines, newspapers. She had studied only up to the 4th standard, but was a huge repository of stories, which she gathered not only from what she read, but also from what she heard from her elders.

This set me thinking. Who were the story tellers that shaped my imagination as a child? My mother? No. Not really. She didn’t tell me stories when I was a kid. She did when I grew up and had children of my own. But when I was a school going kid in the lower primary, I used to tell her stories and episodes from school and she used them as illustrations to impart to me practical and spiritual wisdom. But amma was not a storyteller.

Most of the stories I heard were from the domestic helps we had in the house – and we had quite a number . Those were difficult days and amma used to look for the slightest excuse to engage these helps so that they’d get at least 2 square meals a day. Thus it was that there was Cicily thathi who told us literary stories, Rosa cheduthy (term of respect for elder sister) and Maria cheduthy who told us stories handed down by word of mouth.

The cheduthys were not literate and so their stories had a different quality. Besides, they were not discreet enough to know that certain details should not be shared with the children of a very prudish Syrian Catholic family. Their stories sent us into peals of laughter. They were rich in physical description. The women who were the face for vices were invariably shrivelled versions of once well endowed wanton ladies. Mariacheduthy took immense pleasure in graphically describing the now pathetic condition of these sinful women. I once shared the details with amma who was furious and admonished the two cheduthys.

But Maria cheduthy could not be stopped. She resorted to blackmail. She said she wouldn’t tell us any story if we shared them with amma. My brothers, who preferred outdoor games, were not affected by the threat. But I loved Mariacheduthy’s stories with the sleaze she injected into the story of saints and virtuous people and her demo in the form of dance (this almost seventy year old lady showed me how Salome danced to seduce Herod!) and mimicry (she could imitate the emperor’s gait as well as the old wicked half naked witch, bent double on a dirty stick with her shaky grating voice).

Looking back, I realise that a whole new world opened out to me during the time I spent in the company of these cheduthys. Many looked askance at amma for allowing me to spend so much time in the company of ‘those’ people. But I loved them and their stories. The values imbedded in their stories were the same that were taught by amma and my catechism teachers. In the stories told by the cheduthys and lessons taught by the nuns I learnt the same thing – the greatest sins were those against love and chastity. I learnt that there was no sin on earth that God wouldn’t forgive; so there should be nothing on earth that i too can’t forgive. Only, the cheduthy’s had a way of making the value system appear more attractive.

Sometimes, these stories acquired a class colour. I remember Veroni cheduthy, who came into my world when i was a little older, telling me that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to go to heaven. I laughed out loud ‘cos i knew what she was getting at (she was taken to task by amma for playing truant for a week) and also ‘cos i was taught in my catechism class damage control strategies for being economically better off than her. She became furious at my reaction, and came close to me, stuck her face close to mine and said, wagging a her furious forefinger at me: “You wait and see. When you are roasting in hell, i’ll be reclining against the chest of father Abraham up there in heaven. And when you ask for a drop of water to quench your thirst, i will not give you”. She then did a right about turn and walked off from me, throwing a couple of backward glances to see how the idea appealed to me. Her face, however, was beatific, probably at the thought of amma and me roasting in hell!

I wonder if we have that category of people anymore in Kerala. Highly improbable. Universal literacy dealt the first deathblow to them by giving access to all potential carriers of oral tradition to newspapers, ma magazines and serious magazines. And now with the onslaught of the visual media, who has the time or inclination to be carriers or recipients of oral tradition?

Truth has set me free – the English language and me. In a rambling mode - -

I think every human being is an artist. Every child, unrestricted by the dos and don’ts and fatwas that shape our minds in straitjacket moulds, is an artist. Its unfettered mind sees the world through the prism of unconditioned imagination. As it grows up, there are two ways in which it can develop. It can cling tenaciously to the perspective innocent of life’s schooling, thereby develop double vision as its thinking gets regulated into stereotyped notions. Or it can discipline its life within the rules and regulations of society and wean itself out of the inherent artistic mode of thinking. The first is an artist, in the grip of divine madness. The second, the sane human being – that predictable creature that we all prefer to deal with.

Not my original, as you’d have guessed. “Remember Wordsworth’s “Trailing cloud of glory do we come?”

Well, I think I belonged to the first category despite the cast iron strait jacket mould that I was yanked into by the extreme conservatism of my Syrian Christian community. But I’d have struggled to set myself free from it into the world of creativity had I the word , the signifier.

I lost my word power when I got estranged from my mother tongue. With switching over, in the 5h standard, from Malayalam to French as my second language, my severance from literary Malayalam was complete. Then followed a long period of shallow existence in the world and culture of the English language. The fascinating space around me created by the English nursery rhymes, children’s books, comics, classics, bestsellers sucked me into the vortex of a world I had not lived except in my imagination, while physically inhabiting a Syrian Christian home in the small town of Cochin.

Feelings and emotions - intense and overpowering- struggled within me, seeking an outlet I could not provide –for I was caught between two worlds, one created by an alien language, the other, the flesh and blood world i physically and emotionally existed in but whose language i was alienated from. The latter, the real world I was rooted in, afforded exposure to a number of varieties of Malayalam – the refined language of my parents and relatives, the language of siblings and cousins with whom I had fun times during vacation, the vibrant language of the helpers at home, those potent carriers of oral tradition, pulsating with the confrontational experience of the rough life of the fifties and sixties. Yes, that was my language. That was the language in which I felt and thought; that was the language that coursed through my blood stream.

Tragically, when I reached that age when one gets into the grip of that urge to pen down one’s thoughts, words failed me. The English language did not have the resources to express my thoughts and feeling. I didn’t have sufficient mastery over it. After all, how much of it can one have over an alien language? In utter dismay I looked at the huge chasm between the innermost ME and English, the only language in which I could express myself in writing. My sensibilities could not find corresponding utterances in the alien tongue. I was not Tess or Grand Sophy, but Kochuthresiamma alias Molly, the last but one in a large Syrian catholic family, thrown into the rough sea which first the girl child, then the adolescent and finally the woman had to navigate with considerable difficulty in order not to lose her individuality and power of independent thinking.

Despite its extreme patriarchal culture and hypocrisy, the real world that I inhabited was a rich and beautiful one with a lot of love, gentleness, benevolence, benign human values, and customs & practices steeped in secular traditions evolved from 2000 years of give and take, learn and teach interaction with diverse religions. At the dining table, my father spoke about the story of the evolution of Kerala culture. Being a history person he discourses had the accuracy of history and the authenticity of lived experiences. My mother spoke about it all the time, hoping to perpetuate through me the tradition which she was handed down. The seamstress Cicily thathi and Rosa cheduthy in whose company i found myself very often, filled my mind with stories of local origin, folk lore and myths handed down orally. I had it all in my blood. But i couldn’t speak or sing.

I was a broken muse.

I partly blame the way i was taught the English language. AS a child, I was made to believe that it was the most sacrosanct thing on earth. This, unfortunately, happens in convents. This happens at home too. My people were proud about my comfort in the language. As far as they were concerned, my incompetence in the mother tongue was well mad up for. Sister Kevin who taught Wren and Martin grammar made it appear that any violation of rules warranted severe disciplinary action, something equivalent to a firing squad! The English Language became to me a potent deity, an inflexible tool that would not bend in the hands of a Malayalee Nazrani girl who wanted to tell her tale. So i never wrote.

Till

After research –when i was well into thirties. My area of research included the damaging impact of colonisation on the Indian mind. My perception of the English language underwent a sea change in a matter of three years. When i looked back ,i wanted to kick myself for having allowed ridiculous, intimidating notions to stifle my muse. It’s not as though i didn’t know all along that
· This angrezi language was nonexistent before 600 AD or
· It is the most illogical language on earth, the reasons for which i knew only too well
· That the language was considered barbaric by the refined cultures of Europe
· That the grammar and rules appeared only in 18th century, till which time it was a free for all
· And some of these rules were most laughable as they were modelled on Latin from which English did not descend causing them to stick out like sore thumb, and which therefore tended to get flouted by native users, the only faithful followers being the educated colonised!(Colonised in body, mind and soul, UGH!)
· That English achieved this status only in the colonial world.
· That it is a utility language which the world respected grudgingly ‘cos there was a time that the sun never set on the British Empire.

These and many more factors could have exposed to me the clay feet of this language which was given more than its due in the subcontinent. The History of English language which i was superficially familiar with from my early twenties should have broken the oppressive hold this language had on me much earlier. But for some reason it didn’t. It took me three years of intense reading during my research to break free from the inhibiting chains with which the English language kept me a prisoner.

So, now my attitude is
· What the heck. Whatever you want to say, say it. If your grip over the language isn’t good enough, to hell with it. Say it in whatever way you can. Forget the impropriety of the usage. You loyalty is to yourself, your story, not to the language (though i must confess i won’t go as far as ‘nose poking nenjamma’).
· It is usage that determines the precepts, not the other way round.
· When the British colonised the world and then left behind their language, they lost all proprietorship over it. Each region cannot but inevitably manipulate it to suit its requirements. These are not mistakes but differences, which if officialised will acquire the respectable status of a ‘variety of English’.
· The Queens English born in east midland region on the banks of river Thames close to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, is a misfit in the little state of Kerala and becomes effete in the hands of the non native users in this distant geographical location with its very different climate, culture and whatnot, unless the user is able to relate to the language without the colonial slavishness.

These auto suggestions did help, but sadly, i was long past the age of creativity when the film fell from my eyes.

When old order changes - - -

“He loved me unconditionally”, sobbed my son when he was informed of the death of his grandfather, my father-in-law.

My children were his favourite, others said. That might have been true – I ‘m not sure. But the reason is not definitely because they were the son’s children. It is commonly believed that all Nazrani men have preference for the son’s children which definitely was not true in the case of Achchan, as we all called my father in law. My children grew up with him while the other grandchildren grew up abroad. So naturally, there was a mutual closeness between my children and their grandfather. I refuse to believe that there is that patriarchal preference for the offspring of the male.

My son came to visit achachan two weeks before the latter got a cerebral stroke. He was on the brink of 95, healthy, cheerful, humorous - and ecstatic ‘cos his grandson had come down for 5 days only to spend some time with him. As I look back at those five days, I get a strange feeling that achachan had been holding out only to see Mathew whose scheduled visits had sent him to the seventh heaven. He was a transformed man after Mathew came. He waited for Mathew to get up in the morning and followed him like a shadow, which my son too enjoyed. They would talk and laugh like old friends meeting after a long time. What they talked about, i have no idea, but they were talking and laughing and appeared to be conspiring all the time. My father in law who was not senile despite his age would pretend to be that just to annoy my mother-in-law and me, and thereby afford amusement to his grandson. Then he’s say, “Mathacha, these women are all old. Both of us are the only young ones here” and Mathew would agree whole heartedly with him.

Mathew wanted me to make homemade ice-cream for old time sake. After one round, I left the half full dish in the freezer. One afternoon after my siesta, I came out into the dining room to find the grandfather and grandson with tablespoons, helping themselves to the ice-cream from the dish straight from the freezer! They were at the last scoop, and laughed uproariously when i came with a small dish to take my share.

On the day before he left, Mathew took us out to dinner at the Mascot Hotel. Achachan had readily agreed to come. Of late, he had been disinclined to go out of the house ‘cos he found it very tiring. Achachan enjoyed the dinner, tried out all his favourite dishes, taking my mind back to his healthier younger days.

A week after Mathew left, achachan asked me, “Will Mathew get a job in Kerala?
“Why should he come to Kerala? He is in the academic field and Kerala is not the right place for that”, i replied.
“I want to see him always”, said achachan.
“When is Renukuttan coming?”, he asked after a moment.
“it’s hardly eight months since she came to see you. How can she come down so often from America?”

The next day, achachan got the stroke.

My daughter came down again to see him but he was in the hospital, in critical condition. It made me feel very sad. Her last memories of achachan too should have been what Mathew carries with him. Achachan tried talking to her as much as he could on the day she spent at the hospital.

During his funeral, I kept updating my children. Soon after I informed them that he was buried, Renu, my daughter sent me this text message: I MISS HIM

Wishful Thinking!

RAJA ORDERS IMMEDIATE HALT TO UNSOLICITED TELE-CALLS.

It took a call to the Central finance minister for the telecom minister to swing into action to issue orders against unsolicited marketing through cell phone.

I hope when Sonia Gandhi comes to Kerala next, the AC of her car breaks down and she is forced to drive down from the airport thru stinking streets. Perhaps a couple of nauseous attack too would be ideal. I close my eyes and see the Congress chief first holding her handkercief to her nose, then the mundani of her saree, looking angrily at the people in the car, removing the nose protection for a moment to yell at them and then throwing up - - - - - - -Oh Lovely!

I hope a day will come when ministers from all parties will get stranded on the roads for a whole day with no toilet facility whatsoever on a lightening demonstration day in Kerala. Better still, stones should accidentally crash in through the glass of the AC cars and mildly graze the forehead, just missing the eye, of a youth party leader accompanying the minister. Gosh, how wonderful it’d be if a minister’s offspring’s wedding had to be cancelled on a hartal day. Now, my next wishful thinking is a little too cruel of me I know, but – would you forgive me if I wish that on a hartal day, the near and dear ones of a few party leaders and ministers get waylaid on the way to the hospital causing immense anxiety to these shakers and movers of political stunts? But of course, I do not wish any serious damage to be done to the sick ones. Only moments of anxiety for their relatives who are political goons.

It gives me immense pleasure to visualise a scene where a meeting hosted in a gigantic air conditioned hall by the Cochin Corporation at 7 pm, with Sreemathy teacher and Electricity minister and KSEB MD as the chief guests. The electricity fails. The KSEB Chief speaks into the telephone and is told that a tree fell here and a transformer got burnt there and no chance of restoring the electricity for 24 hours. The generators swing into action but soon each develops problems. Candles and hurricane lamps appear. The hall gets hot. The windows have to be opened. AND THEN - - - - an invasion of mosquitoes – those carriers of Fileria, Chicugunya, Dengue - - . I can see the ministers and high officials scratching away to glory, some of them as comical as the actor Innocent in Chronic Bachelor trying to get a cockroach out of his shirt; and finally the distinguished guests running out of the hall with swarms of mosquitoes chasing each of them.

Sorry, got really carried away there.

Believe it or not, I’ve always thought of myself as a gentle soul, never wishing to anyone any harm. Am a little rattled that I have this streak of sadism in me.

That guy Freud knew what he was talking about!

Nightmarish Vision

Sometimes I wish aliens would attack our planet. Redemption for mankind breaking up into fragments by narrow political religious, racial, ideological walls seems to lie only in such an invasion. I have learnt in history classes that a common enemy can unite a divided country. So an ET invasion might unite this fractured world. Not that mankind does not have common enemies. What else are poverty, disease, natural disasters? Unfortunately, these enemies are no longer seen as enemies but as issue that befriend those who thrive on divisive politics.

And hence this desire for an alien invasion. But I’m not sure that this will unite all the nations. That happens only in movies I think. If Martians come with superior military technology, the chances are that the big players in the world power politics will vie with each other to ally themselves with the alien invaders to do in the rest of the world.

Can’t help being this cynical. We live in a world where developed countries connive with MNCs whose sole goal is to enlarge their yield. Commercial morality and humanitarian concerns are laughable notions for these MNCs. Giant corporates set up factories without proper safety measures in far away underdeveloped lands, in areas where the poor and the helpless and the voiceless live. Should there be an accident like, for example, the toxic gas leak in Bhopal which claimed tens of thousands of lives besides creating havoc on the unborn generations, the poor countries can be bought off to save the neck of the officials whose negligence lead to human disaster of such terrible magnitude. We saw this happen in the case of the Bhopal gas tragedy, where the powers that be in India shamefully waived every rule in the country to help escape that rogue official whose refusal to pay heed to the warnings of safety audits was responsible for the terrible human tragedy. While the debate rages on in India on the identities of the individuals responsible for helping Anderson to get away to the safe haven of his own country out of reach of the hands of justice of the land of the victims, Anderson enjoys the full protection of the US, the chronic Big Bully in the global power politics. Instead of treating him like a criminal and mass murderer, his country has made it convenient for this brutal merchant of death to live in the plush comfort of his Madison square apartment, in the lap of obscene luxury. Apparently, in the Big Bully’s scheme of things, the life of one of its citizen is worth more than the lives of the tens of thousands of the wretched of the earth from the poorest regions in the Third World.

WE live in a world where human worth is measured in terms of the part of the world to which human beings belong, their race and their utility to the corporates.

We live in a world where there is much talk of justice, but none in practice, where there is much talk of egalitarianism, but none in practice. Giant corporates rule the roost. They manipulate governments across the world and sell their values through media and their suave agents. Wolves in lambs’ clothing rule the world. They have a way of networking with those of their own ilk in all the countries across the world.

When the aliens invade, the world would still be divided – but on different parametres, I guess. Big bully and its power-mongering coterie comprising the corporate world drawn from every country will gang up with the aliens to make the world safe for their nefarious activities.

Permission not to pay tax

Every time we go out, we wonder what has happened to all the good practices we’d seen as we grew up in the city. I’m talking of kochin. Once upon a time, municipality workers with tall brooms used to sweep the streets and leave them clean and tidy. Where has that category of people vanished? Doesn’t the municipality or corporation employ these workers any longer? Have these bodies relieved themselves of the responsibility of keeping the city clean? What are we paying the taxes for? Every resident pays the corporation tax and every employee pays professional tax, both of which are meant for the maintenance of the corporation/municipality.

Last week a friend from Aluva told me that the town stinks with accumulated waste. Residents had taken to the streets to protest against the utter dereliction of duty on the part of the municipality to keep the town clean. Apparently, not much good has come out of it.

Isn’t there something called accountability? Doesn’t the corporation owe anything to the taxpayers who pay their salary? What surprises me most is the total helplessness and inertia of the taxpayers to demand their right to minimum cleanliness.

It’s not as though there are no solutions to the waste accumulating. If the corporation/ municipality can acquire about 30 cents of land eachin a few locations in every city/town and start biogas plants, they can not only deal with the waste but also produce fuel to light the street lights over a large area. Biogas plants occupy so little space and are hassle free and produce useful by-products. In fact installing biogas plants in government schools which provide lunch for students producing, on a daily basis, huge waste which they struggle to dispose of, will go a long way in dealing with bio waste produced by the city. These schools can even make arrangements to have waste gathered from the neighbourhood within the radius of a kilometre or two. Biogas plants meant for institutions can take in more waste than they produce. Residents Associations can have their own biogas plants which will spare the residents the hassle of sneaking out of their houses when the roads are free and chucking stinking waste on the roadside far away from their houses. Ways of dealing with bio waste are plenty. I know this for sure ‘coos I, along with a few friends, was on the verge of launching a NGO for bio-waste disposal last December when fate intervened and deprived me of the minimum health required to run an organisation. But I have done my home work.

The point is 60% of the waste produced in the city of Trivandrum, for example, is bio-waste. All we, the people, need is the will to commit ourselves to keep the city clean. Ways and means to do it will present themselves once we set out to do it.

I was wondering - - - isn’t there some way of making the corporation accountable, some way of twisting their arm to do their job? Can’t we citizens approach the court with a new plea? All the deadlines from the high court to the Kochin corporation to dispose of the waste regularly have been ignored by the corporation. Wonder why it has not been hauled up for contempt of court!

The new ploy could be a request from the taxpayers to be allowed NOT to pay taxes till the corporation does its duty – a class action suit. If a thousand taxpayers can pool in Rs. 100 each, there will be enough resources to take the issue right up to the Supreme Court.

Withholding money will hurt, and resurrect the authorities’ conscience and sense of accountability which lie buried deep under tons of stinking waste.

Nuns' tales - 3

My friend Sister Rose (name changed) was waiting with the crowd which thronged the pavements on both sides of a street in Ottawa (I think) waiting to see Nelson Mandela who was visiting Canada. This was soon after his release and so the halo around his head shone luminous and bright.

It was a summer day and so bright and hot (I was surprised when she told me this ‘cos my idea of Canada was that of a country always dull and freezing). The sun was beating down right into her eyes and she looked around for shade, as she was prone to migraine.There was no shade anywhere and she seriously began contemplating going back to her cubicle in the university where she was doing research. Just then she saw a demonstration moving up the street slowly, with a gigantic banner which cast a huge shadow on several rows of people participating in the demonstration. She craned her neck to see what was written on it. It made no sense to her ‘cos it was in French and she hadn’t picked up enough French yet.

Just then she noticed a lady who was shouting out slogans loud, beckon to her and those around her to join the demonstration. Delighted, Sr. Rose jumped out from the side walk and joined the demonstration. Since the slogans were in French she couldn’t follow what was being demanded but she lipsync-ed to the sound of whatever was being shouted. She felt terribly relieved to be away from the sun and travelled some distance with the demonstrators.

Once she regained her sense of well being from walking in the shade of the banner, she began to look around at the sidewalk, smiling at the faces from the university and the convents she recognised. It was then that she noticed that she was attracting a lot of attention. Her friends from the university were pointing out to her and laughing. The malayalee nuns were also laughing, typically covering their mouths. Even to strangers whom she didn’t know, she seemed to be affording a lot of amusement. They were pointing out to her and laughing.

“Possibly nun's dress” she thought. “Guess nuns don’t take to the streets in this part of the world. If only these people knew the role we played in the Vimochana Samaram back home in Kerala”.

Her row had reached a group of young students who were pointing out to her and guffawing and giggling and dissolving into peals of laughter. Sr. Rose was thoroughly confused . Just then a Canadian colleague who was with this group of students shouted out to her, smiling from ear to ear:”Hey, didn’t know you were one of these”.

Curious, Sr. Rose turned to the lady next to her who was yelling out something at the top of her voice.

“What’s this demonstration about?” she asked.

“Oh, you don’t know”, she asked looking surprised.”This is a demonstration for the rights of the lesbians, organised by the local Lesbian Club”.

Nuns' Tales - 2

It was 6 in the evening when Sr. Goretti entered one of the dimly lit bathing rooms which were built in a long row. The thunder showers of October were just over and it was dark. The Septuagenarian sister Goretti pulled the tin door behind her and sent the hook latch home with a flip of her fingers. She then started discarding layers of clothes, something she hated doing. She flung them one by one on the thin line stretched across the corner opposite the door. When it came to the chemise, she hesitated. In her early days in the convent, the chemise was supposed to remain on the body during the bathing act, but over years the unwritten law was put in place that nudity during the act of bathing was not that unpardonable a deed.
She pulled the chemise over her head, flung it over the other clothes and was about to reach for the aluminium mug when she felt a movement under the line where she had put her clothes. Sister Goretti looked in the direction of the sound and she froze!
There, with its head almost touching her long outer habit which hung from the line, was a cobra, its hood spread wide and eyes looking at her with that classic aloofness.
Unlatch the door and jump out, natural instincts told her.
Oh God, How can you, nurture admonished. What, run out in this state of undress in full view of all those novices and aspirants, and also the man who comes to clean the cowshed? No way Goretti.
Goretti’s face became hard. Of course she remained absolutely immobile while these thoughts chased each other in her mind, for she knew the slightest movement and the snake would strike.
She looked venomously at the snake. You vile creature, she thought. Eve fell into your deadly trap and all mankind is still paying for it. But you shall not tempt this Goretti. No you ugly serpent, history shall not repeat. I will not let down my saviour.
And thus stood the serpent in all its crowning glory and Goretti in all her shrivelled nudity, staring at each other, totally immobile.
Oh saints in heaven, help me. How can I make an honourable exit from this wretched bathing room, wailed Sister Goretti while she continued to look with defiant hatred and steely determination into the slanted eyes of the tempter.
More time passed. No miracle happened. Even making a lightning grab for her chemise would provoke the snake and it would strike, she knew. Oh God, I’d be found dead in the bathroom with not a stitch on, she thought distressfully.
Naked I came into the world and naked shall I return thither, came a voice from somewhere deep within her.
Away Satan, she thought. Angrily. So this is what’s called the devil quoting the Bible.
All you saints n heaven, have you forsaken me? she pleaded.
And lo and behold, there appeared in the periphery of her vision a tall new broom, in the corner near the door, just a few inches from her reach.
And then everything happened in a flash. Sister Goretti reached for the broom, the snake struck, missed and the broom came crashing on its head, again and again and again till the magnificent hood was a pulpy mess. Sister Goretti looked at it triumphantly, and snorted with supreme contempt, “What you wretched creature? Did you forget i was named after Maria Goretti, the very epitome of chastity and virtue!” She smirked at the mess and then retched all over the bathing room.
To date, that little convent in the watery Kuttanad sings the praises of brave Sister Goretti.

Nuns' Tales - 1

I love nuns. They belong to a category of people I’m perfectly comfortable with. Of course on most issues I don’t see eye to eye with them. But I know I can’t but be different in my approach to them. More important, they know it too.

From Baby Class to PG i studied in convents. I served in a college run by them. They gave me my sense of values, which, Of course has undergone mutations as I grew older and wiser (?). We have learnt to accept each other with all our differences, and take care not to step on each other’s toes.

I have never felt that teeth- gnashing hatred for or anger towards them, cos the nuns with whom I interacted were good souls. They were judgemental but never uncharitable. They were mulish in their convictions, but only prayed for those who didn’t share them – they did not curse them. They honestly believed that their ministry was to save the lost sheep – tho more often than not, the lost sheep did not believe they were in the valley of darkness. This often caused friction which led to unpleasant exchanges which I had witnessed with much anxiety; but I’ve never had any serious fracas with them. I was always indulgent with them cos I was blessed with an understanding of why they were what they were, and also with the knowledge that they basically have large hearts.

Something I loved about the nuns who were my colleagues was that all of them had terrific sense of humour, and very often the but of the humour was the nuns themselves. here are a couple of stories which have send us in the department into such explosive laughter that the librarian was reluctantly forced to walk into our department which was adjacent to the library, and ask us to keep our voices down.

Both the events happened in a convent in Kuttanaad. Sr Modesta (name changed) was in her late seventies, and belonged to that generation of Catholic women who were taught it was a terrible sin to see their own bodies, leave alone expose a fraction of a centimetre more than was permitted by the laws of modesty. She once went to a doctor (male) with the six year old trainee parlour maid Kunjandy. When the doctor called them in, she asked the bewildered Kunjandy to turn around and show her backside to the doctor. Kunjandy turned around and then stopped, refusing to perform the next motions that would expose her back side to the doctor.

“Lift your skirt, kochey” snapped the angry Sr. Modesta.

Kunjandy froze and refused to budge. Sr. Modesta got up from her chair, roughly bent the little girl over almost double, lifted her knee length skirt, jerked down her billowing cotton bloomer and pointed to a spot on the right buttock saying, “there doctor, there”.

The doctor looked at the spot where she pointed, then frowned, adjusted his glasses, edged himself forward in his chair and brought his face close to the right buttock of the girl who, by now was struggling to set herself free from the vicious grip of Sister Modesta.

The doctor looked up at Sr. Modesta with a puzzled look and said, “I don’t see anything there. There’s nothing amiss”.

Letting poor Kujandy go, Sr. Modesta pulled herself up with haughty dignity and said stiffly to the doctor, “It’s not she but I who have a boil on that spot. I’m the patient, not she.”

The second episode in the next post.