Plus Ultra

Vacuous and Verbose- 31

2012-01-30T15:04:00.000+05:30

The Times of India reports:

Australian captain Michael Clarke feels a "team-first orientation of sustained pressure and sacrifice" led to his side's thumping triumph over India in the just-concluded Test series.

I wonder what he meant by ‘team-first orientation of sustained pressure and sacrifice”

Does he believe that the thumping victory gives him the right to talk nonsense? Or couch it in corporate-style jargon?

He should be made to forfeit 100% of his match fees ( and whatever amount he earned for being named the Man of the Series). A strong message must be sent out to all the jargon-maniacs of the world.

The sameness of time

2012-01-28T23:05:00.000+05:30

In the same New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik on “imprisonment’, that I had linked to in my previous post, there is this passage in the beginning:

One day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. ... It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates.The basic reality of American prisons is not that of the lock and key but that of the lock and clock.

....That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded.... As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment.

While it is generally known that prison is not a desirable place to be in due to loss of one’s freedom, the full extent of the horror is not known. For someone who hasn’t been to a prison, it is perhaps difficult to imagine the tyranny of counting time. The movie, "Shawshank Redemption', with its gripping narration and acting, did a great job in bringing home this horror.

Needed: Jail, revised edition.

2012-01-28T22:35:00.001+05:30

In an earlier post, I had linked to some articles which went into the question of why we imprison people.

I had quoted Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, as saying that our practice of imprisoning people is certainly destined for future condemnation.

Adam Gopnik, in a piece in the New Yorker, reflects on the increase in the number of people imprisoned in the USA and wonders why so many are caged. “How did we get here?” he asks. “ How is it that our civilization, which rejects hanging and flogging and disembowelling, came to believe that caging vast numbers of people for decades is an acceptably humane sanction?”

True, with increase in incarceration, there has been a sharp decrease in crime rate in the US, and the unquestioned assumption was that there was a direct correlation. This has been turned on its head in Franklin E. Zimring’s new book, “The City That Became Safe,” that Gopnik refers to. Zimring explains that the reduction in crime rate in New York did not come about from jailing superpredators and other such steps. Instead,” small acts of social engineering, designed simply to stop crimes from happening, helped stop crime. In the nineties, the N.Y.P.D. began to control crime not by fighting minor crimes in safe places but by putting lots of cops in places where lots of crimes happened—“hot-spot policing.” The cops also began an aggressive, controversial program of “stop and frisk”—“designed to catch the sharks, not the dolphins,” as Jack Maple, one of its originators, described it—that involved what’s called pejoratively “profiling.

On the contrary, while more people were getting imprisoned in the rest of USA, the number of inmates was actually reducing in New York during the period when crime rate was coming down.

So, Gopnik asks, should we think differently about imprisonment?

Since prison plays at best a small role in stopping even violent crime, very few people, rich or poor, should be in prison for a nonviolent crime. Neither the streets nor the society is made safer by having marijuana users or peddlers locked up, let alone with the horrific sentences now dispensed so easily. For that matter, no social good is served by having the embezzler or the Ponzi schemer locked in a cage for the rest of his life, rather than having him bankrupt and doing community service in the South Bronx for the next decade or two. Would we actually have more fraud and looting of shareholder value if the perpetrators knew that they would lose their bank accounts and their reputation, and have to do community service seven days a week for five years? It seems likely that anyone for whom those sanctions aren’t sufficient is someone for whom no sanctions are ever going to be sufficient. Zimring’s research shows clearly that, if crime drops on the street, criminals coming out of prison stop committing crimes. What matters is the incidence of crime in the world, and the continuity of a culture of crime, not some “lesson learned” in prison.

It will be interesting to look at statistics in India on incidences of crime in each state and number of people in jail. Does imprisonment have an impact at all on the future crime rate?

Babbling in different languages

2012-01-28T21:30:00.000+05:30

As one who is severely handicapped when it comes to learning new languages, I am always in awe of people who can speak many languages fluently. I speak Tamil and English, and if in the course of travel in the rest of India have to speak a few words of Hindi, need to formulate the sentences in my head first before uttering them. Such is my sad state.

That’s why I found this review of a book “ Babel no more” quite interesting.

The ability to speak multiple unrelated foreign languages fluently counts among a short list of showstopping talents, like the ability to play a Bach fugue or fly a helicopter (assuming one isn't a harpsichordist or pilot by profession). It impresses in part because it suggests discipline, time, and effort -- and, perhaps, other hidden skills.

….Harold Williams, a New Zealander who attended the League of Nations is said to have spoken comfortably to each delegate in the delegate's native tongue, or the American Kenneth Hale, who learned passable Finnish (one of about fifty languages he was reputed to speak convincingly) on a flight to Helsinki and allegedly learned Japanese after a single viewing of the Shogun miniseries.

The most famous hyperpolyglot is Giuseppe Mezzofanti, the nineteenth-century Bolognese cardinal who was reputed to speak between thirty and seventy languages, ranging from Chaldaean to Algonquin. He spoke them so well, and with such a feather-light foreign accent, according to his Irish biographer, that English visitors mistook him for their countryman Cardinal Charles Acton. (They also said he spoke as if reading from The Spectator.) His ability to learn a language in a matter of days or hours was so devilishly impressive that one suspects Mezzofanti pursued the cardinalate in part to shelter himself from accusations that he had bought the talent from Satan himself.

I wonder how their brains work. How do they shift from one language to another ? Do they burn up some extra grey cells? Sometimes it can go wrong. I had a colleague who could speak all the South Indian languages. The only problem was he would speak Kannada in Kerala, Tamil in AP, Telugu in Kerala….

Bradman's character

2012-01-23T19:51:00.001+05:30

Bradman had the reputation of being a run-getting machine on the field, and a hard Australian off it.

Neville Cardus narrates an incident involving Bradman :

At Adelaide in November, on a night I shall never forget, he told me of his plans to win the rubber. He expected that O’Reilly would tie up Hammond by a leg-stump attack of good length. For the whole evening, he discussed cricket- we were alone in his house. At eleven o’clock he told me he would have to turn me out, as he had a call to make at the hospital. But as the hospital was on the way to my hotel, he drove me into Adelaide, on a night of great beauty. He ran up the step of the hospital and I waited in the car. After a short while he came back, took the wheel and said, “ I’m afraid the poor little chap isn’t going to get through."

The next morning, the death of Bradman’s baby was announced.

I hope I am reticent enough about the night’s happenings. I hope nobody will misunderstand me. I want to give an idea of Bradman’s character.

Source : Cardus on Cricket.

First to jump on to a life boat.

2012-01-23T11:45:00.002+05:30

In the 26/11 incident, the employees of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai conducted themselves with rare courage – many giving up their lives in trying to protect the guests. A study done by HBR reports:

During the onslaught on the Taj Mumbai, 31 people died and 28 were hurt, but the hotel received only praise the day after. Its guests were overwhelmed by employees’ dedication to duty, their desire to protect guests without regard to personal safety, and their quick thinking. Restaurant and banquet staff rushed people to safe locations such as kitchens and basements. Telephone operators stayed at their posts, alerting guests to lock doors and not step out. Kitchen staff formed human shields to protect guests during evacuation attempts. As many as 11 Taj Mumbai employees—a third of the hotel’s casualties—laid down their lives while helping between 1,200 and 1,500 guests escape.

…the Taj Mumbai’s employees gave customer service a whole new meaning during the terrorist strike. What created that extreme customer-centric culture of employee after employee staying back to rescue guests when they could have saved themselves? What can other organizations do to emulate that level of service, both in times of crisis and in periods of normalcy? Can companies scale up and perpetuate extreme customer centricity?

We believe that the unusual hiring, training, and incentive systems of the Taj Group—which operates 108 hotels in 12 countries—have combined to create an organizational culture in which employees are willing to do almost anything for guests. This extraordinary customer centricity helped, in a moment of crisis, to turn its employees into a band of ordinary heroes.

In contrast, during the fire at the AMRI hospital in Kolkata, the employees were accused of scooting from the scene of disaster, ignoring their duty to save the patients first.

When the Coasta Concordia sank last week, Captain Schettino is reported to have been one of the first to have jumped on to a life boat ( His version is that he accidentally fell into one). Marine tradition of a captain going down with his ship has been so glorified, even romanticised, that Captain Schettino’s act has come in for a lot of criticism and condemnation.

Is it fair to judge Captain Schettino’s actions based on some old ideas about valour and sense of duty? By risking his life to save others’ what was he going to achieve? Would he not let down his own family waiting for him, by attempting to adhere to old-fashioned views of captains going down with sinking ships? Ok, he may face a week, a month, maybe a year of stinging criticism, or spend a few years in prison for dereliction of duty- but he’ll have the remaining years to live. The world would have long forgotten the incident.

How do we know how each one of us would behave under similar circumstances? Have we been tested? Why should I sacrifice my 'personal' life while trying to discharge a duty defined for my professional self?

As Theodore Darlymple asks in this interesting piece:

Courage is a virtue and heroism is admirable, but do we have a right to demand them? Which of us cannot look back on his or her own life and remember decisions, or compromises made, or silences kept because of cowardice, even when the penalties for courage were negligible?

If we are cowardly in small things, shall we be brave in large? Have we the right to point the finger until we have been tested ourselves?

If there'a fire in your office when some clients are visiting you, would you make sure that their lives are saved first before yours or your colleagues? How do you know how you would behave if such an event happens?

Update:

Ian Jack writes in The Guardian:

Bernard Shaw, writing a month after the Titanic sank, wondered about the "effects of a sensational catastrophe on a modern nation". Rather than weeping, prayer or sympathy for the bereaved, the result was "an explosion of outrageous romantic lying". The typical British shipwreck, Shaw wrote, had three "romantic demands" in particular: that the cry "Women and children first" should be heard, that all men aboard ("except the foreigners") should be heroes, and the captain a superhero, and that "everybody should face death without a tremor".

Shaw traced the origins of these expectations to the wreck of the Birkenhead, a troopship (and one of the Royal Navy's earliest steamships) that had hit a rock and foundered off the coast of South Africa in 1852.

While the few women and children on board were being loaded into the boats, the troops held ranks at attention on deck, even though the ship was breaking up beneath them. Hundreds died, including all the senior naval officers. A story of self-sacrifice and stoicism set a pattern for behaviour in Britain's merchant and military navies that enhanced, and sometimes confused, a captain's traditional responsibilities for the welfare of his ship and crew. The "Birkenhead drill" meant a seafarer stared death in the eye while the weaker sex was rowed to safety. In the 18th century, a captain could be both a patriarch and a tyrant, a drinker and flogger. Now, as he took his seat among his passengers at that new Victorian social arrangement, the captain's table, he became a kindlier and nobler father figure. Still a patriarch, but one who would place your needs and life above his own even to the ultimate sacrifice; or so the story went.

Update: 24/1/12:

Ingrid Rowland writes in the NYR Blog:

It is hard to know who we, who coach from the sidelines, might really turn out to be if we should ever run up on the shoals: one of the passengers who snatched other people’s life vests, stepped on little kids, and escaped early, or one of those who turned back to save one more person more helpless than themselves and never escaped at all, like the missing musician, age 25, who let a woman with a baby take his place on a lifeboat. It is so easy to judge a a situation that most of us cannot imagine.

…And of course there are larger questions crowding the surface of these troubled waters. Old salts are shocked by the idea of a captain who abandoned his ship. Ostensibly, the timeless, immutable law of the sea is the cement that binds an international crew like the thousand-plus who worked on the Costa Concordia, the lawHas something changed in seafaring? Has it become self-centered like everything else in the contemporary world, or is the fact that these colossal floating pleasure palaces are barely conceivable as ships and hence no longer obey the law of the sea? that bound even the immortal cads of Greek myth to keep faith with their crews.

The Periyar dam

2012-01-19T22:07:00.000+05:30

The book, “Irrigation in India” by Herbert Wilson and published in 1903 carries an excellent description (page 189) of the Periyar dam and the planning that went into it. It also has some sketches and a couple of photographs of the construction in progress.

The Periyar project for the irrigation of the Vaigai Valley, in Madras Presidency, is probably the most interesting illustration of the combined storage work and irrigation canal system to be found in India, especially as it was sanctioned as a protective work. The project includes the construction of a dam to close the valley of the Periyar River to store 300,000 acre-feet of water, of which 150,000 acre-feet are above the sill of the outlet tunnel and are thus available for irrigation; the construction of a tunnel through the watershed dividing the valley of the Periyar from that of the Vaigai River for the purpose of drawing off the water from the reservoir, with the necessary sluices and subsidiary works for controlling the passage of the supply of the Periyar down the valley of the tributary called the Sooroolly, by which it reaches the Vaigai; and finally, the construction of the works necessary for the regulation and distribution of this supply for the command of 107,050 acres of land in the Vaigai Valley, of which 76,445 acres were irrigated in 1898-99.

As the waters of the Periyar flow westward into the Arabian Sea, they are thus diverted across the peninsular divide, the Ghauts, to the eastern coast of India, where they enter the Bay of Bengal. The project has come of further examinations made by Mr. Smith and Major Pennycuick, though to the latter are due most of the later details, and under him is being conducted the construction of the works. It was in this report that Major Pennycuick submitted the first proposals for the substitution of a masonry dam for one of earth. These final proposals were submitted in 1882, and included the construction of a dam located at the same point as that chosen by Mr. Smith, 7 miles below Major Kyves's site, the height to be 155 feet above the bed of the river, and the summit surmounted by a parapet 5 feet high and 4 thick. The dam proper is 12 feet thick at the top and 114 feet at the lowest part. It is constructed throughout of concrete composed of 25 parts of hydraulic lime, 30 of sand, and 100 of broken stone. The front face is covered with a plaster composed of equal parts of lime

The area of country which is irrigated by this project was described by Major Ryves, in his early report on the project in 1867, as being about 1,200 square miles in extent, with a population of nearly half a million. Up to the present time irrigation has been practiced from native tanks, most of which, however, have become very shallow, and from which the waste of water by evaporation is at least 30 per cent. In very good years the water supply from the Vaigai itself is sufficient to irrigate 20,000 acres. Agricultural operations in this region are rarely rewarded by a good crop, although the land where water can be provided is of the most fertile character. During the famine of 1876 as much as $600,000 was expended in relief in this district.

The idea of utilizing the water of the Periyar for the irrigation of the Vaigai is an old one. It was first reported in 1808 by Sir James Caldwell, who condemned the project as decidedly chimerical and unworthy of further regard. The subject was occasionally discussed from time to time, but it was not until 1867 that it was practically brought forward by Major Ryves. Major Ryves's proposals included an earth dam 162 feet high, with an escape crest 142 feet above the river bed, and the water was to be diverted into the Vaigai Valley by a cutting having a maximum depth through the watershed of 52 feet. Other examinations were made, and finally a project was submitted by Mr. Smith in 1872, which included a dam 171 feet in height, to be constructed by the silting process and having an escape of 400 feet in length blasted out of the saddle at the right bank.

It's war out there.

2012-01-19T21:27:00.000+05:30

Judging from the public response to the defeat of the Indian cricket team, it is clear that we have forgotten that cricket is a sport. Amongst the reasons attributed for the defeat were hubris, IPL, BCCI’s lack of vision, team spending time at go-karting instead of net practice, old cricketers clinging on to their positions when they should have retired long back, blah blah. That the cause of the defeat could have been Australia’s superior performance was never put forward.

It would appear as if sports, instead of helping build national character, is reducing us to a bunch of whiners and cribbers who can’t accept defeat gracefully and move on to the next event with quiet determination.

Do we really need sports, if it doesn’t help in building a ‘sporting’ mindset? And, if all it does is to generate bitterness.

There are two rival theories at work:

1) Human beings, like other primates, are innately aggressive, and this pent-up aggression comes out when it reaches certain levels. Tribal wars and modern wars among nations result when the aggression boils over. Sports help in channelizing such aggression into less violent activities, while artificially maintaining the intensity of a ‘battle’. Therefore, sports serve a useful purpose

2) To simulate warfare, the intensity of sports has to be so high that, quite often, the tipping point is crossed and the pretense is gone. It acquires the character of a real battle. Therefore, modern sports which lack necessary built-in controls are designed to cause harm.

On any of the animal programs involving the big cats and their cubs, the commentators take pains to explain that the ‘games’ the cubs play with their mother actually equip them with fighting techniques and serve to prepare them to become better hunters and killers later on. One wonders if human games also will turn out to be means to sharpen the killing instinct.

I leave you with this engaging piece, “Do Sports build character or damage it”. An extract from the article:

The kind of intensity that sports—and especially kinetic sports like football—can provoke is necessary for any society: Thymos must have its moment. But that intensity is mortally dangerous for society and for individuals, too. Sports can lead people to brutal behavior—I see no way to avoid the conclusion. To any dispassionate observer, it is clear that athletes find themselves in more brawls, more car wrecks, more spousal assaults, more drunk-driving episodes than the average run of the population.

Sports can teach participants to modulate their passions—sports can help people be closer to Hector than to Achilles—but they can foment cruelty as well. Athletes, as everyone who went to an American high school will tell you, can be courtly, dignified individuals. But they're often bullies; they often seek violence for its own sake. Some athletes take crude pleasure in dominating others; they like to humiliate their foes, off the field as well as on it.

All too often, the players who go all out on the field but can't readily turn it off elsewhere are the best players. They're the most headlong, the most fearless, the most dedicated. And when they encounter a modulated, more controlled antagonist in a game, often they, the more brutal players, win.

The Great Escape

2012-01-18T20:46:00.000+05:30

‘The Great Escape” is one of the most thrilling movies that I have seen. The fact that it was based on a true story made it even more admirable.

A recent attempt by British engineers, archeologists and historians to establish clearly how the escape was accomplished, as reported in this article in the New York Times, made interesting reading.

The team’s task was to employ “reverse engineering” by uncovering the tunnels and what remained of the tunnelers’ jury-rigged equipment to replicate the wartime fliers’ ingenuity. Ultimately, the team members were stunned that, even without the menace of the ever-watchful Nazi camp guards, they were unable to match their wartime counterparts fully, particularly in the most crucial skill, digging a tunnel 30 feet below the camp surface without repeated collapses of the sandy soil above .

The team concluded:

What those men did at Stalag Luft III was an astonishing feat of improvisational engineering. Their resourcefulness was beyond belief. It wasn’t a case of one man’s genius, more the accomplishment of a team, one man’s skills complementing another’s. And they had one precious resource, time. If you have time, somebody will eventually come up with something, and the others will say, ‘Let’s give it a go.’

…By the measures of ingenuity, courage and persistence, the tunnels built almost 70 years ago in sandy scrubland near the small town of Zagan, 130 miles southeast of Berlin in what was then Hitler’s Germany and is today western Poland, were a legendary feat of engineering.

Amazing.

Some useful tips for Rahul Dravid

2012-01-18T10:13:00.001+05:30

There was a cricketer called George Gunn who played for Nottinghamshire and England. Quite a character, he was, going by the description of him by Neville Cardus.

His test career was a pretty long one too. He played 15 tests over a period of 23 years. According to Wikipedia:

His Test career was an unusual one, all but one of his 15 Tests being outside England. He was not selected for the 1907-8 tour of Australia, but visited the country anyway, for the good of his health. It was arranged that he could be called upon by England if necessary. In the event, it was necessary, and he appeared in the first Test at Sydney. Scores of 119, in his first innings in Test cricket, and 74 ensured that he would play in all five Tests. He made another century, 122, in the fifth Test, also at Sydney. He topped the averages, with 462 runs at 51.33. He was only chosen for one Test in England's home series against Australia in 1909, making 0 and 1 in the second Test at Lord's, but toured again in 1911-2. Though not quite as successful as four years earlier, he made 381 runs at 42.33. After World War I, he was out of favour, and his final four Tests did not come until 1929-30, on a tour to the West Indies when several veteran players (e.g. Rhodes and Sandham) seem to have been chosen as a reward for long service.

Anyway, let me tell you why I suddenly remembered George Gunn. Cardus writes that George Gunn had a keen sense of wit. Once when he was clean bowled he picked up the fallen stump- much to the bemusement of the fielders and the umpires- placed it back on the hole and gave it a friendly tap, before nonchalantly walking back to the pavilion.

Seeing Rahul Dravid getting bowled repeatedly in every innings and walking back dejectedly, I wish he would follow the example of George Gunn. The next time he is bowled, he should casually pick up the uprooted stump, inspect it carefully for damages, place it back on the hole, give it a friendly tap with his bat, check the alignment and replace the bails, before walking back to the pavilion. I am sure that this will completely spook and disorient the Aussies, and make things easier for the Indian batsmen who follow.

Thank you for the water, respected sir.

2012-01-16T21:56:00.000+05:30

The Asiatic Journal and monthly register for British Indian and foreign dependencies (page 650) carries this sycophantic letter written in 1825 by a group of Parsees to the British Governor, thanking the latter for digging wells and providing water.

"To the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, President in Council, Bombay."

"Hon. Sir :—Deeply impressed at all times, with a sense of gratitude for the benefits which, during your administration and that of the present members of your honourable Board, have been conferred on all classes of the inhabitants of Bombay, so creditable to the name of the British government, we, the undersigned, beg more particularly on the present occasion (having been blessed by the high Providence with a favourable season of rain, and expecting a most abundant crop of all descriptions of grain) to offer you our sincere and grateful acknowledgments for your most munificent and charitable exertions in providing against the want of water during the fast dry season.

"The kindness of your disposition, which makes you beloved by all; the obliging condescension which leads you to attend, with the greatest readiness, to the wishes and applications of those under you; but above all, the noble liberality with which you patronize every public institution for the good of the country, need not now any mention from us; they are engraved on our breasts, and they will be associated in the minds of our children with those institutions, which must remain as a memorial of their founder.

"But the more immediate benefits which we have just experienced, as well individually as collectively, who compose so great a proportion of the population of this island, call forth the most lively sentiments of gratitude; and we are therefore constrained by every good feeling, to offer you our humble tribute of thanks. Permit us to express our gratitude for the benefits we lately experienced by the opening of the sally port through the ramparts, which has been so useful to the inhabitants of the port, in getting water both by day and night; and, also, by the opening of the wells in every part of the island where it was probable they could be of service: and likewise in the construction of the new tanks, and in improving and repairing the old onej which benevolent steps have saved the inhabitants from considerable distress.

"Such acts as these, at all times considered as the most charitable in this part of the world, permit us to assure you, are particularly at this period appreciated as they ought to be by all classes of our fellow subjects; and with every sentiment of esteem for your justice and liberality, and with every good wish for your prosperity, and that you may continue long to administer the government of this island, we beg to subscribe ourselves, with the greatest respect, honourable sir,

Your most grateful,

Devoted and obedient servants,

"Hormanjee Bomanjee, Cursetjee Ardeseer and 40 others

Bombay, 31* Oct. 1825.

Makara Sankranti

2012-01-15T20:52:00.001+05:30

The Makara Sankranthi day that usually falls on January 14th, falls on January 15th this year. According to Wikipedia:

Sankranti is the Sanskrit word in Indian Astrology which refers to the transmigration of the Sun from one Rāshi (sign of the zodiac) to another. Hence there are 12 such sankrantis in all. However, the Sankranti festival usually refers to Makara Sankaranti, or the transition of the Sun from Dhanu rashi (Sagittarius) to Makara rashi (Capricorn).

For this purpose, the signs and houses of the zodiac are calculated using sidereal time, not tropical. As such it does not account for the Earth's precession. The festival therefore takes place around 21 days after the winter solstice (between December 20 and 23) that marks the starting of the phenomenon of 'northward apparent migration of the sun' or Uttarayana, literally meaning northward journey of Sun.

Considering the winter solstice marks the beginning of the gradual increase of the duration of the day. Scientifically, the shortest day of the year is around December 21–22 after which the days begin to get longer, hence actual Winter Solstice begins on December 21 or December 22 when the tropical sun enters Makara rashi. Hence actual Uttarayana is December 21. This was the actual date of Makar Sakranti too. But because of the Earth's tilt of 23.45 degrees and sliding of equinoxes, Ayanamsa occurs. This has caused Makara Sankranti to slide further over the ages. A thousand years ago, Makar Sankranti was on December 31 and is now on January 14. Five thousand years later, it shall be by the end of February, while in 9,000 years it shall come in June.

While the traditional Indian Calendar is based on lunar positions, Sankranti is a solar event. So while dates of all Hindu festivals keep changing as per the Gregorian calendar, the date of Makar Sankranti remains constant over a long term, 14 January. Makar Sankranti is celebrated in the Hindu Calendar month of Magha

I couldn’t follow the reasoning, but it appears that some kind of tweaking is done in the calendar to account for the earth’s tilt. Will it be on Jan 15th next year too? I don’t know the answer.

Anyway, I was curious to know if the Makara Jothi event in Sabarimala that falls on Makara Sankranti also got shifted to Jan 15th this year.

Yes, it did.

The divine light, it appears, also does the same tweaking that humans have done with the calendar and manifests itself to devotees accordingly.

Update 160112:

A commenter has linked to an old article in The Hindu which quoted the President of the Travancore Dewaswom Board (that administers the temple) and the Chief Priest of the temple as saying that the Makarajyothi was man-made. It quotes a few others as well who disagree with above.

The statement made by Kummanam Rajashekharan, Hindu Aikayvedi general secretary, that “Makarajyothi, whether it is man-made or not has found a divine religious niche in the minds of every Ayyappa devotee” is interesting. It conveys that a devotee has a right to believe what he likes to believe. That’s what ‘faith’ is all about.

An aspect of faith rationalists tend to ignore is that, in its benevolent form, it binds people together in a common cause. If a million devotees need to assemble in a place, the binding factor must be something extraordinary. One can argue that ‘faith’ in an artificial entity is irrational, but if that irrational faith can serve to unite people, it is stupid to disregard its positive features. I know many people who form their own groups every December and start their preparations for a Sabarimala visit. The countdown to the actual travel involves prayer sessions in houses of different members, and manages to bring together families and friends. For these groups, the question whether the jyothi is man-made or a divine phenomenon is of no significance. There is a larger, unstated purpose - coming together as a group and revelling in each other’s company. The 'faith' provides the solemn 'pretext' for the meeting. I don’t join these groups on their travel or in their prayers, but I certainly look forward to the opportunity of catching up with friends, when invited to any of the sessions.

Faith can take a dangerous form, as we well know. But to keep harping on this is to take a very cynical view of the world.

Also, all of us living in the modern world, are victims of some kind of brand-conditioning. Faith in a brand is no less irrational than faith in a divine light.

Clutter-breakers

2012-01-14T21:41:00.000+05:30

Commenting on the success of the song “Kolaveri di”, A.R.Rahman said, “It is a nice, simple tune. Every now and then a clutter-breaker emerges in music. Jai Ho was one such clutter-breaker. Kolaveri di is in the same category”.

The expression clutter-breaker is common jargon in the advertisement industry. When many ads tend to look or sound similar, along comes one which looks refreshingly simple and different and manages to grab the attention. (See this article here where leading advertising agencies talk about the clutter-breaking ads that they had each created).

Clutter-breakers are required in every field to remove staleness. We need a political party that can view any issue objectively without being burdened by legacy. We need sports officials and selectors who can instill freshness into the whole process. We need restaurants which will come up with simpler themes and simple, good food. – going against the trend of restaurants getting fancier and fancier. Most innovations that are successful have had a very simple idea at the core.

“Simplify. Simpify. In proportion as we simplify our lives, the Universe will appear less complex. “ as Thoreau said.

The football fan.

2012-01-13T10:34:00.001+05:30

I was amused to read this news report yesterday :

East Bengal had to bear the wrath of fans who laid siege to their home turf with players and officials locked inside for about 30 minutes following their humiliating 1-4 loss to minnows Aryan Club in the local football league on Tuesday.

Angry with their second successive loss, three days after they were blanked 0-2 by bitter-foes Mohun Bagan, the fans turned violent near the exit gate, forcing the players to remain stranded in the ground before police could pacify the situation.

The police sneaked through the back door to rescue the team, especially East Bengal coach Trevor Morgan, who was the prime target of the supporters.

Why do people take a game so seriously? That’s because any sport was intended as a benign form of war and to keep tribal instincts at check. Any game therefore has the potential to degenerate into surrogate warfare, at the slighest provocation. To excel in sports one needs to hone one’s competitive spirit with a view to inflicting a defeat on the opponent.The flip side of this build-up is that any failure is considered too humiliating for the sportsmen and the fans alike, which leads to violence and bloodshed.

Last month, a football referee in Venezuela was shot dead by a fan after a match, because he had refused the substitution of a player. Football, more than any other game, seems to activate the reptilinear cortex of the brain and to cause the most primitive behavior.

This tendency was well illustrated in a short story, " A slight case of sunstroke", by Arthur C Clarke set in a nation called Perivia in South America. The story describes a tense football match being played. Towards the end, the referee disallows a goal scored by Perivia and the crowd of 50000 refuse to take it lying down. They simply,instantly and literally reduce the referee to ashes, One of the spectators, the narrator, explains the manner in which the referee was killed:

Have you ever annoyed anyone by flicking a pocket mirror across his eyes? I guess every kid has: I remember doing it to a teacher once, and getting duly paddled. But I had never imagined what would happen if fifty thousand well-trained men did the same trick, each using a tin-foil reflector a couple of feet square.

A mathematically minded friend of mine has worked it out for me, not that I needed any further proof, but I always like to get to the bottom of things. I never knew, until then, just how much energy there is in sunlight; it’s well over a horsepower on every square yard facing the sun. Most of the heat falling on one side of that enormous stadium had been diverted into the single small area occupied by the late referee. Even allowing for all the programmes that weren’t aimed in the right direction, he must have intercepted at least a thousand horsepower of raw heat. He couldn’t have felt much; it was as if he had been dropped into a blast furnace.

“They play football for keeps in Perivia”, concludes the narrator in a matter-of-fact tone. A slight case of sunstroke, indeed.

Yes, they play football for keeps in Kolkata as well.

Ethics without religion

2012-01-12T21:59:00.000+05:30

There is a tendency to think that ‘ethics’ have a religious basis and must be firmly explained in the form of God’s commands- “Thou shall ” or “Thou shall not". When a fundamentalist carries out an act of terror, he genuinely believes that he is an ethical human being, adhering to laws prescribed by his God.

Religion and ethics need to be viewed separately.

Ethics, to apply Darwinian logic, is a product of natural selection. By laying a proper framework for social relationships, it confers a survival advantage on our species. As this essay explains:

We became fully human when we were able to find ways of inhibiting tendencies to socially disruptive action and ways of reinforcing our altruistic capacities. Practices of punishment may well have played a role at early stages of the process. The crucial step, however, consisted in internalizing the check on our behavior. We became able to formulate rules for ourselves, or to remind ourselves of exemplary cases of conduct: we invented a crude system of ethics.

Thus it is that societies such as ones in Scandinavia that are pre-dominantly atheistic have a well-developed ethical framework to act as their moral compass. Their commitment to protecting the environment or in adhering to a clear code of conduct in the public space emerges from this moral compass.

As Dawkins has explained, religion was an unintended byproduct of human evolution, and is completely anachronistic now. The sooner we abandon it, the better. The word ‘secular’ actually means ‘independent of or uninfluenced by religion”. It does not mean “embracing all religions” as is commonly misused. A secular state is supposed to act objectively.

We need not fear that ethics will not have an anchor in the absence of religion. It can exist and evolve by itself.

Violins old and new.

2012-01-12T10:34:00.002+05:30

According to this report in Discover, the claim that old violins (such as the ones crafted by Stradivari) sound better than new ones is just a myth. When a research team asked a group of professional violinists to test out Stradivarius violins and new ones (without being told which of the violins was the Stradivarius’) they couldn’t make out the difference. Scroll down to the comments section of that article and you'll find an admission by one of the professionals who took part in the experiment.

When a Bengali swears that rosogollas of K.C.Das are the best in the world and unmatched in taste, consistency and flavor, test him out. Blindfold him, give him 10 rosogollas made at different outlets and ask him to identify the one made at K.C.Das. Chances are he will not be able to. Similar will be the result when you test people with expensive and cheap wines.

That’s where the power of the brand comes in. For you to appreciate the superiority of a Stradivarius violin, you should know beforehand that it is a Stradivarius violin. That “brand conditioning” is required to make it stand out from a crowd of generic violins.

Just think. If we can liberate ourselves from this conditioning, we could save hell of a lot of money. Do I really need the Gillette razor that costs 4-5 times as much as a ‘lesser’ brand? Would I know the difference between the two in a double-blind test? Do I have to stick to Color-Plus trousers that cost a fortune? For what purpose? Am I really more comfortable in them, or do I just feel so?

Of course, brand managers will tell you that a brand gives you that feeling of security, the assurance of quality, the comfort of familiarity, etc. All that hype is part of the conditioning. The poor fellows have to earn their salaries to be able to pay for stuff that they themselves are being conditioned to buy.

Parental dilemma

2012-01-11T21:35:00.000+05:30

In a lovely post on the subject of ‘parenting’, Shruthi writes:

Parenting doesn't come with a manual. And to add to that, every child is different. Besides, we will be deluding ourselves if we think that we are the only ones who have an effect on our children. The fact is that we live in a society, and inputs and influences come from every direction.

As a result, we are trying to nudge our children in a direction that we think is best - in the midst of all these thousands of little pushes that the child keeps receiving every day, every minute.

And sometimes we don't even know whether what we are doing is right or not. Is it going to hurt her in the long run? Is this going to result in some other behaviour problem later in life? We don't know. We cannot possibly know. So we always do what we think is right at that point of time. Of course we have a long-term view at the back of our minds, but sometimes, we just cannot be sure of what is right.

If you glance through my “Conversation with daughters “series of posts, you’ll note that I don’t come out shining as an awesome parent who always had the appropriate response to whatever challenges parenting threw my way.

When teaching my elder one to drive a car, for instance, I had to ask myself, “Should I train her to scrupulously follow all the traffic rules, or should I explain that she should use her discretion to ignore some rules once in a while?” In particular, should I caution her not to stop at certain points when the light was ‘red’, as speeding cars from behind will crash into hers, taken by surprise at the utter stupidity of someone stopping there for a red light?

I decided that I wouldl set the right example. I would teach her to follow all the rules. I made her apply for a ‘learner’s licence’, stick an “L” Board on the car and, in a few weeks, after I felt that she had got the hang of driving made her go through the proper process at the RTO including the driving tests, etc. She went in at 8 am and came back at 4.30 pm, tired but triumphant.

The next week, a friend of hers was at the RTO. This friend had not taken a learner’s licence, had not gone through the rigour of driving classes, but was getting her licence straightaway because her dad knew someone who knew someone else who could arrange for a licence to be issued without any of the rigmarole that I forced my daughter to submit to.

I emerged from this episode, looking even more foolish than I was before.

Also, when teaching her to drive, I had to make her stick to the lane and stop at all the signals to wait for the green light. All kinds of idiots would keep honking from behind, but I had to urge her to ignore them. The thought that crossed my mind frequently was that I was conditioning her to an impractical saintly mindset, while the rest of the drivers moved past blatantly violating the rules. Should I also teach her a few of those tricks that would render her more street-smart and worldly-wise?

Anyway, what I did explain to her was that I would teach her how she ought to drive, rather than how I actually drove. This was to prevent any smart-alec comments from her on how I was not practicing what I had preached.

Parenting is hard work, meant for professionals. If you are an amateur and attempting it at home, be very careful.

Advice to Indian cricket team.

2012-01-10T20:48:00.000+05:30

A study suggests that Dhoni and team should stop thinking consciously about their game, and to let their brains do the work automatically.

What the study says is:

Whether on the court, field or course, the body depends on the brain for direction. But the brain is a busy taskmaster, with duties beyond guiding motion, making it difficult to focus on that particular job. Like chess masters and virtuoso musicians, superior athletes are better than novices at turning on just the parts of the brain relevant to the desired task. In professionals, the overall brain activation is much lower, but certain connections are enhanced.In other words, experts employ only the finely tuned neural regions that help enhance performance, without getting bogged down by extraneous information.

In contrast, the study found that the brains of beginner golfers preparing a swing showed much more dispersed activity — especially pervasive in the basal ganglia and limbic system, regions of the brain that control emotions and make people consciously aware of their movements.

Such differences in brain activity reflect the players’ different concerns. “The novices were worried about all kinds of things — wind, water and sand,The pro golfers just hit the ball.

..Devoting too much conscious attention to swing mechanics could actually hurt performance, even among big leaguers...When professional golfers think too long about their shots, the athletes activate parts of their brains that they haven’t used during golf since first learning the game, throwing finely tuned sensorimotor pathways out of whack. This is because the expert’s brain has already figured out the optimal solution, and anything they consciously change will disrupt that,

The experience of “being in the zone” could simply be what happens when the brain regions making athletes conscious of their movements are finally quieted and motor centers get free rein to guide the players to victory.”

Taking some lessons from the study, Dhoni and team should stop thinking. Just go into the ground and let your instinct- sharpened by training- take over.

As I concluded in an old post, throw out the coaches and laptops.

A dishonourable society

2012-01-10T20:18:00.000+05:30

When trying to turn left at any traffic junction in Chennai, one needs to either presume that a ‘free left turn’ is allowed, or wait patiently for the signal and be subjected to sneers and abuses from the vehicles behind, especially the auto-rickshaw variety. Nobody knows what the default setting is.

In the absence of a clear sign that says ‘free left turn” or a clearer sign that says “No free left. Wait for signal”, one can conveniently presume the former, except that every now and then a cop would have stationed himself immediately after the left turn to nab the culprit and slap a fine legally or collect a bribe. Ask him where does it say that ‘free left turn” is not allowed, he will retort: “Where does it say it is allowed?”. On some other days, the friendly cop positioned just ahead of the left turn would wave his hands urging you to carry on, thus lulling you into a false belief that it is indeed the default setting. A nice way to set you up for the trap the next time round.

In fact, in no traffic junction can one find all the lights working. In an intersection near my house, when approaching the signal from the east, the green light doesn’t work, so absence of red light means “go”. When approaching from the south, the red light doesn’t work, so absence of green light means ‘stop’. As I cross that intersection frequently I know the protocol, but there are many who don’t. So, much confusion is caused. And, it’s been this way for months, though many of us have complained many times. It’s an excellent hunting ground for the prowling cops.

Unclear rules or ambiguity in law is the main cause for corruption. Law-enforcers can apply their own interpretation and trap the unwary citizens. Soon, some of the citizens learn to outsmart the system and to remain vigilant while breaking the rules. Dubious methods employed by the law-makers and dishonourable survival techniques used by the followers create a vicious cycle.

Similar dishonourable methods are to be seen in all laws- income tax, commercial taxes, electricity rules, you name it. Wrong and exaggerated claims are made by the departments ( the tone of the notice will imply that you are a dangerous criminal who deserves to be imprisoned) and the assessees will find some dishonourable method to settle the claim, even when they know that they’ve done nothing illegal.

If we need to clean up our society, we should start with the traffic signs first, and then move on to larger things.

Expunge that from memory

2012-01-07T17:45:00.000+05:30

If you were given the option to selectively eliminate or minimise the impact of unpleasant memories from your mind, would you go for it?

Well, it’s not in the realm of science fiction. Neuroscientists are currently researching the possibility. As this article explains,

The first speculative steps are now being taken in an attempt to develop techniques of what is being called “therapeutic forgetting.” Military veterans suffering from PTSD are currently serving as subjects in research projects on using propranolol to mitigate the effects of wartime trauma…. In addition to the work with veterans, there have been pilot studies with civilians in emergency rooms. In 2002, psychiatrist Roger Pitman of Harvard took a group of 31 volunteers from the emergency rooms at Massachusetts General Hospital, all people who had suffered some traumatic event, and for 10 days treated some with a placebo and the rest with propranolol [a beta blocker]. Those who received propranolol later had no stressful physical response to reminders of the original trauma, while almost half of the others did.”

Obviously, there are those who argue that there are grave risks in tinkering with human memory. The American Council of Bioethics, felt that editing memories could “disconnect people from reality or their true selves. While it did not give a definition of “selfhood,” it did give examples of how such techniques could warp us by “falsifying our perception and understanding of the world.” The potential technique “risks making shameful acts seem less shameful, or terrible acts less terrible, than they really are.”

Anyway, this can make an excellent theme for several B/K/T/Molywood films. Actually this is an old theme for them, as several movies in the “70s and ‘80s used ‘amnesia’ to good effect in their stories. The stories can be revived again and a new scientific spin injected. The heroine is witness to a murder scene. The culprits grab her and quickly operate on her brain or inject propranolol whatever to remove the piece of memory that has just lodged itself…..

Cardus on Cricket

2012-01-07T16:38:00.000+05:30

Neville Cardus wrote this in an essay in 1932.

Cricket is a capricious blend of elements, static and dynamic, sensational and somnolent. You can never take your eyes away from a cricket match for fear of missing a crisis. For hours it will proceed to a rhythm as lazy as the rhythm of an airless day. Then we stretch ourselves on deck chairs and smoke our pipes and talk of a number of things- the old ‘uns insisting that in their time batsmen used to hit the ball. A sudden bad stroke, a good ball, a marvelous catch, and the crowd is awake; a bolt has been hurled into our midst from a clear sky. When cricket burns a dull slow fire it needs only a single swift wind of circumstance to set everything into a blaze that consumes nerves and senses. In no other game do events of import hang so bodefully on a single act. In no other game does one little mistake lead to mischief so irreparable You get another chance at football if you foozle a nick; but Hobbs in all his majesty must pass out of the scene for hours if for a second he should fall into the error that hedges all mortal activitiy. Many a great match has been lost by a missed catch; terrible are the emotions of long-on when the ball is driven high towards him- and he waits for it- alone in the world- and the crowd roars and somebody cries out, “E’ll miss it- ‘e’ll miss it”.

The laws of cricket tell of the English love of compromise between a particular freedom and a general orderliness, or legality. Macdonald’s best break-back is rendered null and void if he should let his right foot stray merely an inch over the crease as he wheels his arm. Law and order as represented at cricket by the umpires in their magisterial coats (in England it is to be hoped that these coats will never be worn as short as umpires wear them in Australia, much to the loss of that dignity which should always invest dispensers of justice). And in England umpires are seldom mobbed or treated with contumely which is the lot of our football referee. If everything else in this nation of ours were lost but cricket- her Constitution and the laws of England of Lord Halsbury- it would be possible to reconstruct from the theory and the practice of cricket all the eternal Englishness which has gone to the establishment of that Constitution and the laws aforesaid.

From: Cardus on Cricket.

Where's Part-2 of the story?

2012-01-07T10:49:00.000+05:30

News items usually come in pairs. For instance, if there is a story on a terrorist attack, there will be a complementary item which will say, “PM condemns the incident”. A report that “Cyclone Thane threatens the coast of TN” will have an accompanying “Fisherman have been advised not to venture into the sea” report. Stories on “100 people killed in hooch tragedy or 20 people drowned in boat capsize” have as an adjunct a report that “CM announces ex-gratia payment of Rs 1 lakh to the kith and kin of the deceased.

I suspect that these are automatically generated by the computer at newspaper offices without any human intervention whatsoever.

The reader or the listener is conditioned to getting these stories in pairs. You read out the first part of the story and he can complete the second part. And, if by chance, the second part of the story is not reported, there is a sense that something is missing- as was evident from this incident.

A landing on a footbridge in Chennai gave way yesterday, injuring 4 persons. One of them, Yuvaraj, was admitted in a hospital and this is what he had to say when media persons met him later :

“It has been several hours since the incident took place and we have not received any information on compensation or ex gratia until now,” Mr. Yuvaraj said from his hospital bed at 9.30 p.m.

The man could have vented his ire at the poor state of infrastructure and the lack of maintenance, etc. But what was uppermost on his mind was the ex-gratia rightfully due to him and why the second part of the story had not played out as per script. That’s conditioning, for you.

By the way, in this case, the Govt is obliged to compensate the victims. It was caused due to failure of a Govt dept to maintain a public facility in proper order .I am not sure about the hooch or the boat tragedy, though.

Vacuous and Verbose- 30

2012-01-07T10:22:00.000+05:30

The centre-spread of The Hindu today is dominated by an op-ed by Amartya Sen. The title itself, “The glory and the blemishes of the Indian news media” should warn the reader of Sen’s diabolical intention of unleashing a verbal fussilade. And one look at the piece below the title confirms the worst fears. It must easily run into tens of thousands of words.

Some kind of demon possesses these eminent people when they hold a pen to write or touch a keyboard to type. They just can’t stop showing off their knowledge. Words become long sentences, sentences form long paras, paras run into thousands and pages get consumed.

Fortunately, death-by-boredom rate among readers is low as nobody reads these op-eds.

No idea requires to be elaborated in more than 1000 words. If it stretches beyond that it can only mean one thing. That the writer has made use of some filler text from a Lorem Ipsum generator.

Anyway, as Sen has taken such pains to write his thesis, I have taken the trouble of reading it. Here is my response and counter-argument.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur eu risus nisl. Nulla tortor felis, aliquet a tristique ac, placerat a mi. Nullam sed erat odio. Vestibulum mattis risus lobortis justo vehicula id viverra enim lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus facilisis leo quis dapibus. Nunc non urna libero. Fusce in tincidunt elit. Cras dolor eros, tincidunt in fermentum vel, blandit ac massa.

Aenean velit tortor, dictum sit amet commodo sit amet, sollicitudin quis leo. Duis vel sapien non libero adipiscing ullamcorper. Duis ac mi ut quam interdum cursus. Maecenas gravida nulla sit amet diam fermentum in euismod urna fermentum. Aliquam lectus mi, sollicitudin id mollis consequat, convallis quis quam. Etiam porttitor, nunc et pretium interdum, mauris purus elementum velit, id pretium libero magna et purus. Vestibulum auctor, nibh mollis ultricies faucibus, elit massa consequat dolor, non feugiat risus tortor a orci.

Proin nulla nibh, dignissim congue blandit sit amet, elementum nec magna. Donec nec mi ut sem fermentum lacinia ut ac arcu. Cras semper, nisi id volutpat adipiscing, urna urna varius mauris, ac aliquet quam turpis a orci. Nunc blandit eros orci. Integer auctor posuere nibh, eget porttitor turpis vestibulum vitae. Mauris tempus ante eu risus congue porttitor. Quisque vitae est urna, in euismod lacus. Etiam posuere eleifend purus, non tempus augue porta ac. Suspendisse ut ligula justo. Cras sit amet nunc sed justo pharetra cursus ac quis eros. Donec rhoncus dolor ac lectus aliquet varius.

Vacuous and Verbose-29

2012-01-06T21:36:00.000+05:30

The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Deafness affects 6-7 per cent of the Indian population and is a major problem. Delivering inaugural address at the “64th Annual Conference of Otolaryngologists of India” at M.L.N.Medical College, Allahabad today, he has said that these figures point to the magnitude of the challenge facing the country, and especially the concerned specialists and professionals. He has said that our ENT surgeons can do a lot not only to treat it but to prevent it and we also must make concerted efforts to increase the numbers of ENT specialists and Otolaryngologists to tackle this problem effectively.

The Vice President added: “Noise pollution is the other menace contributing to hearing loss. Today we not only have to deal with environmental noise due to traffic or industry, but also recreational noise ever present in the form of loud music etc”. ( Source)

The VP himself is a soft-spoken man, but only the day before he gave this speech he was conducting the proceedings at the Rajya Sabha, which witnessed some of the noisiest sessions ever. The MPs were screaming collectively at high-octave, high decibel levels, not even bothering to use the microphones. One of the ministers made a noise that reminded me of the barking of a pack of German Shepherds let loose, or Naais ( if you know some Tamil)

The Otalaryngolists (what a fancy name) would do well to fit some silencers on to the throats of the MPs, before turning to the rest of the population to apply their methods.

Be brief and be gone.

2012-01-06T20:58:00.000+05:30

If there is one thing that is more boring than a boring book, it is a boring review of the boring book. I remember seeing some reviews of Amartya Sen’s book, “Argumentative Indian” that were as stretched and verbose as the book itself. It is difficult to outdo Amartya Sen on verbosity, but the reviewers put in valiant efforts.

An article that appeared in The Slate refers to the three rules of book review:

1. The review must tell what the book is about.

2. The review must tell what the book's author says about that thing the book is about.

3. The review must tell what the reviewer thinks about what the book's author says about that thing the book is about.

The third rule must not be taken as a licence for the reviewer to present an entire thesis on what he thinks the author is saying. Brevity is the soul of a review.

That’s why I liked this story I came across:

In 1944 a children’s book club sent a volume about penguins to a 10-year-old girl, enclosing a card seeking her opinion.

She wrote, “This book gives me more information about penguins than I care to have.”

American diplomat Hugh Gibson called it the finest piece of literary criticism he had ever read

(Source)

Ostracise hard-working people

2012-01-06T20:22:00.000+05:30

Any successful person- whether a business leader, actor or sportsperson- likes to attribute his or her success to hard work. Nobody likes to admit or create an impression that success happened by chance or a lucky break or due to being around at the right time and in the midst of right circumstances. Mr Narayanamurthy of Infosys was once quoted as saying, “I am the hardest working person I know’. Better to invite sympathy than jealousy, I suppose.

Hard work is a virtue that is over-hyped. If there is a direct correlation between hard work and success, a completely different set of people would have succeeded instead of being stuck where they are.

Yes, hard work may be essential for an enterprise to succeed, but to hold that as responsible for the success is ridiculous. And for us to have hard-workers as role-models is completely wrong. A truly successful person is one who achieves more with less effort, and such a person should be our role model.

All these thoughts occurred to me after I read this 1932 piece by Bertrand Russel, in which he demolishes the myth that work is virtuous:

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached…

I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.

A man who has worked long hours all his life will become bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.

I think I have finally found the philosophy that suits my temperament.

How did Indians compute the lunar eclipse?

2011-12-10T20:33:00.000+05:30

“Memoirs of the various modes according to which the nations of the southern parts of India divide time” published in 1825, carries an explanation of the trigonometric calculations found in the Surya Siddantha.

The author of one of the memoirs ( page 325) combats the then-prevalent assertion among Europeans that Indians had been following certain methods without understanding them, by using the same methods to compute the lunar eclipse of November 1789. Though not wanting to stir a scientific controversy, he still concedes that it was possible that the Indians knew the principles and the theorems long before the Greeks.

The mask of youth

2011-10-15T10:18:00.000+05:30

I am fascinated by this development:

Japanese company REAL-f managed to design the most super realistic 3D face replica that you have ever seen.

The startup offers two versions, a mask type replica and the so-called mannequin type, a replica of the head. For creating these amazing replicas , REAL-f first shoots pictures from different angles of the person who's face will be copied. After that it imprints the image on vinyl chloride resin stretched over a mold.

REAL-f's unique production technology makes sure that even details like the iris and blood vessels are replicated accurately. REAL-f 3D face replica costs US$3,920 with additional copies US $780 each , while the head replica costs US $5,875 with additional copies US $1,960.

I am sure that the mask will be put to use in multiple and ingenious ways. But the biggest market will be from people who are 21 years old. They can make a few dozen replicas of their face and head and, for the rest of their lives, put one on as they keep getting old. They can permanently sport ‘young’ looks, without the need for botox or anti-wrinkling agents. It ‘s a pity that this invention didn’t take place when Simi Garewal was 21 years old.

Saddam's bottom.

2011-10-15T09:56:00.000+05:30

In a post titled, “Movers and shakers of India”, I had wondered why we (Indians) are obsessed with ‘swaying bottoms’. All movie songs involve violent shaking of bottoms and cameras zoom in on these parts so as to appeal to this unique need of the discerning Indian viewer.

That’s why I feel that it will be an Indian who will make the winning bid for an item to be auctioned in London on October 27th. Here is the Al Arabiya News report on the said item:

A bronze buttock from the statue of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 is to be auctioned in Britain, an auction house said Tuesday.

A former soldier from Britain’s elite SAS regiment retrieved the two-foot (0.6-meter) wide piece of history and took it back to Britain shortly after U.S. marines dragged the statue down on live television.

... Auctioneer Charles Hanson called the bronze body part a “piece of modern history” and said he expects it to be sold for at least £10,000 when it goes under the hammer on October 27.

May the best and most deserving Indian win the bid. We couldn’t get the Kohinoor diamonds back. Let’s get Saddam’s bronze buttock as our prize souvenir. It will be a good bargain.

Dasara.

2011-10-01T20:55:00.000+05:30

Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, published in the year 1823, carries an article ( page 79) titled “On the institution and ceremonies of the Hindoo festival of the Dusrah” written by Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B. & K.L.S.in the year 1799, in the form a letter to someone.

In that piece of correspondence, he tries to explain the significance of Dussehra and Durga Puja as narrated to him by some Brahmins.

"A prince named Soorath was expelled from his kingdom by the rakshahs or demons. He for a long time wandered about in the woods, and happening to meet with a bankrupt merchant, they proceeded to relate to a hermit their misfortunes. This holy man gave the two unfortunate wanderers a long discourse on the vicissitudes of fortune, all of which he traced to Yoga Maya. The prince asking who she was, ‘She is’ said the recluse, 'the great goddess in whom are immersed the powers of creation, preservation, and destruction ; in other words, she is the eternal and illusive principle, she takes all shapes in order to enable her to destroy the demons, and protect the good and peaceable inhabitants of this earth.

"'In former days (continued the hermit), when the world was covered with water, and Vishnoo the omnipotent reposed on the great serpent Andi-Shashah (Ananta), two demons arose from the wax or dirt (myle) of his ears. They attempted to murder Brahmah, who called upon Yoga Nedra: this goddess, who is described as a personification of abstraction and delusive sleep (and ono of whose titles is the Great Darkness), instantly removed her influence from Vishnoo; who, seizing his chackra or discus, struck off at one blow the heads of the two demons, Mudh and Kythab, who had carried on a war against the gods for 5000 years.

After the death of Mudh and Kythab, Mheisasoor, or Buffalo-shaped (called the demon of vice), waged a successful war against the gods for 1000 years. Indra, Sooray, Cbandra, Agnee, Vayoo, Varoon, Pavana Kooverah, Yama, and the whole conclave of deities, were so distressed by the superior force of this terrible enemy, that they made their common complaint to Brahmah; this god proceeded with them to the celestial throne of the all-powerful Vishnoo, who was enraged at the tale of their sufferings.

His eyes, flaming like the fiery eyes of Siva, darted irradiant glances, which mixing with those proceeding at the same time from the eyes and bodies of the other incensed gods, combined to form a female of exquisite beauty, in whom the goddess of sleep predominated. The newly created goddess (Doorga) was a composition of all the deities who aided in her formation: from Siva she acquired her majestic head and flowing hair; from Vishnoo her arms and spirit; from Indra her breasts; her emanations from Varoona; Pavana gave her legs and waist; Brahmah her feet; her thumbs were from Sooraya; her nose from Kooverah; her fingers from Vayoo; Agnee gave her a third eye, and from the other gods she derived her remaining features; but, above all, she partook most of the qualities of Siva, who gave her his trisool, or trident, and infused all his fire into her third eye.

"' The armour and ornaments of this goddess were as generously bestowed as her qualities: the god of the winds gave her a bow and arrows ; Indra his thunderbolt; the god of the infernal regions his danda, or mace, and sword; Brahmah bestowed on her the cammundalum, or drinking skull; the Milky Ocean gave her a necklace of pearls; Viswakarman, the artificer of the gods, presented her jewels; Sumoodra, or the sea, several precious stones, and some offensive weapons; for her conveyance, Mount Hima gave her a lion; Kooverah (Plutus) bestowed on her a rich and beautiful drinking-cup; and the great serpent, Andishasha, a garland of snakes. Besides these, every god, according to his means, presented her with various gifts.

Thus armed and ornamented, the goddess sallied forth to fulfill her high destiny. She soon met with Mheisasoor, and a terrible conflict ensued. Mounted on a lion, she slew immense numbers of his demons ; but her followers fell in crowds before the paws, tail, and horns of the buffalo god. At length the goddess and the demon of vice encountered each other. Dreadful was the conflict! As Doorga aimed a terrible blow at him, the buffalo took a human form, in which he was slain, but reappeared in that of an elephant. He next assumed the shape of a lion, and then his original body of a buffalo.

The goddess, oppressed with heat and thirst, and fainting with fatigue, indulged in a draught of wine, exclaiming to her enemy, who shouted victory, "O Mheisasoor! roar as loud as you may till my cup is finished." Having drunk, her strength was redoubled; she seized her sword, and with one blow severed from his body the head of the demon. The dewtas, or minor deities, who had been spectators of the wondrous strife, sung aloud the praises of the goddess Doorga. In her next incarnation she also destroyed the two great malignant demons, Sambha and Nesumbhe. This was, however, in another avatarom, and must not be confounded with the appearance of the mother of nature, as Doorga, or virtue, for the destruction of Mheisasoor, or vice, as these were her acts as Kali, Chamunda, in her inferior manifestations as an infernal goddess.

In her combat with the giants, who were impelled by their evil spirits to action, she appeared with a countenance inspiring terror, and her eyes red, glaring with blood; she was wrapped in an elephant's hide, and, not satisfied with the usual means of destruction, she grasped men, elephants, and horses, with her hands, and swallowed them up like grains of barley!!! Kali was, however, in this action severely pressed by the strength and increasing number of her enemies; but the gods who watched the conflict sent her seasonable aid. Sacred birds, animals, and shells conveyed her female allies (for they were all of that sex) to the field.

The war, after some terrible battles, in which the goddess gave astonishing proofs of her courage and prowess, terminated by her slaying the two demons, Sumbha and Nisumbha, and eradicating the race of rakhush, or demons, from the earth. The being who had conferred on mankind this great benefit was called the Omnipotent, and was worshipped under various names. But some reformed sects of Hindoos, making objections (and apparently not without reason) to her sanguinary proceedings, refuse adoration to Budra Kali, and the Vishnoo Hindoos celebrate this festival in the name of Suruswatee and Lachmee, the wives of Vishnoo and Brahmah, and goddesses of wisdom and of wealth, who, though they had been allies of Kali, were not polluted, like her, by drinking blood, After this war Kali retired to a mountain, but foretold her return to punish evil spirits, which would in her absence reappear. On her departure, however, the goddess enjoined her votaries, when they commemorated her victories, to represent her with red teeth, and to offer her red flowers. They were also commanded to offer prayers to her on certain days, which they were told would propitiate her favour, save them from their enemies, and secure to them health, wealth, and good fortune.

This is the substance of what the holy man related to the wandering prince, Sooradha, or Soorut; who in consequence devoted himself in sincerity of heart to prayer at the shrine of Doorga. He was rewarded by becoming in another birth Saverna Menoot, and it was during the period in which he governed the world that the sage Makundrah related these wonders to the Prince Jayanee. The latter, on hearing the narration, instituted the festival in question, and fixed the dates for its observance agreeably to those named by the goddess, as the best to obtain her aid and favour. Future ages have continued to solemnize this festival by prayer, festivities, gymnastic exercises, and every kind of warlike sport.

Not that we need to learn the story from the British, but the point to be noted is that they made elaborate effort to understand the customs and traditions in India, and recorded all that they had heard or understood. Sometimes, they heaped scorn on the heathen practices and paganism of the natives, but quite often they recorded their observations dispassionately.

The tough little bird.

2011-09-29T20:14:00.000+05:30

Robert Krulwich has a great post on the Bar-tailed Godwit.

They are the only birds known to fly more than 7,000 miles nonstop, that means no food breaks, no water breaks, no sleep breaks, no pausing, just pushing through cyclones, storms, headwinds, flappity flap, flap for days and nights- and this is their championship season. In September and October, they leave Alaska, head straight for the ocean. Though they are land birds, and cannot fish or rest on the sea, they will cross most of the Pacific Ocean, and fly all the way to New Zealand. Many of them are young, and have never done this before.

Every year, between August and November, these birds wait for the cyclonic storms that generate favourable wind for southward departure. “Once they hit mid-passage, equatorial breezes slow and the bird has to beat his or her way south without much help. They burn half their body weight as they fly, and sleep, bird-style, by shutting down one side of the brain at a time. Past the equator, they bump into the southeasterly trade, which is the runner's equivalent of an uphill slog, pushing them west, so they have to navigate to keep on course.”

What an amazing feat! Why does this bird do this long-distance flying non-stop? What is the purpose of this whole exercise? A comment on the article explains “ If it is accustomed to a diet of a certain type and surroundings of a certain temperature and form that is nearly polar, it is unlikely to achieve this other than by traveling to nearly the opposite pole”.

What a tough little bird!

Three men and a baby

2011-09-29T10:46:00.000+05:30

In the film, “Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell,” that was a hit in the ‘60s, an Italian woman (played by Gina Lollobrigida) sleeps with three American soldiers in the course of ten days, during the war. By the time she discovers she is pregnant, all three of them move back to the US. Not sure who is the father, she decides to get all three to support ‘his’ daughter. And all three keep remitting money to her.

I remember laughing quite a bit at the many comical situations in the movie.

But, as they say, life can be more dramatic than anything that a fiction writer can possibly imagine. As this news story in the Indian Express today illustrates:

The seven-year-old may not have a dad, but in the space meant for ‘father’s name’ on his birth certificate, there are three names — of the three men who allegedly raped his mother when she was 15.

…in the records of the primary school where the child studies, the ‘father’s name’ column has been kept blank. The extraordinary entry on his birth certificate came to light when the child was brought for admission to the school.

The panchayat that issued the birth certificate said they put the names of the three accused on it as the grandfather had told them one of them was the child’s father.

I can’t see anything funny in the movie, “ Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell” any more.

Lady Divine, would you like some wine?

2011-09-17T21:20:00.001+05:30

Christopher Hitchens, in an article three years back, writes about the obnoxious practice of restaurants trying to speed up the consumption of expensive wine by pouring it out into glasses that are still not empty.

The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of .. bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle. Indeed, so dulled have we become to the shame and disgrace of all this that I have actually seen waiters, having broken into the private conversation and emptied the flagon, ask insolently whether they should now bring another one. Imagine this same tactic being applied to the food

Once at a 5-star restaurant, I was playing host to a team from Finland. The steward, undermining my prerogative as the host, went directly to one of the ladies and asked her if she would like some wine and she said ‘yes, maybe some red wine”. The next thing I know he brings up a bottle of expensive wine, asks her if it is ok and pours it into her glass and offers some to the others too. After an hour or so, when food had been ordered, he goes again to the same lady and asks if she would like ‘some more red wine’. She says ok, and he opens up another bottle and pours out the wine.

At this point I was fuming. I excused myself from the table, went across to the manager and asked him how much the bottle of wine cost. Rs 6000 + taxes, he said. I blasted the hell out of him and said that the steward had no business to take the order directly from a guest and expect me to pay up. A compromise was reached that I would pay for only one of the bottles. I went out kicking and ranting and swore that I’ll never go there again.

Another common trick is to place some fancy foreign brand of mineral water (without the price tag of Rs 400) on the table and casually ask the foreign visitor if they would like some mineral water. Quite often, the Indian ‘host’ would feel awkward to stop this ‘transaction’ and end up paying good money for nothing.

If you must go these fancy restaurants, never forget the rule: Caveat emptor. And don’t hesitate to recommend an Indian red wine to a foreign guest.

Mr. Walker.

2011-08-28T20:43:00.000+05:30

While in Kenya last week on an official trip, I drove down from Nairobi to a small town called Magati, past the Rift Valley. I was headed to a site that had been identified for a project, which involved participation of the local community. The site was a few kilometers away from a point ahead of Mogati on the highway.

A colleague from Nairobi who was accompanying me said that an ‘elder’ from the local community would like to meet us. Should we meet him at Mogati or should we request him to come straight to the site, he wanted to know. Meeting him at the site at 2 pm would be more convenient, I said, and would save us some time.

As we reached the point that would lead us to the site, we were informed that the approach road could not be accessed as a river was overflowing due to heavy rains the previous day. A local person said he could take us to the site on a different route and we decided to use his services.

We got off the highway into a muddy road, which after 500m led us to a thick forest. The guide expertly navigated us through the trees on narrow dirt tracks. How he knew the general direction or where to turn, I couldn’t figure out as all trees looked the same to me. I had assumed that this was going to be a short drive, but found the journey stretching interminably. At one point, the jeep got stuck in the slush, and was extricated with some difficulty and some clever maneuvers from the driver.

We reached the spot after covering 22 km in slightly more than 2 hours. It was 4 pm.

The village elder was there, all alone and waiting for us. He had reached the spot at 2 pm as scheduled.

How did he get there, I asked my local guide. He had walked. Was there a shorter route for walking? No, he said, the old man had to take the same route that we had taken. As soon as he was informed that he had to meet us at the site, he had started walking in that direction, armed with a stick. Aware of the swollen river, he set out on the longer route that we later took. He walked the entire 20 km and reached the place on time. How long did it take him to cover the distance? Oh, maybe 2.5 to 3 hours, replied my local guide, nonchalantly.

We asked the old man to get into the jeep and started our way back on the same route. I certainly wanted to get back to the highway before it was dark. After 5 km or so, our jeep got stuck in the mud again and simply refused to budge, either forward or in reverse. If we had to walk the remainder of the distance, there was no way we were going to make it out of that jungle before it got dark.

As I was worrying myself with thoughts of giant mosquitoes, tse tse flies and snakes, I saw the old man pulling down some branches from a tree. He plucked out the leaves and heaped them in a pile near the tyres on the rear wheel of the jeep. Using that as leverage, the driver managed to pull the jeep out a few metres behind, then picked up full power and drove it past the slush.

What a man!

Not far from the spot we visited is the hilly region surrounding the Rift Valley, which has produced so many marathon runners and Olympic medalists in long-distance events. What is special about the region, many have wondered. Some have attributed it to the lung-capacity of the runners developed due to exercising in the high-altitude region. Some explanations point to the ‘birdlike legs”. And some to the fact that, historically, the men of the Kalenjin tribe had to move fast and over long distances to round up cattle, as those with the most number of cows managed to garner more wives.

I wonder how many cows and how many wives the old man I met has.

Chennai Chunam

2011-08-19T21:47:00.000+05:30

Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History, Arts and Miscellaneous literature, by James Anderson, LLD was published in April 1799.

James Anderson was a distinguished personality who was based in Chennai and whose botanical garden in the city was world-famous. The suffix to his name, apart from the LLD, reads

“FRS. and FSA.E . Honourary member of the Society of Arts, Agriculture, Sec. Bath; of the Philosophical Society, Manchester; of the Agricultural Society, Altringham ; of the Philosophical So-ciety, Newcastle; of the Society for promoting Natural History, London, of the Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Belles Lettres, Dijon; of the Royal Society of Agriculture, St. Petersburg; of the Royal Economical Society, Berlin; of the Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; correspondent member of the Royal Society of Agriculturet Paris; and Author of several performances.”

Here, he describes the virtues of ‘chunam’- or limestone used as cementing material in India, and recommends it for use in England as well.

No cement for building hath as yet been discovered in Europe that can be compared with the fine Chunam of India for closeness, toughness, durability, and beauty. It sets as quickly as stucco, and at the same time acquires a hardness greatly superior to our best lime mortar, and is alike proper for works under water, as for those that are exposed to the air; so that it supersedes the use alike of gypsum and of puzzuolana, or terras.

It can be made here at all times, only that, during the monsoon or rainy season, it does not dry so soon, and causes more trouble to the workmen; I do not see therefore why it might not be done in England; and if houses were built in England as in India, there never would be the smallest danger from fire; for whatever accident might happen to the furniture, scarce any of our houses here can be injured: the walls are all of brick and mortar, and when fine-chunamed are exceedingly beautiful; as any colour, or variety of colours, may be given to it.

The wood of the doors and windows are never so much connected with it as to cause any danger: our roofs are equally secure, and probably the strongest and most durable in the world, being with difficulty broke down; the whole forming a solid mass, and the mortar harder than the brick. If a room does not exceed twenty-five or thirty feel breadth, large solid beams of teak (tectonia grandis), of about sixteen or eighteen inches square, are laid across from wall to wall; and at the distance of twelve or fourteen feet asunder. Joists of about seven inches depth and four inches breadth are then laid across the beams about a foot asunder.

When these are all properly fitted, and the wall all around raised to a level with them, the bricklayers begin at one corner, and go on diagonally to the other with great quickness, placing the bricks On their edge and applying them close to one another, after having covered their surfaces well with mortar mixed with a considerable proportion of jaggary, or coarse sugar, and also the top, on which they lay it thick. The workmen sit upon moveable planks laid across the joists. The under surface has a curious appearance, from the bricks seeming to have no support.

It is astonishing how few bricks thus jammed fall down, although I have seen terraces made when rain was falling very heavy, and running through in all parts as through a sieve; and those are reckoned strongest that are built in the wet weather, as there is less danger of vacuities than in the dry season, from the quick drying of the chunam.

He will be missed

2011-08-17T21:34:00.000+05:30

While paying her last respects to Shammi Kapoor who passed away last week, actress Madhuri Dixit was quoted as saying "He was a very fine actor and will truly be missed,”

Considering that Shammi Kapoor had been bed-ridden for many years, and had not acted for many more, that statement makes no sense. His ‘acting’ would have been missed- if at all-after his retirement. Death cannot be cited as the reason for his not acting. If he had continued to live on, he was unlikely to get back to his swashbuckling not-to-be-missed roles.

The ‘will-be-missed’ phrase is so clichéd and when used in the passive voice rings completely insincere. Will be missed by who? When in the future? How long?

Yet, I realized that bereavement evokes irrational responses.

Returning home today after attending the funeral of a cousin, I found myself reminiscing about the days, decades back, when we spent hours playing cricket or badminton or just shared some jokes. Yes, I am certainly going to miss him, I grieved.

This cousin was not snatched away at an early age. He had been ailing for some time, and the last instance both of us played cricket or badminton together was 25 years back. Had he not died today, would we have got back to playing those games? Impossible. Would we have got back to our exchange of jokes? Sadly, no. He had ceased to be a sparkling conversationalist, some years back. So, what is it that his death has caused me to miss afresh? What is it that I am deprived of now that I wasn’t a week back?

I don’t know.

But, at least, I used the cliché in its active voice.

Husband- the visible God.

2011-08-15T16:52:00.000+05:30

In a post dated October 2005 and titled, “Dark thoughts of a closet MCP”, I had imagined the mind of a chauvinistic male. The post began this way:

You should have seen the fuss that my wife made and the tantrums that she threw up when I woke her from an afternoon siesta yesterday and asked for a cup of coffee!

Why she should go ballistic over such a simple request, I could never fathom. It would have taken her hardly a couple of minutes to warm the milk in the gas stove, mix the instant coffee and sugar and serve it to me, along with some chocolate biscuits, as I was on my recliner chair reading a book. Nothing complicated about it. Minimum physical labour involved.

It is not as if she had to slog it out like my multi-tasking grandmother who had to wake up at 3 am everyday, have a cold dip in the Cauvery (cleverly dodging the lurking crocodiles), finish her pooja, run after the cows, pin them down, milk them herself, then grind the coffee seeds, roast them, prepare the decoction, and get the steaming coffee ready for my grandfather at 5 am sharp, before he commenced his morning ablutions. All this, while she continued to prolifically deliver several babies a year.

I thought I was using my humourist’s licence to freely exaggerate and to sound funny in the process.

Last night, while watching a debate on a Tamil channel, I realized how wrong I had been. I had not only ‘not exaggerated’ (pardon the double negative) but had not known that many women actually liked their male partners to be completely domineering and demanding. This was a complete revelation to me.

This debate was between two groups of women, with one group arguing that husbands were ‘visible Gods” who needed to be served and obeyed unquestioningly and the other group defending the view that the husband was a friend in an equal partnership.

That such debates should happen at all in this age is a reflection of our society. The participants were well-educated (in the conventional sense of the word) and I heard one of them – belonging to the group that venerated husbands- say that she held an MBA diploma and that it did not make any difference to her convictions. She revealed that as soon as her husband came home from work, she insisted on removing his shoes and socks not just because she felt she ought to, but she enjoyed doing it. None of the women in the ‘husband is God” group attributed the behaviour to ‘traditional values”. All of them said they actually liked placing their husbands on a pedestal and being as obsequious as they could.

The thought did cross my mind that perhaps this was a stage-managed debate. If so, the women were exceptionally good actors.

Maybe this was a freakish group rounded up by the TV studio to make the show livelier? No, I don’t think so. I suspect that this was a good sampling size, one that is representative of a pan-Indian society,

It is pointless to talk about ‘subjugation of women’ when there are educated women still around, who volunteer to be slaves and derive masochistic enjoyment while being treated thus.

Gesundheiit

2011-07-20T10:11:00.001+05:30

Caught in the humdrum of life, we dismiss many things as ‘routine’ or ‘mundane’. Because of this tendency to trivialize, many important things pass us by, unnoticed.

Take the simple matter of sneezing. Do you remember when you sneezed last? Why? Where? What was the intensity? How many sneezes at a time?

Shame on you, if you can’t recall.

A blogger has shown us the way. Starting from June 2007, he has sneezed 2590 times and he has recorded details of each one of them in a separate post. Where was he when the sneeze happened? Was it a weak one, moderate or strong? What activity was he engaged in at that precise moment? For example, his entry # 2588 reads “Kitchen; Strong; Transferring falafel(s) into a Tupperware”.

He follows precise rules. All sneezes are timed and dated. All times are GMT. Avoids confusion when he has to record a sneeze that has happened when he is abroad. Also, he might sneeze on one side of the International Date Line, then cross the International Date Line, and then sneeze again. Using local time, the second sneeze would have occurred the day before the first sneeze, generating confusing and nonsensical data.

The strength of the sneeze is recorded as “Mild, Moderate, Moderate to strong, Strong, Very strong or Very mild”. However, he cautions scientists that these are completely subjective impressions, and almost certainly not consistent, or independently verifiable. And Seismologists to please note that this scale is non-exponential.

Why does he document his sneezes? He explains,

I started counting my sneezes on 12 July 2007. What started out as a little conceptual art joke, a playful satire of the “blogosphere”, and a mock scream against the futility and emptiness of modern life, turned into something more intriguing.

Counting my sneezes, and documenting the time and place of each sneeze, has revealed curious regularities in the way I live my life. For example, it has revealed how much time I spend in the ‘Office/spare bedroom”, in front of a computer. It is interesting to note how much time I spend in this place, and compare it with how little I manage to get done.

Although sneezes are sufficiently unpredictable and involuntary, the act of counting them offers an interesting new take on the old theoretical physics line about events being affected by the process of observation. Sneezecount makes each sneeze matter. It is no longer possible just to blow one out and forget about it . Now that sneezes had a name, an identity.

I am very impressed. I am thinking of doing something on these lines, to bring a sense of purpose to my life.

Vacuous and Verbose-28

2011-07-09T13:51:00.000+05:30

Would you buy the book based on this review?

The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari released a book entitled “Man’s fate & God’s choice” written by Shri Bhimeswara Challa at a function here today. Addressing on the occasion, Shri Ansari said that the book is an intellectual journey in a classical sense. Congratulating the author for such a valuable book he said that yhe book addresses a perennial theme- the man, his environment and his creature.

The book posits that any betterment in human behaviour needs a cathartic change at the deepest levels. That requires diluting the dominance of the mind and reawakening the long-dormant intelligence of the human heart. To meet that challenge, we need minimum numbers, a 'critical mass' to create self-sustained momentum for transformation through consciousness change. And every single human of this generation should behave in such a way that he or she is that single person whose transformation could make the decisive species-scale difference. The book offers a menu of ideas and an agenda of action.

The Tirunelveli Brahmin.

2011-07-05T21:42:00.001+05:30

A Christian Missionary touring South India, in the year 1842, provides this description of the Tirunelveli Brahmin, which I found quite amusing. ( source) (page 46)

The Bramins here… assume a haughtiness of air, which is rarely seen in the neighbourhood of Madras.

They consider themselves exalted so far above other human beings, as to lose sight of all distinctions of rank in those below them; and they hold all, including Europeans, in equal contempt. If you meet a Bramin in the road, and ask the way to any place, he will very seldom condescend to speak, and yet, with true native courtesy, he will never rudely pass you by; he will stop and point with his finger to the right direction. If you further inquire of him the distance, he will hold up his fingers, according to the number of miles, and if you still ask if the road is straight or winding, will draw his finger through the air to mark the various turnings; and when he has satisfied all your inquiries, will again move on in perfect silence.

Indian architecture, circa 1850

2011-07-05T21:21:00.000+05:30

The Journal of the Society of Arts, Britain, 1870, reproduces a speech delivered by Lord Napier on the subject of ‘aesthetics’ in design of buildings. He deplores the tendency of ‘natives’ to copy European design using material not compatible with Indian conditions. He urges the use of indigenous material that are available in abundance and that are perfectly suitable. He advises the local people not to be enamoured of the modern architect and to follow the instinct of the maistry form the mofussil area who has preserved the traditions of the forefathers. An extract. ( read full speech here)

If the rules concerning material which are here enunciated are correct, I need scarcely say that they are in every respect so violated in India as to rouse the regret and condemnation of' all reasonable critic. Madras is the epitome of every error that an architect can commit with reference to material.

Look at the railway station, the High Court, the Custom-house, the sea front of the fort buildings, all discovering the same shameful condition of chronic disfigurement and decay; all blistered, discoloured, and crumbling, the victims of an unequal strife between the element and stucco. Yet at no great distance, there are inexhaustible supplies, the finest stone, and the very soil beneath our feet teems with clay, which only requires the skilful exercise of a familiar art to yield qualities of brick and terracotta, competent to resist the attacks of the blast and the spray forever.

The Presidency College and the Sailors' House are the first attempts to build in an honest manner with undisguised materials, but the act of preparing them is not attained in a day, and I fear that we can scarcely regard these buildings otherwise than as the forerunners of a better era.

It is possible that I may be speaking in the presence of some native gentleman who has made a fortune by the exportation of cotton, and who is about to build a new house. The case is not common in Madras, but it is not incredible. If there be such a one here, I beseech him to pause before he sanctions the modern "Muster" which I mentally see before me. I say to him, 'Discharge your Madras architect, and take a maistry from some remote part of the Mofussil, where the traditions of the fathers are still preserved. Determine to have a national house, but such a house as an Indian gentleman should inhabit under an honest government, in an age of peace, justice, and learning, a house in which the light of heaven, and reason, and freedom can penetrate.

Adhere in general to the ancient plan, and especially to the court and colonnade; collect all the best models and patterns of native mouldings and sculpture; use brick of the finest quality from tho School of Arts for the exposed surfaces; employ timber for the pillars within, Cuddapah stone for the pillars without, glazed tiles for the floors; make a liberal use of ornamental stucco and painting where the rain cannot penetrate; fill the unglazed apertures with the beautiful tracery of which Indian art offers an unrivalled variety. For glazed windows, authentic models may be wanting; but they can be treated in the spirit of the style ; and the government architect can show you how.

Get all your carpets from Vellore, and your stuffs from Madura and Tanjore. Where the Hindoo patterns fail you, borrow from the Mussulmans. Make a sparing use of European furniture, and endeavour to harmonise it with the native forms. But in doing this, make everything lofty, light, bright, spacious, and accessible.

Theo task would not be easy, but it can be done; and every effort would be better than that which preceded it.

Endeavour to realise this, that the Indian arts which you are at this moment casting away here, are at this moment, in London and Paris, an object of inquiry and study to the most learned and cultivated minds. Do not imagine that you are required to do anything unprecedented. All I ask you is to do has been done in Europe itself. In Europe, the ancient national arts were, for a couple of centuries, as much forgotten and despised by us as the ancient national arts of India are now forgotten and despised by you. You have hitherto imitated our errors, I call upon you to imitate us in correcting them

Advice is relevent even today, don't you think?

The Durable Village

2011-07-05T20:37:00.000+05:30

South Indian Sketches, written in 1842, is a compilation of letters from a Christian Missionary, S.Tucker, (who is touring India), to a young friend, Lucy based in England.

Here, Tucker gives a lovely description of a typical village in India and explains how it is vastly different from the villages of England.

If you, my dear Lucy, know as little of the internal state of India as I have done till lately, you will have the same confused and incorrect idea of an Indian village as I used to have, and will take it for granted that it is much like our own; with a population more or less fluctuating, and subject to no other authority than the general laws of the land, or the peculiar regulations of the district in which it is situated.

But the villages in India are very different in these respects from ours. They are all little separate "republics, having everything they can want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relation. They seem to last where nothing else lasts.

Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindoo, Patan, Mogul, Mahratta, Sik, English, are all masters in turn; but the village community remains the same. In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves; a hostile army passes through the country; the village communities collect their cattle within their walls, and let the enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be directed against themselves, and the force employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly villages at a distance; but when the storm has passed over, they return and resume their occupations. If a country remains for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the villages cannot be inhabited, the scattered villagers, nevertheless, return when the power of peaceable possession revives.

A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the places of their fathers; the same site for the village, the same position for the houses, the same lands will be re-occupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when, the village was depopulated; and it is not a trifling matter that will drive them out, for they will often maintain their post through times of disturbance and convulsion, and acquire strength sufficient to resist pillage and oppression with success.

This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India, through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered, and is in a high degree conducive to their happiness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence.

The boundaries of their lands are accurately defined and jealously guarded under the superintendence of the headman, who is the chief person in each village, and whose business it is to make arrangements with the government for the revenue—to apportion the payment of it among the villagers—to let such lands as have no fixed tenants—to settle disputes or refer them to higher authorities,—and, in short, to perform all the duties of a municipal governor.

The office is hereditary, and he is the representative of the head of the first family who settled in the village. Sometimes there are several headmen, arising probably from more than one family having originally settled in it. The headman is assisted by different officers—the accountant, the watchman, the money-changer, the priest, the astrologer (who is sometimes the schoolmaster), the smith, carpenter, barber,potter, minstrel, all of whom are part of the regular village establishment, and are supported by the community. They have existed (and apparently unaltered) since the time of Menu.

There is in all the public works and institutions of India, a character of largeness, whether in number, size, or durability, to which we have no parallel in our smaller and comparatively modern countries; and one might almost fancy that the height of the mountains, the vastness of the forests, and the grandeur of the general scenery had, in times past, communicated their influence to the native mind.

Every village has its tanks, smaller or larger according to circumstances, but always sufficient to contain an ample supply of water for general use; and you may judge of the scale on which these works are sometimes carried on, when I tell you that in the collectorate of South Arcot, a considerable extent of country is watered by the tank, or rather artificial lake of Veeranum, twenty-five miles in circumference, into which the waters of the Coleroon are conducted.

Wanted: An authoritarian rule

2011-06-30T22:55:00.002+05:30

In one of his lectures, Francis Fukuyuma summed up “Asian values” ( as popularized by leaders like Lee Kuan Yew) as “a system in which people are born not with rights but with duties to a series of hierarchically-arranged authorities, beginning with the family and extending all the way up to the state and emperor. In this world, there is no concept of the individual and individual rights; duties are not derived from rights as they are in Western liberal thought."

“Indian values’ too have the same elements. In an essay titled. “Authority and Identity in India”, T.G.Vaidyanathan, an English professor and regular columnist in The Hindu in the 80s and 90s, showed that 'in the Indian ethos, the guru-sishya relationship is the paradigm of all relationships. Whether it is the relationship of a devotee to his creator, of a servant to his master, of a friend to friend, of lover to beloved, of parents to children, and even of enemies to each other.'

Few principles, he says, are exempt from the influence of the guru principle, including games. In fact, to be Indian means to respect authority- all the way down the line. It is not surprising, concluded Vaidyanathan that for many Indians insecurity is nearly always a consequence of the withdrawal of external authority but never of its presence.

So, counter-intuitive as it may sound, a western system of constitutional democracy that we adopted after independence and that promised us freedom and liberties, may have been completely incompatible with our genetic make-up. To function as a cohesive nation, perhaps,we need the reassuring force of an authoritarian rule. Denied the guru-sishya framework that is hardwired in our brains, we tend to get disoriented, undisciplined and to slip into complete chaos. We simply need an 'authority' to submit to. Without a teacher watching over us in the classroom, there is mayhem. Without a traffic cop around, we will just not bother to stop our vehicles when the signal turns red. "Shame of punishment if caught' rather an 'innate sense of guilt in breaking rules" is what shapes our behaviour.

Would a more authoritarian system have worked better for us? One that took away a share of our individual rights but, as a trade-off, ensured a more disciplined, orderly society? Would the Singapore model work in a large country like ours?

This question need not be just a hypothetical one. Results of an experiment performed in India are available to corroborate the theory. I am talking about the Emergency period from 1975-1977.

The imposition of the Emergency was based on dubious arguments, but few would dispute that it resulted in a period of absolute calm. Just four months after the Emergency was imposed, Time magazine would call it a ‘needed shock” and report :

These days India is engrossed in a frenzied campaign to encourage discipline, punctuality, cleanliness, courtesy. Placards appear everywhere, some of whose messages of inspiration are attributed to Mrs. Gandhi but most not. On a street corner in New Delhi: ECONOMIC OFFENSES BRING STERN PUNISHMENT. Another, quoting Mohandas Gandhi: A BORN DEMOCRAT IS A BORN DISCIPLINARIAN.

The campaign for discipline may be having some impact on the country. In Bombay, for instance, streets are no longer littered with debris, telephone repairs are made promptly, and state ministers are arriving at their offices at the hitherto unheard-of hour of 9:30 in the morning. Police claim crime is down 10%, largely because they no longer have to spend so much of their energies controlling political demonstrations. One veteran foreign observer of Indian affairs believes Mrs. Gandhi "administered to the country a massive punch in the jaw, which it probably needed." He adds that if the government can bring the emergency to an end within six months, "the retrospective view will be that it has benefited the country and given a badly needed shock to a society whose values were crumbling."

On the first anniversary of Emergency rule, Time would again report:

Thanks to a record wheat harvest of 114 million tons last year—which in turn was produced by the most beneficent monsoon in modern history—the country is enjoying a period of rare prosperity. As a result of a two-year-old tight-money policy and a very tough economic reform program imposed during the emergency, India last year may have been the only major nation in the world with a negative inflation rate (-6%). India's educated classes still lament the suspension of civil liberties and the continuing detention of thousands of people without trial, but the country at large is reasonably contented.

Well, we all know that the rule did not last. It became evident that there had been gross abuse of power. Gory details of ‘excesses’ and high-handedness on the part of police officials and bureaucrats in North India surfaced– and the Govt was thrown out of power.

But, the part that is forgotten is that, the same Congress swept the elections in all the Southern states, losing just three of the seats. How did this polarisation take place?

It was argued that perhaps only the ‘beneficial’ effect of the authoritarian rule was felt in the South- which mercifully was spared the ‘excesses’.

I endorse that view. I lived in Chennai during the Emergency and remember that period for its ‘orderliness’. Trains ran on time, labour Unions did not resort to strikes at the slightest provocation, colleges were not closed due to students’ agitation and there was general contentment. The Emergency was welcomed. Most people agreed it had injected a much needed ‘dose of discipline’.

It is worth analyzing that phase more objectively? What was done right in South India? How was that optimal balance between discipline and ‘freedom’ struck- without resorting to ‘excesses”? Can we challenge the popular belief that ‘individual liberty" is sacrosanct and an inviolable right that Indians will not compromise on, even if it is for the common good?

Hi ho, Eversilver.

2011-06-07T21:55:00.000+05:30

A friend visiting Chennai expressed surprise that many restaurants here continued to serve snacks in stainless steel plates and coffee in stainless steel “tumblers’, and naturally attributed this practice to a South Indian fetish for anything glossy. Such preferences have deep cultural roots and defy explanation, we agreed. Coming to think of it, I have my coffee only in stainless steel ‘tumblers’ when I am at home.

My friend’s observation reminded me of an article written by Prof T.G.Vaidyanathan many years back. I managed to trace it in a book that contained a collection of his essays. Here is an extract from a piece titled “ The Stainless Steel Culture” written by the author after he attended a prize-distribution ceremony in Chennai, in which the prizes given away were – stainless steel buckets of different sizes.

The presence of stainless steel (or, should I rather say, ‘eversilver’ to give the shining metal its telltale Tamilian nomenclature) is ubiquitous to the Tamil heartland. Its unquestioned and commanding presence at weddings in the shape of the girl’s dowry is too well known to bear repetition here. Humble brass, delicate bronze and sacred, immemorial copper have long since fallen by the wayside and have now been relegated to some forgotten limbo of the mind. That ruthless and rampaging usurper, stainless steel, is now king. Long live, stainless steel. Swept unceremoniously under the carpet are those poor brass and bronze tumblers and coffee filters and dhamaras (small round containers with tiny protective walls) in and through which one first imbibed that magic South Indian brew: “decoction coffee”. No more bronze lamps or bronze bells for worship, In fact, no more vigrahams (idols) either in that sacred combination of metals (panchalokam). An unholy and satanic effect has imperiously ordained that henceforth every single thing on earth shall be in stainless steel and stainless steel only. What we are silently heading for is the ruthless dictatorship of one proud metal in place of the old, lazy democracy of several peacefully coexisting metals. One can only fervently pray that the gods themselves will be spared the final ignominy of being cast in stainless steel and be allowed to remain in humble stone at least in temples. But, who knows?

And he wrote this is 1991.

Philanthropy

2011-06-03T21:56:00.003+05:30

Every argument between a diehard devotee of Satya Sai Baba and a non-believer will end with the former saying, “Whether you believe in his powers or not, you can’t deny that he has done so much for the community. He has built hospitals, canals, roads, educational institutions…”.

This line of reasoning kills any objections one might have on the means adopted for making the money that later went into building roads, canals, etc. The message is clear: ‘Don’t be obsessed with the methods. Look at his large-heartedness. So many people have made tons of money. Not all have distributed their wealth for the larger good of people, as he has done’.

Without getting into discussions on Sai Baba’s methods of accumulating wealth that he then used for charity, let’s ask why we hold as ‘philanthropists’ only those who give away material goods in some form?

In fact, the word “philanthropy’, according to Wiki, etymologically, means ‘the love of humanity’. It is not to be confused with charity.

In her book, “Bazaars, conversations and freedom”, Rajni Bakshi provides a perspective:

The notion that commodity exchange is a higher form of civilization was a key element in the rise of the market from the eighteenth century onward. It followed that progress in the world would now be measured by the ability to accumulate material goods and money, even if some of the money is later given away through philanthropy. This partly explains why Bill gates as a billionaire philanthropist is treated as a folk hero and Tim Berners-Lee who gifted us the World Wide Web is not a household name.

..The emergence of the Internet itself has been a vast collaborative effort. But it was the crafting of the Hypertext markup language (HTML) and the Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) that brought order to cyberspace and gave us the easy access Internet that we take for granted. Tim Berners-Lee created these protocols and released them as a global commons.

Berners-Lee’s driving motivation was to ensure that the fundamental value of the web could be created by its users. He designed the hyperlink protocols to serve this purpose. Refusing to patent the protocols he created was for Berners-Lee both a technological and ethical imperative. This was the only way to ensure its universality, as opposed to competing webs.

As Time magazine put it, “You’d think he would have at least got rich; he had plenty of opportunities. But at every juncture, Berners-Lee chose the non-profit road both for himself and his creation.

Berners-Lee gifted away as much money as Bill Gates did. Only he did not accumulate it first for distribution later. His act of charity was in not charging for his invention worth several billions. He was a philanthropist in the classical sense.

Remember this simple distinction, and realise that by not charging you anything for the gyaan that I come up periodically, I am being a true philanthropist.

Update 040611: I realise I had omitted an important angle- the ability of godmen to distribute wealth by doing a Robin Hood act. Rich people, who would otherwise not part with their money, willingly and readily hand it over to godmen once they turn believers. Some of them may do so to atone for the methods adopted in accumulating their wealth. Some may genuinely believe in the power of the godmen. Whatever may be the motivation, money collected using the 'pulling power' of the godman brand, can be used for 'charity' - to help the poor and the needy.

Look at it this way. When Coca Cola sponsors an event that brings about awareness of climate change, they earn brownie ( or rather 'greenie') points for their generosity. Nobody bothers to think that they earned their money in the first place by selling sugar water as the 'real thing'.

Why do we imprison people?

2011-05-30T22:32:00.000+05:30

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, in his article in the Washington Times on the subject of “What will future generations condemn us for?” had listed, among other things, our practice of imprisoning people, which, he believes, is certainly destined for future condemnation.

Coming to think of it, what do we really intend to achieve by imprisoning people? Prevent them from committing more crimes? Set examples that would serve to deter other budding offenders? Satisfy a principle that the ‘guilty should not go unpunished?

Two philosophers, Ken Taylor and John Terry, have tried to tackle the issue. They ask, “ What are prisons for? And run through five reasons. (source)

. retribution, crime deterrence, rehabilitation, restitution to the victims, or social denunciation.

In the first case, we should set up the system so that criminals are justly punished for what they did, though of course that raises the exceedingly thorny question of what, exactly, constitutes just punishment.

In the second case, however, we are concerned with affecting the criminal’s cost-benefit analysis, so to decrease the chances that he (most criminals, particularly of the violent type, are men) will not in fact engage in the crime to begin with.

In the case of rehabilitation, one cannot even properly talk of punishment, but rather of an attempt to change the ways of the individual and turn him into a productive member of society.

Restitution to the victims is yet another concept possibly informing how and why we imprison people, where the goal is to set up conditions that make it possible for the criminal to compensate (according to whatever parameters) the victim or the victim's family.

And finally, the social denunciation approach says that we imprison people because we wish to send the message that certain kinds of behavior are unacceptable in our society.

Naturally, we may wish to achieve more than one of these goals, but the point is that we ought to be clear on which ones, on how to prioritize them (is retribution more important than deterrence?), and especially on how to go about maximizing the likelihood of the intended outcome(s). But we don’t. The public and politicians don’t seem to make these (not so subtle) distinctions most of the time, let alone engage in serious reflection about what they mean and how they can be pursued. This is bizarre, considering that the prison system is dramatically affecting the lives of literally millions of people, many of whom arguably shouldn’t be there in the first place, as well as costing the rest of us an increasingly large bundle of money, at a time when cries of cutting the budget are all the rage

So, tell me, what is Kanimozhi in jail for?

'We will get him, wherever he is".

2011-05-30T22:02:00.000+05:30

After Bin laden was eliminated, I heard a US media person (sorry, I didn’t note his name, but trust me, I heard him) say that it was a clear message sent to terrorists that you can’t mess around with America. “We’ll come after you wherever you are and get you’.

This is the classic response of those still living in a world of the past and conditioned by fairy tales, where victory in the last page of the story was what mattered. The villain may have led a jolly life for 70 years. But if you manage to score over him in the end, you are the real victor, even if you have been knocked around your entire life.

By executing the operations clinically and flawlessly and bringing down the WTC towers like a pack of cards – which should rank as one of the greatest engineering achievements ever, if you ignore the wrongness of the purpose- Osama had achieved what he wanted to. There was no more ‘victory’ that was left to be grabbed by the US. It was all over on 9/11.

Similarly, when Kasab was handed the death sentence by the Court, P.Chidambaram had come out with a statement: “The verdict (against) was a clear message to Pakistan. “If they do (export terrorism) and we apprehend the terrorists, then we will bring them to justice.”. This was just idle boasting. 26/11 was a plot planned meticulously and carried out efficiently. The intended purpose was achieved on that day, and victory was theirs. Catching one Kasab and hanging him is not going to send any message to the terrorists who are holed out in Pakistan. He was sent here to die and he came here mentally prepared to die on 26/11. He is now on extended time. A bonus period, so to say.

Just as rules of conventional warfare don’t apply in the case of war against terrorism, certain beliefs and honour codes that held sway in the era of conventional warfare need to be abandoned when dealing with terrorism. Victory is when you foil an attempt to blow up a building or when you nab the planners in their den based on intelligence tip-offs. It is when you manage to close in on the institutions that are operating as terror factories. Any post-facto action after the disaster cannot be claimed as a victory. It is too late by then.

Coverage of Rajinikant's illness

2011-05-19T20:21:00.000+05:30

Once, during my school days (many decades back), a dreaded Science teacher was asked to stand in for a History teacher who was absent on that day. Many of us were convinced that, true to her Science class tradition, she would make us draw a picture of Emperor Akbar and name all the parts.

I remembered this when I saw a story in Times of India on Rajinikanth’s illness. I think the regular photographer was absent, so they deputed their science reporter to the hospital to get the full details. And sure enough, he drew a picture of Rajinikanth and named all his parts in gory detail.

The Chinese typist deserves respect

2011-05-17T20:14:00.000+05:30

In his book, “Mother Tongue", Bill Bryson explains the difficulty of designing a typewriter to type out Chinese letters:

Since every word requires its own symbol, Chinese script is immensely complicated. It possesses some 50,000 characters of which about 4000 are in common use. Chinese typewriters are enormous and most trained typists cannot manage more than about ten words a minute. But even the most complex Chinese typewriter can manage only a fraction of the characters available. If a standard Western typewriter keyboard were expanded to take in every Chinese ideograph, it would have to be about fifteen feet long and five feet wide.

An article in “Wired” carries a photograph of a monster typewriter on display at a museum in Barcelona and explains how it worked.

The only part that resembles a QWERTY typewriter is the rubber roller at the back. From there, things quickly become absurd. Take a close look and you’ll see that the flat bed is in fact full of tiny metal symbols, similar to a letter case used for traditional typesetting.

In that case there are a couple of thousand characters, and other cases can be swapped in as needed. You’ll notice that there’s no keyboard — instead, the operator uses the levers to line up a kind of grabber over the required letter. Then he hits a switch and the letter is moved up to the paper and the letter printed. Slow? Very. Apparently a good typist averages just 20 characters per minute

What about computers? The “Wired” article adds:

It doesn’t get much easier with computers, either. Because Chinese is made up of meaningful symbols instead of letters built in to words, a keyboard simply can’t contain everything without being the size of a table. To get round this two methods are commonly used. Wubi is similar to actually drawing the ideograms — the typist hits keys one by one to build up the picture from a series of strokes marked on each key. This is then translated into the correct symbol.

Better is Pinyin, which involves typing the letters phonetically in Roman letters (the ones we use). The computer then translates these into symbols. This is still something of a pain, but short of dropping their entire alphabet, what are the Chinese to do.

Here’s a photo of a Chinese keyboard that I came across today and which prompted me to come up with this post. (via)

Bill Bryson, in the same book that I referred to in the opening para, points out another limitation of the pictorial language:

The consequences of not having an alphabet are considerable. There can be no crossword puzzles, no palindromes, no anagrams, no games like Scrabble, no Morse code. In the age of telegraphy, to get around the last problem, the Chinese designed a system in which each word in the language was designated a number. Person, for instance, was 0086. To this day in China, and other countries such as Japan where the writing system is also ideographic, there is no logical system for organizing documents. Filing systems often exist only in people’s heads. If the secretary dies, the whole office can fall apart.

Start...don't stop.

2011-05-12T20:33:00.000+05:30

Jason Kottke links to a video of a wooden box with a flip switch. Once the switch is on, a bent rod pops out of the box and switches it off.

Here is how Arthur C Clarke described this mechanism that was invented by Claude Shannon, an American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptographer.

"Nothing could be simpler. It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath it emerges a hand. The hand reaches down, turns the switch off and retreats into the box. With the finality of a closing coffin, the lid snaps shut, the buzzing ceases and peace reigns once more. The psychological effect, if you do not know what to expect, is devastating. There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing - absolutely nothing - except switch itself off."

I can’t help thinking, rather cynically, that this box is a perfect metaphor for India. We’ve got sufficient resourcefulness and drive to switch ourselves on. But, as soon as we do this, a ‘hidden hand’ comes out and stops the process, preventing us from moving forward. It’s as if a Kareena Kapoor, like in her Airtel ad, is instructing us to ‘start’ followed immediately by a directive to ‘stop’.

We have the imagination to come up with grandiose schemes and the means to execute them too, but an inner, destabilising force soon materializes to put paid to the plans. All that energy that goes in to kick-start the process gets converted efficiently into a ‘braking force”. The gap between ‘intent’ and ‘achievement’ therefore remains huge. This is true for infrastructure projects, social welfare schemes, law making, reforms, etc.

To borrow from Clarke, there is something unspeakably sinister about a group of people who do nothing but pull others down, following the Crab principle. …

Learning from the metaphor, we will have to tweak the design a bit .Eliminating the ‘hidden evil hand’ is impossible. We’ll have to introduce another ‘rod’ that will spring into action a fraction of a second after the first one, and push the latter back inside before it switches off the box. What can that be?

On white dwarfs and Tamil

2011-05-06T21:33:00.000+05:30

In an article in Science 2.0 that dealt with White dwarfs, Neutrons and Neutrinos, there is the inevitable reference to Dr Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar, the Noble prize winner in Physics, for his calculations that showed that the weight of a white dwarf cannot exceed 1,44 times the mass of the sun.

The article carries a sketch that Dr Chandrasekhar had made in 1930 on his voyage to England. It is interesting that he wrote down the labels for the X axis and the Y axis in Tamil. Honestly, I didn't know the words, but the picture explains that they stand for ' radius' and 'mass'.

Dr Chandrasekhar had done his undergraduation course at the Presidency College, Madras where the subject must have been taught in English. But, the Tamil words must have come to him spontaneously, for some reason, when he was plotting the graph. Not that he knew that he was on to something big, when he was doing it.

The debriefing sessions

2011-05-03T22:35:00.003+05:30

The British had a meticulous system of ‘examining’ their officers returning from India and collecting evidence. These were elaborate sessions and the evidence was patiently recorded and documented. The questions could cover a wide assortment of issues- administration, governance, justice, feedback on the perception of the natives and many other.

This compilation of ‘minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on the affairs of the East India Company” and published in the year 1832 makes interesting reading. Here is an extract from one of the questioning sessions ( begins on page 153)

SIR JAMES MACDONALD, BART., In The Chair.

Captain Turner Macan, called in; and Examined.

In what service are you?

The King's military service, in the 16th Captain T. Macan. Lancers.

For how many years were you in India?

Twenty-three years

During that period did you discharge also any civil functions in India?

For the last 12 years of my residence in India, I held the situation of Persian interpreter to three successive Commanders-in-chief, Lord Hastings, Sir Edward Paget, and Lord Combermere. It cannot be called a civil function, it has always been held by a military officer.

Did the duties of that situation necessarily bring you in contact with the civil servants of the Company ?

With the exception of the Persian secretary to government, the residents at native courts, and political agents, the duties of that situation did not bring me in official contact with the civil servants of the Company, but it brought me in contact with the natives of India, both in correspondence and in personal intercourse.

Were you conversant with any other Oriental languages than the Persian?

The Persian, Arabic and Hindostanee are the languages I am conversant in, but most so in the Persian.

You have stated, that during your 23. years residence in India you have had occasion to make frequent tours in the provinces; has your intercourse with the natives on those occasions been considerable ?

It has, partly from official duty, partly from my Oriental pursuits. I have occasionally corresponded and held personal intercourse with almost every native of rank and talent

Generally speaking, how have you found the natives affected towards the British Government?

I think they have almost universally acknowledged the superiority of the British government over all former Asiatic government; and the learned men have frequently observed, that we have realized in practice the theoretical perfection of the Institutes of Acbar. They admit our intentions to be always good, but they censure many of our regulations and much of our system, both judicial and revenue, as not being founded on sufficient experience and data. The tardiness of justice they complain of as the greatest of evils. In giving these favourable sentiments of the natives on our government, I do not mean that there is one man of them that would take up arms to defend it; on the contrary, except the mercantile population of Calcutta, or those connected with the mercantile interests generally, I do not believe there is a native in India who would not desire a change.

You find, then, the educated natives universally conversant with the details of the British government in India?

Not universally conversant either with the regulations or details, but with the practical effects of the administration.

You have stated that you consider that for the most part they would desire a change; will you define more particularly what you contemplate by the word change ?

Any native government instead of that of the British; I mean that our rule in India is supported, not by the justice and wisdom of our laws or the love of the people, but by our military supremacy alone.

Do you consider that they appeared to feel themselves aggrieved by their exclusion from what they would deem a share of the civil administration of the affairs of their country ?

I think a due share in the administration of the country would tend to attach them more to our government, and make them feel an interest in it, which they now do not.

Will you state to the Committee your opinion of their capacity for being admitted to a larger share of the administration of the government ?

Their intellectual capacity is undoubtedly great; their moral capacity has been much doubted; but under an arbitrary government, where every man who holds a public situation was supposed to be necessarily corrupt in extent to his powers, and was treated as if he had been, whether innocent or not, there was no encouragement to morality or virtue, and a man who could not escape the suspicion of corruption, would endeavour to have the sweets of it. The natives of India are acute and intelligent, have great capacity for business, and, in fact, much of the business of India is now transacted by the native Omlah, without the responsibility attaching to it.

By what means should you propose to ameliorate any existing moral defects in the character of the natives ?

By education; more particularly instruction through the means of the English language, and employment in civil administration.

Do you believe that a general system of education, coupled with opening to the natives all such civil offices as they might become competent to fill, would have that tendency ?

I think it would; if you give a man something to lose, he will be cautious how he loses it. I think their employment should be limited to the judicial and revenue branches of the service. A great part of the expense of our executive administration would undoubtedly be lessened by the employment of more natives and fewer Europeans.

You have stated that you consider the introduction more generally of English language as a great object, with a view to the better establishment of our power in India; by what system does it occur to you that it might be more generally introduced ?

I would propose, that a proclamation be issued in Calcutta, stating, that at the end of a specific period, say five years, which I think sufficient, the proceedings in all the courts under the Calcutta circuit should be conducted in the English language. In the schools in Calcutta there are many Hindoo boys who can read English, even Milton and Shakspeare, with much fluency, and explain difficult passages in those authors. The language now used in the different courts of justice is as foreign to the natives of the country as the English language, except Bengal and Orissa, because in those provinces the use of the vernacular dialect is optional; in all other provinces the Persian language is used: it was forced into judicial proceedings by Mahomedan conquerors, and is not understood by any one of the witnesses that are usually examined, and but imperfectly by the native officer who takes down the evidence, and perhaps still more imperfectly by the judge.

(Remember that this was in the year 1832, much before the rumblings of the freedom movement were heard or felt. In fact, it was much before the British Govt took over the administrative responsibility from the East India Company)

Vacuous and Verbose-27

2011-05-03T20:45:00.001+05:30

A news report says:

Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi today said Home Minister P Chidambaram's remark that Election Commission (EC) had adopted stringent guidelines in Tamil Nadu but followed different norms in other states that went to assembly polls, cannot be "ignored."

Stating that everyone in the state knew about the Election Commission adopting strong guidelines like vehicle check, seizure of cash and transfer of officials. Karunanidhi said the EC should act as a "neutral body".

It should not adopt different guidelines as it would not help democracy. This was what Chidambaram had said, Karunanidhi pointed out.

The CM actually wants us to sympathise with his party for having been caught with cash amounting to crores of rupees. How dare the EC check their vehicles and seize cash that was intended to bribe voters? How can the EC unilaterally impose such strong and ridiculous guidelines that the voter should not be bribed? While cribbing thus, he has the support of no less a person than the Home Minister.

What difference does it make to the case in TN, even if it is true that the EC had not implemented the same guidelines in other states with the same level of strictness? Does it lessen the magnitude of the crime in TN?

Can I rape a woman in TN and when caught by the police cry foul and argue that some rapist in Delhi has not been pursued with the same vigour by the police there, and therefore the law is not neutral?

Update 04/05/11: The more I thought over this, the more I am outraged. The Home Minister, instead of lauding the EC's efforts in TN and arguing for the same strict guidelines to be enforced all over the country seems to be suggesting that TN should not be singled out and that the guidelines must be relaxed and diluted to ensure consistency with the other states. In other words, TN's politicians should not be robbed off their cash and unfairly denied their right to bribe the voters.

Ad men are as guilty as Godmen.

2011-04-29T22:58:00.000+05:30

In his column in Mint, Salil Tripathi writes:

..what drew many to his (Sai Baba’s) fold were two central claims: that he was divine, and that he performed miracles. Nearly 60 years ago, Sai Baba began producing vibhuti, or holy ash, and assorted trinkets, watches, sweets and fruits, presumably from thin air. Magicians showed these were conjurers’ tricks, but to no avail. His followers dismissed the magicians as publicity-seeking tricksters. To experience his miracles, you had to submit to him first. That meant that in a nation of massive illiteracy, he was encouraging people to shelve logic. Sai Baba deftly avoided challengers: Rationalist Abraham Kovoor could never meet him, nor did other sceptics. In The Times of India, C.P. Surendran recalls the amusing story when his mother challenged Sai Baba to give her a jackfruit, after he said she could ask for anything, and he’d produce it magically. Sai Baba hadn’t expected her to ask for a jackfruit; he couldn’t; his followers panicked and shouted at her, driving her away.

Consider the allegation made above “that in a nation of massive illiteracy, he was encouraging people to shelve logic”.

As I argued in a post 5 years back, Sai Baba was no different from and no more guilty of manipulation than corporate brand-builders and advertising agencies.

If Sai Baba had to draw attention and create a mass following, he naturally had to differentiate himself from other mortals and create a brand identity of his own. The flowing saffron-coloured robes, his distinctive hairstyle, the hype and the hoopla over his ‘magical’ powers to pull out watches and gold rings out of thin hair, his Bhajan sessions which would send his followers into a trance- all went into the creation of the unique Sai Baba brand . Without this brand pull, he wouldn’t have enticed his followers to come into his fold seeking mental peace and serenity.

So, how is this any different from an advertiser luring you into a make-believe world and leading you to imagine that by procuring a certain type of talcum powder, you would be transported to a sanitized world of blue skies and green grass, where you would have a wonderful spouse, a lovely home, a cute little dog and a smile on all the time?

If you go through the advertising history of Coca Cola and the slogans that they used during various times, you will discern a clear intent to promote a feeling of well-being subliminally and to ensure a brand association with such a feeling. How is Coke’s claim that “things go better with Coca Cola” any different from Sai Baba claiming that “life goes better when you follow me”? Can Coca Cola substantiate this claim and submit to an investigation by a panel of rationalists and eminent scientists?

In fact, Coca Cola’s website describes how even “Santa Claus’ in his red attire was a marketing creation of theirs. Millions of people- not just children- have suspended their disbelief for generations.

In his book, “buy-ology’, which I have discussed earlier, Martin Lindstrom says:

Almost every leading religion has ten common pillars underlying its foundation: a sense of belonging, a clear vision, power over enemies, sensory appeal, story telling, grandeur, evangelism, symbols, mystery and rituals.

But, what is not so well acknowledged is the fact that these pillars happen to have a great deal in common with our most beloved brands and products.

and goes on to provide examples from both, for each of the ten pillars.

When brands and products can cast a relentless spell on seemingly educated people and make them delude themselves into a false sense of well being, why accuse Sai Baba of encouraging illiterate people to shelve logic and single him out?

If godmen are guilty, so are ad men.

Not doing something.

2011-04-25T20:37:00.001+05:30

Would you like to take a vacation that will not cost you anything, yet will rejuvenate your spirits?

I found out how this could be done, after reading a piece by P.G.Wodehouse, titled “The secret pleasures of Reginald”.

Reggie’s method involved not doing something, as opposed to doing nothing. For instance, he would deliberately not spend the weekend with a person of his acquaintance, Bodfish. Nothing was more awful to him than spending a weekend with Bodfish, and conversely nothing was more delightful than not spending a weekend with Bodfish.

Therefore, at the precise time when Reggie would have been heading to Bodfish’s place had he accepted the invitation, he would recline in a long chair in his club, eyes fixed glassily on the ceiling, and delight in not whirling down in his car on the country roads and later in not strolling down to Bodfish’s garage. Soon, he would not go into Bodfish’s house and not listen to Mrs Bodfish on the subject of her son’s premature intelligence. He would then look forward to the happy time after dinner, when he would pass it in not playing bridge with Bodfishes and their neighbour.

Other evenings, he would have a jolly time in not going to the theatre and not watching a play. And so on. These non-visits would perk him up and bring him back to office on a Monday morning feeling like a lion.

So, just apply this technique. Take a week off and deposit the LTA in the bank. Then sit at home or lie down on the sofa at the precise moment when you would have normally set off for office. Then take delight in not driving through traffic and not searching for a parking place for your car. Later, spend some time in not sitting down with your boss for those boring reviews. Enjoy the lunch hour in not eating that dreadful pantry meal at office. Devote an hour or two in not having those tiresome conference calls. And late in the evening, rejoice in not wading through the traffic again.

Do spare a few moments to not writing to me and to not telling me how it works.

How dare you be happy.

2011-04-24T22:02:00.000+05:30

An opinion piece in the Open Page of The Hindu today is critical of the World Cup victory celebrations, or any celebrations for that matter, when farmers in rural India are committing suicide or are languishing in extreme poverty.

Sixty-seventy per cent of India's population is living on less than Rs. 20 a day. A bottle of Diet coke for us? The electricity used in a day-night match could help a farmer irrigate his fields for more than a few weeks! Do you know that loadshedding is also class dependent? Two hours in metros, 4 in towns and 8 in villages. Now, who needs electricity more? A farmer to look after his crop day and night, irrigate, pump water and use machines or a few bored, young professionals with disposable incomes, to log on to Facebook and watch IPL?

How can we splurge thousands on our birthday parties and zoom past in our AC vehicles and sit in cushy chairs in our AC offices and plan a weekend trip to Coorg when on the way, in those small villages, just a few minutes' walk from the roads, someone might be consuming pesticide or hanging himself from a tree for just Rs.10, 000? How can we?

This is not new. P.Sainath has never missed an opportunity to remind the nation, whenever it celebrated any success in any field, of its extreme insensitivity to the plight of farmers. “Nero fiddling while Rome was burning” has been the recurring charge levelled in all his speeches.

Today I saw a tweet which suggested that there should be a ban on ads on days when a prominent person had died. Is it not wrong for consumers to think of splurging on goodies, when a section of the population is grieving over the death of an individual?

Those who take such a grim view of the situation and recommend universal mourning till every single person is relieved of his suffering are appealing to your sense of guilt. How can you indulge in such joyous celebrations and festivities when elsewhere your own countrymen are wallowing in such misery? Implicit in their admonition is the presumption that happiness is a zero sum game. If I am happy, it must be at the cost of someone else in the world, which makes my state of happiness morally repugnant and unacceptable.

This argument does have some basis. In cases where farmers are deprived of their ancestral land to benefit or enrich an industry, or when rural India is denied basic facility while urban India gets disproportionate attention, they are victims of a zero-sum equation, which needs to be corrected. After all, the total funds available for development are finite, and there should be an equitable distribution.

But, even if and when such equity is established, we have to reckon with variation in human responses.

As the unit becomes larger- from families to neighbourhoods to towns to states to nations- the diversity among human beings increases. There would be a variety of moods and sentiments at any time arising out of unique developments in one’s vicinity, and unless it is a disaster of a large scale (war, earthquakes, and terror attacks) it is impossible to get all people emotionally aligned. On the continuum scale ranging from celebrations on one end to mourning on the other, different people in different locations will find themselves at different points at different times.

I must therefore have the right to celebrate a World Cup victory, without having to feel guilty for the misfortune that has befallen the farmers. This is not being insensitive or apathetic, nor am I belittling the problem that they face. I am merely exercising my right to be happy when the occasion so justifies.

"The Entitlement to moralise"

2011-04-23T23:07:00.001+05:30

If public figure A criticizes another public figure B on issues involving morality or ethics, or takes a strong position on any matter, A immediately lays himself open for a scrutiny of his own credentials to speak out against B or to take up the cause.. When some evidence of past wrong-doing or an act of impropriety is found, A relinquishes the moral right to criticize B, and the sting is taken out.

Some recent examples: Within days of his successful fast as part of his anti-corruption crusade, Anna Hazare’s past was examined and some evidence found of some observations made by Justice Sawant against him. Arundhati Roy who has taken on the entire State on several issues was found to have constructed a house on notified farm land in violation of law. So, she stands discredited.

The principle here is that as Hazare and Roy do not practice what they preach, they undermine their own message and are guilty of hypocrisy. He who hasn’t sinned alone can cast the first stone at others.

For the sake of this argument, if we concede that both Hazare and Roy are well-intentioned in their respective crusades, does the fact of their wrongdoings elsewhere in the past make them unworthy of taking up the crusade or cause? Will dismissing them thus not amount to commiting an ad hominem fallacy?

A.C.Grayling examines such a moral dilemma in one his essays (" Entitlement to moralise") in his book, “Thinking of Answers”. He says:

There is a point of philosophical importance here for the endeavour of trying to live an ethically good life, It is that there is such a thing as “doing one’s moral best’, which may and usually does fall short of what counsels of perfection require, but nevertheless constitutes a serious gesture in the right direction. A person who is vegetarian, but owns leather belts and shoes, may reason that being an habitual meat-eater makes a vastly greater slaughter-footprint than owning a pair of leather shoes, and trusts that this will make some degree of difference towards the good.

…What the idea of ‘doing one’s moral best’ comes down to, when it is sincere and genuine, is something close to Aristotle’s idea that, in effect, one lives an ethically good life by trying to do so. The trying is itself the succeeding; otherwise the only good people would be perfect people, and all those striving to do their moral best would not be good people.

…In a sin culture, even a suspicion of hypocrisy in the messenger is enough to harm the message. The tacit idea is that if the source of the claim is polluted, the claim itself must be questionable. In the Greek view, the value of what is said and the character and the actions of the person who says it are separate things, and can be independently evaluated on their merits.

…Human beings are a mixed alloy, familiarly enough; the very same person is capable of being good and terribly bad at different times or in different respects, and that inescapable fact makes the greatest moral philosophers almost at one in insisting that we should resist the mistake of thinking that anyone is wholly one or the other, even at their best or worst moments respectively.

I would rather have an energy-wasting Gore fighting to save the planet than an energy-wasting Gore not caring about the planet. People like Gore have a platform and the worst thing they could do is fail to use the platform in support of worthwhile causes, whether or not they are personally no better than the rest of us in doing their individual bit.

Applying what Grayling says to our context, we can disagree with Hazare on his methods, and also his insistence on extra-constitutional appointments, but should not invoke some past misdeed of his to discredit him in this situation. Same with Arundhati Roy.

The cotton riches of India

2011-03-21T20:59:00.000+05:30

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction published in the year 1847, by Charles Ollier, describes the cotton wealth of India and makes an argument for Britain to pump in more capital to bring more land under cotton cultivation.

In old times, as now, the greatest cotton country in the world was India. If we will be at the pains to examine the history of that country as far as its manufactures are concerned, we shall find that in all ages it has been unrivalled for the production of cotton goods, its fabrics being still superior in fineness and beauty to anything produced by the looms of the West. Many circumstances, no doubt, have always concurred to ensure to it this distinction; but among these must unquestionably be reckoned the command of a profusion of the raw material of the most exquisite quality. For several generations the cotton goods of India were at once superior in quality and inferior in price to the fabrics of Europe; and as late as sixty years ago, it was very generally feared that the quantities of them poured into the home market by the East India Company would utterly swamp our own manufacturers.

This circumstance, which appeared at the time to be an evil, should probably be reckoned among the chief causes of our industrial prosperity; for, driven to compete with the productions of a country where both labour and the raw material were much cheaper than here in England, we applied our utmost ingenuity to the invention and improvement of machinery, by the aid of which we have been enabled to turn the tables but too effectually upon the Hindus. We can now take the cotton grown at their very doors, transport it sixteen or seventeen thousand miles by sea, spin, weave, and dye it in the heart of Great Britain, and then carry it back to India, and sell it much cheaper than they can afford to do. This is one of the most striking triumphs of modern civilisation, and tends to encourage the hope that, in mere physical processes, there is scarcely any limit to improvement.

There is scarcely any province in India in which some kind of cotton might not be grown. Throughout nearly the whole plains of the Punjab it is found to flourish luxuriantly, more especially in the ceded Doab of Jullender and in the contiguous one of Bari, still nominally at least under Sikh authority. Assam likewise, on the north-east, produces excellent cotton; and descending through every parallel of latitude, from the Doab of the Ganges and Jumna down to Coimbatore and Tinevelli, we find innumerable districts admirably adapted to the cultivation of cotton. Accordingly, from the remotest ages the natives of Hindustan have been clad almost in nothing else. Nor is this all. There is scarcely a single comfort or luxury of life in the promotion of which cotton is not an instrument. From the sumptuous beds, sofas, and divans of the Zenana, down to the humblest pack-saddle for an ass, every thing in India is stuffed with cotton. They have cotton tapestry, cotton carpets, cotton tents and hangings, cotton cordage and ropes, with nearly every thing else of a similar description.

Let us now endeavour to make some approximation to the amount of cotton thus consumed in India. Its inhabitants may be estimated in round numbers at two hundred millions of souls, each of whom consumes annually in clothing two pounds of cotton on an average, which will make four hundred million pounds of cotton appropriated to the manufacture of dress. At least an equal amount must be consumed in the other uses to which, as already stated, cotton is applied; so that the people of Hindustan themselves use annually the enormous amount of eight hundred million pounds of cotton, without taking at all into account the quantity they manufacture for exportation.

And yet not one-twentieth part of the land adapted to the cultivation of the cotton plant or shrub is appropriated to that species of cultivation. One obstacle, it is said, is the land-tax, which the East India Company has hitherto levied with too little regard to its own interests. To what extent taxes on cotton-grounds ought to be remitted, we are not here prepared to say; but it would most undoubtedly be wise in the Indian government to make all practicable sacrifices to encourage and facilitate the cultivation of cotton.

One preliminary step, however, must be the construction of railways and other roads, otherwise, when the cotton shall have been grown, its price will have been so much enhanced before it reaches the coast, that, however excellent in itself, it will be wholly unable to compete with the cottons of America. It is preeminently for our interest that the people of India should be wealthy; and to render them so, we can imagine no better means than pouring in among them annually many of those millions of capital which at present find their way across the Atlantic.

Smoking and movies

2011-03-02T20:05:00.000+05:30

In one of his essays in his book, “Thinking of Answers”, A.C.Grayling writes on the ban on smoking and its effect on movie-making:

Here is a real problem for actors and directors of feature films: how do you convey human emotion without the aid of a cigarette? Before cigarettes changed from being the ultimate symbol of cool to a dangerous bad habit, they provided a hook for every conceivable important movie moment: mystery, suspense (the face between the upturned collar points on the dark street, momentarily illuminated by the flare of the cigarette lighter), lust, seduction (Laura Bacall asking Humphrey Bogart for a light), anger, disappointment, rest, elegance, relief, tension, tranquility – in short, the human condition in the glow at the end of the a little tube of rolled up intoxicant leaf

Yes, coming to think of it, cigarettes (along with beedis, pipes and cigars) have been used extensively by movie directors in a variety of scenes. Whether it was a villain casually stubbing it out preparatory to raping a woman; or Al Pacino tormenting a to-be victim in ‘Godfather” , or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and several more, ‘smoking’ served as an excellent filler during a pause between action scenes or even during one. I guess it also made it easier for the actors to get their hands to do something and appear more natural.

Tamil movie watchers of my generation will remember Rajinikanth in this famous scene where he takes on the challenge of flipping his cigarette into the air and catching it with his mouth and to repeat this ten times. The prize if he succeeded: a Toyota car. And if he failed, he had to cut off his little finger. (Doesn’t matter that this was lifted from a Roald Dahl short story, “Man from the South”. )

A modest proposal

2011-02-22T21:58:00.000+05:30

The 2011 Census, currently underway in India, is likely to come up with a population figure exceeding 1.2 billion.

If it keeps growing at this pace, the country will soon face a massive shortage of food and space, resulting in much misery for all. Everybody has been saying this all along but done nothing about it.

It therefore falls on my broad shoulders to lead humanity out of this crisis. I’ve been exercising my mind to find a solution to this problem and have drawn inspiration from a few science-fiction books and movies.

One method as suggested by the movie Soylent Green set in a dystopian future was to feed the population with processed food that was centrally manufactured by a Govt-controlled Corporation. The processed food was called Soylent Green and it was made from human bodies. This system is efficient and has other merits too, but is not very elegant if you ask me.

The film Logan’s Run came up with the idea of euthanasia. Those who reached the age of 30 were bumped off in a religious ceremony known as Carousel. This method is undoubtedly elegant, but is bound to cause some serious imbalance. You can't have the entire population made up of exuberant sub-30 creatures. You need some moderating influence and sagacity that comes only at my age.

I personally prefer the method advocated by Kurt Vonnegut in his story 2BR02B. For a change he doesn’t paint a dystopic future. He, in fact, describes a fairly Utopian setting where illness has been completely eliminated and death can happen only by accidents, if at all. But, the population of the USA is tightly regulated and maintained at forty million, through a combination of infanticide and assisted suicide. If you wanted to have a baby, you had to find someone to volunteer to die.

This is not only an elegant and simple mechanism, but can also be made foolproof using the efficiency of the free market. Those who desire to have birth certificates for their newborns must produce a ‘death certificate’ of some other person, purchased in a ‘Life Exchange’. The proceeds from the sale of the death certificate will go to the heirs of the deceased, offering them an incentive to put him up for sale in the first place.

Post-Census India will need some such model. Human inventiveness knows no bounds and I am sure that we will be able to build on this concept and refine it to the complete satisfaction of all.

Conversation with daughter-35

2011-02-20T21:33:00.000+05:30

Daughter: This classmate of mine pisses me off completely….

Me: Hello, would you like to modify that sentence?

Daughter: Ok, this classmate of mine bugs me totally…

Me: That’s better. Why use a dirty word in a routine conversation?

Daughter: Appa, ‘piss off’ is not dirty. You can check the dictionary if you want. You confuse it with ‘piss” – which is your problem.

Me: Listen, the origin is same. Why use it when there are non-controversial alternatives available?

Daughter: Because the alternatives don’t have the same impact.

Me: You just replaced the word with ‘bug’ and I thought it made perfect sense to me.

Daughter: It will not, to someone of my generation.

Me: Look, when you talk to someone of my generation- maybe your professors and bosses in the future- you have to be restrained. You could end up making a ‘negative’ impact by using a word which we were taught not to use.

Daughter: You need to change with the times..

Me: Don’t you think you’ll react the same way if, 20 years later, your daughter uses a word that you find dirty now, as part of a routine conversation?

Daughter: You are right. It sure will piss me off.

Vacuous and Verbose-26

2011-02-11T21:41:00.000+05:30

In April 2010, newspapers reported that the Prime Minister was enumerated for Census. Yesterday was the turn of the Vice President to get enumerated.

I find the usage of the term ‘enumerated’ in the above sentences quite odd. I have always understood it to mean ‘to count one by one’. Apparently it can also be used, in the context of a census, to describe a single person being counted.

In his infamous radio broadcast during World War II as a German prisoner, P.G.Wodehouse described the tendency of the German guards to keep counting the prisoners with elaborate ritual and annoying frequency. They would ask the hundreds of inmates to stand in line once before breakfast, once after breakfast, once before the exercise drill, once before going to bed, etc and painstakingly take a head count.

One of the prisoners, according to Wodehouse, swore that if he ever got out of prison alive and became rich, he would buy a German soldier, keep him in his backyard and count him 10 times a day.

Do the Census officials mean this when they say that the VP has been enumerated? That they made him stand up and had him counted to make sure that there was only one of him?

Vacuous and Verbose-25

2011-02-05T17:28:00.000+05:30

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is reported to have said yesterday:

“Corruption strikes at the roots of good governance. It is an impediment to faster growth. It dilutes, if not negates, our efforts at social inclusion. It dents our international image and it demeans us before our own people. This is a challenge which has to be faced frontally, boldly and quickly.”

Being very much a part of public life and heading a Govt that has faced multiple charges of monumental corruption for many years, one would think he would have the prudence not to pontificate to society at large, on this matter. But, no sir, preach he must.

A point of interest here is the unconnected manner in which the PM talks about corruption in public life. It is as though he is able to dissociate from his PM persona at will, and maintain an arms’ length relationship with it. As if the corrupt Govt that he is heading is a third party for him.

I think he is perfecting a new form of ‘illeism”.

Illeism, says Wikipedia, is a style (though archaic) employed by authors to describe, in the third person, an event that they participated in. Example: Julius Caesar describing the wars he took part in, used illeism to impart an air of objective impartiality to the account, which included justifications of the author's actions. In this way personal bias was presented, albeit dishonestly, as objectivity.

Illeism can take different forms. Sportspersons sometimes advise themselves “X (being the speaker himself) has to work more on his free throws”. (source)

Wiki also gives the example of a theologian Richard B. Hays who wrote an essay where he challenged earlier findings of one Richard B. Hays. Similarly, Dr Manmohan Singh, the public speaker is able to come out of his PM’s garb and earn brownie points by talking freely and poker-faced about the rampant corruption that must be rooted out of our Govt and society. Admirable technique.

The Tri-colour

2011-01-26T19:46:00.001+05:30

The National flag and the Congress Party flag carry the same combination of colours and in the same order. The difference is only in the emblem in the middle, the Ashok Chakra in the case of the former and the “hand’ in the case of the latter. When the flags are fluttering at a distance, the emblems are not visible and only the colours stand out.

As any brand manager would say, this causes “brand confusion” in the mind of the viewer, with two entities adopting similar symbols.

How was this allowed to happen?

As the website of the Congress Party explains, the erstwhile Indian National Congress adopted the tri-colour flag, with a spinning wheel in the middle, in the year 1921.

When the country attained independence, the Congress flag was adopted as the national flag, but with the ‘spinning wheel’ making way for the “Ashok Chakra”. As Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre narrate in their book, "Freedom at Midnight" ( via)

"For thirty years, the tricolour sash of homespun cotton khadi, soon to replace the Union Jack on India's horizons, had flown over meetings, marches and manifestations of a people thirsting for independence. Gandhi had designed the banner of a militant congress himself. At the centre of its horizontal bands of saffron, white and green, he had placed his personal seal, the humble instrument he'd proposed to the masses of India as the instrument of their non-violent redemption, the spinning-wheel.

"Now with independence at hand, voices in the ranks of congress contested the right of what they called 'Gandhiji's toy' to occupy the central place in what was about to become their nation's flag. To a growing number of party militants his spinning-wheel was a symbol of the past, a woman's thing, the hallmark of an archaic India turned inwards upon herself.

"At their insistence the place of honour on the national flag was assigned to another wheel, the martial sign of the conquering warriors of Ashoka, founder of the Hindu empire, had borne on their shields. Framed by a pair of lions for force and courage, Ashoka's proud symbol of strength and authority, his dharma chakra, the wheel of the cosmic order, became the symbol of the new India.

The Congress Party continued to use the tri-colour flag with the spinning wheel. The emblem changed to the ‘hand’ sign sometime in the “80s, after the break-away group of Indira Gandhi’s was given the right by the Election Commission to call itself the “Indian National Congress”. So, the party’s flag continues to sport the tri-colour with the ‘hand’ symbol in the middle. It can still be confused for the National Flag.

I am not aware if this has been challenged or taken up with the Election Commission. The Congress Party by using a flag deceptively similar to the National Flag may be subliminally planting the idea in the voter’s mind that it is the party that has the stature and the right to govern the country. Suits have been filed on far trivial or ridiculous grounds and I don’t see why this should not be taken up.

The Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950 prohibits the use of any of the emblems mentioned in the schedule (and the Indian National flag figures in that list) or any colourable imitation thereof, for the purpose of any trade, business, calling or profession, without the previous permission of the Central Govt.

Even though the Congress Party was the one in power for many years after independence, I doubt if the Govt formally granted the permission to the party to use an ‘imitation of the national flag” as its own. Perhaps, the party thought that it was the nation that had to feel obligated to the party for having lent it its flag.

Vacuous and Verbose- 24

2011-01-25T22:52:00.000+05:30

The ghost writer who prepared the text of the Republic day address to be delivered by President Prathibha Patil, gave it the title. “Speech for the President of India Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil on the eve of Republic Day “.

The Press Information Bureau released it on their site with the same title, implying that it was a speech meant to be heard by the President and not to be inflicted on the public. Perhaps, the idea was to make the President realise how it felt to be at the receiving end.

And what a tiring cliché-ridden speech it is. The template is such that the hot air could have been delivered by any of the Presidents on any of the 60 anniversaries of Republic Day, or any of the anniversaries in the future.

"Superb portion of a superb empire"

2011-01-22T23:13:00.001+05:30

This is my 750th post , and my 50th with the BritIndia tag.

My interest in this period of Indian history began when I found that Google Books had an enormous list of publications and reports filed by the British, on their operations in India from the 18th century onwards. These were written by sailors, military personnel, missionaries, scientists, casual travelers, etc. The British loved to keep meticulous notes and publish them for posterity. And they wrote it in a language I could understand.

At first, I indulged in random, lazy surfing. Soon I found that I could ask specific questions and get answers. Who carried out the survey of the terrain before the Railway project was implemented in the 1850s? When did the first steam ship arrive from England? When Karunanidhi claims that Tamil New Year’s day was always celebrated during Pongal, was he right?( No, I discovered) What was Diwali like in India 150 years back? Was Pazhassi Raja as brave a ruler as the movie made him to be?

I must say that I enjoyed doing this, though aware that the posts in this series were the least read and commented on..... Raj

“Howitt’s journal of literature and progress” published in the year 1847 contains a scathing condemnation of the methods adopted by the British East India Company and urges the Govt to liberate the country from the clutches of a scheming, capitalistic entity and to treat India as a superb portion of a superb empire.

Some eight years ago, a society, styled "The British India Society," was organised. No society, in fact, ever began with such brilliant auspices. George Thompson went out to lecture for the society, the first object of which was to throw the light of a real knowledge of the true value of India to this country, and of its utter neglect by the government upon the British public.

The statements which George Thompson made in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Paisley, etc., before large audiences of the cotton-spinners, merchants, etc., of the capabilities of India to furnish us cotton, sugar, and other tropical articles at immensely cheaper rates than we were paying to the slave-owners of America, produced the strongest sensation. If England only once awoke to a real knowledge of the magnificent opportunity which it possessed, down must go the slavery and the cotton growth of America together, and a career of prosperity and affluence unbounded open up to England.

Let India only be appreciated and employed as it ought, and of what consequence would be the trade or the rivalry of the entire world besides? As Mr. Brotherton once said in parliament: Employ your Indian population, and you may build mills all the way from London to Stockport, and they will not be able to spin fast enough to supply that stupendous population with manufactures."

...And what is the fact now for want of this amicable and beneficent exchange? Misery at home and misery in India—dreadful and wide-spreading misery. And why are this misery and national difficulty perpetuated, with such a simple remedy at hand? Why has Providence put this great and magnificent India into our hands, but for the purpose of rendering us independent of the whole world, and of enabling us to carry on the great work of colonization and civilization in the earth?

And yet we thus stupidly turn our backs on the sun of our fortune and prosperity. For a most singular cause. Simply because our Government, having too much on its hands, has made over this great and fertile India to a trading company in Leadenhall-street, which, with a policy worthy only of a company of Hottentots, is destroying India by a number of the most fatal monopolies, and, for what they imagine to be their own private interests, sacrificing the interests of the whole of the British empire, and of every man, woman, and child in it.

And concludes with this call to the British citizens:

We must, as a great commercial people, apply the principles of free trade to India. As a great mother of colonies, we must take the finest jewel now in our regal crown, Hindostan, out of the degrading hands of a sordid and pettyfogging company.

We must treat her as a superb portion of a superb empire. We must confer the land on the people, and raise the necessary revenue by a fixed and moderate taxation. We must abolish all vital-consuming monopolies, and the work would be done. Capital and capitalists would flow into India as naturally as rivers flow into the ocean.

The employment given to the natives there would be speedily felt in all our manufacturing districts here. Cotton, sugar, rice, silks, wool, dyes, and innumerable other articles, would begin to circulate in abundance at home in exchange for our manufactures, and the days of our darkness—the natural consequence of absurd neglect of natural advantages unparalleled in their kind, unpossessed by any other nation, and of the criminal oppression of millions that would fain enrich us by their labour, would be at an end.

The uplifting experience

2011-01-22T21:54:00.001+05:30

While in Mumbai, I visit an office that has two sections, one of which is located on the 25th floor of Block A, and the other on the 25th floor of Block B. The only way to move from one section to another is by coming down to the ground floor in an elevator, walking a few steps to the adjoining Block, and riding the elevator to the 25th floor again. During such transitions, I wonder how life would have been before the elevators were invented.. The answer is, of course, that tall buildings came up only after elevators were available. It was some kind of a symbiotic relationship.

Yet, when we think of the different modes of urban transportation, we think of the bus, the train, the car, but the elevator is denied the credit it deserves. An article I came across recently tries to make amends..

Without the elevator, we would not have experienced the rise of cities. As crucial to the process of urbanization as sewage systems, streetlights, and steel, the elevator enables dense vertical living. Without height, our cities would sprawl out over suburbia and farmland in a blanket of pavement and a noose of traffic.

Not only did the elevator help shape our modern cities, it also offers an object lesson in ecologically sound technology. “It takes about as much energy to run the light inside as it does to run the elevator,”

So, if you are a parent of a school-going child who needs to submit a ‘project report’ on transportation, remind him/her to include some photos of the elevator, apart from the cars and the buses and the trains.

Our World Cup strategy.

2011-01-22T18:03:00.000+05:30

The Indian cricket team now in South Africa without the top batsmen, Tendulkar, Sehwag and Gambhir, seems to be doing well. This is a happy situation to be in. If the team loses, we can console ourselves by saying that it was our second team. And if it pulls off a win, we would have the bragging rights. Our national prestige and honour are at stake, you see.

In his essay “ Sporting Spirit”, written in 1945, George Orwell wrote:

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused.

Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.

After India won the second test match in the recent series, Graeme Smith tweeted that he was assaulted with a barrage of abusive messages from Indian tweeters, proving Orwell right. We had acquired the rights of a conqueror and had to trample the fallen-down opponents to dust.

Orwell ends the essay by suggesting that if Britain had to send a football team to Russia that year, they should “send a second-rate team which is sure to be beaten and cannot be claimed to represent Britain as a whole. There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.”

We should follow the same strategy during the World Cup and ‘injure’ Sachin and make him unavailable for all the important matches. Knowing his level of patriotism, I am sure he would gladly oblige.

The Bridge over the River Beas

2011-01-10T21:12:00.000+05:30

"Modern India with illustrations of the resources and capabilities of Hindustan", by Henry H Spry, M.D, published in the year 1838 has this remarkable story ( page 93)of how a suspension bridge over the River Beas was designed and planned by a Major Presgrave, and built entirely with material produced from the iron ore found closeby and using local labour.

Allow me to re-produce the story in its entirety.

"This suspension bridge has been constructed entirely out of the resources of the district, and by an amateur mechanic, who had never seen an iron suspension bridge in his life and yet we have an assurance from the visiting engineer for the northwestern provinces and Central India—Major Irvine, C.B., that he had seen nothing superior to it in England.

The undertaking was altogether an experimental one; for, as I have elsewhere mentioned, there are no roads in this part of the country of any extent, and, consequently, little or no traffic between remote places; its undertaking, therefore, originated in a desire to ascertain the capabilities of the materials and the workmen employed.

Saugor, and the districts in its neighbourhood, abound in iron ore; and the authorities were anxious to prove whether this valuable mineral could be manufactured into bars of a quality fit for bridges, and whether, at the same time, they could be fashioned by native smiths, who had never wrought, or even seen, iron of the required dimensions.

Major Presgrave, then assay-master at the Saugor mint, voluntarily gave his services to government on the occasion; and it was he alone who planned, entered on, and accomplished an undertaking which, considering the circumstances under which it was projected, must be esteemed a truly wonderful performance.

It forms a striking instance of genius, aided by the light of science, vanquishing apparently insurmountable obstacles. Engineers in Europe, accustomed to find everything provided for their wants, can scarcely conceive the difficulties which were encountered on the onset of this erection. None, save a master-mind, could have borne up against them. Not only was the business of builder and overseer, together with the subordinate trades of brick-maker, mason, carpenter, and iron manufacturer, to be added to his duties of architect and draughtsman, and that too in a climate in which a trifling exertion produces exhaustion, while incautious exposure will bring on fever and death; but he was also obliged to make the tools, and, ab initio, to teach the hands by which they were to be employed!

The foundation was laid in April, 1828, and the building completed and thrown open to the public in June, 1830. The iron of which it is formed is entirely the produce of the Nerbudda districts. When the bridge was projected, it was still in a state of ore in the mines, whence it had to be extracted, and smelted into small lumps, by the ordinary charcoal process of the country. The working of these crude, impure masses into good bars of the requisite dimensions and strength, proved to be a work of extreme difficulty and labour.

At the onset, two attempts were made before a rocky bottom could be found on which to lay the foundation. The banks of the river on either side are thirty-four feet high; the masonry was commenced six feet under the low-water level; the piers are forty-two feet high, the road-way being raised two feet above the ordinary surface of the country. The necessity of this precaution is apparent from the fact, that notwithstanding the height of the river banks, the freshes, during the season of the periodical rains, come down in such torrents that oftentimes the country is overflowed, and consequently, were not the platform of the bridge out of their reach very serious damage might be occasioned.

The bridge is 200 feet in span, between the points of suspension. The clear portion of the platform measures 190 feet by 11-1/2t. The tension of the bridge and chains, unloaded, is estimated, at either point of suspension, to be 95,632 tons; while, supposing the clear portion of the platform 190 feet by 11-1/2, or 2185 square feet, crowded with men at 691bs each superficial foot, the loaded bridge will have a weight of 120 tons; while the tension at each point of suspension will be 217,674 tons. This gives ten tons as the maximum strain that can be applied to the square inch of 'sectional area of iron. The general tension will, of course, be less than half that quantity.

A compact body of men, as a regiment of soldiers, for example, marching over a suspension bridge, is the severest test that can well be devised to prove the strength of the work, and since the completion of the Saugor suspension bridge, many corps of infantry have passed over it; effectually proving, had there been a doubt, which I believe there never was, in the mind of Major Presgrave on the subject, that the bars were sufficiently wrought to sustain this immense weight.

Every bar, before it was allowed to leave the yard, was tested by an apparatus for the purpose. It was made to bear a strain greater than its individual share would be when joined to its fellows, so that every precaution was taken that ingenuity could devise to insure success. Moreover, in the jointing of the bars, a method was pursued altogether new; but, in simplicity and efficiency, all judges who have examined it have decided to be, far superior to the plan commonly practised.

In the iron-work of the bridge there are twentyeight tons eleven hundred and eighty pounds of metal, which, in its finished state, cost about £2 12s. a hundred weight. The whole erection stood the Government in about £4800, exclusive of a present of £500 which Lord William Bentinck made to Colonel Presgrave, as a remuneration for his services, when his Lordship visited Saugor, in 1832-33; making the entire cost something more than £5000 sterling.

Notwithstanding the countless extra expenses incidental to a first undertaking of this kind, and the distance to which all the materials were obliged to be transported, from the work-yard at Saugor to the place of erection, the bridge has been pronounced to be cheaper than those in Calcutta constructed of English materials."

The narrator concludes the story with this eloquent praise.

"Here then we have a structure which, in elegance, in magnitude, and in durability, may vie with the most perfect specimens of the kind in civilized Europe. And yet fashioned out of the oxydized metal as it lies embedded in the bowels of the earth, by the rude hands of a class of artisans, by no means as expert as their countrymen in northern Hindustan, and the whole emanating from the genius and unremitting industry of one mastermind! Does not this speak volumes? Does it not satisfactorily show what India can do when her resources are properly drawn forth? And is it not a reproof to all who would seek alike to depreciate the country and the capabilities of her people? While an empire possesses engineers and artificers who are able to accomplish such a work as the Saugor iron suspension bridge, the infusion of capital is all that is required to render that country great among the civilized kingdoms of the world; and to this point must India arrive, if proper steps be taken to bring her capabilities into active exertion."

Vacuous and Verbose- 23

2011-01-07T22:17:00.000+05:30

When inflation goes out of control, the Govt must be seen to be acting promptly and decisively. The root cause must be found and remedial steps taken. Communication channels must be opened. The public must get the necessary assurance that matters will be set right soon.

The Finance Minister, one of the most capable administrators the country has ever seen, has zeroed in on the crux of the inflation problem with admirable precision. He has determined that bottlenecks in the supply chain of food items have caused inflation and these had to be removed so as improve availability of items to bring down their prices quickly.

To convey to the public that the FM was on the job, the Press Information Bureau came out with a release that carried the following headlines:

Finance Minister Writes to the Chief Ministers to take Immediate Action to remove all Bottlenecks in the Supply Chain of Food Items Causing Inflation and Improve their availability to Bring Down their Prices Quickly.

The press note begins with the following sentence that captures the essence of the FM’s message in a succinct manner:

Union Finance Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee has urged all the State Governments to ensure that all bottlenecks in the supply chain are removed at the earliest and the availability of the items that are driving the current round of food inflation in the economy, is improved so that food prices can be brought down quickly.

The note ends with a crisp punch line to reiterate the message and leave no doubt whatsoever in the reader’s mind:

He asks the State Governments to ensure that all bottlenecks in the supply chain are removed at the earliest and the availability of the food items causing inflation is improved so that their prices can be brought down quickly.

Aren't you happy that you have a capable Finance Minister with a thorough knowledge of economic theories and who doesn't hesitate to direct State Govts to ensure that all bottlenecks in the supply chain causing inflation are removed at the earliest and the availability of the food items is improved so that their prices can be brought down quickly?

Cricket in India- 160 years ago

2011-01-06T21:46:00.002+05:30

“An Encylopaedia of Rural Sports” published in the year 1840 talks about the spread of cricket in the British colonies. (page 134)

"Kent, Sussex. Hampshire, Surrey, and Middlesex, were formerly the principal counties in which cricket was much played, but its attractions have spread it through most parts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and the examples of Englishmen have carried it to France and other continental countries. Even the burning clime of India cannot wholly keep down the practice of it; and, wherever the active and vigorous sons of Britain sojourn, the deep-rooted love of the game is sure to spring up in the tangible shapes of bats, ball, and wickets, surrounded by batters and scouts. The metropolitan resort of cricketers is a large area, called Lord's Ground, in Marylebone; and here is held the club, which is looked up to as the highest authority in the country in every thing appertaining to the game."

In his book, “Ten years in India: The life of a young officer”, published in the year 1850, Captain Albert Harvey of the 40th Regiment of Madras Infantry records ( page 275) that the natives were taking to the game quite well and were even becoming ‘adept’ at it.

I was glad to find that our officers and men were great cricketers; a capital game among Europeans, but one which I had not the slightest conception would be played by natives; 'twas therefore quite a novelty to me. The adjutant was very fond of the game himself, and taught it to the men, who in a very short space of time became perfect adepts in the art of batting, bowling, and fielding.

We used to meet regularly every evening, and have capital fun, officers and men siding and playing matches. I do not remember ever having seen men enter into the spirit of this noble game as did our fellows: they have such quick eyes that their batting was capital; and, as for bowling, I venture to say that our best at it would astonish even " Lillywhite' himself.

At fagging they were untiring, and in catching particularly expert. They got into the regular way of play; made use of all the phrases and technicalities of the game; had their umpires and their scorers, and did the thing in a manner that quite surprised me. All our steadiest and best behaved men were players. Their attending kept them out of mischief; it gave them amusement as well as exercise; and brought them in daily contact with their officers, with whom they got acquainted, and to whom they became attached by constant intercourse.

I know some who objected to the officers and men playing together, upon the plea of its creating too great familiarity between the two grades. So far from such being the case, I never once saw an instance of even one man taking any liberties or approaching to any familiarity with the officers; on the contrary, they were ever respectful, and invariably kept themselves under proper restraint.

Any of the cricketers losing his temper, from any cause, would be immediately scouted by the rest, and not allowed to play. They were all led to understand that while playing they were supposed to be doing so to enjoy themselves; all squabbling was therefore forbidden; everybody was to be in perfect good humour ; each was to do as he liked; there was no compulsion; but the rules of the game were to be strictly attended to, leaving all disputed points to be settled by the umpires chosen for that purpose.

Update 081111: As @KVSarmaJ pointed out to me on Twitter, maybe Lagaan was a true story!

Misplaced celebrations.

2011-01-02T22:08:00.000+05:30

Peter Roebuck writes in his column:

Usman Khawaja is set to become the first Muslim to play cricket for his country. Of course it is a great day for the player but it's also a breakthrough for cricket and his country.

Some locals insist that the newcomer's faith is irrelevant and ought not to be mentioned. After 140 years a Muslim plays for Australia and it does not matter? To the contrary it is a cause for celebration, a step towards enlightenment.

Though Roebuck has already dismissed the question, it needs to be asked. Why should the person’s faith matter at all, in a discussion of cricket?

In a Utopian world, it is possible to highlight points of differences between individuals, and celebrate the rich diversity. The Bombay Quandrangular cricket tournament in the 1920s was an inter-racial contest involving Hindus, Muslims, Parsees and Europeans. An Indian Christian could not take part. The Europeans would not admit Indians, and the Hindus, Muslims and Parsees would not admit Christians. Later, a fifth team called the Rest was included, so that the Buddhists, Christians and Jews could play.

The Pentangular was eventually abandoned when there were fears of ‘communal unrest’. The Ranji Trophy took its place and provincial teams replaced teams based on religion.

Unfortunately, faith has the tendency to arouse baser instincts and, in the long run, to do more harm than good. So, even if there are some positives, we will have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Diversity is one thing, divisiveness another. It is bad enough that we have to divide people on the basis of nationality. But, we will have to live with this aspect for purely administrative convenience. The entire world cannot be kept boundaryless and governed from a central place.

So, when we have national teams such as Australia, Pakistan, India competing, the emphasis has to be solely on the person’s nationality. You are permitted to say that Khawaja is of Pak-origin, but his Islamic faith is not relevant and needs no emphasis..

Sale: Flat 80% discount

2011-01-02T17:18:00.000+05:30

I was in a mall in Delhi the week after Diwali and observed that almost all the showrooms had displayed huge signs announcing “Sale: Flat discount of 80%”. Curious, I stepped into one of the shops and took a look at the shirts being sold. The price tags were in the range of Rs 1800-2500 for some unknown brands of dubious quality. Clearly, the prices had been marked up by 400% or so. I walked out in disgust.

This deception is a result of a vicious cycle created by buyers and sellers together. Buyers are more likely to buy a shirt when the price is calculated as Rs 400, from a price tag that reads ‘Rs 2000’ (less 80% discount) than when it honestly reads ‘Rs 400”. Everybody looks for a bargain all the time, and the sellers know this.

But if this trick is so obvious and so well known, why do sellers still resort to it? The principle at work is “You can fool a different set of people at different times” or “a sucker is born every minute.” There would be some buyers who would presume that the shoppers were getting rid of unsold inventory, post-Diwali, at throwaway prices. And the price tag of“Rs 2000” confers the stamp of good quality on the shirt, right?

Essay on Hindu architecture

2011-01-01T21:34:00.000+05:30

In the year 1834, one Ram Raz, a retired native Judge and magistrate at Bangalore, published an “Essay on Hindu Architecture” that for the first time demystified and explained, in English, the hitherto-obscure science and grammar involved in the design and construction of temples. The book also had several illustrations or “plates’ as they were called.

In an introduction to the book, Richard Clarke of the Royal Asiatic Society says:

The introduction to the European public of an " Essay on Hindu Architecture," and by a Hindu, would seem to mark an epoch not only in the history of the science but also in that of the Hindus themselves.

Their palaces, their temples, the stupendous pyramidal gateways leading to the latter, the colonnades and porticoes with which they are surrounded; some of " a thousand pillars," others equally remarkable for their elevations, richness, and grandeur of design, have for ages been the objects of admiration to the traveller in the East ; and, though it had long been known, proverbially, that the Hindus possessed treatises on architecture of a very ancient date, prescribing the rules by which these edifices were constructed, it remained for the author of this essay to overcome the many, and almost insurmountable obstacles to the substantiation of the fact, and to the communication of it to the European world in a well known language of Europe.

The author, Ram Raz, explains in his foreword:

Works on Silpa Sastra are very scarce in this part of the country; and even the few scattered fragments that can be had are scarcely intelligible to our best educated pundits, as they are so full of memorial verses and technical terms, that none but those who have been regularly initiated in the study of the art, can comprehend them fully.

As to our Silpis themselves, you know they are generally men of very limited acquirements, and totally unacquainted with the science, so that the task of explaining this obscure subject has become exceedingly difficult. I often attempted to unravel it with the assistance of many artists and pundits who had been supposed to know any thing of the matter, and as often despaired of meeting with any success.

At length I have fortunately found a good sculptor of the Cammata tribe, a native of Tanjore, who is well acquainted with the practical part of the Hindu architecture, and with most of the terms used in the art. With his valuable aid I have already been enabled to solve many intricate problems, and to remove many difficulties against which I had long been struggling.

It is a melancholy truth, that those venerable sages to whom our works on arts and sciences are attributed, in endeavouring to communicate instruction to the world have been guided rather by a mistaken ambition of rendering themselves reputable by the difficulty and abstruseness of their style, than by an anxiety to make themselves intelligible. And to this indeed is that almost general ignorance among the Hindus in the arts and sciences chiefly ascribable.

The essay explains how precise rules were laid down for arrangement of various structures, with an emphasis on perfect symmetry. The level of ‘engineering detailing’ that was done is quite remarkable.

Vacuous and Verbose- 22

2011-01-01T19:12:00.000+05:30

It must be tough being the ghost writer of India’s Prime Minister. Solemn messages must be sent out on every possible occasion. The PM must be seen or heard greeting people for every festival that is celebrated in the remotest parts of the country. Otherwise, umbrage will be taken and much blood-boiling will take place.

The poor writer has to rely on some loose templates, or boilerplates, to churn out these messages in time.

Here, for your ready reference, are the New Year messages sent out by the PM in the last 5 years. No one has ever read any of them, but what is important is that the newspapers must carry the obligatory “PM’s New Year message” on its headlines.

2007

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has greeted the people on the eve of the joyous occasion of New Year. In his New Year message, the Prime Minister said the New Year gives us an opportunity to dedicate ourselves to the consolidation of the gains of the past and to work for new horizons of progress and development.

2008

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh greeted the nation on New Year. In his message, the Prime Minister said that New Year is a time to reflect upon the year gone by, upon our successes, achievements and mistakes. It makes us wise to our strengths and weaknesses and gives us a chance to set new goals. It is a time for stocktaking and making a new start in achieving our individual and collective goals.

2009

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has greeted the Nation on the eve of the New Year. In a message, the Prime Minister hoped that the year 2009 will bring with it a better future for everyone. He also wished that the New Year will bring peace and prosperity to the world. “The beginning of the New Year is the time to firm up our resolve to work for the development of our country and for the well-being of our country-men”, the Prime Minister added.

2010

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has greeted the nation on the eve of the New Year.

In a message, Dr. Singh said that as we welcome the dawn of a new decade we should build upon the achievements of the past in striving for the realization of our dreams.

2011

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has greeted the nation on the eve of the New Year. Following is the text of Prime Minister’s message:

“I wish all our citizens a very happy New Year.

It is an occasion to take stock of the year gone by and of the challenges that lie ahead.

Let us make a new beginning to the year. Let us dispel the air of despondency and cynicism. We need to believe in the resilience of our democracy and its capacity to deal with infirmities and shortcomings through course correction.

On the eve of the New Year, I want to assure all our citizens that my government and I will work with renewed resolve for the welfare of our people. We will redouble our efforts to deal effectively and credibly with the challenges of inflation, cleansing our governing processes, national security and making our delivery system work for the aam aadmi.”

( Source: Press Information Bureau, Govt of India)

High alert!

2010-12-24T22:05:00.000+05:30

A news item on Dec 5th this year reported: “A security alert has been sounded across Uttar Pradesh and other communally-sensitive places in India ahead of Monday's 18th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, a home ministry official said”

Presumably, the validity of this ‘high alert’ notice expired on the midnight of Dec 6th.. This emboldened some terror organizations to carry out a ‘low intensity’ blast in Varanasi, on the evening of Dec 7th. . Promptly thereafter, the Home Ministry issued a ‘high alert’ again. In fact, I heard one explanation that the terrorists must have planned to carry this out on Dec 6th, but must have realized it was difficult because the police was on ‘high alert’ that day.

Today, the Govt has issued another ‘high alert’ and has asked the NSG to stand in readiness.

What does this mean? That there will be brief periods of ‘high alert’ that will be announced in advance by the Govt and withdrawn after a few days, when the danger has seemingly passed? That the terrorists are supposed to lie low when the country is on ‘high alert’ mode?

In other words, when the default setting of ‘low alert’ mode is restored, you and I should be worried, very worried.

In one of his essays, R.K.Narayan writes about a childhood experience of an all-night journey that he had to undertake by bullock-cart to reach his home town after alighting from a train in a station thirty miles away.

“The bullock carts moved in a caravan, winding along a dark, tree-shaded highway. Robbers were known to attack such caravans about ten miles from the railway station at midnight. The menace was warded off by a simple expedient. One of the cart-men walked ahead carrying a lantern and a staff and throwing bloodcurdling challenges to the night air. “Hey, keep away, prowlers, if you don’t want your skulls pulped… Who goes there? and so forth, the other drivers also sitting up and urging their bullocks with the loudest swear words. This was kept up till we passed a jutting rock beyond the twelfth milestone; the moment we crossed this spot the challenger went back to his cart, curled himself up in his seat and fell asleep, the entire caravan following this example. By some strange law or understanding, the robbers never seemed to step an inch beyond the jutting rock. It always seemed to me that the robbers were missing a fine opportunity to attack with all the cart-men fast asleep and the only wakeful person being myself as I tried to sleep on a pile of straw expecting any moment to be killed.”

By some strange law or understanding, terrorists are expected to respect the Home Ministry’s ‘high alert’ warning and wait for the ‘all clear’ siren to be blown.

Be warned, Ministers.

2010-12-20T20:56:00.000+05:30

In an article in The Outlook, Madhu Purnima Kishwar writes:

I fail to understand why almost every commentator, every TV anchor, every editorial writer feels compelled to pay ritual obeisance to the “personal honesty and integrity of Dr Manmohan Singh” while dealing with the scandals emanating from his cabinet colleagues. They do so even when there is clear evidence that the Prime Minister was well aware of various shady deals, as in the case of Telecom scam, and that he did nothing to stop the brazen economic crimes indulged in by his ministerial colleagues over the last 6 years.

Even if not guilty of an ‘act of commission’, the PM is certainly accountable for his various acts of omission. Doesn’t he know this?

While reflecting on the PM, I came across this passage from a book written by one Horace Wyndham. One of the characters suppressed by a feudal lord addresses the latter thus:

"Listen to me, Your Lordship. You have broken my business. You have ruined my home, you have sent my son to prison and my wife to a dishonoured grave amd you have seduced my only daughter. But, be careful, Lord FitzWallop, I am a man of quick temper. Do not try me too far. "

I thought this tone would suit the PM perfectly. I can imagine him addressing his cabinet.

Listen to me, you guys. Your have made a killing of several hundred crores from the Commonwealth Games. You grabbed apartments and buildings meant for war widows. You have made the nation lose Rs 1,76,000 crores by allotting the 2G spectrum for a song. But, be warned. I am a man of great integrity and quick temper. If I come across any instances of corruption, I will not tolerate it.

Strong-arm methods

2010-12-18T17:10:00.000+05:30

“Household Words” a journal edited by Charles Dickens, carried this chilling narrative in one of the issues that it brought out in the year 1856. It describes the practice of torture in the Madras Presidency by the District Collectors appointed by the British East India Company.

Indifferent as we are in England about Indian affairs, there are few who do not know that more than one-half of the entire revenue of that vast empire consists of a land-tax or rent, which is exacted from the occupiers by the government.

In Madras, the Honourable Company is not only the head landlord; but the sole landlord. No proprietor, no middleman, no intermediate grade whatever interposes between the actual cultivator of the soil and the great company which is at once his seigneur and his sovereign. The Honourable Company itself lets the land, fixes the rent, raises or lowers the rent, and collects the rent.

For the purpose of rent-getting the presidency is divided into a number of pleasant little districts, each comprising some three or four thousand square miles and containing from half a million to a million of inhabitants ; and over each of these is placed a British head-collector, who, besides making his own fortune within the limited time is expected to supervise the collection of the entire revenue of the district.

To assist him in this duty a large staff of tahsildars, monigars, curnoms, duffadars, peons, taliaries, and other nondescript native officials of high and low degree, is spread through the several villages of the district—but, as this native staff is described by unexceptionable witnesses as little better than a delusion, it may be doubted whether on the whole their services are precisely such as we should desire to see employed in the collection of public money, or in the delicate negotiations between the Honourable East India Company and the miserable defaulters in the land-tax.

Connected with this department, there is also another Indian institution, which may seem, a little harsh to English readers. We at home should object if the collector of income-tax, poor-rate, or county-rate were empowered to proceed summarily, by his own authority and without the interposition of a magistrate, or of any civil process whatsoever, to arrest the person of the defaulter. Even in India itself, bad as things were, this used to be unlawful. But the Honourable Company is strict in money matters and, by an enactment, now about forty years old, all authority, whether of the revenue, the police, or the magistracy, is vested in the same set of officials—those very gentlemen who are declared thieves by their friends.

And now let us see how the case stands. Messrs. Elliot, Stokes and Norton have collected information from all parts of the Madras Presidency, and have heard evidence from every class, directly or indirectly concerned, from the rent-collectors and the rentpayers, and from every section of both. These gentlemen unhesitatingly report, as the result of their inquiries, that personal violence on the part of the native revenue and police officials prevails throughout the presidency, personal violence of such a character that, in five recorded instances, "death has followed upon its infliction." They declare this to be the only conclusion that any impartial mind could arrive at.

The use of wooden pincers (the kittie),trussing a man, bending him double (anandal), squeezing the crossed fingers with the hands, punches on the thighs, slaps, blows with the fist or a whip, twisting the ears,making a man sit on the soles of his feet with brickbats behind his knees, putting a low caste man on his back, striking two defaulters heads against each other,or tying them together by the hair, placing in the stocks,tying the hair of the head to a donkey's or a buffalo's tail, placing a necklace of bones, or other disgusting or degrading materials round the neck,— are some of the usual ways of expediting the receipt of money.

The police officials often however resort to more severe procedures, as, for instance, twisting a rope tightly round the arm or leg so as to impede circulation, lifting up by the moustache, suspended by the arms while tied behind the back,searing with hot-irons, placing scratching insects such as the carpenter beetle on the most sensitive parts of the body, dipping in wells and rivers till the victim is half suffocated, beating with sticks ; nipping the flesh with pincers, putting pepper or red chillies in the eyes, these cruelties being occasionally persevered in till death, sooner or later, ensues.

Rent-day, then, round Madras is not like Rent-day in Great Britain. The rents which are there collected are not the rents of a mere private proprietor, but of the Honourable Company itself.

The officials who figure on the Indian scene are not the steward, or bailiff, of some great estates in the Highlands, or in Connemara; they are every one of them the chosen and salaried servants of that great public body which represents England in India, and for every one of whose doings the good name of England is pledged to the countless millions whom we have taken under our paternal rule in that unhappy empire. For every official deed of theirs, for every act of cruelty, injustice, or rapine ; for every anna of the wretched ryot's substance wrongfully extracted ; for every torture or indignity inflicted upon his most miserable carcase, the Honourable East India Company is responsible.

While the account is quite shocking to read, it must also be recognized that there were conscientious citizens in Britain who brought to light these excesses committed by officials of the East India Company and raised awareness.

You miserable sub-45 creatures.

2010-12-18T13:19:00.000+05:30

Mark Lowry, comedian, in this hilarious interview when he turned forty, explains how the description of birthday changes every decade.

You BECOME 21. You TURN 30. You're PUSHING to 40. You REACH 50. You MAKE it to 60. By that time,you’ve built up so much speed you HIT 70. After that, it's just a day-to-day thing"

Yes, old age catches up quite fast. I can vouch for that now. But it is not all bad news.

In a recent article, The Economist dips into various global studies on the subject and explains the correlation between age and happiness.

When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure—vitality, mental sharpness and looks—they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness.

….One paper, published this year by Arthur Stone, Joseph Schwartz and Joan Broderick of Stony Brook University, and Angus Deaton of Princeton, breaks well-being down into positive and negative feelings and looks at how the experience of those emotions varies through life. Enjoyment and happiness dip in middle age, then pick up; stress rises during the early 20s, then falls sharply; worry peaks in middle age, and falls sharply thereafter; anger declines throughout life; sadness rises slightly in middle age, and falls thereafter.

In short, what these studies tell us is that, after the peak happiness in the twenties, there is a steady decline till the age of 45 or so. At this point, there is a U-bend and we start the upward climb on the happiness curve again.

So, what I want to convey to the kids in the age group 25-40 is this: No doubt you are young and all that. But you are on the downward slope of the happiness curve and will keep sliding steadily for some more years. Whereas, I have bottomed-out of that curve and am well on the ascending part of the graph. Take that, you miserable lot.

Hill cricket

2010-12-18T12:34:00.000+05:30

A few years back, a friend of mine suddenly decided to leave the corporate world and join a Foundation that was into social work.

What drove him- someone with a promising career ahead of him- to make this jump, I had asked him.

He had happened to attend one the programs organized by the Foundation, in one of the southern districts of Tamilnadu, he told me. It was a sports event- the Village Olympics- in which hundreds of farmers and others from the rural community had taken part. It was perhaps, for the first time in their lives that these people had ever indulged in a properly organized activity of this scale and nature. There was much fun and revelry and the simple folks went back home in such high spirits. It occurred to my friend then that if he were a part of the Foundation, he could put his organizing capability to good use and contribute to the cause of bringing joy to hundreds of people.

Quite an amazing decision, I felt, my friend had taken. And he didn’t sound morally superior or use a condescending tone as if he was the chosen one to light up the lives of the villagers. I felt his passion was quite genuine.

I was reminded of this friend when I read this story of the 1,342-team T20 Mahasangram cricket tournament being organized in the hills of Himachal Pradesh.

In its second year, the tournament, branded as “the world’s biggest”, hopes to take cricket to every village of Himachal Pradesh. Organised by the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA), the tournament, which began on November 29, will go on for a month and a half. The participating players are mostly local villagers and though the organisers provide them balls, they have to pool in for bats and helmets, food and travelling expenses.

With breathtaking views of the Kullu Valley and the Dhauladhar ranges, the setting is spectacular. But the playing conditions are nowhere near perfect. The pitch is matting and the playing field is far from level—balls hit by a right hander towards the leg side tend to roll downhill where children in slippers play with bats crudely carved out of any available wood and balls made of cloth.

Balls are sometimes hard to field when they slide off slopes or plop into streams. Occasionally, play has to be stopped as cattle and ponies traipse along the outfield, on their way to the jungle to graze.

Yet, the game goes on. The players, dressed in white, like regular Test cricketers, come in all shapes, sizes, ages and professions. The enthusiasm shows when they bend that little bit extra to send the ball racing, then dive to stop singles and come up smiling after having saved runs and bruised their elbows.

It is a wonderful story, well narrated by Jonathan Selvaraj, the IE reporter.

India vs Egypt

2010-12-17T22:09:00.000+05:30

Amira Nowaira, in her column in The Guardian, writes on the eve of the Egyptian elections:

Egypt's contradictions may be a source of infinite amusement, but also one of genuine distress. Where else can you find a state of emergency that stays in place for 30 years? The word "emergency" implies a brief, intense situation that should disappear as soon as it is dealt with. But 30 years?

And where else can you find a presidential candidate casting his vote for another instead of himself? This was what the 90-year-old Ahmed El-Sabbahi did in 2005, when he proudly declared that he gave his vote to Mubarak.

More seriously, where else can you find a banned organisation like the Muslim Brotherhood getting high-profile coverage in the media and a sizable representation in the 2005 parliament? If the organisation is illegal and banned, why are they all over the media, giving interviews and making statements?

Where else can you find a nation with more than 50% of its population under the age of 15 that is ruled mostly by septuagenarians and octogenarians? Whenever the ruling NDP tries to indicate its endorsement of the nation's youth, it is actually referring to people in their 50s. One must admit, though, that the NDP deserves marks for consistency at least, for if power is still in the hands of octogenarians in the prime of life, then the 50-year olds of the NDP are green youths still being groomed for their future.

Well, the ‘emergency’ in India lasted much less than 30 years. Also, I don’t think I’ll be able to cite examples of any Indian politician casting his vote for another opponent. But, to that question about octogenarians ruling a country where 50% of its population is less than 15-years old, I believe I can provide a strong counter-claim.

In Tamilnadu, we have a 85-year old Chief Minister who has to be taken around on a wheel-chair. Competing with him is the Governor who is also 85 years old and who can barely get up from his chair..

According to a report, the average age of the Indian Union cabinet is 64.4 years which is almost two-and-a-half times the country's median age at 25.9. This is far greater than most of the developed economies where the difference is only a decade or so. Even the Chinese leadership is more youthful with an average cabinet age of 61.2 years.

The only way we can correct this geriatric tradition is by adopting the system suggested by Italo Calvino in a short story -which I had cited in an earlier post.

Sorry for what?

2010-12-17T21:08:00.000+05:30

In one of the Radia tapes, Mr Tarun Das, ex-CII, is heard accusing Mr Kamal Nath of corruption. The Hindu reports

Mr. Das says Mr. Nath can still make his “15 per cent” on this. “You can do national service and also make money… and do really something worthwhile here,” Mr. Das says, to which Ms. Radia's responds: “This is still an ATM [automated teller machine] for Kamal Nath.” “Absolutely,” says Mr. Das.

Asked by The Hindu how he could speak of a Minister doing national service if he was “also making money” and why he pushed for Mr. Nath's candidature despite harbouring apprehensions about corruption under his watch, Mr. Das said his “15 per cent” remark was “irresponsible and unfortunate.”

I regret that, he said. “Loose talk. My public apologies to Mr. Nath.”

Should Mr Tarun Das have apologised?

All of us have some private conversations which we, under normal circumstances, don’t allow to get into the public domain. Talking to my wife in the privacy of my home, I might use the choicest expletives while describing my boss, secure in the knowledge that he is not going to hear about it. But, if my phone had been kept on by mistake and my curious boss- the crook- at the other end manages to eavesdrop on the sensitive dialogue, am I supposed to apologise to him?

Taking the argument one step further, suppose there is a device invented that can read my mind, will I be arrested on charges of harbouring an intention to molest a woman, when I am just fantasising about her?

The rules of civilised behaviour do not apply under all conditions. Digging my nose in public may be gross, but it is perfectly alright when I am alone. If someone catches me doing it, using a secretly-embedded camera, am I supposed to feel bad?

Bug anybody’s phone or room, several dark secrets and skeletons will tumble down. It would be stupid of that person to apologise for something he or she had said during a private and exclusive conversation with another person. Such conversations are like the noise created by a crashing tree deep inside a forest. No one else is supposed to hear it.

The Indian Alchemist

2010-12-04T20:08:00.001+05:30

Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence in its despatches in the year 1846, narrates this interesting case.

The ingenious knave who successfully contrived to defraud an unsuspecting conicopillay in the service of his Highness the Nabob of no less a sum than 425 rupees, and who almost immediately after the achievement became noninventus—has been apprehended at Chittoor, and is now there in durance vile.

It may be remembered that the fellow, a Fakeer, set himself up for an alchemist, and that having won the confidence of the conicopillay by a prefatory trick, he undertook to convert as many silver rupees as this man could furnish him with into as many gold mohurs, by a process which terminated in his own favour at the time, for it made him master of 425 rupees, and set him, thus enriched, on a felicitous tramp into the interior.

But his joys were destined to be of short duration, for a talliar of police, armed with a warrant, was sent in pursuit of the fugitive, and soon came up to the chase.

How the minion of the law came to direct himself to that especial point of the thirty-two points of the compass is problematical, and can only be solved by ascribing to the nasal organs of the officers of police that nicety of scent for carrion which distinguishes the vulture. But be this as it may, the Fakeer was apprehended and on him was found the "handkerchief" which contained the reagent, but not the reagent itself.

The Fakeer acknowledged the fraud, and said that he gave twenty rupees to each of bis accomplices. He may be expected here shortly to undergo the process of magisterial purification.—

Suckers and conmen have been around for a long time. Only the tricks have mutated and evolved over time, keeping pace with new technology

Taking the queue.

2010-11-17T22:42:00.001+05:30

Indians have this reputation of ‘jumping’ queues, and – quite often- not forming one at all. Why can't we accept the simple fact that someone reached a particular spot before we did, and so is entitled to that space? Yesterday, while at the airport, I had the experience of being ‘jumped’ over quite a few times and ended up feeling like I was a piece in a game of Chinese checkers. While some did it brazenly, a lady sought my permission to move ahead of me, as she was late for the Delhi flight- incidentally the same flight I was going to board. Yet another guy shoved me aside at Security and pushed his bag through the scanner. Why? Why?

A paper ( or rather a draft of one) that I found on the net has this to say on the subject:

The queue is, effectively, a mechanism of social regulation in which a randomly assembled group of strangers is caused to act, quite counter-intuitively, in a particular way. Previously unrelated strangers are somehow persuaded to subscribe collectively to a normative code which they then police themselves.

Waiting in line is one of the great levellers of humankind. The queue is no respecter of persons. In the citizenship of the queue no rank is relevant other than the rank order of one’s position as determined by the coldly neutral datum of sequential arrival in the line. Within the queue, roles and relationships become ‘demystified and objectified’. Differences of background, class, reputation, education or socio-economic status count for nothing.The queue is one of the ultimate manifestations of the democratic impulse – in some jurisdictions almost the only evidence of democracy at work.

There is some evidence of a cultural or socio-legal affinity between the ultimately Anglo-Saxon conceptualism of estate ownership and the social discipline of the queue. The practice of queuing tends to be most strongly prevalent in jurisdictions which have always been familiar with the legal apparatus of ‘estates’ in land, that is, with the sequential arrangement of various grades of time-bounded ownership. It has been wickedly observed that ‘[a]n Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.

One intriguing study of queuing in Hong Kong’s Disneyland has also pointed to the strong resistance to queuing culture exhibited by mainland Chinese visitors to the park as compared with the greater degree of queue conformity evident amongst Hong Kong Chinese themselves. Nor is it without significance that the 15 million inhabitants of Beijing are currently being indoctrinated, through the medium of mobile phone text messages, in the practice of queuing. In preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games the Chinese Communist Party has designated the eleventh day of each month as ‘Queuing Day’

So, what explains our extreme reluctance to fall in line? Our relatively recent exposure to laws governing property rights? Our desire to increase the entropy of the Universe, which after all is the natural order? Because a queue gives us an opportunity to challenge hierarchies? Or we see it as a plain nuisance and a silly Western habit? Or all of you just ganging up on me and pushing me out of my rightful place in the queue?

Boys will be...

2010-11-16T21:43:00.000+05:30

A news story in The Hindu today.

A boy who swam to reach the central hall of the temple tank located near the Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore here on Monday drowned midway. According to police sources, the unidentified boy aged about 13 years was seen swimming towards the central hall of the tank holding a thermocol sheet around 7 a.m. A few metres ahead of the hall, he drowned.

It is sad that it had to end this way, but the boy deserves a salute for displaying the spirit of a…boy.

When one is a 13-year old boy, there is no such thing as ‘impossible’ or ‘too dangerous’. Doing things the ‘done’ way is unthinkable. Climbing down the stairs from the third floor is not an option, when a perfectly good system of sunshades and pipes exist. Tall trees need to be climbed to untangle kites, 8-ft high walls need to be jumped over to retrieve the cricket ball, cycles have to be monkey-pedalled, swings need to be subjected to rigorous testing to establish its escape velocity, dad’s razor sets have to be tried out and experienced, puddles must be dived into and water splashed all around, bee hives must be stoned at…. This is a very basic instinct hardwired in the brains of boys and, in the days when food had to be hunted, probably helped them prepare for the hard years ahead.

So, the boy who spotted the thermocol sheet near a water body must have immediately converted it into a raft and set sail for a distant land- the central hall of the tank in this case. It was the only logical thing to do. The thermocol sheet couldn’t have existed for any other purpose.

To write stories, read poetry

2010-11-04T21:20:00.000+05:30

If you aspire to be a good writer and a story teller, where do you get your ideas from? To begin with, says Ray Bradbury, you could read poetry every day of your life.

Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanse paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommend them for browsing.

My story, “The Shoreline at Sunset” is a direct result of reading Robert Hillyer’s lovely poem about finding a mermaid near Plymouth Rock. My story, “There will come Soft rains” is based on the poem of that title by Sarah Teasdale and the body of the story encompasses the theme of her poem. From Byron’s, “ And the Moon Be Still as Bright” came a chapter for my novel. “The Martian Chronicle’ which speaks for a dead race of Martians who will no longer prowl empty seas late at night. In these cases and dozens of others, I have had a metaphor jump at me, give me a spin and run me off to do a story.

What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T.S.Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.

Diwali- 1836

2010-11-04T21:02:00.000+05:30

Carey’s library of choice literature, published in 1836, carries this description of the Diwali festival in Benares:

In no part of Hindostan can one of the most beautiful of the native festivals be seen to so great an advantage as at Benares. The duwullee is celebrated there with the greatest splendour, and its magnificence is heightened by the situation of the city on the bank of the river, and the singular outlines of the buildings. The attraction of this annual festival consists in the illuminations : at the close of evening, small chiraugs (earthen lamps,) fed with oil which produces a bright white light, are placed, as closely together as possible, on every ledge of every building. Palace, temple, and tower seemed formed of stars. The city appears like the creation of the fire-king, the view from the water affording the most superb and romantic spectacle imaginable,—a scene of fairy splendour, far too brilliant for description.

Europeans embark in boats to enjoy the gorgeous pageant from the river; all the vessels are lighted up, and the buildings in the distance, covered with innumerable lamps, shine out in radiant beauty. European illuminations, with their coloured lamps, their transparencies, their crowns, stars, and initial letters, appear paltry when compared to the chaste grandeur of the Indian mode; the outlines of a whole city are marked in streams of fire, and the coruscations of light shoot up into the dark blue sky above, and tremble in long undulations on the rippling waves below. According to the native idea, everything that prospers on the evening of the duwalee will be sure to prosper throughout the year. Gamblers try their luck, and if they should be successful, pursue their fortune with redoubled confidence. Thieves also, anxious to secure an abundant supply of booty, labour diligently on this evening in their vocation : while others eat, drink, and are merry, in order that they may spend the ensuing period joyously.

This festival is instituted in honour of Luchmee, the goddess of wealth, and those who are anxiously desirous to obtain good fortune, seek for two things on the night of its celebration : the flowers of the goolur, a tree which bears fruit but never blossoms; and the soul of a snake, an animal which is supposed to deposit its spirit occasionally under a tree.

The whole of the Moosulman population arc abroad to witness the superb spectacle produced by the blaze of light which flames from every Hindoo building at the duwallee, and the festival being one of a very peaceable description, goes off without broil or bloodshed—and what is still more extraordinary, without occasioning the conflagration of half the houses;

Leave him alone

2010-10-29T22:04:00.000+05:30

Every now and them, we have some writer or other imagining what Gandhi would have done had he lived in these times.

Thus, we have B.S.Raghavan, in his column in The BusinessLine, telling us what Gandhi would have done had he been in charge of Reliance now.

The dress code would henceforth be nothing more than white khadi pants and shirts and ordinary chappals, if not wooden sandals. He would immediately effect an across-the-board cut in the emoluments bringing them down to a tiny fraction of the present package.

The very sight of Rs 4,500 crore worth, 28-storied, 400,000 square feet of living quarters of the elder Ambani would transport him to heights of ecstasy.

He would look upon it as a ready-made home to shift the entire slum population of Mumbai, using the huge landing grounds of helicopters and the swimming pools on half-a-dozen floors for hospitals, schools and orphanages.

He would see to it that all the assets of the Reliance Company are converted into a People's Trust, insisting that the rich should live for the poor and not for themselves, and their life's mission should be to wipe every tear from every eye.

The advantage in writing such stuff is that nobody can refute this or challenge your assertions ,even though they sound deceptively similar to the Rajinikanth jokes that are doing the rounds. You are merely transporting the person to a new era and applying his attributes in a new context.

Which is precisely why I liked Naipaul’s observations on Gandhi. He says that Gandhi was a special product that materialized at the appropriate time. Many circumstances- his mother’s austerity, English Law, South Africa – had shaped him before he arrived in India. He was a unique mix of several parts that made a significant whole, but the combination of his traits worked in a certain context. It is impossible to create another Gandhi with the same blend of attributes as it is impossible to create the set of circumstances that had shaped him. Similarly, the context is so different today, that the same Gandhi if he were alive will not be able to have much of an impact.

Let’s leave him alone, shall we?.

I, Drill bit.

2010-10-24T22:08:00.001+05:30

When it was clear that the Chilean miners would be rescued soon, several Christian factions in Chile were squabbling over which of them had been instrumental in getting God to answers their prayers. The Evangelical, Adventist and Catholic clerics each claimed credit for what they said was divine intervention in the survival – and expected imminent rescue – of the 33 men who had spent 67 days beneath the earth.

Now the Wall Street Journal says that capitalism was what saved the miners. The basic principle is that innovation happens when you let free markets operate unhindered and incentivised by profit motives, as illustrated in the famous parable of the pencil ( “I, Pencil”)

In the case of the Chilean miners, several factors converged to create the possibility of rescue. The central rock drill bit- that stood out for its toughness - was made by a small company in the USA. The high-strength cable winding came from Germany while the communication cable that kept the miners contactable came from Japan. . Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that had its own projector. Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

The WSJ article concludes:

In an open economy, you will never know what is out there on the leading developmental edge of this or that industry. But the reality behind the miracles is the same: Someone innovates something useful, makes money from it, and re-innovates, or someone else trumps their innovation. Most of the time, no one notices. All it does is create jobs, wealth and well-being. But without this system running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead.

Morals without God

2010-10-24T19:41:00.000+05:30

Whatever criticism we may level against religion, it has to be admitted that it has provided us with a moral framework or compass. Even the most non-theistic societies in the world have derived their sense of morality from religion. In short, there is no evidence anywhere for what morality would look like without religion.

Frans B. M. de Waal, a biologist, has written a fine piece in the New York Times in which he argues that even if we managed to throw out religion from our lives and develop a different framework to advocate a certain moral outlook, the elements of that model will look pretty similar to today’s religion. It is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.

(via)

12000, 13000, 14000.....

2010-10-15T22:01:00.001+05:30

Watching Tendulkar when he is in full flow is a joyful experience, but I have found his continued success in the last few years quite annoying. After some analysis, I have concluded that my irrational reaction is mainly due to a) the dread of the sugary, syrupy statements that he insists on making after breaking some record or other and b) the thought that, for the next few days/weeks, the media will resort to painful hyperbole, such as “ He is the greatest living Indian”, etc. Both get to my nerves. I am more than willing to concede that he is an excellent batsman, but I am not going to raise him to the level of a demigod or collude in such efforts.

In contrast, I am far more relaxed while watching Dravid bat. I know that if he scores a century, he will come up with an honest statement, without any added sugar or preservatives. Moreover, the media chooses to leave him severely alone and doesn’t make him out to be a cult figure. So, I don’t have to worry about an imminent onslaught of screaming,bold-fonted headlines.

But, even a diehard Dravid fan has to admit that the 'law of diminishing returns' caught up with him long back, even while Tendulkar, who is of the same age, has been going from strength to strength.

Many theories have been put forward to explain Tendulkar’s sustained age-defying brilliance. His poise, his balance, the way he understands his body’s limitations and stays within that, his child-like enthusiasm, his commitment, etc. But are these qualities good enough to keep him going?

In the book, “The upside of irrationality”, the author Dan Ariely while arguing that too much stress or motivation can be counter-productive, cites an example from the movie “First Knight” starring Richard Gere and Sean Connery. In it, Sir Lancelot is a vagabond expert swordsman who duels to pay his bills. Seeing him win consistently, a person named Mark asks him how he managed to do that. Lancelot offers Mark three tips: first to observe the man he’s fighting and learn how he thinks; second, to await the make-or-break moment in the match and go for it then. Up to that point Mark nods happily, sure he can learn to do those things. Lancelot’s final tip however is a little more difficult to follow. He tells his eager student that he can’t care about living or dying. In other words, Lancelot fought better than anyone else because he had found a way to bring his stress level to zero. If he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, nothing rides on his performance. He doesn’t worry about living past the end of the fight, so nothing clouds his mind and affects his abilities- he is pure concentration and skill.

I thought of Tendulkar when I read that. His power of concentration or his technical wizardry or his commitment, by themselves, could not have enabled him to excel this long. If so, Dravid too has these qualities in abundant measure. So, taking a cue from Lancelot, I would like to submit that what sets them apart is this. Dravid takes his sobriquet of “The Wall’ too seriously. Consumed by the sole objective of holding on to his wicket, even as his reflexes get slower, he stresses himself out completely. Tendulkar is unburdened by such thoughts. He bats as if there is no tomorrow. So nothing clouds his mind and the resulting serenity more than makes up for any age-related drop in his levels of concentration and skill.

Can faith trump logic?

2010-10-01T11:48:00.000+05:30

Siddharth Varadarajan agonises in The Hindu today that “Force of faith has trumped law and reason in Ayodhya case”.

…..leaving aside the question of who “the Hindus” referred to by the court really are and how their actual faith and belief was ascertained and measured, it is odd that a court of law should give such weight to theological considerations and constructs rather than legal reasoning and facts. Tulsidas wrote his Ramcharitmanas in 16th century Ayodhya but made no reference to the birthplace of Lord Rama that the court has now identified with such exacting precision five centuries later.

The “faith and belief” that the court speaks about today acquired salience only after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party launched a political campaign in the 1980s to “liberate” the “janmasthan.”

He is entitled to his views, of course.

An hour or so spent on Google Books provides me a different perspective.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, there was a directive from the British Legislature that Indian subjects of Britain must be protected in their rights according to the ‘laws and constitutions’ of India, on the principle that law can only sanctify long-held human customs and traditions. Following this, there were attempts by many to determine what were the ‘laws and constitution’ that would apply in India. Examples : William Jones, Colebrokes, Sutherland – these were some of the authorities engaged in the task. They even went into differences in belief systems in different regions of India. For example, in his book, “ Hindu Law principally with reference to such portions of it as concern the administration of justice in the King’s courts” written in 1830, Sir Thomas Strange, Chief Justice of Madras, has compiled an exhaustive list of cases in which opinions of learned pundits had been taken while delivering verdicts more suited to Hindu tradition.

A judge who had to enquire into the subject; “ In whom vests " the property of the soil under the British government " in India; whether in the Sovereign, in the Zumeendar, " or in the Cultivator?" first had to determine which law to go by, the Hindu law or the Mohammedan law? In his book,” Observations on the law and constitution of India” written anonymously and published in 1824, the judge concludes that the public law in India was indisputably Mohammedan law and had been so in the preceding 800 years. He notes in passing:

It would, indeed, be absurd to suppose, that questions of property in lands, of revenue, finance, police, where the rights, interests, or regulations of the sovereign were involved, could ever have been remitted to the decision of any tribunal but that of Islaum.

By the Moohummudan law, the Daur-ool-Hurb, as a foreign province, becomes the Daur-ool-Islaum; that is, becomes annexed to the Moohummudan dominions by the mere act of conquest, and the exercise of even a part of the law of Islaum in it. "That country is the Daur" ool-Islaum," says the Jaumeea-oor Iiumooz, " in which the laws of the Moslemeen prevail;" and, adds the same writer, " it is stated by Zauhedee, that according to the unanimous opinion of the learned, the Daur-ool-Hurb becomes the Daur-ool-Islaum, by the exercise of even some of the laws of Islaum in it." Profession of the Moohummudan faith on the part of the inhabitants is not a condition. Therefore, by the Moohummudan law, India undoubtedly was the Daur-ool-Islaum : nay, is held by law to be so now; for it is not a necessary condition that the sovereign be a Moslem.

If, then, by law, the empire of India, by virtue of the Moohummudan conquest, become the Daur-ool-Islaum, that is a part of the Moohummudan dominions, it would have been absolutely contrary to law, even an heresy, in its most formidable shape, to have suffered any law or constitution to exist in India but that of Islaum. Every law, even private right and interest, which existed in the country prior to the conquest, by that act alone perished; and so strong is the Moohummudan law on this point, that supposing even a Moohummudan subject to have previously taken up his abode, and to have acquired lands or houses in India, by the mere act of. subsequent conquest by the Moslems, the lands of their domiciled brother would fall to the conquerors, along with those of the conquered infidel, although his .personal property would be secure to him.

The Moohummudan law of conquest is explicit; and the first act of the conqueror is required to be to carry the law into effect, either by partitioning the spoil and lands among the conquerors, or by fixing the khurauj, or public revenue on the lands, and the capitation tax on the heads of the conquered. The inhabitants are first called to embrace the faith. If they become converts, they enjoy all the privileges of Moslems; if they refuse, they are then called upon to pay the capitation tax; for if they consent to this and to pay the khurauj, it is not lawful to put them to death.

Thus, for 600-800 years, starting from the 11th century, there was absolutely no legal avenue open to the Hindus, especially in the region where Ayodhya is located, to seek justice. The writ of Mohammedan law ran large. It was either ‘silent belief’ or ‘death’. This was true even in the reign of so-called tolerant rulers such as Akbar.

But, the power of faith kept the belief in Ram’s birthplace alive, well into the nineteenth century. Lord Dalhousie had commissioned Montgomery Martin to make a survey of ancient practices in Eastern India, and the latter, in his book, “ The History, Antiquities, Topography and Statistics of Eastern India” ( pages 335-338) describes his visit to Oudh ( the British name for Ayodhya) and talks about the claim made by Hindus with regard to the birthplace of Rama and their contention that a mosque had been built after destroying the temple there. After some research, Martin concludes that there is no evidence that a mosque was built over an existing temple, but concedes that it was certainly built over the ruins of an Hindu temple or palace. He even provides a sketch of a pillar ( carrying images of Hindu gods) used in the construction of the mosque. (Justice Khan, while delivering his verdict yesterday has come to an identical conclusion).

So, Siddharth Varadarajan’s assertion that “the “faith and belief” that the court speaks about today acquired salience only after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party launched a political campaign in the 1980s to “liberate” the “janmasthan” is completely incorrect. The ‘faith and belief’ has been alive for centuries- glowing, albeit on low flame, but glowing.

His point that in deciding on matters of law ‘theological considerations cannot come in the way of logic and reasoning’ can be accepted upto a point, but as the British legislators realised two centuries back, when it comes to law, ‘logic and reasoning’ cannot be completely divorced from ‘ faith and custom”.

Vacuous and Verbose-21

2010-09-28T12:01:00.002+05:30

In a Tamil play written by Cho Ramaswamy, a middle-aged man constantly dreams of a role -even a small one- in the movies and keeps honing his oratory skills. One day, a director succumbs to his begging and agrees to cast him in a single scene in his movie. He would play the role of a postman who had to deliver a letter at the hero’s house. His entire dialogue would consist of the two words, “ Sir, Post”. He is asked to appear for ‘shooting’ the following week.

The whole week or during the countdown to the shooting, the wannabe actor is shown practicing his dialogue and attempting several variations. Should he say “ Saar, post” or “ Saaar, pooost” or “ Saar ( pause) post” or a more musical “ Saaaar Pooost”? Ultimately, during the actual shooting, he has a nervous breakdown and ends up messing it up completely.

I remembered that scene on reading in the papers today that President Prathibha Patil will inaugurate the CWG, by uttering the words, “ Let the Games begin”, soon after the Queen’s message is read out.

I am not sure if that is all the President has to say. If so, she must be in a state of extreme agitation now.

In anticipation of the event, her speech writers would have smacked their lips and sharpened their pencils to write a grandiloquent speech which would cover in its broad sweep, our ancient civilizations, the embedded meaning in the Vedas, the archery competitions described in our epics, Buddha’s enlightenment, Shivaji’s valour, Gandhi’s ahimsa, excerpts from Vivekananda’s brotherhood speech, memorable lines fom Nehru’s “tryst with destiny’ speech, extract from Rajiv Gandhi’s “ I am young. I too have a dream” speech, etc and end with a flourish by referring to India’s booming economy, its vibrant people and its colourful customs. The President’s inaugural speech would start on the Opening day and continue in the background for the next week or two while all the events are conducted and finally end during the Closing ceremony.

That’s how it should have happened in the normal course.But then the CWG committee imposed this restriction and has asked the President to utter just four words. I can see her now practicing her speech. Which word should she lay emphasis on? Should she say, “Let the Gamesss begin” or “ Let the Games Beginnn” or “ Lettt the Games Begin” or " Let the Dames start Begging" or " Let the Blame Game Begin" or....

The President is going to end up being paralysed by the unreasonable brevity that is demanded of her. It is like asking a morose Russian author to compress his novel to the size of a twitter message.

Collective awakening-2

2010-09-27T10:58:00.000+05:30

“Is there something that is embedded deeply now in our collective consciousness as normal, right-thing-to-do, which we will, through a process of enlightenment in the future, realise is a terrible mistake and will make us let out a collective gasp, wondering why we did not even question that it was wrong all along?” I had wondered in a post two years back. (Aside: Can someone help me re-construct that sentence? Or maybe break it up into two simpler ones?)

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University asks the same question in his recent article, “What will future generations condemn us for?” in The Washington Post and provides some answers too. Our prison system, our treatment of the elderly, industrial meat production and our lack of concern for the environment….