For your comfort and safety....

Airlines and hotels love to hype the smallest of comforts that they provide. The classic case is the announcement airline stewards make that “the outside temperature is minus 54 deg C, but for your comfort we are maintaining a temperature of plus 24 deg C inside” as if it is one hell of a favour.

More interesting is the way they try to justify a withdrawal of a basic facility or for charging you for it.

Many hotels have used the pretext of ‘protecting the environment” to avoid replacement of towels every day. You can find a notice in the bathroom which says something like this. “Washing a towel requires 20 litres of water. As this hotel is committed to an eco-friendly approach and to conservation of precious, natural resources like water, we solicit your cooperation. If you would like the towel to be washed, please leave it on the floor. Towels left on hangers will not be washed”. The sub-text is that if you have even a modicum of shame, you will use that towel for the rest of your stay in the hotel and not dare to put it for wash.

While staying in a hotel in Australia recently ( 300 AUD per night. Breakfast, wi-fi not included. Drinking water extra at AUD 8 per bottle), I saw a sign above the mini-bar. “We know that you have tastes that are special and unique. That’s why we have emptied the mini-bar. Please call us up and state your needs so that we can fill it up for you”. This is a good idea. Guests frequently dispute the mini-bar bills and claim the items were never there in the first place. By asking the guests to choose the items to be stocked, the hotels ensure that he/she signs off on the inventory.

On the bed, next to the pair of wafer-thin pillows was a sign which said, “We know that you like to use a pillow of your own choice. That’s why we offer you a menu of pillow options for you to choose from. “. They charge AUD 6 for the pillows.

Next to the bath tub was a notice, “We care for your safety. We have provided a rubber mat for your use. Please ensure that the suction grip is firmly in place before you step into the bathtub.” I checked if there was another sign which indicated the extra charge for the rubber mat. Not only was there no sign, there was no rubber mat to be found either. So much about their concern for my safety.

Later, as I was checking out, I was informed that payment by credit card would attract an additional 3% charge. Of course, if I felt uncomfortable about those charges, I could always pay by cash....

A cry for European education

We have been led to believe that Lord Macaulay had insisted on substituting traditional education in India with western education with a view to churning out generations of loyal natives indoctrinated in western ideas. This extract from an essay on Indian education, published in the year 1864 will disabuse us of this notion. Years before Macaulay made his pronouncement, the natives had shown a distinct partiality for western arts and sciences.

In 1781, Hastings established, the Mahomedan College at Calcutta, and in 1792, the Sanskrit College was founded at Benares. The object of these seminaries was to furnish a supply of Hindu and Mussulman natives, sufficiently qualified by their knowledge of their respective laws to perform the duties of judicial administration. In 1816, the Hindu College was set up at Calcutta by means of voluntary contributions from the natives who desired a knowledge of the arts and sciences of Europe.

The general Committee of public instruction, began its work by undertaking on a large scale the printing of Sanskrit and Arabic books. The Orientalists, by whom are meant those members of the Committee, who, while not neglecting European science, yet evinced a decided preference in favour of instructing the natives in their own literature, possessed most influence, and the whole tendency of the early acts of the Committee was rather to the extension of Eastern than Western learning. That the course thus pursued by the Committee was distasteful to the natives is shown by a letter, addressed to Lord Amherst, through Bishop Heber, on the proposed establishment of a Sanskrit College at Calcutta, in the year 1823, by one of their body, who was esteemed, and rightly, to be at that time the most learned of our Indian subjects.

Ram Mohun Roy, after praising the Government for the exertions it was making in the cause of native education, goes on to say that, however thankful the natives must feel for the interest thus shown in their welfare, yet they cannot help perceiving that the labours of the Government are being misdirected, whether through ignorance of native wishes, or from other causes not specified. He therefore thinks it incumbent upon him to place before the authorities some statement of the native opinions and desires upon the subject. When therefore it was known that a certain sum of money had been voted for the purpose of promoting and encouraging education among our Indian subjects, " We were filled," he says, "with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European gentlemen of talent and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences, which the natives of Europe hare carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of the other parts of the world."

These hopes, however, were suddenly dashed to the ground by the information that one of the first acts of the Committee would be to establish a Sanskrit College at Calcutta, a step as they conceived in a backward direction. One of the great evils of native education was that so much time used to be expended in the acquirement of what was in after life of little value. To obtain a complete knowledge of the Sanskrit language, was the work of a lifetime, and it was no uncommon thing for a native youth to spend twelve of the best years of his life in mastering the grammar alone. If, he observes, the Government wished to preserve the study of the Sanskrit language, it could have done so by holding out certain premiums, and granting allowances to professors, already too numerous, by whom those who were desirous of learning the language, might be instructed; but he regards the establishment of a Sanskrit College, in which the native youth, besides spending much valuable time in acquiring a knowledge of the Sanskrit tongue, would learn that which was taught two thousand years ago, and waste their energies in speculations suggested by the Vedanta, in metaphysical subtilties and logical niceties, much as an Englishman would have looked upon an attempt to replace the Baconian philosophy by the system of the schoolmen, calculated, as it alone was, to perpetuate ignorance. Impelled by these considerations, and a sincere desire for the good of his country, and the spread of true knowledge amongst its inhabitants, Ram Mohun Eoy prays the Governor-General to expend the grant of money in the promotion and extension of Western rather than Oriental learning.

Notwithstanding this remonstrance, the Sanskrit College was founded; but English classes were, as we have mentioned, attached to the colleges at Calcutta, Benares, and Agra, and some time later, in 1824, in deference to popular opinion, and the loudly expressed wishes of local authorities, a separate institution was raised at Delhi for the special cultivation of European learning.

At Agra and Delhi the elements of Geography, Astronomy and Mathematics formed part of the college course, and in addition to the English classes attached to the native seminaries, two distinct schools had been founded at Delhi and Benares for the dissemination of the English language. The patronage which the Committee had extended to the Vidyalaya, or Hindu College at Calcutta, had resulted in a great command among the students of the English tongue, and a familiarity with its literature and sciences rarely equalled in English schools, while the establishment of schools under Vidyalaya pupils, which was everywhere taking place, had widely disseminated the taste for English.

Nothing is more conclusive that at this time the natives would, only be satisfied by a thorough English education than the fact that Arabic and Sanskrit books, published by the Committee at great expense, remained on their hands, while English books were being bought up with the greatest avidity. From the printed report of the.Schoolbook Society from January 1834 to December 1835, the following sales were effected:

English books 31,649

Anglo-Asiatic, or books partly in English, partly in some Eastern language 4,525

Bengali 5,754

Hindi 3,384

Hindustani 3,384

Persian 1,454

Uriya 834

Arabic 36

Sanskrit 16

If further proof were wanted of the growing bias of the native mind, we may mention that pupils could not be obtained in the Oriental schools without being taught gratuitously, and, in addition, supplied with monthly stipends, while the demand for instruction at the English seminaries was so great, that the native youths were themselves ready to pay for the privilege of being admitted, and the average monthly collection on this account from the pupils of the Hindu College for February and March 1836, was 1,325 Sicca rupees. This Hindu College was under the same roof as the Sanskrit College, at which thirty pupils were hired at eight rupees each, and seventy at five rupees, amounting to 590 rupees a month in all. The English classes attached to the Oriental schools had failed lamentably, the pupils not having time to master both studies. The rich natives were everywhere founding English schools under the superintendence of young men reared in the Vidyalaya.

Everywhere arose a cry for European education;

 Update 15/08/13 : Extract from the letter written by Ram Mohun Roy in 1823: 

We find that the Government are establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo Pundits to impart such knowledge as is already current in India.

"From these considerations, as the sum set apart for the instruction of the natives of India was intended by the Government in England for the improvement of its Indian subjects, I beg leave to state, with due deference to your Lordship's exalted situation, that if the plan now adopted be followed it will completely defeat the object proposed, since no improvement can be expected from inducing young men to consume a dozen of years of the most valuable period of their lives in acquiring the niceties of Vyakaran or Sanskrit Grammar.

"If it had been intended to keep the British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner, the Sanskrit system of education would be best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the Government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction ; embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences, which may be accomplished with the sum proposed by employing a few gentlemen of talents and learning in Europe, and providing a college furnished with necessary books, instruments and other apparatus

"The end of our rule in India"

John Chapman, author and an expert on cotton and commercial practices, makes these prophetic and pertinent observations in the year 1853. ( source)

l. That a handful of men from a distant land should rule, forever, 150,000,000 people, is not to be expected. What we shall be in India when our actual power ends, depends on the use we make of our term of empire, and that again on the view we take of our position.

2. We are not lords of India in any other than a present practical sense. We do not and cannot rule it by force. We cannot colonize it, nor ought we. Our chief vocation is that of teachers; to this we join for the present the functions of judges and leaders.

3. Hitherto while we have imparted to India much that is good, we have really taught the natives to be soldiers more rapidly and thorougly than we have taught them anything else; and if we do not change the proportion of the different parts of our teaching, we may justly expect to be expelled by the superior forces we ourselves have trained, before we have had time to infuse into the people so much of higher principles, and such a taste for other pursuits, as shall serve to mitigate the fanaticism of the military spirit.

4. As time elapses, India advances more or less from association with us, whether we will or no. That which lies to a great extent in our own power is the rate of advancement and the objects to which it shall be directed. If we are content with keeping India down, we shall be exp elled in the end as intruders, whatever advantage India may have derived incidentally from connection with us. But if we join heartily our interests with theirs, then the longer we are united the more nearly will they approach to our own views and participate in our progress, the more will they find themselves capable of appropriating and working with our own institutions, the more will they be drawn to see from us the further enlightenment which advancing intelligence can best appreciate, the surer and the more durable will be our sway, and the more confidently may we expect that a dominion begun in discord, violence, and too often in fraud, will end in a friendship of peoples to which policy can give no additional advantages, and treaties afford no additional strength.

Badla

“We want justice’ say the relatives of victims of a terror attack or murder. “The perpetrators must be arrested and hanged. “

Those lines appear regularly in media reports and stories.

When Kasab was hanged, there were celebrations. Only after Afzal Guru was hanged did the kin of the victims of the attack on Parliament accept the bravery medals that were awarded to the security personnel who had died. Justice had been done, at last.

Do people seek ‘justice’ or ‘revenge”? While they will claim they are seeking justice, they are actually screaming for revenge. Does putting Kasab to death bring back the lives of the victims? Can the past be undone? Can the gruesomeness of the event be removed? What satisfaction can the families of the victims derive? Aren’t they displaying a tribal instinct for revenge and  therefore being uncivilised?

In an essay titled “The case for revenge”, Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and professor of law at Fordham University, explains that ‘justice’ and ‘revenge’ are indistinguishable and a call for the former is always a cry for the latter.

But the distinction between justice and vengeance is false. A call for justice is always a cry for revenge. By placing their faith in the law, those who justifiably wish to see wrongdoers punished are not disavowing vengeance. If anything, they are seeking to be avenged by the law. No matter what they say, victims aren't choosing justice over vengeance; they are merely capitulating to a cultural taboo, knowing that the protocol in polite society is to repudiate revenge. But make no mistake: When it comes to the visceral experience of being a victim, revenge and justice are one and the same.

And everyone should feel similarly. After all, there is no justice unless victims feel avenged, when they believe that a wrong has been righted and honor restored. And revenge is never just if it is disproportionately delivered—if the retaliation exceeds what is justly deserved, measure for measure. Indeed, vengeance is not irrational (the common knock on revenge)—it's healthy and entirely human. Insisting that justice will suffice when revenge is what victims really want is both intellectually dishonest and factually untrue. Besides, in modern societies where vigilantism is disallowed, we all on some level reasonably believe that it is only by leveraging the law—and having the legal system serve as our proxy—that vengeance can be actually achieved.

The crux and tone of his argument is that we need not view the quest for revenge as irrational or uncivilised. It is a natural, even primal human response. So long as they don’t inflict the revenge on their own, Bollywood movie style, but let the law take its course, then it’s fine.

Stop all celebrations.

“Amitabh Bachchan appeals for dry Holi as Maharashtra grapples with drought” says this NDTV story. No doubt, by virtue of having led a frugal, Gandhian lifestyle all these decades, he has attained moral superiority over others to pontificate on the need to conserve resources.

The leader of the opposition in Maharashtra’s Legislative Council, Mr Vinod Tawde has lamented that IPL matches are allowed to happen in Mumbai and Pine when there is a drought in other parts of the state, as the cricket ground sucks up 60000 litres a day. (source)

Let’s give both these gentlemen a round of applause. Or two rounds, one for each.

Now, if they’ll explain to us how a waterless Holi in Mumbai or stopping an IPL match in Pune would help the drought in some other corner of the state, I’m prepared to give them some more brownie points. It is a symbolic gesture and an expression of solidarity, they’d probably reply. This is complete nonsense..

These are all card-carrying members of the “P.Sainath School” which holds that no form of celebration or expression of joy should be allowed in the rest of the world, when farmers are committing suicide in Vidarbha.

As I argued in an earlier post,

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.

And people need to celebrate festivals in the manner they’ve traditionally been doing, unless it violates some law or a human right angle. Festivals break the monotony of life and give people some milestones to look forward to. We shouldn’t let hypocritical killjoys mar the spirit of the occasion.

The erratic geniuses.

In a brilliant article, Osman Samiuddin tries to provide an explanation for Pakistani cricketers’ propensity to pull off amazing victories from the brink of defeat. The match would be slowly slipping away from their hands…till something magical happens.

What we know about what happens, roughly, is this. Pakistan are in the field (almost exclusively so), drifting, amiably and contentedly, to defeat over five days, or one. They are comatose flat. Bowlers, uninspired, are on autopilot, the fielders heavy and ponderous. If there is a target, it’s down to, say, 45 off the last 10 with seven wickets in hand. If it’s a Test, the target being chased is a small one, under 200, or if it is the first innings, the opposition are 200 for 2. Coasting.

Sometimes, but not always, it takes an unusual dismissal to turn on the light – a run-out, an electric catch, a part-timer taking a wicket. And then there is total frenzy, so overwhelming and real you can almost hold it in your hands. Such is its force that it can be deeply moving even through the sensory dilution and sanitisation of TV, even on ball-by-ball commentary online. But to let it get right inside your head and start rearranging your brain – like acid but a lighter, less paranoid burn – you have to be there as it happens.

There is music, not heard but felt, a beat somewhere in the background, rising, unrelenting. Up front is the dissonance of a reality that is proceeding swiftly but with an impact that is unveiled languorously. Wickets begin to fall in heaps, twice, thrice in an over and each one seems the only logical conclusion to that particular spell of play. There is an appeal almost every ball, most justifiable. Fielders start hitting the stumps and taking catches which, in other situations, we can easily imagine them dropping.

How do the Pakistani cricketers manage to transform themselves from an erratic and listless lot to an inspired team, seemingly in one magical moment?

It’s a combination of three major national characteristics – laziness, impatience, and latent brilliance. Since we’re lazy, we don’t get engaged until we sense an opportunity. But once we do get engaged, our impatience drives us to get the job done quickly, and our latent capacity for brilliance makes it all happen. Seen another way, we are an enormously gifted team that’s too lazy to apply itself. But when the circumstances are right and an opening appears, our natural gifts take over, with our innate impatience ensuring a speedy resolution

Osman offers an interesting metaphor. The Qawwali. And the state of ‘haal’ it tries to achieve.

To the uninitiated, a Qawwali can sometimes feel like a living, breathing but random collection of voice and sound until, suddenly at one moment, it surges together. And then transformed, it becomes momentarily a single, powerful force. Take also, the alaap, that sudden vocal burst in a Qawwali. Is that not exactly like a riff of wickets by one bowler from out of nowhere, at odds with everything that has gone before?)

The literal meaning of haal is state, as in a state of being, and it can refer to a number of different states. But it has come to be interpreted, more often than not, as one ultimate state of ecstasy, much sought after but rarely achieved, in man’s journey to get closer to God. “In the ecstatic state,” explains Idries Shah in his book Oriental Magic, “Sufis are believed to be able to overcome all barriers of time, space and thought. They are able to cause apparently impossible things to happen merely because they are no longer confined by the barriers which exist for more ordinary people.”

One of the primary objectives of Qawwali is to attempt to bring the performer as well as the listener to haal.

Is it similar to the ‘zone’ that sports psychologists talk about, as when a player is said  to "enter  the zone”?

Where haal deviates from the zone is in the idea that the latter can be sought, that through a series of steps or rigorous preparation and practice it can be achieved. Many sports psychologists – but not all – believe that using different techniques of visualisation, goal-setting and self-motivation can help athletes to achieve and stay in the zone. Pakistan employs no such techniques and never has done. Just as Abu Mohammad says that Qawwali rehearsed and recorded in a studio is the imprisonment of the form, so it is with Pakistan. Net practice and training – the rehearsed recordings of sport – are generally imprisonment for Pakistani players. That is not where they shine. For them, as with Qawwali, it happens live and it happens unprepared. 

Enlightenment, goes one saying of Zen, is an accident, as it could be in haal and as it is in Pakistan cricket.

Do read the full article.

Forgive and forget

Isn’t it a mockery of the legal process that there should even be a debate on granting amnesty to actor Sanjay Dutt? He has been convicted by the highest court of the country after a due process during which he had every opportunity to defend himself and present his side of the story. The charges on which he has been convicted are quite serious and there was enough evidence to show that he had committed the crime, not in an impulsive moment of foolishness, but with a conscious knowledge of what he was doing.

Yet, there is such an outpouring of sympathy. Why?

Santosh Desai has a possible explanation in an article titled “ The disinterest in punishment” in his book, “ Mother Pious Lady. Making sense of Everyday India”.

At a certain level, there is an intriguing indifference to the idea of punishment that underpins the Indian reaction. ..We are not really driven to seek retribution beyond a point. That’s why Charles Sobhraj became a minor celebrity before his re-arrest. Following the cricket scandal, Azharuddin has received full rehabilitation and Jadeja is a respected commentator. Phoolan Devi became a Member of Parliament. ...And Sanjay Dutt bears no stigma for his involvement in the Mumbai riots.

Why this disinterest in carrying out the full force of the punishment?

It is possible that the Indian response comes in part from the absence of a pronounced heaven/hell narrative in Hinduism. We do not really have a Day of Judgement to reckon with; we do not think of justice in binary terms. We do not arrogate to ourselves the right to determine absolute right and wrong and hence live in a world of moral ambivalence. Even Ravana had his reasons; so who is to say what is finally good or bad? ....We are therefore good at forgiving and even better at forgetting

As always, when it comes to explaining any facet of Indian behaviour, religion provides the answer. 

A question of ethics

Some months back I came across an article that talked about the Chinese practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. I don’t have the link to that, but here’s another article which talks about the same thing.

About a million Chinese need organ transplants and there is a huge shortage. Part of this shortage is met by death row inmates, without their consent or that of their families.

This despicable practice militates, of course, against basic principles of human right. The very thought is abhorrent to a civilised mind.

But look at in another way.

The prisoners whose bodies were stripped of organs were hard-core criminals and convicted for such serious crimes as rape, murder, treason, etc. Whereas the recipients could be assumed to be good, law-abiding citizens. If the lives of the latter group could be saved by using the organs of the convicts who are condemned to death anyway, isn’t that a right thing to do?

Whether one feel it is right or wrong depends on which school of ethics one subscribes to. Julian Baggini explains in an article titled “Do the ends justify the means?”, (in his book, Ethics : The big questions) that there are two approaches to ethics : consequentialist and deontological. He explains that “consequentialism maintains that the rights and wrongs of actions are to be judged solely in terms of the consequences that follow from them. If there are two possible actions, you should choose the one that has the better outcome. Better could mean more happiness, less overall suffering, etc. Deontological duty, on the other hand, maintains that morality is about fulfilling duties and obligations irrespective of the consequences. The right and the bad are independent. “

So, if one is a consequentialist, one can argue that the harvesting of organs from dead convicts is ethical as there is a better outcome of lives of good people being saved in the process. If one is a deontologist, the argument would be that it is morally wrong to violate the human right principle of harvesting organs without consent. If the consequence of this stand is that other lives won’t be saved, so be it.

Which school do you belong to?

We just need 10,000 Kumbh Melas.

T.T.Rammohan quotes from an article which marvels at the successful organisation of the Kumbh Mela festival.

On the sandbanks of the river Ganges at Allahabad, bureaucrats and workers from Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and one of its poorest, took less than three months to build a tent city for 2m residents complete with hard roads, toilets, running water, electricity, food shops, garbage collection and well-manned police stations.....

.....Devesh Chaturvedi, a senior official who is divisional commissioner of Allahabad, is proud of the “huge task” that he and perhaps 100,000 workers have completed in organising this year’s festival.

He mentions 165km of roads on the sand made of steel plates, 18 pontoon bridges, 560km of water supply lines, 670km of electricity lines, 22,500 street lights and 200,000 electricity connections, as well as 275 food shops for essential supplies such as flour, rice, milk and cooking gas.

 If we can pull this off so well, wonders Rammohan, why don’t we simply replicate (and multiply) the efforts in all the villages and towns all over India and build much-needed infrastructure?

Apparently, the organisers of the Kumbh Mela and the workers are imbued with a deep sense of mission. They feel it is a service to God, through service to pilgrims. That casts a spell over them and induces them to take on formidable challenges.

Perhaps that’s the reason our ancestors managed to build thousands of temples in far-flung places often in inhospitable terrain. Just imagine the logistics of carrying stones up a mountain, through dense forests, and with no trail. It required some motivation and religious belief provided that. Maybe our brains are hardwired to respond to only a religious calling.

To build modern-day temples such as dams, bridges, airports, roads, expeditiously should we invest each activity with a religious meaning, complete with rewards and punishment? It might just work.

Social life in Madras, 1810

Extract from the diary of Lady Maria Callcott visiting different parts of India from 1809-1811. Here, she describes the typical social life of a British lady in Madras.

I was two evenings ago at a public ball in the Pantheon, which contains, besides a ball-room, a very pretty theatre, card-rooms, and virandas.

During the cold season there are monthly assemblies, with occasional balls all the year, which are very well conducted. The Pantheon is a handsome building; it is used as a free-masons lodge of modern masons, among whom almost every man in the army and navy who visits Madrass enrols himself.

The only other public place at Madras is the Mount Road, leading from Fort-George to St Thomas's Mount. It is smooth as a bowling-green, and planted on each side with banian and yellow tulip trees. About five miles from the fort, on this road, stands a cenotaph to the memory of Lord Cornwallis. It has cost an immense sum of money, but is not remarkable for good taste; however, I love to see public monuments in any shape to great men.

It is the fashion for all the gentlemen and ladies of Madras to repair, in their gayest equipages, to the Mount Road, and after driving furiously along, they loiter round and round the cenotaph for an hour, partly for exercise, and partly for the opportunity of flirting and displaying their fine clothes, after which they go home, to meet again every day in the year.

But the greatest lounge at Madras is during the visiting hours, from nine o'clock till eleven, when the young men go from house to house to retail the news, ask commissions to town for the ladies, bring a bauble that has been newly set, or one which the lady has obliquely hinted, at a shopping party the day before, she would willingly purchase, but that her husband does not like her to spend so much, and which she thus obtains from some young man, one quarter of whose monthly salary is probably sacrificed to his gallantry.

When all the visitors who have any business are gone to their offices, another troop of idlers appears, still more frivolous than the former, and remains till tiffin, at two o'clock, when the real dinner is eaten, and wines and strong beer from England are freely drank. The ladies then retire, and for the most part undress, and lie down with a novel in their hands, over which they generally sleep.

About five o'clock the master of the family returns from his office; the lady dresses herself for the Mount Road; returns, dresses, dines, and goes from table to bed, unless there be a ball, when she dresses again, and dances all night; and this, 1 assure you, is a fair, very fair account of the usual life of a Madras lady.

Rock'em harder

The “thooLi’ as it is called in Tamil is still used by some mothers to rock their babies to sleep. As this old blogpost explains, “The thooLi is a traditional baby-rocker; it's an old, soft saree or veshti (dhoti) tied to a rafter beam, or a hook in the ceiling. Sometimes it comes with a cross-bar, sometimes not. It provides a snug bed for the baby, which the mother can rock, too; and it's simple and inexpensive”. The post carries some pictures of an ‘engineered’ thooLi.

What is striking about these thooLis is the extensive and almost violent rocking that is done by mothers. The faster the movement, the quicker the baby is subdued and made to sleep.

I was reminded of the thooLi when I was reading a book called “ How Eskimos keep their babies warm” by Mei-Ling Hopgood. In one of the chapters she quotes a child specialist who stresses the role of vestibular stimulation.

Deep in the inner ear, nestled next to the cochlea (the small shell-shaped organthat enables us to hear) there is an intricate maze of canals and ducts called the vestibular system. This crucial network contributes to our ability to balance ourselves, maintain our posture, fix our gaze and move in a coordinated way. Stimulation of this system – through rocking, spinning and other movements- has been shown to have a significant positive influence upon arousal level, visual alertness and tracking behaviour, motor development and reflex development. Some research suggests that vestibular stimulation improves cognitive skills and mother-infant attachment.

A child who is being carried, rocked or played with vigorously, or even carried in a sling, moving with his mother or father as they go about their daily business, gets more vestibular stimulation.

The baby’s head is being tipped right and left as the mother working in a plantation moves, for example, as she leans over to put seed into the ground. The baby is getting a lot of vestibular stimulation – a lot more than it would get if it were in a pushchair or pram, which tend to travel straight, more so because people don’t want to tip them as the child might fall out”.

So, bring those thooLis back. And abandon those strollers. In the interest of vestibular stimulation.

New application for iPhone

The original story:

A soldier leaving for battle was given a copy of the New Testament by his mother. She asked him to keep it with him always and that it would protect him. He did as told. One day, the entire platoon was ambushed and gunned down by the enemy. Only the Bible-carrying soldier survived. The bullet had been miraculousy stopped by the Bible in his pocket.

Woody Allen’s variant

Years ago, my mother gave me a bullet...a bullet, and I put it in my breast pocket. Two years after that, I was walking down the street, when a berserk evangelist heaved a Gideon bible out a hotel room window, hitting me in the chest. Bible would have gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.

Modern, electronic version 

Soldier, Joel Stubleski, was returning from a mission in Afghanistan when he was shot in the thigh. He thought he was gone. After helicopters picked him up, medics inspected his injuries. They cut off his clothes and went through his pockets. There, they found his iPhone -- with a bullet hole through it. " Yes, the iPhone had saved his life

Hat-trick

The excellent blog, “Futility Closet” has this interesting story:

The Treaty of Berlin was drafted in secrecy, so its framers were astonished to find it published in the London Times.. Journalist Henri de Blowitz at first refused to reveal his source, but at last relented near the end of his life. Well before the congress started he had attached a confederate to the clerical staff, but the man felt he was being watched, so the two could not dare to meet or talk. Finally de Blowitz noticed that they wore hats of the same type and color, and he hit on a plan of “childish simplicity.”

De Blowitz was staying at the Kaiserhof. Each day his confederate went there for lunch and dinner. The two never acknowledged one another, but they hung their hats on neighboring pegs. At the end of the meal the confederate departed with de Blowitz’s hat, and de Blowitz innocently took the confederate’s. The communications were hidden in the hat’s lining.

“Only twice were we forced to put off the communication till the following day,” de Blowitz wrote in his 1904 memoir. “Once, however, we had a scare.”

“One of my English colleagues, on leaving the dining-room, made a mistake and took my friend’s hat. Without looking at each other we felt, as he wrote me next day, that we turned pale. If the colleague in question had kept the hat, he might have discovered the third article of the treaty, which had been adopted at the previous day’s sitting, and also a hint of the difficulties that had arisen between Russia and England on the question of the boundaries of Bulgaria, and very disagreeable consequences for my friend might have been the result. Fortunately, on reaching the door, the Englishman put on the hat, which dropped over on his nose. He laughingly took it off and replaced it on its peg. I had risen to take the hat from him, but sat down again. I breathed freely, and my friend must have done the same.”

This immediately reminded me of P.G.Wodehouse’s short story “Amazing Hat Mystery”. The story has been well summarised in this article:

“Two gentlemen — one tall with a massive head, the other short with a little head — buy hats from London’s premier hat-maker; this is the king’s own hat-provider, we’re given to understand. The hats are delivered a short time later. There is a mix-up, with the small hat going to the big man and the big hat to the small. The gentlemen each head out to woo their respective love interests: the tall man is in love with the short woman, the short man with the tall. The respective ladies tell their respective gentlemen that their respective hats are vastly mis-sized: the one looks like a thimble atop the massive man’s head, while the other comes down to the small man’s knees. Both gentlemen take great umbrage at the shot that’s been fired across the bow of London’s premier hat-maker. Both assert the impossibility of a mis-sized hat. Both storm out of their partners’ company, declaring the end of each love affair. They retire to the same public house to drown their sorrows. They hang up their hats on the hat rack. As they leave, they each pick up the right hat. On the street, the tall man runs into the tall woman, the short man into the short woman. Each woman compliments each man on the perfection of his hat. Each man and each woman finds his or her proper mate. No one ever figures out why the hats initially failed to do the trick. The end.”

Do you see the connection too?

Just write it.

In a creative process, inspiration can come from unexpected and unrelated sources.Dan Wieden, co-founder of the advertising agency  Wieden-Kennedy that created the Nike ads drew his inspiration for the slogan “Just do it” from a rather unusual incident.  The story is narrated in the book, “Imagine” by Jonah Lehrer (Sadly this book was withdrawn following charges of plagiarism).  

“In 1988 Widen was hard at work on a series of television spots for Nike. The campaign consisted of eight video clips, each of which focused on a different athlete in a different sport. Wieden knew that the campaign needed a tagline, a slogan that could link the disparate commercials together. Unfortunately he was drawing a blank. “I’d been struggling to find that line for months” he says. “And it was late at night, and we had to have it ready to go in the morning.  And so I’m getting nervous, thinking about how this really wouldn’t work without a slogan. But I couldn’t come up with a slogan. It was killing me. 

But then just when Wieden was about to give up and started to go to sleep, he started thinking about a murderer named Gary Gilmore who had been executed in 1977. “He just popped into my mind” Wieden says. “And so it’s in the middle of the night, and I’m sitting at my desk, and I’m thinking about how Gilmore died. This was in Utah, and they dragged Gilmore out in front of the firing squad. Before they put the hood over his head, the chaplain asks Gilmore if he has any last words and he says, “Let’s do it”. And I remember thinking, “This is truly courageous”. Here’s this guy calling for his death. And then, the next thing I know, I’m thinking about my shoe commercials. And so I start playing around with the words, and I didn’t like the way it was said, actually, so I made it a little different. I wrote, “Just Do It” on a piece of paper and as soon as I saw it, I knew. “That was my slogan”. 

The question is why Wieden started thinking about Gary Gilmore, while working on a slogan for cross-trainers. “I swear I don’t normally think about murderers at midnight” he says. “So I asked myself: Where did this thought come from? And the only explanation I could come up is that someone else in the group”- one of his colleagues working on the Nike campaign- “had mentioned Norman Mailer to me earlier in the day. I don’t know why Mailer came up. I can’t remember. I’m sure we were just bullshitting, doing what people do when you put them in a room together. But we were talking about Mailer, and I knew that he’d written a book about Gary Gilmore, and that was it, That’s where the slogan came from, Just a little sentence from someone else. That’s all it takes”. 

That still doesn’t explain what the slogan “Just do it’ had to do with shoes, or whether it really played a role in the success of the company or the brand, or if the brand could have succeeded with any other slogan. 

The story only strengthens my belief that these so-called creative geniuses in advertising companies are just a bunch of nut cases who come up with random and meaningless slogans. Most of them fail. Some of them click for reasons even they cannot fathom. The creators of the ones that succeed live to tell their tale retrospectively, suitably romanticized and mystified for waiting suckers like us.

No wasting.

Many years back, an old lady I knew got onto a wrong bus headed in a different direction. The merciless conductor insisted on collecting the minimum fare of 25 paise and asked her to get down at the next stop. The old lady would have none of that. She enquired with him how far she could travel for the minimum fare, travelled up to that stop and walked back a kilometer or two in the hot sun.  She had paid the 25 paise, you see. She couldn’t get down without recovering its full value. 

I find myself applying, pretty much, the same logic in trying to finish a book that I’ve bought for Rs 599/-. It’s a book on Asian history by Pankaj Misra and I felt that I ought to read it. Maybe I can use a snippet or insight gleaned from there and casually slip it into a conversation to impress my friends. But, alas, I find it extremely boring and am struggling to get past the first two chapters. Yet, I refuse to give up. Something in me tells me I’ve paid Rs 599 for it and keeps goading me to complete it, come what may. 

The same stupid reasoning is used when we believe that we shouldn’t waste food served on our plates at home or ordered in a restaurant. Members of my generation, as we were growing up in a more frugal era, were strictly told that wasting food was not acceptable. What was on our plates had to be consumed.  It was not just about the money. The previous generation had been conditioned in a ‘scarcity’ era and that mindset prevailed. There was  a sense of guilt in wasting food when there was such poverty everywhere and so many people struggled to get a square meal.  It took me many years to realise that eating excess food that one doesn’t really want is far more wasteful than leaving it on the plate.  If in a restaurant, order sensibly. But if there’s more food on the table than what you need, just stop eating. It’s a far wiser thing to do.