Talk of tall claims! Nonetheless, seven and a half months of disappearance later, Songs of Sixpence is back. And appositely, on another day of election results, in another country, my own. Do I have a reasonably unique distinction of having gone through national elections in two different countries in less than eight months? Unlike 29 September 2008, 16 May 2009 seems relatively more heartening. The UPA is leading. Not that I root for them but only that they seem to be the lesser evil among the others.
Hopefully, I will be back again.
Till then, here's my tanner for Manmohan.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Elections in Austria
A day after I walked through the portals of the Habsburg Empire (see previous post), Austria went to the polls. All of Austria voted on a single day, which would be a novelty to any Indian, used as we are to multi-phase polling. (But of course, all of Austria’s electorate – numbering approximately 6.5 million – is probably smaller than that of many of our state capitals.) In the run-up to the elections there was little to indicate that the country was at the hustings. There were no cutouts, no graffiti, no mega-posters, no traffic jams. No public rallies, no loudspeakers, no locality-wise, let alone door-to-door, campaigning. The only indications of the election were the posters, blow-ups of the leaders of the various political parties, all put up in the place of regular advertisements, at tram or bus-stops, or along the sidewalks. The two main political parties, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), competed between themselves, luring voters with the promise of “Die neue Wahl”: The New Choice, and “Die bessere Wahl”: The Better Choice. (I may add that the translations are not authentic.) Also in the fray were the Greens, the Liberal Party and two right-wing parties, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria. The right-wing parties, as one may imagine, have an open dislike for immigrants and Muslims, a proclivity for Nazi policies, and their agenda includes, in addition to a full-stop to further immigration, deportation of foreign migrants as well as an anti-EU stance that demands the return of certain powers to Austria currently vested in the EU.
The results, announced the same night, have come as a nasty shock. The right-wing parties together nearly doubled their presence in the new Austrian parliament, polling about 29% of the popular vote, only marginally lower than the front-running Social Democrats, who polled 29.7%, and more than the People’s Party, who came second with 25.6%. The numbers for the two main political parties are their lowest since the Second World War. They seem to have paid the price of their internal bickering as coalition partners in a grand coalition; the current elections - snap polls really since they were not due until two more years - were a result of the their failure to work together in the incumbent government. The fractured mandate of the current elections gives rise to the very real possibility of at least one of the two right-wing parties becoming a part of the new government, although protracted negotiations may precede the formation of a new coalition.
The implications of the elections cannot be more blunt. Clearly, Austria, as indeed various parts of Europe, is in the grips of a spreading xenophobia, notwithstanding suggestions from political commentators that the vote-swing in favour of the right-wing parties may be read more as a negative vote for the two main political parties, as a petulant response to their inability to collaborate in the incumbent coalition.
At the root of xenophobia lies insecurity. And human beings seem to be growing insecure across the world. Not least in our very own Mumbai.
The New Zealand Herald seems to have carried a more interesting analysis of the Austrian political developments than other news portals on the net. Take a look.
The results, announced the same night, have come as a nasty shock. The right-wing parties together nearly doubled their presence in the new Austrian parliament, polling about 29% of the popular vote, only marginally lower than the front-running Social Democrats, who polled 29.7%, and more than the People’s Party, who came second with 25.6%. The numbers for the two main political parties are their lowest since the Second World War. They seem to have paid the price of their internal bickering as coalition partners in a grand coalition; the current elections - snap polls really since they were not due until two more years - were a result of the their failure to work together in the incumbent government. The fractured mandate of the current elections gives rise to the very real possibility of at least one of the two right-wing parties becoming a part of the new government, although protracted negotiations may precede the formation of a new coalition.
The implications of the elections cannot be more blunt. Clearly, Austria, as indeed various parts of Europe, is in the grips of a spreading xenophobia, notwithstanding suggestions from political commentators that the vote-swing in favour of the right-wing parties may be read more as a negative vote for the two main political parties, as a petulant response to their inability to collaborate in the incumbent coalition.
At the root of xenophobia lies insecurity. And human beings seem to be growing insecure across the world. Not least in our very own Mumbai.
The New Zealand Herald seems to have carried a more interesting analysis of the Austrian political developments than other news portals on the net. Take a look.
Sunday, 28 September 2008
A Coimbatore TamBrahm in a Habsburg court
The sun is out in all its blazing glory! Exactly two weeks after it staged its disappearing act. I’m light at heart and high in spirits!
For the last three weeks, I’ve been letting the sights of the city sink into my eyes. This is a beautiful city, there can be no doubt about it. Even on the greyest of days, and in the face of the dullest weather, this is a fact one cannot gainsay.
However, I’ve really not done any sight-seeing. Struggling to come to grips with the sudden onset of cold, wet weather, I’ve allowed myself to be led by the nose by automatons. Of which, two have become surreally close buddies. Tram 52 and the U4. Every morning I mutely coast along a longish length of Linzerstrasse, followed by a turn into an almost equally longish stretch of Mariahilferstrasse. In the evenings, I mutely coast back. Except on some occasions, when I take the underground. But every journey is a journey undertaken in muteness. To be in a land where you cannot speak the language is some experience. But traveling by tram is relatively better. Because it travels over the ground it gives you a sense of life.
But yesterday, disgusted at myself for turning up for work for the third consecutive Saturday, I allowed a brief appearing act of the sun to give me an excuse that let me march out onto the streets of Vienna. I traveled to the St. Stephan’s Cathedral and walked down the old city. Briefly I peeped over the banners of an anti-Israel demonstration and lent my solidarity. I marvelled at the wares of itinerant artists and the music of indigent violinists. I took wistful rides on the horse-driven carriages. And walking down the streets of the old city I wondered what the Austro-Hungarian Emperors would have made of me, a puritanical TamBrahm, lounging in a Habsburg courtyard.
In circumstances such as these – alien language, alien culture, an excessive sense of order (as may appear to an Indian whose exit amidst much jostling and queue-breaking at the New Delhi airport is followed, upon touchdown, by a bewilderingly sanitized and agonizingly empty environs) and self-imposed poverty – it is perhaps inevitable for a sense of loneliness and longing for company to sprout. One of the first people I was introduced to was MT – and I took an instant liking to her. We talked academics, Austria and India; shared Indian food, cake and coffee, and in the process, found common interests. The conditions were ripe for one’s heart to mellow. One was taking it day-by-day, looking forward to some sunshine in the midst of the depressing weather, wondering all the time whether there was a possibility of anything more than what met one’s eye. And one fine day, not very long ago, words were dropped about a boyfriend, so that with a sharp stab of pain and a dizzy spin of the head, the roller coaster drew to a halt, bringing to an abrupt end one's little would-be romance!
But the bright spot so far has been the cooking! Unencumbered by a loving grandmother, who felt that the entry of a male – no matter that it was her grandson – into the kitchen implied a shirking of responsibility on her part, I have been engaging in some interesting culinary experiments. My pongal is a stepbrother of khichdi, and I eat it with rasam. Last week, my sambar turned out watery (my mother advised me to use rice flour, an ingredient missing from my limited pantry, to thicken it) and the cabbage curry burnt. But elation stemmed from small achievements: fine tomato rice, puliyodarai, rasam and chapattis!
For consolation, I brace myself with the hope that padhai na sahi, ladki na sahi, Hindustani dhaba hi sahi! In the worst event perhaps, I can open an Indian eating joint. ;)
Well, so long, till next time!
For the last three weeks, I’ve been letting the sights of the city sink into my eyes. This is a beautiful city, there can be no doubt about it. Even on the greyest of days, and in the face of the dullest weather, this is a fact one cannot gainsay.
However, I’ve really not done any sight-seeing. Struggling to come to grips with the sudden onset of cold, wet weather, I’ve allowed myself to be led by the nose by automatons. Of which, two have become surreally close buddies. Tram 52 and the U4. Every morning I mutely coast along a longish length of Linzerstrasse, followed by a turn into an almost equally longish stretch of Mariahilferstrasse. In the evenings, I mutely coast back. Except on some occasions, when I take the underground. But every journey is a journey undertaken in muteness. To be in a land where you cannot speak the language is some experience. But traveling by tram is relatively better. Because it travels over the ground it gives you a sense of life.
But yesterday, disgusted at myself for turning up for work for the third consecutive Saturday, I allowed a brief appearing act of the sun to give me an excuse that let me march out onto the streets of Vienna. I traveled to the St. Stephan’s Cathedral and walked down the old city. Briefly I peeped over the banners of an anti-Israel demonstration and lent my solidarity. I marvelled at the wares of itinerant artists and the music of indigent violinists. I took wistful rides on the horse-driven carriages. And walking down the streets of the old city I wondered what the Austro-Hungarian Emperors would have made of me, a puritanical TamBrahm, lounging in a Habsburg courtyard.
In circumstances such as these – alien language, alien culture, an excessive sense of order (as may appear to an Indian whose exit amidst much jostling and queue-breaking at the New Delhi airport is followed, upon touchdown, by a bewilderingly sanitized and agonizingly empty environs) and self-imposed poverty – it is perhaps inevitable for a sense of loneliness and longing for company to sprout. One of the first people I was introduced to was MT – and I took an instant liking to her. We talked academics, Austria and India; shared Indian food, cake and coffee, and in the process, found common interests. The conditions were ripe for one’s heart to mellow. One was taking it day-by-day, looking forward to some sunshine in the midst of the depressing weather, wondering all the time whether there was a possibility of anything more than what met one’s eye. And one fine day, not very long ago, words were dropped about a boyfriend, so that with a sharp stab of pain and a dizzy spin of the head, the roller coaster drew to a halt, bringing to an abrupt end one's little would-be romance!
But the bright spot so far has been the cooking! Unencumbered by a loving grandmother, who felt that the entry of a male – no matter that it was her grandson – into the kitchen implied a shirking of responsibility on her part, I have been engaging in some interesting culinary experiments. My pongal is a stepbrother of khichdi, and I eat it with rasam. Last week, my sambar turned out watery (my mother advised me to use rice flour, an ingredient missing from my limited pantry, to thicken it) and the cabbage curry burnt. But elation stemmed from small achievements: fine tomato rice, puliyodarai, rasam and chapattis!
For consolation, I brace myself with the hope that padhai na sahi, ladki na sahi, Hindustani dhaba hi sahi! In the worst event perhaps, I can open an Indian eating joint. ;)
Well, so long, till next time!
Friday, 26 September 2008
Lustlos!
I'm writing this in a long overdue bid to rescue a collection of cyber-writings slipping ever deeper into the dustbins of trivial history with every passing day. To the left of my keyboard lies a desultory pair of glasses over a sheaf of papers claiming to unravel the secret of institutional change. To my right, there's a mouse. (Well, what did you expect?) The weather outside has slipped into gloom once again. I am in an alien land, far from the delightful, sunny landscape on the outskirts of my hometown. And for no particular reason, with nothing even remotely resembling the emotions they describe, I'm humming these lines in the mind:
Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, there must have been a moment of truth
For here you are standing there loving me, whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.
No, I’m not bored. Just listless!
Guess where I am?
Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, there must have been a moment of truth
For here you are standing there loving me, whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.
No, I’m not bored. Just listless!
Guess where I am?
Thursday, 7 August 2008
A trip to Bengalooru
Last Saturday I was in Bengalooru, taking a much-needed break from dusty, rainless Coimbatore. An invitation to a Ramachandra Guha discussion from a generous reader of this blog served as an excellent excuse for me to break away from an existence that was becoming dangerously humdrum.
Bengalooru was delightful. Luckily, I didn’t run into too much pollution or traffic. It rained, but not at the wrong times. Despite all the construction that is happening in and around the city, Bengalooru continues to have sizeable wooded, green spaces.
On the train from Coimbatore I wondered why Guha was addressing an elite audience of only twenty-five (which is how the talk had been advertised). Guiltily, I asked myself why I had to be a part of this elite gathering.
My sense of guilt eased when I picked up Thursday’s Times of India (its Bangalore edition is relatively sober compared to the Mumbai and Delhi editions) and saw that Guha had been lecturing on the same topic – Will India be a superpower? – the previous day at the National Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS) in the city. And, as I discovered during the course of the discussion on Saturday, Guha has been engaging on this question quite actively. I came away from the discussion with the satisfaction of having listened to a genuinely public intellectual whose questioning of India’s aspirations to superpower status is very much desirable.
Guha’s arguments on the grave challenges that wannabe-superpower India faces are available on the net (they were first published in a recent Outlook issue). He thinks India may not become a superpower and doesn’t want it to be one. Needless to say, his views have generated much heat, particularly among the middle class, which has prospered greatly from the bull run on the Indian economy in recent years, and is now in a hurry to take on the world. I do not propose going into Guha’s arguments beyond stating that I hold broadly similar views with some disagreements, and adding that it takes considerable boldness for someone to air contrary views publicly on a holy cow of an issue in the way Guha has done.
The interesting part of the discussion, in my opinion, came in the form of the questions asked by some of the young people present (I presume they were college students). It seemed very likely that they were listening to Guha’s views for the first time and it was apparent that they were quite bewildered. One of them thought that India had done well on all fronts despite the many challenges she had faced in the years since independence and therefore why could the country not surmount present dangers and become a superpower well nigh? Guha responded, of course, but the boy pressed his question, seemingly unconvinced. Another question came from a young lady, who wanted to know that if India was not going to be a superpower then what were we to tell our children?! A third question, from a young man sitting next to me, was dripping with penitence – how could the common man try to 'solve' the various problems (Naxalism, religious fundamentalism, widening economic inequality, abysmal socio-economic status of adivasis, environmental degradation etc. that had been discussed earlier) that he had brought upon himself?
The appeal lay not in the quality of these questions as much as in the way they were asked, disbelief and naivete couched in a certain diffidence that is characteristic of that age when one is introduced to a world outside of one’s orbit. My thoughts went back ten years ago to the time that I had myself taken tentative steps into college life. Perhaps it is the nostalgia that makes me dwell on the youngsters so much, but the experience showed just how against the grain it is to take a contrary stand on an issue that the urban Indian middle class, by and large, would like to treat as close to its heart as to that of a zealot.
But then, Bengalooru was much more than the Ram Guha discussion. It was a trip on which I caught up with friends, aunts and cousins, and sampled my former room-mate's excellent culinary skills. There were moments when I was confronted by chauvinism: a driver-conductor duo at the Shivajinagar bus stand refused to give me directions unless I spoke to them in Kannada; and there were moments when absolute strangers, also Kannadiga, gave me extensive guidance on where to get off and how to make my way to such-and-such place on such-and-such road. With their help at hand, I let myself sink into the fairly luxurious interiors of the Bengalooru Mahanagar Palike townbuses as I crisscrossed the city, listened to abuse of the newly constructed international airport (someone likened it to a cowshed unfit for cows), lunched at an Andhra restaurant called Bheema’s, eavesdropped on passers-by talking in various tongues, and caught my return train to Coimbatore feeling very cosmopolitan!
(PS: I call Bangalore Bengalooru for purely idiosyncratic reasons - because I love the way it sounds. It is also closer to one of the legends about the city’s origins, of a king separated from his hunting companions who stayed over for the night in an old woman’s hut. The old woman fed him with what little that she had, some boiled lentils or ‘bendha kalluru’, giving rise to the name Bengalooru for the place where she lived. The tale is also narrated in R. K. Narayan’s “The Emerald Route”.)
Bengalooru was delightful. Luckily, I didn’t run into too much pollution or traffic. It rained, but not at the wrong times. Despite all the construction that is happening in and around the city, Bengalooru continues to have sizeable wooded, green spaces.
On the train from Coimbatore I wondered why Guha was addressing an elite audience of only twenty-five (which is how the talk had been advertised). Guiltily, I asked myself why I had to be a part of this elite gathering.
My sense of guilt eased when I picked up Thursday’s Times of India (its Bangalore edition is relatively sober compared to the Mumbai and Delhi editions) and saw that Guha had been lecturing on the same topic – Will India be a superpower? – the previous day at the National Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS) in the city. And, as I discovered during the course of the discussion on Saturday, Guha has been engaging on this question quite actively. I came away from the discussion with the satisfaction of having listened to a genuinely public intellectual whose questioning of India’s aspirations to superpower status is very much desirable.
Guha’s arguments on the grave challenges that wannabe-superpower India faces are available on the net (they were first published in a recent Outlook issue). He thinks India may not become a superpower and doesn’t want it to be one. Needless to say, his views have generated much heat, particularly among the middle class, which has prospered greatly from the bull run on the Indian economy in recent years, and is now in a hurry to take on the world. I do not propose going into Guha’s arguments beyond stating that I hold broadly similar views with some disagreements, and adding that it takes considerable boldness for someone to air contrary views publicly on a holy cow of an issue in the way Guha has done.
The interesting part of the discussion, in my opinion, came in the form of the questions asked by some of the young people present (I presume they were college students). It seemed very likely that they were listening to Guha’s views for the first time and it was apparent that they were quite bewildered. One of them thought that India had done well on all fronts despite the many challenges she had faced in the years since independence and therefore why could the country not surmount present dangers and become a superpower well nigh? Guha responded, of course, but the boy pressed his question, seemingly unconvinced. Another question came from a young lady, who wanted to know that if India was not going to be a superpower then what were we to tell our children?! A third question, from a young man sitting next to me, was dripping with penitence – how could the common man try to 'solve' the various problems (Naxalism, religious fundamentalism, widening economic inequality, abysmal socio-economic status of adivasis, environmental degradation etc. that had been discussed earlier) that he had brought upon himself?
The appeal lay not in the quality of these questions as much as in the way they were asked, disbelief and naivete couched in a certain diffidence that is characteristic of that age when one is introduced to a world outside of one’s orbit. My thoughts went back ten years ago to the time that I had myself taken tentative steps into college life. Perhaps it is the nostalgia that makes me dwell on the youngsters so much, but the experience showed just how against the grain it is to take a contrary stand on an issue that the urban Indian middle class, by and large, would like to treat as close to its heart as to that of a zealot.
But then, Bengalooru was much more than the Ram Guha discussion. It was a trip on which I caught up with friends, aunts and cousins, and sampled my former room-mate's excellent culinary skills. There were moments when I was confronted by chauvinism: a driver-conductor duo at the Shivajinagar bus stand refused to give me directions unless I spoke to them in Kannada; and there were moments when absolute strangers, also Kannadiga, gave me extensive guidance on where to get off and how to make my way to such-and-such place on such-and-such road. With their help at hand, I let myself sink into the fairly luxurious interiors of the Bengalooru Mahanagar Palike townbuses as I crisscrossed the city, listened to abuse of the newly constructed international airport (someone likened it to a cowshed unfit for cows), lunched at an Andhra restaurant called Bheema’s, eavesdropped on passers-by talking in various tongues, and caught my return train to Coimbatore feeling very cosmopolitan!
(PS: I call Bangalore Bengalooru for purely idiosyncratic reasons - because I love the way it sounds. It is also closer to one of the legends about the city’s origins, of a king separated from his hunting companions who stayed over for the night in an old woman’s hut. The old woman fed him with what little that she had, some boiled lentils or ‘bendha kalluru’, giving rise to the name Bengalooru for the place where she lived. The tale is also narrated in R. K. Narayan’s “The Emerald Route”.)
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Profit from rising oil prices?
At a time when rising oil prices are spelling misery for a lot of people, there seems to be a perverse touch to this call to investors: http://www.valueresearchonline.com/story/h2_storyview.asp?str=100024
Thursday, 17 July 2008
A forest and its people
(Am recycling an old travel piece. The reason? Have been thinking of Joseph, Douglas et al for a while. I wonder how they're doing. It's been a long time.)
It is a fine morning and as I peer out of the window, the azure waters of the Indian Ocean lap at the shores of Malindi, a little tourist town on the Kenyan coast. This delightful town, an important yesteryear port, has an interesting Indian connection: this is where Vasco da Gama is believed to have hired a guide who led him successfully to India in 1498, thereby capping the long search for a sea route from Europe to the sub-continent. After two days of rain the sky looks gay and friendly, and I think I can finally move out of Malindi. I have been staying at the dharamshala attached to the Malindi Swaminarayan Temple. It is the month of May, which is the slack tourist season, and the town is enveloped in tropical ennui. But it gives me the opportunity to make friends with the temple keeper, David, an elderly African who has been around for more than twenty years. To my astonishment, I discover that it is David who cleans out the sanctum sanctorum, lights the incense and adorns the deities everyday. He has been doing this ever since the temple priest passed away some weeks ago. A new one, who must belong to the Swaminarayan sect, is yet to be found. Till then, for all practical purposes, the priest at this Hindu temple is a Christian African who takes immense pride in his work! I see this auspicious confluence of religion and race as a good omen and set off to the village of Gede.
Gede is 18 kilometres south of Malindi and is known for the Gede Ruins, the site of an Arab-African settlement that is believed to have flourished between the 13th and 17th centuries. This is now a Kenyan National Monument and is managed (remarkably well, one must add) by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). My own interest in Gede lies in NMK but for a different reason. The NMK is the site of a ‘kipepeo’ (Swahili for butterfly) farm and on the day of my visit, is teeming with farmers from nearby villages carrying butterfly pupae for sale. The pupae are exported to live butterfly exhibits in Europe and serve as an important source of income for the farmers. The butterfly farm is an outcome of the remarkable Kipepeo Project, a community-based butterfly farming project developed with the specific intention of getting local communities to develop a stake in the conservation of the neighbouring Arabuko Sokoke Forest.
As a matter of fact, it is the Arabuko Sokoke Forest that has drawn me to Gede, about 120 kilometres away from the port city of Mombasa. For Arabuko Sokoke is the largest remaining fragment of rich tropical forest that once stretched across the East African coast. About 42,000 hectares in size, the forest is rich in biodiversity and is regarded as the second most important forest for bird conservation in mainland Africa. It is the home of the enigmatic Clarke’s Weaver bird (Ploceus golandi), which is found nowhere else in the world, and of the Sokoke Scops Owl (Otus ireneae), which is found at only one other site, in north-east Tanzania. These are only two of the more than 230 bird species recorded in Arabuko Sokoke. Also found here are three rare, near-endemic mammals: the Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus), Ader’s Duiker (Cephalophys adersi) and the Sokoke Bushy-tailed Mongoose (Bdeogale crassicauda omnivora). The forest also supports a population of the African elephant (Loxodonta africana).
As much as I am interested in its wildlife, I am also interested in the people living around the forest. These are mainly the Giriama, an indigenous people who are believed to have originated from present-day Somalia, which lies to Kenya’s north-east. From Gede therefore, I move onward to the village of Dida, which hugs the Arabuko Sokoke Forest in the southwest. I plan to be there for a few days.
The road to Dida is a dirt trail often cutting across the forest. The forest hangs low on either side and travelling here at twilight or later can be quite eerie. My escort is an immensely friendly forester who gets me engaged in a conversation on elephants. He keeps me riveted with anecdotes that illustrate the pachyderm’s intelligence. Among his stories is one of a villager plucked off his bicycle and dashed to the ground as an act of revenge. I swallow, and utter a silent prayer to Ganesha, hoping that I will remain in his good books, at least till I leave the forest.
In Dida I am entrusted to the care of the forest guard, Douglas, who beams as he receives me, having been informed by radio of my arrival. He lives in what turns out to be one of the few concrete structures in the village. It is also very old and looks as if it might collapse any moment. I consider invoking Viswakarma, the divine architect. There is no electricity in Dida, as in most other villages around the forest. However, as I step into the house, I can see that Douglas has taken great pains to make things comfortable for me. His own bedroom has been made over to my disposal with a couple of small kerosene lamps to light it up at night.
One of the first people I meet the next day is Joseph ‘Radio’ Kajomo. 35-year old Joseph has an honest face and an earnest way of talking that makes me take to him instantly. He volunteers to take me around the village and I accept at once. For the next few days Joseph is my constant companion. He carries a small radio with him all the time, which is the only connection to the world in these parts with neither electricity nor newspapers. I am taken to his house where he proudly throws open a battered trunk containing his proud possessions - books. His star possession is an old encyclopaedia set, purchased eight years ago from a second hand bookshop in Mombasa. It cost him 15,000 Kenyan Shillings (approximately 9,000 Indian rupees), a small fortune that he repaid from his farm income in instalments over eight long years.
One of the butterfly farmers whom I met in Gede the previous day lives in Dida. A message of invitation is sent out for me to Douglas, who arranges for me to meet Felix and his wife at their house. Felix is 43, has a gentle beard and a generous grin. I learn that he was once an inveterate small-time timber poacher, who went to prison thrice. After being introduced to butterfly farming though, he has turned over a new leaf. Butterfly farming helps supplements his income from growing maize and plantains. He is now strongly in support of protecting the forest. Felix’s grin grows wider and wider as I am being told all this. “From thief to conservator,” he says, “that’s my story!”
Joseph takes me around Dida and its neighbouring villages, Kafitsoni and Kahingoni. The houses are all located far apart and it takes quite some walking. We talk as we walk; when we fall silent the radio crackles to life. I meet some interesting, even inspiring, people. One of these is an elderly widow, Kadzo Masha, with a reputation for industry. Beginning as a widowed landless labourer, Masha raised her children well and was able to buy land for her family through sheer hard work. At 74, she works daylong on her farm and keeps a beautiful home. I ask Joseph to tell her that she reminds me of my grandmother. Masha is very pleased. “God bless you”, she says.
The staple food in these parts is warri, boiled flour eaten with baked kidney beans. I partake of this simple but filling meal at the home of Thomas Barawa, a village elder. He explains that the people are suffering ever since their entry into the forest was forbidden some years ago, on grounds of conservation. They are now forced to depend on the market for basic necessities such as firewood and charcoal; their nutritional status has fallen since they can no longer enter the forest to hunt small animals, pluck fruits or collect honey.
Before I realise, it is time for me to leave. I want to pay Douglas for all his troubles but he declines. “You are like my brother”, he beams at me, his hands resting on my shoulders. “I cannot take money from you.” Douglas supports a family of three children - they live in his village further south – on his meagre salary. I am overwhelmed by his gesture. As for my guide, Joseph, I dare not even mention that I would like to pay him. It would be an affront after the camaraderie that we have developed. Douglas and Joseph see me off on a rickety minibus to the town of Kilifi, where there will be a connecting bus to Gede. My friends in Dida may be poor, I say to myself, but they have something that money cannot buy. Dignity. I look back towards Dida and say softly, “I came, I saw, I was conquered.” Never mind if Caesar turns in his grave.
(An edited version of this piece was published in The Hindu Magazine, 8 July 2007.)
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Nishant
I’m not a film critic, nor do I aspire to be one. My solitary foray into the business of appraising a film happened six or seven years ago, when I took on the formidable Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa, extended my critique onward to Kaaghaz ke Phool, and in the impetuousness of youth, sent it by post straight to The Hindu, which had only the preceding week published an atrocious (as it seemed to me then) review of the same movie by the eminent writer, Meenakshi Mukherjee. As if this was not enough, I was cheeky enough to enclose along with my essay a covering letter that in its tone hovered dangerously over the thin line that sometimes separates would-be-smartness from impertinence. Had I rummaged through the rubbish-bins of Kasturi Building, 858, Anna Salai, Chennai, a few days later, I might have found material that looked distinctly familiar (unless of course, someone in a fit of disgust had taken the trouble to reach for the shredder). The only gain from the whole exercise came from the bit of looking-up that I did, mainly some insights from Nasreen Munni Kabir’s biography of Guru Dutt, which was yet to hit the bookstands at the time.
It is therefore with some trepidation that I choose to record some of my impressions of Shyam Benegal’s Nishant. This 1975 film is the second of what is considered his quartet (the others being Ankur (1973), Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977)), which, as I understand, met with reasonable success in breaking ground with mainstream cinema without suffering an undue discount in terms of viewership. The occasion for watching Nishant came about through my discovery of the Konangal Film Society, a group of cinema-lovers in Coimbatore that holds regular movie-screenings. The discovery was reinforced by the draw of the authorship of Nishant’s screenplay, which rests with the fiery Vijay Tendulkar who passed away recently.
Nishant may loosely be translated as ‘the end of the night’ (निशा + अंत) or better still, in the context of the movie, ‘the end of darkness’. For it is indeed the darkness of debauchery and terror, flowing from the haveli of the zamindar, that engulfs the village in which Nishant is set, and which is seemingly dispelled when the village turns against the zamindar. However, while the end of the zamindar may mark the end of darkness for the village, such a luxury is not available to the central character, a violated woman who is solidly restrained by the fetters of social norm that rule out her return to a respectable existence. A question-mark as a suffix to the film title may not have been out of place.
The film is nourished by the splendid performances of the cast, which includes Amrish Puri as the zamindar, and Anant Nag (of later-day Malgudi Days fame) and young Mohan Agashe as his villainous brothers. Naseeruddin Shah is cast in an uncharacteristically tentative role as Vishwam, the youngest of the zamindar’s brothers, although his character is pivotal to the way the story unfolds. Girish Karnad is slightly wooden as the schoolteacher. Shabana Azmi as Sushila, the schoolteacher’s wife, delivers a fine performance. Smita Patil, as Vishwam’s wife, shows promise.
It is interesting that in exploring the complexity of relationships and the bearing that social mores have on them, Nishant seems to completely overlook the complexity of societal make-up in rural India. The film presents us with bipolar opposites with the diabolical zamindar on one side and the rest of the village on the other, ignoring the heterogeneity of caste and class divisions that typify an Indian village and pose a daunting impediment to any attempt at mass action. This neglect is enhanced by the uneven temporal balance of the film. While the first half proceeds at a leisurely pace dwelling at length on minutiae, the call to rebel and its execution is accomplished in double-quick time.
The choice of the elderly temple priest as the medium that incites the village to revolt is curious. As was perceptively pointed out by one of the viewers in the discussion following the film, the priestly class, particularly the practising priest, has scarcely gone down in history as a bugler of incipient radical change, and is more often than not found on the side of the reactionary.
On the whole, however, Nishant does sufficient justice to a lay-audience – among which I count myself - that seeks out the film in the hope of a compelling experience. Backed by some excellent cinematography and Benegal’s ciné-vérité, the film is a remarkable product of its time. Its refusal to dumb down the viewer makes it deeply provocative and rouses one to think along not-so-comfortable lines. Which, at least in part, is what good cinema should be about. Isn’t it?
It is therefore with some trepidation that I choose to record some of my impressions of Shyam Benegal’s Nishant. This 1975 film is the second of what is considered his quartet (the others being Ankur (1973), Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977)), which, as I understand, met with reasonable success in breaking ground with mainstream cinema without suffering an undue discount in terms of viewership. The occasion for watching Nishant came about through my discovery of the Konangal Film Society, a group of cinema-lovers in Coimbatore that holds regular movie-screenings. The discovery was reinforced by the draw of the authorship of Nishant’s screenplay, which rests with the fiery Vijay Tendulkar who passed away recently.
Nishant may loosely be translated as ‘the end of the night’ (निशा + अंत) or better still, in the context of the movie, ‘the end of darkness’. For it is indeed the darkness of debauchery and terror, flowing from the haveli of the zamindar, that engulfs the village in which Nishant is set, and which is seemingly dispelled when the village turns against the zamindar. However, while the end of the zamindar may mark the end of darkness for the village, such a luxury is not available to the central character, a violated woman who is solidly restrained by the fetters of social norm that rule out her return to a respectable existence. A question-mark as a suffix to the film title may not have been out of place.
The film is nourished by the splendid performances of the cast, which includes Amrish Puri as the zamindar, and Anant Nag (of later-day Malgudi Days fame) and young Mohan Agashe as his villainous brothers. Naseeruddin Shah is cast in an uncharacteristically tentative role as Vishwam, the youngest of the zamindar’s brothers, although his character is pivotal to the way the story unfolds. Girish Karnad is slightly wooden as the schoolteacher. Shabana Azmi as Sushila, the schoolteacher’s wife, delivers a fine performance. Smita Patil, as Vishwam’s wife, shows promise.
It is interesting that in exploring the complexity of relationships and the bearing that social mores have on them, Nishant seems to completely overlook the complexity of societal make-up in rural India. The film presents us with bipolar opposites with the diabolical zamindar on one side and the rest of the village on the other, ignoring the heterogeneity of caste and class divisions that typify an Indian village and pose a daunting impediment to any attempt at mass action. This neglect is enhanced by the uneven temporal balance of the film. While the first half proceeds at a leisurely pace dwelling at length on minutiae, the call to rebel and its execution is accomplished in double-quick time.
The choice of the elderly temple priest as the medium that incites the village to revolt is curious. As was perceptively pointed out by one of the viewers in the discussion following the film, the priestly class, particularly the practising priest, has scarcely gone down in history as a bugler of incipient radical change, and is more often than not found on the side of the reactionary.
On the whole, however, Nishant does sufficient justice to a lay-audience – among which I count myself - that seeks out the film in the hope of a compelling experience. Backed by some excellent cinematography and Benegal’s ciné-vérité, the film is a remarkable product of its time. Its refusal to dumb down the viewer makes it deeply provocative and rouses one to think along not-so-comfortable lines. Which, at least in part, is what good cinema should be about. Isn’t it?
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
Tag: The man who knew infinity
Songs of sixpence has been tagged by Mampi. The tag asks me to quote sentences numbering six, seven and eight from page 123 of the book nearest at hand. In my case, the book in question happens to be The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. Now before you jump to conclusions and accuse me of engaging in an exercise in narcissism by reading a biography of my namesake, let me make it clear that the book has come into my temporary possession absolutely by chance, thanks to a friend of mine who fell for the charms of Nalini Chettur, the keeper of Giggles, ‘the biggest little bookshop’, in Chennai. This friend already has several books piled up waiting to be read, so he passed it on to me, mistakenly thinking that I possibly had more time at my disposal. I say ‘mistakenly’, because I have my own pile of unread books. Nevertheless, I gave The Man Who Knew Infinity top priority because it has to be returned, and allowed it to jump the queue of books begging for my attention. To my delight however, I believe I do not have much cause to complain and might even want to hug my friend for his act of generosity. Having traversed about three-fifths of it, I find the book quite engaging. Anyway, here goes:
He devotedly studied his Wisden, the cricket annual crammed with bowling averages, test-match results, and other arcania of the game. In 1910, the minutes of a Cambridge club would alliteratively cite his command of “the University Constitution, the methods of Canvassing, Clarendon type, and professional cricket.” As a young Fellow of Trinity College, he’d play a bastardized form of it in his rooms, with walking stick and tennis ball.
The lines are from the fourth chapter, and as you have probably guessed already, describe Godfrey Harold Hardy, the celebrated Cambridge mathematician who was responsible for dragging Ramanujan out from near oblivion as a lowly clerk in the Madras Port Trust and into the hallowed portals at Cambridge. The book is as rich in biographical detail of Hardy as it is of Ramanujan. As is evident from the lines above, Hardy was a great cricket enthusiast. In fact, he was very much unlike the picture that one may carry of a mathematician: he was extremely good-looking, an excellent speaker and a fine writer. Nonetheless, to partly justify the slightly stereotyped perceptions of a mathematician, he had his share of eccentricities. He was known to refrain from shaking hands and to walk down the street face down, without exchanging greetings with acquaintances among passers-by. For a flavour of the man, I take the liberty of quoting some more lines from the book:
In The Case of the Philosopher’s Ring, a Sherlock Holmes mystery written half a century after the death of Arthur Conan Doyle, the characters include Ramanujan and Hardy. In it, author Randall Collins pictures Hardy as a sort of White Rabbit hopping around the Fellows Garden at Trinity in white flannels and cap, cricket bat in hand, frantically searching for his cricket gloves, crying, “There’s a match due to begin, and I can’t find them. I’m late! I’m late!” In a prefatory note, Collins abjures all claims to historical accuracy. But in Hardy, he’s close to the mark.
The Man Who Knew Infinity is written by an American, Robert Kanigel, and he writes about the considerable difficulty of having to straddle two worlds very different from his own – those of South India and Cambridge - in researching the book. Indeed, his description of life in (South) India when he is discussing Ramanujan’s early days, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (his denigrating description of sambar as ‘a thick lentil soup stocked with potatoes’ still rankles!) Yet, in tackling two highly complex personalities of the twentieth century along with their daunting mathematics, one must accept that overall, he has done more than a decent job. After this, I am more eager than ever to lay my hands on David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk.
He devotedly studied his Wisden, the cricket annual crammed with bowling averages, test-match results, and other arcania of the game. In 1910, the minutes of a Cambridge club would alliteratively cite his command of “the University Constitution, the methods of Canvassing, Clarendon type, and professional cricket.” As a young Fellow of Trinity College, he’d play a bastardized form of it in his rooms, with walking stick and tennis ball.
The lines are from the fourth chapter, and as you have probably guessed already, describe Godfrey Harold Hardy, the celebrated Cambridge mathematician who was responsible for dragging Ramanujan out from near oblivion as a lowly clerk in the Madras Port Trust and into the hallowed portals at Cambridge. The book is as rich in biographical detail of Hardy as it is of Ramanujan. As is evident from the lines above, Hardy was a great cricket enthusiast. In fact, he was very much unlike the picture that one may carry of a mathematician: he was extremely good-looking, an excellent speaker and a fine writer. Nonetheless, to partly justify the slightly stereotyped perceptions of a mathematician, he had his share of eccentricities. He was known to refrain from shaking hands and to walk down the street face down, without exchanging greetings with acquaintances among passers-by. For a flavour of the man, I take the liberty of quoting some more lines from the book:
In The Case of the Philosopher’s Ring, a Sherlock Holmes mystery written half a century after the death of Arthur Conan Doyle, the characters include Ramanujan and Hardy. In it, author Randall Collins pictures Hardy as a sort of White Rabbit hopping around the Fellows Garden at Trinity in white flannels and cap, cricket bat in hand, frantically searching for his cricket gloves, crying, “There’s a match due to begin, and I can’t find them. I’m late! I’m late!” In a prefatory note, Collins abjures all claims to historical accuracy. But in Hardy, he’s close to the mark.
The Man Who Knew Infinity is written by an American, Robert Kanigel, and he writes about the considerable difficulty of having to straddle two worlds very different from his own – those of South India and Cambridge - in researching the book. Indeed, his description of life in (South) India when he is discussing Ramanujan’s early days, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (his denigrating description of sambar as ‘a thick lentil soup stocked with potatoes’ still rankles!) Yet, in tackling two highly complex personalities of the twentieth century along with their daunting mathematics, one must accept that overall, he has done more than a decent job. After this, I am more eager than ever to lay my hands on David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Fiction: Wedding Invite
(This is a product of the crazy wanderings of my mind during the wedding season last year. This was sent to a couple of friends as a prank with a rather tragic outcome: one of them has stopped writing to me. :( Alas!)
My Dear Friend,
I am pleased to announce the consummation of nearly two years of courtship with Sripriya Sasidharan, Lecturer in Microbiology at Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. Sripriya and I shall enter into wedlock in a little over four months’ time, and we extend a warm invitation to each one of you to grace this happy occasion with your august presence. For Sripriya and I, the wedding is an effort to indulge in a celebration of cultural values and at the same time, display our love and concern for the environment (which, we believe, is a core Indian cultural value, although in a state of emasculation today). We plan to celebrate our wedding in the traditional manner over a period of five days from January 9-13, 2008. The venue is our ancestral village of Kolinjavadi, on the banks of the river Amravathi, at a distance of 45 kilometres from the city of Coimbatore. We strongly urge you to treat the wedding as a vacation in the sylvan retreats of the beautiful Kongu region and partake of the personalised hospitality that our village is famous for. The dates of the wedding have been carefully chosen to dovetail with Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival which commences from January 13, the same day as the wedding ends. (The wedding draws to a close on the morning of the 13th, leaving the day free for the initiation of Pongal celebrations.)
Traditionally, the purpose of a five day wedding has been to allow the bride and the bridegroom to grow out of their coyness and get to know each other, in the process developing the inseparable bonds that shall bind them together for life. Long weddings served as occasions for guests to socialise; middle-aged parents would look for prospective matches for their children-come-of-age; young boys and girls would court and fall in love (perhaps even elope in the next weeks); while the elderly would meet with faraway relatives, engage in family arithmetic (accounting for additions by way of marriage or birth; and subtractions arising from death) before eventually parting with sadness, knowing well that given their age this might well be the final farewell.
We hope to recreate this atmosphere in the course of our wedding.
The highlights of the wedding will be the various traditional ceremonies, particularly the Virudham, Paaligai Thelikkal, Mapillai Azhaippu, Oonjal Paattu, Kasi Yatra, Ammi Mithikkal, Meen Vettai and Nalangu. There is immense scope for guests to participate in many of these ceremonies. Sripriya and I are particularly keen on the last two ceremonies, which are in the nature of games played between the couple with others egging them on, and are most mirthful and entertaining when staged in all fullness. In addition to these ceremonies will be numerous informal events involving traditional music, song and dance. Exponents of the nadaswaram (a musical instrument somewhat akin to the shehnai) and the thavil (a percussion instrument) will purvey strains of music befitting the occasion. Womenfolk will sing wedding songs. Wedding songs can serve to tease and create merriment; some extol the beauty of the bride and bridegroom; some are distinctly risqué, while others are typically sad, marking the separation of the bride from her family. There will be performances of kummi, a traditional folkdance. This is a simple dance in which all are encouraged to join in. Some of Sripriya’s cousins also plan to stage a bharatnatyam performance at the temple grounds.
Living arrangements will be made in the roomy ancestral houses belonging to our families. Guests are urged to sleep on reed mats spread on the floor, in the traditional way. Beds can be arranged in the open for those desiring a particularly close communion with the beautiful night sky. Morning ablutions may be performed along specially earmarked sections of the river bank. We expect the wedding to generate enough nightsoil and organic waste to serve as manure for the next crop in the village that will be sown in late January or early February. Guests will enjoy their morning bath in the cool, crystal-clear waters of the Amravathi, one of the few rivers in our country left undammed. While bathing areas are separately marked out for men and women, it is a common prank for boys to hide the clothes of the bathing girls. (Despite suggestions from some quarters, Sripriya and I decided not to have the song, Tere man ki ganga…, playing in the background, on the grounds that this would be a most jarring external cultural influence.) Adventurous girls, particularly those with a taste for the bucolic, may take potshots at the boys bathing in the river, by climbing up the trees in the mango orchards. Catapults will be made available for this activity.
The food will be South Indian vegetarian with the distinct flavour that is a hallmark of the Kongu region. Some of the special traditional drinks to watch out for are paanagam, a tasty energising drink made out of jaggery, neer mor or seasoned buttermilk, and sanjeevi, a drink made out of crushed ragi and corn. Guests are encouraged to help with the cooking, which will be done on earthen hearths. Food will be served on banana leaves spread on the floor and will be handled entirely by volunteers among the guests. We shall be delighted if you are to step forward and nominate yourself for this task. The serving of food is the highpoint of hospitality and we want this to be marked by conviviality and warmth throughout the five days of the wedding. (Please note that all volunteers will have to be appropriately attired. The right kind of sarees and dhotis will be arranged for.) Guests will be required to burp with pleasure at the end of the meal indicating that they have eaten their fill.
Evenings will be taken up by folk performances. This is also a good time for courting and minor flings. Serenading is possible in the coconut groves, where one can endlessly run around the trees and sing to their heart’s content. Couples can hide in the overgrowth along the river bank (this will be sufficiently thick by early January, thanks to the nourishment of the northeast monsoon) and display their amorous affection for each other. For those who believe in elevated love, there are plenty of asoka and banyan trees with thick foliage. (If you are unable to climb up the trees, ladders can be strategically positioned upon request.) We will be delighted to see as many of you take advantage of these romantic pleasures as possible.
Now to the travel logistics. Bullock carts will be waiting at the Coimbatore railway station (you are urged to take a train to Coimbatore since air travel is highly polluting and contributes greatly to carbon emissions) on the morning of 9 January to ferry guests to Kolinjavadi. This is a non-polluting and truly enjoyable mode of conveyance, which will give you a panoramic view of the lush green fields of the Kongu region. You will draw deep breaths of clean, fresh air, a rare commodity in Indian cities today. (Guests arriving on other days are free to charter their own bullock carts. We request them however, to make arrangements for collecting the bullock-dung that will be dropped on the way. As you are aware, this is an important source of manure.) If some of you wish, we can arrange for a few express horse carts. However, horse-dung is believed to be inferior to cattle-dung in terms of fertiliser quality.
We look forward to hosting all of you at Kolinjavadi and enjoying your company on the occasion of our wedding. Your contribution to both tradition and environment shall be equally momentous. (Since some guests are being invited only for specific ceremonies, kindly take a print-out of this page of the invitation, which shows that you are invited for all of the five days. The print-out will serve as something of a season ticket, not unlike the ones sold at five-day cricket matches. We are sending out only electronic invitations to avoid the use of paper.) Please mark the wedding dates on your calendar. Do let us know if you have any suggestions. Our email address is sriram.wedding@gmail.com
With best regards,
Ramanujam
PS: Sripriya delivered a little bundle of joy in the last week of August. Our bouncing baby daughter, Alai Osai (which is Tamil for ‘resonance of the waves’), will be all of four months at the wedding.
My Dear Friend,
I am pleased to announce the consummation of nearly two years of courtship with Sripriya Sasidharan, Lecturer in Microbiology at Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. Sripriya and I shall enter into wedlock in a little over four months’ time, and we extend a warm invitation to each one of you to grace this happy occasion with your august presence. For Sripriya and I, the wedding is an effort to indulge in a celebration of cultural values and at the same time, display our love and concern for the environment (which, we believe, is a core Indian cultural value, although in a state of emasculation today). We plan to celebrate our wedding in the traditional manner over a period of five days from January 9-13, 2008. The venue is our ancestral village of Kolinjavadi, on the banks of the river Amravathi, at a distance of 45 kilometres from the city of Coimbatore. We strongly urge you to treat the wedding as a vacation in the sylvan retreats of the beautiful Kongu region and partake of the personalised hospitality that our village is famous for. The dates of the wedding have been carefully chosen to dovetail with Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival which commences from January 13, the same day as the wedding ends. (The wedding draws to a close on the morning of the 13th, leaving the day free for the initiation of Pongal celebrations.)
Traditionally, the purpose of a five day wedding has been to allow the bride and the bridegroom to grow out of their coyness and get to know each other, in the process developing the inseparable bonds that shall bind them together for life. Long weddings served as occasions for guests to socialise; middle-aged parents would look for prospective matches for their children-come-of-age; young boys and girls would court and fall in love (perhaps even elope in the next weeks); while the elderly would meet with faraway relatives, engage in family arithmetic (accounting for additions by way of marriage or birth; and subtractions arising from death) before eventually parting with sadness, knowing well that given their age this might well be the final farewell.
We hope to recreate this atmosphere in the course of our wedding.
The highlights of the wedding will be the various traditional ceremonies, particularly the Virudham, Paaligai Thelikkal, Mapillai Azhaippu, Oonjal Paattu, Kasi Yatra, Ammi Mithikkal, Meen Vettai and Nalangu. There is immense scope for guests to participate in many of these ceremonies. Sripriya and I are particularly keen on the last two ceremonies, which are in the nature of games played between the couple with others egging them on, and are most mirthful and entertaining when staged in all fullness. In addition to these ceremonies will be numerous informal events involving traditional music, song and dance. Exponents of the nadaswaram (a musical instrument somewhat akin to the shehnai) and the thavil (a percussion instrument) will purvey strains of music befitting the occasion. Womenfolk will sing wedding songs. Wedding songs can serve to tease and create merriment; some extol the beauty of the bride and bridegroom; some are distinctly risqué, while others are typically sad, marking the separation of the bride from her family. There will be performances of kummi, a traditional folkdance. This is a simple dance in which all are encouraged to join in. Some of Sripriya’s cousins also plan to stage a bharatnatyam performance at the temple grounds.
Living arrangements will be made in the roomy ancestral houses belonging to our families. Guests are urged to sleep on reed mats spread on the floor, in the traditional way. Beds can be arranged in the open for those desiring a particularly close communion with the beautiful night sky. Morning ablutions may be performed along specially earmarked sections of the river bank. We expect the wedding to generate enough nightsoil and organic waste to serve as manure for the next crop in the village that will be sown in late January or early February. Guests will enjoy their morning bath in the cool, crystal-clear waters of the Amravathi, one of the few rivers in our country left undammed. While bathing areas are separately marked out for men and women, it is a common prank for boys to hide the clothes of the bathing girls. (Despite suggestions from some quarters, Sripriya and I decided not to have the song, Tere man ki ganga…, playing in the background, on the grounds that this would be a most jarring external cultural influence.) Adventurous girls, particularly those with a taste for the bucolic, may take potshots at the boys bathing in the river, by climbing up the trees in the mango orchards. Catapults will be made available for this activity.
The food will be South Indian vegetarian with the distinct flavour that is a hallmark of the Kongu region. Some of the special traditional drinks to watch out for are paanagam, a tasty energising drink made out of jaggery, neer mor or seasoned buttermilk, and sanjeevi, a drink made out of crushed ragi and corn. Guests are encouraged to help with the cooking, which will be done on earthen hearths. Food will be served on banana leaves spread on the floor and will be handled entirely by volunteers among the guests. We shall be delighted if you are to step forward and nominate yourself for this task. The serving of food is the highpoint of hospitality and we want this to be marked by conviviality and warmth throughout the five days of the wedding. (Please note that all volunteers will have to be appropriately attired. The right kind of sarees and dhotis will be arranged for.) Guests will be required to burp with pleasure at the end of the meal indicating that they have eaten their fill.
Evenings will be taken up by folk performances. This is also a good time for courting and minor flings. Serenading is possible in the coconut groves, where one can endlessly run around the trees and sing to their heart’s content. Couples can hide in the overgrowth along the river bank (this will be sufficiently thick by early January, thanks to the nourishment of the northeast monsoon) and display their amorous affection for each other. For those who believe in elevated love, there are plenty of asoka and banyan trees with thick foliage. (If you are unable to climb up the trees, ladders can be strategically positioned upon request.) We will be delighted to see as many of you take advantage of these romantic pleasures as possible.
Now to the travel logistics. Bullock carts will be waiting at the Coimbatore railway station (you are urged to take a train to Coimbatore since air travel is highly polluting and contributes greatly to carbon emissions) on the morning of 9 January to ferry guests to Kolinjavadi. This is a non-polluting and truly enjoyable mode of conveyance, which will give you a panoramic view of the lush green fields of the Kongu region. You will draw deep breaths of clean, fresh air, a rare commodity in Indian cities today. (Guests arriving on other days are free to charter their own bullock carts. We request them however, to make arrangements for collecting the bullock-dung that will be dropped on the way. As you are aware, this is an important source of manure.) If some of you wish, we can arrange for a few express horse carts. However, horse-dung is believed to be inferior to cattle-dung in terms of fertiliser quality.
We look forward to hosting all of you at Kolinjavadi and enjoying your company on the occasion of our wedding. Your contribution to both tradition and environment shall be equally momentous. (Since some guests are being invited only for specific ceremonies, kindly take a print-out of this page of the invitation, which shows that you are invited for all of the five days. The print-out will serve as something of a season ticket, not unlike the ones sold at five-day cricket matches. We are sending out only electronic invitations to avoid the use of paper.) Please mark the wedding dates on your calendar. Do let us know if you have any suggestions. Our email address is sriram.wedding@gmail.com
With best regards,
Ramanujam
PS: Sripriya delivered a little bundle of joy in the last week of August. Our bouncing baby daughter, Alai Osai (which is Tamil for ‘resonance of the waves’), will be all of four months at the wedding.
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
In those days there was no coffee!
Take the exclamation mark at the end away and you have the title of a book. Yes indeed. In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History is the delightful title of a book by A.R. Venkatachalapathy (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2008), a bilingual author prolific in both Tamil and English.
In Those Days There Was No Coffee is a collection of nine essays that explore life in the Tamil-speaking parts of early 20th century Madras Presidency. The title is slightly deceptive, for only one of the nine essays is on coffee. Arguing that history is not a straightforward reading of the archives, Venkatachalapathy asserts that a careful study of popular literature can provide a nuanced understanding of the past and offer valuable perspectives denied by the archives. Using coffee as the object of the title essay, the author uncovers references to the drink in Tamil newspapers, journals, short stories and autobiographies of the colonial period to purvey rich insights into cultural values and perceptions of the early 20th century, accompanied by a superb exposition on how these were influenced by the coffee-drinking habit. The perspective that unfolds in such an unusual reading of history is likely to pose something of a surprise to any Tamil worth their salt who has grown up with the ubiquitous aroma of filter coffee wafting through the house thrice a day. Admittedly, in my own case, I was well into my twenties before I could even begin to conceive of a past when coffee, the common man’s elixir, was unknown and people drank something else.
Venkatachalapathy captures the tension and ambivalence of early 20th century society when coffee was seeping into popular Tamil middle class consciousness, conferring status and sophistication on the drinker. However, conservative elements inveighed against what they termed an ‘evil influence of modernity’ and ‘a copy-cat imitation of the West’. The contention was partly over the supplanting of the traditional morning drink neeragaram (the word is a combination of the Sanskritic words, neer and aahaar) by an alien, coffee. To quote the author, ‘Made by fermenting water drained after cooking rice, and adding water and salt to taste, neeragaram's demise was lamented by many intellectuals - a sign of their cultural anxiety.’ My grandmother confirms that in her younger days children and elders alike woke up to a breakfast drink of neeragaram, and that in the countryside this could be prepared even out of raagi, kombu, cholam (maize) and other traditional grains. She adds however, that in her time the rice was dehusked at home using the olakai or the traditional metal-bottomed long wooden pestle. As a result, it would not be dehusked completely and would possess considerable nutritive value, quite unlike the rice of the present day, which is polished clean by the comprehensive mechanised dehusking of the rice mill.
The public denouncement of coffee went to extremes that may sound at once ridiculous and amusing to us at this point in time, a hundred years later. One writer reviled the drink, calling it even more addictive than arrack, and went on to regret, ‘In those days people lived a hundred years [by drinking neeragaram]; nowadays times have changed. Even the women who work the fields demand coffee. There is not a single household without a coffee drinker’. Another critic complained, using the language of modern medicine, that ‘with the increase in coffee-drinking in our country, infant mortality, diabetes, constipation and other lowly diseases have begun to afflict our brothers and sisters’!
The attack on coffee extended also to women, by women. Thus, the Stri Dharma, published by the Women's India Association wailed:
Alas! This damned thing has got hold of women! Two cups of coffee have become the order of the day...This habit has taken over even aged women. These old women who were adept in home remedies now rush to the doctor, making a beeline to the hospital for the slightest headache.
The railing against coffee and women spilled over to the realm of the political. A highly sexist letter to Gandhi, apparently in the wake of the Non-Cooperation Movement, went thus:
The greatest obstacle in the way of success to our [non-cooperation] movement in Madras are our women. Some of them are very reactionary, and a very large number of the high class Brahmin ladies have become addicted to many of the Western vices. They drink coffee not less than three times a day, and consider it very fashionable to drink more.
These vituperative attacks on coffee, by their very vehemence, suggest that the anti-coffee brigade was fighting a losing battle. Very much so. For coffee gradually moved on from being a mere refreshment to become an integral part of cultural consciousness relating to notions of refinement and hospitality. Writers began to use coffee as a metaphor. For instance, the short stories of Pudumaippithan, the celebrated Tamil short story writer, are littered with references to the drink. In fact, one of his stories, Kadavulum Kandasamy Pillaiyum (God and Kandasamy Pillai), considered a classic, has Lord Shiva descending to the earth to meet the central character, Kandasamy Pillai, in Madras, whereupon 'the latter instinctively leads him to a nearby coffee hotel'. Here the following conversation ensues:
As God sipped the coffee, a divine demeanour of having drunk soma suffused His face.
"This is my divine handiwork", said God.
"This is not Your handiwork, but the hotelier's. Mixing chicory with coffee is his handiwork. Show your mettle when you pay the bill", whispered Kandasamy Pillai into His ears, content that he had sorted out the issue of paying for the coffee.
"Chicory...what's that?" God looked up quizzingly.
"Chicory powder resembles coffee, but is not coffee - like those who defraud people in the name of God", replied Kandasamy Pillai.
Coffee came to be closely associated with the upper caste, predominantly Brahmin, middle class. Its growing popularity led to the setting up of 'Brahmin coffee hotels' or 'coffee clubs', which served only coffee (in addition to snacks) and no other drink, in urban clusters. The coffee hotels, like coffee itself, also found their way into popular literature as we have seen in the excerpt from Pudumaippithan’s story. However, they came to be targetted - with success - by the Self-Respect or anti-Brahmin movement, which excoriated the obnoxious practice of keeping some seats out of bounds to all except Brahmins.
Coffee’s dominance among the Tamil middle class contrasts sharply with the universal popularity of tea elsewhere in India. In Tamil Nadu, tea is seen as a working class drink and a cultural 'other' of coffee. This perception has even entered the popular idiom so that somebody with a touch of the loony about them may be described as ‘a chap who drinks tea at a Brahmin hotel’!
Some of the other essays in the book are delightful as well. One of them is on the introduction of cartoons in Tamil newspapers, an influence carried over from the English Punch, which spawned an entire genre of Indian journals ambitiously named after the original as The Delhi Punch, The Punjab Punch, Urdu Punch, Gujarati Punch and so on. Among Tamil newspaper publications of the time, it was in the weekly, India, that cartoons were first introduced by its editor, the celebrated Subramania Bharati.
Another essay that stands out is Excising the Self: Writing Autobiography in Colonial Tamilnadu. Venkatachalapathy persuasively argues that autobiography as a literary phenomenon met with the popular approval of the Tamil audience only by the 1930s but was quickly appropriated by writers to provide a historical account of social transformation rather than scrutinise their own lives. This was an indigenisation of the western literary genre, which in its original form served as an expression of individuality and a narrative medium for reflection and self-realisation. The early autobiographies wove their themes around contrasting pictures of ‘those days’ and ‘these days’, producing a romantic narrative of a pristine past, whose order and social harmony was gradually chipped away by the rapid social and technological change permeating society in the wake of the colonial encounter.
In Those Days… offers a splendid peep into the life of the middle class citizenry of the colonial period, painting an evocative picture by drawing from popular literary sources of the time. In brilliantly capturing the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, from its unconventional sources, it shows that history is not the exclusive domain of the pedantic and the obscure. The lay person with an inquisitive mind may not only stake claim to it but also revel in the delight of its more accessible forms.
In Those Days There Was No Coffee is a collection of nine essays that explore life in the Tamil-speaking parts of early 20th century Madras Presidency. The title is slightly deceptive, for only one of the nine essays is on coffee. Arguing that history is not a straightforward reading of the archives, Venkatachalapathy asserts that a careful study of popular literature can provide a nuanced understanding of the past and offer valuable perspectives denied by the archives. Using coffee as the object of the title essay, the author uncovers references to the drink in Tamil newspapers, journals, short stories and autobiographies of the colonial period to purvey rich insights into cultural values and perceptions of the early 20th century, accompanied by a superb exposition on how these were influenced by the coffee-drinking habit. The perspective that unfolds in such an unusual reading of history is likely to pose something of a surprise to any Tamil worth their salt who has grown up with the ubiquitous aroma of filter coffee wafting through the house thrice a day. Admittedly, in my own case, I was well into my twenties before I could even begin to conceive of a past when coffee, the common man’s elixir, was unknown and people drank something else.
Venkatachalapathy captures the tension and ambivalence of early 20th century society when coffee was seeping into popular Tamil middle class consciousness, conferring status and sophistication on the drinker. However, conservative elements inveighed against what they termed an ‘evil influence of modernity’ and ‘a copy-cat imitation of the West’. The contention was partly over the supplanting of the traditional morning drink neeragaram (the word is a combination of the Sanskritic words, neer and aahaar) by an alien, coffee. To quote the author, ‘Made by fermenting water drained after cooking rice, and adding water and salt to taste, neeragaram's demise was lamented by many intellectuals - a sign of their cultural anxiety.’ My grandmother confirms that in her younger days children and elders alike woke up to a breakfast drink of neeragaram, and that in the countryside this could be prepared even out of raagi, kombu, cholam (maize) and other traditional grains. She adds however, that in her time the rice was dehusked at home using the olakai or the traditional metal-bottomed long wooden pestle. As a result, it would not be dehusked completely and would possess considerable nutritive value, quite unlike the rice of the present day, which is polished clean by the comprehensive mechanised dehusking of the rice mill.
The public denouncement of coffee went to extremes that may sound at once ridiculous and amusing to us at this point in time, a hundred years later. One writer reviled the drink, calling it even more addictive than arrack, and went on to regret, ‘In those days people lived a hundred years [by drinking neeragaram]; nowadays times have changed. Even the women who work the fields demand coffee. There is not a single household without a coffee drinker’. Another critic complained, using the language of modern medicine, that ‘with the increase in coffee-drinking in our country, infant mortality, diabetes, constipation and other lowly diseases have begun to afflict our brothers and sisters’!
The attack on coffee extended also to women, by women. Thus, the Stri Dharma, published by the Women's India Association wailed:
Alas! This damned thing has got hold of women! Two cups of coffee have become the order of the day...This habit has taken over even aged women. These old women who were adept in home remedies now rush to the doctor, making a beeline to the hospital for the slightest headache.
The railing against coffee and women spilled over to the realm of the political. A highly sexist letter to Gandhi, apparently in the wake of the Non-Cooperation Movement, went thus:
The greatest obstacle in the way of success to our [non-cooperation] movement in Madras are our women. Some of them are very reactionary, and a very large number of the high class Brahmin ladies have become addicted to many of the Western vices. They drink coffee not less than three times a day, and consider it very fashionable to drink more.
These vituperative attacks on coffee, by their very vehemence, suggest that the anti-coffee brigade was fighting a losing battle. Very much so. For coffee gradually moved on from being a mere refreshment to become an integral part of cultural consciousness relating to notions of refinement and hospitality. Writers began to use coffee as a metaphor. For instance, the short stories of Pudumaippithan, the celebrated Tamil short story writer, are littered with references to the drink. In fact, one of his stories, Kadavulum Kandasamy Pillaiyum (God and Kandasamy Pillai), considered a classic, has Lord Shiva descending to the earth to meet the central character, Kandasamy Pillai, in Madras, whereupon 'the latter instinctively leads him to a nearby coffee hotel'. Here the following conversation ensues:
As God sipped the coffee, a divine demeanour of having drunk soma suffused His face.
"This is my divine handiwork", said God.
"This is not Your handiwork, but the hotelier's. Mixing chicory with coffee is his handiwork. Show your mettle when you pay the bill", whispered Kandasamy Pillai into His ears, content that he had sorted out the issue of paying for the coffee.
"Chicory...what's that?" God looked up quizzingly.
"Chicory powder resembles coffee, but is not coffee - like those who defraud people in the name of God", replied Kandasamy Pillai.
Coffee came to be closely associated with the upper caste, predominantly Brahmin, middle class. Its growing popularity led to the setting up of 'Brahmin coffee hotels' or 'coffee clubs', which served only coffee (in addition to snacks) and no other drink, in urban clusters. The coffee hotels, like coffee itself, also found their way into popular literature as we have seen in the excerpt from Pudumaippithan’s story. However, they came to be targetted - with success - by the Self-Respect or anti-Brahmin movement, which excoriated the obnoxious practice of keeping some seats out of bounds to all except Brahmins.
Coffee’s dominance among the Tamil middle class contrasts sharply with the universal popularity of tea elsewhere in India. In Tamil Nadu, tea is seen as a working class drink and a cultural 'other' of coffee. This perception has even entered the popular idiom so that somebody with a touch of the loony about them may be described as ‘a chap who drinks tea at a Brahmin hotel’!
Some of the other essays in the book are delightful as well. One of them is on the introduction of cartoons in Tamil newspapers, an influence carried over from the English Punch, which spawned an entire genre of Indian journals ambitiously named after the original as The Delhi Punch, The Punjab Punch, Urdu Punch, Gujarati Punch and so on. Among Tamil newspaper publications of the time, it was in the weekly, India, that cartoons were first introduced by its editor, the celebrated Subramania Bharati.
Another essay that stands out is Excising the Self: Writing Autobiography in Colonial Tamilnadu. Venkatachalapathy persuasively argues that autobiography as a literary phenomenon met with the popular approval of the Tamil audience only by the 1930s but was quickly appropriated by writers to provide a historical account of social transformation rather than scrutinise their own lives. This was an indigenisation of the western literary genre, which in its original form served as an expression of individuality and a narrative medium for reflection and self-realisation. The early autobiographies wove their themes around contrasting pictures of ‘those days’ and ‘these days’, producing a romantic narrative of a pristine past, whose order and social harmony was gradually chipped away by the rapid social and technological change permeating society in the wake of the colonial encounter.
In Those Days… offers a splendid peep into the life of the middle class citizenry of the colonial period, painting an evocative picture by drawing from popular literary sources of the time. In brilliantly capturing the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, from its unconventional sources, it shows that history is not the exclusive domain of the pedantic and the obscure. The lay person with an inquisitive mind may not only stake claim to it but also revel in the delight of its more accessible forms.
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The Sahib of Saraidadar, Part 2 of 2
(Illustration below by Sandeep Sen. Originally published on Pangolin Prophecies , a blog maintained by Krishnapriya Tamma.) It was Diw...
