Of blogs and posts

There was a time when many things were blog-worthy. New concepts and ideas, strongly held opinions that had to be expressed in response to some bit of news, replies to questions, rejoinders to criticisms, lengthy essays and diatribes, and such like reasons for the wordsmith within to give expression to his craft. Often, as one went about ones day, an interesting column in the newspaper, a thought provoking passage in a book read while commuting, a conversation with a colleague over lunch, or even something novel one spotted in the street, would trigger the thought – “I must blog this!”

Not much has changed in the stimuli feeding into the cauliflower, newspapers and periodicals are still read (may be heard in some cases), books are purchased and read, and the work days is filled with myriad conversations with colleagues, the city streets are as colourful as ever – and still not much seems to inspire the urge to furiously hammer away ate the keyboard and shoot off a blog entry. And I am not entirely sure I can place my finger on the reason. Yes, insufficient availability of time is a factor – nevertheless it should be possible to squeeze out the time on weekends and may be even some weekdays if it comes to that. But it doesn’t. Things don’t seem as blog-worthy as they did some years ago.

One factor – which I suspect plays a bigger role than time – is that blogs increasingly seem like monologues. Social networking and such avenues have weaned away many millions of eyeballs from blogs. Even serious readers have less time for blogs as they are busy updating what’s on their mind and reading what’s on the mind of their friends. Comments and discussions that arose in response to blog posts are now generally far less lively than they were before. and this is important – discussing ideas tends to generate greater mental focus on the themes and concepts involved, which in turn helps generate more ideas. Merely thinking about ideas by oneself may not be as fecund a process. This is best observed in the work-place. Large meetings tend to be disorganised and confused when it comes to ideas – but smaller focus groups of 3-5 competent individuals are often able to think of innovative solutions an ways forward to workplace problems they seek to resolve. In any case, the point is, the weakening of meaningful and sustained discussions over ideas stems the process of generating new ideas and hence new blog posts. – the process of ideation slows and blogging becomes a less interesting and hence far less frequent pursuit. Unless of course, the blog is used not as a platform to share and review ideas and theories, but a listening wall where one unburdens ones mind transforming the blog into a diary or such-like personal chronicle.

I think this is the speed breaker that Cynical Ruminations has hit. Where as Dharmaraja’s Ashram is practically shut down.

Show me the money . . .

The people are in debt. Their governments are in deficit. The pension liabilities are practically impossible to pay. The drastic re-skilling of workers needed to make economies competitive is unaffordable. Increasing revenues by raising taxes on a debt-ridden populace battling high unemployment would seem, for any democratic regime, suicidal. This then could be the story of almost any rich country one would care to pick. Given that most conventional methods of reducing deficits seem fraught with risks for these governments, perhaps they should start considering unconventional measures.

The Roman Emperors when faced with an empty imperial treasury would sometimes adopt an interesting remedy. Round up the wealthy citizens of Rome and extort huge sums of money from them. And surely, the prospects of rounding up fat-cat Wall Street bosses in say Guantanamo and lightening them of the burden of their ill-begotten bonuses, would sound like a temptingly just recompense to many. Perhaps similar fat-cats from the “City” can be brought in by means of extraordinary rendition? In any case, as fair as it may seem – this may not be the right thing to do. But the fact remains that huge amounts of wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few. By some estimates, as of 2004, the top 1% wealthy families in the US owned a staggering 34% of the total wealth in that country! The bottom 40% on the other hand possessed a mere 0.2%.

This problem of highly unequal distribution of wealth – with a few wealthy people amassing immense fortunes – is not easy to resolve. In theory at least, the possibility of amassing such wealth often motivates much innovation and entrepreneurial risk taking. It may not be wise policy to threaten such a powerful motivation. Its also equally regrettable that few amongst the wealthy are prone to philanthropic distribution of wealth a la mode Mr Gates and Mr Buffet! But that could be the trick – is some way could be found for the very wealthy to willingly part with their wealth to fund such initiatives as deficit reduction, poverty reduction, education, basic infrastructure, healthcare, and so on.

Vanity could be the clue. As is natural for high-status individual – rich folk are bound to have a good measure of pride and perhaps vainglory. Could that be used to tap into their wealth? Perhaps it could – because governments through the ages have been vested with the power to confer status by awarding titles. Knights, barons, Counts, Earls, Rajahs, Nabobs, Rai-bahadurs, Amirs and Baigs! I am sure there would be many rich folk who would love to purchase such titles. And the Government could, if it played its cards well, turn in a handsome profit! Titles could be auctioned, elegant ceremonies where these are bestowed on the recipients can be organised, the mystique can be built up to drive up the prices!

In all likelihood – I suspect this already happens on a small to moderate scale. Governments only need to make this a grand spectacle and a great revenue earner!

Gods in the synapses!!

A few months ago, I had an interesting conversation by way of a series of comments & replies on a friend’s Facebook© update. Basically, I got consigned to “burn” for believing in Allah instead of believing in God. I was torn between laughing at the consignor and feeling sorry for the person. But since this was a friend's Facebook page, I restrained myself from making too many more “tongue in cheek” remarks that would have made the discussion more ‘lively’ than it already had gotten. I am still puzzled about what led the aforementioned gentleman to decide that I adhere to that particular set of religious beliefs (or any variety of religious belief for that matter).

But the incident did get me thinking about my personal beliefs in matter of religion. And that, unfortunately is no straightforward matter. For all intents and purposes, I go about my daily activities without much reference to or cognizance of any set of religious beliefs about any variety of ‘great sky-man’ – ooops, apologies, I meant ‘great sky-person’. In other words, religion and Gods are of no consequence for my day to day activities, tasks, likes, dislikes, aspirations, plans, and such like.

Does that make me an atheist? No. I have my grouses with atheists. Firstly, atheists seem to have solved the knotty problem of evil and arrived at the answer – religion. The claim that religion is key cause of evils in human society is at best shallow, at worst facetious, and is not supported by the sort of rigorous evidence that the very ‘science’, which atheists swear by, demands. But the bigger problem with this characterisation is that the purported objective behind ridding the world of religion  – that of bettering the lot of our species – gets shoved into the back seat and religion bashing becomes an end in itself. Pseudospeciation is common and prevalent enough in our species to make many suspect it to be endemic to human nature – religion is just another definition to mark out the ‘in-group’, (along with nationality, language, race and even sexual orientation), and de-humanise the ‘out-group’. In fact, one can argue that religion can tend to ameliorate pseudospeciation by seeking to induct others into the ‘in-group’ by way of conversion!

But that’s not why I am not an atheist. The thing is, just as I do not care to observe any particular religious tenets, I do not particularly care to deny or denounce them either. In short, I don’t just care enough about religious beliefs to denounce them as falsehoods and be an atheist.

So does that make me irreligious? No again. For while I may not care about religious beliefs, I would not say that I do not care about religion. Belief may be the foundation of faith for a large number of adherents of a religion, it is only one attribute. Religion is a complex phenomenon possessing many layers and attributes rich in meaning and metaphor and in my opinion deeply connected to our very humanness.

This last claim may seem surprising, but it seems very possible that there are distinct biological underpinnings behind the tendency of us humans to be religious. Some studies, for instance, seem to indicate that the tendency to acquire religion (any religion, not a particular one) tends to be somewhat highly heritable. Certain anthropological studies also seem to indicate that religious ideas tend to follow certain templated patterns that may be in some sense ‘pre-programmed’ proclivities. The analogy with the ‘language instinct’ may seem obvious here – mental structures and templates for a ‘natural grammar’ ‘hard-wired’ in the human brain making the ‘tendency to acquire a language’ practically universal in our species. Of course, the ‘religious instinct’- even if we very prematurely call it that – is certainly nowhere as well evolved as the language instinct, and is probably, at this stage, highly conjectural. Nevertheless, religious ideas, at the very least, certainly tend to be highly successful, sticky and durable cultural memes.

The many and various social, cultural, economic, political, ethical, philosophical, anthropological, (and many other social-scientical) dimensions of religion are, on the other hand, are almost blindingly obvious. Turning a blind eye to these and focusing on ‘belief’ is a rather narrowly Abrahmic persuasion. Bracketing off the belief to examine the other facets closely can lead to interesting insights about religions. For example, many have argued that religion is not essential to develop a working moral framework for human society. It is plain that several moral principles are common to most religious traditions. Some observers though, have drawn a very perceptive contrast between these ethical ideas common to many religions and undiluted genetic self interest of the individual.

Consider for example monogamy which most religions tend to encourage as virtuous – and some even try to enforce by prohibiting polygamy as sinful! But what monogamy, in fact tends to achieve is to ensure that as far as possible, every man gets at least one wife and every woman gets one husband. And everyone gets a chance to pass on their genes to the next generation – everyone is happy and human society becomes more harmonious. But is monogamy in the best genetic self-interest of individual humans? May be not. The genetic self-interest of powerful and high-status men would lie in amassing a harem and siring scores of children! And the genetic self-interest of frustrated and desperate low status poor men, deprived of legitimate mates by the rich and the powerful would be to seduce – even rape! And what about the women? Well, who is to argue that a woman who gets one-half (or even one-fourth or one-tenth) of a rich, powerful and high status man is really worse off than a woman who gets one-whole of a poor, low-status man? By choosing to be the third wife of a rich merchant, a woman may be securing the prospects of her progeny far better than by being the sole wife of a peasant! So much for self-interest then – but does social harmony stand a chance in such a scenario? Monogamy then is the more stable option – and religion, as the enforcer of monogamy, brings about social harmony, in this example. This is not a very far-fetched scenario. Religion very likely has indeed played such a stabilising role in human cultural evolution – which, apart from the meme theory, could also explain its durability. Religion then is not just a meme, it quite possibly is a sociobiological construct! I would not be hasty in voting for the eradication of religion, my personal non-belief notwithstanding.

But, given that religion can tend to bring our tendency for pseudospeciation – intolerance and hatred – in sharp focus, it needs tempering. This can be achieved in two inter-linked ways – the global cosmopolitan liberal outlook embodied in the ideals of democratic regimes needs to ensure swift state action against acts of intolerance and hatred, and the very same global cosmopolitan liberal outlook needs to expand by encouraging people to know about (books and education) and interact with (community initiatives, internet) peoples of other religions, nationalities, races and ethnicities. The more I know about other religions, the more adherents of various religions I socialise with, the less likely am I to pseudospeciate – the interaction would lead to a blurring of the sharp divide between in-group and out-group.

But coming back to me. Neither an atheist, not a religious believer – am I bereft of religious persuasion? A fence-sitter? A waffler? A ‘feel-good’ fluff-bunny new-ager who has contrived a cosy religion of convenience? Neither. By birth, upbringing and now by decision – emphatically NOT by faith or belief – I am Hindu. My beliefs or lack thereof is immaterial actually; I am part of an ancient and profound religious tradition that in the richness of its cultural heritage, depth of its philosophical inquiry, prodigious beauty of its artistic, literary and architectural achievement, is second to none. In the tolerant, inclusive and humane openness that at the best of times it is very much capable of, it is probably unique. I owe it to my fathers, who have lived by and sustained this living tradition before me, to belong to and perpetuate it for posterity. This duty enjoined upon me, I cannot deny or refute.

Prohibited!

 

I wish I was an all powerful, autocratic, tyrannical dictator! There are so many things I would love to extirpate from human society on pain of death!

Here’s a sample:

1. Public Display of Religion: All religious activities and gatherings to be restricted to private residences or designated, notified places of worship. Even within private residences and notified places of worship, any religious observance, activity or ritual that leads to increased ambient noise levels outside the private residence or place of worship, shall remain prohibited. Permission may be granted to to hold specific religious observances, on specific occasions, in very specific open spaces that are well demarcated and can be appropriately ring fenced if said specific open spaces have been the sites of said observances by historical tradition at least 1000 years old; however even these would be subject to ambient noise control restrictions. All other religious displays, observances and gatherings including but not limited to processions, ritual worship, sermons, preaching, praying, etc., in public places including but not limited roads, open grounds, parks, river banks, auditoriums, class rooms, residential or commercial complexes, railway stations, bus stations, railway & bus carriages, airports, seaports, shopping complexes, cinema complexes, industrial complexes or premises, etc., are completely banned!
   
   In simple words – religion must get out of our streets and must stay in our homes and temples.
   
2. Never Ending and morally bankrupt Soaps (ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on television): These the bane of ‘modern society’. Seemingly intelligent men, women and children spend hours every day for many years following the on screen antics of terminally neurotic characters. Accordingly, no ‘soap opera’ can be broadcast on any private or publicly owned television network, unless the screen play for the ENTIRE series is completed and submitted for approval before hand. No soap opera can be televised daily but is allowed to air only one episode per week. Furthermore, no soap opera can air for more than 26 weekly episodes. The default duration of any soap opera can be no more than 13 episodes. In the event a show producer wishes permission for 26 episodes, he needs to submit a detailed proposal which shall be scrutinised by a panel of no less than 6 diverse literary, drama and film critics who would be required to examine the artistic and cultural merits of the screen play and the show and only if found to be of high artistic and cultural value would permission be granted for 26 episodes.
   
   In addition, the screenplay would also need to be scrutinised by a panel comprising of professors of moral philosophy, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and behavioural economists who would need to evaluate the screenplay and storyline as to whether it is detrimental to societal ethical values consistent with the current moral zeitgeist of the social group (country or language group) that is likely to view the resultant soap opera.
   
   Needless to say, all panels are required to strictly adhere to reasonable turnaround times (no longer than 5 working days for a single screen-play). Panel decisions will be subjected to peer-review after the shows start airing to ensure efficacy.
   
   In simple words – the idiot box throws out a lot of crap which needs to be flushed down the toilet.
   

There are a few more things I would like to add, but would take me some time to evolve appropriate recommendations, so I will post those later.

Good Friday recollection . . .

Good Friday remains one of my favourite holidays given as it annually provides us with at least one long weekend. Other holidays keep changing the day of the week they fall on! And our Hindu holidays even change the date of the year they fall on!! So my dear Pontius Pilate, thank you for arranging such a very convenient holiday for us all!!

But anyway, often on Good Friday, I recollect a conversation I had many years ago, when I was in college, with a devout Christian classmate regarding this wonderful holiday. Since this happened many years ago, I obviously do not recollect it verbatim, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi XXX, wish you a very Happy Good Friday! Hope you enjoy the festival celebrations!

Christian Classmate: We don't wish each other "Happy Good Friday" and we don't 'celebrate'; it is not a festival!

Me: Oh really? But it is a holiday, so thought . . . .

Christian Classmate: It is the day when our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross . . .

Me: Oh, so it is like Moharrum where they mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hussain?

Christian Classmate: No no what are you talking about.

Me: OK, hmm, but very weird, why do you call it "Good" Friday then, you know, it was the day Jesus like died and all . . .

Christian Classmate: No no, but He came back from the dead after three days so it is Good Friday!

Me: That's not logical is it, I mean the day He comes back from the dead would be a 'Good' day, but the day he dies has to be bad! I mean you don't even celebrate it as a festival because it was the day he died, wo why the hell do you call it 'Good' then! You should call it Lousy Friday!

Christian Classmate: No, no, it is Good Friday because He died for our sins!

Me: What!?!

Christian Classmate: Yes, he died on the cross for our sins, hence it is Good Friday!

Me: But that's absurd, you have a god who bcomes a scapegoat so that you can sin!

Christian Classmate: No no, he washes our sins by dying on the cross!

Me: Yikes. Why the hell does a god need to die to wash your sins! I mean he's a god, he can just cancel off your wicked karma or something can't he?

Christian Classmate: Oh don't ask me all these difficult questions, I don't know. Look, I need to leave early this evening going to church to pray and all. Bye!

Of elephants and journalists . . .

 

Cousin Ashutosh brought an interesting piece on Indian foreign policy, by Barbara Crossette in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Foreign Policy, to my notice. Ashu, and some others have written their own responses to this article. But the Gobi has to add its two pennies worth doesn’t it?

Most reasonable readers would agree that Ms Crossette has gone out on the limb a little with that one. But then does it really matter what one journalist who should have known better writes as long as serious and responsible businessmen, bankers, bulls & bears are willing to put their money where their respective mouths are (figuratively). The proof of the pudding is in the eating and many around the world are eager to dine at the splendid banquet India has to offer these days – so eager as to be willing to gate-crash!

That being said, the thesis and arguments in the article are sloppy at best.

Take India’s non participation in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), for instance. If the blatant and obviously state-sponsored proliferation of A Q Khan goes un-investigated and unpunished, if North Korea and Iran can merrily cock a snook at them while US Marines go chasing after non-existent WMDs in Iraq, these treaties, (the CTBT and NPT), are not only discriminatory, they are utterly impotent. No reason for our policy makers to waste time over them. We never needed to sign to have a spotless proliferation record.

As to Doha - it was as much US intransigence as India & China's that led to the talks failure. If the US can splurge billions and rewrite the rule-books to protect their unscrupulous and filthy rich financiers, India has every right, nay, a sacred obligation, to safeguard the interests of its 200 million impoverished farmers!

So much for being a headache in international negotiations - probably for the first time since independence India has a large enough say in international forums to make a stand against international treaties that may not be in the best interests of a large number of its citizens. It is gratifying to see policy makers and politicians having the moral fibre to finally take that stand!

So yes, the evidence presented and inference drawn in this article is full of holes.

Yet of one thing we must be mindful of - decades after independence, India has the heft to impact global policy negotiations. It is natural that such clout will be accompanied by increased media glare, not always for the right reasons nor always proportional to the issues at hand. The intense discourse in the international media on US and Chinese policy issues is an apt example. We must therefore learn to take criticism in stride and not go over-board in critiquing the critiques! The Indian media would need to be especially wary of going on a jingoistic defensive-offense!!

And more to the point, the worst 'critiques' may have a grain of truth. For instance the allusions to corruption among Indian officials leading to diversion of World Bank funds are very much in the range of possibility. These should be examined and investigated, and the guilty, if they be so, brought to book. This we would be wise to do even if we consign the rest of the article to be ignored to the oblivion it deserves.

Jungle Bells and Hoppy Christmas

 

It’s that time of the year again, the later half of December. Across most of India, the weather’s rather pleasant – even Bombay is reasonably tolerable as against being oppressively hot. In many of our work places, “Head Offices”, variously located across Europe and North America have come to a grinding halt – practically every second or third email pings back with an OOO auto-reply. Many here too have plans of long weekend getaways secured by appending a couple of days off from work to the Christmas weekend.

English movie cable television channels are awash with red and white ‘ho ho hos’, and as if to replicate said TV channels, 5 Star Hotels and Malls across the city sport illumination of the “Christmas lights” variety, have in their lobbies grotesque artificial fir trees festooned with baubles, often smattered with fluffed up cotton wool in an attempt to give it the appearance of snow.

Hmmm, nice. But why though? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Christmas. I wouldn’t touch those foaming at the mouth, Happy-Holidays-NOT-Merry-Christmas-opinionated, Letter-to-a-Christian-Nation thumping, rabidly evangelical atheists with a barge pole. But I cannot help wonder, who are all those hotels and malls pitching Christmas at? Do Christians in India throng to hotels and malls every December instead of celebrating with their families in the traditional way? And even if they do, is the Christian population of the country, at a little over 2%, a sizeable enough market to attract which all these hotels and malls deck themselves up so? Or are they angling for foreigners – tourists from Europe and North America who want to expend their holidays in ‘Incredible India’? May be they are – but I have not really noticed a visible increase in the number of foreign tourists at these hotels and malls around Christmas. And even if we assume that there indeed is a surge in the number of European and North American tourists around this time, do they really want to see fake Christmas trees and snow standing awkwardly in the midst of throngs of guests and shoppers milling around minding their own business? (On a very recent occasion when we were out for dinner, HRH was the only person in the otherwise busy hotel lobby who was paying any attention to the Christmas decorations.)

That Diwali is celebrated with great zeal – hotels, malls, shops and bazaars, all getting into celebratory frenzies – should come as no surprise. Other religious minorities in the country – Muslims, Sikhs, and even Buddhists are probably far more numerous than Christians; and as aggregates are a bigger target market – and yet we don’t see hotels, malls and shops decorated for Eid, Nanak Jayanti or Buddha Pournima! Even such minority groups as the Jains and Parsis, who can pack a financial punch way above their numbers, do not seem to have the privilege of having their main holiday celebrated by the temples of consumerism. That honour is reserved only for Christmas.

And that is precisely why these Christmas decorations irk me so – they have nothing to do with religion, they are far far removed from the Gandhian secular ideal of sarv-dharm-samabhav. I suspect they are hooked to Christmas because of its “life-style” associations. I fear that Christmas, by now, is intricately meshed with the Global Cosmopolitan Consumerist milieu, which wannabes across the developing world aspire for with acute longing. And I don’t think this near blind longing is a good thing for the developing world, I don’t think it is a good thing for Christmas either to be reduced and trivialised as a symbol of western consumerism.

And for this reason, I don’t quite like that Christmas tree, standing in that hotel lobby.

Jamboo-phalani, जम्बूफलानि

 

जम्बूफलानि पक्वानि
पतंति विमले जले
तानि मत्स्या न खादंति
जालगोलक शंकया!

3 poor brahmins from a village outside Ujjaini were on the way to the court of Emperor Vikramaditya seeking alms. On the way they passed by a picturesque stretch along the river bank where a tall Jāmbool tree stood laden with ripe fruit. They refreshed themselves with sweet fruit and cool water and sat down to rest in the shade of the large tree. Some fruit laden branches of the tree stretched over the water and from time to time, ripe fruit would fall into the clear water. They watched for a while and noticed that every time a jāmbool would fall in the water, several river fish would swim closer to the fruit and then dart away without eating!
Intrigued, the 3 brahmins described the peculiar occurrence –

जम्बूफलानि पक्वानि - ripened jāmbool fruit,
पतंति विमले जले - fall into the clear waters,
तानि मत्स्या न खादंति - them (the fruit), fish wouldn't eat,
जलमध्ये डुबुग डुबुग || ー'plonk', 'plonk', (they sounded) in the water!

They knew not why the fish never ate the delicious fruit. Puzzled they, went on with their journey to Ujjaini. As they queued up outside the Imperial shrine for alms from the Emperor, they noticed a court official talking to each alms seeker and handing them a coin. When the 3 brahmins approached the official he asked them what they sought. Ashamed to say they were seeking alms, the three said they had a verse to recite to the Emperor.
The official asked them to recite the verse, and the three recited:

जम्बूफलानि पक्वानि
पतंति विमले जले
तानि मत्स्या न खादंति
जलमध्ये डुबुग डुबुग ||

"Very nice, but the last phrase sounds crude!" said the official, "can't you refine it before you recite it for Emperor"? Looking sheepish, the 3 brahmins told the official what they saw by the river bank and how they did not know why the fish never ate the fruit. "Alright", said the official, "when you go to the Emperor, recite these 3 lines and at the end add this phrase - जालगोलक शंकया!

The 3 brahmins did as they were told. On hearing the verse, the Emperor smiled. He gave the brahmins a gold coin each as a gift and said, "O learned ones, the verse you just recited is very nice, but there is something different about the last line. Tell me did you really compose the complete verse?"

The 3 brahmins were again abashed, "O Mighty One, that court official over there, he changed the last phrase of our verse!" they said. The Emperor laughed and beckoned official who approached smiling. "Few can finesse a verse the way you can Kālidāsa!", said the Emperor.

जालगोलक शंकया! - (because they) suspected (the fruit) to be the round-weights of a net!

The tale, most probably is apocryphal; but by attributing the above lines to none other than Kālidāsa, (Sanskrit composer - known for such great works as Meghadootam, Shākuntala, and Kumāra Sambhava), they become difficult to forget!!

Litterbugs!

 

“India Shining”, they said. “Resurgent India”, one which is decoupled and which grows at 5%+ when the even rich-world is in recession! And we gloat unashamedly about our very talented super-achieving Diaspora! The princely NRIs and PIOs.

No matter how much we achieve though, at the core we are a nation of filthy littering pigs! Most public places, but especially well known tourist destinations – the ones that are on everyone’s ‘sight-seeing’ list will sport the following strewn about:

1. Plastic bags
2. Empty Soft drink bottles
3. Empty packets of chips, biscuits and such-like sundry eatables
4. Paper napkins (otherwise called ‘tissue paper’)
5. Cigarette butts / empty packets of cigarettes
6. Peanut shells / Banana skins / Apple Cores
7. Stubs of maize with the grain eaten away (bhutta, as it is called in Hindi)
8. Red stains of chewed paan spitted about
9. Remnants of picnic meals – paper plates, plastic spoons, paper cups etc
10. Bits of sodden newspapers
11. Graffiti saying “Arun loves Meena” and similar stuff
12. And other such miscellaneous garbage

It is shocking, infuriating and it is observed unfailing across the country. It makes me want to throttle someone. India is a beautiful country with bountiful natural beauty and a heritage to take pride in that has endowed us with rich and dazzling monuments. But we, the people of India, seem utterly incapable of nurturing this inheritance and preserving it for prosperity with its pristine beauty intact. As ‘tourists’ it seems to be out national obsession to go to such places, make a lot of noise, eat a lot of junk and pile up mountains of litter.

I sometimes feel only draconian laws brutally enforced by a right minded police state may knock some sense into us – if not, it would at least keep our tourist destinations clean! I would love for all these places to have a bunch of tough and incorruptible cops provided with whips and the mandate to land lashes on the unworthy rump of anyone who litters!!

 

Jugalbandi (जुगलबन्दी)

 

The jugalbandi is a very special form of recital where two maestros get together to present a performance. Many tend to misinterpret the jugalbandi as a competitive format where the maestros try to outdo each other in displaying their proficiency. Well, petty apprentices may play such games – most maestros are beyond them.

Most  jugalbandis I have listened to have tended to be dazzling virtuous cycles – may be I should say virtuoso cycles – of outstanding creativity, with each maestro inspiring the other to ever greater heights.

The memorable ‘jugalbandis’ between Pandit Ravi Shankar and Yehidi Menuhin, immortalised in the album West Meets East took the world of music by storm by their superb inter-traditional melding.

Below sample jugalbandi with Ustad Vilayat Khan Sahib on the sitar, with Ustad Ali Ahmed Hussein on the shehnai is a nice example.

The maestros present an ecstatic bandish in Raga Anandi Kalyan.

Rāgeshree (रागेश्री)

 

Rāgeshree (रागेश्री), is a night melody and a rāgini of exceptional sweetness, like its sister Bāgeshree (बागेश्री). Though the poignancy of the विरहिनी seems toned down, it is still replete with शृंगार रस the essence of romance. I have been looking for some good recitals, some बड़ा ख्याल renditions for a while now – today stumbled upon two astounding pieces; one a performance by Ganasaraswati Smt. Kishori Amonkar and a second rare live concert recording of Ustads Nazakat Ali Khan Sahib and Salamat Ali Khan Sahib. These are utterly delightful

The quest for Rāgeshree today was triggered as I listened to a smallish recital of this melody by the Sitar Maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan Sahib. A small sample of a similar rendition of this rāgini by the Maestro along with his son is below.

 

I sit, letting the swaras wash over me, a truly delightful close to the weekend.

Far from the @#&*!@ crowds

Thomas Hardy was the master of understatement. “Far from the Maddening Crowds” is monumentally off the mark. Gobi No. 2 has discovered that he is severely allergic to crowds. Crowds follow the law of the Least Common Denominator. Thus the average intelligence of the crowd drops to the level of the dumbest individual in it. This severely assails the mental equilibrium of the Gobi struggling valiantly to keep away from the crowd.

But it is impossible to be the proverbial lotus leaf when attempting to navigate ones way through a crowd. The crowd is omnipotent and omnipresent. There is no escaping it. It sucks all individuals into its ruthless maws and eradicates their ego.

I guess in that sense, it should be a good place to practice transcendental meditation. Let me try that the next time I need to venture out into the fearsome crowds.

तूर्तास गाभण!

तूर्तास गाभण! - Presently Pregnant

Most would construe the above as a rather crude (and very rude) way to describe the condition of a woman who is on, or in the build up phase towards, maternity leave. Most ordinary normal people - and mind you ordinary and normal are key operatives here - would be absolutely bamboozled if told that the above phrase is part of a remark - rather a rhetorical question - regarding a cup of tea! What on earth does the state of pregnancy have to do with a cup of tea? (Unless some marketing guru were to try to do an MR Coffee on some brand of tea!)

Here's what -

Many of us Indians, thanks to the Brits, have developed the habit of sipping tea with "a spot of milk". However, unlike the Brits, we have a fondness for a good deal more than just a spot of milk. Also, very very unlike the rest of the world - we Indians 'cook' tea very differently. We don't add tea leaves to a kettle full of hot water and allow it to brew. We take a vessel with some amount of water and set it on the stove and when the water warms up a bit, milk, tea-leaves and sugar are added in ample amounts and the potion is allowed to cook on a high flame. If the tea being prepared is 'special' or 'masala' chai - it may be cooked entirely in milk with generously stingy pinches of cardamom, nutmeg or such other condiments. When properly cooked, the 'tea' / chai is filtered into cups / glasses and served. If served in a cup and saucer, it is customary to pour the boiling tea into the saucer and blow it cold before sipping it from the saucer. A regular cup of tea may be about two saucerfuls. A saucer is also a handy way to share a cup of tea amongst two persons - though this sort of camaraderie is increasingly rare nowadays.

India has millions of roadside tea-shops (tea-howels, to be precise), which employ kids to run a sort of tea delivery service. The tea-kids go about with a battered olf aluminium kettle containing boiling tea in one hand, and a clutch of tea-glasses often carried in a wire tray similar to the one used for milk-bottles in the good old days. Particularly dexterous tea-kids may carry a clutch of cups and saucers instead of tea glasses.

And, so the story, or rather the 'character sketch', goes that a certain elderly gentleman was served a cup of tea, along with a bunch of acquaintances. Upon siping a bit of the chai, the said gentleman opined that the tea contained a lot less milk than a bonafide cup of tea should contain. Now, a dressing-gown clad English or brown sahib, reclining in a garden chair with a tea tray set on a tea-poy before him would, on discovering the insufficiency of milk in the tea would simply order the sepoy to pour a spot more of milk into his cup, and that would be that!

But the gentleman in question was no sahib. He merely fixed a stern beady eye upon the hapless tea-kid and queried - "रत्नंगिरिच्या समस्त म्हशीस तूर्तास गाभण काय रे झम्प्या?" - which losely translated means - "Are all the she-buffaloes in Ratnagiri presently pregnant, brat?" When asked like this, the poor brat had no reply to make.

This stereotypical, but very very apt depiction occurs in the "character sketch" titled Antu Barva (अंतू बरवा) by the renowned Marathi writer, dramatist, translator, poet, lyricist, composer, actor, orator, singer, director - basically very multi-talented artist - named P L Deshpande (पु ल देशपांडे)
better known to almost all Marathi speakers as PuLa. And Antu Barva is the archetypical chitpavan (चित्पावन) a community among others, that inhabits a small litoral stretch on the western coast of India known as the Konkan, (to which yours truly belongs). A community of sharp, slightly lazy, thrifty and proud folk that is known for acerbic crooked speech - like the one sampled above.

Stereotypes?

My expatriate colleagues have found that this matches their experience . . .

This is an insightful understanding of Eastern Culture Vs. Western Culture... in an
course one can't generalize everyone into these 'categories' but the drawings do
capture the essence of cultural differences between the western and Asian cultures,
in a snippy entertaining way. Useful to know, for people who deal (or whose teams deal)
with people from other cultures; these images have become extremely popular across the corporate world.
Blue --> Western,       Red --> Asian
 Opinion


Way of Life


Punctuality


Contacts


Queue when Waiting


Sundays on the Road


Party



In the restaurant

Travelling

Handling of Problems

Three meals a day


Transportation

Elderly in day to day life


Moods and Weather



The Boss
 

The child

 
 
These pictorial representations were designed by Liu Young who was born in China and educated in Germany

May the bloggings begin . . .

A new chapter in collaborative blogging has teh begun! Two like minded nutcases, whose minds are equally unhinged in often diametrically oposite directions have decided to pour the vitriolic gruel that auto-cooks in the cauliflorean crevices of their cranial cavities into the bottomless pit of blogspace.

Said gruel is expected to be highly corrosive, without any known, predicted, predicated, or pre-dictated attributes. The gruel may display arbitrarily directed or misdirected toxicity and may or may not possess any known antidotes. It is expected to be a cathartic process as may be expected from the deployment of intellectual laxatives.

You have been warned.

Facebook Blog

I suppose it was inevitable that Facebook would some day encroach into blog-space by means of some application. Not sure how well it would do. In terms of features - the FB Blog interface is far from impressive.

On the other hand Facebook already has a 'community' of friends and acquaintances in place for users of the blog. Improvement to the interface is a matter of time - though the look and feel restrictions of having to conform to FB specs may be too onerous.

Lets see how things develop.

Tryst with Destiny

This morning I saw a kid, may be 9 years of age. A grimy bag slung over his back, the handle held in one clenched fist. He was walking - balancing as though on a tight-rope - on a single rail of the railway track. He seemed lost in his own world. Out of the corner of his eye, he seemed to have spotted something valuable lying in the dirt. He leapt of the rail with alacrity and retrieved the object. It was a postcard-sized transparent plastic folder with a plastic zip seal. He seemed quite pleased with his find, as he unzipped the folder and pretended to put something inside. Then, grinning to himself softly, he got back to balance-walking on the rail.

I do not know how many of my fellow commuters noticed the kid. There must have been several hundred of us waiting on the platform, waiting for the suburban train that would take us to our respective workplaces. Waiting for the train to trundle into the station so we could leap in and grab seats - or at least comfortable standing spaces. As the train trundled in, and I was about to leap into the first-class compartment, I noticed a few passengers standing in the passage-way trying to alight. In the ensuing shove and tussle, I missed my chance to grab a seat. Muttering curses I placed my bag on the luggage rack and pulled out my book. As I was reading the second sentence a high-pitched loud voice called out "paalis seth!", and I saw the same kid walking in the compartment, soliciting customers for his little shoe-shine business. The little diversion with the plastic folder seemed to be out of his mind - this was his peak business hour and he was focused on selling his shoe-shine services.

And, I stood there musing. All around me was the fodder that fuels our economy – the professionals, officers, bankers, clerks, accountants, small businessmen commuting to start a regular ‘Bombay’ working day. The Economic Times was being unfurled and folded into neat train-commuter-friendly columns, the hands-free and Bluetooth devices were being adjusted to commence the first business phone-calls of the day, the occasional student was pulling out his well thumbed bunch of photocopied notes. All crammed in a train filled many times its ‘standard’ capacity. And the little ‘entrepreneur’, (who should perhaps have been in school), winding his way amongst the passengers shining shoes for five rupees. I was seeing, as I see everyday, the face of India. The talented Human Capital that is winning accolades from the world, the infrastructure – founded by the British – now creaking at its seams as it struggles to cope with our ever growing numbers, and the grinding poverty that still afflicts millions of us.

And I mused, have we redeemed, wholly or substantially, the pledge of long years ago when we made a tryst with destiny? Perhaps not. Which is precisely why, this is the right occasion to remind ourselves of the dream we dreamt at midnight 60 years ago. Let us read and remember. Jai Hind.

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.
That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death. We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.

- Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister, भारत गणतंत्र (Republic of India), 15th August 1947

Ethics and Evolution

Ethics is the science of morality and is applied to daily living in that it seeks to guide human actions, thoughts, words and motives in terms of certain values. Meta-ethics is the science that investigates morality; that seeks to examine ethical values, arguments and inferences. Thus if we ask – “Is it right for X to spread lies about Y in revenge for not being invited to a party?” – we are posing an ethical question. However when we start asking “What do we mean by right?”, “What makes a specific action right or wrong?” we have strayed into the realm of meta-ethics.

The difference between these two levels of ethical analysis is often not obvious. Often we are not aware of these two operating levels, often we do not care to think at the level of meta-ethics. This is a moot point because most disagreements in ethical discourse though they are disagreements on ethical conclusions primarily arise because of fundamental differences in the meta-ethics operating beneath. This is in many ways analogous to everyday situations where we end up arguing about syntax and semantics (words and meanings) rather than about concepts.

However second degree ethical analysis or meta-ethical analysis is required for humans to be able to justify our uniqueness as moral animals. The bottom-line being that we need to have basic ethical principles defined which we can apply consistently, coherently, correctly and completely. These principles would in turn drive our ethical values which makes comparison between alternative choices possible. This comparison is required, obviously to make the choices, but a more important consequence of this top down approach is that we should be prepared to review old choices as new information becomes available which could change the ethical value associated with each choice.

I brought this analysis up for a specific reason. We often hear views raised with regards to 'absolute morality' and 'relative morality'. These are almost always passionate views expressed with great conviction. But they are not often backed up by clear explanation of what absolute morality vis-a-vis relative morality entails. However when these votaries of absolute versus relative morality are asked to explain or give examples; it often transpires that the 'absolutists' are talking about the broad ethical principles while the 'relativists' tend to focus on specific ethical values and the resultant choices and decisions. It is intuitive then that 'absolute' and 'relative' morality are not necessarily contradictory or conflicting concepts; it is perhaps just as intuitive to observe that ethical principles are more or less stable or fixed while their application is dynamic and open to contextual nuances that must be relatively evaluated. Of course, one would expect a given set of ethical principles to be internally consistent, coherent and logical - in the absence of which attributes their stability comes into question. It perhaps seems to be a little in-apt to use the plural 'ethical principles' in this discussion when in most cases a single over-riding ethical principle seems to be operative. However, deeper analysis of the roots of the moral decison making machinery in the human psyche may lead to a plurality of ethical principles.

Differentiating between ethical values and ethical principles is often tricky and subjective. Take for instance the Ten Commandments. Are they 10 ethical principles? Or are they 10 ethical values? I would tend to analyse them as ethical values - specific statements mandating specific ethical choices. The underlying ethical principle is explicit in the very title 'Commandments' - Obeying the Commands of the Abrahmic Deity is the overriding ethical principle entailed here. But then this is my analysis, others may disagree.

However, the ethics - metaethics / principle-value schema adumbrated above is merely the surface simplicity and structure of a complex and less investigated substrate lying underneath. Ethical thinking, like any other kind of thinking, derives from the mental machinery configured in the human brain and is therefore shaped by the very configuration. Ethical thinking is primarily associated with how we deal with other people. This is significant because through the 0.5 million years of human (homo sapiens) evolution and 5 million years of homonid evolution, a defining feature of the EEA - Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation has been 'each other'. In other words the environment to adapt to which most of human and recent homonid evolution happened was other humans / homonids! It is almost certain that this evolution - which happened in response to other people - was an evolution principally of mental machinery. Significant development being growth in brain size, acquisition of language, a powerful inference engine, and a sophisticated theory of mind - which lets us make conjectures about other minds upto as high as 5 degrees (Peter thinks that Jane knows that he believes Jane's impression about Peter is based on . . .). The mind is far from being a tabula rasa at birth, but comes pre-fabricated with a complex mental machinery, algorithms, templates and inference systems developed over 5 million years of hominid and human mental evolution in response to living with othjer people. As stated above, since ethics is primarily concerned with thinking about how to behave towards other people, ipso facto, ethical thinking is a prime candidate for having been factored into the mental machinery that evolved as an adaptation to other people.

What this entails is that despite the possible variety of ethical principles and the ethical values founded from those principles; human ethical thinking has at its roots a universal set of templates and algorithms. Evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists, biologists, sociologists and such other scientists are only now beginning to look under the hood of this 'ethical brain' which has so far operated like a black box. This is not really surprising. We are thinking machines; ‘thoughts’ keep pulsing rapidly through the synaptic network and soup of neuro-chemicals that constitute our cauliflowers. But we are not aware of the thinking process (unless we define ‘thought’ specifically as a conscious and deliberate activity). There is literally much more happening in our minds than we know - Freud was right after all! Once the above mentioned scientists have finished mapping out the ethical brain, we will have a factual description of a truly universal meta-ethic. The meta-ethic of Gray's Anatomy that applies to each and every human being on the planet - from French or Fijian, American or Aboriginal. And yet, this is a fallacy. Any description of our naturally selected, evolved, adapted, 'ethical thinking' would just be a description of a partially innately developed process that inclines most of us into arriving at certain ethical conclusions in certain situations. This is purely descriptive of a natural / innate thought process and in no way determines the ethical value of the thoughts so arrived at!! To say that is to argue something to the effect that what is natural is what is right; or what is un-natural is what is wrong. It smacks of the all too common confusing of what IS with what ought to be. It is one thing to say that certain ethical inference systems (or tendencies towards developing these inference systems) may have evolved in the human / hominid EEA, because those ethical inference systems conferred on the genetic-factors responsible for their development selective advantage over other genetic-factors that could have led to different ethical inference systems. Such a claim probably is testable, and may be a fair hypothesis to proffer based on what we presently understand about natural selection and how it works. But should these ethical inference systems – as and when their mechanism is fully understood and explained – be the basis for the meta-ethic for human societies to operate by? Probably not. Going one level higher – does the process that in all likelihood was ‘responsible’ for the evolution of these inference system – namely Darwinian natural selection – itself constitute a viable meta-ethic? Should we define good as “that which makes our genes prolific”? Most of us would cringe with horror of the very prospects of that.