Category: Life,Society, Culture,Media

While browsing through some TED talks , I stumbled on a talk by Jon Jandai of Thailand. It was a simple talk , delivered in a gentle voice . Life is Easy ! Why are we making it difficult ? That really got me. Why do we need to earn for 30 years to build or buy a house ? The main requirements are food and housing. He was the first in his village to take up organic farming. He build mud houses which are eco friendly and inexpensive . The skeptic would say, “come rains and it’ll all get washed away.” . After pursuing his convictions for 15 years , people from world over are noticing him.

Today he runs an establishment called Pun Pun , a centre for self reliance. It is a kind of gurukul where people from world over come to learn , share ideas on living close to nature.

Jon says, “why should we look at money as security ? Let us look at building resources for our security. These resources would be food , water, and fertile soil. On one hand we work so hard for money and on the other hand, the same hard work is fast depleting the natural resources that we need for our happiness and security. “

There are a number of videos on the net on organic farming, building of mud houses, making charcoal for energy and such traditional knowledge and skills for self-sustainance.

The idea is not new. Thiruvalluvar of 1^st century or Tolstoy or Mahatma Gandhi of last century were great proponents of living with nature.

I suppose the Renaissance period and the growth of Science in the West, prompted an idea that we can conquer nature, and now we are paying for it heavily. Can’t blame Science , but the idea that Science can conquer nature is definitely debatable.

This idea is best expressed in the words of Francis Bacon ;

“My only earthly wish is . . . to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man’s dominion over the universe to their promised bounds.”

“………….putting [nature] on the rack and extracting her secrets,” and of “storming her strongholds and castles.”    “……………..I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave. The mechanical inventions of recent years do not merely exert a gentle guidance over Nature’s courses, they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations…………….”

Of course, there are some who believe that these words are wrongly attributed to Bacon. Be that as it may, such an idea exists that nature can be and should be conquered for man’s comfort.

Some people go to the extent of relating it to the idea of nature as a woman and Science as a kind of Inquisitor putting her on the racks to extract her secrets as witch hunting was done in the medieval period. Vandana Shiva of Navdania movement elaborates on the idea in her book Staying Alive.

Here are some videos on Jon Jandai and Pun Pun of Thailand

Alert:  Please Don’t take  me too seriously.. just asking ..

What is work-life balance ?

Are work and life mutually exclusive ? Do people stop living while working or is it that suddenly they get a life when they stop working ? If that be so , why work at all ? Is work only for paying the bills or is work mandatory for well being an individual? If it is mandatory for well being , why not call it life as well ?

What is me-time ? Does it mean the periods other than me-time are spent for someone else ? What if that someone else is dearer to you than yourself? Does a mother or for that matter father, spending time for his child come under me-time or child-time ? and of course the next question would be “which is the better spent time ?”

When a person is more at home at work place than he or she is at home , where does she/he have a ‘life ‘ ? at work place or at home ?

Maintaining relationships can be very stressful many a time ; why not bring it under ‘work’ ?

Can life be at work-place and work be at home ?

Why else, people have stuff like working lunch at nice restaurants and conferences at holiday resorts ?

A philosopher would say ‘What is office but escape from home and what is home but escape from office ?’

May be all mandatory activities, irrespective of whether it is at work-place, home or elsewhere  could simply be categorized as life draining activities and life rejuvenating activities , say LDA and LRA and they could be set to a desired ratio to balance ?!

Or would it be better to say  ‘ battery draining’ ,’battery neutral’ and ‘battery charging ‘ ? Writing such thing is battery charging for me ,hope it is so for reading also.

 

These days there are many Indic words in many languages , which have acquired a derogatory meaning . When you want to say Bhakt, you need to say ‘devotee’ lest you’ll be misunderstood. So have words like sanskari, behanji come to mean something else other than their original meaning. The word desi itself has come to mean something or someone obsolete or culturally retarded.

Desi food, desi attire, desi bhasha , desi anything is taboo. In Chennai, though people still have rice with lemon or tomato mix ,they would rather call it lemon rice or tomato rice rather than “thakkali saadam” or “elumichai Soru” , even while talking in Tamil.

Talking in an Indian language  or the ability to read or write in an Indian language is simply not cool. Today, there are so many children growing up in India without ever  learning a single Indian language in school !!.

In short, anything desi is  considered shameful.

Fortunately, we have seen many great , desi human beings like Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda , Subramania Bharati, Shri Aurobindo , to name a few. One truly awesome, desi human being in recent times was Dr Abdul Kalam. He could be a great scientist without his scientific temper coming in the way of his spiritualism, could be the President of India without losing the common touch and above all ,his continuing to teach young people did not come in the way of his own learning. He was learning to play  endaro mahnu bhavaulu    as he told MS Subbulakshmi , another great desi human being,  during the function when she was being honoured with Bharat Ratna Award.

Once he was asked by a foreign reporter as to  what was the core competence of India. He replied ” our core competence is dealing with our millions . No other country has or needs such expertise”

Whatever has to be implemented in India has to be for a billion plus population.  Be it housing, power supply, water supply, employment , education, health care , conduct of elections; whatever be the issue, it takes on a different connotation when it has to be done for a billion people.

So desi samasya need desi solutions. Against this backdrop, does it make any sense to go for a downtown and suburbs model as in US? Does it make any sense to have a network of freeways and a huge number of automobiles zipping through in the peak hours, burning gallons of fossil fuel and polluting the air, beyond redemption?  If we have to go by the US model we would have about a billion cars on our roads; forget about plying the cars, there would be no place to park.

Is it a rocket science to deduce that we need more of public transport and people staying closer to their workplace, meaning more number of smaller cities than a few unmanageable cities like Mumbai or Delhi ? Till 2002, Delhi did not have any mass public transport ? Many of our cities still do not have.

We cannot ban private vehicles, but they can be taxed heavily for use of roads and parking space to encourage use of public transport.

Whatever solutions or models we go far we need to think of 100,00,00,000. Or else we are just creating islands of California in a sea of sub sahara as Dr Amatya Sen put it.

I remember reading  an article by Sunaitra Chaudhry where she brings out the reactions on a certain issue as seen by the ‘ have nots’. As it is fashionable these days, she turns to her maids, driver, mali, nanny, malishwalah etc for feedback. By the time i read through the article , I had counted nine people serving some member of her family in some way.

Today we see our development model in NCR  as  a number of gated colonies surrounded by slums occupied by economic refugees from UP, Bengal or Bangladesh.

Can we sustain this model without the socio-economic stress, building up over time.

Another thing people seem to forget is that India lies in the tropical zone.

These days one sees a lot of buildings in the cities with huge glass fronts. A tropical country like ours should have buildings with less glass to keep it cool. If air-conditioning is the solution we go far, then one has to think of a billion air conditioners and of course the power required to run them at the same time . I can’t even imagine the effect on environment of running a billion air conditioners and a billion automobiles at the same time.

I have never understood the idea of breeding Alsatians or Dobermans in a tropical country like ours.  Particularly in summers these pets go through enough cruelty  for  PETA to wake up. But somehow these ‘dog lovers’ look to servant boys to walk their dogs, in the process littering the walk-ways with dog poop and then they depend on air-conditioners to keep them in their native (European) temperature.

The local breeds are hardier and more intelligent than these ‘phoren’ dogs, yet they are reduced to unwanted, stray animals .

Why don’t people grow jasmine bushes or parijata instead of fragrance less flowers like pansies and phlox.  Even the Indian variety of creeper roses are hard to find these days in India.

About our attire, the less said, the better it is. It is moronic to see people going about in coats and ties even in palces like Chennai, and nursery school kids wearing ties is abominable.

It is so nice to see amaltas and gulmohur in bloom. Along with these, what we need is more shady trees like peepal, tamrind and neem.  How have we come to  the state where poplars, silver oak and eucalyptus are dominating our landscapes ??? These trees, bring down the water table  , clog the drains, give no shade and snap like match sticks during monsoons!

Having done away with most native species of flora and fauna, having relegated desi languages to servant-talk, having set aside desi food and clothing for  ethnic days in the office and festival days at home,  we march on triumphantly towards being total copycats of the west.

What comes to my mind is Goerge Orwell’s concluding lines from the animal farm.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which

Big Fat Indian Weddings.

 

The cliche Big Fat Indian Wedding is somewhat misleading.  India is too diverse a country to be slotted into one word or phrase. Every region , sub region has it’s own way of conducting their weddings. If you had some people spending in crores  for just the wedding outfits for the bride and groom, there are others who  go through the rituals  in plain cotton dhotis and saris dyed yellow in  haldi.

Thanks to Films and TV serials, there is a kind of convergence defying time and space .

There was a time when the entire village became one huge pandal or mandapam ; food was cooked on industry scale for over a week, though the formal functions were spread over ‘only’ four days.  The mud-ovens in the houses were physically destroyed  so that everyone was forced to depend on the community kitchen.

As people moved to the cities, the  leisurely four day affair  got telescoped into one day .

Now the trend shows a switch to a three days revelry. The only difference is that religious rituals take a back seat while  fun events like  sangeet and mehndi to accompaniment of DJ Music and choreographed dance sequences hog the time. Nowhere is it as pronounced as in a Sikh wedding where the actual wedding ceremony is reduced to about half an hour. Why cut into fun time ? Why not have more time for  daru and chicken, music and dance, bhangra and giddha fused with bollywood beats.  Even the sedate southies are readily taking to Karan Johar and Ekta kapoor type boisterous , colorful  functions.

Recently , I attended a wedding. Baraat with the groom on horseback is always the central point ; the famous Band, Baja ,Baraat.  When the bride and groom are from different regions , the ubiquitous  pagris become even more colurful.  The tall Rajput pagris  can be seen along with the flat Puneri (from Pune) pagris.

The Bride and the Groom go through the rituals ,conducted by the pandits while the rest go about the business of eating, drinking and socializing till they are called to shower their blessings on the young couple followed by group photographs. In short , all have fun except may be the the main characters as  in most communities the bride and groom are on some kind of fast till the rituals are over .

Screaming kids can appear anywhere at anytime , with are without their video-games on  smart phones.

So today , what is it that defines a typical Indian wedding ?  May be it is the riot of colours, loud music, be it the traditional Dhol or the modern DJ (often it is the fusion of both), plenty of food and all kinds of drinks, lots of dance and some religion for the Wedding Album !

 

In our country, today, if you ask me for one most misused / abused word, I would say ,it is the word “secularism” . It is closely followed by communal-ism.

The word secular originated from Latin saecularis or Old French seculer, meaning a generation or an age used to mean this world as different from Spiritual world.  

Today, as defined by any dictionary , say wictionary, it means

Not connected with religious or spiritual matters . Some of the synonyms are non-religious,non-church,temporal,worldly,earthly etc. Some examples are Secular music, secular books, secular building etc.

A secular person is a non-religious person (definitely not someone who attends every iftar and Christmas gathering)

A secular state is a non-religious state . Ancient India did not have a concept of a religious state, so one needs to look at European history to understand what a religious state is. As it happens , even in the present day there are many modern Western States who are bound by constitution / laws to promote a particular faith.    A case in point is the composition of the House of Lords wherein Up to 12 Church of England bishops may sit in the house as ex officio “Lords Spiritual”. (Only the Church of England, mind you, not any riff-raff denomination like Catholic or Presbyterian) In our country, the liberals are up in arms , even when a  person gets duly elected to the parliament or the assembly, if he is religious.

Now , let us see how the religious states evolved to delink religion from state affairs, and in the process “discovered secularism in politics”.

There was a time when the Church was very powerful, more powerful than the kings. It had its own army and a hierarchy of officials for implementing the Lord’s will across the length and breadth of its domain , which was striving to expand forever.

Being  a chess enthusiast, as a child I often wondered what a bishop had to do on  the battle field . Chaturang (the four arms , infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots  under the king and prime minister ) in Europe , had become Chess .( pawns,bishops , knights and rooks under the King and Queen) . Later , I realized , If the Pope had to wield political power, the cardinals and bishops had to go  into the battle along with the Knights. Even now when I look at a chess board I can visualize the Bishops and Knights criss crossing ‘battlefield Spain’ under the directions of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella enforcing the Spanish Inquisition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, let us have a look at the History of India , Ancient or medieval. Buddha or Shankaracharya or any other religious leader did not have  armies like the ones Caliphs and the Popes had. So the idea of a Secular State was inherent in any Hindu Kingdom. Each dynasty had a favorite sect or God , keeping with the idea of Ishta devata. Ups and downs in popularity of a particular sect were more fluid and least violent. While  Mahendra Pallava patronized the Jains more, his son Narasimha Pallava patronized the Shaivites more; but by and large all faiths were promoted and none were persecuted.

The only exception was the Sikhs under Guru Gobind Singh  ; but this army was born to fight oppression rather than for persecution of heretics/ kafirs like the armies raised for crusades or the Spanish Inquisition. Still , a religious army has no place in a modern state and the country has already paid a heavy price  in the effort to contain Khalisthan movement.

We come to 1948.  The Indian Constitution was being drafted ,and  it was proposed by KT Shah  to include the word “Secular ” in the preamble,  and it was Dr BR Ambedkar , who vehemently opposed it. He opposed it, not because he wanted a religious state(opposite of secular is religious , not communal ,we’ll come to it later) , but just found the word superfluous.  Jawaharlal Nehru, who was keen on a socialist state was also happy  omitting ‘secular’  and ‘socialist’.

It was left to his daughter Indira Gandhi to introduce the word in the preamble , that too during the Emergency period ,in 1976.  Why was it introduced ? It was part of the 42nd amendment in a bid to retain power with herself  and her party. The amendment was also called mini constitution as it was quite exhaustive in changes across the board. Mainly, she went after curbing the powers of Judiciary. Clauses like ‘anti national activities ‘ were introduced so that any one questioning her could be booked. The word ‘secular’ was introduced to beat the RW parties with , but even she would never have imagined as to what degree that word would be misused as it is being done today.

Suffice to say that the Amendment was unpopular and was forced down the throat of the nation, under emergency conditions.  As it happens, some of the States who use the word Secular frequently did not ratify the 42nd Amendment; to name a few,  J & K, Kerala and Tamilnadu.

Another joke is that opposite of “secular” is “communal”. Communal society is defined as a society in which everyone lives and works together and property and possessions are shared rather than being owned by a particular person. The community can be based on religion , ethnicity or any other factor.  Living as a non religious community is actually called  secular communalism. Now, try chewing on it.

How do we differentiate  secular from communal in modern India ? A tall order indeed.

To simplify the process, RW community is called communal society while other religious communities are secular communities !!!

Now for some light hearted diversion ……

here’s an article calling bharathanatyam as cutural nationalism

https://thewire.in/books/from-national-culture-to-cultural-nationalism-an-extract-from-on-nationalism

The day when rasam (mulagutawny soup) became brahminical

 

 

 

Can wearing a saree make you communal ? may be it can, as Asgar Qadri in Ny times says it is a symbol of hindu nationalism.

 

 

 

Is bindi secular ? Christian educational institutions don’t think so . They do not let the children sport bindi.  However, for Rana Ayub , a bindi is mandatory to prove her secular credentials.

 

 

 

 

 

There are many more questions one finds on  the social media platforms .Just posting a random tweet to have an idea of  the  the line of thinking… There are others tweets debating if idli is secular food  or if  a game of chess is secular ? Then we have a you know who , with a long secular beard lecturing on   the kind of emoticons the secular community can use. As per him,

,  or 

are  haram , thereby meaning not secular.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, a picture which all “secular people” generally agree to be a  truly secular image. Obviously , there seems to be Nothing Religious about it .

It has been learnt from a survey conducted by Harvard University in Collaboration with Fox TV Network that on an average a mobile phone user spends 90% of the air time on Whatsapp or Face-book. Don’t ask me where I got this figure from ; I just thought of it. No worries; just spin it around through Social media apps .Our Whatsapp Warriors (WW) and Face-book Philosophers would forward it on so enthusiastically that it might become true now even if there had been a  doubt earlier.

What would happen if that little curved arrow is not available on Whatsapp ? Well, the traffic on the app will be down by 90%. How can people forward stuff without reading ? How can people pass judgments on stuff they are clueless about ? Why do people forward stuff in languages , they don’t even recognize , leave alone understand ?

Well, to ‘like’ is twice blessed and to ‘forward’  divine.

So much is conveyed with so little vocabulary. The entire vocabulary of a WW is restricted to just two actions; a long press and short press. With this limited vocabulary, you can even  send a plethora of emojis to express yourself. How exciting !

The social media is here to stay. It requires a great degree of patience and detachment to go through others’ posts and sometimes post your own views without the post-delivery pains.

The first time I learnt about the term ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ was in high school physics . When light rays actually meet, it is a real image and when they appear to come from a point, it is a virtual image. An image is an image; what difference does it make if you see it in a concave mirror or a convex mirror. Well we can leave that to the physicists .

The next time I came across the term was in the context of computer gaming,”Virtual Reality” . The term is even more confusing.  After years of involvement in a VR Project I learnt that VR simulates experience through senses and perception. You ‘see’ things which are not there, feel a hit when no one has hit you and so on.

Nowadays one hears a plethora of terms “Perception management” , “Image Projection”, “Optics”, “Image building” and so on. Doesn’t it all amount to creation of a simple Virtual Image or may be an ant throwing up a shadow the size of an elephant ?

Sometimes, I feel , the Real World we live in full of virtual images, where everyone is practicing their own version of perception management in personal and professional Spheres.

Recently, while talking to a finance professional about IPOs, I was amazed to learn about the extent companies  go to ,to project the desired image for success of an IPO. They need to manage ‘TV Channels, Web portals, independent finance consultants, HNIs and so many entities to project a favorable image. This of course is in addition to window dressing of balance sheets  and cooking up of accounts through highly paid bean counters.

Cinema is the domain of dream merchants selling virtual images , but they too resort to image projection to sell the make-believe world they produce.  And publicity tours by stars have reached absurd levels. Simply can’t imagine Rajesh Khanna or Hema malini doing a blitz tour of schools and colleges to promote their movies. Nor can one imagine writers Kalki or RK Narayanan bombarding the world with Tweets and face-book posts to promote their books.  It is not just actors  and writers who need image projection, but even doctors,lawyers and teachers need to project their images and these are professions where ethics forbid any advertisements.

The matrimonial columns in newspapers and matrimony platforms on visual media are the ultimate exercises in maximum image building at minimum costs. The stakes are also high here.

So, be it TV, Newspapers, Social media friends and the ‘real’ people around , all seem so virtual.

Ironically, it is only during interaction with  on-line strangers that I get a feel of interacting with real people.  The financial transactions on-line are so real and honest, though money doesn’t really change hands in the literal sense. While playing chess online with absolute strangers, I can sense the feelings of triumph or frustration of  my opponent. Even the Google translated chats in a foreign language appear more real than interactions with some friends on the face book. What is social media but ultimate form of Narcissism and playing to the gallery.

When the real world is saturated with virtual images, one looks to the virtual world for some reality.