The Helmsman

A few weeks ago an unpretentious, diminutive man in his early seventies, a French and born to Jewish parents passed away in his adopted city, New Delhi, India. I understand that the obituary was in the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. A memorial was held in New Delhi and a requiem performed by the Opera that he co-founded, which is co- managed by his daughter.

“The Neemrana Music Foundation is a registered, national nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organisation in the field of classical music and they believe in the mandate to build bridges of understanding between different cultures. We have been pioneers in introducing the genre of Opera in India. We started with the production of the Indo-French Opera "The Fakir of Benares" in 2002 (Delhi) and 2003 (Mumbai).” (Quote)

Now the idea behind this post is not culture integrating art, Opera or for that matter the innovative hospitality Industry branded the Neemrana Heritage Hotels & Resorts or the highly reliable and professional fashion apparel sourcing business he founded since landing in Indian shores as a French diplomat and deciding to settle down in Mumbai in the 1970s.

Having had the privilege to briefly speak and chit chat with him on a few occasions, having had the opportunity to associate with a segment of his business empire and having been privy to many good words spoken about him, what struck me the most was the faith he reposed in people he picked to work with him and entrust his business empire. That uncanny knack of finding and trusting the right person has paid rich dividends and even after his passing the enterprises he developed, are I believe, in genuine and worthy hands. What probably prompted him to trust must be his unselfish attitude and the willingness to share the dividends of labour. He certainly gave a sense, a feeling of ownership to his top lieutenants and they may have probably percolated the notion down the pyramid.

Why do I mention this story? It is because I have been trying to compare human relationships and how they can prosper into equitable and strong ways and how avarice, grift and selfishness coupled with mediocrity, substandard education and fostering can threaten to pulverise and deracinate relationships, family and businesses.

Once, I asked a gentleman what was the secret story of the success behind their fairly big business which was well into through the second generation. He said. “It was the ability of the helmsman to carry every one along .He would not mind much if one oarsman is a tad slow, his effort will be substituted by the rest and that, seldom is an effort.” Certainly he did not refer to acquiescing inefficiency , remember it was a figure of speech. 

A stark contrast to these two let me call them allegories and the metaphor of the helmsman is a study in human greed, selfishness and absence of values- a concoction that is caustic and erodes the foundation itself. Sand Castles how so ever high are nevertheless buildings of sand build on sand.

The Right to Read

It is always a pleasure and often a sense of having done the right and in no uncertain terms of having asserted your right when you jump a fence that in the first place no one had any business or right to put up.

I today received by courier from AMAZON the Wendy Doniger’s book, “The Hindus an Alternative History”. It cost me Rs 1250 and took two weeks to reach me from its international publisher (not the pliable Penguin India).

This book as many know was found offensive by Dinanath Batra and his group of self-acclaimed Hindus and custodians of Hindu culture ( yes caste, untouchability, dowry, bride burning, marital rape,honour killing , khap panchayats and gang rape of women too are part of the culture they laud about). This group of drumbeaters and bigots filed a civil and criminal suit against the publication and sale of the book in India and simultaneously arm twisted the pliable and  pusillanimous  Penguin India to withdraw the book and pulp it. Interestingly this very same Dinanath Batra took on the Educational Board and has actively opposed and subsequently stopped the introduction of sex education in Indian schools, saying it was against Hindu culture and religion.

Shobha Narayan writes in her post titled “The real reason Wendy Danger’s book on Hindus was banned in India: It’s not boring enough.” She goes on to say, “Doniger is clever and playful; she shines the light into the dark crevasses of a religion that was formulated at a time when feminism as a concept didn’t exist. Doniger knows her Sanskrit and her Vedas, but she looks Hindu rituals and traditions from the point of view of women and minorities. …… .”             

  “……..is blasphemy, as far as he is concerned, never mind that Doniger knows her Sanskrit and Upanishads better than he does; never mind that she understands the glories of ancient India in a way that he cannot begin to fathom; never mind that she knows that the Manu Smriti that he often quotes uses animals to define humans.”

Now in these days when I finally begun to read to hearts content, now that I have a few good books that are tempting me on my table in their own forcible way to be read first, I guess Wendy Doniger has come and the rest will have to wait a while until I read through her tome.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The author herself had this to say on the pulping of her book in India. “And I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate,”                                                                            

 As for me it is not the question of free speech or literary freedom. It is not the widely misused word blasphemy or offending sentiments and hurting religious feelings. It is the question of my fundamental right, my birth right to read what I want. The courts in India have ruled before proscribing books but they have not banned reading them. These impostors and custodians of Hindutva or of Semitic religions, faiths, culture race or region cannot and shall not usurp my right to read and accept or reject what I want.

How about you?

Musings on a Tuesday Morning

         "It is Dark only till you open your eyes"

Perhaps one of the most, if not the most captivating artistry with words and imagination I have come across has been in the writings of Salman Rushdie. People use varied words and phrases to describe his genre and style of writing; magical realism, abstract, fantasy and dreamland imagination, master class illusion, paronomasia, Houdini of literature and also mediocre, besides ‘absolute bullshit’.

He may be considered less in standing when put up with some of the Latin American exponents of magical realism. Well, then Nobel Prize is the sine qu a non of literary radiance.

When compared to the terrene writings, construction of sentences, choice of words and the plot itself for someone who have been breast fed on the writings of Blyton, Somerset Maugham, Hemmingway, Maurice Procter, RK.Narayan from the old to name a striking few, it was trifle difficult to imbibe the writings of men like Salman Rushdie.

I just finished reading three of Salman Rushdie’s books in the order, “Satanic Verses”, “The Enchantress of Florence” and “Joseph Anton”. While the latter is a memoir of his reclusive days- incognito and hounded by the blood thirsty cannibals of the Khomeini era Iran, the others are typical Rushdie class, the former ( The Satanic Verse) the controversial tome and took quite a while to read and use reference sites in the bargain for understanding, (I can only blame my limited comprehension for that).I must confess I have now begun, rather gained time (by default and by chance) and the appetite to enjoy the oeuvres of good writers.

Going back to the memorable beginning of a novel, “The Enchantress of Florence”, is unequaled.                                       “In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveler coming this way at sunset-this traveler, coming this way, now, along the lake shore road-might believe himself to be approaching the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he would allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his guests………..”  

“But the sun fell below the horizon, the gold sank beneath the water’s surface and was lost. Mermaids and serpents would guard it until the return of daylight. Until then, water itself would be the only treasure on offer, a gift the thirsty traveller gratefully accepted.”                                                                                           

The Enchantress of Florence is set in the Mughal reign of Akbar, with occasional forays into the sixteenth century Florentine Italy and pulsating with life that the magical touch of Rushdie’s imagination could lend.

It was yesterday evening, when watching the “News Hour” on TimesNow channel that I began to wonder more and be quite afraid of what is in store for India should a bigoted, perverted and fanatic ideology in the guise of faith and religion were to come to power and with an absolute majority. The mindless frenzy, mobbishness and insane response to the literary creation “The Satanic Verses” and then “Shame” a novella of Tasleema Nasrin helped by mute, acquiescing and pliable governments in India and in some European countries, I find reflects the underlying venom and malaise in human psyche. The danger!

An antisocial called Pramod Muthalik the founder and lord of a fringe rightwing fanatic unit called “Sriramsean” vending his anger and wrath through menacing gesticulations and diatribe to the TV anchor and the civilised world as a whole when cornered by straight questions about his conduct and his self-proclaimed avatar as the custodian of Hindu Dharma and Hinduism was shocking, abhorring, bizarre and foreboding. Outrageously a man, a local head of his vile tribe who is a software engineer endorsed in equally frenzied manner the pathological ideology of Pramod Muthalik and that was far more distressing. They swore that they will hound and moral police any man or woman who to them are conducting against Hindu faith and Hindu dharma, because they have a right to safe guard Hinduism perse.

Mercifully in this age of live video telecast and information explosion such vile and perverted thinking elements are quickly exposed.  Though in some cases there are men who are roaming free even after a decade after approving and acquiescing social cleansing.

But what is amplified by the continuing ban in India on the book “Satanic Verses” and of late the meek withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s scholarly work on Hinduism is that individual freedom, freedom of thought and learning are continuously threatened in all religions and all faiths have demented men and women, cannibals preying upon a just and peaceful  society where individual rights and tolerance is helped to flourish through argumentation and civilized conduct than recourse to banning of unpleasant facts and resort to mayhem.

Ironically the book Satanic Verses is not banned in Turkey a secular country with a Muslim majority but is proscribed in India which claims to be the custodian of secular values.

As for men like Pramod Muthalik and others who have thrived raking up communal and religious divide and murder under the guise of saving Hinduism, the fact is such people are like locusts out to devour and deracinate Hinduism that for many millennia flourished without  abetting bloodshed or by slaughtering  non-believers, but mostly on free thought, free speech, argumentation and tolerance.

If men like Muthalik and his more famously infamous  brethren are concerned, distressed and incensed by the repeated denigration of Hinduism and what they call Indian ethos and culture, they should be voicing and acting against social evils like caste,discrimination based on one's caste and  un-touchability that plagues Hinduism even to this day.

Certainly we do not need the aid of a Rumpelstiltskin who is the creation of marketing mavericks to lord over us and tell us about Hinduism or a brother in arms of an Ayatollah Khomeini or a mediaeval Catholic inquisitor to play the divisive card, be a moral police or bludgeon people with their outlandish ideologies.

Why these people are frightened of books, of words is because they contain far more potent matters of reason, ideas and truth that can threaten and unveil the cannibalistic and satanic ideas that they purvey as heaven-sent. In fact they may even want to rewrite history erasing what they do not like even if it were true historical facts.

Waking from the Dead

The smart phone thrust inside the breast pocket of my shirt ruffled me when its ring tone- music, together with the accompanying vibration woke me from the dead .Usually I stuff the phone in the pocket of my trouser, lest the electromagnetic radiation interfered with the smooth functioning of the heart and enhanced the chances if any of its naughty petulance. Frankly I was not worried about the radiation messing up with other functional organs. Well I could not recall what, if it was not the alleged malevolence of radiation that eventually interfered and annoyed the heart and put me down -dead. That is a different story which needs to be probed separately and is not in context here.

Well then, as I mentioned, the smart phone rang and that startled me and also interrupted the eulogy one bloke was engaging in with little restraint. Though I managed to maintain the perfect cadavers pose, folks standing around were attracted to the origin of the ring tone as it always does when the surly ring of mobile phones defiles and irritates, intruding into many places and occasions where it has no bloody business to be . “I see trees of green........ red roses too ; I see em bloom..... for me and for you ; and I think to myself.... what a wonderful world……”  Louis Armstrong’s immortal masculine voice played on through the Smart phone. I wondered if the irony of the song was missed.

 I must have been dead for quite a few hours, I guess less than a day or there about and I noticed that folks who promised me to consign my cadaver to the medical school forgot about the matter. Else I had no business to be laying there a silent, mute spectator in torpor clubbed by the ennui of the eulogies’. I ought to have been by then lying spread-eagle on some dissection table, rib cage sawed open, entrails left out, surrounded by curious youthful faces and a sophisticated professor- all equally amazed how the fellow’s liver stayed intact after years of tangoing with spirits.

Coming back to the interrupted eulogy, I was certain that these pleasant hearted souls would not want to speak ill about the deceased and that must be the sole provocation for this pretty long but certainly boring ritual of lavishing encomiums on the dead . I surveyed the scene from a distance and saw some of the elders annoyed at the sudden and irreverent (sic) intrusion of the Smart phone. I was laying recumbent, supine- decked with a few flowers and a couple of wreaths – laurel wreaths (!) (Sic).

Now, since I have been dead for long, how do I account for the time I spent from the moment of dying till now? I have not been to a nether world; I did not see paradise or the abominable hell. No fairies in pristine white chiffon gowns and silver wings sprouting from their backs, no sandalwood  and rose scented , perfumed sparsely clad celestial damsels  with provocative bosoms and rump, no forbidding looking men eager to haul me over rough thorny terrains. Then it struck me pleasantly, man there is no hell and mercifully there is no heaven too. The stories of rotting hell and bright paradise with rivers of honey and oceans of unadulterated milk have been pretty fables used by the sophist, grifters and nitwit men and women to scare the gullible , the meek hearted, the guilt ridden selfish of people and they were in plenty. I was immensely relieved, pleased and happy that there was no hell and heaven in the after-world- there was no after-world to worry about. In hindsight, I ought to have, when alive, enjoyed living with more exuberance than I managed to. Only because there was no hell and heaven to hitch hike to in the afterlife.

Thankfully there was no sniveling around. The eulogy continued by another bloke. I sensed that the folks were eager to get done with it and some were petulantly checking their wrist watches.

I surveyed. One bloke wearing dark aviator glasses, with greyish white hair and beard  was massaging his beard with his fingers, while leaving his other hand thrust in his trouser pocket and occasionally glancing at his reflection in the glass pane of the window. He refuses to be displeased with his appearance. The lovable narcissist that he is! I saw another fellow standing in the far corner, impatient and with deep frown announcing probably his belief that the world around is conspiring against him. Bludgeoned by that belief which constantly shadowed him, he flounced out flummoxed, in anguish and annoyance, pulled his moped from the parking stand and steamed away-all the idiosyncratic qualities intact and  trailing after him. Seeing him go, another tall lean guy, in faded Levis jeans decided that enough is enough with the eulogies, jumped into his car and sped towards the club for his evening quota of spirit.

I moved out to the verandah of the building when I heard some muffled laughter. There were some business friends and acquaintances of old in restrained conversation, broke by intermittent muffled laughter. One fat guy who I always admired for his witty retorts and stories asked another, the short bald guy who resembled an elf, the one who runs away to the wash rooms, or bends down to untie and tie back his shoelace when it was time to throw in his share for the restaurant bill and was one of the least fascinating beings I met when I was alive. “Look, Seethu, do you also not want to go away with such fanfare and respected treatment like our A did? We all will assure you, most of all I will, that we will not lessen the gaiety and splendour of the sendoff we give you when you are gone.”

Typical of the man his jest may sound rude and taunting for those who do not possess taste for spirit, of fun and banter and who are incorrigibly vacuous to appreciate jocularities. I saw Seethu’s face turn pale, paler like, paler than the most pallid among the pale skinned Americans.I impulsively began shaking with laughter and soon put the back of my palm to the mouth to muffle the laugh, though no one would have noticed my laughter in the sudden burst of feet pounding , clapping and laughing out there, triggered by Antony’s assurance to the now distrait Seethu, unconscious of the dead man lying inside and the panegyric ritual.

Louis Armstrong’s sonorous voice persisted and the wake up alarm ring tone on my mobile finally woke me. It was early morning and another beautiful day in this Wonderful world-

“I see trees of green........ red roses too ;I see em bloom..... for me and for you ;And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white ;Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights ;And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world.

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky ;Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by ;I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do ;They're really sayin......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow ;They'll learn much more.....than I'll never know ;And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

The person mentioned here, his moniker - Seethu, passed away some six months ago and the news were relayed to me a few days back by a distant colleague.

Antilla Weddings

There was this little conversation that became a discussion, an argument with raised voices and even then it was difficult to hear over the snarling sound of traffic and the tuk tuk of the auto rickshaw engine.  The shouting that was more partially out of disagreement with the other, annoyance and partly because of the din and noise on the busy road ceased abruptly when the destination was reached. I and R (my daughter) have not taken up the argument from where we left it lurching that late evening.

However the point which I presume she was arguing about was one’s freedom to spend as much money in any which way as one wants one one’s wedding and that it is one’s prerogative. I wonder if she disagreed with the vulgarity and inappropriateness of that vanity in the context. Though she dismissed the possibility of her aping in her life such profligate flaunting and that sounded remarkable!

What prompts me to bring up this subject in the Post is that it is disheartening to see at close quarter young women and young men disinclined to even think of avoiding ostentation and vanity. Certainly the major guilt has to be apportioned upon the parents. Upon the miserable argument of upholding tradition and convention they wittingly or unwittingly assign women as an instrument and the solemnness of wedding as a spectacle.

I mentioned to an elder person about a recent commendable instance where a promising young actress in the Malayalam film industry wed her colleague without such jaundiced display of wealth. In fact the young couple went to the Cancer Center & hospital in Kochi and donated fifteen lakhs of Rupees by cheque. I also told her that people want to be like the Jones next doors and even be one up on the other by displaying and flaunting. She disapproved my statement and said that we must respect the opinion of the general public and cannot be singularly revolutionary. She exclaimed that if Sonia Gandhi does something that may be lauded but if we were to do the same people may ridicule.

So the onus is volleyed around.

I do not disagree that wedding day is in our midst still once in a life time pleasance. People would want to be special and be doing something extraordinary on the day. But decking the bride head to toe in gold and precious stones, hosting sumptuous multiple course dinner for folks already ploughed under by their over indulgence and gluttony is something that must be recommended forcibly for eternal rotting in hell if there is an afterlife.

Looking at the gatherings at a couple of wedding recently (one in the family) I mused if we Indians tend to have a wide spread of relatives, friends and acquaintance than the average family in the West.

R, after the wedding in the family expressed her incense and anguish at the bride being decked up like a marionette over burdened with heavy silk sari and loads of gold all over her besides having to change her robes a few times, while the fella was walking about as if on a stroll by the beach. It is difficult to ignore the empathy and the virtual feeling that she expressed. Would she change her opinion that there need be unrestrained display and spending of money on weddings? Would she agree it cannot necessarily be one’s prerogative to hurl around ones wealth even if it is earned?

She may not disagree, I’m sure that it is still a masculine world however and as much the emancipators (sic) want to liberate the female sex. However and as much the haute couture damsels on prime TV channels discuss and debate the liberated Indian women.

In comparison there is no difference between the Ambani’s obscene eye sore, his mansion the “Antilla” overlooking the slums of Mumbai  and the average wedding in Mallu land.

Winter of Lonliness

    “How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.” C.S.Lewis

Well, briefly visiting people- people who one may have known, some not met before, some distant relatives and some social acquaintances. All this, the result of a social exercise that one have to set about, however dismal some of those brief visits and social encounters are. Honestly it is a thankless endeavor, having to call at houses you never wanted to, bare your teeth in a muscular exercise called smile - to draw back your parched lips and grimace baring the frontal teeth to some you may not even want to notice on the road; some trivial, some petty, some haughty, some charming, some stoic about life- theirs and your and some gracious for your remembering them.

A few of them would be eager to annoy with their seemingly innocent but tactless, rude and misplaced enquiries, about something that one  wanted to let behind and  be forgotten; then when they notice a slight trace of discomfort in you they hammer in the nail with a wry smile- what can be called specious empathy. Smile inside with a brutally sadistic comfort before seeing you off.

Sometimes, how one wishes that one need not have to talk. Often it is pleasurable to not speak, to be quite, silent, in a mute existence!

I have been on social calls for the past few weeks necessitated by a forthcoming wedding in the family. So when entrusted with the uncomfortable job of going to homes and inviting folks there is nothing much one can do besides accepting the hazards of the exercise.

Brushing aside the forgettable invitees, I was troubled to see a gentleman who I have known since I was little-seen him in his prime and always compared him with the most handsome men in the tinsel world. A man who is a doctor by profession and whose family had close family ties with my maternal grandfather. I remember often visiting his well-known clinic when I was little and also even in my teens. They were wealthy physicians over three generations and were respected and well-known.

Old age- when money, social positions and nothing else matter; it catches up on you swiftly that you realise that you are handicapped even before you bated an eyelid. . He is in his mid-seventies and was widowed some years ago. That I have known devastated him. 

The loneliness of old age! It must be the matter of the desperation of the mind over what ails the body was what I guess I saw in his face – a man, physically a shadow of what he was. But he was alert and cocooned up in his bedroom watching the cricket Test live. A walking aid was kept next to him. In the course of our brief conversation he spoke about his fascination for cricket, asked me if I played. He enquired about everyone, though sometimes he was unsure. He stood up while I was leaving and with folded hands thanked for remembering him.

When I was driving back from his house, I wondered how many among the rest I met over the past days would ever stand for a moment and think of the fragility of life, of the ephemeral youth, our helplessness in between the brazen existence we often display.

Oh Lord I Have Sinned for I'm "Gay"

In the USA, there was this highly polarised trial which was called, "The Monkey Trial’. A widely acclaimed film, ‘Inherit the Wind” was made on the subject. Well that happened in the twenties of the last century, at a time when Public or government funded schools were prohibited from teaching or discussing the Darwinian theory of natural selection and evolution. Americans, those days preferred to fantasise in the creation of the World sometime in 6457 BC by a vengeful and omnipotent person called God. Looking back those were antediluvian times in the American psyche, (not that much has changed there in other matters).

However, back here in India, today, we have a Supreme Court that prefer to rule on matters that touch our daily lives in a insouciant manner and based on their beliefs and ideology rather than testing the subject on the fundamental principles of the constitution. The two judges who ruled that the Victorian era logic of the Article 377 is fine for them personally (sic) and need not be struck down. Strangely for a judicial school that is often accused by some of intemperate judicial activism in directing the executive on policy matters, this new found revelation that sexual relationship between consenting adults of the same sex, even in private violates the anachronistic  Article 377 is strange.. In toto, the supposedly learned Judges opined that one’s sexual orientation is not a personal matter and can be directed by the executive. Isn't this contention ridiculous and pathetic than the “Holy Inquisition” when dissent was termed heresy, when women were branded witches and burnt at the stake?

This reminds me of the time I was an adolescent and a teenager, when I  withstood homosexual advances- from strangers inside the cinemas, and even a couple of  friends.. Personally it was nauseating and repulsive to me and I evaded such solicitations. The fact is homosexual tendencies, at least transient ones do plague some during adolescence and teen.  Wonder if someone would deny this. In some cases they stay put  in the person and I have known some who were socially well placed,who have lured young chaps to satisfy their carnal needs and in some case may have even sodomised young boys. Well here it is a different matter than from consensual liaison between adults. It is a fact that there are heterosexuals who have gay flings outside their homes. There are marriages that fall apart like cards because one of the partners has homosexual orientation too.

I guess that homosexual orientation is a condition. Rather than being sophist it is necessary that such inclined people are either helped psychologically or let them be as they are with equal rights to privacy like any other.

The question of morality is a fallacy here. When copulation with multiple partners and virtual orgy is depicted in the explicit sculptures of the Chandala era in Kajuraho, when temples have artistic sculptures of high breasted goddesses baring their bosoms, when scriptures elsewhere promises catamites in Paradise if a believer kills an apostate , why this hypocrisy? 

Transgender and Transvestism as well as bisexual orientation is not a crime  like rape, sodomy, murder or robbery. The right wing Hindu groups who bray about the need to uphold Indian culture and that the reversal of Article 377 is against Indian ethos must look back at the puranas and folklore wherein we have number of instances of men and women with the so called unnatural sexual orientation. There has been no instance in those works that tells us that such people were hounded by the society. So we have to wonder if we are actually going forward or into an age which evens the puranas and scriptures cannot comprehend.

The Court certainly erred in their decision and by leaving it to the legislature to amend or maintain the statute as they chose; it abdicated its responsibility in safeguarding the right to privacy and of something as private as sexual predilections.

The BJP, who claim to be the custodians of Indian Culture, ethos and heritage have openly endorsed the anachronism of the Court. In their opinion homosexuality is against Indian culture. Then tear down the sculptures in Konark and Kajuraho. The Church is tactfully silent. Perhaps skeletons are too many in their closets that any overt comment may vitiate the matter for the clergy. Or the Church prefers to still endorse only the heterosexual relationships of man and woman (husband and wife) - as approved by God. All other forms are unnatural carnal acts - sinful , abominable and candidates for eternal damnation. As for the Muslim clergy and politicians they are understandably apprehensive and silent amidst the  hullabaloo the Judgment has created. The reason is not far away to seek.

The matter is not the question of erosion of morality, sin or the abysmal depths the society is going into. Homosexuality has been an orientation since ages. Anthropologists explain that even animals are oriented to homosexual behaviour. It is the specious puritanical views that is the problem and that which restrains from accepting something that has been, that is and that will be.