The Perils of Speaking

A few days ago a good friend called on my mobile and told me that he finished reading all the posts on my Blog- some 380 odd that I wrote from 2008. He said, my postings peaked in 2010 and 2011 and tapered off to a trickle in the year that went past. It took him, a fastidious soldier to calculate that. Else who bothers? Do I? No. Blogging was more about letting out oneself, a sort of stress and ennui buster and I seldom kept counting posts or participating in marathons in the Blogdom.

It is easier to and safer too, to write about inanimate matters and dogs, cats or bugs- folks who do will vouch, I’m certain. For, writing about them you could write what you honestly feel about those creatures and your relationship with them. Your earnest observation or even swollen feelings will not elicit comments from them. You may have no fear about them frowning at you for a candid and what you might rightly feel is an honest observation, or accuse you of calumny. But write about the folks you moved within the past week, an old face and you may see a few grimaces, frowns and expressive annoyance accusing you of slander and innuendo. Some may feel you are prying, ostensibly puritanical while being an incorrigible hypocrite and shoot off their reprisals, chafe and profanity. Besides, all the feelings that one keep cannot be from the land of fairness and goodness. That tells the partial reason for the parsimonious blogging over the past couple of years. Why, as an old chum put it, “invite self corrosion?”

In the present day world, more precisely in the more civilised (sic) modern day society we live, the perils of wielding the pen or exercising the tongue are insurmountable. It is not the pernicious zeal of safe guarding and holding on to one’s opinions but the fierce malice towards all ideas that are non-confirming to ours.  A friend called me a pit bull, derisively. He stated I was being too brash, audaciously and unnecessarily blunt with some comments I made. He was petulant about my observation on the “Good Governance Day”. But yet, I find it neigh difficult to stave off the urge to write if not with malice, with vehemence when it calls for. It is utterly daunting to me.

Yet another person wondered aloud why I was expressing opinions that would not be acceptable to others. Why, why? I stood back and mused, tried to reflect am I culpable of the alleged misdemenour?

Having asserted thus, there were indeed matters to reflect and put in words, such as for instance meeting an old acquaintance-a knavish person after a quite a few years. While having lunch with her the, her infamous and feral mechinisations fleeted through my mind. I came back with the firm opinion that a few years more of aging since I last confronted her may not have mellowed her wee bit and she would still be capable and wily as before.

To me it is astonishing how some folk(s) change with wealth and trappings that until recently was a distant carrot and a mirage to them. Malarkey at its acme! New chums, wealthy acquaintances, and gilded social gatherings assorted with celebrities well, well…! One can only remember the past and leave a deep sigh, while taking extra care to keep a distance.

How far can one get candid, about the world around, the people you know and about oneself? How honest can one get, can one be with one’s opinion and yet not be honest enough to provoke? Or is that standard exalted and worthy? What could one say when confronted with the question what fucking business does you have to comment?                                                                                           Finally I might have ended up provoking the holy nobles by using the “infamous” word above. 

Year End Musings

The year seems to be ending with the first sign of the physical existence of the Maoist in Kerala. I’m persuaded to wonder if the Maoist incursion was the only woe that was missing in God’s own State. When conversions and home comings are the rage of the day, perhaps the insurgents will baptize the tribal in the hills of Kerala into their ways. And could someone blame and cry wolf for that?

Leopard cannot and will not change it spots. The question if it is the ‘will’ or ‘cannot’ that stand out can be debated. But the fact remains that the spots that were before, stays put. But yet, I like many others hoped for the impossible. The shenanigans orchestrated these days through the charade called “Home Coming” is falling flat against the thesis and the scholarship put forth by eminent historians that India is a land where 92 percent of the present population are descendants of emigrants. It was believed at a not so distant time that Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India, that view has since been considerably modified. Now the generally accepted thesis is that the pre-Dravidian aborigines- the ancestors of the present day people, who we call Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes), were the original inhabitants. So factually speaking most of us will have to leave the sub-continent lock-stock& barrel, because we simply do not belong here and we criminally usurped the land of the original inhabitants or say the early inhabitants.

 Mercifully the extraneous factor that always decided our economic fate – the crude oil price has plummeted southwards and the Leopards could revel in the fortuitous boon that has come about. Though that has not alleviated our plight and the hardships in our daily chores, the Leopards could quote statistical wonders that have come to play in their favour. Foreboding of a return of the mother and son and the coterie of sycophants are also helping the felines.

While we brace ourselves for more aggressive posturing of the Leopards who simply cannot shed their parentage, people in Kerala have something to cheer when the year whimpers out. The Gandhian KPCC President V.M.Sudheeran has lost out with his obstinate autocratic style of functioning, one that perhaps he simulated from his icon Mohandas Gandhi. Tipsy days are back again and here to stay and Sundays can be reveling as before. That is the sole solace that seems to strike a chord in me in this whole year that went past.

...of the taboo of Phalluses & other Glands in Phallic culture

The matter is simply misplaced morality- to define it more precisely misplaced notion what is supposedly thought as morality and the eagerness to embrace it as a vindication and display of undue conceit -moral vanity. When such thinking is seen in adults those who are educated, erudite, articulate and in respectable position it is false and stinks of emptiness and hypocrisy.

“To each his own”, is an agreeable dictum for social living. But I can only disagree with people using it to proclaim higher moral grounds for social consumption and acceptance. However in the context mentioned in the next paragraph, I presume that the opinion that led to the “red flag” was egregious and silly.

A few months back a chat group was begun on the social media platform “WHATSAP” by former graduate class mates. The group was ostensibly called “the class of 80”. Great!  About thirty class mates from the 80 batch were successfully enrolled into the group. And dear, some of them are hyper active on the platform, both after office hours and during office hours too. I myself have been an occasional visitor and picking up subjects I could discuss, though opinions in those discussions would converge and also differ, fair enough.  The group is being administered by a jolly good friend and he throws up an occasional “yellow flag” and even a “red flag” depending upon the acceptability of the comments or posts. A means of control and I presume it is to act as a sieve and control of obscenity and revilement of members of the group that could not be entertained.

But I'm afraid it was downright ridiculous when the administrator flagged me down with a ‘red’ when I posted this piece on the platform.

His act can be shunned as frivolous and trivia I suppose, but such opinions originating from people of whom some of them were vociferous and active on the social media in support of the dissent towards moral policing and the “kiss of love “protest, I wonder what outrage is explicit in this innocuous post quoting a physician who was awarded the Nobel for medicine. And the quote was factual and forthright without mincing words stating the pitiable priorities in medical research funding.

Yes it is apparent that the words “boobs” and “penises” certainly offended and enraged the administrator. What miserable and unfortunate organs are they that the creator perhaps in a petulant mood callously foisted upon hapless women and men! For me to post an observation from a notable physician who referred to those words in the right context and in the in correct spell is manifestly obscene, repugnant and gauche. So went the judgment, I presume.

Now, this reminds me of another incident which was comical in almost the same context. When the “Kiss of Love” protest was in swing, I irresistibly posted my observation and opinion on my facebook page against the fallacy of what is termed culture and the hypocrisy of moral policing. A post – a rebuttal , tongue in cheek,vile and vehement was posted by a person on his facebook page assailing my stand and vilifying what he called the advocacy of unrestrained sex. He baptised voices against moral policing as that of votaries of copulation in public like dogs and immoral behviour in public. What amused me to no end was that he, the protagonist was a self confessed fascinator of many homosexual liaisons in his more youthful days. Politely I must term his comment amusing and rebut him by saying he cannot see the wood for the trees.

Now where is threshold for hypocrisy and acceptable moral behavior? What was offensive about the comment of the Nobel laureate and posting it on social platform? Why was the administrator reluctant and peeved to let a discussion originate on the subject?

Looking at the  outraged rejoinder on facebook ,is it perhaps alright to be unrestrained and unconventional at heart and in private while being a puritan by day light?

It will be a wonder if  a few Bloggers would respond to this post. The words are too  abhorrent to mention , to comment . Aren't they ?

....of Gospels & Evangelism

Few days ago I received a personal letter by post from a Pastor Paul Malla who as I could see from the address printed on the mail head represented the Gospel of Christ, an evangelist organisation. The letter was sent from Trichur the citadel town of Christianity in Kerala State.As all such messages it was replete with cajoling, enticing,  subtly baleful and artfully sinister proselytism.

In such occasion in the past, I chose to cast such letters and unsolicited pieces of evangelism into the place that is rightfully its own- the waste bin.But this time around, I chose to respond and shot off an email to Pastor Paul Malla.I did not expect a reply and neither did it arrive nor ever will.

"Thank you for the message sent to me. However dear Pastor there was nothing new and different in it,than the many I have received since my school days in a convent school that was run by wonderful nuns .

But yet,may I ask you something that I always asked after receiving such messages,

Firstly,you mentioned about Jesus coming back into the world. You tanatalisingly,(you might have thought), held out this golden carrot.Could you tell me when that would happen? Before this Xmas? Frankly, I doubt if he would dare, because no man or the son of God who cares a hoot for his life will plan a second coming after the fantastic(sic) treatment meted out to him some 2000 years ago when he came here last, through a circuitous route of virgin conception and birth. 

Secondly, you mentioned about non believers being damned and believers washed free, cleansed off their sins and that of Adam &Eve. Are you serious about this? This is the kind of calumny and guilt you create in people. I will call this an effervescent and banal joke.Sounds tempting though, to be washed off one's sin and the sin of one's forefathers that you guys foist upon people.

 Pastor let me tell you something.You folks who are paid marketeers, salesmen and more politely evangelists (of all faith) thrive upon the insecurity and fear that you create in the minds of the poor, gullible people vis a vis the sins that you talk about and accuse them of. You make them feel damned by such vile accusations and reap the en masse conversions to your fold.This is predominant in all Semitic faith.You now do it subtly while Islam does it through intimidation and physical abuse- murder.Well once you burnt people at the stake for refusing to convert,didn't you?
Pastor Paul stop this hocus pocus of the holy ghost , virgin conception- parthenogenesis , birth and resurrection stories.

Tell me truthfully, did Jesus ever exhort to form a church, a religion during his missionary days? And even if he did, supposedly, is this the kind of Church and faith he exhorted or envisaged in his sermons?

Baptism or the ritual of immersion in waist deep water was a ritual practised by the Jews as initiation. An ancient ritual was later turned by you Christians into a tool, a weapon that served as the sword of "Damocles" to coerce people to join  your fold.You have been perpetuating the meanest crime all these years while you proclaim from the pulpit that damned are the ones who are not baptsied. You stuck the so called original sin on the masses and it  stayed put on them like limpets and infesting their souls.In you letter addressed to me you branded me a sinner and fit candidate to rot in the netherworld.

Pastor Paul, is it not the subsumed principle and corner stone of civilised canon of society that no man be damned for life and  his faith and belief must not condemn him for eternity?But you did. You accused me of sinning and condemned me,my children and posterity too to eternal hell unless I baptise and repeat "hallelujah" to Christianity and Christ.

Your eloquence is fascinating like a book on wizardry and repulsive for its sinister intent and ideology. I wonder if you acknowledge that such vile misdeeds and misrepresentation under the cover of religion is possible only in India.

If you want further debate on the subject please write back in reply to this message.Else, I shall presume that you have nothing to say and that you without demure admit to the mumbo jumbo that you folks have been shamelessly wheeling for the past 2000 years and in the bargain converting people of ethnic pagan faith and worship- people who in their simple ways revered, supplicated and prayed to Nature,  into Christianity.

It is a different story that you have a dozen splinter groups amongst Christians and each one vying for the wealth evangelism brings.The evangelist group who spins the most horrendous and fearsome tale of sin, destruction, illness and stories of hell gets to garner the major portion of the bounty, the booty.Have you ever strived to build a society, a laity that does not live in fear of sin, but rather would conscientiously go about living their affairs? Why do you not help people, let them live their life here on earth in full, than dream of a paradise that is seen only in frescoes of ancient painters and alluring stories of lore and legend. Who amongst you raised a finger against the killing of Yazidi Christians?As for the cruelty and murder you evangelist perpetrated on the world- the native Indians of America, the tribes and Negroes in Africa, the aborigines elsewhere- those stories are chilling to even create nervous breakdown in even the most hardened felon.You did all this to convert people to a faith that you created in the name of a man who probably lived and preached, love, peace and compassion.

Fantastic(sic) Pastor Paul and shamelessly shameful are your intent.
I prefer an eternal hell to the Harry Potter kind wizardry , sensation and nonsense you reel."

Obit

Perhaps, it may be a bit early to write a blog when obituaries and eulogies have not totally ceased. Nevertheless! The guy is dead and gone and he had left a decent bounty that he would not have made if he had not chosen politics as a career.

How far did he get in up the ladder? Well he was the councilor of a city ward. That is a not an awfully exalted position by the way. If you ask about his education, I seriously doubt if he reached near matriculation.

He was born to poor subsistence labourer parents in a hamlet few kilometers to the north, outside the city. I guess he lost his father very early, for when I saw him first as a boy of ten or eleven he and his mother had moved into a single room –makeshift home in a rundown apartment  near my house in the town. She eked out living by doing menial work and chores at different homes in the neighbourhood.

He was certainly unable to cope with school and was an indifferent student. Later when he dropped out of school, or as some say when he decided that he cannot pursue school exams with moderate marks to pass, his distant uncle took him into his fold as an errand boy at the Lawyer’s office where the former was an aid.

He was dark skinned and was muscular for his age. Even at the age of thirteen or fourteen he had strong limbs and broad chest. He excelled in Kabaddi kicking opponents down and tackled mercilessly and roughly while playing football. Kids, skinny as I was stood not even a fortuitous chance confronting him at Football or Kabaddi. He simply elbowed us down, jostled us flat as a beaten pan. I remember he was merciless. His career graph I presume was aided by that quality, to take his rivals head on and bulldoze his way. He must have been tactful in later life. Some say, people preferred to not confront him and let him have his run.

The eulogies that came from political bigwigs who flocked to his house hearing his sudden death was enviously rattling and umbrageous too. “His early inspiration for public service came while he was a student”, the State president of his party, clad in white spotless cotton fabric remembered him. “That was when he joined the student wing of the party and became an active and dedicated party loyalist.” Some spoke about his foresight, his uncanny acumen, his passion to toil for the needy, the poor and the marginalised. The paeans seemed endless. Every day after he was dead, local vernacular dailies carried his picture and a glowing obituary.

When he died he was on the director board of a cooperative bank, (what he knew of banking and the cooperative movement is mystery. His middle school education was not a constraint. But then we have a plus two dame running the country’s Education and Human resource ministry), he was the party district secretary, he was nominated to the University senate (again defying the pathetic limit of his education), and he was the president or treasurer of the local temple (where, locals allege in almost muted tone that he was in cahoots with God and made enough from the temples revenue). Above all he had always put his money on the political party horse that won. He, in the little world of politics that he could travel, always ensured that his finger was in the pie.

If he did not achieve greater success or amass more wealth than he did, it must be because that there were bigger chisellers in the party than he. It is astonishment unrivalled that if an ordinary political party member who could go no farther than being elected councilor of a ward, could generate as much wealth as he could, the extent of booty that bigger sharks in politics siphon off is impossible to gauge.

Malarkey?

Much has been spoken about the richness of Indian culture, tradition, values and so on. The subject, in recent times has been more out in the open, now that a rightwing party has its wings spread wide and almost everywhere. Erosion of values, of ethos, of true Indian culture due to the malevolent influence of alien culture and faith….! The list of angst is fairly long. ( But it is much ado about nothing when one looks back to the fact that 90 percent of the present day Indians are descendants of migrants and the original inhabitants of India where aborigines or “adi dravidas”).

I wonder what is it great about the culture and tradition that we claim to uphold and bray often, beating inflated chests, with incessant eloquence and hysterically. What is it perse?

The Prime minister proclaimed from the Red Fort that he looks forward to leave behind an India that is clean- “Swach Bharat”, he said. He chose to sweep the streets on October 2, Gandhi’s birthday as an ostensible act, hoping the message percolates; that, the idea touches the chord of an India that is downright filthy. His act was obediently aped by his ministers, and bureaucrats – clad in pristine white. The custodians (sic) of Gandhi (sm) – the Kadhi clad Congress men were caught off guard! Government employees of Banks and PSUs were ordered to their offices on October 2 and ordered to swear oath and pledge on civic duties. Perhaps a shade of Soviet Union era here!

The visuals of ministers scraping about streets with brooms was replayed seemingly forever on television. Did that make any sense? Did it prompt you and me to bend our backs and knees to pick up the stray crushed cigarette pack on the street, or the empty coke plastic container left casually on the path? Did it stop the ones who throw away nonchalantly on to the kerb garbage piled from their homes? To desist from making streets and bus stations receptacle of spit and human waste? No. I think it will not. For, Indians are wanting in civic sense. Guess this must be the culture and tradition that some bray about proudly? The hyped, publicised images on televisions were for public consumption. Something we have been fed with every year on the day Gandhi was born. And only an obstinate person who refuses to be cynical would swear otherwise.

Well, one can say that the PM means business and intends good.

What is swaccha Bharat about? Is it just clean streets and building a few thousand toilets (which eventually will be veritable filthy, disgustingly dirty dumps)? From what it is made out to be, it seems so.

I guess we need to define what amounts to cleanliness.

Foremost, shouldn't we realise that cleanliness is not next to Godliness and it is and has to be a few yards before Godliness? Isn't this a country where people cried foul, offended, when a former minister suggested that we need more toilets than temples? Alas most temples in north of India are spittoons. Benares is a holy slum with filthy streets, cadavers floating down the mighty river Ganga that sustains the town. half-burnt corpse pushed into the river and half submerged they seem to float down like orphaned souls. A river that is the source and sustenance for half of the country’s population is relentlessly raped and violated by man. What have the puritan Hindus who claim sacredness for the river, call her “Mother Ganga” done all the while, the factories that spew sludge and sewage into its waters? The RSS who claims to be the bastion, guardian , caretakers of Indian culture and whatever greatness that was identified with her in the ancient, should rather use its cadre to cleanse Ganga , the slums, rivers and nook of India than unleash its frenzied volunteers to demolish ancient structures to build temples.

The wholesale give away of pristine forest lands to commercial interests? Driving away native dwellers to oblivion? Watering down a well-researched and empirical report on the Western Ghats to appease vested commercial interests? Are these acts too part of “Swach  Bharat”?

There was a report on the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. The city recycles 90 percent of the garbage it produces. It is evident from this that the technological wherewithal to sustainably dispose or recycle garbage is available. But we differ from the Swedes in the mindset and civic sensibilities to use it.

Hysterically braying about a rich cultural past and heritage is naïve and useless while we nervelessly rape our land, air and the water. It only emphsises the fact that we have done nothing to deserve a rich past and has no right to deny posterity a meaningful life.

Blaspheming Mortal Gods

Indians are a nation who seems to be lusting, esurient, desperate and yearning for Gods and demi gods. We make Gods out of stone, marble, drift wood and even mortals- lucky are the ones amongst us upon whom we thrust that status often to their glee. These idiosyncrasies are a lesser matter when compared to the outrage we express over iconoclasm and even honest analysis and discussion about the human Gods we made. Their infractions are seldom examined or condemned.

Recent times have seen a liberal dose of critical analysis of Gandhi -bashing as some call it -   Mahatma ‘bashing’ (sic) criticism. We thrust upon him a status akin to God’s, the most  revered, the infallible mortal, the holy man, Mahatma, the spartan saint, who lived in our midst. The eulogy in the words of Albert Einstein, and which strikes reverberantly, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”. Correspondingly there has been fierce defence of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi- vociferous indignation of any criticism of Gandhi, his utterances, philosophy,or his life.

Why Gandhi alone, we have other mortal Gods to whom we prostrate, let us be hugged and kissed, watch them agape and resent bitterly and sometimes hysterically when they are criticised. We automatically are tuned to become agitated, flustered and resent when our beliefs, faith and fantasies are questioned, are seemed to be threatened by scholarly dissection and argument. We fret and accuse of betrayal, irreverence and rudeness when the comparative cocoon that we built is exposed or threatened.

We made a living God of Sachin Tendulkar the cricketer. When an international Tennis player innocently admitted that she is not aware who this Tendulkar is, cudgels where raised in India and virtual stones were pelted at the tennis player for her audacious admission. Remember cricket is played by a miniscule number of countries when compared to the vast appeal of Tennis. We let Tendulkar hijack a whole nation and cricket insisting and wrenching what he wanted- a farewell series a swan song. And like Nehru’s famous “tryst with destiny” speech, we broadcast live Tendulkar’s 45 minutes grandiloquence from the stadium. We even recast the stands at the stadium to accommodate his mother so she could watch him play from a comfortable vantage point. We awarded him the responsibility as the Member of Parliament and he rubbished it with callousness.  We seem to believe that other countries and people are not blessed with legends.

We cast away old and disenabled parents in the streets of farway strange towns and in the insensitive cruelty of  temple towns and run after fat over fed cow like women and men whom we elevated to pedestals and anointed them as living Gods. We run to them hallucinated and gets intoxicated when they hug us supposedly washing away our sins and agonies. We resist any probity in their lives and in the conduct of the vast empire they deftly built and sustain out of our imbecility and blindness.

Arundhati Roy’s recent comments on Gandhi in a lecture led to hoarsely resentment and accusations of blasphemy. Poet and respected social & environmental activist Sugatha Kumari, a Gandhi fan herself shot off a center page article in a daily rebutting Arundhati’s irreverence of the Mahatma and demanding, even pleading kindness, respect and an iota of reverence are shown to Gandhi; his life be seen as a beacon of unflinching struggle in the path of truth and nobility.

Why do we make Gandhi a saint and God? Why is it blasphemous if we dissect his life, analyzing it, page by page, word by word, deed by deed? Why do not we accept and understand that he was a mortal like any and was infallible? Why do not we understand that he may have erred, had weird beliefs and even seedy behavior, which he claimed was his way of understanding his limitations and cleansing his sinful thoughts  etc.

Arundathi based the lecture on the lengthy forward she wrote for the book of unpublished historical speech of Baba Saheb Ambaedkar. The quotes, anecdotes and incidences where borrowed from archives and facts. 

Gandhi’s reluctance and stubborn fire-walling of the abolition of caste in Hinduism, his opposition to the agitation of the untouchables of Mumbai- the Mahad satyagraha when untouchables resisted the ban that was slapped on them from sharing waters of the public well; Gandhi’s parsimonious attitude to the Vaikon sataygraha when untouchables objected to the cleansed area around the Vaikom temple where they were banned; Gandhi’s opposition to the labour strike against the Mill owners in Mumbai when he ranked their satygraha as “duragraha’ – greed- devilish force,(possibly because the Mill owners were Gandhi’s staunch financiers). Gandhi’s attitude towards the blacks in Africa is bailed out by Sugatha Kumari as an aberration She uses his comparative young age as an excuse for his mindset towards ethnic blacks and the socially marginalized.She often in the article states that Gandhi's life as the title of his autobiography was "An Experiment with Truth".

Like what  most of us have been fed about Gandhi, he was not evicted off the train at Pietermaritzburg when he asserted the non-whites right to travel  I class. Gandhi was not endorsing the right of the blacks, but for equal status of  passenger Indians – the elite and middle class Indians like he. Gandhi’s attitude towards caste is perplexing. While he maintained that caste and discrimination was unjust and untouchability was evil he steadfastly endorsed the division of labor based on caste. He refused to admit that caste was the evil cloak of Hinduism.Imagine division of labour in today's world based on caste in which one is born- something not of individual volition!

Gandhi was a wile politician. He was perhaps the first Indian politician to ostentatiously play the communal card with his egregious “Khilafat Movement”. Goodness, Mother of God what had Indian Muslims got to do with the abolition of the Caliphate and the end of the Ottoman Empire in faraway Turkey?

His blatant blackmail with the weapon of satayagraha proclaiming fast unto death until the award of separate electorates for untouchables was withdrawn was perhaps the most cruel and unkind slap on the very same people he ceremoniously elevated as “Harijans”, ironically meaning “children of God”! He used satygraha s a potent black mail to even foster his autocratic views.

Why was SugathaKumari mute in her article about Gandhi’s infamous experiments with celibacy when he slept naked with his two young nieces? Because he was Gandhi and had the halo Indians gave around his being, he escaped criminal censure and was not accused of being willy. Yes that may have been a great experiment on self-control for him and his faithful. But do we care to ask what the poor, helpless young girls had to go through- their state of mind?

Is it not time we chastened and saw icons and great men as mortals and as people who would err, stumble and yet walk through like many? Are we not trivialising their lives when we give them a doughnut – halo and elevate them as Gods? What is blasphemous if we critically dissect their life- be it Gandhi, Christ or Mohamed?