Suddenly the house crow—the Corvus splendens-- has become a subject of intense interest for me. It always seems to have been so to poets, painters, playwrights and philosophers. It goes as far back as Sant Dnyaneshwar whose lyric on the crow, “Pail to gay kau kokatahe” has been immortalised by Lata Mangeshkar in her brother Hridaynath’s composition. “Fly away crow, I will gild your feet in gold” sings the poet. And then again “I’ll make a curd-rice mould and bring it to your mouth”.
Kau and chiu are the eternal pair in children’s stories. They are invoked by mothers too, feeding morsels of food to reluctant infants: “This one is for kau. This one is for chiu.”
There’s Shafaat Khan’s play “Bambai ke kawwe” built around the power crows enjoy in Hindu funeral rites. Of the many blackly comic scenes in Satish Alekar’s “Mahanirvan”, one of the funniest is two sons with rice balls fighting for the attention of a single crow to bring ultimate release to their respective fathers’ troubled souls.
R. K. Laxman held an entire show of penciled and crayoned crows in all their moods and postures. They were sharp, shrewd creatures with cocked heads and slanted looks. Gieve Patel has done a few crows, scavengers, feasting on messy dead rats on roads. But he’s done one that’s different. “Crow with egg”. This fellow stands in the very centre of the picture frame balancing an egg on his beak, a consummate performer, commanding us to stop, look and admire.
Years ago I too became an admirer of the crow for a brief while when one of the species took to sitting at my window watching me write. It is flattering to get attention, even when it comes from a creature which has just been scraping human secretions off the street. I was almost on the point of consolidating our relationship by naming my friend the Thane of Cawdor when he stopped coming. I bet he went to sit at Shobhaa De’s window. Had he expected me to offer him moulds of curd-rice and gild his feet with gold? You never know where birds will get their ideas. Anyhow that was the end of my close encounter with crows.
Till recently, when one of them dived at my head and left it stunned for a good hour-and-a-half. What was that? What did I do? I was only looking out of my verandah window passing time. There was another attack the following day when I was trying to unhook a hanging potted plant from one corner of the verandah to carry it to the other, where the afternoon sun was slanting in.
Friends had suddenly turned foes. Someone said I shouldn’t take it so personally. They’d probably built a nest in the tree outside the verandah. I said, “So?”
I found the answer to that “so” when I Googled “House crow”. Amongst all the knowns listed there, I discovered this (to me) unknown: “Breeding pairs will repeatedly dive bomb humans near the nest.” Ah!
Only personal experience tells you how long breeding lasts. The eggs were laid in April, five in all. Mrs Crow sat and sat and sat on them and managed to extract two kids towards the middle of May. The fledglings were grey wisps of something like feathers back then. By end May we could see their hungry beaks poking out of the nest. We thought we could clean our windows now without being attacked. We were mistaken. Our cleaning hands were clawed.
The little ones are now old enough to hop around on the branches nearest to the nest. They’ve grown sleek while our windows have grown grimy. Try to clean them even now and zoop, a black bomb comes diving down.
I wait impatiently for the baby crows to take to the skies. And yet there is fear. Forget the grime on my windows; will these little creatures, whose birth and growth I’ve been watching for over two months, be safe in those wide open skies with no mummy-daddy watching over them?
Friday, June 11, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Words against meaning
Two years ago I translated Prabhakar Barve’s book “Kora Canvas” from Marathi into English. I knew even as I was doing it, that the translation wasn’t working in English. The original is too full of repetitions and circumlocutions. The artist strives too hard to express the inexpressible, making reading and trying to understand the text tedious. The English language doesn’t take too kindly to descriptive stuff about the inner lives of artists and to home grown mysticism. These things sound just fine in Marathi because the language reflects a culture that thinks, feels and writes that way. In English the same sounds fluffy and uncomfortably sentimental.
Where exactly is the inner life of an artist located? In “Kora Canvas” it is in the “mun”. Now here’s a word designed to give the translator her worst nightmares. In Molesworth’s Marathi into English dictionary which I most often use for its reliability (it doesn’t pass up on difficult words as some other dictionaries do), the word could have any of the following five meanings:
1) The mind; the seat of judgement, reflection, reasoning, memory etc
2) The heart; the seat of the sentiments, passions and the affections
3) The conscience or moral sense
4) Consciousness
5) The will or determining faculty.
Realising the problem this list is likely to create for a person who is straining to understand the meaning of the word, Mr Molesworth gives generous advice. Choose whichever meaning fits the context, he says.
Easier said than done. Usage has never bothered with meanings neatly separated into compartments. In popular and literary usage, “mun” leaks through Mr Molesworth’s pigeon holes to combine heart and soul in one context and mind and heart in another, with a hint of imagination thrown in for good measure. There lies the rub for translators, a breed that Mr Molesworth knows nothing of.
It is strange how inter-connections get made when you happen to be working on two independent things at the same time. While I’m editing the ninth chapter of “Kora Canvas” provisionally entitled “Sensibility” because the original title could also be translated as “Awareness” or “Percipience”, I am also reading Zeami on No theatre and the idea of “yugen”, and an essay on Japanese aesthetics.
“Yugen” cannot be translated in a single word. It connotes the world of the invisible that lies beyond reality. The original Chinese meaning of the word was, to be so mysteriously faint and profound as to be beyond human perception and understanding. This is the kind of space Barve often tries to enter but with the wrong tools.
The essay on Japanese aesthetics goes into equally untranslatable concepts like “mono no aware”, which might be understood to mean “empathy with things in their transience”. Barve writes about once having been so intensely absorbed in the image of a yellow leaf that had fallen on a wet, black road that it kept recurring in his work. Surely a mono no aware response?
Barve also writes about occasionally feeling profoundly solitary and lonely. He accepts the state and lives with it until it passes. But there have been occasions he says, when the feeling has given birth to a creative idea. This is like the idea of “sabi” which suggests both the subjective sadness of solitariness and the objective ‘is’ness of it. This duality is perfectly expressed in the following haiku:
Solitary now —
Standing amidst the blossoms
Is a cypress tree.
At one point, Barve speaks of a dense darkness that descends on him, seeming to fill the entire void of his rib cage. He accepts this state too and lives with it. Sometimes, magically, out of the darkness arises an image of incredible clarity. Patina, darkness, and what they can reveal, are ideas that imbue Japanese aesthetics.
The mysterious beauty of darkness is the subject of Junichiro Tanizaki’s gem of a monograph, “In Praise of Shadows”. My favourite passage is the one that describes his experience of drinking soup from a lacquer bowl. Lacquer bowls have dark interiors. “What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish.; but the palms sense the gentle movement of the liquid, vapour rises from within, forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation.” It is not the thing itself but our awareness of it that creates the thing and the beauty of the thing. Barve attempts to suggest this too in “Sensibility”.
In his afterword, the translator of “In Praise of Shadows”, Thomas J Harper, cites Susan Sontag's explanation of why she chose to write “Notes on Camp” in the style she did. “To snare a sensibility in words.....one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility.”
This is perhaps what Barve too should have done in “Kora Canvas”. He did the reverse. He constructed these essays from the jottings he used to make in his diary.
As an artist, Barve locates his shapes and forms with sensitive precision in the picture space. In "Kora Canvas", he repeatedly asserts that it is only when forms are placed in a coherent relationship with space in the picture frame, that meaning is made. In literature too, suggestion rather than overwrought description makes for greater significance.
Had Barve known as the Japanese do (or did) that certain concepts cannot be over-explained, and had he written "Kora Canvas" "nimbly and tentatively" rather than in long-winded adjective-heavy passages, we'd have had a better chance of reaching his "mun". The style in which it is written stalls us and leaves us groping for meaning.
Where exactly is the inner life of an artist located? In “Kora Canvas” it is in the “mun”. Now here’s a word designed to give the translator her worst nightmares. In Molesworth’s Marathi into English dictionary which I most often use for its reliability (it doesn’t pass up on difficult words as some other dictionaries do), the word could have any of the following five meanings:
1) The mind; the seat of judgement, reflection, reasoning, memory etc
2) The heart; the seat of the sentiments, passions and the affections
3) The conscience or moral sense
4) Consciousness
5) The will or determining faculty.
Realising the problem this list is likely to create for a person who is straining to understand the meaning of the word, Mr Molesworth gives generous advice. Choose whichever meaning fits the context, he says.
Easier said than done. Usage has never bothered with meanings neatly separated into compartments. In popular and literary usage, “mun” leaks through Mr Molesworth’s pigeon holes to combine heart and soul in one context and mind and heart in another, with a hint of imagination thrown in for good measure. There lies the rub for translators, a breed that Mr Molesworth knows nothing of.
It is strange how inter-connections get made when you happen to be working on two independent things at the same time. While I’m editing the ninth chapter of “Kora Canvas” provisionally entitled “Sensibility” because the original title could also be translated as “Awareness” or “Percipience”, I am also reading Zeami on No theatre and the idea of “yugen”, and an essay on Japanese aesthetics.
“Yugen” cannot be translated in a single word. It connotes the world of the invisible that lies beyond reality. The original Chinese meaning of the word was, to be so mysteriously faint and profound as to be beyond human perception and understanding. This is the kind of space Barve often tries to enter but with the wrong tools.
The essay on Japanese aesthetics goes into equally untranslatable concepts like “mono no aware”, which might be understood to mean “empathy with things in their transience”. Barve writes about once having been so intensely absorbed in the image of a yellow leaf that had fallen on a wet, black road that it kept recurring in his work. Surely a mono no aware response?
Barve also writes about occasionally feeling profoundly solitary and lonely. He accepts the state and lives with it until it passes. But there have been occasions he says, when the feeling has given birth to a creative idea. This is like the idea of “sabi” which suggests both the subjective sadness of solitariness and the objective ‘is’ness of it. This duality is perfectly expressed in the following haiku:
Solitary now —
Standing amidst the blossoms
Is a cypress tree.
At one point, Barve speaks of a dense darkness that descends on him, seeming to fill the entire void of his rib cage. He accepts this state too and lives with it. Sometimes, magically, out of the darkness arises an image of incredible clarity. Patina, darkness, and what they can reveal, are ideas that imbue Japanese aesthetics.
The mysterious beauty of darkness is the subject of Junichiro Tanizaki’s gem of a monograph, “In Praise of Shadows”. My favourite passage is the one that describes his experience of drinking soup from a lacquer bowl. Lacquer bowls have dark interiors. “What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish.; but the palms sense the gentle movement of the liquid, vapour rises from within, forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation.” It is not the thing itself but our awareness of it that creates the thing and the beauty of the thing. Barve attempts to suggest this too in “Sensibility”.
In his afterword, the translator of “In Praise of Shadows”, Thomas J Harper, cites Susan Sontag's explanation of why she chose to write “Notes on Camp” in the style she did. “To snare a sensibility in words.....one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility.”
This is perhaps what Barve too should have done in “Kora Canvas”. He did the reverse. He constructed these essays from the jottings he used to make in his diary.
As an artist, Barve locates his shapes and forms with sensitive precision in the picture space. In "Kora Canvas", he repeatedly asserts that it is only when forms are placed in a coherent relationship with space in the picture frame, that meaning is made. In literature too, suggestion rather than overwrought description makes for greater significance.
Had Barve known as the Japanese do (or did) that certain concepts cannot be over-explained, and had he written "Kora Canvas" "nimbly and tentatively" rather than in long-winded adjective-heavy passages, we'd have had a better chance of reaching his "mun". The style in which it is written stalls us and leaves us groping for meaning.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
noise ahoy!
If you are one of those who flips the page contemptuously at the sight of fish, crabs and scorpions crawling over two columns of newsprint, with the reigning pundit telling you that he sees much hope for your business today or love is in the air for you or watch that pothole your sign is full of accidents, and if you happen to be a BEST commuter to boot, it’s time to be deeply depressed. The BEST has designs on your peace of mind.
The news is that the BES & T Undertaking plans to install two 22-inch LCD screens in every bus in its fleet to give you news updates, information on branded goods, automated announcements about the next bus stop, tips from Tarla Dalal on eating right and, hrrmph, astrology readings by Bejan Daruwalla.
It appears that there’s a set-up called the Visual Interactive Transit Entertainment System which is going to supply us with the above-mentioned noisy goodies. Did hordes of commuters sit in dharna outside BEST house when we weren’t looking, clamouring for information on branded products and tips on sensible eating? No. BEST in its very own infinite wisdom has decided we are a pack of uninformed dolts who need to be enlightened on our way to work. In fact one news report makes the BEST plan out to be a form of social service. It seems the venerable undertaking is sadly aware that the way commuters rush around, they are left with no time to sit and stare at their newspapers and/or TV sets. This leads to severe information deprivation. The 22 inch LCD screens per bus are the undertaking’s humble contribution towards creating a more informed citizen.
I’m thinking back to my days of bus travel from Shivaji Park to VT (oops! I mean CST). I particularly remember a fellow commuter who would regularly fall asleep at Sayani Road and wake up with the smell of fish at Crawford Market, all set for the day ahead. What this gentleman was deprived of was not information but sleep. Will today’s victims of sleep deprivation, common to most commuters, be able to sleep through Tarlaben telling them not to eat fried foods, Daruwalla telling them not to fall into potholes and a seductive baritone telling them it’s oh so cool to wear glares that will cost them half of next month’s salary?
Those days I composed most of my Tuesday columns for the late and profoundly lamented “Evening News” en route to the office because, what I was deprived of at home, was time. The columns got composed despite the thunder and clatter and honking of traffic outside because you knew the noise wasn’t maliciously directed at you. But now BEST plans to customise whole wavelengths of noise specially for you, and you can’t jump out of the window because you want to get to work in one piece.
Yes, it’s bad news. But there are two silver linings you can hold on to. The BEST plan can materialise only if the BEST committee approves of it; and experience tells us that where there’s a committee, there’s a roadblock. More good news. Currently the committee is in a sulk for which the official reason is that there’s been some breach of contract by Interactive-what’s-their-name. But actually the committee’s pissed off because the Interactive people went to press before the committee had officially approved the commuter information plan.
The second silver lining is for plebeians. The toffs who ride in air-conditioned buses are going to get the first experimental blast of information. Let’s rub our hands in glee. For who knows? Electronic stuff is tricky. It simply may not work in the AC buses and the whole thing will be called off. Plans involving crores have failed, so why not this? Or, equally reliably, someone will breach some other contract. They do it all the time. Either way, we plebeians will be saved.
If success takes the silver out of both linings, there’s a third that we can make available to ourselves. I’ve just been to the dictionary to find out what “interactive” means. It has a very promising meaning. In electronic devices it means a two-way flow of information in which the giver of the said info responds to the user’s input. Now just assume-- I’m not inciting us-- but just assume our input is a couple of well-aimed stones? The response would have to be silence, na?
The news is that the BES & T Undertaking plans to install two 22-inch LCD screens in every bus in its fleet to give you news updates, information on branded goods, automated announcements about the next bus stop, tips from Tarla Dalal on eating right and, hrrmph, astrology readings by Bejan Daruwalla.
It appears that there’s a set-up called the Visual Interactive Transit Entertainment System which is going to supply us with the above-mentioned noisy goodies. Did hordes of commuters sit in dharna outside BEST house when we weren’t looking, clamouring for information on branded products and tips on sensible eating? No. BEST in its very own infinite wisdom has decided we are a pack of uninformed dolts who need to be enlightened on our way to work. In fact one news report makes the BEST plan out to be a form of social service. It seems the venerable undertaking is sadly aware that the way commuters rush around, they are left with no time to sit and stare at their newspapers and/or TV sets. This leads to severe information deprivation. The 22 inch LCD screens per bus are the undertaking’s humble contribution towards creating a more informed citizen.
I’m thinking back to my days of bus travel from Shivaji Park to VT (oops! I mean CST). I particularly remember a fellow commuter who would regularly fall asleep at Sayani Road and wake up with the smell of fish at Crawford Market, all set for the day ahead. What this gentleman was deprived of was not information but sleep. Will today’s victims of sleep deprivation, common to most commuters, be able to sleep through Tarlaben telling them not to eat fried foods, Daruwalla telling them not to fall into potholes and a seductive baritone telling them it’s oh so cool to wear glares that will cost them half of next month’s salary?
Those days I composed most of my Tuesday columns for the late and profoundly lamented “Evening News” en route to the office because, what I was deprived of at home, was time. The columns got composed despite the thunder and clatter and honking of traffic outside because you knew the noise wasn’t maliciously directed at you. But now BEST plans to customise whole wavelengths of noise specially for you, and you can’t jump out of the window because you want to get to work in one piece.
Yes, it’s bad news. But there are two silver linings you can hold on to. The BEST plan can materialise only if the BEST committee approves of it; and experience tells us that where there’s a committee, there’s a roadblock. More good news. Currently the committee is in a sulk for which the official reason is that there’s been some breach of contract by Interactive-what’s-their-name. But actually the committee’s pissed off because the Interactive people went to press before the committee had officially approved the commuter information plan.
The second silver lining is for plebeians. The toffs who ride in air-conditioned buses are going to get the first experimental blast of information. Let’s rub our hands in glee. For who knows? Electronic stuff is tricky. It simply may not work in the AC buses and the whole thing will be called off. Plans involving crores have failed, so why not this? Or, equally reliably, someone will breach some other contract. They do it all the time. Either way, we plebeians will be saved.
If success takes the silver out of both linings, there’s a third that we can make available to ourselves. I’ve just been to the dictionary to find out what “interactive” means. It has a very promising meaning. In electronic devices it means a two-way flow of information in which the giver of the said info responds to the user’s input. Now just assume-- I’m not inciting us-- but just assume our input is a couple of well-aimed stones? The response would have to be silence, na?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Beauty? My foot!
It's just a fortnight under a year since I last published a post. It's been a year of excessive work. At the end of a hard day of writing for other people, there was neither time nor inclination to write for oneself. Now, with a respite that looks like lasting at least till the end of the year (unless I open my stupid trap and say yes to yet another back-breaking assignment), I'm back to blogging. And it's Shivaji Park once again.
A few months ago, suddenly, workmen started digging up the walkers' track that runs along the periphery of the park. Did someone tell us this was going to happen? Hey, which country did that question come from? Not ours for sure. We are a country of jabberers; but ask us to part with information that's going to affect people's daily lives vitally, and we are like clams suffering from a particularly bad bout of lockjaw.
But one takes life as it comes, and we did. So everyone who was used to walking on the walkers' track, poured out onto the pavement where many like me walk. Thereafter it was constantly bang, dash, bump, trip, excuse me, sorry, damn and grrr around the park. Not pleasant first thing in the morning. And worse because they called the whole exercise "beautification".
Now this beautification plan included a couple of friezes near one of the park entrances showing Shivaji Maharaj being coronated etc. Okay, why not? If you're a Marathi, you are morally obliged to find the idea beautiful.
However, as everybody knows, there's a pair of cousins in politics who don't see eye to eye on anything; and when it comes to Shivaji Park and the great warrior king after whom it is named, they fervently believe their respective parties hold the exclusive title deed to both. When their eyes lock over these properties, they get so severely crossed that only the whites show, the pupils deserting their sockets in sheer fury. So, with one cousin doing Shivaji friezes, the other had to cry foul. Being smart, he took care to cry foul legally.
That is how the public came to hear about how the entire beautification project was commissioned by the BMC, ruled by the Shivaji frieze party, without calling for tenders. This made some residents of Shivaji Park very angry. They upped and filed a PIL calling for a stay on the entire project. A stay was duly brought. Only Shivaji Maharaj's coronation frieze managed to wriggle free of the embargo by virtue of its requiring only a few finishing touches. These done, Bal Thackeray was able to unveil it as scheduled, on May 1, Maharashtra's 50th happy birthday. Whether the frieze adds to the beauty of Shivaji Park or not is not under debate right now.
What's under debate is the rest of the "beautification" work. The stay has stayed that work for what feels like 18 aeons. So what do we have now? We have the track along the western flank of the park fully paved. Halfway down the north end, the paving gives way to a dug up stretch. Round the corner on the east, as well as along the south, some stretches are piled with rubble, others are under sackcloth, and still others are half paved with some paving blocks still scattered around waiting for the stay to be lifted. As a result, walkers who cannot entirely give up their inner track habit, do a kind of slalom in and out from track to pavement and back. Where they come out is where we go into the bang, dash, bump, grrr routine.
The most beautiful part of this beautification story is the parapet. The BMC's idea of beautifying a parapet has always been to paint its stone sides in regulation yellow, blue and red. That has been done. In addition, the top of the parapet has been painted green. Now, if BMC had spent just a few minutes at Shivaji Park observing walker behaviour, they'd have noticed that people sit on the parapet after their walks for a chinwag (and occasionally jalebis and ganthias) with friends. So the thing to do would have been to paint the parapet at the dead of night with paint that would dry in two hours flat. This they didn't do with the result that hopeful parapet sitters spread sheets of newspaper on the wet paint to prevent their posteriors from going green. Today the parapet offers an interesting archive of local, national and world news of the time in four languages.
The current situation is something like this. The chaps who commissioned the beautification work without calling for tenders are sitting at their desks swilling tea or killing flies; the filers of the PIL are happy atop their moral high horse; the judges in their wigs (do they still wear them?) have blissfully forgotten to unstay the stay; and the public that wants nothing more than to walk for its health, is frothing unhealthily at the mouth wondering which of the above to clobber to get the action going.
A few months ago, suddenly, workmen started digging up the walkers' track that runs along the periphery of the park. Did someone tell us this was going to happen? Hey, which country did that question come from? Not ours for sure. We are a country of jabberers; but ask us to part with information that's going to affect people's daily lives vitally, and we are like clams suffering from a particularly bad bout of lockjaw.
But one takes life as it comes, and we did. So everyone who was used to walking on the walkers' track, poured out onto the pavement where many like me walk. Thereafter it was constantly bang, dash, bump, trip, excuse me, sorry, damn and grrr around the park. Not pleasant first thing in the morning. And worse because they called the whole exercise "beautification".
Now this beautification plan included a couple of friezes near one of the park entrances showing Shivaji Maharaj being coronated etc. Okay, why not? If you're a Marathi, you are morally obliged to find the idea beautiful.
However, as everybody knows, there's a pair of cousins in politics who don't see eye to eye on anything; and when it comes to Shivaji Park and the great warrior king after whom it is named, they fervently believe their respective parties hold the exclusive title deed to both. When their eyes lock over these properties, they get so severely crossed that only the whites show, the pupils deserting their sockets in sheer fury. So, with one cousin doing Shivaji friezes, the other had to cry foul. Being smart, he took care to cry foul legally.
That is how the public came to hear about how the entire beautification project was commissioned by the BMC, ruled by the Shivaji frieze party, without calling for tenders. This made some residents of Shivaji Park very angry. They upped and filed a PIL calling for a stay on the entire project. A stay was duly brought. Only Shivaji Maharaj's coronation frieze managed to wriggle free of the embargo by virtue of its requiring only a few finishing touches. These done, Bal Thackeray was able to unveil it as scheduled, on May 1, Maharashtra's 50th happy birthday. Whether the frieze adds to the beauty of Shivaji Park or not is not under debate right now.
What's under debate is the rest of the "beautification" work. The stay has stayed that work for what feels like 18 aeons. So what do we have now? We have the track along the western flank of the park fully paved. Halfway down the north end, the paving gives way to a dug up stretch. Round the corner on the east, as well as along the south, some stretches are piled with rubble, others are under sackcloth, and still others are half paved with some paving blocks still scattered around waiting for the stay to be lifted. As a result, walkers who cannot entirely give up their inner track habit, do a kind of slalom in and out from track to pavement and back. Where they come out is where we go into the bang, dash, bump, grrr routine.
The most beautiful part of this beautification story is the parapet. The BMC's idea of beautifying a parapet has always been to paint its stone sides in regulation yellow, blue and red. That has been done. In addition, the top of the parapet has been painted green. Now, if BMC had spent just a few minutes at Shivaji Park observing walker behaviour, they'd have noticed that people sit on the parapet after their walks for a chinwag (and occasionally jalebis and ganthias) with friends. So the thing to do would have been to paint the parapet at the dead of night with paint that would dry in two hours flat. This they didn't do with the result that hopeful parapet sitters spread sheets of newspaper on the wet paint to prevent their posteriors from going green. Today the parapet offers an interesting archive of local, national and world news of the time in four languages.
The current situation is something like this. The chaps who commissioned the beautification work without calling for tenders are sitting at their desks swilling tea or killing flies; the filers of the PIL are happy atop their moral high horse; the judges in their wigs (do they still wear them?) have blissfully forgotten to unstay the stay; and the public that wants nothing more than to walk for its health, is frothing unhealthily at the mouth wondering which of the above to clobber to get the action going.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Happy b'day Raj
We are a culture of excess. I'm the 'n'th cultural commentator to say so; and for the 'n'th time I adduce the following observations to support the statement:
1) When our temple walls are carved, we see no wall, just carvings
2) When our brides dress, we see no bride, just costumes and ornaments
3) When politicians are garlanded, we see no politician, just garlands
4) When wedding cars are decorated, the driver sees no road, just an extravagant floral burst on the bonnet.
In keeping with the above, Raj Thackeray's supporters started putting up hoardings greeting their leader on his birthday 6 days before the great event, which is tomorrow. Tomorrow, he will grow up by a whole year. That's 365 days. Amazing! One can understand his supporters' hurry to get there first. It's like a Parsi wedding. You scramble for your place, put one end of your bottom on one end of a chair, then look triumphantly at others left walking dejectedly back to their frilled tables.
So the vantage points around the Thackeray residence have filled up fast--the mouth to his lane, the traffic island down the road, and of course Shivaji Park. By tomorrow, we shall see no road, park or traffic island, just hoards and hoards of hoardings.
The early birds got the best places of course--the ones at the mouth of his gully. They will greet him first as he drives out. Then, if he turns right, he will see six separate effusions (at present count), ranged jauntily around the traffic island, waiting excitedly to catch his eye. One of them rhymes: "A newly-created Maharashtra is what Shree (God) desires/ An almighty Raj is what Maharashtra desires." If Raj turns left instead of right as he very well might if he wants to walk his dogs in the park, he will see a line of jubilant greetings that go right round the circumference of the park.
Though one picture is said to be equal to a thousand words, the pictures on the hoardings reveal nothing of Thackeray's plans for the navanirmiti of this State. The tale they tell is mixed. He laughs his head off in one. In another his reflecting shades carry the image of dozens of tiny people all looking up at him. In a third, he has a threatening "we-will-not-tolerate-outsiders" look. But in a fourth he wears an "aggabai" expression with matching gesture. In this gesture typical of Marathi women caught by surprise, the fingers of one hand are laid lightly against the cheek, the eyes are opened wide and a coyish smile hides an incipient "Oh?"
If I were a Raj Thackeray supporter, I would find the greatest reassurance in the picture where the fingers of both his hands are entwined and held against the chin in vacant or in pensive mood. Those of us who have read their Wordsworth, know that such a mood occurs when poets have just returned from seeing a host of golden daffodils. The said daffodils will later flash upon the poet's inward eye, bringing him bliss. Raj Thackeray is not a poet but a visionary. When he falls into a vacant or a pensive mood, surely it is because his inward eye shows him expanding fields of daffodils reaching all the way to the horizon and covering every inch of ground in Maharashtra? After all, that is Shree's desire.
Speaking of god's desire for man's political advancement, I come to the most recent example of excess. The brothers Reddy of Bellary, Karnataka, have donated a 42 crore rupee crown of gold and diamonds to Lord Venkateshwara of Tirupathi. At present they own mines; but what they ardently desire is to occupy the throne of Karnataka. A television channel invited one of the temple priests from Tirupathi to explain the Reddys' action. Rather unfair of the channel, but the priest answered gamely, it's dharma. When the anchors appeared unconvinced, he offered another answer. It's faith he said. The anchors then pressed him with the loaded question, "Such excess in the time of recession," they asked. The priest said yes, it is faith.
Those of lesser faith than the Reddys, be warned. With 42 crore rupees of dharma sitting on his head, Lord Venkateshwara is not going to turn his head, or even his eyes in our direction. We might as well save our diamonds till the assembly elections are over. Once one of the Reddys becomes Chief Minister of Karnataka, we will be free to apply for our minor boons.
1) When our temple walls are carved, we see no wall, just carvings
2) When our brides dress, we see no bride, just costumes and ornaments
3) When politicians are garlanded, we see no politician, just garlands
4) When wedding cars are decorated, the driver sees no road, just an extravagant floral burst on the bonnet.
In keeping with the above, Raj Thackeray's supporters started putting up hoardings greeting their leader on his birthday 6 days before the great event, which is tomorrow. Tomorrow, he will grow up by a whole year. That's 365 days. Amazing! One can understand his supporters' hurry to get there first. It's like a Parsi wedding. You scramble for your place, put one end of your bottom on one end of a chair, then look triumphantly at others left walking dejectedly back to their frilled tables.
So the vantage points around the Thackeray residence have filled up fast--the mouth to his lane, the traffic island down the road, and of course Shivaji Park. By tomorrow, we shall see no road, park or traffic island, just hoards and hoards of hoardings.
The early birds got the best places of course--the ones at the mouth of his gully. They will greet him first as he drives out. Then, if he turns right, he will see six separate effusions (at present count), ranged jauntily around the traffic island, waiting excitedly to catch his eye. One of them rhymes: "A newly-created Maharashtra is what Shree (God) desires/ An almighty Raj is what Maharashtra desires." If Raj turns left instead of right as he very well might if he wants to walk his dogs in the park, he will see a line of jubilant greetings that go right round the circumference of the park.
Though one picture is said to be equal to a thousand words, the pictures on the hoardings reveal nothing of Thackeray's plans for the navanirmiti of this State. The tale they tell is mixed. He laughs his head off in one. In another his reflecting shades carry the image of dozens of tiny people all looking up at him. In a third, he has a threatening "we-will-not-tolerate-outsiders" look. But in a fourth he wears an "aggabai" expression with matching gesture. In this gesture typical of Marathi women caught by surprise, the fingers of one hand are laid lightly against the cheek, the eyes are opened wide and a coyish smile hides an incipient "Oh?"
If I were a Raj Thackeray supporter, I would find the greatest reassurance in the picture where the fingers of both his hands are entwined and held against the chin in vacant or in pensive mood. Those of us who have read their Wordsworth, know that such a mood occurs when poets have just returned from seeing a host of golden daffodils. The said daffodils will later flash upon the poet's inward eye, bringing him bliss. Raj Thackeray is not a poet but a visionary. When he falls into a vacant or a pensive mood, surely it is because his inward eye shows him expanding fields of daffodils reaching all the way to the horizon and covering every inch of ground in Maharashtra? After all, that is Shree's desire.
Speaking of god's desire for man's political advancement, I come to the most recent example of excess. The brothers Reddy of Bellary, Karnataka, have donated a 42 crore rupee crown of gold and diamonds to Lord Venkateshwara of Tirupathi. At present they own mines; but what they ardently desire is to occupy the throne of Karnataka. A television channel invited one of the temple priests from Tirupathi to explain the Reddys' action. Rather unfair of the channel, but the priest answered gamely, it's dharma. When the anchors appeared unconvinced, he offered another answer. It's faith he said. The anchors then pressed him with the loaded question, "Such excess in the time of recession," they asked. The priest said yes, it is faith.
Those of lesser faith than the Reddys, be warned. With 42 crore rupees of dharma sitting on his head, Lord Venkateshwara is not going to turn his head, or even his eyes in our direction. We might as well save our diamonds till the assembly elections are over. Once one of the Reddys becomes Chief Minister of Karnataka, we will be free to apply for our minor boons.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The sacred thread and the pav
I'm on my morning walk. A man in his mid-forties is walking with his son. The son's around eight years old. His head bears testimony to his thread ceremony having been performed a couple of weeks ago. Right now his hair's like a crew around a circular oasis of longer hair.
Most boys these days refuse to have their heads shaved in what we used to call the puri-chamcha cut. (The chamcha was the long tuft hanging out of the circle of hair.) They don't mind the ceremony itself because it makes them heroes for a day, brings them gifts and is denied to their sisters. I'm not sure they know that it is also denied to a whole caste of people called shudras as well. The sacred thread makes my young co-walker my social superior. His thread is a mark of his exclusivity. It makes him dwija, twice born, while I, my sisters and my shudra brothers remain once born. Those who have transgressed against this law have been punished. See what happened to Shambuka in the Ramayan when he dared to recite the vedas. But the British came and spoiled it all. Ignoring the laws of the land, they threw education open to everybody, thread or no thread. And see where it has brought us. As a dalit and a woman, Mayawati is twice once-born; and she is aspiring to be our Prime Minister!
To come back to my young co-walker, here's this boy adorned with marks of exclusivity, and there's his father who's just received a call on his mobile. "What?" he shouts, sounding irritated. "Pav? You want me to pick up pav? How many?"
Oops! Does the man know he is about to do spectacular religious splits in footing it to an Irani's for pav with a son who has just been anointed dwija? In the bad old times of the British, the pav was the Hindu's most feared pollutant. Missionaries were supposed to have garnered their easiest souls back then. All they had to do was fling a pav into the village well and out went the entire village from the Hindu fold. The moment the villagers drank from the well, they became instant Christians. The Marathi verb for such automatic conversions was "batane", which means, "to be polluted, rendered unfit for social intercourse."
How things have changed! By an expedient turn of events, while the thread ceremony is still going strong, the pav has lost its powers of pollution. Today it stands as a proud emblem of the Hindu Hriday Samrat's economic agenda. It is the wrapping that goes around the hallowed Shiv Vada, filling the stomachs and pockets of the Marathi (Hindu) manus. So who's afraid of changing times?
Most boys these days refuse to have their heads shaved in what we used to call the puri-chamcha cut. (The chamcha was the long tuft hanging out of the circle of hair.) They don't mind the ceremony itself because it makes them heroes for a day, brings them gifts and is denied to their sisters. I'm not sure they know that it is also denied to a whole caste of people called shudras as well. The sacred thread makes my young co-walker my social superior. His thread is a mark of his exclusivity. It makes him dwija, twice born, while I, my sisters and my shudra brothers remain once born. Those who have transgressed against this law have been punished. See what happened to Shambuka in the Ramayan when he dared to recite the vedas. But the British came and spoiled it all. Ignoring the laws of the land, they threw education open to everybody, thread or no thread. And see where it has brought us. As a dalit and a woman, Mayawati is twice once-born; and she is aspiring to be our Prime Minister!
To come back to my young co-walker, here's this boy adorned with marks of exclusivity, and there's his father who's just received a call on his mobile. "What?" he shouts, sounding irritated. "Pav? You want me to pick up pav? How many?"
Oops! Does the man know he is about to do spectacular religious splits in footing it to an Irani's for pav with a son who has just been anointed dwija? In the bad old times of the British, the pav was the Hindu's most feared pollutant. Missionaries were supposed to have garnered their easiest souls back then. All they had to do was fling a pav into the village well and out went the entire village from the Hindu fold. The moment the villagers drank from the well, they became instant Christians. The Marathi verb for such automatic conversions was "batane", which means, "to be polluted, rendered unfit for social intercourse."
How things have changed! By an expedient turn of events, while the thread ceremony is still going strong, the pav has lost its powers of pollution. Today it stands as a proud emblem of the Hindu Hriday Samrat's economic agenda. It is the wrapping that goes around the hallowed Shiv Vada, filling the stomachs and pockets of the Marathi (Hindu) manus. So who's afraid of changing times?
Monday, April 20, 2009
Bank clerk to hero with a little help from Shivaji
I finally saw "Mee Shivaji Raje Bhosale boltoy". I had to find out what the buzz was all about. A 3.5 crore budget, three times the norm for Marathi films, people whistling, flinging money at the screen, booked out shows.
Lovely. But on what premise is this success based? On the premise that Marathis have been, and are being, wronged in their own State, particularly in its capital, Mumbai. The representative victim is one totally unbelievable character called Dinkar Bhosale. He is a bank clerk. Not the type we know who doesn't look up while you're standing before his window for a quarter of an hour and when he does, it's like you're a worm deserving to be crushed but he's saddled with this unreasonable job of being at your service.
This bank clerk gets shouted at, abused, ridiculed and pushed around by everybody from the Kolin in the fish market and Gujarati shirt shop owner to his South Indian boss and Marathi wife. He's also taken for a ride by other Marathis--BMC engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, and of course, the police because they are all in the pay of one Gujarati builder-cum-goonda, Ghosalia
Bhosale has a daughter who's 'n' times smarter than him. But when she auditions for a film she gets rejected because she's a Marathi. The director is of the opinion that a Marathi name in Hindi films is very down-market! If at that moment names like Nalini Jaywant, Shobhana, Nutan and Tanuja Samarth, Smita Patil, Urmila Matondkar and Madhuri Dixit whiz through your mind, let them whiz on. Forty years of political rhetoric have made the wronged man image of the Marathi manus a deeply cherished one.
The point of creating an unbelievable loser like Bhosale (till now I'd thought Devdas was the bench mark) is to show that Marathis are to blame for their plight. And the point of showing they are to blame for their plight is to show how they can recover their rights by giving it back as good as they get and putting the corrupt to shame. The point of burdening the totally inept, inadequate, unprepared Bhosale with the job of taking on the world is to bring Shivaji into the picture. It is his power alone that can put iron into Bhosale's (an by implication, other Marathis') jelly spine. All pepped up, Bhosale sallies forth. The corrupt cringe in the light of his moral fire. He delivers thundering speeches (clever dialogue by Sanjay Pawar); and when push comes to shove, he uses Shivaji's Bhavani sword (alleged to be in England) to wound the last bastion of the corrupt--Ghosalia. All the Marathis who've been bribed by him have already returned his petis and khokas in abject shame, and thumped their chests, echoing Bhosale's slogan "I'm proud to be a Maharashtrian". Bhosale is a public hero.
All's well that ends well. Bhosale's daughter opts out of the Hindi film world and does the safe thing-- she signs three Marathi films. With the signing amount she gets, her father fulfills his son's long-cherished dream of owning a bike. Fairy tale over.
Lovely. But on what premise is this success based? On the premise that Marathis have been, and are being, wronged in their own State, particularly in its capital, Mumbai. The representative victim is one totally unbelievable character called Dinkar Bhosale. He is a bank clerk. Not the type we know who doesn't look up while you're standing before his window for a quarter of an hour and when he does, it's like you're a worm deserving to be crushed but he's saddled with this unreasonable job of being at your service.
This bank clerk gets shouted at, abused, ridiculed and pushed around by everybody from the Kolin in the fish market and Gujarati shirt shop owner to his South Indian boss and Marathi wife. He's also taken for a ride by other Marathis--BMC engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, and of course, the police because they are all in the pay of one Gujarati builder-cum-goonda, Ghosalia
Bhosale has a daughter who's 'n' times smarter than him. But when she auditions for a film she gets rejected because she's a Marathi. The director is of the opinion that a Marathi name in Hindi films is very down-market! If at that moment names like Nalini Jaywant, Shobhana, Nutan and Tanuja Samarth, Smita Patil, Urmila Matondkar and Madhuri Dixit whiz through your mind, let them whiz on. Forty years of political rhetoric have made the wronged man image of the Marathi manus a deeply cherished one.
The point of creating an unbelievable loser like Bhosale (till now I'd thought Devdas was the bench mark) is to show that Marathis are to blame for their plight. And the point of showing they are to blame for their plight is to show how they can recover their rights by giving it back as good as they get and putting the corrupt to shame. The point of burdening the totally inept, inadequate, unprepared Bhosale with the job of taking on the world is to bring Shivaji into the picture. It is his power alone that can put iron into Bhosale's (an by implication, other Marathis') jelly spine. All pepped up, Bhosale sallies forth. The corrupt cringe in the light of his moral fire. He delivers thundering speeches (clever dialogue by Sanjay Pawar); and when push comes to shove, he uses Shivaji's Bhavani sword (alleged to be in England) to wound the last bastion of the corrupt--Ghosalia. All the Marathis who've been bribed by him have already returned his petis and khokas in abject shame, and thumped their chests, echoing Bhosale's slogan "I'm proud to be a Maharashtrian". Bhosale is a public hero.
All's well that ends well. Bhosale's daughter opts out of the Hindi film world and does the safe thing-- she signs three Marathi films. With the signing amount she gets, her father fulfills his son's long-cherished dream of owning a bike. Fairy tale over.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)