Ramblings from 2640 Down

I am sitting in the 2640 down (aka Brindavan Express from Bangalore to Chennai) and I am bored stiff, literally. The train is actually moving fast and I can barely hear the iPod play (hmm.. may be I should buy a pair of headphones with noise reduction technology, I see a new possibility of spending happy hours searching for the most suitable one). I believe in transitivity, so why not transfer my boredom to my dear readers. So here it goes.

Upward mobility of Brahmins – a recent study in the transportation industry

Since my ‘retirement’ I had to re-evaluate my transportation options and I have been using public transport within Bangalore (bus) and a more popular means of transport for inter-city travel (II class in trains). The evidence I have gathered so far clearly points to the upward mobility of Brahmins. You never get to see them in these surrounds. Don’t ask me how I know that my fellow passengers are not Brahmins. I just know. When I was a kid I quite clearly remember this was not the case. After long years of II class travel in trains my family once went to Mumbai in first class and that was because my dad got Leave Travel Concession (LTC) from his central government job. We then quickly noticed that our co-passengers were not the usual middle class Brahmins but upper middle class ones. I guess since liberalization the upper castes have moved further up the economic ladder and they don’t have to depend on LTC for choosing higher classes of travel, if they choose trains at all in the first place. It is obvious who has benefited most from the ‘neo-liberal’ reforms. It is funny, in an article in Frontline about education the author could easily fit in the ‘neo-liberal’ word 8 times! It looks like neo-liberal has acquired a pejorative connotation in some circles.

Ritualistic Jainism

The last couple of days have been spent in a small town in Malnad area of Karnataka, Sirsi. I have a friend who has a farm there and is also actively promoting ecological sound agricultural practices in that area. Birding from her porch is usually outstanding and so was it this time too. This time I even got to see a crazy Kiwi there. Her name is Charolette (re-christened as Shalini) and she has come for New Zealand to spend months in India doing nothing. I could immediately guess we had something in common. So we both set off on a bike ride to nose around the nearby sights. That entire area is on the foothills of western-ghats and is fairly wooded. Handling the undulating terrain with bicycles without gear wheels is not something I would look forward to but still the ride was enchanting. We first went to an old Hindu temple near ‘Hundsay Honda’ built during the peak of Vijayanagarm kingdom probably 600 years back. The temple was surrounded by forests and the only person in the temple was a talkative poojari. This is my idea of a good temple where peace and calm gushes through all over. The right place to sit and meditate about which headphone would be the best for noise reduction. Our next stop was a Jain math next, my friend at the farm had donated a cow to the math and we wanted to check her out. The temple had an idol (theerthankara) that was supposed to be 2000 years old. I was happily gassing to Shalini about Mahaveera being the founder of Jainism when the priest (who happened to understand English) corrected me and said that Mahavira was just the last theerthankara (I guess a prophet) and there are 24 of them in each era and there are several eras. But the interesting part was that the power of this particular idol was the fluids that come off after the abhishekam of the idol. This prasad was supposed to have potent medicinal capabilities. ‘A rich businessman from Mumbai (has to be a jain) had an incurable form of cancer and came here and drank the milk and got cured and immediately donated 20 lakhs)’. There was also an idol for fertility and if you did not have any issues you place a coconut before the idol and immediately you would have an issue (it took a long time for to explain to Charolette why anyone would spend so much energy in praying for not having any issues!). If at all I have to believe in a god I think I would have to believe these fertility gods, we have more than a billion in evidence for their existence. I thought I read somewhere that Mahavira and Buddha had been essentially very critical of the ritualistic vedic religion present during that time. But I guess the human need for ritual is much a greater force than any other.

Justice for thievery – a post modern approach

I have a friend who was trained to be an astro-physicists and had worked for some years in the same line before she decided to take up a more challenging profession and became a farmer. She bought a plot of land in Magadi road (of Old Munuswamy and the panther of Magadi fame) and started cultivating ragi et al. The rains have failed this year in the Bangalore area and farming has been not even the usual subsistence level. In this context her house has been repeatedly burgled and she was suspecting the person who was helping her out. On the third instance that person asked my friend if she was still suspecting her to which my friend replied in the affirmative. The helper explained that it was not her and she knew who the thief was. So they gathered the panchayat of the village and my friend presented her case. The panchayat asked the thieves to come forward and so three of them in the crowd confessed! They gave back the stolen material to my friend the panchayat asked her what the punishment should be meted out, she was given a choice of whipping, just thrashing and such. She recommended 3 months of community work for the convicted which was mainly cleaning up the area around the panchayat meeting place. If only the mechanisms for justice could be this swift and easy … (I actually shudder to think, what comes to my mind is vigilantism and no appeals)

Back to Bangalore

Though it has been a couple of days since I reached Bangalore I have not blogged so far. I am sure the readers are not going to believe if I say that I have actually been busy, so I am not going to try hard to be convincing. I was very curious about how the Chandranagar school was doing (for those who don't have a context please read Rajni's report) and so landed up in the school the very same day I reached here. I got to talk to Ms. Padmaja (the HM) and few other teachers. Before I left Bangalore I had uploaded the report to the computer that is there in the school and I had requested all the teachers to go through it and be prepared with action point which we could discuss when I get back. Only 3 of them had done so which was a bit disappointing but not surprising. So we had to postpone the meeting till Nov 6th and this time the HM was going to send a written memo to all teachers to be prepared for the meeting. Otherwise everything seemed to be ok, or at least that is what Ms. Padmaja said but I could quite clearly see that she was not very comfortable. I probed a bit and then gave up when she continued to maintain that everything was ok. She did mention thought that she had avoided any direct conversation with Mr. Manjunath, the errant teacher.
The next day I get a phone call from Mr. Sidde Gowda and Mr. Mounesh, who are Asha appointed teachers. They said they are leaving for their villages (near Shimoga) for the Deepavali habba but are not going to come back to the school after that! They thanked for the opportunity Asha had provided. I had to go "wait, wait, wait ... tell me what happened". According to them there was some altercation between Mounesh and Manjunath and Manjunath hit Mounesh and abused him very badly. Mounesh said that he can't handle this anymore and they would rather go back to their villages. In any case both are trained teachers and are expecting appointment orders from the Government which is going on a teachers recruitment drive. I had told them that I would go to the school and talk to Ms Padmaja and Ms Gowramma (the SDMC president).
Before going to the school I had talked to Ms Padmaja and also to a couple of other Asha Bangalore volunteers about what could be the next course of action. There was no doubt that Manjunath had to go, but how is that going to be achieved with out Ms Gowramma support (Manjunath is her nephew). Padmaja felt that it was best that all Asha appointed teachers are relieved from their duties.
With trepidation I went to the school again on Saturday (October 21) and had a meeting with Gowramma. She had an entirely different version saying it was Sidde Gowda and Mounesh who were baiting Manjunath. This has happened earlier too, I get two different versions and even though I know where my sympathies lie there is no concrete evidence to prove one party is wrong. So I had to tread carefully and mentioned that this kind of goings-on were not conducive to a school environment. So I broached the subject of relieving the Asha appointed 'volunteer' teachers and instead press the education bureaucracy to appoint the necessary number of teachers. To my surprise Gowramma was very enthusiastic about this approach. She now mentioned that there was mistakes on both sides (a concession I guess) and it is best that we get out of the wholly by removing all the 3 teachers. But the school has around 280 students and the government has appointed only 4 teachers which is clearly insufficient. The government ration is 40:1 (which according to me is quite high for a primary school, it should be 30:1). So the school needs at least 3 more teachers. Since I am 'retired' now, I offered Gowramma that we can both go and meet the BEO and request him to appoint the additional teachers. Before that I wanted to make sure that the entire SDMC members concur to our approach. Gowramma is the only person in the SDMC who is active in delivering her duties as SDMC and others have been quite delinquent. Of course they have very busy (daily wage earners) but there is no other way but to participate more in the school management to make it deliver. Asha has very little stake in the school and can act only as a catalyst or enabler. The main effort should come from the direct stake holders who are represented by the SDMC. Gowramma has now promised that she would organize an SDMC meeting where we would discuss these things. She would then write a letter and collect signatures from the all the parents to request the government to appoint the adequate number of teachers for the school. So November is going to be an interesting month. Let us see what happens. Would the government really respond positively and deliver what it ought to deliver? We will see that after the "break". (Advertisers, please flock to me. There are a million readers who are eagerly waiting, holding their breath, to see what happens).

Deconstructing Gandhigiri

I have become an addict! I went to yet another Bollywood movie and this time it was Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Before I go into the movie itself I should point out that enough has been said about this subject. I did a quick Google on Gandhigiri and found articles not just in The Hindu and The Times of India but also in The Washington Post
and Christian Science Monitor. Of course wikipedia already has a good entry and there is a site www.gandhigiri.org.

The movie itself was very entertaining. For a person with Hindi handicap it works perfectly well because it is total Mumbaiya. No urdugiri here! It was a surprisingly clean movie too. Considering the main characters are gangsters there was no dishum-dishum thrown in. There was even a dream sequence but without any gyrating females. The female was pretty but dignified. The best part of the movie was the script and dialogues. They were just fantastic. It reminded me of Crazy Mohan's dialogues in Tamil movies. The attention to detail was also something I discovered could happen in Bollywood movies too! A couple of examples. The chamcha thug walks into a corporate building to meet someone and looks at the receptionist and says "Oy enquiry". The way they explain hallucination was also done very well, "brain may chemical locha". Of course the movie was a bit simplistic and naively optimistic.

But, does it hurt being naively optimistic? May be not....

In Amchi Mumbai

The long sojourn to UK is finally over and now back in thai naadu. The unique fragrance (if I can call it) of Mumbai reaches you even before you actually get off the aircraft. I am now suspicious of Jet Airways air conditioning. This on-demand movie business as part of in-flight entertainment has made a huge difference in long distance flying experience. To the delight of few ultra-nationalists who usually don't read my blogs, I have to say that I chose to watch two Bollywood movies and they actually turned out to be good. They were Iqbal and Theen Deewaren, both made by Nagesh Kukanoor. I liked the first one obviously because it is also about cricket. Is there a new genre developing? First Lagaan and now Iqbal. How successful were these films in the market? No gyrating, no songs... did it work?

On the whole I would have to say that I liked the London area a lot and even UK in general. Till now I have maintained that for an immigrant the US is the best destination (I am assuming here that immigrants are usually from poor black/brown countries and their destination is rich white countries like US, Western Europe, Australia, NZ). I think I change my opinion here. Of course you can't make any decent money by living in the UK but you can have one good life. It is far more multi-cultural in a truer sense than the melting pot. I now understand why. Even in their schools they have topics like festivals in India. Overall the folks seem much more knowledgeable and I would have to say genuinely interested in other cultures. Strangely (I don't about systemic statistics) I also noticed a lot more inter-racial couples. Not just between white and Asian, which also happen in the US, but between white and black, which I find it very rare in the US. Race would become meaningless if this happens more. I don't think it is just geography, many here have of course travelled at least to Spain and Italy (for the sun) but looks like there is a basic lack of curiosity in the US. I have known several folks there who have not gone beyond their states. May be all their curiosities have been quenched in the local WalMart (by the way the local WalMart in the UK is not doing very well since people here seem to prefer quality and not so entranced by price, according to The Economist).

I would have turned into a full blown anglophile if I had not read the two books I had borrowed from their very well run library system. The first one was Sowing the wind by John Keay and the second one The great hedge of India by Roy Moxham. Keay gives a detailed account of the Middle East (we would prefer to call it Central Asia) meddling by the colonial powers. The chaos they created and continue to do so is unimaginable. Moxham’s book is supposed to be a search for a ridiculous hedge (yeah a row of plants) that was to spread miles and miles in the sub continent which would act as a customs line. The custom duty that the colonial administration was trying to collect is the infamous salt tax. But Moxham gives a detailed account of amount of money that was pilloried and taken back to Great Britain and it is just enormous. May be these fantastic facilities (the London tube was built a century ago) might have been possible only through the surplus extracted from a colony. At one time Robert Clive who fought for East India Company had accumulated so much loot that he was one of the wealthiest in Britain. Fine culture develops after tummy is full and when you search history the tummy always seems to get full through exploitation of others....

With that rather cheerful note I am now preparing myself to explore the culinary specalities offered by Mumbai. Bhelpuri and pav bhaji near VT (i still cannot get myself to say CST) is definitely on the menu. I would have sworn by bade mia if ate meat but I dont (I need a separate post on that). Sindudurg near dadar area for kokum khadi and paper thin polis, Yokos for sizzlers in Santa Cruz. If I am really enthusiastic I might even take the first train to Karjat have some vada pavs there and then head back. I would have had no doubts it if was monsoon season but the October heat is a bit of a put off for such adventures. Any other recommendations?

Haj

It was an emotional experience to stand on the same balcony where Kapil and his devils celebrated in 1983! The pilgrimage to Lords was done appropriately on a Friday especially during the holy period of Ramzan! On good recommendations opted for the guided tour which lets you go through the long room where many a batsmen have walked on the way to the middle or on their way back. The guide said the response of those in the pavilion could be icy for batsmen on their way back with a duck on the scoreboard. Botham was out twice for a duck against the Australians! Saw the visitor’s dressing room and sat on the same benches where Kapil Dev or Gordon Greenidge would have sat. The ground itself is rather small and slopes severely across the pitch. The height difference between the left corner (as you see from the pavilion) to the right is more than 6 feet. The stadium seats just more than 30,000. But the history of this place and the tradition makes it special. The MCC still hold the responsibility of maintaining the rules of the game. The only bad part of the tour was the guide himself who actually is a full member of the MCC and so appropriately held a stiff upper lip. By the way, I wonder why they call it a stiff upper lip. Can you try keeping the upper lip stiff while letting the lower one floppy? It does not seem possible, either both are stiff or both are floppy….

The guided tour had 15 Australians and 3 Indians and 2 Englishmen. I couldn’t help mentioning the Inzamam affair and how all the Auzzies are fanatically backing that idiot Hair. These guys are so like the Americans, yuk. Richie Benaud barking at the ICC rather than at his fellow countrymen, sorry boss I have lost all the respect I had for you. His fellow commentator Dean Jones got away lightly after calling a player terrorist. I wish Zidane was around to head butt that guy. The Ashes went on when London was getting bombed while South Africa pulls out of the Sri Lanka competition on security grounds. I think the South Asian teams should say to hell with ICC and form their own organization and play within ourselves and keep the money too. Then the ground that would take Lords place would definitely be M.A.Chidambaram stadium or Chepauk in Chennai. Eden Gardens has become a hell hole after that sad semi-final and Wankhede after booing Tendulkar. I don’t know much about the Lahore stadium but do quite a bit about my favorite Chepauk. The D stand (above the side screen opposite to the pavilion) is the place to watch a test match. Passes for this stand are issued by the TNCA (Tamil Nadu Cricket Association) and usually for the players in the TNCA league. I have never played for that league but happened to play for the NCCA (Northern California Cricket Association)! But my brother did and so we got passes. It is a wonderful experience to sit along with knowledgeable cricket crowd, that too mostly players. Chepauk itself has a reputation for holding a cultured cricketing audience but the D stand takes the cake. I remember when the West Indies played after their ‘83 debacle, there was a standing ovation when Michael Holding started his run up even before the first ball was bowled. The crowd was appreciating his beautiful and long run up. That was a memorable day for other reasons too. Sunil Gavaskar had got tired of opening the innings and decided to come 2 down. But events conspired against him and he was in the middle in the first over with India 0 for 2, both batsmen out by incredible catching of Roger Harper at the slips. The little master faced the fearsome four (Holding, Roberts, Marshal, Garner) to make an impeccable 235, amazing stuff. The second instance which I remember at Chepauk is when the same Gavaskar was the most un-popular cricketer among the D stand crowd. Gavaskar dropped our darling Kapil Dev for the previous match at Calcutta. That was the only test match the great all-rounder missed in his long career, amazing feat considering injuries and stuff. I remember on the first day before the match began the D standers held a huge banner “Sunny days are over” when Gavaskar came out for his morning jog.

Coming to the present, I want to watch a test match at Chepauk from the D stand. With my mom packing a 4-compartment tiffin carrier, I would be all set. Would anyone like to join me? What should the menu be for each of the 5 days? Would it be different if India is winning or if India is losing? Let us ponder over this…

Climate change debate in UK

There is lot of political activity and excitement currently in the UK. The Liberal Democratic Party had its conference last week and this week the Labour Party is having its conference in Manchester. I was just curious about the nature and tenor of political debate in UK and followed some of the important speeches. The LDP has a byline for a Fair and Green Britain. Their leader Ming Campbell gave a lot of importance to climate change issues and how LDP would address these issues, for e.g. have higher tax on air travel and creating a fund for more serious research on greener energy and related technology. Today I watched Gordon Brown (the chancellor) of Labour Party give his address. His was a crucial address as he is pitching for the prime ministers post once Blair steps down. All the talking heads were saying that this would be the make or break speech for him and so I watched it live on TV. He also gave considerable bandwidth for climate change issues and his policy on how to address the issue. Interestingly he mentioned the solution would involve personal as well as collective changes, on how to come up with a policy that would alter personal choices towards greener choice. Even the conservative party leader David Cameron waxes eloquent about climate change. Recently the head of Virgin Air made a that he is setting aside some of the profits for research on making air travel greener like using bio-fuels or something, though his statements are being dismissed as a marketing gimmick by environment agencies. In a small village on our way from Cornwall I saw a bumper sticker in a Smartcar expounding to boycott Esso since Esso does not give a damn about global warning. (www.stopesso.com).

The global warming seems a well accepted fact in UK and is not debatable anymore. The solution to it also seems to be a mainstream debate now. The green debate has move from the supposedly loony environmentalists to the regular politician who wants to appear more caring about our childrens future. A recent article in National Geographic claims that if we don’t address this issue in the next decade or so, the accumulated carbon would create an irreversible change to the climate for the worse!

It is interesting to note that The Economist found it worthy to give it cover page importance. It is interesting to note the same newspaper (as they call it) called it fear mongering in one of their 1997 editions.

India has 1/6^th of the humanity and one would think we should have an equal or greater concern about the future of humanity. Is there any debate on the environment in mainstream Indian politics at all?