Art and Entertainment

Today (Dec 27^th 2006) I attended a Aruna Sairam concert in Mylapore Fine Arts and that experience prompted me to contemplate on the nature of and relationship between art and entertainment. She is hugely popular and the hall was full and there was a standing ovation at the end, which is quite unusual for a staid and low-key audience comprising mostly of tambrams. But I was surprised to find myself highly displeased and I was almost willing to walk out before the end. In the last two weeks I was privileged to see performances of artists, some really good (T.N.Seshagopalan, Ranjini and Gayathri, Malladi Brothers, Sudha Raghunathan) and some, which I felt, were kind of listless (Sowmya, Unnikrishnan and Nithyashri). But today I encountered an ace entertainer. To a quote a niece of mine who is well trained in classical music “She always brings out a lot of applause and seldom tears”.

I have always looked down on art movies and complained that they were not entertaining enough. This experience has shown me that for the artist the primary relationship is between them and the art they are pursuing but for the entertainer it is between them and the audience. In a competitive environment where commercial aspects are involved I think entertainment soon becomes a race to the bottom. Art seems permanent and entertainment ephemeral.

To come back to the concert, she quickly wrapped up the highly technical part seeming to be in a hurry to come to the more ‘interesting’ part. Then all hell broke loose. She was treated like a jukebox with people shouting requests from all over the hall. She obliged and kind of encouraged each request with an ‘avashyam padaren’ (a heavy tambram accent for ‘sure I will sing your request’). It all seemed like a big ego trip. Why do the audience want their favorite song to be sung? Is their desire more important than the artist’s inspiration? Why can’t they just use their CD player if they want to listen to their favorites? The song selection was moving down rapidly, welterweight to featherweight. I was tempted to stand up and ask her to sing ‘loosu ponne loosu ponne’ (a recent and atrocious tamil film song which goes something like ‘idiot girl, idiot girl, I idiot boy is running behind you idiotically), but my mom sitting next to me would have just collapsed in embarrassment. To clarify, I am no traditionalist. I don’t snicker; in fact I am energized, if artists sing Tamil compositions that some traditionalists don’t approve. I think there is enough room to manuevre and you cannot straightjacket art by insisting on tradition. It is not just what she sang but the way it was brought made it more entertainment than art. In any case I don’t know the basics of Indian classical music and hence don’t fully appreciate the techniques and nuances. But I can experience the difference. If I want entertainment I can go to a light music show or switch on TV, here I have come to enjoy the art in its full form. Let us not shortchange it by our shorter attention spans!

So whats wrong with entertainers? No, there is nothing wrong with them. But if all artists become entertainers the world would be full of BoysToMen and no Beethoven, full of Sydney Sheldons and no Shakespeare. I think there is space for both and only an insecure artists would rush to entertainment. Entertainment is like a quickie, there is a time and place for it, but if everyone seeks that all the time then they are really missing the real fun!

I think no good entertainer has died a pauper but there are some good artists who have (Van Gogh and Bharathiyar are popular ones, one fellow poet griped that there were more flies on Bharathi’s body than people in his funeral).

Another aspect to ponder. Is art possible through sustainable sustenance lifestyles or does it need a surplus that usually comes through some form of exploitation? That requires another blog entry.

Sabhapathi

It is music festival season in Chennai and Mylapore Fine Arts Club (MFA) is where I will be every evening till end of this year. Two kutcheris (concerts) have already been ticked off, Gaayathri on Veena and Sowmya (vocal). It has been very good so far though I have to admit the canteen facility is a bit disappointing.

It has been a busy time and that is one of the reasons for not blogging for so long. Asha India had its bi-annual meeting in IIT Mumbai last week and Asha Bangalore was there in full strength with 4 of the teachers coming along with us. I traveled by 2^nd class in train (long distance, I keep doing the Bangalore-Chennai trip more often) after a long time and I have to say that the things have improved a bit. The train coaches are slightly cleaner than before. And also it is the best way to experience Mumbai. Gosh, when you enter Ambarnath area the stench is unbearable. Wiffs of what seems like very toxic chemical along with decomposing garbage and human shit is quite overwhelming. It is also amazing how quickly our senses get used to such stuff. After 15 minutes I stopped noticing the smell.

The Chennai musical festival season is quite amazing. In the next few weeks there would be more than 2000 concerts here! MFA has 5 concerts every day starting at 9 in the moring and ending at 9 at night. Similarly there are more than 20 to 25 sabhas (music clubs) organizing kutcheris. But in a typical southern traditional the whole thing is very low key. A tourist can be visiting Chennai and can even not notice such a festival is going on. If this kind of opportunity was there in any western country they would have marketed it so much and made a huge deal about the whole thing.

If one observes the audience they would soon realize that the average age is 65. But it would be wrong to conclude that classical karnatic music is a dying art. Most of the performers are not very old (in their forties) and in fact in the last decade there has been a boom of sorts. It agains comes down to time availability. The way we have structured our lives with corporate jobs that squeeze every drop out combined with obsessive child rearing leaves very little time for younger folks for any leisure. So only those who are ‘retired’ can attend music concerts that slowly build up over a 3 hour period. But I guess there would be a constant stream of 60 plus retirees who would fill these sabhas. So let us not worry that the classical music would die out.

Switching back to good old Test cricket

I am using the new found 'flexibility' very satisfactorily. The first thing in the morning I switch on the TV to watch the Ashes series of test matches. It is not as one sided as it appears in the scores. In the first test (second innings) the contest between Warne and Pietersen was classic test match stuff. Warne, the old fox, seems to get wilier as he ages and Pietersen does not know anything other than aggression. Warne is now such a tactician he sets up his batsmen over many overs. The way he took advantage of Collingwood's eagerness to get his century was great. A well flighted delivery drew Collingwood off the crease and the ball just dipped and beat him. It was like watching E.A.S. Prasanna at his best. Pietersen used his long legs very well and was so aggressive against Warne; Warne was forced to bowl a negative line round the wickets. Today was the first day of the second test and England has done reasonably well. Again a very interesting partnership developed between Colingwood and Pietersen and a good contest with Warne. It was great watching a good struggle between bat and ball.
On the other side of things we have this one day series going on between India and South Africa. One day internationals have lost their initial excitement and have become formulaic and boring. They are to test matches what Boys to Men are to Beethoven. And when Indian batting is at its worst it is even more painful to watch. Indian batsmen seem to have no mental strength AT ALL. The only person who plays a mental game is Dravid. Dhoni carries on just through sheer timing and form. The rest are worse than pedestrian. Sorry to those who fondly refer to their star as 'Sechin' but I think he should find a few face saving innings and retire quietly. I have never seen a batsmen of his caliber struggle so much before (well I have to say that Viv Richards did struggle in his final days). When Ponting or Lara are out of form they come back so majestically and not tentatively. One cannot be out of form for 2 years! I think Chappell should be thrown out too. The big talking Ganguly was thrown out 'cause he did not match his talk with performance. The same yardstick if applied to Chappell he has failed miserably too. I think the coach's role is not to find talent (that is the selector’s role) but to make a coherent team plan and also improve on the mental and match winning capability of a team. There seems to be no indications of any such thing in out team. Out tail-enders like Agarkar (WHY IS HE STILL IN THE TEAM?) should learn a lot of things from Brett Lee and McGrath. In the last match when Pathan was playing reasonably well why in the world these guys had to go for big shots? (No I did not watch the match, i just saw the wickets in the highlights)

Now that I have more time on my hands, I realize through actual experience what I could only speculate earlier. For enjoying real pleasure and satisfaction one needs time, otherwise it is just a quickie. So back to test cricket ….

Absenteeism in class IV

There are 46 students enrolled in class IV in the Chandranagar Government Primary School. I usually count only around 35. 1 of them I have never seen (Sumitra) and one guy Satish has come only for 2 classes. Others are regularly absent one day or another. The reasons I hear is most that they had gone to their village (ooruge hogidde). The second reason is illness (fever and stomach ache). The first reason is more predominant. Also, it is not as if there was an emergency at the village, it was just some festival or another. I guess the parents feel the school is not that important and the children can afford to miss classes. They don't make sure that the children catch up with the lost lessons either. So there is additional burden on the teacher to make sure that these children catch up. Is it possible when I am already dealing with 35 students? The education bureaucracy wants the teachers to ensure that all children come to school. They even expect the head person to go around the streets in that area to drag the children to school. I feel that is a very wrong approach. For every hour the teacher is outside of the school herding the few children who are not in school there are a large number of students who are already in the school missing the lessons. I think the teachers responsibility is to make the learning environment in the school attractive and interesting. Whether the students come to the school are not should be left to their parents. If the parents are not interested then why should anyone else? The whole obsession with 'drop-outs' makes us spend less energy on the students (and their parents) who are actually interested in schooling. Why should they suffer?

Ladakh, here I come ...

After a gap of six years I am again cycling to work. I borrowed a bicycle from a friend of mine to try and see how it works out. The school is six kilometres from my house and I have been going by car all these days. There is no convenient bus, I have to change a bus from Banashankari bus stand. But the last 3 days I have been using the cycle to get there and back. It takes 30 minutes by bicycle and around 25 minutes by car. I take the inner roads and avoid traffic and so it works pretty well. In Bangalore I definitely need a cycle with gears. This one has the standard 18 setting Shimano gears and hence works well. Still, with all that ups and downs it is good exercise. 12 kilometres a day is not bad and I think if I do that till April I would be all set for the Ladakh trip :)

I used to bike to work when I was working for Oracle at Redwood Shores and lived in Belmont. It was just 2 miles but our apartment was on a hill so my commute back home was bloody hard work. I used to give up on the last bit where the gradient was almost 45%. Here it is not that bad but still needs some serious pedalling. The pollution is pretty bad, I get a good coating of dust and suspended particular matter on my throat and all over. I have to get a mask.
I also plan to use ear plugs, I find the honking so bad and so loud!

The kids were very amused to see me on a cycle. They wondered (aloud) that I was coming in a car few days back and now in a cycle. Why they asked and I let them ponder.... (there is this old MGR song in Tamil which loosely translated to "Why? The question Why? Without that there is no life". So let them ask why...

Test results!

Last Saturday I had conducted a test. It was a VERY simple test to see if my students know the English alphabet and also some basic vocabulary (through pictures). I had taken only 20 students out of the 40 so that it would be easy to manage. I picked a good distribution of students ranging from mediocre to very good. Here are the results of that test

0 to 25 % - 0
26 to 50 % - 2
51 to 75 % - 8
76 to 100 % - 10

Out of this 6 students scored 100%.

Varalakshmi is the smallest person in the class. She is so tiny it is amazing. She must be badly malnourished. She has difficulty with her sight too. One of these days I will take her to a paediatrician whom I know. She has this intense look in her face whenever I ask her a question or when she has to read out something. She has scored 100% and I am thrilled.

The 2 who have scored lower than 50% are Diksha and Manjunath S. I know about them already. After 3 years in school they still don't know the Kannada alphabet itself. I thought may be it was worth trying differently with them. Azim Premji Foundation (APF) has these nice CDs through which students can reinforce their vocabulary etc. So I took my laptop with me and asked Manjunath and Diksha to work with the laptop. I also had to be with them and prompt them at every stage. It did not make a big difference and in fact I found the computer a distraction for them. May be my experience is limited but I feel that computers have no role to play in elementary education. There is no replacement for a good teacher and that is all that is required especially from class I to IV. May be computers can be of use in middle and high school. There is definitely potential in explaining science experiments etc with computers. And also good material can be useful for the teachers. Most teachers themselves don't know the full details about science experiments etc.

How do I handle the bottom 10% of the class? They are way behind the rest. The naughty ones who talk a lot are actually better once I get their attention they are able to learn quickly. But the bottom few pretty much stay quiet but are not absorbing anything at all. My energy is limited and I also confused (philosophically) where I should spend the energy on the 90% of the class who would benefit or whether I should spend on this 10%.

System of School Vouchers in India

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about School vouchers and people have taken predictable positions on that. A friend of mine had recently forwarded a blog entry on this subject by Basab Pradhan who also quotes Gurcharan Das on this subject.

Briefly, the voucher system is supposed to solve the problems of quality delivery of primary education by introducing free market dynamics. Through vouchers the parents have a choice of choosing which school their child goes to. The delivery of education is entrusted to private players who can redeem these vouchers from the government. The idea is that the parents would choose the best performing school and those schools which are not performing would have fewer enrollments and thus the government would not be wasting money on them. Obviously this proposal would appear as a silver bullet for the free market proponents like Basab Pradhan and complete anathema to hard core lefties. The reality, as always, lies some where in between.

I am definitely not as enthusiastic about this proposed system and I would like explain why.

Lack of information amongst parents

It is standard economic theory that one of the essential pre-conditions for efficient functioning of markets is availability of adequate information for all the players. In the Indian context the poor parents in rural areas are usually illiterate and cannot really determine whether the school is functioning at par, above it or below it. Can they really make an informed choice about which school their children can go to? I really doubt it. As the next point would show there is already sufficient evidence to the contrary.

Quality of private schools

There seems to be an unsaid belief that the private schools would be better than government run schools. This probably is reinforced by observing the private schools that cater to the middle and upper middle classes in urban areas. There are quite a lot of private schools (“convent” schools as they are called) which have proliferated in urban slums to cater to the needs of the working class and the poor. They usually sell by claiming to be English medium. These schools are really bad in reality. Our maid’s son went to one such school and even after 4 years in those school, and paying fees, he could not even read basic English. The parents themselves being illiterate could not tell whether their child was learning anything at all or not. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that India’s premier educational institutions like the IITs, IIMs and the REC’s (now called something else) are in fact government run institutions. In any case it would be worthwhile to survey ALL (not just the elite) private schools and find out their performance before making any conclusion on who is delivering better primary education, private run or government run.

Feasibility in rural areas

Voucher system has serious feasibility issues especially in rural areas. Consider the following data got out of the Department of Public Instruction.

Area	Govt Schools	Aided Schools	Private Schools	Total
Bangalore (South) Urban	493 (59.9%)	49 (5.95%)	281 (34.15%)	823
Bangalore Rural	1722 (93.74%)	4 (0.22%)	111 (6.04%)	1837
Challakere	192 (91.87%)	1 (0.48%)	16 (7.65%)	209

As you can see clearly from this data the penetration of private schools in rural areas is minimal and even there the data presented is at the Taluk level and I am fairly certain that the private schools are concentrated in the towns (taluk head quarters like Challakare and small towns Nayakanahatti). Since vouchers are based on market competition, it is not enough just to replace the existing government school with a private school which receives vouchers. There needs to be multiple private schools competing with each other for the same set of students. Do we really think this is feasible?

Teachers in rural areas?

Government school teachers are absent in villages as they find facilities there appalling. They prefer to stay in urban centers for the same reasons why you and I prefer to stay in the urban centers. Without any other factor changing, just by issuing vouchers there is not going to be a sudden change through which teachers (whether working for private schools or government schools) would be willing to go to villages every day. This is a very serious problem for which there is no single solution yet. But vouchers are definitely not going to make a difference.

Abuse of the system

There is a scheme already in place which is very close to the school voucher system. In Andhra Pradesh there is a scheme for SC/STs in rural areas for getting trained in employment generating vocations. They can go to the local training centers (something like ITI) and get trained in motor winding, electrical, operating the lathe kind of skills. For each person trained the government pays the training center for the training. The training centers just exist in name only. They give half (or mostly less) of the money that the government pays them to the candidate directly and give them a certificate without conducting any training. The candidate initially is very happy with that money and probably spends it on alcohol but has gained no skills. What is stopping the voucher system to disintegrate into this kind of abuse? Where parents routinely send their children for child labor (in some cases even hazardous) this kind of abuse is not mere speculation but one more system of corruption waiting to happen.

P.S. – I am not an anti-market person. I think the government has no business in running businesses, in general. That is best left to private players. But governance involves delivery of certain public goods (like basic education and basic health) that only a government can deliver best, especially in a country with low level of human development. This “markets would solve everything” is a puerile attitude not befitting those espousing it.

Soon there would be more girls in government schools than boys...

In the class that I teach there is this girl, Rupa, who is extremely good. She does all the work assigned to her, is very earnest, pays full attention and is eager to learn. She is very bright too and picks up things very fast. I found that she knew more English than I have already taught and she can almost read all words and even sentences. I was curious as to how she knows so much so I asked her after the class yesterday. She said her elder brother taught her. Her brother does not come to this school, he goes to a private school in that area. She has a younger brother too and he too goes to a private school. Her elder brother seems to know a reasonable amount of English and so I asked her why she did not go to the private school too. She said her parents did not want to spend money for her and so she is sent to the government school which free. She had an expression, “duh isn’t it obvious?” on her face. Gender discrimination, stark and unabashed! Her parents feel it is worthwhile making their sons better educated and not their daughter. Do they think that the sons would look after them while the daughter would be married off and even if she earns her earnings would go to the family of the guy whom she is married to? The whole way our Indian system of marriage and family works against adequate investments made for women. The irony of this whole thing is that in the end the boys never take care of their parents or their families anyway. Especially in the poor sections of the society they mostly end up being alcoholics and are a drain on the family.

The extreme form of this gender discrimination is the selective sex determined termination of pregnancy which seems to be quite prevalent in India. India has a very adverse gender ratio (see Missing women of India). May be it is better to kill them off rather than giving them second class treatment all through their lives.

I am determined to teach Rupa at least as much as her brothers learn, if not more.

Trip to Nayakanahatti

Asha Bangalore wanted to evaluate the tuition centers run by Chaitanya near Nayakanahatti in Chitradurga district of Karnataka (http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=657). We decided that we would make a detailed evaluation like the one Rajni did for the Chandranagar School. Mounesh and Siddanagowda who had earlier taught in the Chandranagar School were to conduct the evaluations in all the Chaitanya centers in the next two month and submit a detailed report for each center. Anand Rao and I had gone along with them to Chaitanya.

We left Bangalore at around 900 hours on Monday and reached Nayakanahatti at around 1500 hours. We took a bus from majestic bus station to Challakere which left at 900 and then took a private bus from Challakere to Nayakanahatti. Chaitanya has an office close to the bus stand and they run a computer center there along with a tailoring center. We met Ramesh who co-ordinates Chaitanya’s work. They use the same premises for also conducting the evening tuition centers. On Monday evening we visited another 4 centers. In Channabaseyanahatti, which probably a couple of kilometers away from Nayakanahatti, there are kind of two villages old and new and there is a tuition center in each one of them. Both cater to the same government primary school. The tuition centers are run by Bosiah P and Tippeswamy. Tippeswamy is a graduate (BA Kannada major) and tends to his farms. His living conditions appeared very basic as his house was very close to the center. The centers run from 1730 to 1930 and in both these places it runs in the community halls in the villages. The electricity comes after 1800 and it seems it is quite regular (there are huge wind farms in Chitradurga and apparently they generate 400 MW which is sufficient for the district). There were more than 25 students in each center. We next went to Gowdgere, which is about a kilometer from Channabaseyanahatti. Here the center is run in a house which kind of tiny and cramped. Ms. Chamundeshwari is the teacher there. She was making the students recite the tables. The school is quite close to the village and I don’t know why they cannot have the tuitions in the school itself, unless there is not electrical connection to the school. We then went to Matturhatti which was a 20 minute motorcycle ride from Gowdgere. Here the center is run in a temple and there are almost 90 students attending! Probably half of the school is going to this tuition center. Prakash is the teacher and he seems to be doing a reasonable job handling 90 of them together. Chaitanya acknowledged that they need an additional teacher there.

We wanted to go to the schools also and so on Tuesday morning I went to the schools with Mounesh and Siddenagowda. The interaction between the tuition centers and the schools seem minimal. In fact in Channabaseyanahatti the HM (who is new) did not even know that such centers existed. The school has around 240 students and 5 teachers. Out of which only 2 were present. The others were supposedly on leave. We heard from the HM that the previous HM had some problems with the SDMC (so what is new). Most of the families are telugu speaking and all are Scheduled Tribes it seems (nayaks to be specific). Also the schools performance in KSQE was not great. They said it was less than 40 but seemed reluctant to give out the exact number and I did not insist. The HM feels that the language is an issue with the students being Telugu speaking but the school being a Kannada school. The school in Gowdgere has 180 students with 4 teachers but again only 2 were present. I am not sure if the teacher absenteeism is a chronic problem but could not find out from the Chaitanya teachers either.

The tuition centers can only perform supporting role and might not be beneficial at all if no effective schooling is happening for the children during the day. For now the centers are quite cut off from the school and its related issues. I think it would be worthwhile for the volunteer teachers appointed in the centers (all are local to the villages) to play a role in interacting with the school, its teachers and SDMC. I talked to Ramesh about this and he seems very skeptical about the role of SDMC. Considering that he himself is a government school teacher I am not surprised. I have asked Mounesh and Siddenagowda to keep a tab on the attendance of the teachers at school during their two month stay. Let us see what it shows.

My experiments with teaching - Part I

It is strange that I am getting to teach English in a school. The popular story in my family is how I conversed with my classmate in the school bus when I was in my 2^nd standard or something. “You bring ball?” (with an enquiring expression), “I bring ball” (with a proud expression). My family also claimed for the longest time that my English remained at that level and were quite puzzled about how I could successfully court someone through English. In any case the poor students in Chandranagar do not really have a choice. There are 270 students and now there are only 4 teachers. It is just chaos in the school and any additional help in terms of teaching is welcomed with open arms. So I go there everyday to teach English to the 4^th standard students. I have two text books (an english alphabet book and an english primer book) which I have to finish my Dec 6 before I start gallivanting again.

Oh boy, where do I start? There are more than 40 students in my class. I guess around 15 or so girls and rest boys. They sit on the floor and even if the room is big they tend to sit tightly close to each other. When one opens a book it usually goes over the next ones lap. These kids are badly malnourished. They are so tiny! The biggest one must be as big nephew who is in the 1^st standard. Gosh, but I can’t imagine what it would be like if there were 40 well nourished kids in the room. Their energy levels are very high (except for a couple who seem seriously under nourished, I will have to get them checked out). Many of them have serious problems in concentrating and paying attention. The lack of discipline in this school in legendary (read Rajni’s report). I would really like those who espouse these new-age ideas of teaching to come to this class room and handle these 40 kids. Unless the teacher is someone like Meryl Streep who can hold the attention of any kind of audience spell bound, which I am surely not capable of, there is no way to teach anything to this kind of class without laying down some basic rules. Discipline vs. freedom is something the teacher has to maintain a fine balance. I resorted to time-out by sending the trouble some kid away. But they put on such a sorry face that even the Khumbu ice-fall will melt, but when they get back they start trouble the next minute.

I can give the children all the freedom to do what they want but I am not sure if they would really learn anything at the end of the class.

How do I do to hold the attention of a class of 40 kids without having to behave like Adolf Hitler? Can anyone HELP?

After the second day, I sat with around 8 kids who were either too troublesome in the class or had not learnt much at all separately for an additional hour. One kid seems to have a serious attention deficit but if I work with him one on one he has learnt the stuff. I am quite exhausted after taking one class (45 minutes) and one extra session for these 8 kids (another 30 minutes) and I ready to head back home. How do these teachers manage for the whole day?

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?

Food for thought

A lot of folks who are not at all happy with the current world order, the NGO types, think of the days before the British invaded us as good old days. Recently I met someone who thought that the though process of a civilization based on temperate culture would be very different from the thought process of a civilization based on a tropical climate. By nature the tropical climate has lot more diversity; in the Amazon there are insects which are endemic to a tree trunk! To handle this diversity, he claimed that the tropical civilizations never aspired for one size fit all solutions and instead found local solutions to local problems. Though the logic seems not entirely off the mark I am somehow not convinced that those were good old days for everybody. Anyway, there seemed to be a nostalgic vision of the days when global trade was not predominant and the new world was not found.

I was thinking about how the world would be now if Columbus had never set foot on the Americas and the natives there lived unmolested by the Europeans. The first and most frightening thought that came up was I would not be eating potatoes for dinner today! Life without potatoes is not worth living. For that matter, no chilly, no onions, no tomatoes. I really wonder what Indians (at least the vegetarians) ate before Columbus. Actually, you do get a taste of that food if you happen to be a orthodox Tamil Brahmin, or you belong to one such family and happen to like food in general. There is a day in the year which is devoted to the forefathers called shrardham (I am sure it would be the same several other Indian communities) and the meal that is cooked on that day does not contain any foreign vegetables and spices. There is black pepper as spice instead of chilly, moong dal (no toor dal), kothavarangai (I think it is called gavar in either Hindi or Marathi, I don’t know the English name), seppangkazhangu (arbi in Hindi), senakazhangu (yam I think) and such and of course lots of ghee. It excludes almost all the vegetables that we eat regularly like carrots, beans, cabbage (well it is doubtful if cabbage is eaten regularly by any self respecting foodie).

What kind of food people ate during the reign of Rajaraja Chola? Who made the first urulakazhangu curry/poriyal in Tamil Nadu and how did they make it? Did they cut it in small cubes, or did the boil it and peel or did they make it mashed? If only I had a time machine. Are there any food historians who have catalogued the menu at weddings that occurred in the last 300 years? When did the first restaurant start, are there menu cards preserved of a restaurant which was operating in the seventeenth century? Is there a special branch in history dealing with only food? If there is one I would relish it.

Forget the past; even now the sheer diversity of food is mind blowing. Every family has its own recipes and own ways of cooking. The tastes and flavors definitely vary caste to caste. Some of us foodies have thought of making a food documentary titled ‘enna samayal’ which would explore the different aspects of food in various communities and families in Chennai. Is there anyone willing to produce it?

You can guess, I am very hungry right now. I am waiting for Madhavi to get back from her long day at work so that we can eat our dinner. I have cooked kathirikkai kari (finely chopped onions, eggplant cut in small cubes, sautéed in oil with mustard seeds, urad dal, chilly powder and some salt), and masoor dal (I boiled the dal in a pressure cooker, sautéed garlic, green chilly, onions, jeera, kariveppalai (kadi paththa), turmeric powder and dhania powder. Added the dal to that and when cooked added some fresh cut tomatoes and simmered it for 5 minutes) and red rice as the starch. Yes, in honor of these important thought I did not cook potatoes today but I am all for globalization, at least when it comes to food.

Cornwall ho!

Last week Madhavi took a couple of days off from work and we made a road trip to Salisbury, Cotswolds and Cornwall. We decided we would rent a car and drive so that we have more flexibility on where we wanted to go and also explore the rural roads of England. My expectations were set by Market Blandings!

First Salisbury. I had always doubted the fact that it was England that would have invented the game of cricket. How was it possible for someone to stand still in the first slip in this cold and clammy weather? Wouldn’t he be frozen stiff? I can understand football being invented here. Fast, brisk activity for an hour and a half and that’s it. But five days of slip fielding in this weather, only someone insane would have invented this game in England. But after our recent road trip this doubt has been cleared. There has been a weather change. In the distant past England was not always like this. It was sunny and the evidence of that more or less strikes you at your face in the Salisbury plains. With the current English weather all the theory about the stones being arranged to act as a solar calendar for folks of that time would be just hogwash. It would have been possible only if it was sunnier then. Considering that the pre-historics carted large sized boulders from great distances to build a calendar I guess they would have given enough thought about how much sun is actually seen around that place. Stonehenge is visible from A303. A303, by the way, is not a motorway (a.k.a. freeway) but a dual carriage way but people still drive 70 mph. When we took M3 (a motorway) there were no speed limits posted, so I cruised along with rest of the traffic which was driving at least 75 mph. It is a bit surprising. I would think that the US would have higher speed limits. Even in Texas with wide open spaces the speed limit was 75 mph, otherwise it has always been 65 or lower. So we reached Stonehenge much earlier than I expected. Also, why do they still have speeds listed in miles? I thought all countries other than the US have gone metric.

Trying a Sivaji Ganesan expression next to Stonehenge

From there we went to Salisbury (pronounced saulsbury) town to have a look at the cathedral there. The cathedral was fabulous. Inside it was breathtaking, high ceilings and a huge organ which someone was playing. The arches and perpendiculars were truly breathtaking. How did they manage to build such high structures so long back? What was the architectural tricks did they employ? Of course, none of these questions were answered. As in Oxford, there is really no clear mention of the history of the place and how it was built and that kind of stuff. I am still not reconciled to this aspect of tourism in UK. I know they have a general culture of downplaying stuff here but this is stretching that a bit far.

Salisbury Cathedral

The next plan was to spend a day in Cotswolds. Not in the usual patel point route map but Cotswolds is where you expect to encounter the real English country side. And we did indeed. Due the exceptional navigational skills of my co-passenger we managed to get terribly lost in the small and winding country roads (the kinds you would expect Galahad Threepwod cycling back after having half a dozen pints in the local Inn). The navigator, though, claimed that the entire exercise was deliberate and well thought out. Thanks to this we got to see some really outstanding rural scenes, with whitewashed thatched cottages among undulating meadows, stone mansions and lots of sheep. It looks like most of land is used as meadow land for sheep. Actually, since the roman times England has been know for its wool export and it is an activity that is still continuing. Since this is end of summer most of the grass was getting harvested for hay which would tide the sheep over during the long winter months. We were pleasantly surprised to see the thatched cottages, very cute with their little flower beds on window sills. We also visited a very cute town, The Slaughters (lower and upper).

No, this is not a painting. It is a picture perfect Cotswolds village!

We had an interesting experience in one of the small towns in Cotswold. Overall, in this trip to the UK I have found the people even in the London area exceedingly friendly. I don’t remember if I mentioned this before but I found this very refreshing. I was expecting a stiff upper lip but what I notice is a very mid-western conviviality combined with north-east intellect. Well, take this incident for instance. We were totally lost (again) when we planned to take a long walk in the country side from one of the smaller towns (well this time it was my navigation skills and it was not at all intentional) and we landed up only in the other end of the town. We saw this middle aged lady walking down the street and we walked up to her to ask for directions. She took a lot of trouble explaining the way and then decided we were hopelessly lost for the original trail and recommended a different path which was supposed to be equally scenic and which runs right behind her house. We were walking down the street and Madhavi remarked how pretty some of the gardens were in the houses we passed. The lady invited us to her house to see her garden and I am sure if we appeared to have had more time she would have even invited for a cup of tea with some scones and clotted cream. It was really a nice experience. This is not one-off, I have consistently found warmth and at the same time lot of more knowledge. You don’t get the vague look here when you mention you are from India. I did not even have to spell out my name so many times when I had to book for the B&Bs.

A cottage with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls

From Cotswold we drove directly to our final destination Cornwall, to the famed Dauphne Du Maurier landscapes. We reached St. Ives, the supposed artists’ village on the west end of Cornwall and hated the sight of it. There was something pretentious about the whole place with pretty villas overlooking the bay, crowded with tacky souvenir shops and cafes. We took a short walk to a nearby beach and quickly departed from that town. Our final destination for the night was Penzance where I had booked a B&B. I did not expect much from that place since I did no planning, I ran through the Lonely Planet to find the first available B&B in west Cornwall and booked it. Thankfully all the ones in St. Ives were booked out. We decided to take the coast route and as usual Madhavi did some good planning on the route and we took a small detour and landed in this secluded cove with a small light house in the end. The place looked deadly with very gusty winds, cliffs, rocks and caves. Very much like what you would imagine when reading a Famous Five, pirates and all. We braved the winds and walked to almost the surf. There was no one around and we had the whole coast to ourselves. It was really fantastic. Penzance turned out to be a much better place than St. Ives. The next day the weather was expected to be sunny and Madhavi again did some good planning (again) to pick up an area in the coast with more spectacular scenery. We drove there straight and spent the whole day mostly lolling around on soft grass beds on cliff tops watching the surf pound the rocks. It was most satisfying when we saw two kestrels hovering over the cliff edges looking for something to munch. Madhavi spent a lot of time photographing waves, rocks and old abandoned tin mines in that area.

Breathtaking Cornwall coast

On the whole a very satisfying trip. I guess we will not venture out again for longer trips, only day trips from London. May be Canterbury and Devon and thats it!

Michael Wood

Michael Wood is this British historian who had made the two fantastic documentaries that I got to watch through PBS - In the footsteps of Alexander The Great and Conquistadores. It combines history with travel. Essentially he follows the route of Iskander and also Pizarro giving you historical information and anecdotes. Wonderfully done and his enthusiasm is infectious. I would say he is the equivalent of David Attenborough for history. Recently I read two books written by him. I was looking for some good book on English history and I landed upon Domesday: A search for the Roots of England written by him. Domesday was written circa 1050 AD under the instruction of William the Conqueror. It was essentially a record of all tax payers during that time and the record contains their wealth as well as a wealth of information when researched by Wood. Through that record he has speculated the life of ordinary people in England as well the structure of society. He goes back to Iron Age, Roman Empire, Viking Invasions, Normans and finally Anglo Saxons. Interesting read.

The second book I read by Michael Wood was Smile of Murugan. It is a kind of travelogue in Tamil Nadu with glimpses of history. For long I have been desperately looking for a readable history of Tamil Nadu and other south Indian states. The south, I feel, gets a step motherly treatment amongst all historians either Indian or otherwise. I can't imagine how terrible it must be for the north east. I have not seen any treatment at all (motherly or step motherly) of say Assam or Manipur in our history texts. Anyway, I think Smile... is a very sympathetic view of the Tamil culture (sometimes too sympathetic) but is well written except for a few glaring editorial glitches (IIT is refered to as ITT and Kamban sometimes as Kampan and sometimes as Kamban). Nevertheless it is a very charming rendition of Tamil Nadu, its temples and its peoples. Some of the less known temples mentioned in the book seems worth visiting. I am including that in my plans for late January/early February.

Music

The Royal Albert Hall organizes a program titled ignite in which budding artistes are provided a chance to display their wares during lunch time every Friday. I am now making it a routine to be in the South Kensington area during those times, check out the music going on the café and then head out to the museums. Last Friday it was a jazz performance by a group who call themselves Dom James and his Dixie Ticklers. It was a lively performance enjoyed by the audience whose average age must be over 70. Considering it is a working day afternoon I guess only those who have time (see previous post) on their hands have the privilege to enjoy this kind of stuff. I prefer to listen to live music in a café atmosphere rather than a stuffy concert hall. I am always too tense about clapping between movements! On the other end of the spectrum of reverence/irreverence we have these karnatic classic music performances during wedding receptions where the audience is busy jabbering away catching up on family gossip completely ignoring/insulting the artists. I would like it somewhere in between.

Does the Indian music scene have this wide spectrum I wonder? Classical, jazz, rock, pop, grunge, rap, hip-hop and so on. I know we have very established traditions for classical music and on the light side we have ghazals and quawalis. And then we have the film music. But is there any real light music production not related to films these days? I also wonder about the creativity of our musicians. Even in the classical tradition there seems to be limited composers and compositions, the artist can only render those differently in each performance but the essential composition remains the same. The number of western classical composers is numerous and includes both religious and secular themes. Is there any secular karnatic composition? Also the modern western musicians are very multi-faceted. If you take Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (if you still consider him as modern and not Paleolithic), he composes music, writes the lyrics for the songs, plays instruments (flute among many) and also sings. And he is not alone, most of the serious musicians do that unless if they belong to a packaged boy-band or Britney Spears type group where the main artist is just a marketing front and a whole team is working behind this brand. How versatile are Indian artists?

Talking of Jethro Tull I was quite pleased to find his name in the science museum in the agriculture section. He had invented the seed drill which improved the productivity of wheat cropping by 8 times! The museum was just fantastic. I just spent whole two hours in the energy section and agriculture section. The energy section was all about steam engines and the various inventions related to them. Really ingenious! I will have to go back to the other sections later.

Talking of Ian Anderson, I found out that he had made more money out of Salmon farming, than through his music, in the Isle of Skye which we had visited a couple of weeks back! This goes to prove The Fundamental Interconnectedness of Things theory as proposed by Dirk Gently.

Talking of Dirk Gently, I know that a Douglas Fir was planted in memory of Douglas Adams. Do any of you know where? I would love to pay homage to that wonderful person.

Time – The Importance of Being Lazy

“… And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but its sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
Sun is the same in a relative way but you are older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time….”
- Roger Waters, Time

It was a glorious weekend in the London and we spent it most appropriately by doing nothing. A casual stroll along the Thames to Kingston, a heavy brunch at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, saunter back home and a long afternoon snooze. It was a perfect Saturday. On Sunday, glorious again, we walked all the way to Richmond Park and felt very martyred and had a softy ice-cream cone (it has really been eons since I have had one). The lazy weekend left me wondering about time and its value. In the current “go-go” culture one feels obliged to sound apologetic if the weekend plan is nothing!

I am totally enjoying this break. Doing nothing in general and giving myself time to think, ponder and mull over utterly insignificant stuff by which time it is time to go back to bed. Ah, seems perfect. Also, it gives me great opportunity to spend similar hours with Madhavi. We have not had these moments ever since she started working again 6 years back. She had taken a break when were in California and the time we used to spend with each other then was great! She used to finish all the house work by the time I was back from office and we would go biking on those long summer days. Now the roles have reversed and it is nice once again. I feel even more relaxed as my time is completely under my control.

My dad retired when I was in my 12th standard. My mom continued to work for another 3 years and then retired. They had only one year of relaxed time together before my dad died. Why do we waste this precious time and postpone the relaxation part to an uncertain end? Should we be enjoying life when we are in good health rather than wait for old age when we cannot take it for granted?

It is not just the time available for relaxation or vacation. The very definition of vacation seems to be changing to add pressure and not reduce it. This work-hard-play-hard stuff makes even vacations appear like work. I remember my dad spent most of his retirement sitting next to our front room window with folded arms watching the world go by. The peace and contentment he exuded is something I aspire to achieve. There is this Tamil saying “Summa iruppade sugam”, which translates to “Bliss, it is just hanging out”!

Rrrrighty Ho!

The Scottish highlands reminded me a lot of the Sahyadris in Maharashtra, especially during the monsoon. Only it was colder here and very few people around. We went on a 3 day tour to the Isle of Skye conducted by Rabbies. The tour was excellent and we would highly recommend it and also make sure your tour guide happens to be Shelby. She was very good, with frequent “Rrrighty Ho!”s in a strong Scottish accent. We drove in a mini coach through the Scottish highlands to the Isle of Skye and Shelby kept us informed about the history of the place which was mostly about wars with England, Mary of Scots and all that kind of stuff. She also gave out the significance of various castles that are peppered around in the most scenic spots of the country. Mostly war and bloodshed and a love hate relationship with England where the love is to fight with them, at least as express by our guide.
Fortunately we had good weather and that would mean that mostly cloudy, on several occasions rain and on very few occasions sunshine. The point is that it is considered to be a fantastic day if it is not totally washed out. If sunshine is at a premium in England, you can just forget about it in Scotland. In any case the landscape looks better and the castles look more ominous under heavy cloud cover.
The Scottish language, Gaelic, is almost dead but there are efforts to revive it. With the new devolution of power to the Scottish parliament (a crazy building in Edinburrah) there is some optimism on that front. It sounds very different but most people, even our guide don’t know it.
We were in Skye for two nights and a full day. We went walking around in crazy wind and rain and loved every moment of it. With the mist, rain and wind the place looks magical. Of course what I suspected was finally confirmed. My supposed water proof Gore-Tex jacket from REI was not waterproof after all. To make things worse it just soaks up water and refuses to dry for a day! So now I am looking for a good rain jacket (I want to spend next monsoon in the Sahyadris!), any recommendations?

The highlight of this tour, for me, was the streams. Don’t forget to taste the water there. That peaty, smooth taste is what provides the whiskey from these places that distinctive flavor. Of course I did not miss the whisky tasting trip and also picked up a bottle of Lagavulin (my favourite) and another one of some Islay single malt distilled at Ardbeg in 1996 (recommended by the guy who with his kilt and all looked a serious whiskey drinker). So folks, be nice to me when I get back to Bangalore and we can have a quiet drink. I think they should also bottle the water from there. I would like to freeze that water and use them for Scotch on rocks. What say?
We did end up in going on a boat ride on Loch Ness. No monster sighting though. Our guide tried terribly hard to convince that there is something indeed lurking in those deep waters. Loch Ness is deeper than the North Sea. This is due to some crazy geological quirk – a fault between two plates creating a deep valley and then a glazier coming into it during ice age. The boat had a cool sonar equipment fitted into the boat to track Nessy (as the monster is affectionately called in these parts) but that made the ride far more informative. We got to know the shape of the lake floor as well as the shoals of fishes around. There was some salt water fishes which got trapped in the lake when the glacier melted and in a matter of 15000 years have adapted to fresh water conditions. Pretty cool huh? Will we humans be able to adapt to climate change?
I was quite curious as to why in spite of so much rain it was mostly open grasslands and only small forests here and there in the Scottish highlands. Was it because of the peaty surface I wondered? Well no. As I suspected it was just plain deforestation over millennia of human habitation. It was covered with 98% forests before. And this started and probably was completed well before industrial revolution. So it is not this modern age which has caused all this but traditional agricultural and grazing practices. The jholawala types would always try to convince that ALL problems are due to modern methods. But impartial analysis would clearly indicate environment change and degradation started long back, albeit the rate of change might have been slower then. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond for more on this.
Edinburrah is a fantastic city. The old stone buildings look ominous in the cloudy weather there. We spent a whole day roaming around the town. The castle dominates the old town. We did the walk recommended by Lonely Planet and it turned out quite interesting. We also went to an exhibition titled ‘Peoples story’ which had display about the life of regular folks of Edinburrah, not the Dukes and Kings. There was a whole underground town in which the poor folks lived. The pretty buildings sat on top of these. They generally lead a miserable life and it was particularly bad during the times of plague. There was an interesting piece about domestic help, about how all of them were woman from rural areas and about their difficulties in Edinburrah. This was in 1850. I guess these are issues that we are facing now in Bangalore. The world is indeed flat!