Why reinvent the wheel, and tell you what I think of the jaat-walas? Here's my brother in law Badri (Young Ginu's Southie husband), who does it brilliantly, in the January issue of Outlook Traveller - click on picture to enlarge & read!
BONGS EVERYWHERE...
Why reinvent the wheel, and tell you what I think of the jaat-walas? Here's my brother in law Badri (Young Ginu's Southie husband), who does it brilliantly, in the January issue of Outlook Traveller - click on picture to enlarge & read!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
One more year over, can you believe it?
Is it just me or do you all feel the same way - the deja vu feeling at yet another new year? One more complete earth revolution is now done. In the zillions it will do through time.
One more milestone on the long road of life. With one essential difference. Milestones are in hundreds and thousands as one zips thru' on the highways and freeways, whereas here, we individual humans will ultimately only count it on our fingers ( I don't mean just ten, I count the Indian way - on the creases of the fingers). Apart from taking stock of life, and some resolutions for the future etc. what else does it imply anyway?? And isn't it rather commercial, to make a stock-keeping issue out of life! So much to ruminate over, so much to look forward to...
Even in the smelling of roses, I find, folks nowadays do it by appointment. Leisure is hard work. Worse, the next nextgen do this in abstract, in a mediated way - on TV or on PS2/ Nintendo. The real roses will disappear, as the real people have - and no one will be any the wiser. As we all continue to live with our illusions...
In that respect, it has been a curiously fulfilling year gone past. Once the decision was taken to break with old habits, there is a contentment in doing the usual. In going back to the basics. After ages, being a regular on the long distance train thingy within India, as I do the small town route. I badly needed this reality check in life. Meeting real people. Savouring each step of the journey, never mind the destination. Feet firmly planted on the ground. Eating freshly cooked food - jawar / bajri rotis, appe (had never heard of that! Different from appams), in cosy homes, where the woman is always frightfully busy all the time (making us busybodies feel we have been on a breezy holiday so far) and so warmly welcoming. Viewing life from the inside - their chhota chhota joys, their bada-bada anxieties, their day to day rituals (Khandoba champa shashti came right next to Margashish ka pehla Guruvar - like a Domino set up) , the hopes for their nextgen (the tailor widow has just paid Rs. 26,000/- as annual fees for a private college education for her son - she earns Rs. 25/- per blouse stitched). Of wondering how to stretch the last penny earned... Solapur is proving to be an amazing experience. A microcosm of India. Looking forward to spending big chunks of the coming year in this town.
There is also a part of me that baulks at the thought of the PhD fieldwork coming up. This year up ahead seems so stretched and obscenely long. But I needed to do this 'slowing down of time' for myself - the years gone past seem to have vanished in a jiffy, Dopplerized into oblivion. It is an interesting crossroad I stand on now. Of the past and of the future... And it is not as if there is just one road forward -into the future. Methinks instead that the only road ahead is 'the past' , for that is all that really stays on forever, as history. Each step of the journey will be grist to the mill of the 'past' - all I do is I collect 'future nostalgia' in these live moments of the present...
Realizing how easy - and how ridiculous it had been - in the past, to have moved away into one's own world peopled by (boring) folks just like us, who travel in AC cars, work in high-rise AC offices, visit places by air, wear and discuss bling and the sensex, basically live in a bauble bubble. Where we talk with great pride of India's progress, basis the India one lives in - the ivory tower India - and with zero access to the (real?) India out there.
More to come of all that went past zipping thru in these past few months - recently discovering the new bestseller book 'Eat, Pray, Love' of Elizabeth Gilbert, thanks to Rashmi Bansal who's given me her personal wonderfully annotated copy (so that it is like reading a book within a book:-)), and I add myself to the list of more and more women in the world who swear by its insights (it's 3 of us here for sure - me, Rashmi, Nayanu, each seeking and finding parallels)- is it mere chick-lit, or is there great depth out there?
Rashmi and I - we need to get down with penning our gems and insights soon, in the form of a book, rather than just threatening to do so for the last 2 years !! Let me know, all those, who will buy a copy of our book (and not expect us to give it gratis to our friends :-) :-) )
Of watching a new bangla movie 'Kailashey Kelenkari' with the family at Kolkata - tightly edited, 'remixed' pretty well for the current times ( ref to e-tickets, cell phones), though written ages ago by Satyajit Ray - with a rather real dose of violence, air-crash et al (tough job explaining to the daughter that it was OK to board a flight the next day)... idly wondering how the Satyajit Ray scion, Sandip Ray has erased women from the entire movie! Apart from one gone-past-in-a-flash heroine of an ad being shot - who was, in any case, more a woman as object, than as subject, no sign and no need for a single woman in the entire 2.5 hours....
Perhaps the world of detectives, crime, violence, warfare - is only inhabited by the one (less than better?) inward-gazing half, so I should not keep pointing this out...
But I wonder - is it indeed a world where we women can be erased so easily!? The wives, the daughters, the mothers, the quiet home-makers?
Of beginning the new year with a bang - literally. First, collaring an eve-teaser with a hard slap in a marketplace in Kolkata (had its immediate advantages - the mishtiwala at the mishtir dokan put in two extra sandesh in the purchase, after this vantage view :-) ). Later, with two suitcases misplaced by the esteemed Jet Lite airlines, yelling at the lackadaisical staff at Mumbai airport . To go figure where the suitcases were (took two hours to figure that they had landed in Bangalore on another flight that departed Kolkata at the same time). And to get the compensation money we deserved for the delay (and that most airlines conveniently fail to inform you about by themselves - we got Rs. 2500/-).
Next morning reading the front page news about the mob behavior outside Marriott... And then watching the Mumbai police commissioner Jadhav making an ass of himself as he brushed off the entire incident, on TV, as normal.
But hey, it is now time to go get the bhaji home... Organize the painting of Ma-Bappa's apartment. Find the source of the leak in the duct. Buy reeds from Furtado's for my daughter's clarinet. Pay the salaries due... That then is the normal life of a woman. So I shall continue with my ruminations tomorrow... To Usha Iyer in distant Pittsburg, thanks for pointing out that my Pandeji mail appears in an un(in?)decipherable font. The thing is I was wondering what this wonderful sounding font called 'webding' looked like (looks like some delightful squiggles but I recommend you don't try it, you might get stuck with it like I did), I seemed to be unable to get out of it in that day's post. When many others mentioned they couldn't read it either ( for a web challenged person such as me, am still not sure how to modify the original post for everyone, and not just me to view the change), here it is once again - the 'Purchase Power Parity in India' blog, written during Diwali).
---------------------------------------------------
Pandeji has just delivered some piping hot samosas and glistening lavang latas. On this bright and clear Diwali morning. The samosas are just as we like it - light, crunchy, not over-spicy and not too large. And the LLs melt in your mouth - not too sweet, not too soft.
This old man appeared out of nowhere at our doorsteps around a year ago, with a large white-cloth wrapped hill of degchis containing various mithais, with a word-of-mouth recommendation from a distant neighbor. I refused to buy anything initially and quizzed him with what I like to believe was a hard-nosed attitude - 'who cooks this? how can you just expect me to buy your stuff when I don't even know you? where do you stay' etc. I never got any satisfactory reply and warned him, I won't buy it next time (and bought a lot of stuff anyway).
By now, months later, of course, it is like 'oh, it's you - give me six samosas and twelve lavang latas, will you?' Without having figured out his antecedents yet.
And the total? Rs. 60/-
Nowadays I tell myself about how tickled I am at this wonderfully sublimated globalization. That we can partake of such prices at my own door, in the so-called gated community of Hiranandani Gardens. At around a dollar and a half, in the Y2K plus 7 year of 2007, a wonderful snack for the entire family. AND a couple of friends who dropped by, over chai.
All this talk of purchase power parity - how does one compare a Pandeji across the world anyway? What exactly is the equivalent of 6 sams plus 12 lls in the West?
The istriwala just delivered 10 items of clothing. Ironed at a price of a total of Rs. 20/-: This is 50 cents in all. The fellow that washes the car charges Rs. 200/- per 'bada gadi' and Rs. 150/- per chhota gadi, per month that is - and makes an income of over Rs. 5000/- working from 5 am to 8.30 am, across a few homes. He then works full-time elsewhere 10 am to 6 pm, and is seen as one of the successful guys in his circle.
How can we measure parity for something only we have and understand, as part of our economy? How can we put a price to the slogging put in? Should we be celebrating this 'value-for-money' we get or wondering seriously if this is to be seen as 'exploitation'?
And then there is the 'bauni' factor. Pandeji claims to begin his day's sales at my place (hubby dearest believes dryly, that this is his stock line-of-trade). But all said and done, the thing is you don't want to not-bauni someone. If the first customer brings him luck, let the luck come in, we say. That's our pride in our peculiar Indian 'culture' again. How can you turn away such an old man who's earning a living anyway? (my family pegs him at a doddering 80, he says he is 64).
And what the heck. It is like harking back to the times of our childhood when we lived in the now - fast-vanishing 'middle-class' padas where hawkers announced their wares, each with a lilting and individual call of his/ her own. When the poring over the goods with the neighbors' helpful comments was an essential part of our socialization. When they all aided in the bargaining along with us. When it was essential to crib about something or the other to the hawker. The rising prices. If the prices were good, then the quality ('last time it was not at all like you used to make it').
So. One of these days, we may all be poisoned by Pandeji. That's what say the cautionary doubters of today. Or worse, he may be thrown out by the 'gatekeepers' before we even get to know he had arrived.
And that is when we shall be totally McDonaldized - No taking pity. No bauni (imagine, the guy in the McDonald's counter telling you 'aaj aapka bauni hai' and then doing one elaborate circling of the cash register with your 100 rupee note). Or imagine this: Telling McDonald's "last time your ruthlessly 'always-the-same' McChicken burger was not at all like you make it'!
Ah, Globalization - here we come.
One more milestone on the long road of life. With one essential difference. Milestones are in hundreds and thousands as one zips thru' on the highways and freeways, whereas here, we individual humans will ultimately only count it on our fingers ( I don't mean just ten, I count the Indian way - on the creases of the fingers). Apart from taking stock of life, and some resolutions for the future etc. what else does it imply anyway?? And isn't it rather commercial, to make a stock-keeping issue out of life! So much to ruminate over, so much to look forward to...
Even in the smelling of roses, I find, folks nowadays do it by appointment. Leisure is hard work. Worse, the next nextgen do this in abstract, in a mediated way - on TV or on PS2/ Nintendo. The real roses will disappear, as the real people have - and no one will be any the wiser. As we all continue to live with our illusions...
In that respect, it has been a curiously fulfilling year gone past. Once the decision was taken to break with old habits, there is a contentment in doing the usual. In going back to the basics. After ages, being a regular on the long distance train thingy within India, as I do the small town route. I badly needed this reality check in life. Meeting real people. Savouring each step of the journey, never mind the destination. Feet firmly planted on the ground. Eating freshly cooked food - jawar / bajri rotis, appe (had never heard of that! Different from appams), in cosy homes, where the woman is always frightfully busy all the time (making us busybodies feel we have been on a breezy holiday so far) and so warmly welcoming. Viewing life from the inside - their chhota chhota joys, their bada-bada anxieties, their day to day rituals (Khandoba champa shashti came right next to Margashish ka pehla Guruvar - like a Domino set up) , the hopes for their nextgen (the tailor widow has just paid Rs. 26,000/- as annual fees for a private college education for her son - she earns Rs. 25/- per blouse stitched). Of wondering how to stretch the last penny earned... Solapur is proving to be an amazing experience. A microcosm of India. Looking forward to spending big chunks of the coming year in this town.
There is also a part of me that baulks at the thought of the PhD fieldwork coming up. This year up ahead seems so stretched and obscenely long. But I needed to do this 'slowing down of time' for myself - the years gone past seem to have vanished in a jiffy, Dopplerized into oblivion. It is an interesting crossroad I stand on now. Of the past and of the future... And it is not as if there is just one road forward -into the future. Methinks instead that the only road ahead is 'the past' , for that is all that really stays on forever, as history. Each step of the journey will be grist to the mill of the 'past' - all I do is I collect 'future nostalgia' in these live moments of the present...
Realizing how easy - and how ridiculous it had been - in the past, to have moved away into one's own world peopled by (boring) folks just like us, who travel in AC cars, work in high-rise AC offices, visit places by air, wear and discuss bling and the sensex, basically live in a bauble bubble. Where we talk with great pride of India's progress, basis the India one lives in - the ivory tower India - and with zero access to the (real?) India out there.
More to come of all that went past zipping thru in these past few months - recently discovering the new bestseller book 'Eat, Pray, Love' of Elizabeth Gilbert, thanks to Rashmi Bansal who's given me her personal wonderfully annotated copy (so that it is like reading a book within a book:-)), and I add myself to the list of more and more women in the world who swear by its insights (it's 3 of us here for sure - me, Rashmi, Nayanu, each seeking and finding parallels)- is it mere chick-lit, or is there great depth out there?
Rashmi and I - we need to get down with penning our gems and insights soon, in the form of a book, rather than just threatening to do so for the last 2 years !! Let me know, all those, who will buy a copy of our book (and not expect us to give it gratis to our friends :-) :-) )
Of watching a new bangla movie 'Kailashey Kelenkari' with the family at Kolkata - tightly edited, 'remixed' pretty well for the current times ( ref to e-tickets, cell phones), though written ages ago by Satyajit Ray - with a rather real dose of violence, air-crash et al (tough job explaining to the daughter that it was OK to board a flight the next day)... idly wondering how the Satyajit Ray scion, Sandip Ray has erased women from the entire movie! Apart from one gone-past-in-a-flash heroine of an ad being shot - who was, in any case, more a woman as object, than as subject, no sign and no need for a single woman in the entire 2.5 hours....
Perhaps the world of detectives, crime, violence, warfare - is only inhabited by the one (less than better?) inward-gazing half, so I should not keep pointing this out...
But I wonder - is it indeed a world where we women can be erased so easily!? The wives, the daughters, the mothers, the quiet home-makers?
Of beginning the new year with a bang - literally. First, collaring an eve-teaser with a hard slap in a marketplace in Kolkata (had its immediate advantages - the mishtiwala at the mishtir dokan put in two extra sandesh in the purchase, after this vantage view :-) ). Later, with two suitcases misplaced by the esteemed Jet Lite airlines, yelling at the lackadaisical staff at Mumbai airport . To go figure where the suitcases were (took two hours to figure that they had landed in Bangalore on another flight that departed Kolkata at the same time). And to get the compensation money we deserved for the delay (and that most airlines conveniently fail to inform you about by themselves - we got Rs. 2500/-).
Next morning reading the front page news about the mob behavior outside Marriott... And then watching the Mumbai police commissioner Jadhav making an ass of himself as he brushed off the entire incident, on TV, as normal.
But hey, it is now time to go get the bhaji home... Organize the painting of Ma-Bappa's apartment. Find the source of the leak in the duct. Buy reeds from Furtado's for my daughter's clarinet. Pay the salaries due... That then is the normal life of a woman. So I shall continue with my ruminations tomorrow... To Usha Iyer in distant Pittsburg, thanks for pointing out that my Pandeji mail appears in an un(in?)decipherable font. The thing is I was wondering what this wonderful sounding font called 'webding' looked like (looks like some delightful squiggles but I recommend you don't try it, you might get stuck with it like I did), I seemed to be unable to get out of it in that day's post. When many others mentioned they couldn't read it either ( for a web challenged person such as me, am still not sure how to modify the original post for everyone, and not just me to view the change), here it is once again - the 'Purchase Power Parity in India' blog, written during Diwali).
---------------------------------------------------
Pandeji has just delivered some piping hot samosas and glistening lavang latas. On this bright and clear Diwali morning. The samosas are just as we like it - light, crunchy, not over-spicy and not too large. And the LLs melt in your mouth - not too sweet, not too soft.
This old man appeared out of nowhere at our doorsteps around a year ago, with a large white-cloth wrapped hill of degchis containing various mithais, with a word-of-mouth recommendation from a distant neighbor. I refused to buy anything initially and quizzed him with what I like to believe was a hard-nosed attitude - 'who cooks this? how can you just expect me to buy your stuff when I don't even know you? where do you stay' etc. I never got any satisfactory reply and warned him, I won't buy it next time (and bought a lot of stuff anyway).
By now, months later, of course, it is like 'oh, it's you - give me six samosas and twelve lavang latas, will you?' Without having figured out his antecedents yet.
And the total? Rs. 60/-
Nowadays I tell myself about how tickled I am at this wonderfully sublimated globalization. That we can partake of such prices at my own door, in the so-called gated community of Hiranandani Gardens. At around a dollar and a half, in the Y2K plus 7 year of 2007, a wonderful snack for the entire family. AND a couple of friends who dropped by, over chai.
All this talk of purchase power parity - how does one compare a Pandeji across the world anyway? What exactly is the equivalent of 6 sams plus 12 lls in the West?
The istriwala just delivered 10 items of clothing. Ironed at a price of a total of Rs. 20/-: This is 50 cents in all. The fellow that washes the car charges Rs. 200/- per 'bada gadi' and Rs. 150/- per chhota gadi, per month that is - and makes an income of over Rs. 5000/- working from 5 am to 8.30 am, across a few homes. He then works full-time elsewhere 10 am to 6 pm, and is seen as one of the successful guys in his circle.
How can we measure parity for something only we have and understand, as part of our economy? How can we put a price to the slogging put in? Should we be celebrating this 'value-for-money' we get or wondering seriously if this is to be seen as 'exploitation'?
And then there is the 'bauni' factor. Pandeji claims to begin his day's sales at my place (hubby dearest believes dryly, that this is his stock line-of-trade). But all said and done, the thing is you don't want to not-bauni someone. If the first customer brings him luck, let the luck come in, we say. That's our pride in our peculiar Indian 'culture' again. How can you turn away such an old man who's earning a living anyway? (my family pegs him at a doddering 80, he says he is 64).
And what the heck. It is like harking back to the times of our childhood when we lived in the now - fast-vanishing 'middle-class' padas where hawkers announced their wares, each with a lilting and individual call of his/ her own. When the poring over the goods with the neighbors' helpful comments was an essential part of our socialization. When they all aided in the bargaining along with us. When it was essential to crib about something or the other to the hawker. The rising prices. If the prices were good, then the quality ('last time it was not at all like you used to make it').
So. One of these days, we may all be poisoned by Pandeji. That's what say the cautionary doubters of today. Or worse, he may be thrown out by the 'gatekeepers' before we even get to know he had arrived.
And that is when we shall be totally McDonaldized - No taking pity. No bauni (imagine, the guy in the McDonald's counter telling you 'aaj aapka bauni hai' and then doing one elaborate circling of the cash register with your 100 rupee note). Or imagine this: Telling McDonald's "last time your ruthlessly 'always-the-same' McChicken burger was not at all like you make it'!
Ah, Globalization - here we come.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Dadikaka, we miss you.
'Jug-jug jiyo, beti'... who'll say that so lovingly each time, Dadikaka?
A completely unexpected joke each time - where will the 'each time' now come from, Dadikaka? And your infectious laughter?
Those wonderful paintings of yours - who will now paint them? That fabulous Hindi hand-writing of yours, that we so painstakingly tried to copy, the shuddha bhasha - and the values we imbibed in your presence....
That absolutely amazing voice of yours - really, the side of you that the world is usually aware of, and that youtube does have some bits of - where did it go now, Dadikaka?
Our earliest childhood memories are so wrapped up in your enveloping warmth - you taught us what unconditional love is. That we unconsciously imbibed and have hoped to have replicated. And more than anyone else, you loved this name we called you by - Dadi-kaka = Bearded Uncle.... Dad's brother with a beard.... One day, after a decade of having called you by this name, Ma tried her level best to get us to call you 'Uncleji'. She said it does not sound good to yell out dadikaka in a crowd, making everyone turn around in shock - to a figure who is so completely revered in public.
Uncleji sounds respectful, she felt.
'Nahi bhai!' you said (thankfully!).
'I will always be Dadikaka to my Munnu-Mitku'. And Dadikaka continued to reign as ever.
You brought spirituality to us - by just being you.
I know what you will say now... stop regretting. Look ahead. Jeeti raho, meri bachchi....
And I suppose we shall do so. Go on in life. Enjoying the silly and unexpected twists of life.
How many people are lucky to have had your electric presence in their lives anyway? To be touched by you in this lifetime, to be blessed by you... And to now regret that we did not meet often enough.... When did we grow up and become so preoccupied with our own lives, Dadikaka?
Tera Raamji karenge bedaa paar, udaasi man kahe ko kare, you sang this song that Bappa and you put together. Way way back in the 60s.
Bappa and you - that is another amazing story. Of how you met. Unbelievable.
Lots and lots of love, and eternal respect, Dadikaka, we adore you...
Munnu-Mitku, behan-bhai
Abhi bhi yaad hai, woh butterfly
(Ah, Dadikaka, while the bhajans you wrote yourself were out of this world, your poems on us were pretty gross ... and you knew that!)
Friday, December 21, 2007
Aaja, Khinchle...
Watched Aaja Nachle, about 'small town Shamli' - in an asli small town Solapur. A town deep inside
Aaja Nachle was like falling into the hands of a bad dentist who's taking his/her own time to khinchofy your teeth.
So here was one more movie with the trope of a Bollywood small town - a vanishing point of low buildings beyond the hillock, a place where announcements, we were given to believe, still needed to be made from a bhonpu-cycle-rickshaw... the geography always looks suspiciously similar in all these places. What else can we expect, built as they all are under the sky of the Film City property in Goregaon Mumbai, where if you turn the camera an extra inch either way, you get to see the high-rises of the suburbs.
Ill-thought out storyline of half-baked aspirations. Worse, the makers forget that small towns whether quarter or half baked, do rest their beliefs within the ideological framework of the 'Indian Family' - much more into 'shame' and 'values' than their more metropolitan counterparts - for that very reason, the protagonist comes across as one that not the hip youngster nor the wannabe of the city, and not quite the small-towner will relate to... a carelessly carefree woman, following her own instincts. Instincts are shown to be proven wrong - from a small town perspective anyway, when it is carelessly thrown in, that she got 'divorced' (bad girl!), and one who comes back running at the bidding of a long forgotten 'guru', but never the parents, presumably because they did not yell out for her.
And why Laila-Majnu for God's sake! as the story-within-the- divorcee-story? In 2007?
Well, it didn't seem to weave any magic in a small town, that's for sure. Not sure if the folks in metros will throng the multiplexes situated within shopping malls to see this sanctimonious story that is built on the theme that small towns should not get this shopping mall. Oh boy.
Ugh, and why does every movie have an audition sequence nowadays? Was intriguing in RDB, just about OK in OSO but by now in this one, it is like mildewed roti being served on a platter. And the only actor who manages to step out of the pasteboard boundaries set for them is Irrffaaan or whatever his spelling goes nowadays. An unscrupulous businessman is an ubiquitous Indian phenomenon, and he makes it spine-chillingly so. The rest are just not there anywhere in the story. Kunal, Konkona, Raghubir, Ranvir, Jugal are not different from the hundreds of 'Shamli' residents who suddenly step out on stage during the grand finale ('yeh kahan se tapke' asked the Solapur audience to one another).
And will YRF please explain the most inexplicable point of all? How do you get the pulse of
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
God. Not again....
It is one thing to read about folks with fanatic beliefs (or even see them on strident TV). It is quite another to run into them out of the blue, in an absolutely average and otherwise normal day-to-day life.
Within the past one month, have jaw-droppingly met two human beings - one an MBA classmate of my husband (from IIM-B, OK?) who I was meeting for the first time, and the other (another day) a senior marine engineer I was introduced to, at a dinner party.
Each convinced about their personal way of looking at the world. Of complete distrust of the 'other' religion they had constructed in their minds. Equally distrustful of anyone's pluralistic credentials. In the midst of a staid dinner-do, with its polite guests, to have an oh-so-polite row with a stranger, was to me, a strange, disorienting experience by itself. Also made me aware of how easy it is for all of us to fall into a routine and pattern of our everyday lives, with little need to meet / interact with folks from outside our usual ambit (thus, we usually spend all our time with folks who have similar thoughts as ours). And then, when you do meet someone this way, how easy it is to find not just a healthy difference of opinion (that makes life interesting actually!) but someone completely completely polarized in his / her own set beliefs. [I expect these two chaps felt the same way about me..]
Coincidentally or not, I am currently reading Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion'. While I am not an atheist like him, I am intrigued by his logic. So far (page 156 now), his definition of God - the Christian / Islamic / Judaic / Hindu one - one in a human form, who is supposed to listen to your prayers and even answer them by favoring you - in these respects his distrust is well taken. I have zero patience with a karva-chauthified country... But I can't quite figure out what it is with RD's own strident all 'Reason and Rationality' tone of voice and 'evidence and proof' fundas. We are splitting hairs, methinks, re: God.
To me, God is the name I give the awesomeness I feel - of the Universe, the very fact that we exist, that we question our existence, that we 'love', we 'smile and laugh'. It is in the sheer diversity of the immense yet puny planet we inhabit, a world where even chaos theory has a logic of fractals behind it. In short, a world that never ceases to amaze, in its order as much as its disorder.The formless 'consciousness'. That was there in the era of the dinosaurs, now and long after we'll be gone.
Where miracles are not just in the mysteries left to be solved, but the miracle of the possible - the three airplanes I can now see out of my window, waiting to land over Mumbai airport, in the 'sms's that I can receive at a moment's notice, from anywhere in the world. That is akin to reading someone somewhere's deepest recess of their minds. In everything that we have 'created' where nothing existed earlier.
It is even in the exasperation of meeting folks who dig in their heels, and believe all 'proofs' proffered by their own kinds, are right, and nothing you can say can anyway change their already-made-up minds. :-)
Reminds me also of Andy's Christian sister-in-law. Andy is one of my corporate clients from the UK, and he mentioned one day, how she does not believe that we human beings 'evolved' from apes such as orangutans or chimpanzees, for like she says 'have you ever or has anyone ever , ever seen even one of the thousands of apes in our zoos becoming a human!?' :-) :-) Ahhh....
At yet another do last week, a gentleman (who loves conundrums) posed this query to me: How come he could recall at least 5 occasions in this past year, when in a gathering of 20 people, two had their birthdays on the same date and month... and what is the statistical probability of something like this happening, he asked, when each could have been born on any of 365 different dates. He said he threw this challenge at me since I am a Stats student (was too, in my undergrad!)
My reply - not sure if it was to his satisfaction - was this: you and I have just met today, and here are 15 other people around us. With no birthdays matching. This will be promptly and conveniently forgotten by all of us. We human beings are social by nature and meet folks ALL the time. Everyday. But when on the rare occasions, birthdays do match, it sticks in our mind. This is psychology. Not statistics.
Now, the question that I am intrigued by is: What was the probability of running into such well-educated fanatics who believe so totally in their own version of the world. On two out of three social dos, in one month. One of them, in fact, disbelieved all statistics... census or otherwise, and actually indicated to me that he thinks Muslims outnumber Hindus in India due to their 'high birthrates'. How did I know we Hindus were in the majority anyway, he demanded.
Well...
This reminds me of Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot. As quoted by Dawkins. 'How can you doubt', Russell asked, 'my suggestion that between Earth and Mars, there is a china teapot circling the Sun in an elliptical orbit'?
And any proof you give, will always be 'non-proof', you see, for I can always ask 'How do you REALLY know it is not there, eh?"
Within the past one month, have jaw-droppingly met two human beings - one an MBA classmate of my husband (from IIM-B, OK?) who I was meeting for the first time, and the other (another day) a senior marine engineer I was introduced to, at a dinner party.
Each convinced about their personal way of looking at the world. Of complete distrust of the 'other' religion they had constructed in their minds. Equally distrustful of anyone's pluralistic credentials. In the midst of a staid dinner-do, with its polite guests, to have an oh-so-polite row with a stranger, was to me, a strange, disorienting experience by itself. Also made me aware of how easy it is for all of us to fall into a routine and pattern of our everyday lives, with little need to meet / interact with folks from outside our usual ambit (thus, we usually spend all our time with folks who have similar thoughts as ours). And then, when you do meet someone this way, how easy it is to find not just a healthy difference of opinion (that makes life interesting actually!) but someone completely completely polarized in his / her own set beliefs. [I expect these two chaps felt the same way about me..]
Coincidentally or not, I am currently reading Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion'. While I am not an atheist like him, I am intrigued by his logic. So far (page 156 now), his definition of God - the Christian / Islamic / Judaic / Hindu one - one in a human form, who is supposed to listen to your prayers and even answer them by favoring you - in these respects his distrust is well taken. I have zero patience with a karva-chauthified country... But I can't quite figure out what it is with RD's own strident all 'Reason and Rationality' tone of voice and 'evidence and proof' fundas. We are splitting hairs, methinks, re: God.
To me, God is the name I give the awesomeness I feel - of the Universe, the very fact that we exist, that we question our existence, that we 'love', we 'smile and laugh'. It is in the sheer diversity of the immense yet puny planet we inhabit, a world where even chaos theory has a logic of fractals behind it. In short, a world that never ceases to amaze, in its order as much as its disorder.The formless 'consciousness'. That was there in the era of the dinosaurs, now and long after we'll be gone.
Where miracles are not just in the mysteries left to be solved, but the miracle of the possible - the three airplanes I can now see out of my window, waiting to land over Mumbai airport, in the 'sms's that I can receive at a moment's notice, from anywhere in the world. That is akin to reading someone somewhere's deepest recess of their minds. In everything that we have 'created' where nothing existed earlier.
It is even in the exasperation of meeting folks who dig in their heels, and believe all 'proofs' proffered by their own kinds, are right, and nothing you can say can anyway change their already-made-up minds. :-)
Reminds me also of Andy's Christian sister-in-law. Andy is one of my corporate clients from the UK, and he mentioned one day, how she does not believe that we human beings 'evolved' from apes such as orangutans or chimpanzees, for like she says 'have you ever or has anyone ever , ever seen even one of the thousands of apes in our zoos becoming a human!?' :-) :-) Ahhh....
At yet another do last week, a gentleman (who loves conundrums) posed this query to me: How come he could recall at least 5 occasions in this past year, when in a gathering of 20 people, two had their birthdays on the same date and month... and what is the statistical probability of something like this happening, he asked, when each could have been born on any of 365 different dates. He said he threw this challenge at me since I am a Stats student (was too, in my undergrad!)
My reply - not sure if it was to his satisfaction - was this: you and I have just met today, and here are 15 other people around us. With no birthdays matching. This will be promptly and conveniently forgotten by all of us. We human beings are social by nature and meet folks ALL the time. Everyday. But when on the rare occasions, birthdays do match, it sticks in our mind. This is psychology. Not statistics.
Now, the question that I am intrigued by is: What was the probability of running into such well-educated fanatics who believe so totally in their own version of the world. On two out of three social dos, in one month. One of them, in fact, disbelieved all statistics... census or otherwise, and actually indicated to me that he thinks Muslims outnumber Hindus in India due to their 'high birthrates'. How did I know we Hindus were in the majority anyway, he demanded.
Well...
This reminds me of Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot. As quoted by Dawkins. 'How can you doubt', Russell asked, 'my suggestion that between Earth and Mars, there is a china teapot circling the Sun in an elliptical orbit'?
And any proof you give, will always be 'non-proof', you see, for I can always ask 'How do you REALLY know it is not there, eh?"
Monday, November 19, 2007
Pandeji, Purchase Power Parity etc.
Pandeji has just delivered some piping hot samosas and glistening lavang latas. On this bright and clear Diwali morning. The samosas are just as we like it - light, crunchy, not over-spicy and not too large. And the LLs melt in your mouth - not too sweet, not too soft.
This old man appeared out of nowhere at our doorsteps around a year ago, with a large white-cloth wrapped hill of degchis containing various mithais, with a word-of-mouth recommendation from a distant neighbor. I refused to buy anything initially and quizzed him with what I like to believe was a hard-nosed attitude - 'who cooks this? how can you just expect me to buy your stuff when I don't even know you? where do you stay' etc. I never got any satisfactory reply and warned him, I won't buy it next time (and bought a lot of stuff anyway).
By now, months later, of course, it is like 'oh, it's you - give me six samosas and twelve lavang latas, will you?' Without having figured out his antecedents yet.
And the total? Rs. 60/-
Nowadays I tell myself about how tickled I am at this wonderfully sublimated globalization. That we can partake of such prices at my own door, in the so-called gated community of Hiranandani Gardens. At around a dollar and a half, in the Y2K plus 7 year of 2007, a wonderful snack for the entire family. AND a couple of friends who dropped by, over chai.
All this talk of purchase power parity - how does one compare a Pandeji across the world anyway? What exactly is the equivalent of 6 sams plus 12 lls in the West?
The istriwala just delivered 10 items of clothing. Ironed at a price of a total of Rs. 20/-: This is 50 cents in all. The fellow that washes the car charges Rs. 200/- per 'bada gadi' and Rs. 150/- per chhota gadi, per month that is - and makes an income of over Rs. 5000/- working from 5 am to 8.30 am, across a few homes. He then works full-time elsewhere 10 am to 6 pm, and is seen as one of the successful guys in his circle.
How can we measure parity for something only we have and understand, as part of our economy? How can we put a price to the slogging put in? Should we be celebrating this 'value-for-money' we get or wondering seriously if this is to be seen as 'exploitation'?
And then there is the 'bauni' factor. Pandeji claims to begin his day's sales at my place (hubby dearest believes dryly, that this is his stock line-of-trade). But all said and done, the thing is you don't want to not-bauni someone. If the first customer brings him luck, let the luck come in, we say. That's our pride in our peculiar Indian 'culture' again. How can you turn away such an old man who's earning a living anyway? (my family pegs him at a doddering 80, he says he is 64).
And what the heck. It is like harking back to the times of our childhood when we lived in the now - fast-vanishing 'middle-class' padas where hawkers announced their wares, each with a lilting and individual call of his/ her own. When the poring over the goods with the neighbors' helpful comments was an essential part of our socialization. When they all aided in the bargaining along with us. When it was essential to crib about something or the other to the hawker. The rising prices. If the prices were good, then the quality ('last time it was not at all like you used to make it').
So. One of these days, we may all be poisoned by Pandeji. That's what say the cautionary doubters of today. Or worse, he may be thrown out by the 'gatekeepers' before we even get to know he had arrived.
And that is when we shall be totally McDonaldized - No taking pity. No bauni (imagine, the guy in the McDonald's counter telling you 'aaj aapka bauni hai' and then doing one elaborate circling of the cash register with your 100 rupee note). Or imagine this: Telling McDonald's "last time your ruthlessly 'always-the-same' McChicken burger was not at all like you make it'!
Ah, Globalization - here we come.
This old man appeared out of nowhere at our doorsteps around a year ago, with a large white-cloth wrapped hill of degchis containing various mithais, with a word-of-mouth recommendation from a distant neighbor. I refused to buy anything initially and quizzed him with what I like to believe was a hard-nosed attitude - 'who cooks this? how can you just expect me to buy your stuff when I don't even know you? where do you stay' etc. I never got any satisfactory reply and warned him, I won't buy it next time (and bought a lot of stuff anyway).
By now, months later, of course, it is like 'oh, it's you - give me six samosas and twelve lavang latas, will you?' Without having figured out his antecedents yet.
And the total? Rs. 60/-
Nowadays I tell myself about how tickled I am at this wonderfully sublimated globalization. That we can partake of such prices at my own door, in the so-called gated community of Hiranandani Gardens. At around a dollar and a half, in the Y2K plus 7 year of 2007, a wonderful snack for the entire family. AND a couple of friends who dropped by, over chai.
All this talk of purchase power parity - how does one compare a Pandeji across the world anyway? What exactly is the equivalent of 6 sams plus 12 lls in the West?
The istriwala just delivered 10 items of clothing. Ironed at a price of a total of Rs. 20/-: This is 50 cents in all. The fellow that washes the car charges Rs. 200/- per 'bada gadi' and Rs. 150/- per chhota gadi, per month that is - and makes an income of over Rs. 5000/- working from 5 am to 8.30 am, across a few homes. He then works full-time elsewhere 10 am to 6 pm, and is seen as one of the successful guys in his circle.
How can we measure parity for something only we have and understand, as part of our economy? How can we put a price to the slogging put in? Should we be celebrating this 'value-for-money' we get or wondering seriously if this is to be seen as 'exploitation'?
And then there is the 'bauni' factor. Pandeji claims to begin his day's sales at my place (hubby dearest believes dryly, that this is his stock line-of-trade). But all said and done, the thing is you don't want to not-bauni someone. If the first customer brings him luck, let the luck come in, we say. That's our pride in our peculiar Indian 'culture' again. How can you turn away such an old man who's earning a living anyway? (my family pegs him at a doddering 80, he says he is 64).
And what the heck. It is like harking back to the times of our childhood when we lived in the now - fast-vanishing 'middle-class' padas where hawkers announced their wares, each with a lilting and individual call of his/ her own. When the poring over the goods with the neighbors' helpful comments was an essential part of our socialization. When they all aided in the bargaining along with us. When it was essential to crib about something or the other to the hawker. The rising prices. If the prices were good, then the quality ('last time it was not at all like you used to make it').
So. One of these days, we may all be poisoned by Pandeji. That's what say the cautionary doubters of today. Or worse, he may be thrown out by the 'gatekeepers' before we even get to know he had arrived.
And that is when we shall be totally McDonaldized - No taking pity. No bauni (imagine, the guy in the McDonald's counter telling you 'aaj aapka bauni hai' and then doing one elaborate circling of the cash register with your 100 rupee note). Or imagine this: Telling McDonald's "last time your ruthlessly 'always-the-same' McChicken burger was not at all like you make it'!
Ah, Globalization - here we come.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
The Vanishing Lakes, Trees, Clouds, Rivers...
Nature.
In the wild. In human nature...
Metaphor. Metanym....
Out there.
In me...
WE BANISHED NATURE
We banished Nature, made it bleed -
As if Nature ever had the need
For us.
Clouds drift slow across faint stars
As the moon's bright light falls onto rocks,
And out of all our feverish minds
Flows the stench of a terrible pox.
We banished Nature, sowed dark seeds -
As if Nature's darkest deeds
Could not reach us.
Wild waves roar rough upon the breeze
As birds take easy wing,
But all our spreading cities bring
A creeping dread disease.
We banished Nature, banned its creed -
As if Nature ever had to heed
Fool us.
Mountains call, sweet waters sing,
There's beauty found in everything,
But we keep chasing bitter dust
In our crazy, grasping lust.
We banished Nature in our greed -
As if Nature won't be freed
From us.
Dreams hang soft upon the air,
There's silence gathering everywhere,
Yet we haven't got a care
About the damage we have done.
We banished Nature at top speed -
As if Nature cannot easily lead
Us to oblivion.
There's nothing now that's left to die,
Just smoke rising in the sky,
And if you listen there's just a cry
To show that we have gone.
Copyright © Richard Macwilliam
(And, thanks Sir at IIT for the pointing out
of this poem, the 'deictic',
now that I've learnt tis new word :-)
In relation to the trees
in the campus.)
'Banish' is a deictic too, no?
But then, Nature shall have the last laugh,
as she will say
'I still rise'... as did Maya Angelou...
As time will surely tell. Over a period of eons...
Saturday, October 27, 2007
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