Apathy or indifference? Why are we like this only?

I don't know if its apathy, carelessness, or a "what do I care attitude." High technology companies do not bother a bit about how the roads are laid out outside their compounds. I work in a high-tech business area in Andheri East. I go for a walk outside my office  complex every afternoon and what do I find? Rubble, debris, aggregate, dust, huge exposed plastic pipes through which the modern technology's fibre optic cables pass, couple of stones, no, boulders, a trench that hasn't been filled for the past one month, a broken, foul-smelling septic tank, dogs, turds and more turds.And I step ginerly over them every day! Can you imagine?

The companies that skirt these oddities all have well paved compounds, glistening sun-screened glass, chrome, expensive tiles, order and efficiency. Is it apathy or whatchamacallit indifference? Or is the "Gorment" to blame for creating these bubbles that shine and the surroundings that stink? Sorry, even my mind goes blank on a Monday morning. Guess, I will rant about it some other time.

Meanwhile read this poem written by David Israel in reply to my poem for my stolen mobile phone.

For all ye cricket lovers, the Sharad Pawar episode!

I don't know what the big fuss is about Sharad Pawar being asked to step aside for the Australian team's Champions Trophy victory photograph. See for yourself on this video. Ricky Pointing didn't shove him (as was reported). And if you see the shoves we get in the 8.28 local from CBD Belapur, then you would probably cry murder. Much ado about a little push?

Sridala's Refutation of My Following Post "The 'Gora' Mughal"

Sridala, (my reply appears within double asterisks)

**Sridala, Let me begin by saying I hold no brief for anyone, no, not even missionaries (when my dad took me for an admission in the venerable OLPS in Chembur, Bombay, I was rejected by the fathers there.) If this reads like a bitter tirade because of that fact, then it is a bitter tirade.**

I find it astonishing that you have so much to say about two books you haven't even read.

**Sridala, I was basing my observation on the articles written by William Dalrymple and not his books. And I mentioned this clearly at the beginning of the article. **
I'd like to take you up on a few things you've mentioned in your post; perhaps you could clarify.

You say, "I confess I haven't read any of them, but what caught my attention was several articles in today's newspapers (November 5, 2006) about his second book."

First of all, *The Last Mughal* is not his second book. He wrote *In Xanadu* when he was 18; among his several travel books are, *City Of Djinns*, also about Delhi; *From The Holy Mountain*; *At The Court Of The Fish-Eyed Goddess*; *The Age OF Kali*, in no particlular order. Of his 'popular history' books, *The White Mughals* is certainly the first. If this is what you meant, it is not clear from the sentence I've quoted above.

**Sridala, Yeah I was referring to the two books in the Mughal series that why I wrote “gora” Mughals in the title of my post. **

Next, you say, "Now Dalrymple bases these premises on a few freakish personalities of history".

May I ask how you would know, not having read either of the two books in question, who else he may have cited as examples of integration? Just because the interviewers of newspapers and magazines pick up a few names, it does not mean that Dalrymple himself confines himself to, to quote you, 'a few freakish personalities'.

**Sridala, this is not an interview I am referring to, but an article written by Dalrymple himself. And Sir Ochterlony has been portrayed as a freakish personality by Dalrymple himself. You who have read the book should know. **
Finally, you seem to have understood that Dalrymple's sole premise is that these early Company people turned up with the sole intention of making full use of, again to quote you, 'a sexual cornucopia of a lifetime'. I'm not very clear exactly what this phrase means; perhaps you will explain.

**Sridala, I will refer to my experience in the Persian Gulf, working for a British multinational. Trust me I have worked with them and have intimate knowledge, and I am not basing this on just guess work. The British managers and supervisors were mercenaries when it came to making money in the Persian Gulf projects and even their lifestyles (a close resemblance of theirs in colonial India) was decadent.

When I say this I have seen it with my own eyes and this is not just verbal flaff. They underpaid the Indian laborers and consigned them to labor camps where life was horrid, while they lived in huge bungalows. And they were arrogant towards Indians in general, even their staff and managers. And as I mentioned they needed Indian and Philippino women to keep houses for them while they had left their own women in England. And to their lavish parties they would invite Indian/Philippino/Srilankan nurses but not their senior managers. So where’s the integration that you are talking about? Is an eye witness’ account less true than the research of an historian who can only theorize in his mind?**
But I should mention, having read *White Mughals* and having started *The LAst Mughal*, (and having read his wonderful Introduction to *The Journal Of Fanny Parkes* which is entirely in the words of a travelling 18th century woman -- a useful departure from the standard notion that the history of the Raj is the history of its men) I can assure you that his contention is a lot more than that people came here and became white mughals because it supported a lifestyle they could not afford 'back home'.

**Could they afford the harem that Dalrymple talks about at home? Hardly. So they enjoyed (both money and sex) when they were in India (they still do enjoy [money and sex] in the Persian Gulf) as mentioned above. And believe me, the writer of this, I have been there, and seen it. If you wish to read more on these read a writer named Russel Baker who has written such books as "Monginis" and "Ice Factory"**
Integration -- a more pleasant word, isn't it? -- happened not only in the home, it also happened with translations, writing, and in the arts. It is this broader willingness to understand another culture that Dalrymple was hoping to emphasise. If there is a better climate where examples of tolerance over rabid imperialism needs to be highlighted, I'd like to know of it.

**Yes, integration is a pleasant word if there is integration. If there isn’t and a people aren’t willing to integrate then why clutch at straws? You write “Dalrymple was hoping to emphasize,” so, well, has the hope of an Englishman turned into manna for gullible Indians to make him the toast of Indian social circuit? Is that what you want to emphasize? So can a hypothesis of convenience be relied on more than historical facts and eye witnessed accounts? Is that right? If you are looking for examples of tolerance over rabid imperialism it can be found in the most unimaginable quarters, the works of missionaries, whom Dalrymple criticizes so much.**
You have cited a British missionary, William Carey, in your post. If you've linked it, the link hasn't appeared. Perhaps you could make a more complete citation? When did he say this? Where does this appear?

**Please read my blogpost at: http://johnpmathew.blogspot.com**

In the same paragraph, you mention that you've read books where you say the British dissuaded the missionaries from practising in India. This is completely true. But a mass petition in Parliament apparently lobbied for the missionaries to operate, and after 1830, they were allowed to do so. This is why dates are important. Things did not proceed in the same uniform way throughout the EIC's time in India. I'd suggest that this is a part of what Dalrymple tries to bring to the foreground.

**As I said earlier, I hold no brief for missionaries, mission schools or hospitals, but it seems missionaries are like dogs that can be kicked around these days. As the saying goes “Call a dog names and hang him.” Dalrymple does that and we go, “Oh, he is so right.” Which is really very unfair. Education, hospitals, healthcare, nursing have been taught and given to India by missionaries. As also printing, grammar, dictionaries, books, translations, etc. And if they had the rider that one should be Christians or converts to benefit from their generosity, then I should surely have been admitted into OLPS school, Chembur. I wasn’t.

Moreover, if the missionaries were so mercenary as everyone claims these days why is it that only two per cent of the Indian population is Christian? Of this one per cent were already Christians even before the British missionaries’ ancestors knew about Christianity (Syrian Christians, of which I am one, were Christians from the first century while the British adopted Christianity much, much later). Certainly there should have been more Christians if the missionaries were such ruthless proselytizers. **
I'd also urge you to read the books. Perhaps you might change your mind.

**Now that we have this interesting dialog going, I will, perhaps, read the books, vastly unread as I am. May be I can pick a few more flaws in the books under discussion.**

The "Gora" Mughal

Suddenly William Dalrymple author of "The White Mughals" and now, "The Last Mughal" is everywhere. I confess I haven't read any of them, but what caught my attention was several articles in today's newspapers (November 5, 2006) about his second book. He seems to be the flavor of the season, and for a talk he gave in Bombay even celebrities turned up to listen. ("Oh, here at last is the Englishman (or, Scotsman) who thinks like us and whom we always wanted to befriend, besides our own Mark Tully.") He himself is being treated as a White Mughal, which he has denied in an interview with DNA Sunday in which he was asked, "Are you in a sense a White Mughal writing about the natives?"

Dalrymple, a historian contends that the first wave of British colonizers came to India with honest intent and even lived like Indian Mughal rulers taking on Indian harems and assuming Indian ways and dresses. He avers that this would have continued hadn't the Neo-conservatives and the missionaries intervened. And that India would have been a country of White (British) Mughal harem-keepers. Oh, how inconsiderate of those missionaries!

Now Dalrymple bases these premises on a few freakish personalities of history. One is Sir David Ochterlony who is believed to have donned Indian clothes and travelled around Delhi with his thirteen wives in tow, all on elephant backs. What Dalrymple forgets is that the British colonizers who came to India had no other intention than to plunder the country and the Indian women they took as wives was because they had such a sexual cornucopia of a lifetime available, oh, so easily as rulers. Who wouldn't, given a chance, in an exotic country, have a harem of willing oriental women? Certainly not the British with their famous sexual appetites.

How do I know? I have worked in the Persian Gulf for a British multinational and know this from experience. Most of the British managers of the company had married Asian women and given half a chance they would have had harems too. And they weren't friends of the "Natives" (poor, us!) who toiled for them at less than standard wages. In fact, plunder was their main objective, and if an Asian woman was willing then, why not? These women were Indian and Asian nurses who were invited to their parties where they formed their liasons. We poor sods, even our senior managers weren't invited. (I have devoted a book in my novel "The Love Song of Luke Varkey," to the vulgar corporate greed of the British managers, a chapter of the novel can be read here).

Sir Ochterlony was a creature of circumstance, probably with a big sexual appetite and took advantage of the situation of sexual plenty in an impoverished land of which he was a Mughal master. So were his compatriots who too went completely native with harems and palaces they could ill-afford back in England. There wasn't any holistic intent here, neither had our British managers in the British multinational for which I worked. They were after money and the fulfilment of their carnal desires for which Dalrymple is raising them on a new and exalted pedestal. May be, the Indian intelligentsia lapped it all up and put up Dalrymple's mugs in the press before considering these aspects.

Now another specious argument from his book "The White Mughal" is that the missionaries with their evangelical fervor dissuaded the Englishmen from going native. I have read books that speak of how the British ruling class were dismissive of the missionaries and their attempts to educate the heathen. William Carey the British missionary who set up the first Indian printing press in Serampore and established the first college for training priests was actually dissuaded from travelling to India as an excerpt from this article would show:

"En route they were delayed at the Isle of Wight, at which time the captain of the ship received word that he endangered his command if he conveyed the missionaries to Calcutta, as their unauthorized journey violated the trade monopoly of the British East India Company."

Obviously since an educated Indian would be a threat to their "White Mughal-hood." Then they would have competition from educated Indian men who would want to court their harem members. Not only that, a Christian India would have been an embarassment for the British colonists as they would have to share a church and a religion with the native Christians. So then how would missionaries, zealous as they are known to be, dissuade Englishmen from going native and owning harems? Many accounts I have read have given the distinct impression that missionaries - with their belief in Christian charity - were at cross purposes with their administering countrymen.

Dalrymple's theory, even if it has substance portrays a somehow dystopic scenario of what India would have been if the White Mughals had persisted in their ways and the missionaries hadn't come. We would have had a legion of "White Mughal" sahibs, and their brown offsprings inhabiting and ruling over an India that would have been still entrenched in the supersitions of those times. And Indian men would have had a slim chance with their women, pitted as they were against the "gora" sahib's alluring offer of a comfortable life for their women, not to mention elephant-back rides through Connaught Place.

Thank god for missionaries, in that case!

Cold Shouldered by Technology

The following is just by way of what could go wrong in the connected world. We are so over-dependent on electricity that any gadget we own has to be plugged, switched on, and recharged.  And, we are so dependent on them to be connected to our work, our communities, and our projects. The electricity company on which we depend so dearly increases rates, and sometimes even sends us fancy bills beyond our meager monthly earnings.

I recently lost my cell phone, and with it vamoosed all my telephone numbers. I wanted to make an urgent call. My new cell phone was down, meaning dumb me hadn’t recharged it. The home phone was dead as there was a power cut. I asked my son to lend me his phone. “But, papa, I haven’t yet refilled my cell phone,” he says. I was virtually shaking with indignation.  Of all the nine billion people in the world (okay, one billion Indians) why did it have to happen to me?

May be I can send an email. I open my laptop. I have the latest web access, a V Card installed, so that I can be online anywhere, anytime. What can beat a laptop toting guy who goes straight to his email box? Makes email-browsing Blackberrys a joke. But, no, even my laptop is on a blink. I had forgotten to recharge it after the last time I used it.

Oh, dumb, dumb, dumb. Or, should I say as Jim Carey say, “Dumb, Dumber?” That made me trudge to the nearest shopping complex, nearly ten minutes away to make a call. Once again, technology had failed me, badly, at that.

Lost, My Wallet!

Today I lost my wallet. I paid the rickshaw, carelessly placed the wallet beside me, and stashed the change in my shirt pocket. A woman wearing a large bindi on her forehead was asking the rickshaw driver even as I was getting down if he would take her to Saki Naka. I didn't want to delay them and got down in a hurry and forgot all about the wallet.

 
 

I met my colleague Rahul on the way up, and in the lift, for a moment I felt inside my pocket and the usual lump (yes, my wallet is quite lumpy with the desiderata of modern life like credit/debit cards, visiting cards, receipts, driving license, and some lucky charms) was missing. I felt as if I had dived into a pool with no water in it. Foolish!

 
 

Rahul suggested blocking all cards. But I had another idea. What if they hadn't gone far, I could board another rickshaw and follow them. I ran down six floors. Alas, the rickshaw wasn't there and I stood foolishly gaping at the spot I had got down. No, nothing there. Then I asked the security guard one Dilip Kumar if he had seen a woman with a large red bindi going out. He said, yes, she works in a clinic on the second floor of our building.

 
 

I ran to the second floor and was informed by Masooma, a nurse, that Kaushalya the woman I described worked there and she would be back by afternoon. I gave her my number and asked her to contact me as soon as she came. Meanwhile, I went to my office and cancelled all my credit and debit cards, and kept blaming myself for keeping the wallet aside while I always returned the wallet to my pocket. This once I had deviated from my habit and I had lost a lot of things that had become an integral part of me. The lucky charm in my wallet had me believe that I am sort of invincible and nobody, nobody could do me no harm. I prayed fervently that it should come back to me.

 
 

12.30 p.m. I received a call when I was in a meeting with my boss. A man named Ranjan said an employee had given a wallet to him and could I please come down. My wallet! It had come back to me! My prayers were answered! I ran down to the second floor office and there it was my lost wallet with all the cards and money intact. I wanted to reward Kaushalya but Ranjan said no need. I can only admire the honesty of this lady by the name of Kaushalya.

 
 

The wallet with the lucky charm is inside my pocket now, safely ensconced in its rightful place, and I believe I will never lose it again. As for the credit and debit cards, I called up my bank to be told that they cannot reactivate the cards and that I will have to wait for them to issue new cards. Well, I can afford to wait. At least, my lucky charm is with me.

To a Hesitant Writer

To a Hesitant Writer

You can pick meaning off words,

You can paint pictures;

You can laugh at them,

Who laugh at you;

You can mourn,

The follies of the unwise.

 

To write is power,

Of words, thoughts,

Limitless, boundless,

As the sky above and earth below;

You will never be alone,

When words churn in your mind.

 

You can be heartbroken,

And cry and cry;

But a poem would wipe tears,

Puts a smile on your face,

Erase the pain,

Of loneliness and love.

 

So won’t you write?

A letter, a poem, an essay;

We would wallow in its depths,

Smile at its humor,

Relish what pains it took you,

And forgive friendly trespasses.

Please do not cross rails. It could cost your life!

Posted it below but didn't know how to post it in this format. Well it is an amazing video, reproduced here as "fair use" as it has a social message.

Shinkansen - Bullet Trains - Japan

While on the subject of Trains see the Shinkansen Bullet Trains of Japan. See how the cup stays steady at that amazing speed.

Did You See Many Pudava Sets Today?

Through a speeding rickshaw, a Kerala Pudava set – the gold filigreed cream colored sari worn by Kerala women on festivals – peeped out. What? Was it some Kerala festival, Onam, Vishu, Christumas, that I had missed in my dazed-as-a-dodo-nearing-extinction life? I leaned over to catch a peek at the South Indian beauty – but of course, all Mallu girls in Pudava sets are beautiful. Sorry to say I didn’t succeed. She vanished in a haze of blue rickshaw emission.

Then again, another woman, wearing the same attire. Whoa! This time I got a full frontal view, what lush hair, and what enchanting grace, reminds me of tall coconut palms waving gently in the wind. But what is today? Then as I progressed towards office, more such beautiful sights unraveled to make my heart skip many, many beats. Oh! My poor, poor heart!

Once in the office I did a Google search. And this is what I got. Duh, today is the Fiftieth Anniversary of the formation of Kerala, my beloved native state. Shubhashamsakal, all my Mallu friends, and well wishers. Happy Fiftieth Anniversary!