Changing Map of Humanity

The borders of war torn Middle East will force every shopkeeper around the globe to stock new updated maps.  Whether the nations will recoup the lost forts and cities from ISIS is uncertain as the night boat ride across the Aegean sea. But the recent exodus of refugees to the fenceless borders of Europe proves once again that at the end of the day what every hapless family value is freedom from tyranny, war and bloodshed, whether its in the name of power or religion. The world media is worried at the slowness of Europe’s response to the issue at hand. Media is also slowly waking up to the deadpan silence from the Muslim world, be it in Asia or Middle East.

Every country needs to have its act together before accepting a population who had a life lived in a far away country so different than theirs. The host country thereafter has to share all their resources and opportunities they have planned for their own population forever. Given the worlds experience with religion and its share of confrontation more than peaceful co existence, its natural that Europe feels threatened with a mass exodus they are witnessing now. Europe no longer marries and procreates as they used to. So the worry of a diminishing tribe of David is certain. Also Europe does not have a successful tale of assimilating migrants and asylum seekers over the last many decades. Parts of Europe are already reeling under that pressure and some streets of Europe no longer look like Europe. Natives, signboards, street food have all made way to an embolden migrant narrative.

Borders get redrawn time over and civilisations sometimes get routed forever. More than ever before, we need to allow humanity to lock faith and beliefs within the walls of a place of worship to save the freshly baked bread that welcomes the world every morning.

Tips - the tipping question

Last night after dinner at a restaurant, we were at the same cross roads again. Unsure what would be appropriate?

The Americans demand it! The Japanese find it undignified to accept it. As the Europeans don’t agree on most of the charters of the EU, they don’t take a specific stance on this too. Indians are a clumsy lot, not sure how to handle it; how much to leave behind – TIPS! 

Well, just like most of the cultural flash points started off by the colonial British, this too seems to have stemmed from the gentry trappings of English dining etiquettes. What started of as a gesture by aristocrats to leave behind small change known as ‘vails’ to their host’s servants, the practice soon caught on to coffee shops and restaurants. Seems like the British took it wherever they went and left behind among many other things when they finally left.

So do we really have to pay TIPS? Because someone somewhere interpreted it as, ‘To Insure Prompt Service’, does it really mean we have to leave behind not just some change but a percentage of the bill, irrespective of whether we were satisfied with the service or not? Or are we supposed to just pay for the food and service promised by restaurants and not really bound to bear their staff cost? I find a stronger case with the fuel station attendants and the courier guys who are out in these humid hot days. They deserve it more.

The restaurants serving liquor in UAE are allowed to charge 10% service charge. So we didn’t have to bother much and fiddle with the bill. The restaurant manager had the last laugh!

Mahabali - not just Malayali!

Onam for some reason so much resonates with Malayalis, while Mahabali the king whose legend is the backbone of this festival has a lineage and empire that spreads far beyond the paddy fields of Kerala. He was the grandson of Prahlada whose father Hiranyakashyap (clearly not Malayalis) was killed by Vishnu in his Narasimha Avatar. When Vishnu’s another avatar Vamana decides to stop Mahabali from his Ashwameda Yagna on the banks of the Narmada river (in Madhya Pradesh), we now know this is no more an exclusive Malayali event.

 

So my non-malayali friends, just because the final step that Vamana took happened in Thrikkakkara (in kerala), where Mahablai was sent down to the ‘heaven like underworld’, Mahabali was assumed to be a Malayali king and the traditions that layered around Onam for centuries stamped him with a birth certificate and a pot belly that’s very much part of the Malayali culinary and rangoli ethos. So if you do not know how to wrap a thin porous mundu around your not-so-rounded waist and hate rice, still join the celebrations. After all he was not just a Malayali king! Happy Onam!

Hampi - Ruins that follow you...

Dramatic boulders playing a dexterous balancing act, on wayside hills welcomed us to the magical ruins of Hampi. It was the last day of the shoot of Lailaa O Lailaa in Bellary and we were on our way to Bangalore with a detour to Hampi. The early morning drive from Bellary to Hampi was going to be a memorable one; not only for the experience that Hampi would offer, but we were accompanying the legend and hero of our movie, Mohanlal.  The moment we stepped barefoot on the cold, stone-laid pathway that led to the Virupaksha temple, Mohanlal was heard whispering ‘déjà vu’; later he mentioned that the landscape and architecture resembled Amba Samudram where he had shot for Raja Shilpi.

The ruins are just too vast, magnificent and tragic. We followed him as he walked down the neatly manicured stone lanes of the ruins, sometimes deeply engrossed in the architecture and sometimes cracking a joke while being his usual self.

Walking amidst the ruins, one cannot but feel the glorious Krishnadevraya kingdom brimming to life all around you; you vainly hope thousands of defaced Hindu Gods and Goddesses on the walls of the numerous temples regaining the perfect posture and mudra the artists then etched, and the golden Gopuras transforming to their grandeur that once shown above the Vijayanagara Empire with the Tungabhadra river cutting through it.

The sheer majesty and grandeur of the ruins is as overwhelming as the determination and effort the invaders took, a few hundred years ago, to chop the limbs off numerous deities, to hammer down temples and to uproot a civilisation. While leaving the premise Mohanlal seemed to be affected by the sheer violence that the ruins bore. Hampi, a celebrated UNESCO site is also a harsh reminder of the ruins in the making, across the globe that could challenge Hampi in its epic tragedy.

The Incredible Ban!

The ban on 'India's Daughter' has fanned the documentary across social media with an urgency that otherwise would have taken time or found lesser viewership. But thanks to the government, that seems to have additional baggage of guarding Indian culture along with a few bigots whose interpretation of our culture would offer Taliban stiff competition. Closing ones eyes and listening to the lawyers and the convict, one would mistake the documentary for one on Taliban diktats for women.

There is no need for an international conspiracy to defame Indian culture as the home minister worries. There are enough elements in our society that are capable of doing it and have been doing it for centuries. And when did teaching women a lesson, became the responsibility of men, for being out in the night with a friend in the cities or while defecating in the open in villages?. Obviously these are not stunning visuals of the ‘Incredible India’ campaign that the government would want to be aired on BBC, but definitely an expose on the mindset of rapists roaming our unsafe streets, practicing in our courts and live in our neighbourhood with the noble intention to safeguard Indian Culture.

We are fortunately not bound by any ancient scriptures to live our lives. The constitution is more than enough to govern us and there is place for women in that; we don’t need an annual ‘Women's Day’ to remind us just that. Let the Government first ban the lawyer from the precincts of any courts in India – if banning is such a noble act as in the case of eating beef!. 

Eat, Pray and Love

Students in a catholic school, irrespective of their religion recited christian prayers and sang hymns. The climax of a film depicts the protagonist, an oracle (played by a Christian actor) dances before a Hindu goddess, spits blood on her face and then strikes his forehead with the sacred sword and dies; 
These are not events and art that are common today or might ever probably occur in the near future, but happened in a past not so long ago. 
We now live in an age hijacked in a brake less bus by a ruthless driver driving down a valley, passing by hoardings of next releases of 'Jihadi John' and  list of animals forbidden in our kitchens by each caste and creed, along the way knocking down men and women who vainly tried to slow down the bus.
24 Hours news channels have a field day live-telecasting the deadly drive, and discussing with a predictable panel, if the driver ever had a license and who issued it?

There was a past when life was more precious than deities and scared texts. The evening living room was quieter as Doordarshan murmured in a corner and the world looked forward for a better tomorrow. Those evenings need to revisit our living rooms. For that the bus has to be stopped. Let each tribe let the other to Eat, Pray and Love. 

Stand closer; it's not as long as you think!

The title is from an interesting sticker I saw at Kurian Jacob's guest bathroom. Not sure men do really think ‘its’ long enough as they aim, but inevitably end up messing the flap of closets – a frequent sight in flight toilets. Next time it’s a favour done to the next in line female reliever, if the flap is lifted before the performance or may be just sit and perform; because the female anatomy is simply challenged for a ‘stand and relieve’, which compels them to practise the ‘Aramandalam’ posture above a filthy flap. I keep reminding my daughter to cover the flap with tissues. It worries me that she has to sit on an unhygienic flap. 

Sanitary hygiene is a very personal (literally) issue in India. Homes are kept clean but not public spaces. Public rest rooms are an assault to the senses. Men usually manage, as their physicality allows them to relieve free of contact of the nauseating closets and wall urinals. But then it's only an epilogue to the psyche of a nation where sanitation is shrugged off with a NIMBY syndrome - not in my backyard!

Sanitation, bogging the head lines these days is a case of a vexed maze, where delayed policies stumble on social taboos in a country where ‘have-nots’ defecate in the open and the ‘haves’ ‘flush-and-forget’ in cities that simply don’t have a sewerage system. So where does the tonnes of shit, soap, shampoo, detergents go? – into our remaining lakes, rivers, rivulets and the seas; the same waters that find their way back into the underground pipes that criss-cross our streets and hang precariously under bridges, often leaking, making their way back to households to quench our thirst. 

It would be naive to believe all that we pump out of our porcelain toilets just vanish somewhere and our water sources remain pristine.  It won’t, until a sewerage system is also part of our city development, unlike Delhi and Bombay where 50% of the dwellings just do not have sewerage.

It was interesting to read that hundreds of toilets built in villages remain unused and the target population still defecate in the open owing to tradition – one cannot live and defecate under the same roof! Looks like a long road to travel before everyone relieves in the confines of a toilet. 

Efforts to sanitise the nation has been announced from the ramparts of power. Hopefully efforts are also made for a billion plus population not to relieve and wash into its strangled rivers and to use public toilets responsibly. 

Kerala – No land for liquor

It’s a state that sprang up from the sea-bed as a repentance of the killings of Parasuram. It’s said the blood from the dead were enough to fill 5 rivers. When Parasuram handed over the strip of land to Brahmins to rule, he would never had imagined a time, when the liquor that flows in the veins of its population would be surplus to fill the backwaters of a state that sell scenic pictures to the world labelling it – Gods own country.

If you grew up in a Christian household, you would notice that wine and alcohol was not a taboo but a pervasive liquid state that made its presence felt in family gatherings – be it birth, marriage or death and even in the church altar, when the priest sips the wine during the holy mass. Alcohol was part of our healing too - a burping aunt would be offered a few sips of brandy and for a fermented ‘Appam’ dough, there was always a few ounces of fresh toddy.

There was enough for everyone to drink - Arrack, Toddy, Rum, Brandy and imported whisky from Persia from the early migrants who boarded ships to the coast of the Arabia; they came back with trunks filled with rolls of polyester, Brute perfumes, Quality Street chocolates, Rothmans cigarettes and bottles of liquor.

So see, it was not a bad situation we were in then. Somewhere down the years people got bored and found more reasons to booze. More and more factories closed down and more men flew to the Arabian cities, in budget and not so budget carriers that fleeced them for filling up their seats so easily. Bandhs (banned now) and Harthals (upgraded to what a Bandh stood for), offered plentiful holidays but restricted to stay at home. With higher wages for manual jobs, money flowing to NRI bank accounts, a humid and hot weather and a slow paced life in an otherwise ‘nothing else to do’ state, boozing might have been an attractive proposition. We now top the list of boozers in the country and it also supports the state exchequer to the tune of $1.2 billion.

A ban on liquor consumption seems to unsettle queues that are visible every 2 kilometres along the state highway. The serious question is, what will replace liquor to mourn a death, to raise a toast and to kill time in a harthal?