SILENCE SOUNDS GOOD

 

         

SILENCE

SOUNDS

GOOD

 

 

 

 

 

Silence Sounds Good

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. C. V. Ananda Bose

 

 

‘Inspiring read

AbsorbingCollection’

–ShashiTharoor

 

 

 

 

 

Raj Bhavan, Kolkata, Publication

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raj Bhavan

Kolkata 700062

 

E-mail: governor-wb@nic.in

 

 

 

 

First publication of the book by Notion Press 2017

 

2^nd Edition by Raj Bhavan, Kolkata 2023

 

Copyright© Dr. C. V. Ananda Bose 2023

 

 

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopies and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

 

 

 

 

 

Raj Bhavan, Kolkata

 

 

 

 

DEDICATION

 

 

 

   In loving memory of our darling daughter 

    who left for her heavenly abode so early.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE

 

I hail from pre-social media days when elders in the family would spend time telling stories to children and the children would listen to them intently, floating in the narrations and kindled by the fictitious events, folklore and also real-life accounts.  Having grown up in such a milieu – as my dear daughter would say – I have imbibed some traits of storytelling myself. 

 

Silence Sounds Good is an anthology of my thoughts spurred by my presence at some place or a witness to some event.  The publication contains jottings over a period of time.   The book was first brought out by Notion Press in the year 2017.

 

Human nature entails that our stream of thoughts and their imprints are seldom flawless; so how can their composing be? 

 

Re-publication of Silence Sounds Good has been felt necessary to make it contemporaneous in some aspects without diluting the origination of the thought at the point of its occurrence. 

 

The re-publication of Silence Sounds Good – the book spurred by the repeated prodding by my dear daughter, and hence very close to my heart – is to smoothen some stray add-ons that inevitably cling themselves to our thoughts.

CONTENTS

 

Foreword (English)

Foreword (French)

Preface

 

1.      I met ozymandias, in the secretariat

2.      Should there be boogie with the booze

3.      Almighty dollar

4.      Spanish bullfight

5.      Cry, my beloved country

6.      Don’t bite, but hiss

7.      Ignite public mind or torch public property

8.      The forbidden fruit becomes the favourite fruit

9.      In hong kong during the struggle

10.   Why not grease the palm?

11.   This lake should not die

12.   An autumn evening in fatima

13.   Throbbing hiroshima

14.   When singing birds sneeze

15.   A dirge for the earth?

16.   Three cheers to champagne

17.   How sweet her name is

18.   Married or marred

19.   Wise, not otherwise

20.   Mafia is in town

21.   White house for rent

22.   In a netshell

23.   Crime and punishment

24.   Voltaire at the guilletine

25.   The balancesheet of chernobyl

26.   Scale the mountain

27.   Lage raho gandhigiri

28.   Corporate compassion

29.   God’s own banana republic

30.   Pythagoras and vegetables

31.   Examine the exams

32.   Treating the patient or the disease?

33.   Worship of mammon

34.   Science should not be adulterated

35.   A footnote to atomic power

36.   Of snow mountains, cows and chocolate

37.   Brutes are not brutish

38.   My country, great and strong

39.   Native wisdom

40.   A reluctant european union

41.   The container fest

42.   Bhopal-seveso-thalidomide

43.   Eva who loved love

44.   One among equals?

45.   Amina here, amelia there

46.   Impeachment

47.   Who should sign the death warrant?

48.   The prime minister was a spy?

49.   Rising sun rolls

50.   Hung parliament

51.   Copy cat children

52.   When the slum expands

53.   Flying in with nectar and hope

54.   Collateral damage?

55.   Behind onam

56.   Playing with fire

57.   Rain rain go away

58.   Make it or fake it

59.   My christmas, my own

60.   Forward to awards

61.   Not a bang but a whimper

62.   Silence sounds good

 

 

FOREWORD

 

I am happy to be able to write this introduction to Ananda Bose's book. He is from Kerala and has worked there as a Commissioner, a position roughly equivalent to that of a prefect in France. He has published a number of newspaper editorials in Malayalam, the language of Kerala, and he has translated the book that brought them together into elegant English. The book I have the honour of prefacing will soon be published in French, and it is in French that I wrote the introduction. The great advantage of this is that we have a direct window on what Indians, especially from Kerala, think and how they see the world. Often we translate into French Indian intellectuals or pure literary figures, but rarely leaders who have really put their hands to the task of managing Indian society as it is today. Yet, their voice deserves to be heard.

 

The summaries of an honest man of the 21st century

 

The style of this book is a "travelogue". It is the work of someone who has taken the time not only to travel, but also to research, reflect and write about what he has seen. It is a literary approach, which is not exhaustive like administrative reports or scientific studies, but which still brings out the salient points on each subject. These mini-syntheses are not so easy to establish. Indeed, one tends to be drowned under the mass of information, especially in the current era with the ease of research on the Internet. In this sense, Bose's training as a senior civil servant and diplomat was a good preparation for writing this book. Indeed, when one has to act on a daily basis, it is necessary to be able to make quick and precise syntheses in order to decide on one's line of action. Our author is also a member of an institution qualified to ask fundamental questions, the Global Energy Parliament, GEP. It brings together scientists, various thinkers from the region and Hindu religious leaders, starting with Jagadguru Swami Isa, to examine the question of energy at all levels, from the most material to the most subtle. Swami Isa was able to invite the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to inaugurate a session.

 

This is the book of an honest man of the 21st century, who sets out to discover the world by taking the time to document, to open his eyes and ears, and to reflect on what he perceives with an astonishment that is both attentive and amused. He seeks to understand how people function, what is in their minds, which is obviously a vast task when one travels to multiple countries. His functions in international organizations have helped him in this work, which he has shared with his fellow citizens. Having myself lived in India for thirty years, I was happy to find the great themes of present-day Indian society treated with wit, and I also learned elements of wisdom and humanism from English classical culture. Although we French are the direct neighbours of the United Kingdom, we too often ignore in France their great thinkers and their humanism. Moreover, in an eclectic approach, Dr. Bose does not hesitate to quote in the same page the Vedas and the wisdom of the ancient Greeks.

 

The small essays that make up the chapters of this book can be thought of as patches of colour made by impressionist painters to finally reconstruct a face or a landscape. Even though these blots seem to be separated from each other, they create a whole impression that is remembered.

 

Important themes treated in a brief manner

 

It would be necessary to list many chapters to give an idea of the richness contained in the book, but the reader will discover them by himself. We can however mention the one on the regularly disadvantaged status of the girl, with many details on India, but also on elsewhere in the world. One realizes that even if India has a certain inertia from this point of view, it is far from being the only country in the world to suffer from lethargy in front of the disadvantaged status of the girl. Moreover, the reflections on the great cancer institute of Bombay, the Tata Memorial Cancer Institute, which is one of the largest in the world, is instructive. I can mention in this regard that the Indian government is investing 100 million Euros, which is not a small sum, especially for India, in order to double this institute with a very large centre for the treatment of cancer through Ayurveda. Western medicine spends a lot of money on chemotherapy treatments which, overall and statistically, only improve the survival of patients to a limited extent. Moreover, it tends not to tolerate the alternative. I have heard that French doctors who do not want to send their patients for chemotherapy run the risk of being struck off the medical register. This is one of the many cases where scientism can lead to a form of totalitarianism. In this sense, it is to be welcomed that India, with its one billion three hundred million inhabitants, is engaged in a real applied research on cancer. Those who think that they lack scientific studies on Ayurvedic medicines can find online a book of 1321 pages which is a long list of references of studies published in Indian or international journals of medicine and pharmacology on the effectiveness of these traditional medicines from India. That is a lot! Knowing this, if a Western doctor continues to deny that there is a branch of science that is really developing in this direction, the accusation of obscurantism will fall on him. I was myself recently in Reunion Island for the preparation of the meeting of the doctors of the University Hospital of St Denis with a doctor delegated by the Ayush ministry (Ayurveda, Yoga and traditional medicines) of Delhi. Such meetings are now possible, even if there is still a lot of work to do for a better understanding of the two systems.

 

Ananda Bose's reflections on the Nuremberg trial have a memorial function. The tragedy of the Second World War is too quickly forgotten by the younger generation. Weighing the pros and cons, he cites Goering's argument that in any case, following a war, the defeated are always condemned. For example, the Russian judge in Stalin's pay always voted for death regardless of the accused and the case gathered by the investigating judges. Stalin himself directly killed 30 million people, and Solzhenitsyn and his team have shown that the demographic deficit due to his action was 90 million people. What authority did he have to act as a judge of another dictatorship and have the officials who served him sentenced to death? As for the Americans, they killed more than 120,000 people at once with the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not counting all those who died from radiation. The 100,000 deaths in one night caused by the bombing of Dresden at the beginning of 1945 are also a major stain on the memory of the Allies. When you think that the etymology of the word holocaust means "to burn completely", can we not really speak of a holocaust in relation to these actions? In any case, Bose goes in this direction. Can we not link this to the ideas of grandeur of a nation that was almost convinced that they had received a divine word announcing that their mission was to dominate the world? In this sense, we can recall that one of the pilots who launched the bomb retired as a monk to the Charterhouse of Sierra San Bruno, the monastery in the Apennines where the holy founder of the Order is buried. From a positive point of view, it can be said that he sought a way out of his terrible guilt through spirituality; from a more critical point of view, it can be said that he may have simply regressed to the level of basic monotheistic violence that authorizes the massacre of those who do not agree with the one God, including, for example, the Japanese, and that he took refuge behind this rather flimsy justification in an attempt to stifle his probably enormous remorse.

 

It is quite possible that the chapter on the love affair between Hitler and Eva Brown will disturb some readers. At the same time, it is Ananda Bose's freedom of expression to develop this point of view from the study of Hitler's personality, and to ask whether he experienced moments of true love with Eva. Other authors, such as Eric Fromm, have applied notions of psychopathology to understand the functioning of this dictator. In my opinion, the basic question is this basic paranoia that leads to a cleavage in reality, which itself causes massive ambivalence. For example, it is said that Goebbels, who was the great architect of Nazi propaganda, tried to attend a capital execution and fainted. He could not bear to be in front of the reality of the death penalty, which he directly encouraged by his actions. It is also said that some concentration camp directors played classical music with their families on Sunday afternoons. It is this kind of cleavage that favours totalitarianism. Why not compare this kind of psychological cleavage with the following anecdote: Tolstoy, after having been a passionate hunter, had become a vegetarian out of deep conviction. This was not the case with his aunt, who liked to have "her" chicken for dinner. So he promised her that she would have it, and brought it to the table, but alive, with a knife, asking her to slit his throat. She felt sick and could not do it.

 

As we approach the conclusion of this introduction, we can understand this book by Ananda Bose as an invitation: an invitation to discover more of the culture of India and to deepen and broaden the knowledge of its spirituality. Our author, whose Kerala culture is close to that of Tamil Nadu’s, follows in his own way the very old model of the Tirukural of Tiruvalluvar. This is the founding text of Tamil literature dating from the third century BC. It contains all kinds of reflections and wisdom advice on family life, economy, politics and religion. Each era seeks a harmonization of various factors and trends through its culture, may this book contribute to it for our time.

 

Jacques Vigne

Paris, November 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AVANT-PROPOS

Je suis heureux de pouvoir écrire cette introduction au livre d’Ananda Bose. Il est du Kérala et a travaillé là-bas comme Commissioner, un poste à peu près équivalent à celui de préfet en France. Il a publié nombre d’éditoriaux dans les journaux en malayalam, la langue du Kérala et il a traduit le livre qui les réunissait en un anglais élégant. L’ouvrage que j’ai l’honneur de préfacer sera prochainement publié en français, et c’est en français que j’ai rédigé  introduction. Le grand avantage de cela, c’est que nous avons une fenêtre directe sur ce que pensent les Indiens, en particulier du Kerala, et la manière dont ils voient le monde. Souvent on traduit en français des intellectuels ou de purs littéraires indiens mais rarement des responsables qui ont vraiment mis la main à la pâte pour gérer la société indienne telle qu’elle est aujourd’hui. Pourtant, leur voix mérite d’être écoutée.

Les synthèses d’un honnête homme du XXIe siècle.

Le style de ce livre est un «travelogue ». Il s’agit de l’ouvrage de quelqu’un qui a pris non seulement le temps de voyager, mais aussi de se documenter, de réfléchir puis d’écrire sur ce qu’il a vu. Il s’agit d’une approche littéraire, qui n’est pas exhaustive comme des rapports administratifs ou des études scientifiques, mais qui fait quand même ressortir les points saillants sur chaque sujet. Ces mini-synthèses ne sont pas si faciles à établir. En effet, on a tendance à être noyé sous la masse d’informations, surtout à l’époque actuelle avec la facilité des recherches sur Internet. Dans ce sens, la formation de haut fonctionnaire et de diplomate qu’a suivi Bose a été une bonne préparation à la rédaction de cet ouvrage. En effet, quand on doit agir au quotidien, il faut être capable de faire des synthèses rapides et précises pour décider de sa ligne d’action. Notre auteur intervient aussi dans une institution qualifiée pour se poser des questions de fond, le Parlement global de l’énergie, GEP. Il réunit des scientifiques, différents penseurs de la région et des religieux hindous, à commencer par Swami Isa, pour approfondir cette question de l’énergie à tous les niveaux, du plus matériel au plus subtil¹. Il a pu inviter comme président d’une séance le Premier ministre du Shri Lanka.

Nous sommes devant le livre d’un honnête homme du XXIe siècle, qui part à la découverte du monde en prenant le temps de se documenter, d’ouvrir les yeux et les oreilles, et de réfléchir à ce qu’il perçoit avec un étonnement à la fois attentif et amusé. Il cherche à comprendre comment les gens fonctionnent, ce qu’ils ont dans la tête, ce qui est évidemment une vaste tâche quand on se promène dans de multiples pays. Ses fonctions dans les organismes internationaux l’ont aidé dans ce travail, dont il a fait bénéficier ses concitoyens, et maintenant le public français grâce à cette publication. Ayant moi-même vécu trente ans en Inde, j’ai été content de retrouver traité des grands thèmes de la société indienne actuelle avec esprit, et j’ai appris aussi des éléments de sagesse et d’humanisme extraits de la culture classique anglaise. Bien que nous Français, noussoyons les voisins directs du Royaume-Uni, nous ignorons trop souvent en France leurs grands penseurs et leur humanisme. De plus, dans une démarche éclectique, Ananda n’hésite pas à citer dans la même page les Veda et la sagesse des Grecs anciens.

On peut considérer les petits essais qui constituent les chapitres de cet ouvrage comme des taches de couleur effectuées par les peintres impressionnistes pour reconstituer finalement un visage ou un paysage. Même si ces taches semblent dissociées les unes des autres, il s’en dégage une impression d’ensemble dont on se souvient.

Des thèmes importants traités de façon brèves

Il faudrait énumérer beaucoup de chapitres pour donner une idée de la richesse contenue dans le livre, mais le lecteur les découvrira par lui-même. On peut quand même mentionner celui sur le statut régulièrement défavorisé de la fille, avec beaucoup de détails sur l’Inde, mais aussi sur ailleurs dans le monde. On s’aperçoit que même si l’Inde a une inertie certaine de ce point de vue-là, elle est loin d’être le seul pays du monde à souffrir de léthargie en face du statut défavorisé de la fille. Par ailleurs, les réflexions sur le grand institut de cancer de Bombay, le Tata Memorial Cancer Institute, qui est un des plus grands au monde, est instructif. Je peux mentionner à ce propos que le gouvernement indien est en train d’investir 100 millions d’euros, ce qui n’est pas une petite somme, surtout pour l’Inde, afin de doubler cet Institut d’un très grand centre de prise en charge du cancer par l’Ayurvéda. La médecine occidentale dépense des sommes considérables pour des traitements chimiothérapiques qui, globalement et statistiquement, n’améliorent la survie des patients que de façon réduite. De plus, elle a tendance à ne pas tolérer l’alternative. J’ai entendu dire que des médecins français qui ne veulent pas envoyer leurs patients se faire traiter par chimiothérapie courent le risque d’être radié de l’ordre des médecins. C’est un des nombreux cas où le scientisme peut mener à une forme de totalitarisme. Dans ce sens, on doit se réjouir que l’Inde, avec son poids d’un milliard trois cent millions d’habitants, s’engage dans une véritable recherche appliquée sur le cancer. Ceux qui penseraient qu’ils manquent d’études scientifiques sur les médicaments ayurvédiques peuvent retrouver gratuitement en ligne un livre de 1321 pages qui est constitué d’une longue liste de références d’études publiées dans des journaux de médecine de pharmacologie indiens ou internationaux sur l’efficacité de ces médications traditionnelles de l’Inde. Cela fait beaucoup ! Sachant cela, si un médecin occidental continue à dénier qu’il y a une branche de la science qui se développe réellement dans ce sens-là, l’accusation d’obscurantisme retombera sur lui. J’étais moi-même récemment à la Réunion pour la préparation de la rencontre des médecins du CHU de St Denis avec une médecin déléguée du ministère Ayush (ayurvéda, yoga et médecines traditionnelles) de Delhi. De telles rencontre sont maintenant possibles, même s’il y a encore beaucoup de travail à faire pour une meilleure compréhension des deux systèmes.

Les réflexions d’Ananda Bose sur le procès de Nuremberg ont une fonction de mémoire. La tragédie de la seconde guerre mondiale est trop vite oubliée par la jeune génération. En pesant le pour et le contre, il cite l’argument de Goering disant que de toute façon, à la suite d’une guerre, les vaincus sont toujours condamnés. Par exemple, le juge russe à la solde de Staline votait toujours pour la mort quels que soient l’accusé et le dossier rassemblé par les juges d’instruction. Staline lui-même a fait périr 30 millions de personnes de façon directe, et Soljenitsyne ainsi que son équipe ont montré que le déficit démographique dû à son action a été de 90 millions de personnes. Quelle autorité avait-il donc pour se poser comme juge d’une autre dictature et faire condamner à mort les fonctionnaires qui l’ont servi ? Quant aux Américains, ils ont tué d’un coup plus de 120 000 personnes avec les bombes de Hiroshima et Nagasaki, sans compter tous ceux qui sont morts des suites des radiations. Les 100.000 morts en une nuit provoqués par du bombardement de Dresde en début 1945 sont aussi une tâche de taille sur la mémoire des Alliés. Quand on pense que l’étymologie du terme holocauste signifie « complètement brûler », ne peut-on pas parler véritablement d’holocauste à propos de ces actions ? En tous les cas, Bose va dans ce sens. Ne peut-on relier cela aux idées de grandeur d’une nation convaincue quasiment d’avoir reçu une parole divine leur annonçant que leur mission était de dominer le monde ? Dans ce sens, on peut rappeler qu’un des pilotes qui a lancé la bombe s’est retiré comme moine à la Chartreuse de Sierra San Bruno, le monastère des Apennins où est enterré le saint fondateur de l’Ordre. D’un point de vue positif, on peut dire qu’il a cherché par la spiritualité une voie de sortie de sa culpabilité terrible, d’un autre point de vue plus critique, qu’il a peut-être simplement régressé au niveau de la violence monothéiste de base qui autorise à massacrer ceux qui ne sont pas d’accord avec le Dieu unique, y compris par exemple les Japonais, et qu’il s’est réfugié derrière cette justification plutôt fragile pour essayer d’étouffer ses remords probablement énormes.

Il est bien possible que le chapitre sur les amours d’Hitler et d’Eva Brown perturbera certains lecteurs. En même temps, c’est la liberté d’expression d’Ananda Bose de développer ce point de vue de l’étude de la personnalité d’Hitler, et de se demander s’il a vécu avec Eva des moments de véritable amour. D’autres auteurs comme Éric Fromm ont appliqué des notions de psychopathologie pour comprendre le fonctionnement de ce dictateur³. La question de fond est à mon sens cette paranoïa de fond qui entraîne un clivage dans la réalité, provoquant lui-même une ambivalence massive. Par exemple, on raconte que Goebbels qui était le grand architecte de la propagande nazie avait essayé d’assister à une exécution capitale et s’était évanoui. Il ne pouvait pas supporter d’être en face de cette réalité de la mise à mort, que pourtant il favorisait directement par ses actions. On raconte aussi que certains directeurs de camps de concentration jouaient de la musique classique en famille le dimanche après-midi. C’est ce genre de clivage qui favorise le totalitarisme. Pourquoi ne pas rapprocher ce type de clivage psychologique de l’anecdote suivante : Tolstoï, après avoir été un passionné de chasse, s’était mis par conviction profonde au végétarisme. Ce n’était pas le cas de sa tante, qui aimait bien avoir « son » poulet à dîner. Il lui avait donc promis qu’elle l’aurait, et le lui a apporté à table, mais bien vivant, avec un couteau, en lui demandant de lui trancher la gorge. Elle s’est trouvée mal et n’a pu le faire.

En approchant de la conclusion de cette introduction, on peut comprendre ce livre d’Ananda Bose comme une invitation : invitation à découvrir plus de la culture de l’Inde et à approfondir et élargir la connaissance de sa spiritualité. Notre auteur, dont la culture du Kérala est proche de celle du Tamil-Nadou, suit à sa manière le très vieux modèle du Tirukural de Tiruvalluvar. Il s’agit de l’écrit fondateur de la littérature tamoule datant du IIIe siècle avant JC. On y trouve toutes sortes de réflexions et de conseils de sagesse sur la vie de famille, l’économie, la politique et la religion. Chaque époque cherche une harmonisation de divers facteurs et tendances grâce à sa culture, puisse cet ouvrage y contribuer pour notre époque.

Jacques Vigne,

Paris, novembre 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                  PREFACE

Hereby Hangs a Tale

Ever since Virginia Woolf ushered the common reader on to the center stage of literary appreciation, the focus of writing has,perforce, been shifted to simplicity, clarity and lucidity. She has this recipe for the aspiring essayist: ‘a good essay must have this permanent quality about it;it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.’ There is also the caution given by JB Priestly,‘Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.’ In content and essence this takes all writings nearer to the Wordsworthian concept of poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow’ of powerful feelings. First conceive,then deliver seems to be the essence of creativity everywhere.

Essay writing in English has a pedigree and lineage perfected over four centuries by great masters like Addison, Steele,Dr. Johnson, Mathew Arnold, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, TS Elliot, RL Stevenson, Hazlitt,Virginia Woolf and a host of other literary greats.

Aldous Huxley says that ‘the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost nothing.’ The first ever essayist, the French writer Michel De Montaigne, claims that his essays grew out of his ‘common placing.’ Francis Beacon’s, works were the first ones in English which were described as essays.But literary historians point to Japan as the cradle of the genre of essays where fragmented pieces of writing known as ‘zuihitsu’ were popular, centuries before essays had their birth in Europe.

    The Japanese Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko referred to his essays as‘ nonsensical             thoughts’ written in ‘idle hours.’

    I would say that my essays stemmed from a ‘non nonsensical statement’ made in an ‘idle hour.’The situation calls for an explanation, for, as Shakespeare said, “thereby hangs a tale.” When I was District Collector of Kollam, Kerala I happened to travel with the renowned editor, scholar and poet Dr. NV Krishna Warrier. During the course of conversation he asked, me ‘you speak very well, why don’t you write.’ That was the moment when, it appears, my guardian angel had left me. In that idle hour I made the nonsensical statement, ‘I am hard up for ‘time,’ as if time’ was the villain stifling my creative abundance. Dr. Warrier made a pithy statement ‘If you have a mind to write time doesn’t matter.’So I wrote. Novels, short stories, poems and essays were all in the production line. A laissez faire approach to creative pursuits with no boundaries and no questions asked.

The veteran critic of those days, Professor M. Krishnan Nair, was looming large on the critical stage ready to strike at the very sources of the junk stuff in Malayalam literature which choked the steady stream of literary flow. I was shaky about the bizarre potential of becoming a prey to his critical guillotine,but was greatly relieved to get a pat on my back in his weekly columns. Review of my first short story,‘Flowers of Chowringhee’ he wrote:

In The Waste Land TS Elliot writes, “on Margate sands. I can connect nothing with nothing.” In the essays of Elia, Charles Lamb proves that he is an adept at connecting something with everything through judicious mixing of fact with fiction. The Dream Children is perhaps a quintessential piece of this subtle creative art which always has appealed to this author.

My daughter Nanditha, alias lucky, was enamored of this style, and would prod me, on and off to come out with airy nothings giving them a local habitation and a name. When she grew up and started travelling around the world as an Indian diplomat’s wife she could also perceive the pervading thread of unity amidst diversity in the world which connects nothing with nothing and anything with everything. She would persuade me to come up with a series of books recording my varied experience as a civil servant and as an instinctive traveller.

The basis of the articles in this collection is the experience I gained from travels to various countries and the impression I gathered from what I saw, heard or felt. While I was working in the Department of Atomic Energy I had the opportunity to interact with scientific greats of India and represent India at the European Nuclear Council, CERN, and the International Thermonuclear Organization. I feel that it would be worthwhile to share with the readers whatever bits of information I gathered from exchanges with these scientists.

Most of the essays in this collection had been published in periodicals like Malaya Manorama, Deepika, Kerala Kaumadi, Keralasabdam and Kumkumam.

The discipline offered by column writing came in handy in presenting divergent themes in a unified whole. Time and space acquired new dimensions within the parameters of a column making essay writing a rigid discipline in itself. Time of the reader and space of the journal would act as the controlling levers bringing the writer’s profligacy towards extensive writing. Thequintessentialquesttohold‘infinityinthepalmofthehandandeternity in an hour’ makes brevity a compulsive necessity for those who attempt to write columns.

I am deeply indebted to my wife Lakshmi,son Vasudev and grandson Advaith for gracefully permitting me to divert my time in the preparation of this work, which legitimately belonged to them. I acknowledge with thanks the creative contributions made by Shri Ravindran Nayar, former chief of United News of India in making this book a reality.

Spurred by the repeated proddings by my dear daughter, I bring out this book in English. The darling of our heart, the life and soul of our family, our sweet little girl Nanditha, has chosen go to her heavenly abode leaving all of us in extreme grief. This book is her wish fulfillment and I dedicate it to her sweet and loving memory. I earnestly wish and pray that my dear readers would accept it as a requiem to the dear departed.

 

 

Dr. C. V. Ananda Bose

 

 

1

I MET OZYMANDIAS, IN THE SECRETARIAT

 

    Ozymandias. The mighty emperor. Seeker of everlasting greatness who caused a colossal statue of himself to be made to ensure for him eternal fame. Shelley in ‘Ozymandias,’ refers to the impermanence of power by pointing to the decayed remains of that enormous statue, two vast, trunkless legs and a shattered visage, that lie neglected on a desert path, vaingloriously telling the passersby, with the ‘sneer of cold command:’ “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings.”

 

Yesterday I met Ozymandias. In the Secretariat. Wearing disheveled clothes and holding an old diary in his hand, he was standing in a corner. ‘Wasn’t he a minister once?’, I asked my friend. I invited him to my room, talked pleasantries and served him tea. He had come to enquire about some small matter. I called the officials concerned and gave him the information that he had sought. He thanked me profusely, in all humility, and left the room.

 

Why show such courtesy to these people, my friend who was in my room, asked me. When he was in power had he shown any courtesy to anyone? Hadn’t he shoved around a youngster who came to submit a petition? Then there was that hush-hush incident of his slapping a guard and the guard slapping him back; then the furore over flinging a file at the face of a woman official at a conference. My friend was reeling off his chargesheet against the former minister. Another officer who joined the discussion chose to react philosophically. Some people lose their sight when in power. They become sort of Dhritharashtra. What do we do when the ruler who has to see all, turns blind?

 

My friend continued in unmitigated anger. This happens when the cur and the clown come to occupy the golden throne. But it all depends on the quality of those who sit there, I intervened to say. There are some ministers who are always courteous in their behaviour. They are well aware of their limitations. They show respect for others. There is decency and dignity in their dealings with their subordinates. There are others who are veritable embodiments of arrogance. They will berate anyone they come across. Assert on things they are totally ignorant about. Throw to the winds all rules and regulations. Will claim that if they commit wrongs it is because they have a right to do so and will insist on compliance by others. When a new government assumes office, the employees often make their assessment within a week.  So and so is decent. What a good minister is he!  About the others they say: ‘What sort of a minister is he? Pity we have to bear this cross.’ Both the groups have power in their hands. The difference is in the way that power is used. What distinguishes this behaviour is the quality of the lessons they learn from the time they started to crawl as a child. Yes! As you sow, so you reap.

 

Who is a good ruler? Solomon was a good ruler. He never dismissed anyone or anything as insignificant. Once when he was riding along with his retinue, he came across a long line of ants hastening towards their hole. Though aware that they would be trampled under the hooves of the horses, they continued to go in a line, one after the other. No ant tried to trample another in a bid to save itself. Solomon learned a lesson about selflessness from these tiny ants. Indeed, for a ruler no one is insignificant.

 

Dilip of our puranas pleads to the lion that jumped over his cow to spare the cow under his care and eat him instead.

 

Those occupying the golden throne should realize one thing. Do not ignore or insult those who made them sit on it. There are many things that do not submit to authority. Or ask emperor Ptolemy. He once asked mathematician Euclid:  Is there a shorter road to learning geometry?

Euclid replied: ‘There is no royal road to geometry.’

 

Rulers should approach knowledge with humility. They should not try to eclipse knowledge with their arrogance.   Is haughtiness a twin of power? If you think so it is because you see many a haughty and arrogant ruler around you. Remember the values that one learns from childhood. If those values do not lose their sheen, power will not be corrupted by arrogance. You need not go far to seek examples. Remember Lal Bahadur Shastri who was wedded to simplicity.

 

Why blame ministers? Their number is considerably small. What about the conceit and the contemptuousness vaunted by the bureaucracy whose number is much more.   If anyone going to the village office, police station or registration office feels that he is like Abhimanyu trapped in Padmavyooha, the responsibility squarely rests with the masterclass attitude of the officials.   The general public cannot be blamed if they harbour the view that to get things done in a government office some palms were to be greased.

 

There is a monstress in Greek mythology. Medusa. Know what the hero Perseus did when he went to defeat her? He just  held aloft a mirror in front of her face. And Medusa fell down dead seeing in the mirror the monstrosity of her own face. Bureaucracy is like Medusa. But no one tries to hold a mirror up to it.  Times, however, have changed. No one should forget that.   If they do not improve themselves, the time may come when people shall come forward to show them the way out.

 

When I met Ozymandias in the Secretariat I remembered the spider in a poem. The spider believed that the world was under its feet. But its devious net collapses when a strong gust blows its way. Seeing this the poet says:

 

I then remembered each of the empires.

That man gave shape to in the vastness of time.

 

Shakespeare must have seen our government offices. That is why he wrote: ‘the hell is empty; all the devils are here.’

 

Power is psychotropic. It is an intoxicant, hallucinant. It causes giddiness. The feet may falter and one may fall down. Like ‘patience on a monument’, Ozymandias silently proclaims the transience of power.  Certainly, Ozymandias has a message for all, a loud message for all times.

 

Yes, the silence of Ozymandias sounds good.

 

 

 

2

SHOULD THERE BE BOOGIE WITH THE BOOZE

 

There is perhaps one festival that all the boozers of the world fervently look forward to. The Oktoberfest, which is also known as Beer Fest. An estimated seven million people from different parts of the world are known to converge at Munich in Germany in October every year to take part in this festival, to drink and drown in wild abandon in a matter of a fortnight. It is said that no other festival anywhere in the world attracts such a massive crowd of benign boozers.

 

Though known as Oktoberfest, the festivities in fact begins in late September. Despite being a boozers’ meet, there is a strict code of conduct for the festival that is meticulously observed by one and all. The festival gets an auspicious start at the stroke of 12 noon with the Mayor of Munich ceremoniously tapping a beer barrel. As if on signal, hundreds of thousands of mugs get filled up in the first wave of an almost never ending process of filling and drinking for a fortnight, instantly turning Munich into a paradise of boozers.

 

One may wonder where is the space for seven million drinkers to sit and empty bottles to their hearts’ content. Well, to say the least, Munich has the wherewithal.  The towns men make excellent arrangements to ensure that for all the boozers of the world and more there is enough space in Munich. In the extensive garden laid out with eye catching lawns and lined with trees, all facilities are made. All space expands with the elasticity of a boozer’s mind. All facilities are made to welcome the boozers and to make them feel at home. Leading manufacturers of beer erect spacious beer tents, each having all the amenities needed to accommodate as many as 20,000 guests. There are fourteen such tents in the vast garden. As the flow of the boozers go up, the number of temporary tents also go up. With the launch of the Beer Fest, Munich gets throbbing and pulsating with the rollercoaster rides of the amusement parks, modelled after Disneyland, colourful pageantries, musical concerts and other festivities arranged for the entertainment of the boozers. The tents have room for everyone and facilities for everything. For the young men and women in love, there is perfect ambience for the exchange of hearts.  And for the estranged among them it is the venue for a spirited come back, settling their differences and dispensing with the discords. For the lonely hearts it is the place to have a quiet drink in a corner or, if they like, strike up new friendships and tie ups.

 

It is not the mundane boozer alone who gets attracted to the fest. Glamour stars, intellectuals and bigwigs also frequent the bacchanalia. In the pavilions they patronize there is usually heavy rush of young boozers of both sexes who take to autograph hunting.

 

There is both history and romance behind this world famous festival of the boozers. Its beginning was believed to be in the year 1811.  In 1810 the king of Bavaria, Ludwig I, married Princess Theresa. The venue chosen for the wedding festivities was the vast garden in the heart of Munich, the capital of Bavaria. It was a spectacular royal wedding and the festivities were unmatched in pomp and heraldry.  The king, however, wanted the commoners to take part in the festivities and so on the fifth day of the wedding he arranged for a splendid horse race.   With all that it was a wedding that thrilled and enchanted the Bavarians beyond compare.

 

The following year the Bavarians thought why not a repeat of the festivities in the garden in which the royal wedding took place.

 

That was the beginning of Oktoberfest. And the beer makers rose to the occasion by giving all encouragement and incentive for the festivities. Till now the sixteen days in September and October attract drinkers and drunkards from all over the world to the garden tents in Munich to partake in this bacchanalia. This festival had to be suspended twenty four times. That was because of temporary hitches caused by wars, epidemics and situations like recession.

 

Though not by design, I reached Munich once during the Oktoberfest. Hotel rent was like nowhere else in the world. When the inflated rate was mentioned, I felt something amiss. With a smile, the lady at the counter said, during Oktoberfest it is not the cost but the availability of room that mattered. By inviting boozers of the world for two weeks the Bavarian government and the Munich city administration make a lot of money. To be approximate Rs. 50,000 million. Added to that there are new jobs for 20,000 people.

 

Though there is definitely a link between tourism and drinking, it is doubtful whether there is any other government in the world that has so cleverly used liquor for the promotion of tourism. I remembered the tourism promotion efforts in Goa and Kerala. When the liquor festival was confined to a fortnight in Munich, in Goa and Kerala it was liquor and liquor all the way through the year. But does tourism go up here in proportion to the rise in the intake of booze?

 

There is no manifestation of drunken revelry in the Beer Fest. There is booze in the queues, booze in the tents, booze in the hotels, booze in the parks. There is boozing everywhere.  There is no drunken drawl whatsoever. Here and there some people go off the senses. They also take to some pranks. But such errant behaviour is promptly dealt with and such people are whisked away to a special ‘Clowns’ tent.’ The best way to learn about rule of law in a country is to understand the behaviour pattern of the boozers. The drinkers who visit Oktoberfest come there to enjoy their drinks and not for any drunken riot.

 

A descendant of King Ludwig who started the Oktoberfest now runs a brewery. But he does not have permission to take part in the Fest. That is because of the rule that only beer made within the limits of Munich city can be sold in the Oktoberfest. The prince’s brewery is outside the city limits. But clever that he is, he attempted a way out of the legal imbroglio through a short cut to the festival: set up a mobile beer unit in Munich. But even then, the city administration declined to give him permission. Determined to find his way in, the prince vowed that he would be in the festival within five years. If he failed, he would personally carry a litre of beer thirty miles to present it to the festival authorities. If he succeeded, the organizers would have to reciprocate in the same way. The prince lost the legal battle. He kept his word and came with a litre of beer at the head of a spectacular procession. A pageant that took the glitz out of the Oktoberfest.

 

But at the entrance to the city, police stopped the pageant. The prince argued that it was his right to take a litre of beer to Munich. The law enforcers admitted that he did have the right. His litre of beer was well within the law but his procession was clear unlawful.

In Germany there is no softness to anyone in the matter of enforcement of law. There is no room for breach of law with regard to drinking also. One may drink, but one cannot disturb others through drunken revelry. The India model of law enforcement which concedes a fourth angle to a triangle in the case of some people is nowhere found in other countries. Let the India model remain soft and shaky. Three cheers to the soft state, if its not unbeerable.

 

 

3

ALMIGHTY DOLLAR

 

It was Washington Irving, the creator of Rip Van Winkle, who first used the expression ‘Almighty Dollar’ in his travelogue Creole Village.

 

He said so against the background of the frenzied way in which the American people were running after material gains. Finding relief that the people of the villages were by and large free from going after the mirage of economic might, er wrote: ‘The almighty dollar who is worshipped universally does not seem to have many disciples in the villages. Till such times as its missionaries infiltrate the villages and set up banks and other places of worship, the villagers will continue to live in the present state of contented poverty.’

 

The venue was the residence of a friend in New York. Many people had assembled there. All Indians. I had gone to the U.S. to participate in the Habitat session of the U N General Assembly. And the friends had come there to offer felicitations. The talk naturally went to the social and cultural status of the Indians in America. Everyone pointed to the sunny side of America.   Ample freedom. Ample opportunities. With hard work and enthusiasm one can succeed in life. There is rule of law. All systems work efficiently and smoothly. Corruption is rare. So went the paeans on America. There was one thing on which there was unanimity of opinion. The culture here is not suited to us. The aim of life of an average American is to make money and spend it. Everyone is living for the self only. Family is not a concern at all. None cares for the parents. When the children attain majority they are set free. From then on there is no commitment on the part of the parents to the children or the other way round. One in the gathering was rather blunt. According to him the children appeared to say that they were brought to this world without their consent.

 

One of America’s top notch heroines of yesteryears, Sophie Tucker, once said: “From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 good personality, and from 55 onwards she needs good cash.”

 

American society understands the importance of money and does not fight shy of proclaiming it wherever needed. They do not harbour the view that money is sin and poverty a virtue. Thomas Murphy who was Chairman of General Motors once said openly that the job of General Motors was not to make cars but to make money. When the fundamental stand of the society is such, there is no wonder unbridled competition to make money becomes the character of the society. Charles Revson, one of the titans in the American perfume industry, has said: ‘I don’t meet competition. I crush it.’ McDonald’s owner Ray Kroc goes one step further in dealing with competition. ‘If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water.’ American media legend David Sarnoff has this to say on this competition culture without a human face: competition brings out the best in products and the worst in men.

 

The view that money making is sin is becoming old fashioned. Especially in the context of privatization and liberalization. Even otherwise, has anyone, except philosophers and sages, found evil in money? According to Calvinist thinking God selects some who are dear to him. He also assigns certain symbols to signify his selection. Among such symbols are material gains. There are people who say this is a philosophy that waves to capitalism the green flag of spirituality.

 

In the opinion of Adam Smith, a spokesman of unbridled economic freedom, capitalism’s craving for profit will prove to be beneficial to the society in the long run. When competition among the capitalists gets heated up, it will lead ultimately to a situation of social equilibrium. What it means is that there is in the society an unseen hand that controls such a process. Greed is part of human nature. A dog does not share the bone in front of it with any other dog. Even if there are many bones, dogs are wont to fight among themselves. In Adam Smith’s viewpoint what the government should do is to let the dogs go their way. Even if one dog gets fattened and others get starved it will not have any bearing in the larger perspective.

 

Greedy men are always ‘needy’. If they get ten, they need hundred and if they get hundred they angle for a thousand. Guarding the money they have and making more money are matters that disturb their peace of mind. Once there was a king who was always under tension. His anxiety gave way to a serious illness. Many physicians treated him, but he was far from getting cured. Then one physician suggested a way out. The king has to wear, just once, the shirt of a man without sorrow and the illness will go forthwith. The king promptly ordered a search. His emissaries met many rich people but they all had sorrows. Their constant worry was how to guard their money. Would they lose it, would they be robbed? The search finally came to a beggar sitting in the shade of a tree. Does he have any sorrow, he was asked. ‘No, I don’t have any sorrow at all. I don’t have any money. So there is no fear that someone may steal it. I have some food with me enough for a meal and I can have a good sleep under this tree.’ The king decided that it was this man’s shirt that was going to cure his illness. ‘But I don’t have a shirt,’ the beggar said.

 

It is money that gives heartburns to many. The Bible says, love of money is the root of all evil. Mark Twain corrected it, saying lack of money is the root of all evil. John Muir was one of America’s early environmentalists. He walked a thousand miles to create awareness about the need for the preservation of wilderness in the United States. And the wilderness was being dissected by E H Harriman, the great railroad builder who was creating a vast network of rail roads. He made a lot of money but he needed more money for more investment.  Commenting on Harriman’s predicament Muir commented that he was richer than Harriman. ‘I have all the money that I need. But he does not have.’ No doubt it smacks of Gandhiji’s philosophy. Renunciation. That is the sure way to happiness and contentment.

 

The matter becomes serious when worship of mammon transforms itself from a social reality to a national character and then to a political ideology. That is because the routes through which money comes are devious. It has been proved many a time that the easiest way to make money is to wage a war. But money is required even to wage a war. That means we are unknowingly thrown into the vicious cycle of money for war and war for money. Jean Paul Sartre said in 1951: ‘When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die.’ Lloyd George who was British Prime Minister once underlined the link between money and war when he said ‘The last 100 million pounds will win the war.’ What is important is that the adverse impact of greed for money does not remain confined to the individual or to the society alone.   This greed ultimately gets transformed into a global disaster. 

 

 

 

4

SPANISH BULLFIGHT

 

I write this from Barcelona in Spain. I have just returned after seeing a bullfight, the memory of which disturbs me. If we are not upset by what we see in the bull fight, we are bereft of any conscience.

What is bullfight? Witnessed by a crowd of 20 to 25 thousand people, five or six men bleed a mute animal to death, repeatedly piercing it with daggers, swords and spears. Seeing this gory spectacle of unmatched cruelty, the spectators’ become jubilant, exultant. They applaud, they shout. To describe this inhumanity as ‘brutal’ would be a shame on the brutes. But men who are mad about bullfight never see it in that light. And the people who treat this as a saleable commodity to make money, describe it differently.

 

Bullfight is Spain’s national pastime and the ‘young heroes’ who take part in it are revered in the society. Like cricketers and film stars they thrill, even horripilate, their fans.

 

The Plaza de Toros (bullring) is a spectacular open-air stadium that can seat tens of thousands of spectators.’ The show begins in the evenings. Six huge bulls are brought in to participate in each day’s fight. They are ushered in one at a time. The hero who gets into the arena to fight the bull is known as ‘matador.’ There are three matadors in a day’s fight. Each matador is expected to slay two bulls after vanquishing them. The man controlling the fight is the president. Every stage of the fight is proceeded only with his consent.

 

Once the stadium is full, the fight begins. The first thing is the lineup of the fighters before the spectators. Then two men on horseback enter the ring and seek the key of the cage from the president. The cage of the bull is ceremonially opened. Losing no time the mighty bull barges into the arena like a tempest. The spectators are in their spirits by now, waiting in anticipation for the gory sport to begin.

 

Now two men on horseback, known as ‘picadors’, enter the arena, armed with spears. They stab the bull with spears to annoy it and make it charge at the horses. When the bull attacks the horses, the picadors expertly manoeuvre the horses away, but in the process spear the bull at its neck. Wounded, the bull is forced to lower its head, making it an easy target for the ‘barderilloes,’ who enter the arena now, to drive barbed swords precisely on the neck. Now is the time for the grand entry of the hero of the evening, the matador. His first act is to use a red cape to attract the panic stricken and bleeding bull. With smooth, fluid motion that is famed in folklore and literature, the matador continues to tease the bull for long, using the long, bright red cape as his ornament and armour. And finally, the time comes for him to give the spectators the ultimate spectacle they have been waiting for, the slaying of the animal with a precise, deep thrust of the sword at its forehead. A thrust that pierces the forehead and goes all the way to the animal’s heart.

 

The exulting spectators give him a standing ovation and he reciprocates the gesture with a bow that befits a victor. Even as the celebration goes on, two horsemen gallop in and drag the carcass of the bull away from the arena. The first act of the show is over. Similar to this there are five more acts for the day.

 

Don’t assume that all the people of Spain treat this inhuman cruelty as a national adornment. There are people who consider this as a pastime of exceptional savagery and cruelty. There had

been campaigns from time to time for the banning of bullfight. Philip V banned it once, braving stiff opposition from its advocates.

Strange as it may seem, most of the mighty fighting bulls are reared by priests in some monasteries. Realising the abominable monstrosity in this cruel game, the Pope declared strictures on all those organising bullfights. But the Spanish society that had a passion for this pernicious pastime turned the diktat a short lived affair.

 

Is it an adventure sport or a sport at all? Here is a mute animal trained to look only at the red cape in front of it. After tiring it out by those who pester it, attack it with barbed swords and spears, a hero comes to thrust a sword into its heart. What adventure is there in this bloody act? For a fight to be treated as a fight, the adversaries should be equal. The chekavars who entered the fighting arena in the hoary past in Kerala were like this, equal. In the famous jallikkettu in Tamil Nadu too there is a virtual equality between man and animal. The bull in jallikkettu can be vanquished only with agility, stamina, concentration and superb physical strength.

 

My homeland Kerala in its turn has a culture that recognises and respects animals. There is a strange ritual observed in many a Kerala home. Feeding the ants. Ant is an integral part of the universe that is home. That ant is given a ceremonial recognition at least once a year. The mattuponkal in Tamil Nadu is a festival of the cows. There is a competition in Kerala villages that farmers enthusiastically participate in—maramadi. This is a competition specifically for the bullocks engaged in tilling the paddy fields. In this competition the tiller of the soil and the tilling animal are equal partners. Prizes also are given jointly for this team of winners. What a beautiful concept – man and animal are equal partners.

 

The values that a society uphold, constitute the stamp of its culture. The respect given to life can surely be taken as the yardstick to measure culture. When lives are sacrificed on the street it can be assumed that there is decay in culture and disintegration in society. Those countries having a history of maritime adventurism and subjugation of far off lands may have made huge material gains, but are committing cultural suicide.  Is cruelty a sport?

 

 

5

CRY, MY BELOVED COUNTRY

 

Is there any salvation from the burden of this sin? Freedom from this feeling of guilt?

 

What happened at Kumbakonam, in July 2004, was so gruesome that no one could claim to be free from its responsibility. In the fire that ravaged a school building, a large number of innocent children were instantly burnt to death. We failed in our responsibility to protect the lives of the dear children. Who are all included in this ‘we?’ The management of the school at Kumbakonam? The teachers there? The local people? Department officials? Minister? Law makers? None of them can evade responsibility. Not even we in distant parts of India.

 

How fast it was that the accused were identified and brought to justice! The school manager was arrested. Some officials of the education department also got their due. There were some assurances of help. Some made a show of their shock. Everywhere in the state, thatched school sheds were pulled down. Aren’t these enough? Not satisfied?

 

Satisfied? Ask the hapless mother who packed the school bag and tiffin box in the morning and sent her darling kid to school with a hug only to receive his lifeless, burnt out body in the evening. Ask the little boy who was waiting for his younger brother for a game of cricket. Let them say whether they are satisfied with the action of those who reported that ‘strong and effective steps have been taken.’

 

Where did we go wrong? We have not given even an iota of value to the concept of safety of the children going to school. Accidents are not accidental. We have stringent provisions in the law relating to safety precautions to be taken. But no one cares to enforce them. In many cases, loopholes are left consciously in the law. If the right people are approached in the right manner, one can breach the law and escape through the safety valve of the loopholes. The rule is that building permits shall not be issued if firefighting and fire escape arrangements are not up to the mark.

 

Unauthorized construction will invite punishment. In the case of schools, it is mandatory that the concerned authorities inspect the schools before the academic sessions and issue fitness certificates. Similarly, it is the duty of the management and the inspection team to ensure that the fire fighting equipment are perfectly operable. When the children are entrusted to the schools, the teachers and the school authorities have the duty to ensure that the children are sent back home safely. This is not a favour, but a duty. Fundamental duty. As this involves children, far beyond the call of duty, there is a human touch in this.

 

But we should not forget one thing. As we go up, our responsibility also goes up, not down. The law makers, the law enforcers and those who administer them are all subject to joint responsibility. The basic problem is that rule of law is not given due consideration. Rulers nowadays do not issue orders that are inviolable. They are in fact unable to do so. That is because most of them live as parasites of law breakers. When all levels of the administration are filled with people out to make a fast buck by singing paeans on the powers that be, the law enforcers themselves will be called upon, even forced, to bend or break the law. We should try to introspect at least when we bury the burnt out bodies of the children in the graveyard, on violations of law. In that respect the tragedy at Kumbakonam is not an isolated incident. It is only that the innocent children became martyrs of the rot that has gripped the society. This is not the anguish of Tamil Nadu alone. Cry, my beloved country, cry now. If you have tears to shed, shed them now.

When days go by and memories fade, this tragedy also may go down into dark abysses of oblivion, never to come up again. Though it is said that experiences are our teachers, we learn nothing. If violations of the law go on unhindered and people are enticed by blandishments, it perhaps may be due to want. But what about the United States, that inexhaustible mine of prosperity and plenty? The obsession of the American with security is such that even the defence minister of the largest democracy in the world is subjected to disrobing in the name of security check at the airport. But instances are not rare when that sense of security is of no avail in the face of calamities.

 

In 1903 there was a major fire in the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago in which as many as 600 people had perished. The publicity given by the theatre owners was that the building was ‘totally safe from fire mishaps.’ But whatever was done there was to add to the conflagration. Canvasses with oil paintings, electric lights to simulate moonlight, interior decoration that closed exit points, extremely narrow fire escape-- the whole set up in the theatre was capable of inviting a fire mishap and increasing its intensity. Like here, the authorities there also woke up after the tragedy. The law was made more stringent. The extent of safety arrangements was enlarged. The government became more alert. But all this amounted to nothing but beginner’s euphoria that is never sustained. Again and again there were major fire accidents in that country.

 

As many as 492 people were killed in a fire that ravaged a club named Coconut Grove in 1942. The club had nine doors but all were closed with decorative art works. When the blaze started, people ran towards the main exit, leading to a gruesome stampede in which several people were trampled to death. Later investigations revealed that the building was constructed and the club opened in gross violation of building rules. The city corporation officials dealing with these matters had closed their eyes, deliberately perhaps, to such violations.

 

The 26-storey M G M Hotel in Las Vegas, reputed to be one of the most modern hotels in the world, too had a major fire outbreak in 1980. The fire had started from cooking oil in a pan in the kitchen and spread to other floors. Eighty-four people were killed and over 600 suffered serious burns. There were about 1,000 guests in the hotel at the time of the accident. The hotel was claimed to have all modern, scientific fire fighting facilities. But what use? Even the fire alarm was silent. None of the rooms had smoke detectors. Many of the emergency doors could not be opened as they were jammed. The guests in the topmost floor of the hotel came to know of the fire from radio bulletins.

 

What all this means in a nutshell is that spending a lot of money, or creating safety set up, or framing laws and regulations will not be enough. There should be awareness about safety. All should imbibe the lesson that safety aspects should not at all be ignored. Laws should be enforced. We should be able to learn from the experiences of others. What is needed is an introspection. When sending their children to schools, mothers should ask themselves ‘Is my child safe there?’ Teachers should realise that the life and future of the children are entrusted to them. Law makers should realise that it is their responsibility to ensure safety of those who elected them to power. The rulers should realise that they are there to do what is expected of them to do. And not to beat their breasts and wail when calamity strikes. It is not enough to sit in the chair of power. One should know how to rule. The present day rulers would do well to remember the iconic Dalawa of erstwhile Travancore, Velu Thampi Dalawa who ordered the dismemberment of the thumb of a government accountant for falsifying accounts to help the dalawa’s own mother. It goes without saying that the flow of responsibility is from top to bottom. This should be realised by those at the top. Let us not forget that the lessons learnt from Kumbakonam are applicable the whole of India.

 

6

DON’T BITE, BUT HISS

 

 

As a young boy, I used to watch in fascination large groups of women going to the paddy fields for harvest. Hundreds of them leaving in the morning by open boats and returning in the evenings, after harvesting and crushing, with handful of money, laughing and talking animatedly. It indeed was a pleasant sight. Nowadays during my infrequent visits to the village such a comely sight is not seen at all. There is no harvesting in the paddy fields. No crushing. Paddy fields have long since been filled up for construction of buildings.

 

It is difficult to visualize an Indian village without paddy or wheat farming, farm songs, seeds and sowing, harvest and farm markets. In the treatise ‘Krishi Geetha.’ Parasurama is said to have given detailed instructions on farming techniques, as to how to sow the seeds and when. Of the many riddles I had heard in my childhood, those that still remain in memory are those related to farming. The ox may lie down, but the tether will run along (pumpkin), the round leaf without a joint (pappad), a multitude of chillies that bloomed in the hill that jumbos or men cannot scale (stars in the sky). The festivals and rituals that still remained in the mind were also farm related. The greatness of farming was evident in all facets of rural culture. There is a popular myth I heard in Vietnam. In the olden days paddy was not so small as of now. It was large, rounded, like coconut. And paddy came into being on its own, not due to cultivation by anyone. It sprouted by itself, got ripened and would reach the farmer’s house by itself. All that the farmer has to do is to clean up and decorate the house to give paddy a befitting welcome. Once a lazy farmer failed to decorate the house. He closed the door and went to sleep. Paddy felt ignored and humiliated. It got smaller and smaller and became the paddy of the size we now have. After that paddy would grow only after the farmers put in great effort in the field for cultivation.

 

Though a cliché now, the farmer can still be considered as the backbone of the nation. Our misfortune started the moment we lost this realisation. Those days are gone when we used to spread plantain leaves on the ground, sit on mats and enjoy a feast of white rice and curries of our choice. In our homes now it is ‘hot dog’ for father, ‘spaghetti’ for mother and ‘pizza’ for the kids. The worship of western life style totally upset the local culture. Perspectives changed. In keeping with the fast track life, fast track farming methods also came into being. Pesticides, chemical fertilizers, high-yielding hybrid seeds all together dispatched agriculture west ward. Chemicals were freely used in the processing of agricultural produce also. Going one step further, gamma radiation was introduced to prolong the shelf-life of agricultural produces. Needless to say, all this meant that our agriculture got alienated from such hoary concepts and practices and rituals associated with farming. What is more unfortunate is that the alienation from agriculture has turned our society and economy upside down. The new economic reforms snuffed out our agriculture and the ordinary farmer got lost in the by lanes of the reforms created jointly by globalisation, liberalisation and the world trade organisation. The farmer who was used to win incessant battles with the soil, with rain and shine, with insects and parasites, now stood transfixed in front of unknown and unfamiliar new dangers, wondering where to go from now. The backbone of the farmer, who was a symbol of fortitude and resourcefulness, was broken. The dark fiends of globalisation and liberalisation had a field day, driving the farmers to debt traps and mass suicides.

 

The decline of the farm sector is now a subject of serious debate. And there is divided opinion on mass suicides of farmer families. Andhra Pradesh openly admitted that there have been mass suicides of farmers. When multi-national giants were having a merry dance to celebrate the victory of information technology, farmers were faltering and falling down in the fields. In the ecstasy of the IT festival, no one heard the wails and groans from the farmlands. Many took this matter seriously only when the farmers registered their protest through the ballot box.

 

MI Darling, a former British official, once said that the Indian farmer was born in debt, lived in debt and died passing on the debt to the next generation. There is no change in this situation in many states. Otherwise, the suicide fever would not have gripped the farmers of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and Kerala like an epidemic. The issue of farmer suicides was subjected to a psychological analysis by an expert. According to him there are millions of poor farmers all over the world, but none of them choose the path of suicides. The Indian farmer has always been, then and now, in penury. Now it is not extreme poverty alone that bothers him but disillusionment. He had earlier the feeling that his life was in his control. But now there is a change in that feeling. Market forces he is not familiar with, have subdued him. He does not have control over his life. Someone is controlling it, but he does not know who it is. This pitiable state of affairs has taken away his self-confidence. According to this analysis it is this feeling of disillusionment that is driving the farmers to suicide.

 

True, the confidence in himself and the ability to control his circumstances constitute the life breath that sustains the farmer in his march forward. He has the bent of mind to stand firm in harmony with the soil and nature. And he has the pardonable pride that this feeling gives.

 

Once a man was passing through a farmland full of fruit bearing trees and plants. Impressed by what he saw, he congratulated the farmer saying ‘Thank God for helping you convert an arid land like this into such a fertile area.’ The farmer who was aware of the extremely hard work put in by himself and his family laughed and said “Yes, yes God has helped me.  But you should have seen this place when God alone was taking care of it.’ This reflects the pride of the farmer and his confidence in himself. It looks as if one has to agree with the analysis of the psychologist that the farmer is driven to suicide when this confidence is shattered.

 

Did the confidence of the farmer crumble or was it crushed? Who is the villain of the piece? Market forces? Government policies? Banking institutions? Advocates of globalisation? These are the co-accused who abscond when it becomes certain that they would be caught. All of them are responsible for the fall of the agricultural sector.

 

There is an invaluable character in the epics of the country that has the ability to grant all our wishes—Kamadhenu. For the average villager, agriculture was indeed like Kamadhenu. The pursuit of agriculture was more than an employment for him; it was a way of life. This was not something that fluctuated with the ups and downs of the economy. To ignore the agricultural sector and to welcome new economic practices was like throwing away gold to run after the glitter of tinselly. The farmer is one who will rejoice even if his eye is pricked – if it is by a grain of paddy. He knows how to build a rainbow bridge from the earth to the sky. But yet he slipped, unexpectedly.

 

What went wrong? Once there was a venomous snake. The very sight of him made people run for their lives. Everyone hated him. Once a yogi came that way and the snake made a complaint about this. The yogi advised him to give up the practice of biting people. If he mends his ways, the people would no longer hate him. The snake agreed. After some months the yogi came that way again and found the snake lying on the way side, badly beaten and bruised. It opened up its plaints to the yogi. ‘I heeded your advice and see its result. Whoever saw me started to beat me up or throw stones at me. See my condition now.’ The yogi said: ‘I asked you to stop biting, but not to stop hissing. You have to hiss whenever needed. Otherwise people will throw stones at you and beat you.’ The Indian farmer has to start hissing, through the ballot box. If he does so, self-destruction may yield place to self-confidence.

 

 

 

 

7

IGNITE PUBLIC MIND OR TORCH PUBLIC PRPOERTY

 

 

I saw him praying at the Hanuman temple in the morning. Then he had no tail. The next time I saw him he was on television. In front of the Secretariat. Then he had a tail and there was fire in the tail. That fire was seen spreading to a government vehicle on the road.

 

He was registering his protest. At what? That he was not sure of. But he did know how to protest. If the protest is to be a protest a government vehicle should burn. That is the basic lesson of protest.

 

What is wrong in arson? Arson as a weapon at the height of protest was first demonstrated by Hanuman in Ramayan. But the sparks that flew from the tail of Hanuman were sparks of dharma against adharma.

 

If there is a moral basis for the protest what should be incendiary, is the ire of the people. When people’s anger refuses to be ignited, will it be enough to torch public property? If there is an instance of injustice on the part of the authorities, the people’s feelings will be hurt. When it intensifies, the people will react with protests, breach of law and other forms of resistance. Gandhiji had demonstrated how a government could be forced to genuflect by farmers and factory workers who voluntarily come forward to take part in a non-violent struggle. What Nelson Mandela too showed in recent times was the inner strength of moral struggle. But what do we see now? The champions of protest are incapable of touching the hearts of the people. So they set fire to public property.

 

In a pluralistic society having strong differences of opinion, it is wrong to expect unanimity of views on all matters. There have been intense clashes of interests at different stages in the evolution of civilized societies. In the United States known as the cradle of freedom, we have once seen serious social clashes between the white men and the black. In international politics there have been clashes between power blocs that reached flashpoints. In the economic sphere capitalism and socialism are known to put sparks to the powder keg of interest clashes. But humanity has been marching ahead overcoming all these. Clashes of interest in the society are a reality. And we have to accept them with a sense of reality. What is important is the balance that comes out of such clashes. This can be evolved only through a combination of restraint and consensus. Not through any form of destructive protest.

 

Torching public property on the street has become a ritual art that needs no training. We were angry seeing the manner in which the Taliban administration in Afghanistan went about breaking up, burning or otherwise destroying archeological and historical monuments and artifacts. In the dark corners of the world, libraries had at times been destroyed by arson. But we had not gained anything from such destructive fervour. What happens here is protest against whom? To whoever it is, the protest ultimately reaches the diesel tank of a government vehicle. Who loses? What is burnt is not the private property of the ministers in power from time to time. What is destroyed on the road is public property which is the sum total of the money paid by the tax payers to provide succor to the poor millions of the country. Its destruction is like mauling one’s face. Shakespeare character Polonius says this, of Hamlet: ‘Though this is madness, yet there is a method in it.’ In the madness of destruction of public property, however, there is no method whatsoever. Burn when out of power, weep when in power. Who gains, who loses?

 

Among the Samurais of Japan there is a ritual—harakiri. Ritual suicide by self-disembowelment with a sword. There is bravery in this. But disemboweling another person is not bravery. It is murder. There is greatness and respectability in registering protest through sacrifice and self denial. But destroying public property and making anonymous claims away from the scene is cowardice. The strength of moral right is not there for this unjust show of protest.

 

There is a scene in Sophocles’ ‘Antigone.’ Antigone’s brother Polyneices lies dead and the body is kept, awaiting a funeral befitting a royal personage. But being a traitor to Thebes, King Creon issues a decree barring the funeral. Ignoring the royal diktat, and the fiery royal anger that may singe any transgression, Antigone takes a handful of soil and sprinkles it over the body in a symbolic funeral rite. She ignores the royal decree insolently but her protest is born out of sense of justice against arrogant injustice. It is the flame of fearlessness born in self-respect. In our case the torch of wanton destruction on the road is lit by the farce of a protest that is born out of lack of enlightenment, that does not have any conviction, or self respect. Fighting with shadows is self-deception by those without inner strength.

 

Negativism has become the national character of Indians. A mentality to oppose and defeat anything and everything. If any subject is received that can spur them to protest, they behave like street curs that get a piece of bone. Whether it is piece of bone or ruby, there is no difference in the way in which it is handled. The poet says about ruby in the hand of a monkey:

 

Smelled it, kissed it, licked it and bit it,

But being a monkey, threw it finally away.

 

But the poet has a consolation.

 

Great jewel, don’t grieve as it is your luck

That he did not try to break you open to find what is inside.

 

This is truly what we say when we see jewels are shattered in the street like this. No one has any responsibility to anyone. And the attitude is he is not responsible for his own actions. Then who else is responsible? If an answer is not found to this simple question, the nation’s growth will be downward like the snake gourd.

 

In ‘Don Quixote’ Cervantes gives a graphic account of the insane antics of the chivalrous hero. The Don who thought himself to be a great warrior after reading the exploits of great knights, sets about in shining armour on a skinny horse to wage war against injustice, wherever it is found. Then there is an unending flow of foolish exploits. Seeing windmills and mistaking them to be giant enemies, he tilts at them, falling down in the process. Though injured, he has the smug satisfaction that he has vanquished his enemy. When he hears the calls of shepherds herding sheep he misunderstands them to be the sound of soldiers engaged in battle. Sword drawn, the hero jumps into their midst, scattering the sheep away. At death bed, however, he realizes the folly of his actions and confesses: I was insane. Now I have woken up. Think of me with kindness. Forget whatever happened in the past.

 

Perhaps our own brand of instant revolutionaries who wage wars against windmills and herds of sheep in the street may sometimes have a change of heart. Let us pray for that. For the sins committed every time this repentance itself is expiation. Let us love the sinner and hate the sin.

 

 

8

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT BECOMES THE FAVOURITE FRUIT

 

 

Everyone was damn sure. If this fruit is eaten, death is certain. But this poisonous fruit is in daily use now as a favoured item on the dining table.

 

There is a story behind this change of fortune for tomato. An American soldier named Col Robert Gibbon Johnson had once a brainwave. Something has to be done to remove the mortal fear of tomato that Americans had. The colonel decided to take the initiative himself. That was in 1820. He made an announcement in his home town in New Jersey that on September 20 he was going to openly eat a basketful of tomatoes. About 2,000 people assembled there to witness what they thought to be the suicide bid of the colonel. But when they saw the colonel, after eating the tomatoes, merrily going around like an elephant in a cane field, they were satisfied. Tomato is not an enemy, but a friend.

 

There started the great leap of the tomato. Today it stands first among all the fruits produced in the world. Quantity wise, it is 16 million tonnes more than plantain that stands second in world production. Apple, Orange and Watermelon are in the third, fourth and fifth positions.

 

But there is a point of dispute here. Is tomato a fruit or a vegetable? This became a major legal issue. Finally the Supreme Court of the United States had to intervene. A law came into being in that country imposing a tax on vegetables. One of the major importers of tomato, John Nix and brothers, was bound to pay a huge amount as tax after the collector of customs, Edward Hedden, decided that tomato was a vegetable and hence liable to tax. Fruits, however, had no tax liability. Nix brothers therefore went to the Supreme Court challenging the imposition of tax, claiming that tomato was a fruit. The Supreme Court finally gave its verdict: considering its general use, the tomato is to be considered a vegetable, not a fruit.

 

But plant science does not agree with this view. What the fleshy red tomato contains within it are seeds. Hence scientifically it is a fruit. Tomato is perhaps a strange commodity that is legally a vegetable and botanically a fruit.

 

The dispute about tomato does not stop here. There is dispute between the Americans and Englishmen on how to pronounce its name. While the Englishmen argue it is ‘tomato,’ Americans call it ‘tomaito.’

 

Even as the dispute is still pending a resolution, the Spaniards are organising a tomato festival. ‘La Tomatina’ is a festival celebrated every year without a break in the small Spanish town of Buñol. About 40,000 people from different parts of the world visit Bunol to take part in this unique festival which involves throwing the tomato at each other, everywhere. When the one hour long tomato splash is over, the entire town will be filled with crushed tomatoes. Tomatina has become a festival that rouses the common people to frenzied heights.  I remember having visited this sleepy little town which wakes up to excitement during festival.

 

There are many stories about the origin of the tomato festival. Once a street singer was passing through Buñol singing songs and playing on the violin. When the local people found his oxen voice a nuisance they drove him away throwing tomatoes at him. Later, throwing tomatoes became a common pastime. Another story says that some masked dancers taking part in a rural pageant fell down when some youth ran among them to reach the front. One of the masked characters angrily reacted by beating all and sundry. He also threw tomatoes taken from a wayside vegetable stall.

 

In 1951 the town administration banned the tomato festival. But this invited widespread protests from the people. A group of youth symbolically took out a funeral procession around the town, carrying a tomato in a coffin and giving it a formal burial. Realising that the people wanted the festival, the administration rescinded its decision and offered full support for Tomatina.

 

The festival is organized on the last Wednesday of the month of August. Tens of thousands of people will reach Buñol that day. Parking their cars outside the town limits, they animatedly walk or run to the stadium at the centre of the town. There are fairs and variety entertainments on the way. At the centre of the stadium is a flag pole at the head of which is tied a piece of roasted ham. It is a competition for the youth. One has to climb the greasy flag pole and take the piece of ham. Hundreds of people make a futile bid to scale the pole. When the flagpole becomes less slippery after many make their bids, one person will finally scale it and take the ham. There will be a loud gunfire then to mark the formal beginning of the festival.

 

Trucks laden with tons of tomatoes will then make a beeline to the stadium. The people will grab the tomatoes, crush them and throw them at others. It will be a free for all. The tomatoes will hit roadside buildings also. Some owners try to cover their buildings with plastic sheets but this is no protection from the tomato missiles. If the men wear shirts or T-shirts while engaged in the festival, they will be called upon to remove them. Or else they will be surrounded by others with the chant ‘kamiseta, kamiseta’ (shirt). The garments will be thrown away with much fanfare. After one hour, another gunfire will be sounded to mark the close of the tomato war.

 

The people of Buñol proudly say that never even once since the festival began in 1940 had there been any untoward incident. Those participating in the festival are bound to go by the festival regulations. The most important stipulation is that nothing other than tomato should be thrown. No one should tear away the shirt of anyone. Only broken or crushed tomatoes should be thrown and not whole tomatoes. There should be no throw after the sound of the gunfire closing the festival. What is interesting is that tens of thousands of people who come from different parts of the world all observe these regulations meticulously.

 

Though Spaniards organise a festival in the name of tomato, the first to honour tomato was the United States. American President Jefferson was somehow a devotee of tomato. His children also got that liking and became promoters of tomato. Jefferson’s daughter even wrote a book of recipes on what all could be made with tomatoes. A further promotion for tomato came when in the dinner receptions given by the President, tomato was accorded the status of a favoured item.

 

In the midst of all this, some people even discovered that tomato had properties to fight cancer and other ailments. Some others felt that beauty and glamour were not enough adornments for tomato which needed some added weight also. One farmer in America took up sustained research to bring out a tomato strain that weighed three and a half kilograms. Another farmer in England irrigated and fertilized his tomato plant in such a way that it grew to a height of 65 feet. The French praised the tomato to the sky, calling it the apple of paradise. Another name for tomato is apple of love.

 

Moving from the forests to the farmlands and then to the dining tables, tomato continues its onward journey, touching the hearts of poets, lovers and farmers alike, proclaiming its transformation from the forbidden fruit to the favourite fruit.

9

IN HONG KONG DURING THE STRUGGLE

 

 

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was once asked: ‘Which is the best form of government?’

After thinking for a while, Churchill asked a counter-question: ‘For which country?’

Each country has a system of government that is suited to it. It is generally said that the people get the government they deserve. For English poet Alexander Pope the best form of government is the one that administers best.

For forms of government let fools contest; Whatever is best administered is best:

The worst form of government, no doubt, is democracy. But there is no better alternative.

Years back Hong Kong saw a huge demonstration in the street participated by about half a million people. The streets were surcharged with a new found vigour. ‘Give us democracy,’ the people chanted. And the whole world was watching the developments with bated breath.

It was in 1997 that Britain handed over Hong Kong to China. The people of Hong Kong who till then enjoyed the fruits of democratic freedom, were apprehensive whether the communist style of government on the mainland would encroach upon their personal freedom.

 

In China the days of change had already started. The Chinese leadership decided to turn the specialties of Hong Kong to their favour. They appointed Tung Chee Hwa as the Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Step by step, the political leadership on the mainland tried to consolidate its hold over Hong Kong. With this the embers of unrest that were so far enveloped in ashes started to burn with renewed vigour.

Martin Lee Chu Ming, a member of the legislature and a spokesman of democracy, explained the arguments of the pro- democracy sections thus: The joint declaration made by Britain and China on December 19,1984 had stipulated the conditions under which Britain was handing over the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China. The most important of these conditions was that the freedom and lifestyle of the people of Hong Kong would continue for the next fifty years without any change brought in by China. An elected legislature was also promised for Hong Kong. These assurances have to be implemented in letter and spirit. ‘Our aim is not to gain freedom from China. But we want effective autonomy.’

 

The formula pursued by the pro-democracy sections was ‘One country. Two systems.’ That is, while remaining under the sovereignty of China, Hong Kong would continue to have its own system of administration. What the people of Hong Kong wanted was a Chief Executive elected by the people under universal adult suffrage and an elected legislative council. A study conducted by the Chinese University in Hong Kong showed that a majority of the people of Hong Kong wanted direct election to elect the Chief Executive and the legislative council. Deng Xiao Ping had once said that only patriots loving the motherland would be allowed to rule. The anxiety of the pro-democracy sections was whether in the light of such a statement their patriotism would be called to question. However, these sections were relieved to some extent when Chinese premier Hu said democracy was humanity’s common path and that all countries were committed to safeguard people’s rights.

 

Believers in democracy the world over were in confusion. Like the question “Can anything good come from Nazareth,” their anxiety was whether democracy can be expected from China. It is not yet time to forget the murder of democracy in Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen square means gate of heavenly peace. When pro- democracy student protesters assembled there in 1989, the Chinese military chose to crush it, killing as many as 1,000 of them in a blatant massacre. Another 1,000 odd protesters were seriously injured in the military action. What was the wrong committed by them? All they said was they wanted democracy. Though initially the leadership had said army would not be used, on June 3 about ten thousand soldiers descended on the square with daggers and sticks. The students faced them with fortitude and the brute force of the army genuflected before their determination. Then came the army tanks and machine guns. Though the people, including mothers and children, tried to block the onward movement of the tanks by putting cars and other vehicles across the roads, this was of no avail. With whatever they could lay their hands on, including stones and bottles, the students challenged the army and attacked it, taking inspiration from the statue of the angel of democracy they had put up in the square. But at the gate of heavenly peace, democracy did fall down dead.

For whom does the bell toll in Hong Kong? For freedom and democracy or for consolidating the hegemony of autocracy? Would the shadows of the past fall on the future? We see history at a crossroads. The thinking of the leadership in Beijing appears to be like what the poet said: ‘Light means grief, child, darkness is better.’

 

There was a king in the forests, a fierce looking lion. It used to hunt down any animal it came across. Once the other animals asked him whether there couldn’t be a little bit of democracy. He could kill, but only to satisfy his hunger. After having his fill, could they have the left over? The lion agreed. After killing a big deer, the lion divided it into three pieces and called the other animals. ‘Let the sharing be democratic’, he said and claimed the first piece as his entitlement as the king. He then took the second piece saying it belonged to him as the hunter. Pointing to the third piece, he said it was for the subjects. ‘Whoever among you has the courage can come forward and take it.’

When Hong Kong went in for sharing of democracy, I was reminded of this story of jungle justice. Let us wait and see.

10

WHY NOT GREASE THE PALM?

 

 

It is often heard. Why not grease the palm? It will speed up things.

The attitude of the society towards corruption is somewhat like this. There are people who think that bribing is not a sin, but simply the transfer of money from one person’s hand to another one’s pocket. But is the path of corruption as simple as that?

A customs official in Mumbai suddenly had a desire to make money. He demanded bribe and got it. We may ask why bother if his pocket is bulging or not? But what did he do after making a fast buck? Helped someone to bring in a consignment of the highly dangerous explosive, RDX. And the result. The serial bomb blasts that shocked Mumbai. In the savage attack in which three precious lives were lost and several people were injured. Now, is bribing a simple transfer of money from one man’s pocket to another man’s?

Corruption is an enemy of national security.

Rajiv Gandhi, when he was Prime Minister, said that from every rupee spent on poverty eradication programmes, only fifteen paise went to the poor. The remaining 85 paise was lost on the way, half of it as wages and the other half as grease money. Now can we say that corruption is a simple transfer of money from one pocket to another?

Corruption is an enemy of the poor man.

 

 

It is the responsibility of the government to feed the poor. That is why the public distribution network was put into shape. Listen to the news about the PDS. Thirty-five per cent of ration rice and 36 per cent of ration sugar usually go to the black market. One may dismiss this, asking what harm is there if someone makes an added buck. But can it be dismissed like that? The subsidy given by the government for providing ration for the poor amounts to a whopping Rs. 10,000 crore. A substantial portion of this goes to the pockets of the black marketers. This is more than the plan outlay for many states. Is it not akin to picking the pocket of the poor?

Now is corruption a simple procedure of transfer of one man’s money to the pocket of another?

Corruption is the enemy of planning.

There is a story about a former Chief Minister. When he was in power, his brother-in-law met him one day with a complaint. He had to shell out Rs. 300 to obtain a certificate from a Village Officer. ‘When you are ruling, how dare a village officer seek money from me,’ he asked. The Chief Minister did not say anything. He went inside and came back with a hundred rupee note. He gave it his brother-in-law and said: This is my share. Since you are my brother-in-law I do not want this.’ The equations of corruption are by and large clear now, it seems.

Only when corruption explodes do the people take note of it. Remember Tehelka. What Tehelka had brought out was the fact that defence procurement was steeped in corruption. Here again can it be said that corruption is a simple transfer of money from one pocket to another?

Corruption is the enemy of national defence.

One small corruption story, from the capital itself. The police and Delhi municipal administration officials used to regularly collect bribes from petty shop owners and cycle rickshaw

drivers. There was no one in Delhi who did not know this. An organization named Manasi conducted a study on it. Their finding was unbelievable. One month’s collection in this regard totaled Rs. 40 crore. The matter was brought to the notice of the Prime Minister. He intervened in the matter and cancelled the system of licensing for petty shop owners and cycle rickshaws.

Black money in India was said to be far in excess of the combined revenue of central and state governments by Rs. 700,000 crore.

Indira Gandhi once said corruption is a global phenomenon. The statement sparked criticism that she was justifying corruption. Cartoonists went to town with it. Yet we cannot ignore the truth contained in it.

Much before globalisation came in the economic sector, corruption had been globalised. The flow of corruption had always been from top to bottom. National leaders in many countries served as models for this. Don’t you want to know who all were the world leaders who were the most corrupt? Here is the table.

Suharto, Indonesia – 35,000 million dollar,

Ferdinand Marcos, Philippines – Rs. 10,000 million dollar,

Gen Sani Abacha, Nigeria – 500,000 million dollar,

Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia – 100,000 million dollar,

Duvalier, Haiti – 30,000 million dollar.

We may feel relieved to find no one from India in this list.

Relieved, all right, but don’t brag or bluster. Transparency International has found that in the matter of corruption India occupies a pride of place. The nation with the least corruption is Finland, followed up by Denmark, New Zealand, Iceland and Singapore. Our consolation is that Pakistan is a more corrupt than us. Is it a fair consolation?

What is the way to prevent corruption? From K Santhanam Committee onwards, many have opened up many paths in front

of us. But we could not go along those paths, or we did not try to go.

Once the Central Vigilance Commission was set up, it was felt a thunderbolt would hit corruption on its head. But what is born in fire is unlikely to fade in sunlight. Corruption is continuing as such. And growing too. But there is an easy way to prevent corruption. The only way.

Do not give bribe. Do not accept bribe.

 

 

 

 

11

THIS LAKE SHOULD NOT DIE

 

Reach the bank of the lake with a handful of rice. Sprinkle the rice in the water, calling out aloud ‘Come on, Etta.’ The moment the rice falls into the water, shoals of etta fish flutter up to the surface to eat the grains. This is not an imaginary tale. In Sasthamcotta lake this was a regular sight.

 

Was. Not now. Sasthamcottah lake was once reputed as the largest fresh water lake in Kerala. Now that lake does not have potable water. In it there is an abundance of bacteria at levels that are never permissible in potable water. The lake is on a sick bed. Nay, it is in the death bed. Don’t forget it is a Ramsar lake too.

How did it happen? It is not nature that readied the death bed for the lake. It is man himself who is responsible for it.

The Sasthamcottah lake, the Sasthamcottah temple and the famed monkeys in the temple premises have all been mentioned in legends and folklore. The lake, which was a perennial source of clear, clean, drinking water was surrounded by hills that appeared like sentinels of nature. A special feature of Sasthamcottah was the large number of monkeys there, considered as the guards of Lord Sastha. The King of Kayamkulam had made special provisions for the feeding of the monkeys.

Today there is no clear water in the lake. There are no trees on the hills. There are no fruits for the monkeys to eat. The lake remains a symbol of disgraced nature and a riddle before us.

 

I remember an evening in the past organised by the district administration when I was the Collector. An evening when Sasthamcotta got a new lease of life. There was a large group of Malayalam poets, derisively called ‘tree poets.’ The poets’ meet was led by Sugathakumari, a personification of love of nature. Ayyappa Paniker, Vishnu Narayan Namboodiri, Vinayachandran, ONV and Madhavikkutty, later known as Kamala Surayya, were among the poets who had assembled there to rouse the conscience of the people to ensure that the lake was protected and no dirge written for it.

Jayapala Panicker and Shangrila Sasi Kumar painted pictures against the backdrop of the lake. Youth and women took oath to protect the lake. Scientists came to study what happened to the lake and they suggested protective measures in their reports. The feeling then was that the first step was taken for a great campaign for nature preservation.

All around the lake trees were planted and in the nearby hills afforestation was taken up -named Panchavadi - to prevent soil erosion. Fruit trees were planted in a ‘Hanuman Thottam’ (Hanuman’s Estate). Youth planted saplings in waste lands. Nature lovers from the country and abroad came together to feed the monkeys.

Visited Sasthamcottah again much later. I remember the beautiful lines written by Wordsworth on his revisit to Tintern Abbey after a gap of several years. My experience was not at all rejuvenating. I know it is a futile exercise to abhor history and accuse the past. Yet what was seen at Sasthamcottah was a matter of anguish. The garland of forest and Panchavadi were still there. But in the place where the instruction was to plant saplings of mango, jack-fruit, bamboo, reeds and soap tree a veritable forest of acacia was seen. That perhaps was unavoidable as the only saplings the forest department had were those of acacia. Hanuman Thottam became just a memory. True, there were a few fruit trees here and there. The herbal garden named Sanjeevani Centre, planted at the directions of Dr. Warrier of Kottackal and other renowned ayurveda acharyas, looked almost abandoned. The buildings constructed to provide ayurvedic treatment appeared in a derelict state. Felt pity. If the attitude is this towards plant life it is not likely to be any different towards life breath itself.

Sasthamcottah lake should not die.

It has to continue to live. It is only the people of Sasthamcottah who say this from the depth of their hearts. For them the link with the lake is like the relationship between Lord Shiva and his consort, Parvati i.e. between word and meaning. There will be protection for the lake only on the basis of such a relationship. The strength of biblical personage Samson was in his profuse locks. If the locks were cut, he would lose his strength. It did happen precisely like that. If the umbilical cord of the link between Sasthamcottah lake and the local people is snapped, the lake there will die.

The lake is a source of drinking water for the people of Kollam town and nearby places. The lake and its banks harbour a multitude of waterborne life forms and plants and trees and birds. Research students and scientists have collected detailed data on these aspects. Sasthamcotta is also a favourite haven of migratory birds.

There were many serpent groves in the vicinity of the lake. Now there is no such grove anywhere nearby. And if indeed there is a grove, it does not have trees or vines or migratory birds. If anyone goes to the bank of the lake and sprinkles grains of rice into the water, calling ‘come on Etta,’ etta fish will not come.

What a time it was. But that time has gone, never to return.

Shouldn’t there be a return? Certainly. There should be. This is an issue of drinking water. Of life, of future and the

 

coming generations. This lake was not a gift from our forefathers. It should be realised that it was borrowed from our children. And we should be able to return that loan to them.

How can this be accomplished? If we have the will it can be done. The waters of Sasthamcottah lake should not be dirtied. In fact what did we do? We encroached on the banks of the lake and cultivated the land. The top soil eroded and got deposited in the lake. We threw waste into the lake. When government agencies themselves colluded with such actions, there was no hope. And when the people living nearby went to the lake for their morning ablusions, the lake became a cesspool. The level of waste in the lake waters rose when it was used for bathing cattle and washing vehicles.

Everyone knows what the problem is. If not, ask the residents of Sasthamcottah. They know it only too well. They also know the solutions. But that is not enough. The knowledge they have should be put to practical use. But who will bell the cat? It is the same old question in Aesop’s fable that the people of Sasthamcottah also ask.

Many tried. In the middle of the eighties the district administration itself took the initiative to do something. Some voluntary agencies in the area carried it forward. The water save project of Global Nirmiti Net gave a new impetus in this regard. Preservation of Sasthamcotta lake was the main item in the homestead afforestation programme of the forest department. Sasthamcottah was declared as eco-village.

Now we should not go back. We should not forget that when a lake dies, a culture also dies. What is needed is a sense of purpose and a will to do. What we need is a team, not a crowd. Once Ceaser in Rome had an experience. When there was delay in paying wages, the soldiers rose in protest. They were close to rioting. But Caesar stood unruffled. He said one word: Dhur Ba.

The soldiers lowered their heads in shame and retreated. Dhur Ba means crowd. The champions of environmental protection should realise that they should not become a crowd. Be the soldiers of nature. And don’t waver till you reach your goal.

 

 

 

12

AN AUTUMN EVENING IN FATIMA

 

 

That day a miracle happened in that pastoral village. Blessed Virgin Mary appeared before three shepherd children.

 

The event took place some time between May 13 and October 13 in 1917. As it was a matter of faith, it had to be experienced if it were to be believed. This was the feeling that took me and my wife to Fatima. Travelling 90 miles from the Portuguese capital Lisbon, we reached not another tourist spot but a place in the middle of a rainbow that linked human hearts with the holy heart of God.

That is what Fatima is today. The flow of tens of thousands of devotees to Fatima is not to see sights but to install the essence of the divine revelations given by Fatima in one’s heart and to feel the ecstasy of that experience.

That divine revelations was received directly from the heavenly Mother. And those selected to receive it were three innocent shepherd children, Lucia, Francisco, Jacinta.

One afternoon, after prayer, the children were about to begin to play. They collected pebbles to make a play house. All of a sudden they saw a circle of light of uncanny radiance. Mistaking it to be lighting, they started to run towards their house. Then they saw another circle of light. Looking at it they saw a woman brighter than the sun. There was a white rosary hanging from her hand. The apparition told the children: Pray the rosary.

They were also asked to come to the same place every 13th during the next five months. They did so and the Holy Mother appeared before them on all those days. This experience roused the entire community and the children were questioned. Also, believers and non-believers alike descended on the village to see the children who became veritable exhibits.

And for those who demand evidence for each and everything, the Holy Mother herself came with evidence one day.

An elderly priest at Fatima explained that experience to us with conviction. He had only heard about it, not seen it. Even then this hearsay evidence had the authority of faith. On October 13, 1917 when a crowd of 70,000 people stood watching, Fatima had evidence of the divine apparition. When the children had the visitation they were told what sight they were going to see. The sun would be seen like a disc of silver. Then it would spin like a fiery ball. It would go on spinning till giving the impression that it was going to fall on earth. What the people of Fatima saw on October 13 was exactly the same.

What is important here is not the magic of the miracle. What is relevant is the awareness of what is the essence of the apparitions. What the apparitions conveyed were pronouncements for peace and harmony in the world. They were lessons in faith and prayer. The Holy Mother taught the children that when man’s sins increased, God’s punishment came in the form of wars and poverty and distress. One thing was made very clear to the children. It was Russia that God has chosen to teach the sinful world a lesson. Through them the message of materialism and atheism will extend to the whole world. Many countries will be destroyed. Wars will flare up. Believers will be persecuted. Good men will turn martyrs. These have to be countered with penance, prayers and expiation.

 

The message revealed to Lucia, Jacinta and Freancisco have been codified as three ‘secrets.’ Of them, two secrets have been divulged. The first was a revelation to the children about the sufferings one had to undergo in hell. After showing the pain and suffering that the souls had to undergo, the apparition told the children that prayer and sacrifice were essential for the salvation of these souls.

The second secret later became a reality. The secret was that a world war would break out for the second time.

The third secret still remains in mystery. But Lucia (who subsequently became Sister Lucia) had written it down and handed over to the Pope. The world is waiting to know its contents.

In my boyhood, I used to walk to the school at Mannanam crossing the grotto of Our Lady of Fatima. The belief in my youth was that if we lighted a candle before the idol of Our Lady of Fatima anything that we embark on would become successful. My doubt then was how Virgin Mary could get such a name as Our Lady of Fatima.

No one could give me the answer to my question. That I was made to travel all the way to Fatima to seek an answer may be the handiwork of the invisible powers above. When Arab legions overran Europe in the past, one Arab soldier went on a tour along with some members of his harem. But he was subdued in a skirmish by Christian soldiers in hiding. There was one very beautiful woman in the company of the Arab soldier. Fatima. A Christian soldier married her. After her death, the people named her village after her. That was how the present Fatima came into being.

Is there not something beyond coincidence for a Christian holy land getting a Muslim name as Fatima? All faiths are divine. So what is in a name?

 

 

 

 

13

THROBBING HIROSHIMA

 

When the slayer of the evil Kamsa was born to Devaki, a heavenly voice made a proclamation of it. There was no such proclamation when the destroyer of Japan was born in Alamogordo in New Mexico. But American President Truman got a slip of paper announcing its birth. “It is a boy.” Its date of birth was the 16th of July, 1945.

The pet name given by Americans for the uranium bomb that annihilated Hiroshima was ‘Little Boy.’ And its twin that destroyed Nagasaki was named ‘Fat Boy.’ When these two naughty boys came together, the number of those killed in these two cities exceeded 2,00,000. And no one was able to estimate the number of the living dead who suffered grievously from radiation.

August 6, 1945. It was 8.16 in the morning when America’s atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people at the core of the blast site instantly evaporated into nothing. And those outside this area were partially liquefied in the intense heat. Thousands more melted down and congealed bodies ran helter skelter. Their bodies were so horrifyingly misshapen that it was impossible to make out whether they were men or women. Timber houses were all burnt up and concrete buildings all became rubble heaps, trapping thousands underneath.

It was Technical Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner of the B-29 Bomber aircraft, named Enola Gay, who was the first to give an eye witness account of the momentous event of

the dropping of the first atomic bomb in world history. “The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city.”

While those up above were finding the sight spectacular, those down below were subjected to fire and brimstone of hell. About 80 per cent of the buildings in Hiroshima collapsed into rubble heaps. Later estimates put the loss at 68,000 houses. Only some quake resistant buildings survived. But the fate of the survivors in them was pitiable. No one had any idea what was happening. Even as they were looking out of the window they saw men and women falling down dead. And as huge flames engulfed them, the human shapes appeared like silhouettes or as the images on film negatives, then vanished into nothingness. At times some nude figures were seen, burning flesh oozing from their bodies. They were melting down like wax.

The dead were lucky. It was the fate of the survivors that was lamentable. They lost appetite, lost control over bowel movements, and bled from ears, nose and mouth. A staggering140,000 people died in Hiroshima. Another 60,000 died in the next five years. Even today the real impact of radiation could not be assessed. Studies were continuing. But it was amply clear that the radiation led to such illnesses as blood cancer. A study conducted after the blast by the Yumaguchi University revealed a very sad finding. One fourth of the children born in Hiroagony had one congenital defect or the other. At ground zero in Hiroshima this author could visualize the gruesome catastrophe, in hindsight. Even that was a shattering experience.

Those at the helm of the diabolical act in Hiroshima were not willing for a change of heart even after witnessing death and the devastation caused by the bombing and pain and suffering of the helpless survivors. Three days later they dropped another bomb, nick-named Fat Boy, in Nagasaki. In fact, Nagasaki was not the intended target. They had planned to devastate Kokura but at the appointed time the sky was overcast and visibility of the bomber pilot low. And Lucifer in the armed forces headquarters in America decided that if the target could not be bombed, any other place was as good. That was how under the stewardship of President Truman an atom bomb fell in Nagasaki. Twenty-four thousand people died. And generations were subjected to the hazards of radiation.

 

What was it that prompted America to such fiendishness? That too when Germany and other allies of Japan were vanquished one after the other. There was a reason. The dare-devil heroism of the Japanese. Japan had always betrayed a preparedness to embrace death, the mentality of a suicide trooper. America was well aware of this. In its bid to capture the small strategic island of Evojima America had lost 25,000 men. Another 8,000 had to be sacrificed during the three-month campaign to seize Okinawa. America was certain that it would have to face great loss of men if the war with Japan were to continue. Wasn’t it better to annihilate the enemy? That was the standpoint of America.

Even though its war machine was in disarray, Japan still had clear supremacy in Manchuria, Korea, China and Indonesia in July 1945. America’s incessant bombing had destroyed many a Japanese city. Further, America was able to break the backbone of Japanese navy. But still it could not demoralise the Japanese soldiers or rein the hegemonic ambitions of Japanese leadership. Convinced that the ultimate victory was theirs, the Japanese people were preparing for a do-or-die encounter. Their design was to go in for peace talks when they were on the threshold of victory. Concede some areas while retaining a major portion for itself. This was the attitude of the Japanese people who believed in the invincibility of the Emperor.

 

It was to face such a situation that America decided to field the inventions of the Manhattan Project, the Little Boy and the Fat Boy. Though America was well aware of the horror of such an all-pervasive destructive mission, why was it that it did not give out a warning beforehand. The reason perhaps was the diabolical attitude that controlled that country’s war efforts. If a warning was given wouldn’t its bomber plane be shot down? If by any chance the bomb did not explode, wouldn’t it have given a propaganda gain for Japan? Anyway, evil thoughts prevailed.

The Potsdam Declaration made it abundantly clear to Japan. Surrender or face annihilation. As expected, Japan dismissed the ultimatum with contempt. With that, the fate of Hiroshima was sealed.

The other side also had to be made clear. Even after all this, the Japanese army leadership refused to surrender. The Japanese army top brass was jeering at the impending annihilation in the same way as Duryodhana did in the battlefield of Kurukshethra when, drunk with the arrogance of power, he stood mocking at the face of his own abject defeat. In the end Emperor Hirohito called a conference of political party leaders and advised them to surrender. And Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945.

Let the auditors of history try to find out profit and loss in the balance sheet of the massacre. And let the big boys of world politics play with their toys of uranium and plutonium.

Vedas say -

Yathebhume vikhanami Kshipram thadapi rohathu Mathe marma vimraguari Mathe hridaya marpitham.

(Hey, earth, whatever I take from you, let it sprout,

Oh, holy land, let me never split your vital spots, your heart).

 

These all are old fashioned sentiments. The new law is there is nothing wrong in targeting, without fail, the very vital spots of the earth. After all, the earth is nothing but a globe. What if it strays from its axis? The outer space is there as a playground for Little Boy and the Fat Boy. Let star wars begin.

 

 

14

WHEN SINGING BIRDS SNEEZE

 

 

That was a tragic sight. Children going to school with school bags on their back collapsing to death on the road. Speeding cars getting involved in a pileup on the road. The reason, driver collapsed on the steering wheel. In the sea off the Irish coast, two ships collided and sank. All the crew of the ships had collapsed.

That was the result of the outbreak of fever of unknown cause during the fag end of the First World War. It was Spain that officially confirmed that it was a virus that spread this killer flu.

By that time this flu had begun its death dance in America and New Zealand. It was not a thousand or ten thousand people who succumbed to this flu. The toll exceeded 20 million people.

Cobwebbed memories of this havoc still shock the world. And now sleepless nights are on for us because of the outbreak of bird flu in some countries. In countries like Indonesia, China, Thailand and Vietnam bird flu as become a horrifying reality.

The initial estimate of the United Nations was that about 150 million people would become victims of this fatal epidemic. It was a relief that this estimate was later scaled down. Even then it was a matter of serious concern that 7.5 million people were likely to be afflicted.

It was when anxiety about bird flu had gripped the people like an epidemic that I had the occasion to visit London. Their Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson appeared on television and

said if bird flu hit Britain about 50,000 people were likely to die. He also pointed out that since the H5N1 virus causing bird flu was of a very virulent strain the death toll might go up to

7. 5 million. He had no doubt that bird flu would come. The only question was when. ‘It will not be possible for us to drive away this epidemic. It is a natural phenomenon. It is certain to come. The only thing we can do is to mitigate the suffering caused by it.’

Many countries have started mass killing of domestic fowl including chicken and ducks. Face masks and other protective gear are also being distributed in many countries to prevent its spread. In Serbia 20,000 face masks were sold in one day. Foreign Ministers of European nations met in an emergency meeting to assess the impact of bird flu.

If the calamity struck, it was certain that normal life of the people would be disrupted. Foreign travel might have to be given up altogether. Schools, colleges, cinema theatres and entertainment centres might have to be closed down. Most of the people would have to confine themselves to the four walls of their homes for days together.

Some of the assessments, observations and studies about the intensity of the ailment are eye openers.

It was in Hong Kong in 1997 that the H5N1 virus was first detected in humans. Of the 18 people with the virus, six died. Though millions of fowl were killed the disease spread widely to domestic fowl and forest birds. By October 2005, 113 people of Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia were afflicted with the virus of whom sixty had died. In Asia the virus acquired the potency to spread from man to man. This was gradually spreading worldwide. Between two million and 50 million people were likely to die. The problem is that an effective vaccine can be developed only months after the breakup of the virus into new strains.

The world is now in a pitiable position when nothing is certain.

Experts say the bird flu is not a threat to India. According to Prof Jayasree Mishra, Head of the Tropical Medical School, Kolkata, considering the temperature levels and the immunity of the birds in the country there is no need to be afraid of bird flu. At the same time we have to observe utmost caution on a disease that is likely to become a fatal epidemic the world over. It is in this context that India also started killing domestic fowl in areas where bird flu was reported.

From China to Europe tens of thousands of birds have been afflicted by this viral infection. Once it is transferred to humans it would develop as fatal pneumonia. Though we know that the disease is caused by H5N1 virus, effective measures to counter it have not been developed. The only way before us to prevent its spread is to eliminate the birds afflicted by the disease.

But migratory birds pose a serious challenge to prevention of the disease. If the birds that cross land and sea and forests to come here to roost, become carriers of the virus no effective control against the disease can be put in shape.

There are also serious economic implications to the spread of bird flu. The worst hit will be the tourism sector. Many countries have already imposed restrictions on tourists. And travellers will, unknowingly, put themselves in trouble. Countries like Australia are taking steps to bring back their nationals visiting other countries. Some countries are considering closure of airports and sea ports to control arrivals of bird flu afflicted people. Steps are also on ensuring international cooperation in dealing with this issue. Twenty one countries in the council of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation met in this regard. The president of the National Institute of Health in the United States also attended it to explain the policy of the US in this regard.

 

We occasionally see the cruel face of virulence of zoonotic epidemics. It is not yet time to forget the havoc wrought by the mad cow disease that shook Europe some years ago. Three million cattle were eliminated then. Can we be free from the threat of fatal diseases just by killing mute animals?

The pharmaceutical firms are busy in making a preventive vaccine against bird flu. Roche is in the forefront of such efforts. There is also an accusation that Roche is trying to make hay while the sun shines.

What is being done now is to prevent spread of the disease by going in for mass killing of birds. But such a course of action is beset with moral and practical problems. Even after such mass killings the disease may spread as some birds carrying the virus may escape. It is in this context that one has to assess the deviant policy of mass killing of birds.

I have once read a book explaining the special characteristics of canines. About a hunter’s bitch. The bitch gave birth to four pups. The hunter considered them a nuisance and so threw them into a pond one after the other. The bitch started looking for the pups and found their carcasses in the pond. She picked them up from the pond and dropped them in front of her master. Staring at the master she also lay down beside the carcasses, till she breathed her last.

Is it not man’s greed for profit that made him consistently mix harmful chemicals in avian feed? There is a feeling that it is only because of this that the birds gradually lost their immunity and became susceptible to new ailments. The moral question is whether it is right to punish the birds for the wrongs committed by man. Perhaps the dumb creatures may be speaking. Only that we do not hear them.

 

 

15

A DIRGE FOR THE EARTH?

 

Has a dirge been written for the earth? This is not a question arising out of the romantic imagination of a poet. But a finding of close scientific enquiry. Science says the flood is nearby. But there is no certainty that Noah’s ark will be coming.

It may be an exaggeration. But do not forget that it has a scientific base.

Scientific predictions rarely go wrong. Scientists have warned in advance what the changes in climate will be due to increase in the atmospheric temperature. Now the adverse impact of the changes, as predicted, have started showing in Antarctica. This is indeed a matter for concern.

A huge chunk of the Antarctic Ice shelf has started to collapse. This ice shelf measuring 3,250 sq km in area and 220 meters in depth broke away, becoming huge floating icebergs. This phenomenon has started in 2002. This is for the first time in about 10,000 years that such a thing is happening.

The reason for such a change is the undesirable rise in global warming. Scientists have estimated that during the 21st century the temperature of the earth may go up by 4.5 degree Celsius. This is because of what has been widely discussed as the greenhouse effect. It is natural that the earth’s temperature goes up when sunlight falls on it. But the heat is deflected back to the atmosphere. But some of the gases in the atmosphere obstruct this and send the heat back to the earth. This is akin to what happens in a greenhouse in the garden. What are its repercussions? The earth’s temperature rises. Evaporation of water in the sea, lakes and rivers increases. This water vapor obstructs the heat, leading to further increase in temperatures.

About 40 gases constitute what is described as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide makes up 50 per cent of the greenhouse gases. Every year we emit a staggering 5,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is due to the unbridled growth of industries. About 25 per cent of the world emission of carbon dioxide is from America. This is also due to widespread destruction of forests. Every year we destroy about 100,000 sq km of tropical forests. There can be no estimate of the carbon dioxide we produce when we burn trees in the name of agriculture and other reasons. During the 18th century the measure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was only 256 ppm (parts per million). In 1958 it rose to 315 while later estimates put it at 350. What it means in brief is that we are fast going forward towards annihilation.

Another dangerous gas is methane, emitted to the atmosphere by marshy lands and animals. Paddy fields account for 30 per cent of the methane. As the cattle population increases, the level of methane also increases. Railway engines emitting smoke and electrical generation equipment are the sources of emission of nitrous oxide. There are many other villainous gases enhancing the earth’s temperatures like chlorofluro carbon that causes fissures in the ozone cover and nitrogen oxide.

We are yet to experience the full impact of such emissions. The list of possible dangers to come includes floods, storms, coastal erosion and major climate changes.

As the temperatures go up snow mountains and ice shelfs begin to melt, increasing the level and extent of the seas.

According to scientific estimates this will lead to serious erosion of coastal regions and cause a rise in the sea level ranging from eight inches to 20 feet. If the sea level increases by just three feet, at least five million people will be rendered homeless. In Egypt about 4,500 sq km of farm lands will be submerged. Also much of Bangladesh. If the sea level rose by 20 feet, many of the world cities like New York, London, Beijing and Sydney will be under water. What will happen to the ice caps of the poles? As high as 95 per cent of the earth’s water resources are in these ice caps. If they melt, sea level will rise to a staggering 165 feet.

America which leads in the emission of carbon dioxide is mostly responsible for the increase in global warming. As though by way of expiation, it also leads in making serious efforts at scientific studies into these issues. It was when Jimmy Carter was President that the US government started to give special attention to this problem. Carter appointed a nine-member committee headed by the famous climatologist Jules Charni to study these problems. Their report was an eye-opener. If the carbon dioxide emission continued as at present, it was certain that there would be climate change. The committee’s assessment was that this could no longer be ignored.

They made another revelation. When the calamity strikes there will not be any warning.

 

America from then on took a more active role in this regard. The expectation was that there would be positive steps to counter this problem when George Bush became President in 2000. He had made an election pledge that if he came to power the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would be effectively controlled.

 

Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, had assured a conference of ministers of industrialized nations that the Bush administration would soon take up effective measures to check global warming which she described as the biggest challenge faced

by the environment. But after ten days America shifted its stance. It withdrew from the global meet on this issue at Kyoto. The President asserted that there was no need for any stringent control measures in respect of carbon dioxide. His justification was that there was no scientific proof yet that increase in temperatures was due to carbon dioxide. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil later disclosed that it was Vice President Dick Cheney who was responsible for the presidential volte-face. But nature does not change the way politicians change their stance. Is Donald Trump listening. Climate may not go with trumps volte-face on the Paris commitment of the global fraternity.

Where does India stand in this crisis. Rajiv Nigam, a scientist in the Geological Oceanography Centre in Goa is of the opinion that if the global warming went on at the present rate, by 2020 major cities of India like Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, would be under water. This would be the outcome of a rise in sea level by half a meter to one meter. But there is no dearth of scientists who say that time has not yet come for writing a dirge for the earth. Dr. R R Kelkar, Director General of Indian Meteorological Department, has said: ‘Heat and rains and storms are common here.   But there is not enough evidence to persuade us to believe that the changes will be of fundamental character.’   Afsal Abbas, scientist at the Bhubaneswar Institute of Physics, says ‘man can be deceived, but nature cannot be.’ We may not be able to do much at the global level. But we can certainly do something to set our house in order. Since the destruction of nature begins in the minds of men, defence against it also should begin in the minds of men. In a nutshell it means that an attitudinal change is necessary to bring about a change in the environment. Man should change so that climate does not change!

 

 

 

 

 

 

16

THREE CHEERS TO CHAMPAGNE

 

He was my school mate. He was then a seminarian, aspiring to become a priest. He had an infectious sense of humour and always used to crack jokes, throwing all of us into peals of laughter. But when I met him in the United States after a gap of several years, there appeared to be a sea change in him. His countenance was grave, sombre, so unlike his former self. He had driven 300 miles to see me and he was late by half an hour. He explained at length the reason for being late. On the way he was accosted by a policeman. When he stopped the car the cop sniffed inside and asked him if he was driving after consuming wine. When he protested and said he had drunk only water, the cop pointed to an empty wine bottle on the seat and said ‘the evidence of your water is here.’

How did you escape then, we asked anxiously. ‘I raised my hands skyward and exclaimed O my Jesus, did you turn water into wine once again?’ The cop burst into laughter and let him go.

There is a saying in my mother tongue, that the squirrel never forgets tree climbing.  Similarly, the bubbly student priest of my olden days never loses his faculty to crack jokes, I thought in relief. May be to needle the priest our talk centered on wine itself. And he was an authority on the subject, and he talked at length, explaining everything one always wanted to know about

wine, from A to Z. And he also gave me a friendly advice. Being a globetrotter, Anand should visit the champagne country in France. You would then realize that wine has more to it than meets the eye.

And the next time I went to France, I remembered the Father’s advice. So my wife Lakshmi and I boarded a train from Paris to champagne region. The centre of champagne region is a town called Reims. Extensive vineyards and facilities to season the wine attract tourists from all over the world to Reims. The people come here for two things. To get a kick of spirituality and the kick from the spirit. Once this place was a centre of pilgrimage as it had one of the most famous cathedrals of the past, the olden Notre-Dame Cathedral. This is a great historical monument now. The beginning of France as a nation can be traced to this town. That was when the Bishop of Reims anointed Prince Clovis in 498 AD, marking the beginning of France. Many of the subsequent kings also were crowned in this town.

Today, though it does not have a king champagne – symbol of its pride – rules the world as the king of wines. The worth of champagne is in its quality. The people here are insistent that at every stage in the production of the wine – from the preparation of the ground for cultivation, farming techniques, manuring, weeding, harvesting the grapes and their conversion into wine – meticulous execution is crucial. Only wine made of grapes grown in this region is allowed to be named as champagne. They won’t accept the arguments that other wines are equally good in quality. There have been riots and clashes on many occasions on this count. And this has given birth to many special laws relating to champagne.

The quarrels that had taken place on account of champagne had been more bitter and more virulent than what used to take place on account of women or money. A proclamation was made in 1908 fixing the boundaries of champagne. This led to

widespread tensions and to rioting. The farmers of places not included in the designated area were up in arms and because of their pressure the proclamation had to be withdrawn. Angry over this, the residents of Reims rose in protest, leading to rioting. There was another reason for the rioting. Some greedy businessmen brought low quality grapes from elsewhere to mix with the wine from champagne so as to make a huge profit. The local residents naturally feared that this would adversely affect the good name that the wine and the land had. If such adulteration went on, champagne would lose its position as a market leader. This would upset the very foundations of the country’s economy. When there was a dam burst in popular anger, excited youth ransacked the cellars storing cheap wines and destroyed the jars. After widespread protests and furore the government brought in a new legislation relating to champagne in 1927. That law is still in force.

The law was intended to ensure the superior quality of champagne. Only wine produced in the designated area would be qualified to be called champagne. The entire process of making and seasoning was subjected to stringent quality control.

There is an inevitability of history in the maintenance of superior quality of champagne. The vineyards in most of these areas were once under the ownership of monasteries. In the times of crusades it was the practice of many soldiers going to wage wars in foreign countries to entrust their lands with the monasteries. In the case of those who never returned, the lands became the property of the monasteries. Since the priests were not greedy and did not have the burden of family, the vineyards were looked after well by them. They had dedicated their lives to the service of the Lord and they considered protection of the vineyards also as scared as their prayers. The process of cultivation of grapes and making of wine went on as a selfless service in the hands of the priests. It was indeed a Benedictine priest, Dom Perinon, who was considered the father of the superior quality wine of champagne. The peculiar taste and quality of the wine were attributed to another priest Friar Jean Udart. It was believed that these two had exchanged their notes.

 

We went to an underground processing centre to see the making of champagne. This huge cellar of several floors, constructed in a labyrinthine fashion, extends to a length of sixteen miles. Our guide explained to us the manner of making champagne. Ripe grapes were harvested and carefully sorted. Crushing them to take the juice is the second stage. Grapes can be crushed five times to take the juice but the juice taken during the first three crushes alone would be used for making champagne. The juice so taken is kept for fermentation. After that juice of the red grapes and of white grapes are mixed in a certain proportion. Sugar and yeast are added. It is this processes that give the special taste for champagne. The next stage is filling bottles with this juice. Sugar and yeast are added. The wine become bubbly because of this. The second stage of fermentation takes place now. To remove the deposits in the bottle requires special expertise and needed to be done with utmost care. The bottles are now kept upside down. The muck would get deposited in the neck of the bottle which is then cooled down. The muck will get frozen and therefore hardened. When the cork is opened the frozen muck also gets thrown away like a piece of ice. Syrup and sugar are added at this stage to give the wine its special flavor. Then the bottle is kept in water for three years.

 

When it is flowering season in the vineyards, it is festival time in Reims. Tens of thousands of youngsters will assemble there from different parts of the country. They will get quite a handful of money if they pluck the grapes and hand them over at the counter in the evenings. With enough money to have a good time for some months, they happily go back to their colleges or houses. This is a harvest festival that provides opportunities for

the youth to bet, to sing, to gamble, to dance and to take part in variety of entertainments.

 

Our guide told us about an interesting bet. A youngster was in a bar enjoying his drink. Another man having his wine announced a prize of 1,000 dollars for anyone drinking ten bottles of wine at a stretch. The youth who heard it left the bar and returned within half an hour. He consumed all the ten bottles of wine and got the prize money of 1,000 dollars. Asked where he had gone for half an hour, the youth replied: ‘I wanted to make sure that I can consume ten bottles of wine. So I went to the next bar and drank ten bottles of wine. Convinced that I can do it, I returned here for the contest.’

 

With ‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim,’ champagne, the king of wines, continues its triumphant march across the world. Anyway one thing is abundantly clear: in booze or business only quality will prevail.

Three cheers to champagne with a Keatsean longing.

‘Oh for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17

HOW SWEET HER NAME IS

 

What is in a name, asked Shakespeare. Here are some beautiful names—Tsunami, Katrina, El Nino, Nancy. How sweet the names are.  But ask those people who have come into contact with them. We have been witness to the death dance of the Tsunami. And watched on TV the ferocious playfulness of Katrina. El Nino and Nancy are two other behemoths.

According to Richard Black it is possible to turn calamities into blessings. But the problem is that like history, calamity also has a propensity to repeat itself. In the areas through which river Mississippi flows the havoc wrought by typhoons, and the floods that come in their wake, is a recurring phenomenon. But it appears as if man does not learn anything from experience.

Katrina had her danse macabre this time also on the banks of river Mississippi. About 85 per cent of New Orleans was submerged. This town would have been destroyed by the heavy floods of 1927 when Mississippi was in spate but the city was saved then because of a crucial decision taken by the administration. They used dynamite to open up a new way for the overflowed river to drain into the sea. There was stiff opposition to the decision as many people feared that many houses would be washed away by the sudden surge of waters. But ignoring all protests the authorities went ahead with their decision.

The havoc caused by floods is a cause of perennial sorrow for America. It was surprising that a nation with tremendous resources and technological excellence could not put in place the necessary infrastructure to effectively check natural calamities. The truth is that neither man’s intelligence and imagination nor physical and economic might can overwhelm natural forces. Mississippi flows gently reminding the Americans of this eternal truth on and off. When occasionally it dons its angry face the hapless millions living on either side begin their plaints and pleadings to god. The length of the Mississippi is 6,300 km. From its origins in a lake in upper Minnesota, the river surges ahead on its winding course all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. In its lengthy course it is replenished by over a thousand small rivers, streams and rivulets.

From time to time efforts had been taken to rein in Mississippi in spate. Such efforts received an impetus with the formation of the Mississippi River Commission. After the great floods of 1922 the Commission implemented various protective measures. The Commission also proclaimed that such measures were adequate to effectively check damages caused by floods.

But proving that natural forces could not be overwhelmed, the Mississippi rose in spate, washing away in no time the hapless people and their houses and other property on either bank. As many as 75,000 houses were destroyed. Millions of acres of farmlands were laid waste. At some places in Illinois water level rose as high as 56ft. In Arkansas when the floodwater came the mules engaged in transporting goods drowned then and there. A group of people on the bridge across Arkansas River had to remain there in horror for as many as three days before rescue efforts could reach them. Over 300,000 refugees had to be accommodated in relief camps. Three hundred people were killed. The calamity made the authorities to wake up. More effective protective measures were taken. Bunds and spillways were constructed. And they assured the people that they need not have any fear any more. But in 1937 and 1973 Mississippi repeated its dance of death. A study by Louisiana University showed that the quantum of water in the Mississippi had increased by 250 per cent during the last fifty years. In the contest with nature man is accepting his inevitable defeat.

Worse than the floods was the case of combined malice of hurricanes and the floods that went with it.  In the coastal regions of America this was not at all a rare phenomenon. In both Louisiana and New Orleans what the people faced at the beginning of this century was an emergency like that. It was some relief that the people had been forewarned. Old timers might be remembering the nightmares caused by hurricanes that came without warning and devastated vast stretches.

In 1938 the hurricane that hit with all its might laid waste a stretch of 523 km from New York to Boston, killing over 600 people and destroying a staggering 60,000 houses. Huge tidal waves spewed destruction in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Weather forecasters had seen signs of a hurricane the previous day but they were of the view that its impact would be confined to Florida. And they thought that since Florida had often experienced big and small hurricanes, the people had the necessary training to overcome the situation. But disproving all theories of science, the hurricane hit the coastal regions of America with all its might. Waves rose by 40 ft. People on the ground were swept away. What people on upper floors of buildings saw was the ferocious waves uprooting huge trees and drawing them away into the innards of the sea. With the disruption in telephone and telegraph network, links with the outside world were snapped. A bus carrying children was washed away by the waves. Only one child survived. Many saw in horror the light house on Rhode Island being swept away by giant waves. As though the devastation was not enough, fire broke out in some buildings, spreading fast because of the strong winds. The fire engines that managed to enter flood waters could not do anything as their way was blocked by waves and the wind.

 

Are natural calamities merely natural phenomenon? Perhaps scientists and materialists may argue that way. But a majority of the people who believe that there are some unseen powers controlling the universe may see in the natural calamities deep and complex meanings. When the negativism in man’s approach to nature crosses limits nature itself gives an exemplary punishment. This is a belief prevalent in many civilizations. We believe that when earth cannot bear the weight of all its sinners, Kalki comes with drawn sword as the slayer incarnate. There is another belief that the great flood came to put an end to the sinful life of man. There are widespread legends that whole cities and other human habitations had totally disappeared in massive floods and eruptions of the seas. The belief is that towards the close of the Dwapara Yuga the Yadava clan brought annihilation on itself because of intense infighting among its members and that Sri Krishna’s capital Dwaraka was engulfed by the surging seas. The fabulous city of Atlantis that disappeared in the sea and the imaginary land of El Dorado still fascinate researchers. This is our realisation when we go from the realm of beliefs to the borderlands of science. The increase in nature’s temperature levels is because of the flaws in the lifestyle of modern man. This adversely affects the climate. The sea level increases uncontrollably and calamities like floods and turbulence of the sea occur. If the situation continues like this the cities like London, New York, Chennai and Bangkok will be submerged by the sea, warn the scientists.

Whether it is faith or science, what transpires is one and the same. If you attempt to break the vitals of nature, retribution is certain. And this affects the very existence of humanity. It is clear, therefore, that the brutish style of ‘might is right’ does not have the approval of nature. That is the expert advice given to us jointly by Tsunami and Katrina along with El Nino and Nancy.

 

It is true that the authorities did have sufficient warnings about the impending doom. One cannot but point it out as lapse if they failed to take precautionary measures even after receiving such warnings. A lengthy article in the National Geographic Magazine of October 2004 had made a specific reference to the hurricane that was going to hit New Orleans. The US Federal Government had in fact assessed this as the biggest calamity in recent times. The warnings of scientists were also there. Long ago a movement named Neo-tropical Storm Risk had warned of hurricanes in this region 22 times. Scientists have come to the conclusion that it was global warming that aggravated the hurricane systems. Kerry Immanuel, a researcher in the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had found that the destructive power of the hurricanes had doubled during a period of three years. The reason for this was the increase in surface temperature by just 0.05 degree Celsius. Do not forget that it is America that is mainly responsible for global warming. When natural calamities recur because of excesses committed by men we think of the biblical prophecy. ‘And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ Remember, there may not be a Noah’s ark again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18

MARRIED OR MARRED

 

O Henry’s hero Jim in The Gift of the Magi is deeply in love with Della. Though of poor circumstances, both of them have a possession that they are immensely proud of: Jim has his wrist watch, an inheritance from his grandfather, and Della has her glorious blonde hair. On Christmas eve Jim and Della rack their brains unable to decide what gift to be given to the other, a gift that will reflect their deep affection. The problem is they don’t have any money. But their love for each other is so overwhelming that Jim sells his watch, his precious treasure, to buy for Della a pair of tortoise shell combs that she always coveted. He finds out that it is no use to Della as she has already sold her hair to buy a platinum strap for his precious wrist watch.

That shows perfect compatibility, harmony of mind. To sacrifice for the mate and to find happiness in that sacrifice.

This is very relevant today. Isn’t it true that the number of divorces in the society is going up as in the case of suicides? It is said that the best matrimonial compatibility is between a wife who cannot sleep with the windows open and a husband who cannot sleep with the windows closed. What matters is adjustment. The theme of Shakespeare’s famous play ‘Taming of the Shrew’ itself is adjustment. Katherin is an obdurate, headstrong shrew and the play shows how Petruchio who marries her cleverly uses all his intelligence and psychological insights to tame her and turn her into a perfect bride.

 

Lovers’ tiffs are common in married life. Even gods are not above this. Kalidasa had said that the relationship between Shiv and Parvathy was like that between word and meaning. It was after observing great penance that Parvathy got the hand of Shiv. Even then there were quarrels in their life. In one instance, it was on a silly matter. In place of the usual endearments, he once called her by her other name, Kali. Suspecting that Shiv was making fun of her dark skin, Parvati exploded and left him in a huff. Determined to return only after getting a skin colour as beautiful as that of her husband, she went to the forests and did tapas for a hundred years. At last Brahma appeared before her and granted her desired boon, the colour of the pollen of lotus flower.

A family quarrel like this took place in Vaikunta also. Maha Vishnu looked at Lakshmi and smiled. She mistook that smile, thinking he was comparing her with some other woman. And she cursed him in the strongest fashion: let your head be blown off. The curse indeed came true. It is another story how Vishnu and other gods came out of this unscathed.

In brief, quarrels and patch ups are quite common in married life. Like day and night they will alternate constantly. Night should not get lengthier and day should not encroach into night. As grandmas used to say it is only natural that kitchen vessels sometimes clink and clank.

What is important is to make the family more secure. In the opinion of the United Nations family is the most powerful democratic set up at the core of the society.

The teacher in the village school asked the child: who are all there in your house?

The bright boy replied: grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, then Malini and Kannan.

Are Malini and Kannan your sister and brother?

No. Malini is our cow. Kannan is our cat.

Family is like that. Its inmates are all linked by the silk thread of warmth. In the bondage that cements this relationship, tensions melt away and animosities dissolve in love. And this love erects a heavenly home in the island of hell.

It is true that love is blind. Even death is not able to create a wedge between one who loves and one who is loved. Take the case of two people hated by the world at large, Hitler and Mussolini. At the close of the Second World War when enemy soldiers fired at Mussolini, his wife courted death by standing before him in a bid to shield him from the bullets. And in Berlin, death lost its glitter in the intensity of love when Eva Brown abandoned her safe haven and rushed towards the bunker in which Hitler was waiting for the inevitable end. And in the shadow of death Hitler and Eva became husband and wife.

The fast track couples who pick up quarrels on silly issues is fast increasing in the society irrespective of whether they reach the family courts or not. Also, there is a corresponding increase in the number of youngsters who consider it great to lead a single life. Why blame the youth alone? There are some swell daddies who consider a Benz car outside the house and two divorced daughters inside the house as a great status symbol. The modern couples who seek freedom from conjugal bondage, proclaiming that freedom is life, freedom is ambrosia forget that the fundamental principles and tenets of nature are sacred and inviolable. We are trying to blow out the little light that we have. In the olden days domestic quarrels used to get domestic settlements. The lower and upper courts of justice to deal with such issues were there in the old joint families. Grandfather, grandmother, father, mother and even the uncle in the next building all used to take part in the efforts to patch up domestic differences. The rise of nuclear families saw the end to many such safety valves of the past. The grandparents are now a days as much a threatened species as the lion tailed macaque. Once broken, an earthen pot cannot be put together. If what is broken is a golden pot it can well be welded together. Once the black hole of the nuclear families swallowed up grandparents who used to successfully take up this welding process, an added impetus was given to the process of divorces in the society. If single parenting was a mistake yesterday, it is custom today and no one knows if it will not become fundamental scientific principle tomorrow.

 

It is the sense of self-importance that shatters married life. One having a superiority complex will not bow before anyone. Many factors, like family tradition, love for the parents, commitment to the society, and love for the children, used to help to restrain this one-upmanship but when the threads tying these commitments get lax their relevance also decreases. When man and woman limit their vision by looking only inside, togetherness and the relief it provided get lost. Unable to scale the hurdles one has put, his own father, mother and the kids stand on either side of the boundary line, feeling the angst of alienation. No one is willing to weep on anyone else’s shoulders. And when the feeling is that the rights given by law are more important than the security afforded by the family, unstable minds are encouraged to go after the mirage of legal remedies to human problems. And legal battles and the subsequent separations become the order of the day. The home loses its image as a haven. The extent of relationships get abridged to ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘myself’ alone. When the old generation considered marriage as a liberation, the new generation feels that liberation from marriage is far better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19

WISE, NOT OTHERWISE

 

In the deathless world described by the Poet, even a grandpa of 500 years looks like a baby. But in the present world all those who crossed sixty are in the schedule of the aged. Though these people are fondly called senior citizens, the plight of many in that category is really pitiable. In family and society many of them are treated as valuable and worthwhile as domestic waste. ‘All old people die. Why is that granny alone does not die?’ When the grandma fondly recalls the innocent question of her three-year-old grandson, is not her tenderness tinged with a little heartache?

That heartache, that sadness, is the main problem of the aged now. Many of the aged make protective nests out of that ache and confine themselves in it. There is a usual sight in our native land nowadays. A big house. There is an aged man or woman. There will be people for domestic help. As also television, fridge and other gadgets. And people may ask. What do they lack? There is a large house and all amenities one could think of. There is money for everything. And a car to take the old couple around. But the old man and the old woman in the house feel like being in house arrest. Their children are in America, or Germany or the Gulf. There is a phone call every two days. Medicines are promptly dispatched. Could all these things remove the grandma’s ache? She doesn’t get the nearness of her children, the lisping of her grandchildren. There is no hope that she would get it either. Occasionally her children may entreat her to go to America to spend some time with them. But it is difficult to spend even two days there.

 

We can say it is not a problem unique to India and we can skirt the issue, describing it as a global phenomenon. True, it is a global phenomenon, a problem that causes concern all over the world. The problem of the aged. It is not only financial issues that plague the old people. Financial problems are important. But in developing nations and poor countries alike health issues of the aged nag them and the society more than anything else. Their safety also is a matter of concern.

 

When law and order break down and crimes escalate, the first target of house breakers and killers will be aged people living alone. How many incidents of this nature are reported almost every day.

It appears as if the government has total disregard for the umpteen problems faced by the aged people in their day to day life. Take for instance their plight on the pension day. At the Treasury it is a common sight on pension day to see frail old pensioners standing in queue for hours together. If they show up their hand for the bus to stop, the driver, if possible, would not stop the vehicle, or would only slow down, applying the brake a little. They forget, in their callousness, that the aged do not have the physical agility to hop into a moving vehicle. Some of the bus crew are amused by the predicament of these hapless people. The steps to get into the bus are truly speaking designed only for the strong and the agile, not for the weak and the aged. Even in hospitals, the old people get exhausted by climbing stairs. Even after climbing all the steps, there is no guarantee that the doctor will be available. How many cinema theatres are there that provide ramps for the sake of the aged or people with physical disability? At the railway station, the old people are bound to curse their life because of the difficulty of standing in serpentine queues. Only in rarest or rare cases do we find special queues for the aged. All this show the callous neglect of the aged by the society.

The issue hotted up when the number of the aged considerably increased all over. Even the United Nations took cognisance of the seriousness of the problem. Under its auspices global meets were held, the problem was defined and its extent demarcated and a working document for the welfare of the aged was approved. National governments were then persuaded to accept this as part of their national policy. In the wake of such efforts, some beneficial changes have taken place. It helped to generate a feeling that the aged people were not waste material and that they do have a creative and dynamic role to play in the society shoulder to shoulder with the younger generation. This also helped remove many misconceptions of the past. There was general realization that the aged deserved attention, care, partnership and independence. The approach to the aged should be marked by attention in place of neglect of the past, it was generally felt in the society.

If anyone thought that grandpas above eighty were as good as the stone dead, he had only to look at people like Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Bertrand Russel gave leadership to the movement for world peace when he was ninety-four. Bernard Michelangelo his play ‘Far Fetched Fables’ when he was ninety-three. Michelangelo never considered eighty- eight as old age. It was when he was 88 that he designed the Santa Maria Church. After successfully leading a world war, Winston Churchill did not remain idle. It was when he was 82 that he wrote his celebrated four-volume book, A History of the English Speaking People. Picasso was active as a painter even when he was ninety. Adaneur who became German chancellor at the age of 88, showed that he was as energetic a ruler as any one much below his age.

 

‘Old is Gold’ is an expression that is heard often. How true it is. In a city suburb in Austria there was an old man who used to remove fallen leaves from a water source. His action helped to maintain the cleanliness and purity of that spring. He used to receive a small remuneration from the city corporation. Sometime later the city fathers decided to discontinue this payment to the old man as they considered it a wasteful expenditure. Some months elapsed and the corporation noticed that there was a steep fall in the revenue from tourism. They enquired and what turned up in the enquiry was an eye opener for them. Tourists failed to turn up because the water body was now full of decayed leaves, emitting foul smell. It was no more the clean and pure spring that used to beckon them to its bank to stroll, to while away the time and to take pictures of the pristine water body.

Realizing their mistake the corporation re-employed the old man, giving due respect to the valuable work done by him. Like him, it is indeed the grandpa and grandma in our households who see that the clean spring of the relationships are not contaminated. It is also their job to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted flow for the course of life of the young generation. It will be good if the society in general realizes this.

Old men are wise, not otherwise.

 

 

 

 

 

20

MAFIA IS IN TOWN

 

When the notorious forest brigand, Veerappan, was killed, people were greatly relieved. Youngsters had the habit of erratic hero worship of such lone wolves who incessantly indulge in crimes, taking law into their hands and basking in the glory of the dubious stardom bestowed on them by the media. It is important that new Veerappans do not emerge in our midst or in the woods.

To learn what happens when Veerappans multiply in the society all we have to do is to take a look at America. The number of killings attributed to Al Capone, an infamous mafia head of Chicago, was a thousand. Our Veerappan who killed about a hundred people in the forests pales into insignificance before the city bred Al Capone. Al Capone was only one among the many mafia chieftains. But it was ‘Al Capone style’ that made mafia killings more gruesome and more horrendous.

Groups of rowdy gangs from Italy that migrated to America and settled down there came to be known as the mafia. One such migrant family had nine children, including Alphonse. He began his career in crime in New York as a thug, indulging in stray street fights and petty robberies when he got involved in a murder. When the police came in search of him, Alphonse thought it prudent to flee the city for the time being. He moved to Chicago where the ruling mafia gang was headed by one James Colosimo. Johny Torrio was the lead gangster in that outfit who was then on the lookout for fresh recruitments to his gang.

Alphonse was spotted by him as an eligible entrant and was taken in as an apprentice.

It was during this period that prohibition was enforced in America. While Alphonse saw this as a godsend to make millions out of bootlegging, Colosimo did not agree. Colosimo was promptly done away with. He was shot dead by an unknown assailant, believed to be Alphonse. He then attended the gang leader’s funeral, shedding tears for all to see. Shortly thereafter the New York street thug became Chicago’s mafia don Al Capone.

Under Al Capone’s leadership the Chicago outfit soon became a huge and powerful mafia empire. He went on a victorious march, liquidating all his rival gangs and operating a vast crime syndicate. Robbery, murder, prostitution ring, gambling dens and bootlegging were the major money spinners that raked in millions for Al Capone. As imaginative as he was ruthless, Al Capone went after any means to make money at gunpoint.

There were two major mafia families in Chicago at that time, one of them headed by Dean O’Banion, a migrant from Ireland. Initially what he did was to work as a florist, supplying flowers to rich households. This was a respectable business and Al Capone decided that enough was enough. One day three youngsters came to O’Banion’s flower shop and ordered a wreath. A beautiful wreath was promptly supplied. The youngsters then took out their revolvers, pumped O’Banion’s body with bullets and left the shop after placing the wreath on his body. Like this Al Capone eliminated many of his rivals in Chicago, ultimately crowing himself as the monarch of all he surveyed in the Chicago criminal world.

The law and order machinery of the city just remained as a mute witness before the power and resourcefulness of Al Capone. Though he escaped many big nets, like our Veerappan he got ensnared ultimately in a small net. A court sentenced him to eleven years in prison, not for any major crime like murder, dacoity, bootlegging or prostitution, but for evasion of tax. The long jail term naturally enervated him besides making him emotionally distraught. He showed symptoms of insanity apart from having to undergo treatment for sexually transmitted disease. The mafia don who came out of the prison was a veritable wreck.

After his release, Al Capone did not go back to his olden ways. Hated and discarded by everyone, he lived a lonely life in his house in Florida. He died in 1947, burying with him the ‘Al Capone style’ of underworld crimes.

Instances are not few in America when law enforcers and law breakers join hands. There were reports that the CIA of America had sought the help of the mafia to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The entrusted task was to make available to cigar smoking Castro a consignment of poisoned cigars. Otherwise, gun him down with a machine gun in the Al Capone style. The CIA even hatched a plot with the mafia to humiliate Castro by causing a fall of the hairs of his beard in public.

As in India, America also had its share of the unenviable situation of the fence itself eating up the crop. New York police appointed a super cop to squarely deal with the mafia. His assigned task was to raid unauthorized gambling dens and force their closure. Lt Charles Becker enthusiastically took up his assignment. Mafia groups were jittery. To cut a long story short, the police authorities were shocked to learn, when it was too late, that the super cop had become the head of nefarious empire that he was assigned to neutralize. He had himself turned a far more powerful mafia don.

 

There is something in this that seeks to open our eyes. Is it here or there that an effective setup is in force to prevent law breaking? Though slightly delayed, Indian police could eliminate a dreaded brigand like Veerappan. Though there was an organized move under Robert Kennedy to go against the mafia in America, nothing could be done to break up the sinister empire. Similarly, they could only watch as the terrorist planes pulverized the world trade centre. When parliament came under attack in India, our security forces could counter it and eliminate all the perpetrators. When world leaders met in Seattle the conference of the world trade organization could not be carried out as planned because of vociferous demonstrations outside the venue. Murasoli Maran who was then a union minister, in India, had said in Seattle that if two collectors from India were deputed there the demonstrators could have been effectively controlled. Officials in this country usually get accused of inefficiency and ineptitude, but an occasional pat on their back for their commitment will not be out of place. It only goes to prove that in regard to law and order enforcement as in everything else, if there is a will there is a way.

Generally speaking, both here and there the society witnesses the games of the thief and the cop. The law breakers entice the law enforcers through many appeasements. When the law enforcers accept them, crime and punishment get mixed up. In other words, crimes are committed by a collective of law breakers and law enforcers. And invariably the punishment goes to the hapless public.

 

 

 

 

 

21

WHITE HOUSE FOR RENT

 

European cities had a distinctive feature. The expression ‘had’ does imply that such a thing is no more there. European cities had security. In the railway stations, in the cabs, in hotels, at public places, in fact everywhere there was assured security. But is it not becoming a thing of the past? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some East European countries gave up Communism. Because of poverty, many youths from such countries migrated to the affluent west. From Czech Republic and Romania thousands of migrant refugees thus went over to cities like Paris, Frankfurt and Copenhagen.

Now there is a different kind of ambience in the railway stations in Europe. Announcements are made at regular intervals asking the public to be wary of pickpockets. I did not attach much significance to the announcements till my own pocket was picked. The modus operandi of the pickpockets was to cause an artificial crowding while boarding the train, divert one’s attention to something else and then smoothly relieve him of his purse. I lost my purse to a young man and a young woman from Romania. That was what Paris’ policemen told me.   A fellow passenger consoled me. After all it was only a purse that was lost. Some clever fellows in Paris had even sold the Eiffel Tower as scrap to gullible purchasers. Information was that this was done by some people from Czechoslovakia. I listened to the friend’s narrative, thinking the story telling might help me in forgetting my own loss.

When Victor Lustig from Czechoslovakia came to Paris and settled down in a hotel room he saw a news item in a daily that intrigued him. The Eiffel Tower was suffering from wear and tear and badly needed repair. There was a possibility of pulling it down so as to erect a new tower.

Reading the news, Lustig had a wonderful idea to make easy money and he immediately decided to put it to practice. He joined hands with a friend to lay a trap. They invited some leading merchants of Paris to the hotel and informed them in all seriousness that the government is forced to consider pulling down the Eiffel Tower. There is bound to be a public outcry against the move. But the government has to do what is inevitable. These people have been invited to the hotel in the belief that they will handle this issue with the utmost confidentiality that it deserved. If they are interested, they may submit quotations.

The merchants were naturally beguiled by the recognition they received. They submitted their quotations in all earnestness, and in full confidentiality. The quotation was fixed in favour of one of them, a new moneybag. To enhance credibility Lustig made one more proposition. For smooth running of matters it was necessary to grease some palms and so some money had to be given for that purpose. The merchant was convinced this indeed was government matter. He gave the quotation money by bank draft and received receipt for it with government seal. Lustig soon left the country with the money he received. There was no earthquake following this cerebral cheating. Nothing happened. The merchant did not approach the police as he did not want to be humiliated in public for his folly.

This emboldened Lustig to return to Paris and try his luck once more. He sold Eiffel Tower for a second time to another gullible merchant and got his money. But the merchant this time suspected foul play and informed the police. But by that time

Lustig had made himself scarce. The police could neither trace him nor get back the money.

It is not the first time that important world monuments have been sold in this manner. Lustig of Czechoslovakia and Arthur Ferguson of Scotland are birds of the same feather. Ferguson was cleverer of the two. He leased American President’s residence The White House for a hundred thousand dollars. Ferguson who befriended a billionaire from Texas told him in the course of a conversation that as part of economy measure the government had decided to give the White House on lease. And the billionaire thought this was the best opportunity to shine in front of others. He wanted the White House at any cost and he entrusted the task of getting it to Ferguson himself. Ferguson fulfilled that mission impossible and got away with easy money.

Ferguson’s games did not end there. When he was in England he sold many prime properties. For instance, the Buckingham Palace was sold for 2,000 pounds and the Nelson Memorial for 6,000 pounds. The cheating was exposed when the man who bought the Nelson Memorial engaged a contractor to pull it down.

It was said the New York memorial, Statue of Liberty, escaped Ferguson’s nimble fingers by a hair’s breadth. In his inimitable style Ferguson was once spending time in front of the statue, observing it, examining it and measuring it. An amused Australian tourist asked him what he was doing. Happy that he had got a victim, Ferguson explained to him that since the New York Port was being developed the Statue of Liberty was likely to be shifted. It was indeed a sad thing, but inevitable. The Australian was angry that the Americans in their commercial mindset made light of such a great memorial. In the course of the talk, Ferguson cleverly put across his bait for the tourist to bite. Why not get the Statue for a paltry sum and transport it to Australia so as to install it there? The Australian was fascinated

by the idea. Not long after that he arranged a hundred thousand dollars as payment for the Statue. But better sense prevailed when his bank asked him to consider the proposal in detail before spending so much money. As the Australian started enquiries, Ferguson made good his escape.

It is indeed harvest time for people like Ferguson when pea-brained billionaires walk around with stuffed pockets. How many cheating cases are reported day in and day out in our country and elsewhere!  Many of those cheated do not complain for fear of humiliation. And even if complaints are made appropriate action is rare. Anyway, such cases will continue as long as there are people out to show off their wealth. It is rarely that money and brains go together. But why should we blame people who cheat to make money? Are not the political parties who give umpteen false promises in their manifestos, the biggest ever cheats?

 

 

 

 

22

IN A NETSHELL

 

 

He appeared crest fallen. Normally he was high spirited and animated in his disposition. Sparkling in his vital ways, he was pleasant company for conversation. Time flies in his presence and no one will notice. Why like this today?

Perhaps reading my mind, he said, without any preliminaries: ‘My daughter...’

Was he sobbing? It took some time for him to compose himself and then he opened up. ‘I am really worried about her future. Will she do something drastic because of the shame?’ He began to weep uncontrollably.

I tried to console him. She did not do anything wrong wilfully. It so happened to her.

His daughter had been sent to a good college in a neighbouring state. She was admitted to a hostel, but after some time she felt that the restrictions at the hostel were rather harsh. So, along with two roommates, she took up a flat on rent. The good accommodation was arranged by a co-student.

It was much later that the girls realized that there was a hidden camera behind the tube light. They flared up and took up the matter with the flat owner. But his attitude changed suddenly. He scared the hell out of the girls, showing them what all the camera had copied and whatever had been added extra from the computer. The girls were shell shocked.

Some portions of the captured and morphed shots were also circulated in the college.

What is to be done now? The father was in a quandary. Fortunately, the problem could be solved without much further damage. The girl was quietly transferred to another college in another state, a college run by nuns.

But was the problem solved once and for all? Indeed, it was not something confined to one place. Also, the new issues thrown up by information technology cannot be dismissed as simple or trivial.

It appears as if the problems like the one mentioned above are spreading in our campuses like wildfire. What begins as a minor prank may in course of time assume the proportion of a major crime. Indications are that a new villain named Cyber Crime has firmly entrenched itself in our educational institutions.

Utmost caution is needed even in discussions on cyber crime. Perhaps there may be a teen-aged boy or girl who takes to cyber crime taking a cue from such discussions. The situation today is such that with a mobile phone and a computer one can harass, torment or even wreck anyone’s life.

Multitudes are the ways in which the new gadgets can be put to use for illegal purposes. For instance, there is a cyber way to copying in examinations: messages, both SMS and MMS, can be transmitted from and to examination halls. Pictures or video of girl students in the class and woman teachers can be taken without their knowledge. And with the aid of a computer they can be morphed with other objectionable material to be circulated in the campus to humiliate the victims. Till they are caught by the campus authorities, those indulging in this sadistic pastime can enjoy hell of a time in the campus with their supposed pranks and little bit of blackmailing. What they forget is the shame, mortification and suffering they cause to their hapless victims.

It was when principals and teachers were contacted that the seriousness of the issue came to light. One principal, a disciplinarian, said without mincing words: ‘They are not students. They are criminals. No leniency should be shown to them.’ Others took a slightly different stand. ‘After all, hadn’t we committed similar pranks when we were students? Then also our elders were annoyed and unhappy.’ There was truth in what they said. I remembered the case of a very senior official. In his student days what all mischief had he done! Stealing a priest’s cassock, he would leave the hostel and go to the church’s farm, get a worker to pluck coconuts from the palm and cut plantain. Since he was in a priest’s attire no one suspected foul play. Finally the ‘priest’ was caught and reprimanded. At that time everyone had considered this as a crime. But thinking of it now, it could only be smiled away as a prank.

True, today’s crime may look like a prank tomorrow. But can we dismiss the cyber crimes lightly as pranks?

Some smart boys try to make some financial gains with the aid of the computer. Find out the details of the credit cards of others, and use the information for online purchases. They begin by stealing information from the credit cards of their father or brother, then graduate to such a level as to make them bold enough to steal credit card information of others. Finally when musclemen engaged by credit card companies zero in on the boys, the matter gets out of control. The family comes to know of the goings on, the police intervene and the cyber heroes find themselves with their backs to the wall. It would be with hell of a lot of effort by the family and the principal that prankster turned criminals are kept out of the police net.

There are some super intelligent people who do mischief as a prank. They create a virus to sneak into computers connected to the internet and steal others’ files.

 

No one would deny that there was an imperative need to put an end to cyber crimes. But in the campus the question is who will bell the cat? There is an old saying that a thorn can best be removed with the help of another thorn.  Similarly, cyber crimes can be put to an end in the campus with the help of the student community. If not a full stop, at least a semi-colon can be put if the students chose to do so.

As Principal Secretary, Higher Education, there was once an opportunity for this author to interact with the students of Kerala’s educational institutions. It was heartening to note that they had clear and well thought out views on the matter. They expressed indignation over the manner in which foreign commercial-marketing culture was making deep inroads into our cultural milieu. They cited the no holds barred promotion of gadgets like mobile phones and computers. Divergent political views in this regard did not deter the student community from expressing their common perceptions.

There were certain questions that the students, in general, asked the government. Who is preventing enforcement of the information technology law.   Not the students, anyway. Whose responsibility is it to inspect and control the functioning of internet cafes operating near educational institutions? Why is it that the police set up is not being made competent to detect and deal with cyber crimes?

They have questions for the teachers as well. Can’t the institutions be asked to ensure that the monitors of the internet - connected computers can be viewed by all? Will not such a step help, at least within the campus, to limit access to unsavoury sites? While it may be impractical to ban the use of mobile phones in the campus, can’t it be ensured that they are banned within classrooms? Why should they be permitted in the examination halls? What is the difficulty to bar camera phones from the campus?

 

Also why not make use of the software that prevents entry to unsavoury sites?

As an official in charge of higher education, I was forced to do an introspection. What is wrong with the students’ questions? Are not they logical? These questions do need appropriate answers at the earliest. Earlier the better as any delay is bound to make them huge and unmanageable. As the saying goes, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ those who lament the ‘blue whale’ suicides among youth may pause and the introspect for a while.

Let us assume these questions by students can be answered somehow or the other. But one of their observations remains with the shattering force of a tsunami. That the real perpetrators of the campus cyber crimes and their sinister users are teachers themselves.

True? Well, one can’t be sure. But what if true? May be students get the teachers they deserve.

 

 

 

 

23

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

While driving through Germany’s federal motorway Autobahn, I came across a famous signboard at an intersection: Nuremberg. I suggested to my friend at the wheels to take a small detour and visit that place. Images of courtroom scenes soon filled my mind from whatever I had read about that famous trial of war crimes at Nuremberg.

Sarcastically dismissing the elaborate trial as a farce, Hermann Goering, once Nazi Germany’s second in command and Hitler’s intended successor, had declared: The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.

Four charges were levelled against the Nazi army commanders, officials and others indicted for the holocaust. Crimes against peace – defined as participation in the planning and waging of a war of aggression in violation of numerous international treaties; war crimes – defined as violations of the internationally agreed upon rules for waging war; and crimes against humanity – namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war. The fourth charge was conspiracy to commit such crimes.

The trials began on November 20, 1945 at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice. The Chief Prosecutor was Justice Robert Jackson of America. In the dock were army commanders under Hitler and other pillars of the Nazi establishment, including political leaders and other functionaries, who bullied and terrified the world. The most notable among them was Goering, the highest ranking Nazi official caught alive after the war.

Goering was no ordinary soldier. He was a daring fighter pilot who created history for Germany during the First World War. For his legendary feats Goering was decorated with several medals. As head of the Nazi war machine during the Second World War he had terrified rival nations with his blitzkrieg. But his delay in bombing Britain earned for him the displeasure of Hitler and his subsequent expulsion from the party. He was enjoying his retired life in his private estate when the winds of fortune started blowing against Germany. He surrendered before the invading American forces because of his fear that the Nazi secret police might target him for elimination.

In prison Goering always displayed a rare self-assurance and stamp of his indomitable personality. Though devoid of any luxuries of life, he made use of his prison time to reduce his weight and he faced the trial as an energetic but defiant soldier, showing the world that his commanding power was as sharp as ever. It was Goering who instilled self-confidence in the pallid, ashen-faced and toothless generals who faced the trial along with him.

He resolutely refuted all the charges. One of his main contentions could not be corroborated till today. The contention was that he was totally in the dark about the horrendous acts of persecution meted out to the six million jews killed in the concentration camps and gas chambers. What he had to say was that as one went up higher and higher it was more difficult to see what was happening down below. Goering’s friends also took the same defence. They were not aware of the cruel acts and crimes committed down below.

Who were these partners? The topmost leader of the Great War could not be brought to justice. In a bunker in Berlin,

Hitler took his own life, shooting himself with a revolver. Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda chief capable of making a dog out of a goat, administered poison to his six children and then asked a soldier to shoot him and his wife. Head of the Gestapo Himmler took cyanide when caught as he was fleeing incognito to Bavaria. Twenty one leading functionaries of Nazi Germany were ultimately caught by the allied forces. They included Rudolf Hess. This loyal deputy of Hitler pretended amnesia during the trial. Though at first it was thought he was lying, British doctors who examined him corroborated his contention. The people and the media also believed this. Then came the shocker. Hess admitted in the court that his claim was only a trick and that he was capable of testifying before the court. This statement was of no use as from the next moment onwards he showed symptoms of insanity. No one could understand his mind.

Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach remained in hiding for quite some time, but finally surrendered. He had a change of heart after his surrender. He wrote to his wife that he wanted to own up his mistake in making the youth believe in Hitler. He wanted to atone for this. ‘Let them hang me after that.’

The fiendish style of Nazi operations was exposed in the court room. Throwing thousands of Jews, both dead or alive, into huge heaps of emaciated bodies and then setting fire to them, lining up women at the edge of a pit, disrobing them and then shooting them to death. Even the perpetrators of these crimes

at times did not have the strength of mind to witness them. Hans Fresh, an assistant to Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels admitted to the ghastly nature of the crimes and said no power in this world or in heavens was capable of removing his country’s stigma for having perpetrated such crimes. He too had said those in higher echelons were not aware of what was happening on the ground.

No one was willing to accept the contentions of the accused. Goering, who claimed that he was unaware of the crimes, himself was responsible for the setting up of Gestapo and evolution of the concentration camps. It was again Goering who ordered a deliberate attempt to provoke Jews so as to create tension. After attacking Jewish households and destroying their property, the blame was put on the Jews themselves and a fine of 1,000 million German mark was imposed on them. Goering was also accused of smuggling out artworks valued at over two million pounds from the European cities which came under German control.

The only person who remained unperturbed in the dock was Goering. The performance of Hitler’s Foreign Minister Ribbontrop was pitiable. Herman Hess fully cooperated with the court while Carlton Bruner, who spearheaded the genocide, resorted to ridiculous canards.

The most pitiable was the case of Jalmer Schack, Nazi financial advisor and finance manager. He did not have any other role in the war crimes. When he realised that the Nazi policies were getting warped, he gradually drifted away from it. He even complained to Hitler against the persecution of the Jews. He had to pay a heavy price for his differences with Hitler, because he himself was put in a concentration camp. It was from here that he was arrested and put on trial.

The Nuremberg trial lasted 218 days. The total expenditure was about four million dollars. Truck-loads of documents were made use of during the trial. Ultimately the court gave its verdict. Death sentence for Goering. But before he was hanged, Goering ended his life by consuming a cyanide capsule he was carrying all along. Schack was released. Hess and Admiral Eric Rader got life terms. Albert Speer got 20 years.

Different people reacted differently to the verdicts. But there is one question that remains unanswered till today.

What the Nazis did to the Jews was indeed a vicious and diabolical crime against humanity. But when America dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of the war, killing thousands of innocent people, were they not committing an equally diabolical and heinous war crime?

No one would accept impartiality in regard to devastations of wars. Goering had said the victors were the judges and the vanquished the accused. In the case of Saddam Hussain also impartial people may ask the question: When the war itself is a crime, is the victor morally empowered to award punishment to the vanquished?

 

 

 

 

 

 

24

VOLTAIRE AT THE GUILLETINE

 

The hurricane passed, leaving a trail of destruction and devastation. Human casualty was heavy. The conscience of the nation was roused. And prominent people came together and collected a huge amount to provide relief to the unfortunate victims. They handed over the money to the finance minister and he promptly deposited it in the treasury. Those who collected the money were furious. We collected the money to provide relief to the poor and not to get it deposited in the treasury. And the minister told them with a smile. During the last two weeks I have been giving money to the affected from the treasury without waiting for anyone’s sanction. I knew I would be able to recoup the money as I had faith in the goodness of the people.

This happened in Paris. To be precise, in October 1788. When this message of goodness went around, a revolution was averted.

In the beginning of the new century there was racial unrest in Paris. This went on for about a fortnight. The authorities had to work hard to quell the fire of unrest. It was but natural that world came to worry that equality and fraternity were departing from the land of Voltaire.

France is a country which had spiritedly engaged in wars and invasions and annexations over the centuries. But France was known as, and is still known as, the cultural capital of Europe. It is not without reason. It was based on the values which were

reflected in its social vision and administrative outlook. Even before becoming the slogans of the French revolution, the concepts of equality, fraternity and liberty had created ripples in the social life of France.

Henry IV was ruling France. The threat of Spanish invasion was looming large. On one side were the formidable moves to weaken the ruling setup by unifying the dissenting forces in Paris. Pressure was mounting on Henry IV to take Paris by open aggression. But his response was different. I am father to my people, he said. And drawing analogy to the decision taken by King Solomon to settle a dispute between two women over an infant, he said he would take the stand of the real mother in the story, who was willing to forgo the child rather than halve it. He said. I am not willing to sacrifice humanity to regain Paris. He brought Paris to terms not by the use of brutal force. Only three Counts got killed in the process. Henry who became remorseful said: I am prepared to pay any price to get their lives back. I can tell coming generations that I took back Paris without bloodshed.

There is only humaneness to equal humaneness. It is this reckoning that bestows on civilizations the luster of greatness. Alexander had conquered the world. Once he saw a man leading a mule through the mountains. The mule was carrying sacks filled with gold and jewels for Alexander’s palace. When he saw the mule was about to collapse because of the weight of the burden, the man unloaded the sacks and carried them himself. Alexander was watching this with curiosity. Unable the carry the weight, the man also started to stagger. Alexander told him. You take this load to your house somehow. I gift them to you. This was a moment when authority succumbed to humanity.

Though the French Emperor Napoleon was a ferocious warrior, as an administrator he was kind. There was a Count who was elevated by him to a high position.   But this Count got involved in a conspiracy against Napoleon and was arrested. The Countess met Napoleon to air her grievance. She implored him to save her husband. Napoleon thought for a while and asked her: Can you recognize his signature? She replied in the affirmative. He gave her a letter to read. Once she read it, she fell unconscious. When she came to her senses Napoleon gave the letter to her. Pointing to a lighted candle he said: Do as you wish. The Countess burnt the letter. With great relief Napoleon said: You have just destroyed the only evidence against your husband.

Once I had occasion to visit Paris in connection with an international conference while the French Presidential elections were going on. The candidate who contested against Jacques Chirac had entered the fray with his strong stand against the immigrants and in favour of sons of the soil slogan. It was the time when the western world and the French people had started wondering if tolerance, which was the hallmark of French culture, was vanishing. But the political philosophy of intolerance could not take roots in France. Chirac got re-elected as President. Now the observers are watching if the winds would change direction. Things are moving in such a way that there is scope for the apprehension that the embers of racial hatred and intolerance can flare up into a huge conflagration. It is a matter of great concern that its repercussions will not be confined to France alone.

The neighbouring country Belgium had racial conflicts at least at a few places. Its echoes were heard in some universities in Britain. The apprehension as to whether the war of cultures may become a terrible reality is not totally misplaced. Are we going back to the distorted culture which would honour negativism?   Are the yin-yangs of retrogression and progression becoming cyclic realities in the descending and ascending stages of human civilization? It is unfortunate that though summits are regularly held on war and economic development, no serious efforts are made for cultural coordination. Is not a vision of the whole world as one big family the only way before us rather than the feeling that sons of the soil are the real inheritors of the world?

There is another side to this. The fate of one who gave shelter should not be like the Arab who gave shelter to the camel. When civilized societies try to imbibe other cultures and to assimilate them into their mainstream they should take care to ensure that it is not to their own detriment. The immigrants also should consciously try to imbibe the culture and the lifestyle of the societies they have chosen. It cannot be that they have left their old home but not yet reached the new one. When cultures coalesce, we can find solace in the thought that the wail of racial conflicts in European countries is nothing but the birth pangs of a new global order.

Immigrants may be unwelcome guests. But can one consider immigrants, who for generations are born and brought up in a country, as outsiders? Are they not also sons of the soil since they are born in that country? They too should feel that way. It is the responsibility of cultural leaders and those in power to see that there is no feeling of alienation.

To know how one should behave towards a person seeking asylum, all the French have to do is to look at their own tradition. Once a Spanish slave escaped to France on a stolen stallion. The King of Spain demanded that both the slave and the war horse he had stolen be returned to Spain. The French ruler sent back the horse but not the slave. His explanation was that a man who had sought asylum on the soil of France could not be sent back to slavery. He became a citizen of France and a free man.

 

The spokesmen of racism who are eager to drive away the refugees are taking Voltaire to the guillotine in the land of the French Revolution itself. Are the votaries of the neo-racism listening.

 

 

 

 

25

THE BALANCE SHEET OF CHERNOBYL

 

It did not occur to me what was so special about that day. But when the people around me were holding animated discussion on that, my curiosity was naturally aroused. The topic of discussion was the accident at the atomic reactor at Chernobyl.

On April 26 we were at the biggest nuclear plant in Europe, CERN in Geneva. Most of them were known nuclear scientists. There were also a handful of non-scientists, including me.

The visit to CERN afforded a great opportunity for me to enhance my awareness of the subject, and I decided to make full use of it so as to dispel my ignorance. I could hear from the great nuclear scientists about the real extent of the havoc caused by the explosion in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the erstwhile Soviet Union.

It was on April 26, 1986 that one of the reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear station exploded, spewing extremely dangerous levels of radioactive material into the air. The accident occurred when the scientists were conducting an experiment to see how much power was needed to run Reactor No 4 in the event of a blackout.

The intensity of the accident could be gauged from the fact that radiation from the explosion of the Reactor No 4 at

Chernobyl was a hundred times of the radiation caused by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

In the wake of the explosion over 600,000 people had to flee to other places, abandoning their houses and belongings. Thousands of children who were there on that cursed day had succumbed to thyroid cancer in the following years, the mishap caused great deal of hardship and suffering for the people and economic losses of several thousand million dollars for the government and international organizations. What the victims of the tragedy lost forever was the vitality of their life.

Official claim was that the disaster could be contained and controlled. But the remnants of the Reactor No 4 continue to remain underground as a potential danger, posing the threat of yet another catastrophe in future.

It was said that the remnants of the reactor had been contained in a huge sarcophagus made of steel and concrete. But there were experts who were of the view that the hastily made coffin was not as strong it should be. Scientists were still trying to confine the reactor debris within another heavy security cover that could contain radiation. The structure proposed was like a coconut shell with its open end placed downwards.

What they were planning was to assemble the huge structure far away from the damaged reactor and then transport it to the site to sort of put a lid on the debris. Needless to say, this was a high precision and risky procedure involving technical expertise of the highest order.

With completion of this task, the damaged reactor would go out of sight. But would it go out of the minds of the people?

How to forget that catastrophe? In the case of the 4,000 cancer affected people it would continue to be a fire spitting memory. After the accident, fire blazed in the reactor for ten days, spitting fatal doses of radiation into the atmosphere.

Neighboring countries like Belarus and Russia, Ukraine and even several parts of Europe were covered with radioactive dust. Over 600,000 people who were involved in the rescue and rehabilitation work were subjected to radiation in big and small doses.

At present about five million people are still residing in radiation contaminated localities. The only consolation is that about 116,000 people living very close to the accident site could be evacuated speedily.

It is still not clear how the Chernobyl episode has affected the health of the people. Information is not available as to how many people have actually been affected directly or indirectly by the accident. On one side are people subjected to direct radiation from radioactive clouds and radioactive dust. Then there are people eating radioactive food or breathing contaminated air. There are also over 10,000 people still residing in areas where the level of radiation is much above permissible limits.

No one can say how many have died and how many are living dead because of the accident. The reason for that is that it is difficult to separate natural deaths and deaths due to small doses of radiation. The rough estimate is that several lakhs of people must have died in the accident.

Official centres insisting on accurate statistics, however, contend that the death toll was conservative. According to them apart from the 4,000 people who died in the wake of the explosion, 15 people who died of thyroid cancer and 28 rescue workers were the only victims of the tragedy.

Those who were either teenagers or youth at the time of the accident were parents now. No one could say whether their children had any genetic abnormalities. Generations of people who were guinea pigs of this radiation disaster were likely to become part of the smoke filled memories of Chernobyl.

 

It is pertinent here to point out some of the findings of the expert committee named Chernobyl Forum, constituted under the joint auspices of the United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization.

Committee Secretary Mikhail Balanov had said it was not possible to gauge the mental status of those who had survived the disaster. They could be described for practical purposes as the living dead.

Some were suffering from extreme, irrational fears. Some others totally ignored the threat of radiation, and were living as they please, prepared to face the consequences as and when they came. There was, in effect, a suicidal tinge in their disposition.

Opachichi is a village close to the exploded reactor. There live an old couple, Anna and Vasily Yevtushenko. Anna has turned 70 and Vasily 66. When the accident occurred the authorities evacuated all the people living in surrounding areas, including Anna and Vasily. They were rehabilitated at a place about a 160 km from Chernobyl. They remained there for two years. But the call of their native village and their old home, where they had spent decades, was too strong for them to resist. So, disregarding all objections they returned to Opachichi, to live a risky but contended life in their old home.

Occasionally health officials visit the village and take blood samples. A beaming Anna would say to all her visitors, ‘Everything normal.’

Now about 400 grandpas and grandmas have returned to the forbidden land to live out the rest of their lives as they used to in the past. Side by side with that tentative re-entry of human habitation, there was a heavy growth of forest vegetation as well. Jackals and wild horses and snakes and other animals also abound in the forests.

Only one thing is absent in Chernobyl now. The vitality of youth. And their hopes and aspirations. The town of Pripyat near Chernobyl is now a ghost town.

 

A frightening silence envelopes the town. Also some smoldering heaps like the one in the remnants of the Reactor No 4.

It was estimated that about 200 tones of nuclear fuel still remained there. This was equivalent to the destructive power of dozens of atom bombs.

Though the iron pestle that was the curse of Yadava clan could be pulverized and thrown into the sea, a small piece that remained turned ultimately into the lethal arrow that took the life of Yadava chief, Lord Krishna. Similarly, can we ignore the debris of the exploded reactor, which remain as an open balance sheet of Chernobyl pointing to the possibility of great catastrophes in the future?

 

 

 

 

 

26

SCALE THE MOUNTAIN

 

Experiences are indeed our teachers. We never learn from the class room what our experiences from day-to-day life teach us. If we have to learn about the land we have to go about the land.

In my childhood, there was one person in our midst with a passion for travel, who traversed many lands as no one else did, and who feasted us, from his rare and memorable experiences in many lands: S K Pottekkatt, the Jnanapith awardee.

There was a reason to remember Pottekkatt all of a sudden. Voyaging in a luxury liner from Cyprus to Jerusalem, I was surprised to find in their library a book in Malayalam. Probably a book left by one of their Malayalee employees: a travelogue titled ‘Indonesian Diary’ by SK Pottekkatt. Unexpectedly getting such a gift at an unexpected time, I happily read it from cover to cover in one sitting. I was fascinated about the basic tenets of travel. If you visit a land, learn about the land and its people. See folk dances, listen to folk music, visit museums and other venues of culture. And interact with the local people. Speak to them.

 

I recall. I too had gone a hundred times to many parts of the world. I had tried to read and learn about the land I was visiting. But it was the feel of the land which taught me that the more important learning was from experience, rather than from reading books.

The scene was the Larnaca airport, Cyprus. Lakshmi, my wife, and I were going to Athens. Before taking the baggage to the aircraft, it was put on the x-ray channel as usual. The policeman inspecting the baggage then called out aloud: ‘pisthal, pisthal.’

Suddenly a group of gun-trotting cops ran up and made a circle around me. Seeing that I was enjoying the development, the head of the cops looked at me confusedly. Some passengers also started crowding there to watch the fun.  They wanted to know how the pistol got into the bag.  I categorically told the police there was no pistol inside. But the cops were not convinced. They made a thorough search of the bag and ultimately came up, triumphantly, with something that looked like a pistol. They cast me a look which seemed to tell me that the game was up.

It was with much difficulty that I convinced them that it was not a pistol but a cigarette lighter. Though they finally realised it was an innocuous cigarette lighter, they did not return it to me.

Though the Cyprus incident turned out to be fun, for me and the police, the incident in Israel had almost become vicious. At the time of disembarkation from the ship, the inspecting Israeli police stopped me along with my wife. While others left the ship without any hassle, we were not allowed to get down to the dock. My enquiries about the reason for this elicited no response. I mentioned Indian Embassy but that also did not make any magical impact. I realised that it would not be a comfortable thing to stay back alone in the ship after all other passengers had disembarked. I insisted on getting an explanation for not permitting us to leave. Though initially they ignored my entreaties and protests, they appeared to relent finally. Soon one cop who appeared to be the head of the force, took me to a corner and asked me, in a stony tone: ‘Tell me the truth. Who are you? One after the other, you have gone eight times to Arab nations.’

 

Oh, that is the issue. I felt relieved. It was then that I realised that passengers who visited Arab countries were anathema to the Israeli police. He quizzed me left and right.  But he was far from convinced. Then another officer came and asked me: ‘Tell us the truth. Whom do you want to meet here?’ He did not believe me when I said we came to visit Calvary and Bethlehem.

It was then that he detected an identity card accidentally placed inside my passport. It was a photo ID which recorded me as a guest of the UN Secretary General. That was a card I received for participation in the UN Habitat Summit. Seeing the card, a change came over him abruptly. They were pleased to know that my mission was construction of houses for poor people. Profusely apologizing for detaining us and causing us discomfort, they permitted us to go, accompanying us upto the bus waiting for us at the dock.

Those waiting for us in the bus, who were wondering what was happening in the ship, heaved a sigh of relief when they saw us.

 

There are also occasions when experiences turn out to be bizarre. This had happened both within our country and abroad. One such incident was in Kolkata, the beehive of agitations and demonstrations during the close of the seventies. I had joined the State Bank of India as a Probationary Officer. One day I was going from Esplanade to Writers’ Building when I came across a big, flag waving, slogan shouting demonstration that mostly filled the entire road. Unable to cross the road, I waited on the footpath for some time.  For a brief while, there was a gap in the procession, making use of which several people crossed the road. I too followed suit, moving across the road when something happened right in front of me. The processionists from the rear who had closed up by that time, caught hold of one of those crossing over and thrashed him and poked him with sticks. I too would have been at the receiving end, but a bright new idea struck me. Raising my fist and shouting slogans, ‘chalbo na, chalbo na,’ I too went along with the procession. I had to walk about a kilometer before parting ways with the processionists.

 

We get an insight into what we hear and what we see, only when we experience them.   Saint Paul was in his apostolic mission in Greece. The people of Greece who believed in gods like Zeus, wielder of thunderbolts, were not willing to lend their ears to him who speaks about a God who was crucified by others. Realising that he had to speak their language to win them over, St Paul found a way out.

 

There was a temple in the Acropolis of Athens frequented by the Greeks. The temple of the Unknown God (Agnostos Theos).Once while speaking at the Acropolis Paul told them: Don’t you believe in an Unknown God? I will take you to him. Thus he led the Greek people to Lord Jesus.

When the guide described the temple of the Unknown God, the story that I heard long ago surfaced in my memory from nowhere.

 

Anyone can have experiences. It is the rarity of the experience which makes a journey special.   To pass on this experience to others, one would require a special craft. It was this craft that imparted soul to S K Pottekkatt’s travelogues. I realised this when I accidentally picked up that Malayalam book in the ship on my voyage from Cyprus. I felt great reverence to this story teller of places and people who scaled the Jnanpith with effortless ease.

 

“I am a wanderer and mountain-climber I love not the plain.  You must know how to climb the hills on your own head”, said Nietzsche.   Thirunavuk Arasu of Periya Puranam not only said so but also did so. He climbed Mount Kailas on his head.

 

When I felt that it was time to stop my wanderings in the world, Pottekkat came to remind me that there were still many places to visit and ‘miles to go before I sleep’.  Now I have a crazy wish.  Hold the hand of Nietzsche and climb the Alps on my head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

27

LAGE RAHO GANDHIGIRI

 

 

Lillian said: My life was saved by Gandhiji.

Have you met Gandhiji? No.

Then how did Gandhiji save your life?

What she had to narrate was not a story. But an experience.

“We are Jews”, she said. “My family was in Warsaw. The second World War was raging and Hitler was on a prowl for the extermination of Jews.”   The dreaded ‘holocaust.’ We lived in terror and one midnight what we feared came true. There was a knock on the door and my parents were sure it must be Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo. Their fears were not misplaced. When the door was opened we found a group of soldiers, the leader of whom held a gun in his hand pointed at my father. We knew the end was just a moment away. My elder brother was then three years old. He was amused at the shining button on the officer’s uniform. He touched it, patted it, kissed it. Tried to pluck it, saying he wanted it. The soldier with his pointed gun looked at the child with tenderness for some time. He then put his revolver back in its case, patted the child’s cheek and told my parents: ‘He saved your life. Looking at him I remember my grand-child.’ He then left the place.

It was ten years after this event that a sister was born to this child. Lillian. Today she is a Gandhian, spreading the message of peace and goodwill. ‘If we are able to touch the goodness in the mind of the enemy, then violence will end there.’ It was life that taught her this lesson. One man had lived in this world who personified this idea. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, revered as Mahatma Gandhi.

 

Gandhiji realised that it was possible to change the mind of the enemy through truth and sacrifice. He realised this not because of his observations but because of his experience. Gandhiji, who was in South Africa as an attorney, had once faced the impact of racial discrimination that existed there. He was pushed out of a first class carriage of a train by a white man who despised his presence there. Forced to spend the night at the Pietermaritzburg station, shivering, exhausted and humiliated, Gandhiji made a momentous decision, to stay on in South Africa and fight the obnoxious practice of racial discrimination. He was turning himself into a new man.

 

Gandhiji in fact had two options before him. To return to India or file a petition in a local court against the railway company. But the latter would only provide a temporary solution to the problem. The problem was basic and its solution also should be fundamental in character. He decided to fight racial discrimination. That was the moment when Gandhiji became a Mahatma.

There were as many as 100,000 Indians in South Africa then. The attitude of the white men towards them was beyond tolerance.  Adding insult to injury, the Transvaal Assembly passed a law in 1906, the Asiatic Law Amendment Act, which in effect stamped the Indians and Chinese as a community of criminals. Gandhiji felt that this draconian measure had to be opposed.  He met some influential members of the Indian community and this set the stage for the meeting which was presided by Abdul Ghani, chairman, Transvaal British Indian Association.  About 3,000 Indians in Transvaal assembled in the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg in response to his call.

The electrifying atmosphere and the proceedings at the Empire Theatre has been explained in great detail by Gandhiji, in Satyagraha in South Africa.  It was indeed the advent of Satyagraha:  

“The meeting was duly held in September 11, 1906. It was attended by delegates from various places in the Transvaal. But I must confess that even I myself had not then understood all the implications of the resolutions I had helped to frame; nor had I gauged all the possible conclusions to which they might lead. The old Empire Theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. I could read in every face the expectation of something strange to be done or to happen. Mr. Abdul Gani, Chairman of the Transvaal British Indian Association, presided. He was one of the oldest Indian residents of the Transvaal, and partner and manager of the Johannesburg branch of the well-known firm of Mamad Kasam Kamrudin. The most important among the resolutions passed by the meeting was the famous Fourth Resolution by which the Indians solemnly determined not to submit to the Ordinance in the event of its becoming law in the teeth of their opposition and to suffer all the penalties attaching to such non-submission…

The resolution was duly proposed, seconded and supported by several speakers one of whom was Sheth Haji Habib. He too was a very old and experienced resident of South Africa and made an impassioned speech. He was deeply moved and went so far as to say that we must pass this resolution with God as witness and must never yield a cowardly submission to such degrading legislation. He then went on solemnly to declare in the name of God that he would never submit to that law, and advised all present to do likewise. Others also delivered powerful and angry speeches in supporting the resolution…”

It was not all of a sudden that Gandhiji’s mode of agitation got the name Satyagraha. In an appeal made in his publication ‘Indian Opinion’, Gandhiji had in fact requested the readers to come up with a name for this struggle.  An Indian named Maganlal Gandhi suggested the name ‘Satagraha.’ It was Gandhiji himself who slightly modified that name to ‘Satyagraha.’

 

The echoes of Satyagraha were not confined to India’s struggle for Independence. 

In 1954 the Korean War had reached a crucial stage. China was facing an acute food shortage even as American ware houses were overflowing with food grains. A charitable organization in America took upon itself the task of averting famine in China. They made tiny packets of food grains and sent them to the

White House with a note containing a Biblical quotation from Isaiah. ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him.’

No one knew then how the White House reacted to this charity initiative.   The fact was revealed after the lapse of a quarter century. That was the time when pressure was being exerted on President Eisenhower for bombing the Chinese mainland, exploiting the precarious food situation in that country. The President asked for the number of food grain packets that had reached the White House. When the information was received, he told the army commanders that 35,000 Americans felt that it was time to feed the Chinese. Definitely this was not the time for bombing them. What transpired was yet another vindication of Gandhiji’s vision that in the fight between good and evil, one had to take sides with the good.

What Gandhiji gave us was what appeared to be a dialectical vision of love that made one hate sin and love the sinner. Instances are umpteen before us on what relevance this has in practical politics. India and Algiers became independent almost at the same time. The strength of India was the power of ahimsa. Algiers chose armed struggle. The result: Algiers lost 900,000 people. After independence friendship between India and Great Britain grew very fast. As between Algiers and France, animus and antagonism have still not died down.

It is indeed a cruel irony of fate that Gandhiji who gifted the world with the all powerful weapon of non-violence, was himself felled by bullets.

While that was sadly unexpected, more unexpected was the resurrection of Gandhiji.  

After the release of ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’, ‘Gandhigiri’ today is a watchword among the youngsters for passive resistance against the wrongs of society.

Youngsters proudly show off Gandhiji on their caps, t-shirts and stickers on two wheelers and try to learn the teachings of Gandhiji and implement them in their lives. This should serve as an eye opener for us. We have to take steps to see that the Gandhigiri that grows as a craze among the youth, does not subside. There is no death for goodness. For Gandhiji too. Lage Raho Gandhigiri.

 

 

28

CORPORATE COMPASSION

 

I met him on the verandah of the hospital. He had become thinner, he had lost some hair and his sparkling eyes had lost their luster. But in spite of all the changes, my mind’s eye could recognize who that person was.

Parmanik, a senior official of the State Bank of India. It was to him that I reported for duty when I joined the banking service as a Probationary Officer. At Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, Parmanik was an efficient officer. An energetic young man who always kept smiling.  His cherished desire was to construct a house and settle down in Siliguri after his retirement. He had purchased a beautiful plot there. He had already drawn up the plan for the house.  The day the foundation stone was to be laid, he felt some uneasiness. He contacted his doctor in Kolkata who suggested some tests including biopsy. It was after the biopsy that his family came to know of the tragic fact that Parmanik was suffering from cancer.

It is with such sad stories that hundreds of people come to the Tata Memorial Centre, an institution that can well claim to be the best medical centre in India for the treatment of cancer. It is also this centre in Mumbai which has got the international award for the best cancer control centre in the world.

The Tata family owned quite a number of research centers, educational institutions and hospitals of international standard in India. After becoming part of the management bodies of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Tata Memorial Centre I was able to observe their functioning at close quarters. Dr. Katyayan Dinshaw who was at the helm of the Tata Memorial Centre used to say that cancer was a disease that could be treated effectively if detected early. But most people do not go in for early diagnosis. They come to hospital only when the disease is in an advanced stage and, therefore, beyond cure.

The Tata Memorial Centre also suggests a way out for this. They are continuing their efforts to make available diagnostic facilities at different levels. A beginning was made with the establishment of a rural cancer cure centre at Chiploon in Maharashtra. Later they made extensive arrangements to detect, prevent and control cancer in consultation with the Regional Cancer Centres and other cancer institutions in India. One of the major constraints in the treatment of cancer is the non-availability of specialists at the regional levels. But Tata Memorial has been able to overcome this to a great extent by introducing the tele- medicine method on a large scale. The Tata Memorial has started a system of suggesting methods of treatment after studying in detail the facts about patients made available from the concerned institutions in India. This helps thousands of cancer patients to avail of expert opinion of brilliant doctors in a cost-effective way.

It is worthwhile to know details of the services available to cancer patients at the Tata Memorial. About 65 per cent of the nearly 1,00,000 cancer patients coming to Tata Memorial Hospital get either free or concessional treatment. This institute which started as an 85-bed hospital now has medical facilities to treat more than 850 inpatients. Every year, around 15,000 major operations as well as700 laser operations are done here. This has state of the art facilities for radiation treatment and chemo therapy. Bone marrow transplant is carried out here from 1983 onwards. Tata Memorial was the first centre in India to have this facility.

It is not necessary to go all the way to Mumbai for every treatment, wasting one’s money. Tata Memorial makes available its services in coordination with Regional Cancer Centres located in different parts of the country. Moreover, it also provides back up facilities to thirty medical colleges spread far and wide. Every year, continuing medical education programmes are conducted to train about 400 doctors in advanced methods of treatment of cancer. In short, the medical expertise of Tata Memorial is disseminated to other centres also.

The centre is also equipped to make use of the latest global trends in the treatment of cancer. Apart from enabling foreign doctors to come here and Indian doctors to go abroad for exchange of expertise, the centre also undertakes joint research programmes with countries like Germany, France and America. Many joint ventures, like that with the MD Anderson Cancer Institute of America, had helped to make spectacular progress in the fight against cancer.

Occasionally, I visit the Tata Memorial. I have had opportunities to meet patients, especially from my state. It has been a wonderful experience to have been a witness to the way Tata Memorial succeeded in extending a helping hand to many depressed souls and lead them to a newly orchestrated life.

Joe Ykhuma from Mizoram says: My house is situated in the village Chimtuipui which has neither roads nor electricity. When my father fell ill, I did not know what he was suffering from. Then someone said it was cancer. I had read somewhere about Tata Memorial. I got in touch with the authorities. I came here and got him treated. I had to pay only minimal fees. Now my father’s disease is under control. Once in a while I have to take him to the Barua cancer hospital in Assam for a follow up check up.

Similar are the words of solace of hundreds of unfortunate people who visit the Tata Memorial daily. Nowadays it is the Atomic Energy Department that provides money and other facilities to the Tata Memorial. The Tata family ensures its active participation in the institute. One wishes the other big industrial houses also set apart a percentage of their earnings to provide succor to the sick and needy..

It is a matter of gratification that there are wealthy people here and there who utilize their wealth for the well being of the world. Many of the good enterprises in the services sector at the international level are run by funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. Bill Gates has earmarked a considerable portion of his wealth for the benefit of the people. Warren Buffet, a giant among billionaires, has entrusted a major portion of his income to Bill Gates for the purpose of charity. Laxmi Mittal, a billionaire of Indian origin, has recently indicated that he would be into charity work. We can take it to be a good sign that even in the area of providing service to the needy, corporate culture is coming to bloom. Three cheers to corporate compassion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

29

GOD’S OWN BANANA REPUBLIC

 

He had taken charge as the headmaster of a village school. He was a very strict person and was fond of giving his advice, not only to children but to all and sundry. Whether they needed the advice or not. And if anyone erred, he was there to admonish and correct.

On the way to school he used to see a young man whiling away his time in front of a two-storey building, doing absolutely nothing, except for smoking cigarette after cigarette. A worthless person, he thought.

The master decided to give him a piece of advice. ‘Why do you keep on smoking cigarette after cigarette like this?’ He asked.

‘Just for the fun of it,’ the young man replied. ‘How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?’ ‘Five packets.’

‘For how many years have you been smoking?’ ‘Twenty years.’

‘With the money spent you could have purchased this building.’

‘Do you smoke, Sir? the youth asked a counter question. ‘No,’ said the master.

‘Did you purchase this building?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, I purchased this building last week.’

 

The headmaster who chose to write off the youth as worthless as a discarded banana did not realise that the best anti-dote to smoking was banana itself. This was something that scientists had found out after extensive research. It had been established that the best way to kill the urge to smoke was to eat banana. The B-12 vitamin and potassium and magnesium in the plantain act as a deterrent to the smoking urge.

The plantain is said to have wonderful medicinal properties. Just two plantain fruits are enough to make a pregnant anemic woman feel the difference. Plantain has the capacity to enhance the level of hemoglobin in blood. And it is the ideal food for those with hypertension. The reason for this is that it has a high level of potassium and low level of salt in it. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States is known for its stringent criteria relating to maintenance of high quality in the case of drugs. The FDA has officially permitted the publication of advertisements relating to the medicinal properties of plantain.

Obesity and its attendant side effects are posing a major problem to the youth who spend much of their time in front of computers. Studies conducted by the Institute of Psychology, Austria, have established that the best way to overcome this is to eat a plantain fruit every two hours. Another finding is that plantain can diminish mental tension because of the abundance of Vitamin B in it. It is also a good medicine for those suffering from psycho chondria. Medical science has even proved that if eating the plantain is taken up as a habit, the possibility of death due to stroke can be considerably reduced.

People born and brought up in the rural areas do know the value of the plantain. It is when the children jay walk through the plantain groves with their golden bunches, picking wild flowers and catching butterflies that their minds awaken to the ebullience of the vacation days. For them the memories of sucking nectar from the plantain flowers will remain forever as the fondest recollection of their childhood days. When there is a drizzle one need not run to the house to fetch an umbrella. All that is needed is to take out a leaf of the plantain for use as a makeshift umbrella. While entering the banana farm, it is fun for the kids to mentally calculate the number of fruits in each bunch and when the calculation goes wrong, count over and over again. For small festivities all that is required for decoration are parts of the plantain plant like the unripe fruits, the plantain leaf and the plantain shoot. To hasten ripening of the fruit we may keep the raw bunches in a smoke filled grain store. If we cut the banana into slices and fry them in oil we get crisp and tasty banana chips. Raw banana is a favoured ingredient in the making of many traditional recipes.

Banana is essential for religious rituals. Banana fry will make the evening tea a more attractive proposition. For a further improvement, there can be banana split also. Your son coming home from school, will like to have a banana shake. For breakfast what better items are there other than steam bread (puttu) with boiled banana. When children go on picnics, grandmas don’t forget to fill up tins of banana chips for them.

When you need some money, all you need is to cut down banana fruits from ten plants in the farm and send them to the market. And the remains of the plants could be put in the pits to serve as manure for the next crop. And plantain is not mere plantain. What all shapes, what all colours and what different tastes!

However, we cannot claim monopoly over plantains. It has been substantiated that the plantain originated in the Indo- Malaysian region. It reached Europe in the tenth century AD. The Portuguese took it to South America. Banana is planted in most of the tropical regions. In world production of fruits, banana occupies the fourth place, after grapes, orange and apple. And India leads other countries in Asia in banana cultivation.

Almost all parts of the banana plant can be used both as food for humans or as cattle feed. The uses are different in different countries. Some strange customs relating to it are noteworthy. A practice in Polynesia is one such. They make a pit in the ground, line it with plantain leaves and stack it up with peeled off fruits. After that they cover the pit with plantain shoots and other remains and earth. After a few days they open the pit to take out the ripe and fermented fruits. The ‘masi’ so made is a favourite food of the Polynesians.

In Africa, they make beer and wine out of banana. The Tropical Products Research Institute in London has developed the technology for the manufacture of a special kind of vinegar from the remains of the plantain plants. Cattle feed and feed for poultry and pigs are also made from plantains.

In Philippines garments made of ‘agna’ fabric, worn by both men and women, are made out of fibre from plantains. In Sri Lanka, plantain fibre is used in the making of footwear. The trunk of the plantain plant, the shoot and the fiber from it are used in many ways for many purposes. In Kerala, these parts are used for making pulp for the manufacture of craft paper. Technology is also available for the making of high quality paper using the plantain fibre and the skin of arecanut.

But it is only plantain that can give denizens of God’s own country a feeling which nothing else can give. Boiled rice on plantain leaf laid out for a feast is an image that opens up the doors of nostalgia for any Malayalee. Even if the floral patterns of onam, the craze for caparisoned elephants, paddy cultivation, all vanish, this image of the plantain leaf with boiled rice on it will never fade from his memory. With more than a hundred variety of colourful and tasty plantains, Kerala can rightly be termed God’s own banana republic.

 

 

 

 

 

30

PYTHAGORAS AND VEGETABLES

 

The Chinese scholar Chu Yu was describing an experience he had. He was preparing a dish with fish and he put a sea fish into boiling water. That was the Chinese way of cooking fish. The fish came up arching its body. Ch Yu put the fish back in the water. The fish came up again. When, later, he cut the fish he could see a large number of eggs in its belly. He then understood that it was to save the unborn fishlings that the fish arched itself.  He could not sleep that night. Then he decided that henceforth he would not eat the flesh of any being.

World over, the number of vegetarians is increasing. What is wrong in becoming a vegetarian? There were many great names in the vegetarian group. George Bernard Shaw was one of them. He asserted that his stomach was not the sepulchre for beast. His breakfast consisted of grapes, milk, porridge and wheat cookies. His favoruite dishes were vegetable sandwich and yoghurt. Sometimes he would have a glass of milk, sometimes orange juice.

The great sculptor and painter Michelangelo was very particular about vegetarian food. His biographer Vasari asserts that he was interested only in his work. He had never given any importance to food. After work, he would have a little of wine and some bread. As he became older his indifference to food also grew.

There were great men in every avenue of glory who had made vegetarianism a habit of life. Among the scientists, prominent vegetarians included Einstein, Isaac Newton, CV Raman, the mathematical wizard Sreenivasa Ramanujam and Nobel laureate Chandrasekhar Subramaniam. Edison had said that we would continue to be savages till we gave up the habit of harming living things.

Among the veterans in literature there were many votaries of vegetarianism. For many great writers like Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tolstoy, Mark Twain, HG Wells, Alexander Pope, Ovid and Plutarch the favourite dishes were vegetarian.

The same was the case with many great philosophers like Diogenes, Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, Voltaire and Chanakya. They were all votaries of vegetarianism. Mahatma Gandhi, who is synonymous with ahimsa, states: ‘To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of the lamb for the sake of the human body.’

According to Albert Einstein people who consider life as meaningless are unfit to live. Rachel Carson, the renowned environmentalist and author, is of the opinion that you cannot have peace among people who find pleasure in killing living creatures. That food is best, says Adam Smith, which consists of cereals, milk and fruits. He also reminds that one does not have to eat meat to become a gentleman.

Today 70 per cent of the vegetarians in the world are Indians. In England vegetarians account for five per cent of the population. Even in America there is an increase in the number of vegetarians. At present they constitute three per cent the population.

Can a pure vegetarian be totally healthy? This is a fundamental doubt that many have and only experts can answer this. Nobel laureate Dr. Arthury Vitanan says that vegetables contain all the nutritional requirements of the body. Milk is considered along with vegetables. As milk is obtained from animals many do not include it in the list of vegetables. Dr. Hardinge, an expert from Harvard and Stanford Universities, says that even if milk is excluded and a person takes only fruits and vegetables, he can well meet the nutritional requirements of the body.

There is a group of people who live in the northern provinces of Pakistan. These people of the mountainous regions of Hansa Jiljit and Kaghan live in conditions which call for extreme physical exertion. Every day they have to travel miles and miles over the inhospitable terrain to meet their basic needs. It is noteworthy that their food consists of only wheat, potato, onion, cereals and fruits.

 

The epitome of mercy, Sree Buddha, was a votary of ahimsa. There is an episode in Buddha sutra which makes it clear that god will save those who are merciful. It was the time when the war between Devas and Asuras was at its peak. The war got prolonged without either side winning. At one point the Devaraja retreated and fled with his army. On the way he came near a tree, a branch of which had a bird’s nest. The Devaraja ordered the army to halt. If the horses and the infantry sped past the tree, the nest might fall down and the eggs would break. This should not happen. Devaraja had no further hesitation. He ordered the army to go back. That retreat was a blessing.  Seeing the army returning, the Asuras panicked and fled for their life.

There are people who argue that the physiognomy of man is best suited to vegetarianism. They compare our teeth and nails to those of carnivorous animals to establish this scientifically. The number of people returning to vegetarian habits is increasing, be it for reasons religious, moralistic, spiritual, psychological or environmental.

In the Western world the earliest vegetarians were known as ‘Pythagoreans!’ It meant followers of Pythagoras who was a pure vegetarian. He believed that as long as men kill animals they will also kill each other. He stated that those who sow the seeds of violence and pain cannot harvest joy and love. Those who followed Pythagoras and became vegetarians were thousands in number. It can be said that vegetarianism as a movement also started with Pythagoras.

One thing is certain. It is for each one to decide what to eat. Eating habits also change according to taste and beliefs. But isn’t it wiser to adopt a safe eating habit to ward off increase in diseases? If what tastes good does not suit the stomach it is high time to start thinking. Isn’t it better to change your habits before habits kill you. Let Pythagoras open our eyes.

31

EXAMINE THE EXAMS

 

Once he went to town from his residence, his son driving the car. He was taking the car to a workshop for some minor repairs. After telling his son to bring it to a particular place at 5 pm, he went his way. The son was late in reaching the place. ‘How come you are late?’ he asked. The son said there was delay in getting the car at the workshop. He hid the fact that the delay was because he had gone to see a movie. But he did not know that the father had made enquiries at the workshop and was informed that the car had been taken by the son much earlier. ‘You don’t have the courage to tell the truth,’ the father said, adding ‘I didn’t bring you up properly.’ Declining to get into his son’s car, the father walked all the way to the house. Driving the car the son followed him. This drama continued till both reached their house. The son understood why the father was behaving in this fashion. He was full of remorse by the time they reached home. The father was the grandson of Gandhiji. It was Arun Gandhi, who gratefully remembered the lesson taught by his father.

We are shocked to see parents egging on their children to commit frauds in life.  A feeling appears to have gained currency that it is not a great sin to pass an examination by committing fraud. This may be due to the impression that if the father has succeeded in life through graft, what is wrong in the son passing an examination through copying. There are also people who view this offence lightly, treating it as foibles of the youth.

It is not our problem alone. Irregularities in competitive examinations have become a big headache even in America, Europe and China. Now that the use of mobile phone and the internet is widespread, children have access to easier and simpler ways to commit irregularities. It has become universally common among students to make use of these to lighten the intense pressures of fierce competition in the global village.

It is America that is in the forefront of this malaise of copying. Innovative technology for irregularities also is born in that country. The findings of a study conducted by the Duke University should serve as an eye opener for all. They reached their findings after an exhaustive survey conducted among fifty- thousand college students and eighteen thousand school students. Seventy percent of the students admitted that they had copied or committed other forms of irregularities. If your son, who had loafed around and idled away his time till the other day, comes home successful in examinations scoring high marks better be careful. The parents should examine whether he was successful because he worked hard or because he cheated well.

Parents of the older generations may not understand the antics that the children commit. That is because the activities through the mobile phone and the computer have the cover of innovative technology. Sitting in the examination hall itself one can send SMS and MMS to people outside. The answers coming from outside can be received inside the examination hall. Using ultra-modern electronic equipment the entire question  paper can be scanned and communicated outside. The answers will automatically come. All you have to do is to make advance payment to the syndicates that do such operations.

 

In China recently a huge copying syndicate got into the clutches of the police. Their method was very simple. Once a student registered himself in their web site after depositing money he would get a person to impersonate him. By the time the police came to know of this, more than a thousand students had already fallen into the trap. In 2005 in South Korea also a similar fraud came to light. About twenty fraudulent groups were operating there. Once the question papers leaked outside, the answers were got written by efficient teachers and reached to the ward inside the examination hall.

Rogues who copy ‘original’ essays straight from the website are not rare. Syndicates which undertake examination writing on contract basis through cyber techniques are not rare in America. One should keep in mind that many of them get the correct answers written by experts from India.

The entrance examination GRE was the pride of America. Every year around half a million students sit for this. This is one examination that has been held without any problem for the last six decades. Now the organizers of this examination also are in a quandary. They are afraid of the interference of the cyber world. They are waiting for technological innovations to counter this.

Many universities and other educational institutions which were convinced that entrance examinations cannot be relied upon are trying to find new criteria for admissions. They are going back to the old method of holding interviews and taking into account the opinion of the experts to give admissions.

Some others are trying to remove the thorn with smart steps. To prevent irregularities in examinations they install metal detectors and radio frequency locaters in the examination hall. In China and South Korea legal enactments are in force for awarding imprisonment up to seven years for those found guilty of examination fraud.

The increasing criminal tendency among children is a matter of great concern for the elders. As every child is dear to its parents they refuse to accept the guilt of their children as such. Many of them make light of it as antics or childish pranks of their offspring. It is true that if you consider every childish prank as a crime it would be unfair to the youth. But would it be proper to camouflage a criminal misdemeanor as a harmless prank?

There is no point in blaming the children. They would only make a habit of something they have been seeing while growing up. What do they see? They see their parents take the short cut to success-- the short, crooked and devious way, ignoring the straight and narrow path. They grow up reading about sports stars using steroids to succeed in competitions. And they are taught by teachers who have secured employment after paying bribes. What do we see around us in society.

A patient may not necessarily require the medicines that the doctor has prescribed him. The doctor is favouring the drug manufacturing firm that has paid him a fat commission. The police officer who has to ensure that justice is done, seeks to terrorize both the complainant and the defendant for his personal gain. Around us political leaders abound who neutralize and nullify government policies to favour those who helped them to win the elections. There are literary luminaries who manage to secure awards by plagiarizing writings in other languages and politicians who openly work for their party and secretly work against it. It is seeing such specimens of people that the children wake up and go to school every day.

The tribe of such ‘role models’ is increasing day by day. The number of scientists publishing in their own name the research

 

findings of their colleagues and students is not negligible.   The case of the prodigies who copy paintings by great masters and sell them as originals is also not rare. There is also a rise in the number of journalists who write in favour of ministers and officials who heed their recommendations and write against those who do not.

The treacheries of daily life are not confined to certain strata of the society. Take the case of the man who comes home from abroad on leave for a few days, Power supply to his house will be restored and lights will burn if the electricity line man who has taken off the fuse is propitiated. The building inspector may choose to visit the new house on the eve of the house warming ceremony. If properly handled the auspicious function would take place as scheduled. Otherwise he might decree that the wall was protruding by one inch and that the sun shade had to be done again. In short, the building that was about to be occupied that day would continue to remain incomplete till the palms are properly greased.

There is also no dearth of people who delude themselves with the same ease with which they cheat others. Once it is found out in hospital tests that the child to be born is a female, the husband and wife may come up with some logic of convenience. After all we do not require a child for the time being. Even the youth who makes protestations of love to all and sundry girls of the locality will find some justification when deciding to marry a girl from a family that would pay him most.

It cannot be said that those committing cheating and fraud are not brought to book.  If there is delay of two days in the payment of a loan installment, the bank is bound to charge penal interest. Occasionally we read in the papers about the exploits of the vigilance officers who trap a village officer taking a bribe of Rs. 100. Once in a while we also hear of the efficiency of the police constable who takes into custody an old man and old woman found begging in the no begging zone. A roadside vendor of vegetables is sure to be caught if he has a scale without license.

As the children grow up seeing the older generation succeed through cheating to make money can they be blamed if they sought to pass their examinations fraudulently.

US President Ronald Regan said: My greatest desire is to create an atmosphere in this country in which anyone can become rich any time. David Callahan establishes in his book ‘The Cheating Culture’ that it is the preponderance of money power that forces the American students to the path of cheating.

This culture is casting its shadows in our universities also. Even otherwise wasn’t money always the criterion of success? Right from the olden times we have been calling those who failed in life as worthless as a penny. So if you can flourish by cheating, why  bother to read and strain yourself?  If our children feel so, who is responsible for this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

32

TREATING THE PATIENT OR THE DISEASE?

 

‘Before I die, I want to see the sun once.’ That was Theo Bernard’s wish conveyed to his mother. Ailing from paralysis, he had been in a hospital for a very long time with, unfortunately, a bleak prognosis. There was a feeling death was the only escape route open. Even his doctors had almost given up hope.

It was in such a situation that he expressed the desire to go out of his hospital room to bask in sun’s rays for one last time. Kindly condescending to his desire, his mother took him home and placed him in such a manner that he could enjoy the sun as he pleased. Inexplicably, a great change came over him then. In the pleasant light of the sun, as he watched the swaying branches of the trees, he felt a profound life flow from that great disc to him.

His tryst with the sun was repeated in the subsequent days, to miraculous effect. Nature gave him a new lease of life. Gradually, his condition improved and ultimately he became free of his affliction.

Bernard who heard about the yogis of India came here to learn the undercurrents of Indian culture. He went after the truth of the Indian perspective that combined faith, vision and science. He wrote a book on Indian heritage, a book that laid stress on the tenets of rishis Gautama, Kanada, Kapila, Patanjali and Jaimini.

 

But here we disregard our heritage which we should be proud of. A feeling has somehow got into our minds that foster mother is better than the natural mother. Our new lifestyle invites new diseases and we do not go after local wisdom, or traditional medicine, for the treatment of the disease, but after the so called super specialties.

The treatment today is for different body parts. There are different specialties for kidney, brain, heart, knee etc. The patient is not treated as one unified person, but the sum total of various body parts.

Ayurveda, the system of medicine that links the disease to the individual and the individual to the universe is gaining more relevance today.

A good Vaidya is born only when scientific knowledge, faculty and distinctive treatment methods combine in him in the right proportion. For training in Ayurveda under a Guru, certain conditions have to be fulfilled if the disciple is to be accepted by the Guru as a Vaidya.

It should be remembered that though the symptoms of the disease manifest in the body the disease itself has a genesis in the mind. And if the disease begins in the mind, it is in the mind

itself that it is to be restrained. It is foolish to think that drugs and modern technology will help to cure a disease. The post- modernist generation of medics who think their duty is over if they admit their ailing parents in super-specialty hospitals and put them under the control of electronic gadgets in the intensive care unit, forgets one thing.

The hospital room will turn out to be a prison cell if the patient is not given love, along with medicines. The affection of the family members and words of solace from dear and near ones will make the patient realize that he is not alone. It is important to promote a state of mind that helps the intended outcome of the treatment.

Ayurveda has this insight. It is by stating that working of the mind affects the body that Vagbhadacharyar begins his treatise Ashtangahridaya.

This concept gets an added sheen from the belief that it is the creator of the universe who is the progenitor of Ayurveda. Brahma gave the secret of Ayurveda to his progeny Daksha. Daksha in turn passed it onto the twin Aswini Devas. From them Devendra got it. And for the benefit of mankind, Devendra passed it on to the Dhanwanthari, Bharadwaja, Kashyap and Lambadhana. This legend on the genesis of Ayurveda is a beautiful interpretation of the fountainhead of Indian culture that sees faith, vision and knowledge as a unified whole.

In keeping with our usual style of discarding tradition and going after the trend of the day, we go for instant cure only to succumb to remedies which are worse than the maladies.  Symptomatic treatment begets new strains of diseases.

There is a return to the roots now. Treatment should not drift away from nature, it should be a return to nature. It is not the disease that has to be treated, but the patient.

Charaka speaks of two kinds of Vaidyas. One group will kill the disease. The other will kill the disease, along with the patient. It is for us to decide which of the two we have to choose.  It is said that treatment can cure the disease, but only a doctor can cure the patient.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

33

WORSHIP OF MAMMON

 

Bible says, love of money is the root of all evil.  Or as a few have put it, ‘lack of money is the root of all evil.’ I think the rich have understood all this. One of the richest men in the world was Rockefeller whose empire was worth billions of dollars. He started a Foundation to help the people. The first installment of the amount set apart for this itself was worth 100 million dollars. The Standard Oil Company built up by Rockefeller had at one time monopoly over American oil trade. Though thoroughly immersed in riches, Rockefeller had a strange attitude towards money. The inmates of his palatial house had food hardly enough to satiate their hunger. He was a strict disciplinarian. He tried to impose discipline in his industrial empire too. Rockefeller was opposed to employees going on leave. He felt that even that time should be spent in the factory to increase the production, and the income. He took pleasure in depriving himself of the pleasures of life and denying the same to others. The only aim in his life was to make money. He was always enthusiastic when it came to throwing money to harvest more money. This love of money was in his blood.

At the age of 7 Rockefeller bought some turkeys and bred them. From the money thus earned, he became rich very quickly by lending money on interest. He worked as a foreman and accountant in an industrial enterprise. The money and the experience gained there gave him the idea to start his own industry. During the American Civil War he entered the fray with his own strategy. From then on there was no looking back.

Rockefeller was not prepared to show any leniency in his commercial dealings. He would finish off his competitors. His policy was to do away with his opponents. It was when Rockefeller entered the oil industry that America could recognize his sharp intellect.

He started purchasing the oil companies one by one. In oil trade he did not brook any competition. Gradually he owned all but one or two oil companies in his country.

Rockefeller was like a banyan tree. He did not allow even a blade of grass to grow under it. Here he followed the style of big fish swallowing the small ones. With this the richest industrialist in America also became the most hated. He felt disturbed that many whom he had uprooted got organized against him. There were even threats to his life. This rich man who loved money never gave a thought as to what he had gained.

But even though late, good sense dawned on him. Goaded by his son, he found a new use for his money. That was how the Rockefeller Foundation came into being. The world saw Rockefeller, who could make people work for money, becoming the Trustee of that money. Now Rockefeller riches are utilized in many parts of the world for welfare measures through the Rockefeller Foundation.

Alfred Krupp of Germany was another Rockefeller. He had also laid down certain rules for his family. Extremely rich, he was an industrial emperor who turned into profit whatever he touched. He acquired wealth, accumulated it, but did not permit his family to enjoy the fruits of it. Krupp’s home was also palatial, like that of Rockefeller. Extravagant drawing room and bedrooms. Beautiful garden. But during winter none of these rooms or halls were permitted to be heated. He did not want to spend money to get them heated. ‘If the rooms are overheated the children will go to sleep. They will become lethargic.’ This was his justification.

Krupp had a passion for trade in armaments. Through this he opened up an empire of killings. Krupp was known as a prime mover of wars. For this reason his was the most hated family in Europe.

In the end he faced trial at Nuremberg. He was sentenced to solitary confinement for twelve years. The owner of billions had just a bucket for himself in the prison cell.

The American army had taken necessary steps to bulldoze Krupp’s armament trade. But none could demolish the entrepreneurship in Krupp. After twelve years of incarceration Krupp was a free man. He could open industrial enterprises but he would not be permitted to deal in armaments. This was the condition on which he was freed. Krupp kept his word. He opened his factories. He started producing steel instead of weapons. Then he entered the coal trade also. In both fields he became the uncrowned monarch. Later he became the owner of an engineering chain that spread all over the world.

He could line up the leaders of the world to celebrate the success of the industrial empire he could reclaim. Representatives from 120 countries, including the Emperor of Ethiopia, attended the celebration. But one person was conspicuous by her absence. That was Krupp’s wife. She had fled to New York. The billionaire’s wife felt that freedom was more dear than money.

Both Rockefeller and Krupp who loved money forgot to love life. What if you gain the whole world, if the soul is lost?

 

 

 

 

34

ADULTERATED SCIENCE

 

The Ten Commandments are kept secure in the temple at the base of Mount Sinai. It is for the sons of Aaron to burn incense at the altar. Since it was a holy duty, it had its own rules to be observed. But Aaron’s sons burnt the incense as they wished, not heeding the divine dikkat. God became angry and punished them.  This is what the Bible says.

There are Aaron’s sons today in the temples of knowledge. They neglect the rules. Act as they wish. But none of them get punished.

In our scientific and technical institutions the high priests of knowledge have gone astray. The young scientists lose their confidence. A few of them, here and there, commit suicide. This state of affairs should change.

The Indian Science Academy conducted a study on the injustices being perpetrated in the research institutions. A code of conduct for the scientists was evolved.

The harassments a young scientist engaged in scientific research has to face from his colleagues and his superiors are many. He becomes despondent when he sees the results of his many years of research being published in the name of his superior. The travails one has to undergo in some research institutions are diversely disturbing. One may require very expensive and  rare equipment to complete some experiments. It is when the experiments have reached a critical stage that the superior puts his foot down. The experiments have to be abandoned mid course.

The way research papers and theses get published often leads to controversies. In the case of a thesis prepared by the teacher and the student or a thesis prepared by a researcher and his guide, often all the work has to be done by the junior most person in the group. Many publications are nakedly plagiaristic.

One just copies something published by someone else. The lame excuse given when caught is: ‘Though the thesis carries my name, I have no hand in the plagiarism.’ Some distort facts according to their needs. Experts view this as a serious misdeed, misleading both the students and the readers. But no strong and fruitful action is taken against such misdeeds.

There is another ridiculous practice in our research institutions. It is to claim an honorary status, be it in the case of a patent or a thesis. It is easy for people who are in charge of research organizations. They use their authority over the researcher to ensure their partnership in the patent and the research. The Indian Academy of Science reminds its members that it is wrong to do this when one knows that at no point of time during the research he has any active role in it.

Unhealthy tendencies creep in while giving financial grants to the research programmes. There are increasing number of complaints that one has to resort to many undesirable practices even to get the necessary sanction. The impression has gained that financial aid is granted not on the basis of quality of the research project but on the basis of extraneous considerations. External influences come into play most in the case of recruitments to the research organizations.

The scientific fraternity is of the unanimous view that senior researchers and teachers should be selected on the basis of competence and merit. But in reality things are often different. The fact is that different kinds of influences and external inducements affect recruitment. It is unfortunate that it will not be possible either to hide or erase the deficiencies in a student taught by incompetent teachers.

In the scientific sphere also awards often lead to controversies. It is a difficult task to select a person from among brilliant people. The credibility and high intellectual caliber of the judges is of utmost importance. But often the awards are shared. A certain type of mutual benefit society gives the impetus to the sharing.

 

 

Competent people get sidelined and people of influence hold the sway. They also gain who stand and stare.

The number of people who blow out of proportion their research findings through PR and TRP and cause them to appear on newspaper columns is increasing. These people who cheat the public by extolling non-existent virtues are a good match for the quacks trying to sell off their so-called wonder cure. They are able to catch the attention of the media and make a few gains out of this. Ultimately the loss of faith in the scientific world that this leads to is a matter of serious concern. Now the mercenaries of the scientific world who imposed all sorts of chemicals and pesticides on the farmers are themselves in an unenviable predicament that they have to escape through the backdoor.

We are witness to the increasing unethical practices in the world of medical science. There are duly defined guidelines for experimenting new medicines with and practicing new methods of treatment. The researchers and medical experts, who ignore this totally to make their patients guinea pigs, are committing a total breach of trust in science.

Science is truth. The path of truth must be straight. The common perception is that scientific truth is something you can blindly believe in. If the impression changes, science dies. Credibility dies.

Two persons who were victims of tsunami manage to reach an island. The whole island has only one tree. They sleep under the shade of that tree. They satiate their hunger with the fruit of that tree. They weave clothes out of the leaves of that tree. They extolled the virtues of that tree. As days went by, they started finding fault with the tree. The fruit was not sweet enough. The falling leaves were a bother. As time passed, the tree started withering away. Ultimately it fell. The soul of the tree said: when you had faith in me I flourished. When you lost faith in me I started withering away. If there is no faith there is no life.

Credibility is the life of science. When there is no credibility there is no science. The high priests at the altar of science should not forget this. Let the sons of Aaron remember this once in a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

35

A FOOTNOTE TO ATOMIC POWER

 

A man asked Socrates: How is Athens? I intend to move there.

Socrates asked a counter question. How is your present place of residence?

Lousy town, the man said. People have no affection. They cheat if they get a chance. Their main job is gossip. There is no security for life and property.

Socrates told him that Athens was also more or less the same. Another man from the same locality asked Socrates. How is

Athens. Socrates asked him the same counter question.

His reply was like this: It is a good town. The people are affectionate. There is not an iota of fraud or cheating. There is utmost safety and security for life and property.

Socrates told him. Athens is also like that.

Here, reality is the same. Only the perception changes. The same is the case with atomic power.

I had to face a similar conundrum on the day I joined the Department of Atomic Energy. A Public Interest Litigation had come up before the Mumbai High Court. The contention of the petitioners was that our nuclear plants were not safe and therefore the atomic reactor at Trombay should be shifted to a locality far removed from human habitation.

The arguments put forward by the complainants were matters of grave concern. They had extensively quoted from an interview given by a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board to a national daily in 1998. ‘It is the desire of the Department of Atomic Energy that the government and the people should believe that our nuclear plants are safe. But the reality is that it is not so and I have documentary evidence to substantiate it. A national debate on the issue is called for.’ It was underlining this crucial passage of the interview that the PIL was filed now.

The first and the most important nuclear plant in India is at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay. It is located in a region that is susceptible to earthquakes. If ever an earthquake of intensity of 6.5 on the Richter scale occurred, the consequences would be disastrous, pointed out the petitioners. In the past there had been leaks in the reactor. In 1991 when there was a leak in a pipe, it was found that there was contamination of water bodies. There was a quantity of two million tonnes of liquid waste in the reactor’s store. These containers storing the liquid occasionally get leaked, releasing radioactive water into the earth. There are indications of radiation of the ground, water and plants of the locality. Since contaminated material was released into the sea, fish in the sea near the nuclear plant show symptoms of radiation.

Neither the fishermen who catch them or those who sell them or consume them were aware of this danger. Once infested through the fish, generations are likely to suffer its adverse impact, it was contended.

The petitioners got the support of experts to point out that radiation levels in India were much higher than the permissible levels in other countries. They pointed out that the United Nations had conveyed to India its concern over this matter. Nuclear power plant employees in India were subjected to ten times higher doses

of radiation than their counterparts in US, Europe and Japan, they contended.

Describing radiation as unseen poison, they explained how this adversely affected the human body in course of time. Cancer, miscarriage of births, diseases of the thyroid, genetic abnormalities and mental retardation are among its many consequences.

Making an impassioned plea, the petitioners argued for the shifting of the BARC to a faraway place and wanted that it should be brought within the ambit of very strict safety control measures.

The responsibility for filing an affidavit representing the government and the Atomic Energy Department fell upon me. The affidavit was prepared in consultation with experts from the field.

One of the points raised in the affidavit was about the way in which the Kalpakkam nuclear plant withstood the damages caused by the tsunami. When the tsunami came and gigantic waves wrought havoc in the Kalpakkam plant, the plant automatically shut down strictly as per pre-planned programme, without causing any unseemly incident whatsoever. That was an occasion when the efficiency of Indian technology, especially in the realm of safety, was manifested.

Scientists pointed out that since Trombay was far away from the sea, there was little likelihood of tsunami affecting it. Envisaging natural upheavals, the pioneering scientists headed by Homi Bhabha had raised mangroves extensively in areas surrounding the plant. That the mangroves were effective check against sea erosion and tsunami had been demonstrated on Tamil Nadu and Andaman coasts during the tsunami some years back.

The plants had also been designed in such a way as to withstand earthquakes of severe intensity. Also in keeping with the norms prescribed from time to time by the International Atomic Energy Agency, safety precautions are updated and upgraded from time to time.

It was true that there were occasional leaks in the pipes transporting nuclear waste. One such leak took place in Trombay in the ‘90s, but could be contained soon. There are arrangements to detect leaks and promptly take remedial measures. The safety precautions installed in our nuclear plants were the best and the most effective in the world. There was a system of checks and balances in this area also.

When one hears of atomic power and atomic energy the thoughts flooding to mind are the hazy memories of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl. The fact, however, is that man is subjected to radiation every moment of his life. This is not hazardous either. There is incessant radiation in the atmosphere. Even before the earth came into being there were radiation emitting objects in the universe.

We started having radiation from manmade objects only when we began development of weapons and energy from atomic power.

The depth and extent of radiation from these depended on various factors. The peculiarities of our locality, the nature of the land where the plant is set up, the character of the materials used in the construction, climate, rains, snow, the variations of atmospheric pressure and the direction of the wind.

Radiation from the outer space also goes on incessantly. But only a small portion of it reaches the earth. The atmosphere also imbibes a large quantity of radiation. The radiation level of the in flight staff in the aviation sector is twenty times that of others.

Many of the consumer articles we use in our daily life have radiation potential. Articles like luminous watches, measurement systems and paint emit radiation to some extent. Smoke detectors used in home and other buildings radiate alpha rays.

 

Radiation is also used for the benefit of mankind. Many industries use and make radio-active materials. Workers of such institutions are subject to radiation and always take precautionary measures.

The use of x-ray is very wide in many fields. Apart from its use as a medical tool to take pictures of man’s internal organs, it is used for the screening of baggage at airports, for finding out defects in welding, for estimating the width of printing paper and for the manufacture of plastic films.

In the agricultural sector also radiators is widely used. As many as 1,500 varieties of food crops and plants have been developed with the use of intense radiation. These plants not only give good crops but are capable of withstanding heavy rains and preventing pest attacks. Radiation was also made use of in the United States, Mexico and North Africa to eliminate the threat of attacks from locusts, worms and other pests. A procedure was also operational for the sterilization of pests through radiation.

It has to be pointed out that some of the greatest uses of radiation are in the health care area itself. Radiation implant is used for diagnostic purposes. The use of radiation in the treatment of cancer is too well known to be mentioned here. Radiation is used in surgeries and administration of drugs (chemotherapy). Another use is to sterilize the tools used in operations.

With the development of food technology, yet another beneficial use of radiation has been found: to preserve food for a long period. Normally about 20 per cent of the food manufactured gets stale before it reaches the intended consumer. This wastage can be considerably reduced with the help of radiation. Since the radiated food does not become radioactive, there is no hazard for the person eating it.

There was general feeling that atomic plants are not safe. One reason for this is the fear generated by the accident at Chernobyl.

Common people have the feeling that accidents at atomic plants are as dangerous as atomic explosions. However, studies show that the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in the United States had not affected the health of the people. Though the plant was damaged because of errors of commission or omission, radiation to the outside world was limited.

In Chernobyl, on the other hand, even the ordinary safety measures were not in force. The Chernobyl tragedy caused considerable damage to both man and nature. Yet, compared to atomic explosion, the extent of its impact was minimal.

There are as many as 430 live atomic plants in the world. Their life is estimated as 8,000 reactor years. Apart from Chernobyl and Fukushima no serious accident had taken place anywhere. This does not mean the safety of the reactors can be treated lightly. What is intended is that the issues should be looked at dispassionately and based on facts.

We have to consider another aspect here. Fossil fuels cause many a disease and many an accident that affect the human population adversely. According to studies made by the World Health Organisation, over three million people die every year because of the atmospheric pollution caused by the products of fossil fuels.

As pointed out earlier, natural radiation takes place around us every moment. Even the walls of our home are a source of radiation. The walls, floor and the roof emit gamma rays. Radon and Thoron, produced from the disintegration of Thorium, are present in the atmosphere. Thoron, a naturally occurring isotope of Radon present in indoor air, especially in closed rooms, is identified in a Canadian study as the second leading cause of lung cancer after tobacco smoking.

We need not disbelieve it when science points out that even the milk we give to our children has radiation potential. Milk is 200 times more radioactive than drinking water.

 

There are five regions that are subjected to high natural radiation. One of them is Kerala where there is extensive natural radiation from monocite. After Brazil, it is the coast of Kerala that experiences the highest dose of natural radiation in the world. Xinjiang in China, Orvieto in Italy and Ramsar in Iran are also areas prone to natural radiation.

Many studies have been undertaken on radiation hazards. Comparisons have also been made with accidents in other areas. One study reveals that one out of 200 daily smokers die of cancer every year. One out of 5,000 population die in road accidents, one out of 10,000 in domestic accidents and one out of 20,000 in accidents at the place of work. For those working in the nuclear power sector, the rate is much less by any count.

This does not mean all is well in the nuclear sector. But if we make use of nuclear energy at a permissible level, in a controlled manner, it can greatly benefit the society. It is an everlasting source of energy. What is important is how we make use of it.

There were two students at a seminary. One of them asked the priest one day whether it was right to smoke while praying.

Never, replied the priest.

Is it right to pray while smoking, asked the second novitiate. It is always, always right, said the priest, smiling.

This is the difference in perception. If asked whether atomic power is good or bad, common people may say it is bad. The scientist’s reply may be different.

36

OF SNOW MOUNTAINS, COWS AND CHOCOLATE

 

There are only two places in the world that can go by the appellation God’s Own Country: Kerala and Switzerland. Switzerland with its white, snow-covered mountains, pristine lakes and extensive grasslands is indeed a dreamland. If Switzerland is likened to an alluring, colourfully attired, bejeweled bride, Kerala is a beautiful and bashful village belle slowly coming out of her slumber.

Driving through the Alps mountain range, this comparison somehow came to my mind. I had come to Switzerland this time to visit the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN). When I got a brief holiday in the midst of the heavy schedule of the visit, I decided to spend it at the Alps.

The charm of Egypt is the charm of the Nile. The magic of Switzerland, is the magic of the Alps. About 60 per cent of the land area of Switzerland is taken up by the Alps mountain range. Look from any corner of the country and you are sure to get a glimpse of the Alps. The golden reflection of sun’s rays falling on the snowy mountain is incredibly beautiful. It is not something to be explained, but experienced.

After leaving Geneva we reached the small town of Zermatt. A town with clear sky and clean air. Gaily decorated horse drawn carriages could be found here and there. These are the carriages

that usually transport tourists to and from hotels and inns. Why is it like this? My guide told me. This is a pollution free town. We want to keep it that way. So we do not permit plying of motor cars here. The local people also take extra care not to cause air pollution. Tourists have started searching for places that guarantee clean air. In Kerala where protesters do not permit the starting of any industry, is it not possible to turn that bane as a boon by promoting oxygen hubs that guarantee unadulterated air for breathing?

It may be said that Switzerland is the creation of the Alps. With the seductive beauty of its many enchanting mountains, green carpet grasslands, pristine lakes and thick forests, the Alps attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. It is true the mountain range does not belong to Switzerland alone. It passes through Switzerland, Austria, France and Italy. But it is Switzerland that has imbibed much of the beauty and vitality of the Alps. Rock climbers, trekkers and those enjoying mountain games all make a beeline to the Alps.

The most attractive skiing ranges are located in this area. The first ever skiing resort had also come up here. At present there are more than 200 first grade skiing resorts in Switzerland. This mode of entertainment is not something of recent origin. It is said skiing began about 200 years ago. Switzerland is also home for some world famous ski training schools. Once winter season sets in and nature throws up a sweeping white carpet over the mountain slopes, ski enthusiasts from the world over start flowing here. In winter Switzerland turns itself into a playground of Europe.

It is common to find on the woodland paths young men and women from far who have come here for the thrill of a mountain trek on the Alps. It is an experience they will cherish for the rest of their lives. Carrying a backpack on their shoulders and holding a peculiar walking stick, the trekkers come to enjoy the raw beauty of the Alps. It is people like them who make Swiss life charming.

Long walkways have been specially made for the benefit of the trekkers. Mountain paths extending to over 65,000 km. It is the lookout of the Swiss Alpine Club to coordinate all activities related to mountain climbing, trekking and other forms of entertainment related to the mountains.

The most famous peak in Switzerland is Matterhorn, a peak that throws up challenge to mountain climbers. It is a thrill for the mountain climbers to try to scale that peak. In the nearby town of Zermatt there is always a rush of adventurers intending to climb Matterhorn. The fascination of the mountain is such that steep ascents, heavy snow storms and catastrophic avalanches are no deterrent to make the enthusiastic climbers back out.

There are trains that transport the less adventurous of the visitors to reach the mountain top. As many as 1,400 trains move in the mountain region, transporting the visitors. A journey by Glacier Express crossing hills and forests is an unforgettable experience. One of the most pleasant sights in this journey is the view it affords of the extensive mountain pastures where thousands of heavy set Swiss cows are let loose for grazing.

Dairy farming is one of the most important industrial activities of Switzerland. Cow is the symbol of the nation. The cows account for a major share of national income. During summer the cows are taken to the mountain pastures on the slopes of the mountains and with the onset of winter they are brought back, both with much fanfare and traditional fervour.

Among the Swiss breeds, the oldest and the most traditional is the Swiss Brown, which originated in the Alpine canton of Schwyz. Cow farmers who realized its many virtues took it to other countries. Cow lore says that in 1969 an American named Henry Clerk Belmont of Massachusetts imported this breed.

Swiss Brown now occupies the fourth position among the cow population of the United States.

Visitors to Switzerland usually take home a popular item of gift for the family members and friends: Swiss Chocolate. Reputed to be the sweetest and the best in confectionary, the world over, these chocolates give a touch of sweetness to the memories about the land.

Among chocolate manufacturers, Nestle is on the top. Lindt comes next. There are several other manufacturers locally popular. It was Switzerland that gave the world the technology for the making of milk chocolates.

When seasons change the shape and taste of the chocolates also change. There are as many shapes as imagination permits, like chocolate flowers and rabbit shaped chocolates. During Christmas there is much competition among the chocolate makers to make hundreds of new varieties of chocolate to capture the market.

May be because they grow up listening to the comforting and consoling ensemble provided by the hills and rivers and pastures and snowy mountains and the cows, the people of the country are peace loving. Switzerland is a neutral nation. It kept away from taking sides during the Second World War. Others also let them be that way. Long, long ago when they had to face wars they did so in their own way. Once when the country was attacked suddenly, they lit torches on cows’ horns and drove them down from the slopes. Thinking that they were an army of devils, the enemies threw away their arms and escaped with their lives.

In another instance, they overcame their enemy with the help of vegetable soup. The attack by Lord Savoy’s forces came suddenly. Swiss youth fought with whatever they could find. A woman was making vegetable soup in the kitchen. She threw the

 

boiling soup on the face the enemy commander. The enemies ran back.

Now, on every December 11, the Swiss proudly re-enact the scene in a fond remembrance of the daring act of that Swiss matron that made the day for them. Thousands of people assemble in celebration and make soup in a collective act of thanksgiving. If vegetable soup saved the country then, milch cows safeguard it today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                      37

                                                    BRUTES ARE NOT BRUTISH

 

What is the difference between humans and animals? Don’t they say there are animals among humans but no humans among animals. If anything lacks humaneness and culture we call it brutish.

But are the animals so brutal? The animals who live on the strength of their instincts, in place of intelligence, are occasionally seen as showing humaneness. We often make use of animal stories to drive home to the children lessons about good and evil. Haven’t we ourselves grown up listening to Panchathantra stories, Aesop’s Fables and Jataka Tales?

In Animal Farm, George Orwell brilliantly portrayed animals with human traits who indulge in cheating and fraud and exploit the followers for selfish gains. Described by himself as a modern allegory, the book mentioned the human-like follies committed by the animal characters against the background of revolutionary politics. More often than not we may feel that the brutality of the brutes is much more noble and dignified than the inhumanity of humans.

History is witness to everything. The soldiers of Porus were fighting the invading army of Alexander the Great. Porus, riding an elephant, is leading his men. Injured in the fight he falls down. As the Greek soldiers advance to disarm the king, his elephant confronts them on its own. After scaring away the enemy soldiers, the elephant lifts the wounded King with its trunk, places him on its back and takes him to the safety. The King was saved, but covered by enemy arrows that noble elephant succumbs.

If in the fight against Greeks the Indian king was saved by his elephant, in Greek history a horse sacrifices its life for the sake of the King it served. The King was Antiochus. He was engaged in a war against Galatia when he was wounded and he fell down from his horse. To celebrate his apparent victory, the rival King mounted Antiochus’ horse. And the horse, knowing that it was carrying its master’s enemy, sped with the speed of an arrow to the edge of the mountain and then jumped into the deep ravine below, killing itself and its mount.

In Oxfordshire in England there is a picture on display in the palace of Lord Lichfield. His grandfather patting a dog. Its caption read: more loyal than the servant. There is a story behind it. The dog was barking continuously one day in his grandfather’s bedroom. The grandfather asked the servant to take it outside. But the dog did not remain silent. It continued to make a racket outside, barking and gnawing at the door. The Lord then opened the door and the dog meekly got inside and remained under the bed of its master.

After midnight, the Lord suddenly woke from his sleep hearing some commotion. Someone had sneaked into his room and the dog had overpowered him. The Lord turned on the light only to find that the intruder was none other than his servant. In interrogation the man admitted that his intention was to kill the Lord and rob the palace.

Bears are considered as violent animals. But the story of a bear named Marco is different. Marco was a pet bear reared by Lord Loraine. One day a small child from the neighborhood got into Marco’s cage without knowing its disastrous consequences.

But the bear stroked the child and made him sleep.

The following day the animal keeper was petrified when he saw the bear walking in the cage, carrying the child on its shoulders. He sternly looked at the keeper, who brought food, as though reprimanding him for awakening the child. The Lord and others came rushing in then and were awe struck to see this. The bear continued to pat the child when he woke up and started to cry. He even gave some food for the child and then placed him on the ground and stood back, tenderly watching him leave the cage. It was recorded that this incident took place in the year 1709.

 

The old question ‘who will bell the cat?’ still remains, seeking an answer. The reason is the permanent rivalry between the cat and the mouse. The same enmity is supposed to be there between the dog and the cat. But it is not rare to see cats and dogs living in peaceful co-existence. In a house at New Stanguard in Europe, the master of the house gives a long whistle. Hearing it a dog, a cat and a rat, all his pets, come running. They eat from the same plate. Then sleep peacefully in the master’s bedroom, near the fireplace.

The Bible has said lazy men should learn from ants. Are not ants the symbol of hard work and enthusiasm? The example shown by the bees in community living and collective working style will surprise even management experts. Our general feeling is that animals lack a sense of discrimination and that they only do what they are taught to do.

Those visiting Venice normally go for Venice walk. The tour guide would give the history and importance of the bridges, buildings and other tourist attractions. There is a story related to one such walk. Pointing at an old building, the guide said it was the house of a magistrate. There was a French citizen who was an employee of the magistrate. He was a disgruntled man as despite being in service for a long period, he did not get his deserving promotion. One day he went to the magistrate to complain. But the haughty magistrate ridiculed him and sent him out in humiliation.

In one portion of the house, the magistrate had displayed a large number of crystal ware and other precious exhibits. Coming out of the magistrate’s room, the Frenchman said to himself: he has no money for paying wages, but how much is he squandering away for his luxury. His pet dog which was with him looked at him and appeared to understand his situation. Obviously angry at what had been done to him, the dog leaped forward and pulled the table cloth away in one swish. All the crystal-ware and other items of display were shattered to smithereens. That was the instinctive indignation of the faithful animal.

If a little amount of selfishness, duplicity, deceit, treachery and cruelty were added in the right proportion, the animals would find it easy to be like the humans. Humans can be like animals only if they have gratitude, love, sincerity and humaneness. The Origin of Species says humans developed from animals. If true there is nothing wrong in going back to the animals again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                38

                                    MY COUNTRY, GREAT AND STRONG

 

In Britain in the old days, when the Raj was at its dizzying heights, Indian students in the universities there were generally looked down upon by their British counterparts. One such student, at Oxford, once wanted to break even and so told his British roommate: One British: whisky. Two British: golf. Three British: Colonization.

The British boy countered. One Indian: sleep. Two Indians: sleep. Three Indian: sleep

After completion of their education both of them got jobs. The British boy would get up early, do his morning exercise, have breakfast and run to catch the transport to go to his office. The Indian boy, would recline in his easy chair, reading the newspaper or dozing off.

The British boy asked him. How can you remain like this? The Indian asked him: Why are you working so hard,

without respite?

To make money.

Making money for what? To start my own business. Why?

To make more money.

Then what?

My business will be expanded.

What happens then? Will make more money. Then?

I will relax and lead a restful life.

That is what I am doing now, said the Indian.

That is an epigram. Today the whole world is looking at Indian students as role models. The situation has come to such a pass that if they need management experts they go to IIMs first and if they need technical experts they go to IITs.

But the truth is that we do not have respect for ourselves. Is it because two hundred years of servitude under the British has affected our self-confidence? Or have we come to a situation of not knowing our own worth, like the musk deer searching for the source of the aromatic musk, not realising that it lies within it?

The old saying is Indians march out of step when they see a British officer. Now there is a reversal of roles, as they forget their steps when they see Indians. I had the opportunity many times to realise this first hand. One thing became clear during my travels in the United States, Europe, China, Korea and Japan for discussions on atomic energy. They have great respect for Indian scientists and Indian technical experts. In a way it can be said that foreign research centres are in competition to get scientists from India.

It will not be an exaggeration to say that it was information technology that mirrored the shining face of modern India to the world. The extent of development that we have made in this area is evident every day. The progenitor of hotmail that brought about revolutionary changes in the communication world is an Indian, Sabeer Bhatia. In the Fortune list of the richest in the world are Indians Lakshmi Mittal, the Ambanis and Azim Premji.

 

          The president of the world renowned AT&T Laboratory is another Indian, Arun Netravali. Vinod Dham from India is acknowledged as the father of the Pentium chip that is used in 90 per cent of the computers in the world. India’s Indra Nooyi once headed one of the biggest soft drink manufacturers in the world, PepsiCo. Microsoft is headed by an Indian, Satya Nadella; Cognizant by Francisco D’Souza and of course Sunder Pichai of Alphabet and Google.

Indians account for 1 per cent of the US population, but talk of the cyber town is that 38 per cent of the doctors in the US are Indians. Moreover, Indians account for 36 per cent of the scientists at NASA. It can be said that America is elevated to top of the Information Technology sector by Indians. It can also be said that the mainstay of Bill Gates’ Microsoft is India as 34 per cent of its employees belong to this country. Fact or fiction, this certainly is not too fictitious. The link between computers and India was not begun in recent times. According to Forbes magazine the best language suited for computer software is Sanskrit.

While attending the administrative board meetings of the Institute of Mathematical Studies at Chennai I used to get opportunities to interact with eminent mathematicians. That helped me to assess the value of the contributions Indian scholars made to the world of mathematics.

Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus originated in India. It was Aryabhata who conceived the zero. Even as early as in the fifth century, Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth for circling the sun as 365.258 days. It is not without reason that Einstein had said ‘we are indebted to India as it is they who taught us to count.’

When great cities like London, New York and Paris remained as jungles where lions, tigers and pythons roamed around, Indus Valley Civilization was at its zenith in India. The world’s first university was established at Thakshashila 700 years before Christ. Nalanda university came into being in the fourth century BC.

The modern world has acknowledged the greatness of the oldest treatment system in the world, Ayurveda. That Susrutha had conducted surgeries 2,600 years ago continues to be an enigma for the modern world. It is not without truth that Romain Rolland said: ‘If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.’

At some point of time our pride in ourselves and our self- confidence got a beating. That may be the remnant of exploitation by colonial powers. But India is ready, after this setback, for the great leap forward.

A scene from the famous Oprah Winfrey show – Fashion moghul Tommy Hilfiger was the guest. That was the time when some of his comments that appeared in the media had created a controversy. His comment was that the goods he manufactured were intended for Europeans and if he had known that Asians and Africans used them he would not have taken so much care in their making. Winfrey asked him if he had made such a comment. When he beamed and said yes, Winfrey announced: ‘This show ends here.’

The issue was taken up by Indian youth. They persuaded others through the internet to boycott products made by this arrogant, conceited man. India’s self-pride and self-confidence were not matters to be commercialised.

A poet had dreamed and said ‘the world will listen if my nation’s tongue moved.’ But I never thought such a situation would come so soon. That time has come. What we should do is to try to see that it does not go. As Bill Clinton said after a visit to tsunami affected areas ‘from the stage of the biggest sorrow, India has emerged as the biggest wonder.’ Mera Bharat Mahan. My country, great and strong.

 

 

 

                                                                39

                                                    NATIVE WISDOM

 

Two incidents, one in Africa and the other in South India’s tribal pocket, Attappadi.

The first scene is a rural area in interior Africa. A truck is parked on the side of the road, its driver inspecting the tyre. Suddenly a hissing sound is heard and the driver, covering his eye with his hand, is seen running back. A village woman sitting nearby, breast-feeding her baby, runs towards the driver and making him lie on her lap, drips a few drops of her breast milk directly into his affected eye.

She had seen a king cobra lying below the truck spitting its venom into his eyes. In the normal course if the venom fell into the eye, the sight would be gone instantly. But the woman knew that the best antidote to cobra venom was breast milk.

Later, when the driver was taken to a nearby hospital the doctors were aghast. His eye sight had not been damaged, thanks to the native wisdom of the nomadic woman.

The second scene was at the traveler’s bungalow at A gali. We were visiting the tribal settlements as part of our IAS training. A Tribal Welfare Department official told us a story about an incident during one of his previous visits.

He said the tribals believed that smelling the leaf of a particular forest plant would make one dizzy and unconscious. So they avoided going near that plant. But the engineer in charge of

the Traveler’s Bungalow was certain that there was no such plant. According to him it was all figment of someone’s imagination. He was prepared not only to smell that leaf, but even chew it and eat it.

A tribal boy brought a plant covered in sacks and coconut fronds. The engineer kept his word. He took a leaf, crushed it in his fingers and smelled it. And promptly fell unconscious.

Later he regained consciousness after the tribal headman brought some other leaves and crushed them and made him smell it.

We did not bother to see how much of this was fact and how much fiction. What we realised was that there was something in the two incidents narrated that we had to consider. Native wisdom can’t be ignored.

There were some old sayings we used to hear in our childhood. All of them were intended to make healthcare a matter of our daily routine. Today everyone has tension. Tension in the office and at home. Tension in the playground. In fact, tension everywhere. It is not without meaning that our grandma said, ‘stress begets distress.’ Taking too much of food at night is discouraged by another saying that prescribes that the stomach should be only half full after supper. If the supper is heavy, another saying gives the remedy. After supper walk a mile.

For many ordinary illnesses in the past the remedy was found in the homestead itself. If there was fever, leaves of panikkoorka would be crushed and placed on the forehead. If it was not available, a wet cloth draped on the forehead would serve the purpose. For minor cuts and bruises during children’s sports, an instant remedy was at hand. Take the young flower bunch of the coconut palm and scrape off the white fungus from its outer shell. Apply it on the wound. The child would be up and going in no time.

Such treatment may be given by grandfather or grandmother, neighbour or anyone else. The first person who passes by becomes the medico.

I do not think there is anyone in my generation who had not drunk the pepper and ginger potion, a hot coffee concoction using dried ginger, pepper, jaggery and coriander, for the treatment of cold. No one in the past had any doubt what was to be done in the case of cough. Take some leaves of holy basil, crush them to extract the juice and mix it with lime juice and honey. Cough would flee.

I remember preparing a medicament in the past when a need arose. When I was in the high school, my Headmaster was           Fr Papias. I had great respect for him. When I reached college, he became our Principal. That was the time when a small moustache tentatively started growing on my upper lip. But I was too self-conscious to go before Fr Papias with that new symbol of my manhood. I desperately wanted to remove it but did not know how to.

A neighborhood friend suggested a way out. Take a little bit of turmeric paste and boil it in buttermilk. Make it lukewarm and then wash the face with it. The moustache will vanish. I tried it for one week. But my grandmother discovered my clandestine medication and asked me to stop it. Otherwise I would have perhaps lost forever that visible symbol of masculinity.

There were many bits and pieces of rural wisdom learnt during the young days which helped me in my later life.

Once, when I was at Chennai, I received a frantic call from the local MLA. A nest of wasps was disturbed somehow and hundreds of wasps were now attacking people of the locality. Something had to be done urgently.

I do not have any experience in handling wasps. The call came only because I was in charge of Forest department. Rememberingthat the tribals had a special way of dealing with such situations, I called the Conservator of Forests of Kottayam and asked him to seek the tribals’ help. From my memory, I also suggested a treatment for the victims. Pluck some leaves of mukkutti (Bio phytum Sensitivum Linn), mix it in butter and apply it on the body. The stings will come off easily. It also helps to bring down the inflammation.

I do not know if anyone had acted on my prescription. But I was happy when I learnt that the doctor in the government hospital also suggested the same course of treatment.

In folk medicine it was toxicology that had all the glamour. The old saying was: ‘If you are learning one branch of medicine, learn toxicology. If learning toxicology, learn it the hard way.’

It was because poisonous snakes were so abundant in Kerala that even police stations of the past had facilities for the treatment of snake bites. The most important institution in my birth place, Mannanam, was the seminary started by Fr Chavara Kuriakose Elias. There was a Brother in the seminary who was adept in snake bite treatment. Occasionally people would come there screaming and wailing, carrying a patient in a chair. After a few days of treatment the patient invariably would leave the clime, fully cured.

The Brother’s treatment was based on folk science. As soon as the patient was brought in, he would put in his mouth a little of herbal paste covered in betel leaf. The bitter paste would taste sweet if the poison had affected the man.

Some ayurvedics might make the patient drink a concoction of pepper. If it tasted hot, as naturally it should, it would mean that the poison had not affected him.

‘Prayogasamuchaya’, written by Kochunni Thampuram has a remedy for any severe case of poisoning. Modern researchers admit now that there is a scientific basis for Kerala’s traditional

system of toxicology. But we do not approve of it. When foreigners frantically try to get patents on our folk medicine we merely ask them why they waste their time in taking patents on legends and hearsay.

When we watch in differently as a mute witness to the transfer of such pearls of folk wisdom to other countries, don’t we hear the voice of our late grandma ‘the man leaning by the wall has walked off with the bride.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                              40

                                    A RELUCTANT EUROPEAN UNION

 

From my hotel room I could see the spire of the spectacular Eiffel Tower piercing the sky. Snow was falling and it was a marvelous sight to see the Tower behind a screen of gently falling flakes.

I had come to Paris to participate in the discussions on the formulation of an international treaty on nuclear energy.

There is no dearth of subjects for writing about Paris. It is a place that can write its own indispensable endnote to anything under the sun, whether it is history, art, culture, literature or fashion. Napolean, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, De Gaulle, Champagne, Champs Ely see, Louvre... the list of France’s embedded symbols rushing to my mind is endless.

The mist in Paris this time appeared to reflect the haziness in the society about their political future. It was an extension of the uncertainty that had overshadowed every European nation. Europe was now a riddle wrapped in a conundrum. A creature not understood by anyone. Is Europe a nation? No. Is it a collective of many nations? Who knows. As Mathew Arnold said, it is ‘Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.’ Europe is now in a pathetic limbo especially, after Brexit.

Europe has started realizing that it is very difficult to resist the gravitational pull of nationhood. It also is aware that firm

political decisions are not capable of changing the emotional compartments within. Faceless crowds on the streets proclaim that it is not possible to restrain through political decisions the emotional concepts of me, my country, my culture and my people. The voice from the streets has started influencing the policy makers in their exalted towers. French economist Elie Cohen has said that he is sorry the idea of nationhood among the countries of the region does not synthesize with the concept of integration of Europe.

That was the reality. It was evident before the rulers of Europe when France and Netherlands voted against the proposed common constitution for Europe.

Also, during the policy discussions held prior to the Iraq war, the European nations displayed their Babel like disparity in outlook. They demonstrated before the world that in foreign policy they did not have a common approach. At the same time in regard to common market they did not have any difference of opinion either. Or, they made the world believe so.

But today even in the case of common market there are deep fissures.

There are many instances to be cited. French Prime Minister Dominic de Villepin drove home the point when he declared that France gave primacy to the protection of its own interests rather than those of the European Union.

It was the French government that directly mediated for the merger of two giant companies in France, Suez and Gaz de France. After merger they became the world’ largest liquefied natural gas company. The motive behind the merger was to nip in the bud any move for supremacy of the Italian energy company Enel. There were protests against the merger in Italy.

Italian political parties asked if Europe was going back to competitions of the pre-Second World War period. Italianopposition leader Romano Prodi declared that if elected to power he would give a befitting reply to France.

The situation in Spain was also no different. The Spanish Government went ahead with moves to bring in a legislation to prevent the intended takeover of the Spanish company Endesa by Germany’s E.ON.

All this showed that the general feeling was that if the interests of the European Union went against national interests, the latter needed to be safeguarded.

Awareness is increasing in all sectors that emotional integration of Europe is not an instant possibility. European Commission chairman Joseph Immanuel Boroso has already accepted this. Saying that a practical approach is called for, he pointed to project-based cooperation among the European nations. It meant that while safeguarding national interests the countries of the region may, with a sense of direction, strive for implementation of specific project-based cooperation.

However, increasing number of people now suspect whether this approach will help meet the challenges of globalization. When countries like China and India are advancing fast on the economic front, is not Europe moving in a rather sluggish manner, they ask. As Cohen, who is a member of the Council of Economic Analysis, points out Europe is getting weakened at a time when its strength has to be mobilized and demonstrated in every way.

Adding fuel to the fire, the expansion of the European Union has also come about. If East European countries which are financially weak become part of the European Union, wealthy nations will get new headaches. Wealthy nations also realize what will happen if manufacturing enterprises and job opportunities flow to the countries capable of providing labour at low cost.

It is amusing for the world to watch the keen competitions among the energy companies for supremacy in the context of

the possibility of an emerging free market in the energy sector. Governments of the region were offering overt and covert support for the national institutions.

Politicians, especially in France and Germany, who are more interested in elections and votes, present before the people policy formulations intended to get temporary gains. All of them point their critical fingers at Brussels, the headquarters of the European Commission.

In Europe’s common market the services sector was enjoying all freedom to extend beyond borders. The smooth flow in this regard was obstructed by the European Parliament itself. Collective bargaining and pressure tactics by workers’ organizations aided this process. The European Parliament permitted national governments to put in effective controls on cross-border entrepreneurs.

But there are administrators and experts who believe that what Europe experiences now are only birth pangs. It is their voice that is heard through Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre of European Policy Studies in Brazil. According to him there is nothing strange about the raising of nationalist voice against European common market. A market that goes beyond borders is a reality in Europe now. The political pressure against this is inevitable but temporary. As examples he cites the merger of major companies in the energy sector. This was something that could not be visualized a decade ago.

Europe is realizing the reality that emotional integration is not possible through political decisions. It needed only a determined mind and strong arms to demolish the Berlin Wall. However, the tool to demolish the walls within the mind is yet to be found. Europe’s history teaches us that Bismarck, Mazzini and Garibaldi had understood this.

The fact is that Europe’s rulers do not have the magic wand to instantly remove the estrangement of centuries. The world is,

 

however, waiting with bated breath to see how far the leaders of the European Commission will succeed in leading the people of the region to the dreamland of United States of Europe as Moses led the Jews to the promised land in the Biblical past.

I had occasion to visit Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, and Luxemburg, the seat of European Parliament and the European Court of Justice. It was then that I realized that the European Union did not have a capital. The Union’s important institutions were located at different places. The most important of them is the European Parliament having 732 members. The membership may go up to 750. There is a cabinet, known as Council of European Union, comprising 25 members, a European Commission consisting of 25 members, European Court of Justice with 25 judges and European Court of Auditors with 25 members.

Since Brussels is the venue of the European Union, Cabinet and short sessions of parliament, it may be deemed as the capital of the union.

It is not yet clear if the European Union is a nation, a government or a non-governmental organization. Perhaps it is a combination of all. In certain matters the Union functions as a federation. Similar to the federal set up in India consisting of the centre and the states. This federal character can be seen in regard to policies and programmes on agriculture, commerce and environment and the issue of currency. In the matter of implementation of economic policies, handling of internal matters and measures for consumer protection it has the nature of a confederation. Its style is that of an international organization when it comes to formulation and implementation of foreign policy.

The cardinal character of a nation is its sovereignty. European Union cannot claim sovereignty. However, member nations haveto a certain extent sacrificed their sovereignty for the sake of the union. There is no example of any other regional grouping of sovereign nations sacrificing this much. The relations between the member nations and the Union are controlled on the basis of the many agreements that they had given shape to at different times. But a unified constitution has not yet been evolved.

Not that an effort towards that has not been made. Heads of governments of the European countries gave shape to a historic treaty on October 29, 2004. The agreement was to implement a common constitution for the Union. However, the constitution would come into force only if all the member nations approved it. It was when countries were giving their approval one after the other that the process got a major setback in France and Netherlands. In France 54.7 per cent of the voters voted against the constitution. Netherlands followed suit, 61.5 percent of the voters expressing their opposition. In an opinion survey in U.K. it was found that 75 per cent of the people opposed the constitution and now the Brexit.

Europe is now in a precarious state. Will the dream of a United States of Europe materialize? May be, but the distance between dream and reality is increasing.

 

 

 

                                                           41

                                            THE CONTAINER FEST

 

Investment analysts, Goldman Sachs, estimates that by 2050 the Gross Domestic Product of China, India and Japan would be double that of the United States. Moreover, by then the three richest nations of the world would be China, America and India, in that order. Japan will take up the fourth place.

The influence exerted by a leapfrogging economy on the commercial sector is well known. Maritime trade is going to witness revolutionary changes. New styles and new technology in ship building and port development will bring about fundamental changes in that sector.

It can be said a beginning to these changes was made with the advent of the container system. It was an idea that got into the mind of a 24-year-old truck owner that sparked the container revolution. The hardships involved in driving trucks into the ship and in handling goods, made Malcom McLean to devise a simple method for the transshipment of goods. He made square boxes in different sizes for keeping the goods which were then easy to be loaded onto the trucks and later into the ships.

The change brought about by the new device to the commercial sector was much beyond the fondest dreams of McLean. Following up his invention, McLean developed trucks suitable for carrying containers for transfer to the container ships. His first container ship left New Jersey port in 1956.

It took over a decade for the world to realise the potentialities of the containers. It was during the Vietnam War that Pentagon realised the importance of containers for the shipment of weapons. That marked a good development phase for the containers. After making the deliveries of the armaments, the containers were diverted to Japanese ports for shipment of consumer items from there for the American market. Japanese businessmen also found this a very profitable enterprise.

The container revolution received a thrust because of its economic gains on the one side and the ease of operation on the other. It was very easy to load and unload the containers from and to the ships as also transport them to the warehouses. For the earlier form of freight transport, the loading-unloading wages came to as much as 25 percent of the total expenses. With the introduction of containerization this could be brought down considerably. The goods could be easily loaded or unloaded and transported. The usual thefts on the wharf became a thing of the past.

From now on it will be the age of the containers. Ships, trucks and roads are being made to suite container movement.

We cannot also close our eyes to the challenges posed by the container revolution. It is possible that the container industry is misused for clandestine operations of the terrorists and extremists. Instances are not far to seek.

American State Department asserts there is proof that AQ Khan, father of the atom bomb in Pakistan, had used containers for the smuggling of fission material for some foreign powers.

In 2002 the Italian police foiled a bid by a terrorist group to smuggle out some terrorists in a container. In a ship going to Canada from Egypt, a suspected terrorist, Amid Farid Rizk, was found holed up inside a furnished container, with all facilities inside, including bed and toilet, laptop, computer and satellite phone.

 

Established governments the world over are now making efforts to foresee and check further misuse of the container system, for smuggling, transport of illegal weapons and fake currencies. America is taking other nations into confidence to ensure that adequate security checks are made before the containers are loaded onto ships. In the U.S. this task has been assigned to an administrative wing named Container Security Initiative.

Steps were also taken with the help of technology to easily detect any foul play in the use of the containers. Giant IT firms like IBM, and Saving Technology have been roped in to develop necessary technology in this regard.

At present about twenty million containers are in operation in the seas. In the next six years this number will get doubled. Spectacular changes are also being made in the size and structure of the ships. Ships as long as half a kilometer are in the process of development. They are double the size of the longest ships available now. These ships could accommodate goods carried by trucks lined up for a length of 70 km.

Containers have come to stay and the fast growing economies like India should fast track its efforts to reap benefit out of the emerging container fest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                               42

                                        BHOPAL-SEVESO-THALIDOMIDE

 

1984 December 2, a night of nightmare not far removed from our memory. In the worst ever industrial disaster in the world, poisonous fumes spewed by a chemical factory, Union Carbide’s pesticides plant, instantly spread a pall of agony and death over the people in a vast area of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

Many people woken up from sleep by the suffocating gas, spread far and wide by a rolling wind, fell down dead even before realising what was happening. Thousands were asphyxiated, many vomited uncontrollably and many others felt like glass splinters piercing their eyes and throat. In panic, hundreds ran out into the dark streets, only to fall down dead.

In a catastrophe that had few parallels in the world’s industrial history, it only took 40 seconds for the highly toxic chemical methyl isocyanate to turn into gas and, aided by winds, to spread to an area of about 40 km radius. The most affected were the shanty towns surrounding the pesticides plant inhabited by people from the poor strata of the society. The death toll was the heaviest in these areas.

In a nearby railway station also people waiting for trains suddenly started falling down and were rolling on the ground in agony. It was an eerie, horrifying sight. But even in the midst of such chaos, the stationmaster did not lose his presence of mind. When a packed train was almost coming to a halt at that time, the stationmaster gave the signal for it not to stop but to go on. For thethousands of passengers in the train it was indeed a hair breadth escape from the jaws of death.

In one hour Bhopal’s hospitals were overflowing with patients. The doctors and nurses used all available space to keep the patients, most of them in critical condition. By seven in the morning an estimated 20,000 people had been brought to the hospitals. Bodies of those who died were lined up on the lawns of the hospital.

The death toll was initially put at over 3,000. Several thousand people were grievously affected. The condition of those who survived was pathetic as they had serious, lifelong lung disorders. Many turned blind, many lost sanity. Hundreds of others were destined to cough out the rest of their lives. Pregnant women had miscarriages. In cases where the newborns survived, mothers were horrified to find them abnormal.

Who was the killer? Where was death hiding? Bible says death comes as a thief. The dance of death in Bhopal was caused by the malfunctioning of a valve in a chemical tank at Union Carbide.

Union Carbide is one of the leading multi-national companies in the world. Their contention was if the gas leaked, it was obviously because of sabotage. But the government investigation dismissed that claim, finding indifference and dereliction of duty as the causes.

The factory design was not without fault. There had been flaws in the construction of the factory building. Though the factory authorities were aware of the possibility of such an accident, they did not give it the serious consideration it deserved.

The source of the tragedy was thus traced to the office room of Union Carbide’s Chief Executive Officer Warren Anderson. When Warren Anderson visited Bhopal on December 6 he was arrested by the police, along with some Indian officials of

 

 

the company. But he had to be released within a few hours. He told a press conference later that the arrest made was not to fix him but to obtain some compensation for the victims.

Instead of viewing the human tragedy in a humanitarian manner, what the Union Carbide chose was to deal with it as a legal issue. After all business does not brook humaneness. The highest court of the land approved the agreement made by the Government of India and Union Carbide. It was, however, decided not to dismiss it as a legal issue but to treat wrong doers as wrong doers and to bring them before the law.

It was not Bhopal that initiated the process of dealing in death in the name of industrialisation. In the past also the world had seen industrial houses playing with the lives of the people. The tragedy that took place in Seveso, near Milan in Italy, in 1976 was no different. It was Hoffman-La Roche of Switzerland which was responsible for it. In July that year there was a leak of the poisonous gastetrachloro-di-ibenzo-dioxin and in no time plants and trees in the surrounding areas dried up and got uprooted, cattle fell down dead and children were in agony.

This was a case of fraud on the people. The local residents did not know that their neighborhood factory was manufacturing such a highly poisonous chemical. Or the factory owners took extra care not to make them known. The safety operations handled by the company were badly coordinated. At least a week passed before it was publicly stated that dioxin had been emitted and another week passed before the government started evacuation of the people. Once they realised the gravity of the situation, the government declared the entire region as a protected area. It barred transport of farm products, fruits, vegetables and meat from this area to other places. All houses in the locality were pulled down by the government forces.

What is this chemical called dioxin? Haven’t we read that some of the bombs dropped by America in Vietnam had instantly

destroyed all vegetation in the affected area? It was dioxin that was used in such bombs. Even in small doses this gas can kill animals. Science is yet to find out the lasting adverse impact of the use of this chemical. Yet it has been found that this gas had the capacity to cause cancer among humans and animals.

Perhaps the scientific world could not assess the real extent of the havoc caused by the Seveso incident. That was because about 15,000 families who lived in the region had been permanently re-located. But the immediate impact of the accident itself points to its intensity. About 4,000 children from the region had to suffer from a painful affliction called Chloracne, a widespread, acne like eruption on the skin, leading to open, pus emitting wounds.

Many of the volunteers who took up rescue and relief work at Seveso later developed disorders of the liver. This was in spite of the fact that as a precautionary measure these volunteers were made to work in the area only for a couple of hours continuously.

Pregnant women in the nearby localities were in panic as it was realised that the chemicals would cause serious adverse impact on the foetus. Many of them therefore opted to go to hospitals for abortion. It should be remembered that this happened in Italy where abortion is considered a sin against God.

The plight of the officials who supervised rescue operations was pitiable. They did not know what they were up against and what they should do in the next moment. Even the scientists were not aware of the defensive or protective measures to be taken by the people in general in such a situation.

 

According to Prof Getty who was in charge of health in the region, what happened in Seveso was no less than what happened in Hiroshima. Environmental scientists contend that the Seveso incident was the worst environmental disaster in the world. Whatever be the steps taken in Seveso and adjacent areas, the poisonous fumes emitted by the factory would be carried by windsto sow the seeds of death on people and other living organisms from generation to generation.

 

Those who want to cover up the decay in the industrial culture would say that what happened in Bhopal and Seveso were only unexpected accidents. But how can one justify an industrial culture that pours poison into the unborn foetus more shamelessly than Poothana of lore who smeared poison on her nipples to kill infant Krishna?

 

In 1957, leading drug manufacturer Grunenthal introduced in the market a wonder drug, Thalidomide, that was claimed to be without any side effects and which was certain to remove anxiety, insomnia, gastritis, nausea, morning sickness and what not in pregnant women. It soon became an over-the-counter drug and widely used in as many as forty countries.

Four years later a researcher at the Hamburg University found that most of the children born to women who had used Thalidomide were born cripple. Over 8,000 children without eyes, without hands or legs, destined to a life of misery and suffering as silent victims of an industrial culture gone astray.

It was because of the alertness of a woman official of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that America escaped this tragedy. Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey who had joined the FDA just a month ago had steadfastly refused to accept at face value the contentions put forward by the makers of Thalidomide. She sought many clarifications, including how the drug would affect the foetus. Since the manufacturers could not give any plausible explanation, she denied license for the drug. When the devastating effects of the drug in other countries became known after some time, the one-man army of Dr. Kelsey came in for great praise in America for warding off a potential disaster in that country.

In Britain, Thalidomide affected about a hundred children. Though the people were indignant and enraged, the governmentdid not come forward to inquire into the drug tragedy. The mothers of the Thalidomide children then came out on their own to launch a legal battle against Distillers, the company that distributed the drug. The litigation was similar to that made out against the Bhopal company. For many reasons the case went on for years before a final settlement on compensation for the victims was reached.

The Thalidomide case also showed what people’s will can do in a democratic set up. London daily The Sunday Times created history in journalism by taking up a powerful campaign in support of Thalidomide mothers. The drug company finally bowed before the people after Ralph Nader, the godfather of consumer movement in America, proclaimed that all products of the company would be boycotted in that country. In 1973 the drug company gave shape to a compensation package accepted by all.

The Thalidomide incident helped to restrain a marketing strategy that claimed for products, qualities that they did not possess. Perhaps that was a loss to those drug companies that issue death warrants against unborn children. But it was a gain for humaneness and humanity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                43

                                                EVA WHO LOVED LOVE

 

A middle-aged man wearing a black coat and having a thick toothbrush moustache entered the studio. Seventeen year old Eva had no doubt who he was: Charlie Chaplin.

Studio owner Heinrich Hoffman, official photographer of the Nazi party, smiled. When the visitor left he told Eva: That was Adolf Hitler.

Eva, pretty, blond, blue-eyed, was a dumb girl who did not know anything about politics or Hitler. Hitler, who was an ‘old man’ in her eyes, was forty at that time. He was only rising in German politics and his Nazi party was yet to come to power. Though he was far from becoming Chancellor, he was already able to influence the thinking of a large section of the German people.

When she went home Eva excitedly told her father about her meeting with Hitler. Her father burst out. Hitler is a cheat and fraud. It is unthinkable even of walking along with him on the same street.

True, Hitler and his Nazi party had been considered as a thorn in the eye by many people. But that was also the time when the feeling of German nationalism was spreading like wildfire. While for many it was a passion, for Hitler it was his life bloom.

 

From the moment he saw Eva in Hoffman’s studio Hitler was charmed by her. Some days later he came to the studio and said something to Hoffman. After he left, Hoffman told Eva that

Hitler was coming to his home for dinner that evening. Hoffman wanted Eva also there.

At the dinner, Hitler’s attention was focused on Eva. In the course of the conversation he said he had a wife: ‘I am married to Germany.’ From the glitter in his eyes Hoffman realised that Hitler had already installed Eva in his mind. Eva also knew that she was destined to be Hitler’s.

But Hitler’s first ‘wife,’ Germany, had occasionally created obstacles before her. In his drive to keep German politics under his thumb, Hitler used to forget everything else, sometimes including Eva.

Hitler’s Nazi party got majority in the 1932 elections. He was preparing for his elevation as German Chancellor. He had no time for Eva. When such neglect extended for over six months, Eva was crestfallen. She was lonely, she did not even get the support of her family.

One day when there was no one else in her house, Eva took her father’s pistol and shot herself. She missed the target slightly, but was injured in the neck. It was then that she had a desire to live, live for the sake of Hitler. She telephoned Hoffman’s brother-in-law, Dr. Wilhem Platen. He came rushing and put her in a hospital. The bullet was removed. When he heard about it from Hoffman, Hitler rushed to the hospital and met Eva.

Hitler’s political ambitions did not come to fruition as expected. President Hindenburg was not prepared to hand over power to Hitler. One day in a hotel room at Munich he told Eva that it was the darkest moment in his life. She consoled him, saying it was a good thing, because after darkness there would be light.

Her words deeply touched him. His despondency had gone and he was in his spirited best.

 

 From then on march of events was hectic. On January 30, 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

As in the past when his obsession with Germany was too much Hitler neglected Eva, forcing her to attempt suicide for a second time. She took an overdose of pills and fell down unconscious. Her sister saw her and called a doctor under whose medication Eva survived.

But there was a problem. Since the doctor was a Jew, Eva’s sister was reluctant to convey the news to Hitler.

But the head of Hitler’s secret police Gestapo knew the whole story and informed Hitler. He came to her hospital bed and told her he needed her and that he would not let her go. From then onwards Hitler took care of Eva in every way. He provided her with a house and the Nazi party treasurer was asked to meet all her expenditure.

It was the raging Second World War that really brought out the love that the two had for each other. At the height of the war, Hitler had sent Eva to a safe haven, but she could not remain there for long because of her concern for Hitler. As the war was grinding to its inevitable end, Eva left for Berlin one day, eager to be by the side of Hitler in his darkest hour. Things did not go as she had expected. Her car was damaged in Allied bombing and Eva had to take refuge in a roadside bunker. She spent the night in the bunker and then went on to the Fuhrer’s Bunker, an elaborate air raid shelter beneath the Chancellery. After great hardship she reached him.

It was while in the bunker, where he knew that the end was nearing, that Hitler remembered a question put to him once by his secretary: Why not marry Eva?

Two guards who were with Hitler told Eva that they would be with him till the end of their lives. But before that they would like to marry the girls they loved, who too were in the bunker.

The weddings were conducted there itself, with the blessings of Eva and Hitler.

On the night of April 29, 1945, when Allied bombers showered bombs overhead, Eva came in all her bridal finery, in the circumstances, for the wedding. After formally marrying his companion of several years, Hitler told his associates: In the end, after retiring from Chancellorship, I wanted to settle down in my home town in Austria and spend the rest of my life with Eva as an ordinary man. But there is no time for that. Let God decide.

Preparing for the last journey, he took out the cyanide capsules kept ready. The first one was for his dog, which fell down dead instantly. Then bidding farewell to all, Hitler held Eva’s hand and resolutely walked to his private room and closed the door. After some time gunshots were heard.

When his assistants opened the door, Hitler and Eva were seen lying on a sofa, dead. He had a bullet hole on his forehead from which blood was oozing out. Eva appeared to be smiling. Her pistol was lying on the ground.

It was love whose intensity went beyond death.

Hitler was generally considered as a brutish villain, a maniac killer, but through Eva perhaps the world realized that he too had a human heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    44

ONE AMONG EQUALS?

 

Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet was in session. The topic taken up for discussion was the Nehru-Liquat Ali Pact under which refugees were permitted to return unhindered for the disposal of their properties. The discussion was heated, especially because there was no convergence of views between Nehru and Syama Prasad Mookerjee. When the debate turned loudly argumentative, Sardar Vallabhai Patel quietly left the room. 

Nehru and Mookerjee continued their impassioned arguments. Fearing that something untoward might happen, their colleagues managed to persuade the two belligerents to postpone the discussion for another day.

This was described by N V Gadgil, a minister in the Nehru cabinet, in his book Government from Inside.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee subsequently resigned from the Nehru cabinet.

In a democracy, difference of opinion between the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues is not something new. Our parliamentary democratic system is modeled after Britain. Instances are many in that country of undermining the basic democratic concept of collective responsibility of the cabinet. It was not uncommon to see a quirky style of parliamentary democracy with ministers whole heartedly ratifying government decisions in the cabinet and then going out to vehemently criticise them in public.

When the question of Britain’s membership in the European Community came up, Englishmen were in two camps. The discord was so severe that it shook the very foundation of the then cabinet. A consensus on the issue could not be reached and the cabinet meeting finally ended after the ministers agreed to disagree. The ministers were then given the freedom to vote according to their conscience in an opinion poll on the matter. This freedom was also given to openly participate in the campaign preceding the poll. The only stipulation was that the ministers should not oppose in parliament the government stand on the issue.

In India even a charismatic Prime Minister like Nehru could not control the cabinet in keeping with his views. Ministers were also not rare who accused the Prime Minister of being dictatorial. In 1948 Sardar Patel resorted to police action in Hyderabad ignoring Nehru’s objections. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai’s action in giving refuge in India for Nepal’s King Tribhuvan also went against the wishes of Nehru. The arrest of Kashmir Premier Sheik Abdulla was also shown by historical records as Kidwai’s decision behind Nehru’s back. The powerful Prime Minister could only silently put up with such actions by his colleagues.

This did not mean Nehru was just one among equals in his cabinet. Often he had been described as a banyan tree. But Nehru’s style of doing things as he pleased had come in for covert and overt criticism from colleagues. Nehru never considered it necessary to discuss with his ministerial colleagues on any matter relating to foreign affairs, his most favourite subject. Initially the cabinet was informed of the appointments of Ambassadors but its ratification was not sought. On one occasion a meeting of the cabinet was at its fag end when he informed it of the appointment of Sir Mirza Muhammed Ismail, a former Dewan, as an Ambassador. When N V Gadgil asked him if he was merely informing the cabinet or placing it before it for discussion, Nehru was obviously annoyed. After the cabinet he mentioned this to Patel, but the latter did not mince words when expressing his strong reservation against the appointment. Though Nehru rescinded the appointment, he stopped the practice, altogether, of informing the cabinet of such decisions.

Till Patel’s death, Nehru used to seek his opinion on most matters. Patel was usually silent in the cabinet meetings. His style was to privately talk to the Prime Minister before and after the cabinet meetings. Those privy to inside goings on had said that after Patel’s death cabinet meetings more or less had become ‘Nehru Durbars.’

It is for the Prime Minister to decide who all should be in his cabinet. But how free the Prime Minister is in the exercise of this power depends on two factors. One is the position of the Prime Minister in the party. The second is the position of the party in parliament. Was any Prime Minister ever able to pick and choose his ministers as he deemed fit? The answer is no when we look at the functioning of the parliamentary system in various countries, including India and Britain. Even Nehru did not have the complete power to choose his ministers. The influence of Patel in government formation was clearly evident. K M Munishi, RR Diwakar, Shanmugham Chetty, CD Deshmukh, NV Gadgil and CH Bawa were considered to be Patel’s nominees in the cabinet. Moreover, Vijayalakshmi Pandit and TT Krishnamachari were kept out of the cabinet in view of objections by Patel.

A similar situation cropped up between 1964 and 1967. Morarji Desai had become a force to reckon with in Indian politics. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who became Prime Minister after Nehru’s death, had to accommodate in his ministry 13 senior ministers and 15 ministers of state from the previous dispensation. Though it was after ignoring Morarji Desai’s claims that Lal Bahadaur Shastri was made the Prime Minister, Morarji himself had to be selected to the cabinet. On his own, Shastri selected only three persons for his cabinet, newcomers S K Patil, Sanjeeva Reddy and Indira Gandhi.

However, Shastri ensured that allocation of portfolios was fully his prerogative. It was Shastri’s personal decision that saw Sardar Swaran Singh as Foreign Minister. When a colleague chose to question this, Shastri categorically told him it was his prerogative.

Indira Gandhi who succeeded Shastri was a powerful Prime Minister but even she did not have the absolute power to pick and choose her ministers. She was forced to induct Sachindra Chaudhuri and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed into the cabinet in place of her choices Ashok Sen and Humayun Kabir. This was presumed to be under pressure from Atulya Ghosh, Gulzarilal Nanda and Jagjivan Ram.

When Morarji Desai of the Janata Party became Prime Minister, he was in fact heading a coalition government. Obviously, the Prime Minister did not enjoy the privilege or prerogative of choosing his ministers. It was for the parties in the coalition to decide who should represent them in the ministry. Desai was willing to accept Jagjivan Ram and Charan Singh as Deputy Prime Ministers, but the two senior leaders insisted on only one post of Deputy Prime Minister.

The situation was no different when Charan Singh became Prime Minister. Y B Chavan, Congress nominee, was Deputy Prime Minister. The Congress further decided its other representatives in the cabinet. Similarly All India Anna DMK chose its nominees in the cabinet. In all such instances even the concept of the Prime Minister as the first among equals received a beating.

In coalitions the position of the Prime Minister was lowered to one among equals. This is not a phenomenon confined to India.

In the 1977 ministry, Charan Singh insisted on getting the Home portfolio and the Prime Minister had to succumb to

 

the demand. In the following year when Charan Singh returned to become Deputy Prime Minister he was given the freedom to choose any portfolio other than Home.

At the practical level, it is not possible for the Prime Minister to fully utilise his powers for the-allocation of portfolios. In 1962 Nehru was personally inclined to allot the Finance portfolio to TT Krishnamachari. But he had to yield to pressure from Morarji Desai. In 1963 S K Patil successfully thwarted a move by the Prime Minister for a change of his portfolio. In 1966 Indira Gandhi was interested in changing the portfolios of Gulzarilal Nanda and Sachindra Chaudhuri, but withdrew from the move because of pressure from Kamaraj, Atulya Ghosh and Hitendra Desai.

Later, Indira Gandhi succeeded in establishing her unchallenged supremacy in the party and the government. She could fully implement her decision to change the portfolios of Y B Chavan, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Dinesh Singh. When the powerful Chavan expressed his reservation against the change, he was bluntly told to keep out of the cabinet if had any reservations.

Prime Ministers also have the power, in concept, to remove any minister at any time. According to Article 74(2) of the Constitution, Ministers continue in their position subject to the ‘pleasure’ of the President of India. The pleasure of the President is in fact the decision of the Prime Minister conveyed to him. Ministers sometimes get into difficulties when this concept coalesces with the concept of collective responsibility. It is possible that the cabinet takes a decision that a minister may not personally approve of. Even if it is against his conscience, he has to go according to the decision or resign from the cabinet.

Instances are not rare of ministers quitting cabinet on policy differences. In 1949 Dr. John Mathai resigned in protest against the composition of the Planning Commission. It was already

pointed out that Syama Prasad Mookerjee had resigned from the Nehru cabinet in view of differences over the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Pact of 1950. In 1951 B R Ambedkar resigned, saying he was being kept out of policy formulation forums. V V Giri resigned in 1984 protesting against the Bank Award which according to him went against the interests of the employees. If C D Deshmukh put in his papers protesting against the reorganization of Bombay state, C Subramaniam and O V Azhakesan resigned in protest against the official language policy. It is a different matter they withdrew their resignations in view of the persuasive pressure from Lal Bahadur Shastri. If Mahavir Thyagi opted out of the cabinet in 1966 pointing out differences over the Tashkent Accord with Pakistan, it was the same issue that prompted M C Chagla to resign the following year. Mohan Dharia quit to register protest against the government’s approach towards the ‘total revolution’ spearheaded by Jayaprakash Narayan.

A Prime Minister has two options if he feels that a minister should be dropped from his council. He can either demand his resignation or dismiss him. In 1963 Nehru resorted to a novel method to see that some inconvenient ministers were dropped. Through the good office of the party chief K Kamaraj, a plan, named Kamaraj Plan, was put forward to get senior ministers in the government to build up the party. Taking recourse to this clever plan, Nehru managed to get rid of senior ministers Morarji Desai, Jagajivan Ram, SK Patil, Lal Bahadur Shastri, A Gopala Reddy and KN Srimali and some Congress Chief Ministers.

His daughter Indira Gandhi was slightly different in her approach. While she asked Swaran Singh, Uma Shankar Dikshit and Sher Singh to submit their resignations, she recommended to the President dismissal of Mohan Dharia.

Morarji Desai had sought the ratification of the cabinet for the removal of Charan Singh and Raj Narain.

 

Winston Churchill had said that if a Prime Minister had to succeed he should not hesitate to become a butcher. As and when required, he should be prepared to throw out ministers.

But nothing is impossible in politics. There may be occasions of a minister refusing to resign when asked by the Prime Minister to do so. In such a situation what is the course open to him? Though not many instances are there at the centre, there are several such in the states. Rao Birendra Singh in Haryana (1961), Congress Ministers in UP (1970), Daorathram Sangyan in Himachal Pradesh (1972), Mrs. Chandramathi in Haryana (1972) and Satyavani Muthu in Tamil Nadu (1974) are ministers who refused to quit when called upon to do so. In such situations a Chief Minister had two options before him. Submit his own resignation and then reconstitute the ministry or recommend to the governor to dismiss the ministers refusing to quit. Both these options had been utilised in different times in different states. The Prime Minister also could make use of these two options. The President is bound to accept the Prime Minister’s recommendation for the dismissal of a minister. But there are exceptions. According to constitutional experts, if the Prime Minister’s party is a minority in the ruling coalition, the President is not bound to act on such recommendation.

If a powerful leader of a powerful party becomes Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s voice will become the voice of the cabinet. And his decisions would become cabinet decisions also. In the Indira Gandhi government, initially there were open discussions in the cabinet but in due course it was said that the cabinet took decisions as per her whims and fancies. In the case of the Emergency, the cabinet came to know of it after the declaration was made. There is neither law or precedent to assess rights and wrongs of such matters. It depends on how one views the impugned action in retrospect. If it is seen as reasonable it is right and if it is not justified it may be construed as the Prime Minister acting on his or her whims.

 

The minister who presides over the cabinet in the absence of the Prime Minister is generally considered as the number two in the cabinet. However, there had been concerted moves by the Prime Ministers to see that all ministers were treated equally and that no one gained an upper hand. During Indira Gandhi’s foreign tours, ministers presided over cabinet meetings in rotation, in alphabetical order. In this way Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed presided over a cabinet meeting. YB Chavan and Jagjivan Ram could not get that opportunity. There was once a remark by a wag that Indira Gandhi even thought of inducting some junior ministers whose names began with the letters A or B, just to avoid some others from chairing the cabinet.

In Britain the person considered as a model Prime Minister was Sir Robert Peel. The strongest Prime Minister was undoubtedly Winston Churchill. The war time cabinet was only a shadow of Churchill. Many of the important communications from Churchill to US President Roosevelt were brought before the cabinet after they were sent. Perhaps no other Prime Minister would have received the kind of cooperation and support he had received from ministers belonging to different parties. Churchill got the best of support from his cabinet and could confidently assert, “I am easily satisfied with the very best.”

The great constitutional expert Ivor Jenningshad said that with strong support from the party and full confidence of the leaders, a Prime Minister could wield even more powers than the Roman emperors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

45

AMINA HERE, AMELIA THERE

 

There is a saying in Telugu that raising a girl child is like watering the plants in the neighbor’s farm. The benefit will go to someone else.

Though the Year of the Girl Child was celebrated with much fanfare, the fact remains that many people have not overcome the feeling of disappointment when a girl is born in the house. Take the case of ten year old Amina of Hyderabad. There was a great furore in the media when this child was about to be given in alleged wedlock to an aged Arab groom, one who was well past his sixties. Community leaders and social reformers all came together to raise their shrill voice of protest against and indignation at this reprehensible action on the part of her parents.

Though it was given the tag of marriage, what was evident in Amina’s case was that the Arab had literally purchased the girl. Amina’s father was a poor rickshaw puller. What prompted him to sell his daughter for Rs. 6,000 was the call of hunger that defied all laws. The issue involved is not one that could well be dismissed evil doing by a fiendish father.

Amniocentesis is a medical procedure that, among other things, helps to determine the sex of the child to be born. It was widely misused for the purpose of female foeticide. If the child to be born is a female, destroy it: was the prevailing attitude.

 

A survey taken up in Mumbai showed that out of the 8,000 cases of medical termination of pregnancy, 7,999 cases involved female foetus. When protests against this practice became strident the government enacted a law banning sex determination tests.

 

The condition of the girl child in India is indeed pitiable. Studies have shown that in the case of nutrition, girls fall much below the optimum level, getting less than two-thirds of the norm. The government’s policy on birth control was also biased as priority was given to female sterilisation.

Child labour is prohibited by law but thousands of girl children are employed in match factories, weaving units and zari factories across the country. They are made to work in unhealthy conditions. Studies have shown that the eye sight of girls working in silk weaving units and computer units steadily deteriorate to the point of no return in a matter of five to eight years. In the slate factories in Madhya Pradesh child workers die from silicosis, an occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust. In Ferozabad child workers get scalded while working in glass factories. In the power loom units in Dindi children who are not afflicted by Byssinosis are rare. What the locksmith units of Aligarh give their child workers is a disease named pneumoconiosis.

A majority of the victims of rape are girls below 16 years. The practice of pushing girl children into prostitution in the name of God is still prevalent in many places. Devadasi, Bhavin, Devali, Naikin.   It is named differently in different states. In the red light

areas of Mumbai more than 40 per cent of those indulging in flesh trade are devadasis. A good many of them are minor girls. It is prostitution in the name of god.

What is the position in regard to women’s education? According to the census of 2011 the literacy rate among women was only 65.46 per cent as against 82.14 in the case of men.

 

As for school enrolment, the intake of girls is deplorably low. The dropout rate is very high in the case of girls. Out of ten girls enrolled, only two complete primary education.

It may sound unbelievable that there exist some weird, horrifying practices that numb human sensibilities. Take the case of baby farming that was prevalent in Victorian England. And one of its most notorious practitioners was Amelia Dyer. What she did was to take care of expectant mothers who were about to give birth to children out of wedlock. Amelia, a trained nurse, not only took good care of such women up to the delivery, but also took over the responsibility of raising the children in secret. For her services she naturally received a hefty fee. She looked after the children well and they in turn seemed to like this foster mother.

But things changed one cool morning when a clothes bag was chanced upon by boatmen in river Thames. They opened the bag only to find the limp body of a bonny infant. The police were called in and a search of the river bed helped them to pick up seven such bags. Investigations finally led the police to the doorsteps of Amelia Dyer.

Her practice was simple, but gruesome. Take the infants from their mothers. Get a big fee for their upkeep, look after them for a week, then strangulate them, put them in bags and dump them in the Thames. And continue to get the upkeep money, for free.

Did Amelia emigrate to Tamil Nadu. She is now at Usilampatti. If a girl child was born in Usilampetti many things would be done to put an end to her. Grains of paddy would be put into the infant’s mouth. After a time the infant would be suffocated to death. Another method was to grind a poison berry easily available at Usilampatti and put that paste into the infant’s mouth. If that was of no use there were killer moms available on call. They would smear poison on their nipples and breastfeed the newborn to death.

 

It was a matter of great relief that of late some social workers had taken up a powerful campaign against this obnoxious practice of female infanticide. Yet if you were born a female it meant sorrow and suffering till death.

It appears as if a grinning Amelia Dyer has left Usilampatti and has moved over to Japan. In Japan there is a rule. Children will not be permitted to enter schools after nine a.m. The gate in front of the school will be closed. One girl was slightly late in coming to the school one day. To get in before the gate was closed she dashed in, only to hit the gate and fall down even as a lady teacher was slamming the gate shut. The heavy gate hit her head and she died of a crushed skull. In another incident in an island near Hiroshima, authorities of a school decided to discipline a sixteen year old girl student. She was put in an iron box. Probably they forgot about the box, because they opened it three days later, by which time the girl was asphyxiated to death. Japanese mothers came out of their homes to protest against such draconian disciplinary measures in the schools.

If in Japan girls were tortured in the name of discipline, in Mexico and Ethiopia it was in the name of poverty. In the three extensive waste dumps in Mexico, one could find not only millions of rats but also over 10,000 destitute people, half of them children, mostly girls. These children were born and brought up in the dump heaps. They also die there. There was no escape for them from the mafia gangs that exploited them.

In Recife port in Brazil, one comes across the distressing spectacle of even ten year old girls being pushed into the flesh trade. Brazil alone is said to have half a million child prostitutes. In the famine stricken Ethiopian villages visitors will be disturbed to find emaciated young children searching for the tubers of shrubs to satiate their hunger. In Sivakasi, the world’s biggest centre of child labour, even children as young as four years dip their hands in poisonous material to make fire crackers.

 

We see in Bangkok, capital of Thailand, much more savagery and cruelty than anywhere else. Every year thousands of people from far and wide reach Bangkok to make a beeline to Madam Susie’s brothel. There are girls aged between ten and twelve, none of them reaching that den by accident. They are all pushed there deliberately by their own parents out to make money out of them.

There is a saying that if the student has not learnt, the teacher has not taught. Similarly if the girls are neglected we can say that their mothers are not taking care of them. Most of the mothers are sad when they learn that the child born to them is a girl. If the siblings fight at home, mothers invariably side with the boys.

A recent study was an eye opener. Compared to the boys, more girls stop their education midway. Mothers do not like their sons to be engaged for domestic chores. Boys have more freedom to spend money. Even if the girls make independent income, the custom is to get a major share for the house. After marriage the son brings home a substantial amount as dowry. In the case of the girl the dowry is an outflow. Boys have the chance of getting jobs and getting income. In the case of most girls it will be lifelong kitchen work.

The practice of neglect of girls is not a new phenomenon. Centuries ago Aristotle told a group of youngsters: Compared to men, women have two teeth less in their mouth. The youth totally believed him. Aristotle went one step further: Compared to men, women are imperfect. He cited the case of a circle and an egg. The circle is perfect, but the egg is not. Eggs are laid by hen. So hens are imperfect. Hens are female. So women are imperfect.

The effort to improve the social status of girls has to start from home itself. The approach towards girls has to be changed first.

There are certain urgent steps needed for bettering the lot of girls. There should be adequate representation for women in

our parliamentary democratic set up. Apart from parliament and legislatures, women should be given representation proportional to their population in the local bodies, cooperative institutions and quasi-government bodies.

Though child labour is an offence under the law, there are provisions that cannot been forced. Such provisions should be changed and it should be ensured that child labour is totally banned.

About half of our population are women. Half of them are girls. According to a definition by SAARC, a female aged up to 20 years is defined as a girl.

Though we could put an end to social evils like child marriage, our attitude to the girl child continues without change.

Charles Dickens said about the 19 century England that it was not an ideal place for the children to live in. Perhaps the description applies to present day India where Aminas and Usilampattis get repeated.

 

 

 

 

46

IMPEACHMENT

 

Edmund Burke roared in the British parliament.

‘I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

‘I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

‘I impeach him in the name of the people of India……’

 

The British people, both high and the low alike, thronged the gallery of the House of Lords and lined up the sidewalks outside parliament to witness the sensational trial of the century.

The magic of Richard Sheridan’s oratory, that kept the entire house spellbound for five hours a day, was such that there were people willing to shell out even a thousand pounds to obtain a copy of its full text. There were also people who would bribe a big sum for entry into the trial court.

However great and efficient an administrator might be, he should in the final reckoning be accountable to the parliament and the people. The impeachment helped to further cement this fundamental democratic ideal. Along with this, the Warren Hastings procedure also helped to refurbish the tool of impeachment, that had more or less remained rusted and discarded during the Tudor regimes of Elizabeth and Henry VIII, as the sharpest and most powerful weapon of parliamentary democracy.

It was, however, an anti-climax of history that three years after the impeachment, in 1795, Warren Hastings was fully exonerated by the House of Lords. When the 81- year old Warren Hastings later appeared in person before the parliament, it was with utmost respect and honour that the house recalled the services rendered by this valiant son of England.

What is impeachment? And what is it for? By general definition it means trial before parliament of a minister, top official or judge accused of any serious misdemeanor or misconduct. Impeachment first surfaced during the 14th century. The first to be impeached in the history of England were Baron William Latimer and his son-in-law John Neville who were top functionaries in the court of Edward III. It appeared as if history had ignored this tool for the next three centuries. When after a long interval it returned as a potent parliamentary weapon those who lost power and prestige included Lord Essex and Canterbury Archbishop William Laud. One of the impeachments occasionally remembered by history was that of the great litterateur Francis Bacon. It is interesting to note how this judge standing in the dock defended his action: ‘I may have taken bribe but that has never influenced my judgments.’

In monarchical England where loyalty to the crown was a way of life, the general feeling of the people was that the crown was infallible. It meant that if the administration erred, the responsibility lay with some minister. Impeachment was a tool with which such erring ministers could be brought under the thumb of parliament. A pawn on the chess board of politics.

 

But is impeachment confined to the Westminster system? No. In the United States Richard Nixon could avoid facing the ignominy of impeachment only because he resigned as President. The only President in the U S who was subjected to impeachment was Andrew Johnson who succeeded Abraham Lincoln. He survived on the strength of just one vote. In all states except Oregon there is law providing for the removal of top officials and judges through the process of impeachment.

Pakistan President Musharraf too had to step down when he came to the brink of impeachment. There was a move to impeach President Premadasa of Sri Lanka. In India too there were shrill calls for the impeachment of Chief Election Commissioner TN Seshan. Similarly, advocates of the Supreme Court insisted on impeachment of Supreme Court Judge Ramaswamy. In another instance Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan had granted permission for the impeachment of Justice Soumitra Sen.

In India impeachment is a procedure envisaged by the Constitution. The Constitution provides for the impeachment of top functionaries including judges who are constitutional authorities. Is the Indian President above that? No, there are clear provisions for the impeachment of the President as well. Look at article 61 of the Constitution. The President can be impeached. The impeachment procedure may be initiated either in the Rajya Sabha or the Lok Sabha. The only condition is that there should be a fortnight’s notice for the motion for impeachment and that it should be signed by not less than one fourth of the members of the house. It should be adopted by two third majority. If the charge sheet was filed in the Rajya Sabha it would be the Lok Sabha that would take up the impeachment process. Similarly if the motion was passed by the Lok Sabha, the impeachment proceedings would be taken up by the Rajya Sabha. If after investigation the motion is finally adopted by two third majority, the President would be removed from office.

What is the essence of impeachment? It only means that no one is above the law and that in the final analysis it is the people who have the paramount power. ‘We, the people’ are supreme in democracy.

 

 

 

47

WHO SHOULD SIGN THE DEATH WARRANT?

 

The emperor who used to issue death warrants for the traitors chose to issue the last death warrant for himself.

The emperor who was in his sick bed called his personal physician and said: I am fed up. I don’t want to go on. I want to bid farewell to this world. You should help me in that.

With tears in his eyes the court physician carried out the royal decree.

Years later the world came to know of this secret from the diary of the physician. The death of George V of England was due to euthanasia.

What is euthanasia? Direct euthanasia is speeding up of the death of patients suffering from incurable diseases through the administration of certain drugs. Indirect euthanasia is stopping to administer those life giving medicines which help to prolong the life of terminally ill patients. The general consensus is that both these methods are deplorable. The legislation to permit euthanasia failed to get through in America. But the lively deliberations which went on with regard to this legislation helped one to make a comprehensive assessment of all the aspects of this issue.

Earlier too efforts have been made in many countries to legalize euthanasia. It was in 1935 in England that a concerted

effort was made in this direction. In England organizations for euthanasia were formed under the leadership of Killick Millard. The bill placed before the House of Lords in 1936 could not be passed. Though in 1950 another bill was placed before the House, it also failed. Undeterred, the proponents of euthanasia continued their propaganda tactics and once again brought up the legislation for the consideration of parliament in 1969. Though the bill did not get through, the opinion gained ground that there was nothing wrong in recognizing the need for euthanasia in principle under particular circumstances.

The question is what are the circumstances that justify euthanasia and under what stipulations. It is difficult to define clearly these circumstances and these stipulations. But medical science has recorded near unanimity about certain conditions and situations which were in keeping with common sense. For example, take the case of a patient who is suffering from brain hemorrhage. Once it is evident after all the investigations that the patient is incurable, medical science may be able to prolong his life for a few days or months with the aid of a pace maker or with artificial respiration. But would it be proper to keep the patient like a living cadaver? The advocates of euthanasia do not think it should be so. What about a patient at the terminal stage of cancer? Death is certain. Pain is excruciating. At this stage what the doctor can do is to give some relief to the patient by administering pain killers. These medicines may probably shorten the life span. Under these circumstances the doctor cannot be blamed. In a survey conducted among doctors in England in 1965, 26% voted in favour of euthanasia. There is another situation which is similar. Suppose a terminal patient contacts pneumonia. Pneumonia can lead to death which is comparatively less painful. A doctor who tries to cure the patient of pneumonia is only trying to ensure death in installment instead of treating him. Let the patient die only once. Let him not die many times. This is the argument of those in favour of euthanasia.

 

There are some very eminent persons among those who favour euthanasia. Socrates, Plato and the Stoics favoured this. But the Catholic Church opposes euthanasia, direct or indirect. As far as they are concerned, any killing is a violation of the Sixth Commandment. And hence against the divine principle.

But the Church does not oppose administration of pain killers to patients suffering from severe pain, even if this may quicken their death. The Anglican Church is also generally against euthanasia. But the Anglican Church is not opposed in principle to speeding up the death of a terminal patient when there is no other means to save him. But they will oppose any legislation justifying euthanasia.

In Holland euthanasia is not considered as murder. In cases which reached the courts, only negligible penalties were imposed. Societies which try to gather popular support for euthanasia are very active in Europe, America, Australia and Japan. There are numerous books advocating euthanasia. The arguments of those who oppose euthanasia go thus. God has given us life and only God has the right to take it. Whatever the circumstances be, killing is a sin. Medical science is progressing. If not today, certainly tomorrow it may discover remedies for every incurable disease. Hence we should make efforts to prolong the life of the patients. For example, when one or two decades ago the possibility of saving children with physical handicaps was rare, now medical science has discovered remedies for such cases. The question whether a child born with congenital physical disability should be saved or not is something which agitates the minds of the medical profession even now. In 1981 this led to a great controversy in America. A very reputed lady pediatrician had to face trial for murder for not having tried to save the life of a child suffering from Down Syndrome. During the trial it became evident that the parents were not interested in keeping the child alive. It

was also established that it was the strong medication given by the doctor according to the wishes of the parents that led to the demise of the child. After considering all aspects of the case the court decreed that the doctor was not guilty. Consequently, there was a controversy on the pros and cons of a decision taken by another doctor not to conduct surgery on a new born child as desired by the parents. The Indiana court justified the decision taken by the doctor.

The arguments against euthanasia are these.

1. If euthanasia is legalized it will be used as an easy way by children to get rid of their aged parents with the help of medical practitioners.

2. Euthanasia will only help slow pedal the efforts through research and investigation to discover remedies for incurable diseases.

3. The possibilities of euthanasia being misused are many. For example, in countries where medical insurance is prevalent, it is quite possible that euthanasia may be used for financial gains. We cannot forget the innumerable instances of diabolic misuse of euthanasia by the Nazis in Germany. The essence of medical science is preservation of life and eradication of illnesses. Whatever the circumstances be, if the medical practitioner starts prescribing euthanasia it would ruin the confidence the people have in doctors. It is for this reason that the world medical community opposes euthanasia.

There is a large section of people who consider indirect euthanasia permissible. This section also consists of some religious leaders. At the core of this belief is the conviction that it does not form part of a medical practitioner’s duty to delay the death of a patient as far as possible, even after the patient reaches a terminal stage, utilizing the latest technology. This viewpoint is supported by religion to some extent. After all it is sacrilege on the part of modern science to intervene between God and death.

There are people who ask what is wrong in euthanasia being legalized when abortion and sterilization have been legalized. When a child that is born and a child yet to be born are both gifts of God what logic is there to permit abortion but not euthanasia, they ask.

It is relevant to note the facts borne out by a survey conducted in Mumbai. The survey showed that most of the expectant mothers who underwent sex determination test of the child in the womb, preferred to have abortion if the child to be born was a female. All but one of the 8,000 odd abortions carried out in Mumbai were of this kind. One’s love for aged parents cannot be more intense than the natural love of a mother towards her child. One can presume what would happen to aged parents in case euthanasia is legalized when mothers resort to abortion of convenience.

Indian mythology has a character who established that one has certain rights over his own life span. Ruru, son of a sage, got enamoured of the beautiful damsel Premadwara. Ruru wanted to make her his life companion. But fate destined otherwise. Premadwara died of snake bite. The forlorn Ruru, wandering around in a desolate state, met an angel. As advised by the angel Ruru gave half his life to his beloved and brought her back to conjugal life. This story underlies the freedom a person has over his own life. Pururavas used to worship his father Yayati and was prepared to exchange his youth for his father who wanted to indulge in worldly pleasures. He became a towering example of the individual’s freedom on his life. Velu Thampi Dalawa, Herward the wake of Travancore, who refused to subjugate himself to the authority of the British, asked his younger brother Padmanabhan Thampi to behead him.

 

Here euthanasia takes on the mantle of courage, valour and patriotism.

Is euthanasia right or wrong? This is a question that defies answer. Even if mercy killing gets legalized who can ensure that it is only mercy that prompts a killing.

 

 

                                                            48

                                        THE PRIME MINISTER WAS A SPY?

 

The Prime Minister who went down the sea in a diving gear did not come up again. Even after the search by the naval helicopters or the expert divers no trace of the Prime Minister could be found. People thought that the sea had swallowed him Journalist Anthony Grey came up with a news which startled everyone.

He broke the news that the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt was a Chinese spy. A spy who used to leak secrets to China for money before he became politically important. He was forced to continue as a spy even after he became Prime Minister. Ultimately when things reached a stage that the secret would be out Holt went for a swim in the sea off Victoria Coast as pre-planned in a secret understanding with China. In his book ‘The Prime Minister Was A spy’ Anthony Grey disclosed that Harold Holt boarded a waiting Chinese submarine which took him to China without anyone’s knowledge.

The famous West German Chancellor Willy Brandt was another world leader ensnared in espionage. Gunter Guillaume was one of the closest advisers of Willy Brandt. He used to supply to East Germany on a regular basis secrets concerning NATO. When Guillaume was caught it created havoc in world politics. Willy Brandt’s political life came to an end with this.

 

On December 15, 1975 the Dusseldorf court sentenced Guillaume to thirteen years’ rigorous imprisonment.

The American press reporter Jack Anderson had a more interesting fact to share with the public. According to him Willy Brandt himself was a CIA spy. Besides, he was a double agent who used to supply secret documents to the KGB.  The German government denied all this. But why didn’t Willy Brandt file a defamation suit against Jack Anderson? It is this that raises suspicion.

There is no nation that does not fall in the espionage trap. Take the case of India. On January 16, 1985 Intelligence Bureau officials raided the house of a big industrialist. Two persons were having a drink in a room there. One was the liaison officer of the company, Coomer Narayan. The other was P Gopalan, PA to Dr. PC Alexander, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. This shed light on a spy ring extending to the offices of the Prime Minister and the President of India. Many were arrested, including several bigwigs. PC Alexander’s personal secretary PN Kher, S Sankaran in the office of President Zail Singh, AK Malhotra and Udaychand of the PMO, officers of the Ministry of Finance and defence and officers of many departments that were privy to official secrets. Absolutely confidential defence secrets were leaked to the enemy through these people. They included the report sent to the Prime Minister by Dr. UR Rao, Secretary of Space, regarding INSAT satellite and the secret document sent by the defence minister about a particular type of radar. It was alleged that many documents were passed to the enemy through Suresh, son of Jagjivan Ram who was Defence Minister for a long period. Surya magazine under the editorship of Maneka Gandhi revealed on January 22, 1979 that Pakistan could demolish RAW because of the secrets passed on by Suresh who came to know them from his father who was the Defence Minister.

 

Memory is still fresh about the U2 incident which aggravated the cold war in the 1960s. It was through this that that the world came to know of the international spy organizations. Perhaps the U2 incident could have sparked off a world war. This was the incident which shed light on the clandestine machinations of the covert world of espionage. The U2 aircraft which carried on continuous surveillance on Russia was a secret known only to the CIA. But in May 1960 the Russian army accurately shot down a U2 aircraft that was flying at an altitude of 68,000 ft hoodwinking the Russian radars. Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave a stunning blow to American imperialism by exhibiting the captured American pilot Gary Powers. Incidentally, Russia came to know of the American U2 mission from two men, Michael and Martin, in the American national security agency who were spying for it.

The Israeli Mossad are experts in espionage. But the Russian KGB was able to permanently establish itself by the side of the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion crossing all the hurdles created by Mossad. In 1960 Israel Bir who was the principal military adviser to Ben Gurion was arrested in a Tel Aviv restaurant. At that time he was talking in whispers to a Russian agent. He had in his possession many confidential documents including the official diary of the Prime Minister.

MI5 is the British intelligence organization. At one time the British Premier Edward Heath decided to send back some Russian diplomats. This was based on the fact that the MI5 was convinced that they were carrying out espionage for Russia. How did Britain come to know of this? The KGB agent Oleg Lijal sent to London by the KGB switched his loyalties. As a consequence many of the Russian spies posted in different world capitals had to return to Russia discarding their diplomatic disguise.

Would you believe that there are spies who traded secrets for the sake of world peace? Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was one such.

As a nuclear scientist he gave the Russians the secret of atom bomb being made by America. It was the apprehension that if the know-how to make an atom bomb was with America alone then the Americans could make the world toe its line.  That influenced this scientist to do so. He believed that if one more country could make the bomb this would act as a deterrent.

 

The Russian people who were convinced that it was the KGB who sabotaged Gorbachev, expressed their anger by demolishing the statue of the KGB chief whom they had worshipped for more than five decades. Some of the top bureaucrats connected with the KGB issued a statement that  the vaults of the KGB contain complete details as to who killed American President John F Kennedy. In America, after the infamous Watergate scandal, popular resentment against the American Secret Service, CIA, was unprecedented.

Can’t we prohibit these organizations of espionage? Especially now when the world is progressing on the path of mutual friendship, ending the days of cold war. But we should understand that moving the administrative machinery is not as easy as moving the wheels of a hand cart. For the journey of a nation many things are inevitable which may not be desirable in the life of an individual. An effective spy ring is necessary for the existence of any country. This is not a philosophy of statecraft born out of the cold war scenario after the world war. This is a principle recognized by the vision of statesmen much before the time of Christ.

In BC 1245 it was through brilliant espionage that Gideon saved his Israeli hosts from the Midians. While the Midian army was sleeping, Gideon led 300 spies with lighted torches to the enemy camp. They had advanced covering the torches with earthen pots so it remained camouflaged from the enemy. The spies stood at different points among the Midian

army and when their leader sounded the bugle all of them broke the earthen pot and started to sound the bugle in unison. The Midian army that was not fully awake mistakenly thought that they had been surrounded by a 30,000 strong army. In self defence they drew their swords and started attacking whoever was in front of them. It was later the next morning that survivors among the Midians realized that they had been killing their own troops.

Mithridates was an emperor who lived a century before Christ. He was the ruler of Pontus. He was famed as a brilliant military strategist and depended on his intelligence organization to expand and strengthen his empire. He became adept at espionage at the early age of 14. His style of operation is still discussed for application in the training centres of the American CIA, Russian KGB, Israeli Mossad and our own RAW. Mithridates had a clear understanding, much before he became king, as to the countries which he had to vanquish after assuming power. Whenever he visited a country he took care to imbibe their way of attire, food habits and even their way of talking.

Among those who utilized the services of spies for finding out the secrets of enemies in war, one of the most competent was the Roman soldier Lalius. On instructions from the Roman general Scipio Africanus he entered the Numidian camp with a peace offer. Once there, he cleverly provoked his horse which started running helter skelter. He ran after the horse in an apparent bid to rein it in. In the process he learned much about the layout of the camp which came in handy for his army to win the war.

At a time when espionage could be relied upon, spies conveyed to the palace what they had heard about Sita without distorting the facts. And Sree Ram sent his beloved spouse to the jungle in deference to public opinion. Suppose Ram was a

present day ruler. The launderer who spoke ill of Ram’s wife would fall into the hands of the secret police and disappear. Otherwise, the secret service would spread the disinformation that the slander was about Urmila. And the problem would be solved by banishing Urmila to the jungle.

 

 

49

RISING SUN ROLLS

 

In Greek mythology the Sun God Apollo moves around Heavens in a chariot driven by white steed. It is as a result of this that day and night and the seasons occur.

Once Phaeton, the son of Apollo, had a wish: to move around in the chariot with grandeur like his father. He got in the chariot. The horses bolted. The son of Apollo got flustered, unable to control the horses in their flight.

During this time the universe lost all its moorings. It was as though the sun, the moon and the stars were about to be flung away from their positions. Exposed to the extreme heat the skin of the handsome men of Africa became dark and ugly. There was only one way to save the universe from total ruin. Zeus, the greatest of the Gods, threw his fiercest weapon, lighting, at Phaeton and killed him.

Will the son of Apollo start his chariot race again? Will history repeat itself? These are the questions heard in the corridors of history as one hears the rumblings of the military resurgence of the land of the rising sun, Japan. The Jubilee of Pearl Harbour bombing is over. The shadows of death even today stalk the ghostly lands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The World observed, with tears, Hiroshima Day on the sixth of August. It is against this background that one has to look at the whispers on Japan interfering in world politics in more of a military way.

 

The people of Japan who are not yet out of the traumatic memories of their grievous sufferings during the Second World War may not be prepared for another military adventure. Japan does not have much of a military strength either. The Japanese army itself is named as security force only. Its total strength is three lakh. But if you consider the amount spent on defence, Japan will occupy the third position in the world. But the Japanese people do not consider their security force any more important than the mustachioed security guards striding up and down public buildings grandiosely waving their batons. The very fact that youth are not coming forward to join the army is an indication of the lack of lustre of the armed forces. Japanese parents refuse to give their daughters in marriage to military officers. The standing of the army in the society has come down to such a pitiable level.

Recently militarization became a topic of discussion in Japan. When different world powers sent their forces to the Gulf war along with America, Japan kept away. It is true that a lot of funds were given. But America felt that it would be good if Japan too sent its forces to the Gulf. The Japanese leadership also was in favour of limited military partnership. Once again this inflamed the anti-military mentality of the Japanese people and the Japanese parliament decided to slash the funds budgeted for the security forces. Japan, one of the most prominent industrial powers of the world, is capable of achieving prominence in military strength also. It only requires a policy decision.

Why is Japanese people so averse to militarization. There is a reason. The present generation of Japan has grown up singing hymns to resurgence. The impressive growth and prosperity that Japan achieved after its total devastation and near annihilation during the world war are feats recorded in the glowing pages of world history. Now Japan is in the forefront of developed nations. Japanese people know well that it is where military adventurism failed that industrial adventure rendered prosperity to the nation.

Japan has the history of destroying others and destroying itself when the overpowering ambitions of the feudal lords and the extreme adventurism of the military leadership joined hands to steer the chariot of wasted desires. Japan can claim to a long military history coloured by ultra adventurism and extraordinary imagination as in a romantic drama. But the feudal-military leadership could not convert the shine of the armour to a shine on the face of the short statured Japanese people. It is for this reason that the Japanese people see the army not as a protector but as a destroyer.

For centuries the Shoguns held their sway in Japan. They prohibited any commerce with foreigners for fear that contact with the outside world would undermine the foundations of their unfettered power. In 1958 when Commodore Perry challenged them with four ships, the Shogun leadership had to surrender to the naval force.

Japan which got awakened from its self imposed isolation, started to communicate with the western world. The Meiji rule was re-established once the 14 year old Mutsuhito was crowned as Emperor. Japan was on the road to progress and prosperity and the feudal lords and the military leadership saw this as an opportunity to get their supremacy established. It is only natural that feudal lords of Japan who considered themselves as subjects of the emperors of the Sun’s race took everything under the sun as destined for them. In their view the common men were only aberrations of nature. Before the Meiji era a custom was prevalent in Japan enabling a feudal lord to behead a commoner who forgot to smile when he saw him. Bertrand Russell had jokingly said this was the secret behind the Japanese people smiling always. When prosperity and grandeur increased, the haughtiness of the feudal lords also took wings.

In 1896 the Japanese army sent to Korea returned victorious. Japan overcame China in war. When Japan defeated Russia in

1904 it became the pride of Asia and the nightmare of the world. In the First World War Japan conquered the Pacific establishments of Germany. In the Paris Peace Conference after the war, Japan participated as one of the five super powers. It became a member of the League of Nations. Japan which changed sides in the second world war challenged the military strength of America by bombing Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1944. After the initial victory, Japan was also defeated along with Germany and Italy. America shattered the morale of Japan by bombing Hiroshima on 6th August 1945.

Then came Mac Arthur. Though Mac Arthur set foot on Japan as the head of the occupying forces it was Mac Arthur who laid the foundation for developmental evolution of Japan. It would not be wrong to depict Mac Arthur as the architect of modern Japan.

The only nation that does not consider the right to maintain an army as a part of its sovereignty is Japan. The ninth article of Japanese constitution stipulates that Japanese people for ever give up the right to war. Japanese people who understood that peace has her victories no less renowned than war utilized the national gift of hard work and efficiency towards industrial development.

The heroic Samurai who always stood against modernization came forward to surrender voluntarily the special privileges and rights they enjoyed to make Japan a great threat to America and Europe in the industrial sphere.

It is possible that nations also show the natural tendency to lord over neighbours when they became prosperous. It is keeping this in mind that we have to assess the popular upsurge in Japan against militarization. The Japanese people were so emotionally charged against militarization that they were not willing even to permit their armed forces to participate in an air show or demonstration mission. How good it would be if they were a model to the rest of the world!

America has proved in Iraq and Afghanisthan that it is possible to eliminate the enemy with lightning speed using ultra- modern electronic technology through hi-tech military tactics. If Japan gets militarized it can easily develop anything and everything for the total annihilation of the world in no time. When Apollo’s son’s chariot rolled on only the skin of the African people got darkened. If the rising sun rolls the chariot, it may be possible even to destroy the face of world civilization. It is the good fortune of the era that the Japanese people themselves have taken on the task of sending the lightning against it, as Zeus did.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                50

                                                        HUNG PARLIAMENT

 

England was shaken and shattered by the demise of Queen Victoria. Young Winston Churchill, asked Sir William Hardcourt in sorrow: ‘What will happen now?’ Sir William said with a smile: “Nothing will happen.”

For the first time in its democratic history when none got majority in the elections, the people of India asked themselves, ‘What will happen now?’ Many felt that a minority government was a political absurdity destined to run on stilted legs.

The general assessment was that a coalition government was something like a tattered and patched up coat.

And like the chorus in a Greek drama the people asked in unison ‘What will happen now?’

We understood that what Sir William said was right. Nothing happened. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister. People understood that a Thrishanku parliament, or a hung parliament, also was a parliament. The only thing is that a hung Prime Minister is to behave like the African King.

Once upon a time there was a King in Africa who had three wives. One was one-eyed. Another had a single leg and the third was one-armed. But the King’s family life was by and large long and joyous. Democratic countries in the world have proved many a time that a competent premier can lead the nation and the government by accepting the logic of liking what one gets if one does not get what one likes.

 

European nations like Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Austria, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Ireland had for a long time brought to power minority governments or coalition governments. In the mid-eighties in Europe it was only in Greece and Spain that single party governments ruled.

India having adopted the Westminster form of parliamentary democracy always turns to Britain in search of a model. Britain also has a history of minority governments and coalition governments succeeding in varying measures. In the 20th century Britain had as many as 22 general elections. In five of them no party could get clear majority. Once a government that came to power with a slender majority soon was reduced to a minority government. Thus Britain was ruled by minority governments six times. Apart from this Britain had also occasion to have coalition governments four times.

Hence when minority or coalition governments become inevitable, they need not be seen as indicative of instability or a constitutional crisis. As constitutional expert Walter Bagehot has said a new constitution may not be fully effective in the hands of people brought up under an old constitution. The touchstone of its success depends on people and statesmen who do not have the hang up of the old constitution.

Just because the framers of our constitution could not envisage a hung parliament, it did not mean that a hung parliament by itself carried within it a constitutional crisis. There would be no difficulty to come to terms with a minority rule if a new perspective and new work culture emerged. We have seen this many a time in India.

Different nations have also found out their own solutions to the issue raised by hung parliaments. Sweden has a legislation containing specific directions regarding this. Instrument of Government, 1974.According to this it is the responsibility of

the Speaker to suggest an eligible person as Prime Minister. The Speaker will suggest someone for the post of Prime Minister after discussing with different parties in the parliament. Parliament has to approve the name of the Prime Minister designate within four days. The Prime Minister designate will be deemed to have the approval of parliament if not more than fifty per cent of the total membership does not vote against him.

In Denmark and Norway where minority and coalition governments have come to stay, it is an intermediary who suggests the name of the Prime Minister. And the intermediary is chosen by the King. Normally it will be a prominent national leader who is selected as the intermediary. He will hold discussions with different political parties. After making an assessment on who will be capable of forming a stable government, he will suggest the name of an eminently suitable candidate for the Prime Minister ship. In Denmark it is the intermediary who decides which all parties will be represented in the cabinet.

Denmark bears testimony to the fact that minority governments can successfully function if you have eminent leaders who can govern in national interest, above party considerations. The Venstre, a liberal party in Denmark, was in power from 1973 to 1978 though it had only 22 members in a parliament of 119.

West Germany was a nation which historically had strong and stable coalition governments. Before the Germans got unified, West Germany had only coalition governments. It had three major political parties, Social democrats, Christian Democrats and Free Democrats. All these three parties had been part of the government at some time or the other. Unlike in Denmark or Sweden, the coalitions in Germany are formed before the elections. Before the election itself the coalition would have come to an agreement on most of the issues. The parties would have already discussed and decided as to who the ministers would be and what their portfolios would be.

 

Most of the coalition governments have been in power for the full term because of the mutual understanding and unanimity of purpose. There is a very pertinent provision in the German constitution. A parliamentary motion of no confidence alone cannot remove the Prime Minister. It should also stipulate who the next Prime Minister – Chancellor – would be.

It would not be wrong to say that it is pre-emptive move to stall the tendency to pull down a ministry in a fit of temper.

But the state of affairs in Italy, a neighbouring country, is different. It is a hard task to form a government there with a coalition of small parties. The Prime Minister designate will have to be in the good books of two or three small parties and dissidents of the bigger parties. This is the reason why Italy has the dubious distinction of having the shortest lived governments in Europe.

In Israel which has nine parties, Mapam Party (which later merged into Meretz) and Likud Party severally and jointly had formed governments. They also had the system in which Prime Ministership went by rotation for specified periods.

 

For instance, when Mapam and Likud parties formed government in 1984 it was agreed that the prime ministership would go to Mapam for the first two years and then to Likud.

The last three decades of the 20th century saw twelve general elections in Canada. Six out of them had hung parliaments. The average life of the minority governments there was two years. Canada is a nation which has proved many times it is not necessary to have majority to form a good government. One can understand how foolish it is to consider coalition governments as synonymous with instability when one sees that during sixteen years out of forty Australia had only coalition governments.

Let us come back to Britain. Britain has had minority, coalition and national governments in turn. David Butler,

 

 

the psephologist and an authority in constitutional functioning,  points out in his book ‘Governing Without a Majority: Dilemmas for Hung Parliaments in Britain’ that in the 20th century Britain had single party rule only for 48 years.

The most remarkable coalition government in Britain was the national government under Sir Winston Churchill. A J P Taylor had made this assessment of that government which ruled Britain from 1940 to 1945. The government which Winston Churchill formed on May 10,1940 was not a mere coalition government. It was the only truly national government in British history. This coalition which could act as a strong government during the Second World War could not continue after the war. In the election after the war, Labour Party under Clement Atlee came to power in Britain.

In 1974 Edward Heath and later Harold Wilson headed minority governments. In 1977 the Labour Party chief Callaghan formed the government on the basis of a clear understanding with Liberal Party chief, Steele. According to the Callaghan-Steele agreement the government was bound to discuss policy matters with the Liberal Party. They also formed a six-member forum to discuss issues. It goes without saying that this helped a great deal to make exchange of views much easy. When it was necessary to have important policy initiatives, it was usual to have high level talks at the Callaghan-Stele level.

When you approach the subject of a hung parliament you have to change your preconceived notions about government. This change will be reflected in the context and work culture of the democratic institutions. The concept about the post of the Prime Minister will also undergo basic changes. The Prime Minister in a single party government will be the supreme authority. Sometimes it would go up to the level of the Prime Minister being infallible. But in a coalition, the Prime Minister cannot assume infallible authority. He can rule only according to the consensus of the coalition parties.

 

Prime Minister of a minority government cannot take important decisions ignoring the cabinet. The Prime Minister may not be able to exercise his special executive privileges even in deciding as to who the ministers would be, what the portfolios would be and how a reshuffle should be.

Even the concept of collective responsibility of the cabinet may get watered down. The coalition ministers may not hesitate to divulge minute cabinet discussions to some extent if they feel that certain controversial decisions may adversely affect their public image or the image of their party.

The possibility of a hung parliament getting stronger is a good sign. It is easier to force the party’s policies on parliament when it has a brute majority. In a hung parliament, however, one can have a legislation only if there is consensus on all the major issues. Just remember that in 1974-79 the Labour government in Britain had to face defeat in parliament on many issues. David Butler categorically stated that a government that did not have majority would have to yield to the will of parliament as never before.

The problem will get more complicated when the same department has ministers and state ministers belonging to different parties. At least some ministers will hesitate to take responsibility for all the decisions. Specially, one cannot deny the possibility that the democratic convention of ministers taking the responsibility for official acts performed by the bureaucrats may be ignored at least on some occasions. It is possible that departmental politics and search for scapegoats may increase.

Changes in the work culture of the opposition in a hung parliament will become inevitable. The opposition parties who have decided to support the government will be in a dilemma on certain issues. They may have to give up the style of blindly opposing the government in totality and evolve a style which would be based on consensus, persuasion and compromise.

 

All the issues which a hung parliament raises cannot be fully met through legislation or official procedures. Many a time the approach should be to take everything in its stride. Somehow the Indian constitution has not incorporated any provision envisaging the possibility of a hung parliament. Now that hung parliaments and coalition ministries have come to stay, we should think in terms of suitable amendments to the constitution.

Some of the suggestions which can be considered are:

1. A provision should be made in law for the appointment of an intermediary, as in the case of countries like Sweden, Denmark and Italy, to suggest a person for Prime Ministership on the basis of consensus.

2. As in Norway, there should be a provision in the constitution that once a parliament has been constituted it can be prorogued only after its full term. Such a provision could help the government to go forward on the basis of consensus and agreement.

3. As in the erstwhile West Germany it should be stipulated that once parliament expresses its lack of confidence in a government it should also specify who the next Prime Minister should be.

4. Before assuming power, the coalition partners should come to an understanding among themselves on important national issues and make their stand public. This would help to prevent the tendency of the coalition parties to pull down the government on trivial issues.

5. When the parties who are almost equal in strength join together to form government, the Prime Minister ship should be divided between them for specific periods, as is done in Israel.

6. Except such important matters like Budget or the address of the President, even if the votes turn against the government on other matters, this should not be treated as a No Confidence vote.

7. Implement electoral reforms. Once you accept hung parliament and coalitions as political realities, it is better to adopt the concept of proportional representation.

Accepting the French and the Japanese models also deserve consideration. In France only such candidates can become members of legislature who have got more than fifty per cent of the votes polled. In Japan fifty per cent of the seats are filled through elections and the remainder is filled by parties in proportion to the votes they polled.

What makes democracy dynamic is its ability to rise to the occasion to untie the untimely knots that have been put up to restrain it. We may consider hung parliament as an unexpected blessing in disguise if we learn from the lessons of history and make amends in consonance with our tradition and culture. Anyway, people get the government they deserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

51

COPY CAT CHILDREN

 

We Indians have an obvious preference for the male child as the first offspring of a couple. And the child should not only be male, but should also look like his father. In song and story that sentiment may have takers. But how boringly repetitive the society would be if all the children grew up to become carbon copies of their father or mother! Variety being the spice of life, the purpose of creation is not at all to make clones of people.

Seeing the mad rush of new gen parents one would feel that their desire is not to have children but to have robots as their progeny –  a crop of little monkeys that jumped according to their commands. The number of mothers insisting on getting the best of everything for their children is legion. I feel pity for nervous, fidgety mothers waiting impatiently outside examination halls, causing tension not only for themselves but also for their children. There is tension in every home having school going children. Maths is tough for my son. English is easy. ‘I am now searching for a good tuition master’, my colleague once said. In which class is your son studying, I asked in full sympathy. First standard, was her reply. I felt like laughing but did not show it on my face. The tension and anxiety that grip parents have gone viral in all schools in India today. The parents have decided that their children, like horses with their blinkers in place, should move only in the direction they desired. This is equal to barring the inevitability of the laws of nature. Which path the children will take is their

responsibility too. It is their innate wisdom and the specialties of their character that help them determine whether they should take the path of Abraham or Lot, Cain or Abel. If an attempt is made to create robots out of them, it will naturally lead to tension and personality aberrations.

Teachers also abet such aberrations to a certain extent. At least some teachers are adamant that the students should follow the path prepared by them. In Germany an exasperated teacher once told a student ‘you are an ignoramus in arithmetic. You would never get anywhere in life.’ We know who this student was. Albert Einstein who developed the theory of relativity. In England one student who studied in local grammar schools and indulged in poaching had to run away from home. The world saw him later as William Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist ever. Winston Churchill was written off by teachers as an imbecile. Abraham Lincoln, Edison, Charlie Chaplin, all are famous names. But none of them had completed education in the expected manner. If they had toed the line drawn by their parents, they would never have come to the positions they occupied in later life. None should draw lines for anyone. There are enough dos and don’ts drawn by society and tradition.

Emancipation of the hapless children who are forced to race from one tuition to another has become the need of the times. It is essential to sustain and promote creativity among the children. When the children, who are to grow up drawing lessons from the society in an atmosphere of give and take, are reduced to confine themselves to the cocoons created by their parents, society and culture also get cloistered. This innate characteristic of nuclear families is having a bearing on human psyche as well. For the children of the past, the very mention of the word vacation was exhilarating. Time for play and games with the friends and cousins. What they lose now is the time to jump into the river to bathe, to stone down golden fruits from the mango tree, to walk

behind the temple oracle as he makes his rounds, to tap along with the drum beats during temple processions, to take part in the candlelight march of the church, to help to make up the crib during Christmas, to tell tales and to recite poems, see skits and indulge in pranks without being caught and to save the skin when caught.

I remember seeing a skit in my schooldays once. Think it was written by some neighborhood boys during the summer vacation and presented with the help of a teacher.

Scene-I. A young husband and wife are sitting in the foyer of their home and pleasantly talking. Then they see the mother-in- law coming from afar. To avoid her they fake a domestic quarrel. The husband appears to be in an angry mood and slaps his wife on her cheek. The wife starts moaning in full throated ease. Seeing that the time is not good for her visit, the mother-in-law quietly leaves the place.

Scene-II. Happy that the mother-in-law is gone, the husband says: ‘See, how I slapped you without touching you?’ A victorious wife beams: Heard how I wailed without getting hurt?’

In comes the mother-in-law asking with a mischievous smile: Saw how I tarried without leaving?’

Isn’t it true that such farces and skits give much more creative fun than the ready-made humour of the television programmes? When we watch television keeping only our eyes and ears open, what we really do is to shut down with a bang all doors to creativity.

It was not at all a habit in the distant past, especially in the villages, to pressurize the children in the manner of pressure - ripening of fruits. Once the children were enrolled in schools the entire responsibility for their studies was vested with the teachers. The teachers considered even a minor lapse on their part as a major shortcoming in the discharge of their duties. The parents did not bother much about their children except giving them an

occasional chastisement. Their attitude was not to unduly worry about anything and to take things in their stride. Like that old farmer of Malabar. Once a black steed ran into his farm. It was beautiful, sinewy, well groomed. The villagers congratulated the farmer on his good fortune and said the horse must be worth several thousand rupees. The farmer was indifferent. Well, I do not know, he said ambivalently. After a few days the horse ran away in the same manner as it had come in. The villagers were sorry for the farmer. You could have sold it then itself. If so, you would not have incurred such a great loss, they said. The farmer’s refrain was the same. Well, I do not know. A few days later the horse returned to the farm, bringing with it ten other beautiful steeds. The villagers again congratulated him, saying it was a good thing that he did not sell the first horse. But the farmer’s reply was the same.

Then the ruler of the land, Zamorin, heard about the steeds and came forward to buy them at the rate of one hundred sovereigns per steed, but the farmer turned down the offer. The villagers called him a fool, but his refrain was unchanged. Well, I do not know.

One day the farmer’s son fell down from a horse and fractured his leg. The villagers found fault with the farmer saying if he had sold the steeds to the Zamorin this misfortune would not have befallen him. But the farmer was non-committal. Well, I do not know.

Not much later Tipu Sultan, the Mysore Tiger, began his ransacking of Malabar. The ruler of the land then conscripted all able-bodied youth to the army. Naturally the farmer’s son was spared because of his fracture. When the villagers congratulated the farmer, exclaiming ‘How lucky you are’ his response was the same: “Well, I do not know.”

 

We should realize that inevitability and unexpected developments are part of nature’s interminable cycle. It is only natural that there are turns and twists and rise and fall in the growth pattern of children. Parents should not follow the children like shadows to prevent the inevitable. Nor is it possible to make the children your shadow. Then why this meaningless shadow play? Fretful mothers should ponder over this and find an answer themselves. Leave the children alone. Do not assume that they will go astray if they are outside your ken even once. Fretting mothers too were children once. Did they go astray?

 

 

52

WHEN THE SLUM EXPANDS

 

Two tragic incidents, both in Europe. One was in London. A truck came to a stop at a check post. The cops examined the documents. Searched for any psychotropic drug. When they were certain that the truck was empty, they let it go. As it was about to leave a policeman tapped the truck with his baton and asked jocularly ‘you all ok?’ There was an unexpected reply from inside the truck. ‘ok no problem,’ said a man. The policemen opened the truck only to find not less than 30 illegal immigrants holed up inside. They were detained and sent to jail.

Scene two: Spain. It was with sharp barbed wire fencing that Spain marked its border with Morocco. Hundreds of Africans were grouped on the Moroccan side of the fence. Suddenly they erupt, like a turbulent mountain river, and try to cross the fence over to Spain. Some of them got entangled in the razor-sharp barbed wire, succumbing to instant, bleeding death. Some were shot dead by soldiers. In the midst of it all many succeed in scaling the fence. At last, the soldiers themselves were fed up. Well, bullets can’t stop poverty.

As a member of an international mission when one tried to study the housing problems in Europe one came up with many disturbing realities. There was a rapid rise in migration of people to Europe. The eagerness of starving millions from poor countries to crossover to Europe at any cost is driving them to undertake hazardous adventures. According to official statistics there is

a steep increase in the number of legal immigrants to affluent nations of the European Union. The flow of illegal immigrants is another disturbing reality.

For these hapless people who are driven by poverty in their native lands to seek employment abroad, it is mostly a case of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The reason is that unemployment is going up in leaps and bounds in Europe as well. In Germany the rate of unemployment was eleven and a half per cent. In France it was ten per cent while in Britain the situation was slightly better. In European Union as a whole the unemployment rate was nine per cent.

That the soaring unemployment and illegal migration, together with the exorbitant rise in the cost of land and buildings were turning many urban areas into hellish habitation centres was evident in the cities of Paris, Rome, London, Lisbon and Stockholm. The people of European Union take pride in their uncompromising stand on human rights issues but instances are many in their country of gross human rights violations that serve as eye openers for them.

Paris is a city where the beauty of the landscape is enhanced by imposing palaces and eye-catching mansions. It is the centre of world fashion. Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower are symbols of every Parisian’s pride. They claim that the most beautiful mansions in the world are in their city. The claim is not without substance either. But what happened in recent times was something that gave a harsh blow to the conscience of Paris. In a crowded slum housing immigrants from West Africa, as many as forty-eight people were burnt to death in a devastating fire.        The immigrants’ huts were not provided with water or power by the civic authorities and the residents had, therefore, resorted to their own perilous ways of wiring to get electricity. But it was too late when the society woke up to their predicament. In London

 

 

the conscience of the society was stirred when many Chinese immigrants lost their lives in a similar tragedy.

It was not only natural calamities and accidents that plagued the miserable immigrants, they were also subjected to severe forms of cruelty by criminals. In every city there was organized mafia that exploited the immigrants by forcing them to work at abysmally low wages. In Germany and Belgium instances are many of criminal gangs raiding the immigrants’ slums and looting them. ‘There is no justification whatsoever for people living in such conditions in Europe in the 21st century,’ said Joachim Soares, Director of the Abbe Pierre Foundation, a charity focused on housing for the underprivileged. The general public opinion in Europe also was the same. He saw this as the failure of the affluent community in effectively tackling the problems raised by globalization.

European nations too realized that this was something that had to be taken up as a challenge. But a solution to the problem was not easy to find. The main reason was the skyrocketing prices of houses and flats. During the last five years the annual rate of increase in this regard was seven per cent. The cost escalation was the severest in France and Italy.

France with a population of sixty million was spending about 1.9 per cent of its gross national income on housing for the weaker sections. The quality of construction of these houses was comparatively good. But this was not sufficient to meet the increasing demand for housing with the result that slums were proliferating everywhere. Immigrants comprised one third of the applicants for free housing. The authorities are not sure when these poor people could be provided with homes.

The prime destinations of the immigrants now are Spain, Greece and Italy. That is because it is considered easy in these countries to get permanent residentship in the European Union. Most of the immigrants are from Africa. In Italy the number of

 

immigrants who came through legal channels itself was about 1.3 million. No one could guess the number of illegal immigrants to that country.

Italy does not have any centralised housing project to deal with this situation. Though the provincial governments try to solve the housing problems in their own way, the gravity of the problem is such that these efforts are far from satisfactory. In the words of Massimo Pasquini, head of Italy’s largest tenants’ association, “The problem in Italy is dramatic and even worse for immigrants.”

In Rome alone there are about twenty-seven thousand families without a shelter. In Milan the number of the houseless is more than twenty thousand. In Milan, Rome and Turin there is a rapid burgeoning of squatters along the railway tracks.

Bermondsey is a small town in Britain, forming part of the London Borough of Southwark. In the last decade there was a

15.5 per cent increase in the number of immigrants in that town. Immigrants now constitute more than twenty-five per cent of the town’s population.

There is fear in Britain that the immigrants’ problem might turn into a social catastrophe. They seriously view the possibility of unrest on account of friction between the haves and the have- nots. There is also the worry that the ghetto culture that was considered a thing of the past might make a comeback. Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, has said they were seriously considering how to bring the immigrants into the mainstream of the society.

The Scandinavian nation of Sweden is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Though viewed generally as a land of affluence, one thing was evident from a visit to that country’s capital Stockholm. Even here slums were proliferating. Near Stockholm is the suburban town Fittja, with several

multi-storey apartment buildings and somewhat clean surroundings. But Fittja is known as a ‘Swedish Slum.’ These buildings were constructed to house the immigrants and the poor. Unemployed and living in segregation from the mainstream society, the people of these settlements naturally feel a sense of helplessness and insecurity. What is important is that of late this has started creating new social tensions for Sweden.

When slums mushroom everywhere in the world irrespective of whether it is a rich nation or poor nation, it may be said that the only world city with a difference is Berlin. Its problem is that there is a surplus of accommodation. When there was an economic slowdown and a rise in unemployment, the government started construction of many buildings mainly to give jobs to the workers. Now there are not enough people to live in those buildings.

If urbanization is unavoidable, the proliferation of slums will continue to cause anxiety. We cannot simply dismiss slums as a festering wound of the cities. A major part of city life is facilitated by the people of the slums. Therefore, the planners and administrators who help create slums have necessarily to find ways for slum improvement also.

It has been accepted by human rights activists and administrators in Europe that driving the immigrants away or demolishing the slums is not the answer to this problem.

One day a little squirrel strayed into a neighbour’s house. It was caught and put in a mouse-trap which gradually became its home. The children of the house were happy to feed it regularly and play with it. One day the squirrel somehow escaped from its confinement, plunging the children into great sorrow. They missed it and its playfulness. Then there was a surprise after a week. The squirrel returned to its home, reviving days of gaiety and merriment for the kids. It goes only to prove that home means shelter. It does not matter whether it is a hut or a mansion. Every

slum dweller is like this little squirrel. He will value the shelter provided by his home, wherever it is, in his country or in an alien land.

Rulers and their opponents who waste their time in petty political feuds and intrigues have to jointly make an effort to find out the causes for the mushrooming of slums and the way to solve the problems raised by them or else, as Rousseau said, our cities will turn out to be ‘graveyards of humanity.’

 

 

53

FLYING IN WITH NECTAR AND HOPE

 

That was a contest no youth could miss. The King of Nepal made a proclamation that his daughter will be given in marriage to that valiant youth who holds a raging bull by its horns and subdues it. Three great bulls, fretting, fuming and intimidating, will be released from their leashes one after the other. As they race down the path menacingly, the contestant has to face them, stop one by holding its horns and then subdue it.

No joke this, as it requires not only very strong physique, but also superb spirit, fortitude, will power. In other words, True grit.

Many dared, many who were hardy, handsome and hopeful. But the very appearance of the huge bulls that came their way, snorting and stomping, was enough to throw fright into their hearts. They avoided the first bull, thinking they could handle the next. But the second one was mightier and more menacing. They naturally let it go, waiting for the third and final bull. As it came they pounced on it but found to their dismay that it had no horns.

But the youth who came last was luckier. Mustering all his strength, he jumped in front of the first bull and caught it by its horns. And he got the Princess as his booty.

The King was certain of one thing. There was danger lurking at every nook and cranny of his kingdom of craggy peaks and snow covered mountains. No one can say when and in what form

catastrophe would strike. Only those who had the grit to face the catastrophe headlong as and when it came would be able to survive in his country. And safeguard its people.

 

We have a hardy group of people who are skilled, trained and conditioned to jump in front of danger and hold it by its horns, in a bid to provide relief and succor to people. The brave hearts of the Indian Air Force. In mountains or valleys, jungles or the high seas they fly in on missions of rescue and relief for the people caught in natural disasters or man-made accidents. They are known differently as Flying Angels, Sea Vultures, Himalayan Dragons or Sky Devils depending on the nature of their work. Pledged to save lives even while endangering their own, the achievements made by these people through self-less service and sacrifice are spectacular.

It was a chance reading of official records of the Air Force about the Kirti Chakra awarded by President APJ Abdul Kalam that prompted me to know more about Wing Commander Girish Kumar. My curiosity was enhanced when I learnt that he was the son-in-law of popular Malayalam actor and former Air Force Officer MG Soman.

Even when very young, Girish had the courage the tenacity and the presence of mind to air lift to safety as many as ten people caught in heavy snowfall in inaccessible places in Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.

The first scene was the village Hanse in Laholspithi in Himachal Pradesh. Continuous heavy snowfall had covered the entire village in a thick carpet of snow. A majority of the local residents had already left the village to seek shelter elsewhere. In the midst of such inclement weather and inhospitable terrain, a village woman gave birth to a girl. Her condition was rather critical and it was felt that she would not survive if she is not immediately rushed to a hospital. The newborn’s condition also was equally precarious.

Jawans who were camping in the village heard about this and sent a message to the Air Force Station at the distant Sharanpur. Two youngsters there were returning home after duty and one of them got the urgent, crisp message. Rush to a Himachal village, rescue a woman and child in danger and rush them to hospital in Chandigarh.

The message was received by Sqn Ldr Girish Kumar. What followed was an unforgettable adventure. Girish saw that above him was the deep blue sky below him only an unending expanse of snow. It was impossible to gauge direction from landmarks as no landmark was visible. There was only a sheet of snow below. A helicopter pilot usually banks of the horizon to have a bearing on his directions. But even the horizon was blurred because of the snow. His guide then was only his own skill and his presence of mind. At times the aircraft would shudder because of the increase or decrease of atmospheric pressure, showing that the power of the machine was indeed meaningless in the face of the might of the natural forces. It was not possible for the pilot to gauge the altitude of the helicopter or know whether the ground was level enough for landing. One cannot expect helipads in accident sites in snow-covered mountains. Even when landing, there was the danger of sudden melting of the snow, putting both the aircraft and the pilot in jeopardy. That was an unenviable situation of the rescuer himself needing rescue. What an experienced pilot would do in such circumstances was to fly low, hover over a place for some time and with air blast from the rotor blades test the firmness and level of the ground chosen for landing. If he was confident that the ground was safe, he would land. The engine would not be switched off. He would locate the person in danger, help him on to a stretcher and bring him to the helicopter. He should give first aid to the person before rushing him to the hospital. All this has to be done with the realization that the life of a person was totally dependent on his skill of flying, his presence of mind and his sense of dedication. The only reward he would get would be the feeling of sweet satisfaction that he was able to save a life.

Even before he was able to savour the satisfaction of saving the lives of a mother and child in a Himachal village, Girish Kumar was called upon more such adventure missions one after the other. An Australian couple had got into trouble at the Shinkulla pass on their way from Manali to Ladakh’s capital Leh. In that inhospitable terrain the husband developed breathing trouble and had to be airlifted to hospital. Since two people had to be rescued the Air force sent two helicopters. When he completed his mission after lifting the hefty Australian to the helicopter and rushing him to hospital, Girish Kumar was proud of the Air Force.

When the President presented him the Vayu Sena Medal, saying ‘You are the nation’s pride,’ Girish Kumar was dreaming of more adventures.

 

His wife Sindhu had seen him unhappy only after one such adventure mission. Six boys had gone for trekking and mountaineering at Maniharan in the Himalayas known for hot springs. There was snowfall on the way and one of them slipped and fell to his death. His friends managed to retrieve his body and kept it at a reclining posture at a place and marked the place for the rescuers. They then managed to reach the next army camp. When he received instructions from the Air Force to retrieve the body, Girish Kumar rushed to the place along with one of the boys. The signs left by the boys were all there but the body was missing. How? Perhaps it may be due to Himalayan bears or tigers of the snow mountains. Sindhu says that failure of this mission still haunts Girish Kumar as an ache he cannot overcome.

 

 

There is a breed of dogs which appear as godsend rescuers before people in danger in snow mountains. The St Bernard. Their area of operation is the Alps mountain range. With a bag containing milk and bread suspended from their collar, they search out accident victims in the inhospitable terrain,

appearing before them as rescuers sent by God. The number of people rescued by them is legion. One among the famous breed was a dog named Barry. He had saved the lives of as many as forty people in danger. But as tragedy would have it, when he was in yet another rescue mission, a soldier he was trying to rescue mistook him for a wolf and shot him dead. One can visualize the St Bernard Dogs of the Alps region and the Flying Angels of the Himalayas bowing to each other at the altar of selfless service.

 

 

 

 

54

COLLATERAL DAMAGE?

 

They used to watch television whenever they got a chance. The cat and the mouse in that house. Their favourite was ‘Tom and Jerry’ and they were as fascinated by it as the children of the house were. And the mouse learnt a cardinal lesson from watching the escapades of Jerry and how he outwitted Tom time and again.  Jerry showed that the best way to save his life was to run as fast as he could away from the menacing hulk of Tom.

And during a commercial break the mouse also saw something that could be of great help to him in his fight for, or rather flight for, survival. Roller skates. The wheeled board could take him faster away from his predatorial rival, much faster than his feeble limbs could. He desperately needed one.

After death both the mouse and the cat reached heaven. One day God appeared before the mouse and asked him and other mice with him what boon they wanted. The mouse did not have to think twice. He knew what was good for the mice: roller- skates. God benignly gave them skate-boards.

After a month God appeared before the cats. What boon did they want to make life in heaven more comfortable? They did not want any. The boon granted a month ago without their asking was itself so satisfying, so sumptuous. What boon, God was confused. ‘For one month now our food comes to us on roller skates,’ they told him.

The hapless mice who got into the advertisement trap had mistakenly thought that what they wanted was roller- skates. It was too late when they realized that the skate-boards would only speed up their journey into disaster.

Advertisement traps are often death traps. There was once a drug widely touted as a ‘completely safe’ tranquilizer for pregnant women, a drug that is equally effective in treating morning sickness—Thalidomide. Backed by an advertisement blitzkrieg, the drug soon became one of Europe’s most widely used over- the-counter drug for the pregnant. But within a few years, its tragic effects in the form of severe birth defects manifested in several countries. Children were born with shortened, absent or flipper- like limbs.  By the time the world of science realized this, over ten thousand severely deformed children had been born.

It was not yesterday or the day before that man became a prey to the advertisement traps. It began from the time of the first man himself. It was Satan who enticed Eve to believe that eating the forbidden fruit would make her equal to God. Despite the bans imposed by God, it was the word of the advertiser in Satan that Eve believed. The ad was effective. Eve not only ate the forbidden fruit but made Adam too partake of it.

The style and the tactic of present day advertisers are also not dissimilar. Convince the women and entice them. Men are sure to follow.

This is pardonable, but more deleterious is the way children are misled by advertisements. The situation has come to such a pass that it is now clear that this trend would lead the coming generation to sheer disaster. Realising the seriousness of the issue, several nations have come up with legislations barring advertisements that influence children.

In Australia a mass movement has also come up against advertisements that tend to lead children astray. Sweden and

Norway have barred advertisements on junk food that target children. Canada also has similar restrictions in force. In the US the people are now concerned about the eating habits that turn children plump. The Consumer International has brought out a report on a consumer survey conducted in thirteen countries including the US, Britain, France, Germany, Greece and Sweden. Its important findings should serve as an eye opener. It found that a majority of television advertisements centred on junk food for the children. This was the highest in Britain where an average of 17 such advertisements were aired in one hour. As high as 95 per cent of the advertisements promoted fatty food articles. The advertisers were only interested in increasing profit and least concerned with the prospect of making children obese. The survey found that the largest number of advertisements targeting children came from the multinational chain McDonald’s.

McDonald’s also evolved a new advertisement formula of offering a ‘free gift’ in return for the purchase of its goods. Under its ‘Happy Meal’ project a cheap toy is offered as gift for the purchase of a high-end food packet. Children would press their parents to buy this costly food item if only to get that toy. As forty per cent of its profits come from the Happy Meal products, one can understand why McDonald’s is luring children with such toys.

Many are the problems created by ads squeezed in intermittently during children’s TV programmes. When children insist on getting free gifts offered in the ads, the parents are naturally uncomfortable as they are a drain on their resources. There is a spin toy that entices children—Beyblade. When this became a hit with children its shape and style underwent a sea change. Its price also shot up. When the child insists on getting it, the parents have to succumb. If it is not bought the child would bring the house down. In most houses this is a regular phenomenon.

 

Cheetos is a snack food that children like. A shopkeeper in town said it was in such great demand that the stocks get sold out as soon as they come. The reason is simple. The packets contain ‘free’ tattoos and Tazos that children like.

Most foodstuffs promoted through advertisements are harmful for children.

It is in England which used to have surfeit of such advertisements that the opposition to them became more vocal and virulent. The bishop of St Albans, Christopher Herbert, once told the House of Lords that the society was to be blamed for treating children as mere commodities. ‘We are turning out fat, gluttonous children devoid of any spiritual spark,’ he regretted and asked if this was the way the elders had to deal with the children.  Isn’t it true that his criticism is relevant to contemporary India too?

Though there is ban on advertisements on cigarettes and liquor, our visual media have no qualms in depicting smoking and drinking as symbols of prestige and pleasure, forgetting that they are sending wrong and warped signals that vitiate children’s minds and mislead a whole new generation. Also, seeing violence and force in the television programmes, can the children be blamed if they think that these are the means to solve issues.

Though parents are aware of all this, there is no attempt at home to control TV watching by children. There are parents who entice children to do homework promising to permit them more time to watch cartoons on TV. There are also parents who provide a television set in the children’s room and spend their time watching TV serials in another room. Mothers have to realize that only if they give love and affection and tenderness to their children would motherhood really blossom and spread its fragrance all around.

There was an anecdote mentioned in a memoir of an ornithologist. A colourful bird once came to the garden of

one man. One of its wings was broken. He took it in his hands, nursed it and after treating its wound let it free in his garden. Since it was difficult for it to fly, the bird wobbled in and out of the house. If he called it, it would slowly walk up to him and if rice was thrown in front of it, the bird would eat them. This continued for quite some time.

In course of time new wings grew and the bird was able to fly.

And one day it flew away in the company of other birds.

Seasons changed. Once migratory birds came that side. She was also in that large group. She came to the old house, wobbled here and there, responded to calls by its name, ate rice given to her. This continued for years. She came back once every year, during the next forty years.

This bird teaches us a lesson. We will get love only if we give love. For mothers who pawn their children before TV sets to mind their own business elsewhere, is there anything to be learnt from this? If there is, let them surely learn.

 

 

 

 

55

BEHIND ONAM

 

In the past the desire was to spend Onam in the ancestral home, where the entire family assembled every year, unfailingly, to celebrate the festival. That was the practice when mother was alive. Subsequently the insistence was on being in Kerala during Onam. Now, as years fall off as withering petals of time, that practice also is given the go by. Onam is often spent outside the state. In Mumbai perhaps, or in Delhi or sometimes abroad.

On one occasion Onam was celebrated in an Air India flight to New York. Air India played a thoughtful host, providing the passengers with a delectable Onam feast. The air hostesses spread out the traditional Onam fare, including the gastronomical delight, palada pradhaman, on plantain leaves placed on plates.

As this was being done there was a commotion at the back of the plane. A white woman seated there was arguing with an air hostess. She doesn’t like the dark skinned passenger next to her. Either she or the darkie should be shifted to another seat. Even as the other passengers were surprised at this intolerant outburst, the air hostess tried to pacify the lady saying she would speak to the captain and find a way out. She went to the pilot’s cabin and returned after some time. She told the lady that the captain agreed that a passenger should not be made to travel with a co-passenger she did not like. But there was a small problem. There was no vacant seat in the Economy Class. Seats were available only in the Business Class and First Class.

 

In the normal circumstances no one from the Economy Class would be permitted in the upper classes. But in view of the objections raised by the lady, the captain has decided to give an upgrade to First Class. Not to the lady but to the other passenger.

There was a standing ovation from the other passengers as the air hostess made this announcement.

It was a strange coincidence that the Onam concept of equality of all men was being put to practice in a such a quirky fashion thousands of feet above the Atlantic. But, does it not reveal the universality of the Onam concept?

I told the Malayalee passenger next to me that one should be thankful to the white lady for unintentionally helping to spread the message of Onam in such an alien situation.   He said it was indeed true that the message of Onam often got manifested in strange situations and unforeseen circumstances. He narrated an event that took place in an airport in Africa.

The city was devastated by a flood and there was an unprecedented rush at the airport with people trying to escape the fury of the flood waters. There was a long queue at the counter of the airlines. As the people patiently waited a burly white man rushed in, ignoring the queue, and came up to the front. The girl at the counter politely asked him to go to the end of the queue. He did not like it and what followed was an outburst. Menacingly looking at the girl, he shouted: ‘Do you know who I am?’ The girl did not respond but when the man asked the question a couple of times, she made an announcement over the public address system. “A man in front of me has forgotten who he is. He asks me if I know who he is. It will be a great service if anyone can tell him who he is.” There was an outburst of laughter all around, but the man was not amused. He was angrier. He shouted at the girl and said he would break her jaw. The girl was unperturbed. “To do that also, you will have to stand in the queue,” she said quietly. This time the man too laughed, easing the tension.

It is easy to say that all men are created equal, but very difficult to copy that into life. The reason is the difficulty to overcome limits of one’s selfishness. One should be able to surpass such limitations. But only people whose minds are as high as the sky will be able to accomplish that. Mahabali was able to do it. That is the reason why he stands taller than the heavens even when kicked down to the netherworld. Mahabali was born in the Asura race. There is no goodness or virtue attached to the Asura psyche. Nor does anyone expect such qualities in an Asura. But this Asura emperor could surpass such limitations and was able to imbibe the lofty qualities of the Devas. There were people who had asked can anything good come out of Nazareth. Similarly, the Devas were wrong to think that no goodness would come out of Asuras. Here is an Asura who has surpassed the limitations of Asuras to rise to the level of Gods, perhaps beyond that. He has become the high priest in the temple of goodness and truth. He was not unaware that the third step of Vamana was a step towards his doom. It is his realization that truth is more valuable than his life that prompted him to lower his head to receive that fatal third step. In the matter of goodness even Dharmaputra, the embodiment of goodness, pales into insignificance before this Asura emperor.

 

Let us go to the house of wax in the Mahabharata. Kunti and her sons were living there. Vidura was aware that the imposing palace made by Duryodhana for the stay of the Pandavas was made of wax. And through Vidura, Dharmaputra also knew this. Vidura had even constructed a tunnel for their escape. On that fateful day a woman and her five sons came there seeking alms and food. They had their food and were sleeping. When Kunti and her sons escaped at the time of the fire in the palace, the hapless mendicant woman and her sons perished. This episode

only reveals a great flaw in the character of Dharmaputra the son of Dharmad.   Were not the Pandavas deliberately causing the death of a woman and her five children to mislead Duryodhana into believing that Kunti and her five sons were killed in the palace. Kunti too was aware of this. This only goes to prove that the shining bright specimens of Dharma were clearly overshadowed by dark clouds of selfishness.

Look at Mahabali sitting with his bowed head in front of Vamana, waiting for that deceitful third step. Sukracharya was aware of this deceit and had unsuccessfully tried to prevent it. But Mahabali insisted on keeping his word and upholding truth, even if it meant his own exile to the netherworld. It is only because of this singular quality that Mahabali was able to surpass the limitations imposed by his circumstances and rise to the level of godhead. Even though pushed down to the netherworld he still remains as a beacon of dharma that lights up the entire universe.

The most important lesson taught by Onam is also that with determination and doggedness, with willpower and righteousness, it is possible to overcome limitations imposed by circumstances. The lesson that Onam has given is that truth has no substitute but truth. The path to truth is straight and narrow. Truth is sweet and truth is bright. Truth is forever. Truth is immortal.

 

 

 

56

PLAYING WITH FIRE

 

Tsunami came and went, leaving in its wake a vast trail of devastation, making us aware of the invincibility of natural forces.

A similar, or a greater tragedy, is awaiting us in the forests.

Though we are not aware of its potential to cause disaster.

At times we come across disastrous forest fires. Even our scriptures are full of descriptions of the enormity and the monstrosity of such conflagrations. Only six creatures managed to escape the annihilation caused by the fire in the Khandava forest. Teacher architect of the Asuras, Mayan, serpent king Thakshaka’s son Aswasenan and four Sarangaka birds, offspring of Sage Mandapala who was cursed to turn into a bird.

The truth is that if a forest fire breaks out anywhere in our land, there is no effective mechanism to contain it. What we claim to be our safeguards against fire are far too inadequate to deal with a serious mishap.

But we can do one thing. We can try to avert sparking of forest fires. This will become clearer when we find out the sources of forest fires.

What is usually described as a common cause of forest fires is the play of natural forces itself. Fires can be sparked by lightning and thunder. When dry bamboo branches rub against each other in wind, it is possible that sparks fly out. About thirty per cent of forest fires are said to have its genesis in lightning and thunder.

 

 

But in our forests in summer months, it is man’s negligence or indifference or deliberate mischief that causes a conflagration. Sometimes people who have differences with the forest staff turn incendiary in their retaliation. They cause a forest fire. A savage form of retaliation like the destruction of public transport by people venting their anger at the government. Some clever thieves cut and remove forest timber and then set fire to the tree stubs in a bid to destroy evidence. It is not their concern to which direction the fire spreads.

My stint as Principal Secretary, Forest and Wildlife, has given me some insight into the ways of the wild. Our belief is that hunting of wild animals has been banned. There are also laws in force to that effect. But people who go into the deep forests for the purpose of hunting is not few and far between. They usually raise camp fires in a bid to ward off attacks by animals.

Sometimes they even set fire to forests deliberately in a bid to scare away the animals. There is also a trick done by those who go to forests to cut bamboo and reeds. Setting fire to the bamboo will help remove the thorns, making it easy for cutting. Cattle grazers who frequent forests set fire to dry grasslands to help the growth of fresh grass for future grazing. Similarly, those trying to collect forest honey, use fire to scare the bees away.

It is man himself who knowingly or unknowingly cause minor forest fires that turn into major conflagrations. Those responsible for this do not understand the enormity of the loss caused by them to the society in their bid to make a small gain for themselves. It takes only a few hours for the burning down of huge trees that took several decades to reach that stage. Forest fires also deal a heavy blow to the natural process of forest rejuvenation. It is during summer months that the fruits of the trees become ripe. If there is a forest fire during that period, seeds and seedlings get perished, stalling the rejuvenation process.

 

 

The remnants of the dead trees and the heavy undergrowth of the forests are effective shields against soil erosion. When they are reduced to ashes there is an aggravation of soil erosion.

During my early school days, I used to pass a huge, old anjili tree on the wayside. The children liked it immensely and loved to spend some time beneath its sprawling foliage. Some of the boys who were daring enough would sometimes climb the tree and shake its branches to make its succulent fruits fall down. This year when I went home I saw that the anjili tree had disappeared. I learnt that it was sold in auction by the government for a large sum. Thirty-five thousand rupees. I felt sad. I remembered reading somewhere about a study by researchers of the Calcutta University on the benefits received by the society from a 50 year old tree.

(The amounts in lakhs of rupees)

 

Timber and firewood                                       0.05

Oxygen emitted to the atmosphere                    2.50

Conservation of water                                               3.00

Prevention of atmospheric pollution                    5.00

Wildlife protection                                                     2.50

Nitrogen cycle                                                          0.20

Soil conservation and fertility increase                 2.50

 

The total is Rs. 16.75 lakh. Of this the value of timber and firewood is negligible.

Considering this it will be seen that the enormity of the loss caused to the society and the people by the depredators of forest fires is far beyond market estimates.

We do not realize the extent of devastation suffered by wild animals and birds in forest fires. When birds’ eggs and hatchlings get perished in fire the very balance of the environment is adversely affected. Large tracts of our evergreen and deciduous forests had been turned into mere grasslands on account of frequent forest fires. When thick forests turn into barren waste lands what we are deprived of is the enchanting spell of the wild and the beauty of the evergreens.

It is imperative that the conscience of the society is roused against forest fires. Children should be made aware from early days about the adverse impact of conflagrations in the forest on the society at large. We should be able to effectively utilize the audio-visual media for this purpose. It should also be possible for us to ban entry of people into the forests during summer months when the possibilities of fire havoc are more. Similarly, there should be a ban on cattle grazing in the forests during the dry season so as to avoid the tendency of the people involved to set fire to dry grasslands. There is no dearth of law to impose severe punishment for causing forest fires. The reality is that no one is interested in enforcing it.

What is important is the ability to detect the onset of forest fires as it would help take immediate counter measures. But we do not have the technological set up needed for this. In many developed nations there are specially equipped aircraft that can detect forest fires sparked by lightning and thunder. Such gadgets are not available for our forest protection staff. All they have are watchers and watch towers. During the summer season watchers would roam the forests to see if there is any outbreak of fire anywhere. But there is a limit to what a watcher, equipped with a bamboo pole, can do in such inhospitable wilderness habitated by creepers, crawlers and predators.

We use water and soil to fight forest fires. If the fire is mild, the attempt is to beat it out with branches of trees and plants.

The Latin proverb Similia Similibus Curantur (likes are cured by likes), fire from the opposite direction is used to extinguish a conflagration.

In developed nations aircrafts are used to shower bombs that put out wild fires. What the bombs contain are water and fire extinguishing chemicals.

We cannot dismiss forests casually as they sustain our land. It required a tsunami to make the people understand that our land can survive only if we grow forest in it. In the Andamans and Tamil Nadu the mangroves served as effective bulwarks against the gigantic waves. When the forest thief and the city thief are hand in hand for more denudation of the forests, they should remember that what they rob is the life breath of their own children and grandchildren. We have not inherited this universe from our forefathers. We have borrowed it from our children.

The depredations against forests should be stopped. Make it known to all concerned that this is playing with fire. All-consuming and annihilating is the forest fire.

 

 

57

RAIN RAIN GO AWAY

 

Malabar Hill is an elevated area of Mumbai city, both literally and figuratively. The common perception of this prestigious precincts is that it is the abode of the rich and the mighty, of the ruling class, of power brokers, of cine stars. To be precise, the society’s elite. Because of this there is a perception that for anything and everything, Malabar Hill enjoys privileged treatment.

How meaningless such perceptions are, became evident after a heavy monsoon that inundated, and devastated, many parts of Mumbai. When mighty natural forces go berserk, there is relevance for only one human feeling: helplessness.

In an instant the floods caused by heavy rains taught Mumbai residents this lesson.

Normally it takes only fifteen to twenty minutes from my office at the headquarters of the department of Atomic Energy to reach home on the Malabar Hill. But on that day of the floods it took more than three and a half hours because of the heavy traffic congestion. Tried to inform home about being stranded on the road, but the phone at home was silent. Even as I was watching the heavy traffic crawling, slowly and haltingly, along the beach road, rain became intense and the sea was unusually rough. That was cause for some unease. Thoughts about the tsunami and its trail of devastation troubled my mind. Are my wife and son at home or outside for shopping? No idea.

It was a great relief when finally I could reach home. And greater relief when I found that my wife and son were at home. In fact, they had planned to go out, but did not take the car in view of the rains. They thought of taking a taxi but no taxi was available round the corner.   So they gave up the idea and came back home. It was from the next morning’s newspapers they realized how lucky they were for skipping that trip.

The next afternoon someone knocked at the door. It was Mrs. Ghosh, our neighbor. She was greatly upset. It was some time when she could compose herself to narrate what happened to her the previous day. She was in the car in the middle of a flooded road. Almost three-fourth of the car was under water. It was impossible to open the door or even to lower the wind screen. It was suffocating inside and she even tried in vain to break the glass. She had to remain in the car in this situation for an unbelievable eighteen hours. Even then what troubled her foremost was thoughts about her daughter in college. What would have happened to her?

This was not an isolated incident. News media were full of harrowing tales of death and devastation, of separation of dear and near ones and other tragedies that the flash floods caused to an unprepared society.

Occasionally there were SMS messages from people caught in the floods frantically seeking help and succor. Messages from people we have never seen pleading for our help for their dear ones trapped somewhere in the flooded city. One message was from a man in Nagpur. His sister in Mumbai had boarded a double decker bus which was caught up in the floods at Chembur. The lower deck was inundated and now the flood waters had reached the upper deck. Will someone help her? Though the message was from an unknown person about an unseen person, the human face of the tragedy was clearly evident in this.

 

 

Through SMS and e-mail such pleas for help came from far and near in rapid frequency, indicating the extent of the human suffering. From Pennsylvania in the US one John Varghese was wailing: “My parents are living in Kalyan. Mother told me over the phone that the surging flood waters were fast inundating her home. Then the phone fell silent. Tried to contact their neighbours, but there was no response. Will anyone help them?”

The frantic messages would not have gone unheeded. Even without them, help was flowing, from heart to heart. A school bus was stranded in flood waters. The residents of nearby apartments rushed to the aid of the kids and gave them drinking water, milk and food. When thousands of people waded through floods and slush for miles to reach home, there were long line ups of residents waiting on the way sides with food packets and water to provide them some relief.

Grandmas say, one should help others forgetting ones own self. That also happened during the deluge. Twenty-eight year old Navelkar, employed in the Mumbai police, was an able swimmer. He was on his way home after duty when he saw three men fighting for their lives in the flood waters. He jumped into the water and caught hold of one man and brought him to safety. He repeated the feat and saved a second man. But as he was trying to save the third man sinking, he himself was washed away by the swirling waters. His body was recovered later.

For all people what is important is their personal sorrows and personal discomforts. Statistics, therefore, may not clearly show the quantum of loss or extent of the tragedy. But the fact is that the quantity of rainfall that Mumbai received that day,

94.4 cm, was much more than the quantity it would normally receive for a whole year. The highest recorded rainfall in Chirapunji was 83.82 cm. Mumbai’s drainage system was about a hundred and fifty years old. It could normally handle only two and a half cm of rains an hour. It was therefore too much for this system to cope with when a massive downpour of

94.4 cm fell on the city in a matter of 24 hours. A camel may pass through the eye of the needle, but it is totally impossible for city drains to cope with the sudden, heavy flow of water from such a cloudburst.

The suburban train service was something that controlled the resonance of Mumbaikar’s daily life. Every day as many as

4.5 million people commuted to work place from home in these trains. At about 3.30 in the afternoon of that fateful day, the train services came to a grinding halt, stranding over a million people. While an estimated one million people were stranded in the trains, over a lakh and half were forced to spend the night at platforms. Children from many schools also were stranded in the buses in the flood waters. Those students who had to remain in the schools overnight were lucky to escape the fury of the flood waters. It may be said Mumbai city where fifteen million people lived had come to a total standstill. The extent of the suffering and agony meted out to underprivileged sections of the society by the fury of flood could be gauged when we realize that nearly forty per cent of the city’s population lived in slums.

There were indeed some silver linings to the dark clouds. It was indeed the brotherhood and camaraderie that the Mumbai residents showed in single mindedly handling the calamity.

In some cases people who were thought to have been killed in the deluge returned alive after some time. A seventeen year old student of a college run by the Kerala Samajam at Dombivli was washed away in the floods. A body recovered after a few days was identified as his and was properly cremated by his relatives. A week later, however, the youth was found in an unconscious state on a river bank in a distant village. The villagers first thought it was one of the many bodies washed ashore. But then they found that he was still breathing. He was rushed to hospital and

he survived. When the police brought him home, it was indeed like a resurrection after crucifixion.

When one’s doors are closed in front of him, it is said, those of his neighbour should open up for him. That is real brotherhood. In the midst of the tragedy of the Mumbai floods, umpteen were the hearty tales of such brotherhood. It was an eye opener for many when the ‘chaiwala’ Mushtaq turned out to be a good Samaritan in times of adversity.

A bus carrying twenty-five passengers came to a standstill in front of his makeshift tea stall. It could not move forward because of the flood waters which started to enter the bus. The passengers waited thinking the situation might improve and the bus could resume its journey. The chaiwala made tea for the passengers. After some time he got their residential telephone numbers and managed to go a distant booth to telephone their homes to inform them of their stranded condition. When darkness fell and it became evident the bus would not be able to go forward, Mushtaq became an angel of love, inviting all of them to his small house nearby to spend the night. He made refreshments for them even as they prepared to settle down to spend the night as his guests.

What are the lessons taught by the big flood in the big city? Calamities may strike any time. And often they come without warning. What is important is that we should try not to make city life itself calamitous. We should be able to foresee such possibilities and take pre-emptive measures. The UN estimate is that by 2020 nearly sixty per cent of the world’s population will be living in cities. Urbanization has become the inevitable adjunct to the present century. We have to get in terms with that inevitability. We have to look at calamities, natural and man-made, with a practical mind and make preparations to deal with them effectively.

 

When explosions hit London in the past following a fire breakout in a chemical factory, the authorities were able to put into practice in letter and spirit a security plan they had well prepared in the past. There were clear cut instructions on the counter measures. What should be done, by whom, when. And everyone did his part meticulously. There were also people with a will to oversee its implementation.

See the following message from M P Rattan, an Indian who happened to be in Japan during the time of the Mumbai deluge. ‘I am in Tokyo now. Last Saturday we had a big earthquake here. And a tornado the following Tuesday. But life here continues to be normal. In Mumbai everything has been brought to standstill by a day’s rains. Why is it that we could not do there what these people could do here?’

Can anyone give an answer? Who should give an answer? Can we let calamities continue to hit us with such unanswered questions? If so that will be the worst calamity.

 

 

58

MAKE IT OR FAKE IT

 

The inspiration to write this is a story read in a newspaper recently. A friend of the world-renowned surrealist painter Salvador Dali was convicted by a Spanish court and sentenced to pay a compensation of Rs. 65 million for committing a fraud in one of Dali’s paintings.

Adulteration of art is not something which started yesterday or today. It is almost as ancient as art itself. Unbelievable it may seem, the immortal artist Michelangelo himself was guilty of artistic fraud. See what he did once to make money, when he was not yet famous and rich. He made a good sculpture of the Cupid, soiled it and buried it for some time. He later unearthed it and sold it off as an ancient piece of art to a gullible Cardinal of Rome.

There have been many instances in the past of people cleverly copying celebrated paintings and selling them at exorbitant prices. The inimitable painting ‘Mona Lisa’ by Leonardo Da Vinci had been copied umpteen times and sold as the original. The fraud was masterminded by two well-known artists of Italy. Their modus operandi was to make excellent, and exact, copy of the painting. They would then cleverly place their fake behind the original. Their next step was to persuade super rich art aficionados into believing that they would steal the original painting from the gallery. They would even make the prospective buyer to go to the gallery and put his thumb impression at the back of the

 

 

painting for the purpose of later identification. Since a fake had already been placed behind the original, the thumb impression would naturally be at the back of the fake painting. The fraudsters would then take their fake from the gallery and present it to the billionaire to claim their booty. It would be some time before he would realize that what he had acquired was a fake and not the original.

Emboldened by the successes, the fraudsters asked themselves: why not steal the original painting itself instead of going through the rigmarole of placing fakes in the gallery and stealing it? They enlisted the service of a professional thief to put to practice their grand design. The trio meticulously implemented their plan and lifted the famed Mona Lisa from the high security Louvre Museum in Paris. They made six copies and sold them as the original to gullible billionaires, each of them paying as much as 150 million rupees for it. But the fraudsters’ plan went awry when their professional ally took away the original painting. When he tried to sell it, however, he fell into the hands of the police. Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre where it is still on display with added electronic security surveillance.

It is also not rare to find fake artists who go to jail emerging in later life as great, sought-after artists themselves. England’s Tom Keating is one such. In his early days when he struggled to make a living, he used to supply some private galleries copies of great masterpieces of well-known artists. The remuneration he got then was five pounds per painting. One day he found that the paintings that fetched him five pounds apiece were sold by the gallery owner for 500 pounds each. He felt cheated and started selling the fakes himself. Once he read a book on the famous British painter Samuel Palmer. He then saw many of the paintings of Palmer, studied them. One day when he started painting in his studio, he felt that the artistic lifeforce of Palmer was being channelized through him. What he painted hence were

 

pictures that excelled Palmer’s originals. In some of them he even put Palmer’s signature. Art aficionados came forward to buy them at great prices. Ultimately the truth came out and he was caught and imprisoned. But fortunately his fame as a talented artist spread far and wide. When he came out art galleries started vying with one another to buy his paintings at great prices.

 

It was the Keating style that the young American painter David Stein followed. He made money copying paintings by the famous, and was caught unexpectedly. He had sold to a New York Gallery two fakes by Chagall. It was by chance that Chagall who visited New York at that time was befriended by a Gallery owner who proudly informed him that his gallery had two of the paintings by Chagall. Chagall was not amused when he saw the paintings. They were excellent fakes. He promptly notified authorities and the forger, Stein, was arrested the same night. After he came out of prison, Stein started selling his works as his own.

In the Cleveland Museum in the United States there is an invaluable piece of sculpture: of Madonna and son, believed to have been made in Italy in the thirteenth century. It was by chance that the gallery owners came to know that it was a fake by an Italian artist named Alceo Dossena. When the sculpture was x-rayed iron nails of recent make were seen inside. They decided to remove this fake and exhibit in its place a genuine piece of original sculpture. Spending as much as Rs. five million they installed a beautiful marble sculpture of goddess Athena. Not much later they realized that this too was a fake by Dossena.

If we separate grain and the chaff in art, we would see that many of the great art works displayed in galleries around the world are excellent fakes by talented art forgers. And many of the fakes are much better than the originals they seek to copy.

Who can assess the value of an art work? Critics claim, and try to make others believe, that they have the ability and the right

 

 

to assess the real worth of art. They make their assumptions and it is normally based on these assumptions that the scales of art’s worth tilt this way or that way in course of time. Talented artists often get kicked down to the dustbins of neglect by the force of the changing modes of trends and groupings. Only those who are eulogized by the critics get on to the high pedestals of fame and fortune. And to make a living many are forced to copy the great teachers, knowingly surrendering their individuality and innate worth as artists, turning themselves into forgers. When the self- proclaimed jurists of art make their assessments and pronounce their judgements, the sublime becomes ridiculous and the mediocre becomes magnificent. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. This is something that all lovers of art have to be concerned about.

 

 

 

 

59

MY CHRISTMAS, MY OWN

 

It was in a rather cold morning that we reached that place. My wife Lakshmi and I. It was a dream come true, a great desire, fulfilled. We never expected it to happen, but when it did, we couldn’t believe our luck.

We are in Bethlehem.

My mind went back by a thousand leagues. I thought of my first Christmas. I knew great celebrations were on in the Mannanam church and I wanted to be there. Our maid Mariamma promised me that she would take me to the church for the midnight mass. But would my grandmother agree? Even though she nodded her consent, I couldn’t believe it. Grandma is deeply religious and a staunch believer in temple worship. Would she change her mind? Or what would happen if I fell asleep and did not wake up at midnight? I went to sleep early and was surprised when grandma herself woke me up before midnight and got me ready for the church visit. That was the first time I participated in a midnight mass. My young mind brimmed with joy from that experience, and the beautifully made-up manger in the church yard. I saw infant Jesus and Mother Mary and the three Magis. My young mind gave them form, shape and attitude. From that day on Infant Jesus and the Manger and Bethlehem created ripples in my mind.

Today, I am in Bethlehem. Right in front of the manger where Jesus was born.

 

It was from Jerusalem that we started on our journey to Bethlehem. There are people who do a three hour walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in the cold early morning on Christmas day. But we caught a bus as our visit was ahead of Christmas. My heart throbbed every inch we were closer to the dreamland of Bethlehem. There were many in the bus, people who came from different parts of the world. For many of them this was just a visit to a tourist destination. Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Eiffel Tower and Taj Mahal. As we stopped before a small shop selling souvenirs, our guide announced: ‘We have reached Bethlehem. Time for shopping.’

Have we come all the way to Bethlehem for shopping? My mind was a little uneasy. I noticed that a handful of other people in the bus were also similarly disposed. Instead of going in for shopping, we walked straight into the Bethlehem Church, the famed church of nativity. The church constructed by Emperor Justinian on the very spot where Jesus was born. There was no usual crowd or queue. The door to the church was small and one had to bow the head to enter. As Arjuna participating in the archery contest saw only the eye of the bird he was going to hit, my mind was fully concentrated on the place where Jesus was born. We reached that hallowed place. The exact spot where that divine birth had taken place two thousand years ago had been clearly marked out. With indescribable joy and adoration we knelt there and reverentially touched that spot. And we felt that we had become part of that great mission that started from that humble manger. Words cannot describe the immense joy and contentment, and the sense of fulfillment that my mind felt in those God given moments.

Christmas is not a celebration for me. It is a sensation. A sensation whose ultimate source is the manger at Bethlehem.

In my journeys I had seen the variety and the enthusiasm of Christmas celebrations in different countries. I could see the

elaborate arrangements made for Christmas festivities in Germany and Scandinavia, Italy and America and Canada.

Where was the beginning of Christmas? The Bible does not say when Jesus was born. Then how was it that December 25 came to be celebrated as Christmas? In the beginning, it was January six that was observed as Christmas as per Julian Calendar. During the changeover to Georgian Calendar Christmas also got changed to December 25. It was Pope Julius I who finally decided that Christmas fell on December 25.

In the beginning the Church had not encouraged festivities on Christmas. That was because Christmas celebrations resembled the winter festivities of non-believers, similar in verve and vitality. When the Church was of the view that such festivities were un- Christian in outlook and attitude how could it promote them in regard to Christmas celebrations? But this concept changed in course of time.

Now it is in the United States that the Christmas festivities are at their zenith. In the beginning the Americans felt that this was a celebration of their rivals, the English people. Some American states had even banned Christmas celebrations. For instance, celebrations on Christmas was illegal in Boston. But gradually Christmas became the biggest festival of the Americans too. In 1870 Christmas was recognized as a national festival and a public holiday was announced.

One cannot imagine a Christmas without a Christmas tree. This also did not come up all on a sudden. Its beginning was in Germany and it was Martin Luther who initiated the practice. Once he was going through a wooded area. All on a sudden he had an idea of creating a make-believe world to give the children an impression of heaven from where the Son of God descended. He chose an attractive tree for appropriate decoration and illumination with lighted candles around it. The new practice

came to England through Prince Albert, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, after all, was a German. When the Christmas Tree came to America its whole appearance changed. It was in California that the practice of erecting a huge Christmas Tree at the city centre and singing carols in front of it had started. Today the Christmas Tree has become a lasting symbol of Christmas the world over.

We expect only goodness from Bethlehem. The voice of Bethlehem is the voice of peace and sanctity. Even when there was much enmity between Israel and Palestine, on Christmas day both the groups would come together in the church of nativity. But it is a pity that for two years before the death of Arafat, Israel authorities did not give permission to the Palestine leader to visit the church on Christmas day. Was it not an attempt to instill rancour in an atmosphere of peace and serenity provided by the Almighty?

Christmas for me is a throbbing sensation, pulsating emotion that began from Mannanam in faraway Kerala and has culminated at Bethlehem in the Holy Land.

 

 

 

60

FORWARD TO AWARDS

 

The termite is not a trifling thing. The miniscule termite was the only living being that was capable of shattering the head of Lord Vishnu! It was Lord Brahma who personally created the termite, for a very special mission. Once in a set of peculiar circumstances, Lord Vishnu had to go into hibernation. He remained in a state of peaceful slumber with his chin resting on his arched bow firmly placed on the earth. But as the slumber went on, things got problematic in heaven. Confusion and disorder reigned. Everything went topsy-turvy. The Devas decided that enough was enough. Somehow Vishnu had to be woken up. But being in deep sleep, all the efforts of the Devas to wake him up were of no avail. Ultimately Lord Brahma found a way out. He created the termite and set it to work on the string of Vishnu’s bow. He thought that after the termite gnawed away part of the string, the string would go off in a thud, giving a jolt to Vishnu, whose chin was resting on one end of the bow.

But what happened was totally unexpected. The moment the string snapped, the divine bow stretched back to its normal shape in a thunderous recoil that shook the entire universe. In the impact of the recoil Vishnu’s head was severed from body and sent hurtling into space.

The termite has come again. After the award announcements the jury had gone into slumber unmindful of the fact that the termite in the form of vituperative critics was at work, gnawing

 

 

away at their bow string. The question is whether it would only injure the jaw or sever the head.

Recognition is the lifeblood of any artist. Denying it is equivalent to killing talent. But there is no way to tag a price to creativity. The essence of great art is its pricelessness. When we look with reverence at Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it is not the cost of the paints or the payment received by the artist that comes to our mind. In ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ author Irving Stone pointed out that when a section of the church elite treated Michelangelo as just a contract worker, the Pope himself intervened and admonishingly showed them how the great artist had to be treated.

The society itself is blessed when the artist and the writer are honoured. What a nation needs are not only engineers and doctors, political leaders and wizards of administration. Artists too are essential for the growth of any nation. Is it possible to visualize an England without Shakespeare, a Greece without Aristotle and Socrates and an India without Vyasa, Valmiki and Kalidasa? It was Shelley who said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

It is not forgotten that Plato had expelled poets from his Republic. When someone told that music was dead, Aurangazeb was reported to have said: ‘Is that so? Then bury it deep.’ The likes of Aurangazeb show not the devaluation of art but the bankruptcy of the administration.  It also shows how the might of the sword of the warrior quivers before the mightier pen of the poet.

 

Is it desirable for the artist to receive medals and honours and decorations from the rulers? It is indeed not because of such honours by the rulers that Valmiki and Homer still continue to be revered by the people.

Lakhs of people from all over the world flow to the Louvre not to see the ostentatious display of Bourbon opulence, but to see Mona Lisa painted in life blood by Leonardo.

 

 

Is recognition of art from the government bigger than recognition from art lovers? Does the ruling power have the right to judge creativity? Writing poetry and writing in the files are two different games. Government’s assessing the worth of artists may well be compared to a lowly water snake judging the worth of the mighty serpent King Anantha. When people attempt to wheedle for titles like Poet-laureate they only bring literature and art to ridicule.

Now the very relevance of the system of awards is being questioned. Coupled with this is the unending series of controversies related to announcement of awards. Whatever be the award and whoever be the recipient, it goes without saying that the choice is always subjective to a great extent. Even Solomon who, in a bid to distinguish between the real mother and a fake claimant, asked the infant in dispute to be severed into two halves, was not making a faultless judgement. When Greek Goddesses competed to wrest the title of the most beautiful, the judgement of Paris did more than settle the point of dispute as it led to a great, devastating war. Allocation of awards has become far more difficult nowadays. Giving recognition to a person who does not deserve it tantamount to showing disrespect to a person who richly deserves it. The slighted will definitely be in anguish. And if he opens up his mind to express his anguish, it can only be seen as natural reaction which stems from a sense of injured merit. But if he chooses to behave like the termite of yore, gnawing at the bow string, breaking the jaw of the jury and severing its head, art will be subject to more derision.

Remember the old grandma saying—this will also pass. Artists should learn to imbibe the spirit of that saying. Also learn from the Parable of the Ten Virgins in the Bible. The ten Virgins were asked to receive the bridegroom with lighted lamps. The groom was late in coming and the Virgins felt drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out that the groom had arrived.

 

Five of the virgins found that their lamps had burnt out and there was no oil. The other five, wise ones, had stored enough oil in jars and so they could welcome the groom and go into the wedding banquet.

The artists waiting to welcome the groom named Award should realize that the expected one may not arrive on time. Wait with patience. And keep more oil in store, like the five wise Virgins. Keep alive their resourcefulness, talent and dedication. Ensure that the lamp of creativity is not burnt out. Unexpectedly the honour will come, knocking at the door. Welcome it then with happiness and ensure that till then you do not defame it. Those who subject themselves to ridicule by choosing to abuse award winners, are in fact putting into practice the new age norm ‘harm your neighbour as you harm yourself.’ Don’t let art be eaten away by termites. And don’t yourself become termites in art. One may aspire for an award but don’t let it become an obsessive craving. There is nothing unnatural in talented artists hoping for recognition. But he will be belittling himself if he displays a craving for it. When this craving becomes outspoken, he will lower himself in the eyes of the society.

We may find relief in one thing. Rulers who assume the role of connoisseurs of art are a shade better than those masquerading as artists themselves. There was such a ruler in the distant past. Emperor Nero who ruled over the Roman Empire. When he found that artists and athletes garnered much more respect than the Emperor of Rome, he decided to turn himself into an artist, musician and athlete. The Emperor’s concerts became the talk of the town even in the neighbouring Greece. And in athletic competitions the Emperor invariably came first. Nero became, so to say, an Emperor among artists and artist among Emperors. Perhaps he wished that Homer, Virgil, Euripides and Sophocles will give way to him in fame. But the world now remembers Nero only as an Emperor who played on the fiddle when Rome was burning.

 

In the wailing for award the first lesson is that one has to be satisfied with what one got. In good grace congratulate the winner of the award if you yourself are not the chosen one. And wait for a good morrow. Award determination is in fact a great mission. Those involved in it have to ensure that recognition goes only to the deserving. There is something that members of the award jury have to bear in mind: those who pass judgement also will come under judgement of others. When the undeserved is honoured, art itself will mourn. Those out to determine awards should remember the old adage that Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion. Lord Brahma created the termite for a special purpose. Should the artists and writers assume the role of the termite. It is a decision they have to take.

 

 

61

NOT A BANG BUT A WHIMPER

 

We believe that Kalki will incarnate, with drawn sword in hand, as a force of retribution when the earth is unable to bear the weight of the multitude of sinners. There is also universal belief that when people of the world deviate from the righteous path and go astray, God creates floods to destroy all life on earth. It has been found time and again that despite all the progress made by science it is impossible to rein in the indomitable powers of nature.

The devastating earthquakes should serve as an eye opener for us. Science has not yet been able to clearly predict the timing and intensity of the shockers. Yet, an expert committee appointed by the government of India had indicated areas that are prone to earthquakes. The authenticity of its findings is questioned though.

Japan is one of the wealthiest and most advanced nations of the world. They had found easy answers to many of their problems with the help of science and technology. Japan is in the vanguard of the electronics revolution that has swept the world. There is also a Japanese imprint on a vast majority of the motor cars made in the world. Yet Japan has not been able to find a solution to its perennial problem of earthquakes. Japan accounts for as high as fifteen per cent of all the earthquakes of the world.

Japan suffered one of its worst earthquakes, of perhaps the severest magnitude, in 1923. Almost the entire cities of Tokyo and Yokohama were laid waste, and over three hundred thousand houses crumbled. As the quake hit gorges suddenly appeared along the roads sending hundreds of cars and thousands of people hurtling down. With more shakes in tow, the gorges were filled up soon, burying alive all those hapless thousands. As Tokyo’s high-rise buildings collapsed like house of cards, gas leaks caused extensive fires, forcing people to run for their lives. Frantic people ran towards the rivers to escape the fury of the conflagrations, but the surge of the crowds was so great that many wooden bridges collapsed, unable to withstand their weight.

Surprisingly one high rise building in Tokyo withstood the ravages of the quake- the Imperial Hotel, designed by the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He had designed it as a quake resistant structure.

The number of the dead and the injured in this quake was as high as 240,000, much higher than the toll in the Atom Bomb hit Hiroshima.

The fury of the quake opened up the eyes of Japan. With sustained efforts made on the technology front, Japan has today evolved a mechanism to effectively deal with calamities of this kind. In Tokyo for instance, it has constructed quake resistant reservoirs capable of holding drinking water sufficient to meet the city’s needs for ten days. Similar is the case with storehouses of food articles for a comparable period.

Each country may have a tragic story of its own to tell. The 1985 quake that ravaged Mexico was so severe in its intensity that its impact was felt in distant Houston in the United States, 1,200 km away. For rescue efforts canines proved more effective than humans. In sniffing out those trapped in the debris of crashed buildings trained dogs rendered a service that was invaluable. Another significant fact that came out of the tragedy was the special faculty that infants have in surviving the rigours of earthquakes. Many of the newborns in Mexico hospitals miraculously survived though they had remained under debris for several days. The explanation given by experts for this strange phenomenon is psychological. Life saving energy is fast depleted in the case of adults shocked by sudden calamity but these infants who are not aware of the gravity of the happenings around them do not use up their life force.

Experts describe the 1970 quake in Peru as the most devastating one in the southern hemisphere. It was in a matter of seconds that an entire city was reduced to rubble. Over five thousand people were killed and three hundred thousand rendered homeless. The quake caused the snowcaps of the Nevado Huascaran mountain range to melt, causing landslides on an unprecedented scale. When the debris of hundreds of houses on the hillside washed away in the landslide made a huge heap at the Cemetery Hill, only a statue of Jesus stood upright and intact. Perhaps a symbol of the divine mercy.

In 1988 many towns in Armenia in the then Soviet union virtually vanished without a trace when the earth gave way in a cataclysmic shake. Over a hundred thousand people perished in the quake that measured nine on the Richter scale. In the Leninakan city of a population of 300,000 over eighty per cent of the buildings collapsed. Spitak city became just a memory.

The gross inadequacy of rescue and relief measures came to light after the event. The official newspaper Pravda criticized that each relief worker had ten advisers, who gave advice but did not do anything to speedily remove the debris and try to bring out the hapless trapped underneath. What happened was the unpardonable delay of hours in the relief efforts, causing the toll to mount.

A similar assessment was made by Jawaharlal Nehru in his autobiography in regard to the relief efforts after the Bihar quake of 1934 which claimed over 6,000 lives. Nehru who tirelessly

 

 

toured the affected areas giving leadership to relief work, in Patna, Mussaffar Nagar and Munger, had commented that those who came to render help appeared to be under the impression that relief work meant giving orders to others. It was after Nehru himself picked up the pick axe to remove earth that many leaders started to do some physical work for rescue. The central relief committee headed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad had indeed rendered yeomen service.

The truth is that despite best efforts it is not possible to predict earthquakes. The US has a comprehensive earthquake hazards programme named The Parkfield Experiment that makes use of sophisticated equipment and advanced technology. Yet, generally speaking, earthquake prediction mechanism now cannot claim a status above astrology. The Chinese, however, have an ingenious, and indigenous, system of early prediction of quakes. What they do is to observe the behavior of animals which show some restlessness in the pre-quake period. The Chinese therefore learn from the peculiar way in which dogs bark, cocks crow and serpents crawl in the period before the shakes manifest.

In Sichuan in China, in Pakistan, in Gujarat in India and in several other places we had faced earthquakes in which lakhs of people perished and vast areas laid waste. But we should remember that what we heard in these places was not the roar of the earth but its murmur-not a bang, but a whimper.

Those who think that government’s permission is enough to go against earth’s vitals hammer and tongs would do well to check whether they have got the permission of Mother Earth for their designs. Don’t they say, ‘You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

62

SILENCE SOUNDS GOOD

 

One day when I was returning from office I asked the driver to make a detour. To the teacher’s house. Reaching there I pressed the calling bell. But there was no response. No one came to open the door. Nor was there any sound from within. Is he not there? I peered into the room through an open window and found that the fan was on. That meant that he was indeed in the house. Then why this delay?

At last the teacher himself came and opened the door, with profuse apology. ‘I am sorry I am late. I was in the kitchen preparing noodles for my son who had come back from school. It was then I heard the calling bell. I thought I should put on a shirt...’ he paused for a while, thinking of something and then added with a tinge of sadness: ‘Had she been here!’

When working in the kitchen if she heard the sound of the calling bell, she would immediately open the door and usher in the guest. She would then take the shirt I have to wear and thrust it on my shoulder. All I had to do was to sit in the drawing room and talk to the guest. By then she would have brought tea for the visitor, not forgetting to ask him about family matters. In the midst of it all she would find time to help our son in his homework and go back to the kitchen to do her work. And when the guest departs she would be there to bid him farewell.

He would never forget this Uthradam, the eve of Onam. Usually on Uthradam day his sister and children would come here from Bombay to spend a day with the kith and kin. On Thiru Onam day all of them would go to their ancestral home for a family get-together. His sister’s children, born and brought up in Bombay, were fond of the delicacies of the Onam feast. This time nothing of the sort could be made at home. Could they be bought from outside. Oh No. The children liked the sweets made at their house. They used to enthusiastically partake in the preparation of the Onam specials. They would help in grating the coconut, mixing it with jaggery and spreading the preparation on the leaf. And matching their enthusiasm was the fervour and the passion with which she made the delicacy for them.

And this Uthradam day there was nothing but an anguished sob from my mind. Had she been here!

This year, for the first time, I ordered Onam food from the club. And the children were served the feast by me and my sister. While serving, we were silent. So too were the children.

Had she been here, my mind ached.

That feeling was reflected on the faces of the children. Where is that soft rice that she used to serve on tender plantain leaves? And what a contrast now with the feast from the club packaged in aluminum foils?

It was when the feast was half way through that I noticed that I had forgotten to light the brass lamp though my sister had poured oil and put the wick in it. I said to myself: Had she been here.

It was my sister who made the suggestion. Why should I and my son lead such a lonely life in our big house? Why not let out the upper floor so that there would be someone to talk to and mingle?

It is a good idea, I agreed. At least when I go to the temple after giving some homework to my son, there would be consolation that somebody is in the building to take care of him.

As luck would have it I got a good tenant within two days. But only when they reached home with their furniture and other belongings did I realize one problem. Where to keep my own belongings that now occupied much of the upper floor? Did this house have so many articles? Where would I keep them? Which all would I discard? I couldn’t make up my mind.

But all these things were there even before I constructed the upper floor. And in what orderly manner had she arranged them all in the house. I didn’t even have to think about them. How I wish she were here.

Everyday she would get up at four o’clock. After her bath she would light the lamp in the pooja room. I would wake up only when she calls me with the hot bed coffee ready. She would then iron the dress I had to wear for office. Her chores did not end there. She would help my son prepare his homework, put all his books in the school bag, give him breakfast and then take him to the school bus. She would then rush back home to serve me breakfast before I leave for office.

In between, she would run to the door whenever she heard the doorbell ring. It might be the sales people marketing Rajasthan carpets or vacuum cleaners. Or sometimes inmates of some ashram trying to spread spirituality. After sending them away pleasantly she would again concentrate on keeping things ready for me in my bag and bidding me the usual farewell.

Late in the night she would be seen cleaning up the kitchen, humming a song. She would never close the kitchen before thrice asking the traditional query ‘Is there anyone out there starving of supper?’ She would then retire to get up again at four.

I have my salary, big savings and many friends. But I have only half my life. My life would never have been like this if she had been here.

 

Teacher remained silent, as though he were in a distant world, silently communicating with her.

Once when I was about to go to office I saw two women coming to our house. They were doing a survey on behalf of the government. Even in the midst of her morning chores, I saw my wife patiently answering their queries.

Name?

She told her name How many children? She gave the number. Are you employed? No.

Do you have income? No.

Those who came looked at each other. In the column on employment what should they write? Unemployed or Dependent spouse. They wrote Housewife. In other words one without an income. A dependent person.

I thought of my teacher. Didn’t he say about his wife that she rose at four in the morning and would go on doing her work, going to bed only by eleven in the night? In other words working for 19 hours. At a modest Rs. 100 an hour her monthly earnings would be Rs. 57,000. From my lawyer’s profession I made only Rs. 36,000 a month. But I am head of the household and she my dependent.

To use a euphemism, housewife or homemaker.

In other words, one without a job, one without any earnings. My teacher’s sighs turned out to be my own.

 

I stopped my wife flitting here and there in the house and looked at her face, as though looking at her for the first time. Why this way? She wondered.

I felt as if my teacher had possessed me.

I thought for a while: Oh My God, what would have been my fate had she not been here!

She stood before me silently like the Shakespearean ‘patience on a monument.’ I could understand her silence much more than her words. That was the moment when I realized silence sounds good.