Of Tight slaps and Olympic glory ! :)

 Saina Nehwal won the bronze and the news item that caught my eye the next day was about Saina getting slapped by her mom in a local tournament many years ago when she lost a final. I was reminded about the outcry in the international media over how Chinese athletes and sportsmen are nurtured (read punished !) by their parents. That sets me thinking.... what's the connection with corporal punishment and success ?

Well, to put things in perspective, I am sure there are many more athletes in India who have have been caned and yet haven't made it big. The western world prides itself in it's traditions of absolute individual freedom and has been in the forefront of most fields in this era (until the Chinese arrived).


Here's my take on it:

Talent is a must. But without a system in place to harness the talent , you cannot harvest glory. Be it sports or academics or any enterprise. Talent of any kind is found inherently everywhere in the world. For all humans share more than 99.9% of our DNA. Wherever there has been a system to nurture talent of a particular kind, those talents have flourished in those places. What does the system do? In essence it inculcates 'discipline' and 'focus' as is relevant to the context. Schools of any kind, technical, sports, business, moral (read family), martial, spiritual  ... all of them essentially discipline the talent, so it can achieve. And then, the custodian of all these schools is the government. Tasked with overseeing all these institutions.

The western world waged wars all over the world and pumped resources from the colonies back home and created systems that nurtured their talents. With a set society and disciplining systems in place, they could afford to give liberties and freedoms to people. Thus individual freedom and might of law are held in balance.

Our own country was at one point of time well settled and there were robust systems in place. But in resisting foreign invasions and occupation for centuries after centuries, we have made it a habit to challenge and break the systems in order to preserve ourselves. We challenge the government, we challenge the rules, we challenge the law enforcers. We inherently believe that all rules are meant to oppress. Our first instinct is to find a way to dodge the rule and 'get my job done'. Those amongst us who become law makers 'make hay while the sun shines'. Their logic is similar to ragging: 'people made money before me and will continue to for ever after, and it is my turn now'. Thus we have not yet come out of the hangover of the last millenia - the millenia of foreign invasion! Therein lies the genesis of our lack of discipline. The only place where discipline survived was within the family and community. But increased exposure to the western world over the last few decades, has made it fashionable to put individual freedom over the family, community or society. While in the western world, and China a disciplined society preceded individual freedom, we have put the cart before the horse. For a country that is still trying to to settle down, unbridled individual freedom can only be disaster.

So where does it leave us? Is there any hope? Probably yes... To start with, individual freedoms may be made subservient to the priorities of the family or the immediate community. Not in law, but in practice. Firstly it will slow down the wave of indiscipline and indiscretion. And again, discipline like charity begins at home. And it is not too unrealistic, for we have role models in our own parents or grandparents. Wherever this rule has been observed, results have followed. The only institution in our country that commands respect is the the army, where discipline and the larger good of the group is greater than the individual.

Tailpiece : So what does it amount to? A clarion call to beat up children in schools and at home? Not at all, discipline children by humane means. But the dykes of discipline must not collapse, at any cost !
 

What maketh a library ?

A recent spate of news articles and media coverage on a book recommended for state libraries gave me some food for thought. A few sample links below :
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3664275.ece
http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/17589
http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/17622

To cut a long story short, a book on 'Bharateeyara habba haridinagalu' , loosely translated as  'Indic festivals' was prescribed for school libraries by the government.  Promptly several objections and protests have been organised. Media has been baying for blood. Calls for the arrest of the author have been made. Reason ? The book does not mention Christmas, Ramzan or Id. There are two issues to this controversy.

Firstly, should such a book on 'Indic festivals' have left out Ramzan and Christmas?
Secondly, should such a book be in school libraries?

Regarding the first objection.. Sounds valid? Well it did seem so to me for a moment. Until I googled for articles on 'Roman festivals' and 'greek festivals'. Neither of them mention Id, nor Christmas although Rome is home to the Pope. Sounds shocking? These are not isolated instances, as a search of the web would show. But not many take umbrage at these things. Quite naturally, these are articles on festivals that are typically associated with the native civilisations of Rome and Greece. Those festivals and the civilizations have since ceased to exist.  Cut to the present, the case in point is not very different. A book on Indic festivals dealt with topics from the Indic civilisation. The only difference being that this civilisation, unlike the Greeks and Romans is a living tradition to this day, associated with a large population. And therein lies the genesis of this controversy and motivation for this attack. All that ensued was politics and personally I see no merit in discussing that game.

Regarding the second.. Should such a book be in a library? Is a physics book castigated for not mentioning biology? Or a Math book for not teaching Psychology? At this rate libraries should be stocked with nothing but encyclopedias. And as the internet age has shown the good old shiny books called encyclopedias were anything but complete. A fundamental tenet of academia is that experts talk on subjects of their expertise and may give an opinion or two on others topics but never pretend to be an authority on other topics. A library should have books written by subject experts rather than books that claim to cover everything under the sun, while doing justice to none. A book should be judged solely on scholarly merit and no more, no less. An appropriate demand in this context would be to ask for other books from Islamic scholars, Christian experts and Buddhist masters to be introduced  in libraries. Not ask for this book to talk of Christmas or vice versa.

Tailpiece : Tokenisms may have a place elsewhere but not in academic pursuits. I rest my case.

A Tribute to Uncle Pai

    I read an obituary today for someone I have never ever met , one whose face I don't recollect. But he has been one of the most influential presences in my life for as far back as I can remember. For millions of kids of my generation he was the pioneer who brought ancient figures of divinity , valour and chivalry right out of dusty old books into our personal spheres of imagination at bedtimes. For students whose school curriculum were bereft of any mention of our mythology that shaped the collective conscience of our civilization today, Uncle Pai was the knight in shining armour who endeavoured to bring back those very stories from the ashes. While our media barons of today treat mythology as a cash cow for expanding their arsenal of animation productions, Uncle pai toiled a lifetime, against heavy odds and penury to educate a whole generation of our countrymen about their heritage.
       I remember those summer days as a kid when we travelled on trains for hot unending days to come back home to Bangalore from the far North for vacations. No trip was complete without a bunch of Amar Chitra Kathas(ACK) from the railway station book stall. For things my parents wanted to get done out of me, ACKs were the simplest bribes, gleefully taken and readily given. My demands were always a specific number, 2,3 or 4, etc and I dealt in number of ACKs I wanted that time around. Every visit to the bookstall for me was an exciting prospect. I remember the  thrill of fingering through the various ACKs in print and choosing my booty at the book store. And therein lay the genesis of my tryst with books. I longed to visit the neighbourhood library so I could sit there for hours running through the ACKs and Tinkles. And by the time I had decided which ones I wanted to borrow, I would have read through a dozen others:) Each ACK that I had was meticulously read over and over again for umpteen number of times until I was dutifully lost in the magical worlds that uncle pai wove. Be it the era of the epics  or the stories from the ballads of Kalidasa, or the lives of Tansen or Tyagaraja, or the idiosyncrasies of Suppandi and Shikari Shambu,  Uncle Pai never ceased to weave his web around me where each character existed for real. The illustration by Ram Waerkar were so beautiful and lifelike that to this day, I have never come across an animation that comes a mile within ACK. In ACK, the well built warriors in shining armour,the serene sages, the children with large innocent eyes, the pretty faces of  princesses, took on larger than life sizes. As the years progressed, and I was more exposed to the original texts from which ACK drew it's content, I was even more amazed at how authentic and true to original, Uncle Pai's renderings were.
          The seeds of cultural awareness that ACK sowed years ago are atleast partially responsible for the renewed interest in cultural studies among the youth today. And for that reason I dare say, Uncle Pai was a colossus who started an unprecedented cultural revolution in the post-indepenence era. With tributes pouring in  from all around, this post is my humble expression of gratitude to "Uncle Pai".

An Indian name for India? You must be joking!

Subroto Bagchi's thought provoking blog http://www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi/my-mother-is-an-ugly-woman/ got me to put to fruition my long pending penchant for writing a blog. And now that I am on this blogging bandwagon at last, hope I can contribute meaningfully and frequently enough to it, without just spraying 'bites' around.

This is about something that happened more than 5 years ago, but has since left an indelible impression on my mind. It was a cold foggy morning as my flight glided into Frankfurt International airport from Chicago O'Hare. Thanks to some brilliant bungling by airline folks, my food preferences had been messed up and I was reduced to surviving on some lettuces and cucumbers and the like for the last 16 odd hours. So I walked into transit lounge hoping to catch up on some hot black coffee at least, which in better times I'd have given a miss, but not this time, starved and frozen soul that I was. Luckily for me I found better fare than black coffee, my favourite hot chocolate. So sipping on my second hot cup of chocolate I sauntered over to this portly gentleman at the enquiry counter to check when my connecting flight to Bengaluru was due. He was reddish in complexion and rotund, but rather uncharacteristically short for a German. This particular gentleman was rather polite and gave me all the details I asked of him. And then as I was about to move away after thanking him, he posed a question, that I must admit was rather unexpected. "So you come from India, am I right?" . "Yes..." I meandered waiting for what was to follow. "What is the Indian name for India?" he came to the point right away. "Pardon me?... " . My mind, numbed that it was by lettuces and cucumbers, wanted to make sure if I heard it right. "Yeah... Like you call this Germany, but we call it Deutsch-land. So what do you call India?". "Oh that way.., we call it Bhaarat" . "Are you sure?" said he. Now I felt a bit like I was in the hot seat with AB senior's booming baritone teasing me in KBC. " Yes of course " I said now somewhat affirmatively. "But that can't be !" He was now beginning to sound disappointed like I had somehow mysteriously wriggled out of some well laid trap he'd laid out for me. "Why do you say that" said I. "Well there is a colleague of mine who is an Indian and he told me there is no Indian name for India". "Well now the cat is out of the bag! " thought I. I tried convincing him about his misconception but he seemed cocksure. Then digging deep into my coat pockets I pulled out a small blue book, my passport. Laying it down in front of him, I pointed out to him the the words "Bhaarat GaNaraajya" written in Devanaagari above "Republic of India" and read it out to him. He shrugged and moved away. I could almost read his thoughts that said, 'Well, I cant read it anyway, so what's stopping you from saying whatever you want'. I moved away for my third cup of chocolate with a smile.

As I settled down with my cup of chocolate I thought to myself, well it's not this guy's mistake, He obviously trusted his colleague, who was to him the face of India. And you can't fault him if his colleague turned out to be ignorant. Whether he was plain ignorant or was uncomfortable with the name 'Bhaarat', I have no means to know. But the rest of my flight back home, was laced with a tinge of sorrow for the quality of ambassadors that we dish out to the world outside. The least this gentleman could have done was to say that he was not aware of an Indian name for India, rather than emphatically put wrong ideas in people's heads. But then again, I wondered if I was getting unduly worked up about something trivial. But then again, just to put things in perspective, say you heard a kid saying "Well, my friends call me 'Nosey' because of my long nose, but I don't have any other name". Chances are, you'd think this kid was an orphan, and you'd sympathise with him. Are we lost orphans in this civilized world? Or maybe we need to rediscover ourselves ?