The title triggered great expectations of Innichan style humour , ‘Kanjirappallikkaran Christiani’variety of dialogue or at least a large joint family of achayans with an old world ammachi replete with kavuni & kunukku. So , we ,the couple took time off one Saturday evening and landed at Arora Theatre ,one of the last surviving old world cinemas in Mumbai , at King circle, Matunga where Malayalis watch Malayalam movies. Good we came here and not to one of the multiplexes which were also showing ‘ Christian Brothers’ . One look at the poster with Mohanlal holding a gun and Vijayaraghavan scowling fore told the whole story. ‘Abandon all hope , ye who enter here ’ I remembered this famous line written on the Gates of Hell in the great 14th century Italian poet Dante’s magnificent poem, ‘The Divine Comedy ’. No point in going back after making the journey and buying the tickets for Rs.200. So we entered the hall , hoping against hope !
And discovered that it is another gangster-police- minister-mafia –mahila tangle with the routine paraphernalia of Malayali muscles & brains trained in Mumbai’s underworld imported to Cochin/kerala to sort out the tangle there.The Mumbai- Cochin underworld link has become a staple of our films. Even writer Salman Rushdie could not resist its allure.
Christian Brothers has an impressive star cast . But it doesn’t have either a riveting plot or even a single memorable character. Frankly, I have forgotten the names of the characters already. I recall a few strands of the plot. They are : Strand 1. The conflict over a beautiful bit of unused church property in Munnar between the land mafia , the Thampi family headed by Vijayaraghavan and the Christian Brothers/ family headed by Sai Kumar. Big relief for Sai . Of late , he has been granted Moksha & allowed to be a
good man on screen. Strand 2. The feud between Christie – Mohanlal, Christian Brother 1 and his brother-in-law , Suresh Krishna who is a pimp in Mumbai using even his own wife ( Christi’s sister, the beautiful Lakshmi Gopalaswami ) in his trade. Strand 3. The kidnapping of the Home Minister’s( Devan’s i.e) daughter , Meenakshi - Kavya whose main jobs are a) deflecting Dileep from his pursuit of the Holy orders b) inadvertently making him commit homicide & c) helping the convergence of characters and plots by being kidnapped . Another detail connected to the kidnapping is the Home Minister taking money from Thampi Senior to get the daughter released. Strand 4. Christie’s efforts on behalf of his younger brother, at proving his innocence to his Appachi , at generally throwing his weight behind everyone who needs it.
Now to the other villains and heroes. Biju Menon, a Thampi son is the bad police officer. Jagathi Sreekumar , a Christian brother – more uncle than brother, methinks -is the honest village officer who refuses to destroy the documents on Thampi’s orders .My hopes rose as JS’s face lit the scene but were put out immediately as the poor guy was shot dead soon after he had passed on the documents to Sai K for safe keeping . To offset the bad Christian brother-in-law ( Suresh Krishna) there is Suresh Gopi alias Vadakkan, the good Christian brother-in-law & honest police officer. There is one more Christian brother , adopted from Mumbai – karim Lala aka Andrews , Sarath Kumar ( Kunkan of Pazhassi Raja) being the flavour of the season.
In all this macho, dishum-dishum desert , there are oases, some sweet moments. There is that wonderful Kaithapuram – Deepak dev song sequence where all the mohinis come and their beaus too shine. The cats drink milk . There is the subtle , underplayed romance acted out quite befittingly by the perky, pouting Kaniha and the Gentle giant , Suresh Gopi. Flashes of humour from Dileep and Venjaranmood . As for Mohanlal, all my sympathies. 1/1000 th of him is not required for the role of Christie. But you watch it only because he is playing it. My dear Mallu directors, for heaven’s sake , don’t insult this Thampuran by making him a mere gun-totter & muscleman. Don’t trap him in a repetitive rut ! Don’t rob him of his rhythm, his music, his Mohini !
From the perennial classics , socially relevant , avant- garde triumphs and sheer rib-tickling entertainers ( Thulabharam, Chemmeen, Swayamvaram, Yakshi, all the 80’s& 90s movies,Devasuram, Dasaradham , kamaladalm, Bharatham, Aaram thampuran et al of the iconic Mohanlal, Desadanam, Chintavishtayaya Shyamala and just a few of the recent hits , one Classmates, one Veruthe oru Bharya , one Udayanaanu Tharam, to name a few of a humongous list of greats ) to Christian Brothers , Malayalam cinema’s descent into banality is tragic.
Published in City Journal, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Caesar's wife & other Roman stories ( Published in City Journal ,March 14,2011
Caesar’s Wife & Other Roman Stories
By Lakshmi Padmanabhan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has resurrected Caesar’s wife , a woman who lived, married , had her being and lost her being a few decades before the Birth of Christ. He has unleashed her into the consciousness of his unsuspecting and suspecting countrymen and women. The countrywomen have more cause for concern though the PM is positioning himself in the place of Caesar’s wife and not of Caesar himself. His illustrious but distant predecessor , Jawaharlalji had done that. In a beautiful piece of writing the great Nehru gave vent to dark doubts about his own dormant dictatorial dreams. Plainly he was asking himself whether he wanted to be Caesar ! The name of Caesar is now synonymous with political ambition of the despotic kind.
This is not the first time that the PM has quoted Julius Caesar. I have it on the authority of Arun Jaitley’s article in The Times Of India( March 5,2011) that when P.V Narasinha Rao was removed from the party presidency after losing the 1996 elections , MMS, who was FinMin under him had publicly commented : “ Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
It is amazing to see the continuing connection of Roman history with current Indian politics. Julius Caesar , Roman general ( 100 BC – 44 BC) conquered many lands including Britain & France. But he had not come to India. So how come Indian politicians hark back to him and his wife ? It is , I feel, entirely because of Will – William Shakespeare and the English language and its idioms that came with the Empire. Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ used to be a staple in the English curriculum . But the Caesar’s wife in that play is /was not the Caesar’s wife in the idiom.
Lemme clear the cobweb around Caesar’s wives. Julius Caesar had 3 wives. Biwi No.1 was Cornelia who died in childbirth. The child Julia
survived. No.2 was Pompeia Sulla and No.3 was Calphurnia who got all those bad dreams about her husband’s end .
Pompeia Sulla whom Caesar married for political reasons is the character who inadvertently led to the famous pronouncement by Caesar- Caesar’s wife must be above board . Pompeia hosted the Feast of the Good Goddess which was meant strictly for women. But a notorious profligate called Clodius allegedly disguised himself as a woman and seduced Pompeia. He was prosecuted . But during the trial Caesar did not give evidence against Clodius, though several members of his family did.. Clodius was aquitted. Caesar divorced Pompeia. When the court asked him why he had demanded a divorce when so much uncertainty surrounded the incident, Caesar replied : “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
Our own mythology has a parallel story. A washerman cast aspersions on Seetha Devi’s chastity and the King of Ayodhya, Sree Ramachandra bade goodbye to his beloved. These famous incidents highlight the dilemmas of leaders , of men ( now, women, too ) in public life. Hard choices between reality and perception , between personal happiness and public probity/ acceptance /fame , between woman , defeat/failure on the one side & war , victory and empire /power on the other.
Another equally famous Roman, Caesar’s protégé was quite unCaesar like in his hour of trial. Mark Antony lost an empire for Cleopatra. And happy to lose it , too. Again, Shakespeare had made the romance so memorable for us. We have our own Mark , mutatis mutandis ( with necessary changes, modifications i.e. ) in a Malu , our incorruptible MP from TVM, the incorrigible romantic, the absolutely adorable Shashi Tharoor.
“ The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson ,” wrote Aldous Huxley,
“ consist in the fact that from age to age nothing changes and yet , everything is completely different.” Everything in 21st century A.D. India is vastly different from everything in Rome in the 1st century B.C Yet everything is the same, too.
-------------
By Lakshmi Padmanabhan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has resurrected Caesar’s wife , a woman who lived, married , had her being and lost her being a few decades before the Birth of Christ. He has unleashed her into the consciousness of his unsuspecting and suspecting countrymen and women. The countrywomen have more cause for concern though the PM is positioning himself in the place of Caesar’s wife and not of Caesar himself. His illustrious but distant predecessor , Jawaharlalji had done that. In a beautiful piece of writing the great Nehru gave vent to dark doubts about his own dormant dictatorial dreams. Plainly he was asking himself whether he wanted to be Caesar ! The name of Caesar is now synonymous with political ambition of the despotic kind.
This is not the first time that the PM has quoted Julius Caesar. I have it on the authority of Arun Jaitley’s article in The Times Of India( March 5,2011) that when P.V Narasinha Rao was removed from the party presidency after losing the 1996 elections , MMS, who was FinMin under him had publicly commented : “ Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
It is amazing to see the continuing connection of Roman history with current Indian politics. Julius Caesar , Roman general ( 100 BC – 44 BC) conquered many lands including Britain & France. But he had not come to India. So how come Indian politicians hark back to him and his wife ? It is , I feel, entirely because of Will – William Shakespeare and the English language and its idioms that came with the Empire. Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ used to be a staple in the English curriculum . But the Caesar’s wife in that play is /was not the Caesar’s wife in the idiom.
Lemme clear the cobweb around Caesar’s wives. Julius Caesar had 3 wives. Biwi No.1 was Cornelia who died in childbirth. The child Julia
survived. No.2 was Pompeia Sulla and No.3 was Calphurnia who got all those bad dreams about her husband’s end .
Pompeia Sulla whom Caesar married for political reasons is the character who inadvertently led to the famous pronouncement by Caesar- Caesar’s wife must be above board . Pompeia hosted the Feast of the Good Goddess which was meant strictly for women. But a notorious profligate called Clodius allegedly disguised himself as a woman and seduced Pompeia. He was prosecuted . But during the trial Caesar did not give evidence against Clodius, though several members of his family did.. Clodius was aquitted. Caesar divorced Pompeia. When the court asked him why he had demanded a divorce when so much uncertainty surrounded the incident, Caesar replied : “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
Our own mythology has a parallel story. A washerman cast aspersions on Seetha Devi’s chastity and the King of Ayodhya, Sree Ramachandra bade goodbye to his beloved. These famous incidents highlight the dilemmas of leaders , of men ( now, women, too ) in public life. Hard choices between reality and perception , between personal happiness and public probity/ acceptance /fame , between woman , defeat/failure on the one side & war , victory and empire /power on the other.
Another equally famous Roman, Caesar’s protégé was quite unCaesar like in his hour of trial. Mark Antony lost an empire for Cleopatra. And happy to lose it , too. Again, Shakespeare had made the romance so memorable for us. We have our own Mark , mutatis mutandis ( with necessary changes, modifications i.e. ) in a Malu , our incorruptible MP from TVM, the incorrigible romantic, the absolutely adorable Shashi Tharoor.
“ The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson ,” wrote Aldous Huxley,
“ consist in the fact that from age to age nothing changes and yet , everything is completely different.” Everything in 21st century A.D. India is vastly different from everything in Rome in the 1st century B.C Yet everything is the same, too.
-------------
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Corporate Wives
Every Friday changes your life. Not my observation, this. I am just quoting Bobby Deol , son of his father , the great Dharmendra. Bobby uttered the oracular words after the success of ‘ Yamla, Pagla, Deevana’. Haven’t seen the movie despite being surrounded by multiplexes screening Hindi films. That is not the point. The point is about Friday. Is Friday as life-changing to everyone as it is to the fillum folk ? Not really. Last Friday , 25th of Feb 2011, for instance, did not change my life.
But it did bring me face to face with the current profile of the educated, female workforce in Mumbai and their corporate credentials. The magic word is ‘corporate’. Globalization has endowed it with a halo and I had a close encounter with it at the Women Leadership Summit organized by Siliconindia . I have already mentioned the day and the date. The lead speakers , the panelists were women entrepreneurs ,CEOs of their own companies or women in management positions of new age corporates like Wipro,or of older giants like Bharat Petroleum. All properly suited and booted except for the Malus and Bengus who chose to be in the Indian corporate formal, the silk saree. The Malu, I must mention , was Gita Ramachandran of Bharat Petroleum, a senior artist in the work-life balancing act who gave the most commonsensical tips to meet the dilemmas to the younger delegates. The delegates , too were mostly from the corporate world. I was , perhaps the only one from academia, a profession next in ancientness only to the oldest, I suppose. Felt the difference and the isolation very acutely indeed.
The summit was a sharing of the various challenges and risks faced by the species of women I choose to call ‘corporate wives.
‘Corporate Wives’ can be any of the 4 classes of women. ‘Wife’ was not wife always. ‘Wife’ meant only woman in the early days of the language. So corporate wives are corporate women, i.e women working in or for corporates. Some of these corporate women are also wives in the modern sense,with husbands , children ,mother-in-law et al. Then there are the stay at home wives/marital partners of men who work in corporates. and the last category are corporate wives of corporate husbands. Together they may be called corporate couples. The last 2 categories were not represented at the meet.
The problems aired were not basically different from those faced by women working outside the home in general. Only they are more compounded these days by the nature of the new jobs that have come into being . Glass ceilings are being broken. Women are in key positions. With the coming of MNCs women are on the move and required to be away from the home for longer periods than before. They sometimes spend more time with male colleagues or bosses than with their husbands or families. The corporate wife’s most trusted advisor or mentor cannot be the husband always. She might tend to remember the TA’s birthday more than the husband’s ! All these create stresses and strains. One delegate touched upon a most delicate point, that of how ‘ Not tonight , darling’ is not taken well or sympathized with by the husband.
Families in India are so used to taking the woman’s services of all kinds for granted that they cannot stand any rocking of the boat. Parents, parents –in-law , husbands and children need to become aware of the new demands on the mental, emotional and physical resources of the woman professionals and learn to respect them. It was sad that Women Leadership Summit was attended only by women. A few male delegates, corporate or otherwise, could have made the Friday far more exciting and fruitful.
But it did bring me face to face with the current profile of the educated, female workforce in Mumbai and their corporate credentials. The magic word is ‘corporate’. Globalization has endowed it with a halo and I had a close encounter with it at the Women Leadership Summit organized by Siliconindia . I have already mentioned the day and the date. The lead speakers , the panelists were women entrepreneurs ,CEOs of their own companies or women in management positions of new age corporates like Wipro,or of older giants like Bharat Petroleum. All properly suited and booted except for the Malus and Bengus who chose to be in the Indian corporate formal, the silk saree. The Malu, I must mention , was Gita Ramachandran of Bharat Petroleum, a senior artist in the work-life balancing act who gave the most commonsensical tips to meet the dilemmas to the younger delegates. The delegates , too were mostly from the corporate world. I was , perhaps the only one from academia, a profession next in ancientness only to the oldest, I suppose. Felt the difference and the isolation very acutely indeed.
The summit was a sharing of the various challenges and risks faced by the species of women I choose to call ‘corporate wives.
‘Corporate Wives’ can be any of the 4 classes of women. ‘Wife’ was not wife always. ‘Wife’ meant only woman in the early days of the language. So corporate wives are corporate women, i.e women working in or for corporates. Some of these corporate women are also wives in the modern sense,with husbands , children ,mother-in-law et al. Then there are the stay at home wives/marital partners of men who work in corporates. and the last category are corporate wives of corporate husbands. Together they may be called corporate couples. The last 2 categories were not represented at the meet.
The problems aired were not basically different from those faced by women working outside the home in general. Only they are more compounded these days by the nature of the new jobs that have come into being . Glass ceilings are being broken. Women are in key positions. With the coming of MNCs women are on the move and required to be away from the home for longer periods than before. They sometimes spend more time with male colleagues or bosses than with their husbands or families. The corporate wife’s most trusted advisor or mentor cannot be the husband always. She might tend to remember the TA’s birthday more than the husband’s ! All these create stresses and strains. One delegate touched upon a most delicate point, that of how ‘ Not tonight , darling’ is not taken well or sympathized with by the husband.
Families in India are so used to taking the woman’s services of all kinds for granted that they cannot stand any rocking of the boat. Parents, parents –in-law , husbands and children need to become aware of the new demands on the mental, emotional and physical resources of the woman professionals and learn to respect them. It was sad that Women Leadership Summit was attended only by women. A few male delegates, corporate or otherwise, could have made the Friday far more exciting and fruitful.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Occasionally Yours ........
I am extremely grateful to certain adjectives and adverbs in the English language. They help me to describe myself and others who are made of truly indescribable fluff. Last week while I was waiting for Godot at the Coimbatore airport I looked around and saw that my fellow passengers were taking a 5 hour delay without much of a sense of disquiet . I found myself fidgeting despite a deep dip into an engrossing novel named ‘ Fools Die’ authored by the father of ‘ The Godfather’ , Maria Puzo himself. The occasional nature of my air travel explained my lack of composure. It was equally a lack of exposure, gawar that I am,long years of urbanization notwithstanding, upcountry as sophisticated folks might call me. . The moment this thought and the word ‘occasional’ flashed across my mind’s screen( mind’s eye , inward eye etc. are discarded as they don’t reflect the current times when everything is on the screen and the screen is everything ) I was at peace…and l could settle down to devouring more of the Puzo !
Parts of speech can be played around with, these days, thanks to liberalization of rules everywhere. Hence my coinage‘Occasionals’.Occasionals are a recognized category. In most fields there are occasionals floating around , unbound by rigours , deadlines and expectations. Even well- established writers seek the safety of the ‘occasional’ tag. The particular well-established writer who is on my mind is Kiran Nagarkar who writes brilliantly both in Marathi and English. I haven’t read his Marathi, I must confess. Read his English ‘ Cuckold’ and you will see my point. ‘Occasional’ stalls questions from interviewing pests and their “ when is your next novel coming / are you at work on something ”sort of querries. It is a sort of anticipatory bail. It allows you to operate at your own pace. I wonder whether Arundhati Roy would accept the ‘occasional ’title. More a semi - retired novelist but a regular activist and spokeswoman, daring the arch devil himself. In CVs you find the sobriquet ‘ Occasional contributor to journals and magazines’ which is a euphemism for a defunct scribbler, a plain ex- , one who had written, used to write and so on.
Occasionalism ( of this mundane kind, not the philosophical one) is rampant in the arts and entertainment arena, occasional painters, singers, composers, lyricists,actors, one-film wonders. Could be doing something else to make a living. There in is the rub. The freedom is fine. But where will the food come from ? The old aristocrats who didn’t have to work for a living could afford the luxury of the dabbler enjoying brief flirtations with the fashionable arts. Remember the character in the movie, Nakhakshathangal , so brilliantly essayed by Jayettan ( Occasional actor !) in his heyday as a singer ?
Occasional smokers and drinkers are a different story. If only they remained occasional S’s and D’s ! Nearly always there is progress / regress in their status. It doesn’t take much time for them to be regulars. Chain smoking and alcoholism are just a few steps away. Progress in negative habits comes effortlessly. You don’t have to work at them. Getting established in positive activity is a steep climb.
The personal sphere , so far, has shied away from accommodating occasionalism at least in our part of the world. But if more and more marriages become telegamous ( long distance) and parents and children live apart, families distributed all over the world and so on you cant be too sure. Definitions could change. With a slight expansion or elaboration in meaning, you could be an occasional husband , wife, daughter, son, dad, mom, dad-in-law, mom-in-law…….
Parts of speech can be played around with, these days, thanks to liberalization of rules everywhere. Hence my coinage‘Occasionals’.Occasionals are a recognized category. In most fields there are occasionals floating around , unbound by rigours , deadlines and expectations. Even well- established writers seek the safety of the ‘occasional’ tag. The particular well-established writer who is on my mind is Kiran Nagarkar who writes brilliantly both in Marathi and English. I haven’t read his Marathi, I must confess. Read his English ‘ Cuckold’ and you will see my point. ‘Occasional’ stalls questions from interviewing pests and their “ when is your next novel coming / are you at work on something ”sort of querries. It is a sort of anticipatory bail. It allows you to operate at your own pace. I wonder whether Arundhati Roy would accept the ‘occasional ’title. More a semi - retired novelist but a regular activist and spokeswoman, daring the arch devil himself. In CVs you find the sobriquet ‘ Occasional contributor to journals and magazines’ which is a euphemism for a defunct scribbler, a plain ex- , one who had written, used to write and so on.
Occasionalism ( of this mundane kind, not the philosophical one) is rampant in the arts and entertainment arena, occasional painters, singers, composers, lyricists,actors, one-film wonders. Could be doing something else to make a living. There in is the rub. The freedom is fine. But where will the food come from ? The old aristocrats who didn’t have to work for a living could afford the luxury of the dabbler enjoying brief flirtations with the fashionable arts. Remember the character in the movie, Nakhakshathangal , so brilliantly essayed by Jayettan ( Occasional actor !) in his heyday as a singer ?
Occasional smokers and drinkers are a different story. If only they remained occasional S’s and D’s ! Nearly always there is progress / regress in their status. It doesn’t take much time for them to be regulars. Chain smoking and alcoholism are just a few steps away. Progress in negative habits comes effortlessly. You don’t have to work at them. Getting established in positive activity is a steep climb.
The personal sphere , so far, has shied away from accommodating occasionalism at least in our part of the world. But if more and more marriages become telegamous ( long distance) and parents and children live apart, families distributed all over the world and so on you cant be too sure. Definitions could change. With a slight expansion or elaboration in meaning, you could be an occasional husband , wife, daughter, son, dad, mom, dad-in-law, mom-in-law…….
Don’t Wash !
To wash or not to wash is not as overwhelming a question as ‘ To be or not to
be ’. But it is one of the great existential dilemmas for the votaries of the Sloth Goddess who would like to burn incense at her altar had they been a little less slothful. Washing , as you all know, is classifiable into a) washing of the self b) washing of other individuals far older or far younger to you, sometimes your age or slightly older but more slothful than you c) washing of possessions & utilities like your clothes , your car, your vessels and d) certain washings of the clinical/pathological /technical kind about which I cant say much. As far as the layperson that I am, is concerned, each one of the first three is enough of a botheration to say the least. Each , by itself or in combination with one of the other or both can destroy joie de vivre which is French for ‘ joy of life .’
I have nothing against the hydromaniacs who wash and wash and wash and become godly through cleanliness. I admire them. But I can’t be like them. It may be due to a sort of hydrophobia, fear of water . Not, God forbid, the sort that is caused by the bite of rabid dogs. But just a horror of handing over , however temporarily, of the beloved body, one’s own, to one of the panchabhoothas, resembling somewhat the other fear of having to hand it over to another bhootha or element after the ghost is given up ! Giving kids or disabled elders a bath is however, not impacted by the phobia. I have done it out of the goodness of my heart and also out of the desire to earn Punya.
There are other more compelling reasons that I can urge against the daily bath habit( hairwash included…no Malu would acknowledge mere body wash as bath) of the squeaky clean.My environmental conscience is outraged by the thoughtless overexploitation of such a scarce natural resource as water. Besides lemme point out that washing is not the equivalent of keeping yourself clean, not any more.. We must learn to look upon the water of the 21st century with suspicion. Kaliyug’s Ganga , Pampa & Kaveri are all ‘myly’and can wash away neither your dirt nor your sins.
Washing clothes & vessels falls under the category of necessary evils. I have never had to wash cars which is the big positive about not owning them. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had washed vessels when he was in the U.K with his wife in their youth. Mrs. Singh herself had said so somewhere. George Fernandes had washed his own clothes until he fell a victim to Alzheimers. The fact that even the big folks are not spared the irksome chores helps me check my own tears when I am obliged to bend over vessels and bear their clang-clang and refusal to shine with my scrubbing. As for clothes , I have my own style of handling them. I don’t injure them with too much aquatic contact. But attachment to stiff and starched clothes has been my Achilles heel . How I wish the great Greek hero, I mean Achilles whose heel alone was weak, were reborn as my neighbourhood washerman ! My utopian wishes are endless …Clothes requiring no washing, dishes who will look after themselves, Chitty like attendants who give you a perfect wash , without your having to stir… . The first of these, dirt resistant & stink resistant clothes will soon be a reality according to one report. My eyes are ever alert to such reports. My prayer is : May the ultimate solution be found to the physical and psychological problems connected with washing.
Washing is an inexhaustible topic. A whole book is required to cover the past, present and future of washing in various parts of the world. In fact , such a book is already there . It is written by a writer amed Katherine Ashenburg titled , ‘The Dirt in Clean : An Unsanitized History Of Washing.’ A priceless nugget from it I would like to share with my dear readers. Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine lived at a time /phase when the typical, aristocratic Frenchman changed his linen shirt daily, dabbled his hand in water but never touched his body with soap or water. NB & J were an exception to this . They took a long hot bath daily. Despite this meticulous pursuit of cleanliness , the great Bonaparte wrote to wife Josephine from a campaign : “ I will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.” Emphasis mine.
be ’. But it is one of the great existential dilemmas for the votaries of the Sloth Goddess who would like to burn incense at her altar had they been a little less slothful. Washing , as you all know, is classifiable into a) washing of the self b) washing of other individuals far older or far younger to you, sometimes your age or slightly older but more slothful than you c) washing of possessions & utilities like your clothes , your car, your vessels and d) certain washings of the clinical/pathological /technical kind about which I cant say much. As far as the layperson that I am, is concerned, each one of the first three is enough of a botheration to say the least. Each , by itself or in combination with one of the other or both can destroy joie de vivre which is French for ‘ joy of life .’
I have nothing against the hydromaniacs who wash and wash and wash and become godly through cleanliness. I admire them. But I can’t be like them. It may be due to a sort of hydrophobia, fear of water . Not, God forbid, the sort that is caused by the bite of rabid dogs. But just a horror of handing over , however temporarily, of the beloved body, one’s own, to one of the panchabhoothas, resembling somewhat the other fear of having to hand it over to another bhootha or element after the ghost is given up ! Giving kids or disabled elders a bath is however, not impacted by the phobia. I have done it out of the goodness of my heart and also out of the desire to earn Punya.
There are other more compelling reasons that I can urge against the daily bath habit( hairwash included…no Malu would acknowledge mere body wash as bath) of the squeaky clean.My environmental conscience is outraged by the thoughtless overexploitation of such a scarce natural resource as water. Besides lemme point out that washing is not the equivalent of keeping yourself clean, not any more.. We must learn to look upon the water of the 21st century with suspicion. Kaliyug’s Ganga , Pampa & Kaveri are all ‘myly’and can wash away neither your dirt nor your sins.
Washing clothes & vessels falls under the category of necessary evils. I have never had to wash cars which is the big positive about not owning them. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had washed vessels when he was in the U.K with his wife in their youth. Mrs. Singh herself had said so somewhere. George Fernandes had washed his own clothes until he fell a victim to Alzheimers. The fact that even the big folks are not spared the irksome chores helps me check my own tears when I am obliged to bend over vessels and bear their clang-clang and refusal to shine with my scrubbing. As for clothes , I have my own style of handling them. I don’t injure them with too much aquatic contact. But attachment to stiff and starched clothes has been my Achilles heel . How I wish the great Greek hero, I mean Achilles whose heel alone was weak, were reborn as my neighbourhood washerman ! My utopian wishes are endless …Clothes requiring no washing, dishes who will look after themselves, Chitty like attendants who give you a perfect wash , without your having to stir… . The first of these, dirt resistant & stink resistant clothes will soon be a reality according to one report. My eyes are ever alert to such reports. My prayer is : May the ultimate solution be found to the physical and psychological problems connected with washing.
Washing is an inexhaustible topic. A whole book is required to cover the past, present and future of washing in various parts of the world. In fact , such a book is already there . It is written by a writer amed Katherine Ashenburg titled , ‘The Dirt in Clean : An Unsanitized History Of Washing.’ A priceless nugget from it I would like to share with my dear readers. Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine lived at a time /phase when the typical, aristocratic Frenchman changed his linen shirt daily, dabbled his hand in water but never touched his body with soap or water. NB & J were an exception to this . They took a long hot bath daily. Despite this meticulous pursuit of cleanliness , the great Bonaparte wrote to wife Josephine from a campaign : “ I will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.” Emphasis mine.
Left - Right Reflections
Left- Right , Left- Right , Left- Right …..the mantra echoes in my mind of a long-ago march in white salwar kameez in a parade on an Independence Day or Republic Day at Fort Maidan , Palghat ( Palakkatte Kottamaidanam for the plain, unvarnished Malu– I would like to add ‘ unwashed,’too, for, contrary to widely held belief, many Malus don’t wash , or do so only once in a blue moon -) as part of my brief association with the NCC unit of Govt. Victoria College, Palghat. A highly elastic and extended teacher of English from the dawn of time, I peddle in words, meanings ,origins of words, synonyms and antonyms. As such I find the terms left and right very fascinating , full of history & potential, elastic and extensible. So here I go into their histories , mysteries , their extensions & elasticities
Right from its very origins the words indicating left have been under a cloud. The Old English word for left was ‘winstra’ meaning euphemistically ‘more friendly.’ To call the left more friendly was an attempt to propitiate the evil forces residing in the left hand side of the body. Latin, ever the boon and the bane as well, to English looms menacingly over the left side . The word in the mother of all European languages is ‘sinister’. The opposite is ‘dexter’, a word with all the most desirable associations. Call a person dexterous . He/she will bless you. Anglo-Saxon ( Old English resembling apna Sanskrit in many ways was the language of Britain in the Dark Ages ) had the word, ‘ lyft’, a close look-alike but again with the meaning ‘weak’ or ‘foolish’. It was only in the 13the century did it get its rightful place as the partner of left.
And it has been a very unequal partnership. Evil intentions lurk behind making Right the antonym of Left . As Right has another antonym, ‘Wrong’, syllogistically left becomes wrong ! But ‘Left is Right’ is the slogan of at least two schools of thought, two groups of warriors who have emerged as powerful defenders of everything ‘sinister’! One school is of the lefties, the southpaws or sinistrals as they are called…I wish I could say ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ for reasons that will be made obvious in the course of this paragraph itself. The charge of the southpaw brigade is led by American author and celebrity lefty, Rae Lindsay( the same dame with interesting titles like ‘ How to be a Perfect Bitch’ to her credit). Her iconic book, ‘ Left is Right : The Survival guide for Living Lefty in a Right Handed World ’ reveals how to be left-handed is much more than just right .It is greater than great as some of the greatest of the past from Biblical times to the living present – from David of the David and Goliath story of the Bible , Alexander , the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci to the two Bills ( Clinton and Gates) ) and Oprah were/are southpaws. To the list we can add our own Shah en Shah of the acting world, Amitabh Bachan and sundry other well-known and less known individuals of your neighbourhood.
The declaration of war against right majoritarianism is long overdue. Lefties have been victims of prejudices and superstitions , leave alone the practical problems of handling the scissors, latches, doors , tools and machines of the righthanded world. It has been a world of the righthanded, for the righthanded and by the righthanded. The right hand has enjoyed a privileged position always, in nearly all cultures. Give or take with the right hand is the accepted behaviour. The lefty is obliged to artificially comply, against her/his grain. Many idiomatic expressions mirror the belief system of the right-handed 80 percent and insult the sensibilities of the sinistrals. No one likes a left-handed compliment, for instance. But that is the only compliment worth its name for the lefthanded person. ‘ Right hand man ’ is another hurting usage. The wife is ,vama or vamabhagam , the one whose position is on the husband’s left side , with insinuations of inferiority of both the position and the woman . Another matter, of course, if the husband is a lefty ! Or both are lefties !
Even in the right handed , the role of the left hand is unique. It does the dirty work sans demur. It plays its supportive role without any protest, shares all the work very co-operatively. But its services are not acknowledged in prose or verse. Work of the left hand ( daye hath ka khel ! in the sense of child’s play ) is how language dismisses &underplays the contribution of the left hand. Well, the lefties are out of the closet now , wearing the badge proudly and commading the admiration of the destrals.
The other worthies for whom Left is Right are the Leftist politicians. The origin of the use of the word for anything radical or revolutionary is more literal than ideological. All things revolutionary started with the French Revolution, not with Russia or China or even Karl Marx as some leftists might like to believe. In the National Assembly of France in 1789, the anti-monarchists sat on the left of the President and the Royalists sat to his right. The right wingers and left wingers came into being, were born in this flat , prosaic manner . No blaring of horns or beatings of trumpets . If the Left heard a Panchajanya, it was purely imaginary. But if I were to write the script of the story, I would definitely add it, because the transformative ideology that leftward thinking spawned deseve it. Lal Salaam ! In the same breath I must add that the transformation and the triumph of revolution were short-lived. The state did not wither away. It only became more authoritarian and Big Brother who symbolized the state, an out and out dictator. The communist experiment in governance only replaced one oppressive regime with another. The residue of the revolution has done workers of the free world, God’s Own Country, being the freest, a power of good. The power of collective bargaining is that residue. Shikshakaancha Ekjudice Vijayaaso !…..Teachers’ Unity zindabad !! I have shouted slogans along with my colleagues at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. Been part of boycotts, strikes, demonstrations called by unions often of the Left….sometimes of the Middle &, too. Somewhat like Lib Dem .
Which turn do I, should I take , right or left ? At strange crossroads in Mumbai or anywhere else I stand confused and often take the wrong turn , walk a little and return to take the right turn. But what I consider the wrong turn could have led me to a different , greater destination. You cant, of course , take all the turns. But when you walk forward it is always a march in response to the command Left- Right, Left- Right , Left- Right…..great moral there. Without Left there is no Right and without Right there is nothing Left.
Right from its very origins the words indicating left have been under a cloud. The Old English word for left was ‘winstra’ meaning euphemistically ‘more friendly.’ To call the left more friendly was an attempt to propitiate the evil forces residing in the left hand side of the body. Latin, ever the boon and the bane as well, to English looms menacingly over the left side . The word in the mother of all European languages is ‘sinister’. The opposite is ‘dexter’, a word with all the most desirable associations. Call a person dexterous . He/she will bless you. Anglo-Saxon ( Old English resembling apna Sanskrit in many ways was the language of Britain in the Dark Ages ) had the word, ‘ lyft’, a close look-alike but again with the meaning ‘weak’ or ‘foolish’. It was only in the 13the century did it get its rightful place as the partner of left.
And it has been a very unequal partnership. Evil intentions lurk behind making Right the antonym of Left . As Right has another antonym, ‘Wrong’, syllogistically left becomes wrong ! But ‘Left is Right’ is the slogan of at least two schools of thought, two groups of warriors who have emerged as powerful defenders of everything ‘sinister’! One school is of the lefties, the southpaws or sinistrals as they are called…I wish I could say ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ for reasons that will be made obvious in the course of this paragraph itself. The charge of the southpaw brigade is led by American author and celebrity lefty, Rae Lindsay( the same dame with interesting titles like ‘ How to be a Perfect Bitch’ to her credit). Her iconic book, ‘ Left is Right : The Survival guide for Living Lefty in a Right Handed World ’ reveals how to be left-handed is much more than just right .It is greater than great as some of the greatest of the past from Biblical times to the living present – from David of the David and Goliath story of the Bible , Alexander , the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci to the two Bills ( Clinton and Gates) ) and Oprah were/are southpaws. To the list we can add our own Shah en Shah of the acting world, Amitabh Bachan and sundry other well-known and less known individuals of your neighbourhood.
The declaration of war against right majoritarianism is long overdue. Lefties have been victims of prejudices and superstitions , leave alone the practical problems of handling the scissors, latches, doors , tools and machines of the righthanded world. It has been a world of the righthanded, for the righthanded and by the righthanded. The right hand has enjoyed a privileged position always, in nearly all cultures. Give or take with the right hand is the accepted behaviour. The lefty is obliged to artificially comply, against her/his grain. Many idiomatic expressions mirror the belief system of the right-handed 80 percent and insult the sensibilities of the sinistrals. No one likes a left-handed compliment, for instance. But that is the only compliment worth its name for the lefthanded person. ‘ Right hand man ’ is another hurting usage. The wife is ,vama or vamabhagam , the one whose position is on the husband’s left side , with insinuations of inferiority of both the position and the woman . Another matter, of course, if the husband is a lefty ! Or both are lefties !
Even in the right handed , the role of the left hand is unique. It does the dirty work sans demur. It plays its supportive role without any protest, shares all the work very co-operatively. But its services are not acknowledged in prose or verse. Work of the left hand ( daye hath ka khel ! in the sense of child’s play ) is how language dismisses &underplays the contribution of the left hand. Well, the lefties are out of the closet now , wearing the badge proudly and commading the admiration of the destrals.
The other worthies for whom Left is Right are the Leftist politicians. The origin of the use of the word for anything radical or revolutionary is more literal than ideological. All things revolutionary started with the French Revolution, not with Russia or China or even Karl Marx as some leftists might like to believe. In the National Assembly of France in 1789, the anti-monarchists sat on the left of the President and the Royalists sat to his right. The right wingers and left wingers came into being, were born in this flat , prosaic manner . No blaring of horns or beatings of trumpets . If the Left heard a Panchajanya, it was purely imaginary. But if I were to write the script of the story, I would definitely add it, because the transformative ideology that leftward thinking spawned deseve it. Lal Salaam ! In the same breath I must add that the transformation and the triumph of revolution were short-lived. The state did not wither away. It only became more authoritarian and Big Brother who symbolized the state, an out and out dictator. The communist experiment in governance only replaced one oppressive regime with another. The residue of the revolution has done workers of the free world, God’s Own Country, being the freest, a power of good. The power of collective bargaining is that residue. Shikshakaancha Ekjudice Vijayaaso !…..Teachers’ Unity zindabad !! I have shouted slogans along with my colleagues at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. Been part of boycotts, strikes, demonstrations called by unions often of the Left….sometimes of the Middle &, too. Somewhat like Lib Dem .
Which turn do I, should I take , right or left ? At strange crossroads in Mumbai or anywhere else I stand confused and often take the wrong turn , walk a little and return to take the right turn. But what I consider the wrong turn could have led me to a different , greater destination. You cant, of course , take all the turns. But when you walk forward it is always a march in response to the command Left- Right, Left- Right , Left- Right…..great moral there. Without Left there is no Right and without Right there is nothing Left.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Eunoia: A Blogger at last !
Eunoia: A Blogger at last !: " I feel all the excitement of a first time..."
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