December ’10 ` 30
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THE PERSISTENCE OF TIME Kindle explores milestones and anniversaries of poets, legends, bards and habits that went by in the year 2010.
L SPECIEAND YEAR-UE ISS in int ntterp n erppret reet e aati atti tion on in co conte con ttex e t of Salv al aado ddoor D Dali ali ali l ’ss “Th The Peers rssist isteencce ooff Meem emo mory mo rry” yy”” by by Sagni Saggni Sa gn nik Gang ni aan ng ngopadhy oppa oopa padh dh dhy hyay ay and an ndd P n Prrrith iittth ith ha Kej eejr jr jriw iw iwa waal.l.
Interpretation in context of Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” by Sagnik Gangopadhyay and Pritha Kejriwal.
Editor in Chief: Pritha Kejriwal Managing Editor: Maitreyi Kandoi Senior Editor: Sayantan Neogi Assistant Editor: Sayan Bhattacharya Feature Writers: Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Parnab Mukherjee, Raza Ahmad Rumi, Abhishek Chatterjee Columnists: Teresa Rehman, Abhijit Gupta, Aditya Bidikar, Mainak Bhaumik, Gautam Bhimani, Rohit Roy, Pratik Udeshi, Trina Mukherjee, Vilzaar Kashmiri, Aishwarya Subramanian Art Director: Sagnik Gangopadhyay Cover: Interpretation in context of Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” by Sagnik Gangopadhyay and Pritha Kejriwal. Co-ordinator: Varsha Daga Marketing Manager: Priyanka Khandelia Marketing Executive: Souvik Sen Finance Manager: Binoy Kr. Jana Head - Logistics: Arindam Sarkar Printed at: CDC Printers Pvt Ltd, Tangra Industrial Estate - II (Bengal Pottery), 45 Radhanath Chowdhury Road, Kolkata - 700 015. Distribution: Kolkata: Vishal Book Centre Jamshedpur: Prasad Magazine Centre Pune, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Chennai, Lucknow, Vadodara, Hyderabad: Outlook Publishing Pvt Ltd Vol 1 Issue 9 December 2010 For subscription queries: SMS kindle (space) sub to 575756 or visit www.kindlemag.in or write to info@kindlemag.in For advertising, write to us at: advertising@kindlemag.in For marketing alliances, write to us at: alliances@kindlemag.in Owned, printed and published by Pritha Kejriwal on behalf of Ink Publications Pvt Ltd. Printed at CDC Printers Pvt Ltd and published from Kolkata. Ink India Publications Pvt Ltd is not responsible for the statements and opinions expressed by authors in their articles/writeups published in ‘Kindle’. ‘Kindle’ does not take any responsibility for returning unsolicited publishing material. All pictures, if not mentioned otherwise, are from Reuters.
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Editor’s Note
‘Y
ear-end special issues’- a cliché? Yes, we too plead guilty. The lure of not having to go through the events of the year was most tempting. Leaving behind memories of the catastrophic Haiti earthquake, the toxic oil spill in Mexico, the celebrated World Cup in South Africa and the horrific massacres in Dantewada, inauguration of the tallest building in the world, to the plight of some Chilean miners trapped deep below the earth, a brave Julian Assange playing whistleblower to America’s war secrets in Afghanistan, and some braver millions who suffered floods in Pakistan and Leh. Scent of civil dissent in China and baby steps towards a middle path in Myanmar. Politicians selling airwaves at a discount or ministers giving away flats to not-so-much martyrs. Important births, important deaths etc etc. Since we were going ‘special’, we decided to get into the arbitrary routine of celebrating anniversaries. Of how one man’s experiment 30 years ago, with adhesive and paper could revolutionize business communication. And how 70 years of an iconic smiling face can make us so conditioned and so gullible. It
took exactly 50 years for a person to go from being a regular human to a demi God and back to a fallen hero. 60 years of a simple comic medium could touch millions of people through its social commentary and even today, 10 years after it has stopped being printed, can remain relevant. 40 years of Prozac dependence for our creative needs and 10 years of Wikipedia dependence for our intellectual needs. This could additionally serve as a travel issue, for those interested in traversing through time- lines. It could serve as a list-based issue for those who love compiling lists of best of this and worst of that. But for us, this issue would be as current as a current affairs issue. In the fact that each and every choice has been made with relevance to our times. And that makes it not so arbitrary after all.
December 2010
Maitreyi Kandoi Managing Editor mk @ k i n dl e m a g. i n
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Write to us at: Kindle, Ink Publications Pvt Ltd, DN 37, Sector V, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700 091 or email your response to us at feedback@kindlemag.in or, post on our facebook group wall: Kindle Magazine (group)
Dear Editor, Recently I read ‘The Paid News Phenomenon’. It is an interesting one, though I most emphatically disagree with what you have put across. Truth can win out only in a society which is capitalistic and ideas are treated as a commodity for sale. Capitalism never guarantees that the truth will win out. Capitalism is not a sufficient condition for objectivity, but a necessary one. One can always look into what happened to those who told the truth in Soviet Russia. You don’t even have to go that far. Academics who tell the truth are usually marginalized even at present, as most universities are state funded and regulated in one way or the other. The same is true of such journalists. It is not fair to blame money or capitalism for the dishonesty of journalists, just like it is not fair to blame the printing press or the internet for pornography. It is not the fault of capitalism that there are dishonest journalists. More importantly, it is not the fault of capitalism that the masses are dull and brutish and have a pathological obsession with falsehood. I wonder how most people instinctually grasp wrong ideas at first glance, cling to it and carry on to its logical conclusions. Capitalism can’t make everyone moral, though it will skew the incentive structure in the favour of honesty to the large part, as there won’t be the state to suppress truth under capitalism. Still, people might choose wrong ideas out of incurable stupidity, but they should be free to do so and nothing much could be done about it. Interesting that you had an interview with the marginalized, oppressed and suppressed P Sainath! Warm Regards, Shanu Athiparambath Dear Kindle, As an avid reader of all types of magazines, I was pleasantly surprised on reading the article ‘Not for Pakistan’ by Vilzaar Kashmiri. The article was a fresh breath from all the ‘philosophically and realistically handicapped articles’ appearing in numerous magazines all around India. Personally I would like to add that these stone pelters have twisted their ideologies , the tech-savvy pelters no longer preach about Kashmiri sentiment on the net, they join mainly Indian news groups and comment in a language which far from being unprintable, is dangerous even to think about. As for people like Geelani and Arundhati Roy, my sympathies are with them, a prime example of what ‘AGE’ can do to a person. “We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.” - Georg C. Lichtenberg Regards, Sourav Maulik, via Facebook.
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Writers: Prof. Ajit K Kembhavi, Teresa Rehman, Pritha Kejriwal, Mukherjee P, Saswat Pattanayak, Abhijit Gupta, Aditya Bidikar, Rohit Roy, Abhishek Chatterjee, Agniva Chowdhury, Madhurima Bose, Sayan Bhattacharya and Sayantan Neogi.
By Saswat Pattanayak
W
hen Cassius Clay won the gold medal at 1960 Rome Olympics, he was proud of being American. In his characteristic manner, he declared his love: “To make America the greatest is my goal; so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of Gold; the Greeks said you’re better than the Cassius of Old.” He was only 18 then and after winning the medal for his country, he was expecting to be treated with love and respect back home. Instead, he continued to face racism and in protest, threw the medal away. Ali recalled, “I went all the way to Italy to represent my country, won a gold medal, and now I come back to America
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and can’t even get served at a five-and-dime store. I went to a bridge, tore the medal off my neck and threw it into the river. That gold medal didn’t mean a thing to me if my black brothers and sisters were treated wrong in a country I was supposed to represent.” In a way, 1960 both started and ended boxing as a profession for the three-time heavyweight champion of the world. Boxing became a political tool for Clay, who after rejecting the Olympic glory, chose to identify with America’s most oppressed, the Black Muslims. He declared himself, the world’s “Greatest”: Muhammad Ali.
Norman Mailer called Ali the “first psychologist of the body...the swiftest embodiment of human intelligence we have had yet.” Ali utilized his raw physicality on unexpected quarters: to denounce white supremacy, to demand for black sovereignty, and to educate the working class about class solidarities. He became everything that the power structure did not want him to become. He refused to go down the history pages merely as a boxing champion. He preferred to champion the causes of the oppressed instead; and his victories over the “Uncle Tom” boxers were elements of his larger scheme. Ali elaborated his scheme in forceful words, “I’m gonna get famous so I can help my people...I am not depending on the white power structure and the boxing game for survival, where they don’t look at fighters to have brains or intelligence. For them, fighters are just brutes that come to entertain the rich, beat up each other and break each other’s noses, show off like two little monkeys for the crowd, killing each other for the crowd...We’re slaves in that ring. The masters get two of us big ones and let us fight it out while they bet, ‘My slave can beat your slave.’”
sentence, when Ali refused to be drafted (“I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me Nigger”) he became the highest and the wisest manifestation of that collective indignation. As an amateur, the young Clay wanted to master boxing so he could knockout the guys who stole his bicycle. He never managed to get his bike back. But soon after winning the gold medal at Rome Olympics, the radicalized Ali knocked the arrogance out of the almighty American power structure and reclaimed Black Pride in ways hitherto unknown. Thus, while receiving Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Award for his “contributions to the cause of human dignity”, Mrs King called him, “a champion of justice, peace and unity”; and civil rights leader Dr Ralph Abernathy said Ali was “the March on Washington all in two fists”.
“Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision.” - Muhammad Ali
His two fists continue to inspire peaceniks and boxers alike, for, in times of both peace and war, he remains the Greatest.
True to his scheme, in his days, Muhammad Ali went on to become the most famous person in the world and he used this fame to help his people by raising consciousness about existing social injustices that were systematically put in place by the ruling structures of the American power to colonize and brutalize peoples of colour. It is convenient today for mainstream history textbooks to omit Ali’s political activism and to reduce him to the stature of a boxer, but by his actions, purpose and declarations, Muhammad Ali stands tall as a true freedom fighter for the black people of America. It equally suits the ruling class narratives to herald Ali solely as a ruthless fighter inside the rings, but he is in fact the most celebrated Conscientious Objector to the Vietnam War. During the turbulent Sixties, it was way easier to release anger within the rings, than to resent American Power as a Black Muslim on the streets. And by daring prison December 2010
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“You cannot share your life with any animal with a well-developed brain and not realize that animals have personalities.” - Jane Goodall
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t has to be a very unique and profound sense of duty that convinces a human being to dedicate her life to a single cause. People are hardwired to change. Even in research, diversification is usually the norm. To be able to devote half a century to one single endeavour is a feat achieved by very few in human history. Jane Goodall is one such individual. Clutching a childhood memory of a chimpanzee toy (that apparently influenced her life-time dedication to animals) Jane stepped into Africa at the age of 23. There she met famed anthropologist and palaeontologist, Louis Leakey who was to change her life forever. On Leakey’s initiative Jane was to study under famous primatologists of the time and eventually arrive at the gates of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, now famous the world over for her images with her beloved chimps. On the way, this woman of magnificent determination and love and of little education would end up becoming the protégé of some of the best known naturalist minds of the time. Eventually, two years after arriving at Gombe Park, Goodall would go on to become only the 8th person in the history of Cambridge University to be allowed a PhD without first attaining a bachelors degree. It has been 50 years since Goodall first
landed in Tanzania. And in those 50 years, she managed to not only change a groaning, elitist and superannuated academic system, but, in the process, make humanity reflect upon its own arrogance. Although before her it had already come to be widely accepted that people were indeed related to chimps, that tool making and emotion still remained the prerogative of people was humanity’s last ditch attempt at asserting dominance and the idea of intelligent design over the animal kingdom. Jane Goodall was instrumental in shattering this miserable dream.
hug, they kiss, they beg, they barter... they make war), or realized that, that most human of human endeavour – tool making – was never really unique to our species.
The truth is, this probably wouldn’t have been possible if not for Goodall’s non-academic background. By Leakey’s own admission this unlikeliest of scholars achieved what she did precisely because her mind was “uncluttered by conventional scientific methods”. British academic snobbery, and the inherent limitations within, had been invaded by a young, relatively unlettered, English girl armed with her repertoire of emotions and a deft personal touch.
This personal touch of Jane Goodall served another – a much higher – purpose for the interests of Gombe. The world was becoming more crowded at the time, and Africa, the birthplace of humanity, was feeling the brunt of it. Her beloved chimps were regularly being killed for bush-meat and their habitat destroyed to serve the purposes of a different, much faster growing, species. It was therefore then that Goodall took her research and love for her chimps to a much higher level. The conservation efforts of Goodall are legendary within the activist world. From starting the Jane Goodall Institute to taking things to a global level for conservation goals was testament to her dedication and innovation skills. But it was the already human face that she had given to her chimps that made her efforts more far reaching than so many other initiatives.
Yet, if she hadn’t introduced her unconventional research methods into academia, the world would not have ever met the endearing David or the lovable Flo and Fifi or the many other chimps in Gombe that were given an almost human face. It wouldn’t have known of the emotions of chimps (they
It is a sad truth that this, our closest of cousins, from whom we can learn so much about ourselves, is being systematically destroyed as a species, for our own selfish ends. Had it not been for individuals such as Jane Goodall, whatever little we could salvage would have certainly been lost already.
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100 YEARS of AKIRA KUROSAWA By Sayan Bhattacharya 10 kindle india
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versions of reality has had so many Hollywood interpretations including the recent ‘Vantage Point’, ‘Seven Samurai’ too has its share of high octane action spin-offs including our very own ‘Sholay’, the heartwarming ‘Dasvidaniya’ is a take on ‘Ikiru’, Bergman says that his ‘Virgin Spring’ is a poor take on Kurosawa, the examples are just endless.
At
the end of ‘Rashomon’, the w o o d c u t t e r voluntarily decides to adopt the abandoned child but the priest hesitates. The woodcutter assures him that he has six children and he will not differentiate between them and the new entrant in the family. The priest gives away the child. The overcast sky gives way to bright sunshine. Or take the heart warming ‘Ikuru’ where a vinegary civil servant, who comes to know that his days are numbered, decides to build a park, going against all odds. Even the iconic ‘Seven Samurai’ shows some out-of-work samurai save the lives of some poor peasants from brigands. In the process, some of them die but they are satisfied seeing the peasants going back to their usual lives. The intrinsic goodness of human beings forms the central theme of most of Kurosawa’s films- films that continue to engage, that are timeless not just for their form and content but for the values they celebrate, issues they confront, films that are a lesson in filmmaking, that inspire directors, that continue to evoke intelligent or dumb spin offs. ‘Rashomon’ with its multiple
Akira Kurosawa was the first Japanese director to get acknowledgement in the West. Counting John Ford as one of his influences, the impact of Westerns and Hollywood narrative technique is pretty evident in his films. However his speciality lies in the fact that these influences are rooted in traditional Japanese sensibilities. The widescreen compositions, the characters in his films are all a nod to Japanese scroll paintings, Japanese legends. In fact his mis-en-scene makes quite obvious his in depth knowledge in painting (he wanted to become a painter but his father objected). To add to that he was a master of transcreation. Transporting Shakespeare (read ‘Macbeth’) to Noh milieu in the ‘Throne of Blood’ or adapting Gorky in ‘Lower Depths’ or Dostoevsky, he injected an international connote to Japanese cinema. As the world celebrates the centenary year of this master filmmaker with film festivals, seminars and seminal studies, this is too short a space to celebrate the gems that the man has given us. Also his works have been visited and revisited so many times for references that listing his credentials or detailing his life hardly makes any sense. However I can’t resist relating (at the risk of repeating an oft quoted anecdote) a small incident from the sets of ‘Rashomon’. As Toshiru Mifune (he was to Kurosawa what John Wayne was to Ford, or Mastroianni to Fellini) repeatedly failed to bring the raw intensity to the character of the ruthless bandit.Tajōmaru, Kurosawa asked him to remember the hungry expression of a caged animal, its impotent rage. Mifune did not go wrong after that. That’s Kurosawa, the director, the teacher, the artist. The legacy lives on.
“The term ‘giant’ is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.” - Martin Scorsese December 2010
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decade is a long time. Especially, when it is accompanied by a lingering sense of bleak despondency. Irom Sharmila’s extraordinary vow is a story which repeats itself with ceremonial frequency every year. Sharmila has been undergoing a cycle of arrests every year for the past 10 years for ‘attempted suicide’ which is unlawful under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. This year, she completed 10 years of her fast against the law that allows the army unfettered powers in areas that are considered politically ‘sensitive’ or ‘disturbed’. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) allows discretionary power to an officer of the armed forces to arrest without a warrant, and with the use of necessary force, anyone who has committed certain offences or is suspected of having done so. The Act entrenches the culture of impunity in Manipur, a state ravaged by long years of violent insurgency. The Act also grants officers of the armed forces to fire upon or otherwise use force, even if this causes death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order as well as to enter and search without warrant any premises to make arrests. The Act further stipulates that any officer of the armed forces may only be prosecuted upon the permission of the central government. A massacre by the security forces at Malom in Manipur in the November of 2000 which 12 kindle india
had claimed 10 lives, including women and children triggered Sharmila’s bold resolution – to fast till the Act is repealed. And the fast continued for 10 long years. This bold woman is forcibly fed through a nasal tube. The protracted solitary confinement in the special ward of J N Hospital at Manipur’s capital, Imphal, stirred Sharmila to pour her feelings in poignant verses. Writing poetry has been her moment of catharsis as she unflinchingly engages in an outstanding non-violent crusade against a draconian legislation. This year, her supporters compiled her poems and translated them into English from her mother tongue Meiteilon in an aptly titled book ‘Fragrance of peace’ in order to commemorate the completion of a decade of her fast. The ‘fragrance’ of her conviction has however, crisscrossed impenetrable geographical boundaries and has managed to touch the souls of people all over India. Far away from the trouble-torn Manipur, citizens have met in solidarity with Irom Sharmila at Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kerala and other parts of the country. Representatives from various political parties, mass-fronts, human rights organisations, activists, journalists unanimously appealed to the
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Government of India and other concerned authorities to repeal the AFSPA from Manipur and Jammu & Kashmir, enable Sharmila to lead a free and dignified life, stop killing and arresting civilians just because an area is disturbed, withdraw army from Manipur and begin peace talks with Manipur people and ensure the right to life and right to liberty as provided under the Indian Constitution instead of depriving them of fundamental rights. However, back home, Manipur continues to be a hostage to many cankerous realities. The decade has been a long anguished and excruciating journey for Sharmila’s mother, Irom Sakhi Devi,. After Sharmila started fasting, they mutually
Imphal. decided not to meet each other until her demand was fulfilled. In this one decade, they have met only once in 2008. That was when her septuagenarian mother was seriously ill and was in coma. Sharmila was lodged in the same hospital under judicial custody. Sharmila thought her mother might die and went to meet her in the hospital.
The long years of the imposition of AFSPA has also changed the lives of the ordinary people of Manipur. The AFSPA was initially introduced in 1958 and was enforced in Manipur in 1980,
When a group of over 30 human rights defenders from all over India went to meet Sakhi Devi this year, she burst out crying. “I haven’t met her for the past 10 years. If they repeal
initially intended to be in effect for only six months in order to maintain public order in areas deemed to be “disturbed” by the Indian government. However, the AFSPA is still being implemented in Manipur till today.
A F S PA five days as gesture, daug hter fast. I am to have one her before I
for even a symbolic hopefully my will break her aging and I want last meal with die,” she said.
Meanwhile, her supporters f o r m e d a joint conglomerate called the Just Peace Foundation ( JPF) and organized a weeklong ‘Festival of Hope, Justice and Peace’ in solidarity with the ‘spirit of Sharmila’. Apart from support from India, the festival was acknowledged by International organisations like the Asian Human Rights Commission (Hong Kong), Frontline (Ireland), Forum Asia (Thailand), Metta Center for NonViolence (USA). “This is our way of showing solidarity with her struggle and intensify the call for the repeal of AFSPA. She is an example of an indomitable will of a pure soul to defy injustice of an all powerful state!” says Babloo Loitangbam of Human Rights Alert, an ngo based in
is very discouraging, almost like the military junta in Myanmar which released pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi after 15 long years,” says human rights activist Anjuman Ara Begum.
With her quiet Satyagraha, Sharmila has been able to galvanise people so long immersed in a miasma of hopelessness. Yet, the authorities continue to remain apathetic. There is an enveloping sense of doom. Her wish remains unfulfilled. As of now, her story remains a slice of unfinished history in this ruinous landscape of livid pain.
Wherever AFSPA is in operation, enforced ‘disappearances’, extra-judicial killings, tortures, rapes and arbitrary detentions have been the routine. Everyone seems to be una n im o us in demanding a repeal of AFSPA. Repeal of the Act is certainly n o t the panacea to the Manipur problem; but it is definitely th e first necessary step towards building a sustainable peace in the region.
Meanwhile, Sharmila continues to script history with her marathon fast. Her struggle has also been acknowledged globally. In 2007, she was awarded the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights and the Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize in 2010. “Her fast is a unique contribution to the peace movement. Our government’s apathy to a non-violent str ug g le December 2010
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“If Sharmila dies, Parliament is directly responsible. If she dies, courts and judiciary are responsible, the military is responsible… If she dies, the executive, the PM and President are responsible for doing nothing… If she dies, each one of you journalists is responsible because you did not do your duty…” - Shirin Ebadi
IROM SINGHAJIT SINGH, 52 year-old brother of Irom Sharmila and also an activist fighting for the repeal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, speaks on the unlawful incarceration of Sharmila, the alienation of the North-east and more:
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y sister is a follower of both Gandhian as well as Buddhist philosophy. She does not follow any religion as her religion is humanism. As a child she was a bookworm and used to read books on the religions as well as leaders of the world. She was a very simple girl and was always compassionate towards the poor and the underprivileged. In fact, she has never used cosmetics in her life. So no wonder that she decided fasting was the only way to repeal the draconian Act. In the initial stages when she started fasting in the year 2000, we had thought she would
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give up after a few days. But she was resolute. When I went to meet her, she used to tell me that “As a brother, come to give me courage. But please don’t come to ask me to stop my fast.” She is a simple woman. The people of Manipur were fighting for the repeal of the draconian AFSPA. She simply came and joined them. She is not a leader but a humble soldier fighting for a cause. Inspired by her resolution, I gave up my job as an Agriculture Officer and started working with other human rights groups. I am also a farmer. After 2000, my life has changed and we have faced many problems. But I faced all these not as a brother but as a citizen of India.
Permission to meet her was repeatedly denied. Finally I got to to meet her on Nov 10 with activist Sandeep Panday of the National Alliance for People’s Movement. Sharmila gave away Rs 50,000 for the ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ from her prize money of Rs. 51 lakh that she got from the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM). I am hopeful that she will come home one day. The voice of the people is the voice of God; I am sure the government will listen to our voice and repeal the Act. I think the government’s decision to impose AFSPA only in certain parts of India is due to racial discrimination. It is wrong to keep her in judicial custody.
But this is Manipur and anything can happen here with AFSPA in force. The response to the completion of a decade of Sharmila’s fast was overwhelming. Now even the people in rural Manipur are aware of their rights. We had human rights defenders from all over the country in Imphal. We staged a play and a book of poems was released on the occasion. We want peace and justice for the people of Manipur.
(as told to Teresa Rehman)
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By Saswat Pattanayak “We cannot trust people who are nonconformists. The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.” - Ray Kroc, founder, McDonald’s
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uided by Kroc’s philosophy, McDonald’s has dominated not just fast food retail business, but the fast food culture in entirety. A culture that promotes unquestioned consumption: inexpensive, inclusive and addictive. A bullying monopolist culture that thrives with an overbearing human face; one that constantly smiles, and expects the consumers to smile back at the deals they can’t decline.
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McDonald’s is not just a fast food chain that offers items high in fat, calories, sugar. It is not merely the biggest cause of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in children and young adults. It is not simply a corporation that is unethical in lying about beef contents in french fries or one that employs underage workers for 16-hr days to produce Hello Kitty, Snoopy, and Winnie the Pooh toys for McDonald’s meals. All negative media coverage about McDonald’s misappropriations are certainly what should irk and agitate us. But what should perhaps concern us more are what we have accepted about McDonald’s, than what we feel tempted to reject it for. Because what McDonald’s stands for is much more than its food. McDonald’s stands for a business model that has redefined expansionistic strategies, acquisitions and monopoly capitalism. Over 57% of McDonald’s restaurants are franchises. It currently operates over 32,000 restaurants in 117 countries profiting from 60 million customers each calendar day. As a result of its success, many newer entrants have found inspirations. Yum! Brands, Inc. (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell), Subway, Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chili’s, Olive Garden, Red Lobster have all adopted this expansionist practice of uniformity, conformity, and unanswerable mediocrity. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes, “There are 320,000 small franchised businesses in the United States doing about $1 trillion in annual sales. Although accounting for less than 10% of retail businesses, over 40% of all retails sales come from franchise and they employ more than 8 million people... with a new franchise opening every 8 minutes in the United States.” We have also come to accept the McDonald’s ways of consumerizing children. Of its inimitable marketing tactics that enters the drawing rooms, the classrooms and the playgrounds. Children identify with the mascots of McDonaldland - Ronald, Grimace, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, Captain Crook, etc. After all, McDonald’s is the world’s largest owner
of rental property in the world. And it owns more playgrounds in the world than any other entity - 8000 playlands aimed solely to lure children into coming back to the world of McDoodler stencils and McWrist wallets; during the hours of Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals. The larger the range of unethical profits, the larger the width of generous smiles. Ronald McDonald is second only to Santa Claus in terms of the most recognized icons in the world, and is second only to the Marlboro Man as the most commercialized icon. As the world’s most famous brand, it spends more money on advertising and marketing than any other. McDonald’s seduces us into accepting market imperialism as a desirable future. We are no longer shocked to witness small-scale businesses disappear, alternative media trampled upon, small communities razed off the grounds, bazaars being replaced by supermarkets, complete absence of local farmers from human sights. We are no longer aggrieved at the lack of bargaining power of the purchaser, at the elimination of varieties and assortments in goods and services. We no longer crave for healthy competitions. This phenomenal shift from an ability to express unique identities to amenability for controlled stimulus-response is to a great part, a gift from McDonald’s. McDonald’s today pervades all aspects of society, thus prompting the sociologist George Ritzer to give it an appropriate title, McDonaldization. He writes, “McDonaldization affects not only the restaurant business but also education, work, the criminal justice system, health care, travel, leisure, dieting, politics, the family, religion, and virtually every other aspect of society. McDonaldization has shown every sign of being an inexorable process, sweeping through seemingly impervious institutions and regions of the world.” And what is most remarkable about McDonaldization is that it has a solid future. After all, its most loyal victims are the children.
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40 YEARS
of anti-depressants O By Abhishek Chatterjee
ver the last four decades the context of anti-depressant use and abuse has irrevocably changed. The lingering memory of the drugs also known as ‘barbs’, ‘blues’ or ‘goofballs’ remains rooted in the psychedelic pillpopping eras of the 60s and 70s, enmeshed intrinsically in the attractive, almost inviting image of the hedonistic rock n’roll front man or film star. The Beatles, Stones and Floyd all seemed to produce their best work while under the influence of chemical substances. Many bands even wrote paeans to their creative assistants, perhaps best embodied in songs such as ‘Mother’s little helper’, ‘Sister morphine’, ‘Purple haze’, ‘Smoke two joints’, ‘Downed’, and ‘The Joker’. Cases of celebrity deaths (such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix), caused by anti-depressant abuse did not evoke as much sympathy as they should have, and have since passed into pop culture lore of arguably the musically and artistically most creative decades of our time. We view that time with a certain disaffection and look upon it with a degree of fondness even, as if it were all acceptable and far removed, being a solely celebrity phenomenon, a proclivity for the creative mind or the eccentric or the spoilt multi-millionaire. This is certainly not the case today, where there has been a huge shift in the client base of these drugs, many of which are 18 kindle india
available over the counter today. And the examples are closer home than you think. The anti-depressant is a friend today, said not one, but three absolutely healthy thirtysomethings at a small gathering at a friend’s place recently. The conversation had come up in connection with coping with the demands of modern urban life. While one was unconvinced about this at first, and initially felt the serial pill guzzlers to be a small and feeble minority, it later emerged that the phenomenon was a fast growing one.
Depression and other mental issues claim more than a hundred thousand lives in India alone on a yearly basis, and the number is fast growing - the WHO reports that by 2025 depression will be the second highest killer after heart disease. A dysfunctional family life, work related stresses, chemical imbalances in the brain and genetic buildup are all causes of depression, not to mention the demands of keeping up with the ‘race’ in today’s urban jungles. Furthermore, in a study conducted in the United Kingdom, the use of antidepressants and other prescription drugs among school kids and teenagers has increased manifold over the last couple of decades. This massive rise is representative of the modern phenomenon of childhood mental illness which has grown in the fertile soil of weak family bonds and never ending pressures exerted by school and college exams. Doctors are increasingly
December 2010
pressured to prescribe drugs as a cure and a tendency for prescription drug abuse starts.
For over forty years the use and efficiency of anti- depressants, and their varieties of ‘uppers’ and ‘downers’ has been intensely debated. Many in medical circles claim that the drugs don’t work as efficiently as they are touted to, and much is read into treating the chemical imbalances, where in fact counselling would work just as well. Nausea, weight-gain and lethargy remain prevalent side effects, which have their own complications. But it’s getting easier to pop the chill pill. Stress at work? No problem – a pill a day and all is well (everyone’s singing along to ‘and she goes running to the shelter of her mother’s little helper/ to help her on her way, get her through her busy day’). This is an increasingly rampant trend today and it is down largely to ubiquitous ‘stress’ that pervades every aspect of our lives, where success and failure are what others judge them to be. It is no joke that India has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Students, young adults, corporate climbers and even the ever busy housewives are increasingly falling prey to the lure of the ‘pill culture’. The trend is a damaging one and one hopes we can look at this with the degree of seriousness it deserves. Life is more than driving big cars, owning that 5-bedroom condo and being universally accepted. It’s time to get real - this isn’t about errant rock‘n’roll stars anymore.
At Eternity’s Gate (1890), Oil on Canvas, Vincent Van Gogh (done a few days before he shot himself)
“The risk of a serious suicide attempt in people who start taking antidepressant medication is, fortunately, quite low — less than one in 1,000. The risk actually goes down after people start antidepressant medication.” - Dr. Greg Simon December 2010
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t’s been 150 years since Anton Chekhov’s birth and 100 years since Leo Tolstoy’s death and to use Tolstoy’s words “Everything had been destroyed, except something intangible, yet powerful and indestructible”... and that powerful and indestructible is perhaps the true essence of human life, the truest poetry of humanity, the reality of the ordinary and the everyday, the solidarity of real people and the revolution, that is life itself. The Russian writer’s engagement with life has been one of the purest, simplest, most humane engagements, one in which honest, unremarkable people have emerged as true heroes with their “small acts of kindness and goodness” towards one another…and in that goodness lies the extraordinary and enormous relevance of Russian literature in our cruel, self centered, postmodern times. Denouncing all kinds of grand theories, philosophies and meta-narratives, the 19th century Russian author embraced life in its ordinariness and its everyday poetry. When Chekhov was asked to join a typical intelligentsia “circle,” he replied, “You’ve got to be . . . just a plain human being. Let us be ordinary people, let us adopt the same attitude towards all, then an artificially overwrought solidarity will not be needed.” In Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vania’, Vania’s radical mother neglects him
while making notes on the margins of her pamphlet, the old professor n e g l e c t s people for dead idea s, while Sonia, who is quietly kind to all around her, emerges as the true heroine of the play. Even Elena voices the Chekhovian truth when she observes: “You, Ivan Petrovich, are an educated and intelligent man, and I should think you would understand that the world is perishing not from robbers and fires . . . but from all these petty squabbles.” In Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’, Levin finds only despair after frantically searching for all kinds of theories and ultimately denounces intellect, “And not merely the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And most of all the deceitfulness, yes, the deceitfulness of intellect.”
“Great kindness pervades Chekhov’s literary work, its simply the natural colouration of his talent.” - Vladimir Nobokov
& 150 YEARS OF
Anton Chekhov 20 kindle india
December 2010
Through Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gorky, Pushkin, Gogol, Mayakovsky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and so many others, the Russian experience in history has been of unparalleled beauty. Russian literature is the literature of an immense people, of great forests and grand rivers, the literature of a profound people’s revolution, the literature of a complete churning, and yet a literature of truth, goodness, morality and humanity… and therein still lives the soul of the Soviet Union, warming itself in front of the steaming samovar, playing the balalaika.
In one of his late essays, ‘Why Do Men stupefy themselves?’, Tolstoy retells a story about the painter Briullov, who corrected a student’s sketch. You only touched it a tiny bit, the student remarks, but it is quite a different thing. Briullov replies that art begins where that “tiny bit” begins, and Tolstoy adds that what is true of art is true of life. True life is lived not where noticeable changes occur - where people move about, fight, and slay one another - but where infinitesimally small changes take place.
“If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” - Isaak Babel
&100 By Pritha Kejriwal
YEARS AFTER
Leo Tolstoy December 2010
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35 YEARS OF
By Sayan Bhattacharya
NASEERUDDIN SHAH in cinema 22 kindle india
December 2010
I
t was the early 90s. I was in primary school. Back then a dash of adult entertainment meant the weekly episodes of ‘Chitrahaar’, ‘Superhit Muqabla’ and the Friday night time movies. And movies meant Bollyland potboilers. The strapping police officer of ‘Jalwa’ (a six packed Shahrukh or eight packed Aamir seem so hackneyed) ,the friendly apparition in ‘Chamatkar’ (bottle se bahar aa gaya gin being my favourite), the tirchi topiwale from ‘Tridev’ or the suave and malevolent Mr. Jindal of ‘Mohra’ never failed to entertain, tickle and entice. Then as the years advanced, Hollywood entered the consciousness. In came the Scorseses, Copollas and the Eastwoods. Film after film only reinforced what I had loved so far were tacky imitations of the original. So out went the popcorn
flicks. But even then I couldn’t get over the man because by then I had seen the blind teacher of ‘Sparsh’, the slimy tax collector of ‘Mirch Masala’ , the idealist lawyer of ‘Aakrosh’ or the goofy Parsi act in ‘Pestonjee’ (some people mistake him for being a Parsi) and many more. So the question cropped, if he could be referred to as the Amitabh Bachchan of parallel cinema, why did he have to be a part of the mindless vaudeville of the mainstream? A cliché it is (life itself is lived in clichés) but versatility is an understatement for the man. Even then you soon realize this cliché too misses the point when you read his interviews for he tears into the very films that gave him critical acclaim. He names names, makes enemies but cares who? He is not here to prove any point, he is not here to change the world (as some
of our woolly eyed filmmakers, actors still believe), he is not here to endorse causes or theorise on method acting. The man doesn’t even take himself seriously. He just does his job sincerely and with a lot of passion and we love what he does. And that’s that. Only he can be deliciously sleazy in a red and white bikini (aka ‘Tehelka’) and also stage ‘Waiting for Godot’ or ruminate Growtosky (theatre is his passion). It’s been 35 years since your first foray in cinema, ‘Nishant’. You continue to enthrall and surprise us Mr. Naseeruddin Shah. After all clichés were never more edifying! PS: The labels are not important anymore. Just watched ‘Vishwatma’ and ‘Manthan’ back to back and loved both. Dil to bachcha hai ji…..
“There’s so much hocus-pocus about acting styles and so on, there’s too much mysticism attached to it. But it’s a craft like any other, it’s something you have to work hard at. It isn’t like some people are born with ‘God-given talent’. Some people say ‘character nikaalna hai’, par character nikalta kaise hai, yeh baat mujhe samajh nahin aati!”
- Naseeruddin Shah December 2010
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Shyam Benegal on Naseeruddin Shah (as told to Sayan Bhattacharya) You gave Naseeruddin Shah his first break in ‘Nishant’. It has been 35 years since then. How do you view the trajectory of his career? Let me start from the beginning. Naseer had built a reputation as an actor even before he did his acting course from FTII because he was an NSD (National School of Drama) pass-out. He had worked in a number of plays of which ‘Tughlaq’ by Girish Karnad was particularly appreciated. Then he wanted to get into films, so he joined the Pune Film Institute. Naseer was always more than a student. He took up students rights and was quite an activist. So he was a real pain in the neck of the then director of FTII, Girish Karnad. While he was in his final year, I was casting for ‘Nishant’. While it was easy taking Amrish Puri as the zamindar and Girish as the schoolmaster, I could not find an actor for the youngest brother. I had auditioned many theatre actors already. That’s when Girish suggested I take Naseer so that he could take him off his head! (laughs) and so Naseer was cast. He had a very difficult role in the film because he had to essay such a withdrawn character. He would not get to dominate the screen. Grandstanding often ends up getting all the attention. You play a subdued character well but the audience may not even realize it. Since then I have worked him in several films. Whether it was ‘Bhumika’, ‘Junoon’, ‘Trikal’ or any of my other films, he has never disappointed me. He was always a loner, a bit temperamental. But fact remains that he is singlemindedly a brilliant actor. What, according to you, is his one unique contribution to the film industry? He has brought to the industry the concept of the actor star somewhat like an Al Pacino, Robert De Niro or some of the British and Russian actors. A star will look at you but it’s a larger than life look but an actor is closer to your
reality. Naseer married both. He is a chameleon like actor. He will fit into a character like no one else can. He doesn’t become the part but takes the part, adds his inputs and makes it his own. His nuances are simply magical. Which is your favourite Naseer film - one directed by you and one by another filmmaker? I am partial to films directed by me. He essayed such different characters. So it is difficult to pick just one of my films. I have enjoyed all his performances but among his recent acts, I loved ‘Ishqiya’ the most. What are your views on his comments on the parallel film movement? I have no issues with them. When he makes comments like directors staying in Malabar Hill shouldn’t make films on starving peasants, or taking names and charging that parallel filmmakers worked only with a fixed set of actors, you have no comments on them? He has his views and I need not agree with
wthem. It’s not important to me. However I have no quarrel with different viewpoints. So you have never had any conversation with him on these issues? We have not been in touch for many years now. How did you take to Naseer working in potboilers like ‘Tehelka’? You see acting is a dependent profession in cinema. By which I mean, you are dependent on filmmakers to cast you in their films. So if you say you will work in only one kind of cinema, you might end up starving. So you have to reconcile your survival needs with maintaining your credibility in the profession. Naseer had to look after his family and also had to maintain a reasonable lifestyle. So he worked in all kinds of films. Back then he wasn’t paid as much as he is paid now. However what matters is he played each role convincingly. Do we ever see the two of you coming together? If I ever write a part that’s exciting enough, then we will work again…
Words: Mukherjee P
*
0 0 6 abad
Chile: What is your name? Dhaka: Humanity. Chile: W h a t is your faith? Dhaka: Humanity. Chile: Where do you belong to? Dhaka: I could belong anywhere. Do I always need to define my geography? Where do you belong to? Ahmedabad: I’m nationless, stateless and countryless. I’m just like that tiny speck of dust in this vast universe of ours. It is a simple hard fact that a
OF S R YEA hmed
A
subdivisions by which we categorize identities in our lives. In fact you can even call me Neruda. Chile: How can you be Tagore or for that matter Neruda? You are just two cities stepping into the twenty first century. How can you be Tagore or Neruda? Dhaka: There is a Tagore or Neruda in each one of us. You can call me the Tagore in angst; you could yourself be the Neruda with a sense of History. Rabindranath had a serious debate with Gandhiji in the backdrop of the Bihar earthquake and urged him not to mix up divine justice and injustice with a natural calamity. So,
40
for that matter, any of us is Tagore.
YE
AR
commoner is a commoner anywhere in the world, whether he’s a toiling mass in Ethiopia, a person with a swollen stomach unable to eat in Rwanda or a person boiling grass out of hunger in Kalahandi! Chile: So, both of you (Dhaka and Ahmedabad) want to hide under this umbrella of a commoner? So you don’t have any id? NO passport number? NO pan card number? No ‘social security’ as the Americans would call it? Dhaka: If it suffices you, you can call me Tagore. I think that encompasses caste, religion and imaginary narrow
*
0
SO Dh F
Ahmedabad: I guess so. The Tagore that refused, the Tagore that gave back the knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in a strongly worded letter to the viceroy. The Tagore that consistently talks about the fact that you can’t walk over people’s lives. The Tagore at the fag end of his
aka
*life, eighty years of age, joined the Citizen’s Committee on
Human Rights. Chile: But do you think it is relevant, what we’re doing makes any sense at all? Some archaic poetry written years back...… Ahmedabad: When we are in a situation where we are tucked by all sides, when we are ideologically lonely, you don’t know where to go but you know you’re not lost, you know you’re not wrong but you also know that the world has taken you exactly the wrong way. And you are in that
*
state of empowerment and despair. Don’t you call that fate, Hamlet? Does it really matter whether Hamlet is a prince of Denmark or a dude I met in Tezpur? Does it really matter if Hamlet is a Shakespearean figure? Or someone I bumped into while crossing the busy traffic at Chariali. Hamlet is a trait that defines a century. And so does Tagore. Dhaka: Yes, the Tagore in 1905, challenging the partition of Bengal, nullifying among others, one of the first attempts to partition any state in this country! The Tagore who went to Persia and Iraq and looked back at the civilization in such a warm way. Does an average Iraqi barbequed by uranium in the form of bombs dropped from the sky above have access to Tagore? Maybe that could be a balm to soothe his radiation scarred body that becomes nothing but your fashionable screensaver. Ahmedabad: So this is it. There’s no other way out. If you forget history you are condemned to repeat it. So if you forget real contribution then your heroes are the hollow celluloid ones and not the real ones that left you real legacy. Chile: Let me criss-cross with your legacy and Neruda in me assures you that we, probably, won’t let it die!
0 0 2
F O S R Chile YEA December 2010
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of Post-it
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December 2010
notes
By Mukherjee P
YEARS
December 2010
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of 70 years 30 years
&
without
John Lennon By Sayantan Neogi
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December 2010
T
here have been few instances in history when a single person was a threat to the then-most powerful nation with his intellect alone. John Winston Ono Lennon was one such instance. In his life, his work, his art, his protests, his comments, his death and in his legacy he left behind far more than mere mop-cropped ‘love me do’ hysteria. He was the Beatle who announced in one of his first solo albums after the breakup of the Beatles that “The Dream is Over” - the dream of community through peace, love, mysticism and psychedelic drugs that the Beatles had encouraged and advertised. And yet, paradoxically, Mr. Lennon never lost sight of that dream. “The mainstream media would say that the 60’s were stupid and naive,” he remarked only a month before his death. “But look at how much of what was sniggered about in the 60’s has become mainstream - health food, therapies and all the rest. And love and peace weren’t invented in the 60’s.
What about Gandhi? What about Christ? The naiveté is to buy the idea that the 60’s were naive.” From his ‘bed-ins for peace’ with cosmic soul mate Yoko Ono, his comment about being more famous than Jesus, his concept of ‘nutopia’ to the simplistic manifestation of the communist manifesto in ‘Imagine’, Lennon created the glue and scotch tape that kept three distinct generations together and kept them thinking. It’s been 30 years since he was shot by a schizophrenic white Christian supremacist and 70 years since he was born to notso-responsible parents and yet our imaginations remain predictable and grey. In Lennon, fans re-imagined the working class hero; he wasn’t a marginalized angry man any more but a man of peace whom the most powerful Governments feared. Even though they caught the one who pulled the trigger against his temple, the world will never know who killed John Lennon.
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150 YEARS OF
TAGORE By Mukherjee P
W
hich Tagore? Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore visited more than thirty countries in five continents. On 10th November 1912, Tagore began touring the United States and the United Kingdom, staying in Butterton, Staffordshire with the friends of C.F. Andrews. Between May 3, 1916 and April 1917, Tagore went to Japan and the United States. Shortly after returning to India, the 63-yearold Tagore accepted the Peruvian government’s invitation to visit. He then travelled to Mexico. Each government pledged US$100,000 to the school at Shantiniketan (Visva-Bharati) in commemoration of his visits. A week after his November 6, 1924 arrival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, an ill Tagore moved into the Villa Miralrío at the behest of Victoria Ocampo. He left for India in January 1925. On May 30, 1926, Tagore reached Naples, Italy; he met Benito Mussolini in Rome the next day. They fell out a little while later when on July 20, 1926, Tagore attacked Mussolini’s view of nationalism in no uncertain terms. On July 14, 1927, Tagore began a four-month tour of Southeast Asia, visiting Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Singapore. In early 1930 he left Bengal for a year-long tour of Europe and the United States. Amongst others, he visited Aga Khan III, stayed at Dartington Hall, and toured Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany from June to mid-September 1930, then the usual Soviet Union. Once again, in April 1932, Tagore——was hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran. Tagore’s last travels abroad, including visits to Persia and Iraq (in 1932) and Ceylon in 1933, only reinforced his strong opinions about nationalism. 30 kindle india
December 2010
Which Tagore? In a range that would include about 2,230 songs and eight novels/four novellas and numerous letters, Tagore’s performance text holds a special significance in the history of theatre. His journey began when he was sixteen and played the lead in Jyotirindranath’s adaptation of Moliere’s celebrated ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’. His fist tryst with a theatre performance piece was ‘Balmiki Pratibha’ (The Genius of Valmiki) shown in salon/intimate setting in Tagore’s own house. In 1890 he wrote ‘Visarjan’ (Sacrifice) and in 1911-1912, he came up with the classic ‘Dakghar’ (The Post Office) both in Bangla and in an English translation which he carefully supervised. During World War II (specifically on July 18, 1942), Polish educator and doctor, Janusz Korczak directed the orphans of the Warsaw ghetto in a moving performance of ‘Dakghar’ before they were moved to Trebelinka concentration camp. Mahatma Gandhi was moved by ‘Dakghar’ and Andre Gide read the French version on radio as World War II clouds were looming large. ‘Dakghar’ received rave reviews in Berlin, Paris and Irish theatre d u r i n g Ta g o r e ’s
lifetime and interestingly in October 2008, it has been commemorated in a stamp by the Department of Posts in Bangalore. Let’s look at ‘Dakghar’... Amal, a terminally ill kid standing on the precipice of death is stuck in a closed room. Sitting inside, he imagines the democracy of open spaces, of the world that he cannot access and the indefatigable urge to learn from everybody passing by, the details of life. Finally, the royal physician carries a letter from the King which eases the child. Does he die or moves to another domain? What is that domain? Is it a common nationality? Tagore and H.G. Wells met in Geneva in early June, 1930... Let’s have a rewind of their conversation... TAGORE: The tendency in modern civilization is to make
the world uniform. Calcutta, Bombay, Hong Kong, and other cities are more or less alike, wearing big masks which represent no country in particular. WELLS: Yet don’t you think that this very fact is an indication that we are reaching out for a new world-wide human order which refuses to be localized? TAGORE: Our individual physiognomy need not be the same. Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed. WELLS: We are gradually thinking now of one human civilization on the foundation of which individualities will have great chances of fulfillment. The individual, as we take him, has suffered from the fact that civilization has been split up into separate units, instead of being merged into a universal whole. TAGORE: I believe the unity of human civilization can be better maintained by linking up in fellowship and cooperation of the different civilizations of the world. Do you think there is a tendency to have one common language for humanity? WELLS: One common language will probably be forced upon m a n k i n d whether we like it or not. Previously, a community of fine minds created
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a new dialect. Now it is necessity that will compel us to adopt a universal language. TAGORE: I quite agree. The time for five-mile dialects is fast vanishing. Rapid communication makes for a common language. Yet, this common language would probably not exclude national languages. There is again the curious fact that just now, along with the growing unities of the human mind, the development of national selfconsciousness is leading to the formation or rather the revival of national languages everywhere. Don’t you think that in America, in spite of constant touch between America and England, the English language is tending toward a definite modification and change? WELLS: I wonder if that is the case now. Forty or fifty years ago this would have been the case, but now in literature and in common speech it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between English and American. There seems to be much more repercussion in the other direction. Today we are elaborating and perfecting physical methods of transmitting words. Translation is a bother. TAGORE: Music of different nations has a common psychological foundation, and yet that does not mean that national music should not exist. The same thing is, in my opinion, probably true for literature. W E L L S : Modern music
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is going from one country to another without loss - from Purcell to Bach, then Brahms, then Russian music, then oriental. Music is of all things in the world most international. TAGORE: May I add something? I have composed more than three hundred pieces of music. They are all sealed from the West because they cannot properly be given to you in your own notation. Perhaps they would not be intelligible to your people even if I could get them written down in European notation. WELLS: Artistic expression in the future will probably be quite different from what it is today; the medium will be the same and comprehensible to all. Take radio, which links together the world. And we cannot prevent further invention. Perhaps in the future, when the present clamour for national languages and dialects in
December 2010
broadcasting subsides, and new discoveries in science are made, we shall be conversing with one another through a common medium of speech yet undreamed of. TAGORE: We have to create the new psychology needed for this age. We have to adjust ourselves to the new necessities and conditions of civilization. WELLS: Adjustments, terrible adjustments! TAGORE: Do you think there are any fundamental racial difficulties? WELLS: No. New races are appearing and reappearing, there are perpetual fluctuations. There have been race mixtures from the earliest times; India is the supreme example of this. In Bengal, for instance, there has been an amazing mixture of races in spite of caste and other barriers. TAGORE: Then there is the question of racial pride. Can the West fully acknowledge the East? If mutual acceptance is not possible, then I shall be very sorry for that country which rejects another’s culture. Study can bring no harm, though men like Dr. Haas and Henri Matisse seem to think that the eastern mind should not go outside eastern countries, and then everything will be all right. WELLS: I hope you disagree. So do I!
TAGORE: It is regrettable that any race or nation should claim divine favouritism and assume inherent superiority over all others in the scheme of creation. WELLS: The supremacy of the West is only a question of probably the past hundred years. Before the battle of Lepanto, the Turks were dominating the West; the voyage of Columbus was undertaken to avoid the Turks. Elizabethan writers and even their successors were struck by the wealth and the high material standards of the East. The history of western ascendancy is very brief indeed. TAGORE: Physical science of the nineteenth century probably has created this spirit of race superiority in the West. When the East assimilates this physical science, the tide may turn and take a normal course. WELLS: Modern science is not exactly European. A series of accidents and peculiar circumstances prevented some of the eastern countries from applying the discoveries made by humanists in other parts of the world. They themselves had once originated and developed a great many of the sciences that were later taken up by the West and given greater perfection. Today, Japanese, Chinese
and Indian names in the world of science are gaining due recognition. TAGORE: The channels of education have become dry river beds, the current of our resources having been systematically been diverted along other directions. WELLS: I am also a member of a subject race. I am taxed enormously. I have to send my check - so much for military aviation, so much for the diplomatic machinery of the government! You see, we suffer from the same evils. In India, the tradition of officialdom is, of course, more unnatural and has been going on for a long time. The Moguls, before the English came, seem to have been as indiscriminate as our own people. TAGORE: And yet, there is a difference! The Mogul government was not scientifically efficient and mechanical to a degree. The
Moguls wanted money, and so long as they could live in luxury they did not wish to interfere with the progressive village communities in India. The Muslim emperors did not dictate terms and force the hands of Indian educators and villagers. Now, for instance, the ancient educational systems of India are completely disorganized, and all indigenous educational effort has to depend on official recognition. WELLS: ‘Recognition’ by the state, and good-bye to education! TAGORE: I have often been asked what my plans are. My reply is that I have no scheme. My country, like every other, will evolve its own constitution; it will pass through its experimental phase and settle down into something quite different from what you or I expect. Which Tagore? The Tagore whose works that keep dealing with the core issue of what dies within us before we actually die. Using direct and not couched metaphors and unrelenting images Tagore unspools a world of dystopia that is neither downloadable nor steeped in some clever praxis. And using that as inspiration lives to fight another day. Happy 150 years young man. You are only getting more relevant in such times.
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By Sayantan Neogi
“When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamt has come true a hundred times... I learnt very early in life that: Without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain’t got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend. So I keep singing my song.” - Elvis Presley
E
lvis is the #2 biggest selling music artist of all time. He is second only to the Beatles, having sold over 118 million units and is now the biggest selling solo artist in history. These numbers, though attractive, can hardly represent what Elvis Presley was really all about. Some say he stole the African American music world but ‘The King’ was as coloured as any other African American in the way he grew up and looked at life (before his Vegas years though). During his early years, Presley could safely be described as an African American in a white man’s body. In fact, his endorsement and popularization of African American music actually opened up avenues for millions of African American artists, which might have been more difficult given the 1950’s American racist outlook. The Billboard Hot 100 charts, in fact, currently have 6 African American artists in the top 10 as I write this article 75 years after Elvis Presley and he might possibly have a hand in that; in how the white world looked at everything else. Little Richard said himself, “He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn’t let black music through. He opened the door for black music.” I was discussing the history of rock n’ roll with a guitarist friend of mine and the subject of Elvis came up. I mentioned that John Lennon had once purportedly remarked, “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” My friend immediately bristled at the notion. “No way,” he replied, “he didn’t invent anything...Chuck Berry and Little Richard were playing rock n’ roll before Elvis...he got it from them. Chuck Berry kicks Elvis’ a**!” I told my friend I thought he had missed the point. John Lennon and everybody else, including Elvis, knew where the roots of rock n’
roll lay -- in African-American music. Elvis said it himself. “The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doing now, man, for more years than I know,” Elvis told reporters in 1956. “I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw.” Elvis did not invent rock and roll. But he was an innovator, nonetheless, transfusing the popular music of the fifties (then dominated by white ‘crooners’ such as Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, Eddie Fisher and others of that ilk) with blues, gospel and soul music. And that transfusion was an important component of the anti-segregation sentiment that was brewing at the time and that led ultimately to the American Civil Rights Movement and desegregation. Bruce Springsteen once said that Elvis freed our bodies and that he was the reason why Springsteen wasn’t selling encyclopedias. Dylan and Lennon too considered him the sole reason for them becoming musicians. While Elvis’ contribution to rock and roll and rockstars was enormous, his contribution to his generation and generations to come was even greater.
“When I first heard Elvis’ voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss. It was like busting out of jail.” – Bob Dylan
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W
10 YEARS OF
WIKIPEDIA By Madhurima Bose
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henever we feel the urge to know about anything, from frostbite to frosted pastries, we go online and type Wikipedia. The intelligence received is conveniently noted and rarely challenged. This conviction that we have about the veracity of Wikipedia has been gradually nourished. It has grown from strength to strength, today striving to reach the acme of perfection. Jimmy Donal Wales, the co-founder of this website claims that 375 million people visit this website every month making it the second most visited website after Google. Although Mr. Wales more popularly known as “Jimbo” laughs when asked about the initial days when he conceived the striking idea of forming a free website where there would be, “No ads. No agenda. No strings attached”, this remarkable site completed a lofty 10 years on the 12th of November this year. It is unquestionably a proof of the increasing global interconnectedness. As Wales puts it, “Let’s just say some people were skeptical of the notion that volunteers from all across the world could come together to create a remarkable pool of human knowledge- all for the simple purpose of sharing.” Now that Wikipedia has completed a decade and shares 9.1 million articles in 252 languages with the masses, it is facing financial crunches. Since it isn’t like a commercial website the funds for this celebrated site is hitting its nadir. “At this point, Wikipedia has the financial resources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”, mourns the chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation, Florence Devouard. After a stream of multiple surveys and endless researches it has been discovered that there has been a continuous drop in the rate of Wikipedia members resulting in the current problem faced by this web encyclopedia. It is obvious that the site needs to widen its contributor’s base beyond the boundaries of the United States. It also requires catering to more global languages. Thus the need for an Indian base. This will help them to gain access to new contributors as well as contributors who can provide them with multiple local language experts. Bengaluru for now plays the part of the dummy location. Very soon the permanent location will be fixed. Apart from the main economic agenda, the offices aim at ensuring a faster and more effective service in this subcontinent. Wikipedia was conceived with the notion that it would provide testimony to the collective potential of the populace to change the world. It is without a doubt an excessive ignominy that today this renowned website that has ameliorated our statistics for such an extensive period by being our one stop destination to unlimited, uncensored information has hit its fiscal pits.
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alileo Galilei was a great Italian astronomer, mathematician and physicist, who has exerted immense influence on the development of scientific thought. Galileo was the first person to systematically use a telescope to observe celestial objects. The discoveries that he made were truly pioneering, and challenged long held beliefs and doctrine. His urge to understand these discoveries, and his studies on the motion of bodies, led Galileo to fundamental new concepts in physics, which were later used and generalized by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein in constructing their own theories. Albert Einstein has said that Galileo was the father of modern physics, and even of modern science, because he was the first person to combine the results of experiments with logical reasoning and mathematical analysis to understand the physical world. Galileo was born in the town of Pisa in 1564. He had his early education in Florence and in a monastery, later joined the University of Pisa to study medicine, but gave that up to take 40 kindle india
to mathematics, which was his true love. Galileo taught mathematics first at the University of Pisa and then at Padua, where he spent his early years working and lecturing on applied science including military architecture and fortifications. He later studied the motion of bodies, and made important discoveries on the laws of falling bodies and the trajectories of projectiles. This work involved careful experiments and measurements which helped Galileo develop his ideas on motion, as well as to test the laws that he discovered. Galileo reached a turning point in his life when he heard in the year 1609 about a spyglass made by a Dutchman and shown in Venice. The instrument, which later came to be known as a telescope, allowed distant objects to be seen clearly as if they were nearby. Galileo used his knowledge of mathematics and physics, and considerable technical skills, to design and build a telescope, which far surpassed in performance the earlier spyglasses. With his telescopes Galileo began a series of observations which led to amazing new discoveries some of which are described below. The fourth centenary of Galileo’s first
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observations were celebrated all over the world in 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy, and led to a great resurgence in the interest taken in the subject by people of all ages and from all walks of life, even in remote corners of the globe. Galileo wrote a number of books on his work, the most famous of which is the ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican’, which is presented as a dialogue between Salviati, who supports the Copernican system and Simplicio, who supports the ancient idea of the Earth being at the centre of the Universe. In this book Galileo forcefully asserted that the Earth went round the Sun, which was contrary to strongly held beliefs of that time. Galileo had been in some trouble over the years because of his ideas, but the publication of the ‘Dialogues’ led to break with the church. The Inquisition banned the book, and found Galileo guilty of heresy and condemned him to house arrest until his death in 1642. Even as a prisoner, and in poor health and suffering from bereavement, Galileo completed a highly mathematical book,
By Prof. Ajit Kembhavi Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune
400
YEARS of
Galileo’s Astronomy
describing important work done over the years but never formally written up. The book was smuggled out to Holland and published there. Now some of his observations: The Rotating Sky: The Sun, the Moon, the five visible planets and stars are seen to move in the sky, from East to West, apparently going round once every day. The stars appear fixed in their positions relative to each other, as is seen from the unchanging patterns of the various constellations. Against this background the Sun, Moon and planets are seen to move from West to east, largely along the Zodiac, which is defined by its twelve constellations. We now understand that the daily rotation of the sky happens because the Earth spins around its axis about once every 24 hours, from West to East. It took more than two thousand years of observations, thought and argument to establish this simple fact. The Geocentric System: A widely accepted interpretation of the rotating sky emerged more than 2000 years ago, in many countries and cultures. The Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century AD,
improved and codified the early work, and presented it in his book the Almagest. In this geocentric model, a spherical Earth is at rest at the centre of the universe. The stars are set on a sky which is a hollow sphere and they rotate once a day from East to West, causing objects in the sky to rise in the East and set in the West. The Sun, Moon and the planes are attached to other spheres. These bodies go round the Earth once daily, but also move from the West to East at different rates. The longer they take to finish an eastwardly rotation, the more distant they are from the Earth. While the simple model broadly agrees with observations, it needs serious modification to be able to explain retrograde motion. In their eastward movement, the planets sometime stop; begin moving towards the West, then after some time resumes their eastward movement. This is known as retrograde motion. The geocentric model is based,
following precepts set mainly by Plato and Aristotle in the 4th century BC, on spheres and uniform motion on perfect circles. To explain retrograde motion in this scheme, it was found necessary to introduce the concept of an epicycle. Here a plane moves along a small circle called an epicycle at a uniform rate, and the centre of this circle moves around the Earth at a uniform rate. The combination of the two motions allows retrograde motion to be observed. Ptolemy’s geocentric model was quite successful in explaining observations, and was in use for well over a thousand years. But it had many epicycles and related concepts, which were introduced rather arbitrarily to explain observations. The model would not be seen as being simple, elegant and reasonable from the modern scientific point of view. It was superseded by the heliocentric theory following the work of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo in
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the 16th and 17th centuries. The Heliocentric System: A heliocentric system is one in which the Sun is at rest at the centre, with the Earth and the planets going round it. Several ancient astronomers, including Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC, and Aryabhata in India in the sixth century AD, proposed such a system, but most astronomers, especially in the West, continued to use the geocentric system as developed by Ptolemy. The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, born in 1473, developed a heliocentric model for the Solar system, which was the beginning of the development of modern astronomy and physics. According to Copernicus, the Sun is stationary and at the centre of the system of planets, which includes the Earth. The planets go round the Sun in circular orbits, with Mercury being the closest to the Sun, followed by Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in increasing order of distance. The Earth spins round its axis once every day from the West to East, which leads to the appearance of the daily circling of the sky from the east to the West. The Earth goes r o u n d the Sun once every year, which is seen as the passage of the Sun around the
Zodiac. The planets generally move from West to east, but the Earth’s motion along its orbit at certain times makes a planet to appear to move westwards, explaining retrograde motion. While Copernicus’ simple model explained many aspects of planetary motion, he too had to invoke epicycles to account for the details. Nevertheless the heliocentric Solar system was a much simpler construction than the complex Earth centric model of Ptolemy. But apart from this simplicity, there was not much to commend the heliocentric theory over the geocentric one. There was no proof of Earth’s motion, and such motion went against the long cherished beliefs that the Earth was at absolute rest, and was at the centre of the then known Universe. These beliefs transcended
astronomy, and were considered to have the support of Holy Scriptures. Copernicus was aware of the controversy that his work could cause, and he delayed publication of it until just before his death, even though the work had become well known in his lifetime. Copernicus denied any special role to Earth, and put the Sun at the centre of the planetary system. Since the sky no longer was required to physically rotate round the Earth, the stars could be much further away than previously believed to be possible. The scale of the universe could therefore be much bigger, and the possibility arose that the stars were themselves like the Sun, generating their own energy. We now know that our Sun is actually quite an inconspicuous star amongst the more than 100 Billion stars in our Galaxy, and that there are billions of such galaxies. It is now a tenet of modern cosmology that no particular point or object in the Universe has a special role to play in it, and the Universe has the same gross properties at all points and in all directions. This is known as the Copernican Principle. Galileo and the Heliocentric Theory: Galileo brought an entirely new dimension to astronomy by using a telescope to observe celestial objects. Until this giant step was taken in 1609, astronomers had relied on what their eyes could see, which was limited to several thousand stars, the Sun and Moon, planets up to Saturn, the occasional bright comets and transient phenomena, and some nebulae here and there in the sky. The use of a telescope led to the discovery of wholly unexpected riches in the sky. When Galileo observed Jupiter with a telescope he had built, he found four points of light close to it, which he soon established were circling Jupiter. Galileo had discovered what are now known as the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter,
Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa. Observing the Sun, Galileo found dark spots on its surface, and from the movement of these Sunspots over time, he realized that the Sun was rotating. The diffused band of the Milky Way, so conspicuous on a dark night, could be resolved by Galileo’s telescope into millions of stars, demonstrating that stars and other celestial objects until then unseen could far outnumber those visible to the naked eye, and that the Universe could be very different from its early conceptions. The observation of sunspots demonstrated that the Sun was not the perfect, unchanging, shining orb, as advocated by Aristotle and the scriptures. The existence of the Galilean satellites showed that planets could have their own Moons, and not all celestial bodies were in orbit around the Earth. Many of Galileo’s discoveries had a similar profound impact on astronomy, as well on the then accepted idea of the Universe, Some of Galileo’s discoveries were independently made by others, and records show that Sunspots were observed by Chinese astronomers, without the benefit of a telescope, as early as the 4th century BC. But it was Galileo who established through detailed reasoning that the spots must be located on the surface of the Sun, and realized their importance in overturning long held prejudices. Galileo brought such insight to the interpretation of all his astronomical discoveries, and the physical ideas that he developed in the process have had deep impact on the development of physics even in our times. The Phases of Venus: Galileo discovered that the planet Venus has phases like the Moon. It waxes and wanes, presenting a full face, then waning to a very thin crescent, and waxing again to the full phase, with the whole cycle taking 584 days. Galileo also found that when Venus is full, it has about a sixth of the size of its crescent. Galileo argues from these observations that the heliocentric, rather than the geocentric theory must be right. Venus appears in the sky as a morning star before sunrise or an evening star after sunset. This requires that if the Sun
and Venus both go round the Earth, as in the geocentric theory, then the two must stay close to each other. It can then be argued that if the orbit of Venus is smaller than the Sun’s orbit, it can never present a full phase. On the other hand, if the orbit of Venus were larger, then it could be seen in full phase, but not in the dark phase. Galileo’s observations can be straightforwardly understood in terms of the heliocentric theory. Here the Earth and Venus both go round the Sun. When the two are on opposite sides of the Sun, the full phase is seen, and the dark phase appears when Venus is between the Sun and Earth. There are ways in which the phases of Venus can be explained, still keeping a stationary Earth around which the Sun goes. But the modifications required in the geocentric theory then are rather arbitrary and borrow heavily from the heliocentric theory. These facts provided Galileo with much ammunition in support of Copernicus’ theory, with the Sun being at the centre of the planetary system. Eventually the heliocentric model was accepted as the correct one, but Galileo had to pay a heavy price for having championed its cause. Relativity: In the heliocentric theory, the Earth moves round the Sun at a high speed, a fact which most people found very difficult to accept. Surely the movement of the Earth should have drastic effects, like high winds in the atmosphere, and perhaps the water in the oceans should be left behind. Galileo answered these objections by asserting, based on his researches, that there is no such thing as an absolute state of rest. It is not possible to conduct experiments which can say whether the Earth is at rest or moving uniformly. Galileo used his grasp of the fundamental laws of motion to explain away objections against a moving Earth. The
symmetry between rest and uniform motion that he invoked was used by Albert Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century in constructing his special theory of relativity. And later, Einstein used another assertion of Galileo, that heavy and light bodies fall with the same acceleration, to construct a radically new theory of gravity. Isaac Newton was born in the year that Galileo died. He used Galileo’s work on motion to develop his own laws, postulated the universal force of gravity and used it to derive the elliptical motion of planets around the Sun, thus vindicating Copernicus’ model, and K e p l e r ’s laws.
“Ohohoho (baritone)... ooooh... mumble, mumble... mumble!! Pssssssssst?!? Ahaaaaaa!!” - Mr. Bean, on completing 20 years
W
hile much of the English-speaking world knows Rowan Atkinson as the cynical, conniving titular character from the BBC sitcom Blackadder, all over the rest of the world, he is most closely identified with – and at times even confused with – the character of Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean, who burst onto television in 1990 after many years of being a small part of Atkinson’s live comedy shows, met with immediate and phenomenal success. The show, inspired heavily by early silent films, is a comedy with little to no dialogue, based entirely around Atkinson’s physical performance of the main character, whom he once described as ‘a child in a man’s body’, which is really all you need to know about him. Apart from the brilliant central performance, these two things – the simplicity and the lack of dialogue – are the source of the show’s worldwide popularity. You don’t need to understand English to watch the show, and a new viewer can pick up on what it’s all about in a matter of minutes. The plot is usually limited to ‘Mr. Bean plays golf ’ or ‘Mr. Bean does laundry’, revolving around the character’s odd approach to these everyday things. This means that the show can be exported almost anywhere in the world while still being relatable. Apart from 14 half-hour episodes (which in turn consist of 3-5 skits each), the character has two feature films and a long-running animated series to his name, and has become a part of world pop culture. So much so that Atkinson once attempted to get the show banned in Italy simply to spend his holidays there without being recognised. As expected, it didn’t work.
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40
YEARS of
Satyajit Ray’s ‘Days and Nights in the By Sayan Bhattacharya
S
hekhar promptly took out a wad of notes and rushed out, softly saying “tribal welfare”. Next he pressed them into the hands of the santhal girls waiting outside for some work. What work? While one would fan the babus from the city (electricity hasn’t reached this hamlet in Bihar, the choice of tense deliberate, if you will), the other would sweep the floors while the city bred would lustily devour the shapely contours of her body. British India, the Indian India, nuclear India, post liberalization India…all the timeframes overlap and congeal into a singular, throbbing reality…the divide…the us v/s them that remains, that will continue to remain. The opening frame of ‘Aranye Din Ratri’ (Days and Nights in the forest) begins with Sanjay (played by the underrated
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Subhendu Chatterjee) reading from Sanjib Chattopadhyay’s (brother to the famous Bankim Chattopdhyay) travelogue ‘Palamou’. As he comes to the paragraph describing the liberated tribal women, the unemployed no gooder Shekhar (the superbly talented Robi Ghosh) salaciously remarks about the santhal community being uninhibited like Western society. And yes that’s the crux. The four friends (the other two being the corporator, Ashim, played by Ray muse Soumitro Chatterjee and Hari, the sportsman essayed by the dashing Samit Bhanja) want to break free from the suffocating shackles of daily life. So what better way? Armed with ‘insights’ from a book, they have set for the forest, for some unknown destination, for some unbridled fun and adventure. And adventure means bribing a caretaker and gatecrashing into a State bungalow (Ashim says “Thank
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God for corruption”), some country liquor (mahua), burning newspapers (the camera rests on the map of USSR for a few seconds), impersonating animal sounds, resolving not to shave (“All hippies!” Shekhar proclaims) and seducing a tribal girl with cash and a better life and then making love to her. But all attempts at being wild are laid to rest when they meet Aparna (a superbly restrained act by the classic Sharmila Tagore) and her sister-in-law Jaya (the sensual Kaberi Bose). So what follows is the quintessential power play, the game of wooing overwrought with sexual undertones. When ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ first released in 1970, the ‘discerning’ Bengali audience did not know what to make of it. There was no centrality of theme, no single plot point unlike Satyajit Ray’s some earlier films. The
Forest’... contrapuntal structure of the film was lost on many. A story essentially about the (mis)adventures of four young men and their individual journeys, the epiphanies they experience, their romantic interludes, is also a seering, even if subtle, study of imperialism, a story of relentless exploitation and marginalization. The caretaker of the guesthouse always refers Ashim as sarkar or huzoor and for Ashim, he is just the chowkidaar. He is nameless. He has no identity. Though he repeatedly says that his wife is sick, the new guests of the house are only concerned about the eggs that they should have for breakfast or the chicken for dinner. It takes the perceptive Aparna to make Ashim realize, even if momentarily, the dire straits of the caretaker. When Lakha (earlier co-opted as their servant for some cash and then falsely accused of stealing) hits Hari and runs away
with his wallet, I can’t help thinking about Telengana or Naxalbari that had already happened by then. Moreover this film is also a precursor to Ray’s Calcutta trilogy, where the themes of political turmoil, moral bankruptcy, disillusionment with the State are more pronounced. However unlike some of his contemporaries who invested their skills in making agit prop films, Ray’s characters are nuanced. There is nothing absolute, there is no grandstanding. The suave Ashim is also a victim. When he says the more we rise, the more we fall, doesn’t it resonate with us to this day? It has been 40 years since then. The then Naxalites are today’s Maoists. Posco, Vedanta, Tata, Jindals, Ambanis, the Reddys, the Dongria Kondhs are fashionable parts of the media lexicon. But even then thousands of nameless women continue to be raped, forests are ravaged, rivers sold for multi billion
dollar MOUs, man is set against animal to quench the insatiable greed of a few. While Chidambaram talks about “Maoist infestation”( as if they are some pests that need immediate extermination), Arundhati Roy talks about the “romance of revolution”. But will armed struggle establish an egalitarian society or will Operation Green Hunt resolve Manmohan Singh’s ‘greatest internal threat’? This piece doesn’t want indulge in the polemics of class struggle but it definitely wants to celebrate a film that continues to probe our genteel exterior, that raises the most uncomforting and unnerving questions in the most innocuous way…questions that remain at the edges, obstinately refusing to disappear.
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L
et’s have a time travel towards backwards and grab a new story which can give you a sensational jerk and you will be in present again!
September, 1956 The World outside:
This was the time when the construction of the Berlin wall was yet to be initiated. Neither the Earth-space had experienced ‘Luna 2’ kissing the surface of the moon. ‘The Piper’ hadn’t reached ‘at The Gates of The Dawn’ yet. John Lennon was still in search of a guitarist in the form of Paul McCartney! The World inside: Place: TIFR, Old Yacht Club Building, Bombay- 400039 The murmuring sound gradually turned into a noisy impression with a tinge of cheerfulness. Five or six gentlemen were there in the floor. All of them were coruscated like never before. Yes, they had done it! At last! Irrespective of all those accelerated external affairs, they managed to mingle up the plentiful resources and tremendous diligence in order to introduce India’s first digital computer. Thus the story began. The Actual story
sheltered in an enormous steel rack measuring 18 ft X 2.5 ft X 8 ft. It was fabricated from modules of 4 ft X 2.5 ft X 8 ft.The machine had a word length of40bits and a memory capacity of 1024 words with a magnetic core memory. Regarding the graphical output, the visual display was very unique as it based on the linesegments (not on pixels). A cathode ray tube display system was developed to serve as an auxiliary output to the computer for analogue and digital display of both graphs and alphanumeric symbols. The Present Even after 50 golden years, the valuation of TIFRAC is not a very difficult issue. The most notable success lay in the fact that it provided the means for setting up the computational facility not only for the TIFR scientists but for the whole nation. In contrast to today’s computer that has at least 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, and the highest level of graphics with an operating system providing far more improved user interface, TIFRAC may look very insignificant. But we should keep in mind that when it was discovered Computer Science was at its infancy. Moreover, that was the time when our country was just 13 years old with reference to her freedom. So, apart from all the socio-economic developments, TIFRAC proved to be a powerful representative in the field of science and technology.
That was a pilot model. Basically it was to be a testing, self-educational and proving ground for each of those gentlemen. After gaining enough self-confidence in that exercise they started with a larger team strength to build a full-fledged machine and in about three years a first-generation main-frame computer was ready to be disclosed. The name TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental research Automatic Calculator) was commissioned at that time when the prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the new Colaba campus of TIFR in 1960. Essentially TIFRAC was a discovery rather than a lesson on how to design a computer and its components and that’s why naturally it involved too much of trial and errors. Often they had to reinvent the wheels. On each such reinvention, the betterment over the pilot model followed. And ultimately the end-product that had been brought out was no toy. The main assembly of TIFRAC December 2010
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50 OF D i e g o YEARS
Maradona By Rohit Roy
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“To those of you who have cheered on my goals, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” - Diego Armando Maradona
“ Th e g
y the head of M a
na.” o d ra
oal
s sco by
b tle
red a little
hand of god, a
li t
The rest of the world, however, knows Maradona for his feats at the World Cups he deigned to grace with his presence. Images of this stocky hurricane in his blue and white continue to adorn
Eventually the drug problem would force him an ignominious exit from world football, but his eccentricities would continue to make headlines off the field. From tattooing Castro and Guevara on himself to publicly lambasting Bush’s policies, the public presence of Maradona has been, at best, entertaining. His taxation problems in Italy (€ 37 million) and his continuing battle with drugs, alcohol and weight would, however, provide more interesting fodder for the media. To his credit though, Maradona was able to overcome all his problems to make a comeback as Argentina’s manager. That Argentina could make it till the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup was as much a credit to his idiosyncrasies as they were to the genius of Messi. Although for the proud Argentineans this was not good enough to retain him as a manager, one can almost feel him coiled to burst into the scene quite soon.
wa
However, the madness that is Maradona, took a much darker edge around the same time. As if in perverse tribute to his worshiped eminence, he reached new heights of vice and addiction that only Roman gods could have been permitted to perform. His cocaine addiction escalated out of control and as a result his football began to suffer. He was, at one time, even slapped with a $70,000 fine at Naples for missing practice regularly. Add to that a rocking scandal regarding an illegitimate son and connections with the Camorra (the local chapter of the Italian mafia), and one begins to wonder whether a profession as a rockstar may have been more apt.
the walls of those lucky enough to have seen him or unfortunate enough to have heard of his legend. The most famous of these outings was surely the World Cup of ’86. This tournament and one game in particular would go on to cement the image of Maradona as the greatest paradox in world football. Two goals, four minutes apart, in the quarterfinal against England, would reveal the notoriety and the genius of this man. The now famous “Hand of God” and “Goal of the Century” goals would go on to break English hearts towards an elusive World Cup. The post Falkland War bitterness between the two countries would be exacerbated by this eccentric footballer and his well timed hand.
the
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f there was ever a life that could be described as a roller-coaster, Diego Maradona would surely be chosen. If there was ever a man to exude such extreme emotions from the watching public, Maradona would be that man. Called by many names, the most colourful that come to mind range from cheat to the greatest player of the century (and on a certain summer day in ’86, both seemed to apply within a single match). The irony in describing his uniqueness is that it can best be done in clichés. And possibly the most apt one is that this world would certainly be a less entertained place without him. Breaking into the football scene at a very young age with Argentinos Junior, Maradona’s climb was meteoric and dizzying. It wasn’t long before he was unleashed across the Atlantic into the more lucrative world of European football. After a short stint at Barcelona, Maradona transferred to Naples. It was at Naples that he acquired his almost God-like status. Even to this day shrines across Naples honour this unlikely creole-esque demigod and his gumbo football.
The ancient Romans had long wondered at the workings of their pantheon. A look at present day Naples, and they would have witnessed the birth of a demi-god first hand. 50 years and the ups and downs of Maradona have been too varied to be mortal. And with the promise of more to come this God and his Hand is far from being red carded. December 2010
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50 etween Albert Camus’ Nobel and his death, he experienced three years of almost ‘nonexistentialist’ decline. Camus’s best work, it seemed, lay far behind him; it had been many years since he had published anything of real note. Camus himself was at least partly to blame. Responding to the fashions of the day, he had engaged in philosophical speculations of a kind to which he was ill suited and for which he was only moderately gifted—The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) has not worn well, for all its resonating aphorisms. In L’Homme Révolté (1951) Camus offered some important observations about the dangers of lyrical revolutionary illusions; but Raymond Aron said much the same thing to vastly more devastating effect in L’Opium des intellectuels, while Camus’s naive, almost autodidactic philosophical speculations exposed him to a cruel and painful riposte from Sartre that severely damaged his credibility with
B
YEARS
the intellectual left and permanently undermined his public self-confidence. If his literary reputation, as the author of L’Etranger and La Peste, was thus unfairly diminished in contemporary opinion by Camus’s unsuccessful forays into philosophical debate, it was his role as France’s leading public intellectual, the moral voice of his era, that weighed most heavily upon him in his last decade. His editorials in the postwar paper Combat had given him, in Aron’s words, a singular prestige; it was Camus whose maxims set the moral tone of ‘theResistance’ generation as it faced the dilemmas and disappointments of the Fourth Republic. In earlier years he had accepted the responsibility: “One must submit,” as he put it in 1950. But in the last interview he ever gave, in December 1959, his resentful frustration was audible: “I speak for no one: I have enough difficulty speaking for myself. I am no one’s guide. I don’t know, or I know only dimly, where I am headed.”
(1) In Fre unknown nch, étranger can m . maman est Meursault was all any things: foreign th in the afte morte. Ou peut-ê ese things. (2) ‘Au, outsider, alien, tre hier, je rn o o n o n slipper y ro 4 Januar y ne sais pas.jourd’hui, 1 a ’ But d 9 6 in 0, northern The driver France an a sports car skiddedat two w a s M d hit two ichel Gall off a publisher tree im back seat, Gaston. Michel’s w ard, nephew of the s in succession. if was Alber were thrown clear a e and daughter, w legendar y ho were in t nd sur vive C a m us w hours to e xtricate his ho died instantly. It d. Sitting next to Mthe ich to body from the wreck ok rescue workers twel age. o
52 kindle india
December 2010
Death in the Afternoon, or Notes Towards a Brief Life
By Abhijit Gupta
ALBERT CAMUS
after
(3) He (4) Albert wwas 46. 7 November as born on pied-noir se 1913, to a tt North Alger ler family in ia died fightin . His father War I. (5) A g in World t on Camus at a conference Pompidou in the Centre the speakers Paris, one of fainted o podium. n the
Introduction by Sayantan Neogi
(6
)
In Al terv o be iew rar n Ca rt’s d ed o d ely mu au n pla o no bee s is ghte the s I ce t ju n d a li r— ec fro think in w dge ealt e. In said ond d m t hi pe wi m : ‘I da dis isem the hat u ch th ople th. H y op do n y of t sec bod out niv ey wh ow inio ot he t o ie sid ers fee o a ev n, pa co ne d. Th e, n ity l c re er Ca rti nfe sin e ot st om pa , it mu cul ren gle re fro ude for rtic is d s’ arly ce tho is a m nts tab ipa eno pos lik , Ca ug sen the wh le. P ting un itio e sy the ht. se po o s er h ced n c m rin Jus tha int tud son ere. an on pos e C t o t so of y C all Th d e cer ium am ne m un am y, a ey xp nin s. us !’ eth ive u sy ar os g A -ing rsi s sh mp e d ed the sym is l ty re ou osi oing in a lie, po ack se ld um th ll h ha siu ing arch com is n eir is w s m , li . Th e a ot wo ork fe a t t m rk . I an t c he y p in d v an co la a ita be nte ce. lity a b nt . A it ll t o
(7)If he had not been diagnosed with tuberculosis at 17, Camus might have represented Algeria in football. Till 17, he played for the Racing Universitaire Algerois junior team. (8) During the years of World War II, Camus did not shy away from the barricades. His participation in the French resistance and his editing of the underground magazine ‘Combat’ made him a charismatic figure. His youth, intense good looks and above all, his razor-sharp writing appealed instantly to the post-War generation of young people. (9) ‘He looked like Humphrey Bogart and died like James Dean.’ (10) For any young person in college or university, reading Camus is almost mandatory, ‘a rite du passage’. Affecting a Meursault-like mien also comes naturally for those who have already cut their teeth on Holden Caulfieldimpersonations.
(11) After th the Sartre-B e War, Camus joined e a habitué o auvoir circle, becomin f de Prés. His the cafes at Saint-Ge g rm fr Andre Malr iends included Arth ainur K a u x and the e During this ssayist Raymoestler, ti m e , h ond Aron. e fell in lov Cesarès, a re e wit 1940, Cam lationship which was h the actress Maria mathemati us married Francine F to endure. (12) In novel The O cian. Two years later, aure, pianist and on the univ utsider, about a man he wrote his first w e the Sisyphurse. In the same year, h ho turned his back s, e wrote Th a tr a ct o (13) Camu s dedicated n the philosophy of th e Myth of in 1957 to his Nobel P e absurd. his ri and the absu teacher Louis Germ ze acceptance speech are insepara rd are two sons of thain. (14) ‘Happiness b happiness n le. It would be a mistae same earth. They absurd disc ecessarily springs fromke to say that the well that th overy. It happens as e fe e li n g o absurd spri f the n happiness.’ gs from
an 52, uary 9 1 re in Jan Sart onday 4 or his ed l u M cid -Pa et f Jean 6) On in tick t, he de where h t i a e . (1 a tr men Els as tw ll ou schism us had ast mo limard. 1959 w d at e f s e l a l amu vocabl 0, Cam at the ith Ga trike of the ro here C ) e t h t 6 ft s r w , 5 u 9 e r l l o i 1 1 d e B i ( ey. by roa the ste he car ortfol l, whic ed n r jou ravel orld, :54, t his p nove e call to t the w ) At 1 ard. In pt of a ould b in . (17 -Guy uscri It w la 8) an led sett neuve- hed m ter. (1 a s ’ e Vill unfini years l st Man r 5 n i a 3 was lished ‘ The F b u ep ld b wou December 2010 kindle india 53
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face
Illustration by Arka Alam 54 kindle india
December 2010
December 2010
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60 10 OF
&
YEARS
YEARS
Peanuts 58 kindle india
December 2010
WITHOUT
By
Aditya Bidikar
C
harles Schulz, creator and author of Peanuts, hated the name that had been given to his comic strip. He thought it was juvenile and implied that his comic strip was made for children. He wanted to call it Li’l Folks, which he thought was more sober and portrayed the tone of the strip better. Peanuts was Schulz’s life’s work, and he wanted it to be taken seriously. And he succeeded. Not only was Peanuts loved by readers of all ages, it was also a critical darling and inspired many future cartoonists like Garry Trudeau and Bill Watterson. Peanuts probably needs no introduction, but to put it in short, it was a newspaper strip that followed the life and times of a group of 7-8-year-olds, especially a kid called Charlie Brown, who was, quite possibly, born defeated. Charlie Brown is the unluckiest kid around. He can never manage to fly a kite, he keeps playing baseball despite being defeated every time, he can never talk to the girl he has a crush on, nobody likes him very much, and he always has the football pulled from him before he can kick it. But he muddles on nonetheless, being irrepressibly nice, aided by his dog Snoopy, who can’t even remember Charlie Brown’s name. Over its fifty-year run, Peanuts gathered a fairly extensive cast of characters, including Snoopy’s bird friends, Linus and his security blanket, Schroeder and his piano and more. And through all these years, unlike with so many newspaper strips (Garfield comes to mind), each and every strip was written, drawn and lettered by Schulz himself. Schulz believed that a comic strip had a time of mere seconds to capture the reader, transport him to another world, and make him laugh. Therefore, this should be done as effectively and inventively as possible. Schulz was responsible for many innovations which were later imitated or borrowed by other cartoonists. He established a template which many follow to this day, but none as effectively as Schulz himself. For one thing, he stripped down the backgrounds of his strips till the world behind the characters was merely
implied rather than shown. This made the readers focus on the nuances of the characters and allowed them to lose themselves in the world more easily. He also established the ‘silent third panel’ – the silent beat before the punchline – which, although now commonplace, was nigh-unique back then. Behind the veneer of humour, the strip was always slightly sad and morose. It is full of dark and paranoid characters, many of whom can’t deal with life on their own terms and try to find some kind of escape. If it had been populated with adults, Peanuts would have almost been a nihilistic tragicomedy. The exclusive use of children not only softened the blow, it also made it more gentle, relatable and purer. Of course, no comic strip that lasts for fifty years can be perfect. Peanuts had its ups and downs in both popularity and quality. Snoopy, who was the break-out character, becoming much more popular than expected, more-or-less took over the strip for a long duration in a perhapsmisguided notion to lighten up the strips. But Schulz always came back to his roots, and never completely lost sight of what the strip was. He never let Charlie Brown kick the ball. The strip evolved along with its creator’s artistic capabilities, and remained incisive in its commentary on social issues like race, gender, religion and education, and inclusive in its cast of characters. Even though its heyday was from the sixties to the early eighties, Peanuts remained popular through its
entire run. The production of Peanuts stopped in December 1999, after Schulz had a stroke and discovered he had colon cancer. In his announcement, he said he had always thought he’d be doing the strip well into his eighties. “I did not take it away,” he said. “This has been taken away from me.” The final strip was published on Sunday, February 13, 2000, the day after Schulz died in his sleep. It featured Schulz, in the garb of Snoopy, writing a farewell letter to his readers. Even though United Features owned the strip, it never let another cartoonist continue the strip after Schulz’s death. Over fifty years, Peanuts delighted, intrigued, affected readers in their millions. With nearly 18,000 published strips, it was one of the longest narratives ever created by a single person. And true to form, Schulz hated the name till the end. You can read the SMBC Comics tribute to Peanuts at http://j.mp/kickthatball
December 2010
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When Indian did you first encounter cartoonists should be taking from Peanuts? Peanuts? I was nine years old the first time someone The problem involves the sale and distribution showed me a Charlie Brown strip. But the comics I of strip cartoons. Foreign strips are cheap because liked then were either like “Spooky the Friendly Ghost” of syndication. Indian strips are not, because Indian or narrative strips like “Tarzan” and “Garth”. One year later, syndicates will not buy/sell/distribute them – because Indian though, I was old enough to appreciate the humour and I liked CB newspaper editors are not interested – because Indian readers are a lot. But I read a lot of strips. CB was one amongst many favourites. more comfortable laughing at foreigners than at themselves. Do you view it differently as an adult than you did as a child? Yes, because as an adult I could see the politics behind the jokes.
How were the last 10 years without Schultz’s Peanuts? Well, comic strips are a continuously evolving media species. Today’s generation has not even heard of ‘Little Nemo’, ‘Krazy Kat’ and the original Why do you think this odd little comic gained so much popularity? ‘Dennis the Menace’ who was an English cartoon character in the brilliant Maybe because CB is an anti-hero. He is utterly ordinary, yet he’s the centre BEANO comics. Yet these were all unique and exceptional – there’s nothing of attention. It means there’s hope for all of us! There were also so many like them in the current situation – and there have been hundreds of strips. other characters that eventually it became a microcosm of a particular kind Being forgotten is part of the life-cycle of comics. It’s just a fact of life. of middle-American neighbourhood. What other comic strips would you recommend for people who How has the strip influenced your own work? love Peanuts? I liked it, but I was never even slightly interested in looking towards Perhaps ‘Calvin & Hobbes’. But this is like asking for a other strips for inspiration. I was always keen to be “different” replacement for a beloved friend who has died – it simply even though I realized, ultimately that the market would can’t be done. You finally accept that reality and find prefer something more like the other strips, with different friends, while never forgetting the one “international” rather than “local” humour. who cannot be replaced. What lessons do you think
An interview with Manjula Padmanabhan on Charles Schulz’s ‘PEANUTS’ and more
The character on the left is ‘Suki’ who appeared in a regular comic strip in ‘The Hindu’ back in the 80’s. The creator was Manjula Padmanabhan. 60 kindle india
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RNI Applied for. Vol 1 Issue 9 December ’10 Rs. 30