Farouk Gulsara's Blog, page 81
February 13, 2021
You are more than what you eat!
The Great Indian Kitchen (Malayalam; 2021)
After being denied by many OTT channels, because of the Sabarimala Trials' running narration in the background, it made its presence in an obscure platform, NeeStream in Kerala.No, this is not a cooking show showcasing the numerous mouth-watering cuisines from the Indian kitchens. Instead, it is an India bashing film to portray the slave-like conditions in which some Indian brides live as 24/7 cook, wife, servant, and gardener. Simultaneously, in this particularly orthodox Hindu household, she is locked away in a small room away from everybody view for a good one week every month. She is considered dirty and should not be allowed to prepare food, as it is regarded as a divine duty to feed the family's males.
Coming from a family with liberal views on women empowerment (the protagonist was a traditional dancer in a previous life!), she flips one day. She was done with making adjustments to fit in every time. She called it quits and resumes her former life as a Bharat Natyam teacher.
Surprisingly, female gender had been typecast to play second fiddle in a typified patriarchal society. What happened to the likes of Ubhaya Bharati who had been given the honour of judging a philosophical discourse between Adi Shankara and her husband Mandana Mishra circa 700AD. When her husband was outclassed by Adi Shankara, she debated with the former.
The Vedic society gave equal place for women in society. Pāṇini, 400BCE, the Master Sanskrit Grammarian, advocated women to study the Vedas equally with men. In his Mimamsa School of Philosophy, there were women philosophers. Mahabharata tells of polyandry and strong female characters. What gave? Did the meddling of Indian education by the British and Abrahamic religions dismantle an already functional traditional education system?Many traditional societies view menstruation as unclean body fluid, and many restrictions are attached to it.
Sinu Joseph, an engineer by qualification and a menstrual educator, has researched much into traditional Indian outlook and tries to give an Ayurvedic scientific explanation to the body during that time of the month.According to the agama shastras, each temple is designed to energise a specific chakra. By extension, each temple can have a particular impact on the body, and even a different effect on the male and female body.
This is also used to explain why menstruating women have been barred entry into temples. Traditionally, temples have been looked upon as, not as a place of worship, but as charging pods. Its location concerning magnetic forces of the Earth, its alignment, geometry and placing certain metals within its building makes it an opportune place for sojourners to rejuvenate themselves to meet the challenges of the day. A menstruating body has many internal hormonal circuits to handle, and entering such an institution may have a different impact on the internal milieu. According to the agama shastras, that the author cites several times in her book, each temple is designed to energise a specific chakra. By extension, each temple can have a distinct impact on an individual. Different restrictions have been placed by other worship houses to a targeted group of the population, i,e, ladies in the reproductive age group and restricted entry into the Sabarimala temple. There are even temples exclusively for women! Men are disallowed here. Talk about a reverse Sabarimala, but nobody talks about it.
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February 11, 2021
The wheel of democracy moves on...
Newton (Hindi; 2017)
This movie is interesting because it is set in Chattisgarh, a state not usually featured in mainstream films. Chattisgarh is located in the East-Central part of India and is a place with a very long history. It is mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata and has seen many kingdoms rise and fall. The film's area is supposed to have been shot is Dakshina Kosala, the very jungle where Rama, Laxmana and Sita had undergone 14 years of exile in the wilderness.Now that jungle is said to be filled with various minerals, everyone wants to lay their dirty hands. The Naxalites are roaming around with rifles while the ruling government want to appear to be doing the democratic thing. Come elections, all political candidates promise a new dawn of affluence and prosperity. In reality, what the politicians are really eyeing is the deal to get businessmen to mine the fortune in their land and get their cut of the whole transaction.
Towards this end, the whole machinery is oiled; the local clerk to the armed forces to the local chief and the occasional election officers who drop by. The world gets a very conflicting view of what happens on the ground - a polished version from the ruling party and a picture of anarchy from the defeated. The final losers are the local dwellers. Whoever comes to power, their position, for the people of this story, poverty and melancholy remains the flavour of their day.
India's entry to Oscar's foreign film category in 2017 is a light drama depicting Nutan Kumar, a conscientious government clerk, who is sent to a communist-insurgent infested region to oversee a balloting station. Nutan who is embarrassed by his given name christians himself Newton. He tries as far as he can to be an honest servant. Faced with a disgruntled army officer who is assigned to protect him and his team of ballot officers, he tries, against all odds, to oversee an election centre in the middle of nowhere where the last political leader was assassinated by communist terrorists. The electorate list comprises Adavaasis (aborigines) who are least bothered of voting.
All these for just 76 voters? Everyone says that every vote matters. Can a single vote actually make a difference? Apparently, it does. In 2008 Rajasthan Assembly elections, the Union Minister, CP Joshi was defeated by a single vote by opponent Kalyan Singh Chouhan (62,215 vs 62,216). Chouhan's wife later was found to have cast her vote twice. It was a disappointing blow to Joshi as he was a candidate for the Chief Minister's post. A petition was filed, but the verdict in favour for Joshi only came four years later; almost time for the next election.
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February 9, 2021
All you need is a pretty face and the media.
Just to drive home the point how media sells ideas and influences our way of thinking, look at Elizabeth Holmes's case. At 19, she dropped out of Stanford in 2003 with a one-tracked mind to prove to the world that her painless blood-testing device was going to revolutionise laboratory blood testing. Equipped with only computer knowledge without a medical background, she proceeded with her plan despite the detractors' scepticism. From the get-go, she was faced with opposition from the senior partners and staff employed in her company, Theranos.Through the benefit of her charm and goodwill, Holmes' company managed to secure close to $6 million in funds through crowdsourcing. The trouble was that the machine that Holmes was selling was not working. It gave wrong results most of the time, and the company ended up using other devices to do the tests instead. Workers who complained of its unreliability were sacked and were required to sign non-disclosure agreements to safeguard company secrets.
The young lassie was actually committing fraud on a large scale. Her reputation, on the contrary, was flying sky high. Her work appeared on TV channels, and her pretty face adorned front covers of business magazines. The fact that senior politicians and Clinton Foundation endorsed her work just added its value. At one time, Theranos was valued at $6 million. In 2015, the Theranos machine even got FDA approval.
It took a Wall Street Journal journalist and a disgruntled former laboratory director to bring the company's unsafe and unethical practice to the fore. Slowly the investors pulled out, then came the court trials, then the sentencing. Holmes was barred from positions of power in any public companies for 10 years.
The media still made a killing. They ran hours of the court cases' footage, interviews with so-called 'experts' on relevant topics related to the Theranos scandal. It went on till the next news that raised the curiosity of the public surfaced.
All you need is a pretty face, a convincing story with a gift of the gap and media coverage, you can sell ice to Eskimos.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes Courtesy HBO
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February 7, 2021
Eight limbed alien being?
Netflix
During my childhood, one of the highlights was watching Jacques Cousteau's documentary on ocean exploration aboard his research vessel, Calypso. Week after week, he would have different ocean regions to showcase a kaleidoscopic kingdom hidden beneath sea level. Funny, it appeared so picturesque even though we viewed them on a rackety black-and-white television! I knew then that Costeau was the pioneer in ocean exploration and is also credited for modernising the scuba gear. It was amazing how much time he spent looking at marine life and narrating them.'My Octopus Teacher' reminds me of Costaeu's film, just that this time around, it is displayed in 4K ultra-high-resolution display and excellent sound systems. The cinematography is to die for, and the presentation opens up the mind to look at lower lifeforms with respect.
The narrator, a burnt-out filmmaker, Craig Foster, retreats to his childhood home in Cape Town for some peace of mind. He started diving in a chilly bay off the Atlantic Ocean. He discovers a world of small oceanic creatures and builds a common octopus fascination (Octopus Vulgaris).
In his 300 over days of diving into the shallow lake, the viewers learn more about the intricate ecological system that lives there. Foster observes a particular octopus and films its behaviour regularly. Slowly the octopus built the confidence to come near him and nibble his finger with its tentacles.
I never knew that a film on a cephalopod can be so emotionally wrecking. Craig watches his mate as she (it turns out to a female) go about life, changing its colour to suit its environment, feed on preys and protect itself from predators. Craig has a strict policy not to interfere with nature. Hence, when the octopus was once attacked and had one of its tentacles severed off, he started questioning whether what he did was indeed the right thing to do.
Miraculously, the octopus' tentacle grew back eventually, and it went on to mate. The thing about octopuses is that becoming pregnant is like a death sentence. When the time is ripe, the female will impregnate itself with a sash of spermatozoa deposited into its body. It guards its eggs 24/7 without feeding and drains itself to the brink of death. At the end of incubation, which would be about a month, it would be too weak to defend itself and fall easy prey to natural predators.
The octopus is an interesting animal. It is a mollusc under the class of Cephalopoda just like squids, cuttlefish and nautiloids. It is said to carry a too high number of neurons for its size. For comparison, Octopus Vulgaris, has about 500 million neurons, five times the number in a hamster, and approaches the number in the common marmoset, a kind of monkey. (Humans have about 86 billion.) Because of this and the snippets seen in this documentary, it appears as though the octopus shows emotional responses, scientists wonder if octopuses have consciousness.
It is also a highly intelligent organism. It learns tricks quickly, and the puzzling thing is how it cracks open the snail's shell at the precise point to incapacitate it.
There is a theory that octopuses are no worldly creatures at all. Part of its DNA is alien and had reached Earth with a comet. The DNA fused with the squid but eventually got its own life. It is a master at disguise and Paul, the Octopus, in the 2010 World Cup, had shown the world that they are football enthusiast and good animal oracle when he correctly predicted the eventual Cup winner.
(P.S. Heard a podcast about marine scientists accounts of their years of observation of a particular deep-sea octopus. Hear it below.)
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February 5, 2021
It is an algorithm?
Nostradamus, a French physician who lived in the mid 16th century, was actively involved in treating plague victims when he was summoned back home when his wife and two sons were also down with the plague. His creditability as a doctor was shaken when they died of their affliction. Nostradamus never completed his medical studies as he was penalised for having embroiled in making herbal potions (apothecary); a trade deemed unprofessional.
After the death of his family, he delved deep into astrology and study of the occult. In 1555, he published an almanac which is said to predict events 2000 years into the future. So as not to create problems with the Roman Catholic Church, as it would be viewed as heresy, he allegedly wrote his prophecies in cryptic quatrains using a combination of various languages.
He gained a following amongst the royalty as he foresaw many future events. Even in modern times, his enthusiasts claim that he had successfully predicted the emergence of a leader like Hitler, the American civil war, the assassination of JFK, the 9/11 attack and even the Wuhan virus.
Two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis.The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the great new city.
Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up.
Within months, rivers will flow with blood.
The undead will roam the earth for little time.The thing about history is that it tends to repeat itself. The predictions that Nostradamus describe events in relation to position and alignments of celestial bodies. Added with the cryptic messages, these can be interpreted in whatever we seem fit - earthquakes, floods, invasions, murders, drought, wars, plagues.
Looking at the message 'predicting' the spread of the Wuhan virus, the quatrain can refer to many episodes of plagues that originated from China all through the centuries via the Silk Road.
The verse linked to the 9/11 Twin Tower attack could also be in reference to the numerous volcanic eruptions recorded in history, like the devasting eruption of Mount Tempura in 1815 which left ashes in the atmosphere for months. Rains were crimson-hued staining river red. It caused 1816 to have no summer and the genesis of a new genre - 'horror fiction'. Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' and the story of the undead still roam our silver screens.
Is it not funny that all the predictions are kind of afterthoughts? Where were these people when everyone was having a good time living like there was no tomorrow and partying like it is 1999 planning their next holiday destination before the emergence of this pandemic? Only the wise know that happy hours do not last forever.
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February 3, 2021
The art of not giving a rat's behind!
The question is this. What draws two souls together in a romantic bond and possibly in the union of matrimony? Is it physical attraction or the ability to see things through the same lens, have the same madness or perhaps share the same dream of how life ought to be?
There used to be a time, perhaps even now in certain circles, of these types of unions being arranged by elders. There are no unique qualities looked for by the involved parties. There is minimal interaction between involved parties, and the marriage is more of a contract to continue the circle of life. One takes what one gets and tries against all odds to hold the fort against time's uncertainties. Come what may, the union of the Gods stand the test of time; only to revoked by death.
Now, is it necessary for the uniting couple to be compatible? After all, it is a biological union for continuity of species of which Nature can make the natural selection. Society determines every offspring of these unions be accounted for and the responsibility of caring for them is cast in stone. Biology encourages the male species to sow their wild oats but the female to be stringent with gametes' choice in a competitive selection of the fittest. Unlike their counterparts in the animal kingdom, Man is expected to provide for his partner and kind.
Man has also put in another criterion to be locked in matrimony, compatibility.
The romantics in you want to believe that the highly acclaimed movie characters will have a happy ending. The logical mind, however, drills upon you this association is doomed from the word go. A barely educated young widow from a remote village coming to town to work as domestic help is no compatible match in hand for a US-educated architect/writer who has been cradled in luxury throughout his life. The widow may have a chest full of zest and big dreams to lift herself out of poverty with her bootstraps, in reality, unicorns cannot be pink and invisible at the same time.
Ashwin returns to his apartment, heartbroken, after leaving his bride at the altar after finding to be adulterous. Ratna, his helper, over time, tries to cheer him up by telling her miserable life as a curse with early widowhood and being the breadwinner for her family, even though they look at her as a burden.
The acting is so nuanced, filled with subtle body languages and unspoken dialogue. Despite being a simple story with an ending which is anybody's guess, it managed to maintain its viewers' attention till the end.
The ghost of one's social past will haunt him until and unless one uproots and starts life afresh away from the encumbrances of the web of societal mores and pressures. Alternatively, one can live a reclusive life, giving two hoots to people around him, come hell or high water!
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February 1, 2021
We matter, we like to think!
We brag, exert our authority, struggle for the course we think is right, and our ego. We fight for our rights and continue to do so. Sometimes we cling on to our convictions till breath leaves us. We do it because we think it is the right thing to do. It is our dharma to act so, and failing to impart our life lessons is sacrilegious. The law of Nature must be upheld at all account, and it is our God-given duty to do so.
In that process, we break many hearts, we shed many a tear, invoke misery in others. We, however, feel no remorse because we know we did the right thing. Sometimes it kind to be unkind. Being the elder one with greater power acceded by hierarchy means leading others is a given thing. Pandering to the need of the majority and garnering popular votes are just not acceptable. There is a divine decree to uphold, or is there?Now that twilight has passed, and Sun had set you, all is left are memories of you - anger, dislikes, idiosyncrasies and memory of strict stares. In a way, we miss you as we reminisce the good times and the not so pleasant instances you spent with us in the last few years. Oh, how those twilight years took away your hawkish eyesight, your robust physique, your hearty health, your confidence and your independence.
That is the story of mankind, is it not? We appear wet, helpless, vulnerable, dependant and garner attention. Our cry creates joy to the ones around us. Then we manifest our reason for being, live in the harvest of our investment, clamour in that joy and follow the path of decline. We end up in a state of bliss to the pains of existence. This time the others are crying. They wail, we are in a state of joy, we like to think.
That it is. Our presence is marked with a single lighting of ‘vilakku’ to honour our death anniversary, to celebrate our footprint in the history of time. We like to think that our existence mattered. In grander schemes of things in the gargantuan Universe, we perceive our presence and our action or inaction do make a difference.
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January 31, 2021
It had always been self-interest, not altruism.
Written and Directed by Vivek Agnihotri
What would Buddha, being a pacifist, would do when he is caught in a bad traffic jam? Instead of cussing and cursing explicitly or under His breath, He would probably, wait patiently, not to upset the already tense atmosphere, but instead deal the situation calmly. Mere mortals around him would probably jump at the chance to pounce on his non-aggressive way of handling his machine to squeeze to ahead by at least a few cars. For mere mortals that would mean a big deal, they would retaliate, but not Buddha. The storyteller is trying to equate the Adivasis (aborigines) to Buddha whilst the capitalists and the communists as mortals try to bribe their way to usurp the Adivasis' rightly owned lands for personal interests.
For a movie that Agnihotri had so much difficulty trying to secure financial backings from the movie stalwarts in the initial stage and abandonment by financiers later, it sure did fan a lot of excitement, protests and even riots. It is said to have popularised the term 'Urban Naxalites'. It was the academia where it hurts the most. For a long time, people in higher learning institutions have been looked upon as socialist, leftists or communists' sympathisers. Many have been accused of joining the breaking India forces to cripple the nation from within. Even during the Raj era, educated locals would wag their tails to the beck and call of their colonial masters. They continued as sepoys, and now as journalists, academics and God-men continue their dog and master relationship overseas and even in India.
Even though this film had repeatedly been dismissed as trash by mainstream media and online reviews, one wonders why it obtains raving reviews from others. It hits out at the leftists who have spread all over the institutions of higher learning. With their revolutionary and anti-establishment way of thinking, the young are the most suitable targets to lay their red agendas.The capitalists are no different from the socialist in the way they expect the masses in their agenda of making money. Nobody actually cares for the underprivileged and the marginalised. It is just dollars and cents.
The films tell of a group of free-spirited MBA students challenged by their professor to develop a business model to help an NGO sell aboriginal pottery. It is allegedly to be siphoned back to the community for their upliftment. The protagonist realised that the setup is a sham to hoodwink the government subsidies for their private coffers. Helping the tribes is the last thing on their mind.
A refreshing look at the real world of philanthropy. It is filled with revelry, intoxication and hedonistic entertainment at the expense of the poor. It had always been self-interest, not altruism.
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January 28, 2021
A positive look at caste?
The Complex Place of Caste in Indian Society
Prof. R. Vaidyanathan
Caste has been looked upon as a curse of sorts to the Indian society. It has been drilled repeatedly by the so-called Indologists as a demeaning curse to the nation. Scores of films and spreads of literature are shreds of evidence of this. It has been used as a stick to beat anything connected to Indian religions, customs and culture in the same way Holocaust has done to Austrians and Germans. Prof. R. Vaidyanathan (RV) is one of those who look at caste quite differently. Firstly, 'Caste' is a Western concept. It is a Portuguese word that made its way through the colonists. In traditional Indian varna (caste) system, people were classified not by birth but by 'gunas' (virtue, merit or excellence). The colonialist masters conveniently pigeon-holed the Crown's subject into a hierarchical system for statistics purpose to aid their 'divide and rule' administration. Conflicts usually arise amongst those in the lower rung of the ladder for their piece of the pie in a government job or entry to higher learning institutes.
RV labels advocates for a homogenous India as half baked intellectuals who try to put an individual-centric view of the West to a duty-based system. In the non-government concerns, non-corporate segments and service sectors, caste and community clusters play an essential role in unincorporated or partnership and proprietorship activities. Examples of these are the diamond industry in Surat, electrical works in Bangalore controlled by Mewaris from Rajasthan, etc. He looks at caste as social capital to uplift one's social standing in society. The drive for this 'Vaisyavisation' of India is more pronounced now than ever as the current economic push demands its previous government outlook of India's socialist model.
Prof R VaidyanathanIndia's top 50 most influential management thinkers
His many lectures and talks are available on Youtube
and PGuru's channel.The Anglo-Saxon paternalistic model for a nation is already showing disastrous effects. The family unit is torn apart as the State assumes the role of father, mother, and stands for what a community would do. It provides like a spouse in terms of social security, as a filial offspring in providing retirement homes and an instigator to fight for children's rights to sue and divorce their parents. With his legal status as a State member, he stands alone stark naked with only rights as his imaginary clothes to deal directly with the State. The State also does not have the benefit of concentric circles of cushions to deal with individuals.
Rightly or wrongly, politicians are using caste as their tool as a vote bank. Many political parties are caste-based, and it just suits them fine as a means to keep governmental allocations and possible avenues for corruption within their communities. The push to continue this practice is more incredible now as these leaders are old. They want their progeny to continue prospering in the second oldest profession globally, which, is not different from the first.
Caste has played an essential role in the consolidation of business and entrepreneurship in India, particularly in the last seventy years. The economic development that has taken place in India Uninc. or the partnership and proprietorship activities has been financed by domestic savings and facilitated by clusters and caste and community networks. If caste oppression was really severe in the past, then there should have been many caste wars in the last 2000 years! But history does not provide information about large-scale caste wars.
Something to ponder... Swami Vivekananda, aged 34 then, in an address at Jaffna in 1897,
"The older I grow, the better I seem to think of these (caste and such other) time-honoured institutions of India. There was a time when I used to think that many of them were useless and worthless, but the older I grow, the more I seem to feel a diffidence in cursing any one of them, for each one of them is the embodiment of the experience of centuries.”
Excerpt From: Vaidyanathan, R. “Caste as Social Capital”.
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January 26, 2021
Enough of stereotyping already!
The White Tiger (2021)
Netflix
Again and again, these Hollywood flicks paint a stereotypical paint of the whole of India, one of toxic caste division. They reinforce the idea of the fable of Great Indian Rooster Coop of which all the chickens in the coop can see their fellow occupants being slaughtered one by one, yet they are so subservient that they just stick their neck when it time. No, they do not re-tell the story of The Shepherd and his sacrificial lambs!
An erudite once said this about the existence of caste in India. The division of people by caste was a European construct. The caste is not Indian to start with. It is served from the Portuguese/Iberian word 'casta' meaning lineage. In the Hindu tradition, division of people into caste are birth but by qualities. Even within a family, different children are born with variable aptitude or predilection. One may be a scholarly person (a Brahmin in his outlook), another very outdoors and athletic (Kshatriya in quality) or very entrepreneurial with business shrewdness (Waisha).
On the other hand, some are just hardworking work-horses. It is often quoted of a Brahmin boy, earning a princely sum, working in a multinational leather shoe company after completing his MBA. How can one define his work by birth? Born a Brahmin, academically sound like a Brahmin is typified, indulged in a Waisha trade, dealing with leathers - an area designated to the low caste! Caste division is more and more looked upon as a British tool to 'divide and rule'.
The division of people is by no means is a construct confined to the Indian society. It is as old as the origin of civilisation itself. Watch 'The Crown' and see how a privileged family who brings nothing in value to the national gross domestic gets all the special treatment in late 1960 as the UK braced itself with austerity drive, scurrying for bail-outs and devaluation of its currency. See the turn of events at Washington DC following Trump's defeat and appreciate the disparity in the population of the most prosperous nation on Earth. George Floyd's brutal treatment and demise open a dirty bag of the worms of bigotry and racism.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie for its entertainment value. I liked its atypical narration and the dark theme associated with the story. A person is nice to another because it is the civil thing to do. Or he may need the job. We love our elders and masters behind a facade of loathing, and we loathe them behind the mask of love. People are like pressure cookers. They take in all the heat and beating until such a time that they explode extruding a magma of emotive aggression.It tells the tale of an ambitious boy from a village who works as a driver with a local gangster cum influencer businessman. He takes all the abuses and denigration until he is told to admit to a hit-and-run automobile accident driven by his boss' wife.
(P.S. This film is an adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker-winning novel. With the creative licence, the filmmakers made specific changes to put some stars in a better light to not spoil their image. As pointed by a friend, RV, an erudite critique, the book was written at a time of a different India, in 2008. Much water has passed under that bridge. In the wise words of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, 'No man ever steps into the same river twice; for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man'.)
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