My First Boss - Mr. K N Dar, in Remembrance

 

How does one like one’s first boss to be? Thoroughly professional – someone who tolerates your naiveness but enables your growth to meet your potential, right? Mr. K N Dar was exactly that for me. He had this gentle, caring way of showing you your flaws and also where you should go as a professional. A novice like me got the opportunity to assist him in the preparation of the IPSC Diamond Jubilee conference that the school was so proudly hosting, thanks to his visionary capability and farsightedness.

(I stand with a maroon shirt and Dar sir in blue suit next to Ms. Scindia)

As a school leader, the hallmark of his style had been to keep the best interests of the individual student at the centre of all decision-making. A thorough professional, he woke up early in the morning to make several rounds of the large campus, and went back to his quarters late into the night after ensuring all student hostels are without events. He ensured he paid attention to the individual needs of different students and also those of his teaching and non-teaching colleagues, down to the lowest rung of the ladder, valuing each person as worthy of self-respect. Of course, he had an acute sense of what each person can contribute to the institution and never hesitated in giving everyone the opportunity to bring in their best.

A personal anecdote will bring his style to perspective: I was a night owl back then and regularly woke up later than I intended. My colleague who shared the quarter with me, on the other hand woke up in time and did what he had to in the morning. He had a first hour class and I had a second hour class on an occasion. I had requested him to wake me up before he went for his first hour class so that I would get enough time to get ready for my second hour class. He did that but I went back to sleep. Not someone to miss making rounds of the academic block in the first two pre-breakfast hours, Dar sir noticed that I wasn’t in my class. He sent a student to my quarters and the fella saw me in my home clothes in a just woke-up state. Such an embarrassment! This happened again a couple of months later. This time, Dar sir waited outside the class and I promptly apologized to him and said this wouldn’t happen again. He just smiled and said OK. He then promptly sent a peon to the very class where I had reached really late with a letter from his office. Gosh! What was it? A memo? The formal letter said, “I thank you for your assurance that you won’t be late to your class in the future.” No reprimand, no criticism, no shaming except in this subtle and sensitive way. I was thin-skinned enough to never ever be late to class in that school or anywhere else I worked after that.

My great fortune that I had such a tall personality as my first boss! May his soul rest in peace and his amazing memories live on…

 

Review - ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ (Malayalam Film)

 

‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ turned out to be a film I enjoyed more because of its powerful force of cogency and the introspection and churning of ideas it led to in me. To be fair, the near-perfect acting, the script, the cinematography (that focuses on the mundane details throughout and only at the end of the film zooms out into a brilliant aerial view of the beachside-building the protagonist drives into), and the use of song-lyrics to scaffold the drama of the film are all very impactful. But what stands out remains the director’s focus on the banality of forced routine of the several women in the homes contrasted with the banality of leisure of the menfolk in these homes - a reminder of Amartya Sen’s reference to starvation and fasting based on the luxury of choice. The one man who stands out as someone who cooks and seems to enjoy cooking non-vegetarian fare leaves the kitchen in a massive mess for the protagonist to clean all by herself.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Indian_Kitchen)

The film dwells on the visual imagery of vegetables being chopped, the stove being turned on and the smoke from the dishes being cooked on the stove, the sound imagery of all these, the clanker of dishes, and the dripping of water drops from the tap, and also the smell imagery of kitchen waste having to be cleaned by the woman of the house, who obsessively washes her hands in Lady Macbethian fashion. We suffer her pain when she performs these chores as if trapped. Most other women, especially the mother-in-law are sympathetic and act as allies and partners who are encouraging even as they remain in fear and themselves tolerate the oppression. But there are women who turn out to be non-allies – the aunt who comes in to help when the protagonist is menstruating, the own mother who is absolutely unhelpful – both symbolic of the women sitting in protest against women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple. The scene where we are shown the picture-frames of the women past and present some smiling beside their husbands in wedding photographs obviously hiding the oppression they suffer thereafter, screams irony at us because all we can imagine is their suffering the drab monotony of the not-so ‘Great Indian Kitchen’ where dosa is eaten always with chutney (ground on the grinding-stone, please, and not in an easier mixer-grinder) as well as sambhar, rice is only to be cooked using firewood (not in a cooker or on a gas flame), black tea has to have spices added for flavour etc., all tastes (clothes to be washed by hand and not in a machine; toothbrush and shoes to be handed over…) cultivated and dictated by men who sit around unhelpfully, but adding to this burden absolutely insensitively. The sense of entitlement the men feel is obvious in each encounter the protagonist attempts with her husband and father-in-law – “Ha, how could you even”!

The first fifty minutes of imagery and context prepare the setting for the drama of the next fifty. The film relentlessly juxtaposes tradition and modernity and questions the wisdom of having postgraduate women remain confined to the kitchen and its associated chores (cleaning, cleaning, cleaning). It has the courage to show us where we are wrong as a society, and as a man, if you don’t feel guilty, you are either brutally insensitive or you live with very empowered women around you!

My review of 'Eve in the Land of Kali'

 

Eve in the Land of Kali

Prema Raghavan’s book of 12 short stories is seductively titled to announce its faithful focus on women who are constantly struggling to find their own space between the extremes of the venerated mother goddess Kali on one hand, and Eve, the mere companion of the first male on earth (and worse still, the person to blame for human sins) on the other. While the women are Indian and span the spectrum of geographical, economic and social divisions in Indian society, each of them has a certain universality that every reader can relate to. Speaking of titles, the title of each story by itself is intriguing and requires a close reading of the story to understand why she chose it.

True to the book’s name, most of the 12 stories set the tone by announcing the main  (woman) character in the very first line (Sapna watched… Mridula got on her knees… Madhavi furiously pedalled her way up… etc.). If there are men whose mention is imperative, they remain at the periphery. Prema ensures that unlike in the world outside her book, they never take centerstage in any story.

What is most delicious in the book are the vivid descriptions she affords to everything – the characters, the settings, the innermost feelings of the main actors. Her clever use of word-imagery is by itself worth going to the book for. The descriptions are so intricate and intimate that they come alive for the reader (sometimes distractingly*). For example, in the last story, these lines: “His birth was a quick, abrupt, unwelcome intrusion in the struggle for survival. Before the stalk of his umbilical cord shrivelled and fell off, the mother was at work splitting granite for the roads …” (p. 140)

In many ways, Prema bares herself through her diverse characters the reader sees through her sharp gaze. The reader can never miss the pet subjects of the author herself – gardens, birds, nostalgic trips, the feelings of inferiority created by people’s false notions of beauty and skin colour. She also uses with great aplomb motifs that create an immediate connect and bring the reader to the ‘here and now’ – Pond’s talcum powder, Johnson’s baby products etc. Among the stories, ‘Mothers and Daughters’ and ‘The Homecoming’ come across as particularly autobiographical.

Prema takes the reader on a journey to witness a slice of each of her women’s lives at a dramatic moment in life and creates a calm empathy for the character irrespective of the reader’s own moral compass which may be at odds with that of the character. She also doesn’t feel particularly compelled to bring a sense of closure to the stories. Often the reader is left with several possibilities to conjure up for themselves.

I highly recommend the stories for the clever wordplay in the descriptions, for the wide variety of women characters in what could be called a Kali-Eve kaleidoscope, and for the brilliant perspective it gives to the feelings and situations of the women around us, which, owing to our patriarchal systems, we often tend to miss.

In many ways the book is a feminist nudge to put the woman where she rightfully belongs – the centre of the universe, everyone’s universes.

(Disclaimer: The author was my teacher at college, and I am particularly fond of her for her ready warmth and affectionate nature. What I write here could be deemed to be mildly coloured by the affection one has for a care-giver, but that would be grossly unfair to her and her book.)

*Prema doesn’t sacrifice her urge to bring to life aspects of the scene which may not add value to the movement of the plot. Some authors would have omitted such details but Prema chooses to retain them for the reader to get a more vivid picture.

Who are you to judge me?

Who are you to judge me?
Will you look at me waist up or waist down?
At the Linkin park cap worn carelessly on my head (Did some NRI gift the surplus from a show in a seeming gesture of benevolence?), at the crisp checked pattern of my pink shirt (Could it be from the '3 shirts for 100' sales of secondhand goods spread out on the crowded TNagar market floors?), at my glowing eyes (Does he suffer from cataract?), at the estimated cost of my handheld phone (Is it a cheap Jio smartphone, like the ones migrant labourers carry, on crowded train compartments, and watch YouTube videos all day long?)?

(I saw this gentleman earlier today. I hope he won't mind this unwanted publicity.)

Or at the blue checkered cheap lungi I wear in a casual halfhearted aim at modesty (Could it be Bombay Dyeing's premier quality ones just a little unstarched?), at the worn-out chappals that keep my callussed feet from further harm (Could it be some incurable allergy on the foot?) (Could the sandals have just got caught in the slush outside)?
Do you wait for me to speak on the phone and say out loud words like "sarakku" (literally 'goods', here referring to alcoholic drinks)? Would you change your opinion if, instead, I referred to some champagne tonight?
Ah, you squint your eyes and size me up with your devouring senses and your voyeuristic imagination, I know! But let me tell you a small secret; it may actually be of help to you: you know what, I care a damn for what you think; my life, I live the way I want!

The Imperious Matriarch

A woman who I have always known as an imperious matriarch, Ammumma (actually Achan's Amma) came across as someone who was completely in charge of a large estate even as she lived there by herself mostly. Strangely, she was also the most liberal in my family, and when any talk of marrying outside my community arose, she was the most tolerant of all...
She suffered from arthritis of her knees and hobbled around. Except for that, she had mostly black hair even when in the seventies, her teeth outlasted even her children's, and her memory was almost intact till a few months before we lost her after her 97th birthday. She ate sweets when she felt like (jujubes being her favourite), had three meals at set times, a nap every day after lunch, chai and snacks at 4pm and was a strict vegetarian, going so far as to practice some outdated rituals to avoid 'pollution'. She also cooked great delicacies whenever she could, and on most summers, she transformed the surplus mangoes and jackfruit into salted pickles and sweet preserves.
My fondest memories of her will remain from the endless summers my elder brother and I spent at her large estate, and how she tolerated our trespasses such as my going up mango trees and picking fruit; only sometimes, she would come down heavily on us for dropping mangoes on the tiled roof of the front of the house while she was enjoying her siesta. "Come down you monkey", she would yell at me, while my brother, on seeing her come charging towards the tree, would have bolted from his role on the ground, of catching unharmed the mangoes I aimed at using a long pole. Obviously, I wouldn't come down any time soon.
She was an absolute sweetheart, someone who had the largest heart. No one would go from her household hungry or sad. Relatives, friends and acquaintances always refer to her generosity and her warm hospitality with fondness.
From her seventies, to her nineties, she  diminished only a little: some white hair, a few lost teeth, weak eyesight and a frailer memory of recent happenings. She still spoke imperiously of things that mattered a lot to her, always trumpet

Ammumma with my nieces

ed with pride and dignity of events of the past, of how she got married in her twenties, lost her husband in her forties and plodded on for over fifty years after that, all by herself, with some financial assistance from the pension.
She hardly missed the names of all the countless relatives who visited her or those who were spoken about, even in her nineties...
If I can retain the grace, the joie de vivre she had even as an elderly person, I'll consider myself lucky. Love you, dear Ammumma. Your fond memories will remain etched in my heart! ❤️

Post-Truth

I am a votary of comprehending divergent views on any issue before drawing conclusions. Family and friends who surround me say that the word 'perspective' is my favourite word in the English language.

I consider myself to be a left-leaning liberal on most issues but I have shunned being labelled as a conformist to any party's ideology. Even if a party or a party leader's ideology and actions are detestable to my mind, I try not to jump to conclusions. But people I consider left liberals are seen ever-so-often falling into the trap of jumping to quick conclusions and labeling people and acts based on their existing prejudices. (Hmm, I have lost count of the warm relations/friendships I have 'lost' because I have taken views contrary to those of my loved ones, friends etc, and I am not scared to stand all alone!)

I am writing here because of two recent instances that have made me terribly uncomfortable.

1)      I read rants and rants on my timeline about Hima Das' caste being among the top searches on Google following her tremendous achievement at the WJAC 2018. I read two articles in 'non-partisan' media about this fact. I am quoting from the two articles to suggest what my problem with the argument is:

a.       "Do we need more proof of who is more bothered about Hima Das's caste? It's not the "rural, illiterate" bunch whose lack of awareness is often blamed for the continuing caste system. In fact, it is the urban drawing rooms and high-tech smartphones from where such caste consciousness arises." Sorry! How did the writer come to this startling conclusion saying "in fact..."? It would be great if we had specific data. Else, the writer must say, "past experience suggests" or some such phrase for the story being woven.

b.       "If people are searching caste, it means a majority of them use it as a reference to judge anyone’s performance. But what explains this obsession despite tall claims of exorcising the demons of caste long ago? Does the new right-wing assertion with vigorous pursuit of controlling roti-beti (food and daughter) have anything to do with the renewed obsession with caste affiliations?" I agree that a majority of those using caste in the search are trying to use it as a reference point to judge performance. But how did this lead to the question that follows? At least this writer is being less cocksure and camouflages his opinion with a sceptical-sounding question, albeit a rhetorical one.

Both the writers referred to above make a case for transcending caste barriers and avoiding caste labels and yet they have names which bear references to caste. So, should we blame these writers for being casteist, as they bear names with distinct caste labels in the year 2018, when we should have erased caste out of our society with a magic wand?c.        I will also refer to a good friend of mine who was taken aback at my comment on his post (about this Google search on caste) suggesting that caste is a reality in today's India.

Could we have drawn the wrong conclusions from the propensity of searches about Hima Das' caste? Is not every Dalit and others belonging to the disadvantaged castes always reminded of their caste. In fact, there has been a movement towards assertion of their caste identity as a form of hitting back. Given this situation, to assume that most people who Googled about Hima Das' caste are casteist 'upper caste' members may not be factually correct. Could it be that many of the disadvantaged groups searched for her caste identity both in order to liken the enormity of her effort with theirs as well as to be able to pay even greater tribute to her for her achievement, which would be even more if she belongs to a disadvantaged one. Many of the liberal-minded people from the non-disadvantaged castes could also have the latter intention in their search. To deem every search as a vicious one is opinion bordering on prejudice and I don't like to condone it however convenient it may to the liberal cause.

2)      The other instance is of a friend from college who is clearly left liberal, and shared a post with two pictures in it, both based on the Pussy Riot protesters that appeared on the football ground during the final - one with Mbappe (French team) giving a protester a high-five and the other with Dejan Lovren (Croatian team) "dragging down" one. In the ensuing discussion, several possibilities arose on why there was a difference in the response of the two players - the fact that the protesters were in police clothes, one was winning while the other was losing, etc. Clearly, my friend wasn't interested in these facts, even though he thought they were 'valid to some degree'. 'What truly matters' though, he said was the instinctive response, and the fact that one treated people with dignity and the other did not. 

Both these strands of ideas mentioned above lead me to the same conclusion and I am uncomfortable with that. Are left liberals guilty of the same post-truth that they accuse the right-wing conservatives of? How much more impactful and deep the message would be if we stop jumping to conclusions based on stitching together a clutch of opinions and passing them off as a fact!

I ask fellow liberals to introspect about this and see if we can create a cogent argument and a movement against the upsurge in the mistrust of 'the other' and daily incidences of killing human beings for flimsy bases and rumours...

Disclaimer: My apologies to the friends I allude to here, for bringing you here. You are free to 'comment' here.

Star Power

Source: http://www.quotehd.com/Quotes/marcus-aurelius-soldier-everything-we-hear-is-an-opinion-not-a-fact-everything-we-see

I watched two biopics almost back-to-back. One in the clamour and buzz of the movie hall and the other in the silence surrounding my phone on Prime. The movie hall one is a Bollywood 100 Crorer based on a current star, who had terror charges on him, and the Prime one is a Kollywood-Tollywood hit based on the first female superstar of the South. I cannot but help draw parallels.

Both stars have gone through waves of stardom and setbacks in their careers and also faced great personal tragedies. Both stars faced addiction issues one with alcohol and the other with drugs. I was motivated to watch both films because of reviews written by students on Facebook, both raving about the respective films they wrote about. Interestingly, both films have sub-plots about writers – one is a renowned biographer Winnie Diaz who hesitatingly accepts to write the biography of Sanjay Dutt and the other is a novice journalist whose dream is to get her by-line on the front page of a newspaper. Both the films have these writers doing their research and the audience getting a peep into the star’s life through this research.

My heart, admittedly, was tugged at, at several moments in the two films and the directors have hit the right chord to move the audiences to empathize with the lead characters.

My head, however, was left deeply perturbed by both the films. While I heard Gemini Ganesan’s daughter crib about the false portrayal of her father and the over-glorification of Savitri, I read about the gross glossing over of the criminality involved in hoarding explosives and AKs in Sanjay Dutt’s house during the troubled Mumbai years of the early 1990’s. Both films are examples of how cinema can make or mar popular opinion, in that sense.  So, I am not going to discuss these issues.

There are other common traits that are somewhat discomfiting for me:

1. The films portray the male film stars’ penchant for sexual liberties rather casually. While Sanju coolly announces to his mildly-shocked, awestruck prospective biographer in the presence of his acquiescing wife the number 308 and rounds it off to 350 for greater ‘historical accuracy’ as the number of women he has slept with, discounting those he refers to as ‘prostitutes’, ‘Gemini’ Ganesan, fondly called ‘Kadhal Mannan’ (King of romance) is portrayed as equally casual in his flings, overtures and extra-marital affairs. Manyata Dutt laughs this off as ‘harmless’ acts and Savitri is expected to do the same when Ganesan reminds her of having fallen in love with her even as he was married then.
2. The films show both Sanjay and Savitri failing as parents, and this is conveniently attributed to their own troubled childhoods. While Dutt is crushed under the weight of expectations to live up to a charismatic father, Savitri is shown as constantly yearning for the absent affection of the missing father. The audience is cajoled into forgiving the two for being bad parents.
3. Like most actors with personal setbacks, both stars are shown to be vulnerable and try to escape the harsh reality using alcohol/drugs or even attempt suicide. Alcohol for Savitri is what drugs is to Sanjay Dutt – debilitating, career-destroying addictions. While the former drowns her sorrows in drinks, the latter uses drugs to numb his pains and fears. Both stars are shown to heroically overcome this otherwise insurmountable hurdle.
4. While the audience is introduced to Savitri with the title ‘MahanaDi’ (great actress) and ‘Nadigaiyar Thilakam’ (title of the film), Sanjay Dutt is fondly referred to as ‘Sanju’ (title of the film) or as Baba (young boy; son). Aww, how endearing!
5. Both stars are shown as being prone to being manipulated by friends and acquaintances and being financially unwise. While Savitri loses millions and comes to penury due to her brash investments and financial management decisions, Sanjay, who is even manipulated into drugs by a wicked peddler is shown to be equally dim-witted when it comes to money matters.
6. Politics and gangsters find their way into both films differently. In ‘Sanju’, the director couldn’t have ignored the fact that gangsters are closely associated with the functioning and financing of Bollywood. Sunil Dutt had to meet Mastan don before he weds the Muslim Nargis, and Sanjay has to hobnob with gangsters during the Ganesh Puja. NTR’s Telugu Desam and the Tamil-Telugu questions of language identity find mention in the film ‘Nadigaiyar Thilakam’, which is technically a Telugu film dubbed into Tamizh.
7. In the films’ focus on the central characters, exciting aspects of the siblings and children are downplayed and even biographical facts merely mentioned and not elaborated, all this probably for cinematic clarity.

However, one thing was clear from both films. It is the person who speaks that colours the listener’s perception. The creators paint the films’ facts with their own brushes. The painter gets to decide what you get to see. Do the real and troubling, political issues of gender, terror, corruption, sexual promiscuity etc get shadowed by the excessive focus on the bright glamour of the cinematic lights? The troubled head is left reeling with the question.