Evermore Mother's Day

 Remember that day long long ago? You were a tiny tot, hardly three. She was taking you to school. All along, she kept on cajoling you with sweet dreams of your very first day at what looked like a lair to you. At the doorstep of the classroom, the bell rang. The teacher pulled you in rather hastily. Her typical duty year after year, right? It was your first ever 'away from Aai' mo(ve)ment. You exploded in to a huge sob. 

Her eyes full of unshed tears, she had to leave as per the teacher's terse, strict orders. She reached home, your loud sobs and wails accompanying her every step. Those three hours lasted a lifetime. Back at school, through the window, she peeped in to the classroom to find you happily lost to the new space.

I suppose, this initiation in to the wide wonderful world is the fulcrum of the mother-child bond forever. It hurts her deeply, and yet she is the happiest, given your joy, and this pattern goes on and on, in every new sphere that you continue to explore, your studies, your lows and highs, your career, your bright chances here and abroad, your friendships, your marriage, your child(ren), your first flat, your second car, your hobbies, your pastimes, and on,  and on.

Far and further you orbit, away from her. The umbilical cord refuses to snap for her.  Your unspoken aches pain her. Your weak moments she knows instinctively, and she stays put there, silent but strong for you. You quite casually do something rather routinely for her. For days on end, that is her happy mantra. 

Despite your chilly chidings, your rough snapping's, your being lost to your wor(l)ds, till her last breath lingers her Aai-ness, happy to see you grow, while she lets go, as on that day long long ago!

 Pratima@ Evermore the Mother's Day!

Undiminished forever!

 Well, special days and unique fests have now gotten to be undiminished occasions for buying and more buying, anything from artificial jewellery to dress material to new furniture or utensils, or whatever. In this eternal zest for shopping more, more and more, have we forgotten relationships? Are emotions only for yesteryear ads, as they no longer make even them as before? 

On Akshay Tritiya day, Aai always used to make the unique daliya/rice grain kheer in a separate pot she specially reserved for this very purpose. Papa would without fail visit the Sarasbaug Ganesh temple. On the way back, there would be the buying of Alfonso mangoes for the weeklong feast. Neither insisted that gold must be bought, but they felt that precious moments of undiminished togetherness-es needed to be spent forever. 

Why are the next generations becoming more and more self-centred? Why is personal space so diminishing that it has no place for immediate relationships either? Given the pace of life, none expects that you meet your siblings, for example, every day. Yet a two-minutes-call every fortnight or a wapp message once a month is not much too much to expect, right?  

I always choose to daily send my brothers one really worthy/info-rich wapp message. It could be a video or an audio or a text. Raju often sends at least a thumbs up. At times, he sends a worthy message or two, too. Well, as I am not the "no news is good news" type of person, unashamedly I am happy even with a blue tick by His Lordship's!

Oh, yes, Raju bothers to respond to my insistence on the "reached" message. In my opinion, somehow it seems to continue the "Aai is there" feel. Senti for sure, but that is the way mental bonds remain "akshay", undiminished forever, I think, as I believe that such simple sincere actions speak louder than the actual words of/in a wapp message, right?

Pratima@Being too formal, excessively professional, consciously maintaining distance in close familial bonds is killing the warm mother feel in one's own self, I feel. That could be a better interpretation of the Parshuram Jayanti  celebrated on the Akshay Tritiya day, right?

Ray shine(s)

 May is the month when/in which great people are born. You do not believe me, right? Well, just check the details about dates, okay? Especially remarkable is the greatest May Day (remember the nautical language? "May Day, May Day" means saving life itself, fine?), that is, May 2. Why? Simply superb souls are born on May 2.

Yes, you guessed it right. Yours Truly, too, was born on May 2. Geniuses share May 2 as a birthday!  Satyajit Ray, for instance, boasts of May 2 as his birthday. Yes, Yours Truly, too, is multi-talented. Yet the scales are indeed vastly different. Hence enough of this tomfoolery. Let us concentrate on Ray who shines bright like the summer brilliance.

Ray is truly a Renaissance figure. Reading his literary works, studying his scripts, looking at his 'set' sketches, listening to the way he designed music, the list would be endless. Honestly, each of the frames of his every film is sheer poetry on celluloid. Even his last film which was unmistakably 'drama'tic proves this point.

I can write a book each on every one of his films. In this small little blog though, today let me talk of his finesse in choosing THE perfect artist for a given role. Let me give a few examples to prove my point. Have you seen "Pather Panchali"? Even a minor character like Indir Thakuran, Durga's Pishima, comes alive because Chunibala Devi literally lived the role.

Remember the 1959 "Apur Sansar", one of the most lyrical presentations of love in Indian cinema? You cannot imagine anyone else except Sharmila Tagore as Aparna, while Ray's favourite most actor, Soumitra Chatterjee,  who enters the Ray world in this film, can alone be the lovelorn Apu, upset with life itself, and yet beyond the contemporaneous Devdas iconography.

In fact, Sharmila Tagore of the bouffant variety is the best in her Ray films, and without attracting any attention to her famous dimples. As the distraught "Devi" to her 1960's 'modern' avatars in Ray's Calcutta trilogy, it is difficult to believe that this actress is the same simpering miss of  Bollywood.

I suppose, that is the true talent of a great director who can locate the perfect, the ideal face which makes every character come alive in the casting stage itself. Ray, moreover, makes his actors emote so naturally that spectators can easily identify with the characters.

Madhabi Mukherjee, Utpal Dutt, Robi Ghosh could be a few of the other illustrious examples of his perfect casting.  He repeated all these talented actors film after film. He had an equally devoted team in Soubrata Mitra, Soumendu Roy (cinematography),  Dulal Datta (editing), while masters made music for him. No wonder, the Ray oeuvre has the shine of a glistening May morn!

Pratima@ Ray's perfect casting has a very personal connect for me. Subir Banerjee as the young Apu of "Pather Panchali" looks exactly like my brothers (Sanju more) when they were young. Aai used to love that entire sequence of Durga and Sarbojaya getting Apu ready for the school. She adored that  still often used as the film advert.

Laughter as yoga

 You must have come across this site, mostly in the mornings. Evenings such sightings are rare. No, no, do not worry. I am not talking of any wild site. True, we do live in a jungle. But that is the cement concrete type. And, yes, most 'citi'zens are wild, if the road rage is any proof. Even then not to worry. I am not talking of any danger.

Instead I am referring to a very happy and healthy practice, the hasya yoga, to laughter as medicine. Often in parks, you would see a group of mostly senior citizens throwing their arms up in the air, and laughing away to glory. Oh, yes, there are very many types of laughters they try.

They laugh like a lion roaring. They laugh as if tickled. They laugh like a smile spluttering.  Looked at from a distance, too, the look of this club brings a smile to our lips.  Of course, even in real life, we do know people who laugh like a donkey braying, right? So such a sight is a pleasure in comparison.

True, this laughter is artificial. Yet it is a stress buster in its own way. Alongwith it is often tried pranayama. Thus at least some more oxygen reaches our lungs which is good for our overall health. Worth a try is this low cost, high benefit medication without any side effect.

Since 1998, under the Mumbai based Dr. Madan Kataria's guidance, the first Sunday every May is celebrated as the World Laughter Day, a welcome move indeed. Let us all join this fun movement, and laugh our way to better health.

Pratima@Laughter, they say, is the best medicine!

Of death

 Death enters our life the day we are born. As certain as our birth is our death. The weird complexity of death is that it is so very known, and yet is completely unknown. 

No wonder, death has forever fascinated poets. The list is long. As it is the birth anniversary of Rabindra Nath Tagore, today I am going to talk of some of his images of death.

What is an image? Is that your question? Is it a symbol? Is that you next question? Well, an image is a sensory presentation of  experience. There need not be any similarity as in a simile. Nor there need be any  implication nor suggestivity as in a symbol. Rather it is an evocation of a feel, be it physical, mostly felt by the mind, the soul through the five senses.

Suppose I were to describe a morning not directly but as a blooming bud of the golden yellow champak, I am not comparing the flower with the dawn. Suppose if I were to write," It was 6.30ish. The blooming bud of the swarna champak..." , through the unstated, dormant yet clear associations, my reader can understand the break of a soft, fragrant day with a gentle dazzle of golden beams. 

In my opinion, Tagore's poems are abuzz with images. It could be the effect of imagism, dominant both in poetry (in the 1910's and 1920's of the Imagist Movement) and in paintings(of both the Impressionist and the Expressionist varieties). Anyways, that would be the spacious traverse of a proper research paper.

In this short little blog, let me present two images by Tagore of death that I find fascinating. In the first one, it is the soft gentle maternal love. A mother is breastfeeding the baby. She removes the right nipple from his lips. There is a murmur of a whimper before the eager lips find the left one. All is quiet gentle sleep yet again. That is the glide from life to death. 

This uncomplaining acceptance of death as an absolutely natural, normal transcendence is most beautifully captured by him in yet another image. The soul is the bedecked bride awaiting eagerly the arrival of the beloved, death. 

Those days, "Stree" and "Kirloskar" used to be published every month. For the May issue, I wrote a piece on Tagore. The article ended with my translation in to Marathi of that great Tagore poem, an intensely lyrical image of an eager awaiting for the complete total togetherness.

Aai loved it. The poem is great, and my translation was not exactly bad. She was in her mid-sixties, absolutely healthy. So the subtle edge of her appreciation of the image did not unsettle me a lot even when we discussed the poem. Now it does.

Death, said Donne, 'thou shalt die'. Yet Donne was the very same poet whose superb image in most sensitive terms reminds us,"no man is an island". Hence "never ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." "Every death", as Donne stated, " diminishes me"!

Pratima@"Death smiles at us all," wrote Marcus Aurelius."All we can do is smile back at death "

Journalism

 The freedom of journalism is indeed an interesting theme. No wonder, the U.N. chose  a day to dedicate to it. Independent, fair journalism is absolutely a dicey situation currently. Why?

 Well, in contemporary times, there are two major problems regarding news generation and distribution. The first one of these is the inevitable interference of the deep fake. The AI-generated news, views, images truly create  parallel wor(l)ds which create a world wide web which is vast, glib, and absolutely a concoction, a falsehood whose range, both generation and distribution wise, is so gigantic that it need not even crush the truth. Well, truth as an alternative would hardly (be allowed to) exist at all as there would not be the alternative space for it!

The second problem about journalistic integrity, honesty, probity is rooted in the finances/economy of the deep fake. For deep fakes to erupt, exist, evolve are needed deep pockets. Obviously in a clearly globalised world, international (crony) cartels with their own agendas would be the big brother watching, nay, dictating, every mo(ve)ment of everyone via newer, sharper, more incisive technological tool (kits). Forget small time alternative media creators like the YouTubers, can a local media house sustain such onslaught? The answer is obvious!

Instead of hating for the hake of hating, opening up, standing up to such real and inevitable totalitarian tendencies has to be the genuinely public intellectual's (a journalist should be one) prime duty.

 Instead of blaming, back-biting, bitching over temporary tussles which would settle down once the election fever comes down, media houses zee-lously (pun, obviously a p.j., but very much imminent in the current contexts) should support the coherent narrative, and not the planted narrative with an obvious eco-system rooted everywhere, and yet nowhere! In brief, in the deep fake future, already present, truth willl not prevail. 

Pratima@ The most important quality of a good foot soldier is locating/lambasting the looming large shadows. Like a good captain trying to tow away a ship from the dark continent below whose tip, too, is not visible!

Protest

 Noam Chomsky! Indeed a great name in the field of linguistics! In fact, it could be said that his generative-transformational approach changed multiple fields, from linguistics to cognitive psychology/ philosophy, and beyond.

I enjoy hugely his critique of America. In great works such as "Manufacturing Consent", "Responsibility of Intellectuals", he tears open the mask of American international goodwill, and shows the underlying capitalist greed for power, often couched in trenchant criticism (and terrible treatment) of other less(er) (powerful) countries, and thus he exposes the American grandstanding despite its essential (underlying) bullying. 

  Well, I can go on and on. In fact, when he had come to Hyderabad during my Ph.D. days, I had literally  satellited his itinerary for two days. Well, the reason for such remembrance of him today is the protest movement in the U.S.

With his very own Columbia State University in the lead, across university campuses in the U.S., the "encampment" movement is so strong that many universities had to cancel graduation fetes. Of course, many so-called liberal-democratic intellectuals hereabouts did not understand the long list of universities with encampments. Of course, in Indian universities, even if  the  chalk were to grate a little harsher on the now non-existing blackboards, these greats would have created a huge hangama!

That is not the tale today. Anyways, it never is worth it. The blog today is referring to the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protests on American University campuses, especially because the entire chain of events and the western media response to it are indeed interesting and educative.

In Columbia, for example, like everywhere else, the mighty America sent its anti-riot, fully fitted squads to control the peacefully picketing students! Students have been imprisoned, thrown out of universities (surely at least out of campuses) for exercising their right to protest!

How is Chomsky related to it? Here I do not have the (scholarly) space required to state his position on Palestine. What I find interesting in this context is his attack on American doublespeak. The American intellectual/academic circles (though not as 'dumb' as here) as well as media are either downplaying the quite brutal police action, or even justifying it! 

Now! Remember the  "Bharat, tere tukade" type campus sit-in's in the JNU and other such supposedly intellectual campuses? Remember the reporting of the agitations by women players, the farmers, the 'dadis' in Shaheen Baug?

This very American media, like most of its European/the Western counterpart, was tearing apart the Indian treatment of the sit-in's even when they were literally causing inconveniences to millions. Nothing mattered actually, as these protests were a huge long stick to beat, nay, bludgeon India with, for especially the American, and in general, the Western, media. 

The fun is that now the great Western, especially American, media is stating that there exists some foreign interference behind the student unrest! Poor India! How (and how much) we were lambasted then, literally for months on end! We dared not mention then the 'invisible' foreign hand either! Hence my remembrance of Chomsky who so very brilliantly exposed the American doublespeak, browbeating the powerless, thus manufacturing consent! 

Pratima@"I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing, and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words," says Karl Marx, whose birth anniversary was on May 5.