Defining a Hero

 Who is a hero? The film stars? As somebody who ''assisted'' at the pre/during/post stages of eleven EMRC films, I can most authentically state with total authority that the actors' contribution to any film is minimal, may be,  just two per cent. The script writer, the DOP, the editor and most importantly, the director herself are the real, though mostly unsung, heroes. 

Are the sports stars the real heroes? Well, yes and no, as the Frenchies put it. Like the film stars, they, too, contribute precious little to the daily lived lives of the common man.

Recently, the film by the surname sake of Yours Truly has shown how the real heroes are the brilliant, hard-working, sincere scientists. Yet the news apparently is that the film is not doing as well as a silly comedy or a formula film is.

Why are the scientists not 'heroes' despite being truly heroic? That is because apparently they lack glamour, it seems. Well, if I were to tell you the name of a freedom fighter who walked the talk (to quote from our blog yesterday) and was highly glamorous as well, you would realise what real heroism is and who a true hero is.

Yes, you guessed it right. THE man I am referring to is Bhagat Singh whose birth anniversary was recently celebrated, though, like Shastriji's, in a slightly bated/muted way.  Many a citizen might have missed it, too!

Why is Bhagat Singh truly heroic? Where does his glamour come from? Sure, he, too, walked the talk. He was self-sacrificing, moreover. Most importantly, he thought unusually. He carried out thoroughly that unique thought which brought in systemic changes. 

The best example thereof could be his prolific writing. Personally though, I think that the fast unto death he undertook when he was imprisoned is a great example of how and why heroes are made. From behind the bars, he shook the very foundations of the imperial colonial power. Prison laws had to be changed because he remained steadfastly true to his idea(l)s. In brief, heroes are neither born, nor made. Rather they evolve to revolutionise routine realities, right?

Pratima@ A real hero may not have six or eight, or whatever, packs. A true hero positively packs in a punch that changes the status quo for the better.

Bigotry

 Lord Byron! One of the most interesting poets writing during the Romantic era! He is not as well-known as the other four, the elder Coleridge/Wordsworth pair or the "gen next ", in all senses of this term, the Shelley/Keats duo. 

Byron has a very interesting comment to make on bigotry. He argues, "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who  can not are fools; those who dare not are cowards ." Byron should indeed know.

Byron should know indeed! The unhappy facts of his personal life made a sensational story.  Judgements regarding his life were quite  rampant. Most of these were downright lies, and yet most all  of his contemporaries believed these to be the sacrosanct truth! That is bigotry for you!

That is  the problem. Very rarely is it found that you do not badmouth others. Otherwise, be it the family function or the society in general, you would carry on in " vicious" circles. 

Any solutions to such bigotry? One should cross check facts at the initial stage itself! Never open your mouth unless you know the absolute proof about the veracity or the mendacity of the report. Otherwise, it would be prejudice. Building bridges instead of walls is a must!

Pratima@"Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think," says Emma Goldman. Yes, indeed!

Motherese

 Aai used to call me "Rupu". Look at the very nomenclature. An abbreviation of a Marathi term for silver. Both fair and lovely, right? Priceless, too. In every sense of the term `priceless'. What a wonderful value addition to a child's, especially a daughter's, vision!  

That is motherese for you. Psycho-linguistics may define it as a mother's gibberish language. For a child though, it is the lilting, iyrical, and ultimate gatepass to that magical world called chilhood. Equally worthy was Papa's pet name for me. He would always call me "Jayu", indirectly instilling in me the `never give up' attitude. Thus parents prepare us for a lifetime.

Motherese plays a central role in such a self imaging. As it is, neuro-linguistics and psycho-linguistics inform us that the first six years of a child's life are centrally important in a child's over all growth pattern, and especially in the baby's emotional well-being. The way hence a mother talks to the child defines-n-refines the small one in a big way.

Motherese, let me clarify, does not merely mean a mother imitating the baby's stutter stupidly. An adult may think that the child likes such syrupy sweet talk. Children, in fact, dislike it because subtly they feel you are not treating them with the respect they think they deserve. I remember how Kunal, my nephew, reacted with a stare full of utter surprise and total disbelief, when I suddently started a `cute' conversation, used as he was to a normal, regular adult like tone. In brief, our talk constructs the child's wor(l)ds. Hence the importance of motherese.

Motherese puts the child at ease, so to say. A mother sure corrects the child, his/her speech patterns, behaviour modes. Sure such pruning is needed, too, for an all round growth of the child. A mother, however, has a feather touch while she thus edits out the unwanted aspects in her baby's being. Hence the importance of motherese.

Why, the stories we heard at bedtime, the songs Aai would hum to-n-for us, the gentle scoldings we had to gulp down alongwith food, all these expressions-n-words that have " made" us, all these are forms of motherese. May linguists make what they will of the incomplete sentences, the repetitions, the range of vocabulary, the intonation ingrained in motherese. In real lived lives, however, the incomparable motherese makes the childrenese actually.

Let me end this discussion with a much debated character from "The Tempest" by Shakespeare. He is Caliban, the native, who wildly takes Prospero to task for "learning me your language". We know better though. That is what a mother does, too.  She hues a (wo)man from a savage, not very noble at that. "My profit on it" , a child, unlike Caliban, would have to agree, is I could comfortably live and sleep  with "sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not" so much so that "when I waked, I cried to dream again".

Signing off with a much loved song, a perfect example of Bollywood motherese,

"lalla lalla lori

dudh ki katori

dudh me batasha

munna kare tamasha"

pratima@motherese