Love Spirit

Love is the spirit, amd the spirit is love. Oh, why the tautological platitude, is that your question? Well, I was listening to "You belong with me" by Taylor Swift, a song she wrote and sang in the initial part of her career, when she was literally the sweetheart of the entire U.S., not to forget the whole jing-bang, the fans of English pop music.

It is a cute song. It describes the typical Veronica-Betty-Archie love triangle. The speaker in the song is the Betty type, the good, nice, clean, innocent girl next door, who is sweet but not sexy. Veronica, on the other hand, is the cheer girl to Betty's 'bleacher' sit-out. She is clearly the 'rich bitch' type, too.

The speaker has the spirit, the soul, the heart of the guy who has a crush on a girl who just is not his type, who does not understand him, and makes him sad and blighted! Well, in Bollywood, we have the "pehla nasha, pehla khumar, naya pyar hai", literally the love anthem, from "Jo jita wohi Sikander", right? This song captures the same spirit, but only from the perspective of Anjali, the character enacted by Ayesha Jhulka.

Well, it is a song full of yearning. It celebrates the 'you make me better/complete, but I hang out with her' addiction. It is written in very simple English. The presentation of the nerdy but nice Taylor Swift is sweet, too. 

Yet, it does raise certain basic questions as well.  Why is the "you" Taylor Swift is singing/talking to, the guy who repeatedly 're-turns' to her for soulful solace and sweet smiles, so insensitive and stupid that he is ready to lust after a hothead?

 Why is he ready to throw away the pearl, the diamond in his hand, to slightly misquote Othello!?! Is he then the worthy guy at all? Is she misreading his thoughtless insensitivity as friendship? Useless questions actually 'coz heart has reasons the head knows nothing of! 

Pratima@"I love you not only for what you are, but also for what I am when I am with you, when I think of you," the 'high' of 'romantic' love!

War

 Unfortunately, "war" has become the 'open sesame' clue of our world recently. Just when we thought we had managed the war against Covid, erupted the Russia-Ukraine war. As it lingers on (does anyone know whatever is happening on that front currently?), the Palestine-Israel war is re-creating the gory scenes by the hour!

There is a war against peace currently. That is why people blithely talk of a war to end wars! Actually, war is truly vicious these days, what with the technological advances available. At times, I think that Einstein was so spot on when he said that "I would not know the weaponry of the Third World War, but the Fourth World War would surely be fought with stones and sticks!". 

Yet at times I do feel that often the war could be nothing but an attempt to create a market place for the outdated war technology so that the new lot could be invented, and marketed! Just like the way Indian women, (next African, later Latin-American women) became beauty queens, Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss Galli to Miss Dilli so that beauty products could sell, right?

No, I am not being cynical. Consumerism is key word of the world today, not to forget the cartel practices for business  booms! Yet the real enemy leading to the innumerable massacres is not really the economy or the post-LPG financial structures. 

Rather the fiend lies in the human heart! It can be the aggressive feel of ethnicity mixed with the militant religious intolerance, a dangerous cocktail which breeds the terrorists who have changed the very face of the world after the Twin Tower terror. Till that fatal fall, there was mostly a mutual tolerance which is now replaced by a bitter, vicious suspicion which leads to wars galore, in Afghanistan, in Gaza,

The Russian invasion is a by-product of the NATO border skirmishes which America  using to downsize the Putin-Xi alliance is Interesting unions creating a multi-polar world! Here economic sanctions to crypto-currency, subtle but vicious were the post-modern weapons.

In all this political-religious frenzy and economic hustle-bustle is forgotten the fact that those who die are the innocents! No longer are soldiers the only martyrs. Even children are not spared now! No songs of innocence any longer, only the pathos that Tennyson so sensitively captured in "Home they brought her warrior dead!"

Pratima@ "Never think that war, however necessary, however justified, is not a crime," maintains Hemingway.

Audience response

 Remember, some time back, the TRP war had raged on, and violently? The only worthy detail of that manipulated and manipulative machinations is the underlying need of-n-for audience response.

Audience response and its vagaries form a touchy feely point for all the media. Let me give you an example. As much as the traditional audio, video, audio-video media, the social media matters a lot these days, right? In fact, there are media pundits who maintain that the social media would wipe out the traditional mode altogether in the AI times.

Yet be it the traditional or the social, both the media are controlled by the public, the audience. They can be controlled via the advertising. Equally interesting is the actual response. Most all YouTubers grumble that the moment they prepare a video that is not sensational or is not a 'soft' appeal to mushy emotions, or does not deal with politics, the great Indian obsession, 'views' plummet!

True! How many people watch Tedex talks, for instance? How many are interested in the History Channel? This evening, I got a chance to visit an experimental theater and a performance platform made out of  depleted factory premises. How much is the presence at such places? How many people attend meets that address genuine but not 'newsworthy' issues? Are not artists pressurised in to performing filmy, Bollwoody-ish pop songs rather than the classical raga's?  Closer home, how many students attend lectures regularly?

Yes, the audience response, including the likes, the thumbs-up and the forwards, is quirky, quite unfathomable, quintessentially tiring. Yet a committed creator never compromises with the quality. Quantity hardly matters anyways, be it number of releases or the audience response. Without being snobbish or dismissive, how to respect the truth and one's integrity, that is the question!

Pratima@The footfall @ our blog is nearing 70, 000. Thank you, everybody! Well, I do not use any  audio-visual inputs. It is just words, words and words, to quote Shakespeare's Hamlet. Mostly, I address non-glamourous issues. Yet this sure response is heartwarming. Thank you, dear regular readers!

Why gossip?

 Indeed why gossip? Well, I always find it extremely funny that people may not have time to talk to you. They are that busy. They would immediately quote workload. They have loads of time to gossip about you though!

Indeed why gossip? May be, in the mediaeval era, life was indeed tough. There were not any means or modes of entertainment. Why, in Europe those days, poets were troubadours, and drama even in its most didactic form was not even thought of, while India was warding off invasions. Given such hard times, was there this formula of amusement possibly? Well, but why now in the twenty-first century? May be, most people refuse to grow up beyond their cave-inhabitant versions, I suppose!

Gossip is malicious. One cannot laugh it off by maintaining that people find you so dangerous to their careers or lives that they try to minimise/dim(inish) you through gossiping. Sure, one does ignore it completely because one's clean life, innocent behaviour anyways do not match up with the gossipmongers' lies. Gossipmongers fall flat on their faces for SURE!

The fun fact incidentally is that the term etymologically originated from "godsib", the christening godfather or godmother, responsible for you. By the seventeenth century, it got the current vicious meaning, which was cemented by the nineteenth century. With the advent of television serials and further the social media, I suppose, gossiping has got properly institutionalised!

The best way to deal with gossipmongers is to ignore them completely which sure irritates them more. For SURE. One can confront them the moment there is some concrete proof of their villainy because any ways they are cowards who cry hoarse about you behind your back! They would not have an iota of the daring to say anything upfront because anyways they are NOT upright! Cheap creeps, more to be pitied if at all one thinks of them!

Anyways, people who listen to gossips have to be equally brainless. May be, they so much lack character that they could harass you to please whosoever is influential or is a moneybag. Such people who thus allow themselves to be used are beneath contempt indeed! Not even worth a moment of your precious life!

Well, it is indeed best to remember that gossips have a very unhappy, unpleasant, unfulfilled life. So this need of theirs to find  some vicarious pleasure through gossiping! Poor things! Must be pitied than despised!

Pratima@ Those who thus try to bring you down prove irrefutably that they are indeed low, and beneath you!!

The Seventy Hours Debate

 To work or not to work for seventy hours, that is the question. Since the Infosys founder Mr. Murthi expressed his opinion about the need for a seventy hours strong week, India has exploded in to opinions  in such a vehement way that no need now, or ever since, would there be to prove Amartya Sen's title "The Argumentative Indian"!

Well, there seem to be three groups; industrialists/owners who support Mr. Moorti, often quoting the 9(hours) 6(days) Chinese formula form the first group. Their argument seems to be that we cannot follow the laid-back Western formula of 'forty hours' types.

 Well, true in a way because we are thus aping the West, while jumping across-n-over many steps when/where they worked very hard to now relax the cool way. This expectation is like that of  the hot-headed wifey's who wants her young husband, who could be just two years older than her, to immediately provide her all the creature comforts that her father provided her mother when the lady was in the late forties or early fifties!

The second group is obviously the working group who finds the expectation ridiculous because the wages are low, the office-home balance is butchered, and so on. Doctors, the third group, provide all the jazz in to this melody, rather cacophony, because they quote the life style diseases as if such diseases do not have other parentage such as bad eating habits, lack of exercise, et al. 

I have a fourth and a fifth reaction to this debate! To begin with, my feel is that it is only the organised (mostly the I/T) sector that can thus grumble. Anyways, their percentage in our society is minimal. The majority of Indians work in the unorganised sector where they work for ten hours a day, Monday through Saturday, both inclusive (as job offer letters would put it!) anyways, and yet live long, and lead rather happy and healthy lives!

My second  opinion is a question. "Do the cribbing people really work so sincerely, so hard"? I get this kind of reflex reaction even when people opine that for a peon's job, there were hundred Ph. D. candidates. Well, are these so-called Ph.D. holders really knowledgeable? We all know very well what goes on in that factory called Ph.D. production!

 Are not most Ph. D. degrees a bigger version of  the "spit/vomit" variety of appearing for the exam fiasco, that is, relax/bunk the whole semester, but the night before the exam, stay-up the whole night, memorise as much as possible, and the next day, spit/vomit as answers whatever you might remember!

Can there be, for example, a Ph. D. in any subject (as the thesis is anyways written in English!), but especially in Linguistics and the ELT (two  really very easy areas actually), who cannot speak or write a single qcorrect, simple sentence in English?!? Why then grumble that such candidates apply for and get a peon's job!?!

 Do we really have a genuine, efficient, smart (not hard!) work culture? Very rarely in government offices! In private companies, it might be a shade better. Most employees work for the pay cheque alone. Very rare are the employees who love their work! 

Least actual work, procrastination, making others shoulder the responsibility, ugly and cheap politicking and ganging up, third rate gossiping, that is the sum total of the work experience hereabouts, the great Indian jugad! Work (ethics!) is hardly worship hereabouts! Honourable exceptions, very very few anyways, prove the rule! 

When such storms rage, I feel, all these people should ask their favourite heroes, cricketers and film stars how much and how hard they work!?! May be, Mr. Moorti would then be less maligned!

Pratima@ All the bitterness apart, the Moorti remark has generated a blast of cartoons of all varieties. Most wonderful was the one my brother forwarded to me, in which Akshata Moorty, lovingly buttoning in a carnation/a rose in husband's lapel, is all the while telling him,"Papa called and said, tell Rishi to ask the English cricket team to practice in the net for seventy hours"!

Karwa Chauth

 Bollywood is indeed a huge equaliser. In a way, it could be said that next to cricket, the great passion hereabouts, Bollywood is hugely instrumental in creating a pan-Indian feel. Especially noteworthy is the fact that it has popularised certain religious rituals across the length and breadth of India. Karwa Chauth is one of them. 

Well, if you were to look up the traditional tale of Karwa Chauth, it has clear echoes of the Savitri story. It is about a woman's determined effort to make her dead husband come alive, to get back her dead husband's life even after a wait of a year, it seems. It has a dash of a brother's concern for his sister's welfare and well-being as well.

 Even a child anywhere in India would know the elaborate rituals of the Karwa Chauth, popularised as they are by Bollywood. Like the nine sarees of nine different colours (Major newspapers list them a day before! A full page is devoted each day to pics of women draping the special colour of the day!) that women wear during the Navratri,  Karwa Chauth, too, is an occasion to deck up. Lovely mehendi patterns, great "joodas" of bangles from the wrist almost up to the elbow, nathani, new saree, literally the works!

Once upon a time, the vrat and the rituals  must have been a way of giving at least for a day  some focal importance, a central role to the otherwise much ignored, hugely sidelined woman of the household. Undoubtedly, like everything else celebrated en masse now a days, this day, too, would inevitably be a consumerist frenzy now. 

Well, the feminists versus the traditionalists  debate rages each year when it comes to celebrating such festivals during the contemporary times. Women have been sending space shuttles to the moon now!

 Well, such a critique could be dangerous in a  fraught polity like ours wherein the moon and the fasting both are central to very many traditional practices, and across religions, Ramzan Rozas to the forty days long Lent fast before the Easter to give two well-known examples, right?

May be, one should be civil and generous enough to accept the individual right to celebrate any festival, observe any ritual in the personal space without violating any human(e) rights or without vitiating the public sphere, I would say.  Each (wo)man to her/his own personal priorities so long as everybody respects everyone's right to be, I suppose! 

Pratima@ "A (daily) ritual means I am voting for myself; I am taking care of myself," says Mariel Hemingway.

Why be judgemental?

October 31.  The birth anniversary of Sardar Patel and the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi! Well, across wapp groups, there was a tsunami of messages. Mostly highly judgemental, that is to say, proving that most wapp message makers (actually 'forward' pushers) thought they are the judge, mental actually most of them appeared!

To be extremely honest and frank, I have never understood such blame game. Very sincerely I do think that all of us are made by our times. This rule applies even to a great genius. The field could be anything, literature or science. In other words, in his own unique way, Shakespeare is very much a product of his times, the European Renaissance, and so is Galileo.

Unmistakable are the signature tunes the Renaissance plays in their oeuvre. Similarly, as per their own contexts, those who understand them, interpret them. Hence we have as many Shakespearean plays as there are readers. Similarly, till an Einstein re-interpreted it, reality was Newtonian, and much was achieved thus, too, right?

None must ever forget that it is easy to be judgemental in hindsight. When XYZ is living in that ABC moment, in that particular LMN context, one behaves in a certain way, most often as nobly and hopefully as ideally as is possible to them then, is my belief. In hindsight, anyone can find thousand faults and million errors because both the person and the context are long-lost! Remember, only the person who wears it knows where the shoe pinches!

So why be judge(-n-)mental? Public loves this irresponsible idiosyncratic ignorant game though. Want thereof a proof from close quaters? Look at the way each generation finds faults with forefathers! A grandfather is always a villain to a father whose son considers him a Hitler. Not much different is it with the feminine version. 

My real problem with this nitpicking fault-finding is that in the entire process, most people totally forget the positivities, the unmistakable achievements, right? In the familial fold, for example, children, who constantly crib, forget how the parents sacrificed a thousand moments for them, how they tried the best that was then possible for their progeny. Well, most all see the mote in others' eyes, while completely ignoring the beam in their own!

A classic case of throwing boulders at others while living in a glass palace is the judge(-n-) mental behaviour in my opinion. So why waste time on such (intellectually) lazy time-pass? Let me share a very touching memory of October 31. 

Jimmy, our childhood companion, had to stay in the Katraj Zoo animal shelter as we all were to go to Aarey Colony at Prakash Mama's place for Diwali. Sanju and I left Mumbai the morning after Bhaubheej to get him home as early as possible. 

Jimu's joy when he saw us after a separation of four days was beyond description. Well, while he was heavenly happy in the plastic basket in which we carried him home, Sanju and I found the absolutely empty streets rather funny. 

We reached home, and then we knew! Sure, the Pune context was not as gory as Delhi then.  Yet we were terribly tense till Aai-Papa reached home by the evening. Raju was sailing, safely away from all the trouble.

Yet each time I think of October 31, and of Jimu, I remember Sanju and I getting him back in that plastic basket, Jimmy boy feeling supremely secure, and I cannot forget the eerie silence in the very air then. Well, personal precedes the political! 

Pratima@ Why throw stones at others unthinkingly? Well, when you judge others, letting loose unthinking opinions, you are not defiling them, you are defining yourself!