Let us move!

 The year was 1894. The place was Sorbonne, Paris. The day was July 23. A landmark occasion indeed it was as Pierre de Coubertin attempted to revive the ancient Olympic games there at Paris on that day. The objective was to make the world a better place through sport.

Despite the two world wars and the rampant racism, the spirit of sports revived, and remained a constant. In fact, it became competitive, combative as the George Orwell essay on sports has proved amply. Yet the Olympic Movement was too strong to die. 1942 onwards, the Olympic Day is hence celebrated every July cerca 23 or 26. The goal is to celebrate sports.

The title of our blog defines the theme of the day this year. Yes, indeed we need to move. Given the advent of machines and technology, our comfort zone has widened hugely. Most people are couch potatoes. The unique invite, hence, to move is indeed necessary.

We need to move, to groove, to prove that we are nubile, both physically, and ideationally, thus proving that we are alive intellectually! If we do not move, our very life and especially our thought processes start stagnating, thus destroying the sprouting of any new, creative venture!

Long live the theme this year because when people move about, and thus get to know the big wide world out there in all its complexity, people stop being frogs in a shallow well, fish in a small pond. We then find out the deep  similarities despite the apparent differences. Thus do we realise the motto of the whole earth as one's family, 'vasudhaiv kutumbkam'. 

Such a wide vision can sort out the tragic tales of the migrants, of their children sacrificed to foolhardy adventures. Thus would the whole mankind have a tolerant spirit and an efficient existence effectively explored!

Pratima@Long live 'movements' of all sorts!

Tiger, the terrible

 How books 'de-sign' our perceptions, right? The childhood read, Aesop's Fables, tells us that the fox is wily, while his bigger brother, the tiger, is not at all like the large-hearted King of the jungle, the lion. The tiger we meet in 'The Jungle Book ', Shere Khan, is equally vicious, nasty, cruel, always bothering the man cub, Mowgli.

Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger we meet in Yann Martel's 'Life of Pi', is a big brother of Shere Khan. In the early part of the novel, there is this incident wherein the father releases a goat in his cage just to let Pi Patel and his brother understand the cruelty of the animal, and he does rise to the occasion! The vicious cruelty he shows on that occasion accompanies the boy-hero throughout the impossible voyage. 

When they finally reach the shore, despite Pi's multiple acts of kindness throughout the voyage, Richard Parker in a very self-centred way just vanishes in to the forest, without even a glance backward! William Blake's tiger is a much better presence for sure. His unique beauty becomes a symbol of divine creativity.

As for the real tiger (beyond story books and novels  such as R.K.Narayan's, and many, many more),  the zoo cannot contain his ferocity. I have never been to any tiger reserves, though I have watched videos, seen pictures thereof.

Yet his is a presence which is very much necessary for the entire natural 'chain of being'. However, mercilessly hunted for the body parts, this dangerously attractive species has now been reduced to just four thousand, though just a century ago, there were hundred thousand tigers. 

Yet given the glamour related to tiger conservation, the tiger's current situation is much better than many other endangered species'. How to help the power and the glory of the tiger survive, now that mankind is encroaching the forests in a big way, is the real question. It needs urgent answers. Otherwise, tiger days would come and go, but real tigers would be fewer and fewer, soon only to be found in a story book!

Pratima @ I like the story about the ass, the tiger and the lion. The ass fights with the tiger over the issue that the grass is blue. The tiger takes him to the king of the forest to settle the issue.  While the lion agrees with the donkey, he fines the tiger. Hurt, the tiger wants to know the reason behind this apparent injustice. Says the lion, "the fine is imposed for arguing with a fool over a non-issue, and much worse still, bothering me about it, and wasting my time!" What a unique moral indeed! Quite some lesson truly, absolutely worthy of emulation in real life! 

The Moth Tale

 The moment anyone mentions a moth, the immediate bell that rings in most minds is the film entitled "The Silence of the Lambs". Well, like most bibliophiles, I have not watched that much talked about film, though I have read the 1988 novel. So effective was the story that even today emerge reports regarding the larvae of the  'death's head' moth being found in all sorts of often impossible places.

Actually, literature, especially the Urdu shero-shayari type, is afire with the moth symbol in yet another way. Unlike the flighty butterfly, the moth is a symbol of constancy so much so that it is ready to get burnt, to die a cruel death in its pursuit of the 'shama', the flame. Thus, most often, a moth is the symbol of a frustrated, often one-sided love. 

I look at the moth differently. In my opinion,  a moth stands for the search for light even when it could be fatal. This light thus can be any all-consuming aim, be it knowledge,  be it power, be it the willingness to transcend all that limits. Hence often I find the moth symbol in the Faust myth brilliantly explored first by Christopher Marlowe , and next by Goethe. Well, one can say, different fields have their own versions of the eternal Faust figure, right?

A moth, in my opinion, is a symbol of total transformation as well. The moth in its larvae stage is not exactly a pleasant sight. Yet the moth that finally emerges at the end of the entire transformational process is absolutely unique. I have always found the moth myth a variation on the 'ugly duckling' story.

I find this story fascinating because, unlike the pretty, small little butterfly, the moth is absolutely capable of adapting to the surroundings. The kind of camouflage a moth manifests shows us the greatness of the wonder called 'Nature'. In other words, its attractiveness is not simply pretty; it is valid!

Oh, you are asking me 'why tell the moth tale?' For one thing, that is because, a moth has a unique tail. On a less flippant note, recently was celebrated a moth day. Thence  have I been exploring the theme. Today the story gets told with the moral that moths are magical, moths are mystical, moths are marvellous in their own unique way!

Pratima@ May moths manifest their very own, unique magic!

Live(-r), eh!

 July 28 is indeed a significant date because it deals with one of our most vital organs. It is not very big. It is not explicitly visible either. It controls the very dynamics of our body though. Yes, it is the liver. We live, er, if our liver lives soundly. It was on July 28 that Dr. Blumberg's path-breaking research related to liver received the due world wide recognition. Hence this small little blog.

Let the liver live, or otherwise, we shall not live because liver damage leads finally to hepatitis, a kind of cirrhosis, which most often is fatal. Hence the need to take care of the liver. Better to avoid drinking liqueur, smoking, eating unhealthy oily food. Better to drink a lot of water.

Earlier, of course, the liver disease, like most all diseases, was hardly this deadly and dangerous. In fact, jaundice was almost a great occasion to drink lots of sugarcane juice just as tonsillitis allowed one to eat dollops of ice-cream. Well, in my childhood, I was not so lucky as to be down with either of these wonderful diseases!

Now, however, any amount of care is not enough. The entire climate has changed for the worse, both literally and metaphorically. Now jaundice means vaccines, not the lovely sugarcane juice with a dash of lemon and ginger. Now the more you take precautions and avoid any dis-ease, especially of the unseen organs like the liver, the longer you live, and healthily. Health is now indeed wealth. As Erasmus said, prevention, moreover, is better than cure!

Pratima@Health, like time, is wasted without realising it. Once lost, however, neither can be re-gained! 

The Pity of War

 It was the Kargil Day on July 26. The day  reminded me of the First World War tragedies as it was  this 1914-18 war that truly highlighted all the gruesome viciousness of war, the way soldiers suffer, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen, one of the most intense poets of the genre, wrote most evocatively.

The World War I was indeed a cataclysmic event. It changed the very paradigm of war-making. All the earlier wars were 'one on one' wars. One soldier fought with the other on an individual basis, be it a horseman or be it a foot soldier. However cruel it may sound, it has to be admitted that such a war had some chance of exhibiting soldierly skills.

The first World War changed it all. The mechanised weapons, whether it be the machine guns or the Zeplin's dropping crude bombs, were clearly weapons of mass destruction. Each European country, as well as its colonies then, lost literally an entire generation in this war. With young men dying on the border, women had to first time ever run the daily goings-on of ordinary lived realities.

Truly devastating, however, was the trench warfare. The soldiers, most of them young men in their very early twenties, suffered physically and psychologically due to the trench war.The constant rains and the snow, the terrible smell of rot as the corpses of the dying soldiers, the once-upon-a-time battalion buddies, would be decomposing just a foot away, these were numbing experiences. The trench rats, moreover, would be nibbling away the corpses' organs. No surprise whatsoever then that the trench poetry was known as the shell-shocked poetry.

The first World War had yet another decisive effect on the social imaginary. The realisation that wars were graveyards for people, especially the young, because the so-called leaders, kings, prime ministers, czars took thoughtless decisions wiped out all possible glorification of wars and empty patriotism. 

Reading poems by the hugely talented poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Edmund Blunden is a soul searing experience. Truly tragic was the fate of the soldiers from the colonies who were fighting an alien war in extremely unfriendly contexts every which way. Their plight is slowly emerging from the annals, and would most authentically explore the real 'pity of war'.

Pratima@ "This War will end all wars,' wrote H.G.Wells of the first World War. Unfortunately, it just sowed the seeds of the Second, which included The Holocaust and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki!

Freedom?!?

 Recently, on July 23, we celebrated Lokmanya Tilak's birth anniversary. Unfortunately, most people, if they remember him at all, would remember August 1, his death anniversary. In the public arena, however, that day, too, is mostly, and hugely, celebrated as Annabhau Sathe's birth anniversary.

One of Aai's 'mavashi's had never heard of Tilak at all. She was genuinely surprised when I talked to her in very simple terms of Tilak's stalwart contribution to the freedom struggle. She was not aware, for example, that Tilak started the Ganapati festival as an extremely intelligent and creative way of uniting people through religious/cultural activities/symbols. 

Unfortunate, in brief, is the fact that, these days, great leaders are 'caste-(wise)-divided'! The irony of the matter is that, during his lifetime, Tilak was often denigrated as the leader of the dispossessed, of the reject!

What I admire the most about Tilak was his fortitude. Sure, he was basically  so gentle that sparrows, very shy birds otherwise, used to nestle on his shoulders while he would be busy writing in his cell in the Mandalay prison. 

The famous "I did not eat the groundnuts..." or the " even if the skies were to fall on my head,..." quotes show his tremendous  courage and bravery. In my opinion, however, his fortitude is best revealed in his attitude to journalism.

He was the editor of 'Kesari' and 'Maratha'. His editorials were fierce attacks on the then government of the colonial masters. He suffered often because of his frank opinions. Yet never ever could anyone argue that he was partial, partisan, or even judgemental. 

It is indeed a great quality as a journalist. The truth of this statement would be apparent when we look around us right now. Very, very few of the columnists, news anchors, debate participants think through issues as an honest, fair and balanced individual, as a committed intellectual enunciating in the public sphere for the general welfare. Basically, most are ignoramuses, fulminating either against (mostly) or pro a party, a government either at the state or at the central level. 

'Minimise the image of the leader you choose to hate' is the only agenda. The reverse of the coin, of course, is to 'build narratives'  that suit your preferred political  party. The attacks hence are vicious, and extremely personalised.

'His Master's Voice', be it George Soros or a given political party, is the motto. Such journalism never sees the darkness behind its own shadow, under its own feet. However much these types may be internationally acknowledged, actually they are stooges of a given ideology. 

Totally tragic is this sad situation because everywhere  across the world, both the public space as well as the welfare state are shrinking. As a thought leader, one's role as an editor/journalist/author with at least some intellectual stature has to be guarding such generous humane ideas.

Instead, these journalistic mafiaosi of all ideological varieties, are conveniently shrill and completely shrewd 'influencers', however big nationally/inter-nationally their fan following may be. Full of freshly minted recent most terms such as 'setting a narrative', for instance,  they would beat black-n-blue, metaphorically, of course, A government, X politician, and so on. Their favourite netaji may be guilty of those very actions they consider vile in the 'enemy'! It, however, mattereth not!

Surely, this was not the freedom our great leaders such as Tilak or Bhagat Singh fought for. Sadly, it is such state of affairs makes one wonder if Tilak should have accomodated more in his idea of freedom the Agarkar-Gokhale notion of independence whereby societal/cultural/intellectual growth mattered as much as or even more than political independence.

Otherwise, as is the case today,  we have an affluent society as far as opinionated atmosphere goes. This societal space, however, is truly poor when it comes to sensitive sensibility!

Pratima@ Freedom should consist of respecting others' liberties, too.

Bossy-n-boring

 Have you met people who are the ultimate when it comes to being boring-because-bossy? For such people, they alone (tops their inner circle) are right. They are the paragons of all that is correct, right, proper. 

The political party they prefer cannot do any wrong. Their excessive adulation of a leader grants him/her and, of course, them a halo, while the leader they love to hate is Satan incarnate, and his/her followers, unlike them, have to be biased "andh bhakta"! 

All they do, think, are is by definition THE truth. So the political leader they hate is the worst demon on this earth. Unthinkingly opinionated, they do not even seem to grant the wheels within wheels within wheels involved internationally when it comes to politicking in a post-LPG, neo-colonial world.

When it comes to governance, they do not seem to realise that a leader is the face behind whom are tremendous scholars, brilliant strategists, superb think tanks who do a lot of analysis, genuine thinking, real time, life like practice, and testing paradigms through actual ''re-search'' which goes far far far beyond forwarding wapp, insta or fb messages without even reading them. So the same message, same image, same video would be repeatedly forwarded on the same group with the same spiteful hatred! They do not even notice it as they never seem to read neither before nor after!

Their world is unbelievably black-n-white. They, of course, are by definition the white. So it is okay if they never "listen". Their minor most successes are to be tom-tom-ed to the whole world, to the hilt, with band-baaja-baraat. At times, the whole day, someone's intimate problems would get discussed threadbare, without nary a thought about or the opinion of the third party or the others involved who has no voice due to absence.

Such is their binary vision that they would eternally gas on and on and on about tolerance, democracy, space, but would never grant it to others. You have to be either with them or against them. No different, alternative vision is possible in such a bullying world. The moment a word is uttered against their firmly and blithely held beliefs, huge hectoring from all sides would bombard.

Every argument is a menacing  battle in which they alone must win. Every ignorant, prejudiced opinion they believe in has to be THE truth. How to deal with such goony, loony behaviour? 

Laughter for one thing is the best medicine.  Ignoring them, their lies, their attacks completely, without getting hassled is the other. Of course, being bossy, it would not occur to them that you are no longer in the loop. That matters not because you are left in peace wherein their piecemeal approach cannot pressurise!

Pratima@The best compliment to such people is: eh, you brighten the room when and because you leave it!