Blessings on behalf of the dumb creatures

A pair of pigeons appeared to be fighting in our courtyard. Two of my students who were present there tried to separate them but in vain. It appeared as if one had caught hold of the other's paw with its beaks and was not letting it go.

I too joined the boys in ending the fight. But the pair managed to go away a little bit with their combined effort. The boys realised that they were not fighting. Rather they were badly entangled by the string with which kites are flown. The plight of the birds was pitiable.

We implored one another to catch the birds and cut the strings. All of us shied from doing so. Had there been a boy from the village side, he wouldn't have thought twice before carrying out the relief operation. At last one of the students mustered courage and caught them. The other cut the string. My contribution was little. I had given them the scissors and also made a video.
I blessed the boys on behalf of the birds and said, "May God cut your fetters too in the difficult situations just as you have cut the entanglements of the poor birds!."

Char Sahibzade - a movie review

Char Sahibzade is an animated movie that describes the lives and struggles of the four princes of Guru Gobind Singh. The story is wonderfully directed. It has successfully touched the chords of the masses irrespective the castes and religions. Most of the audience have wet eyes in the hall. The story reaches its climax when the small boys are choked to death with the last brick while they were being laid in a wall along with the bricks. A strange way to punish anyone!

Any movie made on Sikhism has to go through the risks of running into controversies due to the hardliners in the religion. Harry Baweja, the director of the movie, has handled this extremely delicate and sensitive story in an equally delicate and sensitive way. Every person is sent to the Earth for a purpose. It seems that Harry Baweja has successfully accomplished his lifetime purpose by directing this movie. Kudos to him. May he do more such wonderful things in the future!

How I learnt a tough lesson in cooking

After getting up early in the morning at 4 am, I got a craving for cooking a curry-less vegetable (sookhi sabji). After the bath, I cut a lot of carrots and potatoes. I put some water in the cooker and kept it on the flame. Simultaneously I kept on adding the cut vegetable. Half way through I put salt, green chillies and turmeric. Then I added some more water and continued with the cutting and adding part. Lastly I cut a few tomatoes and added a little ginger. Then I closed the cooker. Little did I realise that something can go wrong when the fluid in the cooker is less. As soon as I got some burning odour I put the flame off. I remembered when my mother used to be extra careful about this. It is called 'Sabji da thalle lag jana'. It means the bottom layer of the vegetable has turned into carbon and has got struck with the cooker. At the same time I realised that I had not put any oil in the dish. So I chopped some onions, fried them in oil. I put a little more turmeric also as I thought it was less when it was added earlier. I opened the cooker and added the fried stuff into the vegetable. Before the better half woke up kitchen was made tidy as if nothing much had happened.

The vegetable was, no doubt, very tasty. But the tough part remained to be done. After the lady of the house went to her school and I was free from my coaching work, I emptied the cooker and put the "Sabji" in a serving utensil. The lower part of the cooker was all black with carbon. I cleaned and cleaned but it refused to go. Then I sat in the courtyard and carried on wrestling with the cooker in the soothing sunshine of the winter season. Still it did not show much improvement. Then again I remembered why my mother was always careful that the vegetable should never get burnt at the bottom. Then I came back in the kitchen and took a wired mesh. I sat on a Patadi (a tiny wooden seat) held the cooker between my feet and went on rubbing its bottom with my hand. I cleaned it for about half a dozen times. Atlast it became somewhat as before although not fully.

I became thoroughly exhausted. I placed the cooker back on the shelf to exhibit as though nothing much had happened.The lesson that  I have learnt is that one must go about making a 'Sookhi Sabji' (dry vegetable) in such a way that the bottom layer should never get burnt. There should always be sufficient water in the cooker when it is closed for whistling.

Queue at the ration shops

It is reported in literature by some European observers that famines in the past have been forcing people to become cannibals. The horror stories include instances where mothers devoured their own children. About a century and a half ago famines were common in India. However it is believed that even the extreme conditions of hunger could not force Indians to droop beyond a certain level. Nevertheless some mothers would become willing to give away their children to slavery. But mostly the respectable class preferred death over humiliation.  The whole family would take an overdose of opium or poison of some sort and die in one another's arms. They would do this in closed doors so as not to expose their misery to the world.

The last famine reported in India was in 1971. It was not a very severe one though. At that time the food was distributed through the ration shops. Every house hold was alloted a fixed amount of grains, sugar and the kerosene oil.

I have the experience of  standing in a queue at the ration shops. I remember standing in queue at ration depots of the armed forces as well as those regulated by the civilian authorities. I would confess that it was among the most chilling and loathesome experiences I have ever had.

Contrast in the Eastern and Western mindset

General Sleeman served in India during the British Raj around 1850 AD. He was a man of scientific approach and rational outlook. In sharp contrast he met several Indians with exactly opposite mental disposition. He acknowledged in his writings that some times the local population loved to be looked upon as clownish and irrational. It helped them pose as beggars mentally as well as materially whereby they had less fear of being plundered by anybody including their governments. The following Chapter from his book shows a sharp contrast between rational and irrational mindsets.

The Men-Tigers.

Rām Chand Rāo, commonly called the Sarīmant, chief of Deorī here overtook me. He came out from Sāgar to visit me at Dhamonī and, not reaching that place in time, came on after me. He held Deorī under the Peshwā, as the Sāgar chief held Sāgar, for the payment of the public establishments kept up by the local administration. It yielded him about ten thousand a year, and, when we took possession of the country, he got an estate in the Sāgar district, in rent-free tenure, estimated at fifteen hundred a year. This is equal to about six thousand pounds a year in England. The tastes of native gentlemen lead them always to expend the greater part of their incomes in the wages of trains of followers of all descriptions, and in horses, elephants, &c.; and labour and the subsistence of labour are about four times cheaper in India than in England. By the breaking up of public establishments, and consequent diminution of the local demand for agricultural produce, the value of land throughout all Central India, after the termination of the Mahrātha War in 1817, fell by degrees thirty per cent.; and, among the rest, that of my poor friend the Sarīmant. While I had the civil charge of the Sāgar district in 1831 I represented this case of hardship; and Government, in the spirit of liberality which has generally characterized their measures in this part of India, made up to him the difference between what he actually received and what they had intended to give him; and he has ever since felt grateful to me. He is a very small man, not more than five feet high, but he has the handsomest face I have almost ever seen, and his manners are those of the most perfect native gentleman. He came to call upon me after breakfast, and the conversation turned upon the number of people that had of late been killed by tigers between Sāgar and Deorī, his ancient capital, which lies about midway between Sāgar and the Nerbudda river.

One of his followers, who stood beside his chair, said that 'when a tiger had killed one man he was safe, for the spirit of the man rode upon his head, and guided him from all danger. The spirit knew very well that the tiger would be watched for many days at the place where he had committed the homicide, and always guided him off to some other more secure place, when he killed other men without any risk to himself. He did not exactly know why the spirit of the man should thus befriend the beast that had killed him; but', added he, 'there is a mischief inherent in spirits; and the better the man the more mischievous is his ghost, if means are not taken to put him to rest.' This is the popular and general belief throughout India; and it is supposed that the only sure mode of destroying a tiger who has killed many people is to begin by making offerings to the spirits of his victims, and thereby depriving him of their valuable services. The belief that men are turned into tigers by eating of a root is no less general throughout India.

The Sarīmant, on being asked by me what he thought of the matter, observed 'there was no doubt much truth in what the man said: but he was himself of opinion that the tigers which now infest the wood from Sāgar to Deorī were of a different kind—in fact, that they were neither more nor less than men turned into tigers—a thing which took place in the woods of Central India much more often than people were aware of. The only visible difference between the two', added the Sarīmant, 'is that the metamorphosed tiger has no tail, while the bora, or ordinary tiger, has a very long one. In the jungle about Deorī', continued he, 'there is a root, which, if a man eat of, he is converted into a tiger on the spot; and if, in this state, he can eat of another, he becomes a man again—a melancholy instance of the former of which', said he, 'occurred, I am told, in my own father's family when I was an infant. His washerman, Raghu, was, like all washermen, a great drunkard; and, being seized with a violent desire to ascertain what a man felt in the state of a tiger, he went one day to the jungle and brought home two of these roots, and desired his wife to stand by with one of them, and the instant she saw him assume the tiger shape, to thrust it into his mouth. She consented, the washerman ate his root, and became instantly a tiger; but his wife was so terrified at the sight of her husband in this shape that she ran off with the antidote in her hand. Poor old Raghu took to the woods, and there ate a good many of his old friends from neighbouring villages; but he was at last shot, and recognized from the circumstance of his having no tail. You may be quite sure,' concluded Sarīmant, 'when you hear of a tiger without a tail, that it is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root, and of all the tigers he will be found the most mischievous.'

How my friend had satisfied himself of the truth of this story I know not, but he religiously believes it, and so do all his attendants and mine; and, out of a population of thirty thousand people in the town of Sāgar, not one would doubt the story of the washerman if he heard it.

I was one day talking with my friend the Rājā of Maihar on the road between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore, on the subject of the number of men who had been lately killed by tigers at the Katrā Pass on that road and the best means of removing the danger. 'Nothing', said the Rājā, 'could be more easy or more cheap than the destruction of these tigers, if they were of the ordinary sort; but the tigers that kill men by wholesale, as these do, are, you may be sure, men themselves converted into tigers by the force of their science, and such animals are of all the most unmanageable.'

'And how is it. Rājā Sāhib, that these men convert themselves into tigers?'

'Nothing', said he, 'is more easy than this to persons who have once acquired the science; but how they learn it, or what it is, we unlettered men know not.'

'There was once a high priest of a large temple, in this very valley of Maihar, who was in the habit of getting himself converted into a tiger by the force of this science, which he had thoroughly acquired. He had a necklace, which one of his disciples used to throw over his neck the moment the tiger's form became fully developed. He had, however, long given up the practice, and all his old disciples had gone off on their pilgrimages to distant shrines, when he was one day seized with a violent desire to take his old form of the tiger. He expressed the wish to one of his new disciples, and demanded whether he thought he might rely on his courage to stand by and put on the necklace. 'Assuredly you may', said the disciple; 'such is my faith in you, and in the God we serve, that I fear nothing.' The high priest upon this put the necklace into his hand with the requisite instructions, and forthwith began to change his form. The disciple stood trembling in every limb, till he heard him give a roar that shook the whole edifice, when he fell flat upon his face, and dropped the necklace on the floor. The tiger bounded over him, and out of the door, and infested all the roads leading to the temple for many years afterwards.'

'Do you think, Rājā Sahib, that the old high priest is one of the tigers at the Katrā Pass?''No, I do not; but I think they may be all men who have become imbued with a little too much of the high priest's science—when men once acquire this science they can't help exercising it, though it be to their own ruin, and that of others.'
'I propose', said he, 'to have the spirits that guide them propitiated by proper prayers and offerings; for the spirit of every man or woman who has been killed by a tiger rides upon his head, or runs before him, and tells him where to go to get prey, and to avoid danger. Get some of the Gonds, or wild people from the jungles, who are well skilled in these matters—give them ten or twenty rupees, and bid them go and raise a small shrine, and there sacrifice to these spirits. The Gonds will tell them that they shall on this shrine have regular worship, and good sacrifices of fowls, goats, and pigs, every year at least, if they will but relinquish their offices with the tigers and be quiet. If this is done, I pledge myself', said the Raja, 'that the tigers will soon get killed themselves, or cease from killing men. If they do not, you may be quite sure that they are not ordinary tigers, but men turned into tigers, or that the Gonds have appropriated all you gave them to their own use, instead of applying it to conciliate the spirits of the unfortunate people.'

Two states - a movie review

Chetan Bhagat wrote a few novels where he highlighted the life of top institutes of India like IIT Delhi and IIM Ahemdabad. Since millions missed these institutes as a student, they read them to satisfy their curiosity. These novels became best sellers. But the magic spell did not stop there itself. Even the movies based on these novels did a handsome business. A movie is usually a very short version of the novel. Nevertheless this movie is quite close to the script although several episodes have been omitted.

Cross cultural marriage is indeed a challenge in India. Things look silly as long as they happen to others. Most of us may turn out to be as narrow minded as the parents shown in the movie. Lastly the movie has quite rightly depicted that sex before marriage has become common in the  colleges. Particularly if they are of elite category.