I was wished Happy Dussehra by many of my Indian friends today.

It is a Hindu festival .

The word is a combine of Das as in Ten and Hara as in Defeat

It signifies the defeat of Good vs Evil and of battles that were fought for nine days till on the tenth, evil succumbed .

Dussehra is also called Vijayadashami in certain parts of India

And here is where it gets interesting and what got me thinking.

In most parts of North India the mythology tells of the epic battle between Rama,the eponymous Good King and avatar of Vishnu the God of protection, and Ravana, a powerful being who was the King of Lanka, the land of the Rakshasha’s.

It purportedly was a prosperous and happy Kingdom. But Ravana fell in love. With the wife of Rama, the virtuous and seemingly hapless Sita. And unable to contain himself he ended up abducting her and whisked her off to Lanka.

Clearly this has  overtones of Helen of Troy and Paris. Except Helen was a bit of a willing and somewhat ( from all accounts ) a vacuous participant. So Agamemnon and his army marched more to retrieve property and redress grievances rather than (as in the case of Rama )rescue the maiden and reclaim lost love.

In this mythology ( now of course made real by time ) Ravana is a demon , and Rakshasas are portrayed as such, dark and fanged and brooding with menace. Oddly, in the mythologies Ravana is a learned,cultured man and a staunch devotee of Shiva ,the God of destruction and therefore redemption. He is also a bit of a rock musician of his times, a virtuoso of the Rudra Veena which according to contemporary experts is both very difficult to play and is also the ordained instrument of Saraswathi the Goddess of Wisdom and Learning. So he is not a boor. It is of course conceivable and I suppose reasonable to assume that while he played the musical instrument favoured by the Goddess of Wisdom , he may have been lacking in that quality. Which of course is evidence that Knowledge is not Wisdom. 

So the unwise abduction led to war when Ravana refused to release Sita. Something to do with ego and wistful hope that in time the lovely Sita would yIeld to his affection. Incidentally she was still not besmirched by Ravana , thereby speaking of his love rather than his lust.

The war between the  King of Ayodhya situated somewhere in the north of India and the King of Lanka, purportedly the island just south of the Indian peninsula, ensued. And on the 10th day, the day of Dussehra, Rama defeated Ravana and Good triumphed over Evil. And therefore it is rightfully commemorated and celebrated this day.

It is of course another matter that maybe apart from violating the 9th commandment of not coveting his neighbour’s wife ( which incidentally follows the commandment of not coveting the neighbours house, signifying maybe that wife and property were reasonably synonymous, but in order of priority property had higher value) Ravana had not committed other offence. In fact since the Ramayana,the epic poem of Rama, probably predates the commandments by a millennium or so, Ravana was not aware of this proscription and maybe be forgiven for ignorance of Judaic Law!

Was Ravana evil? Or was he misguided by the great betrayer of Reason, Love?

Should he have been portrayed by later poets as Demon? Or was this a territorial battle between the Northerners and Southerners, Aryans and Dravidians?

Some venture this: in versions of the Ramayana that originated in the South, Ravana is portrayed as a just King just mistaken in his own fault . And his fall being more about Hubris than Evil incarnate.

Either way Good vs Evil is valuable then as now to headline an event whether it is in religion, politics or the WWE.

Now to what really got me thinking.

In the East, and in the South of India the festival season of Navaratri culminates with Vijayadashami. The word means the same as Dussehra ( Vijaya= Victory and Dashimi = tenth day, forgetting the semiotic difference between Defeat versus Victory).

But Navaratri refers to the Nine Nights of the Goddess . Her nine names representing  the nine forms of The Eternal Feminine,also known as Shakti, are celebrated, worshipped and contemplated during these nine nights( do notice that it is nine nights not nine days)

Anyway on Vijayadashami, the Goddess Durga  she of beautiful and serene countenance astride a snarling  lion slays the demon Mahishasura . ( As an aside, he thought he was invincible as he had a secured a divine boon which said he could not be killed by a man. Foolish male, I can hear you say!)

So on this day Good triumphs over Evil.

So here is the question: why do we have two different and widely believed legends  to explain the eternal war? 

One is clearly Masculine where a “man” defeats a foe in order to rescue his kidnapped wife. Thereby it is said as an addendum, he restores order . There is a personal crusade at work here.

And the other is Feminine where a “woman” defeats a foe only in order to restore balance and order. There is no other motive here except the all-embracing protective power of the Mother.

I began to wonder whether these mythologies actually reflect another war that is fought every day.: Whether history is to be written about men or about women. Whether our heroes should be heroines. Whether the way we examine the world should be more about what we do for others rather than why we do for our own personal reasons.

Apologists for one point of view or the other may say that these stories are after all

allegories, metaphors or just stories. 

I tend to think there is a  war: men vs women. A war  which has been fought for millennia . But only now are the warriors who ride snarling lions beginning to emerge from the mists of patriarchal history: the Yousuf Malala’s, Greta Thurnberg’s ,Michelle Obama’s, Jacinda Ardern’s, Jane Goodall’s, Vandana Shiva’s, Louise Gluck’s, Amal Clooney’s, Laila Tyabji’s, Jennifer Doudna’s, Emmanuelle Charpentier’s , Christiane Amanpour’s and Esther Duflo’s of the contemporary world. On every inhabited continent we are beginning to see women educationists, economists, medical scientists , fundamental researchers ,humanitarians, anthropologists,legislators, jurists, sustainability practitioners, farmers, journalists,who are shifting borders.

They are our mothers, sisters, daughters  and spouses.

So it got me thinking as I said: Vijayadashami greetings and blessings to all my friends of all persuasions.

I haven’t seen you around for a while, he said.

That’s true,came the reply. Were you busy or did you just forget about me?

I think a bit of both, maybe not being sure how I stood with you?

Why? You know that you could never be out of favour with me? 

Why are we talking like we are at a Victorian  gathering?

I don’t know, I guess long absences tend to awkward formality?

That is definitely worthy of a Victorian epigram, he said.

We agreed. 

An imaginary conversation like this happens in my brain often. I find that living with other people in me makes for a great teleportation device and a time machine in one. I can go anywhere and be anyone. 

So the same morning  when I was ‘epigramming’ ,(this word is not found in the dictionary, but I feel rebellious: if I can be instagramming I most certainly can be epigramming!) I watched  a YouTube video of Lin  Manuel Miranda ( he of Hamilton fame) where he was talking about a book collection  of his tweets. 

And that led me to start thinking about tweets as the modern  version of aphorisms and epigrams that wits of yore would toss off casually at a soirée.

A tweet is of course more deliberate  and has an opportunity to be edited before it goes into the aether. 

The epigram would need to be reasonably spontaneous and to context. Even if you had in mind constructed it beforehand , you couldn’t just fling it into the gazpacho when you had already moved  onto entrees.

A tweet is not an exclamation point. It is more of a colon. Something to be expected after the first intake of breath.

There are of course spontaneous tweeters.

The most notable among them being the 43rd President of the United States of America , Donald Trump.

He tweets with no aforethought . ( Does such a word exist? It should.) And so the spelling , the gaffes and the blatant untruths abound in his rants. Consistent and well planned liars make the implausible real. Trump makes no sense . But that is how he is.

His tweets are  like premature ejaculations: too soon  and totally self absorbed

But in Tweets, there  is no consideration given  to wit. 

In the old days when to be a wit was an honourable ambition, the most dreaded misfortune that could befall an aspiring wit was to somehow say something so improper and non-apropos that people would shun you afterwards. 

You may have been called a Dimwit or a Nitwit.

The word Twit , presumably derived  from the epithets above, is used often . Sometimes affectionately as in a wife discussing her husband to her friend. Or a father tousling his child’s hair and saying ‘ you are a right little twit aren’t you.’ But the slangs is often  used to deride .

Do not confuse Twit with Twat. Twat is somewhat vulgar pejorative.

So most tweets are devoid of wit. At 280 characters,you could easily spell out 30 to 40 words in one tweet. (Simple words, not sesquipedalian ones which may exhaust the limit quickly.) And that was more than adequate for wittiness. 

And you do not,unlike  DT,want to continue on to another tweet to complete your thought. That would be circumlocutory. 

As we know brevity is the soul of wit.

Old Bill Shakespeare said that. (Of course the irrepressible Ms Dorothy Parker paraphrased that best when she said Brevity is the soul of lingerie!)

Implying that brevity is a measure of intelligence. 

And DT doesn’t possess that particular quality.

So while we can debate whether Twitter came  from the word ‘Twit’, the creatures of Twitter would protest that it was to do with avian language hence their blue ‘tweetybird’ symbol.

So birdbrains and DT wander around tweeting . And there is nary an epigram in sight.

I am sitting on a broken chair in the corridor of one of the many grand red stone and brick buildings of the Madras High Court. 

Part of the great legacy of the British who made Madras, now Chennai, their first port of call’ while building edifices to an empire whose sunset heralded, to many nostalgic apologists, the beginning of twilight in this huge patchwork of a country called India, this too a legacy name bestowed by the firangis who came and went.

What is of course fascinating is not this quick refresher course in Anglo Indian history, but the chair.

I have to sit waiting for my case to be called while black and white suited advocates (pleaders as they were once called) huddle and murmur about the goings on here.

This is maybe what the old courts of kings were like, murmurs of palace intrigue, murder, incest and betrayal. Any way it is all very quaint. 

Opposite me sits an ancient lady somewhat shrunk by the years.  A lady she must have been and remains: perfectly turned out in an brown and gold sari, her white hair pulled back into a short pigtail bun, and her diamond nose ring lustrous with age and dignity. Her eyes with just the lovely hint of kohl are bright. She is sitting on a bench waiting for her lawyer to call her when their case comes up for hearing. I of course wonder what she has come to resolve at this stage in her life. I imagine stories of errant and greedy sons, of machinations to evict her from her stately home and such stuff that would make for a Victorian gothic novel. The truth may be more banal than my imagination allows, but, hey, not much more is happening here at the moment, so I indulge.

She sits, as I said, on a bench.

I sit on a chair.

Which is actually what this mental doodle is about.

The chair is made of a dark wood. Or maybe the wood is not dark, but a softer brown. It could be that it follows the example of  the colour of skin of the people in this delightful state: they are burnished to a shine by the southern sun.

Either way it is not new. It could even be as old as the Dame in front of me. 

It was made for a different era for sure and by craftsmen who probably ran their well-worked hands over the sanded surface in gestures of deep affection.

It sits on four solid legs, which don’t shift and cant even when I shake it.

The interesting thing about this chair is that has no left arm. Amputated by some accident and not because of bad workmanship I surmise. One little stump rises vertically at the left edge of the seat, where in its younger prouder days it would have met the left arm.

When something like this breaks you should be mindful of splinter. And rough wood, even a rusty nail. 

But not this stump: It is time worn and smooth and rounded at the edges. I marvel at how comfortable it feels.  And I can rest my palm there, much like a barbarian king resting his hand on the lion’s head on his throne as he leans forward to pronounce judgment. Quite dramatic, this little throne of mine.

And then I think that in this land, we don’t maintain, neither do we discard. We hope that time will be kind to the objects that forefathers have built. And if not we are equally dispossessed of affection for the trinkets of what should be our collective history. It could well be this is symptomatic of a culture that by and large burns its dead, and which does not preserve names and history in carved gravestones like the white man does.

I look at the old lady again. And the patina of years of her face and the grains of wood on this chair resonate with sympathy for each other.

Mao Tse-Tung or more properly Mao Zedong, aka Chairman Mao has a relationship with me.
We both have our patronym put down as our first name.
In the West, he should have been Zedong Mao. (For years I used to feel very comradely to him because I thought I was ‘addressing’ him by his first name, Mao.)

In the South of India, where I was born, the custom in many communities is to have your father’s name first followed by your given name. This complicates things a bit in the modern world as now your surname is your ‘christian’ name and you are also called that by your friends, unless you have a nickname as well. 
I am called Shanta by my friends. This is short for Shantakumar which is my given name. My father’s name is Venkataraman, so in this tradition, it goes first. So I am Venkataraman Shantakumar. Since this is a mouthful in itself, I just write V. Shantakumar. 
All clear so far?
But when I go to websites or I have to fill in forms that ask me to write my first name (followed by my last name,) I get confused. Should I put Shanta, Shantakumar, Venkataraman, or just V?
If I filled in  Shanta, and say I had joined the army, name tags or references afterwards would be Shanta Shantakumar. Which at roll call would make me sound  not just silly, but really insecure as if to say that I need repetition to assure myself and all there that I am present and accounted for.
If I said Shantakumar that would be even worse, a little like Major Major in Catch 22. 
Venkataraman is my father’s name . And while I am proud to be his son, God rest his soul, I am not sure I want to be him every time some addresses me.
That leaves V. And I am often referred to as V  by anonymous people/ oompah-loompahs that I presume reside in websites like Amazon and Google who say Dear V and proceed to sell me something or the other.

I like V. Only because I saw a movie called V  where the hero was this masked anarchist, sort of a cross between Guy Fawkes and Zorro who wanted to start some  sort of revolution which ends up as a flash mob in front of the Houses of Westminster, and that too without benefit of Twitter or Facebook. I was impressed. 
I fancy myself as a bit of an anarchist, and ever since I saw and even produced/ acted in an amateur production of Dario Fo’s play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, I think these people should be commended for helping some chaos. After all isn’t that what the primordial  soup-gloop was all about that created  us?
But I digress!

However it is all somewhat unsatisfactory.
The real problem lies in the turbulent waters where the complacent rivers of tradition meet the flash floods of modernity.
In the olde days, and here I refer to say half a century ago, the way my name would have been written would be something like this:
Mannargudi Venkataraman Shantakumar Subramaniam Aiyar.
That mouthful  is perfect to establish place of origin : Mannargudi, (ancestral village), Fathers name ( we have been there), Shantakumar , Subramaniam (my paternal grandfather’s name which i  will elucidate shortly) and Aiyar(last but not least the defining caste name).
And scientifically it is probably as clear as any detailed speciation nomenclature  that Mendel could have done. We would know immediately without recourse to PIN’s, fingerprinting or retinal scans that I was I and no one else. After all you had at least 4 unique variables and in my ace a fifth one thrown in for good measure. In combination the odds against another MVSSA being found,at least in the same latitude, would be as much as me winning the Spanish Gordo!
At this point a note on Shantakumar versus Subramaniam is warranted. Shantakumar as I said was the name I was given when I was born. However, this was more like radical hippie parents giving their child a name like Rainbow or Sky or Hiawatha. It was good but not kosher. So when I reached the time when in  Indian Hindu Brahmin custom  a ceremony is performed that is roughly equivalent to a  Bar Mitzvah , an ordaining into the faith if you will which is called an “Upanaynam”, I was given the name which should have been given earlier to me if my father wasn’t metaphorically wearing long hair and tie-dyed jeans. This name is specifically chosen in order to quickly establish one’s genealogy  and is also a God’s name. (Do try to remember that there are quintillion Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu Pantheon with wonderfully evocative names each symbolizing their one great power and/or virtue.)  Subramaniam, also son of Shiva, is my paternal Grandfather’s name. That name in his case if he was the first born son in the family would have been his paternal grandfathers name and so on . You get the drift? The second son gets  the maternal grandfathers name.The third son I have no clue about but I am sure it was equally logical. The daughter followed a similar principle with the grandmothers coming into play.
So Place of Origin,Father, Grandfather and Caste. This system should if it had been followed accurately take one back a few generations for sure.
But here I was a child of the twentieth century, and in trying to be a progressive family and member of an developing eclectic society, the caste name was the first casualty. The place name in an era of ever increasing mobility went next. And then the whole ‘whispered-in-your-ear this is your talismanic name’ etc was found redundant.
So  my school had me registered as Venkataraman Shantakumar, which became V Shantakumar. My parents called me Kumar, and in school friends starred calling me Shanto, a Bengali pronunciation of the first half of my name, as there were too many Kumar’s about and finally today , putting on my deepest voice, I say, “Call me Shanta!”

I think of ,myself as Shanta these days. I probably thought of myself as Kumar when I was a boy of 10 or so.  And occasionally in an outburst of formality I say Shantakumar. But here I am inspire of all this hopeless confusion.

So what’s in a name, then?  I presumably smell as good as I ever will, no matter what I am called.

Here is the rub: numerologists!

These are the  people who now populate the dimension between Asrtology/Palmistry and Tarot/Rune reading.
I have nothing against any of them. I find the idea of the conflict between random chance and manifest destiny very interesting. I vacillate between resignation to unknown fate and  certainty of the power of my intention. I am also keenly aware that circumstance does not or at least it should not be master of my attitude.

But I confess to bemusement at the numerologists. No numerologist has yet won a lottery, say the Gordo referred to earlier, even though it’s all about the numbers.

They will of course tell you and me that it’s not about the numbers alone, it’s to do with the individual’s specific make up,” raasi’s “, their karmic DNA if you will.  And that’s how they know that no 5 is your lucky no and that 3 means your number is up or something like that. 
But they go further.
They will tell you that the reason you have been benighted by fate is because your name is spelt wrong. There is an A where there should have been an AE. Or one K , uh-huh, won’t cut it. Two is called for. So for example i should now spell my name as Kkumar. Try saying that with a stutter.

So the other day when I met this old friend of mine, I was surprised that he now spelt his name as Viveck and not Vivek.  He stills pronounces the name as Vi ( as in Victoria) and Vek as in wake with a v.  If you didn’t know you might now reading off his name card, call him Viv- eck, as in the sound heck, making him sound vaguely Slavic.

And another close friend of mine changed the spelling of her name too. Amba , pronounced Am as in approximately Um and Ba said baa, became Ambba. One would not know how to say this, except pause and stress the first syllable  and be somewhat reluctant to get to the second.

Now the reasons for these are obviously cosmic, beyond the ken  of us less attuned people who cannot sense that the universe is not particularly pleased with the way one’s name is spelt and this non-synchronization to invisible frequencies by one’s written but not oral name is keeping one from achieving fame,fortune and  the true meaning of life.

And here is the real kicker. This is the English transliteration of an Indian name, originally conceived in the sound  and alphabet of Sanskrit or Urdu or Tamil or any of the fabulous tongues of this vast country.
The numerologist uses numerical values based on old pre-English texts and then based on a still- unexplained transposition , converts them to English. Incidentally in Hindi, Viveck would still be written Vivek and Ambba as Amba. 
we seem to be in the realm where the bandersnatch and the jabberwocky frolic .
But who am I to argue? I mean if you want to, on your own or on the advice of a paid numerologist change the spelling of your name or even the whole name say from Joseph to Yousef, you are welcome.

I mean,think!  Would  anyone have taken Alois Schicklgruber seriously? 
For that matter 70 years on would anyone name their child Adolf or claim to be descended from the illustrious family of Hitler?

It may give us some psychical comfort to have a name or a name spelt in a way that increased our chances of success or happiness in a cruel,unfeeling,random world.

So I shouldn’t be contrarian about all this.
Let the double B’s and extra C’s fall where they will, as they do very often in lingerie shops!

But when they start telling us what car to buy based on what the initial letter of our first name is, that’s when I draw the line and demand explanation as did the Roman envoy to Antiochus Epiphanes.

And this advice is not published in the free wheeling  internet, which as we know has opinions on everything including the Idea that the world is flat.
This numerological treatise is published in the largest selling English daily in India as a full article, not as part of one’s daily horoscope which you could choose or reject with the same gravity as a tea biscuit.. The forum lends gravitas.

If you have a name beginning with K or C you should not have a Car with a brand name that begins withH: Honda and Hyundai are warned. Now close friends of mine are Keith and Christine, married to  each other. And his favorite machine is a Honda!  (And to be truthful, the car has had two small accidents since they bought it. And I can reveal that when he saw this article, Keith  shivered in doubt albeit just for a moment.) The article then with all seriousness of purpose continues with other letters of the alphabet , matching initials to cars, much like a key swapping suburban orgy. For example,if S then no M, or something like that, which would have made the Marquis de Sade a little disappointed. And so on in that vein.

On the other hand this may be a good thing after all. 

I am now going to propose that  given the numerological properties of the country and its Raasi, the next Prime Minister of India  must have a name  that begins with Z. This is the only name that will bring prosperity to the nation and restore honesty to politics.
Because at letter no 26,it is the very last chance we will ever have. And also the letter doesn’t exist in any form in any of the major Indian languages as well, so it’s perfectly suited to be spelt any which way you want.

Written 2012

40 days would have been fine, I said to myself.

After all quarantine came from the idea of keeping ships at bay for 40 days in case the sailors were infected with the plague. 

From the Venetian word Quarantena , says my trusted dictionary. Of course, i asked myself why 40 days, not 60 0r less ?

Of course, like all things at that time it was a  period chosen from the Bible: And the Lord made it rain for 40days and 40 nights, before i presume Noah and his motley crew found deliverance.  . It may also be linked to Jesus wandering in the desert. “At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights and afterwards was hungry. “ It could be also inspired by Moses fasting for 40  days. And of course Lent is for 40 days too. 

Why 40? Haven’t a clue.  

I had been in quarantine before : once for measles and then for jaundice, the latter based on my Grandmother’s  mistaken notion  that jaundice was highly infectious

Those did not last 40 days .

So this was new to me.

Stay in, don’t meet, can’t meet anyone and stay away from all ships carrying the plague.. so to speak.

Then 40 days came and went and it’s still going. 

I realised that this was not a quarantine . This was a lock down. I was now in prison. I am socially imprisoned.

We are beginning to complain about the lockdown. As soon as it is lifted the young , kept caged , come charging out. The infections spike. Lockdown again. Trumpians feel that is an infringement of their rights. Others like me whine and groan from time to time, before we sigh and return shoulders bowed to our corners. Articles are written about depression. About the effects this has on old people who are afflicted by dementia. The psychological effects on behaviours, such as online shopping, online working, online food ordering, are debated and dissected.

I tried to boil this down, a decoction that  could make for a strong cup of thinking.

What has happened:

Choice has been taken away

Those who basked in public adulation and derived their sense of value form that have had to contend with only social media surrogacy. And that’s not enough.

We are , some of us at least redefining what is important or not

And we are beginning to realise  the difference between want and need.

These are four layers of filtration. 

But the first layer… aah the first layer is fundamental. And does not depend on our social situation, our mental acuity or philosophical ability..

Choice… that wonderful word, a term oft used as a synonym for free will.

A smaller than small organism with the motiveless malignancy of Iago has taken away choice.

Choice of going outside from our inside spaces. Choice of where shall we eat today. The choice of theatres and live music bands and museums and carnivals and cruises and holidays in destinations chosen for the express purpose of saying ‘I went there, so there!’ The choice of people you would like to meet and share a drink or a snog with. The choice of going to work or staying at home with an imaginary cold. The choice of transportation : ooh I feel sociable and I will take the metro. The choice of going to toilets in public spaces . The choice of running with the bulls in Pamplona: as strange as that almost suicidal choice might be. The choice of going to school or university and on a whim running the old undies up the flagpole. 

And the list imagined or real goes on. In fact you start thinking of things you have never done, and that you would never do  in a normal world do and you miss them!!

Another word for choice is Option. Choose Vanilla or Chocolate. Pick the blue shirt or the pink one. Make a choice between. One and another. There doesn’t seem to be  an “another”.

Lastly choice is also expressed as “I would rather”: I would rather go out or stay in, I would rather have a girl baby than a boy baby. I would rather marry that person rather than this one. I would rather  live in a village than a city . I would rather be in the mountains than live by the sea.

“I would rather” does hint at the degree of difficulty in getting what you choose; but it’s important to have if you have the strength or the courage to overcome obstacles and do what you would rather do!

So we are all locked down, locked in, locked up . 

And it got me thinking about how for centuries we have done that to women all over the world.

We have locked them up and locked them in: in the name of religions and social customs created by fearful men, who were afraid of themselves ,terrified of  the weaknesses within, and scared of the strength of mothers and sisters and daughters. 

Look around.

A woman in the north of india. She is a Hindu woman, in case you though this was restricted to  puritanical Islam. She can’t go out of her immediate neighbourhood, which may be 4 houses surrounding a  clearing and a village well. She has to tell ‘him’, never calling him by his first name, though he can call her anything he wants, what she needs as provisions for the week or months, and he writing the last down, for she cannot maybe read and write, will journey to the nearest shop in a market village,  and get it for her. But she can never ask him for feminine essentials, for how can she tell ‘him’ something like that? So she makes do with pices of cloth when she gets her periods. And contacting an urinary treat infection, she suffers. She may die. *

Look around. 

A man hacks his pregnant wife to death in a village in India**. Because she is pregnant with their sixth child. and he has learnt that this too may be another daughter. Never mind that he never used protection for that would interfere with his pleasure. Never mind that he has no way to support two children let alone 5. 

Look around.

A girl , brilliant at her studies in a small town, is removed  from school by her grandfather who belongs to the patriarchal village authority, The Panchayat. Because she has had her first bleeding. She is now property, she needs to be preserved for her marriage which he and his spineless son will arrange. Now she and her dreams of being a poet, an artist, a mathematician, a scientist, a doctor are silenced. She is now reserved for breeding.

Look around.

Covered in black from top to bottom, slits for her eyes, a woman walks in the busy streets on a big metropolis. She walks into a giant department store. She goes to the perfume section. She asks for a tester . She gets a whiff , though you can’t see her smell this. She shakes her head and she walks out of the store.  She wants to smell a bit of freedom, though she knows that is not hers ever in her life.

Look around. 

We are now  in Africa. A Imam is called . There he will circumcise the clitoris of a young girl .For here is not to experience pleasure. That is only for the man to take.

Look around.

Asking for permission , accompanied by a man , women are allowed to go shopping, visit a restaurant where cloaked in anonymity, they can eat, never meeting the eyes of other people. 

Look around.

Walk 4 steps behind. Never walk by his side. He points and holding your daughters hand, he holding  on to the sons’s, they enter a temple to go pray . The irony is not lost on the Goddess they have come to ask favour from.

Look around.

The young Juliet sees her Romeo for the first time, her heart begins to beat a rhythm she has never heard before. They try to meet secretly. It is innocent and pure and extols the very essence of Love. Her brother sees . And gathering his hate and his male relatives he kills her and her lover . This celebrates his family’s honour.

Look around.

A young woman’s husband dies tragically  before his time. Her head is shaved and she must wear white signifying that her value has come to an end.

Look around.

I would like to fly she says. They laugh. You can’t even drive a car here they say. 

Look around

See the girls in schools who can’t go anymore because they dont have toilets to go to.

Look around. Look around . Look around.

Now look at the girls  in cages trafficked for the  appetites of old men in faraway lands. Look at how rape across every country gets more brutal. Look how freedom means one thing to men and what it means to women.

So here I am writing this ,getting angrier by the minute.

And for the first time I realise I am not angry at the virus, about lockdowns and about quarantine .

Because I am beginning to see , see just a glimmer of what having no choice rally feels like

So now maybe I can now go out and be truly grateful  for what  I have..

.
I am fortunate to have lived in Bombay.
Yes there was a city by that name not too long ago. 
It boasted of wide streets which had not-expensive restaurants where you could sit almost sidewalk-Parisienne style drinking cold beer and eating fried fish and chips a la Anglo-India and  these louvered french windows were cast open for the world to see you and you to see them , or you could walk,not drive nor run, to Irani cafes with high ceilings and slowly revolving fans where the fabled buns with their hidden red raisins would splash a little sweetness  in your mouth when you had them with hot chai served in tiny glasses, or you could visit lending libraries where you unashamedly hired dozens of action comics which was then the possibly more intelligent substitute for television and then got yourself to a cafe which served you cold beer with a stunning view overlooking the entire bay as you munched on slightly oily peanuts while you read  of the exploits of superman ,  or  you wandered in the by lanes of Girgaum and walked by an old billiard  hall  ( note: not a pool parlor)towards a place that made limited quantities of fresh hot local sea food served on small marble topped tables for one,or you could climb worn and wide steps to the first floor of an already rickety building in a lane just behind a church next to a shop making and selling giant,large, medium and small votary candles which in turn sat besides a shop featuring bridal dresses all white and frilly with no colourful options for those who had not remained vestal, to  a dining hall  which served you the rich and possibly not very healthy but oh so tasty Parsi Sali boti, a mutton dish floating in gravy topped with ultra thin fried potato slivers, and you got to this place by walking from a road which on late nights had this ‘chain’  of hand carts owned by a Bengali man who was always immaculately dressed in white muslin kurtas,  and these hand carts served you that quintessential Bombay dish called pau baji, local small square loaves of bread called pau, because apocryphally their dough was rumored to have been kneaded by feet, and to hell with what those feet looked like, the bread tasted delicious when it was covered with salty butter and mildly toasted on this giant griddle pan which had just seen potatoes and  vegetables mashed together with onions and chillies  and tomatoes into a sort of well, mash(!), which you squeezed a little lime onto  and then ate with the bread,while you stood and between bites had a critical discussion  having just watched a late movie show in this extra large movie hall which had amazing art deco balustrades and doors and  windows, or in dusty daylight you could meander into what was the heart of the city towards the temple of the mouthless Goddess who apparently was the patron deity of this city  and enroute to the gold and silver and textile markets busier and maybe bigger than Wall street in the time of Empire, you would discover  a club, not the cigars and port and gentlemen variety  but a restaurant dedicated to the pursuit of eating and solely eating, its signature dish being Aam Ras, or pulped puree of sweet Alfonso ‘king-of-fruit’ mango served with puffed up soft topped  and crisp based fried ‘puri’s’ and where no one talked because mouth and heart and soul were too full for conversation or  you could  catch a taxi where four passengers could squeeze in companionable discomfort and hie thee there to, what seemed at that time, a distant suburb where Sikhs had economically conquered an original fishing village locality and they owned these line of roadside diners where they served you the eponymous Koliwada chicken or even more attractive for us Koliwada fish, both of these reddened by the special tandoori paste and then barbecued/ roasted/ baked/ spit cooked ( there is no exact equivalence for a tandoor), or if you were energized by drink and/or youth or if your appetence moved you to travel 30 miles or so, kilometers still fighting for recognition in that recently anointed metric era, you could find yourself in what was a truck stop village with a couple of small factories thrown in for industrial measure and there sitting on wooden benches you could ,  obviously with very hungry fingers, dig into a biriyani redolent with spices and oil, and  burping you could wend your way home Ulysses- like to where you came from or on the morning after you could wander into the side roads of little Madras, not that it was called that then or now, Madras itself having disappeared as nomenclature except for  a form of textile and  there you would be assailed by the smells of temple flowers, powdered chilis and pickles and wafting in from either side the aromas of pungent and delicious Tamilian and Udipi cooking invited and beguiled you with visions of repast.
The breathlessness of this abundance needs a pause.
You would have  more options if you were post this cornucopian extravagance still bereft for choice. What a curmudgeon thou must be!
The (then) white sand beaches in the south and in the north of the city beckoned with delicious ,no-you-would -not -have -Bombay -belly- the -next -day- snacks put together faster than light by armies of smiling people from the north of India and you stood and ate and dribbled the salty cumin seed flavored soupy water on your fingers as you crunched the pani puri or the tamarind flavored sauce on the ‘chaats’ made your taste buds hop with delight.And in season you would find yourself mingling with the faithful as they broke fast in the early evenings at the time of Ramadan or Ramzan  and in the very narrow and crowded lanes of the predominantly Muslim area that bordered the end of the British cantonment area on the one side and the other ended where the heart of Hindu-Dom began, you would, led partly by nose and partly by following the followers, come to a  street corner where lit by blue street lights the big cauldrons brewed the ultimate love potions of mutton marrow curry in which you dipped the crisp flat bread and sighed deeply with contentment and you  watched the sons and daughters of Allah give gratitude for the bounty lavished on them.
And much much more: the railway restaurant near no railway tracks but where the ‘bearers’ ( not waiters mind you) wore these time battered uniform with funny cloth red caps and brought you oily vegetable cutlets which you had with pumpkin sauce instead of tomato sauce and it was  a consummation; the open only on working days , only for lunch seemed-like-it had – been -there- from-victoria’s times family owned and run place with the live pet rooster sitting near the till where a pulao made with berries that grew only in Iran made you go back many a lunch hour; the only place you got breakfast outside a 5 star hotel  and hot keema mutter at 430 am in a cafe overlooking empty roads ; or just slightly later when the city was beginning to stir you could have hot creamy milk and sweet sweet Jalebis brought out of the frying pans , all so hot that you could scald your mouth if you were not careful. Lest one forgets there was the amazing “Baida  rotis” of Bade’ Mian and for a few cognoscenti there was Chote’ Mian too (,alongside the lovely church near the Colaba post office,) which served as the  eatery for the country liqour bar opposite. 
 And you and your palate would find treasure in oh, so many places in the city of gold and dreams.
Of course you could also, just in passing by the numerous fishing villages which nestle between high rise buildings, be brutally assaulted by the smell of frying of Bombil, otherwise called Bombay Duck.  It is not an amphibious avian, but a  lizardfish available in plenty ;  it is a delicious fish when fresh and freshly cooked, but unbelievably malodorous when sun dried and stored and then fried and eaten. 
This brings us to the Pomplet, the original name and still the  local pronunciation of the fish called the Pomfret. A white fish generally, it is also found in a black form, the Kala Pomplet, which purists claim to be tastier.The fish meat itself is fleshy but flaky, has a mild flavor and works well in curry but notably best in a batter fried form. Which is how in Bombay it was served as “pisndsips”,  a perfect way in conjoined words to signify the inextricability of fish and chips. It was also bread crumb covered and fried.It was an upmarket fish, possibly harking back to the time of the British who may have used it as a homesick substitute for cod.As  it has a convenient central bone, it is maybe easier to fillet as well. 
Either way this was the fish that you had often in various forms, in various restaurants and you were asked whether the fish you wanted fried was rawas ( Indian salmon), surmai (lady fish), bangra(mackerel) or pomplet (pomfret). This was the only fish that retained its original Portuguese name roots.
And it was available everywhere.
If ever there had been a piscine standard for Bombay, I would have voted for the Pomfret to flutter proudly on the  prows of the boats and ships of this harbour and island city.

But Bombay does not exist anymore.
It is now officially called Mumbai, and you are not by law and by procrustean bullying, allowed to refer to it as Bombay. The logic is impeccable: it was always referred to as Mumbai in the local tongue, the name apparently derived from Mumbadevi, the goddess we approached near the Aam Ras place. It was said that Bombay was a corruption of the English who couldn’t say Mumbai; others of course said it meant Good Bay as in the Portuguese Bom. All this of course existed before parochialism held sway. But you always had the option: when you spoke in English or Tamil or Gujrathi you said Bombay. To the Marathi you said Mumbai. No one seemed offended if  you switched back and forth. To the western world it was Bombay, somewhat mysterious and exotic.At that time the pomfret and the pomplet coexisted too. You heard the Pomplet and smiled inwardly at what you thought was the quaint   endearing mispronunciation, little realizing that the original was in fact Pomplet and not the other way around.in fact they still coexist as  names.
But as the city grew, mutated  almost like a creature that grows to dinosaur like proportions in a sewer and having been subjected to radioactivity emerges into the daylight misshapen , warted and carbuncled to terrorise the populace: this was a science fiction type nightmare. The only problem was that this monster that terrorized the populace was the populace itself.As in all great stories the monster itself isn’t evil, existing in a sort of malevolent indifference . The true monsters are villains who use this for their own, chortling-and-twirling-their-moustaches-while-they-do-it, evil ends.And the villains emerged: politicians who allowed the city to grow rampant, fostered division, reduced ethics, morality and even common sense to the lowest denominator of crassness and crudity, and whilst pandering to hate, fed and almost lovingly nurtured the monster.
The wide streets have all but disappeared along with Bombay. The side walk cafes have vanished, prey to unreal and manipulated real estate costs.  The Irani restaurants themselves have gone possibly with the decline in numbers of the Parsees. The lovely cafe on the hill was not allowed to renew its lease: even though in most countries it would have been preserved a s a cultural landmark. The handcarts have gone; whether to mistakenly applied laws or just less attendance in the movie halls, one will never know. The dining hall doesn’t exist.  The Sea food place near the billiard room has shut its doors.The koliwada diners are memory. One knows very few people who have visited the briyani place in the far away industrial suburb.With the burgeoening population came dirt and grime and disease. No longer would anything less than titanium lined stomachs be able to wolf down the snacks on the beaches. And  you would be chary of visiting the once fanstastic eateries in the Muslim quarter.
A few remnants persist:evolutionary survivors like the crocodile. The Pau baji itself lives on. The hot jalebis are still available and still delicious. And in season the aam ras asks you to partake, and wont take no for an answer.
And while there are great local restaurnats dedicated to fish and things that swim in the seas, and you will find Pomfret, it now is being substituted by Basa.  If you asked a traditional fisherman what this was he would not know. It’s originally from Vietnam, it’s a form of catfish, and in the UK it’s called river cobbler. It’s an import. But now apparently locally available because it’s farmed in fresh water fish farms. It is a post modern industrial fish!
But where has the Pomfret gone? Two restaurants said that good quality pomfret is hard to get these days. 
And maybe to the new wannabe Mumbaite, Basa sounds more fashionable to order?
But the truth is simpler. And much sadder .
We have overfished the pomfret. And unlike the Atlantic cod which suffered a similar fate some years ago but which under a voluntary fishing embargo was allowed to repopulate itself, the voracious appetite of Mumbai has no mercy.
Along with so much that has vanished, the city of gourmets is becoming a wasteland of gluttons.
The pomfret is gasping for breath on these arid shores.
Bombay has died.

The other day I saw an ass.

This may come as no surprise to misanthropes and ever-loving cynics who see asses everywhere they go.

Even I, of humble and mild disposition, meet them often.

They are the ones who have opinions about whether having a convivial drink, or for that matter gettting bacchanalian at a celebration, deserves a public thrashing.They are the ones that think that who you were born to is more important than who you are, and they don’t actually know the difference; these asses will kill you if you cross imaginary boundaries and talk to someone of the opposite sex who is of ‘nobler’ birth. See I told you,  they were asses!

Then there are the others who think that their God is better than your God, and if you don’t have a God, then God help you. Asinine as it may be to think that the all seeing omnipotent omniscient unbelievably creative ‘it’ up there, here and everywhere actually wants to and is pleased by playing favorites , and that too by just one of the million trillion gazillion things on this and countless other planets,these geniuses will kill you and themselves for it, dying I presume with a self satisfied smug smile on their faces as they explode into nothingness. There are of course asses of others kinds: white ones who don’t like black ones, brown ones who think white ones are the source of all their problems and possibly striped ones who can’t tell who is to blame at all. There are spectacularly intelligent asses  who believe that that the reason the planet turns is because the light shines from , well, their asses and so they blithely go about doing whatever they feel, as the earth burns in their wake.

So as I said I see asses too.

But this was different. I actually saw one on the street. A full blown four legged ass in the heart of one of the largest cities in the world in the 21st century! Of course since I am not a zoologist I couldn’t swear it was an ass. It could have been a donkey. Is there a difference? 

Anyway here was this lone ass darting across the street to avoid being run over by my car. Now asses aka donkeys as I knew them many years ago before the human varieties that I referred to earlier replaced them, are somewhat phlegmatic creatures, choosing to at best express themselves with an occasional braying sound. But this one seemed like he (maybe she?) was excited about something.

But what got me thinking was where have all the asses gone? At one stage I remember them laden with bricks meandering to a construction site. Or carrying clothes that the ‘dhobi’ was taking away to the local washing place or bringing them back starched and pressed. Or just hanging around in packs at random corners, much like teenagers apparently waiting for something, anything, to happen. And from time to time above the din, you would hear them , the loud braying that was both irritating and somewhat  reassuring. 

And they were interesting creatures that seemed to have a stoic, and yet not-boring disposition. I was told as a child never to walk behind one for they could and would kick. The saying dig your heels in seemed to be inspired by them: I have seen this washerman struggling to get one of them to move. No dice. 

over the years they slipped from sight, even from memory. Till the other day.  And I began to wonder, what had happened to them . I know this is not as romantic a notion  as musing about the swallows of Capistrano or some such.

But hey I liked these creatures : they were of service, they mostly didn’t complain and in an anthropomorphic way I thought they were cute especially after I had seen Shrek.

Maybe they disappeared or at least were disappearing because we had little use for these beasts of burden and unlike their fellow B of B’s they didn’t have other uses like milk and cheese and even the occasional steak. ( I hear that Cleo’s complexion was much enhanced by asses milk, but Shahnaz Hussein has not revived this Pharaonic tradition.)

And so with a sigh and a heave of the old chest, I went on with my evening and my life.

Till this morning. Same street corner, different day part and headed in the opposite direction: The car is stuck behind a handcart. Now handcarts are not uncommon in India, and the beast of burden in this case is a fellow human being. Unlike donkeys/ asses these beasts have not disappeared or disappearing. They seem to be a quote viable unquote species in India.

Here was the interesting twist: the handcart was for delivery of domestic cooking gas cylinders. The puller of the cart which was admittedly a modernized version of the traditional wooden one,  was a uniformed with company Bharatgas  logo and all,young man.

It was the oddest thing of all. Modern India throws out its donkeys and asses. modern India has mined from deep sea,hard-to-extract and then piped and bottled natural gas for Modern India’s kitchens. And Modern  business in India wants young men to work harder than the patient rarely complaining and possibly more efficient donkeys? 

We are a strange land. And I often feel like a stranger in it.

But it seems that we are a country full of asses after all.

Written 2011

Here I was going through the boarding gate, handing over my boarding card to the boarding inspector. I suppose that is what he must be called since boarding was what we  were doing, not like pirates and corsairs leaping from the rigging lines onto the merchant ship, for they scarcely sought permission, but here we were being polite and requesting permission to come on board.

Anyway from the corner of my eye I saw a poster mounted on a stand.This featured a pretty girl, perhaps 4 years or so, of that age when tooth fairies make frequent appearances. She held in one of her little hands a palette . She looked quite professional  and adept, and she well may have come from a long line of painters.  In the other hand, she held a brush which looked poised to turn the air vermillion or cerulean or magenta or one of those colors that only painters and women can identify.

The purpose of this very posed and poised picture was to tell us, the boardingers or boarders  that this was the entrance to gate 5 and 5 A. I was  impressed.

But what I found particularly interesting apart from this vital piece of information( god forbid that we had boarded the wrong ship), was that this girl was blond and blue eyed, possibly of Scandinavian stock, though at the moment I can’t remember the name of a really good Viking painter from whom she may have descended.

Given that I was in the south of India where Dravidians ancient occupants of this land were the predominant genetic strain, with nary a Caucasian chromosome to offer, I was struck by the anachronism of it all. Surely ebony would have worked as well as ivory, I thought.

And then it hit me. I winced.

In the airline business in India it seems that western dress, and western mores are better semoitic signals of efficiency and professionalism than than the vernacular, the home grown ethnicity of costume or  even face.

To that end we have an airline which features a very pretty model, not even a flight attendant giving you the flight safety instructions on a video screen. She is Czech I believe. She is as white as porcelain alabaster  and I would venture that she doesn’t know Hindi, though she has been well rehearsed and the dubbing and lip-sync are quite commendable. Of course I am not sure that featuring her gave me any more confidence  about the  procedures in the event of engine failure, de-pressurization, landing on water and the consequent fastening of life jackets and emergency whistles. But I must confess that she looked pretty in an orange vest.

Then there is the other airline which has each female fight attendant, ( I used to call them hostesses which was a lot more friendly than the functional attendant, someone who I expect to see mostly manning toilets, but be that as it may and it is not germane to this ramble at all) coiffured with a wig cut to resemble a model’s hair style from Paris. I am no connoisseur of women’ hair styles but they resembled to my untrained eye the cut of Audrey Hepburn’s hair in Roman Holiday.  Sort of a cross between a bouffant and a page boy, i would think. (Here  i am impressing you with these terms!)

They also wear dark suits and stockings . This airline has positioned itself on punctuality, and I suppose these replicas of women from Paris in Coco’s era help in that delivery of customer satisfaction.

On the other hand there is the so called national carrier. Stained by age and possibly indifferent neglect by bureaucrats  who have no business sailing any ship whatsoever, they have like many fat merchant galleons of yore been boarded again and again by privateers and so now languish, awaiting fair winds again.

Their  maids of delight are dressed in colourful Indian costume, wear their hair in an Indian coiled bun , if they have long hair, and are generally of a slightly older average age than the other airlines staff. 

The airline itself is not  particularly efficient, but when on board these fight attendants perform with better efficiency and courtesy and maturity. But that is  possibly my parochial point of view.

My actual point is why do we consciously or unconsciously seek the authority of the Caucasian to demonstrate our own ability to operate in the modern world.?  We are world class only if we dress European? 

The cheongsam of the Singapore Girl may argue against this notion.

But it may just be that dressed this way or that, we just can’t be as good when it comes to service, mass produced and delivered. So we compensate our imagined inadequacy with costume.

We are a truly exceptional people when we offer and proffer our individual hospitality in our houses and our homes.

We maybe don’t know how to make a business of it.

Written 2011: Today one of the airlines has vanished. And give the pandemic, we not have many flights at all!

It is said that the world for all its turmoil is still beautiful.

So this got me thinking:

 We say, “ the day is too hot”

The sun or the season don’t care.

The temperature is what is as measured by a thermometer or by your skin. Unaffected by your response, the sun blazes down.

The day is not hot. You feel hot.

There is too much rain.

There is neither too much or too little rain.

The great Monsoon engine doesn’t care.

You may not need so much rain. You may want more water.

You may not like the feeling of damp. Or wading through knee deep floods. 

You don’t like this much rain.

The world is neither beautiful or ugly.

It seeks no approval or disapproval of its countenance.

It’s what it is , indifferent to your opinion.

In the yoga Vashisth, the Sage teaching the Hero how to become a God, says “ The world is as you see it.”

We feel the heat. We resent the rain. We see the world as beautiful or ugly.

Which brings me to the present and clear danger of Climate Change.

While we can see the world as a place designed  for us and in many cases designed by us, the planet actually is indifferent to our behaviour,our perception and our actions.

It does not weep when through our predation we kill off yet another species. It does not protest when we devastate  forests that are the bellows to our lungs. It will not care if all the ice melts on the polar ice caps.

The truth is this: we are only killling ourselves. At best we are hastening our own demise as a species.

After all we are just another species. We may grandstand and demonstrate our powers. But millions of species have come and gone before us. When we too are gone we will not be counted. 

Because we are also the accountants  and there will be no one writing up the books

There are some who believe that the planet has a voice and a soul. This may or may not be true. I think the planet is not sentient in the way we define sentience which is subject object consciousness. 

Planet Earth doesn’t see itself this way. It can’t. It is inclusive of everything that happens on its surface, above it and under it: all living and non living things from insects to fishes to mammals to rocks and sea and sand and trees . The ozone layer the sun the molten core all are part of the planet.

No one and nothing is favoured. Everything is accepted with the same standard. Uncaring indifferent and oblivious. 

We are the ones debating how we are upsetting the fine balance, the intricate machinery that runs the planet. The fine balance and the intricate machinery is what keeps us alive. If it is upset another balance will be found and the machinery will re-engineer for the new . A new which may be too hot, too wet or too dry for us to survive. 

So is it a hot day or a cold day or a wet day? 

The earth doesn’t care . We do .

So we should ask who will mourn our passing?

The answer is no one.

P.S. Mars has not sent an invite to us either.

written 2020

The art of essay writing  is not very different from assaying.

A set of facts much like silt sand and earth are sifted in a mental pan on the riverbanks of ones mind and it is hoped as we put the argument through a sieve that we will find gold .

The construction of an essays’s argument is a perilous exercise

By and large we teeter between the certainty of our opinion buttressed by facts that support our contention and the winds of our doubt at the high altitude of the spires we find ourselves perched upon.

But when  the essay is finally written and complete, it is sent out hopefully , as Plutarch one of the earliest essayists says, to kindle the flame in one’s mind rather than to fill it.

An essay is a provocation to think. It cannot be anything but: it is not history, nor is it  reporting  on the present times. 

It may spring from an observation: So and so 

was dressed so brightly that it reminded one of a male peacock in prime mating season.

That observation leads one of think  of, say, the relationships between plumage and sexuality. And off to the races we go!

An essayist as opposed  to a novelist,a poet, a historian or the writer of a thesis must be prepared to hear voices of both agreement as well as disquietude.

This is actually the job of the essay: it is to provoke. In that sense the  essayist must be a rebel ,never content with the status quo, inciting anarchy.

Anarchy is a space of creativity: it is a context of order without rule.

The essay asks you to imagine a different order or orders. It removes the “it can’t be done”.

An essay is a tilt at a windmill.

A badly written one can be nothing more than a diatribe.

A well written one in the traditions of Montaigne and Voltaire,Lamb and Hazlitt, Jacobsen or de Botton is a delight. You wonder as to how they see  the world we live and love in, the motives and reasonings of the politics of our times, the angst and joys of our lives.

We are shown paths. Which one should we take? 

That, the essayist says, is up to you.