Left Out!!

Ok, I have the flu as an excuse this time, yay!

The importance of Mamata's victory cannot be entirely clear to people who have not lived in Bengal or have followed its politics closely. (If you live outisde Bengal, what you think you know is not true. The English media do a very good job of not reporting things as they are.)

Some people within the state, too, are sitting up and taking notice of the 'rabble-rouser' (who's now being called 'the fiesty lady' by TOI!). She can no longer be laughed off, you see, and that is becoming inconvenient.

Linc's aunt from the US called and was ecstatic to hear about the election results. As I went on to give her more details, she quickly added, "Don't say that too loud. You never know."

I am hoping my children (to come) and I will not have to shush ourselves up like their generation did. That is really the whole point of all this.

We are always asking for it. Men, beware!

This comes about 2-3 weeks late; no excuses for the delay. I simply have to catch up on my blogging. I had written down some thoughts when I heard of the American student's rape in Mumbai:

Going by what some people had to say on prime time TV about the TISS American student rape, and going by everything that I have come across till date, we women folk always seem to be asking for IT.

We wear a chudidar, we ask for it.

We wear a saree-blouse, we ask for it.

We wear figure-hugging jeans and low cut t-shirt, yeah, we are craving for it.

We wear clothes that show more than hide, you bet, we are most definitely asking for it.

‘It’ can range from men leching their brains out, being groped, whistled at, elbow-to-breast bumped, being told downright insulting things, molested, and being plain raped.

This American student went out with a friend at 10.30 in the night. (When I was in Mumbai for a short time, I saw that this was a pretty common thing: I’d see families coming back from Juhu beach with sand in their slippers and colourful balloons in their hands at 1 or 2 in the night.)

After some pubbing, she went to the flat of a person, who was friends with her friend. There were other men, too, by this time. According to a girl on TV today, she should not have done this, that is, going to the flat. Another aunty said that she should not have gone out at all at that hour.

Yeah, of course, she shouldn’t have. She went to the flat, perhaps because her friend was one of the men; perhaps because she was tipsy, sloshed, and wanted to cool it off; perhaps because she didn’t know she was about to be gang-raped.

But she should have known better, shouldn’t she, than to be the only woman – that too white – around 5 or 6 depraved Indian men, for whom a drinking, pub-going woman who then accompanies them to a flat in the middle of the night can only send out one message: am here for the taking, the raping, murdering, etc.

Am not even talking here about what some men may have to say about why they think they can rape women. No time for that shit.

But what enrages me is the attitude of those women on TV. I don’t expect them to side with the American student just because they are women. For the same reason, I cannot accept them laying down rules for another woman.

If you wish to live your life wrapped up in a saree, or believe that distrust of men is a woman’s best weapon, that’s your prerogative. Don’t dump it on another woman.

I find this attitude very sick: these women do not see themselves as individual beings, independent existences. They have fallen in line, and expect others to. It’s a sad thing when the oppressed becomes the oppressor and doesn’t even realize it. I wish I had more time to write about this, but I must stop here.

Some related interesting links I found:

Sleepwalking no excuse for rape (Now, Indian men don’t need such lame excuses, do they? Women are asking for it all the time, you know.)

A feminist theory of rape defense

Lost Season 4 - Yipeeeeeeee!!!

To vote, to vote! (But first to get my name on that List!!)

I want to tell my own little election story today, though it might already be somewhat late for that.

About a week or so ago, I put in an application to include my name in the electoral roll for the fourth time in about eight years. The last two attempts were in Kolkata, the first one was in Hubli.

This time we set out from the house, determined to get my name on the electoral roll, or well, perish trying. We may not have perished, but wilt we did (it was about 39 degrees C, and a woman died that day of heat stroke). We hunted down the right office and the right person – no mean task in a government of West Bengal office – and put in the application.

We had to go up and down four buildings (Shaw Wallace House at Bankshall Street, Jessop Building, a nameless one, and New Secretariat) over about five hours to achieve this. It was quite like a treasure hunt, a clue here and a hint there.

Our misery was because of the Great De-limitation that had made our constituency – Burtolla – non-existent. Though it made sense for us to be part of Manicktala, we weren’t. It turned out that we were now part of Jorasanko – where Mr Tagore’s house is situated. We didn’t know which constituency we were part of, and that was disconcerting. It was as if, electorally, we didn’t exist. Our identity was at stake now.

But we wouldn’t even have known we didn’t exist, if not for the last-minute check by the very helpful officer in charge of Manicktala constituency. We had almost submitted my application there, when he discovered that our street didn’t exist in his constituency. Ananda Babu helped us out here and told us we were in Jorasanko now.

In between these buildings somewhere, a group of leching government officers tried their best to make us give up. (They were a bit put off that they had to stop leching at me to talk to us.) They plainly told us roll revision was not on and we were trying in vain. But, fearless voter (Linc) and voter-to-be (me) as we were, we strode on.

It ended at the rather old New Secretariat building, Or, at least, that’s what we’d like to believe. Election day will tell.

Oh, and that’s not the end of it. It was still eating Linc that he couldn’t find his street in the Manicktala list, so he got on the net and made the bloomin discovery that our street didn’t exist even in Jorasanko. Well, actually, it did, but under a changed name.

Now, though he called and faxed about this mistake to the election office, and they said they would look into it (! – as they always do), our entire para (street) might just get disqualified from voting because our street doesn’t exist on their list. Aah, the suspense is eating me up.

Mridangam – as defined by Umayalpuram K Sivaraman

Not everyone gets to learn from the master. But today, thanks to technology, one of the greatest living mridangam vidwans, Sangita Kalanidhi Umayalpuram K Sivaraman, is accessible to all people passionate about Carnatic music.

The incredible genius of Umayalpuram has been distilled into Mridanga Cintamanih, a pack of 7 DVDs, with the intention of preserving something invaluable for the generations to come. The DVDs, divided into four levels, are instructional and cover the entire spectrum of playing the mridangam - from the beginner level to the nuances of accompaniment to vocal music. This DVD pack has great value as reference material to students at universities and the like.

The Level I DVD, begins from the beginning and instructs the novice mridangam player on the placement of fingers, posture, and introduces him/her to Adhi, Roopaka Chappu, Misra Chappu and Kanda Chappu talas.

The rest of the levels are broken up into two DVDs each. The Level II DVD showcases advanced sequences along with demonstrations of Gathi Bedham (change of speed), aruthis (short endings), moras, and korvais. They seem easy and simple when Umayalpuram handles them masterfully, but can be a challenge to learners.

The undeterred student of percussion music will find more treasures waiting to be explored in Levels 3 and 4. The former hands out more insider knowledge, normally acquired only after years of learning from the master, like intricate patterns and techniques like Pecking, Gumki, Arai Chapu followed by detailed Taniavarthanams in the 4 basic talas. The art of tuning the Mridangam is a bonus with this DVD.

In Level 4, the student learns about what it takes to play mridangam for concerts, both vocal and instrumental, where the mridangam player has to not only hold his/her own, but also play in harmony with the vocalist or other instrument players and contribute to the unified beauty of the music. Light classical music, from folk to bhajans, is also packed in.

The mridangam lessons enunciated in the DVDs are also available in .pdf format and includes an excerpt from Umayalpuram’s book, too.
The total length of the 7-pack instructional music series is 22 hours at the end of which, the mridangam learner is many musical miles ahead from where he/she started. Of course, the journey is never complete but one is definitely well equipped for it.

And, it’s not just the mridangam enthusiast, but the world of classical music at large, that profits from this presentation, which can rightly be called Umayalpuram Sivaraman’s magnum opus. This marriage of musical genius and the best of technology is to be treasured.

Annana Nenapu

Annana Nenapu is a delightful book written by Purnachandra Tejaswi about his father, Kuvempu. The book begins from the beginning, albeit that of the son, and not the father. And the many stories that Tejaswi tells us about his childhood not only reveal less-known quirks of the poet, but also are such fun to read, thanks to his cheery narrative.

For me, it was even more of a pleasure to read such springy and lively Kannada sitting in Kolkata. At times, the writer does get somewhat involved with experiences and events that are strictly not related to Kuvempu and he acknowledges such digressions. But memory is such a strange thing, isn’t it? You can’t train your mind to sterilize and compartmentalize what it sees, analyzes, and stores. Like the canvas cot that Tejaswi associates with Kuvempu in an inexplicable way.


The book also reveals Kuvempu’s views on languages, mainly Kannada and to some extent English, and his heart-warming love and respect for both. Such an attitude is hard to be found these days.

This book has been with me for quite a few years now and had become one of those books I wanted to read someday. I am glad I read it at last. I absolutely loved Tejaswi’s style. Ah, wish I could lay my hand on more of his books.

MIndless googling

When work numbs my mind, I numb it further by typing in senseless stuff. For 'write something' I got this. Quite schizophrenic.

All credit goes to... !!!

I dont understand this. And, if you do, am sure there's something wrong inside your head.

The Supreme Court today upheld an appeal by a bunch of foreign banks to remove the cap on 30 percent annual interest rate on default payments by their credit card subscribers That is, the Supreme Court agreed with the fat cats that its okay to clobber us with 49% interest if we committed the sin of not paying the MAD!!! Yeah, that's mad.

The foreign banks had more than 24 reasons to justify such theivery, some of them being: cost of courier and embossing the card, cost of providing phone banking and internet banking services, cost of sending monthly statements, cost of waiving charges for service reasons, cost of marketing and promotional offers, and cost of rewards and loyalty programmes.

Err, sorry, am no economics pundit. So, let me just think it out in my head.

This means that unless I default on a payment, I dont need to pay for these expenses? Or, to put it another way, if these are expenses that need to be paid for by defaulters, why the heck am I paying something like 33% annually?

First, they rip us off with rotating interest, and then we miss a friggin due date, and you come down on us with a 49% hammer. And, you have the Supreme Court as your best buddy.

Truly, what can I say?!

Google Chrome Review

After you use Firefox, your expectations from a browser are high. And, frankly, I had expected Google Chrome to be at least similar to, if not better than, Firefox.

Yet, I will say that I like the clean look of Chrome and the search functionality of the address bar (Omnibox) is handy. And, it hasn't crashed once. Also, I like the fact that related tabs are kept together. Neat.

But, apart from that, I find quite a few things missing, and I find them more disappointing because this is a Google product.

Like, for instance, if I want to see all the pages I visited, there is no drop-down button on the address bar, or on the back button of the browser. Do they assume, that I will always open a new tab to see the screenshots of the pages I visited or that I will open the 'history' folder?! Ridiculous.

Also, the back button on the browser sometimes refuses to work if I click it just once. It takes at least two clicks to get it moving.

Plus, how do I bookmark a page in just a click or two on Chrome? No idea.

And, new mail on Gmail is slightly slower to show up on Chrome!!! I have actually seen this with both Firefox and Chrome open.

Again, it is very irritating to have to download the Google toolbar for their own browser. I mean, you didnt have to make it this lean.

Maybe I am not fully aware of the solutions to these issues listed below, but am an above average internet user. If things are not obvious to me, something is wrong.

Slumdog, colonial legacy, etc.

The other day I was chatting with a friend about Slumdog Millionaire. He said it was one more of those unbelievably un-ending attempts to sell India's poverty. (Really! If only India's poor knew how valuable they were. They must know, of course.)

Anyway, from Slumdog we went on to talk about contemporary literature and how I felt we lacked one, one which is truly representative (though I don't see how one text can ever be representative of India). He disagreed and said we did have contemporary literature, only it needed to be translated into English (from Bengali, he meant. My friend is a Bong.)

Then, I clarified that I was talking about stuff written by Indians in English. To which, he said, “But why should we write in English? What's the need?”

It seems so clichéd to talk about all this, but here's my bit for what it's worth:

Anyone who loves to write will not mull over which language to write in. We write in the language that comes naturally to us, the language in which we think.

Now, this should logically be the mother tongue, right? Mostly, it is. But because many Indian children are educated in English right from the first day of school, they may use English + mother tongue equally well.

I think in English a lot: this could be because of my profession, my education, or just my inclination. But, as long as I know and love my mother tongue equally well, I don't see why I have to shy away from the fact that I would prefer to write in English.

English wields a lot of political power over Indian languages, it's true. But, after more than 3 centuries after colonial rule, cant we get over the hangover and see it as a language, and not as something we grudgingly use because we were forced to use it 300 years ago? I mean, learning or speaking English shouldn't automatically mean you despise or refuse to learn any other language, be it Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, etc. If you choose to do so, [that is, look down on your mother tongue or Indian languages], that is your choice.

I do not like to look down or hate a language. I, for one, absolutely love to learn new languages, and love to discover the whole new worlds, new cultures, sub-texts buried deep in the womb of each language.

It is sad that most kids today cant read or speak a complete sentence in their mother tongue without faltering. And parents are hardly bothered with that. I had once read somewhere that the less you use a language, the more you lose in terms of the knowledge that comes with the language, like the different people who speak it, their occupations, knowledge about their bio-diversity...

For instance, there could be herbs or spices that grow only in a particular place and only people who live there know about it. They have a name for it in their language, possibly a whole culture built around that local uniqueness. But it remains outside your awareness and if the language perishes, all such knowledge, will, too. (My grandma can look at a herb and say what remedial powers it has. This language will die with her -- Of course, we'll always have our KAPLs and Daburs, but at the household level it will be lost. – Neither my mother nor I have bothered to learn this from her. Of course, this is not really about language politics. It's more of post-colonial India's suspension between the knowledgeable past and the liberating present. Aah, there we go again... making India's colonial past a reference point.)

Well, to sum it up: I don't see a contradiction or a dichotomy in myself if I say I love my mother tongue and English, and choose to write in English. I sometimes write in Kannada, too, for my own consumption. I frankly don't think it is worthy of putting it out in public. If I could give enough time to it, I think I could write as well in Kannada as in English, but, time... that is the one thing I don't have.