Saving the little hog – Goutam Narayan

“I am not an animal lover, I am a conservationist. I have no sentimental attachment to any one animal that I want to save at any cost like the animal lovers do. To save a species, if some animals have to be sacrificed for larger good, that is fine with me”, Goutam had said passionately. Goutam Narayan is known for his work in saving the Pygmy Hog (Porcula salvania) from extinction in the north-west of Assam in India.

We were visiting the Pygmy Hog Breeding Centre (PHBC) in Basistha in the periphery of Guwahati, of which he is the founder-director. Another breeding centre is located at Potasali near Nameri National Park.

When I had first arrived to live in Guwahati in December 2014, I did not know anyone in this city. However, I had the contacts of Goutam and his wife, Nandita, given to me by my sister. So I had gone to visit them at their home. That was the first time I had heard about Goutam’s work with pygmy hogs. “I want to come and see your work with these hogs”, I had told him. Finally, in January 2016 I had managed to visit it.

WHY SAVE THE PYGMY HOGS?

Goutam thinks that this tiny and shy animal is a very good indicator of the ecological conservation of its local environment, “The big animals like tigers or rhinos, they can thrive in lots of places and even if the environment changes, they can survive. But not the pygmy hogs. They need the specific tall wet grassland plains at the foothills and without it, they will not survive. So when animals like the pygmy hog start disappearing, you know that something is wrong and the environment is getting damaged. It is a sensitive indicator of the change in the environment.”

Pigs, hogs, boars and swines are different words used to talk about the animals of the suid family, though usually pig is used for domesticated animals while hogs and boars are used for wild animals.

The pygmy hog is the smallest suid. The grown adult is about 65 cm long and 25 cm tall, weighing around 8 or 9 kg. It is also a very shy animal so it is very difficult to see in the wild. There was a time when these pygmy hogs were found in several places along the Himalayan foothills at the India-Bhutan border extending westwards to India-Nepal border to eastern parts on Assam-Arunachal Pradesh borders. However, now these animals are almost extinct except for a small area in Manas National Park, which has around 200 pygmy hogs. During the last few years, 94 animals born and raised in Goutam’s breeding centre have been released in Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary and Orang National Park in Assam.

HOW DID PYGMY BECAME ALMOST EXTINCT?

So what has happened to these pygmy hogs? How had they become extinct? Often the extinction of animals is linked to excessive killings by humans, but that is not the case with the pygmy hogs. Since they are shy animals hiding in the wet grasslands, they are not easy to hunt. Also, they are small, so have little meat to justify their hunting. Rather, their extinction is linked to the destruction of the tall wet grasslands.

“They are very finicky animals, they require that tall thatch grass and without it they can not survive. They make their homes underneath a bunch of that grass and if they can not find it then they will have no homes, they will not breed and they will die”, Goutam had explained.

Goutam is a field biologist and had started with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) under Salim Ali, the noted Indian ornithologist. Goutam had earlier worked with Bengal Florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis), another endangered species that shares its habitat with the pygmy hog. After working with Bengal Floricans in Manas grasslands he was offered to work with Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, founded by Gerald Durrell in Jersey, Channel Islands.

The wet grasslands habitat has one of the richest in bio-diversity in India, so it is important to safeguard it. Pygmy hogs are one of the most sensitive indicators of the safeguarding of this habitat. These wet grasslands serve as buffer against floods in rainy season while maintaining high groundwater levels in dry season, indirectly benefiting farming communities living in the fringe areas.

A few years ago, in an interview Goutam had expressed his desires of the changes he would like to see, “I would (like to) banish the indiscriminate dry season burning of grasslands every February and March. I may allow some controlled fire till mid January to clear dried grass debris and to delay the transformation of these successional grasslands into a different habitat but not the highly destructive hot burns. Secondly, I would convert hoards of cattle grazing the grasslands bare and trampling the soil hard into a few high yielding breeds of stall-fed animals. Thirdly, I would transform the mindset of planners who want to construct scores of mega dams on Himalayan rivers. They should instead be planning for ecologically and economically viable smaller alternatives that do not cause flash floods in the grassland plains and downstream areas when water is released from reservoirs, particularly during the monsoons.”

PYGMY HOG CONSERVATION PROGRAMME

In the pygmy hog breeding centre in Guwahati, the hogs are kept in separate enclosures according to the genetic lines. Since their numbers are so small, it is important to ensure the genetic lines to maximise their genetic diversity. Pygmy hog is the only member of the genus Porcula.

The Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme (PHCP) has a significant research component. An important part of the research is genetic and endocrinal studies of the hogs. While we were visiting it we met a researcher Shyamalima Buragohain who is working on PHCP’s collaborative project with CCMB-LaCONES (Laboratory for Conservation of Endangered Species of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad) on the endocrine status of pygmy hogs by studying their excreta.

The breeding programme had started with nine pygmy hogs captured in the Manas National Park in 1996 and in 2013. Over the years, their numbers have slowly increased. When we visited, PHCP had 85 hogs. Every year around 12 hogs are released in protected and restored grasslands under a planned reintroduction project. A pre-release centre has been built in Nameri Tiger Reserve where the animals get used to living in the grasslands in a gradual manner under minimal human contact for 5 months, before being released. At the same time, together with forest authorities, programme for rebuilding the grassland habitats of the hogs are started by controlling the burning of the grass and livestock grazing.

HISTORY OF INTEREST IN SAVING THE PYGMY HOGS

The story of conservation of pygmy hogs is linked to the British colonial history of Assam. A British born tea garden owner and naturalist Edward Pritchard Gee, who had decided to stay in India after 1947, is known for the identification of Golden Langurs and conservation of one horned rhinos in Assam. In 1964 he had written the book “The Wildlife of India” in which he had written that probably the pygmy hog species was already extinct.

The 1971 rediscovery of pygmy hog is credited to another British tea planter from the Jersey island, John Tessier-Yandell. Under his guidance a tea garden manager had found pygmy hogs being sold in a tea garden market near the Barnadi Reserve Forest (now a Wildlife Sanctuary where the pygmy hogs will be released by PHCP in May 2016) in Darrang (now Udalguri) district of north-western Assam and John had written a report that was published in the journal “Animals”. The tea company had set up a small project for the conservation of the pygmy hog, but unfortunately it had failed to maintain these animals in captivity.

Following its rediscovery, during 1970s-80s different surveys had shown the existence of pygmy hogs in different parts of Assam, however these had gradually disappeared with the destruction of the wet grasslands habitats.

The international Wild Pig Specialist Group was setup under the Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), under William Oliver in 1980. As an acolyte of Gerald Durrell, in whose zoo in Jersey he started working in 1974, William Oliver promoted the role of zoos and captive breeding. For saving the pygmy hogs Oliver had drawn up his first action plan in 1977, but was unable to get the state of Assam and the government of India to agree to protect them properly until 1995, when he had asked Goutam Narayan to join this project.

THE FUTURE

In September 2015, Goutam Narayan has received the International Harry Messel award “in recognition of his pivotal role on leading the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme in north-eastern India since 1995, thus saving a whole genus from extinction, and his long service to the SSC Wild Pig Specialist Group”.

Regarding the future of the Pygmy Hog species and its habitat, Goutam is optimistic and says, “Hopefully one day the importance of wild habitats such as the wet grasslands will be recognised for their role in providing significant ecosystem services to the local communities and they will be protected and managed using sensitive indicator species, thereby helping both the highly endangered wildlife and local people. Till that day comes the conservationist should help preserve at least some small pockets of these habitats lest everything is lost!”

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Rediscovering 15 August

The last time I had been in India for 15th August celebrations must have been around 30 years ago. Thus, being in Delhi for this independence day was a special occasion for me.

Growing up in the immediate post-independence era, I had also imbibed the values of patriotism and national pride. 60 years later, my ideas about patriotism and nationalism have changed but that is another story!

I remember once going to Red Fort as a child to listen to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and the long walk back home along with thousands of other persons after the speech. Though there was no TV in those days, listening to the prime minister's speech on the radio was something to which I had always looked forward to.

After leaving India, for a long time I had missed not being able to listen to the Independence day speech so usually I waited to ask my sister on telephone about it. Those were the pre-Internet days.

Over the last decade, even though Doordarshan did not provide any internet based live transmissions, it had become easier to read about the speech on internet. Slowly a feeling of cynicism coupled with indifference had crept in. The speeches were lacklustre and afterwards it was difficult to remember anything that the prime minister had said. 15 August had become a bureaucratic boring event.

This time while I waited to hear the speech of the new prime minister, I was not sure if the event merited any enthusiasm. From what I had read occasionally on internet, in my mind Mr. Narendra Modi's figure has been associated with communalism and intolerance of religious minorities. Over the last few weeks that I have been back in India, some of the things said by and campaigns launched by some BJP persons had reinforced those fears.

Still I had thought of going to Red Fort just to relive the old times. However, the metro services does not start early enough so I had given up the idea. Thus, I had sat in front of the TV with a bit of trepidation.

However I liked Mr. Modi's speech very much and also the way he spoke. Especially his words about communal harmony, discrimination against girls and the need for toilets and cleanliness. He seemed very passionate about these issues. There were times, when listening to him brought a lump to my throat.

One day later, thinking about his speech, I can see many contradictions about the issues he raised. Such as his slogan "Make in India". I know that India has to increase its industrial production but it would also mean intensifying the use of the natural resources of India and that will mean displacing people from their lands and endangering our environment. Reaching the "zero effect" he recommended is not realistic in the short or medium term, so how do we deal with it?

He also talked about giving up violence because it does not resolve anything (I agree with that whole heartedly) but would he extend his non-violence exhortation to the police and state agencies that jail or fire on persons who protest against the government's policies?

Even if I have my reservations about some of the things Mr. Modi had said yesterday and even if we all know that "walking the talk" is not so easy, still I am glad that I could watch and listen to him live. It was a pleasant change from the cynicism and indifference of the past decade.

In the evening, we went to Connaught Place for the Shubha Mudgal concert. There were so many persons at the concert that we could only listen to her from a distance.

In the central park, everybody was busy getting clicked in front of the giant Indian flag.

Along the way, people were busy taking their selfies in front of flower-flags set up by NDMC in different places. In India Gate, crowds were unbelievable. It was a wonderful way to conclude the Independence day, watching people express their joy in being Indian.

Here are some images from the day.

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Trees with stories

Everyone knows a few trees. However, usually we are unaware of the huge diversity of trees surrounding us. I found that Delhi zoo can be a good learning place about Indian trees. This photo-essay presents a few trees from the Delhi zoo which have stories behind them.

My interest in trees

I became interested in trees because of our dog Brando. Whenever I was at home, it was my responsibility to take him out for his morning and evening walks. Our house in Bologna (Italy) is close to a beautiful park. During the walks, while Brando sniffed and did the things that dogs are supposed to do during their walks, often I waited and looked around. Inevitably, I also looked at the trees. Slowly I realized that I hardly knew any of their names.

So I bought a book about trees. Then for a few months, every time I went out with Brando, I learned to identify a new tree. I observed the shapes, colours and number of the leaves and the way they were arranged, the quality and colour of the bark, their flowers, fruits and seeds. Now I can identify a lot of trees in that park.

A couple of years ago, when I was in the Delhi zoo to look at my favourite birds (the painted storks), I realized that most trees in the zoo carry little boards with their popular and botanical names. So I spent some time looking at the trees. This post presents some of those trees!

Names of the trees

All trees have botanical names (in Latin), composed of two words - often the first word is about the tree family and the second word is the name of the person who discovered it or name of the place where it was found, etc. If you want to search for information about a tree, knowing the botanical names makes it much easier. So let us start this journey!

Putranjeeva tree (Tree for a son's life): The botanical name of this tree is Drypetes roxburghii. The tree has round hard fruits. This tree is native of India and some other Asian countries. It was taken to Africa and now it grows in many parts of that continent. The round and hard seeds of the fruit can be used for making necklaces.

Another name for this tree is "Indian amulet tree". I don't know if this means that mothers make amulets from its seeds or the name denotes that it is useful to cure illnesses. Its name also made me think of the Indian bias for sons - why did they not call it the tree for a daughter's life?

It is also called "Spurious wild olives tree" - probably this only means that the fruits look like olives but they are not. The tree itself does not look like an olive tree.

According to Ayurveda, a decoction of its leaves and fruits is useful for treating fevers, malaria and for liver problems.

Saptparna Tree (Seven leaves tree): The botanical name of this tree is Alstonia scholaris. The name of the tree refers to the leaves that form flower like whorls in usually in groups of 7 leaves (can vary from 4 to10).

When I saw the name of this tree I was reminded of a Bengali fairytale I had heard in my childhood - about seven princes who were killed by the stepmother and who became champa trees. When ever the stepmother wanted to hurt their sister, the princess, her brothers in the champa trees warned her, "Saat bhai champa jago re, jago re" (Seven brothers of Champa, wake up, wake up).

In English they call it the Indian Devil Tree. Normally, solitary and secluded trees are considered the trees possessed by the devil and if you sleep near them, it is said that they can steal your soul. However, I find the Indian name of this tree completely incompatible with the English name - almost as if we are speaking of two completely different trees.

Another name of this tree is "Indian blackboard tree". Does it mean that it's wood was used for making blackboards in the villages? Is it because of the black coloured boards that the British started calling it the Indian Devil tree?

According to Ayurveda, it is used for treating skin diseases, malaria, diarrhea, snake-bite and for punchkarma purification.

Kanak champa tree (wheat flowers tree): The botanical name of this tree is Pterospermum acerifolium and in English they call it the Dinner-plate tree. I think that the British must have seen the Indians putting together 2-3 leaves and making organic plates out of them.

There was a time when we use to get most of the roadside food (Tikki, Golgappas, chole-bhature) in India in such organic plates, though now, most roadside shops in Delhi seem to use plastic plates. Obviously using plastic means creating plastic waste that damages our environment, but I wonder if destroying trees by excessive use of their leaves for making plates would be a less damaging alternative? What do you think?

It name Pterospermum refers to its Maple (Acer) like winged seeds. It is also called Maple-leafed Bayur tree though I must say that its leaves do not seem to be like the maple tree!

According to Ayurveda, its leaves and flowers are good for treating inflammation, ulcers, blood problems and even tumours. Flower extracts are also useful as insect repellent.

Chir (Pine): The botanical name of this tree is Pinus Roxburghii and it is one of the common Pine trees in the Himalayas. I found its name special because it reminded me of the Nirmal Varma's Hindi book Chiron par Chandani (Moonlight on pines).

If burnt, sometimes the resin in its wood solidifies into a hard translucent material that does not get wet and is useful for starting fire. In Garhwal they call this hard colourful resin as Jhukti. It burns for a long time so if you are travelling in the hills, it could be useful to keep some Jhukti with you.

Bel (Creeper) or Shree Phal (Fruit of divine light): The botanical name of this tree is Aegle marmelos. In English they call it Stone Apple or Wood Apple, because of the tough exterior of its fruit. The leaves of this tree are necessary for two kinds of swallowtail butterflies. The leaves are also good for human consumption.

The fruit-pulp is very aromatic and the juice is tangy and astringent. It is used for making sherbets such as Bela Pana. The fruit takes almost a year to get matured on the tree. According to Ayurveda, this fruit has different medicinal uses including for gynaecological problems, urinary problems, liver problems, etc.

For Hindus it ia sacred tree because it is the tree of Shiva and the fruit is used for prayers in Shiva temples. The trifolate leaves are considered as symbols of Shiva's trident.

Among the Newari famlies in Nepal, there is a custom of marrying the girls to the Bel tree (Bel Baha).

Plaksa or Bhendi: It's Hindi name sounds like that of the vegetable, okra. Its botanical name is Thespesia Populnea. In English it is called the Indian Tulip tree or Portia tree. In Sri Lanka they call it Suriya (sun).

It is important because of its wood that is greatly appreciated for making furniture and musical instruments.

Makhan Katori (Butter bowl) or Krishna badh (Krishna's fig): The botanical name of this tree is Ficus krishnae. It belongs to the Ficus (fig) family of trees which is very popular in India specially as the Ficus religiosa (Pepal tree or sacred fig), under which Buddha had attained illumination.

Compared to Pepal tree, the leaves of Makhan Katori seem darker and thicker. Their unique feature is that they have a pocket like structure at the base. It grows into a large tree.

There is a story associated with this tree -when god Krishna was a baby, he was very fond of butter and often stole it. Once when his mother Yashoda caught him stealing, he tried to hide it by rolling it in a leaf of Makhan Katori. Since then, the leaves of these trees have a folded shape at the base.

Kadamba: There is some confusion about the botanical name of this plant. Its name plate in Delhi zoo called it Anthocephalus chienensis but Wikipedia says that its correct name is Noelamarckia cadamba. It is loved for its round ball like sweet smelling flowers that can be orange or yellow. These flowers are used for making traditional Indian perfumes including Attar.

The leaves of this tree are necessary for the larvae of brushfeet butterfly. Its wood is used for making plywood, paper pulp, simple canoes, etc. The extract of its leaves can cure intestinal parasites.

The Kadamba tree is part of different mythological stories in the north and south of India. Kadamba is mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana. In Northern India, it is associated with Krishna - Radha and Krishna are supposed to have conducted their love play in the hospitable and sweet-scented shade of the Kadamba tree. In the south it is known as "Parvathi’s tree".

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So I hope that you have liked this brief journey with some trees. The next time you look out of yur window or you go out for a walk in the park, ask yourself if you know the names of the trees you see!

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Matru, Bijlee and Bhardwaj’s nautanki

Vishal Bhardwaj's new film "Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola" (MKBKM) revolves around two main themes – a young woman called Bijlee and the land of her village. It is a quirky film with some great funny moments, that touches lightly on the rush for the land grab and "development" in India through an unconvincing love story between a JNUwala and an Oxford returned girl who likes singing rural songs in Haryanvi.

I enjoyed watching MKBKM because of its tongue in cheek and playful way of looking at serious and not-so-serious issues.

Though not unsympathetic to its female characters, the film has a very male gaze at life. It is a film full of male characters who all like to ogle at Bijlee while she goes around in the village wearing hot pants (and even play acts Raquel Welsh in the Bond movie from 1970s, coming out of water like a nymph, with an admiring and applauding crowd like the cricket match in Lagaan. Even an occasional ghunghat covered women stops to look at her.)

Since the film is based in the land of female foeticide and khap-panchayats, its all male lineup of actors makes sense. Like all self-respecting Indian patriarchists, it also has a female chief-minister, around whom they wag their tails.

Main characters of the film

All the charactors of this film are a little inconsistent. They can be charming and fun in one scene, serious and brooding in another and villanous in another. Though all are competent and some are very good actors, its gives the film an air of serious play-acting, as if a group of friends gathered for a party, have decided to act out the different roles for an evening.

Hukum Singh or Matru (Imran Khan) is the bidi-smoking, local-liquor drinking and card playing JNUwala guy who believes in small revolutions. He is not a real communist, in the sense that he does not really hate the class-enemy, oppressor-of-the-poor local zamindaar-cum-industrialist Mandola (or his daughter), he just manipulates him by getting him drunk. His goal of revolution is not to change the system but only to make sure that the farmers' land is not taken away for making SEZ for a Gurgaon-like town full of malls and high rise buildings.

Farmers themselves are more realistic, willing to negotiate the right price to sell their land rather than singing "Mera Bharat Mahaan lives in the villages", but then our revolutionary hero, like all self-respecting maoists, knows what is best for them and does not believe in democratic decision-making.

Matru has his ex-JNU friends-turned-traitors to “the cause”, who work for big multi-nationals, but don't mind smoking bidis and talking with nostalgia about the good old revolutionary student days (it clearly tarnishes the revolutionary reputation of JNU, for which JNUwallas could have asked for a ban on this movie).

Matru also has a hidden life, where he re-reads dog-eared old books in the darkness of the night. It is hidden because he is never shown reading anything, except when he borrows the Shakespeare book from Bijlee. We see a glimpse of this hidden life, when Matru feels that he has failed in his revolution and packs his old battered suitcase with these books, presumably for going somewhere else for another revolution.

Yet a revolutionary or not, when our Bijlee bats her pretty eyelashes at him, he can't do anything except to accept his destiny of being a hero and kiss the heroine. He does try, weakly, to safeguard his ideals and refuse marriage to the rich industrialist's daughter because "I am a servant", but fortunately, the director decides that it is time to end the film, so no body listens to him.

Harphool Singh Mandola or Harry or Mr. Mandola (Pankaj Kapoor) must have read Suketu Mehta's "Extreme city", so he mumbles something that sounds like "bhenchod" in every sentence. He is also Mr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, and his change of personality is induced by alcohol, preferably a country liquor called Gulabo, that comes in what looks like a beer bottle and has the logo of a pink coloured cow. When he is sober, mostly in the mornings, he is a cold-hearted, calculating industrialist, who dreams of buying the farmers' land and making the Gurgaon-like Mandola Town. However, he is also a closet JNUwalla maoist, and this part of his personality comes out in the night, when he drinks and shouts slogans against cold-hearted enemy of the villagers.

It is difficult for him to give up drinking, because there is no AA branch in Mandola and also because Matru makes sure that temptations are always there around him. When he does try to give up drinking, he has delirium tremens, during which he hallucinates about pink-coloured cows. You can wonder why he does not get delirium tremens in the mornings when he plays nasty-screw-you-all industrialist, but that is besides the point. The prosperous looking doctor’s wife (Navneet Nishan), dressed in pink tights, takes those pink cows in his hallucinations as a reference to her figure.

His world revolves around Bijlee, but he is willing to get her married to the silly son of the chief minister, just to make the right alliance, that will make him more powerful and rich.

Badal (Arya Babbar) the chief minister's son, is supposed to be stupid and a villain, someone who does not understand the finer points of life. Yet, he is stupid only when it suits the script.

I loved this guy, because to show-off his love for Bijlee, he brings her a group of Zulu dancers from South Africa on a 30 years lease.

These African dancers, looking as strange in the Haryana village, as any of those white blonds and redheads who dance as high-class extras in Hindi films, are at least different as they are dark-skinned and their dance is very African. May be Vishal Bhardwaj wanted to pull the legs of some Hindi directors who have European girls to play the role of traditional Indian woman (recently a film even had a Ms.UK playing a Kerala girl because “she suited the role”).

There are other scenes where Badal comes out as a person who understands the need to manipulate and to use people, hardly the signs of a well-meaning stupid-rich guy that people like Matru and Harry call him.  Like the scene, where his mother (Shabana Azmi), explains her strategy about how to make fools of people for cornering more wealth and power, and Badal smiles and applauds ironically. Or the scene near the end, when he defends Bijlee when her father discovers her playing lovey-dovey with Matru.

I could understand why Matru thinks that Badal is stupid – because he did not study at JNU – but why do Harry and even Badal’s mother feel that he is stupid, is not clear. May be because he genuinely seems in love with Bijlee and is not ruthless enough?

In the meetings, villagers of MKBKM are almost all men, except for Naseeban, who is a transgender person. There some fleeting shots of a few woman standing near their homes. May be Bhardwaj wanted to remind Haryana guys that if they go on with their female foeticide and infanticide drives, the only women they are going to get are like Naseeban. Actually he could have also shown a couple of village guys with wives who speak Bengali, Bihari or Nepali, to underline the bride-buying from other parts of India, because there are not enough marriageable women in some parts of Haryana.

Coming to the female characters in MKBKM, Bijlee (Anushka Sharma), the girl around whom the story revolves, has the least defined role in the film. The girl had insisted on going to study in Delhi and then in Oxford, but to study what? She seems content enough to follow her father’s plan to marry Badal, even if she also thinks that he is shallow and stupid.

She also seems content to take bath in the village pond and to play with old bicycle tyres in the village wearing hot pants. May be she did feminism studies in Oxford and has taken it as her life’s mission to use her dominant social position as zamindar’s daughter to bring out Haryanvi men from the medieval period into twenty-first century?

In her farm-house party, with other city guys and women, Bijlee chooses to sing a rural song, “oye-bhai oye bhai charlee” sung by Rekha Bhardwaj, hardly the song or the voice for the party of a Oxford-returned young girl and her rich friends!

Apart from the pink-wearing doctor’s wife, the only other female character of MKBKM is the scheming-plotting chief minister Chowdhury Devi (Shabana Azmi). Though she tells her son to get married to Bijlee only to get hold of her property and then to kill her off, she hardly looks and sounds like the vamp she is supposed to be. Her scheming and plotting look like play acting, she is too soft with the officials (like the scene in the beginning, where collector, police inspector and her secretary are all drunk and vomiting), and her eyes never exude the meanness she is supposed to have (though I must confess my weakness for the lady for past many decades, ever since I saw her pounding the grain in "Ankur", so I can't be objective about "Shabby Ass"!).

With Harry, as they stand on the top on hillock and talk of their future plans, she is indulgent, loving and almost poetic, hardly a ruthless politician.

Naseeban, the transgender person (which actor is it?) is treated with empathy in MKBKM. In Bollywood, usually transgender persons have been used for some songs or sometimes for films on prostitution and mafia gangs. In their rare "proper roles" in Bollywood, they are usually some kind of perverts or killers. In MKBKM, for a change, Naseeban is close friend and confidante of the hero. She is his mouth-piece, when he wants to speak to the villagers as Mr. Mao.

Synopsis

Harry Mandola wants to take the villagers' land and build a township. For power and money, he wants his daughter Bijlee to get married to the son of the chief minister, who helps him in getting the land earmarked as "special development zone" (SEZ), so that he can get investments and not pay taxes. His driver, Hukum Singh, is a hidden maoist, who incites villagers to find ways to sell their produce without intermediaries, pay their loans and save their land. Harry has other plans to make the villagers poorer, so that they are forced to sell their lands. However Bijlee has fallen in love with the maoist driver-cum-hero and decides to help him and the villagers.

Comments

All the persons in MKBKM are a kind of make-believe people that superficially look real, in a make-believe place, that superficially resembles Haryana. It is a fake-realism film. None of the main characters is consistent. They are all out to have a good time, doing a kind of sophisticated nautanki, a kind of  theatre of absurd.

Thus there are scenes, if taken individually, that look very realistic. Like the scene where a drunk Harry begs his daughter to give him alcohol. Bijlee tries to reason with him, bares her anguish and emotions, but like many alcoholics, the only thing that Harry understands is his need for alcohol and manipulates her emotions to run away with the drink. By itself, this scenes is realistic and very well acted. There are other scenes like the airplane scene that are more of a farce, though they are also well acted (I think that it is impossible to make Pankaj Kapoor look unconconving doing anything!). But seen as a whole, the graphs of characters are not coherent. For example, Harry behaves completely differently a few scenes later, when he play-acts to be drunk and is able to resist alcohol, because “he has sworn on his daughter’s name”.

No one is really a classical all-black villain in the story. Even the chief minister and her ridiculed son, join in the last song-and-dance routine, to show that they were play acting to be bad. Rather, Bhardwaj makes fun of all his main characters - the pro-industry-and-development group versus the community-environment-empowerment group, highlighting their contradictions.

This does not mean that there is no undercurrent of reality, necessary to call the film a satire. This undercurrent of reality is there in the ordinary viciousness of public officials, their willingness to lick the butts of those in power and to wrench out the guts of those for whom they are the mai-baap. The mad rush for the land grab under the cloak of “development”, for raping and looting the earth, unmindful of the destruction of people’s lives and of environment, is real enough.

“How did you show this land as barren and unused in the map, appropriate for making SEZ?”, the naïve chief minister asks the collector as she looks at the sprawling green fields. The collector with his greasy knowing smile says wryly, “Madam, there was nothing there for three years when it had not rained. This year unfortunately it has rained.”

That undercurrent of reality is an unconscious message that you take home with you, because the film touches very lightly on it. Most of the time, it lets you see that world as make believe, where we are smiling about the antics of a drunk man and his driver, running on a motorcycle or flying away in a small private aeroplane.

In one scene, TV reporters ask a young guy called Nainsukh, the only "eyewitness" of the landing of an UFO in Mandola village, to share his experience. And he talks about his crap. That seems to be message of the film. That the system, the media, the so-called development, but also some of people fighting for justice, are just crapping. Reality is hidden behind that crap, and you need to figure it out.

I am looking forward to watching this film again.

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Climate change and dwindling arm-pit forests

There was an article on the international year of astronomy. It had beautifully illustrated pictures of different shapes of galaxies that have been photographed with potent telescopes. The pictures show specks of lights joining together to make shapes like rings, caps, spirals, etc.

It is difficult for us to imagine the distances to stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. The idea of travelling with the speed of light for a thousand years to reach a star in our own galaxy is difficult enough to grasp. Try to think of millions of other such galaxies, each expanding out forever or getting sucked back in to black holes and the distances that separate them from us, then you can understand the limits of our own imagination and understanding.

Can there be beings that are thousand light years larger to us humans in size, who inhabit this universe and walk around, taking giant strides, and for them the galaxies are like flats in an apartment building, that they pass while going to the office? At the end, it is just a question of proportions!

Because our earth is so tiny in comparison, smaller than a small pinhead compared to this universe of galaxies, and on that tiny little pinhead of earth, to those giant beings we humans would be like sub-atomic particles. Who knows if they can see us in their microscopes? or may be they have not discovered us yet?

That started me thinking about the bacteria and viruses, those tiny sub-microscopic living things that we can’t see but we can sneeze them out to pass on swine and avian flu to our fellow humans or eat in millions mixed in our yogurt. Like for us the distances to all those galaxies are unimaginable, perhaps to the bacteria that live on our bodies, we human beings are like planets or galaxies?

Like a bacteria living on our foot thinks that the little toe where s/he lives is his/her country, our body the earth, the other persons in our house the solar system and doesn’t know if there is life at those far away stars that are the apartments we can see from our window. Who knows if they have passport checks for going to other toes? And the catastrophs like we taking shower or an oil massage or getting licked by dogs or our lovemaking, that occasionally destroys all the living bacterial dinosaurs and makes for "breaking news" of the bacterial news channels. "Another cyclone is going to hit toeland, residents are request to evacuate!"

For them the distance between my house and my office must be like thousands of light years away.

Actually our bodies are like complex ecological systems as mentioned in an article on The Week recently.

"What I found most surprising was the great diversity of bacteria living on the skin," said Julia Segre of the US National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who led the research. According to the first big census of microbes, parts of the body such as the moist armpits were akin to tropical rainforests in terms of the type of ecosystem the bacteria inhabit, whilst other areas of skin were like dry deserts.

"The second most surprising finding was that the skin was like a desert with moist areas like streams such as the armpits, and isolated oases of life where there are rich reservoirs of deep diversity, such as the navel," said genetics specialist Segre, whose study is published in the journal Science.

The human bodies are ecosystems, believed home to trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that naturally coexist in the skin, the digestive tract and other spots.

And for millions of those living beings, climate change means your new deodorant or the antibiotic pill you pop in. Try imagining yourself submerged and surrounded by a living complex ecological system and you will understand that all those antiseptics and disinfectant sprays, cloth washers, dishwashers that marketing guys want you to buy from all the TV screens and ads, are actually all ecological disasters, killing millions of yet undiscovered bacterial and virus species and probably promoting scourges like antibiotic resistance, killer viruses, new kinds of allergies, etc.

Perhaps we human beings are also one of those killer viruses that sprang out and colonized the whole earth because one unthinking giant being killed all the dinosaurs because a dust particle hit him?

So please, don’t shave your armpits. And don’t put deodorants or other lotions. I don’t mind the smell. I prefer a living world on my body-planet. Down with artifical "civilization" and back to nature.

Guntur comes to Bologna

Mayor's office from Bologna had sent me an invitation explaining that mayors from Indian city of Guntur and Philippines province of Bahol were coming to Bologna as jury members for an ecological project. It seems that Bologna with some funding from European Union and in collaboration with a Swedish city was promoting this project for the improvement of environment and ecological sustainability and it had started with the two pilot projects in India and Philippines.

These days when they speak of global warming and climate change, often they end up by saying that enormous growth in India and China is going to put additional pressure on the climate and that the developing world should look for some alternate paradigm of growth. I find that extremely hypocritical.

The other day I was reading that USA alone consumes hundreds of time more energy than all of Africa and if China and India continue to grow the way they are, by 2020 they will be consuming 20% of the USA energy level. So it is not about reducing India or China's energy use, it is about reducing their own energy use if they are serious about climate change and global warming. In the end every drop counts, but isn't it a little shameless to not to look at oceans and focus only on drops?

European energy consumption is not at the American level but it is probably not too much far behind. How much success have they achieved in reducing their own energy consumption?

I feel that in USA and in Europe, the trend is towards more efficient use of energy, less polluting ways of using energy and there is no attempt to change the general paradigm of living that is based on intensive use of earth's resources. Almost everything, from cars to computers, are going towards "use it and throw it" kind of mentality. So how can they preach to developing world about what others should do?

If the developed world is really keen on reducing pollution in the developing world, they should be willing to waive copyrights and protectionist measures to share ideas, efficient technologies with the developing world, and not allow their own multinationals to shift their polluting businesses in developing world without proper technology improvements.

In Bologna itself, there is lot of pontificating about using bicycle and public transport and not using cars, but in reality the city does everything to discourage people from using bicycles and promotes use of cars. In my opinion, as someone who goes regularly to work on bicycle, in the last ten years the number of bicycle users in the city has decreased and number of cars has increased many folds.

I had all these thoughts in my head when I went to this meeting. Fortunately they did not give any hypocritical speeches about climate change and global warming. The emphasis was very much on ecology for improving the lives of people who live in our cities, about improving water supply, solid waste management, traffic, greenery, etc.

Kanna Nagaraju, mayor of Guntur was there with his wife, Kirti. Nagaraju a BTech in mechanical engineering was in real estate business when he entered politics 2 years ago and at 25 became one of the youngest mayors of India (or may be in the world?). Kirti is also a BTech, is still studying, doing MBA and the couple do not yet have a child.

Nagaraju's was not a very fluent or coherent speaker but his presentation was good. He presented some big successes in Guntur after this project - they are now testing water supply for pollution and making sure that people get drinkable and pollution free water. He told that they are almost near to achieve 24x7 uninterrupted water supply, and they have a new system of solid waste collection from the house holds that is separated for recycling. He also said that Guntur is now a garbage free city, they are managing traffic better, building more parks and planting greenery, etc.

Is this change real or is it just a big political speech-giving by exaggerating whatever little has been done, this only the persons from Guntur can tell. I hope some bloggers from Guntur will send comments.

In the meantime, some pictures from yesterday: (1) Nagaraju (right) with Pamela Lama (from the Bologna Mayor's office), Anna Patullo (Bologna counsellor) and representatives from Phillipines (2). On this occasion, Sogni d'oriente, a Italian-Persian music group presented some fusion music. There were also some  (3) products from Guntur on exhibition; and (4) closeup of Nagaraju with interpreter and Ms. Lama.

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Climate change in Europe

Last week I was in Geneva for a meeting. As usual, World Health Organisation (WHO) had booked me in a hotel near the central railway station. When we landed in Geneva, it did not seem like very hot, compared to the hot Bologna that I had left behind. But, when I reached my room in the hotel, it felt as if I had entered a furnace.

While the bed had a woollen blanket as usual, there was something new in the room - a small table fan. Switzerland had always been nice and cool. In the summers, it did get warm in the day but most of the time, nights were cool, needing something warm.

After the arrivasl of fans, how long is it going to take for Switzerland to turn from paradise to hot baking furnace?

During nineteen eighties in Italy, I had never seen a fan in any house or office. To be honest, I had never felt even the need for it. I think that our first table fan, we had bought it in 1993 or 1994. Then in the next years, we bought more of them, so that we had one for each room of the house. During the same years, fans were installed in our office as well. Finally, this year, we have air-conditioning, at home and in office in Bologna (Italy). Everything has happened in the last 10-15 years.

Any way the hot temperatures in Geneva had some nice side-effects also. People were having fun with the summer along the lake in Geneva. Drinking beer along the small pubs, sitting and chatting on the grass wearing bikinis and swimming costumes, swimming in the lake.

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In Geneva I met Gregor Wolbring. He spoke about new technologies like synthetic biology and nanotechnology, and their convergence that is going to change the world completely as we know it. It is all going to happen in the next ten or twenty years, he says, and the real disabled persons will be those will not be able to afford the new technologies for enhancement of their bodies and minds.

He has a soft smile, gentle way of speaking and dreamy eyes. And he has a special wheel chair, that looks simple and has side bars, that you need to move gently to move ahead or back. Listening to him, I feel as I am transported in the world of Asimov.

Yet, take a look at his webpage and his coloumn, and check his credentials, he teaches in the university and is part of some important sounding committees. So it is no science fiction but a new reality he is talking about. He tells about it in a simple way, making it easy to understand.

For a moment, I daydream about enhanced human beings but then that images contrasts so strongly with the reality of poverty, lack of most basic things, disease and death that stalks lives in so many parts of the world! Would that dream be for all of the humanity or will it be sold to the highest bidders, I ask myself.

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In the pictures below, I am with Gregor Wolbring.

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All creatures small and big

I know I have this thing about a role for all creatures of the God including bacteria, viruses and ants. I am kind of obsessed with it and I don't like the indiscriminate use of ""antiseptic" products for killing bacteria promoted by the industry. But today, I read something that did warm my heart. And that proves my theory.

A scientist from Nottingham, Mr Pritchard believes that hookworms can prevent asthma and allegery and links the rise in asthma and allegery problems in the developed world to the use of clean water and deworming treatments.

According to him, hookworms in the intestine, affect the immunity mechanisms and thus reduce the chances of having ashtma and allergy. He has a research project that will give people a limited dose of hookworm larvae and measure their immunity and the effect on asthma episodes.

In poor communities hookworms are responsible also for anaemia and malnutrition so even if he proves his point, how are we actually going to apply this?

It also reminds of a scene from a book called "She was called two hearts" about a white woman going through Australian outdoors with a group of Aborigine people. In this scene she tells about feeling dirty because of not taking baths and constant travelling in the dust. And then they encounter a swarm of small insects that surrounds them. She panics but then sees that the Aborigine people are facing the flies calmly, letting them do what they wish. The flies enter her ears, flutter inside and clean it and then come out and fly away.

So next time you are ready to kill a cockroach or a mosquito, think first, what its role can it have in the nature?

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A sterile world?

Growing up in India, you automatically learn that you are a small part of a large world, where all beings have a place.

Jain munis with clothe on their mouths, women giving food to the ants, Nandi bull sitting in front of the temple and the cows sitting in the middle of the road, all give you that same message. Perhaps that is why, I get disturbed when I see publicity that seems to imply that if you really want your home to be clean or if you really care about your child, buy this detergent powder or this floor cleaning liquid, because these will kill the bacteria.

I can't understand, why do we need to kill bacteria? Don't bacteria live inside our own bodies and are necessary for life since they produce important vitamins? Don't bacteria surround us every where and can they be actually killed just by washing your clothes or cleaning the kitchen floor with antiseptic lotions? Perhaps, I should not worry since these are only publicity gimmicks?

I think that this kind of publicity gives a wrong message. Improper use of antibiotics, has given rise to resistent bacteria, and there are some that can't be killed by any thing. But worse than that, this kind of publicity gives the message that it is all right to manipulate the nature because somehow we would be better off in an artificial world, controlled temperatures, controlled environment, artificial every thing.

I would say that we need to boicott these - not to buy products that say they kill bacteria. Sales and profits is the only language companies and marketing experts understand.

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