Against nature?

There was yet another debate on the TV about nature versus nurture, this time provoked by the news that the museum of natural history in Oslo is organising an exhibition on homosexuality in animals.

It is never easy to say what do we inherit from our parents through the genes and what is more a "learned behaviour" depending upon where we grow up. Somethings things that may seem clearly hereditary are not always so.

Like people often said that my voice sounded exactly like my father's. And now on telephone, my son's friends mistake me for him and my friends and colleagues mistake him for me. Is that because of genes or is it because growing up together - did I subconsciously internalised my father's voice and my son did that with my voice?

Illnesses like high blood pressure running in families, have similar confusions. Do you get high blood pressure because your ma or grandma had it or because living in the same house, you share all your habbits of eating, exercising, reacting to stress?

It is much easier to deal with physical characteristics like the colour of your eyes, or the shape of your ears. That you did get through the genes.

There are many practical implications of the final conclusions of such debates, and that is why any conclusion is hotly debated. For example, if we accept that mental illnesses like neurosis are the result of genes, then perhaps all theories of Freud and therapies like psychotherapy trying to find the cause of your illness in the way your mom wrapped your nappies when you were three months old, can be considered as useless!

Another practical example is about criminal behaviour. If we accept that criminal behaviour is because of genes, then what use is putting the fellow in the jail or worse, hanging him? What could he do, he had no choice but to follow his genes?

So to go back to the debate on the TV on homosexuality in animals, the stakes are much higher. Different religions consider homosexuality to be against nature. Here, vatican officially assumes a similar position. If we accept that animals can also be homosexual, such arguments will be difficult to sustain.

Actually such debate is not new. Some years ago there was lot of discussion about some male Humbolt penguins in a German zoo who preferred to stick with their own company while the females were left in peace.

In the debate on the TV, there were similar arguments. They said, for example: it is the stress of living in the zoo, it is the stress of increasing urbanisation, these are not real serious relationships but only playful behaviour in animals, and so on. So it will always go on, each side refusing to be convinced by the other.

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A symphony for Bombay

It is a beautiful symphony, played by invisible beings, the kind who walk all around you every day and whom you never see. Perhaps, you are also one of them? Symphony is made even more beautiful because, each of those invisible beings is singing a different song, with a different rhythm.

Seven Islands and a Metro by Madhusree Dutta is that symphony. The film was released in some commercial theatres about ten days ago. It is rare that I get to see newly released films but this time, Mukul, my nephew and cameraman for this film, brought me a preview copy. Today, while I was watching it, I wished I had watched it while Mukul was here. In some Dvds there is a director’s cut of the film, where the director explains and talks about the film, while you watch the scenes. If I had watched it with Mukul, I could have had a cameraman’s cut of the film! The film is so beautiful that I really regret not having done that.

Seven islands is about some of the different Bombays that exist for its 15 million inhabitants and for thousands coming here every day in search of a living. Each of them sings their song.

Like the persons who hang at the top of the sky scrappers and clean glass for a living. “I like it up here, there is a kind of peace here”, one of them says.

Like the hundreds of I.D.cards with their pictures, and people standing in queues, answering questions about themselves – name, place of birth, father’s name – in English, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu…

Like the line of cement mixers trailing on the highway like giant snails, their snouts raised up towards the sky to catch the extra-terrestrial sound waves, while helicopter drones above.

Like the girl with grey eyes, who says, “I tell people on the face that I am a bar dancer. I am not afraid. You have to be made stronger to live here. Only money counts”, and suddenly her voice cracks with emotion.

Like angry women protesting against the invasion of UP and Bihar walls, “We’ll butcher you like fish.” Like Kulwant Kaur with icey hands in the story narrated by Manto, who listens to her husband brag about the six he killed and the seventh, a beautiful girl, he wanted to rape. Like the Dawood Bohra bank worker who says, “I was born here in 1944. When he said that you should go to Pakistan, I felt so bad. Why should anyone doubt my patriotism for India?”

Like all those dead and living, living together there in the cemeteries, the Europeans, the Church of England Christians, the Church of Scotland Christians, the Church of North India Christians, the Italian prisoners of war, the Japanese prostitutes and cotton traders, the Chinese.

Like the small window above the graveyard, where a swing is moving in a small room and small feet peep out and go back in. Like the tall and well built Reshma, who talks about her tom-boy days and those trying to dial a "wrong number" with her. She is the stunt women, a celebrity in her area, having done stunts for Hema Malini in Sholay. “Take a look at my pictures. In my time, I was also beautiful, why didn’t I become a heroine?” Like all those small, thin men with faces burnt by sun, who rummage through garbage, who bulldoze houses of poor like themselves, and who talk of hunger, “You can wake up hungry in Bombay but you are ready for hard work, you will not go hungry to sleep.”

Like the young man selling chai during the night. Even beggers and vendors buy the tea from them. “They can deflate the tyre of my bicycle, but I can’t give bribe. I don’t earn enough. They can do what they want.”

Another talks about his love for the girl from the other caste and how he was made to leave for Bombay while the girl committed suicide. “For a days labour, you earn 15 rupees in the village. Here I can spit out betel for 15 rupees in a day.”

Cruel, funny, tragic and comic, they all mix together in a never ending kaleidoscope, each staking their claim to life. The young boy extolling the virtues of vegetarianism, almost unaware of the violence inherent in his words. Or those who talk of the riots and because their religion does not allow them to hurt others, how they gave a couple they had discovered to others “more suitable for the job”. And the hope in their eyes that refuses to die. My future will be better, they all believe. In any case, life here is much better than what ever, I left behind, they argue, perhaps more to convince themselves than others.

The only discordant note in the symphony comes from the comments of the two writers, Sadat Ali Manto and Ismat Chugtai, and the effort to add abstract symbolism to the film, like the broken picture of Gandhi or the red shawl. Harish Khanna as Manto is suitably intense and Vibha Chibbar is a delight to watch, but their philosophical posturings sound false and superfluous like the burqa clad women pushing carts with polyfoam Mumbai maps or the burning kite or the red coloured water with I.D. pictures floating in it.

Words of ordinary people are like swords, cutting and cruel unapologetically. “No more Bihari and UP walla bhaiyas here, let them stay where they are”, says a woman bluntly. There is no need to add abstract symbolism, it is already there in plenty.

They all say that it is about money. No one talks about community, the relationships. After leaving the small towns, what communities they create? What relationships sustain them and replace the warmth they left in home towns? The film does not explore them but you get glimpses of it, like the boy running along the train, who is pulled in by others hanging at the door.

The idea of watching a documentary film for 100 minutes is a bit daunting but once the film starts, it is difficult not to get involved and forget time. Bombay never looked so beautiful as it looks in the rain scenes. Music, sound, images, people, everything fits well together.

In the end, I was feeling a bit jealous about Bombay. I have been there a few times, but my heart is in Delhi. I wish someone had made a symphony for my Dilli like this!

Below, some credits of the film.

Title: Seven Islands and a Metro
Director: Madhusree Dutta
Actors: Harish Khanna & Vibha Chibbar
Cameraman: Avijit Mukul Kishore
Editing Reena Mohan, Shyamal Karmakar
Dialogue: Sara Rai
Sound design: Boby John
Music: Arjun Sen

Note: Poster of the film if from the press kit

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Ragging lessons

Note (2022): I had written this post in 2006, to share my own ragging experiences. It is about my positive experiences of ragging in early 1970s. If the idea of discussing ragging in positive terms upsets or triggers you, I strongly suggest that you do not read this post.

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There are broadly two kinds of persons in the world, I thought to myself. Those who live surrounded by transparent bubbles and life’s woes seem to touch them lightly, leaving them to live in their blissful ignorance. And, those filled with angst, their sensibilities weighed down by the injustice of it all, every experience leaving a burning hole in their souls. Probably Sujit Saraf belongs to that second group, I thought to myself, as I read his article on Tehleka about effects of ragging he had received at IIT Delhi twenty years ago.

Actually his description of ragging was quite funny:

We did many things in that one month that now appear harmless and amusing. We stood on benches in the dining hall and recited the national anthem; we crawled on all fours and barked like dogs; we brought cigarettes and Campa Cola for our seniors; we cleaned their rooms; we dropped our trousers so they could measure our penises; we formed human trains — each car holding the penis of the car in front — and whistled our way through hostel corridors; we simulated orgies; stripped naked; then wore underpants over our trousers to turn ourselves into comic book phantoms.

The impact of these experiences are summed up by Sujit as, “After so many years, I can list all these forms of ‘ragging’ dispassionately, but no one should be misled. Brutality and oppression remain just that, no matter the name used for them… Ragging is a case study for Freud, nothing more.”

If Sujit belongs to the second group, I probably belong to the first. While he seems to have been traumatised by that experience, his words brought back many happy memories for me.

The first time I encountered ragging was when I went to submit some form at MAMC near Delhi Gate. A pimply seventeen, I was suddenly pulled into a small door at the side of their auditorium. Soon my pants were around my ankles and I was asked to wank. It was slightly embarrassing to admit but I didn’t know what wanking meant!

I knew the words all right, they were used often by boys, but I had no idea that you actually did something. Probably I was too busy day-dreaming or reading or playing, and though it had been many years that I had “wet dreams”, I hadn’t ever thought much more about it. I did have some vague basic ideas of what fucking entailed and that was my sex knowledge. I don't think that I thought kissing caused a woman to become pregnant, but probably I was not so sure about it.

My raggers screwed up their noses but were not too surprised, apparently they had seen other ignorant boys like me before? Any way, I was shown the simple practicality of wanking and let off. I won’t bore you with the details of my experiments with that knowledge later that day, but just for that lesson alone, the word “ragging” brings a smile to my face.

The other lesson came in Meerut a few months later, in the hostel of the medical college. Fifty or sixty boys, running around naked and doing hundred little things like the ones described by Sujit above, was an opportunity for close observation of the variations in that small appendage that is apparently supposed to the centre of men’s lives – the penis. It was the best cure possible for all those anxieties about, is it too small, is it too long, is too thin or thick or whatever, that seems to afflict many of us. It did cure me of those anxieties any way. After the first two times of being naked with other boys, any sense of humiliation or shyness disappeared.

It was fun and a way to look at things that earlier, I didn't have the courage to ask or think about.

The third lesson was about female sexuality. Fed mainly on Hindi literature, where sex is hardly ever mentioned directly, I had an idea that sex was something pleasurable for men that was “tolerated or suffered” by women. Both, male and female students of the medical college had their “anthems” full of obscenities, and it was the women’s anthem that opened the magic door for me – sex could be something desired even by women!

Probably I can come up with some more lessons that I received from ragging that perhaps today’s generation won’t care about. I am sure that today’s twelve year old know much more about sex than what I knew at seventeen. If they don’t know, perhaps internet is a better medium to learn, than other guys slightly older than them through ragging.

My parents never spoke to me about sex. With friends, one spoke about it but that was more to experiment with words and our developing identities as men, but at least, I was shy about asking any real questions. Years later, when I tried speaking about sex to my teenage son, I soon realised that he already knew much more about it and probably I could have learned somethings from him! How times have changed.


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Note 2: After almost 18 years, this continues to be among the most popular posts on this blog. Tens of thousands of persons have read it till now.

A lot of readers get upset after reading it, in spite of my warnings.

If you have read it and you feel upset, it might be time to ask yourself what is there in it which upsets you and how you can overcome the trauma you underwent because of ragging?

 

You can also ask yourself why do you look for content which reminds you of your old trauma? Perhaps, you are caught in a cycle of negative obsessive-compulsive behaviour?

 

In the end, carrying this trauma hurts only you. I hope that you will use your feelings of anger and frustration to find a way to come out of them and heal your wounds. Consider talking about it to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, or at least to your close friends.

Contradictions

After a lazy sunday afternoon nap, we decided to watch Syriana. I was still a bit sleepy and I had been hoping for something not too complicated, so probably some bits of Syriana passed over my head without registering.

The film is complicated with different simultaneous and parallel story lines spread over different continents and in different languages, English, Farsi, Arabic and Urdu. The main aim of the film is to show how American multinationals involved in petrol extraction with active support from different American institutions, are willing to go to any length to keep on their profits, including the assassination of those who try to fight against their power. At the same time, short term thinking/planning of USA forces sometimes provide sophisticated weapons to those who later use them against American interests.

I was thinking of how so many Indian films are now equally vehement in showing nexus between corrupt politicians, underworld and other corrupted state institutions.

It is a victory of freedom of press if cinema can show such realities in so clear terms, pointing accusing fingers at the powers.

Yet, the fact that films like these can be done time and again and in spite of all the accusations, that do seem believable, nothing changes. Voters go on electing same persons, those same persons keep on doing what they were doing and public does not care. Then periodically, there are some "ritualistic cleaning" with some weakened power brokers who are sacrificed to satisfy the public hunger for justice and everything can continue as it was. It sounds very horrible and cynical and yet probably an accurate description of how "real" life is.

Coming back to Syriana, George Clooney must be passing though that "I am not just a beautiful body, I am a good actor" phase. It does seem unbelievable, his perplexity and confusion in the film, after being a secret agent for all his life in places like Beirut. The decision of Pakistani boys to be the suicide bombers is also not explained properly in the film, since at least one of them is not convinced about religious dope peddled by his instructors.

***

I always had an admiration for Isreal. There was a long time that I was convinced of having been a Jew in a previous life, who had lost his life in the holocaust. And I am deeply distrustful of religious fundamentalism of any kind, these days, especially the islamic kind. Yet, in the fight between Isrealis and Palestinians, I feel that Isreal is renegating its legacy of suffering and is behaving like the oppressive forces in nazi Germany, uncaring about the countless civilians that Isreali forces seem to crush with uncaring abandon.

Probably this feeling is because for me, this fight is not perceived as between Jews and Muslims but is seen as unequal force of strength between uncaring and powerful isrealis and desperate palestinians, trying to hold on to their homeland.

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Journeys and People: Together in the beehive

The train journeys used to take for ever and the preparations started days in advance. Letters were written for the friends on the way, who were going to host us in their homes for a night or two. Holdalls were prepared with blankets and gaddas, thin mattresses filled with cotton, and we pulled on the straps till they all rounded up like footballs. Biji, my grandmother, prepared a big basket of puris and fried potatoes along with mango and water chestnuts pickles for the journey.

Going to Hyderabad needed two nights and we stopped on the way in Bhopal. Going to Alipur Dwar in the north-east took three nights and we stopped on the way in Lucknow and Siliguri.

In the second class compartment of the train with three tyres, train seats were wooden planks and best was to have the top berth, because then you could go up and forget about the others. The bottom berth was where everyone sat while the middle berth was kept closed till it was time to go to sleep.

As you entered the compartment you immediately measured the others sharing the space with you. Were their faces smiling or were they sour faced? How did they react to, "Uncle, can I put this here?" And then soon everyone beamed with relief since the companions of our journey were as anxious as we were to find friendly faces.

Before you knew, everyone was talking to everyone. Children sharing comics or playing ludo or exchanging stories. Women together chatting as long lost sisters from a Manmohan Desai film. Men looking with understanding nods at their wives, and talking about their own things. Didi, bhabhi, bhai saheb, dada ji, aunty ji, soon everyone had found the right words to address the others. From the open window of the train, on a curve you could see the steam rising up from the engine and specks of charcoal came inside the compartment and coated all the faces, got stuck in the hair and went down the neck into the shirts. Chuk chuk chuk, the train went, with the compartments swaying as everyone spoke to everyone else.

And by the time the shared journey came to an end, we knew lot of things about each other, and saying goodbyes was like we were leaving friends. "Write to me", "If you come to Delhi, come to see us", were exchanged with addresses. Of course, we never saw each other again, those other lives were soon forgotten, the memories of faces and names fading quickly with time.

Every time I stopped to think about it, I could see the round ball of earth buzzing like a beehive, hundreds of thousands of small cells next to each other, each with its own family and relatives and lives, each family facing ups and downs, each with children growing up, persons dying, persons getting married. Even if I didn't know about them all, I could imagine them, each family like our own, a little different in somethings, but underneath every thing else, quite similar.

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Now even in India, there are no steam engines. Those long journeys have become shorter. Here in Europe, even when I do travel on train, mostly I avoid eye contact with others, I almost never offer to others the food I am eating, I hardly ever (actually never) take puris and fried potatoes with me and anyway, most persons have a sandwich and a paper glass with some drink. On the planes, people sitting next to me, some times smile but it stops there. Talking to others that you don't know means "disturbing them" and so everyone looks out of the window or reads or closes eyes and feigns sleep, all lost in their own worlds.

Instead, when the urge to "meet" others comes, I do blog hopping. Like, going to a site like Desipundit and clicking on a blog.

Blog-hopping makes me "meet" other persons. That boy with the red scarf around his neck and his graduation at some IIT, his face full of hope for the future. That lady next to him must be his mother, she looks so proud of him. The girl he is looking at with so much adoration on his face, is she is wife or his girlfriend? There is no picture of his father in that album, why, what had happened? After the pictures, I want to read about the things that boy has written in his blog. And then I click on a link on that blog, then on another link, hoping from one person to another. That girl, she went to India for the first time. Her name is south Indian, perhaps she was born in USA? How does it feel to be surrounded by all Indian faces for the first time in your life, when you realise that you are like everyone else? Jumping between cities and continents. Looking at photo albums and reading about the persons is so much fun. In half an hour, I have gone through three blogs, looked at their pictures, read about their profiles.

Tomorrow, I won't remember them. If not tomorrow, perhaps next week I will forget them. I never remember their names any way. And I never tag them. I like them as they are, random, unexpected, like ships crossing and the passing glimpses into other parallel universes. Sometimes interesting, sometimes ordinary. Sometimes, I don't like them so much.

They are like the companions on a long train journey from my childhood. And I think of the giant beehive, all round the world, every where people with hopes, joys, illnesses, memories, sadness, visting beautiful places, missing places and people. It is good to be part of that beehive.

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Masala addiction

There is something in the spices, in the masala. You just have to taste it a couple of times and it enters your blood. The cells taste the fragrances enclosed in its molecules. And, then you can't resist its call. Days can pass without feeling the yearning for it. Yes I have outgrown it, you think. But the yearning comes back suddenly while you eat the wholesome nutritious, bland, spiceless food. If you are a masala lover once, you are a masala junkie forever!

Hindi films are like that. Once you have tasted them, you can't forget them. In spite of their silliness, their exagerated emotions, their illogicalities, their absent storylines, their corny songs. No, they are stupid, you tell yourself. Give me a hollywood blockbuster any day, I tell myself. A nice French or Italian flick. And then suddenly one evening, you are running to your friendly neighbourhood pirated video store, the hollywood blockbusters forgotten, your heart yearning for some song and dance masala laced with crying mothers, lovetorn couples, destines singed with unsurmountable barriers, that yet once again avoid the tragedy just by the nick. The wonderful world of Bollywood.

And then I found bwcinema dot com. Goodbye to pirated disks, that suddenly block in the middle of Shahrukh Khan telling Kiran Kher, "Mother, I am back!" You just need a good connection and you can watch all the masala without going out of your homes. Three days of unlimited films for as low as 3.99 dollars, the site said, and the suddenly the four day long weekend had found its purpose. And perhaps, this time, I am not going to fatten the Bangladeshi or Pakistani shop owners and be a traitor to India, I had thought. Perhaps, the film producers will get a percentage for each download.

I started with Morning Raga with its lovely carnatak music and a wonderful Shabana Azmi. IFFA awards and Filmfare awards followed. The first day ended with the reluctant patriotic fervor of Rang de Basanti.

I hardly slept that night, waking up at five in the morning to watch Ankahee, the Vikram Bhat-Sushmita Sen autobiography. And then I crashed, falling down asleep for eight hours straight. Chup Chup ke with crazy Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav accompanied my hurridly cooked chinese noodles. A pity they had to spoil it with Shahid Kapur and Kareena.

The third day started with Corporate and I was starting to get over my yearning. I tried to follow it with Kabhi Alvida Na kehna, that had lousy print and even worse sound worthy of friendly neighbourhood pirate video shop. Is it legal, I asked myself? I mean, four days after the release of the film, here they are showing it on internet with a pirate print and they are based in USA and no one can do anything about it? May be this site is run by sons of Al Capone? Anyway, I gave up after fifteen minutes. Then I tried with Onkara. This print also looked pirated with the screen wobbling, as happens with camera prints, when someone tries to shoot the film with a handheld handycam in a cinema hall. So I shifted to Fanaa. This time the print was good even if the film's faked emotions were irritating in spite of wonderful Kajol. Finally to finish the feast, I had Chicken Tikka Masala, all about British humour about parents trying to marry off their gay son.

Now I feel like puking. My head hurts. If I look at the TV screen, red and blue spots float in front of my eyes. Wish I can burp. It is indigestion. I just want to curl up in my bed and not to think of any masala movie for a year. The yearning is gone and it seems it won't be back for long long time. Now from tomorrow, I can go back to my sane hollywood blockbusters and the intelligent Almodovars.

Hindi films? I screw my nose. They suck, I tell myself. Till the yearning comes back again, I am free.

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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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