Our Family - The Four Legged Kind

A wonderful Guest post by Madhu Kamath

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A few weeks back I read Gerald Durrelli’s delightful book “My family and other animals”. It put me in a rewind mode, sending me down memory lane forty years back when I had my initiation into the world of four legged ones.

Sweety and Kaloo were my in-laws’ and hubby’s pet Lhasa Apsos gifted to them by Laotian friends. When I got married in 1973, they had been with the family for more than four years. My mother-in-law had passed away the previous year after a brief illness. I had been an occasional visitor earlier but despite the fact that I had become a family member, Kaloo was suspicious of me. The moment he saw me touch something, he would pounce on me. Sweety minded her own business. I had to be cautious about my movements and that kept me tense. Till that day four months later …

I had taken leave from school as I wanted to visit my gynaecologist. She had confirmed I was expecting but off and on I was getting mild cramps. After my husband and father-in-law left for office, as I got up to lock the door, I went blank and fell. It took me a moment to get up and lie down. The cramps had suddenly become unbearable and I was alone! Well, not really! Both Sweety and Kaloo jumped on the bed, emitting barely audible whines and sat on either side, looking at me mournfully. With tears in my eyes, I put my hands on their heads. I was pleasantly surprised that Kaloo did not mind. May be I was half expecting it as I had seen his affection for the other family members. He had finally accepted me although under distressing circumstances.

When the pain subsided a bit, I called out to our landlady downstairs who promptly got a cab and took me to a nursing home. I was undergoing a miscarriage. She stayed with me till my husband and father-in-law arrived. The good soul was always there for us in need.

Although Sweety and Kaloo had been there for four years, Sweety had never had a litter. A few months later we were surprised to hear sounds from our quilt. We woke up to find Sweety and six new born pups all over our quilt.

The previous night, she had been moving restlessly all over the house, whining. We thought she had a tummy upset and tried to comfort her with a hot water bottle. She was so hairy that no one noticed she was pregnant. When she sat, it was difficult to make out which was her front and which back. She looked like a huge, fluffy black ball.

The pups were so entertaining. Every afternoon, when I returned from school, it took me at least a few minutes to enter the house because the moment I unlocked and opened the door, all of them would gather around my feet, followed by their proud parents. Sweety started avoiding them when they started teething because their teeth hurt her, she could not nurse them any more.

We had a large circle of friends and finding homes for the pups was no problem. A litter of five and another of 4 came in the next one year and needless to say, there were more puppy seekers than the number of pups to be adopted. Our pets’ curiosity about the new family members lasted only a few curious sniffs when our elder daughter was born in 1975. As she grew Sweety became her best friend and playmate. Ajju, her grandpa, called her Bukul. We never asked him why. Bukul sounds sweet, doesn’t it? By the way, in their mother-tongue, it means tomcat. The way our association with four-legged beings grew over the years, her pet name seems significant.

Now ours is a family that loves travelling. When Ajju was travelling, we used to stay put. When we had travel plans, Ajju would be there to be with the pets.

As the months went by, Kaloo, inexplicably became vicious. With a small child in the house, we had to be extra careful. Sweety kept herself confined under the bed or the sofa. Kaloo bit Ajju as well as my husband. Both had to take a full course of injections after we took him to a veterinary hospital. We were advised to get him put to sleep. It was a sad day for all of us. The medication he was getting at the hospital was not helping calm him. His left eye had come out of the socket and he looked wild. Baffled by the change in him, Ajju insisted on getting tests done. He had contracted rabies despite getting tests done. He had contracted rabies despite getting his annual shots.

Sweety also left us in a year’s time. She seemed to be fine, her usual self. She just crawled under the couch, let out a loud sound, ostensibly her last breath, and that was it. The house felt so empty!

Ajju, too, went suddenly when Meghna, our younger daughter was four months old. A massive heart attack when he was getting ready to go up to his room after a hearty dinner of his favourite fish curry and rice, took him away from us.

With Ajju no more, we could not think of keeping another pet, for, there would have been no one to look after it, when we were to travel.

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In 1993 we moved from Delhi to Hyderabad, leaving Bukul there to complete her graduation.

Meghu got admission here in class X. One day as I entered the garage to switch on the motor to boost water, I saw four kittens quickly scurry under the wooden boxes stacked there. And then I saw the mother! She spat at me to keep her babies safe from me. We had no idea this family of five had been in our garage. Gradually, they started coming out and befriended us, treating the whole house as their own.

A few days later another cat (we named her Mausi) coolly stepped inside our garden and she her two kittens also made our house their home. And then came Chutki, all by herself, spending long hours on the swing we had in the verandah. We had names for all of them but after all these years, we remember only wink-eye and Satan; the first because it always seemed to be winking and the latter because we changed its name from Satin to Satan when we realised it was a male. Surprisingly , one by one, all of them disappeared in the next few weeks. It was as if they had a premonition of what/who was to come!

Bukul used to come home during vacations and one such visit, just a few days after the last of the cats disappeared, we were about to go out in the evening, when she saw a black rag near the main door. As she bent to pick it up, she jumped up with a shriek. It was a new born pup, black and brown. Tiny, barely able to move and bleeding from the rectum. Where had it come from?

Thankfully we knew of a vet in the neighbourhood and rushed to him with the pup. He treated him and refused to charge us for the treatment. The pup was soon out and about, prancing, chewing socks, shoe laces and eating well. Needless to say, we could not have left him out on the road.

We had to keep on telling him, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” With all the don’t do’s in the air, we ended up naming him Dhondu. He grew up to be a handsome, loving, much loved family member. The most endearing thing about him was putting his chin on our knee when he wanted what we were eating, imploring!

One evening when Meghu had taken Dhondu for a walk, she heard a whining sound coming from some bushes. On closer look, she found a tiny brown pup probably trying to feel the presence of its mother but not being able to find it. We brought it home and gave it milk with a dropper. Its eyes hadn’t opened and it looked doped. The vet confirmed it was a female and named it Dopey. Like Dhondu, Dopey also stayed. He was five and she, may be ten days old.

Babli was our colony dog. Apart from us, two other families used to feed it. It was amazing how, whenever she had a litter, it used to be raining. Thus for every litter she produced, our garage came in handy. After the 5th or the 6th (not sure!) we got her sterilized.

In the last litter, Babli had three male pups. Meghu named them Pumpkin, Munchkin and Coffee. They too would have ventured out with their mother but father dear had a wish! He wished to keep the white one, Munchkin, for himself. His reasoning - “Bukie has Dhondu, Meghu has Dopey, what about me?” Amusing! A fifty two year old sounding like a kid.

To let you in on a touching family trait … it all started with the time when father dear himself was a young child. His mother was no less an animal lover. They had a dog and a cat, both got along well and were looked after by them. Tiki and Tik-Tik sure had loving hands and hearts to care for them. So, you see! It runs in the family.

And thus Munchy stayed. Babli had free access to our house to come and play with him. We gave away the other two compassionate families after Babli stopped nursing them.

Now Dopey did not trust anyone. Not even us. God knows what trauma she must have endured when she was alone in the bushes. The day after we found her, we took her to each and every house in the neighbourhood to look for her mother and her siblings, if any, but in vain. Still, we all existed under the same roof, in a some what peaceful co-existence, wary of her snapping at anyone who came close to her.

Dhondu left us when he was 11, afflicted by age related ailments. Although Dopey growled at anyone who even touched her by chance, she had a way of saying sorry by lowering her head and raising her paw. She lived to be 13.

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And then came additions of the feline kind to our family when Bukie found a tiny kitten, eyes not yet open, almost in the middle of the road. She brought it home and fed it with a dropper. Fortunately, we have a gate separating the ground floor and the first floor so the dogs would not be able to reach the cat. She was named Daisy.

Daisy started going out on her own and stayed out, for long hours, but by the time we started thinking of getting her spayed, it was too late. One night she got into one of the cupboards in our ground floor bedroom and delivered a male and a female kitten. Our grand daughter Aari was delighted. Her soft toys and dolls took second place. Chutki and Bheem (that’s what she named them) became her companions. The two used to roam around with dear mom and occasionally brought back mice to devour. That was the only problem we faced with them.

Tragedy struck when Bheem came under a vehicle and got crushed. No one saw how it happened. I saw his inert body covered with a newspaper outside our house. We burried him in the small mud patch in our garden. Aari missed him the most.

There was also Yuki who appeared out of no where and used to sit behind the fridge. She disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared.

We got Chutki spayed well in time but another tragedy was waiting for us. My husband, Meghu and Aari had taken her to the vet a day after her surgery, when Meghu, realising that she was urinating, put her down to prevent herself from getting wet. The moment she put her down, Chutki took off like lightening, jumped over a wall and disappeared. In the growing darkness, they were not able to locate her. The vet’s staff also failed though they searched high and low. She was wearing a huge cone shaped E-collar round her neck, so she must have been noticed, we hoped. The next day, Bukie, Meghu and Aari went back to enquire in the neighbourhood but with no luck. That is how we lost Chutki. We still hope that she is safe wherever she is.

Aari is great friends with Daisy also, the occasional scratches not withstanding. Another small baby kitten Aari noticed outside our house was infested with ticks and fleas and her breathing was very shallow. We took her to the vet. He put her on a drip but was doubtful of her survival. The poor thing breathed her last in Bukie’s arm later that night. She too, rests in peace in our mud patch.

Life carried on with Munchy downstairs and Daisy upstairs. In April this year (2013), on hearing mournful mewing from some where around, Bukie and Aari went in search and found three kittens, a couple of weeks old, scrawny, but moving around, at the back of the vacant house next door. For a couple of days we fed them milk there but doing that several times a day was very tedious so we brought them home.

Meghu’s bedroom was lying vacant as she is posted overseas, so with a food bowl, litter tray et al, that’s where we lodged them. Aari took it upon herself to mother them and named them Kittoo, Grey and Minnie. She treats them like her own babies and spends a lot of time talking to them. Of course, she does not mind getting scratched.

Soon after we brought the latest additions home, we got them their shots. Just like Daisy had started going out on her own, we assumed that these three will do the same. But no. Whether we lock up Munchy in the bedroom and let them roam around or put them in the bedroom with the windows open, they rarely go out for more than ten minutes.

Coming back to the meaning of Bukul’s name assuming such significance, we are convinced that some unknown factor was at play when her Ajju gave her that name. After all, it was she who was instrumental in bringing the helpless Daisy home. Her daughter Aari pointed out the presence of the dying kitten to her. It was she who first heard the piteous mewing of the three siblings who have now been with us for almost eight months. Connects? Doesn’t it?

There is a tom cat roaming around in our colony. A few days back it attacked Kittoo near our main door. Bukul rushed out and drove it away. Male cats are known to kill male kittens so we are really scared. Minnie will soon be able to conceive. Must get them all spayed. There isn’t room for more additions. Sorry, house full!

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Baby in the womb - Amazing anatomy models

The science museum of Bologna (Italy) has an amazing collection of anatomy models created around mid-1700s, and used for teaching to the medical students and obstetricians. I especially love the part of this museum that presents the models of babies in their mothers' wombs. If you ever visit Bologna and you are interested in human anatomy, do not forget to visit this museum.

This photo-essay presents some of the anatomical models from The Palazzo Poggi Science Museum of Bologna university.

Origins of anatomy models in Bologna

In 1758 Pope Benedict XIV asked the university of Bologna to establish a school for teaching obstetrics in Palazzo Poggi, that hosted the Bologna university at that time. Dr Giovanni Antonio Galli (1708-1782) was the first professor of obstetrics at this school. Most of the anatomy models displayed in Palazzo Poggi were created during the second half of 1700s by anatomy artists like Anna Morandi Manzolini, Giovanni Manzolini, Ercole Lelli and Clemente Susini. The models are made mainly in two kinds of materials - cold painted terracotta and wax.

Some of the first obstetrics models showing babies in the mother's womb were made by Giovanni Manzolini for Prof. Galli. When Giovanni Manzolini died in 1755, Prof. Galli asked his wife Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774), who was also an artist and used to help her husband, to make the models. Majority of obstetrics models displayed in the Palazzo Poggi science museum are by Anna, who did human dissections and was appointed as the professor of anatomy.

Ercole Lelli (1702-1766) was a well known painter and anatomy modeller. His speciality was wax models of human bodies showing the bones and the muscles. Finally Clemente Susini (1754-1814) was another important artist who specialised in preparing wax models showing the different organs.

Obstetrics models of Palazzo Poggi

Let us start this virtual tour with a terracotta representation of Prof. Galli teaching to obstetricians. It shows both a pregnant woman as well as an anatomical model used for teaching. However, in reality only models were used for teaching and actual people were not brought in the theory classes.

When I had studied medicine in Delhi (India), we did not have any such models. Though I had studied human anatomy and obstetrics, most of our learnings were through looking at few diagrams and imagining the human body.

Today, the 3D computer-based models are common and are a wonderful learning tool. Some time ago, during a free online Coursera course on the anatomy of the upper limb, I had tried learning through virtual 3D models and they were wonderful!

Even comparing with the quality of virtual 3D models, I think that the terracotta models shown below are absolutely amazing.

During the pregnancy, the baby keeps on moving in different positions in the womb. Only when it is close to the delivery time, baby takes the position for the delivery. In most cases, the baby's head goes inside the birth canal and the opening of the uterus begins to dilate. Some of the possible positions for a head-first delivery are shown in the image below (though in these models, the head is still not engaged inside the birth canal):

Some times, instead of the head, baby's butt or the feet come out first - it can mean a more difficult delivery, especially if it is a first baby. Some of the positions for butt or feet first delivery are shown in the following models:

Inside the uterus, the baby is closed inside a membrane filled with liquid - the amniotic sack and the amniotic liquid, while the umbilical cord connects the baby to the placenta on the uterine wall as shown in the next models.

How do twin babies grow inside the uterus is another fascinating area of study, and are shown in the next images.

Most child-births are fairly straight-forward affairs, and women are known to have delivered even alone. However some times there can be complications. Thus regular check-ups during the pregnancy and the presence of a trained obstetrician or a trained traditional birth attendant is important during the child-birth.

Some countries in Africa and South Asia, including India, continue to have high mortality rates for the mothers and the new born babies. Urban areas in India have highly privatised health services with extremely high rates of Cesarean sections. On the other hand, services in rural areas and for the urban poor are lacking or are of poor quality. Reducing mortality of mothers and new born babies is one of the Millennium Development Goals - unfortunately, the progress for reaching this goal has not been sufficient.

The next image shows models depicting some complications during deliveries - intervention for removing placenta (normally placenta separates automatically after the child birth and comes out, but sometimes, it may need to be removed) and the rupture of the uterus.

The position of the placenta in the uterus can sometimes be a problem, if it is placed close to the opening of the uterus and thus, can rupture during the early phases of the child-birth. Therefore, an ultra-sound test is important during the pregnancy to rule out any malformations and to confirm the position of the placenta.

Unfortunately in countries like India and China, ultra-sound test may also be used for sex-determination and abortion of female foetuses.

The next image shows the wax models explaining the different positions of placenta inside the uterus.

Ercole Lelli's wax models

The anatomy museum also has the wax models of Ercole Lelli showing the human bodies, especially the bones and muscles. There are both male and female models, that show the different layers of skin, tissues, muscles and bones in the human body. These make learning of human anatomy such as the functions of individual muscles in moving different joints, so much simpler.

The Venerina of Clemente Susini

Clemente Susini had specialised in the models showing different organs of the body, important for understanding of human anatomy and physiology. One of his most famous creations is the model of a pregnant woman, where you can remove different layers of skin and muscles to look inside different organs, and to take out individual organs to study them.

Conclusions

Every time I visit the anatomy museum of Palazzo Poggi, I wish that we had access to such models when we were studying medicine. Even if you are not a doctor, I think that such models are interesting because they help us to understand our bodies better.

Palazzo Poggi museum has different sections including astronomy, physics, geology, natural history, boats and war-strategy. In this post I have limited myself to the anatomy models, but other sections of the museum are also very interesting. It is a 14th century building with some truly wonderful frescoes. If you are planning a visit to Bologna, do not forget to visit this beautiful museum!

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When Economic Bubbles Burst

Norwegian documentary film When Bubbles Burst (Når boblene brister) by director Hans Petter Moland is about a small town called Vik in Norway that loses its investments, and about their efforts to understand the workings of global economy that led to it. If you are a small investor or a person suffering the impact of global economic crisis, watch this film to understand the issues and to put pressure on your Governments to regulate the banking and financial sectors.

"When Bubbles Burst" will be a part of the International Documentary Film Festival "Mondovisioni" to be held at cinema Kinodromo in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

The global economic crisis has had a crippling impact on the world's economy since 2008. That crisis is not yet over. It has involved countries like Iceland, Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland. It has resulted in a prolonged period of recession with loss of jobs and closure of factories in different parts of the world.

This crisis was initiated by the crash of American banking systems due to accumulation of bad debts. At that time, there were talks of saving these banks since otherwise the bank-crash would have wiped out the savings of millions of small investors. At the same time, it was said that banking system was rotten with high level of financial speculation, risky investments, junk bonds, and billions of dollars siphoned off in bonuses to the bankers.

At the end Governments had paid millions of dollars' worth of aid to the banks. However, the proposed reforms of the banking system never took place and many of the major international banks continue to behave as if nothing has changed.

For ordinary persons, it is not easy to understand what had happened and what to expect in future. "When the Bubbles Burst" tries to take an in-depth look at the global economic mechanisms to explain this crisis and to pose some future scenarios, by talking to experts like Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Lewis, Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Carlota Perez.

Film

The film starts in the village of Vik in Norway, an idyllic rural community that dreams of building a tunnel and a road to connect to the nearby town. In 2007, the municipality of Vik had invested the funds for building the road and tunnel in Terra Securities, a "triple A guaranteed savings", through the American Citibank group. However, Terra Securities had turned out to be valueless junk bonds based on bad subprime loans and the municipality had lost all the money.

Two persons from Vik, involved in the investment, travel to USA to try to understand what had happened. The whole film is about their meetings with different experts who explain the why and how of the disconnect between the "financial economy" and "real economy", and how the technological progress has provided the foundation on which speculative financial markets can play "casino" with the banks and economies of the whole world. "Financial economy or the speculative investments are needed and necessary", they say, "because they provide the power to new innovations and development, but they have to be regulated. If financial economy becomes 50 to 70 times real economy, then it is not sustainable and leads to a crash."

They also visit and talk to persons crushed by the financial crisis. The house loans at very low interest rates were given to fuel the financial bubble but with the financial crisis, the value of those houses has decreased by 2/3rds, while people are forced to take loans to pay the bank interests.

They also visit Detroit, a symbol of the economic crisis with its closed and abandoned factories, decaying buildings with broken windows, an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Comments

The film provides an understanding about the diverse and complex factors that influence the creation of economic bubbles and their crashes. The economic crisis is not yet over - it will last another 7-10 years, one expert says. The closure of the crisis will also require regimentation of the financial sector that is resisting to be regulated in any way. Thus the situation may get even worse before a solution will be found, the film says.

One of the most interesting part of the film is the explanation by Carlota Perez about the cycles of expansion and crash of economic bubbles as essential part of our society. Thus economic crisis are "creative destruction", she says.

This is the fifth cycle of technological advancement and economic crisis in modern era, Perez explains. Each cycle takes us into a new golden age of progress. The first cycle was linked to industrial revolution around 1850. It was followed by progress-crisis cycles linked to railways and steam power development and then to the cheap steel linked development that had led to the wall street crash in 1929, followed by the golden age of progress due to constructions in the suburbs, cars, plastics, appliances and cheap oil after the second world war which led to the economic growth of 1960-80s. It had also led to dismantling of financial markets' regulations by persons like Reagan and Thatcher.

Perez explains that each cycle starts with an installation phase, where a new technology comes with the help of few small investors and slowly gathers steam to expand into a financial bubble, leading to the bubble crash and the crisis. This is followed by a golden age of development that requires use of that technology in transforming the society. Her hypothesis is that green economy could be the future for bringing the golden age following the present crisis. However, it would depend upon upon the initiatives of specific Governments to regulate financial economy and to provide support to the direction of the new developments through appropriate policies.

For the construction-car-oil-appliances cycle USA government under Roosevelt had taken lead by providing appropriate policies. For the new cycle of golden age, the experts seem doubtful if the appropriate policies can come from USA or will take place in another part of the world. Thus, the film ends on a hopeful note of a new and better future.

I found the film fascinating for explaining an area of life that I find difficult to understand and also for the way it explains the links between crisis and development.

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The defector - Leaving North Korea

"The defector" is a documentary film by Korean-Canadian director Ann Shin that follows a group of persons who escape from North Korea in their search for freedom. It is like a thriller as it follows a journey across different Asian countries. The film also makes you reflect on ideas and words like sovereignty, defection, illegal emigrants and human traffickers, usually heard on TV news and perceived as abstract concepts.

"The defector" will be part of Mondovisioni, the International Documentary Film Festival that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

Every year hundreds of thousands of persons leave their countries for dangerous journeys in search of a better life. Many of them lose their lives during these journeys. Some of them are caught during transit in other countries and exploited or imprisoned. Some other are caught in their destination country and sent back. Finally some of them, manage to escape in their destination countries and hide as "clandestines", hoping for some way of legalizing their presence sooner or later.

The clandestines and those who somehow manage to get a legal status in their new homelands, inspire hundreds of other hopefuls from their villages and cities to follow their paths.

There are opportunities for making money from these journeys - at every step of the journey, through each of transit countries and finally in the destination country, some monetary transaction occurs. The persons who organize and help the journeys are called agents or guides by the emigrants and "human traffickers" by the destination countries. They may be linked to organised crime networks. They are known to be ruthless, exploitative and brutal. At the same time, they need to ensure that at least some emigrants reach the destination, otherwise the word of their non-reliability spreads and they lose business.

The emigrants, usually from lower strata, who do not have the qualifications or the resources to become legal emigrants or student-emigrants, need significant amounts of money for these journeys.

Despotic regimes, wars and conflicts also force large numbers of persons to leave their homes and thus increase the pressure on illegal emigration. "The Defector" follows one such journey.

The film

"The defector" follows a small group of persons from North Korea during their journey in China. From north of China, they travel to Xian, accompanied by their guide Mr. Dragon. Then they travel from Xian to Kunming. Finally, they are taken over by another guide who takes them through parts of Laos to northern Thailand, where they can come out as refugees. After spending a few months in Thailand, they enter South Korea, their destination country.

The film focuses on the stories of three persons - the guide, Mr. Dragon and two North Korean women - Sook Ja and Yong Hee.

Mr. Dragon, with a past in North Korean army, had crossed into China more than 10 years ago and is guide/trafficker for other North Koreans. Sook Ja wants to escape from the repressive regime in North Korea and to find her sister, who had escaped seven years earlier and then disappeared. Yong Hee, sold as an illegal bride to a Chinese farmer more than 10 years earlier, wants to escape from the illegal life.

A small part of the film is about Mr. Heo, a north Korean refugee in Canada and his efforts to help other north Korean refugees.

Comments

The film has been shot with hidden cameras and you never see the full faces of any persons escaping from North Korea. Most of the film is about the journey in China - from the north to Kunming. It shares some details about how to escape the control systems in China, but most such information that can be used to trace specific persons or the escape routes is not there. As spectators you are quickly drawn into the stories of the three main protagonists of the film and you can feel their fear and tension, wondering if they are going to make or will get caught and sent back to face prisons and torture in North Korea?

The film has some scenes from north Korea about the general poverty but the stories of the three protagonists are not so much about poverty as they are about repression in the country and their search for better life opportunities.

Talking about the making of the film, Ann Shin had written:

One of the North Koreans not chosen by Dragon was Kyung-shil, a pretty young woman wearing a sparkly sweater and black high heels. She had defected several years ago and ended up in the hands of traffickers in China. Now she worked as a call girl and sent money to her family back in North Korea. Estimates are that eight out of 10 North Korean women found in China are trafficked and sold to men as brides, or sold into the sex industry. (The one-child policy in China had created a demand for North Korean women.)

I wondered if Sook-ja’s older sister had been trafficked.

Dragon told Kyung-shil and the others that he would come back for them on his next trip. For now, he, Sook-ja and my camera crew had a long journey ahead of us where we would travel and film covertly.

We journeyed day and night on buses and trains, jumping off at certain times to avoid inspectors. Dragon knew the schedules like clockwork and we all grew to trust him implicitly. Making documentaries is a leap of faith; That faith is built on the trust a filmmaker establishes with his or her subjects. It’s remarkable how quickly trust builds when lives are at stake.

The most heart-wrenching part of the journey was when the defectors were only miles away from freedom. Trekking through the Laotian jungle, having evaded police patrols and crossed two mountains, Sook-ja suddenly broke down in tears. The realization had just struck her: she was utterly alone. She could see now that her elderly mother would never be able to make this physically demanding journey. The whole purpose of her trek was to reunite her family, but she hadn’t found her sister, and she would never see her mother again.

“I want to erase my name,” she wept. “I want to forget the memory of being born and growing up.”

The journeys of the emigrants are all about loss and alienation - dreaming of better futures and losing families and friends, fearing for families and friends, and living clandestine lives in alien lands where they are just a commodity for sale and exploitation. The nightmares do not end even when they reach the lands of their dreams - in South Korea, they need to go through a process to ensure that they are not north Korean spies. The fear for their family and friends left in north Korea never ends and making a new life is tough, because prejudices run deep.

Personally I found Dragon to be the most interesting character in the film - for the law in China and Laos, he is a "human trafficker" - exploiting the escapees for earning money, but he sees himself as a human rights fighter, helping his country-persons to find a new life and risking his own life. "I am brutal" he agrees, "but it is the only way to save their lives and my life."

In the new globalized world, the rich are welcome every where, money and goods can move freely across borders but not other human beings. Thus people from the south, try to cross the Mexican-USA border, while immigrants to West Europe face dangerous journeys across eastern Europe and Mediterranean sea.

Each of them follows a dream but most of those who survive, live lives of exploitation and discrimination, holding on desperately to life, willing to settle for a precarious security, hoping for better lives for their children. "The defectors" gives you a glimpse into their lives.

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Down the musical memories lane

This post has been stimulated by the book “How music works” by David Byrne of the Talking Heads music group. It is about my musical memories as well as, presentation of some of my music related images.

David Byrne’s book has been a revelation – bringing an understanding about an area about which I had never thought before. Most persons like or even love music. Yet, we have no idea about how music is made and appreciated today. In the book, Byrne writes:

“Just as theater is an actor and a writer’s medium, and cinema is a director’s medium, recorded music often came to be a producer’s medium, in which they could sometimes out-auteur the artists they were recording.”

This surprised me very much - would you have thought that recorded music is a producer's medium and not the medium of the artist singing or playing that music?

When films had changed from the silent era to the talkies, there was a big change and suddenly actors who had dominated the silent movie era, were left without work. Similarly, each technical change related to the music recording and distribution – from radios to gramophones to tape recorders to CD players to MP3 players, affected and changed the way the music was played, recorded and understood, Byrne explains in his book. Where you played the music, from a jukebox in a noisy bar or in a concert hall, also influenced it. For example, why does an average song’s duration is around three and a half minutes all over the world and across different languages and cultures? Read Byrne’s book if you like music, it gives you an insight into things about music that today we take for granted.

My musical memories

My first memories of music are linked to the Bush transistor my parents had bought in 1963. It was the time when Laxmikant Pyarelal had come out with Parasmani and were dominating all music charts. It was the time of Amin Sayani presenting the Binaca geetmala on radio Ceylon. Listening to radio Ceylon was not easy, finding the station on SW2 was tough, but there was no choice because at that time there were no sponsored programmes on Vividh Bharati. Guide had come out in 1965 and I remember the first time I had heard Kishore Kumar singing “Gaata rahe mera dil”.

Amin Sayani also did 15 minutes long film-trailor programmes that presented the main story, actors, some dialogues and songs from new films. I remember listening to one such programme about “Phool aur patthar” and Meena Kumari’s voice from that film.

Around 1966-67 I had first seen the gramophone with the handle on the side, that you had to crank up to listen to the LPs. One day I will also have a gramophone, I had promised myself.

Late 1960s had introduced me to the English pop music at my cousin’s home, when I had listened to "Delialah" by Tom Jones and the "Sunshine girl" by the Herman's Hermits.

Around that time I had discovered Forces’ Request on Delhi B on Friday evenings and thus found out Cliff Richards and Jim Reeves. Songs like “Outsider”, “The lemon tree” and “To sir with love”, had become my favourites.

During the 1970s, I had discovered the Hindustani classical music. My uncle had introduced me to “Nirguna bhajans” by Kumar Gandharav. Going to night concerts on Rafi Marg, and listening to giants like Vilayat Khan had suddenly made me appreciate Indian Ragas.

During 1970s, I still remember the first time I had heard Prabha Atre sing “Tan man dhan tope varun” and Mehdi Hassan sing “Awaraghi”. And I remember my first concert of Kishori Amonkar.

In the 1970s, my aunt had shifted to the staff quarters of Janaki Devi college in Rajendra Nagar and that had given opportunities to listen to maestros like Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Jasraj.

I had come to the European symphonic music and the opera music only after I had come to Italy in 1980. Dvorak’s “In the new world” was the first symphony that I had liked and slowly it had opened the doors to appreciation of other composers, from Verdi to Beethoven. On the other hand, though I loved watching the operas like Aida and Madam Butterfly, I could not appreciate listening to them for a very long time. It is relatively recently that I have started enjoying listening to operas.

Over the last three decades, my work took me to different countries of the world and I started appreciating music from other languages, like Arabic music from Egypt and traditional polyphonic singing from Mongolia.

A visual music tour

Once I started searching for images related to music in my archives, I found that I have hundreds of them. Selecting a few for presenting here was not easy and I had to discard many images that I liked very much. Any way here is my selection.

Let me start with images of music from India - India has such a rich tradition of folk-music, Hindustani and Carnatak music and of course the film music. I like all the different kinds of Indian music.

Today where ever in the world you may live, you can usually listen to music from your country through the internet. However in the 1980s and most of 1990s, it was not so - finding Indian music in Italy was not easy. However, Hare Krishna groups had Indian bhajans and I remember buying a Hari Om Saran music cassette from them once. The image below of the Hare Krishna persons singing and dancing is from Prague.

Prague is also where I saw the wonderful sculptures of blindfolded musicians and dancers by Anna Chromy.

The next image is from London underground, that has a rich tradition of buskers playing music at tube stations and in the metro train. Acoustics of some of the tube stations is marvellous and some of the music I have heard in the tube station sounded absolutely amazing. Like I remember once listening to a busker playing Ravel's "Bolero" on a saxophone at the Piccadilly station, it was the most beautiful rendering of this music that I had ever heard.

London also has the long-standing musical show on Queen's Eddie Mercury - do you remember him singing "I want to break free"? Listening to him, made my blood pulse.

The next two images are from Vienna (Austria) - folk musicians from Slovenia and the statue of Mozart.

The next two images are from Brazil, from a school that teaches Amerindian and Afro music traditions to children to create awareness and respect for these two cultures that are often looked down in contemporary Brazil.

In different parts of the world the dominating cultures mean that the traditions of the indigenous people are seen as "inferior" - music can help us in changing perceptions and helping people to appreciate the value of other cultures. When I had visited the school in Brazil, I had asked myself if in India, the songs and music of Dalits and tribal groups have specific cultural characteristics in different states of India and are similarly ignored? Perhaps someone who knows more about this, can answer my question?

The next two images are from Mongolia. Mongolian traditional singing uses polyphonic sounds to create a special kind of music. I love these ancient melodies, usually sung by men, that seem to come from somewhere deep inside them. The second image has chanting of Buddhist prayers by the monks, an ancient tradition of sacred music that has the power to touch me deeply.

During my journeys in China, I had the opportunity to listen to both traditional music as well as the pop Chinese music. While ancient Chinese traditions received a blow during the cultural revolution and were ruthlessly crushed, in the last twenty years, many of those traditions have re-emerged. The next image presents a guy singing a modern song.

The next two images are from the annual buskers' festival held in Ferrara (Italy) in August. I love the street artists and thus I like visiting Ferrara to listening to them from different parts of the world.

The last images of this post are all from Bologna, the Italian city where I live. Bologna is culturally very active city and every visit to the city centre presents some new opportunity for listening to live music.

The next image is from the music museum of Bologna, one of the most interesting museums that I have seen, presenting notations, music books and instruments from different parts of the world.

The last image of this post is of Dr Ashwini Bhide, a Hindustani classical singer from India, during her performance in Bologna. I like her singing very much and one of her bhajans, "Ganapati vighnaharan" is my favourite. During her concert in Bologna, she had sung that bhajan for me and it remains one of my most cherished musical memories.

I hope that this post has stimulated your musical memories! Wish you all an enjoyful walk down your musical memories lane.

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God loves Uganda! Unfortunately.

The documentary film “God loves Uganda” by director Roger Ross Williams is about American christian groups who feel that they have a special mission for Uganda and about the impact of their work on different aspects of human rights in the African country. The film provides a glimpse into one of the forces that has shaped large parts of humanity in the last five hundred years – the force of cultural colonization.

“God loves Uganda” is part of the international documentary film festival called Mondovisioni, that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna (Italy) in January-April 2014.

Introduction

About five hundred years ago, the colonization era saw Europeans spreading out towards American, African and Asian lands. Exploiting the natural resources of the conquered lands was the most important goal of this colonization. It also resulted in actions that shaped millions of lives, including the decimation of indigenous populations and the slave trade. The conquering armies were accompanied by missionaries, who were supposed to take the word of “the only true God” to the heathen "to civilise them".

Thus colonization took cultural ideas from the old world and established their hegemony in the conquered lands. After the end of the second world war, as the colonies became free countries, they usually carried the legacies of the colonial rules in their national constitutions and laws. It has been difficult to shake off those colonial legacies. For example, even today, the laws made by the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, continue to be the laws of independent India, including the infamous art. 377 of the Indian penal code that classifies homosexual relationships as a criminal offence.

The ideas of “the only true religion”, “the only true God”, “the only true prophet” and “the only true God’s book” are common to many religions but have been especially true for certain Christian and Muslim groups. Therefore, saving the souls of those who do not know about or believe in "the true God", has motivated many persons to dedicate their lives in spreading the word of God among the “non-believers”, including to persons of their own religions but who had slightly different beliefs.

“God loves Uganda” is about an evangelical American group who believe that all the answers of life are in the Bible. They have identified Uganda as the "God's land". About 84% of the population of Uganda is Christian, while another 12% is Muslim.

Film

Groups of American young men and women are influenced by charismatic church leaders like Lou Engle and Rev. Jo Anna Watson, to spend parts of their lives in spreading the words of love, brotherhood, peace and the true teachings of Bible to Uganda. “One million missionaries, one billion converts and one trillion dollars of funds” is the dream goal of one of the groups’ leaders from a church based on an ecstatic trance kind of religious ceremonies.

The American evangelicals have opened their centres in Uganda where they recruit and train young Ugandans to spread their ideas among others. The Ugandan acolytes are accompanied by the young missionaries from America. They are relentless and aggressive, standing on street sides and shouting to people about the dangers of sinning and the urgency of coming to the path of the true religion.

Persons like Rev. Kapya Kaoma and bishop Christopher Senyonjo, from Anglican church and traditional Ugandan church explain how the conservative ideas promoted by the American groups have taken hold among the general population, politicians and leaders of Uganda. These ideas touch on subjects like abstinence, adultery, use of condoms, abortions and homosexuality.

The film focuses especially on the conservative evangelical ideas about homosexuality and how those ideas have influenced the parliament debate in Uganda and resulted in the approval of a new national law that foresees a death penalty for homosexuals. At the same time, it has stoked growing intolerance in the public opinion towards gay, lesbian and transgender persons.

A sequence of the film shows a public meeting where evangelical pastor Martin Ssempa, through graphic images explains that homosexuality is all about licking assholes and eating shit, and thus needs to be punished by death. “The world, the U.N., all the countries have been taken over homosexuals. They will come and make your sons and daughters become perverts and homosexuals. Only we can stop them, it is our duty to stop them”, he thunders in the meeting.

Another episode of the film shows the funeral of a GLBT rights activist, during which the pastor criticises and asks the friends and companions of the activist, to give up being gay and lesbian, followed by attacks of goons on the persons who do not agree with his sermon.

Comments

The film is a frightening look at how good intentions, firm beliefs in God, peace and love, can become instruments of madness, murder and intolerance. That persons promoting and condoning these things are no scary zombies but rather next-door kind of clean-cut American and Ugandan young men and women, makes it even more frightening.

The American evangelical missionaries have actively collaborated with making of this film – they are very open in sharing their ideas and their activities. They are convinced that what they are doing is good and are willing to share everything about it. Their certainties in their religious beliefs makes any kind of dialogue and questioning difficult if not impossible. The strategy of American evangelical conservatives is to start by working with orphanages, schools and education system - by influencing and converting young people to their way of thinking.

The world knows much more about the impact of Wahabi ideas on the promotion of a fundamentalist and traditional view of Islam in different parts of the world. Similar knowledge about impact of conservative evangelical groups is much less, though their role in promoting American wars around the world and the American government's resistance to use of condoms and family planning measures (especially under the Bush administration) have been talked about. "God loves Uganda" shows that they are not very different from their Wahabi brothers.

I had read about the strong views against homosexuality in countries like Uganda and Malawi, but I had imagined that these were due to “traditional African beliefs”! “God loves Uganda” shows that there is nothing "traditional African" about them - ideas of conservative evangelicals from USA have played an active role in arriving at this kind of public opinion and the intolerant laws.

Conclusions

“God loves Uganda” is a close look at how the desire of "helping others", promoted by persons with strong beliefs and lot of money, can influence and change a society's beliefs, and reinforce certain kind of ideas.

Wahabi islamists and evangelicals like IHOP (International house of prayer, Kansas, USA) are not the only ones who want to mould the world to their ideas. Other hardliners including conservative groups among Jews, Buddhist, Hindus and Sikhs, have been inspired by them and have similar ambitions, though usually their activities are focused in their own countries.

How these conservative religious views and processes are shaping our world and what kind of world will be there tomorrow? What role is played by the new technologies in the globalized world in spreading of such views? In the war between the ideas embodied in the United Nations’ declaration of human rights and the ideas of conservative religious groups, which ideas will dominate humanity in the coming decades? The film left me troubled, pondering on such questions.

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