Friday, December 13, 2013

Bangalore Stories-2013


Bangalore Stories
I visited India recently and these are a few of the stories I heard from people I know and people I just met off the street.
Wishing to visit Fab India next to Seva Sadan in Koramangala, I hopped into an auto driven by an old Muslim gentleman. He said he did not know Seva Sadan but would take me to Koramangala and then he said instead of wasting our time, trying to find it, it would be best if we took another auto. We told him, not to worry and we would not mind searching for the address when we got there. We then told him, how much we appreciated his being upfront about not knowing the address and his asking us to take another auto. The conversation ball was set rolling by us and he then told us, how he had been duped by a young stranger (a Muslim) exactly a week ago; he gave 22 thousand rupees to this stranger who vanished with it!! He was visibly upset and told us that he did not drive the auto for three days as he was so ashamed of being duped, so angry, so depressed, so humiliated and that he did not give a police complaint as his wife told he would be the laughing stock of their friends and relatives if people knew he had been cheated. I felt deeply sad to hear his tale of woe and livid with the stranger who duped him. The young conman had apparently spoken to this old driver asking him about his family and our driver had told him about his children, their search for a job and also asked  if this  guy could help his sons get a government job. The conman then told the old man, that he could help him but he would need money and the old man’s photo and a copy of his driving licence, etc. Our driver said he felt mesmerized by this young man’s talk or that the young man had probably done some sort of magic on him, and that though he had never ever trusted a stranger, he did trust this guy and gave him his entire savings of 22k. The young man took the money and told the driver that he should get one more photo and that he would wait while he got one more photo. The old man gave the cash and went to fetch one more photo…when he returned the young conman was gone…so was our driver’s money!
I encouraged the old driver to report to the police and explain everything as the young man must be conning a lot more people in the same way. The old man, even had a couple of phone numbers the con-artist had given him (but no one’s picking the phone now). I gave him one thousand rupees, when I reached my destination, which the old driver initially refused, but I insisted. He then broke down crying. I told him, that he was depressed by his loss and that he may need three months to recover from the depression and that he will feel better in a while. I left him with tears in his eyes…and my heart burning with rage and sadness at his plight.

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My friend works at an NGO. She has the good luck to work with a fantastic team of people…her colleagues are intelligent, dedicated, radical and passionate…..unlike most people, they are not working just to make money; they are the kind of people who care about society, the downtrodden, have adopted children, though they have their own, they are not running after wealth and other typical Indian middleclass mainstream ambitions…if you know what I mean.

My friend told me this tidbit about one of her colleagues which fascinated me…this colleague of hers, is a Hindu from a distant city, young, beautiful and with a post graduate degree. She has met and married a Muslim, who, like her, is different from the mainstream middleclass people one normally sees in Bangalore…he is a writer, into film making, has been working in the editorial section of magazines, and so on. The fascinating thing about their marriage is that she has kept her marriage a secret from her family for the last eight to nine years! The few people, who know about her marriage, have closely guarded her secret! If her brothers knew, she was married to a Muslim, they would definitely kill him and probably kill her too! I find this so sad and scary…she cannot have children, even if she wanted to….hiding something as big as a marriage for so long, from so many people is to be constantly on guard and constantly fear being found out.

This would make a good plot for a love story in a movie…but I cannot imagine living a life like this…for 8 years and forever!

 

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Continuing on this topic of Hindu Muslim hatred, I discovered that I had been too optimistic and naïve, in believing that this hatred has reduced or disappeared in Bangalore. A driver whom I had hired was chatting with us and when we passed a certain Muslim dominant area, he commented how dangerous and untrustworthy the Muslims were in really colourful Kannada! An aged Brahmin priest who was with me commented in a neutral tone, that, after all was said and done, the Muslims were devoted to their religion and that, this it was admirable. Then the driver responded by saying that he was not saying that all Muslims were bad, that there were a few good Muslims too! I really appreciated this aged Brahmin priest’s admiration of Muslims! This Brahmin priest, is probably highly religious due to his priestly profession and he was probably disgruntled by the Hindus diminishing faith and interest in Hinduism… and he was appreciative of Muslims whom he perceived as highly religious(This priest is unlikely to have ever interacted with a single Muslim…all he knows about Muslims is hearsay)

I realized that this distrust of Muslims among the lower educated Hindus (this distrust of Muslims is possibly present in Hindus of all levels of economic strata, education, class, caste, whatever…and definitely much worse in smaller towns and villages) still persisted in 2013 and the passage of time has done little to reduce this blind hate.

Living as a Muslim in many parts of India must be really difficult for so many reasons…I don’t want to go into that now but I feel really sad and ashamed about it. If an Indian Muslim cannot feel welcome or feel  at home in India, if an Indian Muslim has to constantly be on guard, not knowing if his Hindu friends are really his friends or not….his life is not worth living!

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The Brahmin priest in the above story had officiated the wedding of four siblings in one family over a range of 18 years. Due to his advanced years and frail health, he was  reluctant to officiate at the last wedding but agreed when the family insisted.  While interacting with the first of the brothers whose marriage he had conducted 18 years ago, he discovered that the guy was childless. Even though the guy insisted that he did not want to have children and that it was by choice that he was childless, the aged priest was  upset and wondered if he had done some mistake while performing the marriage rituals and if this was why the couple did not have any children! The childless guy laughed and told the priest not to worry but the priest, pulled this guy's wife forward and asked her if she had stomach pains! He even  asked the rest of the family to leave the room so that he could speak  to the childless wife in private!
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I went on a bus trip to Hampe. It was a KSTDC sleeper bus and was surprisingly comfortable! (I found it comfortable….my standards are pretty low and I am easy to please!)

The bus started late and then stopped for people to pee and have coffee. I got off the bus and asked the conductor where the lady’s toilet was and he pointed in the direction behind the teashop. I went off in the dark behind the tea shop only to find myself in the open field, with men from the bus, walking from the other side of the tea shop into the fields to pee!

I was scared to sit down to pee for two reasons: a snake or a scorpion biting my bum when I sit to pee;2. The men who were peeing may be able to see my exposed butt(even though it was dark, I had this fear). I did not pee but walked back to the bus. I could not sleep the rest of the way as my mind busy thinking about peeing! After a few hours, the bus stopped and the driver announced that the road was going to become bumpy and he asked us to pee (He was afraid we would pee in our pants, when the bus hit the potholes on the road). I got down this time too as by now I really wanted to pee. But this time, there was only open space on both sides of the road…not even a tree behind which I could discreetly pee! I was furious and got in again without peeing. Bus drivers and conductors being men, have no regard about women travellers I think!

Around 6 in the morning, when I felt my bladder would burst, I went to the driver and asked him to stop as I wanted to pee. He asked me why I did not pee earlier and I asked him, how the hell I was expected to pee in front of men in the open space, with no privacy at all. He asked the conductor why the conductor had not told me about peeing at the first stop and the conductor told him that he had informed me (about the women’s pissing area behind the tea shop). I demanded that the driver stop the bus and let me out and also not to let any of the men to get down until I finished. He then pulled over and I got off the bus, crossed the road and walked into what might be a forest…there were trees, plants and grass growing wildly with rocks and stones lying around. No signs of  any people such as fields, huts or houses. I walked into this growth, until I felt I was hidden from the bus and with great pleasure and hurry, tore my pants down and squatted down for a loooong pee! When I was relieving myself of this gallon, I was lucky enough to see a fox walk just a few yards from where I was..it seemed to look in my direction and then it vanished. I was so thrilled!  To see an animal in the wild in India is sort of rare and I had got to see this beautiful fox by sheer chance!

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Current cost of a Middle-class Hindu wedding in Bangalore: I attended the wedding of a close relative in October 2013. Friends and relatives of mine were comparing the cost of recent weddings with this one. I was shocked to see how the prices were escalating year after year, while the income of many people remained stagnant.

This is the break up of the cost of the wedding I attended (October 2013). This is the wedding in a middleclass family, in Bangalore.

Cost of hiring the wedding hall: about one lakh rupees per day that is two lakhs for two days(it’s not two days actually but the second half of the first day and first half of the second day)

Cost of flower decorations for the hall: 80,000-00 ( I thought this was too much and not worth this money…but the family had to hire this guy for flower arrangements as the wedding hall owner allows only this guy to decorate the hall and not any other decorator…and the people hiring him are forced to pay what he asks(he shows photos of  a few decorations with varying costs and you choose what you want)

Food: four and quarter lakh rupees(a simple meal for a few(100-200 guests) and a grand dinner for reception(thousand guests) the first day and breakfast (for about 150 guests)and grand lunch(for 500-600 guests) after the wedding, on the second day). I think it was about 250-00 rupees per plate for the lunch and dinner

Use of gas, electricity, etc for cooking: about 40 thousand rupees (paid to the hall…not part of the rent)

Coconuts for tambula: about 15 thousand rupees

Wedding cards : each card cost about 40 rupees and about 500 cards i.e. 20,000 rupees plus cost of printing(I do not know how much the printing cost). Cheaper cards were available but the bride wanted cards which were grand-looking and of hand-made paper ( I understand that much more expensive cards than these, exist)

Cost of saris: The bride wore about eight or nine new saris over two days’ time, for various rituals ( Gourie pooja, sari when she entered the wedding hall, sari for the engagement, sari for reception, sari for the bangle-wearing ceremony; sari for the wedding; sari presented by in laws, sari to enter groom’s house) her saris must have cost anywhere between 75 thousand and a lakh. Apart from this, new saris and clothes to be worn for two days for her mother, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, parents, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law. And then, the gift of clothes to her closest relatives and to the groom and his family.

I was shocked to see the cost of getting a sari blouse stitched these days! I have not been in India for over four years and the inflation in India has simply zapped me! I feel out of breath when I hear some costs! Another major change I saw this time was that women, especially young ones, no longer wear simple blouses! The blouses have become terribly fancy and have embroidery and cost a fortune to stitch! I could not believe that one blouse with embroidery costs over two thousand rupees to stitch! My lovely silk wedding sari, over a decade ago, cost less than what it costs to stitch a blouse today! Factoring in the cost of stitching several blouses not only for the bride but for about 6 other women, makes the wedding budget bloat like anything.

The family also bought about a hundred and fifty blouse pieces to be given to guests. I do not know the cost of this, but will find out and add it here later. (each was a one meter of cotton  blouse material of good quality, bought wholesale, in Avenue road)

The bride’s family hired cars and drivers not only on the wedding day but also to distribute the wedding cards. It cost them about one thousand rupees per day, as far as I know and their wedding-related travel cost would have come to about 50 thousand rupees or slightly more.

They also had to spend on jewels such as the ring and a chain for the groom; the bride already had a pair of gold bangles, a chain and earrings at time of wedding and did not  buy jewels for herself for the wedding(the jewels she had is really minimum, when compared to what her cousins had when they got married).

The makeup lady cost about 50 thousand rupees for two days and I think this was way too much!

Expenses below ten thousand rupees each included the cost of (1)pooja items, (2)cost of hiring the priests, (3)cost of building and taking down the chapra in front of the house of the bride, (4)the cost of hiring the bangle-seller to come to the wedding hall to put bangles on the bride’s hands and other women,(5)musicians(Volga) during the wedding,(6) the taped music during the reception,(7)tips and gifts to servants in the family and the workers in the wedding hall,(8) accessories for the bride such as artificial jewels, slippers and purse for the wedding, artificial jewels, accessories for her female relatives, (9)things to take to the wedding hall for guests staying overnight at the hall itself(towels, soaps, toothpaste, locks and keys, etc)

Both families hired photographers and the bride’s photographer charged them about one lakh rupees (Don’t know, will find out and put the exact amount later) for photos of the two days (reception and wedding) and the Gauri pooja, which was done earlier at a different venue.

I am afraid to add up the cost as it seems such a lot to me…and friends assure me that this family has spent moderately and not lavishly!

I might have missed out some other expenses but this is all I can recall now. I am writing this for myself and also hope it is useful for anyone wondering how much a middle-class Hindu wedding in Bangalore costs now..in 2013.

 

I dread to think how much more this wedding would have cost if the groom’s family had demanded dowry or demanded the bride’s father to “celebrate the wedding in a grand way”. Fortunately, this was not a typical arranged marriage…in this wedding the bride and groom had chosen each other and the typical drama which occurs in arranged marriages was pleasantly absent.

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In the context of discussing wedding expenses, a friend of mine (he belongs to the business caste of Shettys) told me of a wedding he attended (Oct or Nov 2013) recently. I was shocked to hear of the expenses of that wedding. The flower decorations alone in this wedding cost 65 lakh rupees!! Apparently, the flowers were flown in from other countries and they were rare and expensive ones such as orchids. He also told me that as the decorating takes time, the wedding hall was hired for six days! That the road was blocked off for decorations. That the family also hired a ? Rolls Royce to roll the bridal couple in I think at the cost of about 50 thousand rupees per day! I was appalled…65 lakh for flower decorations and the flowers would be thrown out after the wedding! You are throwing out 65 lakh rupees…. I and a lots of Indians believe that most business class Indians do NOT PAY TAXES and they simply want to get rid of their money, in case the tax department raids them…they get rid of the money by spending lavishly…They would rather spend like this i.e. buying flowers worth 65 lakhs for a wedding , than give a raise in salary to their under-paid and over-worked employees; they would rather waste money like this than pay their taxes; they would rather waste money like this than donate to a hospital or pay for some poor student’s education….

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Another person of the Shetty community told me how worried he was about his niece’s marriage. Apparently, the Shetty singles, going in for arranged marriage, were demanding incredibly huge amounts as dowry. The parents of these Shetty single males had strictly warned the marriage brokers to prevent the brides’ fathers or whoever was negotiating for the brides from even having a peek at their son’s horoscope, if they could not give the money or property expected. My Shetty friend told me that, now the dowry was in crores and not in lakhs, like before. He said that he was so glad that the relative whose marriage I attended had found her own partner and had not gone into arranged marriage…I was shocked to hear him say this as this is a guy who was once pretty conservative and had himself gone in for an arranged marriage! Now that his own niece is struggling to get married, he is favouring ‘love marriages’.

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Talking of weddings, my cousins and I were discussing how weddings have changed over the decades and the changes are tremendous!  Let me tell about the weddings in rural areas about 50 years ago ( I was not born then but this is what I heard). The relatives who came stayed in the houses of thier relatives in the village where the wedding was held; these days, no weddings are ever held in the village! The villagers couduct thier weddings in nearby towns. Food was cooked by the women of the wedding party in huge containers on wood burning stoves, outside the house in those days. Now cooks are hired. Previously, the food was fairly simple except for a sweet dish or two. Now, even village weddings have a range of foods served during weddings. The 80 year old priest with whom I spent some time said, that people did not go and get a brand new cloth to hold as the screen between the bride and groom (part of the Gowda wedding ceremony) in those days. Instead, the person conducting the wedding would ask for a dhoti and one of the audience would take off his dhoti (and stand in his underwear, until his dhoti was no longer needed!) and hand it over to be used as the screen! I found this hilarious but the priest insisted that it was true. My grear-grandmother was married to a widower more than thrice her age, when she was just 10 years old. She was sent to her husband's house as soon as she attained puberty and bore 5 children (or more assuming some died in childhood). Now of course, there are no child marriages ( I hope!). In those days, farmers, did not want their daughter to marry into a family which stayed even a few miles away from their village but now, women are ready to marry and move even across continents, as distance is not a big problem now. (My grandmother told me how, in her childhhood,  they  travelled for months, to Tirupathi and back to her village in Tumkur   by bullock cart !) Thanks to prosperity or other reasons, now it is not just the bride or groom who buy new clothes for the wedding, but all family members. In those days, it was just the bride and the groom. My own wedding, 17 years ago, did not have much by way of  decorations. All we had was the traditional banana plants at the entrance of the wedding hall but now, city weddings, even middle class people's weddings, cost a fortune for flower decoration of the wedding venue.

 

Theft in houses by servants was a topic which seemed to dominate several conversations I had. I was so disturbed by this as I cannot tolerate having anyone inside my house, whom I cannot trust. I would rather have a dirty house or clean it myself than have servants whom I cannot trust. Theft is so much that one cannot leave a single item of even minimum value outside the house (and inside the compound) as someone was bound to flick it in no time. This particular house I visited depressed me no end….let me tell you why.

The kitchen knives and the scissors in this house were so bad, that though I offered to help in the chores by cutting vegetables, etc, I could not do it as the knife was so terrible. I then asked why the family did not use the good knives sent to them by their son from USA. I was told that all the good knives had got stolen by the hired help! I offered to buy them from India or Canada and they vehemently declined stating that it would be stolen in a week’s time or less! Every suggestion I made was turned down. They cannot manage without servants; they cannot find good servants who do not steal; they do not believe in finding servants from an agency; they cannot follow the servants when they work as the servants ask, “why are you following me? Do you think I will steal something?”; they cannot lock away everything, everytime;

I was so depressed and angry about this situation. When I grew up as a child in Bangalore, theft was not this high. We left things outside the house and things were never stolen. When I was a child, I only heard of clothes being stolen from the clothes line, where they were hung out to dry. Now even the ugliest things of the least value go missing..things such as dust rags, used brooms, broken vessels, brushes used to clean bathrooms. How miserable can the thief be, that he or she needs to steal these miserable things?

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Monday, August 12, 2013

Books to read in August 2013

Rickshaw Boy by Lao She

The Taliban Cricket club by Timeri N Murari

The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling

Borrowed these from the Toronto Public Library i.e. The Lillian H Smith branch.
 Has anyone noticed that some branches of the TPL seem to have more interesting and a wider range of books than others? Books by authors from other exotic countries, books from countries from which books rarely come out of...The Lillian H Smith, The North York Centre's library and  The Reference library at Yonge and Bloor  are three such branches. If I had not actually visited this library and wandered around, I might not  have discovered these books  and not read them!
 Did the authorities deem these libraries worthy of carrying more interesting books  due to the people and type of organizations  near these locations??? Or the large size of these libraries permits a bigger &  better collection? I dont know. But I am grateful that I can walk from work to the Lillian Smith Library in minutes.

Why did I borrow Rickshaw Boy? Maybe because I loved The Good Earth by Pearl.S.Buck and hope this book will throw more light on China of those days...China as  seen through Chinese eyes

The Taliban Cricket Club---because of the name Murari which is so south Indian! and of course the incongruity of the book's name and  curiosity about this country, which has reached the bottom of the pit, thanks to various factors.

The Casual Vacancy...Curiosity again. I am wondering if J.KR can pull it off with an adult novel.

I will write more when I finish these books.
Once again, I kiss the earth of this beautiful country Canada in gratitude...if I had not come here I would not have had access to these books from all over the world...free of cost...to read and enjoy!
 I am sure The Taliban Cricket Club is banned in Afganisthan and other such countries...people do not have freedom to read a book which is neither about sex or violence or religion or anything blasphemous or evil.
 In India, I may have the freedom to read but I cannot afford to buy and the public libraries do not have such books; In rural parts of India and half the world, there are neither books nor libraries nor even people with literacy...anyway in many parts of the world, people would rather have good food, drinking water and shelter than books such as these
 

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The closer...my new time-pass entertainment

I recently discovered a really good enjoyable television show called "The closer". The beauty of seeing an old show(not 'old-old' but all seasons have been aired and the show has been completed) is that I can see an episode daily until I have seen them all! And I am seeing it on the internet with no ads interrupting me!! And when I manage to wrestle the laptop from my husband for a long enough time, I even see two or three episodes at a stretch...And that, my friend is pure  bliss.

I love this show for so many reasons. It is humorous and it is a crime show ....humor and crime are both a must for me.
The main protoganist is a woman!! And how rare is that !
I love the acting of everyone and the writing is really really good. The plots are good, the crimes seem realistic and the dynamics between the people is interesting...I especially like the one between Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson and Detective Sgt. David Gabriel. Platonic relationships are rarely seen in the western tv shows and maybe that is one reason I liked this.

I am not much of a music person but this is one show where I really sat up and noticed the music. I loved the music in this show...not only at the end when the credits roll but all through the hour. For the first time ever, I checked out who the music composer  for a tv series was  and discovered that  it is James S Levine for 'The Closer'.
After watching The closer, I started paying attention to  the music of other shows. In comparision, to The Closer,  the music for' Law and Order, SVU' is not pleasant especially when they do that loud dramatic sound when they begin some scene...........but then, maybe, the music was meant to be  harsh ... to make the viewer experience discomfort instead of  pleasure, associating the unplesant harsh music with the heniousness of the crime.

I now recall that  I had loved the music at the beginning and end of  many Indian and western shows(but not really noticed the music during the show) ...I think I loved the music of Malgudi days, Mriganayani, Buniyaad and disliked the music of Ramayana and Mahabharatha. I liked the music of shows like the Practice, Boston Legal, Republic of Doyle.....
I have seen at least a 100 different shows  and I cannot remember these shows names now... let alone their music............am I forgetting or the music of these shows  are forgettable???

I am in the middle of the third season of The closer  and I  have several days of bliss to look forward to!
It's summer now and so  there are no new shows on  tv to fill in my evening hours....  the  new shows are aired  in fall and winter. At least, no new shows on the 6 channels on my tv...I dont have cable and I get these these 6 channels through an antenna.

The Closer  (and a million other such shows) should be seen by people living in male-dominent societies. It may at least make the people view women differently.... than the usual way of perceiving  women as dependent on  and inferior to men. I am trying to imagine the effect of this television show  on men and women in countries like Saudi Arabia, Afganisthan, Pakistan....... even  India, Russia or Japan. Male Chavunism is so rife in these countries (and of course several other countries too,) that people.......especially  men simply cannot accept  even a fictional female leader in a fictional  television show ...let alone a real female leader in real life! I am picturing the men I know in India and their comments about The Closer....
Some men would say that Brenda(the female and lead role in The Closer) is an American and American women are better than Indian women; they would accept this lady but not accept that an Indian lady too could have the strengths of Brenda.
Many many many ordinary Indian men I know,  think like little children...so they would be making fun of the weaknesses of Brenda such as her driving, her losing her way when she drives and so on. They would focus on these and lose sight of the bigger picture or her overall strengths.
Even attempts by girls and women to   achieve something or show ambition would be cut down by men(parents, brothers, friends, etc) who would comment by saying"Dont think you are a Brenda Lee Johnson".  How many times I have heard people putting down the attempts of people who try to achieve in India by making negative comments such as "Do you think you are Gandhi? Do you think you are Einstein?" and so on.

I recall the struggles of a female school principal in Hosur who could not get the men working under her to follow her command. They simply did not like taking orders from a woman and would do what was needed only when a male, much junior to her asked them to do their duties. In many Indian  offices, factories, even farms, it is difficult for the  female bosses or female  proprieters to get the men working under them to do their job with compliance.

I wonder when this gender inequality will change in India? What factors will propel this change ?  What factors will hasten the speed of change?
 Religion will definitly not help...it only hinders. The !@#$%^  Manu smrithi quoted by Hindus and the rules of Islam are both anti women.
Politicians are useless in making these changes
The Indian movies and television shows which have such great influence on Indians are not using their full potential to change this attitude towards women. I have not seen Indian movies for the last several years and so I cannot comment.....but I do know that Indian movies/tv shows especially the Kannada mainstream ones still depict women as good if they 'obey' men in thier lives such as husbands and any female who is  assertive is 'bad' .....

Even if women in Karnataka have better education, access to employment, economic strength, greater say over their choices (career, marriage, child-bearing) than 30 years ago, the movies and tv shows continue to be  dated in their depiction of women. I know this because I was forced to see Kannada tv shows last year, when my relatives from India stayed with me!

I definitely do not want a Malashree-type doing Brenda Lee Johnson's role in a Kannada version of The Closer! That would be an over-the-top, parody, impossible to take seriously or believe.
 I strongly believe that if roles like Brenda's were depicted in Indian movies and tv shows, it would go a great way to change people's attitudes towards women.
The more I think about  Brenda's role in an  Indian  version of The Closer,  the more impossible it seems! Let me explain why.....
The ever-present,  subtle but distinct effects of  various hierarchies will change the dynamics between the different roles played in this show...caste hierarchy, economic hierarchy, superior-subordinate hierarchy, male-female hierarchy, old-young hierarchy, poorly dressed-well-dressed hierrarchy, in India will prevent a realistic version of Closer in India.

As Brenda is a female boss, the Indian guys playing her subordinates will have difficulty taking orders from her; if she was a lower-caste woman, giving orders to a chauvinistic Brahmin male subordinate....will he follow a single order from her....definitley not unless he is an exceptional guy!
If she were a lady from south, giving orders to guys from say Harayana or MP...in a police station in any state of India....

This is getting depressing...though I am not really a staunch feminist!



 

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Mulberry tree in Toronto & my village in India

Finding the mulberry tree in my backyard in Toronto was a plesant surprise. I cannot believe that a plant which was cultivated in my village by farmers for rearing silk worms, is growing without any care  from gardeners in Toronto!

Fields of mulberry plants were cultivated in my village and in the nearby villages(of Tumkur district) from nearly 30 years ago. The farmers, realizing that growing mulberry and rearing silk worms will bring in a lot more money than growing rice or ragi, stopped growing  rice and started mulberry. Of course, they did not do this all at once. They were cautious and each one started by growing half acre of mulberry, buying the eggs of the silk worm from the government agencies and carefully rearing the silkworms. Rearing silkworms is a delicate process and it had to be done in the rough and tumble world of the homes of poor farmers! If I remember right, many bought fans for the first time into their homes. They, the human beings had tolerated the heat & humidity and mosquitoes of their homes for centuries  but the silk worms were too delicate to withstand the heat and humidity of farmers homes!

I hope some sociologist has documented the changes in the fabric of rural society brought about by the rearing of silk worms in the towns & villages of Karnataka. Let me write what I recall and what I inferred here.

People who grew rice and ragi, started growing mulberry instead and so for the first time(I guess) started buying rice from government ration shops! This was something new in my village as most farmers ate what they grew.( I am not going to explain   'government ration shops'. please google it dear reader!) Food grains were coming to homes of farmers instead of the other way round!

The wealth increased and probably greed did too! Farmers could now buy gold jewels for their wives and daughters, more land, dig more wells, more quickly than before.

Silk rearing is a skill which many farmers lacked. So they hired skilled workers. If I remeber right, the workers did not accept pay but got a share of the profits.

The silk worms were delicate and those who could afford or who had the sense, built huge rooms with good ventilation so the rooms could be cool.( By huge, I mean huge for a poor farmer's home in karnataka! The rooms may looks small to  people from other cultures or backgrounds). Most old village houses of Tumkur district have tiny windows and some rooms have no windows at all. The old houses not only housed people  but  cattle too and therefore there were these huge mosquitoes in the houses whose bites were extremely painful! Believe me, the mosquitoes in the village (called 'dhanada solle' and the translation is "cattle mosquito") were worse than the city mosquitoes! The silk worms would die if bitten by mosquitoes and so farmers who built these huge rooms, put mesh on the windows. That was another new thing in my village.

 The silk worms were put into large circular things woven out of bamboo wood  and these structures were  placed in such a way that ants could not get at the worms. If the worms were on a table, the four legs of the table were placed in saucers of water to prevent the ants from climbing on to the table! (The ants would not get into the water; the water in the saucers would dry up and had to be replaced by the women...god save them if they forgot!)I wish I had photoes to show. A single photo will be a good substitute for a thousand word explaination!

There was such a rapid increase in wealth by selling the silk cocoons that people   brought a lot more  land under silk cultivation which lead to a drastic reduction of rice and ragi cultivation.
 I had read somewhere that India is home to about 300 varieties of rice. I do know that the rice grown in my village was not available in the shops of Bangalore. Now, these varieties of rice are missing! I feel really bad about this. I suppose no one ever thought, this would happen one day.
 My family grew a type of rice which was red skinned and so sweet that you could eat it raw. Now, that variety has disappeared! We would infact get gunny bags filled with that rice, every year to Bangalore and live on it the entire year. It was torture for me to eat the rationshop rice when we ran out of the rice grown on our farm.... but now my family is forced to eat the rationshop  or shop bought rice.
The new generation i.e. the children in my family of today are not aware of the rice we were growing in our fields, the name of the rice variety we were growing, it's taste, it's looks. I feel such a deep sadness that so many varieties of rice, fruit, plants, insects, etc are disappearing in India, with the increasing population, unplanned farming, etc.

There was definitley jealousy between the farmers who were 'lucky' in the silk-rearing and those who were not! Some farmers's silk worms repeatedly failed to thrive or died at some stage. No one ever scientifically and systematically studied why some silk crops failed.The skilled workers were in such high demand that they were running from village to village, trying to earn more.

With prosperity, came additions to the house and the item which was the most interesting and most ruinious according to some was the television! Only one house had a television in the beginning and everyone in the village would come and sit on the floor and watch tv in that house. I have heard farmers complain that work was not done by thier workers and children as they wre sitting in front of the tv. Before tv came to every house, there was a phase when workers would work, only in houses which had tv! Farmers had to come and drag their workers away from the television set in another farmer's house! All work was done on the floor, in front of the television! Workers, would chop mulberry leaves, with their eyes glued to the  kannada songs from movies on the tv!

Selling the cocoons is another interesting phase. The rates of the silk worms cocoons would chage everyday and would vary from market to market. If I remember right, the Ramanagaram market near Mysore was supposed to offer the best rates and farmers would haul thier cocoons in buses to Ramanagaram. If the farmer felt that the rate being offered the day he reaches was not good, he would wait for a day(sleeping in the market by his cocoons bags!) but he would have to sell, whatever the rate next day...it is not possible to keep the cocoons for long as they would start hatching. If the cocoon hatches, then, we cannot get an unbroken silk thread  and so the hatched cocoon had little value.

The guys who buy the cocoons, sell them to people who put the silk cocoons in boiling water and extract silk thread from it. As silk thread is obtained by boiling the poor worms alive inside their cocoons, followers of Jainism, do not wear silk clothes! I have not seen this process but I have accompanied my relative to the market to sell the cocoons.

Farmers returning from selling the silk cocoons(or rice or whatever) always carried the money in their drawers' pockets for safekeeping. Now men(in cities and maybe villages too) buy undergarments from shops. But in the 70s, men got their drawers stitched by a tailor and the drawers always had deep pockets in them. Villagers wore dhoties over the drawers and there was no way a pickpocket in the crowded buses could get his hands into one of these farmer's drawers! ( men of my fathers' generation got their drawers stitched;  their fathers i.e. my grandfathers generation, wore what is called a langoti i.e. a piece of cloth tied over the private parts.  Maybe my dad wore a langoti as a child and started stitching these 'knickers' or 'chaddis' in the typical striped cotton cloth(called "patta-patti") whenever they came into ?style.

I heard of reports of farmers returning from selling the silk cocoons getting robbed on the way. It made me so bitter to hear that. These men have slaved for 3-4 months and to be robbed of their money is so evil and unpardonable. Therefore, any robber caught is beaten up nearly to death. The sad truth is that even a person suspected of robbing can be beaten, without evidence. I sometimes wonder why Indians are so primitive and savage? Is it the poverty? Or lack of ethics>>>i.e. we only think of survival and nothing else?

These silk worms are so damn delicate that many times, many die and sometimes farmers lose the entire stock. This death can happen at any stage...if it happens at the end, it is , of course very very frustrating. The silk worm is so delicate that even chemical fertilizers are not used as the plant absorbs the chemicals and the worms which feed on the leaves die. The mulberry plant is fertilized only with cowdung and dead leaves.
 I have heard of one family savagely beaten by a farmer who suspected this family (the two families are old enemies) of spraying his mulberry crop with pesticide. His worms died eating the leaves and he somehow concluded that his mulberry plants had been sprayed and the toxic leaves had been fed to his worms.

In recent times, there has been a decline in rearing of silk worms in my village. I am not sure what are the reasons for the decline. Currenly, the monsoons have failed my village and surrounding villages. People are desperate and frustrated. Many have taken loans from the banks and dug borewells but not got water. Now they are even more frustrated with this damn bank loans added to their burden! I can go on about this but wil do it in another article.

When I think of the trail of silk, I realize that the one who makes the most money is the shop-keeper who does the least work and takes the least risks! It is such a shame!

The stages according to me:
government (at least in those days) was growing silk worms which laid eggs. These eggs were sold to farmers at affordable rates.
Farmers bought these silk-worm eggs from the government; cultivated mulberry plants in thier fields...irrigating the plants, cutting the leaves, taking the leaves home and feeding the eggs once they hatch with finely minced leaves and then with less minced leaves, until the worms grew and build thier cocoons.
The cocoons were gathered in bags and sold at a market for silk-cocoons to ? middle-men
The middle-men sold them to people who then threw the cocoons into boiling water and extracted the treads. The threads were probably extracted by hired labour who are probably poorly paid.
The threads are sent to ?dyers in ? Tamil Nadu
The dyed threads are bought by weavers or middlemen who sell to weavers.
Weavers work in government factories or private factories or in their own homes
The thread is woven into cloth and sold to buyers, who sell it to shops to sell to buyers who will buy small lengths of it and give it to a tailor to stitch/ OR
The threads are hand-woved into saris or hand-woved into churidar or skirt  materials. This involved LOTS of work such as weaving gold threads in designs (these designs are drawn by craftsmen on graph papers and then the design is woven into the saris or cloths as borders or even in teh body of the cloth)

In the entire process, the maximum work is done by the weavers. but they live lives in such poverty, you cannot imagine! The maximum profit goes to the sellers of silk cloth and saris, either wholesale or retail.
I wish I had  information to put in here below... Information such as
(1)time taken by farmers and their expenses and profits, labour, time, etc
(2) profit per kg of silk cocoons made by the buyers
(3) time, type of labour, profits and losses, inputs of the cocoon-boiling stage
(4)Details of expenses and profits of the thread making and thread dyeing stage
(5)The labour involved in the sari making stage, inputs , time, profit
(6) how many silk worms go into making of one sari?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

ladybird publications illustrators I like


I'm a huge fan of the old Ladybird books. It's a bit of a shame that the recently published ones, don't quite live up to the quality of their predecessors. These pictures are from, 'Learning With Mother', illustrated by Harry Wingfield, 1970. Aren't they beautiful?



Below is, 'The Discontented Pony', illustrated by P.B. Hickling, published 1951. I've got quite a few unhappy pony stories from this time. It must have been a common problem! I hope these days ponies can find the help and support they need to lead happy, horsie lives!
 
and Eric Winters for books written by Vera southgate

Friday, May 24, 2013

Things I hoard

Plastic bags, paper bags, any bags
Books
I dont throw old magsazines, so maybe tose too
Old clothes
Basically anything which comes into my house, is a prisoner for life!


why?
I may need it sometime
 

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

flower times in Toronto

May first week: Cherry blossoms, flowers in the pear tree and Larrry's crab apple tree and the magnolia trees
May 1st and 2nd week: Thousands of dandelions, the yellow flowering bush, the daffodils, tulips....some tulips were in april  last week or ever earlier .

Thursday, May 2, 2013

remembering comics of my childhood

Now it's May of 2013 and the chills of the Toronto spring are behind while warm summer days have begun.
Now even though it is  decades since I left my childhood behind, every summer,  memories of reading comics and books and mags after final exams during childhood summer holidays resurface....followed by   a sudden rush of  nostalgia & desire to read those very same comics, books & mags!

And ever since I discovered newly republished hard-cover book reprints of my favorite American and British comic strips....such as Modesty Blaise, Andy Capp & Phantom which had appeared in newspapers during my childhood, I am wishing that the Indian comics I grew up with, will be reprinted in a similar manner! The four action Indian comics of my childhood are Daboo, Shuja, Bahadur and Azad. There was also a funny comic called Majnoo a  lovelorn  character. These comics appeared in Sudha, a Kannada magazine.
I should add here that my husband read the James Bond comic which appeared in Indian newspapers(Deccan Herald maybe?) as a teen and he recently bought a hardbound copy of some of the James Bond comic-strip stories(Titan books, soft-bound) as he loved the art work of Yaroslav Horak.

I also recall a few  very very dog-eared but precious 'foreign' comics owned by random friends who reluctantly loaned them when I grovelled ...these are the Richi Rich, Little Lotta, Dot, Casper the friendly ghost comics. I am not sure if Indian kids read them today but I read the few I could get my hands on..over and over again! I had to turn the fragile pages, slowly and carefully! The only glossy, colourful, bright and 'strong' pages were the cover and back sheets. The back sheets had ads which I read and rearead and fantasized. I think the ad said that if you sell a certain number of boxes of ? I am not sure what, you could get one of several things such as binoculars, fishing line, etc. I have daydreamed endlessly about getting those things ! In those days(70s) middleclass Bangaloreans had no access to things such as the binoculars, etc and I would simply drool looking at those tiny pictures of the things we could get if we sell the boxes! If one recalls the shops of Bangalore, there was nothing sold except for food, clothes and a few other things like ironboxes and watches. The number of toys for kids was limited(except maybe in Sapphire in Brigade road but my parents never ever went to Brigade road or anywhere else to shop for toys!). The number of things for adults too was pretty limited in those days.


I discovered the entire series of Chandamama(English)  online...all of the issues & all of the pages.... including the advertisement pages! So I am hoping someone will reprint these four comics! Reading others blogs online, I saw that I am not the only fan pining for these old comics! There are many people who are wanting and I am  sure there will be enough of a demand to make reprinting profitable.

Another thing I wish is for the collection and reprinting of the wonderful short stories which appeared in the Illustrated Weekly of India and Debonair. The stories were very well written and I loved the accompanying illustrations too. It is so sad that I cannot remember the names of the authors except for R.K Narayan, Kushwant Singh and Ruskin Bond. I remember these names  as their names crop up all the time in the news....
Narayan's Painter of signs came in instalments in the illustrated weekly; I remember  Ruskin Bond's short story set in Simla being  published once in the Illustrated weekly of India and I think  Kushwant's novella sort of story  set in Pakistan also came in instalments. I loved a lot of other short stories too and sad to say, I cannot remember even one writer's name. The illustrations for Kushwant's story seemed to be in M.F.Hussain's style but I may be mistaken. I remember one illustrator's name as I liked his artwork! He was Kavadi. His illustrations were expressive, colourful and sort of fleshy! I loved R.K.Laxman's illustrations of his brother's short stories. Which reminds me, I loved Mario Miranda's cartoons which came in the weekly in the jokes page.

I had cut and got bound at a printing shop the comics of Illustrated weekly but have lost the bound books  now! I bitterly regret that! The Beetle Bailey comics were in colour in the illustrated weekly and you cannot get it in colour anywhere now! I also got bound the jokes pages but I dont think it was such a good idea as I cannot read jokes continually. I selected with great difficulty my favorite short stories from weekly and got it bound but I wonder if it is still there in my dad's garage or my mother who is sick and tired of cleaning the garage has thrown it! Anyway, these books are too huge and heavy to lug it all the way to Canada(The weekly was a largish magazine)
I forgot to add but I read the ubiquitous Tin Tin  and Asterix comics in my childhood. I enjoyed these too and loved the art work in both.

I enjoyed the stories in Femina of the 70s. I was highly critical of, but read anyway, the stories in Women's era! Even a moderate feminist would go berserk, reading the stories in women's era! The heroines in these stories were the Sati Savitri types....I can write more, but what is the point of writing about ancient tripe?

As a teen, I did not read the stories but enjoyed the artwork accompanying the stories (daravahis) in the Kannada mags i.e. Prajamata, Sudha, Tushara, Kasturi, etc. I now recall how good the artwork was and I  wonder if the artists were   paid  amounts commesurate with their talent.
 I guess newspaper  illustrators such as Norman Rockwell  in richer countries  and illustrators in national newspapers in India get paid well ; But I do  wonder if the  illustrators for  Kannada mags and newspapers are equally well paid!  I know that Norman Rockwell's originals are sold for huge amounts, even today.
I wonder what is happening to the original art work which apperared in Kannada mags in the past.......Is it with the newspaper or the artist? I  am rambling and I am sorry!

One more thing I would like to add here.....I would go into a trance like state when I saw some of the photos, artwork and illustrations. I cannot describe what a wonderful world I would enter when I was sitting in the 'studyroom', full of old mags and flipping through the pages! Fortunately for me, my dad was/is a hoarder and never sold the old mags. I would sit, cross-legged on the floor, with the mags stacked in shelves, taking down one stack at a time and flipping through the pages...It was the closest to heaven, one can come to, on Earth! I would reread favorite stories. I would gaze at the photos ...I loved some of the dresses in Femina, I loved the houses shown to illustrate decoration ideas...such as old brass utensils tastefully arranged in the living room ! I loved some ads...I remember Karan Kapoor, I think he is Shashi Kapoor's son in ? Bombay Dyeing ads! He was so handsome! I would see these pictures over and over again , for several years! These old mags and books are equivalent to drugs to me! I can get lost in this world. If I was less of a dreamer, I would have used the time to do something more useful than flipping old magazines and gazing at the pages I think!

It was sheer heaven...NO school as it is summer holidays. As soon as I finished bath and breakfast, I would sit in this room, going through these books and mags. They were  Enid Blyton books, Nancy Drew and so on. The street was silent and the only sound was the birds outside and maybe a vegetable seller on the streets on his cycle,  calling out his wares.  Sometimes I went outside with the book and sat in the shade of the guava tree and read until it was too hot or  I felt sleepy and came back in. I would read for a while, day-dream for a while,  look for guavas & papayas in the trees or peep into the tailor bird's nest to check for eggs or chicks. Every year, the tailor bird built a nest by stitching two leaves of the brinjal plant in my house! The poor bird would panic  and scream when I peeped into it's nest but I never touched it. I would daydream about whatever I was reading. Daydream about finding hidden treasure myself. Daydream about having adventures. Fantasize about whatever movie I had recently seen... in the 70s, I would see about one movie a month, mostly Kannada. and then until I see the next move which may be a month later, I would play the move in my head in my spare time and fantasize!

Another favorite childhood mag of mine I forgot to mention till now is the ReadersDigest! I loved them...the short stories and the jokes at the end of each article in the little bit of space left at the end of the page. I loved the fantastic paintings on the covers ...I loved the cover page of the ReadersDigest of the 70s and earlier period. After the 70s, I did not like the covers at all...they were photos instead of art and not to my liking. I stopped liking the stories too.  I bought a great deal of the old RDs...published from the time before I was born. And guess where I bought them? From the guy selling 'Kadlepuri' or 'Kadlekai' on the streets of Majestic! That guy made me pay almost one rupee per copy which to me was a lot in those days. I got many 50s and 60s era RDs from these guys...and saved the books from being torn to wrap kadlepuri for the Bangaloreans! I cannot tell how much I loved a story called ? Child of my heart which came in the book section of one RD issue! It was so moving, I cried each and every time I read it. It was about a difficult teenage school boy who seems to have a crush on his young teacher. I can go on and on telling why I loved the RD but I will shut up now.

What else do I remember from my childhood summer holidays?  I have already mentioned elsewhere about the excited/anxious/feverish wait for the newspaper guy in the morning(once or twice a month) when the Indrajal comic was expected! And it was always late and the guy would keep telling, "the comic will come tomorrow" and the wait would drive me into a frenzy!

What I did not like about my childhood was my dad yelling at me and trying to get us to read the Kannada novels by writes like Byrappa's, Kuvempu's, Shivram Karant and Triveni's or the Hindi books of Premchand, etc.

I do not want to talk about the Amar Chitra Katha which are available even now..hard-bound, I might add.

Oh. One more thing. I love, love, love the English text books from England, which were sold on the pavements of Malleshwaram (in the 70s) by the guys selling used books. I loved their smell, the illustrations (some were grey and white like a black & white photo taken on a moon-lit night)and of course I loved the stories and poems! One was called Tales that letters tell...I got three of them, book one, two and five maybe. They will last forever as they are hardbound and the pages are smooth and glossy! I have bought other English school texts from England, but cant recall the names. Here is a picture of the cover of a book I loved in childhood(photo from ebay)



I loved my middle school English texts and they were the only school books I would read during the holidays. I loved the "English by Stages"(printed in UK), the Radiant Readers (good quality glossy smooth pages but printed in India I think) and one more..I cant recall now. I loved the non-detailed texts more than the detailed texts of course. One more thing I loved in the English text books of mine was the wonderful woodcut artwork. They were small but so exquisite! (Especially woodcut works in a poetry text). Now I do not see woodcut work in text books or anywhere for that matter. It is such a shame! The woodcut work in the E.F.Dodd abridged James Hilton's novel, The Lost Horizon" (Macmillan publications, India) is unforgettable. I never expressed to my classmates or anyone else, how much I loved the artwork but I remember them even now, three decades later!
To me,  abridged versions of  several classics were more loved and more readable  than the unabridged originals. A tale of two cities is another abridged classic I read several times and I am sure I would never have read the original more than once. Robinson Crusoe and Kidnapped were wonderful abridged classics, a great deal more attractive to me than the original-unabridged ones.
 I loved all the  non-detailed texts and all were Macmillan India publications and I loved the art work in all of them; I think the art work was  woodcuts. If my memory is correct, all of these books were either written or rewritten or abridged by a person called E.F.Dodd and I loved all of his  books in those days. Some titles I remember now, almost 30 years later are: Brave children of other lands or Brave children of foreign lands;
Children of India  
Happy Beggars and other stories(frankly, I did not remember this but googled mcmillan publications and recognized it!)
Lalitha and her garden
 Rama & Sita
Adventures of Lila and Chandra
Discoveries of New Lands
Heros of North Lands(Which I mistakenly recalled as Norse mythology)The King's sculptor(I loved this book and lost it and never got it again...looking at it on Macmillan website, it seems to be republished now), Stories from famous poems
The rose and the ring
Sleeping beauty.
I see the book, Snake charmer and other stories on the Macmillan website but I cannot swear that I had that book as a text in childhood. It sounds familiar but....the cover page looks unfamiliar.
I recall a non-detailed text we had in school(or was it college?)called The red sea treasure.(by G.F.Wear?) I really enjoyed the book as it was an adventure story set in Egypt(I think!). I think this is the first ever book I read about drugs and it was a bit too adult for me I think. I cannot imagine drugs and near murders being depicted in a children's text book!
I had Lorna Doone in PUC as a non-detailed text but I don't think this was Macmillan publications.
Though I did get these titles from the website, I still remember many of the stories from each of the books! I have difficulty remembering what I did yesterday but I remember several of the stories of these lovely books! I bought as many of these as I found for my nieces but I doubt if these books are as interesting to my nieces as they were to me...I feel sad that the new generations don't love the books which I did! But that is the sad truth.

I am not generally into poetry but I did enjoy reading poems in my childhood and teens---even if those poems were only ones in my school textbooks. During my 2016 visit to India I did find my 5th standard poetry book, whose poems and illustrations I loved. It is 'Adventures into poetry for primary schools' (selected and arranged by Mary Daunt). It is published by Macmillan & Co in New York 1967and I am one of the few lucky students who studied in a school which had 'foreign' English in those days!(I also hated the school for  reasons such as teachers' brutality)

I will be adding more here as I recall! Adieu!






Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The computer---a gift from the devil

A 60 year old man of Korean origin was lamenting yesterday that today's children do not know how to count and calculate without the computer. He said he's better at calculations than his kids because he grew up using the abacus. He called the computer,'a gift of the devil'!
He alsolamented that today's kids (Canadian) are not as hard-working as Koreans; that Korea is one third the size of Ontario but still has so many major electronic companies ...because Koreans are hard-working!
I enjoyed talking to this guy and wished that he could teach me, how to use the abacus!

Friday, April 19, 2013

My cat sits on a table in the mudroom and watches the birds and squirrels all through spring, summer & fall.
  And last night, I forgot to check if my cat was still out there in the mud-room. I assumed it had come back into the house  ....ergo, I shut and locked the mudroom door on my poor little kitty-kat ; Alas!  My poor, sweet, unlucky kitty ended up spending the entire night in this unheated mud-room  in dreadful sub-zero temperature!(Night of 18th April 2013  in Toronto)
I let the poor thing in, only when I heard it i.e. when I came down to the kitchen at 7am!   Needless to say, I was full of guilt and remorse when it rushed indoors!

As soon as the kitty came in I chased it and it ran under the table...we began our usual games of chase, hide & seek and ball chase. 

 My cat had, in less than a minute,  forgotten the entire miserable night it spent in the cold
or
 it had forgiven me completely!

This incident made me wonder  why  life with people cant be this simple..
When  people are wronged, why cant they forget, forgive and move on?
Why do we carry anger & grudges  about the wrongs  done us and continue to suffer loooooong after we were wronged  ? Why can't we simply let the past go? Why cant we forget the past and enjoy the present? Life would be so much nicer for humans  if we could  forget the past sufferings and focus on enjoying the current blessings.
And also, when the person who hurt has has forgotton and is enjoying life, is it not stupid for us to suffer by storing the anger and hurt in us and suffering, over and over again over something from the past...and ruining the present too.....Time which could have been spent happily is ruined by brooding

If humans could get over the wrongs  done to them with miraculous speed ...like my cat.... life would be one big blast !

PS: For a few days after this incident, my cat would keep looking towards me from the mud-room, as if  afraid of being locked out again!

Some more days later,  it has started watching  the garden ...with undivided attention. I suppose it no longer worries about being locked out! 

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The mentally ill in India …whose responsibility are they? part 2

I am writing part two as I went off course while writing the previous article!

When I began writing the previous article, I  wanted to discuss  about the concept of selfishness or selflessness of family members and who among them  should  take care of the mentally ill ....instead I wrote about the Indian government doing more for the mentally ill and so on.

Selfish or selfless and self-sacrificing?

In the olden days, when joint families existed and nuclear families did not, care of the mentally ill was not such a big issue. In the old days, most women did not go out to work but stayed at home. More people lived in villages than in cities. Therefore the care of the mentally ill or the mentally retarded or any other type of disabled or dependent people and children was not a big issue in India. There was always someone at home i.e the aged grandparents, the women of the house i.e. daughters-in-law and daughters who did the cooking, household work and also looked after the mentally ill.
The income of the family probably came from the family business (maybe agriculture or business or sons working outside and either handing over the income to their mothers(even if they were adults and married) or fathers, who ran the household.

But today, there are major changes in India:
more people live in cities than before;
 more people are now living in nuclear families.... married brothers & their families no longer live under one roof with their parents, uncles and aunts like in the past when large joint families of three to four generations under one roof.
Therefore if a person has mental illness or mental retardation, the only ones who will look after him now would be his parents or his spouse(if his parents manage to dupe someone into marrying him and that person, does not divorce for whatever reason). If he has a selfless sibling and his sibling's spouse agrees or is forced to house him, then, he will be cared for by a sibling in the event of the parents death or inability to look after him.

OPTION ONE:To be selfish and care for one's spouse and children... and neglect the mentally ill sibling/parent/whoever the relative is.....is that the right way to go?
OPTION TWO: To take on the care of the mentally ill sibling or family member.... and giving up a lot in terms of financial burden, time spent in taking the ill to the hospital, time taken in calming him down when he is symptomatic, time given to the mentally ill instead of one's own hobbies or time with one's children's and wife; the stress of explaining to the spouse who resents the time, energy, money spent on the ill sibling.
In the villages, even today,where joint families continue to exist, I have seen the mentally ill cared for by their parents, grand parents, siblings, children and so on. The mentally ill wander about in the village, relatively safe from harm as most people know the mentally ill and the family. (Yet, there are cases of mentally retarded girls being sexually abused by 'known' people  in villages)
In cities, most people live in nuclear families and as far as I know, among the middle class in Bangalore, most women work. Therefore if a mentally ill person is at the home of a sibling, chances are that, they will be alone at home during the day. Unless, their symptoms are under control and unless they are trained to be safe when alone at home, it can be a problem to house the mentally ill or mentally retarded. In the cities, the mentally ill, especially if sympotamatic or if a  young girl, cannot be allowed to wander outside  the house as they are vulnerable and the people in cities cannot be trusted...I mean that the possibility of abuse and exploitation is higher in cities  than in the villages, especially if the residence is in a low income area or high crime area. Also if the vulnerable person wanders into unfamiliar area, the chances of danger are high. The  mentally ill, when symptomatic  cannot be locked up at home, while the others go to work. They can be trained to be safe but one does not know, when they may relapse and do something which endangers them or the home.
I can give examples of the people who housed a mentally ill sibling and faced difficulties. One adult schizophrenic who lived with his brotherr's family,  sold the furniture of the home to buy 'sweets' as he was hungry! His furious sister in law thereafter refused to give him the key to the house. Rain or shine, he had to wait outside the house, every evening, until his brother or sister in law arrived from work.
There was another mentally ill who would go outdoors, without locking the front door, before leaving.
I can give several such examples but will stop here.
The financial burden , for the middle class may not be much, if they merely feed and clothe the mentally ill. I know how terrible this sounds...catering only to their basic needs and not more. But considering human psychology, the burden of care, the inflation, difficulties of living in a country like India, just housing and feeding and clothing a mentlaly ill sibling is...... a lot. Unlike, countries like Canada and some in  Europe, the Indian government does not take care of the mentally ill. The burden of care rests on the family.

The struggle in one's conscience and the debate one goes through daily, while supporting  a mentally ill is simply huge. Here are the three cases I mentioned in another article in my blog and the daily debate about caring for them

(1) An unmarried mentally ill lady about 50 years old, living with her mother, brother, sister-in-law and 2 nieces. She has 2 other siblings who are settled abroad. She has been suffering from mental illness from her teenage years and though on high doses of medication, she exhibits severe behaviour problems at home. The doctors cannot hike the medication as she is on high doses already. She refuses to get admitted to a hospital for treatment or admitted to a half way home or rehabilitation centre. The family cannot make her. She is verbally and physically aggressive, spends a lot of money(she is not earning), is paranoid, impulsive and is such a menacing presence in her home that the other people in her house, suffer a lot. They fear her and do what she says in order to buy peace.
The sister-in-law and the
 

(2) A married mentally ill man in his 40s, is living with his parents, wife and oldest sister who is single. He was running a business in his 20s and 30s but as his illness got worse, he had losses in his business due to poor management and he stopped his business. He was staying at home in a very passive manner for a few years when he was on medication. He was medicated by his family, without his knowledge as he would not take medication willingly. Before the readers from the advanced countries scream about his rights, let me tell you that this is a common practice in India, which even the trained professionals (psychiatrists) recommend, if the client is unwilling to take medication and he is physically aggressive. Secretly medicating is the only practical option for families when the mentally ill person is non-compliant with medication, is physically stronger or is in a position of power in the family. This mentally ill guy has one more sibling, who is married, has a child and living with spouse, in another part of the same city. This sibling is not involved in his care in any way.

(3) A mentally ill single lady in her early 50s,unemployed and living with her mother and sister. She has never been diagnosed until recently i.e. when she was in her forties. The doctor did not give a diagnosis but gave her tablets and her behaviour, whether due to the tablets or other reasons, has gradually improved. It is difficult to say if she has psychosis(no evidence of hallucinations and maybe she has some delusions) or a personality disorder or whatever. She is the second of eight daughters born to a lower-middle-class businessman. Years ago, she was told by an astrologer that she will marry a rich person and subsequently she refused to marry all the prospective bridegrooms her parents showed her as she was waiting for ‘the rich guy’ the astrologer had predicted. She spent her time at home, refusing to do the household chores, refusing to study further or get a job. She sat and waited for the rich groom, who never came. Meanwhile, her dad did not try to get the other daughters married …he wanted to finish his second daughter’s marriage, before going on to the third. After waiting for many years, and after the father’s death, the other girls found men on their own and married. This mentally ill lady at some time in her late twenties started showing behaviours which her exasperated sisters attributed to jealousy and meanness. She would grab the newspaper and sit with it until the sisters left for work or college, refusing to give it to anyone else. She would finish all the water which the sisters had carried up in pots from downstairs and refuse to bring up any water. This was not considered as mental illness at the time.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Increasing distance between the rich and the poor in India






We read about the increase in crime in India these days ...being due to the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer.

I was trying to actually see this difference...check if this 'increase in disparity' was visible to my eyes.
I am in the article below, comparing and contrasting my family with the family of the maid-servant  who worked in my home.

Residences: In the 70s, I was a child growing in a  middle-class family; I remember staying in a small rented one bedroom house with parents, siblings and a grandmother. Now(2013) my family owns & lives in a four bedroom house. The servant who worked in our tiny house of the 70s continues to live in the same type of tiny house, But  in 2013, the families of maid servants  are worse off than they were in the 70s. Now they seem to stay in filthier areas where girls & women are unsafe, the rents are higher, the area is much more crowded and the house they live in is far from the place where they work.This is because the rents are astronomical in good/safe areas.
 Transport to and from work: The maid servants were walking to work before but  now they have to spend money on buses and more time to get to work. When we lived in Rajajinagar, in a 'then' new extension i.e. west of chord road, the servants working in the middle-class homes came from the houses which were in the villages nearby.( As you know, Bangalore is made up of hundreds of villages. And as it grew, the villages were swallowed by the city and agriculture land became sites for houses and buildings).
 Houses in Malleshwaram & Gandhi Bazar in the 60s and 70s had outhouses for servants and their families. Now the outhouses are gone or they are being rented out to middle-class people who want to live within the city than on the outer areas. So the servants who work in these areas of expensive real estate, have to live, far from the houses they work in and travel long distances, spending precious time and money.

Comforts in the houses: We used a kerosene stove for cooking and wood for hot water in the bathroom. Later the electric coil stove came into the kitchen but the kerosene stove continued to have a place in the kitchen and was not thrown out for several years. This was because the electricity was cut off regularly and one had to go back to the kerosene stove to cook! The people working as servants still continue to use wood or kerosene to cook while a few have electric stoves. Maybe a few of the servant families have gas stoves but it is rare.

I am not sure how many servant families today use hot water for bathing or how they boil the water for bath....do they heat on the stove and carry it out to the bathroom, or have a boiler in the bathroom or use coal or wood for hot water for bath. But I know hot water for bath is still a luxury for most of them. Taking a bath daily too is a luxury, given the shortage of water in Bangalore. The shortage of water in Bangalore, makes even life for the middle class hell!

My dad had a cycle when he started working, then a scooter and he replaced aging scooters with new ones, once a decade or so. I walked or used the bus both as a child and as a young adult. I never owned a two wheeler (more because I could not ride one than because I could not afford one!)My sister has a car which she bought recently but hardly ever uses, considering the terrible traffic mess in Bangalore and the cost of petrol. The servants were walking to wrok when I was a kid and now they bus to work if they stay far away. Very few or hardly anyone of the servants, own two wheelers even today. It is difficult to pay for the petrol and almost impossible to keep the two wheeler safe in the areas they live in. Also they live in areas, where a woman(most servants who work in houses are women) riding a two wheeler will invite catcalls from the lousy men who live there.

As a child and young adult we did not have a fridge....now everyone of the middleclass has a fridge. We did not have a gas stove, now everyone of the middle class does. Television came late to Bangalore and now it's not just the middle & upper class who have televisions but even the lower-income classes. In fact, television sets and cell phones are two things which the servant classes own all over Bangalore. This shows how important entertainment & communication is to people! All servants in Bangalore own cell phones today...the cell phones are affordable and more importantly, it helps them stay in touch...staying in touch helps them to get more job opportunities...more jobs means more money! The tragedy in India is that the lower classes do not have enough drinking water, do not have decent toilets, do not have decent schools to educate their kids, do not have decent nutrition but they have affordable(or stolen) cable connections & televisions with non-stop entertainment and affordable cells phones!

When I think of our house, when I was about 10 years old, there was hardly anything in it besides a table, a few chairs, a cot, a sofa, some clothes. We ate on the floor. Now we have dining table and chairs. Servants continue to eat on the floor. Maybe because they cannot have houses large enough to have dining furniture in it or they cannot afford dining furniture or because they don’t feel the need for it.

If we had a lot of guests, like on festival days when we invited the neighbouring women to come home and "Take the Harshna-Kumkuma", we spread the mats on the floor or the jamkhana, a large, colourfully striped thick cloth mat. Now we have loads of chairs for the guests to sit on and people are hardly ever asked to sit on the floor. And as I mentioned before, the servants simply cannot afford to have furniture at their homes even today as they live in cramped, over-crowded places.

Care of appearences: Use of makeup by women of my mother’s generation was limited to the talcum powder ("Ponds"), the turmeric and Kumkum. All used hair oil on their heads and some used 'snow' on their faces before putting on the talcum powder. Now, women of my mother’s generation can afford make-up but decline to use due to embarrassment! They worry that people will tease them for trying to 'appear young'. But one major change in the last 5 years is that the women of my mother’s generation or at least some of them have started dyeing their greying hair! Use of makeup by the servant class is one of the few changes I see. While they never ever used makeup when I was a child, the servants today, especially the young ones, tweeze their eyebrows, go to parlours for various reasons and invest a huge chunk of their earnings on makeup! My aunt was complaining the other day, how they charge extra to work on days prior to a festival and then run to the beauty parlour with the money to tweeze their eyebrows. I know how discriminatory my aunt sounds! Appearances are perceived as very important by all classes of people today and the economically backward is no exception. They may not have money to buy good food but they use the money for looking good.

Children of lower class and middle class families in the 70s and now:As a child I had few toys, most of which were  were broken and I definitely did not get "age-appropriate toys' as I grew up. I had a few story books, which my dad bought second hand on the pavements of Malleshwaram, or I got for birthdays from cousins or a few inexpensive Russian story books(The USSR publications were incredibly cheap....maybe that is why my dad bought them at the Nava Karnataka publications when he went to buy his Kannada books.) Today's middle-class children have countless sources of entertainment & education, depending on their parent’s attitude towards children's books and toys. Children of parents, who believe that toys and books are good, buy them, while children of parents who believe that kids with toys and books don’t study end up being a bit deprived...even if the family can afford toys and books.

There was not much of a difference with regard to access to information between the servant classes and middle classes in the 70s.  Both had access to radio, movies in theatres and libraries, though the lower classes seldom used libraries. The only thing the middle-class had which the lower classes did not use was the newspapers and magazines. But today there is an explosion of information, accessible to the middle classes and literates but not to the servant classes and illiterates and English illiterates…This is the information accessible through the internet.

I feel terribly sorry for children born into the servants’ families today. In the past, there was not much difference between the games played by the  middle-class and the servant class kids. Both had limited toys and next to nothing story books. Both played on the streets, games like running and catching, cricket (with any piece of wood for a bat, any ball for a ball), marbles, lagori, kho-kho, etc. Often, in the 70s,  the servants brought their kids to work and their kids played with the kids of middle-class families.Now, the streets are off limits for both the middle-class and the poor for play, due to the terrible traffic and lack of safety.

Today, the middle-class children, play with video games, computer games, card and board games or watch tv and a few lucky ones, who live near playgrounds play there. The kids of lower classes today, do not have these indoor games which are simply out of reach. Also they cannot play in the streets like the previous generation did....the streets are full of traffic today, unlike in the 70s.
 I know that the servant, working in my mother's house these days, steals toys belonging to my nephew! I only hope she gives to her kids and not sell them for money. This stealing drives me insane! I feel sorry for them but I also hate my family being robbed like this!

Therefore, one can conclude that  the kids of the servants may get some toys, depending on factors such as whether the middle-class families where their mothers work, give the old toys to their mother to take home for them; their mothers steal toys where they work; or if their mothers buy them toys, from possibly someone who has stolen it from somewhere else!

Education: In the 70s, I know of many lower middle and middle class families, who put their children in government schools and Kannada medium schools. The children of servant families too went to the same government schools. there was only a slight discrepency between teh education available to middle class kids and lower class kids, as far as schools were concerned. However, the discrepency was more at home as the middle class kids had educated parents who helped them at home. Once again the discrepency was not much. My mother's generation of middle class women of bangalore,  were mostly educated till high school and not more. They did not do much to help their kids with studies in the 70s. Even the fathers did not get involved much with the children's studies...at least not as much as today's middle-class  parents in Bangalore. The children of servants,  got even lesser help from their parents in the 70s as they were mostly illiterate.

Today, the middleclass put their children in private, English medium schools. The children of middle classes of Bangalore, at least 95% of them have educated parents for whom education of children is a priority. The homes of these kids too are condusive to studying.
However the same is not true for the children of servants. Many girls of servant class families drop out when they reach puberty as their parents don’t consider it safe for these girls to be going to school, unescorted or studying with boys in classrooms, etc. Some girls start working in homes, like their mothers. Boys may study, but the atmosphere at home is not really condusive to studies. Parents have difficulties paying for fees and buying books, etc. Many fathers are alcoholics and abusive at home. Most parents cannot help their children with homework and studies as they are of low literacy themselves. Many cannot afford tutors if their children are not doing well at school. The schools they can afford to send them to are often not good, teachers in these schools are harsh and punitive and damage the kids greatly. The children of lower classes in addition to all this grow with poor nutrition in environments unfit for children.
 The middle-class kids, have access to infinite knowledge through the internet, through older cousins and relatives with specialized education and skills, through travel and books, etc. This is simply not there for lower class kids and rural kids. This makes the gap between the privileged middle class and the rural class (rural have no or limited access to internet and computer) and the lower classes. The difference in access to knowledge for the privileged and under privileged kids is thus becoming bigger day by day and has reached a stage where the gap cannot be bridged between a middle class kid and a lower class kid of third standard!

Let me give an example:  If my niece does not understand anything in physics, she has an aunt who is a physics lecturer; my nephew does not understand Hindi and his grandfather can teach him Hindi; my sister can get them stuff from her lab to help them in science projects. But what about the servant's sons and daughters? There is no computer or internet at the home or school they attend as these schools are poorly funded ; they have teachers who are so punitive that  they are too scared to ask when they don’t understand; their parents are illiterate; there is no educated adult in their family or friend circle who can help. They are totally lost. And as they go from one class to the next, without understanding fully, their bundle of ignorance increases until they are clueless about what is being taught to them in higher classes.

I am feeling so depressed writing this, I am taking a break. Maybe I will continue to write this later or not.

Going over all the factors I know, I think the two weightiest factors driving the difference between the middle and lower classes in Bangalore is the knowledge of English and access to the internet which the middle and upper classes have and the lower classes do not. Unless this changes, the lower classes will sink lower and reach a stage when they cannot survive in today’s world.(Unless the society in India changes in such a way that one can earn a decent living even if one does not know English or use the computer and internet...if other professions could be paid well enough to earn a decent living)

 

Youth of lower classes and middle classes in the 70s & now: Now, let us see, what happens when the servant’s children reach 16-18 years. Many of them do poorly in school and many do not pass the 10th standard exams. As they fail or ‘just pass’, they are unable to get into college. If they do get into college, the parents have a hard time paying the fees. Girls in these families are expected to be married by the time they are 16 for various reasons, which I will not go into now. The boys are expected to support the families by getting a job. Another reason the parents want their sons to get a job is because they will be idle if they dont have a job and get into  ‘bad company’. The jobs one can get after 10standard are usually low paying and they get stuck in this cycle of low income and poverty forever.  The ‘ forever’ indicates that the next generation too get trapped in this cycle.

What about the middle-class family’s children when they finish high school? The offspring of the middle and upper classes are treated as ‘dependent children’ for the next 5-10 years of their life when they get into college, then, maybe university and then career and marriage. The greater levels of education enable them to get higher paying jobs than the servant’s children. The biggest tragedy one can see in India is a poor bright kid who cannot study further because he has no money to pay fees and as his family demands that he work and support the family. Another not so tragic comedy one sees is the middle or upper class family’s children who don’t do well in studies but their parents send them to endless ‘tutions’, give huge donations and get their undeserving kids into technical courses such as engineering or medicine, give bribes to see that they ‘pass’ in the exams and have a degree at the end!

I have seen lower middle and middle class families economically improve over generations or even within one generation. Among my relatives, most grandfathers were farmers; the next generation who came to the city in the 50s are all professionals such as doctors, engineers, professors, lawyers, etc. Their children are at that level or higher in terms of education and money and jobs. But among, the lower classes of today, the upward mobility is painfully slow or the mobility is downward than upwards.
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Today’s society is also pretty consumerist compared to the society four decades ago. Therefore there are a lot more things which people have at home, which they did not in the past.The number of things which the rich and the middle class own is getting more and this too is adding to the widening gap between the classes.
The lower classes continue to have few things....even if they can afford to have more things, they do not have the space in their homes...they live in small cramped houses as rents are skyrocketting in Bangalore.
They do not have the ability to keep the things safely... for example if they owned a two wheeler and parked outside, the wheels will be missing as they live in high crime slums; things inside the home too may not be safe...I have seen alcoholic fathers, sell their children's books, bought by their wives, who got the money by working hard as servants in houses.
They do not have the knowledge to use the things...for example, if they were presented with a computer or some such thing, they would not know what to do with it.
they may not have the knowledge to appreciate the beauty of things.....if they happened to own something such as an old etched brass plate, they may dislike it and prefer shiny plastic set of plates which are made in China which are easy to wash and colourful to look at.


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Easier to bridge the English-Kannada Bridge in the past than now:  In the past, i.e. my father’s generation, the change from Kannada medium of instruction in school/college to English medium was something which most kids seemed to handle well. Everyone of my dad’s generation I know, managed when they changed from studying in Kannada medium (till 10 standard or 12th) to English medium (intermediate or bachelor’s degree). Today, if a child who studies in Kannada medium changes to English medium, he will face tremendous difficulty in coping with the change. He may fail in his exams and lose a year or more. This may be because of two reasons: (1) either,  the sea of knowledge has expanded so much that change in language is difficult for the child to cope or (2)the teachers of today are so poor that it is tremendously difficult for the children of today to switch from Kannada medium to English.

Therefore, today, it is  hard for the students of rural backgrounds when they switch to English medium, when they enter college. The same hold true for  the urban kids who went to Kannada medium schools i.e the lower class kids whose parents could not afford to put them in English medium schools.. Majority of those who switched from Kannada to English medium schools seem to fail these days…and these kids are all from the lower strata of society.

 If they had  had the opportunity to have studied in a decent English medium school, they may have had a decent chance to succeed in college and get a decent job and get out of their parents’ current impoverished condition.
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There are no easy solutions to help the youth coming from the lower classes in India.
Some suggestions I have are:

Each middle-class and rich family should adopt one child or one family of the lower classes and help them with their time and money, without expecting anything in return. They should help by teaching, paying for their classes, tutions, give nutritious food, give toys, books, whatever possible.

All jobs should have decent salaries with health benefits, retirement pensions, etc. The lower classes are teh ones who do nto have these and have to work till they die or depend on thier children, who are themselves earning meagre salaries.

The shameless government of Inda should do something about the poor and also about population control through education than force. (The shameless doctors in government hospitals who ask bribes when the poor go there for sterilization should be kicked out of their jobs for a start)

 
 
 








 

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