WHY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES IN THE WEST SHOULD STOP THE CARTOONS

...by drawing these cartoons, you are no doubt exercising your rights and freedom of expression which is a good thing. But today, people of all religions, societies and cultures are, unfortunately,  not on the same page in  their understanding of the motive behind  the drawings or the spirit in which it’s done.

The cartoons are leading to a lot of violence across the world and affecting the law and order situation. Innocent Christians and other non-muslims who had nothing to do with the cartoon publications are being killed in places which are no way connected to cartoons published in Paris.

One has to understand the differences between the mentality of people of developed countries and people of the countries where the people are reacting with violence to the cartoons. I expect the people in the developed countries like France to understand the people in the countries where the violence is prevailing; I have little or no expectations from the people of say Niger and Pakistan(and India and several other countries which are underdeveloped) about understanding the harmlessness of the cartoons.

To understand why I expect people in France to stop the publications, read the table below(I got the stuff from internet such as Wikipedia and other pages)

FRANCE	DENMARK	NIGER	PAKISTAN
Average literacy 99%	99%	28.7%	55%
Average IQ          98	98	69	84
Average income per month  is        3241.00$	3826.00$ per month	Less than 300.00US$ per year	255.00$ per month

Niger is a developing country, and is consistently one of the lowest-ranked in the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI); it was ranked last at 187th for 2013.

With this sort of a low average IQ, majority of the people in the under developed countries would have concrete thinking and not abstract thinking like the people with higher IQs, higher levels of literacy & greater exposure to a range of learning experiences.

For people to enjoy the cartoons and not take offence, to get the humor without suspecting that the Prophet is being ridiculed, it is vital that they have the following:

1.Abstract thinking and ability to see humour

2.To have grown up from childhood in a liberal culture  

3.To believe that God will not take offense if you draw cartoons of him(Not worry about Blasphemy)

4.To have all basic needs met i.e. one is not hungry, has a roof over one's head,  job, clothes, sense of safety, security about the future, good health, affordable & accessible health care, etc.

However the people in underdeveloped countries have none of the above.
The people who are reacting violently to the cartoons are from severely deprived backgrounds: they have very concrete thinking due to poor IQ, deprivation where learning is concerned,  punitive parents and teachers who governed them with violence since childhood and they grew believing that violence is the right way to express(instead of debates and discussions). They live in poverty and such miserable conditions that they literally have “nothing to lose”.  They have little or no food, clothes, little or no security in terms of jobs, food, shelter, safety, respect, etc. The people cannot bank on their governments to protect or provide for them adequately as the governments are either corrupt or inept .

The one single thing which keeps them going is their faith in God and when cartoons are made of their God, they are unable to see the benign humor behind the cartoons. They probably think the people in the west i.e. developed countries are mocking them and looking down on them and their Gods. They are used to the disrespect meted out to them by people in their day to day life. But when they see or hear of cartoons about their God, it is like, the west is disrespecting the one positive thing in their poverty stricken lives, God. And they react with fury by lashing out at the innocent people they can get their hands on, their poor Christina neighbors.

 

By defying the killing of the journalists by drawing more cartoons, the French are making a point about their refusal to be cowed down. But they also ought to think about the fact that you cannot change people’s thinking by doing the same thing over and over again. It is necessary to change the factors in the lives of these people who are reacting violently …..if these people (in Niger and Pakistan and all the countries) reacting violently to the cartoons had food, clothing, shelter, jobs, security, self-esteem, self-respect, education, a safe and fruitful future for their kids,  they would NOT  be reacting to the cartoons.

They would not indulge in violence as they would have so much to lose, if the violence damaged them. With the poverty they are living in now, they have really nothing to lose. They vent their pent up anger about their miserable lives by blindly burning the churches around them and attacking anyone they can.

Cartoons of Gods make sense  in the context of a literate, intelligent, well fed, secure society ; cartoons in the context of poor struggling societies is nothing but the mean act of rubbing salt into wounds.

I am Charlie... My two cents.

News from most western countries talk of the anger against the killing of the cartoonists in Paris; the news from some eastern countries talk of the anger of the people, mostly Muslims, against the cartoons. The world is once again divided in it’s views of the events and this reflects the disparate value systems in different parts of the world.

Until the people from all religions & cultures i.e. the  ‘entire’ world are on the same page, i.e. share a uniform value system, these types of attacks will continue.

I am against the killings in Paris and the attacks on civilians by terrorists. But I also want the people in the west to understand the reasons why some religious people are so provoked by ‘Blasphemy’. Here is my take based on my experiences of how religion affects people’s behaviour and thinking. As mentioned elsewhere, I grew up in India and I have spent about 35 years in India after which I moved to Canada. I have been in Canada for the last 11 years and have been exposed to the western thinking and lifestyle.

In India, which is a mostly Hindu populated country, religion impacts all aspects of life. Most people have a space for God’s idols and photos at home where they pray or worship, daily. The length of worship and intensity would vary with the individual’s beliefs but you will find at least one image of God even in the houses of non-believers! Many Hindus pray to the cow and do not eat beef; pray to the peepul tree, the banyan tree and would not cut down these trees even if they are interfering with their houses as they don’t want the wrath of Gods on their heads. You will never see a Hindu step on a book or sit on a book or stand on books to reach something high up. Books represent Saraswati, the goddess of learning and your studies are doomed if you show disrespect to Saraswati by standing on books!

People check with astrologers before buying a house or lot of land; they would find an ‘auspicious’ day to get married or have a house warming ceremony and if possible even to start the first day of work! People literally ‘worship’ the Gods and fear the Gods. People are in such a dilemma when they want to get rid of a broken image of God, when they want to get rid of last year’s calendar which had a photo of God on it! They don’t want to keep it as a broken idol is inauspicious and they don’t want to throw it as the Gods may be furious! I know people who go and quietly dump their Gods (broken idols and prints of Gods) in temples. They would never ever dispose it in the regular garbage.

This sounds off topic but it will connect …..There are hardly any public toilets in many Indian towns and cities. So men (not women…the poor women hold it until they reach home) pee into gutters or against compound walls whenever they get the urge to pee. The piss leaves a stink which the person inside the house or the building has to suffer. So many people(at least in Bangalore) have started painting images of Gods on their compound walls as the men will not dare pee on a God! Some have even put up ceramic tiles with images of various Gods on them on their walls to avoid this nuisance!

You will never hear anyone cursing Gods. It is extremely rare or it never happens that a Hindu would curse Gods. A few atheists/teens may do it to ‘show off’ but they are few and rare. (I have cursed but sent up an apology prayer, later, ‘just in case’, HE heard me cursing!)

The Hindus I am talking of are not religious zealots, They are the ordinary people you see all over India. They are of all levels of literacy. You will see this strong belief in Gods, acceptance of some superstitions & belief in astrology in 90% of  Hindus including highly educated Hindus such as doctors, scientists, professors, engineers, computer professionals, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, philosophers, artists, writers, journalists, etc; These people are living enigmas.

Because they have unique brains in which belief in science, reason & logic happily co-exist with belief in Gods, religious beliefs, astrology, Vastu, superstitions, etc! To give an example, I know a medical doctor who had a c section on an auspicious day so her child is born under a ‘good star’!

I am not going to write about Muslims in India and their beliefs as I know only a handful of them and I don’t want to make comments based on a tiny sample. I can say that they are as religious as the Hindus and hold on to their religious beliefs as strongly as the Hindus in India do.

Currently in the west, religion seems to be losing it’s hold.  In the west (USA, Canada, many parts of Europe & Australia) the people are not invested in religion to the extent that people in the east are. (This may be the major difference which explains why the west can casually make jokes about God and it’s ‘no big deal’ but the east becomes so highly offended by jokes about God/religion)

  I have observed that one or two churches in Toronto are going to close and be converted into condos; However in India, I have not seen any temple shutting down. In fact, more temples are being built today in India and in any countries where Hindus are. Another indication that people seem to be less religious now in the west is that many people have stopped going to churches; attendance at churches is very low and most people without children that I know of, say they don’t go to church and people with young children try to attend church at Christmas time at least.  However, in India, there seems to be an increase in religious fervour…at least it appears so by the increase in donations to temples, number of people visiting temples and the number of people participating in religious festivals.

Lots of Hindus/Indians have protested when they see ‘disrespect’ to their Gods in public places or media. I have not heard of killings but we Hindus are pretty vocal in our protest and do not stop until the “disrespect” to the Gods has stopped and an apology has been made. I remember reading about Hindus protesting when some fashion designer put an image of a Hindu God on a dress. There was rioting when a famous Indian (M.F.Hussain) painter displayed his paintings of Hindu Gods and Goddesses in the nude. He had to flee India and seek asylum in a Gulf country. He loved India but he had to flee for his life.  You will never ever see a panty, shoes or slippers with a Hindu God’s image on it as it’s considered insulting to the Gods.

Why are we Hindus so sensitive about disrespect shown to our Gods? Based on my experience and knowledge, I have given below, the reasons why Hindus are sensitive about disrespect to their Gods.

(1)From childhood, we have been so deeply inculcated with respect, fear, devotion to Gods that it becomes a part of us and will never get erased. Very few atheists emerge from Hindu households. (even now if I stand on the telephone directory to reach an out-of-reach box, I silently apologize to Saraswati, so that I don’t flunk in any upcoming exam!)

(2)There is lot anger against the foreign invaders who invaded India and both destroyed & looted temples. Both  Christian invaders from Europe and Muslim invaders from Asia are against idol worship according to their religions. Both of them destroyed the idols which are very sacred to Hindus. Even I felt sad and a bit angry when I saw the wanton damage done to the intricately carved temples built several hundred years ago. The carvings are beautiful and labours of love and devotion. I was thinking, “Okay. You don’t believe in idol-worship, fine. But how could you destroy something so beautiful and something which many workers took years and years to carve? Does your heart not feel bad to break with an axe, what someone has taken so much pains to do? Does your religion ask you to hate beauty?”

(3)Lots of Hindus/Indians share the belief that they have been exploited by foreign invaders. Reading the history of India, maybe some negative emotions are  rekindled in the new generations against invaders. Wealth form India was looted; temples destroyed, people forced to convert to alien religions; those who resisted were killed; several atrocities happened by invaders and now Hindus/Indians continue to hold the anger and this leads to irrational behaviours today…long after these things happened. So anyone making fun of Hindu Gods, etc is going to get an ‘over-reaction’, because of these painful memories or vengeful attitude or a hyper vigilant attitude, based on previous experience where the Hindus got burnt.

(4) The people who react the most or most violently to real or imagined slights to their Gods or religion are:  

(a)the most religious and most easily offended 

(b) not really religious but unemployed  youth who are looking to cause mischief and loot during the riot. 

(c)rowdies in the hire of politicians and local goons who want any excuse to create mayhem and exploit the situation (most riots in India are instigated and maintained by crooked politicians, would be politicians who are hand in glove with the criminal elements). These people have no great belief in religion but create this riot to loot shots, or cause problems to the ruling government 

(d) there is a low-level but nevertheless, ongoing, never ending anger/hate/distrust between different communities and religions in India. So there are periodic flareups between the different communities due to real or imagined insults to the respective religions/gods. 

(e) I think one of the biggest reasons for riots about insults to religion or Gods happens in India because of the egos of the people involved.  Assuming that God/Gods/Goddesses(G) exist, I am sure G would not feel insulted if people said or did something to G’s image or cursed G. I cannot believe G would get so angry with someone he created if that person said or did something insulting G. It would as unreasonable as a mother punishing her baby for peeing on her! Several stories in Hindu mythology depict the forgiving nature of the Gods and their soft corners for sinners. There is Krishna who forgave 100 mistakes of Sishupala; Shiva calming down and forgiving various demons and sinners, the rishis forgiving, etc (there are stories of God’s wrath too but that is a different story)


Though the Hindu Gods are forgiving, the Hindus themselves, can become pretty shirty when they think their religion has been insulted! I think this is because the offended Hindus probably have very fragile egos, which are easily hurt. Why are their egos so easily hurt? Why are they not tolerant? Is it due to low self-esteem issues? Do they compensate for the sense of inferiority they have by reacting aggressively and being intolerant to real or imagined slights? Do they feel superior when they accuse someone of insulting them and then getting an apology from the person? Do we lack maturity and don’t have the capacity to tolerate when someone pokes fun at our religion? Are we afraid of being perceived as weak if we tolerate others making fun of our religion? Do we want to take revenge on what happened to Hindus hundreds of years ago..now?

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The Paris tragedy makes me realize that Perception (of things, attitudes towards various things like God, religion, human life, what is sacred and what is not) varies from culture to culture.  

Freedom of speech is considered as very important in the west; Human Life is sacred and important in the west. But in many cultures, God and respect to God is considered as more valuable than human life. In India, who knows, there may be people who consider a cow’s life more valuable than a human being’s! As I said before, Perception varies.

This bloodshed will stop when people across the world share the same values and ethics system. Until then, each faction will fight for what the faction thinks is valuable; the factions will continue to disregard what is ‘unimportant’; And God forbid, if they disregard what some other (short-tempered) faction considers as important!

Living in India, I came across some people for whom God was the most important thing in their life. My grandmother for example was deeply religious. She was either paranoid or had lost trust in most/all human beings due to a series of bitter experiences in her life. The one unshakable trust she had was in God. She spoke to him daily, she prayed twice a day for an hour at a time and her belief gave her tremendous mental and physical strength. She is one of the most strong-willed persons I know. I believe her strength came from her belief in God.

Similarly, I have met or read or heard about many people who are either ordinary people with immense faith in God or are monks, saints, sanyasis, heads of mutts, gurus, etc. These people’s lives are dedicated to the pursuit of spirituality. They are not involved in the pursuits of most other people such as career, marriage, kids, property, vacations, etc. They are dedicated in the pursuit of Moksha. None of these people would kill if people insulted their Gods but they would definitely be hurt. Most or all would be mature enough to tolerate or forgive your insulting God or try to talk to you to convince you to change your ways (i.e. make you stop insulting God). They may have a philosophical debate with you to prove to you the existence of God.

First of all, I don’t think, I would make fun of religion or Gods, ‘to their faces’ as it would make me look like an immature fool trying to provoke them. Secondly, if I did have the nerve to do it, I would, probably stop very soon, feeling embarrassed. I might continue, only if I could develop a thick-skin like the Borat guy!

What I am trying to say here is that, for an atheist, for someone not too invested in religion, the cartoons about God will not have any impact at all. It is something they are not provoked about as they are not invested in it. However, for a deeply religious person, the cartoons are  hurtful because you perceive them as ‘mocking’.

In the west, making fun of subjects such as handicapped people, jokes about rape and say, pedophilia are considered hurtful and in poor taste. When someone is stupid enough to make a joke, people are disgusted and don’t laugh. Jokes about religion and Gods, though not hurtful to ‘God’, definitely hurt people who are deeply invested in religion.  

The religious and the not religious have to work out a system so that they are on the same page or at least learn to co-exist on the same planet...until we could find separate planets for each religion!

Some creatures & plants I have seen in Bangalore (70s and early 80s)but no longer see.....due to overpopulation of humans and disappearing nature

• Sparrows
• Lizards: Household Geckos which were on the ceiling or on the walls inside the home (called halli in Kannada)
• Also a  gecko which lived in my bathroom but which had white dots on it and was fatter than the usual geckos. I thought it may be a 'salamander' but according to wikipedia there don't seem to be salamanders in south India. 
• Skinny grey lizards These were in my garden and outdoors on the roof, outdoor walls on the house.(All types of lizards are called Votiketta in Kannada) They were almost invisible against the unpainted cement of my home
•  Lizards with the spiky growth along neck and back;
•  Lizards which were mostly black and were streaked with  bright colours like red, orange and yellow. These were bigger i.e. broader and longer than the other lizards. 
• The shiny and wet looking lizard called as Hav-rani in Kannada. Responding to a reader's comment, the Hav-rani is called snake-eyed skink, which is a species of lizards found in many countries and there are 35 types of these snake-eyed skinks (Googled it!)
• Snakes:Cobras which have entered my house on more than one occasion in parts of Bangalore which are now densely populated by people. So we don't see snakes as often in Bangalore now.
• Grey frogs
• Plump earthworms...but not as plump as the Canadian earthworms I find in my Toronto garden now
• Bats
• Squirrels
• Butterflies & moths
• Green and brown grasshoppers
• Several insects I cannot name such as a thin leggy insect  which could skate on water, an insect which came in large numbers after rains and flew round and round the street lights, etc.
• Tailor birds(This one would stitch a nest out of two leaves of  the brinjal plant which grew in front of our garage)
• Dragonflies
• Blue kingfishers near water bodies such as Hebbal lake and so on.
• Purple moorhens at the Puttenhalli kere.
• Paradise flycatcher in University of Agriculture campus near Hebbal lake(I was so overjoyed to see this bird with a long tail feather floating at the back! It's so depressing now to see the lake eaten away by roads and people...the noise level enough is enough to kill off the other living creatures around this area)

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I do not see any of the above these days i.e.  2010 onwards. The non-human life(excluding plants) I see in urban Bangalore  today include dogs, cats, cockroaches, mosquitoes, crows, black and red ants(ants in houses). Maybe my list would be longer if I could recall better!

 I am saddened to see so much of animal, insect and reptile  life missing from urban Bangalore. Thanks to increasing takeover of the city's green earth  by man, there isn't  an inch of space left  for other living creatures!
One example of man's ruthless domination of urban space is of people destroying nests in houses, outside houses as they think it 'looks shabby'. They poke out these nests with long sticks if they cannot reach them, without a thought for the birds or their eggs & young ones.
I have seen people screaming with fear and killing lizards and house- geckos as if they were dangerous bandits. It burns me up, but hey, what can I do?  Bangalore is full of Educated BUT Ignorant idiots! The first rankers of these ignorant idiots is of course our politicians who allow all the green earth and lakes of Bangalore to be built over, simply to fill their personal coffers.
Another set of  Bangaloreans who annoy me are those who build and cover with concrete every single square inch of land on their site! There is no uncovered earth, for the rain water to go in and replenish the ground-water.
I also hate the Bangaloreans who don't want 'dead leaves dirtying' their 'clean-swept' concrete. My dad's neighbour is one such person, who constantly fights with my father about the leaves from our garden.



I had this conversation with a friend who lives in Bangalore this year(2016). 
Me: It's so hot and no water around for the birds. Why don't you place a bucket of water on the rooftop of your apartment building daily?
Friend: Yes. I will ask the security to do it. Umm. I don't think my husband will let me talk to the security to ask him to do this daily.
M:Why don't you do it yourself?
F:What ?Me? My husband will kill me. I can't go daily with a bucket to the apartment roof. People will think I am mad!

People's obsessive need for appearing clean, spruced up and shiny makes them take long poles and poke out the nests built by birds in their building's nooks and crannies.
 People have zero tolerance for anything which clashes with their urban cleanliness. They don't want birds nests as they are messy; they don't want birds flying near their homes as they don't want bird shit;
 They don't want lizards or geckos as they 'may fall into open food vessels and they will die if they eat that food', they don't want  owls or bats around their area as it's bad luck to see them, and so on and on and on. 
A paradoxical behaviour of Indians/Bangaloreans/Hindus  is the worship of cobras i.e .the sculptures of cobras in temples and on festival days such as Nag-Panchami but also beat a snake to death with sticks the moment they spot one! Even tiny baby snakes are not spared.
A similar worship-cum-cruelty is the reverence & worship of cows as they are considered to be Gods and the simultaneous mistreatment of bull-calves (born in the cities) by starving them as they are 'not useful'. The bull calves born in villages don't face similar fate as their unfortunate city-born brothers as they are 'useful' for ploughing in the fields. Personally, I think it's less cruel to kill the calf with one stroke then let it roam the city without feeding it and die a slow painful death by starvation & dehydration.

In the 70s and earlier, people had space for gardens in homes. Now every inch of land is built over and covered with concrete, leaving no earth  for the plants to grow; With plants absent, there's  no resources for insects and birds and reptiles to survive.  The food chain for all these creatures is brutally cut and Bangaloreans and the politicians of Karnataka forget that this will ultimately lead to death of Bangalore itself.

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The plants I NO LONGER SEE TODAY BUT  I had seen growing wild in Bangalore in the past...by wild I mean that I had seen these plants growing on pavements, in empty sites, in people's houses, etc


bili-tumbe-hoovu (white tumbe hoovu) whose botanical name is Leucas Cephalotes(roth)spreng
Tumbe hoovu(pink )
Red tumbe hoovu
Milk weed(It had silky hair-like stuff attached to it's seeds)(Giant milkweed or swallow-wart)
Another is a  plant which was used as borders or fences between houses with tiny  red-pink flowers,growing in bunches. This plant's leaves were pretty rough textured.. I see this plant in Canada in pots as an ornamental plant. Lantana Camara

Another plant I don't see these days in Bangalore is a weed with lovely  yellow flowers & thorny bluish leaves (http://floraandhrika.blogspot.ca/ gives information about this yellow flower plant called Argemone Mexicana).For some reason thoughts about this weed have nagged me on and off  for the last many years. I even looked out for it during my 2016 visit to Bangalore and din't find it anywhere. I am  glad I finally found it's name and details in this webpage(invasive plants of India pdf) at least now in July 2016! Finding this plant was like getting out an elusive piece of food stuck in your teeth after hours of trying to get it out with your tongue!  and I found this blue-leafed yellow flower weed plant near Gadag during a 2019 visit. It was growing near one of the thousand year old  temples near a village in Gadag.

This is the weed I saw near temple in Gadag...which is missing from the pavements of Bangalore these days.


Another is a weed with white bell shaped flowers and thorn covered fruit.(possibly Datura Stramonium)

Another was a blue bell shaped flower weed plant, growing lightly like a creeper and spreading all over the ground and fences.(Clitoria ternata) Also called Vishnu Kranti and Shanka pushpa

Another was morning glory or Ipomea flowers


Another was a plant with yellow flowers, growing on the fence of the stone building school near Malleshwaram bus stand(near Sankey tank) in the early 70s!

Another was a weed with bright yellow flowers and leaves like the groundnut plant's.

How could I forget the 'touch me not' plant (Mimosa Pidica)whose leaves magically close when touched! This too was a weed growing randomly around Bangalore, I would love to have this plant here in Canada and show off to kids!
 I feel bad that these weeds have gone missing from Bangalore....they may be 'mere' weeds but still... they are pretty!  The bright weed flowers on the concrete pavements have a pleasant effect on one's conscious or subconscious of pedestrians. It is high time Bangalore builders stopped pouring concrete over the entire Earth surface of Bangalore and give some space to plants to root!
http://www.isws.in/invasive-plants-of-india.php  
 is an excellent reference if you are looking for weeds of India. It has pictures which helped me to recognize what I was looking for.
....

Celosia argentea was a weed in the crops in my village. it was sold outside temples in the taluk as offerings to the Gods.

Chloris Barbata is another weed I recognize but cannot remember if I saw it in villages or cities in India

Cortalaria Retusa

Cryptostegia Grandiflora

Cuscuta Reflexa

Datura Innoxia

Datura metel but the flower color I have seen is different from the one I saw in the link above

Ipomoea Obscura

Mirabilis Jalapa

Opuntia Stricta (Not sure if I saw this cactus as a weed growing in villages or as a potted plant in homes in cities)

Tridax Cocumbens --I remember this tiny yellow flower so well!

Eicchornia Crassipes (I have seen this in Hebbal lake of India)

While reading about these plants in India, I was puzzled and I still have no answers. Majority of these plants came to India from other countries like Brazil according to what I read about them in wikipedia, etc.
Then which  plants and trees, are true  natives of India?
When I read  books on Hindu  customs and rituals, so many flowers, plants & trees  mentioned in  Hindu mythology don't seem to have been in India during Vedic times. How can this be explained?

Going back to the title of this article, I am depressed, angry and frustrated about the state of Bangalore at present.
One day our children will have to see the common sparrow (of the 70s) in zoos !

Bangalore is NOT DEVELOPING.
Bangalore is being MURDERED by people.

my assignment for screen play writing at TDSB Learn4life Fall 2014 class

The forest at the edge of the Himalayan Mountains was thickly wooded, dark and cool. There were places in the forest, where even the sun’s rays could not penetrate through the thick branches of the trees.

This forest was home  not only for the hundreds of birds& beasts, plants & trees, reptiles & fishes, rocks & caves, lakes & rivers but also for many of society’s outcasts and oddities.  Rumor had it that not only did people seeking God lived here but also the lunatics, the robbers and thieves, the lepers and the other outcasts of society.  There were huts with monks who meditated upon God in this forest. The simple people of the nearby villages, walked to these huts to give alms and seek blessings, advice and holy ashs from the monks. Fearful of the wild beasts and the robbers who were supposed to inhabit the forest, they never came singly but in groups.

Some villagers said they saw this leper or that lunatic entering or leaving the forest. Some claimed to have seen fierce looking dacoits with huge mustaches entering the forest, in the early hours, carrying booty. If everyone’s story was believed, the forest seemed to hold more people, than a city!

Little boys played at the edge of the forest during the holidays from school when could escape the watchful eyes of their parents. Only the boldest of the older boys strayed a bit farther inside the forest to prove he was not scared of the ghosts haunting the trees in this forest.

Several tales about this forest made their rounds. One tale is of a brave hunter & his servant who entered this forest many years ago. People spoke in hushed tones about the hunter who never returned and his servant who was a babbling idiot when he emerged from the forest. Another was the tale of a band of robbers who lived in the forest and hid their booty in one of the caves. No villager dared to enter to hunt for this treasure and wild tales of the treasures hidden grew as the stories passed on from one generation to another.

Kiran, a teenager from the city, who spent his holidays with his grandmother, who lived in the village at the edge of this forest, played with the boys, by the river running between the forest and the village.  He loved the wide open spaces in the village. He loved swimming in the river and keeping an eye out for the cunning croc, added a delicious sense of danger to the swimming.  Kiran found the mangoes tasted sweeter only if he stole them! He enjoyed the scary thrill when the old man guarding the trees gave chase to him and his friends.  

Kiran heard the stories about the forest from his friends. He was fascinated by the story of the ghost which had chased a man who took the shortcut through the forest to reach another village. He was curious about the treasures in the cave. He was most curious about his grandmother, who let him do almost everything he wanted but would never let him go to the forest.

One hot day, when his friends were busy helping their families with harvesting the crops, Kiran, was by the river fishing and looking across at the forest. He tried to peer through the trees, but could see nothing but trees and a family of monkeys doing what monkeys do…. Kiran  looked longingly at the forest.  He had only a few days left before his school, in the city started. He thought of the forest, the people in it, the treasures in it, the wild animals, whose roars in the nights, sent shivers up his spine. He thought of the robbers and killers who lived in them, though he had never seen any.  He wondered if he would ever see the King Cobra with 5 hoods and if he would ever get the Nagaratna from it’s hood.

Kiran’s longing to go into the forest got stronger and stronger, as the day for him to depart to the city got nearer and nearer. But his grandmother was adamant that her grandson, who came to stay with her should return to the city, safe and sound. She would not hear of Kiran, even setting foot on the other side of the river. Kiran, who loved his grandmother was torn between obeying her and his longing for the forest.

He thought of the forest all the time. He spoke less to his friends and lost interest in his games. His mind was full of the forest and he thought of it during the day and dreamt of it at night.  Will he return to the city without searching the forest?

Michael Robotham and others...I read in summer 2014

My colleague and friend introduced me  another nice author, previously unknown to me... Michael Robotham.
I just finished reading two of his books i.e. The night ferry and Watching you. Enjoyed both.
Ordering other books by  this author and hope the other books are as thrilling as these two.  The night ferry is a thriller told in first person by a Sikh lady born and brought up in England and working in the police force. It tickles me to think that a male, non-Asian person wrote this!

Watching you is a thriller with a psychologist in it and as I am in the mental health field, I was sort of curious.

I hope I have a great summer with lots of great books to read! I am currently enjoying the TV show, Psych. My husband who usually refuses to see TV is also hooked to this and we see about 2 epidodes per day. I love this show! It is fun, not at all serious, the guys Shawn and Gus and all of the cast are fun. We do miss the shows we were watching and all of which have stopped now and will hopefully restart in fall. The shows we are hooked to and not airing now are Homeland, White collar, Justified, True detective, Republic of Doyle, House of cards, NCIS, NCIS Los Angles and God knows what else...I can remember only these now.

One of my dreams if I win a lottery ticket is to buy the dvds of all my favorite shows and give it to my friends in India who have no access to these shows. I would LOVE to do that! I want my friends, especially those who are having problems with their husbands to watch the shows such as Good wife, The Closer, etc...I feel it would empower them at least to some extent and make them stand up for themselves, more than they are doing now. I also think/hope that these shows would change the mind set of the people who continue to think that Indian culture is great, that women should obey their husbands, that family is the most important thing for a woman and that women sacrificing themselves is the only right way.
Surfing on Netflix I discovered a funny enjoyable , old show called The job...it is about a police Precinct in New York city and it's not serious and I feels relaxed watching this...I love the characters, and the fact that things were so easy -going and less grim or less criminal  in those days..or at least in this show.


A few of the other books I enjoyed in Summer of 2014:
Maximum city by Suketu Mehta This is a must read for people who want to understand the 'Real' India !


Lachlan Smith's Bear is broken and Lion plays rough...both are set in San Fransisco, are the first two books by this writer and is crime fiction and about Criminal Lawyers...What I liked about this book is that it is realistic.


Sara Paretsky's  Warshawski series about a female P I in Chicago  I liked these books but found some of them a bit slow... I was surprised to get a Detroit feel about the book (the poverty and crime made me think of Detroit). I liked it because it was realistic(I am over-using this word but cannot think of a different one!), and loved the fact that it is a female P.I...I have only seen male P.Is till now.
Loyalty by Ingird Thoft...this too has a female private investigator
The magician's accomplice by Michael Genelin...this is the first crime fiction set in Slovakia that I am reading. I really like it as it's fast paced, easy to read, believable characters. I  have already booked books by the same author, to read when I am done with this one.
One great non-fiction book, really well written is Human Traffic and Transnational Crime edited by Sally Stoecker & Louise Shelly.


Linwood Barclay's A tap on the window....I love most of his books as they are fast paced.


 And one more thing...Either because I am aging or because today's crime fiction is different I have observed one thing about myself. I  remember the plots clearly of the books I read 10-30 years ago. But the books I read today... i.e. modern crime fiction, I enjoy them as they are quick paced, well written and have characters I can identify with or like... but I  forget the book completely within a few days after finishing them! I am trying to figure out why.


The books I read ages ago but remember very well are all the classics, and  books by James Herriot, A.J.Cronin, Georgette Heyer, Dick Francis, etc and crime fiction by authors like James Hadley Chase, Alistair Maclean, Lawrence Sanders, Earle Stanley Gardner, etc


The books I read today but forget completely include those by Linwood Barclay, Harlan Coban, to name two. The books I have read recently but remember are books by Martin Cruz Smith, Stuart.M.Kaminsky's Rostinkov and Liberman series, Tom Rob Smith's trilogy, to name a few.
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books read in fall of 2014:
Random Violence by Jassy Mackenzie : female PI, set in South Africa (My first book with the story set in South Africa). It is very violent (I don't like this amount or this kind of violence) but the writing is fast paced and I would have enjoyed it more if the violence was a bit less
I have borrowed another book by this author but still to start i.e. Pale Horses

Sea glass by Lake Ontario in Bluffer's Park, Scarborough

Sea glass

 

I don’t remember when or how I discovered about sea glass but now, it is my latest obsession. I had no idea about sea glass when I was in India. A few years ago, when I was searching for something else on the internet, I discovered sea glass … I think. Ever since I discovered sea glass I have fallen in love with it and have spent several hours trawling on the internet and even borrowing books from the library to read about it.

While drooling over photos of sea-glass on the internet, I was lead into the world of other fascinating things such as sea pottery, sea brick and beach stones. I enjoyed seeing the photos of sea brick and sea pottery, though there is less about them on the internet, compared to sea-glass.  I also started reading about sea-glass related things such as the sea glass museum at Fort Bragg in California and the sea glass events held in places like USA & Canada, and UK.  I saw the lovely art work and jewellery people have made out of sea glass in the western world. I also recall seeing, in a Baltimore jewelry shop by the harbour, lovely glass earrings …the  glass was supposed to be from Rome and  produced in B.C!  I hope it’s true! I love the idea of earrings made of glass from over 2000 years ago!

During my childhood, I had loved sea shells like any other child and still love them but I am no longer obsessed with them now. I now feel sorry for the sea animals in shells which are picked and killed for their shells and I don’t want any part of that. I pray and hope that someday, People will accept that even molluscs feel pain and stop torturing/killing them. (“Yo turtle-eater. Put yourself in the place of the turtle and try to imagine how it feels to have your skin/shell ripped out of you, even as you are living and breathing”.)

About a month ago, we went to Scarborough Bluffs as part of ‘show-Toronto-to-visitors-from USA’. And while walking along Lake Ontario in Scarborough’s Bluffer’s Park, I found my first beach glass (less tumbled than sea glass but quite pretty and pretty good!) I was thrilled! For me, it was like finding a treasure!

 I soon found and collected quite a bit of beach glass…about 50 pieces maybe. Most of the glass was milky white or a very pale green though I did find a few dark or bright shades such as cornflower blue, stout brown and a bright red. Most of the glass pieces had not been in water for a sufficient time …many were yet to lose their jagged edges and become rounded … but it was good enough for me!

My ceaseless talking about sea-glass seemed to have infected my husband too and he too began searching the beach.  Being picky, he collected fewer pieces but they were really smooth and worthy of being made into jewelry. We returned to Bluffer’s park again after a week (you do not have to pay for parking from start of winter till end of April) specifically to pick the beach glass. And this time I picked up other stuff  like sea pottery, sea brick and round speckled stones which may actually be pieces of concrete with embedded stones …the concrete pieces have become round after being smoothened by the waves of the lake.

 I loved the bricks on the beach this time! These are bricks with the edges rounded off by the waves and the holes in them look cute and they could be made to hold tiny plants or flowers! Another reason I am simply amazed by these bricks is that I compare these bricks of Toronto with the lousy quality bricks I have seen in India (Bangalore and Karnataka especially in the 70s when my dad was getting our house built). The red mud bricks in India were so weak that they would break if they fell from a height of three or four feet! And some  bricks in India were so poorly burnt that they would crumble if it simply rained on them! While these bricks from Toronto which have been in Lake Ontario, for years have only their edges rounded off! It makes me angry thinking of the poor quality of so many things in India.

The red bricks in Toronto are almost like rocks! As people in Toronto (and many parts of US & Canada) have seen, there are millions of exposed  brick houses and brick buildings which are over 100 years old…these brick houses are not covered with stucco or concrete and the bricks are exposed to the severe winters, to rain, snow, summer’s heat and yet, they remain strong! I have seen brick streets in Etobicoke and the distillery district, with vehicles running over them, yet they remain strong.

The rounded concrete pieces too were pretty intriguing for me. I have put the photos of all I found here and when you see the photos, you will know what I am talking about.

I did not see any sort of shells by the lake here…I don’t know if it’s too cold for the molluscs here in Lake Ontario near Scarborough…or if there’s some other reason as to why I did not find any shells here. We found plenty of pebbles and beach stones…they were beautiful, but I did not pick them.

My husband made these ear-rings and pendants which I wore with glee, the very next day. And I am planning to arrange the pieces of beach glass in different patterns, photograph them and save the photos. Unfortunately, I am not as creatively gifted as my husband and the only thing I can do is collect these glasses and weave fantasies about them!

Another topic of interest to me is driftwood. But I am yet to find interesting pieces and make something of them.

Books I am reading in January 2014

Bitten by the Black snake: the ancient wisdom of Ashtavakra by Manuel Schoch
This is one of the best philosophy books I have ever read, I am considering buying it.

The Mughal World:India's tainted paradise by Abraham Eraly
Anyone who is curious about life of the Mughal kings, the people of his court, and the lives of common people such as farmers, soldiers, merchants in India,  in the Mughal period India, should read this book! I had been curious about lives of people in India as a teenager but the social studies books I had as texts were useless. All they had was the names of kings, the wars and their dates, the places the wars took place. The books were so dry and the facts were so boring to read and retain, without a body of information to back them. (I am cursing the Karnataka State Government text books of the 70s and early 80s).
After moving to Canada and borrowing the books from Public Library,  I am learning so much about Indian history. Abraham's books is one of the best---highly readable, informative and this books gets into why people behaved in the ways they did and why things happened the say they did....why for example, the farmers in India   became thieves; how the artisans lived in poverty and  this lead to art slowly dying out, etc
 

Delusions..Allen Frances's Essentials of Psychiatric Diagnosis responding to the Challenge of DSM-5 (The Guilford Press, 2013)

........It is not the wrongness of the belief that defines a delusion, but rather it's being held in the face of universal consensual invalidation. Of course, this distinction is difficult to apply and can lead to some strange paradoxes. Galileo might accurately have fit this definition of "delusional", given the consensual state of scientific knowledge in 1600. And Jim Jones might not have been considered delusional, given the fact that his Jonestown cult provided consensual validation of his wacky and dangerous beliefs..........

This sentence gave me such a joyful Eureaka feeling, when I read it, I cannot express! I have been reading the definitions of delusions  since the last 30 odd years and until this wonderful definiton by Frances,  the definitions always stressed on the falseness of the belief('A delusion is a firm, fixed, unshakable false belief held by an individual' etc,etc,etc)
This description of delusion especially the fact that it is NOT THE WRONGNESS OF THE BELIEF THAT DEFINES A DELUSION, is so right and I am wondering why no one ever thought of it before...I thought of it but did not state publicly what I truly felt and this person Frances has done it!
This description of the delusion makes so many things easy and clear to me.
I can use this aspect of the delusion when I do CBT with clients ........
I can stop getting into arguments when I am accused of being delusional by thinking of this !
I can understand  better and empathize with delusional people...especially those who are not diagnosed with delusional disorder but those millions of people who are doing the same thing over and over again, with little success but strong beliefs.........Like a madcap I know who keeps buying arid agricultural land with high-interest-borrowed-money as he believes the value of this land will go up and up and up.


Normality and abnormality of human behaviour and  the criteria for mental health and illness in various cultures and situations is one area which has always facinated me.  I have written about my take on some aspects of mental illness in other articles of this blog. I will be writing more on delusions(my take on delusions...not regurgigated from other articles on the net or from texts) as delusions  facinate me; it is not the dramatic, exotic and obviously psychotic delusions that facinate me but  the subtle ones, which hover between non-delusional and delusional. The same behaviour falling at different points in the continum from  non-delusion to delusion, when it occurs in different cultures, times, places, genders, etc.
Let me give an example...
a girl of 15 refusing to step out of her house after 6 pm in Cairo as she is afraid of being attacked verbally or physically ..is she delusional or right or over cautious
This same girl of 15 has moved to  a small town in USA and is refusing to step out of her house after 6pm.

 I have written an article on judgement(What causes poor judgement? in 2012) which is sort of about delusions to some extent....poor judgements  are caused in part by delusions

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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