Indo-Pak Peace on Crutches

Is hatred a handicap? Can't you move with it? In fact, people keep alive ideologies and patriotic zeal, the killer instinct in many competitive fields because of just this feeling of hatred and opposition.

Is 'Aman ki Asha' merely using emotive appeal?

It is good that the disabled will play together. But there will be one team that will win. If we say it's the game that matters, then in this case it is probably a concession.

Let us see it as an exchange programme. Not everything must be marketed as an Indo Pak peace initiative.

I wonder if soldiers from both sides who've become handicapped in the course of battles would not make more sense. Who'd understand the importance of peace more than them?

Sabarimala: A Test of faith?

Pilgrims on the way

Every year, in some part of the world, in some pilgrim sites, people die. Tents burned, landslides, stampedes. Yet, year after year people continue to visit these places. As a non-practising anything, I can only tell myself that we don’t stop flying because of air crashes or driving because of road rage or indulging in risk-filled activities and eating the wrong foods knowing they are wrong for us.

However, where anything religious is concerned, both believers and non-believers alike start analysing faith: If there is a god, then why put the devotees through such things? We must understand that these are totally besotted people and they want to see miracles happen because they trust in them, blindly. They are not challenging the superpower; they are submitting to it.

I think such queries are too rational to understand religious faith or the god-mechanism. In fact, there is rarely rational explanation even for air crashes, because it is not always engine failure. It could be a bird hit. I mean a bird in the sky, that pretty feathered creature, can bring down a whole airplane. Turbulent weather can do so. These cannot be factored in by science. So, how can disasters at pilgrim sites?

The miracle light

On Friday, the 14th, 106 people were killed and several injured near the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. There were 200,000 people gathered there at one time. The shrine where the Makara Jyoti (celestial light) appears on its own thrice a year is a sight that every worshipper wishes to behold. There is talk of mismanagement, about how vehicles that are prohibited at the last stretch managed to get in, how there were few cops to man the area, how people had no choice but to push because parts of the rubble were falling on them.

A liquor baron had donated Rs. 18 crore to get the roof of the sanctum gold-plated. This sort of thing is done regularly by the rich in India, but no one bothers about basic infrastructure and, more importantly, management.

The state government has paid Rs. 5 lakh compensation and the Centre has chipped in with Rs. 1 lakh each for the families of the dead and there is money for the injured. This is done when there is large-scale calamity of this kind, but never when an individual is killed in a road accident due to the terrible condition of the roads. And who will take action against the cops who were not there? What about the vehicles when the drivers too are dead? What accountability can there be when there are no accounts?

I am beginning to appreciate these virtual rituals now. I think devotees should follow the rites they wish to and just watch the light or the idol on the internet or on television. And during Haj they can stone the devil in this manner, too, with some sort of interactive software. I know this sounds blasphemous, but I am sure the gods can take care of themselves; it is people who need to be protected.

And let us try and ‘unbrainswash’ them from believing that all this is because god is testing them. Given the way some of our lives go, even the atheists among us must then count as the greatest believers.

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I do have some memories of Sabarimala on my frequent visits to South India during a certain period of my life.

As we’d drive from the Kerala side to Tamil Nadu there would be people walking, often barefoot, in saffron robes mostly to meet Lord Ayyappa, the reigning deity. Women of a fertile age are not permitted in the sanctum because the sage was celibate.

One day I had to return urgently to Mumbai and since there was no night flight, I drove past midnight to reach Thiruvananthapuram airport before dawn to catch the hopping flight at 6.30 AM. There were two drivers, both Tamilians, to ensure that should one feel sleepy the other would be ready to take over. The guy at the counter said the flight was delayed and I could not purchase the ticket since it was not certain what time it would arrive or even if it would make the scheduled stop.

My two escorts, accustomed to an early breakfast, asked if I was hungry. No, I said. Realising that they were, I told them to go ahead. “Madam, you come also,” they said. We went to a small eatery and all eyes turned. I had just worn a loose T-shirt over tights and my lids were heavy from lack of sleep. There were only men in here. Once we settled in, no one cast a glance at all. A banana leaf was placed before us, that was to act as a plate, and all kinds of chutneys were dumped on it, arranged rather neatly though in corners and then arrived my paper dosa, crisp and golden. The two men had ordered half a dozen things. The coffee came in a steel tumbler with an extra one that it had to be poured into from a height with the arm at a right angle. I stopped trying this jugglery but watched with fascination. This cools the beverage and adds froth. The contents of my cup remained in repose.

I could hear the others murmur, if it is possible at all to murmur in Malayalam which is a language that requires one to make groaning and gargling sounds …but there was softness in their demeanour, and I am not romanticising. They had just returned from Sabarimala. Their long fast was over and they were headed back home. They had made it safely, feet calloused, but worth the walk.

I did not take the flight and returned. This time I slept on the drive back. It was fate. Or faith?

Survival, Sacrament and the Marketplace

Making Haiti
Survival, Sacrament and the Marketplace
by Farzana Versey
Countercurrents, January 25, 2010

“I survived by drinking Coca-Cola. I drank Coca-Cola every day, and I ate some little tiny things,” he said. Wismond Exantus’s tale of survival conveys a larger lesson about charity franchising. As someone who worked in the grocery store in Port-au-Prince, where he was found after 11 days, his recollection of Coca Cola as opposed to “little tiny things” indicates that the miracle his brother spoke about could have something to do partly with this beverage and the conglomerate idea it stands for.

There are other ideas. His rescue took place as mourners wept outside the shattered cathedral for the funeral of the bishop; his family could not go to the place to save him because of looters, so they approached the rescue team. The looters are home-grown vultures; the saviours are outsiders.

We’ve been through the Pat Robertson viewpoint. Unfortunately, outside of his limited evangelism exists a larger one that sponges on similar thoughts. It is a ready market for do-gooders who may not express their religious fervour in such black and white terms, but the glorification of being blessed works just as well.

“I am a person who has been blessed,” said Jeremy Johnson, a Utah-based millionaire. “To sit back and relax and send a little money or whatever, it just made me feel ungrateful.”

Ungrateful about what? He was not responsible for the earthquake or for the delay in supplies reaching. He bought helicopters to fly essentials. In Jimani, which he has made his headquarter just across the Haiti border, he has set up a tent. Reports describe him with reverence for managing a “bare-bones operation”, dressed in frayed jeans (is this mandatory uniform or designer empathy?) where he sweats it out with only a small refrigerator providing energy drinks.

Strangely enough, his how to be a millionaire story is rife with fraudulent practices, but this, we are told, has not interfered with his altruistic work. He had earlier “provided a home for boys pushed out of a Utah polygamist sect”. And now he is in Haiti where, according to the Utah governor, people rushed to the helicopters for food and it became “really dangerous”. Therefore, Jeremy is a hero because he not only saves people, but saves dangerous people and those who belong to sects that are not morally up to much.

It is not surprising that he is working with Maison des Enfants de Dieu — Children of the House of God — orphanage to send these children to adoptive families. He has already managed 21 visas and transported them to the United States.

Apparently, bureaucracy was not an issue, although it is for his aid effort where he sees boxes of food on the tarmac. “As a result I even stole. There is a lot left to be done,” he said. This is precious, considering that the local looters were considered selfish and almost vicious.

Johnson is not a celebrity, so his compassion is not entirely driven by charity tourism. It is more about personal gratification: “My life is going to change from this, there is no doubt.” He is already planning the next move and has his shopping list of people who need to be set right.

Haiti, having overthrown the imperial yoke, has to allow itself into a numbing social colonialism and aid slavery. Seen as a tribal society it will now be refereed and guided by the superior Red Crosses. A while ago, I read this delicious comment by model Naomi Campbell when she was asked why she chose to raise funds for the UK flood and not for Africa: “I do Third World. I have been doing Third World since 1994.” One wonders about the expiry date of such vanity of the conscience.

Thirty-seven per cent of Europe’s population was destroyed by the bubonic plaque; ancient cities have been buried by volcanic eruptions. We have had El Salvador, Mexico, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Indonesia — all victims of natural disasters, not to forget Hurricane Katrina and the fires in California.

These calamities have scientific reasons and imbuing them with fatalism makes a mockery of the spirit of enquiry that ought to look into the dangers manifest in our abuse of the environment. Such wimpy sentiments are merely geared to sneak out of political responsibility. Or sneak in political power through the backdoor.

Ironies of India

Mumbai

It’s raining good news for Mumbaikars—with all the lakes touching the overflow mark, the civic body is confident that there will be enough water to supply to the city for more than a year.

Orissa

Thousands of people on Friday fled their homes to safety as the Mahanadi river flooded five coastal districts in Orissa. Six people have died so far and panic migration continued following a state government warning that water the level could rise further.

Official reports said the floods have affected 5 lakh people in 2,606 villages and nine towns in 15 districts. Over 6,000 houses have collapsed. The government said around 27,000 people have been evacuated. More than 60 free kitchens are providing food.

Ironies of India

Just one day in the life of a newspaper and the country and this is what we get...

Bihar

It happens every year. The ‘river of sorrow’, Kosi, causes destruction to life, cattle, fields, houses, villages. From what I read, it passes though the mountainous regions of Nepal and along the way gathers silt. What Bihar then gets is a whimsical river. This is considered a natural disaster when at least some part of it can be controlled. Read the editorial in TOI by N.K.Singh.

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Orissa

VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was killed. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) claimed responsibility for it, warning the saffron outfit of "more such punishments if it continues violence against minorities in the country". There are communal clashes. Does this young girl know anything about the VHP or the Maoists? Can you tell her religion by looking at her?

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Jammu

What are they celebrating?

Jammu broke into wild celebrations on Sunday morning after an agreement between a government panel led by governor N N Vohra and a conglomerate of Hindu groups gave exclusive right to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) on forest land at Baltal for use during the pilgrimage season.

According to the agreement, the state government will set aside land comprising 800 ‘kanals’ for exclusive use by SASB for the purpose of yatra, while making it clear that the proprietary status of the land shall not undergo any change.

The period for which the land will be under the board will include the time required for erecting and dismantling the temporary infrastructure for the yatra.

Congressman Ghulam Nabi Azad: “The 100 acres set aside for the shrine board to make temporary facilities for pilgrims has been used for the same purpose over the decades.”

BJP man L K Advani expressed satisfaction over the accord to resolve to land row and claimed that the PM had told him that the government would not succumb to “pressure from separatists”.

PDP woman Mehbooba Mufti: “The move to allow land use disrespects the popular sentiments in Kashmir.”

All politicians. Only Azad is right, technically.

And then they say we don’t want sops, we are fighting for the land. Now, what happened?

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Delhi

'Dogs Walk The Ramp Before India’s First ‘Mass Wedding’ Of Canines In Delhi'. I have nothing to say except present here an extract from the report:

Painstaking arrangements that included a band, a mandap, flower arrangements and a priest to solemnize the marriage lent authenticity to an event for which 400 owners had registered their pets. There was a murmur among the owners that the sex ratio at the event was skewed—there were not enough prospective brides for the dashing

German shepherds, dalmatians, bull dogs and golden retrievers.

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Mumbai

We don’t seem to have any indigenous ideas left that a replica of Disney World has been created by Sahyadri Mitra Mandal in Chembur for Ganeshotsav? This is by far the biggest street festival of Mumbai. And India has enough folklore and mythology for it to let its imagination run wild. But, no. We are global citizens.