A Single World Leader

Today we live in a world, where thanks to technological advancements in communication and digitization, countries have only geographical significance. Even problems such as Covid 19 pandemic with its variants like Delta and Omicron, climate change, terrorism, drug menace, human trafficking, etc., affect all nations.

  The fight against these scourges also tends to get global with nations coming together under the aegis of The United Nations (UN) through organs like  World Health Organisation(WHO),  the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). Besides these,  other bodies like NATO, G20 summit, Conference of Parties 26 both held recently in Rome  Glasgow respectively also discuss ways and means of dealing with the problems.

 A fair assessment of the results of these global initiatives however points out that the problems still persist. The main reason for this is that though nations gather to find unanimity of approach, their respective national interests take a higher priority than the compulsion of implementing an agreed decision or solution. 

Take the Covid 19 pandemic for a case.  When the first and second waves of Covid were in full swing calling for vigorous vaccination drives, strict quarantine of victims,  area lockdowns, and travel restrictions,  many nations faced problems of insufficient quantities of vaccines, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders logistics difficulties, and demand outstripping supply,. Production of vaccines to meet the global needs at affordable costs is fraught with disputes over vaccine patent waivers. The WHO was crying hoarse to speed up vaccination of all adult population and enforce rigorous enforcement of Covid Appropriate Behaviour like masking the face, social distancing, and frequent handwashing. Individual nations or even areas within a nation decided these issues weighing the pros and cons of lockdowns vis-a-vis livelihood needs of the people. Then there was the problem of resistance to vaccination by some people. 

 The Paris Agreement as a legally binding international treaty on climate change has set a goal to limit global warming to a level below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. This calls for all nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide which is the main pollutant from burning coal for power generation. Both China and India have resisted attempts for a G20 declaration on phasing out domestic coal consumption. Here the economy of using locally available coal for the generation of power overrides the global good of reduced pollution arising from power using non-fossil sources.  

 The question arises as to why global initiatives for dealing with global problems have not delivered the goods in spite of the existence of global organs like the UN and overall laudable efforts by leaders of various nations to find solutions. Is it the respective national economic, political,  social, governance, ideological interest overwhelming global good.?

 Can there be a leader(s) to lead other leaders? What will be that entity's source of authority to lead? Will a group of public intellectuals, activists, authors, statesmen, artists, academia be able and acceptable to provide unified global leadership to leaders of governments? The UNGA and UNSC are only assemblies of governments with some of them threatening to stop funding and with weapons like Veto power can and have indeed torpedoed many viable solutions for many problems in the past. 

  

 

The Old Man and the GK

For Delhites GK is the abbreviation of Greater Kailash. This blog however talks of another GK . Most Delhi University graduates of my age have either made it , or failed to make it like me ,to the IAS, which if nothig else, made us great in GK, i.e., General Knowledge. GK was a compulsory paper in the wrtten exams and a favourite mind- teaser with the interview panelists. The Manorama Year Book was one of the the main sources and approaches to gain the bookish GK . Many bits and facts inputs were required to be learnt as GK . Examples: Babylonian civilization, marvels of scientific inventions and discoveries including Wagner's theory of the continental shift, milestones in world history, Hindu and Greek mythology, politics, plant , animal and sea life, evolution of the State from Plato to Marx and last but not the least current affairs. Famous authors and their works are another an important part of GK, like Kautilya's Arthshastra, Kalidasa's Shakuntalam, Milton's Paradise Lost, Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire and so on which none of us have even heard about much less read. Perhaps this type GK was designed to make the IAS personnel know everything except Indian Adminisration which they would in any case learn later in their career from the political masters. Talking of books, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea which has inspired me to title this blog after it with Gk in place of Sea though I have not read it. In one of his recent pieces , Jug Saraya , the columnist for The Times of India, divides the modern age into BC standing for Before Covid and AD for After the Disease . My piece here is about both these divisions in my life . My recent BC years were marked by personal mobility at my will and pleasure for shopping, haircut, attending concerts, evening meetings in our Society senior citizens group, taking morning/evening strolls in and around our residential campus, visiting bank ATMs and temples . Iwas particular about my attire choosing the right combination of shirts, short/long sleeved, and trousers. In the mild winetr months of Mumbai, I showed off with my wardrobe of blazers, scarves, shawls and sweaters. There was also the undisclosed agenda to present myself with charm and elan to the ladies of the Campus. Occasional academic tasks took me to a couple of local management institutions for delivering lectures, attending college development committee meetings etc, where I exhibited my extensive GK acquired for IAS exam to audiences sitting dazed at my wisdom. My questions at faculty selection or students admission meetings were not so much on the subjects like finance or HRD but based on the ever green GK gained years earlier for IAS. Except Current Affairs , most other GK has remained the same over the years. My current AD life is marked by more or less solitary confinement in our home with strict Covid compliant prtocol behaviour enforced by the family. New skills have been learnt like washing the hands frequently with soap and sanitizers, wearing a mask all the time and speaking clearly for others to understand and keeping social distance. The last requirement was not new to us as my wife and I have always maintained cosiderable distance of body and mind between ourselves. Not only our Society was declared as local containment zone, we too have our inhouse cotainment zones with me sitting in the hall watching the TV and lazing while my wife is locked in another room talking endlessly on phone with her daughetr, sister living abroad and brothers and cousins and local acquinatances . The Mask has given rise to one more Murphy's law i.e the itch in the nose occurs more often when one wears a mask than when not masked.Other noticeable changes in my persona are overdue hair cut , a lackadaisical approach to dress and apperance and opinionated or polarised views. It is said that the endemic will usher in new normals in every aspect of our familial, social, occupationalrelationships , behaviour and lifestyles.. Hope my accumulated GK would survive.

The Dreamy Writer

I dream most nights in my sleep. I have no clue to their duration but they are long enough to result in nice short stories involving themes and characters I have not thought of before. My dream stories occur in parts i.e., before, during and after brief spells of my waking up during the night. The stories are in my mother tongue Tamil. Occasionally I dream delivering speeches in excellent English. I am scarcely able to recall my stories and speeches in full the next morning and I fail in my attempts to write them on paper. Only sketches remain in my memory for few days and fade away. My dream of becoming a writer thus remains only in my dreams.

The "Auto" graphy of my First Car

Like Mahatma Gandhi's autobigraphy is titled "The Story of My Experiments with Truth", this blog may be called an "auto" graphy with the title "The Story of My Experiences with my First Car" My first car was actually a second hand car. In 1980s when I bought it, the term used car was not in vogue. It was a black Fiat , produced perhaps in late 1960s and was one of the last batch with doors on both sides opening from front to rear , fit to be graded as a vintage car. Though called second hand, I am sure it must have passed through several hands as the RC book showed may owner names. To avoid being cheated by touts dealing in used cars , I took the help of a friend to test drive and certify its health and roadworthiness. The price was settled at Rs 18,000. I did not know driving and my firend volunteered to teach me driving .As good leaarner I picked up the rudiments correctly and in quick time and within a week my friend was satisfied that I could drive on main roads without him by my side. I got my two wheeler driving licence upgraded to driving automobles, thanks to some over friendly RTO agents . The only thing I could not get over was taking my left foot off the clutch pedal while driving. This habit resulted in a comic episode when I could not drive the car up the small gradiant of the Gharware bridge in Deccan Gymkhana area in Pune.The car started sliding down backwards and both my daughter and son gotting trying hard to push it up the bridge.. Like most proud owners of newly acquired cars with limited driving skills and even less knowledge of automobiles and traffic rules, I was not deterred from taking the family on frequent round rips from home to home city without parking anywhere . This is because I could not for my life master parking in narrow parking space between two vehicles. In my opinion, parking needs different skill sets and training. The car showed great propensity to consume petrol in tens of litres frequently as well an insatiable thirst for water in its radiator. My ascribed this to age of the vehicle and need for an overhaul of the engine. Then one day it happened what I dreaded not to happen in my driving life. Taking a practice drive alone one afternoon close to my home, the "Leftist" leanings of my car resulted in its hitting the barbed wire fencing off the road and it stalled with engine running. I left the car on a "as is where is" basis, walked back home and phoned up a nearby garage. The car was towed home with its left side mauled beyond recognition of what might it have looked like earlier. An estimate of charges for removing dents, straigtening and painting was submitted to me by the garage man. He gave me the option to consider reconditioning of the engine and other major work like brakes,suspension system etc right then since the car needed all these items too attended. My wife on her part suggested body repainting of the colour of the car with something other than black as she was convinced that black colour was the reason of the accident. I was firm in asking the mechanic to repair only the effects of the accident and that I would take up other items later in due course. Nonetheless, I asked him for a tentative quote for all the repair work including engine recondtioning etc . He mentioned something of the order of the price I had paid for buying the car. Next day I visited the garage to see if the work has been taken up. I did not find my car . When asked about it, the mechanic showed a heap of parts of an automobile engine spread on a tarpaulin sheet saying they have been dismantled from the engine of my car for repair/replacement and refitting . When I remostrated that he had no business to start these major jobs without my consent, he said that since he had no immediate work on hand for such major repairs he had better started the work on my car. After all one day or other I had to get the same done. I protested threatening to report to the police and insisted that he gave me the car back with engine refitted . He agreed to do that and quoted refitting charges payable by me! I had to agree to an astronomical figure for all the work except body repainting . For my misfortune all this happened when the DoorDarshan was featuring a comedy serial Waghle ki Duniya . The main character was one Mr. Waghle who was the victim of cheating at the hands of others. Many of my friends who knew my story of my first car called me Mr. Waghle

The Treachery of TRP The TRP debate is timely.The Times of India in its report says “The entire TRP system that underpins over Rs 25,000 crore worth of TV advertising is riddled with serious vulnerabilities and challenges. A tiny and skewed sample of 44000 homes for a viewership of 84 crore, outdated survey data, regulatory changes –and, as the ongoing scandal has highlighted, scope for manipulation through bribery “, the TRP as a metric for measuring viewership is flawed has become highly questionable. The stakeholders in the system are the advertises, the ad agencies, the media i.e. TV channels and last but not the least, the customers of products and services advertised. In the case of customers, however, data is captured on the duration for which their TV boxes were kept switched on for particular TV channel(s), while no data is gathered on the time spent actually on viewing the programme(s). I am amused at the naivety of the ad industry into believing that their ad spends in English language news TV channels fully serve the purpose of advertising i.e. to help recall the product advertised in the minds of the customer while making a purchase decision. Most viewers feel annoyed by their interrupting occurrence repeatedly throughout the transmission which perhaps tend rather to anger than evoke interest The viewer is bored and compelled to change to another and lo it is an ad break there too !.. So, the audio is put on mute mode till the news anchor's face, which looks equally bored, appears. Another reason for muting the sound byte in ad is its relatively higher decibel level. For these reasons it will not be incorrect to say that TV advertisements in India are counter- productive.

 

Tambrahms: Where to find them?

My earlier blogs on Delhi’s Madrasis, Chembur Mama and The Dilemma of Chembur Mami were mostly based on my observations and some imaginary situations. The characters belonged to the generic group called Madrasis which even today continues to serve as the collective noun of South Indians living away from Madras. It was merely coincidental that these characters also happened to be identifiable as Tambrahms, a contraction for Tamil speaking brahmins primarily living in Tamil Nadu though many have now migrated to other States and countries.

I did not realize that if one wanted to know about Tambrahms, Tamil Nadu is not the place to go to look for them. That State has only a few of them left residing there and in some inconsequential sense.

 The place where they have migrated in significant number and counted is the adjoining State of Kerala. Thus within the Tambrahms, there is a distinct sub- group hailing from Palakkadu called Palakkadu Brahmins (PB), who have distinguished themselves  with great success in fields like  business, corporate management, IT   government service, fine arts, etc,. Though the late T.N.Seshan, a Palakkadu Brahmin himself once said in a light-hearted and self - deprecatory comment that the Palakkadu Brahmins excelled as “cooks, crooks and civil servants”.

The PBs are scattered all over in India and abroad that a writer once wrote that they are “neither here nor there or everywhere”.  The old story that the first humans to set foot atop Mt.  Everest and the Moon were greeted by a Nair from Kerala offering them tea from his stall already established there raises the doubt whether the Nairs followed the Palakkadu Brahmins or vice versa to immigrate to far off lands. However, wherever the PBs have gone, they have shown a strong instinct for holding on to their traditions and also adopting the most modern development in technology. Poojas like Bhagavati Seva and Saastha Preethi with sumptuous Saddhya are the hallmarks of their social life whether  Mumbai or Melbourne, Delhi or Dallas. The conversational gambit when one PB meets another for the first time, “Naan Palakkad Akkum” is the passport for the acceptability of membership of the community.

A good amount of reading* is available about when and why the  Brahmins migrated from adjoining Tamil Nadu to Kerala and especially to Palakkadu. There is also insightful writing on the Agraharams they established in a cluster of 18 villages in Palakkadu, the most famous being Kalpathy.

It is typical of them to speak Tamil with a Malayalam accent and intonation which only reinforces their roots in Tamil Nadu as regards language, culture, and traditions. But some of the words in their dialect would mean differently to the Tamils. For instance, Vellam in Tamil is jaggery or flood depending on the context of its use while they use it to refer to water.  The word for magnifying the intensity or degree of anything for the PB is Bhayangaram but it is used in Tamil to describe something as dreadful.

Their abiding interest in classical Carnatic music is extraordinary.  The doyen among them, the late Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhaghavathar has left a great legacy of musicians after him. Some great vidhwans like Palakkadu Mani Iyer (mridangam), T.N.Krishnan (Violin), and K J Yesudas (Vocal) are household names.

The quintessential Palakkadu Brahmin (PB) is the  middle-aged, stocky, baldish,  veshti folded at the knee and with no upper garment. Punctilious to the core, he exhibits a no non- sense image saying precisely what he wants to be said and with no embellishments or finery of speech.  It is often mistaken by others for low degree arrogance.  But inside that exterior, there is the person of disciplined and healthy life and respect for traditions.

A leading Carnatic musician once mentioned to me the following anecdote. He was booked for a concert to commence at 6.00 P.M. in a temple in Palakkadu but owing to some logistics problem he and his accompanist artistes could reach the site only about 15 minutes before the scheduled time. Fearing some reactions from the organizers, he politely declined the hospitality of refreshments. , telling them that he would be happy if some warm milk is provided, say an hour after the concert began. The concert commenced and he warmed up to begin the alapana in raag  Kalyani , when a stocky person appeared from nowhere and in a commanding voice said “Bhaghavathare! Niruthum (Stop)”  The singer was mortally frightened and thought he might probably have struck a false note or so and that this man,  as a connoisseur, had observed and wanted to point out. He immediately stopped singing. The man came to the stage and  gave the singer the milk saying  “Paal Kettire, Indarum” (You wanted milk Is it not? Take it!) It was exactly one hour after the concert began.!

Palakkadu Iyers, wherever and whatever they are, do the community proud  

*The Saga of Kalpathy - The Story of Palghat Iyers , M. K Das

The Brahmins of Palakkad - The Palakkad Iyers . K.V.Narayanamuthy 

Agraharams - Wikipedia

Why I love English

Why I love English

I do not say that I am aa linguist. As pre-indepedence born, I quite well anticipated the 3 language policy and confined myself to learning Tamil( my mother tongue), English (the medium of instruction in schools upwards class V) and Hindi ( most of my life was spent in Delhi and other non - Tamil speaking cities. However, I am  drawn to love English a lot more than the other two languages. I find several oddities  in its usage in  written and spoken forms. 

For example, one finds  words and their antonyms used together in conjunction for emphasis. On the other hand, some words and their synonyms are used in opppsition or as alternatives. Singular and plural forms of the same word are employed simultaneously. You might find other unique features if you research a bit.

 Take words like up and down and back and forth. Though they respectively imply vertical and horizontal movements, they can be used one for the other. For instance, if you are the boss and a junior has committed some mistake. You are in a rage . 

You have the choice of pacing in your room up and down vertically(!)  or back and forth hrizontally . 

You want to  give him a dressing down left and right and ask for his explanation  in black and white.

You may now and then join the staff in their picnics but they know that you are not one of those give and take guys.

 You narrate to them your early life struggle working day in and day out for the company, splicing the story here and there with juicy details of your bosses.

  

 Words like useless, meaningless and harmless connote the absence respectively of use, meaning and harm. But priceless does not mean no price or free .(!) 

 The dictionary defines the adjective full (double use of l )  as holding of any thing that its limlits will allow . But when used in combination with words like beauty , use and harm,  there is only a single  l. Does it mean that these words are with a lower degree of their respective  quality ?

Statisticians have matured from yearly comparisons to say year on year growth and repeat time and again

I have more or less conveyed what a great language English is to one and all