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| Thursday, March 8, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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PM’s sage advice Crucial support role Laloo’s flop show |
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Holocaust of human heritage
Defenceless Buddhas
Homeshare proves a winning double act
EI Nino killing coral reefs
The virtues of humility and gratitude
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PM’s sage advice WHILE addressing a public meeting, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is at his expansive and rhetoric best and offers all things to all people. He can mesmerise the audience with his oratory, to forget about their specific demands at least temporarily. That is what he did while speaking at Kurukshetra on Tuesday. The Chief Minister would have wanted him to announce a waiver of loan recovery. The farmers would have been desirous of a higher support price for wheat. But he skirted these topics to tackle other problems at hand. He used the occasion to allay various apprehensions and magnify the feel-good factor. The reference to ensuring the territorial integrity of the country at all costs was a result of the unending bloodletting in Kashmir, which has spawned a feeling in some quarters that the government is going soft on terrorists. After all, the proxy war is killing many soldiers from Haryana also. Mr Vajpayee used the holy land of Kurukshetra to flaunt the nuclear astra to send the message that being peaceloving is not a cowardly act, but a well-thought-out choice of the brave. Similarly, he sought to reassure the audience comprising mainly hardy farmers that their interests would be safeguarded even in the era of the WTO and multinationals. Vested interests have been spreading a propaganda that globalisation will sound the death-knell for farmers. The Prime Minister spent considerable time trying to remove this impression. He pointed out that the benefits of joining the world community far outweighed the perceived risks. He devoted the rest of his speech to dispensing bits of sage advice. He was speaking as an elder statesman when he underlined the sorry state of affairs on the water and power fronts. It is indeed a matter of shame that Chief Ministers fight among themselves while precious water flows untapped. Northern states could have resolved the pending issues if only the leaders agreed to shed their petty rivalries. These are particularly irritating at a time when the BJP is part of government in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. The Prime Minister also did well to highlight the infrastructural difficulties faced by farmers. His moral authority is unmistakable. It has to be complemented by administrative support. His suggestion to the farmers to break free of the rice-wheat cycle should be taken in the right spirit. If vegetables and flowers can provide better returns to the farmers while the cereals can be obtained from elsewhere, the switchover makes eminent sense. |
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Crucial support role LIKE Amrish Puri and Anupam Kher do in Hindi films, the Congress plays a key supporting role in Tamil Nadu politics. It cannot win an election on its own but neither of the Dravidian parties can without aligning with it. In last Assembly election, the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) helped the DMK win a landslide and the Congress joined hands with the Jayalalitha-led AIADMK to win a fourth of the Lok Sabha seats and itself two of them. Now the party is split with the TMC retaining a major support base, which is now keen on being on the same side as the mother party. This is the secret behind both fronts wooing the two splinters. The two Congress factions can pull in about a fifth of the votes across the state unlike all others who have only regional influence. Without the Congress presence, fighting the coming Assembly elections will become a gamble. Ms Jayalalitha’s earlier assertion that her bitter rival, the DMK, would end up with just 20 seats will go horribly wrong. Her surrender to the ultra Tamil and openly casteist Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) is an indication of her growing self-doubt. So is her conciliatory attempt the Congress-TMC combine. If these two parties stick together, they can pose serious problems to both fronts, particularly to the Jayalalitha-led secular front. The media has contributed to the political confusion in the state. Newspapers have read a snub in her offer of nine seats to the party and her signing a pact with the PMK. The number is neatly aligned with the legislative strength of the party. At present it has no representation in the Assembly and has two members in the Lok Sabha. It has always been a rule of thumb for smaller parties to demand a share in seats commensurate with the number of Assembly segments in its Lok Sabha constituencies. That incidentally comes to 10 in the case of the Congress. The TMC occupies 34 seats in the Assembly and the readiness to set apart 45 seats is neither humiliating nor dismissive. The AIADMK leader has also agreed to free Pondicherry from the obligations of the Tamil Nadu understanding, meaning that the TMC-Congress combine can even fight the secular front there. The question of PMK’s militant espousal of the LTTE cause is there. But it cannot determine the electoral ally of the Congress since it has done nothing during the past decade to fight the separatist menace. It is awkward to remember the LTTE’s destructive potential on the eve of an election and forget it immediately afterwards. |
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Laloo’s flop show MR
LALOO PRASAD YADAV may appear to be down, but he is still not politically out. The Rashtriya Janata Dal rebels did succeed in turning Sunday's "desh bachao" rally in Patna into a non-event. The rally was meant to mobilise public opinion against the entry of multinationals. Instead, the rebels managed to turn it into a "public vote" against Mr Laloo Yadav and his style of functioning. But he has survived several "Laloo hatao, Bihar bachao" campaigns after his appearance on the political firmament of the benighted state in 1990 as the long-awaited messiah of the poor. That only one poor family became rich and powerful while the remaining number of poor people became poorer during "Laloo Raj". This fact cannot be denied. He is largely responsible for turning Bihar into the most backward state of India. Yet Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav is a political factor which continues to haunt his countless rivals. Cats, they say, have nine lives. The former Chief Minister has many more, going by the number of years he has successfully spent as the "political patriarch" of Bihar. The first term he spent gathering fodder for his rivals and the second daring them to take him on by anointing his wife as the de jure Chief Minister. However, Sunday's fiasco has given his rivals a dream to work on. The disgruntled elements have received signals of support from the National Democratic Alliance for replacing Mrs Rabri Devi as Chief Minister. Yet the beginning of the end of "Laloo rule", proxy and direct, may take time to materialise. The dissidents are aware of his political instinct for survival and are not ready to leave anything to chance when they finally decide to part company with him. They are waiting for the CBI to file chargesheets in fresh cases of corruption involving the number one political couple of Bihar before they work out their strategy for the final push. But they have to reckon with the fact that Mr and Mrs Yadav continue to be in the saddle in spite of the cases already registered against them. How the addition of a few more cases of corruption against them will help the rebels in bringing the curtain down on Laloo rule is a mystery which only time can unravel. |
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Holocaust of human heritage No words can be strong enough to condemn what the unspeakable the Taliban regime of Afghanistan has done, not in a fit of blind rage but as an act of cold-blooded zealotry that Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee has rightly described as “barbaric”. Not since the Nazis has anything so vile and horrific as the destruction of the unique and priceless fifth-century giant Buddhas of Bamiyan been heard of. This savagery is comparable not to the orgy of book burning by Hitler and his henchmen but, in terms of culture and human heritage, to their holocaust of six million Jews. Sadly, the foul deed has already been done. The incomparable works of art, sculpture and architecture that were the proud pre-Islamic heritage of not just Afghanistan but entire humanity now lie shattered to smithereens. Further attempts by sections of the international community, including UNESCO, rather belated in the first place, are now pointless. Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan, in a letter to The International Herald Tribune, had aptly compared the destroyed heritage to the “Pharaonic monuments of Egypt, the Babylonian treasures of Iraq, the pre-Islamic masterpieces of Persepolis in Iran”, the Greco-Roman temples and so on. To point out all this to the medieval and mad mullahs operating from Kandahar and Kabul, however, was like the proverbial playing of the been (a musical instrument) to a buffalo. Does this mean that the world can only wring its hands and do nothing further about the monstrosity at Bamiyan? Not at all. The international community must unite to pillory Afghanistan’s barbaric rulers at every step and in every manner. They may control most of the Afghan territory. But only three countries — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — recognise the Taliban regime. The UN, UNESCO, other international bodies and the numerous countries that have spoken out agony against the outrage must see to it that the Taliban regime does not get international recognition at all. This is the minimum price the vandals must be made to pay for their villainy. The UN sanctions against it must be enforced rigorously and indeed intensified. The suggestion for a complete de-recognition of the Taliban has come significantly from Mr Dimitri Loundras, the Greek Ambassador to Pakistan who also heads a UN committee to deal with the Taliban on the archaeological issues. Other Pakistan-based Ambassadors had joined him and UNESCO’s special envoy as well as a representative of the UN Secretary-General, in frantic but fruitless last minute attempts to reason with the Taliban. It is gratifying that a number of Muslim countries have condemned the Taliban. They have also joined a host of Muslim intellectuals across the world, including a large number from this country, in declaring the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas as “un-Islamic”. The rage and the sorrow of the Buddhist countries such as Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Mongolia are limitless. The Dalai Lama also has given voice to deep anguish. The Japanese Ambassador to Pakistan has cried out against “betrayal”. These countries ought to be active at the UN even more than India that is, of course, the birthplace of the Buddha. As Jawaharlal Nehru once said, Buddhism might have taken root in other countries but “India has always lived under the Buddha’s umbrella”. Some have already started arguing that, however, deplorable the action of the Taliban, such vandalism, based on religion or ideology, has been a part of life almost throughout history. They can cite any number of instances beginning from the destruction by the all-conquering Romans of the Second Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem in 70 AD when they crushed a Jewish revolt in their empire. The argument is specious and must be rejected. What happened in medieval times cannot justify its repetition in the present age that is supposed to be enlightened. In anycase, in medieval Spain when zealots tried to demolish the magnificent mosque at Cordoba and replace it by a cathedral, King Charles V had intervened to halt the havoc. “What you are building here”, he had told the hotheads, “can be found anywhere. But what you have destroyed exists nowhere”. Has there been a single such voice of sanity in Afghanistan, a land benighted by the Taliban? The Taliban’s own excuse for their monstrous act has shifted from time to time. At one stage someone had claimed on its behalf that it was pulverising its own heritage in retaliation for the demolition of Babri Masjid in India. The alternative claim to be articulated next was that the Taliban had been driven to act desperately, if also foolishly, by its isolation and even more by the sanctions imposed by the UN at a time when arms were allegedly flowing in to their rivals, the Northern Alliance. The gullible might have swallowed this — as quite a few in this country indeed did — but then the Taliban itself decided to cut out the cackle. It proclaimed from the housetops that the only reason for its despicable decision was that the statues in human form, whether actually worshipped or not, were “un-Islamic”. This has raised other pertinent questions. Muslims have ruled Afghanistan for at least a thousand years before Mullah Mohammed Omar and his wild followers seized power in the nineties. All of them had respected the Bamiyan Buddhas as their heritage. As someone has pointed out, with an appropriate touch of irony, Mahmud of Ghazni was among such rulers. He did march to Somnath to break the idols there and on the way. But he left Bamiyan strictly alone. In the understable angry discussion on the Bamiyan Buddhas a critical point has been generally ignored. What are the Taliban, if not a creation of Pakistan? Pakistan’s support to it is vital for its continued hold on power. Full allowance should surely be made of the fact that proteges sometimes do defy their mentors. It must also be recognised that Pakistan did join other countries in urging restraint on the Taliban. But regrettably its intervention was too late and too feeble. It was rather pathetic to watch Mr Shamshad Ahmed, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN and a former Foreign Secretary, on the CNN fumbling for words and finally coming up with “ill-considered” as the description of the horrendous act in which the Taliban regime was already engaged when he spoke. The real worry in Pakistan, and among its well-wishers, should be what might happen next. Pakistan may have created the Taliban, nurtured them in its madrassas and sustained them in power with the constant supply of warplanes, tanks and other sophisticated weapons. But now the roles are getting reversed, ideologically at least. In the words of many Pakistanis themselves, their country is getting “Talibanised”. Mr Sadruddin Agha Khan, in the letter quoted above, has asked: “How would Pakistan react if some cleric ordered the destruction of all the Indus Valley Gandhara Buddhas?” His question is not rhetorical but very pertinent. The sway of the Taliban-like insanity in Pakistan is a regrettable fact of life. Neither the military regime presided over by General Musharraf nor those sections of Pakistani society who are dismayed by the rising tide of fundamentalism seem able to resist. This, especially in the light of what is going on in Kashmir after the third extension of the unilateral ceasefire, must be a source of major concern. No less dismaying is the role of some sections of the Indian media that have been virtually condoning, if not applauding, the Taliban’s barbarity at Bamiyan. Their argument is convoluted to the point of being perverse. Because there are in India elements like the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, they argue, the world has to live with the Taliban. The destruction of the matchless Buddhas, in their view, is justified because of the earlier demolition of the Babri Masjid. Mullah Omar and Acharya Giriraj Kishore are supposed to be the two sides of the same coin. The destruction of the Babri Masjid was an egregious and unpardonable outrage. It is a matter of shame for this country that it has not yet punished its perpetrators. Instead, the government of the day is trying to fudge the case against some of the alleged culprits who occupy positions of power in the present set-up. But how does this justify the Taliban’s savagery? Doubtless, the VHP’s threat to avenge the blasting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by some similar idiocy at Ajmer or elsewhere has to be resisted by the Indian State firmly. But the curious mindset being displayed by the Taliban’s Indian apologists can in no way be defended by equating one evil with another. To do so is a perversion, not promotion, of liberal values. The writer is a well-known political commentator. |
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Defenceless Buddhas If the two Bamiyan Buddha statues have a voice, they will simply utter the unutterable: we have seen it all and suffered it all. But being the statues of the Buddha, they will simply and painfully smile and tell the Taliban destroyers, “Sons, you do not know what you are doing.” The last person to vandalise was Genghis Khan who cut off the legs in 1221. He also killed all residents of the town on the Silk Route as a punishment for living with two majestic Buddhas. It was the restoration work by Afghan and Indian experts that attracted new migrants and hotels to cater to tourists. In due course, the very tall statues – one 150 feet tall and the other 30 feet shorter – became world famous, being declared a heritage of the entire humanity. Dedicated sculptors, mostly from India, created the icons out of a rock. In other words, the Buddhas were not built but carved out of a hillside very much like the Elephanta Caves and Ajanta. Again, in other words, there was just a hilltop to begin with and after the chistle and hammer work there stood two stunning figures spreading benediction. Of course the creators used a finely ground paste of limestone to produce the effect of folded robes and the contemplative expression. At one time there were also much gold plating and jewels, now sadly missing. There are some priceless Buddha statues in the Kabul museum. This is after all the theft and pilferage by successive invaders. The first one was by an Iraqi General, Yakub ibn Layeth who took away many Buddhist treasures from the rockcuts of Bamiyan (some scholars spell it without the “y”). Chinese traveller Hsuen Tsang has said that Bamiyan was a very important Buddhist centre and housed many monks. They all lived in the caves cut out of the rocks. There need not be any greater evidence of Indian influence than this. One last word. Temple architecture is normally style-bound. Like the tall spires of churches, domes and minarets of mosques. But in India it is bewilderingly different, The tall spires of the Bodh Gaya temple is different from the gopurams of the south. Humpi is a marvellous blending of the northern and southern architecture. The marble Jain temples of Rajasthan and Gujarat are a breed apart as are the temples in Khajuraho and Konarak. Then there are the exquisite designs of small temples in Himachal Pradesh and the grand and richly endowed gurdwaras in Punjab. No doubt, India’s most attractive exportable product in ancient times was religion and temple architecture and it did well. A town’s final journey The time has finally come for Tehri, it seems, to say goodbye to the world. The latest from the Tehri Dam front is that by the year-end all those living in this historic town, situated on the confluence of the Bhagirathi and the Bhilangana, will have to abandon it to make way for the completion of the controversial 2,400 MW project. Last year it was learnt that they had to move out of Tehri by May 31, but the evacuation got delayed for some undisclosed reason. In fact, the process of rehabilitating Tehri's population officially began six years ago, in 1995, but this could not be completed because of resistance from Tehri-wallas supported by environmentalists. The people living there for generations could not reconcile themselves to the new reality. Only a few of them left old Tehri to re-start their life in New Tehri and elsewhere during these six years. But now perhaps the realisation has dawned on them that the nation is determined to complete the planned temple of modern pilgrimage, to use Pandit Nehru's famous phrase, come what may. The seismicity factor, as pointed out by environmentalists and others, has been taken care of. But nothing comes without a price, and so it is with development projects. The displacement of over one lakh people in the wake of the Tehri Dam construction was unavoidable. But they must be paid adequate compensation and as quickly as possible. What is going to happen in the case of Tehri and its residents has been true about most such projects undertaken anywhere in the world. Leaving aside the factor of population displacement, when the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam came up, even a historic temple had to be dismantled stone by stone and shifted to elsewhere. In the case of Egypt's Aswan Dam a structure of great significance had to be relocated. However, the people who are forced to leave their ancestral place or made to see its destruction with their own eyes suffer the pangs of separation throughout their life. So, one must sympathise with the people of Tehri.
Faded charisma It is not as famous a political resurrection as that of Richard Nixon of the USA in 1968 when he came back from oblivion to win the right to occupy the White House. But Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union comes very close to him. He was discarded and derided in the early nineties for bungling and being easily outmanoeuvred by a non-serious Boris Yeltsin. But in the middle of last week, on his 70th birthday, he recovered the popular acclaim and affection as hundreds of Moscovites gifted him flowers and embraced him as their leader. The magic lies in two things. First and the most important, his wife Raisa’s death about 18 months ago and the two drops of tears he shed at her funeral. The Russians suddenly felt he was as human as they were and equally vulnerable. The glass wall that normally separates the leader from the ruled disappeared and Mr Gorbachev became a part of the common stock. Then there was the story that he has lost his entire savings of $80,000 in a banking scam. A former President losing his money? The most important ingredient in his return to popular esteem is his book, “Thoughts on the Past and the Future”. He neither reveals any sensational details about the happenings of the early nineties when he was ousted as the first elected President of the erstwhile Soviet Union nor he apportions any blame on anybody for his tragedy. Since his ouster from power he has been living on writing in newspapers (including a syndicated column in an Indian paper) and doing the lecture circuit in the West. He runs a think tank in Moscow but does not have the money to pay salaries to the researchers regularly. He also heads an environmental group based in Geneva. He was a confirmed red (meaning a Marxist) but now has turned a green (namely, an environmentalist). Actually he still remains a red and a green since there is no contradiction. |
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Homeshare proves a winning double act Sceptics had their doubts about Homeshare. Many said that it simply wouldn’t work, that the idea of young people being happy to live with, and help out, the elderly — albeit for a minimal rent — was unlikely to take off. Yet almost eight years on, the scheme is a fixture in London and is now spreading elsewhere. “It’s the simplicity of the idea that has led to its success,’’ says Helen Collumbine, who has been running Homeshare for the last year. “Householders obviously benefit, while their families love us because we take the worry off their shoulders. No money is exchanged between the two people living in the same house, and that helps, too. It takes away any sense that it’s a business arrangement.’’ Homeshare started in 1993 in London and recently opened offices in other English cities of Oxford, Brighton and Colchester. It is a charitable organisation that places younger people, who could be working or studying, in the home of an elderly person. The average householder is in his or her 70s, while the younger person — the homesharer — has to be what Collumbine calls “mature’’, usually 25 or older. “We advertise wherever young or old people go,’’ she says, “and that might be in a free London newspaper aimed at young travellers perhaps, or the local paid-for newspaper paper or a doctor’s surgery.’’ Householders may apply directly to the project, although some are recommended by family doctors or social workers. “The referral can be forany reason,’’ says Collumbine. “A family might be concerned about their parent being alone at night after a fall or a hospital stay. Some elderly people also suffer from memory loss and their children are keen simply for someone to lock up at night.’’ Night-times are crucial and there are strict rules about the homesharer being around. They must sleep over every night and they get just one weekend off a month. They are allowed out on the occasional evening but must be in for at least four evenings a week. The homesharer pays $ 73 a month to Homeshare, while the householder pays $ 95. In addition, the younger person is required to do 10 hours of housework a week — cooking, shopping or light cleaning. This demand often puts off possible homesharers, initially tempted by the prospect of low rent. But housework is not the only reason why many younger inquirers realise that Homeshare isn’t for them. There are other rules. “They have to commit for six months and not be in a relationship,’’ says Collumbine. “We need them to focus their energy on the person they’re living with and if they start a relationship during their stint, they are asked to leave.’’ Patricia Angadi (86), lives in north London. She has had homesharers for four years and is very happy with the scheme. “I had lodgers before, but this is better,’’ she says. “It stops me from being lonely, but you also don’t get bothered during the day because they go out.’’ Her current homesharer is 37-year-old Tiina Tuliola from Finland. A trained
carrier, she is used to working with elderly people and has been a homesharer before. “She particularly good,’’ says Angadi, “but I’ve had all sorts. I had one who was chaotic and used to leave the kitchen in a real state and another who started a relationship and spent evenings at her boyfriend’s house. I’ve also had some very good ones I still keep in touch with.’’ Her son Shankara is impressed by the scheme. “It has transformed my mother’s life,’’ he says. “She lives in a nice flat surrounded by nice things but we started to think about whether it was going to be possible for her to continue to live there at all. The fact that there’s somebody else there makes a colossal difference.’’ Shankara and his brother, who both live an hour’s drive away from their mother, used to worry about her safety but now feel happier. “This gives us and my mother security,’’ he says. “It’s a real relief.’’ For Tuliola, Homeshare has been a good way to absorb British culture: “I learn about the language and the lifestyle. London can be a bit overwhelming and this is a secure way of starting life here. “It works both ways,’’ she adds. “I cook dinner and we eat it together. We keep each other company.’’ Shankara’s only concern is that Homeshare might expand too fast. “What’s really impressed me is that the people who run it know the ins and outs of the characters, and that’s why it works,’’ he says. “They have enormous depth of understanding and I don’t know how they would retain that if they grow too fast.’’ Collumbine takes heed of the warning. “We’re very careful in the way we run Homeshare,’’ she says. “It takes time and effort to match people up and we don’t want to risk that.” “At the moment, we want to look after what we’ve got. That’s the priority.’’
— By arrangement with The Guardian |
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EI Nino killing coral reefs In a major ecological disaster, all the three coral reefs of India have suffered massive “bleaching” and over one-fifth of the corals have died due to rise in sea surface temperature caused by the EI Nino effect three years ago, scientists have reported. Nearly 11 per cent of the corals in the Gulf of Kutch reefs, 82 per cent of the coral cover in lagoon reefs of Lakshadweep and 89 per cent of the Gulf of Manner reefs have been “bleached”, according to a study by the Centre for Ecological Research and Conservation (CERC) in Mysore. About 26 per cent of the corals in Lakshadweep and 23 per cent in Mannar are dead, CERC scientist Roshan Arthur has reported in Current Science. Bleaching is the rapid loss of pigmentation of coral due to a reduction in photosynthetic activity, caused by environmental stress such as elevated Sea Surface Temperature (SST). Bleaching leads to whitening of the colony.
PTI
Darwin’s pickled fish come to light They emerged, with unblinking glassy stares, after decades and even centuries in the dark. They came out pickled, half cut and in one case cut to pieces. They were the first of 22m zoological specimens preserved in alcohol to move to new premises, and at last into the public eye, at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London. They were wheeled out a few at a time. There was a giant spotted ray caught in the Indian Ocean more than 40 years ago; a 12ft oarfish found by a man walking his dog in Whitby in 1981, so large it had to be cut into six pieces; the first pufferfish to be described by science, by Charles Darwin during his time aboard HMS Beagle; the first groupers, caught by Captain James Cook in the Marquesas islands in the Pacific; a shark from Harrods. Some were “type specimens’’ - the first of their species to be described and named, the official representatives of their kind. Some of them had stayed on much the same shelves, far from the public gaze, in the research departments of the museum since it was built in 1881, and some were far older. Some were collected by Sir Hans Sloane, the 17th-century scientist who invented milk chocolate and gave his name to Sloane Square. Altogether, the museum has 78m specimens of fish, bird, mammal, insect, plant, fossil, mineral and rock. The preserved fish and marine creatures will be seen by the public for the first time with the opening next year of the first $ 39m phase of the museum’s Darwin Centre. Some were plucked from the seas more than two centuries ago and dunked in ship’s rum to keep them from rotting. Most of them are now stored in 70% by volume methyl alcohol. “We’ve got them since 1774,’’ said Oliver Crimmen, curator of fish. “This is perhaps the longest running experiment in preserving biological specimens. Alcohol seems to work so far, so we are hoping it is more or less permanent. There is no finer method that we have discovered.’’
Guardian
Threads of Life The recent earthquake in Bhuj causing untold devastation has posed an immense challenge to anthropologist Judy Frater who has spent the last 30 years chronicling the life of the lives of the Rabari artisans of Kutch. She demonstrates how stitch, colour, pattern and motif can help to trace Rabari history which is otherwise largely unwritten. The Kala Raksha Trust set up by Frater to revitalise local crafts will have the additional task of rebuilding the broken lives of the artisans of Kutch. “If we’re studying a tradition and meantime see it dying, what’s the use of it?” She says.
WFS
Mafia’s classic crime The Mafia has been suspected of many things in the past, but never of harbouring a predilection for the classics. This Tuesday, however, the police arrested 14 people accused of helping it take over Italy’s National Institute for Ancient Drama, which has been staging theatrical productions in the Greek amphitheatre at Syracuse, Sicily, for 87 years. Investigators said the Mafia began controlling the theatre’s car park, then the usher services and the renting of cushions, and eventually assumed complete financial control, boosting costs by up to 500%. The influence of organised crime on theatre contracts transformed a 500,000 lire ($ 236,000) profit in 1994 into a 5bn lire loss four years later, they said. Among those arrested was the institute’s artistic director, Filippo Amoroso, 52, who is also a professor of drama at Palermo University and artistic director of the principal theatre in Catania. He was joined by Michele Midolo, an alleged Mafia boss linked to the Urso-Bottaro crime family. Another suspect is a leading classical Greek scholar, Umberto Albini.
Guardian |
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75 YEARS AGO The half-yearly meeting of the Shareholders of the Punjab National Bank Ltd was held on Sunday 7th instant at 5 p.m., at the Bank’s Head office, 25, the Mall, Lahore. The agenda consisted of the adoption by the share-holders of the Balance Sheet for the half year ending 31st December 1925 and the election of two directors. A large number of share-holders attended and there was a heated and interesting discussion on the various items included in the Profit and Loss account which was ultimately adopted without any change. The election of directors and others for the General Board and Local Boards was then proceeded with. Mr Mukand Lal Puri, Bar-at-Law, Lahore, was re-elected for a further period of three years while Bakhshi Tek Chand, Advocate, was elected in place of Mehta Bahadur Chand. Results of the election for Local Boards have not been declared yet. The Profit and Loss account shows a net profit of Rs. 4,85,788 and the Bank has declared a dividend of 15 per cent per annum. |
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The virtues of humility and gratitude I do not know much about the essence of sublimity or self. I have read books that elaborate the meaning of these two terms. I have also come across myriad definitions of a purposeful and edifying life but those definitions and theories do not reveal to me the beauty and mystery of "lifeness". It is through my muddled experience that I finally realise the value of a gift that life has offered me, the gift of a little space that I can use for whispering to myself. It is this little space that allows me to do my homework and acquire a certain self-definition. It is while doing my sums that I choose a particular direction, a particular way of life, a tentative perception for my identity and self-recognition. For this blessing to have a contact with myself I bow my head to the Lord, since otherwise I would have remained myopic or visionless. Self-contact is not space-centric, since one continues to have a dialogue with oneself in a sammelan as well as in solitude. It is through this tiny window of the mind that one can detect the blandishments of a derivative lifestyle and the shallowness of mimic-men and one-dimensional fellow-beings. When T.S. Eliot identifies the "hollow men" as "Stuffed men" with "dried voices" and W.B. Yeats laments that the best of mankind "lack all conviction" while the worst are "full of passionate intensity", they sadly discern the absence of self-contact amongst our acclaimed movers and shakers. While this self-immersion or inward descent differentiates between the vital and the trivial pursuits, it acts as a radar against ethical compromises. I think Socrates was perhaps the first person to ring this alarm: that "an unexamined life" was futile-that before judging others we should first judge ourselves. This led him to postulate his credo: "Know Thyself". For authentic living one has to scrape off the varnish called temporal success and stature and attempt an honest handshake with oneself. This inner connectivity alone can sustain us in moments of pain and grief. And this connectivity is akin to a creative passion, the passion to preserve your essential self without wearing the mask of motivated politeness. It is helpful to recall what Henry David Thoreau has to say about this connectedness with one's core self. "Sell your clothes and keep your
thoughts", says the American hermit. And, then, he exhorts us to be "a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels not of trade but of thought". Such a vertical contact with oneself alone can help one get rid of a grave malady called "quiet desperation". The failure to have self-contact, in my view, spawns an expedient attitude with an "insidious intent". This purely utilitarian approach won't let us experience the two incomparable joys-one of having a happy home and the other of sharing the trust and affection of a few lasting friends. Social climbers and slick operators, unfortunately, regard human relationships as a mere trade or a transaction that should yield rich dividends. This mercantile attitude, in Carlyle's words, begets not friends but "dinner guests". Contrary to this "me first" and profit-focussed individuals are those who value the sanctity of human ties, since deceit is alien to the mindset of a person who enjoys a dialogical contact with himself. While this self-contact highlights the role of family and friends in our personal growth, it also leads us to discover the twin virtues of humility and gratitude. "I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself, says someone who preceded Gandhiji in forging civil disobedience as a mode of protest. As a therapy against pretence and tall talk, humility acts as a social and moral tonic. Allied to humility stands an ancient virtue called gratitude which I call the hallmark of a human being. Remember Uriah Heep of Dickens? A sycophant and a snob. In our rage for self-advancement we even bury our self-esteem and later feign amnesia about the benefactor. While gratitude enhances the loveliness of life, thanklessness blemishes it. It may sound a bit naive and mushy but every morning when I step out for a walk I look up to the heavens and say to the Lord "Thank you, Father, for another day and for all the blessings. Thank you for fashioning a sublime rhythm in my life-and for teaching me the values of surrender and the art of walking straight with love and gratitude in my heart". |
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My mind is pierced with the Name of God; What else remains to hold my mind? In the contemplation of the Word is bliss, In the absorption of God is joy. The Name of the Lord is my pillar; Lord my Thy will prevail. — Guru Nanak Dev,
*** ...by repeating the word 'excellent' One does not attain to excellence oneself. Thoughtlessly the self-centred man consumes poison; But the man of God exalteth the Holy Name. *** For the blind, the deaf, the slow-witted, For the outcast, the thief and murderer, the wretched, The love of the Lord's Name is glory and wealth; The Holy Name for them is the only gold; All of the world's wealth else venom and dust. — Baramaha Tukhari, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Rag Prabhati, page 1330 *** Kalma (The Word) is of two kinds, Sifati (attributive) and Zati (essential or substantive). All the names given to God, which are based on attributes or qualities, are attributive. They can be written, read or spoken, and are descriptive in nature. There are hundreds of names of God in different languages and they are all attributive. The essential names on the other hand, is the True Name, which is the unspoken, unwritten Cosmic Law. It is the Creative Power of the Lord, which in the form of Divine Form and Sound and Divine Light abides not only within man but also in the whole outside. — J.R. Puri and T.R. Shangari, Bulleh Shah, the Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast,
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