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BHEL disinvestment Peace along Brahmaputra |
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God’s lesser children NHRC notice on child labour timely THE National Human Rights Commission has rightly taken cognisance of a report on the employment of lakhs of children in Karnataka’s mines. Employing children in hazardous jobs is illegal.
End of Magna Carta
Life’s own brand of logic
We’re getting too scared of authority: Tarun Tejpal Say no to quota at AMU Defence notes
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BHEL disinvestment Disinvestment is one piece of reform that had almost been put into cold storage by the UPA government, apparently to avoid a confrontation with the Leftist allies. Therefore, the Union Cabinet’s clearance to sell 10 per cent of the government stake in Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) came as a welcome surprise. Dr Manmohan Singh did hint recently that some bold reforms were in the pipeline, few perhaps suspected that the government would again ruffle the Leftist feathers. Although Mr Chidambaram claims the Left parties were consulted, representatives of the latter not only denied this immediately, but also came out openly against the Cabinet decision. The Leftist opposition, as usual, is unwarranted. After the 10 per cent stake offloading through a “strategic sale”, the government will still retain its control over the profit-making BHEL with its holding remaining above 57 per cent. That should allay the Leftist fears since the “navaratna” will not stand privatised. The common minimum programme of the ruling coalition partners bars privatisation of profit-making public sector units, it does not forbid dilution of the stake. Secondly, the proposed disinvestment in BHEL will yield about Rs 900 crore, which will go to the corpus of the National Investment Fund. All returns from this fund are to be used to finance education, health and employment generation projects as also to revive the ailing PSUs. The employees of BHEL and the general investors will also benefit from the disinvestment process. Fifteen per cent of the shares to be sold will be reserved for the employees. That will take care of opposition from within, if any. Since the government plans to split the stock, retail investors will be able to buy BHEL shares, which currently are beyond the reach of many due to the high price. The government will have to consider seriously whether the “strategic sale” route, originally adopted by the previous NDA government which led to the Centour controversy, is the right channel for disinvestment since there is not enough transparency. Anyway, the BHEL decision does send the signal that the disinvestment of PSUs remains on the UPA government’s agenda. |
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Peace along Brahmaputra A sense of disquiet is an inescapable element in a truce with a group like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), one of the most violent militant groups in the North East. The accord signed on Wednesday with the Centre and Assam governments is still an encouraging development however, and may well turn out to be an important step in neutralising violence in Assam. In return for a cessation of operations against them, the NDFB cadres will not carry out hostile acts or assist any other militant group, will stay in designated camps, provide lists of members and weapons to the Assam police, and will not carry arms or move about in uniforms. The most recent NDFB attacks were in October 2004, carried out along with the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), which left over 40 dead in three days. Disturbingly enough, the attacks came just a few days after Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s offer of peace talks, and a few days before the NDFB announced a unilateral six month ceasefire, with the declared intention of creating a congenial atmosphere for talks. But the NDFB’s truce moves are in contrast to those of ULFA, which cited the October attacks as its answer to Gogoi’s peace call, and may thus serve to isolate ULFA further. The NDFB itself is a considerably weakened entity following the virtual decimation of its bases in Bhutan following the Bhutanese military operation against terrorist bases there in 2003, and the arrest of several top NDFB leaders over the last couple of years. The road ahead is fraught with peril, though. NDFB leaders have indicated that they consider the truce, which is to hold for one year, a part of their struggle for a separate “Bodoland”. The lingering issue of deportation of illegal migrants, the existence of various criminal networks, the emergence of religious counter-groups, not to mention internecine warfare among the Bodos, make for a volatile cocktail. Recent elections to the Bodoland Territorial Council were marred by infighting. But a reduction in violence will be a key development welcomed by all parties. |
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God’s lesser children THE National Human Rights Commission has rightly taken cognisance of a report on the employment of lakhs of children in Karnataka’s mines. Employing children in hazardous jobs is illegal. The problem is endemic in the mines of Hospet, Sandur and Ilkal belt. Children are used for digging, breaking stones, loading, dumping, transporting and processing of iron ore with no safety equipment, wages or working hours. The menace, however, is not confined to Karnataka alone. It is prevalent in almost all states, including Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The use of children in the manufacture of firecrackers in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, is well known. The poor might consider child labour as one of the components of their survival strategy, but one must see its long-term consequences. Child labour results in ill health, malnourishment and other disorders. These children carry such ailments into their adult life, thus forming a part of the sick and under-productive labour force. Studies have shown that the majority of the child workers have a low capacity to work as they are
anaemic. Those exposed to lead poisoning in their workplaces face detrimental effects in their brains. There is no dearth of laws to tackle child labour. What is lacking is their enforcement. The mining leases should be cancelled if the contractors employ child workers. To raise the level of education of the working children in some schools of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre launched the National Child Labour Project in collaboration with the Rotary Club. Under this programme, the children are given education for at least three hours a day in the afternoon so that a conflict with their normal working is avoided. Each school gets Rs 1.6 lakh per year and the children are provided free diet, books, uniform, shoes and a monthly stipend of Rs 100. The project should be launched in more schools so that more children can be educated and the larger problem of child labour is addressed. |
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It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. — Lena Horne
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End of Magna Carta EVERY year, the US State Department issues a report examining the human rights records of various countries. It is a practice redolent of the Cold War days when the US positioned itself as a champion of civil liberties in contrast to the repressive communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China. Although the homilies of a self-appointed overseer of democratic freedom may have sounded pretentious, especially in the context of the various dictatorships favoured by the US itself, they nevertheless did underline a few home truths. This year, too, the State Department has put out a similar report, proudly claiming that it has castigated its Iraqi allies of violating human rights. The only flaw is that it makes no mention of America’s own dismal record in this regard, as the detentions and torture in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons show. Not surprisingly, therefore, Amnesty International has likened the US report to “a business ethics manual published by Enron”. That the US itself might not be averse to flouting civil rights was a fear expressed even during the Cold War. The American diplomat George Kennan, who died recently, believed that “the worst thing that the communists could do to us … is that we should become like them”. Communism, he argued, could turn the Americans “intolerant, secretive, suspicious, cruel and terrified of internal dissension”. The US managed to avoid such a regression on a major scale during the four decades of the confrontation with the Soviet Union. But there were hints that America was not immune to the temptation of emulating the unethical policies of the “evil empire”. A report prepared for President Eisenhower in 1954 advised that the US should opt for “an aggressive, covert, psychological, political and paramilitary organisation more effective, more unique, and, if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy … There are no rules in such a game … If the US is to survive, longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered”. Thankfully, the Cold War ended without America abandoning the concept of fair play except during covert operations, which saw Vietcong suspects being kept in detention without trial — they were “enemy combatants”, after all — before being dumped into the South China Sea from planes, as a recent article in The Boston Globe recounted. Clearly, the Argentinian military were merely following the examples of their US counterparts when they, too, threw prisoners into the Atlantic from high-flying aircraft. But such violations by the US of wartime rules were carried out secretly and may not have been widespread. But now it is official policy. The US today has an attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, whose description of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete” is widely believed to be responsible for the sadistic treatment of the “enemy combatants” at the Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay. Not only that, Gonzales is also known to be an advocate of legalising the use of torture by claiming that the infliction of pain need not be regarded as torture unless it leads to death or organ failure. If the trashing of the Geneva Conventions is in line with the Bush administration’s rejection of international treaties, such as those on global warming, the international criminal court, landmines, small arms, etc, the virtual legitimisation of torture is an event without precedent in recent history. But there is another equally outrageous step that is being contemplated by Washington. It is the indefinite extension of the US government’s power of detention. A measure of this nature will be America’s unique contribution to the legal process and may blacken its name forever, for it overturns a fundamental tenet of law — the principle of habeas corpus which lays down that a detainee must be produced before a magistrate within a specified period. The law goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215 which stipulated that “to no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice”. Nearly 800 years after that reluctant assurance by an English monarch, an American monarch has decided that he has the right to deny or delay justice. To fulfil this objective, the Bush administration is reportedly thinking of building jails overseas, like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, so that its prisoners can be kept away from the routine legal procedures of allowing access to lawyers and being produced before courts. It follows from this line of thought that the US will need countries which cock a snook at standard legal norms and conventions. In this respect, the American prison complex in Cuba has served the White House and Pentagon remarkably well. Its location in a communist country has allowed the champions of freedom in Washington to deny justice to suspects because human rights have never been one of the top priorities of communists. It’s a safe bet, therefore, that America will not be in too much of a hurry to bring the light of freedom to dictatorial West Asian regimes because the US will need them to house the “enemy combatants”. When the war started in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was said that the Americans were sending some of the captured insurgents to the Muslim countries where torture was common practice. The CIA’s involvement in such “extraordinary rendition” has now been confirmed. The Mossad of Israel is also well known for its special skills in extracting information from prisoners. But the US could hardly turn to its only “democratic” ally in West Asia lest it should fuel further anger against Israel in the Islamic world. Besides, the new attorney-general may have made such tricks unnecessary. What is curious is that despite graphic accounts of how prisoners are kept “chained hand and foot in a fetal position with no food or water” and how they “defecated or urinated on themselves” and how nearly unconscious detainees are kept in unventilated rooms with temperatures “probably well over 100 degree F”, no one except a few lowly soldiers has been punished. So, the Human Rights Watch, after noting that “this pattern of abuse … did not result from the acts of individuals”, has called for the indictment of, among others, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is clear, therefore, that George Kennan’s fear has come true. The US has indeed “become like” its enemies in being “intolerant, secretive, suspicious, cruel”. It is noteworthy that it has taken just one attack on mainland USA for it to reject the legal safeguards built up over centuries in the democratic world. If — the heavens forbid — there is another attack, the American response may well be like what an army man told an audience amidst laughter and applause: “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling”. Arguably, the US has always liked brawling, presumably because its instincts have been shaped by the “wars” of extermination against the Native Americans and the exploitation of slaves. It took a courageous editor of the New York Times, Max Frankel, to put his finger on this aspect of American history when he said: “How guilty are we Americans who feed off land seized from an annihilated people and partake of the wealth created by
slaves?” |
Life’s own brand of logic THE other day someone mentioned the acute scarcity of land, especially in the West, and feared that quite soon it might become necessary to bury bodies vertically in the ground. That, of course, was meant to be something in the nature of a joke. It was not realised however that something-in-the-nature-of-a-joke might already have started taking matters too seriously. A press report at the end of April last — not, mind you, the 1st of April — says that an Australian company has been given approval to began work on a cemetery some distance from Melborne where bodies will be buried standing up to save space and to minimise the impact on environment. Burials will be no-frills affairs using a simple bio-degradable body-bag instead of a wooden casket and the cemetery will feature just three-metre holes dug in the soil. (The body-bags will be bio-degradable to enable the land being re-used as such in due course). The moral is: “Be careful in your attempts at humour: You do not know what might be waiting in the wings to follow your joke”. Life, of course, has a way of thumbing its nose at all considerations of human logic. A small example is of Bernard Shaw saying with great confidence at the beginning of the last century that soon socks for the left and right feet will be made with a distinct shape and will not be interchangeable. That is, they would follow the same pattern of “evolution” as shoes and boots: for centuries the latter were identical for the two feet but now it was unthinkable that should not be made differently from each other. But a century has since passed and the change forecast has not taken place. Again, workmen of the Luddite way of thinking destroyed machinery and equipment in factories at the start of the 19th century in a bid to stop mechanisation. The Industrial Revolution, however, swept all such thoughts before it and made the Luddite effort look like an attempt to stop a flood with a thin wooden screen. For another instance see how time has made the much-valued sporting spirit run for cover. With the Olympic ideal in view it used to be said that winning or losing at a game was not of so much importance as the way the game was played. Now thanks to the astronomical size of the money at stake there, the only thing which counts is victory —
victory at any cost, victory with any means fair or foul. In cricket at one time if a wicket-keeper found that the batsman had been given out by the umpire incorrectly, he would call the batsman back to go on playing. In case he were to do it today, he would be almost lynched by his teammates. Even at school the lesson given by the teachers to the youngsters is “Do every thing you can — to win. Constant verbal abuse of a batsman at the crease helps to upset him: let him have a barrage of it”. In fact, the scourge of sledging is a legacy of that policy, and there is so much of it in
evidence. |
We’re getting too scared of authority: Tarun Tejpal
But before your imagination soars, let me add this footnote that physical and emotional bonding goes hand in hand, then suddenly slips, and simply passes on. Then the other thought: whether these 500 pages carry autobiographical patches from Tejpal’s personal life. Don’t overlook the fact that for several years I have seen him and his wife Geetan, on the circuit here. In
fact, when he describes the woman’s physical appearance in this novel it sure gets down to Geetan — the texture of her hair, the complexion, the
features, for she is an attractive woman. Very much fitting with this description from the novel — I quote from it — “ Like her flawless
skin, her hair was alive. It moved in the hand, as if caressing you. Her face was set. The fine wedge of
chin, the fine nose, the perfect wide mouth.” Besides this, other similarities run along: the nature of the narrator’s job, his intense desire to write, the locales and places where he lived and worked from, the middle class setting. Let’s not overlook the fact that Tejpal comes from a middle class Army background. (His father, Inderjit was in the Army and, now retired, he practises law in Hisar, whilst his mother Shakuntala runs a school). And he took to journalism rather early in life — if I’m not wrong — right after his college. Today he is 42 years old but has already been in the profession for over two decades — “twentytwo years,” to be precise. And then his love and passion for Geetan is again much talked about. One of the few men around in this Capital city who are blessed with that one-woman streak, no looking left or right. Right at the centre. Concentrating on just one woman. In fact, the more I tried to fix and mix this into that, it got too obviously close to facts and near facts flowing from his own life. Thoughts not really getting contained I simply had to ask him the finer details of what made him write this novel. And write at a very crucial time of his life when he and his Tehelka colleagues were being simply mauled and hounded by the establishment. I met Tejpal one afternoon recently at Tehelka’s rather vibrant office in New Delhi’s up-market Greater Kailash. In that typical style of his, he looked enthusiastic, spoke absolutely spontaneously, with a schoolboy sort of stark approach.” Wrote this novel from 2002 to 2003, used to write almost everyday for 16 months, even while travelling. And though those were very difficult years but they were not unhappy, for remember I was fighting for a cause, for the right thing, for my conviction and, perhaps, that itself gave me the strength. In fact, for the last 20 years I had been trying to find a voice and a tone which talks of the intimate story and it’s at that particular time that I’d managed to find it, in exactly the way I wanted it to be. I do believe that books take time to find their own place.” Doesn’t the storyline carry much from his own life and times, I ask, as we begin to sip tea — he in that typical Punjabi style of having it from a sheeshe-ka-glass and me from the mug — just about half filled with the brew or half empty ! Whichever way you ‘d want to look. Without further sips, he quipped: “ Fifty per cent of whatever one writes is from life — be it passion or emotions or sensuality.” But patterns and turns from his life do not seem ordinary. “No, I’m not going by VS Naipaul giving that prefix to it “at last a new and brilliantly original novel from India”, but the fact that it is laced with such heavy sexual-cum-sensual stuff that it gets difficult to believe that such fairy-tale passionately sexual sessions exist and go on existing for days and nights and months and years.” Here I simply had to ask him: is the narrator him and the woman, his wife Geetan ? For their love story is said to be along similar lines — meeting early in life and then deciding to be together. “For me love is the greatest thing in the world. I have played on the sensuousness. We — Geetan and I — have an immense emotional bonding. Geetan would read whatever I’d written. And she has been there by my side all through, otherwise, perhaps, it would have been difficult to go through that crisis period. “ Slowly he comes up with other similarities, between real life and what ‘s written in his novel. In between nodding his head with that pony tail taking the strain. I ask him there’s very little of the political build - up together with that fury of the establishment unleashed on him when he was in the thick of writing this novel. Why did he not really incorporate all that into this novel? “Of course I would be writing about all that at some stage. I would be definitely writing what Tehelka went through but it will take time. It’s all here but let it sink in and trickle down. Contours have to be ready and then I would write. And with that he gets passionate about fighting for one’s rights and convictions. As he puts across: “Its time that the so-called elite and socially
privileged of the country take a stand. During the freedom movement it was the elite who joined in the mass movement and fought the battle against the British. Today we have begun to fear too much. We are getting too scared of authority, of state power and that’s what stops people from fighting for their rights and injustices heaped upon them.” What made him continue to take on the state ? “Because of my strong conviction. I believe you cannot be crushed if you are doing the right thing. Don’t get scared and be trampled
upon, but fight it out and remember when you are fighting for a right cause then that fight will never make you unhappy for there’s a sense of purpose to it. This is what I say when I am invited to address the young of the country.” And if he is not writing or being with his family — wife Geetan and two teenaged daughters, Tiya and Cara — then he is busy meeting the young of the country. At an average he is invited to address 15 to 20 meetings. Now, of course, he gets busier as the launch of this book gets going in other cities. |
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Say no to quota at AMU THE demand by the fundamentalist fringe of the Muslim leadership for a quota for the Muslims at AMU, Aligarh, was long-standing. The government finally yielded to this demand when it approved the AMU Academic Council’s proposal to reserve 50 per cent of the seats for Muslims for admission in 36 postgraduate courses at AMU citing Section 2(1) of AMU (Amendment) Act, 1981, and Section 5(C) of the Act which empowers the university to formulate policies for promoting “the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India”. This approval, apart from being blatantly communal, is totally against the interest of the Indian Muslims. Though on the surface, it may appear contrary. It has to be understood that for the Muslim leadership in India, the institutions and issues like AMU, Jama Masjid, MPLB, Babri Masjid, Rushdie affair etc. are stepping stones of their political career through which they raise themselves to the corridors of power and manoeuvre the government of the day. The present move is a fine example of this fact. The previous government sought to bring AMU under the ambit of the Common Entrance Test (CET). This was interpreted as an attempt to “erode its minority character”. Now to draw political mileage from the whole affair, quota-based admission policy is being introduced as a sop to “rectify” the damage sought to be done by the previous government. The logic cited for this is “to promote the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India”. However, the argument that the study of the modern courses like MBBS, MCA, engineering, LLB, BEd etc by Muslims at AMU would promote their (Islamic) cultural advancement is absurd on all accounts. Today’s India is a land of opportunities. Thousands of educational institutions are providing courses in liberal arts, science, technology etc. like never before. We have low interest rate educational loans to facilitate the pursuit of the dream if we are poor. Thousands of fellowships are offered to the young and enterprising. It was never so easy to study and get empowered. There are countless men and women who, by hard work, acquired education and substantially improved their lot. However, among Muslims there exists really no earnest desire for education and material success through institutionalised mechanism. Muslim society is basically a lost world. It is a world of persistent delusion of persecution complex. It is a world of men sitting idly and waiting for the state to intervene and ameliorate their condition. Here children have no schools, no tradition of selfless intellectual pursuit, and no deep urge to awaken their self or to know the secret of life. In this world, the dominant belief is that Muslims are discriminated against in government jobs, therefore technical skill and educational qualifications are not worth pursuit. Education is seen more as an eligibility criterion for applying for government jobs than an instrument to choose one’s destiny. The advocates of educational uplift of the Muslim through reservations have no inkling to work at this level in Muslim society because it involves years of selfless, unnoticed, unrecognised blood and sweat in the hundreds of villages and towns of India. Such work will not win them a general election, or the favour of the ruling party. In fact, in the rear side of another institution of minority character, Jamia Millia, Delhi, you would get the largest mass of illiterate Muslims. The Muslim intellectuals of this institution are short of time and resources to educate and guide aimless young boys and girls, migrants and locals, unemployed and employed in the self-alienating and demeaning jobs. Again not very far from here is the locality of the Meo Muslims of Haryana, a community at the bottom of socio–economic indicators. In fact according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), female illiteracy among the Muslims on the all India level is 66 per cent and in Haryana it is universal (98 per cent). Ironically, an organisation run by people of another faith is working here, but not a single soul who is championing “to promote especially the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India” is to be found here. The prescription of reservation does not address this issue of mass illiteracy and a pathetic absence achievement motivation through approved means. And if there exists indifference and apathy towards education at the basic level, there will be no Muslim to go to study at AMU. The problem of the Muslim community is not the shortage of educational institutions to get enrolled, rather it is the shortage of men and women to get enrolled. The need of the moment is to unleash the reserve of talent, of infinite aspiration among the young Muslims and give it a constructive direction. |
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Defence notes by Girja Shankar Kaura THE Indian Air Force has huge outstanding bills against three former Prime Ministers of the country, where again the IAF aircraft were used by them for “non-official” purposes. According to information brought out by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the three former Prime Ministers together owe over Rs 11 crore to the IAF for the use of aircraft and helicopters for non-official purposes. The MoD has filed cases against them and the parties which they represent in the Delhi High Court to make the recovery of the dues. Over Rs 5.9 crore is due against former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar for the use of aircraft in his individual capacity. Similarly, the late P.V. Narasimha Rao owes over Rs 4.7 crore. This after the All India Congress Committee (AICC) paid a Rs 1 crore on April 8, 2005. Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda owes over Rs 54 lakh to the IAF.
Court martials on decline Even though the Chief of the Army Staff, Gen J.J. Singh, recently sent a strong message to the rank and file of his force against the court cases that his officers or other ranks may be wanting to file, it has emerged that on an average about 1,000 soldiers of the Army are court-martialled every year for some offence or the other. Although the number of such cases came down drastically last year (2004) to almost 872, the figure was an astonishing over 1,200 in the year 2000. Observers say that aberrations in such a large force are quite normal.
Avoidable loss to IAF The Comptroller and Auditor General has pulled up the Indian Air Force for carrying out overhauls to extend the life of a giant MI-26 with the authority and appropriate technical documents which resulted in the collapse of the chopper on the tarmac itself. Although the incident is of 1997, it has been brought out now. The helicopter based at Chandigarh was due for an overhaul in 1996 and in January, 1997, a board of officers extended the calendar life of the helicopter by a year without consulting the Russian manufacturers. Then in August, 1997, the helicopter collapsed while still parked in the tarmac area leading to a loss of over Rs 8 crore due to the accident alone. The helicopter later had to be repaired at an avoidable cost of Rs 3.49 crore. The inquiry report later said that the collapse was due to the faulty manufacturing process and deficiency in designing as similar defects were also found in three other helicopters. The Russian manufacturers, while carrying out changes in the other three helicopters, refused to accept the responsibility for the collapse of the first helicopter as the board had extended the calendar life without approval of the manufacturers. |
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From the pages of Indian sandhurst
The proposal to establish an Indian Sandhurst is said to be favoured by the Commander-in-Chief of Bombay. The plan is a very unambitious one as it at present stands. It is to found a Military College in India to train candidates for the post of Jemadar in the Cavalry and Infantry Regiments. On the theory of “something is better than nothing” the establishment of a college like this will be welcome. Have a college for the training of Jemadars only to-day, be sure you will have a college for the training of higher officers tomorrow. This college will be the thin end of the wedge. Once established, it will infallibly lead to more than a mere college for Jemadars, and re-open the question of the appointment of Natives to the higher ranks of the army…. We welcome this proposal of a Military College. Once established the Jemadars’ College is sure to develop into a high class military institution. |
God exists in one’s heart like the pupil in the eye. But ignorance causes a man to seek him far and wide. — Kabir A dying man is like the crop. Like the crop he is born again. — The Upanishads The meaning of my life is the love of God. — Mother Teresa Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? — Friedrich Nietzsche We see Him in Parvati, Lakshmi and Saraswati. — Guru Nanak  |
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WHEN I finished reading Tarun Tejpal’s novel “The Alchemy of Desire” (Harper Collins) and put it by my side, two thoughts played strong : are we Indians really so very sensuous as Tejpal has portrayed the two main characters - the narrator and his woman? There’s such a strong physical bonding between the two that it almost borders on the make-believe.