O P I N I O N S

THIS ABOVE ALL
Work more, talk less; chhutti mentality won’t do
India has more national holidays – in my estimate nearly 50 every year – than any other country. Sometimes there are three holidays together in one week.
Khushwant Singh
When Sanjay Gandhi popularised the slogan “Kaam ziyada, baatein kum” (more work, less talk), I met Verghese Kurien in his farm, he epitomised it in human form. I was living in Bombay and took off a few days to spend with his family in Anand. It was a refreshing experience to be in open grasslands among herds of cows and buffaloes grazing in the open.

Touchstones
Building to kindle both mind and spirit
Unlike the earlier institutions, which were set in sprawling grounds and so gave a sense of space and liberality, the new institutions are often placed within cramped areas.
Ira Pande
For the last several years, the Purana Qila is the site for a festival of dance called Ananya, when famous dancers and dance troupes from all over India perform over a week. Quite apart from the quality of these performances, what is bewitching is the venue and the grandeur of those splendid ruins.

GROUND ZERO
Keep it simple, silly
The era of an opaque and imperious government is over. If the UPA wants a policy to go through, it must explain its benefits simply so that the aam admi can figure it out.
Raj Chengappa
While judging a news development, journalists like me are trained to ask a brutal question: Who Gives a Damn? Abbreviated to WGAD, it meant why should you know or care about a breaking news story. Focusing on an event’s relevance helped determine the kind of display or importance given to the item in the newspaper in your hand.

THIS ABOVE ALL
Work more, talk less; chhutti mentality won’t do
India has more national holidays – in my estimate nearly 50 every year – than any other country. Sometimes there are three holidays together in one week.
Khushwant Singh

Verghese Kurien epitomised the spirit of work

When Sanjay Gandhi popularised the slogan “Kaam ziyada, baatein kum” (more work, less talk), I met Verghese Kurien in his farm, he epitomised it in human form. I was living in Bombay and took off a few days to spend with his family in Anand. It was a refreshing experience to be in open grasslands among herds of cows and buffaloes grazing in the open. Neither of the Kuriens took time off from work; the only company they kept were with herds of cows and buffaloes and milkmen who owned them. YK Alagh, who was clearly associated with him, paid him a handsome tribute in a recent issue of “India Today”. I take the liberty of quoting him. “Verghese Kurien was a man who changed the discourse. For him, the poor, unemployed farmer with no resources was never a problem. He felt if a farmer could access technology and markets he would be an asset. Having seen the dream, he would not budge. Like all men of his genre, he was willing to engage but not change.

“Then Amul became the symbol of all that was India. If an idea was presented and he could weave it into his view at Amul, he would push for it. In the many words written since last Sunday, some are worth recounting. The first was the buffalo. Kurien can be credited for the global recognition of the buffalo as an important war horse in Asiatic peasant farming. It wasn’t that well known since it was not an animal found in Europe and North America. The bison had long since been dead. The first time he invited me to get involved was in an international conference where the theme was the buffalo. We are not doing enough but we are one of the few countries in the world that spends money on genetically improving the buffalo. It all goes back to the ‘dudhwala’ and his band of missionaries”.

Holidays forever

I have already written and would like to reiterate that India has more national holidays – in my estimate nearly 50 every year – than any other country in the world. Sometimes there are three holidays together in one week which causes a lot of inconvenience to the public.

As a consequence, we are work-shy, we produce the least and remain the world’s poorest country. I have written in the past and repeat it again that we Indians work only three days in the week. On the other hand, the Chinese work eight days in the week. Consequently, their rate of development is much faster than ours. They outpace us in every activity of life – be it farming, working in factories or offices or sports. So they outstrip us in every field of activity. They had little trouble in giving us a sound thrashing when we went to war against them. They continue to thrash us in every field. They produce world champions; we have not produced a single one. They have a work mentality, we have “chhutti” mentality. How on earth can we catch up with the advanced nations of the world? We have to radically change our mindset or we will remain the most backward nation on the globe.

Those who welcome death

Persons who welcome death/ Are Heroes only at times./ When they fight as soldiers four our country on our borders;/ But those who drive without helmets on scooters,/ On motorbikes; and what not?/ Are they Heroes when they die due to sheer carelessness./ Or dare-devil-due/ To youth’s, aggressive-behaviour?/ And stubborn do-not listen/ To their elders nor even heeding the wise rules of the nation?

Indira Srinivasan in Poets International

Baboon sabha

The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for various groups of animals. We are all familiar with a herd of cows, a flock of chickens, a school of fish and a gaggle of geese. Then a pride of lions, a murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an exaltation of doves, and, presumably because they look so wise: a congress of owls.

Now consider a group of baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates. And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons? Believe it or not – a parliament of baboons!

New airport

Santa has demanded that the new airport at Mumbai should be named Banta Cruz, as Santa already has one named after him – Santa Cruz.

Contributed by Vipin Buckshey, Delhi

Touchstones
Building to kindle both mind and spirit
Unlike the earlier institutions, which were set in sprawling grounds and so gave a sense of space and liberality, the new institutions are often placed within cramped areas.
Ira Pande

Founded in 1892, Khalsa College, Amritsar, sprawls over 300 acres.

For the last several years, the Purana Qila is the site for a festival of dance called Ananya, when famous dancers and dance troupes from all over India perform over a week. Quite apart from the quality of these performances, what is bewitching is the venue and the grandeur of those splendid ruins. The stage is part of a ruined courtyard or turret and has a natural curved backdrop of stone which, when lit up at night, is breathtaking. For a brief while, as you watch these performances, you feel transported to another world and time. Often, one feels one is watching heavenly “apsaras” cavorting before one’s eyes.

Konark and Khajuraho, the other venues for dance festivals, exude a similar atmosphere. In fact, in both these temple precincts, there is the added historical backdrop of the stone carvings that have had a deep impact on the Odissi and Bharatanatyam forms as we know them today. Elsewhere in the world, Rome’s Coliseum and the Edinburgh Castle are just two examples of sites that have come to define the cultural festivals associated with them. Undoubtedly, there is a strong relationship between architecture and art in general for the history of music, dance and theatre is closely connected with the architecture of performance sites.

What is true of the classical art forms applies equally to modern buildings and the culture they spawn. Consider the Indo-Saracenic architecture of our old universities: Allahabad, Lucknow, Aligarh and some of the colleges that were set up in British India (Patiala’s Rajendra College or St John’s College in Agra). The colonial architects designed them in a style that favoured deep verandas, porches and terraced floors with towers and turrets studded with stained glass. Perhaps they were different when first set up but after 150 years or so, they appear dark, gloomy Gothic spaces where time has stood still. Many of them, suffering from a chronic lack of funds and indifference, are now the haunts of the “topori” goon, who favours a “Munnabhai” style of education. Their Edwardian syllabi have not been revised, partly because no one cares and partly because the teachers resist new courses where they will have to prepare fresh lectures and bury their old, yellowing notes. The scene is depressing and these proud temples of learning are now the hunting grounds of political parties who fight proxy wars to get students into their ranks.

In the 50s and 60s, at a time when Nehru and his colleagues were looking to modernise India, the nation welcomed a fresh set of educational institutions with the establishment of various IITs and research institutions. Architects such as Corbusier and Louis Kahn were invited and India got its first batch of glass and chrome educational buildings. Bright, modern and not fussy, these were harbingers of a new pedagogical culture and the engineers and scholars they produced are counted today among the world’s most admired citizens. It is not wrong to say that such institutions created such an atmosphere of modernity that they unleashed a fresh attitude to learning. By bringing state-of-the-art labs and research centres across the world into the country, they sparked a revolution of the minds of their students. Sixty years later, they may have lost some of their initial sheen but are still our national treasures.

In recent times, however, an entirely new kind of architecture has been introduced and it has brought in its wake another culture. This is the private educational institution, often run by a private trust of dubious reputation, which has structured its courses and education towards creating an army of graduates who judge success only in terms of the salaries they are offered at the end of their course. Private medical and engineering colleges charge exorbitant fees and it is now widely accepted that such crass commercialisation of education has led to a dangerous erosion of moral and ethical values. Has architecture played a role in this? If you have occasion to visit some of these institutions, perhaps you may see a correlation. Unlike the earlier institutions, which were set in sprawling grounds and so gave a sense of space and liberality, the new institutions are often placed within cramped areas. They have little space for trees under which students may gather and exchange ideas and the absence of green spaces is instantly visible.

Unlike the older institutions that had a lateral expansion as the basic grid, these are multi-storeyed boxes with classrooms geared to hi-tech gadgetry rather than warm human contact. It is the same with schools: compare for a moment the sprawling campuses of the older schools in your city with the new ones that operate out of tiny areas, set in densely populated areas. Children have little playing area, libraries and labs are often tucked into tiny spaces and games are indoor rather than outdoor activities.

I confess I may be overstating the case but anyone who has lived in Chandigarh for any length of time cannot ever be unaware of the deep relationship between architecture and culture. Using buildings and monuments to make a statement of existence and growth may be far from the consciousness of city planners but it has a profound impact upon the future of a culture that will arise from its spaces.