[Podcast] The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Truth
Film Review: Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns
Teachers, Leave Them Kids Alone
A portly frizzy haired man enters a classroom full of 10-year-old children. “I’m going to give you a question which I have not thought about yet,” he says with a wide smile. The children look bewildered. “It’s a question to which I would not have the answer,” he continues, “you’re going to find the answer.”
“Where did language come from?”
With that he retreats into a corner. Groups of children begin trawling the Internet in search of answers. They consult feverishly with each other, venturing to other groups to find out what they’re doing. Occasionally, a child moves from one group to another.
The man steps forward a little later to ask the children what they’ve found.
“Language comes from the evolution of humankind and how the body is shaped,” ventures a member of one of the groups. “But,” adds another, “they would not have tried to produce sounds if they hadn’t been trying to express their feelings.”
“We’ve observed this happening in classrooms across the world,” whispers Sugata Mitra, professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, UK.
These are concepts that are far beyond their age, yet the children have arrived at them on their own. “Is this a good way to learn?” Mitra asks them. “Yes,” say the children in unison.
It’s a validation of what this 61-year-old professor, winner of the $1 million TED 2013 Prize, has been saying for the last 13 years. Learning in children, he believes, is something that happens almost naturally, a ‘self-organising system’. The lower the adult intervention, the more children are likely to learn.
Mitra is an anachronism in an age that emphasises academic certification and extreme specialisation. He’s part polymath, part dissenter, and perhaps, part visionary.
While studying solid state physics at IIT Delhi in the late 1970s, he discovered that the structure of organic molecules has a greater role in determining their function than their constituent atoms. He then moved on to study energy storage systems, resulting in a new design for zinc-chloride batteries.
This segued into an interest in the way electricity flows through biological systems, which led to a paper that speculated on why human sense organs are located where they are.
Sometime in the ’80s, he’d also developed an interest in computer networking. “I just drifted into it,” he says, “At that time the only people who could create computer programmes were theoretical physicists.”
In 1990, he joined NIIT, where he started work on creating curricula, inventing learning devices and researching new methods of teaching computer programming, which was fast becoming a subject of choice for students around the country.
That was where, one day in 1999, he decided to try an experiment. Computers had entered big schools in every city, and were changing the way children were taught. Would they be of any use to poorer children who had either no access to education or went to schools where the teachers were disinterested and the infrastructure poor, he wondered.
Abutting the wall of his office compound was a slum, the kids of which, even in the off chance that they did go to school, had certainly never used a computer. Mitra bludgeoned a hole in it, into which he stuck a computer. A separate smaller hole housed a track pad. On the computer was an array of educational games and software.
The slum children were quick to explore. Groups of them gathered around this new machine that functioned in a language that none of them knew. It did not take them long, Mitra discovered, to learn to operate it. They fiddled, taught each other and exchanged ideas. In the matter of a few weeks, they’d figured out how the games worked, and more tantalisingly, had even picked up a smattering of English.
Could this be a solution for schools in rural India where there were few good teachers?
‘The silence in Kashmir is eerie’
EDITED EXCERPTS
How did this book come about?
I was on assignment in Kashmir in 2006 to shoot in the conflict zones, but I came back two months later to hunt for a new subject. I made 25 trips between 2006 and 2011. Like other photographers in Kashmir, I got trapped by two easily available, obvious images; the beauty and the conflict. Then, in 2008, I went to Kashmir without my camera. I realised how powerful it was to look at things outside the lens. How numb the people had become. Their emotions have been suppressed for so long that the numbness has become a casual, daily affair. That was my calling, to talk about the people, the alienation, and the Kashmir beyond the conflict. It affected me too; I needed six months of counselling afterwards.
How did being an outsider affect your work?
The political divide between Kashmir and India made it difficult to get close to people. When you say you’re from New Delhi, Kashmiris think you’re with the army and the army thinks you’re a social activist. It’s difficult to enter the Kashmiri people’s lives, homes and hearts. No one talks about the people. The agenda, even for Kashmiri journalists, is to highlight the conflict. My book works with metaphors. Many portraits are shot through a window or barb wire. I wanted to stay an outsider. One must understand what the Kashmiris have been through, both the Muslims and the Pandits. You cannot buy someone’s emotions. In three months’ encounters you kill 120 children, and then announce a package of 300 crore. It won’t solve anything. Kashmir has a syncretic tradition. One image shows the back wall of Shah-e-Hamdan mosque on the banks of the Jhelum, painted saffron with the mural of a Hindu goddess. A lot of graveyards come up in the pictures. In Kashmir, every locality has a separate graveyard due to the high mortality. Death has become so casual. This is a very political body of work. But don’t ask me about azaadi. I’m talking about human emotions, not political agendas.
Amit Mehra
Penguin
144 pp; Rs 3,499
How did you bridge the tropes of photography — the apolitical aesthetic and the news photograph? Does either take precedence?
Aesthetics come with a social message. A photographer may want to work on a different plane creatively, but his mind is always thinking about the situation. In one picture, people are praying on the street under the shadows of flying pigeons. I must have shot a thousand pictures of people praying, but seeing the shadows it struck me how the peace we all pray for, is passing us by. The most political picture is of the broken, snow-covered doll at Shopian. It’s my tribute to Neelofar and Asiya, of the Shopian murder case. This is a very silent body of work, because the streets and the people of Kashmir are silent. The silence is eerie, not peaceful.
How important is communication with a subject?
It’s important and very difficult. I had to get beyond the political divide that existed in my head too. I listened to the people, gained their confidence. The photographer and the subject should become one, until the subject isn’t looking into a camera but into a mirror. When I shot Veer Munshi, the Kashmiri artist living in exile in Gurgaon, he told me his story over two hours. He was filled with anger, yet behind him was a painting of Gandhi that he was working on. Here is an angry man who still believes in non-violence. I photographed him against that canvas.
What is the departure from your previous works?
I have taken a number of pictures without any faces in the frame. Faces are not important. Look at the picture with the man feeding the pigeons. That is freedom. But as Basharat Peer said in Curfewed Night, Kashmiris are picked up and shot at random. Faces don’t matter. Even the faces of the army men are not important. This is not a personal enmity. It is the situation that’s forcing people against each other.
aradhna@tehelka.com
Scripting an almanac, one bird at a time
Photo: AFP
RAMIT SINGAL, a 22-year-old engineering student, was puzzled. The Common Sandpiper, a small dust-coloured bird that migrates every winter from Russia to India, had been late arriving. Instead of getting to Manipal, (where Singal studies), in early August, the birds had arrived in mid-September. “Other migrants, like the Lesser Sand Plover, were also late,” he says.
In Mysore, a few hundred kilometres away, A Shivaprakash was pondering over another ornithological question. Being a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, puzzles don’t ruffle him, but the decline in the number of water birds in the lakes around Mysore was still troubling.
Till a decade ago, his birding group counted nearly 3 lakh migratory birds every season across 200 small and big lakes in Mysore, Chamarajanagar and Coorg districts. “But in the past seven or eight years,” he sighs, “there’s been a drastic reduction. I don’t think we have counted more than 50,000 birds.”
Birdwatchers in other parts of the country have also been alarmed by the decline in the numbers of migratory birds and the increasingly late arrivals of species that do come.
Unfortunately, in the absence of any long-term monitoring data on Indian bird species, it’s impossible to evaluate these changes scientifically, with a certainty that goes beyond anecdotal evidence and conjecture. Without the reference point that this data constitutes — referred to as a baseline in scientific parlance — it is impossible to say whether the shifts reported by birdwatchers are routine fluctuations or indicators of a far graver problem. Ornithologists find themselves in the position of a football referee tasked with calling a goal in a field that has no posts.
“At present, we suspect even so-called common species such as Common Drongo, Indian Roller, Hoopoe, Magpie Robin and Common Nightjar have declined due to habitat destruction and extensive use of pesticides,” says Dr Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). “But we don’t have good scientific data to back this impression.”
Now, MigrantWatch, a ‘citizen science’ programme that relies on the observations of hundreds of amateur birdwatchers like Singal and Shivaprakash, is changing that.
The programme, started by Suhel Quader, an ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru, has built up a meticulous database of common winter migrants.
Birdwatchers from across the country upload detailed observations from their birding trips on the programme’s website. Quader and his team then collate it, charting the arrival and departure of migrant species, and tracking their movement through the country.
Anniversaries might be irrelevant in the natural world, but for MigrantWatch, the five years it has just completed is a milestone that marks significant progress towards establishing a baseline.
From monitoring just nine migratory species when it started, it now monitors 246 species, focussing on 30 common and easily identified migrants. Over 600 birders have contributed to this database, which just hit 19,000 observations.
After a slow start, interest in the programme has shot up. “More people have joined us in the past year-and-a-half,” says Quader proudly, “than in the first four years put together.”
More significantly, the observational dots are joining up and the faint outline of patterns emerging. For 20 species, MigrantWatch has accumulated 200 or more observations, and for another six, it has more than 500 observations each.
I Am Every Awful Script
Director: Kapil Sharma
Starring: John Abraham, Chitrangda Singh, Prachi Desai, Zarina Wahab
It would be tempting to call I, Me Aur Main ahead of its times, if it wasn’t for the fact that it appears so only because Bollywood has shown itself to be patently behind the times. Apart from the resolution at the end of the film, which is a refreshing change from the usual climactic scene of the Bollywood romcom, there are a number of moments in it that, at least ostensibly, demonstrate a modernity that the industry has shied away from: the doting mother leaving her demanding husband as she feels she deserves a retirement too, or the independent girl next door with a passion for electronics. But while the subversion of traditional gender roles is all well and good, I, Me Aur Main fails to impress simply because it is not an impressive film.
Ishaan Sabharwal (Abraham) is the manchild protagonist, whose worldview, as the imaginative title suggests, is restricted to himself. A combination of John’s ineptitude at emoting and the film’s patchy dialogue means that he appears more as a cartoon villain rather than a believable rake. Nevertheless, it does not go down well with his girlfriend Anushka (Singh), who promptly dumps him after he forgets to take her to visit his parents. The dumping means that Ishaan has to find a flat of his own, which is where he meets Gauri (Desai), the neighbour with the aforementioned passion for circuits and suchlike. Again, the atrocious writing means this love for science is usually expressed by her saying things like “It’s basic physics: their volume is higher than yours, so they can’t hear you.” Eventually, of course, the two fall in love, before the inevitable, clichéd bombshell, set to the inevitable, clichéd dramatic music, hits just before the interval.
Chitrangda Singh has had her career umbilically tied to the uncanny resemblance she bears to Smita Patil, with every new release inevitably leading to comparisons and rumours of a biopic. In both this film and Sudhir Mishra’s Inkaar she has essayed roles that are at least cosmetically Patilesque, with an intelligent femininity standing her in good stead when confronted by slobbering males used to having their own way. But she has been hamstrung in both roles by lack of depth to her characters, which means that that intelligent femininity is mostly restricted to screaming at her loutish lovers in Received Pronunciation rather than bad Hindi. That is not to suggest that she plays a bimbo, but the immense potential she showed in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi is not given a chance to shine through. Of course, unlike Patil, Singh has not restricted herself to the arthouse and is bound by the limitations of commercial cinema, but it’s painful to watch an actor clearly meant for better things play such unidimensional roles. The last thing one wants is for her to endure a career of playing the same role in every movie.
The clunky storytelling is a millstone the film keeps trying to shed through the flakey progressivism it embraces. Some of these attempts, like Ishaan’s mother (Wahab), are subtle and layered. Others, such as Anushka’s decision to (quite literally) show Ishaan the door, are as unimaginative as the title itself. The film seems to be going for the unconventional for the sake of being unconventional, as the characters reject as many social mores as they can in the rather short movie. Ultimately, the film is a missed opportunity at changing perceptions that becomes simply another forgettable frothy mess.
ajachi@tehelka.com
‘This film is not about the riots. It’s about three boys’
Photo: Getty Images
Abhishek kapoor | 40 Filmmaker
Why did you decide to work on developing a Chetan Bhagat novel into a film, and how did you approach it?
When I read the book, I saw the opportunity to make a very pure Indian film. The book dealt with friendship, love, politics, cricket, religion, the earthquake and the riots; pretty much everything that summed up India from 2000-02. As a filmmaker, I saw the chance to make a film that would reach out to all Indians and also make a mark internationally.
This is your first film with a major studio. How has the experience been different from your previous films?
A studio makes many different kinds of films, so all their eggs are not in one basket. It’s not about their style; the film is not an extension of their own personality. At the same time, studios have a wide reach, and once they decide to make a film, they back it all the way. The backing, the distribution, the exhibition is so big, that you can be certain the film’s potential will be maximised.
What was it like to premiere as the first Indian film to be featured in the World Panorama section of the Berlinale?
Fabulous. What a platform! The world’s best filmmakers are out there, and to premiere in front of a crowd of 1,500 and get a standing ovation at the end of it! None of them can speak Hindi. Most of them can’t even speak English, because they’re European. To just see them come together and respond in the same way was exhilarating.
Your life has been spent in big cities. How difficult was it to relate to small-town sensibilities?
It’s like making a film in a different country altogether. You have to unlearn so many things to understand the culture of the place, the society they come from, the aspirations they have, the frustrations they have. When you get into a new project, into alien territory, you’ve got to go in there with humility and the desire to learn and appreciate. Every director would have his own perspective, his own insight into a new space, and I had my own. You’ve got to find your way through it and look for your story, your characters. You have to encourage your team to fight it out and give it their best.
The newcomers in the film have been praised for their acting. How important was the lack of established stars for you, to make the film you wanted to make?
Established stars are not what makes a movie, good actors are. Established stars get you an opening. The story demanded freshness and innocence, and you needed the three of them to be friends. If I cast one star in it, there would be an imbalance in their friendship, and that was not acceptable to me. Everybody had to look like equals, they had to give their best, and, more than anything else, convince the audience that they exist. That these three boys are somewhere out there in Gujarat. That could only happen with these three youngsters. After Rock On!! did so well, the instinctive reaction was to work with stars. But I realised early on that this was not the correct move, and it was not materialising for some reason. When I found these three boys, there was no looking back.
Making a film even partly about the 2002 riots is fraught with peril. How did you go about it, and have you had any trouble getting your film released?
The riots and the earthquake had tragic effects on the people of India, especially in Gujarat. We were aware of it. But at the same time, the film is not about the riots. It’s about the three boys. Whatever is happening in the backdrop has to be seen through their eyes. We touched upon them in the right measure. More than anything else, you don’t want to go out there and titillate the audience, start scratching raw wounds. You want to be very sensitive to the people and what they’ve been through. It’s more about healing than investigating.
You’ve steered clear of the politics of the riots, framing the protagonists’s involvement in purely personal terms. Do you not feel, as an artist, a responsibility to society, to provide some perspective about a tumultuous event in our history?
It was a conscious decision. The moment you get into the riots, you lose the innocence of the boys. The focus shifts away from the central theme of friendship. As a filmmaker, my priority is my story and script, not making a social point. You don’t want it to trip you up.
Do you see a shift in mainstream Indian cinema away from the formulaic?
I believe there are far greater opportunities in India today to make ambitious films than earlier, but most filmmakers are not using them. They are wedded to the lure of the 100 crore club, and that means they play it safe. They take it for granted that this is what the audience wants. For the audience, Bollywood is the primary source of entertainment. They don’t have much choice. A film with a major star will make money, regardless of how bad it is, because people pay to watch the star, not the film. But if you came together and decided you would only support good films, and put in the effort, you could end up making 300 crore, as 3 Idiots did.
ajachi@tehelka.com
‘It is a myth that Chanakya was a cynic’
How did your personal engagement with Chanakya come about?
My engagement with Chanakya began with my search to understand India’s ability to reinvent itself. I have been a student both of contemporary India as well as many aspects of its cultural and civilisational legacy. As a diplomat, as someone who is an observer of India, someone who is deeply convinced that we are at that cusp in our young history as a nation where change is essential, I went back to Chanakya, because I saw his ability to be a source of inspiration to reinvent ourselves, which our civilisation is capable of. I did not approach the Arthashastra in its minutiae, because it’s a very specific text in response to a specific time. For me, the Arthashastra is inspiring for its clarity of vision, its comprehensiveness of scope, and for its writer’s abilities to work the kind of rigour and discipline that allows you to achieve goals, and above all, for his insistence on seeing the nation as above all sectoral interests.
What are the key differences between the Nehruvian vision of India and Chanakya’s philosophy of nation building?
There are no fundamental differences, as long as you believe in the validity of an efficacious state, which retains its democratic credentials and inclusive ethos. It’s a myth that Chanakya was a cynic, a Macchiavelli before Macchiavelli’s time. His real concern was always for the welfare of the people, which is obvious when you read the Arthashastra. He believes that otherwise, you are corroding the fundamentals of an effective state. Even if you don’t describe it with sentimentality, the sheer ability to understand what creates an enduring or an effective state would cause you to be concerned about the welfare of the people, which was exactly the principles of the welfare state that Nehru sought to bring about through the prism of democracy. The difference arises, from my point to view, in that the makers of the Indian constitution did not envisage the current situation, where instead of one party with a stable majority that rules for five years, you have a 24-member coalition with a wafer thin majority, which will be the norm for the foreseeable future. This requires us to have Chanakyan honesty rather than Nehruvian nostalgia to be able to understand the problem for what it is. You need to understand with stark and corrosive honesty that today, the functioning of democracy has become the biggest impediment to governance, because all energies go to political management and survival rather than governance, with no thought to long-term enduring solutions because you are looking for quick-fix populist measures. I have to tweak the system to prevent this sterile, self defeating antipathy in governance and democracy.
Could you be more specific on how you would like to tweak the system?
Essentially, we need to have a democracy which functions without taking the voter for a ride. We need more discipline in order to make democracy more credible. So when parties go to the people for their vote, the voter must have all the information. What is the coalition? Who is part of it? What is it that they are promising, and through what timelines? Having come to power, how do we ensure the governments fulfil the role for which they have been voted in? So I provide a compulsory lock-in period for three years for the government to prove its credentials. This is exactly like our anti-defection law. It provides a free run to perform, without the instability of coalitions, for three years. After that, who would destabilise the government just for two years in power?
I found sections of your chapter on security a little problematic. For instance, you begin with this quote from Chanakya: “An enemy’s destruction should be brought about even in the face of great losses in men, material and wealth.” Of course, this was written in an era before nuclear weapons, before man had the ability to literally wipe out the entire human race with the press of one button. You have said that India should be stronger in its relations with Pakistan and China, but do you think that the presence of nuclear weapons in the subcontinent means that we have to be the responsible country, show restraint in the face of war?
That particular quote was not meant to be taken literally. It was meant to merely illustrate that there should be clarity of goals, and that waffle cannot substitute for that clarity. In the unsentimental area of foreign policy, defence and intelligence, idealistic waffle does not help you. On the other hand, Chanakya is the one person who teaches us that in dealing with states which are hostile, there are range of instrumentalities that can be used. I’m not advocating for a moment that we unleash our nuclear arsenal. I’m saying we should talk to Pakistan. But that doesn’t mean that we let our guard down, or ascribe to the real policy makers in Pakistan the same degree of bathos and bonhomie that we would like to cultivate with other constituencies of Pakistan. We seem to have lost our way there. When Pakistan wishes to attack, it attacks. When it wants to appease, it appeases. We react. A foreign policy should not be reactive. A defence establishment should be proactive in terms of its defence requirements in one of the most troubled neighbourhood of the world.
Your solution to Naxalism seems to be to shoot first and talk later.
I have a straight forward approach: win over the naxals. Divide them. Provide every inducement for them to return to the mainstream. But if they don’t, their avowed goal is the demolition of the duly constituted republic of India. That is treason, and no country can have 40,000 square kilometres of its territory under those who do not believe in the duly constituted state. So this drift and waffle about development and punitive technique is totally a self-defeating one, because you cannot enter certain districts to build even a hospital, or a road, or a school. So you have to face this kind threat with unsentimental clarity. But, having one at over, immediately look to one in need of those who are underprivileged and dispossessed. But you cannot sit paralysed, mesmerised by a situation, while they continue to attack with impunity. Your armed forces suffer casualties. That is an unacceptable situation. No nation would accept it, except India.
Pavan K Varma
Aleph
248 pp; Rs 295
But what about the lakhs of people who would be caught in the crossfire of such a conflict?
They are already caught. They are sometimes, against their will, under the tutelage of those who don’t constitute the republic of India. And the armed forces will continue to be predatory without being effective. So there is no security of life for them. And the Naxalites must understand that if they are willing to return to the mainstream, India is assimilative. But if they implacably oppose to the duly constituted state, you have act in a particular way. And again, it’s not punitive action versus development. It’s not either-or, it’s sequential.
A lot of the state’s excesses, in India at least, happen due to mid- and low-level government officials. There is an idealism you speak of, which should exist in our politicians. But there is the rest of the state apparatus, which mostly runs with self-interest as the primary motivation. How do you change that and instill patriotism? Would you make this book compulsory reading?
I do not believe in individual proclivity. I believe individuals behave as per certain norms when there systemic checks to their criminal aberration. That is why in the case of bureaucratic excess of rapacious corruption, I prescribe system checks to change it. That is why I laud the Right to Public Services Act, which has been functioning in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, where the erring official who does not deliver a service in time is fined Rs 500 for every day of delay. As far as corruption goes, Indians as a whole accept a certain moral relativism, where they will criticise corruption in high places when they pay happily for a chalaan not to be registered against them. I prescribe, therefore, an architecture against corruption not depending merely on the silver bullet of one Lokpal. An example is electoral reform, which is the key. Secondly, I propose the expansion of the neutral intervention of technology in as many areas as where an individual interfaces with the state. It just overarches the human intermediary. You can book an airline ticket online; you don’t need a tout.
This book coincides with your entry into electoral politics. Why did you choose the JD(U) to join and do you think that the Nitish Kumar government has implemented what you have written in this book?
I’m an admirer of Nitish Kumar primarily for three reasons: clean politics, good governance and a secular vision. I believe these are needed for a new paradigm of leadership in our country today. Certainly, there are aspects of this book, which I have seen either as work in progress or implemented in Bihar. A notable example is the Right to Public Services Act. I believe strongly that there is substitute, for instance, to boosting agricultural productivity in order to tackle poverty. Bihar has had an increase rice production increase by 29 percent in one year. The ability to implement exemplary and deterrent punishment against corruption is again something I have seen implemented in Bihar, including the seizure to properties of those who are corrupt. I’m not saying it is in every respect ideal, a lot more needs to be done. But there are many aspects which I admire.
Divinity & the Beholder’s Eye
“DEAR MR Ajit Sahi,” it began pleasantly but quickly turned splenetic. “I am appalled at the tone with which you speak. Funny you found yourself struggling to stay alive that night. What did you come expecting? Lawns and sunshine with cocktails?” Ouch. Signed off as “another beholder of the same Kumbh”, the mailer trashed my criticism of the government for its mismanagement of the Maha Kumbh Mela at Allahabad (A Confluence of Chaos, 23 February).
My account had pertained to the dawn of 10 February, when some 30 million Hindu faithful had plunged into the holy river, Ganga, for a once-in-a-lifetime shot at eternal salvation. The same day, some 40 lives were lost in two stampedes abetted no doubt by administrative failures. “It’s very easy to accuse the administration (but) difficult to give any real solution… If its scale befuddles you, then let someone else attempt the great piece of writing.” Ouch again.
But it’s true. Others ambling about at what is humanity’s largest fest ever visibly experience serenity and spirituality that, try as I might, has eluded me, to my deep disappointment. Whereas all that the supercilious me can notice are the disreputable shenanigans of the self-styled godmen, the deadly pollution of an already threatened heritage river, and the irrational sophistry of salvation in the hereafter, there are those who feel, well, blessed and revived at the Kumbh.
“Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest its divinity by controlling nature, external and internal. As Vedic people, we have two ways to achieve that: jnankaand (through wisdom) or karmakaand (through action). In the first, high spirituality brings one face to face with one’s soul as well as with god. But this path needs a high intellect and physique, and therefore is not for everyone. The second path is of rituals and is meant for the grihasth (the householder).”
This eloquence is from Arun Dey, 62, an advertising firm owner from New Delhi, once an apprentice sanyasi, now a father to two successful daughters with corporate jobs, yet still a wishful ascetic. “There is no Sachin Tendulkar here,” he says. “Why are the millions visiting then? It is faith in god. And what is god? It is Nature. Our rituals are obeisance to plants that nurture life. Just as a pot polished every day glistens like gold, our time here at the Maha Kumbh recharges us.”
But aren’t the millions dipping in the Ganga and their rituals horribly polluting the river, turning their utopia into dystopia? Isn’t that, like, totally dissonant karma? Wouldn’t the faithful notch up true karma if they instead mounted a resistance against governments and industrialists that are virtually raping what was once the world’s most fertile river basin and is now one of its most endangered water bodies? From the dozens who I ask this question, I get varied responses.
Yes, the Ganga is being polluted. But what can the common man do? We are not the government. This is kalyug, the Age of Evil in Hindu mythology. What do you expect? Scriptures say the Age of Prosperity will follow. Hence, the Ganga will revive. No, the Ganga is not polluted. We drink its water every day and bathe in it. Wouldn’t we be all so ill if it were polluted? Don’t worry, the Ganga cleanses itself. How can the Ganga be polluted if it purifies us? And so forth.
One would imagine the European visitor would be unnerved by the filth and the grime all around and the river’s dirtiness. Not so. The White People at the Maha Kumbh are of three kinds: the chroniclers; the curious, who may not admit it but are also seekers; and the faithful. Blindsided by the masses here that outnumber the populations of most European nations, those of the first category are driven by the spectacle rather than by searching questions on faith and divinity.
Those of the second category listlessly trudge the Maha Kumbh miles every day and, desperate to vicariously experience the motivations of the multitudes, stop by nirvana shops of the gurus and the swamis for crash courses that don’t quite deliver. After weeks spent here, many are still unsure if they did the right thing by buying that air ticket to escape their friendless lives in the unhappy West (their words, not mine), “where no one gives free food like they do here”.
And then there are the White Faithful. The drizzle turns into a full-blown downpour, turning the cloth roof into a sieve but failing to dampen the spirits of the women in sari or salwar-kameez and men in colourful smart sherwanis or kurta-dhotis. With rare exceptions, these are all white people. They are devotees of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the best known Indian guru globally, who was hailed as a messiah for teaching meditation, and who died in 2008 at the age of 90.
“I am the Raja of Germany,” a portly Caucasian shakes my hand and announces the remit that the Yogi gave him. A gold-coloured circlet across his forehead bears testimony to his status. But this gent is no king of Germany. Rather he leads the German chapter of the “Global Country of World Peace”, the one without borders that Maharishi Yogi started at the turn of the century. The “raja” has joined fellow “rajas” and lesser devotees here to witness the opening of a temple for the guru.
Born at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh and educated at Allahabad University, the Maharishi, who would briefly become famous as the guru of the Beatles, pioneered what came to be his trademark, the Transcendental Meditation (TM). Decades later, he would launch TM-Siddhi (elevated), a stronger version that levitated the practitioner. “We are here to pay homage to the greatest person the world has ever produced,” says David Walne, a 62-year-old retiree from Liverpool whose life was transformed by TM 40 years ago.
The “great and wonderful Maharishi”, as Walne calls his guru, “always said that if we got enough people doing TM in one city, then all the negative trends there would decrease and the crime rate would drop”. Scientists, says Walne, means tested the TM in several cities of the US and found the results attested the claims. And then came TM- Siddhi, which brought into play the “three stages of yogic flying” that he claims helped cut crime rates in Washington DC.
In the first stage of yogic flying, energy moves up the spine. The second stage involves sitting cross-legged and building up a “desire to lift off, do the flying”. Walne says he himself has hopped 4-5 inches. The third stage is hovering several feet above, which only the master has achieved and nobody has seen. In Walne’s case, TM also helped him get off alcohol and Valium.
Barak Azmon, 48, an ophthalmologist-turned-medical equipment exporter from Israel, did his first tour of piety at the Maha Kumbh in 1989. Back then Israelis were barred from visiting India. “I paid baksheesh and got a visa in Italy,” he laughs. He stayed for two years living, working and travelling across India, even enrolling for a while in philosophy at the Banaras Hindu University.
“India is my second home and the Kumbh is the condensed version of India,” says Azmon, a leftish secularist. The nearest thing to god came to him far from the Kumbh, in the remote Himalayan region of Manali, 15 years ago when he and two other Israeli doctors ran a two-week eye camp. “We literally gave eyesight to the blind. For the first time I felt like a real doctor.”
ajit@tehelka.com
Vanity Fair
Out of the Picture
It’s Tunbridge Wells all over again. Well, almost. A BBC strike means that no video footage exists of Kapil Dev’s magnificent 175 — then the highest ODI score by an Indian — against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup. MS Dhoni’s match-winning 224 against Australia this week faces a similar fate, as a Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) directive to ban independent photo agencies and retain photo rights meant that newspapers around the world (and posterity) were denied any images of the iconic innings. Also, Australian fans could only hear their team’s destruction, as the ABC pulled out of the series because of the BCCI’s astronomical broadcast fees.
Kiss and Tell
The liplock that rakes in big moolah
Veena Malik has proven herself adept at being famous for being famous. Now, she’s gone legit by breaking a Guinness World Record, baby! It’s not a made-up record that is a record because nobody else would ever think of doing it, this one’s bona fide. So, on her 29th birthday, the Pakistani actress got the contestants of the reality show The City that Never Sleeps — Bollywood Hunt to kiss her hand over a 100 times in one minute. Talk about getting real, eh!
Under the Hammer
Rapper MC Hammer was arrested for obstructing and resisting a police officer which, he says, was a case of racial profiling. The “chubby Elvis-looking dude,” as he describes the cop, asked him if he was on probation or parole, a question Hammer claims he was asked because he is black. “Only thing more dangerous than a scared man with a gun,” he tweeted, “is a scared man with an agenda, a gun and a badge.” The policeman then tried to haul Hammer out of the car, “but forgot he is on a steady donut diet.”
‘Our next presenter needs no introduction’
Seth Macfarlane (Who then promptly left the Oscars stage. To be fair, Meryl Streep doesn’t need one)
