From Secular Progressive to Regressive

From secular progressive to regressive. That didn't take much time, did it?

There is a palpable sense of glee in some quarters, eagerly waiting for the religious floodwaters to break through and drown this secular bulwark against communal bigotry.  They hope that this would be another deluge, with Sabarimala the first shutter opening of the Cheruthoni dam of religious bile. Let’s hope we find enough fishermen and boats to survive this flooding.

Ideally, one would expect these people to be protesting in front of the Supreme Court, as it was that court’s decision to let these "impure" women in. It’s hard to believe that the secular, liberal intellectuals had any kind of influence on the court. Or for that matter, anyone, because then that will not be a fair and impartial judiciary.

My initial reaction was, “hey, let the ladies believe in whatever hocus-pocus they want to believe”. However, after seeing the attempts by a section to hold God’s Own Cakoos to ransom, I became more interested and started looking up largely uninteresting facts (or fake news, as they are known now).

We have to admire the audacity of this group. The women who filed the case were not, as a Facebook friend commented, WEIRD (Western-Educated Industrialized Rich & Democratic) people with a liberal agenda. If anything, some of them were from the “right” stock (check out Prerna Kumari/husband in fb). An initial smokescreen was created in the name of the Indian Young Lawyers Association, which was headed by a guy called Naushad at that time (2006), who didn’t have anything to do with this petition.

https://barandbench.com/sabarimala-case-petitioners-bhakti-pasrija-prerna-kumari/

The case dragged on for 12 years, and the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom (or is it ignorance, if you believe these people), and hopefully after studying the case meticulously, gave a verdict. All these people, including the NSS, the descendent of the family that ruled over the Pandalam municipality and surroundings, and even a guy called Rahul Easwar, had the opportunity to present their side to the court. Naishtika brahmachari (it will be interesting to know how many people who spout this word know its meaning (I googled)), menstruating women, magnetic force, magic fire in mountain, crowds killed in stampedes trying to watch magic fire in mountain, e-coli in Pampa river, everything. Still, at the end of the day, the court decided in favour of the women who filed the complaint.

http://scobserver.clpr.org.in/court-case/sabrimala-temple-entry-case

Then, before you could say swamiye saranam ayyappa, it all became some devious liberal agenda. Suddenly, some of them saw a chance to open that shutter to let the pent-up religious bigotry on the people. The glimmer of a chance to get a foothold was too good to pass. Hence the change of heart from
https://www.news18.com/news/india/rss-backs-womens-entry-in-temples-says-such-unfair-traditions-should-be-discarded-1215530.html

to
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/sabarimala-verdict-sentiments-cannot-be-ignored-says-rss/articleshow/66060250.cms

Suddenly, ancient customs became important. The RSS supreme leader now blames the judges for ignoring tradition. Irony drowned itself in the Pampa when a Dalit priest said centuries-old customs should be respected. The guy would have had to stand close to a century steps away from the Namboothiri thantri of Sabarimala if those centuries-old customs were intact.

Regardless of the feeling towards the ruling dispensation in the State, it’s time once again for mallus to pull together like they did during the floods.

P.S. It is interesting to note that a similar centuries-old tradition was ditched some time ago at the Shani Shingnapur Temple in Maharashtra after a court order.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/shani-shingnapur-temple-trust-finally-accepts-hc-order-lets-women-in/

Kootharas of the World, Unite..

We are mallus (some consider this term derogatory. I don’t). Many of us were and are proud of that, though I never understood why. We had achieved immense progress, the propaganda machinery had told us over the years – high this, low that, big schlo…, what not. And somehow, even after learning from G Carlin (that being a mallu is not a skill, but a f#$king genetic accident - G Carlin on Pride), there was this subconscious pride in me. Dormant, most of the time, more or less like the subconscious religious and racist bigotry found in the depths of people’s hearts, which peeps out in unguarded moments.

All this pride, however, has been slowly crumbling in front of my eyes over the last couple of years, ever since I started using Facebook and WhatsApp. I found out that we are one of the most reviled people in this country. Chu#$ya mallus. All those achievements were nothing but old wives’ tales. If this continues, the only legitimate remnants of mallu achievement could be the gooey remains in sleazy movie halls across the length and breadth of the country.

The first inkling of what was going to come was when the Grand Poobah compared us to Somalia. There was, however, another hint much earlier in my life when in college a Delhi kid told us “You south Indians are all like that.” Never understood what he meant by “that”. We just told him “Po thaya#$” and left it at that. He was a fair and lovely kid and I think had a fancy-sounding (at least to us) name like Saxena. We were all Bijus and Jubis and other disyllabic names and many of us were jet-black wheatish complexioned. Obviously, no one was there to advise our parents on how to get a uttama santati. No north-faced banyan tree twig, no 72 days of abstinence. They got married, fornicated and reproduced like rabbits. No, that is not true. They didn’t reproduce like rabbits because they were vaccinated, which, in case you’re not aware, is a big scam by the West to depopulate the world. Well, the result is clear. Look at me. They got one parameter right, by accident, for sure. Tall! That’s all. Tall….dark, ugly and dumb.

Well, subsequent to the Poobah calling us Somalis, they started downgrading us one by one. We became the worst state in the country. The crime capital. Our cities are dumps. People, especially of a certain majority religious persuasion, are on the verge of becoming refugees. There is murder, mayhem, and there are trans-genders in workforce, etc. and before you could say Jack Robinson, we became “thundery Pakistan”.

That was when I lost it. “Thundery?!” What the f#$k is thundery? My dormant pride was stirred. Are they alluding to thunder thighs? Those plump women in the mallu movies; a genre that the country loves more than Bollywood fare. Are they telling us that when the Gujaratis were lunging for their asmita, we were embracing Silk Smita movies here? So, that is the deal. They want to paint us as “kootharas,” which could be translated as dirty rotten scoundrels. Once we start believing that we’re kootharas (I know quite a few who have become believers), they, the fair knights in shining armour, riding their cows, will come in and save us. It appears to be from the playbook of certain religions. You’re a sinner who needs to be saved.  

I was downcast at this turn of events. The horror of knowing that you’re universally hated! But then, I do have some friends, who religiously post uplifting messages and motivational bullshit in my WhatsApp groups, which I used to deride. Not today. Today, those have come in handy. I’ve decided to look at the positives and take ownership of being a koothara. After all, I was born and raised in one of the koothara-est neighbourhoods of Trivandrum, thanks to which I had developed a fine command over koothara language at a very tender age (a fact revealed to me by the taxi driver who used to ferry us to school). So, here is my response for calling us thundery. I’m raising my lungi to you in protest, an ancient vedic ritual practiced in this region to express dissent. NO! Not that, don’t look there, you koothara. Look at my thighs, my thunder thighs!

Kootharas of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your lungis.

Samprati Hype-aha Shruyantham

  

It’s been close to two months since I left the heat and grime of Trivandrum for the cooler climes in the northeast of Japan. With temperatures hovering around 0°C most of the time, my brain also went into a freeze mode, occasionally perking up like a dog’s ear to some bullshit in WhatsApp, but rarely responding actively. Some of my friends say it was because I’ve been active only in eating (exotic items like basashi, or raw horse flesh, and uni, sea urchin roe) and drinking most of the time.

  Anyway, now I am in Shonandai, south of Tokyo, where it is quite balmy and nice, and the brain has begun to thaw, ever so slowly. That is when I got this message extolling Sanskrit. Mind-blowing facts, it said. It’s too big for me to reproduce here, but trust me, it is beyond any normal human being’s comprehension. All the usual suspects – NASA, Brits, Russians, Germans, etc. - are deep into Sanskrit now. I got a feeling that if you know how to read Sanskrit in a certain way, the resulting energy waves would even cure cancer (see P.P.P.S). So, I was reading it intently, when a sentence caught my attention –“Learning of Sanskrit improves brain functioning”. Given the frozen condition of my brain, I immediately latched on to it.

  There was, however, one major problem. You really don’t know anyone who can speak Sanskrit. I personally have heard only two. One was my father’s elder brother, who is long dead, and the other is Baldevananda Sagara. He, Baldevananda Sagara, is a pravachaka (usually refers to one who cannot be criticized) and has been around for as long as Sanskrit has existed, which is “millions of years”, the message tells me. There were a few others in between. Panini, who drew up the grammar some 1500 years ago (don’t ask me about the millions of years before that), Vararuchi and Patanjali. Panini was appropriated by the Italians and made into a small bread roll (grilled sandwich), while Patanjali, of course, makes and sells Italian pasta with no Ruchi, or taste. Pathetic, how these Westerners are stealing everything from us.

  Somebody had to put a stop to this, and as if on cue, Our Lady with the Convent-educated English Accent stood up and instructed the elite technical university students in India to use their palm-tops to study the latest technological secrets inscribed in Sanskrit in state-of-the-art ancient palm leaves. NASA is doing it! so, why can't they?

  #$%&! It is a frikkin’ language. Dead, for all practical purposes! There is pride; and then there is cow dung! We sure must keep that language alive. Without doubt, there will be many people studying it, for the classical literature or for the legitimate early scientific works by Indians, but do we have to impose it on engineering students? Why are we getting all chauvinistic about it now? It was an elitist language to begin with.

  It all appears to be part of this constant bombardment of jingoistic hype, propaganda and hyperbole about everything from the prime honcho wanting to make somebody else’s trinkets in India to reasons why god gets pissed off. God recently got angry in Kerala, probably because Malayali women are wearing jeans now. To god’s credit, he/she/it did send a sign that things are getting out of hand. A god figurine apparently fell down from atop an elephant. Our morons, as usual, didn’t understand the significance of that signal from god. On the other hand, god could have just said, “Ladies (it’s always the ladies), time to discard those tank tops and leggings and get back into mulakachchas. OK, not all of you. You there, you are not allowed to cover those boobies up”. But, for reasons which our brains will never be able to comprehend, god didn’t say anything, and killed a hundred for ignoring that sign.

  I’m now in Japan, a country at which god is perpetually angry, again, probably because the women here wear shorts, though nobody in Japan has caught on to that fact yet. In fact, god has been angry and sending hundreds of earthquakes every day for millions of years in anticipation of the last 40 or 50 years of miniskirt-wearing Japanese women.

  A few days ago I took my kids to see some actual dinosaur fossils from millions of years ago. My younger one, not old enough to comprehend the time scale in millions, wanted to know why there aren’t any dinosaurs alive now. Instead of just the volcanic and meteorite theories, I should have told him the entire truth – “Son, it was the thongs worn by the female spinosaura that invoked the wrath of god, who smote them with meteors”.

  Ithi vartha ha.

P.S. “Sanskrit has the highest number of vocabularies than any other language in the world,” says the message I received. I’m sure there is a “vocabulary” for chasmosaurus too, which was first used millions of years ago by, you guessed it, Baldevananda Sagara. He is a living fossil in his own right. The only known living person who can string together a sentence in Sanskrit, let’s hope he is offered a Nobel Prize that he can refuse.

P.P.S. There is also the mythmaking and the personality cult being created around our supreme leader. “Subtle observations” (means made-up crock, like the one about the Google map pointer being the tilak on Lord Vitthal’s head) keep popping up at regular intervals. Movie-goers may soon have to sit through propaganda news reels like the days when Indira was India. It hasn’t reached Kim Jong-un-esque proportions yet, but pretty soon you may hear stories of how the first words the Chosen One spoke as a baby was “Bharat mata ki jai”.

P.P.P.S. Had to “share (at least) this to the maximum” so that people know the truth and live a healthful life away from anti-national medicines. Excerpted from the voluminous “Why Sanskrit Kicks Ass”:

“Sanskrit is the only language, which uses all the nerves of the tongue. By its pronunciation, energy points in the body are activated that causes the blood circulation to improve. This, coupled with the enhanced brain functioning and higher energy levels, ensures better health. Blood Pressure, diabetes, cholesterol etc. are controlled. (Ref: American Hindu University after constant study)”

P.P.P.P.S. Nah. Nothing more. To your health!

Woaa, Thanna, Thanna

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken
 

There’s another election around the corner. It is an interesting time and I was planning not to endorse anyone. Not that it matters. In the USA, influential people will endorse one of the candidates, which could get the candidate some votes. Given my influence, or lack thereof, I usually decide to sit tight and enjoy the show.

 

Things suddenly changed a few days ago. The rant gods smiled at me slyly. And I bowed and crawled and did the complex hand movements involving middle fingers to appease them. Because…

 

The Big Jumbo Party of all decided to bring in a guy boasting the most slap-worthy cheek south of the Vindhyas as their candidate in Trivandrum. As you all know, the Big Jumbo Party, led by the Grand Poobah, is the biggest party of all in the universe. If you have a mobile phone and you look at its keypad at a particular angle, you get enrolled as a member of that party. They had built up a humongous fan base in Trivandrum through that technique and has been planning to enter the legislature leveraging that base.

 

Until now, what was preventing them from capturing the State was the fact that “they party with a difference”. Unlike the other parties in Kerala who party with booze, babes and beef, they party with milk (A2 milk from vedic cows), banana and honey. This never went down well with the locals, who enjoy their tipple with onion fry garnished with beef shreds.

 

It was all going to be different this time around. Many people had finally ploughed deep into their heart and found the latent bigotry buried in there, and were slowly getting comfortable with it - justifying it, defending it and at times ready to kill for it. This was going to be the coming out party (with A2 milk and all, of course).

 

Then Sreesanth happened. After meticulously going through their huge fan base in Trivandrum, the Big Jumbo Party found that none of their local payalukal stood a chance. In fact, not many from the erstwhile Travancore state (also called Pappanavan’s land) stood a frikkin chance, as they are commonly considered as scoundrels. So, cocksure of themselves, they have decided to import good, decent people, mainly from Kochi and beyond, to represent us poor suckers.

 

Now, this is not new and you shouldn’t blame them for taking a cue from the other groupings who have tried and succeeded with outsiders for long. The old, used-to-be-grand party brought an UN super commando all the way from New York and we all fell for it. Before that, the left had the long-haired dude from the north, and recently another guy (who miserably lost) who, though technically from Trivandrum, could’ve been from Mars.

 

To be sure, the pickings are slim for all parties. There is a sickening parade of jaded celebrities on all sides. You really don’t want to endorse any one. Maybe, we deserve to get it good and hard. Still, I had to rant against this man-boy, who brings only one image to mind - of a crying face -, and the sound of a slap that reverberated from Kasaragod to Kaliyikkavila. For #$%’s sake, he is not even the best cricketer the state has produced. That is going to be Sanju Samson (OK, I'm obviously biased here). So, at the polling booth, look at the other options, a NOTA perhaps, or a name that sounds like the person can say, “Woaa, thanna, thanna”.

 

P.S. He, the Kochi lad, is going to make Kerala into a Gujarat apparently. A quick google study threw up the following numbers.

 

                                                Kerala         Gujarat

Poverty rate                                7.05            16.63

Literacy rate (female)        93.91 (91)      79.31 (70)

Sex ratio                                    1084             918

HDI                                           0.825           0.599

GDP                                        $58bn         $110bn

Pop.                                           3.3cr            6.0cr

Households w/o toilets                 5%             43%

Infant mortality                            12%             44%

Life expectancy                             74             64.1

Mythology, Sacred Cow, Beef Issue

I am a big fan of mythologies. I grew up listening to stories from the Hindu mythology told by my dad, uncle and aunt. Then my dad gave me a book called “Balakathamaalika” (in Malayalam), which had Greek, Egyptian and numerous other mythological stories. I read about Jason and the Argonauts, Hercules, Ra, Thor, Charlemagne, Lancelot and King Arthur for the first time in that book and became fascinated. I still have that book and sometimes read it to my sons.

I must reiterate here that I totally love myths; myths that tell the “stories” of men with supernatural powers, and of course supernatural beings. Most of these stories are from ancient times, hundreds or thousands of years old, passed down from generation to generation.

My beef, however, is with the recent myths – Hindu myths - that are propagated as facts. Hindu mythology, it appears, is still evolving. I am not sure whether this process started with the advent of the Hindu right government or whether this was behind the rise of the right into power. The problem with this new myth creation is that it appears full of bovine excrement, unlike the ancient stories written by people with great imagination for that time.

Every once in a while you get a forwarded message of how something great was done by a Hindu sage zillions of years ago and how everybody got up and bowed, etc. These mythmakers are also obsessed with the NASA, for some reason, as if it gives the story some legitimacy.

Some of the stuff I found interesting:

NASA recorded the sound of the sun and it is the great mantra Aum, says a YouTube video with an American-sounding voiceover. For one, NASA didn’t record the sound of the sun. Some scientists at the University of Sheffield recreated the sound by turning some visible vibrations into sound and speeding up the frequency. And it doesn't sound like Aum. It sounds more like a wet fart passing through a stringed instrument (sound of the sun.)

There is a guy called Dr. Gopalakrishnan, who is apparently some big-time scientist who taught the sahib a thing or two about something. He says things like the Vedas were made a UNESCO World Heritage, whereas the Bible and Quran are not. Deceptive half-truths, but gulped down by his fans as absolute truths. Some 30 Rigveda manuscripts were accepted into the “UNESCO Memory of the World Register” (note the difference in name), which has numerous other such entries including the Convict Records of Australia and the Communist Manifesto, not to mention biblical or Qur’anic items. This venerable Dr. is also obsessed with NASA. In a speech, he talks about a visit he made to the NASA, where he saw, “with his own eyes,” every American space scientist listening to Vedic chanting while working. Can’t argue with that, can you? Personally saw thousands and thousands of American scientists listening to Vedic chants. Probably the rap version, sung by Tupac Shakur; after he died.

Then there is Cap’n Bodas, who was cited in an earlier blog here(ancient Indian air travel), and his interplanetary machines, which were presented to the world at the Indian Science Congress. The book the Cap'n cites is probably written in the 20^th century. There are some funny videos out there, with the customary American voiceover, which are quite detailed. So, it must be pretty easy for one of these “vedic engineers” to cobble together a flying machine based on that material. It even says what the pilot should be eating! I am waiting.

Another one I received recently was how Edison went all the way to England to get Max Mueller to blab for his first gramophone recording. Sailing across the Atlantic for a recording! Pretty routine thing for those days, I presume.

“Hey, Max, want to say some bullshit into this contraption I made?”

“Yeah, why not? Why don’t you get  on the next boat and hop over Ed?”

So Edison went across the Atlantic to Max who spoke the first verse of the Rig Veda in praise of Agni, in Sanskrit. At the end of it all, the entire audience stood up as a mark of respect to the ancient Indian sages. And, probably also because their asses were burning as Max screwed up in invoking Agni, who set their seats on fire. It was a rigged veda show, because Edison’s first recording was some shouting and Mary had a frikkin li’l lamb.

Why do they come up with this bullshit stories? As a country, we have enough to be proud of and enough to be ashamed of too. Why do they want to build this false sense of great pride in some mythological stories and plain stupidities by portraying them as science? I have no idea, but anyway thought I will do some myth-busting.

Stay with me for a few more lines. This is important for me. I am worried about the beef issue in this country. I like my beef. I have tasted the best beef in the world. Kobe, Matsuzaka, Kuroge wagyu, and Angus. I have had Brazilian churrasco and also the fibrous chewy beef from cattle that walked all the way from Pollachi in Tamil Nadu to Kerala. So as a beefeater it worries me that I might not be able to do so here in the future.

While thinking about it I checked out how cows evolved. I learned that all cattle are descendants of a few animals domesticated from wild ox (aurochs) 10,500 years ago. What we have here in India is mostly Bos taurus indicus, which at some point of time became holy. Then this thought struck me –“Do the other species qualify as sacred cows?” Y’know, a Holstein or a Jersey? So, I googled and hit pay dirt instantaneously. They are not sacred! Eureka! Only the Bos taurus indicus is sacred! Says da bovine man Shankar Lal, who is the president of the Akhil Bharathiya Gau Sewa.

Here are couple of links.

Cows can fight crime - Indian Express 

Kamadhenu Nagars - Economic TImes 

As per him saatvik (virtuous) Indian cows can reduce crime, reform convicts, prevent evil thoughts, etc. whereas milk from, say, a Jersey cow has devil in it and has poisonous particles that make you think impure thoughts resulting in increased crimes. Whoa!, and all along we thought it was the guys drinking alcohol who were committing crimes. It was the milk drinkers. (Nothing related, but reminds me of the Ghost who Walks ordering milk at bars, and the stoopid Kerala government which has shut down the bars here).

Shankar Lalji is planning to build cowsheds in schools, conduct exams and courses on cows, a university to study cow science and do Gau Kathas in temples.

“Holy Cow!” I thought. Not because he was doing these things, but because I suddenly saw a way out of the beef conundrum we are in now. If Jersey and other species of cows are impure and are not considered as cows (not by me, mind you, but by Mr. Shankar Lal), there ought to be no problem in killing them for meat. It is just like chicken. Another animal that can be eaten. To be frank, these foreign species are more meaty and succulent than the bony Bos taurus indicus. I hope we can import more Jersey cows and other varieties and sell them as Jersey meat. Everybody, including me and the crazy beef fest holding bozos in Kerala, can breathe easily now. Problem solved. Brilliant. Wow, I won't be able to sleep today. Thanks Shankar Lalji.

Garv se Kaho "What?"

Foreigners new to Japan initially find it hard to understand the calendar here. According to the Japanese calendar, this is the 27^th year of the Heisei era, which started in January 1989 when Akihito, became the new emperor following the death of his father Hirohito. Hirohito’s era from 1926 to 1989 is called the Showa era and he is now known as the Showa emperor. This is used officially too, so you should know how to convert from the Gregorian to the Showa (I was born in the Showa era!) or Heisei when filling in your date of birth in some government form.

The Gregorian calendar has the birth of Jesus as the starting point. How did they come up with that date? Don’t ask unnecessary questions. We demand unquestionable faith. Coming to the current era, we, now have a chance to devise a new calendar.

I recently found out that I may not have been proud to be an Indian till 2014. This was revealed by our prime minister, who is now the “greatest leader of the greatest nation on the earth”. That sobriquet, till recently, was owned by whichever douchebag was the president of the USA at that time. So, at some point of time in the past Nixon and GW Bush were the greatest leaders of the “free world”.

Now that mantle has been appropriated by Mr. Modi, if you believe the noise in the Hindu web world. Global leaders are kowtowing to him (though it is our leader who is going around). Everybody is respecting Indians (except maybe Indians). We have reached superpower status where we can project our *#$% into other people’s affairs and get away with it like the USA (we could try Maldives? Maybe not). Canada gave Indians visa on arrival (VOA) status (Don’t try it. It is the other way round. We gave VOA to Canadians). Perhaps if we repeat it enough times all these will come true.

With nothing to be proud of pre-2014, we ought to divide our calendar as BM and AD, i.e. “Before Modi” was elected PM in 2014 (hereinafter “AD 1”), while retaining AD but altering its meaning to Anno Domini Nostri Modi.

“Hey, hey, what about Gandhi? Surely you can be proud of him!” You might ask. Well, what about him? Look at him. The man was walking around in a loincloth. Was it a designer langoti? Was it monogrammed with his initials MKG? In gold? No. I doubt whether the langoti even had the black dots and lines the dhobis put to identify clothes. On the other hand you won’t catch our PM in the same dress twice. Pretty soon he will have the RSS musclemen in designer khaki knickers (made in China).

“How about the Gupta period? Y’know, the Golden Age blah, blah we learned at school”. Stop asking questions. We’ll instruct you on what to learn, do, eat, think, wear, etc. in due course of time. Just follow our lead. The last time we were close to being proud was about 7000 years ago when we had intergalactic space machines and our gurus were doing head transplants. Got it?

So, now I am a proud Indian. Proud of things we are instructed to be proud of. Proud of the fake Macaulay minute of 2-2-1835 in sepia print floating around in the Internet, where he saw a super country when he travelled the length and breadth of India. Did he come down to Trivandrum? If he did, he could have seen my great-great-great grandmother walking nude waist up because it was a great period and feminists were having a “Free the Nipple” campaign of their time, and not because of some crazy caste rules, as the fake historians would make you believe.

(What Macaulay actually said)

There is a right-wing narrative being slowly scripted now, of what a super race we are (were), of how we had invented everything that had to be invented, of how all these foreigners looted us, etc. Some of it may be legit, but quite a bit are based on dodgy historical interpretations and on mythology.

And it is being implemented stealthily and incrementally. A beef ban here, a new history book there, a religious nut in an education board here, a dress code there, a false quote (Macaulay) in social media here, a fake Vivekananda smart-ass riposte to a white man there. It is slowly building up and at some point of time it will reach the critical mass needed to engulf a naïve public who is taught not to think for themselves and not to question authority. The modus operandi is somewhat similar to the right wing in the USA, where the Christian right (in some States) wants the Genesis to be taught as science along with evolution. So, it is possible that in the near future we might be taught there is nothing to be proud of Gandhi, Nehru or Tagore, or that we did the first live television broadcast of a major war thousands of years before CNN brought the Gulf War to the living rooms.

Any which way you look at it, we are screwed.

We will be screwed left, right and centre – by the lame and limp left; by the rabid, rampant right; and the corrupt and clueless centre. And, to rub it in further, we’ll be screwed all over by the corporates, for whom these three exist.

A prime example is Trivandrum. Mr. Modi, the Calendar Divider and the Generous, recently gave a billion dollars to Mongolia, which has a population about the same as Trivandrum district! At the same time, these three groupings (the left, the right and the centre) are falling over each other trying to screw Trivandrum, whether it is over a mass rapid transport system, the Vizhinjam port, a waste management system or any other development whatsoever.

My only hope is that one day Mr. Modi the Generous will throw some spare change our way from the air when he flies over our airspace to some distant land.

 

Year-end Ruminations

 

Sometimes, even though you don’t want to, you end up thinking of the year that went by. So, here are some random thoughts that crossed my mind, sitting in snowed-out north-eastern Japan, -15°C outside, WhatsApping with friends around the world; something which I wasn’t planning on six months ago. I have been trying, often without success, to keep technology at bay. A phoneless cord? Maybe. A smartphone? No way. That used to be my policy.

 

Things, however, don’t go as you planned, especially with kids around, and I ended up with a smartphone, knowing well that it was a slippery slope. One good thing that came out of it, though, was getting back in touch with long-lost friends over the last couple of months.

 

For Trivandrum, it was again a continuation of the disappointments, neglect, maltreatment, etc. from the ruling class. The Mayoress, the government and its umpteen ministers, including one representing the city, all have conspired to crush the soul of this city. The Mayoress, by failing to find a solution to the city’s garbage issue, into its fourth year now. The government, by actively scuttling any development that matters to come here. And to rub salt in the wound, they have built a monument to ineptitude that stands like a middle finger being wagged at the citizens' faces. That is the “newly inaugurated” central bus station at Thampanoor, which resembles Fallujah after an US bombing raid. The contempt is palpable.

 

Which makes one wonder whether a win for the BJP guy in the last parliament elections would have made a difference. Now, that is another slippery slope. Already there are signs that I may have to read the Gita every day (instead of, say, the Kamasutra) if Madame Sushma has her way and makes it the national scripture. Or, worse still, I may have to reconvert (Ghar Wapsi!) to Hinduism in the near future. Where would I start? Perhaps as an untouchable and work my way up the caste ladder, if that is possible in one lifetime. I don’t want to go through all those karma, reincarnation cycle till moksha. Reminds me of the movie dialogue “What does a snail have to do to reincarnate? Leave the perfect trail of slime?”

 

Despite trying their best, the ruling class (who have suckled at the teats of this city, living here, sending their children to schools here, drinking the water from one of the oldest water supply system in the country, pooping into a sewerage system, which again is one of the oldest such systems in the country) has not managed to kill the city’s spirit...... yet. I believe, it is still one of the best places to live in this country.

 

Speaking of poop - I am now in Japan, where pooping is a pleasure. Here is a rehash from a piece I wrote almost a decade ago. The system was new at that time, but I won’t be surprised if the Japanese have come out with a system that measures the amount of doo-doo you make and flushes the appropriate amount of water. It is all eco-friendly nowadays, you see. Save water.

 

Some 74% of houses in Japan now has high-tech toilets. In comparison, 53% households in India do it in eco-friendly, natural settings, upholding the spirit of being one with nature (nice positive spin, eh?). The potty I have been using here in Japan allows me to set the seat temperature (important in winter) as well as the water pressure, position and temperature. You can set it for automatic flush, so that it flushes when you raise your washed, rinsed and cleansed bum off the toilet seat. Women can also use it as a bidet.

 

I sometimes dream of having one such potty in my house in Trivandrum, but then good sense prevails as my brain reminds me of how fried nuts would look like when the voltage shoots to 4000v unexpectedly in a lightning storm. Have to safeguard the family jewels!

 

Finally uploaded the pictures of potty control panels! Hope you all have an un-constipated New Year.

 

Above - the panel I use

Panel at my in-laws place (Added later to a regular potty)

The one at a hotel I stayed recently (attached to the toilet seat).

Well, this blog also seems to have run its course, looking at the recent output. Wish you all an interesting 2015 and beyond.