Men of Letters Burps,

That was hilarious! You forgot to mention HNYs that we get in late December and early January :-)

It has something to do with our ever-shortening attention spans. People don`t like to read paragraphs, instead preferring bulleted versions of text. I must concede that it is atrocious to read the chicken-shit floating around in mails, blogosphere and the likes, but this trend is not about to change in a hurry. We better brace ourselves to cope with more acronyms. Considering the ever-increasing numbers of SMSaholics, it won`t be surprising if someone comes up with a new spell-checker for lingo used in text messages.

Flower’s Desire Inquirer (30),

Thanks for your calming influence! I still can’t get over the fact that Delhi, Urstruly et. all find this masterful poetry …childish. Frankly speaking, I don’t care much about the translation for I don’t fancy myself as any author-shother, but to dismiss this beautiful thought as nonsensical prattle is criminal.

Shobs,

Nothing serious man, just that I checked the site after a few days. Your concern is moving, everyone is fine.

Flower’s Desire Harish, Khadiboli, Bjk, Burps, Shobs,

Thanks for the kind words! I explained the patchy transliteration in my last interact, nevertheless, sorry for the confusion caused.

Like I mentioned, translation is not everybody’s cup of tea. It is highly unlikely for an Average Joe to do justice to the original. My rationale for submitting it here was that some people who had never heard this poem before may get pointers and be able to enjoy the original. At the same time, I’m open to suggestions which can make the translation more enjoyable.

Inquirer,

I think I had downloaded the original from some university site. In the interact above, Bjk has typed from printed text and the piece I used for translation seems to be in line with it.

Flower’s Desire Echo,

When I tried this translation, I also used to try my hands at ITRANS. It was really enjoyable to write some text in Latin script per their prescribed format and see it turning to Devanagari. Probably, the goof-ups in the transliteration are a result of the playing around with that tool. Maybe I got so obsessed with the output that it was churning out that I didn`t put much thought into the consistency partt. The poem is written in the official Khadiboli dialect.

I fail to see the similarity between this poem and the I posted by you exceptfor the broad theme of personification. The former is a eulogy to the spirit of sacrifice for the motherland, the latter a lament by a lifeless object whose angst is exacerbated by the death shroud. I appreciate the sentiments expressed, just that I fail to make the connection. The second one is a classical religious conundrum. I recall reading somewhere a similar question posed by Martin Luther – the protestant reformer. In Christianity, Christ’s sacrifice is supposed to deliver the mankind from its sins (the caveat is that you believe in Christ as your saviour). “Then, why not can we continue with our sinful ways, our deliverance being promised by Christ’s death at the cross” asked ML :-)

Another problem is that translation is a tricky business. One needs to have a healthy understanding of both languages, appreciation of the social, cultural and historical background of the original and be able to map the writing style of the original to the closest, if not exact fit, in the language the piece is being translated to. When these criteria are not met, translations make a perfectly fine work appear crude and unfulfilling. My translation fails to do justice to the beautiful original and I suspect the same is the case with the pieces posted by you.

Flower’s Desire Checked my mail just now and realized that my translation has been published. This is quite surprising!

Last year, my office was quite a long distance from my home and I used to hum familiar tunes during the commute. On one of these boring and taxing commutes, I was trying to recall the old songs telecast on DoorDarshan (DD).

For those not in the know, DD is the official channel. It was the only channel broadcast during the government monopoly days. People who were introduced to the idiot box before the cable TV boom still have some fond memories of DD. The serials like ‘Hum Log’, ‘Buniyaad’ etc. had a loyal following and some stars in the contemporary mass media scene like Prannoy Roy made their start with informational programmes like The World This Week. DD being the government organ took its social obligations very seriously and beamed informational and educative programs from time to time. One of the ways of disseminating these inspirational messages was using songs. So, there was ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ (national integration), ‘Padhna Likhna Seekho’ (education), ‘Ek Chidiya, Anek Chidiya’ (unity is strength) etc. etc. ‘Chah nahin main surbaala ke’ was one of my favourites. The tune was rendered extremely well (probably some classical singer) and the video was shot very aesthetically. Jut picture a 5ish boy and girl, very innocent and cute – manifestations of God’s kindness, dressed in white pyjama kurta a nd lehenga choli respectively, walking on the path to Gandhiji’s Samadhi, their little palms holding a few petals. I always found the combination of the soothing background score and the imagery very captivating.

After I was able to recall a few lines from the aforementioned song, I set out to search the poem. The poem was too appealing to not try my hands at translation, so I did, and submitted the same to Chowk last year. I recall getting a response to the effect that they needed some more meat about the poet, writing style etc. The matters of bread kept me busy and I could never get a chance to read up more on the poet. So it is pleasant surprise to see it here …

In the Company of Women Jawahara,

Many congrats on the publication! Looking forward to the novel. I`ll review that for Chowk :-)

A Rant Against Reservations ``The big question is..whats the alternative to the quota system?``

Zakkk,

All the societies in the pre-industrial age were unequal. The high-culture manifested in language, dance, poetry and other exhibits of sophistication were the preserve of the blessed few and the larger society was happy to do their bidding and gather the crumbs. I have no way of peeking into past, but I guess the disadvantaged would have considered it their karma and not sulked too much. This is impossible in today`s communication age when kids sitting in some metropolitan slum have access to TV and other forms of information which exacerbate their sense of disenfranchisement and fuel the desire to get the toys on display. In a polity which offers universal adult franchise, it is highly improbable, if not impossible, to stop these people from crashing in the party and picking the drink of their choice. To summarize, the government has no other choice but to ameliorate the condition of poor, else face insurrection (maybe ouster in a democratic setup).

Quota system is not a panacea to the social ills plaguing our society, nor is there a system that can comprehensively replace it. A combination of many different mechanisms, working to iron out the various infirmities of the society, would produce the outcome.

The first and foremost issue is that of education. There are villages in India that don`t have schools. A friend of mine told me he had to walk 12 Km everyday to attend his primary school. To add to the woes, these miserable schools do a lousy job of teaching the kids. It would be providential if someone educated from these caricatures managed to hold his/her own against the alumnus of vastly superior urban schools. The govt. must spend vast amounts to improve the education Infrastructure in villages - concrete buildings, better salary for teachers, punitive action against defaulters etc. Since very poor people prefer to put their kids on the job rather than send them to schools, there should be incentives given for merely attending the schools. The mid-day meals schemes introduced in many parts of India are a welcome step in that direction.

Secondly, the disadvantaged communities should be given role-models. Imagine a kid from some dirt-poor family succeeding with/without quotas, but never bothering to return to his community. The successful from under-privileged melt in the larger milieu of society and inspire few, if any, in their communities. Probably, reservations should have an obligatory clause that these people work for the upliftment of their respective communities.

Better health-care and awareness drives in laggard regions would definitely bring down the level of poverty. A mother who is surer that her first/second born would live long enough to light her pyre may not be too keen on going for multiple kids. Awareness of better contraceptive mechanisms would aid the people in limiting their family size. This would allow them to spend their meagre resources on a smaller number of children, improving their chances of success in later life.

A Rant Against Reservations I liked the title of the thread - `rant against reservation` :-)

Pragmatically speaking, such rants and columns won`t make any difference to the policy of the GoI. It is perceived that even though the policy of hand-outs using quotas, is that of diminishing returns, it would be electoral suicide for a party to take a stand against it. Such columns, Op-ed pieces and frustrations vent on blogs won`t make an iota of difference to the policy-making.

From the very onset, reservation is a very divisive issue. unfortunately, the protests have taken a bitter turn and it won`t be possible for dissenters to extricate themselves from the `rude corner` they`ve put themselves in. There are a lot of fragile sensibilites involved and the way this delicate issue was broached in the media makes Germans look like the epitome of courtesy. Check this out:

I completely support the PM and all the politicians for promoting Reservations. Let`s start the reservation with our cricket team. We should have 30 percent reservation for OBC, SC/ST like that. Cricket rules should be modified accordingly. The boundary circle should be reduced for an SC/ST player. The four hit by an OBC player should be considered as a six and a six hit by a OBC player should be counted as 8 runs. An OBC player scoring 60 runs should be declared as a century.

yadayadayada -- you get the idea

This kind of balderdash serves the twin purposes of pissing off a number of people, who otherwise might have been sympathetic to the cause of anti-quota people, besides turning the attention away from the real problem - cornering of goodies by an influential section of the society to the detriment of the really under-privileged people. The problem is NOT that some communities have genetic handicaps which preclude excellence. This line of thinking reminds us of the Eugenics strain of thought prevalent in US during the segregation era. Whites were the superior people, hence the excellence of Western societies. The non-sensical prejudice was beaten into irrelevance when the Japanese beat them at their own game.

I Could Invent a Religion… Re: # 2

This is terrible news! How come this was never reported in the media?

Celebrating the Khalsa Maharana,

Gr8 post! This board ia a great example of revisionism current in the secessionist inspired theological circles. Ram, Krishna and Hari as used in Sikh scriptures are not `pantheistic` deities but names of the same montheistic deity which has foirbidden the Sikhs against `idol-worship` - makes me want to throw up. From `mundan` of the child to the `dahan` of the dead, what is practised is merely a cutural hangover from the Hindu roots! For all practical purposes Sikhi is a separate faith and Hinduism is trying to appropriate its philosophy - just like it did with all other faiths which were extinguished because of Hindu excesses.

I think it is high time our friends take some drastic steps to make their distinction from Hindus clearer. How about burying the dead instead of cremating them? The belief in Karma and reincarnation can be easily removed as perfidy of mahants and the religion more aligned with monotheistic religions by putting day of judgement as a central tenet.

Saving the Female Fetus DMji,

This is an excellent article! I especially liked the way you connected foeticide with abhorrent practice of female infanticide.

I think we are missing the woods for the tress when we lay the blame on the middle and upper classes of the society. If they could afford it, the poor people too would go for scans and feamle foeticide.

Despite the sustained pressure on the abominable practice, dowry is still alive and kicking in our society. Parents have to shell out fortunes for getting reasonably employed grooms for their daughters. Oddly enough, this happens even when the girl is well educated and gainfully employed. It is a vicious circle - one tries to buy the best prospects for their daughters hoping to get suitably compensated during the sale of their sons. It is not too hard to imagine what happens when someone is stuck with 4 daughters and 1 son :-)

There is another aspect to the issue - that of Hindu inheritance law. I don`t know the nuances of legislation regarding this, so I can`t say what happens if a girl decides to take her parents to court in a dispute over inheritance, but in practice, girls seldom take recourse to this option. It would be scandalous if a daughter is seen to be fighting a court case against her parents. So, the girls can profit from their parents` estate only to the extent of what they receive in dowry. It is hard to say whether people become so calculative when fixing suitable matches for their kids, but it must be lurking in the sub-conscious.

On a different note: what do parents do if they already have a daughter and want to go for a male heir in the second pregnancy? I`ve personally met so many people who were the `only brother` amongst a huge number of sisters. Needless to say, they are mostly the youngest ;-) Is it wise to make scanning unlawful for such people?

Fake Dalits, Bogus Tribals? There is a new game in the town, that of tampering with the SC/ST lists. Dadda has decided to add a few more jatis to the SC list in UP, check this out. This policy has far-reaching outcomes which is mostly lost on people. One would wonder what difference does it make if 10-15 more jatis are added to a list of hundreds of jatis. Well, it does. The FC/OBC/MBC/SC labels don`t represent monlithic communities but a hodgepodge grouping of communities spread across India, who have little in common. The truth on the ground is anything but uniformity of status of the various jatis. So, a majority of benefits are cornered by affluent jatis. Off the top of my head, Meenas amongst tribals and Malas amongst Dalits are glaring examples of status difference between jatis grouped under a single label. Their representation in public services is much in excess of their proportion in their respective categories. A small movement from one category to another can wreck havoc on the benefits dispensed to a category - just add a dominant jati to SC list and reservation as we know it would be finished.

Another interesting development is that of dividing the pie or sub-categorizing reserved blocks. Some governments have proposed further classification of reserved seats so that dominant castes don`t run away with all the goodies. This means the SC list itself would be divided in many parts with fractions of total percentage assigned to jati groupings. As with everything else, these steps too have been proposed keeping in mind the electoral politics. But, a reform of the reservation juggernaut is long overdue and much needed.

Lingo Woes Across The Radcliff Line I didn`t know that Indo-Pak border was demarcated by Radcliffe. I wouldn`t have read this article if not for the title :-)

Methinks the role of script in communication is exaggerated. After all, we do read a lot of Urdu, even the pretentious shero-shairi stuff in Devanagari. Moreover, the divergence of language has been bridged to a certain extent by cable TV & internet. I`ve seen Pakistani comedians in `The Great Indian Comedy show` aired on Star One channel. Also, Pakistani bands like Strings perform pretty regularly in India.

Neways, we are discussing something which is least important in the larger scheme of things. If the current trend continues, our languages would become extinct before Asiatic Lion. The language of board rooms, discourse of intelligentsia and fawning of elite is English. English is the stepping stone to success in all walks of life. Hindi is the language of laggards, the unfortunate who have been left behind in the shove to summit. Perhaps, it is my ignorance, but I can`t think of any Hindi writer of repute in the last couple of decades. It is dying a slow painful death.

Muslims in Infidelistan: A Ready Reckoner ``Moses was not known for his staff without cause`` That one cracked me up! The ID `Chowk staff` has an entirely new meaning :-)

Temporary Marriage in Islam In 80`s B.R. Chopra made a movie on the issue of triple talaq - Nikaah. The lead actors were Raj Babbar, Salma Agha and Deepak Parashar. Parashar plays a Nawab who divorces Salma Agha in a fit of rage and then consults a Mulla about marrying his wife again. The process laid out by the mulla was similar to what you`ve written, but I can`t recall whether the term halala was used. The movie generated considerable heat (everything involving Muslims does :-) ), but was released after cuts here and there. The movie also became notorious because of brazen piracy of Ghulam Ali`s ghazal `chupke-2 raat din`. If my memory serves me right, Ali sued the Chopras and forced them to shell-out some moolah in an out-of-court settlement.

Magma Shobig,

Interesting idea! The imagery of encasing the emotions in words, lest they disperse, is delectable. I need to read some English poetry to better appreciate these styles.

When a volcano erupts, the lava starts flowing down the slopes of the mountain, releasing the pressure. In due course of time, the lava cools down, solidifies, plugging the mouth of the mountain. Again pressure starts building up and the cycle repeats. My point is - every time the opening is plugged, the pressure will start increasing. So, I`m not very convinced with the idea of using `magma solidifying` as a reason for `blocking pulses`. On second thoughts, you may have a point. The human emotions when depressed for a long time, might peter out. If there is no outlet to vent it, the emotion itself might lose its intensity and become a part of everyday life.