THE BASTION IS BREACHED

The Bastion is Breached

PAINTING by Dr Mukta Kamplikar

I must have been in class 4 or 5, when my mother brought in a Tabla teacher home in her white Premier Padmini, as she drove back home in that car, from the hospital / medical college that she as a Gynaec worked at. She did that, as this was an aspiration that she nursed, but her father admonished her, for this was a man’s preserve. She therefore wished her son to play the table, the instrument that she was denied. And mind you, this denial came from the father who was very highly educated and primarily an educationist, having held the rank of Director of Education for UP.

Though not with ease, the bastion has been breached by several women and the ones that come to my mind foremost are Sunayna Ghosh and Anuradha Pal.

Anuradha learnt the art from several exponents of this ancient music form, including Pt Kishan Maharaj, Alah Rakhan and his illustrious son Zakir Hussain. When I heard her for the first time at a concert, in the beginning her style sounded dubious, but as she advanced, it had an indelibly clear imprint of the Benaras Gharana.

The bastion was breached by another woman, Sunayana Ghosh of Kolkatta, a disciple of the famous tabla maestro Pt Shankar Ghosh of the Farukhabad Gharana. Again extremely talented, and having made her space in the male bastion with ease that does not fail to astonish you.

But of course, to me, it is Anuradha who appeals more, just because she is from the Benaras Gharana and the extraordinary Gamak of the Dahina nevers cease to mesmerize me. 

Just the other day, I saw on TV, a smart lady Capt Geetika Rathore, who was one of the 6 women to scale the Everest two years ago, leading a contingent at the Republic Day Parade.

They are indeed breaching the till now male bastions.

Letter to the Police Commissioner Mumbai

Attn. Mr Satyapal Singh

Dear Mr Singh

It must have been around 7:45 pm today when I left my Worli office for home. At several traffic signals, anxious cops  furiously beckoning me and others standing by at the red traffic signal to jump it, not leaving me to wonder why, but certainly leaving me appalled and irritated at their insulting demeanor.

Then at BKC main road, finally your convoy overtook me from the wrong side, jumped several red lights, ahead of me, in- fact nudged me to jump too, by intimidating me with deafening hooter that they use.

My belief is, you would have jumped about 4 stop signals.

I followed your convoy, and found them at the American Centre. I spoke to Inspector Narkhude, who was evasive, and that is understandable, and guessed, you may have been in hurry to get to the function.

I must admit, he handling me quite adeptly, as mostly the manner the police behaves reeks of the Kotwal of Mughal Empire. He assuaged me quite well, else I would have demanded to meet with you then and there.

I called 100 to lodge the complaint against your car. On learning from me, it was your car, they directed me to speak to inspector traffic at 022 2493 7746, where I spoke to a constable who admonished me for my audacity of daring to complain against the police commissioner and it was only when I told him, I had a picture of your car, and was also recording my conversation with him, that he brought Inspector Kharate on the line, who checked on the wireless, and confirmed that it was your car at the American Center. He suggested that I lodge a complain at the Vakola police station where when I went the inspector in-charge Pardesi informed me, it was the BKC police station jurisdiction, and not his. This is usual story. Confused about jurisdiction. I don’t know when this will end.

To cut a long story short I would like to know : 

1. What was the need to jump so many stop signals?
2. Which rule entitles you for such privilege, as that is what I understood from all the cops that I spoke with?
3.  Do you believe you will stop this practice or you are in your right and would continue to do this?
4.  Where and how I can file a complaint against you and what action will you assure me? Will like to stand up and endeavor to change this stupid culture?
5. Why you should not be challaned and made to pay the fine just like I would be?

For the record, my car has not been damaged, nor I have   been physically hurt. Our system is so used to such misplaced VIPism, that most will wonder what then my grievance is about. But I only hope, being an IPS- an educated elite, you would understand better.

I also understand, ambulances and cop cars and other emergency vehicles have right of way and traffic. I too would swerve to let them have that right. But I am sure you will not hide behind such niceties and surely that is not a plausible explanation in your case.

I remember an uncle of my who was SP Allahabad, would always jump red lights, as else my ice cream that he treated me to daily, would melt. But that was 40 years ago when I was 4. He then rose to become the Director IB. I only hope, you did not have a similar sense of urgency – a melting ice cream at the American Centre party and also hope you being a new generation are not slave to such feudal mentality.

I expect a reply failing which I will resort to all remedies available to me to ensure such practices are abandoned and such VIPism eschewed or at least bridled. I am also familiar with the usual practices that administration resorts to thwart and frustrate and sometimes even intimidate people like me, and I am ready to make that journey.

  

Thanking you in advance for your understanding and eagerly waiting to hear from you.

Yours truthfully

VK SINGH

The Power of Emulation

I have always believed innovation is not the only key to success. It is not that only high degree of break through innovation is what brings you success.

There are votaries of break through innovation, but much will also depend on how you define break through innovation. To me after the discovery of the wheel in Mesopotamia, there has really not been any innovation as big.

Even electricity comes from a turbine which is a wheel. Tell me one invention which is not about a circle or a wheel.

Some of us may know, that Pascal was not the innovator of the Pascals triangle. This was discovered by a Chinese philosopher and brought into France by the traders. And this Pascal copied, mulled over, mauled and modified it, and made it his, though at no point of time did hide or attempt to obscure its Chinese provenance. But the incremental innovation of Pascal that gave it the current cannot be undermined.

Lot of management schools teach the cases of companies which were not the most innovative, barely crossed the threshold of innovation, and made it big and better than the extremely innovative company that follower companies modeled themselves on, companies that could stake a claim to path breaking innovation. Amongst Pharma I can think of Amgen doing better than Genentech the latter being clearly more innovative. Amongst Generics, a clear stand out example will be Dr Reddys doing better in the long term than Ranbaxy, which was clearly the torch bearer of the Indian Gx market.

The South West Airline case, taught in B Schools is another sterling example of bona fide claim of borrowed innovation. It modeled itself on PSW, the latter lost sheen whereas SW continued to shine.

Have we not personally witnessed, in majority of cases, the brother academically lesser accomplished doing better materially. A sister less talented, landing up with a better husband.

Are the Chinese not better known in the world today for the Maglev, than its inventors in Germany. The Chinese are also better known for the martial arts which were invented in India.

In fact from the college that I graduated, often we observed, those who copied assignments often scored better than those who they copied from.

So what is that I am trying to argue out? How does it matter? 

Aaj Rang Hai

I did not know Amjad Khan (Gabbar Singh) had a daughter till I saw her enact a stereotypical bua (aunt) in Aaj Rang Hai.

Many seers in the past, have advocated Hindu Muslim unity, but the tribe seems to be dwindling today. I think Amir Khusrau was one of them to have ardently advocated this. Mostly, such advocacy was an outcome of an amorous dalliance between a Hindu girl and Muslim boy, but seldom the other way round.

And what I did learn from this mid 60s set, which was attempting to re-live 1200s when Khusro’s father came from Persia with a marching army, was that initially, Khusrau wrote in Persian, and that, his mother a Hindu, always struggled to make sense of Khusrau’s writings, which though struck his admirers with a calibrated consternation, to his mother were nothing more than mumbo jumbo.

Empathizing with the anguish of a mother on her inability to understand what her son composed, Khusrau started writing in Hindavi and even Braj, so that his mother could appreciate what he wrote. He also established the genre of vocalization that has survived a eon of time to the modern day, and is called Qawwali. He also invented the tabla (which I once played) taking cue from the ancient Pakhawaj, which apparently his mother played.

His poem on Holi, inspired by his Guru Nizammuddin Auliya, expounded the syncretist nature of this festival, and is what gave this play its name “Aaj Rang Hai”.

While all actors emoted extremely well and lulled and transposed the audience into an era that they could barely imagine, did even exist, I was particularly enchanted by the performance of Ahlam Khan, enacting the archetypical white clad Brahmin widow, hopelessly torn between her purist predilections which prevented her from even accepting water from the Muslim neighbors young girl, and her affection for this adorable girl.  

We Need Dramatic Change

This is typical Indian way of handling an issue and is rather interesting and symptomatic of the mess that the social and governmental system of the country is in :

•         Deflect the issue and never call spade a spade
•    Neither pronounce nor denounce anything with vehemence. Stay tentative and non-controversial
•         Fence sit and immediately start playing the blame game
•         Refrain from delving into statistics, don’t get facts, harp on generalities no end
•         Allow personal prejudices, parochialism and caste-ism, take over objectivity

The advancement of electronic digital technology and opening up of air-waves to private parties in 1991 has brought in a deluge of TV channels fighting first for eyeballs and then for bytes. This industry, which I would say is still in its infancy, and still morphing to become mature media, YET has about 15 cr homes hooked on to it, with about 10cr having access to private channels through cables.

What irks me is that our media shuns research. In its eagerness to air-wave a burning issue earlier than competition, it usually sacrifices full facts for part fiction.  

Amongst the plethora of debates on the Dec 16 episode, I did not see on the any news channel even one expert, who staked claim to have worked amongst rape victims or claimed to have studied the root cause of this malaise or some statistics showing international trends and patterns. The media does not even do a preliminary background check on the person. You could well find a corrupt politician or bureaucrat condemning corruption.

The media has turned this unfortunate event into a man vs woman debate. This is clearly not a man verses woman debate. No father would want his daughter to be raped. No son would want that for his mother. No brother for his sister. It is detestable, deplorable and simply sordid.

The pressure of media is important and very relevant in cases which involve important people or public figures.  Even in the UK, the posthumous proceedings for conviction of philanthropist Jimmy Savile of BBC would never have been instituted had it not come in media gaze. That people know, builds pressure.

But the media puts pressure where it suits them. They hesitate to ruffle feathers of the high and mighty. In the Robert Vadra land grab case the media has been so effectively silenced. You don’t hear anything on any channel now. The government has in its quiver some draconian measures, drawing lineage to the colonial legacy, that can be used to harass any individual or institution that brings out facts to its discomfiture. There is a whole big battery of babus willing to tutor often an otherwise ignorant political master on how the latter can tweak the law to his advantage. Even in the Dec 16, gang rape case, after smarting media criticism for a couple of days, the government managed to finally gag the media and black out the coverage of protests.

Mostly, sedition laws were framed by colonial masters, to ensure the colonies don’t rebel against their rule, more so, when the rulers were usually sitting in a different continent. Such laws existed in all British colonies including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and even the US, but other than the US (which recast them) most got rid of these laws by the seventies.

Indian sedition law, drafted by a crooked bureaucrat Macaulay in the late 1800s, was used first to indict “disaffection” and used against the Wahabi movememt, but later amendments included “hate” and “contempt” and even stalwarts like Gandhi and Tilak were framed. But the pity is, though the British scooted the law stayed.

Today, we need dramatic change in attitudes. Sincerity and commitment of purpose are missing in all walks. We must learn to value our vote and bring in well meaning people to power who will engineer sustainable change and reform.