India

Ancient writings, General ravings

A Couple of Receptions – Valentine’s Day special

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Valentine’s Day always awakens my romantic nature, as I’m sure it does yours, O most Adored Reader.

Today’s February 13th—the Eve of this glorious Festival of Romance! The Eve of V-Day, that Ancient India gifted to the world under its many original names like Harappa’s ‘Belan Daine Din’, Bengal’s ‘Bela Teeni Dey’, and Tamilnadu’s ‘Vellum Tayen’ (please click here to see my full historical research paper on the origins of V-Day).

I therefore humbly present the first (and possibly, the last) romantic story that I’ve written in my long and inglorious career as writer.

As ever, your comments are welcome; as are rotten eggs and tomatoes, which may be couriered directly to our beloved Member of Parliament Shri Rahul Gandhi ‘s residential address. I believe poor Rahuljee needs to find some romantic interest in life other than Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, considering the way Rahuljee oscillates wildly between confessing his  ardent love for Modi  including hugging Modi and blowing kisses at Modi (and other MPs) in the Lok Sabha, and expressing his disgust and hatred for Modi and spewing abuse at Modi in and outside the Lok Sabha.

Bel Tinda Diwas ka Shubh Kamnayen!

A Couple of Receptions

Mr. Vaikuntan sipped his lemonade and gazed approvingly at the crowd milling about in the hall. Like him, they were all dressed in their wedding-reception best. The floor was a seething sea of shimmering saris and snazzy suits, slinky salwars and dashing sherwanis. There were quiet children in loud playsuits, wide men in narrow trousers, strapping women in strapless gowns. The chandeliers quivered with thundering bass-notes from the dance floor to the right, where lasses in daring skirts and lads in flaring trousers swayed and stamped. Temperature and decibel-levels hovered around one hundred, and conversation was conducted at shriek-level. The air was redolent with attar and Paco Rabanne, with the aromas of paneer pakora and dhokla-chutney being distributed by tireless waiters, with the heady scents of romance and celebration.

Mr. Vaikuntan drank it all in. He himself was dressed soberly: black trousers and a light-grey shirt that went well with the silver-grey streaks in his hair. He was tall, slim and clean-shaven, and wore a pair of thin-framed spectacles that might have given him a rather stern look…but for his smile. When Mr. Vaikuntan smiled (which he often did), the smile reached his eyes and his whole face lit up, making him look much younger than his forty-seven years.

He smiled now, as he gazed towards the stage where the bride and bridegroom stood before red thrones and wilted beneath the glare of video-camera lights. She, Rukmini, was clad in a simple yet stunning blue-and-gold sari; he, Varun, wore a charcoal suit, and their faces glowed with the light of love and promise. A steady stream of guests made their way up to the stage to greet and bless the couple. Mr. Vaikuntan himself had met them as soon as he arrived.

“You look wonderful!” he had murmured to the bride, quite truthfully, upon which her eyes had sparkled with happiness and she had rewarded him with a brilliant smile. He had punched the groom lightly on the shoulder and said: “Bless you both, take good care of her, lad!” whereupon, to his mild but pleasant surprise, the groom had embraced him warmly. But all that was half-an-hour ago, and now Mr. Vaikuntan was a little hungry…

“Isn’t Rukmini looking lovely?”

Mr. Vaikuntan looked up sharply. A woman of about forty was standing next to his chair. He rose courteously to his feet. “I’m Vaikuntan,” he murmured with a slight bow, even as his experienced eyes took in her fine dark-brown eyes and stubborn chin, her slender neck, the suggestion of plumpness in her nicely rounded figure beneath the green chiffon sari. Also he couldn’t help noticing her long, artistic fingers, and how well trimmed her fingernails were…

All this took about three seconds. Rather longer than usual for him, doubtless, due to the rather nice perfume she had on. Very subtle, it was, faint yet incredibly alluring, like a blend of champa blossom, roses and the scent of rain-damp earth.

“I’m Vasanthi,” she replied, her eyes grave yet betraying a twinkle of amusement as she looked into Mr. Vaikuntan’s eyes.”I’m a friend of Rukmini’s aunt, meaning her mother’s cousin Urmila…”

“How nice to meet you,” Mr. Vaikuntan responded cordially. “And I’m an old associate of Varun’s uncle.” She nodded pleasantly and they glanced towards the couple on stage and then back at one other.

“How quickly these little ones grow up, hmm?” Vasanthi said and laughed softly.

“Yes, yes, it’s amazing, quite wonderful,” Mr. Vaikuntan replied. He looked into her deep brown eyes, and suddenly, painfully, he was reminded of the wife he had lost to cancer eleven years ago. A moment, or perhaps an eternity, passed.

“Well,” said Vasanthi, “I’ll just go up and see them…so nice to meet you.” She laughed softly again, exhibiting a set of fine, brilliant-white teeth. Originals, Mr. Vaikuntan thought in passing, and watched her glide away to join the steady stream of people moving towards the stage.

From time to time, she nodded and smiled at people she passed. She paused next to a sofa, halfway down the hall, on which sat a little girl with a doll. The little girl’s name was Nikki, her doll’s name was Guddi, and she liked rasamalai, trains, Pokemon, cats, and her little brother Jayant, in that order. Mr. Vaikuntan knew all this because he had himself chatted awhile with Nikki before going up to meet Rukmini and Varun. As he watched, Vasanthi sat down next to Nikki and engaged her in what appeared to be a most animated conversation. At the end of it, Nikki laughed and clapped her hands in glee; Vasanthi rose, ruffled Nikki’s hair and moved on towards the stage.

On an impulse, Mr. Vaikuntan rose to his feet and went across to Nikki. She looked up and smiled in recognition. “Hello, uncle… Uncle, show me how to make train noises again!”

Obediently Mr. Vaikuntan sat down next to her, puffed up his cheeks, pursed his lips, and produced diesel locomotive rumbles. Nikki practiced making the sounds herself for a while. “Nikki, who was that…er…auntie who was talking to you just now?” Mr. Vaikuntan asked when Nikki paused for breath.

“I don’t know… I liked auntie, she told Guddi and me a funny story. She’s a very nice auntie,” said Nikki firmly.

“Yes, of course she is. Er…do you know Urmila auntie then?”

Nikki frowned. “Urmila auntie? No, I don’t know her…but mummy might know. There’s mummy, shall I go ask her?” And Nikki pointed towards a group of ladies a dozen feet away.

“No, no,” said Mr. Vaikuntan hastily, patting her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. Look, I’ll show you how to make airplane noises now.”

He continued to watch Vasanthi while Nikki hummed and whistled and whooshed away happily next to him. Now Vasanthi was holding the bride’s hand, chatting with her. She leaned forward and whispered something in her ear, whereupon the bride blushed and smiled. Vasanthi turned and spoke for a while with the groom, who threw back his head and laughed. A few moments later, she descended from the stage and moved sedately towards the adjoining hall, where the buffet dinner had just commenced. But Mr. Vaikuntan kept his eyes on the couple. As soon as Vasanthi moved away from them, Rukmini turned to her husband and said something. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head, and both of them turned to look at Vasanthi’s receding figure. And then – this is what Mr. Vaikuntan found most interesting – and then both the bride and the groom looked at one another, smiled and shrugged helplessly before turning to greet their next guests.

Mr. Vaikuntan knew the signs. Rukmini and Varun had no idea who Vasanthi was! It happened all the time on such occasions, of course – especially big wedding receptions such as this one, where invitees numbered a thousand or more and where each side invited all their relatives and friends and friends’ relatives and their friends. One couldn’t expect the happy couple to know even a tenth of the guests, Mr. Vaikuntan reflected. And so gate-crashing – intentional or inadvertent – was all too common.

He waited for the rush to subside a little before making his way across to the buffet hall. As he had expected, the fare was rich: a combination of northern and western Indian cuisine. He gorged himself on puris and channa, followed up with two helpings of pulao and kurma, and rounded it off with a generous serving of dahi-vada. He allowed a pretty young thing to persuade him to eat a kulfi, and finally returned to the main hall with a cup of excellent coffee.

He found a comfortable chair close to the entrance and sat down with a sigh of contentment. It was nearing 10 pm, and already a little stream of people was moving past him towards the doors. A pleasant lassitude was creeping up on him; he knew he himself must leave soon…

“Well, Mr. Vaikuntan… I hope you enjoyed the dinner?” It was Vasanthi, smiling down at him.

At once he rose to his feet. “Ah yes, thanks, I did!” he responded. “By the way, I noticed you having a nice chat with a little girl in a red dress…”

“Oh yes, that’s Nikki. I know her parents quite well. You know, Nikki is such a delightful child…”

“Indeed?” Mr. Vaikuntan murmured. “Look! I see them coming up now…are you leaving together, then?” And there was a terrible gleam in his eye as he gazed at her.

Vasanthi turned around sharply, and her eyes widened as she saw Nikki trotting up the aisle towards them, doll clutched in arms. She was flanked by a young man in a safari suit and a young woman carrying a sleepy toddler.

“’Bye, auntie. Bye uncle,” trilled Nikki as she scampered past.

“Bye,” they responded.

Nikki’s parents nodded and smiled politely at them; they nodded and smiled back. Vasanthi stood frozen till Nikki and her family disappeared through the doors, and then she slowly turned and looked at Mr. Vaikuntan.

“Let us sit down,” suggested Mr. Vaikuntan gently but firmly.

She sat down next to him, her eyes locked in his.

“How long have you been playing this game?” Mr. Vaikuntan asked.

She hesitated, looked away and then back at him, and now her eyes were dark pools of despair.

“This is the second time I’ve done it,” she whispered, almost to herself. “Only the second time…and I get caught.” She broke off and drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I did it for fun, no, for…for… for the sounds of laughter, for the feeling that I belong somewhere.”

Her voice was still soft, but her words came tumbling forth, a cascade from some deep reservoir of pain. “I used to be a nurse at Cooper hospital. But I had to leave. To take care of my husband, he was terribly ill. He…he died ten years ago. Now I live in a working women’s hostel. In Bandra. The other women are nice, a few of them are friends, but they all have family, people to go out with, to visit on weekends, on holidays. I have nobody. Nobody. I help out at the children’s hospital in Khar, I love children, and the work keeps me from thinking too much. But the loneliness, do you know how it is to be alone? Really alone? To live in a grey room with nothing but memories, only memories? To spend endless evenings watching stale TV shows, Sunday afternoons staring at the wall, waking up wishing you didn’t have to wake up because you have no one to care for, to love, no one who cares for you, needs you, wants you… ” her voice trailed away and she closed her eyes.

Mr. Vaikuntan sat still, his eyes never leaving her face.

At length she opened her eyes again; they were bright with unshed tears. “I ask you this much,” she whispered fiercely. “Allow me to leave. Quietly. Allow me what dignity I still have.” And she rose and took a step towards the doors.

“Wait!” Mr. Vaikuntan jumped to his feet and took her arm. “I’ll see you out.”

They walked out through the doors into the warm night. Two distinguished-looking gentlemen stood above the steps – the fathers of the united couple, seeing off their guests.

Mr. Vaikuntan felt Vasanthi’s arm stiffen in his grasp as he confidently led her up to them. “Thanks so much, such a pleasure it has been for us to share your joy… God bless you all.” He shook hands with them in turn, Vasanthi folded her hands in graceful farewell, and then they descended the steps and strolled out the main gates on to the busy street beyond.

The two gentlemen watched them go. “Such a charming couple, hmm?” the bride’s father murmured. The groom’s father agreed, and each made a mental note to find out from the other who they were…but later on, for already more guests were queuing up to say goodbye.

On the sidewalk, Vasanthi stared up at Mr. Vaikuntan in wonder, her eyes glowing strangely. “Thank you…” she began.

“No, no!” interrupted Mr. Vaikuntan, still holding her arm. He drew a deep breath. Suddenly he looked nervous, unsure of himself.

“Look, please don’t misunderstand me,” he continued. “The fact is, I really do understand what made you come here…I understand you far better than you can imagine. Because I’m like you, I too know what loneliness is, it is what brought me here today…”

She gasped, but he went on with growing confidence. “You see, I’ve been at the same game for three years now. I work at a printing agency, I help in designing invitation cards and so forth. So I get to know about lots of wedding receptions and other such celebrations, and can choose among them.” He released her arm and looked at his watch. “Listen,” he went on earnestly, “I live in Andheri…so why don’t we take the same train, maybe we could talk on the way? And perhaps we could meet for dinner tomorrow. There is this big Rajasthani wedding reception at Mulund, or if you prefer South Indian, we could take in a Tamil affair in Matunga…”

Vasanthi and Mr. Vaikuntan were married three months later. The wedding was a quiet event at the registrar’s office, but they held a small reception for workplace acquaintances.

It was a grand success. Halfway through, Vasanthi happily whispered to her beloved Vaikuntan that there appeared to be far many more guests present than they had invited…

_______________________________________

[First – and last – published in 2004: at http://creative.sulekha.com/a-couple-of-receptions_102018_blog]

General ravings, Musings, Potshots

The redness of Sindhoor – 2

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Asim Munir’s Dump Truck, Trump’s Grump, Pakistan’s Bhagavad Gita Inspiration, and How Pakistan Won the Asia Cup  

Believe it or not, O Dear Gentle Reader, I started to write this a few days after the Indian Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) granted  the Pakistan’s DGMO’s pleas for an end to hostilities; and that,  after the Indian military administered a much-deserved thrashing to the  Pakistan military during Operation Sindhoor, May 7–10, 2025. 

But I’ve kept adding to this rant, and subtracting from it, and amending it, all these weeks and months because so much has been happening so fast since then: between India and Pakistan, and between  India and the USA, and Pakistan and USA, and India and China, and Israel and Iran, and Pakistan and Iran, and Pakistan and Bangladesh, and India and Afghanistan, and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Russia and Ukraine and the EU and the USA, and the USA and Israel and Iran and China and Myanmar and Russia and Bangladesh and …well…the USA and the rest of the world. And it’s been hard staying up to date and keeping tabs on all of these developments and events and discerning patterns in them.

Because they’re all closely, weirdly related, and not at all in a nice and friendly way for India and you and I and the Resident Lizard who, as usual, even now reads over my shoulder and chuckles derisively as I type this.  

That’s why, in the interim, I only posted a kind of foreword to this long rant titled “The redness of Sindhoor-1” in August : a kind of grim remembrance of the Indian civilian establishment’s collective cowardice following the Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008.

But now, driven by impatience and exhausted by Cacoethes Scribendi,  I scribble the last few words and post this rant before Dilli’s toxic air drives the last ergs of energy from body and last vestiges of rationality from mind.

First, in the warm and generous spirit of Deepavali, may I offer a (mercifully) short poem to Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir (though I suspect Munir-bhai may not like to be reminded of things like bright lights, flames and explosions after Operation Sindhoor):

Cast away thy angst, O Munir-Bhai

Abandon thy well-trodden Path of Sigh and Cry

For, Ignoble Laureate Trump shall soon free thee of Tamas

With his calling on Pakistan’s military to disarm Hamas

And Deepavali’s Warm Light shall cure all…even thy ISI

By and by

I post this just over four months after Pakistan, led by the devout  Gen. Munir and the beatific Pak Prime Minister Shabaz Sharief, snatched  victory from India in Operation Sindhoor in May 2025; and barely a month after Pakistan snatched the Asia Cricket Cup from India in September 2025.

Let me hasten to explain, before I’m pilloried by my Adored Readers for being high on smooth whiskey and/or good ganja, or arrested by the Indian government or assassinated by Indian vigilantes for expressing ‘anti-Bharatiya sentiments’.

Asim Munir’s dump truck

Consider Operation Sindhoor.

Sure, during Operation Sindhoor, India flattened terrorist training camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir as well as the headquarters of Jaish e Mohammed and Lashkar e Tayyeba in Pakistan itself, killing a hundred or more terrorists of different degrees of murderousness and kookiness in the process.

Sure, the Indian Air Force (IAF) destroyed 12, possibly 13, Pakistani air force planes, including F16 and JF17 fighters and at least one AWACS and ELINT aircraft each—some of them shot out of the air, others incinerated in their hangars or on the tarmac in airbases across and deep within Pakistan by drones and rockets and long-range missiles. Sure, India attacked and destroyed assorted high-value infrastructure in at least 11 strategic (N-strike) Pak airbases including the runways, hangars with aircraft in them, air defence systems, and strategic command-and-control infrastructure, killing a hundred or more Pak military personnel in the process. Sure, evidence of all the havoc caused by the Indian military has been presented in public, not just by the Indian military but by defense/strategic analysts worldwide, and the evidence is still available to you and me and Pakistan and the world in public domain, in satellite imagery and on the Net and in print.

Sure, there is also clear evidence that in the course of its attack on Pakistan’s Nur Khan and Sargodha strategic air bases, the IAF severely damaged an undeclared (i.e., secret) underground N-reactor complex in  the nearby Kirana Hills along with an unknown number of dis-assembled N- warheads. Judging by reports, these N-warheads were plutonium-239  (Pu-239) devices. [This conclusion is based on a simple fact:  unlike uranium-235 warheads which are very stable once shaped and pre-assembled, plutonium-239 warheads constantly decay to non-fissile isotopes like Pu-240, Pu-241 etc. which ‘contaminate’ the Pu-239 over time, till the warheads become like soggy Deepavali crackers that go ‘Phuuussss’ instead of creating a hole the size of Delhi.  And so, Pu-239 warheads require a dedicated N-reactor to refine the plutonium in them back to fissile-grade, in a  complex never-ending cycle. ]

Most interestingly, there is also damning evidence that some or all the N-warheads in the underground N-facility in Kirana Hills—and indeed the entire Nur Khan air base— was under the direct command and control, if not full OWNERSHIP, of the US Air Force (USAF) and had been so for at least 15 years, perhaps ever since the so-called ‘War Against Terror’ launched by the USA under George Bush Jr.  And that the USA set up and controlled Nur Khan to keep a baleful N-watch on China, just as the USA had set up the Bagram base in Afghanistan to keep a strategic eye on China.

In effect, then, India not only delivered several painful kicks to Pakistan’s collective military butt during Operation Sindhoor; India also knowingly or unknowingly (I suspect the former) attacked and destroyed or severely damaged a secret and fully operational USA-run  N- strike air base located in Nur Khan, along with USA-built F-16 fighters and a secret, USA-owned ,underground N-complex including  N-warheads and  N-reactor in Kirana Hills.

But Pakistan declared – and continues to declare – that it defeated India in the battles of May 2025.

Pakistan’s Field Marshal described the inevitability of Pakistan’s victory over India as follows while addressing a Pakistani community event in Florida, USA in August 2025:

“India is like a shining Mercedes coming on a highway like Ferrari, but we (Pakistan) are a dump truck…If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?”

Trump’s Grump

In destroying the USA-owned N-assets in Nur Khan and Kirana Hills in Pakistan, India has put not only Pakistan but Trump and the USA in a hell of a hot spot—militarily, diplomatically and politically.

There’s the money angle, of course…so important to Trump and his cronies. The USA set up the Nur Khan air base alone for over 550 million dollars—and that was only the capital cost.  The annual recurring costs would have been many times that figure. The Kirana Hills N-infrastructure would have cost billions of dollars.

That’s a lot of money, even for a do-numberi  builder-don like Donald Trump.

 Losing all that money to Indian strikes must be terribly painful to Trump and his Deep State cronies, especially when all those beautiful American assets have been reduced to piles of radioactive rubble underground.   

In fact, Trump et al. must be feeling the same pain as Iran did, when Trump’s USAF reduced Iran’s N-complexes in Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz to piles of radioactive rubble underground…

But it’s much more serious than that for Trump and the Americans.

On the one hand, the USA simply cannot ever admit that it owned and ran these N-weapon facilities in Kirana Hills or owned and managed Nur Khan N-strike airbase in Pakistan. Because, to do so would be to admit that the USA had installed N-weapons and N-delivery assets targeted at China  in a secret US base located right next to China—in Pakistan, ostensibly, a  ‘friendly’ neighbouring country of China!

And THAT would put the USA exactly where the Soviet Union had put itself when it started to establish Soviet N-missile bases very close to the USA, in Cuba, in 1962…bringing all humankind close to thermonuclear incineration before better sense prevailed thanks to John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev…but that’s another story.

On the other hand, the USA cannot hide the evidence of its perfidious ownership and management of the Nur Khan air base or the Kirana Hills N-weapon facilities for long—because not only is all the evidence out there for the world to see, but N-radiation has an inexorable and horrible way of revealing itself in time…however deeply it might be buried

Most important, Pakistan is not going to let the USA escape responsibility and leave Pakistan to bear  the fallout—nuclear and figuratively—of the devastated underground N-facility and the remnants of N-warheads lying inside there, and its ruined air bases and related military losses. 

Yep folks, Pakistan has really got Trump and the USA by their short and curly N-hairs this time. For a while, at least.

And that’s why Trump toadies up to and ingratiates himself with Munir-bhai and Shabbaz-bhai of Pakistan  by the passing day, even as his rage against India intensifies by the passing second and by the midnight tweet.

The USA will never admit any of this:  they dare not, for their own reasons.

Pakistan will never admit any of this; they dare not either, for their own reasons.

Pakistan’s Bhagavad Gita Inspiration

A related question arises: why did Pak PM Shehbaz Sharif promote Pak military chief Asim Munir to Field Marshal and felicitate him for ‘defeating India ’ in  Operation Sindhoor?

Well…let’s empathize with Shabbaz Sharief on this one. Sharief had no choice but to promote Munir to Field Marshal; because to demote or court-martial Munir— as any other country in the world with a microgram of self-respect would have done after Munir led his military to such a humiliating defeat— would be to admit that Pakistan’s military had suffered defeat at the hands of India’s military.

And that admission simply cannot be made by any Pakistani PM.

As Pakistan’s brief but bloody history shows, such an admission, however truthful it might be, would lead to a speedy and unpleasant end for that Pak PM.

Whatever little poor Shabbaz Sharief understands about anything else in life, he certainly remembers what happened to erstwhile Pak PMs Zulfikar Bhutto and to Benazir Bhutto, even nearly to his own brother Nawaz Sharief….

Pakistan believes its supremacy over India, making ‘peace’ with India an absurd proposition. This belief is non-negotiable; it is, in Pakistan’s collective psyche, so deeply ingrained that it is the God-given Truth.

It is taught in Pakistani schools upwards. It is taught in religious seminaries. It is naturally, understandably, echoed in the Pakistani media, in the civilian and military streets of Pakistan.

That is why Pakistan declares that it won the conflict against India in May 2025; as it has won every earlier conflict with India since 1947.  

For Pakistan, eternal victory against India is the Holy Hallowed Truth.  However Holey and Hollow that ‘truth’ is.

This is Pakistan’s strength.  In a weird and wonderful way (though Munir might not like the analogy), Pakistan is in fact practising a fundamental tenet of Hindu philosophy: a tenet taught by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita:

You cannot ever be defeated if you believe strongly enough that you haven’t ever been defeated and can’t ever be defeated.

“All that’s very well,” the Patient and Revered Reader might justifiably ask: “But why should this false, hole-ridden Pakistani version of the truth be published as the Truth in the Supreme Court of the World, also popularly known as Western English Media which includes BBC, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and affiliated rags?”

The answer to this is best illustrated by the old joke about God and Devil.

Once upon a time there was a long and fruitless argument between God and Devil over which one of them was the greatest.

Finally, an Impartial Mediator (who some say was Brahma’s son Narada on a White Horse, and others say was a direct ancestor of Donald Trump in a White House) proposed that God and Devil should settle the matter once and for all through a game of football.

Naturally, there was great excitement throughout the Universe among the respective fans and followers of Devil and God (the former, of course, far outnumbered the latter). Tickets for the Greatest Ever Football Game were bought and resold at stellar premiums in galactic black markets, astrologers made astronomical fortunes predicting who would win, and lawyers, investment bankers, Congressmen from the USA and India, and other scoundrels staked entire galaxies (which usually they didn’t own) on outcomes like who would score the maximum goals and how many, who would be red-carded first, and so on.

As for God and Devil, they remained busy with their Holy Heavenly duties and Unholy Hellish duties respectively till, on the eve of the Great Game, they met for a friendly cup of Single Malt Soma.

“Listen, old friend,” murmured God, who was actually quite fond of Devil (though he didn’t care too much for Devil’s horned head, red eyes and sulphurous breath), “you’re going to lose the game tomorrow, you know.  Just look at my Divine Team! I’ve got guys like Diego Maradona, Johann Cruyff, Didi, Silvio Piola, Lev Yashin, Bobby Moore, and Zoltan Czibor playing for me…and as captain I’ve got Edson Arantes do Nascimento, whom the Universe knows as Pele!” God paused for a breath (creating a hundred million new galaxies in the process), smiled and murmured: “You don’t stand a chance in Hell of winning, O Devil!”

Devil chuckled, and replied: “Ah, dear God, you’ve forgotten that the Referee and the Linesmen are playing for me!”

The Asia Cricket Cup

And lastly (phew, at last), consider the Asia Cricket Cup, September 2025.

Sure, India and Pakistan played each other thrice during the tournament. Sure, India defeated Pakistan all three times, including in the Final.

But guess where the Asia Cup is?

The Asia Cup is NOT with the Indian cricket team. The Cup is not even in India.

The Asia Cricket Cup  is in fact in Pakistan, in the grubby hands of one Mohsin Naqvi who is the Chief of the Pakistani Cricket Board, and also works as Pakistan’s Interior Minister when he is not otherwise preoccupied stealing cups, awards and affiliated symbols of victory that belong to other nations.

How come Pakistan and this Mohsin Naqvi fellow snatched the Asia Cup from India after losing the Asia Cup tournament to India?

Well…now we know…

Because Pakistan can never be defeated by India. Pakistan always must win… one way or the other.

Jai Hind!

Ancient writings, General ravings

The Rain of Terror [or, Electricity Department Blues]

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Please do forgive me for my long silence, O Most Loyal Reader…for Clouds of Angst have filled my deranged mind ever since the Lok Sabha polls, especially because the Aam Aadmi Party candidate for whom I voted—whose name I have forgotten, if at all I ever knew it—lost his/her/its deposit.

But now, as I struggle to cast aside Writer’s Block and emerge from the churning brown Monsoon waters that have turned Delhi into a mosquito-and-politician-infested swamp,  the Gates of Memory briefly open to reveal a dreadful yet inspiring tale I narrated 22 years ago; a tale that I inflict upon Thee now (with some slight modifications), in the hope that it might relieve Thee too of any depression with its moral message—that even within the deepest Pits of Darkness, we may find the Lights of Optimism and Good Cheer….    

Pits of darkness

Amid the fire and brimstone raised by the recent debates in Delhi and indeed across India over collapsing buildings, flooded streets, and rewriting our history books, an archaeological discovery of immense significance escaped public attention—much to the relief of an embattled government! Indeed, it was only with the greatest reluctance, and that too on conditions of strict anonymity, that a senior archaeologist attached to the Department of Ancient Monuments agreed to reveal details of their extraordinary find.

“The MTNL chaps unearthed it,” he began, “while digging a trench during a routine cable-laying operation in West Delhi. As soon as they alerted us, we rushed to the site to investigate what they’d found. Careful excavations at the site eventually revealed a large rectangular room with a single doorway. It was buried two metres below the surface, and built entirely of a sickly yellow material, that upon chemical analysis turned out to be a kind of inferior grade cement…”

“Cement?” we broke in, startled.  “How could that be…surely cement is a modern construction material…?”

“Exactly!” he cried. “We, too, were excited at the idea that we might have stumbled upon a facet of some hitherto unknown, technologically advanced civilization! At first the chamber we were in appeared to be an ancient necropolis, similar to those found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian sites of contiguous depth. Strange, sinister-looking objects stood here and there on the floor of the chamber, smothered in dirt and dust: some tall and vaguely cuboid, others squat and flat-topped, still others on spindly legs and clustered in little groups. There was something curiously familiar about them…a colleague remarked that they resembled the great dolmens of Stonehenge and Meghalaya. We also found hideous crimson streaks on all the walls, particularly near the corners. They suggested that the chamber might have been the site of ritual sacrifices in ages gone by!”

“It took us a month to survey the layout of the chamber and to record our findings on dictaphones and digital diaries, notebooks and camcorders. Even now I remember the moment when we finally commenced physical verification of the artefacts in the chamber, starting with a flattish mound near the doorway.” He shuddered slightly. “Ahh! Even now I recall the stillness all around, the eerie glow of our solar lanterns, the silence broken only by the hum of our scrapers and the hoarse breathing of my colleagues, the odours of decay and the heaviness of ancient memories in the air…” his voice trailed away.

“And…?” we prompted him gently.

“Oh ye Gods, give me strength!” he choked: the poor man was obviously still traumatized by his experience. He took a deep breath, lit a noxious cigarette with trembling fingers, and went on in a calmer tone: “As we worked away with scrapers and chisels, all of a sudden a great chunk of dirt fell away from the mound. We brushed away the last traces of earth and held aloft two lanterns to better illuminate the scene. Before us stood a crude wooden table, its legs still encased in muck. And on the table lay a monograph; a standard-issue Staff Attendance Register, open at a page marked ‘July 22, 1986..” and again he broke off into a spasm of choking and gasping.

“What!” we cried, aghast. “But what…but how…what did it mean!”

He held up a weary hand. “It meant,” he whispered hoarsely, “that after a month’s painstaking work, we had succeeded in unearthing a long-buried Area Office of the Delhi government’s sole electricity distribution company— the Delhi Electricity Supply Undertaking,DESU.” He paused to wipe his glistening brow.

We gaped at him, attempted to speak but could only make strange gargling noises.

“The other artefacts in the room,” he went on shakily, “revealed themselves to be cupboards, tables, chairs…little wonder they’d looked familiar to us despite being covered in muck! Our subsequent investigations revealed that on the afternoon of that fateful 22nd day of July, 1986, this particular DESU office had suddenly subsided beneath ground level. The cause for its subsidence was a nearby sewage canal, whose waters had progressively undermined the foundations of the DESU office building. Almost immediately thereafter, a violent monsoon storm had struck the city: whereupon a partly-constructed and wholly illegal building on an adjacent plot of land had collapsed onto the site where the DESU office had stood, burying it beneath tonnes of muddy waters, plaster, sand and assorted rubbish. It was fortunate indeed, that these events took place only at 3 p.m—two hours before official closing time, by which time of course all the staff had long left the office—or else the casualties might have been heavy.”

He wiped his brow again. “And so the DESU office remained concealed through the years, buried underground, till our arrival.”

“This is impossible to believe…it’s insane!” we yelled, having at last found our voice. “What about the employees, the DESU office staff? Surely they’d have turned up for work the following day and found their office missing? Surely they’d have tried to locate it, done something …?”

Our colleague emitted a hideous cackle. “Indeed they did!” he replied. “But all of them, from the Officer-in-Charge down to the lowliest assistant peon, were ‘Lessee Employees’: that is to say, each employee held his post in a purely unofficial capacity, on lease as it were, having paid a lump-sum for this privilege to the person whose name was actually on the official roles of DESU.”

We stared at him blankly.

“This system of Lessee Employment,” he explained patiently, “is still in vogue across India, particularly in government and public-sector undertakings . On the one hand, the official employee continues to draw his/her monthly salary but is unshackled of any duties, and thereby able to learn other skills and earn additional income elsewhere. On the other hand, the lessee employee rests content in the fact that under-the-table earnings more than compensate him/her for the absence of an official salary. Indeed, the overall effect of this system is to increase employment and national productivity!”

We made some more strange gargling noises. He ignored them and went on.

“Understandably, then, when these Lessee Employees of the DESU office could not locate their office the following day, there was no question of their lodging any kind of report or complaint—the poor fellows had no locus standi whatsoever! After searching awhile in vain, they therefore quietly dispersed. Our investigations have confirmed that in due course all of them found re-employment, on similar lessee terms, in other Delhi government and municipal bodies.”

A wave of unreality had come over us. “But…but what about the members of the public?” we quavered. “What about all the people in the neighbourhood who had electricity connections, who were served by this DESU office…what of their bills and applications, their files and records? Surely they at least would have complained when their DESU office disappeared?”

“Yes, yes!” our spokesman retorted impatiently. Clearly, he had had enough of the subject and wanted us to leave. “The more naïve and ignorant citizens did indeed lodge reports and complaints—naturally, to no avail whatsoever. One foolish person even filed a PIL before the Delhi High Court—we understand it is scheduled to come up for hearing in October 2029. The majority of people, however, regarded the disappearance of their DESU office—and with it, their files and records—as a supreme stroke of good fortune.”

“What! Why?”

“You see, at a stroke every electricity connection under this Area Office became unauthorized and illegal, because there were no documents left to prove that these connections had ever been sanctioned or even existed! This in turn freed the local citizens forever from power-related worries. Each grateful citizen—householder or shopkeeper, industrialist or businessman—simply made a suitable one-time lump-sum payment to designated DESU personnel who called on him/her at home…and lo! After that there were no more electricity bills to pay or files to chase, no faulty meters to complain about…”

He leaned back in his chair, glanced pointedly at the wall-clock and fed himself a large paan.

Outside the window, we could see the skies had turned a forbidding grey, and there was a heaviness in the air; a brooding stillness that mean only one thing: a great monsoon storm was brewing. Hastily we rose, thanked our spokesman for his enlightening discourse, but paused at the door as a sudden thought struck us: “One thing remains puzzling,” we ventured hesitantly. “What were those crimson stains you found on the walls of the buried chamber…?”

His reply was fluid if not eloquent. With accuracy born of years of practice, a jet of scarlet betel-juice shot out from his mouth straight out the window. We fled even as the lights suddenly flickered, heralding the usual evening power-cut…

[The Sunday Pioneer: January 20th, 2002]

General ravings, Potshots

ABC Primer on Artificial Intelligence for our new MPs

Mani's avatarMani 5 Comments

With the Lok Sabha elections 2024 well under way, we humbly offer selections from a small glossary of terms that, we hope, will help our newly elected Members of Parliament function effectively in a world that is increasingly being driven by Artifical Intelligence and related technologies.

Note: the glossary is still a work-in-progress; this selection of terms is inflicted on you merely by way of a ‘Beta Test’ (please see below for its definition).

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is a scientific term first used over 2000 years ago in ancient India, when the great philosopher-military strategist Kautilya composed his Arthashastra. Artificial Intelligence (or AI as it is popularly known) describe the simulation—or mimicry—of normal human capabilities such as communication, learning, and decision-making by a political leader of limited or even infantile intellectual abilities. The creation of an AI-endowed leader is a complex R&D process requiring sustained support in the form of mass subliminal advertising campaigns, saturation social/main-scream media coverage, marketing techniques, retrospective psychological and academic profiling, continuous rewritings of political and historical lineage, and other such elements. Such long-term and multi-faceted support requires colossal financial and other resources. Hence, AI-endowed leaders are usually found only in the richest and oldest Indian political parties such as the Indian National Congress.  

Generative AI is a related term, used to describe AI projects that have to be sustained over many generations in order to create and stabilize an AI-endowed political leader.

OpenAI is the short and informal term used by media professionals and marketing/advertising agencies to indicate that a political party has openings, i.e., vacancies, for training aspiring political candidates who have suitably open and vacant minds to become AI-endowed leaders.

Algorithm

An Algorithm is a fundamental sequence of rules that define the path of an AI-empowered politician’s career. However,  Algorithm can take many meanings in different parts of India, mirroring our nation’s disunity in perversity.

For instance, among the Hindi-speaking states of north India, Algorithm [pronounced ‘alag-rhythm’] is popularly used to praise an AI-empowered political leader who is seen as following a different or unique path to political power. Thus, a Congress supporter might be heard saying: “Hamara pyaara neta Rahuljee alag-rhythm ko naachta hai!” [Loose translation: ‘Rahuljee, our beloved leader, dances to a different rhythm.”]

In Tamil Nadu, algorithm [pronounced ‘Alagiri-r-dum’: ‘the power of Alagiri’] conveys a sense of wistfulness—even sadness—at the fate of DMK leader M K Alagiri, who was once seen as the heir and brilliant Rising Son of the late and great DMK supremo K Karunanidhi, but whose political career has rapidly waned and sunk beneath the horizon like the setting sun … even as brother Stalin sets the state ablaze in his dubious light. Thus, a Madurai citizen might shake her head sadly and murmur: “Paavam, Alagiri-r-dum pochu!’ [‘Poor Alagiri’s power is gone!’]

In West Bengal, Algorithm [pronounced ‘All-Agree-Team’, meaning self-explicit] is a popular and explicit term coined by Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Bannerjee, to remind her Cabinet Ministers as well as party cadres that she expects unquestioning obedience from them of her every wish and command.

Important Algorithm-related terms include:

  • Classification—technique by which politician divides and target voters on the basis of class, caste, religion, language, sex, and economic status including various permutations and combinations of these criteria.
  • Regression—(1) a portmanteau word [regrets + session = regression] that describes the common phenomenon of political leaders expressing profuse regrets on ongoing  basis for ‘inadvertent’ insults and abuses that they directed at rivals during earlier campaign speeches. (2) Regression is also used in the sense of ‘backward motion’ to describe the political strategy of promising more and more sections of people that they will be classified as ‘Backward Classes’ so that they can reap benefits of affirmative action policies such as reserved seats in educational institutions, quotas in government jobs, and so on.   

Beta test 

Beta Test [from beta = son, daughter or any other kind of offspring; test = pariksha, trial] describes the complex science-based process—or more accurately, scions-based process— by which an AI-endowed son or daughter of a senior politician is miraculously elevated to the position of party leader and then repeatedly fielded as Lok Sabha  candidate to test his/her/their/unka popularity. A Beta Test may extend for several decades because the Beta candidate’s popularity remains as elusive as a phantom; a result that is explained by some Left-leaning political science scholars as a manifestation of Phantom Uncertainty, first postulated by the great German political scientist Weiner Heisenhamburger.

Big data

Big Data refers to the huge sets of data that are painstakingly compiled by all Indian political parties on their political rivals, pertaining to corruption cases, violent crimes, scandals involving moral turpitude, and affiliated criminal misconduct. Big Data is gathered and analysed on ongoing basis to reveal the weak points and vulnerabilities of political rivals, so that they can then be amplified and exploited during election campaigns.

The analysis of Big Data is called Data Mining, whichderives its name from the infamous Coal Mine Allocation Scam of the early 2000s when this technique was first used effectively by (then) Opposition parties headed by BJP.  Since then, Data Mining is being used by all Indian political parties; not only to persecute their vulnerable political rivals but also to engineer defections by these  political rivals into their  own party or alliance. However, this defection process is subject to strict scrutiny under the Anti-Defecation Law, which forms an intrinsic part of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan Mission that has been launched to flush out malpractices from India’s electoral system.

Important note:  Data Mining must not be confused with TADA Mining – which is a now-defunct legal provision under which criminal cases could be filed against political leaders for illegally awarding mining licences in their constituency to loyal crooks, thugs, goondas, scoundrels and other close family members.

Chatbot

A Chatbot [from chat = chat-show host; bot = bought] is a celebrity TV news anchor who is retained by one or more political parties to spread the party viewpoint(s) and increase the popularity of their leaders. Every Indian political party has at least two or three captive Chatbots, and every Chatbot serves at least two or three political parties.  

Chatbots are characterized by extremely high intuitive abilities (a skillset also known as cognitive computing), extremely low ethical standards, and unmatched swiftness in switching their allegiance from one political party to another as the occasion demands.

Emergent Behaviour

Emergent Behaviour [root: Emergency] describes an AI-endowed leader who has begun to show unpredictable or unintended capabilities, including authoritarian and/or totalitarian tendencies in political outlook.

Large language model

A large language model is simply the technology that allows teleprompters to display speech-text in large font and point-size, so that all but the most inept AI-endowed politicians can read the text without fumbling.

Pattern recognition

Pattern Recognition refers to the innovative system by which the Party Symbol is tattooed on to a newly elected MP/MLA’s hand by  the Lok Sabha Secretariat or concerned Assembly Secretariat. The tattoo helps the MP/MLA  remember to which Party he/she/they/it  presently belongs when the time comes to vote on a Bill  that is tabled in the House. This is of vital importance, as MPS and MLAs switch parties at the drop of a topi (or a dropped call from Enforcement Directorate).  Thus, Pattern Recognition helps MPs and MLAs avoid inadvertent cross-voting, and thereby saves them from painful disciplinary action in the form of whipping by their party Whip.

[to be continued…upon my release from Tihar Jail]

General ravings, Potshots

Arvind Kejriwal wins – gets Anticipatory Jail!

Mani's avatarMani 3 Comments

I write this at a time when our most beloved  Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi and Aam Aadmi Party leader, has been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate and remanded by court order to the ED’s custody for 7 days.  

As a long-term admirer of Kejriwalbhai, I am overjoyed at his arrest and happy for him!  

After all, Kejriwalbhai has loudly and energetically campaigned for his own arrest since 2021, but despite this the nasty evil BJP-led Union Government has consistently denied him his right to be arrested.

In keeping with his selflessness and generosity,  Kejriwalbhai has also ceaselessly and energetically campaigned for the arrest of leaders of other political parties, such as Sonia Gandhi, since 20i5. However, we’ll have to wait and see whether Kejriwalbhai  emerges victorious in those battles too.

Kejriwal’s decade-long struggles to be arrested – rewarded at last

With his arrest now, Kejriwalbhai has achieved yet another splendid victory over his political opponents, that too just before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.  

We can rest assured that Kejriwalbhai, and his AAP, will reap rich dividends in the LS polls from the sympathy voters, empathy voters, and above all, liquor-loving voters of India who had never before been able to buy booze at such cheap prices in Delhi at public expense, while AAP’s ‘New Liquor Policy’ ran for about 9 months during 2021-2022. Indeed, data in public domain show that during that time, tipplers were flying into Delhi in unprecendented numbers from all over India – and even from Malaysia, Indonesia, and reportedly Alaska and Inner Mongolia – to buy choice liquor by the mega-litres.

This liquor-inspired air travel to and from Delhi, by the way, greatly contributed to the profits of public and private airlines during 2021-2022… so don’t believe the Modi-led BJP government when it tries to take credit for India’s increased air traffic!

Meanwhile, there is much hysterical speculation in main-scream media about whether Kejriwalbhai can continue as Chief Minister of Delhi while lodged in jail, as declared by his AAP-compatriot Atishi .

I pause now to ponder this weighty question. Can he?  

A throaty chuckle interrupts my musings.

It is the Resident Lizard, whom I have grown to respect for being a political analyst par excellence – though admittedly he’s become a bit of a cynic of late; probably due to his highly acidic diet of flies and assorted bugs.

The Resident Lizard is stretched out beside a bottle of Holland gin with a distinctly inebriated look in his soulful eyes.

“Of course Kejriwal can be Chief Minister while in jail,” he declares firmly.  “It is a practical and low-cost administrative solution in public interest. Particularly so, because Kejriwal  will join a number of his AAP Cabinet colleagues who are already in jail.”

“But is it appropriate?” I ask. “How can we have someone behind bars as leader of the state?”

 “Of course it’s appropriate,” he snaps, after snapping at a passing mosquito and missing by millimeters. “Kejriwal and his colleagues are facing charges in a Liquor Scam; so what better place for them to run the state from than behind bars, be they liquor bars or steel bars?”

Abruptly,  he twitches his tail and scuttles off in pursuit of a high-velocity fly.

I muse over his words as I stare at the gin bottle, whose contents appear to have shrunk considerably since I last saw it in October 2023.

Has my reptilian associate been quaffing gin merrily through his winter months of hibernation?  Warming his spirits with spirit as it were, like so many citizens happy with AAP’s liquor policy?

We shall never know.  

Still, it does not take away from the strength of the Resident Lizard’s words – or of the remaining gin.

Meanwhile,  I can only reaffirm my solemn vow to remain a Staunch Votary of AAP, and to share a crude vision of what the inmates of Tihar Jail might be privileged to see in coming days.

Jai Hind! Hail Kejrubhai!

Beastly encounters, General ravings, Musings, Potshots

What’s in a Mane?

Mani's avatarMani 9 Comments

Once upon a time, not so long ago, while on a stroll in my neighbourhood, I met a girl, aged about 15, long-faced and short-haired, wearing that sulky, world-weary and prematurely cynical expression that’s so fashionable among today’s young urban elite activist-revolutionaries.

“Have you seen Bombshell?” she asked. Her tone was imperious, peremptory; her accent a pleasant blend of the USA’s North-East and India’s North-West.

I gaped at her. “Bombshell? Which…what…whose bombshell?”

She frowned. “Bombshell’s a cat,” she snapped.

“Oh..ah..yes, I see, your cat! You call it…er… Bombshell? “

“Bombshell’s a He or Him, not an It,” she replied in the withering tone youngsters reserve for dinosaurs like me who come from a time when Tweets were what birds did and Spotify was what leaking fountain pens did. “And you’re saying his name all wrong; his name’s pronounced Zhomm-Shell, not Bombshell. “

I gaped some more and her frown deepened. “Well, have you seen him?” she demanded.

“No, no,” I mumbled. “Meaning, I know a few cats around here, we get along quite well, but I don’t think I’ve met your cat…er…Zhomm-Shell. What a nice name…ah… how do you spell it?”

“Why, J-E-A-N -M-I-C-H-E-L, of course…how else could one spell it for Chrissake?” she snapped.

Wisdom dawned in my foggy brain. “Ah, so you’ve named your cat Jean-Michel?!”

“Yeah, yeah, his name is Jean-Michel,” she replied, slowly and patiently, stressing each word and syllable as a primary school teacher would while explaining something to a particularly dense child. “And Jean-Michel’s not MY cat; he’s a stray. He’s just one of the many stray cats that live here, I’ve given them all names, do you understand? So that I can keep an eye on them…”

“Ah, I see,” I muttered weakly, not seeing at all.

“I think I’ll have to change Jean-Michel’s name, ” she went on, shaking her head sadly. “People are so dumb …especially grown-ups…they can’t even pronounce Jean-Michel properly…”

“But does Jean-Michel know that you’ve named him Jean-Michel?” I asked. I was genuinely interested to know, because I like cats and do believe cats are extremely sharp and sensitive creatures. I also wanted to ask her whether Jean-Michel the cat had learned to pronounce his own name properly, but alas, I didn’t get the chance. Her face turned deep red at my query, she stamped her foot hard, glared at me, let out an explosive “Ooff!” which sounded exactly like a bombshell or rather a Jean-Michel (and even that “Ooff” had a Californian twang in it, mixed with a trace of a Scottish burr, or maybe it was a Karol Bagh rasp)… and then, with a snort of disgust she stormed off looking for the elusive feline.

I remember Jean-Michel the cat now, as I contemplate the national hysteria that’s brewing around the names given to two slightly larger cats in Bengal: a lion named Akbar and a lioness named Sita.

For the benefit of readers who might not be familiar with the facts of this case – which, judging by the saturation media coverage it’s receiving, is a case of supreme national importance that might well determine India’s Standing in the World as a Secular Democracy – here is a quick summary:

  • On 12th February, 2024, two large cats – a lion named Akbar and a lioness named Sita – were transferred from the Sepahijala Zoo in Tripura to the Siliguri Zoo in West Bengal.
  • According to the West Bengal government, the cats had been given their respective names while in Tripura. However, an official from Sepahijala Zoo refuted this allegation, saying: “We had sent a lion and a lioness named Ram and Sita respectively from Sepahijala to Siliguri. We are not aware of what happened at the destination.”
  • On 17th February the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) filed a case in the Calcutta High Court urging the Court to take immediate corrective action, including “changing the lioness’s name to a non-religious one and directing authorities to refrain from using religious names for animals in zoological parks.”
  • On 22nd February a single-judge bench of the High Court directed the West Bengal government to “reconsider” the names of the two hapless cats. During the proceedings, the judge asked the state government’s counsel: “Mr Counsel, will you yourself name your own pet after some Hindu God or Muslim Prophet … I think, if any one of us would have been the authority, none of us would have named them [the cats] as Akbar and Sita...goddess Sita is worshipped by a large majority of people in the country and Akbar was a successful and secular Mughal Emperor.”
  • Meanwhile, West Bengal Forest Minister and TMC leader Birbaha Hansda added her own twist to this cats’ tale by declaring that the whole issue was ‘dirty politics’ by VHP. “We didn’t name the animals which came to us from Tripura Zoo…It is our Chief Minister (Mamata Bannerjee) who will formally give names to the animals...”

On 24th February, the Tripura government suspended Shri Prabin Lal Agarwal, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Ecotourism, for his alleged role in the lion-naming controversy. While a copy of the suspension order against the unfortunate Mr Agarwal is not readily available, highly misplaced and usually uncreditable sources say that he is being accused of “not following the Prescribed Guidebook on Secular Methodologies and Practices for Naming Plants, Insects, Terrestrial and Aquatic Animals, Birds, and other non-Human Species, thereby hurting the religious feelings of the lion and lioness concerned as well as upsetting the secular feelings and communal harmony of India’s citizens as a Hole.”

Seriously, O Sinless Reader, this whole business is so very distressful and confusing.

How sad, that all it takes to set a cat among the pigeons in India is to name a cat – a cat!!! – after some historical and/or revered figure.

Surely Akbar the lion would still grunt and belch in his leonine manner and laze around scratching his ample belly if he had instead been named Subramanian, or Sukhwinder, or Prafullah, or Jalaluddin, or Joseph? Surely Sita the lioness would still wolf down her daily rations with feminine growls of contentment had she been named Yvonne or Shahnaz or Jaswanti or Girija or Harbans Kaur?

Now I fondly recall a monitor lizard that used to hang about our terrace here in Delhi, in the 1990s. We named him Ruknuddin. Why Ruknuddin? We don’t know…but it seemed the perfect name for him. Ruknuddin never knew he was called Ruknuddin, of course; nor did he care…he was too busy being a monitor lizard, which role included regular shikar of sparrows, mynahs, pigeons, squirrels, and other citizens that visited the birdbath on the terrace. [To know more about Ruknuddin, please do click here].

What’s in a name, after all? Or in a mane, for that matter?

Especially, we Hindus ought to understand this….considering the joyous elan with which we attach the names of our Gods and Goddesses and Saints to virtually every sphere of existence, from our own names to our business undertakings. Whether we live in Agartala or Alapuzha, Delhi or Dibrugarh, Madurai or Morena, all we need do is step outside to see a plethora of establishments with names like Shiva Wines, Vishnu Hair Dressers, Sai Stationers, Krishna Dental Clinic, Parvati Shoe Store, Ganesh Liquors, Uma Opticals, Murugan Pathology Lab…

To me it’s not ‘wrong’ to do this; it’s not ‘blasphemous’; it’s simply wonderful! Because it reflects a healthy carelessness and irreverence for blind obeisance, unthinking religious orthodoxy.

It underlines the idiocy of reading ‘sacrilege’ into the naming of a lioness as Sita.

So, get off your moralistic and hobbled hobby-horse, O ye VHP comrades..your outlook and behaviour are almost absurd enough to make a Mamata Bannerjee laugh.

To help my VHP colleagues – and indeed the learned judge who presided over the single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court – appreciate the irrelevance of names as understood in ancient Hindu culture, and thereby shed their needless anthropomorphism and soothe their over-heated cerebro-neural systems, I urge them to listen to ‘Madalasa’s lullaby’ from the Markandeya Purana…here’s a nice rendition with English sub-titling.

Oh…and just to help my friends experience the healing effects of a chuckle, I also offer an ancient, much-disavowed and universally applicable joke on the fleeting importance of names when it comes to the deeper aspects of Life (apologies to those who might find it a trifle risque):

A man boards a flight from Delhi to Mumbai and takes his seat. As he settles in, he glances up and sees a gorgeous woman boarding the plane.He soon realizes she’s heading straight towards his seat. Lo and behold, she takes the seat right next to his.

.Eager to strike up a conversation, he asks: “Business trip or vacation?”

She turns, smiles & says, “Business. I’m going to the Annual World Sexologists’ Convention in Navi Mumbai.”

He swallows hard. Here is the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen, sitting next to him, and she’s a sexologist!

With superhuman effort he maintains his composure, and calmly asks, “What’s your role at this convention?”

“Oh, I’m delivering the keynote address,” she replies brightly. “I’ll draw on my research as well as personal experience to debunk some of the popular myths about sexuality.”

“Really?’ he says, swallowing hard. “Er…what myths are those?”

“Well,” she replies, “for example, there’s this popular myth that men from the African continent are the best endowed, when in fact, it’s the Indian Punjabi Sikh who is most likely to possess that trait. Another popular myth is that Spanish men make the most gentle lovers, whereas in fact the Bengali man is far gentler in lovemaking. However, in general women have found that the best all-round lover, scoring the maximum in all erotic criteria, is the Tamilian man…”

At this point the woman suddenly pauses and blushes deeply. “I’m sorry, I might be sounding a little forward,” she murmurs. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be discussing all this with you…why, I don’t even know your name!”

“Venkataswami!” the man yells. “Venkataswami Chidambaram Mukherjee! But all my friends call me Gurvinder Singh…”

Ancient writings, Musings

Lunar Steps, Stellar Vision

Mani's avatarMani 4 Comments

Last evening – 23rd August 2023 – I was on the ISRO website, watching in awe that turned to delight as Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander gently settled on the South Pole of the Moon, 386,000 km away from us.

And now, even while I write this, the little robotic Pragyan buggy is wandering about that incredibly bleak and cold plain like a cautious and patient beetle on wheels, setting up and testing its instruments to conduct an array of scientific experiments which will be live-streamed back to ISRO and Earth as lunar dawn breaks over the Pole…a dawn that will almost instantly become daylight of a brilliance that we Earthings cannot imagine, even though the Sun will hover just above the lunar horizon. And this coming lunar day will last 14 Earth days, and raise the temperature of the flatlands around Vikram and Pragyan from (-) 100 degrees C to a broiling (+) 50 degrees C….even while the permanently shadowed regions below tall mountains and in the depths of craters will remain a metal-cracking (-) 200 degrees C.

I read a lot of science fiction in my time. This unfolding reality on the Moon awakens so many memories: of the timeless, often prescient stories of H G Wells, Isaac Asimov, Walter M Miller; ofArthur C Clarke’s ‘A fall of moondust’ and ‘2001: a space odyssey’…

It also brings memories of an op-ed article I wrote just over 20 years ago (Jan 2003), in response to an Indian Express editorial on the mathematician Ramanujan; an editorial that, I felt, exhibited the shallow – almost fashionable – cynicism with which much of Indian media regarded (and, alas, continue to regard) any scientific achievements by Indians. Here it is:

Signs of good science

http://archive.indianexpress.com/oldStory/16583/

The editorial ‘Remember Ramanujan?’ (IE, January 5) observes that there is ‘very little happening in Indian science and technology’. Actually, the women and men who have designed and launched our weather and communication satellites, found new ways to store N-wastes, sequenced the rice genome, developed Bt cabbage and biodiesel… they, and others like them, are doing world-class, original science.

Our own lack of scientific temper makes us reluctant to acknowledge Indian work until its worth is ‘certified’ by some western agency, a perilous tendency in today’s fiercely competitive world. G.H. Hardy, who discovered the genius of Ramanujan, was not the first mathematician to be sent Ramanujan’s manuscripts. As C.P. Snow reveals, there had been two before him, men who ‘do not emerge out of the story with credit.’ Both were English mathematicians, both of the highest professional standards; yet each returned Ramanujan’s manuscripts without comment… and this was in 1913!

Recently, a team of scientists headed by N.C. Wickramasinghe conducted a series of balloon experiments and discovered that viable living cells are falling to Earth from outer space at the rate of a few tonnes per day. The evidence confirms the theory proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe in 1981 that all life on Earth has sprung from living cells stored for aeons in frozen interstellar gas-clouds, and that these cells constantly travel to Earth via comets on the pressure of solar radiation.

‘‘Genes are to be regarded as cosmic,’’ they wrote. ‘‘They arrive at the Earth as DNA or RNA, either as full-fledged cells, or as viruses, viroids, or simply as separated fragments of genetic material. The genes are ready to function when they arrive… The problem for terrestrial biology is not therefore to originate the genes, but to assemble them into whatever functioning biosystems the environment of the Earth will permit…’’

The implications are staggering. This effectively scotches the idea that life developed from some kind of ‘primordial soup’; Darwinian ‘natural selection’ is reduced to a mere fine-tuning mechanism that develops variety within living species! Among Wickramasinghe’s team were two Indian scientists Jayant V. Narlikar and P. Rajaratnam.

Yet how little attention we have paid to their work; how quickly we have forgotten them.

Indeed, there is need for more funding for R&D, for research institutions to be freed from the stifling, enervating clutches of babudom. But we too must understand that technology spins off from long-term missions; that progress in science, as in sports, comes only from hard work and perseverance; that far more important than applauding success, is consistent support and encouragement in times of failure.

We need to talk and write more about science in mainstream media. And especially, we must shed our habit of greeting every new idea with withering contempt. Not long ago, Dr Kalam’s idea of a Moon mission was met with widespread opposition, even derision. Yet today, we bemoan the fact that China has stolen ahead in the race by launching its first space launch vehicle.

[P.S.: Isn’t it wonderful how India has not just caught up but forged ahead in this race…hats and topis off to ISRO and the multitude of organizations and industries and academic institutes and individuals, young and old, that have striven through these decades to make Chandrayaan-3 and other space missions reality…more power to them, in the space laps that lie ahead! ]