Twentieth January 2009: Mubarak Ho Obama

Twentieth January of any year happens to be my official birthday. It’s just another birthday. I will be 67 years older. The numerals 6 and 7 add up to 13 and would be an unlucky number in some systems. 13 is not specifically listed as an unlucky number in Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, or Marathi systems. So I guess it’s alright. Some may also ask unlucky in what? Good question. In any case we should not wait upon luck. Right?

Twentieth January 2009 should be a special day when one is conscious of some seeming disparities based on colour perhaps. It is the day Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) becomes the first black (non-Christian?), president of USA. Barack is a Hebrew name meaning "lightning" or "farm for grains". This name could have come from the lost or nearly lost Jewish community of Sudan. Jews were black in those days, perhaps. This may not be of much comfort to modern Israelites still desperately seeking a legitimacy, but Barack would still be a Jewish name. Barack could also be short form of Mubarak? Mubarak means blessed.

You may ask “So what?” We and rest of the non-white world have been having black and yellow presidents including some black-“Aryan” presidents in India. We also have a Husnī Mubarak as a president of Egypt serving his promised last term for the last 15 years!

Maybe it would have been really something if we had a more than half “red” president from the native population of the American continent.

How does BHO’s election affect US and thereby the rest of the world --- as the USA-ians would have us believe --- by which we can now safely include the non-white world? There are two parts. The first conerns the color of the skin and governance. The second is a brief examination of BHO's background about which many of us in India are ignorant about.

The colour of the skin.

The colour of the skin should not matter. There is this Out-of-Africa (OoA) model for the evolution of man when an African eve 50,000 - 200,000 years ago was our common ancestor. The last ice age was 12,000 years ago! I don’t know what this meant for the survival of the first OoA humans. They seemed to have managed well since that age. Was she black? Did they have Gods?

Many early Gods in India and elsewhere were black in colour. The early Madonnas were black (see Fig 1; left Madonna of Czestochawa, center Dear Lady of Einsiedeln, Switzerland; right ma Kali dancing on Shiva, who also should have been black). There is also this notion that the word Negro is a natural name for Africans. Black people of original Egyptian community called their Pharaohs “En-ger” or “N-G-R”. This name may have been generalized by the Romans for all black people. Maybe stupid but plausible if you think of the illogical way the Roman numerical system developed. “Niger” is the Latin for black; Negro is the Italian name; Negre is the French name.

Barack Obama Sr’s family members are from the Luo ethnic group. It is a part of a larger group of East African Luo peoples which include people from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and southern Sudan including a black Jewish community perhaps if the Barack name is from Africa. Some of these people must have contributed to the early civilization of Egypt. The history of Egypt it self should be sufficient to show that from the color of Obama’s skin, USA is in as good a hand as any other. Maybe it is a little better in Obama’s hands if it is to be a new start for a new civilization. Amen.

BHO’s Egyptian father’s skin is not that of a typical stereotype of the modern Egyptian. Egypt is a good place to examine effects due to changes in the color of the skin of the rulers. The oldest Egyptians were Ethiopian or Sudanese people who were the builders of the Sphinx and the smaller pyramids (as in Djoser built of stone > 4500 years ago) in the same manner as those now (reportedly) existing in Ethiopia (built around 300 BC for burials) and as the bigger pyramids built later in Egypt. The Ethiopians/Sudanese concentrated on Ethiopia/Sudan after the Arab invasion of the delta of the Nile.

One of the more prominent features in Egyptian culture is the role of the serpent. It may be of interest to see how the serpent figures in other religions. The most potent symbol is the uraeus depicted as a Cobra. When worn on the Pharao’s crown the uraeus is depicted as a fiery cobra that could spit poison. Is this the snake that led to the Adam-and-Eve origin of aadmi (man in Urdu). I will use this to suggest that the symbol remains although the race changes.

The Uraeus seems to first appear (Fig 2; click to expand) with the change between the 11th and 12 the dynasties and the appearance of the Hyksos kings. Mentuhotep III the last-but-one king of the 11th dynasty does not have an uraeus while Amenmhet I, the first king of the twelfth dynasty ruling from 1991-1962 BC has an uraeus. However, an ivory label on the sole of King Den’s (~ 3000 BC) sandal shows clearly an ureaus on the head of a striking wrestler. There might have been a time when uraeus was not used (like now)

Senusret III was (1878-1839 BC) was the fifth monarch of the Twelfth Dynasty. He seemed to have mongoloid features which may not have been a sculptographic error.

It was during the 12th dynasty that the Hyksos (Greek origin; heqa khasewet = foreign ruler in Egyptian) people of Asian origin invaded the eastern Nile rising to power in the seventeenth century with six kings forming the fifteenth dynasty. The Hyksos people respected native religions and introduced the use of horse and chariot. Ahmose I, founder of the eighteenth dynasty, ruled after his father (or grandfather) rebelled against the Hyksos then ruling Lower Egypt. The similarity between the heads of Mentuhotep and Ahmose is remarkable including the bulge of the eyes. The Uraeus snake is clearly visible on the head of Nefertari (1291-1255 BC), the first of King Ramesses II the great and to Amenope I of around 1000 BC and on to Khleopatra around 50 AD.

So, there you have it. Egypt was ruled by people of all colours. Did they get their influences from others?

A Cobra coiling on the head of Shiva (Fig 3 left) is a very common image in India. The name for the Egyptian asp or cobra is Naja haje, naja being closely akin to the Sanskrit naga. The snake is free and not confined when associated with Shiva. I do not remember seeing any image of Shiva with an uraeus snake. Krishna (right of Fig 3, click to expand) has a head-band which could have evolved in its from from the uraeus; The male Marapachi doll (made out of wood) which is used in the Navarathri (nine nights) festival) (fig 3 centre, click to expand) and used to celebrate harvest festival in South India has an Uraeus-like head-band.

Having a particular is not important. Having a particular symbol is important. How does Obama fit into this?

Barack’s Life --- So Far

Bill Clinton is the first white President who is known as a true black President because he looked after the black constituency to bolster his presidency. Barack Obama may be the black president who was compelled to look more after the interests of the establishment to bolster his attempts for a second term. He is already spending more than four times what other presidents spent for their inauguration.

Barack is no poor black kid from the Ghettos. His grandfather was a domestic servant to the British, which we know in India to be a fortunate situation because the Sahib has contacts. His father, herding goats as a young kid, went to the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii on a scholarship like all good third world boys in those days --- remember Ganguly in Namesake?. There Barack’s father (Fig 4) met his middle class white mother, Ann Dunham. Ann’s father fought in Patton’s army, and Ann’s mother, Madelyn Dunham assembled bombs (?) during WW II and later became one of the first female vice presidents of the Bank of Hawaii.

Barack Jr was conceived three months before their marriage. "That my father looked nothing like the people around me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind." Barack Jr would say later.

Ann’s parents got themselves a house in Hawaii (when Hawaii was not part of the federation of USA?). Barack Sr left Ann for studies in Harvard which is any third world student’s ambition. Barack Sr was an atheist (usually influenced by Marx) like all third world kids who would not adopt Christianity. This should have spelt problems but Ann liked all religions. There were other problems. Barack Sr. was already married; his first wife had given him consent to marry a second time. Ann did not know this. Ann stayed behind with her parents in Hawaii. Ann and Barack Sr divorced when Jr was two years old.

Barack Jr. got his whitely acceptable charming looks (“awesome charisma”) from Ann Dunham (Fig 4) who had Irish, English, German and Cherokee blood in her. So America now has at least a partly “red” president. Ann then married a rich Indonesian oil executive. They moved to Indonesia when Barack Jr was 6, studied in Indonesian schools in the Indonesian Language, and then left at the age of ten for Hawaii to live with his grandparents. The elderly Dunhams looked after Obama (whom we will call BHO from now on) like one would a prince.

BHO went to what was once Oahu College and is now Punahou school, the “greenest”, largest independent school in America, having an asteroid named in its honour (115801 Punahou). Academic standards were not the only criterion for admission to the school which had a sports program considered to be the best in USA by Sports Illustrated. Between Punahou school and Columbia College of Columbia University, Obama was for two years at more-than-120-year-old liberal arts Occidental College with a rigorous academic program. Columbia College itself is an exclusive college which was started more than 250 years ago as King’s College before independence by the Church of England and with a Royal Charter from King George II of England, the last English Monarch to lead his troops in person in battle. It was during his reign that England expanded its colonial power clashing with France and India. It was also during this reign that the song “God Save the King” was developed --- perhaps because of the king’s direct participation? BHO majored in political Science and graduated with a B. A. (political science) in 1983 from Columbia.

This made Obama make the statement before his political career (he ended the reign of King George the second of USA) began that
“For my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know."
Obama himself let everyone know more about the Dunhams.

He joined the Harvard Law School at the age of 27 and graduated magna laude at the age of 30. He “ … saw a degree in law as a vehicle to facilitate better community organization and activism”. He was the first black man to be elected president (with the help of a swing vote from conservatives) of the Harvard Law Review. This election gave him wide publicity and very important consequences for his ambitions.

Obama received a $125,000 advance from publisher Simon and Shuster in 1992 for his autobiography with which he and his wife traveled to Bali for peace and quiet, could not complete an acceptable draft, returned part of his advance payment, came back to Chicago, signed a new contract with Times Book for $ 40,000 and completed the manuscript of his autobiography, Dreams from my Father, in time (Fig 4) when he was around thirty four.

Among important world leaders who wrote their autobiography at Obama’s young age is Adolf Hitler who wrote Mein Kampf around 36-37. It has been written that the
" … autobiographical details in Mein Kampf are often inaccurate, and the main purpose … appears to be to provide a positive image of Hitler."
Obama positioned himself squarely in the center of a relationship between the heritage of his father and his mother as seen from the cover of his autobiography.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi wrote their autobiographies around 55. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not write one. Harry Truman wrote autobiographical anecdotes between 46 and 84. Kapil Dev brought out his first (of three) autobiography. Diego Maradona at 47.

According to many stylometric analyses by several groups of Ayers’ Fugitive Days (see below) and Obama’s Dreams of My Father there is a strong likelihood that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote or was a “book doctor” for some important section of Obama’s “fulsomely praised” autobiography. This plagiaristic leaning should not surprise ordinary Indians, as their current important people do not have the time that Nehru or Gandhi spent in jail, to write their own books. After all, modern leaders have to master the way they deliver their speech-writers’ speech-scripts, which are now similar to cinema-scripts.

Barack’s Record.

Barack himself would require a lot of wisdom (and luck) to complete his first four years and launch out on the second four years. Obama had his luck when he ran against Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate. Keyes ran late in the election season because the earlier candidate stepped down because of a sex scandal. It could also have seen some Obama manipulation, since the scandal surfaced when media forced the unsealing of Ryan's confidential divorce records.

BHO does not seem to have all the luck to start his office. To some it could seem that Bush has gone about systematically scorching the ground he has left behind. The economy is down as never before. People who made money through collapse of stock market (manipulated or not) and oil prices have all their cash stacked away so they have nothing to fear. The Israelis have got a strong commitment and an anti-people-of-Palestine pact from USA (Condolezza Rice) that would bind BHO.

Is Barack a wise man (color is not important) or simply a smart man (color could be important for playing one’s cards). He has already used up considerable amount of his share of luck. He has not come up with some dedicated work like a Martin Luther King. He does not have his own dream he could proclaim about. In his autobiography he rooted for change first with
“Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do, I'll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.”
The “change” that seems to have got him votes from the white community was the delivery from King George II of USA, not the promise to the black people of his father’s kind. Being a member of a seemingly underprivileged or exploited community always gives avenue for exploitation by members of these communities. Man always looks for the seeming uplifting of people they have downtrodden, although many times with ulterior motives on both sides.

Obama has used various contacts to leverage himself without taking that little element of risk that is beyond what is finally acceptable to the establishment. The information we get about him from the internet are the following:-
Saul David Alinsky (1909-1972). BHO began his career working with “Developing Communities Project” associated with Alinsky, who is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing for acting in common self interest. Alinsky coined the term “Think globally, act locally”. In Alinsky’s final work Rules for Radicals he wrote “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away".
William Ayers (1944-). Obama has a close association with Billl Ayers (son of wealthy Chicago philanthropist Thomas Ayers, CEO and chairman of the largest electricity unit in Illinois), who was, in the 1960s, a leader of a terrorist Group Weatherman, whose ideology included “Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents”. When Ayers bombed Pentagon, he reminisced “The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.". Probably, it was the same thing the 9/11 terrorists were thinking.
In his book Fugitive Days Ayers has written "There's something about a good bomb … Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever again stand innocently fixed in my mind.” Ayers is proof that a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) terrorist has hope in USA as he is now a respected Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

BHO was hired as a summer associate in a Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin where he met Michelle his future wife. Sidley Austin is associated with Bill Ayers. His father was a good friend of its owner. Bill Ayers’ wife, a member of Weatherman, was working there when Obama joined.

Jeremiah Wright. BHO has been associated with Jeremiah Wright, a pastor of the predominantly black Trinity United Church of Christ which helped to “recontextualize” the turmoil in the black Christian community --- impossible to be both black and Christian --- that followed Martin Luther King’s death. Jeremiah Wright followed the Black Preaching tradition based on the experiences of discrimination of black slaves and traditionally includes jarring hyperbole. Wright spoke of the United States taking land from the Indian tribes by what he labeled as terror, bombing Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, using state terrorism against Palestinians and South Africa. He urged his parishioners' not to go "from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents."
In one of his sermons shortly after 9/11 he used the phrase “… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." BHO began distancing himself from Wright six years later only after 2007 when his candidacy was announced.
Obama balanced himself again between whites and blacks in his A More Perfect Union speech by saying that he would disown the black community if he disowned Wright, “his old uncle”, as he would disown the white community if he disowned his white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. It seems that a large majority of Wright’s sermons is filled with such “radical” (read true?) pronouncements so that Obama’s attraction to Wright must have been because of the politics. Obama and Michelle Robinson were married by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

BHO is known to kick the ladder he used to climb up (Which Third World Leader doesn’t?). Just as he has dropped Wright he has dropped Howard Dean and Rashidi, who organized the massive internet effort (see my blog Obama! Obama! Obama Mama Mia!”) to get him elected.

So what have we left? If wishes were horses beggars would be kings. If knights became asses Kings would become beggars. Not such a bad thing on hind sight.

Obama said in his A More Perfect Union speech citing Faulkner,
"The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."
Will he bury the past? Does he need to bury the past when color of the skin is not an issue? Will he become a god-like white or will he be black that absorbs all colours and cannot be stained? Que sera sera.

Thought of Food 2: Desi Tabbouleh for Nerds (and +65s)

The demography of the recently upwardly mobile section of highly trained younger generation, aspiring once upon a time to be computer nerds, and now pursuing a mostly clerical software profession far outside their line of training, shows a certain unnecessary bulge in inappropriate parts of their bodies. One of their problems is that, after they return home after a long and tiring day of activity at different levels of sense and sensibility, they have to cook and cook fast. There are plenty of reasons why fast cooking has to be avoided. Ask the terra-madre people. There is also possibly convincing arguments why slow and prolonged cooking should be avoided. I have added this at the end.

In Pune, I find that the growth of the bulge is particularly true for non-Mahrashtrians. One may think that this may be so because of the very healthy lentil (mainly sprouted) and bhakri roti meals that the Maharashtrian families have. It could also be because of the family care and attention that the local Puneites get from their homes. However, I find that Maharshtrians outside Maharashtra are usually as trim as Shivaji may have liked them to be. So I guess that it must be in the Maharashtrian food that the secret of the slim tough body of the Marathi manoos lies. The average Maharshtrian spends little time on his cooking.

With the notion that what is good for the young Marathi (if not Maharashtrian) should also be good for young nerds as well as the plus sixty-fives, I am proposing a recipe for a salad which could solve some problems of the bulge and some problems of cavities in the soul.

I have borrowed some of the ideas from a Kosher Tabbouleh salad made from what they call bulgar and what we call daliya and the common man calls broken wheat. The bulgar is soaked in cold water for a few hours and then mixed with various non-non-healthy and standard ingredients such as tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives, garlic, parsley, mint, salt, lemon juice, and olive oil, tossed and served. The dish is easy to make and when taken with bread of the pita variety made a wholesome and simple meal (for Jews) without requiring a flame. It could be stored easily for a few days in the fridge and new ingredients may be added to rustle up different salads in a few minutes on different days. One could contentedly sit with it in a bean bag in front of the television and spend a few half-hours chewing and savouring every ingredient with or without company even in the evenings of a week-day.

Instead of bulgar, I have used a mixture of full wheat (preferably of the organic variety available easily from Navdanya outlets) and ragi (finger millet) as the starting base. I have also made various other substitutes of the desi Indian kind --- one advantage may be that one need not be dressed formally when eating Indian varieties at Indian homes. Half or most of the fun in eating western food is what one gets with an association with western images (mainly virtual). For the +65s, at least, this is not necessary unless one is exceptionally young-minded.

The basic ingredients are
Nachni, or Ragi or Finger Millet and wheat in desired ratio : one cup
Santara or KamlaNeboo (mandarin): one whole fruit
Moong daal : one table spoon
Bengal gram or chana daal: one table spoon
Spring onion: 6-8 stalks
Spring garlic: 4-5 stalks
Spring fenugreek: several
Tomato: five to six
Cucumber: two
Mustard Oil: 1-2 table spoons (in winter)
Lemon: one fruit
Green chillies
Flax seed: half – one table spoon
Coriander seed: 1-2 table spoon
Coriander leaves: A handful

The procedure is as follows:-
i) Whole wheat and ragi are taken in the desired ratio. In this case I took 1:9 wheat is to ragi by volume. Ragi is at first difficult to chew and it may be preferable to increase the relative quantity of wheat. I think more than 1:1 ratio of wheat : ragi would be less than optimal. A cupful of the ragi-wheat mixture is soaked in water overnight, and then allowed to sprout by draining off the water, tying in a wet cloth and allowing the water to drip or strain off by hanging the tied cloth. The time to sprout (as in fig 1 left) depends on the ambient temperature and may take up to two-three days in cold Indian weather conditions.
ii) The recipes for Tabbouleh salad usually require olives and olive oil. These are now commonly available in India and one may use them. Loose-skinned santara orange (Maharashtrian) or kamla neboo (Bengali) (Fig 2b) is my replacement for olives. The moong daal, bengal gram, orange peel (half of the peel in this recipe), cut green chillies (Fig 2 right bottom) and the orange pods are cooked with one-teaspoon of water and some salt to taste (half to one level teaspoon).
iii) Dried coriander seeds (more the merrier in my case and can be used by handfuls if one so cares or dares) were soaked in water overnight.


iv) I find the addition of flax seed (native to India and available as jawas in ordinary shops at one-third the price in health-food shops) adds immensely to the flavour.
v) In the markets of Pune you many times obtain tender methi (fenugreek) green sprouts (see inset of fig 3 right). You also get plentiful of spring onions and spring garlic (fig 3 right). Chop it up to your heart’s content


vi) Tomatoes and cucumber (fig 3 left) are also chopped. Cucumbers should not be peeled (especially if the skin is appropriately bitter enough to make you feel like a saint), but I peeled it in this case.
vii) The various ingredients are mixed together and tossed in a salad bowl after squeezing out the lemon juice and adding a generous tablespoon of the appropriate oil (mustard oil in this case). In the picture (Fig 4) I have added some lettuce leaves for decorative purposes.


Alternatives
i) The sprouted ragi may not be easy on the palate while chewing. One may soak the sprouted ragi in boiling water for some time.
ii) Instead broken moong daal and Bengal gram one may add baby corn and mushrooms
iii) Instead of peeled oranges olives may be added.
iv) Walnuts, raisins, pista, almonds may be added at different stages of boredom.
v) Pickled shrimp is a good addition when done in moderation.
vi) I usually add some home-made wine from aamla (Indian gooseberry), or mango and so on.
vii) Left over salad may be added to daal (loosely called lentil soup) when it makes a wonderful dish after boiling for some time.

The salad is preferably taken with whole-wheat phulkas. Good, well-set Iyer yoghurt from cow’s milk is a very pleasant accompanying dish. Bengalis should not add sugar to the yoghurt for this salad.

Some Food Wisdom (?)
i) The advantages of increasing the content of ragi (or nachni in Maharashtra) is that its nutrients are absorbed easily, it is easily digested by all age groups, and is very eco-friendly because it is grown without irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers. Sprouting ragi increases the bioavailability of its iron to 88%, because of which a paste from powdered sprouted ragi has been used for weaning baby away from mother’s milk.

ii) The rind of the santara fruit contains a oil of neroli which is used in eau de cologne; the juice contains as its major inorganic ingredient the citrate of potash. This orange is a blood purifier and appetiser while the peel is valuable for checking vomiting and preventing worms and also as a carminative (preventing gas, good for +65s). I have used the entire fruit cutting it in manner as shown in Fig 2b. The cellular pulp is indigestible but harmless. Instead of nuts the recipe uses soaked yellow moong daal (split and de-husked mung beans from which bean sprouts are made) and Bengal gram which is a valuable anti-diabetic food and its water extract increases glucose utilization. Green chillies have also been added (fig 2c). It contains Capsaicin which reportedly cause death of cancer cells (at least in rats), reduces amount of insulin required to reduce blood sugar.

iii) There is a difference between dry coriander and roasted coriander when pyrazines are formed as the main flavour. Pyrazine as part of pterin is found in folic acid. Folate is necessary for the production and maintenance of new cells and is useful in periods of infancy and pregnancy as well as in anti-cancer treatment.

iv) Flax seed are thought to be known for more than 5000 years as flax plants are among the oldest fiber crops in the world. Flax seed adds an almond-like flavour due to the presence of aldehydes in the seeds. Flax seed contains omega-3 (double bond at the third carbon atom from the methyl group of the carbon chain) fatty acids as well as lignans which benefit the heart. Flax seeds are also beneficial for diabetics as it is supposed to reduce the blood sugar levels. Flax seeds contain lignin, a phytonutrient (general name for plant compounds which have health-protecting qualities), about one hundred times more than in wheat bran, millet, oats etc. A very interesting information is that raw flax seed (like the product of more than 2500 plant species) contains cyanogenic glucoside and usually also beta-glycosidase. They act together in the presence of a plant predator by breaking down to a sugar and a cyanohydrin that rapidly decomposes to hydrogen cyanide and an aldehyde. A similar mechanism is thought to be operative in anti-cancer protection mechanisms.

v) Fenugreek is a good appetizer, good for diabetes mellitus. It could be true that the healthiest (greenest) looking vegetables in Pune are grown from the waters of the dirtiest sewage. This is the reason raw salads are not commonly taken by the “native” populace. However, exotic salads and non-native vegetables available from fancy food shops catering to the ‘nerds” and +65s have their own share of exotic and carcinogenic pesticides and colouring matter. Given a choice I prefer the good looking local vegetables, once sufficient care is taken to clean them. I (+65) have not had an unusual share of this problem; actually, I rarely have a problem maybe because of the resistance I may have built up. Besides, bacteria are necessary (they call it healthy or good bacteria). Bacteria are being sold under the name of “probiotics”.

Energy economy of Cooked Food

The amount of usable solar energy that reaches the 10% of the unused land mass on earth per year is around 10^24-10^25 Joules. We may make an estimate of the total energy required to cook food for the world’s population of 5 billion assuming that one requires (on an average) the equivalent of boiling one liter of water per individual per day. This amounts to using about 10^17-10^18 Joules per year or roughly 10^14-10^15 watt hours per year. This would mean that that we would be using about a part per million of the solar energy simply for cooking food and about 0.01% of the present total energy requirement of the world. In economonically advantaged families we begin to use use much more energy for our food. It may not be much but every drop unboiled water helps in minimizing energy squandering. Saving on energy on cooked food becomes absolutely necessary and easily achievable since and other living beings do not depend on cooked food. But this is another issue.

Pune Street Scenes in December. Part I: Time for Mithra-giri

The month of December in Pune is usually an exceptionally beautiful month when the skies are clearly blue and cloudless. This year there is a haze which does not clear up till late in the day with a strong visual evidence for the “brown cloud” which we continue to ignore. I think we are preoccupied with what Antulay meant when he said the thing that is obvious regarding Hemant Karkare’s death during the terrorist attack of November. We must have been very sloppy to allow three top police officers to be killed (nobody said that they were killed by police bullets) in the first few known minutes of the terrorist attack. But do we care?

Having got that off my chest let’s move on.

There is a nip in the air which is enhanced by an anticipation of festive Christian times such as Christmas and New Year. It always causes me some crisis of identity because, as a resident Hindu, Christian festivities should be alien; this, it is not. Perche? You may ask in Italian if only because Rome introduced Christianity to the world and Roman Catholic missionaries to India.

What influence drives Indians to embrace Christian festivities but not, say, Judaism or Islam? I think it is the emphasis on friendliness and the spirit that goes with it that warms our heart. In some Indian language or other the proper word that describes this warm feeling of friendship is mitra (we have so many languages we cannot be sure of the actual root of any word except that it is most time safe to say it is vedic or Sanskrit in origin although I have this intuitive feeling that Bengali would be closer). With so many festivities this mitra-giri of friendliness (as expressed in a peculiar boisterousness) should be forever in India. It is some how enhanced in December. Perche? I have asked before.

As I found out (from the net of course) Mitra or Mithra is quite appropriate to the December times. I will discuss this aspect later in this blog. Mitra-giri is spontaneous and there will be no attempt to deliberately step from one logical stone to another. I intend to just amble and ramble along hoping not to get to any point in particular but just to get a whiff of the season, a whiff of Mithra.

I continue to maintain the position that to begin one must have half-baked knowledge before one realizes that the fully baked knowledge is as elusive as ever before.

Its nice to be out on the streets though in December in Pune simply because there is a gentle glow in the sunlight and the temperature is mild even in mid-day. You can walk safely provided you do not pay attention to the traffic --- the drivers get confused and run you over if you heed traffic rules and do not jaywalk. The fruits and vegetables look good. In Pashan, where I live in Pune, we are lucky to have a large vegetable market that spreads out on the street for about half a kilometer. If you are discerning enough, you can actually get ganvran (village) vegetables grown by small farmers. This is also the season for pink-hearted guavas which you eat as many as you can when the season lasts.



Just as good food there must be a pious regimen. A famous temple in the heart of Pune’s ABC corner (appa balwan chowk) is the Tambadi (red) Jogeshwari (goddess of life) temple (centre of Fig 2). The devi killed Tamra Asoor one of twelve asooras (disciples?) of (probably) evil Mahishasoor who were troubling the devas (gods). Tamra Jogeshwari became Tambadi Yogeshwari with time. The temple was formed around a swayambhu (self-born) by a Bendre family in 1545 AD. The deity here is Pune city’s gramadevata or protecting deity. An internet story goes Shivaji ploughed the land in front of the temple at that time with a golden plough that signified the new beginning for Pune. Two deepmals (tower of oil lamps) were erected to mark the spots where the ploughing started and ended. Jogeshwari is a not a common name of goddess that continues to be worshipped The dilapidated Jogeshwari caves in Bombay is perhaps the oldest non-Buddhist cave in India. In the midst of the intense commercial activity near this temple there is always time for a prayer to the deity (nset of Fig 2) even if you have to sneak it in through closed doors and barred gates. This temple is surrounded by colourful shops (right of Fig 2) selling various items of worship.


Opposite the temple stands a pillar (left of Fig 2) for holding lamps which could be Shivaji’s deepmals mentioned earlier. From the marks on the pillar one can see that it is rather old. The pillar now supports a make-shift book shop on one side and a shop for selling wicks for worship lamps on the other side (Fig 3 left). There was a young girl sitting in this shop trying her hand at sketching passers by when they chose to be stationary for some time. If you search for this temple in the internet one would find references to the several bookshops that line the streets around the temple.



This area has remnants of old houses such as that in Fig 3 (right) which look quite quaint and definitely temporary although it looks historically permanent in the soft December afternoon. If this door was in London one could have claimed a heritage from Roman arch times. By itself, this door (with more doors behind, seen once the picture is image-processed) says so many things --- is the cycle securing the door or the door securing the cycle? --- about Pune and its Puneri manoos.



There is in Pune some newly constructed overbridges built for the Commonwealth Youth Gmes that now flies over the erstwhile University circle and forking into three when taking the road from Old Pune city. One turns towards Aundh (where IT offices are), the other towards Baner (where the Commonwealth tadiums are) and the third dips down to Pashan Road where many early prestigious government and defence laboratories are. These overbridges to Pune’s power-houses took two to three years to build and eliminated the wait for two of the six traffic lights that existed prior to their construction. The bridges thus constructed did not help much in reducing the congestion for the evening traffic which has grown so much. These bridges have been decorated by a few very quickly commissioned and executed “works of art”. A prize-winning work of art, shown above, somehow reminds me of something (at least the face) I had seen earlier --- maybe on the Berlin wall.


One of the laboratories to which the link to Pashan from the over-bridge leads to is the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) built with much care and love by an English scientist with Italian marbles and Nehru’s blessings. A newly added visual splendour (for a short while) from the over-bridge going in the western direction towards NCL and facing the east is the huge hoarding in black with Raghunath A. Mashelkar’s face in orange symbolizing a glowing sun --- albeit a setting sun if one takes the direction into account --- of the soil of Pune. It is nice to see R. A. M.'s ever optimistic and cheerful face up there. The bill-board happily anoints R. A. M. with Padma Vibushan title. The error --- if he is a Padma Bhushan --- could be construed as minor and certainly the fault of DNA.


Coming down to earthier matters (and heading to the Mithra time reserved for plebians), the road to NCL is also a road often used by the Lambadi tribe (some say they should be called Marwari tribe as they do not have heavy bangles upto their upper arms) people who are found in the Pashan area. They are very colourfully dressed and very hard working. Twenty years ago, when I first came to Pune, they wore considerable amount of silverware and had shell bangles right upto their arms from their wrists. The silver has been replace by mirrors and they are mainly without the full complement of bangles. They work as construction labourers and they are always seen collecting dry wood from wherever they can. They do not like being photographed. They have a reputation for distilling alcohol which I have once tasted (Schnapp-like) and which one drinks quickly in gulps (Schnapp-like). Their main “distilleries” were in and around the Pashan lake. In the evenings the Lambadi ladies assemble with their alcohol in plastic packets, squat on a stone selling their liqueur, and carry on a roaring trade that starts just before twilight and continues till late in the night. This used to be at the Pashan circle but they have left for some other place now. Their contribution to the Pashan economy could be considerably more than that of NCL. They keep to themselves and give considerable colour to Pashan in Pune. They live in their own “ghettoes” in tin shacks although they should, in my estimate, be considerably well off.

The tin shacks of the gypsy Lambadis have replaced their earlier bamboo tent-like structures which should have been more dignified and definitely better looking than the burgeoning middle class apartment houses that pollute Pune’s sky line. Some buildings of the conventionally rich people in the camp or cantonment area in Pune still manage to look a bit upper class and distinctly priggish. My favourite modern building is the one at 2413 East Street which now houses the offices of Citibank and Kumar builders (figure on the left below). It did not have the steel framework on top announcing Kumar to the world. Next to it is an old graceful lady of a building which has deservingly a smooth-haired fox-terrier to go with it. It is of importance to remind ourselves that there is equal dignity in living a free life even if it is to take shelter under a tree next to a rock-turned-into-temple (figure on the right below).


The man next to the rock-temple must be representing the most common but ancient life styles. Stone worship of the kind seen is very common in Pune. It is usually done by the oldest (pre-Mahabharata they say) existing communities such as the Kuruba community also known as the Dhangar community (mutiny of 1857) in Maharashtra. They dominate the rural population. This community includes has contributed great minds such as those of Kalidasa and Kanakadasa and from which the Holkar dynasty of Indore or the Hoysala dynasty of Karnataka is said to come from. This community may not form a part of the Rama-worshipping VHP or BJP agenda now; it should be remembered, however, that they continue to dominate our man-of-the street life. Their history is the history of the real kind.

This should bring us to the worship festival in December --- Christmas. Mithra would enter through the most ancient form of worship. Stone worship is, of course, one of the most general and ancient forms of worship, including the worship of sacred stones (ansab) in ancient pre-islamic Arabic worship, and in places of worship in the Old Testament among the Canaanites, for example. The shapes and materials of the stones are not important and could range from rough blocks or pillars or conical stones some which are similar to the stone in the figure on the right.

Now here is the surprising (at least for me) connection between Christmas and stone worship through Mithra-giri.

As we all should know, and as we do not care to know. the festival of Christmas has nothing to do with the actual birth of Jesus. It seems that long before the time Jesus was born, there existed a “pagan” religion with a son-of-God named Mithra. Now Mithra is a familiar name in India and is recognized as Mitra in the vedic texts 3500 years ago. The name Mitra is associated with a dear friend and as a sun god, Mitra represented the "friendly" aspect of the sun, just as the Persians regarded Mithra as a "benevolent god". An interesting interpretation of the name “Mitra” is that it is a hyphenation of Maat or Maa (mother) and Ra, the sun god; so is Mitra mother-sun? Maybe… even if MCPs may not agree.

If you scour the internet you come up with surprising statements (remember, that if you repeat it three times it becomes true, like the hunter of the Snark said):-
i) The Vatican was built upon the grounds previously devoted to the worship of Mithra.
ii) The Indian Mitra, born of Aditi, the "mother of the gods," is the inviolable or virgin dawn.
iii) Mithra was put to death by crucifixion to rise again on 25th of March … when all at once the light burst forth from all parts, the priest cried, O sacred initiated, your God has risen.
iv) Mithra had his principal festival on the time he was resurrected and which later became Easter?
v) Petra, the sacred rock of Mithraism, became Peter, the foundation of the Christian Church.
vi) Mithras was called “Theos ek Petras” or “God from the Rock” which could be the reason for the Vatican Hill with its Mithraic remains being sacred to Peter.


Rock-worship is the common feature which persists from ancient times to this day as is visible on the streets of Pune. This is the continuing religion of the original inhabitants of this land, who are now beginning to have their day whether their costume changes or not. Like the Lambadi (Marwari?) girl on the left or the Lambadi (Marwari ?) boy on the right who is spreading Mithra-ism (or friendship) as easily as he spreads Santa.

Many scientists use the phrase --- which they should not --- “whatever the truth is, one thing is certain”. I will use this phrase now when summarizing what I have found on the net (simply because I am not certain). Mithra is seen as a mediator between God and man or Sky. The Roman civilization came into contact with this religious influence because of their widespread empire. Rome was well-known for absorbing the pagan religions and rituals of its widespread empire. The great festivals of Mithra are observed in the winter solstice and the vernal equinox which would correspond, respectively, to Christmas and Easter of the Christians It is then possible that Rome converted this pagan legacy to a celebration of the god of seed and sowing, Saturn, and the rebirth of the sun god during the winter solstice period. The winter holiday became known as Saturnalia, the most popular holiday of the Roman year and began the week prior to December 25th. A description of the Saturnalia festival in the internet is as follows

"During the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Gambling was allowed in public. Slaves were permitted to use dice and did not have to work. Instead of the toga, less formal dinner clothes (synthesis) were permitted, as was the pileus, a felt cap normally worn by the manumitted slave that symbolized the freedom of the season. Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear their masters' clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god. In the Saturnalia, Lucian relates that "During My week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of frenzied hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water—such are the functions over which I preside.
This equality was temporary, of course; … "

This is the haven of freedom that Indian IT workers love to wake up to and treat Christmas as one of their own Hindu Festivals. We are not necessarily subscribing to alien beliefs when we join in on Christmas celebrations. We are just re-associating ourselves with what was our own --- Mithra-giri.

Pulling Strings for Joy: The "Baul" of Madhugiri

Madhugiri baul and his instrument

One of the joys of blundering one’s way through life is that one learns not only the mistakes that can be corrected but also that one could makes unexpected discoveries, especially if one is in unknown territories. We visited Bangalore (from Pune) for Lalitha’s niece’s wedding. Lalitha drove us down because we wanted Bruno, our world’s biggest smooth-haired fox terrier, with us. Having gone to Banglore we had to drive back to Pune, naturally. And what better way to avoid the monotony and the heavy Bangalore traffic, was to use a route less used. At least it is more romantic --- as in adventure if not as in love --- to tread a new path.

So we thought we will go to Dodballapur (Lalitha’s father was born there) and then take the road to NH4 the national highway from Bangalore to Bombay. This road would have made the trip 20 kilometres longer. Taking purely geometrical considerations (two sides of a triangle being longer than the diagonal) we (which really means I) thought we will take a diagonal route to Sira (where there is a famous big banyan tree within 10 kms and some remnants of Aurangazeb’s rule) via Madhugiri (means “hill of honey”). We did not know it, but we drove past the biggest single-stone monolithic hill in Asia, when going to Madhugiri. The view of the hill (which can also be climbed and has one of the finest hill forts that was built by the Vijayangar kings, that we did not know about also) would have been spectacular on a clear day. The day was non-cloudy and should have been a clear blue-sky November day, but there was this frustrating, view-spoiling, brown haze about which we do not seem to worry even if it is a world concern. The road to Madhugiri from Dodballapur could have been avoided because the road was mostly bad. The road from Madhugiri to Sira could also have been avoided. The road itself was not bad but there were so many huge speed-breakers meant especially for trucks and other heavy high vehicles before and after every village we crossed.

Just when we thought that there would be a long, tiring and tedious drive to Madhugiri/Sera, we overtook very colourful man walking briskly down the road. I stopped the car to photograph him. The man had a happy look on him generally; but a resigned look as far his future dealings with me was concerned. I had my camera. He knew I was going to photograph him. He knew he will get some money from me. He looked as if he did not really want the money. He also looked as if he had said to himself that if he was going to put up with it, he may as well ask for some money. I think I figured out the same thing myself. He posed for a still shot. I asked him to sing. I recorded his singing with my digital camera not knowing that I was shooting something I could not set straight. I have posted it as it is after converting it to .mov or .mp4 files (see top of blog).

Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for the madugiri minstrel --- MM, as he may be called --- as well as, I suspect, Lalitha) my camera battery died. I could not record the details of MM’s instrument any further. I did not know the local language and so I could not converse with him. He, of course, was able to impress upon me smilingly, that what I was paying him was not sufficient. He said something which I understood as he was on his way to a temple or a mela or a village. He found another villager who greeted him heartily and they walked away. I think I missed something very important. I should be going back to Madhugiri sometime with his picture to look for MM and listen to him.

What Musical Instrument did MM carry?

A cursory first glance at the MM would suggest to a city-cynic like me that he is just a happy clown making a living by having interesting colours and a strange instrument. Once he started playing the instrument and plucking the strings (video) it was clear to even an untrained ear like mine that both his instruments and his voice certainly were of good musical timbre. After I reached Pune, I searched the internet. I found nothing like him. So here is a report that is licensed to speculate.

The way MM moved with his belonging wrapped in cloth, a stick, and caressing his cradled instrument he could not be anything but the free-est of men --- a wandering minstrel with a song in his heart, stars in his eyes and music on his fingers and holes in his sole. He reminded me of the bauls. Not exactly the romanticized stereotype images of the modern baul, but the bauls I first heard performing for their living in a local broad gauge electric train (new for me at that time) from Rishra to Howrah in the late fifties or early sixties. My late elder bother --- he was in IIT Kharagpur at that time --- was with me at that time and it was he who educated me on bauls, as he did on so many things.

There were two performers in the train. One of them played on a single-stringed instrument, ektara (ek = one, tara = string), which is a (Fig 1a) a sound box made from a shell of a coconut clamped between two bamboo sticks held together at one end. A string from the bottom of the coconut shell is stretched to the joint bamboo at the top and tuned by a wooden key. The notes are produced by simply twanging the string. The notes can be changed by squeezing the bamboo strips held in the palm of the hand. The other played a khamok-like small drum (maybe one should call it a gabgubi) which was held under the player’s left arm while a small brass drum was pulled slightly to control the tension of the two strings (Fig 1b). The fundamental tone of the melody was set by jerking it very slightly and subtly. The strings were plucked by a wooden plectrum held on the right hand.

The music they played was divine to me at that time and their image is etched in mind forever. Their lively faces have been always an unconscious source of consolation throughout my life since then. The madhugiri minstrel (MM) reminded me of them and he has been unconsciously added to my unconscious list.

MM’s instrument was not an ektara, not only because there were two strings instead of one, but also because it bore no resemblance to the ektara (Fig 1a or 1c) commonly used. There were instead, first of all, two strings so that it could have been a dotara (do as in doe = 2) (Fig 1d). It seems that the number of strings does not determine whether an instrument is an ektara or dotara, especially if you are in the parts of Bengal. In the typical Bengali tradition of arguments, a dotara can have four strings. The four-stringed instrument, which resembles a sarod¸ is known as rahr Bangla and could indicate western (Persian?) influence if only (in my unsubstantiated but licensed opinion) because the begatters of the rarhi kulin families, now setteled in the south of Bengal, hailed from kanauj which is to the west of India.

As I mentioned earlier, MM’s instrument is decidedly unique, at least as far as my very limited experience goes.



There are usually designs of animals, peacocks, birds either on the main body or on the neck of the instrument. MM had a peacock/bird at the bottom of his instrument (Fig 2a). The main body was of bamboo just as the hollow body of any lute. Unlike the ektara MM’s instrument had frets of an unusual kind. Another of the more important features in MM’s instrument was that it had three resonators. Maybe one of the resonators was for his voice. If I remember right, the white-pumpkin-shell resonators were cut open at the bottom. One of the two strings was strung over a bridge so that it must be the melody string. Quite strangely, one bridge seemed to be at the top (Fig 2a) of the instrument and another was at the "normal" position. The other string was perhaps a drone. The rounded bridge (Fig 2a) at the bottom of the instrument satisfies Raman’s description of the bridge in the veena which “…set aside the validity of the Young-Helmholtz law and actually to manufacture a powerful sequence of overtones including those which ought not to have been elicited according to that law …”.

The way two of the dried gourd resonators are located and fixed to the bamboo tube may be thought to be similar to that in the rudra-veena (Fig 1f) which has a tubular body about the same length. Two large-sized, round resonators, made of dried and hollowed gourds, are attached under the tube in the rudra veena. The rudra-veena has raised metal-fitted frets as in MM’s instrument even if the raising of the frets may be a bit exaggerated by MM. The extreme resonators (one big and the other small) have some resemblance to the shruti veena and also to the saraswathi veena.


madhugiri baul 3

Another feature is the pipe-like object coming out from the top. It is fitted into the main tube-like bamboo body of the instrument. I have not seen anything like that before. The way it is fitted into the main body gave me impression that there was an acoustics purpose. I gave it the name “pipe-resonator”. It has occurred to me that the purpose of the pipe perhaps serves the purpose of a muffler in a car exhaust, muffling out some of the undesired (defined by the dimensions of the pipe) sounds/vibrations.

How did MM arrive at his instrument which is certainly not unwieldy or inconvenient? It is unlikely that he knew about the physics of it. When C. V. Raman carried out his experiments on Indian stringed instruments, he had the advantage of his father being a violin player and knowing about Helmholz resonances from Helmholtz’s book “The Sensations of Tone” which re-inforced Raman because of his interest in the physics of the violin.


In that very short and lively book by G. Venkataraman on “Raman and his Effect” (Orient Blackswan 1995) the experiments of Raman on ektara was illustrated (Fig 3). Raman had said

Strange as it may seem, there is in actual use in India, a musical instrument, a rather crude one, it is true, the working arrangements of which, are in essentials, the same as in the figure (a). It is styled the gopijantra or oftener ektara [literally meaning single string], and is chiefly used, I find, by vocalists --- those of the poorer sort --- for striking key notes and marking time. The users of the instruments are apparently totally unaware of its characteristics.

It is a mute point on whether the world lost out because the “poorer sort” (read baul) were unaware of the characteristics (physics) of their instruments or whether the world may have lost out when physicists imposed their learning on the instrument. It may have worked for western instruments but the truly free spirit does not and should not depend on the bounds set by current knowledge of physics. The Madhugiri Minstrel represents that freedom and I yearn to meet him and listen to him once again and perhaps get to know him well enough so that I can ask him about his instrument.

History of Ektara.

As usual, I should have stopped here, but speculation on ektara is a world pastime. It may as well be mine and, hopefully, yours too. There’s much more to Nebuman and hyksos that I have written below. That will be for another day.

Remember, that the earliest recorded image of a lute-like instrument if not an ektara is from an Egyptian king, Nebamun’s tomb (Fig 2b), which dates back more than 3350 years. This was during the reign of the Hyksos, who were dark-skinned semitic tribes who came from the “east” which could have been from or through Ethiopia or Somalia. The hyksos ladies had oriental Jamini-Roy-like eyes with long hair. The ladies had long hair (Fig 2b and 3). One can see a resemblance between the appearance (Fig 2c) of Parvathy Baul (the figure has been taken from her homepage) the modern Brahmin lady who became a baul (if that was necessary). The lady baul of Fig 2c is dancing with an ektara (Fig 1a) which is different from what the ladies of Fig 2b are playing. But wait!

There is a Egyptian hieroglyphic which is a combination of symbols for windpipe and heart and means “beautiful, good, perfect” . The hieroglyphic for nfr resembles the dotara of Fig 1d. This character is seen in the top corner of Fig 4. The hieroglyph (if it is a hieroglyph) next to the two nfrs resembles a flute that the lady on the right of Fig 4 is holding. The hieroglyph next to the “flute” could look like a banjo or a guitar with four tortoise-like legs and (with my licence) I now claim that is close to the kachapi veena of Fig 1e. The kachapi veena it seems has played in the vedic age for geet or samgan and the speculation (not mine) is that geet + tar = geetar = guitar?

So what is the Persian setar? It has three strings and looks like what the ladies are playing in Fig 2b. It spread to Persia around the time of the spread of Islam when contact with Arabic traders with east of India (Chittagong port) because of silk trade was increasing. The setar is supposed to resemble the four-stringed dotara or bhhawaiya which originated in rahr Bangla (where else?). So did the somaliann/Ethiopian hyksos people of 1350 BC (with the “setar” in Fig 2b) bring the ektara or dotara or setar to India? Or were the hyksos people of Egypt from Mohenjodaro? or vanga or Bengal? Did they migrate (remember my licence?) during the great drought around that time?

An article in the internet on "Plucked, fretted instruments in Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Scotland" begins with
"Determining exactly what instruments were played anywhere during the medieval period is never an easy task. One writer's gittern is another writer's cittern. And poetic imagery may be just that - a product of the imagination."

The image of the Madhugiri Minstrel should suffice.

The Terror Within - A Game of Chess

As older people we can only recollect from our Brahmachari days when, as aliens in our own country, we conversed and read in a foreign language without being alienated … strangely! In the context of the images of recent terror, Eliot’s “Game of Chess” comes to mind where bottles of perfumes (read flames from grenades)

… drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene

There are those who would say what kind of measures you can take when individuals are willing to kill themselves. This is especially so when it is a result of training based on the accident of their birth into a particular community. It therefore becomes an onus on the community and can be very impractical. The contraposition to such an argument is how a terrorist can survive in a society in which there is very little disgruntlement. It is evident at once that the second position is too utopian (like the Gandhigiri of the gangster Munnabhai who reforms into offering roses in exchange for blows from property developers) to be practical in removing terrorism as well. Which should we strive for?

We read Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man” in our times (1950s-1960s) and hoped for expansion beyond the new one-dimensional commercial thought prevalent in seemingly opposing capitalism (as in USA) and communism (as in USSR). The aim of both these one-dimensional totalitarian system “… is the weakening and even the disappearance of all genuinely radical (read non-orthodox) critique with the integration of all opposition in the established system.” This is also the aim of the two chief one-dimensional Palestine-based religions --- Islam and Judaism --- who believe in a single omniscient in a single, supreme, munificent, magnificent, omniscient God (much like some of us would like to think of Rama).

I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is One, and that there is no unity in any manner like His, and that He alone is our God, who was, and is, and will be.

The desire for a fool-proof security system should be a result of such one-dimensional thinking with a desirable avoidance of a multi-dimensional life. This is sheer anathema to some and could be so to all. Can one imagine Bombay or Calcutta as one-dimensional cities? I am reminded of a line from one of Pritish Nandy’s more impressive early poems --- “Calcutta if you must Exile me” --- written during the internal “terrorist” Naxalite days (early 1970s) with lines such as

… the headless corpse in a Dhakuria bylane the battered youth his brains blown out and the silent vigil that takes you to Pataldanga Lane where they will gun you down without vengeance or hate…

and the last line

Calcutta, if you must exile me, destroy my sanity before I go.

The point Nandy was trying to make (perhaps) was that the “terrorism” of its Naxalites meant much less than the life and rationale of its native people. According to many, Nandy did indeed exile his sanity in exchange for a make-believe life in Bombay’s shamelessly arrogant dream world --- the Ugly and the Pugly.

How does this terror attack affect the ordinary people who have been burnt? We have our maa-kalis and the tandav of Shiva; as a result we live comfortably with the notion of the union of creation and destruction. We have been a bio-degradable country that has perhaps (it is impossible to be categorical) been based on a fearless faith in the infiniteness of our lives and a respect for all form of animal and plant lives --- even if it may be based on our (the people of the subcontinent) ingrained, native, religion-independent belief in retributions through reincarnation.

Those of us who have lived our lives freely in yoga with the environment for more than sixty years, instinctively detest being caged in gun-toting security of India. Those early days of freedom, for us, were days of walking barefoot on roads, living with many brothers and sisters in a joint family atmosphere, going through the motions of respecting the elders, washing and cleaning after use, playing kabbadi on hard grounds or hearing manga-thenga-pattani-sundal served hot on a leaf on the then pristine pure Marina beach of Madras, or mingling with the top politicians and actors and sportsmen. Our robes were sack-cloth and ashes, our meals were rationed, fresh breeze blew through our hearts and our spirits were free.

There were also those who kept the smolders of partition still burning. Is this attack on mainly upper class establishments a triumph of these fire-stokers? Or is it another manifestation of the demands of globalization in which two one-dimensional objects confront each other. The result would remain one dimensional if one is trying to spread (multiplying unities, 1 x 1 = 1) or separate (dividing unities, 1/1 = 1) such 1Ds. We can only add or assimilate one-dimensionalities (1+1 = 2) to become multi-dimensional and tolerant, which is the essence of our “unity in diversity”, the very basis of making Munnabhai’s “Gandhi-giri” believable/desirable.

What does the security of a country depend on? Does it depend on the trickle-down way an elected government perceives it for the benefit of its vote bank no matter how large it is? or does it depend on the base, the foundation, the very people of a united nation of independent communities.

Why blame politicians if the people choose to put their heads in holes and be very wise in hind-sights?

What makes the people of a nation --- as distinct from a security agency --- want to secure themselves? Will a people be more secure when their conscious states are always fed by frivolous images of a flippant multi-media world produced by glib advertisement gurus who benefit always from projections of conflicts in style. Page three did not die when page three edifices burnt (see image on top where first pages and page three are shown).

I could stop here. I have gone way beyond the 5 minute forty second attention span that one may expect at best. I refuse to believe this should be so or even be encouraged, not only because I am not an advertiser, but because I think people who terrorize are those who benefit from such short attention spans.

Why do we --- the silent majority as described by Ronald Reagan --- allow ourselves to be terrorized? The silent majority are silent because they have become silently terrorized in rat’s alley “… where the dead men have lost their bones … .” (Eliot, Game of Chess).

It is very ease to blame politicians and others who would instigate jehad. But why are we, as individuals, silent on so many things?. A nation is not terrorized when the individual is strong and resistant. Our jawans are brave and so are our young officers. They respond to call of duty like no one else in the world. This is an image we will keep and cherish.

What about the rest of us? Especially those from whom the leadership is drawn.

Where is the rot? Does the rot set in at the higher terrorizing echelons?

Will somebody explain to me how the heads of the anti-terrorist squads should have been the first to be killed? Did the “big-time” terrorists exploit some agents of “small-time” terrorist “supari-killing” (assassination) plots to gain access to potential security breaches?

The answers to these questions have been junked in rat’s alley.

One of the drawbacks of our society --- not only Indian --- is the way we have become de-sensitized to perceived injustice doled out from people who govern. How do we rate our intelligence and our security?

As far as intelligent scientific activity is concerned, we are now (at best) the first to be second. There has been little text-book scale post- independence original (not even wrong) scientific achievement to be proud of since (as far as I know) the late G. N. Ramachandran, the young Ashok Sen and some early mathematicians of TIFR.

There is a visible trail of sycophancy among our academics in all spheres of activity. “India would perhaps also be one of the countries at the bottom as far as ethics in science is concerned.”
The unforgivable image of sloppy short-cuts (a modern Indian idiom) is the crash-landing of our flag on the moon. We should have treated our flag more gently. The next time we will announce our conquest of foreign-controlled territory by landing our national flag on it using fire-power of Bofors gun! Why couldn’t Kalam restrain himself from imposing his rank on (terrorizing) ISRO? More importantly, why did ISRO allow Kalaam to try to steal their thunder.

Our non-military security systems do not fare any better. There is now a talk from security managers of top private companies that they should be allowed to have all the paraphernalia (AK47, grenades, satellite communication, the works) of government security systems. Is there any guarantee that these companies, which failed to see the stock-exchange collapse their financial securities, would do any better than the goondas they would hire. They do so in any case for their physical security and in eliminating competitors?

Why was our television coverage so shallow? The television images survived on irresponsible gossip. There was a cacophonous screech for attention that focused solely on the misfortunes of the rich and the famous. There was no original in-house of the attacks. Except for the bravery of its nervous inexperienced young reporters, it did little to remove doubts about the facetiousness of the lifestyles of the main TV players jockeying solely for TRP ratings.

Why did American Intelligence give much needed information on satellite communication only now and not the many earlier terror times? Did they demand a change in the home minister to a more pliable one as a precondition? Even if they did, did we have to comply?

There is a terror within us which pre-paralyzes us when asked for prompt reaction to terror without. We seem to be worried only about our immediate small-time preoccupations. To go back to Eliot’s “Game of Chess”

"What shall we ever do?"
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

To fight the terrorists we should not wait for a knock on the door. We require playing games of chess planning many moves ahead on a board that has no set pattern and no set rules --- much like the horse race in the Palio of Sienna in Italy.

There is comfort still as long as we remain what we are, or could have been, for centuries. As Tennyson’s Ulysses said

Tho much is taken, much abides; and tho
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

In the meanwhile, if you must play games and pass time, figure out the paths and number of terrorists involved on that night from the details given (from a news paper) given at the top of this blog (hint: use Google Earth).

Thought of Food I. Seven Cereal Chikki

The drive from Bombay to Poona on NH4 is very good after they made it into a toll road --- especially in the months of June to October. The chief advantage of NH4 in my case is that you can drive through Lonavala and visit the Chikki and chocolate fudge shops. Being old timers, Lalitha and I stop for chocolate fudge and a home-made ice-cream cup at Cooper’s which is now three generations old. The Cooper face still proves to be sufficient recompense for the diversion. They still give you huge dollops of their fudges for tasting (always choose the walnut one), you try all of them and end up buying more than twice the amount you thought you would.

The chikkis of Lonavala are famous although one has to be a connoisseur to pick the good chikki shop. The more famous one has been started by Maganlals four generations ago. The chikkis are usually made from peanuts or ground nuts --- that’s the only chikki one should have --- but with the quick stock-market-type money that used to be available to everybody (except people like us, I guess) the chikkis are now made from all kinds of expensive nuts including almonds and pistas or cashewnuts. I cannot immediately pick up an equivalent food item in the western countries except perhaps nougats. The one nougat that immediately comes to my mind is the Hazel-nut torrone or nougats made with honey and Hazel nut (with almonds; see internet for the Torrone di Benevento) and bound by well-whipped white of egg and tons of expertise.

The first chikki Maganlal sold at the railway line at lonavala which was being laid sometime in middle of the nineteenth century. The important and older chikki shops remain close to the railway line in Lonavala even now. The chikkis are flatter versions of the well known ground-nut or peanut balls which are called kadalai urundai in Tamil, or gurdana in marathi condensed from gur and sheng dana to some. These ground-nut balls were made with molasses and are considered to be a very healthy and very affordable food having the essential amino acids (if one wants a technical reason). The flattened chikkis (evolved probably from some British whim or for convenience in packing large quantities in smaller volumes (for the same reason that the Japanese would later make cubic watermelons). A more exotic variety in western countries is the hazel-nut or almond torrone made with honey and white of an egg as binder.

What I will describe in this blog is a chikki made from simple varieties of cereals which have been around for thousands of years, and should be around for ever (despite this recipe, one could add). You may say that the motivation for this recipe came from wanting to sound like the Western seven grain bread since all good things Indian require to be derived from good things Western (just look at the TV channels and their attitudes to the very sensible utterances of the health minister Mr. Ramdoss).

The seven gain bread most times contains besides wheat, malted barley, toasted seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds and poppy seeds. In this recipe for seven grain chikki I use ragi (African millet), jawas (flax seeds), jowar (millet), bajra (sorghum), rice (rice, fully organic from the Godavari), ragira (amaranth) and wheat (fully organic from Navdanya). The cereals are puffed on a thin kadai (picture 8). The kadai is first heated on a high flame for about a minute or two (depends on the kadai) and various grains added individually with continuous stirring until the popping sounds stop. This takes about a minute or two in most cases and depends on the cereal and the amount added. See pictures 1-7 for the kind of puffed cereals one may easily obtain without any special treatment. Not more than a table spoon at a time is recommended for the puffing step.. Flax seeds (picture 2) take the shortest time while jowar (picture 3) does not puff that well for the given patience levels. Wheat puffs mildly (picture 4; it is not like Kellog’s puffed wheat for example, but tastes much better) while it is tons of fun puffing rajgira (picture 1); bajra (picture 7) takes the longest while rice (picture 6) requires some soaking in water and some preplanning (not my forte).

The next step is to choose an appropriate amount of molasses (the darker organic variety is compulsory if you want the feel good factor) which you take in a thick kadai (picture 9). The amount of molasses taken in Fig 9 is sufficient if one takes one- to one-and-a-half table spoons each of the cereals). The molasses are heated with continuous stirring till caramelization (if that is the word) is initiated (Fig 10). A tea-spoon of water may be added for the inexperienced. Note that adding sugar or glucose is strictly taboo if you like the feel good factor unless your feel good factor is inclined towards what is seen in advertisements.

The molass is ready for use if it looks like Fig 10 as a rough guide; if you are doing it for the first time it is usually safer to wait just a little longer than when you think it is ready; alternatively you may ask your grandmother (especially if she is of the hep traditional type) who will tell you to see the way the syrup drips after it is taken out with a spoon--- the last drop must solidify on the spoon.

Once the molass is ready, the puffed cereals are poured in quickly stirred to a consistent paste and poured onto a oiled plate which is mildly pre-heated. It usually spreads slowly and uniformly with little coaxing by patting with the ladle. It is allowed to cool a bit and desired markings are made with a knife (picure 11). In this case, the molass was considered ready a bit too early. The pieces (chikkis) were taken out (with a broad flat knife) or rolled into balls (urundai) before fully solidifying (see Fig 12).

I used our dog (there was nobody else at that time) to test the tatse. So I gave him (Fig 13) different biscuits along with the chikkis. Like a proper thoroughbred fox terrier he saved the best (the chikkis) for the last. He seemed to eat them (Fig 14) with great relish.

I promised to keep the blog short at least once. Because of this I cannot go on any longer. I have, however, got to adhave a moral in the tale. My interest in this really stemmed from my search for finding a cheap substitute for oats for my breakfast, not only because it is expensive in this present stage of retirement but also because I refuse to believe that what had been reserved for horses should now be promoted as proper food for the upper strata. I may not believe in the famous definition in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary that oats is something that is eaten by people in Scotland and fit only for horses in England, simply because the retort of the Scots seemed to be prefect: “That’s why England has such fine horses and Scotland has such good men!”. But I certainly believe in the strength of the Maratha manus brought up on the traditional food of bajra, jowar, sprouted lentils. They are lean and str ong. It seems that after the rest of the Indian army have failed to make a break-through in their wars with Pakistan they usually call for the Maratha Light Infantry to bring things to a quick conclusion. The Marathi thugs or pindaris are also very strong ask any one who has been at the receiving end of a Shiv Sena slap would know.

Before I close this blog there are two common sense points I would like to make:-

The first of these is that the cereal grains are of different size and shapes so that the particles do not pack well in the jaggery or molass syrup. The chikkis could crumble easily if there is not optimum (conditions could be obtained from fluid dynamics of granular material if one wants for whatever reason) amount of stirring.

The second point is that cane-sugar molasses may not be as good for the health as sorghum molasses. The Americans knew about sorghum molasses from the early Africans who settled in their country and the Indians probably did use sorghum molasses until, say, the creative destruction (see my blog on Shiva’s Dance) of sugar-cane cultivation came in.