By Kollengode  S  Venkataraman   (Published in January 2009)

Several months back, I attended an arangetram of Sravya Vishnubhatla in which her maternal grandfather, retired Indian Air Force’s Wing Commander K. C. Varma, who had come from India, spoke briefly. Instead of praising his grandchild for all her efforts on her arangetram and the teacher who worked with his granddaughter, he dwelled on teaching itself. “Teachers in India are very strict with their students,” he said. He further elaborated by quoting a 2-line verse (called doha) of Kabir Das (17th century in the Mughal time), using the poet-philosopher’s vivid imagery on what teachers does to their students:

Supporting from inside the green clay pot

[He] hits the pot from out!

Kabir’s imagery is brilliant. People only see the potter hitting the “green” pot from outside, similar to what parents see in Indian teachers being strict, and never satisfied with their kids no matter how hard they try. 

The potter first removes the stones from the clay, making it good enough for his use. He then works the clay into a “green” pot on his wheel, and let the pot lose its moisture a little bit.

Then, he hits the pot from outside using a mallet. But at the very spot where he is hitting from outside, he supports the pot from inside that others don’t see to make sure that the pot gets the shape and strength he has in his mind. 

Similarly teachers appear to parents superficially, to be mean to their children. But from inside their mind and heart, their seeming strictness is just to ensure that the student meets and exceeds their expectations.  Acknowledgments:  Surinderjit Singh of Monroeville for the word-by-word explanation for the doha.   — END

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By Kollengode S. Venkataraman (Published in January 2009)

Towards the end of the ‘08 campaign, the Republicans and right-wing talk shows extracted one phrase—Redistribution of Wealth– in Obama’s chance encounter with “Joe the Plumber” and berated him till the end.

Of all the GOP invectives against Obama this election season — his “funny” name, menacing middle name, his picture in a Kenyan costume, his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers of the Vietnam Era Underground Movement… …  —  the most hypocritical was the criticism of Obama’s phrase “redistribution of wealth.”  Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin used it in every campaign stop calling Obama by the awkward phrase “Redistributionist-in-Chief.” Gov. Palin and her fellow travelers incessantly castigated Obama for being a “socialist.”

It was hypocritical because even as McCain-Palin campaign was criticizing Obama for simply saying “redistribution of wealth” casually in a chance encounter in a rally in Ohio, their Republican president George W. Bush was actually doing it, pouring billions of taxpayer dollars to bailout scandalously mismanaged companies.

Bush’s bailout of the gilded Wall Street idols would ultimately cost taxpayers, by one estimate, over two trillion dollars ($2,000 000, 000,000), and then some. The companies receiving the bailout money are the gilded American idols like Bear-Stearns, AIG, and Goldman-Sachs. Even the prestigious American Express and Citi Group are begging for the handout. The Big-3 auto companies, after receiving $25 billion, are asking for another $25 billion more.

The original $ 700 billion bailout plan and others proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the ex-CEO of the gilded Goldman-Sachs, was the biggest ‘redistribution of wealth’ in reverse.  It took money from Joe Six Pack and gave it to John Fat-Cats. Remember, these companies, till March 08 paid their executives and their sidekicks bonuses exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars for supposedly running their companies well, while they were actually running them into a ditch.

The subprime mortgage scheme perfected by the Wall Street mavens that led to the global meltdown is the biggestfraudulent multinational scheme ever invented, even though it was entirely legal and wholly unethical.

While the redistribution of wealth from the affluent to the needy is an anathema to the right-wingers, the reverse redistribution of wealth from the needy to the greedy is not only acceptable, but also was necessary. In justifying the bailout, we heard President Bush, Secretary Paulson and their sidekicks say “the stability of the global economy,” “the unfreezing of the credit market,” “millions of jobs,” “systemic instability,” and “the survival of the free-market system” are at stake.

These mavens, with MBAs and  PhDs in physics, mathematics, statistics, and IE&OR from reputable schools, without creating any real wealth, created an illusion of prosperity people saw only on the computer screens of their accounts. By the time they got their paper copy, it was gone!

Of all the GOP campaign rhetoric this election season, the one on redistribution of wealth came across absolutely hollow. In the end, both the gilded and the ragged were standing with begging bowls.

Ironically, in the true meaning of the much-derided socialism, now, the US government is a part owner of banks, like in Russia, China, and other despotic rich countries like Saudi Arabia, and Brunei.

In the last twenty-five years, GOP was taken over by unfettered market ideologues, imperial might-is-right foreign policy neocons, and social/religious conservatives. The three simply could not gel into cohesion, but came together out of unenlightened self-interest. By not accommodating dissenting views of moderates within the GOP, these ideologues greatly damaged their own party and the nation as well.

After the WW II, the world was divided into two Super Power camps: The US led the Capitalist West with western Europe, Japan, and a smattering of anti-Communist despots as allies. The Soviet Union led the Communist East with eastern European nations and anti-American despots in tow. The two camps engaged in Cold War with heavy military buildup. There was a lot of sabre rattling, but without actual wars for the most part. Only skirmishes. The wretched Third World countries that did not want to be in either camp were caught in the middle. 

The Cold War ended with the socialist Superpower, the Soviet Union, imploding because of its rigid Marxist dogma. Twenty years later, the remaining unbridled capitalist “Sole-Super Power” US is seriously weakened right in front of our eyes because of hubris and greed.

The lesson? Extreme Right-Wing dogma is as damaging to society as the extreme Left-Wing dogma. An unbridled economic system based on unenlightened self-interest with no ethical compass, in the end, does more harm than good.

When the world finally recovers from this mess, new economic paradigms will evolve in many parts of the world. Each nation or region will accommodate the unique social and cultural ethos of the populace in its economic model providing protection from future implosions as this one. This global economic meltdown has shown the destructive nature of the unfettered greed-based Free-Market ideas, which was the creed in the post-Reagan America. It is not coincidental that the laissez-faire capitalism died in the US.

The economic implosion of the US will force the US government to put its own house in order. This will, by necessity, constrain America’s global political machinations and military muscle working in tandem. See the  highlights in the box on Page 6. Given the worldwide financial mess we are in, that may not be bad for the US. Or for the rest of the world.  — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman  (Published in January 2009)

Sen. Barack Obama’s victory over Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election is the grand finale in the long list of man-made barriers broken in the US since 1776. Consider these:

1. Legal barriers in the US prevented women from owning property and businesses in the 17th and 18th centuries. Married women didn’t have rights to execute their will. Women could not vote till 1920.

2. Branch Rickey, the general manager of Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 ended the 60-year old Color Line in major league baseball by bringing in Jackie Robinson, a multi talented black athlete. Rickey told Robinson “he would face tremendous racial animus from spectators, and insisted he should not take the bait and react angrily.”  When Robinson asked, “Do you want a player afraid to fight back?” Rickey replied, “I need a Negro player with the guts not to fight back.” Robinson agreed. Robinson went on to become a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer. (Source: Wikipedia)

3. President Harry Truman after the Second World War integrated the armed forces and ended the racial barriers in the military.

4. Till the 1965 Voting Rights Act was enacted under President Lyndon Johnson, the Poll Tax barrier prevented poor blacks from voting.

5. The other race-based barriers crumbling during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s are well known.

6. The 1954 US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education ended racial school segregation and broke another barrier. Incidentally, Thurgood Marshall was the black lawyer arguing the case against school segregation. His appointment later by President Johnson as a US Supreme Court justice broke another barrier. He was the first black justice in the US Supreme Court. Johnson’s imprints are deep in changing the social fabric of the US.

These barriers were removed either by law passed by mostly white elected representatives, or by edicts by individuals — Truman, Johnson, Rickey, Supreme Court Justices — of extraordinary fortitude to end blatant, socially accepted discriminations against women and blacks. 

After this, it was only a matter of time that cities with large black populations would elect black mayors: Tom Bradley (LA 1973), Maynard Jackson Jr. (Atlanta 1973), Harold Washington (Chicago, 1983), and David Dinkins (New York, 1989) are the first black mayors in these cities.

Blacks winning state-wide elections, however, would take much longer. Strangely, of all the states, it was the very “Southern” Virginia (19% black population) that elected the first black governor, Douglas Wilder, in 1989. Virginia was seat of the Confederacy power.

Coming in this tradition, Obama’s victory in the presidential election broke the ultimate barrier in US social/political history. Nationwide, only ~12% of the population is black. A majority of voters – whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, with whites forming the overwhelming majority in a nation-wide election, opted for the charismatic, sophisticated, well-educated, and articulate Barack Obama, making him the first black man to occupy the White House and the Oval Office.

The self-assured Obama had confidence in American voters. Only once did he refer to his racial identity in stump speeches, that too obliquely, when he jocularly said he doesn’t “look like the other guys on dollar bills.” His Philadelphia speech on race relations in America during the primaries is too cerebral to be called a stump speech.

Obama was helped by McCain’s lackluster campaign. In September when the stock market tanked, the McCain campaign’s bottom fell. The choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as running mate only made matters worse for McCain towards the end.

The challenges ahead are daunting for Obama and the nation: American credibility under Bush is at an all-time low globally; the nation is in the midst of big financial woes at every level – among individuals, in small businesses, gilded boardrooms, municipal, state and federal governments; an aging population with under-funded social programs; huge military budgets (See the box on the next page)… …

The status quo is simply unsustainable, and if continued, will certainly weaken the republic even further. To avoid further damage, ideally, every interest group will have to give in something. However, given the power of lobbies on elected officials and bureaucrats, this will not happen. The final outcome could very well be ugly. So, even if Obama delivers  only 40% of what he promised, we should be pleased.

If history is any indication, Obama’s administration will have its share of scandals. We hope they are minor and manageable not to overwhelm his big ideas or the economic mess we are in.

All that we can say for now is, Godspeed Obama!   — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Published in July 2008)

Barack Obama’s political instincts were right on target, even though the odds were heavily against him. Here was an inter-racial black candidate with strange first and last names, and a middle name rightwing commentators exploited to sow the seeds of suspicion.  Besides, he was a rookie in national politics as a first-term senator from Illinois. Yet, he had the gumption to seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency competing against veteran senators Chris Dodd, Joseph Biden, and ex V.P. candidate John Edwards, among others. And then there was ex-First Lady Senator Hillary Clinton, who, with the Clinton machine’s backing, was all set to stroll towards her coronation.

But Obama’s credentials were impeccable: Degrees from Columbia and Harvard, editor of Harvard Law Review, and good oratorical and political skills. With all others dropping out, it boiled down to a long slugfest between Hillary and Barack. 

While Barack stayed on his nebulous message on the need for change, hope, and optimism (Yes, We Can), Hillary resembled a Matryoshka nesting doll. Nested inside the outermost doll were other dolls—sometimes grotesque, sometimes fantastic, but always becoming smaller. She was the Experienced One ready to take charge on Day 1 with that emergency call at 3:00 am wearing her finest pearls shown in the TV ad. She was a Southern Belle in Texas before she re-discovered her roots in Pennsylvania. Then downing shots of whiskey, she was the champion of the working-class. A local labor leader in Indiana, introducing Hillary to his audience, admired her “testicular fortitude.”

She fudged facts on her landing in Bosnia in the midst of sniper fire. Employing coded words of racism, she and her husband Bill Clinton  talked on the support they have from “hard-working white Americans” and “whites who had not completed college.” It was a low-point in her campaign, given that Mr. Clinton, as president, had excellent rapport with blacks. But all is fair in war because only winning matters.  

And when all else failed, she tried victimhood. Blaming the media for its misogyny, she appealed to the anger of older, mostly white women. This was ironic since all of her gains in public life are on account of she being the acquiescing wife of an ambitious, successful, and philanderingpolitician – anathema to feminists.  She exploited her celebrity as the ex-First Lady to get elected to the US Senate from New York.

Meanwhile, Obama too had a few missteps. Though indecisive at first, he distanced himself and eventually divorced himself from the vitriolic Rev. Wright. Obama’s intellectual vigor was well evident in a brilliant speech in Philadelphia on race relations that will enter the annals of American social discourse.

Like the inner Matryoshka dolls becoming smaller inside, Hillary’s stature diminished as she changed tactics for getting the nomination at any cost. Finally, she was the fodder for late-night comedy shows.

Ultimately as the pundits predicted months ago, the delegates math favored Obama, and reluctantly Hillary Clinton conceded on June 6. 

The November election will be a good fight. The issues are stark, and McCain and Obama stand in sharp relief both physically, and also philosophically. Even with an unpopular GOP president, wars on two fronts with no end in sight, and an uncertain economy, the outcome of November election is unpredictable given the unknowables of the race factor in US presidential elections. We are on unchartered water here.

Still in the midst of all this, history is already made. From July 4, 1776 to the Democrats nominating Barak Obama in August 2008, it was a long, and sometimes painful, but in the end, always an exhilarating journey for the nation.  ––  (July 2008) END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Published in January 2008)

Among all Indian languages, Tamil is different: Its system of alphabets, morphology, sandhi rules, andgrammardeveloped independent of Sanskrit. The earliest literature extant now is Tol-kAppiyam (literally,  Old Literature), and is dated back to a few centuries before Christ. In this literary work itself, there are references to earlier works.  Even though in later works starting from 7th century, we see increasing usage of Sanskrit vocabulary, in the earlier works, generically called literature of the Sangam period, the Tamil used has very little Sanskrit influence. Ironically, sangam, meaning association, itself is a Sanskrit word. Serious Tamil academicians have long debated the origins of these names.

In any case, one of the oldest Tamil anthologies, well-known at least to those who have some familiarity of the history of Tamil literature, is the puRa-nAnUru, dated between 3rd century BC to 2nd century AD. With puRam meaning external, and nAnUru meaning the number 400, puRa-nAnUru is a collection of close to 400 poems authored by Tamil bards, poets, scholars, and even kings of that period.

[As an aside, today, just because people can read and write Tamil, or have Tamil as their mother tongue, does not necessarily mean they would have even heard the term puRa-nAnUru. Sadly, this is not unique to the state of the Tamil language. Given the benign neglect of India’s native languages by its elite and middle class, all the Indian languages are condemned to the same fate.The common refrain we hear all the time is, “What is the ‘scope’ in learning the Indian language?”]

These old classical poems have very little religious or philosophical  context. Often, the poets describe the valor and generosity of kings . These poets seek (sometimes even beg) gifts from their patrons to get reprieve from grinding poverty described is colorful imagery. In some poems, poets advise, and even admonish, kings for their misdeeds, a la our columnists.  More on this some other time.

But one brief poem by a king is striking in the social context of the Tamil country of his time, or for that matter, even in today’s context. His name is Ariya-p-paDai  kaDanda  neDunchezhiyan (literally, the NeDun-chezhiyan who went beyond the army of the Aryans).

The king talks on the importance of learning. It is worth noting that this is not a traditional teacher (pandit) or a barely literate community  elder telling youngsters the importance of education. Here is a king living in palaces in opulence, used to a retinue of servants and maidens waiting to do all his biddings, impressing on the importance of education. 

Only after the Industrial Revolution in the 17th century, nation-states started emphasizing education among its populace, recognizing its importance for their political, economic and military ambitions. But here we see a Tamil king centuries before the time of Christ encouraging his population to learn for very practical motivations. Here is his verse in its original:

உற்றுழி யுதவியும் உறுபொருள் கொடுத்தும்
பிற்றைநிலை முனியாது கற்றல் நன்றே
பிறப்போ ரன்ன உடன்வயிற் றுள்ளும்
சிறப்பின் பாலாறற் தாயுமனந் திரியும்
ஒருகுடிப் பிறந்த பல்லோ ருள்ளும்
மூத்தோன் வருக வென்னா தவருள்
அறிவுடை யோனா றரசுஞ் செல்லும்
வேற்றுமை தெரிந்த நாற்பா லுள்ளும்
கீழ்ப்பால் ஒருவன் கற்பில்
மேற்பா லொருவனு மவன்கட் படுமே.

.

Those who can read Tamil and are familiar with vocabulary of Indian languages would recognize that in this verse only three words are rooted in Sanskrit: arasu (etymologically connected to the Sanskrit rajyam), manam (meaning mind), and muni (used as a verb, meaning annoyance).

And the king gives his practical rationale at three different levels, namely, within one’s own family, within one’s own clan, and within society at large.  The free-style non-poetic translation is:

By helping [the teacher in his needs], and by giving [him] gifts,

It is good to learn without getting

annoyed for being subservient.

[For], even a mother delivering all children from the same womb,

becomes partial toward her famous, learned child.

Even among those born in the same clan (jati),

a king would not invite the eldest one,

but [only] follow the wise and learned.

And even among the differentiated four castes,

if a man from the lower caste is learned,

the person from the upper caste is obliged to listen.

.

This freshness and the import of this short piece of poetry written before the time of Christ are relevant for all times and for all places. 

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By Nitya Venkataraman (Published in October 2007)

Editor’s Note: The author of this write-up was born and raised in the US and prefers to remain anonymous. The “Auntie” described here is not unique to South Indians. Variations of this archetype “auntie” are found in every Indian linguage group and every subcultural/religious group within the linguistic group. The author submitted this article for publication, which first appeared as a weblog under a pen name.

With a wave of your hand, the acquisition of some spare folding chairs and procurement of fifteen plastic table cloths, you could turn any room into a formal dining hall in under two minutes. At Costco, you never over- or under-bought because you know the exact number of bags of potato chips, 2-liter bottles of Coke, containers of Dannon yoghurt, and bags of hard candies needed to feed the crowd of any size, plus any last-minute non-RSVP-ed guests.

Those who didn’t prostrate before the altar of your vast knowledge of crowd control before birthdays, graduation or anniversary parties often paid the price in more ways than one. Functions without your fingerprints were never as good.

You weren’t scared of anyone. You had a PhD from the
School of Hard Knocks. So when you spoke, everyone listened. I’ve seen you go head-to-head with everyone — from mess hall cooks to American wedding planners, janitors to Hindu priests, elec-ted officials to Indian musicians — usually with-in the same afternoon. You always won. He who dared doubt you often felt your ire and disgust for years on end.

And you never forgot the rigatoni. You were a visionary and realized early on that the rigatoni was the appropriate side dish to every ima-ginable combination of Indian cuisine.

You also never forgot the thair chadam (yog-hurt rice) … … knowing that there was no location too proud, no occasion too fancy, no table too formal for a stainless steel vessel filled to the brim with plain yoghurt, rice, and fried mustard seeds, best served in scoops with a soup ladle. Once, in my adolescence, I saw you make it with your bare hands in the kitchen of a ritzy hotel in a $700 sari wearing $4000 worth of gold jewelry while the hotel’s uniformed catering staff looked on in disbelief.

When I was standing idly by and watching you, you handed me a plastic bag-encased bottle of Bedakar mango pickle from the depths of your Mary Poppins purse, and ordered me to find a spoon and add it to the buffet line. I hesitated momentarily, afraid of the way the offensive oily, orange-lidded jar of spicy, pickled mangoes would look against the grand opulence of sheer white linens and sterling silver trays. And on your way out of the kitchen with a pathram (vessel) of the rice, you snatched it out of my hands and did it yourself.

You barked at me for not immediately following your instructions — irritated that I was embarrassed by the sight of empty buttermilk containers in the kitchen of one of the city’s most ritzy hotels — but I loved you all the more.
You knew everything. Everything. Without having to ask a single question. People confided in you because you had practical, applicable solutions to any problem. You always had needles, thread, yarn, scissors, super glue, Sharpies, plastic spoons, safety pins and crepe paper on hand in case of emergencies.

You had no less than thirty aunties buzz around you at the
onset of every function like worker bees to the queen. They knew their role, their function, their designated vegetable in the buffet line, and always responded to your command like troops to the general. You always delegated, but they rarely stayed focused and usually messed things up. You knew things turned out right only when you did them yourself.

You were the stuff of legends. Once, I swear I saw you feed 100 people on five minutes notice with a cup of rice, a handful of flour and a few potatoes. Another time you stretched two cups of chakkrai pongal (rice cooked with brown sugar) to serve 400. And you made the best panchamritham of my life with a few bananas, small bunch of grapes, and a scoop of brown sugar.

Your efficiency and style and street smarts deserved their own show like “Whose Wedding Is It Anyway” or a million-dollar, high-flying, party-planning gig for P-Diddy where you would silence him and his entourage with the fire of a single glare and convince them to use plastic table clothes for cost-efficiency. But you stayed and catered to us, the undeserving.

And now, your hair’s a little bit grayer, your gait a little bit
slower, and you haven’t hiked up your sari on one side and leapt across a stack of plastic chairs to stop someone who wasn’t following your directions in quite some years… … But every time I go home and see you organizing and directing and orchestrating the details that matter the most, I know that my childhood, my hyphenated-American experience, my memories of the perfectly organized buffet lines of yesteryears would not have been the same without you.

We want to be “Fair and Balanced.” So, in the next issue will be the other part, “My not-so-favorite ‘Auntie.’” by the same. — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Published in October 2007)

Powered by hand-held PDAs and instant txt msgng, ours is the era of sound bites that call for extrm brvt in communication. And thanks to the information overload triggered by the Internet, our attention span has shrunk to a scary state, which, twenty years ago, psychiatrists would have called an abnormal medical condition similar to ADD (attention deficit disorder). And we have become incapable of digesting abstract ideas unless they are aided by glitzy color-coded graphics.

Sometimes, even mundane information like weather info need color graphic props, a la USA Today; if it is on TV, we need animation for rain, snow falls, lightning, and — even hurricanes and slippery road condition!

And with incessant, thoughtless chattering on phones and over the airwaves, writing has become a burden for most. When is the last time you wrote a coherent paragraph outside work? Or for that matter, even inside work? No wonder, editors often ask first-time writers, much to the writers’ chagrin, to be coherent and tell their story with fewer words

Two years ago I was narrating this to my friend Bhanu Pandalai when she smilingly recited on the spot from memory a four-line shloka in classical Sanskrit condensing the story of the Ramayana. Remember, Valmiki wrote the Ramayana in 24,000 Sanskrit shlokas (verses), which Kamban in 10th century rendered in over 10,000 Tamil verses. Here is the four-line Ramayana from Bhanu’s recitation:

आदौ राम; तपोवनादि गमनं हत्वा मर्गं काञ्चनम्
वैदेहि हरणं जठयु मरणं सुग्रीव सम्वादनम्
वाली निग्रहणं समदर तरणं लङ्कापुरी मर्दनम्
पश्चात् रावण-कुम्भकर्ण हननं एतद्वि रामायणम्

Adou Rama tapovanadi gamanam; hatva mrgam kanchanam;
Vaidehi haranam; Jatayu maranam; Sugreeva samvadanam;
Vali nigrahanam; samudra taranam; Lankapuri mardanam;
Paschat Ravana-Kumbhakarna hananam; etadvi Ramayanam.

Translation:
First, Rama’s going into the forest-retreat; [then] the killing of the golden deer.
Stealing of Vaidehi (Sita); Jatayu’s death; dialogue with Sugreeva;
Vali’s destruction; crossing the ocean; destruction of Srilanka;
Then the killing of Ravana and Kumbhakarna. That is the Ramayana.

I was impressed by the brevity of the unknown poet who distilled the essence of the 24,000 verses of Valmiki’s Ramayana into a four lines—brief enough for a cryptic e-mail! By the way, are school children expected to commit any poems to memory these days?

Then, last April, a few of us including Harish Saluja (DUQ’s Music of India Fame) were in a local restaurant. As I narrated the story behind the abbreviated Ramayana that Bhanu recited from memory, Harish, an animated conversationalist, stretched out both his hands and quipped, “Arre, Venkat, this is nothing! I know an even more pithy and rustically humorous version of the Ramayana rendered in a very colloquial Hindi.” And he, too recited from memory on the spot:

रामभैय्ये इक रावण्णा
वा खत्री वा ब्रामण्णा
वा ने वा कि नार हरि
वा ने वा कि मोउत् करि

Ram bhaye ik Ravanna
va khatri va brahmanna;
va ne va ki naar hari;
va ne va ki maut kari.

Translation:
One Rama, one Ravana; He, a kshatriya (warrior); he, a brahmana (brahmin);
His woman, steal he did. [And so] his demise, cause he did.

This author, his name and time too are not known, was not content with his extremely brief version of the Ramayana that was good enough for a txt msg. The poet continues taking a jab at Tulsidas, who wrote Ramacharitramanas in the Awadhi language:

बात कहो तो बात्तण्णा
तुलसि लिख् गये पोत्तण्णा

Baat kaho to batanna, Tulsi likh gaye potanna. or
That’s all there is to state. [But] a long epic did Tulsi write.

If Tulsidas Goswami himself can be edited into a few lines with some editorial jabs included, where are we? I for sure — maybe all of us — can be frugal with words in expressing our thoughts. With passing years, I realize, frugality in my wandering thoughts would be even better. END

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By Nitya Venkataraman, (published in October 2007)

I always ran into you on the days I least wanted to. You knew how to cut to the core of me, of everyone — the weak- and strong-willed alike. Your BS detector was unsurpassed.

Foolishly, for a time, I thought I could anticipate your moves, but quickly learned I would never be fast enough: you were always one step ahead. I tried valiantly to dodge your never-ending stream of inquisitions over standardized test scores, cumulative grade point averages, class rank, college major, graduate school, first job, starting salary, rent payment, home purchase, and potential spouse.

I always failed miserably, stuttering, shot down and wounded on topics I would have never even thought to imagine. Like how much my student loan payments were. It always seemed easier to surrender immediately to your poison bite than to fight it and prolong my own demise, snared and tangled in a weak web woven of my own lies.I always suspected you knew the color of my underwear, how much I’d paid for it and you strongly disapproved.

I avoided Indian functions my entire senior year of high school because of you… … …This was especially problematic when all I wanted to do was go to the temple to pray I would get into a far-off college to escape your evil clutches.

You were infamous. People in other cities knew you, and my friends in other cities were warned by their mothers to steer clear of you. You were a fast-talking, smooth-moving, sweet-smiling hustler. In my opinion, your greatest triumph was that — despite your status as an equal opportunity offender — you were still invited to most events. But then, you also made the best desserts in a 6-hour radius.

You remembered and verbalized details with a selectivity that borderlined on humiliating: where I didn’t get into college; what I wanted to be but wasn’t; and the other Indians you knew in my age group that did things better.

Your questions were poison double-dipped in sugary innocence. I never realized what I’d just consumed in our conversations until it was too late.

Like Visa, you were everywhere I wanted to be. Once I saw you at the mall on a Wednesday night when I was on a clandestine date. Within an hour, I got a phone call from my mom asking who I was with and how I could have been so stupid. Another time, from the passenger seat of a moving car, you saw me jogging on a local highway and called my parents to let them know you thought it was dangerous. And also that my shorts were too short. I never jogged again.

Among your peers and other aunties, your role oscillated between strictly functional and purely ornamental; and you breezed past both ends of the spectrum with an air of nonchalance so pungent it was rivaled only by your tea rose perfume. You always managed to be assigned a job by My Favorite Auntie that strategically placed you in the middle of the action; but you could also pass off at the drop of a hat. You lingered. You listened. You smelled fear and attacked.

You missed your calling. As a Guantanamo interrogator, you would have extracted policy-changing confessions; as a CIA agent, you would have been the second coming of Mata Hari. And if the federal government put you on the trail of Osama Bin Laden, it is my personal belief that you would not only find him, but be able to report his SAT score, high school grade point average and record of admittance to Governor’s School.

Your line of vision resembled the viewfinder of an AK-47. You always had a target and, with the skill of a true gamesman, you never missed your mark. You taught me how to be coy, how to answer questions without really answering and how to play cat-and-mouse with alarming dexterity. The great flirts and politicians of our generation have you to thank.

I’m grown-up now. And independent. And though I have relatively little to hide, I’m still slightly afraid of you

But when I visit my parents, and see children, teenagers and adults alike running away as your silk-shrouded fin weaves through the crowd at community functions, I miss the simplicity of a long ago time when you were my greatest adversary. — END

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By Kollengode  S. Venkataraman (October 2007)

Geographically, India forced out the British and the Europeans starting on August 14, 1947. But the Indian polyglot media, with its elite angrezi media in the lead, continue to give great importance to West’s recognition of India this and India that. And even after sixty long years, Indian elite still craves for recognition from its erstwhile colonial masters, who were actually, its occupiers. It never occurs to India’s “elite” why it took so long for the West to recognize India’s inherent strengths. That is another story. Now is the time to emphasize the positive.

For forty year after independence, India suffered through the Nehruvian controlled economy, which in mid-1980s took India to the brink of bankruptcy. With no other option, the Congress Party was forced to loosen its stranglehold on the economy. Since then, India’s foreign exchange reserves have been steadily growing. Now it is in excess of $200 billion. China’s is 1200 billion. Without embarrassment, the Congress Party shamelessly takes credit for this liberalization.  

Without the need for any statistics, even cursory visitors to India these days see the strengths not only of India’s macroeconomy, but also feel and experience the vibrancy of ordinary unpad (illiterate) Indians. The Wall Street Journal and others routinely feature articles on the strengths of India’s English-speaking manpower that is “cheap” by the standards of the industrialized West. India’s huge population now is an opportunity, not a problem. My, my, how perceptions change!

Now, multinationals, big and small, driven primarily by the cost advantage, invest heavily in India in manufacturing and in R&D in pharmaceuticals, transportation, and biotechnology. With the cost of healthcare rapidly escalating in the West, many in the West are looking at the option of going to Asia (India, Thailand, and others) for elective surgeries. It costs a lot less in India, including travel, hospital fees, and sightseeing. 

That all these changes came in India just in the last 20 years is quite impressive in itself. What is more impressive is that these changes are mostly the result of the instinctive enterprise of native Indians. All that the government did was loosen its stranglehold (derisively called the Permit-Licence-Quota Raj of the Congress Party) on the economy, which enormously benefited only India’s established businesses, bureaucracy and politicians, at the cost of everybody else.

Overseas visitors to India — mostly tourists and business people — complain about the terrible state of the physical infrastructure like roads, rails, electric power, communications, and mass transit. If you talk to Indian sociologists, social workers and activists, or read newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Spiegel, and others, you see a different India with a widening chasm between the educated Indians who gained by globalization and the others left behind.

You can see this for yourself in India. See the quality of primary education your nephews/nieces or your siblings’ grandchildren get. And then go to a primary school in a nearby rural area, and see the difference between the two schools. See if the poorer kids even have footwear; see if they sit on benches in classrooms or squat on dirt floors in the open; or talk to people in Ekal Vidyalaya (www.ekalvidyalaya.org) or others who run schools in rural India for the poor.

Then go to any hospital where middle class Indians go for treatment — I am not talking about the top-of-the-line Apollo/Escort hospitals where India’s rich and other patients from outside India go for treatment. And then go to a nearby public hospital where the poor go. See the difference.

This is not peculiar to India. The much-touted trickle-down theory of Reagan-era did not work. The US is now more socioeconomically polarized than it was 30 years ago. But the starkness in the differences you see in India quite unsettling. This has led to deep fissures among the India’s social segments  because the beneficiaries of globalization are the 300-million strong educated class that is anglicized to varying degrees. Large numbers (over 400 million by one count) are left behind.

The following scenes encapsulate India’s irony, paradox, dilemma: 

The Father of India, Mohandas Gandhi, the London-educated
barrister, on his return from South Africa in the 1930s gave up his 3-piece suite and arrived in Bombay in the traditional Gujarati dhoti and turban. A large number of Indians, including London-educated barristers in their flannel jackets and ties in the warm, humid Bombay, were there at the sea port to enthusiastically receive Gandhi.

And a few years after Independence, in 1953, the very first Filmfare awards ceremony was held at Metro Cinema in Bombay, and the post-awards dinner was at the Willingdon Club run by India’s brown sahebs. Bimal Roy, who had won two awards for Do Bigha Zamin was denied entry into the club because Roy was in his white Bengali dhoti. 

Now come to May, 2007, sixty years after India’s independence. Source for this story is in Kumudam, the most popular Tamil weekly.

Place: the so-called Traditional Chennai.  Venue: The Madras Cricket Club. A group of Rotary Clubs was holding a seminar on how to make the benefits of the IT boom in India reach rural India in the club auditorium .

A US-returned Chennai native, Mr. A. Narayanan, a senior honorary official in India’s federal ministry of Panchayat Raj (or ministry for Grassroots Democracy), was an invited speaker because of his expertise in the field. He had returned to India after living in the US for several years. Since he was going to speak on improving rural India’s development, Narayanan went to the Madras Cricket Club in a dhoti, worn in the traditional Madras-style. As it happened to Bimal Roy in Bombay, Narayanan too was denied admission to the club in the “tradition-bound” Chennai. Mind you, the club was only the venue, and not the organizer of the event.

And this happened 60 years after India’s Independence! And there was not even a whimper in Chennai’s English media for A. Narayanan being denied entry into the Madras Cricket Club because of his dhoti.

Looking at the irony, one can say during its colonial days, India’s leaders might have been politically slaves, but were free in Spirit. And with spiritual strength, they drove the European colonial occupiers out with very little bloodshed. The Partition was a bloody scar though.

But, today, India’s ruling and social elite is spiritually a slave of the West, while remaining nominally free politically and economically. Where India will be in the next twenty years depends very much on how well India reconciles its accelerated growth in the aggregate with the imperatives for more equitable opportunity for all to benefit, the inequities are no more exclusively along caste lines. In the years ahead, the voices of India’s conscience keepers will only become louder. The challenge for India is for it to regain its spiritual freedom, using the word “spiritual” in its transcendental sense.    — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Published in July 2007)

This is a new feature we are starting, and this can sustain only with your participation.  Indian literature is studded with nuggets and gems on ethics, faith, personal conduct, charity, justice and human foibles.  Since these ideas evolved well before the time of the papyrus, Indian thinkers composed them in condensed verses so that people can easily commit them memory. These poet-philosophers wrote these verses frugally choosing words paying attention to meter, rhythm, alliterations, and rhymes and other rules unique to the grammar of the languages. Hundreds of verses — four, eight, twelve, and sixteen lines — chiseled with great brevity are available in all languages. 

We welcome readers to share with others on an ongoing basis verses in your language (Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Oriya, Assamese, Konkani… … Briefly comment on the verse—who wrote it and when, literal meaning, literary nuances and beauty, and the import—so that others unfamiliar with the language can share your pleasure. Include the verse in the original script for publishing as part of the story.  Call Prema or Venkataraman (724 327 0953) before you start for the nonbinding guidelines.  Asmita Ranganathan would provide illustrations, her time and our space permitting, to reinfornce the story.

Several centuries ago, a  king in India commissioned a Sthapati (traditional temple architect well versed in its art) to build a temple to commemorate a big event in his reign.

The architect went to the neighboring hill known for its excellent quality granites and selected blocks of the black stone for the work — pillars, steps, dwajastham-bham (flag post), and of course, the vig-raham (stone-carved images) for the presiding deity in the sannidhi (shrine).

He spent several days looking for the good granites. Putting all his knowledge to use, the temple architect selected the blocks of stones for his work and hauled them to the temple site. Obviously, selecting the granite for carving the deity was most demanding—the boulder should give a metallic sound on being tapped with his chisel.

He carefully split the best granite block into two halves. With one half he carved an exquisite image that was consecrated in the sanctum. 

He used the other half for a step that takes worshippers to the sanctum. Only by climbing on this step, people could reach and enter the sanctum. With constant use of priests and devotees walking in and out, the surface of the granite step became smooth.

Sivavakkiyar was a Saivite Tamil ascetic. Literary scholars believe his
     time was 14th century or earlier. It is possible, Sivavakkiyar is the name given to him after his time by his admirers, who collectively called the compendium of his works Siva-vakkiyam (literally, the Words of Shiva).  Shiva-vakkiyar can mean the person who spoke the words of Shiva.

Sivavakkiyar uses the vivid imagery in the above scene that many have seen in temples, churches, mosques, and other monuments all over the world, and raises a thoughtful question in a four-line verse:

Translation:

Selecting a metal-sounding* granite, you split it into two.

And a step you made with one block. See, it has become smooth with your use!

Out of the other block, you carved an image for worship, offering the image holy water and flowers.

Why don’t you tell me, sir? Which one of the two is dearer to God?

  * Metal-sounding granites are traditionally preferred for carving images.

If you think Sivavakkiyar is castigating only Hindus, you are
entirely missing the point. The message is to all organized religions. Sivavakkiyar, out of compassion to his fellow-citizens, teasingly asks all of us to ponder over when we imprison ourselves in rigid dogma, theological absolutes, and empty rituals, making them ends in themselves. In reality though, dogma, theology, and rituals are not ends in themselves, but only necessary steps in our spiritual journey as Seekers of Truth.

We can go one-step further. All human organizations—political parties, corporate boardrooms, governments, sports teams, and even religious organizations—deify their stars and heroes. And as they deify and fawn over stars, people knowingly and unknowingly step on those who are the very  foundations of the organizations making the organizations work.

Even in  our personal efforts to succeed, we step on others. Often, we don’t even think what happens to those on whose back we rode to success, till we see somebody else riding on us to get ahead.

After succeeding in life, many realize that they paid a terrible price, often intangible, for what they thought was “success.” One of the Tamil Bhakti poets puts it well: “I was impoverished by my servitude to others.” The poverty he talks about is the poverty of the Spirit in the midst of material prosperity.  — END

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By Nitya Venkataraman (Published in January 2007)

Nitya is a producer for ABC News in Washington DC. She grew up in the eastern suburbs and went  to schools Plum Boro  and Murrysville and CMU.  

November was a month of significant groundbreaking in Washington. First, after 12 years, a Democratic majority swept the House and Senate. Then, on November 13, the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr joined the officially recognized ranks of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson in the last available space of the National Mall.

“By its presence in this place it will unite the men who declared the promise of America and defended the promise of America with the man who redeemed the promise of America,” declared President Bush addressing the 5000-plus crowd assembled on a cold and rainy Monday to watch their dream of Dr. King’s monument become a reality.

The President was joined by former President Bill Clinton who signed  legislation in 1996 authorizing the memorial; author Maya Angelou; Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill); business and political leaders of the African-American community; and celebrities like Oprah Winfrey.

Winfrey credited Dr. King’s vision with allowing her “a voice that can be heard.” “I do not take that for granted, not for one breath, not for one breath,” Winfrey emphasized, “I live in state of reverence for where I have come from, and the price that was paid for me to be here.”

As Indian-Americans, we owe both the memorialized leader and the nameless, faceless masses of the American Civil Rights Movement that reverence, too. “Thanks to the civil rights struggles of those who have come before us,” said Deepa Iyer, Executive Director of South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, “South Asians can look to laws and values that protect the interests of minorities, women and immigrants.”

Think about it: The Barred Zone Act (1917) and the “Thind Decision” (1923) blocked South Asian immigration into the USA. In the 1930s, a group of successful South Asian professionals began to lobby the US government to open its immigration policy to India and though President Roosevelt was receptive, the United States was an ally of Britain, and the bill regarding South Asian immigration wasn’t passed until 1946.

Sixteen years later, in 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation is unconstitutional. The next year 200,000 people marched to Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act, Equal Employment and Equal Housing Acts under president Lyndo Johnson.

We’ve come a long way, certainly: Newly-elected Rep. Jason Altmire  attended  a sit-down luncheon with the South Asian women in Pittsburgh before the November elections; Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa) held a Pittsburgh-area fundraiser courting the South Asian vote.

In doing so, both acknowledged the presence, influence, history and contributions of South Asian Americans in this country and in their respective voting districts.

But after a summer caught on tape of thinly veiled racially insensitive comments by Sen. Joseph Biden (D) on the abundance of Indian  convenience store owners in Delawre and Republican Sen. George Allen’s infamous Macaca comments referring an Indian-American volunteer of his opponent, it’s evident that to some in the US, South Asians are still outsiders, no matter how educated, wealthy or seemingly American they are.

Not long ago — in a climate of hate and anti-minority sentiment — political blunders like those made this summer might not have been taken so seriously. But in 2006, because of laws that protect us and a social decency that defends us, our outrage is communicated and addressed, even influencing the outcome of a local election.

So, it is important during this Martin Luther King Day in February to take part in community events to honor the struggles of those people of color who marched before us, whose shoulders we stand on.  We need to remember this as we achieve more than what was ever thought possible.

“As we build our community in America,” SAALT’s Iyer emphasized, “We must also ensure that we stand up for the rights of all minorities and people of color.” Remembering, of course, that we stand today because less than five decades ago they stood for us.

Editor’s note: February is Black History Month.Make it a point to attend community events where you live.  If possible, also make small contributions to local community events and  charities that help the socially and economically disadvanged children.  — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (October 2006)

In the post-World War-II years, the industrialized West classified nations into three camps using highly prejudicial terms simply because it fitted its perception. The First World comprised of themselves — the industrialized West — led by the US followed by Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Later, Japan was included in this list. The Second World was of course the communist Soviet Union, China, and their allies, mostly in Eastern Europe. Everyone else was put in the derogatory “Third World” basket. Even the European-educated intellectual and the political class of the “Third World” meekly accepted this derogation.

Then, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand became economically strong, better than others in the “Third World” even as they became totalitarian and politically repressive. The West, particularly the US, kept its eyes closed to the political repression simply because these countries were also anti-Communist. Abstract ideology can be sacrificed at the altar of practical politics.

So, the West started differentiating these countries using increasingly value-neutral terms such as Pacific Rim Countries or better still, pandering phrases, Asian Tigers, for example.India was still a Third World nation having a slow “Hindu rate” of growth of 2 to 3% on the GDP.

Many sophisticated economists (such as Patrick Moynihan and John Kenneth Galbraith) realized the number-based classification of the economies of the world, which implies rank, was steeped in arrogance besides being crude and primitive. So, a softer term, “Developing Countries,” came into circulation. In this “Developing Countries” basket came countries as diverse as those in the Indian subcontinent, Central and South America, most of Africa excluding of course, South Africa ruled by the White minority under the apartheid . This euphemistic evolution in coining terms was an improvement, even though it still reeked of condescension.

And then, in the 1980s, the Second World destroyed itself as the Soviet Union imploded. So, to be politically and socially correct, another alliterative term, “Emerging Economies,” came into being. With Indian software warm-bodies solving the highly exaggerated Y2K problems in late 90s at tenth of what it would cost to get it done in the First World, India overnight became a leading member of the Emerging Economies.

Now that people of Indian origin have done well professionally in engineering, healthcare, university teaching, IT, hospitality business, and entertainment all over the world, the alliterative “Emerging Economies” became somewhat out of date similar to calling Sri Lanka as Ceylon, or Myanmar by its old name Burma. Because, as professionals, Indians have already “emerged,” even though India has not.

The latest buzzword (coined by Goldman Sachs) is BRIC nations,
referring to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. This is better since it at least identifies the nations by their names instead of describing them using condescending terms (Third World and Emerging Economies), obviously describing the world from the point of view of the powerful.

According to Goldman Sachs 2003 report (Global Economies, Paper No. 99, October 1, 2003), in the next five decades, if the BRIC nations focus on the improving their fundamentals, they will grow to be bigger than the economies of the G-6 (US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Canada) even in terms of dollars (or Euros).

By 2025, the BRIC nations’ combined GDP would be half of the G-6. Besides, by that time, with the very low birthrates in the G-6 nations, their population would be more geriatric, while the BRIC nations would have a younger and more productive workforce. Even if Goldman-Sachs’ projections are not fully realized, it will be still quite impressive.

I read somewhere that in the pre-Industrial Revolution World, China and India combined accounted for over 40% of the world GDP. After over 300 years of Europe’s political colonization and economic exploitation of the rest of the world, finally, newer counter-balancing power centers may be emerging that will usher in new World Order in political, economic, military, and social terms.

But there are many pointers that this new World Order will be very different from what the First World envisioned when the Berlin Wall was brought down and the Second World imploded. — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Published in October 2006)

Indians often learn about their own history through the writings of Europeans during their colonial rule over India between 18th and 20th centuries. Consequently Indians themselves look at India through European lenses. Even for buttressing arguments on history and culture, Indians  need to quote the works of European writers, many of whom had their own missionary biases and colonial axes to grind.

Nowhere has this damaged more than in matters of faith and spirituality.  This has resulted in common “understanding” that Hindus are polytheists, image worshippers (polite expressions), idolators (derisive term), or even worse, pagans and heathens, whose “souls” need to be “saved” through conversion by persuasion, incentives, or if necessary, by force.

Indians are not known to critically examine writers coming from different cultural and religious background, whose objectives were economic exploitation, political domination, and religious conversion.

While the world knows about the Bhagavadgita as a work that
conveys the essence of the Hindu thought, there are other less known shorter Gitas no less sublime than the famous Gita. I had not heard of these till I read Mananam, published by the Chinmaya Mission West.

Among these shorter works on transcendental and intuitive spirituality is the Avadhoota Gita.Avadhootas are mendicants living beyond the concepts of merits and sins. Like the Sufis in Islam who came centuries later, a true avadhoota doesn’t proclaim himself to be an avadhoota. Jyotir-manayananda in Mananam writes on the Avadhootas: 

“Avadhoota Dattatreya’s uncompromising, nonindividualistic view of the Absolute is most beautifully expressed in the following verse:

त्वद् यात्रया व्यपकता हता ते, ध्यानेन चेतः परता हता ते |
स्तुत्या मया वाक्परता हत ते, क्षमस्व नित्यम् मम त्रिधा अपराधान् ||

Translation:

By going on pilgrimages, I killed Your omnipresence.
By meditating on Your form, I killed Your transcendental nature.
And by singing hymns, I killed Your nature of being beyond words.
Forgive me for these three transgressions.

So long as people have religious beliefs, there will be objects of veneration, be they the books themselves (the Torah, Bible or Koran) and other relics. So, how can one say that veneration of one kind is OK, but not the other? 

Besides, all true religions remind us that these objects of venerations are only ladders for believers to look beyond. Yoga Vashsitham is another work that would shatter ideas that many of us have about fate.

Here is a sample: “In this world, whatever is gained, is gained by self-effort… … What is called fate is fictitious… …There is no power greater than the right action at the present moment… …One who says ‘Fate is directing me to do this” is dumb and the goddess of fortune would abandon him.”   — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (October 2006)

Agreed. With so much at stake, in politics, as in wars, the emphasis has always been on winning. So, all tactics are fair in politics as long as one doesn’t get caught. And nowhere is this more true than in US presidential elections, where winner takes all and the loser instantaneously becomes a small-font footnote in history.

In the US presidential race, it is rare that a candidate, after losing in the quadrennial jamboree, has the stomach and the resources to come back to seek nomination for the second time, not to speak of getting the party’s nomination. The political establishments have no patience in giving second chance to any candidate.

Naturally, the stakes are high for the candidate personally, and also for the parties collectively. That the president can also shape the character of the judicial system for decades by appointing ideological soulmates for lifetime federal courts is yet another huge incentive for winning.

In the parliamentary system, members of parliaments stay for decades, and can have more than one chance for getting elected as prime minister. But in the US-type presidential race, if you don’t hit a homerun in your first strike, you are out for good.
So, deceptions, distortions, evasions, and obfuscation are integral to political campaigns in US presidential elections—as in wars. Manipulating people’s raw emotions and fear, so pervasively used during wars, is also common in politics, sometimes used brazenly.

In this presidential campaign, vice president Dick Cheney stoked people’s fears alluding that if Kerry wins the election, there could be one more terrorist attack. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, the third in line of succession to occupy the White House, reinforced that fear by saying on camera that he believed that al Qaeda might be indirectly supporting the Democrats. Dick Cheney’s and J. Dennis Hastert’s comments will be joining the annals of worst moments in US presidential elections — Lyndon Johnson’s mushroom clouds TV ad, and Herbert Walker Bush’s Willie Horton ad appealing to the racial fears of White America.

This year’s election campaign is one of the most vicious ones, with neither party wanting to address the issues people are confronting in their daily life—unemployment and the fear of losing jobs, escalating costs for healthcare and higher education, and people in the lower incomes looking at uncertain times in their retirements.

This is the reality of this year’s election campaigns in the most powerful and the “sole super power” democracy of the world.
If this is the state of affairs in the US with its 210-plus years of democratic traditions, one shudders at imagining the final shape of the Iraqi version of democracy that President Bush is trying to impose on Iraq.

US is trying—with daisy cutters, 5000-lb bombs penetrating hundreds of feet into the ground before exploding, and high-precision missiles, and at a cost of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars—to forcibly impose democracy at short notice on an Iraq unused to the restraints that democracy demands of citizens and more to the point, the rulers.

In all likelihood, like the Gresham’s Law in numismatics, the noble ideas of freedom, democracy, representative government, and minority rights under majority rule will be quickly displaced in Iraq by bad electioneering, demagoguery, threats and fear mongering, and the brutality of majority rule.

On this if you also superimpose the intra-religious strife and ethnic hatred and insecurities among the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, you get a hell of a recipe for trouble for many years ahead. Iraq might even disappear from the map (a la Yugoslavia), breaking into pieces as Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish states.

To make matters worse, with Shias in eastern Iraq having spiritual affinity with the neighboring soon-to-be nuclear Shia-ruled Iran, US would have sown the seeds for a Greater—and Nuclear—Iran down the road. After Iraq, one wonders if US will have the stomach to contain a Nuclear Iran using strong-arm tactics. Independent Kurdistan is another story.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and their Neo-Con associates would then wish that Saddam and his Baath Party, castrated by UN sanctions, be in control in Iraq. — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (October 2006)

Folks, there is no way around bringing class and wealth in discussing this issue. Towards the end of July, the US Senate did not pass a bill that proposed to increase the minimum wages from $5.15/hr set in 1997 to $7.25 in three steps over several years. This bill was passed by the US House with Republican majority. The Republicans, facing an uphill task in the November midterm elections, wanted to outfox the Democrats with a bill increasing the minimum wages that was dear to Democrats. So, the Republicans, in spite of their dogma not to disturb the Market Forces in determining wages, yielded to election-year compulsions and passed a minimum wage bill.

Republicans talked how bipartisanship is the need of the hour in today’s poisoned political environment. Sen. Santorum waxed how the bipartisan compromise bill would give something both to Democrats and Republicans to take home.

While the bill increasing the minimum wage gave something to
Democrats to take home, it gave much more to Republicans. In the fall campaign, Republicans, likely to lose majority in one or both chambers of the Congress, sure will take full credit for the minimum wage increase. And also for more tax-cut goodies to their wealthy friends.

The minimum wage of $5.15 was fixed in 1997, which has the same purchasing power of around $4.20 in today’s dollars. The plot above gives the minimum wages and the gas price after adjusting to increases in the US Department of Labor’s consumer price index (CPI). In the history of minimum wages, this is the longest time during which the minimum wages did not see any cost of living adjustment. The members of US Congress during the same time gave themselves several wage increases with impunity. Remember, Republicans have been in majority since 1997, and they had their president since 2000. So much for Bush’s compassionate conservatism!

But true to their commitment to give tax breaks to the real rich, the Republicans also piggy-bagged an item to the bill that would reduce the estate tax to the real wealthy benefitting only slightly over 8,000 people in a country of 300 million. Republicans were only helping the really rich cushion the adverse impact of the rise in minimum wage on their lifestyle. Some Compassionate Conservatism!

The Democrats in the Senate, sensing the Republican blood in the water in November elections, managed to defeat the bill in the Senate. If Democrats win majority in one or both chambers in the Congress in November, they sure will send a bill to President George W. Bush’s desk a stand-alone wage increase bill.

The philosophical basis for the estate tax is well known. Paul Volcker, the ex Federal Reserve chairman and Bill Gates, Sr, the father of multi-billionaire Micro-soft’s Bill Gates support some form of Estate Tax..

After all, we have adjusted to the phenomenal increases in the gas prices in the last 3 years that has a cascading effect on price increases on everything; we have survived the Republican tax cuts to the wealthy; we are continually adjusting to companies walking away from their pension plans; we have survived runaway increases in healthcare costs and the rapid increases in the cost of higher education. So sure we can adjust to marginal increases in the minimum wages as well!

End note: The annual salary of someone on a minimum wage is around $10,500/year. This annualized minimum wage is below the government-estimated poverty level income of over $12,000/year for a single-parent with one child. Besides, people who work at incomes close to minimum wages rarely have health insurance. These people can as well be living in the much-derided Third World. As a matter of fact, they do live in the Third World living conditions, but in the First World. — END

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Kollengode. S. Venkataraman

Many readers agreed with the central message of the “The Multitasking Misbehavior of Desis” in the last issue that dealt with audience misbehavior at desi events.

Adults’ behavior cannot be changed by pleading for their good behavior alone because, as any addict would attest, unlearning bad habits is not easy. For desis, even shame does not work for changing behavior, because for one to be embarrassed, one must be sensitive. Consider these:

At a memorial service at the H-J Temple several weeks ago for someone who had died recently, the atmosphere was solemn.  And two people in the audience seated in the back kept talking, talking, and talking. A long-time resident among us known for speaking his mind took upon himself to tell the yakkers (much to the chagrin of his wife) to keep quiet. And they did.

Normally, visiting artists from India, being under the mercy of their sponsors, put up with lot of inconvenience in their concert tours. Lately, even visiting artists are frustrated by the audience misbehavior. Half way through their recital, they tell their audience to show some basic decorum. This happened recently, at the S.V. Temple in two concerts back-to-back.

T. M. Krishna, anaccomplished vocalist, half way thorough his concert on April 12, stopped singing and asked people in the audience not to walk in and out whenever they wanted.  He said something along this: “If you need to go out, please go out only at the end of a piece, and return to your seats only at the end of the piece being rendered when you re-enter.” And he elaborated: “A piece would include the alapana, krti with the sahityam, niraval, swara–prastaram, and the tani (the percussion solo).”

Most of his target audience might not have seen the dripping sarcasm in his words. One needs to be sensitive to understand sarcasm, irony, and paradox. Two weeks later, a similar announcement by another artiste in another recital, this time from Sashank, in his flute concert.

These kinds of misbehavior is damaging for another reason. Artistes are naturally garrulous. Just tap them gently when you host them in your homes, you will get the juiciest and spiciest bits of gossip. And the accompanying artists, specially the good ones, accompany other artistes all the time, and they exchange bits of gossip. And very soon, every artist knows about the audience (mis)behavior in every venue.

In contrast, I recall a lovely Tamil verse by Periyazhwar, an 8th century poet, in which he lets his imagination fly: “With his tender fingers gently caressing the bamboo flute, … his cheeks bellowing as he blows air, and his arched eyebrows converging, when Krishna plays his melodies, birds leave their nests, and spread around sitting still on the ground; and milking cows gather around … … and stand motionless without even twitching their ears, absorbed in his music.”

Here is the original verse:

Even for contrasting Periyazhvar’s birds and cows with Pittsburgh Desis’ misbehavior in concert halls, the 8th century poet will take offense. (In July 2008 issue) END  

Mohanalakshmi Rajkumar, Qatar, Persian Gulf (published in January 2006)

Mohanalakshmi, born in Chennai, was raised outside India since age four. She came to the US in 1988. She grew up in Texas, California, and Florida, went to North Carolina State U, and now is working toward Ph.D. in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Florida.. She is now a project consultant at the University of Doha, Qatar.

The debate over immigration policy in the US has intensified as attitudes towards  illegal/undocumented workers have changed. Some wonder what the fuss is all about. After all, in their minds, undocumented workers take menial jobs that no legal US resident takes. These unlawful workers, the argument goes, are a central part of the American economy. Eliminating them will create a large gap in the current economic structure. They are necessary and essential whether people like it or not.

Living in the US, the issues surrounding the Latino immigrant population can often seem all-consuming. But throughout the world, other immigrant populations encounter similar difficulties working outside their native lands. South Asian laborers in the Arab marketplace face many of the same dilemmas of Latinos in the US. The parallel maybe unwelcome, but the experience of the first tier of South Asian workers demonstrates its validity. This is the first of a four-part series focused on the Indian workers in the Middle East.

Beginning at the ground level, unskilled and semi-skilled Indian laborers provide the basic needs/services of the growing economies of nearby countries. That the labor is “racialized” in the Persian or Arabian Gulf region cannot be disputed. The oil-based wealth of most nationals in Gulf countries requires that imported workers supply everything from nannies to litter collectors. These countries are primed by foreign workers at all levels of industry and commerce. The levels of employment and types of jobs accessible to people are categorized largely by nationality, ethnicity and race. Western Europeans find lucrative packages and bonuses in well-placed positions in the commercial sector. Americans have now entered many countries as educational  consultants or faculty members.

If you are of South Asian descent with a basic secondary level education or lower, mostly you are a maid, driver, or construction worker. In many upper middle class Arab homes, South Asians’ are the invisible hands that prepare food, raise children, and perform menial tasks. Life for these worker means exploitation. Abuse and neglect are certainly possible, and often likely, for these semi-skilled workers. Workmen’s compensation, insurance, or benefits are far from the mind of most workers since difficulties in obtaining their most basic needs such as housing, meals, or paychecks consume most of their attention. Indian embassies in the region are inundated by worker requests for help; workers often come in groups to file claims of falsely garnished wages or missing passports preventing them from going home. Lack of staffing in embassies makes following up on these complaints challenging and difficult.

Construction work is the most visible field where Indians, Nepalese, and Sri Lankans are everywhere to build structures that have few regulatory codes or guidelines. Workers have few safety gears such as helmets or other protective coverings for hazardous work. There are virtually no safety harnesses for work on skyscrapers and deaths from fatal falls are not unusual. The desert heat provides another challenge to these exclusively male workforce. They work twelve-hour days and sometimes during the night, depending on how behind schedule their particular project is. In the summer official labor laws prohibit outdoor working if the temperature is above 115 degrees  F. In many countries the official weather reading is never published to avoid project delays. High incidents of workers passing out has resulted in trailers placed in or near construction sites where a heat stroke victim can rest for a few hours. Immediately on their return to consciousness they are sent back to their previous task.

Is it true that these jobs are actually wanted by anyone despite the treatment and work requirements? It is. In a country like India where the population explosion has forced people to get educated or look elsewhere, overseas labor jobs are attractive for the non-specialized worker. The profile of these workers is almost the same: Young men between the ages of twenty and forty who have passports and physically fit. They pay a fee to a recrutiment agency for placement overseas. Most workers can’t afford these agency fees so they start out in debt to their future employers. These companies are often brokers for the various construction projects within the country itself and assist with the filing of paperwork, visas, and issuing of plane tickets. In all their helpfulness, however, many of them falsify the contract offers to young workers which the men don’t discover until they reach their destination. By then it’s too late. Their passports are taken and held until they repay the amount owed to the company.

If these abuses sound harrowing, they are. Labor unions, worker rights, or human resources offices are fantasies in the day-to-day lives of these workers. The image of these thousands of hands could be akin to the Untouchable caste within Indian itself; but this population has no Gandhi to re-label them “Children of God.” Instead the complexities of economies built on capitalist principles ensure that the disadvantaged poor people will always want these jobs, and rapidly industrializing wealthy companies will always be in need of them.

Who is responsible for the plight of the immigrant worker in the Gulf region? Is it the worker himself who leaves his family, often for years at a time, in search of better income? Is it his own government unable to create jobs for him within his own borders that allow him to feed himself and his family? Is it the government of his host country that often appears to espouse principles of equality and democracy in the public sector? Is it his employer under whose sponsorship he is allowed into the country?

Any and all of these parties could be argued as partly responsible in the abuse of the uneducated Indian workers outside in the Middle East.   — END

By  Kollengode S Venkataraman (published in January 2006)

Ever since US Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision in 1973 on Roe vs. Wade that gave women freedom on their reproductive rights, religious and social conservatives — Protestants, Catholics, and conservative Jews — have formed a loose political alliance to work toward denying women any option in their reproductive decisions.

Anti-Reproductive Rights people are Republicans’ single-issue-based vote bank. So, Republicans seeking statewide and national offices (as senators, governors, and presidents) have been successfully wooing these voters with their shrill anti-Abortion rhetoric. These conservatives with their extensive network through places of worship never miss an opportunity to deliberately frame the question simplistically in black-and-white terms and demonize those wanting to retain women’s reproductive rights.

And they do it brilliantly. First, they invoke God exclusively to themselves, and call themselves pro-Life. They paint their opponents with the darkest brush, as pro-Abortion, worse still, as “baby killers.” These God-loving pious people also occasionally turn violent against healthcare workers providing comprehensive counseling (including abortion) to women confronting unwanted pregnancies—unwanted for genuine reasons. 

Unfortunately, most of life’s dilemmas rarely offer themselves in clear black-and-white terms; they come with varying shades of gray. Right-wing ideologues know this, but they are disingenuous in appealing to their single-issue vote bank.

When they call themselves pro-Life, by implication, they paint their opponents as anti-Life. After all, who can be anti-Life? And who can be for Abortion? The religious conservatives deliberately muddy the water by trying to make pro-Abortion Rights the same as Pro-Abortion.

On moral and ethical grounds, all are against abortions. But I am not sure whether we are unanimous in denying a woman rights on how she should proceed with her pregnancy when she is confronted with medical, social, criminal, and other agonizing personal circumstances.

Besides, we can never foresee all the combinations of circumstances — medical, social, personal — in which women would find pregnancy burdensome. Teenage pregnancy and pregnancies due to rape and incest are well-known. But new diagnostic tools of today detect with great accuracy serious birth defects in the fetuses even in the very early stages of pregnancies. All these circumstances are gut wrenching for the pregnant woman who is remorseful, and has to decide with the clock ticking when she is already petrified about her helplessness.

Take the case of a pregnant woman coming to know that her fetus is having a 99% probability of having a serious birth defect that would require that the newborn would need constant care all through its life — infancy, childhood, and adulthood. This is gut-wrenching. The pregnant woman and her husband may be willing to go ahead with the pregnancy and make personal commitment to provide the personal care. Still, the question of who will provide the care for the invalid person, after the they are dead and gone will haunt the parents so long as they are alive.

If the anti-Reproductive Rights people want to deny women their reproductive rights, they can coerce the state legislatures and the Congress to ban abortions through legislation. But this is easily said that done, and they know it. What they find difficult to accomplish through legislation, they try to ramrod through litigation. They walk test cases through the labyrinth of the nation’s court system all the way to the US Supreme Court. There, a group of nine men and women are the ultimate arbiters of all disputes, and beyond which we have no other recourse.

In closely decided cases with 5:4 majority rulings, in reality, it is not even the group of nine that decides the case. The single judge who can tip the balance from a 4:5 defeat to a 5:4 victory decides cases that may have far-reaching implications.  As a matter of fact, that is how we have George W. Bush as our 43rd president in 2000 elections.

It is worth remembering Chief Justice Earl Warren deciding the case against school desegregation in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Justice Warren took considerable time in persuading his wavering brethren on the bench for arriving at a unanimous verdict. Given the social divisiveness of race in America, Justice Warren understood the inflammatory nature of a narrow 5-to-4 verdict would have on America.

The Warren court actually did politicians a favor by unanimously voting for school desegregation. The unanimous decision in Brown vs Board of Education gave politicians additional cover to stand up against those who were comfortable with the status quo. Politicians always dump on the courts issues that are too hot for them to resolve politically.

In politics in the US, the hold of “Family Value” conservatives is quite substantial. Yet, teenage pregnancy, high divorce rates, and single parent households are all facts of life.

In Japan and South Korea, both non-Christian nations without a fervor of excessive religiosity and piety, the incidence of teenage pregnancy is relatively low. Their men and women may lack all the freedom we boast of here. But traditional family values with emphasis on pride, honor and social obligation without the self-righteousness we see in the US is the bedrock of their societies.

In the US, while higher income families have two-career professionals, lower income families often have two parents trying to manage three lower-paying jobs just to stay afloat. Whatever the case, post-puberty children stay alone in homes till parents return, often without adult supervision. And making matters worse, quality after-school childcare, something that state provides in several progressive European societies, is not affordable to low-income families in the US.

For women confronting unwanted pregnancies all choices are bad, each having its own physiological and psychological scars to live with for the rest of their lives. Now, if the anti-Reproductive Rights religious conservatives have their way, they would tell the pregnant woman what she should do, or what she can not do, rather than letting her decide what she wants to do under very difficult circumstances.

One thing they, the religious conservatives, with all their energy and  resources can do is to educate youngsters to be responsible toward each other on sexual matters, and provide adequate and affordable after-school programs to teenagers in low-income areas so that we greatly reduced the opportunity for teenage girls to become pregnant in the first place.

If the religious conservatives get their soul mates as judges to the US Supreme Court and succeed in overturning Roe v. Wade, the only victims would be the urban and rural poor — black, brown, or yellow and white. The middle and the affluent classes, if they want to get abortion for their women, can and will discreetly go to Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, where terminating pregnancies is legal. They have the time and resources. The poor don’t.

The realistic option for us as a society is to first of all do everything we can through adult supervision, secular, social and religious education, and by instilling true family values — honor, pride, even guilt for wrong-doing, and personal responsibility — to our young men and women so that we eliminate, or at least substantially reduce, teenage pregnancy.

And just as a “nuclear option” that politicians and warfare strategists want to retain as their last and most potent weapon in their arsenal—the modern version of Brahmastram of the Indian epics—as a civilized society, we need to retain the reproductive rights women now have under the 1973 Roe v Wade decision. Just so that if there is a rare need for terminating pregnancies on medical, social, and extraneous personal grounds, all women, even the poorest of the poor, will have the option. And have the option without getting harassed by religious extremists meddling in their personal affairs; without incurring huge expenses towards travel; and without endangering their lives by going to unqualified people in desperation.

Unfortunately, Republicans, in their vote bank approach to electoral  politics, have made this sensitive and divisive issue a litmus test in the political dialogue and in appointing judges into federal courts including the US Supreme Court. They have forced others, even a small magazine like this one, to take a stand on the issue. — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (July 2005)

Millions of Indian workers living in difficult living conditions outside India have been sending billions of dollars to India over the past thirty-plus years. It all started in the late 1960s when a large number of skilled Indians went to Persian Gulf countries in the wake of the oil boom.

Despite this hard currency inflow, at one point in the late 70s or early 80s, India’s foreign exchange reserves were not even enough to meet India’s import bills for one month. This was in large measure due to the 40-plus years of Nehruvian state-controlled economic policies inflicted on the nation by the Congress Party.

In that crisis, it was the money sent in small quantities by non-resident Indians living in the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and North America that was responsible in large part for bailing India out.

In 2003, the overseas Indians’ remittance touched a all-time high of $17 billion. In 2004, according to the World Bank estimates, the monies remitted by NRIs to India touched $23 billion, the highest ever.

At the exchange rates of 2004, the rupee equivalent of the only 5 milion Indians sending hard currency to India exceeded 50% of the income tax the Indian government collects from its over 300-million strong anglicized upwardly mobile middle class.
Tax evasion among India’s middle class, big and small businesses and trading classes is so rampant that it is one of the biggest obstacles for improving India’s infrstructure, primary education and healthcare.

In the December 26, 2004 Tsunami, in Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Arabian sea, over 2000 people died and over 5000 people were ‘missing” and now presumed dead .

A woman in Andaman had a coconut grove that had 300 trees, all of which were wiped out in the tsunami. In April 2005, AFP reported that the government of India’s agents assessed the damage to her livelyhood and compensated her for her loss.

How much do you think was the compensation given to her for making a new beginning? 2 rupees. Fellow Desis, this is no typographic error. The compensatiion was an insulting 2 (TWO) rupees (around 6 cents), which is less than the price of one coconut in Mumbai market. Humiliated, the woman returned her compesnation to the government. — END

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By Kollengode  S.  Venkataraman (in the July 2005 issue)

In mid May, I read a frivolous, derisively funny, and outrageous novel, Bergdorf Blondes, by Plum Skyes describing the life of young high-flying men and women hopping between Europe, NY, and LA, living a life of excess even as they endure marital infidelities, pettiness, jealousy, and backstabbing behind their shroud of wealth. (Review in next issue.)

Soon after enjoying reading Bergdorf Blondes for its hilarity, in the week of May 22 and later, I read in The New York Times the riveting multipart series published under the general title “Class Matters.”

This very serious series on which the Times reporters worked for over a year, discusses among other things:

1) How the American sociocultural landscape is transformed in the last 25 years by the ever-widening disparities in wages, incomes and access to resources between the top 2% of the population with wealth and the bottom 30% of the population struggling to make ends meet,

2) How the falling purchasing power of dollar and stagnant income levels of the working class  have seriously affected  typical families (couple + 2 kids) living below the median income (~$42,000 per year) but above the Poverty Line (~$15,000 per year), and

3) How it is becoming impossible for new immigrants taking up the lowest paying jobs to climb out of poverty.

The contrast between the two stood in stark relief.

The series discuses the accelerating costs of health care, college education, and housing, leading to more and more people getting marginalized. Forty-five million Americans out of 300 million population live without health insurance. State universities cost nearly $20,000 per year and private universities $45,000 a year for tuition and boarding. The dropout rate of average university students from low-income families is on the rise because of the high cost of education.   

The American middle-class lifestyle precariously hangs on the thread of people having jobs, which are at best nebulous given periodic convulsions in Corporate America. The salaried “haves” feel insecure even as they maintain a gloss of good life, and the have-nots feel trapped and see no way out of their misery. If this is not enough, consider these:

1. The Medicare program (which seniors depend on in their old age) is in deep trouble right now.

2. Social Security will be in trouble in the next 30 to 40 years. If Wall Street gets into this (as President Bush wants it), this safety net may end sooner, or end in a bigger disaster for the poorer, less educated individuals unfamiliar with speculative investments, particularly those who get into the market late in a rising market.  Since it is their “personal” accounts with full decision-making control, losers can not blame the government or Wall Street. We have been here before.

3.  Large corporations, left, right and center are filing for bankruptcies and  walking away from their pension and healthcare obligations to retirees. Smaller companies are sure to take their cue from their Big Bros.

4.  As it is, many national retail chains don’t offer healthcare and pension benefits to their new employees. Wal-Mart (with employees nationwide over 1 million) pays its employees $19,000/year on the average, forcing them to seek support from food stamps and government subsidized medical care. Since these are tax-payer-funded, even those who don’t buy at Wal-Mart, are indirectly subsidizing Wal-Mart!

The AFL-CIO reports*  that “Fewer than half of Wal-Mart workers are insured under the company plan — just 46%, while 66% of workers at large private firms are insured under their companies’ plans. Wal-Mart’s workers also pay an exceptionally large proportion (42%) of what it costs the company to buy the insurance. The typical employee at large companies pays 16% to 25% percent of total health plan premiums.

So in the next twenty to forty years, more and more lower-income seniors in their last few years will be depending on their children not only for emotional support, but also economic support, like in India and China. This will further cut into the disposable resources of young parents in the American middle- and lower middle class families. 

We are already becoming a economically polarized society, much like feudal societies of Europe and Asia, with ever-decreasing opportunities for upward mobility for those born into economic and social disadvantages, whether white, black, brown, or yellow.

Given this reality, eternal optimists want us to believe that economic Darwinism is still the solution and the forces of Free Market will eventually take over and level the field.

This optimism is unrealistic. At some point, the federal government, even when Republican ideologues occupy the White House and control the Congress and the federal judiciary, will be forced to provide for increased socioeconomic mobility for the socioeconomically disadvantaged through subsidized education, healthcare, and opportunities for youngsters to acquire marketable skills.

Politicians will do it not because it is the conscionable and right thing to do. As Gov. Ed Rendell said recently in a lecture at Pitt, governments [and other man-made establishments including religious institutions] rarely respond to moral imperatives. They will respond only because gross inequities are the breeding ground for much bigger problems such as social upheavals.

* (http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/pr10212003.cfm)  — END

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