A photograph of a tiger with her young adolescent cubs doing the I-love-you-Ma-when-do-we-eat-full-body-leg-rub thing; evocative and all but the tag line, which included the words unbreakable bond, got me thinking.

First though, that unbreakable bond thing? Yeah, well, not so much. Maternal bonds, especially in the more predatory specie, tend to weaken, if not actually dissolve, as the cub matures; gender, mating rights, threat perception, hunting range and rights, sorts of issues help in that dissolution process. We humans, (and I use the term loosely given the amount of sapience we display in the stewardship of our lives), have sublimated those ‘animal’ tendencies according to our cultural norms. There is not, however, a parent(sane) alive who has not emitted a soul sigh of relief at the adulthood of an offspring and the ensuing easing of parental R word, responsibility; bond weakened, boom.

None of which is to detract from the photograph; nor the resonances with the I-miss-my-slightly-less-predatory-mom places in my soul. As a work of art, it did its job and touched me. The tag line, however, was a touch painting the lily and gilding gold-ish. Not, as the Seinfeld Krew might be tempted to say, that there is anything wrong with that. I also understand, I think, the need of the writer of that tag line to hug his/her mom and ask her if dinner was ready, expressed in the only means available. Hell, I might have done the same on a different day.

With an assurance of apologies for inadvertent offense and disrespect and having, one hopes, soothed the sensibilities of the author of the tag line - over statement, emotional need, wtf am I complaining about?

See, the overstatement of an emotional need, is, as even a cursory glance at the history of governance will show, a method of communication between, no, actually, from, the ruler to the ruled. It is, after all, an efficient way to recruit the great unwashed and unsophisticated into the  cannon fodder needed to man the front lines while the heavy thinking is happening in  ivory towers. Bonds cemented by emotion are not susceptible to reason. One of the reasons why Religion got into the business of governance and that, as we can all see, has worked out so well. Reason is a necessary component in the governance of a putative democracy.And when we, as more washed, although not necessarily more sophisticated, society accept that overstatement as the lingua franca, well, Trump, RSS, Daesh, Nazis, militant Buddhists(!) et.al, happen. Accepting florid displays of emotional need into the patterns of political, which is to say public, speech is handing the reins of democracy over to those who eschew the sense in the words unbreakable bonds in favour of the emotion triggered and generally leads to snarling, and lunging, and blood, and pain; a real possibility in the life cycle of the pictured trio.

NLP is a thing folks, like it or not.

Irritated& Shamed Indian

A question raised on Quora



What are the most irritating and shameful things in India?

I stand shamed when I'm reminded that the inclusive, open hearted philosophy of hinduism is institutionalized into the exclusionary rule ridden Religion of Hinduism replete with uniforms and hierarchies. That just ain't right.
I hang my head when a culture and philosophy that spawned Gandhi finds it so easy to justify killing in the name of Religion.
My skin crawls when a culture that Officially venerates Woman, finds it difficult to codify and control institutionalized violence against women. Do the khap panchayat rulings ring a bell? So very Talibanesque of them, no? But, please, don't tell 'em I said that. (see #2) And yes, Khap Panchayats are as much a religion, rituals, rules, repression, and all, as any of the other Official ones.
Shamed, I am, when jingoism and its fellow traveler racism is being woven into the fabric of the nation; when the Other is demonized and when politically necessary, reviled.
I cringe when I see unimaginable amounts of money are spent on monuments and temples to Mammon, while children go unfed, unclothed, uneducated, uncared for.
I get most irritated that India, YoMo'In (young modern India), aam admi, good (for a given value) people, accept this as the way things, in all their lal-bathied, self promoting VVIP (uppercase by decree)ways are. I shouldn't have said most, 'cuz, I get even more irritated that you, YoMo'In, with your abysmal voting percentages, allow this to happen.
Oh, and the incessant honking is maddening.

Yo'Mo'In & rss vO - Young Modern India &Returned Son of the Soil, version Old and cotton mouth.

Young Modern India (Yo’Mo’In) paused in mid-saunter. No point in wasting a good saunter, a considered saunter, when the place was empty. Well, not empty, per, as it is said, se. There was a returned son of the soil, version Old, (rss vO) in earnest converse with an attentive bartender. Loathe to draw attention to himself, Yo’Mo’In scanned the bar for any other server capable of helping alleviate what was turning into an epic case of cotton mouth. Experience, that bitter, not to mention censorious, teacher, had taught Yo’Mo’In that the rss vO breed needed to be engaged, if at all, with caution, garrulous opining being only one of the dangers, most particularly when one is baked.

The place was empty in the sense that there was nobody from Yo’Mo’In’s demographic, which is to say, employed, disposable income and not living with Ma and Pa. Nobody, in a word, worthwhile.

One of the hazards of arriving too early to the party; lesson learned.

Yo’Mo’In, shrugged, and striding rather more purposefully, stationed himself a few barstools away from the duo. The bartender didn’t notice, his face turned away from Yo’Mo’In, his attention concentrated on what seemed to be a detailed, not to say persnickety, instruction on the architecture of the drink rss vO was ordering.

“Boss” said Yo’Mo’In, his tone a well considered mixture of authority, courtesy, and impatience; a tone well schooled in the methodology of reminding the serving classes of their place in the scheme of things.

Rss(vO) stopped in his instruction and gestured the bartender into complying.

“Whiskey, ‘fiddich, large, no ice, iced soda chaser “said Yo’Mo’In, his speech clipped and precise.

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t get you” the bartender said, the ‘my bad’ etched into the silhouette of his servitude.

Yo’Mo’In took a deep breath, the Thar desert like condition of his mouth making it difficult to talk.

“I believe the gentleman would like a large Glenfiddich with iced soda on the side.” Rss said.

A crisp head bob and the bartender transformed from obsequious to efficient; the efficiency somewhat compromised by his inability to find the Glenfiddich.

Yo’Mo’In sighed and switching to the vernacular and pointed.

“Alli” he said, “ah red label batli pakka dalli” – There, right next to the bottle with the red label.

Speech, authoritative speech, Yo’Mo’In realized, required a fair degree of moisture, very much in short supply in the mouth. His mouth needed moisture, as in, now. Perhaps he should have led with a request for a glass of water.

The bartender interrupted his hunt for the Glenfiddich and started looking for a red label which, it must be said, is easier to pronounce, and spell. Things were not going well. Any red labels extant seemed to be hidden in the multi-hued, seductively shaped bottles of high end spirits management had seen fit to store on the topmost shelf. The bartender wished he could ease the crick he was starting to get in his neck.

Yo’Mo’In wished he hadn’t thought about water, a glass of which was visible to his peripheral vision; just sitting there, unattended, unconsidered, a slap in the faces of all gods of all oases everywhere, beads of condensation making their sensuous ways done the glass, ice cubes that would no doubt tinkle when the glass was raised, as it should be, not just left there, while a veritable sirocco of sand storm...

The glass was moving closer to Yo’Mo’In and it took a moment for him to realise that rss vO was sliding it towards him.

“Water” rss vO was saying, “soaks that cotton up to much greater effect than does scotch or any other alcohol for that matter. Trust me on this”

 I knew it, Yo’Mo’In thought, trying not to spill any of water as he raised the glass, garrulous opinions.

Sex in India

Being a sexually active, (for a given value of active), male of reasonable stamina and density,  7 decades of experience, is, it pains me to say, a bit on the meh side of the ledger. That is to say, satisfying but in a been-there done-that, job done, pass me the towel please, sort of way. Pleasant enough, but...

See, here’s the thing, most of the aforementioned 7 decades of life have been spent outside of India, (my present domicile), in more socially uninhibited Hendrixian environs. Environs that allowed for non-judgmental honesty in which likes and dislikes could be explored, or at the least considered, especially if there was any sort of nice-nice bumping going on. Rather more rule oriented, India seems to be.

Scholarly caution forces me to add that the data (India) gathered for this study were limited to my age demographic, er, spread, to include a cross section of the class and economic mass. Any attempts to broaden the age data base have been met with polite and insultingly judgmental disbelief. However, hope, among other things, quite often involuntarily, springs.

But, I digress. And it might happen again, given the philosophical nebulosity that characterizes meh and attempts to quantify it. Pity, but what to do? It is like that only.

Anyway, as I started to say, my explorations have led to some conclusions, which, I hasten to add, are subject to modification and if necessary, and I’m afraid it probably will be, physical proof of assertions and contradictions.

                Conclusion 1 – First time sex requires an appropriate amount of sidle and when it happens must appear almost accidental. The direct approach, irrespective of reciprocity of interest, will be met with affront and a fair degree of thoo in the body language.

                There are, I’m sure, a myriad reasons, just as I am sure that they all boil down to the notion that post menopausal women ought not to get horny unless, of course, they are those kinds of women, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Ooopsie, word count limit,  TBC, I guess...

question Quora.com - Do we Indians take offence too easily?

Arwn - "Hmm let's see now...how do I answer this without giving offense?"
Interlocutor - "Isn't that, in itself an answer?"
A - "You know, I'm slightly offended that you can be so easily satisfied with that facile a response to that large an issue, an issue that is getting in the way of consensus which is..."
I - "Okay, alright, what's the long, (I'm probably going to regret that word), version."
A - "Well, since you asked, First..."
I - "Merciful Heavens."
A - "Complex questions require..."
I - "I give."
A - "First. We have to deal with the issue of the rather judgemental 'too easily'. It would be fair to ask, how much is just enough offense? And who decides the limits? And can we be sure that the limits mandated are not crossing anyone's differently defined limits? As you can see, not one of those lends itself to facility of response. Embedded in them is a workable definition of 'offense'. One man, woman's offense may well be another's ritual. For example, there are folks, to include myself, who find the sound of electronically enhanced, megawatt speakered, protestations of piety, as is practiced by more than one religion, to be intrusive and not a little offensive. However to say so would instantly hurt the feelings of the speakers and listeners of those modes of faith. And hurt feelings seem to be justification enough for violence and hurt bodies. Then there's...
I - "Okay, point made, but, even long answers have conclusions. Could we skip to that now? I've got a bus to catch."
A - "What all of that suggests to me is that the question is not one of graduated hurt feelings as much as it is about what one does about those feelings. It seems to me that hate speech ought to be as protected as its corollary the sermonized moralities that pass for religious instruction, with, the important codicil that the speaker is then responsible for the actions and attitudes that are a result 0f that speech. Liability laws come to mind. It should be noted the issue is not limited to India. It seems that anywhere, and any when, religion enters into the social milieu, feelings get pinned to shirt sleeves and thus are susceptible to the rough and tumble jostle of the crowded path ways of Belief and Faith, (n.b. please, upper case).
I - "Check please."

Expat Opinions

Here’s the irritating thing about being a son of the soil expat… that probably requires some sort of clarification, doesn’t it?

Okay – Son of the Soil = born and spent early childhood Here, India, then whisked off to There, USA. Five plus decades, and one citizenship change later, back, semi-voluntarily, to Here; which, now that I think about it, makes me an expatriate squared [xp²], with all of its horrifying implications.

However...

This is about irritation; the expat irritation, the itch, deep in one’s soul, when one has to adhere to Guest Conduct, Rules of; the ones that constrain opinions that might not be in concert with prevailing cultural trends. Such as, to take a completely random, (honest), example, there is this business of the rising tide of religiosity in the public weal. There are folks, good folks, who think that this is a good thing. Folks who, should I suggest otherwise, take umbrage, quite often in an emphatic and loud manner, and suggest, in no uncertain terms, that I ought to keep my videshi, that is to say foreign, opinions to my traitorous self. [Full disclosure – usually when I’m winning the, uh, discussion.] Admittedly, I’d be a lot less itchy if I was to limit my political and/or cultural opinions to generalities; oh you know, things like the universally accepted perfidy of politicians and how things were much better, culturally, back when… etc.

But, the irreducible fact of the matter is that culture, and the politics of that culture, have very little, actually, nothing, to do with national boundaries and visa status. Folks, to paraphrase an ad of yore, is folks. Where folks are from, what they look like, the time zone they live in, have as a commonality, a to-the-bone, written-in-the-gene, as-God-is-my-witness commonality, the human condition. Politics, Culture, and religion are artefacts of that condition. Artefacts re the, as some social scientists will have it, the extelligence, the external manifestations of a particular collective of humans and their conditions. I don’t see what visa status has to do with having the right to comment on the idi…irra…inadvisability of a social current that has proven to be harmful, historically and even as we speak. This seems to be particularly so in the case of Religion and its body functions, the extelligence of Holy Places [public conditionally invited], mass gatherings of piety, governance based on Holy Writings notwithstanding.

I rarely get to make that point. It is generally more prudent to move a few, or more, stools down the bar.

Religion in Governance

Religion and faith based governance, in a democracy, wow.

I don’t know why the oxymoronic quality of that doesn’t strike more folks, especially to the folks who vote saffron, skull cap, cross, what have you.

No, that’s not true, I do know why. They just haven’t thought about it. They cannot have. No thoughtful examination of the concept will fail to point to the contradiction of including “… because HE/SHE/IT says so” in a, of the people, by the people, for the people, system of the governance. Religion, as far as I can see, doesn’t allow for a whole lot of yeah-but-we’ve-been-thinking from their congregations. Rules is rules, they thunder, (hey, religion doesn’t have to be grammatical, or even coherent, come to that), from pulpits. It is not for you, you imperfect worm, they continue, to question the Word. Yours is to do or die. And we, the anointed voices of HE/SHE/IT, will tell you what to do, when to do it, and more often than not, how to do it, and no back-talk.

And there you have it.

Back-talk is exactly what makes a democracy, well, democratic. Back-talk, adversarial points of view, out-of-the-box thinking, and yes, even fringe opinions, are all part of the mix in the governance of as varied a lot of beings as we citizens; our individual self interests, corners rounded off by the compromises necessary for the existence of a collective well being, subsumed into the greater good, each of those corners discussed, deliberated, and only then fit into the whole.  Arguing with the power structure is what democracy is all about. Not a lot of that in the practice of religion which is given to edicts, commandments, and holy writ, a top down theory of governance. Which puts paid to any impulse to check with the People to see what they think about, oh, let’s say, killing in the name of the God-whose-Voice-is-all-Terrible. Nope, no consultation, no focus groups, no referenda, and most certainly, no back talk.

 That this, faith based governance, is happening here in India, home of lower case hinduism, the philosophy, is particularly galling. Saffron clad satraps have bullied their way into the halls of governance. It should be noted here that Saffron has become the battle color for upper case Hinduism, now an Official Religion, replete with rules, regulations, and intolerant righteousness. Pontificating from their tax exempt pulpits the Saffron Sages (SS) have been able to parlay their quite often irrational interpretations of the tenets of hinduism(lc) into the right and the power to impose on the rest of us their version of a pure State. Beef, they orate, and the eating of the same is antithetical to the dictates of Our One True God(s) and any Hindu who thinks otherwise is apostate. One such SS politician has gone on record as saying that cattle abattoirs are the source of Islamic Jihadists funding. Or so she believes and the fact that she is wearing Saffron when she goes to the office, well, that says it all, doesn’t it?  

I have no idea on how to deal with any of this. Religion and Faith have taken the place of rational discourse, world over. And all i can think to do is ... Holy Smoke.

What an idea, sirji.

reasonable questions

I’m thinking that India needs more lawyers, trial lawyers, to report the news. They know how to ask uncomfortable questions and insist on an answer.

Take the episode of the Party in Power (PiP) politician who took physical umbrage at the quality of the food he was getting at subsidized prices. In a shocking display of the way he was raised, the gentleman (by statute) attempted to force feed the protesting server tasked with the responsibility of dealing with unhappy diners. This after having publicly, on camera, decried the food stuff as being unfit for man or beast. A representative of the people, sworn to uphold the rights and the dignity of his constituents, used physical force to augment his opinion. Captured on tape, that example of the arrogance of power ruled the news channels. Points of view were sought; spokespersons of every political color voiced, shouted, their opinions, often simultaneously. The political satrap was asked to explain his behavior. He claimed innocence and purity of motive. Much valuable air time was spent exploring the communal – read, racist – over and undertones of his motives and actions. Emotions ruled the hour. Justifications, denials,  equivocations, spin, had the air-waves humming.  Eventually, of course, everyone went home to bed, strangely satisfied, ideological underpinnings undamaged, and the salient point unexplored; do we or do we not believe that all men are equal with rights and dignities on par with any in the land?

Me? I’m still wondering how a democratically elected person thought that it permissible to invade the personal space of a fellow, theoretically anyway, citizen without that citizen’s approval and consent. As far as I know that is the law, in any democratic system. As far as I know unwanted touch is actionable and the perpetrator can be brought to book and reparation. I know for a fact that in the US that unfortunate episode was, is, a fat payday for the target of the Misuse of Power by an elected official with a dash of Threat and Physical Intimidation as icing. Official arrogance can be quite expensive.

I kept waiting for someone to… no, wait, there were voices, lawyer type voices that did try to make that point, but were drowned about by the more emotive issues. They, the lawyer type voices, poor souls, were probably more used to the civilized methods of argument used in trial. Just as much invective, bile, and emotional ugliness, but one that insists that a question be answered and the holes in the response explained. Reason is sought, with emotion and motive mere garnish.

A trial lawyer reporter would have made that his/her first avenue of enquiry. The whole roza, communal fandango would have been recognized as the distraction that it is.

There is the ignoble part of me that envies the youth in India. More particularly the youth in Bengalooru. They are living in a world that I thought Iwould never see again and they are living it brimming with the youthful energies that I once had. In the words of the song, it smells like teen spirit all up in here.
A heady scent, that. It is one that I and my generation, encountered, experienced, infused into ourselves, better than half a century ago. And in so doing changed the course of human social history. I believe for the better. The Youth of B’loor (Yo...) – no wait, that’s an unfortunate acronym – Youth in B’loor (YiB), stand on the threshold of doing the same.
There is that dusky undertone of Travel, Adventure, New Experiences, and Unpredictable Delights that happen when strangers start living next door to each other. In B’loor that happens because of all the cities in India, B’loor ranks among the newer ones. India’s older cities, the large ancient ones, grew over the centuries. With their various sectarian and ethnic agglutinations domiciled in enclaves of sameness, those older cities perpetuated, and still do (to one degree or another), the mildly xenophobic attitudes of the rural and traditional backgrounds of the denizens. B’loor, on the other hand, exploded into city-dom. Young Information Technology worker bees swarmed B’loor from all parts of India, bringing with them bits and pieces of their ‘native’. Without Mom, Dad, and the parivar looking over their shoulders these youngsters, Youngistan, to give them their generational label started mingling. The huge advantage to mingling is that in its Brownian motion it knocks of those edges that don’t fit, leaving a well rounded organism that merges into the larger whole of Modern India, or MoIn, as I prefer. (Get it? I did, it is a close relative of a pun). Next thing you know, and to quote Bobby Darin, you’ve got 2 butterflies, casting their eyes, both in the same direction with the resulting butterfly collection. That’s what happens when you’ve got young singles living in close proximity to each other. In MoIn, in B’loor, it is getting increasingly difficult for the ‘native’ to be identified by physical feature. Ask the children of the YiBs for their ‘native’ and you’ll get as confusing an answer as you would from any USian of my generation.
“Let’s see now. We started out in Syracuse, and then moved to McHenry, but I went to school in Iowa, California, Montana, New York, spending considerable amount of time in Amsterdam and Haight Ashbury.”
Except, of course, the names will be Indian. The music, the laughter, the love, the heady scent of The Possible, will have a B’loor accent.
World peace may not be that far away.