A STORY OF BIRTHDAY BASH

A Story of Birthday Bash (Meta-fiction)

By Remigius de Souza

THERE IS AN INCREASING TREND of celebrating birthdays of children at junior schools and at homes, particularly in cities. This, of course, is presently prevalent among the elite class and English-medium convents/missionary and other schools. It is almost an unavoidable ritual.

It was perhaps started at missionary schools imported from abroad or perhaps from Hollywood-Bollywood-Tellywood. It is now customary. Even it is followed for the grownups.

My parents and we the children, coming from peasant families, were spared from this custom. We never celebrated anyone’s birthday then, or none in our native village. None suffered Identity Crisis. Now it is initiated at age one year. I fail to understand its logic.

Identity Crisis

Perhaps it helps to build-up one’s image, individuality, personality, identity or ego? It may be one of the instruments to prepare a child for the forthcoming judgements and comparison in her/his every walk of life.

Perhaps it gives an opportunity for the elders for celebration in otherwise fragmented / mass society; a sense of identity. Children are fully involved in learning — reading books and writing copybooks: talk-talk, read-talk, write-talk, copy-talk, and perhaps once in while think-talk.

They are hardly exposed to learn any other life-supporting skills for self-sustenance until they are adults, or even middle aged. That’s in the elite class.

Particularly in the recent times, the birthday bash must have come handy to bribe the generation of the unwanted, those born after the world-wide family planning campaign. It perhaps also helps to cover up the guilt of adding to the world population. Is it a consolation?

It comes as an easy package to assure the children, who have lost social contact in the stress and strain of urban life. Besides they are also spared from all other possible manual work and skills as a promise of better life by their ambitious parents.

The children, as they grow up, would capitalise on their talk-talk skills acquired at the successive classrooms. More the talk-talk skills acquired at successive stages — school/college/university — better is the income? No wonder the planning, expertise and equity at social levels are in shambles, not only in India but all over the world.

We have heard, the wealthy sometimes celebrated their birthday at sixty by ‘Tula” —  weighing gold or silver or eatables such as ‘Laddus’ equal of their body weight and distribute it among the well-wishers and their subjects.

Proverbially, the age sixty also marks a beginning of second childhood, or the beginning of fading ‘Buddhi’ – intellect/intelligence, or the drooping learning curve.

For centuries we have been celebrating Krishnashtami, Buddha Jayanti, Mahavir Jayanti, Isu Jayanti (Christmas) and others, Jayanti means victory day. They are the great souls. Their “Think-Act-Talk” is synchronised.

Then recently came state-sponsored birthdays: Gandhi Jayanti, Children’s Day, Teachers’ Day, and Ambedkar Jayanti etc. usually in the form of public holidays.

The role of the Government and/or Market

In our Nation, the Agency started campaigns, such as 'HUM DO, HAMARE DO' – We two, ours two. Thanks to the Managers of people's welfare could not reach the masses – royt – in our magnificent cultural diversity, as usual. The slogan failed, like our Public Distribution System (PDS) of Essential Commodities.

Omnipotent Omnipresent Market now supplies Event Managers for every occasion from birth to the final destination (undertaker!). Of course if you are ready to splurge!

Recently I saw Bollywood’s Big B's Birthday Bash on the KBC episode on a TV channel! Very sexy! Amazing feat! A trendsetter!

Who am I?

For me the birthday is very important date. Over the years I have been filling-up hundreds of form, which are mandatory, issued by several establishments.

Sometimes I have to prove even ‘who I am’ by showing an identity card with my photograph issued by another establishment. That’s in real life.
“Who am I?” has been the eternal question before man; but that’s for the philosophers to bother.

A child feels elated – a king for the day. We continue to blow up the candles ten, twenty sixty… times to be forgotten. It is a make-believe world.

Remigius de Souza
04-11-2002 (updated: 01-11-2012)
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Entertainment Explosion 2

24x7 Entertainment Explosion - 2

by Remigius de Souza 

MOSTPEOPLE* would say, ‘music is their hobby’, which may not mean they play musical instrument or sing. Invariably they hear music on some or other electronic gadget. Forty years ago, there took place a ‘great’ event, but it was not reported in the media, didn’t pull a crowd.

A young music lover Mr. Khadpekar, a student of architecture, invited Pundit Kumar Gandharva to perform solo concert at Ahmadabad. Punditji’s immediate reaction was, ‘No Ahmadabad. The crowd there appreciates music by thunderous clapping during the recital.’ However, after the explanation he readily agreed.

A small group, perhaps less than fifty, some of them from Baroda (now Vadodara), came to attend the concert. The event took place on an open platform at the premises of the Ahmedabad School of Architecture.

Punditji requested to shut the mike and the (loud) speakers. Seeing the uneasiness among his listeners he assured it was perfectly alright for him, and that they would enjoy it better. They were worried because they knew that one of his lungs was removed, and it would be strenuous for him without the ‘sound’ system.

Now it was direct contact between the singer and the listeners, mouth to ears. It was a unique experience, mostly available to private “baithak” – gatherings.

During his recuperating years he was forbidden even to sing. During that period he moved across Malava, Madhya Pradesh, listening and collecting folk songs. He was touched by the simple folks and their traditional music of Malava. He had turned the disadvantage into an opportunity. And a new Indian classical music emerged.

Punditji was generous, open and accessible, a teacher in true sense who could learn even from the humble folks. Indian classical music too was touched by the inimitable maestro. I personally was touched by him and the event that left a deep lasting impression on me.

FEW DECADES LATER, I was at a party hosted by a friend while in Bangalore. Typically there was music on an electronic gadget. At some point I said it is not music but only its replica that dissipates energy. Shankar Kanade protested. I said, ‘This is only a reproduction, which has lost its original quality, howsoever advance a gadget or technology may be.’

Though I did not remember the above event, I perhaps was prompted to say this by my subconscious. Such reproduction or representation is a virtual reality. It is just as a word ‘tree’ or a picture of a tree is not a reality. It may perhaps help someone to recall, depending on one’s perception of the ‘real’ sound, the ‘real’ event, the ‘real’ environment where it takes place; otherwise it is an object without soul – a mere technology.

In his later years Punditji had taken to teaching ‘Bhajan’ when he was acutely aware that his pupils were not getting to the meaning of the words they sang and thus singing remain as technology – a skill.

Punditji is no more. The cassette tapes of his music attached with copyright as well as the cassette players that played his music have gone to dumping yards. However Punditji’s monumental tribute to Malava’s folk songs continues to reverberate in the ears; it’s universal beyond global.

In the name of music we patronise ‘leisure industry’ (the term is an oxymoron) at a price. For that matter work – any work – comes at a price. If there are no singers, why not listen to the air, water, plants, birds… children, if there is little ‘nature’ still left in our environment? Why not dance to its tunes?

Leisure, opposite to work, is absolutely free, anywhere, to anyone irrespective of one’s status.

The millions of folks – the tribal and peasants – enjoy leisure actively, not by passive activity of watching Virtual Reality on electronic gadgets, all over India. They practice it not only during festivities but also during their daily chores.

On account of leisure the Industrial Civilisation is bankrupt and pauper.

Leisure conserves /restores energy: Leisure arrests entropy.

See previous post:
24x7 Entertainment Explosions

CRICKETFRENZY IN INDIA-- A page from dairy 2003

Note: The word, 'mostpeople', was used by poet E E Comings in Introduction to his collection of poems.
Remigius de Souza | 25-05-2007
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© Remigius de Souza, 2007

Mission Impossible!!

Remigius de Souza writes:

Things don’t happen by their own accord.
However we often tend to make this statement: “It happened.”
By our apathy or empathy, we too are the part to make the things, which we presume “they happen”.
But logic – rationale is a double edged weapon. Hence we don’t use it till it reaches its inevitable end. We leave it on its way once we reach a conclusion which seems convenient for us: “Things happen”, we say.
Because, by and by, the other edge of the weapon starts hurting us too; we give up logic.

I watch a Hollywood / Bollywood movie that shows cheap love in plenty and violence – mass destruction in plenty, either by design or default. It is produced at a heavy monetary cost ? a mass destruction of the Earth’s resources, which are actually the privilege of all the living beings of the Earth. The movies are destroying the resources by burning the currencies available (or borrowed) at hand. There are produced in hundreds for mass consumption to provide cheap and passive entertainment, hardly for any creative ends, except to make profit (losses). I resent it, yet continue to watch them.

I don’t look at my logic squarely, because it is about to show my cheap desire to buy most uneconomical but most degraded form of entertainment, even at personal cost of my physical, mental and economic resources. It’s only because I have currency (hard-earned or borrowed) at my hand. I don’t want to look for other creative options of healthy leisure! Mission Impossible!!
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Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
(17-08-2009)




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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

FLOWERS FOREVER

My pathway along the flower bazaar
is hiding its face in utter shame
under the carpet of discarded
faded yesterday’s flowers rising
a stinking aroma as the sun rises up.
They have no salvation and no way
of reaching ever the mother earth
to sustain life eternal, the destiny
denied by the high profile culture
in this flourishing metropolis.


Dirty soil is buried under the tar
layer – no way for a drop of water
to reach thirsty streams below –
as the sun comes up oozes vapour
in the golden city ruled by high culture.
Beside the flower-bazaar lays flesh-bazaar
flourishing spreading its infectious cult
on the high ways and in by-lanes
to other bazaars of hedonic tastes.
A plucked flower here is eye’s pleasure.


Flowers and flesh are graded and priced
from expensive orchid to cheap minor ones
according to affordability in fairness.
Calling the call-girls as sex workers
to honour the labour, the socially awakened
class absolves itself of cultural taboos
and makes way for them to the altar
of progressive newfangled civilisation.
Flowers are offered here to the idols –
the gods or leaders – among the moderns.


The orthodox tribes offer in worship
flowers with grasses ? gains ? leaves ? fruits;
their women who adorn vermilion and
the maidens aspiring for marriage wear
flowers on the heads, celebrate fertility.
Flower is sex, sexual communion in nature
love and romance, fertility and abundance
for all living beings, a healer,
a selfless sacrifice in unison in nature.



27/11/2002
(Flower Bazaar at Dadar, Mumbai is a landmark place. Though officially it is shifted to a new place about half a kilometre away, the place is still being used as a flower bazaar by hundreds of vendors who make their living sustainable. Read more in a following post.)

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

The Slumdog Millionaire Laugh (Review)

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The Slumdog Millionaire Laugh (Review)

Entertainment 24x7 is Opium of Industrialism

After so much of hullabaloo on media I decide to write on the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”, which I had ignored so far, to pamper my ego. First, let me quote Coomarswamy:

“Modern pragmatism, of course, deals with the bastard truth of facts, according to which, we expect (though we do not know) that the sun will rise tomorrow, and act accordingly: Hence, also, the modern concept of art as a merely aesthetic experience”, (Anand Coomarswamy, “Time and Eternity”, Select Books, Bangalore, 1989, p 5).

The award winners of “Slumdog Millionaire”, and media were laughing at the awards collected by the movie. They were laughing at the grim reality not only of the slums in Mumbai and cities and towns all over India but also at the precariously grim reality of 900 million people of India’s agrarian society.

Capitalist society continues to capitalize on anything and everything available; the buzzword these days is Poverty. It capitalizes even on its condemnation by anyone – an individual or a group – that may condemn and criticise its systems, dogmas and society; it would bestow awards and titles upon them, (see for example, Nobel Awards and/or alternatives to Nobel Awards in the recent past), which, of course, do no make even a dent.

Or, for that matter, the gender exploitation and the feminist protests, both, flourish side by side, through multimedia, cyberspace and in real life in the capitalist societies, besides racism.

Poverty is a by-product

Poverty, in the contemporary times, is a by-product of Industrial Revolution, inflicted by the capitalist society. Poverty has reached to a shameful dehumanized state to a global scale.

If the modern lifestyle cannot spare the natural environment from degradation, how could market economy / free market / globalization spare the disadvantaged across the world not to reach global poverty?

It is not only the global cities, but also the industrial capitalist societies (the western and westernised) have their footprint on the regions far beyond their sovereign state boundaries, from the North Pole to the South Pole, from East to West. Wherever they place their foot they leave the people of other cultures and other societies in utter poverty (just as it is said, “Wherever civilisation puts it foot it leaves desert behind”).

And the slums, not only in Mumbai, but in other cities and towns across India, are the by-product of the industrial capitalist society – the First World India – initiated by the past colonial masters, and followed by the development obsessed governments in India with their misplaced priorities for the past sixty years.

Indeed, if we should be ashamed of, it is not the “slumdogs” or the “underdogs”, but our democratic government, therefore, ourselves, we who staunchly believe in the First World India (of minority), or which we call the mainstream society of India!

Inspiration behind the plot

A fiction writer can map, manipulate and design acrobatics with characters and events for the purpose of entertainment, just as the stunts in the Hollywood / Bollywood movies. The book, “Q&A”, on which the movie is based, is one of them, authored by a bureaucrat (what more can one expects from a bureaucrat, though there are few exceptions)? Its questions and answers are inspired by “Kaun Banega Crorepati”(KBC) – who wants to be millionaire – TV serial programme. Hence, movie too is a typical vulgar farce and far-fetched.

Though it is said to be produced on a shoe string budget (by Western standards) is politically, economically and socially irrelevant and least creative: It does not do any justice to the people.

At last, a British Sahib reached Mumbai, slyly, to showcase the slums and poverty in India, which was initiated by the Empire. The movie has ploughed back its investment many more times not only awards.

Peasants are the Lifeline

“Kaun Banega Crorepati” (KBC), of course, was typically imitated or adopted from its western origin, like many development projects in India. KBC and other similar avatars that appeared on Tellywood channels, which have been epitome of vulgarity, had no relevance other than glamour, passive entertainment and profiteering: It squandered money, which go in to smoke, laugh at 900 million people of agrarian society- the real Third World in India.

The peasants are the lifeline of India, not hundreds of movies produced at Bollywood, and such programmes as KBC on Tellywood, or cricket…! “KBC”, “Jai Ho”, “Chak De India”, Dhan Shanaa Dhan Dhan”, “Mera Bharat Mahan”, “Pro-Poor”, “Garibi Hatao”… and such slogans and promises are not going to make any dent on the sordid condition of the slum dwellers and peasants.

Exodus of Peasants to Cities

In Mumbai alone there live more than 50% people in the slums. They have been self-supporting and self-reliant, though often accused as illegal occupants. Just as Mumbai’s footprint goes far and wide (Mumbai that lives the life of hydroponics) so are the affected, displace and marginalized people flock to Mumbai in search work to earn livelihood with dignity. They hardly dream of being millionaire.

They built Mumbai

The major workforce of skilled, semiskilled and unskilled building workers lives in these slums. They have built Mumbai. The government i.e. legislators and bureaucrats, experts and policymakers hardly know this fact, or perhaps ignore it. Slum dwellers of Dharavi and anywhere else are capable of rebuilding and developing these on their own in far more decent and economical way for sustainable living.

Corrective Measures is the Need of the Hour

Intelligence and creativity are not the prerogative of the elite alone. But the power lobby, greedy of profit, would stifle them with legal instruments, either in countryside or in cities.

They don’t need handmaidens of capitalist society help them to plan, design and build their homes and homestead. What is urgently needed is that the Democracy in India must restore their autonomy by providing proper tools.

Some Statistics

1. The United Nations World Food Programme says that the largest concentration of hunger in the world is in India: 230 million or 27% of the world total (see: M. J. Akbar, THE SIEGE WITHIN, Times of India Mumbai, Mar 1, 2009, p. 16)

2. “Wanted: property developer for Mumbai slum

The Indian government has invited developers from around the world to submit plans for the regeneration of a slum in Mumbai, home to Asia’s largest population of slum dwellers… …Nationwide India is facing a slum crisis as more people lock to the cities in search of work. The latest census data reveal that the number of people inhibiting India’s slums more than doubled between 1981 and 2001, rising from 27.9 million to 61.8 million”, (Geographical, Royal Geographical Society, UK, August 2007, Volume 79, No. 8, p.8).

WHEN SHALL NIGHT OF GLOBAL MELTDOWN SHALL END AND THE SUN OF FINANCIAL BOOM WILL RISE TOMORROW?

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

IPL’s Bollywood Cricket

IPL’s Bollywood Cricket

by Remigius de Souza


CINEMA and TV among other options is a powerful media. Bollywood, here, in particular, is quite influential in the areas of personal attire – hairstyle, costumes and gestures – to house decoration by the masses. It has gone further to produce Bollywood politics, Bollywood planning, Bollywood architecture, Bollywood landscape design etc. at local, regional and national levels. No. we are not talking about the Bollywood stars – heroes and hoaxes – in the legislature.

IPL is a similar idea religiously copied in the sports i.e. cricket, from Bollywood extravaganza by the brilliant brains in Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Just as Bollywood does add foreign locations in their films, so does IPL adds foreign players and half-naked cheerleaders, to blow up surplus money BCCI has earned from cricket frenzy of desi fans (as they don’t know how to use it creatively) that goes into smoke: whosoever few are profited. This is a smoke screen to hide BCCI’s failure to bring quality to its cricket game. It reminds us the recent (2008) Bollywood Budget by P. Chidambaram, our Fin-Min of India.

Any number of movies such as Chak De India, Iqbal, and Lagan etc Bollywood may produce, it is not going to change and better the play-life of 200-300 million children in cities, towns and villages that they rightfully deserve.

The children (those not reached puberty), however, are not so much interested in watching cricket on TV screen as playing it themselves. They play cricket. They make a ball out of newspaper sheets, tie it up with a thread that comes from a grocery pack, and invent their own rules of the game. They play in the corridors in the building, gullies, by-lanes, and on holidays on the streets; they don’t have enough playgrounds in their neighbourhoods: that happens in Mumbai as well as elsewhere. The children anywhere in the world invent their own games, rather than look for external aids to keep themselves excited all the time. The children anywhere in the world invent their own games. They also love to sing, dance, paint and play and to tell stories: the adults don’t. Children are not interested in passive entertainment as the urbanite do.

I have failed to convince this one point even to one person. He was undergraduate student of architecture, and I was his dissertation/ thesis guide, while I was teaching architecture. His subject was stadiums – devoutly dedicated to cricket. I suggested working on smaller sports stadiums, which could facilitate several different games, sports and athletics besides cricket. His argument was (as if he was know-all): ‘nobody is interested in other games, because there is money in cricket.’

Remigius de Souza
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Monkey business at Cricket Realty Show

Monkey business at Cricket Realty Show

By Remigius de Souza

Andrew Symonds is an Australian adivasi – aborigine, if I am correct. (I hope this is not a racist statement!) No wonder he is an all-rounder in cricket game. By his present status as a chosen cricketer he is also part of the global corporate capitalist society.

A glimpse of Australia: We have heard that Britain used to send the hardcore criminals and convicts, under life sentence, to Australia, an open country then, with adivasi – the aborigine. There was no built prison. It was similar to British India’s Kala Pani at Andaman Islands for the convicts – criminals and freedom fighters; thankfully there was a built prison. What may be the population of the descendants of those criminals now? Are they reformed after the period of time? We have heard similar Kala Pani was established by the French in Le Reunion in African continent.

Andrew Symonds’s basic aborigine instinct may not have changed, hopefully. He deserves all the respect, at least mine. The aborigine, as I know from contact with a few communities here, are upright persons with self-esteem and dignity. They don’t have the slave mentality of the colonial subjects or low class/caste people exploited for centuries by the higher ups in hierarchies.

Whosoever a player or some Tom-Dick-and-Harry from the stands at Baroda, Gujarat, among the spectators, who go for passive entertainment, may have (I’ve not heard) called him monkey is out of shear envy. We Indians have to prove ourselves above board in our individual and the collective abilities and responsibilities, not only in cricket but all fields.

Particularly Baroda’s record of collective responsibilities, after 1960s, is questionable as the city has been riot-ridden with sporadic eruptions of violence, even artists and academics are not spared. Baroda was called ‘saanskar nagari’ – a city of culture, once. Now I don’t know.

Showing Hanuman with Symonds’s face by the Australian media serves us well. Why should our sentiments get hurt! In the first place to call any human by names of animals – monkey, donkey, pigheaded, dog, vulture, cobra etc – is an insult to the animals and animal world. Chittapavan Brahmins are called cobra, at my native place, Konkan; it is an insult to cobra. Animals, from bacteria to large mammals, have integrity and sense of community.

There is Katkari tribe near Mumbai in Raigad District. They believe that they are descendants of Hanuman, Sugriva etc. in the times of Epic Ramayana. Scientific hypotheses believe that Katkari tribe migrated from south India in ancient times. Hanuman and his clan are portrayed as monkeys.

Were they monkeys? Was it a derogatory term because of their facial features were different compared to Aryans’? It is known that Aryans called the locals or the non-Aryans by names – Rakshasa (demon), Danava, Daitya, etc. – that are derogatory.

There is Bhil tribe in Gujarat and surrounding region. They do not use their thumb in archery, their traditional skill – art, game, or sport. This practice is has been going on for millennia. This is to commemorate their ancestor Ekalavya. Ekalavya had cut his right thumb and offered it to Dronacharya, a Brahmin by caste, his absentee guru, according to guru’s demand for fees. He had learnt archery by self access and surpassed Dronacharya’s pet pupil Arjuna in the skill.

Katkari or Bhil, or other tribes, such historical records come down by oral tradition or mnemonic method, from generation to generation through millennia. Even Vedic scriptures are no exception. Whatever sciences or written texts may say or authenticate.

Ironically Bhils are forbidden to carry their bow and arrows under the Arms Act, but in the name of religion Sikhs are allowed to carry a sword. Adivasis – the tribal – in Gujarat are a minority like Muslims and Christians and have to face atrocities at the hands of people or the state. Sardar Sarovar Project – The Narmada Dam – is a known example that has become a controversy regarding the rehabilitation of the displaced adivasis.

Their traditional skill of archery is being destroyed by the great democracy of India. Even the so-called development in Gujarat has ignored this skill. Forget cricket in Gujarat; it has overshadowed all other games, athletics and sports. Archery is also a spiritual icon in the eastern cultures. Indeed archery should have been a national sport of India. Unfortunately adivasis may not ever see a day when they shall participate at Olympics in archery events. Such are the hypocritical claims of development and progress in India.

We are fond of the Past and boast a lot about its glory. If we start digging the past, many skeletons will be exposed; we must be prepared to learn from it. Instead of studying anthropology of the pluralistic society of India a section of Indic society has turned to its polarisation.

It is said one of the non-Aryans, Ravana, had ten heads. Such magical forms could be imagined, painted or sculpted any time, or constructed now by computer animation. In the present turbulent times, how long shall we continue to live in virtual reality of the past, and/or by magic by technology in the present, devoid of soul? It is time to remove our blinkers of superstitions and look beyond our eyelids the real world.

While writing this, I hear the news on Channel News Asia that the Australian Prime Minister apologizes the Australian aborigines. I am happy. I revere the adivasis – the aborigine – in India – they are Indian Archetypes – so also those all over the world. Tribal – aborigines – are most precious world heritage to be saved.

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Remigius de Souza

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

24X7 ENTERTAINMENT EXPLOSIONS

24x7 ENTERTAINMENT EXPLOSIONS

by Remigius de Souza
24x7 ENTERTAINMENT EXPLOSION has reached the global dimension. Forty years ago, P S Rajan, one of the young architects in Ahmedabad, used to say, ‘in the Hell they are shown Hindi movies through 24hours’. We, then, didn’t imagine that Hollywood-Bollywood-Tellywood, and much more trash that takes place around, will be a 24x7 reality on the earth, here and now. Well, in the Hell as well as in Heaven everyone is immortal, therefore, must be thoroughly bored like people in the Industrial Civilisation.

A journalist from the US, probably from New York, I read somewhere some time ago, had said, ‘people want constant excitement’. Obviously, media has been obliged to provide it, and ‘discover’ more. And people fall for it until their senses go numb.

ET-IT facilitate this 24x7 entertainment explosion enormously through cinema, TV, computer, world wide web, YouTube, iPod, cell phones, and many more gadgets to come, and of course, print media. As I started browsing through the blogs I noticed this frenzy spreads through blogosphere. Entertainment, YouTube, Shopping etc. tags get highest ratings on the search engines.

Anything, and perhaps everything – fashions and fads, gadgets and products, from "deconstruction" by Derrida to Porn to war on insects (and humans) – invented in the First Worlds in the "West" or "North" reaches sooner or later to the markets in the First World in India and other countries in the "South" so it becomes global. The entertainment industry and tourism industry, i.e., leisure, are colonised by the capitalist consumerism to ‘commodify’ free time of the employed and the unemployed.

In India globalisation begins in the cities and spreads in the towns. What about the Indian villages? TV is a powerful medium for the illiterate and the marginally-literate, if thy have access. Perhaps, the farmers in villages of Vidarbha, Maharashtra, and other places, may forget their woes and stop committing suicides, or their suicide rate may rise on and on, after watching affluence, consumption and waste of resources in the First World India, but certainly not out of boredom. We heard that a guru was teaching tem ‘Pranayam’ – a breathing technique in yoga – on a mass scale; never heard about any results.

No, the farmers do not suffer perpetual boredom alike the urbanites. The evident disparity between their condition and the extravaganza of the First World India that is projected through, for example, TV, could only lead to their frustration and anger. Some day it may lead their tolerance of five thousand years of subjugation by the feudal powers to a breaking point to result in another epic war of Mahabharata. Thankfully, the majority in India do not have access to TV and education both.

There may be several such 24x7 obsessions in different fields, occupations and professions, from primary schools to politics, which turn them workaholics, or force others to be. There may be several reasons – psychological, social, environmental, economic or political. But there is certainly one reason. Lost in the modern urban jungle they are looking for their lost identity and community, or for intoxication, in the virtual world: everyone – the producers and the sellers as well as the buyers – are a bored lot.

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© Remigius de Souza., all rights reserved.
21/05/07