DYNAMIC WATER

Dynamic Water - Image by Remi de Souza

A drop of water moves in liquid, vapour, solid forms.
In the oceans it moves up and down, in currents – hot and cold. Vaporized it goes to sky. It drops on ground, percolates in the ground, moves in streams – visible or invisible – to ponds and oceans, or in plants, our bodies… in gutters of urban habitats, but there too it moves. It lives in the collectives. Water moves, also, in my body all over constantly: in blood, sweat, vomit, urine, faeces…
Water is dynamic: humans too are dynamic, being waterborne.
Yet I take water for granted; I don’t notice!
Water is an element to meditate upon.
                                                                        ― Remi de Souza (11-11-2013)


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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Indian Farmers' Woes and Joys

Key Word: Art, Farming (i.e. Agriculture, Aquaculture and Horticulture (forestry) collectively or separate)

Five Elements

Traditional farmers’ lives that depend on monsoon are almost identical in many regions of the world. Hence the following text is inclusive.

Very few would ever believe farmers are artists. Farmers' art is most risky vocation, among all types of occupations, professions and vocations. Even a few may not understand this fact though they may know what is farming.

Haiku by Remigius de Souza

Farmer's art takes place on real field down to earth. Like in words, painting, photography etc. it does not create virtual reality. Farmers take the colours from Mother Nature - Srishti, of five elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space, and on a canvas of small or big plot of land; he works with contemplation. They are never verbose. They are fully in contact with every nook and corner of their farm; likewise the health of all the plants.

Haiku by Remigius de Souza

Farmers are not only artists, they are also planners, but not like town planners, who flatten the lakes and land, and cut it into pieces, make their 2D drawings to build 3D art of cities. Farmers use undulating land for management and conservation of water and land.

Poem by Remigius de Souza

Farmers are management experts, too! They manage land, water, seeds, fodder, weeding, manure, tools, carting, storage, other food crops, rearing animals and birds. And equally important are the repairs, maintenance, examination, improvement and policy planning in every aspect of home and farm, which is part of their homestead. All of these, they do within available resources. Many farmers may be ill-literate but are not 'un-educated' as the elite think.

Poem by Remigius de Souza

Traditional sculptors, for years, make Ganesha, Durga idols in clay. They are aware the deities are to be immersed. Yet they work with devotion, faith, without boredom. Farmers too work with same dedication. Their labour of love, therefore, is elevated to the status of 'vocation', of art. In their karma there is element of contemplation – Dhyan – hence it is 'spiritual' too. Traditional farming also involves action by Community Participation.

Haiku by Remgius de Souza

Politicians are like white clouds.

The educated elite class have an impression that farmers work only four months (during the season) and the rest of year lazy around. Even the experts like Amartya Sen are not exception. What about the governments and bureaucrats?

Haiku by Remigius de Souza | Image by Soojung Cho

More than natural calamities, the real cause of farmers' woes and miseries are the government and bureaucracy, market and industry, and their wrong priorities of progress and development.

Note: There is lot to learn from farmers:
1. Watering the farms: Learning from the people. Governments could learn how to save resources, particularly currency spent for development, and seal its draining at the bureaucratic level - the starting point, which consumes its major part.
2. Cow dung, Rice and Amartya Sen (a critique):Challenges of 21st Century
3. SEE: Soojung Cho’s Artworks of Inner Vision (http://www.soojungcho.com/home.htm )
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Minimal, Minimalist, Minimalism Defined

Key Words: Minimal, Minimalist, Minimalism, Environmentally Sustainable, Art, Science

Minimalism started as a trend in art and design in the west. However, minimalist way of living, objects or artefacts have been existing from unknown times. Customarily it refers to art and design, which puts it in a box of a fashion, where a person may not 'walk the talk'.

Minimal is not minimum, but is to go beyond or achieve the best within minimum in living, thought and action. Minimal implies essential; it is not merely simple. It is neither junk or trash nor extravaganza.

Definitions, however, limit the scope of the defined. We, therefore, start with examples, and arrive at our definitions according to our perceptions. There is no formula! However, it may not be out of place here to add Universal Definition of Design by Nature written by Martin Jones, bio-archaeologist.

Let us start with primary and most familiar examples: Water (by Mother Nature) and Food: Roti – 'bread' (home made – by Mom).

Water is one of the minimalist creations by Mother Nature

WATER is fascinating Element: It soft, malleable, takes the shape of a container, always goes down the soil or to meet the sea, in heat vaporizes, moves meekly around obstacles on the way, cuts through rocks, mixes salts-minerals of soils… 70% of our body is water.

But there comes a time, when this taken-for-granted and often ignored element dances Shiva's Tandav of tsunami!

Water in Science

Water (defined as: 'H2O') is one of all the expressions, creations of Mother Nature! As a matter of fact, all her creations – from microbes to mammals, from algae to giant banyan – are minimal events. This sets an example and also a definition of 'minimal'. Mother Nature is our first and the last Guru!

Such tsunamis also happen in civilized societies. Whenever the arrogant and powerful classes / castes exploit and push the lowly – the sea of people – to the brink of subsistence, the waves of tsunami arise. This is the power within 'minimal'!

Roti as food is minimalist act

FOOD: vegetables, roots, tubers, grains, fruits... each of these have their unique taste, flavour and nutrition. They are also revealed by minimal process and in eating them fresh.

But having four meals a day, on full stomach, we can't fancy their tastes and nourishment; we find it ordinary. We become imaginative and add embellishments, decorations, ornaments... new experiments, processes in preparations of food.

There begins a market competition and struggle to make tasty exotic foods. It is just as we try to beautify our body as if... in this extraordinary creation by Mother Nature was incomplete!

Most elementary food is Roti – flat round Indian bread, and its regional variations. It is by now known in many parts of the world. Roti is made of flour of different grains: maize, rice, millet, finger millet, bulrush millet, barley or wheat. Rich Indian biodiversity also offers variety in various grains.

To make Roti all that you need are: Tava - a concave plate of clay or iron to bake, a wooden or metal plate to knead flour, salt, Chulah – hearth – of clay or just three stones, brush wood for fire  and, of course, water. I believed Roti is indeed a 'minimal' food, until I tasted baked maize loaf made by Bhill aborigines.

Henry D. Thoreau in 'Walden' (pp 99-101) writes about bread by Red Indians, which may not be different from maize Roti made by Bhill and other aborigines and peasants in India. Thoreau writes by experiments and experience of Indian bread, not by impressions.

Minimalist maize loaf by Bhill aborigines

Bhill Festival at Mahi River, Kadana, Gujarat

It was three day annual fair during spring on Chaitri Poonam (full moon day: this year on 18-04-2011). Bhills from Gujarat, MP and Rajasthan states had gathered on the white sands on bank of Mahi River among hills near village Kadana.

I camped there for three days and nights in the open (no bed, no sleeping bag) among Bhill families. At night all would sleep around campfires. They get up at an early hour. First the women take bath in the river, and then men follow. As I come out of warm water I felt thousand pin pricks. No sooner the Sun appears the water becomes very cold. After bathing it is time for breakfast.

Adivasi women started to prepare breakfast, before daybreak. They made balls of kneaded maize flour, wrapped each in the leaves of a specific plant and put them in the campfire. By the time bathing is over the freshly baked maize loaves are ready for breakfast.

The taste, flavour and nutrition of the maize loaf were extraordinary. It remained in my memory as unique and only experience of lifetime. And also the memory of their warm hospitality, though I was a total stranger.

Ingredients of maize loaf are flour, salt, river water, wooden bowl, leaves and brushwood fire; that's all. This could truly be called ‘minimal’ and 'environmentally sustainable' food and way of living, both.

'It is Walking, not the Way' — Vatsyayana      

Hunger is basic to body and mind. Food nourishes both, body and mind. Yet we are only custodians of our body and mind. In transplant operations heart is kept alive outside of body by supplying energy. Why boast it is my heart?

Minimal object is possible when one follows minimal 'way of living', which can't be called 'life-style': No compromises.

Ancient flute of bone 30000 ybp (Credits: NYTimes)

 Source: The New York Times

Note: There are number of "minimal" artefacts people use. Bamboo flute is has ancient origine. Archaeologists have discovered 30,000 years old bone flute some time back. I took my lesson on slate. People still take lessons on slate; Rangoli is another ancient example of "minimal" (land) art.Traditional nine yard Sari in India is single piece dress for women, which is a minimal artefact; many do not even wear a blouse. However a bikini, which is displayed on a fashion ramp, is only a minimum object, and must not be mistaken as minimal. In his paintings Raja Ravi Varma uses Sari for his female subjects. Haiku in poetry is indeed minimalist.

Rangoli inscribed on Mumbai's roadside pavement

Swastika in the centre of this image is repeated for ages

  a million times by women in India.

It is believed this action draws Cosmic Energies.

Remigius de Souza | Mumbai
22-04-2011

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

All Fools’ Day

All Fools’ Day 


Whatever may be, it’s my doing,
by choice or by force, that I forget;
my rush ends it in half-hearted doing
and in endless strife I am caught.

In my fear of loosing my doing
no moment spared to stop and look
from all sides around, inside out,
at all levels, in all dimensions:

much of it I am ignorant.
On the fast track of one dimension
never knew when I lost myself;
never realised I am the means;

and I am the end. A product, an idea,
a thought, an act, or a concept
in time is perishable and transient:
no sooner born belongs to the past.

In stagnant water all actions stink.
But waters of life are always flowing,
condensing, evaporating, raining,
reflecting; that’s the nature of water,

of life born in water, but not my doing.
In looking at doing, the doing ceases.
At the core of ocean prevails
Silence pregnant with new life.

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Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 26 March 2004
NOTE: 1. Image "The Fool" from Tarot pack is occult system, and has no connection to western custom of "April Fools' Day".
2. Image credits- "The Fool" from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Watering the farms

Watering the farms:
Learning from the people

Paddy farming in Konkan

 Paddy farming needs plenty of water. Even during monsoon the farmers need water management during different events of farming actions.

While watering their farms, the farmers traditionally use simple, commonsense techniques. They use various implements to lift water from wells or streams for irrigation, which work by human energy and/or bull energy. Now some use pumps that work on diesel or electricity.
Before pouring the water in the troughs or channels dug in the farms, they prepare cow dung slurry in water, and spread it in the beginning stretch of the channel. That helps to seal the pores in the channel and thus prevents water loss by percolation right in the beginning, thus it assures that water reaches to the end of the farm.

Theories of economics, or politics, or democracy may sound and seem glamorous, but the instruments of application matter. Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics, is quoted by DR. Judah Kahn, to have said: “I was asked to assist in the creation of the world’s most destructive machine but I was never asked how to use it. Now I realize what I have done and the machine could do, and I am afraid” (Richard P. Feynman, ‘Don’t you have time to think?’ Ed. Michelle Feynman, Penguin, 2005, p. 361). Feynman died by cancer. (Was it due to the atomic radiation?) He was deeply interested in the mysteries of Nature, in the compartment of Physics, and perhaps missed Biology – his own body.

In modern society, while intellect takes topmost level, body – individual or the collective – is neglected, exploited, and oppressed. This is evident at national, regional and global levels in a great mass of human body of the underclass, the other living beings and the Earth; the corporate flourish. Do the numbers or statistics — one or one million, ten percent or ninety percent — matter, except for those who sit in the chambers, or move in a grove, or fly high and don’t see beyond their eyelids?

Unfortunately much of the resources – cash or kind, education or skills, which may be appropriate to 21st century – that are meant for the target groups on the lowest economic rungs are absorbed by the administrative channels of the governments; a known secret. Indeed, it is similar in nature to irrigation by pump sets, where water is wasted because of high velocity and volume, which is not controlled. It is high time, the governments learn from the people, and find the ways to plug the dissipation of resources. And please stop treating these people as second class citizens and beneficiaries until the next round of elections.

Sadly, it seems Indian Democracy has lost its sense of proportion and priorities for last six decades, which claims to be a ‘developing nation’, of course at the cost of the Third World India (and the Fourth World India) that only benefits the First World India. We only hope the “PAYBACK TIME’ comes soon.

Late News: Where do the money go? Read: Flood Fraud - January 12, 2007.
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Remigius de Souza

(02-10-06)

One Step Quantum Leap in Education

Illustration 1: Children at Play
The children are at play at the bank of River Narmada at Bharuch City, Gujarat.

There are many dimensions to this event: Discovery (without Copy Right), leisure and learning by sharing, sense of community, free entertainment that helps health of body and sanity of mind. Besides they are swimmers. They would learn rowing, and fishing in course of time, i.e. higher education without fees, without grading, without failures... every one is accepted. They are familiar with the environment around: high tide and low tide, with that the change in water taste, the wild life, and also the presence of crocs in part of the river.
There is unconditional belief and trust that river is mother. Even any event mishap or demise is taken as part of life. And there are many more dimentions...

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One Step Quantum Leap in Education

by Remigius de Souza

Education is one of the vital four links, i.e., work, education, leisure and health to the development of an individual and the community / society / collective (Ill. 1). There are two prevailing education systems: one is universal, which is still followed by a majority that is not yet caught in the web of industrialisation, and the other - institutionalised mass education - is induced by the industrial revolution that took place in the West (Ill. 2).

EDUCATION, WORK, LEISURE AND HEALTH are four aspects through which plants, animals and humans follow the daily living throughout their life-span. Though they are categorized here (because of Author's civilised habits) in reality every aspect is synchronised with, or embedded in, the other three, and are supportive to each other. They neither are in sequence of priority nor separated in compartments. Any one without the other three is lame or invalid or unstable, which could cause mental or physical maladies or malfunctioning in a person and/or the collective.

More advance a civilised society more the division, fragments, hierarchies; all neatly put in various compartments, including the four mentioned above. It helps the ruler / ruling minority to control people by "Divide and Rule" principle. Throughout the history the advanced societies have successively and progressively been proved a curse on land, waters, people and life at large. The industrial civilisation is the worst of them all. It is also a double-faced liar. For example, it would hold population increase for the poverty, hunger and starvation. It would hold the entire humanity responsible for the climate change, rising sea level, depleting ozone layer, rising temperature etc.

Illustration 2: Education Systems
(a) Spiral of holistic education by experiential learning
(b) Linear reductionist mass education by teaching

(a) Spiral of holistic education by experiential learning.

Education here, as said earlier, goes with other three aspects: Work, Leisure and Health. Education is a life-long quest for excellence and fulfilment of the Self, neither for expertise nor personality development as is an in-thing in the modern society.


It works with free sharing / exchange of knowledge, accumulated over generations, between individuals and communities, which lead to improvisation. Even the aborigines today do not live in proto-historic state.

Education, here, is not a slot; it is interdisciplinary, and finds its application simultaneously to support sustenance with life-supporting skills. There is no room for superficial baggage, no need for grades like fruits graded for marketing.

At any point in its quest it - an individual - is full in itself and yet leaves scope for growth - development, like a seedling until it is fully grown in its life-span of four months, or eighty years or thousand years, until death. Qualitatively there is no difference, whether it is rice plant, or a human being, or a banyan tree.

For example, its model is present in the Third World India and the Forth World India (of the tribal communities). Or one may notice it in the remote history when humans came up with fire, lever, wheel, language, paintings, engravings, domestication of plants and animals, when none of this institutionalised education system was present. Ironically no one can fit this experiential holistic education in the prevailing institutionalised education system.

For example, architecture is fairly interdisciplinary course in the modern mass education. To his dismay the author observed for nearly twelve years while teaching that it couldn't reach a holistic level. No, holistic doesn't click. Almost all the students learn in slots, think in slots, and eventually work in slots. Invariably they turn out to be a part of bureaucratic ladder. They also develop autocracy to some extent. Perhaps the seeds are sown begins from their nursery schooling at the age of three!


(b) Linear, or the ladder of, reductionist mass education by teaching



It is based on grading and degrading the human intelligence. Started by the industrial revolution, it is designed for the benefit of capitalism and for easy management by the bureaucrats who claim to be educationists. Any adjustments / readjustments in the system remain within the established framework.


For example, a number of schools started by J. Krihnamurti - the Star of the East - at several places. After giving talks worldwide for decades on 'freedom from the known' he too could not escape 'institutions' started in his name during his lifetime. Such is the grip of capitalism! Even Red China's Star is eclipsed by it. And how many democratic governments do bend or bow before the global or local capitalist institutions - the invisible superpowers?
industrialisation (sometimes called 'social and economic development') is only an orientation of mind, a small fragment in Life, and cannot be called universal in any of its branch, or all the branches of its education and expertise put together. Education and the products from its assembly lines in this system is merely a consumer item for marketing. No wonder the First World countries are now trying to find new markets for their education industry in the Third World countries.


Now research and studies are showing some of the side effects and after-effects of the affluence of western societies. We cite some examples here."The average age at menarche - when periods start - has plummeted over the past 150 year in western societies from around 17 years old to 12 to 13." writes Mairi Macleod (New Scientist, 10 February 2007, p.38). This has social, physical, psychological, and moral if any, implications.


"Peter Gluckman of the University of Aukland, New Zealand, suggests, the problem however, is that in our complex modern society, the amount we learn means that we mature psychosocially much later than our forebears did. This creates a mismatch between the stage at which we are able to reproduce and the time when we have the social competence to cope with it. In his new book Mismatch: Why our world no longer fits our bodies (written with Mark Hanson) he suggests that radical changes in education are needed to help bridge this gap" (Ibid p. 40).


Psychiatrist Bruce Parry, in his interview, tells, "In the US alone, every year there are at least half a million cases of children found to have suffered from severe trauma or neglect. So at any time there are going to be between 8 to 10 million children with profound trauma or neglect-related dysfunction. ... If you look at a society that's badly affected by famine or war, then those numbers climb still higher", ('Nobody's children', interview by Liz Else, New Scientist, 10 February 2007, p 42)." He is a co-author of 'The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog'. (see http://www.childtrauma.org/ )


These examples relate only to children. What might be the situation of women, adult and the aged in the western societies? We only look the glamorous part and the affluence of the West. But the point is any person who has alert senses and observation would notice the changes that are taking place, or would honestly admit that s/he is not capable of looking after a child; perhaps animals would take better care of them: Parry fails to mention this in his interview.



There is no alternative


There is no alternative to the universal holistic education. It is organic and natural, and living beings, from bacteria (our ancestor in the distant past) to humans, have the learning ability bestowed by Nature. When a government has no ability to listen to the people, any democratic society must take its own charge, and restore their autonomy to educate themselves. In the present global circumstances, in the fast changing environment, which is forced by a few powerful, the people must accelerate their learning by their natural gift. That is, they must know, like the cells in their bloodstream, their enemy, and fight.

Any democratic government must recognise the people's education - knowledge and skills - in all the aspects of Education, Work, Leisure and Health. It must not victimise or suppress them by forcing alien systems upon them by taking them for granted. The people also should be spared from religious, racial, caste-ridden, linguistic, provincial fanaticism and fundamentalism, which is invented by the so-called higher-ups for their vested interest for the power. Last but not the least the hordes of activists, who are also the product of the industrialised mass education, should take some pain to learn from the people, and also change themselves. And avoid pushing them into the scramble on the ladder.

There are answers to all human follies. But there must be will to correct by drastic action: the gangrene growing on the society must be severed before it corrupts the entire body.First: recognise the people's education by legislative and legal action, not by lip-service, not by capitalising it, not by authority. The author of this article is not an authority, the people are.This must be coupled by the collective action to protect, preserve, restore, revitalise, renovate, and enhance the existing universal holistic system by legal and financial support.

After gaining the political independence, the people naively believed it is "our government", only to be disillusioned by the feudal mentality of its legislative and executive bodies, decade after decade. The political implications are clear: now face the hung parliaments and assemblies one after another, riots and terrorist acts, deaths by starvation and suicides, piracy in almost every field... the evil seeds of civil war are being sown by vested interests - the enemy within.



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Remigius de Souza

69/243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400 028, India
(04-03-2007)

Remi's poetry homepage>> www.poetsindia.com/poet/Remigius+de+Souza/

Civilization (India)

In the Memeory of Victims of Indian Caste System

by Remigius de Souza

Water droplets
White light
Miracle of spectrum
Turbans and caps
Of different hues
Misplaced identities
In the fragmented civilization
Otherwise one.

* * *

(This composition is dedicated to four Dalits - the untouchables - in the Village Golana, District Khambat, Gujarat, who were chased and shot dead by the high cast Hindus in a broad daylight on the Republic Day, when the country celebrating, only because they refused to do a menial work for them. In Indian society Dalits" [literally - the downtrodden] still carry the stigma of untouchability though the elite in high places, or the Indian Constitution, may not recognise it.)

Remigius de Souza

(Book Review) YAKSAS Essays in the Water Cosmology

YAKSAS
Essays in the Water Cosmology
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Editor: Paul Schroeder
India Gandhi National Centre For The Arts, New Delhi
Oxford University Press
Hb xviii + 339 pp, ISBN 019 563385 7

________________________________________

“Our problem is not so much of the rebirth of an Indian culture, as it is one of preserving what remains of it. This culture is valid for us not so much because it is Indian as because it is culture.”
— Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (The opening lines of his address at Harvard University on 15 August 1947.)

The right question will provide the right answer, and the right answer would have efficacy of an “act of truth”. [P.138]

(I)n Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, the older esoteric interpretations have been made public while the mysteries as have been lost. [P.138]

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has given us a monumental work. The theme of this book dates back to third millennia B.C. and continues to the present. It deals with not only history but also the foundations of Indian culture; India not of the political boundaries. Presently some part of India lives in the space age, while the other is in the Neolithic Age. It is a new edition, revised and enlarged. The first two parts, ‘Yaksas’ and ‘Water Cosmology’, were published in 1928 and 1932 respectively. The part 3, ‘What are the Waters’ was not published before. It is timely publication to welcome 21st century and third millennium.

In his characteristic style Coomaraswamy investigates, and analysis by taking evidence from texts – Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit – Vedic and post-Vedic literature including folk–lore, Ritual and Plastic arts and architecture. He traces the origin, the meaning and development of Yaksa Cult, Tree Cult, Water Cosmology and Life Cults prevalent in India, beginning from prehistoric time. He examines their parallels in and common roots with other cultures and countries and presents the mysteries, which are of timeless value. It helps to give insight in Indian people in the context of present times. It is a handbook the householder, social activists, environmentalists, the NGOs, the policymakers and the scholars alike. If looked up carefully in the context of the present wave of ‘cyberspace’ and ‘animated virtual reality’ and its background of the crisis of ‘Environment – Ecology – Energy’ and their progressively deteriorating state at local and global levels, simultaneously, has much significance.

Yaksas as Spirit, ‘Atman’, as Single Primal Principle, in various forms and aspects, as deities control waters, i.e. Essence (Rasa) in the waters, which is one with sap (in trees), Amrta (Elixir), seed (seamen) in living beings, so also, milk, rain, hoeny, mead (Madhu), and liquer (Sura). Refeferances to the Yaksa aspect as Agni (Fire), or in modern idium ‘Energy”, who is “deadly to be touched” has various aspects: in Kamadeva as ‘fire‘ or ‘love’, ’Life’, ‘Universal Life’; in the sun (Mitra) as the friend; in Yama as Devourer, Death i.e. want, privation and Desire; in Vanaspati as ‘Lord/s of the Tree or Forest; Palasa (The Flame of Forest) being Agni’s birthplace.
In the modern context we can verify and judge for ourselves the cocktail effect of unrestrained tapping of Energy, ‘Agni”, whether from hydal–fossil fuel – electrical – nuclear, or seemingly benign Alternative Technology sources such as wind – tidal – solar – bio-gas sources. Does that lead to Greenhouse Effect, besides various health disorders!

The aspect of Varuna who represents “ideal kingship”, Coomaraswamy has brought up the issue of ‘governance’, which is a ‘hot’ subject today at local and global levels he quotes variously, “When king’s virtue fails, the order of nature is disturbed”, “(T)he fertility and prosperity of the country depends upon the king’s virtue; the direct connection between justice and rainfall here involved is highly significant.” Who are the kings in our times? Are the people, or the high offices of the State, or those who hold monopoly over the resources of the Earth and the Waters? This question leads us to “Yaksa worship” and “Bali–Karan”.

Animal and human sacrifices as a form of worship have been prevalent, though the Bodhisattva forbade. It was believed that the human sacrifices were made when Hoogly Bridge was built. It is a belief that the spirit of the sacrificed person protects the building and the wealth. In the developed modern society the modus operand has changed from “Bali–karan” to “Bhook–Bali” i.e. death by starvation, which is common phenomena. May the “Bhook–bali” be on a mass scale or a stray examples: the Ethiopians, the Boat People, or at home the Tribal in Thane,
Melghat as well as elsewhere, which go unreported? These are, of course, the marginalized and underprivileged people. It could be indirect cause for the ‘protection’ of wealth and prosperity created by the modern development, therefore, of the privileged class.

Rituals of Water Cosmology take place from birth to death and in ancestor worship. One may find a person at a liquor bar in Mumbai city; he dips his finger and splashes a drop of liquor before taking his sip. In urban areas the rituals may have been miniaturized for instant delivery, where meanings and mysteries are difficult to retrieve. This may be due to loss of natural environment from built urban habitat, where canned water and synthetic plants and flowers are served, which is more of hedonism. This is aggravated by new ‘cults’ of endless production – consumption – waste, a new triad, through arms, trade and passive entertainment, but no place for contemplation.

The first two parts – ‘Yaksas’ and ‘Water Cosmology’ – are interspersed into each other, which deal with Life, Sustenance and Spirit. The first two parts are metaphysics show life and sustenance is supported by spirit in all beings, while the third part, ‘What are the Waters?’, deals with how Life and Sustenance help the person to liberate from birth till death by Way of Uajna and Yoga in Enfranchisement (Mukti) and thereby receive Invulnerable Happiness in both material and spiritual aspects, here and now,. “Yajna being work – Karma – ritual, or all works done Sacra mentally, as Sacrifice, work as Vocation (Swadharma)”. Yoga is a Way, Reunion or unity of the embodied self with the Self in itself. Perhaps in a subtle way this masterwork shows what is amiss in the global search for much wanted ‘sustainable development’.

The spatial plan of the book is analogous to a archetypal tribal hut, or a typical Indian temple. The first two parts are like Mandapas, the third is alike kitchen or a room for confinement in a tribal hut, or the ‘Garbhagriha’ with ‘Shikhara’ in temple, indeed a culmination, a pinnacle of the thesis. The first two parts are complex intricate, rich in texture of the outside of a temple. The third part is rustic, ascetic, without ornamentation i.e. as Coomarswamy says, “without extended documentary evidence“. It is graphic presentation (in words) of ascent of Life from Birth to Enfranchisement (Mukti), death being only transitory stage. It is the spherical ascent in spiral movement of the ever–expanding, ever–ascending Person towards fruitfulness and fullness of Life through Yajna (Sacrifice) and Yoga (Reunion) here and now to reach Sovran Good (Rta) and Invulnerable Happiness – ‘Ananda’.

The editing and production of this book is par excellence, which is at once visible from the beginning to the last detail: in selection of paper, appropriate typefaces, layout, the cross references provided to the text, notes, explanatory notes and plates, the bibliography and index which are carefully executed. It is a reference book for art students, architects, planners, landscape designers, and of course, movie–makers and ‘Vastu–consultants’.


Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
28–5–2000
[Revised 18–8–2001]
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

DELUGE 26/7/2005 MUMBAI

Recurring floods: Central Mumbai (On the top left are the slums that too are flooded

DELUGE 26/7/2005 MUMBAI
A Tip of the Iceberg
by Remigius de Souza

I

CALL THIS CITY Bombay (former island city) or Mumbai (now a metropolitan city), the dichotomy remains. While speaking and writing in Marathi it has always been Mumbai, while in English, ‘Bombay’, even before the British left.

So also there has been south-north divide; south of island city being the seat of power. Now north is extended beyond the island city that includes ‘suburbs’ and ‘extended suburbs’.

There have been several flood- prone areas in the north of island city for more than five decades, whatever may be the reasons; negligence could be one of them. The divide between the First World and the Third world (and the Fourth World of tribal communities living in the nearby districts of Thane and Raigad) too continues. Media’s attention during deluge, of course, was Mumbai / Bombay; the woes of slums in the city and Raigad District were scantily noticed.

High, very high, highest-in-a-day rainfalls, likewise, cyclones, earthquakes, typhoons, are common natural phenomena. Floods causing damage to lives and property are mostly due to human folly, whether at countryside or in mega-cities. People learn, or should learn, their lessons over a period of time.

Mumbai has been witnessing for last few decades phenomenal rise in almost every aspect of city life: Stock Exchange Index, population, pollution, vehicles, traffic jams, scams… to name a few, so also the increasing slum dwellers and hawkers that are branded illegal though they struggle to earn their daily bread and to survive with dignity, in the wave (or Tsunami?) of development. These are symptoms of a sick society at large.

Boast about Mumbai’s ten million people! Thankfully it is not going to be a global city in the near future, perhaps never. Mumbai is only a fashionable product. The city picks up technologies for their cosmetic use… with disregard for possible fallout.

The experts, specialists, planners, architects, builders, policymakers, legislators, administrators, of Mumbai thrive on foreign collaborations – ideas, aids, funds, loans… and flattery by the foreigners – institutes or individuals – who have vested interest in trade, market and profit. Almost in every field of city-life they takes on ‘Bollywood Effect’ to please or fool themselves and the citizens, or for the self-interest.

A city’s services, for example, have to stand the test for two to three hundred years and the trial by any calamity – one in hundred possibilities. City can’t be a product by a single visionary genius, or by authorities, or by fancy of a politician. City is not a container made in a factory or in a boardroom. It is a work of collective creativity of people over centuries.

II

MOTHER NATURE unravelled some of the chapters of sordid past and present of Mumbai / Bombay by the deluge of 26th July 2005.

The first rape of Mother Earth took place when the British founded Bombay; they destroyed the islands and hills, bulldozed the lakes, wetlands and creeks, and reclaimed the sea, which drowned some coastal areas in Konkan.

Since then the land grabbing has continued unabated with religious fervour till this day. Mumbai otherwise could have been the Oriental Venice, so to say. The City of Venice, built upon 137 islands, too, gets flooded and is sinking in the sea.

The second assault came when the hills of nearby Raigad District were deforested to build the city. The gods in the religions, scriptures and epics of the world may assume human traits, but Mother Nature is indifferent to the entire human species, not alone to the underprivileged but even to the so-called superior, developed societies. Yet there are millions of people choose to live in harmony with nature.

All human habitats are vulnerable to ‘calamities’ caused by human nature or Mother Nature. In the age of democracy if the citizens give away their responsibilities, therefore, their rights, to the so-called authority of politicians, experts, policymakers, authorities, without making them answerable, without subjecting them to public scrutiny.

The citizens have to face consequences and bear the responsibility; their ignorance, illiteracy or wealth/ poverty cannot be an excuse, or they face annihilation.

This must be happening all over the world. It is time to get educated in the rights and responsibilities, but most urgent are ‘civic sense’ and ‘hygiene’ for everyone, from the presidents and prime ministers to a pauper on a street, throughout the world, without exception. These would cover issues from deadly nuclear power, to dumping toxic wastes, to dumping food in the garbage, to all the issues affecting air - land - water.

Sixteen years ago, on 24th July 1989, there was very heavy rainfall that caused equally devastating floods all over Raigad District. Mumbai also was flooded then. Even that time the authorities were slow to reach the affected areas of Raigad District; the people helped themselves.

That time there were unusual floods also in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts. This is a clear indication of more and continued deforestation south of Raigad District. When water in the Koyna dam reached danger-level, the authorities were caught napping.

In sixteen years they did not learn their lessons. Where and how did the policies, physical–economic–social planning and implementation fail?

Can the built environment compensate the destruction of natural environment, collapse of ecology at national, regional and micro level for development? While taking remedial measures for Mumbai’s sickness, the city cannot be isolated from the region/s.

III

URBANIZATION IS RAPIDLY ‘SWELLING’ IN INDIA.

It's not ‘growing’ as popularly said. Growing implies healthy natural organic process. Swelling is a malady, a sickness. Like floods, slums, etc. this is one of the national indicators, visible, loud and clear than any official statistics or proclamations.

On 26/7/2015 the services, systems, regulators, health, safety, civic sense… and justice failed resulting into a calamity. These indicators are visible at several places during several events – natural or manmade. These maladies are symptoms of sick society, inevitably of the nation.

City is a symbol of centralised power throughout the ages throughout the world. Some call it a magnet to hide the fact. A megalopolis wields immense power by its invisible tentacles over the regions, far and wide, even across the borders of sovereign state, beyond the oceans and continents. What is not perceived is how the metropolitan cities devour the resources of the region/s and the nation. It is even beyond the control of so-called metropolitan/urban region development authorities.

Some prominent citizens may harp on the taxes paid by Mumbai to the nation, but what is the size of ‘black money’ that circulates in the parallel economy, who generates it and who is accountable? How much energy does Mumbai consume and what is its ratio to the State or National energy consumption?

Some talk of appointing CEO, or to appoint a CM who is local citizen (ninety percent of Mumbai’s citizens are migrants), or to block the entry of slum-dwellers to the city, or to make Mumbai an independent state, etc. These are only ‘curative’ measures. This is how some influential citizens use their credibility to consolidate the centralised power. What is needed is ‘corrective measures’ with ‘care’, and rigorous investigation by field work with participation of the local citizens.

Mumbai is beyond a manageable size for its civic authorities and the government. In fact Mumbai is spilling over in Vasai-Virar area, in Thane and Kalyan-Dombivali cities, besides Navi Mumabi; it’s a vast agglomeration, though separated by boundaries. Eventually all oversize institutions fail.

To speak only about Mumbai for a while, the immediate corrective measure is to ‘decentralize’ the power of the City of Mumbai. The first vital measure is to separate Mumbai in three municipal corporations: 1- the island city, 2- the former suburbs and 3- the former extended suburbs. Name them whatever – Mumbai, Mumbapuri and Mumbai Nagari.

The second vital measure is to ‘shift the capital of Maharashtra State to some interior area such as, Beed, Parbhani, Jalgaon, Sangli etc. but not at any major city like Pune or Nagpur. The cash-stripped Maharashtra Government could rent or sell the existing Assembly hall and Secretariat buildings to multinational / Desi corporations instead of selling the city’s open spaces, to make money. In any case we have been dividing the states, districts, even villages, and building new capitals.

To divide the City of Mumbai into three separate corporations is a ‘corrective action’; and to shift the capital of the state, in the words of Patrick Geddes, is a ‘painless surgery’.

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Click below for "Flood Fraud" in Mumbai:
Late News (14.01.2007)

Remigius de Souza
(Published in Janata, Mumbai)
©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Watering the farms: Learning from the people

While watering their farms, the farmers traditionally use simple, commonsense techniques. They use various implements to lift water from wells or streams for irrigation, which work by human energy and/or bull energy. Now some use pumps that work on diesel or electricity.
Before pouring the water in the troughs or channels dug in the farms, they prepare cow dung slurry in water, and spread it in the beginning stretch of the channel. That helps to seal the pores in the channel and thus prevents water loss by percolation right in the beginning, thus it assures that water reaches to the end of the farm.

Theories of economics, or politics, or democracy may sound and seem glamorous, but the instruments of application matter. Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics, is quoted by DR. Judah Kahn, to have said: “I was asked to assist in the creation of the world’s most destructive machine but I was never asked how to use it. Now I realize what I have done and the machine could do, and I am afraid” (Richard P. Feynman, ‘Don’t you have time to think?’ Ed. Michelle Feynman, Penguin, 2005, p. 361). Feynman died by cancer. (Was it due to the atomic radiation?) He was deeply interested in the mysteries of Nature, in the compartment of Physics, and perhaps missed Biology – his own body.

In modern society, while intellect takes topmost level, body – individual or the collective – is neglected, exploited, and oppressed. This is evident at national, regional and global levels in a great mass of human body of the underclass, the other living beings and the Earth; the corporate flourish. Do the numbers or statistics — one or one million, ten percent or ninety percent — matter, except for those who sit in the chambers, or move in a grove, or fly high and don’t see beyond their eyelids?

Unfortunately much of the resources – cash or kind, education or skills, which may be appropriate to 21st century – that are meant for the target groups on the lowest economic rungs are absorbed by the administrative channels of the governments; a known secret. Indeed, it is similar in nature to irrigation by pump sets, where water is wasted because of high velocity and volume, which is not controlled. It is high time, the governments learn from the people, and find the ways to plug the dissipation of resources. And please stop treating these people as second-class citizens and beneficiaries until the next round of elections.

Sadly, it seems Indian Democracy has lost its sense of proportion and priorities for last six decades, which claims to be a ‘developing nation’, of course at the cost of the Third World India (and the Fourth World India) that only benefits the First World India. We only hope the “PAYBACK TIME’ comes soon.

Late News: Where do the money go? Flood Fraud - January 12, 2007.

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Remigius de Souza (02-10-06)

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Writing on Waters: My Epitaph

Writing on Waters: My Epitaph

 By Remigius de Souza

Imagine one half a century spent in the self-imposed silent exile while even while most of it spent in the public domain followed by a period of a decade exposing selfhood in private in public leaving behind the age of space and of time in the futility of existence of Beautiful Life continued encountering the very same ceaseless landmines exploding under my feet on my paths ceaseless I write my epitaph on the waters do wipe away O God my footprints from the paths I have walked upon at long last Who listened.

01.03.02 (Mumbai)(Rev. 02/10/06)
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Remigius de Souza

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.