iTECHNOMAN (self-portrait)

iTECHNOMAN

Self-portrait by Remigius de Souza, Mumbai, India (1972)
Colour on handmade paper 9"x 12"
© Remigius de Souza

You may read or interpret “iTECHNOMAN” in various ways that you may prefer.

Remi (Remigius de Souza) is marginally literate, not only in computers, but also in any of the Arts and Literary disciplines.

He began to learn writing Letters and Numbers of his vernacular language MARATHI on a slate, at his native village in Konkan.

Simultaneously he also took lessons in his basic needs, which are farming in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture; mud house building and its maintenance; and spinning and handloom weaving of cotton fabric: FOOD, SHELTER and CLOTHING.

Industrial society has failed after centuries to reach this ability or level, which is mentioned above, to impart education to any citizen anywhere in the world, certainly not in India.

Decades later he learnt computer programming in an antique language “1401” in an intensive course of one month, which was given by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS): that was the only formal training he received in computers.

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Grandma's Legacy: a Last or Lost Link? (Comment)

Image Source: Hindustan Times

Grandma's Legacy: A Last or a Lost Link? Thankfully not yet. There is much to savour the legacy my grandmother left for me - for us.
Grandma’s legacy is not a lost link. They found some in Andhra Pradesh – it is everywhere in India – provided you look for it.
They should show these movies to the ruling minority – politicians, bureaucrats, experts, specialists, planners, the educationists and the self-proclaimed leaders, and the urban elite – before showing them to the world.
This “Soil Unrecognized Indian” is now being seen…

More on Grandma's Legacy >>
1. She Lived Her Living Doctrine
2. We must carry our own burden

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

TERRA INCOGNITA INDICA

INDICA: I deliberately use the word ‘Indica’, a biological term, instead of ‘India’. It is precisely to indicate a ‘region’ and not political boundaries that associate with the State. In the historical time political boundaries have been subjected to change, anywhere.

TERRA: literally ‘soil’, which I refer to ‘Land and Waters and People, and Biotic and Abiotic Nature’. The biotic and abiotic nature is intrinsic in the life, therefore also in their culture, of the people – the daughters and the sons of the soil.

INCOGNITA: the literal meaning is ‘unknown – unexplored – unrecognised’ alike the medieval (European) map showed the known world encircled by ‘terra incognita’ where monsters roam.

Indeed even in the twenty-first century, the ‘soil’, in my way of comprehensive meaning, still remains ‘unknown (to the world) – unexplored (by the pundits) – unrecognised (by the so-called Authority or the State)’, whom I fondly call my ‘anonymous’ kin, from whatever glimpse I have had through my six decade journey in the Third World India and the Fourth World India.

INDIA has almost a continental size. Broadly there are about 50 – 60 cultural and social sub-groups (as illustrated….). No. We are not referring to the castes or cults or the creeds. We are not taking of, in American lingo, of the Class or the classless society. We are speaking of the ethnic and adivasi – tribal – communities (that is the cohesive collectives), not the civilised advance societies (that is the fragmented collectives in the modern times).

She indeed is a thousand-petal lotus, our national flower. There have been as many topographic and climatic regions – bioregions – that have great hand in shaping the culture, expressed in food, clothing, shelter (or architecture!), visual and performing arts and crafts, languages an folklore… and thus as a result a superior quality of sustainable living. I call it a model for the modern world, a world heritage, now facing a wipe-out.

Unfortunately in the global race to make India an industrial power by the petty imitators – the ruling minority – comes at cross-purposes with the survival of the agrarian society and the diverse bioregions. The petty imitators are out to homogenise them with monoculture of industrial civilisation. The industrialisation here, so far, only helps the power mongers and profiteers through their invisible tentacles.

Indeed one lifetime is not enough to see and to assimilate and to understand this phenomenon for any person or even a group of persons. Any documentation, even a fraction, would reveal great treasures of wisdom and knowledge and skills, across these diverse bioregions, accumulated over generations of anonymous People of India.

India is such a vast country with diversity that it is impossible to manage even the welfare of the people (for the lack of understanding) for any centralised power, even with an iron hand. This is true of any region in the world which has been proved time to time. Decentralisation of powers, down to earth in practice, (power in the hands of peasants) is the only answer to this malady; M. K. Gandhi came very close to it in his concept of Panchayati Raj – power to village self-rule.

See LINK (TERRA INCOGNITA INDICA)
10-05-2009


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Man and Nature (within and outside)

Presentation accompanied with the paper “ARCHITECTURE AND BIODIVERSITY IN INDIA: A Context to Aesthetics in Our Times”, presented to PAITHRUKAM 2004: Seminar/Workshop on “Aesthetics in Indian Architecture: Past, Present and Future”, at MES College of Architecture, Trissure, Kerala.
Author: Remigius de Souza, 14 OCT 2004

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Man And Nature (Within And Outside)

More PowerPoint presentations from Remigius de Souza

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Note: All the references to images and quotes in the following presentation are not mentioned. Also the permissions of the authors and publishers have not been taken. The author acknowledges their copyright. These are used purely for the academic purpose.


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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.