Karva Chauth and Ten years of fasting

Last week was Karva Chauth- the day when all the married women in North India fast for the well being of their husbands. It is a festival I have never understood. We have a similar festival down in the South. Only it does not involve fasting but tying a yellow thread around the neck.  The other difference is that both unmarried and married women participate-the married women pray for the well-being of their husband and the unmarried pray for a good husband.  I must have been in 7th or 8th class when I began protesting against this festival.  I did not want a yellow thread around my neck and having to answer embarrassing questions in the school.  More importantly, I did not see why my brother should not pray for a good wife or why my father should not pray for the well-being of his wife. This one-sided business made no sense to me.  My mother and I had a fight over this festival every year till I left home. At that point she kind of gave up on me.

While the South Indian version is plain and simple, the North Indian version is colorful thanks to the patina provided by Karan Johar's movies.  My friend puzzled by the fervor of Karva Chauth, she wanted to know the reason.  She was told the reason plain and simple: One gets gifts including diamond set. Well that makes lots of sense though I still think keeping a fast for a diamond set is stupid. Now if some one was promising me books it would be a different matter...

This week is Irom Sharmila's tenth year of fast.  This one is shorn of all glamor. All Irom Sharmila wants is the AFSPA to be withdrawn from Manipur.  Successive governments have come and gone. Whatever be the color of the government, they all agree that AFSPA is necessary for a state like Manipur. No one bothers to answer why it is important. Makes no sense to me but...

Some amazing moments

Okay, we are still behind many nations in sports. And many of the top players did not come for CWG. But still it is amazing...
We won two medals in gymnastics...
We won medals in field and track events.  Yes, Dani Samuels did not come but to make a clean sweep of the discus throw is amazing.  And the 4 X 400m women relay won the gold. That was wow.
Medals were expected in shooting as well as in wrestling and boxing.  Badminton too given Saina Nehwal plays for us.
But hockey was unexpected...though I wish that we did not have to lose so badly to Australia!
What was also unexpected was the way the stadiums started filling up towards the end. My students and I went for a hockey match- women's hockey NZ versus South Africa (semi-finals) and Wales vs Scotland. The stadium was at least 2/3 full and everyone was cheering...
I do not know what it means in the long run or even if we can sustain this momentum.  We will know soon for the Asian Games begin next month in China.
I did not want the CWG... but now I am not so sure. At least Delhi got some new infrastructure, though I do really wish they had not built the village on Yamuna floodplains. In addition, the ASI got into act and repaired some of the monuments.
I do not know...if our politicians had bit of sense then they would bid for games in other cities or at least spread it around a bit so that other cities too could bit of infrastructure, considering we seem to spend on it only when we have to put up a show.
Anyway, given the way CWG has been a success (successful corruption as well), the political parties are now dreaming of Olympics.

P.S. The hockey match was in the evening and it was 10 pm when it got over.  We were 4 women and in Delhi, we could walk over to the Metro station, catch a metro to New Delhi Railway station, get an auto and get back safely. That was truly amazing.

Mothers and sons...

Growing up my biggest grouse was that my mother expected me to do all the housework while my brother escaped scot-free. Of course my mother had a ready excuse:
"He is left-handed."
So?
So he did not have to grind the dosa batter or do the coffee grinding or clean the table or learn to cook or mop the floor or any of the hateful thousand tasks my mother lined up for me.

My mother, whenever confronted, denies being more indulgent towards her son. But science is on my side. Here is the article from Guardian that confirms my suspicion: Mothers are more hard on their daughters irrespective of their origin.

Life in the times of CWG

As I type, India has 20 medals. And there are questions asked about poor attendance.

I went to CGO complex as my DBT report was long overdue and I need the next years money to fund my lab. The CGO complex is next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.  I took a taxi.  It was a bad choice as events proved later.

The roads are a mess. One lane has been blocked for the CWG players and they are ferried about in AC buses (DTC low floor buses) with dark curtains so no one can see the players. None of the players were curious enough to peek out either.  The remaining lanes are for us citizens and naturally everything was jammed.  The police is out in full force with guns and bunkers. Reminded me of the high days of Khalistan movement when the bunkers were everywhere. It was spooky.

The JNS is a fortress. No car can enter.  No parking allowed either. So I had to dismiss the taxi and walk down to the complex. At the entrance to the complex I had to show my identity card before I was allowed to enter.

Why would anyone in right mind attend the games?

Of course, the citizens do not exist. All the laborers have been deported out of Delhi. The most affected are daily wagers because no one seems to care as to how they will survive without money?  And aren't we citizens? Don't we have the right to live in our country, in the city of our choice? What right does the government have to treat us as aliens?

I took an auto back. The autowallah put it right:
"The government better remember that the foreigners are not going to vote in the next elections. It is we who are going to vote."

Tomorrow I need to go to CSIR complex, which is near Pusa. Not looking forward to it. Though I think it might be easier as there are no stadiums close to the complex.

Dilli badnam hui...

That is what the CNN-IBN is happily saying:
Dilli badnam hui darling tere liye.

I thought the height of absurd statements was Lalit Bhanot's sage pronouncement:
"The standards of our hygiene is different from theirs."

One of the most enduring memories of my hostel days is the dark and dank and smelly toilet. I simply do not know how I managed the two years at Baroda but it was terrible.  Toilets, for me, have to be clean and airy and light.  But Indian toilets are generally afterthought...something we need but prefer to push it out of sight.  Of course cleaning toilets is anathema to us. Forget what Gandhi said or did, it is simply not done because we, you see, do not clean toilets. There  are special people to do so. One of my acquaintances once said to me that he does not clean toilets and he did not see what was big deal for Infosys Chief and his wife to highlight this aspect of their life. I was little stunned. I was about to ask as to who cleans up the toilets in his house but I bit my tongue in time.

When I moved into my current residence, which by the way is currently dripping water thanks to the incessant rains and 150 years of excellent work by CPWD, the toilet was a sight to be seen. The first thing I did was to get a bottle of Harpic and scrub the toilet till it was usable.  Why do we do such things?

The toilets in our School are no better.  I finally had to post a stinker of a note before the girls started behaving themselves. Even now we keep the Western toilet locked up because we figured that many girls do not know how to use it.

There is no question of their hygiene and our hygiene. Simply put-toilets have to be clean. It is good sanitation and key to prevent health problems. The sooner Lalit Bhanot understands this point the better.

Meantime, Dilli badnaam hui darling tere liye.

I think I am going to enjoy the CWG.

A tale of two songs.

Two songs have been composed for the Commonwealth Games. One is by Palash Sen who has a group called Euphoria.  The other is by A.R. Rahman.  Therein lies the tale.

The song by Palash Sen is fantastic. The lyrics evoke the old time Delhi- you know the sepia tinted photographs of an era long gone by. Of course Palash Sen is very much a Delhite. He grew up in Delhi and he lives in Delhi and the passion for his city is reflected in the song. We can argue endlessly whether Delhi as a city is worth being passionate about but as someone who grew up in Delhi I remember a Delhi that is every different from the one it is today.  Listening to the Delhi theme song, it is that old time Delhi, the laid-back city, the one with wide tree-lined avenues, the one of lazy winter afternoons flashes through the mind.

I listened to A.R.Rahman's song too and I think the major problem is the language. Palash Sen has very wisely stuck to Hindi.  It is different matter whether Hindi is the language of our country or not. But the fact is that the ethos, the passion is usually reflected only one's native tongue.  A. R. Rahman's song is a kichdi. It is a wannabe and unfortunately it remains a wannabe. The music content of many of Rahman's song takes multiple listening before it grows on to you. So I am keeping an open mind. Maybe I will like the music after multiple listenings.   But what do we do with the lyric. Nonsense lyrics like Take it Easy policy is okay for a movie. However, when you expand it to something like Commonwealth Games it is stupid. 

A.R. Rahman had said that he would do one better than Waka Waka, the theme song of World Cup. We will leave it for history to judge it.  Personally, I prefer Waka Waka.

In today's Delhi Times Geeta Chandran has aptly summed up the problem with the theme music. And she concludes by reminding the readers of the Asiad theme song which was set to music by Ravi Shankar and sung by Amitabh Bacchan. The point to remember is that the music as well as lyric were so simple that all of us hummed.  

As a last point I do not know how much Palash Sen was paid but definitely Rs 5 crore that was paid to Rahman for a theme song is obscene especially when there was flash flood in Ladakh and parts of Bihar are reeling under drought.

Refreshed

Finally the refresher course is over. There was a fracas. One of the persons who came to give a talk decided to tell us that he was an expert in Helicases. These are proteins that unwind DNA during replication, transcription etc.  I have no problems in someone declaring that they are experts as long as they are willing to substantiate that claim. To be fair, I think he thought he would be safe in making that declaration because the refresher courses are generally for college teachers and as they do not do research he decided he could get away with the proclamation. Unfortunately, I was there in the audience and once he pompously announced that we should keep quiet during the lecture as it was a difficult topic he was explaining, I decided to have some fun. I asked a very legitimate question and he was furious. Then my colleague with whom I collaborate for doing biophysical studies decided to ask a question which he could not answer. He boiled with rage when I prompted him by taking names of the scientists who done the work and therefore, if he is an expert, he should immediately recall. That cooked my goose.  The next opportunity he got he went for me with all guns blazing. The end result was that I happily walked out of the class and he ranted that we were all stupid. Which got another of my colleague riled up and there was a lovely fracas. Hopefully, we will not ever get him to give another talk.

Take home lesson:  Never take your audience for granted.