Simple answers to complex problems

Life is about growing up amidst situations with multiple shades of grey leading to a foregone conclusion that life’s template is a work in progress.

What will a book be like if it claims to be as much for the happily married as otherwise; if it is directed to those in love as also to those who aren’t into it yet; and if it will interest those without children as well as those who have plans to rear kids? Essentially a memoir of lived experiences, Immortal for a Moment lets the reader realize that life is all about growing up amidst such determinate situations which are invariably filled with multiple shades of grey leading to a rather foregone conclusion that life’s template is still a work in progress. Each fleeting moment holds new reflections on what life could be like. 

Natasha Badhwar extends her search for a deeper meaning in the daily rigmarole of life, beyond the experience of parenting three daughters in her debut book. She lets her thoughts take a deep dive into the obvious, reflecting on events and happenings that are often taken for granted. There are elements of intrigue in her expressions as she recognizes those inhibitions which are better left aside as useless baggage. Deeply personal but honest nonetheless, the stories of everyday living reflect significant life truths which readers can easily relate to. 

The author seems to suggest, and for good reasons, that nothing should remain unsaid that can help explore many different shades of one’s own life. Come to think of it, nothing is sacrosanct but a life lived equitably and responsibly. Simple realization that marriage can be lonesome will help one avoid it from becoming a pile of resentments. The more you take it as a sport, the more you begin to play it to your capacity. Indifference and disagreements are essential aspects of any marriage; it only begins to work when one gives up on it. 

Natasha’s prose is lucid and reflective, comforting those who lack courage to override entrenched notions and internalized beliefs. These are deceptions and by overcoming them can one access hitherto unexplored parts of oneself. ‘Anyone’s life can be a situational comedy provided one is willing to explore joy in unexpected places’, she argues. Immortal for a Moment is an invitation to preserve every fleeting moment because the more one holds onto them, the more meaningful life becomes. The task is to break the world of silences that we have created around us, allowing these silences to break free in words that explore our strengths while deploring vulnerabilities. 

Collection of columns written over several months, each of some fifty short essays in the book help the reader reclaim parts that one is reluctant to include in life’s narrative. Much of what she writes can help expand possibilities, create new frames of references, and protect social boundaries. One can relate to each of the episode or life experience either as an insider or an outsider, on both accounts it can shake the reader out of slumber.

The response to the self-righteous judgement by an unsuspecting woman who, perhaps distressed by the sight of the author’s three little girls, sought a reconfirmation to her preconceived notion that ‘these three because you wanted a boy’ is worth retelling for clarity and a sense of purpose. How do you deal with those who are lurking around with quick-stick labels for everyone?  The best way, and perhaps the only way, is to shut out ignorant voices by speaking louder than them. The query ‘what was in them that she hated so much’ had shut her up for good. 

Immortal for a Moment holds the message that while we may have sorted our external selves, our inner selves are yet not free from biases and prejudices. The external façade is what hides our true self, and that is how our society is indeed structured. Far from addressing the intricate web of oppression and disparity, we often participate in perpetuating different forms of inequalities. Should we let our lives be betrayed or rebel against what we realize is absurd?

Natasha explores complex issues of everyday existence with the maturity of a serious thinker. It is not difficult to align with her line of thinking that seeks simple answers to complex questions. In her raw and honest writing, the author puts her heart out there. In doing so, the book invokes a Natasha in each one of us because each one has the power to change lives. But to be able to do so, we have to travel into the depths of our own consciousness. It is Natasha’s small world that opens windows of possibilities for unlearning and relearning to change the world around us.       

It is not a self-help book but its words are soothing and comforting nonetheless. After all, hanging on monkey bars of material desire is not what life is all about. 

Immortal for the Moment
by Natasha Badhwar
Simon & Schuster, New Delhi
Extent: 233, Price: Rs 350.

First published in the Hindustan Times, issue dated June 1, 2019,

Fairies are fake. So what?

The compelling reason for belief in fairies has to do with the Homo sapiens being a storytelling animal, which thinks in stories rather than hard facts.

Not long ago, one day in 2009, the Irish story collector Eddie Lenihan was chided by a woman for broadcasting his beliefs about fairies, and thereby perpetuating stereotypes of the Irish as mystically backward or irrational. Lenihan had responded by pointing at the nearby cathedral and saying that everyone believed in God although no one had ever seen him. Whomsoever one might align with, the fact is that fairies, and their less favored cousins, witches and ghosts have lived through times, with as many claiming to have seen them as believing in their contested existence. Curiously, these entities continue to attract wide attention. That the famed images of ‘Cottingley Fairies’, the fake photographs that shook the world in 1917, could fetch £ 20,000 a century later in 2018 is testimony to their unceasing popularity among general public, in literature and in arts.       

Shot in the village of Cottingley in Yorkshire, the picture shows a teenage girl looking at the camera as dancing fairies with butterfly wings appear in the foreground. Claiming to have found the winged creatures gamboling near their home, Elsie Wright, 16, and her 9-year old cousin Frances Griffiths could convince the world, including the great rationalist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with indelible proof of the existence of the supernatural beings. Although the fairies in the pictures looked anything but fake, with serious doubts being expressed even then, it took some sixty years before the myth was finally busted. Yet, these images remain so famous and potent that it is hard to imagine them never having existed. 

Fairies is an intriguing inquiry into a subject that is widely considered the stuff of fancy, whimsy, and childhood. After reading several accounts of fairy sightings, Richard Sugg meanders through the fairy narratives in arts, literature, and media to draw fresh perspectives on the cultural meanings of the unceasing fairy-belief. If Sir Doyle created the literary myth named Sherlock Holmes, Elsie and Francis complemented it with their unforgettable icon, the Cottingley Fairies. It may seem a strange coincidence but the desire to be taken in by faith of some kind during a war-ravaged period could have been the innate cultural compulsion.    

But why would such a notion persist in the present times? One would imagine that the technological revolution across the hundred years between 1917 and 2017 would have buried the numinous otherness of the fairies for good. That is not yet the case if Sugg’s entertaining but thoughtful narration on the fairyland and the fairy-faith is anything to go by. Give any child a pair of crayons and ask to draw fairies, winged creatures in different hues will erupt on the drawing sheet. Fairies seem omniscient and omnipresent!   

To think that fairies exist only in English, Scottish, or Irish imagination may not be correct, fairies stories are part of folklore literally across every continent in the world. Every culture has their stories of fairies or nature spirits, from Ireland to China, South Africa to India, and Canada to Australia. Not only stories, designated elf habitats and no-go zones have been part of the folklore. Most cultures believe that they are not actually on our plane of existence, but another plane overlapping ours. Whatever be it, why do fairies stories abound across cultures?

Having authored eight books on weird subjects covering Ghosts, Mummies and Vampires, Sugg sought to explore and bring to surface a subject that is buried deep in the caves of our childhood. It becomes clear that the compelling reason for belief in fairies has to do with the Homo sapiens being a storytelling animal, which thinks in stories rather than hard facts, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains. On top, there is the unwritten rule – if the majority believe in it, it becomes the truth by default.

Should it matter whether or not fairies exist and are real in a world where sensationalized fake news is an accepted reality? Hasn’t the world long believed Kardashians to be real without anybody watching them? A belief in fairies has given a sense of purpose to treating nature in a compassionate manner. Sugg presents the case of emerging genre of fairy ecologists who have helped to counter the predatory behaviour of industrialism and capitalism. The belief in fairies has led many development proponents to accept that cutting an oak tree or demolishing an elf habitat will invite dangerous retribution. The belief in fairies has the power to respiritualize nature, much like what the nature spirits, the Navi, demonstrated in James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar. If faith in fake can have real impact, let the fake-of-the-fairies prevail. And, why not?  

Fairies: A Dangerous History
by Richard Sugg
Reaktion Books, UK
Extent: 280, Price: £16

An edited version was published in The Hindu on January 9, 2022.

Catching the fleeting idea

It is a common perception that unless ideas root and grow, these wither and lose relevance.

Ideas are fleeting in nature, considered by many as a kind of potential energy that dissipates in quick time. It is a common perception that unless ideas root and grow, these wither and lose relevance. Yet these are rarely in short supply, as everybody has ideas! Either pricked by a curious moment or triggered by a news event, ideas erupt in fertile minds without any regard for time and place. Unless ideas are allowed to mature like wine, this fleeting energy does not catch much attention. If this is what ideas may mean then why should a compilation of newspaper columns as a book of ideas catch any attention? In his foreword to India in the Age of Ideas, economist Bibek Debroy sets aside this dilemma by arguing that other than pandering the writer’s ego the idea of packing ‘ideas’ in a book may remain somewhat questionable. So be it!

Written over a decade and more, there are some sixty-six short pieces packaged together to take the reader on a roller-coaster ride through history and culture, urban designs, and economics. Several of the pieces are set in the past and therefore dated, whereas the more recent ones reflect contemporary concerns and hence relevant. While the author claims to have addressed diverse issues from an inter-disciplinary perspective, using a Complex Adaptive System lens, the narrative is a linear response to evolving situations. It couldn’t have been different as the basic premise is rooted in providing quick response to current challenges. 

Many of the issues raised are simple and relatable. Who would not agree that the Indian history must be rewritten by properly revisiting the primary evidence? Isn’t the issue of legitimacy of ruling elite at the core of the current crises in democratic governance?  Can the country afford to discount the role of new middle class as a harbinger of cultural transformation? These and others issues need a nuanced understanding rather than a quick fix. Given his academic and administrative background, however, solutionism remains core concern for Sanjeev Sanyal. 

India in the Age of Ideas misses out on assessing complexities of interactions between human psychology, cultural norms, and social behaviour in addressing contemporary social, economic, cultural, and political challenges the society is currently grappling with. While the author holds up a mirror to the historical contradictions, cognitive dissonances, and governance deficit, how must collusion course between them be resolved has remained largely unaddressed? 

Although there is a limit to which meanings can be layered into newspaper columns, many pieces written over the years are reflective and engaging. In an easy to read style, Sanyal shares some of his off-the-cup concerns. While agreeing with the author on the need for relocating the Independence Day celebrations across different parts of the country, I may suggest similar attention to other events of national importance. Similarly, there is merit in author’s laying emphasis on debates based on evidence than on ideologies and personalities. 

By deliberately avoiding an updation of the articles, Sanyal has not only taken the readers for granted but has weakened his own arguments at several places. The author’s assertion that quick response to a situation is more important than a meticulous plan seems preposterous. And for a book of ideas, inclusion of such unsubstantiated ideas is surely not a good idea. There are quite a few repetitions and contradictions that have gone unnoticed in the compilation. 

India in the Age of Ideas should be more valuable to the author, as he may not need to preserve newspaper clippings of his articles anymore. Given that it is a compilation of old articles, the book seems over-priced. However, this genre of book publishing has value provided the information is updated and the arguments substantiated into a coherent narrative.   
India In The Age Of Ideas
by Sanjeev Sanyal
Westland, New Delhi
Extent: 318, Price: Rs 699.

First published in the Hindustan Times, dated May 11, 2019.

The ultimate binge drinkers

Institutionalization of the bedbugs' fear in identifying other vermin in the society from the aim of social segregation and eradication is shocking!

They drink, and drink, and drink – up to three times their own body weight. No wonder, they are called the ultimate binge drinkers. At times, they are too bloated to return to their homes. Their stealthy lifestyle of drinking, and their habit of helping themselves uninvited stirs the strongest psychological fear among people. Evolved some 100,000 years ago, bedbugs’ drinking habit has sustained them as a species at the cost of humans who continue to shudder at the mere mention of these tiny blood suckers. Its influence on our lives has been unprecedented, pretty much every other bug, including the stomach bug, the computer bug, and the electronic bug carries that name tag. 

In his fifteen years of research on bedbugs, Klaus Reinhardt, a professor of applied zoology at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany, has found that only two from some one hundred odd species of the family Cimicidae are found in our beds. While Cimex hemipterus resides in the tropical regions, the other Cimex lectularius dwells in temperate zones. Although bedbug sightings may have declined in many tropical countries in the recent years, increase in bedbug infestation in the UK, US, Australia and Canada in the past fifteen years clearly indicates that bedbugs have no respect for class and prosperity. In fact, they never had given the fact that London was heaving with bedbugs in the early 19th century. 

Divided into nine profusely illustrated sections, covering aspects of bug diversity, bug sex and bug forecast, Bedbug provides intriguing, engaging and entertaining insights into the life of an insect that is as much part of science as fiction. Alexander Dumas sighted bedbugs during his travels; Shakespeare referred to bedbugs in his plays: and Queen Charlotte was not ashamed of the infested Buckingham Palace. Throughout recorded history, bedbugs have featured in literature, film, poetry and pop culture. The sci-fi musical Bedbugs!!! had a successful run Off-Broadway in 2014. The musical comedy amplified extreme fear leading to paranoia about bedbugs becoming immune to almost all forms of insecticide. In the musical, a mad-scientist Carly mutates New York City’s bedbug population with her super-insecticide to take revenge of her mother’s bedbug-related death. Through the natural history lens, Reinhardt explores how bedbugs became ‘the other’, to represent personal animosity by creating parasitical villains. 

Bedbug provides multiple perspectives on an insect that causes more mental despair than any other human parasite, and yet has interesting aspects that call for tolerance towards it. For a species to be all pervasive, it must have a distinct genetic makeup and a curious sex life. Bedbugs are indeed unique on both aspects. With 14,000 identified genes in the adult bedbug to 36,000 genes for the entire species, researchers are now looking at the genome of the bedbug that can help in the design of pesticides to get rid of these blood suckers. It is still early to suggest if such a possibility has been worked out to any degree of certainty. However, genetic research can indeed help in identifying genes that area associated with blood-sucking, or digestion, or their mating habits, or whatever. 

When it comes to the battle of sexes, male bedbugs are clear winners as it stabs knife-like copulatory organ through the skin into the female’s body. How do females survive such traumatic insemination? That they survive, and contribute to building multiple progenies must make any sane head spin with bewilderment. Have female bedbugs invented a set of extra genitalia to cope with traumatic mating? Reinhardt sets aside such bizarre exaggeration to provide a set of possible strategies that female bedbugs may have been applying to stay in the business. When it comes to issue of sex, humans may have something to reflect upon bedbugs mating encounters. 

What makes Bedbug insight-fully interesting is the manner in which scientific research has been viewed keeping in mind the journey of this insect through history, literature and culture. We may not want to be soft on bedbugs but the fact of the matter is that it costs more than it is actually worth. It has led to resistant bedbugs! According to Reinhardt, there is lot to learn about this profoundly misunderstood insect. The bizarre mating habits of bedbugs have recently led to the development of a homeopathic remedy to cure ovarian pain. It is well known that bedbug’s flatness had helped Einstein unravel the presence of infinity. 

The essential message from Bedbug relates to institutionalization of the fear of bedbugs in identifying other vermin in society from the aim of decimating them. Reinhardt hopes that pest and vermin metaphors will not be used to invite thoughts of social segregation and eradication – like the Jews annihilation in Germany and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Bedbug informs and entertains, suggesting tolerance as a means of controlling the bug. 

Bedbug
by Klaus Reinhardt
Reaktion Books, London
Extent: 184, Price: £12.95

First published in Current Science Vol. 117(06), dated Sep 25, 2019 

Getting away with murder

The massacre shamed Britain and helped India win independence.

It has been a century to the day since 1,650 bullets were fired non-stop on unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh, a bloody result of the imperial fear of the natives. The questions of what led to the dreadful killings of hundreds of innocents and how the mass slaughter was dealt with afterwards have pushed researchers and historians to explore the colonial psyche and come up with fresh insights on understanding  the dynamics of colonial brutality.

Jallianwala Bagh by Kim Wagner
Penguin/Viking, New Delhi
Extent: 323, Price. Rs 599.

In his rigorously-researched Jallianwala Bagh, historian Kim Wagner, whose earlier work includes The Skull of Alam Begh, situates the massacre in the Empire’s mindset of retribution and the need to silence growing native discontent. The other book being reviewed here, Kishwar Desai’s Jallianwala Bagh, 1919: The Real Story wades through official and counter-narratives to provide a nuanced account of the shocking incident. Both books – among the first to be released in time for the centenary; other notable titles include a translation of Khooni Vaisakhi by Nanak Singh, Anita Anand’s The Patient Assassin and Rakshanda Jalil’s Jallianwala Bagh; Literary Responses in Prose and Poetry – help us gain a better understanding of this seminal moment in India’s history.

While Wagner maintains the historian’s carefully detached tone as he notes the unjustifiable use of brute power to stop purported sedition from spreading to the countryside, Desai provides a passionate reconstruction of the events leading to the dreadful day, including the deep-rooted racism of the rulers.

What is the value of revisiting something that happened 100 years ago other than to cause emotional discomfort leading to nationalistic posturing, the reader might ask. No amount of denouncing and condemnation of the personal idiosyncrasies of the stone-faced Brigadier General Reginald Dyer can erase this incident which continues to make little sense even in the context of the brutal violence of the imperialism prevalent today. The Lieutenant Governor of Punjab Sir Michael O’Dwyer was in favour of exemplary terror to silence discontent among the natives against the dysfunctional state and that Brigadier General Dyer deliberately picked Gurkha and Baluch soldiers to shoot into the crowd, thus demonstrating that the Empire would persist ruthlessly with its divide-and-rule policy to retain power and subjugate the colonised.

Jallianwala Bagh, 1919 by Kishwar Desai
Context/Westland, New Delhi
Extent: 257, Price. Rs 699.

It is difficult to be objective while drawing lessons from the incident. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre offers a two-way learning process, however, by promoting a profound understanding of both past and present through the interrelation between them. Following the archival grain, Wagner reconstructs events not simply as they happened, but as they were experienced by different people at that time. Jallianwala Bagh reveals how different experiences were treated differently and in the process, helps the reader to understand how violence worked, or was thought to work. In the end, it resulted in a mistrust of the colonial state.  

Desai imagines the cries of men, women and children who lay dying at the Bagh. “History belongs primarily to the victor, but only as long as we allow it,” she writes. She believes the massacre was not spontaneous as has often been made out. It was carefully planned. If this had not been the case, Miss Sherwood’s near-death experience at the hands of native rioters on April 10 would not have been brutally reprimanded, and Mrs Ratan Devi would not have had to spend the night of April 13 grieving over the dead body of her husband.

In the centenary year of the massacre, both books pay tribute to thousands of those who were humiliated, tortured and killed under the pretext of martial law. As the memories of the dastardly act are revoked, the call for a public apology by the British has resurfaced once more. Did the British do enough to detoxify the issue? Winston Churchill called it “an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation”. David Cameron, who was the first British prime minister to visit the monument, denounced the massacre and called it a deeply shameful incident in British history, as Churchill did, while shying away from apologizing for the event. He said, instead, that the UK “stands up for the right to peaceful protest around the world”.

Addressing this lingering concern, Wagner wonders if an apology will do any good as both those who suffered, and those who perpetuated the crime are no longer alive. Such a take on the massacre may not appeal to everyone but it also goes without saying that the sacrifice of thousands at Jallianwala Bagh was not a waste. The massacre shamed Britain and helped India win independence.

But the ways of colonial justice were perverted indeed: while Udham Singh was hanged for his revenge killing of the former lieutenant governor of Punjab, Michael O’Dwyer, General Dyer, the chief perpetrator of the crime, was never convicted. He got away with genocide.

First published in The Hindustan Times, issue dated April 13, 2019.

Fear of an imaginary rebellion

It is still difficult to reconcile with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the violence unleashed by British colonialism.

Even a century after the dreadful afternoon that silenced hundreds of unaccounted innocents it is hard to reconcile any justification for the barbaric massacre that remains a red blot in the British history. Monstrous no less, the ten minutes of terror unleashed on a hapless crowd gathered in Jallianwala Bagh on the fateful afternoon of April 13, 1919 only proved that violence was a key aspect of British colonialism. General Dyer had seemingly followed the principle of exemplary violence that had justified mass slaughter of sepoys by Cooper during the 1857 mutiny, and summary execution of namdharis by Cowan in 1872. In each of these instances, fear of an imaginary rebellion had provoked violent action. In justifying his own action, Dyer had disingenuously acknowledged that ‘we cannot be brave unless we be possessed of a greater fear’.

In his painstaking reconstruction of the circumstances that led to the dastardly act, historian Kim Wagner wonders if that seminal moment in the history of India and the British Empire has been rightfully understood. In making sense of the form and function of colonial violence, he concludes that spectacular display of brute force was the most effective means of preserving control over the natives, as was evident in brutal reprisals by the British in Kenya, Egypt, and Ireland during its colonial rule. Although events of colonial violence were conveniently attributed to some rogue individuals, as Winston Churchill’s disavowal of Dyer’s action indicated, it only helped ignore the very structure of imperialism that harbored violence in its design. Else, physical and symbolic humiliation, including crawling orders and public flogging, would not have continued following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. That it did, indicate that the massacre was pre-emptive and retribution well considered.

Jallianwala Bagh is a powerful reassessment of the causes and course of the massacre, pieced together by mining facts from a variety of written sources. Like his previous works on the British imperial history which include books on Thugee and The Skull of Alum Bheg, Wagner provides an unbiased account of colonial panic and subsequent brutality. It was the growing unrest throughout the British Empire in 1919 that had made decolonization a real possibility across the colonized entities in Asia and Africa. Despite its barbaric nature, the dreadful incident at Jallianwala Bagh could well be described as the last gasp of an imperialist ideology mired in racial discrimination.

Did the British ever felt remorseful for the tragedy that befell thousands of unarmed civilians?  Despite termination of his military services, for the British public Brigadier-General Dyer was a ‘hero’ who, most believed, was the man ‘who saved India’. Through an appeal in The Morning Post newspaper, as much as £ 26,000 were raised which meant that Dyer could retire in comfort and without any financial concerns. What’s more, Dyer received a full military funeral upon his death in 1927. In his tribute, Rudyard Kipling had remarked ‘He did his duty as he saw it.’ Aren’t public sentiments reasons for the British to avoid tendering an apology for the heinous crime?

Wagner doesn’t shy away from addressing this lingering concern. Far from being apologetic, asserts Wagner, Churchill’s description of it as the ‘unprecedented monstrous episode’ was an act of deflection that only asserted the moral legitimacy of the British Empire. During his visit to the Jallianwala Bagh in 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron had persisted in denouncing the massacre but not without reclaiming the moral narrative ‘that the United Kingdom stands up for the right to peaceful protest around the world’. What will the British apology seek to serve now that both those who suffered, and those who perpetuated the crime are no more?

Will an apology heal the wounds, and should we even attempt to heal the wounds? Even if the British apologize, it would only be for one man’s actions, as isolated and unprecedented, and not for the colonial rule, that in Gandhi’s words, produced Dyer. While an apology in the centenary year will assuage pent-up emotions, it is important that the seminal event in India’s colonial history helps in reiterating the need for individual right to freedom of expression. Jallianwala Bagh is an important book on the colonial era, as much relevance for our post-colonial world.

Jallianwala Bagh
by Kim A. Wagner
Penguin/Viking, New Delhi
Extent: 323, Price: Rs 599 .

First published in The Hindu Magazine, issue dated April 7, 2019. 

Capturing water through its flowing history

Without counting cultural values and notions of justice, any attempt at re-engineering water management is bound to escalate fears about nature and climate.  

Current clamor on water scarcity is pitched around what  nature supplies through rains and what gets delivered through pipes, backed by the assumption that effective demand-side management will help counter supply-side conundrum. Far from it, a water crisis has become severe even when large parts of the country have seemingly escaped what is traditionally termed as ‘monsoon economy’. Between the extremes of a dreary winter and a blistering summer, water crises manifests itself in dried and polluted rivers; as cumulative water shortage in major reservoirs; and in unending queues of desperate people awaiting erratic supplies. This all points out towards an emerging social disruption, if it isn’t there already!

For getting a better sense of the emerging water crises in an age of climate change, Sunil Amrith, Professor of South Asian Studies at the Harvard University, suggests a nuanced understanding on how history shaped water management and use; what compelled the society to respond to new economic opportunities; and how mastering the unevenness of water and its extreme seasonality by the British shaped an economy that improved revenue flow into the treasury?  With maximizing revenue being the be-all and end-all of the British rule, every investment in infrastructure had led to expanding trade for Indian products in the markets of London, Liverpool, Hamburg, and New York. Investment in irrigation works bolstered local resilience to drought, signaling benevolence of the rulers, while ensuring that the state’s coffers remained full. The political connotation of investment in irrigation projects has persisted since then.   

In his reading of the history, Amrith finds a serious lack of realization of nature’s water endowment in expanding irrigation – exploiting economic gains from water remained bereft of social and ecological concerns. And this had continued well into the twentieth century as quick economic turnaround had propelled a large swathe of large landowners to switch to water-guzzling cash crops like cotton and sugarcane. It has only eroded deep social and historical patterns that had treated ‘the monsoon as a way of life’ in promoting crop diversity, and a culture of resilience. With farm crises at its peak, the state is now trying to restore historical sanity by promoting diversified crops a’la more crops per drop.     

Amrith mines British and Indian archives to produce a lively history that unfolds the development of modern meteorology in erasing water inequalities. That water has been a source of both social and economic power was known to the powers-that-be, it was in the disguise of democratization of irrigation expansion that the state sought to usurp power. No wonder, control over water became an engine of inequality between people, between classes and castes, between city and regions. Regional disparities have become ever more pronounced. Little has been learnt that 4 per cent of the available world’s fresh water will always be in short supply to serve 14 per cent of world’s population with competing, and increasing demands. 

Unruly Waters provides in interesting peep into the history of water development that continues to shape and reshape politics in the countries of South Asia. It captures the fears and dreams of rulers and governments in the region in laying control over its shared natural endowment through dams and rivers diversions, which has led to unleashing political tensions between neighbors. It is bound to escalate, as both China and India race to construct hundreds of dams to secure both power and water in carving an elusive water future in the age of climate change. Amrith reminds the present-day governments of both countries about what its founders had painfully remarked: “Jawaharlal Nehru had lamented the ‘disease of gigantism’ in promoting large dams whereas his compatriot Zhou En-lai had acknowledged the mistake of accumulating water by cutting forests”. It is an irony that political expediency has allowed cumulative wisdom of the past to erode. 

As the risks of climate change become increasingly evident in the region, there are essential lessons to be learnt from the shared history of miscued water development in South Asia. That many measures to secure the region against monsoon vagaries have destabilized the monsoon itself through unintended consequences leave much to be desired for sane actions in securing a safe water future. Need it be said that the idea that modern technology will fix matters is passé.   

Unruly Waters is the most comprehensive historical treatise on rains, rivers, coasts and seas, as also on weathermen, engineers, and politicians who sought to tame nature. Amrith covers a vast historical landscape on water but leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. It should be essential reading for researchers and planners as it has between-the-lines lessons and messages to be captured to getting a better sense of the unruly waters. In suggesting that the task to understand the monsoons and the rivers that shape the region is far from complete, the author is emphatic in his suggestion that water management can neither be purely technical nor can it be addressed on a purely national scale. Without counting cultural values and notions of justice, any attempt at re-engineering water management is bound to escalate fears about nature and climate.  

Amrith calls for a new political imagination to view water beyond local histories and national boundaries. ‘Water, which connects Asia, cannot be allowed to divide the region’. There cannot be more compelling reason for countries in the region to cooperate in managing and sharing water then the fact that the countries in South Asia are the world most vulnerable to climate change. Unruly Waters presents all the essential elements to get back on the drawing board to plan a secure water future for the entire region amidst the most challenging times. 

Unruly Waters
by Sunil Amrith
Allen Lane, UK
Extent: 397, Price: Rs 799.

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine, issue dated April 1, 2019.

The Right Words for the Right Tunes

Lyrics are to music what heart is to body, thereby creating a pulsating culture of distinct narrative that has survived since the advent of sound in cinema. 

Over decades, songs have acquired a musical grammar of its own in building an emotional chord with its listeners, both on and off the screen. From populist numbers to flashy entertainers, songs have outlived films in people’s memory. Each song holds a distinct complexion and aura in taking the cinematic narrative forward, which gave lyricists an opportunity to weave magic with words to articulate emotions in simple, accessible verses. Yet, their immense contribution to Hindi cinema has not got its due, lost to overt recognition of music composers and singers.  

Main Shayar Toh Nahin is a comprehensive attempt at restoring that disparity by revisiting the lives and works of those whose lyrics reigned supreme in conveying emotions of all hues, and thereby became part of the cultural fabric of the society. From the art and craft of song writing to structuring poetry into the film narrative, and from capturing depth and range of human emotions to pacing simple verses as musical interludes, the book delves into all that went into loading simple words on complex situations for creating a lasting impact. Such has been the contributions of leading lyricists, from Pradeep to Kaifi and from Majrooh to Gulzar, that film songs attained personal and social relevance beyond just pleasing the ear. 

Without Sahir’s heart-rending Babul ki duaen leti jaa marriage ceremonies are rarely considered complete; Anand Bakshi’s reflections in Kuch to log kahenge help listeners overcome life’s tribulations; and Shailendra’s classic Sajan re jhoot mat bolo holds moral lessons. By playing with power of words lyricists could evoke multiple emotions to suit myriad situations on screen, converting life’s experiences into simple but relatable verses. Words are intelligently packed to lend meanings through music to create uplifting, inspirational, and soothing effects.  

Filled with trivia and unheard anecdotes, Rajiv Vijayakar has pieced together a fascinating history of lyricists that reads like a who’s who of all those who have carried the rich tradition of weaving words into music to assert that ours is a land of lyrical expression of thoughts and emotions. Lyricists, unlike poets, face the challenge of reading the situation, the emotion, and the character on the screen in selecting verses that not only conform to the musical tune but appeal to the masses too. ‘The power play of words saw entire philosophies written using fluid, everyday language’, says the author. Indeevar’s Kasme vaade pyaar wafa and Gulzar’s Aane wala pal jaane wala hai continue to resonate till this day. What must not be lost to oversight is that while creating a rich and variegated collection of happy, sad, and romantic songs these lyricists had to strike a perfect balance between their creative instincts and the demanding ecosystem?  

As the book traverses the musical journey of lyricists, it also seeks to explore why words and melody have a fleeting presence today. With commerce taking precedence over creativity, grammar, aesthetics, and the finesse of language has taken a beating. How else would any lyricist use the word haalaatein when haalat (circumstances) itself is a plural term! Curiously, the consequent sense of loss that music lovers feel is falling on deaf ears. Known for his impeccable reputation as a lyricist, late Raja Mehdi Ali Khan had long opined that lack of language proficiency and reading habit had brought the inevitable decline in the quality of lyrics. Rightly so, as a majority of today’s lyrics are mere assemblages of words, bereft of thoughts.

Far from being judgmental, entertainment journalist Rajiv Vijayakar draws the contours of change sweeping the world of film music, and the challenges that lie ahead. It is evident that in the predominant market culture, songs have become products with a short shelf life. ‘Songs are dying faster today because the importance of words has decreased’. Much of the onus rests on how the music industry recognizes and responds to the importance of words, and gives lyricists their due in reviving the culture of songs. For the music loving populace, however, songs promise more than mere entertainment as these push thoughts, impart lessons, discuss morality, and provide a psycho-therapeutic balm.  

Main Shayar Toh Nahin is all that an avid music lover ever wanted to know about what went into creating a memorable song. It is a tribute to the genius of past lyricists, who made the audiences connect and identify with the words at the personal level. Such has been the impact and power of lyrics that a vast majority can effortlessly recall several such songs. Will the present-day lyricists uphold that rich tradition! 

Main Shayar Toh Nahin
by Rajiv Vijayakar
HarperCollins, New Delhi
Extent: 347, Price: Rs 499.

First published in the Hindustan Times, issue dated March 30, 2019.

To sin is human, afterall!

To sin is essentially a mind game, and only mindful action can dissuade humans from committing a sin.

The quest for grabbing anything forbidden has been a crucial aspect of human existence; else the apple in the Garden of Eden would have left hanging. The act to sin has stayed on with us ever since. Be it the Christianity’s seven sins or the Hinduism’s five, all efforts to stay away from sins have only brought us closer to committing a sin. Despite a consistent religious and moral battle to stay away from them, there are some unseen forces that tempt us to take a call on them. In a closed society where everybody is guilty of some sin, the only crime seems to be getting caught. Come to think of it, in a world of thieves ‘stupidity’ of getting caught may indeed be on top of all sins! 

It goes to the credit of Saint Gregory who, in the 6th century, enlisted seven deadly sins as pride, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, envy and wrath, which seem an expanded version of the five Vedic sins – Kama (desire) , Krodh (anger), Moh (lust) , Lobh (greed) and Anhkaar (pride). Irrespective of its religious connotations, these traits have been acknowledged detriments to mental peace, individual prestige and social reputation. Yet, as experience shows, the impulse to indulge in sinful behaviour is so strong that people easily succumb to the forbidden temptations - the mythical apple continues to hang low.    

For aeon ‘why we do the things we know we shouldn’t’ has been a subject of intense religious and philosophical inquiry, however, without any end to the battle between temptation and restraint. Labeling certain human traits as bad behaviour has hardly been a deterrent. Is it because people do not ascribe the same negative value that has been historically assigned to the sin under reference? If that be so, is it the reason for sinful traits to persist or is there more to understanding nature and proliferation of sins than what has been understood till now? 

Jack Lewis, a neuroscientist and a television presenter, gets deeper into examining the origin and societal relevance of sins as viewed through different religious lenses. In last 10 years since attaining a doctorate in neuroscience from University College London, Lewis has focused his attention on making the latest neuroscience research the widest possible audience through print, radio and television. His radio show Secrets of the Brain is currently being aired in 20 countries, and his co-authored book Sort Your Brain Out has gained popularity. In all of his works, Lewis comes out clear that in varying degrees sins are considered major obstacles to peace and enlightenment. Curiously, however, the world has done pretty little to limit the temptations that surround us. Instead, social media, live streaming, and online shopping has spurred greed, gluttony, lust and envy, while reinventing narcissism as the leading new normal behaviour. 

When the term narcissism was coined by Sigmund Freud some 100 years ago, it was with reference to loving or caressing one’s own body to appease one’s romantic partner. Today, it means an obsession with the self that is as much a cause for social pain of rejection as a physical pain of isolation, resulting from an over-inflated sense of self-importance. 

The Science of Sins peeps into the world of seven deadly sins in their many dimensions, both historical and contemporary; to understand the neural battles between temptation and restraint that takes place within our brains. Using the enormous amount of scientific data on the human brain that has accumulated over the years, the book explains how the neural circuitry of the brain is involved not only in tempting us to be sinful, but also how tweaking parts of our brain could help dissuade us from committing a sin. Although medical terminology thrown across makes it a heavy reading narrative, anecdotal reference to real-life stories sustain readers’ interest.

While Lewis uses intriguing scientific facts to explain why committing sin is impulsive, he leaves the reader in the lurch when it comes to getting over it. Acknowledging that there are no magical cures, he nonetheless advocates ways to train brain to resist temptations. Magnetic stimulation and medical interventions can curb pathological behaviour in extreme cases, mindfulness meditation has been found to be an effective way of remodeling various parts of the brain as a steady process. In the world where each of the seven deadly sins has been systematically taken advantage of by the nefarious forces of global commerce, the quest for remaining healthy, happy and productive warrants a serious application of mind.

The essential take away from this well-researched book is that sin is a mind game, and only mindful action can dissuade humans from committing a sin. Assessing each of the seven sins - pride, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, envy, and wrath - from philosophical and neuroscience perspectives, Lewis lets the reader get a clear sense that only by eliminating inner turmoil and personal suffering can an external sinful stimulus be checked. The Science of Sin falls short of a self-help book as it leaves much for the reader to decide upon. It is nonetheless a book that offers deeper insights on various shades of sins, and how people grapple to reduce their individual vulnerabilities to cope with it. The book concludes that it is not hard to do things we know we shouldn’t, provided we remind ourselves on it frequently.  

The Science of Sin 
by Jack Lewis
Bloomsbury, New Delhi
Extent: 304, Price: Rs 499.

This review was commissioned by the Hindu BusinessLine.

The rise and fall of a hero

....who crushed the skulls of all who opposed him in a bloodsplosion of gruesome vengeance!

In her authoritative study of selected monuments in Modern Delhi (Building Histories, University of Chicago Press, 2016) historian Mrinalini Rajgopalan drew a special reference to the statue of Brigadier General John Nicholson– the British officer who had turned the tide of the Rebellion of 1857 in favour of British troops – which was sought to be removed as early as in 1949. Although the statue of Nicholson wielding a sword was eventually relocated to his Irish hometown of Ulster in 1957, the Ministry of Home Affairs had turned down the earlier plea on the grounds that there wasn’t any noticeable public concern about the monument, and that it only acted as a reminder of our weakness as a historical lesson. 

Post-independent India did show remarkable restraint in its attitude to the British era but by the time the tenth anniversary of Independence approached – 1957 was also the centenary of the Indian Uprising – the mood had changed, and a statue of a British soldier with unsheathed sword seemed highly vulnerable to nationalistic fervour. The three-and-a-half tonne statue was finally removed and ferried to Belfast before the anniversary, and with it went that part of history which had compared a young army officer to the likes of Napoleon by his contemporaries. Called ‘The Lion of the Punjab’, Nicholson continued to remain popular in Britain through much of the 1950s and 1960s for his decisive role in breaching the mutineers’ defence of the walled city of Delhi, but has lost much of it in recent times with modern British historians dubbing him as “an imperial psychopath” and “a homosexual bully”. By late 1960s his name had become a byword for brutality and racism, and his portrait, once proudly displayed in the exhibition of Great Irish Men and Women at the Ulster Museum in Belfast was removed. One website badassoftheweek.com describes him as “one who crushed the skulls of all who opposed him in a bloodsplosion of gruesome vengeance”, and that he is “in equal parts respected and despised by roughly everyone on the Indian subcontinent”. What made an erstwhile hero, considered ‘The Hero of Delhi’ by BBC Radio in 1950 lose his credibility in his home country? Is it because British peoples’ attitudes to race and Empire have changed in the years since his death? Or, is there more to this complex character that has yet not been fully unearthed in earlier accounts of his life?  

Journalist and radio broadcaster Stuart Flinders has pieced together a new perspective on Nicholson’s personality in his biography Cult of a Dark Hero based on previously unpublished material, letters and diaries. India was an appealing career move for a majority of youth in Ireland that made Nicholson, one of the seven siblings, use his uncle’s influence to join 37,000 European soldiers at that time in British India. After completing his basic training upon arrival in Calcutta in 1839, Nicholson was given permanent position with the 27th Native Infantry (NI) at Ferozpore. From there on Nicholson was quick to adapt to local conditions, and proved his mettle in first fighting the Afghans, and then the Sikhs.

Fighting the Ghilzais (tribe) in Ghazni was both torturous and tumultuous. His mother’s parting words ‘never forget to read your Bible’ were of little solace as blood thirsty tribesmen lurked around. In one of his diary entries, Nicholson had noted his anguish: “I return home to breakfast disgusted with myself, the world, and above all, with my cruel profession. In fact we are nothing but licensed assassins”. Nicholson may have sounded apologetic in his note but his hatred for the natives was only to be cemented upon discovering his brother Alexander’s mutilated body as he was passing through the Khyber Pass. Alexander had also come to India as a cadet. 

Cult of a Dark Hero provides a detailed account of the life of a controversial soldier whose extraordinary efforts on inventing the Movable Column of troops helped to nip revolt in the bud, and ensured that Punjab remained under British control. The more power he gained, the more control he exercised in dispensing justice. Flinders provides evidences of Nicholson’s method of asserting the rule of law, which not only won him local support but anointed him as a cult figure, somewhat of a deity. Stories of him bringing peace, justice and, where necessary, retribution merged with ancient tales from Islam, and he became a mystical figure, part folk hero, part Muslim legend. The cult of Nikal Seyn had a dedicated following spread across religious beliefs but the cult was finally taken up by Shia Muslims in remote parts of Punjab. The cult survived on stories that valorised him as a super hero. One story had Nikal Seyn cutting off a man’s head, realising his mistake and putting it back again, following which “the man made a bow and walked home highly satisfied and honoured”. However, such stories were not to last long with the change of times and traditional practices. 

Nicholson career of less than two-decades culminated with his last military encounter in securing walled city of Delhi that not only made him one of the great heroes of Victorian Britain but cost him his life too. Cult of a Dark Hero provides graphic details of the assault on Delhi, which proved beyond doubt that Nicholson knew no fear, and preferred to act rather than to take advice or seek permission. After the guns had blasted holes in the city wall, Nicholson commanded his troops to enter the city amidst terrible shower of fire at Kabul Gate of the city, and with rebels occupying the adjoining houses. Nicholson received a bullet under the right arm on September 16, 1857, and succumbed to it six days later on September 23. “His was a life of adventure lived on the very edge of the British Empire, as courageous as he was ruthless, as loyal to his friends as he was merciless to those who crossed him”.

In his foreword to the book, Sir Mark Tully wonders if much of the opprobrium heaped on Nicholson takes full account of the times in which he lived. That he was brutal there is no doubt, but he was a dedicated soldier with a clear sense of duty. 

Tully was taught by his mother to hold Nicholson in high esteem, as his great-great-grandfather Richard Nicholson was John Nicholson’s uncle. He finds that Stuart Flinders’ research on the controversial life of an archetypal imperial hero has pursued a balanced middle course. Flinders does not paint John Nicholson either black or white, but leaves the verdict open. Not as a justification but as an explanation to how Nicholson got dubbed for his outrageous attitude, historian William Dalrymple has written that “the atrocities committed by the native sepoys against the British women and children had absolved the British of any need to treat the rebels as human beings”. Early in his career Nicholson had admitted that “he disliked India and its inhabitants”, which perhaps led to his ultimate branding as an imperial psychopath, but by no means was he the only British officer to have been engaged in wanton cruelty.      

Cult of a Dark Hero is as much an engaging account of the British exploits in laying control over vast expanses of undivided India as about the man who seemed undeterred by fear of any kind. Flinders stays objective in his readings of personal letters and diary entries in assessing the conditions that made a young man go beyond his sense of duty in making a living. His uncanny power of penetrating the disguise, helped by his habit of maintaining an extensive intelligence network, made him a military strategist of unmatched qualities. That he stayed ahead in taking decisions at the time of crises made many of his seniors uncomfortable. However, his temperament was ideally suited to the times in which he lived.

In his perceptive assessment, Flinders argues that there was a deep sense of racial supremacy exhibited by Nicholson in his actions, which is rightfully abhorred in recent times. The reputation of Gordon of Khartoum, the British officer who suppressed the Muslim revolt in Sudan in 1880, followed a similar trajectory for the same reason. Although it may remain difficult to justify his brutality in the service of the Empire, it is equally hard to draw conclusions on why he lost out on his cult status in recent times. Nonetheless, Flinders concludes that Nicholson was driven by personal ambition and a sense of duty to his country rather than by any notions of improving the lives of those amongst whom he worked. His presence during the Uprising was reassuring to Europeans, but it did alter the course of history for those who were subjugated by the imperial forces. For those interested in the history of freedom movement, Cult of a Dark Hero provides insights on how the Indian Uprising of 1857, often referred to as the First War of Independence, was eventually lost, but which had sown the seeds of a long-drawn battle to win freedom 90 years later.      

Cult of a Dark Hero: Nicholson of Delhi

by Stuart Flinders

I B Tauris, London, 

Expanse: 231 pp, Price: £ 25 

First published in Biblio, issue dated Jan-March 2019.

The enigmatic cultural icon

Can a river which has watered and nurtured an entire civilization from time immemorial be left contaminated, carrying an unbearable burden of silt and detritus?

Ganga strangely represents the physical manifestation of an accepted mythological duality – to be divine and vulnerable at any given time. Revered as a goddess, the river is endowed with two contrasting characters: one as an eternal deity of the flowing waters, the other as a carrier of the accumulated human misdeeds. This beguiling duality has allowed the river to be worshiped and neglected at the same time, regardless of its worth as a finite and tangible resource. Flowing through the heart of an ancient civilization, the unholy alliance between purity and pollution has kept this enigmatic cultural icon on the very edge of survival. It continues to survive nonetheless!  

In an insightful account of the myth, religion, history and development of the sacred river, the University of California historian Sudipta Sen delves into the duality manifest in the approaches adopted to ease the Ganga of the vexing problems afflicting its purity and flow. While attempts to clean the river of its pollution load have been victims of their own top-down ambitious scope, the mythological history of the river makes it difficult for multitudes of Indians to accept that the river may be in imminent danger. Despite the evidence of an unprecedented ecological decline, the unstinted faith in the divine powers of the river makes it easy for a vast majority to espouse confidence that the Ganga will never go dry like the great Yellow river of China. 

But can the river’s miraculous powers heal its own scars? Sen let’s mythology speak for itself to serve a possible clue. During her descent to the world, an anxious Ganga had asked King Bhagiratha: where shall she cleanse herself after people wash off all their sins in her waters? In his unexpected reply, the King had expressed confidence in the moral obligation of all upright mortals to carry out the unenviable task of expiating the sins of the world. Such is the power of mythology that it continues to inspire faith that the collective power of the sinners will rise one day to restore the river into its pristine state. Will it?

Within the study of the significant historical moments that shaped the river, the book offers two parallel but inter-related threads that connect the mythical and historic with the climate and ecology in getting a sense of the cumulative consequences of human activity from the past to the present. Far from learning any lessons from its rich history, argues the author, the uneven contours of the past are very much at work today. The purest of all rivers continues to remain the most polluted. And, there is no getting away from the fact that the great cultural icon is in trouble, suffocated by dams, encroached by overcrowding, and desecrated by discharge.  

Ganga is for anyone interested in how a river shapes human culture and its history, stimulating multilayered interpretations on its metaphysical threshold. It is an ambitious undertaking that blends geography, ecology, mythology and religion in presenting an intimate biography of the most sacred and beloved river. It is as much a celebration of its glorious past as a mourning of its pathetic present. It is scholarly treatise which, by author’s own admission, took twelve years in the making, and is an essential reading for those interested in understanding a river from its diverse social, cultural and spiritual perspectives.  

The book offers no quick fixes on redeeming the river from the civilizational onslaught. It instead asks why the Ganga, held in such reverence across a multitude of religious traditions, remains hostage to the promise of development and risks of degradation? It provokes the discerning reader to grapple with the river’s rich past and its most uncertain future. At this time when the cleansing and the purification of the Ganga has been an urgent and much-vaunted national priority, the book offers a nuanced understanding on the river from a cultural and civilizational perspective. 

A river which has watered and nurtured an entire civilization from time immemorial cannot be left contaminated, carrying an unbearable burden of silt and detritus. Sen argues that it is time we identify what stands in the way of tangible progress toward a cleaner and healthier river. The time to act has never been as urgent!      

Ganga: The Many Pasts of A River
by Sudipta Sen
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 445, Price: Rs 799.

First published in Civil Society magazine, issue dated March 2019.

Life hacks in vale of tears

As tech takes over, deepening misery, battering the human spirit, subduing truth, Harari advocates a meditative resilience, a constant debate

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. And, it is becoming increasingly so as machine intelligence powers its way beyond intelligent minds and algorithms begin to guide human emotions. Far from maximizing human potential, such technological transformation is upgrading computers to the extent that it will empower a handful of tiny elite at the cost of most others who not only stand to get exploited but are being made irrelevant in the process too. The cumulative impact of emerging info-tech revolution is fueling global inequality like never before, while contributing to increasing social tensions which are dividing humankind into hostile camps. 

Unless the situation is peeled to its last layer, it may not be clear where the world is headed and how indeed should we protect ourselves and the generations to follow. From ecological cataclysm to fake news epidemic and from chauvinistic nationalism to underrated bio-terrorism, the world is fast becoming a theatre of the absurd where the bull of progress is raging wild with anxiety and anger. Spare a moment and one will find that in the emerging social milieu the internal lives of individuals are being compromised. Little do we realize that an unprecedented pressure on our personal lives had ignited the Arab Spring, and has now sparked #Me Too movement? Clearly, there is more to come as our internal psychological mechanism remains under duress.  

In his clear-eyed and searingly realistic assessment, Yuval Noah Harari draws lessons that celebrate human wisdom but without discounting human stupidity. Enlisting 21 carefully distilled lessons into 5 over-arching themes, the Oxford scholar traverses the world of despair emerging from unresolved technological and political challenges to underscore the significance of meditative resilience in a world of post-truth ignorance. It is a curious and reflective analysis of the existential challenges here and now, lessons that are borne out of our complicity in political biases, unabashed privileges and institutional oppression.  

Harari keeps it plain and simple, locating lessons in our everyday acceptance of the so-called inevitable. Many of the social and political disruptions of our time can be located in ever more lonely lives we live in an ever more connected planet. Irrespective of how many virtual friends one may boast, it is an accepted fact that one cannot know more than 150 individuals. The facade of generating likes on the social media is not without serious psychological repercussions. Humans may have got everything under their control in their journey till now, but in the new age they are finding it hard to make sense of all that the technology has on offer. 

As the title suggests, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a collection of essays written over time to grapple the present day predicament of existence. Much of what he writes emerges in response to the nagging question ‘why there is so much suffering in the world and in my own life?’ Harari contends that we are living in an age of bewilderment, when myths of all kind are collapsing – from religious myths about god and heavens to nationalist myths about the motherland and the nation-state, and from romantic myths about love and adventure to capitalist myths about economic growth and consumerism. Yet, the society continues to nurture myths.

Truth is a casualty in the process.  The truth is that truth was never high on the agenda of Homo sapiens; instead they have been busy constructing stories. Be it religion or politics, the focus is to fit ourselves into some ready-made story such that we stay away from truth. This is how life has continued from generation to generation, making each animal play its part in the story. But without getting to know ourselves more, we will continue to believe stories. So if you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, explains Harari, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is. 

While one might not concur with all the lessons on offer, the infectious enthusiasm with which Harari writes makes it virtually impossible not to be carried away. The author of the global bestseller Sapiens has rooted his essays in everyday realities; the book however remains ambitious in scale. The essential take home message is to join the debate about the future of humanity. History is unlikely to give us any discounts or exempt us from the consequences if we continue to pursue our busy schedules. More people join the debate the better it is. The globalized world is in dire need of the empathetic imagination. 

In spite of its unwieldy capaciousness, Harari espouses a fundamental truth about our scarred times: that nothing can insulate us from the vagaries of a violent and vengeful world.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century 
by Yuval Noah Harari
Jonathan Cape, London
Extent: 352, Price: Rs 799

First published in Outlook magazine, issue for the week ending Feb 25, 2019.

Time's Bitterest Jokes

Only by recreating a sub-continental imagination based on diverse cultures and interlinked histories can a plural world with open setting be created that we can call a home! 

For the Greeks nostalgia meant a mix of sweet and bitter pang that humans often suffer in search of their roots, and their belongingness. From what was once considered a return of pain or some sort of sickness, relived nostalgic moments are now said to improve mood, increase self-esteem, strengthen social bonds and imbue life with meaning. It does so for Ziauddin Sardar, as moments of reckoning through sights, scents, and sounds of the lived past reveal his true self as a desi, an identity that sans ethnic lineage and national boundaries. Why should my identity be limited to a mere seventy years and a vaguely samosa shaped area on the world map? As a compassionate critical thinker and an accomplished author, Sardar traces his identity in the macrocosm of culture and civilization that is beyond the body politic of the nation-state called Pakistan. 

Ways of Being Desi pieces together those aspects of history and culture that have either faded from peoples’ imagination or lie marginalized in the percepts of territorial identity. It has cast an unmistakable imprint on people’s mind, shattering their self-esteem to the point that they don’t find anything true and authentic within their own country. Nothing could be worse for a heterogeneous population than a lack of belief in self and the country, the psychological underpinnings of which reduce the sense of belonging to a caricatured symbolism of political identity. It is the diasporic sense of separation and loss that is beautifully reflected in the rich anecdotal narrative that has curious elements of sub-continental imagination. 

Only by building courage to remove the mask of modernity could the author hear the call of sanity and sweetness of everydayness that he had long lived, and cherished. Sardar unapologetically returns to his desi-ness, and rediscovers the emotional power of relationships; captures the sense of aesthetics in language; and locates himself within the civilizational space called watan. The detective novels of Ibn-e-Safi, the cinema of Dilip Kumar and Guru Dutt, the poetic genius of Ghalib and Faiz, and the crossover Pakistani television dramas help him comprehend the missing sub-continental imagination, the absence of which has only given people of the partitioned land a sense of political identity that has distanced itself from the history and culture of its ancestral lineage. 

Within the political realities which persist only for maintaining status quo the idea of coming together of diverse traditions separated at the cruel hands of history may sound romantic; however, there is merit in it as it can counter the collective insanity and despair that fuels a sense of inferiority. Such remote possibility is pregnant with the idea of building creative alliances between shared culture and affinities to act against the helplessness and impotence generated by modernity. One begins to feel author’s pain and at the same time aligns with his optimism that only by recreating a sub-continental imagination based on diverse cultures and interlinked histories can a plural world with open setting be created that we can call a home! 

Sardar traverses a significant part of his nostalgic journey through films, as he finds in them reflections of contradictions and opportunities, as well as poetic aesthetics and cultural values. In addition to acting as a universal symbol of sub-continental identity, films like Mughal-e-Azam, Ganga Jamuna, Devdas, and Pyassa not only set the literary agenda but acted as a lifeline for cultural survival. Despite their many-layered complexities, films have been an invitation to a meditation on love and beauty, art and life. While the Indian cinema of the fifties, sixties and early seventies engaged with audience purely on the basis of shared cultural assumptions, the television dramas of Pakistan during the eighties and nineties explored the role of tradition in shaping a contemporary identity. Both found resonance across political boundaries, a testimony to the acknowledgement and appreciation of shared cultural chord. Could film and television media of the kind be the reflecting mirror of shortcomings, and a messenger of promises?   

At the core of Ways of Being Desi are reflections on socio-political realities of a country that has belittled the identity of its own people. Packed with sardonic wit and uninhibited sarcasm, the author provides an honest exploration into the shaping of the nation-state, that is perpetually in paralysis. Not only the land area but the mental spaces of people have been partitioned, distancing them from the aesthetic and sensibility of their sub-continental belonging. The country needs to recover its tradition of pluralism and humanism before its segregated populace plunges it deeper into the abyss of bigotry, violence and mob rule, cautions Sardar. The author invokes desi-ness as a living, dynamic reality that has the potential to reclaim the past to reunite it to its futures. 

Ways of being Desi 
by Ziauddin Sardar
Penguin Allen Lane, New Delhi
Extent: 299, Price: Rs. 599.

First published in Outlook magazine, issue covering the week until Jan 21, 2019.

Wisdom of the past holds good

Being able and willing to live inexpensively may be a virtue that the majority of people across the globe will have to practice out of necessity.

Frugality has been abandoned, and with it, the wise words of the sages, from Buddha to Socrates and from Thoreau to Gandhi. The idea of simple living is now deemed insufficient, unexciting, and even uninteresting by a significant portion of the global population. As the lure of purchasable pleasure entices people into relentless earning and spending, a culture of unceasing consumerism has pulled those with resources away from frugal simplicity. Emrys Westacott, a professor of philosophy at New York’s Alfred University, tries to explain why frugality has not become a global norm --despite so many wise people having championed it over the years.

Westacott, a philosopher, sees a deep contradiction in the idea of individuals pursuing happiness within a competitive consumptive society. Competitiveness can only fuel jealousies. Any attempt to distinguishing oneself by acquiring products as badges of social position only creates a false and temporary sense of happiness. In extreme cases the propensity to acquire and hoard can turn pathological, dominating a person’s life until they require treatment for a psychological disorder. Epicurus and Plato were convinced that securing material wealth was unlikely to bring happiness and that living simply was the key to moral purity.

It appears that the idea of frugality has fewer and fewer takers because the concept of simple living has turned out to be quite complex. Pursuing frugality in the current world restricts the pursuit of excitement and adventure in a world loaded with such opportunities. Further, we are living in the times when the economic imperative to growth has meant that a minimum level of economic activity must continue to keep several fellow beings busy so they can make sense of their gainful existence. Despite most of us, at one time or another, feeling some sort of moral pressure to embrace frugality, the world is stacked against us. The Wisdom of Frugality isn’t a polemic urging people to change their lives by embracing simplicity, but rather a broader investigation of both frugal and luxurious living. We are each left to draw our own conclusions, regardless of how confusing our choices may be.

Many people jump on and off three treadmills: the hedonic treadmill for pursuing happiness, the status treadmill for satisfying consumption, and the working treadmill for generating income. All this on and off come at an enormous cost: physically, mentally and emotionally.

Why can’t people break free of the shackles of false happiness? Westacott acknowledges that our culture is torn between accepting acquisitiveness as a necessary condition of economic growth, and denouncing it as an undesirable trait that bespeaks false values. Beyond that, though, there is no further explanation.

Freedom has been central to the idea of the good life offered by philosophers of every generation, but consumerism has reinterpreted this through the lens of false values. In the interconnected world of growing individualism backed by the availability of a myriad of economic choices, argues Westacott, freedom needs to be exercised in the context of contributing to the public good. Given the problems of pollution and global warming, we need to live more frugally and less wastefully in order to protect natural resources. That’s in our own interest, and the common interest. Technology may be of some help, but it, too, adds to an ever-increasing demand for more goods and services. Frugality is a possible antidote to over-development, one that the world can hardly ignore.  

The Wisdom of Frugality succeeds in providing a springboard for thinking about whether the wisdom of the past still holds today. Being able and willing to live inexpensively may be a virtue that the majority of people across the globe will have to practice out of necessity.

The Wisdom of Frugality
by Emrys Westacott
Princeton University Press, Princeton
Extent: 313, Price: $20

First published at the AnthemEnviroExpertReviews, uploaded on March 5, 2019.