Category: Meena Raghunathan

Keeping Tradition Alive

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July is here. And along with it, the festival season. Pujas—a time for festivities, fun, enjoyment with the family. A time to get back in touch with our traditions. A time of solemnity and also gaiety.

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But also today, a time for stress! Who knows what the auspicious grass for Ganesh Chaturthi is? Or the prasadam to be made for Thiruvadarai? What is the rangoli to make for Rathasapthami?

And how to answer questions from the kids? Why is Naga Panchami celebrated? Who is Ekadashi? Why do we make sundal for Navaratri?

“Follow the Hindu Moon: A Guide to the Festivals of South India’, by Soumya Aravind Sitaraman, will answer all these questions and more. Brought out by Random House about 10 years ago, this magnum opus is in two volumes, totaling to over 800 pages. But don’t be put off by the weight and the bulk. The publication is erudite and comprehensive, but extremely easy to read and refer to. The text presentation is clearly organized and simple.

What really brings the book to life are the more than 400 colour plates. Beautiful, un-posed, real—they bring alive the beauty of our traditions. Whether it is the decoration of Varalakshmi or the photographs of the delicacies made for different pujas, you wish you could be there in the photo, living that moment. The photographer is Usha Kris, Soumya’s mother!

Volume 1 is called  ‘Celebrate’. It covers: “Puja Basics’—everything from aartis to vastram; ‘Embracing the Almighty’—a guide to pujas;   ‘ Getting organized’—pooja checklists to annual festival planner; and ‘Celebrate’—detailed walkthroughs for every festival of South India, including procedures, observances, rituals, sankalpams, stories, etc.

Volume 2 called ‘Understand’ has sections on everything from ‘Reading the Panchanga’ to shlokams, to naivedya recipes, and festival-specific rangoli designs.

The books work at several levels: as a ‘Do-it-yourself’ guide for novices; as a reference book on details for experienced mamis; and as a fascinating browse for anyone.

At first look, Rs. 3500 seems a bit of an investment. But this book is bringing to you almost those many years of tradition!

So whether you are an experienced puja veteran, or a student in the US who wants to celebrate festivals the traditional way, or an ‘armchair cook’ like me, you are going to enjoy this book. So buy it for yourself. Or share the joy of a festival and gift it to a loved one!

–Meena

129 Pages Open Up a World

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‘The Buddha in the Attic’. What an innocuous book title. And such a pretty cover.

But the world it opened for me was neither innocuous or pretty.

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A confession first. I am pretty ill-informed of historical migration to the US. I knew about Italians and Irish going. And other Europeans—like the Polish. But I never thought of Asian migration as significant. Hence the very moorings of the book were an education. ‘Oh, Japanese migrate to the US in numbers in the 1880s?’ was the question that struck me. I had to do some little surfing and reading to give myself a context.

Just a quick wiki-glimpse of the highlights of this for those of my readers who may not be familiar with the issue:

 

Coming back to the book, it traces the stories of ‘picture brides’ who came to the US from Japan. And therein lies the brilliance. It is not the story of one woman or family. The technique that Julie Otsuka uses is such that through a tiny 129-page book, I begin to understand the history of the whole Japanese community in the US in the pre-WWII period, and get powerful insights into what might have happened to a whole set of picture brides.

Read it to understand history from the perspective of immigrants; read it to understand history from the perspective of women; read it to understand xenophobia is not new and that history does repeat itself; to learn that the stories of some women are the stories of all women; to learn that the stories of one diaspora are the stories of all diaspora; to learn how so much can be conveyed with so few words.

Bottom line, READ IT!

–Meena

P.S: Feel really ill-informed. I never knew about this book or Julie Otsuka till recently.

Justifications Believers Could Give

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In the old days, it seems from all reports,

That Gods of all faiths performed many, many miracles

 

THEY would save believers from the jaws of death

THEY would heal lepers and give sight to the blind

THEY would grant riches and victory to the righteous

And take the time to wipe the tears of widows and orphans

 

But it seems THEY are slipping up badly these days

I can see no miracles around me

In fact, THEY are performing ‘Below Expectation’ (a term from my appraisal process!)

Even in their core function

Which is to reward the good and punish the bad

 

Well, when you think about it

I can find some excuses for THEM

How do you expect THEM to cope

With the kind of rise in population

The world has seen from the good old days?

So many billions of souls

Calling out to them for

Miracles big and small

 

Agreed THEY are Gods

But even THEY, surely

Must be stressed and over-worked

Poverty, hunger, AIDS

Terrorist attacks, the War on Terror

Nuclear proliferation

Stock market booms and busts

Dictators and trolls

Floods, droughts, tsunamis

Child trafficking, porn sites

Violence against women

 

In between sorting out all this

Do you seriously expect THEM

To make the time

For a personal miracle for you?

 

Get real!

 

–Meena

 

Things That Got Our Teachers’ Goats

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about something that had our teachers and school management paranoid—so called ‘contraband books’. We had a well-stocked school library, but obviously we had an urge to read something beyond—like comics and M&Bs! Which our teachers and the nuns were determined to stop us from doing. One of the things that used to happen irregularly regularly were surprise checks. Suddenly about four teachers would walk into the classroom, and order us to open our desks and bags, and would riffle through them. Anyone caught with any book other than textbooks or school library books was sent off to the Principal, and had the book confiscated.

I marvel at those days of innocence, considering that as far as I know, no one was ever caught with anything more wicked than an Archie comic. Or yes, a Barbara Cartland. While Georgette Heyers were completely kosher and in fact, in the school library lists, and even M&Bs were tolerated (which meant we were not too nervous if a teacher heard us mention them), for some reason BCs really got the teachers paranoid.

They were also paranoid about what our hair was fastened with. It had to be black ribbons. Rubber bands, even black ones, got them. What to talk of ‘love in Tokyos’!

And socks. They had to be plain white, and NO DESIGN! The faintest sprays of flowers or creepers, even white on white, would get them on a trip.

Skirts had to be just above the knee. Anything shorter and there would be consequences. The girls with more oomph and guts found their way around this. They used to roll up the waist band of the skirt two or even three times, so that the skirts were at a daring mid-thigh. And roll them down, oh so innocently, when any strict teacher happened by.

All this was at Carmel Convent Delhi. But I am sure that readers of my generation would all relate to this.

I thank my teachers for the discipline they dinned into us. For the values they made a part of our lives. For the seriousness with which they taught us. For how earnestly they took their mission of making something of us.

–Meena

Starry, Starry Village

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Last week, I was in interior Andhra Pradesh. We were felicitating high-performing Std. 10 students from government schools of villages in our project area.

All was routine, till they announced one of the winners as Keerthi Chawla. I wasn’t sure I had heard right. It was too North-Indian a name for a village in AP. So I asked again what the child’s name was, and she reiterated that it was Keerthi Chawla. And she was speaking Telugu. I asked her if she belonged to those parts or her family had moved there. She told me she was very much from Dosari village. And also told me her full name, which was Vangapudi Keerthi Chawla.

I couldn’t wait for the function to finish to catch hold of my colleagues to ask what this was about. They told me that the trend in Dosari village was to name children after film stars. That is not an unusual trend—we all know that many a Rajesh or Dilip or Aishwarya were named about the eponymous stars. What was unusual of course was the adoption of the name—lock, stock and surname!

We thought we should get a little more into it. A very quick count in the primary school and Bala Badi in the village threw up 81 children who were named after stars: from Trishas to Tamannas to Anushas (these ladies don’t use surnames, I think). From among those who do use surnames, we found apart from Keerthi Chawla, also a Vidya Balan. Among the boys there were Nageswar Raos, Ram Charans and Prabhas.

(I have met many a Jhansi, Jhansi Rani and Jhansi Lakshmi from AP/Telangana. Not sure why these names are so popular here.)

I thought mine was my Keerthi Chawla was the most exciting find. But I was deflated when my colleague told me that in her previous job, where they used to provide education support for children from Tamilnadu slums, they had one child called David Beckham (Muthu David Beckham).

With what dreams do parents name their children?

How we look up to the stars!

Do they know?

–Meena

Sights That Make Me Smile As I Walk By

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Our Indian cities don’t have much by way of street art. And what there is, looks typically municipality-commissioned.

Which is why i thought i should share a few examples of street art that ticks all the boxes of what this should be–creative, imaginative, quirky and brilliantly executed.

So I am going to let the pics speak for themselves!

A brilliant 2-level piece, partly on the compound wall, and partly on the building wall. (Note the line across the boy’s shoulder. Below that, is the the portion on the compound wall, and above on the building wall). Yelahanka, Bangalore.

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Compound wall of a house. Yelahanka, Bangalore.

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Discarded dish antenna. GMR Institute of Technology. Rajam, Andhra Pradesh.

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–Meena

My Crores vs. Your Millions

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India gave the world Zero. So should we not be a bit more assertive in the matter of numbers?

I have grown up with lakhs and crores. And I have not heard that India has officially moved to millions and billions.

2018-06-15 17.29.16_resizedWhy then does my newspaper headline inform me that 55 million Indians are pushed into poverty every year due to health spending? Isn’t it a sad enough fact for me to take in, without having to contend with doing mental callisthenics?

And an Indian research journal in which I hope to publish a paper also says that figures must be in millions and billions, not in good old familiar lakhs and crores.

Well, in the case of the research study, maybe it has been done in collaboration with American researchers? And in the second, maybe it is that the journal hopes for an international audience?

Whatever the reasons, when communicating to Indians, would it not make more sense to use familiar number-names? Is 55 million a lot? Or not so much? What proportion of the population is it? I can’t do these calculations early in the morning.

And writing numbers too! I write and relate to 10,00,000. Not 1,000,000. But will Excel allow me to? NO!

India, we hear has a lot of soft power (as well as software power). Can we not prevail upon companies making programs to have an ‘Indian number variation’, like there are options for UK and US spellings?

And even more important, can we in India—the media, academia et.al., use lakhs and crores? The Americans have proved that a country can get by in the comity of nations without switching to the metric system. Mine is a relatively small ask!

–Meena

 

Living Magic!

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How can you not be cured by a medicine called Living Magic! That is what ‘Zinda Tilismat’, translates to! With a name like that, can you wonder that it claims to cure everything from colds to upset stomachs to toothaches, to ‘new’ ailments like swine flu and bird flu? (But no, I haven’t heard of its use in Nipah, I have to admit!)

The ‘wonder drug’ was formulated by Hakim Mohammed Moizuddin Farooqui, way back in 1920, and has been manufactured in the Zinda Tilismath Karkhana in Hyderabad since then. This Unani medicine is basically made from aromatic herbals—mainly eucalyptus, and also some camphor, menthol, thymol, etc. Amazingly, you can apply it externally or ingest it.

The pack seems to have been unchanged for all these 100 years too. It carries a picture of a spear-toting African. The reason, it seems, is that the founder was so impressed by the Siddhi guards of the Nizam that he thought that such a picture on his medicine would give it an association with strength and well-being.

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I have no idea if there have been clinical trials on this medicine to substantiate any or all the claims. But can you argue with a sale of 1 crore vials every year?

And the romance of the name! I am ready to be cured of anything with this. And, to its credit, the ingredients cannot do me harm!

As a Hyderabadi for some years, I obviously knew of this magic potion. But as we do with things which are local, I didn’t bother to buy it or try it. Now that I have left Hyderabad and someone reminded me of ZT, I became obsessed with it! So I made some friends buy and send me some. Now I am waiting for some (minor) illness to strike me, so that I may be magically cured.

So I suppose my message is, everything is in a name! An invaluable lesson to product managers (I began my life as one), innovators, company founders, et.al.

–Meena

Matchmaker, Matchmaker….

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Shared memories are probably what define a community or nation or any grouping.

And one indelible memory shared by millions of Indians is seeing miles and miles of walls painted with:

‘Rishtey hi rishtey

Prof. Arora

Mil to lein’.

Prof. Arora rocked social media before social media was invented!

But this piece is not so much about the ‘world-famous in India’ professor, as about how matches were and are made.

Detail from ‘Matchmaker’: A painting by Nilofer Suleman

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When we were young (and for centuries before that, I would imagine), it was about

Pushy pishis

Mission-mode mamas

Chatty chachis

Anxious ammammas

Each activating their network of relatives, friends, acquaintances; chatting up people chance-met at weddings or house warmings or whatever; reaching out to guests of their neighbours, sisters in law of their cousins, whoever. But the fundamental strategy was ‘pass the word, pass the word’.

And boy, did it work! Everyone (except the resolutely resistant), did end up getting married.

‘Matchmaker’: Nilofer Suleman

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And then came a generation where it was considered OK to put up a matrimonial ad in TOI or Hindu or whatever the local dominant newspaper was. This seemed to work fairly OK too.

Today, with so-called efficient networks and all manner of specialized networking sites, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I meet so many 30+ people who are not married. It could be that they don’t want to get married. But I know at least half of them do want to. But they never seem to find the right person. The trick seems to be to find a soulmate in school or college. It seems to get increasingly difficult afterwards.

Then parents come into the picture. And they are pretty clueless!

Which makes me think that we have to find some other means to fix matches. Have no idea what, but maybe go back to real-live human beings as intermediaries, rather than just bits and bytes of information floating in the ether?

—Meena

Two BHIMS I am Fan Of

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The first is the hero of Randamoozham, or The Second Turn, the masterly Malayalam novel by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, based on the Mahabharata. It is told from the perspective of Bhima who never got his due, though he took the brunt of every battle, was the bravest, kept every promise, and made his share of sacrifices. The novel makes one question stereotypes and assumptions. For instance, after reading the book, you will never quite respect Yudhisthra, who comes across as self-righteous and pompous, or admire Arjun, whom we now see as egoistical and pretty focussed on himself.

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It was my friend Ann, knowing of my interest in such take-offs on the epics, who told me about Randamoozham, which she said was the best book she had ever read. After a huge build-up, when I asked her to get me an English translation on her next visit to Kerala, she said she thought there wasn’t one! Anyway she said, she would check –she mentioned that there was a bookseller who sold books on the train, who was very knowledgeable, and he would be the best person to ask. And faithfully, she asked him on her next train trip from Bangalore to Kerala. And oh boy! Did she get an earful! The bookseller took a break from business and lectured her for five whole minutes about the younger generation who did not care to know enough of their mother tongue to read in it; how did they expect to get the real essence of a book written in Malayalam when they read it in English; how could she insult the writing of a master like Vasudevan Nair by even dreaming of reading his masterpiece in English. etc. etc.

Subsequently, several English translations of the book have come out. But the one I love is BHIMSEN by Prem Panicker, shared with me by my friend Unni. It has none of the hiccups and awkwardness that translations from Indian languages to English often suffer.  It is surely a work of love. I am not even sure it is published formally—what I recall is that it was published chapter by chapter on Mr. Panicker’s blog. Prem Panicker, is incidentally a cricket journalist.

(You can access the book on https://prempanicker.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/bhim-complete-and-unabridged/)

The other BHIM I love is the app for money transfer. I am in general very wary of financial transactions through electronic media. And being technologically-challenged, have great difficulty operating most of them. But BHIM is one thing which works like a dream. I routinely pay salaries using BHIM. I use it in shops. Whenever my friends buy anything on my behalf, two clicks and the money is in their account.

So folks, two messages:

Download Bhim the novel, and enjoy the best read in a long time.

Download Bhim the app, and enjoy superlative convenience.

–Meena

P.S. ‘Duryodhana’ by V. Raghunathan, is the re-telling of the Mahabharata from, you guessed it, Duryodhana’s point of view.