Jumbo Symbol

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As we celebrate our 76th Independence Day, here is a look at a creature which is inextricably tied to the image of India—the elephant.

Though the tiger is our national animal, and lions stand proud on our national symbol, it is the elephant which is associated in popular imagination with India. Elepehants have traditionally been associated with the wealth, grandeur and ceremony of kingly India. Even today, people from foreign lands imagine elephants strolling the streets of the country.

A constant and less-than-flattering reference is to the Indian economy as an elephant. To quote former RBI Governor Dr. Duvvuri Subbarao, ‘In development economics parlance, the East Asian economies — Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong — are referred to as the tigers. The next generation of fast growing Asian economies — Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia — are referred to as the cubs. China is called the dragon. All these countries delivered a growth miracle in the last 40 years. ‘

‘India is referred to as an elephant because it is a strong animal with enormous potential but it moves at a lumbering pace. The hope is that it will start dancing and deliver the next growth miracle.’ (Knowledge at Wharton).

But coming back the elephant itself. Though elephants are so central to the imagination of India, ironically, one sees the image of the African elephant all around—from ads celebrating India and Indian products, to calendar art, to even textbooks and school charts.

The two are different at a very fundamental biological level. Asian elephants belong to the genus Elephas, species maximus, and African elephants to the genus Loxodonta, species africana. The two cannot interbreed and produce viable offspring.

Elephant
Coutesy: Britannica

Physically, the African elephant is significantly taller and heavier than our Asian ones. Another obvious difference is that Asian elephants have small ears, while their African cousins have much larger ears, which cover their shoulders. All African elephants have tusks, while only male Asian elephants have tusks. (Artists seem to like depicting large ears and longs tusks on all the elephants they draw, which may be the reasons for the predominant image of African eles even in our media!). The trunk of the Asian elephant has one finger at the tip, while the African elephant has two fingers– this means that the way they pick up things is different—our elephants will curve their trunk around the object, while the African jumbo will hold the object between its two ‘fingers’, much as we would hold something between finger and thumb. Our elephants have two humps on the forehead, while African eles have one.

Importantly, Asian elephants are tameable, while African elephants are not. This is why in India, elephants have played such a large part in our lives—whether in religious ceremonies, in cultural processions, as royal symbols, as transport or war animals.  

Thought still on the endangered list, conservation efforts seem to be paying off in India, with numbers reportedly on the rise, standing at about 28,000 this year, and elephant-bearing states vying with each other to report higher numbers. Project Elephant, launched in 1992, was critical in focussing attention on conservation of elephants and their habitats. Now, it has been merged with Project Tiger, based on the thinking that both animals inhabit the same habitats in some places. Only the future will tell if this is a good move, given that different issues confront the two majestic animals in different locations, and the move may take away the focussed attention on each of these.

On the economic front, bodies like the World Economic Forum think that ‘India’s economy is an elephant that is starting to run.’

As we wish our elephants to do well on World Elephant Day (August 12), we also hope, on Independence Day, that the Indian economy does well and all Indians attain a better quality of life.

Happy Independence Day!

–Meena

Tomato Puree

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There is an unusual addition to the front page news these days. It is the tomato! As prices of tomatoes soar, there is panic. From housewives to gourmet chefs there is a scramble to devise meals where the familiar flavor and texture of tomatoes can be recreated without the star ingredient. Recipes are shared, and suitable substitutes recommended, such as tamarind, raw mango, kokum and curd. Ironically these tartness-adding agents have been used in Indian cooking well before the tomato gravy became ubiquitous element in everything from paneer to pizza!

Interestingly, the tomato is a relatively recent arrival in India. It is believed to have been introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and was probably grown in the parts of India where the Portuguese influence was strong. It was not easily adopted by the local people as it was looked upon with suspicion, often referred to as vilayati baingan (imported brinjal), and unclear whether it was meant to be eaten raw or cooked. It is only in the 19th century, with the British influence that tomatoes became a part of Indian cuisine.

As we are missing the tomato in our daily meals, it is a good time to take a look at its chequered history.

The global history of the tomato also is a long and convoluted one. The plant is believed to have originated in South and Central America, and can be traced back to early 700 AD to the early Aztecs who named it tomatl or xitomatl (plump thing with navel). It was an integral part of their native diet in the sixteenth century. The Spanish conquerors of the region called it tomate, from which the English word tomato is derived.

Europeans first came in contact with the domesticated tomato when they captured one of the cities of the region. The Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes is thought to have brought back the seeds to southern Europe where they were planted for ornamental purposes. The tomato was not eaten till the late 1800s. This was in part due to their reputation as being deadly plants. Some of this was because the tomato was classified by Italian herbalist Pietro Andrae Matthioli as being part of the deadly nightshade family (Solanaceae plants that contain toxic tropane alkaloids) and a mandrake (a group of foods thought to be aphrodisiacs). The fruit was also nicknamed as “poison apple” because it was believed that eating this could be fatal.

Another thing that compounded this belief was that rich people in the 1500s used plates made of pewter which had high lead content. Foods high in acid, like tomatoes, would cause the lead to leach out into the food, resulting in lead poisoning and death. Thus the cause of death was not tomatoes but lead poisoning. However this connection was not made then, and the tomato was labelled as the culprit. The less affluent who ate off plates made of wood, did not have that problem, and hence did not have an aversion to tomatoes. This is essentially the reason why tomatoes were only eaten by poor people until the 1800’s, especially in southern Italy. People may have started eating tomatoes when not much else was available because not only did they add flavour to the otherwise bland meat dishes, but they could also be preserved and stored. The earliest recipe for tomato sauce was published in 1694, by Neapolitan chef Antonio Latini in his book Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward).

Even within the rest of Europe, tomato as an edible component was looked upon with suspicion. Tomato was perceived as a cold fruit, and coldness was considered a bad quality for a food according to the Galenic school of medicine. It was associated with eggplant which was also an unknown; it was cultivated close to the dirt, another factor that didn’t make it palatable. While the tomato was gradually making its way into cuisine in southern Europe, it still had to find its way to other parts of the world.

How did the tomato synonymous with pizza? Thereby hangs a tale! In 1889 the Queen Margherita of Italy was to visit Naples, and one restaurateur wanted to create a special dish to honour Her Majesty. He made a pizza topping from three ingredients that represented the colours of the new Italian flag: red, white, and green. The red was the tomato sauce, the white was the mozzarella cheese, and the green was the basil topping. Hence, Pizza Margarite was born, which still remains the most standard pizza.

The mass migration from Europe to America in the 1800s meant that the new arrivals also brought with them their own culinary ingredients and traditions. The Italians took with them the tomato and its basic partner the pizza. The rest is history! From the mid-1880s tomatoes became a staple in American kitchens. As the demand for tomatoes increased they began to be imported in large quantities.

One of the big importers of tomatoes was John Nix, wholesale merchant in New York. When a shipment of tomatoes arrived at the port a 10 per cent import tariff was levied. At the time imported vegetables were subject to this tax, while fruits were exempt. Nix protested, arguing that tomatoes were not technically vegetables. He was not wrong. Tomatoes were, and are, botanically classified as a fruit. A fruit contains the seeds of the plant while any other edible part of the plant that we eat, which doesn’t come from the fruit of the plant is considered a vegetable.

Nix filed a case against Edward Hedden, the Collector of the Port of New York. The case made its way to the Supreme Court in 1893. The case was argued using definitions of fruits and vegetables from different dictionaries and their usage. It became a hotly debated issue: Tomato: Fruit or Vegetable? Eventually the court unanimously agreed that the tomato should be classified as a vegetable because of how it was used in everyday life, not how it was used in commerce or in purely botanical terms.

A plump thing with navel, a poisonous ornamental plant, a poor man’s multi-use ingredient, a tax-exempt fruit to a taxable vegetable. Tomato puree indeed!

–Mamata

Deadly Fat Sticks

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I saw a reference, in a book I was reading recently, to Trichirapalli Cigars. That really intrigued me. For me, Trichy was a place one used to go to as a child to visit aunts and uncles. And of course, a morning was set aside for a visit to the famous Rockfort Ganesha temple. The temple is built on what may be the oldest rock on earth, and we needed to climb 344 steps to reach it—which we as kids did most enthusiastically. And while the elders devoutly visited the Pillayar and Shiva shrines, we kids played around the temple courtyard and passages. Another must-do on such trips was a visit to the amazing Kallanai Dam built by the Chola king Karikalan around the 2nd Century AD, and a picnic on the banks of the Kaveri.

And never in all those years, and all the years following, had I ever heard of cigars originating from there. But apparently, it is quite a thing! Not that one wants any place to be famous for cigars, but I thought that I must at least learn a little about this, since I have memories of the town with which it is associated.

To start at the beginning, a cigar is defined as a roll of tobacco, wrapped in a leaf of tobacco (or in a substance which contains tobacco). This is what sets it apart from cigarettes, which are made of tobacco rolled in paper or a substance that does not contain tobacco. Cigars are expensive—one reason is that the wrapper leaves need to be of a special quality– strong, elastic, silky in texture, and of even colour. They must have a pleasant flavour and good burning properties. Even the filling used for cigars is often a blend of various types of special tobaccos. And cigars are usually hand-rolled, which makes the process expensive. The shape and size of cigars also determine the price, as does the age—if the tobacco used in a cigar has been aged, or the cigar itself has been aged, it will cost more. And then there are ‘special edition’ cigars which are collectors’ items.

If tobacco-leaf wrapped cigars are at the highest end of the spectrum, tendu-leaf wrapped bidis are at the lowest!

While Cuban Cigars are the best-known, apparently Trichirapalli i Cigars are pretty famous too! Apparently, these were among the major exports to Britain in Victorian times. In fact they were supposed to be the cigars of choice for Churchill when access to Cuban cigars was cut. Churchill even appointed a CCA (Churchill’s Cigar Assistant), a cigar taster for the PM! His job was to ensure uninterrupted supplies of the best Trichirapalli cigars to Churchill. So well-known were these cigars, that Sherlock Holmes mentions them in his famous story “Study in Scarlet”, and Hitchcock also referenced them in one of his films.

What is unique about these cigars is the process employed in processing the leaves. Rather than ageing the leaves as is usually done, in Trichy, they ferment them in toddy water or in distilled fruit juice (orange, apple, pineapple, grape) with added jaggery and honey. This gives them a very distinctive flavour.

Cigars may be expensive, and perceived as fancy and high-class. But they are just as deadly as their humbler cousins–cigarettes or bidis. They contain the same addictive, toxic and carcinogenic compounds found in cigarettes and are not a safe alternative.

And in some countries like the US, cigars are becoming popular with younger people. This is because flavoured cigars like cherry or cocoa or liquorice are available, unlike in the case of cigarettes, where flavours are not permitted. Moreover, the fact that cigars are often sold as single sticks make them more accessible. In fact, a recent survey among middle and high school students who used cigars in the past 30 days, 44.4% reported using a flavoured cigar during that time. The cigar industry seems to be deliberately targeting younger people. A cause for worry indeed!

Cigar-trivia is fine, but ALL smoking and ALL tobacco products are bad!

–Meena

Mycologist, Artist, Author: Beatrix Potter

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Several generations of children grew up with The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The author Beatrix Potter is a familiar name in children’s literature, but what is less known is that she was also a notable woman of science, in an age when this was almost unheard of.

Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866 in London in a family that enjoyed culture and the arts. Although Beatrix was educated at home by a governess, she and her brother spent all their free time in the woods around their home, observing the small creatures that lived there, and even bringing some, like hedgehogs and rabbits home. Beatrix was a quiet shy girl who expressed herself through paintings and drawings of wildlife, and in coded notes in a secret diary.

When an uncle who was a chemist gave her permission to use his microscope, a whole new world opened up for Beatrix who could minutely study plants, and insects and make detailed sketches. Her interest in natural history was further spurred when she used to visit the South Kensington Museum. She found herself drawn to the study of plants and fungi as well as insects.  

Beatrix’s interest in drawing and painting mushrooms, or fungi, began as a passion for painting beautiful specimens wherever she found them. As her biography says: She was drawn to fungi first by their ephemeral fairy qualities and then by the variety of their shape and colour and the challenge they posed to watercolour techniques.

Source: https://www.linnean.org/

In October 1892, on a family holiday in Scotland, Beatrix got to know Charles McIntosh, a local postman and self-educated naturalist who was also an expert on British fungi. McIntosh admired her pictures, sent her specimens to paint and advised her on scientific classification and microscope techniques. She sent him copies of her pictures in return. She would go on to produce some 350 highly accurate pictures of fungi, mosses and spores.

Beatrix also started hunting for rare varieties of mushrooms, and growing dozens of different species of fungi at home, in order to study their development. She was intrigued by their life cycle. By 1895, Beatrix Potter’s interest in fungi was becoming even more scientific. Following advice from McIntosh, she began to include cross sections of mushrooms in her illustrations to show their gills and used a microscope to draw their tiny spores. She speculated about whether these spores could germinate and the environments in which they might do so.

In May 1896 her uncle Sir Henry Roscoe, a prominent chemist, introduced her to the mycologist at Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens. This led to a post at the Royal Botanic Gardens where she produced faithful, detailed renderings, largely of mushrooms and toadstools as seen through a microscope. In addition to her art, the scientist in her also began experimenting with germinating spores of various fungi on glass plates and measuring their growth under a microscope. Her close observations and experiments, as well as her drawings showed in great detail how lichens, a common type of fungi found on rocks and trees, were actually not one but two different organisms that lived together. Her studies showed that this was a union between an alga and a fungus. The two different organisms are able to live together, with each of them benefitting the other in some way. Beatrix thus was one of the earliest to study and hypothesize what would later become the science of symbiosis. However, the botanists she showed her work refused to discuss even discuss the drawings she made.

Beatrix prepared a paper on her findings and submitted her work to The Linnaean Society of British Scientists but was not allowed to read it herself because, at that time, only men were invited to their meetings. The all-male panel rejected her paper and refused to publish it. Potter withdrew the paper, presumably to make amendments. But it was never published; and no copy exists today. Thereafter Beatrix turned her full attention to drawing and writing.

There is today some controversy about how serious Beatrix Potter was as a mycologist. But there is no doubt about the accuracy and detailing of her drawings and paintings of fungi which remain unparalleled, and are referred to mycologists even today. As her biography says: Beatrix Potter never saw art and science as mutually exclusive activities, but recorded what she saw in nature primarily to evoke an aesthetic response.

The name Beatrix Potter endures today as the author of well-loved children’s books. In 1893 she sent a letter with a picture story to a sick child of her old nanny which began with the words “I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.”  Beatrix went on to create the loveable characters of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddle Duck, among others that had adventures in the 26 books that she published subsequently. Over 150 million copies of her books have been sold and have been translated into 35 different languages

As her books gained popularity, she channelled all the profits towards a large property called Hill Top which she purchased in 1905. Situated in England’s Lake District, this was her first farm. She enjoyed the quiet and solitude that the thirty-four-acre property brought her and this allowed her to work more efficiently. Aside from being a farmer and landowner, Beatrix also became recognized as a sheep breeder. She never lost her love for nature and became an advocate of traditional farming and the preservation of the wild environment surrounding the area. She continued buying patch after patch of land around her farm. By doing so, Beatrix hoped to further pursue her dream to provide land for the creatures that she had loved since her childhood.

Beatrix Potter died of bronchitis in 1943, aged 77, leaving behind a legacy across different fields of study. The British Natural Trust eventually became recipient to her donation of 4,000 acres of land. The property was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017, and is now open to the public.  Beatrix Potter’s love for the land and all its creatures continues to provide a haven for all life.

–Mamata

Raiders of the Lock Art

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Art thefts make the headlines fairly frequently (as do movies and OTT series on the theme). They have a long history—the first art heist probably dates back to 1473 when Polish pirates boarded a ship and stole  Hans Memling’s a painting called ‘The Last Judgement’. They took it back to their country, where even today, it is displayed at the National Museum in Gdańsk. Italy has, since the 15th century been trying to get the painting back!

Patriotism and national feeling were also behind the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 from the Louvre. Vincento Peruggia, a handyman at the Museum, along with two compatriots, spent the night in a closet there, and quietly walked away with the painting in the morning. Peruggia thought that the painting was an important part of Italy’s heritage stolen by Bonaparte, and wanted to get it back to the homeland. He hid the painting for over two years, trying all the while to sell it to a buyer who would help in the repatriation. It was no easy task, because the theft had gained international notoriety and everyone was on the lookout for the painting. Finally, after 28 months, a dealer whom Peruggia approached called the police, and the painting was recovered and Peruggia jailed. In fact, it is this theft which is supposed to have catapulted the Mona Lisa to the fame and popularity it enjoys today—few had really bothered about it before this incident.

The biggest art heist in terms of monetary value is the theft of several paintings of incalculable value from the   Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The stolen works, still missing, include a Vermeer, a Rembrandt, and a Monet among others, and are valued at about $500 million.  

Another art-theft that caught the popular attention was the one where the thief was dubbed ‘Spiderman’. Vjeran Tomic entered the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris several times without being noticed, by spraying acid on a window. On the final visit, he stole several artworks, including a Picasso and a Modigliani. He was finally caught.

The point of art thefts is a little difficult to decipher, because the stolen works are usually well-known and even if there are people willing to buy them, they can hardly be displayed, as they would soon be recognized.  Of course there are some people who steal art for ‘noble’ reasons, like Peruggia who wanted to restore his country’s heritage. Or there may be others who are happy to pay in the millions and billions, and take enormous risks to enjoy the paintings in very private situations. Or maybe just the idea of outwitting complex security measures gives some a kick.

At least paintings are not too large and heavy, especially if the thief at some stage takes them out of the frame, and are therefore relatively easy to move and hide.

But that cannot be said of stolen public art. One of the most famous of such thefts is that of a Barbara Hepworth sculputre, Two Forms (Divided Circle), from its plinth in South London’s Dulwich Park. The bronze standing at 93 x 89 x 23 inches was installed in the Park in 1970, and disappeared overnight on 19–20 December 2011. While the art piece was valued at about £500,000, the thieves probably stole it to sell as scrap—for which they would likely have got £750!

Lock
The Lock standing proud before it was stolen

Not at this scale, but our own Bangalore (and we personally) suffered such a loss last month. Raghu is an avid collector of locks, and seven of the locks from his personal collection were blown up in bronze, and placed on the kerbside of a large bank located on MG Road. The idea was to add an element of aesthetics and interest which could be viewed and enjoyed by all passers-by. Alas, on a night in June, one of the seven bronzes disappeared! And will probably be sold for scrap. A loss to the Bank, to us who love and cherish the locks, and to the general public.

Many curators and security specialists have thought through how thefts of public art can be prevented. Stephen Feeke, curator at the New Art Centre,  a gallery and sculpture park in Wiltshire, offers common sense solutions—for instance, flood-lighting to deter thieves and vandals;  securely gating and fencing the perimeter; and blocking access for vehicles, as a bronze sculpture is far too heavy to carry off without a car. Others suggest high-tech measures like using forensic coding that might allow the metal to be traced.

But many are united in that there must be an outcry and voices must speak out against these thefts, which are not only a personal loss to the owners, but a loss for the public for whom this may be the most accessible form of art.

Lady Lock did not have Lady Luck on her side the night she was stolen, but let’s hope our cities do more for their public art.

–Meena

Lollipop Day

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July 20th last week was marked as Lollipop Day—where else but in the US!

Well, and why not? Lollipops have been ubiquitous since for as long as any of us can remember. Toddlers and young children are happiest when their tongues are red or yellow or any of the other colours of the rainbow, and the sugar of the lollipop is coursing through their blood. So what if this is every mother’s nightmare!

The human predilection to lick and suck at sweet things goes back to pre-history. At that time of course, it was much more ‘natural’—people would poke sticks into honeycombs and suck the sticks—probably the earliest form of lollipops.

In China, Egypt and in the Arab world, fruits and nuts were glazed with honey and sticks inserted into them, to make for more convenient sweet-treats.

But the sweet as we know it today, has its origins in the late 16th and early 17th century. This was the time when sugar started becoming abundant in Britain (on the back of inhuman and slave labour in the colonies). The English started making boiled hard sweets, and inserting sticks into them. And there they were—the first official lollipops. The name itself probably originated in North-England, where tongue is called ‘lolly’ and pop means ‘slap’ — so ‘lollypop’ meant ‘tongue slap.’ 

The McAviney Candy Company started marketing lollipops in 1908, but it was the Bradley Smith Company which really took it to scale. Manufacturing got automated, when the Racine Confectioners Machinery Company built a machine which could attach hard candy to a stick at the rate of 2400 sweet per hour.

Today, there are over 100 varieties of lollipops available today in all shapes and sizes.

And of course something like lollipops are sure to have many a bizarre record associated with them. So here are a few:

The largest lollipop ever made weighed 3176.5 kg and was created by See’s Candies (USA) for Lollipop Day 2012. It was chocolate-flavoured and was 4 feet 8.75 inches long, 3 feet 6 inches wide, and 5 feet 11 inches in height. The lollipop stick which was 11 feet 10 inches tall was not counted towards the record.

A lollipop-licking event was organized in 2008, in Valladolid, Spain. Here a world record of the most people (12,831)  licking lollipops was made.

27 people lined up 11,602 lollipops in a line stretching half-a-kilometre in length to create a Guinness record. This was in South Africa.

But the weirdest has to be the record set by two boys bouncing a balloon back and forth 56 times without letting it touch the ground, using lollipops held in their mouth!

Today, there are lollipop flavours that suit the adult palate as well– lollipops in beer and wine flavours, as well as tea and coffee-flavoured lollipops.

And lollipops don’t need to be sweet. The Indian version—imli-based lollipops are, in my reckoning, the best! Today they are marketed commercially, but back in the day, my grandmother used to pound together tamarind, jaggery, chilli powder, salt, ghee and hing, put the shiny ball at the end of a stick and hand the treat around to us kids. Of course these were extremely restricted and made once a month or so, after much begging and pleading.

But we did also enjoy the store-bought sweets occasionally. Lollipops in those days were generally flat and in one colour. A particular favourite of ours used to be a longish one which had a hole towards one end so that it doubled as a whistle as well.

Today lollipops are often round, and come in a variety of other shapes as well. There is a wide range of sizes, and they are often in a riot of colours. Some are so large that even the most-eager 4-year olds cannot finish them at one go—leaving the mothers with the challenge of a sticky, drooly mess.

Popular as this sweet may be, one also has to be aware that it not only can lead to cavities, and other tooth and gum-related issues, but the sugar-high can sometimes be too much. So it should definitely be a rare treat.

–Meena

Rubik’s Magic Cube

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It was all the rage in the 1980s. Every house had one, and it was fought over by adults and children. It was in everyone’s hands that were never still; it sparked contests and competition across the world. It was the Rubik’s Cube.

At first glance, the cube seems deceptively simple, featuring nine coloured squares on each side. In its starting state, each side has a uniform colour — red, green, yellow, orange, blue, or white. To solve the puzzle, you must twist the cubes so that eventually each side returns to its original colour. Easier said than done! To master the cube, you must learn a sequence of movements that can be performed in successive order. Mathematicians have calculated that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations or ways to arrange the squares, but just one of those combinations is correct.

The creator of the puzzle cube was an unassuming Hungarian architecture professor named Erno Rubik. Erno Rubik was born on July 13, 1944, towards the end of World War II in the basement of a Budapest hospital that had become an air-raid shelter. His father was an engineer who designed aerial gliders.

As Erno described his childhood: I was an ordinary boy, wanting to do everything possible—and not possible. I climbed trees and had fun in other ways that weren’t allowed but were exciting to me. And I was curious and tried to make things. Nothing special. He love to draw, paint and sculpt, and went on to study architecture at Budapest University of Technology because he felt it combined the practical with the aesthetic. He went on to teach architecture and taught a class called “descriptive geometry” where he encouraged students to use two-dimensional images to solve three-dimensional problems

In 1974, 29 year old Rubik was tinkering in his bedroom which had lots of odds and ends, including cubes made from paper and wood.  He tried to put together eight wooden cubes so that they could stick together but also move around, exchanging places. The object quickly fell apart. Erno kept at it, taking it as a challenge. After much trial and error, he figured out a unique design that allowed him to build a solid, static object that was also fluid. He then decided to add 54 colourful stickers to the cube, with each side sporting a different colour – yellow, red, blue, orange, white and green. That way the movement of the pieces was visible and trackable. Erno was lost in the colourful maze, but with no clue how to navigate it. It took many weeks of twisting and turning before he could finally get the colours to align.

Once he found that the cube could be restored to its original state Erno Rubik submitted an application at the Hungarian Patent Office for a ‘three-dimensional logical toy’. Rubik now looked for a company who was willing to produce the cube commercially. It was not easy as no one believed that people would ‘play’ with such a toy. Finally in 1977 a small company that manufactured chess sets and toys agreed to manufacture 5,000 such cubes. The toy entered toy shops with the name Buvos Kocka or ‘Magic Cube’.  By 1979, 300,000 cubes had sold in Hungary.

As the popularity of the cube grew and spread, even beyond Hungary, Rubik felt that taking it beyond Hungary needed an international collaboration, but that was the period of the Cold War when geopolitical tensions restricted collaboration with the so-called Western Bloc.

So Erno Rubik started to take his creation to international toy fairs where it met with lukewarm response. In 1980, at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, a marketer named Tom Kremer spotted the Magic Cube. He thought it was fascinating and made a deal to take it to America. Rubik got a contract at an American company, Ideal Toy, which wanted one million cubes to sell overseas. But due to copyright issues, they suggested that the name be changed. And so, Rubik’s Cube made its debut at a New York toy fair in 1980. Erno Rubik himself was invited to launch the cube. The shy professor with not very fluent English, was not the best of salesmen, but he was the only one who could demonstrate that the puzzle could be solved! The rest is history.

Rubik’s Cube became a craze. More than 100 million Cubes were sold over the next three years. Rubik initially believed the cube would appeal to those with science, math, or engineering backgrounds. He was shocked when, as he wrote, It found its way to people whom nobody would ever have thought might be attracted to it.

The Rubik’s Cube went on to become ‘one of the most enduring, beguiling, maddening and absorbing puzzles ever created’. More than 450 million cubes have sold globally, (not counting the many more imitations) making it the best-selling toy in history. It became much more than a puzzle. It has been described as ‘an ingenious mechanical invention, a pastime, a learning tool, a source of metaphors, and an inspiration.’ It has spawned speed-cubing competitions and an assortment of record breaking feats. But as Rubik once said, for him it is not the speed that is of essence; “the elegant solution, the quality of the solution, is much more important than timing.”

The educator in Rubik believes Arts should be an integral part of STEM education. He feels that the Cube demonstrates this fusion. The Cube has become a universal symbol of everything I believe education should be about: fostering curiosity, the rewards of problem-solving, and the joys of finding your own solution.

Even as the Rubik’s Cube became a global sensation, Erno Rubik remained a publicity-shy professor, continuing his “tinkering”. He started his own design studio in Hungary and began to work on new projects and revive abandoned ones, including puzzles called the Snake and Rubik’s Tangle. In an interview he said: I never planned to achieve this peak and had no idea that I would. And, after it, I had no thought that I’d like to do better. My only goal is to do well. I’m not thinking about whether people will like it or not. I need to love it and meet my targets, nothing else. What happens after that depends not on me but others. The Cube created the strongest connection with people—which is harder than being popular—maybe because it taught them that they could solve difficult problems and rely on no one but themselves to succeed. It has meaning, and that’s enough for me.

–Mamata

Another World Youth Skills Day…

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In 2018, the proportion of India’s working-age population started growing larger than its dependant population (children below 14 and above 65 years of age). This bulge in the working-age population, called the demographic dividend is going to last till 2055—a total of 37 years.

World Youth Skills Day

But such a large population of young people is productive only if they are educated and skilled so that they realize their potential and contribute to the nation’s growth.

The harsh reality is that only about one in five Indians in the labour force is “skilled” as per the Human Development Report (HDR) Report 2020. India is 129th among 162 countries for which this data is available.

If the absolute numbers are a matter of concern, for me, the less-obvious ‘quality of skills’ is even more of concern.

Let’s look at a few indicators of how effective skill training programmes in India may be. With regard to many skills, a school dropout can be certified at Level 3 or 4 through a 3-month training programme. In the formal skill structure, which is the ITI and Polytechnic systems, the length of programmes is more respectable, but the courses and curricula are outdated by about five decades—some of these institutions still offer programmes in Stenography! The faculty may never have set foot in an industry, and the equipment, even if it is functional and not rusting, has not been in use in the real-world for at least 20 years. And the youth themselves, during their time in these institutions may never work on an industry shop-floor, or even visit a factory.

If skill is ‘the ability to do something well’ how do we expect youth passing out of such systems to do anything useful, least of all ‘well’?

Contrast this to Germany, which is one of the leaders in skill training. They base their skill training on the dual system which works because of the cooperation between Medium and Small Scale Enterprises, and vocational training institutes. Trainees in the dual system typically spend part of each week at a vocational school and the other part at a company. Dual training usually lasts two to three-and-a-half years. It is basically a combination of theory and training implanted in a real work setting. It is an integral part of the education system and is driven by industry and trade unions, who constantly upgrade and modify training modules and job roles. These occupations are certified by either a chamber of commerce or crafts or trades. About 70% of German youth go through this skilling system.

Whether is the length of the training, the rigour, the exposure and hands-on work in industry, or the up-datedness of the curriculum based on industry needs, where is the comparison between skilling in such a system and skilling in India? We can talk about the importance we place on skilling, tout the numbers (the National Skill Development Corporation website says 1,10,34,285 candidates have been certified through the flagship short-term training programmes), and the institutional structure and industry-involvement mechanisms we have put in place.

But to quote a 2019 ILO report on India,

‘Since 2013 … despite ongoing reforms promoting skills development, VET has not kept pace with general education, and its share of upper secondary education fell to 2.7 per cent in 2016. Moreover, VET does not respond to the training needs of young women. Only 17 per cent of VET students were girls in 2016, down from 20 per cent in 2000 (UIS, 2018). Non-formal and informal VET programmes do not reach a large proportion of India’s young people. Survey data collected in 2017 indicate that only 5 per cent of young people aged 14–18 were taking any type of vocational training, whether formal or not. And 59 per cent of those receiving training were taking courses shorter than six months.’

This should not be news to any of us. Each of us has experienced how difficult it is to find a plumber, electrician, carpenter or welder, leave alone one who knows their job, can problem-solve; one who turns up on time; one who works cleanly and cleans up their mess.

We are five years into our demographic window. And still have not put in place a critical building block, viz skilling. How can we hope to fulfil our dreams, aspirations and ambitions if we don’t bring about DRASTIC changes and SOON? We need to take an honest look at where we stand, admit we are not on the right track, and go back to the drawing board.  

July 15 is marked as World Youth Skills Day.  We in India too marked this last week. But Skill Days will come and go. When will our youth be able to access high quality skills?

–Meena

Living Your Dreams: Calvin and Hobbes

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 3 Comments

I am an unapologetic follower of comic strips. This is the section of the newspaper I save up to savour after reading all the gloom and doom news. One of my all-time favourites is Calvin and Hobbes.  

The creator of these iconic characters–six-year-old Calvin named after the Protestant reformer John Calvin, and his imaginary stuffed tiger friend Hobbes named after the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, is Bill Watterson.

Watterson graduated from Kenyon College, a liberal arts college in Ohio, with a degree in Political Science in 1980. He started working as a political cartoonist for a local newspaper soon after he graduated, but was fired after three months. He then worked for a company creating ads to sell products, something that he hated. All the while he continued drawing, with the idea of creating a syndicated comic strip. It was five years before his dream could be realized.

The first Calvin and Hobbes strip appeared in a newspaper in November 1985. The characters and their adventures and ruminations were much deeper than just “comical”. They reflected the universal quest to accept the impossible and to embrace the irrationality of the moment. As Watterson once described it “My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships”. Watterson’s daily strip became an icon for all these elements and was syndicated to over 2,000 newspapers. Bill’s new ‘job’ was to come up with 365 ideas a year. For this he said he had to create a kind of mental playfulness. He sustained this for ten years. The last Calvin and Hobbes strip was published on 31 December 1995.

Despite the huge success of the characters, and in the face of intense pressure to allow related merchandise, Watterson never succumbed to what would have been a billion dollar industry. He believed that by doing so “Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards. I’m not interested in removing all the subtlety from my work to condense it for a product…Note pads and coffee mugs just aren’t appropriate vehicles for what I’m trying to do here.”

In 1990 Bill Watterson was invited back to Kenyon College to give a commencement address to the graduating students. His deeply personal and candid talk urges young people to follow their dreams even in the face of numerous challenges.

This month, as thousands of graduates across many parts of the world step out of the security of academic institutions and enter, with excitement and some apprehension, the vast, hitherto unknown world of work, Bill Watterson’s words offer encouragement, support and inspiration.

Sharing some excerpts.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by” absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery–it recharges by running.

A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job. A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.

I tell you all this because it’s worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It’s a good idea to try to enjoy the

To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work. Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn’t in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.

–Mamata

Homes for Hippos

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

Hippos hit the news every now and then. And in the past weeks, they have been a topic of some discussion in India, thanks to a request from the Colombian Government for us to provide a home to some of the ‘cocaine hippos’ that have become feral there. Actually, it is quite unfair to call them ‘cocaine hippos’—it is not like they snort cocaine. Their ‘fault’ is that they (or their parents/grand-parents) were owned by the infamous cocaine smuggler Pablo Escobar.

Pablo Escobar was a Colombian druglord, who was called the ‘King of Cocaine’, due to his monopoly of the cocaine trade into the US. He was the founder of the Medellin Cartel, and the wealthiest criminal ever, with his wealth being estimated at $ 30 billion in 1993, when he was killed at the age of 44, by the Colombian National Police.

Every aspect of Escobar’s life was larger-than-life. Like the emperors of old, he set up a menagerie at Hacienda Napoles, his huge ranch east of Medellin, and kept giraffes, elephants, ostriches, and other exotic species there. Four hippos—three males and one female–were part of this menagerie.

When he was killed, authorities did not quite know what to do with these animals, and just left them in the estate—where not unexpectedly, they multiplied. In about 25 years, there were close to a 100 individuals (the number may stand at over 150 today). A single hippo can eat over 35 kg of grass and other green plant material in a day, posing a threat to local biodiversity. Being large and heavy animals, they stomp the ground and compact it as they move over the same area day after day. They defecate in the water, and end up polluting rivers and water bodies.

Hippos
Pic: Encyclopedia Britannica

Efforts to curb the population explosion have not met with success. About 15 years ago, the local government tried culling the animals, but this led to protests across Colombia and was thankfully stopped. A sterilization programme is in place, but the hippos breed faster than local experts can find, catch and castrate them (We can’t even manage it with stray dogs, what to talk of hippos!).

Hence the plan to ship the hippos to various countries which are ready to receive them. Mexico has agreed to take 10 of them. Colombia has approached India to house 60 of the animals at the ‘Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Kingdom (GZRRC)’, being created by Reliance Industries in Jamnagar, Gujarat. The plan has not met with enthusiasm by any wildlife expert. Housing them in zoos is an expensive proposition.  Hippos are native to Sub-Saharan Africa, not India, and definitely cannot be released into the wild. (However, based on a small fragmented tooth unearthed in Madhya Pradesh, researchers claim that India was home to hippopotami nearly 5.9 million to 9,000 years ago. The hypothesis is that they entered Eurasia from Africa, and then diversified in South Asia before going extinct. But even if they ever were native here, they haven’t been for many millennia.)

There is no doubt Colombia has a problem. Apart from destroying vegetation and biodiversity, hippos are also a threat to humans. They are known to be very aggressive, and can chase people on land, as well as capsize boats in the water. They sometimes raid fields and come into conflict with humans.

And it is also true that a safe home must be found for the hippos—they are only living their life as they were meant to. How can they help it if someone uprooted them from their home and brought them to a new continent?

But bringing them to India definitely does not sound like a good idea. The recent import of cheetahs should serve as a cautionary tale. We need to protect our biodiversity and trying to introduce non-native (at least in human memory) species is not going to help either our diversity or the introduced species.

–Meena