Cry, my beloved Mangalore

My dear students,

Ever since the troubles in Mangalore, last year, when fanatics had attacked Christian churches, and this year, when fanatics attacked a pub, Mangaloreans settled across the globe have been worried about what is happening back home.

Mangaloreans, including me, are a community that migrate easily. But their roots remain back home, to which they return during the vacations and where they have built houses on the small pieces of ancestral land they own.

My father was a railwayman, having left his native village of Sornad, in Bantwal taluka, some 50 miles south of Mangalore. Denis John Pinto migrated to Bombay and got married to Mary Therese D’Cruz on 22 May 1950. But through his many transfers in the Signal & Telecom Department of Central Railway, he kept returning to his native Mangalore, steadfast in the belief that that was the surest way to ensure that his children would keep their roots nourished.

Not only Mangaloreans, but every decent citizen in India is shocked by what is happening in Mangalore. Let’s listen to a son of Mangalore – Amith Prabhu.

*****

Hooligans today, terrorists tomorrow

“I had remained silent when the churches were attacked last September in my home-town of Mangalore. I had not woken up to the gravity of the situation, except for some still images of a community in pain.

But the Republic Day eve this year was different. As shots of the pub attack began flashing on national news channels, I was convinced My Mangalore was no more the same.

Having been born and bred in Mangalore, I have seen gradual changes in various spheres over the first two decades of my life there. The last eight years have been different: a sudden rise of mindless hooligans, backed by political parties.

The disturbing fact is that harmony is being destroyed in the name of religion. And many of the attackers are well-educated youth, who could use their potential in several constructive activities.

There is a direct link between these disgusting activists and the state government. This was expected after the last assembly elections. However, the level to which these self-styled moral police are stooping, and the way they are moving around scot-free, following these criminal acts, is appalling.

In the recent pub attack, the electronic media (forgive me this accusation) was an equal partner. In order to get cheap content, they chose not to inform the police, who could have caught these lousy miscreants red-handed by laying a trap.

While destroying property to protest unacceptable behaviour in a pub is pardonable, the beating up of customers, especially women and whacking them in front of cameras, is not just audacity but calls for public whipping. Unfortunately, our judicial system does not provide for such punishment. And news is already out that most of the dirty fellows, who were arrested, are out on bail.

Except for the magnitude and the enormous loss of life, I do not see a difference between the terrorists of Pakistani origin, who attacked Mumbai in November, and these cruel rowdies who vandalised the pub and assaulted men and women partying there.

These are no less than terrorists and are trying to gain free publicity, thanks to the news-hungry TV channels that encourage such acts by covering them with gusto.

That’s what the terrorists on 26/11 wanted in Mumbai. And that’s also what these sick men in Mangalore wanted on 24/1. Both of them got it on a platter.

NGOs usually end up as political parties or terror outfits. The roots of terror are sown during such organised programmes. Mangalore is being used as a ‘laboratory of hate’.

Thankfully, Mangalore is one of those Indian cities that are both tolerant and resilient. Mangaloreans may forgive, but won’t forget. Such violent attacks on harmless citizens will be given fitting replies.

A national movement against terror and hate is taking birth. Mumbai saw a glimpse of this campaign during December. Another “freedom struggle” is waiting to take off.

This time, against the hooligans of today, who are training to become the terrorists of tomorrow.”

*****

Amith Prabhu is an Indian communications professional, who has lived most of his life in Mangalore, and is currently based in Mumbai.

The next piece is by Kajal Iyer, who works with the electronic media in Mumbai.

*****

Men need to control women

“Isn’t Vijay Mallya from Karnataka? So is the state ready to give up its highest revenue-generating industry, at the whim of some group that thinks it is protecting Indian culture?

And pray, what Indian culture are they talking about? They surely haven’t read about how the great courtesan Amrapali was revered as a woman of learning and influence by this very Indian culture.

Have they read Bhasa, Kalidasa or Jaidev’s Geet Govind, which are our cultural heritage? They sure haven’t read any of the scriptures or maybe they have only read select paragraphs of the Manu Smruti, which is why they think they need to control women.

Every so-called culture in the world has this great insecurity about their women forgetting their culture. It’s strange, isn’t it, that men beat women, calling themselves the custodians of culture, and demanding that the women should ‘mend’ their ways so that they would give the correct cultural knowledge to future generations?

If these men are such great custodians, they should be able to impart all the so-called cultural values themselves, isn’t it? Why hold women responsible?

Tacit supporters of the attacks say that the liquor culture is spoiling our youth. Such incidents might help ‘correct’ some errant youth. Then shouldn’t they become volunteers with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)? Strange how even attacking someone’s personal space is interpreted as the constitutional freedom to voice a protest.

I don’t enjoy pubs much. But that doesn’t mean I have the right to judge my friends, who frequent pubs. Have these men ever heard the quote, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend, till death, your right to say it”.

Oops, I forget, the quote isn’t Indian, na?”

*****

Kajal has her own blog.

*****

Where do we go from here?

We have seen a lot of petitions on the Net - sign them. Be active. Join groups. The main thing is action, not mere writing and discussion on the Net. Remember, the hooligans have to be faced on the streets. Like the terrorists were confronted in Mumbai.

Here, there is a lot of scope to act on our own. We do not have to rely only on the government or political parties.

Suggest action. Wherever you are, get in touch with like-minded persons.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, Tuesday, 3rd February 2008.

Should you read poetry?

My dear students,

When a student of mine from Ranade Institute, Gauri Gharpure in Kolkata, sent in a quote on poetry I used it in the post, "The clarity of poetry" because as a journalist I have been obsessed by clarity. I had no idea then that some of my readers were great admirers of poetry.

One of them, Baruk Feddaboon, based in Bangalore, has his own blog called "bottle broke" Click on the pic below to get into "bottle broke"

"The clarity of poetry" got eleven (11) comments. But it was the diversity of the comments that astonished me, considering this was not a blog for poets. One of my readers, Baruk Feddabonn, who is not one of my students from any of the places where I teach in Pune, had early on introduced himself and I kept thinking to myself, "Here is my Eklavya." So I asked him to do this piece on poetry for journalists.

I have touched up the piece here and there, as is the time-worn custom among subs. I hope Baruk will understand.

By Baruk Feddabonn

Should you read poetry? Hell, I don’t know. Can I tell you why or how to read poetry? Hell, I don’t know! What I do have to offer are a few thoughts on what I have, over the years, got from poems.



The following five pieces:

1. What is Real?
2. Hope
3. Perspectives
4. Weirdness
5. Language and Poetry

are based on poems and bits of poems, some well known, and some not so well known. I do hope these poems help in convincing you that poets are not necessarily the useless buggers they are often made out to be!

1. What is real?

“When Prime Minister Gujral
planned a visit to the city
bamboos sprang up from pavements
like a welcoming committee.

But when he came, he was
only the strident sounds of sirens
like warnings in war-time bombings.”

(When the Prime Minister Visits Shillong the Bamboos Watch in Silence; Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih)

I often hear attacks on poetry for not being ‘factual’. Somehow, not being factual is seen as a bad thing. But honestly, what are facts? And how important are they? A lot of poetry deals with the metaphorical and the imagination. Things are alluded to; often not ‘directly’ spoken of. But is that wrong?

In common language, we speak of the sun rising. ‘Factually’, that is untrue – the sun does no such thing. Nor does it set. The ‘rising’ and ‘setting’ of the sun are our human explanations or metaphors for the natural phenomenon of the earth moving around the sun!

So while the Prime Minister was not ‘factually’ the sound of sirens, that line aptly describes the distance the rulers, even in a democracy, keep from the ruled – visually (bamboos on pavements) and aurally (sirens). And that ‘only’ – describes, better than an entire sentence, the alienation, which the poet felt. So while not ‘factual’, the poem is ‘true’.

And now you decide. Will you transcend the facts and opt for the truth instead?

*****

2. Hope

“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”

(September 1, 1939; W.H. Auden)

Sometimes, switching on the evening news plunges me into despair. I see war, corporate greed and the non-stop destruction of the natural world. And this is only the news that is reported.

In the not-or-barely-reported news are farmer suicides, Bhopal victims and Binayak Sen. I watch the increasingly self-obsessed lives of the super-rich; the cynical manipulations of politicians and governments; the prostitution of religion to the dictates of power.

It’s easy to get lost in the darkness, at least for me, and I wonder whether it would not be easier, more practical, to pick up a gun. A messy proposition, yes, but maybe a simpler one?

And then I remember this poem.

Written on the eve of the Second World War, the poem by W.H. Auden speaks of the darkness and despair the world is under, trying to understand why. And though that question is never answered, there IS an answer – that what is important, in the end, is to see the “points of light”, and “show an affirming flame.”

I think I can try to do that!

*****

3. Perspectives

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;

(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; T.S. Eliot)

A close friend and I are currently arguing on facebook. He feels, to quote, that “the Israelis have their heads better screwed on than the Palestinians do.”

I utterly and absolutely disagree.

I see the Israeli state as a creation of terrorist incursion, whether the original Israel of the Bible, where God apparently told the Jews to wipe out the Canaanites, or the Israel created in 1947 on the strength of British guns. This friend, by the way, is a reasonable person (as much as we can pretend to be), and hates war as much as I do. But the argument goes on.

Point: many people watch sunsets - on beaches, in the mountains, even from the rooftops of urban homes. Some of us photograph the sunsets. I doubt, however, that anyone has made such a grisly and unlikely comparison, as Eliot does. And while I appreciate the comparison – I find it humorous – I know many people who do not.

While no wars have been fought on what sunsets should be compared to, many wars seem to have been fought for, what to me seem, silly reasons such as country and religion. Then again, maybe you don’t think these are silly reasons. Maybe, we can all benefit from understanding each other’s perspective.

*****

4. Weirdness

“Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.”

(Pied beauty; Gerard Manley Hopkins)

My grandfather was hardcore working class; when I say he built his house with his own hands, I mean that literally.

In a society dominated by an increasing desire for more power and status, Apu (Mizo familiar for grandfather) was suspicious of all things ‘big’ and ‘authoritative’, and proud, till the day he died, of working with his hands. Fiercely independent and bluntly outspoken, he made some very powerful enemies who almost succeeded in destroying him.

His name, appropriately, was Rualhleia, which loosely translated from the Mizo means ‘he who is not even’. He definitely had a lot of rough edges!

This poem by Hopkins reminds me of my grandfather, in its celebration of the strange, the common and the uneven.

We let others determine who we are and how we respond to the world. Being ‘acceptable’ is important, whatever the cost! Recently, I was berated by a colleague who thought it shameful that I did not, in my position in the company, drive a car.

I have been receiving a slew of emails telling me to forward them, if I am patriotic. I am constantly told that:
- the only hope for India is in the ‘new’ capitalist economy;
- I should be economically successful;
- I should buy more; from recognised brand names;
- crime is something the lower classes do;
- the army is good;
- beauty means fairness;
- I should want to marry, and have children, and care about what happens to the ‘family name’; and
- I should avoid 'weird' people who disagree with what society thinks of as 'acceptable'.

But I can’t do that. My Apu and I, we’ll stand by all that is “counter, original, spare, strange”.

*****

5. Language and Poetry

“I am a venereal sore in the private part of language”

(Cruelty; Namdeo Dhasal; translated by Dilip Chitre)

“Poetry must be raw, like a side of beef,
should drip blood, remind you of sweat
and dusty slaughter and the epidermal crunch
and the sudden bullet to the head.”

(What Poetry Means to Ernestina in Peril; Mona Zote)

“I’ll go for words,
Words are my forte.

Words stab and jab,
Heal, hurt,
Mask, unmask,
Paint pictures.

Words
Create.”

(Power of Words; Malsawm Hriatzuali Jacob)

Language is fascinating. You know how they say a picture speaks more than a thousand words? Sometimes a sentence speaks more than a thousand pictures!

Language can be used like:
a warm gentle hand; caressing, hugging, loving;
a wall, to separate and segregate;
a whip, to subdue and suppress;
a rock, to retaliate.

Language can be like a scream of horror.

Language can be:
loving, harsh, angry, cold;
questioning, pleading;
full of laughter one moment, solemn the next.

Language can elevate the common; tear down the proud. Language can calm, hurt; goad, encourage; dream.

Language is like a knife – that can chop up food or slit a throat.

*****

People ask me, “Why do I like poetry?”

I tell them, “Because poetry is to language what pottery is to mud.”




You may email Baruk Feddabonn at: baruk@provoke.co.in.

*****

Henceforth, I will sign off, borrowing a phrase by Sushma Nair (nee Menon), a student of mine from 1992 when SIMC used to be called "Symbiosis Institute of Journalism and Communication (SIJC)". She had had coined the phrase for me to use as the editor of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, the house magazine of Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd, Pune, where I worked in PR and Corp Comm (don't be shocked!!) during 1996-2003. Thank you, Sushma.

I hope the New Year 2009 is taking good care of you. Keep in touch by phone, SMS, email or through the evergreen postman.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, 16th January 2009.

Mumbai attacks: one man's freedom-fighter is another man's terrorist

My dear students,

Just like the proverb, “One man’s food is another man’s poison”, so also we may argue that one man’s freedom-fighter is another man’s terrorist or militant. I deliberately chose a provocative headline to focus on the place of perception and “ways of seeing” in journalism.

Ever since my school-mate Dr Vivek Pinto got to my blog, he has been deluging me with links, which he is sure (and I agree), will be useful for my students and anyone interested in the topics I take up “Against the Tide”.

Among his many links, one such gem is a thoughtful piece entitled, “Separating the Terror and the Terrorists” by Clark Hoyt, published in the New York Times (NYT) on 13 December 2008. Dr Vivek Pinto sent this topical piece for you, my dear students, because the issues that it instigates are "beyond mere semantics and word-play".

Somewhat like the reader’s editor or ombudsman in ethical Indian newspapers, Mr Hoyt, who became the NYT’s third public editor on May 14, 2007, is “the readers’ representative and responds to complaints and comments from the public and monitors the NYT’s journalistic practices. The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the NYT.”

The following is my edited version of Mr Hoyt’s biography. “After starting his newspaper career in 1966, Mr. Hoyt began working at the Detroit Free Press in 1968. He became Washington correspondent for The Miami Herald in 1970 and was later news editor of its Washington bureau. He was named managing editor of the Wichita (Kansas) Eagle-Beacon from 1981-85, before returning to Washington where he became bureau chief in 1987.

“He was Knight Ridder's vice president/news from 1993-99. And from 1999 until the sale of Knight Ridder, he was Washington editor, where the bureau received much praise in recent years for its aggressive reporting. Its journalists have won the George Polk, Overseas Press Club and Headliners awards, among many others.

“In 1973 Mr. Hoyt shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting with Robert S. Boyd for their coverage of Democratic vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton's history of treatment for severe depression. Mr Hoyt is a director of the foundation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a former chairman of the National Press Foundation. He is a graduate of Columbia College.”

*****

Though Dr Vivek Pinto sent me Mr Hoyt’s piece at once on 14 December, I have waited ten days -- for our emotions to cool down -- before putting it up. Maybe, I should have put it up at once, because some of you may have been grappling with some of the issues Mr Hoyt incites. But I prefer, from personal experience, to take things up in a detached way. One of the stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle, Gobind Vallabh Pant, a chief minister of U.P., used to day, “Thanda karke khao.”

I have supplied Mr Hoyt’s bio-data, because I want you to take seriously what world-class professionals like him are saying. It will not do for journalists like us in India to be swayed by the local tide, especially the kind of mind-numbing repeats that were unloaded on Indian TV in the name of “breaking news” during the three days of 26-28 November 2008 and, following that relentless hammering, the jingoistic calls to “war” being made in the name of fighting against terror.

I am reminded of the Goebbels-like hysteria unleashed across the USA by Bush, Cheney & Co. after 11 September 2001. Later, the Bush administration manipulated “26/11” to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. No wonder, an Iraqi TV journalist has become a hero after flinging his shoes at Mr Bush in Baghdad. You may refer to my 5 November 2008 post, “From Bush to Obama – The Killing will Continue”, for the drift of my arguments.

*****

Dr Vivek Pinto is a research fellow at the International Christian University, Tokyo. After his doctorate in the US, he taught there for some time; before moving to Japan. Earlier, he had worked for a few years at Kishore Bharati, a pioneering NGO in science education at a village in Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh, en route to Jabalpur on the Itarsi line. Kishore Bharati was founded by Anil Sadgopal, a molecular biologist at TIFR, who was disillusioned with the way science was taught in schools and with his own research work.

Wishing you that joy and peace of Christmas, which only sharing with our less-fortunate fellow human beings can bring.

My warmest of regards in these cold nights,
- Joe.
Pune, 24 December 2008.