Navarathri

Patience, flexibility, love, and the ability to soothe are some of the qualities we would very easily associate with our mothers. These are the same virtues we glorify during the nine days of Navarathri (Nava = nine, rathri = night) as nine different manifestations of the Universal Mother. The Universal Mother is commonly referred to as Durga (or Shakthi or Devi), which literally means the remover of the miseries of life. In the Hindu culture, God is looked upon as our Mother, and vice versa. ‘The first manifestation of God is the hand that rocks the cradle’, as Swami Vivekananda aptly puts it.

Navarathri is divided into sets of three days to honour three different aspects of the Mother. During the first three days, we pray to Durga (or Kali), who is the destroyer of all our impurities, our vices. Then for three days, the Mother is worshipped as Lakshmi, who bestows upon us spiritual wealth. The final three days are spent in worshipping Saraswati, the Goddess of wisdom.

According to the great Hindu scripture, the Ramayana, Lord Rama performed a Holy prayer to invoke the blessings of Durga Maa to ensure success in bringing back his wife Sita from Ravana who had abducted her. The day, in Ramayana, when Rama vanquishes Ravana is celebrated as Dusshera (also known as Vijayadashami), which is the day after the nine nights of worship. During the nine days many in India fast. Fasting is seen as one of the best methods to improve one’s self control and overcome one’s desires. The fast, which is performed in the name of Durga, is akin to the prayer by Lord Rama. On Vijayadashami, Ravana, who symbolises our vices and desires, is finally conquered.

A prayer for the Mother –

Ya devi sarva bhooteshu matru roopena samsthita
namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namaha - Devi mahathmyam

Salutations to the divine mother,
Whose art manifest in every being's existence.
As mother, I worship thee, over and over and over again.

Letters from Edinburgh V

I have started getting used to spelling out my name whenever I call someone on the phone here. I had to do it so many times - with the British Airways, British Gas, British Telecom, Royal Bank of Scotland. A for alpha, N for number, U for up, P for Pakistan, and then NAMBIAR.

Spelling out 'Sainath Lakshminarayanan' for the Natwest bank was the best training I could get. I got so lost that evening. I could not get any word for L. L for ... for ... LOVE! Yes that is the only thing I got to say to that Natwest lady.

Letters from Edinburgh IV

The most noticeable structure that can be seen from my kitchen window is a church tower. It stands out from the large number of small houses that my neighbourhood is studded with.

One evening, I was watching the sun set, sipping some tea. The church clock’s bell rang, which caught my attention. I looked in its direction, expecting to see the old church tower. I could not see it that day. I thought my senses were failing me. I knew that the Edinburgh Council, which does not allow us to even change a broken window (that is how they ‘preserve’ their heritage), would never bring down a church tower.

It is then I observed something. There was a huge tree that had come in the way. I had never seen the tree earlier. Or had I? Maybe I had seen the church tower through the skeletal structure of the very same tree. That evening, dense green foliage stood in place of the life-less autumn tree.

Someone knocked at our door that evening. It was spring.

The blank slate

One of the things I had in my mind, even before leaving for Edinburgh, was to buy a cycle once I reached here. I had this Famous Five style ‘riding through the meadows’ picture in my mind which complemented my love for cycling.

When I reached here, I learnt that there is a bicycle recycling and cycling promotion charity called the Bike Station at Edinburgh. There, they take old and discarded bikes out of landfill, repair as many as they can, and put them back on the roads. Every Saturday, between 10 am and noon, they sell these refurbished cycles to people. I thought of going there to buy a second hand cycle (when a new cycle would cost greater than £150, second hand cycles can be bought for as less as £40).

I went there on three consecutive Saturdays. The first time I reached the place at 10:30 or so. There was a huge queue. I hadn’t foreseen the demand for second hand cycles, especially during the time of the year when a lot of new students like me had landed in the city. I stood in the queue for some time and then, realizing that there was no way I was going to get a bike that day, left. The next week, I went there early. That week the number of cycles they had to sell were very few and by the time my turn came, there weren’t any cycles left.

The third Saturday, I went even earlier, to make sure that I get a favourable place on the queue. For a change, I was in the first group that was allowed to enter the garage. It was a square room, with cycles kept along the walls. I kept looking at the price tag (the most important factor to be considered!) of the cycles along one side. I saw one for £55. It looked in good condition. I knew the cost was reasonable. But my mind said, ‘Check out the other bikes too. There might be something cheaper, better’. I went around the room looking at the other cycles kept. Did not find anything that suited my budget. By the time I came back for the £55 cycle, someone else had taken it. The Bike Station had taught me the first lesson I learnt in Edinburgh.

How many times in our lives have we kept things waiting for the proverbial sunnier day? We keep living with the want – the want of a better day. We seldom see the beauty of the blank slate given to us each morning.

A sad day

Today I felt sad. All I could see in our news channels was the tirade which was traded between L K Advani and Dr. Manmohan Singh. Ideological differences kept aside for a moment, I do not think that two Indians, who are as old as my grandparents, must share such sharp words. I yearn to see the respect they ought to have for each other. When such mature, responsible people begin to speak thus, I start losing hope.

Your vote counts!

I am writing this in urgency. We have another 4 days before our people go to poll booths around the country to vote for the first phase of the elections to the 15th Lok Sabha. Two experiences over the past few weeks have forced me to write something of this sort.
1. During a talk show in CNN IBN, which Rajdeep Sardesai hosted, one of the panellists, when talking about the middle class of West Bengal said, ‘The middle class of India is the most untrustworthy. More than half of them do not even come to vote.’(Not quoted verbatim).
2. Tarun Vijay (columnist for the Times of India and editor for an RSS weekly) spoke of the ‘English speaking and writing middle class’ as being ones who ‘discuss big issues, but do little; expecting others to make the changes’. (Again, this is the gist of an article he had written).

Now, if you are reading this message, you are a part of the ‘untrustworthy English speaking and writing middle class of India’.

I do not want the ‘middle class’ to prove these commentators wrong. But I want our people to get involved. Let’s make the choice today, which will define where we stand tomorrow. Let’s all go to the polling station on Election Day. Jai Hind!

Letters from Edinburgh III

Parents taking their young children to their school in the morning is one scene I see almost everyday here. The children are normally jumping around; enthusiastic about going to school. There isn’t much to study during the first few years. Seeing them on their scooters, I am reminded of how the school going children of the same age group in India are. Back home, seen on the streets, are children walking unwillingly to school. They have a heavy bag on their shoulders (might be the reason for our lower average height when compared to people in the west!); shoulders drooping. The only time in a week we see them smile are on Fridays; that too on the condition that they do not have any test or exam scheduled for Monday. The children face the brunt of competition (for space in the school bus, to a window-seat in their class!) right from a very young age. This very efficiently kills creativity.

I am sure things are improving in India; our actions on this front might accelerate the change.

Letters from Edinburgh II

One of the first things I noticed about the people at Edinburgh, was the pace at which they walk. Edinburgh is a very small city, and we can go to almost any place here walking (if we have all the time in the world that is, which I seemed to have during the first couple of weeks here). The people here (I would not call them Scots, because we have a large influx of people from the other European countries) walk as though they are always in a hurry to get to some place. I had a difficult time walking on the pavements on the first few days. There were these constant stares we used to get (for walking the Indian way!) from people who almost always used to overtake us. One night, one lady even passed a remark (which would have been deemed racist if she wasn't as drunk as she was!) 'You Indians walk slow!'.

Now things are different. I don't know whether it is because I did not want to hear anything like what the lady said again, or it was because I started cycling more than walking. But today, the people seem to be slow (relatively!).

Letters from Edinburgh I

I landed in London, on my way to Edinburgh, at around 6am, some time in the end of September. It was a Jet Airways flight from Bombay. The pilot was an Englishman. In the post-flight announcement he made, he said, ' … It is a warm, sunny day in London. The outside temperature is 8 degree Celsius...'. I laughed to myself as I was trying to figure out what I was jumping into.


Today I would say, 'Yes, that indeed is warm!'.

The terrorist in us

The first time I read about farmer issues and about the spiralling suicides among them was through some articles written by P Sainath in the Hindu in 2004/ 2005. Some of those articles were real eye-openers. I had a chance to live vicariously in rural agricultural India through Sainath.

In early December, a new article gave figures of the number of farmer suicides in India in 2007. It said that more than 16,500 farmers had committed suicide in 2007 alone. The figure took me unawares. I always knew that problems existed amongst the Indian agriculturists, but never thought that the problem was this big. We have been having one Mumbai terror attack almost every week; not in the Taj or the Oberoi, but in interior Maharashtra, Andhra, Kerala; those places which have largely been deemed to be ‘uninteresting’ by the print and electronic media. And these attacks are not by non-state actors from across the border, but by you, and me and all around us, who have cocooned ourselves from the rural reality and have been indifferent to such happenings.

When would we see group discussions on CNN-IBN or NDTV discussing these ‘insignificant’ issues? When would we see a candle light march in the big cities for these tillers of the soil? How much time more would it take for this news to prick our collective conscience?

Profound tought from Obama's victory speech at Chicago

Obama ends the victory address with this line -

'I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.'

It is still very early to comment on him or his proposed ideas. This one line though, gives me hope. And what is life without hope?

Promising signs

We have been hearing a lot of troubling news from India lately. But along with the sad news, I also had a glance of some promising signs, which could be the change we need to see in our country.

The Lok Sabha session which was held last week, mainly discussed national security, with the aim to thwart any terrorists' plans. For a change, we saw the whole house united. The leader of the opposition said that the opposition would back any measure the government would take against terrorism. Terrorism was our common enemy. It was said that Indians (irrespective of religion, caste, or political inclinations) were on a war with terror. I enjoyed watching our leaders speak about our national identity.

Our Prime Minister apologized for the attack that he accepted could have been avoided. I understand that this apology would mean nothing to the families who lost loved ones in the dastardly act. My respects to them. Nonetheless, I must admit that it takes courage to accept that one has done wrong. I hope that he and the government now speak through their actions. I hope they can walk the talk!

Women on top

I was having this discussion with one of my friends last week. He was of the view that women, whom he had met in his life, which he himself agreed was a very small sample, are in general intellectually inferior to men. It seemed he had not met one girl who could intelligently question something some of his teachers taught. He gave examples of famous CEOs of companies. The male subset of the CEO set is much bigger than the female one, he said. I tried to counter him by providing names of some famous women in fields like sport, music, business, media and politics. Even this did not force him to nudge from his earlier position.

I was quiet for some time, with my mind trying its best to make the knockout argument. During the search for the argument, I happened to think of the most obvious person in our lives. I was reminded of someone whom we all take for granted so easily. I reminded him of our own CEOs at home. The CEO, who works and manages our households, who makes homes out of the places we live in. Our CEOs do not expect much more than our love for all they do. They work when no one is watching so that our lives run smoothly. They make lives so much easier for the menfolk (read: CEO of some chip manufacturing company in the Silicon Valley!) without whom, I do not think my friend's presumed male dominance might last.

Any doubts on who is on top?

Blame game

A week has passed since 26/11. We have been exposed to the lackadaisical measures that were taken by the government in dealing with intelligence reports warning such mayhems There have been stories of the media taking advantage of the situation for their own ulterior motives. There were some stories that doubted the competence of the Indian defense forces. All is well and good until we are not to blamed for what happened in Mumbai.

How many of us pay taxes honestly? How many of us have used some arm twisting to get things done in India. How many of us take responsibility for trouble (be it at home, or in our colonies, or on our roads)? We know very well about the ills that exist in our society today. How can we expect some men who are form this society to lead us well? It is from the same society that you and me are a part of that politicians and journalists come. Would it not be right to blame ourselves for everything we have seen over the past week instead of finding scapegoats?

Newspaper ad - the polity making the most of the terror strike

This is a front page ad printed in the Hindustan Times Delhi edition yesterday.

I have nothing personally against the BJP. I am sure we could probably expect something similar from the Congress if the BJP were in power. Nonetheless, this ad is troubling. Can they not have waited till the situation normalized in Bombay?

Letter to a terrorist

I do not know whether you have a bigger cause you are fighting for. Maybe you do. I do not want to know about how just your cause is. All I can tell you is that, even if there was a small group of people who wanted a dialogue with you, who wanted to understand your problems and try to solve them in a sane manner, the means you have taken to attain victory has totally derided the little amount of respect that the people affected by these acts of terror may have had for your cause. I do not know whether you achieved what you intended to do with the attack; I believe instead of winning over the people, you have actually made them move even further away from you.

A new dawn

‘Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.’ - The Dalai Lama

Religious conversions in India

One of the first pieces of news about India which I received on reaching Edinburgh was about the communal tensions in the Kandhamal district of Orissa. Similar cases, where churches were burnt and Christians ill-treated, in Mangalore and some other parts of Karnataka followed suit. It is only when these occurred, did I try to find out about the magnitude of the problem we are dealing with. I have enlisted here some of the observations I made through articles/ web pages I read and discussions I had on the issue.

There is no doubt that the atrocities that have been committed on the Christian converts in these places in the last month or so can not be justified. Indians have the best example of non-violence being used as a mode of struggle, which proved to be more of a success than other violent means people have adopted since then. Why forget what history has taught us?

On the contentious matter of conversions, the first question that can be raised is about ethics. Are the means adopted by Christian missionaries to coax people to convert ethical? There are two sides to this question. These missionaries live with and try to propagate the belief that it is only Christians who reach Heaven and that they have been assigned the duty of helping people at large to reach there. Through the conversion activities they are involved in, they believe they are answering their true calling and performing their duty. They believe that whatever the means they use ( like providing monetary benefits, education, jobs etc to the converts) to induce conversions, the end justifies the means. On the other hand, if their intention was to do good alone (through charitable activities), they could easily provide the destitute with these economic benefits without asking them to convert. That would be the idealist's way to make sure that the destitute, who were not taken care of by the government (and the people who are represented by the governments) are allowed on to the first rung of the ladder of economic development.

Another fact that caught my attention was that most of the converts were 'dalits' (untouchables). I thought this to be a good enough reason for a person to convert. M y argument was that these people, when were Hindus, may have had faced instances when they were discriminated against, which instigated thoughts about converting. One of my friends, who has worked with tribals in Jharkand, informed me that the term 'dalit' was being used to label almost every tribal group in India by the media. He showed me instances where tribals (even though they were classified as Hindus), followed completely different rituals (eg. they considered trees/ plants sacred). There is a distinct possibility that the tribals who have been converted in Orissa and some other parts of India, were such groups. Although I say this, I do not discredit the caste based oppression many of the 'dalits', or tribals for that matter, are still facing in many parts of India.

Next, my friend gave me his reasons as to why he was against these conversions. He said that through these conversions, these tribes were losing their culture. He added that when everywhere in the world various organizations have been trying to preserve tribes and their traditions, under the name of religious conversions we were directly causing the 'extinction' of such tribes and their traditions. I respect my friends views on the matter of protecting tribes and their values, but I fail to see the same motive in the opposition shown by some parts of the Hindu right wing groups. If the subject of protecting the culture of these tribes is important, why is it that these right wing groups bring about this matter only when the situation at hand is grave?

What can cause a person to change their inclination (be it political or religious in this case)? Isn't it dissatisfaction? If the converts before they turn to Christianity were fully content with the kind of lives they were leading, would they ever convert for material benefits? I do not think so. So what is it that is not working right? These tribes surely would be having desires. They would love to have health care, would love to have their children educated, which promises jobs for them when they grow older. Why isn't the government trying to provide these tribes with what they need, so that they remain rooted in their rich tradition. One would also need to figure out whether these tribes would keep up with their tradition once economically developed (as Christians or Hindus)?

I know I have not provided any one who has read this write up with answers. In fact there are more questions to which solutions need to be found. I hope I have helped you to see the problem at hand in a different light. I would like to thank my friends Srinivasan C J and Udit Kumar who helped me gain a different perspective on the issue.

The cure

I have my eyes closed,

and I see you in tears.

You have wrinkled up your face

in sadness or fear.

I hear the room's silence interspersed

by your repressed whimper.

I move my fingers to your face,

taking them softly from your temples,

caressing your cheek,

till they reach your chin;

undoing at every instant

the wrinkles that blemish your face.

You begin to feel at ease,

resting your head on my shoulder.

I keep stroking your hair,

till you fall into a peaceful slumber.