Tuesday 23 December 2008

My possessions of rags

My possessions of rags


Acacia’s yellow hot
Thorny shadows
Tear at
My possessions of rags
Preserved through ages
Of walk.

* * *

While wandering for several years around present Lothal (the remains of Indus Civilisation) I realised: the land here turns ceaseless into desert; it is not restored even in the so-called advanced Twentieth Century!

Though I take keen interest in archaeology I never visited Lothal. What is the point in boasting about the bygone past!

We have heard a story: Emperor Nero was playing fiddle when Rome was burning. Mighty Roman Empire and the Civilisation vanished.

During my childhood I had read a Marathi story about wrestlers. In the climax, it mentions, “the strength of the mighty is also their weakest point”.

Industrial Civilisation, nurtured by the capitalist global corporate society, too, is falling headlong.

I intend to post on the present hot topics at leisure:
1. Global meltdown, and
2. Terror.


~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved।


Thursday 18 December 2008

Save Plant-Life to Save all Life Forms (Image)



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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Thursday 27 November 2008

Viva Obama! Viva the Black! Viva the Red Indian!

by Remigius de Souza

I write in solidarity with all ethnic/ aborigine communities and cultures of the World that still survive, as the Obama-frenzy of media cools.


We, here in India, Rejoice

Viva Barack Hussein Obama! Viva the Black in ghettos in the US! Viva the Native Americans, also called Red Indians, in the US Reservations!

Viva the Underclass of the US society, and of the World including India in the Third World India and the Fourth World India, which are the popular vote banks here for the First World India!

We, here in India, rejoice in the election of the first black President of the US: It’s a beginning!
The history of the US is the history of five hundred years, of the nation of migrants from Europe, of the black slaves from Africa, and of the Natives of America, and subsequently of the rest of the migrants from the rest of the World. It is the history of tow hundred years of nationhood of the US.

The Class (or classless) society of the US – the First World nation – lives at the fast pace of time set by the Industrial Revolution: the president elect Obama, of course, belongs there.

We hope this election is the beginning of the change for the better for the Underclass and the underdeveloped societies of the US, and also of the World, for their liberation from the tyrannies of colonisation and neo-colonisation (of the resources of the world by money and military power), at this historic moment, beyond the race, caste, class, religion, colour, gender, or political dogmas. It’s a payback time.

At this historic moment, when the boundaries of the nation-states are getting defused by the tsunami of globalisation designed by the vested interests of the few, we hope, there shall also be the end of neo-colonialism of the capitalist across the world.

Will the US and other powerful states retreat and withdraw from the lands they claim in the Arctic & Antarctica? They belong to the whole World. The – the land and the waters and the life there – are the World Heritage.

Of course, I can’t help remembering at this historic moment:
1. The warning in the book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed' by Paulo Freirre ; and
2. The hopes and dreams in the epic poem ‘The Mental Flight’ by Ben Okri; and
3. The recent research carried in the US suggests that “Even the most well-meaning liberal can harbour hidden prejudice. ...Even today, the study finds, Americans of various races still unconsciously dehumanise their black fellow citizens by subtly associating them with apes” (‘Racism still runs deep’, Editorial, New Scientist, 16 February 2008, p. 5). And
4. The words of Anand K. Coomarswamy, “Mark a final victory of the conquered over the conquerors.”

India is not an exception, but perhaps is the forerunner in this racial slur from the epic times of Ramayana, when the aborigine tribe of Hanumana–Vali–Sugriva clan was called monkeys. The Katkari tribe on the mainland near Mumbai claim themselves to descendants of Hanumana clan. We have heard Barack Obama carries a charm of Hanumana in his valet.

We also do introspect

Long before the words ‘India’, ‘Bharat’, ‘Hindustan’ etc. were coined for this nation / region, the aborigine communities have been living long before the civilised societies came. The boundaries of sovereign states have been changing time to time. The concept of ‘India’… as a nation was given to the elite Indian by the British. Earlier there had been many princely states and kingdoms.

Aryans had a service class or a caste called ‘shudra’, which perhaps later was treated as an untouchable caste, of course by elite castes of clergy and warriors. Aryans assimilated some of the aborigine people as ‘shudras’ (slaves?). Oppression of the untouchable casts is millennia old, which continues even today. They are now officially called Scheduled Castes in the Independent India.

Oppression of the aborigine tribes also is as old as that (civilised societies).

The late Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, from an untouchable caste, took the helm of write the Constitution of India. Neither that did change the lot of the untouchable nor his and thousands of his followers’ conversion to Buddhism. However they are taking education. They are politically aware. They are provided with ‘reservations’ in educational institutions and jobs (the reservations turned the elite and upper castes in loggerhead with the law.)… Even one of the untouchable castes became the President of India, in recent times, and many became ministers. Talking in numbers, still a large majority of the untouchable castes are languishing in poverty and illiteracy.

Despite a woman Prime Minister earlier, and now a woman President of India, the gender atrocities continue. The only difference is that some are reported, not all.

Before them, there were most revered saint-poets, both women and men, including those from the untouchable castes, over centuries (say, 11th to 16th centuries) but they failed to bring reforms to the whole society. With the growth of population, progress and development, the Indic society continued get more and more fragmented, leading to economic classes, where large majority, irrespective of their caste, languish in poverty. About 300 millions are Below Poverty Line.

Even before the saint-poets, 2006 years ago, came Gautama the Buddha, believed to be an Incarnation; but he failed. On the contrary Buddhism was driven out of India, of course, by the learned of the upper caste. However it is still being practiced outside India, mostly Asian countries.

Such is the power, and greed for more power, of the elite classes and castes.

The earliest example, which I know of the oppression of the aborigine, is of Ekalavya, a youth of Bhil tribe, in the Epic Mahabharata. He approached Drona, a Brahmin, and teacher of princes Pandavas and Kauravas, to teach him archery, which he rejected. Hence he learnt archery all by himself by self-access and excelled in the skill; he had installed Drona’s statue as his guru by proxy. When Drona came to know about Ekalavya’s skill, he demanded his right thumb as his fee, which Ekalavya dutifully complied. This is one of some of the sordid stories of Mahabharata.

The climax of this story is: The Bhil tribe practice archery without using their thumb for millennia to this date as a living memorial of Ekalavya. Bhils are excellent archers, but in the Independent India they don’t figure in any sports events, leave aside Olympics; there was a single exception of tribal from Rajasthan. On the contrary they are banned to carry bows and arrows. The reasons are obvious.

These are the lessons in the living history.

Five hundred years or five thousand years, it is a past. As for future it remains only as speculation. It is the present that matters: Time is the better judge.


~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Monday 24 November 2008

Universal Definition of Design

Universal Definition of Design by Nature

While studying, teaching and learning architecture, inside and outside classroom, I was confronted with the word DESIGN, which appeared number of times on every occasion.

There must be several volumes written on design not only in architecture but also on other artefacts, such as arts, crafts, projects and policies, laws and acts by the State etc. And now web design... rockets and spaceships. Their meanings and definitions go beyond the language dictionaries.

Nature, indeed, remains the first guru in all the ideas, concepts, theories, hypothesis, inventions in all the disciplines developed by humans from the beginning of time, until now. Where does the meaning or definition stand?

But when I read the following lines by Martin Jones, bio-archaeologist, I literally jumped, overjoyed:

"In whole organism, randomness structure is uncommon. Everything seems finely tuned by the brutal rigours of natural selection. There are no spare limbs to be found and hardly any dispensable organs. This forced economy of whole organism design has always limited the use of bodily form as an evolutionary timepiece” (‘MOLECULE HUNT: How Archaeologists are Bringing the Past Back to Life’, Penguin, 2002, p. 48)”.
I do not wish to edit or modify this extract.

Examine all artefacts designed by an individual, group, an organization, and even the State – any State, in the context of Environment – Ecology – Energy cost to the whole planet, whether it is Moon / Mars Mission or school curriculum. Don’t simply ‘talk-talk-talk global’ but also ‘act global’, and don’t develop pseudo-development projects.
* * *
Links: (1) Architecture and Biodiversity (2) Architecture of Diatoms (3) Oldie's Secret

Remigius de Souza
24-11-2008

~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved।

Saturday 22 November 2008

Maroon Veil


Maroon Veil

Maroon silence covers
Thousand hundred wars
And the emperor cried of his bloody hands.
I fight with an unrecognized enemy
That is in maroon veil.
My enemy goes on multiplying
Like an amoeba within me
That I don’t recognise myself anymore –
Me a fractioned self into innumerable
Amoebae to fight against
Under a maroon veil:
Maroon is the war
Maroon is the threshold
Of day and night:
I hide myself under a maroon veil.

* * *
17-10-1969
Baroda (Vadodara)
(I wrote this composition during my stay in Baroda (now Vadodara). Then I was the witness to communal riots, exploitation of the scheduled caste and the schedule tribe in Gujarat State. The gender atrocities were very common, such as dowry deaths. It was no more a peace-loving State. However, what I witnessed then was only a tip of an iceberg, or the beginning of the unrest/atrocities/riots that followed in three decades. )

Also please see link: My Enemy within Me

~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Friday 21 November 2008

O, Life!

O, Life!

When did it happen I don’t remember!
A fragile voice from my depths inner
was whispering again and again while
pursuing my passions and desires dear:

“Life is larger than the religions all,
and philosophies, sciences, and arts all;
they are no more than means and machines
to take refuge, and for self-gratification;

“more elaborate they get farther you are,
lost in the labyrinth, away you wander
from Life, holding an empty pot of creation
you create the Creator in your own image.

“A saint or a sinner, a prince or a pauper,
whatever you’re, life does never anyone spare.
Life is most unscrupulous, utterly ruthless.
Life – not a four-letter word – owns you.’
* * *
Poetry comes as a refuge from writing scholarly and authoritative volumes of discourses that veer away from the basic context: Life itself.
* * *
Remigius de Souza
Mumbai 20-24.03.2006

~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

MY ENEMY WITHIN ME

My enemy within me

The enemy within rises
To soaring heights
Through nose, eyes, ears,
Scull, belly, penis…
Through the pores of my skin
Amounting to thousand sculls...

My enemy within – but he is mine –
Whom I embrace for lifetime
To rid of my enemy within
Only once perhaps
When I enter death
Death an unknown region
Beyond living consciousness
Is the only hope led by the fire –
The path of struggle – destruction
To open the gates of Death.

* * *
17-10-1969
Baroda (Vadodara)
(I wrote this compostion during my sat in Baroda (now Vadodara). Then I was the witness to communal riots, exploitation of the scheduled caste and the schedule tribe in Gujarat State. It was no more a peace-loving State. But what I witnessed then was only a tip of an iceberg.)
~~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Monday 6 October 2008

I’ve risen from my fossils:Homage To 20th Century

I RISEN FROM MY FOSSILS: Homage To 20th Century

I’ve risen from my fossils.
Don’t carry the cross of justice
for me. Now the rising prices –
food water air clothing word
expensive and swelling trade,
earning only to leave
behind ruins and holes.


------
Baroda (Feb. 1970)
~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.


Sunday 5 October 2008

Guinea pig-culture Farming: Homage To 20th Century

Guinea pig-culture Farming: Homage To 20th Century by Remigius de Souza

Life is larger than arts and sciences
Trades, philosophies, all the religions.
But for us our Ego is larger than Life
Coated in diplomatic polite benevolent words.

We have turned our subjects – living entities –
Into letters and numbers and formulae
Taught by the Standards, decoded by systems
Dividing – grading – degrading – selecting.

Dependants though we are, craving for
Physical liberties, not knowing how
Dependant they are on whom we depend
After decades of Information Education.

Living on borrowed memories we equate
Cost of our living standards with price
Of Labour and Love and Life of others –
The unassuming, of no-account entities.

Our subjects live in virtual reality,
Move in virtual time, romancing
On borrowed time in cyberspace…
What about liberated intelligence?

Yet, we indulge by decree, in designing
The Standards for others on our models
Though utterly ignorant we may be, says Remi
Of the Price of Labour, Love and Life.

-----
Remigius de Souza
January 21-25, 2001


~~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Saturday 4 October 2008

Pottery

Pottery

My life in work,
My work in life,
And my poetry
Are works of clay pottery.
~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Friday 3 October 2008

Walking on fire

Walking on fire

When we walk with fire
We cannot refute fire.
We can only be consummate with fire;
love and death are but one,
itself is fire.
~~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Thursday 2 October 2008

Gandhism (गांधीवाद) Marathi Poem

Gandhism

Gandhiji wore loincloth of Khadi
We patronise marketed Khadi
That’s our limit of Gandhism –
Don’t shed crocodile’s tears.

(Dedicated to Democratic India, where Gandhiji appears only on the currency. His concept of Panchayati Raj - Rule by the Village - has remained only as concept, to be used in the scholarly discourses.)
October 2, 2008
(Translated from the original by the author)
------------------------
गांधीवाद

गांधीजी पंचा नेसत होते.
आम्ही बाजारू खादी नेसतो.
ही आमची गांधीवादाची मर्यादा --
नक्राश्रू ढाळू नकोस.

~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Cow dung, Rice and Amartya Sen (a critique)

Cow dung, Rice and Amartya Sen (a critique):
Challenges of 21st Century

“Everything, in this world, exists in order to culminate in a book.”
—Mallarmé (1842 – 1898)
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions
may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding”
– Albert Camus
Illustration 1: Cow dung and Paddy Waste Recycled

(Key words: Land (with waters) is the source of Life and the sustenance to all living beings, and culture to humans. Peasants – the landless and the landholder alike, the artisans known as twelve ‘Balutadars’, and the forest dwellers or the tribal, which amount to 800 millions including those languish in the city-slums. Development is an ongoing process and not an abstract economic theory. When means and goals are same then there is possibility of development: here land is the means and goals, so also the peasants. Environmental-Ecological-Energy Cost (E-E-E Cost): It is not enough to count cost-price-profit (loss) in currency any more; it is already an outdated mode the economists have been following.)

I am browsing Amartya Sen’s book, ‘Resources, Values and Development’ (1984), a selection of his essays from 1961 to 1984, republished in paperback in 1999 (OUP), after about fifteen years. Perhaps the author and the publisher did not see any need to include subsequent essays, if any, a sequel to the theme of this book, perhaps due to the restraints of economy.

At the start of the introduction, Professor Sen declares, ‘Much of economics is neat and elegant; but some of it is not. The essays included in this volume belong to the later category (p.1).’ It is because, I think, they are holistic. They relate mainly to development economics that take into account many aspects. I, of course, skip theories, equations, diagrams, tables etc., as I am not equipped to comprehend; I look for fiction. I, however, find something amiss, something desirable to the heart of a peasant. Hence, without defining or theorising I straight go to an example: In the Chapter 13: Rights and Capabilities, Section 3: Capabilities, I notice:

"Consider a good, e.g. rice. The utilitarian will be concerned with the fact that the good in question creates utility through its consumption. … But that is not the only thing it does (p.315)." he further writes, "Four different notions need in this context. There is a notion of a good (in this case, rice); that of a characteristic of a good (e.g. giving calories and nutrition); that of functioning of a person (in this case, living without calorie deficiency); that of a utility (in this case, pleasure or desire fulfillment from the functioning in question, or for some other functioning related to the characteristic of ice) (p. 316)."

AS I READ THIS PART, I wander away from the book into the realms of my perceptions, experience, information and impressions that I gathered during my journey through places, events and time. It is also keeping in with an idiom in my native tongue, Konkani, “you need not check every grain of ‘rice’ in pot if cooked.”

Sometime around 6500 – 5800 BC, the archaeologists say, people in the Fertile Crescent in South-east Asia domesticated rice. That included a part that we now call India, Bharat, or Hindustan as per our convenience. However, even to this day the tribal, in the backyard of Mumbai, cultivate wild Jowar – millet – and use it for various purposes: grains for food, its stocks that grow 7-8 feet for fodder and in housing.

I take the example of Konkan, a rice-producing region on the western coast, where I was born, and grew up on paddy farms during my formative years. For a peasant, her homestead is the yard around her adobe abode with plants, fields, groves, grassland, hills, and of course, the community well, a stream, water reservoir if any; and a cow, goat, chickens, cat, dog or bullocks join her kinship.

During all the dry days, besides other chores, she collects cow dung, brushwood, dry leaves, which go for fuel and/or manure in a compost pit. She collects even the ashes from ‘Chulha’ – cooking hearth, and ashes from the burnt leaves and spread in the farms. For the peasants this is ‘conventional’ agriculture, which continues in many places. The western and the westernised call it ‘non-conventional’ or ‘organic’ agriculture.
In between, there are four months of monsoon that witness hectic activity at home and the fields – transport, process, sowing and caring paddy, other grains and vegetables.

The harvest brings the work that involves transport, process and storage. For example, there is a process for parboiled rice. Until few decades ago, they used the wooden grinding wheels (Ghirat) at home to remove husk, similar to stone-mill (Jaate) for flour. Now they take paddy to rice mills. They take home even the husk of the ground paddy. They feed the finer husk after boiling to the chicken / cattle. They mix the course husk in cow dung to make ‘govari’ – a flat cow dung disk – for fuel. Paddy straw is stacked in a mound (Koodi) around a wooden bully 10 – 15 feet high. It is stored for cattle feed during dry days, as green fodder is available during monsoon.

The seeds, paddy, parboiled rice and rice are stored according to the quantity in a bamboo mat silos, or in paddy straw bundles (Moodi). Silos are covered from outside with cow dung wash. The bundles look like huge pumpkins of about three feet in diameter. The paddy straw cover is about three inches thick when compacted. They use a hand-made paddy-straw rope to tie around the bundle, compacted by using a wooden batten. The vertically tied rope looks like altitudes on a map of the globe. Indeed, it was a beauty, a work of art (or craft!) now perhaps lost forever. Paddy straw is also used for roofing in some cases, as may be seen near salt pans to cover and protect the non-disposed stock of salt in the open, during monsoon.

This is a very brief description of few details of peasants’ actions related to rice in the example above. Simple and ordinary as they may seem, there is a complex interrelationship between resources, values and development, which modern economics may not have fully explored. There is much more: besides skills, tools, processes and products related to rice, so also number of other “utilities”, not only for livelihood, but also culture/s of peasants. This has been going on for generations, for ages.

“Consider a good, e.g. rice”, again. A few hundred miles north of my birthplace is Riagad District. Here, for example, in the coastal plains, the peasants don’t plough the paddy farm, but directly broadcast the seeds. They also use water-flooded paddy terraces to farm favourite local specie of fish, ‘Jitada’, by digging pits that retain water for few months after monsoon. People have used diversity and adversity both to their advantage discovered by ‘collective creativity’ and not by theories. In the land of great diversity that is India, what variety and wealth of knowledge, skills and practices must there be.

However there is no time or will among the ruling minority, which is obsessed with western-style ‘development’ of capitalism with a benevolent name ‘duel economy’, hence, no records of “Intellectual Property Rights”, which may come up or be ignored in future; every time there may not be cases like Basmati rice, Neem and turmeric. The theft and smuggling of plants and herbs out of the country that is taking place is apart! While the elite enjoy a status of neo-Brahmanism, the 900 million peasants are like Shudras, or second-class citizens, or an underclass; that’s ‘duel economy’! Without right empowerment how would the peasants care for the vanishing precious biodiversity?

With industrialization, and without appropriate rehabilitation, it is not only the loss of the people’s knowledge, tools, and skills and the indigenous seeds, but also the loss of environment of the natural habitat. The ground water is going lower or is getting poisoned. We do not hear the chorus of frogs during monsoon nights any more. We were shocked to hear a hundred peasants died at a stroke in Karnataka by consuming crabs that had concentrated pesticides in their bodies. What will be the fate of the land, waters and the people when the SEZs (Special Economic Zones) devised recently to take over agricultural farms in India) will become operative in near future?

The governments, at the centre or states, have shown total apathy for the past six decades to organize and implement rehabilitation of the peasants, while bringing in and supporting industrialization with their ad-hock policies, projects and the laws. Why is this apathy? It is only because the peasants and the farming communities in six lakh villages is not an organized sector like commerce, trade and industry, which can twist government’s arm at a single call. Are the peasants on their way out to annihilation? It is as mute a question as the peasants.

Perhaps the plain reason for this failure of the government is that the British Raj did not leave any formula as their legacy while parting; or it failed to invent any on its own; or it failed to imitate others. It failed because it failed to do necessary fieldwork. It is easier to produce nuclear weapons or space ships, at any cost. How could anyone invent a theory or an equation or a formula for application for such a great diversity and the great disparity?

Certainly, Sen must be aware of many examples as one cited above, and the anomaly thereby, as may be guessed from his writing. However, what will happen to economics, if it has to take into account the above example? It will have to count also the “Environment–Ecology–Energy Cost” (EEE Cost) of the conventional agriculture of the peasants, here and now, at least in the Twenty First Century, and revise all its equations and formulae, hypotheses and rationale. It will have to re-write the equations after assessing the “EEE Cost” of all the industrial products.

The example cited above clearly shows the practice is labour intensive, uses local resources, and conserves the soil regularly by its rehabilitation, and so far it is a model of sustainability. The capitalist society and its culture of production and consumerism beyond needs, and the waste thereby, do not envisage this aspect. Even by conventional system the peasants do not get a fair deal, even by the governments. The experts, even those rebellious against the system, are recognized by awards not by action. But who could guarantee the theories work? As Paul Valéry says, ‘there is no theory that is not a fragment.’

Definition of Non-working Population

See, for example, the Census Survey of India 1991 (Census 2001 is not yet printed). It defines, “persons engaged in household duties, students, dependents, retired persons, renters, beggars are some of the categories grouped as non-workers” (Section 10, part 10.2). This seems to be applied to both urban and rural populations. How crude? Among peasants, the women share major responsibility at farms as well as home; the help comes from the aged and the children – students, dropouts, or those never enrolled. The peasants, even if aged, never retire unless invalid. The village data, if checked, will show substantial number of non-workers. See also the number of inhabited villages in the Census data. How do the people survive? Where do people go?

How reliable are such data that may be extensively used by economists, other experts and planners to shape the fate of the people, but never reach the peasants? The amazing fact is the government may approve to send a man on the moon, but never sends complimentary copies of the Census Survey to the Gram Panchayats so they can scrutinize its work: only the peasants are qualified to do it, but they are languishing in illiteracy – innumeracy.

The peasants are not aware of their status recorded by the government every ten years. And now Census 2001 is available only in electronic form. What would be the response of the peasants, particularly women, who feed not only their families but also the nation, to their status of ‘non- workers’ along the beggars, in the country that is so rich in resources? Whosoever may be responsible, the hypocrisy is unprecedented, it has no match anywhere.

Having, of course, a will, in the modern times, and by hard work, the government can open many new avenues and areas to the peasants to elevate their skills, knowledge, livelihood, sustenance and self-reliance. Taking the example of rice, we name a few options as a reminder:

Farmers' options for ancillary products and by-products from paddy farming

Rice husk: cement; Paddy straw: cattle feed Paper; Rice bran: bran oil; Defatted bran: Agricultural farm;
Animal waste and farm residue: methane gas, manure;
Waste water: filtration plant --- algae pond (nitrogen-rich manure) / fish pond;
Recycled water: farm/ kitchen garden; Plantation: fruits / fibres / spices and condiments / medicinal plants / aromatic plants / colours and dyes / gums and resins /paper / timber / and conservation of vanishing species; and now bio diesel (e.g. Jatropha); Land: conservation, restoration, use of soil testing kit, and as the subcontinent now is known to be earthquake prone, to be prepared for self-help; Waters: conservation, recycling, aquaculture, health, recreation, use of water testing kit, and water management in the times of floods and draughts by self-help, having known that the government help does not reach in time to save life and property. Market: (1) arithmetic to derive the price-cost-value-benefit of their actions and input into their work, sustenance and the way of living; (2) idea of modern ‘economic developments that are conducive to a proliferation of middle-men, where commodities take over things, even humans, and prices from values; (3) work to master the market, neither to serve it or patronise it. (See the enclosed illustrations.)

These options should be the focus of education and main part of the curriculum for 900 millions peasants and 600,000 villages in the country, and not the British-made schooling, which is being followed by the authorities and the departments.
Having a will and courage, the government, as it has vast infrastructure, it turn every village into a Special Agro-tech Parks (SAPs) across the country. Taking a clue, if need be, from the West that sent the youth to the armed forces, or China’s example of ‘Cultural Revolution’, India too can develop on an indigenous tool, which is partially in operation.

Introduce a compulsory ‘internship’ of six months for all the candidates who go for Diplomas, Degrees, Masters and Doctorates from every discipline of higher education, without reservations. They must go to the villages and work with peasants and SAP, without any stipend. They should support themselves by using, and also testing, their learning of 15 / 17 / 20 years of formal education. (The likely fallout that there may be a countrywide wave of ‘bribery and corruption’ to escape the internship, or otherwise we trust the Response-Ability of the younger generation, irrespective of all the prevailing waves in the country!)

Deliver the “Pro-poor” products, not the promises.
Give them the ‘fishing-hook’, not the fish.
Be the facilitator, being democratic government, not a ruler.
Return the land to the peasants, by their ancestral right, don’t sale to the corporate.
Start six lakhs Special Agro-Technology Parks (SAPs) for six lakhs Villages of India on war footing. 


Illustration 2: Methane Generation by recycling organic waste

Traditional or conventional paddy farming is holistic. There the cycle of Environment and Ecology and Energy is complete, therefore, there is no waste of energy i.e. energy is changed in to other forms.
The Illustrations here may look contemporary, but the elements have been there for millennia.

Illustration 3: Rice production in Konkan Region and Some New Directions
It becomes necessity in the changing global situations that the peasants are well informed of the characteristics of Industrial Civilization and its mentality to colonize other societies and communities under the new tools of power and profiteering: So that the peasants could maintain and guard their autonomy.


Illustration 4: Cow dung cakes are labor-intensive energy option
Cow dung: The Industrial Societies are accustomed being less populated are mass producing, even beyond their needs.
Typically, we have heard that in UK there is a plant that recycles cow dung at a mass scale, may be about thousands of tonnes, imported from several farms.

Modern technology has failed to evolve forms for decentralization of recycling, building, or processes that are possible at family level.

Illustration 5:  Paddy Farms
Paddy farming is round the year action unlike industrial products. Man, Animals, and Plants, all receive sustenance.

Modern Industrialized Farming is detrimental to LIFE, though it may benefit the capitalist society, which creates enormous wealth as well as enormous waste at the cost of LIFE.


— Remigius de Souza
~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Prayer Power and Global Climate Warming

Prayer Power and Global Climate Warming
by Remigius de Souza

IN THE REALMS of Terra Incognita Indica, sages and saints for centuries acclaimed Sahaja-Dharma – natural intrinsic Dharma – of an individual that is beyond and above any Authority, Institution or Agency. Dharma upholds spirituality / religiousness, even if one may be theist or atheist.

Prayer Power

Prayer when becomes Work
Nature becomes ugly liability.

Work when becomes Prayer
Nature becomes supreme serenity.

(Nature, here, that is inside and outside both.)

Global Warming

WITH THE RISE of civilised societies, there also grew elite classes of rulers and clerics i.e. institutionalised religions, which believed in gods or non-gods, where the rulers assumed the role of incarnation of gods, coroneted by the blessings of the class/ caste of clergy.

Ever since, the history has been witnessing chaos, conflicts, exploitation in the name of sovereignty and/or in the name institutionalised religions and their respective gods. However, ironically, the great civilisations and the empires (until the last century) vanish, and People prevail.

As the civilisations advanced, of course in technologies, with new, newer weapons of war of domination over and exploitation of the weaker, the underclass, also emerged.

The history also witnesses the rise of institutionalised ‘no-God-religions’ and the weapons of war, colonisation, globalisation, market, economy, and convenient laws of the state that may rule and deliver judgements but not Justice; all these add on the already existing chaos.

All the religions and hypothetical systems, which rule, promise protestation of life, happiness and salvation during life and/or after Death (now, in the clones, perhaps).

All humans are subject to emotions roused by their senses, virtues and vices, strength and weaknesses handed over by their grooming and orientations; the more powerful the greater their insecurities.

However, the so-called modern, powerful advance societies have succeeded in organising vice/s on mass scale at global level to the effect of mass murder of Land and Waters and all the Living Beings.

Despite all the hullabaloos raised by these societies on the issue of Global Climate Warming, indeed it is trivial before this crime. To cover up their own crimes on mass scale these societies hold responsible the whole of humanity for global climate warming.
~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Thursday 28 August 2008

MUMBAI THE GREAT METROPOLIS

MUMBAI THE GREAT METROPOLIS

Metropolitan culture flourishes here
By road side shops and squatter:
They trade and eat and drink
And foul and pee and defecate forever
The land and waters and raise
Generations of the unwanted.

Defying ancient ways of land
[and waters] that give man
The sustenance and culture’
Modern civilization develops
Wealth and waste endless
To leave behind desert and craters
All over the earth and heaven
And the posterity left to live
The life of hydroponics.

They treat the posterity
As their personal property
To pamper their ego-flights
In being instrumental at will
Or whim procreating
Their Offspring at the price of dignity
While perpetuating possessions
That rise by greed and perversity.

(4-3-2000)

~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Monday 25 August 2008

Tata's Nano car (Modern Haiku)

Tata's Nano car (Modern Haiku)

Behind your car
I am dragged –
fallen leaves.

(For a farmer even fallen leaves are precious. They burn them to keep warm. It is used as (compost) manure. But in modern India (call her Bharat or Hindustan) modern maharajas – the corporate – like Tatas – have emerged. What value do they have for - whether farmers or fallen leaves? Read more)
(Translation by the author)
-----
पाचोळा ( आधुनिक हायकू)

तुझ्या मोटारीच्या मागे मागे
येई मी फ़रफ़टत ....
पाचोळा।

(शेताकरयाला पाचोळा फार मोलाचा असतो। त्याची शेकोटी होते। त्याचे शेतासाठी (कम्पोस्ट) खत होते। पण आधुनिक इन्डियात [वाटल्यास भारत म्हणा किंवा हिन्दुस्तान म्हणा] टाटा सारखे आधुनिक राजे महाराजे तयार झाले आहेत। शेतकरी की पाचोळा, त्यांची त्याना काय किंमत ? पुढे वाचा )

२४.८.२००८
~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Saturday 16 August 2008

God's acre

-----------------------------------

God’s acre


When I was born someone smiled –
a dew drop on a tender blade of grass
draped in rainbow attire,
a sparrow picked a grain and flew.

From morning always moves to dusk
on the pathway walks the Sun, along
hear a call from Goddess Night –
Life hangs until the distance ends.

Remi, if you could cut / graft the roots
of beliefs would the twist between
the ends – Birth and Death –
ever remain the same?

(Translation from original Marathi by the author)


~~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Tuesday 12 August 2008

CREATIVITY: to create problems to create solutions to create…

Creativity is to create problems to create solutions to create…

WHY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KEEPING AWAY from the institutionalized formal schooling even to this date? Without mincing words, it is because the prevalent British-made education isn’t relevant and/or the system is not appropriate for their sustenance.

Homo sapiens have a powerful weapon of language over other hominids and species. As script and writing were discovered with rise of civilization, the powerful classes or castes monopolized them and kept ‘the other’ – their subjects away; perhaps they promised them the physical and spiritual protection in the return of the exploits.

Over the centuries this majority, which still persists and is increasing, had known that the scriptures and the script have not been essential for the survival in real life in real world. Perhaps that is why Gautam Buddha, the rebellion, speaks to people in Prakrit – vernacular!

Those who go through the British-made western-style education become alienated from the people and society, from real life, and embrace ‘virtual reality’ of market, money and media. The people inevitably turn into a mass society, and subsequently face identity crisis.

Fortunately none of the ethnic and tribal communities and their members suffers from identity crisis. They are acutely aware of its irrelevance in their real life, and therefore cannot afford it, and opt to drop out.

The identity of Britain and the British is “East India Company” – the international Baniya – the traders. The East India Company baptised the elite India with trade and replaced clergy by traders who are invisible rulers.

It is not a discovery that a language or a script is ‘virtual reality’. With the development of science and technology more and more languages and scripts are emerging, such as, binary. This pushes the society to further fragmentation and chaos, and the powerful move to further alienation. Thanks to the progress of Electronic Technology/ Information Technology in leaps and bounds that perhaps a million odd persons are now marginally computer-literates. The brighter ones end up in silicon valleys to slave for the likes of the Gates.

An annual Union Budget may use Hindi language, but even the educated may not be able to comprehend its means, meanings and ends, or how economic language changes political equations, or who shall hijack its benefits by hook or crook. Then they need the modern-day gurus to interpret the scriptures of the country’s budget. Such monopolization of languages leads the experts to alienation from the real world, and pushes the ‘other’ members of the society to oblivion. Can anyone take a word of the rulers at its face value? The same could be said of all the fields of specialization and expertise; they remain exclusive but not universal.

See more
¬¬¬¬
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Sunday 10 August 2008

THE CITY OF GOLD

THE CITY OF GOLD

Shunting between
South-North North-South
Air-conditioned dreams inhale
Cooled air from human excreta
Infested with virus a-plenty
along the roadside
in the city of gold.

Oozing carbon monoxide
with safety belts fastened
At 40 km an hour by the side
of the urchins dark-skinned
Unaware of impending slow dying
Gleefully playing
in the city of gold.

Between South and North
It is the dark tunnel
of pipe-in music intoxicating
Noise of airliner competing
along up-right hi-tech architecture
shuts itself off silted air
in the city of gold.

Homecoming birds go afar
In the search of shelter away
From rootless rickety trees
Thickened with dust carbonised
Happy chirping sparrows no more
No night shelter for birds any more
In the city of gold.

Shunting between South and North
As weary nights descend
Pavements and railway platforms
along the corridor of power

And the poverty dozes off slowly
for a few hours of dreams
in the city of gold.
------

Mumbai [7-4-1998]

~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved।

Friday 18 July 2008

धरतरी: The Earth (Marathi Poem)



धरतरी
धरतरी झाली माझे माता पिता गुरु.
--- रेमी डिसोजा
गुरु पौर्णिमा १८.७.२००८
~~~~

The Earth

The earth is my mother, father, guru. All incarnations came from and merged with land. The Earth is manifestation of God.

-- Remi de Souza






© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Wednesday 16 July 2008

A perpetual state of trauma


A perpetual state of trauma
by Remigius de Souza

In your society i.e. high-class society, or classless society,
of Industrial Civilisation, comprised of individuals,
as if no one is born of biological parents,
but everyone is a product of high-class-culture
of science–technology–trade–consumption,
laced with aesthetics of hedonism by your overbearing senses;
touch, hearing, taste, vision, smell, sex and terror (fear).

For you the rest of humanity just belongs to the Underclass Incognita.

And your high-class-culture (or dharma!) turns everything –
Earth, Waters, Air, Life at large… including Other Humans – into a commodity
for the consumption for your high-class-society,
and for the display extravagant of your high-class-culture.

Your high-class-culture developed (but never evolved?)
out of five thousand years of civilised society,
knows no option
either for the revival of Life,
which, of course, is not in your hands,
or allow anyone or anything a natural death.

but is left to live a life of an invalid,
by benevolently pumping drugs and chemicals
to leave a body –
from the Earth and Waters to Plants, Animals and Other Humans –
in a perpetual state of trauma.



(Note: Sadly, fragmented split personality that I am, I address this to myself though a negligible fragment that I am of Industrial Civilisation.)
~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Warli Painting with the Artist and her Family

Ritual Painting by Warli Midwife on wall during child birth


Warli Painting with the Artist and her Family

Warli painting is the DOMAIN OF WARLI WOMEN, unlike male chauvinist civilised societies. Warli Painting, like their dances and music, is part of their life and culture and not a separate department for the so-called gifted artists in the civilised societies. Warli Tribe have neither gender issues of discrimination or prostitution like in civilised societies.
However, we notice that the do-gooder urban elites are promoting their own values and encouraging males to paint for publishing and marketing Warli Art. They don’t learn because they can’t appreciate Tribal values. This missionary work is most detrimental to tribal culture.
The western and the westernised societies fail to understand; in the tribal communities everyone is artist – painter, poet, singer, dancer, house builder… unlike industrial and civilized societies, which tend to divide society into compartments and hierarchies.

Read MORE ON >> Warli Housing and Art
~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Saturday 28 June 2008

Remi’s Vernacular Tongue




Remi’s Vernacular Tongue

Remi’s one more blog: language is Marathi, or English, but different in Remi’s vernacular tongue.

In a family there may be 10, 5, 3 or 2 persons. Their accents and manners of talk may be, or seem to be, similar, but each one’s vernacular is independent. It’s like finger prints. It’s like out of countless leaves on a tree, each leaf has unique impression of veins on it.

That doesn’t happen with countless cars on a large parking lot though effort is made to bring variety by different colours and designs. It’s the same story with apartment blocks in cities.

But all the mud houses built in a village/s in vernacular style do not fail to enchant us by each one’s uniqueness and their variety.

That’s the fun in the natural variety.

How could the sixty years of wanderings fail to make impression on Remi’s vernacular tongue – words, meanings and sound?

A person who wanders whole his life moves on margin. But his wandering is not like a blinkered buggy horse. Or it’s not like a railway that runs on tracks. Or it’s not like aeroplanes that fly on a drawn line from one point to another. Or he has no obligation caste-religion-class.

His wandering is like honeybee’s dancing journey; her hive too moves with her. His wanderings are like an aborigine moving happily at will in the wilderness.

His wandering that started at the foothill of Western Ghats is yet to fulfil, if alive, in reaching homeland – Gondwana.
~~~~~
Remigius de Souza
21.06.2008
LINK (Remichi Marathi Boli)


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Friday 20 June 2008

Inflation here – Inflation there

Inflation here – Inflation there

Inflation does not happen: It is not a Natural calamity. Inflation is created by humans, their lifestyles and the market forces. It is created by the misplaced priorities by the dominance of institutions, including the State, that take over the personal and the collective domain of an individual, family, and the society at large. For example: War (in the name of peace) and movies (in the name of entertainment where energy dissipates into smoke).

For ages the Indic peasants have been self-supporting and self-reliant for their needs, and could exercise their autonomy in their personal and collective living. By the standards of contemporary developed societies in the West, they may seem to be poor. Their poverty has been due to the exploitation by the rulers, and the dominant casts and classes, for centuries. Yet they were fairly free in their personal domain.

With the entry of white angles from the West – the East India Company and the British Rule (also read French – Dutch – Portuguese) – their remaining freedom came to an end. Perhaps the final stamp of this end was placed by the Cadastral Surveys the British carried out in the entire country. It also sealed peasants’ autonomy. Thus came into force a new tenure – government land.

It helped the British to consolidate further the centralised power, which was dependant on their military power. Now they had an added tool of power – Revenue Department – the Indian Civil Service (ICS). What is the cultural impact on the agrarian society must also be taken into account, not only economic and administration. The tribal – adivasis – the aborigines – escaped this cultural onslaught, may be to some extent, but they lost the land rights of their habitat – the forest – that went to the Department of Forest


On achieving the Independence, the government of Indian Republic and the provincial governments took over the ready infrastructure and the laws, and followed the foot steps of the past colonial masters. The struggle for Independence thus ended, instead of, now, continuing to investigate, scrutinise and to revamp the established system.

Also there came an end to the pioneering efforts in education, women’s uplift, science, and social reforms etc. that were going along the movement for political independence. The slave mentality of centuries took over again.

Whatever changes that may have taken place during the subsequent years were mostly effected by changing nomenclature – ICS became IAS, writing of the Constitution (which underwent more than 100 amendments. Isn’t it commendable that we learn from the mistakes) and some adjustments and readjustments. But the dragnet of centralised power continued to tighten the peasants – the second class citizens if India.

Free market – liberalisation – globalisation – economic growth – Club Nuke – blah-blah-blah, and very recent one – the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are the pretty pet programmes and policies of the modern First World India, which goes on popping poppy pills of progress that come with consumerism mantra.

Now listen to the music of the perils of the peasants in the Third World India, who produce food for all, are being displaced, marginalised, starving, driven to suicide, while Public Distribution System of essential commodities falter or fail now and then. The food production comes down; the food prices go up.

What would the elevated bureaucrats and the leaders to be the modern-feudal-masters, the Mai-Bap Sarkar, taking the role of Provider, now do? Distribute the dole in cash. The cash though has no tangible value, particularly when the inflation strikes, one after another, by the consumerism mantra, which never comes down in decades. But when the problem is so large and widespread, who could guarantee the dole or development reach to the needy?

The peasants produce food for all: It’s a NEED. None, however, can produce oil – the fossil fuel. They can only extract it from the Earth and process it: It is a WANT of the privileged few; it is not for all. What is the point in shouting green slogans?

We must carry our own burden', that’s what my grandma – an illiterate peasant woman – said fifty years ago.

Who does WANT Nuke or Nano? Who doesn't NEED food?
Tell the bright brains of IITs and IIMs to find how to use the billion-people-strong human energy! This is a challenge of 21st Century and the Democracy.
~~~~~
Remigius de Souza
20-06-2008


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Monday 16 June 2008

Warli Tribal Woman and Cow Dung

Warli woman uses cow dung wash on new bamboo container and baskets
for their maintenance. There are no special classes or schools
to learn several uses of cow dung. The child here is learning by experience
and example, not by scholarly treatises and expert discourses.
The western (and the westernized) societies can only think of production
and use of, even local material such as cow dung on a mass scale; obviously
to keep control on the mass society and profit through centralized power.
Cow dung as building material
(This excerpt is taken from my research paper, “Tribal Housing Buddha and the Art and Science of Karvi Hut”. See LINK for full Text and Images)

Some time ago the Indian Petro-Chemicals Limited (IPCL), Baroda came out with a chemical for waterproofing treatment of mud walls. The offer came through 'Council for Advancement of Rural Technology' (CAPART), Delhi to use it on experimental basis, at 90% subsidy on its cost, on the first 50 houses built for the tribal, under RLEGP. Being sceptical about such industrial products about its cost, economy, and the after-effects etc. we declined. Instead, we suggested using traditional cow dung wash on the walls. The chemical was highly toxic. Thankfully, IPCL had a good sense of withdrawing entire stock from the market, perhaps in good time.

Traditionally the tribal and villagers use cow dung for finishing the mud floors and mud walls. They also use it for the grain silos made of mud mixed with cow dung, or apply it on bamboo silos. People must have observed that pest does not affect the grain stored in such a condition. From the Vedic times, ‘Agnihotra’ – a ritual with fire – uses cow dung, which is believed to purify environment. Are these superstitions? Perhaps the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and IPCL could divert some of their resources to understand cow dung. We should not be surprised, though, with use of chemical fertilizes and pesticides even the cow dung may also found to be ‘fouled’!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Saturday 14 June 2008

iTECHNOMAN (self-portrait)

iTECHNOMAN
Self-portrait by Remigius de Souza, Mumbai, India (1972)
Colour on handmade paper 9"x 12"
© Remigius de Souza


You may read or interpret iTECHNOMAN” in various ways that you may prefer.
Remi (Remigius de Souza) is marginally literate, not only in computers, but also in any of the Arts and Literary disciplines.

He began to learn writing Letters and Numbers of his vernacular language MARATHI on a slate, at his native village in Konkan.

Simultaneously he also took lessons in his basic needs, which are farming in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture; mud house building and its maintenance; and spinning and handloom weaving of cotton fabric: FOOD, SHELTER and CLOTHING.

Industrial society has failed after centuries to reach this ability or level, which is mentioned above, to impart education to any citizen anywhere in the world, certainly not in India.

Decades later he learnt computer programming in an antique language “1401” in an intensive course of one month, which was given by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS): that was the only formal training he received in computers.


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Grandma's Legacy: a Last or Lost Link? (Comment)

Image Source: Hindustan Times

Grandma's Legacy: A Last or a Lost Link? Thankfully not yet. There is much to savour the legacy my grandmother left for me - for us.
Grandma’s legacy is not a lost link. They found some in Andhra Pradesh – it is everywhere in India – provided you look for it.
They should show these movies to the ruling minority – politicians, bureaucrats, experts, specialists, planners, the educationists and the self-proclaimed leaders, and the urban elite – before showing them to the world.
This “Soil Unrecognized Indian” is now being seen…


More on Grandma's Legacy >>
1. She Lived Her Living Doctrine
2. We must carry our own burden

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Monday 19 May 2008

TERRA INCOGNITA INDICA

INDICA: I deliberately use the word ‘Indica’, a biological term, instead of ‘India’. It is precisely to indicate a ‘region’ and not political boundaries that associate with the State. In the historical time political boundaries have been subjected to change, anywhere.

TERRA: literally ‘soil’, which I refer to ‘Land and Waters and People, and Biotic and Abiotic Nature’. The biotic and abiotic nature is intrinsic in the life, therefore also in their culture, of the people – the daughters and the sons of the soil.

INCOGNITA: the literal meaning is ‘unknown – unexplored – unrecognised’ alike the medieval (European) map showed the known world encircled by ‘terra incognita’ where monsters roam.

Indeed even in the twenty-first century, the ‘soil’, in my way of comprehensive meaning, still remains ‘unknown (to the world) – unexplored (by the pundits) – unrecognised (by the so-called Authority or the State)’, whom I fondly call my ‘anonymous’ kin, from whatever glimpse I have had through my six decade journey in the Third World India and the Fourth World India.

INDIA has almost a continental size. Broadly there are about 50 – 60 cultural and social sub-groups (as illustrated….). No. We are not referring to the castes or cults or the creeds. We are not taking of, in American lingo, of the Class or the classless society. We are speaking of the ethnic and adivasi – tribal – communities (that is the cohesive collectives), not the civilised advance societies (that is the fragmented collectives in the modern times).

She indeed is a thousand-petal lotus, our national flower. There have been as many topographic and climatic regions – bioregions – that have great hand in shaping the culture, expressed in food, clothing, shelter (or architecture!), visual and performing arts and crafts, languages an folklore… and thus as a result a superior quality of sustainable living. I call it a model for the modern world, a world heritage, now facing a wipe-out.

Unfortunately in the global race to make India an industrial power by the petty imitators – the ruling minority – comes at cross-purposes with the survival of the agrarian society and the diverse bioregions. The petty imitators are out to homogenise them with monoculture of industrial civilisation. The industrialisation here, so far, only helps the power mongers and profiteers through their invisible tentacles.

Indeed one lifetime is not enough to see and to assimilate and to understand this phenomenon for any person or even a group of persons. Any documentation, even a fraction, would reveal great treasures of wisdom and knowledge and skills, across these diverse bioregions, accumulated over generations of anonymous People of India.

India is such a vast country with diversity that it is impossible to manage even the welfare of the people (for the lack of understanding) for any centralised power, even with an iron hand. This is true of any region in the world which has been proved time to time. Decentralisation of powers, down to earth in practice, (power in the hands of peasants) is the only answer to this malady; M. K. Gandhi came very close to it in his concept of Panchayati Raj – power to village self-rule.

See LINK (TERRA INCOGNITA INDICA)
10-05-2009


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Thursday 1 May 2008

Man and Nature (within and outside)

Presentation accompanied with the paper ARCHITECTURE AND BIODIVERSITY IN INDIA: A Context to Aesthetics in Our Times”, presented to PAITHRUKAM 2004: Seminar/Workshop on “Aesthetics in Indian Architecture: Past, Present and Future”, at MES College of Architecture, Trissure, Kerala.
Author: Remigius de Souza, 14 OCT 2004

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Note: All the references to images and quotes in the following presentation are not mentioned. Also the permissions of the authors and publishers have not been taken. The author acknowledges their copyright. These are used purely for the academic purpose.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Friday 25 April 2008

IPL’s Bollywood Cricket

IPL’s Bollywood Cricket

by Remigius de Souza


CINEMA and TV among other options is a powerful media. Bollywood, here, in particular, is quite influential in the areas of personal attire – hairstyle, costumes and gestures – to house decoration by the masses. It has gone further to produce Bollywood politics, Bollywood planning, Bollywood architecture, Bollywood landscape design etc. at local, regional and national levels. No. we are not talking about the Bollywood stars – heroes and hoaxes – in the legislature.

IPL is a similar idea religiously copied in the sports i.e. cricket, from Bollywood extravaganza by the brilliant brains in Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Just as Bollywood does add foreign locations in their films, so does IPL adds foreign players and half-naked cheerleaders, to blow up surplus money BCCI has earned from cricket frenzy of desi fans (as they don’t know how to use it creatively) that goes into smoke: whosoever few are profited. This is a smoke screen to hide BCCI’s failure to bring quality to its cricket game. It reminds us the recent (2008) Bollywood Budget by P. Chidambaram, our Fin-Min of India.

Any number of movies such as Chak De India, Iqbal, and Lagan etc Bollywood may produce, it is not going to change and better the play-life of 200-300 million children in cities, towns and villages that they rightfully deserve.

The children (those not reached puberty), however, are not so much interested in watching cricket on TV screen as playing it themselves. They play cricket. They make a ball out of newspaper sheets, tie it up with a thread that comes from a grocery pack, and invent their own rules of the game. They play in the corridors in the building, gullies, by-lanes, and on holidays on the streets; they don’t have enough playgrounds in their neighbourhoods: that happens in Mumbai as well as elsewhere. The children anywhere in the world invent their own games, rather than look for external aids to keep themselves excited all the time. The children anywhere in the world invent their own games. They also love to sing, dance, paint and play and to tell stories: the adults don’t. Children are not interested in passive entertainment as the urbanite do.

I have failed to convince this one point even to one person. He was undergraduate student of architecture, and I was his dissertation/ thesis guide, while I was teaching architecture. His subject was stadiums – devoutly dedicated to cricket. I suggested working on smaller sports stadiums, which could facilitate several different games, sports and athletics besides cricket. His argument was (as if he was know-all): ‘nobody is interested in other games, because there is money in cricket.’

Remigius de Souza
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Sunday 13 April 2008

Inflation? Take Ju-Jitsu Action

Inflation? Take Ju-Jitsu Action


On the heals of the Budget 2008 India comes inflation at 7.4%, highest in the last three years, as if an earthquake at 7.4 magnitude on Richter Scale. While one pinches a belly, the other sends physical tremors. But inflation is manmade unlike an earthquake which is natural. In both cases the people suffer.

Market now in modern times is omnipotent, omnipresent force in our lives. Inflation, recession, or even famines, are works of human hands: All works of human hands are perishable, but all human problems have answers. The damage caused to humans due to earthquakes is also a human problem, hence have answers.

I heard on a TV news channel, a Negro man (he must be a celebrity) was making a statement “INFLATION WILL AFFECT ECONOMY” (as if humans are nonentity). They, the concerned people, also add “IT WILL AFFECT THE GROWTH” (after exploiting all the resources of the Earth that belong to all the living beings on the earth). Whose growth anyway?

What could our government do? It will give some promises. It will play some jugglery with numbers to take care of production, trade, industry… blah – blah – blah. They will postpone the problem for some time, like those newly built flyovers in Delhi, Mumbai etc. to solve traffic congestion created by city planners, only to shift the traffic jam to the next point. But the problems created by buildings – civil works are going to stay until next earthquake.


We all know what Ju-Jitsu Action is. Yet we go over it briefly to give a boost to the idea. The Buddhist monks, in self defense, developed it to face the menace of thugs, dacoits, thieves thy met on the way to China some two thousand years ago. They used no weapons but only the force of the attackers to defeat them.

There is no need to mention who the enemy is and its cronies are (inside or outside).

What Ju-Jitsu Action possible in the present situation, without using any force, without spending any energy? Just in two words:

BOYCOTT MARKET


Boycott market, at all levels, just for ONE DAY – 24 HOURS all over India, or Bharat, or Hindustan – whatever you call her.

Don’t travel by train, passenger bus, car, two wheelers, and/or planes.

Switch off radio sets, TV sets, telephones, mobile phones… Don't visit cinema houses, theatres, entertainment houses.

Don’t attend work – even the so-called essential services, schools – universities, examinations for a day.

Don’t buy newspapers.

Don’t go for any shopping, not even essential commodities, which are putting hardship due to inflation, even if it means to go hungry, fast.

One day’s fast is not going to kill us. There are 200-300 million persons below poverty line who are not sure of their tomorrow’s meal. There are millions among Hindus, Muslims, Jain, Christians who observe abstinence / fast for a period of time of year. There are tens of thousands of adivasis who for lack of food drink toddy to kill their hunger during lean period of summer.

There are 300 million mobile phones in operation in India. Imagine what effect it wrought on the market if they stop working for a day!

OBSERVE INDIA BANDH, as if it is a day of national mourning.

No agitations. No protest marches. No slogans. No placards.

Imagine who will yellow their pants (or sarees, or salvars, or whatever), not only in India but all over the world!

So much energy shall be saved!


TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF INDIA BANDH will break the backbone of the omnipotent, omnipresent MARKET and its great religion, the creed of Consumerism and its manipulators and their cronies.


We have heard of Gandhiji’s STATYGRAHA. I don’t know what truth is; but the truth will be out in just twenty four hours.


Ju-Jitsu Action works. (I have personally tested it on many occasions in my personal and public life, even though it may sound silly, impractical, even to some it may seem impossible, it works.) It is time tested weapon for those not in powers, for those who do not wield weapons. Even if they get to know such an idea is floated, they shall be shaken.

Remigius de Souza
12-04-2008

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.