"Banaras is the chant on my lips"

The family stories are that my mother's father was one heck of a smart man.  He was a calm and studious type, and truly gentle, right from when he was a young boy.

In the school leaving exams, which determined the eligibility for college, he knew he had done really well.  But, to his shock, his results were held back.  He soon found out the reason: In one exam, his responses were identical to another student's, and the authorities needed additional time to establish who had copied from whom.

The principal and teachers at the high school submitted affidavits with evidence of grandfather's academic track record, and argued that it was the other student who had copied grandfather's responses.

Finally, the authorities cleared grandfather's results.

But, by then, it was too late for him to apply to the reputed colleges in Travancore and Madras.  He was stuck.

Dejected and frustrated, he applied for admission to Benares Hindu University.  The response was an offer of admission, but only to study metallurgy.

Wanting to get away the sour experiences, grandfather took up the admission offer to study metallurgy, which was never his primary interest.

Grandfather during his undergraduate years at Varanasi (Benares)
in the early-1930s

In his undergraduate years at Benares, grandfather got interested in North Indian classical music, especially the shehnai music.

The leading shehnai musicians playing Hindustani musicians have for the longest time been Muslims.  Varanasi, shehnai, and Muslims go together.  Ever since Islam and Muslim warriors found their passage to India, there has been a significant Muslim population in the holiest Hindu city.

Yet, almost halfway into The City of Good Death, there is no Muslim character.  Not even in passing.  Of course, the plot is built around the Hindu notion of the good death.  But, the canvas has enough and more space for non-Hindu elements that are a part of Varanasi.  (For instance, the local police inspector could have been a Muslim.)

To her credit, the author--an Indian-American brought up in a Hindu faith--notes in the book that Varanasi's population is not all Hindu.  Yet,  she decided not to include even a minor character who is Muslim.  But then she deserves a lot of leeway given that this is her debut novel.

Perhaps this aspect of her storytelling bothers me because of the contemporary political effort to saffronize Varanasi.  The current Prime Minister contested for India's Parliament not from his home state of Gujarat but from Varanasi (in Uttar Pradesh) in order to make clear the religious bottom-line.  He and his party have been very clear in their argument that anything Islamic is an overlay that covers the Hindu history and, therefore, are on a warpath to erase the Islamic aspects of the landscape--including in Varanasi.

This commentary in The Hindu expresses serious concerns about the saffronization of Varanasi:

Banaras, known to accept everyone with open arms, is being asked to exclude every person without a Hindu name. This overt saffronisation of Banaras might result in the erasure of its famous mixed culture, the mili juli tahzeeb

The author writes:

In the late Mughal period, with the arrival of Shahzada Mirza Jawan Bakht and Nawab Ali Ibrahim Khan in Banaras, the city emerged as a hub for literature and art. Mushaire (symposiums) on the lines of those held in Delhi’s Red Fort became common, especially at Nawab ki Deohdi, the residence of Ali Ibrahim Khan.

The commentary ends with this:

Mirza Hatim Ali Beig Mehr, a close friend of Ghalib who stayed in Banaras shortly, wrote: 

jab se mujhe qismat ne banaras se chhudaya,

rahta hai zabaan’ par meri bas haaye banaras! 

‘From the day fate compelled me to leave Banaras,

O Banaras is the chant on my lips’ 

kaabe mein’ dua mangunga main’ apne khuda se,

ya rab! but-e-kaafir mujhe bulwaaye banaras 

‘I will pray to my god in the kaaba;

O god, let me be recalled by the idols of Banaras’ 

These poets are long dead but the spirit of their poetry should not die with them. Let the narrow lanes of the old city not become a graveyard of all things good, of art and love, and a wealth of culture.

 

A not so sorry sari story

Attending a wedding in India, which I did this past December, was awesome for many reasons one of which was this: not only older women but most of the younger women too were wrapped in saris.
Silk saris.
In a mind-blowing array of colors of designs.
No two saris looked the same.
And every woman seemed to delight in the sari that she was wearing.

Right from a young age, I was impressed with the beauty of the sari.  I had no idea about the differences that the elders talked about: Kanchipuram silk versus Benares silk, for instance.  All I knew was that saris were gorgeous and that I liked some more than others.  It was exciting when I was asked for my opinions on the saris and I was always willing to jump in with my comments on the color scheme, the pattern, the "border," and whether it will look good for that particular woman.  I think it is a surprise that I never had even the faintest interest in wrapping myself in one! Thankfully ;)

Of course, there was no equivalent for the males, whose traditional outfits at weddings was nothing but a white veshti and an angavastram.

No Angavastram though! ;)

Thus, it is no surprise that I could sympathize with Sashi Tharoor's lament that women were ditching the traditional saris.   Of course, the intellectual me also felt right away that it was atrocious for Tharoor to complain about the loss of traditions after his own life far, far away from the traditions.  But, I suppose people like us will always talk and write about the rapid changes that lead to the tossing overboard of traditional practices--even saris.  Why, even the half-saris! ;)

As women ditch the traditional saris, the industry that once employed hundreds of thousands has been rapidly changing as well.  In the place of human hands weaving those silk threads into colorful patterns that the silk saris become, machines have taken over.  The artisan and artistic craft is dying.  While Kanchipuram silk continues to flourish for various reasons, Benares silk is long past its glory days.  It is now being sustained in ways that makes this sari-fan jump with joy:

The jobs of the Varanasi weavers, once estimated at a half million men, may have been fading out back then, but on a trip in late 2013 I discovered that efforts were underway by two companies — the socially conscious New York fashion label Maiyet and the Mumbai chain Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces — to reinvigorate the ancient skill by employing the weavers and inviting tourists to visit them as they work. About 700 people have taken Maiyet’s tour; more than 650 have gone on Taj’s.

Hurrah for capitalism and the profit motive!

The fashion line’s work in Varanasi got the attention of David Adjaye, a star British architect whose international works include the design of the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington. Mr. Adjaye is now designing Maiyet’s building for the weavers, which is to be completed in 2016.
Meanwhile, Taj had started resurrecting the desolate village of Sarai Mohana, five miles from Varanasi, which has a large concentration of weavers. Taj’s plan was to have the weavers make saris for its employees and guests. Since then, the village has been turned into something of a tourist attraction.

How awesome!  

For centuries Varanasi was a hub for the silk trade. The gossamer fabric, woven by hand on long wooden looms, is recognizable to aficionados by its refined feel, substantial weight and audible rustle. ...
Weaving in India dates to 500 B.C. and flourished during the Mughal period from the early 16th to mid-18th centuries. Since Islam traditionally forbids the images of people and animals, weavers created floral brocades for saris and scarves, much like the gold flower pattern on mine.
Weavers, nearly all men, pass down their skills to their sons or male relatives. But their trade has been shaken over the last few decades as power looms offer a cheaper and faster way to produce the same goods, six to 12 meters of material a day, depending on the design; it can take a weaver weeks to create the same amount. This technology left many of the artisans facing starvation and selling the wood from their looms for firewood.

Yes, it is that old tale of technology condemning artisans to starvation. The Luddites found out years ago as the Industrial Revolution unfolded in England that fighting the change is hopeless. Adapt or die.  It was literally the death of one weaver that, ironically, led the hotel chain to employ some:

It was this plight that in 2005 caught the attention of Ratna Krishnakumar, the wife of R.K. Krishnakumar, who was at the time the vice chairman of Indian Hotels Company Limited, of which Taj is a part.
“I had heard about how bad the situation was for these weavers, but the final clinching point came when I was watching the evening news and heard about a weaver in his 30s who had died from overselling his blood to feed his family,” she said in a telephone interview from her Mumbai home.
Mrs. Krishnakumar, 66, came up with the idea of tapping the men to make the saris for Taj’s female front-office staff. The weavers now make saris for 550 women who work at 11 of Taj’s 114 hotels in India.

Mrs. Krishnakumar deserves high praise,don't you think so too?

The project started in 2008 with a dozen weavers but now has more than 40. Mr. Ramrakhiani said that they have woven more than 1,000 saris for the hotel employees. Another group of 12 to 15 master weavers creates saris that are sold at 15 of the hotel’s gift boutiques, including at its properties in New Delhi and London.
Like Mrs. Krishnakumar of Taj, Maiyet’s co-founder and chief executive, Paul van Zyl, was aware of weavers’ problems.
“We naturally hit on Varanasi when we were looking for skilled weavers,” said Mr. van Zyl, 44, the former executive secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which was set up to deal with aftereffects of apartheid. The high-end line that he started is now available at 50 retailers worldwide, including Barneys New York.

If only the business world can always look a little beyond it's narrow and short-term interests--we will all then be collectively much better off.

The "rare earth" chemistry

My grandfather earned his metallurgy degree back in 1938.  Yes, that long ago. For reasons that will be a tad too long for this post, he chose to study at the university in Benares (Varanasi) by the Ganga, far, far, away from his home in Sengottai--which is very close to the peninsular tip in southern India.  If not for his mother threatening to kill herself should he take up a job far away from home, grandfather would have put his education to far greater use.

But, playing with the cards he was dealt, grandfather worked for quite a few years at Indian Rare Earth, and split his time between Manavalakurichi and Chavara.  He worked there until his horribly untimely death when he was just about 51 years old.  (Since then, family lore is that every male in the family goes through a crisis at that age; I wonder what awaits me then; bring it on, cosmos!!!)

I was four when he died.  Soon after that, my parents thought that I as a four year old kid might be a great distraction for my grandmother from her grief, which is how I ended up spending about eight months with her, while the rest of my cohorts went to kindergarten :)  Throughout my growing up, I was immensely influenced by the fantastic stories about him that my grandmother, my mother, and my aunts always had about him.  Not one had anything even remotely negative to say about him.  As kids, we thought it was strangely interesting to see test-tubes of sands of different colors tucked away in a cabinet, and I recall mixing them up wondering whether they would explode :)

So, why "rare earth"?

The rare earths start at lanthanum, Element 57, and run to lutetium, Element 71, and if you look them over, there's a good chance you won't recognize any of them.

Why are these rarely heard elements in the news?  Why is this important?

some patient chemists have learned to exploit the subtle differences among rare earth elements to create amazing technology. Neodymium and gadolinium now make unprecedentedly powerful magnets, which can cool and refrigerate things for pennies, replacing nasty, expensive, ozone-killing chemicals. The Honda Prius uses neodymium in fuel cells. Cerium makes great catalytic converters to clean pollution up, and europium makes energy-efficient LED bulbs. Many superconductors use yttrium, and even simple wind turbines need dysprosium and terbium to store energy, among other things.

Fascinating.  Absolutely wonderful that these rare elements play such significant roles.  So, is America leading the charge on this?  Ahem ... while we were busy fudging mortgage loans, waging wars, and watching reality shows,

China has half of the world's reserves and produces a staggering 95 percent of the ore on the world market. That's because the Chinese government made a shrewd guess in the 1990s and invested in the infrastructure necessary to tediously separate one rare earth from another on an industrial scale. China's dominance wouldn't be a huge concern except that the government has put strict quotas on exports lately. Some rare earths now fetch more than $100 a pound in the United States. (The U.S. once mined rare earths but let the industry flag and would need about 15 years to catch up.)

You got to be kidding here ... come on, isn't there anything that the US can do anymore?
Oh well ...

To feel the pain of others, and to help those in misery

Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, was shot dead on January 30, 1948--only a few months after his successful struggle to boot out the British.

One of Gandhi's favorites among the prayer music is this  While the reference to the Hindu god, Vishnu, might distract a militant atheist, I ignore the Vishnu part and appreciate, and love, the ideas expressed there. For instance, this:

Vaishnav people are those who:
Feel the pain of others,
Help those who are in misery

Wouldn't you want to be friends with such people?  Wouldn't you want to be such a person?  A wonderful ideal to work towards, though a tall order for most of us mortals.

So, yes, it was Gandhi's favorite.

The video below is an instrumental version of that bhajan. The lead musician is Ustad Amjad Ali Khan.  Way back, when I was still an undergraduate student, I spent a few precious rupees from my meager allowance to attend his concert in Madras' Music Academy.  I went alone, because I could not convince anybody from my generation of friends and family to go with me. As exhilarating it was, I felt the lack of companionship that evening. I should have known then it would be a recurring theme in my life :(

But, I digress!  Yes, a Muslim musician and a Hindu bhajan.  How cool is that, and how awesome the music he produces is!



The music below is Ustad Bismillah Khan's powerfully emotional rendering of Gandhi's another favorite "bhajan"--Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram. Yes, another Muslim musician masterfully treating a Hindu bhajan. A few years ago, when talking family stories, I came to know that the shehnai was a favorite of my grandfather's, perhaps a result of his undergraduate studies at Benares, which was also home to Bismillah Khan and many other musicians.



I worry that such coexistence and celebrations in daily life, among the regular folks, have all become a distant and faded memory, as much as Gandhi and his messages have become.

Death at the confluence of the Varuna and the Asi

During the train ride from Florence to Rome, I chatted with the guy seated next to me.  He looked about five years older than me, and was dressed as I imagine a European executive would.  He asked about the travel plans.

"No Naples?" he asked after listening to my schedule.

He opened his briefcase and took out his business card.  On the other side he wrote something and handed it to me.

"It means that one should go to Naples before they die" he said as he passed me the card.  He had written Vedi Napoli e poi muori.  And, of course, his card noted his MBA credential.

Naples was that kind of a city in the history of Italy.  Such a fantastic city that there was nothing else to see after experiencing Naples.

Kashi is a total contrast to Naples.  Also known as Benares and Varanasi, Kashi was the city to which faithful Hindus liked to go and die. 

In the traditions, there is a saying about Kashi: Kashya maranam muktihih (काश्य मरणं मुक्ति:) which translates to Dying in Kashi leads to salvation.  A liberation from the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth.  No reincarnations after the good death in Kashi.

My great-grandmother went to Kashi to die.  

She--Parvathy--had experienced one too many tragedies in her life.  Two of the six children that she gave birth to died before reaching five years of age. 

Of the four who remained, the eldest daughter died from tuberculosis within a couple of years of getting married and without having a child.  Her youngest son also died from the same dreaded disease when his wife was three months pregnant with their first child.

Great-grandmother was dejected with life.  She lost interest in living, and asked her husband to take her to Kashi while making it clear to the family that she was not coming back.  It was goodbye forever.

She died in Kashi as she wished.

Of course, not everyone can time their dying by traveling to the city of good death.  This is why many traditional families had in their homes small sealed containers of water from the holy Ganga River.  A few drops of this holy water in the dying person's mouth is considered the second-best alternative to the good death at Kashi.  If the Ganga water cannot be administered, then scattering the remains after cremation gets the person as close as possible to salvation.

Such a fascinating and profound view of life and death has also generated a backdrop for Priyanka Champaneri in her debut novel The City of Good Death. 

The citation for the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing notes:

A first-generation immigrant who was born and raised in the United States, Champaneri draws on her personal navigation of identity and culture, reconciling her Indian heritage and Hindu faith with her Western upbringing.  The City of Good Death confronts family, religion, and belonging in ways that reflect Champaneri's cultural dualities.

Most of us try in our own ways to reconcile our faiths and the social practices of wherever we live in a world of science and technology that are seemingly at odds with those faiths and practices.  We try to resolve them before we die, whether or not we have visited Napoli or Kashi.

Traditions

As a kid, I always knew it was only a matter of time.  Time to graduate from wearing shorts at home to wearing veshti. 

I do not recall when exactly that happened, but it did.

It worked well.  It felt wonderful to feel that I was being recognized as a grown up.  Almost an adult. 

When the veshti got dirty, however, there was no way to camouflage that.  Eventually the white became off-white, and then an inevitable yellowish-brown.  The attempts to whiten that and make it look new all over included dyeing it with Robin Blue, which always made it worse unlike what the manufacturer claimed.

Soon, the the charm of the newness of wearing a veshti wore off.  I didn't want to become a dull and boring adult.  And certainly I did not want to become a brahmin.  

So, into the teens, I suppose wearing a lungi was how we teenagers and young men rebelled within this traditional world. 

A lungi, also called a kylee, was a horror to the traditional elders.  Disgusted they were with what they considered to be trashy and uncultured.

But then it is not that the elders were sticking with the traditions either.  The traditional nine-yard sari (madisar) had given way to the six-yards.  Mother wore it only when she was participating in religious rituals.  On a daily basis, father wore trousers and not the panchakachcham.  

The drift away from traditions wasn't anything new.  My grandfather wore shorts in his adult life!

Grandfather during his undergraduate years at Varanasi (Benares)
in the early-1930s.  Notice his socks/stockings? ;)

Imagine that!  No veshti but in a pair of shorts.  And no kudumi but a "crop" as my grandmother referred to the modernized man's hairstyle.

Veshti and and kudumi stand out in a world that has become globalized.

In Neyveli, the town where I grew up, there were a couple of professionals who wore veshtis to work.  Even to clubs.  A favorite memory is of one gent, with the traditional kudumi rushing around town on his Lambretta.  And, even more surreal the image of him at the bridge table in the smoke-filled cards room at Park Club--apparently he was sharp at bridge.

The older I get, the more I tire of the modern, especially when the world begins to look the same.  I suppose the old rebel in me wants to rebel against this "modernity."  But, relax, I have no plans to wear a veshti to work, or anywhere for that matter ;)  The last I wore one was at my niece's wedding:

When I travel, men and women wearing clothes that reflect their respective cultures and traditions fascinate me.  When in India, I am impressed with the sight of half-sari wearing girls. Or, the women in their traditional outfits in Ecuador.

In the clash between the tradition and the "modern," rarely does a tradition survive.  But then we create new traditions as we become modern, which a future generation will slowly and systematically walk away from.

Traditions!

This nadu is my land, this nadu is your land ;)

Right from when I was a kid, I have always believed that there is something in people in India that makes us feel it is normal to go far away from the places where we were born and raised.  Maybe the stories of my grandfather were the reason; back in the early 1930s, he went from his home in the southern tip of the peninsular India all the way to Varanasi (Benares) for his undergraduate education.  Given the transport and communication technologies of the day, that kind of a decision is almost unimaginable these days.

Or, maybe because of the stories that I heard about my father, who went all the way from the southern tip of the peninsular India all the way up to a back-of-beyond place in Bihar in order to work at a project that was modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA.)  Those days, travel from his mother's home to his work consumed five days, which meant that ten days of a month-long vacation were spent merely on traveling!

By the time I was a pre-teen, I had been made aware of the far corners of the world to which people from India had spread.

Such a "will travel" attitude means that soon people of Indian origin pop up in areas all around.  Sometimes, that leads to tragedies too--like in the case of an Indian engineer who was shot dead by a white terrorist.

If we don't get killed, and if we are allowed to do what we like doing, then, hey, a Sendhil Mullainathan happens.

To people like me, who come from a certain part of India, that name immediately tells us that he is one of us.  It is a Tamil name.  

For a few years, I have been following Mullainathan's work to the extent that I can understand.  He has been engaging with the public, too.  Good for him, and good for us.  A chair professor at Harvard, he writes in the NY Times about trump not having an economic adviser:

The Council of Economic Advisers performs a function, and provides a perspective, that businesspeople do not.
By way of background, it is useful to understand how the council, which does not, at the moment, have a chairman, actually operates. In effect, it is an in-house economic consultancy for the White House. The staff produces economic analysis on nearly every issue the president faces.

trump is clear that he knows it all.  He doesn't need any stinking economist to tell him about the economy.  How many economists are as rich as he and some of his cabinet members are, right?  If you are so smart, how come you ain't rich, you stupid economics professor?

Mullainathan addresses this difference between business and economics:

This is a much broader responsibility than you might imagine. For example, suppose a reduction in the size of the Army was being considered. The effect on national security would be a major concern, but even this policy has economic consequences. What would the reduced job opportunities do to people who have made the military their profession? What would happen to the economies of the towns that surround Army bases? What would the fiscal consequences be, such as the cost of early retirement or severance packages that might need to be paid as part of a downsizing? It is the council’s job to marshal the best analysis and evidence to answer these questions.

Ah, those elite professors at liberal universities that keep conservatives away from campuses.  trump and his minions know better.

Chances are that despite the best efforts of the white supremacist party aka the GOP, a smart, good-looking, person of Indian origin might even make it all the way to the Oval Office; just wait for it ;)