On Winds

Winter has switched to spring quite abruptly this year. 

Within a span of a week cold foggy mornings gave way to bright sunshine all day prompting us to pack up our jackets and sweaters a month ahead of the Holi festival -  the traditional end-date for winter in this part of the country. There is however one lingering sign of winter that still remains - a cold, steady wind that blows before sunrise and after sunset.

Winds have a language of their own. They always remind me of a passage in Michael Ondaatje's classic, "The English Patient":

"There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which at times has reached the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arfi...which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.

There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days - burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibili from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob - a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand meters high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic..."

One of the winds named here - the Ghibili - has been immortalised by the Japanese anime legend, Hayao Miyazaki, who has named his production house, The Studio Ghibili Collection, and churned out some of the most endearing animation movies we have seen. 

Recent research has also revealed that the great Amazon forests owe their nutrition to winds that emerge from the Sahara desert. Molecular level analysis combined with remote sensing technology tells us that an estimated 22,000 tons of phosphorus from Saharan dust is deposited on Amazon soils every year!  Even more astounding is the discovery that much of this phosphorus comes from one specific area in the Southern Sahara, the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient lake bed where rock minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus!

Do the winds that blow through Delhi have their own names? Have they inspired any creative genius, or carried vital nutrition into distant ecosystems? We don't know yet.  Perhaps the answer, my friend, is blowing in the winds...the answer is blowing in the winds.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Nature (4 Jan., 2021) - Dust arriving in Amazon Basin over the past 7500 years came from different sources

* NASA Satellite reveals how much Saharan dust feeds Amazon's plants - https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants

* The Studio Ghibili Collection - Hayao Miyazaki - https://ghiblicollection.com/

* Demons of the African Air - https://www.irishtimes.com/news/demons-of-the-african-air-1.90392

Hijabs in Udupi

 It is amazing how news of a certain type suddenly blows up.  

A couple of weeks ago, in a hot, humid coastal South Indian town called Udupi, schools finally reopened after the long Covid break. Most students and teachers seemed relieved to be back - except at Government Pre-University College, Kundapura. 

Out of over 590 students studying at this school, about six muslim girls out of 75 decided that they would not adhere to the normal school uniform, and instead wear the hijab. The school objected and stopped these students from entering its premises, and within a few days this became national and international news!

Suddenly everybody seemed to be hyperventilating about the constitutional rights of minorities, and alleged oppression by the Hindu Right. Prominent 'thought leaders' on the social media claimed that 'traditional dress', fundamental rights and cultural identifies were being trampled. 

I have had numerous muslim classmates in Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram, and I never saw them in school wearing hijabs. Coming to think of it, I was not even sure of the various grades of this outfit - the hijab, chador, niqab and burka -  until a few weeks ago. And now it turns out that the students who are insisting on wearing a hijab are actually wearing a much more conservative (and regressive) covering - the niqab.

Having travelled widely in that area since the 1980s I can vouch for the fact that the hijab was rarely seen in the southern states until very recently. The traditional dress worn by girls of all religions here has been the ones that are suitable for the local climate - long skirts/pavada and blouse, or light cotton sarees. 

Why has it suddenly become necessary for a small section of people to demand an exemption for long-standing rules? Was this a deliberate attempt to provoke a reaction? 

Amongst all the discussion and debates I have come across so far, this one from "India This Week" seemed closest to ground realities.  

Unlike the shrill debates you see on the TV channels, often dominated by extremists of all hues, this one offers the unique perspective of educated muslim women who have themselves been working for years to increase the literacy levels amongst the poorest sections of the society. 

It is a pity that sane voices like these are getting drowned out. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* Islamic Dress Post - https://vintageindianclothing.com/2015/04/20/the-islamic-dress-post/

* Muslim Style in South India - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/2786886.pdf

* 900 Cannot Suffer Because of Six Students - https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/hijab-row-udupi-govt-school-students-urge-management-to-start-classes-as-exams-near-1912725-2022-02-14

* Indian Girls are Fighting to Wear Hijab in College - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60079770

Boy Soldier

 

We ran for hours, deeper into the forest. The path had ended, but we kept running until the sky swallowed the sun and gave birth to the moon...

This must be one of the most harrowing real-life stories I have read so far.

It is about a twelve-year-old boy who loves reggae music, dancing, and hanging out with his friends. All of a sudden his world is turned up side down by an armed gang that attacks his village. The villagers scatter and run for their lives, leaving the boy gets separated from his family. While trying to escape a civil war, he ends up getting forced into becoming a combatant himself - part of a gang of teenage boys wielding machetes and AK-47s, marauding villages, killing innocent people as a form of revenge, or simply for fun - the oppressed becoming oppressors themselves.

I stood holding my gun and felt special because I was part of something that took me seriously and  I was not running from anyone, anymore...We were simply told to follow the path until we received instructions on what to do next. We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with fari, sniff cocaine, brown-brown, and take some white pills...

A few years later, while this war of attrition is still dragging on, a UNICEF vehicles roll into their camp. The younger boys are taken away to a rehab centre where most of the children are just not able to adjust to a life without drugs and guns. Most of them revert back to fighting, but one, somehow escapes because of one dedicated, thoughtful nurse. This is is the story of that one boy - Ishmael.

"None of these things are your fault", she would always say sternly at the end of every conversation. Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member - and frankly I had always hated it - I began that day to believe it...

Ishmael Beah's memoir, "A Long Way Gone", is centred around Siera Leone of the 1990s. A country with a population of just over 8 million, and an area that covers double the size of Kerala. Here the mistrust between various tribes and political factions boils over into a full blown civil war. 

Mourning the dead wasn't part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive...Little did I know that surviving the war that I was in, or any other kind of war, was not a matter of feeling trained or brave...

This is the story of just one among the 300,000 children across 20 countries who end up as soldiers on the frontlines of war. According to the UN, up to 40 percent of these are girls. Come to think of it,  perhaps it is a miracle that even a few of them manage to get back their childhoods, and return some semblance of a normal life.

This book is a small but vital window opening into a world we do not know much about. A place where brutality is on a loop, and where peace is an aberration, an abnormal state of affairs. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* UNICEF - Children recruited by armed forces or armed groups - https://www.unicef.org/protection/children-recruited-by-armed-forces

* Sierra Leone on the CIA World Factbook - https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/b0a107fb587d45dbfc17e74a6dd39c4f/SL-summary.pdf

* HRW - Child Soldiers -  https://www.hrw.org/topic/childrens-rights/child-soldiers

* UN -  https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/2015/02/4-10-child-soldiers-girls/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone

A Mug That Cheers

 

"Do you see how the edges are curved? It fits out lips better..." - Ayse Birsel, TEDxCannes

One thing I discovered this winter is the joy of holding a beautiful, ceramic mug, and sipping a hot drink on a cold winter day. The drink could be anything hot - tea, coffee, rasam, or just plain warm water - what matters is the comfort of holding such a mug, cupped in your hand, while sitting at your table or just staring out of the balcony, and letting your thoughts wander as the world going by.

This is not something I had given much thought to earlier - after all, a mug is a mug is a mug, and it is different from a cup! We have always had on kitchen racks an assortment of mugs - the small ones for chai or coffee, the slightly larger, bright red ones that we got for free with branded coffee powder, the monogramed ones we got from various places, and a few larger more stylish singles - the last survivors from the lovely sets we had got as thoughtful gifts from friends. 

Our specifications got a little more stringent this winter. The standard flat-bottom mug just would not do! - it had to have a rounded bottom that could be cupped comfortably in both hands; it had to hold more than 350ml; it had to be stable, and not topple over easily when perched on a tray in transit; the mug had to be balanced - not too heavy, or too light,  and of course, it had to look good and feel good in your hands;  something you would feel like picking up - just for the joy of it.

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Focus

 This is an interesting talk - Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence | Daniel Goleman.

Speaking to an audience at a Google office, the Prof. Goleman is essentially about our need to get more control over our own ability to focus out attention.

While much has been said academics and practitioners alike about the importance of Emotional Intelligence, and about the role of specific parts of the human brain - especially the Amygdala - that are hard-wired to cut out the clutter and focus on factors that are important for our survival, he makes one interesting point: It is possible train ourselves to ramp up cognitive control. 

Ideally, this training should start at an early age.  Goleman illustrates this point by describing the famous "marshmallow experiment" at Stanford on four-year-olds, and the research on how a school in a hardscrabble neighbourhood, transformed the outlook of children by helping them practice deep breathing through innovative games.

A video well worth an hour of your time. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Book - Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence | Daniel Goleman - https://www.amazon.in/Focus-Hidden-Excellence-Daniel-Goleman/dp/0062114964

* Floor Effect - https://www.statology.org/floor-effect/

* Daniel Goleman - https://www.danielgoleman.info/