Pakistanis Do Not Need To Study Relativity

re Saminashah #60

Most of the major characters in A Suitable Boy are supposedly based on real life people Vikram Seth knows. Lata is apparently based on his mother and Amit is very obviously Vikram Seth himself.

anNy, Harimau,

Did you find A Suitable Boy too sweet? I liked a great deal of it and some of the characters were well wrought...

regards

harimau:

``I keep looking at ``A Suitable Boy`` and I still haven`t gotten beyond the first page. Not just mind candy but a huge ball of cotton candy for the mind.``

allow me to agree most vehemently

Harimau,

Thanks for your reply; I tried to post my response (and witty it was), but could not get it through. Khair, maybe tommorrow.

regards

Pakistanis do not need to study. Period.

Ref Venki #: 52

[Not to take away from the rest of what you write, but some of the earliest works of the Kuruntokai are dated between 1st century BC and 1st century CE.]

It is almost impossible to date Kuruntokai. The convention in Kuruntokai is that all the poems are about love. So there is no reference to a reigning king which might serve to date the book. I deliberately chose the latest date proposed by scholars. Even for 6th century AD, the poems are far beyond anything of similar antiquity any other civilization has to offer.

Ref MastRam #: 51

[Is that the poem from which Vikram Chandra got the title of his book ``Red Earth and Pouring Rain``?]

Don`t know. Quite likely though as Vikram Chandra might have had access to an English translation such as `The Interior Landscape` by AK Ramanujan. And the phrase ``Red Earth and Pouring Rain`` seems to have been lifted straight from Ramanujan`s translation.

By the way, Ramanujan`s translation, though excellent, sometimes adds explanations to the poems. For instance, his translation of the poem reads:

``What could my mother be

to yours? What kin is my father

to yours anyway? And how

did you and I meet ever?

But in love our hearts are as red

earth and pouring rain:

mingled

beyond parting.``

The poem in Tamil does not have the words ``mingled beyond parting``. That is left unsaid and for the reader to infer. Same thing goes for ``in love our hearts``. The poem simply says ``loving hearts``. Does the poet mean the hearts of all lovers? Is it specific to this couple? The beauty of the poem is in how spare the language is and in the power of its imagery. The first three lines posing the various questions, establishing that the protagonists indeed are strangers in every way and then, wham!, love intervenes and they are inseparable in their hearts.

[By the way, did you read latest Outlook`s cover story? Authors of Indian languages sound very bitter in it.]

Thanks for that reference. I read that article and some of the sidebars. It is indeed true that writers in regional languages are ignored. It is well known that theater in Calcutta and Bombay are at the cutting edge, probing society at its tendermost points and exposing raw wounds. Yet, unless one understands Bengali and Marathi respectively, this remains inaccessible to the outsider. The same can be said of written literature. I remember novellas of Jayakanthan in Tamil as powerful as John Steinbeck`s ``The Grapes of Wrath`` yet he is completely unknown outside Tamil Nadu. I keep looking at ``A Suitable Boy`` and I still haven`t gotten beyond the first page. Not just mind candy but a huge ball of cotton candy for the mind.

The gripe about translations not being as good as the original is very valid. In one of his stories, Jayakanthan writes about a slum-dwelling woman`s fantasies during sex: she imagines she is having sex with MGR rather than with her husband. This is hilarious on the surface but exposes the adulation in which MGRamachandran (movie idol and later Chief Minister of the state) was held. In all his movies, MGR is the ideal hero, he rescues damsels in distress, he comes to the aid of the poor and the downtrodden against feudals and captains of industry, he is the loyal son who treats his mother as his God, etc. He parlayed this image into even greater popularity by calculated acts of public charity guaranteed to win him greater acclaim, such as handing out raincoats to rickshaw-pullers so that they can ply their trade during the monsoon season in relative dryness. But to say that a faithful wife would fantasize about sex with MGR is to show how crazy the world had become when it came to MGR.

As an analogy, if someone wrote that a San Fernando Valley housewife fantasized about sex with Ronald Reagan, it just doesn`t have the same impact: Quite a few valley housewives probably HAD sex with Ronald Reagan. So, how do you translate the cultural setting in which the story is set? It is almost impossible.

Rushdie`s ``Satanic Verses`` sells well in the West because he doesn`t attempt to bring in too much of the Indian cultural scene into his book. The only references I remember are from the first chapter when the song ``Mere jhoota hai Japanee`` is mentiond and perhaps a few more about Salahuddin`s relations with his father and his lover in Bombay, but the latter two are almost completely Westernised. You just can`t do justice to Jayakanthan, Vaikom Muhammad Bashir, or any number of Indian language writers in translation.

When you read Jhumpa Lahiri`s ``The Interpreter of Maladies``, you are still left with a feeling of incompleteness. The stories lack something, I felt. Maybe that is an intended effect, that you experience the disconnect these expatriates face but from the other side of the mirror, so to speak.

re: Venki # 52

Venki, while the Abhidharma theory is startlingly anticipative of the meme theory, there is no reason to believe that scholars developing the notions of memes (Dawkins included) had any knowledge of the abhidharma exposition. Hence, issues of acnowledgement don`t arise.

Still, thanks for the link. You have definitely piqued my interest.

P.S. One more reaffirmation of why an understanding of the logic of evolution comes so much more naturally to an average Indian than to an average non-Indian. OK...that was too self-congratulatory :)

P.P.S. The notion of Dharma as an aggregation is just fascinating. It boggles my mind to think of the myriad implications of this simple idea...

Pankaj#42:

Meme was a word coined by Richard Dawkins in his book `The Selfish Gene`.

Meme Link: http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/what.is.html

There is nothing latest about it. The `meme theory` is itself a resurrected meme!

Try the Abidharma-kosa by Vasubandhu (5th century CE) to get an idea on where `memes` come from without acknowledgement of course.

Abhidharma Link: http://www.bartleby.com/65/ab/Abhidhar.html

Harimau#50:

Not to take away from the rest of what you write, but some of the earliest works of the Kuruntokai are dated between 1st century BC and 1st century CE.

From: http://www.geocities.com/athens/5180/kamil.html

re Harimau #50

Is that the poem from which Vikram Chandra got the title of his book ``Red Earth and Pouring Rain``?

By the way, did you read latest Outlook`s cover story? Authors of Indian languages sound very bitter in it.

Ref saminashah #: 48

[Actually, some scientists fear that downloading human consciousness onto computer programs will be mankind`s final grasp at immortality.]

Isn`t it crazy that scientists in each discipline wear blinkers when it comes to their research work? Thus computer scientists want computers to be human clones ignoring the fact that it is easier to clone humans biologically. We have already successfully cloned sheep, cows, mice, pigs, and most recently a housecat. Questions of a political nature are posed in moral or ethical terms (eg., what to do with cloned fetuses with abnormalities... this in a country where naturally conceived fetuses are routinely aborted for birth defects) more to win votes than for any other purpose.

Of course biological cloning wouldn`t suit the computer scientists because they have no background in that field. So they have latched on to the topic of creating consciousness in computers. Probably they feel that a computer with its memory would carry on where they leave off when they die whereas a cloned human starts off with a mostly blank slate for a mind and then has to be trained for several years and still will not have the same consciousness as themselves but its own unique conscious identity. While I like the idea of exploring how humans behave or indeed what constitutes human consciousness, I personally reject the idea that I would want to live on as a computer memory.

[Also, another interesting conversation in a class on present day narratives; sciences are considered the cash cow in terms of lucrative careers, and scientific writing is hailed as the most effective form of writing because it delineates exactly the information needed. More abstract artistic forms of writing such as literary criticism tend to be be less precise and more evocative and discrete-nature of the discipline.]

Just saw ``Dead Poets Society`` again last night. Robin Williams asks in class, ``What is the use of language?`` and a student answers, ``To communicate.`` Williams comes back with, ``No. To woo women.`` Twenty years ago, I would have dismissed it as crap but not anymore.

For all the crap about science writing, here is a short poem from the Tamil anthology Kuruntokai from the 6th century AD:

``My mother and yours - what were they to each other?

My father and yours - how were they related?

You and I - How do we know each other?

Like the gentle rain falling on soft red earth

Loving hearts have become one.``

I would like to see any piece of science writing top that or any one of the other 400 poems in that anthology.

PS. However, I do like Lewis Thomas`s books on biological science.

[Finally, the death of the novel has been predicted, but book sales are at an all time high. Any comments?]

Do we really have novels with powerful ideas coming out anymore? Aren`t books like Jaws, Jurassic Park, Coma, etc., written with future movie options in mind? When I was a callow youth, I remember reading Thomas Hardy, nay, devouring one book after another, each leaving a lasting impression on me. Alexandre Dumas was another favorite. Short stories by O. Henry. Oh, who can forget ``The Gift of the Magii``?Compared to that what we get as fiction today is mind candy.

re: sput

{{raveena #28, ``.umm, kermit dear, everything others write doesn`t become yours...``

and everything that i write does not become yours either.}}

i rest my case.

ps: i`d rather be a fly, than a macchhar like you

Harimau,

Actually, some scientists fear that downloading human consciousness onto computer programs will be mankind`s final grasp at immortality. One of the readings I like to assign is an essay called ``The Age of Simulation`` by Jeremy Rifkin. Rifkin argues that humankind having made the world inhospitable due to environmental pollution, war, deforrestation and industrialization seeks to recreate controllable, simulated environments. Hence the appeal of virtual reality, television, etc. History, information, landscape, reality is manipulated and reassembled and made more amenable; anyway that was a bit of a reduction of Rifkin`s argument. Throws in a bit of Descartes as well.

Also, another interesting conversation in a class on present day narratives; sciences are considered the cash cow in terms of lucrative careers, and scientific writing is hailed as the most effective form of writing because it delineates exactly the information needed. More abstract artistic forms of writing such as literary criticism tend to be be less precise and more evocative and discrete-nature of the discipline.

Finally, the death of the novel has been predicted, but book sales are at an all time high. Any comments?

raveena #28, ``.umm, kermit dear, everything others write doesn`t become yours...``

and everything that i write does not become yours either.

``ask your kindergarten teacher about the lesson on

borrowing by first asking and then returning promptly...if you learn it well, she`ll give you a jolly rancher and send you on your way for extra time at the sandbox...now shoo``

(yawn) oh did you say something? all i heard was a fly buzzing around and hitting a window.

re: the article

Mr Panini,

A thought provoking article.

Your single theme seems to be: those in rich countries have no business to preach others as they too were once poor. I agree with that. In that respect, your following statement is interesting:

``It is well known that the wealth of the world from the beginning of the Christian era till about 1750 belonged to the East, with India and China alone accounting for more than half of it.``

I had read in The Economist (many years ago) how China and India were the 2 countries with highest GDP (for over a millenium all the way to start of Industrial revolution). When British East India Company came to trade, India had a trade surplus of 20 million pounds in its favor. In another article i had posted in Chowk, an American author in The Atlantic had argued how India became poor, mainly due to exploitative policies of the British.

Both China and India are civilisational countries. Many original ideas have come out of this part of the world. Gunpowder, printing press, paper etc were invented in China. These countries will emerge as centers of excellence in near future. India is already becoming a knowledge based country. There is a surfeit of talent and if given the right atmosphere and opportunity, people of this part of the world can do wonders.

People of west are aging fast. By 2020, India will have the largest number of young men (below 25 years). If India can educate these men and make them skillful, they will in turn be in great demand at home and abroad. What goes round comes round. If West needs to sustain its prosperity, it needs to help East become prosperous. The 2 are interlinked.

Sridhar

Thought of the day: ``of the 20,000-odd Gypsy children of secondary-education age in Montenegro, only three (yes, three) go to school. But it is not much better inside the EU. In Greece, 80% of Gypsies are illiterate. ``(from the Economist).

The gypsies are considered to be a tribe from the subcontinent (possibly Sind/Panjab area, as their official name in Germany - Sinti - would indicate as well as their language - many words including numbering being the same as in Panjabi) that went to the middle east as mercenaries and from there moved on to Europe. So maybe the fear of schools is in the blood...