The Covered Trucks

harish,

am finally coming to this. i don`t know that it sounds more journalistic, but the silences are quite telling. . . i don`t know that you need to speak for the characters, or try to explain what they`re not speaking about. but i think i understand why you are doing that.

on a lighter note, i smiled upon reading that rohan mistakenly went to the ladies loo. i remember travelling with my parents and having to pee so badly i rushed into the first loo in sight which was the men`s loo. thankfully there were no men relieving themselves, and no people who yelled at me. :)

a little editing would help. and i look forward to reading more.

--ana

Ref nb #26

[Re: # 21
are you for real?]

Nope. It looks like a troll.

Re: # 24
dost mittar - i didnt know about the chamar minister tag but i did know of his habitual question - did you see the moorthi? - to all visitors. depending upon the dakshina you left, you could then talk to babuji.

Nadeem,

I am really not seeking to either be balanced or unbalanced. I understand your saying this being a ``sellout`` to balance, since the first part was more charged and less politically correct. But, this work has its own form, and there will be the occassional slackness of pace. These are also the areas where the explications, digressions, and the foregrounding takes place.

Besides, I am awful at description of the outer landscape. That said, I have struggled to keep the theme throughout, even while on the road my anxiety was to get away from the theme. But please do stay.

Dost,

The third piece will be out soon. Thanks for sharing these personal nuggets.

Farzana,

This was written at an odd time, a time of spiritual fatigue. I do not want to sound rather insensitive, but I distinctly remember NOT wanting to discuss the riots, relive memories. And yet, they always intruded. I kept off newspapers throughout....or almost throughout.

I am staying off discussions raised by these pieces. That said I thank all who interract here, and I hope eventually at least some of the questions raised will be answered.
I do not want to get into a bulletted form of distillation of views, and their explication. The canvass, and the treatment of real life people and their responses, and in many cases theri bagrounds, will all hopefully coalesce into a vision and worldview that I hold.

HN

Re: # 21
that should be piqued, not peaked.
are you for real?

``I must confess that we are well short of our mission goals in India of 100 K per year saved souls for the Lord. Also I have been using the following books for our good work- ``

What the hell? Dude, save souls here in the States. Please let our country be. And if that be too much for you, at least declare your intent honorably on the visa application so it can be denied. Most missionaries come on tourist visa and do missionary work. That`s illegal. And Pat Robertson makes a stink when a missionary is arrested and given a good thrashing by the police.

`chamar`

It seems that in some ways Indians seem to have become more polite if not more civilised. Back in the 60s, no less a person than Deputy Prime Minister Jagjivan Ram was routinely referred to as `that chamar minister` even in Delhi colleges.

Pentecost...``I am just an ignorant ABCD from south India and this is just for our church missionary activity. We have been targeting the tribals in south India for our church but have lately started doing one-on-one with members of more forward type(is that the right term) castes here in US? I must confess that we are well short of our mission goals in India of 100 K per year saved souls for the Lord. Also I have been using the following books for our good work- ``

Haha...MISSIONARY ALERT !!! So tell me sir , how many times per week do you surrender your holy ar$e to the local pastor ? All in the service of the good lord , of course...

How many people were killed? Mohd. Arif Khan answered this very well in a TV interview. He said that tragedy is complete even when a single life is lost, after that it is mere stats.

Anyway, in Godhara 59 people were charred. In the following riots 763 people lost their lives (200 killed in police firing).

http://mha.nic.in/annual-2002-2003/ch-1.pdf

Hi! I am kind of new here. But has been coming and checking out interactions on this site from time to time because web pages from this site pop up while I am doing my internet research. I don’t know if this is the right way to ask this but I am just curious about the caste of the author Harish Nambiar? Is he a Nair from Kerala? This is just for some research I am doing for my mission. I might be wrong but I think the interactor with the handle – HARIMAU, had some very interesting comments on Nairs which has kind of peaked my interest in the Nair community of Kerala. If someone knowledgeable about castes from south india can give some details about the Nair caste that will be great.

Forgive me for my ignorance, I am just an ignorant ABCD from south India and this is just for our church missionary activity. We have been targeting the tribals in south India for our church but have lately started doing one-on-one with members of more forward type(is that the right term) castes here in US? I must confess that we are well short of our mission goals in India of 100 K per year saved souls for the Lord. Also I have been using the following books for our good work-

Caste and Tribes of Southern India by Edgar Thurston & K. Rangachari
Cochin Tribes and Castes.; An Anthropological and Sociological Analysis by Iyer, L. K. A
A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar by Sastri, K. A. N.

Though the elaborate details about the caste dynamics in the above mentioned books have been really helpful, if anyone can recommend any other books which are better than these, that will be really appreciated. Thanks for all your help

You can send all information to –

the_pentecost2000@yahoo.com

what / who is a ``chamar``??..

I assume it`s a derogatory term used to refer to ``dalits``.. growing up in cities, i never heard these insults..

---

I`d be interested to know how many people died in the riots and the number of Hindus / policemen.. too..

Re: # 18
its nice to read you and rahul - i didnt go to the camp at kanya kumari, rahul but i did attend a first cousin and i agree - but as for the chamar hai saala remark: no, its not the rural crowd alone. one my classmates in college was a public school kid, obscenely rich and definitely urban and once he and his friend (also a fellow classmate and public school kid, obscenely rich and definitely urban) were dropping me somewhere and said almost the same thing. but they had the grace to look embarassed and the two of them gave me uneasy glances - but i have to wonder if they were embarrassed because of what they said or that i heard them. as it happened i didnt know back then what a `chamar` was (public school princess moi) so i asked them what it meant. it was a treat to see them fumble. :))

I went to Nagpur last year to visit my brother who`s doing his MD. the last time I went there was 14 years ago, when I did an exam there from neighbouring MP. Yes, the memories come back fast and furious.
Nagpur is/was Congress territory, but it is very Maharashtrian. In the area, you may be able to get away not speaking Marathi, but people do not open up to you as much if you don`t speak their language, as you discovered.
I am still surprised that people would actually say, chamar hain saala, but then, I believe the people most likely to talk like that are the completely rural and the OBCs, who had no seats reserved for them when I got into college(I think it was the last batch that happened).

Ref satyamvada #16

[Harish and Dost-Mitter,

Can you please inform us as to how many Hindus and policement died in the
Gujarat riots ?]

None. Only Muslims die in Hindu-Muslim riots. I wouldn`t be surprised if in another 2 years, there is a finding by an inquiry commission that all the people who died in the Godhra train fire were Muslims.

[Thank you]

You are welcome.

PS. Shortly after the Gujarat riots, I had posted numbers that indicated that Hindus suffered more in proportion to their population compared to Muslims. However, don`t expect any Indian journalist to write anything except to tarnish the reputation of the country or to blame the Hindus.

Yo, Tahmed32, members of which religion died in the train fire at Godhra? Can you answer that question?

Harish and Dost-Mitter,

Can you please inform us as to how many Hindus and policement died in the
Gujarat riots ?

Thank you,

Harish:

One more thing. I feel the time-gap has given it a different resonance. I cannot be certain, but had you written this soon after the incidents the angle might have been different, perhaps the voice a bit more assertive...

---

And do excuse me, but I need to handle this bloke!

[``But then this is an opinion of someone who does not believe in objectivity!``

At last !! Some honest introspection from FV-ji....]

Cut out the ``at last``. I have always maintained that even reportage, as opposed to opinions, invariably have a slant and it is not really possible to be objective. To my mind, it is not even desirable. So there is no new introspection here. You get what you get and some more...