A Palakkad Iyer’s lament

April 20, 2012 No comments

This comes with a disclaimer: I love my heritage, and don’t mean to run down or offend any community.

Wondering why I’m saying that?

Well simply because I’m looking for an answer to the question: Am I a Tamilian or a Malayali?

History tells me we (Palaghat Iyers/TamBrams)  are just migrants from Tanjore who crossed the border for survival. If that’s the case, we are Tamilians, right? Then why is it that the Tamilians don’t consider us entirely Tamil?

Born and brought up in Chennai, I know how people always liked hearing me talk, not because am funny, but simply because they liked my sing-song accent. And whenever I went to Kerala to meet my relatives — and I tell  you we Palakkad Iyers have a lot of relatives in the God’s own country — people always referred to me as a ‘pattar’.

What’s that? In Sanskrit it just means ‘Brahmin.’ So do we go around giving all the communities generic names just because they don’t really know where they belong?

For movie buffs like me, it’s quite easy to get disgusted with society’s blinkered view of us. If you have watched Nala Damayanthi, Michel Madana Kama Rajan or Malayalam movies like Iyer the Great, Sethuraman Iyer,  you would know we are always stereotyped as cooks and crooks.

I know we are smart and great in the kitchen, but to always display the men in our community without shirts and women in madisaru (the 9-yard saree married women wear) is preposterous!

The best part about us TamBrams is the fact that we respect and follow both cultures equally. Our office managers might raise their eyebrows, given the number of ‘offs’ we take to mark our festivals, but from welcoming King Mahabali to celebrating the festival of lights, we do both cultures justice.

I remember how I once asked a Malayali friend of mine for “Vishu Kaineetam” (an important ritual associated with the Vishu celebrations) and he told me to decide if I was a Mal or a Tam for the day.

Didn’t he know that it obviously it depended on the amount I get?

Take our food for example, a fine blend of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

We are vegetarians, and quite obsessed about the idea too. Rice might be our staple diet but it’s the coconut we use in our cooking which fills our  stomachs.

Speaking of food, ask any outsider what he/she knows about us, and all they can say is ‘thair saadam’ (Curd Rice). In this case, they are right.

We might have a lavish meal set for 100 people,  but the one thing which you can be sure will be wiped clean is curd rice.

A TamBram (as they fondly call us) can survive on just curd rice for years. Even if they go all the way to the US, you can be sure they would make their own curd at home.

That reminds me of our obsession with the idea of the US.

For some, its pure heaven. For others it’s just a TamBram adda (hang out).

We graduate from IIT, usually top the class, and take the first  flight out. What with our nicely-combed, oily hair, tucked-in formal shirt and holy ash-filled forehead, any desi  there can identify us. I’m sure that’s the Tamil blood in us.

The Malayali side of us takes us to Ayyappan temples every evening. It’s not that Tamilians are not pious, but the obsession for neatness and serenity, comes from the Keralites’ field. We stand in queue for prasadam, and arrive late to office simply because we want to listen to one more MS Subalakshmi’s song.

I can go on and on. But I still don’t know which side of the blanket I’m from. I do know that I love my early morning filter coffee, Carnatic music and my diversified heritage.

Despite Chetan Bhagat thinking we are self-obsessed and the movies making fun of us, I can, and will, proudly say am a Iyer Aathu Ponnu.

Waste Bengal Blues

April 16, 2012 No comments

‘Kya aap communist hain?’

‘Nahin main cartoonist hoon’-

Famous lines from the Guru Dutt movie, Mr & Mrs 55

click here for videoLike almost everyone else who could, I fled Calcutta almost two decades ago, never to return.

Then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and his band of merry men had ensured that growth of any kind was strongly and sternly discouraged. The Comrades wanted five day’s wages for two days of work.

Strikes, (better known as hartals or bandhs) ensured that nobody worked on those two working days either.

That old joke comparing Bengalis with sperm, because only one in a million work, should perhaps be seen through that prism.

My father died because doctors in the city were on strike the day he had a heart attack.

The exodus of educated youngsters and almost all major business houses from the state did not faze the Marxists at all, because the numbers were quickly refilled many times over with immigrants from Bangladesh.

Political or public dissent of any kind was quickly tackled with overwhelming force.

The Reds ruled Bengal for 34 long years, making it the world’s longest running democratically elected communist government, according to Wikipedia. During this period, all those who could, left Bengal. Those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, were desperately hungry for change.

Paribartan, or change, was precisely what Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress promised.

Other pledges included making Urdu the state’s official second language,  introducing cruises on the Ganges River “in line with River Thames of London” and converting Darjeeling district into the “Switzerland of the East.”

Her frugal lifestyle, her white cotton saris, her rubber sandals and her loud, earthy manner were perhaps seen as a refreshing change from the sophisticated, cultured, bhadralok image projected by the senior Communist leaders.

The Left, or as the Bengalis aptly call it, the ‘Bum Front,’ was decimated in the 2011 state elections, with the Trinamool Congress and its allies winning some 225 of the 295 seats up for grabs.

Less than a year later, most Bengalis are complaining that they didn’t realize that the change would be for the worse.

Far, far worse.

The first ominous signs came when the new Chief Minister decided that Calcutta (I still have a ‘Cal’ hangover. Try saying ‘just returned from Kol’ and you’ll see what I mean ) needed to be painted blue. All government buildings, flyovers, roadside railings and even the city’s iconic yellow taxis are being painted light blue, the Trinamool party colour.

Add to this the decision to play Rabindra Sangeet at traffic signals.

This at a time when the state – in Mamata’s own words, had lots of  ‘potentiality’, but no cash. The Left, of course, had looted the coffers during their long tenure.

But that was just the beginning.

When a spate of crib deaths in a government hospital in Malda hit the headlines in January, Didi, as she is fondly known, first dismissed them as ‘rumours,’  and then blamed the media for highlighting what was plainly a leftist ploy to discredit her government.

She had also hinted that an earlier fire at the EMRI hospital, in which 70 people died, was a leftist conspiracy against her.

In early January, her speech at a business summit, wistfully called “Bengal Leads 2012”,  went viral on social networks and YouTube.

And this was not just because of gems like: ‘….Bengal is the border of Bangladesh. Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh are the border of Pakistan…”,  but also because of the way Corporate India and diplomats from various nations kept a straight face as Didi slaughtered the English language and diplomatic courtesy in her inimitable style.

Watch the entire speech here.

In February, her government declared that Urdu would be the official second language in 18 districts where the Urdu speaking population exceeds 10 percent. This included areas like Asansol, where Hindi is spoken by more than 30 per cent of the population.

Days later, she dismissed the gang rape of a woman in Calcutta’s tony Park Street area as another Leftist and media fabrication. When it was found that the woman had indeed been raped and beaten at gunpoint inside a moving car, transport minister Madan Mitra publicly wondered what  “a married woman was doing so late at night” in that area.

March saw her sack her own party man and Union Railway Minister for daring to hike train ticket prices in the Railway Budget. Needless to say, the prices were “rolled back.”

Fed up with the bad press which all these events generated,  Mamata finally hit back.

First, she barred state-sponsored and aided libraries in the state from buying any English or large-circulation Bengali dailies, allowing only five small Bengali dailies, one Hindi newspaper and two Urdu papers.

Then, she shot herself in the foot again with the arrest of  Ambikesh Mohapatra, a Jadavpur University professor who had dared circulate a fairly innocuous cartoon on Mamata on the internet.

The arrest sparked off a tidal wave of protests, with thousands of people circulating far more offensive cartoons and epithets about Didi, and daring her to arrest them.

In fact, #arrestmenow  was trending on top of Twitter in India on Saturday, and is still good for a chuckle or three.

But I digress.

The reason I won’t return to Calcutta is not because I fear arrest.

It is because it is now the capital of Waste Bengal. Or is it Jest Bengal?

Why Count Dracula hates Twilight

April 6, 2012 3 comments

It is Bram Stoker’s 100th death anniversary in a week, but his timeless classic Dracula continues to scare the living hell out of many of us even now.

The legend of a mythical vampire that lurks in dark corners to suck blood out of virgin girls, preserving the beast’s youth for eternity gave me sleepless nights when I first read it in high school.

It is surprising how even a 100 years ago, with no access to any special effects or visual aids, Bram Stoker managed to paint a graphic picture of a blood-thirsty vampire ready to mercilessly kill you.

The imagery of Prince Vlad’s crumbling castle with bats flying around in grim circles, the protagonist Jonathan Harker’s eerie journey through the Carpathian Mountains, his despair at finding himself trapped helplessly inside the castle, the bloody scenes of driving a stake through Dracula’s heart will certainly haunt you for countless nights even if you read it today.

The first standoff between Harker and the Count was so intense and dark that it made me want to stop reading the book altogether — ‘When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonaic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix…‘  The scenes were so perfectly laid out that it was hard to beleive that it was indeed fiction.

The effect that a worn-out collection of ship logs and diary entries on a vampire had on me was so deep-rooted that it took several days for me to not shudder at every mention of Transylvania.

I remember never being able to open my windows at night, even during the sweltering Chennai summer, simply immobilized with fear.

Of course, this is also the reason why I hate Twilight. This disgraceful book converted the intimidating mythical vampire into a sugar-coated, sparkly teddy bear that you could instantly fall in love with.

Vampires were meant to induce fear, make you shudder on a moonless night, and petrify you at the sight of blood. A quintessential vampire would have ‘women acting differently’ around the beast and yet falling in love instantly.

A vampire could be unnervingly deathlike yet irresistibly charming. A vampire’s job was to give you bloodcurdling nightmares and make you instinctively reach out to a clove of garlic, the most-popular and the only known form of a vampire-repellent.

Inducing this kind of paranoia about things unknown was exactly what Dracula managed and still manages to do. This piece of Gothic fiction was not just an eternal classic but also a book that shaped up an iconic fictional character that you would end up hating yet revering in fear.

The ingenuity of this magical vampire and his crafty seduction tactics still continue to mesmerize but also spook the living daylights out of anybody who can stomach the horror.

Confessions of a Twitter fanatic

February 19, 2012 2 comments

‘Just another social networking site. Big deal!’

That was my first reaction to Twitter and the frenzy that surrounded it.

Why would anyone want to restrain themselves to 140 characters when they had unlimited space on other sites to post profound observations about the world in general?

Digvijay tweets on Anna's RSS links again

Also, I was extremely skeptical about the Twitter community mouthing off on civic and political issues – half of them were just passive aggressive tweets that did nothing to improve the situation.

I mean, how hard is it to whine about the state of roads in the country, minimize your window, and continue watching videos on the internet?

However, the Bombay floods last year was one of the first things that made me look at Twitter from a different perspective.

The floods were an utter disaster. Several were stranded with no transport, no electricity, non-functional phone lines; in short, absolute pandemonium ensued.

But amidst all this chaos, there were a bunch of clear-thinkers on Twitter, quietly networking with others who were stranded, offering to pick them up and giving them a place to crash for the night.

Though this number was small in comparison to the thousands stuck in the rains, it is still possible that there were at least a hundred fewer lost people on the roads.

Another incident that radically changed my opinion about Twitter was the amount of support an abused wife got from the Twitter community one night.

This lady, who had an alcoholic husband, posted a series of tweets that went like this – ‘‘scared’ , ‘husband in temper’, ‘he is not physically violent, just furious, but you never know’.

For the rest of the night, an entire bunch of people stayed up (people from different time zones as well), and supported this lady through her trauma. Many promised to call the police if they did not hear from her at least once every hour.

The night passed, she packed her bags, reached her parents’ place and then wrote a blog about the incident.

It still chokes me up when I read about the comfort and confidence that she got from people she hardly even knew.

Twitter’s success (like any online medium) lies in the fact that it can disseminate information instantaneously.

‘Please keep the people of Homs#Syria in your thoughts. The city is under siege from Assad’s army–a bloody massacre is occurring right now.’  Till that tweet, I had no clue there were protests happening in Syria.

Who can forget the gut-wrenching tweets during the Egyptian revolution last year? When the government shut down internet access in the country to impede protestors, I have never seen more outrage.

Twitter becomes the most active when a loved celebrity dies.

People trying to grapple with their emotions send out tweets that move you to tears. Several odes to Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse were posted almost minutes after the news came out. This radical distribution of instant information is what makes Twitter what it is: it lets you not just inform, but reach out to people.

For instance, you are bound to take notice of a particular piece of news if your friend talks about it.

Twitter has replaced my daily newspaper these days. From a ball by ball account of the latest cricket match, outrage at a political issue, to gossip about celebrities, there is still more to read on Twitter.

Gate (sic) me out of here!

February 13, 2012 One comment

The once taboo word, spoken only in hushed voices, has made it in to our living rooms now. And we have Sunny Leone’s participation in an Indian reality show and the recent shenanigans of three Karnataka ministers in the Legislative Assembly  to thank for it.

When the latest scandal broke out, news channel tickers displayed headlines like, ‘Porngate hits BJP‘, ‘Porngate ministers resign‘, ‘Porngate Mins under pressure‘ and the like. I am not here with a moral rant against the unabashed usage of the word porn, though. (However, I must confess I was stumped when some news anchors began calling them Porn Ministers!)

Now where was I? Ah, yes…it is the usage of ‘-gate’, as a suffix to denote scandal, that has caused me much vexation of late.

And it isn’t just a one-time usage that has riled me enough to smash the next television set I see. Other than the ‘Porngate’, there was ‘Memogate’, ‘Examgate’, ‘Cablegate’, and ‘Monkeygate’ to name just a few. Wikipedia even has a page for an exhaustive list of all ‘–gate’ scandals.

Now, you probably know the origin of the “suffix”, but if you don’t, you can read about it here. It is predominantly used in the Western media but is fast catching up in India too.

Riddle me this: If the ‘gate’ in ‘Watergate’ was not a suffix, then why did it become one?

Is it simply  our journalists’ peculiar penchant for portmanteaus, or inadequate knowledge of English grammar,  that compels us to use such unoriginal bastardized clichés? What is the harm in using the good old ‘scandal’ or a synonym thereof, if we must?

But if you want to read something more than an idle rant, then let me point you to what James Stanyer says in his book ‘Modern political communication: Mediated politics in uncertain time’.

Speaking about the rise of what he calls the  ’scandal syndrome’, he says: “Whereas once a major scandal was a newsworthy event, now every indiscretion by politicians, every breach of a code, however small, is reported as a scandal. Many of these revelations are given the ‘gate’ suffix to add a thin veil of credibility, following ‘Watergate’, but most bear no resemblance to the painstaking investigation of that particular piece of presidential corruption.”

It is not just me who is all worked up over this. A Google search throws up several posts (here, here, here, here and here) by bloggers across the world, including an article in The New York Times, calling on the media to stop using the suffix.

What do we make of all this?

Does this point merely to failing standards in reportage, or failure of journalists who are losing the inclination to push for that deep, hard-hitting story?

Or does this strike at the very core of a society that gets off on sensationalism, and is content with stories of low news value?

 

An ode to Vidya Balan

February 12, 2012 12 comments

It is the attitude more than the aptitude which decides one’s altitude,  and she is definitely on Cloud 9 now.

She might not be the traditional beauty that Bollywood usually prefers. But she is what the people are looking for now.

Who said only stars and their children make it big in the industry? The right talent, a lil push and some luck can definitely do the trick too.

From a nobody, she’s  made a striking mark in the industry with just her talent and her special style of choosing scripts.

When Vidya Balan, who created a buzz a couple of months back by describing herself the female version of Aamir Khan, she was not too far away from the truth.

Both of them have reached a stage in their careers where people associate them with good scripts and brilliant acting. To leave behind oneself and let the cameras capture only the character the script demands is next to impossible for 90 per cent of the stars in Bollywood.

How many of us really remember Priyanka’s or Kareena’s first movies? However, Vidya left the ‘Lolitha’ mark on us with Parineeta itself. We knew she would make it big with the conviction with which she played the girl-next-door role.

Like the Khan, she too floundered in a couple of commercial films that did her talent no merit.

But quickly, she found her ground and stood it. She has put the Bollywood beauties  who sneered at her looks and clothes  to shame with her acting skills. Her sheer versatility, the way she morphs herself into the character, removing her real life persona completely out, brings out the similarity between her and Aamir.

That is possibly the difference between a fine actor and a movie star. A star can never let go of his/her own persona, even momentarily on screen. But these two stars make you feel as though the character they are playing is just an alter ego.

What awes me most is the way she gains all the weight to get into the character for the Dirty Picture and then sheds everything to look sexy for her first Bollywood item number.

I don’t know if she can look sexy,  but am sure she will leave people wanting for more.

The Tired Trinity of Indian cricket

February 8, 2012 10 comments

That wristy flick.  That impregnable defence. That scorching straight drive.

Have we seen the last of this in Test cricket as far as Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman are concerned? These veterans have carried the burden of Indian cricket, especially Test matches, for the last decade or so.

They were responsible for India becoming the No.1 Test side in world cricket. These three, and of course Saurav Ganguly, brought us some spectacular Test victories at Eden Gardens, at Rawalpindi, at Perth, at Cape Town, at Headingley, at Lords.

But the last Adelaide test, and the 4-0 drubbing in England earlier, are clear signs that the ‘Holy Trinity’ of Indian cricket is on shaky ground.

It’s the end of an era.

While cricket fans might hope and wish that these stars will continue to shine forever, the reality is that they are over the hill. Recently, India lost 8 consecutive tests abroad, some of them by huge margins, facing the ignominy of innings defeats.

What does this point at? Fading powers!

Instead of Laxman fashioning  an Indian win with a Very, Very, Special knock, Dravid holding fort to eke out an honorable draw, and Tendulkar enthralling spectators with his stroke play, what we will see – in fact can already see – is an increasingly painful struggle to stay at the crease. To hang in there.

For fans, it is an agonizing wait for the baton to be handed over.

This must be done soon. The likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Manoj Tiwary and Cheteshwar Pujara are all waiting in the wings, already biding their time, to show us what the new generation can do.

That doesn’t mean that we do not give the greats of the game their due.

Sachin, Dravid and VVS are not scraps of paper, they gave you moments of incredible joy, and made our hearts swell with pride. The least that they deserve is an honourable send off.

The ‘five wise men’, aka the Indian cricket team selectors, must have the foresight to ensure a smooth and perfect succession.

It is time that another boy becomes a man!

The spectrum spectacle

February 3, 2012 2 comments

Subramanian Swamy can’t stop smiling – and the powers-that-be in the UPA can’t stop squirming.

We are talking about the Supreme Court verdict of February 2, 2012, in the 2G scam case, championed by the irrepressible Swamy. The apex court has cancelled all the 122 2G licences issued by former telecom minister A Raja in 2008, even as it has granted Home Minister P Chidambaram a breather of sorts.

UPA head honchos are putting on a face (one can’t bring oneself to call it a “brave face”, so, let’s just say, it’s a face), but that face can’t fully wipe the egg off  itself. Sample what law minister Salman Khurshid had to say on the verdict: “The then telecom minister took it upon himself to issue these licences and the SC verdict does clarify that he was the only one responsible.”

And telecom minister Kapil Sibal: “There is no indictment of the Prime Minister or the then finance minister (P Chidambaram) in the Supreme Court’s judgement. If there is any indictment, it is the 2003 policy (first-come, first-served) of the NDA government and we only followed it.”

Yeah, right. Put all the blame on the Raja of Chors. PC didn’t do anything, did he? And the PM’s half-hearted attempts to stop Raja is all that can be expected of him. Right, right.

Okay, let us step back a little and examine the 2G scam, albeit briefly.

The scandal came to light when the Income Tax Department was investigating political lobbyist Nira Radia. What was gleaned in the process was that Raja had arranged for the sale of the 2G spectrum licences far below their market value. Nine companies purchased the licenses and collectively paid the Ministry of Communications a sum of Rs 10,772 crore (US$2.37bn). Later, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India estimated that the sum expected from the licensing was actually a stratospheric Rs 176,000 crore (US$38.72bn).

Do the math and calculate the loss suffered by the exchequer.

While there might be some merit in the polemic that  no tax rupees were actually lost as the loss is only a presumptive one, the fact remains that a coterie of wrong-doers ganged up indulge in the worst kind of crony capitalism – and almost got away with it.

There is yet another spin sought to be put on the affair by some apologists. It goes something like this: underselling of the licences has done a world of good to the mobile telephony sector. If the telecom companies had been asked to cough up substantially more than they did, they would have passed on the higher costs to the citizenry. Which would have translated into you and I having to foot higher mobile bills.

True, so true.

But did Raja and company have your and my welfare at heart when they took bribes from telecom companies to award them licences?

Yes, some companies have been caught in a web for no fault of theirs – ways and means can be found to compensate them.

But, in a country where it takes fasts unto death by civil society to bring corruption to the fore, the judiciary has come to the rescue at a time when even Anna seems to have stepped off the pedal.

And while most of us find Subramanian Swamy’s stand that 15% of the country’s population should be disenfranchised abhorrent (yes, he did say Muslims should not have the right to vote!), in this particular instance, we say: Thank You.

The Hindu strikes back

February 1, 2012 4 comments

If you have lived in Chennai as long as I have, then the morning cuppa would be synonymous with The Hindu.

Most often, it would be the older folk in the house, devotedly reading the paper from top to bottom with a dictionary in hand. The younger ones of course would find nothing of interest in the paper, except for an occasional Guardian crossword, a spiteful Sudhish Kamath movie review, or an extremely rare picture of a Bollywood starlet.


The paper was no doubt as dry as the Chennai weather and it made no attempts to change, until variety came in the form of the Times of India. TOI was a whiff of fresh air with its irreverent page layouts, full first page advertisements, celebrity gossip, and splashy pictures. In short, anything that could make oldliners and rednecked Hindu loyalists shudder in fear, would easily find its way here.

Of course, as any conservative paper would react, The Hindu too went into denial. Some half-hearted attempts at improving design, jazzing up supplements, and trying to change the pro-Congress stance went unnoticed. The whole ‘TOIlet’ paper humor was encouraged too.

The bitter truth however was that TOI was eating up The Hindu’s base, one lakh at a time. The last readership survey in South India showed TOI at 10.07 lakhs, while Hindu was only a few lakhs ahead at 18.30.


Maybe it was the declining readership, or the editorial change in the form of Siddarth Varadarajan, the paper has finally woken up with an aggressive ad campaign that has not only stirred a lazy Chennai awake, but also managed to create a loud buzz online, with the YouTube video crossing 1 lakh hits.

But the reactions are contradictory.

Several condemn this blatant attack on TOI, and call it unoriginal. They even claim that by bringing out such an ad, The Hindu now recognizes TOI as an equal competitor in the industry, and hence increases the latter’s credibility.

However, some of the more hopeful  see this as a welcome change. The paper finally shows signs of shedding its conservative image and it is only fair that it should be welcomed, they opine.

Some of the ad slogans, like ‘also has pages 1, 2, 4,5,6,7’, ‘Sense not sensational’, and ‘because government malfunctions matter more than wardrobe malfunctions’ have become a huge hit. The video links are being retweeted every few minutes, and some of the tweeple have even archly commented that ‘for maximum reach, The Hindu should put its ad on page 3 of TOI’.

Only time can tell whether the paper would actually bring about a change or simply disappoint. Either way, I can’t wait to see how TOI reacts to The Hindu comeback.

Be it a war of words or war of ads – The Hindu has finally learnt a fundamental lesson -anything that entertains sells!

Fear and loathing in Jarawa-land

January 31, 2012 2 comments

The shocking incident of an  isolated tribe being forced to dance nude for tourists, that too in a territory technically off bounds for civilians, has left me ashamed to be an Indian.

Once upon a time, the world revered India and scores of foreigners came to our mystic land to understand themselves and the world around them, to understand what it means to be human.

The Jarawas of the Andamans have been there before recorded history. That means they were here even before the Dravidians set up shop on the subcontinent. In fact, they trace their origins to the great migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa, aeons ago.

Now there are just about 300 of them, living on some islands in the same way their ancestors did centuries ago.

But instead of cherishing, celebrating and trying to protect their culture and way of life, we bring in boorish tourists to watch them dance naked— for scraps of food!

This despite the tribe being protected under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956, and being notified as national treasure.

Are we so deprived and depraved that we exploit a community on the verge of extinction?

Officially, we pride ourselves on our rich and diverse land and people. Yet this is how we treat diversity.

Such events only prove that we have misplaced our basic instincts somewhere along the way. We pollute, loot and exploit our Earth, and then blame it on progress.

We are all products of social conditioning, which in many ways has alienated us from the natural scheme of things. In fact, there are some children today who believe milk comes out of a carton.

But the more we have advanced as a species, the more adversely it has affected us. For instance, can you imagine a world sans money? Well, the Jarawas are a perfect example. They do not give a damn about an economic depression. Why do we want to pollute their world?

Sadly, these ‘tribal safaris’ are just the tip of the iceberg. Similar incidents of exploitation of other tribals are now being reported.

If the video shot by one of the tourists watching the Jarawas being forced to dance had not surfaced, we would not even have known –or even cared– about this abominable crime.

The trouble is, not many seem to care even now..

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