Lead Kindly Knife

Newman College Thodupuzha, named after the famed Anglican cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), has been witness to a string of weird incidents for the last four months. In March, a teacher framed a question which obviously hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims. The ensuing rage and waves of protests made the management repeal the question, tender an apology and keep the teacher under suspension. The man absconded and resurfaced recently directly into the hands of the local police.
Now the events have taken an ugly turn. Some yet-to-be-identified hooligans have swooped on him and chopped his right hand off, just like that!! To go by all the indications, the mischief is the handiwork of a gang of extremist Muslims youths who found it impossible to brook insult of their god and prophet. Perhaps they fancied themselves as the warriors of god, entrusted with the mighty task of keeping his name free from profane discourses!!
What does the event portend?

Remember the Titans

If you have disposable time and flare for regional linguistic variations, take a ride through the roads, streets and lanes of this part of the globe. The glistening flex boards and rustling festoons transport you to another world where every other identity—otherwise rearing its ugly head every now and then—has erased itself. Football has percolated to the nook and cranny of Areekode and Kondotti and Manjeri. Behind the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze, portraits of Pele, Maradona, Roony and Kaka smile at the passer by—stop here or gently pass, if you can.

Mirth and frenzy apart, the visual extravaganza speaks volumes of the zeitgeist and weltanschauung of a cultural terrain that has carved a unique niche in the history of Kerala. Known as the Mecca of Kerala football, Areekode houses a string of education institutes that have been pivotal in the overall social harmony the place enjoys. Look around and you can’t help suspecting whether you have landed in Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo. That can well be an exaggeration. The Latin American cities are not perhaps as abuzz as the football crazy local towns, to go by the media reports trickling in.

Though hilarious and apparently innocuous, the hues and words strewn everywhere betray a silent dimension. An uncanny concoction of popular culture, adages, religion and identity, it can be poured into any number of carafes and written about reams on end.

The most pungent of the recipe is the heap of dialogues lifted out of blockbuster movies, especially mouthed by the senile superstars. They are not plagiarisms like the doctoral dissertations produced in Kerala but deftly customized with added nuances. Only those winding cinematic speeches which thrilled the audience by means of veiled references to warfare and religiosity have found a place in the hoardings. No wonder, some others have picked up religious rhetoric to lend credence to their claims. Argentinean fans are miles ahead in this regard. The fact that the disciples of Maradona sweated to the final round is treated not as a stroke of luck but interpreted as an inevitability, something divinely determined and executed. To remind and reinforce the reality (that is for the supporters of Brazil), they freely use the term “unbeliever”, a term that the Koran uses to address those who prefer to tread a path different from that blazed by the Prophet.

In Malayalam there is a proverb to the effect that half a quail is good enough for a thousand chickens: aayirum kozhikku ara kaakka. The Brazilians fanfares use it with a slight deviation: aarirum Messikku ara kakka, half a Kakka, the Brazilian defender is enough to tackle a thousand Lionel Messies! Not to be outdone, the other section has come up with a hoarding that features a beleaguered Kakka unsuccessfully trying to rein in a charging Messy. At the bottom we read kuthiraye thalakkan kakkayo (Can a crow control a horse?). Kakka, in Malayalam, means crow. As a rule, the Argentinean fans find their existence in relation to the five time champions Brazil. Virtually every single slogan seeks to downplay the Brazilian squad.
How do others fare? Of course there are hardcore fans of France, England, Germany, Italy and Mexico. Though the teams are strong enough to lift the title, the fans are sober and mature in their expressions. Instead of targeting other teams and staking whopping claims, they highlight the relative merit of each team and remain hopeful. The wait is almost over.

THE GOD WHO WAS THERE

The refrain echoed by the media that Rajmohan Unnithan was arrested along with a woman under dubious circumstances has proved myopic and grossly erroneous. Had the frenzied self-styled moral policemen and the pack of drooling media wolves considered the possibilities of a divine intervention for a moment, they would have kept off from heaping calumnies on the venerable congress leader. He might have been found with a woman at an ungodly hour. But do you think god was reclining in his heavenly chair, sipping champagne with one hand and fondling breasts with the other? Woe betides those who thought and think so. He was wracking brains figuring out the best way punish the arrogant Unnithan who had lately been busy with accusing Abdul Nazar Madani of collusion with terrorists. They had forgotten that M was living only for us and any move against him would incur the wrath of god.
Look back and see for yourself. The man, who sat panic-struck chewing fingernails and trying to mask his face, had made incriminating remarks against Madani: rubbish like he was communal and dabbling in simple terrorist activities like blazing buses, you know. God grew agitated and devised a plan. He made Unnithan and that woman come together and diligently intimated the swelling moral policemen and saw how the mighty fall!! And how about the moral zealots? They were mere pawns in the hangs of the almighty in punishing a nasty snake!!
Let this be a warning to anyone against hurling wild accusations at others, especially the PDP stalwarts.

WINDMILLS OF GODS

Perhaps the forty windmills, technically supported by the multinational power major Suzlon, have helped mitigate the acute electricity shortages that have pestered the verdant hills of Attappati for long. The gigantic blades, visible from many points of the tribal region, have redefined its pristine skyscape. The transmission towers of six mobile phone operators spot the sky too, giving finishing touches to the new vista.
The new source of energy has unintentionally breathed a fresh lease of life to moribund gods. Something like a theological lifeline!! The new meandering roads to the hilltops where these machines are located have driven many tribal groups into panic. They have seen it before. Masters clad in impeccable clothes landing en masse, throwing promises around, and poaching whatever possible. New roads mean the loss of more land, something the lot clings on to these days. Realty is flourishing and to own land simply means one can marry daughters off better, and conversely bargain for more dowries when it is the turn of sons.
There is no official platform to resist. The company sells the locally generated power to the state owned electricity board which redistributes it at subsidized rates and free in the case of agriculture, not to say anything about the rampant power theft and fraudulent meters. The woes thus have manifested in a different form. Many a god has been resurrected from the valley of oblivion. They were condemned to the Netherlands of belief by two principal agencies. One was those people who believe adivaasis are Hindus and their gods were nothing but the corrupted or deteriorated forms of real gods like Vishnu, Siva and Parvathy. Non-vegetarianism, penchant for alcohol and gory looks were the result of alienation from the epicenter of Hindiuism which they identified with the brahminical gods and goddesses. The other group was missionaries who saw the pantheon of gods as devils themselves and to be demolished to establish any chance of attained heaven.
As if to compete with the new machines, the old gods have been installed atop hills. They are simple, rude and quite undemanding as their followers. Perhaps these gods are afraid of changes and will resist them to the hilt. They are not overtly hungry, never obstinate, unassuming and do not need a cozy sanctum sanctorum to sleep in, unlike sought-after gods at Guruvayoor and many churches. Poor people, poor gods. Anthropomorphism at its best, one may say. They body forth the fear of a people branded as backward and exploited like anything. From this hilltop you can see a double storied building painted read and just empty. It is an old age home built by the government for the aging tribal population. Somehow the brains behind the plan forgot for a senile adivaasi nothing was dearer and more important that remain in the village he was born into and brought up. Life is more collective and to look after an old man is not a big deal for them unlike their educated and enlightened city counterparts.

TALE TOLD BY VINOD RAPHAEL

Thus spake Vinod in a tiny room stifled with pungent odors:

“This event took place in a nearby college of fame and repute. Postgraduate students of chemistry, with the active assistance of a teacher, manufactured the lethal poison potassium cyanide. Since guinea pigs were not available, they settled for a guinea dog. A wandering mongrel was baited and kept ready. They kneaded the poison with rice and fed the dog. Last Lunch, a student said. Cocksure of the instant death, they counted seconds. To everyone’s surprise, the dog only squirmed a bit and bolted. That is possible, you know. Chemicals react differently in animals and humans. Still there is no doubt of death as the poison is too powerful, assured the teacher stroking his aspiring goatee. The dog must have retreated to the nearby woods to breath its last in peace. Such things have occurred before, you know. Perhaps we will have to confirm its death by the stench in a few days. Well, to cut a long story short, a strange sight greeted their sulfuric eyes next noon. The dog was back, grinning from ear to ear, in the pink of health. It was furiously waging its tail to thank yesterday’s food and asked with the impeccable manners of a college lecturer: “Would you mind you give me one more meal?”

(The photo of the dog is given above)

ANTICHRIST

The greatest trouble with Antichrist, as a widely popular and often accepted theological construct, is that it presupposes a benevolent Christ, the Anointed. Though most current narratives put down the title exclusively to Jesus, a man believed to have lived and preached two millennia ago, the concept is much more universal and problematic. Saviors pop up here and there with promises of emancipation are a normal part and process of social ventilation. The claims staked by, attributed to or imposed upon the putative figure of Jesus are amazing and intriguing because the age had produced many an aspiring messiah—from the largely forgotten Appolonius to Simon Magus, who was worthy of a reference in the Bible. Unlike his predecessors, successors and rivals, Jesus seems sort of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. This has translated into controversies and endless deliberations over his ‘true’ nature among clergy: is he human, divine or a blend? Is it proper to call Mary the mother of god? The argument continues. His feelings, gestures, actions and cryptic words have consumed reams, and these days bytes.

He was a pioneering economist who stressed poverty eradication (feeding five thousand with a few loaves of bread), a dedicated doctor who specialized in the most dreaded disease of the day (successfully curing leprosy), an effective psychoanalyst (driving out spirits from the possessed)l, a maverick bold enough to question institution (storming the temple and driving off the traders), a researcher capable of bring the dead back (Lazarus in back) and above all an exemplary martyr we are on constant lookout for. A versatile genius, all rolled into one. Couched in ambiguous words and deeds, he seems to be a character like Hamlet or Macbeth. Perhaps that accounts for his enduring charm. Perhaps that is why Richard Hollowoway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, goes to the extent of playing down his historical existence while highlighting the tremendous influence he has exerted on the course of history since his times. (http://www.thehindu.com/2006/12/25/stories/2006122502400900.htm006/12/25/stories/2006122502400900.htm).
The perfection of Christ is present in the Antichrist in plunging humanity into destruction and death. Prophet Mohammed, Martin Luther, Napolean and Hitler have been named as the antichrist from time to time. Is the Lars von Trier movie Antichrist to be read as a foil to the Jesus discourse? Does it require a Christian background at all? I don’t know. But who then is to say no? It was a pleasure to watch Willem Dafoe play the mentally tormented Jesus with the pangs of angst written all over him in the Martin Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. We have the same man as the nameless He in Antichrist. ("He comes to us as one unknown, without a name." said Albert Schweitzer. From the last citation). The signs of torment, doubt and fear are too clear to miss. But everything seems to be in the reverse, chronologically and structurally. He and She returns to Eden, the mythical space of ‘delight’, from where Adam and Eve were expelled by an irascible god for knowing things. Unlike the Biblical abode of innocence and tranquility, what await the couple are grief, pain, chaos, despair and gynocide. To worsen things, the place is soaked with sex and harbors disquieting secrets waiting to be discovered and covered. The parody of the idyllic paradise, however, has no Satan sneaking around with the promises of superior knowledge but is stuffed and stifled with dark mental caves where anything is possible. Maybe the Prince of Darkness is within us. It is a physical unconscious with much to explore: ferns, foxholes, attics and more. A deer giving birth to a dead calf, a fox disemboweling itself while uttering the ominous words “chaos reigns” and a crow refuses to be killed are there portending more uncanny sights and visions.

Unlike Adam and Eva, He and She come back to the Eden after losing the fruit of knowledge: a toddling son. He is a therapist with rather strong convictions: he knows traditional medications are not going to cure She. His attempts to save her soul take a different direction and attain new dimensions in the Eden. Instead of letting others kill him and thus purify mankind, He walks away strangling his own wife/patient who becomes sure that women are inherently evil and that she is directly and inexorably responsible for the death of their son. She masturbates the unconscious He to have an ejaculation of blood and cuts her clitoris using a pair of scissors. Before limping out of the place, He cremates her as if she were a vampire. Jesus was crucified and I can’t help imaging the iron nails piercing his flesh as the stakes driven through the vampire or the vampired. There are no returns. hopefully.

A movie that deserves mention is the 1972/3 Bernardo Bertolucci piece The Last Tango in Paris. Exactly as in Antichrist, here we have Paul and Jeanne, without knowing other’s name, hiding and drowning grief and losses through wild sex and masturbation before the woman shoots him in the apartment— “little old but full of memories.” The tiny room and behavior happily detached from the sociocultural norms, unfortunately, are too good to last.

Alfred Hitcock, is a natural reference to the film: “In a full color handout given to press and potential buyers at some Cannes screenings, opposite a few uniquely blank excerpts from a Danish Film Institute interview with the director there’s a photo of him . . . that seems to directly reference, down to the three-quarter profile with the smug facial expression, the famous publicity shot of Alfred Hitchcock, turned to face a live crow perched on his shoulder, that was distributed to promote the film of his that most directly drew lines between female sexuality and the unpredictable horrors of nature, The Birds. Von Trier alters the image a little bit: in his shot, the crow lies at his feet, dead. In other words, this time, nature’s not going to get away with it.” (http://blog.spout.com/2009/05/20/antichrist-review/ ). As a psychological thriller Antichrist pictures a tiled bathroom, resembling the one in which the heroine is stabbed to death in Psycho. Again, the reversed postures are notable.

(It is said that Gandhi developed aversion to sex because he was making love when his father was breathing the last. Nothing was more fitting than watching Antichrist on his birthday, October 2)

HOW TO KILL A BUFFALO?

Television has been with us for fifty years, that is technically. Just like the platitude Indians are equal and are secular. Even today, in a shining India where MNCs throng, television density remains depressingly low. As in many other social indices, Kerala stands apart. The higher penetration rate has heavily impacted on our social habits and outlooks too. Evenings are for soap operas or reality shows. Women huddle in front of the glimmering screen, invariably their eyes riveted to it, ready to weep for the pangs of characters. By the half of last decade, private channels had almost replaced the staid state owned television and redefined our visual sensibility. An average Malayalee knows the world through television. What he sees on it true. In other words, the infallibility once attributed to print media has become the privilege of television. The factoid ‘camera does not lie’ is the plank on which the faith rests. Never ever have our channels dithered in taking advantage of this trust. We have seen how often the self-appointed wholesale dealers of truth whip up passion and frenzy on graft and sex, only to declare later that the whole affair was a bogus report concocted by a rival channel.

Arguably the Prudential World Cup in 1983 and the assassination of Indira Gandhi the following year were watersheds in the history of television. To own a television set became a new status symbol. In the 1990s, with the advent of cable networks, our living rooms were literally flooded with news and music. Channels vied with each other to bring in the latest and the intriguing. And often they infringed upon traditional media ethics. In the early 1990s Asianet, the first private player in Kerala, televised a documentary on the ruthless and unhygienic slaughtering of cattle in an abattoir in Trivandrum with the warning ‘carrying women and the weak-minded are advised to abstain from watching.’ In hindsight the gory scenes that splashed the screen and the minds seem to have been the curtain raiser of many a visual extravaganza to follow. Later Asianet and archrival Surya set new standards by repeatedly telecasting the visuals of a nut whacking a government employ to death.

It is during the same period that sting operations and exposés sparked off heated discussions and debates. To be fair, the startling revelation that sleaze had soaked bureaucracy was a jolt to the public and would play a major role in forming public perceptions about politics and politicians. In Kerala it was a documentary on the lives of bootleggers and contract killers by Asianet that set new senses and sensibilities on roll. The televisual debut into the murky lives and allies of the homegrown felons featured youngsters shuffling down with daggers slinging from their waists. The electrifying program remains fresh in memory. Now, after all these years, if a channel films the den of some goons, won’t they be shooting a bloodbath, with a lot of risk on their lives? Or will they tread the path of Edward Armstead in The Almighty in scripting and creating events to be reported? The hype over the murder of the young businessman Paul M. George and the ongoing investigation of Sr. Abhaya murder case raise chilling possibilities and eerie doubts.

Some days back, a weird action of a cop triggered much controversy. He was bold or outrageous enough to shoot parts of his colleagues grilling a petty actress arrested on charge of prostitution. He would not stop there. Rather mysteriously the picture found its way to the internet. Who was the prostitute here?

Questions and fears never end at the moment when we celebrate the golden jubilee of television.
(www.hksanthosh.blogspot.com)

GODS AND TROUSERS

From The Economist (September 12-18, 2009)

A Bolivian religious fanatic briefly hijacked a Mexican airliner, ordering it to circle Mexico City. He told the crew he had three accomplices, whom he later identified to police as “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Read more http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32761994/ns/world_news-americas/

A Sudanese woman, Lubna Hussein, was found guilty of wearing trousers, a practice said by the authorities to be indecent. Her case has sparked an international furore. She was freed from prison after journalists paid a fine of $200 (against her wishes). She also faced up to 40 lashes if convicted, but that punishment was not imposed.