Somali pirates and the Indian Navy

Many years ago, the architect of India naval strategy, eminent historian and reluctant diplomat KM Panikkar said: "A navy is not meant for the defense of the coast. The coast has to be defended from the land. The objective of the navy is to secure the control of an area of the sea, thus preventing enemy ships from approaching the coast or interfering with trade and commerce and conversely after securing the control to blockade the enemy’s coast and destroy his shipping. The Indian navy, whether it be large or small, must learn this lesson. Its purpose is to protect the seas and not the land and if it cannot protect the seas vital to India’s defense, then it is better not to have navy at all”. He further argued that “while to other countries the Indian Ocean is only one of the important oceanic areas, to India it is a vital sea. Her lifelines are concentrated in that area, her freedom is dependent on the freedom of that water surface. No industrial development, no commercial growth; no stable political structure is possible for her unless her shores are protected.” Jawaharlal Nehru agreed with Panikkar in this case: “History has shown that whatever power controls the Indian Ocean has, in the first instance, India’s sea borne trade at her mercy and, in the second, India’s very independence itself.” Note here that the Indian Ocean region in this context means the seas and oceans around India.

But let us get back to the oceans, in this case the Gulf of Aden. When I read about the Ukrainian ship with many T72 Russian Tanks being held by these pirates, and that it still is, I was flabbergasted. Russia had no compunctions in chasing the Chechnyan’s with the hot pursuit logic that USA once followed, but have done nothing to the Somali pirates holding their ship. It was also a bizarre fact that terrorizing of this shipping lane had been going on now for 15 years. The surge in attacks came fourteen years after the fall of Somalia's last effective government. Now entire villages on the coastline collaborate in these activities and the rich takings have resulted in an even better equipped pirate force with mother boats, fast speedboats, satellite phones, RPG’s and automatic weapons. Can you believe it; they took just 16 minutes to subdue the Saudi Tanker (BTW it had only about twenty five crewmen)!!

From a $135,000 ransom for the ‘Semlow’ in 2005, it has now reached a $25 Million demand for the Saudi Oil tanker ‘Sirius Star’ (While the pirates have so far earned a total 150M$ in 2008). Currently some 15-17 ships (95 plus attacks this year) are held captive by the Somalis. The average going rate is a ransom of 1M$ per ship.

Why did this happen? Why are ships being terrorized? While an answer points to greed, it was primarily due to antiquated maritime laws which do not make it easy for a merchant ship to carry arms. To this day they have only water cannons and possibly acoustic bangers even though some have recently started to employ security guards. One other reason is that tanker environments are too explosive for arms to be carried or used. So what can these ships do? Either travel in convoys with an armed escort, or reroute away from the Gulf and employ faster, bigger ships. But that adds to the cost (fuel bills alone increase by 20-25%) and delays the shipment. Peter Hinchcliffe, marine director with the International Chamber of Shipping, explains to ABC News Australia

“First of all we think that to put arms on board, even with trained armed guards, is not a good thing to do, because that is going to increase the potential heat and damage out of a firefight.” So we're not in favour for that reason, but there are more fundamental reasons. “Firstly that some flag states do not allow ships flying their flag to carry small arms on board.” And even more serious from a commercial point of view, some port states will not allow the ships into their ports if there are small arms on board.

Further complicating are other issues like if a ‘pirate’ is killed, the ship would have to enter port and her master and crew would be detained and questioned. You can imagine their plight in a lawless country like Somalia. The legal advice typically goes as follows - Since privately owned merchant ships are not armed in peacetime, it is not usually prudent to risk crew and cargo if the harassing vessel has demonstrated the intent to use force to prevent free passage (e.g. firing a warning shot across your bow)

What had India got to do with this situation and Somalian Piracy? A large number of Indians work in the mercantile marine and serve the many ships operating in that region. Recently the Japanese ship that was hijacked by Somalis had 18 Indian crew members (do you remember the number of news reports featuring Seema Goel, the wife of the ship’s captain PK Goel?). They were released after the Japanese paid a large ransom. Then comes the commercial facts (so nicely explained in this article by CSM) 85% of India’s sea trade is carried on these routes by foreign ships. Over 300 Indian ships are at risk on this route and finally as an ex Army man says, India also had a present need and opportunity to project its forces beyond its borders as a show of might and to bolster its claim for a seat in the Security Council.

Here is a real pointer - Senior shipping sources said the move of Indian armed security follows a recent refusal by a Western naval patrol to protect an Indian merchant ship that felt “vulnerable” to attacks on what is perhaps the world’s most dangerous stretch of water. “When the Indian captain asked for protection, he was asked, firstly, about which flag he was flying, then about the nationality of his crew, and finally about which cargo he was carrying,” said Shipping Corporation of India Chairman S. Hajara. When informed that it was an Indian ship with Indian seafarers, the captain was told that he could not be provided immediate protection, Hajara, who is part of the Indian delegation to the IMO Council meetings, told IANS.

The nation of 1.1 billion people provides one-sixth of the world's maritime workers and every month it sends 30 Indian-owned vessels carrying oil and other goods valued at $100 billion through the Gulf of Aden. Indian shipping firms say they are losing $450,000 a month on cost overruns and delays due to piracy. "India cannot wait to take action until the Somali pirates hit the coast of Bombay ," says Mr. Bhaskar. "They must be quarantined in their own waters before they cause more damage."

India finally entered the fray on Nov 2^nd with the deputation of F44 INS Tabar (battle axe). INS Tabar, a Talwar-class Russian made stealth frigate, the Indian navy's latest, is on an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden and recently shot into limelight with the destruction of a Somali mother ship (later clarified as a Thai fishing ship Ekawat Nava 5 hijacked by pirates) on Nov 19^th and successfully escorting approximately 35 ships, including a number of foreign flagged vessels, safely during their transit through pirate infested waters of the Gulf of Aden plus preventing two hijacking attempts. The bigger INS Mysore will either join or replace it soon. The official version of the pirate boat sinking by INS Thabar is dull and drab. If you want a proper Indian masala version, look at the one put up by Chairboy in Digg.
And now, who are the pirates and what is their cause? CSM explains

Today's pirates are mainly fighters for Somalia's many warlord factions, who graduated from operating roadblocks to terrorizing ships, who have fought each other for control of the country since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991. Their motives are a mixture of entrepreneurialism and survival, says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called. Using a mother ship – often an Old Russian trawler – to prowl deeper waters for their target, they can offload smaller boats to move in close and overtake the ship, and climb up with hooks and ladders, and submachine guns.

Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenya-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme told Deutsche Presse that there were fewer than 100 gunmen operating in 15 groups in 2005. Now there are some 160 groups with a total of up to 1,200 pirates operating in Somalia's coastal waters. The pirates, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, launch speedboats from 'motherships' to pursue their targets. The mother ships are old captured Russian trawlers (Guardian confirms this - It turned out to be a previously captured ship being used by pirates as a base to launch their speedboats far out to sea.) 'The big question is where does the money go?' Mwangura said. 'We think they are collecting money going to fund other projects onshore ... we can say they are doing this on behalf of organized crime and for terrorist activities.' However some other reports mention a fishing class that had their daily means disrupted by the busy ocean waters and the ships taking up arms. Others mention that a good portion of the ransom is diverted to the insurgent groups.

Finally I read reports that India has to seek UN approval for each operation and that recently Somali had acceded to India’s request to enter their waters. With the going average ransom rate at 1M$ and possible local competition, the Somali pirates have not been troubled by sailing brazenly as far as 400 nautical miles from their shores as they did in capturing the Saudi tanker. Or is it that they realize that time could run out soon for them?

I agree that it is time to take the fight to the pirates and if the Indian Navy has to set an example, let it be so. Kudos to the navy!! KM Panikkar would finally be smiling from up above!!

Update - 26th Nov 2008: It has now been clarified that the destroyed trawler was the Thai fishing vessel Ekawat Nava 5 which was comandeered by Somali pirates before the event. A survivor recounts that the ship was hijacked by 10 Somali pirates on Nov 18th.

Recommended reads

India & the Indian Ocean – KM Panikkar

India in the Indian Ocean – Donald Berlin

Dimensions of National Security: The Maritime Aspect

Pictures

Pirate speedboat - from Herald Sun

Location map - WSJ

INS Thabar - from globalsecurity.org

Barum mother ship - NPR

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Talpade's flight over Chowpathy

One of the conquests many attempted since Da-Vinci’s time or even earlier, is flight by man, powered or un-powered. There were people who attached wings to their backs, some even attaching feathers to their arms, but in the end injuries, hurt egos and even death were the results.

Historic documents such as the Vedas and some Indian epics do mention flight and structures termed Vimana’s but nobody seems to have taken them seriously (inspite of claims & rumors that NASA's ion engine is based on the vedic texts). The contents of the book Vimanika Sastra and all the innuendo put together by H Childress and Berlitz, were dismissed as hogwash by many learned scientists. Having read the “the anti-gravity handbook” and the Vaimanika Shastra translation myself, I should agree that both leave a number of new doubts and questions in the reader’s mind rather than answering them. It could be so since the original Sasthra text itself is considered incomplete.

1800-1900 was a period of inventions- People were innovating left and right, at a pace never attained since then. Eventually, two attempts got recorded into the annals of aviation history. One was Santos Dumont of Brazil and the other the Wright brothers of USA. The latter are accorded all the credit today for being pioneers of manned, controlled flight. Dumont’s supporters argued that his 14bis flew for 722 feet in 1906-1907 after his 1901 dirigibles; The Wright brothers did their first 852’ flight in 1903, but more in secret. Brazilians argued that Dumont flew without use of catapults and slopes to aid take off, the Wright brothers did just that. Clement Ader did a self powered flight in 1890; or so it appears, but just 8 inches above the ground. Then there was John Stringfellow’s plane in 1848. The Wright brothers did some more sparsely witnessed flight demonstrations 1903-1906. But was there somebody else before the Wright’s, perhaps? Somebody who did not get his due recognition?

Well, one other person 'purportedly' flew a self powered unmanned plane in 1895. That man was Shivkar Bapuji Talpade. His plane was called ‘MarutSakha’. Reports concluded that he obtained the designs from his Guru Subbaraya Shastri (who compiled Maharishi Bhardwaja’s Vaimanika Shastra – a collection of some parts of the original Vedic period text), that he had his wife supporting him in these design & production endeavors, that the plane flew only a short distance before crashing, that it had a mercury ion engine, that he stopped his efforts after the crash due to paucity of funds, imperial animosity & lack of sponsorship.

The problem with this story is that there is very little to corroborate it except for the two articles, one by Times of India and one by Deccan Herald. There is a third write up linked here.

The Times article states- In 1895 an Indian pioneer flew what is said to be the first Indian plane in the air. The centenary year of the first successful flight, by the Wright brothers, was celebrated from December 17, 2003. But our own pioneer from Mumbai, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, made an aircraft and had flown it eight years earlier. One of Talpade's students, P Satwelkar, has chronicled that his craft called 'Marutsakha'(Friend of the Winds) flew unmanned for a few minutes and came down.

KRN Swamy of Deccan Herald states - One day in June 1895 (unfortunately the actual date is not mentioned in the Kesari newspaper of Pune which covered the event) before an curious scholarly audience headed by the famous Indian judge/ nationalist/ Mahadeva Govinda Ranade and H H Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, Talpade had the good fortune to see his unmanned aircraft named as ‘Marutsakthi’ take off, fly to a height of 1500 feet and then fall down to earth.

Doubts remain, since the Guru named Shastry later turned out to be a disciple. Talpade passed away in 1916, the manuscript of Vaimanika Shastra was completed by Shastry only in 1923 (he died in 1941) to make do a promise Shastry had made to the well known scientist JC Bose. The drawings of the craft and engines were made by a TK Elappa, a draftsman from what he thought the text meant. Then there is the fact that Talpade was a Sanskrit scholar, not really an inventor (nor was his wife one) who could build an ion engine from incomplete Vedic text. Those interested may checkout a critical study of Vaimanika Shastra by a few IIS students.

Kesari was a newspaper edited by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in Marathi. Some argue that the very fact that Kesari Bal Gangadhar himself was editor when this article was printed, gives it complete credibility. Some add that Shivkar Bapuji's craft only flew only to a twenty meter height and crashed within seventeen minutes, hence was counted largely as a failure but had he been loaned more R&D money he might have gone into the annals of history. Anyway Talpade supposedly lost interest in things after his wife`s death which happened some time after the test flight, and after his own death in 1917 at the age of 53 his relatives sold the machine (in which children of the house used to play) to Rally Brothers, a leading British exporting firm then operating in Mumbai.

The story of the first Indian to fly a plane thus remains a myth, for lack of further evidence. If somebody has some more concrete data to prove this event, please feel free to provide it. Another question remains unanswered. Since Subbaraya Sastry completed the book after Talpade’s experiment, why did he not allude to it or add information of this very important practical experiment?

Disclaimer – This article does not imply that the ancient wisdom was non existent. On the contrary the question asked is if there is some kind of proof out there on Talpade’s flight and details of the kind of craft he built, in scientific terms.

Added references
Another translation of Vaimanika Shastra
Vimanika Shastra – Wikipedia entry
Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India and Atlantis - David Childress, Ivan T Sanderson

pics - from the web, thanks to the uploaders

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Chowringhee

I read a lot and yes, as always, I simply enjoy the feel of the paperback in my hand. Hardbound editions are difficult to hold for a long time and even though the typeset is big, your wrists ache after a while. There are very many nice ebooks available (for which I am grateful to Googlebooks) and I find the compact Acer Aspire One Netbook competent enough to handle these. So now, many historical ebooks from Google books can now be read on it in peace. It is still tough on the eyes, even with the LED backlight and towards night you wonder how all that sand got into your eyes. But still nothing can beat a real book, even if yellowed with age, or smelling musty and allergic – sufficient reason to encourage a swig of Benadryl or some such antihistamine before the attempt. Sometimes I wonder why some cruel guys mark, underline and write cryptic comments on these book margins ( 2nd hand books) and then finally decide to sell it ‘as is’.

It is funny – Does development kill the need to read or the desire to read? I guess so – Apple has been working on a ebook reader and Steve Jobs had this to say in Feb 08- "Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading. "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."…

Ah! Well.. I am drifting in the wrong direction; let’s see what entertained me the last few days - My latest pick – Chowringhee – Shankar

I met Bhaskar my old friend after many years, in Bangalore a couple of months ago. He is now managing a prosperous supermarket chain, and I recalled one of our earlier conversations about a Jeffrey Archer book ‘As the crow flies’. Bhaskar had at that time talked about doing something like the protagonist and well, he ‘the man’, as they say in USA chased his dream, to start supermarkets & department stores in Bangalore.

When we met, Bhaskar recommended that I read Chowringhee, a book about Calcutta, for he had been fascinated by it. Well, I finally found a lone copy after a tedious search in Gangaram’s on MG road and have since then finished reading that glorious book. What fascinating writing and more than that, what a fabulous translation work from the original Bengali. It was simply impossible to put down the book. You enjoy the story telling, meeting and getting to know each character in the book, be it Sankar himself, or Bose or Sutherland or Connie or Rosie….

A little bit about Chowringhee. This is a locality or neighborhood in Central Calcutta, also termed the Regent’s park of Calcutta. It is a business district, a shoppers place and home to many hotels today. In the British days they had magnificent houses in that area. In those days leading to independence, there used to be a Spencer hotel located in Chowringhee. It was considered by many, including Jules Verne (Jules Verne mentions the Spencers hotel in his book the Demon of Crawnpore (The steamboat – Nana Sahib) as the best in Calcutta.

David Martin states in his ‘Changing face of Calcutta’ - Fame and fortune have attended Chowringhee Road for nearly three centuries. One of Kolkata’s principal arteries, throughout the length of its history it has carried an aura of prestige and importance. Fashionableness and colour have always been its handmaidens. To countless Indians, and for most people familiar with India, the singularly unique name Chowringhee immediately identifies with Kolkata. It represents the nearest equation in India to what Piccadilly is to London, Fifth Avenue to New York and the Champs Elysees to Paris. Nostalgic Londoners like to regard their Circus as the centre of the universe. Kolkatans are more reserved in their acclaim, although the fervour they display for their city is perhaps unmatched. Although dowdier these days than its more illustrious worldlier partners, Chowringhee no less exudes similar allure and magnetism in its eastern setting. Yet another book that explains Chowringhee of the early part of the century is ‘The Underworld of the East - By James S. Lee’ where the steamy underbelly of old Calcutta comes to light. In that real life account of his visit to the city, Lee lives on the rooftop rooms of the Spencer Hotel and talks of ‘Punkha’s’ in these (Hotels had no electric fans during those years) rooms which were pulled through a hole in the wall by the Punkah wallah. Humorus accounts of the ‘punkah wallah’ nodding off to sleep prepare the reader to the hotel stay at Spencers during the early part of the 20th century.

The author of ‘Chowringhee’ is Mani Shankar Mukherjee a.k.a. Shankar. As the book blurb puts it - The book set in the Kolkata of 1950s is a saga of the intimate lives of managers, employees and guests in one of its largest hotels, called Shajahan in the novel. Shankar, the newest and the youngest recruit, recounts the stories of several people whose lives come together in the suites, backrooms and restaurants of the hotels. This book predates Arthur Hailey's "Hotel" by three years and has been translated into Malayalam, Marathi, Hindi, Russian and now English. It’s larger than life characters - the enigmatic hotel manager Marco Polo, debonair receptionist Sata Bose, the tragic hostess Karabi Guha - attained almost cult status. And the novel became a classic.

A fascinating study of human character, Shankar takes you into the workings of newly liberated Calcutta, the babu’s, the gora’s and what not. The camaraderie between the staff of the hotel, the dark secrets, all of them are retold in a style with a singular purpose of entertaining you. It makes you feel that you have just stepped out of the hotel, as you finish the book and it is then you feel the warm glow and contentment of having read a masterpiece and the sun on your back as you step onto Chowringhee road.

From Telegraph India article - It took Vikram Seth’s recommendation, who read the novel in Hindi, to spur Penguin into translating Chowringhee. Arunava Sinha’s translation in 1992 was fished out. “There is nothing dated about Chowringhee. It is so much about people that the story carries well ahead of its background and period,” says the translator, who is now on the verge of finishing Sankar’s other celebrated work, Jana Aranya.

Excerpts from a Samachar article

Shankar revealed the inside stories of the book only recently (Jul/Aug 08). He goes on

"I will reveal some inside stories about 'Chowringhee' that I could not tell for fear of a British barrister. I began my career as a clerk after my father passed away when I was barely in my teens. I had to drop out of studies in search of a job. The book was loosely based on him - more as a tribute because he introduced me to the world of good writing. Now that he is no more, I can share the inside stories," the writer said with his trademark wit.

According to Shankar, the idea for the book took off when he was still in the service of Noel Barwell, the last British barrister in the Kolkata High Court. "Barwell stayed for a long time at the Spencer's Hotel in Kolkata and I was a frequent visitor to the hotel. It was through common friends at Spencer's that I came to know what was happening at the Great Eastern Hotel, one of the biggest hotels in the metropolis then.

"So, there was this notion that the book was inspired by Great Eastern Hotel. Actually, the muse was the Spencer's Hotel. It was from there that my love affair with hotels began," Shankar disclosed.

The author, who was unusually expansive, also gave away the real identity of the charismatic receptionist of the Shahjahan hotel in the novel. "I got the idea to create the debonair Sata Bose, the receptionist, from a railway employee I chanced across. His name was Satya Sadhan Bose and since he had many sahib friends, he refused to be identified by anything but Sata Bose," he divulged.

Shankar, whose books stormed into Bengali homes with the marketing slogan "A bagful of Shankar (Ek Bag Shankar)", is a household name in West Bengal. Collections of his books were sold in blue packets that readers were proud to possess. Shankar wears many hats. A street food expert with two books to his credit, the writer is an also an adept marketing man associated with a leading industrial house.

The book also became a popular movie in the 60’s acted by Utpal Dutt, Uttam Kumar, Subhendu Chatterjee, Biswajeet etc..I have not seen it, but have recently acquired a VCD. Now I need to find time to enjoy the movie even though I do not have the faintest inkling of the Bengali language. But I will manage, surely.

For those who can find the book - read it, You will see a different India, set around the times of the movie Parineeta and yes, without doubt you will enjoy it ...

Further reading
A Hindu Article

Pics - Sankar - Telegraph, Book cover from the net

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Shanta P Nair Kerala’s Nightingale

Thumbi Thumbi va va…Picture a scene - a song from 1956, K Raghavan master’s music and Vayalar’s lyrics. The nervous Vayalar Rama Varma would have been sitting and listening to his very first lyrics for the movie ‘Koodapirappu’ being sung by Shanta Nair. After the opening lines, he would have finally relaxed, and allowed the magic of the experienced singers voice to take over. Or switch to another scene – The great MB Sreenivasan is tuning a song for Kalpaadukal. He asks ‘Shanta, do you think you can do a duet with a young newcomer’? Shanta says (a time when stalwarts usually refused to sing with newcomers) – ‘of course, why not’ – thus introducing Yesudas into the singing scene, singing the chirpy song ‘Attention penne’. Or the great Baburaj doing his very first movie ‘Minnaminungu’ with Shanta singing ‘Vallittu Kannezhuthanam’…or some years later, enthralling Salilda with her own composition for a ‘Salilda movie’.

Sadly, yet another great singer of yesteryears passed away recently (July 28th 2008), after prolonged illness. I had been collecting information on Shanta P Nair even before her demise and it was a blog entry by Cris and Jo’s gentle prod for a music related blog that finally got me to finish this. The collection of information that I have on this great singer, other than having listened to her songs comes from the archives of our fine ‘Hindu’ newspaper, namely the articles by K Pradeep, Jayakumar and Ambika Varma and various comments from music enthusiasts of Entelokam, a fine Malayalam music site.

Calicut, a city of the arts & trade, yet again figures in this fine singer’s story. I remember the hallowed recording rooms of the AIR station across the Arabian Sea waters, right on the beach. The air conditioned interiors smelled different where as a child I had gone there many times to participate in some programs. This was also the place where my wife used to sing some years ago. Abdul Khader worked there, so did Shanta P Nair as an announcer, initially. Then the two became popular with their ‘lalitha ganam’ programs. It was here that Shanta Nair met drama writer & program director Padmanabhan Nair, married him and settled down into the routines of family life and away from the recording rooms. (However Saraswathy Amma in a recent article stated that Shanta Nair also worked at the Trivandrum AIR later).

Born 1930, she spent 79 years in this world and her 200 odd songs (I could list only about 50) for some 100 films are now a testament to fine music, if only in posterity. They were songs from an era when melody was queen and when Malayalam music and films were only just taking shape and form. In a group of singers with a heavy Tamil and classical base, she stood out with her lovely clear voice. It was in 1952 that she started in the film world singing for the movie Tiramala. She had studied Carnatic music from the age of eight under Chertala Gopalan nair and Ramanattu Krishnan and went on to complete her intermediate at Women’s college Trivandrum, later finishing her BA at Queen Mary’s Madras. Subsequently she joined AIR Calicut as an announcer and after a stint of 3 years there and a courtship with Padmanabhaan Nair culminating in wedlock, left the job to continue in the film music world. Under Cherthala Gopalan Nair she gained confidence in performing on stage. In a Hindu interview, Shanta Nair remembered how at the age of 10 she sang a Swati Tirunal Adathala varnam before the famous Muthiah Bhagavathar. "When I finished, he said `belle belle nalla padara."'

Quoting Hindu from an Interview - Gentle, gracious and reticent. A singer who never knew how to market herself, a sense of nervousness was palpable when you talked to her. Her sister and her daughter, Latha Raju, who were there with her in the room that evening, intervened. They revealed that Shanta had always been like that; she needed to be persuaded to sing, or even to talk. There was something in Shanta’s voice that endeared her to a generation of listeners. It was a voice that was as smooth as the serene backwaters, lively as the monsoon showers. It was a voice that gelled with the Malayali psyche Shanta had the unique honour of having sung for stalwarts like K. Raghavan, Vayalar Rama Varma, G. Devarajan, O.N.V. Kurup and Baburaj in their first film and with many singers who recorded for a film for the first time. Among those singers was K. J. Yesudas

And once in the absence of Salilda, she composed a tune for Ramu Kariat. Salilda after hearing it insisted that it be retained without changes in the final release. Shantha remembers how she was persuaded by Ramu Kariat to compose music for that song in his film `Ezhu Rathrikal.' The music director Salil Choudhury was away in Mumbai. The song was `Makkathu poi varum maanathe.' "When Salilda heard it, he complimented me profusely. It is such a simple and nice tune and sung by her daughter Latha Raju. She also did the chorus for Salilda later in the Chemmen songs.

Her last song was in 1961/5 for V Chidambaranath’s Murapennu `Kadavathu thoni aduthapol' in the film `Murapennu' along with S. Janaki. The song remains a hit to this day, and it was Shanta's last screen song (You can get a flavour of her “kadavathu thoni’ when you hear the Ousepachan song ‘Ormakal odi’ from Mukundetta sumitra vilikkunnu). She recalls with pride how thrilled she was when she got an opportunity to sing `Vande Mataram' before Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. ‘Unarunaroo Unnikanna...’ a solo by Shanta P. Nair, based on Bilahari raga, is still one of the best devotionals in the language.

Shanta P. Nair immortalized many film songs with her mellifluous voice in a career spanning from 1951 to 1967. She was equally proficient in Carnatic music and held many concerts, which she used to end with light music. She is no more, but her music and sweet voice will remain in our hearts.

Singing Highlights of her career
Yesudas first duet (Attention penne, Kaalpadukal)
Vayalar ‘s first movie (Thumbi thumbi vaa vaa, Koodapirappu)
Vayalar & Devarajan combination first movie (Janani, Chaturangam)
Baburaj’s first compositon (Vaalittu Kannezhuthanam, Minnaminungu)
Raghavan Master’s first (released) movie song(Unarunaroo, Neelakuyil)
Her first song (Amma than thankakudame, Thiramala)

She sang for the following movies
Thiramala, Balyakalasakhi, Neelakuyil, Aniyathi, Koodapirappu, Manthravadi, Rarichan Enna Pouran, Newspaper boy, Kaalam Marannu, Achanum Makanum, Jailpulli, Minnaminungu, Padatha Painkili, Lilly, Mariakutty, Chaturangam, Krishnakuchela, Mudiyanaya puthran, Sabarimala Ayappan, Baghyajathakam, Kalpadukal, Laila majnu, Palattu koman, Swarga rajyam, Veluthambi Dalawa, Vidhi thanna vilakku, Moodupadam, kalanju kittiya thankam, Tacholi othenan, Murapennu, Chemeen, Ramanan, Dantha gopuram, Ezhu rathrikal.

More Bio
Wife of late Padmanabhan Nair, daughter of R Vasudeva Poduval and Lakshmikutty Amma, hailing from the Ambady Family Trichur. Survived by Latha Raju also a singer (AIR Chennai Deputy Director) and son in law JM Raju a music director and singer himself. Shanta Nair won the Sangeet Natak Accademy award in1987.

My FavoritesThumpi Thumpi Va Va
Valittu Kannezhuthanam
Tengidalle Tengidalle
Kadavathu Thoni
Unaru Unnikanna
Poove Nalla Poove (with P Leela)
Poomuttathoru mulla virinju
Makkathu Poivarum (Music by Shanta - sung by Latha Raju)

References & Photographs – Thanks to Hindu
A voice from yesteryear – G Jayakumar
Yesterday Once more – Ambika Varma
Unforgettable Voice – K Pradeep
Neelakuyil – The movie
Entelokam – The confluence of Malayalam music enthusiasts

My Blogs on other Malayalam singer’s & MD’sMehaboob
Kozhikode Abdul Khader
MB Sreenivasan

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The Mini CAT

Ah! This is not feline at all; CAT in this context stands for compressed air technology. Now, I had read about this development from newspapers some days back and I was wondering when and how the development will hit the streets what with the influence of the powerful oil & conventional automobile lobby.

A few days ago, I was listening to the LA 103.5 FM station and one of the RJ’s said, “know what India’s TATA is launching? an air powered car” and the lady DJ wise cracks “aha, so the car has windmills on it or what”. My blood pressure rose in a jiffy, but came down when the male DJ calmed her and me down by stating all the great things about the car. Of course the end of the clip was spoiled by another RJ who said well, “Nowadays Indians can also lay their hands on Jaguar and Range rover and all those high end cars”. I did feel he was a bit sanctimonious about the whole thing, but let’s let sleeping dogs lie.

Politely the others said wow! Fantastic! And all that…not remembering that many Americans had air car inventions to their credit years back but had gotten steamrolled by so called ‘better petrol driven inventions’.

When Guy Negre - Renault F1 engine developer and aeronautical engineer, his son Cyril and his 17 year old company Motor Development International (MDI) completed the designs for an air engine, the Frenchman had finally realized the dreams of Jules Verne. In his book ‘Paris of the 20th Century’, Verne had foreseen aero cars driving on the streets of Paris. Our modern cities, with streets a hundred meters wide and buildings three hundred high, and which are always maintained at the same temperature, and with the sky furrowed by thousands of aero-cars and aero-buses! (Verne 1863)

MDI has had a long haul since then. MDI promoter and US agent Shiva Vencat struggled to get the project flying in the USA, funds were hard to come by and the response was lukewarm. It finally took a 27M$ infusion from Tata Motors in 2007 to jump start the air car project. Tata as part of the deal got the rights for licensing and further developing the engine in their vehicles, MDI got the finances to develop their own version for Europe & other countries (Tata is the only big firm Negre’ll license to sell the car - and they are limited to India). For the rest of the world he hopes to persuade hundreds of investors to set up their own factories, making the car from 80% locally-sourced materials.

Well, I am not sure we would see many aero cars in US freeways or streets in the short run, even with the high price of gas and the uproar about fossil fuels in the public media, but I can foresee and look forward to seeing such cars running on the roads in Indian cities by next year. But back to the topic…the Mini CAT air powered car…

Air technology - The idea first came up in Englishman Dennis Papin’s mind in 1687, with the first model made in 1840 in France, then the idea died off. Starting with the Mekarski engine in 1872, Porter, Hardie, Hodges, Kiser, Barton and Wardeiner came out with successive working models. Since the world war, no further attempts were made in the mainstream until the 70’s by Truitt followed by Russell Brown, Starbard and Miller. Liesler, Mead and Miller refined the ideas further and provided renewable and perpetual versions. For details of all these inventions, and for those interested in the milestones, check here.

Tata and the air cars - Tata had a lot of headway in this due to the fact that they had been selling air powered buses since 2000, something that I did not know. All eyes would be on the Tata MDI model which would be the first to produce about 6000 of these cars, maybe later in 2008. Tata’s Air Car, which MDI calls a MiniCAT, is expected to cost the equivalent of $8000 (reports vary between $5000 to $8000)in India, and would have a range of about 300km between refuels—an event which, due to the fact you’re only paying for the power needed to work the compressor, would cost around $2. Until the market for this car is properly developed though, owners will find included a small compressor which can be connected to any regular power supply, and will refill the tank within 3-4 hours. While Tata has been tightlipped on plans, Forbes states the following - MDI is shipping a prototype to Tata this summer. Tata will either reproduce that car or, more likely, install the MDI technology in one of its existing cars, such as its recently unveiled Nano. The MDI technology - Air car models today have a four-piston engine powered by compressed air stored in tanks at 4,500 pounds per square inch. The lightweight tanks hold around 3,200 cubic feet of air. The air car is propelled when compressed air from the tanks is injected into a small chamber, where it expands and cools. This expansion pushes a down stroke of the piston and as the temperature again heats the air in the first chamber, that air is forced into a second chamber, where it expands again to drive an upstroke.

Forbes adds – MDI versions come in bright colors, can go 70mph and have a range of 125 miles on flat roads. The motor uses a whoosh of air to push its two pistons up and down. Exhaust from the engine consists of harmless atmospheric air, cold enough to serve as air-conditioning on a hot day. But don't try to tow a trailer with one of these things. The engine can't top 75 horsepower.

The designers say on long journeys the car will do the equivalent of 120mpg. In town, running on air, it will be cheaper than that. The developer Mr Negre says there's no issue with safety - if the air-car crashes the air tanks won't shatter - they will split with a very loud bang. "The biggest risk is to the ears”

So looking forward to an air driven vehicle and many more such ‘green’ inventions.

Pics – from related manufacturers sites on the net - thanks

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Two interesting quotes

By and far, the English are a pretty interesting lot though some tend to be the pompous variety and I can assure you there are still many of them around, prone to making grandiose statements or silly remarks. This little note is about two such comments from history, but with an attempt to understand the basis and perspectives behind them.

Churchill’s oft quoted sentence: It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir, well-known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the vice-regal palace….

This was stated on 23rd Feb 1931 by Churchill, at Winchester House Epping following the Labor government’s proposal of Dominion status to India. Now Churchill himself had spent many years in India as a war correspondent and was a staunch believer that the British withdrawal from India would weaken Britain as well as create huge turmoil in India due to all kinds of violence and bloodshed. He was proved somewhat right, but his rude utterance above alienated even conservatives from his policies. Read an interesting piece here. In his diary, Wavell concluded that the British Prime Minister "has a curious complex about India and is always loath to hear good of it and apt to believe the worst".

The full text of what he stated was - “Now I come to the administration of India. In my opinion we ought to disassociate ourselves in the most public and formal manner from any complicity in the weak, wrong headed and most unfortunate administration of India by the socialists and by the viceroy acting upon their responsibility. It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir, of a type well-known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the vice-regal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king emperor. Such a spectacle can only increase the unrest in India.”

Seditious middle temple lawyer - The subversive nature related to the civil disobedience campaign arrangement by Gandhiji explained the sedition part. The Honorable Society of the Middle Temple is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. It appears that Gandhiji was actually enrolled at the Inner temple.

In April 1919, a group of soldiers led by Gen Dyer fired at a crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Speaking in the House of Commons, the same Winston Churchill described this as "a monstrous event", a "great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorizing not merely, the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or country". Vikas Kamat puts it succinctly – Winston Churchill loathed Gandhi. Gandhi loathed none.

After 75 years the latest British Prime Minister - Gordon Brown stated in 2007 that Mahatma Gandhi would inspire him as prime minister. “I could never compare myself to Gandhi or those other heroes of mine but I do take inspiration from the way that they dealt with the challenges they faced when I think about how I will deal with the challenges the country and the world faces, including the security challenge," he said. "That means especially having the strength of belief and willpower to do what is difficult and right for the long-term, even when there are easier short-term options on offer."

Charles Dickens telling one of his friends on 4th Oct 1857 that, if he were the Commander in Chief of the British army in India, he would "do my utmost to exterminate the Indian Race" and "with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution…blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth."

What he actually said was – ‘I wish I were Commander in chief there. I would address that Oriental character which must be powerfully spoken to, in something like the following placard, which should be vigorously translated into all native dialects, I’ the inimitable, holding this office of mine and firmly believing that I hold it by the permission of heaven and not by the appointment of the Satan have the honor to inform you Hindoo gentry that it is my intention with all possible avoidance of unnecessary cruelty and with all merciful swiftness of execution to exterminate the race from the face of the earth, which disfigured the earth with the late abominable atrocities’.

The reason why Dickens, well known for his sympathy for the downtrodden and the poor in his own country, had this outburst was due to the many highly exaggerated reports of the atrocities on the British especially their women and children by Indian rebels during The Sepoy Mutiny which started on 10th May 1857, reaching their shores. AJ Mohammed states It is certain that Dickens empathized and had strong links with both Victorian concepts of family, duty and honor both at home and in India: his son Walter had left for military service in India in July 1857 (who died in India 1863), shortly after the Mutiny. What followed from him was a novella ‘The perils of certain English prisoners’ and commenced on the ‘The tale of two cities’ both books influenced by the said revolts.

The British press exaggerated, describing the rebels as tossing British babies into the air and bayoneting them for sport. By September, Queen Victoria was writing about the horrors committed on women and children making "one's blood run cold." She wrote that ‘Altogether, the whole is so much more distressing than [the war in] the Crimea - where there was glory and honourable warfare, and where the poor women and children were safe.’ Read even more flagrant quotes here and the article detailing the resulting repression by the British, one that is considered by Amaresh Mishra to be of holocaustic proportions with 10 million Indians killed over 10 years.

For those interested – why did the 1857 riots take place? Many explanations have been given for this uprising against the Company rule in northern India, but the East India Company's increasing racial and administrative arrogance lay at the root. Anglo-Indians were excluded from senior positions in the Company; non-European wives of the Company were forbidden to follow their husbands back to Britain. Verbal abuse mounted, with 'nigger' becoming a common expression for Indians. This slide into separatism also affected the Company's relations with its Indian soldiers, the sepoys. One by one, ties between the army and local communities were cut: Hindu and Muslim holy men were barred from blessing the sepoy regimental colours, and troops were stopped from participating in festival parades. As missionary presence grew, fears mounted that the Company was planning forcible conversion to Christianity.

Tail note – What did the Karl Marx have to say in 1853? "The question is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton."

Ah! The English……

Additional References - Charles Dickens’s Indian dispatches

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Poor Ivar Kreuger

My interest in Ivar perked up after I finished reading Ayn Rand’s famous play Night of January 16th. Like most other Rand books, it was inspiring and this one was based on Ivar Kreuger. I guess those who read some of my earlier blogs would have found me a big-time admirer of Ayn Rand and her powerful writing style & ideology. For me she presents a perfect example of what one can achieve if one wanted to. As a Russian émigré who spoke not a word of English, she became a master of English writing, words, plots & sub plots, movie scripts & what not…But then, this is not about her, this is about Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish Match King.

Sweden has always been a fascination for me. A small country that virtually made its fortune, trading in the rest of the world, be it Japan, China, India, Germany or USA…they made their name & fame with Ingrid Bergman, Alfred Nobel, ABBA, Bjorn Borg (and the other tennis stars that followed like Wilander, Edberg, Bjorkman….) and companies like SKF, IKEA, ASEA (now ABB) and Ericsson.

Ivan Kreuger got the name ‘match king’, selling matches (our old theepatti) and holding the world monopoly for matches for a long time. His organization Swedish match owned & owns WIMCO today…I used to have a friend Theepatti (that was what he was called, since he worked for WIMCO) Nair who worked in WIMCO, that BTW is another story, how Nair joined WIMCO, will hold it for some other day, maybe..
Now why did Kreuger & Swedish match strike it big? And what happened to him?

Ivar Kreuger killed himself on March 12th, firing a bullet through his heart, as media puts it, to escape creditors following the NYSE crash. The story of his death was reported by Time with some background material to boot and titled aptly ‘Poor Kreuger’. His rise to richness is simply mind boggling; even Kreuger did not know how much he made. Schooled in Sweden (double engineering degrees by age 20), he left Sweden when his girlfriend’s guardian refused to let him marry her as he was not financially sound (like a Bollywood movie eh?)!! Moving across the Atlantic and working as an engineer in the US, he picks up an award for saving a drowning girl in New Orleans!! He goes on to Mexico and South Africa, hears that his old flame is dead and returns back to Europe, after visiting India.

Kreuger then moved to Sweden and virtually took over the match industry (hesitantly at first), starting out actually to help his father’s ailing match factory. The Swedish match used the revolutionary non toxic red phosphorous safety match (required to be struck on a special surface compared to the more dangerous Lucifer match) and was thus the most popular. He was one of the first to effectively use the concept of mergers to grow, creating the merged Swedish Match company, and grow he did to control a capitalization of over a billion dollars (30Billion SEK in the 1930’s is roughly equivalent to ~150 BUSD today!!). Diversifying into all kinds of areas, he even owned LM Ericsson, the great communications company at one time. He made his fortune at a time when there were no big accounting rules, forming large pyramid & holding companies (~ 400 subsidiaries!).

Ivar grew to become larger than the state and then started to decide destinies of many a European state with his magnanimous personal loans (75-350M$ at that time!!), effectively undermining governments and politics. And then, he died. The larger problem (as an individual larger than powerful states) was solved eventually, though millions lost money due to it!! Today much of US financial reporting system owes itself to laws passed after the analysis of Kreuger’s clever methods of manipulation.

Kreuger was an interesting guy. A very clever chap from childhood days, he purportedly even made money selling exam question papers to students. During his heydays, presidents, politicians and movie stars like Garbo hobnobbed with him. He lived a high life, penthouses wherever he went, and the best luxury money could buy. He could be quite cunning when he decided to acquire something, indulging in industrial espionage, secret agents, cross purchases of competitors stock and the such. Most amazing was the fact that he committed little to paper, relying on his superb memory. Kreuger himself maintained all the while: "I've built my enterprise on the firmest ground”...Time does not concur though!

'Throughout his bizarre career,' wrote Robert Shaplen, author of the 1960 biography Kreuger, 'Kreuger alone supplied the figures for the books of his various companies, and he mostly kept them in his head. A former secretary of Kreuger's claimed that Kreuger once dictated the text of the annual reports for his four companies in a single afternoon. To Kreuger's credit, he was a highly intelligent businessman and financier. Many of his defenders contend that, although his dealings may appear shady in retrospect, at that time many of his activities represented the norm.

Well let us now get back to the death – Kreuger fires a 9mm bullet into his heart, as subsequent reports state. Many thousands who lost their life savings wanted to hear no more of the high profile villain, and the case was quickly closed. There are a few others who point out that - No bullet is ever found, no shot was ever heard and the gun disappeared during investigations. The body was found with a gun in the right hand, even though Kreuger was left handed. Somebody had purchased the gun in Krueger’s name, while Kreuger was apparently in a meeting elsewhere! No autopsy was held & his body was quickly cremated!

The bankruptcy that followed Kreuger's suicide in 1932 led to numerous changes in financial reporting. The media coverage made it politically expedient to pass laws to prevent such schemes. The result was mandatory audits, by CPAs, of all companies with listed securities. The US security market became a regulated market after Kreuger’s death…

Rumors were a plenty even after Ivar died – One was that he had actually faked his death and fled to Indonesia. Supposedly Kreuger's tobacconist later received a large order from Sumatra for custom-made Havana cigars. The tobacconist said that Kreuger was the only person who would have known how to place that order.

Whatever happened to Swedish match, the owner of WIMCO matches? The Wallenberg family of Sweden came to the rescue of Swedish Match. In an agreement that involved a transfer of $15 million from Stockholm to New York, Jacob Wallenberg was able to gain control of the injured enterprise. Swedish Match was sold to Volvo in 1990. Volvo eventually spun Swedish Match off to its shareholders in 1996, in a deal worth SKr 10.1 billion
Kreuger’s - Three of a match story
Three on a Match (also known as Third on a match) was a superstition among soldiers during the First World War. The superstition is that if three soldiers lit their cigarettes from the same match, one of the three would be killed or that the man who was third using the lit match would be shot. Since then it has been considered bad luck for three people to share a light from the same match. The reasoning was that when the first soldier lit his cigarette the enemy would see the light, when the second soldier lit his cigarette the enemy would take aim, and when the third soldier lit his cigarette the enemy would fire. The superstition was alleged to have been invented about a decade later by the Swedish match tycoon Ivar Kreuger in an attempt to get people to use more matches but it appears he merely made very shrewd use of the already existing belief which may date to the Boer War.

References
Two contradicting accounts terming it a murder
Time articles & Kreuger - A complete study

Authors Note: I wrote this more than a year ago, but looking at the situation with the markets today thought it a good idea to post it!!

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Shelley, Nair and Lawrence

An occasional reader with little time to peruse this further, but with some imagination would assume that this title is about a firm of lawyers (into which an Indian lawyer strayed or some such thing) for lawyers are wont to naming their companies thus, in what I would term a singularly unimaginative fashion. But this short article is not about a lawyer’s firm, but about two people and their relation to the Nair’s of Malabar.

The Malabar community, Nair’s in particular has been a subject of great curiosity from Roman times and a number of legends have been attributed to them in traveler’s tales. Many of them are far fetched and meant for the only purpose of evoking extreme reactions. Books have been written about them, notably by Fawcett and Forbes. Their customs and traditions until the turn of the century, especially the matrilineal and matriarchal lineage was the object of much study by the travelers, for it was a rare place where women were sometimes considered more important in the family system though mainly from an inheritance point of view. This particular (matrilineal) aspect has been the subject of a huge book by anthropologist Kathleen Gough, which I am incidentally in the process of perusing.

Nayar (or Nair) society was reputed in those days to be harmonious and productive, without property disputes and sexual jealousies, enlightened and spiritually favored (Indian renaissance – Pg 89 Almeida and Gilpin). Of course this did raise a lot of questions about polyandry and free love amongst a group of people in Europe. Cameo’s Lusiad’s even tried to portray how idyllic the life style in Calicut was compared to the cheap and gaudy lifestyle of the Portuguese and the Dutch in Cochin. Forbes wrote about the stillness of nature in Malabar and the softness of life, providing a soothing effect without the using of drugs like Opium (!!). Forbe’s account of the encounter with the bathing lady and the Nair temple and his flight are fascinating for a reader. He called the people handsome, fair and the women well made, sometimes tall but very graceful (in his 1813 version he changes this graceful to ‘masculine’). In short he equated the place to the mythical ‘garden of Eden’ till the next version of 1813.

James Henry Lawrence (a.k.a Chevalier Lawrence – Knight of Malta) living in Jamaica was fascinated by the original (privately circulated) Forbes account and many others. After studying the Nair race, he wrote an essay ‘Nair marriage traditions’ in 1793 and then a romantic novel originally in German as ‘Das Paradies der Liebe’ later reprinted as Das Reich der Nairen. According to him, Nair customs were based on the Freedom of nature. In the book, a British ‘Nairess’ known as the Countess Camilla is brought up in Malabar and goes back to London topropogate her ideas.

The novel was read by Friedrich Schiller the famous German writer (a friend of Goethe) who recommended to Lawrence that he publish it. Lawrence himself translated the book into English as ‘The Empire of the Nair’s’ (Rights of women – An utopian romance) in 1811. Alas, the book is not easily available today except for some parts here & there (Unless you want to spend a fortune and buy Modern British Utopias, 1700–1850 edited by Gregory Clayes). Lawrence in his longish and apparently ‘dull’ work entreated Europe to advocate the customs of Nair’s when it came to marriage.

It got some recognition after the famous but unconventional (from a lifestyle point of view) writer and romantic poet Percy Shelley read it. He wrote to Lawrence stating himself a complete convert to Lawrence’s ideas and advocating the abolition of marriage, calling marriage as licensed prostitution. Shelley then referred to these ideas in his Queen Mab (others roundly condemned him for bringing Nair domestic governance to Europe)

Unfortunately a lot of things happened between 1792 when Lawrence first wrote the book and 1811 when he published it. The relations between the Malabar Zamorin’s, the Mysore rulers and the English changed. Political factors came into play and the English saw a chance of subjugating the weakened Malabar Nair’s. Malabar had by then been annexed by the EIC and the British crown. Nair men were soon seen as threatening to the British interests (after various revolts by the Zamorin’s relatives and the Pazhassi raja). The writing about Nair’s soon changed their tone and the once touted customs soon changed to uncultured and barbaric, adulterous and demeaning (Buchanan accounts). Lawrence’s book was no longer the ‘in thing’…

Even the published Forbes version about travels to Malabar (1813) played down the original glowing comments and took a more cautious tone.

Strangely Lawrence and Shelley never visited India though Lawrence had a number of contacts with East India Company personnel. Schiller (read his play The Indian Exiles) too was intrigued by the Nair’s and was probably influenced by Lawrence’s writings about Malabar. German writer Cristoph Wieland and Richard Carlile often quoted these customs. Mary Shelly was however not enchanted with the book and parodied it in ‘Frankenstein’. At times, Lawrence was even called Nair Lawrence (W St Clair – Godwins and Shelleys pg 471)

Shelley’s interesting letter to Lawrence about the book and his opinion about Nair’s can be read here. At that time Shelly was married to Harriet Westbrook and feeling miserable about the ‘jail’ institution of marriage. Later he married Mary Godwin only for legal reasons (SL Gladden – Shelley’s textual seductions Pg 127)

Dr Prof Robin Jeffrey (An Aussie academic and keen follower of Nayar society & Kerala) in his essay on the Legacies of Matrliny states thus – Why is Kerala different from the rest of India? It is a question asked for over 30 years. He states the answer right at the beginning of his essay - The place of women in their society is, he believes, the key to the puzzle of the “Kerala model”. In his lovely essay he covers the path taken by the Nair matrilineal society in Kerala till it was finally abolished in 1976. He summarizes - Matriliny did not make women rulers of their families, but it did allow some of them a remarkable latitude unknown elsewhere in India.

References
Indian Renaissance - Hermione De Almeida, George H. Gilpin
Lion Magazine 1828 – Pages 653-672
Shelley pic from Shelley resource pages

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Roxane and the Rakhi

If you look around the legends surrounding the tying of a “Rakhi’, you will chance upon mentions of Alexander (known to Indians as Iskandar or Sikandar), Porus his nemesis, friend and enemy (all in one!!!), and Alexander’s wife Roxane. Very interesting, I thought as my original plan was to study the real story behind the Elephant medallions. Now, why did I have to do that? Because I was reading the latest book by Steve Berry, titled ‘Venetian betrayal’, which actually takes you close to the secret within those elephant medallions…

So it is common knowledge that Alexander after a campaign sweeping across 10,000 miles and covering Europe, Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan & Persia reached Multan near Jhelum to take on the local king Porus. A valiant fight took place between the two armies where Alexander’s soldiers got terrified by the elephant army of Porus. Now the story drifts to two versions, one which says Alexander lost and his soldiers mutinied to go back home to Macedonia and the second where he won, but impressed by Porus’s valor becomes his good friend (the established popular version) after which he allows Porus to continue as king and a favored Hellenistic satrap at that.

But Alexander proved to be an enigma and is still hotly researched by scholars. A grand soldier, titled ordinary or great depending on where the writer or historian is located, he achieved what he did in all of 32 tumultuous years. In those 32 years, he had a number of male and female liaisons, and on the female side he had three wives and apparently two mistresses. The three wives were Roxane, Stateira, Parysatis and perhaps two mistresses Barsine and Pankaste/Kampaspe. It is also suggested in the annals of history that he had other casual involvements as well.

Two of the wives gave him children, but they together with their mothers were killed. His favorite wife, the one he met in 327BC and married while in the Afghan region of Balkh- Soghdia in Bactria (modern day Afghanistan - Mazar-i-Sharif) was Ruk Sana, Roshanak or Roxane. Again there are three versions, one that says he fell in love with her at first sight (she sang in her dad’s – the local king’s mehfil, it appears) and another where the father - king Oxyartes in order to stave off Alexander’s advance through his country got her married to him. A third version states that the girls were hiding in a cave to escape Alexander when he found them and promptly fell in love with her beauty & poise. Here again the story is suspect as Alexander was not too keen on women. Secondly even if it was all done to be seen as a local amongst Persians (he learnt their language and even assumed religious formalities according to some) and accepted Roxane, why would he choose the daughter of a lesser king? Well, let us leave the study to historians who have made Alexander their cause.

Alexander died on the way back from India, in 323 BC. His dead body was never found and even today there are only theories on how he died, one of them being poisoning by Strychnine at the hands of his beloved Roxane…Other theories are West Nile virus, Typhoid, Malaria….So now you know why this enigma is a historians favorite and typical of Greek drama, can stretch for years if a soap opera on it was ever attempted…

Now why should Roxane kill Iskender as Historian Graham Phillips contends? Because she was upset that he was spending quality time with Hephaestion his deputy, his childhood friend and also because he married around that time two other Persian sisters (Some time earlier, Alexander married another woman, named Statiera (Alexander set an example by taking his second and third wives, first Parysatis (dates unknown) and then Stateira, Darius's daughter in a Persian mass marriage ceremony). Roxane was pregnant (their first child died during the Indian campaign) when Alexander died and the generals of Alexander who heard from the emperor that the strongest should rule after him, were all out to clear the tables. When Alexander died, Roxane and child had to flee, to Babylon and later to Macedonia.

After Alexander's death Roxane sent a letter to the Persian princess in Alexander's name, bidding Statiera to come at once to Babylon. When Statiera and her sister Drypetis arrived in Babylon, Roxane had them murdered and their bodies cast into a well. Roxane gave birth to a son, Alexander Aegus, who became King Alexander IV. For many war-filled years after Alexander's death, she successfully maneuvered to protect the child's future with help from Alexander’s mother. In the end, she and her son were victims of the power that the very name of Alexander evoked, the year was 311.

A little bit about Porus, the fight, the relation with Alexander & Roxane. Porus was actually Raja Puru or Parvatha - King of Paurava located between Jhelum and Chenab around today’s Lahore. Indian sources record that Parvata was killed by mistake by the Indian ruler Rakshasa, who was trying to assassinate Chandragupta instead. Greek historians, however, record that he was assassinated, sometime between 321 and 315 BC, by the Thracian general Eudemus, who had remained in charge of the Macedonian armies in the Punjab and who coveted his elephants.

Alexander fared badly enough with Porus in the Punjab. In the Ethiopic texts, Mr E.A.W. Badge has included an account of "The Life and Exploits of Alexander" where he writes inter alia the following: "In the battle of Jhelum a large majority of Alexander`s cavalry was killed. Alexander realized that if he were to continue fighting he would be completely ruined. He requested Porus to stop fighting. Porus true to Indian traditions did not kill the surrendered enemy. After this both signed a treaty, Alexander then helped him in annexing other territories to his kingdom".

Now how did Porus chance upon Roxane? Alexander feared Porus’s elephants, heroism and valor so much so that he became worried about his war and invasion and had pre war sacrifices conducted much against his norm. His soldiers were also very scared facing the magnificent elephant army in the pouring rains and muddy grounds (This linked account is exhaustive). At this point of time, Roxane apparently approached Porus with the sacred thread of Rakhi. She proclaimed him her brother and requested the great Porus to safeguard her husband’s life at any cost, which he did the next day. The king accepted the bond of protection and love and then cooperated with Alexander in his Indian ventures. This apparently led to the popularization of tying Rakhi, which is still prevalent in India.

But well the story also goes the other way, that Porus’s wife met Alexander and tied a Rakhi in his hand with a promise to spare her husband’s life. So, if Roxane who was upset with Alexander, did get friendly with Porus, could she have schemed with him to get rid of the Sikandar with strychnine? Ha ha! now I am thinking like our soap opera queen – jumping jack jeetu’s daughter… But well who knows??

Writes Plutarch, the great Greek historian: ``This last combat with Porus took off the edge of the Macedonians' courage and stayed their further progress in India.... Alexander not only offered Porus to govern his own kingdom as satrap under himself but gave him also the additional territory of various independent tribes whom he had subdued.'' Porus emerged from his war with Alexander, with his territory doubled and his gold stock augmented. Victory in defeat?

And some trivia - However, Alexander's Indian adventure was not entirely unproductive. He had introduced the Indian elephant to the West. He was so much impressed by the broad-bottomed boats carrying grain up and down the Indus that he had them introduced in Greece. The Greeks now introduced five times more spices in the West. Sissoo (Sheesham) wood of the Punjab was used to build pillars for the Susa Palace in imperial Iran. He would, no doubt, have carried the mango also, but for the fact that its over-eating had given the ``God-king'' no end of loose bowel movements. And it was thus Alexander forbade mango-eating in his camp.

Now I started to wonder how the folklore of Roxane meeting Porus came about – The answer probably lay in the story of the famous movie 'Sikandar' released in 1941. Here they have scenes of Roxane meeting Porus and ensuring an agreement that Porus would not kill Alexander. Pretty interesting screen play for those who want to read the words. Incidentally Prithviraj Kapoor and Sohrab Modi acted in the movie.
So when you tie the next rakhi on a boy’s wrist or somebody ties one on yours, remember Alexander, the lovely Roxanne and Porus with his elephants…

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Mahatma Gandhi & William Shirer

Gandiji is coming back to Indian conversation in many ways; it was through Gandhi the movie in 1982, ‘Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara’ in 2005, ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ in 2006, then it was through Gandhi My father that hit the screens some months ago. As the father of our nation, he will remain in our hearts and minds, no doubt about that.

Many years ago a team of HR managers from a famed car company came to our office to determine opinion & feelings of expatriate managers in a third country. We talked about this and that till one of them asked me ‘Tell me what you think was Gandhi’s greatest asset’. I was actually taken aback, and floundered for a few minutes before getting into things like humility, dedication, perseverance, concept of Satyagraha and so on. The questioner, an Italian, said at the end, I don’t think so; I think he was the greatest mass communicator, ever. This happened in 1996 and I guess he was right.

Remember the brilliant ‘Telecom Italia’ Gandhi ad, below from 2006?

And I wondered, did it require an Italian to teach me this attribute of Gandhi? Today he is exemplified in MBA & communications courses. We all revered him, but many of the masses never understood much of what he said when he traveled in India, for example the rural masses of South India!!

All this took me back to a book I read about Gandhiji. Though ‘My experiments with truth’ sounded sermonizing to me when I read it during my teens, the book I read much later was a classic. It was in 1980, that Chicago born William Shirer wrote the book ‘Gandhi – A memoir’. It is not very well known or easily available in India (because of the last chapters I guess), and I was fortunate to find it at the vast Milwaukee airport second hand bookstore (one & only used book store in an airport). As I got my teeth into it, I found it fascinating, covering many facets of Gandhi not previously talked about. It was truly enjoyable and well worth the read. It was far easier than the dense but classic ‘Rise and fall of the third Reich’ by Shirer.

The layman would equate Shirer to the tall Gora (played by Martin Sheen) who accompanied Kingsley Gandhi in the 1982 movie. In reality Shirer spent only a few years of his life with Gandhiji (1930-32) and he said in the book "I count the days with Gandhi the most fruitful of my life. No other experience was as inspiring and as meaningful and as lasting. No other shook me out of the rut of banal existence and opened my ordinary mind and spirit to some conception of the meaning of life on this perplexing Earth."

Shirer went on to say - William L. Shirer, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, observed both Hitler and Gandhi. In Hitler he saw a great orator using staged settings to move captive audiences to his will. Gandhi on the other hand was somehow “the manifestation of their [Indians] collective conscience.” He often led them without speaking, using only his fellowship. He explained, “They felt in the presence of this great man that something immense was suddenly happening in their drab lives, that this saintly man in his loincloth cared about them, understood their wretched plight and somehow had the power, to do something about it.” Gandhi—A Memoir, Shirer pp. 68-69

Shirer explained that Gandhi understood two-way communication as part of effective representation and demonstrated it in an interview with a college teacher, who said: “For these masses Gandhi holds out the only light, the only hope there is. They want to see the man who, they are told, goes around half naked like themselves and yet who dares to present their grievances to the mighty, bemedaled white Viceroy himself.” Gandhi—A Memoir, Shirer pp. 70-71.

For those interested, even though the book is out of print, Amazon still has some second hand copies at $1.00 plus shipping. It is a good read, pick it up…

Vaikom Satyagraha, for the right of the untouchable Hindus to use the roads round the temple at Vaikom tested his principles of Satyagraha together with Sree Narayana Guru (Here was where Vaikom Mohd Basheer the famous writer & Gandhian mentions having received his blessings & managed to touch Gandhiji’s hand) .

Gandhi’s intervention on March 10^th 1925 secured the victory. He later visited Payyanur on 12^th Jan 1934.

Many years ago, while I used to visit N Delhi on business, I used to stay at Hotel Marina in Connaught place, just across the famous Madras restaurant. It was a nicely placed hotel and after a tough day, the perfect place to be. Walking to Janpath and other places was easy and the rooms though not 5 star, acceptable. Much later, I read that Nathuram Godse and his team stayed in this very hotel preparing and planning Gandhi’s assassination, ten days before it was finally done. Check out the marina link above to read more about the plot…

I hope the younger generations will continue to remember this leading light….

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