And the band played on

Published in 1993-4?

Jameer Khan has been blowing his trumpet for various bands for over 14 years now, and he is not smiling about it. Not that life has been fun lately Unlike most other itinerant musicians of his ilk who return to agricultural pursuits during the off season, he must eke out living in Delhi itself and his current vocation is painting walls, furniture, or anything else people will pay him for.

"Music has always been in my family's blood," he declares proudly sitting on a rickety chair by a begrutten wall during a breather, but he would rather that his son grew up into a carpenter or some such thing rather than ever become a trumpeter. Why, I ask and he rejoins with a litany, "The playing season seldom lasts beyond four months, salaries are poor and uncertain, upward mobility, social or professional, is unheard of and there are niggardly compensations to look forward to ... and boy the music nowadays! Carpenters at least never need to sit idle or lay bricks!" he retorts.

He is not alone in this unrewarding profession. Delhi is teeming with brass bands that are virtually mandatory on social occasions. Most musicians hail from poor families with a tradition of professional playing. They invariably come from outside Delhi hoping to make that extra exiguous buck during the peak marriage season or Ramlila when there is an unlimited demand for anybody who can blow a horn or beat a drum.

Ramlila is the big moment when all the musicians and bands look to make the mark that will set the tone for the seguing season. Amidst the festivities, bands from all over Delhi vie to out do each other as the reputations established here are irrefragable determinants of a band's demand and prices. "This is the only time we truly rehearse," Jameer Khan blurts, and some of the sessions stretch for really long periods - sometimes a new tune may take a week to master though "experts" manage in a few hours. Then there are the old favorites that have to be reprised. A good band must be prepared to satisfy all sorts of requests.

Once the season commences life lapses into a familiar pattern. “We want our band to create the right impression," says Madan Lal, the proprietor of Anand Band, "We provide the outfits and the instruments and strive to arrange for the transport. There are a set of musicians on contract, but the number that actually goes out to play varies with the client's requirement and demand."

The musicians themselves know the routine by heart. "A lot of us would make excellent postmen," jokes Mahammad Rajan, a clarinet player with the Popular Band. The work begins with sniffing out the right address and this can be rather cumbersome. In unknown localities when several marriages are being organized in close vicinity, bands preening away at wrong addresses before being displaced by rightful rivals is hardly unknown.

The playing itself is distressingly monotonous. Songs like Aaj mere yaar ki shadi hai and Babul ki duyaen leti ja are the meat and potatoes of every marriage and after a bow to them, the bands launch into the current standards - these nowadays being headed by the ubiquitious Amma dekh and numbers from recent movies like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Chand Ka Tukda. Occasionally a request is made that certain band members are unfamiliar with, but this is rarely a deterrent as chords are struck and impromptu improvisations made.

"We are prepared to play anything as out salaries are peripheral really”, elaborates Mohammed Rajan. "What we are always looking forward to are the tips we get. Our proprietors do not seek shares here and the total tips work out larger then the pay itself. That is why sometimes musicians are prepared to play for a pittance... foot is rarely served to us but sometimes liquor bottles are provided after the show and I suppose a tipple is alright after a hard night's blowing.”

The flexible repertoire and the ability to instantly draw on a variety of styles is a major draw of these bands. The same set of people happily play movie songs, bhajans, Punjabi songs and a lot else, sometimes all on the same night. Competence levels may be pretty average and more often than not most notes sound alarmingly alike even if played in dissonance, but their efforts seldom fail to enthuse Indian revelers who are generally too inebriated to appreciate nuances of any sort.

The idea is really to have some lights and a beat to wiggle at. The bands seldom believe in displays of virtuosity or setting the tempo, they just adjust to the mood, especially now with trolleys having been banned by Delhi Administration on account of noise and traffic problems and the concomitant loss of vocalists who could communicate with the listeners.

Marriages constitute the single largest chunk of a band's engagements but the calendar includes several other events. A man's association with a band lasts a life time, quips Mohammed Rajan's cohort, "we play at the birth, the thread ceremony, marriage, even death. The world is incomplete without us." Now of course with the emphasis on ostentation mounting, bands have become omniscient, playing at jagrans, processions, even birth day parties, playing the same old rhythms with their numbers being symbolic of the client's status.

Loud music on public occasions has definitely been a constant in Indian culture and with time, rather than emphasizing on quality, decibel levels have gone up. One reason that the brass bands supplanted the pipe players of the yore was probably their ability to really spank the ear-drums. The new orchestras that are coming in routinely use microphones and amplifiers to make quire a din, and with their vocalist they have the advantage of putting up real shows. Does that make any difference to the way the traditional bands conduct their business?

Chander Prakash at Anand Band sees some of the better musicians migrating to the more lucrative orchestras but this is hardly a significant phenomenon. "None of us depend solely on music for our livelihood and our skills are not extraordinary either. But we are willing to walk and our music envelops our listeners who believe we play just for them as we stand in little circles around anybody who wants to move to our music . We offer immediacy and we are an inalienable part of the Indian tradition. As long as traditions live we will be too," he says.

Despite the penury, there is pride in the playing. "Some of us have our problems with breathing, but our breath brightens other people's lives," says Jammer Khan. Poverty may ultimately force his kids out of the hereditary profession but die-hards like Mohammed Rajan say that all in all it’s not such a bad life. "Sleep in the day, blow for a few hours at night and sometimes somebody calls you 'master saab'. Its not too great but its okay."

Part of a seminar on the press during the emergency – on the role of The Statesman

Written in 1992. Published 1995?

Among the English language, mainstream national newspapers, only the Indian Express and the Statesman emerged with their reputation and credibility enhanced by their deportment during the Emergency. This despite the fact that they were more constrained by censorship regulations than other newspapers due to their contumacious broadsides against several aspects of the Emergency. As has been mentioned earlier, the Indian Express was placed under total pre-censorship and not even the sports pages or the matrimonial columns were spared scrutiny. The Statesman managed to avoid such fate but could not avoid intermittent pre-censorship. It however managed to successfully challenge a government decision to not give it any advertisements. The order issued in August, 1976 had to be withdrawn following the high court order in February 1977.

Most post-Emergency works have identified the Statesman, published simultaneously from Delhi and Calcutta, as the most vociferous critic of the government during the Emergency. One of the reasons assigned is its diffused proprietary structure wherein no party controlled over 13% of the shares. These factors allowed its editor, Mr.C.R.Irani, to function in an atmosphere bereft of any standardized management policy regarding editorial content, and follow his own anti-establishment volition. Such fortuitous circumstances were not available to fellow editors. The Hindustan Times was controlled by the Birlas who were decidedly with Mrs. Gandhi, while a third of the Board of Directors of the TOI was nominated by the Government enabling it the latter to pull all the strings. The Hindu owners too were disinclined towards confrontation.

In any case, the fact remains that the Statesman did, in a very notable and creditable way, wage a battle of wits with the Government. However, it should not be assumed that the daily sheets of the Statesman were littered with anti-government propaganda. Not only would such a step have invited immediate reprisals, possibly even proscription, it might also have damaged the newspaper’s credibility. In the case most issues of the Statesman were dominated by the government viewpoint. The highest print and photographic space was accorded to the Prime Minister and most of it held her in favorable light. The opposition, after being absolutely blanked in the initial days of the emergency, got a worthwhile look in only in the crepuscular days of the Emergency. A considerable amount of space was devoted to matters entirely extraneous to domestic policies. Stories from abroad received considerable space as did human-interest stories. Disasters and accomplishments like the Viking landing also competed successfully for space. Active criticism of the Government received a comparative modicum of space, and was frequently camouflaged, but it was this that distinguished the Statesman from most other papers as the following shall endeavor to establish.

Perscrutation of a month’s editions prior to the declaration of the Emergency immediately establishes the Statesman has being sympathetic to the opposition’s cause. The Gujarat elections, extensively covered serve as beacon of Mrs.Gandhi’s falling star, as violence and dissatisfaction dog her campaign. Thus a headline like, ‘Mrs. Gandhi’s car stoned by students’ (5.6.75) appears more message than news.

The paper’s coverage of Mrs. Gandhi’s disqualification by the Allahabad high court judgment and the events leading up to the Emergency may be said to have set the tone for the newspaper’s demeanor over the next year and half. The edition dated 13.6.75 is paradigmatic. The report on Mrs. Gandhi’s disqualification (under banner headlines) mentions ‘wide acclaim’ for Justice Sinha in the ‘crowded courtroom’. The front page includes the opposition’s clamor for Mrs. Gandhi’s head couched in the strident advice to ‘respect judiciary’. The promptly produced editorial urges resignation on ‘moral grounds’. The op-ed article by N.J.N. speaks piously of, ‘democratic tradition and conventions’ while going for the incumbent’s jugular, and a string of letters unanimously endorse the view. However amidst the entire diatribe a photograph of Mrs. Gandhi straddles a conspicuous corner of the front page and she gets her say in no uncertain terms. The second lead story concerns Congress leaders rallying around Mrs.Gandhi in unanimous support. There is also a reprint of the Times, London story that Mrs.Gandhi’s peccadillo would not be considered ‘corrupt practice’ in U.K. Most interestingly however, Mrs. Gandhi is quoted as promising to ‘work for the upliftment of the poor’. A week later Mrs. Gandhi was allowed to invoke the specter of ‘Central Crisis’ and ‘threat on the border’. On the same day the first letter questioning the resignation theory appeared. ON 21.6.75, Mrs.Gandhi earned another quotation in the front page when addressing a boat club rally in her support, she said, ‘when people remind us that many promises have not been met they should remember the obstacles and difficulties. We have not let the nation down’. Such homilies and other ‘progressive and developmental’ ideals were to become a constant refrain over the next 18 months.

There was no edition of the paper on 27.6.75 the day after the imposition of the Emergency as electricity to most newspaper houses had been cut following government instructions. The paper the day after carried very innocuous headlines of the Emergency report. The lead photo, quite ironically, was from abroad and in keeping with the subdued mood, and in marked contrast to 13.6.75 there was no editorial comment on the Emergency. A little blank space had been left in the op-ed page, but this illegal practice was hastily abandoned thereafter. Notably, all letters had switched to mundane affairs. Clearly censorship was in force and the fact was mentioned in an exiguous column, in gross violation of censorship orders, but soon enough the Statesman’s ardor was diminish.

Looking at the newspaper in the days ahead, an innocuous observer may be pardoned if he cannot descry the existence of such a dybbok as the Emergency, and if the Prime Minister conveys the impression of being the paragon of all virtues. The front page was soon reduced to carrying news items like ‘Prices of cinema tickets and eggs reduced’ (22.8.75). And this was not an isolated instance. News reports like ‘Sunday Market at Chandni Chowk moved’ (21.7.75) ‘Delhi shops get a pruning’ (9.8.75) and ‘issue of tokens to cyclists’ (13.8.75) became the norm. Apart from being obscure reminders of government efficiency, they quintessentially appeared to be the result of the need to fill pages. A letter published on 11.1.76 called for compulsory sterilization of beggars. It is unlikely that such a letter would have been published at any time except the Emergency, and while to a later reader it appears to be a manifestation of the general inanity prevalent in the nation at that time, it is unlikely that the Statesman was using the letter as an ironical aside on the Emergency for the posterity.

Not all ‘propaganda’ on the Emergency was couched in such subtile terms. The front page was frequently devoted to playing up the sunny side of the Emergency while Mrs. Gandhi basked in the glow. New items like ‘Indira Gandhi lists the gains of Emergency’ (25.7.75) and ‘ only democracy can work in India’ (7.8.75) constantly appeared. Through most of the period of the Emergency Mrs. Gandhi grabbed headlines spouting democratic ideals and progressive measures. Thus she spoke of ‘Women’s rights’ (15.1.76) ‘decentralisation’ (22.2.76) ‘scientific farming’ (11.4.76) ‘Solar Energy’ (31.12.76) et.al. and espoused other akin ideals and Government measures whilst reiterating platitudes like the need for ‘Democracy to suit a country’s needs’ (29.10.75). She also got away with half-truths, like ‘there is no censorship in India’ (9.7.76) when clearly several publications were under censorship at that time. The Statesman chose not be question such statements. Indeed it published an editorial titled ‘Flourishing Press’ (31.1.76) which was generally a summary of the report of Registrar of Newspapers based on figures till 1973 and made absolutely no mention of censorship laws. The newspaper also gave prominent space to Mrs.Gandhi’s invective against the Western press. News items like ‘Bias in Criticism of the Western Press’ (3.3.76) and ‘ Ignore western press – Indira Gandhi’ (16.9.76) where faithfully rendered with no questions asked. The newspaper also eagerly covered the Non aligned press conference that was ironically enough held in New Delhi and encouragingly published Mrs. Gandhi’s address (with her photo lead) whence she spoke of ‘the need to fight Western Colonial Media (9.1.76). The paper thus let go of an excellent opportunity to expose the hypocrisy inherent in the summit.

The newspaper persisted with an equivocal stance towards censorship. While carrying on a battle of attrition with the censor authorities itself, it strangely enough chose to favor censorship of other media. An editorial on 8.6.76 identified TV and radio as ‘modes of propaganda’ and called for a ‘sophisticated approach’ to their censorship. It also suggested that film censorship be ‘qualitatively vigilant’ rather than merely quantitative’. The movie review section of the paper may be held culpable of being politically inert. The most glaring instance was the unanalytical review of the film made by Sukhdev on the emergency, provocatively titled ‘Thunder of freedom’. The review mentioned ‘wide-spread acceptance’ of the Emergency and questioned none of the aspects of the documentary that was apparently a panegyric to the Emergency. Most galling of all though was the latent tyrant in the reviewer, streaks of which were revealed when he constantly hoped that something in the Emergency provisions would enable him to ban all that he did not like in Hindi movies, viz. sex, violence and even excessive length.

The opposition did not derive much succor from the newspaper, indeed it was blanked out for the most part. Reports on JP’s movement surceased entirely, and JP himself occasionally made it to the paper only due to deteriorating health. Mrs. Gandhi was able to level accusations like the ‘opposition (is) taking undue advantage of our tolerance, friendship, politeness, frankness’ (24.2.76), without the opposition getting a chance to retaliate in print. Top leaders like Morarji Desai and Charan Singh barely got a look in whereas Sanjay Gandhi (after making an initial photographic appearance on (8.3.76) was regularly featured. Other Congress leaders were visible too with some like Barooah being particularly prominent. When the Home Minister made a blatantly pro-Emergency statement that he hoped ‘new habits would become a way of life’ (14.9.75), it merited front-page attention. On the same day, the regime was eulogized for the ‘Big increase in the State’s income – better collection of taxes’. Unsurprisingly therefore, even readers of the putatively anti-Emergency Statesman often became convinced of the Government’s merit as a letter published just prior to the 1977 elections shows. The reader writes, anyone who has read the newspaper carefully over the last year cannot fail to be struck by the advances made’ (20.2.77) and plumps for the Congress on the basis of the Statesman reporting.

Within the limited ambit of the current research it has not been possible to precisely determine the reason for such reporting in a newspaper whose editor frequently took the opportunity to take potshots at the Government. The very need to keep the newspaper afloat could have been once such exigency. The Government made no secret of the displeasure with which it viewed the activities of the Statesman and apart from putting legal pressure even tried to place Government nominees on the Board of Directors. At a meeting held under the chairmanship of Mrs.Gandhi on August 12, 1975 different ways of dealing with the Statesman were discussed and under instructions of the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, the Company Law Board was moved on December 10, 1975 to appoint Government nominees on the Board of Directors under section 408 of Company’s Act, 1956 on the ground that the Statesman had indulged in malpractices relating to news print. It is a different matter that the Statesman was ultimately able to prove the case malafide, but there is certitude regarding extreme pressure. Creditably then, the Statesman refused to tergiversate the carried on in critical vein, though it often had to take recourse to metaphors and veiled references to get past the censor.

The anti-establishment tone of the newspaper before the Emergency has been aforementioned and its vehement editorials (12.6.75, 14.6.75, 17.6.75, 18.6.75) pressing for Mrs.Gandhi’s resignation after the Allahabad High Court Judgment marked the apogee of the stance. The combative mood appeared to have vanished with the imposition of the Emergency and interestingly not a solitary op-ed article condemning the Emergency appeared till December 1976. However while the clangorous nature of the protest may have had to be dissembled, the Statesman, while never losing sight of pragmatism, continued to chip away.

It carried out pretty reasonable reportage of the Supreme Court Appeal by Mrs. Gandhi with regard to her election case, allowing equal space to consul arguments on both sides, thus leaving the door ajar for some anti-government rhetoric to creep in. It also carried regular reports on various constitutional amendments taking place at that time, albeit minus any significant analysis. While this occluded the scope for any trenchant criticism of the implicit motives behind these amendments, it was probably prudent to do so in the days of censorship, thus also excusing itself from the obligation to voice encomiums apropos these amendments.

On 16.9.75 there appeared an interesting photograph on the front page captioned ‘Beggars continue to squat in Delhi’. It showed a couple of beggars at the swanky Connaught Place. Innocuous as the photograph appears, I venture an animadversion in the light of the drive towards order in the city. The papers at that time were dominated by various drives towards punctuality, cleanliness, efficiency, discipline etc., and also reports of punitive measures being taken against offenders. The Statesman, by publishing this photo, may have been trying to picturise defiance. I may be running the gauntlet of over interpretation here but the photo does stand out amidst those of clean streets, perfect traffic etc.

In more assured vein, the comparison with Pakistan was insidiously bruited to exhibit the discrepancies prevalent in the current situation in India. The technique involved was to play upon the antipathy towards Bhutto and by innuendo suggest simulacrum with Mrs. Gandhi’s policies. Two episodes stand out in particular. On 1.1.75 the paper carried out a report on Bhutto using Mrs. Gandhi’s speeches to defend his position and invoking her logic of strengthening the center and simultaneously warned of the authoritarian proclivities intrinsic in such a mode of governance . On 24.2.76 the editorial took issue with Bhutto for carrying out short-term measures’ and went on to apostrophize, ‘Pakistan is more important than Bhutto’. This was obviously a dig at Barooh’s slogan that ‘Indira is India’.

Around November 1975, the reporting on Emergency increased as pre-censorship was relaxed. Mrs. Gandhi, while she continued to enjoy a privileged position in terms of news-worthiness, now occasionally found herself on the defensive. Thus on 6.11.75 a report appeared: ‘Indira Gandhi admits distortions in the economy’. Others in the same vein included, ‘Indira Gandhi denies lurch to the right’ (31.12.75) and ‘fifth plan not given up, says Mrs. Gandhi’ (10.1.76). While such reports failed to establish any points against the government they did succeed in mentioning some of the popular grievances of the time. These reports were filed’ By our special correspondent’ and while not being radical had the merit of raising issues, and also signaled the paper’s independence from the Government controlled news agency ‘Samachar’. This also allowed forbidden terrain to be explored. Thus on 14.9.75, the detenus were mentioned for the first time in a report titled ‘30% of the detenus freed’ due to prevailing normalcy. A more interesting report appeared on 21/2/76 , after the imposition of the President’s rule in Tamil Nadu, a letter appeared that spoke of the ‘value of liberty’ but refrained from mentioning the Emergency. The editorial column too was not entirely bereft of fight. Conspicuous instance included the following:

1. 9.11.75 – the editorial questioned the propriety of the amendment, which made the Supreme Court verdict of Mrs. Gandhi’s case redundant. Cheekily, the editorial was titled ‘Welcome relief’ and began in spirit appreciative of the assured stability at the center before changing tack towards the end. This may have been done to inveigle the censor.
2. 18.1.76 -- The editorial on Family Planning questioned the government’s actual priorities against stated ones mentioning the cut in the budgetary allotment to family planning, thereby making the government appear to be dragging its feet. It also suggested coordination rather than coercion as the more efficacious method, thus bringing to fore the taboo subject of coercion.
3. 13.3.76 – Editorial on the collapse of the Gujarat Government during the budget session refers to the ‘inability of the opposition in the present political climate’ thus hinting at the undemocratic state of affairs prevalent in the country.
4. 24.3.76 – Editorial on the opposition. It bids ‘Ground rules of parliamentary politics have changed… old concepts of opposition irrelevant, new rules of iscusion and criticism’ and leaves little doubt about where its own sympathies lie. It also seizes the opportunity to criticize the Congress role in the Gujarat opposition.
5. 1.4.76 – The editorial says ‘ The judiciary has done us proud in the Emergency’. It makes no specific mention of any judgments but it was common knowledge at that time that the judiciary had courageously refused to be cowed down by the Emergency provisions that aimed at strengthening the executive beyond control. This symbolic editorial put the Statesman firmly behind the oppressed.

Matters finally reached a head with the 44th (later rechristened 42nd) amendment bill, which the Statesman vehemently opposed. The subdued editorial or 2.9.76 set the ball rolling. It spoke sarcastically about its prolixity but was quiet otherwise. It did however mention the probability of a ‘long debate’. Soon enough it began to publish criticism of the bill. Thus on 8.10.76, it published a criticism of the bill by J.C. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. On 18.10.76 it published pro and con views of a wide section of people. On 20.10.76 lawyers and women vented spleen at the ‘change’ in basic laws.’ Finally on 28.10.76 an editorial described the bill as ‘nothing but an attempt to take away from people what belongs to them’. In a follow up the next day the editorial warned that ‘concentration of power can be very dangerous’. Suitably, a sudden volley of letters took the editor’s side. (30.10.76).

In December 1976, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting finally abandoned attempts to legally force the Statesman into acceding to a government appointment on the Board of Directors. It was a major victory for the Statesman and it showed in its coverage of the elections in 1977. By then it had found the courage to openly criticize censorship. An editorial on 1.3.77 declared, ‘Press censorship is a pernicious doctrine… few countries can outshine India in the bizarre nature of many censorship orders’. When Mrs. Gandhi declared at an election meeting at Behrampur in Murshidabad district that ‘The Prime Minister represents the entire people and any attack on him or, her is an on the entire people’, several letters ridiculed her. Democracy was a different ball game for them.

On the poll eve the editorial ventured ‘The extent of lying heard since June’75 would have made Mephistopheles tremble’. It spoke of ‘meanness displayed in achieving objectives’ and averred ‘never before in India have such responsibilities been placed upon voters’. After the results had been declared and Mrs. Gandhi voted out of power in a democratic way, the Statesman obviously felt vindicated and exulted, ‘We India can hold our head a little higher today’. (22.3.77).

Words as ideas,

From the days when I confused words for ideas. This one reflects my fascination for the cinematic experience (rather than movies themselves). The other one is a look at the evolution of media tools and why its hegemony is illusory. A total write-off this one. Words, more words, and then some more with the odd sparkling sentence thrown in. Spot it if you can. Definitely not my finest hour!!

At the formula movies

Life is a movie formula. We, old fans who have always been at the movies, do not let prescience of the end (death = end of the movies) bother us too much. We sit back in the dark as the projector runs itself out on the glassy screen, in alternating, pulsating shades of incandescent, dull and sombre, as hombres bursting out of the projector’s luminous alchemy spread themselves out on the white screen (but we will call it silver, not because of bromide, but because we worry about the image, of the things we see and the way they show us and the way we see ourselves in them), once vitreous diamond, one sweating, glistening coal.

And we return every night so that we can sit in masochistic darkness blacker than the tenebrity outside, and watch shafts of light overhead torch the silk(y) screen that we have built for ourselves in a distant, visible, conspicuous yet where-else corner of our daily theatre, so that it flares into life (illumining only the smoothly stretched, taut screen, but we feel a soothing glow , and our grateful eyes sparkle and our shining clothes always crackle in movie halls) and onereic, phantasmagoric yet so veritable figures (that we credulous folks, believe that we are going to be just like them, and they are just like ‘me’) twinkle into vivification and we really don’t care whether these apparitions laugh or cry or brood or exult or suffer (for they are pretence anyway !), all that we want to do, while we have the time, while the movie runs and we are more animate than the projector’s people, is to be happy, to make the best out of it.

Our whole life is onanism to these movies, and the movies are peccavis of our hieratic wet- dreams. We sit like paramours with inamoratas, in the last row of the balcony, gazing at the unnaturally clear, epidermal screen, the cleanest part of the theater, a sacred palimpsest of our guilt and desire apropos our neighbor in the theatre and the searing pilgrim urge for exoneration (or exorcism), whilst the screen flickers and crumbles into vitality; but across our uncertain exculpation hangs the pallid aureole of impotent remorse, because we cannot help knowing that every time a movie begins it begins to end. We have amortized the movies with our pertinacious solipsism. We have become the movies. We are the movies.

Is this then the formula? The lord said: let there be life, and there were movies. We, old fans, who have always been at the movies, know this formula by heart, and thrive on its empathetic benison. We are ashamed for we know we are as parasitic as fetus, but we still buy umbilical chords at ticket counters and flee into wombs where these shadowy projectors wait for us amidst deception of the nocturne, with their ephemeral light and their quasi-catoptric grasp and suzerainty over our gullible sentience. We sleep among them because they are our oldest friends and their life makes our own lives luminescent by proxy. We go to these chthonian places because they are ‘it’, because there is no other place to go. Amidst all the prestidigitation, we have no illusions. Yet, we hasten lest we miss the beginning, but everyone knows the end. The formula rules. We know that the gamin will get the gamine, but will it be a happy ending? We have always wondered.

This then is the formula. We like to fly so high that our wings melt and we fall from the sky. But the formula stares me so close in the eye; it is too far for you, too near for I.

An architecture of the media

The industrial society was arguably the first to rush headlong into the future. During ancient society and medieval feudalism, time was at best a tertiary given – ineluctable yes, but seldom imperative, on account of the sharply defined but seemingly eternal elitist hegemonic order (best exemplified in the Annalist historiography which subordinates ‘event’ and ‘structural’ time to the ‘langue duree’), and technology that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

The age of the ‘techne’ marked the crossing of a Rubicon – for the first time in human history the notoriously futuristic credo of progress and development became immediately available and the impending became inextricably enmeshed with the quotation. In every, sphere life was suddenly agog with ‘marvels’ – Newton, steam engines, Darwin, the Bessemer patent, the serendipitous invention of the Montgolfier brothers, and more. Factory life and production opened new vistas of possibility and the human horizon of expectations has since been bounding exponentially.

Doomsayers of various ilk, from Spengler to Henry Adams (and we may also include the pessimistic visions of such as Schumacher and George Miller) have often focused attention towards growing socio-political labyrinths and fragmentation, the perilous state of resources, historical cycles and slipstreams, thermodynamic discharge and akin factors, and raised plausible visions of apocalypse but the bubble has stubbornly refused to burst. Discontent with going around the world in eighty days, generations have successively diminished the temporal expanse of the world and as we enter the post-modernist world of ‘chaos’ ‘uncertainty’ and ‘relativity’ we ‘inner and outer’ in techno-time more than ever before.

It is a matter of no little significance in the history of our racer civilization that the media has grown in scale and stature in tandem with the coeval ‘technologisation’ and democratization of the common society. The advent of the scientific revolution and capitalism broke feudal strangleholds and emasculated the various versions of the ‘estates’ order that had been perpetuating their stultifying influence around preponderate parts of the world. Social and philosophical notions of the individual arose. Even while tenets of egalitarianism were distant, more and more men rose to participate more freely and actively and in many more spheres than had been hitherto possible.

Greater involvement logically entailed greater generation of information, which had to be spread over greater distances and a greater spectrum and in lesser time. Indeed, before the world shrank it bloated, but the technology that engendered it also made the proportions of this tumescence manageable, even beneficial. The post office and mass media were both the handiwork and handmaiden of the information driven manufacturing society.

It may indeed be irrefragably averred that the institution of mass media could not have been envisaged or derived even until late feudalism. In those days information was expensive (custom-made, to use later terminology that is most befitting), scarcely traveled large distances and concerned only a handful of people (mostly elite) and remarkable events, and was disseminated with only as much celerity as quadruples could manage. However unlike medieval systems capitalism was an open and outward looking phenomenon that was impelled by its innate, expansionist logic to forever draw and co-opt more and more elements to fuel its dynamics.

Quite inevitably the cost effective, technologically efficient and wide-reaching method of mass media became its natural messenger. The invention of the Guttenberg press was a magnetic event around which all the forces presiding over the passing of the feudal era clustered. The invention, apart from being the harbinger of technological promise, was an important step towards the democratization of the most critical implement of power, i.e., knowledge – it was no longer the sole prerogative of monastic ivory towers and fittingly many great inventors and ideologues rose from the ranks of common society.

The tide soon turned into a deluge even as more and more specialized target audiences for mass media were created. From books arose magazines, journals, comic books, posters and pamphlets. Progress in other technological avenues gave birth to radio, television, cinema video, compact disc, audiotapes etc and today we are on the cybernetic brink of interactive TV and ‘virtual reality’. All along the reach (market = mass base = mass participation) of the mass media (and even popular culture) has shown steady acclivity, so much so that it is now among the cardinal signifiers of our society much in the same way as the elitist activities of the past such as art and architecture symbolized the cutting edge of their respective eras.

Any architecture of the media must be characterized by its triumvirate of coefficients – time, technology and democracy (by which is meant general involvement and not its strictly political connotation), and this combinatory is geared towards the production and regurgitation of information. It is in this light that we must comprehend that mass media can never afford to be either entirely didactic or mindless and refrains like Doordarshan’s pontificatory shibboleth – to educate and entertain – must be assiduously discarded.

The animadversion becomes clearer if the most transparent facets of the mass media such as hard news, features, documentaries, drama, fiction, editorials etc. are neglected in favor of the more subtle messages that are transmitted to the subconscious of the receiver, thus influencing his subjectivity and future choices. Popular cinema is a fine exemplar and the persistence and popularity of formula in various guises around the world a most suitable giveaway. If cinema were to be reduced to mere plots, the medium would soon become redundant and it is the medium’s efficacy as a carrier of sub-textual information that has kept it vivified.

The most commonly understood of these sub-textual signs are perhaps prevalent fashion, socio-politico-cultural trends and boundaries and technological prowess or limitation as the case may be. The prevalent knowledge of and about the world draws barriers for popular cinema that it cannot deny and as such they are reflected in the message- medium. Thus Ramanand Sagar’s Sita showed greater fidelity to Raja Ravi Verma’s prototypes than to some informed opinion that suggested that a topless Sita would bear greater affinity to a historical reconstruction of the germane age’s fashion tastes.

Similar paradigms abound (however it must be specified forthwith that the above and segueing are not intended to establish the primacy of the sub-text over the text or the vice-versa, but rather the endeavor is to piece together the sprawling nature of the mass-media). News selection is a case in point that aptly reflects upon the mass media as a disseminator of collective intellectual information, or the dominant knowledge structure of the world. The triumph of hegemony lies in compliant subjectively and when the mass media, ostensibly of its own volition, chooses to highlight starvation deaths in Ethiopia rather than in Kalahandi or to discuss Booker entries in greater detail than Jnanpeeth winners its susceptibilities become immediately lucid.

The old hat about whether railway accidents should count as news comparable to air-crashes may also be mentioned. A pattern may easily be described in the way news items are carefully selected, classified or discarded by all sections of mass media and this ineluctably denotes the medium as a carrier of hegemonic information more than anything else.

This hegemony should not be construed in the sense of precepts emanating from the upper echelons of the society or else mass media would violate the democracy coefficient aforementioned and would be indistinguishable from propaganda machinery (communist Russia is an example of didactically organized media set up which was destined to be an aberration). The consent I have in mind is a democratic one that pervades common society and is not monolithic. The history of the past two centuries bears ample testimony to the fecundity of such an understanding of hegemony and the mass media has not been bereft of its implications. At an intellectual level it has been witness and party to an unprecedented democratization ideology – never on prior record have so many prominent ideologies jostled for space on a global level and it would not be improper to say that minus democratic mass media such would not have been feasible. All modern ideologies from Marxism to environmentalism owe this debt to the mass media, which has not only spread the word but also lent these ideologies a degree of authenticity that can only come from cold print.

Putative media issues like Bofors and RJB-BM imbroglio may be understood in this context. The media must not be made the hero or the villain of the piece (if holistically considered) for it serves merely as a conduit and not as a demiurge. Its powers are limited by the co-efficient driven nature of its existence. Similarly at the consumerist level mass media constantly alters and establishes points of reference sometimes stretching, but never violating the democracy co-efficient, and also simultaneously reinforces the time principle. An explicardum lies in advertising. It functions at twin pedestals: -

• As a rapid informant of production news with the concomitant sub-textual information similar to the one discussed in the case of popular cinema; and
• As a lever and control on mass media as result of the complex interaction between producers and consumers in the contemporary society.

Indeed the symbiotic relation may be shown as: mass media ß> advertising is an integral part of mass media but also an active instrument of the same while the mass media becomes a gestalt advertisement of the state of the world. In the context of this essay this point may be seen as merely a reiteration of the former, only with the qualification that the definition of advertising would have to be expanded to accommodate not only items that are expressly labeled so but also disparate features like news or rock videos with their implicit underpinnings that derive from all our coefficients – time, technology and democracy.

Thus mass-media would appear to be our culture’s prime mode of ‘talking’ – in the context of getting information across to our ‘circle’ (which is often global in the modern and post-modern case). Undeniably there are other modes of communication, telephones and computers being two of them with global reach but these can never achieve mass media’s influential status unless they venture out of the personal sphere -- computers with their vast and inter connected information pools seemingly have the potential to compete and it is apprehended in several quarters that in alignment with mass media it would inexorably lead towards the de-privatization of our society thus hearkening towards a simulacrum of the primitive commune.

Marshall Mcluhan’s vision of a global village borne out of tetradic permutations is an augury of such a fate. He envisions a world wrapped by inter-connected, disembodied voices in the noisiest era of human history and an altered nature of institutional life towards which we seen to be heading with our telegenic leaders, sound bites, prime time mania and excessive consumerism etc with time reduced to a channel zap. The nature of the individual and democracy shall indubitably be restructured and technology remolded in accordance.
Mass Media, while it shall survive will not remain the same. The portents are already visible. Modern audiences have greater freedom and access than ever before and information embargo appears to be a thing of the past. Modern media so fills our sky that any one with an antenna can pluck gleanings from it. Choices are unlimited and round the clock specialized channels under one flag (thus de-centralizing without losing a central identification plank) are rapidly becoming the norm with the fare doctored to meet international tastes.

The movement is towards ‘totalled specialisation’ and even in India mass media networks are diversifying to include as many servers as possible – thus e.g. Bennet Coleman has acquired a stake in television. Abroad too large-scale mergers have take place with Time Warner being among the notables. Time magazine is also available electronically. It may never perhaps be possible to spread information evenly around the world but it will definitely not be for lack of trying.

A versicle in edgeways; or floundering juvenilia

• The sun has set on the night.
• The winter night, ardent pursuer of the semidiurnal, is yet again inveigled into evanescence by time feigning stasis.
• The dawn has dawned.
• A bellicose, recrudescent sun peruses contumacious, flocculent clouds, seeking ingress.
• The dew, vitreous vesper of the night, wangled from the clouds, ensconced in the grass; and upon it a misty apparition of the quasi morning. It blinks.
• She blinks, she winks, she hood winks.

The revivified sun descries an exiguous schism amidst the hitherto incoherent clouds. The obtruding sorority surmounted, consanguine solar rays, parergons in concinnity, peregrinate towards the land peregrine only to its autochthons. Out in the courtyard, blessed by truant pedagogues to peripatetic delinquency, a quartet of humdingers savors the catechism their spirit siphons from the nature’s procreaees; shuddering at the vagrant antics of the mordacious wind. She, the svelte sylph, is appareled in raiment of morganatic proportion. It, the willow wind, is jocose today. A gust of fresh air, emanating from the burgeoning chimera in our minds, eschews the verdant grass, elicits a shiver from a neighbor, brandishes withered leaves against the fleeting dust, and with chevalier strides swoops upon the girl. Look at that, look at that! A bystander bellows, the wind blows, the skirt billows. Atrophied eyes cartograph the evolution of the escalating arrayment into a spectacle of ascending chic. Bravo! The incendiary (piacular perhaps) faculty of the ebullient wind that transcreates into her pulchritudinous cheeks a flaming rubicund flush. ‘Aw’ she apostrophizes, ‘the gump!

The gump? Nay – the gumption of the cognoscenti. The skirt is scattered, and the day is araised. Oddity! I have fallen in love. The heart, perfidious instrument, conjures and abjures, abducts and reneges, musters and disimmures… the precocious sensation. Far away from me, cloistered by serendipitous prolepsis, cajoled by sententious inefficacy, and yet sequestered by claustrophobic vicinity, the hoyden and the hobbledehoy amble moodily into the purview – and when she tramples his shadow, trespasses into his being, traverses his soul, the stultified hedonism, soporific within him, thrives again; and when their askance glances converge, from her squint-eyed masquerade there shimmers affection, or affectation; from the inchoate swivel of his eyes there gleams trepidation. Speak, I enjoin, let the words roll. The recurrent rhyming, the echoing encores, the awry alliterations! But I butt into rebuttals, I can’t cant, I ascribe, proscribe, I weigh, inveigh… Far away from me the hoyden and the hobbledehoy trot - - and when she unfurls her arms as riposte to a fellow’s hullo-ed humdudgeon, he meanders towards his rescinded persona, stammers thingummy poetry; and when the redolent Samina ruffles his olfactory glands, the atavistic instincts fulminate, the impending perdition prevaricates… Ah! I am maladroit and a goop. Far away from me she shall retreat. I walk away. Chaotic!

Quixotic! The women eh, they make men out of us.

• The hour is a transvestite.
• The air bristles with divested moorings, and embellished paraphernalia.
• Dishabilled: heart in monologue.
• Accoutred: heart in soliloquy.

The aureole is forsaken. Yet the reveur reveres the revue. A splendid chiaroscuro of resplendence augurs the peroration of the interregnum afore the ordained resurrection. Hey, I whistle, hey. He sees pretty, makes prettier. He is a magician. He is an alchemist. He transmogrifies verity. He transmutes the mundane. He transfuses the gospel. He translates the monochromatic. He transgresses the ethereal. He transcends the phantasmal. The eclectic trainee. The cherubic Kavita embroiled in solipsistic missives, strolls along an isolated street, stalked by fobs who vituperate her, accost her, accord her emetic bonhomie. He molests them. The imbroglio has quotidian reincarnations. The ravishing Saryu, lovely in the transpicacious morning, has had her facility at coitus honed by him. He precludes the mottled Swati’s harangue and is dumbfounded by the demure Chaya, ‘Sweetheart! She knows not I love her. Pitiable sweetheart. ‘ The reveur reveres the revue … Far away from me the gamine and gamin perambulate. I walk, I run.

• I am too pudent for chivalry.
• The sun descants.
• Get thee to a nunnery.
• The sun descants.
• How about it.

Net naiveté

More sex! I wrote this one when the Internet was only something you read about. And guess Virtual Reality sleaze was the easiest way to get my editor’s attention! This one is a little tamer. A description of my first encounter with the Internet at a college laboratory when ‘Windows’ was still a magical word.

Surf's up

Published in 1997 - or thereabouts

Manoj Naik, research student at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, is hunched over his terminal at Gateway Sleepy on the Internet. Cyberspace is the part of the world he knows best and today he is giving me a ride across this wondrous frontier.

I am especially curious because Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) has just announced that anybody who has a personal computer, modem, and a telephone can register himself and hook onto the Internet. But what do you do once you get there, and what is the big hurry anyway?
Naik clicks open the windows in his computer and lets me peer at the fascinating parallel world inside. Colored bands float across the screen and he keys in appropriate instructions. "Internet is a virtually inexhaustive source of information" he tells me. "Here you can find something about almost anything on earth."

But that must make Internet a vast jumble of information. How then do you locate whatever you are looking for? " Very few people are ever sure of the locations. So we have Web Browsers - friendly software like Netscape and Mosaic - which are directories to the Internet" explains Naik. "They are navigational charts which take you wherever you want to go."

Right now we are trying to locate information on Dire Straits, the rock band. The mouse in Naik's hand is a magic wand as it traipses across the screen to reveal layers of information. Our catchword is Dire Straits and soon enough a picture of the familiar steel guitar begins to form on the screen.

Even with the high technology it has not been particularly easy. The Indian Internet link functions on a very narrow bandwidth, which limits the amount of information, it can carry. The way I figure it, it is rather like transporting petroleum in tubes instead of pipelines. Information filters through painfully slowly, taking minutes rather than seconds. Pictures come on even more leisurely than the text and Mark Knopfler's guitar forms in little dabs on the screen.

Pretty soon however we have hiccups with the telephone line. Despite its technological pretensions Internet is a no go if old-fashioned telephone lines do not work. Our connections are finally 'alive' after consuming quite a bit of our patience. Naik still does not trust his luck entirely and repeatedly opens the magic window on the screens to confirm that the telephone connections have not been delinked.

When we are finally ready to read, the information available is a fan's dream. Critical articles, interviews, discography, biographical details; news of forthcoming plans, etc, are all there and what is more this information is constantly updated. On Internet nothing is ever behind the times.

All the information is not merely a blink on the screen. Unlike big screen movies these can be preserved forever and for no cost; finally books for free! And what is more even picture can be stored.

So far the information we have been looking for has spiraled one way towards us." The beauty of the Internet line in the enter -activity," says Naik, " If you are looking for a conversation there are a host of discussion groups that you can latch on to and discuss anything under the sun."
This is where the worries come in. Internet is likely to provide access to loads of information, which is likely to be not only useless but also tasteless. A lot of folks are likely to spend most of their time downloading cyber-porn or cyber-babble.

Freedom, however used, is a very serious issue on Internet and computer aficionados who have developed the network without any active assistance from Governments are extremely touchy when anything regulatory infringes upon their domain. B.N. Jain, Professor at the Computer Science Department, IIT, say Internet will always stay ahead of Governments. “To describe cyberspace as uncontrolled or chaotic is to miss the point entirely, " he points out " It is far more fruitful to describe it as distributed control. We are now moving beyond the stage where nodal agencies had enormous clout. The goods are distributed far more equitably in cyberspace. Let's see what we can make out of it".

Some uses, of course, suggest themselves automatically. Entertainment is likely to be redefined and the commercial prospects enjoined by the unprecedented information dissemination are immense. People sitting at home will now have fiber-optic nerves doing everything for them. They need never go out. I could have written this article sitting are home, talking to my sources on the computer and then just unloaded the file in my office computer. Would I be tempted to do just that in the very near future?

Jain is not too sure. "Technology does not necessarily diminish human contact. Internet will make work more efficient but you would still need to meet people. I would not have granted this interview without seeing you. You may make a million faceless friends on the computer but you will still want to hold someone's hands."

Sex and other adventures in cyberspace

Originally published in The Pioneer - circa 1993-4.

In today's world, sex and technology make generally un-wholesome bedfellows. If you're the kinky sort, you can make love to, or with machines; if you staid enough to restrict your urges to your fellow species, you can make do with the disembodied services of telephone sex or stare at pre-programmed images on movie or video screens. Understandably, most of us feel a shade disinclined to go hi-tech and sex is generally accomplished in close confines in a manner easily recognizable to our earliest ancestors, perhaps even to animals.

Hang on though, the portents appear brighter. MTV addicts may have seen a trailer of the future in the Aerosmith video Amazing and the naughty sizzler makes ‘teledildonics’ or long-distance inter-personal sex appear simplicity itself. The trick will perhaps be in dressing for the occasion: you will need an intimate, snug and transparent bodysuit meshed with tiny tactile detectors coupled to vibrators of varying degrees of hardness that will be able to transmit a realistic sense of ‘touch’ and ‘feel’. You will then need to top yourself with an HMD (head-mounted display), don sensor-webbed gloves and you'll be ready to copulate in cyberspace. Dial your partner's telephone number, enter the computer password and you'll soon be immersed in VR (virtual reality), a life-like but totally artificial representation of your bodies in cyberspace where you can whisper in her ear or bite it or do anything else and those detectors in your bodysuit will be triggered at just the right frequency and sequence to convey just the right scratch and squeeze you prefer.

‘Smart skin’ aided intercontinental sex will be as easy as that in a world encompassing relatives of Aldous Huxley's ‘feelies’. But wait, how long before we can fast-forward into the age of these not-so-innocuous telephone connections and portable telediddlers? Well, perhaps the middle-aged and the elderly will have to resign themselves to making the best of available technologies, but the young can take heart. Computational load capacities will doubtlessly expand in the future and the promise of fiber-optic networks webbing the earth should occlude any hitches concerning the high bandwidth that tactile telepresence requires. The spoilsports at the moment are the sense receptors that will require myriad computer calculations to duplicate the minutest nuances and emotions of the human body. Still, the fantasy continues to inch towards verity.

Before that, however, a look backwards and a definition. Sci-fi writer Willian Gibson who coined the term cyberspace in his 1984 novel Neuromancer described it thus: ‘Cyberspace -- a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation by children being taught mathematical concepts...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system’. It means a whole new artificial world that exists only in our collective consciousness and within our computers. A communications revolution.

Its deliciously homebrewed story connects with the PC revolution and networking, a phenomena that we indubitably owe to the hordes of amateur computer ‘hackers’ who diligently, if sometimes mischievously, found ways of breaking into other people's computers, thus creating the earlier instances of cyberspace. As with all pioneers, the activities of these ‘hackers’ (whose fame was initially spread by the movie War Games) were not viewed very kindly by the established authorities who found their computer systems infested with unauthorized accessors and the FBI believing them to be an advanced crime ring, often swooped on the ‘hackers’, seizing every bit of electronic equipment they could lay their hands on.

However, with time and demonstrations of manifold utility in everything from telecommunications to toys (indeed, video games experts and Hollywood deserve special place in the story), cyberspace has gradually ceased to be the derelict frontier and its whiz-kid cowboys now strut their stuff in some of the most gilt-edged laboratories in the world.

Virtual reality adds a dimensional doorway to cyberspace. In this three-dimensional world, the user does not merely peer at a fixed perspective through a screen, as in the two-dimensional world of ‘simulators’ used to train pilots, but can instead, immerse himself in the artificial world within the screen and use a gesture to remold it. If this sounds abstruse, imagine that you're a gifted architect adept at envisioning complex three-dimensional structures which you cannot possibly illustrate for your clients except via simulacrums like models or diagrams. Factors like seismic stress or acoustics beat even your skilled mental techniques and your clients often remain vague till much work has been done on the actual building. Here virtual reality offers the possibility of creating ‘architectural walkways’, meaning that you can fit the entire building into a computer screen, and then entering it observe it from any angle, or better still, enter any of the rooms, open windows, rearrange the furniture and feel even intangibles like the sunlight on your body. If you don't like anything, you can change it right there.

Sounds convenient, but does it convince? Science writer Howard Rheingold has surveyed the terrain and he reports some amazing inventions from artificial reality labs across the world. At NASA he commandeered repair boats in ‘virtual outer space’; in Japan he had an eerie out-of-body sensation watching himself through the eyes of a telerobot; at Cambridge, Massachusetts he ran his fingertips over ‘virtual sand paper’ by means of a texture-sensing joy- stick and watched scientists create animated creatures that will live in tomorrow's semi-sentient virtual worlds; and in arty France he fulfilled the ultimate ambition of every armchair musician -- he moved his hands in empty space as if playing ‘air violin’ and presto, the glove covering his hand transmitted the actual sensation of drawing a bow against a taut violin string.

And thus the line towards ‘teledildonics’ continues to be drawn: artificial intelligence no longer threatens to make humans redundant but instead appears to augur human intelligence amplification. We may indeed be on the brink of a unique historical opportunity as the high bandwidth networks of the 1990s and beyond link billions of homes and unprecedented cyberspace opens up for colonization. Detractors will have qualms about ‘electronic LSD’ -- potentially addictive 'sensory’ experiences that may make reality pale in comparison -- and more seriously about the uncontrolled, chaotic nature of cyberspace that even today includes inter-cultural, multinational networks ranging in size from amateur bulletin board systems in high-school students' bedrooms to the mother of them all, the Internet.

But we need to view retrospectively how every change in technology, from the earliest civilizations to our very own steam engines to TV and even our earlier generation computers, has enriched our lives and in the process expanded far beyond the expectations of their inventors. Cyber- space should turn out to be a medium of great social power. Infrastructure and even belief systems are likely to cluster around it. As a brand new communications network reaches its apogee, we need to perhaps remind ourselves of McLuhan's prophesy of an altered ratio between senses and brance ourselves accordingly. Alternatively fall prey to making love in cyberspace and never ever being able to come of it.

Daggers drawn

A bit of sex and a whiff of controversy. First, a look at why men are unfaithful. Then, why we owe all knowledge to the gay folk among us. And finally, a movie review I wrote which didn’t amuse Spielberg fans at all. The Academy didn’t agree either.

Homosexuality is not a biological accident

1996? Written as a deliberate provocation for the AntiClockwise column in The Statesman

Tell you what, homosexuals are not only a great credit to our society, they are also specimens of a superior evolutionary expression whose contribution to the benefit of mankind is indispensable. The practice is prevalent in every strata of the animal kingdom starting from insects upwards but the most illustrative fact about homosexuality is that it finds its most mature manifestation among the most intelligent group of primates, viz., rhesus macaques, baboons; chimpanzees and, of course, the gayest of them all, the homo sapien himself.

This is surely not a biological accident. Mankind has pressing social and intellectual requirements which just cannot be fulfilled by individuals who are driven by the natural need for reproductive maximization. Homosexuality sets promising individuals free from arduous parental duties and enables them to concentrate efficiently on their roles as seers, shamans, artists, keepers of knowledge, etc. It is no surprise that celibate monks (and the occasional maiden aunt!) were entrusted to preserve and propagate knowledge by both the Buddhists and the Christians. It was wisely realized even then that heterosexuals had too many worries and children on hand to bother too much about matters of civilization.

The key thing to remember about homosexuals is that they voluntarily sacrifice their reproductive potential and thus lose all their chances of spreading their genes into posterity. This is a monumental level of martyrdom but crucially for the argument here, such altruistic behaviour is not characteristic of mankind alone. It is, in fact, quite widespread across the entire zoological spectrum. Common examples abound. Among the best known is the behaviour of sentinels in animal herds who deliberately expose themselves to predators so that the rest of the brood may escape unhurt. Human body- guards who fling themselves in the line of assailants' fire also display similar tendencies. A personal sacrifice, a la homosexuals, is therefore no biological aberration or exception but an adaptation measure essential for the survival and flourishing of the species' as a whole. Indeed, without homosexuals among us, we would be lesser people.

It is sad, therefore, that the immense invisible contribution that the homosexual community makes to the general society is neither perfectly understood nor appreciated. One possible reason is that ours is a culture obsessed with breeding. Soldiers who rape hapless women in vanquished enemy territory are silently applauded by their mates because it is subconsciously understood that they have planted their genes in the enemy population thereby maximizing the reproductive potential of their own community at the expense of the enemy's. Raped women are then ostracized by their own people for the same reasons. We have been biologically attuned to conclude that even rape is worthwhile if it culminates in reproductive success. Among animals, ducks and scorpion flies in particular, resort to the stratagem of rape for reproductive success, and mankind taking a cue from them often turns a blind eye towards the evils inherent in rape if reproductive interests are involved. Rapists who pine for kids invariably win public sympathy.

It is immediately comprehensible in this context why the homosexual refusal to propagate is automatically construed as a threat to the established modus vivendi. Science and other evolved streams of knowledge are fast and surely veering towards the ineluctable conclusion that homosexuality is not unnatural, as has been made out to be for centuries by prudes worldwide. It is about time that the vital role of homosexuality in the larger context of evolutionary progress is assessed and respected. Over the ages it has been myopic of us to have derided and vilified homosexuals for favoring other pursuit over the artificial social obligation to rear kids. Recognize them now for what they are -- folks who breed in spirit rather in kind. Without them we would still be amoeba.

Schindler's List: a squandered opportunity

Schindler's list is a film that has had greatness thrust upon it, but what else can you expect when the audience watches it with head bowed in respect and the mind's eye reverentially closed? They watch it with the sub-conscious awareness that what is unfolding before them is not another celluloid dream but the long delayed funeral march of the millions of innocent people who were brutally slaughtered during one of the most horrific pogroms in human history. They are cathartically conditioned to conclude, as they did with 'Gandhi', that the movie has plumbed the very depths of human evil.

Sad to say, then, "Schindler's List" remains an essentially superficial movie bound by formula conventions. It deals with the story of Schindler who, regardless of his personal foibles, pulled off an extraordinary act of courage while millions were systematically massacred by fellow Nazis. It is a colossal subject for any director to undertake and Steven Spielberg, while being faithful to the sad facts of history, takes the emotionally manipulative short-cut when it comes to dramatizing the action.

The characters remain one-dimensional and stereotyped as per dubious conventions established by rabble-rousing Hollywood war movies with no pretensions of historical fidelity. The Nazis in the movie represent real historical figures but they are played in the typical fashion of monstrous villains in fictional dramas. They are utterly uniformly vile, prompt in the execution of sadistic orders and untouched by the faintest trace of dignity or remorse at their actions. Throughout the movie not a sigh escapes any of the Nazis. The only moment when they are not trigger-happy comes right at the end of the move when they have lost the war and refuse to mow down Schindler's Jews. Their defeat is not pitiable but comic, as Schindler makes patronizing remarks, and provides the audience opportunity to smirk victoriously in the movie.

Schindler himself is a prototype of the rare good Nazi that Hollywood allows itself -- an outcast who wears the badge of the establishment but does not truly belong to it. His money and style ultimately symbolize not the opportunities that war provided to unscrupulous businessmen like him but the moral decrepitude of Nazi officers who threw principles to the wind at every chance of making a fast buck. Fittingly he is perched stop a hillock during the scene midway in the film when his countrymen run amok in the camp below and he recognizes that his salvation lies with the God's chosen people.

The Jews in the movie suffer from extreme nobility. The holocaust is an occasion for stoicism and dignified suffering -- a link in the chain that unites them with their persecuted ancestors. There is little dissension among them and almost no defiance. A hopeless bid to escape by a cherubic little boy that precipitates great carnage sums up the situation --angels violated by demons! A more obvious symbol is the anonymous death of a pretty child marked out in superimposed red, whose disturbed grave symphonizes the satanic malaise gripping the Nazis. God however does not entirely abandon his chosen people. Guns jam, almost miraculously, when a rabbi is taken out to be summarily shot -- the priest survives to preserve the brood's conscience. No doubt the Jews endured great misfortune but by garbing them in holiness, Spielberg ceases to be dispassionate and objective.

Spielberg 's greatest asset is his identification with the audience's needs and he delivers an emotional, heart-tugging statement garnished by black and white photography, somber music, leisurely pace, skilful design and other prerequisites of ‘admirable' cinema. However, he has lost the opportunity to explore the war and its impact on human behavior. He has just made clichés honorable.

Man’s libido explained

Sex drive and associated velleities are all over the news headlines once again. Hugh Grant’s little peccadillo and the more grievous misadventure by Sushil Sharma have once again raised queries about rampantly libidinous males and the inevitably tragic consequences the befall them in our society which is frightfully quick to frown upon the slightest of sexual transgressions.
Can it, however, be held that both the protagonists mentioned above are mere pawns in a great biological game where their actions are governed not by free will but by evolutionary history that has condemned man to be promiscuous? The two men, so to speak, were perhaps just helplessly following biological commands!

The startling theory seeks to justify its claims by hearkening to the path-finding works of none else buts Charles Darwin, the first man to successfully elaborate a cogent evolutionary system. Darwin’s paradigm rests upon the simple notion of the survival of the fittest wherein fitness quite plainly means the ability to reproduce successfully and plentifully. It can therefore, be said that species are genetically tutored to adapt strategies, which enhance their procreative potential to the utmost. This is the line that sociobiologists take to adumbrate that sowing wild oats comes naturally to men while women are innately inclined to be conservative when it comes to doing what the birds and bees do!

The empirical evidence is presented in the following fashion. When it comes to reproductive equipment an average man is provided with more than he can handle whereas an average woman has only a precious little store that she must utilize to its optimum. Consider their respective inventories in outline. Very few men possess any less than at least 100,000,000 sperms, which can be used to fertilize myriad women. The opposite sex, on the other hand, has been blessed extremely frugally in comparison. A mere 400 eggs is almost a pittance. What makes it worse for women is the restraining fact that only about 20 of these eggs can be fertilized in a lifetime, and that too only one at a time. A woman therefore puts far more at stake when she embarks upon a reproductive venture than a man whose investment is diffused.
The sensible reproductive strategy for a woman thus is to scout for the best available mate and establish a monogamous relationship with him. A man, however, if he has to obey the evolutionary imperative to spread his genes, must seek to cast his net as wide as possible in search of as many mates as possible to propagate his genetic line. Promiscuity, it apparently follows, is his biological duty.

The argument, if taken at face value, appears very persuasive indeed but several prescient observers of science take it with a pinch of salt as it appears to reinforce several conservative and patriarchal beliefs about women.

Science, despite its obvious contributions, has often tended to besmirch its reputation by passing prevalent prejudices for verified fact. Intelligence tests, heavily under laid by racist bias, which had ostensibly ‘confirmed' the cerebral superiority of the Anglo-Saxons, are one of the best known examples of science going obsequiously haywire when confronted by the dominant prejudices of the day. The fact that most of the socibiological assertions fit in far too neatly with conservative ideals make them immediately suspect in the eyes of several sociologists.

Ms Patricia Uberoi, of the Institute of Economic Growth, is among those who have qualms about the fidelity of the 'masculinist' conclusions of sociobiology. Mincing no words in denouncing the' speculations' of sociobiology she avers that it "sustains the patriarchal schematization of popular assumptions which often betray double standards of morality". Her contention is that human society is fundamentally different from anything achieved by other animals and to confuse certain aspects of mammalian behavior with apparently similar human dispositions is to miss the point completely. In any case human behavior itself is not universal across various civilization and several human communities display widely varying patterns of behavior, which finally end up flying in the face of the facile generalizations of sociobiology.

She cites the case of women in South Asia who are apparently considered far more promiscuous than the males there, thus creating a belief-system entirely disconsonant with sociobiological wisdom, which makes promiscuity virtually a fiefdom of males. The rigid control that men exercise over the freedom of women in these parts is the direct fallout of the socio-cultural conviction that the sexual behavior of women needs to be controlled lest they run amok. A 'free' woman easily acquires the label of 'dangerous'. These are entirely specious assumptions, but so, she hastens to add are those of sociobiology.

Women, Ms Uberoi reiterates, have long suffered at the hands of folklore and ' scientific' attempts to foist respectability upon misogynist tenets is only one of the ways to disparage feminine sexuality. Examples abound, and the most insidious ones are inherent in our daily language itself. 'Bitch' is a nasty word often used to describe unpopular women. The reference to an animal often ' in heat' is an invidious way to run down female sexuality. The implications are that a woman exhibiting sexual proclivities is not to be trusted, and any woman accused of such conduct naturally becomes a fallen woman.

The need, she explains, is to look at specific gender roles in specific historical contexts instead of rooting for slippery ideas that prey upon the prejudices of our times.

It is, however, difficult to dismiss biology entirely from human behavior. Several sophisticated analyses of men-women relationship that have little or almost nothing to do with biological nitty-gritty do feel compelled to hark to at least a few larger biological issues to explain the discrimination that is an ineluctable concomitant of inter-sexual relationships.
Noted psychologist, and currently the Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Mr. Ashish Nandy, has included a thoughtful chapter in his book ‘On the Edge of Psychology’ in which he argues that men feel insecure with women as they are conscious of a sort of biological inferiority which springs from their inability to physically bear children.
Our phallocentric society has, however, consistently sought to deny this shortcoming in man and the concerted effort to emphasize the primacy of 'productivity over reproductivity' is a pointer in this regard. It is an unfortunate trend, he feels, and may well be the ruination of human civilization at a later date unless man realizes that nature is essentially reproductive. The phallocentric obsession with putting the woman in her place must yield to more egalitarian impulses.

Perhaps the most cardinal of the errors of sociobiology is its confusion of reproductive strategy with life. A spider's life may be said to revolve around its biology but surely human beings have requirements that transcend the merely physical. This is perhaps the trait that makes them civilized unlike other animal species who can never be worthy of this tag.

In fact the distance between man and other animals is so great that the phrase 'biological instincts' is no longer used to describe the natural urges in man. ‘We nowadays prefer to use the term 'biological needs", says Prof K D Broota, the Head of the Department of Psychology at Delhi University , ‘because man is not as beholden to biology as the other life forms are.’ There are minimum biological requirements that do cry out to be fulfilled but the driving urges in man are socio-cultural attributes like recognition, power or achievement rather than simplistic needs like sex or food.

Indeed the promptings of socio-cultural imperatives may often be so great that a man may sometimes be compelled to act entirely in defiance of the most basic biological considerations. Suicide, for instance, goes against the very grain of the biological rationale of self-perpetuation, yet it is virtually integral to human society. Men are not prisoners of biology, they have overcome it in several ways.

Prof Broota goes on to enunciate that civilizational biological conditioning is the more fruitful way to comprehend the misdemeanors of Messrs Sharma and Grant. The aphrodisiac in their case was not some hyperactive hormone but a false sense of power, the belief that they were above the law and that they could get away with anything. They had definitely been encouraged in this belief by the manner in which our society is structured. A sad laxity in inculpating the high and the mighty is one of the unmissable hallmarks of contemporary life. He hopes that examples are made out of the offenders in the current cases and measures aimed at de-conditioning society encouraged. All the biological hogwash quite obviously does not wash with him.

Certain questions, though distanced from sociobiology per se, remain. Man's ability to apparently transcend biology raises questions about whether the march of civilization depends upon a negation, or denial, of biology. Mr. Nandy's caveat apropos the nature-defying emphasis on productivity over reproductivity is one of the cases in point.

Other, less esoteric, points are raised by Professors R N Saxena, Head of the Department of Zoology at Delhi University. He peers history to explain that several biological functions in human beings have altered the dependence upon, and the subservience to, natural phenomenon. The yearlong birth cycle characteristic of human reproduction is an illustration. Most animal species are characterized by seasonal birth cycles but mankind is not slave to such limitations possibly due to the artificial environments it has cloistered itself with. Several domesticated animals, who too are privy to these artificial environs, display similar freedom from natural limitations.

It is often said that those who best understand biology are the ones least bound by it. Successive human civilizations have tended to manipulate biology for their own ethnocentric ends. Take homosexuality, for example. The practice fell into disrepute only with the onset of the Christian era. The ancient people, particularly the Greeks, thought of homosexuality as a rather refined way of having sex. The Christians however thought of sex as only fit for procreation and homosexuality was immediately branded as 'unnatural'.

Women's sexuality suffered a similar fate. The Victorian fascination for linear, teleological explanations extended itself to the suppression of matriarchy and creation of patriarchy. The monogamous relationship was celebrated as the apogee of civilization and women were warned to keep within its limits. The current sociobiological endeavor to justify male philandering is plausibly a pseudo-scientific conservative backlash to this very effect and an attempt to make occidental moral values universal.

It is therefore prudent to tread carefully when considering scientific assertions, which have cultural ramifications. Science is not an inviolable tool. The popular image of a scientist as an impartial seeker of truth is only half true. Most scientific agenda are governed by hidden factors and several conclusions are premeditated by cultural anticipation. All 'purely' scientific rationale of the conduct of criminals and others must be taken suspiciously lest we fall into the trap of bad science. Our biology has no doubt bound us in certain ways but we are much more than merely the sum of our contributory parts. Life is a gift not a sentence. We are a free species.

Superficial intelligence,

I often wrote about things I had no clue about. An example is this article on artificial intelligence on which I probably read up more than I did for a tutorial that was due around the same time. And here is one that discusses research, which ‘proved’ the superiority of the white race, based on skull size. I don’t have the whole article with me any more but hopefully you’ll find enough to chew on.

Size of skull has nothing to do with race of intelligence

For he truly believed in his science, belonging to his own race afforded him immense pleasure, and boy did he blush at his own sight! One day he was scrutinizing the unworthy skull of a brigand when he had the kind of joyous insight that occasionally. marks serendipitous discovery but more regularly signals crackpot invention. Thus was born Cesar Lambroso's celebrated theory of L'uamo delinquente, crime and the man, which posited that criminals were but evolutionary throwbacks in our midst, the straggling biologically retarded who had failed to fully traverse the distance between ape and man.

Nature however, had been merciful to the authentic Homo sapien and cursed the delinquents with visible anatomical signs that automatically revealed their atavistic criminality. Some of these giveaways included large jaws, relatively long arms, precocious wrinkles, low and narrow forehead, large ears, darker skin, thick skull and inability to blush. The theory secured Lambroso's place in history.

Biology determines society, or the credo that innate, inborn and inherited biological distinctions are accurately mirrored in society, as political, economic, cultural and most significantly racial hierarchy was a keynote in Darwin's century. Our society has always been infatuated with gradation and Darwinian advances seemed to hint that the people left in the wake by modernization must rank lower on the biological scale. The level headed Darwin himself did not escape the tenor of his times when he wrote of a future when the gap between humans and apes would increase with the extinction of such intermediaries as the Hottenentots and aborigines.

Nineteenth century was also the age of hardboiled empiricism and mere theories unsubstantiated by clinching 'facts' carried no weight. The proponents of biological determinism chose the measurement of intelligence as a single quantity as the means to establish the chasm between races and to this end generated two major sources of scientific data -- craniometry (or the measurement of skulls) and certain styles of psychological testing. The methods were clearly founded upon the gospel that all there was to intelligence was what lay in the head and external, unquantifiable vagaries like environment or culture had no say in the matter of gray matter.

The white man's burden was a popular truism at the time and most erudite hypotheses suggested the following pecking order -whites way up, the rest in the pits. To prove this, scientists scurried to their skull collection and research data and soon arrived with empirical evidence that whites had larger brains and superior cranial index (the ratio between the maximum length and width the skull) while the poor blacks were destined to slave in the fields and had their miseries compounded by mysterious diseases like ‘dyesthesia' a diseases that caused inadequate breathing and ‘drapetomania' or the insane desire to run away from their benevolent masters.

Brain size was crucial, as a diligent scholar had recently managed the impossible feat of establishing that European brain size had increased with the progress from feudalism to modernism. The jaws and facial angle of the blacks confirmed their stature as groveling idiots and IQ tests proved their moronic sensibilities. The theory of recapitulation, which showed that black adults were like white children, reinforced black imbecility and the theory of neoteny, which showed that white adults were like black children, reinforced white acumen.

Sensibly and understandably, the rigors of modern science and social education have relegated such fact finding to naught and their exponents to historical footnotes. Intelligence is not a measurable thing like height or weight and the idea of measuring heads is rather preposterous. Brain size does not vary with race or correspond to gifts. Indeed the human body can be measured in a thousand different ways and a randomly determined small scale of measures almost always toes the line of the prevalent paradigm while being purblind to alternatives.
It may embarrass scientists now but entirely specious marvels like the distance between the navel and the penis were once bruited to countenance white nobility whilst an equally ludicrous rejoinder could well have been made that whites were simian as they had thin lips -a Chimpanzee trait. IQ tests being culture specific were similarly misleading and sometimes even ‘neutral' questions were but glimmers of the examiner's biases.

Science is often a powerful ally of entrenched institutions and the quandary that is ours is whether the scientists involved were racists? Most of them were bitterly opposed to the rising ethical hopes of equality and their scientific pronouncements had several tragic consequences on state policies like slavery, immigration, colonialism etc. It is little known that millions of Jews from Central and southern Europe who, anticipating the holocaust, had sought to emigrate to the US were often denied on specious eugenic grounds, and thus virtually condemned by votaries of science.

Science, it must be remembered begins from the void of ignorance and chases the truth by ceaselessly falsifying its own assumptions. The scientist involved published all their data, hid nothing and truly believed in the validity of their assumptions. Scientists themselves are prisoners of their own cultural condition and the truth they seek can never be 'pure', sullied as it is by the vision of their times.

Computers cannot handle every hue of human behavior

The dream of a mechanical mind is centuries old and since the industrial age humans have fastidiously held that the brain, the seat of thought -- which in the 19th century was described as a property at par with electricity, the faculty of motion and impenetrability --could be duplicated. The dream of mechanized thought, however, began to resemble a vision only towards the close of the last century when Charles Babbage, with suitable encouragement and inspiration from Lady Lovelace, invented the 'difference machine' that could, at the heave of a designated crank, tabulate any function, and in principle even perform that most emblematic of all intelligent activities - play chess.

Then came the World Wars. The immense logistics involved hastened the development of number crunching computers. Meanwhile, on another arena in the war theatre, scientists examining the plethora of brain damaged patients thrown up by the fighting concluded that the operations of a nerve cell and its connection with other nerve cells could be shown in terms of logic. Thereon it was deducted that intelligence could be shown in purely mathematical or computational terms. Thus was the cast assembled.

The creators of artificial intelligence did not seek to merely design efficient goal-oriented machines, like say the pocket calculator, but their ambition was to replicate the human thought process itself and thus provide scientific answers to the philosophical questions concerning the nature of knowledge that had gripped mankind down the ages. They believed that they had hit upon the pivotal idea that what distinguished human intelligence from its animal counterpart was its innate ability to manipulate symbol systems such as those found in math and logic. The machine's other human propensities included its apparent mimicry of the human thought process during a chess game as it sought to process information over time in a logical manner by decomposing the task into sub-tasks.

The cardinal sin of such a serial-device was its obeisance to the Greek dictum of men as rational beings, and the concomitant fallacy that the mass of men leads a mental life as logical and rule governed as a chess-game. And lest the reader deem himself an acolyte of the perished Greek tradition, a sucker-punch: Four cards, with a number on one side and a letter on the other, are laid out on the table with their faces displaying respectively; E, K, 4 and 7. The given rule is, "If a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other. One is permitted to turn over two cards to determine the validity of the rule.

Now you perhaps realize that the card marked K is superfluous to the rule and that it is imperative to pick the card marked E. The trick lies with the numbered cards and if your mind is attuned to the vast majority of your brethren you are likely to dump logic for intuition and rush to read between, above and below the lines and conclude that the rule logically implies that even numbered cards have a vowel on the other side and thus fatally plump for 4. The right choice, however, is 7 because while a consonant on the other side would be irrelevant to the rule, a vowel would falsify it.

Surely this is not a conclusive example of human irrationality but computers imprisoned by an absolute contrary faith were indubitably destined to fall short, especially with the rigid programming condemning the machines to endless repetition of processes minus any learning and improvisation.

Quite obviously toy problems like chess did grave injustice to any simulacrum of the human mind and the need was to locate real world issues like perception. Soon came the imaginatively termed 'society of minds' theory, wherein the brain was reckoned to be not a general unambiguous processor of all information but a repository of myriad agents that could selectively handle different kinds of information simultaneously, and thus serial symbolic machines were abandoned in favor of parallel processing machines.

Since computation was achieved by the excitatory and inhibitory interaction among a network of competing cooperating neuron like units that depended upon the statistical properties of the entire ensemble to meet the target, information ceased to inhere in a specific locus and the need for symbolic processing was obviated in favor of direct perception models. There was thus no need of any separate knowledge store, it simply resided in the strength and appropriateness of the connection between simple neurons and dedicated to specific functions.

But will a computer ever learn to discern animals in the shape of clouds, faces in stone or drama in inkblots? Or find the way through a forest? A great deal of human knowledge is biologically learnt and culturally transmitted, something, which a computer cannot mimic.

It would be imprudent to expect artificial intelligence to handle every hue of human behavior and those who sought a facsimile of the human mind in artificial intelligence must resign themselves to the fact that human beings may be an amalgam of several kinds of computers and may indeed be at odds with any computer hitherto designed. There are certain ways in which our thought process has an affinity with computer framework but there are also basic incompatibilities. Paradoxically, there is little semblance the human mind bears to a computer.

Horns of dliemma

My fascination with the Internet took several, often contradictory, forms. Here’s an article in which I talk of the Internet as a web of illusion. Also on this site. Evidently not a thought that I would have bet my life on, for here’s an article suggesting that we don’t use the Internet efficaciously enough.