Day 3- On Enid Blyton, the extended transferred epithet and religion

If I had to name just one person I spent most of my childhood with, that would be Enid Blyton. I remember spending whole summer months letting myself get sucked into her world- with flying cars and pixies and adventure lurking at every turn. In the early years I even wondered how it would be if all my toys came out at night and had little fights or skated on soap.

Anyway, there was one story (one of my favorites) about a boy who sees an enchanted book at a store. The book opens from both ends- each tells a different story. Both stories are about the boy's own life and what his future would be like. On one story, he makes his choices based on ambition- spends more time at his business, is often cruel etc. On the other- his choices are based on family and love, and though he doesn't make too much money, he is content.

As a kid reading the story, it was obvious which side to pick- the kind side. But you see, that's the problem with the stories kids are told. They have not one inch of the gray that fills real life, or to use the cliched phrase, they are too black and white. Anyway, that's not the point for today.

The thing I really want to highlight is how authors tend to bunch qualities together. In this story, for instance, the boy (when he grew up, that is) would not only spend too much time at business, but would also be mean to his customers and get angry all the time. Then the reader's mind would almost automatically associate the making money with the other "bad" qualities of being cruel, when in fact it is possible for a man to make money and still be a good person.
In contrast, if you pick a story like "Atlas Shrugged", there are the people who make money and sound cruel but are actually kinder through their actions. But there, Ayn Rand also has some fictional associations- like the fact that the smart people are all blunt, arrogant AND successful, while the villains are all not just evil and people-pandering but quite stupid; or the fact that all the "good" people speak the same kind of language and anyone who uses any amount of subtlety in their speech is some sort of conniving villain.

I see this as a very interesting literary device. It is very close to the transferred epithet in the sense that the effect (or our judgement) of one quality is actually transferred on to others. Which is why I want to call it the extended transferred epithet. But the reason it is interesting is because it is also very very powerful.

Take these verses, for instance..

"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."

"Know that a king who heeds not the rules (of the law), who is an atheist, who is rapacious, who does not protect his subjects (but) devours (i.e. mistreats) them, will sink low (after death)"

The first is from the Bible (Revelation 21:8) and the second is from a translation of the Manusmrithi (Ch8, Topic17, Verse309).

In both cases, a set of negative characteristics are combined with the "faithless" and the "atheists". Of course, with most religions "faithless" is bad enough to warrant prosecution- it is often considered evil by definition. But the subtle propaganda that lets religions persist, especially in the age of technology and information, exists in these places- in stories where the villains are evil AND non-believers, where the books proclaim that the faithless are also always immoral (conveniently skipping over the faithless moral human being). Religions are not only full of these; they are so prevalent that most people tend to actually believe them (like believing all faithless people are also immoral). Which is why I said it is a very powerful device.

Anyway, let me finish off today by saying that I think the extended transferred epithet is a beautiful literary device. It is convenient and powerful. But that's precisely why one should be wary of it.

P.S: There may be a real name for this literary device. I tried looking for it but couldn't find it. So I came up with my own name for it instead! :P

The Roman Catholic Hindu actress

I actually started a post about NRIs and India-ranting. But midway I read an interview excerpt and decided this was more important to write about. But before I get to that, answer this question:

Which religion do the following celebrities belong to: 
a) Javed Akhtar 
b) Daniel Radcliffe 
c) Kamal Hassan 
d) Stephen Hawkings 
e) Angelina Jolie?

(We will come back to this in a while)

******
The footnote I read was an excerpt from an interview of Milkha Singh about 'Bhaag Milkha Bhaag' and the question was "How do you feel about a Muslim actor playing the role of a Sikh?"
This question was wrong at so many levels- why should a Muslim actor not play a Sikh? Wasn't he "acting" by definition? How did this question even have any significance?

But what really bugged me was the fact that they called Farhan Akhtar a Muslim. For anyone who doesn't know- he is an atheist. He was also brought up an atheist. Javed Akhtar was born into a Muslim family but declared himself an atheist. (Some sites say Farhan's agnostic, but he is definitely not 'Muslim'!)
And no, he is NOT a Muslim atheist. Nor is Kamal Hassan an Iyengar atheist. Or George Carlin a Roman Catholic atheist. In fact, they are all just plain atheists. One might argue that they all belong to the same religion (I am defining religion VERY loosely here). So going back to the question I asked at the beginning- Javed Akhtar, Kamal Hassan, Hawkings, and Radcliffe are in fact united by their religious beliefs or the lack thereof. (Angelina does not subscribe to any religion.)

Now I can hear someone think- "How does it matter? It's a minor mistake. If he were not an atheist, he would be a Muslim!". It matters because this statement is equivalent to saying- "If I were not born Hindu, I would be a Christian". or "If I were not born an Indian, I would be Chinese". That's a ridiculous argument because if you were not an Indian you might have been an African or American or Eskimo or a hundred other things. Just because Farhan Akhtar's grandfather was a Muslim, it does not mean he is one. Also, saying he is an atheist Muslim is a contradiction in terms.

Which brings me to the real issue- why should people be identified based on their religion? Do you identify people based on their favorite beverage or favorite color? Religion is a far more personal choice than that. If you judge a person based on his religion, you might as well say "All people who like the color purple are violent maniacs who mistreat their women." or identify people as- "He is a Diet-Coke drinker.","She is a strong believer of green tea." , etc. Religion is a more important choice, but it is still a personal one.

Ok. If you really want to judge people on their religion, so be it. But why judge them on their ancestors' religions, when they have expressly said they don't follow it? Calling someone a Muslim because his grandfather was one is like saying "Your grandfather hated pani puris. So you must hate pani puri too".  It reminds me of Dawkins writing- 'That's all fine. But are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?' Well, I hope you can at least see how ridiculous this sounds. It is hard for most people to look at atheists as non-religious people. I know I also used to identify some popular atheists by their former religion. It is too easy a trap to fall into. Religion is an easy way to categorize people- have them in neat slots that you can generalize about. But most often, we tend to get carried away by the slots and forget what it really means.

So, let me state it here. RELIGION IS NOT SOMETHING YOU BELONG TO AUTOMATICALLY because your parents do. RELIGION IS SOMETHING YOU DECIDE TO FOLLOW (or not) based on what you want to believe about certain questions. And the next time you see an atheist, don't classify him/her into a religion based on his/her name, family, or place of origin. 

Preferably, try not to poke into their religion at all.

P.S: I forgot to mention- the Roman catholic Hindu actress is Julia Roberts. Born a Roman Catholic and currently practicing Hinduism. 

Mahabharata.. and women..

(This post is the 6th post in the one-month challenge I gave myself.)

Mahabhaaaarat... (or Mahabhaaaaratham)- I can still hear the title of that epic series which I used to rush to watch every Sunday morning. I don't think I ever saw the series fully, but I definitely heard the songs. But unlike most people whose introduction to Indian epics is Doordarshan or Amar Chitra Katha, my first introduction to the Hindu epics were a different set of books given by my grandfather. (Of course, not counting the versions that different people in the family had told me) They were a very interesting read and I guess they got me hooked to reading mythology.

The thing I love about mythology (not just Indian) is that these are stories that have survived generations of people- millions and millions of people- who lived their very different lives, who heard some version of the stories just like I did and then added their little mark to it. Just a small change there, just a simple line here that makes you look at one character differently. It is astonishing to think that these stories touched the lives of a villager in Ashoka's kingdom, a flower seller girl in Akbar's reign, and then us- born out of the Internet age. Unlike hardcore philosophy and religion which are often sheathed away from the eyes of the common man (because of how abstruse they are), mythology is supposed to bring the ideas to the masses- through every day events that people can relate to. Through songs. Through stories.

Of course, like most people I know, I loved the Mahabharata much more than the Ramayana. As a story alone, the Ramayana is too ideal. Too serious and too straightforward. And has a hero like itself. Ravana is probably the only guy with any gray within him.And the narrative is almost simplistic. But for a few points where people debate on whether Rama was right- nothing much there.

The Mahabharata, on the other hand, is in a whole different league. For a story written centuries ago (as claimed by historians), think of the layers, the millions of metaphors, characters and scenarios. It is almost like Vyasa wove the different colors of the human fabric in intricate design and made a beautiful garment out of it. The number of ways in which each story intertwines with the others, the situations come back in unexpected ways, characters face dilemmas and still each line, each small move is significant to the story is- in one word- brilliant. (This last line, i once mentioned to a friend and she thought I was talking about Harry Potter. My answer is- yes, Harry Potter is pretty complex. But imagine what you would get if the HP series was given to a country that has 27 official languages and hundreds of tribes who went on adding to it and taking from it over hundreds of years- that's the complexity Mahabharata has!)

Well, I could go on like this in semi-poetic prose, but let me get to my point. The reason I wanted to write about the Mahabharata is because every other day I see it from a different view. Every new tale I hear about it makes me rethink the story. (A month or so ago, I had a long discussion about how Dhritarashtra's character is very interesting- he is the one guy who can't see anything and yet has power. Also how his insecurity plays so much of a role. I almost wanted to rewrite a version of this epic from his viewpoint.) What I read yesterday was an answer on Quora about Draupadi and Karna. I will let you see the link for yourself, but this led me to another link called the Bheel Bharata (Bheels are a tribe in India) where the author mentioned one interesting point- Mahabharata has very strong women characters.

That's something that had never occurred to me before. That this old epic has many incidents that are governed by what the women do. (From Ganga and Sathyavathi to Kunthi to Draupadi. Arguably, it is Sathyavathi's father who gets a promise from Bheeshma, but Sathyavathi is the reason the story begins.) One could almost say that it is the women of Bharata that run the story- the men are merely there as side characters. Pawns. Of course, that's not completely true, but one could view it that way.

Interestingly, the article mentioned that Ramayana's women are not that strong. I agree that Sita and Draupadi are poles apart. What they represent as women are very different. But I still think Ramayana is also a plot where women hold the strings- Kaikeyi, Manthra, Shurpanaka. Why, every important turn in the story is started by a woman!

So ya, I find it very interesting that- apparently, even in those times they knew that though the hero is the man of the house, the plot of life is always driven by the women :P

Tomorrow: Improving teaching in India

Theists and checking up facts: an oxymoron?

First- this post is not meant to offend anyone, but of course, as all articles that start with such a line, it just MIGHT end up offending some people. I hope it doesn't because the people that it might offend have a lot to gain from this post. Secondly, when I say "religion" in this post, I mean both religion and Hinduism. More often, the latter. Third, as usual I started out with intention of writing a much shorter post but like Mark Twain, found I didn't have the time to, so I wrote a longer one :P Lastly, I have included some interesting references at the end, if you are interested in looking up and decided not to plod through this entire post. Now let me start at the beginning.

As I might have mentioned in the blog before, I come from a very orthodox family. At least within my circles, I sometimes feel that our family could serve as the Oxford dictionary definition for orthodox. I don't find anything wrong about it per se, but that is worth mentioning because it partially explains why I am interested in religion (interested in, not a believer of). Because I grew up in such an environment and because I was also taught some excellent reasoning skills by the same orthodox people and because I am a big reader, I spent a substantial portion of my childhood reading stuff related to religion. I also spent quite some time listening to all kinds of arguments FOR religion- how great God is, why we gain from believing, the millions of miracles he has performed, why it "makes sense" to believe and so on. I must admit it was not that difficult to 'believe' before I knew Google.

Anyhow, with all that background reading (which was pretty interesting, admittedly, and a lot of it quite reasonable) I learned that- unlike what many people in the outside world think, orthodox people are very intelligent. I think I should re-emphasize this point because much of my audience consists of people who grew up in so-called neutral families. Such people often think that religious fanatics and fundamentalists are complete idiots. Let me break this to you right now- they aren't. In fact, I can almost say that I know many more sensible yet orthodox people than I know sensible secular people. Talk about irony.  
Anyway, because of such a background, I continued to read stuff that religious people say long after I stopped believing. You see, I want to be able to pit myself against the best of the other side. Anyway, so far, so good.

The problem arose when I started having unlimited access to the internet and started checking up stuff on Google. When Google is your friend, many of your facebook friends might unfriend you. No, seriously. There have been times when I have verified stuff put up by some of my valued friends (not necessarily related to religion) by simply typing the title on the Google searchbar and found that they were plain false. Then, goodnaturedly, I comment on their post saying this is false, and said friends get angry. (Ok, nobody unfriended me as yet, but you can imagine how things went after that point.) Anyway, I digress. The point I wanted to make was that I have this instinctive thing to look up stuff before believing in them. So from then on, (and back to religion  now) whenever someone used a religious anecdote or any other anecdote that I could verify, I did. In fact, whenever they quoted anything I could note down and check, I did. In the process I learned a lot- but sadly 90-95% of their anecdotes were hoaxes. Except the ones from their own lives. Even worse, this was not limited to anecdotes. Many of the "facts" that they used to substantiate their claims were fabrications from propaganda magazines. I will give two examples here, but trust me, there are hundreds more. (Click on "Read more" below for more).

What can an atheist look forward to?

I must admit that sometimes being an atheist is hard. (The only thing harder than being an atheist is being an agnostic- and I hope I will write about why that is so sometime.... ). Especially when things go wrong. You cannot believe that ultimately good will triumph- even if you have put in all your efforts into something, nothing really stops anything from going wrong. No, I am not trying to be defeatist here, but the truth is that believing something good will happen out of the blue, or that there is something that rewards hard work is still belief in the supernatural- just without the baggage that God is forced to carry around most of the time. Anyway, when things are going bad for you, you cannot simply pray to some supernatural power and hope that he will set things right. You cannot believe in any sort of essential fairness in the world. If there is any law that governs life for you- it is survival of the fittest (which is a different form of fairness, in my opinion.. But anyway..) and then maybe the laws of physics. But these laws cannot provide solace- you simply cannot hope that Newton's third law will slap that guy who was mean to you at the store this morning. 

The other problem is- what ultimate goal do you have? Most religions advocate some kind of heaven or salvation- something to look forward to. To work towards. There is no such goal in atheism. We are simply insignificant chemical specks in a vast universe that may or may not have its own agenda. We are products of our genes which are simply fighting for their own "selfish" reasons. (Yes, I am oversimplifying things here- but the details aren't particularly comforting either..) We do have some role in modifying nature- we can and have affected it in many ways, but that is not something you can work towards. Nor is it something you can look forward to, because many of these changes will have a sizeable impact only long after you are gone. Yes, many atheists find joy in serving the poor and improving life conditions of the underprivileged- so much as to say that service is their God. Unfortunately, not everyone can feel that. Some atheists can work for improving life conditions of others, but cannot see it as their goal (Objectivists, for example). It is like saying- "I like making people happy, but I cannot live for it". So then, what CAN an atheist (like me) look forward to? Is there anything at all that can be labeled the "joy of being an atheist"? (Click on "Read more" to continue..)

Ephemeral truths?

Talking about ephemeral truths and eternal lies.. I wanted to write about this truth test thing.

I personally find it funny/weird/childish for a CM to promise or ask someone to promise in front of 'God' about anything. Come on, even kids know how to lie.. Or in Hindu style, it is Kaliyug, for God's sake. Even if the CM had promised, I wouldn't have believed him entirely. But what he did in the end was funnier. He just dodged the issue entirely.

Huh?

He refused to take the truth test he himself devised and expects us to believe he is true? I hope he isn't as naive as that. But that brought me to another question. If you truly believe in God and if you truly believe God will punish you for misdeeds etc, isn't corruption a misdeed? Isn't trying to hide corruption a misdeed? If you are anyway going to be punished for all these, you might as well have promised. (Or) If you truly believed in God, why were you corrupt in the first place?

I have seen this kind of 'god-fearing' people a lot. (Like people who fast for one month thinking about Butter Chicken throughout!) People who spend their lives making black money, evading taxes, misappropriating funds, what not. ("Aisa nahi karoge, toh zindagi me kuch nahi kar sakte.." or the "Ner vazhi romba suthu kozhandai!"* types) And then they go and write off one crore to charity. I am honestly unable to understand if they think their God is that dumb- like he will forgive you if you pay him enough! It is like they believe in God in spurts when they realize he might punish them. And for the rest of their lives they continue without any morality. If I could be God for a day, I would spend at least some part of it ragging these people. You know, just keep arguing with them, until they accept they thought God was as big a fool as themselves.

Anyway, back to our CM. I was discussing this stuff with a friend and we came up with the theory that the CM thinks corruption is not wrong as such. But he knows lying to God is wrong. And that's why he didn't make the promise. That answered my confusion a little and the theory sounds OK to me, though I can't find for the life of me how anyone can think corruption is not wrong. I can imagine someone saying, "Everybody does it. Why penalize me?" or even "Without doing so, you can't become rich" but "NOT wrong"??? Honestly, either I am incapable of that level of self-deception or I am impractical by Indian politics' standards, but corruption IS wrong. Even to save your soul. 

And if you really think God exists, forget your double standards and better believe in him fully enough not to be corrupt in the first place. Or you will land up in this funny "God-promise I didn't do it" situation. And then, don't blame me for laughing!

*This was one of Sujatha's most awesome dialogues. I really really love Sujatha for this one! For those who don't recognize it, it came in Anniyan.

Fast- II

I didn't intend writing this post really... I wanted to write about my New Year vacation, but then I think that will take some more time.. So thought will do a "quick post" instead... (And before I start, Happy New Year! :) )

This is about fasting.. (Somehow this every year around this time, I end up writing about this huh?) But really, this is a more serious take on fasting...

Right now, I am listening to a phone conversation in Tamil... (not sure if it is eavesdropping, but then this person is clearly loud and also knows others might be listening-- so not my fault you see ;) )

"You must treat me man... Come on, you got married"

"You didn't even treat me for your birthday"

"Just one rum will do da... "

......

 and so on. (translated, of course!)

Whoever it was at the other end was trying to escape, and as I type the conversation is still going on...."Wait a second.. this post was about fasting", you tell me, "and you are writing about some useless phone conversation?!"