Cruelty, thy name is human being!

At last justice has been dispensed with, in time. Well, that is how it looks to all, for now. Only time will tell if this judgement will be taken to its logical conclusion by the concerned parties. There are so many interest groups in our country that include some human rights organisations to change the course of law to the directions of their choice. Human beings from time immortal do not hesitate to do cruel acts on other living beings, be it their own fellow humans or helpless animals.

Cruelty is a part of the human mindset. When a chicken is caught from it narrow dingy cage by its wing, it makes desperate noise. Probably it does so out of pain. The butcher then puts it on the weighing balance. In the next moment, a knife dips into its neck. He immediately drops the bird into an empty drum where it writhes in pain for a few seconds....The buyers of the chicken meat watch, with shocking passiveness, all that is unveiling right in front of their eyes. Everyone enjoys the action as if they all see a comedy movie. In Pondicherry, goats are cut on the road side itself, nearby the make shift meat shops. In the world, in so far I have seen, only in our country, animal flesh is displyed on the road sides with blood still oozing out. Probably there will be some more countries like ours, but let us not compare our country with theirs

Those men in Delhi not only raped the young woman but did much more. They murdered her mercilessly. The only mistake she did was that she was born a woman. Of late, we are all realising with a big shiver in our bodies that, punishment for being woman is increasingly becoming barbaric as the modern world is progressing to 14th year. I never call these men animals, because animals can never be so cruel. They attack other animals only for food. Animals have sex only for sustaining life. Sex is a nature instilled process that never crosses the "red line".

Remember the phrase 'red line'? US president used this around an year back.  It was presumed to be as powerful as the legendary Lakshmana Rekha. The context was Syrian civil war. As feared by the world's most powerful man and also by the feeblest man on the Syrian streets, gas has been used. More than 400 children along with a few hundred adults died like cockroaches. Who did it? No idea, but we have some speculations so far.  The needle of suspecion is clearly pointing to the president of Syria. This is the way human psychology works. Once the balance of mind is upset, nothing is in his hands. Disaster is the outcome of such madness. Helpless human beings bear the brunt of such mindless violence.

The world now receives the news of Syrian response to the proposal to surrender the gas with great relief. It is not correct to use the term Syria, it should be the ruler of that poor country. At last, some sense is dawning in the killer President's head. The Russian president supports the reckless president, not the Syrian people, it looks. Dark clouds of war blow over. It is heartening, because, US has relented from yet another war. Let us all hope that the autocratic president surrenders his gas weapons along with presidency as early as possible. Syrians has enough of him. Let the US keep her pressure on the heartless dictator and his supporters till they abide by the rules of the game.

At least one bird in a day is run over by speeding vehicles in this island. The unsuspecting bird, it can be a pigeon or a mynah often sits on the middle of the road searching for its food. In the quest for its livelihood, it forgets to realize that there are monsters roaming about and they can take away its life within a second. The men at the wheels hardly think that every life is created by the Almighty who created them too. Men do not think every life has right to exist because, normally once they get to hold the steering of a vehicle, adrenalin level in the blood raises much above the acceptable levels. Snuffing out a life is not man's business. But still, he does not want to alert the poor bird or stop for a few seconds to allow the bird  to fly away. What urgency these men got in this islet that cannot save a life, how much ever insignificant it be?

It is in the upbringing. As children, many of the boys in our gang used to stone to death if we spot a chameleon. Children believed that a chameleon had the power to suck blood from the body through the navel from a distance. The beleaguered creature dies a horrid death within no time. The same fate awaited the tiny poison less country snake that mistakenly shows up in front of the civilized society. These snakes feed on frogs and rats. The beleaguered sound emanating from a frog that is trapped in a snake's mouth is a usual thing in the country side. Even that croak in distress sometimes sounded like music to our ears! There was no boy in the village who has not stoned a dog. The painful howls of the dog give an unexplainable pleasure to the people who do this nasty act and the onlookers. The same is the mental condition of a person who whips out his smart phone, switches on the video camera in it and catches the scene of an accident. The number of this tribe is increasing alarmingly.

That is in the genes but varies from person to person. In a majority of people, these genes are hibernating. A man who is taught to be compassionate to fellow living beings from childhood days can never do any harm to others. It is important to study a little bit of moral science along with tremendous quantity of Mathematics, Physics, Biology and Chemistry. Classes shall start right inside the homes. Do we have some time to spend for the young generation to show the right path? Gandhi is very relevant here too....

Desert Living -18

Here is a narration of a spectacular scene. Three cars meet at a tri-sectional road. One car reaches first and on sighting an oncoming car from the opposite direction, stops before taking a turn. The oncoming car also stops at the junction. Then comes the third one from the third direction. That car too stops at the junction in order to facilitate the other cars to move on. There was no traffic signal at the junction, but still these men at the wheels showed tremendous patience to drive safely and above that, decently. That, all those drivers were Indians make the story so far an unbelievable one. It happened not in India but in a foreign country makes the rendition sensible anyway. In the countries, where strict rules are there, our countrymen are more than happy to follow them. In fact they are the first ones to stick to the rules

The above incident happened in Das Island, where only a few hundred vehicles run. One of the drivers signalled the other one to move ahead first and then the "log jam" has been cleared! This is just a normal scene on the roads where stringent laws are in place to deal with erring motorists. Not only rules exist there, but they are implemented with equal straightforwardness. Heavy penalties in terms of money and punching the licence act as deterrent to one and all who tempt to show there skills on roads. Law enforcement agencies do not simply pocket a few bucks to let off the wrong doers.

If you spot a non air conditioned Tata or Asok Leyland bus on the roads of the desert, just think that this bus is used for transporting labourers working in the construction field. In Qatar, Friday afternoon session is considered a holiday. At around four in the evening, the contractor arranges a bus to take people who are interested to go to the nearby town to buy some essential goods or to have some good food. It was a Tata bus, non air conditioned and above that, all the seats used to wear a thick layer of dust. These were the buses used for ferrying the workers at site. 
 

 Imagine wearing a coat with a thousand pins inserted in it. Stand in a hot sun, wield a pick axe and hit the hard soil continuously. The humidity is almost 100% and the temperature could be anything above 40 degree Celsius.  The entire cover-all, the uniform everyone wears in a construction site will be wet in the opening hours of the work itself. How irritating it is to wear fully drenched clothes and indulge in physical jobs! This is how the human beings work in a desert. 

Perhaps, more disgusting thing about the life in desert is that at the end of the month, the money they get in hand must be something like 15 to 20 thousand Indian rupees. For this, the miseries and hardships they endure is unimaginable. For several months together they do not get to see their near and dear ones at home. They are in a way condemned to lead a monotonous life in the labour camps in the deserts.

The facilities provided at their dwelling places is always minimal. Four men are squeezed into a small box type shelters, where two tier beds are provided. Bathrooms and toilets are provided outside their rooms, that are shared by everyone in the camp. Mediocre quality food is served in the 'C' mess. There will be long winding queue in the mess to get the food. In Qatar, I was mistakenly guided to the labour mess that was known as 'C' mess. I have been served rice and dhaal and then a side dish. Kuboos was stacked nearby. People could pick them as much as they needed. It was such a meagre food that I could not eat it properly. There were no tumblers to drink water. The workers were supposed to bring bottles and fill water to drink! I was surprised to see how shabbily the workforce is treated at a construction site camp. Even the 'A' mess for that matter was no better than the C. There, we got chapatis that resemled very close to rubber sheets!

The other day, a supervisor with a sub-contractor had articulated the plight of the workers. He said, there were labourers who take home a monthly salary of as low as ten thousand rupees and their tyrant boss combined with an indifferent Personnel and Administration department do everything to see that the men who do the real work at site get the remuneration as low as possible. There were not even a single penny given as increment for the past three years. They work for 12 hours everyday. This includes four hours of over time. On Friday the full working hours are considered as over time. Like that they earn something that need to be sent to the family back home. 12 hours on all the seven days of the week!

The subcontractor has only one non air conditioned bus to ferry nearly three hundred workers to and from the site. The entire process takes more than one hour to complete. By the time they reach the mess, half of their rest time would have passed. Then the queue in the mess and then back to work. By this time, the boss would be chilling out in his fully furnished single room. He takes food from the A mess where varieties of food is arranged to consume as much as he pleased. There are different kinds of fruits and sweets in addition to the rich food menu. If he still need something more, he can order ice cream or  a ginger tea.

Most of the workers come from India dreaming of big things. Many of them had since converted their dreams into reality and the process is continuing. The price they pay for this is a lot of unpleasant things in life. But still, good number of people, who earn so little, spend a major part of their earning for personal comforts like liquor and cigarette. Even if liquor is scarce in the desert countries, these people manage to get them as much as they need. This again eats into their earnings. At the end of the month, what could be the amount they send home?

 

The other day, a plumber's help was sought to fix two water taps and some minor repairs in the pipe line at my Pondicherry home. It was all over within three hours. The plumber took away thousand rupees for that. An electrician charged four hundred rupees to fix four fans on the ceiling. A labourer in Keralam is paid five hundred rupees for eight hours of work. Contrast these people with the sweat drenched helpless souls of the desert. The desi ones enjoy their life with their family everyday while the expat ones lead a miserable life in search of a better living standard. The irony is that, he burns away his life in the desert, braving every kind of adversity, to spread brightness in his family at home. What use the money serves to them when the "beakon of light" is like a visitor who can never share the load of running a family apart from sending money every month? 

 

Onam, Sweet Onam -3

Chingam is a pleasant month. After the 'panja Karkitakom' pleasant things revisit the earth. Dark clouds, squally winds and heavy down pours become a thing of past. The 'thumba' plants start blooming. The tiny white flowers in the little plat announce the arrival of another Onam. Heart brims with excitement. Then comes the "Onappareeksha," the first term examination. Most of the time, this occurred after the Onam. We always wished the Onappareeksha to come before the festival. It could have facilitated worriless celebrations. Worry? Who worried about exams, by the way? Anyway, it still remained like an uncomfortable pricking thing somewhere in the entire scheme of things when the first term exams were posted after the Onam. It used to start immediately after the Onam when the minds where still hooked to the comfort zone of unbridled enjoyment.

If ‘atham’ is dark, Onam will be bright. That is a belief among the people. Rain is unpredictable in Keralam and it can show up any time as it pleases. So, a few times in my memory, rains dampened the spirit of Onam so mercilessly. As the first rays of the sun falls on earth on the Onam day, the excitement reaches its culmination. One of the boys was turned into "Maveli" by that time. Those days maveli's attire was made of a particular small plant. We called it 'punja' and these plants were seen during the Onam season just like 'thumba' plant. Bundles of the 'punja' plants are tied to the body of the boy who agreed to be this year's Maveli. The entire body is covered with the plant and the face is covered with a mask. That was the Maveli of the olden days. There was some innocence attached to this always.

Kids shout "Maveli Vanne...Maveli Vanne..." (Maveli has come...Maveli has come) and accompany the grassy Maveli to the neighbouring houses. There, the Maveli dances till someone from the house turns up with some coins. He visits a few houses and collects a small sum. That was equally shared among the participants. This paltry amount was all that used by the guys for a Jayan movie at Poochakkal Royal theatre or to meet the expenses on the way to watch the football tournament at the nearby village.

After the rich breakfast that included every kind of traditional items, we straight away headed to the play ground. There was no specific play ground but all open places were our play grounds. People have not yet started constructing houses wherever they saw some vacant places. There were hardly any fences too. On Onam day everyone was allowed to go out and play. Even our seniors came out to have fun. At least for five days from the first day of Onam, all went back to their childhood days. That was the beauty of the celebration called Onam. Kabaddi was the favourite game but many other groups of girls and boys played different types of interesting games. Interestingly, none of us knew much about cricket. The swift lock of the legs of the guy who raids was the key to success in kabaddi. Sasikumar was an expert in this. Vinod was a very good at eluding any kind of traps. Many times, I felt so frustrated to see him slip away so easily from my own tricks to beat him.  Very interesting indeed. Guys and gals knew nothing about how the time passed by.

As lunch time arrives everyone disperses for a break. We never tried to find out what others were going to have. It could be true, many of them who left the play ground for the lunch had not had one, to his/her heart’s content. My grandma, but, would have arranged everything an Onam feast demanded. After offering the first meal to the Gods and the ones who had departed long back, we ate everything we could. Immediately after the lunch, all had reassembled back at the same venue to continue from where we left.

As the sun traversed much towards west, it was time we all got ready for the big event at the eastern village. By this time, all those new Onam dresses looked like a bundle of drity clothes. Today is the day, the foot ball tournament starts. We could ill afford to miss that. The guys line up and head straight towards east, leaving the gals behind. The gang consisted of at least ten boys. All along the tiny bunds of the vast paddy field, we walked in a line, cracking jokes and laughing so loudly.

Next day is called the second onam and then come the third, fourth and fifth Onams. Every day the routine continued. Play all the days and then over to the football ground by evening. Needless to say it again, one day, we all marched to watch the matinee show of our beloved hero's action thriller. On one of the Onam days every time, we took lunch from Nanu's house. 

The customary 'atha pookkalam' had 'vaada malli' as the main attraction. These purple coloured beauties were cynosure to the eyes. Then to match with it, we had tiny leaves of the Shatavari plant. Thumbappoo gave the white hue while the 'dry flowers of thulasi mixed with cinder of the husk of rice grains provided the black. After the work  is done, just standing at a little distance, we felt so proud about it.

Perhaps it were not the best art work but it was the outcome of hard work and dedication. There were no cameras those days to freeze all the action in celluloid films. Still, everything remains as fresh as a vaadaa malli in the mind. No mega pixel gadgets needed to narrate those enchanting images to all those love to take a nostalgic trip to the paste.

Another Onam is at our door step right now and it is Visakham day today. Time to go out to collect flowers. Nanu is waiting outside with the tiny basket he weaved with coconut leaflets....

Memories of a Temple Pond

This is how a temple pond in Keralam looks. How beautiful it is! Close to the temple, another structure paved with tiles on its roof, stands like a shelter to the devotees taking bath in the pond. There are steps from the top to the bottom from where one can get into the holy water and take a blissful dip.

Our village temple too has a pond. It has no frills and fancies attached to it, but it does have a humble coconut leaf thatched shelter. It does not have steps to reach the water. A simple, non descript pool of water, cleaned at times, depending on the financial position of the poor temple is all that describes the "theerthakkulam". Still, the village's elitists and the ordinary ones alike came there to have a dip.

Everyone who took bath in the pond visited the deity with the wet clothes. A clean body and a praying soul narrowed down the distance between the 'dehi' and 'deham' at the abode of "Olavaipil Thevar", as we fodly called our presiding diety. The Mahadevar temple had only a few visitors those days, but as the days passed by, the number of devotees swelled, but they hardly take bath in the temple pond now. The temple pond now cries for attention from the urbanized villagers.

Elders took bath and went about their routine jobs. When we start our bath, there could be a few elders who stand on the edge of the pond, cleaning their teeth with twigs of mango or neem tree. Most of us used 'umikkari'- the charred remains of the husk of rice grains- to clean the teeth. We believed a mix of the cinder of husk of the rice grains and crystals of salt cleaned the teeth much effectively than the chemicals we use at present. Children came to the temple pond only to have a blast. It was not just a bath we meant. It was a no holds barred revelry in water lasting for several hours.

Guys jumped one after the other into the pond as if big boulders fell in water. That was just the beginning. We swam to every direction in the pond. Someone fully immersed and some others floating. Back stroke, front stroke, breast stroke, free style whatever be the technical names, we guys knew everything. The ones who disappeared in water were not seen for a while. After a brief lull, they raised from water on the other side of the pond. That was thrilling. Many times, one by on remained in water while others counted 1,2,3...I don't remember up to where we counted but as much as I could recall, it was not more than 100.

But, there was a spoil sport often appeared at the vicinity. He was known as "manager." He shouted at the children to stop the bath and get lost. Children were afraid of him and so, they quietly made an exit from the scene. He was known as manager in the village because he was managing the temple at that time. He was our neighbour and a close friend of our father. He had a grocery shop and the ration shop right opposite the temple. Manager had a wooden face like most of the rustic fathers. He always appeared on the spot to pour cold water on most of our joyful outings, be it in the temple pond or in the temple premises. Elders' psychology those days was like that. They never liked children making too much of noise, running helter skelter all over, stone the mango or a cashew tree. They often tend to shoo away children who trespass onto their compounds.

The fiery eyed face of Vinod's father makes me always wonder about this unaccommodating mindset of the elders. Vinod was our neighbour and a close friend. Whenever his father sighted him playing, his father broke a piece of stick from the nearby fence and beat him mercilessly. Fearing the wrath of the ever angry old man, Vinod, at times, skipped those happy moments with us. Probably the father was worried about his studies. For him, life was not to be whiled away indulging in such non productive activities. The concerned father's wish has come true, to a great extent. Vinod leads a comfortable life now. Recently when we met on the occasion of the temple festival in our village, he talked to me about the family trip to Singapore.

When we bathed in the pond located in our house compound, only a few guys joined. The most essential person was Nanu. He was like a shadow and it was pleasure being with this witty little boy. Our pond was small and so the space was not enough for more guys. Perhaps, this was a mini swimming pool in which we learned a little of swimming skills. Those self learned maneuvers were used in full throttle in the temple pond. These were the time everyone drank the water from the ponds. Many times, water entered through nose too, but that was quiet natural in the learning process.

There were a few naughty creatures in the pond. A group of tilapia fish lived in the pond along with many other varieties. These funny tilapias always mistook their prey with the little private parts of the guys! It was not painful but a little irritating at times. Still we liked their presence in the pond as it was a belief that they acted like scavengers. Wherever I spot these fish in the lakes and water bodies in tourist spots, my mind suddenly takes a return journey to that pond in the temple compound.

After a violent bath, the water in the pond used to turn black due to the mud being kicked up. No wonder if the manager's wooden face turns red. That was almost a routine but the show went on unstopped. Descendants of tilapias may be still swimming in that water body, waiting for the "little preys". But we stop short of diving into that water, lest the manager, watching from the heavens may not like to see the presumably serene pond turned into a pool of muddy water yet again. I let my memories take a dive and remain there for hours together....