Getting my car registered - Part one

For newly returned Indians, dealing with the Indian bureaucracy can be a traumatic experience after having been spoilt by the relatively smoother dealings with Uncle Sam. These days however, many government services are being made available online, so encounters with License Raj are far and few in between. It is however unavoidable if you buy yourself a new set of wheels.

When I got a 2-wheeler 2 years ago, I dealt with my fears through the tried and tested technique of procrastination. I registered it finally almost a year after I got the thing after multiple nudges from FIL. I could get away with it because it gets driven only for a kilometre from the house for early-morning dropoffs of my kids to the school bus stop or for emergency groceries close by.

We recently acquired a Ford Figo, a compact diesel hatchback that gives 15kmpl in the city and promises to reduce my fuel bill almost by half (Petrol prices in tax-hungry AP reached a whopping Rs. 62 recently). Unlike the US, where you renew your rights to emit carbon every year, in India you pay an one-time (hefty) road-tax when you buy the car and you're done. The dealer collects the payment from you when you buy the car, but does not get it registered. Instead he gives you a stack of forms and a nice instruction sheet as to how to do it. The instruction sheet looked quite encouraging. It assured that I don't need an agent, I just need to show up in the local RTA office with the aforementioned stack of forms and "enjoy the warmth of their hospitality".

My first attempt on a Saturday morning got quickly aborted as it happened to be a second Saturday and the office was closed. My second attempt was on one of the week days.  I reached the office early enough (around 9:30AM) feeling quite smug to be there before the rest of Hyderabad wakes up (usually around 11AM). The queue was short and I reached the window in no time. A guy who looked like an agent was helpfully snatching the forms from the folks to verify if things were in order and he did the same with me. He found that the forms were missing a signature and a stamp from the financing bank. Darn it.

The dealer and the bank's loan guy were supposed to work together and the bank's explanation as to the missing signature was typically vague. It seemed like the missing signature was by design and I was supposed to have contacted the loan guy after getting the vehicle to get the requisite signature.

Anyway, the loan guy picked up the form from me at work. We arranged to meet at the RTA office the next Saturday where he would come with the signed form.

So I reached the RTA office for my 3rd attempt on Saturday morning a bit later than I would have liked - 11:45AM. There were multiple long lines, with no signs as to which line was for what; word on the line was that one was for new driving licenses and the other was for registrations. I joined the line for registrations just getting beaten by two people who squeezed ahead of me.

The anxious wait started with less than two hours left before the office closed early on Saturday. People in the line had to be constantly on the vigil fighting back line-cutters, but were not always succeeding. One guy tried to get ahead of me saying he had just gone to park his car; I had been in the line for 15 minutes and had not seen him earlier, so I said nothing doing. He sulked and moved back and promptly cut into the line three spaces behind. The queue was getting increasingly restless and was pushing up forward as if that will make it move faster. The guy behind me was violating my air space big time and when I glared at him, he just pointed to the guy behind.

I was getting philosophical at this point and was fully prepared to find out at the counter after a couple of hours that some other thing was missing. "No registration for you!"

(to be continued).

- Balaji

CWG Part Deux

Although it is old news now, I feel like I should write one after the CWG. The games themselves went largely without incident. There was some whining from the media about how they were treated by the organizers. Apparently the games website was mostly down and information was poor to non-existent on event schedules. Some of the Indian players complained about not being able to get tickets for their next of kin. There was some noise about how the women ushers during the medal ceremonies were dressed inappropriately in bridal costume.
Still, considering the state of affairs before the start of the games, things had trended up significantly. Not a peep about about the athletes village once the games started, other than the exceptional food.

For TV junkies like me, the CWG was another landmark - the first broadcast of HD in India. Consumers in India have been conned into buying HD TVs for a few years now with no HD programming in sight. Finally, the programming is here, a bit like how it happened in the US when it started. Discovery and National Geographic have HD channels and they have started showing major sports events on HD as well. I have a Tata Sky HD set top box that cost Rs. 2500 with first year's HD programming thrown in at no additional cost.

The CWG opening ceremony looked rather nice on HD. So did the stadia - they stood up to the scrutiny of the higher resolution camera quite well.

As for India's performance in the games, it was its best ever - which was broadly expected given the host country boost factor. India finished 2nd in the gold-medal tally behind powerhouse Australia, just one medal ahead of England and 3rd in the overall tally. Curiously, England, Scotland and Wales compete as separate countries while they combine as the UK in the Olympics.

Going into the last day, India trailed England by 1 medal, equalized and then took the lead in dramatic fashion behind Saina Nehwal's come-from-behind victory in the Badminton singles finals.  The one thing that marred the proceedings on the last day for India was its thrashing at the hands of Australia 8-0 in the men's hockey finals.

There were many firsts for India, a handful of track and field medals including a gold in women's 10000m and an 1-2-3 finish in women's discus.

So that was the good part; once the games ended, we started hearing about how much money the organizers looted and we are back to reality again.

- Balaji

Returning to the country holding the CWG

I returned yesterday from a 2-week long business trip to the US where I was reading and hearing media reports about the CWG debacle in Delhi; must say I had my head down in shame a bit. The Indian media perspective (more like "The Hindu's" perspective) is decidedly more mixed. Clearly it was top of mind for The Hindu with 7 stories on its Saturday's edition.

"Get your act together, Manmohan tells Ministers" - Where was he all these years?

"Sigh of relief for Games officials" - The said relief comes after a guardedly positive statement from the president of the CWG foundation, Mike Fennell. IOC president Jacques Rogge threw in his support as well. They both seem to believe things can still be salvaged in the next 8 days. Apparently a lot of progress has been made in the last 3 days.

"A letdown for a proud nation" writes Peter Roebuck the sometimes controversial British cricket writer. This article and another report I heard on the NPR reinforced the notion that there is at least some sentiment in the West that is rooting for India and these people are saddened by this setback to India's standing in the world. Among other things, Peter Roebuck cites some study about India that says in around 15 years,  291 million will move from poverty to a sustainable lifestyle and the size of the middle class will grow to 538 million. I wish I could believe that.

"Mixed reactions to facilities at the Village"
"Athletes village comes in for praise"
An Indian table tennis player actually liked the accommodations. Another Indian athlete opines anonymously that the facilities are 95 percent ready but the lack of finishing touch is making it look bad. A Kiwi player says they were promised world-class accommodations and was disappointed. The Kiwis however really liked the setup for table-tennis.

The final verdict will have to wait until after the games, but it is likely only to decide how black an eye India is going to get.
- Balaji

Readings in history (part 5) - lecture by Dr. Parpola

During my last visit to Chennai, I attended a lecture by Prof. Asko Parpola, a well-known researcher on the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) and the yet to be deciphered Indus script (see my earlier post on Harappans and Aryans).  Prof. Parpola along with Dr. Iravaddam Mahadevan (another well-known researcher in this area) have hypothesized that the Indus script is a script used to write a proto-Dravidian language. Proto-Dravidian is the hypothetical language that Tamil and other Dravidian languages descended from.

In this specific talk, Prof. Parpola focused on a couple of possible connections between the Indus script and Dravidian languages. One was the preponderance of the "fish" symbol in the Indus script, some of which he claims to indicate a "star". Refering to a star as a fish is of course reminiscent of referring to a star as "Vin meen" in Tamil, where "meen" is Tamil for fish.

The more elaborate discussion was on the occurrence of a symbol that is taken to be the hind-leg of the wild-ass, an inhabitant of the salt-deserts of north-west India (the same area where the Indus valley civilization had spread).

Prof. Parpola hypothesizes that the Tamil word for donkey "kaZhuthai" referred originally to the wild-ass as it can be parsed as "kazh" (salt-desert) + "uthai" (kick), i.e. kicker of salt-desert. He also conjectures that the old Tamil word "taal" (தாள்) which has multiple meanings including leg and star is another possible link.

Okay, if you're like me, you are probably thinking this is a big stretch. However, if there are multiple such tenuous links, I suppose they could add up to a "preponderance of evidence" claim.

In any case, the deciphering is very much incomplete as Profs. Parpola and Mahadevan readily admit and Prof. Parpola says other interpretations of these symbols are possible.

One unfortunate aspect of research like this is that it gets politicians and other people with vested interests and foregone conclusions all excited. The "Dravidians are great" gang understandably grasps at such research feverishly. (Prof. Parpola was an invited speaker at the recently concluded World Tamil Conference at Coimbatore where he was bestowed the 2009 Classical Tamil Award by Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi).

On the other side, the "Aryan supremacists" frown upon anything that gives the Dravidians any kind of legitimacy. For some of them, contesting this hypothesis is not just about denying  the Dravidian connection to the IVC, but to appropriate an Aryan one (although there seems to be no archeological backing for the Aryan connection - there is plenty of evidence against it as John Keay talks about in his book).

There is however another school of thought (this by published scientists) that says that the Indus inscriptions were really not a script (of any language, Dravidian or otherwise), instead just a bunch of random signs (like a set of traffic signs).

The tension between the two sides (or is it three?) was apparent during the Q&A session after the talk.
Dr. Mahadevan alluded to this by asking the audience to limit themselves to "clarifying questions" on the paper. At a different point, Dr. Mahadevan (a Tamilian) also said that Dr. Parpola enjoyed some benefits as an IVC researcher that he himself did not have, because Dr. Parpola could not be labelled a "Tamil Chauvinist".

So, I was all prepared to witness some serious war of words, but it ended up fairly lame but for a couple of skeptical questions which Dr. Parpola answered rather diplomatically. I heard from my friend that an earlier talk by Dr. Parpola engendered a lot more debate.

Anyway, let us hope that this research is conducted solely by objective scientists with as minimal external influence as realistically possible. And I do hope they crack the script. Whether you consider yourself Aryan or Dravidian, the mystery of the IVC carries enough intrigue that you want to know the answers whichever way they point.

- R. Balaji


Related links:
An article in The Hindu on this topic
This blog post follows a robust debate on the merits of Parpola's ideas.

Historic visits - Kakatiya sites

We travelled to Warangal (140km from Hyderabad) and environs over the weekend to visit sites from the Kakatiya dynasty (13-14th century AD). Kakatiyas controlled northern Andhra Pradesh around that time and were feudatories of the Hoysalas of southern Karnataka. Their art definitely seems to have been influenced by their suzerains. Hoysalas of course built the famous temples of Belur and Halebid, arguably among the most beautiful sculptural temples of South India. I have visited Belur/Halebid as a kid but still remember some of the sculptural marvels.

Of the three places we visited

(I) the Kakatiya Fort complex in Warangal,

(II) the Ramappa temple in Palampet and
(III) the temple complex (mostly in ruins) at Ghanpur,

I liked the Warangal site the most, probably because it was the most well maintained. There must have been a stunning temple here once. What you see now are various pieces of that temple that have been arranged into some kind of order by the Archeological Society of India (ASI). One of the prominent features were the perfectly circular inserts in the pillars that look as if they were lathed. Except they didn't have lathes in the 13th century.

The scultptures show signs of systematic mutilation (right) suggesting that the temple was destroyed by an invading enemy. It is tempting to think of the Muslim invaders as the culprits - Malik Kafur, Ala-ud-din Khilji's general conquered these parts around that time. However my friend RG who accompanied me pointed out that vandalizing temples and monuments of a conquered kingdom was fairly common practice by kings of all religions throughout history. Wendy Doniger, noted Indologist whose "Hindus - An Alternative History" I am reading now, echoes similar sentiments.

It was fun to have my friend who is an "amateur enthusiast" of sculptural art in South India play unofficial guide; we looked for various clues to identify the deities and other mythological characters portrayed there. For instance, two sculptures standing on either side of a small shrine turned out not to be Dwarapalakas as their position might suggest, but Lord Shiva himself, considering that he had 4 hands, wore an Angavastram that didn't go below the knee and the serpent earrings; clearly the re-arrangement of ASI still needs some work.

The Ramappa temple was very curious in that it had a super-structure that was very much intact, while the base looked like it had been disturbed violently by an earthquake (picture to the right); or more likely because the temple settled into the ground that couldn't bear the weight of all that granite and basalt. The Ramappa temple had inscriptions that looked fairly close to modern-day Telugu script (I have picked up a little bit of the Telugu script in the last year, though I don't understand what I read).

The temple complex at Ghanpur was in the worst shape. The highlights there were the leaning temples and the temples with fractal patterns in their vimanas (vimanas unlike gopurams are the towers over the main shrine; gopurams are at the gateway of the temple).

For more pictures from the trip, see this Picasa album.

Life as a sports fan in India - Cricket, tennis and F1

For someone who was following the NBA, NFL, tennis and a bit of golf in the US, I needed replacements in addition to cricket and tennis in India. I love cricket, but there is just too much of it and you get saturated. I withdraw myself every few months, and come back to it refreshed.

I am on one such break now and I have discovered the joy of Formula 1. F1 features the most advanced and sexiest looking cars in the planet, super-talented egotistic young drivers with the maturity level of teenagers, challenging tracks (not the boring curved rectangles of NASCAR) and  plenty of on-track strategy (pit stop, tyre and fuel strategy).

On top of this, the intra-team dynamics between the engineers and the two drivers creates lot of intrigue. Clearly it doesn't matter to the team which of their drivers wins as the total points from both contribute to the team's points for the Constructor's championship. However, the drivers are also after their individual glory of winning races and the annual driver's championship.

So what's not to love? There was one little problem. There was not much overtaking. Too often, it seemed like the car with pole position ran away for a coast-to-coast victory.

This season, they have tinkered with the rules and there is lots of overtaking - I don't yet understand which changes caused it. One significant change is the no-refuelling rule which means that there is no need for a  "fuel strategy" . Fuel tanks have been enlarged to fill enough fuel to last the whole race. This implies that the cars get progressively  faster as they consume fuel and get lighter through the race. The pit stops are now only for tyre changes (or to fix any number of issues that can crop up in the car) since tyres don't last the entire race. Fewer variables and simpler racing.

This year there are two teams  (Red Bull Racing and McLaren Mercedes) that have the fastest cars and probably the four best drivers - Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel for Red Bull; Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button for McLaren. The Red Bull cars are faster in the corners, while the McLarens have better straight line speed. Any one of these 4 drivers can win on any given week. When one of these cars somehow falls behind in pole position or ends up behind because of a slower pit stop, they are certain to overtake everyone and come up front. Further there is a weekly battle within these four that makes for some seriously competitive racing.

Take for instance last week's Turkish Grand Prix. Webber and Vettel (the Red Bull drivers) were #1 and #2 going into lap no. 41 (it was a 58 lap race), when Vettel overtook Webber on the inside but inexplicably moved to the right, making contact. Vettel's car spun out of control and he retired from the race. Webber managed to rejoin the race as #3 behind Hamilton and Button (the McLaren drivers) who by now had taken the #1 and #2 spots. Vettel made a "mental" gesture as he walked out of his car, clearly blaming Webber for the incident even though the near-unanimous verdict from the pundits was that his move to the right (into Webber's way) caused the contact.

Then in lap 49, it was the McLaren drivers' turn for a duel. The McLaren crew radio-ed instructions to both drivers to "conserve fuel", so Hamilton slows down a notch; Button disregards the instructions, speeds up and overtakes a surprised Hamilton; Hamilton now furious, battles back and retakes the lead soon after. The McLaren crew is now in a panic as they don't want a repeat of what happened to the Red Bulls and repeat the instruction for conserving fuel, effectively asking them to stop dueling. The race ends with those track positions with Hamilton's first victory of the season.

As you can see from these videos, a lot of the action is now telecast with on-board cameras which is probably the best way to experience the race. I can't wait to watch this in HD when it does eventually come to India.

Talking of HD, Indian consumers have been getting conned into buying HD TVs for the last few years while there is no HD programming; finally Sun started HD service on some select channels (including coverage of this year's IPL) a couple of months ago. Tata Sky (which is what I have) promises to have it by end of year in time for the Commonwealth Games.

- Balaji

Trip to Mahabaleshwar

We went to Mahabaleshwar on a team outing - by over-night train from Hyderabad to Pune and then a bus ride to Mahabaleshwar. It is a "hill station"  in the Western Ghats 100km from Pune. Hill station in quotes because at an altitude of 1400m, it is not as chilly as what you might expect like Ooty (2200m) or Kodaikanal (2100m).

However it rivals if not exceeds the other two in terms of scenic beauty. It is situated on a plateau with stunning views of five river valleys all of which originate from near Mahabaleshwar. |Four of these are now dry, the fifth one being the still-wet Krishna. The Castle Rock and Arthur's Seat viewpoints offer views of canyons lined with stratified walls that are reminiscent of the great canyons of the US. Interestingly, the guide books (Frommer's, Lonely Planet) don't make a big deal of this. Goes to show how these places in India can be under-marketed also revealing attitudes towards tourism in India. The guides mention the temple adjoining the origin of the 5 rivers and the strawberry farms, but none the canyons.  

- R. Balaji

Golt movies ain't half bad

Okay, if "Golt" offends my Telugu brethren, I will invoke the Chetan Bhagat excuse - you only make fun of people who you care for.

It is now almost three years in Andhra Pradesh and what better way to get to know a people than to watch their movies? My wife and I have started watching Telugu movies on DVD borrowed from our neighbors. Going to the theater does not work because of the language problem, which is conveniently resolved with subtitles in the DVD form. And yes, my conclusion of this post's title was reached by a sample size of two - Magadheera and Arya 2.

When I was growing up, Chiranjeevi movies (dubbed in Tamil) used to be shown in the 10:30 morning show in my home town; I remember seeing trailers of these and feeling all superior about Tamil movies - the Chiranjeevi movies seemed like cheesy masalas even at that age. The only good Telugu movies seemed to be from K. Viswanath (Sankarabaranam, Sagara Sangamam, Swathi Muthyam etc.) at that time.

Fast forward 25 years (sheesh, I feel old writing that), and now Chiranjeevi's son Ramcharan is acting in masala movies, arguably much better ones. Magadheera was a super-hit last year and we could see why. It is a love-story that spans 400 years - a warrior and a princess from a pseudo-historical Deccan kingdom whose unfulfilled love gets another chance when they are reborn in modern-day Andhra (or is it Telengana?). Ramcharan is swashbuckling in the warrior role and passable in his modern day incarnation while Kajal Agarwal pulls off both roles with aplomb (aside from looking cute beyond belief); of course my wife's assessment of the two actors might be the reverse.

It amazes me how little the Indian film industry dips into our vast and rich history for its stories these days. I can't remember a single recent movie set in pre-colonial India other than Jodha Akbar and Ashoka (both laudable efforts). Movies like Magadheera show the possibilities even though this one is actually not based on historical events.

Indian movies have made enormous progress in photography, art direction and other technical areas. I think it is about time big-budget producers and directors made some blockbusters set in our history.

Anyway, coming back to Magadheera, it should show Tamil masala directors a trick or two. I now see why a lot of recent masala hits (the Vijay ones especially) are being imported from Telugu to Tamil.

A lot of the movie is shot in Hyderabad and it was fun to see some places that we know. I have been to the Golkonda fort many times; it is a great place especially when you see it with a guide who can put it in the right historical context. But it never looked as beautiful as it looked in Senthil Kumar's camera in the song "Panchdhara Bomma". The song alone is worth the price of admission. It is arguable whether India produces world-class movies, but we sure make the world's best music videos.

The other movie Arya 2 was more of a guilty pleasure. The movie is outrageously campy but it was also very funny. Boy, this guy Allu Arjun can dance (and I thought Vijay could dance).

- R. Balaji

He did it!

One of the issues I have continued to follow after I returned from the US is health care. I have also been following how Obama is doing as president. It was a no-brainer to vote for him being on the center-left myself, especially after the Bush years. While I knew expectations on him were wildly unrealistic, I was still hoping for say just a couple of miracles.

However, in the first year he had managed to disillusion everyone who voted for him and enraged everyone who did not. The health care debate was going badly for the Democrats with Republicans managing to vilify it quite effectively. So when I went to the US for my quarterly business trip in February, I was in a morose mood. I was especially disgusted by how the loss of one senate seat could make Obama and the Dems so timid (filibuster, schmilibuster).

However there were signs of a turnaround in those two weeks I was there. When the history is written about how Obama pulled off a legislative achievement that could very well rank among FDR's New Deal, the Reagan tax cuts and LBJ's civil rights bill, the healthcare summit should be judged as a turning point. It was political theater at its best, seemingly orchestrated only for the O man's benefit. He seemed like the only adult in the room, and just couldn't help coming across as the most intelligent and knowledgeable on the issues. He also came off as gracious in accepting a couple of Republican ideas and in a hilarious moment acknowledged the feisty John McCain's criticism about some pork barrel in the bill.

Since then, the Democrats (led by the formidable Nanci Pelosi) seemed to have new energy infused into them and for once have acted with the courage of their convictions. The Dems in the House are passing a bill that is supposedly unpopular (depending on what polls you believe) and might even cost some of them their seats in November. Why? Because they believe it is the right thing. Where were they all these years? Looks like there is some hope for them after all.

So why do I think this bill is a good thing ? There is a part of the bill that spends money to cover un-insured and under-insured people*. I support this part for the same reasons why most bleeding heart liberals do. Don't get me wrong - capitalism is the greatest thing since steamed idlis, but there are a couple of things for which we should make an exception. Health care is one of them.

Then there is the part that prohibits insurance companies from doing plain old shady things - like stopping coverage once you get sick and deny coverage for pre-existing conditions ( the latter is arguably less shady). The fact that profit-minded companies will do things like these (can't even blame them), is exactly why we need to exempt health care from capitalism and free markets. And why it is reasonable for a social justice minded government to get into this business.

There is a supposed third goal of this bill that reduces the upward spiral of health care costs. The problem is real enough (US spends the most per capita on health care in the world, while it is not in the top 15 nations in terms of health indicators). But this part seems so complicated that we will never know until we see some results.

- R. Balaji

We're World No. 1!

India reached the no. 1 ranking in ICC Test Rankings after beating Sri Lanka at home 2-0 in December. The real test came this February when they played No. 2 South Africa at home. They promptly lost the first Test by an innings and more at Nagpur, crumbling against a speedy and swinging Dale Steyn. Reverse swing used to be the domain of bowlers from the subcontinent and Dale Steyn seems to be the first white bowler to have cracked the code. We sorely missed Dravid and Laxman, both out with injuries.

India needed to square the series (don't ask me about the logic of a 2-match series) at the lovely Eden Gardens to retain their No. 1 ranking. And that is exactly what they did. The win was made possible by a mammoth 643-6, thanks to 100s by Sehwag, Tendulkar (his 47th!) , Laxman and Dhoni.

India's ascent to the top has been built on a batting order "designed by God himself" as someone said. With Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman and Dhoni you can probably create two international teams of great batting caliber. The so-called seniors (Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman) don't seem to be in any hurry to retire. All 6 of them have been in form recently and that is a bit too much to handle for any attack in the world. With the wise Zaheer Khan's reverse swing and the wily and fighting Harbhajan Singh's off spin, we have a reasonable bowling attack to boot.

The South Africans are a sporting bunch - they actually walk when they're out without looking at the umpire; a welcome change from the lows in sportsmanship inhabited by the Aussies. It was nice to see that these things still happen in cricket. Most of the Indian players still walk (may be except the naughty Harbhajan).

Call me old fashioned, but I believe Test Cricket is the only pure form of cricket bcause it is a true test of bat against ball. I detest 20-20 and I eagerly await the day it will go away. Limited overs cricket makes sense when the need to slog is balanced by the need to keep the wicket to last the entire overs. With 20 overs, there is little risk of getting bowled out, so batsmen can slog with impunity. This tilts the equation too much in favor of the bat.

As for tests, yes, it is impossible to sit and watch all 5 days, but you catch pieces of the action when your favorite batsman or bowler is operating and the extended highlights in the evening are rather convenient. To be No. 1 for the first time in this form of cricket is just plain awesome.

- R. Balaji

Reading and watching Chetan Bhagat (part 2)

We went and watched 3 Idiots. It is a honest-to-goodness feel-good melodrama that leaves no emotion in the human mindscape un-visited. It was also hilarious at times. Indian movies are like chaat; evey movie (dish) will contain every emotion (taste).

I also don't get why the hero has to have superhuman physical prowess, Einstein's smarts and Gandhian nobility all in the same movie; among others, it also has the problem of seriously lengthening the movie since each quality takes about an hour to demonstrate. I am fairly certain the book (Five Point Someone) doesn't do this, now I have to go and confirm. Anyway, dinging it for the bad habits of the genre is not being fair to it. Adjusted for the genre, it is certainly one of the better movies I have seen recently. Every Indian who went to an Engineering college (either willingly or forced by some circumstance) will connect with it in many many ways.

- R. Balaji

Readings in history (part 4 - Harappans and Aryans)

One of the things that has drawn me to history recently, is really the curiosity about who we (Indians) are as a people and where we came from. Yes, it sounds like a cliched middle-age crisis driven thing, but it is real enough.

I went back to reading John Keay's book, especially the first few chapters that deal with Indian pre-history. Turns out, we only have two major sources to understand our history in the 3000-5000 years before Christ. One is the Sanskrit literary and religious compendium in the form of the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Brahmanas and the two great epics . The other is the Indus Valley civilization which is one of the three great civilizations from that era (the Egyptian and Sumerian being the other two).

First the Harappans - as Keay calls the folks from the Indus valley civilization. Harappans did not build towering monuments like the Egyptian pyramids. They however built arguably more egalitarian structures (i.e. not monuments for kings' after-life built by slave-laborers) of bricks so advanced that when they were excavated in the 1920's, the presiding archaeologist thought they were merely 200 years old. They also may have invented the proverbial wheel and spread their civilization over an area that spreads more than 600 km.

The thing is, even though these two societies (Harappans and Aryans) lived roughly in the same geographical area there is no link between the two. It is clear that the Harappans did not write the Vedas. The Aryans' arrival in India post-dates the last of the Harappans by at least a few hundred years. Further the Harappan writings look like anything but Sanskrit.

You might have heard that the Harappans' script has been defying proper deciphering by epigraphists. There are two theories on it - the initial hypothesis of links to Aramaic and Iravadam Mahadevan's more recent theory that it is indeed linked to the Tamil-Brahmi script.

As for the Aryans, it is remarkable that we know about a society primarily from their literary and spiritual work and not traditional sources of historians such as inscriptions recording actual events. Unless of course you believe that the events in the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharatha actually happened in some form. Interestingly enough, John Keay seems to suggest exactly that. He even dates the Great Bharatha war at around 1000 BC. Looking at these epics from a purely historical view, Keay however seems to oversimplify them. For instance he condenses all of Ramayana into a single statement that its goal was to institutionalize dynasty based monarchical system in North India (as opposed to the clan-based societies that existed around that time). I was disappointed that he did not delve into the content of the stories to reason about the people who wrote them. Whether the events in Mahabharatha and Ramayana happened or not, the stories at the least give hints to the kind of values that must have existed around that time. The great sacrifice of Bheeshma, and the sense of filial duty and nobility of Rama and Bharatha to just mention a couple of examples. Not to mention the complex interplay of characters and their motivations in the Mahabharatha. May be it is not aligned with the historian's method to do this kind of reasoning.

Keay writes amazingly well and I have yet to see another book that so concisely, dispassionately and readably narrates Indian history, albeit in a cold-blooded western way.

- R. Balaji

Reading and watching Chetan Bhagat

My head was beginning to hurt reading too many improving books - as P. G. Wodehouse would have called them - and it was time for some lighter fare. A neighbor of mine recommended Chetan Bhagat; apparently he is what twenty-somethings are reading these days. So I decided to reconnect with my younger self and read his latest book, the hugely entertaining Two States.

Within 5 pages I was transported to my college years; Bhagat's simple no-nonsense style and acerbic bluntness fit the gen X (or is it Y?) narrator's sensibilities like a glove. Well it better, since it is semi-autobiographical. It is the love story of a boy and a girl whose families in a certain way represent opposing ends of the Indian cultural spectrum; a live-life-to-the-full Punjabi family on one side and a serious geeky Tamil Brahmin family on the other. Cross-cultural weddings are ripe with humorous possibilities and Bhagat takes full advantage. The book works equally well as a satire (of the corporate world, north and south Indian stereotypes) and as a family relationship drama. It is also probably the best service to national integration since Bharathiyar's "Sindhu nadhiyin ..". If these two families can get along, surely anyone in India can with anyone else (like for e.g. Andhraites with Telengana-ites; sigh) .

It is a screenplay ready to be made into a movie and I can't wait to see how the movie will do in Tamilnadu. Bhagat holds nothing back in his digs on all-things Tamil (or more loosely South Indian). He needs every word of the apology he makes in advance in the preface: "you only take digs at people you care for"; he is married to a South Indian and I suppose he has a certain right.

Apparently this is not even Chetan Bhagat's best book. I hear good things about his earlier book - Five Point Someone, a film version of which (3 Idiots) has recently released and is a big hit. I have not seen it yet. Another one is One Night at a Call Centre (film version "Hello").

- Balaji

Readings in history (part 3 - a couple more books)

Thought I will briefly mention a couple of other books on history.

A few years ago, when I was in the US, I read India - A history by John Keay. If you're looking for a comprehensive & readable account albeit from a western eye, you could try this. I remember being vaguely irritated by his dispassionate treatment at times; a plundering Mahmud Ghazni would receive the same level of respect as Raja Raja Chola or Akbar from his very academic view of history.

A remarkable part of the book is the chart in the Introduction that shows the percentage of territory controlled by various dynasties in the last 2000 years. A pretty neat way to summarize and picture Indian history.

Another book I read in 2007 is No God but God by Reza Aslan which is a history of Islam. Events in the last decade had piqued my curiosity on Islam (to put it mildly) like I am sure many around the world. It was quite educational and an easy read. The chapter on Sufi Islam struck me as interesting and surprising - Sufiism is a mystic tradition of Islam whose practitioners talk about almost a romantic love of God - not unlike Hinduism's own Andal and Meera. Modern day Islam however seems to look at Sufiism with a disapproving eye. You might have heard of Rumi, a well-known Sufi poet who has attracted a lot of attention in the west. I sampled some of his writings a couple of which reminded me of The Gita's central motto ("Karmanye..."). It is always interesting to see common ground between religions. The books also takes great pains to depict how Islam has been this multi-faceted religion through history while it may not appear that way in modern times.

- R. Balaji

Readings in history (part 2 - languages)

Thanks for all the comments - inspires me to keep going.

More highlights follow from Sastri's book and some from other sources including a friend of mine I will call RG (who is well versed in these matters and has been educating me a little).

First, it would be good to clarify the linguistic hierarchy as widely agreed upon. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada are part of the same language family (Dravidian languages) rooted by the theoretical language proto-Dravidian. Tamil is the oldest as we all know. Telugu and Kannada branched off earlier and Malayalam was the last one to branch off from Tamil (around 9th century AD). i.e. it is the closest language to tamil. Telugu and Kannada countries were ruled by kings who patronized Sanskrit as the religious language and those languages have come to borrow heavily from Sanskrit. That is to say, while they are not Indo-European (like Sanskrit and its north Indian derivatives), Telugu and Kannada are much more influenced by Sanskrit . Clearly political history influences language history.

An interesting member of the Dravidian family, as some of you may have heard of is Brahui, a language spoken in what is now Baluchistan (parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan). A remote Dravidian language island in an ocean of Indo-European? There are a couple of theories on how this came about. One is that Dravidian speakers (and hence Dravidians?) occupied all of the subcontinent until the wave of Aryanization swept through all of north India somehow leaving a small island of Dravidian speakers. Another theory maintains the more prevalent view that Dravidians did not occupy north India; some of them just migrated to Baluchistan later. The Aryan/Dravidian debate as I mentioned earlier is a juicy one which I hope to return to at some point.

Anyway, coming back to the main thread, Sanskrit had been the language of high culture throughout South India while commoners spoke the regional languages. Tamil developed the "literary idiom" first. The earliest known Tamil literature is what we call the Sangam literature which is placed in 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The Sangam literature itself says that this was the 3rd Sangam and there were 2 other Sangams earlier which ran for a total of 9999 years. This is considered a big exaggeration. Surely Tamil literature is not 12,000 years old; but if Tamil evolved to a point where beautiful poetry following complex metres was written in 1st century AD, the language must have existed for a few hundred years before that in more rudimentary forms (this my own guess). But few hazard guessing a date.

Telugu and Kannada literature start showing up in the latter half of the 1st millennium AD with the bulk of it in the 2nd millennium. If we use the dates when the languages developed the literary muscle, then Telugu and Kannada are younger than Tamil by almost 1000 years. Malayalam is even younger*.

Other interesting titbits.
- Sanskrit was never written down for a long time and primarily stayed alive as an oral tradition as a way to carry the Vedas forward.
- Languages and scripts are "orthogonal'" . i.e. When we talk about a language's history, we talk about it independent of its scripts. There are often multiple scripts developed at various points for the same language. For e.g., Sanskrit was written in a script called Grantha in South India. Tamil had another script called Vattezhuthu. The current script for Sanskrit and many other north Indian languages is as you might know Devanagari.
- From a religious perspective, the source of Hinduism as we know lies in the Vedas and Upanishads (some consider the Upanishads as part of the Vedas) and the puranas most of which are dated in the BCs. However Buddhism and Jainism made a strong push that almost pushed Hinduism out of India. You might remember Amartya Sen's characterization of India as a Buddhist/Jain country until the 5th century AD. Then Hinduism makes a big revival after the 5th century AD. And as many of you might know, the saints who are credited for Hinduism's modern revival (if you can call 1500 years old as modern) are Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva who were proponents of the Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita Hindu philosophies respectively. All three of them notably hailed from South India; they  wrote their philosophies in Sanskrit.

That's all for now.

- R. Balaji

P.S.
* The discussion of the age of these South Indian languages reminded me of the debate going on right now in India where folks in Andhra have applied to the central government to give Telugu classical language status. There was some recent court finding that went against this. Apparently Tamil and Kannada have been given this status already. I forget what benefits this status provides.