"Ariyillanjittu".... If only they had a few grains of rice...

Phantasmagoria can become a word-prism, to re-look at what has touched you, in your life.

" Ariyillanjittu" is the title of a short poem, by the Malayalam poet, Vailoppilly Narayanamenon, which I happened to learn in my 7th standard, while at Don Bosco High School, Irinjalakuda, Thrissur Dist. Incidentally, the pregnant poem appeared on the last page of the Malyayalam text
book, the page which curls like's dog's ears,  in the safe-keeping of even the studious student, who would revere books.

" If only we had a few his  grains of rice" could be the rough translation of the Malayalam title, though every translation is a betrayal/treason,as the saying goes. The same holds good for my feeble and faint attempt to render the poem in English.

Some cut down the mango-tree, the others gathered up the left-over of the fence
And some busied themselves in consoling the widow
All amidst the might hurry of the village, to cremate the emaciated frame of her husband
When everything was ready, to consign him to the flames,
Somebody ran up to the hovel, and asked the young widow, for a few grains of rice
To sprinkle around her husband's still body, that his soul may be laid to rest, prim and proper
Amidst her sobs, from the corner of the hut, the woman mumbled, groaningly
" If only we had a few grains of rice, he would not have died."



"... the muddled and selective presentation of facts in the mainstream media on Gujarat, while does not highlight the failure of the Gujarat government to provide basic needs and the welfare requirements of the poor, has helped to project the Gujarat model as an "alternative" for India."

                                                                     - Quoted from Atul Sood and Kalaiyarasan A., " Fiction and Facts", in Frontline, April 4, 2014, p. 16.

" Every second child under five in Gujarat is undernourished; three out of four are anaemic"
                        - On the cover page of  The Week, April 6, 2014 

The Dead and the Half-Alive of Gujarat Procalaim the UNtruth of the MOdified Glory of Gujarat. 

" Admire I do anything...."

While I was pursing my Masters in Philosophy, at Jnana Deepa Vidya Peeth Pune, I used to residing at Don Bosco, Koregaon Park. During my two-year stay there, I was in the habit of 'posting' a thought on the glass panel of the door of the dormitory, every morning. There used to be quite many followers of my glass-slit 'blog', cutting across friends and foes.

. One of those aphorisms, I posted, mirroring the daily life-situations of those days, read like this. "Admire I do anything and everything, but Admirer, I am not of anybody."

As I read the reports about how the largest democracy in the world, is gearing itself to the sacred execrise of electing a new goverment, the  poignancy and relevance of my distinction, between  " to admire" and to "become an admirer", comes to the fore. Whether it be Modi Vs Rahul or Sonia Vs Mamata, the politics seems to be played out around the idiom of  personality cult and sycophancy. And while making sure of my spelling for sycophancy, I chanced upon the Greek roots of the word. The exercise turned out to be very revealing indeed.

Historicallly, sychophancy goes back to the practice or occupation, in ancient Athens, of being an informer, engaging oneself  in slanderous accusation and the spreading of malicious reports. It also refers to the art of abject flattery, obsequiousness and the character of quality of being a servile or abject flatterer.  Indian voters, seem to become a prey to sychophancy, in all its historical and sematic shades.

 When the machinery of crony capitalism, wedded to the hierarchical forces of caste and class, drive the election campaigns, ideology takes the back seat. Persons, real or cloned  through masks, cultivated through cult, come to occupy the centrestage. And their votaries are mystified as if in a trance - a phantasmagoria of images of the cult-figure or the opponents, in alternating illusion. That is how we have temples being built for Sonia, and teh chant of NAMO mantras. Only few persons, who have been jolted into their autonomous consciousness, like Jaswant Sing, have the courage to say, " Enough of this NAMO NAMO Thamasha."

Let there be more of the ilk of Jaswanth Singhs and less of Jaitlyes, in the Indian political horizon.  Jaswanth Sing, who is able to admire even a Jinnah and not become an admirer of Modi.