Rumbles of a Lonely Mammoth

It is a fad today, to pontificate on the wonders of learning in one's own mother tongue. "It is a wonderful thing", they say. "All the developed countries do it", they say. "English is making slaves out of us", they say.  Yet - they say all of this in English, on a platform called Twitter made mostly by men speaking English, based on computer languages that are predominantly written in English using algorithms that are mostly published in English. Never mind that those who say this, have made a living in India / out of India using their "English" knowledge, and have gone on to monetize on that advantage. Now, they want youngsters in India to forego English and learn everything in their own mother tongue. What these warriors of mother tongue refuse to accept is India is vastly different from the other countries they mentioned. Let us first burst that myth. Here are the top 10 economies in the world, with their GDPs and population siz...

Warning: Long Post / Rambles in some parts The old Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times". It is considered a curse, because interesting things to hear and read are often tumultuous to live through. "Interest" in a particular time period, presupposes life altering changes to countries or even civilizations. For example, volcanic eruptions produce some of the most fertile soil known to humans; but you won't want to be near one when it erupts. Tamizh Nadu is going through some interesting times. The events are big - and in a subtle way, interconnected. First was the demise of the reigning CM, Madam JJ last year. In what seemed to be a smooth transition, her prime loyalist Mr. O. Panneer Selvam (OPS) took over the reigns of the government. It was no surprise, since he had been her choice for CM whenever JJ was forced to not occupy it. Interestingly, the controversial friend and confidante(?) of Ms. JJ - Mrs. Sasikala Natarajan (SN), was found to...

Jallikkattu has been in the news - and is proving to be a sharp dividing factor between people. We will look into the cultural continuity of Jallikkattu, its purpose, its position in the rural economy and agriculture, and the problems associated. I am not going into the power play behind the NGO / PIL / Supreme Court nexus that is hell bent on stopping this game - though we will see briefly how it ties up with the continuing colonization of India. First things First : Jallikkattu (சல்லிக்கட்டு) is NOT bull fighting. "Bull Fighting" as a term creates a negative connotation where successive players try and kill the bull. In Jallikkattu, the bull is not killed. In fact, the multitude of men in the play do not even fight the bull. Henceforth, we will not use the term bullfight to describe this sport. There is a strong historic reason to not call it bull fighting.  The technically correct term for this sport in tamizh is ஏறு தழுவல் - "Embracing (தழுவல்) the Bull (ஏறு)...

Yesterday, the PM addressed the nation on the issue of demonetization and its impact on the general populace. It was a damage control exercise with two objectives. First was to acknowledge the hardships that everyone went through during this exercise, thereby mollifying rising impatience. The second was to outline a roadmap for what the govt aims to get done in the next year. The points raised in the talk came as no surprise. In fact, as we had noted in an earlier blog - ( here ) - the main target of demonetization hasn't been black money itself. While the bank deposit wind fall has been accepted with due gratitude by the government, the main targets were Fake currency rackets, terrorism and naxalism. One facet that we had not thought of, but turned to be a blessing was the almost complete crackdown on human trafficking. One would also imagine narcotics business to have taken a big hit. Each of these problems have enormous prevalence in various border states. On the whole, it ha...

The Hindu Wedding - the extravagant, "feed the whole town" and "bring together the whole clan" kind of wedding, has been under attack for several years - if not decades by the liberals of this country. Incidentally, the same group that is attacking the Hindu wedding is at the forefront of the so called "Social Justice War" to ensure prosperity to the lower strata of the society. The attackers of the Hindu wedding are proponents of forced wealth redistribution, and go as far to rob Peter to pay Paul. They imagine themselves as modern day Robin Hoods, who want to deprive the evil rich Hindu of his / her ill-begotten wealth and give it to the poor. They argue that the Hindu wedding is a grotesque exhibition of wealth; a kind of "in your face insult" to the poor, and hence must be curbed. We should look at this accusation in a bit of detail. Let us consider a typical 3 day traditional Hindu wedding. A brief summary of a Hindu wedding goes as follo...

Two major events shook the world. One was the election of Donald J Trump as the president of the United States. The second, and closer to home (and more important in my mind) was the demonetization of large denomination currencies by the government of India. First on US Elections I had always held through this election season that HRC - the Democrat contender, would be a global disaster as a president. Part of the sentiment was the disdain with which she dealt with an emerging India. She made it a deliberate policy decision to hyphenate India with a failed state, Pakistan. Her shenanigans as a secretary of defense in hurting Indian interests has been detailed elsewhere, and I shall not venture into them here. Suffices to say, I am glad she lost. While she will still have considerable pull in the way Indo-US relations will shape up, she won't be in the driver's seat. Having said that - it would be naive to suggest that DJT is the best thing since sliced bread for Indian i...

There have been political murders in many southern states. Even though Kerala and TN stand out (in that order), the murder of the day in Bangalore (16/10/2016) and one today in Pune (17/10/2016) shows a widespread and planned attempt to murder dissenting political voices. On the top most layer - each of these issues seem unconnected. In Kerala, it is Communists that unleash the violence. In TN, the violence has decidedly religious undertones - most that were murdered were politically active Hindu activists, and the murderers are suspected to be Islamic fundamentalists. Nothing is known about the murderer in Bangalore. These are the superficial observations. The connecting thread is that the victims in all these cases are politically active members of Hindu organizations. The levels of these conflicts have been kept deliberately below retaliation threshold; and their reporting deliberately muted. Given the press coverage a single murder in Dadri cases of inconsequential vandalization...