Encroachments by the Haves and the Have-nots
Should they evoke such different registers?
Raghuram Ekambaram
Mini-meals from the Pages of The Hindu
Long ago I had titled a post of mine as a smorgasbord. That was a mistake, as many readers may have been put off, either because they did not understand what was on offer, or, if they had understood, because they decided that whatever was on offer would smell as rotten as a smorgasbord offered at cheap eateries; not quite greasy spoons but marginally better.
Today I am calling what is available in Tamil Nadu during lunch hours, like at A2B. A full meal is served in a circular plate, ringed by katories (a Hindi word). The icture shown below maynot be from A2B.
I have taken two items from today’s The Hindu (2025-07-29), one an editorial piece and the other, an opinion on the Editorial page. The editorial is entitled, “Culture of risk” and I will offer my comments on that first.
I do not know whether editorials carried a strap line, but this one did: The notion of a routinely planned mass gathering should be done away with. The use of this general term “mass gathering”, which include celebrations of a victorious local sports team, a rock concert, and, of course, pilgrimages on special days, or during special periods (the recently concluded Maha Kumbh Mela comes to mind), is to side-swipe any criticism from thereligious band. This is done more explicitly further down in the piece. The slant against religious “mass gathering” becomes clear towards the end of the editorial, “...annual drills under the Management Disaster Act are rarely held for regular worship (hero worship is not included here!), while funds earmarked for permanent infrastructure are often directed to festivals.” This carries clear message that income/outgo numbers trump devotees’ safety!
I appreciated that. Put the blame where it belongs, specifically. Equally importantly, as I may have written elsewhere, the use of “must” in every item instead of the slippery “should” gladdens my heart. Yes, there has to be force behind the recommendations. I may have preferred the Biblical “shalt” or its equivalent, “ought”. No complaints though.
I do take exception to, “...venues must publish capacity charts at entrances...” There is a lack of specificity here. The charts are needed for the safety personnel, and definitely not for the pilgrims. No pilgrim would ever have the time to read any notice; they would wish to reach the Heaven on Earth as fast as possible. I assume that the writer intended precisely that. Yet, the safety personnel are to use advanced instruments, information channels like “LiDAR and AI cameras.” Therefore, capacity charts are sooo.. last decade. Overall grade, (A-).
Now, I take up the opinion piece on how Ayurveda is better left out of medicine based on science. This is authored by two people whose competency in this issue is attested to only by they being author/co-author (this, to my logical mind could include other authors/co-authors! if there is only a single co-author, the author also becomes a co-author!) of a book, “The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India”. This was an eye-opener even to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is good, that the issue became highlighted in at least one paper, many years after FDA’s actions, as public memory is notoriously short lived, everywhere. So far, all positive.
The author and his co-author are investigative journalists. They have, to the extent I can ascertain, no background in medicine, pathology, pharmacology and other associated fields. So, both of them must have worked doubly hard on the issue to bring it to the notice of USFDA and have the latter take punitive actions on a company, and more importantly warn the doctors. Another plus point, almost no negatives thus far.
Why the “almost”? The article makes categorical statements that may not be accepted by its regular readers. The syllabus for Ayurvedha, “is an absolute mish-mash of concepts [none that can be understood by the people who approach Ayurvedic practitioners, I believe] ... with a sprinkling of modern medical concepts...”, and, “these are irreconcilable concepts...”. This, in my opinion opens the piece to arrogant questions such as, “How so?”
The simple method to avoid that discomfiture is to say whether these so-called alternative systems have undergone empirical studies, double-blind tests etc. Answering these questions in the write-up, just a short line or even a subordinate clause, would have foreclosed that avenue of possible embarrassment.
The write-up uses the phrases “evidence-based” or “based on evidence” at a few places. Instead, I would suggest the use of “empirically validated”, which automatically invokes probability. As all of science is probability (to be facetious about it, even the answer to Would the sun rise tomorrow morning? invokes probability!) none can raise any an objection.
Just one more point of interest, at least for me. A grandma saw her granddaughter suffering from a serious case of the sniffles and some fever too, and also saw her swallowing a medicine pill or two. The granddaughter told her grandma, “Grans! Don’t worry, the doctor prescribed some medicines and told me I would be normal in about seven days.” “SEVEN DAYS!” Grans shouted! “Drink up my chicken soup and you would be OK in a jiffy, LIKE WITHIN A WEEK!”
That purported joke is pretty much the so-called traditional medicine practice leads you to. The unmistakeable mark of most such systems is the lack of a time frame. It is not that the patient would sue should the situation not get better in the stipulated time. The tragedy is these “doctors” have not even been schooled so! An ‘A’ grade.
The mini-meal, I see, has been consumed; the plate is empty!
Raghuram Ekambaram
When did the faux Cream Rise to the Top?
When do Tamil brahmins realize they were Tamil Brahmins?
I have been trying to find the answer to the opening question. My effort was truly laymanish: no research, no reading through hundreds of books or research papers, no looking for it in the religious scriptures of Sanatana Dharma (I believe this term gained traction since the 19thcentury, defenestrating Hinduism), no asking others who looked like Tamil brahmins (at least a complexion fairer than pitch black, reasonably narrow nostrils...), of course, not asking those who did not look like Tamil brahmins, and so on. No luck.
But before I venture further, I need to explain the presence of the word faux in the heading. All of us know cream rises to the top. Would faux cream too rise to the top? First, to define it, we may say faux cream looks like cream, feels creamy in hand (that does not help much), and only Tamil brahmins have found out how it tastes (for them, it is a trade secret). But, it does rise to the top.
The third, among Tamil brahmins is their special vernacular (“special” and “vernacular” in one sentence? That is an oxymoron!). But, it suits Tamil brahmins as they are indeed (oxy)morons!
In Tamil Nadu, Tamil brahmins wonder, at moments of weakness, why their version of spoken Tamil is so open to ridicule. I faced this when I was in the eighth grade at school, the first day in a sub-optimal urban space. Tamil brahmins’ Tamil sounds strange to the ears of other Tamils. But, Tamil brahmins are content with their vernacular and indeed are proud that it sounds strange to other Tamils.
And, their life is oversaturated by rituals, for every little thing, not to speak of big things.Soon after you have your morning cup of coffee (this is a concession), you have to recite a series of some mantras, take a bath, and recite a slightly varying set of mantras before one is allowed to eat. You wish to sit down (and down it must be, on the floor) to have your breakfast (Tamil brahmins break their fast with a full-fledged meal), and you have a specific ritual; a slightly different ritual for the night food, before retiring for the day.
Tamil brahmin wedding rituals are scary. Would you not be scared if as the newly-wed groom you are to show your wife (also newly-wed, of course) a particular little star that is a companion star to a brighter star in the day sky (you can see neither), and ask her to be as faithful to you as the little star always accompanies the bigger star? What about each giving the other some space? No, not Tamil brahmins. “Nothing alien, you see; we are Tamil brahmins.”
When your life ends, you are no more a Tamil brahmin, but your sons are. The burden is shifted onto them. You repeat a mini-ritual on every New Moon day, and once a year, a more elaborate one.
It is, perhaps, worse than the burden you bore in your lifetime. Tamil brahmins would not allow their sons to grieve their father’s death! You wanted irony, Tamil brahmin’s life is replete with them.
Do all of the above, then you just may turn yourself from Tamil brahmin to a Tamil Brahmin. Yes, it takes that kind of effort for the cream to rise to the top, even of the faux variety. And, what do you do when you do rise to the top? Complain that you are being suppressed in showing all your talents, in suppressing others. The faux cream is not allowed to rise any higher!
I can go on and on, but I will stop here.
Raghuram Ekambaram
What is So Great about Scoring a Century in a Cricket Test Match?
Yes, asking most sincerely, in all contexts.
The captain of the English team said much the same thing, in a very specific context though.
Ben Stokes seems to have said, referring to the drawn test match at Old Trafford between England and India, “But I don’t think there would have been too much more satisfaction from walking off 100 not out, getting your team out of a tricky situation, than walking off 100 at 80, 90 not out.”
Should someone look through the history of cricket, I am sure he (add she/it, if you so feel) would find dozens of situations when the match dragged on merely to accommodate some batsman scoring a century. But, that is not a sound argument as it is episodic, but what follows is.
What is hundred but merely a number, an integer, to be specific; and, you get to hundred by merely adding one to its immediately preceding neighbour; 100 = 99 + 1. If an English batsman were to get out at only 99, the same Stokes would have bemoaned that batsman missing a century. I dare anyone, including Stokes himself, on this. Therefore, before advocating the downgrade of the so-called “achievement” of a batsman scoring a century, one should downgrade century itself as a milestone. Are you ready, Stokes?
Looking at the importance of scoring a century, one has to discard the team perspective−which is what Stokes evoked−and adopt the individual’s perspective. Unless sports writers, broadcasters and the myriad hangers-on are ready to say, “It was good to have had you here this long. But now that we can accommodate more than two digits on the screen (TV, mobile phones (in the landscape orientation), stadium score boards etc.), we doubt you are welcome here. Do not crowd statistics,” as they bid farewell to celebrating centuries, none, Stokes included, can complain about Sundar and Jadeja batting to hundred. Whatever one may say, these batsmen did indeed risk getting out without tasting the sweet, yet hard-earned “draw” in the middle.
Stokes failed in exhibiting empathy; of course, admittedly no friend of competitive sports. More than that, the English team complaining about the BCCI team not accepting the offer most definitely had an ulterior motive, to get another half hour rest for its bowlers. That too is not very sportsman like, wouldn’t you say, Stokes?
Well, Sundar and Jadeja too would have enjoyed an additional half hour of rest, not forgetting Jasprit Bumrah! What is good for the goose is good for the gander!
Raghuram Ekambaram
Students Evaluating Teachers – Cart before the Horse?
“FIFTY YEARS AGO” is a short segment appearing in The Hindu in its Editorial page on a particular day in the past that gives recap of its report on a particular newsworthy event. For the past about ten years this space has become interesting to me. Fifty years ago, I was just coming out of my cocoon (exclusively academic), and I was helped along by events happening in Vietnam (Tet Offensive had happened a few earlier, and I was blissfully unaware). Now, the reader would understand how what happened fifty years ago and how the newspaper reported it became points of interest for me, in my 71st year of living.
On July 23, 1975 I must have been in Bombay undergoing the so-called “practical training” at Chembur plant of the Fertilizer Corporation of India (it was later renamed as the Trombay unit of the Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd. I was staying with my uncle in Sion (E) and travelled by the bus no. 8 Ltd. of BEST (yes, I do remember these details). My uncle−now, I can call him a turncoat Madrasi−subscribed to the Times of India and I could not have read the short report that appeared in the day before yesterday (2025-07-23) in The Hindu in the aforesaid space.
So much for the background for this post (the reader may call it space-filler and I would not protest). Some academicians at the policy-setting level (including Vice-Chancellors), college principals, and eminent educationists expressed divergent views on the suggestion that “students in autonomous colleges” should evaluate the work of their teachers. This was reported carrying the date line July 23, 1975.
Only recently I completed reading the section on education in Adam Smith’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. He did not seem to endorse the idea of the students evaluating teachers. But, we are not beholden to Adam Smith, are we?
The University Grants Commission organised four workshops (I have attended many such workshops that are only talkathons and only one which indeed was a workshop; how many of my readers know the difference?) from which the following recommendation emerged: “the process of assessment of students should be continuous [it must have meant continual] and they in turn may also evaluate the efficiency of teachers in the teaching-testing-learning processes.” Tut, tut, tut ...
One of the reasons, not the main one, is for the university administration elevates the process of feedback into a “weapon by which the merit of a teacher is solely or partly adjudged... ” The door for mischief is left wide open.
Well, I am not going to admit that I would have availed mischief to take revenge against one of my teachers, if only had I been given the opportunity.
I pointed out an error in the teacher’s explanation. In an eighth semester class (two more semesters to go to graduate), I noticed that the teacher took a value for a parameter in a problem from his notes. That value went against a provision in the design code. The teacher took his revenge the next semester (the time lapse did not lessen his antipathy towards me). I would have marked him off at negative infinity had faculty assessment by students was in vogue then; this was not mischief but what the teacher truly deserved.
Since then, I have had many instances in which I had either assessed the faculty or been assessed by the students. It had been a two-way street, no accidents, as all the drivers were safe and sound, and most importantly, honest.
Neither the students nor the faculty members can feel safe−at least as safe as I felt beyond the unsavoury incidence involving my teacher and me−today, in India. The apprehension felt 50 years ago is still valid I can say. No wonder, for a particular test in the deemed-to-be university mentioned at the beginning the average for the class was above 80%!
Raghuram Ekambaram
What Happened to the Crocodile?
I heard it at the feet of my maternal grandma, the story of how an elephant got its salvation from Lord Vishnu in one of the hundreds of Hindu stories. The story is meant to fascinate the pre-teens, mainly between the ages of three and ten, and to indoctrinate them in unquestioning conformity. As I grew older, the story lost its sharp edges, and was relegated to the back folds of my brain’s prefrontal cortex (I am no brain specialist, please remember).
But, then it hit me hard some time not too far back. For the reader to understand what hit me, they have to know the story. So, I proceed to tell that first.
There was this elephant that went bathe in the river. It was a religious elephant. As it was enjoying the cool waters splashing on him, it felt a sudden tug in one of its front legs. It saw a crocodile trying to bite off the lower portion of the leg. It yelled out in pain.
I am not enamoured of this story now, though I was then. This really should not matter to me now, but it does as I care for the current generation and those of the future. It is for this purpose, I have raked my brain over hot coal trying to figure out what the crocodile did was so wrong that it paid for it with its life.
Look at the picture and there is a particular detail that the reader should take note of. The elephant waded into the water merely to fetch the Lotus flower and offer to Lord Vishnu (it looks like it is offering ahead of the time for offering, perhaps under duress). There is a story behind this too! In its previous birth, the elephant was a king/prince and he disrespected either God himself or one of the seers dear to Lord Vishnu (my copyrighted version!) and was thus cursed. With the punishment of hanging on to his dear life for what must have been felt as eternity by the elephant, the effect of the curse had been completely erased. Thus Lord Vishnu welcomed Gajendra to His abode. This is the genius of Hindu writers of tall tales. They are good at tying up the loose ends, across generations, merely by going backwards in time! The concept of soul comes to their help. Our physicists may learn from them.
Yet, my discomfort from this story arises from the fact something important was missed. The crocodile must also have done something wrong in its previous life, in which it too was a devotee of Lord Vishnu. Why else would it be killed, and killed by that highly sacred weapon Sudharshan Chakra?
Perhaps I will hear a tall tale on that at the knees of my grandmother when I die and be reborn to a different set of parents, as a human. This is to hoping.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Competition between a Mercedes and a BMW
I know that the BMW was custom-built, besides being souped-up and armed to the teeth; I would tend to believe that the Mercedes was bought off a show room floor, and no gadgets. So, the competition was unfair.
But for a James Bond aficionado (yours truly), any time a Bond movie is shown on TV, that is manna from Heaven! And, it is a particular item from one Bond’s movies−Tomorrow Never Dies−that is the subject matter of this post.
In a scene that one enjoys merely for the unfettered imagination (not quite, and I will come to it a little later) of the script and dialogue writers, the BMW is being chased on the up ramp in a multi-storied car-park by a Mercedes Benz. Herein lay the competition, as at the end of it, both are totalled!
At the roof, Bond gets out of the running car, and it goes over the fortified parapet wall to crash into an AVIS Rent-a-car (“We try harder!”, about 50 years ago, as they were not as big as Hertz) business on the street. There was no Hertz (then, the number one) car rental anywhere on the screen! So, AVIS too must have paid the producers of the movie handsomely.
But, what you subsequently see is that the chasing car, the Mercedes Benz, just cannot negotiate the jump (perhaps because, it was not being driven remotely! There were people inside, but that never bothered James Bond ever), is just left hanging five levels above the street.
Daimler Benz may have thought that the asking price (for this on-screen advert) was too much, but for the company that makes BMW vehicles it was an opportunity of a lifetime, one that would make their collars stand up with pride; not an opportunity to let go, no matter the cost!
What I learned from the above is that writing scripts and dialogues for movies are never far from opportunities to make more money!
Raghuram Ekambaram
Pollution in Amma Mandapam Bathing Area, Tiruchirappalli
This post is occasioned by a fervent plea to look into pollution at the location along the banks of River Cauvery. Read the letter given below:
I have a problem; check that, more than one problem in this city. But, I would concentrate on the one indicated by the letter writer to The Hindu of July 21, 2025. This submission by the well-meaning reader appeared in the Reader’s Mail space.
“The Cauvery is also subject to pollution near Amma Mandapam ... bathing ghats.” The next line is the problem: “The onus is on the civic authorities to take steps to improve the city’s ranking”.
Point 2: This is like putting the horse before the cart. At the bathing ghat, the pictures show, people do more than take bath. What look like flotsam and jetsam clinging to the sides of a ship are things that I am not able to name. I could, of course, guess they are votive offerings to River Cauvery.
You see in the distant background the Rock Fort and the temple for Lord Siva, Thayumanavar. That should establish that the bathing ghat is on the other bank of the river from those iconic constructions (a train run by Indian Railways is called Rock Fort Express!).The appellation “eyesore” must be added to the sight as shown in the photo, on the other bank of River Cauvery from Uyyakondan Canal mentioned by the writer.
One can easily establish one-to-one correspondence between the hangers-on in the two photographs!
Point 3: Why are the "eyesores" onus, exclusively, on the civic authorities? Aren’t citizens expected to show civic pride? If the mean looking ugliness of a city−such as those shown in the photographs−does not motivate the citizens, why should the civic authorities care more than punching-in and punching-out their time-cards? One can see that some portions of the wire mesh have been cut out (bottom right). Why? Just so, people can stray into the river farther in the hopes of catching bigger fish.
In the first photograph, one can see the same activity being carried out by reckless people sitting on top of the screens of wire mesh, indulging in it. Haven’t they been warned? They have been. Yet, the activity goes on as if nothing has happened. Yes, nothing has happened to these people. But none can claim that such risks are necessary to make something of oneself. Risky or risk-free life? The individual shall decide, not the civic authorities.
To end this diatribe, while I appreciate the letter-writer’s desire to go up the ranking in Swachh Survekshan, the issue is really one of civic responsibility and civic sense.
My commandment: “Thou shalt not lay all the responsibilities at the feet of governance, at whatever level.”
Raghuram Ekambaram
No Up-Down Inversion in Mirror Images
In the Question Corner of The Hindu of July 20, 2025, the reason for left to right inversion is very well explained. In engineering, we call this rotational symmetry. Such inversion is acknowledged to make manufacturing (drawings for manufacturing) less burdensome. If one carefully notices the doors on either side of a metro or even an Indian Railway coach, one would notice right-left inversion (the handle on IR coaches will be on the right on one side of the coach and on the left on the other side).
I need to add a truly personal note here. I, on my own, realized that such left-right inversion happens in mirrors not only when you face the mirror−which is what almost anyone who had given this matter a thought would have considered−but also when you stand (or sit) side-ways to the mirror. I realized this when travelling by the college bus merely about eight or nine years ago (when I was superannuated from my job at the age of 60) sitting in a row of seats behind a student who was busy typing out an SMS on her mobile. I saw her doing that with her fingers of her left hand. Curiosity got the better of me and I kind of craned my neck to see fingers of which hand she was using. It was not a big surprise but a mini-Eureka moment: She was typing out with the fingers of her right hand whereas the glass pane on the window indicated those of the left hand!
The lesson? If you get curious about anything, take every opportunity to see how else, besides listening to those in the know, you can learn stuff.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Unprompted, Does an Atheist Ever Claim, “There is No God!”
I might have been wearing ear-muffs when there were muffled sounds of an atheist claiming the non-existence of God (yes, God and not god). Yet, there has been no such chorus, even Mr. E. V. Ramasamy Naicker did not claim so in the early to mid 20th century in Tamil Nadu.
I do not know how many of my readers would have read an essay written in his early college years by Antony Flew entitled, “Theology and Falsification.” That essay, I believe is essential reading for anyone discussing the existence of God.
I will try to weave in what Flew wrote, as I understood, on existence of God. It would definitely be a torture; I am not recommending this post to anyone to read. I developed my idea from what the Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote, and more importantly how I rewrote it in my head. I read about fifty pages of his writing during a very stressful time in my life, if you would like to know.
So, that should give you the idea that I behaved just as religionists and believers do when going through difficult times. But, that would be wrong. After reading those pages, I just let those thoughts float to the back of my mind. It was only when I found my professional footing and also tried to root myself as a reed in the bed of a slow moving, unruffled stream of thought, I began to think about what Hume had said.
As a non-philosophically inclined layman, I thought Hume said that one cannot prove the existence or non-existence of anything because any claim in this regard depends on an individual’s experience. This is, of course, dependent on an individual, pointing to only a subjective as opposed to an objective existence.
I went further and asked myself, weren’t existence and non-existence two sides of the same coin. I thought they were. Hence, if one face of the coin cannot exist, the other face too cannot exist. Wrong. This coin analogy appears to be egregiously false. The existence or non-existence of something (head or tail) does not prove either the existence or the non-existence of its opposite (tail or head).
One can prove that a black elephant exists−merely show the sceptic a normal elephant−yet to prove a white elephant exists (not as a metaphor) or does not exist is only as easy as conjuring or not Lord Indra’s mount Iravatham (refer Hindu mythology).
A macabre (originated in my own mind, hence macabre! I suffer from headache so often thatI wish my head never existed!) example: absence of headache does not prove the existence or non-existence of a head!
The above tunes in perfectly with the wavelength of what Flew said in his essay. The argument also follows, in a manner of speaking, William Paley’s assertion that there indeed is a designer who designed life and He is God, and ends arguing precisely the opposite. Flew gives the argument as a parable, a conversation between a Believer and a Sceptic. The pair comes upon a “clearing in a jungle”, in which they see many flowers and weeds growing.
The Believer says, “Aha, there is a gardener who tends this patch!” The Sceptic is not convinced. They try to take many efforts to catch this gardener, like patrolling with bloodhounds, setting up a barbed wire and electrifying it and on and on, but to no avail. Yetthe Believer is convinced that there is a gardener. He says, “"But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves."
Then, the exasperated Sceptic cries out, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”
Ouch...!
Flew concludes that religious believers cause God to “die the death of a thousand qualifications”. In the name of fairness, let me also offer the following: Flew recanted his essay later, egged on by people of the Intelligent Design persuasion. In announcing his death, the NY Times called him an “Ex-Atheist”! But, the strength of the argument is in its simplicity and it endures.
For an atheist to be an atheist, she has to invite others into an argument with her. An atheist is never inclined to do this, unless there is an argument put forth on the other side, may be a theist or a Jeffersonian Deist. I give you a true instance: In the university in which I did my Graduate work, there was an area that was not outwardly marked off as for free-speech, but where anyone could think of themselves as standing on a soap box in Hyde Park in London. It was there a fundamentalist group (about twice a semester) would start provocatively, calling out students in Fraternities and Sororities as fornicators. The fuse has been lit, as most of them are Christians (repulsion takes over when called out as fornicators, true or not), from families who are believers. This “debate” gained sharp edges when an atheist (yours truly) appeared. It was fun for others but a serious involvement for the atheist, who became a more convinced and convincing atheist because of these interactions.
Many atheists I have come across, some in Delhi, would share their thoughts with me but not with others who they might have suspected as theists. I, on the other hand, was never shy. I am sure all of them are waiting for me to convert on my deathbed.
I sincerely wish readers of this post would read an essay entitled, “Message of the Non-Jewish Jew” by Isaac Deutscher and try to understand that to be an atheist in a majorly theist society, one has to “go beyond the boundaries [of theism]”, yet allow the co-traveller (if any) to go his theistic way. The atheist shall not care whether the believer would turn into an atheist or not. That is for the latter to decide.
The above is why, I think, an atheist does not claim, “There is No God!” That is for the theist to hear and decide.
Raghuram Ekambaram
