Change the Discussion to Living and Surviving Languages

                                              Change the Discussion to Living and Surviving Languages

This write-up, which I hope would not be too long, does not take reference to any recent particular verbal duels between politicians. It is rather about changing the parameters of the discussion; please note that I used “discussion” instead of “debate” or “argument”, as I do not want anyone going away having arrived at a definitive conclusion.

Any language dies only when there is a maximum of one person who can do something with it, but has no one else to do it with. When that person dies without leaving a progeny (which is no guarantee the language would survive), the language dies. This, I believe, is an uncontroversial position, though even this is not definitive. As we have multiple venues of reproductions of thoughts, a language can be resurrected. Yet, such a resurrected language may not be said to be the language it was before it died. Time stops for nobody, and all that.

A surviving language; there are many, like Latin, Sanskrit etc. merely survive. That is not an analytic statement if you follow how I define “survival”. This is what Baruch Spinoza did as he wandered in the philosophical terrain: define a word before using it and, this is crucial, his definition matched how he wanted to develop his theses and hardly ever matched how others had defined it earlier.

Survival of a language, I take it to mean, as not changing substantively to have an effect on understanding anything spoken, written in it. I am no linguist, but I would go out on a limb and say that Latin is at best a surviving language. No one ever takes an effort to make it living, the essence of which is to change. Latin never changes. Perhaps someone might want to extend the point to Sanskrit.

A living language, again, as I define it, is one that resists, but not with any conviction, changes. Yet, it changes. Take Tamil, for example. Some Tamils think through the language to come up with words that have no shelf life (though a Tamil by birth, I am not one of them). “Bus” is a word in English and its equivalent in Tamil was coined as “Perundu” in the late 1960s, which could mean something big that pushes (perhaps the etymology of “undu” could give me a more relevant word to carry the meaning of a bus). There are enough examples.

The word bus in a “bus bar” in an electric substation means carrying a large quantity of electricity (power) with minimal resistance.     Now, that matches the meaning of the word “bus” as regards transportation. I hope you get my point.

To get back to “bus” and “perundu”, try using the latter at a bus stop and observe how people look at you – You must be from Mars!

My conclusion is if a word in another language can be relatively easily pronounced and written by a mass of people who use that word in their daily interactions in their vernacular (no disdain, only to mean the marketplace), then that marks a living language, vernacular or otherwise. Both the vernacular and the literary forms of a language should be able to thrive in a dynamic environment; a living environment fit for a living language.

Further, French language does not easily accept words from another language. I might say that it is closer to surviving than to living.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Should Various Scriptural Documents Occupy the Same Shelf?

                                               Should Various Scriptural Documents Occupy the Same Shelf?

Apparently yes. Something called the Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill became law stipulating life imprisonment for sacrilege against the Guru Granth Sahib, the Quran, the Bible, and the Bhagavad Gita.”

I wish to stake a short excursion into the last two in the above list, namely “the Bible” and the “Bhagavad Gita.”

Which Bible is being referred to here, the Hebrew Bible (in particular, the Pentateuch) or the Greek Bible, or its supposed English translation, the King James Version or the more recent versions like the New International Version or the Revised Standard Version. Any interpretation of any of these versions could be considered a sacrilege by the group of people who follow the other versions. 

Actually the Hebrew Bible does not sit well with the Christian Bibles. The Hebrew Bible must have undergone many changes as the language would not have been static over, say, 2,000 years. Then, would only the Hebrew Bible that predates all the other available Hebrew Bibles will not be a sacrilege? Something to think about.

I know that in the court of law a Hindu witness takes the oath not on Bhagavad Gita but on a generic (!) God. There is another option, but I will skip that here. Two questions arise: One, why only Bhagavad Gita is given protection against sacrilege and not the other, older texts of Hinduism like the Vedas, Upanishads, Itihas, and Puranas in the Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill mentioned in the opening paragraph?

Two, what happens to a Buddhist witness? The Buddha never asked his followers to believe him. He pointedly asked them to go their own way and parse whether what they find lessens their suffering. Then, the Buddhist witness would take an oath on himself! Does Indian law afford this, or even, can afford this? Parsis may take the oath on Avesta, I’d suppose. Why doesn’t the above mentioned bill include it? Oh, maybe Buddhists and Parsis are too honest to come before the court. Or, there are no Parsis and Buddhists in Punjab. I am not leaving out Jains because I do not know the name of their sacred literature. I tender my sincere apologies to them.

Things to think about?

Raghuram Ekambaram

Is Population the Correct Metric to Decide whether to have a Metro Rail System?

                                    Is Population the Correct Metric to Decide whether to have a Metro Rail System?

There is this fight going on between the Tamil Nadu state government and the Union Government about according sanction to build a metro system for Coimbatore and Madurai, in Tamil Nadu. I am not getting into this fight.

I do wish to ask the question as given in the heading of the write-up. Should it not be ridership and length of travel per trip?

Take the case of Agra, a tourist city. How touristy was it in 1977? Not very. Three of us, all post-graduate students at IIT Kanpur (no females and in a visit to Agra that is sacrilege!) visited the mausoleum (that is really what it is). There were no tempos (three wheeler designed for six passengers but carried as many as 17; one late night, I was the 17th passenger from the railway station to the campus) at that time, we did not notice any other mode of transport, not even a bus, and to make the experience vivid, there was no designated bus stop. That is when a bus, I may call it nothing more than a jalopy, approached us. We flagged it down. No, it came to a stop on its own. There were no passengers! We asked the driver whether he would drive us to our destination. He very happily took us in and drove us to the hotel. On the way we learned that after the visiting hours are over he gets no passengers and he takes, for a fee, anyone tourist anywhere they want to go.

Now, I am happy a metro system will be available, nearly half a century later. The population of Agra in 1977 was 703,000 and in 2025, it is, 2,478,000. The critical point is this is not on account of tourism, floating population. It is the base population. Yes, Agra needs a metro system. I am sure Fatehpur Sikri, another tourist destination, is a station on the system, though it is nearly 40 km from Agra.

Let us look at Coimbatore, a serious hub of industrial activity. Further, Maruthamalai, a must-visit religious center for devotees of Lord Murugan is  only 20 km away. So, we may add it in our metro system for this city. On top of that, it has more than its share of educational institutions and my estimate is per day ridership would give a good run for the money to Agra, whether it comes to ridership or total distance travel.

We, those are the meaningful metrics and not population.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Rural Work Programmes

                                                                    Rural Work Programmes

I read in an article that Indian leaders chose early to appease voters, and listed “rural work programmes for livelihood”. I do not know why he shied away from being specific, MGNREGA. The wage rate varies from about 250 rupees to about 350 rupees. Is this a give away? One economist thinks it is. But, I have heard another one saying that those taking MGNREGA as inflation-causing see India through the windows in an airplane! I agree. 

John Maynard Keynes said that in times of real difficulty, like material scarcity, to pay a labourer just to dig a hole and fill it back is not charity; and even if it were to be considered a charity, it is towards conferring dignity upon the work that devolves onto the labourer.Keynes was very particular that this is a temporary issue.

Take India. Poverty in India is endemic. Rural poor are too poor even to stand on the first rung of the development ladder. MGNREGA merely tries to lift one on to the bottom most rung.

The economist who wrote what I started with is retired from a western academic institution and must have taught his ideas. Yes, he had the right to teach how he saw things, but in the whole article there was not any empathy, even lightly felt. He refused to see what happens below his penthouse.

One last thing: He says with contempt writ all over, “[C]ycles for schoolgirls ... laptops for students or gold coins for brides ...” Later, he walks back but without mentioning, “rural work programmes for livelihood”; To quote, “It is true [grudging acknowledgement if ever you wanted a taste of it] that some of the so-called welfare provides valuable relief to recipients: bicycles for girls, toilets, gas-fired cooking stoves, free bus rides for women.” Why not add, “rural work programmes for livelihood” and food subsidy too?

Yes, politicians appease voters (Does he think the US Senators and the House of Representatives do not appease voters?), and schoolgirls when they become adult women have more freedom because they have a bicycle and ride them, if only the roads are not occupied by parked SUVs. When did toilets not become a social good; in your house your throughput is sent to a publicly operated sewerage treatment plants, did you know? Toilets are the first step in that process. If you wish to privatize sanitation, try finding an investor, at an affordable price. Good luck. If you cannot, I may have to shit on the road side.

I have great respect (though I do not claim to understand them except at the most basic level and also not because they won the Nobel Prize) Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, but doing a cut-and-paste job of their thoughts to situations light years away−in 1938, in Sweden and other western nations to India between 1950 to decades in the future, if ever−is the epitome of intellectual dishonesty. Does he think the IMF will look away when the nation becomes more and more indebted to global lenders? Dream on. 

I can go on and on, addressing each issue in the article, but I would spare this old man.

Raghuram Ekambaram      

Sources of the Woes of Traffic on Indian Roads

                                                Sources of the Woes of Traffic on Indian Roads

Let me itemize them but in no particular order:

1. Pedestrian indiscipline

2. Unnecessarily sounding the horn; the larger the vehicle, the louder the horn (SUVs)

3. Leaders of Political parties − Rallies

4. The security details of politicians

5. Yellow barricades (sometimes, one may have to zigzag to go past them) on thoroughfares (for you security, the police say) 

6. Cattle

7. Parking on road shoulders, if and where they exist

8. Parking on one half of the carriageway 

• A to-be-condemned police van has been parked on the carriageway for at least the past three years; this is sufficient license for the other vehicles to park likewise

 

9. Tourist buses and their passengers

10. Processions – Weddings, funerals, some religious functions, temples ...

11. Round Table Conference (without the table, yet round nonetheless) in the middle of the road

12. Not many pedestrians are aware that one should walk on the right side of the road

• This way, the pedestrian (assuming his eyes are forward looking and he is walking normal) is aware of the vehicles approaching her as vehicles are driven on the left side of the road as the driver of the vehicle sees it (this I learned when I was about seven or eight years old)

 

13. School/college students (boys/girls/young adults) walk at least four abreast occupying at least half the street/road 314. Any car will be parked right in front of the door of the shop in which some purchase(s) may be made 

• The ownerette (female owner!) has to pop in, spend at least ten minutes and come out swinging her bag(s) of purchase(s); more the number of bags, more is the swinging!

15. Parking against the traffic direction is called road freedom for the one doing the parking

16.  Item number 15 above is called road rage if anyone other than you does it

17.  If you own your vehicle, then sharply cutting in front of a pedestrian is the norm

19.  Use of High-beam headlights on well-lit urban roads

20.  At railway level crossings, when the gates open, it is the season for “Open sesame” for everyone; left is right and so is the right!

21.  Young motorcyclists enjoy making every one deaf by removing the muffler from their exhaust pipes.

21.   Road markings in India are puzzles in themselves 

• Do not ever try to solve them; when in Rome, do as Romans do. Lose your inhibitions.

22.   Traffic signboards are worse than road markings

23.   Traffic lights are still worse

24.   Paver blocks are highways for any and all vehicles, from cycles, bicycles, tricycles, with and without training wheels, four wheelers 

25.    ...

 

That above is not exhaustive, merely what I have observed. If the reader has more, please fill in the ellipsis at item number 25 and do not hesitate to add more!

Raghuram Ekambaram 

Tower of Brahma

                                                                        Tower of Brahma

The Tower of Brahma (also called the Tower of Hanoi, indeed it is more widely known by this name, I’d imagine) is a puzzle that also offers a teaching/learning moment in schools and to first year engineering students (most puzzles do, and I am taking this as an example). 

Three circular discs with a hole at the centre are stacked on a pole per increasing diameter top down (smaller at the top, if anyone has any doubts). There is also a set of three poles and the discs can slide down the poles. Let us call the pole on which the discs are stacked on the “original” pole (How original, eh?), in the figure above, the left most. 

The task is to move all the three discs from the “original” to any one of the other two poles, on the condition that at no time a larger disc can be on top of a smaller disc. What is the minimum number of moves needed to achiever the target? I am not giving the solution as it is well known.

Have our students learned anything beyond solving this puzzle? I seriously doubt that.

Just suppose one student asks herself, “OK, I have solved this puzzle, it is so simple. The answer I get cannot be any smaller, as any move at any step besides the one I made will violate the condition. Hence, I am right. Voila!” 

But, as studious as she is, “What if there are four discs?” she asks. Not one to ask for help, she follows all the rules and gets the correct sequence of the moves with the appropriate disc. In fact she sees that, after getting three discs in order, she has to move the fourth disc and go through one more stacking of three disks. That is, shifting three discs directly indicates the number of moves involving four discs. None of the three discs on the move are smaller than the fourth. “I am OK!” 

The fifth comes along, and she knows that she is on the right rack and does not do the shifting and gives the response immediately!

The student is better than smart, she is brilliant. She decides to check whether she can do the same with the reverse order of discs, with the appropriately changed condition, a smaller disc cannot be placed on a bigger disc; it has to be the other way, after all from the original puzzle. She learns one more thing: to test whether something is equivalent to some other thing, one has to accommodate ALL the rules and regulations in both the cases.

Just one puzzle enabled the student to learn so much!

Obviously Lord Brahma thought of that as after creating all the beings and their souls. He had time one hand. While Yahweh rests on the seventh day, Brahma indulges Himself playing this game/puzzle! We are so superior, of course!

Raghuram Ekambaram

How do You See Temba Bavuma?

                                                                   How do You See Temba Bavuma?

Oh, you do not see Temba Bavuma at all? There is a reason for my seeing him the way I do.

I see him as 4 cm taller than I was at my tallest (I have been through an accident in which my spinal discs got compressed; besides, just about everyone loses height as they get to 60 years in age and go beyond; I am 71 now).

But some see him as yet another token black on the South African cricket team. Bavuma’sbatting average is nothing to write home about. In the same breath I would mention he captained his nation’s cricket team to win the ICC World Test Championship. South Africa’s cricket team now onwards cannot be called “Chokers”. That has to count for something He had the nous. That too counts. A captain is a captain and a winning captain is perched a step above. That is really how I see Temba Bavuma.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. The above was written before South African victory over India in the match on November 16, 2025, two days ago. I posted it at 2:20 PM. I am now reposting the material with hardly any change as I had inadvertently deleted that blog post. I retyped (as distinct from rewrote) the post from material I had in .pdf with hardly any changes, like the name of the Championship South Africa won beating Australia, and the opening two sentences.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. 2 I am giving below an article profiling Bavuma two days after South Africa’s victory in The Hindu of 2025-11-18, that is two days later. Don’t tell me that I am patting myself on my back, though that is precisely what I am doing. The newspaper piece has some details that would have been available to him to which neither had I access nor was I interested in them. 

 

Raghuram Ekambaram  

Postmodernism and ‘I’

                                                                        Postmodernism and ‘I’

No, this is not going to be any highfaluting piece on who is ‘I’, whether the ‘I’ changes and do you recognize those changing ‘I’s, if not who else does and whether they have any standing in this matter.

When someone, anyone, asks you, “Who are you?” the instinctive and the almost universal response is, “I am _______,” the blank filled by your name. This name is not given to you by you yourself, you would agree. Yet, postmodernism−yes, these are the times of postmodernism−subjectivity rules and you are the subject and your name should be the most meaningful to you! So, you should name yourself. This should be your choice, and as your personality, your thoughts, indeed anything that connected with you (like how you see and perceive the others, the objects that you encounter) changes and accordingly your views of them change, you are never “YOU”, except at every instant!

Hence, your fundamental freedom must be to have no fetters if and when you wish to change your name, which after all was given to you by your parents. I do not mean to say that you ought to keep changing your name; only that you ought to have the most fundamental freedom to change your name whenever you wish. If society becomes confusing, then that is postmodernism! So be it!

One last thing: postmodernism is accused of being nothing but relativism. Yes and No. Yes, it is relativism but not relative to others but relative to oneself at different slices of time, the slicing is at your own convenience!

Raghuram Ekambaram    

 

The First Three Statements I Write on the Board in the Classes I Taught

                                     The First Three Statements I Write on the Board in the Classes I Taught

1. In this class, you’ll learn how to learn

2. In this class, you will learn by yourself.

3. In this class, you will learn by asking questions; I take the responsibility to comlpete the syllabus and there would be no hurried teaching.

Intermittently I ask the students when and how I have deviated from any in the above list; that, I consider a meaningful feedback.

The first in the list is arrogance personified, and I stand by it.

Raghuram Ekambaram

One of the Sources of the Woes of Traffic on Indian Roads

                                            One of the Sources of the Woes of Traffic on Indian Roads

There must be many, but the one that comes to my mind is what the policeman told me when I passed the driving test in Lexington, KY, USA.

“Remember, now you have a killing machine under your control.” 

What is given above is a verbatim reproduction and the reason I recall it is because I used the same statement to every single friend I helped to learn driving when he/she got their license. Tell me, how many Indian parents/friends/driving school staff instil this sense of, not fear but concern for the other users of the road, in the minds of the learners.

Zero. 

I am all in on this, if anyone wished for a wager.

Raghuram Ekambaram  

Disaster Response Now and Then

 Disaster Response Now and Then

Recently I read an opinion piece in the newspaper and annotated it extensively. I am offering it below in case you have not read it.

While I appreciated the information content in it, I definitely did not agree with the tone of a part of one sentence: “Digital dashboard, predictive analysis, drone surveillance, and GIS tools replaced traditional paperwork and panic-driven coordination,” talking about things available today and those that could not have been available 30 years ago, and “[T]raditional paperwork and panic-driven coordination” were the only ways to get the job done then. 

The above asynchronous sentence of the writer disrespects−yes that is precisely the meaning I ascribe to the phrase, “...replaced traditional paperwork and panic-driven coordination.” The writer, had he been old enough, say, 70 years plus, (I am assuming things I have no right to, but which carry much weight in this write-up), would have remembered how people survived disasters doing only “traditional paperwork” and could coordinate with one another only in a “panic-driven” mode.  

It is OK to highlight how things have improved but is NOT OK to put down how things were done in the past, in the absence of technologies available today. I wrote code in FORTRAN in the 1970s and ‘80s, and now even coders do not know what kind of an animal it was (as extinct as a dinosaur).

Raghuram Ekambaram

But, He Did Die!

                                                                         But, He Did Die!

One of the lines in Spectre has James Bond saying, “But, it did stop,” talking about a fictional meteorite Kartenhoff. Taking the above line to the next movie in the franchise, No Time to Die, I am not ashamed to admit that I did not understand the title. Did it mean that it was not the time for Bond to die, or that Bond had more life in him? To my mind, it was a contest between life and time!

When I saw the latest offering and saw it end with Bond dying, I breathed a sigh of relief. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed every one of the movies, maybe 26? But, maybe a year or more later I read the dispiriting news that the next Bond actor has been chosen.

I wanted James Bond dead. He shall not continue after I am dead, whenever that may be! He is dead now, before my eyes, and let him stay that way; permanently dead.

Raghuram Ekambaram

What if God Had Stopped at, “Thou Shalt Have No Gods!”

                                            What if God Had Stopped at, “Thou Shalt Have No Gods!”

That is, if Yahweh had to rush to somewhere before adding, “Before Me”. But, that did not happen and we have wars and no peace.

What this post dwells on is the counterfactual. God, Yahweh was an egoist, an egotist, and vengeful. Jupiter of Greek mythology is said to have been power mongering and wedded to exercising authority.

What would have happened had Jesus not have pleaded with God, about those who crucified Him? “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Yahweh would have been satisfied, a la “Mugambo kush hua!” 

It is not impossible, or even improbable, that Mohammed had not raised such pleas. Yet, at least some of his followers have brushed under the carpet such pleas. The Buddha was distinctly different. He asked each in his gatherings work within himself/herself! You wish to take revenge? Go ahead! Then, see whether you can live with that thought.

What about the Hinduism, not the religion, but ostensibly promoting a way of life where violence is not to be forgone? There are only a few instances in the vast literature of Hinduism exhibiting any serious forgiveness.

If you take the whole of Hindu scriptures, including the Puranas and the Ithihasas, you would be hard pressed to locate non-violent developments. An example, King Dasharatha was forced to marry every year to escape death at the hands of Lord Parashurama, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu!  

In the very old movie Sampoorna Ramayanam,  Lord Ram lets the demon Ravan go back to his palace, recoup and come back the next day – the song “Indru poi naallai vaaraai ene” so beautifully rendered by C S Jayaraman. Only a temporary relief to the eventually vanquished. All such magnanimity is only till such time the Lord’s patience is stretched to the limit. 

Lord Krishna waited for repeated insults by Sisubalan before the threshold was crossed. In Vamana Avtar where the vanquished enjoys repeated, annually, but limited relief. Of course, Lord Shiva is vengeance itself! Yes, in citing from the traditions of Hinduism, none can stop at one instance.

Sikhism began with the lofty ideal of eliminating irrationality in the spiritual life−which, by itself, is irrational; but let that pass−of people. Yet, it descended rapidly towards war against the Muslim invasions during Mughal rule. Of course, Muslims themselves became violent. 

Mohammed’s body might not have even gotten cold, when Islam split into two sects (less than half-a-century, if I remember my history lessons right), warring against each other. 

If you go back to the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament, you would realize how the House of Jacob, also known as Israel, came about. Indeed, the whole of the Old Testament is a series of violence.

In Srilanka, Buddhism is the religion of the state. The Buddha eschewed violence and never preached to settle issues through fights. Yet, Srilanka is a nation of internal violence of a very high order. The government and the rebels engaged only in violence. The irony cannot be any more vivid. Violence by the settlers in America against the natives takes one’s breath away. It is very easy to go on and on as there are nearly 200 nations. The permutations and combinations are so vast that military power cannot but go on increasing; the Military-Industrial Complex that the American President Dwight Eisenhower lamented.  

Therefore, if you went through history, you would not find any instance in which religion had not played a critical part in peaceful settlement of disagreements, however intense they may have been, and against negotiating peace. Violence is useful to religion and vice versa.

One should look at killing two birds with one stone.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. This write-up was more than half finished before I limited myself to short posts.