As always, Maria Popova on the fantastic Brain Pickings makes a drab day turn into a promising one with something she leaves you to chew over.
The many uses of a mundu a.k.a dhoti
The New York Times recently wrote on Masala Dosas to die for. The article was shared among a group of us friends. The article triggered a huge debate. In the first instance, as a Malayalee, it offends me the "masala dosha" was spelt as "masala dosa".
Get this right all of you who live north of the Vindhyas, it is a DOSHA, not a DOSA. If you like it so much, then pronounce it right and spell it right. And this includes you, yes you, the "venerable" New York Times, as well.
And all you jokers in Bollywood make a big deal out of our South Indian accents. But let me tell you this, the way you guys sound, your accents suck as well to us in the South. I mean, how dare you call a dosha a dosa? And then you have the temerity to stake claim to it! Even as I write , my blood boils.
Anyway, for whatever reasons, a line from the article caught the attention of my very learned North Indian friend Ashish Mishra. He wrote to us: Loved this line: “According to the court’s narrative, Rajagopal hiked up his dhoti and gave Santhakumar a beating.”
And then the debate took an altogether different dimension. My other equally literate friend from the North, Shishir Prasad concluded: "The angle of flick of the Dhoti is a crucial data in murders down south. The new emerging science of Dhotistics a la ballstics is now about to become big."
Just so that you North Indians know, in the south, a formal dhoti is called a mundu or a veshti and not a DHOTI. An informal DHOTI is called a LUNGI, much like you jokers in the North call it. You wear a mundu or a veshti to work or on formal outings and a lungi at home.
My blood boils again!
But I'll take a deep breath and share the final word on the debate my very competent (as all South Indians are) friend, S Srinivasan wrote. Because by then, our conversation had travelled a long way away from the masala DOSHA.
The strategic unwearing of dhotis, or their tactical repositioning thereof, is a science evolved over centuries in the deepest crevices of temple mantapams by raking Brahmin mamas (of the Four Paunch Sizes referred to by Ramnath) to convey one’s emotional state to others and to achieve certain desirable outcomes.
1. The first, of course, is the hitching up and knotting in the crotch area. This indicates aggression and challenge to a duel. The equivalent action in English culture is the throwing of the gauntlet a la Henry Bolingbroke in Richard II. I suspect Annachi performed this action before the submissive Santhakumar.
2. The reverse is also true. The dropping up the hitched up part is a sign of reverence and often done in the presence of elders. Given that hairy legs are the sine qua non of authentic Tamilness, this is also done by less endowed men (hair-wise) hiding their weakness in front of bushier brethern.
3. Dhoti is a weapon of mass reproduction. In the age-old days when they didn’t take off clothes before engaging in their conjugal duties, the dhoti (especially the panchakachham version) and the “madisar” of the maami allowed mutual access to desired destinations. Innocence was just a roll away if the couple were to be walked in on.
4. You will also hitch up your dhoti while hovering in windy areas such as the Marina Beach, the top of a coconut tree or near a cycle pump. A sudden gush shouldn’t expose more than absolutely necessary.
5. The less manly will gather the middle of their dhoti and tuck it in between their thighs, admittedly a more modest manoeuvre but a bad idea if you plan to walk in the near future.
6. Holding the edge of the dhoti while walking is a sign of resoluteness and decision. It is a sign that if things didn’t go the way, the dhoti-wearer wanted, he wouldn’t hesitate to hitch it up and beat the guy in front of him. Watch Mamootty and Mohanlal to learn this gesture.
7. Crispness of the dhoti aka veshti is a sign of authority. An average Tamil politician has more than 100 dhotis and doesn’t wear one without starching. However, once he falls at Amma’s feet and rises again, the crumpled dhoti signifies the loss of that authority.
8. A swift undoing and retying of veshti has been known to be a flirtatious gesure, exclusively indulged in by the aforesaid bushy brethern. Others, women for instance, may think it is creepy but who cares?
9. The underwear etiquette to go with the dhoti is elaborate. Only dandies and software engineers wear Tantex under the hood. The most authentic Tamil wears the Pattapatti, the loose zipless trunk made in Zebra-flavored fabric, tied up with a string. Your money goes into its two pockets, which are even less bustable than SBI’s safe-deposit lockers. As a consequence, an underwear that bulges on its sides shows the monetary endowment of its wearer.
10. Fashion faux pas. Wearing shoes with dhotis unless you are Telugu hero from the 1970s and is angry because your sweetheart has just been raped by the village headman. In which case, you will wait till the girl hangs herself with one of your dhotis, cover her body with the one you are currently wearing and kick the headman with your pointy shoes. After intermission, you wear new dhotis.
11. Eating well is a good idea to keep the dhoti in its place. The noodle-bodied use a length of rope permanently tied around the waist to keep it from falling off. However, you remove the string before getting married because if your wife sees it, she will call you a “mamma’s boy” and hang her safety pins in it for safekeeping.
12. The top inner end of the dhoti—the one that goes around before the other goes above it – makes for a good storage place too. You pull up the end as much as you need and role it into an impromptu string bag (surukku pai). Items allowed to be kept in it are betel nuts, tobacco and smartphones)
All of you in the North will do well to remember this before you gyrate to that silly song Lungi Dance by the uninformed Shah Rukh Khan
Grams, a Google for the underground Internet
A new search engine just made its debut and has overnight turned into the first port of call for all things illegal
The last week has seen frenetic curiosity and underground online activity. All of it has to do with the beta launch of a search engine called Grams. It is the kind of frenzy Google generated when it was first launched.
While the interface resembles that of Google, there is one difference. People use search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo to search for all things legal. Grams, in the few days it has been around, is turning out to be the first port of call for all things illegal. That includes drugs of all kinds, arms, ammunition, fake currencies, passports and citizenship documents, and credit card numbers, among other things.
Attempts to elicit a response from Grams’ creator, who goes by the nickname gramsadmin, did not yield any results.
The message was sent to him on social networking site Reddit.com, where he announced the beta launch last week. This search engine cannot be accessed on any regular browser. It uses a different protocol and requires an altogether different browser that masks your online identity.
To grasp the significance of Grams, it is pertinent to first understand a concept. The Internet most people trawl to mine information is what hacks call the Surface Web. This is that portion of the World Wide Web that can be indexed by most search engines.
Below this surface, lies the Deep Web. This part is practically impossible to index by conventional search engines because of the various formats it exists in and the dynamic nature of its content. Estimates on how large the Deep Web is vary. But there is consensus that it is exponentially larger than the Surface Web.
A smaller part of the Deep Web is called the Dark Net. At first look, this is the Wild West, littered as it is with contraband of all kinds. The philosophical mooring that holds the Dark Net together though is freedom. That is why this place is used by political dissidents of all kinds to spreads their literature, whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden to pointers media outlets can scoop, and documents of all kinds that governments across the world don’t want people to set their eyes on.
To indulge in all of these, people who populate the Dark Net have to hide their digital footprints. To that extent, this is as perfect a place as it gets. That said, it is infested with malware and trolls of all kinds. You click on a wrong link and concede control of your machine to unscrupulous elements. As the saying goes on Dark Net, you get what you search for.
To access this part of the web, you need a piece of software called The Onion Router (TOR) Browser Bundle. It can be accessed on www.torproject.org from any regular browser. The bundle contains a browser called The Onion. Once installed, type http://grams7enufi7jmdl.onion/ into it and you’ll be taken to Grams.
All addresses on The Onion that point to the Dark Net end with the extension .onion, very unlike the .com, .org or .net URLs most websites on the Surface Web are identified with. These URLs are difficult to remember, are changed often to escape surveillance, and cannot be found on any other search engine.
Grams, in this phase, allows you crawl results from eight online black markets that include BlackBank, C9, Evolution, The Pirate Market and SilkRoad2. A comprehensive list of Dark Nets is listed on The Hidden Wiki (www.hidden-wiki.net). The links it contains can be accessed only if a user has the TOR Browser installed. A word of caution once again—all of these links are potentially dangerous and are monitored by intelligence agencies for leads on underworld activity.
SilkRoad2, for instance, in its earlier avatar SilkRoad, was one of the most active places for drug traders. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) busted it in a covert operation. But it has surfaced once again on the TOR network under the URL http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion/ and carries a self-congratulatory message—We Rise Again.
Trading on the Dark Net is usually conducted using Bitcoins, a form of virtual currency. Extremely volatile, at the time of writing this piece, one Bitcoin was trading in the Rs.30,000 region. While many countries have taken a view that recognizes Bitcoin as legitimate, albeit virtual, currency, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been more circumspect. Speaking at the Nasscom Leadership Forum in February this year, governor Raghuram Rajan said the central bank isn’t closed to the idea, but needs to study it in greater detail before putting out a formal policy on how it ought to be treated.
To get around central banks such as RBI that don’t have a formal policy in place yet, Grams allows users to check prices of their intended purchases in US dollars, the British pound and euros. Moving monies into various accounts involve ingenious techniques, most of which are now documented onhttp://grams7enufi7jmdl.onion/markets.
The most recent in the money transfer arsenal is a mechanism called 1776, which its developers claim “is designed as a fraud proof implementation of Silk Road”. Transactions are completed in just about 10 seconds. It follows on the back of security breaches and busts by law enforcement agencies in the past. All of these money transfers though are driven primarily to fund drug purchases or arms supplies.
As for the business model that powers Grams, it is again designed on the lines of Google. Gramsadmin writes that the site will “have a system similar to Google AdWords where vendors can buy keywords and their listings will go to the top of the search results when those keyword are searched for. They will be bordered by an advertisement disclaimer so users know those are paid results”.
In the Internet underbelly, this is clearly a game-changer. Who advertises on this site, how will e-commerce develop here, and what kinds of businesses these spawn from now all are open to speculation. There are no answers.
This article was first published in the print edition of Mint on April 24, 2014. Copyrights vest with Mint.
Fr (Dr) Frazer Mascarenhas: Picture Copyright www.gyancentral.com
In defence of Fr (Dr) Frazer Mascarenhas
I feel compelled to write this piece after listening to all of the vitriol around a letter Fr (Dr) Frazer Mascarenhas wrote to students at St Xaviers. A few tweets of support in favor of Fr Frazer later, trolls pounced on me as a Vatican stooge. I can't help but laugh in spite of my stated position as an atheist. But like most Xaverities, I feel strongly because it is my alma mater, class of '93.
I think it impossible Fr. Frazer remembers me. There is no reason he ought to either because there is nothing remarkable I achieved there unlike its distinguished alumni that include Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Azim Premji.
I wasn't in his class. But I remember him as one of those members of the faculty everybody on campus loved to tease. His gait was the butt of many unkind remarks and hoots. And as he used to do the rounds of the hostels, a chant would go up in the choicest of Hindi cuss words. I think it unfair to reproduce that chant here. Suffice to say, in hindsight, it makes me squirm. I can't think of too many people who would view all of these hoots and chants indulgently. He is among those rare men who did.
That out of the way, for those unfamiliar with the college, the political environment on campus was always a charged one. Most of us had very strong Leftist leanings and it showed in the kind of causes students took up. Among the more famous ones is Arun Ferreira. I don't know him personally. But he was part of my graduating class, he was, and he continues to be in the news for allegedly being a Naxalite activist. He has been exonerated and his persecution by the authorities rapped in all courts. Another matter altogether that unlike Arun, once out of college, most of our leanings changed. I think myself a conscious capitalist now. As a friend recently told me, "When young and you aren't a Leftist, you're stupid. When older and you're still a Leftist, you're stupider."
My larger point here is while in college, all of us held strong views, the outcomes of which were healthy and often times vociferous debates between faculty and students. On some issues we agreed. On others we disagreed. But there was no animosity. What always emerged though was a culture of openness.
I view Fr Frazer's letter from this perspective. The letter is an exchange between him, members of the faculty and students at the college. I must add here while the institution is run by Jesuits, they don't make secular institutions like Xaviers any more. That is why it upsets me even more when the letter is being given a communal tinge. Xaviers isn't a communal institute. It is perhaps one of the most liberal ones in the country.
That raises another set of questions. Can the head of an academic institution take a political stance? Allow me quote some excerpts from an interview with Fr Frazer on why he took a strong stance around two volatile political issues in the past.
- Mumbai University's decision to drop Rohinton Mistry's book Such a Long Journey
- The Binayak Sen Sedition Case.
The full transcript of the two part interview is on Gyan Central.
You were recently in the news for protesting against the proposed ban of Rohinton Mistry's book, and also for protesting against the treatment of Binayak Sen.
Both the protagonists were students (or ex-students) of this college. Rohinton Mistry is an eminent alumnus of our college. And the person who got the book banned is a present student of the College. Now this is an academic issue. An issue that affects academia. If an academic institution is not going to have a say in the matter, then I think we should be ashamed of ourselves. So all I did was make a simple statement on our website of what we – my teachers, and I and the management-- thought about the withdrawal of Rohinton Mistry's book. We put the statement up for our students and our alumni on our notice board, because it intimately affected us. It affected our academics; it affected our alumnus and present students. We had to take a stand. That's all.
Then, the media took hold of that and made it headlines. I didn't have anything further to say. That was my one statement. And we do think that if we don't take a stand on issues of this type, we are not doing our job anymore. Our job is to have a free flow of ideas. We took a stand for academic freedom. Yes, they did point out to some slang words used. But we said "look at any novel. They all reflect life." And this novel is reflecting the life of not today, but of that age when the particular political party was aggressive. We only made an academic statement on an academic issue. The media turned it into something else.
What about Dr. Sen's case?
Dr. Sen's case also... we teach a course in Human Rights to our students. My students came and told me that they had gone to Kala Ghoda with banners and placards protesting against the arrest and the sentence awarded to Dr Sen. And they were treated very harshly by the police. They were just bundled up into vans. So once again we made a statement on our website that this is not the way to solve an issue. People have the right to protest. Binayak Sen has done good work. If he has been implicated in such a thing, it could be that it is politically motivated. And you've see the results. He is out on bail now. Even the central Government has called him on to a committee of the planning commission! In other words, human rights are something that you have to respect. And if there is a conflict, there are democratic ways of solving that. Not the way it has been done in Dantewada. Of course, there are political ramifications to any statement made. But these are issues which academic institutions and academicians have to battle with. They have to voice counterviews. Otherwise, there's no hope for our society.
If he could state his positions on these issues on public forums without attracting vitriol, I see no reason why he ought to be attacked now.
The cross of carrying a "Christian" name
Some disclosures first.
- This post is being written in a fit of anger
- I am Indian
- I was born into a Catholic family. My parents and my wife are practicing Christians
- I am an atheist
That out of the way, why the anger? The immediate provocations are two pieces I read earlier today morning. The first, Being Muslim Under Narendra Modi by Bashrat Peer in the New York Times. The second, Secularism is Dead by Shekhar Gupta in today's edition of The Indian Express.
I thought the NYT piece an interesting read. But, quite honestly, I'm tired of bleeding heart secularism, what the rise of the Right Wing means, and why "minorities" ought to be protected.
Shekhar Gupta's argument is an interesting one as well. But I suspect a bout of intolerance embedded in the piece. The kind of intolerance stoked by too much "minority appeasement". This is the kind of intolerance that terrifies me. Allow me articulate where I'm coming from.
I come from a school of thought that believes merit triumphs adversity. As Martin Luther King Jr famously said: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. To my mind, that explains how Babasaheb Ambedkar, a man born into the Mahar community, or "untouchables", got to draft the Indian Constitution, perhaps one of the finest in the democratic traditions of the world.
That also explains the rise of the now much reviled Dr Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to the highest office in the land. Like Dr Ambedkar, he grew poor and earned a decent education on the back of his scholarly capabilities, not his minority status. For the record, I have to say this. For all his frailties, I think posterity will thank Dr Manmohan Singh for the reforms he unleashed.
The India we live in now is a creation of men like these, as much as they are creations of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru, part of the "majority community" (How I hate these politically correct terms!).
So how did India comes to be hijacked around discourses that constitute the "minority" and the "majority"?
Allow me put my personal experience into perspective. Because I was born into a practicing Christian family, my parents gave me a "Christian" name. For better or for worse, my identity is now "Charles Assisi". The cross I carry with this name manifests itself when I introduce myself. Often times, after the mandatory "What do you do?", a cursory "So, you're a Christian?" follows.
In the first instance, how does that matter? But my name places me in a ghetto. The insinuation as I have come to realize over the years is that I am a lesser Indian than somebody with an Indian name--or to put it in bluntly, a "Hindu" name.
I've been the subject of idiotic questions like "Did you learn English early because you were born Christian?"
That I enjoy Western Classical Music is attributed to my being a "Christian" when truth is I grew up on a staple diet of Malayalam films.
I'm slotted as a drinker when truth is I am a teetotaler (Yes, I used to drink until a few years ago much like anybody else from the "majority community").
It is taken for granted meat is consumed abundantly at home. Fact is, I do. At home though, most of my family rarely consumes meat. My brother is a vegetarian in the finest traditions of the Jain community.
The Congress assumes my vote for granted, when fact is I find the politics it practices as obnoxious as that of the BJP.
I find it incredible when people ask me why are my daughters called Nayantara and Anugraha. "How did a Christian give his daughter's Hindu names?"
Nayantara means "The star of my eye". What if I had called her "Stella del mio Occhio" instead?
Anugraha means "A blessing". What if I had called her "Benedicta"?
Would the same question have been asked of me? These aren't "Hindu" names. These are Indian names-- the India I was born into.
That is why I find my name alien. "Charles" is English and "Assisi" is Italian. I've often asked my parents why did they name me Charles. The stock answer is because my grandfather was called that and family tradition demands the first born be named after his grandfather. As for how did Assisi come about, I have no clue. I suspect it was decided by some Catholic priest from a foreign land who converted my ancestors to the faith.
But like I said earlier, for better or worse, this name, I have to live with. This is now my identity, my cross to bear, and the stereotypes that come with it. I am reconciled to living with it. What I can't reconcile with is how my name is being twisted to slot me as a "minority".
I didn't demand "minority" status. I don't want it either. I want no special privileges. I want to be known as my own man, who made it on his own. And I know how to make it on my own. I want to be respected for what I am and what I am capable of.
That is why I squirm when political and religious leaders from the so-called minority communities demand protection and assurances are offered their "interests will be taken care of". That is also why I get horribly upset when I'm told the "freedom" I enjoy is because the "majority" thought it only appropriate I deserve that freedom.
I don't want anybody to either take care of my interests or protect my freedom. I know how to take care of both.
As Virginia Wolf famously wrote in A Room of of One's Own: "Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
On iTunes and a Youtube Hack
On the back of some rave reviews, I rented Madras Cafe from the iTunes store. Another matter altogether the movie didn't quite live up to expectations. But that isn't the point. For the first time, I encountered an error while trying to play a movie purchased from the store. For the life of me, I couldn't get what in the devil's name was going on. Looked up possible reasons, and discovered furious iTunes users complaining on various forums.
One of the ways, I read, to get around the problem deauthorize my Mac from the iTunes store and authorize it again. Tried it. Didn't work for me. The HDCP error persisted. But I could see the movie downloading in the HD format I had paid for. Apple forums had no answer to the question. This was one of those times when I cursed myself for being a Mac Fanboy.
When things don't work is when you feel maniacally compelled to make it work. I looked up Youtube and found an HD version of the movie. Because it is free, the movie is ad interrupted. But that's par for course and I'm willing to live with it. As someone who makes a living out of creating content, I think a content producer ought to be compensated one way or the other. There, I digress again.
Plugged my earphones and hit the play button. For some strange reason, the sound was awfully low and I couldn't turn it up. Looked around and I came across a neat little hack on VLC, my favorite media player that allowed me boost the sound and stripped all ad breaks out of the stream as well. I still haven't figured how it works. Would appreciate any clues.
How to go about it? Just do what see in the screenshot below. Open VLC -> File -> Open Network -> Copy paste Youtube URL -> Click Open. Enjoy!
Streaming on VLC
After having done all of this, I shut my machine down. Next day, when I open it, a pop up on screen informed the movie is ready for viewing. It played flawlessly. I'm stumped.