Thoughts from my father

Dancing in the rain

I reproduce below a real incident written by an American. I myself have no comments to offer.

The Russians are a rotten lot, immoral, aggressive, ruthless, coarse, and generally evil. They are responsible for most of the troubles in this world. They are not like us.

That’s pretty much the summary of the daily news about the Russians. But sometimes something slips through the net of prejudice, some small bit of a sign that is so clean and true and real that it wedges open the rusting Iron Curtain long enough for us to see not an enemy but fellow travelers, joined to us by membership in the Fellowship of Joy-and-Pain.

See Nicolai Pestretsov. I don’t know much about him, I don’t know where he is now, but I’ll tell you what I know.

He was a sergeant major in the Russian army, thirty six years old.  He was stationed in Angola, a long way from home. His wife had come out to visit him.

On August 24, South African military units entered in an offensive against the black nationalist guerrillas taking sanctuary there. At the village of N-Giva, they encountered a group of Russian soldiers. Four were killed and the rest of the Russians fled – except for Sergeant Major Pestretsov.  He was captured, as we know because the South African military communiqué said: “Sgt. Major Nicolai Pestretsov refused to leave the body of his slain wife, who was killed in the assault on the village.”

It was as if the South Africans could not believe it, for the communiqué repeated the information. “He went to the body of his wife and would not leave it, although she was dead.”

How strange. Why didn’t he run and save his own hide? What made him go back? Is it possible that he loved her? Is it possible that he wanted to hold her in his arms one last time?  Is it possible that he needed to cry and grieve?  Is it possible that he felt the stupidity of war? Is it possible that he felt the injustice of fate? Is it possible that he thought of children, born nor unborn? Is it possible that he didn’t care what became of him now?

It is possible. We don’t know. Or at least we don’t know for certain.  But we can guess. His actions answer.

And so he sits alone in a South African prison.  Now a “Russian” or “Communist” or “soldier” or “enemy” or any of those categories. Just-a-man who cared for just-a-woman for just-a-time more than anything else.

Here’s to you, Nicolai Pestretsov, wherever you may go and be, for giving powerful meaning to the promises that are the same everywhere; for dignifying that covenant that is the same in any language – “for better or for worse, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love and honor and cherish unto death, so help me God.” You kept the faith; kept it bright – kept it shining. Bless you!

God's Own Country..the context is Green Kerala Express(Written by my father)

While we have all the time whining about the state of affairs in Kerala, you have shown some refreshingly welcome hues of our home state.

For more than 4 months I have been viewing an entirely different reality show (?) in the DD Malayalam channel called ‘Green Kerala Express”.  From this I can definitely say that a silent revolution is taking place across the state, a revolution of total and true development without the so called high tech roads and high rise buildings.

Instead of the conventional talent hunts in the other reality shows, in this first-of-a-kind reality show, it is the local self-government institutions – panchayats from across Kerala that vie for the top spot.  The Panchayats are judged on the basis of the sustainability of the models that they have created for local self-government in areas such as energy, water and land management, women’s empowerment, social security, sanitation, education and so on.

“As a society, we in Kerala have achieved a lot – 100 per cent sanitation, electrification, literacy, health, availability of water, zero dropouts and the like.  Grassroot-level intervention is a major factor in this success and there are a lot of unsung heroes in Kerala’s socio-economic development.  ‘Green Kerala Express’ highlights the collective efforts of the people in utilizing the grass-root level talent in the community,” Says G. Sajan, assistant director of DDK.  “This is not a fault-finding mission.  Rather it is important for us to introspect and find out the good things about ourselves,” he says.

After extensive preliminary evaluations, out of the 1000 or so panchayats, 150 were selected for the next round in the studio, where representatives from the selected panchayats present a short video of and argue for their models in front of an eminent panel of jury members (Mrs. Vineetha Menon, HOD of anthropology, Kannur U’ty, Sri K.P. Kannan, former director of Centre for Development Studies, Dr. R.V.G. Menon and Sri M.K. Prasad, Agricultural Expert Sri R. Heli and another celebrity judge.  The first celebrity judge was Ms. Padmapriya, who apart from being an actress is a Research Scholar in Sociology.  There were others like Sugathakumari¸Madhupal etc.

From this, 15 Panchayats were short-listed for the next, which is now going on. This round delves deep into the activities in each development sector.

In the end one panchayat will be selected as the winner. And the winning panchayat gets the prize money of Rs. 1 crore.

I have been witnessing for the last several weeks dozens of such fascinating tales of grassroot-level efforts of sustainable development from across the length and breadth of Kerala like a litigation-free panchayat, a fallow-free panchayat, one that has labour bank, one with resource pool of teachers, one that has a people’s initiative for protection of women etc.

I wonder how some panchayats have developed their government schools to such attractive levels and I long very dearly to return to a second boyhood and study there.  I was quite amused to hear one 8 year old girl in one of such schools wanting to become a ‘Vanitha Police’.

It is also quite refreshing to hear people speak spontaneously and frankly resisting the tendency to talk in platitudes.

Some of the panchayats claim to be models for best practices in farming,(One panchayat, Adat in Trichur is aiming to make it an “organic destination”  for “Adat rise” and “Kerashree coconut oil”), water shed management, dairy development etc.

“Only in Kerala with its impressive track record of grassroots level development can such a show happen.  Not only is the show an opportunity for socio-development initiatives to get noticed but it also serves as a platform for healthy competition among the local self-government institutions to perform better.” Says Padmapriya in one of her interviews.

“Execution of vision and working strategy play a major part in the judging criteria.  As does sustainability of the venture,” says the jury.

If ever there is a reality show with a difference, then it is the ‘GREEN KERALA EXPRESS’

Some brilliant thoughts by my my father

Dear Jayadev, friends

Sub: On computer usage

Your article on the effects of computer on eyesight has prompted me to go into some reflections.  Some time back in one TV programme I saw a Japanese girl demonstrating calculations on an imaginary abacus.  She was so adept in using the abacus for her day-to- day calculations that she could do away with a real abacus and perform the calculations on an imaginary one.  It was so fascinating to see her fingers doing waltz or Kathak on the imaginary beads on the Abacus hanging on a wall (Actually there was no Abacus hanging on the wall.  Of course, there was a wall).

As we all know an Abacus is an adding machine, calculator and computer.  On second thought, that’s not quite true.  It is just a visual record of the computations going on in the mind of the person using it.  Lots of people in China, Japan etc. still use it.  Not only is it an effective practical tool, but also it is nice to look at.  Nice to hold and touch as the TV commentator would vouch. And the older they get and longer they are handled by a human being, the lovelier they get – smooth and dark and polished.  They will last for a lifetime, they will never need updating, all the software needed to drive them is between your ears, and if they break they, can be fixed even by children with household tools.

The TV commentator had narrated the story of a Japanese-American conglomerate, which moved into the Chinese market in a big way.  In order to demonstrate the value of its small pocket calculator it arranged a contest.  The great Abacus – PC shoot-out.  The guy who won – the one with the Abacus, of course – was a senior clerk for a shipping company. It is true that the operator of the little computer did handle the job of handling the pile of invoices forty-four seconds faster than the mercantile clerk and his Abacus.  But the computer got the wrong answer.  May be the machine operator was in too big a hurry to prove how smart his machine was and fed it fuzzy facts.  Much face was lost.

Now don’t get me wrong.  PCs are here to stay and they have their place.  Machines are not evil themselves.  And a careful, thoughtful man like the shipping clerk might do even better with his pocket calculator than with his Abacus. It’s just that I’m a sentimentalist about the wonders of the human hand and mind.  And when I find that it can still hold its own in the face of the wizardry of the electronic circuitry of little chips (in a chess game the computer loses to the masters most of the time!), I am pleased.  It is comforting to know that some very old and very simple ways of getting from one place to another still work.

Yemmens

കടല്‍ക്കരയിലെ മണല്‍ പോലെ ആകാശത്തിലെ നക്ഷത്രങ്ങള്‍ പോലെ പ്രണയത്തില്‍ സംഭവിക്കാവുന്ന മുറിവുകളും തിട്ടപെടുത്തന്‍  പറ്റിയെന്നു വരില്ല,എന്നാലും പ്രണയിക്കാതിരിക്കാന്‍ കഴിയുമോ.ഒന്ന് മാത്രം ഓര്‍ക്കുക, സ്വന്തം ഹൃദയം പറയുന്നത്ത്‌ കേള്‍കുക, മനസ്സിനെ ഒരു പരീക്ഷണത്തിനു വിടാതിരിക്കുക. 

പ്രണയം അങ്ങനെയാണ്,ഒരു നാള്‍ പെട്ടെന്ന് വരും, നിമിഷത്തിന്റെ ഉന്മാദവും, ഓര്‍മകളുടെ സുഖവും, ചരിത്ത്രത്തിന്റെ വേദനയും പ്രദാനം ചെയ്യും. ഒടുവില്‍ ആത്മാവില്‍ ഭയത്തിന്റെ ഒരു ചങ്ങല തീരത്ത് കാണാമര്രയത്തെവിടെയോ ഒളിച്ചിരിക്കും. .ഒരു കൊച്ചു സ്വപ്നത്തെ  കണ്മുന്നിലെ സത്യമാക്കാനുള്ള ചെറിയ ഒരു ശ്രമം മാത്രമാണ് പ്രണയം. ചിലര്‍ വിജയിക്കുന്നു, ചിലര്‍ പരാജയപ്പെടുന്നു.വിജയിക്കനായാലും പരാജയപെടാനായാലും രക്ഷ്ഷപെടാനകാത്ത സഹാസം ചെയ്തെ പറ്റൂ.