AERIAL THEATRE AT KENSINGTON-CHELSEA FESTIVAL, LONDON, AUG 19

First time I saw anything like an Aerial Theatre that combines Gyroscopy, Circus, and Acting to convey a powerful message. It is about the challenge posed by plastic, and how plastic has formed an ISLAND PATCH in the Pacific ocean. The performance is named High Sprung Cast Away.

Let me quote the organisers: "CastAway responds to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a floating island of everlasting plastic that has now grown to 6½ times the size of the UK. It presents an alternative, sustainable and more compassionate way of being and challenges us to consider our own actions in the face of climate change.

Drowning under a crushing mass of plastic, the Keeper of the Waterways awakens and rises up... The all - female cast immerses audiences in an underwater world where performers dive, twist and float over 26 feet in the air to delight, inspire and captivate audiences of all ages.

SITTING ON A TIME BOMB: TAMIL NADU'S PROPOSED STATE POLICY ON EDUCATION

In a list of 37 states/UTs, Tamil Nadu is ranked 23rd when it comes to quality of Primary Education This ranking by the Union Government has been officially accepted by the Minister for School Education, Anbil Poyyamozhi.

We consulted Development Economists, Independent Scholars, Writers, Artists , College Teachers, College Students, School Teachers and more importantly 26 Children in the age group 8 to 16 studying in Government and Government Aided Schools before we drew up our recommendations to the High Powered Committee.

Click here for the full Report: https://cedarindia.org/.../TN-ED-Policy-Recommendation...

1. Consultation-1: “Addressing the Educational Challenges Faced by Children and Youth belonging to ‘Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Communities: Implications for the Proposed Educational Policy of the Tamil Nadu Government”

[organized by CEDAR in collaboration with Lady Doak College and TNCRW on Sep 30th at Madurai]

2. Consultation-2 One-day Consultation organized by CEDAR with Schoolteachers on Oct 1st at Kovilpatti

3. Consultation-3 One-day Consultation organized by CEDAR with Children on Oct 2nd at Madurai

4. Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) Conducted between 2021-2022

What we need is not a mere change, but a revolution to set things right.

Dr. Chinnaraj Joseph

THE PASSING AWAY OF A TEACHER AND A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

       When a friend of mine called me yesterday to announce the death of Dr. A. R. Venkitraman, Venki to all those he endeared, I was deeply moved. Venki, after a very long and successful career as Professor and Head of the Post Graduate Department of Chemistry at the American College, Madurai, passed away in his son’s home in Cincinnati, USA at the age of 92. In a context where the pandemic brings every day the news of strings of death of young and old, as well the dear and far, one might ask what is there to publicly utter about a person who retired some 30 plus years ago, and waned away from public glare. For me, it is not merely a matter of expressing the personal grief alone. It is the kind of publicness and political-intellectual content Venki brought into defining his role as a teacher which needs reminiscing and celebrating.

        Hailing from Kerala, Venki joined the American College in 1951, two years before I was born. From here, he went to the USA, and earned his PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Rochester. Unlike many who escaped into greener pastures, he returned to American College, to put it in his own words, ‘to give back what he received.’ It is no exaggeration that he raised a flock of scientists who put American College in the international map. Some even went to bag the Indian Nobel, the Bhatnagar Award. This side of Venki- the scientist-researcher and Chemistry teacher, is very well known to all and as a Sociologist I am least qualified to speak beyond this.

 However, the point I would like to make here is that, if American College could stand as the last bastion of the liberal academic world with its classic overtones till a decade ago, it was certainly because of the fierce commitment to values of freedom and thoughtful public actions, people like Venki were committed to. By some queer coincidence, Venki was the President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Madurai unit (1982). Henry Tiphagne of People’s Watch, was the Secretary, journalist T.N. Gopalan of The Indian Express was its Vice President and myself, its treasurer.

 Two incidents I would like to recall: the first one was the infamous police lathi charge in 1982, disrupting a procession organised by PUCL in Madurai. The retired Justice and founder of PUCL, Tharkunde himself was beaten up on the road. Venki could not be seen after the commotion. My worry was more about Venki. Soon I learnt that he was one among the few who ran to safety and reached IMA Building near the Medical College. The second incident was, the urgent need to present a ‘freed bonded labourer’ before District Collector Mr. Devarajan, in his Camp Office. We three, Henry, myself and Venki had to be present. By the time we finished our work and got out of the Camp office, it started raining heavily. It was a working day. Before I suggested anything, Venki walked into the rain saying, “Chinnaraj I have a class at 11 'o' clock,” and rode away in his scooter completely drenched. That was the balancing of a profession and public commitment Venki taught many of us, by setting up personal examples.

 Venki was 24 years older by age to me, but that never came in our way. I had not known Venki till I joined the college. The day I first reported for work, I had to go to his office and introduce myself as he was the Dean. In spite of his very endearing manners, I was a bit nervous. After he picked up the conversation, he casually pulled out a packet of cigarette and asked, “Do you smoke Chinnaraj?” I hesitantly nodded my head. “No harm, you can always come to my room for a smoke if you like,” he said. The next half-an-hour we were smoking and talking, and he was inducting me into matters official.

Nothing came in his way- age, gender, caste, class or religion. William Zumbro, one of the founder-Principals of American College was fond of saying, “ONE NEED NOT BE A CHRISTIAN TO DO THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE, AND ALL THOSE WHO ARE BORN CHRISTIANS, NEITHER ARE COMMITTED TO IT.” Venki perfectly exemplified what Zumbro said, and gave that rare flavour of cosmopolitanism and inclusiveness to American College. He was very ahead of his times.

 In 2008, when I was the Principal and Secretary, I had to wage the last battle defending all that stood for more than a century in the name of freedom, inclusion, tolerance and excellence. Venki stood by me, shoulder to shoulder. This I need to state here and now.

Besides mourning the death of a fine human being, friend and a public intellectual, I am suddenly reminded of a world that was lost for ever. For this new generation of educationists, drunk with commercialism and buried in corruption, this might look as an act of blasphemy and a practice in sorcery.

 

Dr. CHINNARAJ JOSEPH

Former Principal and Secretary

The American College

12-06-2021 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DELHI MALAYALEE NURSES' ROW: REMEMBERING T. M. NAIR

A few days back, BG Pant Hospital (GIPMER) in New Delhi, passed a very questionable office order saying "A complaint has been received regarding Malayalam language being used for communication in working places in (GIPMER)... it is directed to all Nursing Personnel to use only Hindi and English for communication otherwise serious action will be taken." There was a strong protest from the strong body of Malayalee nurses, and the order has been subsequently withdrawn.  Some superintendent of the hospital went on air extending a personal apology, saying that there was no mala fide intentions on his part. His concern, he said, was Hindi-only-speaking patients' welfare. Thus, it has been made to appear that it all happened without the involvement of the higher ups or the maverick Chief Minister Kejriwal.

Of all people, this should not have happened to nurses in the first place whether they are from Kerala or Wuhan.   Nurses are nurses as long as their professional commitment, empathy and patient care are intact. They are free to talk to someone in their own mother tongue as long as the other party is willing to entertain it. The hospital should have been very mindful of the times as well.  When everyone is concerned not only about saving the lives of the helpless people inflicted with corona, but also the grave risks the frontline workers like the nurses are taking in order to perform their duties. Another point that comes to anyone’s mind is that, the nurses of Kerala over a century, have made a big mark contributing to building up the very profession. No single community from India or even elsewhere, can take this credit.

This episode reflects yet another example of growing intolerance of the hegemonic North. In my opinion, there is a serious political lesson for Keralites to learn. The pity is that Kerala ever since its inception entertains a three-language formula and kids in schools, mostly or always study Hindi as a third  language up to their tenth standard. In this sense, a Keralite is formally more qualified to be appointed in a Delhi hospital in terms of functionality, than someone from Tamil Nadu.  

Though Keralites demonstrate a lot of pride over their Malayalam language and literature, when it comes to learning Hindi and Sanskrit, their attitude has been always pro, or positively pragmatic. In the past few years however there has been an increasing concern for self-assertion and frequent protests against discrimination by the Union Government. LDF victory has made the voice shriller.

The nurses’ issue, forced me to recollect an interesting incident that happened some 40 years ago. I was to travel from Trivandrum to Madurai. I could get a last-minute ticket in a Tamil Nadu Transport bus, a deluxe service operated between Trivandrum and then Madras. A few minutes after I took my seat, a white-and-white-dhoti-clad, middle aged, smart gentleman took the seat next to me. No sooner-than he settled down, he spread out a the Malayala Manorama newspaper, and started scanning through. After a while, he picked up a conversation with me. I was really surprised when he said he was an IAS officer working at the level of a Deputy Secretary in the Kerala Secretariat, and was going to Madras. Given my age and inexperience, I could not resist my amusement and blurted a few words in his praise telling him how the IAS officers looked very different in Tamil Nadu– no dhoti business, no vernacular newspaper and no bus journey. (I am not sure how much it has changed now).

Both of us competed with each other for a while praising things on the other side of the fence. Then imprudently I brought T.N. Nair and his role in founding the Justice Party and giving early impetus for the Dravidian movement into the conversation. I also elaborated his anti-Brahmin anti-North outlook. I also expressed my disappointment over the lack of Malayalee sympathy for either T. M. Nair or for the Dravidian cause. Hearing this, the IAS gentleman grew very grim and said cryptically, “Sensible Malayalees never subscribe to any chauvinistic views like Tamils… and we are not emotional people like you and we don’t say we are Dravidian…  and only you people who give Malayalees, the Dravidian tag.” I became a little hurt and defensive. After dropping into silence for a while he continued, “See my dear young man, we live in a secular India, and we educated Malayalees want to move around, get jobs in Delhi or Assam and keep going. We don’t have difficulty with Hindi because our language is very Sanskritised in terms of vocabulary, grammar and phonetics…because of this, unlike you, we learn Hindi easily.”

At that point, I gave up my conversation. He slept in the comfort of being a Malayalee and I, embracing my chauvinistic pride as a Tamil. It was late in the night, the bus reached Madurai. I got up from my seat to get down. My Malayalee co-passenger was awake. He managed a broad smile and said, “Please don’t mistake me on what I said.” I said, “No… no,” expressing politeness.

Recollecting this after 40 years, I imagine that the Malayalee co-passenger of that night, should be sitting somewhere in Kerala, munching the news of the ‘Malayalee nurses’ episode.’ I guess it would have saddened him. 

 I thought I can raise this question to my Malayalee friends: What is detestable? The Dravidianist legacy and the spirit of independence from North the Dravidian lot like T.M. Nair, Thiyagararaya Chetty and EVR bequeathed to us, or the Hindustani-Hindu-Hindi chauvinism and hegemony of the newly emerging elite begotten by Bharath Mata. Kejriwal belongs to this lot. 

The clarion call for strong states and state autonomy came only from Tamils, and Tamils alone, because in the Dravidianist theory, linguistic-cultural self-assertion is the very basis for political autonomy of a state. Language is power, a power that can be either deployed against you to subdue you or, if you choose, you can creatively articulate it for breathing freedom. History holds several proofs.

Anyway, T. M. Nair will turn in his grave.

Dr. Chinnaraj Joseph

10- 06- 2021

   

 

Master Class by Sameera Jain at MMFSA

Master Class by Sameera Jain at MMFSA

         Sameera Jain was here in MMFSA on 9^th December 2017, to give a Master Class on “Documentary Filmmaking: Contemporary Trends.” Her presentation was based on two of her documentaries, Mera Apna Sheher  and Bhai Mian. Apart from Filmmaking students of MMFSA, students from Fatima College, Wakf Board College, Yadhava College, American College and faculty from Kalasilingam University, attended the session. Everything started with a completely different viewing experience which in a way, baffled many. Some of the students were initially confused. Sameera took off from this confusion.

After making the distinction between viewing mainstream films and a documentaries, she went ahead talking about the kind of creative challenges documentary filmmaking can demand. The lessons of the four hour exercise, can be briefly summed up as follows:

1.       A fiction film is a ‘lie made to look real,’ whereas  the documentary claims to portray the ‘real.’ True to the postmodern spirit, Sameera tried to underline the difference between ‘portraying the real’ and making the ‘representation of the real.’

2.       The ‘representation of the real’ again changes from one filmmaking protocol to another.

3.       Then you arrive at the question, “What is Sameera’s protocol for making a creative       documentary?”

i.                     You choose a subject which the mainstream filmmaking refuses to see. In other words, you choose ‘what you see but refuse notice.’ The choice of the subject always lies on the periphery of the society, and not in the centre. In Mera Apna Sheher, this is exemplified by choosing to represent the ‘gendered space of Delhi city’ available to different women of subaltern strata.

ii.                   The narrative needs to be least structured that a collage of representations of sequences demand the viewers watch the documentary carefully, making multiple stories. The non-linearity of narration, play of images and the unreliability of narration facilitate this.

iii.                  The cinematographic protocol is to capture the spirit of the ‘faceless’ and the ‘voiceless’. Though multiple cameras are used, their positioning and movements portray the anxiety, unpredictability and vulnerability of the subjects in question. In Mera Apna Sheher, the gendered space made available to the less fortunate women is captured in terms of shaky images, images with haze and a casual framing of shots that do not easily configure around human figures.

iv.                 So much depends on process documentation. However Sameera’s documentaries cannot go without a few staging's involving  main subjects. This needs a lot of care that they do not create too much of performative distortions.

v.                   Finally, the editing does not intend to conceal the filmmaking protocol but does invite self-conscious viewing and facilitate multiple story construction. There is no central point to arrive at coherent narrative.

vi.                 Then the author of the documentary ‘must be dead’. Ironically,  Sameera was a bit reluctant to admit this.   

 It was certainly a good exercise for students that how the medium of the film is pushed beyond its entertainment value and serve art and education.

T. Chinnaraj  Joseph  

சினிமாத் துறையில் சேர திரைப்படக் கல்வி அவசியமா ?

சினிமாத் துறையில் சேர திரைப்படக் கல்வி அவசியமா ?

                                            

EGGS FROM THE COOP

In the past three decades, poultry keeping has become not only a popular avocation in states like Tamilnadu but also a profitable business. We gobble up eggs like mad and at the slightest excuse, order for kilos of broiler meat. At times, we hear animal lovers’ deep sighs over the cruelties involved in raising and slaughtering the fowl in millions.

 As I am a ‘chicken lover’ and not an animal lover, such talks produce only a mild guilt in me. But I don’t fail to poetically compare the olden days when my grandmother raised several broods of chicken in her huge back yard in her village house. When we went there for vacation, it used to be a great fun watching these broods in flamboyant colours and shapes. They walked all around the garden with their ‘cluckclucks’ and scratched and clawed the earth in every nook and corner to find insects and little creatures which they ate with relish. Unnoticed, they often invaded the dining hall or bed room to peck and taste some delicacies that came in their way. As a mark of invasion, they also left their sticky and smelly droppings that you trampled upon when careless.

 Then there was the egg hunt. The layers often chose the coziest places in their opinion, to lay their eggs- in the corner of a shed, inside the cow’s manger, in a grain trough, behind the paddy sacs in the storehouse and even on the roof top. Grandmother knew the behavior of most of the layers. Some still cheated her, and she had to go on a search. We used to merrily join her on such treasure hunts. Grandmother showed extraordinary affection to the good chicks and scolded the bad ones as she shooed them away. They said, “Cluck cluck.”

The greatest turmoil for the brood befell when a guest arrived unannounced. Grandmother would immediately think of Khozhikuzhambu. This means killing a rooster or a delinquent hen. Some birds as if they had super-sense to detect grandmother’s death warrant, would fly and sit on the roof top or on an inaccessible tree branch. The farm hand then would be assigned to execute the death warrant. Smart ones defied and escaped the day to wait for another arrival of a guest and a fresh warrant. When my grandmother killed a fowl for lunch or dinner, she always lamented at least for two days regretting the killing and calling the dead one by some strange pet name.

When I nostalgically look back, I realize that the domestic fowl those days enjoyed considerable freedom, joy and human affection as they lived and sacrificed their life contributing to our wellbeing. Then came our aggressive consumption, matched by poultry science. The poultry keepers said, the birds cannot behave the way they used to. They could no more live in a garden or farmhouse but inside a pen or coop where they cannot even move; get exposed to light only if they are layers and not broilers; get fed only what the poultry keepers thought is right; not allowed to go with the rooster but artificially inseminated; and finally sent to the hell holes called broiler shops to be slaughtered, skinned and sold. Notwithstanding this, I am happy about my khebhabs and tandoori chickens.    

  

                                                                                    ***

When I was brooding over the country chicken this way, my wife reading the Times of India of July 4^th edition, drew my attention to the news that some of the schools in north western districts of Tamilnadu- Erode, Namakkal and Krishnagiri excelled in obtaining the most number of state ranks in +2Exams. Jokingly, I dismissed her and said, “These districts excel only in poultry keeping and not in education.” Then she gave me an elaborate lecture on how these institutions used ‘poultry keeping method’ as educational and pedagogical methods. I said, “John Dewy and Paulo Freire will wriggle in their graves.”

These schools she said, are resident schools with highly standardized lodging facilities. It seems that children are fed appropriate food in appropriate time. But life for children compares to a regimented and calibrated life of a chicken coop. One school by name Bharatha Vidya Bavan, make children observe study hours between 4.00 AM to 9.00 AM and then from 6.00 P.M to 11.00 PM, beyond attending the regular classes. This means 15 hours of thoughtless drudgery. Worst, even the bathroom walls it seems display one-word answers which the students are expected to rote-learn. They seem to eat, sleep, work and bathe in examination. The assurance is, like the poultry chicks children would acquire capabilities of laying plenty of marks- anything between 1150 to 1199 out of the maximum possible 2000 in the final reckoning. Who knows? One day a well bred child from the best among these poultries may lay the record 2000 eggs of the season. Even this will not satisfy the greedy parents who promote these schools paying in lakhs of rupees.

                                                                              ***

The ‘cluck’ ‘cluck’ of the chicks of my grandmother’s garden I think, would make more sense than the chant of the children of the coop. It is better we raise our own brood of chicks even if they leave their droppings in our bed rooms, lay fewer eggs and sit on the roof in defiance.

                                                                             0o0

           

 CHINNARAJ JOSEPH