Mother Tongue and Other Tongue

Last Saturday, 20 April, I was invited to speak at a book launch. Thousand Thoughts written by Larysa (Laura) Savinska is an unusual book. It has Larysa’s original poems in English, in Russian and as if bilingualism is not enough, three poems in Ukrainian.

Linguistic theory says you can write poems only in your mother tongue. Because poetry is about feelings and emotions. Our strongest sentiments are attached to our mother tongue, our first language, the language we learn naturally, without having to cram grammar books. Larysa proves that theory wrong. She writes her poems with equal passion in English and Russian.

*****

Jean-Marc Dewaele from the University of London has spent a substantial part of his academic career investigating how swearwords and taboo words, the F language, affect multilinguals. (Incredible the kind of things academics pick for research). His paper begins with the drunk and angry Captain Haddock. Tintin and Captain Haddock are surrounded by armed Arab bandits in the desert. (The Crab with the Golden Claws, Hergé, 1940). When captain Haddock’s whiskey bottle is shot to pieces by the bandits, he releases a mouthful of oaths in French, his mother tongue. The swearing, of course, is only as strong as the kids’ books can swallow. Anyone fond of Tintin is familiar with the ‘mille milliards de mille sabords’ (billions of blue blistering barnacles). The Captain’s swearing is so powerful, the bandits run away.

The conclusion of Dewaele’s paper is more interesting. His research finds that swear words in our mother tongue offend us more than those in languages learnt later in life. This emotional force in mother-tongue applies to both the giver and the receiver of the swear words.

Those of you who can use swear words or have been sworn at in various languages can verify how true his research is.

*****

In the discussion on multi-lingual writing, Nabokov’s story is quite telling.

Vladimir Nabokov, the Lolita fame, wrote an autobiographical memoir called Speak, Memory in 1951. (In the USA, it was called Conclusive Evidence). The book essentially covered the period of his childhood and adolescence. As a child, Nabokov grew up in Saint Petersburg, in Tsar’s Russia. After the communist revolution, his family fled Russia and emigrated to England. Nabokov enrolled at the University of Cambridge. After graduating, he moved to Berlin. In the Second World War, once Hitler’s troops began advancing, the family fled again, this time to Manhattan, USA. That is where he wrote Speak, Memory, a memoir in English.

The following year, a Russian publisher approached Nabokov and requested him to write a book for the Russian readers. Nabokov offered Speak, Memory; now to be published in Russian language. Nabokov, being Nabokov, a prolific writer, didn’t want to translate. He began writing the same book in Russian.

A strange thing happened. Memories, associations, smells began to flood his mind. He recalled several stories he had completely forgotten when writing in English. The Russian memoir Drugie Berega (Other Shores) was published in Russia in 1954. Initially meant to be a simple translation, it was a very different book than the memoir in English.

Nabokov’s first two decades of life were spent in Russia. Apparently his memories, emotions, feelings from that period were closely associated with the Russian language. Though he was fluent in both languages, it was a mistake to try and capture the Russian period in English.

After the publication in Russian, Nabokov became restless and began translating the Russian version, which he considered to be authentic, back in English. In 1966, the memoir was published in English once again. Now called: Speak Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. In its preface, Nabokov acknowledged his difficulties in trying to fit the Russian memories in English. “This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English re-telling of Russian memories in the first place, proved to be a diabolical task….” (Pp.12-13)

*****

In 1980, our flat in Bombay got its first phone- an immobile landline. It had a six digit number – 465416. The six digit number showed how few people had phones despite Bombay’s large populace. We were among the last to get a phone. I began to memorise the numbers of my friends, relatives, and colleagues. By 1986, I was holding more than 200 Bombay phone numbers in my head. I didn’t work as a telephone operator or a spy; I simply loved numbers and was proud of my memory.

In 1986 I moved to Moscow, and began to memorise the Moscow phone numbers. Moscow had seven digits. By 1990, I could easily recite more than 100 Moscow phone numbers. The following year, Soviet Union collapsed. In 1992, Ruble collapsed. Calling India from Moscow became dirt cheap. I thought I should surprise a few Indian friends by calling them from Moscow. In my Moscow flat, I still had a dialing phone. I tried to recall the Bombay numbers, but struggled. I was confident about my Bombay residence number, but most other numbers were blurred.

However, as soon as I came back on vacation to Bombay, and put my index finger on the phone dial, all those numbers came back. Now I had difficulty trying to recall the Moscow numbers.

This was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. Both sets of numbers were stored in my head. But I could recall with ease only the local numbers.

*****

I notice something similar with the languages I learnt.

I left Russia 20 years ago. I rarely speak Russian now. But whenever I land in Moscow, words and expressions start flowing from my lips.

Since leaving Poland at the end of 2002, I have been there only twice. And still in November 2017, as soon as I breathed the Warsaw air, I could converse in Polish with the old fluency. On the third day, I was cracking jokes in Polish.

I may not have had as many lives as a cat does, but I have distinctly experienced Indian, Russian and Polish incarnations.

*****   

If you speak only one language and live in only one country, you have only a single life.

If you spend a considerable number of years abroad, learn the local language and customs, mingle with the local community, (marry a local), start talking in that language in your dreams, work along with the natives, immerse yourself in that land, more importantly love the place and the people, that is reincarnation. I don’t know how credible the philosophical or religious concept of reincarnation is, but I certainly know that people who become part of another country and culture are reborn in the same life.

This is what happened to the author of Thousand Thoughts. For the past thirteen years, Larysa has made India her home, married an Indian, at her home in Goa she speaks in English with her family. She has even renamed her Indian avatar – Laura. She works as a coach and motivator- all her clients are Indian. In those thirteen years, she has experienced emotional ups and downs that have found an expression in her poems. Her Russian poems were written in Russia, her English poems are written in India.

In her poem Golden Cage, a lovely metaphor, Larysa writes about the people who shy away from experiencing another life: (Only an excerpt here)

There was a bird in a golden cage

A tiny singing bird

I loved her songs, I sang along

Enjoyed her voice a lot

One day I thought I’ll free the bird

Allow her to fly

It must be sad to stay inside

And never hit the sky

I’ve opened the little golden gate

But the silly bird stayed in

It’s all she ever knew

She was quite happy here

I’m like that bird, the whole sky is mine

And what do I choose instead?

I’ve locked myself inside the cage

Of what I thought is my nest

I look outside, perhaps I feel

That there is more out there

But I’m not ready for the sky

It’s so familiar here….

*****

Linguistic theorists who claim poems can be written only in one’s mother tongue didn’t take into account that reincarnation in another land can produce poetry in another language.

Ravi

Killing Chickens

Manas was my classmate in college. His academic brilliance was often accompanied by eccentricity in thoughts and expression. It made him an interesting company for a short while. After all these years, I am still happy to meet him over lunch or dinner, but would probably refuse an offer to share with him a day-long journey or a weeklong vacation. For many years, he has been a professor at a reputed American university. In December, when he visits Bombay, we occasionally arrange to meet. This week, we had gone out for dinner. The place was Manas’s choice. He ordered a tandoori chicken, and I  asked for a vegetarian platter.

“You should try tandoori chicken here.” Manas said. “It’s terrific.”

“Well, I prefer veg.” I said.

“I thought you were not religious. I hope your vegetarianism is not based on some religious principles.”

“No, no. Not religion. But it’s true I don’t like someone killing animals so that we can eat them.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Isn’t that unethical? Isn’t all killing wrong?” I asked. Killing anybody, even chickens, can’t be right.

“But those chickens, the broiler chickens, are more than compensated for their killing. They have got the gift of life.” Manas said.

“What do you mean – compensated? They had a life, and that life has been cut short by somebody with a sharp knife beheading them. Kill them young, so that we, I mean people like you, can eat them.”

“You’re missing a point. Their life as you call it wouldn’t exist if I was not eating them.”

“Are you trying to justify killing those poor chickens?”

“Listen. I don’t think you, as a vegetarian, know or care how the broiler industry works. There are two types of chicken, those that give eggs and those used as meat. The second type is called broilers. They’re specifically bred and raised as meat.  Do you have any idea how many chickens are raised annually? More than 50 billion. If we were not consuming them, most of them would never be born. You know if the world had only vegetarians like you, a few trillion chickens would have never existed.”

“So, what’s wrong with that?”

“We’re talking about the ethics of killing chicken. I accept the chicken is eventually killed. But that happens in one day, in a matter of few minutes. What about the two or three months of life the chicken enjoys till then?”

“Manas, what sort of enjoyment you are talking about?”

“Look, at least in the USA and Europe, the laws governing the poultry farming are strict. You need to look at the health and welfare of the broiler chickens. They are free, not in cages. Until the day they die, they enjoy company of thousands of other chickens. They are treated well, fed well. They see the blue sky, run around.”

“But at the end of it, that life is terminated – brutally. A butcher cuts its throat.”

“Listen, in the west, laws regulate the way broilers are killed. It needs to be quick and with minimum pain. But even if it was brutal and inhuman as it may be in this part of the world, the chicken has still lived its life until then. The joy of breathing, the joy of enjoying the power of senses, the joy of looking at different colours, the joy of mere living... the chicken got that good life only because somebody finds its meat tasty.”

“Manas, but speaking from the ethical point, who has given us the right to kill them?”

“I’ll tell you who. Since we the people breed them, we have the right to kill them. It’s like god. God has created human beings, and god kills them one way or another. And if you wish to compare us with broilers, God is not always a civil butcher. Look at all those cancer patients. God could have easily killed them in one minute. The time that it takes for a knife to separate a chicken’s head. But God opts to torture many innocent men and women, even children, for years before killing them. How is that ethical?

What I’m trying to tell you is that the billions of broilers that exist today, and have existed in the past were created by men, not God. In a vegetarian world, god would not send them at all. And since man specifically breeds the broilers, he has the moral right to end their life as well. And the trade-off, according to me, is fair. The chicken gets to experience life that it would not have otherwise.”

“ Manas, I think you attach too much importance to experiencing life as you call it.”

“Of course I do. Each day of life is an experience that offers unlimited possibilities for joy and creation. It has nothing to do with how the life ends. Take the case of Mahatma Gandhi or John Kennedy. Both were shot dead. You may even say brutally and unfairly. Does that diminish the importance of their lives in any way? Until the day they died, they lived life to the full. They not only enjoyed their life, they also contributed to the world. If I were to apply your argument about broiler chickens, you are saying it would have been better if Gandhi or Kennedy were not born, rather than getting brutally killed.”

“Well, I’m not sure if Mahatma Gandhi and chickens should be compared.” I said.

“If you are talking about ethics, there is no difference. I believe that the gift of life the chicken gets as a result of our meat-eating is so great that getting beheaded prematurely is a small price to pay.”

Manas then called the waiter, and ordered another Tandoori chicken. “It’s excellent!” he offered his compliments to the waiter.

Ravi

A bit about bitcoin

If you were fortunate (or freak of some sort) to have invested 1000 dollars in “bitcoins” six years ago, the value of that investment would have become 4 million dollars today. Why go so back; investing 1000 dollars in “bitcoins” a year ago, in December 2016, would have fetched 20,000 dollars now. What else can multiply your wealth twenty times in a year?

Many of my friends have discussed with me the bitcoin phenomenon. Some of them are PhDs. The conversations are usually short, ending with something like, “I don’t understand it at all. Is it a new currency of some kind? Where can I buy it?” Since nobody I know knows even as much as I think I know, I will venture to use my limited knowledge about economics and superficial research to share with you my understanding of the bitcoin phenomenon.

What is a bitcoin?

It’s a currency, but unlike the currencies in your pockets, it is virtual. Interestingly, no government or regulator introduced or controls it. Apparently, bitcoin was the innovation of one Satoshi Nakamoto. The name sounds Japanese. However, no such person has ever been found in Japan or anywhere else. We can be certain of the existence of Jesus Christ, possibly of lord Krishna, but Satoshi Nakamoto has remained enigmatically missing since bitcoin’s launch in 2009. To pay him tribute, the fractional denomination has been named Satoshi. (Dollar-cent/ pound-penny/ bitcoin-satoshi, except 100 million Satoshi make a single bitcoin). People have wondered if Nakamoto was a group of software engineers rather than a single person.

Do banknotes or coins exist for this currency? Banknotes don’t, coins may. However, the coin itself has no meaning or value. The currency is virtual. You can create, acquire or sell it without having anything to do with physical coins.

Can anything be a currency?

For centuries, perhaps millenniums, world ran its business through barter. A carpenter built a shed for a farmer. The farmer in exchange supplied the carpenter with potatoes. A need was felt for a medium of exchange that would make such transactions convenient. Initially gold was used. When rulers launched money as we know it, it had to be backed by enough gold in the government treasury. This was the Gold Standard. In theory, you could take your cash to the government treasury, which was obliged to give you equivalent gold. Over the years, the gold standard was abandoned. As we know, money supply got further expanded with plastic cards. One may get his salary in the bank account and pay online or with credit card. Transactions can and increasingly do happen without involvement of any physical money. Governments, through their monetary policy, still need to monitor the total supply of money. Very loosely speaking, if the total supply of a particular currency is doubled without any change in the number of goods that money can buy, the prices of those goods will double as a result of the money supply. Printing of money usually fuels inflation, and done in excess can result in hyperinflation like in Germany (1923) where you carried money in bags to buy something that fit in your pocket.

It is, therefore, very important for any currency, however created to have at least four elements. (A) Hard to earn (b) limited in supply (c) easy to verify and (d) trust and acceptance. We will now see how this applies to ‘bitcoin’.

Mining of bitcoins   

Bitcoins, like gold, need to be mined. But gold is a natural commodity; the deposits of gold exist in places like South Africa, China and Russia. Through a laborious physical process, involving miners wearing helmets and risking lives, gold needs to be extracted and refined.

Mining of bitcoins is a computer, software process. In theory, you or I can mine bitcoins. In practice, perhaps only those with a PhD in computer science, cryptology and game theory can mine them.

The mining process is like solving a giant mathematical puzzle. Imagine you are a hacker. You need to crack somebody’s birthday and a four digit numeral (pin) to access his account. You have no idea how old the person is, but feel he was born between 1965 and 1974. Let’s also assume you are allowed any number of attempts online. (If you insert a wrong pin number three times, some ATMs swallow your cards. Not a case here). You need to start with 1 Jan 1965 and go till 31 Dec 1974, each day combined with 9999 numbers. In effect you will need to try 3652 days x 9999= 36,516,348 times. To perform this manually at the rate of one try every minute, you will take 300 years.

bitcoin mining farm 

Mining a bitcoin is as difficult as this. It requires huge computer power, and astonishingly high power consumption.  The global bitcoin mining activity is estimated to consume 3.4 gigawatts, about the same that the whole of Bulgaria consumes in the same period. To lower the costs, mining is set in places like Iceland with its cheap geothermal energy. In China the miners use hydroelectric power. To save on time, mining pools are formed. They share the reward when anyone from the pool succeeds in mining a bitcoin.

In short, I’m certainly not volunteering to become a bitcoin miner.

Limited in Supply

A successful miner is rewarded with 12.5 bitcoins per block (I will explain what a blockchain means later). In 2020, the reward will be halved to 6.25 bitcoins per block, and every succeeding four years it will keep halving. By 2140, when neither I nor any reader of this article will be around, the bitcoin supply will stop at 21 million bitcoins. That is the limit set by whoever has created this game. After that, the miners will be rewarded only by way of transaction fees (similar to how your bank charges you for  transactions), and not bitcoins.

Easy to verify: Blockchain

Since no government or regulatory body controls the mining or the transactions, how can we trust the bitcoin manufacture and trading? The mechanism is complex but transparent and fairly secure. The bitcoin software takes care of this.

The “blockchain” is a public ledger (of course, not physical but virtual) that records all bitcoin transactions. If X pays Y with bitcoins, the transaction is broadcast with its history not only to X and Y, but to all the bitcoin owners in the world.

In our normal world, when X pays Y through a bank transfer, the bank statements of X’s bank and Y’s bank will reflect that transaction. However, those statements will be available only to X and Y. With bitcoins, it is as if those bank statements are available to everyone in the world. Through this public ledger, blockchain, you can trace the history of each bitcoin and every transaction. Every ten minutes, the system stamps the page with a special serial number (hash) and glues it permanently into the ledger book. With the bitcoin price skyrocketing, there is huge competition to get into that ledger. It’s like thousands of volunteer software geeks (miners) putting their names into a hat, and every ten minutes a single name is drawn out from it.

Private key

Each bitcoin or its fraction has a complex but unique private key. A bit like a password. All transactions happen anonymously. This private key is the only way to preserve your bitcoin wealth. If you lose the key, the money is gone; there is absolutely no way to recover it. In the early days, when people were casual about bitcoins, some owners have left the private key written on slips, misplaced those slips, and have potentially lost millions. Someone can also hack into your key and steal your money, but this is not as easy as with conventional accounts and credit cards.

Private Key is similar to the Swiss bank account keys. In the past, I believe the notorious Swiss banks let the clients hold money with them anonymously. Anybody with the key to the locker could withdraw its contents.

Who accepts bitcoins?

Of course, not everybody. Paypal, Microsoft, Dell and Newegg accept bitcoins for payments in certain countries. Reportedly, some hotels and airline tickets can also be booked. Last month, PWC, the big accountancy firm began accepting bitcoin for advisory services in Hong Kong. (Inspired, I hereby announce I’m willing to work as an advisor for anybody for bitcoins as well).

As can be expected, bitcoins are popular with drug dealers, smugglers and other tax evaders.

Globally, an estimated 800 bitcoin ATMs can allow you to buy bitcoins, most of the ATMs are located in the USA.

This month, apart from stock market trading, futures trading is allowed for bitcoins.

Trading in bitcoins as opposed to mining

I have established above that people without PhDs in computer science are unlikely to succeed in mining bitcoins. If you notice, most critics including Warren Buffet who call bitcoins a fraud are old. They are too old to understand the structure and complexity of the bitcoin game.

Now, middlemen like Coinbase have appeared. Without being a miner, you can buy and sell a bitcoin or a fraction of it using your smartphone. (Since 1 bitcoin was nearly 18000 dollars at the beginning of this week, most buyers are thinking of buying fractions).

You need to ask yourself a question. If you buy a bitcoin, who is getting the money that you pay? It’s not going to any government. The money goes to the bitcoin miner, the anonymous maker of the bitcoin, and the middleman who connects you with him.

Commodity or currency?

Finally, is bitcoin a currency or a commodity? It’s a money-like global commodity. However, as a commodity it has no intrinsic value, you can’t wear a bitcoin necklace or eat from a bitcoin plate. In that sense, it’s clearly an absolutely useless commodity. Because it has no intrinsic value, and is not tangible, its bubble not only can but ought to burst. If you want to buy it as a commodity, I have a one word advice. DON’T!

If bitcoin was merely a currency and not a commodity, its life expectancy would have been longer. With a stable value, people wishing to conduct transactions anonymously would love to use it. Bitcoin as a commodity may destroy bitcoin as a currency. With the price volatility, its acceptance as currency is in danger. More than that, the volatility and gullible masses joining this new Ponzi scheme will make governments the world over regulate or ban it sooner or later.

Virtual coins, when they become extinct, are worthless as antiques.

Ravi

The Case of the Disfigured Husband

On 28 November, A. L. Narayana, a senior police officer from Nagarkurnool, was the first person to speak to the petrified wife over the phone. Her name was Swathi Reddy. Her speech was incoherent. Four assailants unknown to the family had attacked her husband, thrown acid and petrol on his face, set fire to it and fled. Swathi was trying to get her husband to the hospital. Her neighbours had advised her to report the assault to the police.

“You don’t need to come to the police station. I’ll see you at the hospital.” Said Mr Narayana. A young woman whose husband was disfigured in an assault should be given all possible help, the police officer thought, getting into his jeep.

He met Swathi Reddy at Hyderabad’s well-known Apollo hospital. She stood shaken and crying next to her husband, Sudhakar Reddy. Mr Reddy lay on the hospital bed bare-chested, wearing just a pair of jeans. His ash-coloured face had patches that showed how unevenly the face had burnt. Burn marks were also visible on his neck, shoulders and chest. An oxygen mask was attached to his face. His eyes were shut. A bad job this, thought Narayana. God knows if the victim would ever recover his original face. 

Narayana started filling out the required details himself. He could do that much for the ill-fated woman. Swathi Reddy was 27. She was a trained nurse and worked in a clinic. Her husband was 32. He had a stone crushing business. They were married for seven years, and had two children.

‘Where were the children at the time of the attack?’ Narayana asked.

Fortunately, they were with their grandmother. Swathi had dropped them off at her mother’s house only the previous day.

The police officer wrote out descriptions of the four strangers who had poured acid and petrol over Mr Reddy’s face. Swathi was screaming at the top of her voice, so the culprits had run away. Another few minutes and they would have succeeded in killing Mr Reddy.

Nothing was stolen. Swathi Reddy could not say if her husband had any enemies. She certainly didn’t know. Her husband’s business was a small scale enterprise. They owned a car, but other than that it was a middle class family. It was unlikely the assault was related to Mr Reddy’s financial affairs.

Apollo hospital was expensive. Mr Reddy’s brother stood in the corner of the room. He had somehow managed to cough up Rs 350,000. Far more would be needed until Sudhakar could get his face repaired and go back home.

‘Will you please talk to the plastic surgeon?’ Swathi said to Narayana. ‘They should do a plastic surgery urgently. I can’t bear to see his face.’

Narayana didn’t understand why the police should speak to the surgeon. Surely, surgeons knew their business well. On the other hand, you had here a woman in shock. She worked as a nurse; she probably knew the way hospitals functioned.

‘I’d taken him to a private clinic before coming here. That clinic specialises in plastic surgery. They refused to admit my husband, saying this was a police case. So, we had to bring him here.’ said Swathi. ‘This hospital’s doctor said the burn injuries are not deep enough for plastic surgery. What does he mean? Look at my husband’s face. Anyone can tell he needs plastic surgery.’

Narayana made sympathetic noises. He took Mr Reddy’s brother out of the room, and asked him similar questions. He didn’t know anything. Sudhakar had not yet said a single word. Yes, his face had become unrecognisable.

‘It’s horrible.’ Said Mr Reddy’s brother. ‘It’s not only his face. Something terrible has happened to him. I couldn’t recognise him at all.’

*****

Mr Reddy’s brother called the police station the following day. This time, he s0unded as agitated as Mr Reddy’s wife had the previous day.

‘Is your brother all right?’ asked Mr Narayana.

‘No... I mean... I don’t know. My mother and I would like to see you urgently.’

In less than half an hour, the two had landed at the police station. Narayana offered them water.

‘Sir, this man... this man can’t be my brother.’ The visitor looked at his mother, who suddenly broke out crying.

‘Hang on; you said yesterday he was unrecognisable. And I’ve seen his face. It’s quite understandable...’

‘No, no. This man can’t be my brother. Both my mother and I thought it was very strange how an acid attack could change his height and overall appearance. When we tried to talk to him, he wrote. He refused to say a word.’

‘It’s possible he is not in a position to talk yet.’ Narayana offered.

‘The hospital offered him lunch. The plate contained a nice, hot mutton soup. Sudhakar, my brother, loves mutton soups. This man, whoever he is, told the nurse he is a vegetarian. He is not my brother, he is an imposter.’

‘But his wife... Mrs Reddy... what does she say to that?’

‘That’s what is strange.’ Mr Reddy’s mother spoke for the first time. ‘She says we’re all wrong. The assault has affected him badly. She maintains the man as her husband. We can tell you he’s not.’

‘Well,’ Narayana thought, ‘the wife says the disfigured man is her husband. The husband’s family says he is an imposter. Why should the wife lie?’

Narayana contacted Mr Jogu Chennaiah, the Additional Superintendent of Police. The case warranted someone senior.

*****

An  Aadhar card is a biometric identity document introduced by the Indian government. De facto it is mandatory, because it must now be linked with bank accounts and mobile SIM cards. When you apply for an Aadhar, you submit fingerprints which enter the world’s largest biometric database.

When the Nagarkurnool police visited the private room in the Apollo hospital, the man with the disfigured face was asleep. Mrs Swathi Reddy had gone to see her children. Narayana took the electronic device out of his pocket. He delicately pressed the fingers of the sleeping man on its screen.

Within an hour the police officer was standing next to a man in the government lab.

‘Good fingerprints.’ said the man. ‘They match exactly.’

‘What’s the name?’ asked Mr Narayana.

‘Rajesh Ajjakolu.’ said the lab assistant. ‘Here are his contact details.’

*****

Rajesh Ajjakolu worked as a physiotherapist. Two years ago, Mrs Swathi Reddy, a mother of two, consulted him about her backache. A young woman visiting a young male physiotherapist is a tricky situation. The two fell in love and started an affair. In India, with more than two billion prying eyes, it’s difficult to keep an affair secret for too long.

On 23 November, some of Sudhakar Reddy’s relatives saw his wife with a stranger in a car. They promptly informed Sudhakar. Sudhakar confronted Swathi and they had four unpleasant days full of quarrels, suspicion and fights. Swathi took the two children and left them at her mother’s house. She then spoke to Rajesh, her lover. They decided to get rid of Sudhakar. But after killing Sudhakar, Swathi and Rajesh wished to live a happy family life together. How to manage that?

*****

Three years ago, Swathi had seen the popular Telugu film Yevadu. She loved it. In Yevadu, a young man (Allu Arjun) suffers facial injuries when a mafia man tries to kill him. A lady plastic surgeon saves him by giving him the face of her deceased son (Ram Charan). One man dies and another starts living with his face, thanks to the great innovation called plastic surgery. Once Rajesh gets Sudhakar’s face, Swathi and Rajesh would move to Pune with her children and live happily ever after.

*****

Early morning on 27 November, Swathi gave her husband an anaesthetic injection. She was a professional nurse, after all. She and Rajesh then clobbered him to death with an iron rod. They took him to an isolated spot 150 km away from Nagarkurnool, and burned him after dousing his body in petrol.

On their return, Swathi poured acid and petrol on Rajesh’s face and lit a match. For love, it appears, men are willing to suffer much.  Swathi waited until Rajesh’s face was sufficiently burnt. She then began screaming; hoping that the neighbours would soon turn up to see the disfigured face of her husband.

*****

Sudhakar Reddy’s family spent Rs 500,000 on the treatment and on learning the truth, stopped. As a result, the hospital has refused to let Rajesh go until someone pays the balance hospital bill. The police have promised to take Rajesh to jail as soon as the hospital releases him.

Swathi Reddy is already in jail. That was the price she had to pay for failing to appreciate that a perfect plastic surgery can happen only in films.

Ravi 

Nostalgia: from Disease to a Tonic

In November, I attended a reunion of the former employees of British American Tobacco, Poland. I had lived and worked in Warsaw between 1999 and 2002. Last month, I met many ex-colleagues after a gap of fifteen years. Men had become plumper, greyer, balder but easily recognisable. Girls, however, have a fantastic ability to not change. They were just slightly mature versions of those I had said goodbye to fifteen years ago.

We spent a delightful evening, which began with a film specially created using old photos, brands we sold and campaigns we ran. We recalled incidents and flashbulb memories from the good old days. In conversations, and later FB comments, the term ‘nostalgic’ was frequently used. In this week’s diary, I want to analyze what nostalgia is and why it makes us emotional.

Nostalgia a disease

Strangely, for centuries of its existence, the word nostalgia referred to a medical disease, a psychiatric disorder. In the 17^th century, Swiss mercenaries were often hired to serve in foreign armies. They possessed proven battlefield expertise. (Even today, the Pope and the Vatican are protected by the Swiss Guard). Young Swiss soldiers, stationed in Italy or France; on seeing a tree or terrain that reminded them of home; on hearing a familiar Swiss melody, often became ill. They complained of giddiness, high fever, pain in the chest or stomach, indigestion. In extreme cases, some of them died. A Swiss PhD student Johannes Hofer called it the Swiss illness (mal du Suisse) or Nostalgia. Nostalgia was coined by combining two Greek words ‘nostos’ (homecoming) and algos (pain). In English it can be loosely translated as ‘homesickness’.

We must remember that in the 17^th century, going abroad was very different from today. Swiss mercenaries who left for Italy or France took months to reach their foreign employers. They had no phones or Facetime. They knew or suspected they would never see their homeland again. That made their yearning for home unbearable. The only known “cure” was to return home, and many tried to, only to be punished by death for deserting.

For the next two centuries, nostalgia remained a disorder in medical parlance. Only in the last fifty years or so (in times of relative peace), research has begun to focus on its positive aspects.

Nostalgia versus homesickness

In modern times, nostalgia has a much broader meaning than homesickness. ‘Saudade’ is another word, in Portuguese, that represents a state of profound longing for an absent person or thing that one loves. It’s a beautiful but sad word, often implying that the object of longing would never return. It can be translated as missing-ness or emptiness, love that remains after someone/something is gone. The premature death of a close family member produces Saudade.  

Nostalgia, as understood in the 21^st century, refers no longer to a “physical”, but a ‘metaphorical’ home. If you imagine our ‘past’ to be a home that is different from our ‘present’, you will appreciate why we become so happy in revisiting the past. It’s time travel. The longer the distance (time gap), the more happiness this homecoming generates.

When I met my Polish friends/colleagues last month, all of us were transported back in time. I revisited my “home” that I had shared with them more than fifteen years ago.

Smell, taste, music, photo albums

Smell, taste and touch are capable of making us nostalgic. If you visit your school after 30 years, you may recall some smells you never experienced thereafter. Or you may unexpectedly eat something you haven’t tasted since your childhood. Taste and smell can make you nostalgic. However, mankind has still not managed to record those sensations. Our access to them is rare and accidental. We can’t run a Google search for a smell, nor send it to a friend on whatsApp. Which is not the case with music. Or photos. We can capture them, search for them or forward them. We can lose ourselves going through old B &W photo albums.

Music is known to be a powerful nostalgia producer. Research has shown that music heard during the age 12-22 leaves the strongest emotions within us.  Music is capable of re-creating a certain period of our life. For people my age from the English speaking world, the song ‘those were the days’ by Mary Hopkin may bring back their youth and romance. Its video clip is aptly black and white.

Television arrived in Bombay in 1972. The signature tune created by the sitar maestro Ravishankar represents the B&W television era in the minds of Bombay tele-viewers. A clip of a few seconds makes them nostalgic, hugely happy but also sad about the time to which they can no longer return.

I think distance in time, and distance in geography both matter. When I lived in Europe, some Indian songs made me deeply nostalgic, to the point of tears. The bhelpuri I ate in London or New York made me sentimental. When I hear the same song in India or eat bhelpuri in Bombay, they don’t have the same emotional impact. That is the reason emigrants always look for things from back home. In that, they are like the Swiss mercenaries. They no longer fall ill or die like the Swiss soldiers, because if desperate, they can always take a flight and visit home. 

The same can’t be done when you travel back in time, particularly revisit your distant past. When someone married thirty years ago looks at his wedding album, it brings back all related memories from that time. He is amazed at how young everyone looks. He looks with admiration at his hairy head in the photo. The pleasure is tinged with the pain of our inability to turn back the clock, of the good old days that will never come back.

Personal vs collective (historical) nostalgia

Your wedding album is essentially your personal nostalgia. It is unlikely to create the same emotions in a stranger. On the other hand, the Bombay TV signature tune or the Mary Hopkin song is a collective nostalgia. We share a common past with our friends from school, from university, from our workplace, with our fellow-citizens, and finally as global citizens. Now that we use smart phones, pictures of old phone instruments, typewriters, or heavy cameras make us nostalgic for things unlikely to make a comeback.

Facebook cleverly uses nostalgia for a commercial purpose. It focuses on both your personal nostalgia (We thought that you’d like to look back on this post from 10 years ago- FB) as well as the collective nostalgia (your year in review, please share with your friends-FB)

Political tool

It is believed ‘nostalgia’ is the reason Trump and Brexit have happened.

Older people who predominantly voted for them longed for the good old days, when America was great, and Britain was truly sovereign. The blue British passports didn’t have European Union on the cover.

Using the slogan “Make America Great Again,” Trump didn’t simply invoke the idea of an idealized past. He provoked the anxious feelings that make nostalgia especially attractive — and effective — as a tool of political persuasion.

Nostalgia often filters the bad memories out, leaving only the good moments that make us feel warm. BAT, Poland had its share of corporate politics, nasty bosses and unpleasant arguments. However, last month the bad blood from the past was forgotten. We mainly remembered the good times. (Those with overwhelmingly bad memories don’t turn up for nostalgic meetings).

In communist countries like Russia, many people have forgotten how bad life used to be: the queues, the shortages, and the paranoid police state. They now focus on the State support and zero inflation, the two positive things from Soviet days. One reason for Vladimir Putin to be in power for such a long time could be the nostalgic desire of the Russians to have stability, security and a superpower status like in the Soviet times.

Benefits of nostalgia

Recent research on the subject of nostalgia has pointed out many of its benefits.

a.      Gives an overall sense of enduring meaning to our life. By acting as continuity between past and present, it alleviates existential threat.

b.      Nostalgia generates positive effect, increases self-esteem, and fosters social connectedness.

c.       Counteracts against loneliness, boredom and anxiety.

d.      Makes people generous to strangers, more tolerant to outsiders.

e.      Couples feel closer and look happier when they share nostalgic memories.

f.        More than one research say nostalgia literally makes us feel warmer in cold days or in cold rooms. Nostalgia makes us more human.

g.      When the present is distressing, people often look to the past for support.

In short, in your cleaning drive, please don’t throw away old letters, photos, documents, particularly the handwritten stuff. All of them are capable of injecting a dose of nostalgia in you – it can act like a drug that produces euphoria.

Don’t lose an opportunity to meet friends from old times. Those reunions are bound to make you happy. If you are feeling miserable, if the weather is cold, listen to your favourite songs from your teens. Visit places from your childhood, go back to your school building, and meet your ex-colleagues several years after changing jobs. It’s a guaranteed recipe for feeling happy.

Ravi