Male libido and French connection

 The Times of India had reported from Bangalore a few years ago that the Indian wife of a French diplomat had filed a case against him with the police for abusing her daughter. The lady had explained that she was heavily pregnant and when her daughter of less than two years had complained to her that 'Daddy hurts' she had ignored the child. Later her maid reported that 'Sir' used to take his daughter and lock the door for long periods. Then she became aware, scared and started noticing. Her husband took cover under diplomatic immunity and fled the country as soon as he got wind of the police complaint.

Feminist groups have always maintained that women are not always safe at home. There was a big jump in cases of domestic abuse during the recent two Covid lockdowns in India. The right glorifies home and hearth for women but reality is otherwise.

Two days ago I was watching a French movie on TV Monde Asie channel on TV. It is a free channel and I like French movies and their whole approach. The movie was already on when I started watching it. A young woman is admitted to a mental hospital and is not allowed to visit her two young daughters. Her charge that her husband is abusing them is not accepted even when she had managed to get a video of one such act. Her parents in law decide to look after their granddaughters. One day, when accidentally the grandfather goes to the bathroom when the elder granddaughter is in the bath, she cries out. The grandfather immediately understands although the grandmother keeps denying and pressurizes him to consider the consequences. The grandfather was aware of his son's tendencies in the past and had always known but thought that the son was now reformed. He is disturbed and he calls the daughter in law.

Again I do not now what happened in the end but probably the outcome was positive. What has stayed with me is the aggression and duplicity of the son. Others must also be like him.

The more I think of what children, especially girls, go through in life, I shudder.

The French movies are bold. They portray life in all its aspects, warts and all. With us, when Ghashiram Kotwal was to be staged in the then east Germany, a dominant opposing voice was that blemishes in our history should not be advertised. But then how will progress be possible?

Reading list

I recently read an article by a 70-year old lady in The Reader's Digest, Asia (October 1, 2022) Her circumstances of birth and later, marriage, prevented her from pursuing higher education but she had an innate strong desire for learning and for bettering herself. She describes the day in school when her teacher distributed copies of a long reading list of 150 books. The teacher knew that most of her students would not be in a position to go to a university. She wanted them to continue their learning and so painstakingly, over a long period of time, she had compiled the list.

The writer of the article took up the list whenever she could and get - from local libraries, old bookshops and later outright purchase - the books in it. She began at the beginning and is nearly through the list now. After her domestic responsibilities were reduced and after she retired, she could finish 3 or 4 books from the list in a year. She also read them thoroughly, even when she could not understand them fully. For example, she described Das Kapital by Karl Marx as a very boring, rambling book.

The writer is proud of her own work. It was her higher learning, she says. The reading allowed her to get into different situations, perspectives, aspects of life, reasoning, laying bare of emotions etc. etc. and to enrich her understanding and her personality. She is grateful to her teacher and is even more proud of her.

The article got me thinking. I am also a teacher and hundreds of students have passed through my hands. Well, not exactly because there was always a huge gap between students and teachers in a college. Still, I can think of so many who would profit today from a dip into literature. Most of them would be settled in their careers and would have time on hand. At least some would have begun to grapple with thorny issues of meaning of life, our place in the world, purpose of existence, what to do after job, family and money etc. etc. Perhaps my small reading list would help some of them.

I have made a small list of 25 books, 15 fiction, 10 non-fiction. All of them were with me at different periods in my life and I vouch for them. They are an eclectic mix.

I am refining the list right now and soon, I will put it up.

A student, part two

    I decided to go with him for a lark. At the appointed place and time early morning, he was waiting for me. We crossed Katraj ghat and took Bengaluru highway. Then, a short distance from Pune, we turned right and proceeded towards Gunjawani. I had never travelled here before. We had to climb and it had rained very heavily the previous day. I drove with a lot of trepidation. At one point, villagers cautioned us to not go ahead because of accumulated water but to take a short detour. Finally we reached his friend's basic farmhouse. We went to the river from there, had lunch prepared by the caretaker couple. The student had promised a meeting with the villagers but it did not transpire. On the way back, I forced the student to drive so that I could relax. I came back home in the evening.

   It was an outing planned by him to butter me up. I asked him to visit a research library and prepare a bibliography. He prepared the latter without visiting the library. Google search was all that he was willing to do, apart from his talk about visits to different districts and farmers in them.

   He took a long time to prepare a synopsis for his pre-Ph.D. interview. I made him revise his note 7 or 8 times. His presentation of the note was horrible. He had made no preparation. The research panel suggested some changes in the research outline. He could not understand them and I had to help him with the corrections.

   By now I had become wise to his ways: all talk and no work. I came to the conclusion that he was a fraud. It also became clear that his was not a permanent post and often he did not have enough money with him. His schoolfriends helped him out. Once he asked if he could come over to my house and I served him sumptuous Diwali 'faral'. He ate like a starving person. Next time he called, I offered only tea and biscuits at the behest of my mother. His face fell when he saw that. I felt bad and also realized that he was used to cajoling people and extracting invitations from them. There was no progress in his research.

   My retirement was fast approaching and because of some new rule, I could not even continue with guiding my existing students once I retired. I happily offloaded this student to another guide from our college.

   I learnt later that he managed to get a job in a new commerce college. There were prospects of getting the right pay-scale and becoming permanent, provided his work came up to expectations. I do not know if that has happened or not.

   The student continues to message me and greet me on Teacher's Day, new year and Diwali etc. I return his greetings but say nothing more. 

   Whenever I think of him, I feel sad about my own gullibility.

A student, part one

    He was my Ph.D. student. Unlike my college colleagues, I had neglected the work of guiding research students till the very end. When it transpired that for becoming a Professor, one had to have at least one or two Ph.D. students, I woke up.

   The procedure for becoming a research guide and for guiding students was a long, bureaucratic one which had no academic value. It showed distrust of guides at every possible juncture and its assumption seemed to be that guides were in a mad rush to have as many research students under them as possible. Learning the procedure was humiliating and a waste of time.

   Once I became a guide however, students started approaching me and I foolishly got taken in by their claims. I said yes, I would be their guide. I just forgot that commerce faculty's academic standards are very poor. These students were already in touch with touts in the market who promised to do statistical and quantitative analysis for topics they themselves suggested, for a fat fee of course. The students had happily decided that they would have to shell out money but the return was a secure path to academic progress: becoming heads of departments, principal, subject experts on university panels etc. etc. All these things were gleaned and pieced together by me bit by bit as time passed. No student was interested in any topic; nobody genuinely felt that s/he must explore a certain area to know it better. They had no puzzles of dichotomy between what the books said and what was happening around in their mind. One Assamese girl who had studied and who taught economics was the sole exception.

   Among the rest, one stood out for his smooth talk. He was a fair fellow with curly hair. He had good manners and had the gift of the gab. My colleague Shaila who shared my room was charmed by him.

   So this fellow came and chatted very nicely. He was teaching in an MBA institute. He had failed his SET examination. He was simultaneously preparing for it and for Ph.D. He said he was familiar with agriculture and so I suggested a topic related to agricultural marketing. He held forth on organic farming, indigenous seeds, evils of APMC (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) and online marketing tools for farmers. He appeared to be knowledgeable.

   He talked about a land-owning friend of his who was experimenting with organic food and online marketing in his village in the command area of Gunjawani dam in Pune district, Bhor taluka. He invited me there. I said yes perfunctorily to fob him off. However, just two days before the promised outing, he phoned to remind me. I was touched.

   

Goodbye to Chitale milk

 It was an essential part of middle-class life-style when we came to Pune fifty years ago. It appeared that its quality and the fat content were beyond comparison. Chitale Bandhu Sweets, a shop of the same people, was another Puneri hallmark and long queues of customers formed in front of the shop since early morning on festive days. The sweets were fine but expensive and the very idea of spending so much time for them was too much for us. My father always ridiculed this obsession with Chitale milk and sweets. 

We abandoned the sweets but my mother stuck to Chitale milk. Boiling it, keeping aside the cream, making curds, making buttermilk from the special curds from accumulated cream, keeping aside butter and finally making ghee from accumulated butter - these time-consuming activities were a part and parcel of her kitchen work and she was very proud of them. I followed in her footsteps and did it all when she was not around which was rare.

With old age, my mother started finding it difficult to keep up and father advised her to give up Chitale milk. We could buy readymade butter and ghee, he suggested. Sacrilege, she thought and stuck to them. He gave up after repeated attempts to reduce her workload failed.

The quality of Chitale milk has worsened now. The milk is fatty but curds and buttermilk are full of casein. During the rainy season, milk quality goes down. Market grapevine says, they have scaled up and they use automatic machinery to get milk. Their marketing, helpline etc. remain poor.

In the month of May, Chitale milk which I was boiling on the gas stove suddenly turned sour and something snapped in me. I said goodbye!

For the next two and half months, I made trips to an Amul shop I found out nearby, every fortnight and bought 5 or 6 liters of Amul milk in plastic pouches at a time. I also bought cartons of milk. I found that Amul Gold was even more fatty than Chitale milk. It had few takers in our locality. Everyone preferred Amul Taaza, a low-fat variety. Amul shop had lots of milk-based products such as buttermilk, curds, ghee, flavored drinks, ice-cream etc. However, their supply was never assured.

We are used to getting milk delivered at home every day. This man said, Amul was not available with him and he had no substitute for Chitale milk. Amul has its own distribution and selling system and it does not cater to people like him. I had heard of milk delivery apps. I searched and found out that they  served Amul Gold or cow's milk or expensive organic milk. Complaints about their delivery were legion.

I realized that the market for home delivery of milk was imperfect.

I contacted our delivery man and asked him to supply Katraj milk every day. Katraj is our local co-op milk collection and delivery dairy and its milk is highly popular among common people. It is not possible to make proper, thick curds or buttermilk from this milk but many brands of these are available in the market. I have started buying them now. I have always liked the taste of Katraj curds though.

Surprisingly, my mother has supported me in this transition. She does not talk of Chitale milk now and we are happy. There is less work in the kitchen and what my father wanted has come about fourteen years after he passed away.

Epiphany

 In my novel Empire, I have drawn a character called Emma Macmillan. I have made her a liberated woman who is far away from the stereotype of the indolent memsahib. Emma establishes a school for native girls in Calcutta and then, after her marriage, takes to promoting Indian textiles to improve the lot of highly skilled Indian weavers, impoverished due to cheap Manchester piece goods.

I made Emma travel to different parts of northern and central India in search of special textiles and I have also shown that after a visit to England, Emma gets a brain wave of making standard readymade frocks and dresses for women who otherwise must stitch their garments on their own or get them made which was expensive. The year is 1886.

Emma's character is rooted in history so far as her school is concerned. After that, it was only my imagination.

Imagine my surprise when I came to read something similar that actually happened in 1889.

It is described in Outliers, the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

In chapter 5, lesson 3: The garment industry and meaningful work, Gladwell describes the journey of Louis and Regina Borgenicht, Polish immigrants to America in 1889. Louis has worked in a garment shop and Regina is a skilled seamstress. When they come to New York with one child and one more on its way, they have money to last for just a few weeks. Louis starts looking for work and notices that readymade garments of all types are available in abundance there. He realizes that they greatly add to the convenience of customers and are easy on their pockets. Readymade garments are the most important commodity he says to himself. He finds that readymade aprons are not available. So he and his wife start making them and selling them. One thing leads to another and both become manufacturers and suppliers of garments in due course of time.

Gladwell states that theirs was not an isolated story. There were many other Jewish immigrants who were similarly skilled and who became successful in American garment industry at around the turn of the 20th century. Being there at that time was the essential ingredient in their success.

What Gladwell has said about success and its prerequisites is riveting read of course.

Let me however, right now, gloat over how close my ideas about garments were to what actually happened. Of course, I had imagined India and Great Britain. Gladwell wrote about East Europe and USA. Still, the common thread made my day!

DVD

 Quite late in my British Library membership days, I stumbled upon a collection of old DVDs. They were much borrowed and viewed repeatedly. Yet the quality of most was alright.

I started with Bergerac - a police detective in the Jersey island. He is in and out of the police force and has a powerful local magnate for a father-in-law. John Nettles played the detective. He has two loyal buddies in the force and his chief is against him but Bergerac manages to crack cases. I must have watched seven seasons of the series with each season 7 or 8 episodes. The series is old but was wildly popular on BBC TV in the 1990s.

Then there was John Mortimer's Rumpole. Again old Bailey world by itself. All these DVDs had subtitles. Without them I was lost. 

There were a few hit movies. Goodbye Mr. Chips had Peter O'Toole in the movie I had watched in theatre. This one was older, longer and more charming.

Then inevitably Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series.

There were others too. When Corona began, our library was shut down and a year later, I had to shift to digital membership. It is better in many ways. Two old DVDs remain with me as there was no way to return them when my old membership was over. So I gather that the stock of DVDs does not survive anymore. That makes me nostalgic. Even in these days of OTT and web series and streaming, I would love to go back to those DVDs.