Brilliance or Madness?

Brilliance gone awry or a moment of blind rage, the FIFA World Cup final between France and Italy will be remembered for one moment of insanity: when Zinedine Zidane took matters into his own hands, or head, and butted Marco Matterazi full on in the gut. Since this was going to be Zidane's last stab at glory, he would have wanted a grand flourish before the exit. So, what propmted the gifted French wizard to throw it all away in a fit of blind rage? Did the Italian taunt his mother of having loose morals or make a racist comment while the two were jostling for the ball? We don't know, yet, but sledging is quite common in sports. But if it was indeed the slur about Zidane's mother that made him lose his rag it is to be understood in a certain cultural context.

The 'mother' is a venerated figure in certain cultures and you insult her at your own peril. I had my own 'zidane moment' four years ago, ironically on the eve of the FIFA World Cup 2002. I was backpacking with Sagar, a good but eccentric friend in Kerala. He was shooting a documentary and I was tagging along, being the spot boy, camera assistant, bag carrier, odd jobs man and dumping ground all rolled in one. One evening in Thrissur, we went to see a late night movie. It was a tamil language potboiler with racy dances and a steamy siren. Walking back to our hotel after the movie, me cheesed off and Sagar thoughfully animated, the two of us argued about the merits of the movie. The argument was along the lines of 'art' cinema Vs. kitsch. the conversation meandered dangerously to the personal and at some point I made a comment, I forget exactly I said, about Sagar's mother. It wasn't in an insulting vein, more like a matter of fact statement. Since Sagar was quite a radical I thought he would be able to take the comment. how wrong I was. The next instant I was hit by a verbal tirade with the intensity of a nuclear blast. That was the end of the fragile peace that had held since the trip started. The remaining days were spent in spiteful acrimony and we parted ways on a bad note.

It is a big deal in India to insult someone's mother. Specially considering the fact that most Indian males deify their mothers, the sacred space around the mother-figure is indeed to be carefully trod; one misstep could land you in some very hot water. The mother-figure is glorified in Indian popular culture. Think of films like Mother India (1951); then there is that cathartic scene in a Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bacchan movie (i forget which one) where khanna declares emotionally 'mere paas maa hai' in reply to Amitabh's taunts about his poverty.

The deification of the mother is in keeping with the 'virgin-whore' dichotomy that characterises gender norms. On the one hand women are elevated to perfect role models in the form of loving, caring mothers. But they are also cast as immoral sluts and voluptuous vamps with loose morals. This dichotomy is puzzling. There are cultural and religious traditions in India that celebrate both manifestations of the feminine: The grand durga pooja festivities of Bengal elevate the feminine to the status of benevolent protector. The malevolent form, in the shape of the dreaded kali with her voluptuous dance of death and garland of male skulls, is just out of the range of vision, but forever lurking at the back of the mind.

The Remains of Memory

The shards of white, glittering glass, lying on the hard ground
remind me of my delicate piecemeal memories.
Broken up by age and scatterd in the slipstreams of time
they lie buried deep in the caverns of my mind
and are retrieved when a shroud of blue envelops me in its warm embrace.

I stop and stare at the shards glowing bright in the noon sun,
doing a dance of light and fury.
Ever so carefully, I make my way among the shattered, scaterred glass
so as not to disturb their mocking tones, their smug self belief
that, after all, memories are like shards of glass,
bright from afar, but painful when embraced from close.

The Politics of Science

There was a lec-dem yesterday at the Centre for Drug Research Institute. CDRI is a premier government funded research institute for biomedical research located in Lucknow. CDRI is located in Chattar Manzil Palace, where the regal nawabs of Lucknow once lived the good life. It is a huge magnificent building. If Nehru called dams the “temples of modern India” then surely research institutes like CDRI would be the reigning deities of the nation; strech the analogy further and you could imagine scientists as the “priests of modern India.”
The striking irony: A product of scientific rationalism like CDRI located in a palace that was built for a pre-modern way of life.

The lec-dem was by a distnguished scientist from the National Physical Laboratory (another government lab) who had just returned from Antarctica. This gentleman is the coordinator of India’s Antarctica project and has visited the icy continent twice! The lec-dem was organised with a view to share his experiences about his journey. But the subtext was to also introduce the audience to the potential to exploit Antarctica’s resources. More on that later.
The scientist showed us pictures he took at the Indian station and narrated anecdotes about his visit. Also, interesting facts about the white continent. But, I felt that the underlying message of the talk was “This is a continent that is lying unexplored and unexploited. Something has to be done.”

He kept harping on the fact that there is no tourism to Antarctica from India. The fact that 10,000 tourists, mainly from S. Africa, Australia, N. Zealand, visit Antarctica made it all the more regrettable. The terms in which he framed it, it was like the nation was getting left behind in the scramble to ”exploit” Antarctica.
There was one moment during the slide show that was particularly revealing. There was a ’science cartoon’ of a penguin talking to a scientist (presumably an Indian) set against the icy, frigid landscape. The penguin says, “Looking at you I feel I have wasted my life here. No job, no money, no comforts. When you next go home to New Delhi take my son along with you so that he can become a scientist.”

There are several narratives that can be interpolated from this cartoon: science as the ultimate aim of society, looking at the things outside the realm of science as essentially “wasted”, scientific research or achievement as the desired goal, looking at a ”non-scientific” way of living, and all the imagined attributes that accompany it like ’sloth’, ‘carefree’, ‘easygoing’, as undesirable and a desire to correct this.

There was another revealing moment. Giving the reasons for harmony in the Indian station, as compared to other countries’ stations, he said that “the great women of the Indian nation hold together the family bonds for the progress of the nation.” Harmonious social relations and infact even the progress of the nation has been yoked to the women of the nation, like a cart is hitched to a bullock for its physical progress.

Science is supposed to be liberating; it was born in the crucible of enlightenment values and opposition to religious dogma. But has science now itself become a dogmatic religion which sees the world lying outside its realm with disdain, to be colonised, for the purpose of progress, progress of the nation?

Antarctica is the last wilderness on Earth, a land untouched by man or science. The icy, bleak landscape is threatening and exhilarating at the same time. Is this one reason that Science wants to colonise this continent? Why can’t penguins live their boring, unscientific lives? Why can’t the mountains and moss and seals live in peace? Why does progress of the nation depend on women performing a particular kind of role; that of holding the bonds of family togeher and civilizing the brute man?