THE MECHANICAL FOREMAN

In the Indian industry of the 80’s, we had three categories of people in an organisation – workers, officers and foremen. I am not sure if you have had the fortune of coming across this particular breed in your career. They were a class apart – one that, I suspect, possibly evolved with the Industrial Revolution. My experience with them is confined to the construction and allied industries – I never had the fortune of meeting the factory variety.

Anyone who had put in a good twenty – twenty-five years in a company, was reasonably good at his work and could write or sign his name in English without tearing up the paper, was eligible to become a foreman. Background education was either absent or limited, or in most cases, suspect. But that was never a hindrance for them to propound theories on everything in life from astronomy to multi-vitamins.

There were some aberrations to this rule, of course – some who could not even write their own names, but good at their work, and survived with the help of a symbiotic relationship with the nearest manager.

They came in three flavors – dumb, not-so-dumb and smart.

The dumb ones slogged it out at work, spent the better part of their lives trying to be the perfect “yes-man” to whoever was the boss at the time, only to get promoted to the junior management grade –– which, if you ask me, was not a very good place to be in the first place, but something they learnt when it was too late. These foremen, very soon, found themselves doing the same jobs once again, but with an enhanced designation and reduced income. They then either retired, or died out of sheer boredom.

The not-so-dumb ones were essentially good speakers and had reasonably good analytical skills. The fact that they used those skills for all the wrong reasons is a different matter. They knew their job well, and knew how to advertise it better. Most of them were trade union leaders, and screwed up their own happiness regularly at three-year intervals, when the trade agreement negotiations came up.

These foremen-cum-union leaders, poor fellows, had to rough it out for three months, once every three years, to obtain a raise of, say, 15 to 30 paise per hour for the general masses and then claim a great victory, with celebration marches and all the works. When the new wage settlements were signed and sealed, sanity returned, and everyone could now goof off in peace, with all the work reserved for the overtime hours.

The smart ones were the lot on whose shoulders the company actually rested. Engineers came and went, like sparrows in search of food on a summer morning, but they remained – their years with the organisation (and not the work they did) adding to their personal value.

Back in those days there was a big gap between the “worker” class and the “management”, at least in concept and social perspective, if not in reality. These people straddled the divide like a colossus and enjoyed the best of both worlds. They had naturally higher salaries than most workers (and many engineers, too) and therefore their overtime earnings were like a small fortune each month. Then, they enjoyed all the little perks that junior managers had – the occasional car trip, access to telephone, and similar things. Some even had a small cabin erected at site for them. They never fell for that “promotion-to-the-management-grade” rubbish. The management, at the working level, relied on these men to deliver the day-to-day jobs and the general workers aspired to be like them at some point in future.

Most of them were “specialists” in something or the other and their “special skills” had almost a cult following. People wondered how they had acquired those skills without providential interference. They too, in turn, kept their “knowledge” a closely guarded secret and passed their expertise on to only one or two “carefully chosen” followers. Their skill areas were well-known, revered and respected and no one even dared to infiltrate the territories. No two foremen had the same territory or domain, either.

Remember, these were times l-o-n-g before insta-knowledge and expertise had been made so redundantly available by the Internet, Google and bullets on MS Powerpoint slides.

In many ways, they were the original “God’s Gift to Mankind” – an epithet that was later usurped by the software programmers of the IT era.

I shall talk about one such famous foreman.

***

This guy, a bespectacled Jurassic geezer with a toothy grin, was THE EXPERT at aligning electric motors and gear boxes set on a frame. If he was at site, he was the ONLY ONE (chosen by Providence, I presume) who would be doing the job. The fact that he averaged between six and ten hours to complete one set of alignments, was a trivial, very trivial, matter indeed.

He always moved around with two helper-cum-shishyas (almost everybody else had one) who carried his bags of special tools, and one welder / cutter with his own set of equipment (“shishya” – student). From him I learnt about the intricate, soul-stirring technologies known as the “Thou” and “Haoa Maar” (“Haoa” – air; “Maar” – hit or shot).

In case you are wondering, a “thou” is supposed to be one-thousandth of an inch. He took great pains to explain to me that my engineering degree was not worth the paper on which it was printed, if I did not understand the relevance of “The Thou” in industry. He was right. I did not. I did come across the word some time in college, but no, I never realised it was one of the pillars of civilisation. That abject surrender apparently endeared me to him and I was promptly adopted as the “third shishya” – never mind the fact that I was his “manager”.

He opened his bag of tricks and showed me little plates of varying thickness and explained how packing had to be used as a first step towards getting The Perfect Alignment for a motor-gearbox coupling. He even gifted me a “thou – gauge”. I was visibly impressed, but what I have never understood is how he managed to get his “thou-specific” alignments with packing plates that were several hundred “thous” thick.

After the motor and gear-box were placed on the frame and packing plates of different “thous” placed all around, the Master shook his head in disdain. The work was half-done. The Perfect Alignment could only be achieved through the intricate workings of the “Haoa Maar”.

This consisted of picking up a five or ten-pound hammer (“hamma” in his parlance) and swinging it in well-coordinated motion to hit a point a few feet away from the frame holding the offending motor-gearbox couple. The resulting vibrations Alone, could provide the Perfect Alignment. That is the concept of the “Haoa Mar”.

There were “Ek Haoa Maar”, “Do Haoa Maar” and many other subtle variations to the exercise. And you had to give a respectful time gap between each “maar”, to let all the vibrations die down. A difficult technology to master by any yardstick. That is what he told me. I agreed then and have remained in total agreement ever since.

Shishya no. 1 was ordered to start off with the haoa maar. He took a five-pounder and banged the steel structure a few feet away. “Arey-re-re !! Zyada ho gia !!! Ulta baju maar !! Pyar se !! Ek haoa, bas !!! (“Hey !! Too much !! Hit the other side !! With love !! Only one haoa – that’s all !!”)

A soft plonk ensued. “Ek aur !!.... “Nahi !! Abhi ulta baju do haoa de !!!..... (“One more !! No !! Now hit the other side with two haoa !!”)

And so the circus continued for a significant period of time. 

All that rattling of the steel structures attracted a small crowd of onlookers to watch the great Master at work. They could only watch in total silence. No one was allowed to even whisper. (As a shishya, I, of course, had the privilege to ask questions).

A few hours and some twenty or thirty “haoa mars” of different intensities later, the motor and gear-box set were transformed into a work of art – the Perfectly Aligned Couple.

How it came about remains a mystery to me to this day. No one could define the exact moment this was achieved, that is no one, except Him. Apparently those vibrations caused infinitesimal movements that Only He, with a million dioptres sitting on his nose, could gauge.

Putting the couplings on and bolting them up were jobs reserved for lesser mortals like his shishyas. After powering up, the smooth whine of the thingamabob was supposed to be the reward of a job well done.

Thus worked The Master, to the utter astonishment of the onlookers. And woes betide anyone who did the job any other way.

Long Live the Foreman !!!!!

*****

In Search of a Snowfall

I have harboured a long-time desire  to witness a snowfall. It made me go up to Auli – a Himalayan ski resort at an elevation of about 10,000 feet and sub-zero temperatures, in end December of 2010, only to witness snow coming out of snow cannons, for skiers who had booked slots a couple of years in advance. It was like tooth-paste on a mountain slope. 

I have seen “fallen snow” in so many places across the world, but never a snowfall. Thus when events finally made it possible for me to visit Canada during the last week of November the following year, I was thrilled. We were to go to Winnipeg (the city where Winnie the Pooh was born) to meet a customer. I read up some sites on Canada and started dreaming about snow and snowfalls…. I also borrowed some stuff from colleagues who had been there before – a monkey cap (yes, for the first time in my life !!!), gloves and a Papa Grizzly jacket. These jackets are meant for the Canadian winter and I can find no other expression to describe them…

The route was Kolkata – Dubai – Toronto and then a domestic flight from Toronto to Winnipeg.

The Dubai – Toronto leg was all of fourteen hours in an A380 aircraft – my first on that plane. (The A380 does provide one with a very different flying experience, but that is another story.)

If you lay the surface of the earth on a flat Euclidian plane, then the contours of the sunlit area form a parabola. (I do not know why that happens and if you can’t figure that out, ask Euclid – he was the fellow who said it…).

Our flight path to Toronto from Dubai followed this parabolic contour; one-side of the plane was always in the sun, the other in darkness. We flew straight up north from Dubai, over Iran, the Caspian Sea, the Russian plains,  then in a wide curve over Sweden, Norway, crossing the Norwegian Sea north of Iceland, past the southern tip of  Greenland, then over the Labrador Sea, Newfoundland and Quebec province, finally landing at Toronto.  We actually did not turn south – we went straight across the globe and Toronto came in our path. (That is where I guess Euclid gave up in sheer desperation and 3-D geometry was born…)

We flew above dense white clouds for the entire area from north of the Caspian Sea till the southern parts of Quebec province, I really could not see anything down below, except for a few frozen bodies of water amid green grass that were visible through some holes in the clouds over Newfoundland. The cloud cover slowly dispersed as we started our descent towards Toronto. All I could see were brown fields with grain waiting to be harvested…. The whole of the Canadian plains seemed to be divided into large rectangular plots in myriad shades of brown. Not a speck of snow anywhere.

We landed in Toronto around two in the afternoon on a Monday, where the outside temperature was a healthy eight degrees Celsius with a wind chill that made it seem like four. Got out of Terminal 1, had a smoke outside, took a sky-train to Terminal 3 for the next leg of our flight.

Snow ? Where was the snow ? And the cold ?

At Terminal 3, I met my first home-grown Canadian – she was the security person standing at the check-in counter. An elderly lady in police uniform, with a walkie-talkie; she asked if I had any liquids, explosives or firearms in my baggage…. Then looking at my sealed baggage still with the tags from the previous flight and my stunned expression, she burst out laughing. “I know it is silly, but I am still required to ask you that firearms question,” she said.

“And what if he says ‘yes’ ?” asked her colleague, another security officer, a tall lady with sparkling eyes. “Oh, then I would like to run and leave him to his designs,” said the first one, and we all burst out laughing. A far cry, indeed, from the typical security folks we come across in most airports of the world…

We took off for Winnipeg at around six in the evening. It was pitch-dark and I was unable to get a window-seat. The stewardess greeted us saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the flight to Honolulu, Hawaii.”  There was a gentle chuckle from the crowd and then she explained that we would need to refuel at Winnipeg on the way…. Some more Canadian humor.

The air-hostesses were quite lady-like and smiling but after observing the calm insouciance with which they picked up pieces of heavy cabin luggage and swung them into the overhead lockers with one clean sweep after another, I decided against becoming too friendly with them. (I generally steer clear of visibly strong women given my delicate build, like a bottle-gourd on a diet – a survival skill honed through nursery-school skirmishes with female class-mates….)

As we were coming in to land at Winnipeg, I was thrilled to see snow everywhere…. The airport was covered in a white sheet of snow…. Wow !!!! They said that the outside temperature was minus eight degrees Celsius, with the wind chill taking it to minus fourteen !!! Aha !! I was beginning to feel happy finally. My colleague assured me that “snowfalls were round the corner"….

We got out of the airport terminal and had to walk to one corner of the building to have a smoke. By the time I lit up and had a couple of puffs, my ears had fallen off and I was wearing a couple of cold metal tubes in place of jeans. All the stuff I had brought from India for this weather was still locked up in the suitcase. About five or seven puffs later, the cigarette simply fell off my frozen fingers into the snow. We rushed into a taxi – and warmth, and reached our hotel some time later.

All hotels in Canada are non-smoking and “if someone spoiled your room by smoking, then they would charge you, as the room-owner, five hundred Canadian Dollars for operation cleanup”.  That meant every time we wanted to have a smoke, we would have to go out into minus fourteen degrees and do it. Pretty challenging thought, that. But the snow made all the difference – it had snowed over the weekend before we landed and everything was beautifully white.

I switched on the TV for weather forecasts and then my hopes began to fade. They said it would not snow in Winnipeg for the next few days. The next morning the temperature was around zero with the wind chill taking it to minus four. We went about our business and then for lunch at the “Concourse”….

All major buildings in downtown Winnipeg are connected by a vast network of underground tunnels that house supermarkets, post-offices, food courts and what-not; one does not need to go out into the wintry cold at all, unless one is going home. These are known as “Concourses”.

As we were chatting up some people from our customer’s office, my colleague mentioned that I was desperate to see a snowfall and one lady said, “How sad, the weather is unusually balmy for this time of the year..”

“Balmy ? Balmy !!! Balmy ???? The Webster English Dictionary says, balmy means mild, summer-like, warm.  At zero degrees, with a wind chill to make it minus four, she calls it “balmy” ? And then it dawned on me - she was speaking Canadian !!!! Definitely not English. But that cognitive Canadian balm was yet to embalm my conative Indian yearning…snow…??

For the next two days, the TV kept saying it was snowing here and there, all over the place – Johnson, Halifax, Polson, Bolson, His son, Her son, St. John’s, St. Peter’s and half of the apostles’ towns, but not in Winnipeg. The weather turned steadily warmer and the snow kept melting off the streets. On day three, we had walked for about a kilometer to the office and I was actually sweating. Yes. I. Was. Sweating. The Papa Grizzly jacket had become useless.

And just to let you know, while the rest of the world has snow, the Canadians have it in three flavours – flurries, snow and ice pellets. All those places around Winnipeg got their fill of flurries and pellets, while the snow kept melting off the streets of Winnipeg.

These Canadian weathermen, so unlike their colleagues at Alipore in Kolkata, are dreadfully accurate – I wished they got hit with ice pellets.

We took the plane out of Winnipeg and back to Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. The flat lands of Manitoba State, of which Winnipeg is the capital, were still covered in snow. And the flat lands around Toronto still had crops waiting to be harvested. Toronto was a “balmy” thirteen degrees with bright sunshine (that’s “balmy” in English not Canadian). As we planned to leave Toronto that Friday, the TV forecast snow for Winnipeg the following Monday. And snow for Toronto as well, the day after.

Having witnessed first-hand the early Canadian winter, I have decided not to believe anyone any more. Late November in Canada is just like late November in Kolkata. Only colder. And more windy.

Meanwhile, my search for a snowfall will have to wait some more – for another time, another place.

*** 

The Indian Tonsorium

For some reason, we Indians refer to barber shops as “saloons”, while for most people across the world, a saloon is a “watering hole” or a large hall for lounging around. Possibly an aberration of the word “salon”, but I leave that to the academics to figure out. I am sure all my Indian readers are familiar with the hair-cutting saloons found all over the country, from prime estates in the large cities to the remote villages in the far corners. Foreigners coming to this country need to know that if they want a haircut, they need to go to a “saloon”. A “barber’s shop” may be difficult to locate.

These saloons can be put into three broad categories : shops on the sidewalk, shops beside the sidewalk and shops above the sidewalk – in malls and bazaars.

The shops on the sidewalk – the most common – sport a mirror on a wall or a tree trunk, with four bricks wrapped in plastic for a seat. The Bengali nickname for it is “eentalian” saloon, “eent” being the Bengali word for “brick”. The upgrade from the “eentalian” variety is a rickety wooden chair or a rusted steel one. About those mirrors, the less said the better. Your reflection could take any shape or form. The Laws of Physics are severely tested.

The upmarket variety of these “eentalian” saloons have a plastic sheet tied to different parts of the immediate surroundings at different convenient levels to serve as an awning and protection against the sun and bird poop. One is expected to pay a premium for that.

The barbers at these shops can be considered experts at their trade, given the volume of customers they handle daily, though tonsuring seems to be the most visible and consummate art form.

If one enters the saloon beside a sidewalk – more often than not, a ramshackle hut made of corrugated iron sheets or bamboo screens called chatai, and covered with blue plastic sheets to keep out the rain and sun, one will immediately encounter a bewildering array of gods staring down at the potential customer. The intent, I presume, is to warn of things that will follow.

Apart from the regular offerings, these mid-range shops also offer the massage service. The massage comes in two varieties – head massage and body massage. The head massage typically begins with a gentle pinching and drawing out of the eyebrows, then moves to the ears, and finally the head. The hair is first pulled to the point where it is in danger of being ripped off, and then the head is pummelled with fists till the eyesight begins to blur. Then the fellow goes back to the neck and pinches it at different places, cutting off the blood flow to the brain at various times. The end game involves pulling the ears and eyebrows again, and wiping off the face with a towel that smells of so many things.

The body massage starts off with pinching the tender area between the neck and shoulders till the victim grimaces. Then the arms, one by one, are stretched, twisted and turned, fingers snapped and twisted, and the attention goes moves back to the neck. The poor fellow is asked to rest the head on the table in front, and the pummelling of the back begins. For a while, fists rain down till the area starts to become numb. Muscles are pinched and twisted, across the length and breadth of one’s back, interspersed with raining fists, till the barber himself is exhausted. Spondylitis, or any such ailment that the victim may have, goes for a walk, I suppose.

The more well-built the barber, the powerful and rigorous is the massage. If you opt for both the head and body massage, you will be wobbly on your feet for a while. And you need to pay at least Rupees forty or more, just to get beaten up in this fashion. Haircut and a shave, extra.

A word about those towels that are used. It is safest to visit the shops early in the morning because they typically wash the towels at night before going to bed. And you can draw the other conclusions.

Barbers have a special role in traditional Hindu society; all males, they are required to perform a variety of functions at births, deaths, thread ceremonies and weddings – roles defined by the ancient texts. Naturally therefore, the art is passed down from father to son and the profession runs through families for generations. Most of them take their profession as a “holy” one and try to deliver to the best of their abilities.

Of course, in the Indian context, a haircut is absolutely independent of one’s looks. It is a work of art by the barber.

What you get for free, however, at these saloons, is knowledge. Profound, deep insights into how to run the country or local government, control food prices or why India lost the last cricket match and cannot do well in football, even why sending satellites up constitute a waste of money for India. The more loquacious the barber, the wider the range of topics.

To get a haircut that matches with your facial structure or profile, you will need to go to the glitzy malls, where they will charge a hefty premium for showing you an album of past and present film stars and ask for your preference. The final output may or may not match with your desires, but that is not their fault – right ?

If you ask for a massage there, you will most likely get the same pummelling at three times the charge, because the place is air-conditioned. And there are fewer gods on the walls. Your choice.

Black 8 the Terrible

Like most students of our time, we had one year of compulsory Sanskrit classes. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it left a deep and indelible mark on my mind, and perhaps in the minds of most of my class-mates as well…

It did not make literary geniuses out of us – nor did it actually enhance our vocabulary, because our mother-tongue – Bengali, had evolved from Sanskrit anyway. We did learn some new words for everyday things and the origins of some of the words we use everyday; the latter being an item of information that is perfectly useless for the rest of one’s useful life – unless one is bent on making a living out of origins of words; in which case one would die very early from hunger.

The contribution of that language course was in a completely different sphere. It trained us to have regular, consistently fearsome, nightmares – an experience that has served me well in later life – people now look upon me as the “fearless ’un”.

Don’t get me wrong – Sanskrit was not the cause – it was the teacher. This fellow, and I forget his name, was a glossy, ebony version of Mr. Weatherbee of Archie’s comics. A huge black 8 in spotless, white dhoti and kurta, with a smile that could curdle the blood of most boys just entering their teens.

He would come into class, carrying a bunch of moth-eaten books in one hand and a cane in the other, like some medieval warrior with a sword. He would carefully place the bunch of moth-eaten books on the table – but the cane would never leave his hand. One day it would be Sanskrit Literature, the next day, Grammar. Most of us were so confused by the routine that we carried both books to school anyways. Else, it was three lashes of the cane on the right hand for not having the correct book in class.

The literature class consisted of little Sanskrit stories told in a completely incomprehensible language, with unpronounceable words, sometimes joined together to make bigger unpronounceable words. We always wondered about those fellows of yore who had Sanskrit for a mother tongue. Those kids must have had a terrible time trying to tell their mommas in Sanskrit that they were hungry, because Sanskrit demands that one possess a perfect set of teeth and an acrobatic tongue coupled with about 10 Terabytes of cached memory to store all those noun and verb forms for instant access…. but that is not part of this narrative.

Our teacher would read the stories out aloud and translate into Bengali, spreading gentle smiles of comprehension all across the room. And then it would start. His eyes would wander all over the class and come to rest on the first unfortunate fellow of the day, who would be asked to read the passage just covered.

Two lashes of the cane on the calves if it didn’t sound like he was reading Sanskrit, (and it never did). We all wore “half-pants”(“shorts” in today’s parlance) in those days, and there was no protection…..  Then another student would be called up, then another, till someone was able to read something that sounded like Sanskrit. Most had a difficult time controlling the spit from flying out while endeavouring to pronounce properly.

The following day, in the Grammar class, the routine would be slightly different. The randomly selected first unfortunate fellow of the day would be called up in front of the blackboard and asked to recite some noun or verb table, with our man standing right beside him, cane pointing to the roof.  Halfway through the recitation, the inevitable goof-up would take place – and the poor student, merely Bengali-trained, would get tongue-tied.

And then believe me, here is what would happen – in slow motion. Mr. 8 would take three steps backwards, gently, ever so gently, lay his cane on the table, and haul our little Sanskrit criminal towards him by the collar. Then, with his right hand, he would take a large pinch somewhere around the tummy area of the boy. He would close his eyes, grit his teeth, and start twisting the piece of flesh he had between his fingers, saying, “Porishni keno ?” (“Why have you not memorized the piece ?”)

Our friend would wince, and slowly bend over till his head touched the table, unable to scream or speak……. They would stay in that position for a few seconds, before he thought it proper to release his grip. The story would be repeated for the next little criminal who could not recite the tables, and the next, and the next… Most of the times we forgot to recite out of sheer terror.

Rumour had it that he also taught at the girls’ school next door. I never found out what he did there.

The grammar book was called “…some… Upakramanika”….My impression about Vidyasagar, the author, was one of pure contempt. Did he not have better things to do ? Were we supposed to honour this fellow for unleashing pure, unadulterated terror in our lives ? All those hundred and twenty pages of that book posed some of the biggest challenges of our early teen years…. Not the desire to master the language in the way that V-fellow did, but to go through life with the sole objective of avoiding those lashes…….

In the process, all the “bhekam” (frogs) and “loshtrum” (stones) were finally confined to the dark recesses of our minds, to be invoked during nightmares, but never to see the light of the day again….

*****

Just as a few words of French thrown casually about in an English sentence tend to project a person as “erudite”, a few Sanskrit words do the same job for the average Indian, irrespective of the language he or she is speaking……. That is what I learned later in life.

The intellectuals of our society go about doing just that… a few Sanskrit words thrown randomly into a conversation or a poetry, and lo !! We have the perfect scholar in our midst.

……“Lyob Lopey Karmanadhikaraney Chaw”…… Haven’t the foggiest idea what that phrase means – it is all I remember from the Upakramanika, learned with lashes and pinches during our days under the reign of the “BLACK 8 the Terrible”.

Didi

The Bengali language has a lovely word for the elder sister : “Didi”.

***

The other day, I was lounging at the club canteen after a gym session, when a young girl, barely eight or nine years old, came up to the counter, her grandmother in tow. She obviously had gone for a swim, judging by her wet hair, and was probably very hungry.

They went over the menu pasted on the wall, with animated discussions on each item. The grandmother then said, “Take a couple of chicken sandwiches – I know you like them.”

The little girl said, “Why don’t we buy a plate of chicken momo ? You know how bhai likes them.” (Bhai means younger brother). 

The grandmother reasoned, “He is at home and probably not hungry. You need the food.” The girl was insistent and then they reached a compromise. She was more intent on buying something for her brother before she bought something for herself.

They bought a plate of chicken sandwiches and a plate of chicken momo – one to be eaten here and the other to be carried home. The little girl promised to share both – one with her grandmother and the other with her bhai.

Watching them, I could not help, but comment to the elderly lady, “All didis are like that.”

***

Yes… all Didis are like that – I have witnessed it time and again.

God Armour

In his book, Letters from the Earth – published posthumously, Mark Twain makes a pretty unique observation (Letter X):

“…..Some Midianite must have repeated Onan's act, and brought that dire disaster upon his nation. If that was not the indelicacy that outraged the feelings of the Deity, then I know what it was: some Midianite had been pissing against the wall. I am sure of it, for that was an impropriety which the Source of all Etiquette never could stand.

A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity.

Take the case of Jeroboam. "I will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall." It was done. And not only was the man that did it cut off, but everybody else.

The same with the house of Baasha: everybody was exterminated, kinsfolks, friends, and all, leaving "not one that pisseth against a wall."

In the case of Jeroboam you have a striking instance of the Deity's custom of not limiting his punishments to the guilty; the innocent are included. Even the "remnant" of that unhappy house was removed, even "as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone."

That includes the women, the young maids, and the little girls. All innocent, for they couldn't piss against a wall. Nobody of that sex can. None but members of the other sex can achieve that feat.

A curious prejudice. And it still exists. Protestant parents still keep the Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall…..”

***

I once happened to go to the city corporation office to pick up tender papers. I was asked to wait in the “Complaints Hall” – a huge cavernous, semi-dark place with rows of wooden benches polished to perfection through constant use, a few rickety fans turning lazily overhead, and a man – the officer – sitting in the farthest and darkest corner of the place, taking complaints from the row upon row of people.

Every time a complainant filed his complaint and moved out, all the people on the benches moved one slot closer to the officer.  A naturally-occurring pantomime, given the peoples’ anxiety to lodge complaints. It was more synchronized than the “waves” at a football stadium.

I had to participate with the crowd, although I had no complaints; I was there for a different purpose. By the second row I was within earshot of the conversations going on; I could hear the complaints being made.

One fellow complained about “no water”. “OK” said the officer, “we’ll send you a tanker, just go to the next room and write down the address.” The fellow from the next room shouted that all tankers were out and it would be late afternoon before they could take any more orders. “Never mind”, said the guy.

The next guy complained about his drain being clogged and the drain water spreading all over the place. That was noted. It went on for a few more fellows each with a fairly unique set of problems.

Then came this irate chap. He was so angry that the veins stood out on his forehead. Like spaghetti. It seems he was the owner of a corner plot in a densely populated part of the city, and his boundary wall had crashed because every passer-by found time to pee on that wall. The resulting stink made his days and nights unbearable, his life unacceptable and as he complained, his boundary wall untenable. He wanted the city corporation to do two things; one re-build the boundary wall for him, and build a public toilet somewhere close by.

I do not know how that complaint was settled but thirty or more years later, we still have an acute shortage of public toilets, with the result that people (read men) still pee on the nearest available wall as and when nature demands it.

This has caused the Prime Minister of the country to impose a tax on the entire publicly non-peeing population, with the avowed intention of building public toilets all over the place. But how does one protect one’s walls in the meantime, particularly in a country where the God of the Bible described above is not very active ?

Innovations abound…. People who have boundary walls, particularly the ones with corner plots, have installed porcelain tiles with pictures of different local gods  at a height of about two feet off the ground, along the entire length.

God armour !!

Ever since gods were invented to take care of humanity’s aspirations, failings, desires and food, they have come a long way.  OK – the gods these days are not as vindictive as the one described above, but they still manage to do the job, by just being present on the wall.

Or do they ? The other day, I saw one fellow squatting… 

*****

ANCIENT LEGENDS – food for thought

This article is a simple collection of different data sets that defy explanation through conventional history.

There is a point where archaeological evidence staring at us in the face seriously contradicts conventional historical perspectives.  Religion, mythology and history then become one hazy mixture.

The examples are many :

·         The Pyramids and Sphinx of Egypt : While some pyramids were built as tombs for the Pharaohs, the big three on the Giza necropolis do not have any sign of ever being built as tombs. There are books written by modern authors that wax eloquent about the precision with which these three, and the Sphinx were built, and some theorists have tried to prove that these are much older than what conventional historians think. Perhaps older than the last ice age, that ended about 12,000 years ago, as proposed by Graham Hancock in his book “Fingerprints of the Gods”.

·         The statues of Easter Island ; Another major mystery – who built them ? How ? Why ?

·         The precisely cut stones at Pumapunku – championing a technology we are yet to develop.

·         The Olmec ruins of Meso- America that precede the Inca and Mayan ruins by a few thousand years. And we do not know who these people were, or what they were called.

The biggest challenge with these giant megalithic monuments lies in the fact that we cannot date stones through the conventional radio-carbon (C-14) method. Dating something lying beside a stone does not prove the age of the stone itself.

Some more examples :

·         The documents / tablets of ancient Sumer and the epic of Gilgamesh in particular.

·         The globally used symbol of divinity in antiquity – the entwined snakes – bearing a striking resemblance to the double-helix DNA molecule

·         The ruins of the Indus Valley civilization where bodies have been found as if they were killed in an instant, with substantial radioactive levels even today, and the sand around them fused into silica/glass, leading scholars to suspect a nuclear explosion

·         Sanskrit – that highly evolved language that does NOT NEED a glossary to describe modern technological discoveries and inventions – this alone could fill a whole book… And there are other contemporary or older languages – Tamil in India, three of the Chinese group of languages (not Mandarin), Akkadian in ancient Babylon, to name a few. How did these evolve ? There is no prior history.

·         High precision astronomical charts, calculations and calendars all over the world, including India.

o    Ancient India had over thirty calendrical systems that stretch over several thousand years. The Whitaker’s Almanac reduced this long list to seven calendar systems, where the oldest – the Kali Yuga calendar – has the year 6001 corresponding to the year 2000 of the Gregorian calendar. (Source : The Argumentative Indian by Dr. Amartya Sen)

·         Old maps of the Antarctica created at a time when people were not supposed to know it existed. (Example : The famous Piri Reis map).

·         The philosophy of the Gita (I refuse to call it a simple religious book) – that includes all notions of modern management in all spheres

·         Innumerable buildings, temples and other structures that align with the sun’s movement during the equinoxes and solstices…..

In many cases, archaeological evidence shows these civilizations “just appeared”, without any evidence of a gradual social / evolutionary / technological progress. Then there are astonishing similarities between the fables / myths / legends of cultures widely dispersed across space and time.

People thought the battle of Troy was the stuff of legends, till ruins of a city was discovered that scholars think, belong to Troy. If that is some day proved correct, then that was the last recorded battle where “gods” took sides and participated in it.

****

In the book “Twelfth Planet”, Zacharia Sitchin talks about four eras :

1 – When only “Gods” walked the earth;

2 – When they created sterile clones (supposedly the first humans) to work for them

3 – When the clones developed the power to breed and began to outnumber the Gods

4 – When the Gods left this planet to the proliferating humans

Compare that with the 4 “yugas” described in the Vedas : Satya / Treta / Dwapar / Kali.

Even today, across all religions, celibacy is considered a virtue; a virtual, first stepping stone to be closer to the “Gods”. A fall-out from Era 2 ?

Overview of Yugas as per the Sanskrit texts :

·         Satya Yuga (Krita Yuga):- 1,728,000 Human years (average human life-span : 100,000 years)

·         Treta Yuga:- 1,296,000 Human years (average human life-span : 10,000 years)

·         Dwapara Yuga:- 864,000 Human years (average human life-span : 1000 years)

·         Kali Yuga:- 432,000 Human years (as of 2015, 5,117 years have passed; 426,883 years remain). Kaliyuga started in 3102 B.C. (average human life-span : 100 years)

(Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology )

Why would an agrarian society, as conventional historians want us to believe, have the need to calculate and write about this kind of numbers ? Where did this information come from ?

In almost all ancient texts there are stories of people living for 600 – 900 years…. Were they from the “third era” ? (The ancient Egyptians too, talk about a “first time” when “gods walked the earth”).

By the way, the number 432,000 (or its sub-multiples 4320, 43200) is represented in all ancient cultures from the Mayan texts to Egyptian ones. (Source : “Fingerprints of the Gods” by Graham Hancock).

Most discoveries currently attributed to the western world are already explained in the ancient Sanskrit texts :

MEDICINE & SURGERY : Sushruta Samhita - The oldest Medical and Surgical Encyclopedia known to mankind. It is supposed to have been written sometime between 1200 & 600 BCE, but I think it is much older.  The Sushruta Samhita contains 184 chapters with descriptions of :

·         1,120 illnesses,

·         700 medicinal plants,

·         64 preparations from mineral sources and 57 preparations based on animal sources.

·         Its author Sushruta, is also considered to be the first ever human to perform medical surgeries on humans. It is impossible for an individual to compile all that knowledge in a single life-time. Perhaps he drew from even older sources of information to accomplish the feat.

·         The book also has vast details on embryology, human anatomy, along with instructions for venesection, the positioning of the patient for each vein, and the protection of vital structures (marma).

·         The “Ayurveda” consists of the document described above as well another ancient text on medicine and medicinal plants and concoctions.

·         The oldest documented evidence (9000 years) for the drilling of human teeth of a living person was found in Mehrgarh along with the evidences of orthopedic surgeries.

The ancient Chinese school of medicine is another brilliant example. The map of the human nervous system on which the principles of acupuncture and acupressure are based, is knowledge that we are still discovering.

Cloning / Test-tube babies :

In the Mahabharata, Gandhari was blessed with 100 sons. The birth story of those 100 kids runs like this : Gandhari, after two years of pregnancy, gave birth to a “single, hard lump of lifeless flesh”. Rishi Vyas cut up the piece of flesh into 100 pieces and put them into 100 separate jars or “kund”. Thus, each ‘Kaurava’ was created by splitting a single embryo into 100 parts and growing each part in a separate kund (container). Is this not identical to the cloning process of today ?

In fact, none of the major characters in the Mahabharata had a normal birth, in the sense that their parents were their biological ones. The five Pandavas too, were born through “blessings” of separate gods, to King Pandu’s two wives – Kunti & Madri.

Draupadi the common wife of the Pandavas, and princess of the Kingdom of Panchal, “emerged out of a sacrificial fire as an adult”. Some versions say she never aged. She was not, therefore, a human female in the conventional sense. Some versions say that she was “created” to bring about the downfall of the Kauravas.

Space Travel : The ancient Sanskrit texts talk freely of “three worlds” (tri-bhuvan) and people travelling between them in “vimanas” or flying craft. “Swarga” or “heaven” was a place where people went even when alive, to learn things.

Arjuna (one of the central characters in the Mahabharata) did so. He went to “Swarga” to learn “the arts” and how to use “special weapons” that the “gods” had gifted him. And then he came back to earth to fight the war.

Distance between the Sun and Earth : This is captured in the Hanuman Chalisa composed by Tulsidas in the 15^th century C.E. It runs thus :

“Yug sahasra yojana par bhanu,

Leelyo taahi madhura phal jaanu”

The sloka translates to: ‘[When] Hanuman travelled thousands of kilometers to swallow it thinking of it as a fruit’. The word-to-word translation of the same excerpt reveals the distance that Hanuman travelled.

1 Yuga = 12,000 years.

1 Sahasra Yuga = 12,000,000 years.

Also,1 Yojan = 8 miles.

 Hence, “Yug Sahsra Yojana”, the first 3 words mean 12000*12000000*8 = 96,000,000 miles,

or 153,600,000 kilometres.

Interestingly, the actual distance from earth to sun is 152,000,000 kms. Bafflingly, there’s error of just around 1%. It is believed that he received this information from the monkey-god Hanuman himself.

This list can go on… speed of light, value of Pi, explanation of eclipses, the heliocentric theory, even the elasticity of time and space, are all described through various stories / couplets in the Sanskrit texts.

One of the Vedic stories runs like this : There was this beautiful, learned, accomplished princess for whom no man on this earth was good enough. Suitor after suitor got rejected and her father, the King, in sheer desperation, decided to consult the Lord Brahma. Father and daughter got into a vimana and took off.

When they reached the place, the Lord Brahma was meditating. When he opened his eyes, he listened to the King and advised him to go back to earth, to a particular village beside a river. There, he said, would be the son of a “rishi” (sage), who would be the perfect match for the daughter.

The King said that he knew that village, but there was no sage living there. Brahma explained that the time interval between the King’s leaving the earth and returning to it will be about 21,000 earth years and the King and his daughter will not be disappointed.

How do you explain this story without the concept of elasticity of time and theory of relativity ?

****

It is said that Kali Yuga started the day the great Mahabharata War ended, which is why every Hindu worship ritual today invokes the standards set in the Kurukshetra War.

Warfare :

It took more than 3000 years of savagery and brutal battles for mankind to come together at the Geneva Convention and set rules for warfare, some sixty years ago.

The Mahabharata War had strict rules along which it was fought, barring a few transgressions. The transgressors were annihilated.

Can we even imagine the level of socio- political- religious evolution those people had, to define rules and protocols even for a “winner-takes-all” war ?

****

I am beginning to believe that the truth lies somewhere between the theory proposed by Zacharia Sitchin and that by Graham Hancock…

I think the Great Flood, circa 10 – 12,000 years ago, completely destroyed a highly evolved global civilization. Ancient Indian stories, Sumerian texts, monuments all over the world, numerous other artifacts, bear testimony to this.

With due respect to their lives’ works and efforts, conventional historians chose to ignore a lot of the above evidence. If they thought independently, they would be marginalized, or even ostracized.

And conventional history cannot explain the above.

[Compiled from diverse sources…]