Friday, 13th Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister

“Don't walk under any ladders, Don't break any mirrors, Don't spill any salt, And don't walk by any black cats. Happy Friday the 13th!”

On 13th Friday, 2013, the BJP Parliamentary Board has ‘unanimously’ declared Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate. As the old guards became useless and most of the second-level leaders do not have mass support, Modi’s succession is easily predicted, and political observers were curious only to know when it will happen. However, what message this action gives to the people of India. One easy answer is Modi can lead India to the path of development, as he did in Gujarath ( as he did everything else in Gujarath, including the riot!). But we need to ask the disturbing question, how Modi’s concept of development is different from that of his counter-part, i.e., the Congress.

Evidently, he is not against multi-national corporations, wooing capital flow from the other countries, or anything like that. In other words, his idea of development is in no way different from that of his opponents. But, one difference maybe that he will be stricter in implementing the plans and programs. His dictatorial style won’t be suitable to a multi-cultural society like India.

Let us hope for the best!

"Drink Alcohol, Be Healthy!"

“Do you know the problem of the ‘liquor policy’ of our government?”One of my friends asked. I wondered, as if I just came from Mars. It never even came to my mind that the Kerala Govt does have a liquor policy, except the fact that it runs many liquor shops in Kerala to promote drinking; in the same way we promote art and literature (Do we promote art and literature?). I immediately surfed the Internet and found one PDF copy of the liquor policy of the govt. I didn’t know that our rulers are so humorous. One of the main attractions of the document is ‘the basic idea of the govt is not to promote drinking, but to decrease the use of liquor among the Keralites’. With that mission, the govt has formed a new corporation, named Kerala State Beverages Corporation. Of course, the aim of the corporation is not to sell coffee, tea, or soft drinks, but liquor. Hey, why you are saying so, ‘beverage’ means not tea and coffee, but alcohol drink, don’t you know that? An average Keralite would wonder? According to Merriam- Webster Dictionary, ‘beverage’ means ‘a drinkable liquid’. However, for Kerala Beverages Corporation and majority of the people of Kerala, it means only alcohol. You are so naïve in thinking all this. The govt is selling liquor to give quality alcohol to the public, thereby limiting the chances of selling methanol, and at the end the aim is to control drinking in the final stage, the people reason. Then, why the govt banned soft drinks like Coca Cola, Pepsi etc, but leave alcohol as such, you may ask. You are completely wrong my friend, we are banning these drinks to show that we are fighting against the MNCs.

However, I cannot find fault with the governmental system because we are living in a country where a religious document such as the Sama-Veda talked about different ways to make liquor. The govt is trying to revive the ancient civilization by forming an institution such as KSBC, and the people are just supporting that endeavor of the govt!





For further reading, see here and here.

Ummaachu- The Saga of a Brave Woman

Ummaachu by Uroob

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ummaachu (Beloved) is a novel written by famous Malayalam writer Uroob (P.C. Kuttikrishnan). Uroob (1915 – 1979) was considered as one of the most important among the progressive writers in Kerala, along with Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, Thakazhi Shivashankara Pillai, Karoor Neelakanta Pillai, S.K. Pottekkatt, and Keshava Dev. As most writers of the period, his writings portrayed the life of the people of Kerala during the time of Independent Struggle, including the social, political and cultural dimensions. We can see the Kerala during the early period of 1950s, especially in a novel like Ummaachu.
Ummaachu is predominently a love story, or stories covering generations. In the first generation, the protagonist Ummaachu is in love with Mayan, who has no social status, income, and he is an orphan. Due to family pressure, she is forced to marry Beeran, another childhood friend of Ummaachu. Beeran is the only son of a wealthy man, so Ummaachu’s family cannot think otherwise, except but to marry off her with the wealthy scion. However, her mind already accepted Beeran, but as she is a woman who has no voice in the family, she marries Beeran. Beeran leaves the village soon after the marriage and became a wealthy man in Wayanad, Malabar. He comes back after a few years and meets Ummaachu. He finds that he still has a place in her heart, which makes him in an ecstatic mindset, and as a result, he kills Beeran at night. Later, he gets married with Ummaachu, and accepts Abdu, son of Beeran in Ummaachu, as his own son. He with the help of his close associate Chaappunni Nair, manages to build a happy home there, and he has two boys in Ummaachu, Marakkar and Hydrose. In his later life, in old age, he feels guilty over the murder of Beeran and commits suicide.
Another love story that can be seen in the novel is between Abdu, elder son of Ummaachu and Chinnammu, daughter of Chaappunni Nair. This narration shows the bold stand of the author as having an affair between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman even in literature can create a hostile reaction from the readers in a sensitive place such as Kerala, where even now the issue of “love jihad” spurs controversy. However, as the predominant concern of the novelist is the importance of strong relationships among human beings irrespective of caste, creed and religion, this twist is unavoidable. This in a way shows the nationalist concerns of the author, that of an India where human relationship is built based on human feelings and concerns rather than religion. This idea is further developed as Abdu became an active participant of Congress party and in the assertion of Chinnammu that “we are not against people”.

The novel further explores the life of people in Kerala during the 1950s. The inequalities and superstitions in the life of both Hindus and Muslims are shown in the work. It is a Kerala where inequalities in the name of caste can be seen, where women were being out casted, where polygamy was prevalent.

Apart from the nationalist concerns of the author, powerful critique of social injustice, the novelist also narrated the intricate mental struggle each character has gone through. Ummaachu at first is forced to marry a man whom she doesn’t love, and later she gets married with the man who killed her husband. This situation puts her in a difficult situation as a struggle goes on between Abdu, her son in the first marriage and her husband, Mayan. She cannot leave Abdu or Mayan. The condition of Abdu is also filled with emotional turmoil. He has to live with the man who killed his father, a Hamlet like situation. The same ‘to be or not to be’ question can be seen here. Due to the emotional trauma, Mayan commits suicide. Again, Ummaachu has to see the ‘cold war’ between her sons, Abdu on the one hand and Marakkar and Abdu on the other.

The language used to narrate the novel is also of greater importance. Any writer who wants to narrate the story of Muslim community in Kerala will face this challenge, the challenge of selecting the language, as the dialect used by the Muslim community in Kerala is in contrast with other regions, or communities. I am of the opinion that the linguistic difference is based on the geographical difference rather than religious. Any native Hindu in the Malabar area can understand the language of Muslims. However, we cannot neglect the fact that a variant of Malayalam known as “Mappila Malayalam” was prevalent in Malabar. Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer was one of the rare creed of writers who got immortality by being able to record the features of this language variant. Though Uroob used this style in the novel, the determining style is that of Standard Malayalam.

Overall, we can say that Ummachu is a saga (a narrative telling the adventures of a hero or a family) of a woman who determined to change her destiny by questioning the dogmas of the society.



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The Kaleidoscopic Vision in Black Hawk Down

Reviewing movies is something which I never attempted before; it is not that they are not worth talking about, but there are only few movies which will compel you to talk out something. Black Hawk Down (2011) is a movie like that, especially in the contemporary scenario, where the world police, the USA is trying for a war against Syria. In other words, it’s the time I saw the movie that compelled me to write this, rather than the movie itself. Whenever any conflicts happen in the other nations, the US Govt takes it granted that it is their duty to intervene in the issue, often with the justifications such as to ‘save democracy, war on terror’ and so on. Though we can find a ‘colonialist ideology’ in the approaches of the ‘self-declared savior of the world’, it has been criticized often that the US Govt has some special interests such as oil, arms trade, etc in the move. During the time of Iraq war, the armed forces reiterated the claim that Saddam Hussain had had ‘weapons of mass destruction’. In the same way, in order to interfere in the Syrian Civil War, they are alleging that the Syrian forces have used ‘chemical weapons’ in the war. In fact, the US often makes these kinds of allegations without much scrutiny. American films also cater to these ideas of the US Govt, for which the best example is the movie, Black Hawk Down.

The movie was based on an actual event happened during the Somalian Civil War in which the US forces tried to capture the Somali warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid. The movie celebrates American heroism even at the time of great difficulties. One dialogue in the movie shows the ideal of the common American soldier:
Hoot: When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?" You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is.”

When the American soldiers are portrayed as the symbols of courage, brotherhood, and men of great ideals, their opponents are the epitome of cruelty, brutality, savagery and even their women take weapons to kill the angels in the world, the American soldier.
At one instance, the Somali leader, Atto says to the general “You shouldn't have come here. This is a civil war. This is our war, not yours.” Then, the general, General Garrison replies, “300,000 dead and counting. That's not a war Mr. Atto. That's genocide.” If we applies the same logic on what the Americans did in the Iraq or Afghan war, we can see the same ideology working.

The narration is one-sided; we can easily see the construction of the ‘other’ and the ‘self’ in the movie. When each soldier getting killed by the Somali is shown with great sentiment and extreme feelings, the Americans killing the Somalis were being justified, since they are eliminating the ‘evil’. When the American soldier is portrayed as a gentleman in his captivity, the opposing war leader is shown as arrogant and brute. See his conversation,
Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: You Americans don't smoke anymore. You live long, dull and uninteresting lives.

[Durant is being interrogated]
Durant: My government will never negotiate for me.
Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: Then perhaps you and I can negotiate, huh? Soldier to Soldier.
Durant: I am not in charge
Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: Course not, you have the power to kill, but not negotiate. In Somalia, Killing is Negotiation.

Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: Do you think if you get General Aidid, we will simply put down our weapons and adopt American democracy? That the killing will stop? We know this. Without victory, there will be no peace. There will always be killing, see? This is how things are in our world.

The American soldiers are still possessing what we call the ‘white-man’s burden’, thinking that it is their duty to civilize the exotic, Asian-African tribes. The character Eversmann at one point declares, “Look, these people, they have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that we have two things we can do. Help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN. Right?” This is the justification, I believe, each American man has to defend the US intervention in the affairs of other nations, right?