from my sketchbook 1978-The Arab Room

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Spot the Difference-6

Dogs laugh with their tails but it all ends where you are greeted with a growl.
Man laughs at best from his belly but at worst backbites.
benny

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Will the next god step to the mike, please?

Sai Baba is dead! Long live Sai Baba.
India need one god to take over all the problems of being an Indian. Foreigners are also welcome.
This time we have slightly changed our criteria. The god that we choose need not build hospitals or schools. He has nothing to do for alleviating the miseries of being poor or sick. He must bear every uncertainty of our existence. It is so simple.
If our law is not adequate an higher law of one man-one god will apply.
If a hungry man comes the god must produce out of thin air laddus and it should conform to Agmark.
If a devotee comes to hear words of comfort, god must turn himself into a vending machine churning out homilies at the drop of 100 rupees pm.
If man and woman require a hug the god must be able to envelop the person in need, in a bear hug.
If one comes with inauspicious horoscope create one that is unbeatable whether on earth or in paraloka
If one comes for a darshan give the person what he desires. Only that he does in return what god wants to see: the color of his money.
Only certainty a worshipper needs in India is that he can throw all his uncertainties onto another. An Indian spiritualizes that it requires a god to recognize another god. Of course some might say the fool has just met a crook. Not so with India with their problems,- mostly of the making of fools whether in the ruling or in the ruled class.
Thus a god you must have for peace of mind. No two ways about it.
The relation between God and his bhaktas is predetermined. No exception allowed.
Let us see what does an Indian do? He passes all his worries onto his family,community and the nation without a sweat. If he has undertaken a megaproject he has taken loan using the good offices of some bigwigs without intention of ever honouring his debt of honour; if he has married off his sons he has already bilked the girls parents with tall tales of his son’s amazing future; one son is already in air,a pilot (holding a fake certificate) and nobody knows the uncertainty of their lives are handed over to him in good faith; he has other sons applying for higher education on quota exclusively meant for the poor by tampering with the records -and some middle level bureaucrats are already accomplices in his shenanigans, he has under several loopholes avoided paying taxes to the concerned department and many other. What with all these incredible escapades to be one step ahead of others in the simple matter of living, all that is left are uncertainties. Naturally the god must be of immense talents-no matter holy or unholy, to give him the assurance. Producing an air of plausibility where there is none is essential in god.
So if you have such a talent step out of the crowd of cyphers,blancos,nobodies. The job commands crores and mega crores of rupees.gold ingots,precious metals- all tax-free!
If you have some physical oddity like a melon for a head and a bittergourd for nose never mind. All we need to know is you can speak and a dramatic flair to produce some trifle out of nowhere.
Tailpiece: Per day some 47 farmers commit suicide out of desperation in India. This has been going on for sometime. They attain the lotus feet of the gods and these gods are not to be confused with the god we choose for the foolish,crooked and the lazy ignoramuses.
benny

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Life is…

Life is sure funny.As a child you know you are born to express yourself. Sure your parents want to see you walk and show how gifted you are. But then you go and land a job.Since then all you are allowed to express is company policy. How come?
2.
Life is sure funny. As a young man you eye girls and bed is all that matters. Girls in all sizes and shapes and with attitudes no matter what, fit whatever bed is available. But only one is ever going to make you sleep in peace. How come?
benny

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Will the real Anna Hazare stand up?

I read Anna Hazare contrary to my initial impression has been active. He hails from Maharashtra where he is a law unto himself. In other words he is extra-constitutional authority.He is known to impose punishment as he seems fit. A villager under his feudal fiefdom will be tied to a pole in front of the village temple and publicly flogged. Several men undergo this, one of whom, a vice sarpanch of the village, says: “I was drinking. I was … tied to the pole and flogged two-three times. It is normal. ” He believes in forced vasectomy. He believes that corrupt people should be hanged — literally hanged to death and so on. ‘So has the frog in the well believed. What if the frog has not cleaned up the mess in that well either the frog is a crackpot or one that is less than what he pretends to be. Anna Hazare has let the biggest crooks in his backyard go scot-free and executed his righteous indignation on the weak and the backward laborers who in his Bill of Rights are only entitled to Rs 50 for male and 30 per day for female coolies. Forget the gender politics and caste politics. Anna Hazare is a loose cannon and he is more likely to prove a paper tiger .
He is now middle class hero and youth icon. On what solid grounds any right minded person might ask? Hence the title. I had in recent posts touched on this nine day wonder as a fable. I also did a cartoon. Beyond this I do not think he holds any interest to me. Let me quote finally a perceptive article I came across by chance:

‘The Anna Hazare phenomenon is what one could term the Rorschach Effect in Politics. A couple of years ago, Barack Obama wisely pointed out, “I am like a Rorschach test.” During his presidential campaign, his supporters saw in him whatever they wanted to: an anti-Bush, a liberal messiah, a pragmatic and non-partisan moderate, and suchlike…’
(ack:http://in.news.yahoo.com/blogs/opinions/rorschach-effect-indian-politics-amit Verma of 21 April)
For those who think he is an unshakeable anchor in a time of organized corruption and communal malevolence he is most likely to be proved as a broken reed.
Moral: Fools who choose a paper tiger to set them on the right path do not deserve anything better.

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Death by installments-current news

An East Harlem man accused of killing his grandma confessed he gave her a hug – then body slammed her – after she handed him $1 instead of the $175 he demanded, a cop testified Wednesday.
“Oh my God, I killed my grandmother,” Larry Davis, 22, admitted, according to Det. Mark Worthington.
We all love our grandmothers. More so when they love us without strings attached. Grandmothers are a breed apart and are not like our parents. Grandmothers cannot do wrong. We are likely to hate at times their sons or daughters. For we do not like to be told,’ we have to earn our keep and we must be responsible for the mess we make’. Worse still our parents love to keep us short on our pocket money. They mistakenly think they can straighten us out by shortchanging in our pleasures.
But grandmothers do not have such a mindset.
Do not we see all a piggy-bank when we see one? Grandmothers are something that we can bank on. No one can be so blind not to touch them for a hand out. Only that when they are soft touch we dig deeper. Much to our horror we come to a point we have become sponge and not responsible adults.
We sober up and grow out of it. Alas some do not grow up,- like Larry. He asked too often and the grandma knew whenever she saw him to dip into her purse. He asked finally for $175. Poor grandma gave $1 as first installment. I am sure she intended to give $7 in the next and $5 as the third and final installment. Poor Larry could not figure it out. That was his mistake.
Moral of this: I know when it is a no and I can say no even when the ‘yes’ is not good for me.

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Language of Jackboots-current news

The spokesman for Russia’s Federal Migration Service has been fired after issuing a racist rant to the BBC, ITAR-TASS reports.
Konstantin Poltoranin, the agency’s chief spokesman, told the BBC: “What is now at stake is the survival of the white race. We feel this in Russia. We want to make sure the mixing of blood happens in the right way here, and not the way it has happened in Western Europe where the results have not been good.”
The BBC sought comment from Poltoranin for this great report on Russia’s only center for destitute asylum seekers, on the outskirts of the Urals city of Perm. They meet three men from the Ivory Coast and Rwanda who had come to Russia seeking political asylum, only to be shuttered away in the center, facing racist attacks from its administration as well as local residents.(ack: Miriam ElderApril 20, 2011 12:00-global post)
Having seen the BBC program I wonder where all the milk of human kindness has gone to? Reading Turgeniev,Tolstoy I looked up Mother Russia with certain reverence. It was tinged with pity when I read Dosteovsky and I saw the soul of Russia in the serfs and minor officials both noble and ignoble. The system was bad as with any feudal society where man’s dignity is measured by what is doled by some at their whims and fancies. Russia was vast as well as strange to me. Then came Stalin and his cohorts and I could still understand the nature of Russia. Man on the street needs lot of assurance and Russians love to be bullied and roughshod by the father (Stalin is seen as such even this day!) whose brutality is only matched by his resourcefulness to create a safe oases from the surrounding hordes of devils. In Stalin was the mantle of Ivan the terrible and the Russian understood the language of jackboots more than any other. Unfortunately jackboot speaks a language that can eat into the soul of the race long lain under some tyrant.
Reading this news of poor devils from Africa being dehumanized by petty officials like Konstantin Poltoranin I can only think the Russian can only speak the language of Jackboots. It was in their genes for eons and they express what is at that atavistic past even when we say dignity of man ought not fear man made frontiers and barriers of language. Respect of man is the only currency and passport any one today needs to have.
Mother Russia ought to have guarded and taught her children with a little more solicitude for their future.
Tailpiece: Some 20,000 Tunisians are like loose cannons and they have fled to Europe. Italy have solved the problem of unwanted migrant workers by passing them on to the rest of Europe. How many of them are ‘moles’ carrying some hidden agenda for some only to be known in future? No one knows. But one thing is certain. The former colonial masters who had exploited the natives are faced with consequences of their ‘wrongs’. Africa is still a ‘white man’s burden’. There they have democracy and elections are treated as ‘Heads I win,Tails you lose’. Nigeria, Ivory Coast are cases in point. Is it not? History is an arena where moral questions of man’s actions are unravelled in another time frame than that he is accustomed to.
benny

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Cartoon-At the foot lights

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From Russia with Love-2

From the outset the Allies found stymied by Stalin’s hot and cold approach even when he was pestering them for material help. Following the Atlantic Conference in 1941 Churchill sent Lord Beaverbrook while Avrell Harriman from Roosevelt was included. The delegation had service members to help them with assessing actual needs of Russia. Their discussions were frustrating and in Harriman’s words ‘ pretty hard sledding.’ There were also moments of surprise and warmth. General Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s personal representative on the Services committee found Russian soldiery,- from top to lower ranks, was very finicky about saluting. Ismay’s Marine orderly once reported his embarrassment of commanding salutes at every turn by Russian officers but his superior let him a free hand saying, ‘ acknowledge their compliments handsomely’. This Marine in his impressive blue uniform was one day being given a guided tour. The Intourist guide showed a building and said,’This is Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel’. A little later, ‘We are on the Churchill street, formerly Hitler street. The guide pointing to the Railway station intoned,’The Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station..’ Stopping short the guide offered a cigarette,’Will you have one, comrade?’
The Marine took it and thanked, ‘Thank you comrade, formerly bastard!’
When Ismay later reported this to Churchill he relished it so much it became a standard joke, one among his repertoire of after-dinner pleasantries.
benny

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Pen Portrait-Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475 – 1564) Italian
Sculptor, painter, architect, poet.

A giant in an age of giants ‘the man with four souls’ who has crowned a lifetime of work with achievements of highest rank in architecture, sculpture, painting and poetry, was born at Caprese on March 6, 1475.
The Buonarroti were a Florentine family of ancient burgher nobility brought to straitened circumstances. With his father’s death the boy was put out to nurse with a stonecutter’s wife. “I drew the chisel and the mallet with which I carve statues in together with my nurse’s milk”. Later he was taught to read and write his native Italian, but art became his dominant passion.
In 1488 he was apprenticed to two leading artists of the day: He turned to nature and his works soon outshined those of his masters.
Next he turned to sculpture in the school formed under the patronage of the Great Lorenzo de Medici. Soon he came under the eye of the Great Lorenzo himself. Forthwith the boy was taken into his household where he remained until Lorenzo’s death in 1492.
(bronze bust by Volterra. done in charcoal, 1978)
A style was being developed on the classical Greek lines; Paganism gave way to Christian piety as he came under the spell of that fierce prophet Savanarola.
In poetry and philosophy Dante provided the inspiration; in his own realm of art, he was very familiar with the styles of Ghirlandais, his early tutors, Ghiberti, Grotto and Donatello.
In one of the scuffles with a fellow student, he got a blow on his nose which marked him for rest of his life. His deeper emotions – for he was in and out of love – he found expression in a series of exquisite sonnets, bulk of which was addressed to V.C…..
After his patron’s death he travelled about Venice, Bologna, Florence and Athens to Rome. The year 1499 marks his first real work of Christian sculpture ‘Pieta’. From then onwards he was prolific. In 1504 he carved out ‘David’ from a spoilt block of Carrara marble, nine cubits in height. In eighteen months he had carved out the masterpiece, a statue of amazing beauty.
Next year he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II who set him to work on the construction of his own tomb. This task dragged on for years, causing trouble and bitterness between the sculptor and the pope’s executers: It was never completed, but the famous ‘Moses and the Group of Slaves’ were part of the scheme.
Three years later Michelangelo accepted the commission to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A work of more power and loftier conception is hard to find. His agony and the ecstasy is the quientessence of the artist in the throes of creation.
The next decade saw Michelangelo busy on the work for Julius’ tomb and on the colossal figures for the Medici Chapel. After a brief entry in Florentine politics, in 1534, he left Florence for Rome.
In his sixtieth year he was appointed as the chief architect, sculptor and painter to the Vatican by the order of Pope Paul IV.
In the same year he began his fresco in the Sistine chapel, ‘The last Judgement’ which took him seven years to complete. In 1547 he was made architect of St. Peters, whose cupola is his great contribution to architecture. The same year saw the passing of one oasis in his troubled life – the widowed poetess Vittorio Colonna, who was the only woman in his ascetic life and whose love was cerebral as well as spiritual. The bulk of his sonnets – statues in words, roughhewn and beautiful in their rugged vitality – are addressed to her.
Another seventeen years had to pass before he could join her. He had lived long years alone, wedded to his art, “a wife who was too much for him”. A generous man to others and a mean one to himself, he lived frugally. He was irritable, quick tempered and arrogant, but the creative fire in him made him lead an ascetic life only for art! He has enriched the world with what he could carve out of his tormented soul.

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