Maadeva paid a bribe

When Maadeva arrived at the police station he put on a swagger, and made tight his eyes, and asked for Shankar, the policeman who'd called his handphone and asked him to come to the station for passport verification. Shankar wasn't in.

"Sit please, sir," the daphedār who sat in the hall asked Maadeva, but Maadeva stood on, and turned to the wall and read the notices on it. A man had died in an accident, his identity had to be traced with only the photograph of him in death. The picture was on the circular, of the face of a man flat on the ground, a shook up face free of injury, but a dead man's face which any one could tell. From the Commissioner of Police of Beragauru, on letterhead with an impressive police insignia centered on top, it was announced that six policemen had been suspended in the Kanakadasapura Station for not wearing uniforms while on duty. The circular admonished all policemen of Beraguru City to arrive for work wearing their uniform and leave the station after work still in uniform. The notices were all crisp and white.

A band of six men walked in and stood around the daphedār in the hall. The daphedār was in uniform, and sat solid at the head of the hall in the center. A plainclothesman came in from outside and sat in one of two red plastic chairs before the daphedār. Very soon it was clear that the huddle was for a case of attempted suicide. By a woman.

"Where is she?" The daphedār asked. In the hospital. "Is she fit to make a statement?" Yes. "Who is with her?" Her mother. Her father has yet to arrive from Neelamangala. "Where is her husband?"

To this question one of the six answered that the husband has just arrived at the hospital. Another, a burly man who was bent doggie style with both hands pressed on the daphedār's table said, "this is his third marriage, saar." And he continued, nodding meaningfully: "this is his third marriage." And then, once again, "his third marriage saar."

To which the plainclothesman asked: "Why are you telling this three times? How does it matter how many times he has got married? Let him marry a hundred times. Did you give him your girl, or not?"

A man in starched khadi said no, they didn't know the fact when the marriage was performed. Asked who he was, he said he was the girl's doddappa, her elder uncle.

"You should have made your enquiries before you gave your girl, is it not? That is dharma, you agree?" the plainclothesman was tough and engaging and reprimanding all at once in his inflections. The men were silent. Respectful.

"Ok. You two, go and get the statement," the plainclothesman ordered two constables standing there, also in plain clothes. "If no one has really harassed the girl, her father, mother, husband, mava, atté, we will book the case on her," he said, though until now no reason had been discussed for the girl's extreme step. And the threat had no effect on the six men, who went out with the doddappa smiling to the plainclothesman and saying: "We should be silent. That's all." Maadeva watched how the doddappa who was tall seated was while standing the shortest in his group.

Something in the air of the station soothed Maadeva and when Shankar came he followed him meekly into his impossibly tiny "Computer Room" and took the lone red plastic chair by Shankar's soiled red-fabric "computer chair." And he and Shankar were mutually meek, plus Shankar was also deferential, and after the originals of Maadeva's telephone bill and his passport had been checked with the photocopies, Maadeva got up to go.

After he had gone a few steps Shankar came hurrying up to him as Maadeva knew he would. "These papers, sir" he said, holding out the forms in which he'd filled Maadeva's details . "We have to buy paper on our own. For paper give me something sir," he begged softly, and Maadeva's eyes felt cool to him as he watched the policeman's upright stance, and his hard body that was straining his dress, and his smooth young angled face.

He was surprised that the man was so completely satisfied with the hundred he gave him, in these times of great expectations. The first few minutes he told himself it was okay to give a man who worked in a coop a small tip. He was still thinking about it upon reaching home, his early conviction marred now by some confusion, and some shame.

The Hasanamba Temple in Hassan

Seven divine maathrikes who had been living their immortal lives in Varanasi came floating southward a great many ages ago, and paused over Hassan. In those days when the western ghats were pure jungle and Hassan was a mere small habitation a short distance from the hills, on jungly plains, what lay below bewitched the divine ladies, and they landed softly in town. Seeing how it was beautiful even up close, they decided they must live forever there. For the divine, forever is truly forever, and the maathrikes live in Hassan even now.

Of the seven, three maathrikes (mothers) chose for their new home an anthill. They were Vaishnavi, Kumari, and Maheshwari. Three others chose three wells in a pond a short distance from the anthill, which pond came to be called Devigere, the pond of the goddesses. They were Varaahi, Indrani and Chamundi. The seventh among them, Brahmi Devi, went some distance south-west of the other six, and settled on top of a short hill, and a village grew round it, and took one of her several names, Kenchamma, and became Kenchammana Hosakote, or Kenchamma's new fort. Why did they call her Kenchamma? Or Kenchamba? Because of a blush on her cheeks? Because of red in her hair? Or red the color of blood of the rakshasa with whom she fought a long and bloody battle and slayed him there? And, coming back to Hassan, who among the three—Vaishnavi, Kaumaari, Maheshwari—is Hasanamba? I'm going to find out on my next visit, later this month.

A story on the Internet says Malik Kafur, Alauddin Khilji's general who pillaged the Dwarasamudra (Halebid) Temple of the Hoysalas thirty kilometers from the town-center of modern Hassan, was resting his troops somewhere in Hassan. His men cooked a meal of meat and consumed it near the anthills where the devis had by now been long in residence, and so angered the devis that in consequence his troops began to fall dead a man at a time. A stricken Kafur quickly met the priests of the devis but they couldn't help him, the affront on the devis being so terrible. But Hasanamba, who is God to all men and forgives every penitent, appeared to Kafur in a dream and suggested he build a temple to her, which he did using local expertise, and earned forgiveness, and thereafter continued his campaign and celebrated great victories.

(This account needs adjustment with another, that Krishnappa Nayaka, a palegaar (chieftain) of the place in the twelfth century, was who really built the temple. Maybe the one made better what another had built. Perhaps not. Does it matter, so long as the stories live and regenerate into livelier ones?)

Once the temple was ready, the devi ordered that it be opened for darshan only once in a year, during the lunar month of Ashwayuj. And she made the temple powerful with miracles: Three female faces formed over the anthill in the core of the temple, and the anthill became the chief deity. A big round red chandan formed on the foreheads of the devis, which the priests scrape out on the day they close the temple for the year, but the devis form the chandan again upon their forehead when the temple is opened. The nandaa deepa, (a ghee-lit lamp) burns all year round, for the entire duration when the temple doors are shut, with the ghee never depleting. And the anna naivedya (the rice offering) submitted before the devi at the time of closing the temple is warm and unspoiled when the doors are opened again. For centuries now, Hindus who have a connection to Hassan have lived in faith in these miracles which only a privileged few get to witness on the day on which the temple re-opens in the year: the temple authorities, and the District Commissioner, and a few others deemed important. People come in hundreds of thousands, as they've done for centuries now, to say thanks for prayers answered, and with fresh prayers for new needs and new problems.

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• Adapted from: India Forum Archives
• Some unsavory news: Hasanamba temple remains neglected
• Tourist Information: The Lonely Planet

bird feed

Today, at twitter:

In a tweet, Mr. Omar Abdullah asks with implicit humor: "Why? Why? Why do film stars have this uncontrollable urge to wear sun glasses at night?" To which I dispatched my own inconsequential toot, because, I thought, what idiosyncrasy does the film star see among the ilk of which Mr. Abdullah is part?

All in jest, of course, but his micro-post brings also to mind the bus conductor who will complain of his private travails with the power transmission department, and the lineman of the power department who faults the postal service, all of whom have much to say regarding what it costs to get work done in the sub-registrar's office, all of whom all together have much to tell to the non-movers in the municipal corporation.

The one in jest, and all else in sheer disgust, but all, however, serving to soothe the mind a bit. It is good to talk tweet.

the height of work

I flew Indigo to Delhi, sitting in an aisle seat on row 3. They offer only (what Shashi Tharoor once called) cattle-class seats on Indigo, which is such a splendid idea, which takes you to the clouds on a flattened world for a couple of hours. The young man seated next to me, in the middle seat, started up a conversation in Kannada with the chap at the window, also young. It turned out both were in government service, and after a wide-ranging conversation on prospects in various government departments, and pay-commissions, and pay-scales, middle seat exclaimed he sometimes feels he should quit government and start a business. "I could start a coaching school," he told window seat, "and I won't charge too much."

After a while window seat went to the toilet, and middle seat asked me "are you a writer?" I forgive the man his overestimation of me: I was wearing a black Fabindia kurta over blue jeans, and a grey pair of sneakers. "No," I told him, "I'm only a student."

"I'm reporting rather late in life for classes," I added, seeing how he was figuring me out—"and you?"

A sub-inspector of police. He was on his way to the final interview for admission to the IAS (the Indian Administrative Services). His interview was set for Friday, and his medical examination for Monday. I'd watched him while he settled when we began our journey: his bag which he'd stowed overhead was a small saggy schoolbag, and the book he had in hand for inflight reading was a book of puzzles devised by Shakuntala Devi. "How many will be selected?" I asked him: Nine-hundred from the short-list of two-thousand and three-hundred.

I told him I'd pray for his success. He responded with a not-really-rude grunt to that, but one could see he was expecting success regardless of anyone praying for him or not.

(The Indian Administrative Service was where my father had wanted me to go. It had seemed like a grand thing when he proposed it, but I didn't have it in me to go through the rigors of a competitive examination, so I went into business.)

After a while when middle seat and I went each into his reverie, I leafed through the printed materials in the seat pocket and found an ad for ladies to join the pretty young things serving us on the flight. 33,000 feet above average, it said of the job. I have flown Indigo two round-trips now, and they appear to make no mistakes, and I saw they'd managed the issue of weight and complexion that they demand of their staff with such language as to keep their airline out of sight of activists.

But I thought of other things. What is the deepest a miner descends? Is his job so many feet below average? And the young man at the window who had since returned from toilet, who wasn't on course for the IAS, how far from average was he destined to cruise in his life? He seemed not to be discontented, and so, was the terrestrial his altitude of choice?

On the flight back home all passengers were put on a pleasant plane by a Costa Rican who had opted for a higher than ground-level job, but in the Indian skies. Indeed, the pilot was a foreigner, a happy one from the sound of him, from the way he kept talking to us, asking us to not worry, "only turbulence" or, "see, I told you, just turbulence." At the end of the flight he stood out his door to greet us as we left his plane. His bulk matched the volume of his speech, and his eyes were as merry as his voice has been on the speakers.

The Ugly Indians

The Ugly Indian who seemed like the leader asked who has a camera and he asked for one “before” and one “after” and exchanged thumbs-ups before leaving to guide another group to another “problem.” Minutes later, when I took an acrylic board and scraped the ground on the corner the wall of the Chinmaya Mission Hospital forms with a transformer fence, I recoiled from the stench of urine that had dried and gone dormant and now raised its repugnant hood—and struck with full force. Quite soon, along with the other Ugly Indians, I got used to the thing and went on, mindful of the stink but newly stoic. To capture the smell “before” and its disappearance “after”—that was the greater effect to record and publish, but how do you do it except with words?

The Ugly Indians will not have you sharing names of other Ugly Indians or their methods or phone numbers. You reach with all the members of the core group at a single email-ID, theuglyindian@gmail.com. After they’ve verified that you fall in line with a near-sacred demand for anonymity, and once they’re sure that you fit the mooh bundh; kaam chaalu code, you’re in.

People do shake hands and exchange given names, but that’s all. No phone numbers are offered or asked for, and no one says what they are the big shot of, or which school or vocation they dropped-out from. The man on the left is tall and hefty, the young man on the right is lean and tall and bright in orange tees, the senior citizen behind me stays still and silent until time comes for painting, and the four teenage kids at the far end plan to paint the wall all the way to the long end. Young and old, man and woman, boy and girl, everyone works solemnly, speaking the minimum that the work on hand demands. In the end, the stench of urine, the hideous sight of garbage, and the sense of shame of living in India, all evaporate and in place of everything there comes pride from labor performed by hand, comes hope from those who proved along with you that more than a handful of Indians care and will act and, like a gust of welcome air that had gone missing, there comes renewed love for community.

The good feelings are not all unalloyed, of course. Where will the guys who’d been pissing on the wall take their leak tomorrow? Will they not dump garbage again every day from after now? The veteran Ugly Indians say yes even before you ask, that your labor will be littered upon sooner than in 24 hours, but they affirm also that a few of them will work on the problem right away, from tomorrow. With that concern out of the way, you think the very young men that you saw, not one of The Ugly Indians, but the hired hands with nice faces, who took the heaps of smelly mess that you brought to them and hauled them onto a high truck and compacted the stuff there. With nary a tool to lessen their fatigue. What of them?

O yes. But of course. You demand many solutions when a good thing gets going, and expect more from those who have shown that they can help, but the decent thing to do is to emulate The Ugly Indians, or to join them, and to begin the change, each in their street, even as you allow the new questions that arise, allow the answers that rise up also, and give limb to solutions that are mostly only spoken while seated in armchairs or during leisurely strolls.

Yes, indeed. Kaam chaalu; mooh bundh.

Update on Saturday, April 21, 2012 at 4:15PM by Shashikiran Mullur

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The folks at The Ugly Indian made a mention of this post on their Facebook page. My thanks to them!