A Sampradaya of Bhakti and self-realization

I manage to wriggle out of the chaotic traffic jam around Mithakhali Circle thanks to my small Maruti and some crafty moves that let me survive on the Ahmedabad roads. I find a spot surprisingly close to the Lion’s Hall entrance, park my car and make my way in, leaving the commotion on the roads behind; the tumult in my head persisting. It feels as if I’m entering little Chennai—the foyer is bustling with maylapore mamis, babies in arms, and old men feasting on pongal and sambhar. The crowd is mostly over 50, with the women dressed in beautiful kanchivaram silks and the men in dull clerical shirts and pants. Inside the hall sits a group of musicians, bare-chested, dressed in gold-bordered mundus, immersed deep in devotion. At the centre is a dignified looking man, with a warm husky voice, exuding a sense of calm.

Udayalur Sri Kalayanaraman Bhagvathar is one of the stalwarts in the South-Indian bhajana tradition. The combination of his reputation and an evening of devotional songs has managed to draw the Tamil population in Ahmedabad away from their prime-time soap operas; or maybe, as Kalyanaraman jokes, they’re only there because it’s Saturday!

A sampradaya is essentially a tradition, a lineage of knowledge passed on from one generation to another, not through inheritance, but through rigorous practice and commitment. The sampradaya of the Nama Sankeertanams (essentially: singing the god’s name) partially owes itself to the Bhagwata Purana, one of the several sacred texts in Hinduism formally written down in its existent form somewhere in 1000 CE. It states in the bhagvatam that in the present age of Kaliyuga, the only way to self attainment in the midst of vice and destruction is through bhakti yoga, most easily achieved through the singing of devotional songs. The bhajana sampradaya in South-India typifies a particular style of singing that presents deep philosophical truths drawn from the sacred texts through simple devotional songs and hymns that often leave the listener in a trance.

As I try to forget that I’m sticking out of the crowd like a sore thumb, I allow myself to give in to swaying to the catchy rhythms. The mrudangist with his mastery plays with the time cycle teasingly, almost falling out yet always hitting the end beat on the mark. Kalyanaraman has a smile on his face, it’s a challenge keeping up with the drummer’s tricks. The songs are mostly in Tamil, but the years of my Bharatanatyam training have taught me enough to get the gist of what’s being sung. These are a varying descriptions of the numerous incarnations and appearances of the gods and their somewhat soap-operatic tales. It is dizzying to try and understand the multitude of stories, let alone the family trees of these gods and the contexts in which their worlds were written about. I stop trying to search Wikipedia on my blackberry for the Vishnu Avatars and origin and significance of what I’m hearing, and let myself give in to the hypnotic music, beyond its meaning, beyond understanding its historicity, and purely allowing the tumult in my head to evaporate.

A recent article in The Hindu brought some shocking statistics about road traffic deaths to light. According to a survey by the World Bank, close to 1.2 million people die in road accidents each year, almost as many as are killed by malaria or tuberculosis – and some 85 per cent of these accidents take place in developing countries. The poor get hurt more than the rich, since they're the ones riding the bicycles, walking, or travelling in over crowded buses. And while studies say that by the year 2020 the rate of accidents is expected to fall by 28 per cent in rich countries, it is expected to rise by a frightening 83 per cent in the poorer nations.

While factors like a low global budget for road safety ($10 million annually, as opposed to $1.9 billion for tackling malaria) are hindrances to road safety across the world, the issue pertaining particularly to India is somewhat different – that is, a complete breakdown in the systems of the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) and their regulations.

The legal process, as laid out in the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989, for a citizen to obtain a driver's license in India seem as fit as that for any other developed country, but the actual implementation of the law is a complete farce. And while local traffic police & officials struggle to tackle mass violations of laws by drivers on the roads, it escapes me how the complete failure of the RTO in its license granting process goes unaddressed.

The findings of a combined study by individuals from NYU, Harvard, the Chicago GSB and World Bank titled Obtaining a Driving License in India: An experimental approach to Studying Corruption statistically show exactly what one's personal experiences on the ground reveal. Having lived in the city (and obtained a drivers' licence from there myself), lets take Ahmedabad as prime example. The RTO building is grossly over crowded. The bureaucracy is such that on average it can take at least 3-4 trips to the RTO just to obtain a learners' license. The queues are endless often leading all the way outside the building, forcing applicants to stand for hours under the sun in the scorching heat. So while an honest individual might choose to follow the lawful procedure, it should come as no surprise why most people seek a way to ease the process.

Enter: Agents. Agents (a.k.a. "facilitators" or "consultants") are people who help individuals obtain services and make the process of obtaining a license smooth, through personal connections with the government bureaucracy and an in depth knowledge of the procedures. Agents, while illegal, are an established institution for obtaining licenses, passports and other services through the government system. While most people use agents to get past the bureaucracy, many others do so to avoid taking (or retaking) the final road test sometimes required to obtain a permanent license. An agent will help you get all the paperwork in order with all the signatures required without the hassle of having to run around and stand in queues – all for a price. The agents also come in handy if you don't have all the required documents necessary for completing your application (like a birth-date verification certificate or proof of address) or even better, to skip the test in case you don't really know how to drive. Agents, through their connections with the license granting officers, will get your application passed and license issued by subverting the system. Of course, the 'alternate' system works flawlessly since the licensing officers get a consistent cut from the agents' fee charged to the applicant.

This 'alternate' system is sensitive to objective criteria, such as missing documents (resulting in higher prices charged by the agent for more missing documents), however totally blind to the individual's ability to drive (the agent can get you a license anyway, with no hike in price). While the CMV Rules state that passing an oral examination of the basic Rules of the Road Regulations is mandatory for anyone to be given a Temporary Driving License (i.e. a learners' license), the Ahmedabad RTO rearly even mentions the existence of the oral test required to obtain the learner's license, even if applied directly & not with help of an agent. Only one of several friends of mine who have obtained their learners' license in Ahmedabad have ever had to take the pre-learners' license test. In fact, that particular friend considered herself 'unlucky' to have been asked to take the test.

The result: hundreds of people everyday, regardless of their ability and knowledge of road regulations, get granted the license to drive. While most people learn how to drive without bumping into things anyway, almost no one learns anything about traffic rules for defensive driving. Its a whole different discussion as to why people here don't have basic courtesy, but turning without signaling, overtaking in a tight spot, parking wherever the hell one wants, and paying no heed to a pedestrian crossing even when there's an elderly person trying to cross the street are all incidents that are way too common. In fact, when I stop my car to let a woman with two children cross the street, I get a strange look that says "uh...what're you doing, why did you stop? You mean I can cross?!" It takes just one impatient driver to cross a red light when there's no policeman manning the junction for the entire lot of drivers behind him or her to also break the law. Total chaos and gridlock at an un-policed intersection come as no surprise. And its not that people don't know the rules, it doesn't take more than a 1st grader to know that you're supposed to stop at a red light, but its that people choose not to follow them.

An analysis of the situation reveals many interconnected aspects as matters of concern. Of course, a clean up of the mess at the RTO needs to be the first issue to be addressed. Statistics of the study mentioned earlier show that almost all corruption takes place through agents. While it is close to impossible to stem the corruption within the government bureaucracy (since it is so deep and at every level), the agents are not employed by the government. Therefore it would seem rather simple to implement the banning / arresting of agents on the RTO premises. This would force individuals to comply with the legal system, enforcing the taking of tests, and in turn encourage a sincere effort on the part of applicants to learn and understand traffic rules. (Banning agents would also however require the RTO to rework their application procedure to make the entire process less confusing to the consumers – confusion, according to the study was one of the main reasons for applicants switching to agents.) Yet that doesn't seem like it would solve the problem either, since not knowing the rules is only a small part of the road traffic problem. One cannot, at least at this level, teach people courtesy and morals. Punishment for hard offences, such as running a red light are difficult enough to enforce given the large scale of violations on the roads. Enforcing the helmet law for motorcyclists is a joke for a traffic police official when more people ride without helmets than with. And with the country's massive population and limited infrastructure, it would be impossible for a system of automatic cameras capturing offences to ever work efficiently. In countries in the west, most drivers will obey a stop sign, even if it is on an obviously empty junction, with no traffic to seemingly require the stop, and no police or cameras enforcing the action. Even where rash driving and breaking the law are exceptions to the norm, systems of catching culprits on camera fail to deliver punishments due to the challenges of timely fine collection. In the English county of Bedfordshire alone (with a driving age population of approx. 300,000), about 250 offences get caught on camera each month. For offences between January and April 2005, Bedfordshire had failed to collect over £32,000 worth of fines due to the challenges of collecting fines in time (England has a max 6-month collection rule).

As is the case across the world with all aspects of law-breaking, behavioral scientists, sociologists and policy-makers need to seriously rethink the models of punitive actions and their success in preventing further violations. While setting the systems right at the RTO might not curb reckless driving, it must be done. Locking down on the 'alternate' system will send a strong message out to the public: the state will not tolerate a bending of the rules.

The bribery, of course, doesn't stop at the RTO. A person running through a red light and having been caught, can most often offer the cop enough money for chai nasta and get away without getting a ticket. Which brings one to the hopeless conclusion that unless rampant corruption at all levels in the government is brought under control, to put it frankly, this country is doomed.

War on Freedom

After a refreshingly heartening series of protests across the country following the arrest of MS University student Chandramohan, I seemed to have found once again, a ray of hope in the country's youth. The latest incident of state supported suppression of one's freedom of expression took place in Gujarat (where else!) when BJP zealot Neeraj Jain along with thugs of the VHP barged into a private exhibit, meant solely for evaluation of the students' work and started tearing down artwork at the Lalit Kala Kendra in Baroda. The police, instead of stopping the vandalism, arrested the graduate student on charges of 'hurting religious sentiments'.

The destruction of Hussain's work at the Amdavad ni Gufa and the many death threats and attempts at seizing his property, along with the monetary rewards announced by the Hindu Law Board & the Shiv Sena independently for anyone who chops off the artist's hands are all known to the public. The attacks on filmmakers like Deepa Mehta and Anand Patwardhan, and the banning of many films that go even close to suggesting the harsh truths of our society are just more examples of the moral policing that these self-appointed 'cultural guardians' practice. In a democratic India, the official government authorities in charge of censorship remain mere bystanders while groups such as the BJP youth league and the VHP take the law into their own hands.

Every individual and group is entitled to its own views on bharatiya sanskriti and its 'purity'. If you find a painting offensive, walk out of the gallery! Who are these individuals and groups to decide what is appropriate for me to see, when they have no rightful authority in the matter? It is a breach of duty when the government does not take appropriate action against those openly associated with these incidents. But it is horrifying that the state machinery joins hands with the hooligans by punishing individuals who are in fact, victims of a public violation of basic human rights.

People who continue to complain about the inaction of the government while they sit in comfortable inertia are of no use today. It is therefore especially reassuring when citizens visibly demonstrate their furor through means of peaceful demonstrations and protests. Following the incident at MSU, students and artists have come out in unison all over the country. Protests in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Thiruvananthapuram are all the face of growing opposition against communal and cultural intolerance.

Chandramohan's classmates, in protest of MSU Vice Chancellor's action suspending Dean Panikkar who had the courage to stand up and condemn the incident, put up an exhibition of ancient Indian art showcasing ancient sculptures representing the tremendous cultural and expressive freedom that was a part of our rich heritage. An attempt to curb the student protest resulted in the Vice Chancellor ordering to seal the exhibition, in effect, censoring century-old Hindu art and heritage – does VC Manoj Soni see the irony, or the hypocrisy?!

Movies like Rang De Basanti and Munnabhai Lage Raho show a strong movement towards the sensitization of Bollywood and its acknowledgement of the needs of present day culture. The movies (though sometimes suggesting questionable means), to whatever extent, manage to inspire the youth through a realization of empowerment. The tremendous involvement of youth across the country, whether through rallies or SMS campaigns was stirring during the Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo cases. Although Chandramohan's case particularly might not be as horrifying (arrest and not cold blooded murder), the incident is symbolically, an attack on every Indian citizen's right to expression. It is evidence of an orchestrated 'war on freedom'. And we cannot affort to be silent bystanders.

Khalil Gibran: on Love and Marriage

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Coming in Second Place

They said it was down to the last two and that the committee was having a tough time choosing. But I suppose eventually they had to, and they picked her instead of me. Regardless of the result, the very process of writing the speech was a good experience for me. Since I won't be delivering it at graduation, you may read it below.

Thank you — President Corzo, Honorable Deans, Faculty & Staff, Parents and my fellow students. It’s truly an honor for me to be up here today and I really want to thank everyone who’s made it possible. Over the last four years we’ve all made some friends, with students, faculty. Some of them were helpful at the time, some will last our lifetimes. And as we look forward towards leaving this supportive environment, it all looks a bit scary. Finding a job might be the first thing on a lot of your minds. Some of you might still be unsure about what careers to pursue, but I want you to take a second and look a little further. War vs. negotiation; globalization vs. isolation; activists vs. those who are convinced that nothing individuals do makes a difference anyway; social responsibility vs. the bottom line – these are huge problems staring at all of us in today's world. Those of us who will eventually reach the levers of power may be able to do something to affect them, but what about the rest of us?

I was born in India, into a rather privileged family of scientists, educators, industrialists, and artists. Being lucky enough to have the opportunities that so many around me lacked, I quickly learnt something my family had stood for for many years; the privileges I had weren’t just an advantage, they were a responsibility. My mother has been an activist for most of her life, and a lot of her work uses performance to talk about real life issues, against violence and inequality, for women’s empowerment, social development. Having established a name for herself, reporters often ask her, “its all very well to use the arts for social change, but how do you know if it really makes a difference?” And I think of hundreds of performances I’ve seen of hers, where people come up to her afterwards and sob as they hold her and tell her how she’s changed their lives. My mother is one woman who believes in something, and has devoted her whole life fighting for it. Maybe there’s something else you believe in, or maybe you haven’t found it yet. Don’t stop looking.
If you don’t believe art can make a difference, think of the Danish cartoons and how much of an effect they had on the rest of the world. Positive or negative, initially, that was just art on a piece of paper.

The climate change so urgently needed might be hard to achieve, but its not impossible. All over the world, people are acting and reacting out of fear and distrust. Can we rely on science to tell us the truth? (look at all the research that hides the source of its funding), how about literature (Frey’s “memoirs” that were fiction), sports (the steroids scandals), politics (where in the world are the politicians whose constituents can trust what they say?) So one of the things badly needed in this world is a restoration of truth in our lives, and that is something each one of you can do. It is an ideal each one of us can act on, and change the world together, one of us at a time.

In this age of globalization, is it enough to call yourself a citizen of America? In times when ripples in the east are felt equally hard in the west, I think it is apt to remember an old Sanskrit saying, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakkam, The whole world is my family. Mother Teresa once said, “If there is inequality and despair in this world, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” It’s a good thing these occasions are called commencement ceremonies, for we are really, only at the beginning.

Thank you.

Jack of All Trades

Ever since I was a child, I knew I wanted to dance. I started learning when I was about five years old and haven't stopped since. I went pro when I was in my early teens and took a couple of years off after graduating from highschool to pursue a serious career in the performing arts. Music has also always been a passion. There are pictures of me, all of three years old, banging away on a set of tablas at one of my mother's dance rehearsals. To this day, rhythm drives me obsessively. If I'm walking with my ipod playing, I have to pace my steps to the beat. I've never really had any serious formal training in percussion, but I can be pretty handy with a dholak, ganjira, or even a djembe.

Come age 14 and a whole other field catches my attention. Motion graphics, digital media and the technology of visual communication. I enrolled in a six-month diploma program and laid the foundations of what became the subject of my college education; a degree in Multimedia at the U of Arts in Philadelphia. That's where my interests diverged even further, into web and interactive design and the programming that supports it, into design that can solve problems and create systems to better our lives.

Today, age 21, two weeks away from graduating and entering the so called "real world", I am about to become a fresh graduate: a motivated, intelligent, creative, and hard working, (I never said I was modest!) young man, ready to take on the world. But yet, despite all that, what often bothers me is the fact that I'm not as accomplished in any one skill or profession as I'd like myself to be. I am the proverbial Jack of All Trades, Master of None. I can make a decent website, but will never be a programming wiz. I can move, but I'm not as flexible as the dancer who works his ass off eight hours a day. I can play percussion, but I'm no Sivamani.

Having given this much thought, I have often wondered why exactly this is the case. Its not that I'm not motivated enough to stick with one thing, nor that I give up too soon. The fact is, I can't live with just one thing, without the other. I'm sure if I put my mind to it, I could be the hot shot programming wiz that knows php like the back of his hand. But then I'd be sitting in the audience during a performance thinking to myself, man I wish I was on stage. So its not that I'm not happy with whatever I do, or always think the grass is greener on the other side, but that I'm never content doing just one thing. Life has too much to offer to restrict yourself to just one thing.

Ever since the beginning of civilization there has been division of labour. With cultures that had the caste system, a person's birth in a particular family or community in itself decided his profession. In later times, the caste system broke down and a person could choose her own profession, based on her skills, or purely based on her interests. Yet choosing one profession has always been an expectation. In schools in India, children have to pick a field of higher studies and narrow down their career options to only one from business, arts or sciences as early as age 15. Do we really know what we want to spend the rest of our lives doing as early as that? Do we ever really know? And do we really ever need to choose one over the other? Yes we need our specialists, but we also like our Man Fridays. With times changing, maybe the trends are changing too, to become more diverse and universal, curious about the world and ready to take on anything that may come in one's way.

Taking the Plunge

So I've done it. I've succumbed to the indirect pressure all around me and I've set up my very own blog. You could say I've just become part of the cliché that is blogging in today's world. But in a way, and this isn't just an excuse, its an honest effort on my part to allow those of you who already know me and want to be in the loop, or those of you who want to get to know me, to do just that. One thing I hope this will also do is encourage me to start writing again, something I really enjoy, but too easily lose the inspiration to do regularly.

Just as a quick update, I've spent the last few weeks working on my new portfolio website that you're reading this on right now. Its been a good exercise for me, both in terms of sorting and compiling my work in a presentable manner, and in terms of teaching myself the basics of transitional XHTML and CSS that has equipped me to create an almost fully web standards compliant site. Other than that I've been working towards creating my senior thesis performance that is premiering on Sunday April 30th at the UArts Drake theater in Philadelphia. I had a little scare when my co-performer Eric got the flu and was in bed for most of this week, but he seems to be better now and we'll hopefully get back on track with the show during these last few days.

On a more confident note, I feel honoured to have been nominated to be student speaker at our commencement ceremony, as I graduate with a bachelors in multimedia from The Unviersity of the Arts here in Philly. I'd written and submitted a speech to the selection committee and just went and delivered it live as part of the final stage of the selection process today. Thanks to much intellectual stimulation and help from a dear friend Ronnie Lynton, I seem to have done a fairly good job with it. Fingers crossed until I find out whether I made it or not on Tuesday!