A Time Elsewhere - I

Reading this book A TIME ELSEWHERE by J P Das. It instantly put me in a time machine, transporting to the timeframe of 1864-68 when Odisha suffered from devastating famine followed by draught when millions perished. Here are few interesting anecdotes from the fascinating book recapitulated in my own words.

The British were late arrivals to Odisha, setting their footsteps in the state after conquering much of India. Looking from a breather from the plundering Marathas, the natives of the coastal state bridging Bengal and Andhra approached the English with apprehension. Both the prospective ruler and the ruled harbored mutual suspicion.

The British heard that the Odias were a stupid, ill mannered and effeminate race. The Odias, including its Zamindars (landowners) and petty kings (more like Vassals) believed the English were of a different species - Pig faced with extra large, spectra wide ears which they used to fan themselves during the summer and used as blanket during winter. The Odias were in total awe at their new rulers.

Familiarity clears fogs of boubt from the mind, slowly breeding contempt. The English looked down on their subjects and ruled with an iron hand. But the ruled, far from being timid and docile, expressed sporadic disaprovals, mostly the small but growing tribe of educated young men who made their mark in their remarkable way of protest.

One such example is UTKAL DIPIKA (The Lamp of Odisja), an Odia Magazine published for the first time on August 4, 1866 by Gourishankar Ray and Bichitrananda Das. They left no stones unturned by reporting the failure of  British administration to prevent and contain the great famine of 1865-66 when millions died from starvation.

One cold winter evening of 1866 there was a hot discussion amongst four young English officers sipping Brandy inside the exclusive Station Club of Cuttack. They were pulling legs of E J Barton, the Assistant Collector of Khurda who was accused by a woman of fathering her 1 and 1/2 year old daughter in an age sans contraceptives.

Folks believed her, for the little girl was looking like a prospective English Mem with her sparkling blue eyes and reddish white skin - a genetic trait nowhere close to the generally dark complexioned Khurda men. The case was eventually dismissed for the lack of evidence in an age when DNA test was strictly fantasy.

This news about the blue eyed girl came like a bolt from the blue on that blue, starry evening at the Club as gossip filled tongues kept wagging about the spicy incident in the milieu of the bland, mundane life of the government officials. The news was first seen by Barton's counterpart from Jajpur on Utkal Dipika which he subscribed for 4 Rupees, 2 Annas for six month postage paid.

This was not the only controversial news reported on Utkal Dipika by its fearless Editor Gaurishankar. He named the Relief Magistrate Kirkwood "The thrashing Firangee" for the later'spenchant to beat his subjects at slight pretext. He once beat a Brahmin hired to cook rice at a relief camp to pulp for dereliction of duty. (Those days Brahmin cooks were hired to cook at relief camps as many upper caste Hindus would rather lose their life from starvation than lose their caste by eating anything cooked by someone from the lower caste.Brahmins being from the highest strata of the caste pyramid were the safest bet as cooks).

But the magazine did not always criticize the British Officers. It praised the dilligent efforts of Mr. Barlow, Collector of Puri who did a stupendous job during the epidemics of famine, cholera and small pox which followed one another - nature's way of population control in those days without condoms. Kudos to our forgotten heroes Gourishankar and the likes of Fakir Mohan Senapati, my mother tongue has seen this day rather than fading into oblivion.

Sona Mohapatra once again

An Odia girl Sona Mohapatra is in the news cycle for singing the famous Odia Bhajan (devotional song) "AHE NILA SAILA". Not new to controversies, it is her mispronounced Odia words from the song whose lyrics were penned by the legendary Lord Jagannath devotee BHAKTA SALABEGA has catapulted her into the center of controversy.

Not sure if she did it deliberately to gain some attention, but not surprised at her act. It is not difficult to fathom the fashionable tendency amongst the modern generation Odias to speak a twisted, acccented version of Odia - especially the girls. In nutshell it reflects their inferiority complex of being from a state of India which is feudal and amongst the bottom on social ladder.

By uttering their mother tongue in an accented manner they strive to pretend not being Odia, hoping it would promote them to identify with another race from a higher strata. What Sona Mohapatra did is symptom of a prevalent disease if unchecked can turn into an epidemic, resulting in the death and decay of one of the oldest and finest languages in the world.

I have seen interviews of Odia actors, item number dancers and wannabe artists who speak in a equitable mix of Hindi, Odia and Hindi. This disease is slightly less amongst men but first catching up - a tendency you will not find in folks from our neighboring states of Bengal and Andhra who are proud of their mother tongue and harbor no inferiority complex about speaking it.

Several Odiyas who I am certain rarely venture out of their home state are often seen talking in Hindi among themselves, even though the closest non-Odia person could be miles away. In premium hotels in Bhubaneswar waiters take orders in Hindi, fully aware of the fact that their customers are 100% pure bred Odias. I once asked a waiter the reason behind this. The man responded - AGYAAN, LOKA HINDI PASAND KARUCHANTI (Sir, folks prefer Hindi). He probably had a point. Apparently, speaking Hindi fetches more respect and possibly tips than speaking in Odia.

I am sure UTKAL GOURAB (The Pride of Odisha) Madhusudan Das who famously said "UTCHA HEBA PAI JADI KARA ASHA, UCHHA KARA AGE NIJA MATRUBHASA, "if you wish to rise then raise your own mother tongue" would be turning in his grave. Reminds me of a friend during my Engineering days who in an inebriated state used to say - HUM SUB ODIA HAIN, ODIA MAI BAAT KARNA CHAHIYE (We are Odias, we should speak in Odia).

Eminent writer Khushwant Singh was concerned that the way the new generation of Sikhs are cutting their hair and getting clean shaved, soon they will lose their identity and blend with Hindus. I am afraid we Oriyas are well on track to achieve that.

The Chhabirani incident of 1980

A plethora of news coming from my homestate of Odisha on media, social or otherwise regarding crimes against women including rapes and molestation is disgusting as well as disturbing.

Disgusting - can't think of a better word to depict these incidents. Disturbing - coming from a state where the folks are known to be laid back, docile and mostly law fearing (fear of law enforcement keep their libidos in check. Apparently, not ant more).

My first memory of such heinous crime goes back to 1980 when as a 11 year old, I was not old enough to comprehend the depth of the crime - yet old enough to recognize its evilness and impertinent to any Civil society. It was he rape and murder of Chhabirani, the wife of a journalist who went above and beyond his job to expose the nexus of a cabal of crooks of petty politicians, local officials and small time businessmen in coastal Odisha's Jagatsinghpur, then part of Cuttack district.

It was an unusual bold step for a journo from a state where his fraternity's ethics can be judged by the paens of your praise they can heap on you for a bottle of liquor. (Khushwant Singh once wrote that Indian journalists are champion consumers of alcohol as long as paid by others. Usual disclaimers apply).

The tragedy happened when chased by criminals, the journalist accompanied by his pregnant wife and child were trying to flee his village in the middle of night. The moon was pale as they tried to cross the BILUAKHAI river, one of several river distributaries criss crossing the vast Mahanadi delta.

Here is where the details get sketchy. Some say the pregnant wife along with her little kid could not cope with his faster walking husband and fell behind getting separated for ever. Another version - the man had to attend his nature's call and took time to relieve near the river bed and wash himself clean as many villagers do. He lost some valuable time only to come back and regret later. We don't know.

But what we know, the men on chase took their turns to rape Chhabirani to death along with her yet to be born child. Her semi buried body from the sands of river was later recovered. But this incident survived the sands of time to become a folklore of the area for a long time to come.

It was the age sans social media when internet and cell phones were strictly fantasy. TV was non existent. "The SAMAJA", the only widely circulated vernacular newspaper of the time with some reach to the interior parts of Odisha carried the news. The brutality of the crime against a pregnant woman raped and killed in cold blood caught the imagination of the common man of Odisha - at least in its thickly populated coastal belt.

Laxman Mullick, the contemporary MP of Jagatsinghpur was accused of shielding the perpetrators of this inexcusable act, so also his higher ups who tried their best to protect their political turf by containing the fall out of the crime. Time flew. Years later, I read the news of the berieved journalist getting remarried, leading a low profile life. Was justice ever delivered and those who commited the crime got punished ? Your guess is as good as mine.

Man is a creature of comfort

We are too much Air Conditioned to AC.
This weekend I spent couple of hours doing yardwork, addressing the root cause - uprooting the weeds from the root, root cause of the problem which stunts growth of veggie plants. The weeds, appropriately called BALUNGA is Odia (ascribes to useless, unproductive folks) are those parasitic plants growing near the productive ones, hampering their growth by sucking away nutrients maint for the fruitful ones.

Suddenly I felt the heat. Longing for the cool comfort of the Air Conditioning I ran into my home. Temperature outside was 90F (32 degree Centigrade), not too hot by Southern US standard where we are seeing the initial days of the dog days of summer.

When faced with similar situation in India during my growing up days when the outside air was hotter and more humid, I didn't run to the comfort of AC - because like most from my generation we didn't have AC in our home. Now every one has at least one wall mounted.

I never felt the heat so much even during the hottest of summers in India. Though the weather was a lot salubrious then, for me exposure to AC was limited to its cooling comfort wafting inside the Computer Lab in NIT, Rourkela during my student life. No more, no less.

A few restaurants and movie theatres had AC, but they regularly cut corners to save money by switching it off now and then. The owners cheated their customers Air Conditioning which the proprietors thought as a luxury which should be robbed off from the hapless customers.

Urbanization and rapid growth of concrete jungles has made the cities hotter than before, but over dependence on AC makes us feel and complain about the heat. As the saying goes in Odia - MANISHA SABUTHARU BADA SUBIDHA BAADI PRANI (Humans are creatures of comfort). Now that I have the comfort of AC, every now and then I look forward to it. Without it, I adjusted to environment. It yet vindicates Darwin's theory of the survivor of the fittest. Humans being intelligent animals readily adjust to the situations and cicumstances. That's why they survived, the dinosaurs, mammoths and mammoth number of animals didn't.

Same applies to most from our parent's generation who grew up in villages. After living in the cities for decades they can barely spend more than a day in their native villages which do not provide the same levels of comforts of the cities. My grandmother who lived more than half of her life without electricity was so much addicted to AC that she won't leave her room which was a cool 20 degrees cooler than the outside world. She was too tuned to AC and refused to visit her native village home in summer where she lived happily lived the better part of her life earlier in village.

During the World War II at the time of relentless Nazi Bombing on England the British Royal Air Force fought bravely against the air blitzkrieg of Germany's Luftwaffe. Winston Churchill, the then British war time Prime Minister said about the Royal Air force - "Never in the History of mankind so many were dependent on so few", a tribute to the contribution of the handful of pilots who stubbornly defended the entire English population from the Nazi onslaught.

Same can be attributed to AC - "Never in the history, so many humans were dependent on a mechanical unit". When in the summer month of July, 1902, a 25-year-old engineer from New York named Willis Carrier invented the first modern air-conditioning, little he knew his invention would be indisipansible little more than a century later.

50th Death Anniversary of Bobby Kennedy

1968 was a tumultuous year in America's history. It was the year when Civil Rights and the unpopular Vietnam war protests were at its peak. It was also the year of the Presidential elections when the incumbent President Lyndon Johnson eligible for re-election declined to do so, a rare (probably the only) instance of a sitting President not running again for another term.

It was followed by the announcement of Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, also popularly know as RFK as the Presidential candidate for the Democratic party. He was juggernauting his way through the nomination process by winning the important state of California on this day - exactly 50 years ago on 4th June 1968. His Republican opponent Nixon was all set to be the only Presidential nominee in United States history to be defeated by brothers.

But it was not to be, as cruel fate had something else in mind. No sooner he gave his victory speech at Ambassador Hotel in LA, California than he was walking through the kitchen of the hotel and shaking hands when his assassin Sirhan Sirhan pumped bullets from point blank range on Senator Kennedy as he slumped to the floor, lying in a pool of blood. Bobby Kennedy died early next morning in Hospital.

JFK, his elder brother and the president who was assasinated a few years back appointed Robert Kennedy as Attorney General. The young Bobby played a major role during his brother Kennedy's administration, especially negotiating with the Russians during the Cuban missile crisis. It is still regarded as a huge diplomatic success of John Kennedy who famously said - "We will not negotiate out of fear, but we should fear to negotiate". But lot of credit goes to his younger brother Bobby's work in the background to clinch the deal.

RFK was instrumental in evolving the Democratic party fight for the cause of the working, poorer American Middle Class who formed its base in the rust and mining belt of the Midwest until last election when they decided to switch their loyalty to Trump. The depth of Bobby's popularity could be gauged from the thousands of public who thronged the carriage on train all the way from California going through the Midwest on its way to the East coast.

Exactly 2 months before RFK's tragic assassination, on 4th April, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther king Jr, the American leader and minority civil rights crusader was shot dead as he stepped into the balcony of his Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Two eminent, charismatic persons in America of the time died in a span of just couple of months. The history of United States and the world could have been a whole lot different if these two leaders lived longer. We just passed the 50th Anniversary of the untimely deaths - their dream and legacy still lives on.

Hawaii trip 2018 - Day VI

The Kona Airport on Hawaii Big Island is uniquely distinct from the rest of the Airports I have seen in United States. Once you check in, you would think the departure lounge being a closed arena and climate controlled. I was wrong. It was under open sky from the top, with the incessant Ocean air caressing the passengers.

It makes sense in an Island where the temperature hovers around 75F (21 Centigrade) all over the year with low humidity. This is pretty much the same temperature we set our AC at home. So, why waste money and energy on running Air Conditioning when nature provides the same free of cost 24x7, 365 days a year - not to mention being environment friendly with the added bonus of a soothing, salubrious breeze.

Hawaiian Language has 5 vowels and 8 consonants. They don't have the alphabet "S", the alphabet which is the first letter of with the most words in English dictionary. All the words are constructed using these few alphabets.

During our Chilhood days there was a magazine named Competition Success Review, popularly known as CSR. It was a must read for those aspiring for Civil Services, especially from the feudal and backward states like Odisha, UP and Bihar where the craze for the Civil Services used to be the highest.

Come June, when the results of the Civil Services are announces, it is shortly followed by a special edition of the magazine with a smiling person on its cover page with the caption - "IAS topper talks you". After a few pages of interview the final answer invariably comes from the topper every year - "Credit of my success goes to Competition Success Review". I doubt the veracity of the statement, though it may not be a bad price to pay for the budding Babu to be on the cover page of a magazine. It's win win situation for both.

But the most notable feature of the interview was the answer by the topper to the question about his preparations which led him/her to the path of success. Again the invariably mundane answer was - " 2 years of wide extensive studies, followed by 1 year of selective intensive studies".

As we had a Red Eye flight to catch on our way home and an entire day to spare, a la the IAS toppers we opted to do a "selective intensive" sight seeing, which was followed yesterday's "wide extensive" sight seeing.

The icing on the cake of the selective, intense visits today was the trip to the statue of King Kamehameha of Hawaii. It was built in 1818. His dynasty ruled for centuries until the last person of the dynasty Queen Liliuokalani was exposed by US which annexed Hawaii as its 50th state in the year 1893. Thus marked the end of the great Hawaiian dynasty. It is the end of my Hawaii travelogue as well.

A la a consulting assignment and life, a vacation (holidays) has a start date and an end date. All good things in life has to end one day. Now on my way to Atlanta, a long flight back home.

Hawaii trip 2018 - Day V

It smelled sulphur all around as soon as we landed in Kona Airport on the Big Hawaii Island. The giant volcano seems to be farting a lot while shitting lava through its ash-hole.

Don't understand why they have Interstate Highways in the Islands. There is no other state which connects Hawaii group of Islands by road, California the closest state of USA is just 3000 miles away.

A unique thing about Hawaii is the difference of rainfall on parts of the island. On the Windward side where the mountains faces sea, they get no less than 150 inches of rains in a year. Travel a handful of miles on the other side of the mountains called the Leeward side, they get hardly 15 inches of annual rainfall, apparent from the cactus like vegetations in those areas.

I went to a local Wal Mart in Kona, Big Island. To my surprise, I discovered there were no plastic (polythene) bags. Lack of plastic bags and littering, coupled with strict recycling is a small step towards keeping the Islands clean - a Giant step towards Environmental friendliness.

Unlike in the crowded, commercialized Honolulu and Oahu where we took guided tours, on the Big Island we hired a rental car to explore on our own. First stop was the Black sand beach where the sand was pitch black, so dark that even mosquitoes can't see it at night. The volcanic soil has given the beach its unique hue.

We drove through miles of undulating mountain roads, surrounded by long Banana plants waving their gargantuan elephantine leaves at us. Giant mango trees provided canopy on the serpentine roads as tall, lanky coconut trees bended their backs to welcome us. A la a giraffe

dropping its head, the coconut trees were wobbling and struggling to stay steady like a drunk sailor under the influence of cool oceanic breeze. We drive by scores of ripe mangoes strewn around on the roadside, never quite imagined such a sight on American soil.

The next stop was the Volcanic National Park. No sooner we got periliously close to it, than we could sense Volcanic activities with a huge mushroom cloud of dust visible on the eastern horizon, blocking the sun, spray painting the sky in gray. The white ash could be seen sprinking the road like snow fluries in the middle of summer.

Saw bewildered black chickens running haywire and crossing the road, hoping today as our lucky day to try some volcano roasted chicken. But our luck would run out soon as blazing lights of cop and park ranger cars detoured us by with a huge digital display - PARK CLOSED DUE TO VOLCANIC ACTIVITIES.

After taking the route prescribed by the authorities, we proceeded to Akaka Falls amidst foggy mountain tracks. It was raining at the precinct of the Fall, giving our car a natural car wash, wiping off the Volcanic dust from its surface.

Now it's time to say "Au Revoir" to this Island Paradise on earth. Don't know if I will ever have a chance to visit arguably the most Isolated, inhabited and enchanting place on earth. Such chance encounters in life reminds me of a passage from our epic BHAGVAT GEETA (Hindu sacred text) as I look at the vast Pacific - Two logs floating in the middle of Ocean collide with each other to get separated forever, never to meet again. Hawaii and I could be very well be those two logs.