Time, History and Fact - reflections on race

Those who argue that race is a construction, a fiction made up by regressive and prejudiced people are perhaps making a mistake similar to those these criticize. Racial profiling is something we all do often. Within India we recognize people as south-Indian or North-Indian also as racial profiling. When we go to a foreign country and feel lonely we seek to talk to those from our land and we seek them in public spaces through racial features. When we see a sportsperson or an actor we like, we look and try to guess where they must be from. Thus racial profiling exists, not only in negative contexts but in all kinds of positive ones. Of course such profiling stems from stereotyping and patterns we are used to and our guesses are right perhaps only 7 out of 10 times. Those who live in western countries where people from all parts of the world have been coming to settle, and have now lived there for 2-4 generations, have become more sensitive to the fact that it is hard to pinpoint people's 'origins'. There are many with mixed race backgrounds.

In a country like India, such mixing occurred at earlier points in history. In a country like America we see it occurring in these past decades with immigration. So, in India we see diversity but never really think of it as racial difference, because culturally we became enmeshed over the centuries. In America the differences remain sharp and will change over a few more generations.

Liberals are of course right to pin-point that all societies are and have always been mixing. It is true. Waves of migrations and intermixings have been occurring throughout history because of good and bad forces – war, love, travel, exploration, climatic distress, commerce and power-alliances. That reality does not undo the fact that race is encountered experientially. Even though Indians are a heady mix of various races and populations, differences of features and traits are still very visible. Recent studies of genetics show that some communities here, owing to marriage rules of  caste or tribe have actually maintained genetic purity for more than 2000 years, even while many other groups, including those who think they are very caste-pure are much more mixed than they imagine. Genes are also not the only factor, as diet and environment are equally relevant in shaping communities.

So both racial patterns and racial mixing are our heritage. If we look far enough at most races their apparently fixed identity itself emerges as a result of some previous mixings. There is a tendency to see social histories as different and opposite from race and genes, which are considered more fixed and scientific. But after all isn’t a gene or race itself simply the congealed form of social history? If a people live together with common memories, customs, diet and climate and they continue to marry within themselves, racial and genetic types will accentuate. If they scatter then these will dilute. And both these things have occurred throughout human history. Some racial factors are deeper and long lasting, many others are more malleable. Some can shift in even one lifetime and other can take 10 generations. These patterns of history and nature are visible on our bodies and faces. They can even help predict disease patterns in population groups. And yet most of the time they are nothing more than the accumulation of repeated historical acts and habits. The gene patterns that affect a population today may not have the same effect 5-10 generations later, if their people migrate and mix with others.

The forces of both preservation and change constantly operate in the world and subconsciously affect the way humans think and feel. The longings of love, travel and exploration have been as strong as the longings to maintain order, community and continuity. Perhaps together they make a world that is both balanced and also exciting and ever new. Liberals want to prove that the differences between humanity are the fiction of conservatives, so they keep trying to prove that race does not exist (to be fair what they are often trying to do is puncture narrow-minded studies on race). Conservatives always feel that liberals consider no traditions holy and and insist on the continuity of group identity. Their anxieties sometimes come from egoistic needs to maintain social dominance and at other times express more understandable fears in the face of loss and change. The subconscious minds of communities fear that too much mixing will obliterate their uniqueness and their group identity. So they can even go as far as to perform honor killings to prevent such change. Perhaps this is why there are Romeo-Juliet and Heer-Ranjha-like tragic stories in all feudal societies, where the intense pull of love and its inevitable failure both exist.

This much is now clear that there are vast mixings throughout our history and yet also there are racial continuities. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves do we need to prove that race does not exist, in order to be kind and just people? Does this mean that if science proved beyond doubt that race exists, we  would somehow get a license to oppress or exterminate some people? Also if we can see that race itself, is not something eternal, but a product of long-term history, then it is something that is always being made and unmade, ever so slowly. Meanwhile, justice and open-mindedness can very well flower alongside.

Wisdom that pervades life

In this country, and perhaps in other places in the world too, there is a deep hunger in the common women and men for true spiritual knowledge. When we interact with people at this level, we find that many common people, have uncommon intelligence. Those who would fail at school and have been considered dim-witted in terms of many knowledges, will display an ability to grasp the most subtle of cosmic truths.

In most cases people’s words are misleading. They can make you believe that there is such shallow understanding. It is the nature of the mind perhaps to repeat words, intelligent sounding words that have been learnt over the years. Good words and speeches, idioms and axioms, quotations from religious texts of popular mythologies, accepted academic wisdoms. But this is the mere surface. While our lower and ordinary natures are wont to conform and seek security in familiar concepts, there is another side to us which is hungry for and instantly recognizes the living and everlasting truth, when it is communicated to them. This is why perhaps at least in the Asians worlds it is the ordinary people that have continued to cherish and nourish holy people, whether these holy people are garbed in ascetic clothing or simply live among us as ordinary folk.

It is sad really that those who consider themselves wise and rational and wish to rid the common people of their superstitions, are really unable to perceive this ocean of intelligence that lies in the hearts of a people. It teaches them to doubt their intuitive relation with truth and see everything in terms of loss and gain, power and defeat, rights and stances. Even the most evolved of concepts is but a blip before the experience of the ever-flowing river of truth. Concepts about social equality, justice and freedom are great historical achievements, but without a relationship with the ever present ocean of continuity and totality, they will foster only a continuous restlessness, a disconnect from others but also more primarily a disconnect with one’s most important and deeper needs. They will paint everything in the light of struggle and protest.

The re-turn to religion and faith is a great achievement in the world today, and if perceived in the right  and open-minded light it is not antagonistic to equality and freedom, it is in fact their natural evolution.

Some queer love songs...

I saw #Arthur Bressen's 1977 documentary #GayUSA on mubi.com. It is such a beautifully crafted film. Perhaps the only documentary I have watched twice! What brought me there the second time was the songs. 

I tried to look for their words online but couldn't find them. I did find a list of their names on a site dedicated to the music in Bressen's films. (queer music heritage dot com). 

Then I decided to hear and copy out the words. I wonder if sharing them here will violate copyright? I'll put a few nuggets. Even though they are about gay love, they speak to just any heart. And hey are sung in a lilting and natural style. 

(I think this one is 'Glad to be loving you')

    When I look into your eyes

    I see the whispers and the cries

    I see the silence 

    You're a woman... I am too 

    No longer scared to tell you

    I love you 

    Though those moments we're apart 

    seemed so long 

    the love we shared with each other 

    kept getting strong...er

    now we speak more openly 

    dropping inhibitions isn't easy 

    born with so much deep inside 

    its hard to know who we can confide ... in 

......... 

An Almost-Vegan who also eats ‘Non-Veg’?: Diets beyond definition

 

(wrote this article initially sometime in 2015-16, at the height of tensions about vegetarian and non-vegetarian messes in the IITs.)

A hard to define diet

I have trouble digesting Lactose. So I do not drink milk except in small measures in tea. I eat curd and cheese only sometimes. I do eat ghee in decent amounts, as my main source of ‘good fat’. My home is a vegetarian one, and I have grown as such. As with many Hindus of vegetarian families/castes, I did not know much about ‘non-vegetarian’ foods till I was in school. But since then, as I entered college life, owing to my love for trying cuisines, of relating with the different states of my country and feeling closer to the lives of my friends who now came from various parts of India, I have eaten and still occasionally do eat ‘non-vegetarian’ food – fermented fish paste called Ngari from Manipur, Calamari or lamb starters in a pub, Beef recipes of Kerala, or even the slow cooked meatballs from Kashmir have all been on my occasional list. To top this confused list, I did grow up eating and loving egg but after a bout of jaundice, I have become allergic to it. So in recent years it has been no to eggs but yes to a rare tandoori chicken. Most confusing.

So when people ask me if I am vegetarian or non-vegetarian, I have to stop myself from launching into a long thesis for explanation. I guess, functionally I am on most days a vegetarian who has less dairy products. An oddity; an almost vegan, who sometimes eats some meat.

An eclectic morality

These are of course my personal dilemmas, yet I feel that there are insights here that are worth sharing. They point to the fact that macro debates about diets and morality do not always do justice to the unique biographies of people. This combination of diet that I have developed over the years is not completely random. It emerged as an evolving understanding of what works for my body and my values. I think my diet has a peculiar morality of its own. I do think about both environmental and nutritional concerns too. Totally unrelated to the veg-non-veg maha-debate in India, I try as much as possible not to buy packaged biscuits and chips, though I am very fond of them. Fresh stuff from a bakery or a ‘Hot Chips’ stall, in a paper bag is preferable. I control how much I order food online, as I dislike the use of plastics in packaging and the fact that some poor soul is zipping through traffic and pollution to fetch me my meal. I prefer - especially since I have matured in age - to either eat at home or myself step out to eat. Here too, whenever possible I love to patronize clean but common-man friendly dhabas, perhaps due to my limited pocket but also because they feel good. Surely gourmet cuisine or visits to capitalist Starbucks also happen. But I keep it in check.

Daily Musings...

 

Daily notes on things I see, read or reflect on... ongoing understandings

Avoid the bandwagons

I recently came across some information which indicated that modern poultry farming techniques, which ensured high quality egg production, rearing of hens so that they produce more eggs, all this was supported and encouraged in India by the Peace Corps, an American social service organization which combined bringing Christian values and modern development to the 'less fortunate' world. It also believed it was fighting world hunger by improving the amount and quality of protein nutrition in developing countries.

Following these interventions the modern poultry farms grew in India and slowly become more mechanized, organized and high producing, so that by today only 20% of India's eggs are produced on local farms, and the rest 80% on factory farms. Indian governments too, encouraged by the global wisdom about protein and health, advertised to their populations that eating an egg a day will keep them healthy. The acceptance was so effective that even a number Hindu vegetarian families would feel their young children eggs, as it was deemed necessary for growth.

Surely the peace corps are not entirely responsible for introducing the modern poultry industry in India but they were surely significant. Their strongest presence was in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh I think , states that to this day are high egg producers. Today India is the third largest egg producer in the world, after China and America (i gather, from a video on veganism). 

Today, again from the West a new wave has come to India. Animal Rights groups, both Indian and Western, show us the terrible conditions of egg-farms. Terrible they surely are. They are now educating us of other vegan sources of protein. They are telling us that modern animal factory farming, create large amounts of green house gases and obviously are cruel to animals. They also tell us how especially the large scale farming of cattle, requires much production of fodder for them to eat, which uses land, which eventually exacerbated world hunger. So we are being urged to go vegan, to use other sources of protein, to contribute in solving world hunger and reducing climate change, poultry farms are being urged to stop using battery-cages to keep hens. 

I do not mean to say that vegan advocacy is wrong. Or simply that it is just a western ploy to fool us. Much of what vegans say does seem to make sense. in particular their description of the suffering of animals in egg and milk industries makes a strong impression on me. 

Yet, I find it disconcerting that entire countries and populations are routinely taken on one ride and then another ride, driven by mandates that some people have decided are wise. India of course used and abused animals in its own way, as did other cultures. Yet most of the time keeping a few cows in one's house or a few chickens or pigs or goats, was always way less cruel than what modern factory farms are doing today. We went through such a large shift, only to now stop and decide to change our ways. 

The lesson for me really is, live simply and non-violently, and avoid jumping on bandwagons of any kind!

Encounters between Scandinavian Missionaries and Santhali tribes in 1867-1900

While on academia.com, I came across a book review about a book on missionaries from Norway who worked among Santhali communities during the time of the British rule. This note is not related to the genuine and controversial debates about conversion activities among tribal groups. It makes some other observations. 

The book (of which the review was) had noted that the attitude of these missionaries to the tribal person was different from the usual style displayed by missionarie from lets say UK or Germany. Norway, their country of origin and also the Santhal land had both been exposed to modern technology and to trains at around the same time. A sense of Santhali identity and nationhood was growing among the tribal people and it was similarly found in Norway. Norway had till very recently had strong pagan traditions of Viking Gods and their memories were still strong even among the Christian missionaries. For example, they found similarities between the chief Santal boga (spirit) Maran Buru with the Scandinavian shape-shifting God, Loki (we all know that God, don't we!). 

Pagan faiths in both Norway and Santhal culture

So, the book had observed - that the missionaries who had themselves left these pagan faiths and been attracted to Christianity did not see Indian lives as 'civilized Europeans making sense of savage people', as was common perhaps among missionaries from some other countries. Instead, they were 'confronted with their own sinful past'. Possibly Irish missionaries would also have been different, as their local histories had also gone through processes of suppression by mainstream Britain. 

The colonizing West had its own suppressed histories

I found this example so fascinating because you can see the tragedy of it so starkly. That even the West had a non-Christian past, which it came to reject. Of course some years later, these old histories began to to revived and they never really left, as we see with the fascination for the history of Scotland and Ireland. Yet the British were going all over the world trying to reform other people. Also, it is an interesting instance to the see the variations within Europe and how all colonizer-colonized encounters in India were not the same. 

(These ideas are cited from a book review of 'An encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries and their changing worlds 1867-1900, by Marine Carrin and Harald Tambs-Lyche, in 2008)

**************************

Veganism isn't about eating natural 

These days we read and hear about various new approaches to diet. There is the organic movement, a growing preference towards eating traditional and indigenous diets, and growing without pesticides and fertilizers, there is the Keto diet which is about having more protein and fat and less carbs to reduce weight. There is veganism that encourages people to give up eating meat as well as dairy products. 

Veganism's main concern is to stop cruelty to animals

One cannot be blamed for assuming that veganism's push towards eating a 'plant-based diet' must be all about eating natural. However that is hardly the interest of Veganism. In fact it can be quite comfortable not eating natural as well. Their main goals are two - that we avoid any form of cruelty to animals and that we eat and consume in a manner that reduces the rapid effects of climate change. Data has shown over the years that both the large scale meat and dairy industries operate in a manner that generates huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. A significant percentage of farmed land includes that which produces animal feed to cater to these animals - cattle and poultry mostly. Also vast amounts of water is consumed.  It is believed that the reducing the scale of this industry will have direct benefits for climate change and resources conservation. 

Even more urgently vegan activists would like to tell us all that animals undergo immense violence and very reduced and poor lifetimes within factory farms. These farms are nothing compared to a romantic vision we have of farming and animal care during the medieval age. The forces of mass production are such. To make milk and meat freely and continuously available for a large consumption market - not only individual households but restaurants and fast food chains - the mistreatment of animals is unavoidable. These animals are routinely separated from their mothers, denied their milk. Male calves and chicks little use except as meat. The conditions even of those who live, are quite horrible. The lifespans of cows that have to be made pregnant repeatedly reduces by almost 1/3rd. 

If meat is grown in a lab, its ok

So these are really the concerns of veganism. In an environment where many people are realizing that plant-based diets, at least predominantly plant-based diets are healthier options in the sedentary lives of al least privileged classes, veganism also chooses to speak for vegetarian diets. However this goal is what we discussed above. Vegan experts tell us that a plant and nut based diet is actually sufficient source for protein and calcium. If at all we have deficiencies of vitamin D or B12, the two things that dairy and meat alone are believed to provide, these they say can be had in the form of supplements. There is a growing vegan business worldwide of producing either clean meat - which is basically meat cultured and grow in a lab, or plant-based meat, foods made from plant-based protein sources. Various small additives from various plants are added to it, in order to create items that look, smell and even taste like meat, but are sourced from plants. 

A blurring of boundary between natural and synthetic

In a world today when both a human muscle and a chicken muscle can be cultured and grown in a laboratory we can see that the category of natural itself is not what it used to be. Additionally today nutritional and biochemical sciences have broken down nutritional components and flavour and taste elements into much more fundamental parts. so plant-based meat uses small and selective extracts from yeast, olive oil, coconut, beetroot, various concentrates, mineral and vitamin compounds and what not to bring together that meat-like experience in a food that has not animal meat in it. 

So natural food too can potentially be perceived as a sum of its many chemical and biochemical parts, in a way that blurs distinctions between chemical, synthetic, natural and artificial. It was perhaps to be expected. Whether it is the process of replacing fertilisers and chemicals with natural alternatives or attempts to integrate traditional medicine into modern biomedicine, we find similar shifts. The natural is studied with greater and greater scrutiny, at molecular, chemical and microscopic levels in order to increase its efficient understanding and use. 

If one speculates, in a certain extreme case Veganism would even be ok with growing vegetables indoors in nutrient rich water - another new and growing field in agricultural 'sciences'. So if some years hence, we feel that Earth has had it, lets go and colonise Mars, then could we even go and colonize this new planet and grow vegetables in such water and live non-cruelly? Maybe i'm taking it too far. After all the need to save animals and the climate is for the purpose of our lives, here and now. Yet, it is worthy observation because today with new simultaneous explorations in various sciences, veganism could as easily map on to synthetic mass food production as it could we moving towards healthier and natural diets. Vegans for instance would not necessarily be against GM foods and seeds. 

Sustainable Agriculture and livelihoods

Veganism of course has many faces and levels. Those who are most passionate about animal rights alone, are at one end. There are other who may prefer to reduce factory level meat consumption and are  also interested in healthy diets. Many environmentalist in India have somewhat divergent interests. They are more focused on sustainable agriculture - for instance the use of local and hardy seed varieties that need less water and also free farmers from dependence and debt under the forces of multinational seed companies. This is a very different kind of focus. Here again the main concern may not be about eating natural, unprocessed foods, but at the core lies the idea of economic self-sufficiency and ecological security. 

So where is Health actually?

Health in all this seems to occupy an interesting space of convergence. 

spiritual too. 

A world without domestic animals?

Spirit of the Kikar Trees

I decided then and there that I would go and visit the Mangar Bani. 

Mangar Bani is among the few remaining pristine forest areas left in the Aravali hill ranges around Delhi and Haryana, in the misst of which the Delhi-Faridabad-Gurgaon highways also run. It is also a sacred grove and a Paleolithic archeological site, that has remained relatively untouched over the years. Villages do exist close to this eco-sensitive area. Despite its sensitive and important significance, governments in the past have not done enough to protect it. As it fell under the villages' jurisdictions, as common land or Panchayat land, the locals took some care till some decades ago, but slowly with increasing commercial activity, the area began to get affected. Environmentalists who are trying to protect the Aravalis from illegal or even legal mining, various forms of development and dangers have been concerned about it. 

I knew nothing about this place till very recently. Why suddenly then did I become interested in this place? Mangar Bani entered my imagination in the past weeks because of various things that occurred around me.

Painful romance with Sociology

An old Piece from 2007. 

Sociology...

The past 6 months have messed up my brain. literally. the only time I can think clearly is when I'm not really thinking. and the rest of the time I'm reading laborious writings in which some other very thinking people are thinking. And I used to think I was a thinking person. Now I no more know what I think.

Welcome to my life-world (a sociological term) of a masters in sociology.

I have wanted to write my first blog entry for so long, but my brain has been too cluttered. So without putting all that down, I really cannot move forward. To throw it all out is my intention, but that may not be the end I reach. For as sociology teaches us (oh for christ's sake!) life hardly works by a means and ends logic, and a lot of sociology is the study of the unintended consequence [Hence perhaps ur Chattis ka aankda with the model -loving economics dept!!!].

The original beauty of sociology is undeniable. You see so much of your own thinking, existence, mundane and special activity in such novel ways. Also gratifying in many ways is to see theorists talking of things you have observed from time to time.

But then the texts!

From Taking Stances to Real Understanding

What years of knowledge about the rights of gay, lesbian or trasngender people could not do for me in terms of creating a transformation in attitude, was achieved by watching gay and LGBTQ romance shows. I was never someone who was opposed to ‘alternative sexualities’, but I always thought of their issues in terms of rights and in terms of sex. Gay relations for instance were always imagined understood in terms of – they are attracted to the same gender. I didn't always relate to it, I even sometimes found it odd, unrelatable. I could only say that well, there are different kinds of people, different realities and people have a right to be who they are. So standing for a gay person for instance, involved ‘taking a stance’. However after watching male love stories, there was not even any need to take a stance. my understanding extended from a sexual orientation definition, to romance, feelings, flirting, heartbreaks, loneliness, acceptance by family, aspirations for one’s own family and so on. The naturalness with which I felt an understanding was of another level. Somehow never having had a close gay friend I never accessed these things earlier.

Dan Levy the man who co-scripted the series Schitt’s Creek with his father, said something like this about his show. I wanted to create a world wherein everyone felt safe and had respect and place in that town in which the tale was told. He plays a gay character and a romantic relationship is also portrayed in the show. No one in that show is fighting for the right to be gay, the family, the neighbourhood are all at ease with it, other men are not uncomfortable around him and so on. This may be somewhat idealistic, but I feel that by writing and creating films or shows in this manner, we make it possible to imagine that what we think are really big issues or will make us awkward actually may not be so, or could easily be worked out. On the other hand, a narrative that is mostly about rights and struggle, creates two parties pitted against each other – obscuring the fact of how we live in shared worlds. The very structure of this narrative, compels each group in a sort of automated way – to stick to its guns.

I don’t mean that stories of struggle and rights are not important. Times matter too. In the 70s and 80s public content that was even sympathetic to gay or queer people focused more on their struggles, the prejudice and violence against them. And of course this was a reality. It still is, though perhaps a little less. It is probably the natural evolution of a social movement and its narrative to reach such a stage today, when rather than only fighting for space, stories are more and more about imagining coming out to one’s family, teenage love, romance, marriage or families for LGBTQ people.

Anyhow, this experience for me was a learning one. Very quickly we get into debates, we stand for or against issues. But such a support is in the shape of concepts, ideas. There is another joy in actually coming upon a lived reality of another, such that a ‘stance’ shifts to an ‘understanding’ or as something relatable. To take a different example, rather than simply saying that Pakistan too is a country with its own people and culture and is not simply a hub of terrorists, that we ought to be more understanding, watching a show such as Zindagi Gulzaar Hai, could make it immediately relevant to an Indian. College life, youth, family troubles, fashion, gender struggles, dating etc. all come alive in this show and make an obscured neighbor a little more relatable.

Shakeel Badayuni.. A time.. A mood

  Today I played my Mughal-e-Azam music cassette. I have until now managed to continue the playing of some cassettes (that are still working) on my philips cassette player 

Mughal-e-Azam's music is absolutely divine. Classical, Filmy, emotional, kathak thumris, Shayarana... Pardah nahin jabkoi khuda se, bandon se pardah karna kya... gets to me each time. I just started looking up Shakeel Badayuni's life story on wikipedia (yes that has become the first stop these days.. hopefully not always the last). he is the lyricist of the songs of this film. What a life this man had. what a beautiful contribution to life, to India, to music and emotion. 

I read that he had been given an education in the usual persian, arabic, urdu and hindi at home, as was common in many muslim homes. Really an education in the languages and literature in a home-based scenario with a strict but concerned teacher, is probably the most beautiful thing of the pre-modern era... a sort of intellectual luxury.  

Badayuni did not display an early bent towards poetry at a young age but when he went to study at Aligarh Muslim university he started taking part in inter-college mushairas and it turned out he was quite good at them. Imagine that these beautiful things used to happen in some of top universities... The wikipedia piece mentions that in those days (which is the 1930s and 40s, a period of nationalist ferment and also modern religious reform) shayars often used poetry to comment on the downtrodden sections of society and the betterment of all. Badayuni however was more inclined to romantic and heartfelt writing. Often we who have grown up later, think that shayari was only about weak emotion, soppy romanticism. we forget that it has had many other sides too. Even romance ought not to be taken lightly. Romance is after all about our highest ideals, our visions of the ideal life, not only for ourselves but our country, our world, the betterment of humanity. I recall that many a time my romantic visions involved meeting someone whom i loved and how we both would maybe set up a school, or open an organic farm, or set up and organise waste management and composting or some such crazy idea. change things, help people. my romance was always tied to some such activity as well. So romance is tied with idealism. In pride and prejudice romance was tied deeply with the question of how a man and women ought to treat each other and respect each other's intellect. for its time it was important idealism. 

The shayars at our universities were expressing their concerns about equality and social reform through their poetry... and no poetry is complete without the edge and black humor about the realities of life. Badayuni grew in such an age. I feel that at that time soooo many beautiful, unforgettable musicians, lyricists and screenplay writers emerged in India... many but surely not all of them muslims. They expressed not only a 'muslim' sensibility but the very poetry that india was at that time. 

What drove them? I feel that sometimes it happens this way... somewhere deep down the consciousness of a people living in a certain time is aware that the times they are living in are crucial, that they will never return, they will be gone forever. The ganga jumna sanskriti, the confluence of Indic, Hindu, Muslim and sikh sensibilities in northern India, were dying out in these years as independent India was marching ahead. So such people knew, without knowing, that they must pour out their entire creativity, their nostalgia, their entire knowledge because even poetry is knowledge - a model of relating with interiority. So they sang, and wrote and made stories which channelled the very mood and warp and woof of their times. These expressions carry an entire 'dharohar' (heritage) of a certain kind of personhood. funnily it emerges as its brightest just before it is going to be overrun... and then the memories drive the next generations... teaching them important tales, built on their own very bonfire.