March 8, 2012
I have been thinking and reading about the clustering of all the goddess temple related festivals around this time of the year in Kerala when I realized that International Women's Day is celebrated today. Though a day with socialist party origins and capitalist mass marketing hijacking happening only in the last couple of years, I will count it as yet another feminine celebration occuring in early spring.
The clean up operation after the world's largest congregation of women, the Attukal Pongala, that happened in the city yesterday took less than 8 hours. The efficiency with which cars, autorickshaws, buses and trains got the 3.5 million women back home was more than impressive. Newspapers today carried supplements with photographs of the event. A young English lady in red churidar making her first pongala. Few women from Azerbaijan who committed the faux pas of trying to eat the pongal before it was officially blessed by the sprinkler priest. Actresses who realized a little too late that mascara was a bad idea when one is going to stand next to a hearth for four hours.
Though the theme of this year's women's day was empowering women to remove hunger and poverty, the newspaper thought the glamorous women currently in demand in show biz are the best reps of the female sex in this society. Words of wisdom from them in print. Mostly repetition of the cliches that we have heard ad nauseum in beauty pageants. Disappointing to say the least. Interviews with the several dozen lady police officers who managed the crowds yesterday or the scores of women who cleaned up the city in a matter of hours after the festival would have made much more sense.
Even if they wanted to stick to perpetrating the nonsense idea that only show business women matter, interviews with Mallika and Iniya who were part of movies that won National Awards announced yesterday would have been better. "Josco Jewelers" with their diamond and gold jewelry half page ads clearly missed the memo about this year's theme. For the time being, it looks like "empowering" women means making them 'fair & lovely' and obsessed with gold, silk and social approval!
Legendary music director, Bombay Ravi, passed away. Though he started off in Hindi cinema, he gave nearly a hundred evergreen songs to Malayalam film industry. His brilliant works in Kalyani and Mohana ragams in timeless movies like Panchagni, Vaishali, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, Sargam, Sukrutham etc will remain close to Malayalee hearts as long as the language survives.
Checked out the disaster management exhibition called "Surakshayaanam" at Kanakakunnu palace grounds in the evening. Not much of a crowd. Irrigation department has a miniature of the Mullaperiyar-Idukki dam area. Kerala Police and Fire force have booths along with a few private agencies. WWF has gorgeous black and white posters but the info sheets on the common birds and butterflies of Kerala are a tad expensive at Rs. 10. I had no idea that the frequent blue visitor to our garden is called Blue Mormon in English and Krishna Shalabham in Malayalam. With 16,008 wives Krishna was more than a Mormon!
ISRO's display had the replicas of the three launch vehicles and no mention of the entertaining directorial mudslinging that is going on at the top of the organization. I guess there will be another exhibition for PR disaster management.
The huge dome that took Bengali and Bihari laborers nearly a week to construct has been painted to resemble a globe. It is bone chillingly airconditioned inside and a huge LCD screen shows a movie on disasters and their management with a few light and sound effects. Big waste of money.
On an open forum stage, perhaps because it is women's day, an all women 'the view' type panel discussing local disaster management. As I walked into her audible range, the speaker was forcefully making a point, "We have to live here. We can't go to Australia. They will burn us alive there because we are Indians!" Such disastrous stupidity! I moved on quickly before hearing her delusion about what happens in America.
This afternoon, three girls, in their early twenties, were having a passionate discussion about their recently concluded exam outside a professor's house in our colony. Snatches of the conversation as I walked past them.
"...enikku oru napathu kittiya, ninakku enthayalum oru ezhupatho enpatho kittum..." (If I get 40, then you will surely get 70 or 80)
"oh...ninakku enne patti enthoru confidence" (Oh you are so confident about me!)
"edei...nee ee victorian okke padichittale poyathu...athukondu ninakku ezhuthan patti....njan ente thanne kore victorian angu srishthichu vittu" (You went after studying about all this Victorian..so you could write the answers...I had to imagine my own Victorian era since I hadn't studied)
I presume that it was a history exam. More power to the queens of imagination!
Though it has nothing to do with the women's day, Oliver, the Maltese boy pup is getting neutered in Pearland today. Sometimes I think animals like him are lucky to go through neutering and castration and lose their balls and natural instincts in one shot than in a slow, couple of decades long education process as in the case of the socialized human male.
Gorgeous full moon through the silhouettes of coconut tree tops tonight. Venus and Jupiter have been sparkling in the sky for a few nights now. Mars is closest to earth. On top of all this, the sun has let out two massive storms that will hit us tomorrow.Beware of the ides of March, I suppose!
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