Burqa ban

Burqa, the face veil of the devout Muslim woman, has come under debate across the world, especially in Europe after Belgium and France banned it while other nations are expected to follow. Fifteen years ago no one questioned it, the use of burqa in public places by Muslim women; at any rate no Muslim nation ever raised a voice against it. On the contrary, its use was mandatory and enforced with efficieny. When I was in Iran in 1994, I was walking the streets of Azerbaijan with my wife. An elderly woman stopped my wife and asked her to adjust her headscarf so that it covered her hair completely. It was a helpful gesture on the part of the lady who did not want to see a foreigner getting into trouble with the clerics and probably the police?
Today I read that even Muslim nations like Syria and Egypt have banned the burqa, the former completely and the latter in select places. It surprised me, considering the inflexible nature of the Muslim idea of the propriety of a woman's dress, and the equally inflexible clerical mind in upholding it.
This issue will not stop here, for the many nations that have a sizeable Muslim population will have to confront it sooner or later. India is one such country, where it is already grappling with the idea of a Uniform Civil Code. Whatever maybe the case with a particular nation, but the idea of questioning the deep-rooted fundamental notions of a society, chalked out and maintained by men since centuries, is clearly the winner. What else is being modern?

Sent from my Nokia phone

Nature vs. mind-made

At an informal meetup whose members are grandiloquently called Immortals, I read a piece that I had blogged here. It was on rain and as a member I read it to a small gathering of about six people, both ladies and gentleman.
One of the expressions I used in my writing happened to be about a flash of lightning which I said was like a flash from a mighty camera. A member took exception and said I ought not to compare natural phenomena with man-made things, rather it is best if it were other way around. Commenting on this peculiar trait he gave an example of a computer professional who upon looking at the blue sky had compared the spectacle to the background wallpaper on a Windows desktop.
While one may lament the degrading implication of such a comparison, it is nevertheless a useful, albeit a quick and shallow device, in expressing one's feelings. For nature and its phenomena are incomparable and any attempt to describe them must necessarily run the risk of providing a subjective experience as a simile.
In one of the readings from Tagore the power of the written word came out forcefully as the poet creates a rich experience in which all the five senses were alive to participate in every nuance evoked and the feelings empathized. It was a humbling experience too.

It's raining

I love rain, especially when it comes crashing down on the rooftops and through the leaves and branches of trees. The sound of falling water, it changes in pitch, tone and volume depending on where it is falling. All that water falling and flowing in tiny streams and gathering into pools - ah, all that chatter of falling rain and gurgling water, the rising and falling tempo, its tingle on the skin and the heady smell it evokes from dry earth. It is a treat from the gods, a heavenly invite to rejoice.
Tropical rain is sudden, rushing and copious. It nourishes the earth and cools the air. It fills the ponds and lakes, and raises the water table. It washes the trees and the streets. It clears the air of pollutants. Water-washed leaves glisten in the light and in the night they reflect the street light like a thousand light bulbs. You see the trees festooned with lights. Thunder adds to the feeling of being among the primordial elements of the earth. Lightning appears like intense flashlight from a mighty camera.
Everything is wet and dripping, like the earth is ensconced within its own tears, sometimes of joy or sadness, depending on the mood of the observer. Rain is always rain, it is never good rain or bad rain, never a pouring or a trickle; it is the receiver who uses the adjectives to describe it to suit his or her mood or situation.
Thunder rumbles in the sky, like the earth that trembles under a quake. It sends currents of fear in the heart. It is the living spirit that is afraid, the fear of the elemental fury of nature, a fear as old as life itself. When lightning strikes something - a tree or a living thing - it burns, shrivels and dies. When water floods and overflows the banks, it washes away everything in its flow - humans, cattle and trees. When the wind blows with gale force, it uproots trees, razes shacks and throws everything in its path helter-skelter - be it man or beast. We call it the fury of nature, but is it? When a volcano erupts it is not the wrath of the gods, but we say it is. Fear has its own vocabulary. Nature sustains itself in myriad ways; rain or sunshine, flood or drought, quake or volcano, it is nature living, breathing in and breathing out life.

Father's Bio

I have been busy working on gathering the details of my father's early life, before he got married to my mother, even before he left his family home to become a journalist.
It is quite a job to dig out the past from those who lived through it. Depending on the subject they either express freely or guardedly. In any case they usually tend to digress when they talk about the past. It is difficult to bring them back on track once they go off at a tangent. Under pressure, they do return to the topic, albeit reluctantly, for they have been interrupted in their free flow of memory.
It is surprising to note how much of a man's life is a history of his time. It becomes doubly interesting when the man had spent a considerable part of his life in shaping the events now considered part of history.
Indeed, history is man's collective story. Every one of us leaves a little history behind which posterity will either love to cherish or hasten to bury. History though is unburiable and surfaces time and again in the pages of a historian or a sensitive writer.
I find the work of digging into my father's life quite interesting, even fascinating at times. I have collected scores of photographs and anecdotes. There is a lot of work to do and the job remains unfinished until the man lives again through the pages of the written word.
I have started putting together some random notes and scanned photographs. I have begun to blog at bjbnr.blogspot.com where I am attempting biographical sketches using the information I am gathering from time to time.