"If 70% don’t speak Hindi as their mother tongue, the question of Hindi becoming the official language or the national language of India doesn’t arise" 💜💜💜

On Prof. Ganesh N Devy | In today’s Times of India

#newspaperinlearning

So happy to see Prof. G N. Devy’s interview featured in today’s Times of India, where he emphasises on the need for preserving India’s multilingual character.

But first… Who is this 75-year old Ganesh N Devy? And what are his unique achievements?

Well, G N Devy is a Professor of English who had left his illustrious academic career in Gujarat, for the noble cause of supporting and preserving the diverse cultures and languages of the innumerable indigenous communities of India.

He is an illustrious academic who took upon himself the noble task of doing a nation-wide survey of Indian languages - to identify, document and understand them; especially languages of fragile communities such as nomadic, coastal, island, hill and forest communities.

The Reason?

The previous linguistic survey of the languages of India was done almost a century ago, in British India, that is quite outdated by today’s standards. The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) was a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, conducted between 1894 and 1928.

This monumental ‘British India’ project was the first systematic linguistic survey of the region and was spearheaded by George Abraham Grierson, an Irish linguist and member of the Indian Civil Service).

The survey described 733 languages and dialects. Grierson employed school teachers for much of the data collection, and the absence of trained linguists did lead to several deficiencies in the survey.

During the Post-Independence period, the Government of India initiated two similar surveys, which are yet to be completed.

That’s hence G. N. Devy took it upon himself to bridge the missing gap, and undertook this massive survey, carried out by scholars, writers and activists in partnership with members of different speech communities.

Times of India, 11 May 2025 | Chennai Edition

To this end, he had founded the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), a massive project, which involved around 3,000 volunteers to survey and document all the living languages of India, thereby documenting 780 languages. A survey that resulted in 50 multilingual volumes.

Coming back –

He is an influential literary critic, who works with DNT communities, leading to the creation of the DNT-Rights Action Group.

A voracious writer who has written and edited around ninety books in multiple languages (English, Marathi, and Gujarati) covering literary criticism, anthropology, education, linguistics, and philosophy. His notable books include After Amnesia (1992), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award, Of Many Heroes (1997), A Nomad Called Thief (2006), and The Crisis Within (2017).

A passionate linguaphile, known for his extensive work in language preservation and advocacy for marginalized communities in India.

An accomplished academician, who founded the Adivasi Academy, in Tejgadh, Gujarat, to support and preserve the cultures and languages of Adivasi (indigenous) communities.

A veteran linguist who established the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, in Baroda to focus on linguistic research and publication.

An organic intellectual, in the Gramscian sense, who is also the Founder of the Dakshinayan Movement - A movement of artists, writers, and intellectuals, founded in response to growing intolerance.

A Padma Shri awardee, and a recipient of numerous other awards including the Linguapax Prize (2011), the Prince Claus Award (2003), and the SAARC Literary Award (2001).

A grassroots activist, whose work bridges academic scholarship and grassroots activism, focusing on linguistic diversity, the rights of marginalized communities, and cultural preservation in India.

[On an aside, doubly happy to note that Professor G. N. Devy was with us in the Department of English to give the TG Narayan Endowment lecture, 12 years ago, on 16th December 2013. You may want to read on that, on our past post HERE.]

G N Devy releasing the sixth issue of Eclectic Representations in MCC

Hence, so happy to see G. N. Devy’s interview featured in today’s Times of India, where he emphasises on the need for preserving India’s multilingual character.

In a candid chat with Kamini Mathai, Ganesh N Devy opens up on epistemic shifts, and the future of language in the AI Age, in today’s Sunday Edition of Times of India.

It is in India’s multilingual character that Indianness can be located, says Devy.

Kamini: There has been a pushback against the three-language policy from some states. As a linguist, what are your views on it?

It is good as a normative policy. However, imposing it on all language groups in India is a bad idea as it forces people to study languages that are not in their linguistic family.

Hindi belongs to the Indo-Aryan family, making it easier for Punjabi speakers to learn but harder for those speaking Dravidian languages such as Kannada or Tamil.

Never in our long history have we had any single pan-Indian national language. India has always been multilingual, and it is in its multilingual character that Indianness can be located.

How did Hindi come to be seen as a ‘unifying’ language?

Hindi was the colonial choice as the number of kingdoms under British rule was much larger in the Hindi-speaking area. So, it became an important language ‘functionally’ speaking until the 19th century, as English was not universally understood by princes.

Post Independence, the Constituent Assembly decided there would be no single national language, but Hindi or English could be used for inter-state communication for 15 years.

Though Hindi was expected to replace English, it could not as it lacks the vocabulary for full administrative or legal use. In fact, no Indian language has the capacity to replace English as the medium of communication.

You contest the numbers that show a growth in Hindi speakers. Why is that?

Because Hindi was expected to replace other languages, it became necessary for the Union govt to show that there is constant growth in the language.

During the 2011 census, which was the last census done and for which data was released only in 2018, the citizens of India provided 19,569 names of mother tongues.

Of these, close to 17,000 were outright rejected and another 1,474 dumped because not enough scholarly corroboration for them exists. Only 1,369 — roughly 6% — were grouped together under 121 labels and presented to the country as languages. Of these, 22 are called the scheduled languages.

Was the elimination of mother tongues done on a scientific basis?

The architecture of the census has its foundation in the principle of exclusion. To use a term from medical science, this act amounts to imposing an involuntary aphasia on citizens.

In this instance, the numbers on whom it is imposed run into crores. The logic was that a language deserving respectability should not have less than 10,000 speakers. On no scientific grounds, a fair decision, but the practice continues.

Most languages I encountered during my linguistic survey had no written form, relying on oral traditions.

The Gondhali community in Maharashtra, for instance, ‘wrote’ in the air — one person moved their arms to convey sentences, and the other understood. This invisible script has been passed down for generations.

When you start looking closely, you will also find that most of the language groupings in the census are forced.

How has this helped Hindi ‘grow’?

In 1971, 20 crore of India’s 54-crore population were listed as Hindi speakers. By 2011, that number jumped to 52 crore, with the proportion rising from 36.9% to 43.6%.

The data for Hindi has been bolstered by adding the speakers of nearly 50 other languages. This includes Bhojpuri — claimed as mother tongue by five crore speakers, and with its own cinema, theatre and literature — as well as languages in Rajasthan, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Bihar claimed by six crore people.

Even a language in Maharashtra called Pawari is listed under Hindi. Its speakers do not understand Hindi well, and Hindi speakers do not understand Pawari either.

If we were to remove these languages that are forced to sit uncomfortably with Hindi, only 32% would speak Hindi as their mother tongue.

If 70% don’t speak Hindi as their mother tongue, the question of Hindi becoming the official language or the national language of India doesn’t arise. India has no national language — only official ones.

What is the future of language in the AI age?

Nearly 75% of the world’s natural languages are in decline or nearing extinction. Globalisation, with its push for cultural uniformity, has accelerated this loss.

A similar decline occurred 8,000 years ago with the shift from hunter-gatherer to agrarian economies.

The crisis is intensified by AI. Neurologists and linguists warn of reduced memory and disappearing grammar structures, such as the past tense.

What about Indian languages?

India is home to one in eight of the world’s languages. With the deaths of the last Bo speaker in the Andamans and the last Majhi speaker in Sikkim, their languages died too.

Many coastal and nomadic languages have vanished, and tribal ones are fading. The word stock is dwindling too. People now use fewer words; metaphors and proverbs are nearly lost.

In Bengal, for example, heavy code-mixing with English is common. Few can speak a full sentence in pure Bangla. Languages lacking in digital presence like Odia, for instance, will slowly be left behind.

Tamil fares better than Marathi, Telugu, or Bangla, but reading skills among schoolkids remain low. English medium schools are reducing children’s exposure to songs and stories in their mother tongue. As a result, children inherit storylines, not the language,

he signs off, in this insightful interview to The Times of India.

Coming back –

Akin to the concept of epistemic shift, that Devy has mentioned in this above interview, he also talks about a ‘forced aphasia’ something similar to ‘epistemic violence’ that Spivak talks about!

Says Devy -

The most useful indictor of tribal identity is language - the literary imaginations of those communities whose speech traditions face the prospect of forced aphasia.

Most tribal communities in India are culturally similar to tribal communities elsewhere in the world. They live in groups that are cohesive and organically unified.

They show very little interest in accumulating wealth or in using labour as a device to gather interest and capital. They accept a worldview in which nature, man and God are intimately linked, and believe in the human ability to spell and interpret truth.

They live more by intuition than by reason, they consider the space around them more sacred than secular, and their sense of time is personal rather than objective.

The world of the tribal imagination, therefore, is substantially different from that of the non-tribal Indian society.

Once a society accepts a secular mode of creativity, within which the creator replaces God, imaginative transactions assume a selfconscious form.

The tribal imagination, on the other hand, is still to a large extent dreamlike and hallucinatory. It admits fusion between various planes of existence and levels of time in a natural and artless manner.

In tribal stories, oceans fly in the sky as birds, mountains swim in water as fish, animals speak as humans and stars grow like plants. Spatial order and temporal sequence do not restrict the narrative.

This is not to say that tribal creations have no conventions or rules, but simply that they admit the principle of association between emotion and the narrative motif.

Thus stars, seas, mountains, trees, men and animals can be angry, sad or happy. It might be said that tribal artists work more on the basis of their racial and sensory memory than on the basis of a cultivated imagination.

In order to understand this distinction, we must understand the difference between imagination and memory. In the animate world, consciousness meets two immediate material realities: space and time.

We put meaning into space by perceiving it in terms of images. The image-making faculty is a genetic gift to the human mind—this power of imagination helps us understand the space that envelops us.

With regard to time, we make connections with the help of memory; one remembers being the same person today as one was yesterday. The tribal mind has a more acute sense of time than the sense of space.

Somewhere along the history of human civilization, tribal communities seem to have realized that domination over territorial space was not their lot. Thus, they seem to have turned almost obsessively to gaining domination over time.

This urge is substantiated in their ritual of conversing with their dead ancestors: year after year, tribals in many parts of India worship terracotta or carved-wood objects representing their ancestors, aspiring to enter a trance in which they can converse with the dead.

Over the centuries, an amazingly sharp memory has helped tribals classify material and natural objects into a highly complex system of knowledge.

The importance of memory in tribal systems of knowledge has not yet been sufficiently recognized, but the aesthetic proportions of the houses tribals build, the objects they make and the rituals they perform fascinate the curious onlooker.

It can be hard to understand how, without any institutional training or tutoring, tribals are able to design, organise, craft, build and express so well. In contemporary practice, the tribal memory is greatly undermined.

There is a general insistence that tribal children attend schools where non-tribal children attend school, that they use medicines manufactured for others and that they adopt common agricultural practices.

All because the world has very little time to listen patiently to the tribals, with their immense knowledge and creativity. We have decided that what is good for us is good enough for them. In the process we are destroying a rich vein of our cultural heritage.

A proper understanding of the tribal imagination can add to our literature and art. Indian literature has been burdened for the last two centuries by the ‘perspective imagination’ of Western origin.

Because our systems of knowledge have been more or less replaced by Western systems, the tribal is now the only Indian unaffected by the colonial consciousness. To pose the question of memory once again may thus help rekindle our culture.

A vast number of Indian languages have yet remained only spoken, with the result that literary compositions in these languages are not considered ‘literature’. They are a feast for the folklorist, anthropologist and linguist, but to a literary critic they generally mean nothing.

Similarly, several nomadic Indian communities are broken up and spread over long distances but survive as communities because they are bound by their oral epics.

The wealth and variety of these works is so enormous that one discovers their neglect with a sense of pure shame.

Some of the songs and stories I heard from itinerant street singers in my childhood are no longer available anywhere.

For some years now I have been collecting songs and stories that circulate in India’s tribal languages, and I am continually overwhelmed by their number and their profound influence on the tribal communities.

The result is that I, for one, can no longer think of literature as something written. Of course, I do not dispute the claim of written compositions and texts to the status of literature; but surely it is time we realize that unless we modify the established notion of literature as something written, we will silently witness the decline of various Indian oral traditions.

That literature is a lot more than writing is a reminder necessary for our times,

says G N Devy, in the introduction to his 2002 book titled, Painted Words.

You may want to read more on G N Devy’s tribute to his friend Mahasweta Devi, on her passing away, in our past post HERE.

"India had no option but an alliance with the Soviet Union" ❤️

Nayantara Sahgal | Her Courage and Convictions

#OnherBirthdayToday

Was Maruti Motors Ltd, originally founded by Sanjay Gandhi, s/o Indira Gandhi?

Was Sanjay Gandhi the real reason behind the 1975 Emergency?

Was Indira Gandhi pushed into politics by her Father Nehru? because of her unhappy married life?

Nayantara dares to bare it all in her uncompromising book on her cousin and former Prime Minister Smt Indira Gandhi, titled, Indira Gandhi: Tryst With Power (2012)

Nayantara Sahgal (98 years old and still going strong) is one writer who calls a spade a spade! Known for her courage in addressing sensitive and controversial topics, including the harmful effects of political corruption, and the hard times during the Emergency period in India - she is one of the fiercest critics of Indira Gandhi!

Indeed, there were much more fiercer critics of the former Prime Minister – Smt Indira Gandhi!

Salman Rushdie, Arun Shourie, Ram Manohar Lohia, Shiv K Kumar, just to name a few.

However, Nayantara’s criticism of Indira Gandhi assumes added significance as Nayantara happens to be Indira’s own sweet cousin, and the niece of Pandit Nehru.

Well, on a personal note, I remember listening to Nayantara Sahgal (88 -years old then) during the Hindu Lit Fest in 2015, when Nayantara was in conversation with Geeta Doctor and Ritu Menon.

“When my father was first arrested, I was two years old. So my mother didn’t want us to be unhappy. So whenever dad went to prison, she would make us chocolate cakes and give us, and that explains the title,” 

she explained, when asked about the significance of the title of her memoir, Prison and Chocolate Cake at the Hindu Lit Fest.

[You may want to read more on this exciting conversation with Nayantara on our past blogpost HERE on our blog]

Coming back –

On the reason for writing the book on her cousin, titled, Indira Gandhi: Tryst With Power, Nayantara says -

The book owes its tone to the intense anxiety I felt at what was happening in the country. The Emergency itself was a watershed in Indian politics. 

The memory of the terror it established overnight in June 1975 - of arrest without warrant and imprisonment without trial, of censorship, surveillance and the abolition of civil liberties, even of the right to life and liberty - has faded with the years but its shadow lingers in the public’s and Parliament’s mind. No one wants to go back there.

Internally, the country lost a decade of development under Indira Gandhi. 

The populism that replaced Jawaharlal Nehru’s pragmatism made for rousing political theatre but without sound practical backup it brought no reduction of poverty nor benefit to the economy.

On an international scene where the US was locked in a war on Vietnam, and had thrown its military and diplomatic might behind Pakistan in its conflict with East Bengal, India had no option but an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Indira Gandhi was forty-six years old when her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, died on May 27, 1964. Since Independence she had been her father’s companion and hostess at New Delhi and had accompanied him on official visits abroad.

In 1955 she had been appointed to the Congress Working Committee, the party’s executive, with charge of the women’s and youth wings, and had become a member of its two subsidiaries, the Central Parliamentary Board and the Central Election Committee, soon afterwards.

These responsibilities placed her at the heart of election preparations for the second general election of 1957.

Her emergence onto the scene of political and public endeavour took place during a period of marital strain and difficulty, and Nehru welcomed her increasing involvement in the party, both as the natural outcome of her background and as therapy for her troubled domestic life.

The Congress party’s and his own championship of women’s rights had been instrumental in creating a climate of pride in women’s opportunities and achievements.

It was a special satisfaction to him that his daughter, whose health and unhappy marriage had been a continuing anxiety to him, should now find a way to fulfil herself through national activity.

He wrote to his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, who was India’s high commissioner in London, on March 12, 1957, from the family home at Anand Bhawan, Allahabad, where he had gone to cast his vote:

When voting finished today, large numbers of our Congress workers turned up at Anand Bhawan, including many women. Indu has specially shaken up the women, and even Muslim women came out. 

Indu has indeed grown and matured very greatly during the last year, and especially during these elections.

She worked with effect all over India, but her special field was Allahabad City and District which she organized like a general preparing for battle.

She is quite a heroine in Allahabad now and particularly with the women. Hardly eating and often carrying on with a handful of peanuts and a banana, she has been constantly on the move, returning at midnight, flushed, slightly gaunt but full of spirit and with flashing eyes.

In 1959, at the suggestion of its outgoing president, U.N. Dhebar, the Congress party accepted her as his successor. Mrs Gandhi accepted the office with tears in her eyes, and it was an emotional occasion for many present at the party meeting.

She occupied the office, normally a two-year term, for barely a year, though during this period she took two initiatives.

She advised the division of Bombay state, convulsed at the time by agitations demanding its separation into Marathi- and Gujarati-speaking states. Bombay was divided, bringing Maharashtra and Gujarat into being on May 1, 1960.

She also urged the Union government’s interference in Kerala, where the communist government formed in 1957 was locked in a confrontation with the Roman Catholic and Nair communities over the issue of state control of schools and colleges.

President’s rule was established in Kerala, and fresh elections held in 1960, when an alliance of parties led by the Congress won a majority.

Then Nayantara starts roasting Sanjay Gandhi – the prodigal son of Indira Gandhi, and his unwieldy might and influence in the political affairs of the nation.

In fact, it was her son Sanjay Gandhi who had originally conceived the idea of manufacturing an affordable “people’s car” for the Indian market in the early 1970s. He envisioned it as a private sector initiative. As a result, in the year 1971, he established Maruti Motors Limited, and he became its first managing director.  

Despite initial setbacks and controversies surrounding the project, Maruti was granted an industrial license in 1974 to produce 50,000 cars annually.

Following the political changes in 1977, Maruti Motors Limited faced liquidation. However, after Indira Gandhi's return to power and Sanjay's death, the government took control of the company and eventually collaborated with Suzuki of Japan, leading to the Maruti Suzuki we know today.

Nayantara observes that,

A storm broke in Parliament over the non-appearance of Maruti, her son Sanjay’s car project, his failure to account for the delay and his personal financial gains from government contracts. There was critical comment in the press and talk in marketplaces and coffee houses, where most controversial issues and political scandal ended for dissection.

Unlike his brother, Rajiv, a happily married airline pilot and father of two, who stayed out of the limelight, Sanjay did not enjoy a reputation for modesty or pleasant human relations. A problem student, he had been withdrawn from boarding school and tutored at home to prepare him for the school-leaving examination, and later, had left Rolls Royce at Crewe before completing his training.

Sanjay had developed a taste for authority and a lifestyle lacking restraint. Much is forgiven a handsome young man, particularly a prime minister’s son, and his escapades, which at one time included hijacking cars and coarse personal behaviour, were generally ignored.

He came to critical public notice for the first time as the recipient of government favour with no qualifications in education or experience to justify it, ‘suddenly heading a huge car manufacturing industrial complex involving an investment of ten million dollars, although his declared income for the year 1969–70 was Rs 748 [about $100]’.

The Emergency gave Sanjay wide scope for bullying command and vendetta. He already exercised authority without official position. He was now credited with ordering arrests and house and office raids.

He gave direct orders to government officials and had squads of the Youth Congress to do his bidding. An aura of terror now attached to his name, and it was augmented by the enforced sterilization campaign conducted by him.

By the end of the year he was given the status of a leading political personality, his arrivals in state capitals accompanied by official panoply to match his mother’s.

He was met by chief ministers and cabinet members, his visits elaborately arranged and attended by state politicians and officials.

Much of her private torment and anxiety must have centred on the undisciplined young man, dangerously addicted to the shortcut, says Nayantara.

Sanjay Gandhi, as director of Maruti Technical Services, had received a fee of Rs 3,00,000 for imparting technical know-how to Maruti Ltd. Asked by an income tax officer what Sanjay had contributed to the technical side of the car project, W.H.F. Muller replied, ‘Actually a set of drawings, incomplete set, in respect of the car he had built… What actually was produced was a few prototypes hand-made.’

It was Sanjay’s megalomaniac plans regarding Maruti which compelled her to declare the second Emergency in June 1975 so that the Maruti scandals could be hushed up.

Sanjay’s death on June 23, 1980, when the aerobatic aircraft he was piloting without sufficient experience crashed, left a design in ruins about his mother. The cabinet decision to hold an open judicial inquiry to investigate the reasons for the disaster was dramatically changed at the initiative of the prime minister.

After Sanjay Gandhi’s death, Mrs Gandhi’s government nationalized Maruti Ltd by presidential ordinance between two sessions of Parliament, telling a press conference, on October 21, 1980, that the company had more assets than liabilities and ‘has to be used for the national good’.

That’s all for excerpts’ sake from this ‘book of revelations’ from Nayantara.

This book is a must-read to know the hardcore reality behind Indira Gandhi’s real driving force – her prodigal son – Sanjay Gandhi!

To sum it up, Nayantara Sahgal carved a unique niche in Indian English literature by her courage and her convictions! In fact, she courageously interweaves the personal and the political in such a bold style of writing, quite unheard of for long in the Indian writing scene!

Let’s together wish the legendary 98-year old Nayantara Sahgal a very happy birthday today! 😊

'The helping hand that guides you along... whether you're right ... whether you're wrong!' ❤️

Peter Pan | Film

On J. M. Barrie | & His Peter Pan

#onhisbirthdaytoday #mothersday

9th May 2025

In honour of Mother’s Day this Sunday (11th May 2025), today, we’ve got for us all a slice of life from J. M, Barrie, and his lovely creation - Peter Pan and his Neverland.

It’s such a sweet coincidence that J. M. Barrie’s birthday and Mother’s Day come so close to each other.

Well, Peter Pan has made such a lasting impact on the entire landscape of children’s literature. In Peter Pan, Barrie moves beyond the moralistic and didactic to weave an engaging story that embraces the worlds of fantasy, imagination and adventure.

In fact, Barrie’s works carry a strong sense of sentimentality in his portrayal of children, exploring themes like loss and longing, and the bliss of childhood!

There is a distinctive element of magical realism as well, that’s the hallmark of Peter Pan – something that makes the extraordinary feel believable, and the mundane magical!

I am sure we all musta sure watched Barrie’s Peter Pan (that was made into a movie - the good ol’ 1953 Disney’d version) who dances and flies around delightfully not only in the movie, but also in our little hearts as well, ain’t he?

Well, Wendy, the eldest girl of the Darling family, who lives in a quiet street, in Bloomsbury, London, gets so excited and delighted when Peter Pan appears at the window of her house one fine night!

And in the course of their animated conversations, when Peter asks her who’s a ‘mother’, she gives him, her delightful definition of a ‘mother’ –

Here goes the conversation between Wendy and Pan, Peter Pan -

Wendy: My name is Wendy, Wendy Moira Angela Darling.

PETER PAN: Wendy’s enough.

Wendy: What were you doing there?

PETER PAN: I came to listen to the stories.

Wendy: My stories? But they’re all about you.

PETER PAN: Of course. That’s why I like ‘em. I tell ‘em to the Lost Boys.

Wendy: I'm so glad you came back tonight. I might never have seen you.

PETER PAN: Why?

Wendy: Because I have to grow up tomorrow.

PETER PAN: Grow up?

Wendy: Tonight’s my last night in the nursery.

PETER PAN: But that means no more stories.

Wendy: (SNIFFLING) Mm-Hmm

PETER PAN: No! I won’t have it! Come on.

Wendy: But where are we going?

PETER PAN: To Never Land.

Wendy: Never Land!

PETER PAN: You’ll never grow up there.

Wendy: Oh, Peter, it would be so wonderful. But wait! What would mother say?

PETER PAN: Mother? What’s a mother?

Wendy: Why, Peter, a mother’s someone… who loves and cares for you and tells you stories –

PETER PAN: Good! You can be our mother. Come on.

And towards the end of their wondrous adventures in Neverland, Wendy yet again bespeaks to the grandeur of a mother!

When Wendy tells them all that they’ve to get back home to London, the boys are quite unhappy!

Wendy then gives them a beautiful discourse on a ‘mother’, to everyone who’s eagerly gathered around her, a sweet little discourse that’s iced with a wonderful song too!

[And when Wendy sings them all the song, even the inimical Pirate captain and his men who are eavesdropping on their conversation, are so moved to sobs and tears as she sings the song!]

Giving y’all the conversation sequence that leads up to the song -

Here goes -

Wendy: Oh for goodness sake. Please, boys. Do you want to stay here and grow up like - like savages?

Michael: Of course.

Wendy: But you can’t. you need a mother. We all do.

Michael: Aren’t you our mother, Wendy?

Wendy: Why, Michael, of course, not! Surely you haven’t forgotten our real mother.

Michael: Did she have silky ears and wear a fur coat?

Wendy: Oh no, Michael. That was Nana.

Lost Boys: I think I had a mother once. What was she like? What was she like? I forget. I had a white rat. That’s no mother!

Wendy: No, no, boys. Please. I’ll tell you what a mother is.

Lost Boys: Yeah tell us. Tell us. Please Wendy.

Wendy: Well, a mother, a real mother is the most wonderful person in the world. She’s the angel voice... that bids you good night, kisses you cheek, whispers ’sleep tight’.

Your mother and mine

your mother and mine

the helping hand that guides you along

whether you're right

whether you're wrong!

Your mother and mine

your mother and mine

what makes mothers

all that they are

might as well ask what makes a star!

Ask your heart

to tell you her worth

your heart will say

Heaven on Earth

another word for divine

your mother and mine!

John: I propose we leave for home at once.

Lost Boys: Could I go too, Wendy? Me too, Wendy! I wanna go!

Wendy: All right boys. All right. I’m sure mother would be glad to have you. Uh, that is, if Peter doesn’t mind.

Happy Mother’s Day folks!

"What’s so interesting about the movie is that, it seems, K Balachander had made this movie out of a deep sense of guilt" ❤️

“Three Boys & Two Girls Come out of their Homes and Plan a Suicide Pact”

When the legendary Director K Balachander did a Movie because of a Deep Sense of Guilt!

Summer Holidays | College Days

#reflections #memoriesfromdiaries

8th May 1999

Well, when I look back at this particular diary entry of mine, written more than a quarter century ago, (26 years ago), I feel quite nostalgic, you see! 😊

It was college-time summer holidays for us.

I had read a few books on this day, watched a TV serial and a movie as well.

The book – I don’t remember, but the TV Serial is Shaktimaan and the movie is K Balachander’s Vaaname Ellai! 😊

Back then, during our summer holidays, Doordarshan was our one and only OTT, our DTH, our Cable TV, our IPTV, our YouTube all rolled into one! 😊

In fact the very mention of the name Doordarshan brings a rush of memories!

For those of us in the India of the 80s and 90s, it wasn’t just a television channel; it was the television channel. 😊 It was our sole window to the world of feature films, TV serials, cricket, and movie songs.

So on this particular summer holiday, I did some reading, taking notes on them in the process.

Later, watched Shaktimaan, one of my childhood superheroes! 😊

Well, the Shaktimaan TV serial revolves around Shaktimaan, the superhero who is endowed with superhuman abilities, by means of which he fights against evil forces. His alter ego is Pandit Gangadhar the witty photographer.

In fact, Shaktimaan could be said to have inaugurated the superheroes genre in India.

Before that, we all had our quota of exposure to superheroes only through Western characters like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man.

That’s when Shaktimaan stepped in and filled the missing gap, providing a homegrown hero who embodied Indian values and cultural ethos, thereby making the superhero concept more relatable and accessible to children and adults alike across India.

In short, Shaktimaan was a cultural touchstone for a generation of children who grew up in the 1990s. 😊

Then, listened to the mellifluous patriotic Indian song, “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara” a song that promotes unity in diversity.

Then, I watched Vaaname Ellai by legendary director K. Balachander. Back then, Doordarshan used to screen National Award-winning films on DD National on a regular basis.

On this particular day, DD National had screened “Vaaname Ellai” which translated to, “The Sky is the Limit”.

I had given my own short capsule summary of the movie in my diary entry for memory-sake!

So here goes the story in detail - 😊

Vaaname Ellai is a poignant story of five individuals from diverse backgrounds who are quite disillusioned with their lives.

Since the five of them face a lot of personal struggles, betrayals, corruption, caste discrimination, and abuse, they collectively decide to end their lives by committing suicide together.  

However, instead of immediately ending their lives, they make a pact to live together happily for 100 days - determined to experience happiness and fulfilment before their planned end.

During this period, they form a unique bond, share their joys and sorrows, and try to find meaning to their existence in their ‘remaining days’.

The arrival of an abandoned baby into their lives and their interactions with differently-abled individuals who lead fulfilling lives begins to have its intended effect on the five of them.

They now give a re-think on their decision to end their lives, and ultimately, they find a reason to embrace life again.

What’s so interesting about the movie is that, it seems, K Balachander had made this movie out of a deep sense of guilt!

A sense of guilt that had haunted him because of the astounding box office success of his earlier film titled, Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981).

This film had depicted a tragic love story with the lovers committing suicide, that, sadly had a cascading effect on the audience, resulting in many people imitating the suicide in the film.

Then it so happened that, the famed psychiatrist Lakshmi Vijayakumar had exhorted KB to make a film showing the thoughts of suicide in a positive light - to go through struggle, but overcome it and realise that life is worth living.

And the net result is Vaaname Ellai!

Well, that brings us to the field called cognitive neuroscience!

Cognitive Neuroscience is quite an interesting field of study that deals with –

How we perceive the world and interact with it!

How we acquire and retain information!  

How we understand and produce communication!

How we make our life choices, etc.

In his seminal book on the subject titled, Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, Jeffrey Zacks observes that –

If you are interested in what goes on in your head when you watch a movie, there is a science base that is very informative, says Zacks.

Interestingly he also teaches a seminar called “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Film.”

He adds to say that -

Sitting in a theatre, it is not at all uncommon to experience bodily responses - to feel as if you are preparing to move, perhaps even squirming a little in your seat.

What is going on? Your eyes and ears are telling you that something exciting is happening in front of you and your brain is preparing you to react.

Of course, you know it’s just a movie. Movies evolved to take advantage of the brains we have. Our tendency to want to respond physically to them highlights this.

William James described the tendency of visual images to evoke motor actions more than a hundred years ago, using the term ideomotor actions –

“Wherever movement follows unhesitatingly and immediately the notion of it in the mind, we have ideo-motor action.”

These days, we distinguish between two different ways in which an action can be associated with an event in the world.

We can describe these as two different rules that people are built to follow. I will call these the mirror rule and the success rule.

The mirror rule says “Do what you see.”

Everyday life is replete with examples of the mirror rule, though we often don’t notice them. Imagine that you and I are sitting across from each other at a desk.

If I cross my arms or legs, you are much more likely to cross yours. Once you start looking for them, the effects are dramatic and actually pretty funny.

You can experience this feeling at the movies, too. In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the title character (one of several played by Peter Sellers) has an involuntary habit of snapping Nazi salutes when he gets excited.

You can almost feel your own arm going up. Watch The Natural, and it’s hard not to feel yourself swinging a virtual bat along with Robert Redford.

But for now let me mention one action that is especially subject to the mirror rule: laughing.

In one study conducted at the University of Indiana in the 1960s, researchers asked people to listen to jokes either alone or in groups. The group audiences laughed more.

Interestingly, they didn’t rate the jokes as any funnier; perhaps they laughed more not because they thought the jokes were any funnier, but as a direct result of seeing or hearing their fellow audience members yukking it up.

The entertainment industry is definitely wise to this, whether or not producers can cite the relevant experimental studies.

Sitcoms have been filmed in front of live audiences for 5 decades because producers know that audiences at home laugh more when they hear a live audience laughing.

In fact, when a live audience does not laugh sufficiently, canned laughter will often be added to the soundtrack. And it works: People laugh more when a laugh track is added.

Why are we built to follow the mirror rule? We are an intensely social species, often dependent on other humans for our survival, and mirroring probably provides several benefits for fitting our own behaviour in with that of others.

This sort of coordination is present across a wide phylogenetic swath. For example, if one of a flock of shorebirds takes off, others will tend to imitate it.

They do this so that if one bird detects an approaching predator, the whole flock can quickly evacuate. Imitation is also an efficient way to learn new skills.

In short, our behaviour often follows the mirror rule, such that when we see an action performed we have a tendency to perform the same action ourselves. The mirror rule is exactly “monkey see, monkey do.”

Now to the second rule:  the success rule. The success rule says, “Do what has worked.”

It is obvious why we would be built to follow the success rule - doing what works is better than the alternative.

You can feel the success rule working powerfully in situations where you need to react fast. When a traffic light turns red and your foot presses the brake seemingly before you could think of it, that’s the success rule!

The mirror rule and the success rule describe how what we see can determine what we do, 

signs off Zacks!

Fascinating ain’t it? 😊 

Memories to continue...

[Image Courtesy: IMDB]