Desicritics Author: Anil Menon

The Politics Of Captain Nemo

Anil Menon — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:35:59 EDT

Like many current science fiction authors, Jules Verne would've been surprised to know he was one. His ambitions were somewhat different. As he told Alexander Dumas, pere:

"Just as you are the great chronicler of history, I shall be the chronicler of geography."

And he proceeded to do just that. There are four recurring characters in a Jules Verne novel: air, fire, earth and water. The womb's domain, so to speak. Verne liked to place his human characters in enclosed, self-contained, unique spaces of one kind or the other-- heavier-than-air flying machines, isolated islands, floating cities, villages on tree-tops, the earth's core, cannon-balls to the moon, steel submarines 20,000 leagues under the sea-- and send them out for a spin. For the most part, his people are two-dimensional cross-hairs; their main role is keep track of places in the reader's mind.

But there is one marvelous exception. In 1912, some forty odd years after the publication of 20,000 leagues Under The Sea, Sir Earnest Shackleton wrote in The Future of Exploration:

"...all the work of our modern oceanographers-- of Sir John Murray of Challenger fame, Dr. Hjort of the Michael Sars, Prince Albert of Monaco, and of the various marine biological stations-- has won less of public attention and interest than did a single one of Jules Verne's heroes, Captain Nemo of the Nautilus. Thus does a good tale overshadow the romance of real life...."

How did Captain Nemo ever become something more than one of Verne's story pegs? F. P. Walter provides one answer:

"...much of the novel's brooding power comes from Captain Nemo. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he's a trail-blazing creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes or Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero's brilliance and benevolence a dark underside--the man's obsessive hate for his old enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he's a fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism, yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole....Hate swallows him whole."

It is a plausible explanation. As Captain Nemo readies to destroy an enemy ship-- of unspecified nationality-- he rages at the tale's protesting narrator in an Ahab-type outburst:

"I'm the law, I'm the tribunal! I'm the oppressed, and there are my oppressors! Thanks to them, I've witnessed the destruction of everything I loved, cherished, and venerated--homeland, wife, children, father, and mother! There lies everything I hate! Not another word out of you!"

But who destroyed everything Nemo loved? Which homeland? 20,000 leagues was deliberately silent on these issues. Verne had wanted Nemo to be a Polish rebel who'd participated in the January Uprising and whose family had been murdered by Tsarist Russia for that reason. But Russia happened to be a pal of France at the moment, and Verne's editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, "persuaded" him to omit crucial details.

It resulted in an inferior book. Captain Nemo became a man driven by a series of general nouns. Just compare him with Captain Ahab, in whom motion and motive merged in an ivory stump.

But characters like Nemo do not leave their authors in peace. In 1875, five years after 20,000 leagues, Jules Verne wrote L'�le mysterieuse (The Mysterious Island).

French readers learnt that Nemo was Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand, a distant relative of "Tippo Saib" (Tipu Sultan); someone who'd fought for freedom in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, and whose family had been murdered by the British.

However, readers of the English translation-- by W. H. G. Kingston-- encountered a very different version. Here are some samples; the fragments on the left are from Kingston's censored version, the ones on the right are from the much more accurate version by Stephen White.

1. Regarding Nemo's Origin:

"Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund. His father sent him, when ten years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe." [Kingston]

"Captain Nemo was an Indian prince, the Prince Dakkar, the son of the rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund, and nephew of the hero of India, Tippo Saib. His father sent him, when ten years old, to Europe, where he received a complete education; and it was the secret intention of the rajah to have his son able some day to engage in equal combat with those whom he considered as the oppressors of his country." [White]

2. Regarding the effect of education on Nemo:

He traveled over the whole of Europe. His rank and fortune caused him to be everywhere sought after; but the pleasures of the world had for him no attractions. Though young and possessed of every personal advantage, he was ever grave--somber even--devoured by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and cherishing in the recesses of his heart the hope that he might become a great and powerful ruler of a free and enlightened people."

"Still, for long the love of science triumphed over all other feelings." [Kingston]

"He travelled over all Europe. His birth and fortune made his company much sought after, but the seductions of the world possessed no charm for him. Young and handsome, he remained serious, gloomy, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, with implacable anger fixed in his heart."

"He hated. He hated the only country where he had never wished to set foot, the only nation whose advances he had refused: he hated England more and more as he admired her. This Indian summed up in his own person all the fierce hatred of the vanquished against the victor. The invader is always unable to find grace with the invaded. The son of one of those sovereigns whose submission to the United Kingdom was only nominal, the prince of the family of Tippo-Saib, educated in ideas of reclamation and vengeance, with a deep-seated love for his poetic country weighed down with the chains of England, wished never to place his foot on that land, to him accursed, that land to which India owed her subjection." [White]

3. Regarding how the world viewed Prince Dakkar:

To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travelers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, and are of no country."

"This artist, this philosopher, this man was, however, still cherishing the hope instilled into him from his earliest days." [Kingston]

"In the eyes of a superficial observer, he passed, perhaps, for one of those cosmopolites, curious after knowledge, but disdaining to use it; for one of those opulent travellers, high-spirited and platonic, who go all over the world and are of no one country."

"It was not so.This artist, this savant, this man was Indian to the heart, Indian in his desire for vengeance, Indian in the hope which he cherished of being able some day to re-establish the rights of his country, of driving on the stranger, of making it independent."[White]

4. Regarding the Sepoy Rebellion:

Instigated by princes equally ambitious and less sagacious and more unscrupulous than he was, the people of India were persuaded that they might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had established peace and prosperity in their country. Their ignorance and gross superstition made them the facile tools of their designing chiefs." [Kingston]

"The English yoke was pressed, perhaps, too heavily upon the Indian people. The Prince Dakkar became the mouthpiece of the malcontents. He instilled into their spirits all the hatred he felt against the strangers. He went over not only the independent portions of the Indian peninsula, but into those regions directly submitted to the English control. He recalled to them the grand days of Tippo-Saib, who died heroically at Seringapatam for the defense of his country." [White]

So on and so forth. At the end of the rebellion, the British kill Prince Dakkar's entire family, he loses his kingdom and his fortune, and he is left only with hate. He becomes a man in search of death. As is often the case, he proceeds to inflict on others what he sought for himself. In The Mysterious Island, Captain Nemo, now on his deathbed, seeks something else from the protagonists: understanding.

"I had right and justice on my side," he added. "I did good when I could, and evil when I must. All justice is not in forgiveness."[White]

It is the first time the word "justice" appears in the tale. This line is missing in Kingston's translation.

Of course, the British translators were faced with a difficult dilemma. What were they to do with the iconic Captain Nemo whose hated enemy was revealed to be... their homeland? In modern terms, Nemo would've been a terrorist. It's not surprising they elided what they could not swallow.

What is surprising, however, is that the White version was available as early as 1876. But until Walter James Miller publicized the discrepancies in 1963, most English readers-- including myself-- typically encountered W. H. G Kingston's version or other equally distorted versions by Rev. Mercer Lewis and Edward Roth. Even today, Barnes and Noble continues to sell Kingston's version under the "Signet Classic" imprint (Penguin); in fact, the volume has a new foreword by Bruce Sterling as well as the original introduction by Isaac Asimov. It is unconscionable. Walter Miller, discussing the misleading Mercer's translation of 20,000 Leagues, remarks:

"...there is still residual bad news. Barnes & Noble, in their fat Verne anthology, actually feature the Mercier Lewis version of Twenty Thousand Leagues! The Quality Paperback Book Club, Scholastic Magazine Press, Wordsworth Press, and Nelson/Doubleday all still issue the Mercier Lewis as genuine Verne....Thanks to publishers like these, many American adults still do not know the genuine prophet of science fiction; do not know about his social and political stance or his splendid literary talents."

I should mention that B&N also sells Jordan Stump's accurate translation (Modern Library Imprint, Random House).

The perils of translation are many. Consider:

The sentence "This sentence is in French" is not true.

Suppose the above sentence had to be translated into French. Would it still be true? Or how about this: the Aymara of the Andes don't match up the words "back/front" in the usual way with "past/future." They seem to have a different conception of time. As far as they're concerned, the future is what you cannot see, so why should it be lying in front of you? So how should "Back to the future" be translated? The surprising twist in the movie title, obvious in English, is completely lost in Aymara.

Proust thought C. K. Scott-Moncrieff's rendering of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu as Remembrance of Things Past completely misrepresented his work. I ran the title through Google's translator. I doubt Proust would have been happier with Google's version: With the Research of Wasted Time.

Fortunately, great works survive their translations, great authors survive their works, and great characters survive their authors. Nemo is neither Prince Dakkar nor is he a Polish rebel. As E. F. Bleiler wrote:

"Who else was Nemo? It used to be said that Nemo was Lord Byron in a diving suit, but a fitter description (as Verne's friends and relatives knew) is that Nemo was Jules Verne in a diving suit."

Say, Lovely Woman, The Number of Bees: Bhaskara's Lilavati

Anil Menon — Sat, 2 Sep 2006 16:37:14 EDT

"Having bowed to the deity, whose head is like an elephant; whose feet are adorned by gods; who, when called to mind, relieves his votaries from embarrassment; and bestows happiness on his worshipers; I propound this easy process of computation, delightful by its elegance, perspicuous with words concise, soft and correct, and pleasing to the learned."

So begins Bhaskara's Lilavati in Henry T. Colebrooke's classic 1817 translation. There's an earlier Bhaskara, also famous, so Lilavati's Bhaskara is sometimes referred to as Bhaskara II or Bhaksaracharya. He was born in 1114 A.D. in Vijayapura (modern day Bijapur), India.

It was a quiet time. The quiet, that is, of a hurricane's eye. In 1114 A.D., Angkor Wat was still an idea searching for its stone, but its future builder, King Suryavarman II, was already a year old. Genghis Khan was just fifty odd years away. The West hadn't rediscovered Euclid and Aristotle yet, but Abelard of Bath and his students were in Syria, poring over the Arabic texts that would eventually ignite the Western renaissance. The Muslims had gained a foothold in Gujarat, and in the 13th through 15th centuries, they were to reinvigorate the subcontinent. And way north of Vijayapura, about 400 miles from Delhi, the last of the magnificent Khajuraho temples were being built.

Why did Bhaskara write the Lilavati? Simple. To teach duffers. As he concludes in the Bijaganita (one of his six works):

"A morsel of tuition conveys knowledge to a comprehensive mind; and having reached it, expands of its own impulse. As oil poured upon water, as a secret entrusted to the vile, as alms bestowed upon the worthy, however little, so does knowledge infused into a wise mind spread by intrinsic force....What is there unknown to the intelligent? Therefore for the dull alone it is set forth."

Almost 600 years later, in his Decline and Fall, Gibbons was even more pessimistic:

"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

And more recently, the late Richard Feynman-- by all accounts, a great teacher-- cites Gibbons with glum relish in the preface to his celebrated Lectures.

The Lilavati is a collection of worked out examples in algebra and geometry. The level of mathematics ranges between high school algebra and freshman pre-Calculus. In its time, it represented the height of 12th-century mathematics. The problems are generally addressed to one Lilavati, traditionally taken to be either his wife or his daughter. Tradition is as good a reason as any because there's no other reason to support the claim. To modern ears, the phrasing of some of the problems is decidedly odd. Problem 2.2.16 begins with:

"Beautiful and dear Lilavati, whose eyes are like a fawn's...."

Then there's Problem 3.1.49 which begins:

"Pretty girl, with tremulous eyes, if thou know the correct method of inversion... "

And how can I overlook Problem 3.5.68?

"The square root of half the number of a swarm of bees is gone to a shrub of jasmine; and so are eight-ninths of the whole swarm: a female is buzzing to one remaining male that is humming within a lotus in which he is confined, having allured to it by its fragrance at night. Say, lovely woman, the number of bees."

Colebrooke, thorough as always, notes that the "jasmine" referred to is the "jasminum grandiflorum." And Ganesa, in his Buddhivilasini (1545 AD), supplies some context: "the lotus being open at night and closed in the day, the bee might be caught in it."

Indeed. The good professor's concern is not misplaced. The hazards of being a bee are many. For poor Colebrooke, the text must have made many a warm Calcutta night even warmer.

In Bhaskara's time, 'shyness'-- at least in Sanskrit poetics-- was as much a performance, as say, cock fighting. Bees, lotuses, plantain stalks, jasmine, etc. are all conventional metaphors in Sanskrit poetry. For example, here's one of Vittoka's verses (verse 387 in Ingall's transalation of Vidyakara's treasury):

"I saw a golden staff wandering in the park
on which a wondrous lotus ever bloomed;
herein two bees; above a moon half full;
and still above, massed darkness,
which yet remained both day and night."

The poet is talking about a young woman. The golden staff is her body, the lotus is her face, the two bees are her eyes, the "moon half full" is her fair forehead, and the massed darkness, both day and night, is her bejeweled hair. Sometimes the eyes are waterlilies, the breasts are always like golden jars, plantain stalks refer to thighs and so on and so forth. When done poorly, Sanskrit poetry is akin to cryptography, reminiscent of English metaphysical poetry.

In any event, Bhaskara's exercises excite a real passion for mathematics. Who, but one with an adamantine heart, can resist the call of a verse such as this:

Whilst making love a necklace broke.
A row of pearls mislaid.
One third fell to the floor.
One fifth upon the bed.
The young woman saved one sixth of them.
One tenth were caught by her lover.
If six pearls remained upon the string
How many pearls were there altogether?

Note: The above is not from the Lilavati per se. It's from the Manoranjana, a commentary written by one Ramakrishna Deva. Colebrooke spotted its connection with Bhaskara's Problem 3.2.54 and decided to-- god bless him-- footnote it.

Lilavati is not exactly Aguilera-dirty. Problems involving randy geese, bees trapped in lotuses, girls with tremulous eyes and so on are, I'm sorry to report, relatively few in number. One of the problems [3.6.75] is downright chilling:

"If a female slave, sixteen years of age, bring thirty-two (nishkas), what will one aged twenty cost? If an ox which has been worked two years sell for four nishkas, what will one, which has been worked six years cost?"

But most of the problems would fit in today's calculus textbooks. They're of the 'two doomed trains rushing towards each other with speed such-and-such...' type. It's the world of conical reservoirs, slipping ladders, and rectangles surmounted by semicircles. The kind of problems Frigyes Karinthy made such fun of in his delightful short story, The Refund:

"If we represent the speed of light by X and the distance of the star Sirius from the Sun by Y, what is the circumference of a one-hundred-and-nine-sided regular polyhedron whose surface area coincides with that of the hip-pocket of a state railway employee, whose wife has been deceiving him for two years and eleven months with a regimental sergeant major of hussars". [src]

If you said: '28 apricots' you are wrong! It's 27 apricots!

Lilavati is now a mood, a symbol, a place and an attitude; a woman. For me, it's hard to believe it was written almost a thousand years ago. Much has changed in the world since it was written. Angkor Wat and Khajuraho are now ruin and memory. But the time-laden ponds remain. So do the lotuses and bees, forever getting entangled in eyes, thighs and mathematics.

Book Review: 20 Cases Suggestive Of Reincarnation by Ian Stevenson

Anil Menon — Sun, 14 May 2006 10:48:15 EDT

The homepage of the Univ. of Virginia's Division Of Perceptual Studies quotes Thomas Jefferson:

"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led."

It is a fine quote, exactly the sort of postprandial statement one can imagine Jefferson making at Monticello, with a glass of Chateau d'Yquem in one hand and Sally in the other. They don't make presidents like him anymore.

But perhaps they do. That is, if Dr. Ian Stevenson is right.

Ian Stevenson's a medical doctor (internal medicine) trained at McGill University, the author of many peer-reviewed articles, and a former chaired professor at UVa. Dr. Stevenson's pursuit of the truth has led him into very odd territory. In the 60s through the 80s, he investigated cases in India, Ceylon, Brazil, Alaska, and Lebanon that were "suggestive of reincarnation."

There's a rough pattern to these reincarnation stories. A child -- usually between two and four years of age -- begins to claim that he/she is actually so-and-so, now deceased. Parents resist said claims. Eventually, contact with so-and-so's family is made. Dénouement follows. At some point, ranging from 3 weeks to twenty years, Stevenson shows up with his tape recorder and interpreter. He interviews the families, cross-checks claims, classifies events into a typology, and then re-conducts the interviews with a second translator. The book describes twenty representative cases. His conclusion:

"In the cases of the present collection we have evidence of the occurrence of patterns which the present personality is not known to have inherited or acquired after birth in the present life. And in some instances these patterns match corresponding and specific features of an identified deceased personality. In such cases we have then in principle, I believe, some evidence for human survival of physical death. I say in principle, because I continue aware [sic] of particular weaknesses in the present cases."

I think he's mistaken. But whatever one may think of his extraordinary conclusion, the book will induce respect. His case reports are painfully detailed, monumentally tedious and reassuringly detached. It's shoe-leather research rather than arm-chair research. It's Masters and Johnson sans lubrication. The book is a lovely testament to what empiricism is all about.

Assuming the evidence is not manufactured out of whole cloth (in which case the book ranks with great literature), there's a neat little puzzle to be explained. Some of the cases are rather disquieting, especially the cases of Pramod and Swarnalata. Stevenson's methodology is not that of the doctor or the physicist but that of the detective. A detective more in the mould of P. D. James's Adam Dalgliesh than Conan Doyle's Holmes.

My skepticism about his conclusion has to do with a dog that does not bark. Seven of the cases are from India, three from Ceylon, two from Brazil, seven from Alaska and one from Lebanon. There's none from Europe. None from North America. None from Canada. None from Australia. None from a family or culture that did not believe in reincarnation. The child from Lebanon, for example, was from a Druze family, the one group of people in the Middle East who happen to believe in reincarnation. Stevenson suggests that this lack of a bark is because of negligent reporting; if parents are from cultures that don't believe in reincarnation, then they'd be much less receptive, even hostile, to their child's claims about being reincarnated. As it is, parents are rarely amused when their children wish to adopt other parents.

It's possible, of course, to cast doubt on Stevenson's work by questioning his methodology, the possible collusion of families, the easy manipulation of children and so on. The late philosopher, Paul Edwards, has written a fine book doing just that. Ostensibly, reincarnation is a silly idea; it's not hard to make fun of it. And it doesn't help that Stevenson works at a place called the "Division of Perceptual Studies" or DoP(e)S. The skepticism is more than justified. The paranormal is the open sewer of science; the carrier of daft ideas and willful deceptions.

Strictly speaking, reincarnation is about the persistence of memories after death; soul migration is a folk-theory invented to explain reincarnation. A scientific theory of reincarnation -- if it exists -- wouldn't have to explain souls. A scientific theory of reincarnation would be a theory about human memory. We need a different kind of ghost, something with measurable properties. Perhaps the recent quantum mechanical basis claimed for consciousness may provide some clues.

It's interesting to see what happens to a scientist who undertakes a field of inquiry that has zero scientific credibility. His book's had few serious rebuttals. It's mostly been ignored. In his interviews, Dr. Stevenson, who's now in his 80s, sounds resigned to the benign neglect. Perhaps not so benign. A few years back, University of Virginia alumni tried to shut down the DoPS, claiming it damaged the reputation of the Psychology Dept. Fortunately, they failed.

My guide in these matters is William James. In a letter to Carl Stumpf dated Jan 1, 1886, he wrote:

"It is a field in which the sources of deception are extremely numerous. But I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomenon are impossible."

Hear, hear.

When Prayers Attack

Anil Menon — Sat, 1 Apr 2006 00:17:25 EST

Well, it's official. If you're scheduled for a coronary bypass, and the local Ned Flanders is busy organizing the congregation to pray for you, order the bastard to cease and desist immediately. Science has determined that intercessory prayer may significantly increase the risk of post-surgery complications for you.

This month's issue of the American Heart Journal has a paper by Benson et. al. on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer. They begin the paper by saying:

Intercessory prayer is widely believed to influence recovery from illness, but claims of benefits are not supported by well-controlled clinical trials. Prior studies have not addressed whether prayer itself or knowledge/certainty that prayer is being provided may influence outcome. We evaluated whether (1) receiving intercessory prayer or (2) being certain of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with uncomplicated recovery after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

And their conclusion?

Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

In English: Prayer is ineffective at best, and knowing that you're being prayed for can be a risk factor as well.

The doctors are to be commended for three things: (1) for having the cojones to study the supernatural; (2) for giving "intercessory" a slightly sinister connotation; and (3) for making the Universe a slightly funnier place.

The basic idea of the study is quite simple. There are two control variables: prayer and awareness. Either a patient may or may not be prayed for and the patient may or may not be told this fact. That gives four groups of patients, and the figure shows the number of patients assigned to the various groups in the study. Note that a patient was never told that he is not being prayed for; that of course would be unethical.

What the doctors measured were the number of complications post-surgery (the Society of Thoracic Surgeons has defined these complications in a reasonably precise way). It is here that the study becomes interesting. What the Benson team found was that the least number of complications occurred in the group of patients who were not prayed for and were ignorant of that fact (Group 2). The largest number of complications occurred in the group of patients who were prayed for and were aware of that fact (Group 3). In the figure, the red arrows show the direction of increasing risk.

The results are statistically significant; that is, it is unlikely that these numbers could've obtained by pure chance. Benson et. al. are strangely reluctant to make this conclusion. In their words:

We have no clear explanation for the observed excess of complications in patients who were certain that intercessors would pray for them (group 3)... the excess may be a chance finding.

But, in an otherwise laudatory review, the lead editorial in the same issue of the American Heart Journal heaped scorn on this pusillanimity:

While presenting these results clearly and noting them in discussion, the investigators take an almost casual approach towards any explanation, stating only that it "may have been a chance finding." It is rather unusual to attribute a statistically significant result in the primary end point of a prospective, multicenter randomized trial to "chance." .... If the results had shown benefit rather than harm, would we have read the investigators' conclusion that this effect "may have been a chance finding" with absolutely no other comments, insight or even speculation. [Amer. Heart J. 151(4). pp. 762-764].

They go on to argue that cultural biases should not stand in the way of studying religious phenomenon. They're absolutely right. Religion is not within the purview of science. But religious claims are. It's an idea that has been gaining steam in recent years. Generally, scientists have held back, been apologetic for negative results and avoided confrontation. It'd be interesting to see if Medicine becomes the new villain in the minds of the faithful; Evolution now bears the brunt of the animus.

Medicine has always been the cradle of scientific thinking. It is inherently democratic (the physician touches all), inherently rooted in natural explanations and inherently self-correcting in that an idea that cures usually survives over one that doesn't. These features make medicine a radical science.

Ancient Indian medicine offers one of the best examples of what happens when the theocracy understands this fact. Ayurveda, which started out as a materialistic, experimental study of diseases, dengenerated into a logical but irrational system of superstitions. Not many people are aware that both medicine and physicians are heartily condemned in most of the sacred Indian texts; text after text lumps physicians with thieves, fowlers, washermen, cobblers, harlots and eunuchs. This was a historical shift. In the Rg-Ved, the Asvini brothers, twin physicians to all the other Gods, hold a high and honored place. But by the time the Yajurveda was composed, things had taken a drastically different turn. Brahmins are strongly prohibited from practicing medicine. Physicians are listed amongst the unclean. In the Taittiriya-samhita, one of the rescencions of the Black Yajurveda, there's a part where Ashvini twins are denied their share of their sacrificial offering. They are made to barter their services for a share and to undergo a purification ceremony (specifically, Bahispavamana); both would've been unthinkable in the Rg-Ved. Clearly, medicine had been put in its place.

The results of the Benson study are not as significant as the fact that it was undertaken in the first place. Medical, pharmacological and neurophysiological experiments may finally help Religious Studies achieve what William James so boldy hoped almost a century ago: a genuinely scientific examination of religious phenomenon.

William Makepeace Thackeray: The Indian In The Closet

Anil Menon — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:22:29 EST

William Makepeace Thackeray was one of those rare writers who could criticize something without developing a contempt for it. Writing, for him, was a way of coming to terms with human nature, specifically, his human nature. As Gordon N. Ray in his definitive biography of Thackeray, wrote: "Closely scrutinized, his novels turn out to afford a kind of diary of his intimate life" [1]. So it is interesting that the theme of racial mixing -- of miscegenation -- runs like a bright red thread through Thackeray's work.

For example, in The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan (1838), Gollian Gahagan falls madly in love with a half-breed, the fair and lovely Julie Jowler, daughter of Colonel Jowler and his Indian wife, a "hideous, bloated, yellow creature." Later on, Gahagan is chased by the lady Puttee Rooge with the "complexion of molasses" and "rendered a thousand times more ugly by the tawdry dress and the blazing jewels with which she was covered." And at one of the novel's many crisis points, Belinda Bulcher, 100% white and "dazzling as alabaster" extracts a promise from her hero:

'Captain Gahagan,' sobbed she, 'Go-Go-Goggle-iah!'
'My soul's adored!' replied I.
'Swear to me one thing.'
I swear.'
'That if--that if--the nasty, horrid, odious black Mah-ra-a-a-attahs take the fort, you will put me out of their power.'

Gahagan promises and then goes around offering the same service to the other white ladies in the camp. However:

Fancy my disgust when, after making this proposition, not one of the ladies chose to accede to it...

Disgust? Why? That the white women preferred rape and possible survival over virtue and certain death? Thackeray was unusually sympathetic to human foibles, especially feminine ones. He was the first major English writer to see that in a thoroughly materialistic society, morality too becomes just another status symbol. But when it came to racial mixing, there is an uncharacteristic latent disgust in his writing. Phillip Davies, who first studied Thackeray's obsessions with racial mixing, concluded:

It would appear that Thackeray was strongly conscious of what he might have imagined to be a skeleton in his closet. [2]

But just what was this skeleton? The author of Vanity Fair was born on July 18, 1811 in Calcutta, India, and was the first and only child of Richmond Thackeray and Anne Becher. As the Secretary to East India Company's Board of Revenue, Thakeray, Sr. was very well off and had a palatial house on 39 Free School St in Chowringhee, Calcutta. Young William lived the life of a prince: an Indian wetnurse, adoring parents, devoted Gunga Dins, fine morning walks on the Esplanade, spring-hung Ox-driven carriages and the thrill of surveying a world still largely clueless about the British shaft rudely and firmly ensconced between its butt-cheeks.

This idyllic existence came to an abrupt end on September 13, 1815, when Richmond Thackeray took gravely ill and died. Anne Becher decided to send her beloved son back to England (she joined him a year later). William Thackeray left more than a mother behind; he left behind two aunts (a maternal aunt, Maria, and a paternal one, Augusta) and his ayah, "Black Betty." He also left behind a half-breed sister, Sarah Redfield. Her absence was to haunt him.

Sarah Redfield, born in 1804, was the daughter of Richmond Thackeray and Charlotte Sophia Rudd, his native -- possibly Eurasian -- mistress, or cara amica as Roberdeau delicately puts it in his Bengal: Past and Present. In the early 1800s, it wasn't that big of a deal. The ratio of white officers to white women was around 16 to 1. And if the illegitimate children could pass for white, then their fathers would even send them to England for a chance at full assimilation. Sarah was unlucky that way. It is known that she got married in Calcutta to James Blechynden, also an Eurasian, on July 20, 1820. Thackeray Sr. wasn't a total jerk; in his will he'd left an annuity of 100 pounds for her and 25 pounds for Charlotte. Sarah Blechynden nee Redfield must've had no surviving children because upon her death in 1841, her share of the annuity went to William.

It is understandable that William Thackeray would be haunted by thoughts of his brown sister enduring God alone knew what in Calcutta. But it began to border on the morbid. For example, after eating a dinner of turtle and cold beef (!), he recorded in his diary:

I wish the turtle had choked me -- there is poor Mrs. Blechynden starving in India whilst I am gorging in this unconscionable way here. I must write to her. [2]

The source of his guilt may not have been entirely due to the fact that his mother, unlike hers, was also their father's wife. It's probable that Thackeray too was the product of a distant miscegenation; not so distant that people didn't remember but distant enough that it didn't matter. His maternal grandmother, Harriet Cowper -- Anne Becher's mother -- is thought to have been of Indian origin, perhaps twice or thrice removed. In fact, according to Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray's daughter referred to Harriet Cowper as "my brown grandmother" [1, pp. 54]. Such doubts about pedigree, in that time and place, could be a heavy burden. For example, in a letter to her husband-to-be, the great Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was partly black, wrote:

I would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave!

William Thackeray was the brother who'd been able to pass. Thackeray's anxieties popped up in his conversations, letters, novels and essays. His essay On Being Found Out [3], while meant to be comic, is also confessional, apologetic and defiant:

It is a very curious sensation to sit by a man who has found you out, and who, as you know, has found you out; or, vice versa, to sit with a man whom YOU have found out. His talent? Bah! His virtue? We know a little story or two about his virtue, and he knows we know it. We are thinking over friend Robinson's antecedents, as we grin, bow and talk; and we are both humbugs together.

Indeed, for someone with Thackeray's sensitivity -- several peers referred to it as being almost "womanly" -- his secret would've been like a convex mirror, distorting the familiar and revealing, as the poet John Ashbery wrote:

...in that gaze a combination
Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful
In its restraint that one cannot look for long.
The secret is too plain...

References:
[1] Gordon N. Ray. Thackeray. McGraw-Hill. New York. 1972.
[2] Phillip George Davies. The miscegenation theme in the works of Thackeray. Modern Language Notes, 76(4). 1961. pp. 326-331
[3] William M. Thackeray. On Being Found Out. Cornhill Magazine, 5(3). 1861, pp. 636-40.

Deja Vu: The Strange Case Of Hussain Ali Qambar

Anil Menon — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 01:10:51 EST

In 1995, Hussain Ali Quambar, a forty-five year old Kuwaiti businessman and father of two -- Najiba, 6 and Taha, 3 -- converted to Christianity. He would probably have escaped public notice had he not got into a messy custody battle with his wife. Hussain Ali Quambar, now exposed for what he was -- Robert Hussain Ali -- found himself in deep ontological shit. At first, he was approached by reasonable men with a reasonable offer -- recant and reconvert -- but like all new converts, Robert Ali was quite inflexible. Besides, Kuwait is practically the Netherlands of the Middle East; what could possibly go wrong?

Lots. Robert Ali found himself sued for apostasy by three Islamist lawyers led by Abd al-Latif al-Saleh and Mohammad al-Jadai. Poor Robert was unable to find a lawyer to represent him. His house was vandalized. He was forbidden to see his children and when his father passed away, his share of the inheritance was denied to him. The media hounded him. Finally, on 29th May 1996, a lower Shi'a court led by Ja�far al-Mazidi found him guilty of apostasy. According to Amnesty International, the verdict included the following statement:

The defendant has a narrow point of view and does not clearly understand the provision and articles of the constitution which focus on freedom of religion and its rituals. These constitutional freedoms stem from Muhammad's teaching. The constitution respects freedom of religion without fear of being closely monitored, but it does not mean that a Muslim should be allowed to convert from his religion to another. Everyone understands that there is a clear difference between these two points.

Robert Ali didn't understand; intractable as always, he appealed the decision.

There are many other such cases involving religious persecution: Alladin Omer Ajjabna Mohammed, Hossein Soodmand, Mehdi Dibaj, Mekki Kuku, Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd and perhaps the most famous of them all, the Nobel laureate and secularist, Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz writes masterful stories; delicate brushpaintings of Egyptian life imbued with a deep and rich love for its history; in October 1994, he was stabbed in the neck by an Islamist extremist.

Now there's Abdul Rahman, threatened with execution. What puzzled me about this case was why the Afghans could not see it was a matter of personal choice? Why did it matter to them what Abdul Rahman believed in? Why the need to punish? What is an outsider to say when faced with an explanation such as this one:

The Prophet Muhammad has said several times that those who convert from Islam should be killed if they refuse to come back," says Ansarullah Mawlafizada, the trial judge.

Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, kindness and integrity. That is why we have told him if he regrets what he did, than we will forgive him," he told the BBC News website.

A similar reaction was observed by a Norwegian scholar, Anh Nga Longva, regarding the Hussein Ali case:

What struck me most was the unanimity of the condemnations. Everywhere in the Middle East these days opinions differ widely on the relationship between religion, public life and politics - with 'liberals' and 'islamists' being the two contending categories at each extreme of the continuum. Kuwait is no exception. On this particular occasion, however, I found a surprisingly strong consensus across the liberal/islamist divide. Practically everyone agreed that Qambar's conversion was a serious crime and as is the case with all crimes, it had to be punished.

Anh Nga Longva offers an interesting explanation for why apostasy cases provokes such rage in some Islamic breasts; it is akin, he says, to what a hard-core patriot might feel about treason. Treason is punishable by death. For some Muslims, apostasy equates with treason.

In an attempt to demonstrate to me that the death penalty against apostates makes good sense, an informant - an academic person whom I would describe as moderate by most accounts - concluded his argumentation with the following remark: ' Why is it so difficult for you to understand this? You did execute Quisling in Norway after the war, didn't you?'

Kuwait City was liberated on February 27, 1991. Unlike the Abdul Rahman case, which also started four or five years after an equally brief war of liberation, Hussain Ali's plight attracted little attention.

For two good reasons: (1) In August 1996, a month before his appeal was to be reviewed, Robert Ali was given a passport and packed off to the U.S.A. (2) In 1997, Hussain Ali reconverted back into Islam and returned to Kuwait. His soul remains in jeopardy. The Old Testament is very hard (see Hebrews 6:4-10) on apostates.

How the Buddha became a Catholic Saint

Anil Menon — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:17:47 EST

The story of how the Buddha became a Catholic saint is a story about an ancient Indian diaspora. Not the diaspora of a group of people but that of a collection of south-east Asian stories: the Jataka tales.

The Jataka tales have had a particularly strange journey. The word "jataka" means birth. The Jataka tales is a collection of fairy tales, riddles, parables, humorous moral tales and biographies all loosely centered around the previous lives of the Sakyamuni Buddha. Most of the approximately 550 stories in the Jataka tales have little to do with the Buddha. The Jataka tales were told long before they were written down. The tales were part of an oral tradition.

In the third or fourth century B.C., about three hundred years after the Buddha's death, the Jataka tales finally got written down. As the monks traveled, the Jataka stories traveled with them. The stories skipped languages, got translated, got adapted to local conditions and became native to many different cultures. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example, the Pardoner tells a Jataka story. Over half of La Fontaine's fables are actually from the Jataka tales.

Something very similar also happened to the Panchatantra (itself a secularized compendium of many Jataka tales). Arabic versions of the Panchatantra tales were set down in a manuscript called Kalilah and Dimnah (derived from Karataka and Damanaka, two recurring jackals in the Panchatantra stories). In the seventh and eight centuries A.D., Jewish merchants translated Kalilah and Dimnah into Greek and other European languages. The stories floated around in the collective Western consciousness until Planudes in the 14th century A.D. set them down as Aesop's Fables (no actual manuscript by Aesop has survived).

So widespread was the influence of these folktales from the Jataka and Panchatantra, that Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916), the famous folktale scholar and writer wrote:

... as to the source of the tales that are common to all European children ... increasing evidence seems to show that this common nucleus is derived from India and India alone .... So far as Europe has a common store of fairy tales, it owes this to India.

As Jacobs is careful to qualify, he is not claiming that every European fairy tale is from India; that's plainly ridiculous. But it seems the common stories, the stories that every child seems to know in Europe, can be traced back to tales that originally appeared in the Jataka or the Panchatantra.

What was it about these tales that made them so popular? I think it's the humor. It's of a special sort. In one of the tales, Buddha works as a security guard, and in another, a queen gets laughed at by fish. Yes, fish. The humor in these tales is often droll; Joseph Jacobs thought it was a characteristic of the South-Asian storyteller:

Can we go further and say that India is the source of all the incidents that are held in common by European children? I think we may answer "Yes" as regards droll incidents, the travels of many of which we can trace, and we have the curious result that European children owe their earliest laughter to Hindu wags.

Perhaps that's a bit much. Still, magic realism - whimsy's pretty new dress - is still very popular among South-East Asian writers.

At any rate, around the same time the Kalilah and Dimnah was being translated by the Jews, there lived a Christian monk called John of Damascus in the court of al-Walid ibn Abdul Malek, the Caliph of Baghdad. St. John was born around 676 A.D. and died sometime between 754 A.D and 757 A.D. He wrote a series of works defending the Christian faith. The Arabs, who ruled most of the world at the time, were very secure about Islam (seeing it as extension of Christianity); the Caliph gave St. John a free hand. One of the good father's books was a religious romance - the first Western one - called Barlaam and Joasaph.

The story of Barlaam and Joasaph is that of a young Indian prince, Josaphat (or Joasaph), being converted to Christianity by the arguments of Barlaam. Josaphat's story (before his conversion) is almost exactly the story of the Sakyamuni Buddha. Indeed, "Josaphat" is nothing but a Greek-formulation of "Bodhisat." This is fairly well established.

The online Catholic Encyclopedia says (about St. Josaphat):

The story is a Christianized version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show. This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle Persian Budasif (Budasif = Bodhisattva).

Barlaam and Joasaph was a huge hit. It was translated into all the European languages; there's even a version in the Spanish dialect used in the Philippines.

It used to be a practice in the Catholic Church to recite the names of saints and martyrs in the most sacred part of the service (so called Canon of the Mass, just before the Host is consecrated). That is why, of course, we speak of saints as being "canonized."

But who decided who was a saint and who wasn't? For a long time, the decision was left to local parishes. However, in 1170 A.D., Pope Alexander III decreed that the power to canonize saints rested exclusively with the Holy See. The names of the martyrs were no longer recited in the Canon but moved to a sub-service called the Prime. Over time, it became less and less permissible to include new names into the list of saints - the Martyrology - without getting explicit approval from the Pope. Trouble was, there were still several equally official Martyrologies floating aroud.

Pope Sixtus the Fifth (1585-1590) made a move to eliminate these multiple versions by commissioning a single standard list of martyrs. Cardinal Cesare Baronius was assigned to draw up the Martryologium. It was decided to make the official Martyrologium as broad-minded as possible; the idea was to merge existing Martyrologies rather than pick a correct one (for obvious reasons). On November 27, 1610, Cardinal Baronius included:

The holy Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, of India, on the borders of Persia, whose wonderful acts St. John of Damascus has described.

Baronius seems to have included these names from the Catalogus Sanctorum, the fourteenth century Martyrology of Petrus de Natalibus, Bishop of Equilo (now Jesolo, Italy).

So there you have it. The Buddha is an official Catholic saint.

The Catholic Encyclopedia is resolutely unembarrassed about the whole incident. As I understand it, they take the position that sainthood is a human assignation, based on our understanding of what constitutes a miracle. The Vatican claims authority, not infallibility.

Isn't it strange how history works? A collection of stories, freed from their letter cages, moving across languages, belief systems and time. I'm reminded of the editor's advice in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend become fact, print the legend."

There are also strange ironies. In the 19th century, Naryanan Balkrishnan Godbole, a Sanskrit pandit, translated the so-called Aesop's Fables of Planudes of Constantinople back into Sanskrit. The stories had returned home after almost 2000 years of wandering. I'm not sure if St. John's Barlaam and Joasaph exists in Pali; if it doesn't, it should.

St. Buddha would have agreed, I think.

The Non-Conservative Traditionalist

Anil Menon — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 08:34:15 EST

It's hard to know when a difference makes a difference. For example, if you're Humpty Dumpty, your 'cravat' could just as well be your 'belt'. Or not. Likewise, the Patriot act was what used to happen in Victorian bedrooms and though the situation is a tad different these days, the original meaning still works. But ever since the Republicans discovered framing, things have gotten tricky. 'Clean air' is about smog permits. 'Tax relief' means 'let's help the rich.' 'Sex' means 'let's not.' But some words did not need any changing at all; 'traditional' family values, for example, never did mean 'liberal' family values.

In a recent talk at Harvard's Kennedy School, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, made an off-hand comment:

Are the Saudi people conservative? Yes. Are we traditional? Yes...

It's an interesting distinction. Isn't 'tradition' what conservatives conserve? Could a non-conservative claim to be traditional?

As I see it, a traditionalist is someone who uses the past in his/her daily life. For a traditionalist, the past is neither dead nor inaccessible. If a particular tradition no longer works -- slavery or foot-binding or burning widows -- it is modified to make a new tradition. The modification is usually a series of minor changes: a sari may be exchanged for a salwar, a particular dish may no longer be cooked, a man may go to Lamaze class, a Bollywood movie may include a gay character, etc.

In contrast, a conservative's relationship is not with the past, but with the future. The conservative does not love the past as much as he fears the future. The Shiv Sainiks flip out on Valentine's day not because Urvashi never sent a "I heart you" to Pururava (she did), but because their version of the future only permits docile women. The actual past is quite irrelevant for a conservative.

After a number of detailed studies on how institutions adopt new technology, the late Elting E. Morison, came to the conclusion that we needed,

...a relatively greater reverence for the mere process of living in a society than we possess today, and a relatively smaller respect for and attachment to any special product of a society, a product either as finite as a bathroom fixture or as conceptual as a fixed and final definition of our Constitution or our democracy. [Source: Man, Machines, and Modern Times. M.I.T. Press. 1995. pp. 43]

Perhaps this identification with process as opposed to artifacts is what separates a traditionalist from a conservative.

Consider the often hideous precepts of the Manusmriti. How can a Brahmin parent (say) square this ghastly text with his/her kid? A conservative parent would have to lie, because his/her idealized past can admit no evil. In contrast, a traditionalist only needs continuity, not permanence. Such a parent can not only acknowledge the many mistakes made but also the possibility of recovering from them. Even better, the traditionalist's own life is a living example of such transformation.

It's a difference that makes a difference.

Wafa Sultan - Rebel, Heretic or Outcast?

Anil Menon — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:56:02 EST

Wafa Sultan has become The Muslim Who Spoke Out. That she rejects the label "Muslim," and has been daring to speak out for over two years is quite besides the point.

Albert Hirschman wrote that there are possible responses to organizational decay: Exit, Voice and Loyalty. We can either quit a system, or we can work from the inside for change, or simply soldier on like the horse Baxter in Animal Farm. It appears Dr. Wafa Sultan has chosen the first two options.

In her now famous debate with Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli on Al-Jazeera (aired on February 21, 2006), the Syrian-born psychologist kicked some serious ass. A sample excerpt:

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.

And later:

The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of
the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church.
We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

Admittedly, there're a lot of this sort of stuff on Desicritics as well. The difference seems to be one of authenticity. That a Muslim woman would go dare to go head-to-head with a senior and respected Muslim cleric in prime time struck a nerve. According to the Memri TV, the Al-Jazeera debate has been viewed more than a million times. Dr. Al-Khouli (image shown on right), who teaches at the famed Al-Azhar university in Cairo, seems to be something of a regular on Al-Jazeera; he's the reliably medieval voice on its Al-Itijah Al-Mu'akis (Opposite Directions) program. The dude didn't know what hit him. At one point, the poor man was reduced to:

If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...

He'd had plenty of forewarning. In July 2005, Dr. Sultan had knocked heads with Dr. Ahmad Bin Muhammed, an Algerian professor of politics, and in my view, even more provocative. She's a contributor to the Annaqed, which is harshly critical of Islam and very pro-America. As a medical student in Syria, she'd been a witness to the murder of her professor in 1979 by the Muslim Brotherhood. As she told the New York Times:

They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god.

Wafa Sultan may be the least important character in the story. The fact that Al-Jazeera has these debates, that the Islamic world seems to be in the process of a self-examination, that there are at least a million people who were willing to download the debate, and that it took about three weeks for the debate to become news-worthy in the Western media are all equally interesting aspects. But for now, as the poem says: may her tribe increase.

The View From Chittor, Pune

Anil Menon — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 00:12:00 EST

So you're having dinner at Chittor, a Marwari eatery on Deccan Gymkhana road in Pune. The decor is Rajasthani-chic: walls with Chittor palace scenes, wooden Palithana chairs with reddish dandia-stick arms and ornate arabesque ceilings.

There's none of the "Hi, I'm Tiffany, I'll be your waitress tonight" crap. You enter, sit, gulp down the jaljeera and tuck in. It's that simple. As per Rumsfeld's shock n' awe doctrine, the jaljeera is followed by buttermilk is followed by a chilled mint-concoction. The waiters in traditional-wear seem to take it personally if any of the six+ katoris on your steel plate are even half-empty. There's khichdi and chaas, good enough to make Prithviraj weep. Chutneys. Marwari dal. Gatta sabzi. Ras malai, raita and kachoris. There are four kinds of breads -- methi tepla, bajre ka roti, phulkas and bati -- and panchrang pulow and white rice for a little variety. There's fruit salad, khichdu, shrikhand and glares for little Moti who won't stop weeping for KFC. As a take-home test, the stomach is offered a clutch of jalebi puzzles; sweet little kolams in ghee and sugar.

The bill is not optional. But at a measly $5/head, it includes a bonus laugh + unlimited mukhwas.

It's been one hell of a dinner. You whip out that palm pilot and tap out a note-to-blog on Chittor. You tuck it away, pay the bill ("no check please gentlemen!"), nod to the turbaned doorman and step out into the humid night, bloated and happy.

A forest of hands. Damn beggar kids. Its practically the entire cast from the City of Joy. You close your eyes and then re-open them. Nope. The little bastards are still there.

Look, forget the grand gestures and deep thoughts. Fuck guilt. Screw Jeffrey Sachs and micro-financing and freakonomics. Just cough up a few bucks and head for the car. Yeah, it's totally wasted, these pointless acts of feel-good charity. The pile of hands is a half-a-billion deep. The kids act so filmi hungry, it's almost funny; hell, it is funny. Your friend says he knows a great meetha-paan place.

Many months later, someone asks: how was Chittor?

So you begin to describe. It sounds, you realize angrily, a bit like a confession.