Media

Funnily, intervention by the media swings between two extremes. At one end, the media projects itself seriously as The Fourth Estate, a cornerstone of democracy. That, however, is as believable as having free and fair elections in Congo. On the other end, a carpet is rolled out for manufacturing consent. There at least has to be a pretence about the fact that it can, after all, have an independent conscience. Alive front pages and stray reports bursting forth through shrinking spaces within news organisations are but tireless reminders of what should have been. Public scepticism to some extent will save the media from itself.

THE OTHER SIDE MRINAL PANDE - AMA-SPEAK ON MARRIAGE: THE ELDERS KNOW BEST

A ma, my maternal grandmother, was an accidental matriarch. She was pushed into that unenviable position in our strongly patriarchal Kumaoni Brahmin community by the sudden and untimely death of her husband.
She'd had little formal education and her command over English was also a bit shaky, but when Ama spoke about tradition, she usually had truth as well as wit on her side. Marriages, she said, may have been conceived in heaven, but since they have to be solemnized on earth, it is pointless to expect divine help in finding a perfect match for one's child.
Look at King Janaka of Mithila, she'd say, the most learned astrologer-scholar of his time, and he couldn't foresee when he married his daughter Sita to the prince of Ayodhya that she was going to be exiled to a forest, not once but twice by the Ayodhyawallas, while her husband, the divine incarnation of Lord Vishnu, just looked on! No, Ama said, we mortals must fall on our own resources and an occasional use of guile and subterfuge to check in on the candidates while matchmaking was perfectly justified.
Amazing how relevant Ama's tactics remain to date.
The phobias, the neurotic timidities and aggression that guided matchmaking and the marriage ceremony in her days are still around. And most Indians are still a little wary, if not totally outraged at the thought of their young falling in love and choosing partners.
On my writing desk wedding invites lie all swathed in expensive silk, some studded with crystals and inlaid with gold and silver threads. Inside, they name the couple perfuncto rily and then go on to list parents, grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, siblings and a dozen nephews and nieces as folks that await your darshan (darshanabhilashi) and merciful presence (kripakangshi) at some half-a-dozen festivities.
The kangaroo-like pouches within the cards carry at least sub-invites that list these fringe functions "ring ceremony, cocktail, mehndi, ladies' sangeet" and god knows what else.
But, even though the flesh is willing, the ever-wise spirit tells me it is actually rather weak and unlikely to withstand so much merrymaking in a week. So I keep throwing the cards out and rescuing them with the good intention of sending a "thank you and bless the happy couple" note later. The sheaf keeps accumulating tea rings and finger marks and one day, after the wedding season is long over, I consign them all to the trash basket with a sigh.
In Ama's time, the family elders were supposed to know best, period. Matchmaking firmly excluded the boy and the girl and was carried out entirely by families in consultation with the family astrologer, the local barber (since he regularly shaved and massaged all eligible and non-eligible males in the area) and sundry close and trusted relatives.
I recall Ama dictating to me one such letter of "observations" to a non-resident relative regarding a particular young man who had been recommended by someone as an eligible bachelor to the parents of some unnamed marriageable girl from our vast clan. After the routine … "May peace be upon you, worthy of all high titles, Shri so and so," Ama came to the point, "since you had asked me to check on Shri so and so's chiranjivi son, I note below my findings. Of course the young man has an impeccable lineage and counting seven generations from his father's side and five from the mother's, one could detect no blood relationship, so that particular aspect, too, is taken care of.
"The young man is said, moreover, to be of a most obedient son to his mother, and a good earner. Physically, he is somewhat dark of mien and, according to Ramnath Baaji, the barber, has a cast in one eye. As I observed his gait from my house, his left leg seemed a bit shorter than his right.
Upon enquiry I learnt that his mother, while she was expecting him, had stepped out to see an eclipse which resulted in the aforementioned anomaly. However, as a groom he is alright. Don't just gape at me, write girl, write !" The last command was barked out to me. "But Ama," I remonstrated, "after naming all those awful physical defects, how can you say he is okay as a groom?"
"Shut up!" said Ama, "who are we to find fault in another's son? And in any case, if finally the parents decide to marry their girl to the bloke, can you imagine how foolish that can make me look? How does it matter if a sweet made of good ghee turns out a little misshapen?"
Those of us who have begun to challenge the traditional ways of matchmaking, but expect perfect matches nevertheless, are haunted by the question. Will this marriage last? Choosing a job is not hard for our young because the nature of most jobs is clear and they can easily check if their skills match the requirements. But since most of them still continue to grow up-in the most profound sense, virtually fatherless, can they be entirely trusted when they reach the age of consent to choose a bankable partner? Sons, who have grown up with daddy always at work/asleep after a long day/out playing golf/tennis or simply brooding in his study know as little about women as they do about being men.
Ditto for daughters.
Mrinal Pande likes to take readers behind the reported news in her fortnightly column. She is chief editor of Hindustan. Your comments are welcome at theotherside@livemint.com

"My Life These Days"

In this chilly winter
Everyday I leave my quilt at 6 AM
And go out to brave the cruel freezing wind
which cover my face with unwanted kisses
To attend coaching classes
Where I recite memorised budhhist koans
On the way to becoming IAS
Seems half-way I'll achieve salvation
Have left ad-hoc lectureship
Will soon leave Income Tax Inspectorship
Have become Devdas without
Chandramukhi and Paro's fellowship.
And more agonising than any thing else
You have become pretty elusive.

Are you lonesome tonight?

You could be alone but never lonely, so long as you learn the art of making most of your solitude!

Vinita Dawra Nangia TIMES NEWS NETWORK

IF you are an intelligent people observer, you would have noticed two kinds of loners. Those who wear their loneliness comfortably. At ease with themselves, their gaze is steady and introspective. Friendly if someone approaches them, they aren’t unduly perturbed if left to their own devices. Then there are those extremely uncomfortable with their loner status. They are awkward if someone talks to them, and more so when ignored. Bad social manners yes, but beyond that, you can figure these are lonely people who haven’t learnt to be comfortable with their aloneness. Loneliness is not the same as aloneness. Being alone implies not having anybody with you; it’s a state of being. A person who is alone may or may not be lonely. You can be comfortable and positive with your aloneness, or you may choose to be negative about it, which is when it becomes loneliness — a state of mind. Loneliness, in fact, doesn’t just strike those who are alone. It can strike you even when you are in the midst of a crowd. You don’t have to be alone to be lonely! Sitting amongst friends or even with family, you can sometimes feel a searing loneliness that is inexplicable. This can get quite disturbing since there’s no plausible cause for the feeling of isolation and depression. Indeed loneliness can be an anathema, leading to depression and much heartburn, unless you have the capability or intellect to use it to rise to higher levels of consciousness. And yet, it is up to you where you allow it to lead you. Loneliness is a strange feeling of detachment from those around you, where you float away from the situation and almost seem to be an outsider looking in. There’s a strange yearning, a thirst for something you cannot figure out, something that evades your grasp and yet, tantalizingly beckons from not-so-far. This is an intellectual loneliness, which has teased seekers for ages. Spiritual healers would have us believe that the intellectual yearning of a lonely person is actually a yearning for the Ultimate Truth. Dr Brian Weiss goes further and explains it as the yearning for soul mates we have been separated from and will meet again in this lifetime and other lives to come. Spiritual or intellectual, perhaps it was this loneliness — a feeling of emptiness and isolation — that set Gautam Buddha on his path to enlightenment, this that exhorted Gandhi to begin his experiments with truth. This again that fired the pens of many creative writers and coloured the lives of many an artist. Loneliness and a yearning for friendship inspired a lot of Robert Browning’s work, the essays of Charles Lamb and many others. For centuries, great people have lurked in a lonely state, on the periphery of society. The trick is in learning to graduate from loneliness to the love of solitude, much like Wordsworth does in The Daffodils, where the loneliness of “I wandered lonely as a cloud…” soon, with the sighting of the daffodils, and the poet's imaginative response to them, turns to a blissful expression of solitude… For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude And solitude is a desirable state to be in. Distinct from loneliness, it has a certain healing quality. You can find solitude anywhere if you are seeking it. Loneliness is negative, it doesn’t give you solitude. But you can rise from one state to the other if instead of giving way to the negatives of loneliness, you choose to seek its resonant qualities, use it to your advantage by turning inwards. Turn within to an understanding of the self. As all great thinkers and poets have done for ever. Choosing an existence far removed from cacophony of life, almost all poets and artists have used Nature to help them create that resonance which transforms loneliness to a fulfilling solitude, be it Wordsworth’s Daffodils or Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden in As You Like It, where nature is alive and talks. An inner harmony, a balance that flows from within to without to embrace all around — creating a cosmos, a vibration in your aloneness. You can also snap out of a lonely state of mind by throwing yourself into activities that get your creative juices flowing. Read, write, paint, cook, dance, sing, watch movies, listen to music. Do whatever you choose, with a passion that slakes intellectual thirst, and that passion would surely blow away the cobwebs of a lonely state. So, whether you convert your state of aloneness to a depressing solitary, lonely state or to the bliss of solitude — the choice is yours! vinita.nangia@timesgroup.com