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Reflections of India

~ by facing my shadows

Reflections of India

Tag Archives: bhopal

The day I walked into Union Carbide ….

27 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian History

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

@APrayerForRain, bhopal, union carbide disaster

13416bhopalmass

 

Whatever you see creates it’s echo within you, and in some deep sense you become like that which you see.”
– Osho Hidden Mysteries

For two years I avoided Union Carbide. True, when I first arrived in Bhopal the accommodation building was pointed out from the road. Another time with a Swiss tourist in the car, it was pointed out as we wizzed down new Brahmpur Bridge Road.

I had walked Bhopal’s old city before ever realising how close I was to the fenced off site.

You know it is there but no one really talks about it. Just as bodies are dissolved on a pyre, the still toxic site remains permeating Bhopal’s collective soul.

For the few protests I sense a general malaise.  Protests allow  a sense of action. They show that people can do something – a something that meant everything stayed the same.  But the eros of protest rarely brings lasting change.

13416bhopalhorrorIn a recent visit to Australia, the Uranium sales  contract signed by Prime Ministers Modi and Abbott, inspired many Australian friends to ask me “Is it safe? Look what happened in Bhopal.”

Perhaps the legal decisions of previous governments (Both in  India and the USA) will bind Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Couhan. But I hope the upcoming 30th anniversary will be a plat form for social and business reform. The hubris of scientific progress has often been used to minimize industrial safety.  Double dealing of admitting liability in USA and not in India where some people want blood.

The Bhopal Municipal Corporation site claims 2000 died the night of December 2/3 in a city of then 800,000 and 8,000 since.

“The leak was caused by a series of mechanical and human errors. A portion of the safety equipment at the plant had been non-operational for four months and the rest failed. When the plant finally sounded an alarm–an hour after the toxic cloud had escaped–much of the harm had already been done.
The city health officials had not been informed of the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide factory. There were no emergency plans or procedures in place and no knowledge of how to deal with the poisonous cloud.”

 

2014-09-21 14.42.17resSo two years later I find myself crossing the crumbling damp earth to a painted brick fence . Behind the white blocks  that encircle the site shantis are leaning. Washing hangs from branches into the property.

The monsoon is past but the sun has already left a sting on my face and exposed hands. The soil is soaked and rutted, wet and crumbled.

On a chalky patch of white a sitting  sari-d woman is pounding  the ground. Nearby three naked youths pull themselves from a long concrete water tank near bye. Towelled and dressed, they offer (more like foce me) to take my picture for piase, money.

Union Carbide Hole

There is a clear breach in the wall, half filled in by layered rocks.

But I feel an intruder. The world needs to experience Bhopal and to learn from this disaster. The thought of Toxic tourism feels an unwelcome intrusion. And tourists do have a reputation of destroying the landscape and  solemnity of the places they wish to see.
The terms ecotourism or cultural tourism seem oxymorons. Tourists are seen as culturally ignorant, Tourism often changes the very thing come to see. Frustrated sceptics feel justified in describing Social Justice tourism as “self righteous arrogance”, “hypocritical” and “ironic”.

But I am not a tourist. I rent on the other side of town.

I am not seeking to satisfy morbid curiosity. People ask me about the disaster as if I should know as the 30th anniversary approached.

Emails to MPtourism and anyone else I can think of have been ignored.  One website claims permission can be granted in 24 hours, but no organisation matching the claim was found.  I approached the police at the Collectorate Office. I am given an address but that’s a dead end too.

Talk of tours has upset some locals, but one of my Bowen Therapy clients, a former UC employee is frustrated there is so much myth and exaggeration about the disaster in the hope of making money. I am not so sure.

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I had followed my nose past the Taj ul Masjid without a map, bought an icecream opposite the Chingari Rehabilitation Clinic  and knowing I must be close recognised the fence line almost by accident.

No, I am not a tourist!

bhopalgastraegedy_victimss

I understand, the locals expressed concern about opening the site to tourists for the 30th anniversary.

However we spend more on tourism than on eating, so disliking tourists is a bit like disliking who we are who we have become our culture and who we stand for.

It’s like resigning to what is and saying we can never do better.

Bhopal is sadly the premier example for Toxic Tourism.  India and the world have not learned the lessons. In US toxic “human sacrifice zones” shock even locals by the nearness to homes playgrounds and schools.

I do not wish to discredit the beauty of Bhopal or to make a clown of human suffering.

I do want people to see what is hidden and denied. A life worlds apart that is right next door.

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But If Duponte can creatively advertise “better living through chemistry” or GE claim “We bring the good life” why is it wrong to use creativity to remind people of hidden and denied toxicity? World over, such tours reveal how close toxic industries are to residents

Bhopal is a beautiful city. This is the beauty I want people to see. Yet to inspire change, perhaps we need to evoke the ugly sensibilities of our world.

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An appearance rust and brick like any other forgotten factory is before me.

Amongst the rusted frames, life is mixed with death and new growth. Greenery isa graphic symbol of renewal in a scarred and contaminated landscape. I sense life from death.

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But unlike Hiroshima or the Twin towers there is no iconography of memory. Yes, outside ruth watermans memorial captures despair but is barely noticed. Some laugh at it: “What is that supposed to mean?”

https://www.facebook.com/urban.photo.rhizome

source: facebook.com/urban.photo.rhizome

Urban Photo Rhizome Bhopal 2011

In 2011 The Urban Rhizome Photo project rebelliously showed that may Bhopali’s do not want to be defined by the tragedy.  This shadow boxing with the past reminds us that environmental disasters carry a universal burden.  Bhopal may have been a local tragedy but intricate links question our entire global society.

Union Carbide may be a local phenomenon but it’s response must be global.  Landscapes are not just rock and tree scapes but memories evinced from our past. Healing is therefore an ongoing and constant renegotiation of individual and collective meaning we as a society give to this tragedy.

Unfortunately, the survivors have become an ongoing subjects in the collective experiment of industrial failures.

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Images haunt. There is a whole mythology built on this fact: Cezanne painting till his eyes bled, Wordsworth wandering the Lake Country hills in an impassioned daze. … ‘It is like being alive twice.’ Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is. … Some feeling in the arrest of the image that what perishes and what lasts forever have been brought into conjunction, and accompanying that sensation is a feeling of release from the self. …Only the moment is eternal.”
—“Images,” an essay in Twentieth Century Pleasures (Ecco, 1984) by Robert Hass

As I look at the green shrubbery pushing through rust and concrete I am reminded that India is a land of images.:Images that link us to its myths.

How will the night of the gas be remembered? How can we explain the larger implications of industrialisation?

More than just words are required. In Tantra it is taught that we enhance our senses and evoke our inner mantra. So what emotive experience  -what feeling – could move people to action? There are so many conflicting memories to interpret and rehabilitate.

How do we recognise contemporary needs with conflicting painful past and remember  Bhopal’s beautiful palaces and not just a disaster?

What legacy will lesson balance public memory with the marginalised, equity with ecology?

IN07_INDIA_BHOPAL_121940f

The images of this mantra of death are as tactile as a poem that brings up the sensations of the past and present. But it is too easy to see life like fragments of ghazzals rather than appreciate the beauty – or pain – of the poem.

The recent movie recreation “Bhopal: a prayer for rain” has again projected history across the movie screen of the mind.

2014-09-21 14.23.17res

 

But in the silence of metal and concrete I hear a mantra in my mind.   Mantras  reminds us of the power of silence and reflection and meaning and how, like life, springs from the humus of death.

Bhopal must mean something for the world or the rusting hulk will become just an industrial product another. It’s mantra must be of  industry, ecology and decontamination.

As I left I turned down the main road. The front gate to Union Carbide land was wide open.

It is up to us to determine by what songs  future generations will remember December 1984.

Workers repackaging the toxic waste atthe Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.— Photo: A.M. Faruqui

Workers repackaging the toxic waste atthe Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.— Photo: A.M. Faruqui

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I want a king sized cafe latte “mai raja akar coffee chahiye”

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in India, Madhya Pradesh

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bad management, bhopal, cafe latte, coffee, Khan Bhai, office politics, volunteer

Bhopal City of Lakes

Bhopal City of Lakes

I want a king sized cafe latte: “mai raja akar coffee chahiye”

In fact I need it

A child bangs her hands on the window, face flattened on the glass.

“Do not feel sympathy. Give charity if you want but do it freely. It is their job. I used to invite kids to my home for food. They asked for biscuits for their brother and take the back to the shop to be resold.”

It sounded heartless, but I had only yesterday watched an adult direct children where best to sell squeezing through packed intersection of MP Nagar.

Clearly Romano is very upset. Our Swiss volunteer has had enough of office politics, Indian style.

“Rajbir uses a few words in English then switch to Hindi .. I don’t have to be at that meeting” for hours he had sat useless, unheard feeling as if he were a trophy kept to show that a skilled white scientist commended the company.

The feeling is not racist. I had attended a festivity and found out later the host had told my business partner “Tell him to bring other white monkeys.” A strange type of prestige by association. A reverse racism?

“I travel to work. So I can learn then give them my experience. Do some practical thing. I knew when I am coming it would not be like it would be in Switzerland.”

Advity explained that the architect took it on himself to draw plans without consulting Rajbir or the farmer.

Mr Patidur had warned them at a meeting that there was water logging in a depression nor did the architect consider pre existing trees, designing a building in a field that will be harvested in six weeks time..

“Rajbir is cost effective. That’s why I stick with him. His knowledge is worth it. Other partners like Rajender think of business only. Same with Ashish . He rushed his plans demanded payment before the land was surveyed properly.” This added costs to the farmer not in the contract.

How he got away with it seemed to me incredible, except that he is well known as a local. They did not question his prestige or his family connections to Bollywood royalty. Neither guaranteed the common sense of his design.

“The energies of the farm are ruined” she said thinking Feng Shui. Then added “To you I will stand up for Rajbir. To Rajbir I will stand up for you.”

We wind down a narrow alley where Khan Bhai takes the old TV. If he can fix it it’s his. A bike is parked away from the wall blocking our way. The young man moves it smiling. Into the inner street another must move his bike. Oblong drops in the road – as if missing six inch slabs of cement – limit manoeuvrability

“it is so much like a ghetto. I used to worry mew now I dint give it a thought” Advity says.

The car bottoms out on a concrete rise that rises like an oversized speed bump some 2 metres wide. We reverse back as men manoeuvre things in the gutter as children tearing at each other over a prized possession are pulled a part by women covered rose, saffron or blue matched with gold appliqué.

Woman’s searching eyes from beneath a tightly warming wrap. Clearly Khan bhai knows them.

“She looks like manna” I say. Advity disapproving scowl as if to ask “how could you think she looks like that? .. My daughter is perfect” remains unsaid.

One road is full of shops selling farming implements .

Then we pass plastic buckets in a window and pulling in enter under a Yamaha emblazoned sign. But filled with plastic bowls, pots even boxed vegetable slices. But to the side is found motorcycle fuel tanks on racks.

There is nothing we need we move on.

At Mukesh Seeds Khan bhai is laughing as I imperfectly spellout the name. Impressed by my effort, the owner offers me his visiting card.

But as night is darkening the roar of traffics seems louder. The call to prayer begins on the nearby right, then distantly to the left.

Khan bhai shifts anxiously, approaches Advity.

“Brian, you watch car? I go Namaz.”

No one tells the office where the car has been.

I pay to top up the fuel

Explanations will be too explosive. I have had enough of office politics.

“mai raja akar coffee chahiye”

I need a king sized cafe latte

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Death of a Gond Queen

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in Madhya Pradesh, Tribal India

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bhopal, Dost Mohommad Khan, Kamla Park, Madhya Pradesh, rani kamlapati, Tribal India

kmlapati palace

Leaving the bus at Kamla Park, I am reminded of Bhopals Tribal heritage.

The indigenous peoples of the Malwa were the Dravidian Ghonds and Bhils.  The Gonds were mainly peasants while the Bhils were hunters and the Aryan Rajputs and Marhattas had dominated the region before the arrival of Islam.

With their own language the Gonds had their own idols and eventually assimilated into Hinduism. A gond-raja warlord ruled over both Gonds and Bhils.

 The meat eating Gond’s preferred to remain distinct from Aryan Hindus, particularly Brahmanism. Ethnically Dravidian they remained separate  from the succeeding layers of Hindu and Muslim settlers who had forced them to south and central India.

ghond palace

 So, a history of Bhopal though is incomplete without recognising the contribution of the Gond people, who were recognized by the Begums.

The famous forts of Ginnor and Chowkigarh were initially built by  Gonds.

Nawab Hayat Mohommad Khan adopted two Gond boys, the future Dewans Faulad Khan and the more infamous Chottey Khan.

To this day senior Gond families till retain land rights to larger properties or jagirs granted them by the Begums.

But as I walk around Kamala Park, there is a more haunting legend.

The famous Gond, Rani Kamlapati built the seven storey palace overlooking the lower lake.  Legend even claims  that the 16th century queen spent moonlit  nights floating on the lower lake in a lotus shaped barge. Kamala is Hindi for lotus.

Dost Mohommad Khan founder of Bhopal State

Dost Mohommad Khan founder of Bhopal State

She hired the Afghan mercenary  Dost Mohammed Khan, to avenge the murder of her husband, Nizam Shah Gond. Dost deposed her, founding his own dynasty, but the exquisitely beautiful queen declined life in his harem, and jumped into the upper lake rather than lose her honour.

 So as I walk around Kamala (lotus) Park, by the palace ruins, I am reminded of the scary tales that keep children awake from the parks southern shore.

 

view from Kamlapati Palace

view from Kamlapati Palace

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Reflections on the Maji Mamola Masjid

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by opus125 in India, Madhya Pradesh

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bhopal, India, Madhya Pradesh, maji mamola bhai masjid, mamola bai

Maji Mamola Masjid Bhopal

Maji Mamola Masjid Bhopal

I enjoy walking in Bhopal’s old city. It is not just the tourist spots, like Taj-ul Masjid, the biggest mosque in Asia. Ienjoy the side streets and buildings sometimes overlooked. One is the Maji Mamola Masjid, one of three built by Bhopal’s first woman ‘ruler’.

In summer heat, before the monsoon sweeps the dust from the street, I watched, read the sign, and reflected on my readings of Bhopals history. Why this building stayed in my memory I am unsure. Perhaps, as a historian, I know ghost from history reappear benign and malevolent.

At Independence Bhopal was a largely Muslim state of around 70,000 in seven thousand square kilometers, and famous for mosques, locals tell conflicting histories. Some tell of a successful integration of non Muslims to build Nehru’s dream of a religiously integrated India,  more probably one must revisit the unofficial  reign  of Mamola Bai, consort to Yar, and for 50 years the power behind the throne, the first of five unofficial women Nawab Begum, she is a  testament to positively shape a man’s world.

In 1947, distant religious slogans echoes first from Calcutta, of death to Muslims or Alluha Akhbar and now as 2015 sees a shift in India’s politics  I wonder if the ghosts of Bhopal also offer us guidance.

Maji Mamola Masjid Bhopal

Maji Mamola Masjid Bhopal

When the more powerful British, Marhatta and Mughal warlords slogged it out, Manji Saheba (Revered Mother), as she was known, maintained a just subservient and vassal state. When her husband died, Mahji Mamola headed a 5000 strong army against the half brothers who claimed the throne. She appointed ruler her husband’s oldest 11 year old son, Faiz Mohammad Khan, born to another of Khans wives.  Known for her charity, kindness to the poor and respected as just and fair, she consolidated Bhopal’s fragile authority in a time of social upheaval.

As Major William Bough wrote of her:

“From the account given of her conduct, under the most trying circumstance, it seems difficult to pronounce whether she was most remarkable for the humanity of her disposition, or the excellence of her judgment. She was beloved and respected by all. Her memory is still cherished by the natives, both Hindu and Mahomedan, of Bhopal, and it is consoling to observe, in the example of her life, that, even amid scenes of violence and crime, goodness and virtue, when combined with spirit and sense, maintain that superiority which belongs alone to the higher qualities of human nature; and which, without these, can be permanently conferred by neither title nor station.”

Perhaps her greatest honour came from Pir Ghous Ahmed Shah Gailani, a diret descendant of the Muslim saint, Pir Abdul Qader al-Gailani, who declared her to be Rabia Basri,the second, ensuring the title formerly attested in the Mughal court.

Who was Mamola Bai?

A war prize of matchless beauty, Mamola Bai, soon became Dost Mohammad Khan favourite consort, known for exceptional character. That she was reputed a Brahmin Rajput princess, though a Muslim convert,  was welcomed by neighboring Hindu rulers and she encouraged harmony between the Muslim elite and Hindu locals. Her devotion to the integrity of her step sons rule impressed the Pathans, from whom the Khans descend.

When the traitor Wasl Mohommad Khan, conspired against Faiz Mohommad Khan, sceded almost half of Bhopal to the Peshwars, who then appeased, did not give authority to the traitor. In an act of great kindness, Mamola Bai assisted Wasils widow and daughter, Saleha.

She herself led a force on horseback to occupy Raisen Fort. After defeating the Moghul force she diplomatic use emissaries and gifts persuaded the Moghul emperor to formerly assign Raisen to Bhopal.

Vassal first to the Nizam and then the Mahattas. Her far sighted welcoming of General Thomas Goddard, as he forced his troups through harassing Hindu and Muslim opponents, stood against public opinion. Aware of British growing influence in Bengal, Bombay, Oudh and the south and by securely billeting them in Raisen fort she ensured her kingdoms future security after her death. In 1778, indolent Hayat, her second step son, was Bhopals fourth Nawab, Warren Hastings was Britian’s first Governor General in India, Britain and France were struggling for India’s heartland.  Britains East India Company was attempting to link India’s East and West while suppressing the Mahattas.

So revered was Mamola Bai that fearing she would succumb to illness, Muslim saint Shah Ali Shah prayed for seven days in seclusion, himself dying while Mamola Bai recovered. To this day, Shah Ali Shahs Island tomb is a pilgrimage site in Bhopal Lake.

Island shrine of Muslim saint Shah Ali Shah

Island shrine of Muslim saint Shah Ali Shah

Critics suggest Mamola knew her reclusive step son Faiz Mohommad Khan uninterested in politics, giving herself real power. Faiz became revered as saintly. interested in politics and his successor Hayat was unwilling or incapable. Perhaps another blot on her rule came from her fourth adopted son the Brahmin Chottey Khan known for his ruthlessness. However, after the 1762 death of chief administrator Bijjeh Ram Bhopal saw the violent death of three ministers and the city overrun by the Peshawrs who Mamola Bai wisely bought off with territory and tribute.

in 1776. Mamola Bai adopted four Hindu boys (a tribal Gond, two Aheer, and a Brahmin) converting them to Islam. Whether this was an attempt to show to Muslim subjects her devotion to Islam, Chottey Khans, improvement of administration, modern taxation, facilities and life style was tainted by his aggressive and ruthlessness.  Chottey was appointed minister 17 years later he gave Bhopal needed stability.

Although extending diplomatic and trade ties with Gwalior, Indore and Baroda, better administering mosques and modeled the artistic life to mirror Delhi and Hyderabad,  Chootey’s heavy handedness saw Bhopal again threatened.  First by the maneuverings of Seleha, daughter of the traitor Wasl Mohommad Khan, who then married Nawab Faiz Mohamad Khan.  On his death,  the Bahu Begum, as she was known, refused to accept her husband’s bother, Hayat. Defiant of the woman who raised her, she ran a second court at nearby Islamnagar taunting her former in-laws to defend family honour. This was the same year Mamla controversially showed hospitality to the British. Hayat had even offered to stand down to pacify her for the good of the kingdom.

During the authority of Chottey, she then taunted Dost’s grandson, Shareef Mohomad Khan, to attack this non family usurper:  “If I were a man, I would never allow this Brahmin slave to rule over the family of Dost Mohomad Khan.” She failed to finance a rebellion and later Shareef was defeated in the Battle of Phanda that stained Chottets character for its gorey arrogance that disturbed the Nawab Hayat and showed the aging Momola Bai was losing her grip on power. Afterward, Chottey astutely bought off the ferocious Pindaras, a group of  Muslim Maurauder’s, ensuring Bhopals peace.

In 1794 Chottey died,  two tears before Mamola Bai. She was buried in Grinnor Fort.

I am reminded of the feuding Kaarava’s and Pandava’s families from the Mahabharata. Then, remembering the Khans were Muslim, think of early wars that followed te death of Mohammad that fractured Islam into Shia and Sunni.

Without Mamola Bais guidance, dissent , decline and intrigue followed. Fortunately, the Peshwars were already in decline that the farsighted British alliance would later help.

With all this turbulence, it is amazing to see an artistic heritage that flowered into a city of regular concerts, tribal dance displays, the Tribal Museum as well as 200 hectares displaying India’s diverse tribal life.  While tigers and bears do not roam a few kilometers from the city edge as they did in 1947, Madhya Pradesh boasts jungle reserves, such as Pench, where ‘lived’ Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, Baloo and Sher Khan.

I would like to see her as a reflective woman in difficult times, and yet recognise she must have been a woman of action of strong character and action.

Concerned that extremists destroyed girl schools in Pakistan, Urdu poet and journalist,Muslim Saleem  reflected on his childhood in Bhopal, praising Mamola Bai and future women who shaped Bhopal.

“These enlightened (lady) rulers turned Bhopal State into a modern, prosperous, welfare state. They all spoke fluent Persian and Urdu and had learnt some English as well. They established a large number of schools, both for boys and girls, and provided free education. Nawab Sultan Jehan Begum made generous donations to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan for the establishment of Aligarh Muslim University and had the distinction of being its first Chancellor. After her death her son, Nawab Hameedullah Khan, who had graduated from Aligarh, was chosen as the Chancellor. Had those ladies not been educated, had they not encouraged education, both for boys and girls, I would probably have been no more than a kharkar, a cobbler or stone breaker.

Without the encouragement mothers can give, many children, even boys, would drop out of school, leading to an even higher rate of illiteracy. How then could we possibly progress as a nation? You are not only holding back women, you are holding back the nation.”

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Saving the Tribe

05 Monday May 2014

Posted by opus125 in India, Tribal India

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bhopal, iGRMS, India, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Poorvotsav 2014, Tribal India

Poorvotsav 2014 Bhopal

Tree frames lit in hues of Jasmine, Green and Reds silhouette cloth backdrops of tan and neem  Above, lilac, saffron and gold hang like coloured prayer flags.

The air is cool now.  Jupiter rides high above a quarter moon. An hour before, the harsh glare of sweat exploded in downpour over the old city. Lightening forks distantly, a madrassa of white skull capped youth find their mosque as dust blows over the blackened complexion of a prone street dweller by Kamla Park. Then the rush of rain flushes the air as I find shelter and coffee at Park View Fast Food Restaurant .

Poorvotsav 2014, Bhopal

Now,  as I admire the strength and agility of tribal dance I wonder whether good intentions are enough to save Tribal Culture.

A series of dancers where hats bound by strands of upright flowers. I am struck by the unity of design as much as by the variation f nature. The hats are not the factory designs of microscopically perfect regularity. Flower stems, like nature, have their own fractal chaos, that reminds me of the recursive ascension to mount Meru depicted in a Hindu temple roof, or the internal search within the  unadorned inner sanctum, garbhagrha, or  “womb room”, to be reborn again.

Poorvotsav 2014, Bhopal

The central energy of folk art is spiritual in an increasingly material world. This, wrote Doctor Narmada Prasad Gupta, has resulted in material and spiritual seen as antithetical opposites, like black and white. The natural and simple life is being lost because we have lost the purity of life that sees material and spiritual as an organic whole.

It is easy to be romantic of the past. It is easy to blame British or Muslim invaders “corrupting” a tribal purity. Others, like Vardana Shiva, suggest the masculinised Aryan invasion, conquered the more inclusive Matrisitc cultures that preceded them.

The village is no longer distant from the politics poverty, exploitation and manoeuvrings.

Tribal life found strength in its diversity, which modernity threatens to homogenise. The masculinised cultures likes to simplify, but nature, and the tribes dependent on her,  thrive in diversity.

So I am torn.

The wonderful beauty of tribal dance, performed so stunningly at the 3 day Poorvotsav, a North Eastern Tribal Dance Festival, at ,the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (Igrms) Bhopal leaves me in awe and sad.

Poorvotsav 2014 Bhopal

The explosion in interest in Tribal art is a beautiful here in Bhopal.  However, unless the elite see beyond nature destroying production the Tribes will not survive.

Tribes thrive in the rich natural havens of mountains, rivers and trees. In our technologically destructive world, where life styles corrupted and ruined

Every day in the City of Lakes green farmland is being shredded into another apartment block.

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While showing wonderful dance and art in a city centre is marvellous and important does it support the thousands of practitioners of the art in a distant village? A short recording does wonders to promote an art to an unknowing urban audience yet also risks losing the hundreds of subtle variations of a dance unrecorded elsewhere.

Then there is the onslaught of Bollywood, as beautiful as that is in itself.. The travelling performers of Rajasthan for instance have complained people want renditions of the latest glitzy movie and no the unglamorous traditional performers.

I am in awe every tribal performance I visit here.  The bright red frocks sashed in tan are beautiful. The men in black tunics and white pyjama are a delight. The incredible musculature of a woman aching backward stuns me. Without the support of her hands another dances on her stomach.

As I return home, a lift offered me by a local near to my Shahpura home, he asks me if I attend church, pointing out the Campion church near home. I politely decline but thank him for the thought.

My thoughts ask instead how we can inclusively keep alive – indeed help make thrive – the knowledge, experience and folk sensitivity that is Tribal India.

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Images for this post are supplied from the IGRMS, Bhopal.

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Bhopal Buses

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by opus125 in India

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bhopal, India, india car deaths

Bus Accident, New Market, Bhopal

Bus Accident, New Market, Bhopal

Returning to the Old Collectorate building to again register my presence as a foreign  national, my bus met with an accident.

Now I find Bhopal buses excellent, although the old clunking diesels are the nightmares of environmentalists.. In the madness of traffic that is India it seems miraculous there are so few. Atleast I though that until I read their were 142,000 road deaths last year in India.

It is not the first Accident I have seen here. I have seen women bumped off the back of scooters unharmed and once a woman grazed as she fell off a bike valiantly holding onto her child. A passing retired colonel picked up the baby took it to a nearby hospital and paid the bill without a word. A passing doctor told the woman to be quiet – her grazes were very superficial her crying was distressing the child.

But from the bus, I cannot say who was at fault.  My first instinct was the bearded driver of a four wheel drive  had squeezed into to tight a space between the bus unable to see him. Then again, the grinding of metal suggested perhaps the driver was turning into a drive way. Perhaps he was side swiped by the bus.

As the bus engine cut I saw the offended man march with self righteous indignation back from beside the bus, I guessed he had taken the numberplate. I realise he had parked across the buses path.

Bus Accident, New Market Bhopal

Bus Accident, New Market Bhopal

Soon voices raise. Indignant grabs at the bus driver protected behind a door. Then sharp grabs, and shoves A half hearted tussle to pull the driver from the bus. It seemed more to get public attention but few men in kurta seemed interested.

So instead he began to let down the driver right front tyre as we piled out the bus onto one that followed close behind, hoping to find my ticket deep in the confines of my pockets.

Uneventfully finding the Special Branch Police Office I await until my old friend Deepak Nayak, can process my Residency Certificate, which is fine as I am reading how to use the iRMS machine for our new clinic premises we will soon move into. A new recruit is uncertain but fastidious in his attempts to help me meanwhile.  Another superior guides him but the file remains unfound.

“Deepak will be here 5 to ten minutes. I am new.’

A latte at Cafe Coffee Day, and I again traverse the routine of a bus conductor, with th added novelty of a random ticket inspection by a supervisor who crosses  them with a biro.  Orr when, stopping fo a change of conductor, the bus, sightly onto the road, remains stationary as buses behind blare their horns in frustration.

I suppose the increasing heat before the monsoon raises passions as well as air temperature.

Oh well, at least the bus trip was interesting.

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Finding the Sacred in life

21 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by opus125 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

beauty, bhopal, Dvid Boehme, Sacral Existence, sacred creation, sacred life, spiritual heart disease, Trickster, Wendel Berry

Bhopalgarneshmaking IMG_0215

The idea that we live in something called “the environment” is utterly preposterous…. The world that environs us, that is around us, is also within us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it; it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

– Wendell Berry

The Navaho see creation as a sand painting. A catholic may relive recreation in the eating of the body of god, and the logos John says all things exist.  The Hopi world describe the weaving a microcosmic  womb of the spider woman.

Throughout history various traditions have described chaos turned to order.

It seems to me the universe was described a multi-layered, with both a celestial over world and a chthonic underworld, with appropriate spirit rulers and other denizens. there are also rulers of the principle directions or quarters. The levels of the universe are connected by a central axis, the axis mundi which appears as a sky ladder or world tree. Much as Jacobs ladder ascended and descended to heaven.

It is via this central axis that the shaman gains entry to all the levels of the universe.

IBhopal Lakes Fstival

With this in mind, I am considering the rose. The traditional rose and not the hybrid multi pedalled equivalent. Five petals and five sepals identify the  Rosaceae familly including apples, pears, quinces, apricots, plums, cherries, peaches, raspberries, loquats, almonds and strawberries.

The rose may smell as sweet by any other name, yet still its it’s prickles are  the wounds of love or evil.

Red roses? Like blood?

The Apache Indians red ochre the earths  blood,  coral is teeth, rock the bones, opal  its fingers, nail and teeth,  and abalone the sclera of the eyes. A dark cloud is the hair that later turns white.

In Jewish Kabbalah  the heaven as mans skin, the constellations are to the skins configuration, as the 4 elements to mans flesh, and the internal forces of the universe are angels, servants of god, to men’s bones and veins

For scientist and thinker David Boehme, the  whole body signify heaven and earth, the body cavity or bladder relates to air,  the heart  fire,  blood or liver is water  and the arteries course of the stars and the intestines wasting away.

I wonder if we have lost our connection to the earth behind a mask that distances us from life.

Old City BhopalA mask is a democratic space that on level at least convinces us we are not part  hierarchy , But infact,  increasingly dependent on technology there are new rulers and surfs. The present level playing field is as much   a colonialism as the world post 1492. We have just changed the name.

We have become detached from our bodies unable to listen to the yoga of life or the intuition of nature.

We call them myths.

The majesty of greatness is not known to small souls, just as the moon is not known by a mushroom that dries up by midday, or the cicada that dies before it sees spring.

But we should know.

Whether as crow or coyote , Trickster was the violator of taboo and also power of creativity. Of course, you probably don’t believe that. Which is OK. But do you dismiss it as a pagan or stupid superstition? The common alternative is to kill off nature as dead and uncaring,as emotionally distant   as some distant uncaring god in heaven.

 Do we hear the music of the earth blown through trees ad valleys like hollow reads, and the quiet creative song of heaven?

I would rather admire the geometric cell like plants that float in fluids angles  and the higher organisms which show the highest regard for their offspring.

We seem death to nature’s appeals.

Perhaps we would be better to once again see the Universe is a green dragon: green with life, an embryonic,  cosmic egg, and mystical like a dragon.

Fishing Bhopal

Or like Geothe to describe the essential plant as human potential described in terms of potentials. The Seed is the sum of all previous qualities contracted, the fruit expansion, and the plants exual organs are divided :  stamen – contraction; Corolla – expansion; Calyx – contraction. The stem is expansion and it is in the cotyledons  that duality appears

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari even suggest a “mechanic phylum” of space and its domains. A system of clouds, flames, rivers and phylogenic linage of living systems  of  living and non living systems

To us nature is dead, and life is made ou to be a rare accident.  We – especially the Christian West, except perhaps for Saint Francis – have seen ourselves above and superior to nature.

We as a society have a spiritual heart disease.

Why must we see life as dead? Why not live life as art.

We could see myths of breaking and recreation as did the poet Yeats : “the foul rag and bones shop of the heart.” We can listen to the rhythms of their “canonical formula” (a:b::c:a-l)., an archetypal rhythm that reaches deep within if only we let it.

We could instead ask what is the deeper archetypal yearning a tradition calls from us. We could recall to life the Medeavel festival of fools and offer a second life for the masses. Then taboos were recognized albeit regulated . Now social conformity enforces an  apartheid of wealth that risks imprisonment of those who do not fit the mould.

The West boasts of its Grecian heritage. Of course, the Greeks were obsessed with the patterns and ratios of beauty. So why cant created objects be  somehow sacred? Perhaps this is why I find a sculpture not of form but of belief but a passion.

But alas, like so many others, I allowed the ritual of bookwork, of study  – my mind – to destroy my passion.

I am not suggesting we carry Bibles down to  the church peasants adoring some wayside chapel , bent in adoration of some wayside crucifix.Nor do I ask you to sit in lotus reciting endlessly the Gayatri, Om mane padme aum or the names of Krisna.

Bhopal Old City

I arrived in India with a prefabricated metaphysics.  There was great romance in Mumbai’s  neo-gothic train station.  In sacred enclaves it is easy to admire a hernmetic code, a Buddhist, Hindu even a Muslim theme. But is the red Sindor only Hindu? Is the colour before me a Krisna or an advertising blue?
I arrived in India with a prefabricated metaphysics.  There was great romance in Mumbai’s  neo-gothic train station.  In sacred enclaves it is easy to admire a hernmetic code, a Buddhist, Hindu even a Muslim theme. But is the red Sindor only Hindu? Is the colour before me a Krisna or an advertising blue?

Perhaps I am unable to translate the experience. Perhaps Bhopal  triggers  personal memories  in the  recesses of my being.  Have Freud and Lurian kabala pooled into colours of mind that have distorted my vision.?

What I read as a historian is from a philosophical structure,  much like a wax work video new virtual surface that spirals into new forms.

What I do know is that there is beauty in the  mad painters claiming to be prophets  that offer themselves a sacrificial lamb in cultural mayhem .

Chaos and  somehow flows in a way only India could.

It is more than a tangle of primitive chaos. Even more than a fissionary art caught in possibility of social fright.

 …and through it I am learning to listen and I hear a profound symphonic order.

As the flat sound of my chappals on cobblestones echo a powerful slap, I think I would rather be initiated into the art of god

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A Camel walked up my drive way

17 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by opus125 in Madhya Pradesh, Tribal India

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Tags

bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, nomads, stray camel

Today a camel walked down my drive way. A stray camel, perhaps lost from one of the moving herders from Rajasthan.


Either way it sauntered in but finding a dead end down one of the colonies streets splayed is legs apart, tail swishing nervously, as I negotiated around it to direct it outside.
It angry glare over a shoulder reminded me to keep from kicking range. A deep gurgling as it threw out its dulla, a hollow throat sac it throws out in a display of male dominance, It’s stinky and rather ghastly sounding. Again strutting off  he turns, deeper into the colony, and lunched on a neighbours roses before I maneuvered it to the exit. Then, strutting out  a dog finally decided to try and appear heroic.


So I am reflecting how beautiful it is that Madhya Pradesh has so many Tribal’s and that  the shepherds, parked just around the corner of my home, can roam free through the capital city of Bhopal.

Yes, it can be a pain when a herd blocks the road, or a railway crossing, but it is beautiful. Beautiful because nature is still at your doorstep.

Then, a I cycle off to  buy milk, that all this is threatened. Where the shepherds parked only  last week, there is now a dirty big hole: foundations for yet another society building ripping up good farmland. At least corn still grows opposite. The shepherds ae there but shunted off into the distance.

Unfortunately, owners of rental farmland make better money from the disease of urban sprawl.

Cornered, he turns his back on me, twitching his tail and dominantly spewing his dulla.

 

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I ironed my first sari

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by opus125 in Madhya Pradesh

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Tags

aged parents, bhopal, India, Madhya Pradesh

Ama

No I do not wear a sari. (They don’t suit my complexion, nor am I a eunuch or dancing cross dressing religious performer) .

Ama made me do it.

In a society where parents are honoured, Ama was thrown out of home by her son. She then lived in straw huts in the dairy next door working in four of the society houses but unable to keep up. Lakshmi, a delightful lady across the road, had offered her work, but  the mother in law (a dragon to some, but who I find delightful),  is old and determined to enjoy as much power as her few remaining years will allow her. She made Ama’s  life hell.

Tired and worn but, Advity took Ama  in. After raising 13 children she deserved better. There is no spare bedroom   in Merkaba, but a role up mattress. Instead she willingly cleans as she is able has good food, clothes and a warm house to stay in.

And she enjoys mothering me –ensuring there is no waste subze even when I am screaming my stomach is full.  She feels wanted and since she doesn’t know how to use the telephone she can ask me to press the buttons when she needs make a call.

Today she somehow convinced me to iron one of her six her sari’s . All 6 metres of it, and I was petrified I would burn the six metre length of cotton.

Manna and Advity couldn’t stop laughing when I told them.

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Oh My, Amer Bakery House Blues

01 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by opus125 in Madhya Pradesh

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Tags

Amer Bakery House, bhopal, Cultural difference, Madhya Pradesh

siddlesaddle copy

Amer Bakery Hut is not my favourite eatery in Bhopal, but a fried wats to go. With its American Barbershop decor its a sit down fast food McDonaldsification of Indian food.

Advity had wanted to go out, but why she chose to find herself sitting in a westernised Amer Bakery Hut I was not sure.I commented he was uncomfortable eating Westernised fast food momo’s, spring rolls and PaniPuri. Even the striped logo reminded him of a pre world war I American barber shops.

Now, I do sympathise with the locals wanting to enjoy what is modern, fresh and new. As an outsider, I suppose I am biased. Its just too … well… Western.  Why travel to India to eat in a food hall, or a McDonalds? OK, I admit, McDonalds are good world over when in urgent need of a clean toilet. You know at least it’s clean. So is Amer Bakery Hut.

The one quirk of their outside take away service – a process found even inside Reliance and Star Bazaar supermarkets, is deciding your item, walking to a separate ticket counter, and returning ticket in hand to collect your food. Sit down, I can understand it, especially if an item mist be cooked. It seems to slow delivery of cakes or coffee just waiting to leap into my mouth.

But now, as my good Indian friend chooses a seat, the front desk attendant is playing “silly buggers” . Pardon my Australian.  At first I thought it was my accent, I know my drawl is misunderstood, just as I mishear Hindi and English words I use freely spoken  in unfamiliar dialects.

So I re- ordered in Hindi. He still only managed half the order, pointing to pictures of the wrong items on the back wall.

Frustrated, I resort to almost baby talk

“Ek  ……  Do ……, do lassi” pointing at each object. It is as if he refuses to comprehend I want to order multiple foods. My lady friend is sitting at a table but see her eyes betray annoyance.

He mumbles frustrations about “stupid firengi”.

I repeat the order. “Dont play games with me. Mai Bharat mai teen sal jata raha hun. I have ordered here many times before… with no problems.”

Clearly he was one who enjoyed the smug satisfaction of getting a rise out of upsetting “whitees.” There is a common nervous smile, mostly benign, that smugly ostracises outsiders. A smile I see looking for support of the group, the caste, or family. A smile I soon realised was born of insecurity and rarely malice, that came from coping and perhaps emotional  of generations of colonialists.

However, that same giggle would be seen as an insult where I come from. Sometimes, my instinct is frustration, even insult. Then I remember …..

pimpri-Chinchwad201101323 003a
So often my gestures are also misinterpreted. Where I was taught direct truth shows another respect, here it is polite to be silent.    Each position has streths and weaknesses. Explosive directess may cut a heart. Silence may degenerate into gossip  and undermining .

It is said that the billion strong flocks of passenger pigeons that blacked US skies became nervous as their numbers thinned. As hunters machine gunned them from the sky their numbers shrunk and the few flocks became confused unable to cope without their huge numbers.  While I don’t expect Indians to become extinct (the last Passenger Pigeon, Martha died at Cincinnati Zoo in 1914), there is something of the need of the group that drives people here.

Its not true of everyone. Its just that some need the approval of the tribe, at the expense of the other.

Yet, tradition says the man should move out to the forest alone in meditation, but I suspect few choose to be gurus.

Finally I place my order.

“What was wrong with him? “Advity is unimpressed by her fellow country men. “What are they staring at? The Khans are whiter than you.”

Undoubtedly true, my Mediterranean skin allows me to pass as an Indian until I open my mouth giving all away in accented Australian Strine.

But who are the Khans you ask?

If you want to know a little of the unscrupulous adventures of Bhopal’s founder dost Mohammad Khan.

The Khans were Bhopal founder s. The lake may have been built by 11th century Raja Bhoj – part of the requirement to expiate the sin of murdering his mother.   However, Afghani Mohammad Dost gained prestigue for his unscrupulous military daring toward the end of Aurengzebs reign. He had also learned of Jahan and Akhbars religious accommodation and saw some of the problems ofAurengzeb more austere religious policies.

Originally from Afghanistan they are often very white – at least the locals think so.

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