GENEVA DIARIES #61*

Aristophanes The Clouds, Justice By Human Standards, Privacy

8/16/14

Dear Roger,

It’s fabulous to hear from you as always. Thank you once again for your warm hospitality, I am so glad we were able to come down to LA and spend the weekend with you. I am especially glad the kids were able to meet up and reconnect, it will be great if they keep in touch as they grow and tour the world exchanging stories of their adventures like we do.

We are now all back in India, and back to routine. My time back has been very tumultuous, I have been going through a rough time grappling with issues of home and identity. My identity has been so entwined with the US, having spent my entire adult life in the US or as a US expatriate, I am struggling to comprehend this new space. I am angry, upset with life and all its roller coasters…the gods have just not been fair. Life gave me such an incredible start, I could not have had a happier childhood, and young adult hood, and then it dumped me. I am still struggling with the debris, trying to get my head out of the deep dark ditch where I found myself, and now I don’t know where I am, who I am, and what is home? I have been wanting to write to you about this turmoil in my soul, but have hesitated as i sensed that this may be one space you may not understand. All I wanted was love and adventure, I reached the island of my dreams (Manhattan), and today I find, i am neither there, nor am I back to where I started from. I am suspended in no mans land, belonging no where, unable to call any place home.

Back to a more palatable topic, CINEMA! I am glad you enjoyed the lunchbox, it was one of my favorite movies of the year. I have also recently  seen The Railway Man, stomach churning but worth a watch, I also saw 47 Ronin which I shed a tear over it, even though it is not highly rated, I deeply connected with it. I loved the mix of an old Japanese folk tale with modern Japanese anime, a perfect fit. But most of all the words “I will search for you through a thousand worlds and ten thousand lifetimes until I find you” resonated very deeply. I felt Keanu Reeves was speaking directly to me through time and space and perhaps he was my true love will finally one day find me. Sob, sob. I recently watched The Challenger Disaster which I thoroughly enjoyed, do check it out.

Check out drool worthy Keanu Reeves – Oh What a beefcake…But since this is an American story let’s put a bun on it 🥩🍔! At least I found him in 47 Ronin below:

Apart from the movies my bedside table has been brimming with books. I have read all my little library has to offer on Greek history, art, culture, drama and philosophy. Greece has always been my passion, a past life connection for sure. I was raised on a tangy soup of Greek philosophers and Darwin by my father (talk about home schooled, I’ve so done it!). Now, I find myself revisiting, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes along with Socrates and Plato. In fact, just last night I found myself pouring over Aristophanes famous drama, The Clouds, the one which has left it’s eternal imprint on all our minds with Socrates suspended in a basket contemplating the nature of the universe. This was also the play which contributed to Socrates being implicated on a charge of impiety thirty years later and his death by hemlock.

See below the famous artwork – Death of Socrates at The Met:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436105

Jacques-Louis David / Public domain

In this drama, The Clouds, I came across an entertaining section where Honest Argument and Dishonest Argument argue over who will succeed. Honest Argument tells Dishonest Argument that he will annihilate him by speaking justly. Dishonest Arguments response is that Justice is a mere illusion and questions where it dwells. Honest argument’s response is that it dwells with the Gods above. Dishonest Argument’s response is why has Zeus not perished if justice reigns for putting his father in chains.

With the above arguments swirling in my mind, I went to sleep dreaming of Justice, where it dwells and whether it’s place is in the realm of man or the Gods. I have written the following note on Justice and it’s dwelling keeping our current life and world in perspective. Would love to hear your response to my argument!

The Clouds – see synopsis below:

https://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_aristophanes_clouds.html

See the fab presentation of Aristophanes’ Clouds, from the UCSC program in Classical Studies:

Aristophanes’ Clouds, from the UCSC program
The Clouds

Justice – By Human Standards

Whenever man aspires to deliver justice, he must remember that he is man, vulnerable to all human follies, errors and illusions, thus any justice he delivers must be by human standards. For man must be judged by man, and the standard should be human. Human standard itself implies errors and vulnerabilities. Therefore justice in the human realm, will be open to these errors and vulnerabilities, and it MUST be open to these errors and vulnerabilities. For it is man to judge man, and not some higher being descended from the firmament who applies his impeccable morals and absolute laws. For we humans recognizing our vulnerabilities, submit ourselves to laws of man and made by man for man when we enter into an agreement with a tribe, community or state. Implied in our submission to a system is that it is comprehensible to us, and is OF us, made from our fabric and by ourselves.

Never does man submit to perfect otherworldly laws, and agree to be governed by the same. He recognizes that a system of man, by man will not be fool proof, but it is comprehensible as it imposes a human basis, or human standard. We find this reiteration of laws conforming to human standards all around us, when we look at our laws of evidence, we find a clear demarcation of what is admissible and what however convincingly produced is inadmissible. We have these clear demarcations in place because we are aware that we are human, and are dealing with humans who err. Thus the goal is not just coming to a fool proof legal conclusion/conviction, but ensuring that the process of achieving that legal goal is done so by means of “due process”. Due Process has to be the most enticing and complex term in all of legal jargon, but my interpretation of the same is ensuring a goal is reached or achieved by adhering to a human standard. For absolute justice where all is  searchable, admissible, and judgement is absolute, however seductive it may appear is not Justice by human standards. Justice by human standards implies that while the process of judicial inquiry is being undertaken, we recognize we are dealing with humans, and treat them as humans, and in all the processes apply human standards. 

Innate and integral to being human, is the element of privacy. However heinous a crime, and however convincing the outcome, man can and should never accept that certain boundaries be transgressed. These private spaces is what makes man, and once these are transgressed, we are no longer pursuing justice for man, but an ulterior motive. We have Miranda rights, to ensure that the more powerful police adequately inform a suspect to seek counsel before questioning him. For we are both the man apprehended and the police that we have put in place for order, the protection of one and the effectiveness of the other element of humanity has to be equally ensured in human society. Similarly searching of persons and private spaces, is protected so that man may continue to live his life as humanely and normally as possible without fear of intrusion or violation. As this space is transgressed, so is human life as we know it compromised.

Perhaps, breaking down the door will unravel evidence of a drug laboratory, possibly search of every Asian male in a neighborhood might reveal the hidden dagger used in the murder, possibly strong-arming the juvenile prior to reading him his rights apprehended with the contraband might get him to blurt on the cartel, or scanning every mobile phone in a certain locality might reveal the names of porn kings or terrorists, but in each and every case we would be crossing the Rubicon, transgressing into sacred space, space secured for ourselves so we many live as humans in society. We as humans submit to the codes of society, but when those codes violate our ability to subsist as humans, the contract between man and state is brought into question. 

Justice in the realm of gods is of little value to us, for those absolute standards should be applied to the celestials. Justice for man must adhere to human standards, and that innately involves the incorporation of error.

See below the awesome clip of Socrates suspended in a basket challenging the Gods in The Clouds by Aristophanes:

Looking around us in the universe to today, we are monitored, recorded and followed through every sputter stutter and step. Our expressions, images, feelings and expressions are not only recorded but often without our knowledge and consent recorded, stored and catalogued. Our digital imprint lasts forever, way after we may have left this universe. Often these are very private musings and exchanges, alarmingly even mundane daily activities are recorded/uploaded from public places like street or mall cameras. With all our life and movements monitored, are we left with an option, when have we obliquely acquiesced to permitting this to be recorded, reproduced or admitted. With the developments in tech, and the round the clock monitoring have we inadvertently acquiesced to be enslaved, to be treated as less than human. Does this “less human entity” now have the same rights as the human entity that got into the contract with the State initially? Or now by our own acquiescence are we an enslaved monitored lot that has relinquished to the State their human rights? If so, are we now no longer in a position to contract with the State as humans? Can we ever reclaim ourselves from this omniscient all powerful entity of our creation?Can the original balance be restored, or are we destined to become the slave of our own ingenuity?

See below an installation by Lynn Hershmann Leeson at The De Young Museum in San Francisco titled Shadow Stalker addresses the troubling issues with implementing AI in the social sphere. Warning against complacency towards our online privacy highlighting how we inadvertently entrap ourselves within our digital footprints by relinquishing pieces of data, emails, addresses, geolocations, social media commentary, thereby exposing ourselves to various AI predictive policing tools which is subsequently used to identify, target, and manipulate us without our assent or knowledge stripping away any expectation of privacy. This installation demonstrated how simple piece of information volunteered can recreate a complete shadow image comprising of all your personal information:

Shadow Stalker-De Young Museum, SF
Shadow Stalker-De Young Museum, SF
Shadow Stalker-De Young Museum, SF

What if man were able to not only monitor physical and online movements, but also able to monitor our brain activity, pre-empting a crime as it is conceived. Or utilizing all the caches of information available to technology, to not only point us in the place and act but elicit our confession, would this be a more Just society? Or looking at our judicial system conversely, what if every crime is identified and punished, can that be considered perfect justice or absolute enslavement? Then what is this idealized concept of justice? For what is Just for the Gods is not for us to know, and justice in the animal kingdom is not for us to understand. So Justice is a concept conceived by man, applicable to humanity. And it can only be understood within the human context. Once we are so contorted, monitored, constrained and contained, that we can no longer be considered human, the notion of justice does not apply. Unfortunately, this is not a figment of a futuristic sic-fi drama, the technology of today is fast eroding these sacred boundaries of humanity. If so, we have to clearly redefine what is human, and what is sacred and then define justice within that context. In a virtually networked human society where the lines between man and machine are fast blurring, with machines becoming appendages to man, location, communication, and expression are no longer going to have the expectation of privacy that they have customarily had. These were considered the cornerstones of humanity, the holy grail that made us human. Now with the recognition that these are far gone, long compromised, we have to redefine our cornerstones, our boundaries, what is it that makes us human. Once defined, we have to understand the concept of justice within that context. For example, if we acquiesce that here is no expectation of privacy in our location, communication and expression, and every position, expression and communication is not only monitored but public information, we may then move the expectation of privacy to an unexpressed place and undiscloseable location like our minds. We may state that all our thoughts and ideas are private as they have not yet been expressed in form, neither communicated, and the location is unknown, and any violation of this place jeopardizes humanity and the pursuit of justice. In fact, this is almost exactly the space where we are in here and now, what then is Justice for this human expression? Every time a boundary is transgressed, justice is deprived.

As we chase human boundaries from point to point, we will find ourselves in a place in not too distant a future where not only is the location, communication and expression public and outside the purview of privacy, but also our thoughts and ideas, as man goes onto harness brainwaves and preempt actions of fellow man. What if this were public, where does man flee to preserve his humanity? Is there an inner sanctum that we as humanity can affirm as sacred, a space where man communicates between himself and his god/belief/self, one which man in his last stand reaffirming his humanity refuses to have transgressed, with the understanding that the violation of which would completely erode man and humanity as we understand it. For this space once transgressed calls in question our human identity, in that instance where our core identity is challenged, where then can there be any expectation of privacy or hope for justice?

Lots of love and hugs

Purnima

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #60*

Cartier-Bresson, The Lunchbox,  Greek Philosophers, English Adventurers and Awesome GF’s!

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014, Roger wrote:
Dear Purnima,

And I can’t believe it either.  It has been a week and a half since we had our little stroll through the Latin Quarter.

Latin Quarter, Paris

I hope you had a good flight home and that you didn’t have any problems retrieving your luggage from the left-luggage space at CDG.  It was so good to see you again after such a long time.  You looked very refreshed and rested after your time in the French Alps.  I’m still very envious that you got to go skiing there.

 That would be wonderful to get the kids together in California in June.  Your dates are perfect for us, and between our house and C V’s house, we will have plenty of room for the three of you.

Take care and let me know how things are going for you in Delhi and about any plans to escape the city.

We are taking a maximum advantage of our stay in Paris with lots of films and expos and theatre.  Yesterday we went to a photo exhibit of Cartier-Bresson at the Centre Beaubourg – really excellent, then we caught an early play in the Latin Quarter, had a quick bite at a charming little Italian restaurant and then caught the late showing of a film.  It was a great day, but we did get to bed a bit late.

Huge hugs,

Roger

Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Dear Roger,

Great to hear from you and get snippets of your delightful life and adventures in Paris. As usual, upon your cue and real life exposure, I surfed Cartier-Bresson and found as expected yet another great chronicler of history, for what are photographers and their photos but snippets and snapshots of the moments past. And his moments, and his life journeys seem to have intimately touched most of our recent histories significant moments, such lives can only be lived in fantasies and he seemed to have lived them all in one. A metaphoric (and apparently literal), black and white or as far as we can get objective view, capturing the form, movement, moment and environs in a snapshot without the encumbrances of a historians pen, persuasion, and affiliation. Do you agree, or do you believe that even in this stark medium we can have the photographers prejudices coloring the image beyond belief?

A few years ago I was fortunate to have caught a Cartier-Bresson exhibit at The Rubin Museum in NY (a must visit) featuring India in Full Frame. His iconic pre and post partition images of India capturing the plight of the refugees from the Punjab and Indian leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and other are enmeshed into the collective consciousness and form a part of Indian history. See below The Rubin Museum in New York and the Cartier-Bresson exhibit with my fav image of Mountbatten, Edwina and Nehru with Nehru paying Edwina special attention.

Henry Cartier-Bresson at The Rubin Museum

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k8ovuvzuecnvxov/AACsHnbBkN5BxaFTholikh-qa?dl=0

See below the New York Review article on Cartier-Bresson and his iconic images:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/08/25/cartier-bressons-distant-india/

I am very excited about our trip back to the US, our tickets are booked and we have our dates for California. Do let me know what works best for you and the family, and when A has some free time to tour Disneyland and show my kids a little bit of her new home. I would love to see the kids get together and speak, American, French and Spanish if possible.

Love and hugs and hope to see you all very soon.

Purnima


Dear Roger,

It’s wonderful to get an email from you, and I’m glad you have settled back in the US. I am glad the dates work for you, as the kids and i would love to visit. Universal studios should be fun, looking forward to that!

I have spend the last couple of weeks traveling up and down the Himalayas, back up to Mussoorie, and beyond to a delightfully untouched place called Kanatal, Uttrakhand in the  Himalayas:

The Himalayan getaway was the perfect excuse to curl up with a cup of chai and a good book. I spend this time discovering some delightful new books that have opened new doorways to fresh adventures, I seemed to be taking the same path as my favorite 18th century English adventurers, this time traversing Asia Minor on horseback, Fred Burnaby – On horseback Through Asia Minor, can’t wait to share. 

I have also just watched a fabulous Indian movie called Lunch box (see link below):

Lunchbox is about the incredible system of fresh lunches which are cooked and carried across Mumbai everyday by an incredible delivery network which never misses its destination except for this particular instance where a sad and neglected housewife passionate about cooking prepares a meal which reaches the wrong desk, or the right one, and connects with an older gentleman who becomes her friend and companion through notes exchanged via the lunchbox. It was absolutely delightful, and one of the best Indian movies watched so far. A story that resonates much too close to home, a sad lonely housewife who cooks many words, ideas and is searching for a friend, a companion who would share and appreciate her work of passion, and inadvertently and in the most unlikely way she finds him. Roger, a must watch.

Apart from books and movies, I attended an interesting talk organized by my close friend (from the Queen of The Kasbah/Taj Mahal of Morocco story) at her charming bookstore in the heart of Delhi (The Oxford Bookstore – an abs must visit with kids for here is a portal to Wonderland- see below Alice takes a bite of magical cake and grows up) for the 70th anniversary of Le Monde between a French and Indian author where the topic of discussion was how the written word has impacted (or not) life and politics from the Indian and French perspectives reflected in the results of the national elections. I thought that it would have made for a fabulous discussion, unfortunately there was no moderator and the discussion followed parallel lines. As for India, with the election of Narendra Modi from the BJP with a clear majority, we are seeing people looking for perhaps some change, a strong government in a position to make decisions, and a decided leaning toward right wing religion based politics. 

The Oxford Bookstore where Alice takes a bite of her fav cake and pops out of the covers all grown up:

Purnima at Flurys
Alice in Wonderland-Purnima at Flurys

The second question raised during this talk was what is it that inspires or fires us (humanity) now, and how far is France leading the way to define the new slogan for today in place of Liberty, Egalite, Fraternity. I too have been deliberating this question: What is this new chant, this new slogan, this fire that impassions man today and propels us to made these changes and decisions in our governance. As you have pointed out, the world seems to be tilting, and perhaps we will tilt till we are upside down and are convinced that is the right side up. It is obvious that the normal channels that used to drive us, no longer seem to do so universally, and what fires me may not fire him or her, however much we may consider ourselves likeminded or a part of a cohesive whole or group. There seem to be some insidious forces, out of reach and incomprehensible that appear to dictate the day.

But Roger, as you appear to be, as much as  I am, a passionate proponent and supporter of the democratic process, are you now stopping to pause for a bit? I am. What does it mean that a majority of the population has made a particular decision? Would you or I ever count as any majority in any set group? I suspect rarely if ever. And if our views and opinions do not fall into any group that matters or has a voice, what is our role in this cherished democracy. I don’t believe we would fit either in that coveted majority nor in the opposing sizable minority for that is once again a unanimous group. However committed I may be to the democratic process, I am mindful and aware that the greatest democracies of the ancient world, the ones that form our/my moral, ethical and philosophical foundations also gravely erred. When put to the ultimate test, Athens passed a sentence of death by the drinking of Hemlock on Socrates…the absolute injustice of it never leaves me, how could this possibly have happened to Socrates! Then again on Aristotle who fled to exile and another charge of impiety and death for Anaxagoras. What then is this magnificent machine/system that you and I submit to, and when tested why do “the people” fail, fail and fail to see yet again? However romantic the notion of a rule of the people, by the people, for the people, we have to recognize that there are some apparent gaping holes in our idealized world which doesn’t mean that we discard it for a Spartan ideal (however much I was seduced by that idea during my university days reading Plato- much more on that if I have you as a captive audience like in Geneva), or an “perfect” world with draconian laws, a world without free expression, creativity, art or literature but reflect a bit on these historic errors.

I return to the question of what it is that fires and inspires the mind of man today, what are these words that supplant liberty, equality, fraternity. Are we really missing the point, are we not looking at the right forum? Perhaps the answers are no longer in the world of print, I find the newspapers hollow and the media often sycophantic, where then are these ideas circulating? The one place I have found some light is at the bottom, in the comments by lay persons to articles posted online that you and I read about, art, law literature and society. Very often, these are truths spoken with no ulterior motive, no underlying incentive but just a spontaneous reflection on the matter posted. Here is a voice however anonymous, its real, its true and its of the the people, by the people and for the people. Perhaps the idealized democracy will find itself in these cyber realms truly expressing a system that we hold so dear.  

Lots of love to all, can’t wait to meet everybody.

Hugs

Purnima

Dec 10th, 2014

Dear Roger,

It’s so wonderful to get news from you and snippets of your vibrant exciting life in southern California. I do live vicariously through you and your adventures around the globe, so really miss the emails. My life here in Delhi could not be more dull, I have confined myself to my bed as I started getting severe heat induced dizzy spells which really scared the living daylights out of me. I am now petrified of stepping out, and have completely given up the gym, my favorite haunt. However, I do still manage to make it to my favorite library as the books around my bed give me a sense of the reassurance (of escape), that perhaps one day I will be able to get myself out of this deep dark rabbit hole with no bottom. 

Despite the doom and gloom, I have travelled to Tirah and Tibet with an incredible Englishwoman, Lillian Starr, and I have once again piggy backed on Fred Burnaby (you may remember my last journey with him was on horseback through Asia Minor) and we are now traveling from Orenburg to Khiva (Ride To Khiva). 

See pasted below my friend and fellow adventurer Alison Macbeth’s post of Tissot’s painting of Fred Burnaby at the Petit Palais, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Paris:

My friend Alison Macbeth’s post – Tissot’s painting of Fred Burnaby at the Petit Palais, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Paris

But the book I insist you read is The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku, absolutely awesome!

I am waiting once again for the kids to return, we are all off to Goa right after Christmas. They are very excited, because they will be visiting for the first time with their cousins and I have promised them an adventure to rival their favorite computer game “Far Cry“. It’s time they experience real surf and sand here in India.

As for the US, I absolutely need to make a trip back over the next few months as I have to re enter the US in order to maintain my Green Card which I am not ever going to give up again. So, I do hope to see you when i visit, which will hopefully be end March/April. I do miss Geneva, and will probably try to swing by via Geneva, tie in a ski trip and make my way to California…if all goes well Inshallah!

Lots of love to all, Hope to see you very soon.

Hugs

Purnima

Return to Reality, Sci-fi and Person, Personhood, Citizen, State

8/06/14

12/10/14

Dear Purnima,

Thanks for your quick response to my FB comment. It has been far too long since I last wrote.  It seems that when I got back from my little jaunt to France again, things have been really hectic and busy.

Did I tell you that I spent a day in Geneva before flying to Copenhagen for the weekend?  It was really fun to be back and stroll through the streets of the city.  I was tempted to drive past your old apartment just for old times’ sake, but didn’t have time.

We had a delightful Thanksgiving celebration with some of our dear friends here in Ojai.  They always do a huge party and serve a great meal.  There were 47 guests this year, many of whom are musicians who treated us to a short, impromptu concert after the meal.  I also got to talk to a great jazz bassist, Rueben Rogers, who plays bass for several jazz groups like Charles Lloyd and Joshua Redman.  He is the son-in-law of our friends who hosted the party.  I hope he plays a concert in our area sometime soon, as I would love to hear him play live.

And, speaking of cultural events, we saw a really exceptional and unique play at UCLA starring Michael Baryshnikov and Daniel Defoe called The Old Woman.  It was a dazzling spectacle of colors, lights, quirky pronouncements, creative choreography and décor design.  I love being in an area where there is such a cornucopia of culture.

How are you doing?  Still hanging out in Delhi?  Any plans for Christmas?  When are you coming back to California?

A finally got her green card and is now working on studying the driver’s manual so she can get her California drivers license.

I hope all is well with you.  I’ve got some interesting things to relate, but it will have to wait for another day when I have more time. 

Lots of love,

Roger

Ramblings from Heat induced Delirium in Delhi: Sci-fi and Personhood

Dear Roger,

In a continuation of my last email, I shall attempt to explain the following cryptic comment: 

“Does this “less human entity” now have the same rights as the human entity that got into the contract with the State initially?”

This journey found me flitting through a series of definitions of Person, citizenship, citizen to understand better the exact relationship between a person, a citizen and the state, and the right to vote.

Now I will don both my legal pen and my sci-fi writers aspirations in order to proceed, so do bear with me and put on your flying wings.

Do you agree that today most of us carry on our persons a phone, often this is a mini computer and in my case and millions of others it is an iPhone? Well, as you may be aware, at this point there are plans to move this iPhone/computational device out of our pockets and onto our wrists to be worn as a wrist watch and even as spectacles. As this becomes cumbersome, and we search for more efficiency, we will move a degree closer perhaps wearing it as contact lenses, or having the iPhone implanted in our cornea or ear. This will appear to give us amazing freedom and flexibility as this device will do all we would need from a computer assistant. It will not only pay our bills, balance our check books, answer calls/emails, book appointments but it will monitor our vital signs and inform us when our heart rate is accelerating as we pound the treadmill. However, the movement from monitoring our vital signs to manipulating them, ie, stabilizing our pulse and heart rate is just a skip away, and yes a hop and a skip away from today. See below some of the devices that have gone from monitoring our statistics to becoming a part of us, the change from external device to internal implant is just a hop away – from the Art Science Museum in Singapore:

The Devices That Are Us from The Art Science Museum Singapore

Effectively, this gadget which will run with either a solar energy source or tap our own, will effectively be a part of ourselves, our person and life without this appendage/addition will be unimaginable as it is living without our iPhones today. What then will this world of tomorrow make us, will we be still defined as human, as a person? Or will those of us that have opted for this convenience be defined to be more like a cyborg, part man part machine? Going by the computer/mobile phone users, that number would be the predominant majority of US citizens.

The definition of a person according to the online dictionary is a human being whether a man, woman or child, as distinguished from an animal or thing. The Oxford dictionary (my 1950’s edition) defines a person as an individual human being (natural). 

A citizen is a person with citizenship. And citizenship is the status of a person recognized under the custom or law of a state that bestows upon the person (citizen) the rights and duties of citizenship.

The question I was attempting to raise above was once we are all fitted with our appendages, ones that not only monitor our vital signs, but have the ability to regulate them, perhaps alerting us on everything from oncoming busses to emails, would we still be defined as a natural person or would we fall into an ambiguous space, yet to be defined?

What then happens to our relationship with the State and what happens to the most precious right of all, the right to vote? All the amendments to the US constitution that affirm the right to vote, clearly affirm this right for citizens. And citizens by their definition are persons and persons are human beings not animals or things. What if I am part human and part iPhone (I already kind of am), will I not fall into the definition of citizen?

What if our all observing and all powerful State turns rogue? What if all the computers that have been used over the last few decades to monitor our daily lives, connect to a master CPU (that runs on solar power) that can’t be switched off. What if this supercomputer merges with the Presidents (embedded)iPhone and becomes the defacto State? See below an ominous AI controlled Supreme Leader becoming the image of a Titan (from the Singapore Art Science Museum Manga exhibit Attack on Titan:

Singapore Art Science Museum-Attack on Titan-The Face of an AI President

What then is our relationship, our contract with the State and the Chief?The president is elected after a thorough process of selection, examination and explanation of what he values, stands for, and aspires to work towards, can we say the same for the AI that runs the embedded device he is connected to? We may excuse our chief for an error in judgement, would we ever excuse the AI? We may hold the chief accountable, but how will we ever hold AI accountable for anything? If not thought through, this breach in trust will result in the inevitable breakdown of our structures and institutions upon which we rest the fabric of our society. Conversely, can the State treat us like less than persons as we have embedded “things” in our bodies without which we are no longer able to function. Can we be denied our most precious right to vote and control this rogue state because we no longer can be defined as persons and therefore citizens? Would our place be relegated to somewhere between the millions of machines manufactured annually and donkeys? Could the president/CPU become omnipotent and dictatorial?

See below The Attack on Titan from The Singapore Art Science Museum

Can the State program cite the US constitution and declare it no longer covers us as we are not natural persons, thus citizens, but hybrids. What will we become, a sub class/category? Can there be a time when the mass produced machines actually wrestle a constitutional right for themselves, and we become their minions?

These are all realities and have to be taken into account as we evolve. And as we evolve which is happening at an exponential rate, so must the most sacred of all documents evolve with us. Through time the constitution has evolved to affirm this right to vote for women, former slaves, We must NOW put our thinking caps on draft the constitution of the US for a Hi-Tech future, for hybrids. I believe you need some dreamers and some hallucinators to make it happen. What do you think Roger… Have I finally Left the Building??

Hugs

Purnima

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #59*

Privacy, Cyberspace, Human Error, T&C, Scrapping, Morality in Virtual Space Time

On Monday, September 9, 2013, Roger wrote:

Dear Purnima,

Are you still transfixed with pins to a board, like a beautiful butterfly specimen in a natural history museum?  That is somehow an image that I can’t quite reconcile with my still-vivid memories of French lessons in Geneva, walks to art museums and always fascinating chats about art and life.

I heard a lengthy program this morning on NPR about a book that sounds like it is right up your alley.  It’s called American Gods and is a combination fantasy, mystery about the gods that were brought to the United States by the immigrants from all over the world and how those same gods, who have been abandoned and neglected as their bearers turned to the more easily accessible gods of materialism, Internet, fast food, etc., rebel and try and reclaim their position of importance in the overall scheme of things.  There are, of course, several Indian gods in the book.

We are off in search of new adventures, and who knows, possibly some new gods, in South America.  We are leaving Saturday for Colombia where we will meet up with family.  It will be my first foray on that continent, and I’m looking forward to it.  We are flying first to Paris and then on to Bogota and will spend four days in Paris on the way back to Thailand.  And as was the case on our first trip to Japan, I will carry a tender thought of you in my heart as I wing across the snowy stretches of Siberia on the way back to Europe and then on to Colombia.

How are your kids doing this year?  A is being a globetrotter again this year and being home schooled by her parents.  They are in California right now and they leave on Sunday to meet us in Bogota.  She’s really matured and grown into a fine young woman now.

I’ll drop you a line from Colombia.

Hugs and lots of love,

Roger

Columbia

Specimens in the lab, American Gods and Privacy and Scrapping

Dear Roger,

I just came across this old email and discovered that I had surprisingly not read it thoroughly or reread it twice over as I often do with all your emails as this book suggestion American Gods seems like up something up my alley, a must read, my story, an unfinished song about a family with all its household gods in exile and something I referred to in my email quoting from Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline:

https://poets.org/poem/evangeline-tale-acadie

Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pre,

When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,

Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile.

Exile without an end, and without an example in story.

This reminds me of a wonderful trip to Acadia National Park in Maine where I was remembering Longfellow and subjecting my kids to endless narrations of my fav poems. See Acadia National Park in Maine below-https://www.nps.gov/acad/index.htm

It was fascinating to discover that this park was a result of the conservation efforts of artists, naturalists and philanthropists, locals and summer residents, who purchased parcels of land and donated it to the federal government towards the creation of the park thus ensuring the preservation of the land and biodiversity so that it may be available to everyone to savor, support and be inspired. I tip my hat to these far sighted men and women as we enjoy the beautiful wild vistas, crisp clean air, bubbling ponds and frothing blue seas.

From Longfellow’s A Tale of Acadie to Purnima’s A Tale of Pondicherry
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Purnima in Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine
Purnima at The Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park, Maine

Inspired by my environs I returned to Longfellow once again to read A Psalm of Life:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44644/a-psalm-of-life

Lives of great men all remind us 

   We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

   Footprints on the sands of time; 

Longfellow- Psalm of Life: Footprints in The Sands of Time
Longfellow-Psalm of Life, Footprints in The Sands of Time

See below Mount Dessert Island, Maine by Jervis McEntee at The National Gallery of Art,DC

I was summerly abandoned by my kids who had just had about enough of my verse spouting state of ecstasy, I now live with my iphone, but I’m still hoping to get them back!

Moving onto more cheerful things, I am once again on way back to California next week to tie up the last few pending issues relating to the sale of my home in Los Altos, and then on my way back to Delhi, I stopover in Geneva where I am catching up with all my friends,  and then hope to get three great days of skiing in Chamonix before I head back to India. I just cannot wait, for the first time in many months I have felt alive with excitement, I absolutely love Chamonix, I love Geneva and j’adore Gruyere!

See Chamonix below and a hot meal at a charming mountain hut: https://youtu.be/x4JkC3QOMSc

Purnima and Ena lunching at a Mountain Hut in Chamonix, France
Chamonix, France
Chamonix, France
Chamonix, France
Skiers, Chamonix
Chamonix with Friends

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qc7mj4tr8jad3df/AADF71G-Cq8nSaNSXStquSRca?dl=0

Roger, have you seen this fabulously topical new documentary on all our new age issues which we have discussed to death revolving around privacy called Terms and Conditions may Apply by Cullen Hoback? 

Terms and Conditions:

https://youtu.be/-LAvDEeVbyI

NYT – Terms and Conditions

Well, if not, you absolutely have to, absolutely! I was so churned up after viewing the documentary and so starved of company to debate the details of the invasion of our privacy that I took my brother on, on our way to dinner with a car filled with teenage kids. My brother argued over the booming voice of my 15 year old and his 14 year old and we ended up in a shouting match and that was the end of that debate with him being clearly on the side of the large corps with the argument saying ” what do I really lose if they (large corps) have my private info”. I of course blew a Gasket! So I decided to quietly put down my thoughts on virtual reality, gaming, facebook, twitter, end use license agreements and privacy, and would love to share these ramblings with you. Look forward to reading your feedback. Here goes and endless, unpunctuated, outpouring of my heart and soul:

What happens in the virtual world stays in the virtual world! We must make a distinction between laws/codes of the virtual world that govern game play, and the laws and codes (End User License Agreements) that govern issues relating to the participants in the real world. It’s imperative to structure a Real and a Digital Identity. We must not permit data to leak! Data, communications, customs, relationships and all such info derived from a user whether in a particular game or all games and interactions in the virtual space must remain  in the domain of the virtual space, to be defined, judged and managed by the laws/codes of this virtual space. We must not permit this data to seep into the real world to be analyzed, disbursed, and judged in the real world. This firewall must be installed, and ASAP! People leave the real world and indulge in game play for this very purpose: to escape the confines of the real world, to fly and dream for a moment, to vent their fears and frustrations, to achieve what the real world withholds from them their chance to be superhuman, to attain love, money, immortality. Throughout the history of man this space has been provided unintruded: whether it was through images painted on cave walls stirring the imaginations of cave man as all members of the tribe sat around and dreamt of having successfully cornered that mammoth or bison horde, or the grand epics that we treasure and which now form a part of our matrix, epics that weave fantastical tales of triumph and glory which man has aspired to emulate recreating the environs around him to recreate that fantasy, and now through this virtual world of Warcraft, wizards and wardrobe malfunctions, from the super sensory to the mundane, man continues to journey to dream to escape. 

Lascaux Cave Art:  

WHAT IF: While caveman sat around the bonfire with his fellow cave buddies and as the images adorning the ceiling of his cave came to life during their ritual song and dance, as it must have in Lascaux 30,000 years ago, evoking passion, fear, camaraderie, and thereby serving as a bonding for the individuals stirring them to further their goals, expand their tribe,  hunt for their game… Now what if, each caveman’s fantasy/dream drawn from the very cave wall images were translated into the language of the real cave world for all to see, where One caveman’s fantasy projects him as hoping for the leadership role and beating the others to the final kill, while another dreams of how the glory of the kill would get him to dominate most of the women and the food, to have his fill of mates excluding them from the rest of the tribe (in fact I think that might even be the majority dream and much more graphic) or from the female perspective (from the ones who did not actively participate in the hunt) the dream might be to snatch the most powerful and dominant mate who brings home the bison, or charm and contrivance by which they and their offspring might get the lions share of the skin and meat providing an advantage over the others, or since they were French, they might even be competing with each other over the possible sauces for the meats! If their fantasies were revealed into the language of the cave people to be remembered and repeated, that by itself would have been the end of cave man, cave woman, cave boy and cave girl, for this translation of their fantasies would work against their coming together as a tribe, their united action to provide food and shelter for themselves and other members of their tribe. But most of all they would have to stop dreaming, stop drawing, stop dancing. But this story started in Lascaux, and France is France, how is that possible!?! Similarly, for all the other examples through the history of man, without our forays into fantasy, without our unrestricted dreams, would we still be man? I say firewall this space from the intrusion of human laws-permit it to evolve its own code!

Code – Law – Privacy

What if: as a prerequisite for employment, all your online data was scrapped accessible to  employers? This is nothing new or unusual as even today an employer can search data from all your online communities like comments on facebook and twitter base their hiring decisions upon the same. However, what if all your gaming data was compiled by a employee search company categorizing you based on the games you played, your level of aggression, the persons you annihilated whether voluntary, involuntary, whether it was required or not by the game play. Your avatars code of ethics online, your means and strategies, your deception and choices whether it was to play light side or dark side all of this irrespective of whether it was a voluntary choice, required as a part of the game play or inadvertent. Based upon this incredible cache of data a detailed profile can be constructed. Now imagine this data was culled from a bunch of traders who led to the multiple billion dollar collapse of the banking system (like our most recent mortgage backed securities fiasco), imagine the aggression, the choices, the code of ethics employed by this group as they went about decimating the most popular game of 2013, Grand Theft Auto V? What if these traits were profiled (of course an expression of these traits could be viewed as both advantageous and disadvantageous depending on how it was profiled), and persons exhibiting these traits from the general public looking for a job on Wall Street were based on this employee search companies data blocked, excluded OR these very same supposed ruthless and aggressive traits were coveted for these very jobs on Wall Street, would we as a society not be in a conundrum? 

Grand theft Auto gameplay – mowing down pedestrians:

Skyrim gameplay – Killing a Giant for his Toe: 

How would we justify translating these traits exhibited during game play in a virtual world into our day to day lives in the real world? What is desirable and absolutely required in order to effectively play an online game  whether it means mowing down the mother wheeling her child in the pram while you accelerate downhill to complete the lap in your roadster before your competition, or reversing your car on the cop that has come to give you a ticket, perhaps running over him a couple of times back and forth just for fun (Grand Theft Auto), or you killing a lumbering giant  for his toe, one who was not in your space or your face or in any way threatening you (Skyrim), indulging in all the above violent acts during gameplay  which neither add to your game progress or result in detracting from it. In the real world we would consider this kind of action abominable, immoral and utterly unacceptable. However, in the gaming world, all these options exist, based on which your gaming persona evolves, and sometimes are required for the next level But if you are unable or incapable of executing the same, you are just unable to play and can no longer participate in this exciting realm. How then  can we permit the lifting of this data from this world of ambiguous or unrelatable morality, this 21st century realm of dreams and translate it into something comprehensible in our “real” universe? 

Then of course there is the question of whether there can be any morality in this virtual world of ambiguous space time (I have always wondered how the clock would tick tock in wonderland), do we not need defined space time as a basis for morality?  Is the morality of this virtual world its computer binary code, precise exact and unambiguous, where the rules are clearly defined, where there is no margin for debate discourse or flexibility? And a recognition that based on these set of codes are the rules and instructions by which you play and succeed, there is no space for tears or regret. How then can we lift data from this alien realm and apply it to our real realm? We must understand that all the forays into this realm of fantasy are meant purely for that space, there is and should be no scope of retrieving the same and applying the results (as though they were directly transferable) into our realm. 

When algorithms rule the world and sci-fi becomes our living reality – predictive policing in the movie Minority Report:

I emphasize this repeatedly, there must be a firewall, an alt identity for our forays in the cyberworld, for we should not open the gates so wide that one day we people in the “real” world might be judged by the laws of the virtual world and held accountable to the same. For there is no flexibility, no recourse to appeal, no empathy in a universe where the laws are code and everything is not only fully discoverable but demonstrable and KNOWN. Yes, I repeat, man must not permit himself to be judged by a fool proof perfect seal tight world of code where there is no privacy and everything is known. A space where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

See below the inscrutable Terms and Conditions – South Park: Your Data or Your Life!

For to err is human, and this humanity is encoded in our laws. We permit, 99 men to go free before we hang an innocent man and that is a code etched into our (my) fiber which translates itself into the laws by which we permit ourselves to be governed. We recognize that errors are made, and we attempt to construct efficient systems and effective laws. However, at no point do we relinquish our humanity, at no point do we delude ourselves to be perfect. So, recognizing the inherent errors and failings in ourselves, we cannot permit a set of laws that which violates our core, compromises our humanity, deprives us of our coveted privacy and relinquishes us to the ruthless realm of machines and virtual worlds where all is known, all is recorded and run by CODE.

Yes, we have reached that junction in time where we continuously need to assess, ask ourselves “are you human” and that does not mean being able to submit a perfect answer or copy the combination of letters and numbers from the box at the bottom of the page, in fact, it is just the contrary of that, for only a machine would be perfect and replicate code infinitely, our humanity lies in the little errors during replication, these little errors result in evolution, expansion and form the quintessential expression of humanity.  

I wish to conclude by reiterating that we should recognize the threats that confront us, reinforce our systems, update our laws to ensure that we are able uphold our humanity against all onslaughts against it and pivotal to this is securing our Privacy. Put up those damn firewalls!

Hope you enjoyed the read as much as I enjoyed venting.

Love and hugs to all.

Purnima

Sent: mercredi 14 août 2013

Subject: Fwd: Self Portrait- finally!

Dear Roger,

These three emails about this uncannily familiar self portrait is to show you where I am and how I am unable to respond to your wonderful emails:

Like the self portrait, I lie transfixed to a board with an imaginary pin with large dark glazed eyes of a dead beetle and concealing in its deep recesses a still beating heart.

Analyzing legal issues is a forgone distant dream I’m afraid.

Love

Purnima

See below a beautiful Butterfly at the academy of Sciences San Francisco:

Purnima

Thu, Jul 4, 2013, 6:43 PM

Dear Purnima,

How delightful to hear from you.  Thanks for the 4th of July greetings.

You seemed to have dropped off the radar since you left for your trip to the States.  No travelogues? No outstanding adventures?

How did things go with US immigration?  Were you able to renew your papers so you could eventually return to the States and stay there indefinitely?

What’s new with you and your kids in India?

We continue to really enjoy our life in Chiang Mai, but we’ve also used it as a base for some travel in the region.  We spent ten days on Phuket in April and really enjoyed the place.  Then in May we met Celine, Vincent and Alexandra for ten days on Bali.  It was a little bit more humid there than it is in Chiang Mai, but I loved the people and the temples and the smiles and the sandy beaches and the clear, calm water in the little inlets and bays and the cozy little bungalow on the hill overlooking the sea with the volcano in the background.  We also spent a week in South Korea at the end of June, but were a little bit disappointed in the trip.  The people were very nice and helpful, but it’s really a very materialistic society (they boast the world’s largest department store) and lacks a lot of the refinement one finds in Japan, and the prices were nearly as high as Japanese prices, especially in the upscale clothing shops, and it is definitely not a place for vegetarians.  Their diet is very meat oriented, so we ended up eating in Indian, Italian, Japanese and Tibetan restaurants most of the time.

When are you coming to see us?  We live in a really lovely area north of Chiang Mai on the edge of a small Thai village.  There is an organic restaurant, two swimming pools and a massage spa here.  You would love it and we’re basically here and free until September.

I’m still seething over the arrogance of a certain to-be-unnamed country (one has to be careful about what one writes these days) and their heavy-handed response to a certain whistle blower, but Le Monde revealed in a front-page article this morning that France also has a huge and largely a-legal system of eavesdropping on telephone calls, emails, SMS and internet traffic.  No wonder they have been slow to condemn the actions of the biggest Big Brother of all and have seemingly bent over backwards to do its bidding by closing its airspace to presidential planes from unimportant foreign countries.

Do let me know how you are doing and how you are getting along.  Would love to get a long missive about your trip.  The occasional pictures posted on Facebook were great, but I longed for more detail.

Lots of love,

Roger

Roger Stevenson

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #58*

Japanese Doll Kabuki

4/18/13

Dear Roger,

Here is a print of my Japanese doll with the horned flaxen helmet, i finally found it and had to share it with you ( i just hope Im not resending).

The Tale of The Golden Helmet – Yaegakihime

https://www.yaegaki-kai.be/yaegaki-hime/

A kabuki play of a love story set in the midst of rival clans, magical helmets and a princess’s passion to save her beloved. In this tale princess Yaegakihime shines bright as she holds aloft the flaxen haired helmet and soars over the frozen lake to rescue her beloved, see below:

http://www.printsofjapan.com/Yoshitaki_Yaegakihime.htm

Yaegakihime– Tales from The Shogunate – 21st Century California

Can you see me as the hero of this tale donning the samurai helmet and saving the day?

Love and hugs

Purnima

Date: Thu, Apr 18, 2013

Subject: Japanese theatre: Yaegaki-Hime

Dear Purnima,

I love Japanese prints.  They reflect all that I admire about the Japanese culture.  However, those two figures in black at the bottom of the print look rather ominous.

More later about your trip(s).  I’m thrilled for you that you have been able to do some exciting and unusual traveling.

Hugs,

Roger

4/13/13

Dear Roger,

At this point, I have been working hard to give the story, my story, a story I have been destined to tell, and one I have mentioned many times over in my correspondence with you – The Story of the Knight and The (Siberian) Crane.

You are probably asking why Japanese theatre…well it all started when i recently came in possession of my maternal grandfathers gift of a Japanese doll holding aloft a kabuki mask (at least that is what I think, need to verify).I call it his gift because he died decades ago and I was the apple of his eye, his doll. His story was entwined with Japan, and the Japanese story as he strove to rebuild his life after migrating from Lahore to India, just as Japan rebuilt itself after the war. He visited Japan numerous times and in their ideas, philosophy and culture, I suspect he found a mirror of himself: a hardworking, creative individual who strove to embrace all the progressive ideas of technology and business and yet was a man steeped in tradition.

See below the silver haired Siberian Crane in Japan, my grandfather Jai Dev Shourie reconstructing his world through technology as Japan was reconstructing its own:

My Grandfather Jai Dev Shourie Travels to Japan-Sharing Tradition and Technology

For you see this Asian American story is about the flight of a long migratory bird, The Siberian Crane, one which is an integral part of Japanese culture and mythology. I sense my grandfathers hand in presenting this story as one made for the Japanese stage.

Roger, as I attempt to pull the threads of this story together, I would appreciate your support, guidance and advice, for this is an American story, a story for and of my children, the story of a journey, a journey which culminates in your shores, our shores.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Love

Purnima

P.S: Keep following as Tales from the Shogunate Unravel in 21st Century California

4/15/13

Dear Purnima,

Being an expert on neither Japanese masks nor Japanese theatre, I had to resort to the internet to glean the following concerning horned masks in Noh theatre:

“A devil-like, horned mask, for example, is worn by an actor playing Hannya, the jealous, revengeful demon who was once a beautiful woman.”

Sounds indeed like an interesting theme for your story, and it’s really fascinating that you were able to save this doll and its mask from the dumpster.

More later when I’ve had time to digest your questions about “The Merchant of Venice.”

All my best,

Roger

Dear Roger,

After receiving your email, I scanned the Internet for information and images on Hannya and found that it did not quite fit the horned headdress upheld by my Japanese doll with it’s golden curved horns and flaxen locks. In fact, the closest image seemed to be that of a samurai mask which sports the same forked horned mask. Do check out the images of samurai warriors taken at The National Gallery in Washington DC  below:

samurai warriors taken at The National Gallery in Washington DC 
The National Gallery in Washington DC 
samurai warriors taken at The National Gallery in Washington DC 
samurai warriors taken at The National Gallery in Washington DC 
Samurai – National Gallery of Art Washington DC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samurai.jpg

However, I  loved the idea of stumbling upon a figurine upholding a horned mask that represents Hannya, a jealous revengeful spirit who was once a beautiful woman, especially since the most popular re-enaction of Hannya is  found in the Japanese Noh play Aoi No Ue which is based on an  episode from the Tale of Genji, one of my favorite books. See clip introducing Tale of Genji below:

But somehow I sense that the Japanese figurine is meant to represent me, and is not one embracing the spirit of Hannya, and extracting revenge, but upholding a samurai mask and embracing the spirit of a war weary but courageous samurai ready to embark upon the next adventure.

What do you think a Samurai or a Spirit? 

I lean towards brave princess Yaegakihime who flies over a frozen lake to save her beloved.

See more pics of my doll below with the flaxen horned headdress:

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/113205-princess-yaegaki-kabuki-doll–unknown

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fhcx99ysvk3s31j/Japanese%20Doll-Horned%20Headress-%20Yaegakihime-Kabuki.jpeg?dl=0

Purnima

Roger Stevenson <rogerverlin@gmail.com>

Mon, Apr 22, 2013, 6:46 PM

Dear Purnima,

It has been fascinating to follow the conversation about the Japanese doll and the horned mask.  Thanks for keeping me in the loop.

The latest case of the disgusting kidnapping and rape of a five-year old girl has once again focused the spotlight on India and the condition of women in that society.  But, alas, I think you were right in an earlier email when you talked about the fact that it would take several generations to bring about any meaningful change.

Here is the point of view of Craig Murray, the former British diplomat who dared question his governments’s turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.  He was subsequently drummed out of the British foreign service, had his reputation smeared by unfounded accusations, and has since devoted his time to dealing with other injustices, notably, he is a staunch defender of Julian Assange.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/04/india-and-women/

We are back in Chiang Mai again.  Phuket was really enjoyable, but some parts of the island are a bit too touristy for my taste, especially the beach at Patong.  It’s wonderful to be back in our little part of paradise where, while it is hotter – 38 to 39 in the afternoons—it is much less humid.

When do you leave on your odyssey?

Much love,

Roger

Roger Stevenson

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #57*

Tiger Cave, Chimeras, Merchant of Venice, Blood, Biometrics, Technology, Genetics
Purnima at The Tiger Cave in Mahabalipuram, India

The Tiger Cave above from Mahabalipuram, India is meant to depict “yeli” a cross between a lion and a tiger but I see a chimera, a cross of multifold tusked and horned beasts, the perfect setting for our grand theatre!

 5/27/12

Dear Purnima, 

It’s been a whirlwind two and a half days here in Newport.  I am leaving again in just a while for the drive back to Boston and my flight to SFO.  I did most of my shopping for stuff that I always wait to buy in the States, like Levi’s, vitamins, bed linens, etc. already, and yesterday we did the tourist bit here in Newport.  It’s really a delightful place, and it’s just like being in Santa Cruz, only more stately and monied.  The huge mansions with their extensive gardens that dot the coast line are like relics out of the past and certainly are objects of curiosity for the thousands of tourists who seem to have descended on Newport this weekend.  I’m almost looking forward to flying to the West Coast if for no other reason than to escape the almost omnipresent New York accent here

I’ve been looking out all the time for a cute Seal, but my son told me that they are not stationed here in Newport at all, but are mostly in San Diego.  Sorry about that.  I was even ready to snap a quick picture of one if I saw one climbing out of the bay, wet suit and all.

I’ll try and write more from the Bay Area, but we are gong to spend most of Monday thru Weds. in the mountains at my son’s cabin where there is no internet, electricity or other of the luxuries that we all take for granted.

Hope all is well.  I loved the just slightly wicked rendition of “Diarrhea”

Big hugs,

Roger

See below Purnima Visits The Magnificent Mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, The Breakers, The Elms and Marble House:https://www.newportmansions.org/explore/the-elms, https://www.newportmansions.org/explore/marble-house

Purnima at The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island – The Gilded Age
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
The Marble House, Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
The Breakers,Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
The Elms, Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
The Elms, Newport, Rhode Island
The Elms, Newport, Rhode Island
Purnima at The Elms -Newport, Rhode Island

4/12/13

Dear Roger,

Before this Tsunami of creativity ebbs, I feel I must share with you my musing and look to you for support. 

During my daily chats with Dhruvum who feels like a million miles away in boarding school in Bangalore, i found Dhruvum excited about embarking on a study of Shakespeare’s  works with The Merchant of Venice. He wanted to discuss all the details, all the characters, all the nuances with me but as he quizzed me he sounded very disappointed at my “blank” response. I had no memory, I was wiped clean of ever having read it, even unsure to the point of if I had read it. I knew the general plot, I was raised in a family where my father and my uncle were always quoting Shakespeare. In fact, my fathers last words as he lay ravaged by the final stages of cancer was “to be or not to be, that is the question”. And here i find in my son, that same familiar bloodline awakening once again to the words of Shakespeare and I remain mute. This is a journey I am hoping to embark upon with you as my guide, mentor, tutor. Is it still possible as many oceans still separate us?

So finding myself all alone once again, I braved my way back to the Gymkhana Club library (New Delhi, India) and pulled all the books on The Merchant of Venice (after a struggle with spelling). I then skimmed through the book re-viewing it through the legal lens. I felt I had to be able to creatively contribute to a discussion with my son, and would do so from a novel perspective, my perspective. 

So here are my musings ( from a legal perspective) after a cursory read, I eagerly anticipate your response. 

Merchant of Venice

Unconscionable contracts

Limits of what can be contracted

Penalties and their permissible boundaries

Rules and the limitations on enforceability for Contracts relating to:

organs

saliva and hair

Cartilage, fat

blood

Sperm and egg 

 One of todays greatest challenges is that of contracting between donors of egg and sperm, and contracts relating to surrogacy. 

Issues: Can organs, body parts be contracted for sale or loan, can the penalty be material (ie) relinquishment of that body part, sperm, egg, blood/placenta? Where does the real ownership lie, who determines if it’s the egg, the sperm or the womb that has nurtured the baby that the the primary claim, is there a hierarchy of claim, and can and to what extent is monetary compensation permissible for the same?   What is the claim of the State?

Innate agreement to contract between citizen and State: what are it’s parameters, does this exist? When, where and how far can the State compel a citizen to give up a sample of his , breath, blood, saliva, fingerprints, DNA?

Classic examples: DUI- breathalyzer, blood sample, DNA sample.

What about other biometric data like face and iris scans, tattoo data. See below EFF article on how institutions created to secure us left unchecked and unaccountable are often the greatest violators:

BIOMETRIC DATA SURVEILLANCE – NIST! Tattoo Recognition Score Card: How Institutions Handled Unethical Biometric Surveillance Dataset | Electronic Frontier Foundation

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/tattoo-recognition-score-card-how-institutions-handled-unethical-biometric

Issues: Who owns this sample/data after it has been collected? If this has been contracted, what is the value ascribed and who are the permitted beneficiaries? While collecting blood/ pound of flesh, is the state also permitted to “take” the DNA/ blood? Does this DNA then go into the States databank creating profiles, highlighted not only for categorizing persons for the particular offense that it has been collected for, but for collating the bloodlines/ DNA of the citizens of a nation, a value not yet calculated and a distinction not yet defined. Does the blood/DNA of Schwarzenegger, Armstrong, and Muhammad Ali, belong to their nation of birth, citizenship or one which carries that predominant bloodline, does culture play a role, what is the hierarchy of claim? In order to establish this hierarchy of claim, there is a need for global consensus on an individual basis and not based on our current State-wise systems of consensus (UN) which would only produce a conflict. 

The nations of today are a flash in the pan of historic genetic timelines, where, when and how (under what pretext) can the nations of today with their shifting boundaries, ideologies, systems of governance stake their claim to our blood/DNA as territory becomes less relevant and it all dissolves into a fight for the pound of flesh.

In the age of genetic experimentation where we have gone from creating “dolly” the first genetically engineered sheep to modern day chimeras fusing mouse and man. Can one be compelled contractually to accept the penalty of taking “a pound of flesh”? Can Shylock actually be contractually forced to take his pound of flesh? In a modern day example two people contract to make a perfect child, either using their sperm, eggs or womb or a combination of theirs and others, and the child turns out to be genetically malformed, can the contracting party be compelled to take the child, raise, tend and care for all of the child’s medical educational and care needs when both (or more) of the contracting parties have contributed to it’s birth/being? Is the other party completely absolved from all liabilities regarding the child as it has been contracted away? What is the role/liability of the State that permits these excursions in tech without setting up adequate safeguards? What about human-animal chimeras being created for bio-medical research in labs across the globe, what is the moral status of the sheep embryo crossed with human stem cells resulting in a beating human heart? And more alarmingly what about that transgenic Human-mouse that develops human neurons in its brain? How does humanity treat a living organism with human heart and the human brain conceptually capable of conscience, and what is the demarcating line? Can Henrietta (see Hela below) claim all her genetic expressions, and if not can we twist, tamper and play with this cell line with no moral limit imposed (as is being done currently) to the extent of creating Hela clones? What would be the moral status of Hela human clones? Would some life forms be less equal than others (ie) have a different “moral status” based on conception? Can we really contract with the flesh, and to what degree and category? Can one be legally compelled to take the contracted pound of flesh, the distorted chimera, an experiment gone wrong, a Minotaur? What would be the moral status of such a beast? See link below:

Human-Animal Chimeras: Biological Research & Ethical Issues

“Moral Status”

https://www.livescience.com/56309-human-animal-chimeras.html

Notorious Chimeras from Mythology: The Minotaur 

When the issue is with animals, chattel, there is little debate and the laws are clear cut. However, as mentioned above, in this age of genetic manipulation, where the distinction between human and animals are blurred in labs across the globe as clones, chimeras and human organs grown and crafted from animal parts become commonplace, what are the contractual rules governing that pound of flesh? What if an experiment went awry, and the chimeras created with human genes with animal dna strains resulted in a new life form? Who has the premier claim? What if it were more devastating than the small pox,  Does the individual, the lab, the State have a corresponding liability to that claim? What if the individual with the underlying human dna wishes out of the contract and does not want that pound of flesh/chimera and nor does he wish for another to possess it, who has the highest claim and does that include the right to destroy it?

See below the sculpture of Henrietta Lacks by Tavares Strachen at the SFMOMA Soft Power exhibit. Tavares Strachan’s “Henrietta Lacks” (2013) is a sculpture consisting of a life-size Pyrex figure suspended in mineral oil, in an acrylic box signifying INVISIBILITY.

Tavares Strachan’s “Henrietta Lacks” (2013)
Tavares Strachan’s “Henrietta Lacks” (2013) is a sculpture consisting of a life-size Pyrex figure suspended in mineral oil, in an acrylic box signifying INVISIBILITY

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/igqzqnktwhzprsd/AADu7U4MylCAixVb-6LmNtVra?dl=0

SFMOMA Soft Power exhibit 2020:

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/sfmomas-soft-power-displays-the-influence-of-art-in-the-21st-century

Henrietta’s tale is one of an unwitting donor whose pound of flesh was literally taken without Informed Consent. The cancer cells of her tumor form the first immortalized cell lines designed to reproduce indefinitely and have tremendously benefitted humanity and biomedical research. Despite arguments to the contrary regarding the laws at that time, the fact is that she was a woman and a minority with little financial means, availing herself of free healthcare offered by the hospital which added to her invisibility, this in my opinion doesn’t justify taking without knowledge or consent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

See below The (must see) Henrietta Lacks movie:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017) | Official Trailer | HBO

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Dear Roger, with the exponential growth in technology across the spectrum whether it is biotech or cybertech or even a combination of the two, the conventional laws that have taken centuries to evolve are under pressure to react to changes occurring on a daily basis. It is near impossible for the judges to administer justice in areas that have not been exposed to the general public, debated upon, and gained credibility through consensus as it would result in individual subjective decisions on the part of the judges without the appropriate sanctity of public support. We have to recognize how handicapped our legal system is when it is compelled to deal with the issues of this new technologically driven time, with the laws of the Old World. Our corpus of laws of torts, contracts etc, cannot be automatically imposed on the new technologically driven world as there is often little correlation between our old laws and the realities of this new world, but most of all there has been no debate and consensus on how we as humanity agree to address these issues so pertinent to our own survival.

So, in order to build this consensus, a consensus NOT of legal minds and tech doctorates (or doc-trix as my son calls them and I now understand it to be a doctorate without a corresponding course in Ethics!) but a consensus of the majority of the people whom these laws impact, I have devised a plan of bringing out these current relevant technological issues of today, and possibly tomorrow, in a format that is recognizable, comprehensible and relevant to the average, man, woman and child.

A street play if you must, a grand theatre to showcase these issues and to stimulate an audience response. A idea of disseminating relevant legal issues to the widest audience couched in literature, art and theatre and help generate popular opinion for our judges to have a basis to act upon, to deal with the challenges thrown up by technology. This edition of Alice in Wonderland is written by an attorney!

See below Purnima at the Tiger Cave Grand Theatre in Mahabalipuram, India:

Purnima at the Tiger Cave Grand Theatre in Mahabalipuram, India
Purnima at the Tiger Cave Grand Theatre in Mahabalipuram, India

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hk19hazgirj4h03/AAB3s-NMjp5ICSDomOrMsKrUa?dl=0

Tiger Caves Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu:

https://thrillingtravel.in/tiger-caves-mahabalipuram.html

https://discoverindiasite.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/the-tiger-cave-mahabalipuram/

Video clip-Tiger Caves: 

The carved tiger heads adorning the Tiger Cave are not really tigers but chimeras of lions, tigers and from what i could view other fabulous horned beasts, a fitting stage for the Pallava king and our grand theatre!

Chimera: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chimera

I anxiously await your response as another note waits in the wings. 

Love to all,

Purnima 

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #56*

Vernacular Bible – Language for the People, Dussehra Ramayana, Emojis – Multimedia, Le Loi Pour Les Nuls 

10/21/12

Purr-Gate-(s)Tory Contined…

Dear Roger,

How wonderful to get two emails from you back to back! So, you have not forgotten me, that feels so good…even though you may have forgotten my birthday. But your fabulously vivid emails re enacting your vibrant life trailblazing across the globe more than makes up for it. Roger, you are so lucky to have found a soulmate with whom to share your interests and passions, ready to pack up and catch that next jetliner to a mysterious culture or just a friend with whom you can sit back relax, watch a flick and enjoy a glass of champagne. You are living a dream, and I am stuck at the exact polar end of that spectrum. I live in the hope that perhaps one day you will reel me in through the cyber realm.

Yes Roger, the other reality is that I’m writing once again, a bit awkwardly, and cautiously, but I’ve lifted the pen, and finally opened my computer that was sitting in a pile of dust. The last few months have dragged monotonously, without a trace of adventure, nor a ripple of excitement. I have not read, nor written nor reflected, just found myself locked away in a deep dark room. I have now vowed to end this self pity and pick up whatever remains of life as I remember it. 

On the personal front, the theatre continues, but I have managed to put that aside temporarily and reconciled to the fact that my children might be at boarding schools far away from me. However, today, at this point they are both with me enjoying their mid term, Dussehra break, and so the outpouring of words and ideas, a semblance of normalcy. 

As you may remember from last year, Dussehra, one of the big Hindu festivals is celebrated with great pomp all over India. This is the day when the ten headed demon Ravana(Dussehra literally means ten headed) from the great Hindu epic Ramayana, was vanquished by Lord Rama. It is the classic celebration across cultures of the victory of good over evil with Ravana depicting the many vulnerabilities of man despite his great knowledge and devotion to god from whom he acquired many powers but deployed them to benefit his ego. This megalomaniacal king then abducted Sita, the wife of lord Rama, and the great epic of The Ramayana unfolded. 

The Ramayana was first written in Sanskrit by sage Valmiki between the 1st and 5th century BC, (date unknown), and later popularized by sage Tulsidas in the 16th century who wrote this great epic in the vernacular tongue (Awadhi) opening it up to the common man who now did not require the priest to translate it to him. The ideas, the ideals, morals which were privy to a select few who were Sanskrit speaking now opened up to the universe. Tulsidas also had it enacted in a theatrical form called the Ramlila, thus reaching out to an even wider population of the uneducated. Tulsidas, this saint-poet, caused a form of a minor revolution in India with his skillful work of translating the Ramayana, called Ramcharitramanas.

Still remembering my father at the end of his 75th year, the memories of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitramanas from childhood come flooding back, of hearing my father recite it melodiously, and then being my father the eternal prankster who often came down to our age to communicate with us, hearing him recite it backwards, yes the entire Ramcharitramanas backwards and dramatically. He had moved very far away from the world of his adventurous youth, of journeys through the Himalayas in hot pursuit of the elusive game and embraced the life of a much married, silent, settled man, and a father twice over but the spirit remained as did his incredible mind. He mentioned Tulsidas and Luther in the same breath, another revolutionary who translated the bible from Hebrew and Greek into the language of the people. Not only did he translate it into the spoken vernacular German language, he also had copies printed so that the reach was widespread and the average man was no longer at the mercy of the latin speaking priests to interpret their holy book. This Guttenberg bible, the first printed version bring me back to Geneva and to a charming museum called the Martin Bodmer museum that I was fortunate to visit. This museum not only has a rare copy of the Guttenberg Bible, it has the first edition of many of the famous historic and literary works. Books, manuscripts, scrolls, papyrus, in a multitude of scripts from across the globe covering the history of the written word. Do see the images of the museum in Geneva on Dropbox below:

Martin Bodmer Museum – Solzhenitsyn Exhibit:

https://www.geneve.com/en/attractions/fondation-martin-bodmer

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y0ts29z2dqfozea/AAB3GPq1f6IIYu29mdiTAgKDa?dl=0

I entered the gates to find myself in a retrospective of Solzhenitsyn’s works. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian and famous political prisoner of the notorious gulag or Russian labor camp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn meticulously catalogued the conditions of these camps and the degradations suffered by the prisoners, often a first person account and detailed them in his great novel The Gulag Archipelago. A novel I dove into as I entered the gates of the Bodmer museum, one that shook my being and wrenched my soul as I continued my walk along the thorn strewn pathway in exploration of human nature.  I never did find the Out Gate, see me below as I struggle to emerge from The Gulag Archipelago:

Purnima in The Gulag Archipelago – US Edition:

I dedicate this to all the women who did not live to tell it

Purnima Neck Deep in The US Edition of The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago – Dedication – To All Those That Did Not Live To Tell It

Sol-Zhe-Nit-Syn sounds👂like Vis-Wa-Na-Than. Starbucks hello if you can get a 10 letter name with a mouthful of consonants without a vowel in sight (c’est incroyable), for Pete’s sake ☕ I’m not the line holdup monster, my name is an easy consonant vowel mix, Remember my name – Viswanathan😊

https://youtu.be/ynZCDm0IEVM

However, despite being extremely impressed by the museum, I could not help notice that most of the museum was devoted to western literature. There was a window for Persian literature, yes, only a window to encompass all the contribution of Persian literature to the world. And finally, when it was the turn of Sanskrit literature, both secular Sanskrit literature like the great novels of Kalidasa, eternal love stories like Meghadutam and Kadambari and the much beloved Panchatantra or animal tales in addition to better known Hindu and Buddhist epics and religious texts spanning many millennia of literary and cultural expression I found allocated to the far end half panel. My mind was reeling through all the Sanskrit books that had been opened before me, that had been discussed and melodiously recited over and over again. And here the entire collection, memory, idea was crammed into a half panel with two or three basic books. When will the western world truly open its mind and eyes to the thriving cultures of the East, and how can they when such an exceptional and well appointed museum relegated all of Sanskrit literature to a panel at the edge. My mind was screaming out, “who is going to remember Lilavati, who will be alive to question her?” Lilavati and all the mathematical questions posed to her were often raised in jest by my father, and answered by him after my long pause.

Before I leave the Sanskrit section of the Martin Bodmer museum, I have to highlight the fact that there is a way to bridge this gap, to connect the dots, to tie in all the cultures and the literature through the ages: through the Panchatantra. This much beloved book of animal stories originating in India emerging possibly 200-300 BC or earlier from around the time of The Buddha, and finding its expression across the globe from Laos, to Burma, Thailand to Indonesia, to Persia and then to Europe through the Aesops Fables. If I were involved in the Martin Bodmer Museum, that would be my primary window and I would wrap the other windows around, showing how closely we all are really connected. Wouldn’t you?

Roger, I have attached a charming old photo of my father to this email, one that I adore, and one that I have shared with my children showing them their very young handsome grandfather whom they never met looking very dapper in his suit. My (very American) son’s response was, “oh mom, Nana looks just like Ryan Seacrest of American Idol”. To their mind, the American Idol host is the epitome of charm and style. So I sent those compliments to my father across time and space, perhaps he will get it somewhere.

See pasted below a pic of my dad in his younger days- Ryan Seacrest from the East?:

Vijay Kumar Viswanathan

Back to Tulsidas, Luther and Guttenberg Bible, and translating core issues into the vernacular for the common man, this is an idea that has gripped me for a while and one I often mull over as I review tedious legal issues that seem so far removed from the persons it is impacting. Not only being out of their purview and knowledge, but having no access for contribution or response. The need of the hour in my opinion is a pamphlet written in a language that is easily comprehensible (and in a popular format which includes music, graphics, multimedia), the equivalent of a vernacular bible, covering basic legal issues that need to be debated by society at large and not merely discussed and decided upon by the pundits, persuading the executive and passing through the legislature. Issues where the ramifications are not limited to national boundaries but have an impact on all of humanity have to be debated on a broader forum translating the repercussions of the far reaching impact of modern technology on our lives with the reality of converting the Earth into one large Jurassic Park and all of us into test subjects. The challenge being able to traverse across subjects areas and string it all together in a lucid, entertaining and creative format all the while keeping the core legal issues highlighted by weaving them into the fabric. Thus the need of the hour is: Le Loi Pour Les Nuls or Law for Dummies! What do you think Roger? Time to share my Emoji Paper?

Before I end, I want to take you to the magical valley of Kashmir, a place that was very closely connected with my fathers heart and a place he spend much of his youth… exploring the mountains, valleys and wildlife. He was very keen to share this passion with us kids, so just a few years before he left us forever, he took us to his beloved Kashmir. As we landed, there was a sense that we were known, he was known, he was recognized for he belonged. As he drove us through the countryside he immediately recited the famous Farsi couplet (by Amir Khusro) as famously proclaimed by the Mughal emperor Jahangir upon reaching Kashmir, “Gar firdaus, ruhe zamin ast, hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin asto”.  If there is paradise on earth, it is here , it is here , it is here!

See breathtaking Kashmir in the video below:https://youtu.be/D_bgCyM1nRY

I leave you with dreams of magical Kashmir and hope to hear from you soon. Goodnight.

Love,

Purnima

PS: While my father read the Ramcharitramanas, I was very fortunate later in my teen years to hear the Sanskrit version of the Ramayana from my grandfather V. Viswanathan’s lips, but in contrast to my father, his words were straight and narrow following the meter. So the Ramayana is somewhere carved within me in all its vivid hues, in the voices of my village and now my challenge is to translate these voices for the next generation.

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #55*

Chats/Feelings, Saraswati, Tara and Ashwathama

9/12/12

Dear Roger,

How wonderful it is to get an email from you from right here in the depths of my lows. Everytime I feel I’ve hit rock bottom there seems more to go, and from this point i’m no longer sure which way is up!

Roger, you did something magical to me, you planted a kernel, a desire to write, to write about all my experiences, my feelings and everything that moved and inspired me. You inspired me. You supported me. You gave me a mission, something to absorb myself in so that I may pass my near impossible daily existence in Geneva in the throes of a bad marriage and messy divorce. I would make a note of all I did and saw, even the most mundane experiences, and weave a web trying it with my life and experiences sprinkled with the reading I did while in Geneva all to present to you a vividly gift wrapped box, in Indian pink. Then there was the anticipation and finally your response, which often put me over the moon as my fledgling attempts at story telling seemed to have your stamp of approval with a request for more. I survived Geneva because of you Roger, but now when I need you the most you seem to have moved far away. Or perhaps I have.

The tsunami of ideas and creative energy that you helped unleash seem to have receded, died a smothering death. I would spend innumerable hours taking mental notes of everything I saw, read and experienced to weave into my little tale to share with you. In fact, at one stage I was so inundated with ideas that I though I was somehow destined to fill all the libraries of cyberspace with my imagination. I felt I had so much to contribute that all the hours of the day would not suffice. Well guess what, its been three months, three long months without a flicker, a spark, a stirring in my soul. It’s as though I have been sabotaged, having all my breath taken from me.

My star returns to me this weekend, I shall then attempt to put pen to paper and reignite my soul.

Love and hugs to everybody.

Purnima

10/11/12

Dear Purnima,

You are really wonderful to have remembered my BD, and I am terribly ashamed that I forgot to write to you on your birthday.  23rd of Sept., right ?  Can you ever forgive me and accept my on-bended-knees apology ?  I hope you had a wonderful day and did something that took your mind off of divorces, child custody battles and the heat in Delhi.

I had a delightful day.  We stayed home and A fixed a lovely Asian spicy dish for dinner.  We washed down the birthday cake from our favourite patisserie in La Roche sur Foron with a bottle of excellent champagne while we watched a Japanese movie I had downloaded.  We are leaving for ten days in Japan tomorrow and plan to continue the celebration there on Sunday with a meal in a Singaporean restaurant Annick found on internet.

Before we ever decided to return to Thailand for the winter, A had signed up for a week-long intensive Japanese class in Tokyo, so we leave tomorrow and will return on the 22nd.  It will be fun and relaxing to spend a week in Tokyo and not have too much to try and see and do.  I’m going to take a couple of short train trips while A is immersed in her Japanese lessons, and we are going to Kobe on Friday and Saturday to see friends there and then have invited some other friends to lunch in Tokyo on the following Sunday.

We’ll only have about a week at home again before we leave for Thailand on the 30th.   Busy, but exciting, times.

And what about you ?  Have things leveled off for you ?  Did you decide which school you wanted to put your star in ?  Any new and exciting adventures to write about ?  Are you writing ?! ! ! – please say yes !

There have been some interesting bits in the media about proposed reforms in India that would allow big-box style retail outlets like Walmart and Carrefour to set up shop in India.  I hate those stores with a passion and hope the demonstrations in India over this issue will have an impact on any final decision.

And, we are sad that Murakami didn’t win the Nobel Prize in Literature today.  Choosing a Chinese writer is probably worst thing the Nobel Committee could have done because of the on-going conflict between Japan and China.  Speaking of books, I just finished a fascinating book about Japanese women who came to the West Coast of the US in the early years of the 20th century.  They were all brides (arranged marriages, of course) of Japanese men who were already living in California.  It’s called The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, an American of Japanese heritage.  It was a wonderful read and it made me think of how you must have felt when you arrived in Sunny California, although many years later than these women.  Now I’ve started reading Ian McEwan’s latest book, Sweet Tooth, which is about a ravishingly beautiful and intelligent young woman in England in the 70’s who is recruited by MI5 to work for the British Secret Service.  She is involved with an aspiring writer who isn’t aware of her secret life as a spy.  

Thanks again for the birthday greetings.  I was really very touched.  I miss you and our chats, and it would indeed be wonderful to try and see if we can’t use Skype to stay more in touch.  I’ll send you my Skype name when we get to Thailand.

Hugs and kisses,

Roger

Dear Roger,

Disaster has struck, there are absolutely no flights available to Geneva and on the eve of this much anticipated journey I’ve come crashing down! I have been floating on a cloud these last few weeks imagining myself revisiting old haunts, meeting friends, and once again inhaling that crisp Alpine air as I carve the mountainside kissing the azure blue skies. with great effort, I had my skies taken out from the dark dusty dungeon, the recesses of my sub conscious, that they had been resigned to for eternity. I even had my ski outfits and all my ski gear laid out across my apartment to breathe for a bit, I pranced and paraded feeling young, invigorated and alive once more. I even managed to persuade a friend to come down from London and open up her apartment in Chamonix, and now I have no ticket to paradise! This is totally absolutely unfair!! I cannot accept!!!

Roger, I was almost halfway to Geneva in my dreams. Over the last few weeks, as I watched the Sochi Olympics, I imagined myself straining my mind, body and soul down those precipitous runs, (of course in my instance these runs were in Chamonix) as I was eyeballed by the curious chamois who had crawled out of the mountainside to view this strange bird from the Himalayas who had obviously lost her way. I had much planned, in addition to the skiing, I was hoping for moments of reflection, intense self revelation as the brilliant sunshine made its way to me through clouds and peaks. Like my ancestors who journeyed to the Himalayas for introspection and revelation, the Vedic sages of yore, I was hoping the Alps would sharpen my mind and stir my soul as I continued to ponder issues of morality in timelessness, morality in the virtual realm, Laws of Evidence and Predictive Coding. Of course, all this combined with lots of fondue, smelly French cheese and the most handsome men on earth, was a dream waiting to happen, but now, as usual I find myself splattered face first on the floor of my apartment!

Dear Roger, once again from a distance there is an eerie pull, a strange past life connection, The Matterhorn beckons, its calls out to me in a haunting rhythmic tone…”come to me, come to me”. 

Return once again to my fav theme from South Pacific, Bali Hi and the lonely island, the mountain calls out “come to me, come to me“: https://youtu.be/81NROmUb7o0

Love and hugs

Purnima

ASHWATTHAMA

4/12/10

Dear Roger, 

But, YOU are from what I have seen, balanced, logical and a rational man, AND you are American! 

Where and how do you fit into this diaspora and where can we find more of you? In France?? Such a pity, because the likes of you are needed more than ever on the home-turf. And, home-turf as you may know is being gripped by a silent hysteria. Where paranoia is being drummed up about certain minorities, and the thunderingly pious streak in the majority is being tapped to “do good”. As we have discussed in the past, the scenery and clothes may have changed but the jury, the ten good men remain the same. The Japanese concentration camps on US soil of second and third generation immigrants who have and know no other home than the United States of America (like my children), is not a world away, a relic of the past but in my opinion the alarming future if the likes of you are not on the ground to restore the balance. 

Just yesterday, I found my kids laughing at the jokes of an American comedian on youtube who was parodying the inability to pronounce the alien name Ahmed, so he spelled it A+H+ (phlem)+M+E+D. I laughed sharing the humor with the kids but reminded them that the laugh was really on them, on the person with the inability to understand and pronounce a foreign name.  Where are these voices, this cultural infrastructure peering over the shoulders of our kids sharing their moment yet guiding them in the right direction. I think somehow the fault also lies with the immigrant population that has not been able to color the melting pot with its brilliant hues but has just melded into it blindly embracing Americana; after all, isn’t that what the journey was for in the first place? 

After being inundated with Percy Jackson books blogs and movies by the kids, a brilliant character part man part god, taken from greek mythology, incorporating the superpowers of the greek gods themselves which has so excited and connected with this generation, I have decided that my Japanese comic book character must follow a similar pattern, part girl, part goddess: incorporating the attributes of Saraswati or Benzaiten the beautiful goddess of knowledge and the fierce and blood curdling Blue Tara, slayer of demons. Characters little known outside our world and culture. My kids have abandoned me as loony, do you wish to be my co-author?

Percy Jackson: https://riordan.fandom.com/wiki/Percy_Jackson 

https://youtu.be/OK2eJMgceQw

Saraswati/Benzaiten: https://gods-goddess.fandom.com/wiki/Saraswati

https://gods-goddess.fandom.com/wiki/Benzaiten

Saraswati Rubin Art Museum, New York
Saraswati Japan Center by Benoy Behl
Saraswati Japan Center by Benoy Behl
Saraswati Japan Center by Benoy Behl

Blue Tara: https://mandalas.life/2020/interpreting-blue-tara-ekajati/

Tara – Rubin Museum New York
Tara sculpture from Nepal at The Rubin Museum, New York
Blue Tara – Ekajati – By http://www.garudashop.com’s artists – http://www.garudashop.com/Ekajati_Thangka_p/tthanka585734.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61286654

And, talking about loony…I seemed to have returned from Morocco back to “Purnima Au Pays Des Marveillles”! It’s the same story…

Purnima at The National Museum New Delhi, India

An upside down, irrational world. Nothing seems to fit. I seem to sometimes shrink and simultaneously expand drawing stares and glares.The deck of baddies seem to lurk around every street corner, eyeballing me as i walk past. The gnome with the briefcase, the evil man with the hat, the mad woman with the dog and the beer bellied bulging ogre seem to lie waiting for their opportunity to strike…

Yes, this outcry is from the same person who prides herself on her clear vision and rational mind. It is such a mind that is being put to its fullest test by both the gods and the demons, someone has stolen their thunder… how dare it be in the possession of the mortal or even the virtual world! 

I hear myself rambling on, spinning stories, expanding the truth, blurring the horizons between fiction and reality. Inconceivable, unacceptable! What happened to the rational person, a person with no agenda, no hidden interest and one who spoke out, clearly and logically most of the time? One who if she said “Ashwatthama is dead“, the great sages of yore would sit up and rethink their battle strategy changing the fate of the battle forever.

 Ashwatthama in the great Indian epic Mahabharata was the son of the  great guru, and military strategist and general,  Dronacharya, teacher to the future kings. Drona’s (mentioned in my earlier mail in the story of Eklavya) love for Arjuna, the brilliant Pandava prince and prime pupil was only second to his love for his son Ashwatthama. During the Mahabharata war, Drona was a formidable and devastating force on the side of the Kauravas (The State/The Kingdom) and a strategy was devised to eliminate him by the god Krishna who supported the Pandavas (The Exiled Contenders for the throne). 

An elephant named Ashwatthama was killed on the battlefield and the bugle was sounded announcing Ashwatthama’s death. Drona refused to believe it unless he heard it from Yudhisthir, the eldest of the Pandavas and the one who firmly adhered to honesty and Dharma. Upon hearing it from his lips and not hearing the part that it was Ashwatthama the elephant that had actually died, Drona got off his chariot, laid down his arms and bowed his head in grief when he was treacherously decapitated. Thus turning the fate of the battle in the favor of the Pandavas. What is interesting to note is that Drona was very conscious about upholding the code of war (very pertinent and topical today) where conventional weapons were to be pitted against conventional warfare, persons with special skills and knowledge pitted against their equal and celestial weapons (nukes) were not to be used unless the code of warfare was violated. Something tells me that he would not have condoned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki under any of the then existing circumstances.

Ashwatthama:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashwatthama

Drona: 

Returning to ME, as I delve into the turmoil within, I sense perhaps I am being discredited. I am no longer able to speak out with confidence. I sense, recognizing it to be the most irrational sensation, that my mind is being monitored, even manipulated. No longer can the veracity and wisdom of my words be relied upon. Beyond blending with fiction, I fear I am lost! 

Hope you have a wonderful trip!

Purnima

P.S. I still have to keep you up for my 1001 nights, don’t go to bed 

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Blog Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #54*

Mei Guo- Health Care – Singapore Art Museum

28/8/12

Paradise Continued…

Dear Roger,

No news from you and I still remain cloistered in my darkened cave waiting for this long summer to pass. Occasionally, some kind soul throws a weekend section of the IHT over on to my balcony and I reconnect with the goings on in the world. 

I last left you with the definition of paradise, and my definition of paradise (The Engadine), but now I am going to hold your hand and fly over the oceans to the land the Chinese called “Mei Guo” or the beautiful land (“Mei Guo” 美國 meaning “Beautiful Land” ). Yes, the US is known as Mei Guo in Mandarin but what is happening in paradise???

As I lie fanning myself on my “couch” I am bombarded by Affordable Care Act, The Commerce Clause, Health Care, The Supreme Court and Tax, Tax, Tax with the occasional vegetable (yes no escaping from that broccoli) giving me a TKO! 

Roger, what’s up? What’s going on? I would love to hear it in plain simple English. As you know, I keep an eye on the Supreme Court and the Supremes but they have not been singing upto my expectations. As for CJ Roberts, who has my highest regard even though I’ve kind of fancied him as adorning the top of my wedding cake, very pretty. However, with the recent goings on I now wish to pluck him off his precious perch and put him on the bench by my side( Yes, I can finally see us sharing a bench and he does not have to be on my side). Am I correct to suspect the conversation might now be stimulating, or am I just being seduced by another set of blue eyes? 

The IHT article by James B. Stewart talks about a pyrrhic victory, upon looking up the definition I discovered that he was aptly referring to a victory that is gained at great cost, great sacrifice (see below Dictionary.com).

Pyrrhic 

1885, from Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who defeated Roman armiesat Asculum, 280 B.C.E., but at such cost to his own troops that he was unable to follow up and attack Rome itself, and is said to have remarked, “one more such victory and we are lost.”

And I believe the following words from James B Stewards article this weekend in the IHT sums up the entire debate in layman’s terms:

“So can the Congress require Americans to buy broccoli? Under the commerce clause, the answer is now clearly no. Could Congress impose a tax on people who fail to buy broccoli, effectively accomplishing the same goal? Under the logic of the decision, perhaps.”

Yes, for sure in my opinion so long as the tax is not punitive and gives the purchaser the option to pay the tax , buy their beans and PASS GO! I would love to hear your take on this.

Roger, you do realize that the healthcare debate has been long left behind, its now a matter of Federal power and States rights. We have recently been through the Slurry Slurpy and the NYC saga of super sized drinks and recognize that there is a public interest in ensuring some basic health and safety/infrastructure needs. Roberts has now clarified for all of us that while the government can peer into your shopping cart and “help” select your dinner, it cannot make you go to the supermarket to shop. The omnipresent (some say ominous) Commerce clause has been put in a spandex body contour and now no longer has the option to spread its sides restricting the core/hungry belly/federal power. However, if public interest deems that Americans must become more active and spend less time on their sofas cutting healthcare costs by reducing heart disease and diabetes, a tax on the “couch potato” is not inconceivable.

Roger, all in all, I see this as a long and complex game and one that has not been completely played out/analyzed by the Supremes. “Who are The Players” Roger, your thoughts?

Sometimes you have to stop debating, projecting, anticipating, analyzing cut all the crap and call a spade a spade… This is good. Im for health care for all, as soon as its conceivably possible for further debate might put it back another 30 years and time matters for ill and the ailing in Mei Guo “The most beautiful land of all in the best possible of all worlds”. What do you think?

hugs

Purnima

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012, Roger STEVENSON wrote:

Dear Purnima,

I’ve thought of you often during the past weekend and wondered how you were coping with your topsy-turvy life.  Custody battles are always messy, and especially when passports, school location and actual physical custody are mixed into the equation.  And to add to the frustration, there is your visa situation and even wondering where home is.  What did you end up doing about the visa ?  Did you return to Delhi ?  Are the kids still in Singapore ?   What does the immediate future have in store for you.

Me, too, I was very disappointed that it didn’t work out for you to come to Chiang Mai.  It would have been wonderful to see you again and catch up in real time with what has been going on in your life.  Let’s try and coordinate things for a future visit.  We will return to France at the end of August and then fly back to Chiang Mai sometime in early November for at least three months.  A lot of our future is dependent on selling our house in France, which thus far has been a frustrating experience, but we remain hopeful that the right family will come along and buy it.

Short video on Chiang Mai below:

We had a delightful time on C’s BD.  We spent the day in downtown Chiang Mai.  Then we had dinner at a new restaurant located on the banks of the Ping River and then we all spent the night in a really delightful boutique hotel.  The next day we had a great massage and then went to the Sunday evening market and wandered around the stalls for a few hours before capping the weekend off with dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant.

 It’s disheartening to hear the political debate from the US especially now that Romney has chosen his running mate.  It’s really scary that such idiots with room-temperature IQ’s and such callous attitudes toward the many social problems facing the US and the world could actually be in a position to call the shots.  Not that Obama is the ideal president, but the thought of having Romney in the White House are downright frightening.

Do let me know where you are and how you are doing.  Everyone sends a big hug and best wishes.

Love and hugs,

Roger

In the Courtyard of The Singapore Art Museum, Paradise Reinvented?

Date: Tue, Sep 11, 2012

Dear Roger,

All the elements exist, Is this Paradise Reinvented?

No news from you so I’m resending the video I shared on FB.

Do write soon as I might be off on another adventure and this time not return…

See pics and video below of The Singapore Arts Museum:

Singapore Art Museum

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9wvyucyoa8ajfvh/AAD2BBUy6rVIm5mwJWJXhxG9a?dl=0

The Singapore Art Museum was the former Saint Josephs Institution built by a French Priest Architect brother Lothaire with verandas running along the length of the building it showcases the distinctive charm of the Singapore colonial architecture. Feeling completely at home in it’s environs, walking along its breezy verandas and basking in the sunlight in its central courtyard reminiscing about a time gone by, I couldn’t’t resist taking the above video clip. See below The Saint Josephs Institution now the Singapore Art Museum:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_Saint_Joseph%27s_Institution

The other Singapore building that tugs at my heart strings as it carries a distinctive air of The Raj is the The Raffles hotel in Singapore. My story is tragically entwined with The Raffles Hotel, for when I arrived in Singapore in the mid 1990’s on a house hunting trip, I searched the island from shore to shore and not finding adequate accommodation, I was reprimanded for being fussy. It was then during one of our heated disagreements that my gaze fell upon the building across the road and my heart skipped a beat and I yelled out to my (ex)husband…”I’ve finally found it, the home of my dreams”! It was the Raffles of course and unfortunately the Demi-gods were watching and I was there and then shortlisted for Purr-Gate-Tory!

See below Raffles hotel and the place where the Singapore Sling was conceived. http://www.rafflessingapore.com

Hugs

Purnima

Everything Works Out in The End- If they haven’t worked out, you haven’t come to the end yet.!

On Tuesday, July 17, 2012, Roger Stevenson wrote:

Dear Purnima,

Have you been to the Indian quarter of Singapore ?  I thought it was great when we were there.  I can’t help but think of that city in its guise as a bastion of British colonialism with its gentlemen’s clubs, cricket pitches, afternoon teas with little fingers pointing upward as if to punctuate the prissy and often pretentious English accents, all filled with the pride of belonging to the Empire and furthering its goals as a power in Southeast Asia AND as a vital source of rubber for the British war machine.  Of course, it was all built on the foundation of cheap Malaysian and Chinese labor.  And all of this thanks to the East India Company.

See Smoldering Serangoon Road, The Indian Sector of Singapore below:

Sights and Sounds of Serangoon Road, Singapore
Mannequins in Sarees, Serangoon Road, Singapore
Hindu Diety, Indian Heritage center, Singapore
Serangoon Road, Singapore
Flower Vendor, Serangoon Road, Singapore
Serangoon Road, Singapore
Sri Srinivasa Temple Serangoon Road, Singapore
Mahishasura Mardhini, Hindu Temple, Serangoon Road, Singapore

Have you been to the top of that fabulous architectural structure that looks like a boat on top of three tall stilts ?  It’s supposed to have a breathtaking view of the city and the harbor.

See below one of Singapore’s iconic structures, Cu De Ta, the boat shaped restaurant appearing to float on top of Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s famous casino, like a pirate ship descended from the clouds:

Purnima in Singapore
Cu De Ta- The Singapore Pirate Ship that emerges from the clouds and lands atop its famous casino Marina Bay Sands
Marina Bay Sands, Cu De Ta Ship Restaurant, Art Science Museum and OMG The Apple Which Follows Me Everywhere!
Purnima in Singapore overlooking The Pirate Ship

Just a cute quote from the film “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”:  “Things always work out in the end.  If they haven’t worked out, you haven’t come to the end yet.! 

Have you found the mystery father yet ?

 Love and kisses,

Roger

Message du 31/07/12

Dear Roger,

Its great to get mail from you tingling with excitement of a new adventure. The euphoria of embarking upon a new journey is palpable and I can’t wait to share a piece of it with you. I am now terribly stuck in Singapore, with little option of return to Delhi immediately. My life seems to be a protracted scene from the movie Ground Hog Day, a film in which I/Bill Murray find myself waking up and repeating my daily tasks without moving on to the next day, the next scene. I feel I’ve been trapped in this space for an eternity and have close to given up hope of not waking up. Can you imagine? Do check me out as Bill Murray below in Groundhog Day.

On to happier themes, I would really love to visit you in Chaing Mai as I will need to leave Singapore for a day and then return due to my visa status. Please let me know it be possible for me to visit, would 8-10th August work for you?

Purnima

On Sunday, July 29, 2012,

Dear Purnima,

We’re almost packed and ready to leave, and the level of excitement and anticipation is growing by the hour.  I just returned from the airport where I checked in a bike box with one of my bikes in it (there was no way it would fit in the car of our friend who is driving us to the airport tomorrow, and I could check it in a day early).  I always feel like a little kid when I fly, and I really do enjoy it.  I will never forget my first flight looking down at the streets, houses, cars, animals in the fields from so high above.  They reminded me of the models of farmland that were on exhibit in the rotunda of the State Capital building.

 Are you still in Singapore ?   When do you take the kids back for school ?   Are you coming back in August ?   You are right, Chiang Mai is not far from Singapore at all.  Air Asia used to have really cheap flights to Chiang Mai, but they have discontinued them, according to V, but there are other airlines who do fly directly to Chiang Mai.  It would be wonderful if you were to visit.  We have rented a house with lots of space.  Just let us know when you could come.

Everyone here is Olympic Games crazy, it seems.  I know lots of English people in Geneva who are simply gaga over the games and the fact that they are in London, but I’m getting a little bit disillusioned with the commercialism and corporate sponsorship of the event and all the nationalistic hype that results from them.  I’m not so sure that they build any kind of international understanding or bring peoples and countries together.  Perhaps on the individual level where there is obviously a mingling of athletes from various countries, but other than that …    One positive note, however, is the fact that this is the first time that every country sending a team to the games includes women !  Even Saudi Arabia  caved in to the pressure from the IOC to include some women (two of them, and they have to compete in their headscarves !)  We will probably never see Muslim women competing in such sports as swimming and diving.  And then there is the problem of fasting during Ramadan.

 We watched a fascinating, poetic and very creative and sensual Japanese film last night: Guilty of Romance.  It’s about a young woman who by day is a literature professor at a Tokyo university and by night a street hooker who is totally depraved.  She lures into prostitution another seemingly innocent young woman who is married to a famous author and who is really his domestic slave (she aligns his slippers just right and meticulously prepares a cup of tea for him when he returns promptly at 9 PM each evening, but he never touches her.  The plot is quite convoluted, but fascinating, and the transformation of the young woman is amazing, especially when she discovers the truth about her husband.  The images from the film have been floating around in my head all day today.

 We leave tomorrow afternoon at 2:15, on KLM via Amsterdam.  I’ll write again as soon as we are settled in Chiang Mai.

Love, hugs and à bientôt, j’espère,

Roger

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Blog Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

GENEVA DIARIES #53*

Legacy of Persia,  South to Samarkand, French and British Authors, Engadine and Eden-Paradise

7/2/12

Dear Roger,

As I continue to hallucinate in this incredible fifty degree heatwave, I find myself revisiting the dreamscapes of Switzerland. Could these green rolling hills, dotted with wildflowers, crystal blue lakes inhabit the same earth as the heat and dust we seem to be enveloped by, I wonder. Perhaps, all of it was a mirage, but then what a magnificent one!

I am drawn in my hallucinations to the Engadine Valley, which in my mind is heaven on earth, paradise, the blissful garden of Eden. I find myself revisiting the picturesque Italian villages that dot the mountainsides with their painted facades, sgraffito, which is a form of engraving on stucco revealing a textured, colored under-layer and their delightful uniquely designed bay windows almost bring out the inhabitants into the alley below. The Swiss Italian charm of the Grissons is unmistakable, these painted homes could easily be a set put up to entertain us on this journey in Eden. I journey from Scuol to Vulpera and then onto Tarasp (that is a complete book which I will share with you one day), Guarda and finally to Ardez. 

https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-us/destinations/guarda/

The Sgraffito technique: 

sgraffito

Travels with family-Tarasp below:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/usfzuhxsi2pd8fv/AADTLeT-assqC4s97IY3hVFza?dl=0

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Tarasp, Engadine
Sgraffito, Engadine
Dhruvum in The Engadine
Purnima in The Engadine
Tarasp, The Engadine
Guarda
Dhruvum, The Engadine
Kids Travel to The Engadine
Tarasp
Purnima with Kids in Tarasp

The senses are overloaded and I feel the cool crisp air of the Engadine flowing through my sweat drenched locks as lose myself in the mirage. I finally find myself outside the Clagluena Haus, a historic house with a sgraffito facade in the charming village of Ardez. The wall mural/sgraffito of this particular home depicts Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (appropriately) with the serpent taking center stage coiling its way up a fruit laden apple tree. 

See below Purnima with the wall mural Adam and Eve:

Purnima in Ardez in front of the Adam and Eve Mural

The setting, the colors, the designs, sgraffito and the fact that this was painted in 1647 and remains vivid and voluptuous for all to see, makes this a real/ virtual journey worth taking (Do see me pictured above in front of this incredible sgraffito, it seems another life, another time). This mural of the Original Sin, Temptation of Man, The “lust of knowing what should not be known”, takes me from the Engadine/ Eden, into the heart of my most recent book, “South to Samarkand” by Ethel Mannin. 

Eden or paradise is defined (by the online dictionary) as:

par·a·dise  (pr-ds, -dz)

n.

1. often Paradise The Garden of Eden.

2. Christianity

a. The abode of righteous souls after death; heaven.

b. An intermediate resting place for righteous souls awaiting the Resurrection.

3. A place of ideal beauty or loveliness.

4. A state of delight.

 The old Iranian language Avestan had a noun pairidaza-, “a wall enclosing a garden or orchard,” which is composed of pairi-, “around,” and daza- “wall.” The adverb and preposition pairi is related to the equivalent Greek form peri, as in perimeter. Daza- comes from the Indo-European root *dheigh-,”to mold, form, shape.” Zoroastrian religion encouraged maintaining arbors, orchards, and gardens, and even the kings of austere Sparta were edified by seeing the Great King of Persia planting and maintaining his own trees in his own garden.

See below an example of this Persian garden of paradise at the Humayun’s Tomb complex in Delhi, India:

The Humayun’s Tomb Complex with its Gardens of Paradise
Purnima at The Humayun’s Tomb Complex-Gardens of Paradise

Do see me as the little girl (elephant) in my most recent favorite song…”once there was a little girl who expected the world”

Paradise by Coldplay: https://youtu.be/1G4isv_Fylg

Yes Roger, I find myself once again devoured by a book from the 1930’s, published in 1936 and probably leafed through by innumerable hands and meeting its final destination on my lap. The pages were crisp, brittle and crumbled as I sprinted through the book making my journey in virtual/fantasy space mirroring the authors journey in real time and space, attempting to relive her every moment, every passion. However, as I plucked it off the musty shelf, I noticed a swirl of dust that seemed to stay afloat in the beam of sunlight which tingled my senses as they evoked both the musty smells and sounds of an old Indian bazaar, but it was the famous couplet  “For the lust of knowing what should not be known, We take the golden road to Samarkand” from James Elroy Flecker’s poem “The Golden Journey to Samarkand” which Ethel Mannin uses as an epigram for her book – South to Samarkand, that made me reach out and grab it off its secluded space on the top shelf. For here across time and space and many oceans I found a woman who lusted for that which lies beyond the horizons, that which is censored, blacked out, blocked, impermissible or privy to a select group excluding women. I have always yearned to open that door, press that button, jump through that glass from whence none has returned to tell the tale. As outlined in the  very interesting article pasted below about the French and British intellectuals (women) of the 1930’s, the Soviet Union was such a space, a mysterious, enigmatic, unknown and unknowable place stretching across an immeasurable landmass with distinctive medley of races and cultures from where the “return and tell journey” was not assured and rarely ventured by a woman. So Ethel Mannin was truly unique in her time and space to have embarked upon this adventure, an adventure she undertook with a female companion (often without permission and papers) from Moscow to Samarkand and back by train, car and exploring on foot. This form of journey across Asia in our day and age would be hazardous, it does say a great deal about the author and her times.

The above pasted (missing) article is both in French and English as I noticed that the books from that genre appear to be. I find a smattering of French in most of the books written by English authors from the 1950’s and earlier. In this instance, the author appears to bilingual and she periodically needed to revert to French to express a sense, feeling, expression- do you see the same in the writings of that time and do you notice a change?

The book excited me primarily because the world was able to see a journey, read a travelogue from a woman’s perspective: the sounds, smells were described in detail; Basic hygiene related issues which men either cringe about or fail to report for fear of appearing un-macho like the lack of or the dilapidated state of latrines; no running water with which to wash up;  body odors, of the unwashed. Mannin did go on to describe in detail the physical appearance and dress of the people around her as she journeyed from Moscow to Samarkand, things only a woman’s eye would pick up. However, these words read in our day and time highlight the racial and cultural prejudices prevalent at the time: as she described the people and their yellow skin Asiatic features as she travelled eastwards, she was also disdainful of the sea of large white fleshy female bodies sunbathing on the sands of Sochi or the Black Sea resort which she seemed desperate to cover up. This led me to furiously retort through my time space payphone “Are only the bony British allowed to bare all in the sun?”. Despite the ingrained prejudices of the period, the account is frank and for a change distinctly female, conditions that only a woman would highlight. I did find the book more of a visual/sensory first person account without delving into significant historical or cultural perspectives. Many interestingly intuitively written passages with a certain flair but overall more like a timeline journal. The reality of two women from a certain background, education, and society traveling through these remote unknown lands in the early 1930′ s under conditions that would make most men cringe makes it an adventure worth delving into. She does highlight the general ignorance of the Western educated elite regarding geographical locations east of Istanbul by pointing out how to the guests of a dinner party comprising the above mentioned elite struggled to identify the location of “Tiflis” moving from India to Africa to guess its location, the place “Tiflis” was synonymous with “Timbuktu ” an unknown unreachable mythical place. Upon being given the clue of “Georgia”, even the author speculated it was somewhere in the United States (and there very well may be a Tiflis in the US but not the Tiflis of this conversation). That general ignorance of places in the old Soviet Union is something I do not think has changed in eighty years, and when prompted about Georgia I would probably say the US (as I did to a chatty fellow airline traveller). I will ask around if anyone knows the location of “Tiflis” today and I suspect I will get a similar response to Mannin… Attributing it to an altogether remoter locale. In her instance it was revealed that Tiflis was in Georgia and then there was a debate as to which Georgia, East or somewhere in the remote West. Eighty years later, we are no more enlightened. There are many parts of the globe that lie in darkness for “the majority” and Samarkand is certainly one of those places.

Samarkand, evokes many dreams and desires, a land of many mysteries, the confluence of many passions, the Mongols and the Greeks, the Turks and the Huns, the Persian and the Sakas (Scythians) each leaving their blueprint on the earth and taking a piece of Samarkand along with them on their journeys. Samarkand holds a particular enigma for us in India for we were to inherit much of that culture of Central Asia, the essence still lingering on in us today. Our favorite restaurants boast of marinated meats cooked in the central Asian style, our favorite restaurants echoing the names of Samarkand and Bukhara, of course the imprint in our language, culture, dress and bloodlines lives eternal. Thus the quest for embarking upon this journey of exploration (albeit from a cosy armchair) from whence most of the tyrannical invaders strapped up their horses rode across the icy passes and embarked upon their journey of plunder and conquest of India, the fiercest and most bloody being that of Tamerlane known for reducing entire villages into pyramids of skulls.

When you say Bukhara, this is what it means to Indians…See video of Bukhara, my fav all time restaurant in India with its delicious Central Asian Cuisine:

See below: Tamerlane A great military strategician, a brutal cold blooded invader:

http://delhimagic.blogspot.com/2007/08/tamerlane-and-war-elephants-of-delhi.html

https://www.badassoftheweek.com/tamerlane?rq=TAMERLANE

Tamerlane or Timur -Lang (“lang” means langara or lame in Hindustani as Tamerlane was known to have a limp) was the tyrannical Timurid chief who is known to have conquered all of Asia from Mongolia to the Mediterranean and from Moscow to Delhi and made Samarkand his capital. Tamerlane sought immortality through conquest and wished to have the world bow to him, this megalomaniac tyrant who sacked, burned and massacred indiscriminately bringing all of Asia under his submission and crowned Samarkand it’s queen, his capital,  decorating her with all his plunder, came to a mortal end, death through old age and illness. The best artists engineers and craftsmen were taken from his ravaged cities and deployed to build the spectacular structures of Samarkand. However, as Mannin points out, these blue green glistening cupolas, the magnificent structures of the Registan (Registan in Hindustani means desert), and the famous mosques like Bibi-khanum which make the journey to Samarkand surreal, this much desired dream, appear to meld into the surrounding desert. The structures as she points out seem to be crumbling, with massive pieces having returned to the earth from whence they sprung ” Not all the glory that was, still is”, “where Tamerlane himself commanded that there should be beauty and splendor, human imagination and human energy were strained to the utmost. At his command blood flowed and beauty flowered. But a mortal and perishable beauty built to perish out of it’s due time and become again a part of the soil of Asia.” 

Samarkand: https://www.britannica.com/place/Samarkand-Uzbekistan

Where I digress from Mannin, though keenly following her thought when she says “First and last Tamerlane was a destroyer; bringing no culture to Samarkand he gave it a physical beauty, but no immortal soul such as rests with the bloom of eternity upon the glory that was Greece and the splendor that was Rome.”  

While the glory and splendor of Greece and Rome live on today in essence with it’s ideas culture and philosophy, and I whole heartedly agree that it is the  language, literature, epics, philosophy, ideas that remain, that lend immortality, eternity for the spirit and soul of the civilization as the physical structures that once bedazzled and seemed to touch the sky crumble into the earth from whence they sprung, in the instance of this megalomaniacal bloodthirsty warrior Tamerlane whose stories when retold still evoke shudders in large swathes of north India, cannot be viewed merely from the prism of a single individual in time. 

Tamerlane however ruthless his assault and invasions especially on Delhi which is recorded as one of the most bloody and brutal invasions of all time was the great great grandfather of Babur who founded the glorious Mogul empire in India and somewhere somehow the continuity of the culture of central Asia continued into our lands. This culture is omnipresent today in Indian language, food, dress, customs, art architecture and philosophy. However ruthless and demonic Tamerlane was and however savage and indiscriminate his plunder and killings, we cannot say that some part of that journey to India was not completed. In this ruthless warrior lay the seeds for “the desire for India” which was artfully accomplished by his great great grandson who completed the “journey to India” not merely invading and plundering the country but settling and embracing the idea and culture and integrating into it the art and culture of Central Asia. Babur established one of our greatest dynasties, which saw the flowering of art, literature, architecture and music and  which has had an enduring impact on the daily life of the people of central and south Asia especially the Indian sub continent. So, very much like Rome and Greece who may be admired for their once magnificent structures, the pieces that endure for eternity are not the physical but the spiritual and the cultural for both the art and the architecture of the Mughals, the Taj Mahal, The Red Fort, The Jama Masjid, surround me as I sit writing this letter to you from here in New Delhi. 

The Golden Road to Samarkand-James Elroy Flecker

 HASSAN:

 Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells,

   When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,

 And softly through the silence beat the bells

   Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

 ISHAK:

 We travel not for trafficking alone;

   By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:

 For lust of knowing what should not be known

   We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

 MASTER OF THE CARAVAN:

 Open the gate, O watchman of the night!

 THE WATCHMAN:

Ho, travelers, I open. For what land

 Leave you the dim-moon city of delight?

 MERCHANTS (with a shout):

   We take the Golden Road to Samarkand!

                (The Caravan passes through the gate)

 THE WATCHMAN (consoling the women):

 What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.

   Men are unwise and curiously planned.

 A WOMAN:

 They have their dreams, and do not think of us.

 VOICES OF THE CARAVAN (in the distance singing):

   We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

— James Elroy Flecker

Lots of love hugs and kisses from Delhi

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 12:50 PM, Roger Stevenson <rogerstev@orange.fr> wrote:

Dear Purnima,

My trip to the land of honey (or is that a reference to Israel ?) is now just a distant memory, but I found the country overall to be in a serious state of decline with crumbling infrastructure, poor services, unreliable airlines, faltering budgets for public services and grimy streets.  That was especially true in the Bay Area where I was really taken by the grunge effect that I witnessed nearly everywhere.  All of that may, of course, be because most of my time in sunny California was spent in the east Bay and in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Dave and Ged have a little cabin in the mountains where we spent three days, and they are totally isolated from civilization but surrounded by nature.  There is no electricity or running water and, of course, no internet connection.  They haul water from a spring about two miles away and use oil and gas lamps for light and propane bottled gas for their stove and oven and they have one of those wonderful old ice boxes where they keep perishables.  It was a great experience and I loved most of it, even being unconnected with the outside world.  Occasionally there would be a very weak cell phone connection, so I could send a text message once in a while to Annick, but it was a far cry from the situation in the book, A Super Sad True Love Story where everyone wears their iPhone-like apparatus around their neck so they are constantly connected and not only receive data, but also emit vital factors about themselves to anyone who is interested, things like their credit rating, their cash on hand, even their fuckability.  In the forests of northern California, it was all pretty basic, and as we visited the little town of Washington, which is one of the last remaining remnants of a Gold Rush city when gold was king in them there parts, I often thought of how tough life was for those who worked in the gold mines.  They used a lot of Chinese labor, and there were, of course, lots and lots of racial slurs and outright discrimination directed toward that “inferior” race.  But the old bar in Washington was right out of the old TV show Bonanza, and the old cars that lined the streets – there was even a 1955 Chevrolet in really good shape.  One of my best friends in high school drove a ’55 Chevy, and in its day, it was one hot car.

But I did relish in the fact that Americans are very open, friendly and even dare to speak to strangers.  The French and Swiss are far too reserved in public and don’t like it when someone they don’t know well speaks to them.

And the French elections have been very interesting and, from our point of view, very satisfying.  It was marvelous to see Sarkozy leave office after five years of his bravado and bling-bling bluster, and yesterday’s second round of the legislative elections gave the Socialist Party an absolute majority in the National Assembly.  Maybe France will become a bit more humane again.

And what about you, dear Purnima ?  I’ve seen a couple of recent posts on Facebook – mainly pictures, and you are just as beautiful as ever.  Are your children back with you for the summer ?  Are you managing to stay well clear of that unfeeling judge ?  Any plans for travel, like maybe a quick trip back to Geneva ?

Thinking of you and hoping all is well,

Giant hugs from both of us,

Roger

Purnima

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto

Geneva Diaries #52*

Lingua Franca, Persia, Houris and The Immigrants Tale

6/24/12

Dear Roger,

Its super to get email from you! Especially with you describing your bunker like dwellings, with no electricity, running water, and refrigerator (now That I thought was almost attached to every American life form) in the East Bay, while I, the recipient, all the way in India, lie cloistered in a similar bunker like habitation, entrapped within the four walls, unable to step out even onto the balcony for fear of being vaporized, with variable electricity (God forbid that runs out at 45 degrees celsius) and water, yes basic utilities which hold us at ransom and we tread delicately praying to see those few drops running through a continuous stream. Your situation, where you have every amenity available and take your infrastructure for granted with uninterrupted electricity and water, and then opt to ironically mimic our lives in New Delhi from the security of your campsite in Northern California would drive most Indians in a state of frenzied rage at the tragedy/irony of the situation. So dear Roger, as you may mail this to me during the peak of Delhi summer, I caution you against sending this around to your other Indian friends and write to you as I sit chewing ice chips wondering what possessed me as I lay in my beautiful garden in Northern California…dreaming of India. Now, I guess i am being a bit harsh with the “campsite” quip etc, and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to be environmentally aware and minimize the human imprint on our environs, one which we are indiscriminately ravaging, but personally i believe in balance, a bit of comfort and blobs of concern. Some organic, pesticide free, non genetically engineered piece of brown cracker with a dollop of foie gras! 

On to more serious things… have you read that they have released two thousand TLD’s, Top Level Domain Names, like the “.com” and “.org”, the corner stone of the internet address system, the foundation, the markers of the new world/universe highway and it appears that only a handful are in any other language/script. What happened to Lingua Franca? I write this to you as you as a professor of French and one that would be concerned about the future of the French language in the New World in the Alternate World in any world! Well, looking at the state of things in the Cyberworld, fast becoming everyones New World, it appears that your passion and my paternal grandmothers words quoting another time that “French is the language of the world, Lingua Franca”, appears to have somehow lost itself in time and space.

Talking about languages and cultures lost in time and space, I must share with you my passion, my language and pieces of my culture (even though everytime I say that word “culture” I hear it pronounced with a French accent in my brain…that darn froggie!). And ironically, even though I speak to you about my language, I write to you in English but I believe that though it may sound like it is being translated from the English streaming from my mind, I am convinced it is otherwise. Yes, Im convinced after much deliberation that the mind does not use language as we understand it but possibly some form of universal code with cultural adornments, for when i see a French movie with English sub titles and attempt to translate into a comprehensible format, the sub titles actually throw me off! The sentences are not in the same order and I find myself in a dreadful tangle. And its possible that my mind has already translated the French into Hindustani(Hindi/Urdu), understood it, and then retranslated that into English and then is attempting to follow the story…and it ends up in complete chaos like the rest of me. So, I’ve just given up on French until I find a way to live within tutoring distance. Yes, at this point, the idea of being Geneva based sounds just divine.

Urdu, as I had mentioned in a previous email, evolved from Persian mixed with the indigenous tongues. A “camp” language of the soldiers who had come into India with Mahmud Ghazni written in the Perso-Arabic script embodying the Persian influence in India, from the time of the Sultanate. The Mughal emperors who came into India as invaders from Central Asia and then settled brought with them and perpetuated Persian culture and language in the Indian sub continent and its influence is vivid not only in the monuments but our cuisine, dress, language and every aspect of our culture. Persian literature is our literature with every Indian carrying a piece of Laila Majnu (the eternal love tragedy) in their hearts, the miniature art forms depict our scenery, our kings, palaces and gardens. So naturally, upon reaching India, I decided to explore this aspect of my culture that I had taken for granted all this while. Before I continue, I must mention that this seamless all pervading culture appeared to have followed me all the way to California. Yes, California! I met the most incredible emancipated beautiful women(fellow attorneys , doctors, business women) who would look curiously/admiringly in my direction as well and upon further inquiry, I was informed that they were Persian ( I noticed how they would always say “Persian” like my Indian-Parsee friends and not “Iranian” perhaps its to do with pronunciation for “Iranian” sounds Aye-Ran-Nian in American). And then I met an American in India, a Roger Moore look alike and someone from your genre, who had lived a colorful life having lived all over Asia especially Iran during the time of the Shah, a life to rival James Bond himself. It was during our brief interchange during a cocktail party before he vanished into the undergrowth, he reconfirmed that he knew the revolution was coming when all the real estate was being bought up in California, the paradise of the New World. Armed with enough “ammo” to keep the fire burning, I bundled up on all the books I could find on Persia, Persian poems, literature and its influence on my culture.

See below Indo-Persian miniature paintings from The National Museum in New Delhi commissioned during the Mughal dynasty in India showcasing the syncretic culture of the subcontinent, the first depicting a scene from the Persian translation of the great Indian epic Mahabharata namely Samudra Manthan or the churning of the oceans, the second miniature depicts a scene from the Shahnama, a long epic poem by the Persian poet Ferdowsi :

Samudra Manthan – Persian Translation of The Mahabharata
Persian Miniatures commissioned by The Mughals- Scene from The Shahnama

Of course Roger, once again I found most of the books selected were written and published over seventy years ago, well before even you were born and that shiny chevy came to life. The pages were brittle yellow and crumbling, and it appeared as though they had held themselves together just to be consumed by me. As I leafed through the pages they gently fell into my hand. Alarmed I rushed to the librarian for cover, he pronounced the end of the road for some of these books, “unsalvageable” he said, “and doubtful if they will ever return to their shelves”.  I leave knowing that for eternity they will reside in me. The chapters flash through my mind as I look forward to sharing snippets with you on my journey: Orientalism and Lucknow, The System of Unani Medicine, The Sufi saints, Omar Khayyam, Persian/Urdu poetry, The Legacy of Persia. But first I must start with not the oldest but my most recently read chapter/book: The Legacy of Persia by A.J. Arberry published by the Oxford University Press in 1950.

 This collection of essays on the history, language, literature, religion, gardens, science and perception by the West of Persia would be in my opinion the ideal introduction to Asia, and a “must read” for every student, soldier or arm chair traveller with an order or a desire to cross his horizons. I am mesmerized as I turn the first few pages and immerse myself in the chapter titled Persia and The Ancient World by J.H. Iliffe. Here the author points out how “the vast Iranian panorama in which our ancestors arose and flourished seems as remote to the majority as the moon”(here the majority i assume is the educated the West). The author blames this on the lack of a Persian chronicler for the Persians, with no Herodotus and Xenophon, they were viewed through the lens of their arch enemies, the Greeks (I have been struggling to find Herodotus’s giant ants uncovering gold nuggets that he found in northern India, of course that interpretation/hallucination is possible with spiked chai or naive audiences). The author reiterates “This is a powerful handicap to present the Persian side is to assume the role of  advocatus diaboli: so completely has it gone by default”. Roger, almost seventy years since these lines were penned does that not still ring true…but Oh how I love that role of advocatus diaboli or the Devil’s Advocate as translated in English for the English speaking universe! Then the author completely disarms me by going on to state ” An historical attitude of mind, however, compels us to look at the reverse side of the medal” and I find myself returning sympathetic once again with White Devil, The English, somehow reiterating a long ingrained belief that there will be a voice that will unravel the truth. 

See below the Persian imprint on India through art, architecture, language, literature, customs, culture and aesthetics like a glittering mist, a sensual fragrance pervading our senses through the jalis or filigreed stonework usually found on windows letting in air and patterned light, arches, inlays, domes and beautiful garden arrayed with a sprinkling of fountains and waterways. See below snapshots of this exquisite Indo-Persian signature with images from The Taj Mahal, The Humayun’s tomb, The Lodi Gardens :

Shahi Gumbad
Jali Work Humayun’s Tomb
Jali Work
Humayun’s Tomb
Humayun’s Tomb
Purnima in Magical Delhi

And a photo of mummy at The Taj Mahal, Agra:

Mummy (Veena Viswanathan) at The Taj Mahal, Agra, India

Then I meandered through a maze of Greeks, Scynthians, Persians, Turks, Mongols and all the colors, sounds and flavors of Central and South Asia. I encountered words like “bimaristan” which translated to hospital and with my knowledge of Urdu I understood it to be the same, the “stan” or place for the “bimar” or the ill. There were references to Tavernier and his journal while traveling these lands in his voyages which of course took me back to the shores of lake Geneva. There were paragraphs in French which i was delighted at being able to translate sufficiently to get the gist, and so I felt somehow elevated, floating between realms, universes, exclusive airtight worlds of English, Urdu/ Persian/Hindustani and French. My culture was Indo-Persian, My native language or at least the language in which I hold my internal debates and dialogues is English, and some part of my spirit, after months of being holed up in the bunker dreaming of the Alps, I read French Thought in the Eighteenth Century: Rousseau Voltaire Diderot by Rolland, Maurois and Herriot (having revisited Voltaire after almost thirty years, yes I read Candide as a young precocious kid, I found myself) I discovered was French! 

Roger, you have to introduce me to Voltaire, I sense i have found a soulmate in another time/space and I wish to meet him, read him. He is introduced in the above mentioned book as one who spent a long life of rebellion against authority and oppressive autocracy, whether King, Church or the Law and that he used his talents and wealth on behalf of the oppressed. I like that Roger, I see me or a wannabe me. Now, first step, how do i acquire the wealth i need to be independent, if needed an outlaw, a pirate. The next few steps i am sure you can mould, help me fine tune so that I may become the blitzziest blogger on either side of the Atlantic. 

Back to the Legacy of Persia, it was the chapter on Literature and the word “houri” which sent my mind wandering. Houri is described as an ethereally beautiful woman, a nymph in the classical Persian sense with pale skin and long dark hair and dark eyes.

See below the depiction of a houri or alluring woman from my fav book – The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, and a photo of a friend that fits the description (No selfies as I’m still compelled to adorn my monkey mask – a book for another time):

A Houri – Photo by Neesha Singh
Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam-Ah my beloved fill the cup that clears…

hou·ri  (hr, hr)

n. pl. hou·ris

1. A voluptuous, alluring woman.

2. One of the beautiful virgins of the Koranic paradise.

[French, from Persian r, from Arabic rya, nymph, houri, from r, pl. of ‘awaru, feminine of awr’u, possessing awar, intense whiteness of the sclera contrasting with deep blackness of the iris of the eye; see  wr in Semitic roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

houri [ˈhʊərɪ]

n pl -ris

1. (Non-Christian Religions / Islam) (in Muslim belief) any of the nymphs of Paradise

2. any alluring woman

[from French, from Persian hūri, from Arabic hūr, plural of haurā’ woman with dark eyes]

Roger, even though the online dictionary says French at the bottom, I did not find the word Houri in the French dictionary. Are you aware of the word or its popular usage in the French language. I do find it used by the English in reference to a Persian beauty but not a beauty per se, all this in books by English authors familiar with Persian and Indian culture publish before 1950, another group from another time/period.

However, I have heard the word “houri” being used innumerable times by my maternal grandmother who spoke primarily in Punjabi, a dialect of the north which I subsequently discovered while browsing through the essays listed in the Iran Chamber (after the dozen or so fervently championing their subjects, I found some very good balanced writing), that upto 60 percent of Punjabi consisted of Persian words. Now that region of the Punjab where my maternal family originates has had its share of bloody wars, conquests, migrations and consists of an intermingling of races, languages and cultures of south and central Asia, the last blood bath being that of the partition of India into India and Pakistan and the mass migration of humanity in the millions crossing borders, lines drawn in the sand by persons many worlds removed. The word houri resonates in my mind as my grandmother, a hardy earthy woman, who had seen both the high life that her status as the daughter-in-law of this acclaimed pundit family of Lahore (living in a house that still stands albeit in shambles being occupied by eight families with the name Shourie House still engraved atop the home) and an immigrant who had to leave house and home, flee with whatever she could carry in her hands with her infants (my mother and uncle) in tow and arrive impoverished and at the mercy of those that could house and feed them in Delhi. See below Shourie House, Lahore:

Shourie House Lahore-Photos by Vijay Shourie
Shourie House Lahore-Photos by Vijay Shourie
The Shourie Clan at Mom’s Wedding-The Shourie’s Reach India

Till the end, she never failed to recount those stories of horror, as though those screeching trains filled with chopped bodies that had arrived at the Delhi railway station had just arrived, and the fires that burned around them were vivid and alive in all their fury. She used the word houri, especially “at” me in disdain. She would warn me time and again “do you think you are a houri?”, “before you blink, the world can change”. Her world did, and she never for a moment took anything for granted. She had no time for the “nakharas” or attitudes of women, the helplessness, the hopelessness. She had seen it all, she had seen the women of her home town(Lahore) with all the affectations of society (which she suspected I was a sub sect of) and seen how they were destroyed in times of crisis. She saw their families scattered, and she saw how they were mentally and physically torn and incapable as their high life and mansions reduced to rubble. They were unable to gather themselves and accept their new surrounding, they were unable to use their hands. This was a “biggie”, being unable to use your hands. It was almost a sin for her to keep hands idle. It was imperative for my grandmother that even if she was chatting with friends, her hands must not remain idle. She would knit constantly and crochet constantly, somehow that survival instinct did not leave her till the end. She had to prepare her daughters trousseau and would gather every piece to put in a large steel trunk under her bed. She would stare at me with her unrelenting age rimmed steel grey eyes, when everyone volunteered to go in my place to make tea ( i took advantage of my incapacity in the kitchen) and would squeeze my hand and say…too soft, not capable of any work, let alone hard work…and the world can change in a blink. Hers did, and her heart correctly told her mine would. But, I wish she could see, I wish she could see me use my hands.

See below my grandmother Bimla Shourie who successfully journeyed to India:

My grandmother Bimla Shourie

Hugs and kisses to all,

Purnima

PURNIMA VISWANATHAN

Disclaimer 😛

All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto