Just Jo

So here comes another Onam! A time for all Malayalees to come home and celebrate the togetherness with family and friends, the colorful Pookkalams and yummy Sadyas. Here I wish all my Malayalee friends a happy and prosperous Onam. Let us not forget the inspiring myth behind this festival – of everyone in the place being happy and prosperous, of everyone being just and fair to each other.

ഓണാശംസകള്‍!

I chose this song because of the Onam spirit that this song has, right from the beginning of the song with “aaRppO… EeRRO!”, poo viLi and the rhythm of a boat song. I should thank my friend Sujay who first brought this song to my notice when we had to choose a song for the Onam competition in our office and then to Vishnu for providing me the track. The track is made of some loops and gets faster at places and I had to make do with it.

Album: Poothaalam
Composer: Kannan
Lyricist: Chitoor Gopi
Singer: M G Sreekumar

Download MP3 of “Vannallo Ponnonam” (4.25 MB)

The good folks at Mashithantu.com have come up with a new initiative after their successful ventures of online Malayalam-English dictionary and Malayalam crosswords. The new project is called “Harisree” and their tag-line is “ente bhaasha, adutha thalamurayilekku” (meaning, “My language, to the next generation”). The website teaches you how to write Malayalam. You can just pick up a letter in Malayalam and see how it is written, with the direction points. And when you have chosen a letter, it will show up words that starts with the letter with pictures to demonstrate/represent what the word actually means. If you click on the “Pronounce” button, you can also hear how each letter and the related words are pronounced. And then there is a drawing pad using which you can try writing the letter or word.

I think this is a very useful software especially when you teach children of the now or next generation. And it has some very cool features like I explained above. My congratulations to Joju John and his friends who have worked behind this software. Great job folks! Looking forward to what you have next in line.

Click here to visit Harisree.

Who does not encourage that? Is it the men?

There are some people who thinks that it will be a ‘market’ like situation if women come to the fore front (of politics). Some fear that their seats will be lost. To a certain level, the male dominance and their prejudices have made women withdraw themselves.

The above is an excerpt from an interview with a retd. prof. Annie Johns from Thrissur. She was being interviewed by “Catholica Sabha“, the official monthly newspaper of Thrissur Arch Diocese. The interview was about the need for women to enter politics. What made me smile after reading the interview and the above quoted piece in particular is the time that the interview is published. The Catholic church in Kerala is more fervently being involved in Kerala politics than any other time in Kerala’s history. But before I come into all that, let me quote the history of the newspaper that’s called “Catholica Sabha” (meaning “Catholic Church“).

In the About page of the Catholica Sabha website, it says that the original publication was started in 1977 as a magazine. But even though we live in a Catholic neighborhood, I or the people I know including the older generation  have had no idea about the existence of this newspaper until it was delivered to our homes since a couple of years back. And it was during the Church vs. Communists fight on self-finance colleges issue that it was very promptly started appearing monthly in our homes.

Just one look at the newspaper and all you see is anti-Communist propaganda and not much of anything else. It is as if the Church administration started this newspaper, not to spread the news related to the Church activities but to fill their pages with their anger against their enemy no:1 – Communists. The language of the articles that appear in this newspaper can compete with any third-rate tabloid. Take the column “nErum nuNayum” for example (or this, this and this). I don’t think even an official Congress party mouthpiece would use such level of intolerant language. It is pathetic to see it coming from a religion in the name of Jesus Christ.

But you should notice that the language that the Church is using against Communists is different from the language they use against Hindutva brigade or any extremist forces of other religions. It is quite evident from the copies of the newspaper which was published during the Orissa riots. In those copies, the language mellowed down and the tone was soft (but that ain’t surprising as the Church claimed that their greater enemy is Communism during the anti-Christian riots of Orissa). A recent example is Prof Joseph’s hand-chopping incident. Apart from a couple of press protests, there was no serious forms of protest from the bishops or priests.

The ordinary Catholics, as dumb as they are, did not raise any question as to why the Church authorities chose to speak softly on Sangh Parivar when the community members were being hacked to death in Orissa or in places as close to Kerala as Mangalore or in Kasaragod. They did not ask why the priests were rather arranging massive protest rallies and meetings against the Communist government in the name of self-finance colleges and a silly text book issue. They were also planning to lead the second liberation struggle, which of course popped like a balloon. So the attitude of the Church is clear. The Catholic church in Kerala cares only about their money and power and don’t give a hoot about the lives and security of their fellow community members. They use the mass power of the community members to sustain their financial and power interests. Now imagine if the hands of Prof Joseph were chopped off by a CPM member than the Popular Front activists; by this time, the Church would have brought down the government itself.

I have been wondering about the sudden urge on the Catholics side, particularly in the Thrissur Arch Diocese, to fight the ‘evil of Communism’ and then I could draw some ‘co-incidences’. In one of the issues, “Catholica Sabha” newspaper stated that K Karunakaran was one of the most capable politicians of our state (Emergency? Rajan murder case? What are they??). The late Thrissur bishop Joseph Kundukulam was a close friend of K Karunakaran and it is alleged that he openly asked the community members to support the Congress party (legend has it that the priests would raise their hand and show it like the hand symbol of Congress party and say “all of you should caste your vote” during the sermons). The next Thrissur arch bishop Mar. Jacob Thoomkuzhy was a soft spoken priest who did not have any political control ambition like his predecessor. But soon arch bishop Mar. Andrews Thazhath who was a close aide of late Bishop Kundukulam took in charge and he is the guardian of the newspaper now while the assisting bishop (also newly crowned) Mar. Raphel Thattil (who also was close to Bishop Kundukulam) is the chief editor. So it is obvious how the political ambitions and it’s related dirty politics have come to the Thrissur Archdiocese.

Bishop Thazhath has played more politics than his guru Bishop Kundukulam. He, along with Changanacherry Arch Bishop Joseph Powathil, had lead a massive campaign against the Communist government on the issues of 7th standard text book and self-finance college. He also openly advocated for the candidature of Tom Vadakkan in Thrissur constituency in the last Lok Sabha elections and rumor has it that the requests went straight to ‘high-command’. But ultimately the Congress party turned down the request and Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, a sensible man and the supreme leader of Syro Malabar Catholic church, issued a strong statement saying that it is wrong for bishops, priests and Church leaders to intervene in the selection of candidates during the elections.

The newly released “Catholica Sabha” newspaper, which we Christians in Thrissur had not heard of until Bishop Thazhath took in charge, is yet another attempt by the church administration of the Thrissur Arch Diocese to play the political games and claim their political power. I think somebody from the higher authority, like Cardinal Vithayathil, should check with this newspaper and ask the editorial team to control themselves. I go to Church and I hear the Bible interpretations of love, tolerance etc and then come home to read “Catholica Sabha” to read all the intolerant political pieces in a cheap, venomous language. I’m not interested in that and many people I know who are afraid to speak about it are also not interested in that. Particularly when the Church has no interest in protesting against the communal forces but spend all their energy on Communist bashing.

Coming back to the interview that I mentioned in the beginning of this post, what made me smile all the way is the Church’s interest in getting Christian women in to politics. Perhaps it is the pessimist in me who links this to the electoral seats reserved for women. But it is not exactly that which made me laugh. It is the recent news of Vatican still not allowing women priests and I wonder if prof. Annie Johns would have the exact same answer if she is asked about the priesthood of women and Vatican’s decision – “There are some people who thinks that it will be a ‘market’ like situation if women come to the fore front. Some fear that their seats will be lost. To a certain level, the male dominance and their prejudices have made women withdraw themselves.” Would she say these exact words then?

I think “Catholica Sabha” may want to publish a piece on that.

In my post about Prof. Joseph’s hand-chopping incident, I had written about the intrusion of religious elements into the liberal, democratic and political spheres of Kerala in disguise. I think this is more dangerous than the Hindutva politics because Hindutva politics is there on the surface for everybody to see. Hindutvavaadis thrive on anti-minority sentiments and extreme Hindu-nationalist views, and everybody knows that. Hindutavavaadis never hesitate to boast upon their beliefs (except for the grooming campaigns of Narendra Modi these days), but on the other side, the hard-core Islamists chose to play different. When they learned that terrorism and an extreme Islamist movement is a growing concern in the public, they put on the mask of liberal activism and tried to play more left than the Left. While the Left in Kerala has left itself to be rotten, there was an empty space in the field of activism that was available for others to occupy. And the Islamists were quick to fill in that space. It is said that ‘even the BJP is Leftist in Kerala’. So the best way to get public acceptance was obvious – be more left than the Leftists.

The first step in that direction was taken long back – starting with media. A prominent Malayalam weekly and news daily is owned by such a group. They invited the prominent figures in the socio-political-liberal sphere to write for them and made a mark. Then came their student/youth organizations. They started campaigns and agitations on several issues – Capitalism, Globalization, Bourgeoisie, Western Imperialism, Environment, Development, Human Rights etc. When they shouted slogans against America and Israel, their tones were sharper than the Communists. When they talked about freedom of speech for M F Hussain, they kept mum on the threats and Fatwas issued to Taslima Nasreen. When they talked about Imperialism and Human Rights, they never talked about the Islamic imperialist countries and the grave human rights violation in those countries.

When Madani was released from jail, he also played the same political card. Madani was smart. He saw the possiblity of a wider political spectrum and thus included “Dalits” in his come back. The term “Dalit” had already become a fine selling point of all political parties by then. Madani also banked upon the same “anti-imperialistic” politics of the other Islamist organizations.

But people failed to notice it or chose to ignore. And our socio-political leaders kept taking part in their meetings and that image has been used to boast upon their public acceptance. And now the final step – Jamaat-e-Islami is forming a political party in Kerala. And what is their declared obective? Their Wiki page says, “Establishment of (Islamic) way of life in all aspects of life“. And their core doctrine? “the Divine Being is solely Allah, there being no God except Him, and that Muhammad is Allah’s messenger“. Tell me how it is different from the dream of a Hindu nation proposed by the Sangh Parivar.

Now we have a number of such “political parties” and “activist organizations” in our public sphere. And the news of bombs and detonators being placed in the public spaces and people being hacked in the name of religion is increasing day by day. Even though some of the socio-political leaders and intellectuals have turned a blind-eye towards such developments, the consolation is that there are people like Hameed Chennamangaloor who have been voicing against these groups openly since a very long time. And publications like Mathrubhumi weekly having open debates about this as cover stories. But that is not enough. People have to stand up and say, we don’t want an Islamic or Chrsitian version of BJP or Sangh Parivar. We don’t want religion in our political space. We don’t want that one God or multiple Gods and their doctrines to rule us, instead the secular ethos envisioned by the founding fathers of this country. We want to keep our democracy in place, how much shortcomings and failures it has.

The news of a Malayalam professor whose hands have been cut off by a group of Muslim extremists is the talk of Kerala these days. Professor Joseph’s right palm was cut off by a gang of six people while he was returning home from Church on a Sunday. Two Popular Front activists have been arrested in connection with this incident. Popular Front, of which the accused are members of,  is alleged to have links to Islamic terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and SIMI (Student Islamic Movement of India) as is read from their Wiki page.

The incident has to be condemned and the culprits should be brought to justice, as we cannot excuse any form of terrorism or extremism, regardless of which community it comes from – the majority or minority. But there are a couple of issues attached to this incident.

The problem arose when Mr. Joseph, a professor of Malayalam in Newman College Thodupuzha, included a narrative in a question paper that he prepared for the students of the college. The narrative was from an article written by film maker/politician P T Kunjumuhammed. Kunjumuhammed had written about the script that he wrote for his award winning movie “Garshom”. He wrote that the scene in which the protagonist of his film talks to God was inspired by a lunatic in his hometown. So the lunatic would call God and God would respond “what is it, you son of a dog“? (I am unsure that “Son of a dog” interprets it’s Malayalam usage “Naayinte mone” well though). The question that came with the narrative was to supply the punctuation.

P T Kunjumuhammed’s article:

The controversial part of the question paper:

Courtesy: Mathrubhumi.com

Prof. Joseph took the passage and instead of leaving the lunatic nameless (as in the original passage) he added a name (which he did not have to do) and the name he chose was Muhammed (which also he did not have to do as there are many other common Muslim names if he had to give one). This was really unnecessary for Prof Joseph to include such a twisted version in the question paper. When this became a controversy, the college management and Church apologized for having to hurt the Muslim sentiments and they suspended Joseph when the question paper became a controversy which was a rightful thing to do.

But this gruesome act of extremists leads us to another thing – how a group of radical Islamists have begun to unleash their terror openly in the Kerala society. They are in large numbers and comes in different names. They have infiltrated into the liberal, democratic and political spheres in disguise. And if they are not stopped now, Kerala will soon become an Islamist playground. The under current is already on.

Today will be marked in the history of Keralam as the first queer pride parade in Keralam is happening at Thrissur today. It starts from Regional Theatre, Thrissur at 4 PM today and will come back to a public meeting at 6 PM. Why today, July 2nd? Their blog says, “July 2nd of 2009 is the day when the Delhi High court decriminalized homosexuality by rereading section 377 of Indian Penal code. We celebrate pride on this day as we see the judgment as a historical moment in the lives of queer people.”

I think it will be really interesting to see the response of common public to this event, particularly in a conservative society like Keralam. It wouldn’t be so surprising but still, the shock treatment would begin today.

Checkout their blog here.

Whenever I read the major Malayalam newspapers in Kerala, I see a lot of news about Communists – the bad things they do, their fight between themselves, their flawed ideologies etc. I have been reading this for the past few years and ever since the Communists got in to power  in Kerala. It has really made me think that Kerala has become such a trashy place because of Communists. But then I thought, how could it be because Kerala is not West Bengal and we have sent successive Congress governments to power in alternate terms. That made me ask – is everything alright on all other sides?

The Malayalam media weeps about the changed ideologies of the present day Communists. They celebrate it. Very often they publish articles with stories of old comrades who have fought hard for the party but still live in poor condition, but rarely would you find stories of Gandhians who live the same way. You would read stories of old comrades weeping about how Communists have changed but you won’t read stories of old Congressmen including Gandhians weeping about the state of Congress party and the dreams and hopes they had on this party during the freedom struggle.

Every now and then, the media quotes the old Communist leaders like AKG, Azheekkodan etc. They sighs out something like “those were the times”, but have any of these media barons left a word of support, during any of those agitations they held, when they were alive? What did they actually think of them then? On the contrary, what about the Congress? How much have they changed from the times of leaders like Gandhi?

I think there is some truth in saying that V S Achuthanandan is a media creation. V S is no political messiah. That man has made big news while he was the head of opposition. He lead many agitations and made sure that the media followed him suit in all those events. When he came in to power, he held on to his chair, doing nothing about what he was preaching all the time as an opposition leader. The argument that he was not being given a chance to do any doesn’t hold water. He could still have done something, or just walked out. But what he did instead was being a cry baby and the media is celebrating him to use as a tool to project the groupism in CPM.

On the other side, situation is much worse when it comes to groupism. The old Karunakaran fraction has started demanding more positions in the Congress party eying the forthcoming elections. Even within that group, some people are not satisfied with what Padmaja Karunakaran is settling for the group. The group fight between Chennithala and Chandy groups are really explosive and they have started fighting from the youth congress election level itself. Do the media not report it? Oh yes, but in smaller boxes inside the inner pages of the paper, unlike the front page coverage that the CPM groupism gets in newspapers.

Checkout the newspaper reports of any crime cases in any parts of Kerala, you would see the two major newspapers reporting that “the convicted includes a former area secretary of CPM” or “..is a first cousin of CPM block president” or “..is an area member DYFI” etc. But I have never read any news items that reads “..is a member of BJP” or “..an area secretary of Youth Congress” etc. Not that you cannot find any criminals in Congress or BJP, of course. You can find plenty of them. From local goondas to political goondas, affiliated with both parties.

Earlier you could take Deshabhimani newspaper and say “oh, this is party’s mouth piece, they of course would publish news this way” and you could resort to other news papers for unbiased reporting. Or rather I should say “less-biased” than “unbiased” because all major newspapers in Kerala have strong political/communal biases. Deshabhimani (CPM newspaper), Janayugam (CPI newspaper), Janmabhoomi (BJP mouthpiece),  Punyabhoomi (VHP mouthpiece), Kerala Kaumudi (Eezhava/SNDP mouthpiece), Malayala Manorama (Congress mouthpiece), Deepika (Syrian Christian mouthpiece), Mathrubhumi (ex-Janatha party, now solely Veerendrakumar family mouthpiece) etc. But these days you have NO single newspaper in Kerala to read the less-biased news.

All of these cribbing above might make you think that I am a Communist party member or a sympathizer, but I am not one. During the two-three times of my voting exercise, I have never voted for the Communists. But going by the examples given above, it really makes me think now – is there really a media syndicate in work here?

Today’s is a guest post from a friend, Sally Varma. Please post your thoughts in the comments section.

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On May 22, 2010, Saturday morning, an Air India Express plane from Dubai overshot the table-top runway at the Mangalore airport and plunged over a cliff into a wooded valley, killing 158 persons. There were 160 passengers and six crew members on board Flight IX-812. The passengers included 137 adults, 19 children and 4 infants. Eight passengers survived miraculously.

The whole of India was shocked with the news. I was at home watching TV and was going through the different news channels showing the news of the crash. I went through all the regional news channels first and was shocked to find a harrowing truth. All the Malayalam news channels only cared about the Malayalees in the flight. Among the 160 passengers in the plane, the only reports that were being shown was about the Malayalees who were in the plane. The newsreader kept repeating the same news of the number of Malayalees on board, the number of Malayalees killed, the number of Malayalees who escaped etc… It is a sad state that we live in where such bias takes place. Is this not a tragedy for India as a whole or is it in the viewpoint of all these Malayali channel’s ‘just a tragedy for Kerala’? What about the other people and their families, the non-Malayalees on that ill-fated flight? Don’t they too deserve the same prayers as the Malayalees?

I then switched channels and went to the Tamil news channels, which were faithfully showing the news of the crash with no partiality or bias towards only the Tamilian people on board. Also channels like CNN-IBN, Times Now, NDTV 24×7, were all showing religious coverage of the crash.

So, I think this shows the Malayali attitude of selfishness and regional chauvinism. And to think that all these channels and papers were criticizing Bal Thackeray for his comments on Sachin.  Bal Thackeray had slammed master blaster Sachin Tendulkar for his statement that he is an Indian first and then a Maharashtrian. If these Malayali channels can do this sort of bias while reporting news of a national tragedy like the Air India plane crash, then I think the comment from Bal Thackeray also can be justified.

It is high time that the Malayali media stop promoting such regional sensationalism and start to consider everyone as equal human beings.

In memory of the 158 HUMAN BEINGS who were killed in the Air India plane crash of October 22, 2010. May their souls rest in peace.

• The general cry for development and employment
• A real estate company – that’s going to get acres of our land for cheap price, of which only 25% will go for IT
• An anti-Left-in-everything newspaper – that will even burn it’s own house if it helps the anti-Left cause
• The interest of home-grown business scions like Leela Krishnan Nair and Muthoot Pappachan in taking up the project from TECOM
• The sloppy un-clear stand of the so-called Leftist government

All of these make me think – what is really there in this cake called Smart City in Kerala that everybody wants to get hold on a piece of it?

Read this too – The Smart politics of Smart City

What goes on in the Malayalam movie industry these days make the movie lovers quite sad. The current state of the Malayalam movies is quite pathetic. We have only a couple of hits each year and rest of them bombs in the box office. The state of the cinema theaters is also pathetic that one wouldn’t take the pain of going to a theater to watch a movie and would rather watch it at his own home. With the arrival of big LCD screens, Dolby home theater sound systems and DVD/Blue-Ray discs, watching a movie at home is much much more comfortable than watching it in a theater. As a result, many theaters are closing down rapidly.

But who cares? There is absolutely no effective discussions going on about a rescue plan. The people in the industry are busy making crappy movies and the competition is so high in this field that we get crappy, crappier and crappiest movies – one after one. Then there are these organizations (AMMA, MACTA, FEFKA and all those funny names) which functions like gangs and we see their gang wars quite often. And it is cinema that dies in this war.

The whole incident of Thilakan being an outcast from Malayalam cinema has proved that there is no hope for any improvement in the near future. Thilakan had accused AMMA (Association of Malayalam Movie Artists) of not allowing him to work in the movies and he pointed fingers at the superstars (Mammootty and Mohan Lal) in particular. What followed was a series of cheap stunts.

Director B Unnikrishnan, general secretary of Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA), said that the actor in Thilakan has died. But Thilakan has some great performing moments of Malayalam cinema (or rather Indian or world cinema) to his credit and we all know what kind of movies B Unnikrishnan has directed. Unnikrishnan also said that he would resign from his general secretary position if Thilakan could prove that FEFKA banned Thilakan from acting in films. Incidentally, the same FEFKA has threatened to pull out all technicians from the movie “Dam 999″ if Thilakan was cast and the producers threw Thilakan out of the project. And as far as we know B Unnikrishnan still holds on to his position.

The above incident proves that there is some truth in what Thilakan says. He also lashed out at the Super Star fans and I whole heartedly agree with him on the fan-hood. The fan associations work like thugs, threatening people if they boo in cinema halls (and they themselves send booing teams when their enemy star’s cinema is released) and they also threaten people who leave after intervals when they are fed up of watching crap movies, and now the fans of Mohan Lal and Mammootty have united against Thilakan. Kerala now see that the rivals joining hands to fight a lone, old man.

Thilakan undeniably is a great actor. The truth is that if there is Thilakan acting in a super-star movie, he outshines the super stars with his acting prowess; however small his role is in the movie. So there are good reasons to believe what Thilakan says about the popularity-hungry, fan-fed Superstars working on denying him chances. Take a couple of superstar movies for example. “Kireedam“, an award winning movie where Mohan Lal and Thilakan played father and son, had both Mohan Lal and Thilakan in an equal performance and for the movie lovers, it was a treat (remember the scene where Thilakan says “kathi thaazheyideraa…“?). Or take Mohan Lal’s commercial hit “Sphadikam“. Thilakan’s Chacko maash was the most powerful character in that movie than Mohan Lal’s Aadu Thoma. Or take Mammootty’s “Kauravar“. It was an outright Thilakan movie, though Mammootty was in the lead role. Or take movies like “Perumthachan“, “Moonnaam Pakkam” etc. I can draw a lot more examples.

But he had very little support from industry, probably because nobody wants to question the “kings” and destroy their own career. Sukumar Azheekode came in support of Thilakan but he only added more garbage to the already stinking mess. Thilakan had claimed that he is a staunch Communist, but the party kept mum on the whole matter. It is understandable particularly when Mammootty is the chairman of party-owned Kairali TV. So the party did not back the ‘lesser Communist’ when they have ‘elite Communists’ in their fold. But renowned director Shaji N Karun came in support of Thilakan. He said, “The organizations have nothing to lose if they ban Thilakan. But the it is the cinema viewers who are going to lose.” He is so right. It is not AMMA, FEFKA or any other organization who is going to lose, but us, the Malayalam movie viewers. And the members of these organizations are busy looting our money and give us crappy movies.