His Mother's Son.....reloaded

One has had occasion, over the last half a century, to observe sons, at various levels.  One has also had occasion to observe the level of "education " in the mothers, and wonder about the various attitudes they displayed.

Only to come to the conclusion, that education, as we know it today,  has nothing to do with anything.

Three true stories.

T was born in the very early part of the 20th century, and married off at 13 to a widower, whose children were almost her age. She later had 2 children.  This was the time, many educated folks retired and came to settle down in Pune around the time India got her independence.  Her family and another family who they were friends with, thought it was a good idea to link to the two with a matrimonial alliance, and her son was married off to the friend's daughter, who was, unusual for those days, a graduate, and even more unusual, quite independent minded. Grandchildren happened and T lived for many years after her husband passed away, in a huge house with both her sons and their families, in separate households, respecting each others religious and other sentiments.  When her eldest grandson went abroad to do his post graduation, naturally he became a prized catch in the eyes of folks with eligible daughters, a few years later.   

Mind you, T was someone who still followed some very old customs. She was totally untouchable when she was wearing a "sowla" or her puja/worship clothes. You could do what you wanted in your own house, but in her house, you didn't participate in anything on what were considered monthly impure days.  However, she, with hardly any education, a restrictive controlled married life, and an early life where she was neither seen nor heard,  was quick to see how girls were getting a great benefit from school, sports, and participation in many activities , and never stopped her grandchildren from anything. Many years later, when someone ribbed her about whether her grandson in the US would possibly return with a "white"  (read golden hair and wearing a frock)  bride,  she told them she had complete confidence in her grandson and the values he had imbibed from his mother and father, and she would welcome , such a wife, if needed, with an aarti, and present her with a typical wedding silk sari. I blogged about it here in a post that questioned culture and moral policing.  Hardly any education, very very conservative behaviour patterns in her husband's house,  and she still learned, how to move judiciously with the times.

B,  someone closer to my age, who came from an upwardly mobile, hardworking, educated  family,  was himself encouraged to attend high school in the US for a year on an exchange program and made many lifelong friends.  He returned to help his father expand their business,  acquired a doctorate, had an arranged marriage with a very nice , well educated girl from the same community, and they had a son.  Naturally, he paid great attention to is son's education (like his father before him), and his son too went overseas , and excelled at his given field of study, with a doctorate and returned home.  He started working outside to acquire some actual expertise  and met a very nice girl, and decided to marry her.  The problem was that she was of another caste, although a Hindu.  The parents were fairly upset. This wasn't about just the bride and groom, but two families being linked. The father poured his heart out to his great friend in the US ( an American who had lived in India) , because he had to talk to someone he considered close.  Email after email.

But they never lost communication with their son. One fine day, they sat him down , told him their misgivings and feelings about his intended   bride, and asked him to think it over seriously for a few days, and  get back to them.  The son respected their wishes. All conversations and discussions happened , with no acrimony, accusations, whatever.  A few days later, he got back to them. He understood where they were coming from, he respected their thinking, but he was very very firm about who he would marry, and it was the girl he worked with.

What happened next was amazing. The parents had come to a conclusion after weeks of agonizing. They implicitly trusted their son and he respected them.  On hearing his decision, his parents looked at each other, and his mother got up to say, that , "OK. We welcome a new daughter into our house !"   .....The wedding took place with great celebration and fanfare a few years ago.

R, someone I know,  has a daughter of marriageable age.  As is the custom in a society, where systems for social interactions like dating etc are yet to become customary,  most folks become a data entry point in a portal where  eligible girls and boys with all the relevant family career et al details are mentioned.    There isn't anything that you could point fingers at, in R's daughter's case;  except that she is an adopted child, and most folks who intellectually applaud that, simply runaway when personally faced with it.

One fine day, she (R's daughter) , gets a message on a social networking site from someone who has searched her on a portal, and taken the trouble to contact her because he found her interesting.  They communicate, they exchange numbers, Skype each other. There appeared to be a lot of laughter, which R thought was an encouraging sign.

Then one day he mentioned about a horoscope. R's daughter doesn't have one , because her birth time isn't known for obvious reasons, and she tells him so. For some reason he asks her blood group. Turns out they both have the same.  He continues to call and talk about his future plans, his family and so on and   so forth. Then one day he asks to speak to R.  He says he will be showing R's daughter's profile to his folks, and they would get back to him.  R has a decent conversation with him, is impressed . 

One night, R is watching some music program on TV, when her daughter comes in, wildly gesticulating saying she is wanted on the phone.   Intrigued, R goes in to answer the phone. It's the guy.  He is very polite, very civil, calls her aunty and everything, and says he has just heard from his folks, and his mother objects because, believe it or not, these two, R's daughter and this fellow have the same blood group !  He apologizes, and asks he if and the  daughter can still be friends. R says its up to her daughter.

A travesty of education, this.  The mother rules the roost in his house. Either all of them are completely confused about blood groups , or they think R is stupid.  A family which prides itself on well educated sons, an educated father, possibly a not so educated mother.  The mother decrees what is clearly a fake reason, and the son, a science student, in an analytical well paying job,  blindly, gutlessly passes it on, without thinking.

Similar blood groups are never a problem. Rh factors being different sometimes cause problems at the time of childbearing, for which medical solutions exist.  But who cares.  The matriarch has decreed in the year 2011, that "matching blood groups is a no-no and the devoted son , stands to attention, and passes on the message.

R  counts till 10.  Idiomatically.  Takes a deep breath, and tells the guy, "Thank you for informing us. Appreciate that you took the time to call.  But you know what, we people are guided by our blood groups too. My daughter and I are both B +ve.   And we follow that tenet. We always tell each other, "Be positive"......Interesting na ?"

There is no reply.

So many sons of so many  mothers. Through the ages.  The older ones  never went to school, but imbibed and absorbed "education", as their sons went out into the world.  And then this mother is 2011. And a son, who, despite his degrees, and stuff,  makes a mockery of the word, "education", preferring to propagate untruths.

To people, who he thinks are as "uneducated" as he is.

And incidentally, to hell, with a young girl's mind.... 

And then I sit down and wonder, whether we as a society are actually improving .....

Happy Moo Year.....हम्मा , हम्मा, हम्माहम्माहम्मा, रे हम्मा

I don't know if it has anything to do with the recession, the economic downturn, BIG folks feeling the pinch ( and I mean financially BIG), but in all the wild stuff going on around me in the name of infrastructure development, one has suddenly stopped seeing cows.( As they leisurely strolled through the middle of the main road, totally oblivious to honking folks in buses, fancy cars, and yes, helmets and motorcycles..., giving looks, like a politically secure minister, may give his detractors in Parliament.)


I live in an area ,in the suburbs of Mumbai, which was once considered god-forsaken, back-of-beyond, jungle-like etc etc, by those who thrive on fancy 4-wheels and fancier 5-stars. About 600 acres of wooded area, where stands today, the premiere Engineering Institute in India, since the last 50 years. Bordering on a lake, the early residents of the area, besides technical humans, were leopards, cows, wild dogs and monkeys.



While one occasionally sights leopards (they have moved still further back into the park area after the engineers happened), the cows, wild dogs and monkeys, have managed to make their presence felt, in a sort of defiant way. Quite understandable , since they were there first; and there isn't any reason, that any Act of Parliament to start such an Institute, , signed with a flourish by a Prime Minister, should suddenly make them go, particularly since no rehabilitation plans were discussed.

Whats more , no one did any protests on their behalf, and got any prizes.

The academic area has a covered corridor, that runs by all the departments. My earliest memories of going to work, include those, of dodging groups of these cows and bulls, sort of strolling confidently through these corridors. Heads down, pointing horns, a disdainful sneeze, followed by the shake of the head, or a wild swish of the tail, and one of the cows would give a dismissive glance towards the Electrical Engineering department, before traipsing ahead to the next. The security personnel would rush with their sticks to drive them off.


Sometimes this would result in an interesting stampede , as we all moved to the side, and these cows galloped past. Gardens were developed outside departments, and the cows had one more reason to wander. It wasn't uncommon to see a beautiful garden with a flower bed, and a cow sitting dangerously close to it, ruminating, chewing the cud, probably cursing the days the bipeds trespassed on her scene.

Occasionally , a single cow, probably a senior woodizen, would walk in an important manner , all by its self through the centre of the corridor. Whoever decided that cows Moo, never heard our cows. They do more of a loud deep throated "HMMM", similar to that done by a outraged grandparent , after observing what the world is coming to today. Most of our classrooms have open windows and in the monsoon, it was quite common, for some of the cows to take shelter in the department doorway, and loudly moo, as a Data Structures class got over, and the Cream of India's youth, emerged to face and desperately dash across the actual creator of cream, so to speak...

Very often a group of cows would be out on campus for a stroll with their calves, familiarizing them with the terrain , so to speak, and it was amazing to see how they protected them. I learned it the hard way, when I happened to change gears on my two wheeler as I passed them, and triggered an immediate violent reaction in the elders. Heads down, horns ominously pointing towards me, folks on the road were treated to a bunch of angry cows at a gallop, as I accelerated for dear life, and hoped for an open building gate that I could enter and close. From then on, regardless of which vehicle was used, we avoided changing gears near a group of cows and calves.

Our Institute cows roamed the campus far and wide, but come evening, they gave a new meaning to "coming home in the dust at dusk". We had a surfeit of meadows on campus, and the cows really didn't think of it as special, in the evenings. Our roads were paved, and so dust wasn't really an issue. But several times, in the darkening gloom, one would see a huge herd of cows, about 50 of them, sitting right in the middle of the main road that cut across our campus. Which reminded me of political meetings. They were oblivious to polite requests, honking, lights switching, verbal shouts , but mostly responded to security rushing around with big sticks, which again confirms my suspicion about their meeting resembling a political one.

Maybe , they were political.

Our Institute was initiated through a Russian government collaboration, back in the days of the Comrades. Breznhev actually planted a tree on campus. Occasionally delegations would come to visit, and the corridors which were hitherto strictly out of bounds for any vehicles, would be thrown open for the guests , who drove through them , in, Ambassador cars. Maybe this was to keep them away from an interested bovine population. It wouldn't do, for the education minister of Russia, to be greeted by a cow with her special campus Moo, as he queried someone about how the Russian computer was doing. However, grasslands on the sides of the corridors, occasionally ensured that the Russians got a dedicated view of our campus cows, performing, through, as they say, both ends of their body.

They are cutting a lot of trees now, to facilitate the construction of new buildings and infrastructure. The arterial road widening outside our institute, has also resulted in the complete destruction of a shady belt. Not surprisingly, one has not been seeing the cows , in the numbers, that one saw earlier. The new generation of students are missing out on the most unique aspect of studying here. There was something to be said for a bunch of cows quietly grazing away, watching all the going ons on Convocation Day, as yet another set of students who had , over the years, rushed by them to class, in mismatched chappals, now stood about in kurtas, and uttariyas, , all set to go off to a country, where children still thought that milk came in cartons and bottles and not from cows.....

Maybe we have little value for our cows although we culturally idolize them.. Some good souls, create go-shalas, and set up places where the cows are taken care of well. We treat them as a nuisance on campus that interferes with our "vision" for the place.

Maybe we need to know about Roger Federer. His Canton/State, presented him with a cow, to celebrate his Wimbledon win. He named her Juliette, and Juliette later had a calf. Federer stood proudly next to Juliette in photographs.

Amidst crores of Rs being declared as prizes by various states to the Nations performing sportsmen, one never hears of anyone being presented with a prize cow or bull.

I yearn to see the day when we see a picture of the Indian cricket team . or say, Tendulkar or Dhoni, standing beside a prize Cow, maybe even doing the victory lap , the cow sprinting ahead of them, as they cajole her in typical cowherd shouts.

And, of course, we wont speculate on a possible name for the cow......