The Purpose Of The Others

A few weeks ago during the ongoing US Presidential election campaign, President Barack Obama made a speech where he controversially used the words "You didn't build that" in reference to how individual wealth creation is dependent on social institutions and structures. The soundbites of the speech were relayed on the news networks and on the internet (below):

The immediate para of the "You didn't build that" part of the speech was:

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

-US President Barack Obama

Something about this speech felt familiar. Deja vu perhaps? Then the speech faded from memory.

 During this morning's journey to work, I heard words that brought this speech back to mind. I was listening to one of my brother's music CDs when an old telugu song came on. This song too talks of the futility of self-absorption and calls for the realization of the organic nature of human existence within the social framework. The song was from the telugu movie "Rudraveena" called "Chuttu Pakkala Choodara Chinnavada" ("Look Around Little One") written by Sirivennela Sitaramasastri. 

The last stanza of the song roughly translates to:

Every grain you eat, was produced by this community

The life in which you take pride, was shaped by this society

When the time comes to repay your debt, are you fleeing?

Will you burn the boat, after you've crossed the stream? 

 

 Both the song and the speech have a socialist tone. In the song this message is contrasted against a mystical and spiritual understanding of human existence. While the same message is used by Obama to counter an existential interpretation of free-market individualism. Put together, these interpretation have sought to project socialism as a beacon to refute both the atheistic & worldly as well as the religious & other-worldly interpretations of human existence.

 But in this effort to glorify socialism in poetry and prose, one aspect that remains unanswered is the extent to which collectivism is an end as opposed to it merely being the means. This element of vanity within socialism was captured by the comedian John Foster Hall in his often quoted pithy one-liner:

"We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know"

- John Foster Hall

Links:

1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia

2. http://www.lyricsintelugu.com/2010/07/rudraveena-lyrics-chuttu-pakkala.html

3. http://audensociety.org/vivianfoster.html

Could It Be Murder?

Yesterday was a slow day at the office in the telugu language news media. And so it was that word of a heinous incident had come to their attention. A dead girl was found stuffed inside a suitcase placed in a busy area of the city.

I got a call in the evening urging me follow the electronic media's coverage of the incident. Apparently the stellar journalistic instincts of the TV9 news channel reporters had again kicked into high gear. They had finally found a story where they could fully flash their investigative brilliance.

Reporter starts her inquiry with the most probing of questions (the sensational coverage as narrated to me over the phone):


Reporter [already smug]: "Sir, do you think this is a case of murder?"

Cop [equal to the task]: "We cannot answer that question at this point. We have to conduct a complete investigation to know the full details of the incident"


Their next step might be to flash a 'lost & found' for the suitcase owner on the perpetual scroll, their motto after all reads - "for a better society". Keep watching meanwhile.

Link:
http://expressbuzz.com/cities/hyderabad/woman%E2%80%99s-dead-body-found-in-a-suitcase/195213.html
http://hindu.com/2010/08/04/stories/2010080461000500.htm

Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: They named it!

Mr. Anant Maringanti's brave attempt at understanding the absurdity of the mutant Telugu Language Media's macabre instincts for propagating mass hysteria (from Business Week):

http://kafila.org/2009/12/18/media-induced-morbidity-syndrome-anant-maringanti/

Nuvvu or Meeru

My mother tongue is telugu and after listening to (without always understanding) many Indian languages, I realize that most Indian languages are copies of each other. Any unique feature of a language is immediately plagiarized and presented to its new consumers as original. The syntax is all that varies while the semantics finds parallel in other languages.

This process works so long as the feature that is adapted can locate a void that is to be filled in the linguistic and cultural context of its new host language. After many centuries of this process of assimilation, we see that the mythology, folklore, songs and more recently movies have such close resemblance in the various linguistic cultures that these linguistic communities become parallel mirrors of each other.

So it is that although we have been constantly informed of our linguistic diversity, we find that the talk in these Indian languages is about the same things. All this comes as no surprise. But with a foreign language such as English in the midst of these native tongues, the translations tend to get interesting. The prevalence and acceptance of a foreign language in India too can be explained through the paradigm of a sibling rivalry among the native languages that could only arrive at a truce wherein the lingua franca was foreign, hence everybody lost but no one complained.

But in the bargain, we forget the quirks of our native tongues that define each of our identity. One such central character in many non-western language (or atleast in telugu) is with regard to addressing others (the 2nd and 3rd person singular). The practice of using the plural grammatical number when referring to a single person denotes reverence or submissiveness or respect towards the listener, sometimes a salutation is also used.

e.g: "Nuvvu" and "Meeru" in Telugu (both singular for "you", but the 2nd one uses the plural form).
This is similar to "Tu" and "Aap" in Hindi for "you". But it is taken to another level in hindi/urdu when the singular 1st person is sometimes referred to as "Hum" meaning "We".

Therefore when using an Indian language to address a listener, the speaker looks to pick up clues on background and status so as to accurately place the prospective listener on the social ladder. All the while, the speaker himself tries to project verbally and non-verbally his own perception of self-worth to the listener, so that he is not mistaken for a lesser being. Ofcourse, there is an opportunity for explicit course correction (singular to plural or visa-verse) when this complex dance fails and the judgment is inaccurate but that just shows up the lack of social faculty of the speaker.

This feature is by no means unique to India or even the continent. But to be able to use this single feature, the speaker has to possess vast amounts of social knowledge and skills. It is difficult to always identify where to use the straightforward single grammatical number and where to use the tricky plural grammatical number while faced with a situation demanding a conversation with a random person. Thus the grammatical demand for social information about the listener forces the speaker to get more involved in the society and its hierarchy resulting in better communication.