Crocodile Safari

Had stopped by at the Madras Crocodile Bank recently. The overwhelming impression I came away with was one of plenty. Plenty of crocs, piled up on top of each other. Well fed, too. Tourists can pay Rs. 60 for the privilege of watching the crocs eat dead rats which are tossed into the croc enclosures. Sometimes the crocs don't bother moving and simply ignore the rats; they're too full.

The crocs which are most obviously thriving at the Croc Bank are Mugger or Marsh Crocodiles. Other species are hard to spot in their enclosures; the Muggers are the ones piled up on top of each other. Muggers at the Croc Bank have taken to double clutching, one female laying two clutches of eggs in a season, a phenomenon that has not been observed in the wild. This astounding fertility has led to a Mugger-boom and allowed the Croc Bank to supply Muggers to zoos and wilderness restocking programs around the world - Bangladesh was down to a single crocodile in a tank at a shrine before the Croc Bank shipped some across the border. It has also led to a surplus stock at the Croc Bank of 1000 Muggers. My inner economist can't help asking the question - should these animals be harvested?

The stock answer is NO! A legal trade in wildlife products generally makes poaching more lucrative. If the Croc Bank sells Mugger hides to licensed dealers, it becomes harder to protect more vulnerable sub-species like the Philippine Crocodile from poachers. This is why, say, ivory from elephant culls is not sold.

However, it turns out that trade in crocodilian skin is entirely legal, and that this seems to be helping conservation. There are now commerical crocodile (or alligator) farms in Australia, Africa and the USA. And commerical farming seems to be working. Here's a quote from an American alligator farm web site:

In the 60's, the American alligator had almost become extinct and was placed on the endangered species list by the Federal Government. Commercial farming was correctly seen as a way to ensure the preservation of this reptile.

Why is this working? There is a nice little Powerpoint presentation on the CITES website which provides a clue. Back in the early 80s, the international trade in croc skins was over a million skins a year. Almost all these skins came from the wild. Today, the volume of trade is about the same. But 80% of this trade is in skins from ranches or captive breeding facilities. This is relatively easy to regulate because there are only five tanneries in the world which process croc skins. Skins which don't get processed at these tanneries are basically worthless, and so are unattractive to poachers. So croc conservation becomes this self supporting little econo-system, saving the crocs from extinction without competing for tax revenues or charity.

This conservation success story also has a cultural benefit in the American south. Alligator meat is a part of traditional Cajun cuisine, and thanks to the alligator's remarkable comeback, its meat is back on the dinner table.

The only little grouse I have with this story is that the majesty of a wild animal in its natural setting is somehow lost in this business of commercial farming and theme parks. But even here there may be a marketing opportunity. Maybe red blooded men could go adventuring into the swampy jungles of Queensland on a crocodile safari, hunt down their reptilian prey, cook it Cajun style over a campfire, and capture their experience in free verse. A new-age male-bonding rite-of-passage. It wouldn't sell in Bangalore or Chennai. But in Queensland? Would Queenslanders like Matthew Hayden or Andrew Symonds buy an all expenses covered wilderness experience like that? They just might...

Galli Galli Sim Sim

An auspicious post to wish all readers a happy new year...

Just discovered a piece of children's entertainment which is not just mostly harmless, but positively good. It is teaching my children that the differences between cultures around the world are there to be enjoyed, but that underneath these differences human beings are essentially the same, that we are The Family of Man (I think). This is a collection of video and music clips from Sesame Street around the world, published by Putumayo, a favourite music label.

My family is now singing along with Elmo, Big Bird and Sesame Street stars from India, Israel, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. The look and sound of each of these video clips are distinctive and local. Yet, the same spirit and mood clearly animates each of these local executions. Unity in diversity, that old mantra of Indira Gandhi-esque national integration, applies not just to India but to all of humanity.

More generally, I also think this is a fair representation of how globalisation impacts local cultures and identity. At one time, even serious and well-intentioned people in India would have had doubts about whether letting Coca Cola and their ilk operate in the country would somehow dilute India's Indianness. The first debate I ever won, back in high school in the mid 80s, was about "Have we sold our culture for a pair of jeans?". I opposed the motion back then.

Now, two decades after liberalization started, that argument feels settled. Coca Cola and Sesame Street are very much a part of the Indian landscape, and have figured out that it makes a ton of commercial sense to adopt an Indian idiom. India is changing rapidly, India is becoming ever more closely connected to the rest of humanity, and yet India remains as distinctively Indian as it ever was.

And exactly the same logic probably applies to Israel, Mexico, Russia and South Africa as well.

Quick Gun Murugan

Wokay. Mind it! This is not a movie. It is a 90 second ad film stretched out over 90 minutes. But once you are in an undemanding frame of mind that is willing to forgive that flaw, a frame of mind that comes naturally on long-haul flights, Quick Gun Murugan is good, clean fun.

The best thing about Quick Gun Murugan always was his style. The razor thin moustache, the comfortable paunch, the artfully arranged forelock, the green shirt, the large cooling glasses, the panache with which he lights a cigarette, his gallantry with the lovely ladies, his comfort in his own skin...Quick Gun Murugan is the style-god incarnate. All this came through in the 90 second adverts. What the 90 minute movie offers is space to elaborate on this style, and the movie uses this space well.

We find out about QGM's brother, a Grade II government employee who lives in Matunga and shares his cowboy style. QGM's lady love turns out to be a former Bulbul (Brownie) scout who resides in his love-locket and harangues him into staying on the straight, narrow and upwardly mobile. Mango Dolly, a gangster's moll with a heart of gold and a wig to match, does an item number for Quick Gun. He wonders how a nice girl from a good family wound up doing item numbers, and suggests, in all sincerity, that Mango Dolly's work is also a form of worship for the goddess Saraswati.

The plot? Quick Gun is a cowboy. He is also a vegetarian. His duty as a vegetarian cowboy is to save cows, not to kill them. And so the movie is about Quick Gun's battle with his evil nemesis Rice Plate Reddy, who want to make the world non-vegetarian.

Tripping on this cowboy's vegetarianism is not a bad gag. But it is a gag, not a plot. Nobody watching the movie is going to care about whether Quick Gun succeeds in his vegetarian quest. Sure, the point of the movie is to parody a style, not to reveal character or elicit empathy. But couldn't they have tried just a little bit harder? Or less hard, hence giving less screen time to Rice Plate Reddy and his boring flunkeys?

So sit back, relax and get set for an evening with Quick Gun Murugan, my beloved brethren, fortified with a tumbler of whisky and a masala dosa, and you will be the yenjaay! You might even cast a vote in favour of our won and wonley revolutionary leader, புறட்சி தலைவர் Dr. MG Ramachandran.

Wicked

"That's wicked! Really wicked! Thank you man. Thank you. Wicked!"

Thus spake a man-on-the-street. He wore workman's overalls. He spoke into his cell phone, excitedly, animatedly. I overheard him as I walked to Pret to pick up lunch, and thought it odd that a word that once meant bad has come to mean good. Ours is a topsy-turvy world, a world without roots or moral anchors. A sign, perhaps, that the common people can no longer tell good from bad? A sign, perhaps, of civilizational decline?

It turns out that the word wicked is derived from wicca, or witchcraft. Wicked came to mean evil in a specific medieval context, when witches were burnt at the stake for pagan or occult spiritual practices, even in supposedly secular America, which must count as one of the most horrifying traditions of religious persecution in history.

My Enid Blyton reading daughter instinctively knew this etymology. When I asked her what exactly wicked meant, the first word she associated with it was wizard. Wicked, wizard and smashing can be used interchangably to describe The Famous Five's sumptuous teas.

Wicked's reinstatement into modern English as a stylish, ironic synonym for very good has impeccable antecedents. F Scott Fitzgerald was the first modern writer to use the word in this context. This has since become common usage in both New England and Old England. Though if the global appeal of the Twilight movies, Harry Potter and even classic pop hits like "You can do magic" are anything to go by, understanding the roots of wicked will actually give the word more currency. Go wicked.

Test Cricket at Brabourne

It is great to see test cricket at Brabourne Stadium in Bombay. Not just because of Sehwag's 293, or India attaining the world #1 ranking, but for its political resonance.

Brabourne stadium represents a part of India's culture and cricketing heritage that deserves to be celebrated and brought back into the mainstream. It was built by the Cricket Club of India (CCI) in 1936, to be "India's Lord's". For my money, it is a more beautiful and charismatic cricket venue than Lord's.

The CCI website tells me of one of the founding myths of Brabourne. The Maharaja of Patiala, one of the great patrons of cricket in pre-independence India, went to the Gymkhana to watch a game. He was not allowed to sit with the white skinned Europeans, and was sent to the native enclosure. Hurt, and perhaps inspired by Jamshetji Tata's hotel that stands half a mile from the Bombay Gymkhana, he swore to create a great cricket club where such segregation did not exist. He went on to build the Cricket Club of India. He saw no contradiction in naming this great new stadium after Lord Brabourne, then the British governor of Bombay Presidency.

At the time, the dominant political forces in Indian cricket were the princelings of the Raj. The Maharaja of Patiala was the first President of the CCI, and sponsored the Patiala Pavilion. The Maharaja of Idar, a Rathore prince from North Gujarat whose clan married into Ranji's Jamnagar family, paid for the Governer's pavilion. One of the great banqueting halls at the CCI is the Cooch Behar Room, presumably sponsored by another cricket loving royal family. A more recent CCI president was Raj Singh, once chairman of the Indian team's selection committee, scion of the royal family of Dungarpur.

The aristocrats of the CCI long had the Bombay Cricket Association (BCA) as tenants on their premises. The culture of the BCA was closer to that of the Marathi speaking middle class families of Dadar, Matunga and Shivaji Park - the culture of Umrigar, Phadkar, Mankad, Wadekar, Gavaskar, Shivalkar, Vengsarkar and Tendulkar - rather than the culture of India's erstwhile royalty. Discomfort between these cultures is easy to imagine, but the relationship stayed on the rails through Jawaharlal Nehru's lifetime, up until the early 70s.

By this time, India itself was changing rapidly. India had defeated Pakistan in war in 1971. East Pakistan had broken away and formed the independent nation of Bangladesh. Also in 1971, the Indian cricket team had defeated England - the old colonial masters - at their own game, in their own country. This team was captained not by a princeling like the Maharajkumar of Vijaynagaram, but by a middle-class Mumbaikar called Ajit Wadekar. A hot-headed, curly-haired, twenty two year old called Sunil Manohar Gavaskar opened India's batting. A new India was taking shape. This India had no time for the niceties of older days. Not coincidentally, 1971 was the year Indira Gandhi's parliment abolished the privy purses that had been paid to the royal families of India since independence. The lineages that had built the CCI were no longer royalty in any meaningful sense.

Relations between the CCI and the BCA came to a head during the England tour of India in 1972. The CCI apparently turned down the BCA's request for more ticket allotments. The BCA under SK Wankhede decided to break away from the CCI and build their own stadium. Wankhede stadium, an unremarkable concrete behemoth that sits a couple of blocks north of Brabourne, was completed in 1975. It has since hosted most important matches in the first city of Indian cricket, while Brabourne lies idle.

The power struggle that led to Brabourne being supplanted by Wankhede is now over. The victors should be secure in their victory. Does that create room to restore Brabourne to some of its former glory as the home of Indian cricket? And hence, can contemporary India recapture some of that spacious, graceful, cosmopolitan spirit that still pervades the CCI?

The betting is that Brabourne will be forgotten and that service as usual will return once the repairs at Wankhede are completed. But, heck, crazier things have happened.

We do need some education. But why?

I visited the Iona School yesterday for their Advent Fayre. Some good friends' children attend this excellent school. It was a very nice family morning, with craft activities for the children, live singing, and freshly pressed apple juice. Also picked up a brochure about the Steiner Waldorf system of education followed at Iona, which says:

Integral to the Steiner Waldorf education is its view of each child as a unique, spiritual individual, developing... towards an adulthood in which the individual spirit can find full freedom of expression. Every step in the child's education may be seen as geared to this end.

Was struck by the contrast between this and a thought emerging from my own alma mater, Vidya Mandir, Mylapore:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work makes Jack an unemployed adult.

This is taken from an email that came through on the alumni mailing list. Work, in this context, means swotting. Play means loafing around like Aamir Khan in the latest Bollywood flick. The implication, deeply embedded in Mylapore culture, is that the purpose of education is to get a good job, earn a decent living, and support a family.

Does this Mylaporean approach also lead to the individual spirit finding full freedom of expression? Perhaps, yes. Especially if the individual spirit finding expression is similar to that of Mac MacGuff, the dad in the film Juno. Mr MacGuff's teenage daughter, Juno, is searching for her calling. She asks her dad about his career. He tells her that he found his passion, the calling which gave his spirit full expression, in Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) repairs. Which, fortunately, is the means by which he earns a living.

Thierry Henry's Handball and the Philosophy of Sport

See the player in the blue t-shirt? She is Dr Emily Ryall, Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Sport at the University of Gloucestershire. She is a committed, competitive sportsperson and a University lecturer, thus embodying the Corinthian ideal of amateurism. As a girl with a Ph.D. who plays rugby, she is reshaping the myths of womanhood. Discovering Dr Ryall, and that there are entire University departments dedicated to the Philosophy of Sport, are some of the few good things to have come out of the Thierry Henry handball incident.

BBC Radio 4 had a story last week on Henry's handball. It featured Simon Barnes, the chief sports columnist for the Times, and Dr. Ryall. Both of them let Thierry Henry off pretty lightly. Neither of them focused on the thirty seconds immediately after the goal, when the Irish players were animatedly appealing to the referee, when Thierry Henry had ample opportunity to 'fess up.



Simon Barnes thinks "sport is no longer about building character, it reveals character"; so Henry's handball was a part of the great spectacle of sport because it gives us an insight into Henry's flawed genius. Dr. Ryall thinks intent matters: the fact that Henry did not intend to cheat makes a difference to her. Which is a very interesting moral argument. For instance, the business leaders who destroyed Enron (or Lehman Brothers for that matter) surely did not intend to do so. Unlike Henry, it is not at all clear that anyone at Enron cheated. But does positive intent absolve them of blame? Things are certainly not working out that way, certainly not in the court of public opinion.

Personally, I find the lack of censure for Thierry Henry, in the court of public opinion, more shocking than the handball itself. People, in all walks of life, will always have opportunities to cheat. Some people will always take the opportunity and cheat. But overall, people will cheat less if they are constantly reminded that cheating is bad, and that honour matters.

Dan Ariely, the behavioural economist, demonstrated this in a neat experiment. One group of students took a test, and were paid according to the number of correct answers they self-reported. Another bunch of students took the same test after having sworn not to cheat. The bunch who swore not to cheat consistently gave themselves lower and more accurate scores than the "control", despite having exactly the same incentives and exactly the same opportunities to cheat.

Many people describe Henry's handball as "understandable", which is true, it was understandable. But in being understanding of Henry's understandable behaviour, we, collectively, are diluting the social norm that cheating is bad.