Warrier's Collage on Tuesday July 19, 2022 : Self-Publishing
Welcome To
Warrier's COLLAGE
On
Tuesday
July 19, 2022
🙏
Kindle Direct Publishing
https://youtu.be/2fMTKsUHCRI
Good Morning 🌄
Don't miss today's Collage Cover Story at B.
(Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha...).
Nice Day
M G Warrier
A
Messages/Responses
1) Dr M L Jayaraman Nair Thiruvananthapuram
Talked to Jayaram on July 17. We were together in Gokuldham Quarters during 1980's. We talked about mutual friends, RBI days and other sweet nothings. For me, friends younger to me with whom I am in touch are not many. I approach them for refueling. Jayaram is one such friend. More later-Warrier
2) C V Subbaraman
Bertrand Russell's letter to Einstein:
Where are the men of science today, when the Russia Ukrainian war is on, destroying national assets in both the countries? Statesmen are absent whose words count in the build up of international relations. Now Man is either desperate and helpless or has lost commonsense and wisdom, in proportion to the advancement of science of warfare. The United Nations has divided nations and has its weakest voice.
Subbaraman
II
Babusenan's Column brings out clearly the ever-shrinking personality of Man in an ever expanding Universe: the larger is the image of the universe, the smaller is the proportion of Man's space and age in it, each time a new addition to the human knowledge is made, each time Man shrinks but his ego bolsters in reverse proportions! Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam works in reverse order, for Nations do not unite but break up. Within those broken-up nations local and regional aspirations and affiliations develop. The intensity of feelings of "You" and "We" grows with new conflicts brewing to cut the size of camaraderie. The growth of mutual suspicion arrests the area of mutual trust. The One world order is thus an utopia.......Do I love my neighbour any longer? I do not know, but I do know I do not trust a stranger. But, when I get to know about him mor, I trust him even less!
Subbaraman
3) K Balasubramanian
Are we not living in "Vasudeva Kudumbam" concept? YES, I feel...
"remains a hardly realisable dream......" 𝘝 𝘉𝘢𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘯.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...If it is so, how come life in our Metros runs smoothly? for that matter our group mail interactions where we agree to disagree also has run for 13 years
Therefore We are already living within such a concept.
4) V Sundaresan
Shri KNG has again started off with a sixer – “I am a believer in antidisestablishmentarianism. I am not trying to confuse. It only means that I do not believe in revolution but only in orderly evolution.”
He finishes off in Dhoni's style – “Now nobody is following Manusmrithi and if at all we are doing anything as per provisions of Manusmrithi, it is by chance and not by choice". This gives a clear indication that he is not a stickler to parampariyam but open to adapting himself with changing culture.
Sundaresan V
5) More responses on this will be included later
6) S Venugopal Chennai
Warrier,
Amazing Brilliant Cheers Delighted (ABCD of) COLLAGE🙏 KUDOS🙏
7) A Poetry Recital & Story Telling Group in Mumbai
Caferati. :
https://youtu.be/UcEon7mYAIw
8) Painting By Reshmy Warrier
https://www.instagram.com/p/CgGJoEZKRYt/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
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Collage Cover Story*
By Y S P Thorat
Article published in Sakaal Marathi on July 17, 2022- This is the original English version :
Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat Maratha…
Whoever writes the destiny of mortals - either deliberately or mischievously- intertwined the fate of my father, a passionate Maratha, with the‘land of five rivers' thereby binding us, his children, in a similar fashion.
His seminal brush with Punjab happened in 1931 when his friend RK Nehru introduced him to a young Punjabi medical student at Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi. The meeting was fateful. The Maratha, smitten with love, lost a minor battle of Panipat. He proposed marriage only to be thwarted – not by the maiden - but by parents from both sides. Not one to give up, he and his fiancée - my mother - waited for 5 years before the obstacles were overcome and their wedding was celebrated in 1936. As a consequence of these occurrences, we, his children became heirs to two cultures by birth and to a multiplicity of traditions by upbringing. Taking the cue from our parents we too chose our partners.
I shared these thoughts with my wife as the plane took off for Amritsar. She read for a while and then dozed off.
Continued at H1
*Shared by Usha Thorat
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Current Affairs
Theory & Practice : Cooperatives in India
http://mainstreamweekly.net/article12527.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
Media Response: M G Warrier
July 18, 2022
Welcome reverse migration*
This refers to the report "Mid-size IT firms forced to move where talent is - small towns"(July 18). Perhaps this is one of the positive side effects of the recent pandemic which sowed chaos across the world. The urban migration and the craze for "going abroad" had reached alarming levels in India developing an allergic discontent even in school children about anything native.
Now we find young executives creating opportunities to work from home and in rare cases where employer's make their life uncomfortable, getting self-employed in places of their choice.
Last two years, there is an attitudinal change in the NewGen workforce, factoring in variables other than remuneration package in their work-life balance sheet. This is definitely a positive impact of the pandemic we survived.
M G Warrier
Mumbai
*Published on July 19, 2022 :
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article65655461.ece
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Collage in Classroom : Online Publishers
https://notionpress.com/en/for-writers-en?
Briefly :
For the last 20 years or so I have been writing something everyday keeping readers' response in view. Started with LTTE (letters to the editor), progressed to short articles, published a book* when SS Tarpore lovingly persuaded, wrote a regular Column for The Global Analyst a monthly magazine for 10 years and discontinued it during the pandemic when keeping in touch with outside world became technology-driven. So far remaining active has not become a problem. Ok, I'm 78.
Since school days I used to get energized when I see my name typed and later in print. Even today I write LTTE just for the fun of seeing my name printed in next day's paper.
Though major portion of my published work including The Global Analyst Columns didn't fetch me any remuneration, many publications paid me some compensation (for 2 articles published in a lifestyle magazine called BPositive, I was paid @Rs2 per published word!)
*"Banking, Reforms and Corruption" (Sampark Kolkata, 2014) now available as eBook titled "Chasing Inclusive Growth ". Next two books, "India's Decade of Reforms" (2018) and "Restoring Trust in Governance"(2020) were published by Notion Press and are available with Publishers besides major online marketing outlets like Amazon and Flipkart.
I've experimented with the free and instant publishing facility available with Kindle Direct also :
https://www.amazon.com/M-G-Warrier/e/B079ZC3JKX%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
PS : Someone said : "Life is what happens when you plan your future". I'm not sure. In my case, beyond LTTE, writing or publishing were not there in my dreams. Of course, I have a collection of books I have picked up from here and there over the years which I thought I would read post -retirement. I used to glance through some of them when I stay in Thiruvananthapuram. Now such occasions are few and far between🙏-Warrier
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Books
Published by me :
https://notionpress.com/author/m_g_warrier
More links :
https://www.amazon.com/M-G-Warrier/e/B079ZC3JKX%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Chasing Inclusive Growth: Reforms for Financial Inclusion : https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07B527VZY/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_ZRPHZH3FNX1WX3YMBJVX
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Collage Selects :
1) Life is more amazing than fiction* :
Nanda Kumar Das
2nd
Director,
Commercial Bids & Contracts | Marketing Pitches | Governance | Business Insights | Motivational Speaker | Dean's Lister | Ex-Submarine Captain | Lean Six Sigma GB | Guru for Storytelling
2d
A grounding experience...
I flew from Delhi to Vizag yesterday and am here to attend the decommissioning ceremony of the submarine that I commanded.
The ongoing unpredictability in weather caused a lot of turbulence during the flight and I subtly noticed that the gentleman seated next to me was getting anxious. He was chanting prayers loudly and was mumbling, "go slow, go slow". And in one of the momentary zero gravity moments, he clasped my hand tight in panic. I put my other palm over his to soothe him. The "Alpha”in me felt good to have supported a needy. After the moment passed and seatbelt sign went off, we got talking. He kept on listening to my subtle boastful intro of being an ex-submarine captain and now doing well in the corporate etc. He kept nodding and encouraging me. Somehow he never gave me an eye contact. Then came his turn. He introduced himself as Dr. Sharat Babu, a Doctorate in Law from Andhra University and presently working as a lawyer in the Supreme Court of India. He also runs an entrepreneurial venture with boutique IT peripherals. We got talking and spoke about our families. It's after almost an hour that he dropped the bomb. He said, Nanda sir, I am fully blind since birth and the person seated on the other side is my assistant and support. That's when the tables turned. There on, every sentence I spoke, automatically had the salutation, "Sir". My story sounded like a nursery rhyme in front of his Odyssey.
We exchanged contacts and promised to stay in touch going forward. God has peculiar ways to keep you grounded.
*Shared by Kiran Warrier Mumbai
2) Collage Extra
Leisure :
Jokes Time with S Venugopal & Warrier
Wife is Like That :
Just this morning, wife called.
She was crying.
She said sorry to me.
While crying she also said she will never fight with me.
She will always listen to me.
She will do whatever I tell her to do.
I was overwhelmed listening to all this.
Don't know whose wife she was !
It was a wrong number,
but the feeling was great...!!
(Some wives forget to press the red button after finishing conversation. So you listen to what they talk after that. Those things are not for sharing further🙏-Warrier)
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Quotes on publishing
http://www.wiseinkblog.com/storytelling/20-memorable-quotes-on-writing-and-publishing-from-famous-writers/
Shakespeare was writing, he wasn’t writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.” –Ken Kesey
Ken Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957.
“In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.” –Gore Vidal
“And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.” –Sandra Cisneros
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” –Maya Angelou
H
1) Continued from B
My childhood had been spent in the north and its culture and traditions were imprinted deeply on me. Though the lingua franca at home was English, mother invariably conversed with us in Punjabi thus giving us the gift of the language and its idiom. As regards holidays, our‘dual citizenship' entailed Diwalis in Kolhapur and summer holidays in Kasauli - a charming hill station now in Himachal where my maternal grandfather, a leading lawyer of the High Court, had acquired a beautiful summer residence together with the hill on which it was built!! The family home, however, was a large rambling house in Amritsar which we visited from time to time. This idyllic state of affairs ended once I left for Mayo and after that, it was Maharashtra and the Marathi – Maratha - ethos that shaped me. So strong was this influence that as time passed, memories of childhood slowly faded. Thus, it was quite by chance that one day when Usha was away in Mumbai and I was surfing 'You Tube', the title of a Punjabi film caught my fancy. I played it on a whim not realizing that this would trigger the“forgotten half”to surface and put me on this flight.
Usha stirred as the‘touch-down’was announced.
Outside, green, yellow, blue, brown; the green of lush wheat fields, the yellow of mustard, the blue of nourishing rivers, and the brown of villages interspersed in between.
The plane touched down. We located our cab. On the way to the hotel, the driver and I talked,“clicked" and on impulse, we booked him for the duration of our stay. 'Hukum deo Huzur' he said. What do you want to see? Darbar Saab, I replied. 'Wah ki gal kiti. Dil jeet leya Saab.' Then he looked at me quizzically trying to figure out why a non-Punjabi was in such a hurry to get to Darbar Saheb. But the question he asked was Where are you from? Maharashtra, I replied. He pondered over the reply and then said 'Thwadi gal kuch samaj nai aaye.' I replied in chaste Punjabi. “My mother was a Punjabi. I have come to visit her, honour her memory, and find myself”. His face lit up 'Baadshao, Chalo, hune chalo.'
We cover our heads and enter. The temple is bathed in the light of the setting sun. Hundreds of pilgrims walk around, sit, and pray. Some are Sikhs, others clearly Hindus – Tamils, Maharashtrians, Bengalis, Assamese… all denominations. Despite the crowd, there is silence. Perhaps, hundreds of years of prayers have so sanctified the shrine that the mind is automatically driven to stillness and silence. Away from the stratosphere of politics, we are a people harmonious with diversity, thriving alongside each other, celebrating life, indifferent to whether the building in front is a temple, church, or gurudwara. Sounds of Gurubani -- the message of that gentle saint, Nanak -- waft in the breeze lifting our hearts in one breath to heaven, drawing out the pain from within us. Half a millennium ago, Nanak, in the tradition of the Buddha, taught “Nanak dukhiya sab sansar” Suffering characterizes life and then added, “Nanak, ‘naam’ jahaz hai” The way out is by ceaselessly remembering Him. I recall my mother explaining the substance of his message: The world is balanced by evil and good, pain and ecstasy, deprivation and bounty. Whatever is taken away is required to maintain the cosmic equilibrium and whatever is given to you fulfills an essential want”.
And then my eyes are drawn to bullet holes in the wall – a stark reminder of the military operation that took place in 1984 on this holy ground. For an instant, the mind recoils from that memory. I understand the compulsions that drove Operation Bluestar but the heart bleeds at the hurt it must have caused the Sikhs -- the gentlest and happiest among our people.
For a while, we sit side by side in silence wondering how to bridge the gap between an ideal state of being that we cannot attain and the ordinariness of daily existence we cannot live with.
फ़र्श से मुतमइन नहीं, पस्त है ना-पसंद है ;
अर्श बहुत बुलंद है, ज़ौक़-ए-नज़र को क्या करूँ ?
The next day the driver insists we have breakfast at his place. We do and then walk to the Jallianwala Bagh. A guide materializes and leads us to the narrow ‘Historical Lane’ through which Dyer brought guns and troops to shoot at the innocent crowd that had assembled in the Bagh on 13th April 1919 - the day of the Baisakhi Mela. “There were no exit points” he explains “and in their panic people ran to the walls to escape or jumped into the well”. We walk to the bullet-ridden wall – a testimony to Dyer’s savagery and the horror unleashed here. I can’t believe that it actually happened; that a man could – coldly and with calculation - rain bullets and machine-gun fire at a gathering of defenseless people and then, before the Hunter Commission, have the gumption to say that he saw no wrong in what he had done. I also can’t understand a country that after his dismissal from the army glorified such a man and presented him with a purse of ten thousand pounds.
While walking in the Bagh I experience mixed feelings. There is something eerie about the place. I shiver and draw the shawl tightly around me. 'What's wrong?' asks Usha? 'Nothing' I reply.
The Bagh shapes a national memory and a national past. For officials and our leaders, 13th April is the moment to pay homage to the nation's freedom fighters and remember a commanding political event. For the people of Amritsar, however, it is an emotional reference point to express their cumulative pain. Perhaps it is time to map the dissonance between the people's narratives and academic histories and listen to those whose families were there on that fateful day or were subsequently humiliated. I too would like to testify that after the firing, when martial law was imposed in the city for six weeks, Indians were stripped, jailed, whipped, and made to crawl. On one of these days, my grandfather was returning home from court. His car was stopped at the corner of the lane leading to our family home and he was made to crawl at gunpoint till he reached the gate.
Yes, I would like to testify - not only about the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh incident – but about the holocaust of the partition that Punjab faced head-on in 1947. India's partition ostensibly along religious lines is simply the most dramatic instance of post-war decolonization based on an arbitrary drawing of boundaries. The forced migration of an estimated fourteen and a half million people and the murder of perhaps two million innocent men, women, and children devastated subcontinental psyches. Painful memories of displacement and the horrific killing of kith and kin have left deep psychological scars which have still not healed. These traumatic memories have fuelled hostile relations between India and Pakistan, compounding the difficulties in resolving issues like Kashmir and the sharing of Himalayan River waters. Partition remains a defining moment that is neither the beginning nor the end and continues to influence how the peoples and states of postcolonial South Asia envisage their past, present, and future.
Usha is strangely silent, almost withdrawn on the return journey to the airport. And then perhaps to lighten the mood she asks 'So, what does it mean to be a Maratha and a Punjabi – a kind of two-in-one ice cream?' It is an intriguing question but I have no ready answer.
The Maratha within me is sure of who he is, where he has come from, and what he believes in. But what about my other half? Can I define my identity as a Punjabi similarly and in a way harmonious with my other self? Suddenly it seems to me that the resolution of the two identities within me is akin to – and reflects - the plurality within our society. I am a Maratha and a Punjabi because my parents met 90 years ago but do I know what other genetic linkages exist within me – and by that token, within each one of us? Is it important to define myself as a Maratha or a Punjabi or as a“human being”? Similarly, if at a societal level we can accept that many streams have flown through our body politic since the dawn of history will we not inch towards a more compassionate understanding of each other? Is that not why our constitution premises the unity and integrity of India on citizenship - on the fact that we were Indians not because we belong to a particular caste, creed, or region but because we were born in this hallowed land.
And it was in this way that the answer I was seeking within myself came to me. I turned to Usha and said “The answer to your question is that I am a Maratha from the Deccan, and the Godavari and Krishna flow through me as do the Ravi, Sutlej, and the Beas; just as pithla and bhakri are part of my bloodstream so also are sarson da saag and makke di roti; just as “Har Har Mahadev” impels me to battle, so also does “Bole so Nihal …”
The truth is that the only unwavering identity within me is that of an“Indian”. It is an identity that I am proud to carry with me -- in this life and thereafter.
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