Reflections on Durga Puja 2018
Durga Puja in Bengal has withstood the challenges of time and circumstance. It remains the high point in the Bengali social and cultural calendar, an occasion to celebrate life with all its vicissitudes in fellowship and worship when the most loved deity of the Hindu pantheon descends to earth for five magical days, then departs through her immersion in the waters of the Hooghly river for her heavenly abode. Bengal’s rural and urban communities are united in their identity like no other festival.
Its metropolis Kolkata is thus the focal point of the Durga Puja celebrations. It is one of the world’s largest street festivals, with puja pandals, large and small, in almost every locality, monies collected through voluntary contributions varying with the depth of the contributors’ pockets. The craftsmen constructing the idols of the Goddess have traditionally come from the rural environs of the city; they still do. What has changed is that their efforts have been complemented by urban sophisticates, products of art schools and colleges, who bring to the table their special skills. Pandal-hopping is an extension of visits to formal art galleries; in this case a giant gallery to which heaving crowds throng, beginning in the late afternoon and reaching their climax at nightfall when the glittering pandal lights glitter and entice visitors in their heaving thousands.
If artistic endeavour has expanded, so, too, have its commercial aspects. The cost of pandals has risen, often spectacularly. The goal therefore for organizer today is to attract sponsorships from the city’s business houses. This has become a regular feature of Kolkata’s Durga Puja in recent years, as the city’s decline reversed: parks and popular watering holes have come into their own, often with critical financial help from business enterprises entrusted with their management and supervision.
The Trinamool Congress regime of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee must be credited for much of this revival following decades of mismanagement by the previous Communist-led Left Front government. The paradox is that her capricious governance is turning out to be a considerable hindrance to the evolution of the next cycle of socio-economic progress. The State, it would appear, is trapped in permanent transition. The risen Kolkata is therefore work in progress, of which the Metro is a prime example. Its tentacles are spreading to distant corners of the urban conurbation bringing a measure of social coherence to an uncontrolled urban sprawl. The sobriquet of the ‘dying city’ is no longer fit for purpose Capital that had fled Bengal’s urban unrest has returned in large measure, as Kolkata’s billboards, show-rooms and shopping malls demonstrate only too well. This, of course, is no reason for complacency. Large-scale manufacturing is an imperative for ameliorating the high unemployment; of this there is as yet no visible sign: the massive investment flows from domestic and foreign sources have to materialize on the scale evident in other parts of India.
With the road and rail networks expanding in all directions, Bengal’s future development is cause for hope, particularly as the agricultural sector is remarkably buoyant and food shortages a receding memory. Durga Puja this year invites a tour d’horizon of the Bengali landscape. Its message is that, while much has been accomplished, more needs to be done to reach the next level of economic growth and prosperity. Measured optimism is in order.
Saudi Arabia: A criminal syndicate
Saudi Arabia, a desert kingdom founded by a Bedouin tribe achieved formal recognition in 1932 - the mewling bastard of the British Colonial Office headed by Winston Churchill. Suspicious of an enlightened a pan-Arab state dominating the region, and hence holding the route to Britain’s Indian Empire and possessions farther east, patronage of the chieftain Ibn Saud with carrot and stick, became British policy in the Middle East. Trans-Jordan and Iraq were two further constructs of British imperial enterprise. The romance of the ‘noble savage’ in the corridors of power in Whitehall, and subsequently on Capitol Hill and in the White House in Washington, when American companies struck oil in the Wahabi kingdom, took hold. Savage, Ibn Saudi assuredly was, noble he most certainly was not, as the work of Said K. Aburish, on The Rise, corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, reveals in copious detail.
Saudi royalty has been, continues to be, a cast of thousands, all living off the bounty of oil revenues. Immigrant labourers are the kingdom’s hewers of wood and drawers of water. Oil melded with the Wahhabi doctrinal and social imperatives, have made Saudi Arabia the hub of confessional dispensations throughout the House of Islam, a messianic corporate kleptocracy without peer. Saudi-funded zealots promoting a Wahhabist culture expanded across the Muslim world, incubating, in turn, jihadi operatives committed to the extirpation of non-Sunni apostasy, together with the obliteration of unbelieving kaffirs or infidels, their institutions and ways of life, where and when encountered.
The present crisis in the Saudi monarchy’s relations with the West and the international community in general, stems from the abduction and brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, nephew of the late, sinister international arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi. Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi exile and journalist resident in the United State; a Washington Post columnist. His gruesome assassination was carried out in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, enraging the Turkish government, and inviting the censure, if only temporarily, of global investors and multilateral financial institutions. Saudi Arabia’s lacquered image as a pillar of regional order and stability, has been besmirched, perhaps beyond repair..
However, geopolitical considerations are also in play. Donald Trump’s priority is the $110 billion arms contract with the Saudi regime. American, British and French weaponryhave kept the Saudi monarchy in business as aggressor state. The ties between the Anglo-America power brokerage and Islamist radicalism has been explored with telling insights and sweep by the British writer Mark Curtis in his well researched book, Secret Affairs: Britain’s [and America’s] Collusion with Radical Islam. Scholar and philosopher Noam Chomsky commented: ‘Unearthing this largely hidden history is a contribution of the highest significance. The criminal Saudi intervention in Yemen, with the prospect of the most devastating famine in recorded history, is being carried out with the aid of Riyadh’s Western benefactors.’
The horrific execution of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the sheer effrontery of the planning and execution was met with initially brazen Saudi denial, followed by panic-stricken admission of limited guilt, apology of a ‘grave’ error, minus the premeditation.
President Erdogan poured scorn on Saudi talk of a rogue operation gone awry. He said the murder of Kashoggi was carefully planned and brutally executed. The Turkish President demanded the arrest and surrender of the 18-member Saudi hit squad and their trial in Turkey. He wanted to know the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s body. President Erdogan avoided explosive denunciation or new revelations - since much of these had been aired previously in the Turkish media, - opting instead for a restrained but robust rebuttal, calibrating his trust in King Salman’s word, without reference to his heir apparent the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely believed to be the orchestrator of the repugnant crime. The door was kept open. The ball is in the Saudis’ court.
Anil Kumble: Great cricketer, brilliant techie
India’s Anil Kumble has an honored place in cricket’s hall of fame as one of the game’s greatest spin bowlers. His brain matches the once physical skills. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Madras, Kumble is also a noted techie, his startup Spektacom Technologies in alliance with Microsoft Corp and Star India has invented the Power Bat.
The Power Bat is driven by the Microsoft Azure cloud platform using Artificial Intelligence Internet of Things services. As soon as the batsman hits the ball, data on different parameters such as speed, twist, and quality of shot are measured in a unit of measurement titled Power Spoeaks. In sum, it provides real-time statistics and insights straight off the ground.
At its release in Mumbai, Anil Kumble said: ‘Our vision is to bring sports closer to fans through interesting ways of engagement using real-time analytics At the same time, it is important that the technologies used are seamless and do not disrupt the game or obstruct the players.’ This opens up a new dimension to all sports right into industry.
