In praise of the maligned, reviled crow

Raju Korti

When you have precious little to do with a mind desperately seeking to go into an overdrive, your eyes look for something that you have been seeing ever since you can remember but never actually registered. It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle.

(Pic representational)

So in tune with my latest talent for discovering engaging pastimes that don't cost a dime, I have found one that consumes most part of my day wherever I may be. The object of my riveting attention these days are the much reviled, despised crows, especially the ones that flit around and perch themselves on the huge tree that faces my bedroom.

It is extremely rare that you get to look at a crow straight in the face, eye-to-eye. But having encountered its X-ray gaze on a numerous occasions, I have come to the unassailable conclusion that much of the revulsion people have for this condemned species of birds is misplaced and unfair. It is actually a sharp, intelligent and quick-on-the-uptake bird that has a canny knack for survival compared to the songbird variety that corners all the admiration.

I am pretty sure that those who look down on crows as intellectually-challenged birds have had a lost childhood and since my adulthood makes for no concession of my kid years, I will recommend crows like I am their hired attorney.

My respect for crows grew when as a growing kid I first read the meandering stories of Pandit Vishnu Sharma's celebrated work Panchatantra where he dedicates one full technique of existentialism and life to the philosophy and intelligence of the crows. In my prime stage of youth, I read writers who often compared the hair colour of beautiful women with that of a Raven.

Wittingly, I became more conscious of the ubiquitous presence of this bird with a petite 7-inch frame and it became a hobby of sorts to try and look at it straight in the eye. It was both knowledge and revelation that it had many feathers in its smooth pate visible only to the discerning like me.
Mark Twain took my esteem for crows to the next higher level although his famed eulogy has frills of derision to it. I will reproduce his words to allow you to draw your own conclusions:

"In the course of his evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a loyalist, a democrat,, a practitioner and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love of it. He does not know what care is, he does not know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is, his life is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and will go to his death untroubled, knowing that he will soon turn up again as an author or something, and be even more intolerable capable and comfortable than he was ever before."

Quite a hefty package that! Twain has actually used "he" in place of "it", which to my understanding is an indirect admission of the crow's ability to stand heads and shoulders above the man with the love-hate traits that he so profoundly describes. And mind you, the icing on the cake comes when you realize that it is the Indian crow, not the American crow that Twain is at pains to labour over. You can decide finally which is the variety that eats the crow.

In my kindergarten days I learnt it through a simple but lasting legend of a thirsty crow who stumbles upon a pot of water at its bottom. Unable to draw water, "he" puts pebbles to make the water level rise and then quench his thirst. Crows have travelled beyond the cliques attributed to them to deserve their place under the Sun. In my flight of fancy, the crow emerges as an anti-hero who can seamlessly change his feathers as a hero or villain with all the trappings of intrigue, authority, brashness, dare-devilry, gate-crashing and conspiracy. Not for nothing I am told that a decade back almost 100 poets in US came together to create an anthology about crows and ravens to reiterate how the corvids have a strong grip on human imagination.

The crow needs to be deciphered beyond the antiquated belief that they they have no sense of shame -- that they caw at 6am, expect a response from windows reflecting the overcast skies and then cap it with a solitary call that croaks 'is anybody there?' and takes off before you can muster any answer. Nobody can individuate and leave you with an apologetic smile like the crows do. The raucous, impertinent caw packs a vocal punch enough to make you feel smaller than a crow -- in every sense.

In the midst of the political uncertainty in state when elected leaders quietly slinked away to the cooler climes of north-east a couple of months back, I had drawn a tangential connection with the crows as the most reachable beings in Mumbai, quite easily their most adopted host. With a scary reputation that accrues from the scriptures as living incarnations of your dead ancestors, they have adapted themselves to changing times without losing their sense of commandeering demeanour and disposition.

The Kawwa Chalisa that I have been promising myself to write is finally taking shape in Black. As an avid watcher, I have been witnessing the subtle yet noticeable appreciation of their chicanery that defines their dubious reputation. Crows in Mumbai are a league ahead of their counterparts in other parts of the world. They have almost stopped flying. They would rather conserve their energies travelling on top of four-wheelers. Being status conscious, high-end cars are preferred and lesser brands are looked at with disdain.

Since the very idea of flying is repugnant to their authoritative senses, flying if at all necessary, happens at just 5 to 6 feet which makes you a dangerous obstacle in their gradient. If you think they will change navigation to skirt you, perish the thought. They will not hesitate to dash you, their pointed beaks ready to drill a hole. You stay crow-hit because dare you not call it just a bird. In their considered wisdom and superiority, they are convinced they are 24x7 essential service. Do not be startled or put off by their collective caws in the hush between midnight and wee hours.

There is a unanimous opinion among Mumbaikars that there is no underestimating the collective force of crows in groups. You shoo off one or pelt a stone at them, they will attack you so violently that you will carry the fear each time you think of stirring out of your house, The crows neither forget not forgive. You won't remember which crow you tried to offend but the guy in black suit has a photographic memory to single you out from hordes. So stay out of their way, When you see them approaching, make way for them politely.

Sitting in my balcony, I watch them flitting by as if they own the title deed of the land they walk on or the airspace above. One crow looking at me from its perch seemed to tell me:

Mr Whoever you are,
You have a flawed view of my skin
Don't be hypocrite racist
Blacks, you said?
Its a question of degree.

We don't cause dark circles
under your eyes but you
pride on your raven black hair
Black is beautiful, we're sure
You are the ones who fuss

We don't abuse metaphors
Such as eating human
You are vile to eat crow
Stop this blatant drivel
We are as much His creation

My response:

When you come cascading 
Utterly black against the
Contrasting white skies
Your wings obscuring the Sun
Your caws drown other sounds

Again and again your lithe
figure shuttles between the
ground and trees around
Your gleaming feathers 
ready to blanket the celestial

When the mountains far away
With evening haze engulfing,
See you fly in ebony spread
Heading towards a secret roost
You become harbingers of night.

At the break of the dawn
Your caws are sharp prods
That I have duties to do;
And I concede in humility
You're a phenomenon in yourselves.

By the people, of the people, for the people; but no government

Raju Korti
War has many affiliations and stakeholders, poverty has none. After witnessing the worst ethnic turmoil all through the eighties and early part of the nineties on its soil, poor (!) Sri Lanka has discovered this the harder way. What began as is usually described as "economic crisis" has blown up to a complete bankruptcy. The horses ruling the country like their personal fiefdom have bolted without shutting the door when their stables became too hot for their posteriors.

Situation came to the boil on Saturday when large swarms of protesters descended on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for a situation of the country's own making. With suspended repayments of $7 billion in foreign debt, foreign reserves almost wiped out and no import of food, fuel and medicine, Sri Lankans are faced with the prospect of not knowing from where their next meal ticket would be coming. While the Covid cut into its tourism-related economy, the dynastic Rajapakses played to the gallery with populist tax cuts,

At this juncture, it is not significant that the Rajapakse dynasty has ben evicted, A lot is being said that the President quit when it was difficult to dislodge him constitutionally. It is a question of survival of the entire country in dire straits. For those who are citing the family tree as the root cause of the crisis, forget that the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremsinghe also refused to vacate the chair for his own political agenda.

To me, it is obvious that the nation borrowing heavily to plug years of budget shortfalls and trade deficits squandered on ill-conceived white elephant projects, As Lanka's third largest creditor after Japan and Asian Development Bank, China has been blamed for exacerbating the crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who never fails to refer to his philosophy of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam, has extended a helping hand but given its nature, it remains doubtful how much of it will actually translate into genuine help.

The IMF bail-out package is nowhere in sight. In any case it comes with a rider Shylock would be embarrassed about -- that the government must raise interest rates and taxes as condition for the loan.  That is killing the country to bring it to life. Russia has little time to take time off from their military engagement in Ukraine. In short, a terrifying situation for the broke and broken Lankans. The scenes at the presidential palace were reminiscent of what happened in Afghanistan after the resurgent Taliban overturned the elected dispensation. It is a classic case of anarchy being worse than the government.

The Prime Minister has a remedy which is worse than the malaise. The cash-strapped government will print money to pay employee's salaries with zero thought for an inflation on a higher trajectory. He was just a gamble by Rajapakse that didn't pay off. However, in the midst of the raging crisis, the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka made a specious but hilarious statement. "Protests should be peaceful. Chaos and force will not fix the country's economy." She is not deprived and doesn't stand in queues.

Those who say that Covid-19 has sent the country's economy in a tailspin and is in free fall now are dreading the prospect of looking at a scenario in case international community does not unlock its wallet on humanitarian grounds.

In my blog on April 1 last, I wrote: "Gotabaya Rajapakse has a fair history of riding rough shod over country's democratic systems, Assuming the presidential office hasn't helped him get rid of the army uniform he wore in the past. He is not known to believe much in media freedom and has often threatened it of reprisals and has been accused of corruption in defence procurement. When I met his elder brother and (then) PM Mahinda Rajapakse in Mumbai in 2006, I recall how he had outlined his plans to get his younger brother in Lanka's political ma9instream.

With the security forces given a free hand to put down public protests, the Sri Lankan government is asking for bigger trouble as such measures of retribution never work in the longer run. It is difficult to believe the levels of stupidity government get to in crises of this magnitude." 
The irony is Sri Lanka has no government and therefore no governance today. It only has people by the people, of the people an for the people, Democracy of another kind!

Nitin Gadkari and Raju Korti, Warriors of '57

Raju Korti
As a professional journalist with 42 years of experience behind me, I have always and scrupulously avoided making friendship with politicians. I have always kept them at arm's length as very early on in my career I had seen some of my ilk using them as piggybacks and turning wheeler-dealers. Without sounding too pompous or holier than though, vested interests was never my cup of tea. The only exception to this professional credo of mine was Nitin Gadkari who is now a serving minister in the Narendra Modi-led government. Notice the past tense.

Nitin and I are almost same age, he being barely three months older. He opted for Commerce and Law  before becoming a political leader while I chose Engineering, Science, Management, Law and Mass Communication to finally end up being a professional mediaperson. He was sharp, witty, incisive and interactive. One of his features, which is still in evidence, is the perpetual sardonic smile creasing his face. From my experience with him, I know what exactly goes into the making of that smile.

When I started as a journalist, he was just finding his moorings in Politics as student leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad and later the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. We used to cross paths often, me on my Honda motor-cycle and he on his Vespa. There was this rickety 'chai tapri' where we would cross and he would invariably beckon me with a wave of his hand. Our meeting would last around 15 minutes, sipping chai and sharing small talk and pleasantries.

Knowing, I would never entertain any political discussion that smacked of vested interests, he respected my bearing and I reciprocated by never asking for any favours. There was always a touch of humour to his talk punctuated with a grin and over a period of time I started understanding when it was sarcastic and when benign. 

What was absolutely genuine, however, was his love for food, especially snacks like Samosa, Aaloo Bonda, Kachori, Chakli and Chivda which he would freak out on any time of the day. I didn't have to be a dietitian to realize that this fond fascination for junk food had contributed largely to his portly structure. (Purely as pun) I never saw him throwing his weight around as is the won't of the modern-day leaders. Later, during a chance meeting in Mantralaya, he told me how he had to exercise restraint to shed those extra kilos and belly fat. Knowing his cravings, I knew it must have been too tough on him but diabetes and cholesterol don't exempt politicians.

Nitin matched this gluttony with an equal appetite for figures. All those who wonder how he reels out complicated financial and other figures of the projects that his ministry executes, ask me. He was remarkably good at those, a healthy commentary on his memory. You could/can never catch him on the wrong foot there. I suspect a lot of his rivals grudgingly respect his penchant to throw figures with an articulation that sometimes sounds a little glib.

When he sent me a personal invitation for his son's thread ceremony, I chose not to go for the reason I have already mentioned. Instead, I called him up and wished him formally. At Mantralaya, I avoided mingling with him too much. The conversation never went beyond formalities and we both knew we could have (had) much more deeper exchanges than the shallow ones. A couple of times I jokingly referred to him as "Sattawancha Senani" (Warrior of 1957, the title of a famous Marathi  book by Vasant Varkhedkar on Tatya Tope, the General of the 1857 mutiny) although we both were born almost a century later. He would respond with his trade-mark smile.

I am not surprised he has traveled thus far. I had seen the traits of a seasoned leader much before he had made it to the national consciousness. For the record, this piece has nothing to do with my political proclivities. This is as I have seen him as a person from close quarters. As he completes 65 years today, I extend my birthday greetings to him through this blog because I know if I call him, he will respond with "Ye bhetayla" (Come and meet).

And that is one thing I will not do. One, he is now busy up to his neck as union minister, and two, politicians do not have the same priorities as other mortals. Once a politician, always a politician. Maybe if and when he hangs his boots and to relive some nostalgia.

Ye kambakht Covid North Korea pahuncha kaise?

Raju Korti
By far the most bizarre thing about North Korea is its people who are actually oppressed don't even know they are oppressed. Irony has the dubious reputation of killing itself often in a country that pompously calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It has only accentuated after its dilly dallying state media finally admitted the presence of Covid outbreak on its sealed soils. And it has entrusted the job of controlling the outbreak to its Army after declaring  "Severe National Emergency"; whatever that means in that country. 

For many countries, Covid as news has taken a backseat but anything that happens in North Korea is news at all times. If reports are to be believed the Iron Curtain country which shares its borders with Russia and China to the north, hasn't been able to stop the onset of Covid-19 what with tens of thousands of people infected by the virus. True to its character, Pyongyang conceded the outbreak after being in denial mode with this new isolationism forced on its already isolated populace. Bizarre can't get more bizarre than this. How does a country define a lockdown that is internationally locked down?

The state controlled media has chosen to speak the couched language of calling the  outbreak as "unspecified fever like never seen before". What happens to its 25 million population due to lack of vaccination programmes and next-to-nothing healthcare is a matter of speculation. The country has turned down offers from the international community to supply Covid vaccines including its closest ally China. There is no mistaking the inadvertent humour in the story that North Korea found it safer to seal its borders than to hazard the use of Chinese-made jabs. 

While the virus runs amuck, a lockdown would be disaster in a country that in its obsession believes it is more prudent to spend on nuclear weapons than public welfare. By conceding about the presence of Covid on its soil, the pariah state seems to have dropped subtle hints that it my be willing to accept "outside" help. But will it? Your hunches about what will happen in that country invariably turn out to be wrong when your sanity tells you they should be right.

I am not sure if China's expedient ties with North Korea will help. Their alliance has been nominal with a history of tension and antagonism for decades. That said, it has somehow managed to forestall any attempt by Pyongyang to stray from its orbit. Keeping North Korea on a tight leash is a tight-rope that China will perennially have on its hands.  

Forget China, even North Korea finds it tough to handle itself. Sample this weird piece of governance. South Korea had stopped sending fertilizers to North Korea when the latter was facing an acute shortage of fertilizers. So like everything else, a new law was enacted that made it mandatory for the citizens to collect their poop and hand it over to the authorities to sustain the country' agriculture. How they managed this can only be imagined.  

If the country fails to control the Covid surge, North Koreans may find it doing it again. For their own life!

Divided and lost in the maze of languages!

Raju Korti
One cliche that gets bandied about in India is about the beauty of unity in diversity. It is a red herring that is often tinctured with "inclusivity" as an additive and euphemism. My pointed reference is to the needless heart burning on the issue of languages. A war of words has erupted -- as it does every now and then -- over what is/should be  the country's national language. As actor Ajay Devgn tweeted that Hindi was and will remain the country's national language, people from the world of politics and entertainment started weighing in to muddy the waters further.

The divide over language is flogging a dead horse. It is a man-made issue that finds its genesis in politics. The country's map has been redrawn on linguist lines following the States Reorganization Act (1956). Among other things, it promoted unwarranted regionalism and misplaced pride. Worse, the twenty plus languages the country proudly boasts of, now come with an emotional quotient that we can do without. The North-South divide has been particularly notorious on this count with a dubious history of self-serving political leaders exploiting the regional ethos.

I fail to understand the self-aggrandizing that bloats this balloon. The narrow politics of language has only thrived on sentimental naivete and defeats the very concept of inclusivity. Language is and should only be a means of communication and expression. All languages are prosperous and expressive in their own way and learning more languages should be encouraged instead of confining and constricting people on which language serves the best.

As a journalist with The Hindu, I recall my visits to (then) Madras several times in the mid-eighties and how severely hamstrung I was as a non-Tamilian because of the animosity Tamilians nursed towards people speaking Hindi. To be fair to them, the simmering discontent in the state was a result of the severe backlash of how some political leaders in Maharashtra had stoked regional and linguistic passions. Whenever I tried to convey in Hindi, I invited murderous looks. Somewhere in the midst of this linguistic ferment -- evident in some measure in other states as well -- English gradually began to make strides as a link language.

As a visiting faculty across colleges in Mumbai, I am seeing how speaking English is becoming common among the younger generation. To them, the issue is not of language but of style. Looking down upon other languages finds a variety of excuses. I have heard any number of times how some languages lack finnesse, not able to understand what it means beyond phonetics. The unvarnished truth is language has become a highly divisive force. All this in a country which proudly proclaims Sanskrit as the Mother of all Languages but has consigned it to the pages of history -- and to the chagrin of some -- lost its expertise to foreigners. 

Let people speak and express in the language of their choice. Meanings don't change with languages. If you can't communicate in the language that other people don't understand, bloody well have the chivalry to learn theirs and encourage them to do so in turn. Don't fall for the emotional blackmail of those trying to drive a wedge for vested interests.

Each language contains countless unique words, phrases and grammar peculiar to it. If you don't learn it, you don't understand it. Language is a double-edged weapon. It has the terrifying power to divide, it also has the power to unite. We need to celebrate and accept language and the diversity it encourages. Above all, language should be just that. A medium of communication and cognitive expression. 

There is no such thing as a national language. There are only link languages. Inclusivity is inherent in a link. If you think this is sermonizing, go get a life!

Two courts, one Becker and of 'serves' in both!

Raju Korti
For someone nicknamed "Boom Boom" in his heyday for his imperious serves, this is one serve that Boris Becker will not be proud of but will have to serve it anyway. The tennis sensation who strode the Wimbledon like a colossus at a time when current sensations Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were just toddlers, has been served with a two-and-half-year jail stretch by a UK court after being found guilty of violating the Insolvency Laws. The blonde who basked in the glory of kissing his golden Wimbledon trophy at just 17, declared bankruptcy while he owed his creditors Pounds 50 million. For a former Number One with six Grand Slam titles, this is a slam that is not grand by any stretch of imagination.

Becker's tennis career is stuff folklores are made of. I clearly recall watching on my Black and White TV the unseeded 17-year-old, hands raised, before an awe-struck crowd kissing the golden Wimbledon trophy as the youngest ever achiever. It was a dream beginning for any sportsman and Becker showed in the times to come that his rip-roaring success was not a flash in the pan as he went on to annex one Grand Slam after the another in his rising trajectory. But what went up also came down as the vagary of Murphy's Law caught up with him.

Becker is an interesting case study of how people who court blinding success in their career also get overshadowed by a turbulent private life and financial troubles. Having made a fortune out of his swashbuckling talent, his downfall was as protracted as his rise was rapid. And to think of it, becoming a tennis professional was the last thing on his mind. Destiny took a somersault for the charismatic man who hurtled to chaos from a grand standing that he enjoyed in the UK as one of its favourite citizens.

The legal code admits that Law is blind because it goes by the merits of the case and is essentially indiscriminate in nature. Its presumption that lawmakers are fair to all the people all the time is more hypothetical makes sense prima facie but reality often ignores the social upshots that often get relegated. I am aware that this is a highly subjective and therefore debatable issue but that only underscores the need for applying Law with due considerations. In Becker's case it is not just fall from the grace but hitting the abyss of public humiliation. 

From whatever I have gathered, there doesn't seem to be much outcry over Becker's sentence, something that would have made a subject of raging debate in India which erupts into frenzy when celebrities are mired in legal cases.  Conventionally, public sympathy goes with them purely on the emotional quotient as they are generally viewed as the "victims". In his home country of Germany, the media has reacted a little harshly to his punishment. That is understandable as Becker chose to become a British citizen on the premise that "he enjoyed no privacy in Germany and its citizens thought as if they were entitled to him." In the Indian mindset, this emotional crush would have seen a situation to the contrary where the celebrity would feel entitled to his country instead.

It is a paradox -- as remarkable as his career -- that Becker doesn't find much sympathy in a country who he chose to live in because people moved on with small pleasantries and were not overbearing. He now has to decided in his conventional wisdom whether that serves him right or maybe not. History is replete with examples where stars the sporting arena (among others), have had an extra run riding on public support and sympathy when they should have either been punished or faded away from the scene. Remember how Kapil Dev struggled to beat Richard Hadlee's (then) record of 431 wickets at the generosity of the cricketing board, how the likes of Hansie Cronje, Steve Smith and David Warner garnered huge public sympathy when the Law went against them for their acts of commisions and omissions to quote just a few instances. It is fascinating that the Law which owes its origin to social expediencies makes no concession for public beneficience. Some might believe the comparisons unwarranted but Law and Propriety are blind in every sense of the word.

If Becker has broken the Law, he deserves to be punished as matter of truth but a man who has brought so much glory to his foster country at the cost of his own doting countrymen of birth, also deserves some leniency. Law is blind, so it caught up with him. The British media should probe him whether he still stands by his old views about his citizenship when his meadowed presence in his chosen country  has invited more ignominy than the ardor of where he took his roots.

If I may exercise my quotabulary: Becker served one court, the other served him. Both served justice and ironically, Becker has served as a mascot of both.

Running with the hair and hunting with the scissors

Raju Korti
I am generally self-effacing but it is never too late to pat oneself on the back. It was more than four decades ago that I realized I had a special talent with the scissors. I am not talking of the one that I used so prodigiously as an editor in the four decades that followed. Cutting fluff and cholesterol from bloated news stories was worth its sadistic pleasure when I got murderous looks from the reporters the next day. But the one I am referring to here lay dormant in me as I discovered later.

Better than a barber!

Keeping manes was a fashion in my college days. I had acquired one more out of neglect than out of fashion. But laid low by an illness, my hair had decided that it would take its own course. My mother, always so old fashioned, tried all tricks in the book to drive me to the nearest saloon and get a decent hair cut. I dodged all of them until she started calling me a sloth bear.

Loathe to sit head bowed down while the barber sheared my hair mercilessly, I decided to use the scissors at home to crop and discipline my rampant hair. Since Maths and Physics happened to be my choice subjects, the knowledge about slopes, gradient, parabolas and curvature came in handy. I didn't know I had done a neat job of it until my friends asked me how I managed to go to a saloon when I was supposed to have been convalescing at home. Excited by the new found me, I would make it a point to tell my close relatives, especially the senior ones, that they could hire my services for free. They would laugh it off.

My first opportunity came sooner than expected when an old relative discharged after long hospitalization came home with hair strands obscenely sticking out of his nose and ears, face a wasteland of thatched hair and eyebrows looking like a sidewalk lined up on either side by tall grass. It took me almost two hours to trim his facial fuzz. More than him I was pleased with my own performance. Thereafter I did many such jobs, each one turning out better than the earlier. I had a gut feeling that there were many who were keen to use my sccisor-ean skills but inhibitions probably kept them back.

I sharpened those skills perforce in the last two years when the pandemic kept the "nhai" or hair stylist as some would prefer to call, out of business and drove people to self help. I cut down the burden over my friends in the neighbourhood. They all thanked me profusely but it didn't occur to any of them that I deserved some compensation in the light of the situation if not for the labour. And to think of it, professional barbers charge Rs 200 or much more. 

Last week, barbers in Mumbai jacked up their prices by Rs 50. For the first time my penurious condition didn't bring a scowl on my face. It looked clean in spite of them and their silly banter. In any case, you are only as good or as bad as your last hair cut. Mine was about a fortnight ago. The pic is proof that I have done it well and it didn't cost me a dime.

Jaanee, hum apni hajaamat khud karte hain!