When summer comes, we hear the hums of
Bhisma Lochan Sharma.
You catch his strain on hill and plain from Delhi
down to Burma.
He sings as though he’s staked his life, he sings
as though he’s hell-bent:
The people, dazed, retire amazed although they
know it’s well-meant.
They’re trampled in panic rout or languish
pale and sickly,
And plead, ‘My friend, we’re near our end, oh
stop your singing quickly!’
The bullock-carts are overturned, and horses
line the roadside;
But Bhisma Lochan, unconcerned, goes
booming out his broadside.
The wretched brutes resent the blare the hour
they hear it sounded,
They whine and stare with feet in air or wander
quite confounded.
The fishes dive below the lake in frantic search
for silence,
The very trees collapse and shake – you hear the
crash a mile hence -
And in the sky the feathered fry turn turtle while
they’re winging,
Again we cry, ‘We’re going to die, oh won’t you
stop your singing?’
But Bhisma’s soared beyond our reach, howe’er
we plead and grumble:
The welkin weeps to hear his screech, and mighty
mansions tumble.
But now there comes a billy goat, a most
sagacious fellow,
He downs his horns and charges straight, with
bellow answ’ring bellow.
The strains of song are tossed and whirled by
blast of brutal violence,
And Bhisma Lochan grants the world the golden
gift of silence.
Source: p. 64, Images of Life, An Anthology of Poems by Neil O’Brien (Frank Bros. & Co.)Note: Summers are unbearably hot in most parts of India (this does not prove that winters aren’t cold enough though!). It is hard to tolerate someone singing out of tune in that crazy heat. This is a poem by Sukumar Ray, translated by Professor Sukanta Chaudhuri. Sukumar Ray is the Lewis Carroll of Bengali literature, much inspired by Carroll’s works. His poems seemed untranslatable till the gem of a collection The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray by Professor Chaudhuri (Oxford University Press) came into existence. Sukumar Ray’s famous son, filmmaker Satyajit Ray had also made an attempt to translate his father’s poetry into English and later highly praised The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray. This poem would go well with my previous post as well as serve as an introduction to the fantastic world of Sukumar Ray. Although structurally Bengali and English are very different languages, like in English, great poetry often rhymes well. This makes it doubly difficult to translate as much of the essence/ play on words would be lost if it didn’t in the translation.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Indian Puzzle
□ Women (1~144) □ Men
There are two windows with two queues. One for women and the other for men. What do you do if you are male? Easy one! Stand in the queue for men. That’s right! Now, what do you do if you are male and your serial number is 128? Flummoxed? Don’t be! That is the situation I was in when I went to apply for my voter ID card so that I can participate in the elections. What did I do? I stood in the queue for men and waited my turn, only to be told to go to the other window. When I went there, people told me, “Are you blind? Can’t you see this is a queue for women?” I said yes and tried to explain that I was told to come here by the person at the other counter. They shout back, “Liar! Impossible!” So back I go to the queue for men, and tell the person in charge at the window that the other queue is for women and they are not letting me queue up. The man in charge shouts, “Your serial number is 128. You have to go there.” So back I went. By this time a few other men apparently with the same confusion are also trying to ask the person at the window for women whether they can get their work done there. The person takes all our application forms. By this time the women in the queue and the famous unasked for male helpers who appear out of nowhere and are there to give free advice, are livid. A slanging match ensues between the two parties as I barely manage to get away with my work done and without getting roughed up. I thank my stars for being “lucky”. What does the print over the window mean? Nobody knows!
The agony does not end there. There is still the photograph to be taken. The man at the window does not know where the photograph is being taken. So I go to the office on the third floor of the building. There I am told that the photographer should be somewhere in the building (an old sprawling one with many floors). So there I am marching up and down all the floors with the temperature soaring well above forty in the hot midday sun. Finally, I found the amiable cameraman in the basement ready with a digital camera. He asked me to stand against the wall and snapped me in a jiffy. Some progress at last! A modern digital camera!
It would take two months to make the ID card I was told. As we learn in India since childhood: “The fruits of patience are sweet.” Indeed!
There are two windows with two queues. One for women and the other for men. What do you do if you are male? Easy one! Stand in the queue for men. That’s right! Now, what do you do if you are male and your serial number is 128? Flummoxed? Don’t be! That is the situation I was in when I went to apply for my voter ID card so that I can participate in the elections. What did I do? I stood in the queue for men and waited my turn, only to be told to go to the other window. When I went there, people told me, “Are you blind? Can’t you see this is a queue for women?” I said yes and tried to explain that I was told to come here by the person at the other counter. They shout back, “Liar! Impossible!” So back I go to the queue for men, and tell the person in charge at the window that the other queue is for women and they are not letting me queue up. The man in charge shouts, “Your serial number is 128. You have to go there.” So back I went. By this time a few other men apparently with the same confusion are also trying to ask the person at the window for women whether they can get their work done there. The person takes all our application forms. By this time the women in the queue and the famous unasked for male helpers who appear out of nowhere and are there to give free advice, are livid. A slanging match ensues between the two parties as I barely manage to get away with my work done and without getting roughed up. I thank my stars for being “lucky”. What does the print over the window mean? Nobody knows!
The agony does not end there. There is still the photograph to be taken. The man at the window does not know where the photograph is being taken. So I go to the office on the third floor of the building. There I am told that the photographer should be somewhere in the building (an old sprawling one with many floors). So there I am marching up and down all the floors with the temperature soaring well above forty in the hot midday sun. Finally, I found the amiable cameraman in the basement ready with a digital camera. He asked me to stand against the wall and snapped me in a jiffy. Some progress at last! A modern digital camera!
It would take two months to make the ID card I was told. As we learn in India since childhood: “The fruits of patience are sweet.” Indeed!
The Homecoming
I am back in my hometown for a little over a month now. Back after two years, and this is my longest stay here after a period of six years. If you take into account another half a dozen years that I spent in college right in this same country but more than sixteen hundred kilometers away, then that makes it a full twelve years I have been but an occasional visitor. In many ways, I feel like Urashima Taro (nowadays sometimes called the "reverse culture shock" phenomenon), the legendary character in Japanese mythology who was whisked away to the bottom of the sea by a turtle he had saved before from being bullied by young kids. Right at the bottom, after many happenings, he met the princess of the oceans, where he married her and stayed with her before being homesick and wanting to go back after many years had passed. As a parting gift, he was given a box and asked to open it only if he was in real trouble. Urashima Taro reached his “hometown” but found everything had changed. No one recognized him and he did not recognize anyone. He remembered the box and curiosity got the better of him. He opened it, was enveloped in white smoke, and suddenly found that he had lost his youth and become an old wrinkled man.
Well, I am not a high school kid any more as I was when I left to pursue a university education, and though hardly visible, I have four gray strands. The lady at the barber’s (QB House 10 minute cut) had politely asked if she could pluck them out, but I had manfully refused wanting to remain a natural (that I probably always am!).
When I came back two years ago, the moment I came out of the airport, a few young men who tried to help me with my luggage though I did not ask them to, kept badgering me for just one dollar. I politely told them that I did not have one as I did not come back from a country where dollars are used. Since they had “helped” me, I offered ten rupees but they insisted on one dollar. So they ended up getting none as I really did not have any. Sorry folks!
This time though, these one in a million dollar guys were not there. I got a pre-paid taxi and moved on. The heat drugged me into a stupor, as the cosmopolitan mosquitoes buzzed to keep me awake! I reached home the following day by bus that felt like an air-conditioned roller coaster on the new high speed expressway.
It is election time in India so most news items are about elections and the Indian Premier League T20 cricket (the latest and shortest version of cricket) underway in South Africa at this time with swashbuckling players from all over the world taking part as warm up to the world cup later. Soon they will be switching sides when they play for their national teams!
On the very local front, the population of the stray “street dogs” seems to have increased more than the population of people living here, so much so that they have their own groups and frequent territorial fights. Are they planning to contest the elections too inspired by Animal Farm and the news that the pigs are down with swine flu? They are noisier than sloganeering people who pass by at times. But though these dogs would not allow me to go for a jog in the morning, scaring me out of my wits with bare white fangs, they usually wake me up half an hour before I set the alarm (free morning call!). Uncanny? Yes. Keeping me on my toes? Certainly!
Then there is the self proclaimed universal poet Mr. Sarkar at the house opposite. He used to write good poetry and also be an orator in his heydays. Especially, when he chose to climb onto the rooftop of his house and put his vocal cords to vehement use, proclaiming to the world his many talents. Legend has it that he built his own house. So what if the walls are a bit clumsy to look at! Imagine one man building an entire house by himself and even having tenants living within those uneven walls! It seems he has been learning all the while as he has taken to being a blacksmith now. Not that I have seen a single customer come by his hardware shop in the past one month. Maybe the neighbors do not complain because they have gotten so used to the clangings and bangings that they can not sleep without them! (Pavlov should have tried another experiment!) Night and day, whenever he feels gay, you can hear him clanging away! And even when he stops, I can hear them in throbs, that keep banging inside my head, wishing I were dead! Ggrrr! Anyway, now where did I get that instinct?!! Does that make me a good language student? I leave it to you to judge that. At present I am trying to learn a bit of a foreign language and the volume of my walkman has reached its limit.
So here I am, as the hot sultry unforgiving summer continues, with teasing promises of rain occasionally, as the clouds fly away faster than they gather on some mornings (once in a blue sun), relaxing and enjoying homemade meals and not trying to dwell too much on honing my meditation skills or the old proverb that home is home though it will never be so homely.
It is three in the afternoon as I type this on my computer. Thank God there is no power cut yet! First of May being a holiday, probably there is no one to cut the power! The other day, my friend (Roshmi) told me in jest that Indian politicians are so powerful that all the power goes to them. Hence, we have shortage of power! Maybe they are recharging their batteries for the elections! Some argumentative Indians are sorting things out in loud voices in the neighborhood houses. The wind is hot outside (in India people call it the loo … Brits beware of Indian English with double meanings! Things have changed a lot since you guys left?!), the windows are closed and Mr. Sarkar is at work again!
Well, I am not a high school kid any more as I was when I left to pursue a university education, and though hardly visible, I have four gray strands. The lady at the barber’s (QB House 10 minute cut) had politely asked if she could pluck them out, but I had manfully refused wanting to remain a natural (that I probably always am!).
When I came back two years ago, the moment I came out of the airport, a few young men who tried to help me with my luggage though I did not ask them to, kept badgering me for just one dollar. I politely told them that I did not have one as I did not come back from a country where dollars are used. Since they had “helped” me, I offered ten rupees but they insisted on one dollar. So they ended up getting none as I really did not have any. Sorry folks!
This time though, these one in a million dollar guys were not there. I got a pre-paid taxi and moved on. The heat drugged me into a stupor, as the cosmopolitan mosquitoes buzzed to keep me awake! I reached home the following day by bus that felt like an air-conditioned roller coaster on the new high speed expressway.
It is election time in India so most news items are about elections and the Indian Premier League T20 cricket (the latest and shortest version of cricket) underway in South Africa at this time with swashbuckling players from all over the world taking part as warm up to the world cup later. Soon they will be switching sides when they play for their national teams!
On the very local front, the population of the stray “street dogs” seems to have increased more than the population of people living here, so much so that they have their own groups and frequent territorial fights. Are they planning to contest the elections too inspired by Animal Farm and the news that the pigs are down with swine flu? They are noisier than sloganeering people who pass by at times. But though these dogs would not allow me to go for a jog in the morning, scaring me out of my wits with bare white fangs, they usually wake me up half an hour before I set the alarm (free morning call!). Uncanny? Yes. Keeping me on my toes? Certainly!
Then there is the self proclaimed universal poet Mr. Sarkar at the house opposite. He used to write good poetry and also be an orator in his heydays. Especially, when he chose to climb onto the rooftop of his house and put his vocal cords to vehement use, proclaiming to the world his many talents. Legend has it that he built his own house. So what if the walls are a bit clumsy to look at! Imagine one man building an entire house by himself and even having tenants living within those uneven walls! It seems he has been learning all the while as he has taken to being a blacksmith now. Not that I have seen a single customer come by his hardware shop in the past one month. Maybe the neighbors do not complain because they have gotten so used to the clangings and bangings that they can not sleep without them! (Pavlov should have tried another experiment!) Night and day, whenever he feels gay, you can hear him clanging away! And even when he stops, I can hear them in throbs, that keep banging inside my head, wishing I were dead! Ggrrr! Anyway, now where did I get that instinct?!! Does that make me a good language student? I leave it to you to judge that. At present I am trying to learn a bit of a foreign language and the volume of my walkman has reached its limit.
So here I am, as the hot sultry unforgiving summer continues, with teasing promises of rain occasionally, as the clouds fly away faster than they gather on some mornings (once in a blue sun), relaxing and enjoying homemade meals and not trying to dwell too much on honing my meditation skills or the old proverb that home is home though it will never be so homely.
It is three in the afternoon as I type this on my computer. Thank God there is no power cut yet! First of May being a holiday, probably there is no one to cut the power! The other day, my friend (Roshmi) told me in jest that Indian politicians are so powerful that all the power goes to them. Hence, we have shortage of power! Maybe they are recharging their batteries for the elections! Some argumentative Indians are sorting things out in loud voices in the neighborhood houses. The wind is hot outside (in India people call it the loo … Brits beware of Indian English with double meanings! Things have changed a lot since you guys left?!), the windows are closed and Mr. Sarkar is at work again!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
From Jae Hind to Jae Ho: ‘Ma tujhe salaam!’
Destiny wins! I salute thee Mother! The movie Slumdog Millionaire has been one of the hot topics being discussed for the last couple of months. Incisive criticism from many quarters continued to pelt, as the film picked up a lot of other awards before finally making it at the coveted Oscars. All this culminated in a climax that ended with eight Oscar Academy awards on the night of February 22, 2009. And what a night it was! As so many newspapers across India have gushed. Indeed, all is well that ends well.
Congratulations flowed now across the country. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed the message to the Millionaire team. There have been reports that President Barack Obama wants to watch the movie. Hope he does! Amitabh Bacchan too came out with praise. Amir Khan has already done it before. But recently is reported to have said something opposite. Makes me wonder whom to believe, the press or the filmstars?! Danny Boyle publicly acknowledged on stage and made up for not having mentioned the name of Longines Fernandes, only proving his greatness once again. AR Rahman came out on top with his great music. Parliamentarians reportedly shouted Jae Ho.
As much as it has been said that it is not an Indian movie, the fact is that it has been filmed in India, has an almost entirely Indian cast with child actors who actually lived in those slums till they were picked up by the Millionaire team, and an ambitious music director from India who dared to dream. Vikas Swarup, the author of the novel on which this film is based, is an Indian diplomat. Loveleen Tandon is the co-director. (How much more ‘Indian’ can it get!) Apart from the liberties given to art and fiction, this movie has no other drawbacks and shows up the poverty in India that is very real.
This is a movie that deserves praise despite all the fault lines in the story that many critiques have tried to single out. My advice to them is, “Don’t pick your nose in public. It is a bad habit.” Some newspaper articles did hit the nail right on the head when they mentioned that many Indian movies are shot abroad and show a kind of affluent lifestyle that is but an impossible dream for millions of Indians. No one has prevented filmmakers in India from making movies about reality, and life as it is in most parts of the country. Satyajit Ray did it without the fancy cameras that are available to film directors today. Most Hindi movies depicting big houses, sports cars, rich heroes etc. portray a kind of lifestyle that is as much alien to the bulk of Indians as the poverty in this movie is to the affluent West.
Amartya Sen, in his book The Argumentative Indian (p. 127), has written:
“There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor about the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.”
In the previous page, he has written about the ‘love of the false-exotic’:
“It is not obvious whether the imaginary scenes of splendour shown in such ‘entertainment movies’ should be seen as misdescriptions of the India in which they are allegedly set, or as excellent portrayals of some non-existent ‘never-never land’ (not to be confused with any real country).”
This is a film that (I hope) will help break many myths. One of them is that poverty ‘sells’ in the West. It does not as much as it is being made out to be. The affluent countries get to see so little of the seemingly unreal world in poverty stricken areas that these rare efforts must move some of them at least a bit. Of course, people get to see poverty even in developed nations. There are documentaries made on them. If Indians want to see them write to the national television and ask them to telecast such programs. Indians are the ones who are used to growing up with desperate squalor around them. They are more likely to develop ‘immunity’ to the problem than foreigners. Not that all Indians are like that! The second are the myths that are made by Indians themselves and those propagated by foreigners about India. Foreigners who do not live in India or those who come to visit for only a few days, are likely to have distorted views about the country. That is not the real problem. It is how we Indians project our image that matters. I have heard Indian’s proudly claim that 90 percent of Indians know English. In a country that has a literacy rate of 64.8 percent? (That means almost a billion English speakers!) Are you kidding! What kind of mathematics is that! Admitting it does not take away the fact that India has excelled in certain fields, has remote sensing satellites orbiting the earth and is dreaming of a manned mission to the moon, and due to a burgeoning middle class rocketed by the exploding population is soon to become the country with the largest number of English speakers in the world.
It also does not take away the fact that some Indians can actually write excellent English. WB Yeats, a great poet in his own right was woefully off the mark when he wrote in a letter to his friend shortly after writing the introduction for Gitanjali (the collection of poems that won Rabindranath Tagore, arguably one of the greatest poets and writers, the nobel prize for literature), “Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English.” That was when India was not yet independent. Things have changed now. In the year 2000, a British company which recruits teachers for UK schools, started recruiting English teachers from India with the conviction that the accent may be different but Indians could be good English teachers all the same. Indian English writers like Amitav Ghosh have proven that their cult owns the English language as much as the native authors. Professor Roger Pulvers wrote in The Japan Times about bringing more English teachers from India to Japan. Craig Storti wrote in his book Speaking of India that the problem about Indian English was more about the different speeds with which Indians usually speak English more than grammatical mistakes that makes spoken Indian English hard to grasp. The mountain is slowly being reduced to the size of a molehill. And you will agree that not many people in the US had much of a problem understanding Anil Kapoor’s Indian accent!
But I am sorry to say that I am not too proud of the kind of English that some Indian English teachers in Japan speak and there are many English teachers in schools in small towns in India who could do a far better job if only they were "discovered".
There is nothing to be ashamed about poverty. Mark Tully, former BBC correspondent in India for 25 years has often been asked by visitors to India, “How do you put up with the poverty?” I would like to quote his answer here.
“Well, I think it’s a rather stupid question because whether I put up with it or not isn’t going to really affect the poverty. But I think there is one answer that can be given and that is, at least one can try to respect the poor.”
Mark Tully is speaking about Kolkata here in particular, the city in which he was born. He also says (about India), “… I tried to show the poor as people, not as objects of pity. I wanted to demonstrate that they retain their dignity inspite of the hardships they suffer…” Let us not lament about the poverty in the film.
As my Economist friend (Dr. Rajarshi Majumder) wrote to me, “I liked SM. It is a story of Hope amidst Poverty, of optimism amidst anguish, and of Love in troubled times. I really appreciate the way the movie showed that life's varied experiences, which during the time they are experienced seems so dark, also leads to a high moral confidence and capability to face problems and never loose hope. Watch it.”
The real heroes in the movie are the kids like Azharuddin and Rubina. While the former reportedly said that he was very, very very…. Happy, and the latter’s neighbor who watched her grow up commented that it was like happiness falling from the sky. There can be no doubt about their happiness. Now they are getting government flats too. I do not know whether they have become ‘millionaires’ but they have really made it out of the black hole of poverty. That is their destiny and let us rejoice.
India has never lacked talent. Here is the gauntlet for all those people who want an ‘all Indian win’ at the Oscars (if there can be something as hundred percent as that!) Since no one has ever stopped them, let all the famous filmmakers and actors/ actresses in India unite for once and make a project that wins such an ‘all Indian’ Oscar rather than cribbing about it! Jae Ho! Victory be yours!
Notes:
1. Ma Tujhe Salaam are the words of a Hindi song composed by AR Rahman. It means, “I salute thee Mother.” Mother in this case is Mother India.
2. The quotation about what Mark Tully said has been taken from the audiobook Mark Tully’s India. (punctuation mine).
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/999985.stm ‘Indian teachers for UK schools’ (Tuesday, 31 October, 2000).
4. Sadly, the movie is yet to start showing in Japan. It will only start in the later part of April 2009 though all the other movies made last year (including super flops!) have been screened in movie theatres here. It would be interesting to see how people here react to the movie here. May be dubbing it into Japanese is taking a lot of time? Efforts are being made by NHK, the national television in Japan which produced a series of programs on India, and some Japanese authors who have started showing and writing about India with fresh insight. A welcome change maybe?
5. Unlike what is being said by many critics, this movie has many elements of popular Bollywood Hindi movies too, albeit in more refined, subtler and newly repackaged form. It has the hero, the heroine, the villains who trouble the heroine, a thriller plot, and truimph of the hero as he wins his heroine in the end, with dance and music. And, unlike many Bollywood movies, this movie does not project breaking the law as something heroic. Think about it!
6. Even Satyajit Ray was accused of ‘selling’ poverty when he made Pather Panchali in 1955. His movie was based on a novel written before independence (1929). The novel was Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's first as a novelist and the film was Satyajit Ray's debut as a director. Five decades after Pather Panchali the film, the critics are being shameless because we still seem to have enough abundance of poverty to ‘sell’ for probably another five decades!!
Congratulations flowed now across the country. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed the message to the Millionaire team. There have been reports that President Barack Obama wants to watch the movie. Hope he does! Amitabh Bacchan too came out with praise. Amir Khan has already done it before. But recently is reported to have said something opposite. Makes me wonder whom to believe, the press or the filmstars?! Danny Boyle publicly acknowledged on stage and made up for not having mentioned the name of Longines Fernandes, only proving his greatness once again. AR Rahman came out on top with his great music. Parliamentarians reportedly shouted Jae Ho.
As much as it has been said that it is not an Indian movie, the fact is that it has been filmed in India, has an almost entirely Indian cast with child actors who actually lived in those slums till they were picked up by the Millionaire team, and an ambitious music director from India who dared to dream. Vikas Swarup, the author of the novel on which this film is based, is an Indian diplomat. Loveleen Tandon is the co-director. (How much more ‘Indian’ can it get!) Apart from the liberties given to art and fiction, this movie has no other drawbacks and shows up the poverty in India that is very real.
This is a movie that deserves praise despite all the fault lines in the story that many critiques have tried to single out. My advice to them is, “Don’t pick your nose in public. It is a bad habit.” Some newspaper articles did hit the nail right on the head when they mentioned that many Indian movies are shot abroad and show a kind of affluent lifestyle that is but an impossible dream for millions of Indians. No one has prevented filmmakers in India from making movies about reality, and life as it is in most parts of the country. Satyajit Ray did it without the fancy cameras that are available to film directors today. Most Hindi movies depicting big houses, sports cars, rich heroes etc. portray a kind of lifestyle that is as much alien to the bulk of Indians as the poverty in this movie is to the affluent West.
Amartya Sen, in his book The Argumentative Indian (p. 127), has written:
“There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor about the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.”
In the previous page, he has written about the ‘love of the false-exotic’:
“It is not obvious whether the imaginary scenes of splendour shown in such ‘entertainment movies’ should be seen as misdescriptions of the India in which they are allegedly set, or as excellent portrayals of some non-existent ‘never-never land’ (not to be confused with any real country).”
This is a film that (I hope) will help break many myths. One of them is that poverty ‘sells’ in the West. It does not as much as it is being made out to be. The affluent countries get to see so little of the seemingly unreal world in poverty stricken areas that these rare efforts must move some of them at least a bit. Of course, people get to see poverty even in developed nations. There are documentaries made on them. If Indians want to see them write to the national television and ask them to telecast such programs. Indians are the ones who are used to growing up with desperate squalor around them. They are more likely to develop ‘immunity’ to the problem than foreigners. Not that all Indians are like that! The second are the myths that are made by Indians themselves and those propagated by foreigners about India. Foreigners who do not live in India or those who come to visit for only a few days, are likely to have distorted views about the country. That is not the real problem. It is how we Indians project our image that matters. I have heard Indian’s proudly claim that 90 percent of Indians know English. In a country that has a literacy rate of 64.8 percent? (That means almost a billion English speakers!) Are you kidding! What kind of mathematics is that! Admitting it does not take away the fact that India has excelled in certain fields, has remote sensing satellites orbiting the earth and is dreaming of a manned mission to the moon, and due to a burgeoning middle class rocketed by the exploding population is soon to become the country with the largest number of English speakers in the world.
It also does not take away the fact that some Indians can actually write excellent English. WB Yeats, a great poet in his own right was woefully off the mark when he wrote in a letter to his friend shortly after writing the introduction for Gitanjali (the collection of poems that won Rabindranath Tagore, arguably one of the greatest poets and writers, the nobel prize for literature), “Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English.” That was when India was not yet independent. Things have changed now. In the year 2000, a British company which recruits teachers for UK schools, started recruiting English teachers from India with the conviction that the accent may be different but Indians could be good English teachers all the same. Indian English writers like Amitav Ghosh have proven that their cult owns the English language as much as the native authors. Professor Roger Pulvers wrote in The Japan Times about bringing more English teachers from India to Japan. Craig Storti wrote in his book Speaking of India that the problem about Indian English was more about the different speeds with which Indians usually speak English more than grammatical mistakes that makes spoken Indian English hard to grasp. The mountain is slowly being reduced to the size of a molehill. And you will agree that not many people in the US had much of a problem understanding Anil Kapoor’s Indian accent!
But I am sorry to say that I am not too proud of the kind of English that some Indian English teachers in Japan speak and there are many English teachers in schools in small towns in India who could do a far better job if only they were "discovered".
There is nothing to be ashamed about poverty. Mark Tully, former BBC correspondent in India for 25 years has often been asked by visitors to India, “How do you put up with the poverty?” I would like to quote his answer here.
“Well, I think it’s a rather stupid question because whether I put up with it or not isn’t going to really affect the poverty. But I think there is one answer that can be given and that is, at least one can try to respect the poor.”
Mark Tully is speaking about Kolkata here in particular, the city in which he was born. He also says (about India), “… I tried to show the poor as people, not as objects of pity. I wanted to demonstrate that they retain their dignity inspite of the hardships they suffer…” Let us not lament about the poverty in the film.
As my Economist friend (Dr. Rajarshi Majumder) wrote to me, “I liked SM. It is a story of Hope amidst Poverty, of optimism amidst anguish, and of Love in troubled times. I really appreciate the way the movie showed that life's varied experiences, which during the time they are experienced seems so dark, also leads to a high moral confidence and capability to face problems and never loose hope. Watch it.”
The real heroes in the movie are the kids like Azharuddin and Rubina. While the former reportedly said that he was very, very very…. Happy, and the latter’s neighbor who watched her grow up commented that it was like happiness falling from the sky. There can be no doubt about their happiness. Now they are getting government flats too. I do not know whether they have become ‘millionaires’ but they have really made it out of the black hole of poverty. That is their destiny and let us rejoice.
India has never lacked talent. Here is the gauntlet for all those people who want an ‘all Indian win’ at the Oscars (if there can be something as hundred percent as that!) Since no one has ever stopped them, let all the famous filmmakers and actors/ actresses in India unite for once and make a project that wins such an ‘all Indian’ Oscar rather than cribbing about it! Jae Ho! Victory be yours!
Notes:
1. Ma Tujhe Salaam are the words of a Hindi song composed by AR Rahman. It means, “I salute thee Mother.” Mother in this case is Mother India.
2. The quotation about what Mark Tully said has been taken from the audiobook Mark Tully’s India. (punctuation mine).
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/999985.stm ‘Indian teachers for UK schools’ (Tuesday, 31 October, 2000).
4. Sadly, the movie is yet to start showing in Japan. It will only start in the later part of April 2009 though all the other movies made last year (including super flops!) have been screened in movie theatres here. It would be interesting to see how people here react to the movie here. May be dubbing it into Japanese is taking a lot of time? Efforts are being made by NHK, the national television in Japan which produced a series of programs on India, and some Japanese authors who have started showing and writing about India with fresh insight. A welcome change maybe?
5. Unlike what is being said by many critics, this movie has many elements of popular Bollywood Hindi movies too, albeit in more refined, subtler and newly repackaged form. It has the hero, the heroine, the villains who trouble the heroine, a thriller plot, and truimph of the hero as he wins his heroine in the end, with dance and music. And, unlike many Bollywood movies, this movie does not project breaking the law as something heroic. Think about it!
6. Even Satyajit Ray was accused of ‘selling’ poverty when he made Pather Panchali in 1955. His movie was based on a novel written before independence (1929). The novel was Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's first as a novelist and the film was Satyajit Ray's debut as a director. Five decades after Pather Panchali the film, the critics are being shameless because we still seem to have enough abundance of poverty to ‘sell’ for probably another five decades!!
Monday, March 23, 2009
It's A Small World
Written by: Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman
It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all
There is just one moon
And one golden sun
And a smile means Friendship to ev'ryone
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all I
t's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world
To listen to the tune click on this link:
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/smworld.htm
It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all
There is just one moon
And one golden sun
And a smile means Friendship to ev'ryone
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all I
t's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world
To listen to the tune click on this link:
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/smworld.htm
Friday, March 20, 2009
Good quotes
The eternal child speaks:
"You understand, Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes." The teacher said she understood. Pippi speaks in Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.
On knowledge:
"Knowledge is not a direct means to good: its action is remote. An exact knowledge of the dates of the Kings and Queens of England will put no one into a flutter. Knowledge is a food of infinite potential value which must be assimilated by the intellect and imagination before it can become positively valuable. Only when it has been so assimilated does it become a direct means to good states of mind; but without this food both intellect and imagination tend to grow stunted and wry, are in danger even of starving to death." From Civilization, An Essay (The Sense of Values) by Clive Bell.
A little food for thought ...
"You understand, Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes." The teacher said she understood. Pippi speaks in Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.
On knowledge:
"Knowledge is not a direct means to good: its action is remote. An exact knowledge of the dates of the Kings and Queens of England will put no one into a flutter. Knowledge is a food of infinite potential value which must be assimilated by the intellect and imagination before it can become positively valuable. Only when it has been so assimilated does it become a direct means to good states of mind; but without this food both intellect and imagination tend to grow stunted and wry, are in danger even of starving to death." From Civilization, An Essay (The Sense of Values) by Clive Bell.
A little food for thought ...
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Bystander Non-Intervention Theory
When I was a student at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, in the year 2001, one day I was on my way to class at eight thirty in the morning. I had a small presentation to make that day, so after preparing late into the night, I got up early in the morning, had a prolonged bath, put on my best ironed clothes, had a bite of breakfast and was on my way. It was then it happened. I felt a sharp object penetrate into my flesh somewhere at the back near my spine at waist height where I was wearing my belt to keep my trousers in place. Instinct told me I had been stabbed by a knife. It must have taken a fraction of a second as I “slowly” wheeled around to face my attacker, hitting out blindly with my students’ rucksack that had a couple of heavy bricklike paper dictionaries in it. My attacker, stunned by this sudden blow, crouched low and prepared to spring straight at my throat, and at the same time I realized that my assailant was a huge stray dog that was drooling with saliva and baying for my blood. The knife had been dog fangs. Mortified with fear, I held out my bag as a shield to protect my Adams apple that the beast was aiming for. Meanwhile, I was screaming for help at the top of my lungs, clutching my bag in front of me with all my strength, and aiming hard kicks at the rabid brute with my leather shoes. In JNU most students used to wear chappals or rubber flipflops/ sandals. I used to do the same, but on that day I had my prized shoes on because it was a “special” day and I have never thanked God any less for the coincidence of me wearing the sturdy leather shoes that was such a great weapon compared to bare skin as for saving my life. Scared to death, my kicks luckily found their target more often than not and once I managed to deal a smashing blow right below the chin of the animal (the sound of the crack of bone confirmed that the right spot had been hit). That made it yelp in pain and widened the distance between us enough for me to make my escape. I must have broken the Olympic hundred meters record that day as I rushed back through the gates of my dormitory. Unfortunately, people do not get gold medals for running for their lives.
The incident happened on a clear patch of land surrounded by the in-campus residences of professors teaching at this famous university. It was a short cut way for students just outside the gate of the students’ dormitory. I was in the clearing being attacked by that dog and shouting for help as the professors and their families watched me through their windows. I heard something like: “The dog is mad. Hit it! Hit it!” That was all! None of them came out with a stick in hand to help me as the dog took away chunks of my flesh and meat from exposed areas. If only someone had come out running with a stick, the dog might have been scared away. But it did not happen. “The anonymity and alienation of big city life makes people hard and unfeeling.”[1] We are talking of the families and professors, the educated elite, of one of the best universities in India. We are also talking about India, the country that produces the largest number of movies in Bollywood, that show individual heroes fighting twenty armed men single handed and bare fisted and winning it! An on screen hero can win with a colt revolver against a battery of semi-automatic light machine guns. Unfortunately, life is not a movie and no hero was there to save me except my own clean pair of heels.
Later, when I went to the medical clinic inside the campus with my roommate after shocking him out of his sleep, I learnt that I was the last of fourteen people who had been bitten by the dog since early that morning.
Psychologists call this the bystander effect/ problem. Wikipedia defines that the bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer to help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.[2]
This is not unique of India as some of the following cases will show. What produces this effect? One of the reasons certainly is fear. No one wants to be in the same position as the suffering victim. No one wants to be hurt in the process of trying to save someone else, especially if it is a stranger one does not know. It could be about ‘saving face’. No one wants to look foolish in front of other people while trying to attempt helping another person in front of others. “They may also be afraid of being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance.”[3] People are also afraid of being involved in embarrassing legal situations with the police or having to face liability lawsuits. This is as true in the United States as in Japan and India. An individual seeing the inaction of others may judge the circumstances as less serious than s/he would if s/he is alone. There is also diffusion of responsibility. When many people are around that could make an individual less liable to act. These are the theories behind the problem.
Yet both Hollywood and Bollywood make so many movies of heroes who save thousands of lives. And actually, there are thousands of people who even sacrifice their lives to save people in distress in real life. They are the exceptions rather than the rule and that is why governments of nations have honors and medals for such acts of bravery. Such people show unique calmness and exemplary heroism in crisis, and are a rare species that exist probably in all countries in varying numbers. The president of India honors children and adults for acts of bravery on January 26th every year celebrated as Republic Day in India. School books teach us stories of valor and how to help people in need. In India there is a local proverb which means that a person who allows a crime to happen in front of his eyes is as much a sinner as the person who actually did the misdeed. We are taught that it is bad and cowardly not to help someone in need. But how many people actually do that? Many do and many don’t is the right answer. Some people take initiative and a lot don’t. And many dither and in that time of indecision, the incident is over. The situation in this case could have been different if fellow students had been there to help me. No sooner had the news of the dog attack spread in my dormitory than a group of students armed with sticks rushed out in search of the dog to prevent any more casualties. And there were none after that.
Given below are various cases taken from different sources that show this kind of apathy. And the argument here is that, such behavior could be partly overcome with training and reform of the education system. The ambiguity in bystander apathy lies in the judgment and interpretation of the situation, i.e. whether the bystander perceives it as an emergency enough to take law into his own hands and act, or not.
Jesse Sokolovsky’s case, Cultural Clash on the Kyoto Subway, is a typical example of this kind of apathy which is what the bystander effect is about. [4]This happened in Kyoto, Japan, while three Americans Tom, Dick and Harry were boarding a subway train. Dick and Harry got on the train ahead of Tom, and Tom tried to board a different car where it seemed likely that he would get a seat. But he slipped and his leg got stuck in the gap between the train and the platform. Speechless with panic, he looked around for help. People just stared at Tom as he struggled to free his leg and just about managed to board the train before the doors closed. Tom could have been in serious trouble if the train started moving with his leg still stuck. In the book, the author and the discussants have analyzed the case from a cultural point of view and about the technicalities of ‘fool-proof’ safety of the subway system in Japan. In the absence of statistical data, it is difficult to analyze this case in technical detail and cultural allusions alone may not be the formula for an answer to the problem. Nevertheless, it is another typical case that portrays the bystander problem, which may or may not have to do with the difference between individualism and collectivism. (We will come to this later).
The Genovese effect started serious research on this issue. Kitty Genovese, a young woman, was stabbed to death in 1964, in the middle of a street in a residential section of New York City. It was originally reported that 38 people witnessed the incident but failed to raise alarm. Newspapers at that time claimed that the US of A had become a cold and uncaring society. Decades later, it was claimed that those newspaper reports had been exaggerated, there were fewer than 38 witnesses and police had been contacted during the attack.[5] It was also presumptuous to assume that the entire nation had become cold and indifferent when the incident occurred in New York.
The time factor or the duration of the incident is important. The Genovese case involved thirty minutes. But though no one measured the time period of the Kyoto case or the case of dog bite, we can safely say that they were short duration cases. The dog attack must have happened within a minute’s time though time seemed to stand still and it looked like five minutes. In Japan, train doors usually open and shut within a few seconds though the station staff and conductor wait to make sure that all people have boarded and no one is near the doors before shutting the doors. This often makes for extra seconds or even a minute before the doors are shut. The trains are made in a way that they will not move unless the doors are properly shut. The time factor determines whether a response from the bystander can be elicited or not. There are those who react instantly to situations, but most of the people are actually taking time to make up their minds. This is what creates the time lag in a response though by and large most of the bystanders are mentally concerned and affected by the incident. Darley and Latane wrote in their paper about their experiment, ‘Subjects who failed to report the emergency showed few signs of the apathy and indifference thought to characterize “unresponsive bystanders.”’ (p. 381-382). Even the participants who did not report the emergency were nervous and asked about the welfare of the victim when the experimenter returned to the room to diffuse the situation.
The danger levels of the cases are different. In the stabbing incident, bystanders were in danger of being harmed if they tried to get directly involved. The Kyoto case has no direct danger to the onlookers. Tom was in grave personal danger of ending up as a cripple for the rest of his life. The dog could have killed if it got to the throat. But there was the bag as a shield and the people watching the scene could have thought that a young man could keep a dog in check. There was a chance of the dog biting people coming out to help, but if they came armed with sticks and in large numbers, there was a chance of it being scared off too. Personal danger is high in all the three cases but bystander danger has different levels in the three different cases respectively. Also, fear is the added element for bystanders in the Genovese and dog bite case, whereas, apathy and reluctance to get involved in an incident concerning a foreigner that could bring up unpleasant legal formalities is predominant in the Kyoto case. The Genovese case and Kyoto case have high legal risks in terms of possibility, while the dog bite case is low on that aspect. But in all the cases raising an alarm would have helped even if no one got personally involved.
The fear factor is important both in the case of the victim and the bystanders. Optimum arousal occurs when the heart beat rate of an individual is between 115 to 145 beats per minute. Sportsmen have been reported to have a heartbeat at the top of this range when performing at their best. After 145, complex motor skills tend to break down, and after 175 there is absolute breakdown of cognitive processing. [6]
Little research on the gender factor has been done regarding the bystander problem. As males and females are brought up in fundamentally different ways in most countries, their reactions under stress could be different. This is not made clear by the few experiments that have been done and needs further exploration. Also, in predominantly male societies, men may be expected to take the initiative in emergency situations. This also requires much debate and deliberation. Size of a person, skin color, gender, etc. do play a part, big or small, though there is a tendency to deny it as obsoletes in this ‘modern’ age.
In developed countries, the matter is sometimes best left to specialists in some rare instances. I was staying in an apartment in Japan. One summer evening I was having tea in my room with the window open to tempt in some breeze, when there was a sudden squealing of tires, the loud sound of a bump and a woman’s voice shrieking like crazy. I rushed out into my verandah and found that a small boy had been hit by a car on the road outside. The mother was screaming over her child and hurling abuses at the driver of the car, and the driver visibly shaken, was trying to make a phone call with his mobile phone and asking the mother not to touch the child. A Japanese young man had stopped his bicycle and was voluntarily guiding oncoming vehicles out of the way. A doctor from a clinic down the street soon reached the spot and was giving first aid. It was twenty minutes before the ambulance arrived and a few more before the police reached the spot. Onlookers had gathered around but no one tried to meddle. As the medical staff told later, that had been a good thing because in case of head injuries, moving the victim could sometimes be fatal. It also shows the presence of mind of the driver of the car that hit the child, who kept the panic stricken mother from moving her child in any way. Some elderly people living in the vicinity helped clean up the spot after the police had finished their investigations.
Highlights of this case:
・ Not moving the child had been important. Any “help” in that direction could have been dangerous.
・ The child was hit when the mother and the child were trying to cross a road from behind a bus that had stopped at the bus stop. Why was the mother not holding the hand of her child while crossing the road right in the middle when the signal was green for vehicles?
・ Too many cooks spoil the broth. One person was enough to control the traffic. Someone had the brainwave to fetch the doctor at the local clinic nearby. Someone had informed the ambulance and police. Other helpers would have been redundant and only an obstacle.
・ Even in a country like Japan, with hospitals quite near to that area, it took twenty minutes before an ambulance arrived. What are the logistical problems?
・ The ambulance staffs were expert in putting the child on the stretcher without moving his head. This was a specialists’ job.
・ Elderly neighbors cleaned up the spot rather than wait for the municipal authorities to do it. The police had done their job and given them permission. Waiting for the municipality would only have obstructed traffic for a longer period and lead to more chaos.
・ Unlike the Kyoto case and the dog bite case, there was time for bystanders to react. They had a full twenty minutes to take initiatives before the ambulance finally arrived.
・ There were the unconcerned too, who did not have the time to stop and provide moral support, or just hurried out of the spot to avoid getting involved. It did not matter in this case.
Conclusion:
In case of split second incidents, one person taking the initiative could change the whole scenario. Hollywood and Bollywood serve a purpose too. The positive side is that they give hope over despair and ambition to some people to do things differently and try and save people from threatening situations. Prior training and education can help people react better to emergency situations as is evident from the positive results obtained from earthquake training or disaster drills.[7] As Professor Yamaoka, a specialist on earthquakes at Nagoya University said, a severe earthquake is an emergency situation that happens only once in several decades or a hundred years. So the experience being passed on through generations or the lack of it is not the main factor. But mental preparation and participation in actual drills could make the situation much more manageable. During the Kobe earthquake many people helped others. Similarly, creating more awareness and an education system that trains response to emergency situations is important in solving the problem of bystander apathy.
We have discussed the following causes of the bystander effect, like diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance/ ambiguity in an unfamiliar situation when people tend to look out to others for instruction and often mimic their inaction, and, the fear of blunder in front of a large crowd. There are other factors like social appropriateness/ privacy (as in case of hostilities between married or unmarried couples; people including the police usually do not interfere unless asked to), blind faith in a system as in Japan where everything goes smoothly in order (the train will not move and the authorities are certain to do something about it; the factor of human error is forgotten), misinterpretation of the Genovese case (a. exaggeration of initial reporting; and b. social factors like the feminist critique of male violence was yet to be established), erroneous interpretation of the situation by the bystanders, etc.
Stereotypes, especially in the media, magnify this problem. The New York incident drew news columns that talked of a cold and indifferent nation. When it happens in Japan, people tend to view it as a problem of ‘instruction awaiting Japanese’. One case of dowry or wife torture in India is enough to condemn the entire population and make foreigners think of India as just another backward country.
The bystander effect should not be categorized as a clash between individualism and collectivism as this problem has existed in both individualistic and collectivistic societies. In a globalizing world, there is lot of overlapping of both individualistic tendencies and collectivistic traits in the same nation, society or individual. Such societies are too complicated to be simply classified as one or the other. It is mostly a big city problem though rare cases may exist in smaller towns. The circumstances and causes could be very different from that of big cities. Uncontrollable fear, vulnerability and inability to make decisions are part of the problem. Awareness is the solution. This is a social problem and more versatile research is needed by manipulating social influence as suggested in the abstract of The Bystander Effect and the Passive Confederate: On the Interaction Between Theory and Method by Joseph W. Critelli and Kathy W. Keith.
The bystander effect can be avoided. The following information from BBC is relevant.[8]
Notice something is happening.
Interpret the situation as an emergency.
Assume personal responsibility.
Choose a form of assistance.
Implement assistance.
To avoid being a victim of the bystander effect:
1. Talk to people directly.
2. Make eye contact.
3. If possible, use people's names; if not, point.
4. Tell exactly which people to do what.
5. Do not yell indiscreetly for help but do let people know that it is an emergency situation.
Experts in various cultures could modify these rules keeping the local culture in mind to make them even more effective in that particular culture. And above all, it requires awareness and training not only to be able to take the initiative to act in an emergency situation but to be able to overcome ones panic and be able to point a finger at someone and shout for help (which is easier said than done).
References:
1. Darley & Latane 1968 Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 4, 377-383. http://www.nd.edu/~wcarbona/darley%20and%20latane%20-%20bystander%20intervention.pdf
2. Levine, Dr. Mark Rethinking Bystander Non-Intervention
http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine20050211T142024.pdf
3. http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/latane_bystand.html
Notes:
[1] Gladwell, Malcolm 2000 The Tipping Point. p. 27
[2] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect (Aronson, E., Akert, R. D., and Wilson, T. D. (2006). Social psychology (6th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall).
[3] Wikipedia: Social psychology research.
[4] Sokolovsky, Jesse 2005 Cultural Clash on the Kyoto Subway, ‘Different Cultures Different Interpretations – Incidents and Reflections with Focus on Japan,’ Edited by James Lassegard, Rajdeep Seth, Jesse Sokolovsky, Kayoko Takagi, Kyoko Tanaka, Nagoya University. p. 17
[5] http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine20070604T095238.pdf
[6] Gladwell, Malcolm 2005 Blink p. 229-231.
[7] How to Survive a Disaster http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810315,00.html
[8] www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A585362
The incident happened on a clear patch of land surrounded by the in-campus residences of professors teaching at this famous university. It was a short cut way for students just outside the gate of the students’ dormitory. I was in the clearing being attacked by that dog and shouting for help as the professors and their families watched me through their windows. I heard something like: “The dog is mad. Hit it! Hit it!” That was all! None of them came out with a stick in hand to help me as the dog took away chunks of my flesh and meat from exposed areas. If only someone had come out running with a stick, the dog might have been scared away. But it did not happen. “The anonymity and alienation of big city life makes people hard and unfeeling.”[1] We are talking of the families and professors, the educated elite, of one of the best universities in India. We are also talking about India, the country that produces the largest number of movies in Bollywood, that show individual heroes fighting twenty armed men single handed and bare fisted and winning it! An on screen hero can win with a colt revolver against a battery of semi-automatic light machine guns. Unfortunately, life is not a movie and no hero was there to save me except my own clean pair of heels.
Later, when I went to the medical clinic inside the campus with my roommate after shocking him out of his sleep, I learnt that I was the last of fourteen people who had been bitten by the dog since early that morning.
Psychologists call this the bystander effect/ problem. Wikipedia defines that the bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer to help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.[2]
This is not unique of India as some of the following cases will show. What produces this effect? One of the reasons certainly is fear. No one wants to be in the same position as the suffering victim. No one wants to be hurt in the process of trying to save someone else, especially if it is a stranger one does not know. It could be about ‘saving face’. No one wants to look foolish in front of other people while trying to attempt helping another person in front of others. “They may also be afraid of being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance.”[3] People are also afraid of being involved in embarrassing legal situations with the police or having to face liability lawsuits. This is as true in the United States as in Japan and India. An individual seeing the inaction of others may judge the circumstances as less serious than s/he would if s/he is alone. There is also diffusion of responsibility. When many people are around that could make an individual less liable to act. These are the theories behind the problem.
Yet both Hollywood and Bollywood make so many movies of heroes who save thousands of lives. And actually, there are thousands of people who even sacrifice their lives to save people in distress in real life. They are the exceptions rather than the rule and that is why governments of nations have honors and medals for such acts of bravery. Such people show unique calmness and exemplary heroism in crisis, and are a rare species that exist probably in all countries in varying numbers. The president of India honors children and adults for acts of bravery on January 26th every year celebrated as Republic Day in India. School books teach us stories of valor and how to help people in need. In India there is a local proverb which means that a person who allows a crime to happen in front of his eyes is as much a sinner as the person who actually did the misdeed. We are taught that it is bad and cowardly not to help someone in need. But how many people actually do that? Many do and many don’t is the right answer. Some people take initiative and a lot don’t. And many dither and in that time of indecision, the incident is over. The situation in this case could have been different if fellow students had been there to help me. No sooner had the news of the dog attack spread in my dormitory than a group of students armed with sticks rushed out in search of the dog to prevent any more casualties. And there were none after that.
Given below are various cases taken from different sources that show this kind of apathy. And the argument here is that, such behavior could be partly overcome with training and reform of the education system. The ambiguity in bystander apathy lies in the judgment and interpretation of the situation, i.e. whether the bystander perceives it as an emergency enough to take law into his own hands and act, or not.
Jesse Sokolovsky’s case, Cultural Clash on the Kyoto Subway, is a typical example of this kind of apathy which is what the bystander effect is about. [4]This happened in Kyoto, Japan, while three Americans Tom, Dick and Harry were boarding a subway train. Dick and Harry got on the train ahead of Tom, and Tom tried to board a different car where it seemed likely that he would get a seat. But he slipped and his leg got stuck in the gap between the train and the platform. Speechless with panic, he looked around for help. People just stared at Tom as he struggled to free his leg and just about managed to board the train before the doors closed. Tom could have been in serious trouble if the train started moving with his leg still stuck. In the book, the author and the discussants have analyzed the case from a cultural point of view and about the technicalities of ‘fool-proof’ safety of the subway system in Japan. In the absence of statistical data, it is difficult to analyze this case in technical detail and cultural allusions alone may not be the formula for an answer to the problem. Nevertheless, it is another typical case that portrays the bystander problem, which may or may not have to do with the difference between individualism and collectivism. (We will come to this later).
The Genovese effect started serious research on this issue. Kitty Genovese, a young woman, was stabbed to death in 1964, in the middle of a street in a residential section of New York City. It was originally reported that 38 people witnessed the incident but failed to raise alarm. Newspapers at that time claimed that the US of A had become a cold and uncaring society. Decades later, it was claimed that those newspaper reports had been exaggerated, there were fewer than 38 witnesses and police had been contacted during the attack.[5] It was also presumptuous to assume that the entire nation had become cold and indifferent when the incident occurred in New York.
The time factor or the duration of the incident is important. The Genovese case involved thirty minutes. But though no one measured the time period of the Kyoto case or the case of dog bite, we can safely say that they were short duration cases. The dog attack must have happened within a minute’s time though time seemed to stand still and it looked like five minutes. In Japan, train doors usually open and shut within a few seconds though the station staff and conductor wait to make sure that all people have boarded and no one is near the doors before shutting the doors. This often makes for extra seconds or even a minute before the doors are shut. The trains are made in a way that they will not move unless the doors are properly shut. The time factor determines whether a response from the bystander can be elicited or not. There are those who react instantly to situations, but most of the people are actually taking time to make up their minds. This is what creates the time lag in a response though by and large most of the bystanders are mentally concerned and affected by the incident. Darley and Latane wrote in their paper about their experiment, ‘Subjects who failed to report the emergency showed few signs of the apathy and indifference thought to characterize “unresponsive bystanders.”’ (p. 381-382). Even the participants who did not report the emergency were nervous and asked about the welfare of the victim when the experimenter returned to the room to diffuse the situation.
The danger levels of the cases are different. In the stabbing incident, bystanders were in danger of being harmed if they tried to get directly involved. The Kyoto case has no direct danger to the onlookers. Tom was in grave personal danger of ending up as a cripple for the rest of his life. The dog could have killed if it got to the throat. But there was the bag as a shield and the people watching the scene could have thought that a young man could keep a dog in check. There was a chance of the dog biting people coming out to help, but if they came armed with sticks and in large numbers, there was a chance of it being scared off too. Personal danger is high in all the three cases but bystander danger has different levels in the three different cases respectively. Also, fear is the added element for bystanders in the Genovese and dog bite case, whereas, apathy and reluctance to get involved in an incident concerning a foreigner that could bring up unpleasant legal formalities is predominant in the Kyoto case. The Genovese case and Kyoto case have high legal risks in terms of possibility, while the dog bite case is low on that aspect. But in all the cases raising an alarm would have helped even if no one got personally involved.
The fear factor is important both in the case of the victim and the bystanders. Optimum arousal occurs when the heart beat rate of an individual is between 115 to 145 beats per minute. Sportsmen have been reported to have a heartbeat at the top of this range when performing at their best. After 145, complex motor skills tend to break down, and after 175 there is absolute breakdown of cognitive processing. [6]
Little research on the gender factor has been done regarding the bystander problem. As males and females are brought up in fundamentally different ways in most countries, their reactions under stress could be different. This is not made clear by the few experiments that have been done and needs further exploration. Also, in predominantly male societies, men may be expected to take the initiative in emergency situations. This also requires much debate and deliberation. Size of a person, skin color, gender, etc. do play a part, big or small, though there is a tendency to deny it as obsoletes in this ‘modern’ age.
In developed countries, the matter is sometimes best left to specialists in some rare instances. I was staying in an apartment in Japan. One summer evening I was having tea in my room with the window open to tempt in some breeze, when there was a sudden squealing of tires, the loud sound of a bump and a woman’s voice shrieking like crazy. I rushed out into my verandah and found that a small boy had been hit by a car on the road outside. The mother was screaming over her child and hurling abuses at the driver of the car, and the driver visibly shaken, was trying to make a phone call with his mobile phone and asking the mother not to touch the child. A Japanese young man had stopped his bicycle and was voluntarily guiding oncoming vehicles out of the way. A doctor from a clinic down the street soon reached the spot and was giving first aid. It was twenty minutes before the ambulance arrived and a few more before the police reached the spot. Onlookers had gathered around but no one tried to meddle. As the medical staff told later, that had been a good thing because in case of head injuries, moving the victim could sometimes be fatal. It also shows the presence of mind of the driver of the car that hit the child, who kept the panic stricken mother from moving her child in any way. Some elderly people living in the vicinity helped clean up the spot after the police had finished their investigations.
Highlights of this case:
・ Not moving the child had been important. Any “help” in that direction could have been dangerous.
・ The child was hit when the mother and the child were trying to cross a road from behind a bus that had stopped at the bus stop. Why was the mother not holding the hand of her child while crossing the road right in the middle when the signal was green for vehicles?
・ Too many cooks spoil the broth. One person was enough to control the traffic. Someone had the brainwave to fetch the doctor at the local clinic nearby. Someone had informed the ambulance and police. Other helpers would have been redundant and only an obstacle.
・ Even in a country like Japan, with hospitals quite near to that area, it took twenty minutes before an ambulance arrived. What are the logistical problems?
・ The ambulance staffs were expert in putting the child on the stretcher without moving his head. This was a specialists’ job.
・ Elderly neighbors cleaned up the spot rather than wait for the municipal authorities to do it. The police had done their job and given them permission. Waiting for the municipality would only have obstructed traffic for a longer period and lead to more chaos.
・ Unlike the Kyoto case and the dog bite case, there was time for bystanders to react. They had a full twenty minutes to take initiatives before the ambulance finally arrived.
・ There were the unconcerned too, who did not have the time to stop and provide moral support, or just hurried out of the spot to avoid getting involved. It did not matter in this case.
Conclusion:
In case of split second incidents, one person taking the initiative could change the whole scenario. Hollywood and Bollywood serve a purpose too. The positive side is that they give hope over despair and ambition to some people to do things differently and try and save people from threatening situations. Prior training and education can help people react better to emergency situations as is evident from the positive results obtained from earthquake training or disaster drills.[7] As Professor Yamaoka, a specialist on earthquakes at Nagoya University said, a severe earthquake is an emergency situation that happens only once in several decades or a hundred years. So the experience being passed on through generations or the lack of it is not the main factor. But mental preparation and participation in actual drills could make the situation much more manageable. During the Kobe earthquake many people helped others. Similarly, creating more awareness and an education system that trains response to emergency situations is important in solving the problem of bystander apathy.
We have discussed the following causes of the bystander effect, like diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance/ ambiguity in an unfamiliar situation when people tend to look out to others for instruction and often mimic their inaction, and, the fear of blunder in front of a large crowd. There are other factors like social appropriateness/ privacy (as in case of hostilities between married or unmarried couples; people including the police usually do not interfere unless asked to), blind faith in a system as in Japan where everything goes smoothly in order (the train will not move and the authorities are certain to do something about it; the factor of human error is forgotten), misinterpretation of the Genovese case (a. exaggeration of initial reporting; and b. social factors like the feminist critique of male violence was yet to be established), erroneous interpretation of the situation by the bystanders, etc.
Stereotypes, especially in the media, magnify this problem. The New York incident drew news columns that talked of a cold and indifferent nation. When it happens in Japan, people tend to view it as a problem of ‘instruction awaiting Japanese’. One case of dowry or wife torture in India is enough to condemn the entire population and make foreigners think of India as just another backward country.
The bystander effect should not be categorized as a clash between individualism and collectivism as this problem has existed in both individualistic and collectivistic societies. In a globalizing world, there is lot of overlapping of both individualistic tendencies and collectivistic traits in the same nation, society or individual. Such societies are too complicated to be simply classified as one or the other. It is mostly a big city problem though rare cases may exist in smaller towns. The circumstances and causes could be very different from that of big cities. Uncontrollable fear, vulnerability and inability to make decisions are part of the problem. Awareness is the solution. This is a social problem and more versatile research is needed by manipulating social influence as suggested in the abstract of The Bystander Effect and the Passive Confederate: On the Interaction Between Theory and Method by Joseph W. Critelli and Kathy W. Keith.
The bystander effect can be avoided. The following information from BBC is relevant.[8]
Notice something is happening.
Interpret the situation as an emergency.
Assume personal responsibility.
Choose a form of assistance.
Implement assistance.
To avoid being a victim of the bystander effect:
1. Talk to people directly.
2. Make eye contact.
3. If possible, use people's names; if not, point.
4. Tell exactly which people to do what.
5. Do not yell indiscreetly for help but do let people know that it is an emergency situation.
Experts in various cultures could modify these rules keeping the local culture in mind to make them even more effective in that particular culture. And above all, it requires awareness and training not only to be able to take the initiative to act in an emergency situation but to be able to overcome ones panic and be able to point a finger at someone and shout for help (which is easier said than done).
References:
1. Darley & Latane 1968 Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 4, 377-383. http://www.nd.edu/~wcarbona/darley%20and%20latane%20-%20bystander%20intervention.pdf
2. Levine, Dr. Mark Rethinking Bystander Non-Intervention
http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine20050211T142024.pdf
3. http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/latane_bystand.html
Notes:
[1] Gladwell, Malcolm 2000 The Tipping Point. p. 27
[2] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect (Aronson, E., Akert, R. D., and Wilson, T. D. (2006). Social psychology (6th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall).
[3] Wikipedia: Social psychology research.
[4] Sokolovsky, Jesse 2005 Cultural Clash on the Kyoto Subway, ‘Different Cultures Different Interpretations – Incidents and Reflections with Focus on Japan,’ Edited by James Lassegard, Rajdeep Seth, Jesse Sokolovsky, Kayoko Takagi, Kyoko Tanaka, Nagoya University. p. 17
[5] http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine20070604T095238.pdf
[6] Gladwell, Malcolm 2005 Blink p. 229-231.
[7] How to Survive a Disaster http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810315,00.html
[8] www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A585362
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