Smita Pani: Re: [World Malayali Club] The Sinners

Dear fellow-Malayalis

കഴുതയ്ക്ക് അറിയാമോ കര്പ്പൂര വാസന?
എന്നാല് - കഴുതയ്ക്ക് അറിയാമ് നന്നായി കക്കൂസ് (മറക്കുഴി) വാസന  

പാപത്തിന്ടെ കൈക്കൂലി മരണമാണ് (റോമന്സ് 6. 23)

When an unknown budding philosopher offers his world-view for public consumption, the targeted consumers are entitled to inspect the new product to discover its defects, if any.  And to publicise their discoveries.

There is a saying among the English (and among the English-educated) that hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Such hope sprang in my breast when the world expert on sins and sinners, i.e. our erstwhile unlearned pandit, suddenly resorted to using the genteel old-English word "commode".

"Do not use the general forum as a commode of personal tensions," exhorts he.

As anyone knowing English will tell you, "commode" (still is use sometimes), derives from the Latin word "commodus" (meaning "suitable").  It means (1) a chest of drawers, (2) a small, low table with drawers or cabinet space, (3) a movable wash-stand, (4) a chair enclosing a chamber-pot.

In my travels in continental Europe and in Great Britain, I have noticed hand-carved ancient commodes (fitted with antique mirrors and soap and perfume-holders) of the first three descriptions in elegant country homes of titled families and in posh city apartments of the newly-emerging gentry.  They make a courtly and aristocratic accompaniment to ancient armour and heraldry displayed in the ornate premises.

My slim hope that our unlearned pandit, our  expert in sins and sinners had suddenly risen in rank to a connoisseur of classical furniture of the Western nobility who ruled India for two centuries, shattered into smithereens when my hosts at a recent reception held at the local American Embassy told me that in the United States "commode" has a totally different and pejorative meaning.

To the crude and rude European invaders and New England colonists who systematically annihilated the native populations of North America and seized their lands as war booty, a commode was nothing but a toilet, a latrine equivalent to the ubiquitous "out-house", a hole in the ground dug by early "settlers", and sometimes shielded from public view. 

Our unlearned pandit, our expert in sins and sinners had used the word in the last-mentioned sense.  In other words, he has now graduated to become an expert in toilets, latrines, privies, out-houses and places of defecation.

And, specifically, he has become just another cheap potty-mouth.

Perhaps, all is not lost just yet.

In the delightful modern Japanese tale of childhood and innocence, of discovery and of gradual maturing, "Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window", by Tetsubo Kuronayagi, published by Kodansha International Kinokuniya Company Ltd., a little girl, just starting kindergarten in a unique school which has abandoned but refurbished railway carriages for classrooms, suddenly loses her small purse down the school toilet.

She desperately tries to retrieve it, but initially fails, as she could not reach it.  Then, having "refused to shed tears or give up the purse as lost," she goes to the janitor's shed and gets a large, long-handled wooden ladle used for watering the garden.  She goes to look for, and finds, the cesspool into which the school toilet empties.  She lifts with difficulty the round concrete manhole cover.  Then she starts ladling out the contents of the cesspool.

The headmaster happens to pass by and asks her what she is doing.  "I dropped my purse," she replies and carries on with her task.  "You'll put it all back when you have finished, won't you?" asks the understanding headmaster, coming around after she had worked for some time.  "Yes," she replies.  And she does just that.  She never found her purse.

Let our Potty-Mouth draw what lesson he will from this enchanting tale of childly virtue.

We now come to another unearned professional qualification of our Potty-Mouth pandit-expert.

He repeats his earlier counsel, couched slightly differently:-

Do not treat the forum as an outlet for personal tensions.

Potty-Mouth now poses as a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a researcher into and diagnostician of personal tensions, their existence, their cause and their cure, perhaps even runs a treatment centre (consisting of an array of different commodes of his choice and manufacture).

If we were to stand on its head this sage counsel of universal wisdom, what do we get?

He himself vented his personal frustrations and tensions, not omitting his personal prejudices against bankers and educationalists, against left-handers and against social non-conformists, by using this august forum as an outlet, as a convenient commode.  My reaction to this "tarring everyone with the same brush" and branding every living human as a "sinner", did not evoke from Potty-Mouth a retraction or an apology.

No, instead, there was a plunge into further pillorying of our financial institutions, of our educational institutions, of our teachers who awarded "low marks" when justified to below-average students, of the concerned and unhappy parents of such students.

Instead of offering help and encouragement to do better next time, they were heaped with abuse.

May we look at the Christian Gospels?  In Matthew 21. 26 - 29, Lord Jesus Christ himself praises banks and those who invest.  His exact words, upbraiding a non-investor:-

"Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knowest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strowed:  thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own money EVEN WITH USURY.

"For unto every one who hath shall be given (more), and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

Our our Potty-Mouth screams in large font that his intention was:-

"just to highlight the plight of those who are ostracized and to show how easily one is ostracized.  My topic is branding people as sinners unjustly."

Who else but he alone, is branding unjustly the unfortunates and the victims of circumstance as sinners, to be condemned, even to be killed off?

What salvation is he offering, in all good faith, to save these "sinners" from their unsought predicament?  To integrate the "ostracised" into the society of the "ostracisers"?  What is his cure for these ills he claims to have identified in our imperfect society?  Pointing accusing fingers at everyone while leaning over from the top of an ivory tower?

Is running and hiding his only answer?  Besides resorting to potty-mouthing?

As to "derision and denigration":  when someone provokes controversy by parading his ignorance and condemning those who should be pitied and succoured, then he invites careful scrutiny of his chosen words, expressed boldly and emphatically in public -- even if those words merit derision and denigration.  And refutation.

പോത്തിന്ടെ പുറത്ത് മഴ പേഞ്യാല് പാഠം പഠിക്കുമോ പോത്ത് ?  

S Narayanaswamy