There was an article the other day about how three of the top heroines of Bollywood have not changed their hairstyle at all in the past many years. They continue to have ‘long’ hair and have only experimented with colouring and maybe layering.
After studying hairstyles of Bollywood actresses on his recent visit to India, Hollywood hairstylist Sam McKnight said “…they’re stuck in the ’80s, as they don’t experiment”. Aishwarya Rai, Karina Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Sonam, Preety etc. continue to sport long stresses that help them to keep their hands busy during interviews—flicking it back, to the side or side to side.
Well! The Indian nari is classically picturised with long tresses. One of the samudrika lakshanams is long, black, beautifully thick hair. In fact the traditional pativratas like Sita, Draupadi, Devaki (Krishna’s Mom) had long and beautiful hair. When the bad guys like Ravana, Duryodhana, Dushasana and Kamsa grabbed their ‘scented hair’ their final fate was sealed and it was the cue for Yama to mark them down for the next ticket to his lokam.
Indian women are reluctant to experiment with short hairstyles and the blame can be laid at the door of Indian men who are obsessed with long tresses. Remember, hair was also associated with ‘sumangali’ status and the lack of it denoted widowhood. Even today Indian women do not have hair styles to please themselves, but kowtow to family and society. In fact women with short hair are labeled ‘bold’.
Indian actresses are also part of this tradition and very few have short hair. Those who do are generally the femme fatales types like Urmila and Mandira Bedi. When the stars have to sport short hair they resort to wigs.
Hair dressing salons used to be for men. A few years ago only beauty parlours had hair dressers as part of their services. Today in urban areas specialized hair salons are coming into existence.
If it is a bad man on TV or films they all sport long hair and unkempt beards. Many urbane men are now growing their hair! So finally there may be a leveling of sexes—at least in the length of their hair!
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Nobel Prize and South India
The seventh in an official list to win the Nobel Prize is Venkataraman Ramakrishnan, this laureate is the third such awardee from Tamil Nadu. The list starts with Rabindranath Tagore (1913 Literature) and is followed by C V Raman (Medicine 1930), Khorana (Medicine 1968), Mother Teresa (Peace Prize 1979), Subramanian Chandrashekar (nephew of C V Raman; Physics 1983), and Amartya Sen (Economics 1998). Two more names Naipaul (Literature 2001) a person of Indian origin and Ronald Ross (born in Almora, Medicine 1902) are associated closely with our country.
South India has been the cradle for a great deal of people associated with research, writing, medicine, sciences and mathematics. It has also seen a huge brain drain and has exported some of the best brains in every field to the rest of the world. The Brahmin and upper castes have had to necessarily leave their shores to establish themselves in more friendly and encouraging surroundings. This section of society was legitimately denied seats in universities and jobs based on merit and achievement as the bias was towards other communities.
Today, these NRI’s, from the Middle East and US and UK are sending money back home to set up their parents in better surroundings, to invest in real estate and to establish a home away from their current dwellings to come back to in case of need or after retirement. These NRI’s have got together and in fresh pastures have built temples, churches and other holy places, social organizations and associations that keeps alive and flourishing the values and traditions that they have left behind.
There was a joke that was popular: Hillary climbed the Everest with a lot of stress, adventures and great difficulties. He reached the top, turned around and said, “I am the first man to climb the highest mountain on earth” and let out a roar of exultation.
An echo came back, “Saar! What about a cup of hot tea?” A South Indian, some versions specify as Nair, had already set up shop!!
South India has been the cradle for a great deal of people associated with research, writing, medicine, sciences and mathematics. It has also seen a huge brain drain and has exported some of the best brains in every field to the rest of the world. The Brahmin and upper castes have had to necessarily leave their shores to establish themselves in more friendly and encouraging surroundings. This section of society was legitimately denied seats in universities and jobs based on merit and achievement as the bias was towards other communities.
Today, these NRI’s, from the Middle East and US and UK are sending money back home to set up their parents in better surroundings, to invest in real estate and to establish a home away from their current dwellings to come back to in case of need or after retirement. These NRI’s have got together and in fresh pastures have built temples, churches and other holy places, social organizations and associations that keeps alive and flourishing the values and traditions that they have left behind.
There was a joke that was popular: Hillary climbed the Everest with a lot of stress, adventures and great difficulties. He reached the top, turned around and said, “I am the first man to climb the highest mountain on earth” and let out a roar of exultation.
An echo came back, “Saar! What about a cup of hot tea?” A South Indian, some versions specify as Nair, had already set up shop!!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Colour Yellow
When you think of the colour yellow in India, the yellow signifies the auspicious element of any festival.
Yellow is the colour that strikes the eye first in the spectrum of colours. It is a sign of auspiciousness in India and no function or festivity begins without turmeric. Just a blob of haldi paste is worshipped as Ganesha in all pujas. Wedding invitations are printed in South India in yellow and pink paper and smeared with haldi paste before being given personally or posted to invitees. The bride begins her wedding celebrations with a ‘haldi’ ceremony where the girl is liberally smeared with haldi and sandalwood paste by all the near and dear ones leaving her at the end of the ceremony in a yellow daze. The caterer draws up a list of all the provisions needed for festive meals beginning with haldi kumkum.
Women whose husbands are alive are honoured with haldi kumkum as the incarnation of Shakthi. Such women customarily smear turmeric on their faces after a bath and present a distinctly jaundiced look. It is also an important healing, anti-bacterial root with medicinal qualities that merits small print on tubs of off-the-shelf remedies for all possible illnesses. Gold too is popularly called as the yellow metal.
Traffic police in cities have liberally used their brush and yellow paint to decorate the middle of the roads with flourishes of yellow stripes that signal dangerous and accident-prone areas to the man or woman on wheels. For traffic on the roads, the colour yellow signals caution and has the best long distance visual impact. Though the middle light on traffic signals is traditionally amber, it is most often in this city just pure yellow—that is: when it works.
Yellow is also a priority sign and used as a switching light. School buses are yellow, signalling to other traffic to take care when approaching as such vehicles are normally loaded with screaming, undisciplined children. Life jackets, badminton and tennis balls are yellow as well. In many countries yellow and orange is used as colour for danger materials. Yellow-black stripes mark pedestrian or zebra crossings and it is also the badge of the blind. The "yellow card" is shown to football-players as a warning sign. A yellow flag on a ship means an epidemic disease on board. In the animal kingdom yellow—fire-salamander, hornet, wasps—as well as red means a warning and is a sign for poison.
Warm gold-yellow in its effect is quite different from the conflicting effect of shrill lemon yellow. The former symbolises light, cheerfulness and warmth and effects stimulation. In his theory of colours Goethe wrote "In its highest pureness it always brings the nature of the light with it and has a cheerful, merry, soft delightful quality…it is used for the shining things in painting”. Yellow was also the favourite colour of Vincent van Gogh. At the beginning he used yellow ochre and later added Cadmium yellow or Chrome yellow to his palette ("Sunflowers" of 1888). He converted the light of his landscapes into colour. For him light symbolised the sun of the South, cheerfulness, but friendship and love as well. In his paintings the yellow always appeared in accordance with his complimentary colour blue- the symbol of power and completeness of life.
Kandinsky describes shrill yellow in his book "About the spiritual in art" as inducing a disquieting effect. “If watched directly it disquiets you, upsets, excites and shows the character of the violence, ….an obtrusive effect on your mind. This quality of the yellow colour can be increased to a level, which the eye and the mind cannot stand….until it sounds like a very loud played trumpet."
As the colour yellow was easily "soiled" by other dyestuffs, it began to be associated with disgust, as the colour of pus and of leprosy. Yellow sputum is a signal of lung infection and yellowed eyes and urine signal jaundice. A yellow flag on a house showed that the plague was raging there. According to medieval medicine the cause for any imbalance in the human system was the gall bladder. A yellow coloured skin was a symbol for trouble, everlasting envy, jealousy and stinginess.
Jews, as a symbol of discrimination in the 12th century, had to wear a yellow hat. During the Nazi regime they were humiliated and forced to wear a yellow star badge on their sleeves. Western actors avoid the colour yellow—like the plague. Theatres never have yellow curtains, as this is said to cause misfortune.
The colour is also associated with prejudice and cowardice. A traitor or a lawbreaker in the villages of Tamil Nadu is dressed in a yellow loin cloth, seated back to front on donkeys, decorated with black and red spots and driven out of the village. On the other hand yellow clothes symbolised somebody observing a fast or undergoing a penance. The Muruga devotee bearing kavadis wears yellow and so do Tirupati Balaji’s pilgrims and mendicants. Lord Vishnu is traditionally dressed in Pitambaram, the lovely shade of yellow that contains the root word-umbre, which is common in Latin tongues as well
So wherever you see yellow remember it can mean anything ranging from warmth and cheerfulness, through warning and danger to disease and pestilence with associations of discrimination, cowardice, devotion and divinity as well.
Yellow is the colour that strikes the eye first in the spectrum of colours. It is a sign of auspiciousness in India and no function or festivity begins without turmeric. Just a blob of haldi paste is worshipped as Ganesha in all pujas. Wedding invitations are printed in South India in yellow and pink paper and smeared with haldi paste before being given personally or posted to invitees. The bride begins her wedding celebrations with a ‘haldi’ ceremony where the girl is liberally smeared with haldi and sandalwood paste by all the near and dear ones leaving her at the end of the ceremony in a yellow daze. The caterer draws up a list of all the provisions needed for festive meals beginning with haldi kumkum.
Women whose husbands are alive are honoured with haldi kumkum as the incarnation of Shakthi. Such women customarily smear turmeric on their faces after a bath and present a distinctly jaundiced look. It is also an important healing, anti-bacterial root with medicinal qualities that merits small print on tubs of off-the-shelf remedies for all possible illnesses. Gold too is popularly called as the yellow metal.
Traffic police in cities have liberally used their brush and yellow paint to decorate the middle of the roads with flourishes of yellow stripes that signal dangerous and accident-prone areas to the man or woman on wheels. For traffic on the roads, the colour yellow signals caution and has the best long distance visual impact. Though the middle light on traffic signals is traditionally amber, it is most often in this city just pure yellow—that is: when it works.
Yellow is also a priority sign and used as a switching light. School buses are yellow, signalling to other traffic to take care when approaching as such vehicles are normally loaded with screaming, undisciplined children. Life jackets, badminton and tennis balls are yellow as well. In many countries yellow and orange is used as colour for danger materials. Yellow-black stripes mark pedestrian or zebra crossings and it is also the badge of the blind. The "yellow card" is shown to football-players as a warning sign. A yellow flag on a ship means an epidemic disease on board. In the animal kingdom yellow—fire-salamander, hornet, wasps—as well as red means a warning and is a sign for poison.
Warm gold-yellow in its effect is quite different from the conflicting effect of shrill lemon yellow. The former symbolises light, cheerfulness and warmth and effects stimulation. In his theory of colours Goethe wrote "In its highest pureness it always brings the nature of the light with it and has a cheerful, merry, soft delightful quality…it is used for the shining things in painting”. Yellow was also the favourite colour of Vincent van Gogh. At the beginning he used yellow ochre and later added Cadmium yellow or Chrome yellow to his palette ("Sunflowers" of 1888). He converted the light of his landscapes into colour. For him light symbolised the sun of the South, cheerfulness, but friendship and love as well. In his paintings the yellow always appeared in accordance with his complimentary colour blue- the symbol of power and completeness of life.
Kandinsky describes shrill yellow in his book "About the spiritual in art" as inducing a disquieting effect. “If watched directly it disquiets you, upsets, excites and shows the character of the violence, ….an obtrusive effect on your mind. This quality of the yellow colour can be increased to a level, which the eye and the mind cannot stand….until it sounds like a very loud played trumpet."
As the colour yellow was easily "soiled" by other dyestuffs, it began to be associated with disgust, as the colour of pus and of leprosy. Yellow sputum is a signal of lung infection and yellowed eyes and urine signal jaundice. A yellow flag on a house showed that the plague was raging there. According to medieval medicine the cause for any imbalance in the human system was the gall bladder. A yellow coloured skin was a symbol for trouble, everlasting envy, jealousy and stinginess.
Jews, as a symbol of discrimination in the 12th century, had to wear a yellow hat. During the Nazi regime they were humiliated and forced to wear a yellow star badge on their sleeves. Western actors avoid the colour yellow—like the plague. Theatres never have yellow curtains, as this is said to cause misfortune.
The colour is also associated with prejudice and cowardice. A traitor or a lawbreaker in the villages of Tamil Nadu is dressed in a yellow loin cloth, seated back to front on donkeys, decorated with black and red spots and driven out of the village. On the other hand yellow clothes symbolised somebody observing a fast or undergoing a penance. The Muruga devotee bearing kavadis wears yellow and so do Tirupati Balaji’s pilgrims and mendicants. Lord Vishnu is traditionally dressed in Pitambaram, the lovely shade of yellow that contains the root word-umbre, which is common in Latin tongues as well
So wherever you see yellow remember it can mean anything ranging from warmth and cheerfulness, through warning and danger to disease and pestilence with associations of discrimination, cowardice, devotion and divinity as well.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
FAMILY VALUES AND TRADITIONS
Human birth is a rare privilege say the Hindu Shastras. It is the result of our punya karma, accumulated over several births. Human beings are also endowed with the unique capacity of “free will” that governs their actions. This makes them choose their path do things that benefit family and society or to do things contrary to the natural order.
Many Indians trace their birth to the lineage of a sage or gotra. This is a blood lineage that has lost its relevance with intra and inter-marriages. It is the patriarch or the matriarch of a family who establishes the values and traditions for all its members. This may include upholding dharma (interpreted as fairness and honesty in this case) following principles, love for learning and erudition, observance of tradition and culture, philanthropy, hospitality and conserving resources—monetary, interpersonal and intrapersonal.
The problem arises when the head of the family has an overpowering personality and dislikes losing power and omits to facilitate the transition smoothly. They do not plan a proper line of succession, not only monetarily but also to carry on the traditions and values. A modification in these values and traditions do take place in the changing generations. New and better ones may take their place or they could be eroded.
Many of the younger generation bask in the glory of their ancestors for all the wrong reasons and lead a shadow existence without building up on the base already established. They fail to develop their own identity and do not recognize that their birth in a family is Eswara prasada or a divine gift. In many families, with the break up of the joint family system the observance of traditions and upholding values is becoming more and more difficult. Migration, distances, lack of the proper infrastructure is leading to what is being called simplification in rituals and rites. On the other hand there are some people who go to a great extent to keep the home atmosphere alive in spite of physical difficulties. Festivals, rituals are observed and traditions passed on to a new generation.
However values may be difficult to observe and sustain in a particular environment. Take vegetarianism or abstaining from liquor. In modern times these traditions are losing their importance. Of course, when people become older, the call of roots and family traditions become stronger and these practices are dusted and resurrected.
Only when an individual lives and follows traditions and values with an open mind, does the family background become meaningful. Claims of birth merely establish monetary or situational superiority. When we understand and apply a particular ‘value’, it becomes easy to observe with all its merit in daily lives.
Many Indians trace their birth to the lineage of a sage or gotra. This is a blood lineage that has lost its relevance with intra and inter-marriages. It is the patriarch or the matriarch of a family who establishes the values and traditions for all its members. This may include upholding dharma (interpreted as fairness and honesty in this case) following principles, love for learning and erudition, observance of tradition and culture, philanthropy, hospitality and conserving resources—monetary, interpersonal and intrapersonal.
The problem arises when the head of the family has an overpowering personality and dislikes losing power and omits to facilitate the transition smoothly. They do not plan a proper line of succession, not only monetarily but also to carry on the traditions and values. A modification in these values and traditions do take place in the changing generations. New and better ones may take their place or they could be eroded.
Many of the younger generation bask in the glory of their ancestors for all the wrong reasons and lead a shadow existence without building up on the base already established. They fail to develop their own identity and do not recognize that their birth in a family is Eswara prasada or a divine gift. In many families, with the break up of the joint family system the observance of traditions and upholding values is becoming more and more difficult. Migration, distances, lack of the proper infrastructure is leading to what is being called simplification in rituals and rites. On the other hand there are some people who go to a great extent to keep the home atmosphere alive in spite of physical difficulties. Festivals, rituals are observed and traditions passed on to a new generation.
However values may be difficult to observe and sustain in a particular environment. Take vegetarianism or abstaining from liquor. In modern times these traditions are losing their importance. Of course, when people become older, the call of roots and family traditions become stronger and these practices are dusted and resurrected.
Only when an individual lives and follows traditions and values with an open mind, does the family background become meaningful. Claims of birth merely establish monetary or situational superiority. When we understand and apply a particular ‘value’, it becomes easy to observe with all its merit in daily lives.
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