Classics Retold

The following night Shahrazad said: Ala-ed-Din told his mother to keep the story of the Lamp and Signet Ring a secret, and the mother agreed.  Ala-ed-Din continued to eat the food the Jinni had brought and they were done by two days. He took one of the plates which the Jinni had brought and went to the market. In the market he met a Jew to whom he offered the plate. The Jew inspected the plate and saw that it was gold. He took Ala-ed-Din aside to a corner with the intention to bargain. Jew did not know whether Ala-ed-Din was acquainted with its worth or was inexperienced, and he said, "O my master, how much is it?"  Ala-ed-Din replied, "You know it." The Jew considered how much he should bid. The boy had given me a business like reply. Perhaps he may not know the real worth of it. He took from his pocket a dinar of gold and gave it to him. Ala-ed-Din looked at the gold coin and quickly went away. The Jew found that the boy was ignorant of the worth of the plate, and...

The following night Shahrazad said: Ala-ed-Din, now realised that the Moor had been cheating him and his mother and that he was not his uncle. Fear gripped him and crept through his body upto his head. He wished to weep and cry, but not a sound came of him. Sitting on the second step, tired and hungry he fell asleep. When woke up he went to the garden to see if there were any exit to the surface of the earth. He returned again to the step and sat there with the hope of hearing any footsteps. He was sure that there was no escape, but at that moment the signet ring that the Moor had put on his finger came to his mind. The ring was there. He recalled what the Moor said, "This ring will guard you from all danger, if you are in trouble.  Pray to God and the slave of the Ring will appear before you."   Raising his hands he prayed, "O Mighty Omnipotent! Save me from this calamity." He touched the ring and stood in silence, and suddenly the slave of the Ring appeared before...

The phrase "Quit India" was first coined in 1942 by Yusuf Meherally, a fiery socialist leader and then Mayor of Bombay. He had a flair for airing captive slogans. In 1928 he founded Bombay Youth League which was formed with a view to organize protests against British rule. Another leader of the league was K. F. Nariman. Simon  Commission was appointed in 1927, and it was officially known as Indian Statutory Commission. Its job was  to review the Government of India Act of 1919. When the Commission was constituted it did not have any Indian representation.  It had seven British members chaired by Sir John Simon. It came to India in 1928. At the time of their arrival there was wide protests against this exclusion of Indians from the commission. Their feelings were reflected in the slogan, "Simon Go Back" coined by Yusuf Meherally. The sections of people hurt by the slogan: Quit India  The slogan hurt British people, but it hurt more, a major section of the Indian peop...

The following Night Shahrazad said: When the Moor burned the incense, the night fell immediately, followed by murk and quake and thunder, and the frightened Ala-ed-Din would have fled the scene; but the Moor sensing his mood hit him hard on his head, and he fell down. When he came to himself he asked the Moor, "Uncle, what have I done to you to receive such a blow?" The Moor replied to mollify him, "It is my intention to make you a man. If you do what I tell you, you will become richer than all the kings in the world. And now pull your wits together, and see how I have cloven the earth by spell and incantation. Under the stone with the ring is the treasur. Catch that ring and lift that stone. No one can lift it except you. No one can hinder you set foot in this treasury. It has been reserved for you alone.  Therefore listen to me and not refuse me.  All the treasure are for you and me only." In spite of his tiredness and tears, those words dazzled Ala-ed-Din. He rej...

Dogs, donkeys and dogmas belong to very different semantic world, though connected in sound. But they illuminate a certain pattern of social behaviour and cultural psychology.  Dog: The Companion  Dog is a domesticated companion of human beings. Dog stands for intimacy, loyalty, the unruly life that refuses to be neat. He has been with us for the last 20 to 40 thousand years, and his ancestor gray wolf joined our hunter gatherer ancestor bands in the late Pleistocene. The domestication process began well before the development of agriculture. It began as a form of self domestication. He might have been attracted by the bonfire of our ancestor bands celebrating a huge catch. He must have been less aggressive and submissive. And human bands' campsites offered enough opportunities for scavenging food waste such as carcas and discarded bones. The relationship was symbiotic with the gray wolf's haunting howl that alerted his master of the approaching predaters, and he, with more se...

The following night Shahrazad said: When the supper was ready, Ala-ed-Din's mother told him to go and see his uncle and bring him to the house. At that moment, a knock came at the door.  Ala-ed-Din opened the door and the Moorish wizard entered the house followed by a eunuch carrying wine and fruits. Ala-ed-Din received the wine and fruits and the eunuch departed.  The Moor saluted the mother, and began to weep and asked "Where is the place my brother used to sit?" She showed him the place where his husband used to sit. The Moor went to it, prostrated before it and kissed the ground.  "Ah! How small is my satisfaction," he cried, "and how cruel is my fate, since I have lost thee, o my brother, o apple of my eye!" He went on weeping and wailing and he swooned from the violence of the grief. Now Ala-ed-Din's mother was convinced that he was his uncle.  And she raised him up from the ground, and said, "Don't kill yourself.  And she comforted,...

"There seems to be a tacit  understanding between RG and NM that both of them should work for the better future of India though they are running different vehicles, one is redundant and the other is a sixteenth century model." That's a perceptive and rather witty observation - It captures both irony and insight. Both of them operate within outdated or constrained framework, despite claiming to pursue India's future.  While they may differ in rhetoric and style, their underlying political mechanisms, party structures and populist tools are old vehicles struggling to drive a modern nation.  Both leaders, in their own ways help to sustain same political ecosystem - an ecosystem that thrives on polorization, spectacles, and personality driven politics.  Even rivalry becomes a kind of collaboration in maintaining that order.  India's leadership, whether Congress or  BJP seems trapped in nostalgia or inertia - two different vehicles on th same circular road. This...

The following night Shahrazad said: I have heard, O king of the age, there lived in the city of China a poor tailor who had a son named Ala ed Din.  Now this boy had been a scatter-brained scapegrace from his birth. He lacked concentration and he was mischievous. And when he was ten years old his father wished to teach him handicrafts, and being poor could not spend money on him for learning an art or craft or business. So he took him to his own shop to learn his trade of tailoring. But Ala ed Din, being a careless boy and always given to playing with urchins of the street would not stay in the shop a single day. He used to remain in the shop as long as his father was present in the shop, and when his father went out on business or to meet a customer, run off to gardens  along with his fellow ragamuffins. Such was his case. He would neither obey his parents nor learn a trade.  His father was very sad over his son's misdoings, fell sick and died. But Ala ed Din went on in ...