Let's not
forget every generation describes its own times as cynical and dark.
And yet every generation also throws up its share of idealists, who
challenge the status quo head on and generate change for the rest of us.
After all, be it middling or lasting, isn't change emblematic of every
generation and doesn't change entail the quixotic in some shape or form?
I
highlight in my answer the quixotic accomplishments of a music
reformer, the world's oldest Ph.D., the outsider who solved the problem
of chronic homelessness in the US, an Indian and a Kenyan who gave up or
used their livelihood to feed the homeless, the Japanese pensioners who
volunteered to clean up the Fukushima nuclear plant leak, and the
disabled Chinese men who persevered on their project of environmental
conservation when even their neighbors were unwilling to help.
T. M. Krishna, a musical iconoclast, the Indian music man for all seasons.
In
the world of music, I doubt there is another to match Krishna's
quixotic behavior. Many non-Indians may be unaware of classical Indian
music. Stretching back centuries in unbroken lineages, each region in
India evolved a distinct form and style of classical music. In South
India, it's called Carnatic music.
As with many things with a storied and ancient past, this art form
remains untouched by the proclivity for greater inclusiveness. Entry and
presence within this life-long vocation is thus restricted to the few,
those few entitled by virtue of birth. Enter T. M. Krishna, the Don
Quixote of Carnatic music. A child prodigy. Debut at age 12 at the Madras Music Academy's famous December Madras Music Season.
Already
an iconoclast who pushed the boundary of acceptable norms in the
preposterously staid Carnatic music world, he dispensed with age-old
strictures on prescribed kacheri (concert) performances. He followed up
with an even more ambitious 588 page opus on this art form, A Southern Music: Exploring the Karnatik Tradition: T.M. Krishna: 9789350298213: Amazon.com: Books. The anachronistically exclusive purview of the upper caste Brahmin, even today its doors firmly closed to other castes, in the chapter An Unequal Music, Krishna,'describes
how the urban Brahmin elite have dominated the art since the late 19th
century and how they have not let other castes take part in it' (The
game changer: T.M. Krishna sheds convention in his new film and creates
music without frills. By Lakshmi Subramanian in The Week, Dec 6, 2014).
Obviously
a restless and supremely talented musical wunderkind, this was only a
preview to Krishna's single-minded and utterly audacious quest to foist
inclusiveness on Carnatic music culture.
Krishna's first salvo? Perform a Carnatic music concert for the masses (Caste, Class and the 'Classical' - FAQs about the Urur Olcott Festival, Chennai: Nityanand Jayaraman;
). Not just any masses but those displaced and sidelined from the
natural order by the relentless and thoughtless sweep of urbanization.
The Edward Elliot's Beach, popularly called the Besant Nagar beach, located in Besant Nagar, in the South Indian metropolis, Chennai,
is also home to an ancient fisherman's village, the Urur Olcott Kuppam.
In Tamil, Kuppam means fisherman's village. Existing for ages, entirely
honorable, entirely of its place. Swallowed up into the environs of the
ever-expanding Chennai city like so much baleen into the whale, not
just disemboweled but also degraded by this urbanization process, the
change disenfranchises its dwellers and dispossesses them of the
aspirational attributes associated with dignity and honor. No longer
fishermen. Instead the surrounding middle-class label them slum
dwellers. A middle class who denigrate them even as they depend on them
for essential daily services that their feudal lifestyle ingrains.
Dignity of labor is after all an ever-present absence in feudalism.
Let's understand in his own blistering words why Krishna organized a Carnatic music concert in this fishing village (
The city of unheard melodies), '
The
etymology for the word “city” leads us to some archaisms. But “city”
implies a capitalist-centric, economic magnet. This may be the primary
attraction, but it is a far more complex social animal in which the idea
of culture plays a central role. In the grammar of economics, the city
is a symbol of opportunity and in the poetic phraseology of culture, a
symbol of equality. Both perceptions are not just flawed, they are
concocted to establish the dominance of a certain class. But these
beliefs have driven and continue to drive people to the city.The
word “urban” too must be explored in this context. This gives us a
glimpse of the delusion we have created by the idea of the city. The
word is derived from the Latin “urbs”, meaning, simply, city. What is
“urban” is that which pertains to a city, which by tradition is meant to
be civilised, refined, courteous. The adjective “urbane” sums up the
essence of the city, as does the Tamil word “nagarikam”, where nagara
means city and nagarikam implies being cultured.But what
is this “culture” that we believe exists within the urban space, which
is lacking in the village? Is it universal? The moment we explore these
questions more words pop up, such as sophistication, class, nuance,
elegance and subtlety. These relate as much to the identity of the urban
person as to the urban idea of art. One cannot disconnect the two.
Cultural aspiration is a far stronger force than we concede. It goes
hand-in-glove with economic upward mobility. The control group of any
city, which tends to be the middle and upper-middle class, tolerates the
rich-uncultured (culture as understood by them), but embraces the
rich-cultured.The city does certain things to people. It
closets them in individual sociocultural bubbles. In a way, the city is a
habitation of multiple cloisters, where each hardly recognises the
existence of the other. In what is said to be a space determined by
economics, it is culture-politics that actually rules. The
fisherman’s city has no link with the accountant’s, which, in turn, is
socially independent from the migrant labourer’s. These people are
linked only through the services they provide. We know the services, but
not the faces that provide them. The fisherman is unseen, but the fish
is needed. This means the fisherman’s culture is irrelevant to me.But
we still speak of an “urban culture”, a misnomer that exists only
because of the constant hammering down of this idea by the controlling,
powerful upper-middle class. To the urban middle class, the slum is a
filthy village and hence culturally despicable.This
raises a serious question about art and “spaces”. In most cities in
this country, art is compressed within specific spaces. Space is not
emptiness; it exists only when it is filled. Here, the people who fill
each kind of art space are homogenous and look for homogeneity for
retaining its “values”. Certain performing arts moved to the cities in
India in the early 20th century and have stayed in confined urban
spaces. In due course, villages and towns that were part of the history
of these art forms lost their connectivity. Once again, we have to come
back to the middle class, since it is its art that moved with it to the
cities. These are the arts we refer to as classical. Parallelly, two
other things have happened. The other forms of art within the cities,
often considered crude by the middle class, live in their own bubbles,
yearning for acceptance as “urban”. Village art forms get universally
categorised as “folk” and exotic or acceptable for certain occasions,
but not “cultured”. We cannot ignore in this sociocultural hierarchy the
fact that even those practising “other” art forms in the city or folk
forms in the villages aspire to be accepted as cultured.The
greatest tragedy of urbanisation is what it has done to the idea of the
village. We have manipulated the village to represent deprivation and
poverty. We have presumed that vilage culture is a local phenomenon that
has no role in the mainstream narrative. And, ironically, when this
very same village-dweller becomes a city person, he is once again pushed
to the cultural margins. Hence, it is insulted twice over'.
Profound,
provocative and ever thought-provoking, I did say opening salvo, didn't
I? Krishna followed this up on June 10, 2015, with an announcement akin
to a tsunami in the stiflingly cloistered world of Carnatic music. He
was withdrawing his participation from Chennai's fabled December music
season. Again, in his own words (
How Do You Solve A Problem Like TM Krishna?), '
I
am unable to reconcile my musical journey with that of the December
Season", he said in a brief note. He found, "The world of Carnatic music
is 'socially stifling and narrow'." "We really don't care about the
rest of society and don't see that this music must be democratised", he
explained.
An ongoing and as-yet unresolved saga that will
likely leave its mark in the history books. Single-minded,
single-handedly taking on an entire, entrenched and age-old artistic
tradition, seeking to re-shape it to more equitable and inclusive mores,
who could be more quixotic than T. M. Krishna?
And since it's
all to easy to garb oneself in the paltry veil of superiority, let's not
forget that the process of hierarchical subjugation Krishna articulates
plays itself out the world over. I'm reminded of it every time I visit a
grocery store in the US, that the fresh produce on display is the
product of practically indentured labor.
Ingeborg Rapoport. Even the Nazis couldn't deprive her of her Ph.D.A
neonatologist, i.e., medical doctor specializing in the new born. In
1938, she wasn't allowed by the Nazis to defend her doctoral thesis.
Why? Her mother was Jewish. On Tuesday, 9 June, 2015, at the age of 102,
she received her doctorate in neonatology from the University of
Hamburg, Germany. '
Syllm-Rapoport stressed in her acceptance speech
that she went through all the efforts of getting the degree at her
advanced age not for herself, but for all the others who suffered from
injustice during the Third Reich, said Kerstin Graupner, a university
spokeswoman (
Denied by Nazis, world's oldest doctoral student awarded her PhD – aged 102).
Sam Tsemberis, the outsider who solved chronic homelessness in USAWhat he's accomplished. '
According
to academics and advocates, he’s all but solved chronic homelessness.
His research, which commands the support of most scholars, has inspired
policies across the nation, as well as in the District. The results have
been staggering. Late last month, Utah, the latest laboratory for
Tsemberis’ [sic]
models, reported it has nearly eradicated chronic
homelessness. Phoenix, an earlier test case, eliminated chronic
homelessness among veterans. Then New Orleans housed every homeless
veteran' (
Meet the outsider who accidentally solved chronic homelessness).
How
did he do it? Serendipity. A psychologist, doing outreach for the
mentally ill in New York city brought him into close proximity with the
homeless. He soon realized they were extraordinarily resourceful but
infantilized by experts whose process of rehabilitation or what passed
for it, i.e., medicate and release, kept them in a vicious cycle of
dependency.
'Homeless services once worked like a
reward system. Kick an addiction, get a home. Take some medication, get
counseling. But Tsemberis’ [sic]
model, called “housing first,”
said the order was backward. Someone has the best chance of improving if
they’re stabilized in a home.It works like this: First,
prioritize the chronically homeless, defined as those with mental or
physical disabilities who are homeless for longer than a year or have
experienced four episodes within three years. They’re the most difficult
homeless to reabsorb into society and rack up the most significant
public costs in hospital stays, jail sentences and shelter visits.
Then
give them a home, no questions asked. Immediately afterward, provide
counseling, a step research shows is the most vital. Give them final say
in everything — where they live, what they own, how often they’re
counseled'.
From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/06/meet-the-outsider-who-accidentally-solved-chronic-homelessness/Narayanan Krishnan, succor for the mentally ill homeless in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.By
all accounts, a young man set on the fast track to material success.
While still in his 20s, he was already working as a chef in the
five-star
Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces in
Bangalore,
South India. He was short-listed for further training at an exclusive
Swiss hotel. Around this time, while visiting his hometown of
Madurai, his response to something he saw fits the textbook definition of quixotic. In his own words, '
I
saw a very old man, literally eating his own human waste out of hunger.
I went to the nearby hotel and asked them what was available. They had idli,
which I bought and gave to the old man. Believe me, I had never seen a
person eating so fast, ever. As he ate the food, his eyes were filled
with tears. Those were the tears of happiness' (
Once a rising star, chef now feeds hungry).
That was it for Krishnan. He quit his job, his career, and
commandeering his mother's kitchen and spending his own money, he
started cooking wholesome, nutritious meals and driving around Madurai,
feeding the homeless he saw on the streets.
Obviously his parents were dumbstruck to say the least. As the English language newspaper
The Hindu reported in 2006, '
By
the following morning, Krishnan, who was about to leave for a training
programme in Switzerland, had decided to walk away from his future. He
quit his job and to the dismay of his parents, he spent the next two
months cycling around Madurai and distributing food packets that he
purchased from his savings to mentally ill destitutes. "I started by
using my mother's kitchen", he recalls. Single-handedly cooking three
meals a day for 40 people, packaging and distributing them was no easy
task. But Krishnan was determined in the face of his parents' worries
about his new found "vocation".But now, they are proud of what he did.
Krishnan never stopped providing free food for people but the numbers
have grown steadily' (
Making a difference).
That early effort has grown into the
Helping the Helpless of Madurai, India.
The Akshaya home opened on May 9, 2013. ~450 residents. Many, if not
most of them, with mental diseases or old or both. Not all roses all the
way though for Krishnan and Akshaya.
June 5, 2014, a 23-year old woman resident fled the home and accused she'd been raped (
Inmate's rape allegation casts shadow over Akshaya Trust).
Akshaya
claims that the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court exonerated the
Trust of all allegations on September 12, 2014. While I could not track
down that verdict, I found another verdict of the same bench. In this
September 18, 2014 decision, responding to a petition filed by the
Akshaya Trust itself, the bench instructs the local Madurai police to
work with and help the Akshaya trust identify and rescue mentally ill
wandering the streets of Madurai (
Akshaya Trust vs The Commissioner Of Police on 18 September, 2014),
suggesting not only that the Akshaya Trust continues to work to help
the mentally ill homeless on the streets of Madurai but that it's
expanding its integration with local infrastructure to better fulfill
its founder's mandate. Quixotic? What Narayanan Krishnan decided to do
is nothing less. And not just behavior, it's become his way of life.
Clifford Oluoch, a Kenyan school teacher on a quixotic quest to feed homeless children in Nairobi, KenyaIn
May 2015, BBC World News reported about Clifford Oluoch in Nairobi,
Kenya. A primary school teacher by day, since February 2015, he spends
his evenings feeding homeless street children (
Feeding Kenya's street kids: An evening with Nairobi's 'Messiah' - BBC News).
Roping in his family to help in his quixotic venture, he spends his
salary on bread and butter, his family helps make the sandwiches, and he
spends about 3 hours every evening feeding homeless children.
As the BBC reports, '
Earlier
that evening, the teacher, his wife Benedette and their 13-year old
daughter had buttered 30 loaves of bread. This type of meal costs about
2,000 Kenyan shillings ($22; £14) a day. For months he has
been splitting his salary between his wife and two children and 60
street children and says he was beginning to feel the pinch. Thankfully word is slowly started to spread in his community - this month he got a donor for bread. He
says he can now use that money to see to other needs such as
transporting someone to hospital, or helping some of the homeless women
set up fruit stalls. Still, this is an expensive project to
maintain on a teacher's salary, not to mention the time away from his
family - up to three hours every evening.So why does he do it?"My wife and I feel strongly about helping other people," he says."We
know what is it to grow up having nothing. We know how difficult life
is when you have no-one. This is making a difference, that makes all of
it worth it," Benedette told me earlier'.
Doesn't Clifford Oluoch's behavior fit the textbook definition of quixotic?
The response of some elderly Japanese to the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown was pure idealism.Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
March 2011. Even as we were transfixed by the inexorably unfolding
disaster of a post-tsunami nuclear reactor meltdown, a group of >200
pensioners calling themselves the 'Skilled Veterans Corps' volunteered
for damage control work in the stricken nuclear power plant. Retired
engineers and other professionals over the age of 60, their spokesman
Yasuteru Yamada, told the BBC, 't
hey should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young' (
Japan nuclear crisis: Pensioners seek work at Fukushima - BBC News).
'
Weeks
after the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck, he and Nobuhiro
Shiotani, a childhood friend who is also an engineer, formed the Skilled
Veterans Corps in early April. They sent out thousands of e-mails and
letters, and even set up a Twitter account. On his blog, Page on bouhatsusoshi.jp,
Mr. Yamada called on people over age 60 who have “the physical strength
and experience to bear the burden of this front-line work.”The
response was instant. About 400 people have volunteered, including a
singer, a cook and an 82-year-old man. Some 1,200 others have offered
support, while donations have topped 4.3 million yen, or $54,000. His
blog has been translated into 12 languages.Although Mr.
Yamada, a soft-spoken cancer survivor, started with a simple goal, he
has triggered a much wider debate about the role of the elderly in Japan,
the meaning of volunteerism and the growing reality that the Tokyo
Electric Power Company, which owns the reactors, will face an
increasingly difficult time recruiting workers' (
Seniors Volunteer at Japan’s Crippled Daiichi Nuclear Plant).
From
Pensioners to Aid Nuclear Plant Clean-Up on Worker ShortageThe two physically disabled Chinese who taught their neighbors to embrace the better angels in themselves.Jia
Wenqi, 53, is a double-arm amputee from high voltage shock after
touching an unprotected electric cable at the age of 3. Jia Haixia, 54,
is blind. Born blind in his left eye, a factory accident in his right
eye in 2000 rendered him totally blind.
For 13 years, they've
planted as many trees as possible on an 8-hectare plot they lease from
the government. Their aim? To prevent flooding in their village. Doing
so they prevailed over the cynical apathy of their neighbors who now
choose to help them. As the BBC reports, '
When they began working
together on the project, other villagers were cynical, Haixia explains.
"They didn't believe what we were doing was possible," he says, "the
whole riverbank had been bare for years and there were hardly any
trees." But after a few years the trees grew, the area became greener
and the villagers changed their attitude choosing now to assist the two
men...'They help us to fix our tools, water the trees and trim the
weeds," Haixia says. They even bought us saplings to plant.' (
The disabled men who act as each other's arms and eyes - BBC News).
From
The disabled men who act as each other's arms and eyes - BBC News.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-endearing-examples-of-quixotic-behaviour-in-the-modern-world/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
