Canine Concerns – A Dog’s Sad Tail

Srinivas Rao

23 June 2013

I write this piece with some distress and probably to alleviate my sense of despair. I have loved animals but at a distance. I have feared dogs since childhood having been bitten sometimes, have been chased, snapped at the feet and baked hostilely at and suffered the inevitable anti rabies vaccines.  So it was rather unlikely that I would have tried to nurse a very sick dog that landed at the entrance of our building emaciated, weak and unable to move. I was watching this dog, tied to a post lying near a drain from my window and wondered whether it might even die.  I was unable to take her off my mind and attend to my reading and decided to take a closer look at what the problem was.  A deep brown coat and biscuit brown limbs she had large ears and with large doleful imploring eyes the canine had no energy to move and tentatively shook her tail just a bit, unsure whether this human specimen peering at her was friendly enough.  Full of ticks and mites it seemed she was a corpse living to feed the innumerable beasties on her body.  Feeling pity and helpless in equal measure I offered her some food which she refused opting to drink large quantities of water.

The Bhishma Pitaamaha Syndrome: Gerontocracy’s oldest Metaphor in India

A Srinivas Rao

13^th June 2013

Few would have suppressed their smiles at the unseemly drama when LK Advani blogged about the slights that Bhishma Pitaamaha suffered apart from the entire bed of arrows he was lain on by Arjuna.  While Mr Advani enjoyed the embalmed self description and the episode does invite some deeper understanding of the Indian reluctance to part with power and the gerontocracy’s justification for perpetuation of its rule. (It is not that the Congress party exactly covers itself with glory, with its first family and their inheritance of the Party chair and the sycophancy it entails; but that’s a different story. Besides the BJP’s genuflection while not at 10 Janpath is certainly at the RSS Sarsanghchalak at Nagpur).  I shall examine in this article the Bhishma Ptitaamaha’s life critically, drawing entirely from the brilliant analysis of the noted sociologist Iravati Karve in her compelling portrait “Yugant”.  The reason I also wish to direct attention to this note is the enormous leadership blockages in Indian institutional infrastructure that is really headed by an inept gerontocracy filled with retired judges, bureaucrats, of all hues and to occupy positions of authority in exchange for political favors that mirrors the Jajamani patronage system.  Having been also personally witness to my own octogenarian dean at SP Jain Institute as his subordinate or minion and his steadfast refusal to step down and enable a smooth succession, I thought this article was ringing in my mind at many levels.