The Ice Bucket List

Remember the ice bucket challenge? You probably don’t, given how, while everyone says that life is transient and fleeting and all that, it’s the social media fads that are truly transient and fleeting, and thank goodness for that. Still, back before the days of Pokemon Go and Prisma and Dubsmash videos, the ice bucket challenge was the first of the big social media fads that really made you wonder how crazy (or cray-cray, as the more with-it lot would say) people could really be. I suppose one should be thankful that the capacity for human lunacy is being channeled into absurd social media fads as opposed to, say, starting a world war, but the ice bucket challenge was still a strange phenomenon, whichever way you looked at it. One minute all seemed well with the world, the next, people were all over the Internet having a bucket of iced water poured over their heads. Something that should’ve died a quick death with the first case of pneumonia instead went on for months with celebrities, ‘fifteen-seconds-of-fame’ type internet sensations and even normal, sensible people dunking a bucket of iced over their heads and, for good measure, filming the whole damn thing. If you tried that now, randomly pouring a bucket of iced water over someone, they would probably beat you to pulp and swear never to talk to you again, but back in the day, for one glorious summer, someone was grateful if you did that to them.

While I was perfectly happy with the world dunking itself in iced water as long as it left me out of it, I was worried about what the ice bucket challenge was doing to the Internet. Think about it – at that point, if for some reason an alien species had decided to vaporize our entire planet and destroy all physical proof of planet earth, the only thing they’d be left with is the Internet. Consequently, the only thing the aliens would know about us humans is that we loved pouring iced water over our heads. Is that really a good legacy to be remembered by? It would not have extracted even the slightest pang of guilt amongst the aliens over destroying the human race. If an alien army inquiry into the destruction of planet earth did ever take place, this is how it would’ve played out:

Alien Commander: “What? You vaporized Earth? Have you no conscience? You just killed all life on an entire planet – there must’ve been millions of life forms on that planet, and you just vaporized it all! How could you?”

Alien Soldier: Well, they anyway spent all their time pouring ice cold water over themselves – that’s all they ever did.

Alien Commander: What nonsense! No race could be that daft – you’re just making it up to save your skin.

Alien Soldier: I swear it’s true. See – I have proof! Look at their Internet – all you see is humans having iced water dunked over their heads.

Alien Commander: Oh, all right. Then it’s fine. I probably would’ve done the same thing.

Perhaps someone should take on the responsibility to curate information about humanity for posterity, just in case the planet is vaporized by aliens or melted into oblivion by a nuclear holocaust. Sure, the ice bucket challenge is now history, but if you just let the Internet be as it is, the future generations will only see us as these massive perverts, because about 90% of the Internet is porn. Or they’d see us as this eccentric race that spent all its time looking for monsters on their mobile phones. At best, they’d think that we worshipped cats, because most of the videos on YouTube and photos on Instagram are of cats. It’s just like the way we think the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians didn’t really worship cats – maybe they hated cats and that’s why they seized the opportunity to bury a cat or two whenever someone died. But we misinterpreted it to think that they loved cats so much that they buried their dead along with a cat.

The whole matter of legacies is why I was glad that somebody finally made a movie set during the Indus Valley Civilization. Here was an ancient civilization that must’ve been pretty cool in a lot of different ways, yet all I could remember about the Indus Valley Civilization from history books were two things:

1.    They loved making terracotta figurines. Every photograph in the history books about objects from that time was a terracotta figurine/object/artifact. I’m sure there would’ve been much more to the Indus Valley people than making terracotta figurines – for all you know they would’ve made music, played sports or even devised an elaborate cuisine that was way ahead of its time, but thanks to none of that being found, everyone thinks that making terracotta figurines was all they ever did.

2.   Life started with the Indus Valley Civilization. Ok, and the Egyptian, Chinese and Mesopotamian civilizations. Of course, we were later taught that we all evolved from monkeys, and that humanity first began in Africa millions of years ago. But for a few years before that, history always started with these four civilizations – it was as if there was nothing at all until they all just sprung up around the same time. But while the Egyptians had the pyramids, the Chinese had the Great Wall and the Mesopotamians invented the wheel; the Indus Valley’s claim to fame was terracotta. I like terracotta, but it’s not exactly the wheel in terms of civilizational contribution, is it?

The initial joy of a movie set in the Indus Valley Civilization quickly turned to deep despair when it turned out that Hrithik Roshan and Ashutosh Gowariker, the team behind Jodha Akbar, were responsible for the movie. Still, I thought I’d at least go ahead and take a look at the trailer, just to expand my knowledge of the Indus Valley Civilization. Thanks to the trailer, I now know that there was so much more to the Indus Valley Civilization – unarmed combat with crocodiles, elaborately choreographed dance sequences, Mediterranean dresses, Viking hats, Roman-style gladiatorial battles, greed, corruption and evil dictators. It’s the sort of stuff that’s too interesting to go into a history book, so maybe that’s why they only told us about the terracotta figurines!

Monumental Madness

One of the reasons I found history interesting was that it always had some truly bizarre, utterly crazy, completely bonkers occurrences that were happening all the time. At the same time, I’d also found history terribly boring because all these absurdly fascinating tales were narrated in a very matter-of-fact way and you were simply expected to remember it as a bunch of facts and figures instead of really getting into the stories. Take the Mughal emperors, for example. All of them were painted as such great rulers, but their stories always began with “Shah Jahan was one of the greatest Mughal emperors known for being a patron of the arts and architecture. He ascended the throne after killing his brothers, and then went on to rule for three decades. He is most famous for building the Taj Mahal, India’s greatest monument of all time.” I mean, isn’t it crazy how the fact that he killed his brothers to ascend to the throne has just been glossed over like it was some humdrum, everyday task that he performed, like waking up and brushing his teeth? Only Aurangzeb, who’d ruthlessly accumulated a staggeringly large portfolio of atrocities that was impossible to ignore, was painted in negative light. It would’ve been so much more interesting, and possibly accurate, if the paragraph on Shah Jahan were changed to “Best known for building the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan was certifiably crazy. He had no qualms about indulging in a spot of fratricide to ascend to the throne. He then developed an unhealthy, psychotic obsession with his wife Mumtaz, which led to an early onset of senility that manifested itself in devoting 22 years of his life to building the Taj Mahal. As if this wasn’t enough, he proceeded to chop off the hands of the people who’d worked on the Taj Mahal – certainly not the sort of thanks you’d expect for helping someone build a great monument. In this day and age, such a man would be locked away in an asylum or run for the US Presidency, but the 15^th century was a little more lax about such degenerate behaviour”.

The craziness was not just confined to the Mughals – the Vikings had their terrible fashion sense, the English were always fighting with everyone, the Greeks were busy inventing philosophy and triggering off long, pointless arguments on the human condition that continue to this day, and the Mongols spent so much time looting, plundering and pillaging everyone else that they had no culture or cuisine to speak of despite being around for so long. Perhaps the greatest sign that ancient man was just as crazy as modern man, though, was in the monuments. Sure, most of them are magnificent structures that make you gape in awe and marvel at their breathtaking beauty, but once you get past all that, the lingering feeling you’re left behind with is “What on earth were they thinking?”

Take the Great Wall of China, for example. It was built over hundreds of years with the aim of protecting China from regular Mongol invasions. It seems that the ancient Mongols had made it a habit to invade China regularly – probably whenever they were bored, which was pretty often given that there’s nothing much to do in Mongolia. So the Mongols were pretty crazy, but the Chinese were even more so given that they were perfectly happy spending hundreds of years just to build a wall. Surely, while it was getting built, the Mongols must’ve had a great time merrily raiding China from the sides where the wall wasn’t ready – but the Chinese still thought that putting up with periodic pillaging was worth it as long as, eventually, it stopped the Mongols.

To its credit, though, the Great Wall at least had some functional purpose. What are truly baffling, though, are the pyramids.  Sure, ancient man was highly enthusiastic in celebrating the dead and forever building monuments to commemorate them – but even by those standards, the Egyptians took it to an altogether different level. Today, after thousands of years, the pyramids remain truly magnificent structures that stand testament to how bonkers the ancient Egyptians really were. Yes, it’s an engineering marvel and a remarkable architectural feat. You wonder how the Egyptians moved all those huge boulders and created those impossibly big triangular buildings – but the bigger question is – “Why?” Like most civilizations, the Egyptians did slightly nutty things like burying the dead along with their cats and some slightly cool things like inventing paper – but what were they thinking when they decided to build the pyramids? What possessed them to wake up one day and announce – I’m going to spend the next decade building a giant stone triangular building, and then spend the next few hundred years building many more of the same? I'm guessing it set civilization back a few hundred years – the Egyptians could’ve invented a lot more things if they weren’t spending their entire time building pyramid after pyramid.

The Pyramids and the Great Wall provide an insight into why, even today, the Arabs and the Chinese spend so much time building absurd things. I’d recently seen a TV program on a ridiculous elevator being built all the way up a mountain, along the face of a cliff, and was not at all surprised to know that it was in China. It’s the same whenever someone sends you a link about some preposterous new thing that’s built like an underwater complex that’s as big as a city, or a skiing lodge in the middle of a desert, or an entire European-looking village being built in the middle of nowhere – you know it’s either China or the UAE that’s committed the atrocity. Although given that a good chunk of taxpayer money has now been allocated to building a pointlessly gigantic statue of Sardar Patel, India might soon be joining that list.

Perhaps if history had been taught in a more interesting way in school, we would not be repeating the mistakes of the past. But no one was really paying any attention, were they?

Somewhat Historical

If there’s one subject from school that no one seemed indifferent about, it was history. In a way, history was the chicken liver of academic streams – you either loved it or you hated it, and most people hated it. And although I hate chicken liver, history had always been a fascinating subject for me - full of intriguing stories made boring by the fact that you had to memorize them. 


What was rather baffling, though, was why history had to be the same every year. At the beginning of each year, history started with the ancient civilizations – the Indus Valley, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians (also known as the Sumerians just to confuse you) and the Chinese. After then briefly touching upon the Greeks, the rest of the world would be forgotten about and the focus would shift to India, with the chapters on South Indian kingdoms being skipped if you were in a North Indian school. Finally, every year, history would end with India gaining independence. 


It wasn’t the same with other subjects – you learnt something new each year. For all the other subjects, people seem to have put some level of thought and planning – presumably breaking up the year-by-year syllabus on level of difficulty, how much a child of a certain age could absorb and other such criteria. But for some curious reason, the person who devised the history syllabus thought “You know what? Instead of children learning something new each year, why not force them to study the same goddamn stuff every single year?” If this were a cartoon, at this point there would be diabolical, crazed-scientist type laughter from the history syllabus guy accompanied by ominous lightning and thunder in the background. Ordinarily, you would expect a person with such thoughts to either be sentenced to death by firing squad, or if that’s too extreme for your liking, be quietly asked to go tend to his gardens and leave the whole syllabus business to someone more capable. But instead, the fellow was hailed as a revolutionary in educational circles “Teach the same thing every year? What a mind-bogglingly brilliant notion that is! Why didn’t we think of this before? Just to silence our detractors, we can have something different for the 10th Standard, but until then, it can be EXACTLY the same. I bet no one would even notice.” 


In spite of all this, though, I still loved history – and history was one of the first things I noticed while walking about Kolkata. Maybe it had more to do with the part of Kolkata I was staying in, but the city just seemed to ooze history. Of course, this isn’t the centuries-old sort of history that envelops you on visiting an actual historical town like Hampi. It’s not the sort of history where if you picked out a building and told me “Chandragupta Vikramaditya used to drink here with Kautilya on Friday evenings” or “This is the park where Sher Shah Suri was relaxing in when he got the idea to build the Grand Trunk Road” I’d believe you. It’s a very recent sort of history, but one that still adds a lot of character as far as a city is concerned. It’s the sort of history where if you told me “India’s first telegraph message was sent from this building” or “This building was inaugurated by Queen Victoria to commemorate cotton trade between India and England”, I’d find that perfectly acceptable. Every second building seemed to have some sort of stately, heritage air to it, as if to tell you “This may look like a dusty, stained and dilapidated building now, but important financial transactions used to take place here – this is where the first business houses started their businesses.” You might think that all this isn’t that big a deal, but it’s utterly fascinating for someone from Bangalore where most buildings tend to be all glass and no character.


And given how deserted the roads tend to get after 10 in the night in Bangalore (or Delhi, for that matter), it was a pleasant surprise to see the amount of people on the streets even at 11. And unlike Mumbai, it didn’t have the feel of “Oh, I work super hard and party super-duper hard so I just have to get from point A to point B and am therefore on the road” – it had more of a “Oh, I just feel like hanging around and killing some time and am therefore on the road” sort of feel to it. People were just milling about – standing and chatting around the pavements, under trees, playing cricket on the streets, etc – no one seemed to be in any sort of rush. And you just felt safe – I know this sounds utterly illogical and has no basis in reason, but think of it this way. Which of these scenarios seem the least likely to occur to you if you’re walking alone late at night?
1. Delhi - A burly Jat driving by screeches to a halt near you; brandishes a shiny pistol and threatens to beat you to pulp, shoot you and then discard your body in some hinterland-type area if you don’t hand him all your money.
2. Mumbai - You’re caught in the middle of some underworld crossfire and are now being chased by them as you’ve witnessed too much to be allowed to live.
3. Chennai - You’re lost and no one is willing to speak to you in a non-Tamil language, leaving you with no choice but to keep walking on the road until you drop dead.
4. A menacing-looking Bengali…See! I cannot even continue with this sentence because the mere mention of a menacing-looking Bengali sounds oxymoronic and has therefore already made this the least likely scenario!


I’m sure I’m wrong on this – there must be heaps of crime statistics out there that prove that Kolkata isn’t any safer than most big cities in India – but it just didn’t feel that way. Even the cops looked friendly – as if they would offer you a cup of tea and a roshogulla before arresting you if you ever did do something that warranted arrest.


Now, a lot of you might protest at this point “What do you mean a Bengali cannot be a dangerous, cold-blooded criminal? I have two words for you – Bob Biswas!” That may be the case, but the feeling I got was more along the lines of what Robert Clive may have felt before deciding to go ahead with the Battle of Plassey. Here was a chap without much of a track record at colonizing – but when he started trading in Bengal, the thought probably struck him “Hmm…the whole trade philosophy of give and take is fine, but I think I prefer just the take part of it. Why don’t I just conquer Bengal? The Bengali may be ferocious in debate, but he’s unlikely to engage in prolonged armed conflict, particularly if I attacked in the afternoon.” Of course, being possessed of a character that’s devoid of imperialistic or dictatorial tendencies, invading Bengal did not cross my mind – but it probably would have if I was predisposed towards such militaristic activities. 


Of course, Kolkata is renowned for its street food – and unlike Tom Cruise, the hype is perfectly justified. But apart from mastering the art of making delicious rolls, the roll shop populace has also achieved mastery over the mathematics of permutations and combinations to create an elaborate menu out of 3-4 basic ingredients. Every roll shop would have 3-4 basic ingredients – chicken, mutton, egg and maybe veg/paneer. The menu, though, would stretch to an entire page, or be painted on an entire wall, thanks to the various combinations of single and double that you could choose for each. Chicken roll, therefore, would form an entire section in the menu, with items in that section coming in the following forms: Chicken Roll, Double Chicken Roll, Egg Chicken Roll, Double Egg Single Chicken Roll, Double Egg Double Chicken Roll, and so on.


Come to think of it, it’s a bit like this post – I’d started thinking there isn’t a whole lot to say and so this would be a short post, but its ended up being about as long as most other posts!