Between you & me

CHENNAI

I REGRET very much that I could not write the column last Monday, and I am grateful to the readers who expressed concern over my health.

Last week, that is the week that just ended, that was the week that was, to use the title of an old TV programme. In a refreshingly frank statement, unhedged by non sequiturs, the Prime Minister placed the onus for the failure of the Agra talks firmly on the intransigence of General Parvez Musharraf, his insistence on talking about Kashmir only and his refusal to discuss cross-border terrorism. For many of us, laymen, that was the only silver lining in a week of dark clouds. For the rest, the week produced any number of flash points to different kinds of disaster or near- disaster. Militants continued to kill innocent people in Kashmir with total impunity. Road disasters took a heavy toll of lives in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the country. The BJP and the Shiv Sena flexed their muscles and stood eyeball to eyeball until better counsel prevailed. The U.P. Government came near facing collapse when 13 members of an allied party, who, rejecting loyalty to their leader, supported the Government as they wanted to save their ministerships. An Assam Minister was convicted of raping a juvenile and sent to jail. Two young lovers in Bihar were hanged to death by their own relatives because they belonged to different castes. In Macedonia and in Ireland the peace process was stalled by skirmishes. In one of the most horrifying incidents of the week, a suicide bomber killed over 19 Israelis in a crowded family restaurant in Jerusalem; which gave the Israelis sufficient excuse to mount fierce attacks on Palestinian installations. Again, a possible peace process was in danger of being disrupted.

But the occurrence that etched itself in the minds of the people with horror was the fire that swept over ``the asylum'' for the mentally disturbed at Erwadi in Ramanathapuram district. Fires and deaths from fires, though shocking, are not that unusual, especially in urban centres during summer. But the Erwadi fire was straight out of Dante's Inferno. The asylum was just a series of thatched huts, in which the mental patients were kept chained, and which was lit at night by a tiny kerosene lamp. The insanitariness of the huts is better imagined than described. All during the night, the patients had no way of going out for any reason, because they were chained ``to prevent them from escaping.'' Under the circumstances, a fire was waiting to happen, and when, it did, it swept over the huts, burning to cinders 28 of the patients who have been chained to one another or to the post, had no means of escape. An ironical twist was given to the macabre tragedy when it was revealed that guards and watchmen did not go to the assistance of the patients as they were accustomed to the latter howling and creating unusual noises. There was also an initial story to the effect that some masked men were seen setting fire to the huts, but this canard died quickly when it was realised that a small kerosene lamp could have caused the fire.

A belief that a Muslim shrine works wonders on mentally disturbed patients, the unwillingness of families to keep mentally ill patients at home, combined with the cupidity of entrepreneurs to make a fast buck by providing such asylums, with minimal facilities and no medical supervision, are what enable places like Erwadi to thrive. It is a good thing that Government at long last has woken up to the situation and has started providing remedial measures, and it is to be hoped that Government will take under its charge the other ``mental asylums'' with which Tamil Nadu seems to be dotted.

HHH

THE COLUMN has received several tributes to the late Sivaji Ganesan, which indicate not only their admiration for his acting but also a closeness with him as a human being, even though they had never met him. ``The only person who could have acted the role of angry young man in his earlier films, and that of Lord Shiva later on,'' a reader says.

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A READER points out with pain seeing on cable TV one of the charred victims of the fire at Erwadi still with his chain on. This is cruel and unthinking, and against all tradition, he says.

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READERS WILL forgive me, I hope, if I stop now - with, of course, a story for Parthasarathy. Computers are getting so sophisticated these days that there may be a gender angle to them. So thought a rich man, who constituted two panels - one of men and one of women, and asked them to figure out whether computers were male or female. The women's group said computer should be addressed in the masculine gender because (1) in order to get their attention, you have to turn them on; (2) they have a lot of data but are still clueless; (3) they are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem and (4) as soon you are committed to one, you realise that had you waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.

The men, on the other hand, concluded that computer should be referred to in the feminine gender because (1) no one but the Creater understands the internal logic; (2) the language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else; (3) even your smallest mistake are stored in long- term memory for later retrieval and (4) as soon as you commit yourself to one, you find yourself spending half your pay on accessories for it.

Take your choice, Parthasarathy.

S. KRISHNAN

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