Sharmila Tagore's Father-in-law & Bodyline

In the recently concluded Lord's Test, intimidatory bowling was copiously used by both sides. It is useful to recall the start of this. In the days of the rampaging Australian Don Bradman, England were clueless to control him in the "Ashes" series. Their captain Douglas Jardine came up with the infamous "Bodyline" bowling consisting of bouncers bowled at the batsman's head with a packed legside field. He had Harold Larwood's extreme pace to make it effective. Larwood, a poor coal miner, had to obey the captain.

Not so the Senior Nawab of Pataudi, Sharmila's Father-in-law, who was playing for England, as at that time India was a colony. When Jardine asked him to field in the leg-trap, he flatly refused, considering Bodyline unsporting. Jardine could do nothing about him, & placed him elsewhere on the field as Pataudi was a deserving batsman for England & moreover a Nawab, whom the British were treating with kid gloves, for their own ends.

So Jardine had to content himself by snide remarks like "So Your Highness is a 'conscientious objector' (borrowing the wartime phrase) in the war against Australia!"

Aristotle, Da Vinci, Nature & Constable

Aristotle was the first of the "natural philosophers" as scientists were called in those days. He wrote extensively on the natural world around him & was considered an authority. But this had the unfortunate effect on his successors as they studied Aristotle rather than nature.

Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Polymath was the first to go back to studying nature at first hand, as pointed out by Fritjof Capra in his two books on Leonardo. Even the flora & fauna in his paintings were specific to the region & season depicted in the painting, rather than being merely ornamental.

Similarly, the early landscape painters created their art from nature, but coloured by myths & prevailing conventions. Their successors also copied them instead of going back to nature. John Constable was the first to go back to nature & depict her in all her true glory, untainted by any preconceptions. His paintings were so accurate that the time & place where they were depicted became clinically accurate. To use the phrase "time space continuum" in an entirely different artistic context, his works were rooted even to the hour & mile of the natural scene inspiring them. Even so, he was disappointed by the landscape paintings (presumably including his own) noting that they were a watered down imitation of the true glory of nature, as remarked by John Sunderland in his magnificently illustrated monograph on Constable.

"Samskara" (1970) & "Grahana" (1978)

These two Kannada films start with the problems of the funerals of people who died in ambiguous circumstances. The first film, too well known, deals with a born brahmin, who did not lead a conventional life & had no children to conduct his obsequies.

The second film, lesser known, was the directorial debut of Nagabharana, now one of the best film-makers in the language, assisted by Girish Kasaravalli, who also rose to eminence later.

There was curious custom earlier, whereby in a certain area, a Brahmin girl, if not married before puberty, was blindfolded & abandoned in a forest by her parents. One such girl was found & rescued by the "untouchables." As a consequence of this, periodically six selected "untouchables" were invested with the sacred thread, taught the Gayathri mantra & converted into Brahmins for a few days.

The problem started when one of the six died during his temporary brahminhood. The brahmins refused to do his obsequies & so did the "untouchables". The body remained so for a day, when the Patel's son, a progressive, brought the police & got the body removed. This earned him the ire of all the village & he was barred from the village. The film deals with the aftermath, with grave economic & social consequences.