oblation (comm 1 tf 2:30-4 reading assignment: 2 texts in this post)

A work of art and a message
Ambeth Ocampo
Inquirer

April 25, 2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts had moved from the top floor of the Main Library in the university’s Diliman campus to a cluster of buildings and stables that used to be the College of Veterinary Science. It had been 20 years since I last visited the College of Fine Arts. I was invited to join a thesis panel there once, but I conducted myself like Simon Cowell on “American Idol,” and the invitation became my first and the last.

This time, I risked life and limb to ascend the Main Library on a slow elevator, on a pilgrimage to see the original plaster sculpture of Guillermo Tolentino’s Oblation that stood in a room beside copies of ancient Greek or Roman sculpture that came from the pre-war college on Padre Faura Street in Manila, or perhaps the first school under Fabian de la Rosa in Manila’s Quiapo district. Tolentino has fascinated me for a long time, and it’s a pity that I was too young to even know who he was when he passed away in 1976. I’m glad that UP has honored him by naming a street after him; it’s a small gesture for an artist who has given UP an iconic symbol in the Oblation.

Tolentino had a life beyond the walls of his Fine Arts classroom. Aside from being our greatest sculptor, he was an accomplished guitarist, a writer famous for a series of published debates on Modern Art he had with Victorio Edades, an authority on the “baybayin” pre-colonial Philippine script, and one of the founding members of the Union Espiritista Cristiana de Filipinas [Christian Spiritist Union of the Philippines]. I wish I had met him in person.

Tolentino made inspiring pieces of historical sculpture because he was not just interested in history, he actually spoke to our heroes from beyond the grave via séances in his home on Retiro Street in Sampaloc, Manila. In one of his forgotten books “Si Rizal,” he reproduced a transcription of a prewar conversation between Trinidad Rizal and her elder brother Jose, the national hero.

Although thousands of people pass by the Oblation every day, it is often ignored. People see but do not notice. I wish students would take the trouble to look at it up close to get a sense of its message.

Tolentino originally designed the Oblation sculpture around the idea of heroes and heroism. It was unveiled by Gregoria de Jesus, widow of Andres Bonifacio, on Nov. 30, 1931, on the Padre Faura campus. In one human figure, Tolentino created the Filipino version of Leonardo’s Vitruvian man -- the ideal Filipino based on the physique of his assistant, Anastacio Caedo, not Fernando Poe Sr. as some people would want to believe.

In one figure, Tolentino expressed ideas and ideals of heroism. Today, the Oblation is just seen as an icon of UP or, at best, the inspiration for the annual exercise of running naked on campus.

Tolentino’s preparatory sketches already had the figure with his hands outstretched in an act of oblation, an act of self-sacrifice or offering. He was originally garbed in a G-string, but Tolentino decided on simplicity and molded the figure completely naked. If the man truly had something to be proud of, he might as well flaunt it.

One of my pop quiz questions is to ask if the Oblation is circumcised. Nobody, not even National Artist Bencab, got the correct answer. Are people too prudish or homophobic to look? When Tolentino was at work on it, the UP president politely suggested that Mr. Oblation’s manhood be discreetly covered and the artist complied with a fig leaf.

The Oblation rises three and a half meters off the ground, an allusion to 350 years of Spanish rule. At his feet is a cluster of “katakataka,” a plant most people do not know or recognize today, to symbolize a continuous stream of heroism. I presume Tolentino, who was trained in classical sculpture, thought of using laurel, the symbol of victory, but then this is best used as a crown on the head, and “katakataka” [wonder] looked better. Besides, the symbolism of laurel might be lost on Filipinos who see it more as an indispensable ingredient in chicken-pork “adobo” stew than a symbol of victory.

The Oblation rests on a base made of rugged white stones alluding to the different islands in the Philippine archipelago. Taken individually, the stones have no effect, but when assembled into a pedestal, they become a symbol for unity and the Philippines as a nation.

The Oblation miraculously survived the Battle for Manila in 1945 and was moved to the College of Fine Arts when UP moved to Diliman after the war. A bronze copy was pulled from the plaster original and unveiled in its present site on Nov. 29, 1958.

Since then the Oblation has given birth to other copies installed in other UP campuses, providing pride and, at times, merriment. In UP Baguio, the Oblation is complemented by a statue of a nude woman, making people worry that the union might result in little Oblations. When UP Pampanga asked for a copy, they were told to wait for the offspring of Mr. and Mrs. Oblation in UP Baguio.

The Oblation base in Diliman carries a bronze plaque with a quotation from Jose Rizal who asked, “Where is the youth who will consecrate their time, illusions and enthusiasm for the good of the Motherland?” The quotation even demands that “pure and spotless must a victim be for the sacrifice to be acceptable.”

Tolentino left us with a work of art and a message. The only thing left is to see, notice and pay heed to it.

Pinoy Kasi : 'Oble'

By Michael Tan
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: May 02, 2008

MANILA, Philippines—In Filipino tradition, we just had to give it a nickname. I'm referring to the University of the Philippines’ famous (and, occasionally, infamous) Oblation, which has permeated the consciousness not just of UP faculty, students and staff but perhaps the entire nation. This is the statue of a man with hands spread out, head looking to the heavens and nothing on but a fig leaf.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo referred to it in her speech earlier this week when she signed the law giving UP a new charter. National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera focused on the Oblation in his commencement speech on the UP campus in Tacloban City last week, and I'm sure speakers at other graduation rites did the same thing.

Not surprisingly, we now have a doctoral dissertation on the Oblation. Last week I sat in a committee that listened to Reuben Ramas Cañete as he defended his dissertation with the intriguing title: "Sacrificial Bodies: The Oblation and the political aesthetics of masculine representations in Philippine visual culture."

The dissertation is as monumental as the Oblation, reaching 860 pages. But reading it was not that difficult, given the way Cañete was able to dig up and present so much information about the Oblation. His focus was on the social context of the Oblation: what influenced its sculptor, Guillermo Tolentino, and how the Oblation has been used by students, faculty, and even commercial interests. He did this by wading through historical archives (including, for example, every issue of UP's student newspaper, the Philippine Collegian, from 1986 to 1992), and interviews with people who had special interests in the Oblation.

With Cañete's permission, I'm going to give you a peek into his dissertation, which I hope he will eventually pare down so it can be published as a book and shared with a larger audience.

'Katakataka'

There are actually several Oblations. The original version was cast in concrete and then painted in bronze. This was first installed on the UP campus on Padre Faura Street in Manila on Nov. 30, 1935.

A question that has intrigued many Filipinos is: Who was the model for the Oblation? One popular myth says it was the actor Fernando Poe Sr. Cañete disputes this, but it isn't clear either who the model was because there are different people named in the written accounts about the Oblation. The name that appears most frequently is that of Anastacio Caedo, Tolentino's sculptor assistant, who eventually did other Oblation versions.

Tolentino may have intended to use a “bahag” [G-string] for the Oblation, as shown in one of his early sketched studies, but in the end he chose a fig leaf, in classical Western style. However, at the foot of the statue there is a spray of “katakataka” leaves, which is said to symbolize heroic self-sacrifice.

Reading about the katakataka, a plant whose leaves can be used to grow a new plant, made me wonder why we haven't had a mischievous fine arts student doing a new version of the Oblation with a katakataka leaf. That would be more nationalistic, and somewhat naughty, since the word "katakataka" also means "Surprise! Surprise!"

The original Oblation was transferred to the new UP campus in Diliman, Quezon City, on Feb. 11, 1949, with a repaired arm that had been damaged when the Americans bombed Manila during "liberation." The distance from Manila to Quezon City is only 11 kilometers, yet the transfer took eight hours, accompanied by a convoy of 3,000 students and alumni. From that we can see that the Oblation had become an important symbol to UP.

In 1958, a slightly shorter (306 cm instead of 321) bronze version of the original was cast in Italy and installed in what we know now as the Oblation Plaza, in front of Quezon Hall in UP, Diliman. This is the Oblation known to most UP students and alumni. The original "Oble" is now in semi-retirement at the Institute of Library and Information Science, also in Diliman.

The Oblation was reincarnated three more times, with Cañete suggesting, based on their height, that these may have come from the second version. These reproductions, which were cast by Anastacio Caedo, are now found on the UP campuses in Iloilo, Baguio and Manila. A sixth version, also based on the first, was produced by National Artist Napoleon Abueva and it is found on the UP campus in Los Baños, Laguna.

With UP setting up new campuses, it was inevitable that more Oblations would follow: version 7, produced by Fidel Araneta for the UP campus in Cebu; version 8 by Abueva for the UP Visayas campus in Miag-ao, Iloilo; version 9 again by Abueva for UP in Tacloban City; and version 10 for UP Mindanao, in Davao City, based on a new design by Jaime Ang. Actually, even the earlier versions have some variations, said Cañete, with versions 7 to 10 depicting an Oblation more like "a modern swimmer about to take a swan-dive."

Defiance

The Oblation has been reproduced in smaller versions for many purposes, including trophies and souvenirs. It has also appeared on T-shirts, mugs, pins, and, most importantly, Collegian editorial cartoons, where it is often used as a symbol of defiance. The most well-known, which appeared in the Jan. 12, 1976 issue, shows the Oblation with a caption calling students to political action and poses the rhetorical question: "Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa?" (The limp and awkward English translation is, "If not now, then when?") This was at the height of Ferdinand Marcos’ rule by martial law.

Cañete gives a fascinating account of the ultimate in the Oblation's symbolism: its performance through the Oblation Run, where members of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity follow its lead, minus the fig leaf, streaking through the campus. The first run involved two bold fratmen in 1977, more to publicize the showing of "Hubad na Bayani" [Naked Hero]. Again, there was an element of protest here, more specifically against censorship during the Marcos dictatorship. The Oblation Run is now an annual tradition, with a large run (people are already talking of hundreds) planned for June to mark UP's centennial. Like the Oblation, the Oblation Run also has its own versions in some of UP's other campuses, and lately, even at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Two or three years ago student activist groups also did their own naked runs in downtown Manila to protest tuition increases.

Cañete says the Oblation's symbolism has become "hybridized"—a combination of different causes, and definitely given myriad interpretations, even religious ones. It's an open secret in UP that an unknown group has been leaving rice offerings and performing rituals in the Oblation Plaza.

Tolentino would be pleased to see how his Oblation has been reincarnated so many times, both physically as well as symbolically. There is even a female Oblation now, just inaugurated last week at the College of Arts and Letters in Diliman, but I still need to visit her before I can do another column. Now, what shall we call her?

on RH bill by ateneo professors (engl 2 tf 4-5:30)

an excerpt of
CATHOLICS CAN SUPPORT THE RH BILL IN GOOD CONSCIENCE
(Position paper on the Reproductive Health Bill by individual faculty* of the Ateneo de Manila University)
link http://2010presidentiables.wordpress.com/reproductive-health-bill-5043/text-of-ateneo-professors-position-paper-on-rh-bill-5043/

The Realities of Women and Their Children

No woman should die giving life. Yet, in the Philippines, 10 women die every 24 hours from almost entirely preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth (POPCOM 2000). Our maternal mortality rate continues to be staggeringly high, at 162 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births (National Statistics Office (NSO), 2006 Family Planning Survey (FPS)). More lives would certainly be saved if all women had access to good prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care.

The reality, however, is that 3 out of 10 Filipino women do not have the recommended number of prenatal care visits (at least 4); and 6 out of 10 women still deliver at home, where they rarely have access to a skilled birth attendant, or to quality obstetric services in case complications arise (NSO and ORC Macro 2004, 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS)). Moreover, because a woman’s life and wellbeing are inextricably linked to that of her child’s, it is not surprising that the country’s infant mortality and under-five mortality ratios remain also worrisome: for every 1,000 live births, 24 children die before they reach the age of one, and 32 children die before they reach the age of five (NSO, 2006 FPS).

Aside from poor maternal care, our alarming maternal mortality rate also stems from the high incidence of induced abortions. The silence on this topic shrouds the tragedy of many Filipino women who have resorted to it in desperation. An estimated 473,400 women had induced abortions in 2000, translating to an abortion rate of 27 abortions per 1,000 women aged 14-44, and an abortion ratio of 18 abortions per 100 pregnancies (Juarez, Cabigon, Singh and Hussain 2005). Abortion not only terminates the life of an unborn child but also imperils the life of the mother, especially if performed in unsafe clandestine clinics by untrained personnel, or induced by the woman herself, as is the case of poor women who cannot afford a surgical abortion, or the services of a traditional practitioner (hilot). Of the nearly half a million women who had abortions in 2000, 79,000, or 17 percent, wound up in hospitals as a result of abortion complications (ibid.). Induced abortions accounted for 12 percent of all maternal deaths in the Philippines in 1994 (ibid.), and is the fourth leading cause of maternal deaths.

Studies show that the majority of women who go for an abortion are married or in a consensual union (91%), the mother of three or more children (57%), and poor (68%) (Juarez, Cabigon, and Singh 2005). For these women, terminating a pregnancy is an anguished choice they make in the face of severe contraints. When women who had attempted an abortion were asked their reasons for doing so, their top three responses were: they could not afford the economic cost of raising another child (72%); their pregnancy occurred too soon after the last one (57%); and they already have enough children (54%). One in ten women (13%) who had attempted an abortion revealed that this was because her pregnancy resulted from forced sex (ibid.). Thus, for these women, abortion has become a family planning method, in the absence of information on and access to any reliable means to prevent an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. The fact is, our women are having more children than they desire, as seen in the gap between desired fertility (2.5 children) and actual fertility (3.5 children), implying a significant unmet need for reproductive health services (NSO and ORC Macro 2004, 2003 NDHS)

The importance of family planning to the lives of women and their children cannot be emphasized enough. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA n.d.) asserts that women’s access to effective contraception would avert 30 percent of maternal deaths, 90 percent of abortion-related deaths and disabilities, and 20 percent of child deaths. In the Philippines, however, women sorely lack adequate access to integrated reproductive health services. This stems mainly from an inconsistent national population policy which has always been dependent on the incumbent leader. For example, studies have pointed out that former President Fidel V. Ramos and then Health Secretary Juan Flavier showed strong support for family planning initiatives. In contrast, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appears to have an incoherent national population policy, because while she recognizes the need to reduce the country’s population growth rate, on the one hand, she relegates the responsibility of crafting, funding, and implementing population and reproductive health programs to local government units (LGUs), on the other. Thus, we are witness to uneven reproductive health and family planning policies and programs across LGUs: Whereas Aurora and the Mountain province, and Davao, Marikina, and Quezon Cities have put in place commendable RH policies and programs, a metropolitan city like Manila teeming with informal settlers had banned modern artificial methods of family planning under the administration of Mayor Joselito Atienza.

From the foregoing, it is easy to understand why the contraceptive prevalence rate of the Philippines is only 50.6 percent (NSO, 2006 FPS). This means that only a little over half of married women use any family planning (FP) method, whether traditional FP (14.8%), modern natural or NFP (0.2%), or modern artificial FP (35.6%). And yet an overwhelming majority of Filipinos (92%) believe that it is important to manage fertility and plan their family, and most (89%) say that the government should provide budgetary support for modern artificial methods of family planning, including the pill, intra-uterine devices (IUDs), condoms, ligation, and vasectomy (Pulse Asia, 2007 Ulat ng Bayan survey on family planning). In another survey, the majority (55%) of respondents said that they are willing to pay for the family planning method of their choice (Social Weather Stations, 2004 survey on family planning).

The evidence is clear: Our women lack reproductive health care, including information on and access to family planning methods of their choice. Births that are too frequent and spaced too closely take a delibitating toll on their health, so that many of them die during pregnancy or at childbirth. Some of them, despairing over yet another pregnancy, seek an abortion, from which they also die and along with them, their unborn child too.

The sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person
The Catholic Church proclaims that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God, as well as redeemed by Christ. Therefore, each person’s life and dignity is sacred and must be respected. “Every violation of the personal dignity of the human being cries out in vengeance to God and is an offense against the creator of the individual,” according to Christifideles Laici (1988, no. 37). Indeed, we should measure every institution by whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person whether that individual is a woman agonizing over her ninth pregnancy, or an unborn child in a mother’s womb.

The RH Bill as pro-life and pro-women
We support the RH Bill because it protects life and promotes the wellbeing of families, especially of women and their children. Contrary to what its detractors say, the RH Bill is not “pro-abortion,” “anti-life,” or “anti-women.” With “respect for life” as one of its guiding principles (sec. 2), the bill unequivocally states that it does not seek to “change the law on abortion, as abortion remains a crime and is punishable” (sec. 3.m). It can be argued, in fact, that in guaranteeing information on and access to “medically-safe, legal, affordable and quality” natural and modern family planning methods (sec. 2), the bill seeks “to prevent unwanted, unplanned and mistimed pregnancies” (sec. 5.k) the main cause of induced abortions. The RH Bill is also pro-life and pro-women because it aims to reduce our maternal
mortality rate, currently so high (at 162 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) that the government has admitted that it is unlikely to meet the Millennium Development Goal target of bringing it down by three-fourths (to 52 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) by 2015 (NEDA and UNCT 2007). For example, section 6 of the bill enjoins every city and municipality to endeavor “to employ adequate number of midwives or other skilled attendants to achieve a minimum ratio of one (1) for every one hundred fifty (150) deliveries per year.” Section 7 instructs each province and city to seek to establish, for every 500,000 population, “at least one (1) hospital for comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four (4) hospitals for basic emergency obstetric care.” Section 8 mandates “all LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units [to] conduct maternal death review.”

Moreover, the RH Bill’s definition of “reproductive health care” goes beyond the provision of natural and modern family planning information and services, to include a wide array of other services (sec. 4.g). These include: maternal, infant, and child health and nutrition; promotion of breastfeeding; prevention of abortion and management of post-abortion complications; adolescent and youth health; sexual and reproductive health education for couples and the youth; prevention and management of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmittable infections (STIs); treatment of breast and reproductive tract cancers and other gynecological conditions; fertility interventions; elimination of violence against women; and male involvement and participation in reproductive health. We therefore ask, How then can the RH Bill be violative of human life and dignity?

To reiterate, because reproductive health is central to women’s overall health, fundamental aspects of women’s wellbeing are compromised when reproductive health is ignored. The conditions under which choices are made are as important as the actual content of women’s choices: the right to choose is meaningful only if women have real power to choose.

The Conditions of Poor Families

Poverty is a multi-faceted phenomenon caused by inter-related factors: the weak and boom-and-bust cycle of economic growth; inequities in the distribution of income and assets and in the access to social services; bad governance and corruption; the lack of priority accorded to agriculture including agrarian reform; the limited coverage of safety nets and targeted poverty reduction programs; and armed conflict. However, there is no question that poverty in the Philippines is exacerbated by our rapid population growth (Alonzo et al. 2004, Pernia et al. 2008), which, at 2.04 percent, is one of the highest in Asia. A close association exists between our country’s chronic poverty and rapid population growth, as the latter diminishes overall economic growth and blights the prospects of poverty reduction. Curbing our population growth rate is thus a requisite of sound economic policy and effective poverty reduction strategy, and needs to be undertaken with the same vigor we would exert in fighting corruption, improving governance, or redistributing resources.

Turning once again to the conditions of our people, surveys have established the strong association between household size and poverty incidence. Women aged 40-49 in the poorest quintile bear twice as many children, at six children per woman, compared to an average of three children for women in the richest quintile (NSO and ORC Macro 2004, 2003 NDHS). The same pattern is seen when one considers the woman’s educational background: women aged 40-49 with no education (invariably because they are extremely poor) give birth to an average of 6.1 children, whereas women with college or higher education have three children on average (ibid.)

The sad fact is, whereas women in the richest quintile, who have three children on average, are able to achieve their desired number of children (2.7 children), the poorest do not. Women in the lowest quintile, who bear an average of six children, have at least two children more than their ideal number (3.5). The inability of women in the poorest quintile to achieve the number of children they want stems from their high unmet need for family planning, which, at 26.7 percent, is more than twice as high as the unmet need of women in the richest quintile, at 12.3 percent (ibid.).

In addition, studies have noted an inverse relationship between family size and household wellbeing. In particular, an increase in family size is accompanied by a decrease in per capita income, a decrease in per capita savings, and a decrease in per capita expenditures on education and health. Applying standard statistical techniques to indicators of household wellbeing in the 2002 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey (APIS), Orbeta (2005) notes that small families with four members enjoy twice as much income per capita, at P18,429 per annum, compared to large families with nine or more members, at P8,935. Annual savings per capita also declines from P2,950 for a four-member household, to P1,236 for a nine or more-member household.

Expenditures on education and health are good indicators of a family’s investment on the wellbeing of its members. Based on the 2002 APIS, small households with four members spend 2 ½ times more on the education of each child in school, at P1,787 per student, compared to large households with nine or more members, where annual education expenditure per student is only P682. Similarly, four-member households spend nearly thrice as much on the health of each member, at P438, in contrast to nine or more-member households, where annual health expenditure per capita is only P150. These figures reveal that as household size increases, a family needs to spread its resources more thinly, thus investing less on the education and health of each member. This has deleterious consequences on human capital and income-earning potential (Orbeta 2005).

Moreover, as family size increases, school attendance of its members drops. The proportion of school-age members 6 to 24 years old who attend school declines from 67.9 percent for four-member households, to 65.6 percent for nine or more-member households (2002 APIS survey, cited in Orbeta 2005). The prevalence of child labor is also associated with household size. Working children’s families tend to be larger (7-11 members) than those of nonworking children (2-5 members) (Del Rosario and Bonga 2000).

In summary, poor households typically have more children than they aspired to have, as a result of a high unmet need for family planning. A large family size strains a poor family’s capacity to earn, save, and provide education and health care for its members. This diminishes children’s human capital and income-earning potential, and explains why poverty tends to be transmitted and perpetuated from one generation to the next.

Nostalgia for Kerala (and its food) by Pete Cherches (for comm 1 tf 10:30-12)

source: http://petercherches.blogspot.com/2007/10/nostalgia-for-kerala-and-its-food.html


I've visited the state of Kerala, on India's Malabar Coast, twice in the 1990s. It's my favorite part of India. There are beautiful beaches and backwaters, places of great historical interest, reflecting the region's varied colonial past, and an overall sense of contentment and well-being among the people. It has the highest literacy rate of any state in India (largely a result of years of Marxist local rule), and though generally a poor, agrarian region, the poverty isn't abject. As a traveler you're not confronted by a constant parade of beggars or relentless hawkers. Kerala is a success story of the developing world.

In 1991 I visited Cochin, and about five years later I traveled more extensively within Kerala.

I wrote the following as part of a letter to a friend after that first trip:

Cochin is situated on a number of islands, along with a mainland district called Ernakulam. Ernakulam is not particularly interesting, but it's the best location as far as traveling logistics are concerned. I arrived there mid-afternoon and took a walk around town, stopping in at what was billed as an international food fair, which consisted of five or six booths run by hotels and restaurants, serving north Indian, south Indian, Chinese food, pizza and ice cream, in addition to a couple of kitchenware displays. I stopped at a stand run by the Cochin rotary club which served 21 (count 'em) varieties of dosa. That night I took a sunset cruise on the Arabian Sea, followed by dinner at my hotel, the Sealord. As Cochin is a coastal city, seafood is bountiful, and the Sealord does it up well.

The next day I took the state-run tour. The tour covers a lot of ground in 3 1/2 hours that, due to travel logistics, would be much more time consuming to do on your own. The boat takes you to the major sights on various islands, but the stops were, I felt, too rushed.

Cochin has such an interesting range of sights due to its setting and history--variously controlled by the Indians, Portuguese, Dutch, English and back to the Indians. There were Christians in Kerala way before the Portuguese arrived, and now the state is about 20% Christian--you see a lot of blessed virgins and people wearing crosses around Cochin, and at the settlement of Fort Cochin there's an old Portuguese church, St. Francis, surrounded by houses that look like English country cottages. By the water are a number of these big contraptions known as Chinese fishing nets that have been in use for centuries. In the settlement called Mattanchery is a palace known as the Dutch Palace (originally Portuguese, it was restored and expanded by the Dutch), the highlight of which is a series of beautiful murals depicting scenes from the Ramayana.

Also in Mattanchery, in a neighborhood known as Jewtown, is a 16th century synagogue. Jewtown is a fascinating place. The shops and houses have signs with names like "J.E. Cohen, Tax Advisor" and "Dr. Blossom Simon," all, apparently, old Cochin Jewish names (the Jews settled there about two thousand years ago). There are only about 25 Jews left, most of them elderly. The woman who sells postcards at the synagogue told me that her son, a doctor, lives in Detroit. Jewtown is full of curio and spice shops, and the smells are wonderful. There's also a Jewish cemetery in Jewtown.

One custom that the churches and synagogues have inherited from the dominant culture is that one always removes one's shoes before entering a place of worship.

Later I went to a cassette shop in Ernakulam, in search of typical Keralan music. I don't know why, but when you tell the shopkeepers in far off places that you're looking for the genuine article they never believe you. At first they showed me everything but what I was looking for--north Indian ragas, film songs, even some Tchaikovsky. "No, no, traditional music from Kerala," I insisted. He finally got the message. He brought out a tape of music for Kathakali (the local dance drama) which I eagerly purchased. But the best find was a tape called "Malayalam Devotional Songs" (Malayalam is the local language, very clipped and staccato when spoken, a Dravidian language that is completely unrelated to Hindi). Though they're Hindu songs, the music appears to be greatly influenced by the church, as the male vocal harmonies sound much more western than Indian. The instrumentation is Indian, the melodies slightly Arabic, and the combination is beautiful.

That evening I went to a Kathakali performance, or should I say demonstration. A full Kathakali performance runs many hours, and the tourist version is greatly abbreviated. The presentation included a lecture on Hinduism and its relationship to the dance, followed by a forty-five minute taste of scenes from Kathakali. It's a mannered, gestural, ritualistic dance theatre, similar in some ways to other Asian dance idioms, such as Indonesian and Japanese forms. Traditionally, female roles are portrayed by men. The technique is precise and physically exacting and requires years of study. The stories were originally drawn from Hindu epics, but eventually the lexicon expanded, and recently there have been Kathakali versions of Shakespeare. The dancers have perfect control of all face and body muscles, and the make-up is striking and elaborate. Before the lecture you have an opportunity to watch the make-up process.

There are a number of companies in Cochin that do nightly Kathakali presentations. I went to See India Foundation, which is reputed to be the best. But when I had asked a rickshaw driver to take me there he insisted, "No performance tonight." I knew he was lying. One thing you quickly learn in India is never believe anything a cab or rickshaw driver tells you. For instance, if you blow into town and tell a guy to take you to your hotel of choice, he'll say, "All full," because he wants to take you to a place that gives him a commission. Apparently the drivers in Cochin have the same arrangement with Kathakali companies.

On my last day in Cochin, Claudio, the Italian musician I had met in Mysore, and his friends turned up at the Sealord (they had taken a land route via Ooty, a hill station on the way). I ran into them at breakfast. They had just been through a horrible overnight train ride and were exhausted. We arranged to meet in the afternoon for a boat ride through the "backwaters."

As I didn't have time for one of the longer backwater trips (the 8 1/2 hour ride from Alleppy to Quilon is supposed to be the ultimate), I opted for the ferry from Cochin to Varapuzha, a two-hour trip each way. Claudio, Elena, Roberta and I boarded the ferry at 2:30 and paid our fare--1 rupee, 30 paise (about 7 cents). Fortunately the ticket seller realized we were just going along for a pleasure ride and advised us that the boat gets to Varapuzha at 4:30, but that the last one back to Cochin leaves there at 4:25, so we'd have to get off a stop or two earlier.

The boat is a passenger ferry that takes people from island to island, and along the way groups of people got on and off, most of them standing, packed in. Luckily we had seats with an unobstructed view. Everywhere you looked there were palm trees. The ride was delightful, though a bit claustrophobic. At about 4:00 we decided to look for a suitable place to disembark. At one stop Elena pointed and said, "Why not?" So we got off. The villagers who got off with us looked amazed--why on earth would we be coming to their island?

It was a lovely, idyllic place, and I felt a bit like Gauguin arriving in Tahiti. As we walked through the village, people really took notice. Kids followed us, shouting, "Hello, what is your name, where are you from." Young women with babies smiled shyly. Word got around and pretty soon the whole village had come out to see us. We had become an event. We chatted with a few people (most didn't speak much English), and learned that the island was called Kothad. As we started walking back to the ferry landing, somebody yelled to us, "Wait--the alderman wants to meet you." So we went back and met Rafael, a delightful old guy who proudly showed us the little chapel of St. Mary ("One hundred years old," he boasted) and asked us all about ourselves. A gaggle of children had assembled around us, and Rafael asked us to please take some photos of them. I was all out of film, but Claudio took a number of shots. The kids loved posing. Then Rafael and the kids escorted us back to the ferry landing and waited with us until the boat came. My one hour on Kothad was one of the highlights of my Indian trip.


Note: Things have really changed on Kothad. I just discovered that there's a 3* resort on the island.
* * *
Keralan cuisine differs from other Indian cuisines in a number of ways. Unlike most other South Indian cuisines, it is not strictly vegetarian, since the population is much less homogeneously Hindu than the rest of the south (Christians and Muslims account for over 40% of the population). Being a coastal state, there's much emphasis on seafood; the tiger prawns of Kerala are crustacean nirvana. A "curry" in Kerala is nothing like a North Indian curry (dishes with a similar spice mixture are known in the south as "masalas"). A Keralan curry gets its name from the aromatic curry leaf, and it's often cooked with onions and tomatoes. Kerala is named for the coconut (kera), so naturally coconut and coconut oil is used heavily. Varuthatus are wonderfully incendiary dishes made with chili paste. Keralan cuisine is one of the world's great culinary secrets. The Kerala Tourism website features recipes for many typical Keralan dishes.

Keralan food is virtually impossible to come by in the U.S., which is a real tragedy. There was a place, about fifteen years ago, in Manhattan's "curry hill" restaurant enclave, called The Raj, that served Keralan and Punjabi food (the home states of the two owners), but it was nothing special, and it didn't last very long.

Londoners have a much better time of it. I've eaten at a good Keralan place near the British Museum called Malabar Junction, but since I was last in London the big news is Das Sreedrahan's Rasa group of restaurants, devoted to various aspects of Keralan cuisine. Rasa has garnered numerous rave reviews. The original Rasa is vegetarian, Rasa Samudra specializes in Keralan seafood cuisine, Rasa Maricham is a black pepper concept restaurant, and Rasa Travancore serves (believe it or not) the Syrian-Christian cuisine of Kerala. Das Sreedrahan has even taken Kerala to Newcastle, with his recently opened Rasa Newcastle. I'm dying to try every Rasa branch in London, though it would probably be much cheaper to go straight to Kerala.

I was excited to learn, several months ago, that there's a Keralan restaurant, Kerala Kitchen, in the Floral Park section of Queens. I also learned that it's a pain in the ass to get to from Brooklyn or Manhattan without a car. It's at the edge of Queens, right near the Nassau County border, and no subway goes within miles of it. One could take the F train to the end of the line in Jamaica and then hop on a bus for the next hundred blocks, but I figured that would take me close to two hours each way. I decided that the Long Island Railroad was a better bet. From Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn it's about a 25-minute ride to the Floral Park station in Nassau County, then it's more than a mile walk to the restaurant. I took the LIRR out on a beautiful late summer day for lunch, and the walk was rather pleasant.

The restaurant is run by Keralan Christians from the town of Kottayam. Not only was the presence of both pork and beef on the menu a clue that they were Christian, but there was also an Indian calendar-style illustration of the Virgin Mary in the dining room.

The menu was intriguing, including such seasonal specials as rabbit roast and frog legs fry (toddy shop style). They serve a buffet on weekends, which would have been the ideal way to sample a lot of dishes, but I went on my own on a Wednesday. I figured my best bet would be to order the "kerala meal," a thali with a fish dish, a meat dish, two vegetables, rice, dal, yogurt, pickle and pappadum.




Overall, the entire meal was a great disappointment. First of all, everything was lukewarm; perhaps ordering the thali wasn't the best idea. The vegetable dishes were very bland (granted, Keralan vegetables tend to be milder than Tamil versions). There was a green bean with coconut dish (thoran, similar to the Tamil poriyal), and avial (mixed vegetables in a yogurt sauce). The non-veg dishes were somewhat better. The sauce for the kingfish curry had a nice, tangy bite, and the beef fry had an aromatic dry masala that reminded me a bit of an Indonesian rendang.

Disappointment notwithstanding, I may rouse myself out on a weekend to try the buffet, but I'd much rather find a really good Keralan place closer to home. Perhaps Das Sreedrahan will take a cue from Gordon Ramsay and open a Rasa branch in New York.

Turn out the lite...by Anderson Digby (for comm 1 tf 10:30-12)

Anderson, Digby. "Turn out the lite; lite food is insipid, weak, denatured, flat, diluted, and easy: food for cowards and children. " National Review. 48.n18 (Sept 30, 1996): 69(1). Academic OneFile. Gale. University of the Philippines - Diliman. 4 June 2011
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THE other day I saw something in a shop. It was about four inches long and pink. It called itself a sausage without fat. Despite its size and shape, this is rather like calling something with no gin in it a gin-and-tonic or selling a vinaigrette without vinegar. A basic sausage has only two main ingredients: lean pork and fat pork in proportions around two-thirds, one- third. And the fat is essential: it partially melts under heat, cooking and moisturizing the lean in a special way that makes the sausage taste like a sausage.
The mildest thing one would want to say about this horrid dry pink innovation, which sweated under the grill and fell to bits under the knife, was that it was less than a sausage. Which is precisely what has been happening to food and much else on a grand or rather a pathetic scale. Cigarettes with filter tips are less than cigarettes, and non-alcoholic beer is less than beer. Low-fat milk is less than milk.
There is a word that usefully captures this trend to the insipid and denatured, and it is "Lite." There is now lite wine, lite colas, light olive oil, light bread, light coffee, and light frozen dinners. Go to a restaurant with a modern person and the greatest compliment she will be able to pay as she leaves will be, "That was a wonderful lunch, just what I like, light."
The "Lite" trend has at least one redeeming feature. Over the years I have struggled to find the right word to describe the food I cook and write about. Well, now we know. It is whatever is the opposite of Lite. A pheasant shot and hung for two weeks till ripe, a leg of beef stewed in a heavy Rhone with the wine reduced to a few tablespoons of powerful sauce, the dark meat from crabs pureed down with hot mustard, a bass with its body slit and stuffed with sliced lemon and garlic and half-grilled, half-stewed in pungent Greek olive oil, kidneys in Fino Sherry, a well-cured manchego cheese, old goat crottin, a thimbleful of espresso -- these are the opposite of Lite.
But it is not just a matter of heaviness or strength. The aroma of a saffrony fish soup, the complex tastes of mesclun with a home-made wine vinegar and olive oil, a bone-dry Champagne, brains in the lightest of batters -- none of these are strong. But they have their proper character. That does not mean they are simple. The mesclun is obviously complex, the others less obviously but still so. Good wines are complex. Indeed one characteristic of whatever-is-the-opposite-of-Lite is that it has not been made easy. There are no concessions in a cassoulet.
Good dishes are what they are. If a novice approaches them, it is he who has to submit and learn to appreciate them. They are not altered for him. And whatever-is-the-opposite-of-Lite also has texture. Good eating is about physical sensations: of crunching the tiny bones of pigs' feet, sucking away at the crab claw, pulling that greeny purple asparagus spear through your teeth, punching the claret round the gums, chewing at that older and better piece of beef, sniffing the sinus-clearing horse-radish, the sharp intake of breath as the marc hits the back of the throat, the drying of the mouth as a sour Asian fish sauce touches the gums, and the sheer delight of using a Spanish wooden toothpick to excavate the gaps in the teeth and enjoy the flecks of almonds or filaments of stewed wild duck a second time around.
If the opposite of Lite is all these things -- pungent, complex, characterful, without concession, food for men -- then this reflects back and throws more light on what Lite is. Lite is insipid, weak, denatured, flat, diluted, and easy: food for cowards and children. Now this is no reproach to those who make Lite products. The food market is demand-led. The industry supplies what people want and does so very efficiently. So booming Lite business gives us a picture of the American and British consumer of food. He is ignorant, timid, squeamish, and childish.
Come to think of it, Lite is quite a good description of the rest of our culture. Our morality is Lite, childish, and diluted. Our religion is insipid and undemanding. The schools make things easy for their pupils. The entertainment industry is fluffy and flimsy. Is a foreigner allowed to suggest that the obvious description of the Republican candidate for the Presidency is not "wrong" but "Lite"?
Gale Document Number:A18738581



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