Daily Vocab Capsule 26th September 2017

Daily English Vocab

The idea that used to be Bangalore

A city is more than a place to live, it embodies a dream and the possibilities of a dream. Sometimes a city acquires the status of a myth, becomes a character in a novel. Many great cities have been characters in novels. Moscow, Paris, London, Delhi have all shared the sense of being novelesque, capturing in their character a sense of hope, a sense of the future. Their decay signals in a sense a death of a world, a paradise lost. Bombay and Calcutta have smelt of that slow decay, a period where the city grows like a cancer, explodes like an epidemic corroding the dreams of millions of its migrants. Yet if one city showed hope in India, expressed its cosmopolitan dreams and its intellectual inventiveness, it was Bangalore. Bangalore was myth and metaphor (a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else.) for modern India, a flag we could wave in the global world. Yet today one senses the myth is dying. There is a sense of loss, a silence of mourning which no amount of political bluster and brand bravura (great technical skill and brilliance shown in a performance or activity.) can conceal. One senses that the myth of Bangalore as the cutting edge Indian city is dying. Myths are like signs that have to be read like symptoms by theshamans (healers) of the city. Today Bangalore is a desiccated (lacking interest, passion, or energy.)myth. This essay is written as an almost futuristic plea asking for the renewal of the myth. Myth has to be restored symbolically. One needs an event that creates a new grammar, a new vision of storytelling.

Back to Visvesvaraya

Modern Bangalore as a creation myth goes back to the iconicity (resemblance or similarity between the two aspects of a sign) of one man, the dewan of development, the patriarch of Indian planning, M. Visvesvaraya. No technocrat is as much a part of folklore, subject to immediate recall and celebration as the ectomorphic Visvesvaraya. He conveyed a sense of hybridity, of being Indian and more, a man who believed that character building, dam building and nation building went together. His iconicity stands up to Gandhi. If one wrote, “industrialise and perish”, the other replied, “industrialise or perish”. Their contrasts were stark but each was home grown. Visvesvaraya was one of the great icons of modernity and his style, his integrity invoked the myth of Bangalore. His urge to create the motor car industry, his vision of planning, his ideas of dam building, his integrity were all the stuff of legend. He balanced in himself, the public and private, the national and vernacular (the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a country or region.), the scientific and the managerial. His life helped create the mythic Bangalore.

The institutions established in the fifties and sixties, the aircraft and space industries, the biotechnology labs, supplemented the legend of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Raman Research Institute. Bangalore was India’s premier science city and the scientific leadership of Satish Dhawan, Sivaraj Ramaseshan, Amulya Reddy, Roddam Narasimha nursed this image with care. They were outstanding scientists who had a wider vision of society. They were institution builders who conveyed the idea that this city worked and innovated, yet there was a complementarity we must recognise.

Bangalore was not only a modern city, a haven for science. It was also the seat of a great creative imagination, where a Bangalorean could be as proud of Kannada literature as of Bangalore’s science. The vernacular and the cosmopolitan (familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures.)combined in a miraculous way in the lives of Shivaram Karanth, A.K. Ramanujan, U.R. Ananthamurthy and others. It was a world where ‘Hindustan’ aircraft and the literary world of Hegudu, with its visions of theatre, could combine creatively. There was no sense of dualism because dualism had become dialectic (the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions.), a dizzy (shaky) list of creative combinations. Anchoring all this were shrewd politicians like Devaraj Urs and Ramakrishna Hegde, who made electoral democracy a part of Bangalore’s creativity. Bangalore was modern, hopeful, liveable, scientific, local, cosmopolitan, a retired person’s dream and a professional’s first choice. IT added to the lustre and created the myth of Bangalore as India’s Silicon Valley. Firms like Infosys attracted other firms and Bangalore had its new legends of technocracy and entrepreneurship in N.R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and in Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Yet it was IT as it tended to outgrow itself that created the first cracks in the myth.

Onward to IT

IT reasserted the dualism between science and technology and created a tension between playful freedom and technological productivity. A C.V. Raman in his heyday (the period of a person's or thing's greatest success, popularity, activity, or vigour.) could assert that he was more interested in the properties of a diamond than worry about its industrial uses. But decades later, Mr. Narayana Murthy was challenging IISc to name one its inventions that had made a difference. The technocrat, the manager and the entrepreneur were edging out a more cosmopolitan world of science. Earlier, the pursuit of science was seen as a public good, an attempt to create a public culture. Today scientific research without a technological catchment was seen as unproductive. What Narayana Murthy mounted as a challenge was read as obvious by the Modi government which wanted Big Science to be a money spinning enterprise, what in business folklore was called a paisa vasool regime. Worse, IT became cocky (conceited or confident in a bold or cheeky way.), overconfident about its powers convinced that what was good for IT should be good for Bangalore. It tried to substitute technocratic ideas for the creativity of politics. There was a managerial hubris at the centre of it, symptomised in the tragedy of the Aadhaar card, which not only created a split between technocracy and politics but a fissure between the formal and informal economy destroying a sense of the openness and availability of citizenship, confusing identity with identification. The halo around such half-thought-out projects ate into the imagination of democracy, where those who battle for the Right to Information now struggled against the hubris of the Aadhaar card. Suddenly the wisdom of the whole seemed less than the creativity of the parts. IT lacked the wisdom of institutions like IISc which were nursed by leaders who had a sense of the state, the polity, the people.

Civic issues, civil society

Democratic politics too has suffered as the city faces a host of civic problems. But here one senses the sadness of civil society and the opening breach between the vernacular and cosmopolitan styles. The Karnataka of today is becoming more local and parochial in its manifestations. There is a desperate need for rethinking the imagination of Bangalore as a city. Today’s protest movements are a gasp (a convulsive catching of breath.) of survival than a creative attempt to heal the polity. One has to rework the alchemy, the grammar of the myth that made Bangalore, Bengaluru. The imagination of the city as diverse, open, wise to the ways of the world needs to be reworked and mere technocratic projects cannot be the quick fix for the problem. They, in fact, might be the source of the problem. Oddly, the death of Gauri Lankesh, and the responses, showed that a lot of civil society is sheer nostalgia. It triggered this essay and its list of questions. How does a city revive its dynamism which goes beyond the hype of start-ups? Bangalore has to come up with answers because it embodied a sense of hope of what India could be and should be. The city has to desperately reinvent itself because the idea of India needs an idea of a re-inventive Bengaluru.

Courtesy: The Hindu (General Studies)

1. Metaphor (noun): (A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else.) (अन्योक्ति / रूपांतर)

Synonyms: Symbol, Trope, Allegory, Emblem, Similitude.

Antonyms: Plain (Speech).

Example: A great poet always uses metaphoric phrases in his poetry.

Related words:

Metaphoric (adjective) -लाक्षणिक/रूपक

Metaphorically (adverb) - लाक्षणिक रूप से

Origin:  from Greek metapherein ‘to transfer’.

2. Bravura (noun): (Great technical skill and brilliance shown in a performance or activity.)  (दक्षता)

Synonyms: Virtuoso, Exceptionally Good, Excellent, Brilliance, Dazzling, Masterly, Expertise.

Antonyms: Feebleness, Weakness.

Example: During the audition, the performer showed bravura by taking artistic risks.

Origin: from Italian bravo ‘bold’.

3. Shaman (noun): (A person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of good and evil spirits/ a tribal figure that serves as a go-between for the physical and spiritual worlds) (ओझा)

Synonyms: Healer; Witch Doctor, Kahuna, Angekok.

Example: The shaman of the tribe recommended that the girl not be buried immediately, as he wanted her spirit to have time to leave her body.

Origin: from Tungus šaman 

4. Desiccate (verb): (Lacking interest, passion, or energy.) (सूखना/झुरना)

Synonyms: Parch, Dry, Devitalize, Wither.

Antonyms: Grow, Sprout, Flourish.

Example: Without water, the crops quickly became desiccated.

Verb forms: Desiccate, Desiccated, Desiccated.

5. Vernacular (noun): (The language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a country or region.) (प्राकृत भाषा)

Synonyms: Spoken Language, Colloquial Speech, Native Speech, Conversational Language, Common Parlance, Jargon.

Antonyms: foreign (language).

Example: The vernacular of today’s young people is very confusing for some of the older generation.

Origin: from Latin vernaculus ‘domestic

6. Cosmopolitan (adjective): (Familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures.) (सर्वभौम)

Synonyms: Worldly, Worldly-Wise, Cultivated, Sophisticated, Suave, Urbane.

Antonyms: Rustic, Unsophisticated.

Example: With restaurants representing over twenty countries, the mall food court has become acosmopolitan eatery.

Origin: from Greek kosmopolitēs, from kosmos ‘world’ + politēs ‘citizen’.

7. Dialectic (noun): (The art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions.). (तर्कशास्त्र)

Synonyms: Analytics, Argumentativeness, Rational, Logicality.

Antonyms: Illogicality, Irrationality.

Example: A brainstorming session was in full effect as members used dialectic tactics to problem-solve.

Related words:

Dialectical (adjective) - तर्कशास्त्रीय

Origin: from Greek dialektikē (tekhnē) ‘(art) of debate’

8. Dizzy (adjective): (Having or involving a sensation of spinning around and losing one's balance.) (अस्थिर/कम्पायमान)

Synonyms: Unsteady, Shaky, Wobbly, Off-Balance

Antonyms: Steady, Unshaky, Clear-Headed.

Example: If you feel dizzy after giving blood, please let the nurse know.

Related words:

Dizziness (noun) - A sensation of spinning around and losing one's balance.

9. Cocky (adjective): (Conceited or confident in a bold or cheeky way.) (मग़रुर/गुस्ताख़)

Synonyms: Arrogant, Conceited, Overconfident, Overweening, Smug, Haughty, Supercilious.

Antonyms: Humble, Modest.

Example: After his team won the last 10 football games, the cocky quarterback told everyone at school that he won the game by himself.

10. Heyday (noun): (The period of a person's or thing's greatest success, popularity, activity, or vigor.) (समृद्धि का उत्कर्ष)

Synonyms: Salad days, Prime time, Acme, Zenith, Pinnacle

Antonyms: Bottom, Nadir, Low point (of time)

Example: The paper has lost millions of readers since its heyday in 1964 due to allegations of corruption.