Opinions from around the region   May 1995

WOODBLOCK TO LASER, poem written by Michigan-based Gelek Rinpoche in praise of the Asian Classics Input Project, vMch is entering Tibetan canonical texts into CD-ROM. This translation, by Michael Roach, was carried in Wired of August 1994.

Great friend of mankind,
Your intellect (Lo) is deep and vast
Born of the hundred thousand
Good and wonderful (sang) deeds
You´ve accomplished.

I bow down and salute you,
King of scholars,
For your surpassing (Tharchin)
And courageous efforts
To share the precious knowledge
Of our snowy land
Throughout the countries of the world.

The light of the disk
Is endless
Like the light of the disks.
Of the sky,
Sun and moon;

The generosity of your gift
Is endless
We are attracted to it
And caught,
Like fish in a net;
The lands of the globe
Are endless
Where the goodness of your contribution
Will spread;

The people you reach
Are endless,
And what you do
Is of ultimate value.

A hundred thousand
Mirrors of the disk
Hold the great classics Of authors
Beyond counting
No longer
Do we need

To wander aimlessly
In the pages of catalogs
Beyond counting.

With a single push
Of our finger
On a button
We pull up the shining gems
Of citations,
Of text and commentary,
Whatever we seek;

This is something
 Fantastic,
Beyond dreams.

But you went further,
And spread the disk
All throughout
The entire world;
A feat
More amazing still!

I throw to you
A thousand petalled blooms
Of congratulations,
And I rejoice
In the kind deed you have done,
Which I know
Will satisfy the wishes
Of people throughout the world.

May your good activities
Spread to wherever
The earth spreads,
And there too
May the praises
Of your deeds be sung.

SCIENCE OF WHITEWATER is explained by scientist James Trefil in his 1986 book Meditations at 10,000 Feet: A Scientist in the Mountains.

We are all used to the fact that when water flows swiftly over a rocky bed, there will be a lot of foam and bubbles generated— this is what is meant by "Whitewater". But there is something strange about the waves you see in Whitewater. In a typical stretch of Whitewater, you might see a classical wave, except for one thing. The stream might be moving to the right, and the turbulent crest is on the left-hand side of the wave. The wave, in other words, is pointing in the wrong direction! Your instincts tell you that a rock in the stream bed should push the surface of the stream up, and if a wave forms, it should break on the downstream side of the rock. It definitely shouldn´t produce foam on the upstream side.

The wave is an example of "hydraulic jump," a phenomenon so common in everyday life that we usually don´t notice it .Imagine that there is a large rock upstream of the Whitewater. As shown in the figure, the water coming over the top of the rock is flowing down a slope much steeper than that which describes the general geometry of the stream. Consequently, on this part of the rock the flow of water will be fast; and since theamount of water that has to passover the rock is roughly the same as that which has to flow through any other area of the stream of equal cross section, the swift flow down the steep side means that the water flowing over the rock will be shallow compared to the rest of the stream.
 
Once the water coming down the rock encounters the slower fluid in the main part of the stream, it slows down. You have a similar experience when you run to catch a plane, then arrive at the ticket counter where movement is slower. When this happens, the number of people at the slowdown spot grows; a crowd accumulates. In just the same way, when the swiftly moving water slowsdown, water accumulates. In an open stream, the only way to accommodate more water is for the overall depth to increase. Thus some distance from the rock we expect the depth of the water to be greater than it is where the water is sluicing down the base of the rock.

It´s not hard to see that we can have a situation in which the fast, shallow flow down the rock is supercritical while the deep, slower flow down stream is subcritical. If this is the case, then there must be some spot where the flow is exactly critical. If a wave is generated in this region, it will move upstream as fast as it is being swept downstream, thus appearing to be stationary to someone on the bank.

JHINGA LA LA HO HO! Is what the plains folk hear when a hillman opens his mouth, writes Sadhana Naithani of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in The Times of India of  12 November 1994.

The Paharis or the hill people have special representation in the popular Hindi feature films: the (non-pahari) hero or the heroine in pursuit of adventure suddenly observes a group of people wearing colourful but undefin able clothes, feathers on the heads, dancing around an unknown deity with a queer face and in the name of linguistic expression producing sounds like Jhinga La La Ho Ho! These quaint creatures are Paharis.

Outside their natural habitat they are high-cheek-boned guards at the gate of the villain or hero portrayed as absolutely foolish or at best stupidly brave! Or course, for romance, honeymoon, etc. the hills are the best locations but totally deprived of any native. Moreover, when obsolete customs like swayamvar need to be placed in a community then again it is that of the Paharis.

This fantasy would have been laughable had it not been related to the real negation of the identity of our hill people, within their state of Uttar Pradesh. Thus it is not only for the Bollywood dream merchants but also for the common people of the plains of UP that the Paharis, tribals, cannibals, etc are all the same Jhinga La La Ho Ho! people.

The Pahari men are all Bahadurs which is synonymous with being stupidly loyal, otherwise dumb and definitely poor. Bahadur is not an individual name and does not belong to any known religion, region, custom or society. He is simply from the hills. How many plains people of UP can even differentiate between regions, linguistic and cultural zones in theHimalayas,is a moot question. A Bahadur canbe a Garhwali, Kumaoni, Nepali, Bhutani, Sikkimi or anything else—the mainlanders could not care less...

The Himalayan regions of Uttar Pradesh and its people have neither shared the political power with their plains counterparts nor have their issues and problems figured importantly in the state or national agenda. The Pahar and Paharis have existed incognito. They are a part of the mainstream´s Unconscious and can be represented any how by unconcerned politicians and fantasising dreammer chants. The real roles that they, as a community, play in society, or their individual national heroes are not considered worth mentioning.