UMBRELLA TIMES

V

One of the sights at the school bus stand of my childhood I vividly remember was that of the mocchi, braving the elements under an old, black- coloured  umbrella  fixed to a small stick grouted to the ground. The BPL lawyers in the kutchehree and the Italian barbers on the footpath also worked under fixed umbrellas.  Dadu, who owned the shop below our house in Dhanbad, would often  ride his bicycle holding an umbrella in one hand. My maternal grandfather was never to be seen without one except during winters, his thick- rimmed sunglasses , starched pyjamas and kurtas and a towel completing the preparation for his outings. My father seldom carried an umbrella, we three brothers most certainly never did - the sun was to be braved and rains were to be enjoyed, the wetter the better. I enjoyed the sight of the girls struggling  as gusts of wind would threaten to break the ribs of their umbrellas and do a shimmy at their hemlines. 

The collapsible umbrella owes its origin to the ingenuity of the Chinese about three thousand years ago. The Chinese character for umbrella is sãn which is a pictograph resembling the modern umbrella. The Chinese design travelled across to  Japan and Korea , found its way to Persia and even hopscotched over the craggy Silk Road to reach the Western world where surprisingly, during the Middle Ages, it fell into disuse with people largely preferring hooded capes. It wasn't quite there in England during Shakespeare's time and none of his works contains any reference to an umbrella.The first person  to use the word "umbrella" in England was Thomas Coryate, an author and a traveller ( he even travelled to India ) from the time of Shakespeare , who mentioned it in Coryate's Crudities  ( 1611) about the umbrella which he had seen people of Cremona in Northern Italy use.

The word" parasol" is from para ( to stop)  and sol ( sun)  while etymologically  "umbrella" evolved from the latin umbella ( an umbel is a flat- topped  flower) or umbra meaning shaded or shadow. The suffix-elle is used to denote "little" , thus an umbrella ( umbrella) is " a little shadow". The Hindi word Chhata is derived from the Sanskrit chhatrak which is a toadstool- so something shaped like mushroom.  Owing to its shape which becomes emblematic of the sky and thereby kind of celestial, it fires up a host of symbols:  metaphors, personifications, allegories and signifiers  for protection, wisdom, compassion, enjoyment, unity, love, refinement, status, royalty, and even enlightenment in religious and secular life. A friend even wished me on Father's Day with an E Card carryinga picture of man and an umbrella. 

The parasol or chhatra or chhatraratna was an auspicious symbol, one amongst the Ashtamangala symbols of Budhism, and also the emblem of Varuna and deities like Revanta, Surya and  Vishnu ( in his Vamana avatar). In many Dharmic iconography, traditional Tibetan medicine thangkas or cloth paintings and ayurvedic diagrams, the umbrella is uniformly represented as the Sahasrara which is the seventh chakra of the Sanatana tantric/yogic system-  lying just above the head. The Tibetan parasol , consisting of domed silk cover and hanging silk pendants was the union of wisdom and compassion and came in octagonal and square  shapes to represent the Noble Eight Fold path and Four Directional Quarters respectively.

It shared a similar symbolic value to the baldachin, that  canopy one sees over thrones of the royalty , and was often used in the procession rites in many religions, right from the Greek festival of Scirophoria (when a white parasol was carried by the goddess from Acropolis to Phalerus,), to the Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox and even the  Catholic Church  ( as the golden and red coloured umbraculum as part of the Papal Regalia over the Host) , not to forget the  many Buddhist processions where it was almost considered as a a mobile temple.  In Vajrayana Buddhism, the enlarged umbrella ( atapatra) was even worshipped as the thousand-armed and footed goddess Sitapatra whose name means " the white umbrella".

Celestial, meteorological, metaphorical, aesthetic, enchanting, multi-  functional -  the umbrella is quite ubiquitous. So while you have cocktail umbrellas on cocktail glasses, those real zany ones that add to the oomph of the drink, the origamic fecundity of the Japanese has produced a brilliant array of umbrella creations and even inspired modern umbrella designs sans the internal ribs.  It allows for a rhapsodic display of colours as one could see at the opening ceremony of Paralympics in London in 2012 when the participants danced to the beat of Rihanna's popular number Umbrella. 

Stung by the barb at the bankers ( "a bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain") , Citibank launched a counter offensive through its Citi logo  - it  uses a red curve above the "t" to represent an umbrella ( with the "t " as the handle) as a symbol of protection to its clients . Somewhat similar is the logo designed for Consumer Society and Citizen networks  in which the umbrella is held as a protection against the market manipulations represented by a rain of bar code.The most celebrated instance  of the parasol being used as a protection against assaults was  the  kevlar coated  £ 10, 000 device used by the  French President Nicolas Sarkozy  in 2011,  giving it the fancy name of para pactum. This added one more to the 'para' umbrella term  - along with the parasol ( sun), paraplui ( rain)  and parachute (fall). 

Forecasts of rain are often made using umbrella and rain icons ( U +2602  and U+2614 )  as encoded in the Misc Symbols block of Unicode. If you don't want your goods to be exposed to rain and damp during transit, be sure to put the umbrella label.Smart umbrellas are now being used, complete with sensors and Bluetooth devices to send rain data as an alternative to , and improvement over, the traditional rain gauge.It is safe to be with an umbrella not only while being out in the sun or the rains but also while having sex. Hold it, don't let your eyes pop out of their sockets in disbelief, I was only referring to the use of the word chhatri  by North Indians as an euphemism for condom, if not exactly as a prophylactic slang, at the chemists' to avoid prudish smirks and snickers. 

Umbrellas are also used in photography as a diffusion device , as a glare shield or as shade depending on the situation. They have for long been integrated in Indian architecture as chhatris- elevated dome-shaped pavilions and canopies. In modern times, Frei Otto transformed the umbrella into an item of lightweight architecture. The umbrella industry has now a fairly buoyant demand as garden, beach, patio umbrellas are mushrooming all over. In the days when cricket was played at Sharjah, umbrella hats were as common, if not as attractive, as the lovely ear rings pretty expats wore and Henry Blofeld  mooned over with maniacal fascination. 

A very large number of "umbrellas" have entered the world of business, finance and  international relations : umbrella organisation, umbrella company, umbrella fund, umbrella branding, umbrella effect or price umbrella, umbrella clauses,  nuclear umbrella, etc. The word  has muscled its way in the languages as figures of speech, is hugely  polysemic  and even entered into popular culture as proverbs: "prepare the umbrella before it rains" ( Malay); "any fool carries an umbrella on a wet day, but the wise man carries it everyday"( Irish); "if a man from humble beginnings gets rich, he will cary his umbrella at midnight "( Indian). Of course, the Abol Tabol Bengalis use an adage " chhata korchhe" which means "does nothing" and "chhatar maatha" which means "rubbish" - but then this is something one can expect from a people who go high less on alcohol and more  bumper illish harvests! One has to be careful about being umbrellaed in rush hours at the London metro, 

Probably due to the coquettish whirl they admit to, parasols have been found to sexually alluring.While in ancient Greece and Rome, the umbrella  was used primarily by ladies of fashion, even in England it became a part of a young lady's wardrobe , complete with a repertoire of parasolic gestures for coping with suitors. The Geishas of Japan were famous for the umbrella twirls as for theitr sashays- and of course for many other things. And much as the Japanese may use a proverb  about lovers not requiring an umbrella in the rains, in India, the fillum people saw in it it a necessary accessory during rains to ramp up the romance and envelope the couple in a cloud of  suggestive sexuality- none more compellingly captivating than Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Sree 420.

For the phallically alert if not inclined, here comes Freud on the topic. Sigmund Freud , always alert to shapes, saw in the umbrella as a phallic symbol - the male genital.  Derrida considered the umbrella to be  a symbol of both, the male as well as female genitalia depending whether it was opened up or turned upside down , somewhat analogous to the pair of up-pointed- inverted triangles or the blade and the chalice. 

However,  what has fascinated me is the de- elitization of the umbrella over the years. Historically, there had been a pronounced element of elitism associated with carrying of umbrella. In  ancient Greece, in the Pathenæa, the daughters of the Metics or foreign residents carried parasols over the Athenian women as a mark of inferiority. From the account of Roman poets like Ovid, Martialis, Juvenal it appears that it was a matter of honour among maid servants , as it was in Egypt as well, to bear it over their mistresses.  In Tibet, the entitlement of parasols for secular elite was as per their rank.

My only memory of physically seeing the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is one of her in Jubilee Park of Bokaro Steel City where she was distributing some prizes to children in the open- protected by shade of an umbrella held by an assistant. I have rarely seen Indian politicians hold the umbrellas themselves: in many African and Oriental societies,  the umbrella is a symbol of official /royal importance and it is considered infra dig by people in positions to carry the umbrellas themselves. 

The umbrella was adopted in the West from 18th century onwards , despite protests by the coachmen whose business it hit ( the way the strolley impoverished the coolies at the railway platforms) ,  and soon became a part of a British male's attire. Actually, an umbrella came to be a signifier of good taste. It has now become quite popular among India's middle class as well -  for Akshay Kumar's as Sachin Tichkule in Priyadarshan"s Khatta Meetha, the umbrella becomes a part of his middle class identity as he lugs it around while going about his day's work. But in India, as in many parts of the Orient including China,  the rich and the powerful still liked others to hold an umbrella to them.

However, in a rapidly democratising world, holding an umbrella could be supremely endearing to the masses  and one has to look no further than POTUS Barack Obama as he walked down the plane ladder in China during his last visit to China. Amongst many other things, how the umbrella is held could be a defining difference between the Occident and the Orient.  The Queen has been seen holding it, Bush and Putin have been photographed shielding  their spouses. To his credit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao bucks the umbrella trend and is often shown holding his own while making field visits. I wonder when our netas would do so.

But probably more than its de- elitization, it is the  radicalisation of

the umbrella as a symbol of protest against authoritarianism which kind of marks a 180 º swing of the society from antiquity to modern. It became the visible symbol of protest  of pro democracy movement in Hong Kong called the Umbrella Revolution- the umbrella as a shield against undemocratic elements including police batons . Yes, the umbrella, that quintessential symbol of the elite, is now the symbol of  mass protest, not only of  pro democracy protestors of Hongkong but also of  the sex workers ever since they held a Red Umbrella March in 2001 at Venice - emerging as a symbol of protection from abuse and intolerance they face everywhere as well as one of their strength and solidarity.

Meanwhile, I, who never used an umbrella during my childhood and youth,  have moved on with age. I do carry one, when the sun shatters my defence on the golf courses. But mine is no ordinary golf umbrella- it comes with a small fan  I hold close to my nape  as I amble from  one slice to yet another duck hook  in search of the ball. And  remember, golf, that so -called elitist of the games, probably because of its Scottish origin, doesn't allow the caddie, whether  you are Woods, Mcllroy or Spieth, to hold the umbrella even as you try to sink in a putt amidst the pitter patter of rains. A total DIY thing it has become.