A simple desultory Philippic

Making friends. Or not.

2011-12-01T13:49:00.007+05:30

Scum usually does rise to the top, often by sticking close to more solid stuff that floats.

I was in a little rowing boat, observing this phenomenon in a water body on the IIM Joka campus, when a half-brick splashed into the water a few feet away. A half-brick, not a pebble, not a stone. Two more followed. My friend and I were more concerned about getting brained than getting drenched, so we rapidly rowed to the other side of the pond. Got out, ran around to get the psychotic half-wit who was chucking the bricks. Of course, by the time our feet were on land again, the brick-chucker was a rapidly retreating blob in the middle distance.

That was in 1986. I still don’t know WHY he threw those bricks at us. It’s quite possible even HE didn’t know. (Incidentally, his hair was not so curly then. But the rest of him was about the same shape as it is now.)

Cut to 31^st December 2002 (or was it 2003?). Calcutta had a new hotel and they’d thrown a party for the formal launch. I walked in late (as usual) and went to get a Coke for my wife. As I turned from the bar I saw … you know how some memories stay with you visually, like a freeze-frame? This was one of those moments, a mental photograph that has stayed with me. What I saw was this - about twenty feet away, the man-with-friends was keeling over to one side, one hand pressed to his jaw, obviously the effect of a close encounter with somebody’s fist. I confess I was actually happy that the guy had got his come-uppance (college hates tend to stay with you, don’t they?). I called to my wife – “***** **** just got punched in the face!”

Five COMPLETE strangers in the vicinity turned towards me and practically chorused – “WHO is the guy who punched him?! I want to get him a drink!”

Obviously the man-with-friends was as popular as he had been in our college days.

****

So Mihir Sharma has spent a lot of time going through this awesome self-help (?) book, then dissected it in some detail, and even published the resulting article in “Caravan”. The article has almost “gone viral” on the Interwebs - it’s trended on Twitter, been discussed on Facebook, inspired blog-posts, telephone conversations, reminiscences (yes, I KNOW this post is in the same category!). In the process, it has ensured wide publicity for a book written by a man who believes that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Sort of winning a battle and losing a war, surely?

Why bother spending so much time on a person whom you obviously dislike, Mr. Sharma? You’re just giving him the kind of importance HE thinks he deserves. A self-defeating exercise. You’re surprised that he’s made a lot of money by sucking up to the right people? You still wonder at the levels of hypocrisy that famous people are capable of? You find it worthy of comment that people put up with each other in hopes of making money? You secretly believe that our public figures are the spiritual descendants of MK Gandhi, Gautama Buddha and the Good Samaritan? You were on an extended holiday to Mars when the Radia tapes became news?

Lose your naivete, Mr. Sharma. Your diatribe is not going to make an iota of difference to this man everybody seems to hate (whether secretly or openly). People associate with him despite being told he is shallow, scheming, sociopathic, sycophantic (selectively?), grating and utterly obnoxious. Unless you can establish that associating with him will cause financial loss or imprisonment, a donkey’s amours will have more value to his associates than your article ever will.

Consider this. When, some years ago, IIPM was being generally loveable and altruistic to Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis, I spoke to the head honchos of both the major English newspapers in Calcutta about the reality behind IIPM’s claims (e.g. Stiglitz as visiting faculty). They nodded gravely, looked uneasy, then wandered away. The mainstream media never published the data that emerged, they mentioned the issue only in passing. Very strange. Of course, the fact that IIPM were India’s biggest advertisers in print media during those months of July and August was completely irrelevant.

So wisen up, Mr. Sharma. You are an alumnus of a university that (creditably) states openly that one of the biggest gains from studying there is the social network. Yet you’re surprised that the object of your dislike has succeeded through networking? You will notice that I have not named the man here; I don’t want to face a civil suit filed in Dimapur or Jammu. I’m playing safe, while you have the guts to call a spade a bloody shovel several times over. All credit to Caravan and to you for your honesty in publishing an article that could invite retribution. But sadly, your article won’t make any difference to its subject. He will still be available as a motor-mouth to make up the numbers for TV “debates”. He will remain on contract for an incredibly insensitive and stupid weekly agony column. He will still be famous for being famous. And he will still make oodles of money as a front-man and lobbyist. So what’s the point?

~~Please get a life,~~ Mr. Sharma. Don’t waste your intellect and talent on stupid trivialities. And oh - do try and write shorter sentences. It would make your point of view so much clearer to non-intellectuals like me.

Existential. Very.

2011-09-16T05:21:00.000+05:30

5 in the morning. My TEETH ache with sleep. The laptop shirks, slows down, offers me irrelevant updates. Top of my inbox is a (believe this!) “state of the blogosphere” survey. The coffee seems to have suspicious clots. My innards refuse to co-operate with my plan of going for a run.

Let’s face it, I’m built for greed, not speed.

But we shall persevere.

Getting warmer

2011-08-30T09:23:00.001+05:30

Writing has become a bit of a … well, not a pain, not quite, since even a pain is a tangible state. More like mental constipation. One of the nicest guys I know has been asking me for a YEAR to write something for him. On one of my favourite subjects. And despite several attempts, I have produced nothing. Like a toddler who’s coaxed to sit upon the pot in hopes that SOMEthing will emerge, but fails to perform.

As you can see, nothing but wind so far. Not even sound and fury. Just … nothing.

There was a blog I used to read because it was interesting. The Bouncer’s Blog. Then it palled upon me. But – and here’s the secret – the Bouncer summed up the only way to become a writer (and of course I’ve mentioned it before, when moaning in a similar vein). To read, then write. Then read and write some more. And then again. Eventually something will emerge that’s worth reading.

John Steinbeck, for a while, worked as regular correspondent for the San Francisco News. The gentleman in the next cubicle – whose name, of course, I forget – recalled that Steinbeck would come in and spend an hour writing on foolscap paper with a pencil, then throw it away. When asked why, he said “Oh, those are just my warm-ups”. Warm-ups. The first thing that occurs to you, gentle reader, is of course the amount of money that could be made today if those warm-ups had been preserved. The next thought that comes to me is that writing, like any other sport, requires warm-ups.

The problem with being totally out of shape is that by the time one is warmed up, one is also utterly exhausted.

Leave them alone ...

2011-02-28T09:06:00.001+05:30

Long, long ago (which is another way of saying 1995 or thereabouts), there used to be people who took a conscious decision to drop out of society. They wanted to seek the ultimate truths in life, or maybe just hated the society of their fellow men. (There’s a third category of people who seem to disappear from normal society –engineering students. But they don’t really qualify because they eventually build their own worlds.) In India, this used to be a commonplace occurrence. Having led a full life, raised children and performed his duties towards his family and ancestors, the Indian man was expected to become a kind of sedate hippie and head for the hills to contemplate the eternal mysteries (such as, what is the right answer to a woman who asks “Does this make me look fat?” Have you noticed that there weren’t too many stories about women who pushed off for the Himalayas? Why should they, they’re the ones asking the questions, it’s the men who have to come up with answers!) This renunciation is not entirely unknown in modern India. Some men still close up their rooms, shave their heads, don the simplest robes and set out on the spiritual quest. Whereupon wise neighbours nod to each other and say “I knew his credit card bills were too high.”

The Western world has its share of recluses. Paradoxically, we only know about the ones who are famous, such as Greta Garbo who “just wanted to be left alone”. A recluse who is not already famous is by definition invisible, at least until he buys a 72-ton Abrams tank over the counter in, say, Wisconsin and goes on a shooting spree. Especially in the USA, some of the most famous authors have chosen to stay out of the public eye. J.D. Salinger, who died a year ago at the age of 91, had not allowed himself to be photographed or interviewed since the 1950s. He went even further in that he did not publish any of his works after 1953, though he continued writing throughout his life. In effect, he removed not only himself but also his defining talent from public view. This, I must confess, is entirely beyond my comprehension. A latter-day literary lion, Thomas Pynchon, also chooses to keep his life private, but at least he continues to publish novels. He has this option because his work is highly valued; a newly published author has to give up her anonymity during the book launch tour, the interviews, the Page 3 appearances.

Fame can be a bitter addiction, but there are some very public examples of stars who went private. If Hollywood (or more correctly, New York, where she lived for 40 years) had Greta Garbo, Ballygunge Circular Road has its own mystery. Roma Dasgupta’s last screen appearance was “Datta” in 1976. Forty years on, her mystique obviously has not waned; all of Bengal’s media ran amuk when she was admitted to Woodlands in 2009 even though nobody outside her family really knows what she looks like now. Of course, inaccessibility makes a star’s aura more enduring. But let’s be clear about one thing – whether it’s Garbo or Salinger or Suchitra Sen, none of these celebrities has abjured modern civilisation or even the urban milieu. (Garbo, for example, was known to go shopping and take long walks in Central Park, safely hidden behind oversized sunglasses.) All they have done is severely limit their social interactions so as to protect their privacy. They are still islands in the stream, just very inaccessible islands.

In fact, they reinforce John Donne’s most famous line. They cannot survive without the support systems of modern civilisation. It’s a question of economics, not philosophy. Getting away from it all is very tempting (No Rakhi Sawant! No ICC World Cup!) until you realise it also means doing without home delivery, pedicures and group mails. This brings out the difference between (a) recluses, who limit their social interactions e.g Howard Hughes, who spent most of his last years in a curtain-enclosed penthouse in Las Vegas (b) hermits, who go off into the wilds and survive on their own without a phone, laptop or ATM card (I’m not sure which of these two categories would include Bobby Fischer) and (c) exiles, who want to live in society but for some reason cannot, such as most women’s mothers-in-law or Robinson Crusoe. Boo Radley, the mysterious neighbour in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, is probably more of an exile, forced to withdraw from society. His creator, Harper Lee, is closer to being a recluse, since she did not choose to become a public figure despite the acknowledged brilliance of her only novel.

We should also be clear that a recluse or a hermit is not always a misanthrope. They may not bear any hatred for the human race, just dislike its company. We all have days like that, when we’d rather be just left alone. Not because we want to wipe out the neighbourhood, but because we want to enjoy the weather. Or soak in some music. Or just spend the day with a book and a thermos of tea. The recluse just wants this state of affairs to last forever. This may seem strange at first, but remember within every extrovert there’s an introvert screaming to get out.

The sincerest form of flattery

2011-02-22T08:40:00.000+05:30

I could start with Shakespeare, but frankly, it’s a lot more fun to pull out “Tezaab”. Remember 1988 and “Ek do teen”? Rake the ashes of your memory a little more and you’ll find Anil Kapoor as Munna, sitting at a plank table with his knife stuck into it. Did we find it unusual that he gestured with his left hand? He, along with a couple dozen other aspiring stars of the day, (some of whom still hover on the fringes of our TV screens – Sudesh Berry, Mukesh Khanna et al) spent his screen time delivering killer lines with slightly pursed lips, waving his left hand about, standing with his hands on his hips, dancing stiff-legged like a racehorse with stiff fetlocks. All punched out of one mould and torn apart by the critics for it. You can’t blame them; they grew up watching the “one-man industry”, the ultimate superstar, they didn’t know stardom could come in any other form. Their ultimate accolade was “Tu toh Bachchan ban gaya!”

But here’s the rub. In 1982, a bootleg video from Pakistan did the rounds. It was called “Copy Cat” and it consisted of scenes featuring Yusuf Khan aka Dilip Kumar inter-cut with footage of … three guesses? Yes, got it in one – Amitabh Bachchan. The similarities were unmistakable. Dilip Kumar was to Bachchan as the Big B was to an entire generation. But Yusuf Saab was not the only “inspiration”. The 1971 cult film “Dirty Harry”, and Clint Eastwood’s gait as he walks towards the bank robbers to deliver the most famous line of the ‘70s. Very familiar, if you play it in split-screen with Vijay Kumar walking across a smoke-filled mining site, lighting dynamite fuses from his beedi. Yes, “Trishul”. Or even the inspired riff on Chaplin, talking to his mirror image after getting beaten up in “Amar Akbar Anthony”.

So do we dismiss the most enduring star of Indian cinema because he borrowed from all over? Or do we give him credit for a graceful synthesis of the most striking features he found? If we take the former view, the Big B is no more than a screen version of Kavya Vishwanathan. (Remember “Opal Mehta” in 2006, when we briefly basked in the reflected glory of an Indian origin girl not only getting into Harvard but writing a bestseller before she was 18? And the subsequent disappointment when she was labelled a plagiarist?) For that matter, Aamir Khan, now a byword for versatility, spent the first 12 years of his career subtly copying Rajesh Khanna. Who in turn blatantly copied Dev Anand. Who spent 30 years trying to be Gregory Peck …

Where is the fine line between “inspiration” and “imitation”? Or, in the recorded arts, outright plagiarism? One of my favourite stories is the row that Vishwa Bharati University created over the tune of “Chhnoo kar mere man ko”, a Hindi song from a Hindi film where the song sequence was coincidentally shot in Calcutta. Of course it was a direct lift from “Tomaar holo shuru” and Vishwa Bharati, as the guardians of the tradition, went all huffy about it, even threatening to sue Rajesh Roshan. Only to be deflated by an interview where RD Burman ingenuously mentioned that the Great Bearded Bard had taken the tune from an old Scottish folk song.

RDB knew what he was talking about. His genius lay not only in his creativity but in the way he hungrily devoured music from all over the world. Consider this eclectic list of songs that he copied or adapted from – “Tera mujhse hai pahle ka nata koi” from “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, “Tum ho mere dil ki dhadkan” from Procol Harum’s “A whiter shade of pale”, Sholay’s “Mehbooba” from a Greek hit by Dennis Rousso, the title song in “Kasme Vaade” from “Sesiya Hamba” by Ipi Ntombi. Would I then agree that that very modest musician Anu Malik is, as he claims, every bit as great as RD Burman? Excuse me while I die laughing!

And now for the Bald Bard who recreated the English language. What’s common to “Love’s Labour Lost”, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest”? They are the only plays that Awld Will wrote with his own original plots! Every other one of his 37 plays – that means the other 33 – is based on someone else’s story. Shakespeare, after all, was writing the jatra of his day and milieu. He followed the same reasoning as Bollywood directors today – if you “adapt” something that’s already successful, you’re not guaranteed a hit, but you stand a better chance of making some money.

There are some cases where perceived plagiarism may be no more than the persistence of memory. After all, given the 5000 years of recorded history, of musical traditions, of poetry and myth, the chances are low that we can come up with a creation that is altogether new. Why, even our beloved Guv’nor, Thomas Stearns Eliot, has been accused of lifting the refrain of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from a line by Madison Cawein (the “Keats of Kentucky”). Should we believe it? And if we do, where is the difference between TS Eliot and Kavya Vishwanathan (or for that matter Dan Brown)?

In the translation. In making something new from something familiar. In adding one’s own special bits of genius to a piece of gold until it sparkles like a solitaire. In the final analysis, have you added more than you’ve borrowed, have you given more than you took? The truth, my friends, lies in the telling.

The country of the blind

2011-02-07T10:27:00.001+05:30

Some of my closest friends now hold dual citizenship. In every case, the second loyalty is to the third most populous demographic group in the world, one with more inhabitants than the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh or Russia and less than only China and India. I’ve visited this realm. Correction – I visit it. Quite often, if not regularly. It’s a strange and wondrous place; I’m yet to see tangerine trees and marmalade skies there (or, alas, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes), but it does have pink cows that give instant strawberry milk shake. It has its problems, such as the sudden and mysterious outbreaks of minor physical violence in the form of “pokes”, but all in all it is a peaceful place despite the apparent lack of productive economic activity. Its external relations are exemplary. Since it places no restrictions on citizenship or indeed on loyalty, its denizens also inhabit other countries of the same sort and they all seem to get along famously.

The major problem, of course, is that the real world intrudes so often. Surely we’d all be so much happier if we lived forever after in the-world-that-Mark-built? Hours and days on end spent “liking” each other’s status messages, notes, comments, photographs. Sharing long-forgotten musical masterpieces by the likes of The Monkees or Anuradha Paudwal. Uploading photographs of our vacations, our families, friends, parties, pets, food, bowel movements. There must be enough economic production on Farmville and enough governance in the form of Mafia Wars. Surely this is the state of enlightenment the poet envisaged when he wrote “Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake”?

In the beginning, of course, there was Orkut. Mr. Buyyukkokten’s (I kid you not, that is his name!) creation in the dim and distant past (2004) was very important because it started the social phenomenon of “fransip”. Before Orkut, young men – sensitive, caring, intelligent, young men of luminous charm with great social skills – had little opportunity to “mek fransip”. Their options were limited to circling on their motorbikes round women waiting at bus-stops. Or making, through pursed lips, sounds that could have come from a flatulent duck but were actually meant to indicate deep mental processes. Once they discovered Orkut, their great creativity and sensitivity found its rightful outlet. These young men could then demonstrate their intelligence and charm by repeatedly “scrapping” young women’s profiles and, as a follow-up, posting photographs of their own pelvic regions. Strangely enough, Orkut went into decline despite these wonderful features. (A quick tip for Facebook users who have migrated from Orkut – if a woman sends a man a “friend request”, said request does not have a sub-text that reads “I want to have your babies”. Seriously. Take my word on this.)

Then, of course, the heavens shook, lightning flashed, John Williams composed his grandest music ever with bass notes that could make continents vibrate, and Facebook was created. (This scene was edited from “The Social Network”.) Mark Zuckerberg is undoubtedly one of the most influential men of the 21st century. After all, they didn’t make a movie about Mahatma Gandhi till 32 years after he died; Zuckerberg has a movie about him before he’s 32! And while it may not show very nice things about him, it has been nominated for the Oscars. There is absolutely no truth to the report that Mark sent copies of the issue of TIME magazine – the one with him on the cover - to David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg with a handwritten note that said “Nyaaah nyaaah nyaah!” Now if I could only figure out why I can’t upload clips from that film to my Facebook account …

Before my friends on Facebook denounce me as a hypocrite, I would like to clarify that I have a Facebook account. With friends. And status updates. And even albums. In short, I am a citizen of Zucker-burgh. And I have no doubt that the very concept of Facebook is awesome in its simplicity. It is such a convenient means not only to keep in touch with one’s friends and relatives but also to build networks. To create fora for discussing matters of great importance and relevance. To mobilize opinion on issues that matter. For example, President Mubarak has made the first peace offering to the Tahrir Square protesters. Not only has he posted pictures of the gathering in his “Friends” album, he has even sent friend requests to the ones in the front rows. (For the first time, Facebook invites were delivered in person. By large policemen.) Besides, the team at Facebook are active on social issues. They now propose to set up Amber Alerts to help search for missing children. Only pessimists and Republicans would say that half those children wouldn’t have been missing if their parents had logged off from Facebook and spent more time with their children in the first place.

In any case, social networks are here to stay. How will the world recognize the creator of the largest network? Hard to say, but we have one hint – the White House may soon announce the first virtual First Pet. In the meantime, wait for the inevitable merger of the larger social networks, viz. MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Coming soon – My Twit Face.

Mall-ady

2011-01-19T13:07:00.002+05:30

“I went down to the sacred store / where I’d heard the music years before / but the man there said the music wouldn’t play”. I guess that’s a pretty good indicator of my attitude. Lines from a 40-year-old song (“American Pie”, from the 1971 album “American Pie” by Don McLean and no, it was not originally a Madonna release!) most aptly sum up my nostalgia for the not-so-distant past. Yes, “dinosaur” seems an appropriate term. “Old coot” would be pretty close too. But you know what? I’m not the only one. Why is the music of RD Burman, who died 16 years ago, still the No. 1 choice for teeny-bopper parties?

But let’s stick to what I started out on. The “sacred stores”. The old curiosity shops we used to find everywhere from Park Street to Palm Avenue and Putiari. Places we went, to buy books, bedsheets, buns. Places that are now replaced by aisles with fluorescent lighting and bright green signage that says things like “Home Furnishings”, “Bakery”, “Personal Care”. And I mourn their passing. Now we have malls. And retail chains. Even wannabe malls. Clean, comfortable, air-conditioned, efficient. And with about as much character as a styrofoam cup. Give me an earthen bhNaar any day. Or, as a sign of special favour, a four inch tall glass with ribbed sides. That was Pandit’s acknowledgement of regular customers. Pandit, who ran his little paan-cigarettes-tea-and-occasional-hash kiosk near the corner of Palm Avenue and Ballygunge Park Road, who took two years to grant me Most Favoured Customer status and who vanished some years ago. Now all we have is coffee shops and Chai Junction. Wonderful in their own way, but hey, would they open up the shop and make tea for us at midnight when we’re wandering home in our cups?

These labelled counters, now. All very systematic, but why does the Wife prefer traipsing the hot sweaty aisles of Newmarket, popping into stores that have remained unchanged since before she was in school, wading through multiple layers of samples laid out on the counter, leaving and coming back three times before she makes a purchase? Why not pop into the nearest mall, read the signs, check the price-tags, bag the choice and step into the check-out line? One big reason is that malls don’t let you bargain. It’s something a woman needs. It’s her version of hunting-gathering, blood sport. Tracking, stalking, going for the kill. It’s all there in the bargaining process. (Including the disappointment of the one that got away.) You can’t do that in a mall. Not everybody has as much pizzazz as the protagonist of Anurag Mathur’s “The Inscrutable Americans”, who could haggle over the price of toothpaste in an American supermarket.

And there’s the personal touch. Oh yes, when malls were a novelty we loved rubber-necking at the glitz and the brands. Then it wore thin, and we trickled back to Newmarket and Russell Street and Gariahat. And so loved it when we were welcomed back like family, by store-owners who had seen us grow up, who had seen my wife graduate from buying school uniforms through party wear to saris . And now, school uniforms for our daughter. Even shop assistants who have been in the same place for 30 years, the ones who would offer my wife a soft drink when she dropped by from college (it was such a treat then!) and now have to be dissuaded from spoiling our daughter with caffeine-sugar fixes. Think about it. Do you see the same people manning the aisles at your local mall, two months running? Isn’t it nice to see a familiar face, more so when it’s somebody you’ve haggled and fought with for years on end? Because the same guy, after he has griped about how you’re cutting his throat and starving his family, will offer to keep your purchases behind the counter while you go shop some more. And then send them to your car. Try that at your check-out counter some time.

And then there are the personal icons. I love Kookie Jar, but the real jar comes from realizing they’re now 25 years old and no longer the new kids on the block. But for shortbread and cookies and above all plum cake, can we desert the eternal Nahoum’s? Shop No. F-20, Newmarket, all dark wood and old glass and the sweet sweet smell of baking, still lorded over by the venerable David Nahoum, third generation of his family to sit behind that counter. Or Kalman’s on Free School Street, where I buy my sausages. Not certified and hygienic behind glass, but made fresh in the back room while the ever-smiling Joy asks me whether I want my ham sliced thick as usual. Or even the dark cobwebby raftered thick-walled neighbourhood “homoeopathic dispensary” with a thousand tiny vials behind dirty glass in cupboards of carved mahogany 80 years old. Can they be replaced by gleaming steel-and-glass chemists’ shops?

All summed up in another song from the dim and distant past – these are “places I remember / All my life. Though some have changed /
Some forever, not for better / Some have gone and some remain”. The past is a different country, but sometimes the borders are blessedly blurred.

Speaking in tongues - variations on a theme

2011-01-17T10:43:00.003+05:30

A few weeks ago I was indiscreet. Presumptuous, even. Despite my semi-literate status, I ventured to criticise some aspects of formal education. And paid the price. My learned friends squashed me in no uncertain terms. They dismissed my criticism as no more than petulance at a system I had failed to master. No doubt they are right, and there is a deeper truth than I can comprehend to the practice of studying statistics for the purpose of not making causal correlations. But back in the day when I was struggling ineffectually to understand the mysteries of calculus, it struck me that even mathematics actually requires you to learn a new language. Before you can start applying numbers to advanced maths, you have to acquire a new vocabulary that incorporates bits of Latin, Greeek and sundry parts of the English alphabet.

This was something I realised from my helpless struggles with trigonometry in school. In fact, Bangla college slang uses “tan” as a synonym for incomprehensibility. Our state of stunned incomprehension could well have given rise to conspiracy theories like the one so drolly presented by E.V. Rieu in that little-known gem, “Hall and Knight, OR, z+b+x=y+b+z”. (http://www.poemspoet.com/e.-v.-rieu/hall-and-knight) One quatrain from this masterpiece will suffice to illustrate my point:

'How hard it is', said Mr Knight, 'to hide the fact from youth / That x and y are equal: it is such an obvious truth!' / 'It is', said Mr Hall, 'but if we gave a “b” to each, / We'd put the problem well beyond our little victims' reach.

Utterly delightful.

In all fairness, the liberal arts take more pains to clothe themselves in robes of language rich and strange. In 2000, the University of Monash in Western Australia developed a computer program to generate essays on deconstructionism starting from a few phrases. The web-site categorically states that “The essay (generated) is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator.” I believe they had to take the program offline because their own students started using it for assignments. There was also a report of trouble in the groves of academe when this program fooled one of the foremost experts on deconstructionism.

The rumour may well be true, because going by the experience of my very learned cousin, these learned treatises may actually be rarely read. This cousin was sending out a paper for peer review, and left the computer for a while. Whereupon her sister (also an academic) inserted the words “Bare Naked Ladies” randomly into the text. Sixteen times, once for each expert it was to be mailed to. My unsuspecting cousin mailed off the text and soon received puzzled queries from about 5 people about the strange phrase. What is more revealing, however, is that the other 11 learned reviewers sent back their opinions with no mention of the interpolation!

It’s not just academics. Every kind of expert, whether anglers or astronauts, develop their own special language. It’s a kind of initiation rite. It’s most evident in that very bright and very self-assured breed, the management consultant. For more details on that, go here.

Here endeth ...

Looking back

2011-01-09T23:02:00.002+05:30

2011 seems like a great year so far. No disasters reported, no coups, tsunamis, recessions or even a major scam. There has been at least one uplifting event already, so the year has started well. On the other hand, there are critics (well, at least one critic) of my opinion. And in this case, a sample size of one is also a majority of one, because the critic in question is married to me. The essence of her criticism – or what Bertie Wooster might call the res, gist or nub – is that one cannot pass judgement on the year at 9 a.m. on 1^st January. In fine, it is too early. She also says, in no uncertain terms, that sausages-for-breakfast does not qualify as an uplifting event.

Oh well. Since higher authorities will not let me pass judgement on 2011, I must retreat to the dim and distant past. Specifically, to 2010. Which seems to have been a good year on the whole. Except perhaps for the Democratic Party in the USA. Or marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. And Ricky Ponting’s Umpire Education Policy. And Arun Nayar, who found that safety-pins cannot hold a marriage together. Or the Indian Railways in Uttar Pradesh, where 6 accidents were reported in January 2010 alone. And the General Post Office, Kolkata, where employees were taken to task at year-end because they could not achieve unreasonable targets (such as delivering letters on time, specifically a letter from the Home Minister of India). Further, this was not a good year for bond salesmen and stockbrokers in Greece, or for that matter in Iceland or Portugal. There was some talk of an economic crisis in Spain as well, but all calls to their Ministry of Finance yielded only a recorded message at about 98 decibels that went “OLEEEEEEEEE!!! GANAMOS!!!” (We won). Apart from these, 2010 seems to have gone off well.

It was also a very moving year. The earth moved early and often (no, I am not referring to intimate experiences.) In January, an earthquake in Haiti touched 7.0 on the Richter Scale. In February, there was an earthquake in Chile that touched 8.8; since the Richter Scale is logarithmic, that means it was nearly 100 times as powerful as the Haiti earthquake. The earth wasn’t done yet – it moved again in April in Qinghai, China; in June off the Andamans; and in October off the coast of Sumatra. And these were only the major ones reported! As a result, People magazine and Times Now had to change their definitions of movers and shakers.

2010 also saw major advances in scientific inquiry. Psychics and clairvoyants in Kolkata examined the possibility of grafting on six more arms apiece, but were baffled when informed that an octopus also has a beak. Later, conspiracy theorists had a field day when Paul the Octopus died. The most popular theory was that somebody had asked him to predict Rajinikanth’s death. In related news, Diego Maradona finally stopped throwing players off the team when it was pointed out to him that he had himself been thrown off the team. Elsewhere, scientists declared that they had developed a car that can run on water. As long as the water came from the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, some scientists expressed fears that if the oil spill got worse, we would have to start drilling for water. Unless the oil spill was diluted by melting ice caps, because global warming seemed a very real menace in 2010 (though trains tangoed in the fog in January and monkey-caps bloomed all over Calcutta in December). The issue had come to public notice much earlier, when almost-President-of-the-USA Al Gore won an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth”, the highest-grossing PowerPoint presentation in history. Unfortunately for him, that did not cause any significant change in US public policy, such as declaring him the President.

The year that saw the rescue of the Chilean miners ended with a different kind of digging out. Julian Assange caused consternation when Wikileaks spilled the dirt on many governments, but allegations of an entirely different kind of leak dumped the dirt on him.

India has had its share of drama in 2010. The most heartening aspect was the spirit of innovation. Such as the provision of snakes in the Commonwealth Village, purportedly to make athletes from wilder climes feel at home (there is no truth in the rumour that the snakes story was really all about Gujarati catering). Or the proposal to solve one of India’s most contentious political issues by commissioning a temple-cum-mosque on the site – under the able stewardship of the CWG Organising Committee. Lalit Bhanot, poor man, caught some flak with his comment about Indian standards of hygiene; so much for speaking the truth. In related news, the External Affairs Ministry learnt of the existence of some countries only when these countries threatened to pull out of the Games.

All in all, 2010 was a rich period of history. We must, of course, limit our scrutiny to those events reported in the mainstream media; as is well known, nothing can really have happened unless so reported. Which may mean that one Ms. Radia does not even exist. Ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned – we aren’t quite done with 2010 yet!

Yule like this

2010-12-27T11:59:00.001+05:30

A check-out line on Christmas Eve is a good introduction to the Theory of Relativity. You know what I mean? One acquires an entirely different perspective of time. 17,492 people ahead of me in line searched in their handbags for discount cards, argued with the counter clerk about free gifts, held up the billing to add a dozen disgustingly twee key-chains from the Point-of-Purchase display. I waited. In a parallel timeline, seasons changed, empires rose and fell, glaciers melted, mountains grew. Still I waited. And thought with wistful admiration of Oliver Cromwell’s Parliament that, in1647, banned the celebration of Christmas in England.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the Grinch who stole Christmas. I don’t even say “Bah! Humbug!” in the manner of Old Man Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol”. But standing in that check-out line and later, stuck in never-ending traffic, I contemplated emigrating to China. Or to Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea or Algeria. Because they don’t have any Christmas holidays. (On second thoughts, emigrating there may not be a good idea. Reports indicate that ignoring Christmas is just part of their policy statement about “peace on earth and goodwill towards all men”.) The celebration of Christmas – like Diwali, Durga Pujo, Holi, Eid, Moharram, Yom Kippur and the Chinese New Year – may be less about religious belief and more about the celebration of community, identity. The defining symbol is no longer the cross or the holly. It is the credit card.

Let’s face it, Christmas in its present form never really was about the actual birth of the Saviour. For one thing, the Bible mentions that the Wise Men sought directions from shepherds in the fields when they sought the Child. Shepherds. In the fields. Does that sound like deep and dark December? The Bible itself mentions no date nor season of the year. Besides, it’s no coincidence that Christmastide coincides with the much older celebration of the winter solstice. This was when the Romans celebrated – wait for it – Saturnalia! Which, of course, was a festival noted for its sobriety, piety and atmosphere of restraint. Not! The Church did not approve of the excesses of the Saturnalia. Very interesting excesses they were, too. Those Romans knew a thing or two about debauchery and decadence. Well anyway, the consensus is that the Church, believed that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Around the 4^th century of the Christian Era, they quietly took over the winter festival, stripped it of the … errr, youthful high spirits, and converted it into the Feast of the Nativity. So perhaps the Grinch was not the first to “steal Christmas”!

Christmas, of course, has its own set of traditions. It’s quite interesting to trace their origins. The mistletoe connection resonates with Norse fertility rites and the legend that Loki used it to slay Baldur. Wassailers and carol-singers were pre-dated by the Roman Mummers, who travelled from house to house singing and bearing gifts. The Mummers, alas, often quite regrettably neglected to clothe themselves, and were usually the worse for drink, but let’s just say it’s the thought that counts. And be grateful that in the present day we are not assailed by the spectacle of fat Uncle Percy in the altogether! The tradition of deforestation is comparatively new to most of the world. It was common in Germany to put up Christmas trees; it must have been a natural outcome of having to clear acres of primeval forest to keep the wolves away from the castle drawbridges. It was only when German nobility were imported into the bloodline of English royals, and perhaps as late as the 19^th century, that the custom of ruining perfectly good forests became common. With the result that more than 20 million trees die every Christmas in the USA alone.

It’s a little strange to note that Americans were originally a little chary of Christmas. They saw it as an English custom, and quite understandably Americans in the 1780s were not too fond of the English. Times changed. In 1822 Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem that we now know as ‘Twas the night before Christmas. Apparently this popularized the custom of Yuletide gift-giving. In 1843 Sir Henry Cole commissioned the first set of Christmas cards. The flood-gates opened. Christmas moved from the church to the mall. Retail barons offer more deeply sincere thanks for Christmas than do many devout believers. And no matter how much they may try to enforce the First Amendment, America leads the world in Christmas commerce. Sometimes the emphasis on “the season for giving” seems a little contrived to me, even calculated.

And yet … The Wife and the Small Person were leaving Newmarket when a snot-nosed urchin tapped on the window to sell them safety-pins. Whereupon the Small Person piped up, “It’s Christmas, Ma. HE should get a gift too!” The Wife asked the waif what he really wanted. The child’s eyes lit up. He led them to the nearest toy store. And pointed to a little train. Now I, as far as possible eschew emotion. Impedes rationality and all that. The Wife was regrettably damp-eyed when she recounted this incident. And the urchin’s sheer delight when she actually handed over the train set. But when she told me of Small Person’s reaction – “Ma, this is all the Christmas present I need. Now I shan’t ask Santa for anything!” – I must confess that my self-imposed bar on sappiness creaked at the seams. Oh, bother! I’ll admit it, I felt good. And a little moist around the peepers. The spirit of giving? It’s still alive. Compliments of the season, readers, no matter whether you’re fellow cynics or dewy-eyed romantics.

Learning process

2010-12-20T14:21:00.002+05:30

It’s wonderful to have a proper education. Unfortunately, school and college seem to get in the way. Most of us are so busy getting a degree, we never get around to getting an education. To quote the great sage Chuck Berry (better known for his views on women, drink and blues guitar), “When I think back on all the ***p I learnt in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.” When I first heard that, I thought it was the wisdom of the ages. Somebody famous had just validated my decision not to study maths or science and my jettisoning of a Master’s degree as soon as I got a paying job. It sounded good. It made me feel great. But that was before I met calculus. Oh, AND statistics. Together. The academic equivalent of being tag-teamed by Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker.

This academic mauling occurred many years ago, when I made a misguided attempt at getting what I thought would be an advanced education. What that really means, of course, is that I tried to get another degree. Not in this country; I winged it to the land which claims to be the true defender of democracy, the most reliable bulwark of freedom and free speech. To be fair, in the first few weeks the classroom atmosphere did seem refreshingly open and liberal. One faculty member, a long languid Californian who specialised in “kaampyutyshenul maahd’ling uv elactral trands”, gave me an A+ for an assignment wherein I savaged everything he had taught us in three classes. I was awed; I’d expected a poor grade, on the lines of a teacher in my earlier alma mater who gave me a 0 on a test because (she said) I had answered the question with reference to the wrong chapter! (This, mind you, was in the third year of college.) I became friends with the faculty member, a great guy except for his terrible taste in beer. (I quickly learnt that even boutique microbreweries can produce quite awful beer. In hindsight, that was one of the most educative aspects of my sojourn.) The groves of academe seemed rather pleasant, at least for a while.

Around the fourth week on campus, I asked myself whether I was learning anything. Statistics, a little bit. Calculus, maybe. But was I working towards a goal that held relevance for my job back home? A PhD doesn’t seem all that hot after you meet a girl who’s been working on one for seven years. With a thesis on – believe this! – “Sex Scandals and the American Presidency”. (She did have the grace to admit she’d left out JFK and WJC because either of them would have been enough for a thesis by themselves.) And how exactly would her thesis be of use? She shrugged. Not her business, she said. Her job was research; practical applications were not her look-out. This, I thought, was ethically one step away from Tom Lehrer’s satire – “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.” So what purpose did the research serve? With all this emphasis on statistical analysis, could we frame some rules? Make some predictions? Say, that a man who has been involved with more than three women and a washing-machine on one prom night is 67% more likely to get involved in a scandal if he is elected President? Nope. No way. Apparently every thesis had to mandatorily include (a) at least 120 pages of abstruse statistical analysis, followed by (b) a disclaimer that “No causal correlations are attempted”. Say what? We’re expected to get permanent migraines learning calculus and we can’t even use it to make a point?

In sum, I found the post-graduate scenario strange because (1) the topics of research tended to be phenomenally arcane (2) there was no attempt to find practical applications of research findings and (3) there seemed to be far too much emphasis on quantitative methods, without any results to show for it. But was I the only man on campus who thought this way? Autumn rolled around and with it, our discipline’s annual national conference. (Held, of course, in balmy San Francisco while we shivered on the East Coast.) We followed it on the Internet (although live video feeds were jerky) and lo and behold, I was vindicated! Because the Annual Convention was picketed by masked demonstrators who were protesting against … yes, arcane research topics, lack of practical relevance and over-dependence on quantitative methods! I was not alone! But why were they masked? This is the creepy bit – the protesters were mostly junior faculty who feared that they would never get tenure if they were recognized on camera. Obviously, the land of the free didn’t quite live up to its name on campus.

And obviously any system of education has its own rules, written and unwritten, that students are expected to follow. Systemic education may actually be an oxymoron. Perhaps the only real education comes from that rhyme that goes “I have six honest serving men / They taught me all I know / Their names are why and what and when / and who and where and how”. So is a formal education just a formality? I think we need to come back to this next week. Stay tuned.

An old love

2010-12-06T07:25:00.002+05:30

The two events were a thousand kilometres apart. Not to mention a couple of centuries
.
In the autumn of 1983, I took a girl out to lunch.

Two hundred years earlier, 1783 saw the start of a famine in Avadh that is said to have lasted a decade. (This much is certain. The rest of the story is not substantiated.) Asaf-ud-Daulah, Nawab of Avadh, started construction projects to provide employment to the hungry farmers. The first, the biggest and arguably the most beautiful was the Bara Imambara in Lucknow. Every morning an army of workmen and their families would assemble before dawn, to work till sunset. These were mouths to feed. Wherefore each evening huge pots were filled with layers of rice and meat, the lids sealed with dough, then lowered into pits where charcoal fires had been lit. They would remain upon the embers all night, thus providing, next morning, a slow-cooked breakfast for the army of workers. An awesome breakfast. Because this, of course, was the origin of dum pukht biryani.

What a wonderful story. But alas, unsubstantiated. By common consensus, biryani actually came to India many years before Asaf-ud-Daulah. The recipe probably came over the passes of Kandahar and Baluchistan in the 14th century, with the hordes led by one of the most fearsome names in history – Tamerlane. Timur the Terrible, Timur the Lame, Timur the Scourge of the Infidels. His sack of Delhi in 1398 was a thing of blood and horror, but some of my friends might say it was a small price to pay for the next six hundred years of biryani delectation. (Not, I hasten to add, my own point of view; my friends tend to have extreme opinions.) There may be more than a grain of truth in the Timur story, though; it is at least likely that the idea, the concept of biryani came to us from Persia. Birian is the Farsi word for “fried when raw” or “fried without cooking”, which is a good description of the way the meat is sautéed for traditional biryani. But what IS traditional biryani?

Depends on the tradition, of course. Hyderabadis will assert that their version of biryani is the older one, brought into the Deccan when Aurangzeb’s governor started the Asaf Jahi dynasty. This version is based in Paradise, or at least the earthly version that has now opened branches across the twin cities. One of the nicest things about buying from there is the sealed pack. Voila! Biryani and haleem that one can stash carry on as cabin baggage!

Another version that also claims its origin in Aurangzeb’s reign, by a similar process of osmosis-through-Nawab, is Arcot biryani. This is even spicier than Hyderabadi and perhaps less well known for that very reason. After all, the taste of biryani should be very different from a spicy pulao. Otherwise grand old Boman Kohinoor, lord and master of the legendary Café Britannia in Bombay’s Ballard Estate, could claim that his signature dish of Berry Pulao is actually biryani in Iranian disguise! There is even a Calicut biryani which is supposed to have come across the seas with the Arab traders.A footnote to the southern saga is the development of Tahiri Biryani, supposedly for the Brahmins who supervised the Nawabs’ estates.

The Hyderabadi tradition of biryani is pretty elaborate. Apparently there were 26 distinct variations in the Nizam’s kitchens. The most major point of differentiation was and is the kachchi / pakki divide. In kachchi biryani, the meat is only marinated before being placed between layers of rice in the deg or handi for the slow cooking process. For pakki biryani, the marinated meat is sautéed with spices before placing it between layers of cooked rice redolent with ghee and spices. The specific spices, the precise meat – whether goat mutton, venison, pigeon or beef (chicken is actually a late 19th century entrant at the very earliest) – are secondary issues of improvisation. But I must confess I can’t accept a dish as biryani if it’s seasoned with kari pata!

The Calcutta variant of Avadhi biryani is a comparatively recent development, since Wajid Ali Shah’s retinue of bawarchis and masalchis only settled in Metia Bruz in the 1850s. For Calcuttans, however, there IS no other. Biryani is limited to the products of Shiraz or Aminia or Sabir’s or, for the hardier souls who can stomach cupfuls of ghee, from Royal on Chitpur Road. Or, more recently, Zeeshan and Arsalan. Straight up Avadhi biryani fragrant with ghee and spices, with the addition of a sautéed potato and – when it’s a plate of “special” – a boiled egg. Having been initiated into this most glorious tradition by the age of ten, I am definitely biased in favour of Calcutta biryani. I’ve tried the others, I don’t deny that some of them are very good, but the real stuff? For that, give me a winter evening with a nip in the air and the woodsmoke from the little lanes back of Park Street. And a table shared with like-minded friends, to scoff down platesful of asli biryani with firni and thick sweet “spesul chai” to follow.

And oh – that lunch date in 1983? It was my first biryani at Shiraz. Also my first date with that girl. Who, despite the fact that she’s now married to me, still shares my enthusiasm for the real thing. After some 27 years of dining at Shiraz, we took our daughter there last month. She loved it. And the waiters smiled benignly as one more generation was introduced to tradition.

Child's Play

2010-11-25T18:45:00.001+05:30

I come out of the shower to find Small Person pottering about the room. No hugs, there’s a cold war on over one of her transgressions. As I button my cuffs, I ask sternly “Who went potty in their pants today?”
Large-eyed solemn gaze directed upwards at me from my knee-level.
I repeat the question … “Who went potty in their pants today?”
“PAPA!”, she replies with a gleeful grin before she scampers away on tiny legs.

* * *

Kids! You can love them to bits, but there will be times when you will think Herod and Kamsa had just the right methods for dealing with them. Not the views one should express, however, when invited for coffee and conversation to discuss the issue of how adults relate to children. This was with a group called “Childwise”, at a bookstore on Park Street last Wednesday. It speaks volumes for the organisers’ persuasiveness that I forsook my biryani on Eid and toddled along to hear wise (child-wise!) things about parenting, schooling, learning and disciplining. I was not disappointed.

I expected pontification. Piety. Platitudes. Instead, we got straight talk. I expected a fair amount of preaching on corporal punishment. In the next two hours, we discussed class sizes, power structures, reading habits, role models. (And I fell in love. But more of that anon.) The main question was (and is) are we doing right by our children? Of course everyone has a different answer to this. And of course 99% of parents will assert that they are doing the right thing, but … Those “buts” tend to hide the essentials. Of time spent with the child. Of teaching by example. Of not pressurizing a pre-teen to excel in six different endeavours. And where does the school figure in this picture? Can schools be more than cramming centres? Can they contribute to positive discipline? Some teachers outlined innovative new schemes for motivating students – red cards like a football match, a bank of points at the beginning of the school year. But frankly, those schemes alone do not seem adequate.

Thankfully, the whole issue of corporal punishment in schools was summarily dismissed by Mr. John Mason, who said that its rights and wrongs are no longer open for discussion once the courts have banned it. One well-intentioned lady opined that all punishment demeans the child, that punishments “reinforce an unfair power structure”. I think that’s sheerest tosh. Children are not angels. (Well, not all the time.) Positive examples and rewards alone will not suffice to keep them on the right track. Sometimes a child needs to be made to stand in the corner. Besides, they’ll grow up into a world that has unfair power structures. Doesn’t it make sense for them to get used to it right away?

I was a little disturbed by the clear divisions between parents and teachers, the “we” and “they” attitudes evident. Parents are resentful of teachers who think they know all about teaching. Again, some of the teachers were aghast at how little some parents knew about their children. Thankfully, both groups articulated their issues clearly and within the hour the milk of human kindness was flowing freely. Yes, large class sizes do make it difficult for teachers to devote individual attention to children. Yes, parents should not need to spend 4 hours every evening going over school-work with their children. But how does one get around the problems of competition for limited educational resources?

We benefitted from the clear thinking of several teachers present, including the redoubtable trio of John Mason, Sister Cyril and Brendan MacCarthaigh. Two points that they made stand out. First, on the subject of exams and competition, Brother Brendan pointed out that in sports, a coach is fired if his players fail consistently. Why is it that if a student fails academically, the child is thrown out while the teacher remains? This raised a laugh, but it is a very basic issue in teacher evaluation.

A couple of people pointed out that the supposedly large class sizes in our elite schools are wonderful when compared to the situation in many rural schools. One lady mentioned a school where in one room, one teacher had to teach 80 children across four classes. Sister Cyril (whose appearance, sense of humour and no-nonsense demeanour reminded me of my very dear great-aunt), addressing the issue of overcrowded classrooms, said that the best way to deal with it is to divide the children into groups. This can be done in either of two ways. If the better achievers are grouped together, the teacher can concentrate on the other groups who don’t do so well. If children of varying abilities are put in the same group, they can help each other.

And what about the home front? Parenting is not instinctive. Parents cover the spectrum from those who smother with love to those who forget about their children. Parents need to understand better what makes their children tick and how the child can enjoy learning. Sister Cyril revealed that she has been running interactions with parents on these lines for 32 years!

All in all, a very instructive evening and an experience that I would like to have repeated. One niggle remained, however. For a body with the laudable motto of “Connecting before correcting”, Childwise could have made sure there were more young school-going participants in the discussion.

And yes, my falling in love? The object of my adoration was Sister Cyril’s distinct Irish brogue, which has survived 32 years in Calcutta!

Getting there ....

2010-11-22T15:42:00.001+05:30

After several hours of earning my pay (not a very pleasant exercise, at least in my day job), I took some time off today to browse. And by labyrinthine ways came I upon a blog I used to have, many years ago. In fact, the first blog I ever started (almost defunct, because I haven’t posted there since February or thereabouts). At the risk of boring the pants off the few readers I have left, I shall reproduce a post from 2004 (SIX years ago?!) which so matches my mood just now, as a perfunctory sun splashes its last tired rays on Park Street and starts its homeward slide into the haze behind Vidyasagar Setu, as I gird my loins for yet another meeting and a long drear November evening in office with piles of papers that make a mockery of the first nip in the air.

But the post also has content that brings contentment, for even though it’s taken six years, I can now put a couple of tick marks against my bucket list. Observe the parts emboldened –

* * *

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

And how shall I begin ... shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets. And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows … And one of them would have been me, standing at a window high above the Via Arriberti, looking out at the layered sky settling behind the chic hedgehog Duomo and the dome of a church in the next street.

The winter evening settles down With smells of steaks in passage-ways … except that in Calcutta, one would have to wait a long long time to smell a good steak. Perhaps in the CC&FC or Mocambo. Mem: Work on a good steak-house for the city. But as the weather slips towards December, it is nice to walk the darkling streets or perch (perchance) on a balcony and greet the chill of evening.

Life is very long … What does the week ahead hold for me? I need to change my job. Stay at home and tap away at this slightly speckled key-board until something emerges that I can parley for pelf.

Then take the money and run … to Peru to see the Nazca Lines and Macchu Picchu, push myself across a rope bridge in the Andes, stare down a llama … Or to Malawi, to walk the high veldt with a camera as the sun goes down behind the acacias and a stomach-jolting roar floats from the horizon … A wood-panelled pub in a narrow alley in Dublin, at a table scarred with burns and bitters, with the lilt of Irish talk around … Or on a road out of Istanbul with the Bosporus gleaming below, driving between two days and two continents as strange music pours from the radio … Perhaps a yurt on the steppes on the edge of the Gobi, lifting the flap to see the horizon distant as another day ...

Oh well. At least I have my coffee ... "black as sin, hot as the Pit and strong enough to float a horseshoe".

* * *

Observe, good my lords and gentles, that I have got around to fulfilling a couple of these wishes. In 2007 a couple of kind souls who liked my store window, to wit, this Philippic, actually started buying some of my efforts. No princely amounts, but the satisfaction of knowing that somebody thought my writing good enough to buy with real money. Post recession, the market has even picked up, to the point where my keyboard can subsidise not just my panatellas but even the occasional bottle of peaty delight. Score one for the dinosaur!

Peru … I know my limitations, so I did not venture the Inca trail with its precarious bridges, but in 2009 I did manage to visit Machu Picchu (Pick-choo, say Pick-choo, not Pitchu). I even saw the Nazca Lines from the plane, on the long flight back towards Sao Paulo. And while truth compels me to admit that I did not in fact stare down a llama, I did withstand the downhill rush of three of the uncouth creatures while climbing up to the threshing floor at Machu Picchu.

Istanbul was the year before that, 2008, an idyll of quayside coffee in Ortakay and leisurely walks down Istiklal (marred only by a series of meetings, how work does intrude most unfairly upon life!).

And of course, Mocambo and black coffee are two of the enduring pillars of my workaday existence. For once, this Old Bong has reason to go easy on the sadness! Sunrise in Malawi, the Gobi, even Dublin - I shall get there, no matter that it’s a long long way to Tipperary!

* * *

... the first stone

2010-11-15T16:30:00.000+05:30

(The Bengal Post, Monday 15th Nov 2010)

On weekends, the Better Half makes breakfast for me. Very gratifying, but once in a while she gets the fried egg less than perfect. The yolk runs. Very sad. I do so love the first dip into the sunny centre of a good fried egg. My question is, when I don’t get my egg just so, do I have the right to criticise the Better Half? (Of course, I’d never actually criticise her, I’m a sensitive modern man. With a healthy instinct of self-preservation!) After all, she has given her time and effort to fry me that egg without any profit from the act. Does that place her beyond criticism? Is altruism generally beyond criticism?

I think we’re agreed that if the egg in question is ruined by the cook, a certain amount of criticism is warranted. (But very cautiously: good cooks are hard to come by. When Saki wrote “The cook was a very good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go she went”, he was merely outlining the demand-supply situation for skilled HR.) The cook is paid to do a job. If the job is not done to the client’s satisfaction, there is a monetary loss. Fine, that’s easy – egg ruined, cook gets it in the neck. But if there is no payment involved, is criticism still justified?

I’d say yes. Criticism may not be fair, it is rarely objective, but it should always be permitted. Now that I’ve established my credentials as a model of reason and fairness – who may, however, hate your guts for criticizing me, not that I’ll ever say so, oh no! - we can now move on to the next step in this argument. Suppose the cook just cannot fry an egg the right way. Criticism and advice have no effect. What then? Find a new cook, I’d say. What if every cook I find is still incapable of frying an egg right? To my mind, the answer is simple – do it yourself. (I do fry a mean egg.)

Can this progression hold true in every case? Last week, I ventured that if we are unhappy with people in public life, we should ask ourselves if we can do their jobs instead. Which brought upon my head both wrath and invective. One reader raised the question of doctors. If you’re unhappy with your surgeon, can you carry out a laparoscopy? Obviously not. But you are at liberty to read up on the subject and learn about the basics of the procedure. To carry this do-it-yourself argument to its extreme, if the medical procedure is really that important to you, you should have trained yourself to be a doctor. (Or to be John Rambo, who could sew up his own arm.) This is not realistic. People have different skills and training, they fulfill different roles in an organised economy. A doctor can criticise a baker even if he himself does not know how to make a plum cake. At the same time, the baker can crib that his doctor just couldn’t cure his allergy. The do-it-yourself option is not always viable. And criticism can result in improved services, especially when the media or the courts are involved.

But what about situations where specific qualifications are not required? To go back to my earlier theme about the people we all love to criticise i.e. politicians, no specific training or qualification is required to stand for election. What is required is effort. And time. If you think that no government addresses the issues that concern you, would you take the matter into your own hands? Would you stand for election? Would you fry your own eggs?

I have an example in mind.

In 1985, the owner of a restaurant named The Hog’s Breath in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, faced some problems in getting clearances for some modifications. So he ran for election as Mayor. (Reportedly, he campaigned for the repeal of a law that banned eating ice-creams in public.) He actually won the election by a handsome margin and went on to modify the downtown building codes. Having got the policy he needed, he finished his term and retired from public office. That’s do-it-yourself. The man had a personal history on those lines. He was (and is) an actor who had differences with his directors; he eventually set up his own company, directed his own pictures and went on to win two Academy Awards for Best Director. Take a bow, Clinton Eastwood.

I’m not saying everybody can run for election (or be Dirty Harry). I’m not saying that we shouldn’t criticise people for doing a bad job just because we can’t do the job ourselves. What I am saying is that in many cases, we waste our time in criticism when we actually could get the job done ourselves. The most awe-inspiring example is Dashrath Manjhi of Gahlour village in Bihar. Does anyone remember him? He worked for 22 years, from 1960 to 1982, to cut a road through a hill, a road that cut down the distance between his village of Gahlour Ghati in Bihar’s Gaya district and the town of Wazirganj. By the most conservative estimate, he single-handely cut and moved at least a million cubic feet of stone!! We speak lightly of resolve that moves mountains. He had it. The next time you have a problem – with traffic, with local hoodlums, with bad roads – think of Dashrath Manjhi. He never said “Yes, we can!” He just never doubted that he could.

The easy way out

2010-11-08T11:14:00.002+05:30

I really need to start reading comics again. Except that comics no longer exist. These days we have "graphic novels". Thankfully, even graphic novels feature superheroes. Though superhero costumes are significantly different these days. No more undies worn on the outside, or so I'm told. I won't hazard a guess as to what has replaced the Phantom's diagonally striped briefs, but the Indian version of Spiderman reportedly wears a dhoti!

Graphic novels were brought to mind by a whimsy in Samit Basu's new novel "Turbulence" - that superheroes actually prefer simple exploits, like fighting muggers off an old lady's purse, to grand schemes for improving the world. Makes sense, if you think about it. Punch a hoodlum, save a lady, smile for the paparazzi, then fly off with the cape billowing heroically. Much easier than, say, identifying the bugs in health-care delivery systems. And so very much easier than actually thinking up workable solutions. Besides, try explaining fiscal reform to a guy who’s on his fifth beer. “Look, suppose this napkin here is the federal debt, and this salt-cellar is the bail-out package … ”. Nope. Wouldn’t work. You’d get a much better connect with “So we decided, these guys aren’t going to listen to reason, we need to bomb the **** out of them!” Keep it simple. And, if possible, suitable for television.

A brilliant example is the strange incident of the dog on Salisbury Plain, as recounted in the memoirs of the Rt. Hon. James Hacker. Remember that? Where the Minister spends several million pounds of public money to save a dog that's strayed onto an artillery range, all because it will earn him votes? Cuddly dog, convenient cameras, caring Minister, great sound-bytes. An event rather than an issue, more circus than bread. A showy gimmick that’s not only easier than a systemic solution, it's also easier for the common man to understand.

Gimmicks these days are much easier. Or principles easier to defend. They were rather tougher propositions in the past. In 1865, Sir Robert Napier led an army from India to Abyssinia to fight the Emperor Towoodros (Theodore II) just to free a handful of British prisoners. Nine thousand infantry and cavalry with their guns and artillery ferried from India to the northern tip of Africa, then 30 kilometres of railway built to take them up-country. And a last brilliant touch - 44 elephants to pull the guns into the mountains! Three months for the army to cross 400 miles of mountain and ravine between the sea and Towoodros’ mountain-top stronghold, Magdala. Then, anti-climactically, just one day to rout Theodore's army. With only 2 fatalities on the British side, one of them in a shooting accident during the march. (5 of the elephants died, alas.) Sir Robert Napier was lionized for his brilliant leadership. Parliament and a grateful Queen made him First Baron Napier of Magdala.

Then came the bill for the exercise. And the reaction. 9 million pounds? Too steep a bill to pay for Britain's glory! The press and public tore into him, and into the government that had seen fit to send his army to Abyssinia. Perspectives change when there's an election to fight.

The British political establishment, of course, was justifiably scared of being judged by the electorate, especially when the victory was long past. Isn't that what we voters do? Applaud as long as our leaders fight the lions in the circus, then raise the roof with cribbing when we find there's the devil to pay? Napier - and others after him, in other times and in other countries – faced the public attitude summed up by Kipling when he famously wrote about the British soldier. "Oh, it's Tommy this and Tommy that and Tommy go away / But it's Thank you, Mr. Atkins! when the band begins to play."

I suppose we all know the risks when we sign up for a life in the public eye. Whether it's on the hustings or the silver screen, success comes with the hazard of the pillory, the laurel wreath barely conceals the basket of rotten tomatoes. I wonder, though - do the tomato-chuckers ever consider how it would feel to be on the receiving end? Would we be as quick to criticise if we knew we might be asked to step up ourselves?

That's a sobering thought. Especially when I think of the names we like to call our politicians. The next time you think they're taking the populist route, evading the tough issues, beating up on the muggers instead of rebuilding Gotham City (to use the Superhero Simile), just consider - would you put your money where your mouth is? Would you stand for election?
And if you would not, will you be honest about the reasons why you wouldn't?

Probashi Pujo - apologium

2010-10-27T13:08:00.002+05:30

I am Smart. I have realised that my commenters (kind, kind people who spare their time for this blog) also provide material for my column in The Bengal Post!

I have goofed.

In this column last week, I waxed eloquent about the shortcomings of Pujo as celebrated in foreign climes. It doesn’t feel right, said I. It lacks the true community feeling; it isn’t the real McCoy, quoth I. Then I sat back with a certain feeling of righteousness and looked upon what I had wrought. And lo, it did stink most mightily. For look ye, from sundry places in the western realm there arose voices of protest, yea, verily did they raise the roof. Wherefore I hied me to a place of quiet and safety and thought awhile of what had come to pass. And after much thought and beating of the breast (no rending of hair, I’m a little handicapped in that field), I came to the pass of repentance and correction.

Here’s the deal – Pujo as celebrated by Bangalis abroad is fine. No, really. It has everything that one looks for in Pujo here, and then some. The camaraderie, the common effort that leads to a sense of community, the preservation and reinforcement of traditions, even the food. They’re all there in the probashi Pujo. That is the sum and substance of my learning from the protests – dignified, reasoned but seething with indignation – that came my way when I posted last week’s column on the Internet. I was wrong. And I shall quote some of my critics to illustrate where I was wrong.

One commenter sternly reprimanded my “casual and irresponsible rhetoric” that thoughtlessly criticised “the people who have adapted miles away from their homeland, been creative in their undying efforts to recreate their childhood experiences and who have been perhaps more original and credible with less resources than their counterparts in Kolkata.” That’s a valid point. Their Pujo is not inferior just because it’s different. Some aspects are definitely far more commendable. With fewer people to organise each Pujo, there is far greater involvement. In a way, the sense of community is stronger. These Pujos are a celebration of Bangali identity, only in a different way. They establish a little bit of Bengal in “a corner of a foreign field”. I would, however, clarify that I had not criticised the Bangali in exile; I had merely (and perhaps thoughtlessly) stated that the experience of Pujo there does not match my experience of Pujo at home. In the process, however, I had missed much that is commendable and indeed enjoyable about the Pujo in exile.

I must be careful about that term too! One commenter from Dallas explicitly takes umbrage at the word “exile”. Here I hold firm – “expatriate” or “NRI” do not suffice to convey the precise state of mind. I must accept the other point she makes, that Pujo abroad is not significantly different from Pujo in “Bhopal, Pune etc.”

I am ambivalent on one other issue. A “higher decibel level seems sexier but this might be just another of those Kolkata phenomenon (sic) where something obnoxious first becomes acceptable and then lovable”. Well, for those of us who grew up in the ‘70s, the pandal microphones forged a major bond with the latest Bangla adhunik. Our generation’s attachment to RD Burman is partly due to “Pujo’r gaan”. Yes, our indulgent smiles at the incessant announcements over the microphone must be a manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome, but wait! Even the USA can be tolerant of some noise. A friend points out that even in Somerset, New Jersey, they “have some talented dhaakis too”. Glory be! That’s a major part of the Pujo ambience.

A major issue for probashi Bangalis is the authenticity of the food. My flippant (and passing) mention of chicken pizza has not gone down well and my commenters have taken pains (but of course!) to list the menus at their Pujos. “The standard fare is bhoger khichuri with labra, bhaja, chutney, luchi, payesh and mishti in the afternoon and the evening food is even more grandiose sometimes including dishes like ilisher paturi.” “In Boston and New York … didimas, mashimas and kakimas along with the meshos and kakus are toiling away in kitchens to make authentic bhog.”” Being vegetarian i cannot comment on the quality of the mangsho, but the khichuri is always awesome!” I am bested, rebutted, dismissed – and tempted!

Ladies and gentlemen, I withdraw in much embarrassment and confusion, my arguments blown to the four winds. I accept that I was guilty of “taking just one sample and bad-mouthing the entire population”. I repeat, however, that I had merely pointed out certain aspects of the probashi Pujo that, in my humble opinion, diminished the experience. Some of these are inescapable in a foreign land, where Pujo must of necessity be limited to two days on a convenient weekend and cannot encompass 5 days of celebration. And can a Pujo abroad have any equivalent of the immersion ceremony and the truck-ride that it usually entails?

On the other hand, we are now reassured that the spirit of Bangali Pujo is not only alive and well beyond our borders, it is even growing in strength. If the Bangali cannot come home for the Pujo, he will recreate his home where the Pujo is. Dhaak, montro, and the authentic food to cap it all – shall we look forward to Michelle Obama and perhaps Carla Bruni in laal paar next autumn?

In exile

2010-10-12T10:43:00.003+05:30

(Again from The Bengal Post)

A chill wind and a sere sky. Drawing on a moody cigarette in the corner of a deserted car park, I grimaced as the cold stung my nose and made my eyes water. Time to go back inside. To the trestle tables and the scattered chairs. The half-smiles and the distant Durga. To the strange experience of Pujo in the eastern United States.

I’m quite proud of the fact that in the last 35 years I have missed only three Pujos in Calcutta. Of course I found Pujos to join elsewhere, but my one experience of Markeen Sharodiya was quite depressing. Now that our annual tryst with Birendra Krishna Bhadra is done, we have thrilled to the clarity of Hemanta Mukhopadhyay’s “Jaago, tumi jaago”, the school holidays have started, the pandals are nearly complete and half the Bangali population is out of town anyway, spare a thought for those who pass their Pujo in exile. Not for them the resonance of Mohishasura Mordini at dawn, or the clamour of passing dhaakis on Ponchomi. Not for them the luxury of slipping over to the mondop for a half-hour of adda before bed, while sipping tea and watching the passers-by. Not a chance, when the mondop is 20 miles away in a school gymnasium that has to be locked down by 8 p.m. And not when they live in a land where coffee is sold in paper cups and tea is hardly known, let alone the earthen cups that we in India take for granted.

The earliest Pujo I remember clearly was actually in Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park. It was then a suburb on the edge of the outer dark. Alaknanda did not exist, jackals yipped in the fields to the south, buildings were sparsely scattered, the “parks” were unfenced. Yet the Pujo was a great affair. In my memory, the pandal is grand, the protima awe-inspiring, the dhaak loud and the incense strong. And yes, the food was wonderful! I was young, Delhi was home and there was no sense of deprivation for not being in Calcutta. Pujo was a blast. Even my next experience of Pujo in Delhi, 15 years later, was warm and joyous. It most certainly would not have been exile, except that I was young and my thoughts lay in Calcutta.

So Pujo away from home can still be enjoyable. Or not. Forget the theories about religion, ritual, tradition, community. What are the specifics that make a Pujo for the average Bangali? Why did my experience in New Jersey seem so sterile, alien, like something out of Blade Runner?
The first thing that comes to mind is being home. Durga Pujo is about Bangali identity. Roots. The para. There has to be a direct link through either family or neighbourhood. The Pujo mondop must be located in a place that belongs to you by association. Which is why a “neutral venue” in the next county cannot give any sense of ownership. It doesn’t work.

Amit Chaudhuri, in these columns, identified another factor that leads to alienation: silence. Growing up in Bengal, a silent Pujo was unimaginable. Our grandparents grumbled about Pujo songs over loudspeakers; for us, they actually marked the hours of the day. We Indians are more tolerant of noise even in our daily lives. During Pujo, we live in a vast envelope of communal noise that is somehow reassuring. Where there is no hum, no dhaak, no announcements for “Bubai Mondal from Sodepur to join his friends in front of the information booth”, Pujo for us is incomplete. How can we immerse ourselves in the moment if we have to worry about the possibility of the neighbours complaining?

And of course there is the food. Let us face the truth – no Bangali celebration is complete without gormandising. And that really is not possible without the involvement of mashimas and boudis who, flushed from the kitchen heat, triumphantly bear the fruits of their labour to the communal tables. The products of the world’s largest fast-food chains may score more in terms of revenue, but they fail miserably as Pujo food. Mangsher ghugni, kochuri aloo’r dom, bhoger khichuri – how can chicken pizza and bagels compare with these?

The other thing that comes to mind is the sense of being only one of many. The knowledge that “our” Pujo is not the only one within miles, the competition to have a better “cultural programme”, a more gorgeous pandal, a more awe-inspiring Protima – these are not possible in an alien land where pandal-hopping can happen only in cyber-space. Alien. That is the keyword. Pujo cannot be thoroughly enjoyed except as part of a greater whole, it cannot achieve its fullest in an alien environment. As we enter the culminating week of Debi Pokkhyo, let us spare a thought for those less fortunate. Have a good one, readers.

Incident in Prague

2010-10-11T13:09:00.004+05:30

Quizman said long ago that I’m “effortlessly pompous”. I agree. It certainly applies to the stuff I write for publication.

The Old Town Square in Prague is the most beautiful urban space I have ever seen.

I have fallen in love several times over the last few years. My first infatuation was Paris, where the flowers punctuate the awnings of the cafes on the Champs Elysee and every passing lady leaves a whiff of perfume. Then Lisbon with her laid-back attitude, a beauty in morning deshabille, stole my heart. Later, Istanbul’s joie de vivre marched into my affections like the earthy heroine of an H.E. Bates novel. But when I stood below the astronomical clock at the corner of the Old Town Square and watched the sunset fade on the spiky steeples of the Tyn Church (or, by its bhalo naam, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn), I knew without doubt that it is beyond compare.

Now aesthetic exhilaration is all very well, but we had spent the day driving round a fair part of the Czech Republic on very mundane work. The roads had been clogged and the weather beastly; the schedule of meetings had not left time for lunch. So even as the lights came on and created a quite unrealistically beautiful golden glow over the 12^th century buildings, our corporeal selves intruded very forcibly upon our common conscious. My stomach thought my throat had been cut and protested in no uncertain terms. My companions and I looked at each other “with a wild surmise” and proceeded to seek sustenance.

I was firm in my resolve that we would have a fitting meal and not waste our appetite on fast food. I had seen, in the cobbled pedestrian passageway that lies between the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, a sign advertising “traditional Czech cuisine’, so despite the protests from my companions I marched them all the way to the Café Mustek (so named because it lies at the head of Ulice Mustek). We were accosted at the gate by a young man the size of a refrigerator, dressed like a medieval executioner. He turned out to be charmingly helpful and found us a table in a corner, gave us menus and directed a bright young lady to take our order.

Overwhelmed by the bounty on offer, we proceeded to order several different kinds of savoury meat – rabbit, duck, chicken, pork knee – and the waitress did not see fit to warn us that even our large appetites would not be able to do justice. When our food arrived, we were already rather full of Pilsner Urquell and so gazed with some alarm on the size of the helpings. Never mind, said I, and we set to. Now, pork knee as served in the Café Mustel is a ritual as much as a meal. It is served on a miniature spit balanced on a nice wooden tray, surrounded by little dishes of mustard, savoury dip and horseradish relish (the last being a close relative of the Japanese wasabi). For a quarter of an hour, conversation flagged as we carved and shared and sated ourselves. We finally paused in our labours, emitted long sighs of satisfaction, took deep draughts of our Pilsners and wiped our mouths with large napkins in the manner of Obelix.

At that point I noticed four pairs of hungry eyes at the next table looking longingly at our lavish spread. Young college students, they had ordered only a beer apiece (at that age, beer is always more important than food). As we watched, they started counting out loose change and ordered just one plate of French fries. My friends and I looked at each other, then at the untouched dish of roast rabbit. We conferred on whether it would be seemly to offer it to the young people. The consensus was that their pride would not permit them to accept. Despite our growing feeling of guilt, we decided not to commit the social gaffe. I had the remaining food packed despite my friends’ objection – they said they had seen no poor people we could offer it to. Never fear, said I, and we proceeded to amble back towards the hotel, myself swinging the packet of food as if it were a clouded cane.

A hundred yards from our hotel door there lay a nightclub of a certain sort. A sallow young man, stubbled and shabby, approached us with the offer of a free trial of the pleasures within. As he tried to hand me a little pamphlet, I had an epiphany. “I can’t give you any business, but would you accept this food instead?” It took a little explanation (his English was none too good, our Czech non-existent) but once he got the drift he smiled a large, large smile. Then he drew himself erect and, pointing to an even thinner and shabbier young man nearby, asked “May I give it to him instead?” I shrugged. Why object, as long as somebody’s hunger is appeased? The packet was handed over and we walked on.

As we turned into our hotel, there was a commotion behind us. We turned and saw the second man capering after us. I was alarmed. Was this a protest, maybe even an assault? No such thing. It was gratitude, expressed in a manner that filled the heart. The young fellow grabbed my hand and poured out an effusion of thanks. “I have not eaten so well in months! This is Christmas come early!” Then “Wait, I will thank you in the Indian manner!” and he actually prostrated himself on the sidewalk in front of us. Severely embarrassed, we escaped into the hotel. But talking it over later, we agreed that more than the fleeting sense of virtue, our day had been made by the youngster’s spontaneous expression of gratitude. Perhaps, for a moment, it even made the inchoate sprawl of Wenceslas Square more beautiful than the picture-book perfection of the Old Town Square.

Thoughts on 2nd October

2010-10-05T00:28:00.002+05:30

Thanks to the Bengal Post, there should be at least one post a week on the Philippic.
More, if certain other things work out.

There are good reasons why the citizens of the USA consider their country to be the greatest in the world. The biggest reason is that Fox TV tells them so. To be fair, their present President does not repeat this statement as often as some of his predecessors. This may be because, in any speech by Obama, B.H., at least 30% of the time is spent in striking a statesmanlike pose and looking at a point about 3 feet above the left shoulder of the cameraman on Centre 1, which leaves less time for uber-patriotic affirmations. Most Americans take this as an indication of (a) statesmanlike intentions, though not necessarily ability or (b) a malfunctioning teleprompter. But any public figure in the USA must, in any public pronouncement, work in a reference to the USA as the leader of the free world and the guardian of democracy. This helps in building public consensus, patriotic fervor, even national unity. The method has been tried and tested by other world leaders such as Hussein, S., Hitler, A. and Dzugashvili, J. It seems to work.

Do these affirmations lead to an overwhelming question? Or does rhetoric lead to a blind acceptance of the maxim of “My country, right or wrong”? My question is limited to the context of our own country. Do we Indians believe in our country because we are told to do so? Or is there a deeper basis – whether rational or emotional - to our patriotism? As far as I am concerned, I live in India because I would not fit in anywhere else. This is my country. I would have no peace or comfort in a country where I can’t buy tea in an earthen cup. But I have sense enough to know that this does not make India the greatest country in the world (as, indeed, “Mom’s apple pie” is not sufficient proof of American superiority). One of the good things about my country is that I can still say this on a public forum without fear of the outcome.

Come to think of it, everybody says this. In the international media the concept of India, incredible or otherwise, exists in the future. We Indians agree. We’re getting there, we may be world leaders some time soon (a decade? A century?), but we’re certainly not there yet. Indians abroad (especially in world heritage sites like New Jersey) tend to have an extreme version of this objectivity. For them, practically nothing about India is acceptable. Not the infrastructure, food, medical facilities, education nor even the air. Not for them the empty rhetoric of world domination. (Curiously enough, this is the demographic that is most likely to buy into the Fox TV view of the USA. But we shall examine this phenomenon anon.) This clear-eyed pragmatic view, alas, rarely extends to Indian icons. The same Bangali who derides the work-culture of Bengal is most likely to get emotional over any criticism of Netaji. Or Swami Vivekananda. Perhaps Bangalis are not a good sample, since they can get equally emotional over Suchitra Sen and (on the evidence of lady friends from DSE) Kaushik Basu. No, let us examine the Indian at large.

Can you criticise his national icons in public and get away with it? Ambedkar, Bose, Nehru, Rajaji, Shivaji – can any of us afford to be less than respectful in our public utterances, without fear of an immediate and often physical reaction? The Americans are quite the opposite in this regard. They are as comfortable with depictions of Jefferson’s peccadilloes with the domestic staff at Monticello as they are with Jay Leno’s wisecracks about the current President. They accept the fallibility of their leaders and icons while maintaining the myth that their country is, by and large, above criticism. Those who do venture to criticise the country as a whole disguise it as criticism of a particular administration, of individuals rather than the collective. Doing otherwise would invite being labeled as a “Liberal”, which as we know is polite American usage for “wacko pinko Fascist Commie faggot”. In India on the other hand, the revered Arundhati Roy can write a brief 82-page essay in a leading weekly about the various ills of the Indian state, but a historian who suggests that the pride of Maharashtra was less than perfect must face a book ban.

I find this strange. What I find even stranger is that the efforts of one man were the single largest factor in creating this system whereby we live in a (reasonably) free and democratic nation, yet this man’s memory is reduced to dry paragraphs in history books and poorly painted portraits in government offices. This man’s life and even his views are beyond the realm of public scrutiny, despite his own experiments with truth which he recorded in frank and sometimes self-flagellating detail. It is sacrilegious, or anti-secular, or just plain traitorous, to suggest that despite his political acumen he made mistakes that led to bloodshed and misery. The real tragedy of the man’s legacy lies in this, and not in those three gunshots at a prayer meeting in 1948. By placing him above and beyond criticism, we have placed him beyond reality. And in the process denied his legacy the light of the truth that he believed in.

A Pujo primer

2010-10-02T11:13:00.003+05:30

(Not for the real Bangali - this is more like a Pujo primer, written for Jetwings on the request of the Skeptic)
(This blog will stop feeling like a blog if I just keep posting published stuff. OK. Shall be back soon. With a Rant. Or several rants. Rants are the life-blood of blogging)
(No, I lie. Comments are the life-blood of a blog. And my readers don't bother)
(Casts accusing look before exiting left)
(Pops head back in to thank those Good Readers who HAVE commented.)

(Oh, all right. The Pujo thingy is below. Go on and read it, will you?)

Saccharum spontaneum. Kaash phool. The sudden appearance of patches of greenery topped with these swaying white plumes signals an uplifting of the spirit, a sense of expectation. It’s supposed to be a perennial grass, but for Bangalis it is associated with one season.

It happens some time in September, after the rains. Suddenly the sunshine is sharper and mellower all at the same time, the morning air smells different. Even though you can’t admit it to yourself – especially if you’re over 40 and have a duty to be respectable – you feel like standing on the balcony and singing. It has to be Robindro Shongeet remembered from many years ago, even if you usually spend your evenings with Thelonious Monk. Singing loud, full-throated, a chest full of song. Because somewhere in your mind you can hear the rhythms of the dhaak, the pandal down the road is taking shape as a lattice-work of bamboos and is that .. yes, that IS a stray banner of kaash phool in the corner of the park.

Pujo. Sharodotshob. Durga Puja. The autumn festival, the high point of the Bangali year. Browning’s Englishman may yearn for England in the spring, but for Bengalis the one time when thoughts must turn to home is during the Pujas. Learned people can expound on the religious roots, the tradition of the Mother Goddess, the difference between Navratri in the rest of India and the six days of Durga Puja. But deep down, we Bangalis know that our Pujo is only incidentally about prayer. It is in the deepest sense a celebration of our identity, a reassurance of community, an affirmation that life can be good.

Puja starts with Mahalaya. Waking at 4 in the morning to switch on the radio, then snuggling under the covers while songs and mantras and the clashing of cymbals roll around the darkened room, interspersed with the theatrical intonation of Birendra Krishna Bhadra. Unique, inimitable, the voice of Pujo, Durga’s herald long after he died in his 80s. Mahalaya is the last day of Pitru Pakksha, the fortnight when Karna was sent back to earth to appease the souls of his forefathers. The more devout will flock to the rivers before dawn to offer prayers for their ancestors, along with offerings of food for the departed souls. Mahalaya also marks the beginning of Debi Pakksha, the fortnight of worship of the Mother Goddess. It is cause for celebration – Pujo is here!

The preparations for the autumn fortnight start nearly a year in advance. Every neighbourhood has its Puja Committee, and they vie to outdo each other in the splendor of their pandals and their images of the Goddess. A pandal is a temporary structure, a bamboo framework draped with coloured cloth. This simple description cannot convey a thousandth part of the grandeur of some of these elaborate structures reaching 60 feet high or more. Some are made as copies of famous shrines, amazing in their reproduction of detail. Last year one Pujo Committee recreated an entire Garhwal village along with the Badrinath shrine. Some are more ambitious fantasies, ranging from Hogwarts School to the space shuttle launch pad complete with Titan rocket and boosters. The objective is to ensure the maximum number of visitors, the maximum coverage in the media. And it’s all a labour of love, since the visitors are not charged a penny for the view.

Once carried inside the pandal by the choking rush of visitors, one may pause to wonder at the idols. These are usually made of clay in the potters’ quarter of Kumartuli (kumor = potter, tolii = neighbourhood), whence they are sent out to Pujas not only around Bengal but around the world. The shipping schedule apparently starts 6 weeks before the actual festival, with the first batch of idols carefully crated and despatched to expatriate Pujos in Seattle, Singapore and Saigon. There has even been a regular Durga Pujo in Switzerland since 2004! Of late, there has been a demand for more durable, re-usable idols, crafted in metal or even fiberglass. But each idol starts with a handful of clay ceremonially collected from the doorstep of a brothel, the rationale being that men leave their better selves there when they enter.

The Bangali Durga Pujo is actually an aberration of sorts. The Mother Goddess was traditionally worshipped in the spring. Myth has it that Rama invoked her protection before his battle against Ravana in the autumn (the festival of Rama’s homecoming, Deepavali, follows within a fortnight). Ever since, Durga has been worshipped in autumn, hence the local term Akaal Bodhan or untimely prayer. Part of the 4 day ritual involves the lighting of 108 lamps which symbolise the lotuses offered by Rama to Durga during his invocation. (He was short of two lotuses, so he planned to pluck out his eyes and offer them instead. This may have been somewhat counter-productive, since he sought the means to defeat Ravana.) As is inevitable with the contentious Bangali, there are different views on the rituals and even the mantras for the actual puja. Personally, it doesn’t make a difference. I am not particularly religious. The rituals are comforting, nostalgic. They bring back memories of schooldays, of aunts and grandmothers in red-bordered saris of white cotton who would settle themselves at the feet of the idol to chop huge basket-loads of fruits for the votive offering, gossiping all the while and chewing on betel leaf that reddened their lips.

There are claims that the Roychoudhury family of Barisha (now a southern suburb) celebrated Durga Puja regularly from 1610. The first such Puja recorded was organised in 1757 by Raja Nabakrishna Deb of Shobhabajar in Calcutta; the unspoken truth is that it was actually meant to fete the conqueror Clive. The tradition of community pujas started 4 years later, from Gooptipara in Hooghly, where 12 young men (12 friends or baro yaar, hence the term baroyaari Pujo) organised a Pujo through community subscription. 250 years on, not only every neighbourhood but every apartment block must have its own Durga Pujo, no matter how small. As they say, one Bangali is a poet, two Bangalis form a political party and 3 Bangalis means 2 Pujo Committees!

There are other conventions about Durga Puja that are cultural or traditional rather than religious, but nonetheless defended with fervor. For decades now, there have been organised competitions for the best pandal, the best lighting, the best protima (idol). Bengal’s celebs (and not a few from Bollywood) troop dutifully round the cities to make their choices, and the results are often hotly disputed. One year it even led to litigation! Every periodical brings out its Sharodiya or Pujo Shonkha, the special autumn edition. Most of the finest and most acclaimed writers of Bengal, from Satyajit Ray to Sunil Gangopadhyay and Buddhadeb Guha, have featured in these editions that celebrate the Bangali literary tradition. The most enduring tradition, of course, is common to all festivities – the chance for the would-be Romeos to look sidelong at the flocks of preening young belles, the little romances that sometimes fade with the strains of Doshomi Pujo and sometimes last. Maddox Square in south Calcutta is by way of being a legend in this context; it is almost mandatory for the 18-25 age group to meet there at least once during the 4 days of festivities. The closest parallel is Chittaranjan Park in Delhi. And then of course there is the organised gawking, especially in Calcutta. Millions of people walk around the city from one pandal to the other, gazing slack-mouthed at the lights and the decorations, bowing deeply before the idol where the deity seems to look right into their souls. Little convoys wind their way through the clogged avenues and little by-lanes from dusk to dawn. Restaurants stay open well past midnight, street food stalls close only when their larders are empty. For those 4 days, the world becomes a heady rush of sound and perfume and bright lights, of friends and festivity and a warm feeling of togetherness even with comparative strangers.

Till the evening of the 10^th day of Debi Pokkho, Doshomi. When the Goddess and her children must be bade adieu, carried down to the river in ceremonious procession, there to be set adrift to return to their abode on Mount Kailash. Leaving the Bangali with an after-the-party feeling that he seeks to counter with the Bangali version of next year in Jerusalem!” – Aaschhey bochhor abaar hobe”, once again next year.

Begging the question

2010-09-29T10:52:00.004+05:30

(The Bengal Post now has an online edition.)

Online profiles are revealing. In their omissions. For some unfathomable reason, I don’t see young people proclaiming on Facebook that they are quizzers. Amateur film-makers, yes. Adventure bikers. Music connoisseurs. Even tattoo artists. But quizzers? No. Why so? Could it be because the common image of a quizzer is of an adolescent male with bottle-bottom glasses and body odour , and perhaps a cranium enlarged like Amitabh Bachchan’s character in “Paa”? A strange species who only emerge from their subterranean burrows in the dark of the moon, to gibber about “directs” and “connects” and “infinite bounce”? This, of course, is totally untrue. The average quizzer is actually a veritable Adonis, with long wavy blonde hair, rippling muscles and the suave charm of Remington Steele to go with his omniscience. (And the moon is made of green cheese.)

For a long while I was a little ashamed that I enjoyed quizzing. It seemed a little juvenile. Grown men (and a few women) sitting in a circle to show off how much they know. Like the obnoxious brats in the first row who squeal “Miss! Miss!” and raise their hands when a question is asked in class. But I could not forego the guilty pleasure. Dammit, quizzing is fun! Especially when the quiz is run by somebody who can keep it interesting. Which made me think. Obviously there are good quizzes and bad quizzes. What’s the difference, then?

Quizzing at its worst deserves the term it’s known by in the western world – Trivial Pursuit. This includes the kind of question that fills tupenny “quiz books” churned out for the delectation of fond parents who want to mentor their little prodigies. What is the currency of Vietnam? What is the capital of Upper Volta? Who appeared in the 23^rd episode of “Coronation Street”? In other words, disparate nuggets of information that have little relevance to one’s knowledge of a subject, trivia that is (sadly) often swotted up and regurgitated without any interest other than scoring points.

It gets better (in my humble opinion) when it throws up facts that pique one’s interest and make one want to know more about a particular subject. In other words, it can lead to bridging the gap between information and knowledge. For example - Mīrzā Mohammad Tāregh bin Shāhrokh compiled the Zij-i-Sultani, the greatest star catalogue between the times of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe. By what name is he better known? This was Ulugh Beg, grandson of Timur, ruler of Samarkand, astronomer and mathematician, whose bones were placed in Timur’s tomb by their descendant Babur. Now that is a slice of knowledge, a smorgasbjord of facts that entice one to read up more about the history of Central Asia, a region totally neglected by our Anglo-centric view of history. A good quiz question introduces one to a fascinating cast of characters or a new knowledge-scape. It is not just informative, it is interesting. It is to Trivial Pursuit as Madame de Stael’s salon was to housewives’ gossip.

The best kind of quiz question, however, is a kind of brain-sport. It is the question that gives all the clues and leaves the quizzer to work them out. It makes the quizzer rummage through the recesses of his memory and put things together to arrive at an epiphany. And this often requires teamwork, a pooling of thoughts and deductions that justifies the formation of a quiz team. One example that I recall with particular relish was a question about the iMation logo – a wand tracing an arc of dots that turn to stars. Apparently it’s inspired by a quote from a famous science-fiction author. One of us latched on to the wand and stars and said there must be a reference to magic. Another said that all wise things in science fiction can be traced to Arthur C. Clarke. Then we decided that, given the company (iMation), it must be something about technology. All this in the space of about ten seconds. Then the fourth member of the team, who had been vigorously rubbing his chin, put it all together with the actual quote from Clarke – “Technology is progressing so fast that it will soon be indistinguishable from magic.”

A most satisfying moment. That is the kind of joint deduction that renews my interest in quizzing. And my faith in Calcutta, where this pursuit is still valued for its own sake without regard for the rewards. Just the satisfaction of knowing one got it right.

There are other nuances to a good quiz that can only be understood from the other side, when one has to set and run a quiz. It’s all too tempting for me to set a series of questions on Kishore Kumar or the Great Game or Clint Eastwood, to indulge my personal interests. This is not fair to the quizzers. The questions must cover as wide a range as possible, while at the same time maintaining an even standard of difficulty. The quizmaster’s primary aim must not be to stump the teams and the audience. Quizzes are enjoyable when questions can be answered, they are not meant to showcase one person’s abstruse knowledge. Above all, like any good show, a quiz has to hold the interest. But for that, it should know when to stop.

And since I am reminded of brevity, here endeth the first lesson.

P.S. For all those who're asking whether I'm doing a quiz at the DI on the 3rd of October, the answer is "NO". It's been postponed indefinitely. You'll know when I know.

Separated at birth

2010-09-13T09:43:00.003+05:30

The Bengal Post is keeping this blog alive. But hopefully there will soon be some travel notes here - the sidewalks of Vienna, the Schonbrunn Castle, the lights of the castle on Buda hill and wild boar in a Magyar cellar.
Meanwhile, this Monday's effusion -

There were two people in line ahead of me. One was a crotchety old lady who needed attention and was going to some lengths to get it. As he took her order, his eyes met mine over her shoulder and I noted a flicker. Not of recognition, but perhaps realization? Two brown-skinned men, sizing each other up in an off-campus diner on Long Island, half way across the world from their homes. When I reached the counter, though, he was perfectly professional. “What can I get you, sir?”
It was I who broke the ice, venturing a few words in Hindi. “You seem to be from my part of the world” – the word I used was mulq, region, province. The smile came out then, a little hesitant, a little wary. A nod in affirmation, a few words in that accented Hindi that brought back afternoons on South Campus and back-slapping uproarious evenings in Nehru Place. I crashed on – “You must be from Punjab!” That nod again, and a smile I didn’t quite understand.

He ushered me to a table, excused himself, busied himself behind the counter. When he brought me my coffee, it was accompanied by doughnuts, cake, cookies, a tray heaped with sweet-smelling hospitality. “Aap khaao jee, ae mhaarey tarf se hai”. Afterwards, he refused to accept payment even for the coffee I’d ordered. “This is the first time you’ve come here, you are my mehmaan. Mhaarey mulq ke ho jee.” The unspoken statement of fraternity, of a common tradition in a foreign land. Heart-warming.

Except that he wasn’t from Punjab. At least not the Punjab I had in mind. “I’m from the other Punjab, bhai-saab. Kehnde hain beech mein kuchh baarder hai – what do you think?” How could I respond except with a smile and a shrug? We didn’t discuss it further. No ruminations on history, enmity, politics, lost families and homesteads. Just a smile on one side and a shrug on the other, the helplessness of 2000 years of common history cast aside by the next 60 years.

That encounter came to mind this week as I watched a most improbable script unfold. Take one Indian sportsman and one Pakistani, both a little past their sell-by date. Mix well, pour into one of the four biggest events in their sport. Not any one of the four, either. One in the US, where the government has an exclusive strategy team for this region. Serve garnished with the following – item#1 , a scandal about gambling and cricket that taints one side of the border; item #2, a scandal about doping that wipes out several medal prospects on the Indian side; #3, confusion about the biggest sporting extravaganza to be scheduled in India in several years. Wait, there’s more. Serve with the most perfect timing – a final match that coincides with both Ganesh Chaturthi and Eid. If poor Manmohan Desai had come up with such a series of coincidences, the scoffing classes would have torn him to shreds.
The script went a little pear-shaped at the end, of course. Bopanna and Qureishi lost in the finals. No matter. They scored one and a half billion points with their smiles photographed together off-court. In fact, the conspiracy theorists had already started muttering about a fix, with everybody from B. Husein Obama to the line judges and Marcos Baghdatis involved in some incomprehensible realpolitik to rival Robert Ludlum’s most convoluted plots. No matter. For a week, two countries looked on and smiled a little sheepishly as the rest of the world asked what the fuss was about, all these years. And the Internet bulged at the seams with a fantasy every cricket fan has indulged over the last 40 years – could anybody have beaten a team that had both Sachin Tendulkar and Wasim Akram, where Javed Miandad and Kapil Dev were comrades and not adversaries?

This same week witnessed a rare partnership in the world of music – Ghulam Ali and Jagjit Singh performing together, an evening where the sheer presence of the two stars overshadowed their actual performance. Elsewhere, whether in collaborations or on the personal level, whether in the public domain or from my own experience, I seem to recall only good things happening when people from both sides of the border get together one to one. A new friend from Lahore, dapper in Hugo Boss and sharp as a knife, dismissed all politics with a wave of the hand and invited me to a weekend at his cottage in Murree. “We’ll play squash and drink beer, no government can object to those activities!” A millionaire’s offer that in its own way echoed the hospitality of my friend in the Dunkin’ Donuts on Long Island.
In Bollywood, alas, the story is not so good. There was Meera earlier, there was Mohsin Khan long before her, and now one reads of Veena Malik. Is it only in in the film industry that Indo-Pak partnerships have not really worked out. Everywhere else, we seem quite hunky-dory. If one leaves out, of course, the minor issue of international relations!

Staying alive

2010-09-07T16:24:00.004+05:30

(Reading this, I realise I am most 'mazingly propah when I write for the print media)

At my age, senile dementia is not a joke. Nor is Alzheimer’s. Or Parkinson’s Disease. Every once in a while a name or a term slips away from me in the course of a conversation, like a dog scurrying under the bed at the mention of a bath. I can see the tip of its tail but I can’t call it out. Because I’ve forgotten its name, of course. And I worry. Is this a sign of decay? Then – like most married men – I am reassured by The Wife. Who gives me in rapid succession a pitying look, the word I’m searching for and an admonition to talk less. I do take some precautions to avoid Alzheimer’s. I work my way through a few cigarillos a day. All in the interests of better mental health, because I read somewhere that smokers are immune to Alzheimer’s. Or wait – was it Parkinson’s that they mentioned? There you go, I’ve forgotten again.

I wonder – how does one stay mentally young? Not everyone can follow the advice and example of Mr. Hugh Hefner, so what are the options? Solving crosswords? Learning salsa? Eating arugula? None of them as much fun as the Hefner Highway, but easy to try. What else? Listening to hip-hop? I’ll pass on that one. I can think of few things more ridiculous than a middle-aged man wearing his trousers round his knees and bobbing up and down while jerking his hands strangely. Dementia would be by far the easier option!

I do have a viable option for mental zing - the company of the young. About 6 years ago I discovered blogs, and through them a community of (mostly) young people who were bright, articulate, interesting. They surprised me. They shook me up. And they reassured me. They do listen to music I find strange, with even stranger names. (I mean, Arctic Monkeys?) But back in the day, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd must have been equally incomprehensible. And these young people listen to Procol Harum as readily as to Lokkhichara. They emote over Robindro Shongeet as much as they follow China Mieville. Their tastes are eclectic, their minds elastic. When I find myself mentally retreating from the things they introduce me to, I think back to my teens. To the way my father and his father freely dispensed their opinions of the books I read, the clothes I wore, the music I listened to and the company I kept. I remember my resentment then. And I resolve to be less judgemental now, more open-minded. (Though it will be a long time before I listen to Lady Gaga by choice!)

I must confess I derive tangible benefits from the company of the young. Updates on the latest gizmos. The low-down on the international literary scene. Quirky software that speeds up my phone, or helps me edit sound-tracks. Knowledge of the by-lanes and flesh-pots of my own city, and of places surprisingly far and wide. And very often, the help of kind young limbs to reach out, walk over, lift and shift. What’s more, they help me put myself in perspective. From my reactions to them, I can better understand my parents’ generation; from their tolerance of me, I learn to be patient myself.

These youngsters shake me out of my cynicism too. They’re willing to give. Not money, but time. Which, if you think it over, is in the truest sense giving of oneself. They believe. In causes, in people. And in the future. After all these years of seeing the seamier side of life, it’s refreshing to see these young people forego their own pleasures. To teach poor children, to clean public spaces, to help with their own blood. I admire their energy, their selflessness. And I am humbled.

I won’t for a moment suggest that the young are angels without exception. Good grief, no! Some of them are beyond redemption. I’m not referring here just to call-centre love intrigues that lead to murder. Or the kidnapping of friends for ransom. Or the random violence whereby a game of cricket leads to a 14-yr-old being maimed for life. The young commit worse transgressions on a regular basis. They use textese even outside SMS. They think “American Pie” is a Madonna number. The girls shave their heads, the boys wear their hair long. They insert strange metallic objects into parts of themselves, at least those parts not yet covered by strange tattooes. They’re different. Of course, being different is not in itself a crime ( I think). But wait. Tattooes, body piercing, long hair, drugs? Why is it that the first mental picture is of a “Naga sanyasi”? The brand ambassador of Gen-Next?

Nor am I suggesting that senior citizens (a term used by the young, I believe, to refer to any person over the age of 25) are devoid of value. We oldies get a lot done too. I’m proud to have contemporaries who still have mental flexibility, tolerance, energy and compassion. These qualities are not the prerogative of youth. Or perhaps they are. Perhaps youth is defined not by a figure but the very possession of these qualities. And the country of old men exists only in the mind.

More from THAT essay (does it never end?)

2010-08-30T15:51:00.004+05:30

I abhor Sounding Serious, but the I-word has to come into this somewhere. Identity. What IS this Indian identity? What sets me apart from a Bangladeshi or a Pakistani? (I've been mistaken for a Mexican, too, but perhaps that's not strictly relevant to the subject.)

Precious little, on first examination. Not the national language, Hindi. Not any specific attire. Because our genes are the same, the product of several thousand years in this sub-continental melting pot. We share languages, traditions, cuisine. What then identifies the Indian? We should step outside ourselves for a while to ask, how does the world see Indians? How far are we from the standard shibboleths of mysticism and spirituality and exoticism? In the American media (what, is there any other kind?! You mean there’s folks out there Who. Don’t. Get. Fawx. TeeVeeee?!) the standard Indian is a nerd. Apu in The Simpsons and Raj Patel at Riverdale High. The software geeks who are “taking our jobs to Bangalore”. (A skewed perception, since the entire Indian IT workforce is less than 2 million out of a population of 1.13 BILLION.)

In Britain, where Patel may soon be the most common surname (indeed the most common Indian name across the world, from gas stations on Mid-western highways to pulp and insurance magnates in Kenya), India is sadly equated with balti cuisine and Bollywood rap. For the Japanese, India is the cradle of Buddhism. The French made Satyajit Ray a Chevalier of their Legion of Honour. Russia had a long love affair with Indian tea and with Raj Kapoor (though we hear that of late Amitabh Bachchan has gained ground). An Indian cannot, reportedly, walk the streets of Cairo without fielding questions on his proximity to Mr. B. Which is all very well, but is there such a thing as the Indian of the 21^st century?

Much has been made of Messrs. Mittal and Ambani, their pre-eminence among plutocrats and their conspicuous consumption. About how India has Arrived because Tata have bought Corus and Jaguar. I agree that this is great news for the urban Indian who reads the financial papers. It means recognition in the international market, it means credibility for our skills and our goods. It means holidays in Latin America, gadgets from Singapore, mezze brunches in classy brasseries. And it means sweet damn all to half of India.

I could trade it all for evenings like the one I spent in a village in Howrah district back in the ’90s.

We were visiting learning centres set up under a scheme for functional literacy that employed volunteers. The teacher at the centre was a field labourer who had had to drop out of school after the 5^th grade. This man, with a family of 9 to feed, gave hours of his time every evening so that his fellow villagers could learn to read and write. And insisted that we share his dinner before we left. Puffed rice, jaggery cakes and tender coconut water from his own yard. Simple fare that I remember 15 years later because the unthinking hospitality with which it was offered brooked no refusal.

Hospitality. To paraphrase O. Henry, they will pour their larder into you before they pour their lead.

At the height of the Khalistan movement, a friend in the police met some of the most feared insurgents. He shook his head in wonderment as he recounted their first offer – Duddh shuddh piyo jee, “have some hot milk”. Kashmir in 1990, the Valley in flames after the shooting of Ishfaq Wani, when a waiter murmured a warning in my ear as we sat down to dinner in the Circuit House. But in the same breath, apologised for the meagre fare during the month of fasting.

This can border on the farcical. On election duty in Sangroor in Punjab, I found that one candidate's election platform was a large trailer drawn by a Tata Safari. Loaded with CRATES of Solan whiskey and the charred remains of a poultry farm. His appetites were as large as his heart. For every sip he offered, he would take one himself; his day's canvassing ending only when he subsided into the trailer, snoring blissfully. At which point his nephew (on Safari with him, so to speak) would steer homewards. Steer a little erratically, since Said Nephew shared the family trait of appreciating the simple pleasures (or plai-years) of life. When it was pointed out that this amounted to soliciting for votes with promises of gain, the complainant was immediately rebuked and shushed by at least three other candidates, the largest of whom turned to me and said, with a dismissive wave of a huge hand, 'Wo koi nahin jee, bacche thod-di si jo pee pah lehnde so ki fark painda'. “What does it matter if the boys have a drink or two.”

The tradition of hospitality is not limited by India’s boundaries. Out on Long Island, the man behind the counter at a Dunkin’ Donuts forced cakes and coffee on me, then refused to accept payment because apne mulk ke hain aap, you are from my country. In Barcelona, I bargained over curios with a Sindhi shop-lady who would not give an inch or a peso, but pushed two boxes of sweets into my hands as I left. “For your baby”.

Hospitality. In the simplest form, placing humanity above the self.

Us and them

2010-08-24T18:49:00.003+05:30

It was a constant of my schoolday mornings. The tea tray, the newspaper, the voices slightly tinny as they poured forth from the old National cassette deck, my father unconsciously beating time on the chair-arm to “Sajani sajani kunja maajhey” and occasionally trying to instruct me on the finer points of the young Rabindranath’s budding genius in Bhanushingher Podaboli. At that age, I took the “Thakur” part of “Robi Thakur” very literally – I thought Rabindranath was actually a minor member of the Hindu pantheon. (This view may actually hold true in Bengal at large and Nandan in particular but is sadly absent in the rest of India among those exiles from true “kaalchaar”¸ the “non-Bengalis”.) What stuck in my 7-yr-old mind, however, was the fact that Robi Thakur’s first published work was not in Bangla but in Maithili - “Baba, was Rabindranath a khotta?!” My young mind was shocked that The Man himself had condeigned to write in any language other than Bangla.

After all, we Bangalis are the chosen ones. Can any other language compass the thoughts of our greatest literary genius?

I grew up. My attitude changed. But not, alas, the Bangali mind-set. Not the sweeping dismissal of all other ethnicity as O-Bangali. Nor the loving epithets – Khotta, TNetul, Pnaiyya and of course the ubiquitous Maaru. Even today, ten years into the 21^st century, the educated and supposedly liberal Bangali who prides himself on being a global citizen can be dismissive, even pejorative, about “other” Indians. Granted, this parochialism is not violent, nor even xenophobic in the manner of Maharashtra or Assam. The Bangali does not seem to support political organisation on the lines of linguistic identity. The “Amra Bangali” party has had some limited electoral success and entered a Legislative Assembly, but in Tripura, not in West Bengal. Yet in some sub-stratum of the general conscious, independent of “Proutist” ideology, there persists a nagging resentment of the O-Bangali. This is of course most frequently voiced against the ethnic group that seems to be the most prosperous, the Marwaris.

I cringe when I hear the term Maaru. Even when it is used in jest by one of my Marwari friends. Because they are paying the price for prosperity. The community is not new to Calcutta. A friend of mine – Calcutta born, mostly Calcutta educated, proud of his roots in Mymensingh – received his come-uppance in a conversation some years ago, when one of Calcutta’s best-known citizens mentioned gently “My family has lived in Calcutta since the 18^th century. Perhaps in another hundred years we’ll be accepted as Bangali”. In another well-known and oft-vilified Marwari family, known for their proximity to a previous Chief Minister, the present generation studied Bangla and not Hindi as a second language; at home they converse in Bangla, a rule made by the patriarch 40 years ago. But of course, they are only Maarus. They waste their time making money and what is worse, they buy out the houses of old Bangali families instead of letting them live on in genteel poverty in their old decaying mansions. Most reprehensible.

What about the community whose very names most easily set them apart from the Dhars, Bhars and Bhattacharyas? One of Calcutta’s most visible and successful Anglo-Indians, son of a grand old man who has represented his community in the State Assembly and in Parliament, told me that his proudest achievement is not that he is known across 5 countries, but that he was at one time goalkeeper for Rajasthan Club on the Calcutta Maidan. Anjan Datta’s nostalgia on celluloid may harp on how they are different from the Bangali mainstream, but they are for the most part “simple fish-eating Bongs.’

Perhaps these attitudes do not intrude upon personal interactions. One of my closest friends from school is a Sikh. On 31^st October 1984, after walking home through the disturbances, I called him to find out if his family was safe in their Gariahat home – five floors of burly Sardars perched above a petrol pump, terribly vulnerable to arsonists. Chuckling at my concern, he told me that their neighbours had taken it upon themselves to throw a cordon round their house until the trouble subsided. A heartening story, and one that supports my hypothesis that Bangali parochialism is rarely violent.

There is even a subtle distinction between the Calcuttan and the “other” whose roots lie upcountry. The Calcuttan used to be the most reluctant to leave his city, the most convinced that his life was best between Dum Dum and Garia, the one most likely to refuse an assignment in Purulia or Jalpaiguri. This was succinctly summed up by a colleague in the IPS when he said “WE are the real Bangalis, we have worked all over Bengal. YOU are only a Calcuttan.”

In one respect there still exists a disconnect that nobody will openly discuss. In my experience, this is more common among a previous generation and, strangely enough, more common on the city fringes, in the suburbs rather than the truly rural areas. The same “cultured”, supposedly educated Bangali who declaims the poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam is perfectly capable of asking, “Is he Bangali or Mussulman?”

The wheel seems to have come full circle, though. A certain class of Bangali is most likely to deride paati Bangali attitudes and lampoon “Bong” stereotypes. Good or bad, they have positioned themselves outside the narrower Bangali identity in favour of one that is more pan-Indian. Is this a sign of growing cosmopolitanism?

(This was in the Bengal Post, where I am allowed to faff on any given Monday. And they pay me for it!)

The sum of the parts - Pt 3

2010-08-12T08:31:00.001+05:30

It takes more than a journey to comprehend this country. The British had this tradition at the turn of the last century, the Grand Tour. The closest Indian equivalent may be in the civil services, where officers in training are sent around the country on “Bharat Darshan”. In our year, possibly like every other year, everybody wanted to go to Goa. Our group went instead to Jammu and Gujarat, to Bombay and to Bangalore. We watched sunset over the Arabian Sea from the deck of a frigate, tiptoed down border trails in Akhnoor in the dark before the dawn, ate Vadilal ice-creams and thalis beside the highway near Ahmedabad. For thirty days the sights of India washed over us in waves. At the end of it all we listed all the places we hadn’t visited, the sights we hadn’t seen even in the States we passed through – the step wells of Gujarat, the mustard fields of Punjab, the brooding citadels of Mandu and Orchha, the ruins of Hampi. Thirty days was never enough to see a tenth of this bewildering variety.

We did, however, get a feel of the people. Because we rode the rails. Through long nights and longer days, lulled by the rattle of the wheels, we spoke to people. To Indians. A studious Sikh accountant from Ludhiana, so different from the stereotype of the bluff Sardar. A group of feisty old ladies from Surat, travelling down to Bombay to run a sale. The homesick young sailor going up from Vishakhapatnam to Kanpur, looking forward to his mother’s cooking. In hindsight, that young man personified two of the strands that bind together this crazy sprawl. First, the armed forces, where discipline and uniformity blur the differences between regions and races. Second, the railways, that uniquely Indian melting pot where the diverse ingredients are tossed together.

The iron horse had more than an economic impact on the process of “nation-building”. Besides opening up the Indian hinterlands to trade, the railways broke down the divisions in society and opened up their minds. An aphorism from 19^th century Bengal has survived – Jaat bhanglo teen Sen – Keshob Sen, Wil-sen aar ishtisen. Loosely translated, three Sens demolished the barriers of caste – Keshob Sen (the Brahmo reformer), Wilson’s Hotel in Calcutta where people of all castes ate together and the ishtisen or station, where people were thrown together in the adventure of travel. Travellers from Theroux to Iyer have vouched that a second-class railway carriage on a long journey is the best way to understand the soul of India. Also to share biographies and genealogies, prepare strategies for the sowing season and the stock market, plan a holiday with (recent) strangers who are suddenly good friends and find a suitable boy for the neighbours’ distressingly modern daughter.

****

A railway carriage would also be the best place to face the stereotyping that moulds regional identities. The burly Sikh, bearded and turbanned, ever-ready to break into an energetic bhangra after a meal of tnn-ddoori chik-ken, good-humoured and good-hearted but typecast as the simpleton - India’s version of the Irishman or the Polack. An image that needs re-thinking after the Khalistan movement in the ’80s, or in the light of the achievements of Hargobind Singh Khurana, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Paramjit Singh Dhaliwal. The fish-eating, emotional, argumentative Bengali, wordy and quick-tempered but a physical coward. The Gujarati money-bags who would sell his family for a profit. The “North-Eastern” student, a catch-all categorisation that ignores the distinctions between the Manipuri Bishnupriya (Vaishnavs) and the Baptist from Mizoram, let alone the differences between the 16 major tribes and 64 sub-tribes of Nagaland. Is this merely an attempt to fit people into categories, or is it symptomatic of the emphasis on sub-regional identities? Shall we see in India a replay of what is happening in Georgia and in Moldova, a continuous process of differentiation and division?

My generation was fed the line of “unity in diversity” long before “India shining” became a catch-phrase. I have problems with both. The diversity is self-evident, but the unity seems more tenuous with each passing year. Some years ago I was in Manipur on government work and became used to the term "you Indians". Even "going to India". It stirred déjà vu. Then I remembered Kashmir in 1990. These words, the attitude, were chilling echoes of a chilling fortnight in Srinagar all those years ago. That's some unity. Consider the Jarawa tribesman in the Andaman Islands. He may not even KNOW about India. His home is closer to Thailand than to the Indian mainland. In case I've failed to get the point across, the idea of "India united" seems to fall well short of a consensus.

Three major wars, a few dozen separatist movements, schisms along the lines of religion and of culture, huge differences between town and country. More importantly, separate Indias for the haves and the have-nots, a situation that has led to insurgencies that run from the Nepal border to the fringes of Tamil Nadu. Make no mistake, the Maoist movements are insurgencies, and the future of the Indian polity will depend upon whether these are addressed as a disease or as symptoms of a more fundamental illness. A secular federation where the greatest visible divide is between two of the world’s major religions. A union where the northern half of the country still lumps together four distinct cultures, languages, traditions as “South Indian (or as “Madrasi”, from the time of the Madras Presidency under the British). Where is the unity?

It’s some kind of miracle that this country still holds together after 60 years.

It’s time we realised that there is no such thing as an average Indian.

Because it’s time we stopped dealing in stereotypes.

Part of a part (of a big book) - Part 2

2010-08-09T09:40:00.004+05:30

The down-side of the Indian experience is that it leaves us a little jaded for the rest of the world. James Elroy Flecker’s lush verse drove me to the gates of Damascus. And to disappointment, because I have seen the Buland Darwaza in Fatehpur Sikri and there can be no comparison. The giant dome of the Hagia Sofia is slightly less awe-inspiring when one has seen the Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur. Everywhere one goes, one has to fight the inner voice of Mark Twain’s hayseed who’d been there and seen that.

It’s not just the diversity in the culture, nor even the weight of 5000 years of history. The sheer physical differences are sometimes difficult to comprehend. In the 50 Celsius summers of Vizag or Bhopal birds drop dead from the sky, at the same time that soldiers in the upper reaches of Leh need fuel to melt their drinking water. Every school-going child in India is aware of the contrasts from west to east, the sere stretches of the Thar desert (a friend from Bikaner told me he had never seen rain till he was four!) and the sodden slopes of Cherrapunji. The Himalayas, which beggar description even when seen from a hundred miles away, or from a porthole at 38,000 feet. The festering mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, heavy with tropic heat and the ever-present terror of the Royal Bengal Tiger. The boulder-stippled, sinewy ravines of the Seonee river in India’s heartland, flowing through the tawny meadows and shape-shifting trees of Pench. The Sergio Leone landscapes of the Rann of Kutch and the Victorian propriety of pensioners’ colonies in Mushobra.

On the west bank of the Hooghly in Bengal, a thirty kilometre stretch is a lesson in the history of colonization. Bandel Church was built in thanksgiving by a shipwrecked Portuguese trader, and the Marthomite cross is testimony to its origins. Chinsurah, farther down the river, was a trading post for the Dutch. Some of the older residents of Chandannagar, just south of Chinsurah, still hold French citizenship and receive pensions from the French government. The Institut de Chandernagore on the Strand still runs classes in French and has a library of books on France. In French. More relevant, perhaps, is the institution of Lords Bakery, which may be the only authentic boulangerie within a thousand miles. Travelling farther down, Rishra, once a German trading station and indigo factory, still has a neighbourhood called Alemaanpara. Srirampur was Frederiksnagar under the Danish East India Company, before the arrival of the two Williams, Carey and Ward. By the middle of the 19^th century all these towns were under the rule of the Viceroy of Her Majesty’s Government in India. All except Chandannagar, which remained a French territory until ceded to India in February 1951. This anomalous enclave also played a part in India’s freedom movement – as French territory, it was a haven for the young revolutionaries pursued by the British Govt. in India. Memories of five countries from the Continent, all to be swamped by a sixth.

Bloodlines of the earliest recorded invaders live on in remote pockets of the Himalayan foothills. The village of Malana in Himachal Pradesh is closed to outsiders. The locals claim descent from the Greek armies (more probably Seleucus’ men than Alexander’s) and have their own distinct religion. The language of the Drukpa, a polyandrous tribe in Ladakh, is different from the regions surrounding them, and it is surmised that they too (like the inhabitants of Nuristan across the border, famously celebrated in The Man who would be King) are descended from some wandering arm of the Greek forces. Ladakh itself, marked with chortens, fed on thukpa and tsampa, is a little echo of Tibet. In the ’80s, the Sports Authority of India picked boys from the obscure Siddhi tribe in Andhra Pradesh to train them as distance runners. Turned out they were relying on genetics, because the Siddhis are supposed to be descendants of Ethiopian warriors brought over by the Nawabs of Hyderabad.

They were all here once. India holds them still.

****

Filler

2010-08-07T17:48:00.004+05:30

Around the time Mr. Amitabh Bachchan started a blog, I visited it a couple of times. And on one occasion saw a spirited (and verbose) defence of Sarkar Raaj, which I found awful. Not least because the Queen of Equine Giggles featured in it.

So I commented on his blog. Except that he (or his Blog Manager) did not see fit to publish it, let alone reply.

Today I found the comment in an obscure folder. It has no relevance any more, since the film in question is long gone. So in keeping with my dictum of irrelevance, here goes ..

Mr. Bachchan

We grew up on your films. 30 years on, "Daawar Saab, main abhi bhi phNeke huey paise nahin uthata" or "Saala nautanki" are phrases we use in conversation. Is there one line in "Sarkar Raj" that is as memorable?

Most of us have our own selection of favourite scenes from your films, scenes that have stayed in our minds so clearly we can tell you the colour of the wallpaper on the sets. Is there one scene in Sarkar Raj that deserves such recall?

Ram Gopal Varma has made some very good films, from "Rangila" to "D". "Sarkar" was a decent take on "The Godfather", mainly because it didn't try to fix what wasn't broke and did a fairly straight riff on the original. "Sarkar Raj", sadly enough, has no template or plot to carry it through the interminable backlit shots and the endless pans across silent faces. Not even your eloquent eyes, Mr. Bachchan, can carry a film which doesn't know what it wants to say. The denouement where your character Subhash Nagre lays out the plot seems very contrived, something like the forced "surprises" in Abbas-Mustaan's "Race". The plot - such as it is - just does not hang together.

Even the area that has been RGV's strength hitherto, the delineation of the characters, sags in this film. Why would Shankar Nagre suddenly let Anita so completely into his life? And why would the rest of the Nagre family accept it? Why would a man-manager as good as Shankar totally alienate Chandar? Why would he need to differ with the father he idolises?

It doesn't work, Mr. Bachchan, it doesn't fly.

Sadly enough, RGV underestimates his audience's intelligence. He makes the characters spout long justifications of their actions and explanations of the plot. This is such a sad contrast to his earlier films with their tight editing and minimal dialogues.

In the final analysis, much as I have admired some of RGV's earlier work, I cannot forgive him for the criminal waste of resources, to wit, you and Abhishek (1). Even Tinnu Anand made better use of your persona in "Shahenshah" though that had an even weaker plot premise.

Your audience deserves to see you in better films, Mr. Bachchan.

J.A.P.

(1) - Yes, if anybody actually reads this, I might catch some flak for mentioning Bachhua there.

The sincerest form of flattery

2010-08-04T09:25:00.003+05:30

Coffee break. Blog browsing.

And I find there is another Sad Old Bong.
Well, not quite.

http://sadoldbong.rediffblogs.com

Shudder.

But what were they thinking?!

The sum of the parts - 1

2010-08-03T20:14:00.006+05:30

I have been published. And PAID. AND the Honourable Editor has said nice things about me in the foreword. AND I am invited to the book release on Monday.

Quite overwhelming.

Besides, now that it's published, it is fodder for the blog.
But Four. Thousand. Words. is FAR too much for a blog post.

So, children, you shall have it In Instalments (my editor for the newspaper column Admonishes me Sternly if I use these capitalisations. This is MY blog. Sucks to you, Ed!)

Instalment 1 -

Arsalan Meyehane. The sign in the Cicek Pasaj (Flower Lane) in Istanbul stopped me dead in my tracks. Not just because it appeared at the end of a long thirst-inducing walk. Not just because, thanks to Kemal Pasha and his proscription of Arabic script, it was in Roman letters. What struck me was the echo of India in this city on the cusp of two continents. Meyehane or bar is almost exactly the same as maikhana, that staple of poor Urdu shayari. And Arsalan is one of The Wife’s favourite restaurants back in Calcutta. Which set me to thinking Deep Thoughts about how the world is reflected in India. I retired to the meyehane to sluice my mental processes with raqi (which, alas, has no counterpart in India).

Minor irrigation yielded a flood of impressions. Travelling the world after three decades of travelling around India yields a continuous state of déjà vu. In the alleys of Aleppo, cobbled and cloistered, sometimes almost claustrophobic, I thought “I have been here before”. Shall I say / I have gone at dusk through narrow streets … That would be Benaras, the lanes of Godhaulia that rise and fall and eddy into uneven stairs, or break into sudden effusions of multi-coloured shops and garish lights. Lanes that lead you to an overwhelming question - the burning ghats on the river’s edge.

Or the winding lanes in Lisbon’s Alfama, where, in a yellow tram-car hurtling between friendly shop-fronts close enough to touch, I found echoes of Surya Sen Street in Calcutta. The Edwardian facades of old Calcutta came to mind again, and the Indo-Saracenic architecture of south Bombay, on a walk that took me down Piccadilly and up Oxford Street. A sleepy courtyard in Damascus, arches and pillars around a cracked pavement gently heaving like a summer sea, the dome of a mosque rising beyond the outer wall, could just as well have been in Lucknow.

Near Sao Paulo a church gleams white against a hillside riotously green, come to life from a photograph taken in the late afternoon sun near Benaulim in Goa. From the air force observation post on Laitkor Peak in Shillong, green meadows roll towards a hilly horizon, blurring into memories of a drive from Lancaster to the Lake District. Louvred windows look out on the lanes in Pondicherry that run towards the sea, with street signs still posted in French.

Kipling’s Kim, protagonist of one of the greatest road novels, is “little friend of all the world”. How apt for a book that is still one of the best accounts of India, for India itself is a little picture of all the world.
Three thousand years, waves of invaders, ripples of traders and millennia of assimilation; Greeks, Turks, Persians, the descendants of the Mongols, Portuguese, French and finally the British; a patchwork quilt of history that comes to life through the senses. A snatch of song in a nargileh bar that sounds eerily like Bangla adhunik – the same cadences, a similar tune, even words that echo my mother tongue. Curry and rice from a roadside stall in Bangkok, the aroma and the feel of comfort food taking one back to late winter nights at Khyber near the Delhi Ridge. The sudden explosion of a laugh in a smoky room, and the lattice-work above the arched doorway suddenly turns into Café Britannia near Ballard Pier.

****

Embarrassment

2010-08-02T18:35:00.002+05:30

... of riches.

Returned to Bloglines after some months. TWO THOUSAND odd posts from the blogs I (used to) read.

Which is not ALL that much, considering I've been away for at least a year.
Obviously I'm not the only blogger who had a fling with Twitter.
Or just gave up, now that blogs are so noughties.

But still - 2000?!

Then I saw the button. "Mark all as read".
There are some things one can learn from Twitter!

But of course

2010-08-02T18:14:00.001+05:30

In the mail today ... "Daft National Policy".
Seriously.

Now I AM worried.

Nothing beyond remains

2010-07-26T22:09:00.003+05:30

Science tells us that our perceptions of beauty are not hard-wired into the psyche. That we accept as beautiful those faces and forms that most closely resemble the faces we grew up with. This is a disturbing thought, since neither Catherine Deneuve nor Penelope Cruz bears the slightest resemblance to my grandmothers, my great-aunt, my mother or any of the 157 aunts and cousins in my extended family (nor, indeed - more’s the pity - to any of the women I know). Conclusion – my perception of feminine beauty is not shaped by my memories

Ah, but show me a floor of red cement and I’m lost. Growing up in Calcutta (well before flight attendants tried their hot-potato pronunciation of “Kawl-cat-tah”), the long afternoons of summer vacations were spent sprawled on the cool smooth shiny red cement floor of my great-aunts room. That floor was my antediluvian air-conditioner; somehow it never heated up, even when the tar melted on the roads under the sun of June. Red cement floors. How I mourn their passing.

And louvred windows. Doric columns. Corbelled arches. Curlicued railings. Courtyards. Balustrades. Lime and mortar walls, thick as a grown man’s arm-span. Unkempt little lawns with patchy grass, in the shade of old fruit trees. Part of the fabric of my childhood, the setting for lyrical pieces of nostalgia like Amit Chaudhuri’s A Strange and Sublime Address. And all fading, crumbling. Torn down to build apartment blocks, where little plants in little pots wither on window-ledges hemmed in with ugly iron grilles. Or glass and concrete malls, like bad dreams out of Philip K. Dick.

Of course the problem is not Calcutta’s alone, nor even India’s. Travel to business districts around the world, and on first sight you will be hard pressed to decide whether you’re in Sao Paulo or Sydney. Even the iconic Manhattan skyline has been reproduced in Frankfurt and in Singapore. But most of these cities have made conscious efforts to preserve a heritage district, a piece of the past that not only preserves an emotional continuity but also makes good business sense through tourism. Where is Calcutta’s heritage district? Where, indeed, are Calcutta’s heritage buildings? What are the parameters whereby a building is classified as part of our heritage?

I turned to TGGG (The Great God Google) for enlightenment and found this - https://www.kmcgov.in/KMCPortal/jsp/HeritageBuildingHome.jsp. Five pages of earnest effort that do not answer basic questions. Where is the list of declared heritage buildings? The tab redirects to the same page. Are there any objective criteria for identification? None that I could find. Buildings are expensive to maintain. Is there any model for funding this? None on this web-site, though there is a laudable initiative to waive municipal taxes on buildings where the owners have made preservation efforts.

First, what is a heritage building? One which “requires preservation and conservation for historical, architectural, environmental or ecological purpose”, such purpose not elaborated. Is age alone sufficient ground? Historical association? Jorasanko and 38/2 Elgin Road are shrines for Bengalis, but can any of us say offhand where Michael Madhusudan Dutt or Raja RamMohan lived and worked? How about a building’s iconic status? I can imagine a universal gasp of horror at the suggestion that the Victoria Memorial is not a heritage building, but I find it ugly beyond tolerance, a clumsy attempt to emulate an original that is beyond compare. Then should we allow its demolition just because it looks like Jabba the Hutt in marble? Probably not, because something infinitely uglier could take its place. I found a number of articles deploring the de-listing of heritage buildings or criticizing the reconstruction plans approved by the Corporation. Criticism is expected. The authorities cannot please everybody. But do we have guidelines for preserving heritage areas or reconstruction on heritage sites? Templates, photographs, models? Again, none that I could find.

How has this issue been handled in other cities? One of the best examples I have encountered is in India – INTACH’s project for preserving heritage districts, both Tamizh and French colonial, in Pondicherry. I was charmed by the recreations in the old French quarter and the teak-columned courtyards in the old Tamizh houses. When I visited their web-site I realized that most of the houses I had admired were in fact almost entirely new, rebuilt through the joint efforts of the Pondicherry Planning Authority (PPA), the Town & Country Planning Department (TCPD) and INTACH. Can this partnership not be replicated in Calcutta?

How does one fund the process? In Mumbai, apartment blocks have been built around old bungalows, preserving the facades. On the London waterfront and in Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madeira, crumbling warehouses have been restored, beautified and transformed into economically viable retail and entertainment districts. The Alfama in Lisbon and the recreation of colonial Williamsburg in Virginia have proved the tourism potential of history recreated or preserved. Palaces in Rajasthan and villas in Goa have been reborn as hotels.

The past can pay for itself. Can we in Calcutta give it the chance? Perhaps more to the point, do we even want to?

Published today in a paper that does not have a Net edition.

Baggage

2010-07-18T11:22:00.002+05:30

(I am now A Columnist. Published every Monday. Which would seem to give me time to write over the weekend, except that my deadline is Friday. Bggrrttt.

But yes, it does ensure that there will be at least one post a week on this blog. Recycling is so cool.
Unfortunately, while I can post my columns on the blog, I cannot send off old posts to be printed as columns. Bother.

Anyway, this one was written as the “sound of the deadline whooshing by” built up to a gale-force roar. Came out on Monday the 12th. Tomorrow’s column has been submitted. And I’ve already started on next Monday’s. Oh what a good boy am I!)

Travel is romantic. To arrive in a new country, draw a deep breath and go “Ah, I’m in Lantau!” (or Lima or Lagos, as the case may be).

Unfortunately, your luggage is in Sevastopol. Romance gives way to a feeling more like sand in your underwear. It’s the middle of the night, there are no stores open and the rest of your underclothes are in that suitcase in Sevastopol. How does one deal with the situation?
More relevant, how does the airline deal with a situation where baggage is in Europe while the passenger’s in Asia? Alitalia – as reported on the Internet last year - would immediately go on a wildcat strike. By the time the first irate passenger located the airline service desk, the staff would be downing grappa on the Via Cavour (presumably with much gesticulation and shrugging).

Some airlines, however, exhibit admirable resilience and efficiency.
Last Wednesday night the Lufthansa flight to Kolkata landed on time. The luggage did not. The large Lufthansa team – all 3 of them – swung into action to help the milling passengers. By hiding behind a convenient pillar. When rousted out, they demonstrated their customer-friendly attitude by distributing forms. To be filled in triplicate. Deposited. Receipted. Produced whenever the airline saw fit to produce the missing luggage. On the next flight. Saturday. Perhaps Sunday. Next week, next year, some time, never.

Sundry open-mouthed passengers hitched their jaws off the airport floor. And asked, what about NOW? What about clothes, toiletries, medicines? What about children and their milk, diapers, Gerber’s ready meals? How do we manage till Sunday? Will you give us money to buy what we need? Whereupon the airline reps mumbled vaguely, smiled sweetly and disappeared hurriedly. End of Act 1.

Two days of investigation produced some enlightenment and much pique. But no compensation. The city office phones are not answered because there IS no city office. A forlorn voice from the airport eventually said yes, we SHALL offer you compensation – 50% of your expenditure on clothes and 100% on toiletries. With no limit.

No limit? Good! We have a wedding to attend, can we buy fresh trousseaus from Sabyasachi, spend a couple of lakh? An audible gulp from the other end of the line, then a befuddling clarification: we pay 50% of what’s reasonable. As decided by our city team. Devastating obfuscation. In essence, Lufthansa delay your luggage, do not pay any compensation unless pushed, have no clear policy or limits in the matter and no transparency.

The first response is, only in India! This couldn’t happen in the West. Alas, a little research revealed that the air traveller really is beleaguered worldwide.
In May 2010 the EU Special Court of Justice ruled that the liability of a carrier in the case of destruction, loss, damage or delay of baggage is limited to approximately €1134.71 (an odd figure, yes, but the equivalent of 1000 Special Drawing Rights) per passenger. The Warsaw / Hague / Montreal protocols fix an upper limit for compensation of 17 SDR per kilo of luggage, about €18.5 or Rs. 1089. There is no stipulated minimum.

Basically, if the airline plays fast and loose with your luggage, you can scheme. Or argue. Or give up. But you cannot cite a general law.
You have been warned.

(Update: The luggage arrived last Sunday. Forms for compensation were filled in. Bills in triplicate were attached. Suddenly … nothing happened. It’s been a week.)

Just saying

2010-06-26T13:59:00.000+05:30

At 8 a.m. yesterday, I was spoilt. Sprawled in a large comfortable bed, leaning back on a pile of pillows, curtains on three sides of the room pulled back to let in views of the Kerala backwaters alternately gilded by cloud-broken sun and stippled by needles of rain. I pulled out my new X-Mini, plugged it into the laptop and let rip with Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty’s freight train rasp on “Have you ever seen the rain”. Freeze frame.

"Leave the rest to us"

2010-03-10T14:50:00.004+05:30

There were a few (at first glance, about 3 busloads, but when I counted later there were only a half dozen) decorous Scandinavians at the front desk (in front of the front desk? Did that put them in the forefront?) when I came in. Some of them were quite tall. Say, about 17 feet each. It looked like Muir Woods had gone the Birnam way, only with a heavy dose of Janpath linen. I spent some time being polite to assorted kneecaps. Then a voice floated into my ear, and not from above either. A polite smile in a dark suit emerged from the forest of legs around me. “Checking in, sir? Are you alone”? And voila, I was wafted to a different counter where a pretty young lady was sternly commanded to wait upon me. I smiled happily and waited to be handed my room card.

Some time later, I was still waiting. The smile had left. Twitter is not just a social networking site. It is also the appropriate term for the string of inanities emitted by a certain kind of person in the hospitality sector. Look, child, I KNOW you won Ms. Bright Smile in your college beauty pageant (last month?) and I can guess somebody told you that you look cute when you helplessly tuck a curl behind your ear, but this isn’t “Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”, all I want to do is CHECK IN, not give you a massage on reality TV! I realized I was shouting inside my head. What was worse, I could hear it echoing. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall in resignation. Perhaps I should have taken my chances behind the Posse of Patellas. Eventually I was rescued by The Smile in the Suit. With apologies for the delay. “And, sir, we’ve upgraded your room.” Really? Some consolation, then.

If it seems too good to be true, it usually is.

What kind of place takes a geriatric business traveler and places him in … a HONEYMOON SUITE? The plaque on the corridor wall terrified me. As I peeked apprehensively round the door, however, it seemed quite tolerable. Nice large room with lots of windows, decorated in a quiet beige. Then I wandered in. And the bed hit me. At least, the sight of the bed. A four-poster. With a gilded headboard. Fringes and tassels in a hideous floral print out of a cheap drawing book. And ‘elpmeGawd, a ruched CANOPY, a nightmare out of stereotypical Krole Bagh, in a shade that looked like gilded SHIT that would glow in the dark! The only way I could avoid it was by turning a chair to face the window. Which I did.

The worst was yet to come. Back in my room after 8, tired to the point where the Nightmare Bed no longer registered on my conscious, I hauled myself to the door to answer the buzzer. A simpering personage with the mandatory plastic smile asked breathlessly, “Sir, do you want evening service?” I responded with a squawk of alarm and slammed the door in her face. Over-reaction, yes. She was only doing her job, yes. But the whole bizarre scenario fired the wrong synapses in my staggering brain. Great Cthulhu, “evening service” in the honeymoon suite? Let me out of here!

*** ***

It went downhill from there. Too tired to ask for an ironing board, I checked the laundry rates. A hundred and fifty to iron a shirt?!

The room service extension was perpetually engaged. When I got through, a lisping voice took 5 whole minutes to understand my order. “We don’t have filter coffee, sir, we have fresh-brewed coffee.” Several deep breaths. A sandwich, please – not grilled, that takes longer and I’m in a hurry. “Yes sir, coffee and a grilled sandwich.” More deep breaths. You know what, FORGET IT! Just send up an ice bucket and some lemon wedges. Of course they delivered. After an hour. 6 cubes of ice. No lemon wedges.

Eventually, my Large Young Friend who had dropped by rejected the room service menu and rang down to find out how long the buffet in the coffee shop (“lavish” “delicious” etc., if the write-up was to be believed) was open. General confusion at the other end of the line. “I think it closes at 10, sir.” Damn. Oh wait a minute, they may be clueless. So we wandered down. Of COURSE they were clueless! It was open till half eleven. Good! What have we here?

A pasta salad. Where the pasta looked like an industrial installation. An OLD industrial installation, right down to the blotches on the piping. Butter chicken?! On a BUFFET? A quick peek under the cover, and agh! Red and greasy, like someone had bled into an oil sump. We fled. Walked over to the Shangri-La next door, leched at the Rolls Royce showroom. The Silver Ladies now are not the beauties of yesteryear, they lack the flowing lines of running board and wheel casing. They look like tanks that went to charm school. Yet we leched awhile before we passed on to the hotel proper. Then stopped dead in our tracks. Because they had another Rolls parked in the portico. With the hotel logo on its passenger door. They use THIS for an airport transfer?! Maaaan, I am SO going to book their Presidential Suite when I grow up!

We had the buffet there. Superb. Just superb. Except for the little contretemps afterwards, when there was more blood. No, not into an oil sump, I just haemorrhaged from my wallet. But in the final analysis, well worth the pain, that meal was worth at least the loss of a couple of a couple of fingers if not a whole limb.

And so to bed. Another Delhi day tomorrow. (Update: The day started at 6, except that there was no daylight. What, I can’t blame the hotel for that? Says who?!)

Indulgence

2010-03-06T13:50:00.001+05:30

They peddle them at traffic lights. In parking lots. Outside Newmarket. Or when you're walking down Free School Street towards the old record stores. Strawberries in little boxes. Not punnets, boxes. Looking oh so pink and delicious, each with its little crown of dark green leaves. But they're lying minxes, these strawberries, because they're sour.

As a good evangelist in the Cause of Food, I have figured out how to convert them and bring them to the light.

Wash them, trim off the leaves, chop them fine. Put them in a small bowl, add a heaping spoonful of castor sugar. Stir 'em about a bit and put them in the fridge. Leave them be while you go get a couple of small tubs of ice-cream. Vanilla ice-cream. Not gelato. Put the ice-cream in a large bowl. Stir THAT about for a bit. Take the strawberry stuff out of the fridge, mix it in. Keep stirring till all the melted ice-cream is a deep pink.

Voila! Real strawberry ice-cream.

The weekend looks promising.

Validation?

2010-02-24T11:50:00.002+05:30

Rob Stein in Cricinfo puts forth a statistical (and sociological, even) exposition of something I observed 5 years ago.

TheAussies.
You can hate them, you can bay for their blood, but by God you can't write them off.

The Garden of Ease

2010-02-21T10:06:00.000+05:30

The first thing I saw, after we’d crossed the culvert strewn with brickbats and concrete chunks, was half a human brain lying in the dust.

Gu-what-i?

2010-01-17T08:24:00.001+05:30

Three egrets fly in formation past my window, followed by a flight of crows. They must be going home to roost. It’s barely half past three and already dark as a December dawn in Delhi. Earlier, I could just make out the hills ringing the valley, shadows in the winter fog. Now they have vanished in the haze. Darkness flows in from the horizon and laps against my window. Guwahati. Is it just coincidence that it has the same first syllable as Guantanamo? Maybe. After three hours in this hotel room, Guantanamo seems like Ibiza.

If anybody from Guwahati is reading this, my apologies. I was here last year and stayed at an old hotel with 70mm views of the Brahmaputra on one side and on the other, windows that framed a picture-perfect green hillside punctuated with amazing bursts of flowers, the kind of hillside that is supposed to exist only in the paintings of Gauguin and Matisse. I loved it. Even though the only reason I stayed over was a bandh that resulted in my flight home being cancelled, I loved it. It was a two-day idyll out of some Pacific island time-warp.

THIS time, I’m at a squeaky new budget hotel that’s some distance from the city itself. Some distance? The Brahmaputra may not even be in the same time zone! From the window I can see (a) what-might-be-hills-if-they’d-quit-hiding, about half a dozen (b) building under construction, one (c) building completed but still utterly hideous, one (d) water tank, spidery, one (e) dog lying in dust and apparently making a snack of a certain-part-of-itself, one (f) man with his back to me but evidently inspired by aforesaid dog, also one (g) fields full of stubble and miscellaneous weeds like a cheap salad, about 537. Diverse? Perhaps. Inspiring? Like a Mariah Carey video. Why the hell am I here?!

(This is a thought that has come to me rather too often. In a heaving sweaty college auditorium strewn with a few hundredweight of ballot papers, in a little green-painted room by the light of a sputtering candle listening to the creak-clang of a tube-well where there wasn’t one, standing in the sun outside a mill looking at a crowd-turning-into-mob, being practically force-fed parathas with sincere Punjab hospitality while waiting for a judge to turn up in court. The answer, regardless of the occasion, is “Because you signed up for it, sucker”. But those are other stories.)

So here I stand, cup in hand, Room Service won’t take my call. The coffee’s gone, I can’t go on, I curl up in a ball … I have a caffeine addiction. Once I get into a hotel room, I have to, have to have HAVE to, have a coffee. It’s a ritual. Even if the only thing available is that execration from the armpits of the devil, Nescafe sachets. But … the coffee-maker won’t work. Agh. So I sit by the window and I watch the clouds roll by. No I didn’t. I went downstairs and got a coffee from the kitchen. These are nice guys. I mean, what would YOU do if some bald plugugly (dressed in black, yet) strolled through your swing doors and said he was just following his nose? They didn’t throw me out, they didn’t call security. Instead, they smiled, assured me they’d get me some coffee and tut-tutted sympathetically about the broken coffee-maker. (THEN they shooed me out. Politely.)

Then the vending machine ate my money. It just sat there smugly and blinked at me. “Change not available”. Yeah OK, so give me back my money. More smugness. Blink blink. “Change not available”. I took a deep breath and walked away from the machine before I gave in to temptation and broke the bloody glass front.

* * * * * *

Seven in the morning now and the work-day beckons. I can’t say I’m allured, but what the hell, if I have to spend my Sunday earning my pay, I might as well do it properly. Yesterday evening it was tap-tap on the laptop correcting, summarizing, clarifying even though not more than 3 of the 50 people in that hall today will even bother to read the hand-outs. It was not pleasant. Until our local organizer, bless him, chivvied me into the next room where he plied 3 colleagues and myself with Islay’s best and finest. And then led us through the foggy chill to a restaurant where we were served steaming fragrant rice heaped in a shaped mound on a bell-metal plate, with bowls of daal and torkari arrayed around it like petals in a child’s drawing of a flower. Followed by course after course of fish done just right i.e, not messed about too much in sauces and spices. Highlights - mutton lightly curried in ginger, and succulent pieces of the biggest damn aarh (estuarine catfish) that I have ever had. Oh yes. Before the meal we were served a lovely palate-cleansing clear soup with spices, rather like a Thai soup but blessedly free of lemon grass. I asked if it’s a traditional Ahomiya preparation but was told it has no name. Can anyone enlighten me? And for those of you who may visit Guwahati (I’m looking at you, Thin Man), check out “Delicacy”. Well worth a visit.

Heigh-ho, off to work we go. Snow White, wherever you are, prepare to do without Grumpy, Dopey and Sneezy. I’m the avatar for all three of them today.

If I were braver

2010-01-12T14:01:00.002+05:30

This is what I want to do. But as Bernard Shaw said, blame it on the lack of courage and opportunity. (Hat-tip - Neha)

WinEter thoughts

2009-12-08T14:54:00.003+05:30

I understand only two kinds of wine. Wine I like and wine I don’t like. Which is why I’m not the kind of guy you should invite to a Wine Club gathering. I’ll head straight for the cheese and crackers rather than sip something that reminds me of the taste of iron window-grilles after a shower. (What, you never licked the grilles, say when you were about 5 years old?) The rest will gargle softly with half-open mouths, hold their glasses up to the light and talk about “legs” and “body”. Excuse me? Those are terms I associate with Jamie Lee Curtis, not with glorified fruit vinegar. And at my age, it’s a health hazard to even think of tasting her. (It doesn't help that she once said "In some circles, my Caesar salad is more famous than my body." I LOVE a good Caesar salad. Oh well.) [1]

I like some whites. (I’m referring to wine here, I must hasten to add.) But you know what I reelly reelly like? Sweet wines. Dessert wines. A good port, sherry, most of all a good Tokay. The last is something I can’t afford (hopeful look at the gentle reader, hint hint, and I wouldn’t mind if you throw in some good pipe tobacco as well), but I do still have some Cockburn’s and some genuine tawny (from Lisboa, no less, though aged in the cupboard and not the cask). So this winter, when my friends flock back to Cal for the Christmas vacation, I shall serve them whisky.

And keep ALL the nice sweet wine for myself!

[1] She also stars in one of my all-time favourite films.[2]

[2] YAY! Links AND footnotes, I’m getting back to Serious Blogging!

Blast from the past

2009-12-06T10:02:00.002+05:30

The tie is tatty, the suit shines with age. He’s 80 years old and needs regular dialysis. Every time he stood up from the red moulded-plastic chair on stage, he grimaced at the pain in his knees. At the mike, his mouth opened wide to show his tongue licking his lower lip. He seemed to suffer from twinges elsewhere as well; when he raised his hand to count off the beat at the start (always a simple count, not for him the “hwunn, two, HWUNN two THREE”), the arm never rose above the shoulder.

But then he raised his saxophone to his lips. And even now, even five decades and more after he started recording, we were in thrall from the first note. Sweet and true like honey on a winter morning, he held the melody for the 30 men on stage, some of them his comrades since 1958, some who were still in school when his friend and leader died in 1994, all of them united in memories. Manohari Singh – saxophonist, composer, grand old man of the orchestra and above all, comrade-in-arms to RD Burman for nearly 30 years, from the days of Chhote Nawaab to the swan song of 1942: a Love Story.

Ranged around him were 13 other stalwarts of the RD legend. Bhanu Gupta on rhythm guitar and harmonica, Ramesh Iyer on lead, Franco Vaz inside the circle of his drums, Kishore Sodha with his trumpet, Shyam Raj alternating between clarinet and tenor sax, Pradipta on the mandolin. It was … eerie. It was my childhood revived. For nearly 30 years now, RD Burman has had a pre-eminent niche in my personal pantheon. But frankly, I was at the concert not for the music but to satisfy my curiosity, to see the men (no women in those days!) who’d made the music. Then they struck up. Nothing very iconic, just the title song from Shaan with full oom-pah. And the hair stood on end on my forearms.

The entire evening was like that. Music straight up, no frills or showmanship, some memories of RDB from the MC, (Ankush, who works for Siemens in Pune but travels everywhere for RDB shows and memorabilia), and total involvement from the vocal audience. The concert was linked to the launch of a documentary on RDB by Brahmanand Singh. Funded by Shemaroo, this DVD release is in the same no-frills style – fixed-cam interviews of the people who knew RD, reminiscences of the way he made his music, intercut with some stock footage and some rare old photographs and recordings. Essential for RDB fans, pretty good even for others who may not share my passion.

The high point for me came right after the interval when, on request, they played the Sholay theme. Even unrehearsed, they were so GOOD. Good music and nostalgia, what a combination. They’ll be back next year – those of them who are still around. I’ll be waiting.

Trafficking

2009-11-08T07:15:00.002+05:30

I want a Humvee. Or an armoured personnel carrier. A small one would do. Say, about 6 tons of hard angry vehicle. With the Mother of all Snow Ploughs welded on in front. And then I would drive it around. In Calcutta. WHOOSSHH around the roundabouts. And KERR-RUNCCCHHH into all the bloody taxis and buses and call-centre cars that dawdle around corners picking up passengers or waiting for them. Oh, the mangled metal. The GORE. The bruised bleeding bits of morons who can’t walk 20 steps to a bus-stop. The crash bang tinkle of Moron Mobiles slowly falling to bits. The surrrr-THWUM-budda-budda-budda as the occasional tyre flies off, bounces twice, rolls a few yards, wobbles and then settles onto its side.

And then I would raise the hatch and peer out, blink in a surprised manner, and say “Oh dear, are you HURT? I’m SO sorry, but I never expected anyone to Be Parked on a CORNER.”

And then I would reverse my 6 tons of armour for a bit and then RUN IT INTO THEM AGAIN. AhahahahahHAHA. The joy. The JOY! Take THAT you STUPID SUCKERS!

The morons will still win, of course. Because now all these bleeding-heart empty-skullcase do-gooders are building bus shelters. ON THE CORNERS. The Motor Vehicles Act states clearly that no vehicle should stop within 30 feet of an intersection. Of course, neither the municipal authorities nor the police are bothered about such minutiae. Some Votary Club or Loins International or Mewa Bal will start to raise money for cancer research, find they’re stuck at Rs. 23,109 (and 37 paise, that will clear up the little accounting error that the Chapter President’s nephew left in the books the year we let him loose on the audit). And they’ll say, you know what, this much money will do zip for cancer research, let’s build a bus shelter instead. Right slap bang on a corner, of course.

Which is why a Humvee wouldn’t do, no sir. It has to be the armoured vehicle. Which I can drive STRAIGHT OVER the Bus Shelter on the Corner, oh, I love the crunch of concrete in the mo-o-orning, and bowl away merrily playing “Kashmir”. Over the loudhailer. Of course there has to be a loudhailer. And a horn that sounds like the crack of doom. Oooohhh yerrsss. The horn is very important. VERY. You know why?

Because at 8 a.m. every morning, outside my daughter’s school, there will be 5248 cars all trying to get Right to the Gate before dropping off their little darlings. And ALL of them will be honking away because of course each one of them thinks HE is the only one in a hurry, why on EARTH would anybody stop in front of MY car, can’t they see How Important I Am?! What? Schools and hospitals are supposed to be SILENCE zones? Who the hell reads all that fine print?
Which is why, from my Armoured Vehicle with a Humongous Horn, I shall pull the Honker Version of Crocodile Dundee. (Remember that scene with the mugger where he looks in pity at the mugger’s knife, then pulls out a young scimitar about 37 feet long and says “You call that a knife? THIS is a knife!”)

So I shall wait till EVERYbody’s honking and then Lean on the Special Horn. At about 240 decibels. And after the glass has fallen out of all the car windows and the tyres have imploded and the morons’ eyeballs have stopped bouncing on their stalks, when there is a Sudden Silence broken only by the soft susurration of mortar running off the buildings, I shall switch on my loudhailer. And murmur into it, in a Voice of Quiet Menace – imagine Alan Rickman trying to be nice in “Die Hard” – “Next time you feel like making stupid noises, gentlemen, I shall be right behind you”.

Which brings me to another very good use for the Baby Tank with the Loudhailer. Calcutta is full of Good Souls who are Very Sociable. And Large Aunties who Need their Own Space. And People in an Awful Hurry who Couldn’t Be Bothered About Traffic. And ALL these Types will jaywalk. Across the road, half-way in from the sidewalk (sidewalks? Just because you build them, I have to WALK on them? What is this, a fascist state?!), down the MIDDLE of the bloody road. And I would steal up behind them Very Quietly and then, oh THEN I would Let Rip on the 240 decibel horn. Or maybe play a recording of screeching brakes over the loudhailer. And watch the Waking of the Jaywalker.

You know how, in Asterix panels, people fly right out of their pants when Obelix swats them? And come back to earth in an accordionated heap, followed by the tinkle of descending teeth? That’s how I imagine it would be. Jaywalker, deboned and filleted by Sudden Crack of Doom, flying through the air like Superjellyfish. Pants, abandoned, standing on their own for a frozen moment before gently falling in a heap. Oh wait … would that apply to the Large Aunties too? Eeewwww. The imagination boggles like billy-o.

Oh well. I shall just have to look the other way to preserve my sanity. A small price to pay for implementing the Grand Design.
Right then. I’m off to eBay to look for an armoured personnel carrier at a bargain price.

Non sequitur

2009-10-19T14:33:00.000+05:30

Suddenly, I can smell aloo bhaja. Potatoes, fried. Not jhuri bhaja, which is crisp potato shavings, fine strands that crunch in the mouth, flavours added with kari pata, fried red chillies and perhaps peanuts as well. Not the roundels, the potato slices that may or may not be crisp at the edges and faintly sweet if made from fresh potatoes in winter.

No, what I suddenly smelt – sitting in office, windows closed, cup of post-lunch coffee steaming on my table – was the thick limp greasy flabby listless slivers of aloo bhaja that would make me depressed when served by relatives at lunch. Haven’t touched that junk in years. Decades, even. Yet such is the perversity of the human mind, nostalgia nudged me towards desiring those too. All from the memory of a smell.

I’d say that rates as a pretty acute observation of the human predicament. Right up there with Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, which my father considers one of the greatest novels ever written and I found a load of irritating crap (perhaps because I was about 14). You don’t agree? With any of those three assertions? There you go, human failing again. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to do some research on the local availability of aloo bhaja …

Does size matter?

2009-09-23T08:26:00.002+05:30

I like some things about the USA. The size of their helpings, for one. The down side is that I usually have to leave some food on my plate, thus missing out on the satisfaction of a plate wiped clean at the end of the meal. My mum was always big on “FINISH what’s on your plate!”. Yes, the usual line about ‘Think of all the poor children who don’t get enough to eat”. And no, I never did see the point of that. For one, I was never sure that there were children poor enough to want my left-over spinach or neem begun (fried aubergine with bitter leaves, very much an acquired taste). Furthermore, where was the supply chain that would take the left-over spinach to the poor hungry kids? As far as I could see, it went into the fridge or into the lady who cleaned the floors (and she didn’t take it home, she ate it ALL right there right then. And stayed reed-thin. So much for justice, thought a fat kid)

It IS nice, however, to be served a humongous platter of dead animals. (Even though Americans seem to serve fries with EVERYthing. Any day now, I’ll get tiramisu with fries on the side.) Except that the American fixation with size (no, you smutty-minded brats, I am NOT going THERE) applies to other aspects of life too. Case in point, the New York Times.

Consider this. A newspaper that has more sections than most other papers have pages. A newspaper where you’re not even expected to take the whole paper, just the sections you want. Or just the sections you can read and finish. Basically, you’re expected to leave stuff on your plate!

I’m OK with that. I only get some selected feeds from the NYT (yes, that’s the way they plan it). But what do I do when Indian papers go the same way? At home, I don’t have to read too much of my two daily papers because 75% of their matter concerns either the Kolkata Fashion Week or the Lakme Fashion Week or the Alternative Fashion Week or … well, SOME event or the other which involves men with make-up and malnourished women. Neither of which interest me. So I usually get to office with the satisfaction of Having Read the Papers. (What, the front page and the sports section DO count as the whole paper!)

But now, in Delhi, a bulging bag hangs on my door handle. ONE paper? Item, the Hindustan Times, Delhi edition. It’s like a young telephone directory! (And less informative? Well no, it’s getting to be a good paper. With some notable lapses, but hey, this is Delhi.) Four sections. Or is it five? How do I even begin to read this? (I know, in the smallest room, but don’t be facetious!) I give up. I’ll watch the news on television!

So I shall have to leave for work with a sneaking suspicion that I am Not Informed about the World. So be it.

But is there any way we could persuade these guys to Give Us Less?

.. to meet the faces that you meet

2009-09-09T13:12:00.013+05:30

Charukesi muses on portrait photography.

Which is serendipitous. On my recent travels, a friend told me I don’t take enough pictures of people. So I tried. And now, in the wake of Charukesi’s post, I have questions.

Is it portrait photography if it’s not just the face?

Or if the face is incidental to the context?

What if the person is too far away to see the face?

Or not looking at the camera?

Turned away from the camera, even?

How about a portrait without faces?

I suppose the basic question is whether the subject is more important than the story.

Your views, please (pun intended).

With THIS one below, there’s no confusion. I’m rather proud of it

What if ...

2009-09-07T19:30:00.004+05:30

There are many sides to the truth. But if the evidence against the conviction and execution of this man is even half-true, then his prosecutors have a load on their collective conscience that may be greater than most convicted felons’.

Read it. It’s a cautionary tale against pre-judging anybody. It drives home (and indeed quotes) the greatest argument against capital punishment – that it may lead to the state murdering an innocent man. This makes sense to me now, even though some years ago I posted on this blog in favour of the execution of one Dhananjay who'd been convicted of rape and murder.

And it twists my insides to think of a man losing his children to a fire, then being accused, tried and convicted of murdering them, THEN spending 12 years waiting for his death for a crime he possibly didn’t commit.

Update: Krishna, in the comments section, links to The Innocence Project. Worth a look. And another.

Been there, done that.

2009-09-04T11:58:00.002+05:30

Or, WHEEEEEEEEE !!!!!

Curious

2009-09-01T13:01:00.002+05:30

About a strange (i.e. curious) phenomenon.

Usually, the daily count of visitors to this blog is in single digits. Even I hadn't visited it in some weeks, which gives you an idea of how riveting the content is.

Then why, on the 12th, 13th and 14th of August, did the count go up into several hundreds? (Well, hundreds anyway)
Does anybody know? Did wossername, yes, Megan Fox, mention it on TV?

Mid-air musings

2009-08-30T22:05:00.001+05:30

At 38,000 feet above the earth, flying away from the setting sun and losing time with every minute flown, Brazil is a random patchwork of jewelled lights in the gathering dark. Over my left shoulder the plane’s wing cuts through the last glow of sunset on the fleeing horizon. The dimpled stewardess takes a minute to check with the flight deck, then tells me we should land in another 40 minutes. Not that it makes a huge difference – we have four hours to kill in Sao Paulo before our connection to Heathrow. One compadre will peel off to JFK – he has ten hours between flights and I’ve been telling him to spend the time riding the buses up and down Manhattan – leaving two of us to fly across the Atlantic. Landfall over Dakar, then north over the Sahara in daytime. That should be some view.

It’s been a little like “ten little Indians” from Buenos Aires onwards. S* had to fly back to Calcutta to meet a buyer. B* stayed back in Lima for another day, he was doing good business and anyway he had an appointment in Belem. N* will fly back via New York because he doesn’t have a UK visa. And my boss will stop off in London, leaving me alone on my side of the cabin to fly the last leg to Calcutta via Delhi. Can I collect and stow my luggage, check in and make a flying visit to Piccadilly on a late summer afternoon, all in six and a half hours? I’m risk averse, but the idea is tempting.

In my ears, Katra katra gives way to Khali haath sham aayi. Voices from home, and the yearning for my own armchair and a small wriggling armful welcoming Papa home becomes an almost physical sensation. Another 36 hours or so, and I’ll be sipping my Arabica as a familiar voice grumbles happily at me from across a glass-topped table. The captain’s voice comes over the PA and the A-320 begins the long slide down the sky to Sao Paulo. My ears pop. Time to shut down and pack up, but I can stay with Kishore on the headphones. As the plane loses height, the lights of each city sliding under the wing become clearer, brighter. City grids and highways appear, then tiny specks of headlights. The spangles remind me, Pujo is 3 weeks away. I’m headed home. Mmmm.

This daytime flight over the breadth of the continent has been rewarding. Minutes after the captain announced that we’d be skirting La Paz, a huge expanse of water appeared somewhere off to port. If it stays in view from 38,000 feet for over 10 minutes at 900 knots, it’s enormous. Lake Titicaca, on the border between Peru and Bolivia. Two weeks ago in Bangalore, a friend told me that Bolivia, a land-locked nation, has a navy – a bunch of coast guard cutters on Lake Titicaca. I looked close, even used my camera zoom, but couldn’t see any of them. (Like Spike Milligan, who, when he boarded the train to boot camp in 1940, was handed a picture of Hitler captioned “This is your enemy” – “I searched the whole train but couldn’t find him”)

Earlier, somewhere in the Peruvian Andes, I saw a strange barren plateau. Flat for miles and miles without a trace of habitation, then suddenly the edge crumbled into precipitous ridges and canyons. A very high plateau, because the rim was dusted with snow. It looked like a coffee truffle cake with a bite taken out of the middle, the striation of millennia showing in the canyon sides like a cross section of chocolate layers. And yes, the icing on the edges.

Checking in at Heathrow, I was served by a fragile blonde with a German-Polish name tag. She was quick, helpful, positive. He was at the next counter, manned by a person with a sandalwood dot on his forehead and a bad-tempered mouth. Neither man was happy. I told him he should have flown Jet. He said no, Air India is more Indian than Jet. Say what? I shrugged and went off to find the lounge. (And abandoned my plans for going into town – everybody warned me about Friday evening traffic)

Later, in the lounge, we got to talking. When he introduced himself I was sure I had heard the name before. He told me the real reason for the Air India booking. His wife and he never took the same flight, and this time it had been her turn to fly Jet. I googled him. He’s into steel and distilleries, his father-in-law was a well-known Chief Minister and his firm had been named in a land and loan scam in Madhya Pradesh. But he was pleasant, polite, well-spoken. A good public school does have its plus points. When we taxied for take-off, he peered through from First Class and waved. I went up the aisle and peeked into his section. He was seated cross-legged, rocking a little, reading the Hanuman Chalisa. Fear of flying. What can I say, in the light of the Air France crash in July even I had been a little apprehensive about the long haul over the Atlantic.

Day 2, 11 a.m. Lima time. The stewardess serves me a second cup of coffee, no breakfast, thank you. We’re just over an hour from Delhi. Earlier, the mud-brown dirt-pile hills of eastern Iran and Afghanistan looked like a child’s tracks on a beach. I’ve learnt, though, that even if it looks barren from the sky, greenery is visible when one goes down below 20,000 or so. As I look out of the porthole, the hills have vanished and we’re flying over One Big River, tributaries meandering around it like baby snakes around a Big Mama Python. The fields on either side are big, straight-edged. Given the location, this can only be the Indus.

The next time I look down, we seem to be flying over a cloud-field. No wait, is that the sea? Are we flying south of Karachi? Then a speck of human habitation comes into view, a straight line cuts across the picture, and it all comes into focus. Those aren’t waves, they’re sand dunes. We’re over the Great Rajasthan Desert. It seems to go on and on, but that’s because I keep looking. Gradually the patches of green multiply, run together. As we continue towards Delhi, a flotilla of tiny white puffy clouds takes position over the Punjab, their shadows marking a grid over the checkerboard of fields below.

The captain’s Aussie accent comes over the PA. Half an hour to Delhi, and after that only one more airport and one more flight before I reach home.