Creativity Vs Divinity

The Puja season, this time around, has come upon us a might too early, sapping some of joy - what with having to contend with an extremely muggy weather, the lack of the warm ‘Sarat Kaal’ sun and overall the general ‘puja’ flavour that the winds bring in, while ushering in the Goddess in our midst.

Kolkata though, true to its undying spirit, refused to be held back and put up, as it is wont to, a kaleidoscopic show trying to be mightier and grander than its previous shows and it is here that I step in. While the Puja’s have their own folklore surrounding them of how Goddess Durga, bestowed with powers from the entire pantheon of Gods that make up the Hindu religion, defeated Mahishasura – an embodiment of evil, to us mortals it is more of a long string of pure abandonment and bliss…no studies…no work…stay out as long as you want…eat what your soul craves for…and the list is endless. In the midst of all this, I have a sinking feeling that as puja’s after puja’s go by, we are, to some extent, running the risk of losing the very essence of divinity in the race to differentiate one Puja from the next. Today, creativity and the need to create crowd pulling ‘themes’ has become such a fad that the simplicity in the act of worshipping – putting your palms together and bowing before the divine has been substituted with being able to quickly flash out your digital cameras or your mobile phones and start clicking away. Can you blame the common man for losing the very essence of bhakti in the face of, the awesome creativity that is laid out before him to feast his eyes on. Experimenting is good and has to be encouraged – by all means, but haven’t we taken it too far?

At the cost of sounding puritan, I would rather that the puja’s be a showcase of both creativity but while holding on to the age old essence of the festival – a time that we take to find the God in us and immerse ourselves, albeit whatever little, in the Omnipresent Power. While it may be a good idea to showcase our creativity – and believe me there is an awful lot to show – we should seriously introspect on how we are tending towards depicting the Goddess. To my mind this is one area where we have threaded a bit to far for comfort. Take the case of a theme puja in South Kolkata this year, where the organisers fashioned the pandal as a giant weaver bird’s nest – and it was really a magnificent piece of craftsmanship, but they ended up botching the image of Goddess Durga, who instead of holding her weapons had different kinds of birds in her hand! Then there was this excellent puja organised in Salt Lake, built around the Buddhist theme, which was again extremely well done but again when it came to depicting the Goddess they took the theme too far. All this brings to mind Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s famous poem ‘Buddha aur Naachghar’, from which I am quoting a few lines…

“Jaaha Khuda ki nahi gaali daal,
Waahan buddh ki kya chalti chaal,
Wehey thea murti ke khilaph,
Esnea unhi ki baaniye murti,
Wehey thea puja ke virudh,
Esnea unhi ko diya pujj,
Unheay Eshwar mein tha abiswas,
Esnea unhi ko khay diya Bhagwan,
Wehey aaye thea phailane ko vairag,
Mitane ko singar, patar,
Esnea unhi ko baana diya Shringar,
Baanaya unka sundar aakar,
Unka bel mund tha sheesh
Esnea laagaye baal ghungar-daar,
Aur mitti, lakdri, pathar, loha,
Tamba, peetal, chandi, sona,
Moonga, neelum, panna, haathi-daath,
Saab ke aandar Unhe dhal, tarash, kharad, nikal,
Bana diya Unhe bazaar mein biknea ka saaman…”

And if we are to keeping riding the crest wave of creativity don’t you think we really run the risk of taking all forms of God to what we have done to Buddha…read on…

“Peking se Chicago taak,
Koi nahi curio ki dukaan,
Jaahan bhalei-hi aur na ho kuch,
Buddh ki murti na milea jo maango!
Buddh Bhagwan,
Aamiro ke drawing room, Rahiso ke maakan,
Tumhare chitra, tumhari murti se shobha eeman,
Paar whey hai tumhare darshan se unabhig,
Tumhaare vicharo sey unjaan,
Saapney mein bhi unhe eeska nahi aata dhyan,
Sher ke khaal, hiran ke seengh, kala-karigiri ke namuno ke saath,
Thum bhi ho aaseen,
Logo ke soundar priyata ko deete huay taasken
Esi leye Tum ne eek ke thi aasman zameen?”

Mandate 2009: Part 3: The Bengal Voter – Caught between a Rock and a very hard place

The current elections threw up a very interesting dilemma for the Bengal voter. Used to as they were, to docilely voting for the ruling Left combine (chup chap lale chaap), since:

a) any other option simply did not exist and,

b) (more importantly) the Left had turned rigging into a both a science and an art with a fine tuned machinery that worked flawlessly to either vote for you or inflate the voter rolls like nobody’s business.

This time around voters in Bengal truly stood at the end of the precipice. No matter which way they voted they had inadvertently booked a one-way ticket downwards. On one hand they had to make sense of the maverick Mamata Banerjee, (Maverick M from hereon) who single-handedly heaved the mighty TATA group from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea and to my mind pushed the lately awaken industrial drive in Bengal literally to the seas and on the other put up with the arrogance and sheer apathy of the ruling combine, who are so lost in their self-woven cocoon of invincibility that they are hurtling down to be modern day Neros; to burnt down along with Rome.

The rural populace had their own arithmetic to figure out. The Left, which had ridden to power based on this rice and potato growing mass, giving land to the landless etc while shutting down all the industries was suddenly faced with very vocal and strong dissent when they went to buy land for the industrial drive carrying fat purses in tow. The wheel had turned a full circle. Why should the poor and marginal farmer, who had for years being fed on the rhetoric that capitalism and industry were the biggest evil to mankind, suddenly wake-up one fine morning to find you exposing the goodness of industry and be ready to sell his sweat-soaked land to the devil? Maverick ‘M’ maybe mad for all he cared but to her undying credit she did not promote the capitalistic devil to be the newly arisen Leftist God.

The urban voters were in real quandary. With the intellectuals and their mass of followers having already decided to throw in their lot with Maverick ‘M’, the average citizen knew very well that voting for Maverick ‘M’ would push the industrialisation drive down the tube, whereas not voting for the Left (thereby ensuring their defeat) would mean that a badly mauled Left would be on their back foot and would shelve all work on the industrialisation process.

Voters in Bengal sorely missed the ‘No Vote’ button. Had their been one, I dare say the results would have been very difficult what with our high voting percentage (80%) and love of participating in any political process.

We await to see if any fight is left in the Left tiger or the dramatic transformation of Maverick ‘M’ into a development and performance driven leader of the masses. Both these guys have two years to deliver the goods and the portents don’t seem good for the Left as of now.

Mandate 2009: Part 2: In search of the Right Strategy for the Right (Wing) Party

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s own flagship right wing party and I am loath to call it the Hindu Right Wing Party (since they know precious little about the Hindu way of life or its unique but subtle power of assimilation) has since the 2004 general elections, lost much of its sheen, steam and gloss.

If we thought nothing could defeat the BJP in 2004, who were riding high on the urban popularity rating chart and an entire election campaign epitomised by the India Shining Campaign, little did we, urban rats, housed in glass encased towers, hermitically sealed off from the real India, realise the power of the rural populace. The BJP got a historic thumbs down – a shock from which they have been unable to recover till date. Their predicament has been compounded by the sad loss of Pramod Mahajan, their master strategist, who not only made up the moderate face of the party but was responsible for micro-managing each local and state election that the BJP fought while they were in power with, on an average, very satisfactory results.

The current think tank at the BJP is not only woefully short of ideas but at times fatally fails to judge people’s emotions. Take the case of the Mumbai terror attacks – in their haste to show the UPA government in poor light, the whole of the BJP top brass led by Advani and closely followed by Modi landed when blood was still freely following. It left a very bad taste in the people’s mouth and I guess this was one of the major reasons why their rhetoric on terror and its risks never paid off, even if what was mouthed was largely true. Another instance of insanity running riot in the BJP camp was the Quixote (and an extremely ill-advised) attack on Manmohan Singh. He may be whatever else but no one can grudge his academic and intellectual credentials or his honesty and faithfulness to his country and office. Calling such an erudite person ‘nikkamma’ or a good-for-nothing was not done at all, and the country did not buy an iota of this grand Advani dictum.

The BJP, moreover, inspite of having the example of Narendra Modi – who has proved again and again that performance pays – did nothing to assure either the rural or the urban voters about the development agenda of the NDA government. Their constant harping on terror and the myth of a week Prime Minister ended up in not only eroding their voter base but landing with a much lower number of seats in the lower house.

Performance Mr. Advani, performance. That’s the order of the day. Please take a cue from your own chief ministers or your NDA ally Nitish Kumar. They will, I bet, vouch for it. No longer will complicated caste-religion combinations sway the masses as it once did. See the jolt that the detestable Mayawati received!

Mandate 2009: Part 1: Left (Out) in the cold!

Each time that India goes to vote, the outcome never fails to amaze me. For a country where 72.2% of its population is from rural hinterland and an overall literacy rate of around 61%, the foresight and uncanny sense of politics displayed by that a billion plus people is mind boggling. Every election result is a revelation by itself. If in 2004 no one expected the BJP not to come to power, this time around the mandate to the Congress party has stunned the Congressmen themselves let alone the intelligentsia. The guys who lost the most, this time around, were the Left parties who have been truly left out in the cold for the next five years. The Left parties, on a national level, led by obnoxious Comrade Prakash Karat had, over the period of the last five years, on a number of occasions, brought the government to a paralytic halt on just about every other issue that they took fancy to oppose. With the loud mouthed brigade fronted by A. B. Bhardhan (I deeply detest him and his arrogance) and his ilk following Karat step for step, they had even managed to unceremoniously elbow out political statesmen like Somnath Chatterjee, who as the speaker of the lower house not only exemplified the dignity of the chair but won everyone’s admiration for his bipartisan conduct of proceedings of a normally unruly house and a very vocal opposition. Karat and Co must rue the day they launched a vitriolic campaign to dislodge Somnath as the Speaker of the House. Whatever our politicians may be, they atleast acknowledge an honest man when they see one! and it is no different for the general populace that has blotched many a political party’s dream to forever have their hands on the arm twisting gadget. The Left got a through drubbing in both of their fiefdoms of Bengal and Kerala. Kerala is more understandable since these guys tend to switch their allegiance every five years but Bengal is where they got hurt the most. The Left which had risen as a phoenix over the ashes of the Congress had, over the passage of time and with a lot of water under the bridge, come of think of themselves as invincible. Their almost fanatic belief in their military style organisational prowess, the conversion of rigging and intimidation into a time-tested scientific process and their nose in the air behaviour proved to be their ultimate undoing. You simply can’t afford to alienate the people who vote you to power, can you? This arrogance was also manifest in the utter lack of strategy and diplomacy on the part of the intellectually bent Chief Minister, whose inapt handling of both the Singur and Nandigram crises drove the normally docile Bengali intelligentsia enmass into the, only too happy arms of Mamata Banerjee – famous for her not so clean nor artfully draped saree and her rabble rousing antics. Who thought that the Left would meet its nemesis in the hands of a Lady, whose only merit has been to throw earth shattering tantrums at the drop of the hat! It would be interesting to see how the Left reacts in Bengal with the assembly elections due in two years, which on a politicians calendar is no time at all.

Oscared Slumdog Millionaire

The Oscar's are all but over and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a desi movie by a videshi has won an enviable bevy of 8 Oscars – a no mean feat. The crowning glory – AR winning two Oscars and Resul Pookutty bagging the Best Sound Mixing Oscar – a commendable performance, especially for Resul, knowing that we Indians don’t have access to the best technologies as our more lucky compatriots in the west do. It would do every Indian proud to see their homeboys rubbing shoulders with the best there is of Hollywood, standing up on the world stage and chanting ‘Jai Hind’ in unison.

Of the very few films that I see each year, I was goaded into viewing Slumdog Millionaire by my wife, enamored as she was with the rave reviews that appeared in almost all print and electronic media. I must confess, and I would be one of those one-in-a-million kinds, who stepped out of the theater extremely disappointed. I did not like the film, period. A good film is as much about a good story, a story that forces you to think and reflect, as it is about good technique, direction, use of the technology etc, among a host of other such parameters. To me, a good film leaves behind a good and long lasting aftertaste, which, at the very least hangs on for a couple of days if not more. Slumdog Millionaire does nothing of that sort. I forgot the film as I stepped out of the hall, that's it! While I do not grudge the musical and technical awards that it has won (adapted screenplay, film editing, sound mixing, cinematography, original score and original song), but the fact that the film has won the Best Picture and Best Director Award is a huge dilution for what the Oscar’s stand for. Why is it that the film has captured the imagination of the jury? It has an average storyline – a rags-to-riches story with a fair bit of romance thrown in, a cop who moves from being malevolent to benevolent, and a fair bit of blood and gory. Here's why I think the western critics feel for the film.

Every country and race has, due to some quirk of history, been typecast into certain image patterns. For instance the image that India generates is one of cows, sadhus, poverty, slums, filth, corruption etc. An African-American is typically seen as a druggie, mugger, a member of some vicious gang etc. Africa on the other hand brings up images of wild animals, suffering, abject poverty and hunger. These are images that appeal to us the most and hold true our mental image of the race and country. Most of the tourists from the western world helplessly retain images of India as dusty and noisy country, beggar children with snooty noses peering through the car window as you wait for the lights to change, unruly traffic, potbellied cops etc. For an average western mind, India and its ever changing colour, its huge diversity of culture, its languages, its religious diversity, its chaos is a bit too much to take in and understand. No Sir, we are not an easy country and race to understand. So when Danny Boyle holds aloft a medley of images that western audiences are so used to seeing, it is then that they start feeling comfortable and see in the film the India of their imagination. The film portrays the image of India most tourists retain – a superficial, surface view – a view that shows just one small (but true) side of a complex crystal like shape that is India. Good, but is that good enough to win a Best Picture Oscar? The hype that the film created in India also exposes the deep scar in the Indian psyche left by years of British rule – a period during which Indian were left to feel as savages without a sense of history or culture. Deep down somewhere we are still diffident in taking a divergent view to the pronouncements of the Western world. Thus, as the film started getting rave reviews in the west, the Indian critic too started to toe the western line, with the media jumping into the fray. Except for Amitabh Bachchan, and kudos to him, for standing out (though I really didn’t know why, before I saw the film), there has been little noise to the contrary. Yes the film has been shot well, edited well, the score was fantastic and all that but to win the Best Picture and Best Director awards? My view of what the Oscars stand for has gone down quite a number of notches.

The golden bullet…

While this has nothing to do with the subject of the post, I was surprised to note that Indians are the United States’ biggest supporters, not withstanding the belligerent cacophony of Karat and Co. We have, in our admiration of the US, left behind a trailing list of countries that comprises of almost all the power blocks that are subservient to the US. The Russians and Turks are the guys that hate the US the most while we keep crowning the Taliban with that honour.

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With Obama, set to take oath of office today, the US has worked itself into a proper frenzy – the likes of which has not been seen in modern times. The credit undoubtedly lies with Barack Hussain Obama whose emotive appeal for ‘change’ and ‘hope’ has not only captured the imagination of the youth – the world over, but I guess, somewhere deep down we were all weary of the conflicts, the very real shadow of terror that we spend our days in, and the tailspin that the global economy has been sent into due to the reckless greed of large financial institutions and individuals straddling them.

‘Hope’ is undoubtedly the one single emotion that we all live by. Strip us of this and the world would be populated by a set of zombies, with nothing to look forward to. It is to Obama’s credit and oratory skills that he has held out a bright beckon of hope – a hope that wanted to see an African-American holding the most powerful office on earth, a hope that a sane, thinking and empathetic person would be in a position to make some real changes in how we want to live in this world, and a multitude of other manifestations of hope.

Obama has, so far, held onto the high moral ground, making all the right noises, astutely choosing his lieutenants and largely justifying the faith that the American people have reposed on him, but he has also, in the process, created a mountain of expectations. While he has been trying his best to bring down expectations to a manageable level, the people, I am afraid, wouldn’t be as patient as he would like them to be. With the eyes of the world on him, Obama must during his presidency try and bring some sanity into the world; move beyond the narrow and vested confines of geo-political interests to deliver on substantial environmental goals, use the power of the US to help address the causes of terrorism, bridge the increasingly widening gap between moderates and fanatics, and deliver fast on the economy.

Obama has wriggled himself into an unenviable situation where he is seen as a golden bullet, a panacea for all that ails the world. If we were to lose his cool or his head, the self-created mountain of hope that he has so carefully carved out would turn into an ugly Frankenstein, ready to mercilessly devour its creator. Obama needs all our prayers and wishes to succeed; succeed not only for himself, but for the world – so that the youth in each and every country can elect from among themselves such change agents, who can make a real difference in our lives.

Best of Luck Barack Hussain Obama and God Speed!

A New Year is upon us...

I going through a phase of extreme writer’s block…there are a lot of things that I think needs writing about, but the past month has been a lot of false starts, ending up with nothing… I hope the new year would be kind on me…till then may I impress upon you to read what I felt (what a bloated ego!!) were my best 2008 posts…

Here goes...(each posts opens in a new window!)


An Interview with Mamata Banerjee

One Billion People One Gold Medal

Marathi Pride

Contentment - are you on its left or right? (esoteric)