Ruminating...

As an old year draws to a close it’s time to sit back and ruminate on how a slice of time, of a lifetime of measured time, has been allowed to slip past. I am reminded of a stanza from T. S. Elliot’s poem “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” that runs thus…

 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
 

And here we are, poised and looking forward to a new year – a brand new yellow fog, while the breath of the old yellow fog still lingers around us, embracing us in its reluctant brace and…
 

Seeing that it was the last of the days of a chilly December morning,
Sat up with a start, startled by its cymbal of thoughts,
Lent itself against the wall, tail in hand,
Pondering the dark alley, to slither into the gloom,
Turning its soot covered back,
To a year marred by the oddities of human nature,
Of smiling faces and bedecked bodies, but savage cores,
Of fire spewing machines, felling people,
(Don’t we too savagely fell the trees and pull food out of the seas!)
And women with wild hair and white sarees, running sailing ships aground,
And men in white caps, white silhouettes, white cavalcades,
A beatific smile on their faces to greet the faces that they meet,
Dancing a wet Monday morning pantomime,
Limbs askew, gurgled speech, paunches filled beyond belief,

And me, sitting by the doorframe, framed by the alleyway,
Seeing the smoke rising from the butt-end of each day,
And the yellow fog, burdened by human foibles,
Slithering past the darkening alleys, past the faces of stone,
Past obscenely loud TV sets, past the clinking crystalware of the rich,

And what do we presume?
Shall we treat the new yellow fog, bright with the vigour of youth,
Newly appointed with a tailored suit, with boots of leather to match the gait,
Any better than the fogs of the past? Or shall we…

The Gift of The Ancients

History, and the writing of it thereof, is perhaps among very 

Konark Sun Temple - Fresco

few areas where creative freedom can be exercised to just about any length. History is what its writer or maker makes it to be and being the most malleable of subjects, can be contoured to serve the dictates of time and ruler. Thus if the ‘Badshahnama’ was written by Abdul Hamid Lahori – a paid chronicler to sing peans on Shah Jahan’s rule at the peak of Mughal power in India, so do you have the Chinese traveller Fa-Hien leaving a detailed chronicle of his travels. In each case, what they saw and what ultimately appeared in print (!) had colourations that the author brought on, either because they had to earn their kudos and thereby the green bucks or what they saw was always seen in sharp contrast to what they had been exposed to in their countries or cultures.

Ancient Indians were a much smarter lot. They were quick to see through the game and while they excelled in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and all kinds of literature and arts – areas that left strong evidences, they never took to documenting their histories – leaving it to later generations and foreigners to do their work, but here came the master stroke – leaving enough evidence strewn across the land, of its customs, religion and intellectual prowess to prevent later historians from doing a wholesale distortion of facts. Indians thus, in the absence of any written documentation and thereby bereft of any colourations, clung on dearly to their culture, with ‘knowledge’ being passed down orally and later through their religious texts and tomes.

Ashokan Rock Edict

The greatest gift that our ancients left for us was to school us in the art of assimilating diverse thoughts, religions, cultures etc., into our fold, without distorting what we had. Indians, it is oft lamented, have no sense of history – almost all travellers coming to this land will vouch for this; contemporary figures like Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul included.  Indians look at the circle of life – the continuous cycle of creation and destruction followed by yet more creation and destruction - with a passivity and acceptance that confounds most thinkers. The ability to live in the present while cocooned in its shell of customs and beliefs (go to Banaras to see this aspect at its liveliest, where the nuclear physicist stands jostling for space with the matted Sadhu to offer obeisance to Mother Ganga) is something that the outside world can hardly fathom. Indians, perhaps, are the only race that saw such a lively procession of kings and emperors, raiders, marauders, conquerors, imperialists, priests and religious zealots carrying on their unending dance of destruction and creation, while succumbing to none but instead allowing them to assimilate within it.

Hindustani Classical Music mourns its doyen

With the passing away of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, contemporary India has lost its foremost doyen of Indian Classical Music. It is sad loss for the nation – a void that will take a long time to fill. Music comes from the soul and it is always great souls that make great music. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was and to my mind remains to be the face of Hindustani Classical music. 

Hailing from the famous Kirana Gharana, (founded by another doyen – Ustad Abdul Karim Khan) Bharat Ratna Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s majestic voice and 'gayaki’ endeared him to generations of listeners.  

The Kirana Gharana has the distinction of giving India and Hindustani Classical Music some of its best stalwarts including the venerable Pandit. Sawai Ghandharva (Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s guru), Begum Akhtar, Roshanara Begum, Smt. ‘Surashri’ Kesarbai Kerkar, Mohammed Rafi, Smt. Gangubai Hangal, Ustad Rashid Khan, among others.

 

We shall all miss you terribly Panditji…

Two decades since Naipaul came to India

Just through reading Naipaul’s ‘India – A Million Mutinies’ the last of the trilogy on Naipaul’s travelogue in India and I wonder, as yet another year draws to a close, if Naipaul would have seen India in a different light from the India he saw in 1990.  India then was standing at the threshold of an economic growth miracle to be fueled by the opening up of the economy and the easing away of the License-Permit raj. Naipaul would today have perhaps travelled more comfortably to the rural hinterlands of Punjab, been astounded presence of the ubiquitous Nokia handset in the hands of the boy who repairs tires by the roadside or by the spending power of the burgeoning middle-class in the glitzy malls but the million mutinies that he saw then would still be there.

Two decades later while the sense of ‘nation’ has grown (and we have the British to thank for this), the country remains as fractured as ever – factures that are both old and new. The political demography of the country has seen a sea change from the heady days of independence. The rise of regional parties and the pressures of running a coalition government – never an in-thing with the family driven Congress Party has thrown an entirely different set of challenges for the nation. The replacement of Brahmin power starting from the south and extending up to the north has brought forth a new breed of politicians and political ideology that has done nothing, just as Brahmin hegemony did nothing, for the economical transformation of the deprived classes – they remain in the same state if not worse even as the nation steps firmly into its next growth curve. The acute lack of governance (‘su-shasan’ as Nitish Kumar succulently puts it) at the federal and state levels (except perhaps states such as Bihar, Gujarat etc.) has widened old economic fractures and introduced more yawing gaps between the rich and the poor.  Endemic corruption coupled with poor policy measures, lack of transparency and controls has seen a galloping increase in prices of essential commodities leaving a significant part of the populace without access to very basic food let alone a minimum balanced diet. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) estimate ranks India at a low 66 out of the 88 developing countries - a score worse than many Sub-Saharan African countries! While I find the WPI (Wholesale Price Index) an inaccurate measure to gauge Food Inflation (the middlemen and hoarders are the devils in heady supply chain cocktail) the following table (Inflation in %) gives you a sense of how prices have been on a sprint.

Items	1993 – 94	2004 – 05	2010 - 11
Primary Articles	7.9 %	9.2 %	19.3 %
Fuel and Power	4.2 %	5.9 %	13.5 %

Our Common Wealth of Neros

To Rome said Nero: "If to smoke you turn I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn."

Seeing the CWG fiasco unveiling itself before our eyes many of us many may be tempted to grit our teeth and say “a people deserves the political masters that it gets…” but haven’t we as a nation reached its nadir with our handling of the games. What a basket case we must seem to the world and here we have politicians and bureaucrat of all shapes and sizes, from the petit Sheila Dixit to Calamity Kalmadi keeping a poker face and saying ‘aall is wellll…, aall is well…”. The CWG Village maybe a filthy pig-sty but then Indians always were environment friendly and pooed in the open…and hence we really don’t identify with people who flush their turd down a tube…yuk and here you are, complaining while we are trying so hard to make a whole village environment friendly!

What a motley crowd of jokers, nincompoops and mediocres has this nation surrounded itself with…Behold the right honourable Mani Shankar Aiyar doing a merry little jig in his garden now that the games are crumbling…or take a peek into 10 Janpath and pay obedience to the reining deity of the Indian political governance (sic) system…and what may she be playing now…the harp? Or shall we zip down to Panchavati, 7 Race Course Road, where we thought resided an intelligent and intellectual Indian but alas, what has the system done to him…he is a but a shadow of his former self, surrounded as he is with spineless bureaucrats…

Phew! What a close call…we almost got done in by the spanking white Ambassador car with a shining red beacon…that screaming fly past was by Ms Sheila Dixit, one who got us into this shit…she is off to the CWG site…the roof of the stadia shouldn’t cave in…bricks and tiles can rain down on the athletes…large projects do have small hiccups…wow Ms Dixit, you are Nero born twice!

And as trudge along, our heads hanging we are accosted by a group of patriots…"why you worm" they say "you should stand by the nation and its politicians and its bureaucrats and its…what a shame…you should feel proud and not pick holes…oh! The sadness of it all"

A sparrow on the window sill...

Professor James Middleton, very unlike him, sat staring at the sparrow that had just perched itself on the window sill. A man who hated whiling away time had for some reason chosen that very moment to go gallivanting into his mind’s bower.

“Rotten luck!”, thought Middleton Jr., who had, again for reasons unknown, chosen this very moment to present himself to his father and plead for some bridging funds to help him tide over a bleak financial month, not that the other months did not start putting on display ominous black clouds from somewhere during the 17th, had Middleton Jr. chosen to be prudent!

What had caught Middleton Sr.’s attention was not the bird that had chosen to pay the Middleton window sill a visit but two very significant pieces of news that had been delivered to him along with his morning cup of coffee. One was an obituary to ‘Common Sense’ and the other, the news of Rap star Sean “Puffy” Combs a.k.a. Puff Daddy a.k.a. Diddy gifting his just-gone-on-16 son a $360,000 Maybach!

While the sparrow on the sill sat cocking its head at impossible angles, our Professor was at that moment thinking about the traveler from Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel Other Colours, wondering as he did as he stood outside the door from which hung ‘No Entry’, if Diddy’s ludicrously expensive gift meant that he (Diddy) belonged to a class of people who are so loaded with cash that they can buy just what pleases them, old sage ‘Common Sense’ be damned, or was it that he, Professor Middleton, and the likes of him had just got banded into a class of people who begrudged their sons their existing allowances and allowed their pettiness to colour their judgement…

Never before had two entirely different pieces of news clashed like cymbals, leaving our good Professor completely floundering unable to make sense of the dizzying pace at which the world around him was changing…wasn’t it completely true (as the obituary penned by an Unknown Author read) that “Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn), reliable parenting strategies (the adults are in charge, not the kids), and it's okay to come in second…” or how our sage went into a feverish delirium realizing that “six year old boys (were) charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; a teen was suspended for taking a swig of mouthwash after lunch; a teacher was fired for reprimanding an unruly student and schools had to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a student but couldn't inform the parent when a female student is pregnant or wants an abortion” and how “Common Sense finally gave up the ghost after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot, she spilled a bit on her lap, and was awarded a huge settlement”

And the most perplexing predicament was that we are, or so we are told, firmly ensconced in the ‘Knowledge Age’…having progressed a long way from the Stone Age…and we seem to have collectively lost the ability to think in simple terms of right and wrong. Prof. Middleton found this enigma of evolution both frightening and revolting…’are we somehow turning the clock back on ourselves’ thought the good professor, as his eyes fell on his son. “I wonder if it is money that brings you to my study so early in the morning?” quipped the old man.

Middleton Jr.’s long and studied silence elicited a 50 pound bridging fund, much to his amazement. And before we forget, the sparrow which was faithfully pruning itself chose to fly away as soon as the money changed hands!

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)

The nonchalance of the political class

'We are the hollow men
we are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet on broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men'

(T.S. Elliot – Hollow Men)

Mumbai, India’s financial capital, shred by the audacious terrorist attack, exposes as it has done time and again the moral bankruptcy of the political and governing class in India. While it is true that terror strikes can’t always be predicted or stopped, what we need from the political class is more proactivity when it comes to dealing with the security of the nation and its people. Even after 50+ years of independence we are yet to mature as a nation as far as governance is concerned. The Congress party that has ruled the country for the majority of years has under Indira Gandhi sunk this nation into an ever spiraling vortex corruption, ineptitude and mediocrity. Take the instance of the current Home/Internal minister – an outright nincompoop who has absolutely no right to hold the office that he holds – that guy wouldn’t know even if his own bed caught fire let alone re-organize the intelligence gathering mechanism that is racked by factionalism, interference from the political parties and is riddled by corruption. Did he resign on moral grounds? Absolutely not, he ain’t going unless given the boot by Madame Sonia. The President of India – a nation of a billion people, is another example of the mean mindedness of the ruling party – a person with no poise, experience or charisma propped up as the First Citizen of the country. I am feeling extremely angry as I furiously type out this post thinking who is there, if anyone at all, among the large smattering of political parties that we have, who will put the interest of the nation before their party or themselves or the next election.

Until we bring to the nation a certain rigour in governance; give birth to an Obama among us, innocent families, you and me have no option but to be slaughtered like lambs – the political families remain unscathed by all this and thus feel no need to pull their act together. God! It has been years since we have achieved our freedom riding on untold sacrifices, for how long are we fated to deal with an inept political class and a largely corrupt governance system ; till then we have to bear witness to hundreds of innocent families being ripped apart.
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Footnote: I couldn't help adding this...had uploaded the post before the PM's address to the nation in the aftermath of the terror strike...so here is the edit... and I quote from the PM's address:

"We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts. We are determined to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the safety and security of our citizens"...(sic)

"Instruments like the National Security Act will be employed to deal with situations of this kind...to immediately set up a Federal Investigation Agency to go into terrorist crimes of this kind..."

I wish the PM had kept his silence. It would have been better! We have had enough of hearing the same stale response...you and your brethren will continue doing nothing and you will forget all that you said up until the next terror strike...please concentrate on the assembly polls and on how to protect your turf - the nation be dammed!

The Festive Season...

This time around, the festive season seems to have come on in a hurry and has, as equally, left in a rush. Most of the time the festive season gets spread across October and November giving us a feel of an extended season of fun and celebrations, but this year the entire season had got cramped into October and with the last of the events today (Bhai Dooj) we are staring at a long year ahead before the new season sets in.

Here are some snaps from our Diwali celebrations. All of these snaps were taken by my little Bro.

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Interview with Mamata Banerjee

I must confess that I am very poor with the lay of Kolkata even after spending more than 4 years here and therefore used the services of a driver to land me to Mamata’s current abode – set right in the middle of a labyrinth of narrow lanes. I was surprised that Mamata had so readily agreed to be interviewed – not after my, shall we say, encouraging last post on the Singur impasse.

So there I was, standing at the formidable lady’s doorway; me in my tee and jeans, with a borrowed digital camera slung awkwardly across my shoulder and a thick black BILT notebook in my hand. Did I look the jurno type I wonder! But I sure was all strung up. This was after all my first celebrity interview!

As I stood at the doorway debating how to address the lady, the door opens up to reveal her Ladyship herself and I blurted out in Bengali, “Mashi, ami Supratim, interview-ta netae eschi” which to effect meant “Auntie, this is Supratim and I have come for the interview…” Her Ladyship visibly stiffened and with a sharp scowl responded “I am no one’s Mashi, call me Didi….everyone calls me Didi here so…anyway come on in”.

Here’s a verbatim transcript of the interview that ensured:

SK: It’s an honour to be having been invited to carry this interview and thank you for sparing time from your hectic-hectic schedule.

MB: Let’s dispense with the niceties…make it quick…there is a delegation of some social activists who I am expecting in 20 minutes…will you care for some tea?

SK: No, Thank you. Can we start…and would you mind if I record the interview?

MB: I am waiting…and please keep the recorder between the two of us and don’t fiddle with it.

SK: Didi, I have heard that there are three P’s that your life revolves around – Poetry, Politics and Painting – how do you order the three P’s and why only P’s?

MB: The three P’s are like three children to me…I love each of them equally and like all children they vie for my attention always, but the eldest one ‘Politics’ is by far the naughtiest and the unruly one…and while these are the main P’s there are some smaller P’s (she smiles) – P’s that no one knows about.

SK: Didi, can you shed light on the other P’s?


MB: Well, I have never spoken publicly on those….but…okay…one of them is plotting (she gives a mischievous grin and her eyes twinkle). You know Supratim I am a dramatist at heart…I love drama…but there is only a small wrinkle here…while I know how to start a drama, I have still not mastered the art of developing a closure…I guess it will come in time…

SK: (A little wide-eyed) Didi, if you don’t mind, could you please elaborate on this?

MB: Look, I started the extended Metro project while I was the Railways Minister in Delhi but even after a decade it’s yet to see the light of day….more recently the Nandigram impasse…I started it out well and there was a lot of drama…the plot was nicely sewed up but then the ending…Singur…again, I thought I had thought out the ending…but the ending is veering away from my ending. It’s maddening I say….each of my dramas behaving so atrociously!

SK: (I don’t have the heart to ask about her other P’s and lunge for the next question) Didi, I understand your feelings about Singur but why did you block the national highway?

MB: (Didi gets visibly agitated here) You guys are no different…you are speaking just like those media guys…and I thought…No I did not block the highway…the highway came between us and the oppressors (TATA’s). If the government and the honourable courts were so concerned about the highway why, tell me why, didn’t they move the highway a little sideways…Ba re!

SK: Didi, I noticed that Medha Patekar is your ardent supporter. How did you meet her?

MB: Truth be told, I didn’t know about her till the Narmada Dam issue came up and drove her hopping mad (dam read backwards!!!). But once I met her I felt that we had a lot in common! We don’t invest in combs, always wear white sarees – a little dirty and crumpled sometimes – and can be heard for miles around, with or without a microphone. Not to forget she is a social activist and I activate societies.

SK: Didi, the Nano project by the TATA’s is supposed to help industrialisation in the state, why are you opposing it?

MB: I am not opposing the project…this is all wrong…it is those communist agents who are spreading this type of disinformation…let me put the record straight…I am all for industrialisation but why do these TATA need so much land…small car, small land…better still no land…we all know agriculture needs land, but whoever said industrialisation needs land…you seem to be a sensible person, you should know…


SK: But…

MB: I am not finished…and please don’t interrupt…I lose my train of thoughts and focus…As I was saying, why can’t the farmer farm the farm while Tata Babu makes his car…that way he can shout to the farmer who can help him paint the car or fit the bumper or help in a thousand other things and the farmer can always sell the freshest produce…Tata babu can always have the freshest breakfast, lunch and dinner…grow healthy and produce more small cars…and there we are, everyone happy.

SK: But Didi, the Tata’s would need to create factories to mass produce the cars and this will help generate jobs for the people and a myriad other things.

MB: Maybe you are not as bright as you look… Dhritarastra (the mythical Indian king in the Mahabharata) had, if I recollect correctly, over 100 children and in one lifetime…he is the father of mass production in India and did he need a factory…and here we have Tata babu who is a spinster but thinks about mass production…and didn’t I just tell you that Tata Babu could shout to the farmer for help…I am lowering Tata babu’s cost and there he is threatening to withdraw the project.

It is at this point that Derek O’Brian, the noted columnist and humble Trinamool (Mamata’s political outfit) worker steps in.

DOB: I couldn’t help overhearing and had to step in. Didi is absolutely right. When will you guys understand Didi. She has the good of everyone at heart…the good of Bengal…its people, farmers, workers and the industrialists of India.

MB: Derek, it is no use explaining anything to these guys…and Supratim is no different. It was my mistake that I thought that he was different. Why, I can hear the social activists shouting…they must have turned into our alley…I got to go!

And thus,I unceremoniously ended my first celebrity interview, and in the rush of things all but forgot about taking an interview snap and have had to rely on one of those google(ed) images.

Maybe Buddhadev Bhattacharya will accede to my interview request next.