Snob Values

Splitting the perfect pea

2011-10-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

(The Hindu Magazine, October 9, 2011)

It had been cooking for an hour already. But when I checked, it still was not done. If it had not been a strangely bad day, I would have cottoned on; but then, if it had not been a strangely bad day, I would not have done it. My mistake was one that many aspiring cooks make and it was perfectly understandable, except that I was not an aspiring cook and I could not understand how I had done it. I was making dal for dinner. And instead of the tur or arhar dal that was on my menu, I was boiling all heck out of chana dal and getting nowhere and not too fast either. It became especially funny, since just a couple of weeks earlier I had been giggling at the exact same mistake a friend of mine had made…But the story ended well enough. The semi-cooked dal was incorporated into a kind of adai, a multigrain dosai/pancake that perhaps no good Keralite would admit into their food habits, but that was eventually delicious.

Dal, or split pulses of various kinds, is a mainstay dish in almost every part of India and much of South Asia. It takes on many avatars, eaten with rice or roti, spiced or plain, with vegetables or meat, and can be the ideal diet food as well as a calorific indulgence. Today you don’t even have to bother to make it in your own kitchen (perhaps getting mixed up between one dal and the other, like so many of us are still embarrassed about) – you can buy cans of the famous Dal Bukhara originally from the well-known Delhi hotel, you can pick up cans of lentil soup at the imported goods store in the mall, you can find ready-to-heat-and eat packages from brands best known for ketchup, you could even just call the local eatery, be it a high-end restaurant or the dhaba at the corner, and collect a pot of steaming hot goodness ladled out from a huge vat that has probably been simmering for hours.

It all begins with pulses, as they are called, or lentils or dried beans that are hulled and then split. These are processed in various ways and then stored, either in oil (which keeps longer but also needs to cook longer) or not. It is an essential part of almost any diet, even at today’s unbelievably high prices, since it provides most of the protein required in a normal diet – in fact, dal is about 25-30 percent protein in its own makeup. Most commonly used are tur (which I actually wanted), chana (which I inadvertently used), moong (from the well known mung or moong bean), urad and masoor dal, with the less salubrious kesar dal listed among others. A number of beans and peas too are staples, from the familiar rajma, chana and cowpeas (blackeyed beans or lobia) to the Mussyang or melange of pulses comon in the hilly regions of Nepal, to the less seen in India varieties like lima beans, fava beans, yellow split peas (favoured by the Indian community in Guyana and Trinidad) vetch and horse lentil.

Dal is not difficult to make, even for the novice, once the kind of dal being used is determined. Quickest to cook is moong dal, while the beans need more intense pressure cooking to soften and absorb flavour; if pre-soaked in water, cooking time can be reduced appreciably. The whole lentil, called sabut dal, contains more dietary fibre and is preferred in sub-continental cuisine, though the split pulse, or dhuli dal, is easier to handle, especially in a modern and hurried kitchen. Once cooked, the dal is flavoured in a variety of ways, from the addition of a simple tadka to a more elaborate preparation like the Parsi dhansak or the South Indian sambhar.

Perhaps the simplest and most delicious way to prepare dal is to leave it alone. Well, not completely alone, but in the company of just a basic spicing of salt and a squeeze of lemon. This works best with moong dal, eaten with a more complex vegetable dish that provides the ‘taste’ and ‘appearance’ but needs the support of the dal to stand out. One step further along the culinary evolutionary chain is the dal that has tadka or chonk added to it – a tiny spoonful of ghee, in which is sputtered a pinch of asafoetida, a few mustard seeds and a couple of curry leaves is all that it takes to make magic. Adding dried red chillies, chopped ginger, green chillies, fried onions et al layers flavours on to the essential blandness of the dal, and mandates the rest of the meal is simpler, for the full pleasure of the experience. Some dals do well with pressure cooking, which rushes through the traditional process of simmering for hours, even overnight – as is done with the deliciously rich and creamy ma di dal, for instance, or the meaty, hearty dhansak – and pushes nuances of flavour and spice into what is rather tasteless and bland.

In India, the traditional stress buster is always considered to be dahi-chawal, a cool melange of softly cooked rice and fresh yoghurt. But khichdi, an almost-amorphous blend of rice and dal cooked together to a delicious tenderness, or a plateful of squishy dal eaten with ever-so-slightly overcooked rice and a dollop of ghee would do the same magic trick without too much effort. And that is exactly what eventually came to my table that day, once I had sorted out which dal I wanted to use!

When the music stopped...

2011-10-13T00:51:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, October 8, 2011)

In 1941, a few years before India became an independent nation, a son was born to devout Sigh parents in Sriganganagar, Rajasthan. He was called Jagmohan, but his father changed his name as per the suggestion of the family’s guru of the Namdhari sect. The child became Jagjit Singh – a name that is now spoken of with reverence and admiration by anyone with any musical interest. He was trained by a blind teacher, Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma, and by Ustad Jamal Khan of the Senia gharaana and learned to sing shabad kirtans (Sikh hymns) in gurdwaras and holy processions. The interest became a passion very soon and Jagjit’s first paid public performance was when he was in the 9th grade, when people paid hin small sums of money and cheered and applauded as he sang. His favourite songs were always coloured with soft sadness, a gentle melancholy that spoke of love lost but hope still in bloom.

My taste is not for this kind of music. I like happy sounds, dramatic sounds, vibrant sounds, colourful sounds, not tunes that are tinged with blue and touched with the edge of tears. So when I was asked to go with friend to a Jagjit Singh concert in Mumbai some years ago, I protested, objected, cavilled. Not me, I grumbled, it’s just not my thing at al. To me, ghazals, the singer’s forte, were for airplanes and elevators, music that soothed and softened, that could easily – and often did – put me into a soporific state that was akin to intense boredom. I was not especially interested in that kind of mood at the time and had to be pushed into being part of the group, bribed with the promise of dessert that was all about chocolate. And I was right; the music was soft, gentle, sleepy almost, lulling my self-frazzled synapses into a kind of torpor that was extremely pleasant, on the verge of being addictive. What grabbed my attention was not the man on the stage playing the harmonium and singing, but the way people around me reacted to him and his music. They were spellbound; they knew every word of the lyrics; they sang along, teary-eyed, smiling, unabashed by the emotion that beamed off their faces.

Jagjit Singh often told the story of what happened during a concert in college – the electricity suddenly went off and he had an audience of 4,000 people watching and listening to him. Mercifully, the sound system was battery operated and he could be heard. He remembered, "I went on singing, nobody moved, nothing stirred ... such incidents and the response from audiences convinced me that I should concentrate on music."

And thereon, he did. He was a huge fan of classical musicians of the time, from Talat Mehmood and Abdul Karim Khan to Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Amir Khan. He developed a taste for Urdu poetry, and thus a preference for bol-pradaan music, which focuses more on the words and expression rather than the tune itself. Geets and ghazals made magic for him, and he soon built up not just a repertoire of songs, but a roster of loyal fans who asked for certain compositions whenever he sang. But Bombay, as it was then, was where he wanted to be and in 1961 Jagjit Singh moved to the big city to try and make it big in film circles. People liked his music, but had no work for him at the time and he left for Jalandhar. Four years later, he tried again. This time, he found a degree of success. He made two albums for a recording company and shed his turban and cut off his long hair to be more photogenic for the cover photographs. From small gatherings to – very, very slowly – bigger projects, it was not an easy journey for the music-man. But the struggle added depth and emotion to his songs and his voice, adding real-life anguish of experience to words that anyway sang of sorrow and loss. And he made the ghazal an accepted, anticipated and applauded form of vocal expression.

Along the way, there was great joy, too. He met and married his love, Chitra, and the two sang together in a collaboration that was sheer poetry. It was still not easy, even though he was getting increasingly popular, both as a solo singer and with his wife as a couple. The birth of his son Vivek in 1971 brought him not just happiness, but luck too. In 1975 he composed his first LP for HMV and sold unbelievably well. But grief came in 1990 when Vivek was killed in a car accident. Chitra lost her voice and refused to even try and sing again, certainly never in public. Jagjit Singh decided to use his loss to colour his music and focussed on it as a kind of meditation, concentrating entirely on his work. He became more spiritual, less ebullient, increasingly philosophical. And the audiences poured in. Bollywood too had become a fan – his songs were used in blockbusters like the arthouse Arth and the more populist Sarfarosh.

Along the way, his health suffered. Jagjit Singh had a heart attach in January 1998, after which he stopped smoking. Nine years later, he suffered blood circulation problems and had to spend time in hospital. A few weeks ago, he had a stroke and was rushed into surgery, where clots in the brain were removed. He was on life support and died on October 10 at the age of 70 in a Mumbai hospital. I may not have been a huge fan of his music, but I will always admire the man who could give so many so much pleasure.

Getting the jobs done

2011-10-13T00:49:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, October 8, 2011)

Many many years ago, when I was very young but had already started writing, I used a pencil and wrote in laborious longhand on lined paper. Soon, I had graduated to bashing away on a typewriter, first an old model we had inherited and then a more modern electronic one that beeped if I went too fast and erased my mistakes with a ka-chunk sound as if I was being severely whopped. And then I learned – and pretty fast it went too – to use a computer.

It did not take long and I did go through the usual problems of deleting something instead of saving it, battling worms and virus attacks, grappling with new programmes or old ones being updated so fast I could barely keep up and suddenly finding that something I knew I had saved had mysteriously vanished and then, just when I had written it all over again, had reappeared without any word about where it had taken its secret holiday.

Along the way, I learned not to check for spelling errors since it was all done on a programme with auto-correct mode firmly on, and I rarely missed a deadline since writing was for me not only easy because of the way my head worked, but much easier because of the way my machines worked.

As technology advanced, so did my own skills as a kind-of-journalist. My list of contacts grew longer; my own talents of getting a story done and filed became honed. I could out-write almost anyone, with no need for an editor at the end of it. Most of it came courtesy me, but some of it was thanks to my trusty, handy-dandy computer. I could bash almost anything into it, but it almost always got it right when it translated it into English as the local media wanted it and better.

It was all great fun and, along the way, it left me free to do more with the story itself, whatever it may have been, without needing to be tied down to any rules of grammar or linguistic etiquette that made me stop and think about how I should be saying that I wanted to say. I could create pictures, which is what all really good writing does, and not be tied down by the size of the canvas or the paints on my palette.

And it was great fun; I learned along the way that writing for a career can be more satisfying than writing for myself, because you not only reach a lot more people who tend to marvel at your work, but you even get paid for it, which in turn would pay for books or shoes or diamonds or whatever else you want to get with it. And it also fed my never-happy ego, pushing me to do more, be read more, be known as a name more. What more did I want?

Actually, there is a lot more than I want. Or so I found as I wrote that little bit extra that made me better known than so many others who had started out with me. I wanted more technology. More science that could be applied to making my life as a writer easier, better, faster, simpler, more interesting, more everything. And I wanted more of it to be done for me.

To help, there has always been a machine, I argued, so why is there not more than a machine that I can use without too much trouble can do without me having to do it? Once upon a time I used a pen, frantically wielded, to take notes during an interview. Then I graduated to a tape recorder, a large and irritatingly awkward object that needed a whole big bag of its own and never switched on and off the way I wanted it to. Relief came in the shape of my Walkman, chosen deliberately for its recording functions. And then I moved on to a digital recorder, a slim, neat, light gizmo that worked as I demanded it should, at least most of the time. I did figure out how to use my mobile phone for recording interviews, but needed far more talk time than it gave me, so gave up on it very quickly.

But, as always, there was the next step that had to be taken. I now am looking for a programme that will transcribe what is on my digital recorder directly into a text file that I can edit on my computer. I have found one, but the errors that it comes up with drive me to tears…of frustration, of laughter, of bemoaning my own fate at having to listen to and comprehend hours of someone speaking and make it into words that suit the newspaper, magazine or website I may have done the interview for.

I once wrote travel stories on a palmtop; I am now looking for a rather more advanced kind of device I can carry around without strain. Now that Steve Jobs is no longer on this earth to make one that will fit all my requirements, where do I find what I really want?

Anyone have any realistic inspirations here? Do tell….

Animal enthusiasm

2011-10-07T04:04:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, September 30, 2011)

I was reading this morning about some large animals – a rhino and a couple of elephants – in the zoo in Mumbai, a place called Ranibagh situated right in the most crowded part of the city. The unfortunate creatures are single, alone, without mates, without company, with no real friends except their keepers, who have their own lives and loyalties. But I am not going to come up with another sad rona-dhona story. This is a tale of valiant efforts and some measure of success. This is the story of animals who have people who care.

The state of zoos in many parts of the world leaves a great deal to be desired. There are newspapers galore talking of the woeful conditions of animals in zoos in cities that have been in the middle of some conflict or the other, caused by man or nature. You see reports almost every other day about a lion dying in Tripoli zoo or monkeys eating dead simians in a cage in Russia somewhere or birds struggling to stay above the water level in New Orleans. There are animals in distress everywhere in the world, some with no hope other than a merciful death. A lot of the time, it comes slowly, painfully, eventually. And then, once in a wonderful while, a miracle happens. Caregivers from all over the world are able to go into the zone of such greatly nightmarish proportions and save a few of these suffering creatures, giving them relief, care, food, medical treatment, hope, life. Not all of them survive, sometimes not enough can be done. But enough is done to make the rest of the world aware of what is happening, to awaken consciousness and consciences about this kind of cruelty, to start changing the world’s perspective on animals in zoos.

In this battle, there are those who have done plenty of good work and I, we, all of us salute them and cheer them on. While the media has spoken about a lot of them, some unsung heroes are never known, never seen, never heard of. Like the little girl in the park the other day who was feeding a small group of stray dogs with biscuits from her tiffin box. Like the young man who fosters injured pigeons from his chawl room near the railway tracks in central Mumbai. Like the rather foolhardy gentleman who pushes his luck every day when he walks through the national park tracking leopards to study their habits, so that they do not get caught and killed by less caring humans who have poached on the cats’ territory. Like the group of schoolchildren who have been saving up to make the elephants at the zoo more comfortable, even though their efforts may never be enough to make any kind of difference.

For some reason, animals are given unfair and very short shrift from most of humanity. Organisations like PETA, Save the Tiger, World Worldlife Fund et al do their bit, but it is not in any way enough to cope with the downside of the situation. There is just too much bad stuff happening for the good stuff to be able to balance it. Along the way, new species are being discovered – they recently found 12 new kinds of frogs in India – and old ones are being wiped out – the Tasmanian Tiger, for instance, has not been spotted in years in its natural habitat and the last specimen died in captivity a while ago.

In India, a group of enterprising, enthusiastic people has done much to increase awareness of what is happening to the tiger, that great striped cat that once roamed this continent. Save the Tiger is now a movement of worthwhile proportions, being supported by television campaigns, phonathons, fund collecting drives, government diktats and public noise made by a wide cross-section of people, from schoolchildren to celebrities from the sports and film world. Is it all helping? Actually, there have been contradicting reports, but on the whole the response has been favourable and positive.

There are so many animals waiting in line for attention, from the tiger to elephants in Mumbai’s overcrowded and neglected zoo, from small insects in the forests of the northeast to rhinos that cannot find mates. But the tiger has grabbed most of the pie where focus is concerned. It makes for good photographs, suits soft toys and has so many poems and stories written about it that almost anyone can identify it without too much trouble. The best part is that saving the tiger is a cross-border effort, which could help our two countries, in fact, India and Bangladesh, work together, thereby becoming better friends and perhaps increasing the scope for partnerships.

The Sunderbans tiger, a magnificent beast, often stalking through fields and waterways of both nations, once in a rare while caught and transported to safer regions – safer for both animal and man – and celebrated as a symbol of strength, vigour and beauty, could be the glue that keeps the bond close and firm for centuries.

Maybe that is something all of us should think about!

Can we ever be ready to die?

2011-10-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, September 23, 2011)

Disaster is a part of life anywhere in the world. And as one disaster follows the other, as it will inevitably do, people learn from the first and are better prepared to face the second. Or so anyone would presume. But things are not that simple. Consider what happens in India, for instance. I am always writing about how we never seem to learn, how we fail to follow up with any degree of efficiency when we are badly hit by man or nature, and how we cannot understand what George Santayana meant when he said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We do not remember what went wrong and why, just as we cannot remember what we did when it happened and why it did not work. And when it happens again, as it will, we are not ready to deal with it.

All this sounds obscure, right? Actually, it is very simple. And it comes back to haunt me, you, all of us each time.

Consider the recent bomb blasts in Mumbai – how much have we changed since the previous blasts just a few years earlier? And then there was a bomb that went off in a crowded location in Delhi just a couple of weeks ago; people are still dying from that one. Have we learned how to prevent this sort of attack, or do we now know how to handle the consequences of not remembering? People are still dying. People are still not willing to fix themselves and thus help fix the situation. What are they doing instead? Blaming the government for not keeping them secure, for not being able to prevent such attacks, for not seeing that our country and its citizens are safe. Where does the primary responsibility for that actually lie? I would think each one of us should be alert, aware, able to keep ourselves inviolate, as far as is possible.

But we cannot do that. Not unless we, as a nation, as a people, as a culture, are willing to change our behaviour, our perceptions and our comfort levels. Consider this: Just two short weeks before the attacks on the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai in November 2008, I went in there to do some errands; my bags were thoroughly checked, my person was thoroughly checked and I was torn between indignation at the hold-up and gladness that the hotel was being so careful. The next week, I walked right in, without more than the most cursory and totally normal check. I did wonder, but without too much effort spent on the exercise. Just a few days later, all hell broke loose.

Today, no cars are allowed into the hotel porch without special reason; no one is allowed into the building itself without a thorough search. And people – even those who remember the nightmare of those three days – have already started objecting to being examined, to being stopped before they go in, to being held up for the all-important minute or so that it takes for the check.

The same sort of thing happens with natural disaster too. We all read about the tsunami of Christmas time in 2004 and its aftermath, the death toll, the number of missing, the devastation of land and families that nature brought with it. Some of the responsibility for the toll the wave took lay with man, with intemperate destruction of the shoreline, leaving it vulnerable to even the mildest attack, the lack of safety measures along a coast that could be thus destroyed, the instability of homes and the total incompetence of the authorities to deal with the situation. And then there was the great flood of 2005 in Mumbai, when the city was forced to a standstill, about 5000 people died, incalculable financial losses were incurred and innumerable homes were destroyed.

Today, we still moan about waterlogging, but we do not stop ourselves throwing garbage into the waterways and drains and clogging them. We still stay home in fear when a storm blows up, but we do not make sure that there will not be flooding through the streets of the city, there will not be delays in travel and there will not be deaths by drowning or disease.

And where it comes to earthquakes, we will never learn. True, we cannot predict when a quake will hit, but we can make sure that we do not indulge in excessive deforestation and thus make mountain slopes fragile, we do not make buildings that are earthquake proof, we do not make sure that response teams are trained and equipped to handle the movement of the earth without delay or inefficient fumbling.

From that point of view, the aftermath earthquake that struck last Sunday in Sikkim was amazingly well managed – or so it seems, perhaps because the area is not too highly populated, and getting information from there is still not the easiest task right now. That may be the cynical way of looking at it, but it is true. The 6.8 Richter earthquake has so far resulted in about 60 deaths, though another figure puts the fatalities at 98 till now. Thick fog is hampering relief and rescue operations, communications signals are not clear, if any links exist, and the terrain limits access. Landslides have caused much of the damage to life and property.

But have we learned from the previous quakes? In 2005 over 80,000 people died in northern India and Pakistan. In 2001, over 20,000 people died in Gujarat. In 1993, about 10,000 people died in Maharashtra. What comes next? That depends, I would think, on what we have learned from what has happened so far. It all depends on us…

And terror knocks on our door…again!

2011-10-07T04:01:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, September 13, 2011)

After 26/11, 2008, when ten terrorists came sneaking in to Mumbai and held hundreds of people and a whole city hostage, we promised ourselves that it would never happen again. We tightened our heartstrings, our belts and our security systems and battened down the hatches that had allowed the baddies to come sneaking into our turf. Or, at least, we promised to do so.

That it didn’t work completely, that it was not foolproof, is another story altogether. For the time being, we felt like something had been done to keep our collective future safe. Unfortunately, it all happened again, in another time, another place, another avatar. Only a few months ago, on July 13, three bombs detonated in crowded parts of Mumbai city, where there was nowhere to run to; 26 people died, about 130 were injured, some still in hospital.

Then, only a couple of days ago, on September 7, there was more death, this time in the Indian capital of New Delhi. A bomb set in a briefcase was placed just outside the High Court gate, where the crowd was thickest, where people stood waiting to collect passes to enter the hallowed precincts. In the ensuing mayhem, ten people died, at least 75 were injured; three more are now dead after serious injuries.

Who does this? Whom do we hold responsible for killing our loved ones? Who are these people who cause pain to so many, not just those who are hurt by their misdeeds? Do we call them the bad guys, the villains of the piece, the anti-heroes? Or are they just misguided folk trying to get a point across and using violence to do so just because nothing else works? What is the deal?

In the Mumbai carnage of 2008, nine out of ten terrorists were killed. The last is in jail, awaiting death. They came from a neighbouring country, which still protests any links with them. They came to cause chaos, to destabilise, to damage, to prejudice any kind of positive bond that could possibly be forming between the two countries. And to some extent they did succeed, since any bloodshed does make diplomacy stop and take a deep breath, but no permanent damage was done. The peace process will continue, overtures will be made again and yet again, and life will go on in the subcontinent, accusations, maladjustments and mania notwithstanding.

The July blasts in Mumbai, on the other hand, have no known perpetrators, at least none that the government is telling us about. Some unseen hand is directing people to come in, sneak in, tiptoe in to our cities, plant deadly devices and rain down death. Why? Who knows. Who? Who knows. How? Who knows. And what do they get from doing this? Who knows!

And this week in Delhi? Why? Who? How? Nothing is certain, but the Delhi police was sent an email just hours after the bomb went off, saying that there will be another such attack, this time likely in Ahmedabad, that little bit closer to Mumbai. Before that, two more emails were received – one said that the bomb had been planted by the HuJI or Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, a terrorist group that demanded that the death sentence of Afzal Guru, in jail now for the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building, be commuted.

The battle has been raging for years now, with everyone from human rights activists to local freedom fighters to terror groups in the fray. This particular email has been traced to Jammu and a manhunt is on. But to complicate the matter, another email was received by a local television news channel that claimed that the Indian Mujahideen was responsible for the bomb, but without any raison d’etre or details. Apparently Google has been asked to help trace this one back to its sender.

What is distressing about almost any violence is that it is not a precise, cold, simple strike. The collateral damage is huge, beyond comprehension. Innocent lives are inevitably lost – this may sound like a cliché, but there is no other sane way to describe what happens. Someone just walking past to buy an ice cream, a child chasing a ball, a woman waiting for a bus, a young man talking to his girl on the phone, a grandfather holding a balloon for his granddaughter as she ties her shoelaces…they all are blown to bits by a bomb that does not target them. They die instantly, or wait for death in a hospital bed.

And they leave behind families, friends, people who mourn even as they get on with their lives. Some of these people may decide to react, sometimes with the same violence, the same anger, the same heat, the same fanaticism.

And then they enter the cycle that never has an end…except in death.

Longing for that old-fashioned filmi fun

2011-10-07T03:52:00.000-07:00

(The Bengal Post, September 18, 2011)

Once upon a time heroes were heroes and a vamp did a little seducing. The big screen came alive with stereotypes and no one ever wondered why the bad guy was doing good things, or even if the bad guy was bad, after all. Which is what happens when I watch a movie made in Bollywood – with apologies to a stalwart named Amitabh Bachchan, who decries the use of that terribly useful term to describe an entire industry that is based in Mumbai, even though the B in Bollywood actually came from the old name of the city: Bombay. Be all that as it may, I sometimes long for the day when I knew what was going to happen next in a film, and enjoyed not just the strangely expected twist in the plot, but every cliché and predictable catchphrase that was part of the dialogue, the story and the song sequences. Today I never know who is going to do what and why, and who will run around which tree with whom but end the movie with someone else…or something like that, anyway. I miss that good, old-fashioned and totally trite progression of a film from introductory scene to the climax. And I feel huge amounts of nostalgia when I see the good guys being bad, the bad guys being heroes and the heroine wiggling and jiggling somewhere I between creating merry mayhem in the emotional well-being of men and women alike with no real reason to do so except sheer wickedness and a need to make some noise at the box office.

Thus it was, a long time ago, maybe even as far back as last year. The hero and the heroine were good people, young, carefree, happy, dealing with family, education, stress and growing up with a lovely insouciance that made me, as a viewer, as happy, carefree, ad infinitum. The closest that we have come with any degree of significance to that in recent times is a funny little film called Ajab Prem ki Gajab Kahaani, starring the charming Ranbir Kapoor and the lovely Katrina Kaif as well as a host of other people who came and went as the plot dictated and never really did much beyond being able supporters of the main leads. The two danced, they sang, they played games, they fell in love – not necessarily with each other – and eventually, after some trial, error, twists and turns, got married to – I hoped – live happily ever after. There was really no lesson presented to be learned, no moralistic sledgehammer, no cause promoted. It was a happy film, not commenting on social issues or presenting a doom and gloom scenario that reeked of reality. I laughed when I was supposed to, and I knew when that was; I also understood when I was supposed to be sad and though I may not have cried, I did see that I was not really meant to. But Ajab Prem… is a rare instance of a totally clichéd and feelgood film that did its job as well as it could be done. Since then, there have been others, from F.A.L.T.U. to Delhi Belly, with so many shades in between many of them not many in any way special, that came, made a lot of noise and left, without telling me just what was going on and why. I am left feeling sad at the vacuum.

I liked it the way it was. I liked it when Bindu or Helen or Padma Khanna or even Mumtaz, in her very young days, heaved her bosom and sang seductively to lure the men on and off screen in to watch her. While the heaving bosom was not the charm for me, the ambience of the scene as it unfolded, was. There was magic when Helen stood on the bridge holding a parasol and singing Mera naam hai Chin Chin Choo, as much enchantment as when she cavorted, insisting that Yeh mera dil, around a grim Amitabh Bachchan in Don, dressed in a white and gold cut out frock and showing off every overblown curve. And when she did her best to distract the leering Gabbar Singh with her sinuous moves in Mehbooba oh mehbooba, I brushed sand out of my eyes and waited for the action to begin, since I knew that a fight sequence after an “item song” was like toast and butter, lightning and thunder, the Internet and Google, an inevitable partnership. And what Helen did, no one else has been able to, not even the chameleonic Kareena Kapoor in the Farhan Akhtar-Shahrukh Khan version of Don, where the lady wriggled on a shag rug (no pun intended, honestly) wearing a glittery gold dress (Kareena, not the rug, of course).

There was another spell being cast alongside the music and Helen. The whole egg-chucking, bottom-bashing, water-spraying, broom wielding way of the filmi world, so wonderfully epitomised in films like Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Ishq, Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke and so many David Dhawan-Govinda productions has yielded to far more intellectual humour, as seen in Waisa Bhi Hota Hai II, Tere Bin Laden and the aforementioned Delhi Belly. There is a brand of slapstick in movies like Golmaal and its successors, Ajay Devgn’s Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, Double Dhamaal and so many other more recent films that have not rung firebells at the box office, but have done enough to make filmmakers consider more. But many of these rely on a brand of funny that is plain sly, not cleverly so, based heavily on sex and potty-jokes rather than the straight out bashed-on-the-head-with-a-balloon genre, which is a lot more fun, a lot more innocent, a lot more straightforward and a lot more watchable with a general audience.

And then there were the stars. Salman Khan kept it more or less clean, but spawned his own brand of saleable Hindi cinema, with a nice combination of self-deprecating humour, intensely muscular humour and shirtless body-beauty with a babe clinging to his arm style, which worked fabulously with the masses but somehow never gets critics happily clicking away with reviews and reports. He is not the Prem of Maine Pyaar Kiya or Hum Saath Saath Hain or even Hum Aapke Hain Kaun any more, all of whom I liked as real people. As he gets older, his stunts get madder and his fans get happier. Shahrukh Khan, on the other hand, is starting to take risks, do experiments, play with his look and plotlines and acting, even though the ‘romantic hero’ tag sticks firmly on him. Saif Ali Khan tries to do more than he started out with and has been successful in proving himself as a capable actor, but I miss that chocolate boy I liked in Yeh Dillagi, for instance. Akshay Kumar appealed more in the long-ago Dhadkan, with his glasses and preppie look, than in any of the silly films he has been part of more recently, be it the highly popular Singh is Kingg or the flop show Chandni Chowk to China. And Sunny Deol, the jingoistic, speech-yelling, Pakistani-bashing hero of Gadar has vanished into the filmi woodwork, surfacing only rarely with a not-great product and then sinking back into obscurity.

So where has the larger than life Hindi movie that I grew up with vanished to? Is life only about Salman’s pectorals and SRK’s NRI appeal? Since everything that goes around comes around, or so I am assured, I am looking forward to the good old days soon becoming the good new days again. Bollywood zindabad!

God of all things

2011-09-04T04:53:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, September 4, 2011)

August 31 was Ganesh Chaturti in India, the day when the Lord Ganesha was born. He is the universally beloved Elephant God, the child with the head of a baby elephant, the adult with the head of a fully grown tusker. Mythology has a lot of explanations for the man-animal form of this deity, but one of my favourites is a well known story, told me with a little modernising in style and language. It may not have been conventionally and politically correctly presented, but it stuck and made more sense than the way the scriptures recorded it.

This is how my version went: Shiva and Parvati were married and happily so. One day, Shiva was out hunting, while Parvati decided she needed some me-time and decided to take a bath. But since all her companions were busy with their chores, she had no one to guard the bathroom door, which did not lock properly. So she had a good scrub and used the dead skin she rubbed off herself to fashion a small boy, whom she posted outside the door while she soaked a bit in the tub. But she had not told her rather possessive husband about what she had done, so when he came back from the hunt and decided to tell his wife all about it, he was startled to find that he could not enter the bathroom. There was a small boy standing outside who would not let him go in, saying that he had orders to do so. The argument raged for a while and then Shiva, tired, sweaty and fed up, pulled out his sword and cut off the boy’s head.

That was only the beginning. When Parvati heard the uproar outside she quickly rinsed off, got dressed and stepped out of the bathroom, only to find that the child she had created from her own body, her child, as it were, was lying there dead, decapitated, and that by her own husband! There were tears and curses and ultimatums and finally Shiva promised to restore the child to life. Unfortunately, during all this drama, a large bird had picked up the child’s head and flown off with it. Parvati stormed off to her friends, leaving her husband to sort out the whole issue. Shiva, annoyed and rather desperate to find a solution and mollify his wife, sent his men in every direction to find the first baby they could. He, too, went looking. The first baby he found was an elephant, young, lost and hungry. So he cut off its head, took it back to where the child’s body was lying and attached the two. A mantra was said, some gestures were made and, lo! A new baby was created! This one had the body of a human child and the head of an elephant, but as soon as Parvati saw it, she took it as her own son. And Ganesha was born.

In India, Ganesha is considered to be the destroyer of all evil, the remover of all obstacles, the protector of all life. He is prayed to before the start of anything good and in my home state of Maharashtra and my native South India, He is especially revered, with good food and hymns. They bring Him into the city on His birthday from hundreds of miles away where he is made with high-quality clay, plaster of Paris, reverence and prayers, on trucks, bullock carts and tempos, and install him with great love in elaborately decorated pandals or pavilions that often mirror the state of the nation and people’s sentiments.

This year, Anna Hazare and his fight against corruption will be a popular theme, with cricket, Salman Khan and potholes being favourite subjects. By using these as part of the Ganpati (which is another name for Him) celebrations, the aspects of everyday life that matter to everyman are reflected, mulled over, debated and finally laughed about. Occasionally, there is even a solution, very often the local communities getting together to use funds collected during the ten-day puja (period of worship) to help sort out things.

But what is extra special about this time of year is the genuine harmony that wraps around the average Mumbaikar – if I knew more about the rest of the country, I would probably include that too! There are fewer fights for a seat on the overcrowded trains, one less argument with that supermarket checkout boy, a smile for the lady who chugs along in her new Honda in the fast lane, even the maid who comes in long after she is supposed to and holds up your day.

There will be little, if any, communal battles, and women in burkhas and men in white kurtas with skull caps will stand in line to visit the Elephant God, along with their Hindu friends and neighbours. Sweets and crunchies are exchanged along with hugs, while fervent pleas, ardent prayers and heartfelt thanks echo through the streets. It is a time for celebration, a time to speak to Lord Ganesha, a time to be at peace. It is the Ganpati festival and all should be well with our world.

Shammi Kapoor: India's own Elvis

2011-08-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, August 26, 2011)

Many years ago, when I was in graduate school in the United States, I saw my first Shammi Kapoor film. I was staying with an Indian friend and knew next to nothing about Hindi movies, stars or anything about the place called Bollywood that existed in and around my home city of Mumbai. But as I sat with my friend’s small daughter cuddled on my lap and watched this portly gentleman slide down in the snow yelling what sounded like “Yahoo!”, I caught the first spark in what eventually became a fascination with the world of Indian cinema. The word was indeed ‘Yahoo’, the snow was packed against a hillside in Kashmir and the stout man was Shammi Kapoor.

The film was Junglee, a classic black and white movie that created a special brand of history when it was released and made its hero and heroine (Saira Banu) stars. And as I started to get more familiar with the music of the hundreds of Bollywood productions that my friends knew so much about, the tunes stayed in my head, along with the many interesting bits of information I heard, read and saw about this exotic new (for me) realm.

It got better – once I started working on the Internet, creating online versions of magazines, writing content for websites and using cyberspace to talk to friends, find information and enjoy discovering new concepts and facts, Shammi Kapoor played a surprisingly non-filmi role. I learned that the star had retired many years before I saw that sliding-in-the-snow routine. He was ill with kidney trouble, underwent regular dialysis and did the occasional cameo in a film.

But, more interestingly, he had a fairly full life that had little, if any, connection with films. He was the founder and chairman of the Internet Users Community of India (IUCI) and had played a major role in setting up the Ethical Hackers Association. Best of all for his fan club, he also maintained a website dedicated to the Kapoor family.

And that perhaps is the story of a star. Born on October 21, 1931, into the first family of Hindi films, as it is often called, Shamsher Raj Kapoor was the son of Prithviraj and Ramsharni Kapoor, brother to Raj and Shashi. He spent a few years in Kolkata, where his father acted in films, and then the family moved to Bombay, as it was known then. Academics was not his forte and he preferred to start working first in his father’s company, Prithvi Theatres, and then as a junior artiste in films – he made his big screen debut as a hero in 1953, with Jeevan Jyoti, co-starring Chand Usmani.

Serious roles got him nowhere near the big time, and he was almost forced into a change of image with Nasir Hussain’s Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1959), with a young Ameeta as his heroine. Dil Deke Dekho with Asha Parekh cemented this new avatar in the minds of the audience and Shammi Kapoor was labelled a ‘star’. Tall, athletic, light-eyed and handsome, his looks made it even easier, while his wealthy playboy persona seemed true to life and won hearts all over the world. Junglee was followed by Dil Tera Diwana, Professor, China Town, Rajkumar, Kashmir Ki Kali, Janwar, Teesri Manzil, An Evening in Paris, Bramhachari, Andaz and Vidhaata.

Music played a huge part in Shammi Kapoor’s success. Most of his super hit songs came from the composers Shankar-Jaikishen or OP Nayyar, and were sung by Mohammed Rafi. They include – apart from the exuberant ‘Yahoo…Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe’, of course - Suku Suku, Ae Gulbadan, Govinda Aala Re, Deewana Hua Badal, Tumne Pukara Aur Hum Chale Aaye,Tumse Achha Kaun Hai, O Mere Sona Re, Akele Akele Kahan Jaa Rahe Ho, Aajkal Tere Mere Pyar ke Charche, Badan pe Sitare and Hain Na Bolo Bolo. We all remember those and can sing along with them.

But even as we do, we tend to close our eyes rather than watch Shammi Kapoor on the screen in so many of his films. He may have started out as a handsome, agile, gloriously ogle-able heartthrob, but soon gained a lot of weight and became lined, ungainly, unappealing. By the 1970s he had stopped acting as hero and did character roles in films.

He even directed two films – Manoranjan and Bundal Baaz, neither too successful. And earlier this year, he managed to shoot for his grand-nephew Ranbir Kapoor’s next movie, Rockstar. But by then he was fairly seriously ill with kidney failure. And early morning on August 14, he died in Mumbai.

Shammi Kapoor is an integral part of Hindi movie history. He was called the ‘Elvis of India’ and sang, danced and romanced on the big screen like few others have managed to do. For his sheer joie de vivre and the memories of friendship, movies, music and masti that his work have given me, I will always be a fan.

Book review - The Tiger's Wife

2011-08-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, August 19, 2011)

THE TIGER’S WIFE
Tea Obrecht

A book is generally the sum of its parts. There is the story, the characters, the development of the plot, the point of view, the overall coherence and, of course, the writing itself go a long way to making a book readable, buyable and, eventually successful. Once in a while, the entire package comes together beautifully, and you, as reader, will not just buy the book, but read it over and over again for the sheer pleasure of imbibing something worth owning. But sometimes a book comes along which makes sense in a strange way, for just the experience of being something different, with a story that is so unlike the norm, characters that make sense but are obviously not anyone you would know well and all in a setting that is unusual, magical, enjoyable. The writing may not be the best. The language may not be the most refined or evolved or even adult. The various parts could be disjointed and not all of a high quality. But the book does well, the critics love it and you, as reader, like it without being sure what is wrong with it, though you know there is something off-kilter. But, frankly, you don’t really care.

This is what happens with The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obrecht. The story is amazingly interesting, enchanting, casting a rarely used spell with its out-of-the-ordinary progress. It begins with the small girl-child Natalia being taken to the zoo by her grandfather. They have food for the animals, from cabbage heads for the hippos to sugar cubes for the pony that pulls the carriage, but what they really head for is the tiger cage. And, as they watch, the dustpan keeper is attacked by one of the big striped cats, his arm mauled and bleeding, a matter of shame for the man and frustration for the animal. When she grows up, Natalia becomes a doctor in the big city, like her grandfather was. All through her life – she ‘speaks’ when she is over 60 – the tiger has been a major influence on her family, somehow deeply connected to the copy of the Jungle Book that her grandfather has always kept, no matter what the circumstances.

Natalia is on her way to a seaside town orphanage somewhere in the Balkans to treat the children there when she is told that her grandfather has mysteriously passed away. The young doctor chases up the reason for his death, by going back along the path that he too while he was alive, going through the stories he had told her, the places they had been to together, the small pleasures that they had shared in the process. And along the way there are two stories that always resurface – of a tiger escaped from the zoo which prowled around the fictional village of Galina, and the ‘deathless man’ who is fated to live on in spite of whatever is done to him. The deathless man and the tiger walk side by side with Natalia’s grandfather through his life, whimsically appearing and vanishing in a complex puzzle that the reader tries to unravel as the story unfolds.

The tale has a special magic, the characters played out, the bonds strong, though lacking emotional depth and perhaps endurance, even the clichés making sense in their positions. Most of all it is the imagination of the author that carries most weight, making her well deserving of the applause that has come her way since the book was published. It is not an easy book to read, but it is well worth the effort.

We all need a hero

2011-08-23T00:15:00.000-07:00

For the past few months one small and unassuming man has been making a lot of noise all over my country, India. His name is Kisan Baburao Hazare, and he is usually known as Anna. He has a reason to make his presence felt and has much of this nation – educated and not, rich and poor, urban and rural – on his side, rooting for him.

The social activist is best known for his fight against corruption and, while his methods may be questionable, his goals are indeed noble, a cause worth doing battle for. And while a lot of my friends and others I know may support him and his way of getting heard, I certainly do not. But then, for now at least, he is a hero and all of us needs one of those every now and then, I know.

Hazare was born June 15, 1937, and does his work from a village in my home state of Maharashtra called Ralegaon Siddhi, a place he has been credited with helping to develop and structure into what is today known as a model township. As part of a family that was not very well off or highly educated, he was brought to the city by his aunt, who brought him up, educating him till the 7th grade. To bring some money into the family, he started working after that, selling flowers in central Mumbai. He prospered and brought two of his brothers to the city to work.

It is perhaps the next stage of his life that taught him much about strategy and battle – in 1962 the 25-year-old Hazare joined the army as a driver, posted near the Pakistan border at the Khem Karan sector. In an air attack on Indian bases in 1865, Hazare narrowly escaped death, but his comrades were all killed – this started him thinking about the purpose and meaning of life and death and set him on the path of reform and service of the less advantaged. A road accident in the mid-70s was the true turning point – that decided Hazare’s future; he vowed to dedicate his life to the service of humanity. He was 38.

Hazare retired from the army in 1978. Much of his work centred around the small village of Ralegaon Siddhi, where he worked on development and in fighting alcoholism. In that battle, he was unstintingly harsh. Hazare himself flogged drunk villagers and justified his actions: “Rural India is a harsh society. Doesn’t a mother administer bitter medicines to a sick child when she knows that the medicine can cure her child? The child may not like the medicine, but the mother does it only because she cares for the child. The alcoholics were punished so that their families would not be destroyed.” And the tough love seemed to pay off; he became the crusader, the saviour, the hero.

Soon Hazare’s work and its ambit had stretched to cover more than just one village and more than the issues he was already known for. He battled politicians and industry alike, laying the foundation for the Right to Information Act, among other milestones. This time, over the past few months, his aim is to wipe out a national ailment: corruption. He has proposed to the Indian government the Jan Lokpal Bill, a law to establish an ombudsman, or Lokpal, who has the power to deal with the problem of corruption in public office – from the prime minister to a less exalted minion in the corridors of government.

On April 5 this year, he decided to begin a fast unto death at the Jantar Mantar in Delhi to push the Indian government into taking action on a strong anti-corruption act. The fast ended four days later, when the government agreed to his demands, hoping to get him out of the spotlight, but Hazare’s name had already become a buzzword all over the country.

For so many reasons, the little man from a little village is now a national figure, respected, almost revered, by luminaries like social activists Medha Patkar and Arvind Kejriwal, former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, spiritual leaders Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev and Swami Agnivesh, former Indian cricketer Kapil Dev, along with countless less well-known people nation-wide. The protests continue, every now and then flaring up into mass rallies and marches, as Anna Hazare and his team find new issues to object to – the arrest of Baba Ramdev, the draft of the Lokpal Bill, something a government official said, a new sugar factory, an obscure point in the draft being considered for approval…anything that could even remotely be contentious becomes so.

Along the way, there is a lot that I cannot understand. If – as so many people call him – this ‘new Gandhi’ is really on the side of progress, why is he stopping a city like Mumbai, the commercial capital of the country, working with his rallies and protest marches? Does he realise that one day off work can mean the difference between starvation and a meal for some of the urban poor? Why are so many people, some extremely well qualified, highly educated, reputed as thinkers, see him as such a significant presence today? Are they all – are we all – so tired of the way India survives with corruption as an everyday- every moment companion to accomplishment of anything from getting a ration card to gaining admission into primary school? We are. I am.

But do I believe in Anna Hazare as the solution to all the problems faced by a modern, progressive and developing nation? No, I don’t. I would, frankly, stop all these marches, rallies, protests and find a way to keep myself free from any taint of corruption first, be it paying a cop for a traffic offence or accepting a favour for writing a story published in a newspaper. It starts with me. As an individual, I can make a difference, quietly, effectively, without having to make any noise about it, without playing a tangled game of politics in doing it, without confrontation and hordes of unwashed people gathering in a public space and creating chaos and disrupting life. To me, for me, that is where the battle can really be won: in me, with me, by me.

The freedom to be independent

2011-08-16T04:33:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, August 14, 2011)

It is the 65th year of my country’s independence on August 15, and I feel a strange sense of joy at knowing I am part of a nation that has earned its freedom. We – my grandparents’ generation actually – fought long and hard to earn that right and took huge risks, sacrificed their lives, their homes, their families to get it all. They gave it to us as a kind of birthright, something we never worked to get, something we took and still take for granted. And 64 years is a long time for anyone to learn how to be free. But what bothers me is one simple question: Have we deserved that same freedom? I wonder.

With freedom comes responsibility, maturity, ambition, ethics, honesty, reliability, accountability…so many add-ons that it gets bewildering. Freedom is not just about not needing to carry a permit to get in and out of anywhere, to be able to work and live as you may wish to or to be able to exist without persecution and prosecution for your sheer existence. It is far more than material; it has to be ethical, almost spiritual. Freedom is about giving as much as it is about taking; it speaks of a need to be a useful productive, supportive, grown-up member of a family, a community, a society, a nation.

And so I wonder, are we doing all that? Are we, in fact, capable of doing any of it? I am honestly not too sure about that one.

Consider life as it is today. We face major issues like corruption, terrorism, inefficiency, instability, poverty, backwardness and goodness knows what else, all issues that seem to have no real solution, not unless we stop, end everything and start over again. We cannot, obviously, afford to do that. We have over the past few years battled immense economic problems, recovering amazingly well from a downturn, a recession, a gradual climb back up and a volatile job market that still is not up to par in many fields.

We have battled graft in so many different forms at so many different levels, finding the corrupt in more high places than we would ever have expected, from heads of state governments and prestigious departments to chiefs of the biggest and most successful corporations. Terrorism has been less terrorising than even a year ago, but the violence has not stopped – just recently there were three bomb blasts, one rapidly following the other, in parts of Mumbai that are highly populated and thus vulnerable.

There has been environmental crisis, with oil leaking into the sea after a ship was holed and slowly sank just off the coast of my home city; another threatens even as I write this. Our roads are a mess, with the infrastructure victim to corruption and inefficiency, putting lives at risk every day in every way – people die in uncovered manholes, after skidding on badly surfaced roads, after accidents caused by potholes and rash driving. And our government…well…the less said about its functioning and organisation, the better.

So are we a bad people in a bad nation? No, not at all. We have the drive, the knowledge, the experience, the ambition and, best of all, the ability to be all that is good and positive and successful. And we are, in many pockets, in many fields, in many ways. But, as always, the bad tends to overshadow the good, working against what we actually are and highlighting what we seem to be. We are a people of God, in so many ways, a people who believe that good always triumphs. We are a people who always accept, often understand and are willing to believe, just because that is the tradition we grow up with. And we are willing to work hard, in our individual capacities, to get where we think we should be, without shortcuts, if the system permits.

Now there is the problem. Very often, the system does not permit. We get stuck in the cracks that have developed with time and negligence and, to come extent, habit. We know that, for instance, it is easy to get away with a traffic offence, especially if it is minor, like jumping light or driving without a seatbelt; all we need to do, we have seen, is pay off the cop who has stopped us and then we proceed as if nothing had happened. We know, for instance, that to get a passport, we can, if we are willing, pay a gent standing outside the passport office and thereby jump a lot of lines and shortcut a lot of procedure that would normally take longer than we like. We know, for instance, that we can get a job that we are not really best qualified for by telling the headhunters that we are related to so-and-so or you-know-who and get a salary we do not really deserve. It is all a matter of the life we know…and this, unfortunately, is it.

So whom do we blame? Ourselves or the system? Either, both, all of the above. Freedom is a flexible concept that we can easily learn to use. We should start by doing a little growing up…then we will indeed be, as they say, Indians shining!

Potholing could become an Olympic sport!

2011-08-16T04:31:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, August 7, 2011)

I was out yesterday and most of the time, trying to navigate the roads of my city, Mumbai. It was not just a time-consuming effort, given the traffic bogging up every street, but also a rather painful one. This, because at every six or so paces or so the car dipped in and out of a pothole, often unexpected, that bane of the Mumbai municipality’s infrastructural department.

There were, of course, alternatives to sitting in a comfortable automobile doing little more than checking text messages or talking gently to the driver and my co-passenger. I could have started a small business in milkshakes, adding flavour to milk and letting it froth happily in the spin, whirl and rattle of the road against the wheels. I could have started a whole range of milk products, really, churning butter in the boot, fluffing up espresso in the front seat and making cheese under the hood. But the fallout of all my mad entrepreneurial thoughts? And that long bumpy trip in the car: a severe backache, a cricked neck, stiff legs and a whacking great headache.

The main topic of discussion these days in any home from almost any socio-economic stratum is the state of the city and its various essential services. In other words, whatever affects the ordinary resident of the megalopolis, from the price of milk to the number of potholes to the collection of garbage to overall cleanliness is up there for hot debate that can include everything from curses to the government in general to vexed noises about the vegetable market that tends to accumulate garbage and thus pests and thus illness.

And along the way there will be many rude words said, many dire predictions made, many what-ifs and opinions aired. Reams of newsprint and hours of airtime will be occupied with the ramifications of the problem, and audits will be done on whether any solutions have been found and, if so, how effective they have been and for how long. But along the way, people seem to forget one simple way into and around the whole issue of civic maintenance, be it road surfaces, garbage heaps or prices of essential commodities.

The ones directly impacted are the users, the customers, but the ones almost directly responsible for the problems are, in fact, the same users, customers.

Consider my horror some years ago, when I started commuting by the local trains – those amazingly efficient (especially considering the load they carry and the conditions they need to function in) metal worms that wind their way around my city transporting millions of commuters from one place to another – and found that personal space and habits lose all importance. I sat there watching life out the train window and inside the compartment, wondering at the number of people piling in and out of the bogies at breakneck speed. There were people spitting, throwing plastic bags, pieces of paper, fruit peels and who knows what else on to the rails, children squatting on the tracks doing a happy and thorough bowel-cleansing and, alongside, women cutting vegetables and meat, vendors selling fried snacks and cotton candy, stalls hawking assorted local medicines, hairclips, T-shirts and umbrellas and so much more.

When I started driving to work in my own car, I would see men in suits leaning back in fancy, foreign-labelled, chauffeur-driven limousines casually tossing empty plastic mineral water bottles out of the window, women glittering with diamonds and immaculate manicures flicking things out of their cars – biscuit packets, magazine tags, plastic bags, even orange peels and chocolate wrappers.

And there will be the civic authorities, made responsible for the task of getting the city’s infrastructure working to par. Highly placed officials finance their luxury homes and travel jaunts abroad with bribes taken to ignore the quality of the asphalt used to pave the streets. Contractors responsible for getting the job done, be it resurfacing the roads or installing safety devices for a metro-railway will use the payments they receive to make their own lives more comfortable, compromising on the effectiveness of whatever task they are assigned, and putting so many lives at risk.

Huge budgets allocated for making my city – or, indeed, so many others all over the world – a better place to live and work in will be used to line pockets of those who hardly deserve the rather dubious honour, destroying any chance of making life better for those who provided the money by paying taxes or creating corpus funds.

The result? Backaches, headaches, miscarriages, accidents, deaths.

Roads once built and surfaced should stay that way for a few years, if not decades, able to withstand the onslaught of heavy container trucks and the lightest of footfalls from a beauty queen alike. Instead, one shower of rain and the potholes appear, reappear, and again. The sand is washed away, the bricks come bursting out and it is as if nothing has been fixed, nothing is built to last, nothing has been done to make life better, nothing changes.

Style vs substance

2011-08-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, July 29, 2011)

The Indian media has been buzzing madly with news and views on the visit of Hina Rabbani Khar to India. She landed at Delhi airport a few days ago with all the noise and fanfare that only a young and good looking woman from a traditionally male-dominated country with a history of hostility with our nation can drum up.

We the media, in various ways and various means, were waiting with anticipation and breath baited (literally) with speculation, and came up with all sorts of reasons for her appointment as foreign minister of Pakistan, known more for its restrictive Islamist attitudes towards the fairer sex rather than equality or even any degree of suffragette-like freedom.

Most believe that it is cosmetic — a token gesture to please the western world who expects sexual parity, at least to some extent. Some believe that it is due to the fact that Ms Khar comes from a very wealthy and extremely influential family, which could help the political balance in Pakistan tip in favour of those connected with that same family. And a few believe that she actually will do the nation and its rather troubled image some good, that she is a shrewd politician, a sharp operator and a very clever negotiator with carefully honed skills in observation and analysis.

And her speeches have certainly been clever and careful. She arrived in India last Tuesday to meet and talk to Indian foreign minister SM Krishna, with the optimistic statement hoping that India and Pakistan can “move forward… that these two countries have learnt lessons from history, but are not burdened by history and we can move forward as good, friendly neighbours who have a stake in each other’s future and both the countries understand their responsibilities to the region and within the region”, she said, with doubtful English but earnest intent.

And the meeting and talking was with some focus on bilateral issues, from confidence building between the two nations, to India’s concerns on terror attacks and on the Jammu and Kashmir argument (to put it mildly). Ms Khar is understood to have said to the Pakistan media that she and her government are looking forward to “pro-active, productive and result-oriented engagement” with our nation on everything that is planned for discussion.

Along the way, peace has always held centre stage. According to Ms Khar, both India and Pakistan are determined to commit to an “uninterrupted and uninterruptible peace process”, something that is often and tragically interrupted at frequent intervals by a terrorist incursion and attack on (usually) Indian soil, leaving us as a people and a nation stunned and shocked to the point that any trouble that cannot be accounted for as perpetrated by any single individual is automatically and inevitably blamed on Pakistan, its government, its government-supported militants or anything in that context.

So the meeting that Ms Khar had with the Hurriyat leaders could be a matter for concern, though the powers-that-be insist that it will have no effect on the peace process in general. According to the Dawn, “What Pakistan’s Foreign Minister and SM Krishna, her Indian counterpart, have achieved arouses hopes for a tension-free relationship between the two South Asian neighbours.” We can only keep our fingers crossed that media optimism is indeed made concrete with deed rather than merely word.

In this very sunny environment, however, there is a note of caution that needs to be sounded, clear and very loud. The media in India, whether local or international, seem to prefer seeing Ms Khar as a glamorous female presence rather than a woman of substance, one who was in India for a definite, important and very necessary process. Her star power, her fashion statement, her sunglasses…all theses became much more important than why she was actually here.

As one scathing and well-deserved editorial said, “Just how little was achieved at the summit is demonstrated by the fact that the talks themselves were a sideshow obscured by Khar’s star power. In just one day, she has become a bona fide celebrity in India, not for her diplomatic skills but for her looks, sense of style and pricey handbags.” Ms Khar’s presence was made notable for her Birkin bag, especially, which bodes well for the just-opened Hermes store in South Mumbai’s elite shopping precinct, but not happy for the diplomatic raison d’etre of her visit.

What is encouraging is that Ms Khar herself is not especially happy with her positioning as a ‘fashion icon’. She is reported to have been quite annoyed at the coverage in the press for her style and attitude, saying that “You see paparazzi are everywhere. Besides, you (media) should not do such acts.” And thereafter she refused to answer any more questions. So is she serious about her diplomatic intent doubted during her visit to India? We give her the benefit of the doubt, but wonder, especially since she does not have the experience that a diplomat ideally needs for this delicate job. But the Wall Street Journal said it all, with “From her blue tunic pants ensemble to her Roberto Cavalli shades, everything grabbed Indian eyeballs, with media coverage of her accessories practically overshadowing the India-Pakistan dialogue….”

And at the end of it all, the Hermes Birkin bag grabbed more headlines with the general public than Ms Khar did as foreign minister of Pakistan. And that, amazingly, amusingly, is how that cookie crumbled.

Living with virtuality

2011-07-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

(The Hindu Sunday Magazine, July 24, 2011)

With his latest show on in London, artist Baiju Parthan reflects on how his exploration of mythology and technology contributes to his art.

He once floated through the halls of a media house, his glasses glinting with an almost-childlike glee as he saw the world from a different perspective. Baiju Parthan drew, he said mildly. From his prolific pen and fertile mind came illustrations that seemed otherworldly, often surreal, bizarre, from a reality that was not easy to visualise, leave alone comprehend; until suddenly, startlingly, it all came together brilliantly. And then he vanished, as suddenly, emerging anew as an artist with the same view of his world, his art selling like the proverbial hotcakes; his image as an artist soaring, albeit in the same gentle, detached, off-earthly way that he always seemed to have around him.

Tell him this and he will laugh, still gently, vaguely embarrassed. He lives in a world that to him is real, though perhaps not always practical, and he sees his art and his former job in the same light.

“I haven't categorised it as ‘practical', but respond to a kind of feedback from the condition I live in. At one point in time I needed to survive, but those conditions changed when the job became non-essential. I am not saying that I did not have that idealistic notion when I was a student, that art was art and life were separate and that one should not sell art, etc., but I started looking at it differently. When you are a student you are full of idealism and when you are out of college, you are full of realism. Unless, of course, your tummy is full, you can't produce art!”

Learning something new
Study is a fact of life for Parthan, even today, ‘established' as he is as a reputed artist. But to call him an ‘intellectual', as many do, makes him blush. “The intellectual side was nurtured when I was a student; I kept on studying, enrolled for distance learning courses. It is a personal quirk of mine; I believe that as long as you keep learning something new, you feel young and hopeful. But I do not think I am an ‘intellectual' in the sense of someone who is possessed with the notion of ideas. I am interested in knowledge.” And he is also passionate about science, technology and the realm that computers have opened up to him. “I work essentially with 3D graphics directly linked with animation and virtual reality. I am now learning a bit of programming with Python, a scripted language used in 3D procedural animation.”

This kind of not-all-there air hides a very sharp mind that is open and absorbing. And that has come from his youth, reveals Parthan, who is originally from Kerala but studied art in Goa. “I came from a very Marxian background with extremely well defined ideas to conform to social norms. I met this group of people that were the opposite and were much happier and for the first time I realised that I had a choice. This changed me. I was exposed to a lot of not-so-mainstream literature that was mind-bending and loosened up my ideas of the world. I did get very interested in anthropological studies, sculpture, mythology, all adding to my artistic growth.” And he created his own reality in the process. As Parthan says, “Reality is what you make of it; it is up to you to extract meaning from it, depending on the peculiarities of your perceptual framework. You see the world depending on who you are and what you are. My whole idea of art itself got shaken up, almost 30 years ago. We were taught Western art history, as part of the curriculum; I was quite disillusioned that you had to be of British or Western origin to be an artist of substance. That was when I started becoming realist and earned a living.”

From there on, it was all about exploration for Parthan. “At some point I got deeply involved in philosophy: the definition of the self in the western and eastern modes of thinking. The western self is self-aware and separated from what is around to become what you are; the eastern is more an inclusion that makes you what you are. The eastern self is also more inclined towards metaphysical thinking, while the western sees cause and effect. The way the self is organized defines how you make art.” His own quest is something to do with knowledge “Every new piece of knowledge, once imbibed, can never be undone. I try and transform myself through learning…how far you can extend yourself into yourself, your immediate family, the community, the nation. I have lived in a personal bubble, totally involved with my own pursuits ... job, art, whatever. One blocks out the environment to do what one is doing. At some point I decided that maybe I was being unfair to the rest of my life.”

Symbiotic
His interest in technology, married to his passion for mythology is reflected in his art. Parthan sees them as symbiotic. “I think technology and mythology feed off each other. I am always hunting for metaphors that can be translated into symbols used in art. I studied mythology and got a chance to pit different systems against each other and find motifs like the hero myth, creation, etc. I am a hardcore science fiction junkie – that is where the two meet for me. Metaphysical becomes science fiction – Matrix is essentially the hero myth in a cyberpunk environment! You start finding parallels in these worlds.” All narratives are indirectly quests of some kind. I enjoy the whole aspect of technology because it shifts perceptions, makes us extend our own selves in newer ways into the environment we live in.”

The Show
Dislocation: Milljunction Part II @ Aicon Gallery, London, July 15 – August 20, 2011.

Baiju Parthan's new show at the Aicon Gallery in London is a solo, Dislocation: Milljunction Part II, which includes painting, photography, video and lenticular prints. Different styles of painting coexist within a single frame in some works, while in others, there seems to be a time-space continuum, with two different realities working together. There is a mirror effect in some; in others, computer code races vertically. Which world are you in, as a viewer? Are you in today or a time that is long past, that may not actually have existed? And should you be joyous, maddened, angered or just plain confused? That depends on you. Parthan just handles the controls in a subtle, clever, almost disturbing manner.

The artist explains: “This is actually part two of my solo, Mill Junction, held in New York in March, 2010. It was originally planned as a dual location show simultaneously opening in two venues of the Aicon Gallery, but I couldn't come up with the required number of works at the time. Hence the slightly modified title - Displacement- Mill Junction 2. It is about 'Bombay/Mumbai' as a city that exists in retrospect, solely as memory or recollection. It is also about how these memories get erased or modified through technological and social change.” Parthan uses the city's iconic presences to describe the vestiges of a fast-changing cityscape. “The most coherent aspect of Bombay is the mill area – there's really no coherence otherwise through the city, since so many people live so many lives. In all Bollywood movies, the early black and white ones especially, the mill and the worker is so prominent. I haven't lived here during that time, but the vestiges of that reality still exist, seen in the symbols and motifs strewn around. As we move forward in time, the motifs vanish gradually – the mills become towers, the taxis give way to cars. I am trying to relate to them more personally, making a point of view.”

The show has “paintings as well as modified photographs or photoworks, a combination of photographs and 3D graphics elements. The paintings form a series of ‘soft graffiti' and are derived from photographic references. The paintings are intentionally defaced with over-painted ASCII computer code - today the (digital) photograph is actually a document made up of ASCII code which is parsed/translated into the image by the computer.” Three photo-works titled Lunch Break present the city environment from the vantage point of someone engaged in a First Person Shooter game (FPS computer games), an oblique reference to the vandalism the city is often subjected to by some political party or the other. Two large photoworks Titled Chorus and Monument are lenticular prints that create a virtual 3D-like space.

According to Parthan, “The show is also about the softening of our reality experience as information/digital technology and economy conquers every domain of human activity. Probably this is the first time in our intellectual history that we have two categories of reality overlapping each other – virtual and real - we have augmented our reality with virtuality.” But the virtual transactions that we do, from paying bills to shopping to social networking, which happen away from hard-edged physical reality, soften the experience of everyday reality.

The new Iron Lady comes to tea

2011-07-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, July 22, 2011)

She came, she saw, she spoke and she conquered a few sceptics with her neat logic and undoubted enthusiasm. But Hillary Clinton’s main strength is perhaps her genuine interest in my country, India. She was here earlier this week, speaking of many issues that concerned not only India and the United States as friends and political allies, such as they are, but the subcontinent as a whole and its people in general. While the eyes of the world were fixed on her clothes, her hair, her mien and her handshakes, we looked into what she was saying and wondered whether it was more eyewash than concrete plans to get things moving, to make this part of the world a safer place to live in, to change certain realities that, for the world, are not exactly positive and progressive.

Clinton’s speech wherever she went focussed on her “vision for the 21st century” and the desire of the United States to “forge multi-faceted ties with India”. Her reason: “We understand that much of the history of the 21st century will be written in Asia…and that much of the future of Asia will be shaped by decisions not just by the Indian government but by governments across India and by the 1.3 billion people who live in this country,” according to her and so, presumably, her government. Even as China is a nation that has perhaps the strongest and more enduring ties with the United States, a fact that has been proven again and again through time, we found – as we have known for a while – that the American politic looks at us to be a “steward” in the region, a presence that will set the standards and the rules for the behaviour of governments across this part of the world. And the reason for this is fairly simple, one that we well recognise and accept as fact: India is, after all, the largest country in the subcontinent and can channel that power into being the most influential. If we do things right, that is.

But one aspect of existence in the region is of concern now, has been for a while and will remain so, until it is dealt with in a more effective and permanent manner: counter-terrorism. This was the prime focus this time, since Mumbai became the victim of terrorism once again just a few days ago, when three bombs exploded in the most crowded parts of the city, one quickly after the other…and then the third. The United States, in a message and via Clinton, has once again pledged its full support to Indian efforts to deal with terrorist threats and with security to prevent such activities, and has also promised to stress the point with Pakistan – often the first suspect in any terror events on Indian soil – in its drive to ‘clean up’ the region. In this direction, Clinton has suggested that India should be more proactive and strong in its responses to any threats and actions that jeopardise the security of the subcontinent.

As she put it, “India’s leadership has the potential to positively shape the future of the Asia-Pacific… and we encourage you not just to look east, but continue to engage and act east as well,” and play its role as an ally of the United States in regional meets such as ASEAN and the East Asia Summit planned for later this year. As she said, “We are betting that India’s vibrant pluralistic society will inspire others to follow a similar path of tolerance. We are making this bet not out of blind faith but because we have watched your progress with great admiration.”

On the whole, Clinton’s visit to my country was seen as a positive one, full of promise for the future and for increased interactions and cooperation between India and the United States, And she left us with three key agreements: an “end-use monitoring” deal that will give the United States the ability and freedom to track arms supplies to India to ensure that there is no further trade in these weapons to third and perhaps hostile elements. The technical-safeguards agreement is set to give India the capability of launching non-commercial satellites containing American components, in conjunction with a science and technology cooperation agreement. And there will be, as there tends to be, a strategic dialogue on a whole range of issues – from education to climate change, terrorism to nuclear non-proliferation.

All this sounds great, especially in the light of the current political situation and the goal that India has of earning a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. But who gets the better deal in this set of bargains? It sounds as if the United States is giving more than it is getting, but that country has not achieved its power and position in the world political scenario by being altruistic. Somewhere along the way, we have to be sure that we have not got hold of the short end of the stick and that we are indeed the power that Hillary Clinton has told us we are. And, if we are, we need to be sure that we know how to use it, be truly powerful, without abusing what we are and what we can be…

Blood on the streets, again

2011-07-16T02:04:00.001-07:00

(bdnews24.com, July 15, 2011)

It seems to be a never-ending story. Back in 1993, about 18 years ago, a series of bombs went off across the city of Mumbai – or Bombay, as it still was then. I was in the city then, doing a little shopping very close to the Stock Exchange building, where the blast tore through the side of the fairly new tower. Not too far away, another bomb went off, blowing a hole into the base of the Air India building, a South Mumbai landmark and part of what is considered among the most expensive real estate in the world. In quick succession, there were more bombs and more deaths – near the Passport Office, near a gas station, at a hotel, in a crowded market. In all, 13 bombs went off. When the carnage was over, the bodies were counted. About 700 people were hurt, some very seriously; about 250 people died.

A few years later, it seemed to be happening again. Between 1997 and 2003, there were 9 reported bomb blasts, with about 29 people dead and 199 injured. Par for the course, some would say, and certainly far fewer than the number killed or hurt in everyday accidents, illness or criminal acts. And then came August 2003, when twin blasts echoed through the mean streets of my city, leaving 50 dead and 150, at least, badly hurt. About three years later, seven bombs went off in local trains, the city’s commuter network, injuring 890 and killing 181. This was in 2006.

In 2008, November 26, something happened that shook not just the city, but the world. Terrorists attacked Mumbai, choosing crowded locations to kill and shock; the difference: this time, the targets were elitist enclaves too, two multi-star hotels – the Taj Mahal and the Trident – as well as the main railway station, our historic Victoria Terminus, now known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. At the end of the three days that the attack lasted, 166 had died, over 300 were injured.

And now it is as if those black days have come back. Two days ago, on July 13, three bombs went off in my city. The first, at 6:45 pm, blew up at the very crowded Zaveri Bazaar, in the heart of the diamond market. The second, at 6:46 pm, blasted into the evening crowds at Opera House, just outside the main diamond export centre. The third, at 7:05 pm, occurred at the Kabutar Khana in Dadar, near a key railway terminus.

The sites were well chosen – there would be people milling, pushing and shoving to get to their trains or buses to go home, not really noticing anyone who did not belong, who was acting in any way unusually, who carried a high-intensity explosive designed to destroy. When the sound of the pouring rain could be heard again, before the sounds of pain and death echoed through the blood-soaked streets, 18 people had died; 131 were being treated for injuries, some life-threatening. No one had seen it coming; there were no warnings at all, the government insists. Nothing could have been done.

But there is something that could be done, at least now. While various government bodies, parties and politicians debate the who, where, why, what and how of the whole nightmare, we are citizens of India’s commercial capital – and we as citizens of the country and the world, in general – can do something to make ourselves and our lives and loves safer. To start with, for the moment, we can all stop blaming each other and the authorities and deal with the situation as it is now, as people have so valiantly been doing ever since that first drop of blood spattered on the ground. We can all stop pointing fingers at terrorist groups – be it Al-Quaeda, Lashkar-e-taiba, Indian Mujahideen, whatever, whoever – and at the government that we think is not doing enough, and take a good hard look at what we may be doing wrong.

Hang on, I am not saying that we are to blame. All I am saying is that we are not helping any by playing the blame game and shoving responsibility on to other people. We need to look at what we are doing – or not, really – to keep ourselves, our surroundings and our city (or cities) safe. We still pack a lot into very little where space is concerned; true, we need to, but there is a neat and clean and SAFE way to do that, too, where there are escape routes, where anything untoward would be noticed, where clutter is not a way of life, but a temporary inconvenience that does, indeed, stay strictly temporary and is cleared out within minutes or at least hours.

We need, regrettably, to be a little less accepting of strangers and what they are doing, not just in the community, or the city as a whole, but as a nation, making sure that those who want access to our world are worthy of existing in it.

There is so much more that we can do, but so little that we actually do. But we need to learn to do it, as much as I need to learn to do it, soon, before the next bomb goes off in this city that is my home.

Singing on the rain

2011-07-11T01:12:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, July 8, 2011)

The monsoon has just revived in Mumbai after a few weeks of muggy weather and people are celebrating. Yes, there are problems with flooded roads, stalled trains, water logging, slugs and worms, fungus, damp clothes, smelly carpets and much more, but it is that time of year when the temperatures suddenly and pleasurably drop after too long being too high, the earth and air smell fresh and clean and the water is cool and sweet. And even as the average Mumbaikar complains about the rain and says many rude words at having to travel to work in the wet, he or she will almost always start humming one or the other of the many songs that are associated with this time of year. And almost all of them will be from Bollywood productions.

Even I, who do not watch movies very often but run a film website with my team, have been heard bursting into song when the rain is coming down, preferably outside my window and not on my head. And when there is rain, when there is song, the two together will invariably spell romance, with a capital ‘R’, the kind that needs an umbrella built for two, the kind that is about chai and pakoras, the kind that doesn’t really need a significant other but works with one too.

Sometimes the rain reminds me of romance classic style. Like in Shri 420, when Nargis and Raj Kapoor sang Pyar hua ikrar hua hai. It is considered to be iconic of the genre, with two rain-washed faces gazing lovingly at each other under a large black umbrella. The couple under the shelter are soaking wet, but don’t seem to notice, and the rumoured real-life love story of the leading lady and gentleman (in those days they were, I am told!) made the scene even more romantic.

In contrast was the cutely funny ditty from Kishore Kumar’s Chalti ka Naam Gaadi, with the delectable Madhubala. As he sings, softly at first, then louder, Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi si, I never fail to smile, in empathy, in amusement, in some degree of wistful wishful thinking. There is such fun in the lyrics and such liveliness in the tune, and such a happy sound when the two come together to create one unforgettable moment!

More elaborate harmony and difficult vocals come with Rimjhim gire saawan, from Manzil. It comes in two versions, for male and female voice, and both are superb. The first, with Kishore Kumar, shows off the strength, the power, the force of the rain pounding down on the ground, on roofs, on bare heads, while the softer feminine version is more soulful, plaintive, gentle, with Lata Mangeshkar evoking visions of giggling girls, hot tea pouring into a cup, rain drizzling on flowers, the fresh wetness of grass tickling bare feet.

Lagaan had a more contemporary take on this, as the villagers wait for the long-delayed rain to give them and their fields and wells some respite from the heat and drought. As Aamir Khan and Gracy Singh join the rest of the community to sing Ghanan ghanan ghir ghir aye badara, in an AR Rahman composition, you can almost hear the rain rattling down on a wooden roof, pattering into an almost-empty well, drenching the cows and village folk alike as it soaks quickly into arid ground.

And then there is the seduction of the rain, a gentle, lazy, swaying kind of rhythm that lulls frazzled minds and nerves into soft lethargy. In Bheegi bheegi raaton main, from Ajnabee, Zeenat Aman manages to seduce Rajesh Khanna and everyone watching her – or even just listening to the song – with the gorgeous lyrics: Bheegi bheegi raaton main, meethi meethi baaton main aisi barsaaton main kaisa lagta hai? (in the rain-soaked nights, with sweet words and the monsoon season, how do you feel?). More seduction comes in the shape of a sexy Sridevi singing Kaate nahin katte in Mr India, with a mesmerised Anil Kapoor keeping her company, though invisibly as the object of his adoration sings Lo aaj main kehti hoon…I love you (Listen, I will say it today…I love you!)

But there are so many different ways to play in the rain, some of them a lot more energetic and young, maybe not even romantic, but great fun. In the Aamir Khan-Sonali Bendre starrer Sarfarosh, they sing to each other, Jo haal dil ka idhar ho raha hai (The condition of the heart that is happening here…), there is love, romance, seduction, fun, but all in a joking, jesting, teasing way, with a driving beat and very western tune. And Kareena Kapoor danced in the pouring rain to first try and seduce a rather staid Rahul Bose and then in sheer joy of being washed clean by the rain in Chameli, singing Beheta hai mann kahin, kahaan jaante nahin, koyi rokle yahin..Bhaage re mann kahin, in her character as a prostitute.

Of course, no writing on fun-filmi-fabulous rain songs would be complete without speaking of one that is not from Bollywood, but has that contemporary beat and a beautiful voice backing it – Shubha Mudgal’s Ab ke saawan aise barse…that one could inspire anyone to go running out to dance in the rain. Even me!

Book review

2011-07-02T04:03:00.000-07:00

(The Hindu Magazine, June 18, 2011)

The Konkani Saraswat Cookbook by Asha S Philar

The perfect cookbook is easy to use. The perfect cookbook has lovely pictures that whet the appetite and culinary ambition, inspiring people to try the recipes in it. The perfect cookbook is made of the right paper; that is easy to write on, easy to read even through various identifiable and anonymous stains of spices, oils and the occasional singed hole. And the perfect cookbook has pages that stay open to a page; that can be turned with the handle of a ladle, wiped clean of spilled stock or coconut milk and put away without any worries that a damp volume could cause a whole shelf of books to catch fungus. Along the way, the perfect cookbook makes cooking simple, fun and not too stressful, with delicious results.

Unfortunately, Indian food being the genre it is, and publishers of Indian cookbooks interested more in a mass buyer base and low prices than the contents, very few Indian cookbooks handle any of the above-mentioned issues to any degree of satisfaction, making them in general very difficult to like...for me, at least.

This one has its moments, though not enough. It is exciting because the food is usually found in a home kitchen rather than a public eating space, and the recipes may vary from kitchen to kitchen, cook to cook, eater to eater. As with any recipe book speaking of food that is not familiar or comfortably classifiable, everything is subjective and a little tinkering works better than following every instruction faithfully. Fortunately, the organisation of the recipes was immaculate; from breakfast to festival menus, food segued smoothly through the day...and the year.

Once the aspiring cook (myself) of Konkani-Saraswat cuisine untangled the minor mysteries involved — since here usli equals upma, both of which are rather different in the Tam-Bram repertoire, some translation and de-confusing had to be done — and got past the phonetically graphic imagery of Mashinga Saang Ghalnu Kholmbo, it was fun to work on. Goli Baje, which sounded like a song from a Hindi movie, was a fritter that developed interesting shapes in the hot oil and tastes fabulous with a more western yoghurt dip. Gradually, things got more familiar with the Ravey Unde earning demands for more, the level of the Tomato Jam falling faster than manna from heaven and the Batate ‘High Jump' causing its fan club to leap up to catch the last, slightly crispy morsel of sautéed potato. The seafood, for which the Konkan region and the Saraswat kitchen are so well reputed, were highly spiced, redolent with the sweetness of grated coconut or coconut milk and ideal with thick buttery roti or a heap of fresh, hot, ghee-laden rice.

Does this book meet all the requirements for a perfect cookbook? No, but for its sheer ‘home food' value, for the little notes that the writer adds as helpful hints at the end of some recipes, for the effort and the involvement that has gone into it, the book is a treasure worth owning. Also, perhaps by the end of it, the user can figure out just what Konkani-Saraswat life is all about!

Book review

2011-07-02T03:57:00.000-07:00

(Times of India Crest Edition, July 2, 2011)

SUMMER AND THE CITY by Candace Bushnell

Once upon a time there was a naïve, simple, small town girl called Carrie Bradshaw. She made friends, she lost them and, once in a rare while, found them again. But along the way, with each person that she met, she grew up a little, learned a little more about life and living it and found friends that could, fingers crossed, be forever. When she moved to the Big Apple, she was initially swept away by the glitz and glamour of New York City. But again, that growing up thing happened and she found herself in a place that she, over time, graduated to calling her own.

The Carrie Diaries told that story. This one takes up where the other left off – Carrie finds herself in her new friend Samantha’s apartment, the plan she was supposed to take sliding right off track and out of her mind. The older woman was kind, but in a sort of absent-minded though affectionate manner, and took Carrie to all sorts of interesting parties without keeping tabs on her or behaving in any way like an inhibiting adult. Samantha made the introductions, Carrie could do what she wanted with them.

A dream existence for any young person who wanted to live the glamorous life. But is that what college in the big, bad city was all about? Parties, getting drunk, making out, meeting famous people? Carrie was there to study, to become a writer to find herself and hone her skills. She did do a little more playing around than she had planned to, but found her groove soon enough and settled into making a career of her writing.

Along the way, she met some fascinating men. She liked one, but found that she was not important enough in his life. She was sought after by others, but did not want them to be important to her life. How she finds the balance between love and living, life and work, friends, family and professional contacts is what the books is all about.

Writing done with a happy, fluffy kind of tone, knowing itself not to be a serious, significant piece of literature is perhaps what makes the book work, as a quick read, one bought for a flight and perhaps left on the plane. There are insider jokes and insights right through, and a solid awareness that this is embroidery on an American television icon – the best-selling, high TRP Sex and the City series. And take it all with a huge pinch of salt, preferably the designer kind, and sip on a Manhattan while you read…

Getting away with murder

2011-07-02T02:26:00.001-07:00

(bdnews24.com, July 1, 2001)

Grabbing headlines and TV slots in India lately, is one big deal of a case: murder. About three years ago, on May 7, 2008, a young man called Neeraj Grover was brutally killed by an ex-navy officer called Emile Jerome Mathew in the apartment of a Kannada actress called Maria Susairaj. Mathew and Susairaj were in a relationship, but she also had a ‘sleeping partnership’ with Grover, a producer with a private television channel. The story was almost farcical, but had tragic consequences.

As far as it can be reconstructed, this is how the morning went: Grover was at Susairaj’s apartment early that morning. Unfortunately for him, his presence could not be put down to his being a colleague or a reporter or even an electrician or deliver man, since he was naked. Susairaj’s regular boyfriend, Mathew dropped in without warning and lost his temper at seeing an unclad man in the flat. In a fit of passion, he stabbed Grover with a kitchen knife. Grover collapsed and died soon after.

But there is more to the story. First, Mathew had heard Grover’s voice in the background the evening before, when he called Susairaj on the phone. The woman told her boyfriend that Grover was merely helping her move into her new apartment, but Mathew warned her not to let the ‘friend’ stay overnight. The anger in his mind over the new man in his lady love’s life had already been ignited.

Second, and worst of all, once the murder had been committed, Mathew and Susairaj apparently had sex, with the body in the same room, before dismembering the corpse and then packing it in plastic before getting rid of it. And the disposal was as macabre – they wrapped each part of the cut-up body in garbage bags that they went out to buy, then stuffed the bags into the boot of a borrowed car, took it to a wooded area on the outskirts of Mumbai, poured liquid fuel on the remains and set fire to the heap.

Then came the great cover-up. They reported Grover missing, they made up stories about knowing him or not, they lied at every corner and with every word they spoke.

And, after all that, they got caught. Susairaj has spent the last three years in jail. So has Mathew. And while they have done their time, the case has been fought in court, all the evidence presented and debated.

Yesterday, the verdict was pronounced. And Mumbai is stunned. Maria Susairaj was sentenced to three years in jail for attempting to conceal evidence, while Emile Jerome Mathew was given ten years in jail for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and attempting to conceal evidence.

This means that Susairaj will walk free, having already served that term, while Mathew has just seven years to go, probably getting out earlier for good behaviour, if he manages that. Grover’s parents are shocked and demand that the case be reopened.

His father has told the press: “We were expecting death sentence for both Maria and Jerome. I think the investigating agency has not probed the case properly. I am not going to sit quiet. I will spend every single penny of mine to get Neeraj’s killers the death sentence.”

It is not just Mumbai and the Grover family, but the judiciary that is horrified by this sentence. Most judges and lawyers asked their opinion believe that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice.

The public, of course, has been voicing their collective protest on the matter and its outcome. Most want to know how such a blatant and horrific murder could be excused so easily. Is it that easy to kill and get away with it, with no consequences? That is the questions many are asking.

The same kind of question was asked some years ago, when a young model called Jessica Lal was shot and killed by Manu Sharma when she refused to serve him another drink. The murder happened in front of a huge party of people well known in the Delhi circuit, but Sharma managed to walk free for many years… until the power of public opinion went to work and managed to get the case reopened, re-heard, re-judged and the murderer re-accused.

Justice did get served in that instance, with the killer being handed a life sentence. It took years of fighting by the media, by Jessica’s sister and by those who believed that the law should be upheld honourably and fairly, for an unnatural death to be appropriately dealt with.

Is that what needs to happen in this case, when a young man’s fault was to be enamoured of a pretty young woman? And will any murder, done for passion, be considered so trivial a pursuit that the killer can walk free without too much trouble? Is this what justice is all about?

Is anyone listening?

The female of the species

2011-06-25T02:56:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, June 24, 2011)

Many years ago, my parents decided it was time to have a child and went about the job with one aim in mind: they wanted a daughter. They got one. And they were happy. But this not always the case in this country that I call home: India.

A long time ago, or so we were taught in school, most Indian families wanted boy-children, for various reasons, some religious, some financial, some a matter of prestige and power. Most of all, a boy was necessary in a Hindu family, since only men were considered suitable to light the funeral pyre of the male head of the family when he died.

To make things worse, the girl child had to be married off at the appropriate age and to get that done, a dowry had to be provided; which meant extra expenditure for the family. Put all this together and it is understandable that a female infant was not preferred by many couples. But we would all expect that attitude to change with time, progress, education and better socio-economic status. In fact, the change has happened, though not for the better.

According to the recently released results of the census in India (2011), the sex ratio, instead of improving in favour of females, has become even worse. The number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group 0-6 over the last ten years is now 914, down 13 points. Any plans to decrease or prevent female foeticide and infanticide are, the authorities admit, not working well at all.

Astonishingly, these figures reflect not just in what most would consider ‘backward’ areas, but in urban, educated populations as well. Sex determination, though made illegal and punishable by law, is still being practiced in the worst way possible, sometimes with scores of female foetuses being aborted by clinics of doubtful repute, the remains found dumped in gutters or septic tanks to rot or be eaten by vermin.

Way back in 1990 reputed economist Amartya Sen spoke of the “missing women of Asia” when he tried to understand why 50 million women in China and 100 million in India were just not there any more. He explained that on a global level, at birth there are many more boys than girls; women last longer and survive better, since they are hardier. This is the case even in sub-Saharan Africa, devastated as it often is by natural calamity and war.

However, in much of Asia, especially India and China, the numbers are reversed and there are far more boys than girls, men outnumber women significantly. As Sen says, “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.” He believes the reason to be, simply and emphatically, a matter of gender discrimination, something that could possibly be corrected with a suitable environment of employment, literacy and economic rights, including property rights.

But I, as a woman, a girl child, empowered, educated, literate, employed, economically stable, with a right to family property, wonder about that one. I have seen my own peers, classmates in college and colleagues at work worry that the child they carry within themselves as young to-be mothers could be female. I have even heard, much to my amazement and a certain incredulous horror, a close friend telling me with great relief that she was glad that her baby had been a son, or else life would have been far more difficult.

To make the situation even more confusing and, to me, irksome – to say the least – I read a CNN report recently that told me this: “If Americans could have only one child, they would prefer that it be a boy rather than a girl, by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin”. This, the report says, is not too much different from “what Gallup measured in 1941, when Americans preferred a boy to a girl by a 38 percent to 24 percent margin”. And this, in what considered itself to be the most highly developed nation in the world.

But Bangladesh seems to be in a rather more enlightened zone with reference to this particular subject. According to reports, the country’s population is more balanced apropos the male-female ratio, at about 0.93 (male to female) in the adult age-group.

What bothers me is one simple fact – for a nation that reveres the female deity, Shakti, in Her various forms and powers, India is abysmally ignorant in its behaviour towards women and its overall attitude to the girl child. The female cannot stay the weaker sex, as she is generally thought to be, and needs to be given her rightful place in society, in the family, in the ethos of the people.

We as a nation seem to forget one small but very important fact – if there were no women, there would be no men!

MF Husain...RIP

2011-06-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

(Written for the Hindu, but used rather differently there....)

So much has been said and written about the artist often called the ‘Picasso of India’. Many speak of the sadness that MF Husain felt at being exiled from the land that was his home and most feel that he would have wanted to end his life in India. But the ‘barefoot painter’, as he is known, died in London, with friends and family in attendance, leaving behind a host of memories and an enormous body of work. That work, and the aura of the man himself, will live for ever. As artist Anjolie Ela Menon has said, “I consider him sort of immortal in my mind – even if he is not physically there, his whole body of work stands.”
Artists old and young see him as an icon, almost a God, albeit a very human one, perhaps even something that he himself may have painted. Jitish Kallat intellectualises his impression of Husain: “He forged a language very early on, in the decades immediately after Independence,, that in some ways merged the tenor and texture of an emergent India with the language of modern Europeanism – he found a novel middle ground with his typically agile and intuitive manner.” To Kallat, “He will always be seen as a visionary cultural figure, for the entire transformative effect he has had on the landscape of contemporary Indian art and for expanding its circumference to where we have it today.” And doom and gloom was not the artist’s story once he fled the country. “He dodged the tragedy of his exile and the legal brouhaha through humour, a kind of insightful equanimity,” and his fantastic artistic legacy is more relevant than the hate felt by the few who objected to some of his works so many years ago.

The lawsuits, the exile, the analysis – all this did not detract from the very warm and funny human being called Maqbook Fida Husain. Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Gallery remembers, “Whenever I was in Dubai or London I would call and meet with him – on one occasion I was going to visit some gallery and he immediately put his Jaguar and driver at my disposal! In the morning of the same day he invited me over to tea and in the backyard he had a proper Bedouin tent set up, fully furnished, tent style, and served me chai from a samovar. And he told me that if I had come in the evening, he would have arranged for a belly dancer!” He was always great fun, Mehra says fondly, “His joie de vivre was amazing – i use to tell him he was always my ideal person. He had time for everyone actually, no matter who they were, and the capacity to take whatever he found in anyone.” And exile was not that big a deal, for Husain, she believes. “I think he was a man who lived practically out of the boot of his car – it held audio cassettes, CDs, a quilt, books and brochures, even an Armani suit! He could sleep anywhere, travel at short notice; he carried his paintbrush and some paints and could set up a studio anywhere. He lived in his head – he did have his favourite restaurants and tea stalls, but that we all have terms of endearments. He was having a ball living between continents.”

Art collector Ashwini Kakkar owns six Husains, last count. “My favourite work is Bull Leading a Procession – it never had a formal name, but it is from the Bull series and is almost like a Ganpati procession, with people dancing and singing, except that the Ganpati head is replaced by a bull-head.” And Kakkar has a favourite memory to share of the “man with a very large heart”, one that has him laughing as he tells it: “One day I was driving out of my office in Mumbai and saw this man walking along barefoot - it was so hot, the peak of summer and the road must have been burning – I offered him a lift. He was going to Regal cinema. We chatted in the car and when he got off, he said ‘You send your car to me tomorrow and I will paint the whole thing for you!’ It was a brand new white Fiat and I completely chickened out – to this day I regret not having sent my car to him!”

There are some who may never have spoken to Husain, but revere him. Artist Sudarshan Shetty explains that “I never met him formally, I only saw him a few times. The first time I really saw his work was when I was in art school, in a book published in the ’80s by Abrams. I think his work in the ’50s and ’60,s was truly marvellous. Moreover, I was always fascinated by the distinction that he was able to create between the artist and his persona.”

There will always be life after death, in a legacy that lives forever. After all, that was the way Maqbool Fida Husain would have painted it!

Killing the story

2011-06-20T02:00:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, June 17, 2011)

Over the past few days in India, all media headlines have been focused on one issue – the killing of crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, in the daytime, in well-populated Mumbai city. The story is tragically simple – Dey was riding his motorbike, on his way home to his wife, when four other bikes veered around him. He was shot a number of times before the bikers sped off. He died of his wounds before he could be admitted into hospital.
The murder took all of 45 seconds. Just last month, Pakistan – a country facing more trouble than ever before as regards law and order is concerned – was the scene of a ruthless killing. Journalist Saleem Shahzad had vanished soon after leaving home in Islamabad, headed for a studio to film his segment for a television talk show. He was found dead two days later, his body showing signs of interrogation under torture, it was reported.

According to the organisation Reporters Without Borders, since the beginning of 2010, 16 journalists have been killed in Pakistan. The country ranks a dismal 151 of 178 countries in its press freedom index.

In the Philippines, in Nabua, Camarines Sur, Romeo Olea was on his way to a radio office when he was shot, most likely for some story that he had done or was working on. This was the third murder of its kind in the nation in 2011. And there have been many more over the past year.

In Bangladesh, the toll is two (in recent times) – Hossain Altaf, publisher of the daily Bajrakontha, was found in a decomposed state in the septic tank of his own home, nine days after he was reported missing. Mahbub Tutul of the Ajker Prottasha and Ajker Surjodoy was killed in Chittagong, but the crime is likely to be business connected, since he had already quit journalism a few years ago.

These countries figure on the CPJ Impunity Index published this year. In the latest index, unsolved journalist killings that occurred between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2010 have been examined and analysed and the 13 nations with five or more such cases included in the list. To explain a little, the Community to Protect Journalists is an independent, non-profit organisation formed in 1981 to promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report news without any fear of reprisal. The index was first published in 2008, with the aim of identifying countries where journalists are murdered more frequently than natural deaths occur, and governments fail to solve the crimes – not identifying the culprits or not bringing them to justice. “The index calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population” is the way the process is defined.

The focus of the 2011 Impunity Index is to highlight countries where “journalists are slain and killers go free”. On top of the list is Iraq, still a lawless and dangerous place to be, where killers of 92 media persons were never caught and/or punished. Pakistan joins the list at number 10. Unfortunately for your country and mine, Bangladesh, Brazil and India follow close behind.

As the executive director of CPJ Joel Simon says, “The findings of the 2011 Impunity Index lay bare the stark choices that governments face: either address the issue of violence against journalists head-on or see murders continue and self-censorship spread.”

But somewhere along the way, there is a flip side to the whole story. It is not just doom and gloom and the fault of governments or nations, or even the criminals alone. Many journalists rush in where armour-plated fighting machines fear to roll in, and are killed because of their foolhardy behaviour. Sure, it is the job of a journalist to hound for news. But in countries like Iraq or, more currently, Libya, there is strife, ongoing for a while now. This could better be defined as a state of war rather than armed hostility.

In other words, for a journalist to run into such an environment, it needs caution, training, protection and, always, always, always, full knowledge that death could be around the corner.

The same goes for a more ‘safe’ country where news is being made. A city like Mumbai, for instance, has crime, has an underworld, has dealings that, if exposed, could create a situation of grave personal danger for a journalist. There should be protection from the state, yes, but the media also needs to be ultra-cautious about getting into corners that there is no backing out of. Tragedy is often the result of a misstep.

They say that Dey was killed for knowing too much about the wrong people. Perhaps he died because he did not keep the right people informed about what he knew?

MF HUSAIN: An artist who made history

2011-06-13T02:01:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, June 10, 2011)

Many many years ago, when I was a very small girl, I remember going to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai with my parents and looking up at an enormous wall. There were these huge horses galloping toward me, all black, white, grey and brown, their tails flowing, their manes waving, their eyes wild, nostrils flared. They were beautiful, free and fast, running against the wind along an open plain. And I was awed, even then, by the fast that all that freedom, all that movement, all that speed, was captured in just a few brushstrokes on a wall. The artist was a man who epitomised the spirit of the city he made his home for many years, Mumbai, colourful, always excited, youthful and just that wee bit crazy. He was MF Husain, who went on to earn titles like ‘Picasso of India’, and died earlier this week in London at the age of 95.

Maqbool Fida Husain, born in Pandharpur, a Hindu pilgrimage town in Maharashtra. His father made kandeels, or lanterns and the family was not very wealthy. The young Maqbool made his way to Mumbai, where he eked out a living – at one stage, he hand-painted posters for Hindi films, developing a passionate interest in the world of cinema, which led him to make a couple of movies with popular Bollywood stars. By the late 1940s, he was making a name for himself as an artist and had joined FN Souza’s Progressive Artists’ Group, a clique of like-minded artists who wanted to foster the avant-garde, with an Indian flavour, and break away from the more traditional portrayals familiar in the Bengal School of art. In 1952 he had his first international showing in Zurich and over the next few years had become known all over the United States and Europe. Along with his art, he also made films – his 1967 Through the Eyes of a Painter won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; Gaja Gamini, starring Madhuri Dixit (who became his muse after he saw her in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun?) showed off the various manifestations of a woman; Meenaxi: A Take of Three Cities was a paean to actress Tabu. None of these was commercially successful, but they were appreciated by a discerning audience. A film on his life, his autobiography, is planned for a film called The Making of a Painter.

Controversy could have been Husain’s very believable alter ego. Some of his works have been incomprehensible, mystifying fellow artists, critics and viewers alike. I remember, when I had just started working as a journalist, I walked into a major Mumbai gallery to see Husain’s new show. Called Shwetambari, it made little sense to me, but it somehow gave me a feeling of clean serenity, a peace that could only come from within and radiate towards the rest of my world. Seen from a more practical perspective, it was all about white – the walls of the large space were draped in white handloom fabric, while the floor was covered in torn, crumpled bits of newspaper. When asked about it by a rather outraged public, Husain’s explanation was simple, and in a strange way, logical: “It is a powerful statement that is meant to be experiences, not understood and interpreted,” he maintained, “I wanted people to come and stand there and feel the overabundance of white, which is the basis of all colour.” To him, the man with the artistic soul, it was only in the presence of white that other colours could be seen and felt and appreciated. From that point of view, it all made perfect sense.

I have seen Husain often in Mumbai, wandering around art galleries, at parties, in hotels, even in bookshops. He was usually barefoot – until the time he, as rumour had it, developed some kind of fungal infection in the foot and was made to wear shoes – and carried a long paintbrush. His white beard was immaculately neat, his glasses glinted with his passion for life and he eyes watched the world as it moved around him. He walked fast, spoke gently and laughed delightedly. And he got into messes of all sorts – from the controversial works of goddesses as nude figures to an unclad Mother India used in an advertisement – which, eventually, made him flee India in 2006 to settle in the Middle East. Qatar was thrilled to have him there and offered him citizenship, which he accepted in 2010. Even in exile, he had to face problems – the government of Kerala was to give him the Raja Ravi Varma award, but a petition was filed against it for various reasons.

Right now, in India, there is a sadness at the death of an artist of such stature. But many of us feel another grief – that we ourselves could not prevent a treasure slipping out of our own hands. And even here there is controversy – many believe that he wanted to be buried in his homeland, India. He did say in a television interview last year, “My heart will always be in India...it is my beloved land.” But his family tells us that “He said he should be buried wherever he dies.” And though he is no longer here, he will live for ever in the work that he left behind – work that is thought-provoking, thoughtful, beautiful and always worth seeing.

‘I want a thali of movies...'

2011-06-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

(Hindu Magazine, June 12, 2011)

... says film journalist and author Anupama Chopra as she discusses her addiction to Bollywood films, her writing on that subject and her latest book First Day First Show, released recently.

Of movies and more...
She is passionate about Hindi movies, be it the classic Sholay (a ‘ perfect film') or the rather disastrous Kambakth Ishq, which she drove miles to see when holidaying in the US because she had serious withdrawal from the song-and-dance routine she is addicted to. For many years now Anupama Chopra has been expressing this passion through reviews, articles, interviews and so much more, as a film journalist and writer. She has compiled a number of these articles, written for India Today, Variety, the New York Times, LA Times, NDTV (from her popular review show, Picture This) and more in her latest book, First Day First Show. This is her fourth, after Sholay: The Making of a Classic, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema.

Chopra says about her latest, “The idea was to sort of create a way to see the history of modern Bollywood, because it has evolved so much from when I started; 1993 to 2011; it's another world now. We wanted to record that change. The articles are not chosen for being the best written, but for being a snapshot of the time. When I look at it, I look at the kind of questions being asked, the issues discussed and the kind of films being made, I realise how much things have changed and how much things haven't. This book is my testament to my enduring love affair with Hindi movies!”

Surprising choice
Bollywood was a rather surprising choice of journalistic focus for Chopra, who grew up in privileged South Bombay (as it was then). Educated in St Xavier's college, with a first class first in English Literature, she laughs, anything filmi was considered déclassé. “I was just seduced by Hindi cinema. When I began, my mother was mortified that I would think of film journalism!” Her mother Kamna Chandra — who wrote two very big films Prem Rog for Raj Kapoor and Chandni for Yash Chopra among others — said things like “You say you want to roam around Film City and interview Sunjay Dutt and Sunny Deol! Oh my God, how can you! What did we do wrong?”

Chopra recalls, “You just did not go into movies in any capacity! I did not grow up watching a lot of Hindi films; if you were a South Bombay person, you didn't even go beyond Worli! But, truly, I just did it first as a lark, a job to have because I did not know what I wanted to do.”

But she knew what she did not want to do. “I wanted to do film journalism, but knew I couldn't spend my life worrying about who is sleeping with whom.” She went to Northwestern University, US, because “I wanted to learn the craft of journalism and I came back after working for a year at Harper's Bazaar magazine. I got myself a job at Sunday magazine and then joined India Today specifically with the aim of covering the film industry in a way that looks at the movies.”

At the right moment
She was exceptionally fortunate, because just when she came into the field (1994-95) things changed. “If it had been somewhere with just the men in safari suits and suitcases of cash, I don't know how long I would have lasted, but 1995 was DDLJ and Rangeela; there was a generational change. And I had a ringside view on this complete evolution. It was really fortunate I was at the right place at the right time.”

The attitude of film-folk towards journalists has also changed. “You have the classic stories of Dharmendra chasing Devyani Chaubal and Anupam Kher slapping someone from a magazine, but now I think everyone is savvier; marketing teams have realised that they need the media to sell movies. Some journalists have great relationships with some stars, but I also hear stars complaining that they are asked either very offensive questions or very inane ones. I just hope it doesn't get more aggressive like in the West. There is such a hunger for scoops, for information, it's hard to sustain quality and standards.”

With all her passion for and knowledge of Hindi films, Chopra will not consider writing a film script. She insists, “Never ever! I think it takes way more talent than I have. I tell other peoples' stories, which is much easier and does not require the same level of talent or confidence or ambition. To write fiction you need a great soaring imagination, to be able create other worlds. I honestly don't think I have the talent or have ever had the interest. I have no interest in creating, I just like to consume.”

Anyone would think that Shah Rukh Khan was her favourite person, considering that three of her books feature him prominently; he starred in DDLJ and has written the foreword for her new book.

She is amused, “So many people say that to me! He is somebody I first interviewed in 1996 or 1997. Since then, our paths have crossed often. As it happened, Salman never talked to the press and Aamir was extremely reserved and not accessible. Shah Rukh is superbly articulate, superbly entertaining, tells the best stories, so it's never been a chore to go back to him. It's so much fun. He talks very passionately; he always seems engaged in the conversation. There is never a boring moment. I have a great time listening to him. He said to me that he needs to entertain all the time, whether on the big screen or one on one. He has this compulsive need to make you happy!”

Improved quality
In her tracing of cinema for all these years, has there been improvement in the quality of films from Bollywood? “Oh my God, yes! You see some of the films made in 1992-93, they are appalling! People hammed like crazy! I think they have vastly improved. You are getting more voices, and there aren't as many second generation kids as those from other backgrounds. In terms of craft, it has hugely improved. What we do need to go back to is the fundamentals of storytelling; we do not invest enough in writers or time in writing. But in every other way we have really moved ahead.”

For Chopra, the world of movies is a driving need. And she likes her dose of masala as much as she likes an off-beat thriller. She says, “I think anything different is a good thing. It's great to have the traditional Bollywood film, mainstream masala, but it's also great to have a Shor in the City! But I was heartbroken when Karan Johar said he was going serious with My Name is Khan. I loved Udaan, but am as happy to weep when Shahrukh died in Kal Ho Naa Ho. I want it all, the Guju thali of movies, not a minimalist French meal with one dish at a time!”

Book review

2011-06-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, June 4, 2011)

THE CONVERT
Deborah Baker

Once upon a time there was a young woman called Margaret Marcus. She lived in Larchmont, a postwar suburb of New York City, and was born and brought up a Jew. As she grew into an adult, she became absorbed in certain questions that, to her, were important. And these have been discovered, read, mulled over and re-presented by the author as a book that highlights the disconnect between the beliefs and tenets of Islam and the ways of the West. The subject, Margaret, did something unusual for the time and unexpected for her context – she converted to Islam, left her country and moved to Lahore, Pakistan, to live a far more restricted life and yet become one of the best known individuals in the discussion on what Islam is in the modern world. As Maryam Jameelah comes through as a woman not at peace with herself or her life, but one who teeters on the edge of fundamentalism and wrote loud and long and profusely about and against her former existence and the West in general.

As a character with issues Maryam is not the first of her kind that Baker has profiled. She has written about suicidal poet Laura Riding and about the mentally fragile Beats of India. But in Maryam she finds a subject who is the personification of the age-old debate between Islam and the West, sometimes loud and hectoring, sometimes quiet and strangely frightening, always edgy and just that fraction off a balance that could tip either way with unwanted, unwonted results. As she trolled through anonymous grey boxes that made up the archives at the New York Public Library, Baker found a little surprise: a Muslim name where most were Christian or Jewish. There were nine boxes containing letters home to parents and astonishingly contrasting texts written with a fanatic flavour and cited and respected in madrassas, vignettes of a life that changed so dramatically and drastically that it was as if one person had died and another had been born. It was a choice made – “a life lived by the sacred laws laid out in the Holy Qur’an or one blackened by hell-bent secular materialism”.

The book is in some ways confusing, wavering between Baker’s thoughts and Maryam’s rather more radical arguments, but it is absorbing, interesting, informative and, eerily, acceptable. There is a culture that to an Indian – especially a modern-day Hindu - is familiar, but as if seen from behind a veil composed of all the traits, characters and quirks of a religion that is not fully known or understood. And there is a personality that is so swept away by faith and the people with whom she associates that it is difficult to accept that degree of trust. There is suspense, there is an almost-soap-opera like story that twists and turns and goes from secrets about very intimate feelings, situations and happenings to a forum that is very public and global. And there is the underlying and growing awareness that Maryam is indeed a woman who is mentally disturbed, one who has demons to face that only she can see and hear.

Whether Maryam was unusual in her beliefs and decisions is not for anyone except herself and her conscience to say. But whether Baker should have recorded this life should not be in question – it is one worth knowing, if not living.

Hunger is a good weapon

2011-06-03T09:13:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, June 3, 2011)

For the past few months in India, protest has been the name of various games. People want something, they protest; if they don’t want something, they protest; if they think something is wrong, they protest; and, once in a strange while, if they think something is right, they do a little bit of a protest too. And one very Indian way of protesting is to stop eating, the practice known as a ‘hunger strike’.

Many years ago, when I was a student doing a kind of internship at a high-level research facility, the worker’s union at the institute decided to go on a mass hunger strike to protest, among other issues, the fact that I wore a sweatshirt with the official logo emblazoned on it. Why that should have been a point of contention I do not know, since the shirt had been made for me by my father and had nothing to do with any official permissions or commercial transaction.

Any which way, the union members gathered outside the cafeteria at about 10:30 in the morning, nicely fortified with sweet tea, snacks and slogans shouted under a big banner. They sat there reading magazines, gossiping, listening to music and got slowly more and more hungry. Crowds walked in and out, stopped to stare, chat and sympathise, official security did a quick and regular check every now and then and I watched from the balcony overlooking the scene.

It was a long, slow, painful time, as hunger gradually crept upon the strikers, inch by tortuous inch until finally, unable to bear the suffering any longer, they unanimously declared the strike over, their cause, if not won, at least made clear to the management. It was time to stop the protest; it was time to regroup and re-strategise; most importantly, it was time for lunch.

This one left me – for one – in giggles, but not all hunger strikes lend themselves to levity. Take, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, as we Indians like to call him, the man who fought for freedom and won it by a shrewd mixture of politics, diplomacy and bargaining. He had many routes to getting what he wanted, the most effective, perhaps, being a foodless one. Not getting his way through logical and more devious means of argument, good sense and political discussion, he would take the emotional route and retreat into a shell, either not speaking – because of the intense sadness he felt, he has said – or, as a last resort, not eating.

Fasting was a non-violent way of communicating, of getting the message across, he believed, in keeping with the tenets of satyagraha, or civil resistance. And it worked, though it did occasionally cause the British, who were the opposing team, to dig in their colonial heels and stand firm against such blandishment – on at least one occasion, this brought Gandhi rather too close to death for comfort!

Hunger has been used to make the point not just in India, but all over the world. It was a favourite method of protesting injustice in pre-Christian Ireland, according to the Internet, but had all sorts of rules, caveats and codes by which it could be done. In 1909 suffragette Marion Dunlop decided to go on a hunger strike while she was in jail for wanting the right to vote. She was quickly released, because the authorities did not want her to die in their jurisdiction – unfortunately, many women died after being force-fed, a process that was painful and injurious.

In the US, too, women demanding rights went on hunger strikes and had to undergo force-feeding while in prison. Other such horror stories have come out of Tibet, Cuba, Turkey, Canada and Iran, Japan, Venezuela and Palestine – anywhere that ordinary people have a point to make and no other way to deal with it. This is peaceful, non-intrusive and very personal. And, as history shows again and again, it works.

Why this topic at this time? Various reasons, actually. At the moment, a glorified yoga teacher called Baba Ramdev has been holding my country to ransom as he threatens to go on a hunger strike to protest the government’s inaction against the evils of black money and corruption. Just a few weeks ago well-known social activist Anna Hazare did the same, staying off food for 96 hours – a significant time period considering the gentleman’s age (71) and state of health (needs medication and care) – but at the end of it convincing a recalcitrant government to think about his demands and start the wheels of investigation and change turning, albeit excruciatingly slowly.

But for me, personally, all this makes little sense. Apart from the fact that I like food and I think eating is one of the pleasures of everyday living, it does not make sense to starve to win a battle – where do you get the strength to fight then? How does that work into making the protest, for whatever cause, powerful and convincing?

If someone can answer that one for me, I will fast…at least until dinner time!

From real to reel – life goes to the movies

2011-05-31T00:57:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, May 27, 2011)

In 2006, Bangladesh found itself in the international media spotlight, for all the right reasons. One of its well-known citizens, Muhammad Yunus, an economist and one-time professor of the subject, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, which also shared the honour: the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides small loans to people on or below the poverty line who have no collateral to use for credit from other banks that lend money. Yunus made what could be considered a mistake – he aimed to step into the political arena and had already become rather too well known on a global platform.

And where there is worth, there will be enemies. And, they came crawling out of the woodwork and attacked just when they thought the time was perfect and ended the whole thing. In March this year, the Bangladesh government removed Yunus from his post in the Grameen Bank, saying that after long scrutiny legal violations had been discovered and the Nobel laureate had overshot his age-eligibility limit.

The facts of the case are well known, especially in Bangladesh. But there is one ramification that is of interest to the ordinary Indian now, especially one who watches movies and is a fan of one particular actor: Irrfan Khan. The star has bagged a new and prestigious project to play Yunus in a film called Banker to the Poor, based on the eponymous bestseller. Being directed by Italian filmmaker Marco Amenta, it will show how and why, from a very human perspective, the Grameen Bank was opened and how it managed to boost the economy of a section of the Bangladeshi population that needed all the help it could get. It is reported that the actor will be meeting Yunus to get an insight into his role and the functioning not only of the bank, but of the man who created the institution. With someone of the thespian credibility and involvement of Khan, the film will be realistic and graphic, but whether it will find an audience is another question completely.

Meanwhile, international cinema has taken a number of true stories and made them come alive onscreen. A couple of years ago, Angelina Jolie and the same Irrfan Khan were reliving the tragic tale of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by al-Quaeda in Pakistan. More recently and closer to home, Monica told the story of Shivani Bhatnagar, another journalist, who was murdered in her home in New Delhi; it starred Divya Dutta, as talented as Khan, but not as well acknowledged for some reason. Somehow so many of these ‘true story films’ are about death and disaster, grief and revenge, but perhaps that is because that is what sells, certainly more than happy tales of roses and sunshine and everyone being happy.

Consider some of the film made on real subjects over the last year or so: Green Zone (2010), about events from the end of the invasion phase of the Gulf War until the transfer of power to the Iraqis; Mad in Italy (2010), based on events about a girl’s ordeal to stay alive at the hands of a young maniac; The Social Network (2010), on the creation of Facebook and the lawsuits that followed; 127 Hours, the story of Aron Ralston, the American mountain climber who amputated his own arm to free himself after being trapped by a boulder for six days; No One Killed Jessica (2010), on the real life murder case of Jessica Lall, a young socialite and model in New Delhi; Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey(2010), a Hindi movie version of the Chittagong uprising In 1930 and so many more.

But cinema is not just about box offices and fan clubs, but can be an educative tool as well. How many young people would be willing to read about the story behind one of the most successful networking tools ever: Facebook? I know very few adults who will even recognise the name of Aron Ralston, but so many youngsters will have seen 127 Hours and know it for a Danny Boyle film with music by AR Rahman! Children may not listen to Indian mythology, but after seeing My Friend Ganesha, they will know the entire story behind the baby elephant god and his creation and virtues. In fact, a number of schools and colleges have started understanding the positive qualities of commercial cinema, seeing it as more than just escapist fare or a dream world, and using it to educate, to mentor, to set examples of qualities that young people need to accept and absorb to be responsible, progressive and mature world citizens.

And the story of Mohammad Yunus could be another small step in that direction too.

Art worth owning

2011-05-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

(Hindu Magazine, May 29, 2011)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. That seems to have been the working principle of Stuart Cary Welch’s life. Welch (1928-2008) was a curator, scholar, gifted teacher, celebrated connoisseur and collector, who spent over 50 years studying the art and aesthetics of India and the Middle East. And his passion for the objets he admired was matched by the careful and meticulous way in which he collected pieces that touched his intellect, his instincts and his heart. Part of his vast and wonderful collection, Arts of the Islamic World, was offered on sale at Sotheby’s, London in April, bringing in an astounding £20.9 million, an auction record for any single such sale of Islamic art.

And, at the end of this month, May 31, 2011, Part II will be offered to a discerning public. With 204 lots, this will include, as Sotheby’s says, “many dramatic and exquisite works of great rarity, including Rajput, Deccani, later Mughal, Company School and Himalayan paintings, drawings and works of art, as well as a wide range of more affordable drawings, sketches and decorative arts from the 13th to the 20th century.” Star of this particular show will be a "Vasudhara Mandala, the earliest recorded Nepalese paubha that contains a date within its dedicatory inscription, and was painted in 1365 by Jasaraja Jirili. It is estimated at £300,000-400,000.” Other highlights include a rare and important, finely painted Monumental Portrait of a Monkey, Mewar, Udaipur, circa 1700, estimated at £70,000-90,000 (estimated prices do not include buyer’s premium).

According to Holly Brackenbury, Director and Head of Sotheby’s Indian Art Department, “Stuart Cary Welch was a scholar, connoisseur and collector. His lectures, exhibitions and publications inspired many people in the West to look at Indian art for the first time. He looked at every piece individually and brought about a new understanding of Indian art, this is particularly apparent in his collecting; every miniature, sketch and object was collected for a reason, he identified not only the historical importance of a piece but also its beauty.” She explains that “This collection of Indian art is one of the most important to have come to the auction market within the last fifty years. There are some exceptional pieces in the sale. Not only do these pieces have the provenance of coming from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection, but many have also been widely published and exhibited in leading institutions across the world. This sale offers collectors and museums globally a wonderful opportunity to acquire some fantastic works of art with impeccable provenance.” Brackenbury says that “Welch took great pleasure in collecting art and his family is keen for other collectors in to have the opportunity to acquire some of these remarkable pieces.”

Welch was a lecturer at Harvard University, and a curator of Islamic and Indian art at Harvard Art Museums for over 40 years. Pieces in his collection are symbolic of his passion, beautiful, rare and valuable works that include the Vasundhara Mandala and Monumental Portrait of a Monkey, as well as an exquisite folio from the Gita Govinda, Radha and Krishna in a Bower, dated perhaps to about 1780. It is in opaque watercolour, with touches of gold, estimated at a value of about £60,000-80,000. The Krishna theme is also seen in Bhairavi Raga: Lord Krishna Enthroned and Adored, a circa 1650 miniature in the early Pahari style, one of the Ragmala series. Its estimated price tag: £15,000-25,000. Celebrating Holi, Awadh, 1760-1764, is another treasure, offered at about £30,000-40,000, a work vibrant and energetic, showing off the colours and spirit of the festival. And Entertainment in a Harem Garden shows off a place that any harried city dweller would love to escape to – dating to about 1765, it has courtyards and gardens in a large palace complex, with a princess and her female attendants in a terrace watching a dancer perform. A getaway priced at a fabulous £40,000-60,000!

Even as Welch’s august reputation makes the collection being auctioned even more prized and covetable, the Internet offers an interesting and fun piece of information on the collector-connoisseur: “The 1978 Merchant Ivory film, Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, film follows art stalkers yearning to acquire a maharajah’s hidden collection of miniatures. When, finally, the dusty cloth bundles are unwrapped, the screen dances with colourful images of painted works—all of which belonged to Welch.” A man worth knowing, art worth owning.

Book review

2011-05-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, May 14, 2011)

The Cloud Messenger
By Aamer Hussein

Indian literature is replete with the most evocative images of amazingly interesting ways and means of communication. There are parrots that can carry love from lover to beloved; pipal leaves are an oft-used and bio-recyclable form of letter-paper; flowers tell stories that sound like poems whispered into shell-like ears; and the wind sings songs that convey messages between people separated by wars and distance. Kalidasa in his Meghadoota (or ‘cloud messenger’) devised a more ethereal form of ‘mail’ in his 111-stanza lyric poem. It tells the story of a homesick yaksha who is in exile for not doing his job for King Kubera diligently enough. The yaksha misses his wife and tells her via a cloud, a messenger who is coaxed into doing the job through a seductive travelogue describing the delights of the journey from the plains to the city of Alaka, in the Himalayas, where the yaksha’s wife is waiting for her husband. The cloud links the separated lovers, and gives its title to the eponymous new novel from Aamer Hussein.

The Cloud Messenger is about Mehran, the narrator, who moves from a luxe life in Karachi as the youngest son and heir of a khandaan to adulthood as a student of Urdu and Persian in London. There is an almost autobiographical flavour to the character, and the “novel is the story of some of the paths I might have taken”, the author writes, describing his career development from working in a bank to studying languages, psychoanalysis and philosophy to finally becoming a much-lauded writer of culturally Asian-British fiction. The words are simple, neatly strung together, drawing pictures that alternately provoke and depress, speaking of love won, lost and languishing, a world where relationships change as quickly as the cloud formations above London.

When Mehran was a child, he and his sister Sara would listen to stories of a time that seemed to them to be strangely exotic, where they could only imagine the tastes of strawberries and crumpets, the cold of ice and snow and the sight of a lady wearing a yellow-petalled hat and called the ‘Queen of England’. England, the children knew, was “much further than India, very far away”. Mehran learned more from the Enid Blyton books that he read as he grew up and then about other lands from Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, the Old Testament, the Qur’an, the Iliad, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and so much else that he devoured so eagerly. By 1978, when the narrative swerves into the first person, he has not only read his way around the world, but done a fair bit of travelling as well, seeing and wondering through an existence that in any sense of the word would be extremely interesting, satisfying and educative.

And then he meets people who make more of a difference to his world than his reading or travel ever did. There is Marco Feliciani, “a bit of a lad”, Lady L, aka the Professor, “reputed to be a martinet”, Riccarda, an older married woman who becomes Mehran’s lover and causes Marco some jealousy, and the tragically destructive Marvi, who manages to enchant the young man into an affair that lasts into the painful and prolonged end of her life. In each relationship there is a story, and as these tales weave into each other, Mehran finds, like the ephemeral beauty of the clouds, change is about the only permanence he has. And in that, he finds himself.

All news is good news

2011-05-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, May 21, 2011)

It is amazing how clichés can be fiddled with and made to fit the occasion…any occasion. Take my title for this piece, for instance. For the last week, I have been trying to get the brand new website that my team has been working on seen and talked about, using any and every means at my command – ruthlessly, with Machiavellian cunning and without being squeamish about it all.

I know it is a new concept for the environment it has been launched into and, while what we have to say with it is not anything so far unseen, the way we are saying it is, at least in this part of the world. I am admittedly rather chuffed, puffed and pleased about the whole thing, and though there may be glitches and goofs that I have not yet caught up with peppered through the site, I am proud of what we have created – me, my team and all those who have helped us get to this point.

And, if my editor will allow me to say so, we are at www.bollywoodlife.com. It has been a good six months of a tough, arduous and often frustrating journey, but when we saw it live on the Internet, all the arguments, the long hours, the wait, the struggle and the chewed nails have been so worth it.

Now comes the more difficult part, I know. Since we are online, we now need to find an audience that will make the entire process pay off for all of us, in revenue, in page views, hits, accesses, whatever, but most of all in an audience. Now don’t get me wrong. We – or I, since I am the one writing this…am not looking for appreciation without balance. I want to know what is wrong, not just what is right.

I want people to look at what we have done and be realistic, not just praise us for doing a good job more because I write well, or I look good or – yes, it has happened – I am who I am. I don’t even care if people want to be nasty about the site. Following the cardinal rule of any media hound, follower or creator, any news is indeed good news, at the moment.

Having done my little bit of advertising for the product, I will get to the point which, as you will read, is relevant and related. Over the past few weeks, a number of scandals have hit the headlines, some of which have been read on this very website that you happen to be reading me. The most reported, perhaps, has been the 3G spectrum brouhaha, where licenses have been issued not as per worthiness, but according to who can pay the most to the people with the power to grant clearances.

After many weeks of to-ing and fro-ing with the government unable to find proof, identify perpetrators, nab them and bring them to justice, arrests have at last been made. Most recently Kanimozhi, the daughter of one of the most prominent political figures in South India, joined her partner in crime, A Raja, in jail, a place far less luxurious than the homes and comforts that they have been used to.

Joining them is Suresh Kalmadi, a familiar face and name on the subcontinent in the world of sports, indicted for his role in the multimillion dollar misappropriation of funds during the Commonwealth Games held at the end of last year in New Delhi. Sports has been dogged by more scandal than usual, or so it seems, with Shane Warne – as the most recent instance – getting into a fight with the authorities and having to pay an enormous fine to get out of it, the Sri Lankan cricketers refusing to obey the orders of their government to go home, ad infinitum.

But in all this, one aspect stands out: all these people, named or not, are or have just been in the relentlessly targeting spotlight that the media focuses on anything and anyone who creates a noise of any kind. Consider it from this point of view – if Kanimozhi gets off the sentence that will be pronounced, and comes out of jail, free, she will be considered a martyr, a woman who has suffered for her cause, never mind that she made her little fortune on it. Which makes all the publicity she is getting now not a reason to hide her head under her dupatta, but to hold it high and present the best angle for all the photographers to record for posterity.

A Raja has until now faced the media with a beaming smile on his face, assuring all who are interested in hearing it that he is innocent and will be exonerated. Once he gets out of jail, whether proven innocent or guilty, people will remember that smile and that self-assurance, giving him points for it rather than condemning his arrogance. Kalmadi may not recover easily from having an eggy face, but he made his millions, presented a sports spectacular and made his name known all over the Commonwealth. Shane Warne, a fading sports star known more for his sex life than his game these days, finds a fresh new look for the limelight and is obviously enjoying every moment, never mind that few reports are positive, laudatory or kind.

This is the story of so many others – movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes, be it the rather substantial but couture clad Aishwarya Rai Bachchan or the abysmally outfitted Mallika Sherawat or a multitude of international faces who have had fashion disasters; Lindsey Lohan and her addictions; Julien Assange and his troubles and, perhaps most recently, Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was caught in a rather awkward situation and has been put under house arrest, bailed out by his wife. They may all be rather red-faced when they are caught in the camera but then realise that it is indeed true – any news about them is, for them, indeed good news!

Knowing the bad guys

2011-05-07T03:49:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, May 6, 2011)

The news is full of it. And that does not imply what it commonly does in everyday casual lingo, honest! I was actually speaking of the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden, which fascinating topic has been the focus of all and every television news channel, newspaper, magazine (when printing schedules permit) and conversation. As some bubble-headed Bollywood starlet tweeted, this even did its best to upstage the royal wedding, which everyone had been watching for a couple of days earlier.

But even as the debate raged on how it all happened, how long it had taken, how hard they had worked, how secrets are kept and then revealed and how death comes as the unexpected end, there were questions that demanded answers, some that will never be, not to everyone’s complete satisfaction. Main among them: What actually happened that day at the house where Osama was said to be hiding out? And was that really honest-to-God Osama bin Laden who was killed by the US SEALS who managed to attack his hideout with such stealth and sublime secrecy?

That is something I worry about at some dispassionate level, me and a whole lot of people who cannot completely accept that the man who caused so much grief to so many is really dead and sleeping, as some wag pointed out, with the fishes.

I remember that long-ago evening when Osama’s most stunning piece of work was unveiled for so many to watch, stunned, amazed, horrified. I had just come home and turned on the television to watch a travel show that my parents, many miles away in a different city, had been praising. There was an incredible scenario unfolding as I stopped my pottering to stare at: there was a huge, smoking, red-rimmed hole in the side of a building I knew so well – the World Trade Centre in Manhattan, New York.

As I stared, wondering what bad movie I was seeing the preview of, a plane flew towards the second tower, banked slightly and then dove in. Then, astonishingly, horribly, one tower slowly fell down into itself; then the other crumbled. Without my knowing it, there were tears salting my lips, my nails were digging red dents into my palms. There would have been people I had met in that building complex, maybe on the planes that flew into them. And as news of the other two crashes came in, more tears followed, of a strange empathic grief, of a dread that evil reigned, of a sense of overwhelming sorrow for a world that seemed to have gone mad.

Over the next few days, weeks, months, the extent of the horror slowly unfurled. There was a man who pulled the strings that made all this happen, we all learned, a monster who was called Osama bin Laden. He had created and controlled a network that destroyed, killed, pillaged, all in the name of some warped form of a religion that in its pure form did not advocate murder, friends who were of the same faith educated me. And over the years more people died, friends, children, brothers, sisters, parents, those who had done nothing to earn that kind of fate.

It became oddly personal when someone whom I considered a friend was killed by the same hate-clan, his neck sliced open after days of tortuous confinement, the killing caught on video tape that was made available for the world to see and gasp at. Daniel Pearl, journalist and a nice guy, slaughtered like an animal in a sacrifice. We had met, chatted, drunk coffee, met again, spoken on the phone and emailed; I liked him, I liked his then-shy wife Mariane, I liked the person who had introduced us to each other, a woman called Asra Nomani that I was proud, pleased and happy to call “buddy”.

And with one stroke of a knife, that circle of friendship was destroyed. As were a few planeloads of people who had no connection at all to any of this, no reason to even know that a rather twisted mind called Osama bin Laden existed at all. But, in some ways, the biggest tragedy of the whole plot was the fact that the open, accepting, often-naive and generally friendly American warmth became dark-tinged with shades of suspicion, with the cold waves of hate, intolerance, anger and sadness.

Travel to the US, UK and elsewhere was not as much of a pleasure as it had been. Racial profiling changed from being a concept that raised eyebrows to a reality that turned individuals into sniffer dogs ready to snarl instead of smile. And what was once a theoretically-fuelled debate on one faith being as good as another became a real argument about which belief system could be categorised as ‘killer’ more easily that any other.

Now that Osama bin Laden is reportedly dead – God help us all – will that change, albeit gradually? Will the world ever be the same again? Or will that shadow that he hid behind cloud eyes, judgements and life for ever and ever?

Wedding wows

2011-04-30T04:03:00.001-07:00

(bdnews24.com, April 29, 2011)

It is being called the wedding of the decade. But then they said that about another wedding that happened many years before, in 1981, when Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, heir to the throne of the British empire. On April 29, today, her first son, Prince William of Wales, married Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. And, we hear, that it all took so long to actually come about (ten years since the happy couple first met in 2011) because the two of them wanted to be absolutely sure that they would remain a happy couple indeed and not live separate and unhappy lives after a few seasons together as man and wife.

Whatever the two still-fairly-young people have decided to do, and for whatever reason they have decided to do it, it is after all their lives – or life, when it is all done and signed – and we, as bystanders, however interested, have no business sticking our noses into it. And isn’t that what got Diana killed? Too many people taking too much of an interest in her business? In a way it is all part of life as it is today. Enquiring minds, as the catchphrase goes, want to know and the media is duty-bound in its role as media to provide that information. So when it comes to the wedding of the son of a star personality that the press went crazy chasing, that frenzy starts up all over again.

The hype over the wedding of Prince William and his lady love is not without parallels in less royal circles. In India, the hype-bug struck very recently when paparazzi tried to storm the venue for the big day that Bollywood star Lara Dutta and tennis biggie Mahesh Bhupati were celebrating with a circle of close friends and family. A few years ago, the wedding of former Miss World Aishwarya Rai and Bollywood scion Abhishek Bachchan had the press photographers camped outside various places that the different ceremonies were scheduled to be held, with someone actually sneaking very private images of the actual nuptials out to the waiting newshounds for instant ‘scoop’ publication. And of course, on an international level, there is the ever-hungry public waiting to know more about when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to make their relationship legal. Gossip websites the world over focus on these issues, never mind that they do not really impact the state of the world apropos peace, global warming, nuclear winter or the price of…well…eggs!

What really amuses me is the so-called ‘educated speculation’ that people indulge in. While there is some justification for the royal PR people to divulge ‘insider’ information – that bit about how the royal couple wanted to be sure they would stay happily married before actually committing to a date comes from them – to have the man (or woman) on the street professing to know all sorts of confidential tidbits about how Kate and William will live their lives as husband and wife, from the colour of their bedsheets to the flavour of their toothpaste to the swimwear they will use during their honeymoon seems a bit too much to digest. However public a figure, whatever their profile, wherever in the world they may be, no one has a right to poke their snoopy noses into a private and personal existence; the outside world needs to learn how to stop at the bedroom door, for one!

Oddly enough, it is the new princess’ fashion sense that is attracting the most comment. From her figure – now even slimmer than before, perhaps because of the stress of becoming a wife so publicly – to her wedding gown, everyone has something to say. Along the way, comparisons are being made, naturally of course, to her late mother-in-law, Diana, with editorial opinions and photo-features by the dozen talking about how Diana wore this so what will Kate wear on a similar occasion? The burning question editors of websites, newspapers and magazines have right now is what will Kate wear for her wedding? Should it be sexy and a la mode, as befits a young woman with a decidedly modern personal style, or should it be modest and reflective of a future queen who will lead by example? Should she buy British or opt for a more global design statement? And should it be white, which seems out of sync since the pair has been together for so long, or include a touch of colour, which would make it more edgy, contemporary and young? Everything that is the bride’s prerogative has become a matter of open debate.

Is this fair? Doesn’t a young woman, especially one newly married, deserve some privacy? She has a life, she has so many changes to adjust to, she needs time and space to be a princess, a wife, a part of a very large and even more illustrious family, she needs to feel like she is still who she essentially is, a young woman with a mind and a psyche that has the freedom to be what it is. And it is up to us, as the general public, to give her that respect.

The great buying bazaar

2011-04-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, April 22, 2011)

I was at the mall yesterday and found that almost every store had a huge crowd bogging up the aisles, milling around the checkout counters and trolling through the shelves. It was sale time, a special event that had been announced in every newspaper, magazine, brochure and flyer for many days before the melee actually started. Privileged clients, mainly those with special credit cards from selected stores, had received news of the discounts and deals via text messages on their mobile phones, emails and the occasional pesky phone call.

As all these potential customers, along with arbitrary visitors wander through the mall, they are wooed by touts from various stores, inviting them into their establishments, to ‘just look, madam’, to hopefully spend a few more shekels than actually budgeted for. And the money flows out of wallets and into cash registers, good fly off the shelves, big bags are carried out and cars, autorickshaws, trains and buses head to different parts of the city with loads of passengers, happy and spent, literally and metaphorically. Welcome to the great Indian bazaar!

It is much easier to be truly capitalist and indulge in gratuitous expenditure today than it was a few years ago. Thanks to the unprecedented burgeoning of malls all over the subcontinent, making the good old ‘department store’ defunct, there has been a sudden and drastic increase in not just availability, but also awareness of what is available where, when and for how much. And along the way, there has also been a growing demand for quality, for international brands and for a degree of convenience that was once available only in stores in the more developed and commercially elitist nations. In other words, the power of money has become reality, with everyone asking for more every day, in every way.

Once upon a time, the mall was an elitist concept, a place that people with money went to buy everything from kitchen gadgets to lingerie to toys for the children. Today, just a couple of years after the mall made its debut in India, for instance, there is a distinct divide in the customer base and the kinds of stores in a particular hub. Some are indeed more upmarket than others, showcasing high-street brands and one-of-a-kind products. Designer clothes, couture accessories, fine jewellery, big-name cookware, even mobile phones and sound systems that could cost the same as a small car will be available to a clientele that lives in million dollar homes and considers spending thousands on a simple meal an everyday way of living.

In other shopping malls, bargains will be a way of rolling the cart through the aisles, a huge discount attracting the most customers and pulling in the profits for the suppliers, never mind that the goods may not last too long – as long as they are affordable, look decent, get the job done…for now…it is fine and will be bought.

Malls today are a fact of everyday life. In my own neighbourhood, fairly elitist and suburban, there are three enormous ones within a ten minute walking radius of my home. One has high-end stores, with designer labels and wares that are generally found more in shops abroad, selling dreams and aspirations more than goods. The other is more middle-market, with more local products, some expensive, some not, selling utilitarian products of fairly high quality but not exceptional brand. And the third is a more accessible set of shops that provide service to the huge lower-middle class, the kind who would consider a car a luxury and food more important than interior decor. All these people need to be catered to, their needs fulfilled, but at a price that makes sense to them and delineates a certain consciousness of necessity versus luxury.

It is perhaps the story of a global virus called commercialism. There is a need for more than our parents and grandparents had, an awareness that there is more to everyday living standards than perhaps a few years ago. People want more, rather than merely need more, to be comfortable, to feel that they have a decent standard of living, to live up to their own heightened expectations. Along the way, it becomes a generational aspiration, a desire to satisfy a hunger that the elders did not feel as strongly, to become more than what the parents were, to have more than the grandparents did.

Jobs and salaries reflect that evolution – not necessarily good or bad – and so do credit card company profits, which over the past couple of decades have soared, even through the recession and any bad times that the economy went through. The attitude change, too, is revealing of a changing time, where people are willing and able to spend plenty of money and demand plenty of bang for their spent buck.

And if they can get their satisfaction, everyone goes home happy!

The art of craft

2011-04-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24, April 15, 2011)

A couple of weeks ago the gentleman who supplies us with printing paper and cartridges for the printer called to say that he had received a new shipment of stuff. His wife was really the dealer, he explained, and she was ready to show us some of the latest lot. Good quality, he promised, good prices too. For a few seconds, I wondered, but then I realised I already knew. It was nothing in the least bit nefarious that he was speaking of, but something quite innocuous albeit desirable.

The gentleman has a wife who came from Bangladesh. She has a little home business of embellished fabrics that she sources from her home country. And every time she brings in some, the shipment is gone in a matter of a few hours. This time, we were getting a preview, just because we had been asking to see the materials ever since we had heard about them.

So we trotted over, took a good look, a second look and a third, and picked out what seemed to be the best of the lot, overall a good lot. It was not especially traditional, unlike some of the other samples in the bundle, but it was pretty and had the kind of subtle impact I tend to favour in my clothes. There were some pretty examples of nakshi kantha, the craft I had read so much about, all adapted nicely to suit a modern urban lifestyle, used on cool cotton saris, stylish kurtis and elaborately worked salwar-kameez suits. The work was very similar to what is produced in Bengal, the traditional and age-old kantha work, simple stitches elaborately set into intricate designs that make art out of what is essentially a village craft, used in garments that have acquired high-fashion tags the world over.

That is what fascinates me about culture and tradition. There is a growing newfound respect for that which we have taken for granted for generations, elevated from something that was used to make everyday utilitarian items, often for household use, prettier. It could make a chore a little more pleasant and time spent in the house more aesthetic. Once upon a time it could have been done with the intention of giving a housewife or ageing member of the family something to do; painting could have been a matter of decoration, or for ritualistic purposes, to ward off evil or send a message or even just camouflage the home from possibly-hostile visitors to the area. Inside, too, there would have been some kind of ornamentation, a sense of house-proud-ness, an attempt to make the surroundings more appealing and interesting.

However, history and the human mind being what they are, much indigenous culture has got lost over time, due primarily to the whimsical nature of man and his snob values. There have been many times in India, for instance, when local culture and tradition has given way to the western music-video ethos, be it in films, in fashion and, inevitably, in craft. Fortunately, every time, there has been a valiant group of individuals who battle to make that erosion stop, to even reverse it in certain cases, making sure that what is irreplaceable and valuable as a reflection of the history of a human evolution is not lost forever.

Many years ago, I met an elderly lady who told me about a fascinating method of tie-dyeing textile, native to a region in western India. The bandhini, a tie-dye technique that caught tiny pinches of fabric in string, protecting them from being coloured when the piece is dipped into a vat of dye, told stories in the designs that were created by the intricate pattern of dots and circles that resulted. There were myths retold, the lady explained, and see here, this is how the new bride tried to entice her husband to stay with her and not go on a business trip; and this is what the woman said to her daughter when the girl said she wanted a new skirt that had gold paisleys on a scarlet background; and this one is about the man who won the battle that he fought against 17 men who tried to take over his field…

Fabric is one almost-universal way of capturing legends and passing them on to a new generation. It is useful in so many ways, a sari converting to a quilt that is usable as a tent that can be made into baby clothes that may end up as a bag for carrying new saris. Each may be embellished, with simple stitches like in kantha or more intricate ones as in the fine tilla work of Kashmir, and each tells of a world, a people, a life.

As these pieces are passed down from elder to child, from community to clan, from one village to another, the stories spread, the myths get tweaked, a new history is created. In that, even the salwar kameez piece I bought, sent via various people from your country, Bangladesh, to mine, India, will become a part of my personal culture, one that bonds us with a sense of beauty.

Ratheesh T

2011-04-11T01:05:00.000-07:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, April 9, 2011)

Sometimes you look at a work of art and wonder whether you haven’t wandered off into your own nightmares. Sometimes you see strange apparitions that could only have come off a medieval woodcut that spoke of demonic rituals and unholy desires. Sometimes you can wonder if you are really on the same plane, physical of psychical, as you explore visually, strangely disturbed by the images, but unable to move away from them. Such it is with the work of Ratheesh T, often described as magic realism, the genre so evocatively and expertly channelled by literary greats like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony) and in art by Paul Cadmus and George Tooker. In India, OV Vijayan’s Malayalam prose captures the essence of fantasy in the highest quality of language, presenting a stunning series of word-pictures that seem, in a strange way, to find reflection in what Ratheesh creates. His works are, on the surface, highly detailed and astonishingly intricate; as you look closer, the spooky element comes to the fore, leaping off the large oil-daubed canvases to smack you in the eye, metaphorically speaking, of course, with a certain unnerving sense of horror, of weirdness, of a realm where fantasy and horror collide in a parallel universe that does nothing to soothe rattled senses.

Ratheesh T was born in Kilimanoor in Kerala in 1980 and lives and works in Tiruvananthapuram, from where he earned a BFA at the College of Fine Arts. He started exhibiting early, with works at the Kerala Lalithkala Academy in Kochi in 2003, and has shown in prestigious galleries and fora in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. His involvement and empathy with his art shows in his responses to questions, thoughtful, passionate, occasionally incoherent, but loquacious, his eyes gleaming with a strangely otherworldly excitement though his spectacles as he speaks in a heavy Malayali accent. His recent show at the Galerie Mirchandani-Steinrucke in Mumbai, a preview to an exhibition including his works in Berlin, is called Green Pond and is indicative of the predominant colour in his works. As he explains with characteristic enthusiasm, “it comes naturally...it just comes”

There is a lot of green used, something that has been commented on before. Does this stem from your background in Kerala, or the channeling of nature as the main focus of your thought processes?
That is a good question. My paintings have a lot of green, my studio space is surrounded by green so it comes naturally, I do not think about it. One painting I made in Scotland is very brown...it comes to one, it just comes.

‘Magic realism’ is a phrase oft-used to describe your work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a master of the art in writing. How would you, the artist, explain this concept of magic realism in the context of your work?
People think about it as magic realism, but my ideas come from real life, from the heart. How do we create a total feel? That is very important. As an artist, I will do anything, go in any direction to achieve my purpose of getting this total ‘feel’. In my self portrait there are snakes inside my brain - now that is not only a snake; somebody may think ‘only snakes’, but for me it is showing the complexities of its body and powerfulness of its head. Also, it tells the story of the history of the snake in India - Krishna sleeping on a snake, Shiva wearing a snake...it all relates to power, the power of God, or in my case, the power of the brain. Magic realism is other people's issue, it is not my issue.

At first look, the work is full of life, of energy, vibrant, positive. As you look deeper, there is a certain sense of darkness, an underlying evil almost, that comes through. Is that a reflection of life today or a comment on it?
Peripherally, we can say that there are so many images of that kind. But deeply, underneath the peripheral, if you go into any detail, you will find abstraction of the universal - in life and looking at it, everything appears peripheral when one sees what I am doing on the canvas. But that is not the right way of looking...
First, when we are looking at the canvas, we get the total feel, the first impression. Only after that do we notice details, we walk to and then into the details. That is going towards another way to discover the truth.

How do you do your work – the paintings are so complex, so detailed, so intricate – where do the ideas come from? Is there any method with which they are executed? And is this complexity the reason you do not show that much in Mumbai?
Much of it comes from my love and admiration for my mother. My birth into my family is a great gift. This birth - where I was born, when I was born - each and every idea comes from this, it is my gift. An artist is born. Some paintings take less time and are less complicated, like Memory and Mother Goddess; others take very, very long.

What are you, the artist, attempting to communicate to your audience?
What I try to make is total energy of real spirituality, that which is inside me. This has nothing to do with religion's God, but everything to do with energy.

It has been said by critics and essayists that you are making trenchant comments on the issues that matter today – could you explain that?
Everything is positioned on the landscape and the landscape sometimes answers back when you ask questions. I am also on the landscape all the time, so I am too close to it, I cannot say much about it. Instead, I paint.

Gingger Shankar

2011-04-11T01:01:00.000-07:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, April 9, 2011)

She is all Indian, genetically speaking, but truly global in sound. Her father, with whom she is not the closest of friends, is the well-known violinist, L Subramanium, and her mother Viji was a classical singer who passed away in early 1995. Gingger Shankar is all about music, about art, about performance, about the beauty of Indian culture in its purest and most communicative form. Raised in India and the United States, Los Angeles in particular, Gingger studied vocal music, violin, piano, dance and opera, starting her performing career at 14. Touring with her as-famous uncle L Shankar, table maestro Zakir Hussain and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram, took her to festivals and events all over the world. Adding to this already distinguished resume has been work she has done with musicians of the ilk of Smashing Pumpkins, Talvin Singh, Steve Vai, Sussan Deyhim, James Newton Howard, Rabbit in the Moon, Tony Levin and Steve Lukather. Her 2004 triumph rings the high note in her collaboration with composers John Debney and L Shankar for the musical score of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, in which her voice and her instrument, the double violin, are clearly audible right through. Films, concerts, albums...she has them all to her credit, from Charlie Wilson’s War and The Forbidden Kingdom to live venues like the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the San Diego Indie Music Festival and the Sundance Institute Composer’s Lab.

The list of performances, awards, honours and fan clubs can go on and on. But from the point of view of her unique talent, Gingger is perhaps the only woman in the world who has mastered the ten-string double violin, which covers a whole orchestra worth of double bass, cello, viola and violin in tonality and range. Add to that her astonishingly facile voice, covering five octaves, and her extremely glamorous appearance, it is not surprising that the world of modelling, films and high-voltage celebrityhood occasionally invites her to make a special appearance. In an email interview, she tells Ramya Sarma a little of what she is all about...

Tell us something about growing up with music - you come from a family well known for its artistry, is that where your talent was nurtured and honed? How did it all happen to bring you to where you are in your journey?
I was around music from the time I was born (probably earlier!). I was very lucky to have a mother who exposed me to so many different types of music. We'd go to classical concerts and listen to rock music on the way back home. She was a very open minded person and because of that I was able to soak up so much music by the time I knew I wanted to perform. My mother taught me singing, my grandfather taught me violin. I also studied piano, opera and western music. All those influences definitely make me the artist I am today.

This is what i have read about you "dedicated to stretching her boundaries and spreading her wings, always experimenting with elegant and exciting mixtures of sounds. She weaves an intricate tapestry of musical styles" - how much of the Indian musical tradition is reflected in the music you make? And what other culture is most significant?
It entirely depends on the project. When I toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, I added Indian influences to what I was performing. In the movie world, some projects want eastern sounding scores, others want very traditional western scores. My record has hints of Indian influence. I think my music reflects me- modern, traditional, Indian, western, electronic..I am definitely a hybrid!

The Indian (especially the Carnatic) raga explores a different and more intricate scale than the western musical repertoire. Does understanding one system make the other easier to play with? Does one influence the other?
I think having both influences definitely gives me a larger palette to work with. I love crossing the boundaries of both and creating new soundscapes. Especially in the land of film scoring, taking a western traditional score and putting an indian twist to it is so much fun.

You have such a fabulous resume where your film work is concerned - have you considered a stint in Bollywood, especially today, when so much new stuff is being explored and experimented with? Acting, music. vocals, there is such a lot someone with your background and talent could be part of!
I would love to. I have just never been approached to do it!

The double violin is your speciality. How does vary in potential and sound quality from the more conventional one? And, of course, in the kind of music it can produce?
It definitely has a unique tone that no other instrument can produce. It is fantastic for movie soundtracks as well as live performances. It covers the whole orchestra, so it has quite the range as well as dynamics.

You have worked with so many well known musicians in various styles - what or who have the significant influences on your own work been?
That is a very difficult question to answer. I think when you collaborate with an amazing musician, you both influence each other a bit. I have had the luck to work with and listen to so many talented artists along the way, that I feel my inspirations and influences have come from many different places and people.

What kind of music makes you really happy, brings you joy, makes you smile? And what makes you cry?
I listen to loads of music, and it all depends on where I am in my life. Right now I love Kanye West's new record. That is my driving music. My mom's music always makes me cry.

Banal question: What does music mean to you? How would you describe it and its role in your everyday life?
Music is weaved into every part of my life. I am very blessed to do what I love for a living. Besides that, I listen to so much music as well. My friends constantly give me tracks to listen to. And, like everyone else, I have my workout songs, my angry songs, my break up songs, my memory songs, etc.

You have been part of various charitable, awareness-raising movements, mainly through concerts you have been part of. Are you focused on any particular cause?
I have been lucky to work with some incredible charities. Everything from juvenile diabetes and cancer research to promoting music in schools. I don't think there is any cause that is better than another. As long as I can help in some small way to bring awareness to these wonderful organizations and support them, I am thrilled to do so.

What are you working on currently?
I recently finished scoring the feature film Circumstance, which just won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. It is being released in the summer. I also completed another feature film Homecoming which is by a very talented new director Sean Hackett. Now I'm working on my album as well as a theatre play in Los Angeles.

Book review

2011-04-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

(Times of India's Crest edition, April 9, 2011)

LOVE VIRTUALLY, by Daniel Glattauer

Very often, life is a twisted tale of serendipity. Sometimes it is all about a mistake, a tiny error made because fingers did not obey what the brain told them to do. Such was the story that began with an email sent to cancel a subscription. A person called E Rothner sends mail to Like magazine asking that it be stopped. The first is polite, asking if the cancellation can be done over email. The third explains a little, saying that the ‘rag...is gradually going down the drain...’ Unfortunately for E Rothner, the mails have been sent to the wrong address, woerter@leike.com instead of woerter@like.com and, a little to and fro of ‘round robin’ mails later, Leo Leike responds to Emmi Rothner in person. The typo leads to a strange and occasionally funny love story with a slight difference to it: the two people involved in the romance never meet, limited by Emmi’s ‘married’ status and some degree of instinctual reactivity that kept them – perhaps serendipitously – apart.

In some ways, Love Virtually is something that has happened to all of us. Anyone who has ever been part of an email correspondence knows that it is easy to be friendly on a keyboard, especially when there is little chance of actually meeting the other person. Small intimacies develop rapidly, with endearments sliding into the writing as easily as it is to press the ‘send’ button. Personalities are revealed – in this odd, going-nowhere tale, this version a translation from the original German Gut Gegen Nordwind, Leo is a Language Psychologist at a university working on the influence of email on linguistic behaviour, while Emmi is a married (and happily so, she tells him) woman with two stepchildren that her husband brought with him into the relationship and saved her the trouble of pregnancies, she says. Even as mails get longer and more detailed, while at the same time getting shorter, choppier and in that more personal, Emmi learns a great deal about Leo while protecting herself, giving away nothing in actual words, but a great deal in the tone. An inevitable possessiveness creeps in to the ‘relationship’, such as it is, developing from teasing lightheartedness to a more intense sense of belonging, a feeling of ‘mine’, a resentment for anyone else – especially another woman in Leo’s life – who is becoming important.

Along the way, as they two emailers begin to know each other, there is, as would be expected, a need to meet, a desire to see what the other person is all about in reality, even as they both maintain their privacy and keep some vital information to themselves. In that very self-protective bubble, they meet, but don’t actually meet, dropping by the same pub for a drink at a specified time. And they play a little guessing game, a flurry of emails, short and long, strident and non-committal, slowly revealing more about themselves and their growing bond. There is a gentle eroticism in everyday information – do you wear pyjamas to sleep in? I bought a new pair today only for you...A kiss is planned, one where the blinds are closed, but hands are not free and clothes – oh, what shall I wear? The language of lovers anticipating a rendezvous, with all the trepidation and anxiety people meeting for the first time feel flavours the short messages, sent back and forth in moments. Just when reality starts to trickle into this fantasy electronic world, the door crashes shut and an email Emmi sends to Leo telling him that she loves him is rejected. The end? No, Every Seventh Wave, a sequel, is due this summer, hopefully taking this utterly frustrating, totally idiotic, voyeuristically unsatisfying story forward.

But then, we have all at some stage been there, done that, occasionally even taken off the T-shirt!

No apologies, please!

2011-04-02T02:45:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, April 1, 2011)

It’s cricket season and crunch time, with the semi-finals showing who has the power to stay in the game and compete for the coveted World Cup. Bangladesh, unfortunately, crashed out some days ago, when South Africa beat the team quite comprehensively. As host of the opening game, the nation must have been devastated, but team captain Shakib Al Hasan could do little to change that, except for a simple apology. “Just sorry,” he is reported to have said.

But a small explanation followed: “The way we finished the tournament was not the way we wanted to finish. We wanted to finish on a high. But that can happen in cricket. We didn’t play good cricket throughout the tournament. Though we won some matches, we didn’t play good cricket.”

After the semi-final between India and Pakistan on Wednesday, the Indians certainly went all out to rub defeat into Pakistani’s faces and egos – and, as could almost be predicted, there was another apology forthcoming, this time from Pakistan team captain Shahid Afridi, who congratulated the Indian team for the win they managed to achieve, and then went on to say, “At the same time, I want to say sorry to my nation. We tried our level best but couldn’t make it…”

While these seem like rather irrelevant apologies for more widespread and important issues like global warming or peace on earth, apologies do make things go more smoothly in many cultures. Bizarre as it may sound, officials at the Tokyo Electric Power Company in Japan are now saying many sorries for messing up on radiation readings after the disaster that hit that country last month caused cooling systems at a nuclear power plant to fail and thus leak deadly radiation into the water and air. Is it something that they could have prevented? Perhaps, yes. But is it something that apologising for could fix? Hmmm, that is a point to be thought about long and seriously, once the crisis has been dealt with rather more effectively, that is.

It is easy to say sorry. We all do it, so quickly and casually, often not really meaning it in the least bit. Apologising for dropping an atomic bomb on a nation may be a little more significant than saying a shamefaced sorry for stepping on someone’s toes, or dropping water on someone’s shirt or even breaking a glass at a dinner party, but neither does much to rectify the situation, often not much to mollify the person upon whom the error impacted most.

Would it not make more sense, I often think, even as I myself may be apologising for something I have done that I should not have done, to have not done, to not affect someone or something in a way that should deserve an apology? Or is that the story of living in cloud-cuckoo land, where dreams come true and idealism is the local form of government?

Apologies are excuses for what should not be done, someone said when I talked to them about this particular piece that I planned to write. Sometimes the feeling is that you do something that you know you should not, because it gives you some odd, perhaps perverse pleasure in doing it, even as you know well that you are doing something wrong, maybe even something so uncharacteristic that it is not obvious that you are doing it. Saying sorry allows you to make mistakes deliberately, consciously, as a purposeful act of fulfilling some purpose or the other.

I could attack my colleague with a knife, for instance, just because I think he slighted me in the lunch room by not passing me the salt; it will be done knowing that it is really not my usual norm of behaviour, but I need to get it off my chest, off my mind, off my list of to-do tasks for the day. There is an anger that needs to be addressed, dealt with, deleted from my mind, which can only be done by stabbing my work-friend. But having done it, or even merely trying to do it, I would be horrified, conscience-stricken, shamed enough to want to undo the very thought. So I would say sorry, many times over, attempting to delete the action and make my colleague see me once again in the same light as before my ‘error’.

Would an apology stem the blood, if there was any? Perhaps not. Would it make my workmate feel better, if I had actually shown my anger or whatever emotion I had inside me? No. But it would, viscerally, make me feel as if some of the harm has been alleviated, mitigated, undone.
All I would need to do is say sorry. And that, like I said, is often seen as solving a lot of problems…

Not quite a lady, but a diva!

2011-03-26T01:31:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, March 25, 2011)

The first time I saw her, though not in real life, was when I was taken to see Taming of the Shrew, the Hollywood version of the Shakespeare classic, many years ago. She is introduced through a peephole in a large wooden door, as a pair of startlingly beautiful violet eyes, heavily made up, which hold anger, aggression, a strange shyness and something that could only be called ‘star power’. Some years later, I saw her again, this time as a photograph at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; she featured in a wonderful black and white image as Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, with heavily kohled eyes and slick hairdo, a gold snake coiled against her magnificent bosom. I was stunned by that photograph, not just because it showed off more cleavage than I knew existed when I was that young, but by the power of those eyes, the direct gaze, the firm resolution shining through. Elizabeth Taylor, I understood, was a star, a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood, a lady who was more than a woman, a complete diva.

As I grew up, I learned more about the star and the person behind the makeup. She was Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, born in England to American parents, brought up in the United States, known all over the world. She was, by the time I could read, more than just an actress, she was all celebrity, all scandal, all glamour and gossip. Her love story with Sir Richard Burton grabbed headlines all the time; even as she divorced him, she called him the greatest love of her life. And she had many – movie stars and politicians, even a construction worker. Marriage happened to her eight times, twice to Burton, and once each to Nicky Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher, John Warner and Larry Fortensky. When someone asked her why she kept repeating the act, she said, “I don’t know, honey. It sure beats the hell out of me.”

As an actor, Taylor was seen in blockbusters and flops alike. She started acting when she was all of nine years old in There’s One Born Every Minute, and worked in a number of films, transiting neatly into more adult roles with no trouble at all. From Lassie Come Home to National Velvet, she was a star by the time she was 12. In Conspirator (1949), at just 16, she moved to a grown up character but Father of the Bride (1950) was the production that brought her into adult roles, big time. Some years after that, her southern belle accent in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof steamed up the screen as much as her passion with Burton in Cleopatra, but she took home two Oscar awards for her work in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966).

Perhaps best known in the life that was Elizabeth Taylor was her collection of jewels. The famed 33.19 carat Krupp diamond and the 69.42 carat Taylor-Burton diamond are perhaps the best known of her enormous collection, apart from the 50 carat La Peregrina, a teardrop shaped pearl that she almost always wore. She channelled her passion for sparkling stuff to start designing for the Elizabeth Collection, touted as “fine jewellery with elegance and flair”; even her designer-label fragrances mirror the jewel theme: White Diamonds, Black Pearls and Passion. As she aged, Taylor segued from her short shorts and babydoll frocks into more matronly kaftans and wraps, often making a ridiculous picture, trundling along carrying extra weight on her tiny, top-heavy frame, loaded with spectacular jewels. Her glamour was never doubted, but her style statement was, with talk show hosts and comedians alike making fun of her.

As her acting appearances faded into minor roles and then none at all, her philanthropic activities increased, keeping her in the public eye to some extent. She was more recognised as a social activist, with AIDS awareness, research and treatment being top of her champion-list. Taylor fought illness – suspected lung cancer, a benign brain tumour, skin cancer, pneumonia, congestive heart failure (which finally brought about her death) and alcoholism, surviving them all with some help from devoted doctors, various love interests and her indomitable will to survive.

The legend Taylor died, at the age of 79. She was a grandmother ten times over, with four children and four great-grandchildren and a host of friends, alive and dead, from the still-gorgeous Debbie Reynolds to the late Michael Jackson. Eulogies have been written about her, the star, and many more will follow. But for me, that image of beautiful violet eyes glowing through the peephole in a large wooden door is what she will always be about. That, and the knowledge that she was a true diva who even dictated before she finally passed away that her own funeral be 15 minutes late!

Stand up and be counted

2011-03-21T00:23:00.000-07:00

(bdnews24.com, March 18, 2011)

Every now and then our front door bell rings and there stands a stout little gentleman carrying a huge bag, smiling a small smile. He takes his shoes off, comes in and sits down at our dining table, unfurling a huge roll of papers almost larger than he is. Taking a sip of the water I serve him, he coughs gently and then uncaps his pen. He looks up, smiles, and begins his task for the moment, asking us the most intimate of questions, ranging from how old we are to what we do and how many air-conditioners we have in the house. None of us take any offense at the personal nature of his examination, since we know that he is merely doing his job, and a rather arduous and painstaking job, at that. He is a data collector for one of the most ambitious tasks that India has been set: to get every single individual recorded, labelled, registered and all that good stuff. This will be valuable not only from the point of view of doing a general census, or a count of all this country’s citizens, but also help to implement what is known as the Unique Identification scheme, whereby every Indian has an special identity card that lists all their personal details, making is easy for everything from the collection of government pension to finding someone in a criminal database. It will act as a combination social security card, a voter identity card, a ration card perhaps, and a general means of identification, eliminating all the various papers that are so necessary in the process of applying for a passport, a gas connection, a visa, and much more. Whether this scheme will work or not remains to be seen, since it is rather ambitious and dependent on an organised system of data collection and analysis, as well as an efficient and systematic manner of presenting that collected date and issuing the unique identity card at the end of the whole lengthy, tedious and bug-ridden procedure.

I read recently that in Bangladesh the 5th population and household census kicked off earlier this week. As always, as in India too, the most prominent citizen of the country, its leader, the President – Mohammad Zillur Rahman in the case of Bangladesh and Pratibha Patil for India – was the first to stand up to be counted, as the saying goes, thereby hopefully setting the example for the rest of us to cooperate with the people and the process that they are trying to work on. The five-day-long process will result in data about the total number of people in the sub-continental nation, especially on their age, sex, ethnicity, religion and social and economic status, which will be useful in planning and implementing schemes for development and progress. As in India, Bangladesh also has a ‘floating population’, as it is called, which finds a home, however temporary, wherever possible, be it in a bus depot, train station, on the pavement, or under a bridge. These people, too, will be counted, though it will be a fairly difficult task.

The problems involved with an exercise of this magnitude are not few. Even as teachers, municipal workers and various others, primarily volunteers, are added to the task force, the word needs to spread from the government that this kind of process is going to be implemented and must be completed within a certain viable timeframe. Of course, organising the whole thing and getting it in the right gear at the right time is in itself a huge job. But worse still is the problem of getting the citizens, for whose eventual benefit it will all be done, to cooperate. In India, there have been reports of people not being polite to the data collectors – that is perhaps the least of the issues that need to be addressed. For most, it is a matter of genuinely not having the time to sit down and have responses recorded – in Mumbai, or other big cities, where families tend to be nuclear and both adults go out to work, the coordination between those who have the information and those who need the information is perhaps the most difficult step in the entire process. There have been stories written of where people are home but refuse to open the door, refuse to give the information being asked for or just refuse to entertain the data collectors once they know why the doorbell has been rung by a stranger.

Once all the information is gathered, it needs to be sifted, analysed, channelled, used, to best effect. Census taking is not a spy story being acted out; it is a useful – valuable, in fact – exercise through which the people who live in and belong to a particular country can be helped by those with the power and authority to do so.

PABLO BARTHOLOMEW

2011-03-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

(Hindu Sunday Magazine, March 13, 2011)

“This is where I grew up,” photographer Pablo Bartholomew says of Mumbai, the city he knew - and still does - as Bombay. “It is a real city, a hard, intense place.” Bartholomew came to the city in his late teens and did a lot of his work on the urbanscape of the metropolis there – “This was a way of discovering a new city,” he explains. He showcased his ‘discoveries’ recently with a show called Chronicles of a Past Life - '70s & '80s In Bombay at the Sakshi Gallery.

But much of what he saw then and viewers could see in his show is no longer real. The photographs are a mnemonic for those who remember the city in the 1970s and ’80s, but are unfamiliar vignettes with that otherworldly touch of the perhaps-known for those who came after. Bartholomew also did some modern-day exploration, “walking around, and found that some of the places are not there anymore - the building I shot my pictures from is not there, the scene I shot is no longer there. There are places that have closed down. This is a function of time and change; everything changes. These are passings and passages of time. Bombay (as he and so many others who know an older, less harried city call it) for me becomes a bit of a passage where I go back to some of the older places where I had breakfast or lunch or dinner and I continue to do that today because in some way it is reinforcing memories or feelings that I have of or for the city.”

But the draw was not the much-vaunted ‘charm’ of the metropolis. It was something more, something else, something that went beyond definition. Bartholomew does not think that “Bombay ever had charm. It had a vitality. It had a democratic way that it treated many people of different faith, colour, belief; outsiders were absorbed in as long as they had something to offer the city.” But with all that, too, change has been inevitable. “I think that fabric to some degree has changed, there have been migration changes, so maybe there are many more North Indians here now. Earlier, the Parsis, the Goans, people from the South stood out much more than the Punjabis, but now I think maybe the equation has changed. There were always South Indians – Keralites, people from coastal Karnataka and Mangalore. That is what made the city so exciting and interesting! You had all this mixed with a healthy dose of Muslims added in.” The people were the driving force, the momentum that has made Mumbai the commercial capital that it is today.

Bartholomew believes that with the positive has come a downside that is not always healthy. “I think the city still has that buzz and craziness of driving itself, but the infrastructure has defeated it. If you look at what is happening in North Bombay – Andheri West and beyond – it is totally chaotic and haphazard. Some things in the South may never change, until those buildings fall or some really strong builder lobby takes over, which they are always trying to do.” And he is not against progress in any way, though he rues the shape it sometimes takes. “If there is a fire and a building comes down, there is always a chance that a new horrible structure will come up. But it is not as if they will rebuild it in historically the same manner, because there is really no value for that today. That is a matter of sadness.” According to him, “The city fathers here never really bothered about the future, it seems, because they came from somewhere else probably, from rather dull and low education backgrounds which didn’t allow for them to have concerns of a certain type. The concerns were probably of lining their own pockets instead, not necessarily in thinking of a greater, larger good for a city so that it could continue to live and breathe.”

He articulates many of the concerns that dog today’s Mumbaikar and are beginning to find expression in urban development now. “Take the suburban train services – they should have been revamped years ago so that the system could have a different kind of infrastructure and carry more people. The introduction of more different and innovative kinds of transportation – the development of waterways, for instance - would be hugely useful. But maybe those who could have done it did not think all this through well enough at the time. Things could have been done years ago,” but are still only wishes in the minds of some who have to navigate Mumbai’s bustle every day!

Bartholomew’s camera also looks at change from the point of view of preservation, a kind of record of a not-too-distant past, one that is yielding perforce to a ‘new and improved’ cityscape that is not necessarily aesthetically better. Consider the mill areas, he suggests, they are “also being redone, but the whole thing is going bananas with the way in which these vertical structures are coming up! Are the buildings in tandem with the larger city? What does it all represent? Nobody cares, nobody thinks these things through. Frankly, it’s all about money and politics,” he avers. Bartholomew brings up the oft-made projection of Mumbai becoming like Shanghai, the fastest growing city in China and one that is often made an example of in discussions on development and progress. “Shanghai is like New York on steroids – a supercity with super infrastructure and the semblance of arriving into the new century, even though not everything is ideal there either. There is also ambition and drive, but not as much corruption, not to the degree that it stalls certain kinds of progress being made in a positive way.”

In the capturing of an ethos that is soon vanishing, down to the smallest architectural detail, Bartholomew has an intimate understanding of what a softer, gentler, more mellow Bombay once was. And he feels that “You can still have the old stuff and do innovative things in other areas that are not offensive and in your face but address space and the needs of a city. Nariman Point (the central business district, as it were) may have been the worst idea that the city developers had – it brought everybody down to the South end of a narrow island, making them need to travel down there every day to work and then back home. Did Bombay and its people need that sort of movement? Things could have been diffused to maybe the central part of the city (Bandra-Kurla), to meet a different dynamic need.” The loss of a certain lifestyle, even a kind of habitat, as seen in his black and white images, was perhaps due to the fact that “When everything gets choked, people have to do something about it. In China, when they build a city out of nothing, they first put in the infrastructure and then invite in industry and people to live there. Here it is the other way around: you come and build and settle, then you get water and electricity and transport and roads.”

Some of his images are especially poignant, faces that show poverty, hunger, deprivation, but never a loss of spirit, that great spirit that is often mentioned whenever the city is hit by crisis, be it bomb blasts or terrorist attacks. There is the watchmaker in his tiny booth, the daily-wage labourer in his singlet, the dabbawalla, the trucker, the beggar, all living in a city that was and still is all about dreams. “The country was in some ways happier then,” Bartholomew believes, “nobody was so rich or so poor, or it was less apparent. Now the divide is so great between the rich and the poor in the city. It is a miracle that we do not have levels and layers of violence like Brazil and some parts of America. The greater danger is now the rural-urban divide and the trouble caused by it, by the uprising of the most deprived and prejudice-laden. It could happen very fast to the city.”

A dire note, but one that indeed rings true. But for Bartholomew, the city is special enough, important enough for him to be as involved and opinionated as he is about it. As he has said in his show, “Bombay offered me and thousands of others like me…the opportunity to be cradled and mentored professionally. It gave friendship, food and shelter and the chance to be discovered, the chance to become someone.” Today, this photographer is ‘someone’ with a voice that speaks through images that are a true chronicle of a city that once was, that will always be.

Disaster strikes Japan

2011-03-12T01:50:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, Friday, March 11, 2011)

Traditionally, historically, the Japanese are very stoic people, who prefer to show no emotion, never betraying how they really feel. But right now, in a new time and space where grief outweighs any age-old norms of behaviour, the need to express anguish, shock and pain is overwhelming. The small country with a big honour code was hit by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake at 1446 local time, Friday, triggering tsunami that reached about 10 metres in height. Buildings have been shaken, people even more so.

The epicentre of the 20 mile deep quake was 373 kilometres from Tokyo, the capital, where tremors were felt, power lines failed, fires spewed smoke, skyscrapers tottered, cars fell off bridges and people feared for their lives. The enormous waves generated carried with them cars, houses, boats, trailers, animals and human beings inland and out to sea, leaving destruction, devastation in their wake. Cell phones buzzed overtime as anxious relatives and friends tried to get in touch with each other, reporters tried to get one up on the news as it happened and rescue teams rushed to get to where help could most be used.

The disaster was not limited to Japan alone – tsunami warnings have been issued elsewhere through the Pacific region, particularly in Russia, Indonesia, Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hawaii. And it comes as the highest on the scale of two previous quakes off the Japanese island of Honshu, 7.2 on Wednesday and 6.3 on Thursday morning.

The results of any such natural disaster are immediately visible. Roads and buildings are cracked, perhaps even collapsed. Public transport services are, for the most part, halted, at least until it is declared safe for them to start again. There is a strange darkness, lit by the occasional flame of burning debris, an eerie silence prevails, into which the smallest noise could be the herald of more destruction, possible death. From the human point of view, fear rules over all other emotion, showing on faces, in actions, as reactions. Instant friendships are formed as a kind of shield against that feeling of being alone, being afraid, being possibly hurt, perhaps even killed. Some of these bonds last for ever, since they are forged in moments of such stress, when each moment, every expression, is written on the soul, as it were, in letters of dark permanence.

As the authorities scramble to get essential services working again and some semblance of normalcy into everyday life, rescue and recovery personnel start the heartbreaking task of finding victims, human and animal, helping, healing, saving, burying, consoling. But that is possible only once nature stops its terrorising stirring up of the earth and ocean, calming to a state of comparative peace.

Another fallout of disaster of this kind is the effect that it has on the economy of the nation concerned. This time, the Japanese yen has fallen sharply, while the Nikkei index and June futures slid downwards. The trend has been seen across Asia, where economies are just starting to recover from the recession that hit so hard a couple of years ago. So it comes as a kind of double – multiple, really – whammy, where a nation and the countries around it are affected by a single stroke of an uncontrollable force that leaves behind a general and overwhelming devastation.

What is truly frightening is that while Japan is a well-known hot spot – from the terrestrial perspective, where the earth’s tectonic plates more than occasionally clash – so many other regions are also suffering the effects of natural upheaval. New Zealand is still shell-shocked by the massive quake earlier this year. China was rocked this morning by a tremor even as it is still trying to recover from recent shakes. The north of India, in the Leh Valley, is in the process of rebuilding from earth slides. And so on and so forth. Is someone up above, some higher power, some divine authority, not pleased with what we humans are doing to the earth today? Is this series of disasters retribution for man’s sins? While this kind of thought may not be especially rational or even logical, one does wonder why…

Can a nation and a people recover from such trauma without permanent scars? Japan has had to deal with the lion’s share of the nightmares that can befall any people. In modern history, there have been natural disasters that cannot easily be counted, from earthquakes to floods to mudslides and more. There was the black period where the atomic bombs brought hell to the islands, where places and people are still recovering, generations later. There have been wars and political upheavals, killings and greater pain that can be imagined or expressed.

And each time, every time, like the mythical phoenix, the country has managed to get back on its collective feet and make greater progress, gaining its position as one of the most advanced in the world. This time, too, it will happen, once the shaking stops.

Saas-bahu, soap opera, and life of a woman

2011-03-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

(BDnews24.com, March 8, 2011)

Every year, once a year, the world goes crazy with all sights focussed on women. International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, becomes a marketing opportunity, with the spotlight set on the female buyer, or the female for whom buying happens. In other words, it becomes a marketing scam, almost, with lots of special offers, special events and even more special celebrations.

And, once it is all over, once the sales have ended and the salons and cafes empty, things quieten down, fade back to normal and assume a veneer of normality, it is as if nothing ever happened; the woman is still what she was before the hype and hoopla and all her importance, as assumed or granted for that one day, or even one week, reverts to whatever it was originally. It is as if nothing every happened. The woman never was in the spotlight.

But on television, life assumes a different hue. Through the day, in India, the soap factory is fully occupied, churning out endless variations on the age-old family saga. Some of these are comic, full of fun and slapstick humour, a never-ending series of tired jokes, defunct humour and, often, tactless and downright silly lines.

There are clichés galore, from the characters to the words they speak with such intent to the settings, the progress of events and the situations themselves. But somewhere, somehow, the makers of these ‘serials’, as they are called, have managed to top the right vein, capturing an audience that is loyal, steadfast and believing of any fare dished out to it. And the woman, often the protagonist, is in clover…or on celluloid, as the case may be.

The classic genre of soap opera on Indian television is the ‘saas-bahu’ serial. In any one of these, there will be a young woman who, as the show progresses through various episodes, gets married. The wedding itself is an opportunity for the heroine to go through various traditional rituals, the actual process depending on the community the show is based within, and in doing so, to showcase a number of products, from saris to makeup to jewellery to whatever a woman needs to be her best. On the way to that stage of the story and the woman’s life, there will be drama, with tears, angst, joys, playfulness, familial bonds, comedy and whole lot of fun, for both viewers and actors alike.

And there is a character evolution too, in a physical sense. The girl starts out in jeans, salwar kameez, even skirts, then, once she is married, almost as if she has crossed a rubicon that cannot be re-negotiated, she changes into saris. From a simple, non-jewelled, uncovered head and light-hearted mien, she suddenly metamorphs into a more serious avatar, one that is sari-clad and decked out in the most impractical jewels.

From a young person who would jump and skip down stairs, chase other children around the house, garden or college grounds, she moves into a realm where she has to walk elegantly, slowly, without that exuberance that is supposedly typical of a single young woman, taking on the weight – perhaps of responsibilities – of an adult.

Once she is part of her marital home, as it is known, the young woman becomes someone else. She has to live by new rules, learn new traditions and customs, even call a stranger ‘Mother’. She cannot, by the fairly strict laws of soap opera-dom, access her parental home, her parents and siblings, her closest friends, her former life, as it were, without the relevant permission from not just her husband, but his parents as well. She now belongs to her new home and must abide by its customs.

When I first saw an Indian (Hindi, to be precise) serial of this kind of genre, I was amazed, amused and then horrified. I did not and could not believe or accept that young woman today would change so drastically, so dramatically, becoming so different from her normal personality. I would never allow that to happen to me, I insisted, even as I watched open mouthed, seeing the transformation happen night after night on the small screen.

And then I started meeting women who had actually gone through it in real life. There was the woman in the gym I go to, for instance, who had to battle her marital home and everyone in it to be able to create some kind of life outside it, to become a salon owner and find her own feet. After the sudden tragic death of her husband, the only support she had in her blooming, she had been closeted in her own home, her freedom to live and choose taken away from her.

Just a few days ago I heard that she had won that independence again, but with the threat hanging over her head that her children would be taken away from her if she brought any disgrace to the family name. And this is a young woman in Mumbai, a big city.

Most of the soaps are set in smaller towns, since this kind of regressive ambience can be found there. There is also a familiarity for the viewers – they identify with the travails the heroine and her ilk go through and cheer them on when they win, occasionally gasping in horror as they do something beyond the norm established by tradition and often age-old but constricting familial habits.

Along the way, there is a feeling that this kind of family situation, this kind of closed existence is supportive and comforting, without the risks that feminine independence carries with it, but it is also restrictive, stultifying and amazingly painful for a spirit that, under ideal circumstances, should be allowed the freedom it needs to bloom and be all that it can be: a woman who knows her power, her strength and her ability.

Salaam Bombay

2011-03-07T00:23:00.000-08:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, March 5, 2011)

Chronicles of a Past Life - '70s & '80s In Bombay, photographer Pablo Bartholomew’s show at the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai is “the street photography side of my work,” Bartholomew says. Since a lot of it had been done “in Bombay (as it was then), it was appropriate to have the first viewing in this city.” He came to the metropolis at the time as a kind of escape from his life in a Delhi that was all about bureaucratic correctness, his father’s name and a turbulent teenage existence. For him, acceptance came, he says, “not for whose son I was, but for my skills and talents”. This exhibition, a “manifestation of my outer world, my associations with the city and its people, known and unknown”, as he himself describes his work, is Bartholomew’s way of “paying my dues to this city and its people” In the process, he managed to not just record his discoveries in black and white film, as a kind of archive of a gentler, more serene and yet vibrant city, but a “place that came to be called home”. In a way these images tell the tale of a significant slice of Bombay’s history, of a time that can never be recaptured, a time that was a kind of bridge between history and progress, between the vestige of a foreign rule and the impersonal face of a modern present.

Of the many originally chosen for the show, there are only about 10-15 images that have not been hung, Bartholomew explains. After all, “You can’t have everything – this is 112 images, quite a huge show in contrast to the 40-60 pictures normally done. I felt that there was so much of the city that I wanted to show, plus there was space that was available and I wanted to configure it densely, since that is also the way the city is. To have that sense of density and show off the subcultures” as ‘sets’ in distinct areas of the gallery “was also what i wanted to do”.

A visitor wanders through those sets, those streets, those subcultures, seeing “some rather obscure architectural details, views and streets, very minimal, no traffic, more of a graphic element, as if you approach the city, as it were. There are shots of sport, old cars, Irani restaurants, the rain, people in the city - the worker, so essential to every function, the dabbawalas, the pushcart guys...There is also a tribute to the old people.” An old man in a solar topi, his face lined with the experience of ages; a watchmaker, sitting at his tiny table, wearing his sadra and cap, bent over his almost-forgotten craft; a wizened couple in a seemingly but deceptively romantic situation, their faces hidden behind a newspaper...

As a whole, the exhibition is tribute to the city itself, its physicality – “open views of the cityscape, the sea with buildings, some at Worli, some at Nariman Point, windows into the walls, more sort of intimate spaces of a city.” Bartholomew has also “built a table with pictures of people –so many who to some degree touched me, and some not at all: poets, writers, theatre people, film people, friends, scattered on that table in a very haphazard manner – something essential to my life in the city.” And there are the sleepers, religious iconography, some things that you see as cutouts, signs, symbols, the inanimate.

As Bartholomew explains, “I think people react to these pictures differently, depending on what vintage they are. If you have been around in the ’70s into the early ’80s and were teenage and above and are now in the 50s like me, it serves as a function of memory, reminds you of certain things that may have happened” around the locations captured on camera. “For younger people, it is a sort of surprise to engage and understand Bombay as it was, and rediscover things that they may not know at all except through what they have heard. It is curiosity, voyeurism, nostalgia - it all depends on what appeals.”

Book review

2011-03-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

(Times of India Crest Edition, February 26, 2011)

TENDER HOOKS, by Moni Mohsin

Sometimes a book comes along that cannot be slotted into any particular genre with any definite description. It is more than the sum of its parts, as Aristotle is erroneously credited with having said, and as a whole brings in a host of experiences that go beyond just an ordinary piece of literary creativity. This one, by British-domiciled Pakistani author Moni Mohsin, is usually classified as chicklit, but could be much more, as it entertains, amuses, enlightens and, in a strange way, educates. Along the way, it does get tedious, tiresome, long-winded, but it is good for a light-hearted giggle right through it all.

Mohsin has her finger firmly on the pulse, the idiom and the snob values of wealthy society in Pakistan – in Lahore, in this particular case. Her heroine, Butterfly, is a woman who knows her place in her context, someone who is sure of her socio-economic class, her social position, her self-importance and her family. She has a loving husband whom she adores but never really understands, except instinctively, an adolescent son who is her world, her life, her jaan, a large and often irritating family who wants more of her than she has mindspace to give, and friends with whom she believes she must not just compete and win over, but help, with no patronising nose-in-the-air flavour to it at all, of course.

Butterfly has a small problem that she needs to handle: her cousin Jonkers, fairly recently unclasped from the avaricious albeit loving arms of a slutty secretary-wife, who was “making sex appeals to him”, has to be married quickly. But the girl has to be fair, beautiful, rich and from an old-established family of the highest class, as would be suitable, at least in his mother, Butterfly’s Aunt Pussy’s mind.

But as she flits in and out of GTs (get-togethers), wedding receptions, kitty parties and girl-‘seeing’ sessions, our heroine has one aspect of the whole matter on her mind – the threat is that something dire will happen to her darling son unless the deed is done successfully. A small accident at school makes her convinced that this will indeed happen.

But somewhere along the way, conforming to the way things are done becomes less important and what Jonkers actually wants and likes seems a good idea. In sorting matrimony, social priorities and her cousin’s life out, Butterfly learns more about love, her own life and husband’s feelings and, as a bonus, local politics and protest and confesses that “I’m tau very glad that the Talibans are being given a good and proper beating up by the army. They were giving us no ends of trouble. Blowing themselves up in full bazaars at the least evocation...”.

Written in a wicked, tongue-in-cheek and entirely giggle-worthy idiom, a style that comes straight from the occasionally skewed and always busy mind of the star of the show, Butterfly, reading this book brings to mind people we all know. I see my adoptive aunt, sitting in her living room with her group of friends, playing cards and having a wonderful gossip...

Speaking in mother's tongue

2011-02-28T03:05:00.001-08:00

(bdnews24.com, February 25, 2011)

My mother tongue is Tamil, the native language of much of South India. Having been brought up in Mumbai, many miles north of the state of Tamil Nadu, and parts beyond, it was hard enough to keep pace with the many languages that I was exposed to and had to communicate in, let alone one that was, in many ways, alien to me. The only person who spoke it with any degree of accuracy or authenticity was my mother, and that was not assertive or sustained enough where input was concerned to keep me linguistically rooted. And, of course, like any good single child with a strong minded and independent streak to her personality, I was not about to listen to anything a parent said, especially if it smelled even slightly of authority. As a result, like so many people I know, while I take great pride in my own personal heritage and am immensely privileged to be an Indian in today’s progressive and futuristic world, I cannot speak to the very ethnic group to which I actually belong. Is this a good thing? Not at all. After all, I am a Tamilian and should know how to speak my own mother tongue.

This is perhaps the result of an urban upbringing. Almost everyone I know communicates – and prefers to communicate – in English mixed with a touch of the local idiom, a kind of everyday Esperanto. It gets the job done, it makes life easier and it works all around. But is it a good thing, long-term, especially in a time when people are moving further away from their origins and becoming amalgamated, homogenous, even anonymous, none any different from the other, linguistically speaking. Unfortunately, in most cases, this tends to mean that local languages, dialects, even idioms are often lost, as is happening in much of the sub-continent, especially in northeastern India, where some languages are so esoteric and obscure that they are limited to just one small tribe – and the death of the last member of that extended family implies the extinction of the very word itself!

This could conceivably happen in Bangladesh as well, especially if children are not taught and encouraged to use their native language. A recent report tells me that textbooks in their mother tongue and teachers who can use that to communicate with the youngsters are in short supply in the country, particularly in Chapainawabganj district. Children are finding it difficult to deal with classes – and the teachers involved – in Bangla, which they are not as fluent in and cannot manage to catch up with too easily. Some prefer to drop out rather than struggle with not only lessons, but also in building relationships with others of their age who speak either Bangla or English. Santali, for one, is not used in textbooks, so it has to be taught using the Roman alphabet, which makes things a lot more difficult for the youth.

It is indeed a matter of irony that the country itself has signed the United Nations charter that gives “all communities of the world the right to receive education in their mother language”. The charter was ratified in Parliament by the passage of a bill, but the law in this case has not yet been implemented. Which means that these children will have to wait even longer for their lives to be made more comfortable – to a point where they can earn and living and be valuably contributing members of society. Of course, the question does arise: why should the youngsters bother if the government doesn’t? If it is not important enough to provide them with ways and means to be educated, to become self-sufficient and more global citizens, beyond their immediate ambit, why should the children themselves bother to muster up enough motivation and initiative and effort to get the job done without help?

Eventually, it is not a battle that can be fought, leave alone won, by the school children alone, or even by the small community to which they may belong. It has to be a concerted effort by many people – those directly involved, those that run the local schools, the government and, perhaps most important of all, those who care about keeping the culture and traditions of the nation alive, healthy and flourishing. And it is not just a matter of textbooks, but about a lifestyle, a way of living, a style of communication, a route to the future – a future of not just young people and individuals, but also of a country that wants to look into tomorrow. A tomorrow that is the story of success, of development of achievement, of progress. That same tomorrow which we all look forward to, whether we are in Bangladesh, in India, or anywhere else in the world.

Draupadi

2011-02-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

(The Hindu Sunday Magazine, February 13, 2011)

Shivani Wazir Pasrich was once often seen on the catwalk, her back straight, her stride measured, her head held elegantly. And then she stepped out of the limelight and into a world that was more private, personal, her own life. But her next step was on to a different stage, one where she could communicate with an audience every time she spoke, talking to each person sitting in front as if they were her friends, the faces changing every day but the intimacy always staying the same. As a theatre actor, Pasrich has found a new world to challenge her, a world that has accepted her and lauded her talent. This was obvious after the staging of Draupadi, a play in English that she, as first-time producer, recently brought to Mumbai, to the National Centre for the Performing Arts. It has managed to bring the classic heroine out of the shadows of her many husbands and onto centrestage, literally and metaphorically, with a little help from luminaries such as Ritu Kumar (costume design), Aman Nath (set design), Shubha Mudgal (music/voice) and Anjolie Ela Menon (a signature painting). Draupadi was directed by Tina Johnson and Pasrich herself.

The story draws on the original character from the Mahabharata, but begins after the war has ended. Draupadi (Shivani Wazir Pasrich) is wandering through the neverworld that lies somewhere between heaven and earth and is wondering why her life has been the way it has. And, as she did on so many stressful occasions through her life as wife of the Pandavas, she talked to Lord Krishna, her confidante, advisor and savior. Why do women need to suffer, especially the way she did, she wants to know. And Krishna (Dilip Shankar), the all-seeing, all-knowing, introduces her to Maaya (Charu Shankar), a modern woman in today’s world who has faced societal abuse and is on the verge of killing herself. Draupadi strikes a bargain with her for her life versus Draupadi’s salvation. And the debate of revenge over resilience, life over death, pain over endurance begins…

According to Pasrich, the process of producing a play was very different from just being an actor playing a part in one. “It was as traumatic as the story of Draupadi!” The venture was never planned to happen in the way it did, since “At the core I am an actor. I am used to taking a subject and making it my own, in my own space and comfort zone. A producer is exposed to the elements – I would laugh at production people when I was doing television and plays.” When she watched Dilip Shankar during the process of Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man with Lilette Dubey, “Dilip did the lights – he would be looking after everything, and I would laugh and say ‘You could easily be an actor, why do you do this?’. Inadvertently I became a producer. Suddenly I realized that as an artist many ideas come to you and some day someone would ask you to do something that relates to it all – the road that you take in life has no knowns; it is just a very hard road.” She realizes that “If you set your heart to something, you need to find the route to make it happen…and it does!”

Draupadi came from the research that Pasrich did while she was working on a project dealing with Karna, the anti-hero figure in the Mahabharata. “I found it was all quite male-centric and did not do justice to Draupadi. I thought long and hard – why is it the same kind of track people think about when it comes to her? As a human being, there must be many aspects to her. There seemed to be a strong parallel to many of us today – we are individuals on so many fronts, so why box us into whatever limits we are in? We are after all as rounded as anyone else, and need to explore as many possibilities as anyone else. If you – or I - are going through a tough time, so is everyone. Draupadi went through more difficulties than anyone else,” Pasrich thought. “I did a lot of research on her – the story in my mind that took shape was that as women we face challenges – we have to be malleable as clay, as hard as rock and like sand, fill gaps wherever they appear. It is not possible to be all three in any situation with a given conflict. You will always have problems, but if other women have survived, dealing with more conflicts, so can you.” For her, “Draupadi was an inspiration to conquer all adversity, as strength, as that voice inside speaking out against injustices meted out by society. The whole concept is to not let it all fly into anger and rage and emotions that have no resolution, but to create a system of actually harnessing that energy and channelizing it positively.”

And the choice of Pasrich as the title character seemed pre-ordained. As she tells it: “We were rehearsing for a play on Karna; I was playing Draupadi. I wanted to improvise, but the director did not like it. And a man from ISCON man who came to watch said, ‘Ma, you are Draupadi.’ I believe the project was destined and the people who came on board were all fated to be there. It all just happened.” Over two years, paths just opened up, says Pasrich, “The ones I had chosen were blocked, others opened up, and it made me very vulnerable, emotional, fragile. Draupadi was never just a play for me. It is much more. I don’t think it has changed me, but it has changed people’s perception of me - which is very flattering. I hope it does not change me! The whole idea of creating is to know who you are and what you are, you know that you are grounded and solid.” And who is she? “I am the mother of my two daughters – but with that, I feel greatly inspired to do things that could change the perception of what women are how they are perceived in society.”

Draupadi the woman may have been traumatized by circumstances and have risen above them to become a heroine of all times, but Draupadi the play is “completely entertaining,” insists Pasrich. “It is not a sermon, yet it has a message, not something that is preached, but an insight into life. This play really is about healing in a sense. I believe it is so relevant in our modern-day world, where we face so many expectations, so many burdens, as wife, mother and human being. We need to be kinder to ourselves.”

The play has been staged in Delhi and Mumbai. It will be seen in Bangalore in January and Pasrich looks forward to staging it in Chennai and Hyderabad as well. She enthuses, “I am looking forward to performing in the South - they are so aware of the epics and our history and tradition and it would be interesting to see what they say about this take on the character.”

Just say 'die'!

2011-02-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

(http://www.cricketcountry.com/cricket-articles/The-repercussions-of-publicly-dubbing-cricket-a-stupid-game-/529)

aka The repercussions of publicly dubbing cricket a “stupid game”

It was just last week that someone tried to kill me...or so I thought for that one crucial moment when all escape routes seemed to be blocked and my bloody – but unbowed – end was a given. It wasn’t that I was being a bad husband, or that I could be a husband at all, since I am all woman, but that I made what tends to be a rather tactless remark in the context of the average Indian conversational ambit. I made the fatal – almost – error of saying that cricket was a “stupid game”. For a few seconds there was a stunned, unbelieving, incredulous silence.

Then the quiet, deliberate tap of a glass being set carefully down on the table. The gentle clink of a fork touching a plate. The muted gulp of water rushing down a throat clogged with an undefined but ardently felt emotion. Oops, I thought too late to myself, that was not a good thing to say.

It would have been perfectly okay in certain contexts. Just after a college baseball game in Port Jefferson, Long Island, for instance, where most people cannot understand the concept of cricket and why it has to be played with much pomp under circumstances that are alien to any self-respecting contemporary citizen.

Or during a formal tea hosted by the Queen of England for the Arsenal team where the idiom would be a ball that is larger and kicked around with the feet rather than with what seems like an oddly configured two-by-four with a strange paint job. Or even at that fabulous after-party for the latest Bollywood blockbuster premiere where in the film there is no role for a wannabe sportsperson of whatever persuasion.

But in an Indian home with a group of Indian guests, all hotly debating the virtues of leg-before versus leg – presumably - after, the occasional cry of “Howzzat!” echoing around the spacious sitting room even as terms like “googly”, “mid-on” and “run out”, danced in the air along with a floating cat hair and a bit off fluffy feather the vacuum cleaner and the otherwise eagle eye of the hostess had missed? Never. The deathly silence slowly, inexorably, inevitably grew menacing.

There was a sense of violence, barely contained, that overwhelmed the gentle fragrance of sandalwood and hot, sweet ghee that wafted around the dining area. A large man rose from his chair and turned towards the dining table, where the perpetrator of the verbal crime stood. Me. I. Myself, the hostess of the dinner evening, the co-owner of the apartment and the one who had made the remark without sparing a tiny thought for the consequences.

You see, I tend to forget that in some – a very few – ways, this is not a free and democratic country. All people are not equal, not where holy cows (forgive me, oh Lord of the Speech Censor Board) are concerned. You do not speak with any lack of discernible tact about religion, local politics or (may I be forgiven the temerity of even mentioning the word after my gaffe) cricket, not unless you want to face a penalty that can range from a cold silence to complete social ostracism to, in some dramatic and extreme cases, murder.

I believed for the second that that would be what I was going to have to deal with, as the large gentleman loomed up alongside me as I stood with knees going ever-so-slightly wobbly, my cold and admittedly clammy fingers clenched tight around the handles of a large glass dish holding the ghee-scented dessert. “Pudding?” I asked weakly, as perhaps a form of atonement for my blunder.

Mercifully, my guests had known me for as many years as I had been alive. They understood that in some aspects of everyday Indian life, especially cricket, I was not as bright as I could have, should have been. They smiled, forgave, even made a joke about my ignorance. And they continued the meal and its accompanying chatter without too much attention paid to what had been said, without bothering about me, in fact. I was still alive and undaunted. But it had been a close thing...

(Ramya knows little, if anything, about the gentleman’s game, but she is capable of inviting comment, occasionally of the murderous kind)

Getting rid of the bugs

2011-02-21T02:13:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, February 18, 2011)

Much of today’s beleaguered economy turns on the axis of appearances. Since a great deal of money comes in – or, at least, is invited in – to any country from outside it, that country has to present an image that is favourable, “pretty”, perhaps a little mendacious. It happens anywhere in the world; just before an event that focuses the global media’s hawk-eyed lenses on any nation, there is a frantic rush to get things cleaned up, to make sure the best face is presented, even if it means last minute whitewashing (literally and metaphorically), huge amounts of ill-afforded money spent on cosmetic alterations and more manpower than is practical put on the job. India did it for the Commonwealth Games last year. Now Bangladesh is doing something similar. According to news reports, the country “has launched an all-out war on mosquitoes in and around cricket stadiums to ensure a bite-free World Cup for spectators and players”. Two venues in Dhaka will host the opening ceremony and six matches in the tournament and spray teams have been deployed by the Dhaka City Corporation to wipe out the buzzing bugs before they can take a bite out of those involved in the game. Apparently, there has been an alarming increase in the number and proliferation of mosquitoes in recent months, and so special measures are being taken to kill the insects in the stadiums and for three kilometres around those centres, as well as around the hotels used by the teams and their supporters. And, in the process, the authorities look to make sure that the picture of the country presented to the rest of the world remains as bug-free.

The problem, in Bangladesh and much of the Third World (or what used to be considered the Third World until some nations made enough economic progress to lift themselves to the next rung in the relevant ladder), is one of familiarity breeding more than just contempt – there is a laissez-faire attitude to the environment, a disregard for hygiene outside the personal or immediate, and a generally abysmally low level of consciousness of the huge disparity between the haves and the so many more have-nots. In India, in China and perhaps in Bangladesh (where I have not yet been), people will be immaculately clean, no matter how poor they are, their homes will be as spic-and-span, again no matter how poor, but look outside the window, or just beyond the gate, or even along the stairwell to their apartment, and you will see discarded bottles, spit stains, plastic bags, everything that makes up the detritus of a human existence.

This is another aspect of the great clean-up act. And Bangladesh is reportedly working on that aspect of life too. The story goes that “Authorities have already evicted hawkers and beggars, forced worn-out buses off the roads and banned laundry from being hung out near stadiums to improve Dhaka's image.” Which is, really, the crux of the whole matter: improving an image. Throw these unfortunate individuals out of their accustomed habitat, change their lives and not for the better, send transport companies out of business because they cannot afford to change their worn-out vehicles for newer ones and make sure that the face that the foreign visitors see is shiny and sparklingly clean. But what happens to those who are dispossessed? Or do they already know that it will not last, that within a few months, or even just a couple of weeks after all the noise and gimmickry is over, they can move back in and take over the turf they know and control so familiarly? I have these questions, but who will give me answers for them?

But the issue is more than an immediate and makeshift change in presentation. The alterations must go deeper, much deeper, to a very personal and core level, one that is long-term, permanent perhaps, a new and improved attitude rather than just a cosmetic spit and polish job. As many nations have found – Singapore being a case in point – it is not impossible. It may take more than just presuming that people have a conscience and will clean up their acts – literal and figurative – because it is the right thing to do all around, it could need a little enforcing of the law and a couple of deserved and painfully felt punishments, but it can work. This is not about the activist-style pronouncements of environmental doom and death by non-observance of high standards of hygiene, but about leaving behind an environment worth living in for the generations that have not yet been thought of. It could be that shame is a good trigger towards achieving this end – being seen as an unaware, unclean, uncivilised land where the rats, mosquitoes and humans fight for a common goal: survival.

It could be, of course, just trying to save the World Cup visitors the trouble of finding good hospitals to treat a serious case of malaria!

Soup: good food indeed!

2011-02-15T01:40:00.000-08:00

(The Bengal Post, January 2011)

It all started way back in time, around 6000 BC, or perhaps even before then. According to archaeologists, it could date back to the time when waterproof containers, made from the skins or internal organs (nicely cleaned, of course) of hunted animals, first came into being. That is when the first records show that people made and drank soup. They combined water with meat, vegetables and flavourings to produce savoury and more-or-less-liquid foods that they ate – drank? – as a meal, with a meal, as a way to keep warm, to re-hydrate their bodies and gain quick and easy nourishment to maintain, nurture and heal the system. As the word spread and the concept of ‘soup’ evolved, the categorisation began – clear soups, also called bouillons or consommés, capture the essence of their main ingredient, are light, and do not have any chunks or inclusions; thick soups, on the other hand, are heavier, incorporating a thickening agent that could be flour, cream, eggs, butter or grains, like barley and peas, and serve more as comfort food, as it were, than an appetiser or digestive. Stews, as a different kind of food, are even more thick, have plenty of pieces of vegetables, meats, seafood or cereals and can be a complete meal in themselves, including rice, pasta or other starch form.

Soon the idea that a meal needs soup to be complete spread and cookbooks almost always had entire chapters dedicated to the food. The famous slogan of ‘Soup is good food’ took over the canned foods business and became a truism. People from various parts of the world cooked up pots of delicious soups, each a showcase for local culture and customs. For instance, the Germans became well known for their potato soup, while the French used butter to add life to delicately seasoned bisques and bouillons. As travel became easier and often more necessary to make commerce happen successfully, soups – as indeed all foods – needed to become more portable; this resulted in the development of dried soups, first with concentrated chunks of meat stock and then, spurred by the Japanese penchant for invention and innovation, vegetable extracts. These ‘instant’ soups just needed a little hot water and some stirring to become delicious, quick and nutritious meals. It was just a hop to the next step, when tastemaker or bouillon cubes were created to be added to rice, stews, curries and more for that additional kick of flavour. Of course, the instant noodles in a Styrofoam cup were an instant hit with the college student, since they were filling, cheap, very easy to make and provided a hot burst of energy on a cold winter’s day of term papers and studying for exams.

A somewhat unusual concept is a sweet soup, usually made with seasonal fruit and served cold. Watermelon or musk melon is commonly used to make a soup that acts as a base for other fruit or interesting soufflés, sorbets or desserts. In Norway, fruit soup is made with prunes, raisins and other dried berries, served warm or cold. Cram, milk, spices, alcohol (port, brandy or champagne) are commonly added for a little punch and richness, while potato starch may be used as a thickener with a neutral taste. In the Middle East, China and Central Asia, fruit soups tend to be warm or even hot, the sweetness cut with a little lemon or even acid cheese; the Chinese in fact make a delicious winter melon soup that has a chicken stock base and is savoury, including mushrooms, scallions and other vegetables.

Perhaps most complex in flavour and multifarious in ingredients are the soups from the Orient. They combine the intensity of a long-stewed broth with the lightness of tofu, the heat of spice pastes, the textures of fresh vegetables, the sweetness of seafood and the heft of meat, sometimes all packed into one delicious bowlful. The laksa, the tom yum, the thukpa, even the shorba combine east and west to produce an inimitable and undeniably irresistible blend of flavour, texture and spice that set up a wonderful ‘item number’ almost of Bollywoodian proportions in each mouthful. There is a crunch, a slurp, a spark, a, explosion of gustatory fireworks with every bite and the stomach and the soul do a joyous and exuberant dance.

India has a unique way of looking at soups, broths and stews. Many soups are about healing, using ayurvedic or naturopathic tenets. Cumin, for instance, like fennel and cardamom, is ideal for digestive disturbances, while cucumber is cooling and mustard is heating. Turmeric aids in the treatment of diabetes, skin infections and inflammations, while ginger can help to deal with fever, cold and respiratory congestion. Adding these ingredients to soup or stews at various stages has different effects, most of them therapeutic and relieving, some supportive and nutritive and all delicious. In fact, most Indian food is created with therapy in mind, and thus works on the body and mind as a holistic system, indivisible and always balanced.

Just as good food satisfies the mind and soul, a balanced meal can work to satisfy the digestion. Soup, according to the French, makes food better, while the Chinese, who like soup to end a meal, believe that it helps digestion even as it serves to balance all the flavours that do a merry dance in the mouth, lining up the tastes, as it were, for that last segue into the stomach.

RASAM
(A staple South Indian soup-like dish, eaten with rice or drunk plain. This is the easy, almost instant recipe. Best when it is cold outside or your sinuses are blocked, or your tummy is uneasy)
Garlic – to taste, minced fine
Salt – to taste
Pepper – to taste
Tamarind water – 1 glassful
Plain water/lentil water – 2 glassfuls
Ghee – 1 tsp
Asafoetida – pinch
Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
Cumin seeds/powder – 1 tsp
Curry leaves – 6-7
Coriander leaves – 2 tsp, finely chopped
Tomato – 2 tbsp, chopped
Splutter mustard seeds, cumin seeds and asafoetida in hot ghee. Add garlic and sauté gently until softened. Add curry leaves (if using, cumin powder). Add tamarind water, simmer gently. Add water (or lentil water), salt, pepper and bring to the boil, then simmer gently for ten minutes. Put in chopped tomato, simmer until soft. Turn off the heat, add coriander leaves and serve hot.

CHICKEN SOUP
(A good way to use up bits of leftovers and make yourself feel better when a cold threatens – there are no proportions, just throw in whatever fits in a large pot)
Cut up chicken (better without skin but with bone)
Garlic – chopped
Ginger – chopped (do not overdo!)
Onions – rough cut
Carrots – rough cut
Potatoes – rough cut
Celery – Rough cut
Peas
Corn kernels
Salt
Pepper
Rice/pasta
Throw all this into a large pot with enough water to cover it with two or three inches more. Boil vigorously at least twice, skimming off the dirty foam. Then simmer for at least an hour, more would be better. Serve piping hot in a large bowl.

Taking a break

2011-02-13T03:51:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, February 11, 2011)

Everybody loves a holiday, more so when there is no real reason to have one. Many working professionals do their thing through the week, looking forward to Sundays or even two-day weekends, while some who work in government organisations get breaks more often, as the bank or office or department takes time off whenever the local authorities declare it to be a time-out. And of course, especially on the sub-continent, play day is, logically speaking, time to take a day off and...err...play! Like next week, on February 19, when Bangladesh plays India, and next month, on March 19, when Bangladesh will play South Africa in the World Cup lineup. On those two days, it has been declared - or so I read in the local newspapers – that “all educational institutions in Dhaka and Chittagong cities will remain closed”. This decision presumably has prime ministerial approval, since Sheikh Hasina was the chairperson and chief patron.

Holidays are always welcomed, but can sometimes make life more difficult for the ordinary citizen. In India, a country trying to deal with the multiple whammies of inflation, recovery from a recession, overpopulation, underemployment, hunger, poverty, corruption and the aftermath of terrorism, all of which makes it very much like so many other nations across the globe, a day off generally means a day when business slumps, where profits drop and where nothing works to par. It is a day when banks do not update accounts, credit checks and permit withdrawals, meaning that the local ATM or any-time-money machines are functioning overtime. It is a day when the plumber will not come to fix that leaking tap, the electrician cannot buy the new fuses he needs to make the power go on in your home and the quick run into town will not happen by car because the gas stations are closed so you cannot fill up the petrol tank. Mercifully, in my home city of Mumbai, there will always be a grocery store open to deal with emergency needs, the trains run smoothly for the most part, rain, shine or holiday, and the electrician does work holidays if coaxed to, though he may charge overtime.

When I was much younger and in school, I would often wonder why I never got mid-week holidays. During the monsoon, when things were soggy and nasty and no one really felt like sloshing through the puddles, which occasionally grew into satisfying floods, we walked wetly to school and back, or were ferried there by cars or buses that seemed to have become boats. The best part was that the school was situated very close to the beach, which meant that flooding was a given during the heaviest part of the monsoon. But, for some reason we resented without knowing it, we never got a day off, even when other schools did. We even had to go to school on national holidays like Republic Day and Independence Day, when we stood in the assembly hall, sang the national anthem, raised the Indian flag and then ate a small celebratory snack of cake and chips, finally going home mid-morning to watch the parade in New Delhi on television. It was a holiday, really, but never felt like one, since we had to get up early, get dressed in uniform and spit-shined shoes, trudge down the hill (I lived in a building on the very top of a hill) and go through the prescribed routine.

These days, from the very grown-up and adult perspective I have now, holidays seem to be more easy to get from the powers that be. While I do not remember holidays being declared for reasons as trivial (may cricket lovers forgive me here) as a cricket match, the working person does get a day off for national celebrations, deaths of important people, strikes, go slows and the occasional flood. Even terrorism, as experienced by a shocked and horrified city in 2008, when a team of allegedly Pakistani villains sneaked in to our city and massacred innocent people, could not stop us working, with no declaration of holidays or indeed any time off. The same thing happened so many years ago in 1992 and 1993, when riots and then bombs ripped through parts of Mumbai – the city refused to stop and take a break. This, many journalists with a stock of clichés and little originality call the “spirit” of the city. But it is actually something else, something that I needed to grow up to understand. It is the drive to survive, not any kind of ‘never-say-die spirit’ that we as citizens of the city that is Mumbai possess. We need to go about our lives in order to live, to keep going, to feed ourselves and our families. We cannot stop and smell roses, even on the cricket pitch.

But we can, of course, make sure that there are televisions in the office to watch the cricket match on!

Blasts and more

2011-01-29T02:17:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, January 28, 2011)

The bomb that went off in an airport in Moscow killed 35 people. By any reckoning, it is not a huge figure considering the fact that casualties of terrorism have been numbered in thousands in the not too distant past, but it is, obviously, painful and devastating for both the victims and the world. Just think of it — people are wandering about the airport, Moscow’s largest and busiest, minding their own business, waiting for luggage, picking up friends and family, spending time before a flight when, suddenly, there is noise and fire and flying metal and then, as a horrific silence palls for a few seconds, bodies and blood and cries of agony. Is that a way for a life to end?

At least 35 lives did end that way. And 180 or so others could be in danger, injured, critically or less so, in hospital or back in their own homes. The bomber, who knows; it is theorised that it was a woman, all dressed in black, carrying a case and kneeling alongside it when the bomb exploded. The cause? Nothing yet from news reporters. The blame? Being passed around, as is always the way it goes when something like this happens. Will the perpetrators of the villainy be caught and punished? We all assume so, trusting the law and the governments concerned to do the right thing.

It has always been a complete mystery to me what terrorists hope to achieve by killing the innocent. If you have a reason for protest, I always thought, you try and express that to those who can help find some kind of solution. You speak to the people who can solve the problems you have, you look for ways around the issue, you could even kill, destroy or otherwise violently address the matter and sort it out. Why get people who have no real involvement in the problem hurt? Why involve them at all? It is indeed a very naïve way of looking at a world that is not a place where you can find easy solutions to simple problems, but it does seem a neater and more practically logical way of dealing with a difficult situation. I may live with my little delusions on this one, but there is no way I can be convinced that destroying the lives of so many who have absolutely no connection to an issue can be seen, even potentially, as a way of sorting out that same issue. And by killing, hurting, maiming, does the issue get solved or does it just get worse?

Some years ago, my own city of Mumbai, India, was shocked by a series of bomb blasts. The explosives were set near popular and crowded locations – the Stock Exchange, an airline office, the passport office, petrol pumps – and aimed to cause maximum damage. The ‘bad guys’, so to speak, were trying to destroy a spirit rather than a people, but in spite of the results of the blasts, which show in certain parts of the city even today, Mumbai went about its business without faltering for too long. It is, after all, the commercial centre of the nation, the place where money is the focus; and nothing can stop life from rolling on, especially where business is concerned. While it is known who the real villains of the piece are, the case is still in court. Justice takes a while to be served but it will be served…eventually.

Some years later, bombs went off, one after the other, in the local trains, killing and injuring more innocent people, commuters wanting nothing more than to go home after a long day at work. Again, the wheels of justice are grinding along, albeit slowly. A couple of years ago, horrifyingly and unforgettably for all of us who know this city and its landmarks well, a group of terrorists went beyond the anonymity of bombs placed in suitcases or hidden in cars and attacked people in two local luxury hotels, in the train station, in a hospital, on the street. Many were hurt, scores traumatised, 164 dead. The only one of them who is still alive is in jail; his trial is in progress.

There have been more, in my city and elsewhere, too many to list here. There will be others, because that is the way this world and the discontented work. And more editorials will be written. But will the violence stop? More relevantly, will the violence actually work – will those who believe in it, use it, perpetrate it, propagate it, win for their causes? Or will they, like their unnamed and uncounted, uncountable victims, die and never know what their death has achieved? In this unbalanced, insane and unreasonable existence, that tiny spark of sanity and courage that demands an end to killing and pain has to be fostered, nurtured and, always and for ever, kept growing.

Private moments

2011-01-22T01:33:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, January 21)

There has been a great deal said and written about the whole notion of privacy today, especially with invasive – and potentially intrusive – technology like the Internet and mobile telephony. Everyone who wants to stay networked and connected is signed up on some chat program or the other, apart from Twitter, Facebook and who knows what else that could be defunct by the time this piece is read by more than myself and the editor. Texting is easier than email and snail mail rarely finds mention anywhere. Potential employers find ideal employees on social networking sites and everything from salaries to terms of employment can be discussed not in person, but via email, chat or a message sent to an online box. As a result, the most intimate details are registered in some corner of cyberspace and can be read by those with the technical know-how to do so. Which is in a way rather scary. After all, people can find out all sorts of stuff about you, what you do, how old you are, how much money you have, who your parents were, where you live, what your blood group is…is nothing sacred any more? And that is the point of this piece. Nothing is really secret any more, very little is not up for public consumption, only a few facts are kept inviolate. What price privacy then?

Every celebrity I know of has said something about privacy – be it a Kareena Kapoor or a Shahrukh Khan, a Catherine Zeta-Jones or a Robert de Niro. They all know, and they all acknowledge, at some point, that the sheer circumstance of their being celebrities means that they need to give up a substantial portion of themselves to their adoring fans, the curious and ever-nosy public. People want to know, to paraphrase a popular American pulp publication, and it is part of any star’s – in any field – image to make sure that what needs to be known and what could be known, is. That is just how that breed called ‘PR managers’, or publicity agents, came into being. They feed the press with stories that are just steamy and sparky enough, with a tiny bit of truth attached to give it all some credence, and so keep their clients in the limelight even if, in actual fact, they are doing no work that merits any kind of attention. It is one way of getting seen and heard, which is so important in the world that they inhabit, both to be noticed and to be noticeable.

But my problem with this whole notion of privacy is somewhat different. The concept of ‘private space’ seems to be unknown and, if known, not understood by many, especially in the Indian (often sub-continental) context. There will always be someone peering over your shoulder, metaphorically speaking, anywhere in the world and we all need to get used to it, because it is now a fact of everyday life. But here, in reality, there tends to be someone peering over your shoulder, literally speaking, when you are trying to get something done, whatever that something may be. If I am in the checkout line at the store, there will be some lady peering into my basket, wondering what I am buying. At the post office, the chap in the line just behind me will need to know just what I am sending, to whom and at what cost, for what reason I am never sure, since we are not acquainted and are never likely to be. And he would have edged up closer to me than I would like or I would do to anyone else, even someone I knew well and could be so intimate with. The young people around me at the mall would perforce include me in their happy, laughing, noisy group as we walk through the security check and electronic detection gateway, because they would be pressed so closely against me as we pass through that narrow passage, stop briefly at the curtained body-check and emerge into a brightly lit and vibrant shopping arcade. None of them would know – perhaps not even realise – that they were in such close physical contact with me, because none of them would even start to think that the proximity was in anyway intrusive.

That, perhaps, is my problem. In our culturally much warmer and more physical world, this kind of contact, this kind of curiosity is not unusual. To object to it is more strange, since it shows that you – as objector – is not from the same realm at all. It shows that you are a colder person, someone once explained to me, one who does not see the curiosity and intimacy as concern, involvement, interest. It shows that you are from a time and space where you prefer isolation, cannot ‘mix’ with other people easily and will not, therefore, make friends and relationships without difficulty. The last time this enforced contact from a stranger happened to me, I cringed away and then finally voiced my displeasure in the mildest terms; I was glared at and asked, “What’s your problem? If you want privacy, go home!”

That is indeed my ‘problem’ – I want my privacy, my private space. Is that really a problem?

Raghu Rai - interview

2011-01-18T01:40:00.000-08:00

(Hindu Sunday Magazine, December 2010)

“A creative photographer is one who either captures mystery or reveals things, everything else is useless,” said Raghu Rai when he was asked for qualities a good photographer should have. In his latest compilation in Portraits – The Indians published by Penguin, Rai has captured that same mystery, revealed those same secrets, discovered the power of personality as embodied in a sideways glance, a soft smile, a knife-sharp jawline. The book is a record of imagery, of history captured through a camera lens, not just by Rai himself, but by a group of distinguished photographers and some whose names have never been known. It is divided into two sections – the first a selection of pictures by 19th and early 20th century photographers in India of the ilk of Raja Deen Dayal, Bourne and Shepherd and Johnston and Hoffman and the second, Rai’s own work from over 40 years of exploring the world of the still camera. These portraits tell a story of empathy, of creativity, of a time and place that seems almost otherworldly today, the pomp and splendor of royalty, the grandeur of ancient palaces, the gentle cadence of a language spoken with the eyes rather than the tongue.

Rai also advised non-professional photographers to “begin clicking portraits as it teaches them to connect with emotions better than juggling between doing overambitious pictures”. He added that “If your mind is not connected to what you are shooting, you are not a good photographer.” From the collection he has presented in this new book, not only is the mind of the photographer connected to the subjects’, but that emotional bond is lifted off the static page and into the mind and soul of the reader, the person who turns page after page and is absorbed into the lives of the faces he or she may look at. Putting them all together in one volume was a job that has taken many years and a great deal of thought and, more, introspection, Rai says. There were “many institutions organizations and people who collect old photos – such as the British Library, which has treasures from the countries that the Raj ruled, the Alkazi collection, as well as a number of others - there have been exhibitions and books on these too.”

But it has become a case of almost overkill for him, since “With the many books available, I was getting bored – creativity is the first criterion for me, after all, and if the image is old and creative it has strength, a special power. Because I was bored with all that I had been seeing all these years, I decided to get into collecting pictures myself.” It started with Rai “buying pictures wherever and whenever I could. I would travel and look for pictures everywhere I went. Gradually I discovered that I had collected so much material and, in today’s digital technology age, when you scan everything, new things start taking shape.” What did take shape was a new sense of excitement, a new exploration of the world of faces, old and new, with added value from Rai’s own work that had also been scanned. “While looking at my own old portraits, a friend sitting with me said that I had my own style and collection, and that I should do my own book.” The spark was lit, the fire started. Rai “started looking at old works and some of my own and I discovered that they were coming along very well. I sent the creative director of the British Library in London a first draft – that was about two-and-a-half years ago. He had the knowledge to judge and I wanted to know what he thought of it. His first response was that it looked great, but he said that the first section needed more work.” Editing, re-editing and yet more revision was called for, until finally Rai decided that it worked. “This is the sixth draft - he has not even seen it yet! When the editors at Penguin saw it, “Bina Sareen, who looks at every image carefully and understands it, was very encouraging.” And the concept of the book became reality.

But the process was not as easy as clumping together images and adding some text as binder. Rai explains, “When a photo is 150 years old, it does not mean that it becomes of great archival value, unless the subject matter or the aspect of life or the portraits that the photographers have done is powerful. By sheer virtue of age, it does not mean every image is valuable for me.” But the cachet of antiquity, however recent, is invaluable. “In the old days, it was old cameras, old film, slow film, a slow process, so you needed time and a lot of patience to take one picture. You to almost rivet people to their chairs, since the exposure was longer, the camera was open to the person for a more extended period. With this technical limitation – or perhaps because of it - their eyes showed so many emotions coming and going. In the old portraits, the eyes were very strong and stunning.” This was one of the primary aspects of the portraits that made most sense to Rai. And there was more, in the sheer innovativeness shown by those early photographers. For instance, “The first double spread (in the book) of the different princes of India taken in 1910, is actually a collage of individual portraits” stuck together against a common background of a majestic palace. Another favourite he cites is the portrait of an entire Parsi community during a Navjyot ceremony; it shows such patience and control, with each individual carefully positioned and dressed in traditional clothing. “The original was tiny, just two inches by four inches; we have restored it and blown it up to two pages. My idea is to have a big exhibition of these photos – we could make a six-foot long print and right next to it we could place the original to show off the scale and quality of the work done. Each one of these shows off the imagination and creative ideas that the photographer of that time had.”

Some of the portraits have interesting effects – for instance, lithographs combined with painting and photography, or miniature paintings with photographic faces. One of Rai’s favourites is the triple-set of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – “as a barrister, as a satyagrahi, then as the Mahatma, a transformation into three different personalities.” It is with this amazing creative variety and imaginative flair that the project was conceived. “The book was planned in that direction, making a definitive statement about portraiture and the habits of the times. I did it this way because I was tired of seeing other pictures and books, with the same old treatment. I felt a sense of responsibility to do something new and creative, because that is what I am: a creative photographer.”

Rai’s own work includes some images of strangers, ordinary people living ordinary lives, but their eyes telling stories of extraordinary souls. “My house was being painted and every day some new people would turn up – simple, wonderful human beings. The experience of watching them was so overpowering, a powerful feeling. So I made them pose and I took the pictures.” And then there are the more famous images, or Indira Gandhi, of Satyajit Ray, of MS Subbulakshmi. Rai says that “The politicians are part of my journalistic work. I am especially connected to the great masters of Indian classical music, with their stylized and special expressions; look at the great Bismillah Khan – he is looking up and still inwards, his head almost like a monument! He seems to be looking into himself with a smile…music transforms him into someone extraordinary.” During a shoot of Ghare Bhaire, Rai saw Satyajit Ray sitting by himself on a bed, re-creating the sequence he is going to shoot. “The lighting looked very dramatic. I called to him and he turned to me and the picture happened. And then there is the image of Alkazi at Arles, watching a photo show – I asked him to turn around and he made some very funny remarks about me; he was a very funny guy!”

Call it a career or a matter of thoroughly enjoying work. Raghu Rai knows just how to do it. “I had lots of fun with these situations,” he remembers.

Book review

2011-01-16T05:08:00.000-08:00

(This was published in the Bengal Post. I do not know when, since the person in charge still has not sent me a clipping!)

BATTLE FOR BITTORA
Anuja Chauhan
Harper Collins

Many years ago, during World War II, irony and humour were not just a route to stress relief, but also trenchant commentary on the state of world affairs, politics and the world in general. In Britain, cartoonists and jokesmiths took regular and pointed swipes at politicians, political systems, rationing, shortages, soldiers, the trenches…almost anything that could possibly be mentioned, all with a spin that made it tolerable to face and reflected public sentiment. Humour of that genre – funny ha-ha and funny peculiar, famously compiled under that name in the UK in slim hardbound collectible volumes – rarely finds unrestricted and accepting audiences in this country, even though Indian politics is the stuff of any side-splitting, tongue-in-cheek or totally insane humour. It is the embodiment of a kind of laughter that comes from biting satire mixed with Bollywood-ishtyle successful slapstick of the genre of Andaz Apna Apna. This could be the time for it to all happen.

Ideally suited, in fact, to production as a Hindi movie – perhaps made by the likes of the quietly rude Gurinder Chaddha or a completely OTT David Dhawan – is Battle for Bittora, the new Anuja Chauhan book that comes after The Zoya Factor, already snapped up by Shahrukh Khan’s production house for the big screen. Politics is the hero, the theme, the villain, the supporting cast, with Sarojini (named after the lady, not the Delhi market) Pande the main actor in the chaotic drama. She has to leave her city job in an ad-agency as creator of animated kitaanus to deal with her grandmother Pushpa, aka Amma, the power that energises Pavit Pradesh, the state that Jini needs to win votes to rule. She has a battalion of advisors, from the larcenous, vodka-swilling Gudia aunty to the sneaky Nauzer Nulwallah, the underhanded Dugguji, floral Bunty, Our Pappu, Hasina behenji, the doughty Jugatram, the villainous Uncle Tawny and various others. And then there is Zain Altaf Khan, erstwhile royal scion of Bittora, who makes her blood boil and her hormones dance…

Take a dash of melodrama, a helping of nepotism, a soupcon of truth, plenty of lies, lots of cash floating around and some rural practices (honour killing, for one) and stir it all about with Dabanng-style dialect and you have a glorious Indian election. With lots of thinly veiled criss-crossing plot lines, characters that could jump straight off the ‘breaking news’ headlines and more insider information than the Official Secrets Act could consider restricting, the book is a fun read, often giggle-worthy, albeit vaguely repetitive and occasionally irritating. As a reader, you want to get to the end faster than it arrives, and tend to skip every now and then. But if you see your favourite Bollywood hero playing the role of Zain and your pet heroine as Jini in a total-timepass masala entertainer based on the story, you plug in and plough through. And you have to admit that Amma was right when, with her last breath, she says, “Don’t let that fat Katrina play us in the movie”!

Just a little respect

2011-01-16T05:05:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, January 14, 2011)

It happens more than you would expect. Every now and then the newspapers carry a report on how a ‘domestic worker’ – as they oh-so-politically correctly put it – has been abused by her or his employers. For the most part, these unfortunate individuals tend to be young, distressingly so, and either far from home and family or else abandoned by those who should have been of the most support. They are taken into a household with promises of being provided an education or a means of helping their families survive, but few find any kind of satisfaction in that kind of job well done – most have to live as almost-slaves, deprived of the most basic of child right, like education, food, shelter and stimulation. Many need to deal with the nightmare of physical, emotional and often sexual abuse, accompanied by pain, trauma, horror and that endless feeling of degradation and humiliation. And if questioned, the employees either run away, deny any wrongdoing or insist that the child is theirs, body, soul and mind, to with as they wish.

But is that really possible? Can anyone own anyone else, especially an innocent human who is unaware of what he or she is legally, morally and rightfully entitled to? Does the young person have no say in the matter? Do dreams, hopes, ambitions and beliefs – especially in the integral ‘goodness’ of human nature count for nothing in a world where, essentially, everything can be bought and sold? It seems not. Consider simple instances of how you, me and others like us (to give it a strange kind of classification that goes beyond socio-economic class and stratum) behave with the people that we employ to help us live our admittedly privileged lives. We tend to need a staff to cope with maddening schedules, commutes, comfort, and all else that goes with the trappings that make us busy, hardworking and eventually successful people in today’s highly professional and near-automated world. There is a maid or two, a driver, a laundryman, a vegetable vendor, a grocer, a gardener, a babysitter, a stylist, a tailor, a handyman…the list can be never-ending, depending on the degree of dependence we may have on support outside ourselves and our families. Many of these may be underage, taken on for their low price and easy availability, sent to big cities to find work by their own families in order to swell coffers back home, to find their own way in a world that is hard and poor, to better themselves perhaps, or to find escape from the rigors of a life not wanted and not wanting them. We look for them, find them, interview them, haggle over how much to pay them, hire them and then? Do we really look after them?

‘Look after’ does not always mean treating the employee as your own child – since most of them are mere children. It is about much more – ensuring that their rights as human beings, as individuals, as children are respected. Ensuring that they as those human beings, individuals and children have access to food, shelter and clothing, to opportunities for betterment and advancement, education, healthcare and a viable future. And ensuring that they are safe, live without fear, can face the world as strong and balanced people. How many of us – myself included – manage to do that?

I find it shocking in some instances that my own friends, people I expect to be aware and with active consciences, since they are as highly educated and informed and capable as I am, if not more so, do not seem to believe that the domestic staff they employ are deserving of respect. The same respect that those who employ them enjoy. They may be less advantaged from the social or economic standpoint, but they are no less deserving or entitled. A ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’, small marks of respect and humaneness, is always needed, however menial a task that the worker has been hired to perform. Speaking politely is just the start; there is always more – being aware of the need for a break in routine, a need for warmth when the weather turns cold, a need for food when it comes time for a meal, a need for rest when a long day’s work is done. Most of all, a need for compassion, healing, caring, involvement, an assurance that they are not alone, not abandoned, not un-respected. How much effort does it take for a smile, a sharing of a snack, a consciousness of right over wrong?

It makes sense to me to see that my own maid is comfortable, is not unwell, is properly fed and clothed, is safe, is happy. A smile in her face brings a certain joy into my household for the hour or so that she is within it. And the sense of caring and involvement that she gets from me gives her and me the assurance that she will stay with me and give of her best as long as she is able. She laughs, talks, jokes, even yells at me when I do not give her what she wants – which is usually the right detergent to wash the marble tile of the floor, the perfect scrub for those non-stick pans, the right to bring me onions from the factory she works at even while onion prices shoot through the proverbial roof.

All that, to me, is worth so much more than having someone under my thumb, slave to my whims and fancies, someone who works for me rather than with me to keep my life ticking along smoothly.

Screen playing

2011-01-16T05:02:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, January 7, 2011)

The film biz in India spans almost every language that is officially recognised in the country. But, where public perception is concerned, there is one overwhelming influence that is the colour of all things filmi: Bollywood. A word coined by some enterprising wordsmith or journalist many years ago, one disliked by superstar Amitabh Bachchan and many others, it still works well to describe a world that is about dreams and ambitions, successes and failures and great joy and even greater heartbreak. The age-old and astonishingly seductive showreel of a young man (women were less visible in the particular sequence) from the village coming to the big bad city that was (in those days) Bombay and serendipitously meeting a big-time producer/director and becoming the new Big Star illuminated by flashbulbs and starry eyes still brings people — young and surprisingly older too — to the City of Dreams, as Mumbai is called now, is still very much a valid, working clip. There are still hundreds who come to the megalopolis to become the next Salman Khan, the next Madhuri Dixit, the next celluloid sensation, the latest Yash Chopra or anyone else whose name may echo through the peninsula. And some of them do…as was seen in various films released over the past year.

Annum 2010 was not a time when big was better. A number of films that came from established and reputed production houses sat flat on their cans (sic!) while the box office rattled sadly to poor collections. Movies expected to go stratospheric in their success fizzled unexpectedly, shaking Bollywood and its fan following out of a state of cinematic complacency. Big-budget big-star big-prediction films like Kites (with Hrithik Roshan), Guzaarish (directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan), Raavan (by Mani Ratnam), Veer (Salman Khan) and We Are Family (with Kajol) failed. And smaller, less touted productions from comparative unknowns, like Love Sex Aur Dhoka, Ishqiya, Tere Bin Laden, Peepli Live and Band Baaja Baaraat did startlingly good business, pushing all those involved with them into the spotlight.

The result of this shake-up could have been predicted, following all patterns of uncertainty and surprise: Bollywood decided that it was time to rethink formulae and strategies and try, once again, to figure out what worked, what could win and what would bring in the money. Unfortunately, as with anything filmi, that attempt to rewrite the formula and find a success guarantee will never be possible. After all, there were too many unpredictable wobbles that happened – Salman Khan, superstar of the mass audience, wrote a film called Veer that failed almost as it was released; that same Salman Khan rewrote audience perception with Dabangg and his act as a corrupt cop had cash registers ringing all the way to the bank and back. Farah Khan’s success with Main Hoon Na and the Om Shanti Om, both starring Shahrukh Khan, spurred her into declaring her independence from the star with Tees Maar Khan with Akshay Kumar playing the lead. It was panned by critics and audiences alike, with not even a steamy ‘item’ number by hot-stepper Katrina Kaif being able to revive its fortunes. Shahrukh underlined his track records by retaining and building on his fan base with no releases and not many appearances over the year, though his My Name Is Khan still brought in good business overseas.

Unusual stories and screenplays were perhaps the deciding factor in the success-failure game in 2010. First time directors hit it huge (Abhinav Kashyap being the best case in this point with Dabangg), small towns were centrestage (as in Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti) and comedy was central, especially if it was slapstick (see Golmaal 3). Thrillers did well too, from Once Upon A Time In Mumbai to the aforementioned Ishqiya. And, as total ‘paisa vasool’, or value for money, Rajnikanth’s Robot (more in the Tamil version) and, of course, Dabangg, with their clichéd dialogue, dramatic delivery and over-the-top action did the trick best of all for everyone, even the most carping critic. It was a time when big stars lost a lot of their starry sheen to the raw newcomer, the underdog, even the obvious non-starter. Consider the surprise hit of the year in Band Baaja Baaraat, where Ranveer Singh, who came out of nowhere to play a loud, crude, un-citified hero against the more experienced Anushka Sharma, won accolades from his critics, his audiences and, best of all, his more senior colleagues in filmbiz!

So what does Bollywood hold for the next year? Filmmaking now is all about polish, sophistication of technique and a much greater degree of depth than has been visible for some time. Production houses and financiers have realised that whatever the name attached to the film, however big and bright the star, whoever the director and the ‘item number’, what really does make the difference is the story itself. If there is a tale worth telling, Bollywood is finding that it needs to be told in order to tell a different story at the box office: that which is about finding – and keeping – the limelight.

Eat it and weep

2011-01-16T04:57:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, December 30, 2010)

It’s all about knowing your onions. And in India, where life is full of flavour, colour, spice and all things nice, onions are getting to be one of those essential aspects of everyday life that are getting more rare by the day. The other day, walking through the small market I generally get my vegetables from, I found that there were only two stalls there selling onions, where normally there would be about seven. Also, the wares that they did have on show were sub-standard, small, stunted, battered, rejects rather than the prize bulbs I would have chosen. ‘Sorry, the supply is like this, we have no choice,’ the vendor said, even as I reeled backwards at the price he cited – about four times what I usually paid for quality I would never look at.

This has been the scenario in this part of the world for a few weeks now. The headline news has concentrated on onions, with slight tangents to look at the case of other vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant and yams. Garlic comes a close second to its cousin the onion where price and standard of supply is concerned, so expensive and so low-grade that few want to buy it, even if they could afford to. Carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower and other staples that every household has in the larder are being replaced by sprouted lentils and protein granules/chunks and other substitutes, just to balance budgets and dietary requirements. Restaurants are still providing onions with curries and kebabs, with sandwiches and burgers, with salads and suppers, but as a side or extra, to be specially ordered and separately paid for. And many menus are citing the non-availability of the stuff, replacing it with cabbage, with extra jalapenos and, in one hilarious case, with a plus order of ketchup.

All this sounds very odd and rather dire, considering that the shortage of one particular common vegetable has become the stuff of national debate. India, as the world’s second largest producer of onions after China, has been facing a crisis of sorts as onion production has gradually but inexorably fallen over the past four or so years. Farmers in my own home state, Maharashtra, are choosing to use their land to cultivate crops that are more income-generating for them and their families, with guaranteed harvests, guaranteed sales and guaranteed returns. Perhaps a major factor in this choice has been unpredictable rainfall – either there has been too much, as happened in 2010, or too little, as in 2009. All this has led to no control of the situation, arbitrary price allocation with no common minimum rates, hoarding, a black market and a kind of vegetable (especially onion) mafia, all of which could be part of a very bad Bollywood movie plot. The irony is that not too long ago, there was such a glut of onions in the market that the bulbs were being sold at a mere four rupees or less per kilogram!

But somewhere in this vegetable soap opera, the government plays a rather significant role. Many blame the Indian minister in charge of food and agriculture, Sharad Pawar, saying that he did not do much to analyse the situation in time and deal with it before it could escalate to the levels it is at now. He cannot possibly be faulted for unseasonable and unpredictable weather conditions, but he could have foreseen the issues of unstable supply after becoming aware of the damage to the standing crops and the harvest that was nowhere at normal, at-par levels. Crop damage at between 25 and 50 percent in the onion-producing regions of the country was noted in October 2010; the low supply to the markets was seen in the next month. In December, prices had shot past affordable limits. But the honourable minister, it is reported, was busy with more important issues – he was signing licenses for the export of the onions the Indian kitchen so urgently required! The stuff of so many savoury Indian culinary products was being sent off to Pakistan and parts beyond.

And the irony does not end with the price factor. The real crux of the whole drama has come now, when the onion market has been given a fillip in a process of crisis management rather than logical functioning of a balanced economy. All export permits are being reassessed, all onion exports have been stopped and all supply chains and storage facilities are being examined. Maddest of all in this madhouse of supply, demand and sales is the fact that we, India, are now getting onions from the country many still see as the ‘enemy’ or ‘rival’ – on and off the cricket field – Pakistan. Yes, those same onions that we sent them not so long ago. Of course, that too has a bit of a rider attached – the Pakistani onion is said to be of lower quality than the Indian one; but that could be just that same cross-border rivalry rearing its idiotic head.

But then, with onions, who really knows them!

Nothing like new technology

2011-01-16T04:55:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, December 25, 2010)

Many years ago, the phenomenon called the Internet arrived in the subcontinent. It was not very extensive, Google did not exist as a public service and Wiki-anything was still unknown. Connections were slow, the bandwidth was limited and getting online was expensive, a privilege of corporate houses and the wealthy at home. That was the first coming.
To be a part of the wave had a certain special snob value that could not be matched by anything else that could be bought off the shelves, even the mobile phone, which was an equally prestigious acquisition at the time. The reach of this new concept was enormous, its potential unimaginable, its possibilities endless. Writers could be read all over the world without too much effort, information could be exchanged almost instantly and communication was no longer a case of missed phone calls and waiting for the postman to deliver the mail.

In that time and space, journalists had tough choices to make. The adventurous plunged into this new realm of technology driven news-gathering, developing abilities that they had perhaps never been trained for. They had to create stories without delay, since they had only a small and often unlikely chance of being first to ‘break’ something. Newspapers and magazines were starting to explore the idea of an online edition, cautiously and with many reservations, primarily because many of the established journalists were of an older school that was wary of anything that happened too quickly and used too much science that needed too much explanation.

The dotcom wave was sweeping through this part of the world and many bright and ambitious individuals were buying their ways into it. Salaries that were tempting, to say the least, were up for grabs — all that you needed was excitement, enthusiasm and a certain recklessness and willingness to play in an unknown field.

And then the bubble went pop. There was no money being made, since advertisers had not yet caught up with the immense potential of this new medium. Many of the better established writers and editors stayed away, preferring the tangible evidence of bylines to the rather more ephemeral world of the Internet, where you could read writing only if you knew where to look for it, most cited.

If you were published online, you ‘vanished’, was often the belief. But it was a time when those who looked very far ahead bought domains, registered URLs and were savvy enough to squat on possibly lucrative-in-the-future space in the cyberworld and wait until the rest of mankind caught up. The recession did quite a lot to destroy a great many dreams of this kind, but patience did pay off. The dotcom business is back!

I do not speak just as an insider, working in the Internet space and writing for this newspaper, an online publication. I speak as someone who has watched people and their attitudes evolve from being wary of and shying away from a new medium to absorbing and accepting it as something that has more interesting possibilities that should — must, really — be looked into and tapped. Today, as part of a web company, managing content and looking for new ways to capture audiences, I realise the huge range of permutations that can be easily managed, new ways of presenting the information, innovative methods of finding that same information and a hitherto unknown universe of design and style and creativity using technology and stimulating the very core of human thought processes.

And the reservations have, to a great extent, dissolved. Writers are flocking to the Internet space to write blogs, to create fiction chains, to find kindred spirits, to sell their works. They are discovering novel ways to present their writing, to tap into new audiences, to explore new ways of saying things that have been said so many times over since man started learning how to write. The feeling of ‘vanishing’ has itself vanished, and even the known and famous advocate use of the Net to show off their work to the discerning, to locate agents that could help, to publish unedited writing and have it critiqued or to present new stories for a select – and occasionally paying – reader population. And there is now money to be made with that kind of writing, since those with advertising budgets are willing to give healthy cheques for work of quality that can be used to bring the public in to browse and thus increase page views.

New technology is never a bad thing, especially if it does nothing to disturb the balance of the environment and our world. The Internet is indeed technology of a unique kind, non-polluting, not-interfering, non-invasive, for the most part with no attached health hazards (apart from human weaknesses like addiction to Facebook and online chatting) that should become part of every life, if only for the enormous realm of novelty that can be explored to learn, to study, to think, to understand and to reach out to the rest of the world out there.

Power of press

2011-01-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, December 10, 2010)

The Indian media has been shaken somewhat over the last few weeks by what could only be called “indiscreet behaviour”. Two very senior journalists — people who have been listened to, read, respected over the past so many years — are in the dock for being inappropriately involved with a matter that has reached judicial proportions, with those involved in it being indicted by opinion, the press and, to some extent, the government in India. They insist that they were only stringing along their “source” to get more information on the story that they were independently investigating, but many beg to differ on that one.

After all, being responsible journalists, responsible adults and responsible human beings, they should have known what they were doing and understood their limits. Most of all, being public figures with popular television shows and print columns to their credit, they should have realised when they were crossing that fine line between investigation and involvement, and kept the distance that is so important in such situations. But they did not.

And the media — rivals or else-wise — is working hard to generate support on the one hand and, on the other, to make it clear that this is just not done. There are no apologies forthcoming, no believable excuses for what happened, no real reasons for it to be done. And the scandal value has dwindled to almost nothingness, the breaking news that it was just last week fading off the headlines and being relegated to the inside pages of papers that have nothing else to report.

Why did it happen? Who knows, except for one small point that is well known but rarely accepted by those involved: the journalists had started thinking that they were truly powerful; their word, such as it was, had to be accepted without questions asked, with no terms and conditions attached, no sanity check. Why? Simply because for years they have been the voice of that same sanity; their words have been taken for Gospel, the whole truth, reliable, honest, unbiased. But, as one of the two people concerned said when he was spot lit by the media for his role in the matter, it only takes a moment of indiscretion to wipe out 30 years of solid reputation. His name, for its immediate recall value, is now ‘mud’. The same can be said of the lady involved in the fracas — her television news show is well-known and looked forward-to, her interviews hard-hitting and incisive, her face and her voice famed for their presence whenever, wherever there is news to be reported.

And now both these luminaries, winners of more awards than a single person has a right to, have a somewhat tarnished public image.

All simply because they thought they were inviolate and all-powerful, people who could make things happen with a mere wave of a verb, conduits for a change that would normally take much longer and a lot more effort than one individual could manage to put in. Why? Because they had already tasted that heady sense of power, had already made things happen, had already influenced not just public opinion, but powerful opinion-makers too.

As senior journalists with an impressive body of work behind them, they had lobbied successfully to make change happen, be it increased privileges for the armed forces or greater protection for endangered big cats. But in trying to, as they both separately insisted, elicit information from a source as they worked to break a story that could shatter sections of the government, they overstepped their limits, blurring the lines between reporter and lobbyist, seemingly aiming to influence the flow of power rather than explore its tides and discover what the power equation actually was all about. In doing so, in getting a little too personally entangled, they have managed to not just mess with their own images, but push the entire press community into the spotlight, making almost anything that is done in the quest for a story, questionable. Responsible journalism? Perhaps not! Time for some kind of control mechanism to be implemented in journalistic research? Perhaps, yes!

In 1887 Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Creighton saying, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” A more fitting paraphrase attributed to William Pitt, British prime minister in 1766-1778 goes: “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.” With great power comes great responsibility — the responsibility to see that it is used with discretion, intelligence and, most of all, common sense.

Doing the green thing

2011-01-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

(bdnews24.com, December 4, 2010)

An international publishing house has me on its mailing list and I get emails from there on a regular basis, as do a lot of other journalists I know. I also get print outs in the mail, replicating what the emails say. While I once took that for granted, since the snail-mail acted as a kind of mnemonic through an incredibly chaotic week, it now seems wasteful and redundant. I have told the various people at the publishing house this and asked them to send me only the email, save a tree and build on their carbon credits, but they do not react or respond. Maybe this is a case of a tree falling in the deepest part of the forest.

Environmental awareness is taking on new avatars every day. It can be visualised as a social movement or a very personal form of activism that speaks passionately and persistently of the need for various measures to protect natural resources and ecosystems. Sustainable management through public policy, lobbying, protests and the setting of examples could be the route to a better world, a healthier planet, a safer future. That awareness has indeed grown, spread and become part of the everyday ethos for many all over the world. The effects of ignoring or abusing Earth are becoming more pronounced by the hour, and the consciousness that it is man who is destroying his own home is increasing. There have been books written on the subject, films made, papers presented at international conferences and laws changed to deal with the issue, but how much do each one of us, at a very personal level, actually do? Have we changed our own lifestyles to make sure that there is a world for our descendants to live in, long after we ourselves have crumbled to dust? Think about it.

Many of the problems we face today are not of our making, admittedly. Blame it on the quest for “progress” as it was called, that began a very long time ago, perhaps when man first stood on two feet and found that fire was a useful tool. In more contemporary history, the Industrial Revolution in Europe set the tone for modern-day engineering, technology and manufacturing units. The euphoria of doing things faster, bigger, better and more easily did much to deplete the planet of precious resources like fossil fuels and minerals. And we – as a species – did not really know better when we dug up the earth and poured chemicals into rivers and puffed carcinogen-laden smoke into the air. In the mid-1970, people began to see what was going on, how “progress” was making sure that there may not be a life worth living not too far down the line. And a slow, wary and oft-reviled awareness started growing. We, the people of today’s world, realise that what we inherited is not healthy, for our bodies as much as for our planet. And we have started working on dealing with that particular issue. In fact, the Chipko movement of the 1970s holds as much credence – if not more – now than it did then, with its slogan of “ecology is permanent economy”, which is easily adapted to the new brand of environmentalism, which deals with aspects like global warming and genetic engineering as comprehensively as it does with the traditional issues of priority, protection and preservation.

Or have we? Just as I get printouts of already-sent emails, there is a paper trail that leads inexorably from company to client, no matter whether it is necessary or not. Any shareholder will be familiar with company reports and newsletters dropping through the letters slot in the front door or being received from the courier man. New stores, services and sales will be announced by inserts in the daily newspapers, sometimes blank on one side and shoved in by the dozen. Team discussions in the office invariably have executives – and, as major offenders, journalists – taking notes on paper, sometimes just a large box outlined on a larger sheet or one word scribbled in a corner, the whole crumpled and thrown into the basket.

And it is not just about saving trees by saving paper. A train ride or a drive through almost any big city in India and many anywhere else in the world is an environmentalist’s nightmare. Peek out the window and there will be plastic bags, scrap paper, cans, PVC bottles and other rubbish tossed casually out on to the tracks, the road, the nearby streams, the sea. Rituals in India, for instance, result in a good deal of waste in the form of flowers, bricks, wood, et al, all mandatorily dumped into flowing water. But does it all have to be contained in a plastic bag, of the kind that does not have a biodegradable-by date attached?

Our planet does come with that date – and time, it is a-wasting!

Forget the ethic, just pay!

2010-11-29T01:41:00.000-08:00

(Published in BDNews24 online, November 26, 2010)

Scandal and sensation is part of everyday life anywhere in the world. Like an epidemic, it has occasional flare-ups and then subsides into a subliminal mutter, all set and waiting to erupt once again into a storm that hits headlines in print, on television and over the Internet. Over the past few weeks, an epicenter has been India, a land-building scam vying for public attention with one focusing on the telecommunications industry and many others just waiting for their share of the media spotlight. It is all about high level politics, contacts, licenses, permits and, obviously, a great deal of money. With that quantum of power comes a lot of privilege, many perquisites and even more permissiveness, at least in the local ethos. And all along, though everyone knows, nothing can be proved or used in a court of law. Not so much because it is not useful and useable evidence, but because the process of untangling it all would be too time-consuming, too messy and just too complicated to deal with on a fast-track basis.

Transparency International’s latest ranking of 178 nations by their perceived level of corruption indicated that India had fallen three places, with most Indians being labeled “utterly corrupt”. Congress President Sonia Gandhi recently said that the fast pace of economic growth in India was happening at the cost of a “moral universe” that was “shrinking”. The biggest noise was perhaps made at the Commonwealth Games, which concluded not too long ago in Delhi, and was coloured a darker hue by the taint of corruption in places that should, ideally, have been clean and whitewashed, with no hint of anything that was not above board and honest. And, as the latest nail in the ethical coffin, Ratan Tata, a very respected industrialist with a huge and immensely successful conglomerate to his name, told the story of how he was asked for a bribe by a government official when he was thinking about starting a new domestic airline.

In everyday life too there is a great deal of wheeling and dealing, some of it astonishingly underhanded. There is corruption everywhere, from the parking lot attendant taking a little something to find you a good space ahead of the waiting line of cars to a minor minion at the local municipality office who wants to be “induced” to expedite signatures so that you can buy your new home. We have all faced it and are usually so inured to it that we do not find it strange, let alone dishonest, any more. I am as much part of this cycle of a little bad-tinged good as anyone. When I was just 14 years old I got a driving license that stated that I was 18, just by handing over a surprisingly small amount of money to the official at the local authority office. When I was rather older, living alone in a city that was not mine, Delhi, I was asked blatantly for some money to escape dealing with a court appearance when I took a right turn against the sign, never mind that the sign was nicely hidden in a tangle of leafy branches of an overhanging tree, thus giving me no indication that what I was doing was not allowed. Since then, life has not been all honest either – most recently, we gave a traffic policeman a little pourboire to let us off the offense of jumping an unexpected red light at a crossroads. All in the urgency of getting somewhere to get something done without the wait and accompanying hassle.

The current news focuses on much larger instances of wavering morals. There is no traffic policeman to bribe or government minion to coax into granting favours. Huge amounts of money are involved and people in positions of greater power are part of the scenario. From the Commonwealth Games, where the issue of accountability was clouded by accounts that were fudged on a massive scale, to the Adarsh housing society, where premium apartments were built ostensibly for war windows but bought at extraordinarily low rates to less needy souls, to under-quoting and over-charging bidders for a new-generation telecommunications service, the dirt is flooding into the public domain and the figureheads who were supposed to maintain a code of conduct and the dignity of their post are falling off their self-attained pedestals, fast. And as each scandal is unearthed, rodents who were part of the tangled web woven around it desert the fast-sinking ship, ratting, as it were, on their superiors whose orders they were merely following. Who takes the blame? Who accepts the responsibility? Who pays the price of these shortcuts to a better life for themselves? Who knows!

But life is not all murky in these parts. We do have honest officials, politicians who are not corrupt and a great number of ordinary citizens who will not resort to the easy route to wherever they are going. It all takes a little longer to get there, that is all. If you have the time, honesty is still, after all, the best policy.

The great divide

2010-11-20T02:15:00.000-08:00

(Published in BD News Online, Bangladesh, November 19, 2010)

Once upon a very long time ago God created man and, of course, woman. One school of thought maintains that woman – let’s call her Eve, since that would be more convenient and comprehensible – was formed from a bone from the ribcage of the man – Adam, again for more convenience. A Greek myth says that Pandora, the first woman, was a gift given to men by Zeus to punish them for having received fire, stolen from Prometheus. Zeus – oh, wise man! – commanded the creation of the first woman, a ‘beautiful evil’, destined to give birth to descendants who would torment the race of men. That was, perhaps, one of the last instances of men acting with wisdom and foresight. And it did, just to even out the points, give women the power to deal with men and men the possibilities of telling really bad and chauvinistic jokes.

Be that all as it may, the fact of the matter is that in Asia the woman has to live with a strange balance of power. In many parts of India, for instance, like in some clans in Kerala and certain communities in the northeast, the woman reigns supreme in a society that is still matriarchal and matrilineal. In the bustling commercial capital of Mumbai a tiny proportion of the female population fight battles like the glass ceiling and gender equality, while in the rest of the teeming metropolis, there are bigger wars to face, from everyday and startlingly casual sexual abuse to exploitation, poverty, hygiene, health…name it and the woman must arm herself to conquer it. Driving buses through the crowded streets, steering trains along the maze of the commuter network, working on construction sites, directing films, catering lunch services - today there is little that women do not generally aspire to, frequently struggle towards and usually manage to do better than their male counterparts. There is almost always a male bastion to breach, an age-old barrier to clamber over, with sari, high heels, make up and all. In the process, an aggression builds up, slowly evolving into a core of steel and fire, hiding a tiny kernel of softness and sensitivity.

Mythology that stretches its legends across the world have examples a-plenty of a woman’s life not being an easy one. Consider Draupadi, daughter, princess, wife, warrior, heroine of the Mahabharata. She had to deal with not one husband, but five, all because of a thoughtless command from her mother-in-law to her husband – share your prize with your brothers, said Ma-in-law to Arjun, the prince who had shot the arrow that won the hand of the princess. A literal translation of the command into action gave Draupadi five men to be wife to – some interpretations see it as various aspects or face of the same man. Along the way, the poor woman had to deal with poverty, deprivation, manual labour, humiliation and, as the ultimate insult, sexual abuse, where she was stripped in front of a full court of gawking men. But she won, with a little divine intervention, and is now considered a paragon among women.

And there was Sita, wife of Lord Rama, hero of the Ramayana. She went from being a foundling in a field to being a pampered princess and then the wife of a princeling revered as the Ultimate Man. But there was more to Sita than most people who are told the story as children usually think about. She was taken from a safe, happy, luxurious home with promises of being the queen of a kingdom. And within a short time of being married, she found herself living in a forest, surrounded by wild animals and wilder demons, and then was whisked away by an amorous man with an amazing ten heads to his island in the south. One deadly war later, she found herself back with her husband, all ready to resume life as his queen, at the closing of a full circle of adventure. But a tiny voice – a male one, the ancient texts say – demanded proof of Sita’s virtue and the unfortunate lady had to go through trial by fire, at which point she decided she was fed up of men trying to run her life and walked away to a more bucolic existence with her sons.

And somewhere along the way, a different consciousness stirs…

Women like myself, an admittedly privileged lot who do not need to worry about the next meal, a roof overhead or clothes to wear, have seen their mothers and seniors fight the battle and, for the most part, win. Our paths have already been cleared and made ready for our stiletto heels to tick-tock along. We have decided to focus our energies not on waging that ancient war, but using the hard-won territory to make ourselves more comfortable as we fight newer, more relevant battles, whether to find new territories to conquer or mould those we already own to suit our particular situations. Today we see what is traditionally considered ‘male power’ as a sort of convenience for women – go ahead, guys, tote that luggage because it is too heavy for us, we would rather not get calloused palms; go through that door first because anything nasty out there can get you rather than us; sit on that lone free seat in the train, we do not want our nicely laundered clothes to collect the leftovers of the previous commuter; get that promotion at work, we will fix all the messes you make when we take over and come out smelling of roses. Go ahead, be men. We are happy being who we are: women.

Book review

2010-11-20T02:13:00.000-08:00

THE CHAPEL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
by Kirsten McKenzie

Conflict is often a route to miracles, a time when unlikely friends are made and bonds forged that could last a lifetime. Many stories like this one emerged from the darkness of World War II. This book is a gently written, vaguely disconnected and very readable fictionalised record of one of these wonderful tales. Once upon a real time, when battle raged across what used to be Europe, a group of soldiers taken prisoner during the war came together to create something that exists even today – a small chapel on a hill on a small and desolate island in Orkney, where the PoWs are stationed. They built it from salvaged material, nuts, bolts, scrap found in the mud, and home-concocted paint. And they learned how to see faith as not some kind of saviour, but as a way to be thankful for what they found within themselves.

The story begins when the artistic Emilio and Rosa, childhood sweethearts and just formally engaged, are separated by war. He, along with others from his unit, are trudging through the desert, weakened by heat, a lack of water and proper food, and are taken captive. As PoWs, they are shipped off to Lamb Holm, on a tiny island which seems like the edge of the world. There they learn to live with each other and, in essence, with themselves. Emilio finds friends in Paolo, Romano, Bertoldo and others, sketching everything and everyone inside and outside the small hut they call home. A priest takes a small makeshift mass, but it is not enough for Emilio, who longs for a real church, one with an altar and a picture of the Madonna framed by elaborately patterned arches.

Suddenly, it all becomes possible. Italy surrenders to the Allies and is out of the war. So the prisoners are no longer prisoners, but men free to live as they wish. But there is no one who tells them how to go home. So they make lives for themselves on the island and, soon, a small place from where they can speak to God. Emilio designs a chapel in abandoned Nissan huts, making it beautiful, artistic, simple, with all the devotion and skill that he, the artist, has in his soul.

Meanwhile, back in Italy in her little village on the banks of Lake Como, Rosa becomes embroiled in the local resistance movement. She finds diversion in Pietro, in the excitement of subterfuge and the attempted escape of Rachele and her father, Jews who attempt to flee the persecution they face. And, of course, there is Heinrich…

Both stories, forming a whole by virtue of the connection between the two protagonists, have their moments of drama, of grey dullness, of suffering. At the end, which is actually where the book starts, the married couple are visiting the island – Emilio is not all there in his mind, while Rosa tends him with all the devotion but not quite all the love that she has. Bertoldo is still young, his memories of trauma buried either too deep to be felt, or felt to deeply to be shown. And all that really matters is the small chapel at the edge of the world.,,

Amitava Das - Interview

2010-11-20T02:11:00.000-08:00

(Published in the Hindu Sunday Magazine, 14th Nov, 2010)

There are two aspects of Amitava’s show, currently on at the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai, that strike a viewer: the amorphous, almost Rorschach-ian forms on the canvas and the general mod of pain. His works are home to bright splashes of colour, to near-fluorescent hues, to light-reflective gold and silver, to what seems to be the occasional sequin (but is actually a kind of paint cleverly used), but there is an anguish that seeps into the air as you stand in front of Tamra and the Wounded Tree, or Inflicted Wounds or even the diptych titled Wounded Earth, without really looking at the names neatly placed alongside. As the canvas reveals its various facets, you start seeing, understanding, where the darkness is, where the tears come from: Small strips of medical sticky-tape, carefully placed on the paint, centred by a red blotch, a wound given rudimentary first aid. There is nothing specifically delineated, but much that is felt, unsaid, emanating from the thought that has created the work. And in the gentle wash of pain, there are small stars of celebration, of joy, as in Vivaho, where the couple stand shyly separated by a dividing line, the red sprays perhaps of the flowers in the garlands that will soon make them one…

Delhi-bred and based Amitava Das, a Bengali in accent, appearance and sensibility (even though he avers, albeit with a smile, that the people of Kolkata need to grow out of an obsession with Tagore and Rabindra Sangeet), showed in Mumbai after a hiatus of six years. “I have shows in other places,” he says, “it is not possible to show only in one place all the time!” He refuses to classifies his work, insisting that “When I work, I do not work from a particular point of view saying it belongs to a particular style or phase or school. It is up to the viewer or anyone who can appreciate my work to classify it; I don’t believe in doing so – a true work of art doesn’t belong to any school or anything else.”

A graphic-cum-exhibition designer by professional, Amitava studied at the Delhi College of Art even as he worked on various shows, mainly designing pavilions for India in major trade fairs and events abroad. “The last project I did before I quit (exhibition design) was to design the India Pavilion for the Cannes Film Festival. That was the year Devdas was the official Indian entry.” It began many years earlier, but the true importance of this field and his contribution to it came in 1984 – “I did a show that gave me a space of 23,000 square meters – it was the Hanover Industrial Fair, and India was a partner country. The next day, they stopped showing India of the past and started showing modern India - that is the impact that we had!” Amitava remembers that “in 1989, the same thing happened. Trade through fairs is the new culture, the way of thinking - that is why there are so many art fairs today. India has slowly become a global partner in almost every field, especially in the visual arts.” He believes that this is evident in “the fact that Hollywood actors want to act in Bollywood these days!”

Indian art is fast gaining a position of great respect in the international realm. However, “Many people try to showcase their work from their point of view, which is wrong. We should try and showcase our work from our cultural point of view, from the Asian or Indian point of view,” Amitava insists. “We have to act according to international terms – this is something that India should try and change, so that our point of view is recognised. We should be able to make art from this region be seen and acknowledged and recognized the world over as having a unique cultural identity. We should not have a complex about that. We should feel that we are strong, that this is our/my art.” This, he feels, is hardly a simple issue to deal with. “The problem is that we do not have the right promoters. Also, we do not have good art writers, or the right backing – not government backing, since the government should not interfere, but should merely provide support. Otherwise red tapism and bureaucracy will not allow art to grow.” In this, though, self-promotion, is not a player, since promotion is “not my job – that is what the galleries or art writers and promoters should do.”

With many years of experience backing him and his own feeling of satisfaction in helping younger artists, Amitava has some advice to give. “Young artists should work sincerely and consciously and with respect for art and for their own culture. I cannot advise them on how to promote themselves. But, of course, the whole world has become far more transparent now, with the Internet, and there is a great revolution happening in communication. Facilities are available, and now younger artists have to have a different way of presenting their work, but they should always remember that the mind is far more important than the information that is available to it. Too much information has to be matched by a point of view.”

So what is the magic formula to find success, especially internationally? The painter explains his perspective that “Certain artists have been recognized, but there are so many more who are good but do not have promotional avenues and ways of being seen and noticed internationally. If you want to participate in a biennale, for instance, you have to do a certain kind of art – multimedia or installation, perhaps. That should not be a factor in selection, though it tends to be. I don’t accept it.” How does he manage to keep ahead in this kind of environment, especially since competition is, to put it mildly, cut-throat? “I paint, I draw, but I don’t do installation art or sculpture – after all, I have done that on a very large scale in exhibition designs! And my work was more architectural then. I do not feel like doing it now since I have already done it, though with a different purpose! In Moscow some years ago I was given a huge glazed wall to work on, wonderfully brightly lit by the sun. I did a tapestry mural with the help of 250 women from Mehrauli village, through an NGO, and they wove my design on canvas with felt to show a Krishna Leela.” Amitava makes it clear that “I am not against installation art – I appreciate it greatly, but feel that it is a greater organizational feat than an individual one. Many works of this kind today are not original, but derivative to a great extent.” And, to make it worse, “Many younger artists are confused about it and so do all sorts of things to grab attention.”

Inspiration for the veteran artist comes from many sources, “film, music, poetry, anywhere”. Many years ago, “I divided my attention into study work and my own work ever since I was in art college. By the fourth year I had a successful one-man show.” Family support comes, even though “My father originally wanted me to study commerce, be a CA, have a career. So after school I joined the commerce course, but quit soon enough. At the time I never took art as a subject since I did not like the way it was taught. I would visit shows, read, watch others – that is how I learned enough to get into college.”

Commerce and art need not be separated, Amitava says, since “Ultimately, artists need to survive. Why should they keep the old image of the jhola-carrying struggler? They should have the best of whatever is available, a good life and lifestyle, so why not aim to sell?” But intentions as an artist should be clear, “You should not play to the gallery. That’s why I never depended on anyone – I was independent, worked for my living and did art, since it was my passion.”

Cubicle connections

2010-11-09T02:05:00.000-08:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, November 6, 2010)

Make friends, influence people and move on. That is the story in today’s get-ahead-fast world, where changing jobs is fairly easy, the after-effects of the recession notwithstanding. Once upon a time a career was all about staying with the same organization for years, even decades, steadily slogging on in a job that was about stability and loyalty rather than rapid advancement and incremental salary jumps. Now it means being on the constant look-out for a better opportunity, a better paycheck, a better position, even a better commute to work. With each experience, there is a take-away, be it a store of memories – some good, some entirely forgettable – or a higher visibility in the field. Then there are the friends made at work. These ‘office friends’ are special, a non-sexual yet intimate relationship with people who share the work experience, personal and professional angst, often the same boss and, almost always, lunch. But there comes a time when the dabba with a BFF yields to a cup of coffee with a headhunter and, soon, a new job. Everything changes, from the work itself to the boss to the location of the office, with new friends, new gossip circles and new timings. Keeping in touch with that BFF is suddenly more difficult and meeting, even more so. Lunch dates become increasingly infrequent, telephone calls gradually peter out and then, startlingly, those same close friends are seen more as other people’s Facebook buddies. But some are lucky and manage to keep in touch with friends from various jobs. Networking sites and modern communications make it easier, they say, albeit sometimes with a tiny tinge of regret at the sweet sorrow of the parting when a job hop was done.

“I fly solo,” says Arun Katiyar, who now works as a consultant in the content and communication space, “no office, no colleagues, no politics, no back biting”. He “changed jobs on average every two years between 1982 and 2007 when I worked for others. But in that period, I worked 18 years for the same company, my assignments and job profile changing almost every two years.” He does not make friends quickly, “But I have been often told I have a big smile by everyone other than my wife. Obviously, even a small smile at work and with colleagues does wonders.” He has been fortunate enough to work with people who are “young and have the energy to stay in touch with me. Often, when I travel, even to places like San Jose, past colleagues turn up to accompany me for dinner or a drink. The world is kind and forgiving place!”

Indu Prasad, producer of an auto website, has changed jobs “as often as the next phase of life happens”. She does not make friends easily, but needs that “special click that happens only with a few people”. Former colleagues are still part of her life and she manages to keep in touch “all the time - they are some of my closest friends”. As she explains, “You spend more than half the waking hours in office and they become your buddies, a surrogate family of sorts.” But she admits that the contact “has decreased. You have your work, life, love, universe and some people do fall off your planet. And the level of interaction that you have when you are in the office is not there. Keeping in touch over chat or phone is not the same.” But for Prasad, “It's part of moving on. But the important thing is we still make time for each other whenever possible. That might be once in three months instead of every week, but that is not bad either. Facebook and Twitter have changed the timelines of keeping in touch. It also helps when you call each other once in two months to take up conversations instantly, since you already know what's happening with the other person.”

For Alok Bhatnagar, a senior digital professional, changing jobs has been “purely circumstantial”. He makes friends very easily, he says, and “I keep in touch with my peers from my former offices - less so with seniors and juniors, but I do talk enthusiastically if anyone from there calls me.” He has a degree of equanimity when it comes time to move on. “I think that I have resigned myself to the fact that one needs to leave behind office friends when one changes jobs. I always promise to be in touch and somehow do manage to do so one way or the other.” Social networking helps; “My contact level has increased thanks to everyone now joining FB. And the feeling of missing them is completely gone!” But he has another bond that is stronger, since “With some of my office friends, I have had a deeper relationship than only work. In fact, I have a set of friends (former colleagues) with whom I try to do at least one annual outstation holiday trip. Our families are also closely integrated.”

According to psychiatrist Harish Shetty, “Office friendships have a range of variables – there are different networks established: trust, wherein you trust your colleagues with personal matters; expertise, where you learn from colleagues, go to them when you have work problems; love, when the person is more than a friend but less than a lover; guru – a papa figure, or godfather, who becomes a lover sometimes; and buddy, the person who is always around, to keep you company or give you money when you need it or take you to the hospital when you have a crisis.” Some of these may overlap, while others remain as they are, no matter what happens.

Aligned to friendship and bonding is a level of competition at work. Vying for the same position, for a higher annual increment, even for a better work-station or desk near a window can cause some friction in the closest relationship. As Katiyar remembers, “There was competition. And it was a lot of fun. I remember working with two other people in a newspaper and when we left, we found ourselves working for the same magazine. We were good friends, but also wanted the best assignments. Over a period of time, we learnt to work on assignments together or to help each other. But the outcome was not always pleasant. However, today, with almost two decades between then and now, it seems like the right thing to have happened. No regrets!”

Bhatnagar admits that “There has been competition at work, but the feeling goes when one quits. There can be exceptions here, especially if there has been negativity in the relationship. However, those are people whom you would not call office friends.” He believes that “Friendship can never be forced. It comes when you realise that the other person is temperamentally compatible. I do not think any of my friendships in office were a matter of propinquity.” And, along the career path, if he comes across those people again, “Yes, I am open to work with most of my office friends again.”

Prasad, on the other hand, would prefer to keep the two worlds apart where some of her former ‘office friends’ are concerned. Parting made no major difference, as “Some people you miss because your friendship was beyond office lunches, parties, shopping, bitching, etc. They become your friends without the constraints of geography or time zones. Some others you miss because they made the job fun. You realise that your learning curve was better while working with some people than with others. And yes, there are more that are lunch / dinner / drinking / shopping / travelling buddies and, thank God, those things can still be done even if you are not working together, only, not as often!” For her, “Our friendships have evolved beyond the work place and I like that space.”

Katiyar “knew I'd stay in touch with some of them and that felt good. Even more importantly, many of them expressed the fact that they would like to work with me in the future.” But there is a faint feeling of regret sometimes, “Sometimes I do feel bad when I hear about major developments in their lives from others. Recently, an ex-colleague and now a friend who runs a restaurant with a business partner took over his partner's share of the business. I heard about it from another friend. I felt a twinge.” He does also miss some people “for the conversations and the many common things we shared. When I think back to those subjects/ discussions, I wish I could ping them, just for old time's sake. Friendships with some people who were not part of the office I worked in, but were in the organization, have endeared despite the fact that we did not share any ‘closeness’ of office space. I think it was more that we shared some views of life, shared something deeper than proximity.”

And did competition play a role in the relationship? He says, “Yes, there was competition. And it was a lot of fun. I remember working with two other people in a newspaper and when we left we found ourselves working for the same magazine. We were good friends but also wanted the best assignments. Over a period of time, we learnt to work together or to help each other. But the outcome was not always pleasant. However, today, with almost two decades between, it seems like the right thing to have happened. No regrets.” For Katiyar, even as one door opened, another was firmly shut. “I don't think I want to work with them again. I'd rather have them as friends. You know the funny thing about life? Office colleagues can become friends, but friendships can be easily destroyed by an office environment.”

As Shetty explains, “Even when you change jobs, you still maintain some relationships across the board. Most young people today have no loyalties towards establishments and infrastructures,” he says, “the brand is yours alone, resume is yours. Networks stretch across borders of jobs; companies may compete, but your friendships endure. There is a crisscross of friendships that does not break and does not come in the way. Young people are clear about what they want from a friend.” He feels that “These are fantastic friendships, with no workplace loyalty but more bonding to peers, so there is a lot of acceptance, along with a lot of bitching at times, a lot of forgiveness, and connectivity always. The interactions may be short, in bursts, but it is beautiful.”

Book review

2010-11-09T02:03:00.000-08:00

(The Hindu Literary Review, November 7, 2010)

DAYANITA SINGH
Penguin Studio
231 pages
Rs4799

This is an unusual book. Eponymously named, it features the work of photographer Dayanita Singh and writing by Aveek Sen and Sunil Khilnani, as well as a set of emails from Mona Ahmed. Taken as a whole, rather than each of its parts, it is not a book about photography, or a book of writing on photography, but a synergy between the two, where the writing complements the photography and the photography offsets the writing, with each illustrating the other. The volume is divided into ‘stories’, in turn with the obvious classification of ‘writing’, which tells stories with words, and ‘pictures’, which tell their own versions of the stories with light and shade.

The introduction itself tells the story of the photographer and how she became one. The “fall off the horse”, as it is described, when she realised what she was going to be, came when Singh was just 18, taking pictures as part of an academic project for her first year at the National Institute of Design. At a concert by tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, she was stopped from taking photographs and protested with a vow of “one day I will be a famous photographer and then we will see.” It is incidents of this kind, personal, intimate, that make the academic tenor of the writing more digestible. And it is indeed academic in writing style, well-researched, lucid, erudite and occasionally tough going for the average reader of ‘coffee table’ books - which this is very likely to be seen as by most people.

Sunil Khilnani speaks of the holy city of Kashi in What To See In Benares, the lead-in to I Am As I Am. The setting, the mood, the dirt, even the sounds and smells of piety and how they are all, strangely enough, captured on film (or pixels) are suddenly left behind at the stone walls of the Anandmayi Ashram. At that point, the images take over. And there is an overwhelming sense of serenity, of acceptance of simplicity, of innocence and gentleness. The same kind of cloistered feeling comes in Singh’s Ladies of Calcutta, of which Aveek Sen writes in Fiction in the Archives. There is a sense of travelling back in time, to a place where life is slow, studied, purposeful and all feminine. The women and their accoutrements pose – their images are slowly and deliberately taken apart and as carefully put together again in evocative prose.

Sen’s A Distance of One’s Own, and its accompanying set of photographs in Singh’s Go Away Closer, is not as obvious and easy to understand. There is an eerie emptiness, a desolation that comes with the images, and, as Sen says, “Departure and arrival become mysteriously inseparable”. The writer’s The Eye in Thought which goes with Sent a Letter explains the progression of images in a “diary-like” set that grew from the way in which Singh’s mother Nony presented her own work. Like any book worth owning, it can be seen, savoured, put away and then looked at again with a new pleasure, the essay and the images forming a coherent unit.

Blue Book, prefaced by Sen’s A Land Called Lost, bursts suddenly, shockingly, into colour after a series of black and whites. The ‘leaving behind’ is complete, the objects pictured are abandoned, but there is also a feeling of anticipation, of waiting, of knowing that something urgent, eventful, will happen not too long hence. Dream Villa is, as Khilnani writes, India by Night, its colour, light and mood weird, spooky, a story being told even as something lurks behind the door at the edge of horror…or could it be overweening joy? The last piece in the book is Sen’s Difficult Loves, writing that is sheer poetry, even as it fairly pragmatically discusses Singh’s work and its intent.

But all this apart, perhaps the most moving story in this book is Myself Mona Ahmed, three emails from Mona Ahmed to ‘Mr Walter’ (Keller). She talks of her life and her own evolution, as a child in a fairly stable home, her castration, her adulthood as a eunuch, her small joys and large griefs, her love, her isolation. It is touching, the images bringing on tears at times, the writing even more. Her words in 2000, “Suddenly I felt better, maybe it was the magic of the old woman, or the gods took pity on me” could be the bon mot of the entire volume – there is magic in the words, enchantment in the pictures.

Khalil Chishtee interview

2010-10-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

(The Times of India Crest Edition, October 16)

Art today is not just about aesthetics, but more about making statements, voicing an opinion, getting a point across. Everyone has something important to say and many artists use their inspiration to say it in a way that is ‘hatke’, different, eye-catching, attention grabbing. Forty-seven-year-old Khalil Chishtee, a Pakistani by birth who lives in the United States, has a lot to say about the world as it is now, about lost faith and belief, about courage and, with his medium, the state of the environment. He uses trash bags made of plastic, apart from other materials that somehow do not grab the same kind of attention, and has said that “This is the beauty of the contemporary art world that it understands the importance of content than durability.”

The content he creates is in the intent of his works – he explains his view that “humanity is tormented by its compulsive need to categorize and differentiate along any number of physical, cultural, political and economic factors, ignoring the obvious common denominator of our human-ness that makes us alike”. Blame II (2008), for instance, is a graphic representation of crucified martyrdom, while Broke Messiah (2009) has a male figure hung on a wall, the legs mere shreds of plastic skin. Figures suspended upside-down seem to dance, in Unbearable Lightness of Being II (2010), and I Love My Dad (2010) and I Love My Mom Too (2010) are less graceful, almost awkward and caricaturish.

Khalil studied at the National College of Art, Lahore and California State University, Sacramento, and has been part of a number of shows in the US, Pakistan, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Middle East. This is his first exhibition in Mumbai.

How would you define a “plastic age”? Or is that a literal meaning that you aim at?
'Plastic age’ means literally a plastic age. If you look around you, you would see plastic everywhere; in fact, in all new technology, plastic is the main ingredient used. This is the one material that we use the most.

Why do you use trashbags?
Although I use many materials apart from trash bags to make my art, but I think this plastic speaks the language of our time. Things and trends change within no time in our fast paced lifestyle - if something is very trendy or pricey today, it could become trash by tomorrow.

I Love My Dad and I Love My Mom Too have been called ‘comic’, ‘cynical’ and ‘disrespectful’? Why? Do these pieces make any comment on your relationship with your parents or other family?
Disrespectful? Interesting, this comment! In Pakistan elderly people snub youngsters with, “No one ever told you how to talk to elders?” We hide our wrongdoing in the name of respect or trends. I Love My Dad and I Love My Mom Too refers to all those who live in foreign countries and consider themselves to be ambassadors of their homeland. They are the one who will sell everything in the name of culture, religion or patriotism. If you look at the form of these sculptures, you will notice one Muslim child is carrying a larger-than-life-sized head, exactly the way people in the subcontinent carry wares on their heads and sell them on the streets. To me, when immigrants say great things about their home countries, they are trying to say they love their father or mother, but what is the big deal about that? All of us do love our parents – but we need to learn how to love other people’s parents as much as our own.

You straddle two worlds with many differences. For the US, Pakistan is not all good and vice versa. How do you maintain an emotional/intellectual balance?
Art has made me different from any ordinary individual. To look at things without preconceived ideas or a fixed mindset is a gift that my work gives to me. I can easily see and understand these differences – after all, when you see a ditch, it’s easy to avoid it. I can easily see what Pakistan is doing wrong politically and what America is doing in the name of helping others. I cannot reduce myself to become Pakistani or American; I am a human being who is trying to see things clearly without clinging on to any one thing.

Does your art reflect your life across cultures? How?
I see myself as someone who has lived all his life in the East and now lives in the West. My art is whoever I am.

What are the identities you are recycling here?
When you recycle plastic it remains plastic; but when you recycle people, they change from Indian to Pakistani, from Pakistani to American, or from Hindu to Christian and from Buddhist to Muslim. What I am trying to find out is whether there is a tiny bit of a chance that they become human, which is a greatest and truest identity.

Your sculptures show men (no women?) who are in so many ways anguished, tortured, in pain. Why?
Being a man, that is the only body I am familiar with and have the ability to say anything about. Where a woman’s body is concerned, either I would romanticize it or look at it with some preconceived ideas; I cannot do justice to it because I have very little information about it.

I think ‘anguished’, ‘tortured’ or ‘pain’ are big words for me, but I speak about the suffering one goes through in life. I know we all seek happiness and go to extremes to find it, but in reality there is only one true happiness that I am familiar with: suffering. It is when you get to that state of clarity that you understand that all other forms of happiness are a denial of suffering, which is to live a lie.

You are passionate about Urdu literature and poetry. How do you channel that in your art?
I studied in an Urdu medium school as a child, so it’s very easy for me to read and write in that language; like every other Urdu reader I am a big fan of Mirza Ghalib’s poetry. In some of my work I am exploring his romantic verses in a political context.

Book review

2010-10-04T03:03:00.000-07:00

(Published in the Hindu Literary Review, Sunday, October 3)

SARASWATI PARK
by Anjali Joseph
(Harper Collins)

Anjali Joseph has been listed as one of the top 20 writers in Britain below the age of 40. Her book, Saraswati Park, has been collecting astonishingly favourable reviews, as being ‘beautifully rendered’, ‘impressively assured’, ‘unhurried gossamer prose’ that is written with ‘wit and delicacy’ and much more that is laudatory, flattering and so much else that it seems like a serious case of severe hyperbole rather than genuine critique. To some extent, this is indeed deserved, since the writing is polished, crafted, with flowing paragraphs and some interesting turns of phrase. But where it hits a roadblock, for me at least, as reader, reviewer, is the story itself.

Saraswati Park is about a man and his family who live in Saraswati Park, a housing ‘society’, as it is called in Mumbai, a Harbour Line ride away in the suburbs. It is a small bubble of slow calm, as many of these places still can be in the metropolis, where neighbours become family and the troubles of one are shared by all those who exist closely around them. Many of these matters are never acknowledged aloud, but are known and sympathised with, often discussed over the dining table around the high-low din of prime time soaps and mulled over through the afternoon episodes. It is the women who are keepers of all secrets, who have the discretion of a spy with the intuition of a fisherwoman. Even in the thick of the hustle and hurry world that is the city, in the very centre of all the activity, outside one of the busiest commuter stations in the world, there is a tiny oasis where time, like the cliché, seems to have stopped, or slowed down enough to be caught in a long time ago. Just outside the General Post Office, close to where the hordes pour out of VT station, as it is still fondly known, under a tree on a small traffic island sit eight or nine letter writers. They do write the occasional letter, but are more occupied, when they are, with packing small parcels, filling in forms for job applicants, helping sex workers send money home to the village, advising folk on all things postal and perhaps occasionally playing counsellor, psychiatrist and mentor.

Mohan Karekar is one such gentleman, who lives his life in a very understated manner. What gets him excited is books; he dreams of one day writing his own, and scribbles possible plot lines and incidences in the margins of the books he buys from the constantly endangered breed of pavement booksellers. His life at home is mundane, everyday, but in quiet crisis, with his wife not happy but not especially unhappy either, not completely accepting that reality but trying to escape it in her own quiet way. His nephew, who comes to stay and study, is gay, but manages to hide it, or so he believes, from everyone who actually knows but is tactful enough to be silent.

In the telling of the story, there are some issues that a reader, especially a Mumbaikar with a certain love for the city, will balk at. Why does Mohan, also a Mumbaikar, work as a letter-writer, even though he was not able to go to college after his father’s business went bust? And if this is all he does, and does not use the money his daughter in America sends him, how does he maintain his standard of living? According to Joseph, who says that “essentially the family is not moneyed, though his children are doing really well,” it is how the story goes. “There are just a lot of potential contradictions involved in that very wide description of being middle class – it could mean people who go out and spend a lot of money shopping on weekends, or it could mean people who are really working hard to pay their children’s school fees. This is just one of the things it does mean. I began to really like the idea of this person who is not unemotional, it is not that he does not care about his own family and cares about other people’s, but at the same time there is this intrinsic detachment. And also he is not a go getter, the new driving Bombay.”

This is a very polite book, one that skims the surface of a vibrant, multidimensional, bustling metropolis, never getting too deep into uncomfortable reality or even capturing it in words. An easy pleasant read, but not a particularly memorable one.

I, me, myself

2010-10-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

(Published in The Times of India Crest edition, last weekend)

When G Stanley Hall stated that the single child situation was “a disease in itself”, he left himself wide open for future pillory. Since then, the myth that an only child is spoiled, selfish, bratty and overindulged has been smashed often enough for it to become a tired joke. The reality is that only children are indeed more privileged, in that they have more resources at their command, more attention since it is not divided, more parental attention and, thus, more potential to develop into truly interesting individuals. There are issues like a lack of competitiveness, a feeling of complacency and some social maladjustment, but those are individual-dependent. What does seem to be unique is a sense of being alone, a lack of a support structure that a child with siblings would almost automatically have, never mind that intra-family stress may come in the way.

As N Meenakshi, a single 40-something writer puts it, “My parents chose to have me and no more, because they wanted to give me the best. But once I grew up and various crises happened, I realised it was not all joy!” She refers to the time when her mother fell ill, when she herself had to deal with the aftermath of major surgery and then, more recently, when her mother passed away. “Now that there is only me and my father, I get unimaginably stressed when either of us falls ill. And as Dad gets older, I worry more, about everything, major, minor and silly. If he even coughs, I start thinking of all sorts of horrendous possibilities and I am paranoid that some day he will not wake up - I don’t think I have slept well in years now!”

Dancer Alarmel Valli married fairly late and is based in Chennai, while her husband lives in Delhi. As an only child, she has understood that “Ultimately, one has to rely on oneself. Of course, it is more easily said than done!” Even though she grew up with a host of cousins to play with, she remembers that “I was a bit of a weakling, so with boys playing boisterous games, I would be an outsider. Books were my companions. Only children have to create their own worlds; they don’t feel alone - the world of imagination is very real.” This looking inwards to find companionship helped her “formulate ideas; there was a constant dialogue going on in my head. This has a tendency to tuck you away from the rest, but then you get used to the idea and you find a lot of beauty and strength from it. You get more introspective, which helped in my dance.”

Art expert Ranjit Hoskote found that “As a child, an only child, I found I could live, effectively, in a rich interior reality without being disturbed. You get your parents' nurturing attention - in my parents' generation, this attention was truly nurturing and balanced, giving the child his/ her own space and time. It was not overwhelming or obsessive, as I find it to be among my own contemporaries who are parents.” But it has its downside, he admits, in “a periodic sense of isolation. And, as you grow older, a sibling to share duties with would be a good idea.” There is a sense of responsibility that sets it, he finds, however capable and active the parent (s) may be. “As they grow older, I (more than they themselves) feel more protective, anticipating things they might need, ways in which I could help them deal with a fast-changing present. My mother jokes that our roles have now been reversed!”

In the laughter, there is one overwhelming byte of reality that only children get more aware of as they get older: parents are also getting older and will not be with them for ever. As Hoskote says, “A sensitive point indeed, and one that only children will be haunted by but never articulate.” As children grow up, find their own lives, but with maturity, age and perhaps parenthood comes a strangely insidious insecurity. “The insecurity probably comes from a gradual distance that the years inevitably bring about, from the Golden Age of childhood and the sense of near-perfect serenity, nurture, emotional expansiveness and creative possibility of the family of three people. Especially as a citadel against a confusing world. So the insecurity is a more general awareness of growing up.”

According to psychiatrist Dr Ashit Sheth, it’s “all about how the parents go about it – most times, parents do not address issues” that bother only children later in life. “I can understand that the pain-bearing capacity of an only child is less,” he says, “since he or she has not learned to face difficulty, how to compete (for time, attention and privileges), and may be afraid about coping with responsibility as they get older.” Parents need to address these issues, he feels, though “in our kind of society set up there will always be relatives, some family, to help” in a crisis situation. “Children know that they will have to take care of aged parents, but parents should bring to their notice that they need to be ready for that kind of responsibility and must rise to their own potential rather than be pampered and spoon-fed.” Marriage, Sheth believes, is inevitable, with children to follow, which provides a support structure in itself. “These are issues more abroad; in India, we have family bonds that protect only children.”

Valli believes that “As you get older, the only child thing starts becoming a bane at times. I had a rich inner life as a child, now my life is extremely creative, as a dancer and with my students.” For her, her mother was the anchor, “a very uncompromising mirror that never distorts a reflection. She has been there for me right from the time I first started going to dance class – I carry the values of dance and in life that she instilled in me.” Her father, whom she calls a “good man, a kind, gentle soul” may have “spoiled me silly if not for my mother. Now that she is older and not in the best of health, she is still very much there to provide moral support. But as one gets older, that same support structure starts being eroded; there is a great sense of insecurity.”

Insecurity is what dentist Dr Pankaj Mehta, father of an only son, occasionally feels. “We could afford only one at that time, but now I think we should have had another child.” He finds that he and his wife are starting to worry about him being alone, “but he does not really bother. In fact, he is planning to have only one child too!” The worry works both ways. Meenakshi finds that, particularly since she is single and has no children, “I worry about Dad, but now I find that I am worrying about myself too. In fact, ever since the news of how Parveen Babi died alone came out, I get terribly stressed about how I could die alone in my home and not be found until much later!” But she, like so many others, knows that at times when she needs them, friends become family and stand by her. “It happened when my mother died – a friend from work came along and became family. Even today, Anita has a special place in our home and hearts for her unstinting support when we needed it!” Hoskote’s parents react to his occasionally paranoid concern “with patience and a very warm amusement,” he smiles. “Being an only child sounds tough, but maybe that's not such a bad thing to have gone through after all! And, over the years, as only children, we find our siblings among our friends. And they can be closer than blood.”

Valli agrees: “I try and tie together 100 things at the same time - this is when one feels the lack of a family structure, brothers and sisters who actively help, offer input, ease the pressure. If you are not with these people in the place that is the wellspring of one’s creative inspiration it gets increasingly insecure; as your parents get old or pass away, you do feel more alone. I think it is a boon and a bane to be an only child. If I had not been an only child, my mother may not have been able to dedicate herself to me as completely as she did. I may not have been able to focus so completely on my dance if I had not had that isolation. You grow used to being by yourself, through living with your own thoughts and you don’t feel as alone as some people would when constantly surrounded by people. I even holiday alone, don’t feel at all bereft. But when my mother fell ill, it was quite frightening, panic stricken, at that point I was eternally grateful to have friends, cousins, husband, etc.”

Most of all, Meenakshi has learned, “It takes a great deal of courage. You find that strength from somewhere, a strength you never knew you had. It hurts like crazy, and I get really tired of being told I am a ‘strong person’, but you survive, you occasionally go on auto-pilot and keep bashing on. After all, there is always a deadline that you need to meet and a story you have to write!” Valli avers that “You need to have faith that you are not alone, you have to have the confidence that you come through that, that you have that inner core of strength that allows you to cope. One has to aspire towards creating that inner core of strength – the purnatvam, of fullness, fulfilment, sense of power.”

Fasting, feasting

2010-10-04T02:58:00.000-07:00

(Published in The Bengal Post, Sunday, September 26)

Fasting is an integral part of religion, especially in India, where so many faiths co-exist, occasionally blending to create an entirely new concept with its own sounds, symbols and sensations. While to abstain from food is sometimes advocated for health reasons, it is most often a voluntary abstinence, done with one eye on heaven, but the mind firmly in the stomach. Perhaps ironically, many communities ‘allow’ foods that would generally be considered ‘junk’, from potato crisps to ghee-soaked fried bananas, making a day of fast rather more delicious than any other more healthy time!

The concept of restriction food in any way is not limited to India. In fact, almost every part of the world observes some kind of fasting period, with exceptions for the very old, the very young, the pregnant, the infirm and the unable (those travelling, labourers or people otherwise physically stressed). The Bahá'í faith, for instance, mandates fasting – complete abstinence from food and drink - from sunrise to sunset during the month of Ala (March 2-March 20). While Buddhists do not fast, per se, they do avoid eating after a meal at noon at least about once a week, as per the Buddha’s teachings: “Not eating a meal in the evening you too will be aware of good health... and living in comfort.” Christianity varies by denomination over the practice of not eating, but the most familiar is the Lenten period, when a partial fast is maintained for 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter to commemorate the time that Jesus went food-less in the desert. The Jewish faith demands complete austerity, with no food or drink, not even water to brush teeth in major fast days like Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av.

Islam upholds fasting as the third of the five pillars of the faith. Ramzan is the most notable time for this abstinence, where people eat before dawn or after dusk, avoiding food, water, fighting, lying, sex and more in between. It is believed that by this, a Muslim gains taqwa, or the awareness of God, along with protection from hell, brings about a feeling of brotherly love and teaches the virtues of control, charity and austerity. The Jains fast to attain a state of ahimsa, or totally non-violence, doing so primarily during Paryushan, a period that recently passed, mainly to decrease desire for the physical world and gain spiritual bliss. The Sikhs, in contrast, do not follow the practice, since the holy book, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, states that “Fasting, daily rituals, and austere self-discipline - those who keep the practice of these, are rewarded with less than a shell.”

Hinduism, like almost any other faith, has complex rules of fasting and, of course, its polar opposite, feasting. Sravan, the holy month that was over a couple of weeks ago, was about a certain degree of abstinence, with no alcohol, meat or certain other foods and habits. Ekadashi, Pradosha and Purnima, for instance, are specific days of every month where people do fast. Different Gods demand different restraints: for Shiva, Mondays mean no food, while for Vishnu, Fridays and Saturdays are hungry. In South India, devotees of Mariamman do not eat between sunrise and sunset on Tuesdays, while in North India Thursday tends to be a day of abstinence. It is particularly at this time of year, when the major Hindu festivals like Ganesh Chaturti, Navratri, Durga Puja and Diwali come around that food finds centrestage. The mornings will be filled with the sounds and sights of prayer, meditation and ritual, while the evenings are a time of celebration – after the prayer lamps are lighted, the feasting begins, especially for Gods like Krishna (Gokulashtami) and Shiva (Mahashivratri). For Ganesha, the elephant-headed God who has just gone home (on or a few days before Anant Chaturdashi) after a ten-day stay at the homes of his devotees, it is all about food –bananas, sugarcane, modaks, all that any self-respective young elephant would relish!

Fasting has to balance need with the dietary restrictions prescribed by the ancient texts. This has given rise to a whole library of cuisine, from the peanut-rich recipes of Maharashtra to the arbi undhiyo of Gujarat and the roti kootu of South India. Favourites will include elements such as sago, potato, sweet potato and banana. Here are a couple of easy and familiar recipes:

Sabudana khichdi (sago pulao)
1 cup sago washed, drained and left to stand for 1 hour (should squash fairly easily when pressed between the fingers)
2 tbs oil
1 medium potato, cubed
1/2 tsp cumin
1-2 green chillies finely chopped
chopped coriander leaves to garnish
salt to taste
roasted peanuts
Fry the potatoes till brown and slightly crisp and keep aside. Crackle cumin, add chillies and sago. Stir constantly over medium heat. Add salt and potatoes. Sprinkle over with peanuts and coriander leaves. Eat hot.

Banana varuval (Kerala banana chips)
(Use red bananas or the raw green ones)
Peel the bananas
Slice directly into hot oil using a mandoline
Sprinkle salted water into the oil during the frying (CAREFULLY!)
Drain the crisp chips.
Add more seasoning if wanted.
Eat warm or store in an airtight container.

A pressing need

2010-09-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

(In TOI Sunday, September 20)

Once upon a time if you needed something ironed, you could send it down to the streetcorner istriwala and have it back within minutes, warm and smelling vaguely of charcoal and camphor. This was a comfort during the monsoon, when clothes never really dried properly and the general atmosphere of dank sank like a cloud over the house. Today, the streetcorners are more likely to house a PCO or a fast food delivery kitchen, many of the istriwalas having bloomed into full-scale laundries/dry cleaners or moved to a more heavily populated area with a guaranteed customer base. The service is still available, but many who provide it also provide home-delivery and take rather longer to finish the job. One reason for this – apart from the fact that stylish non-iron clothing is so easily available in chain stores and the number of laundries with storefronts and thus greater respectability and accessibility have increased – is the affordability and availability of irons that can help even the busiest executive do the job at home. And yes, these can even be bought over the Internet, with many discounts and special offers, making it all a win-win situation.

A basic household small appliance, an iron comes with various factors that any buyer will need to check on. Many people visiting the United States bring back an iron with all the bells and whistles that a Na’avi (if they ever wore clothes that needed ironing, that is) may have dreamed up, and then find that the wattage is not right and a transformer is needed. And wattage plays a starring role in the price point too, since the higher the watts, the hotter the iron can get, thus the easier and quicker the ironing will be. And, with each bell or whistle attached, the price goes up. Essentially, an iron is best if it can give you, the ironer, steam, an easy-to-fill water reservoir, a non-stick soleplate (the bottom of the iron, which actually touches the fabric), variable heat/fabric settings and other optional features, like automatic switch-off, a light/sound indicator that flashes or beeps to say the iron is ready for use, et al. Of course, the warranty of the gadget must be checked and, the less friendly the salesperson involved in the transaction, the more difficult it will be to get any kind of post-sales service for it.

Ironing is a necessary chore, but is based on science. The heat generated serves to loosen the chemical bonds between long-chain polymer molecules in fabric, while the weight of the appliance stretches and straightens them, thus making the cloth flat and smooth as it cools. Sometimes the molecules need to be nudged apart by water, which is where a steam iron comes in handy, best for cottons, linens and pure silks. Synthetic materials have a lower melting point, which is why they smell when ironed and may cringe away from the heat by shrivelling up – something everyone who has ironed anything made of polyester or nylon will know. Ironing also can be used to dry clothing and kill some small bug-eggs or germs, but is not a good way to straighten hair, even though the gadget that does that is also called an ‘iron’.

The market has dry irons and the more popular steam/spray irons on offer, with a few travel irons also available. The last will be small, compact and usually not use steam, making it easy to pack and take through airport customs without trouble, unlike the average knuckleduster or set of batteries. Most commonly seen in department stores, be it Hypercity or Big Bazaar or any other, or in electronics outlets like Croma, Kings, Vijay Sales or Kohinoor, to name just a couple, they come in a bewildering range of options, from colour to capacity, brand, service record and so much more. Some of the most commonly seen include – from Black & Decker: steam iron X775 ( 1,918), X1015 auto shut-off steam iron ( 2,961), X1015 auto shut-off steam iron ( 2,961), X1060 1900 W cordless iron ( 3,487); from Panasonic: NI-S200TS steam iron ( 1,649), NI-W410TS steam iron ( 2,859), NI-S500TS steam iron ( 2,089); from Philips: 3300 series steam iron ( 4,195.00), 2500 series steam iron, dripstop ( 2,995.00), Azur steam iron ( 5,295.00), travel iron ( 1,795.00, steam boost), 1700 series steam iron ( 3,095.00); from Morphy Richards: Astra: (750 watts, 545), Senora (1000 watts, 599), Orbit travel iron ( 1795), Comfigrip Precise Control ( 3995), Comfi-grip Pro ( 2995) and other like the Anjali Ecopress ( 585), Magic Sleek dry iron ( 470), Bajaj non-stick iron ( 890), Kenstar dry iron ( 450), Maharaja Whiteline steam iron with ceramic coating ( 889), the funky Birla Lifestyle BEL-9023 cordless iron ( 1,615) and the Mini travel iron ( 449). There are too many to list completely, but read the fine print, choose your colour and get set to press!

How to iron:
• Use an ironing board.
• Check instructions on the garment tag and adjust iron settings.
• Use high heat for cotton and linen, medium for cotton blends and wool and low for nylon, polyester and other synthetics. Good pure silks can be steam ironed, but check on a small inside corner first.
• Make sure the steam iron reservoir is not empty.
• Stretch the garment flat on the ironing board to save some effort.
• Never leave the iron on and flat on your clothes – not unless you want some interesting burn effects!
• A drop of perfume in the reservoir water can make your clothes smell better, but make sure to clean the iron properly.