little arsonist

salman rushdie is a hero!

2012-02-08T17:30:00.002+05:30

the government of india has made it quite clear that it doesn’t want you or me to know who gibreel farishta and saladin chamcha are. the protagonists of salman rushdie’s fourth novel — you know the one, of course — have long been personae non gratae in the world’s largest democracy. it is interesting to wonder what farishta and chamcha would have to say about last month's developments in jaipur though.

rushdie was invited, asked not to come, allegedly threatened, cajoled into making an appearance via video conference and eventually told to stay away following protests by radical fundamentalists. according to reports, representatives of various organisations tried to enter the venue in protest against the video address. some of them alleged that the festival was trying to portray rushdie as a hero.

the thing is — farishta and chamcha would undoubtedly agree — salman rushdie is a hero. he can refer to himself as one primarily because he fulfils the criteria: he is a man of distinguished courage, because fighting fundamentalists for 24 years makes him one. he is a man who has performed a heroic act, because the asking of difficult questions is heroic when one lives in times that discourage questioning. he is regarded as a model or ideal, because his contribution to the arts outweighs that of many who choose to disrupt rather than debate. so, yes, salman rushdie is a hero.

this is what makes the government of rajasthan’s insistence on playing the role of mute spectator (in the presence of the world’s media, no less) such an embarrassment. it has failed on every count, kowtowing to groups of people who have arguably no idea what it is they dislike about rushdie in the first place.

in an open letter to then prime minister rajiv gandhi in 1988, rushdie wrote: ‘on october 5, the indian finance ministry announced the banning of my novel under section 11 of the indian customs act. many people around the world will find it strange that it is the finance ministry that gets to decide what indian readers may or may not read.’

the acts of cowardice we witnessed on television through the past month were the latest in a long line of absurd developments surrounding what is, in effect, a book that a shockingly small number of indians has actually read. these developments could, ironically, find a place in any rushdie novel quite nicely. much of his writing, which falls into the genre of magic or magical realism, relies upon placing a story in a real setting while enabling its protagonists to break the rules of that world. midnight’s children, his most acclaimed work, is a meta-narrative that incorporates multiple realities, making it a perfect tool for social criticism — something that would give any writer of a much-maligned novel much to think about.

here are other pieces of information that matter: gibreel farishta and saladin chamcha, both indian muslims, are actors. the former plays hindu deities on the big screen in india, while the latter earns a living doing voiceovers in england. everything about the novel they reside in — from the controversial dream sequences to the studies in disillusionment and schizophrenia — tries to make sense of what it is like to be an alien in a strange land. it examines the notion of identity, of trying to fit into a culture different from one’s own. that the book was attacked by some of those for whom the writer was actually writing makes for an ironic footnote in its dark and colourful history.

if the past is anything to go by, this issue may not find any sort of resolution soon. this means rushdie may not address us again. the loss is undoubtedly ours.

what i would like to know is whether or not the government of india allows its citizens to read a banned book. responses to that question are vague. until i do receive an answer though, i intend to read the satanic verses again. i intend to do this because i don’t see why any democracy should dictate what i can and cannot read. i have a mind of my own. if you have one too, i suggest you do the same.

these walls can speak

2012-01-16T17:33:00.008+05:30

step back in time, if you will, to the year 1835, on what was then the island of bombay. picture an englishwoman — her name is of little importance — stepping out of her carriage into the bright noon sunshine of the place we now call kala ghoda. she walks slowly, parasol in gloved hand and lady-in-waiting similarly clad, a respectful step behind. town hall lies straight ahead of them, the mint to their right, while englishmen mill around customs house to the left.

representatives of the east india company, all familiar faces, tip their hats while the natives look on. on both sides of the relatively broad street, shops peep out of customary ground-plus-one storey structures, plastered stone masonry glinting dully, the monotony broken by occasional ‘chhajjas’ or ‘jhilmils’ — projecting eaves — in a few buildings. “at times,” one can imagine the lady mutter, “it almost feels like home.”

step now into bustling, present-day mumbai and walk in the footsteps of that woman. coming in from the chaotic hub that is churchgate, imagine moving past middle-aged men in formal wear, the occasional beggar, and hawkers selling everything from handkerchiefs to plastic toys. walk past the impressive university of bombay, where a massive clock on the face of rajabai tower counts down minutes to the matinee show. standing proudly in the distance is the broad art deco façade of regal cinema.

much has changed in the tiny art district of kala ghoda, evolving as all things do through time. a walk down these narrow streets today belies the fact that this was once a nucleus around which the metropolis of bombay sprang into existence. as all residents know, the horse in question refers to a 12.75-feet bronze statue of king edward vii (then the prince of wales) on, well, a black horse. sculpted by sir edgar boehm, it was moved years ago, now standing guard at the city zoo. the name persists though.

there are a number of things that make kala ghoda interesting. for one, it is part of the city’s business district called, simply, fort. the throbbing heart of the city in the eighteenth century, the area received its name from a fort built by the british east india company. today, it extends from the docks in the east to azad maidan in the west, chhatrapati shivaji terminus to the north, and kala ghoda down south.

when envisaged by the british, fort was a trade centre. it wasn’t meant to be a large town, just a small zone that would help the english hold the reins of power firmly. like all such enterprises, a fixed master plan was never chalked out. instead, as power exchanged hands and the decades rolled on, the area metamorphosed, layer by painstaking layer, to create the rich cultural entity it is today. with the coming of each layer, distinct architectural areas were created, the shadows of which still peek out today if one cares to look behind the gaudy billboards shouting out bollywood gossip.

what remains beneath it all is a kind of duality, a two-faced aspect of the architecture that comes from an original division of the fort settlement into separate areas for the british and our native ancestors. the buildings still carry a few allusions to those areas, along with changes imposed by successive generations, their varying tastes and degrees of functionality.

although it now hosts a popular annual cultural festival promoting the arts, kala ghoda didn’t emerge as the city’s art district overnight. then again, it was here that india’s first film was screened one evening in 1896, setting in motion developments that would make us the world’s biggest film producing nation. putting aside history though, it is the area’s architectural diversity that is more rewarding. what you get is not just a unified entity comprising buildings set in an historical zone; rather, a juxtaposition of layers that have their own tales to tell at every street corner.

the physical form of the fort area is best described as an irregular trapezium. seven layers of development have been identified, chronologically, in the precinct. the kala ghoda crescent can be defined as the area stretching from regal chowk to the university of mumbai, with oval maidan to the west and lions gate to the east. like gems dotting this zone lie architectural and historical beauties like the prince of wales museum, national gallery of modern art, jehangir art gallery, max mueller bhavan, institute of science, bombay natural history society, elphinstone college and the david sassoon library.

one can recognise the influence of an early native population in the area now covered by bohra bazaar street, perin nariman street and mint street. the functional nature common with british residential and administrative architecture can be seen in the admiralty house, while buildings at master nagindas road still proclaim distinct colonial accents in flat brick arches and key stones.

italian facades show at the area around town hall; veer nariman road has predominantly european buildings; and the indo-saracenic style makes an appearance in the readymoney terrace building. from gothic spires to the quiet elegance of the renaissance, islamic to art deco, it’s hard not to be struck by this sort of architectural diversity. looked at as a whole, it can unanimously be judged the finest heritage spine of the city, with three distinct styles: the pre-1860s, victorian architecture from 1860 to the 1920s, and stark art deco of the post 20s.

moving to the structures themselves, why not start with the wellington fountain, erected by public subscription in 1865. opposite it stands the gothic façade of today’s maharashtra state police hq, once the royal alfred sailor’s home. noticeable from here is regal cinema, designed by charles stevens and built on the site of a saluting battery (and also, as some historians maintain, a cemetery for englishmen). on the other side of the street stands the department store known as sahakari bhandar, formerly the majestic hotel built in 1909. it was designed by w a chambers and company, who also designed the taj mahal hotel in 1903.

stepping along the crowded pavement, past small shops selling cigarettes, one runs into the indian mercantile building at a corner. built in the early 1900s and famous for its oldest occupant, phillips antiques, it overlooks the institute of science with its renaissance style. set in its spacious interiors is the mumbai branch of today’s national gallery of modern art.

across the street and past bus stops on the other side, the prince of wales museum (now the chhatrapati shivaji maharaj vastu sangrahalaya) demands more than a cursory glance. its indo-saracenic style, local yellow and blue basalt make it a common enough childhood memory for most students, with a dome strikingly reminiscent of the gol gumbuz at bijapur. what the building also has is a lot of traditional architecture and interesting cultural adaptations that include bulbous cupolas, jalees, rajput-style jharokas, brackets of hindu temples and semi-open verandas — all merging into one whole.

opposite popular record store rhythm house, a stone’s throw away, are the stark contours of jehangir art gallery. next, elphinstone college, named after governor mountstuart elphinstone and housing the maharashtra state archives with its rare government records, manuscripts and newspapers. then, the david sassoon mechanics institute and library, with its beautiful marble statue of sir sassoon and flooring of richly coloured minton tiles. from here, the ornate neo-classical style of the army and navy building peeps out, now occupied by several multi-national companies.

does kala ghoda eventually live up to its reputation as bombay’s art district? a short walk through it ought to prove that it does. like soho in new york, quartier latin in paris, and other art districts around the world, it manages that particular collation that has remained relatively untouched, apart from superficial changes imposed by an evolving urban landscape.

with its combined total of almost 1,10,000 square feet, it is a slice of culture that best represents what bombay is about. taking the city’s diversity, history, the artistic and commonplace, it somehow becomes a microcosm that gives visitors a taste of today as well as times past. what it does, in the process, is trace a story of survival and strength, about ourselves and what we are. that is what strikes a chord in every heart that beats through its crowded streets.

in conversation with imogen heap

2011-12-22T14:47:00.007+05:30

samantha hale says she is not a filmmaker. she admits to never having been to film school. and yet, her admissions form part of a voiceover at the beginning of her documentary titled map the music. part road trip, part soul search, it is an hour-long film that took hale a little over four years to create in the wake of her father’s death. devastated by her loss, she believed it was a love of music that helped her heal, and set about trying to examine if others felt the same way.

the film (currently available at insound) follows fans of musicians like rachael yamagata, kate havnevik, zoe keating and jim bianco. these aren’t ordinary fans though; they are followers who, like hale, walk in the shadows of their icons, trudging to as many live performances as they can in the hope of salvation. what hale manages to tap into and draw, in the process, is an interesting parallel between music and faith: a belief system of sorts that helps keep millions sane.

at the centre of all this footage lies the force that is imogen heap — the essex-born, grammy award-winning singer-songwriter, twitter-star and recent collaborator on acclaimed musical television series the dewarists. it is to heap’s live performances that hale, other fans, even other musicians, turn to time and again, citing the hold she has on her audience.

those lucky enough to have seen heap live will testify to her manic energy that drives every performance. surrounded by all manner of musical instruments, she flits across stage using what can only be described as microphones attached to her wrists, pulling and discarding samples at will.

when not on stage, heap comes across as calm, measured and — as i found out when i met her at a surprisingly quiet hotel in juhu, mumbai — completely at ease with the status she has long enjoyed. she helpfully fiddled around with my mobile phone’s audio recorder, coaxing it to life whenever it stopped (which was every five minutes). after a discussion that included everything from emerging technologies online to forthcoming projects in china, i was left with the sense that heap is an artiste more comfortable than most with pushing boundaries. it was easy to see why fans adored her. that she intends to play here again is testament to the fact that there are enough of us interested. for that, we ought to be thankful.

excerpts from our conversation:

map the music tracks a number of hardcore fans who clearly seem to immerse themselves in the music you create. do smaller concerts, like your recent ones in india, come as a relief? are you free to play the music you want to, as opposed to what your fans demand?

i do actually have a set of songs i have to do, because i ask fans to vote in advance. the reason is i have so many songs and often go to a city where people like a particular one. there’s no way of knowing what they like in advance. this is my way of doing my best to democratise the choice of set-list and also to take the pressure off me in case they get it wrong.

why is your music not available in india? as an artiste, is there something you can do to persuade the music industry to take emerging markets like ours more seriously?

i have a major label representative in india, but i imagine one of the main reasons they don’t put the record out is they can’t guarantee a certain amount of sales. if it’s a big act, you know a certain percentage of people have probably heard it and will buy it. i have my own label and license the music, so i understand the difficulties. the amount it costs to put out a record, to manufacture a cd and market it, is immense — and i’m not trying to stick up for record labels here, but the proportion of illegal downloads to sales is so high here that it almost doesn’t give an incentive to a record label to produce anything.

i’m upset that people can’t go out and buy it legally, but i think we are in a transitional phase. the technology to download music exists, but we haven’t caught up with it yet. the industry hasn’t set a viable alternative to buying a physical cd. we can buy the download, but people are so used to not paying for music anymore that it almost seems like it should be free to a lot of people. we need to figure out a mechanism, a structure that makes sense for both artists and music lovers.

people don’t think about the person at the end of the chain. they feel that because the record industry has taken so much money in the past and made cds so expensive, the musicians don’t need it; but, actually, we do. i think places like india, china and indonesia, where people are enjoying so much music, is where money will be for musicians. it’s almost like the new frontier. if a structure did work out, where artists get paid micro-transactions for each sharing or downloading, you are no longer criminalising your fans.

you’ve popularised vokle and are working with technologies that change the way artistes play live. is there anything on that front that has got you excited?

i think one of the things made pretty apparent, even in the past year, is how much i can output creatively in such a short period of time, because the mechanisms are more in place. everyone is on vimeo, youtube and twitter, so one can connect with many people really quickly. for the first time, i am making films, compiling art with amateur photographers and paying them for their work. to combine all of this is exciting. it’s become more dynamic and immersive for me. even if everyone is sharing the creative process, i feel as if i have the reins. i feel almost overwhelmed by the possibilities.

how is your project involving ‘sound seeds’ coming along?

each song has its own eco-system. it usually has a project attached to it. i had a song recently out called neglected space, which i am most proud of because it’s not a song, poem or film. it has this middle ground that i feel i haven’t experienced before. this process of doing a song every three months has given me great confidence. i feel like i’m verging on things that are truly original, like nothing else on the planet. i wish i could do that every time.

connecting different worlds is leading me to be hyper-creative. with neglected space, i combined it with thomas, my partner in love and crime, where we got a load of friends from all over (they paid for their flights) and brought this old-world garden to life, with members of my local community. i’m excited by that physical manifestation of something along with the music. it opened my horizons massively.

i am now doing something ridiculously complicated — something i never thought i’d be able to do — in china, where i’m taking over hangzhou (capital city of the zhejiang province) for a day. i am curating 24 different events across the city over a 24-hour period. part of them will be musical accompaniments to everyday happenings. i want to connect local people with their own art. it’s a day in the life of the city. we’re making a 50-minute film out of it.

minds without fear has been doing really well in india. how do you prepare for a project like the dewarists, where everything is open-ended? how did the collaboration with vishal dadlani come about, considering the music he puts out is so different from your own?

i met vishal in singapore and instantly liked him. that is number one for me with any collaboration. i wanted to come to india to write some music, but didn’t want to go with the usual suspects like a r rahman, who is massively famous all over the world. i like the idea that, each time i do a collaboration, it’s a real random card. if i were to work with people who were similar, it wouldn’t push me creatively.

we had just four days to write and record this song, and i was nervous. what i think we ended up with is a total mesh of our work that shows give and take. he came with the idea of a poem by tagore. it worked very well because, on my flight over, i was watching something about the ‘arrow of time’ — the phenomenon of how entropy increases as time continues and things fall apart, disassemble and become smaller parts. i loved that and it connected with his idea wonderfully. there was no argument, it just felt right.

what are you currently listening to?

i don’t listen to music, strangely. i never listen to my own music unless i’m mixing it. when i have time i like listening to what’s around me. when someone’s around the house, i tend to put on an album called solo piano by this guy called gonzales. if i’m djing, i like things like dizzy rascal, john hopkins (one of my favourite artists) and people who exist in many worlds like ryuichi sakamoto, who can exist in classical contemporary as well as j-pop. i have a lot of friends who make music and i’ve met them along the way and listen to their work because it reminds me of friendship and touring.

on women in a man’s world

2011-11-15T16:58:00.001+05:30

unlike the ladies of our glorious capital, who presumably come to realize this at around the same time they learn to walk, i had no idea how difficult life for india’s fairer sex could be until i turned 17.

it was a wild time. doordarshan — our public service broadcaster, for those born after 1990 — was suddenly made redundant by the arrival of satellite television. to cut a long story short, i was introduced to channels that played rock music instead of hum log, and the notion that men need not have short hair. and so, i ‘dared to think beyond’ the recommended middle-class length of ten centimetres.

my family didn’t react with horror; not at first. by the time my hair reached the small of my back though, our relatives had split into two distinct groups that (a) questioned my sexuality in a subtle manner or (b) urged me to turn to god. pointing out that images of jesus christ depicted him with long hair only encouraged both groups to pray for my soul.

but, i digress. it is only after my hair reached my waist that i realized india was not the same country for men and women. the epiphany arrived, as they usually do in mumbai, on a local train. struggling to step into a churchgate-bound fast one morning, i suddenly felt a pair of hands squeezing my buttocks. this wasn’t supportive squeezing, the kind given to shoulders of those in need of comforting. this was rough stuff, reminiscent of mating rituals on animal planet.

turning around was impossible, obviously, because no one can turn around on a mumbai local. once inside, one is pointed in a particular direction and forced to stay there. and so, until i managed to put some distance between what i can only refer to as my buttock-squeezer, i had to bear it.

it was not a rare occurrence either. i would try entering a crowded train, crowded bus, or crowded store — most places in mumbai involve crowds — and an obnoxious pair of hands would try and get close to me. the experience of being felt up would end only after i turned around, at which point my faint moustache-beard combo would dispel the myth of my being a nubile 17-year-old girl with underdeveloped breasts.

apart from a great deal of staring, the question ‘aati hai kya?’ was also asked often, and never politely. some men would snicker, while others pretended to be eunuchs and clapped their hands before laughing uproariously. men on motorbikes would whistle as they went past, and continue until they noticed the beard. they would then slow down and abuse me for leading them to believe i was a woman.

eventually, six years on, i went back to a respectable ten centimetres. as my relatives praised god for showing me the light, i began to shave again. i wasn’t exactly the same person though. at 23, i was armed with the knowledge that a large number of my countrymen were nothing but desperate, insecure folk who had no idea how to treat a woman. i also struggled to understand how india’s women went grocery shopping, managed careers and became fabulous mothers, wives or managing directors in the face of behaviour that often bordered on hostility.

there were normal men too, of course, but what struck me was how one abnormal, sex-starved lunatic could ruin a good day simply by assuming it was alright to make a pass at someone he thought was female. if this could happen in a metropolis, how did repressed men in smaller towns behave?

as i write this, television channels are airing footage of policemen in bihar assaulting women with bamboo sticks. if, as many have pointed out, ‘any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members,’ don’t you wonder what sort of india her women live in?

what we have lost

2011-10-19T17:25:00.001+05:30

when i was younger, i knew who my neighbours were. they knew my parents and siblings. we greeted each other at the entrance to our building, exchanged portions of food our mothers had prepared, and fell asleep safe in the knowledge that we could count on each other in the event of an emergency.

but, that was then — a time when few societies had watchmen, fewer still had stringent rules about who could and couldn’t live on their premises, and the letters ‘cctv’ looked like gibberish.

i no longer know my neighbours. i recognise some of them vaguely, and acknowledge their presence with a nod every other month or so. i have never been invited to their homes, and haven’t invited any of them to mine. in the event of an emergency, i intend to call family or hope for the kindness of strangers.

friends of mine who come to bombay from other cities speak of the horrifying experience that house-hunting has become. entire localities have been cut off and reserved for groups on the basis of religion or, bizarrely, food preferences. single men are frowned upon; single women labelled loose. credentials and recommendations are demanded, rounds of interviews initiated. in some societies, families with children aren’t welcome because of the potential noise their offspring may make. in other societies, families without children aren’t welcome because their relationships do not come across as stable.

builders now advertise security measures the way they once discussed views from balconies. balconies are, incidentally, on the verge of becoming extinct. new homes come with guards, intercom systems, and video cameras prominently positioned outside doors. the idea of surprising someone is no longer feasible.

the saddest effect of the manner in which our city has changed will reveal itself in the way our children learn to live. they will grow up to be adults unable to trust the people they share their living spaces with; adults who will frown suspiciously in the presence of out-of-towners; adults who will perpetuate the newly-emerging myth that bombay is an unfriendly city where the language you speak determines what you can and cannot have access to.

when i was younger, my schoolmates spoke a dozen languages. their homes, and my own, were unguarded. i was never asked where my family came from or how long i had lived here. i had no idea what a domicile certificate was. i was born in bombay. now, when i make my way home to a building populated by strangers, i miss what my city used to be.

from ad to worse

2011-09-12T17:08:00.000+05:30

the dark-skinned girl will never get the moderately good-looking boy. she won’t get the job she deserves either. she will be ignored by peers and forgotten by friends. she may dream of becoming a doctor, but will lack the required confidence to walk into the nearest medical school. naturally, all of this will change soon after she begins to apply a fairness cream. things will start to look up even more after she purchases a fairness moisturiser. her life will then turn around. her friends will adore her. men will stop to stare; women to glare in envy. and, if she doesn’t believe the manufacturer’s claims, the endorsement from an a-list bollywood star will seal the deal.

to look for ethics in the advertising industry is a lot like trying to avoid a politician on a tour of tihar these days. anything that can be twisted to misrepresent reality, in any shape or form, can and will be twisted. despite decades of exposure to this sort of unadulterated garbage however, the sheer abundance of it spouted in fairness cream ads continues to surprise me. these are blatant untruths — for that is what they usually are — packaged and served up for our collective consumption every 15 minutes or so, yet no one feels the need to sit up and complain.

this absence of anguish can be traced to the obsession with skin tone that large numbers of us continue to nurture. black is unbearable. brown will simply not do. wheatish is a euphemism. only the magical ‘fair’ can make life bearable. according to recent figures posted at a site for advertising and marketing professionals — who, incidentally, refer to this as the snow white syndrome — the men’s fairness cream category alone is currently a rs 200 crore market. a year ago, the bbc pointed out that the indian whitening cream market was expanding at close to 18 percent annually.

the cost of it all is conveniently swept under the rug. most fairness creams can be differentiated from each other primarily on the basis of how much bleach they contain. they whiten the skin to a certain degree, but have the potential to cause irreversible damage with overuse. and yet, advertising continues to perpetuate the long-established cultural belief that fairness equals success. it’s why brides and grooms across the country, or their parents, continue to hawk or demand fair spouses.

now, even dark underarms are a problem; there is a fairness cream for that particular area. creams for fairer pelvic cavities no longer seem far-fetched.

a case for baby girls

2011-08-11T15:56:00.000+05:30

if history has taught us one thing, it is that numbers are ineffectual. they are to be bandied about at will, or used to initiate conversations at dinner tables. this may be why census reports or occasional bomb blasts fail to shake us. our eyes simply run over figures before moving on to the next sensational item of interest.

let me try, nonetheless, to resurrect a few recently buried numbers. between 1991 and 2001, india reported 927 girls aged 0 and 6 for every 1,000 boys. this dropped to 914 between 2001 and 2011, a period known in some deluded circles as the india shining decade. according to a recent study by the lancet, one of the world’s most respected weekly medical journals, the number of sex-selective abortions of girls rose from approximately 2 million in the 1980s to a staggering 6 million by 2010. this corresponds, roughly, to the number of european jews murdered during world war ii.

our census 2011 has revealed that, among 28 states, kerala has 1,084 females per 1,000 males on the sex ratio front. at the other end of that spectrum, haryana reports 877 girls. maharashtra reports 883 girls for every 1,000 boys. a decade ago, it had reported 913.

let me now draw your attention away from these large figures to the minuscule 6 — the percentage of convictions among cases filed against doctors in states with the most skewed sex ratio. of 805 cases filed under the pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostic techniques act (pcpndt), 55 were awarded convictions. media reports suggest there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue the rest.

also consider 2,382 — the number of compact portable ultrasound kits in maharashtra, according to a report prepared by the state health department. priced between rs 2 and rs 4 lakh, some of these are as compact as the average cell phone. and there is no way of monitoring their sale.

the government amended the pcpndt in 2003 to prohibit sex determination. anyone who seeks a prenatal diagnostic test to determine the sex of a foetus is allegedly liable to imprisonment for three years and a fine of up to rs 50,000. medical practitioners found guilty face the same term and a fine of up to rs 10,000. does this sound like a deterrent?

i have two questions for the ‘guardians of our culture.’ if it is as rich as they claim it to be, what happened to our much touted belief in ahimsa, or non-violence? why do girls continue to die?

the dating ‘bio-hazard’

2011-07-04T18:29:00.001+05:30

to describe women as picky is a lot like saying muammar gaddafi isn’t having the best month of his life. they have been picky since the time god, in his infinite wisdom, looked at one of adam’s ribs and thought, ‘i could do something with that!’ do keep in mind, of course, that the thought came to him much after he was done with the big stuff, like oceans and mountains, darkness and light. to bring eve into the picture earlier could have initiated a drastic change in planet earth’s many colour schemes.

men on the other hand are, well, accepting. take my friend sudhir, for instance. what the women in his life — and by this i mean his mother, grandmother and six aunts — do when he’s not around is of no interest to him. since 2005, he has also applied this non fastidious approach to the dating game. what a woman reads, what she likes to watch on television, what her political leaning are, who she looks up to, what she wants her ideal man to be like — all of this pales in comparison to the inordinate amount of interest he attaches to the thumbnail photograph on her profile page.

if the image in question is suitably becoming (i.e. if it bears a vague resemblance to any extra on any soap opera), she captures the attention of the aforementioned non fastidious sudhir almost instantly. he then proceeds to bombard the becoming female with that pithy question now inordinately popular in large parts of india: ‘will you be my friend?’

as the smarter sex, it falls to women to protect themselves from people like sudhir. thankfully, his complete inability to find a date in six years is solid proof of how well they are doing for themselves on this front.

one of many things sudhir manages to get wrong all the time is his profile page at the 22834 dating sites that currently claim him as a member. each of these sites asks users to fill in a questionnaire about themselves, with queries on physical attributes, likes and dislikes. sudhir ignores them all, and opts instead for a large photograph of himself astride a bright red motorcycle. with one hand on the handlebar, and the other waving in what he assumes is a coy fashion, he smiles hard. it’s the kind of photograph that would compel most of us to assault the photographer. sudhir, however, usually asks if he can get a larger size, in a glossy format.

i have pointed out to him, gently, that a photograph does matter, but not as much as men like to think it does. as far as attractiveness goes, most women rate men poorly in that department, but tend to be more kind when it comes to a man’s willingness to communicate. ergo, profile trumps photo.

the thing is, questions at dating sites exist for a reason. they are there because women have always wanted a lot of answers. they want to know how tall you are, what you think of romantic comedies, who your favourite feminist is, how you like to spend saturday afternoons, what your idea of a great book is and, in short, whether or not you’re a pompous arse with the iq of a non-flowering plant.

for men unable to find a woman without the help of a dating site, ignoring a profile questionnaire is unforgivable. to not pay much attention to her own profile is worse. let’s say pooja from delhi has made it clear she wants to settle down, for instance. why in the world must she then have to fend off messages from 19-year-olds in orissa offering themselves up as potential friends? if 22-year-old dhwani from bombay specifically mentions wanting to hang out with someone her own age, why must 47-year-old jeetendra from delhi feel the need to tell her how beautiful he thinks she is, three times a day? according to a female friend, some guys simply send her the same email every week or so. they can’t avoid it because they aren’t really looking at who they are sending it to.

too much information doesn’t work either, because the average single woman at a dating site has approximately 17,000 profiles to browse through. if you need 1,000 words to describe why your mother thinks of you as a demi-god, chances are most women will move to the next profile after your first 10 words. it makes more sense to share a few important details about yourself, then stop. saying you like dogs and the matrix is fine; adding ‘beige is my favourite colour’ and ‘i love the smell of earth after the rain’ is pointless. when was the last time you met someone who chose to marry a man because they both shared a love of petrichor anyway? another thing profiles ought to be is positive, so avoid beginning every paragraph with the sentence ‘i know this makes me look desperate, but…’ or ‘i’ve tried dating the regular way for years and failed, so...’

lastly, as arthur c. clarke pointed out in between writing sci-fi classics, the best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return, it’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

sudhir continues to ignore my advice. he uses the word ‘curvy’ to describe himself, even though all his friends would opt for ‘obese’ instead. his argument is no woman will decide whether or not a relationship is going to work based on reading a profile, irrespective of how well or badly it is written. he may be right. then again, women are picky.

technology and the single man

2011-06-27T16:00:00.001+05:30

‘i’m writing a term paper on the finer things in life, and i was wondering if i could interview you.’ this line, guaranteed to do the opposite of what it promises, comes to single men like my friend sudhir with iphones via an app called pickup lines. one assumes it is called what it is, in order to avoid confusing those who spend much of their time looking for it. after all, if you can’t come up with a decent pick up line on your own (sudhir can’t), chances are most things in life are confusing to you. an app by any other name would, therefore, mystify.

it costs a dollar to download, and also offers you a taste of the pithy. for instance: ‘if beauty could kill, you would be a weapon of mass destruction.’ sudhir continues to paint the town a pale shade of pink on his own, proving that some women continue to play fairly hard to get. this gives the rest of us hope. that the app exists, however, is solid proof of what assorted historians and chief minister mayawati have been trying to convince us for years now: things simply aren’t what they used to be.

look at how dating has changed. who would have thought the once celebrated practice of a single man venturing forth to capture a woman would give way to the tentative poke on facebook?

a couple of centuries ago, when mark zuckerberg’s great-great-grandfather was just a twinkle in the eye of some fairly winsome lass, courtship was a carefully planned ritual. it involved young women ‘entertaining’ gentlemen callers at home, under the beady eyes of chaperones. in her book from front porch to back seat: courtship in twentieth-century america, the writer beth bailey described how courtship gave way to dating at the turn of the twentieth century, because the poor simply didn’t have homes suitable for dating. it stands to reason, then, that with real estate prices being what they are, teenagers high on testosterone must now rely on smaller spaces — like gadgets they can hold in their palms, perhaps — to initiate what passes for wooing these days.

the saddest thing about this state of affairs (pun intended) is the absence of old-fashioned romance. in norway, way back when, single women would advertise their availability for marriage by wearing empty sheathes on their belts. interested suitors would then place their knives in these sheaths — one could never accuse them of being subtle — signifying the betrothal of the girls in question. in england, gentlemen would send gloves to the women they desired. acceptance of these proposals was signified by the ladies wearing the gloves to church on sunday.

compare these noble gestures with ‘skout’, a mobile application that uses your phone’s built-in global positioning system (now you know what gps stands for) to find and connect with singles in your area. this may be one of the reasons why asha bhosle doesn’t sing songs like ‘do nain mile do phool khile’ anymore. her smartphone probably depresses her.

before facebook, single women would wonder about whether or not a man proclaiming interest was genuine. now, they simply track the number of times he posts something on their wall. sadly, the once solid line between potential boyfriend and online stalker has also blurred considerably. why sit at the bus stop opposite her building for hours in the hope of seeing her for a minute, when you can go through her photo albums on picasa while pretending to be at work instead?

there are no more secrets among friends either. no more guessing games. your first meeting, first kiss, first tentative roll in the hay and other assorted milestones are now documented for public consumption. worse, her friends can now be critical of her choice by tagging you as ‘big loser’ in all of her photographs. other friends can then post a number of lols in the comment slots, steadily depleting your reserves of self-esteem.

another thing technology does is steal social skills from large numbers of young men. it makes it okay for sloppily-dressed boys to ask their ladyloves to a movie via twitter for ipad, forego face-to-face conversations for pointless exchanges on blackberries, or amuse with the help of googled one-liners. all a far cry from how our parents went about this business.

not that there aren’t stories that end happily, of course. newspapers love retelling stories of a girl falling for her idea of prince charming on the basis of his witty tweets, or the one who would never have found the ‘love of her life’ if it weren’t for orkut. and yet, these come to our attention precisely because they are exceptions. fairytales are for two or three in a million, at best.

the saddest thing about being part of a generation that is so ‘sms-reliant’ (you can replace that with mms if you happen to live in delhi), is that single folk no longer feel the need to call each other. some of my friends text introductions, compliments, jokes, even comments about the weather. what they miss, in the bargain, is the gamut of emotions their parents experienced. the heady rush of emotion that surfaces after a woman you think you love giggles at something you said.

at what point do technology and relationships fail to go hand in hand? i can think of one example. the ‘period tracker companion for men’. another app for a dollar, this is allegedly the perfect thing ‘for anyone who would love to know exactly what time of month you want to be a little extra nice and special to your partner.’

maybe it all just comes with the territory. what we need to do, perhaps, is take the advice of journalist griff niblack: if you are yearning for the good old days, just turn off the air conditioning. better still, switch off your iphone. i’ve asked sudhir to consider it.

a day in the life

2011-05-18T15:47:00.001+05:30

there must be something valuable hidden under the streets of bombay. how else am i to explain the regularity with which the bmc’s minions arrive for impromptu digs on the narrow stretch i live on, every second week? they come without preamble, in groups of three or more, and shoddily proceed to tear up what earlier groups have unevenly smoothed out a few days before.

piles of rubble on either side of the lane swell and dwindle every month. during the monsoon, the pits turn into makeshift homes for small animals. the digging and filling is of such abysmal quality that i sometimes wonder if incompetence is one of the prerequisites for employment at the bmc. efficient workers must stick out like sore thumbs at that august institution.

forced into the role of amateur trapeze artists, my neighbours weave in and out of gutters and potholes. like them, i avoid hillocks of mud and head to the main road every morning. once there, i wait until nine rickshaws refuse to take me to the railway station, before opting for a bus. the kilometre-long trip takes 35 minutes, on account of work involving the soon-to-be-open-in-2014-or-so bombay metro. i am informed, via a badly painted signboard, that the maharashtra state road development corporation regrets the inconvenience.

at the station, the train is late; as it has been for the past 11 months. the western railway plays a recorded message, in three languages, informing me and 26,000 others on the platform that it regrets the inconvenience. most residents of bombay can repeat the message fluently, in three languages.

when it does arrive, i wear my knapsack up front to avoid being pulled back by fellow travellers. i then jump in minutes before the train rolls to a stop. 16 minutes after the scheduled departure time, it pulls out at the speed of 2 kilometres per hour. i shuffle through the crowd, avoiding armpits and pushing heads of shorter men away from my own. i do this for 40 minutes before arriving at the station i am compelled to get off at, in order to make a living.

there is just one foot overbridge at my destination, part of which looks as if it has been made by welding together sheets of iron. i avoid looking down as i cross it. approximately 100 minutes after leaving home, i walk into my office. it is 11 am, in what is referred to as india’s financial capital. here, any inconvenience caused is regretted.

go offline and fight!

2011-04-13T17:05:00.001+05:30

i have been asked, by five friends and two complete strangers, to wear white in support of anna hazare. they have sent me this message via sms. i don’t have a problem with this, primarily because the colour white suits me. pink could have invited trouble on the dadar local.

i have also been asked to join 16,754 other people who ‘like’ anna hazare on facebook. he isn’t actually on facebook, what with being occupied with a fight against the central government, but a short biography from wikipedia is what’s prompting those 16,754 well-meaning folk to move a mouse towards the aforementioned ‘like’ icon.

there are also 17 facebook pages devoted to the lokpal bill. this includes a curiously named ‘dinesh demands lokpal bill’ page, presumably created by a certain dinesh who takes his own demands more seriously than most. each of these pages is, of course, ‘liked’ by a number of people.

at petitions.in, ‘the first and foremost location for hosting your online petition in india’, 125 people have signed a petition in support of the bill. the petition’s creators are aiming for 100,000 more to sign up.

much of these developments come from social media enthusiasts. these are people who act exactly like you and i do, except that they intersperse meals or sex with long hours on social networking sites. by 2015, i strongly believe every third indian will be a social media enthusiast. a seven-year-old in my building describes himself as one too, even though he thinks the internet has something to do with badminton. i choose not to correct him.

i suppose what i am trying to say — in the convoluted manner that has almost convinced my family to disown me — is that enthusiasm about anna hazare’s fight is commendable, provided it leads to something that can help him in ways that go beyond a ‘like’ icon. every step we take in india today points to a scam of some sort. i mean this literally, considering even the paver blocks that line many of our streets are overpriced and often replaced for no apparent reason.

armchair activism is all very well when the issues at stake aren’t of decisive importance. hazare’s fight has the potential to change the lives of our children. stop ‘liking’; start doing something instead.

i am happy about the fact that my pointless suggestion on twitter, that his fast may well be a slick marketing campaign by khadi bhandar, has earned me more abuse than usual. i am not well-liked on twitter, at the moment.

confessions of a shrink

2011-03-07T13:24:00.001+05:30

‘Although written by a shrink, this is not the memoir of a shrink.’ The words, and italics, belong to Sudhir Kakar. The assessment is an honest one. At 73, the writer’s life certainly warrants the kind of scrutiny — his birth weight was ten pounds, he tells us — he brings to it. Also, as a long-time ‘observer of the Indian psyche,’ he is more than qualified to take on the task.

Memoirs are, by definition, accounts of random events that affect a person’s life. It is precisely this randomness that makes some of them more interesting than others. The Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung once mentioned that to read Kakar’s books was always a joy because of the uncommon way he combined ‘literary and psychoanalytic approaches to the world.’ This synthesis surfaces time and again in these pages, only not as often as one would like it to.

Would Kakar, as a Freudian psychoanalyst, agree that to write a memoir is an act of narcissism? Possibly. Then again, he probably subscribes to the view put forth by the psychoanalyst Andrew Morrison, who believes that a reasonable amount of ‘healthy narcissism’ allows an adult’s perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others.

Writing from Goa where he now lives, Kakar begins with the funeral of his father, returns to his childhood in Nainital, and charts his story from Ahmedabad to Frankfurt, his return to Delhi and the relationships fostered in between these migrations. His writing of his student years is bland, covering meals of rice and keema mattar (sic), his time at the Wirtschaftsuniversitaet in Vienna, and being caught by a policeman at Harvard for urinating against a wall (he blames his ‘Indian instincts’). His first marriage (the brass band played Mere Sapnon ki Rani, apparently) is dealt with summarily, as is life as a ‘minor celebrity.’

At other times though — while focusing on adulterous loves, or describing the late Narasimha Rao as a ‘natural sulker’ — his ability to tease meaning from the innocuous shines. Take for example his assignment from Rajiv Gandhi, who wanted a psychological assessment of the state of Sikh militancy in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star. Interestingly, Kakar refers to the rarely mentioned role of the community’s women in its men taking up arms.

Eventually, one must acknowledge that without psychoanalysis, our stories are largely incomplete. That Kakar manages to bring some sort of completeness to his is commendable.

— A Book of Memory: Confessions and Reflections, Sudhir Kakar, Penguin India

good + bad = verse?

2011-02-07T15:23:00.002+05:30

‘my agent tells me that i have a name | an audience waits, he says, for what i say.’ that was dom moraes in 1965, from a collection of poetry titled john nobody. it was a time when poets did have an audience. not an impassioned one perhaps, or a particularly large one, but an audience nonetheless. can that be said for the times we live in? times that have, in the early years of our millennium, borne witness to the demise of moraes, g s sharat chandra, agha shahid ali, arun kolatkar, kamala das and dilip chitre?

the youngest and first non-english person to win the hawthornden prize for his debut collection in 1958, moraes lived his declining years in obscurity. he chose to fade away quietly while a majority of us awoke to the dubious joys of reality television. obscurity had, by this time, long been thrust upon a number of other poets; nissim ezekiel, for one. described as the ‘father of post-independence indian verse in english,’ all he received was a 100-word obituary from the press trust of india. then there was kolatkar, whose seminal collection jejuri was forgotten by all but students of indian writing in english. it was eventually re-published by the new york review books classics series, two years after his death. and then, a year ago, dilip chitre passed. his life of letters spanning seven decades was condensed to a couple of paragraphs on page 4 of a national daily.

keeping these facts in mind, then, is it safe to say that poets writing in english no longer enjoy the kind of attention, albeit limited, they once did? eunice de souza, one of india’s most respected poets, disagrees rather vehemently, when asked. “kamala das always had readers,” she points out, “as do many poets today. their work is known online, via texts taught in colleges and schools, and through festivals.”

i put the same question to sampurna chattarji, a younger poet whose debut collection sight may strike you blind was published by the sahitya akademi in 2007 and reprinted a year later. “it may sound odd,” she replies, “but it seems as if poets in english are getting more attention, and seem to be publishing with greater alacrity.” she qualifies this by adding: “it seems easier to be published and heard, there seem to be more openings for readings by first-time poets, more poetry festivals, and the blogosphere seems to generate more debate and discussion. also, with a number of international and national anthologies — 60 indian poets from penguin india, the bloodaxe book of contemporary indian poets, women unlimited’s anthology of 54 women poets in english and in translation, and a forthcoming one from harpercollins — it seems a whole spectrum of poets has found a place. whether this seems so only to the poets concerned is, of course, another question. also, whether one is mistaking ‘noise’ for attention is worth thinking about.”

naturally, not everyone’s view is as rosy. poet dominic alapat, who publishes much of his work online at collaborative blog woodsmoke, believes the diminishing space for poetry in the mainstream media has contributed to the poet’s near invisibility. in the same breath, he identifies e-zines and blogs as spaces where poets, critics and readers can now interact.

going back to chattarji’s comments, the interest shown by publishers is rather new, when one considers major collections published in india over the past 50 years. one can’t help but compare the situation with indian fiction in english, which attracts bigger advances each year, along with the odd auction for publishing rights.

in the 60s and 70s, many of our most respected poets were simply forced to self-publish. in 1976, arvind krishna mehrotra, gieve patel, kolatkar and adil jussawalla formed the publishing collective clearing house. the only other major publisher willing to allocate space for poetry at the time was oxford university press, with its ‘new poetry in india’ series. according to a recent feature in literary magazine the caravan, clearing house titles were cheap but didn’t have much of an audience beyond mumbai’s shores. still, four important collections — mehrotra’s nine enclosures, kolatkar’s jejuri, adil jussawalla’s missing person and gieve patel’s how do you withstand, body — were published in its first year alone.

why do our poets fail to find their rightful place in the sun? james russell lowell, the american romantic, once described them as ‘forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world.’ it was a long-held view — the poet as prophet. the late dr jacob arlow, president of the american psychoanalytic association, weighed in with a paper describing how a poet tended to spin a public fantasy, speaking to ‘the unconscious fantasies of his audience’ and presenting ‘a socially acceptable form of expression of forbidden wishes and conflicts.’ he went on to describe how poets, by rebelling against societal constraints, could be looked at as heralds of a changing morality, their art as instruments for change.

i asked de souza and chattarji if they agreed with the notion, and if an audience still existed — people who would pay to read and discuss poetry, while placing the poet in a position of eminence. “there are enough people around who think some poets speak to them directly about their experiences,” de souza says. “most of us are not hung up on audiences.” chattarji believes the number of people “willing to pay to read english poetry, and attend events (almost always free, as opposed to such events abroad that are ticketed, and where poets get a reading fee) is as small as it has always been.” she thinks there is fatigue, and boredom, when one hears the words ‘poetry reading,’ but points out that a recent public reading by adil jussawalla in mumbai was packed to the rafters. in alapat’s opinion, readers probably view poets as “modern-day shamans satisfying some emotional, aesthetic and philosophical hunger, rather than as prophets or clairvoyants.”

maybe what readers now want is — like everything else — something that entertains rather than provokes, work that can move away from self-obsessed free verse and the long shadow of the modernist movement. another thing one must consider, while attempting to look at the big picture, is that there are usually two groups of people involved when it comes to poetry — populists who want more readers, and academics who prefer the serious study of an art form. while the former look back at a golden era when cities mourned the death of a poet (when 83-year-old victor hugo died in 1885, more than two million people accompanied his funeral procession), the latter sometimes oppose the spread of poetry on the bizarre notion that commercialisation could have an adverse effect on artistic integrity. that view surfaced a few years ago, after a wealthy heiress left america’s poetry foundation a gift of $200 million.

as with most other things, economics is certainly an influencing factor. i asked rakesh khanna of independent publishing house blaft, why publishing poetry didn’t make sense. his firm has a rather eclectic catalogue, after all, covering everything from bestselling crime novels to pulp art, experimental fiction and graphic novels. “i am personally not that into english poetry and don’t follow the scene,” he admits, “although everyone tells us publishing poetry is not something you should do as a business.” and there you have it.

what this means is, despite short-lived bursts of publicity — when tishani doshi’s countries of the body won the uk’s big forward poetry prize in 2006, for instance, or tranquebar press gave us 2007 winner daljit nagra’s look we have coming to dover! — publishing poetry in english isn’t exactly a cakewalk. add to this a missing tradition of criticism, and the possibility of things changing for the better in future seem rather bleak. still, eunice de souza points out that even well-known and very fine poets like manohar shetty have just published their own work instead of waiting for publishers. chattarji refers to online journals, and a new print journal in mumbai called nether brought out by college students. she also mentions ongoing schemes from the sahitya akademi, forthcoming titles from harpercollins and small presses like hemant divate’s poetrywala, which recently published her second collection, absent muses.

alapat admits that while he has been published in some poetry magazines, acceptance is low. “everyone has a view on what a poem should be like,” he says. regarding the absence of a tradition of criticism, chattarji agrees. “that is a lacuna i feel more deeply than i do publishing opportunities,” she says. “review spaces for poetry are increasingly constrained, if not completely excised. some of the more intelligent, nuanced, objective and contextualized criticism is written by poets themselves, and that is vital, but i wish there was more of it.” she’s not the only one.

the sound of silence

2011-01-06T13:46:00.004+05:30

an interesting by-product of the first half of the twentieth century was the publication of black and white woodcut novels. the works — particularly passionate journey by the artist frans masereel — eschewed all text in favour of imaginative visuals. masereel had a massive influence on a number of artists, one of whom happened to be lynd kendall ward. with his first book titled god’s man, published in 1929, ward inadvertently became one of the founders of what we now refer to as the graphic novel.

the spirit that moved ward and masereel makes a welcome return with hush, the first release from independent publisher manta ray. described as a mini-graphic novel, it is written by pratheek thomas, illustrated by rajiv eipe, and based on a story by vivek thomas.

putting aside the need for speech blurbs, the creators use all of three tones to tell a short, but still affecting, tale. the 26x17 cms panels, spread across 34 pages, plot a non-linear narrative of how a young girl reacts to abuse. does it work? yes, but only to a point. the illustrations are fabulous; it’s the tale they are meant to service that isn’t exactly new.

as a first step towards pushing the envelope in india, keeping the genre in mind, this is more than welcome. also, for the price, it is absolute value for money.

— hush, pratheek thomas and rajiv eipe, manta ray comics

the beast within

2010-12-27T11:07:00.002+05:30

ah, the vicarious pleasure to be had from dredging the mind of a terrorist. it’s a tempting trip more than a few writers have attempted to take in our pleasant post 9/11 world. mohsin hamid did it rather well with the reluctant fundamentalist, as did h.m. naqvi in his own manner with home boy. now, omair ahmad takes his shot. the result is quite possibly the most poignant of the lot.

set in the fictional town of moazzamabad, ahmad’s terrorist is an 18-year-old with a knife. what he does with it is of far lesser significance than the story of what drives him to pick it up. the novella (longer than a short story, with a modest timeline and no ‘grand scope’ to speak of) opens with the lives of rafiq ansari and shaista shabbir, and closes with their son jamaal’s almost hesitant transformation into jimmy the terrorist. in the process ahmad, like hamid before him, manages to shine a light on what compels one to negate everything from instinct to an innate sense of morality. like all good fiction, the journey from point 'a' to 'b' cannot be paraphrased.

the writing is mature; ahmad’s control over his story, complete. his work as a reporter comes to his aid when he describes the innocent spark that ignites a riot. his familiarity with india’s political history helps him create powerful caricatures, like the one of l.k. advani. there are a few minor annoyances — the omniscient narrator doesn’t quite find his voice at the opening, shaista’s presence (or, rather, her absence) doesn’t affect much, and rafiq’s switch from amateur poet to prophet isn’t entirely plausible. also, can the hindu-muslim story ever find a language that doesn’t occasionally stumble into cliché?

ahmad is clearly a gifted storyteller. better still, he has stories worth telling. that he does this using finely-polished prose, even while focusing on proselytizing, is what makes jimmy the terrorist an achievement.

— jimmy the terrorist, omair ahmad, penguin india

on leaving home

2010-11-22T16:38:00.003+05:30

if you want to make a film about anything other than bollywood, or play original music for a living, conventional wisdom exhorts you to try neither in india. unless, one may now happily retort, you are jaideep varma or part of a certain band based in new delhi.

leaving home: the life and music of indian ocean became india’s first non-fiction feature film to release nationally earlier this year. it was rather well received by the media. while one critic called it an ‘inspirational music documentary’, another referred to it as ‘nothing less than a miracle’. the movie-going public at large chose to ignore it, reserving enthusiasm that particular week for a film with an item number instead.

this release on dvd, then, comes as a second chance for many of us to get our priorities in order. it’s a chance to choose something infinitely more interesting than your average formula flick — a film populated with real-life characters (susmit sen, rahul ram, amit kilam and the late asheem chakravarty) and a story worth listening to.

much of varma’s film is given over to how the band indian ocean came to be, what drives its individual members, and why their music inspires much adulation on the live circuit. part documentary, part live concert, part impromptu jam session, it’s a rough-around-the-edges piece of work that, almost inexplicably, generates a certain affection for four musicians many of us may never meet.

and the dvd has extras — an hour of footage that takes us behind the scenes, introduces us to the filmmaker and his team, and tells us a little more about the wonderful mr chakravarty. the short montage on the latter becomes a poignant, funny epitaph. it shows him as he always was: a very special man, clearly devoted to the music he helped create.

selling as it is for the price of an average movie ticket, this is a steal. if you want to make a documentary, or play your own music in india, you can. watch leaving home, and believe.

looking down from st. paul's

2010-10-17T15:33:00.001+05:30

'oh, could i flow like thee, and make thy stream
my great example, as it is my theme!
though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.'

— john denham, the thames

coming to bombay?

2010-09-24T14:10:00.001+05:30

no one really cares about first-time visitors to bombay. this is awful, because the thousands who keep arriving (largely in the hope of becoming the next salman khan) need to be warned about a great number of things before stepping off their trains at what continues to be called vt.

take travel by train, for instance, which 6.9 million of us take for granted. how is a first-timer supposed to figure out the unwritten rules that help us get from point a to b on a daily basis? how is one to know, for example, that you never try the virar fast if you want to reach borivali? or that a dadar fast is a horrible idea if you have to get to bandra? or that ticket checkers don’t give a damn about how it’s your first day in the city if they find you in the first class compartment without a ticket?

hanging outside the train is another bad idea. it can be a great introduction to bombay, but may also be your last introduction to any city on earth if a pole happens to get in the way. and, sadly, there are a lot of poles in the way.

other things to avoid include medicines that promise to solve all sexual problems in 24 hours, manufactured by baba samrat bangali from vasai. also, don’t smile at fisher folk who tuck their saris between their legs; they carry sickles and love using them.

if you choose to wear slippers or a kurta while trying to get into a fast train, know that this gives the 26 people behind you much leverage, and will compel you to travel barefoot in approximately 6 seconds. don’t get into an argument with the guy who saves a seat for his friend by putting down a sheet of newspaper; these sheets are authorised stand-ins for absentees.

lastly, don’t ask the group of bhajan singers in your compartment to tone it down a bit so you can read your book. i learnt some of these things the hard way, so you don’t have to.

birthdays at home, please

2010-08-23T16:29:00.002+05:30

once upon a time, when mumbai was still bombay and a larger number of us could afford to buy dal by the kilogram, our streets were tolerable for a number of reasons. for one, few of us knew what a sedan was. sure, we had heard about them via archie comics, but our limited world-views prevented us from imagining roads without hulking ambassadors or shrinking marutis.

secondly, protests were relatively mild because there were no malls to gather around or attack. there was no satellite television either, which meant these protests may have occurred, but few of us found out about them until the world this week aired days later.

best of all, we could actually see traffic lights because there were no political hoardings blocking our view. the smaller number of gaudy posters had nothing to do with less-narcissistic politicians. they loved the idea of looking down upon us even then, irrespective of how much they all resembled extras in b-movies. no, the reason they abstained from the now popular habit of wishing each other a happy birthday in public was printing technology.

hand-painted posters were possible, but didn’t exactly lend themselves to mass-producing. now, with high-end machines easily enabling printing speeds of up to 2000 feet per minute, the carpet-bombing of street corners at a nominal cost becomes irresistible for these wannabe leaders. it also leaves them with enough to splurge on amateur photographers and first-time photoshop users. the result is a mismatched mess of fonts, colours and bathetic praise for anyone even remotely related to someone at mantralaya.

acting as a deterrent to this flood is the maharashtra defacement of property act, 1995, violation of which results in a fine somewhere in the vicinity of rs 100 — or what a kilogram of dal now costs.

this morning, i passed a hoarding bursting at the seams with greetings to a local councillor. it was the latter’s birthday, so a great deal of praise was evidently in order. what saddened me more than how awful the hoarding looked, however, was the man’s age. he had just turned 34, which meant he — and the rest of us photogenic folk residing in the area — could expect similar displays for a few decades more.

i’m all for doling out praise where it’s due. fix our roads, plug holes in our water pipelines, clear the garbage on time, and give yourselves a pat on the back in public if you really, really must. but blocking our roads with posters to celebrate your birthdays? that won’t get you my vote.

where have all the poets gone?

2010-07-07T11:27:00.002+05:30

it’s been six years since dominic francis moraes died in his sleep, in the suburb of bandra, far from the dreaming spires of his youth. 52 years since he published his debut collection of poetry, a beginning. his body was laid to rest in the cemetery at sewri, as automobiles whizzed past on the street outside as usual.

once the most promising poet of our times — the youngest, and first non-english person to win the hawthornden prize ‘for the best work of the imagination’ — he was compelled to face his declining years in relative obscurity, choosing to fight cancer without a recommended treatment of radiation, fading away quietly while the rest of us carried on with the business of living dangerously.

it’s been six years since arun kolatkar faded into the ether. three decades since his masterpiece, jejuri, first made its presence felt. kolatkar didn’t own a telephone, organise public readings, or hire a pr agency to promote his poetry. when he died of cancer after a prolonged illness, no streets were named after him. today, few bookstores carry copies of jejuri, choosing instead to reserve shelf space for iim graduates who can’t write. jejuri was re-published by the new york review books classics series, two years after his death. copies are still hard to find here.

it’s been six years since nissim ezekiel died, slowly forgetting who he was. six years since we forgot who he was. winner of the sahitya akademi award for latter-day psalms, he became little more than the man whose poem, the night of the scorpion, appeared in high school english text books. without him, the pen all-india centre would be more irrelevant than it currently is. when nissim died, forgotten in his corner of mumbai, english newspapers called him ‘the father of post-independence indian verse in english’. the press trust of india gave him a 100-word obituary.

it’s been six months since dilip purushottam chitre died in pune. he faded away doing what he loved best — writing poetry in marathi and english, translating other poets, and painting whenever his health allowed him to. without chitre, many of us would never identify with seventeenth century bhakti poet tukaram. without him, the work of namdeo dhasal wouldn’t raise eyebrows beyond the streets of golpitha. his 70-year life of letters was reduced to a couple of paragraphs on page 4.

the government of maharashtra reserves most honours for a king who died 330 years ago. it chooses to ignore other kinds of heroes closer to our time, on a daily basis.

still behind every man?

2010-06-21T13:18:00.000+05:30

a woman called reshma does our dishes at home. she also sweeps and dusts the place for a sum of rs 700 a month. i don’t know her last name, despite the fact that she has been with us for over a year now. what i do know is she comes from maharashtra’s smallest city, panhala, once capital of the maratha state and famous for its fort — the only one where, according to rudimentary tourist websites, chhatrapati shivaji spent the most amount of time outside his childhood homes.

i also know that reshma is punctual, efficient, and funny when she chooses to speak, which is often. on the days she doesn’t speak, i know it’s because she has been beaten by her husband.

as his second wife (and the younger one), she says it’s her feisty nature that provokes him. he has two children with his first wife, who doesn’t work, and two with reshma, who is forced to work because there simply isn’t enough money to go around. he can’t stand the fact that she helps provide for the family, apparently, and accuses her of being too proud for her own good. his anger then compels him to attack her.

i have tried, time and again, to convince reshma to report her husband to the police. i have offered to invite them to my home, and have her speak to them there instead. i have offered to call ngos that deal with domestic violence. reshma refuses every offer. “my husband doesn’t care about the police,” she says. “he will get away within minutes. what will i do then?” my reassurances mean nothing to her.

her solution, for now, is to bear the abuse until her children grow up and take her away. panhala offers no job opportunities, she says, so her mother can’t afford to keep her there. she doesn’t want to disrupt her children’s education either.

reshma has nothing to look forward to. stretching before her are years of dishwashing, the annual week-long trip to her mother’s home, and the dim hope that her children will study enough to land a job that can help them support their mother.

as politicians debated the pros and cons of the women’s reservation bill a few weeks ago, i asked reshma if more empowered women in politics would make any difference to her. she laughed for a few seconds, then asked, “will they manage to take decisions without asking their husbands for permission?” i haven’t thought of a reply yet.

waiting for goddess

2010-05-11T19:43:00.006+05:30

rami turk and linda greaves sat patiently outside the congress centre in prague, their eyes on two tour buses parked nearby. the blinds on both vehicles were drawn, and there was no perceptible movement. rami and linda didn’t mind though, not after the enormous amount of effort it had taken them to get there. the former had travelled from ras al khaimah, in the uae; the latter from oldham, in the united kingdom.

as the minutes ticked by, they were joined by david rangel of barcelona, rabih el-khoury of lebanon, marla kendrick of cambridge, steven glatt of london and a few others, including yours truly from mumbai. all eyes stayed on the buses. ensconced within was the musician we had all come from far flung corners of the globe to see: tori amos.

born myra ellen amos to a methodist preacher in north carolina, amos was a piano prodigy who won a seat at the influential peabody conservatory in baltimore when she was just 5. at 11, she was kicked out for preferring rock to rachmaninoff. by 13, she had begun playing piano in bars. following a failed rock album at 24, she released the groundbreaking little earthquakes at 27. the year was 1992 and, within a few months, she had the kind of devoted fans most musicians would give one of their limbs for.

rami, linda and the rest of us were in prague for amos’s 2009 tour promoting her album abnormally attracted to sin. it had begun with a 29-city tour of the united states and canada, and was set to roll across europe for five months before moving to australia. what made all amos concerts different from, say, a janet jackson tour, was the number of familiar faces at every venue. some fans followed her across the us, others across europe, still others across continents. and, many had been doing this for over a decade.

naturally, this gave rise to a few questions from family and friends that we all had to answer at some point: for one, why did we do it? why did some of us put our lives on hold for weeks, to follow a musician around the world? and, why attend 40 concerts when one really ought to suffice?

our defence, this was not a new phenomenon. there had been thousands like us who could have been asked those same questions. like the deadheads — fans of american jam band the grateful dead. by the late 1960s, the band had begun to attract large numbers of people who would travel to see them in as many venues as they could. eventually, a community of sorts developed, with its own language and idiom.

the similarities between deadheads and toriphiles — that’s what we’re sometimes called — are many. we too have our own slang, our in-jokes, concert favourites, even an online bootleg exchange. as for why so many of us often chose to attend 40 performances instead of just a couple, i put the question to some of my companions in prague. for steven from london, a tori amos show could never get boring because “the venue, city and songs changed constantly.” for marla, it was the opportunity to meet new fans that kept bringing her back.

while the concert in prague was my first, the people around me were veterans. they knew amos’s staff, got me front row seats, and introduced me to everyone in the entourage who mattered. what many of them did when amos went on tour — every two years or so, to coincide with new album releases — was follow her across a continent, booking tickets for every date. those who followed an entire tour could end up attending 200 concerts a year! the logistics involved could drive frequent flyers up a wall.

this sort of devotion isn’t easy to explain, considering amos has never enjoyed the kind of album sales that artistes like u2 or madonna can boast of. her fans ensure her concerts sell out though, help her albums go platinum, and create thousands of dedicated sites online. at one level, this passion comes from the fact that she is a musician who stirs things up. her music sometimes reaches a level of emotive rawness that fans of coldplay will simply never know. it explores everything from feminism to self-loathing, religion to rape — not exactly the sort of stuff people like tuning into while jogging.

what was more surprising than fans following her, however, was how amos herself managed to stick to a punishing schedule. at every show, she took to the stage well before her two-hour performance, for a sound check. after playing for around five hours, she would get into her tour bus, travel overnight to another venue and do it all over again. and. like clockwork, fans in every city would assemble before a show in the hope of meeting her — a tradition going back to the early concerts. from manchester to london, basel to amsterdam, they would wait patiently for a few minutes with their favourite pianist.

that morning in prague, amos couldn’t make a pre-show appearance. so, after attending the evening’s performance, we travelled by bus to make it to her concert next day — in austria. there, after a two-hour wait outside the stadthalle in vienna, i managed to do what i had waited 16 years for. i came face to face with tori amos. as fans thrust flowers at her and held up album sleeves for her to sign, we chatted.

later that evening, minutes before amos took to the stage, i turned to rami from the uae and asked how he would describe a concert to someone who hadn’t heard her music. “how can you describe the taste of chocolate to someone who’s never had it?” he replied. and then, the house lights dimmed. as her drummer and bassist plugged in, tori amos stepped onto the stage. there was a deafening roar and, for the next two hours, all was right with our world.

her art of stone

2010-04-01T19:58:00.005+05:30

“i will answer no questions,” says carmel berkson, photographer, sculptor, scholar, “until you reply to some of mine.” her look does not waver; her hands lie calmly on the table before us. she proceeds to ask me about art, my background, even my tenuous grasp of physics, before deeming me vaguely qualified to discuss her work.

we are at the bombay presidency radio club in colaba, from where boats of all sizes make their choppy journey eastward to the mythical island of elephanta — home to shaivistic stone carvings of deities, and now a unesco world heritage site. it is the perfect place to meet berkson, considering the island changed her life. “i first visited india in 1970,” she says, “and was completely unprepared for the medieval sculpture i encountered. it prompted me to take up sculpting and move here permanently 7 years later.”

born in new york, berkson studied at duke university and columbia before coming to india. with a bit of guesswork, i assume she is now in her late eighties. a compact figure dressed smartly in blue, she takes on the role of mother figure, keeping an eye on whether i have eaten enough, and pointing out the best dessert at the club’s restaurant.

a self-taught sculptor, the former student of economics has since spent the last 3 decades studying what she calls the ‘protean sculptural forms’ found in temples and caves. her research has led to acclaimed books of criticism and photography on traditional sculpture. it has also helped her take a definite stand in the approach to her own art, which situates modernism within a definite traditional idiom.

reading some of her books, one is struck by the vehemence with which berkson insists on the need for contemporary artists to stem what she perceives as a radical divorce from the past. her latest, indian sculpture: towards the rebirth of aesthetics, advocates a ‘reconnection’ with the ancient masters — a ‘leap backwards’ over centuries of foreign intrusive style impositions. it is a position at odds with the concept of ‘glocalisation’, where everyone, from industrialists to artists, is encouraged to ‘think globally and act locally.’ what berkson wants, simply, is for contemporary artists to take a second look at traditional aesthetics.

another thing she has always been vehement about is the complete lack of respect places like ellora and elephanta receive. in the life of form in indian sculpture, she expresses her hope that they will once again acquire the sacred value they once held. “i want the government to stop selling these places as tourist attractions,” she explains. “thousands come to ellora for picnics, or to prove they can visit 33 caves in a day. they don’t have a clue of what’s really going on.” by ‘going on’, she refers to the art. “few can grasp the enormity of the magnificence of ellora because they tend to come at it from one perspective,” she says. “it has to be understood as a piece of symphonic music. when it comes to structure, one doesn’t see it; one feels it as a totality.”

as we talk my gaze is drawn, again, towards elephanta. i ask berkson about a book she wrote on the island with wendy doniger o’flaherty. in an introductory essay, the latter — often in the news for the wrong reasons, currently for her latest book, the hindus: an alternative history — says it breaks her heart to see tourists milling around the taj mahal, while passing by elephanta. does berkson share that view? “of course,” she replies. “it’s why i came here. it is the greatest work of art and it is completely neglected, which is a crime.”

berkson refuses to be photographed, incidentally, preferring the focus on her work alone. for years now, she has lived at the salvation army quarters in south mumbai, sculpting, doing research, and looking after the interests of street children in her neighbourhood. “i want people to leave me alone to do my sculpture,” she says. “and i want a gallery that will understand my work and exhibit it.” (interestingly, the chances of the latter happening increase dramatically a week after berkson and i meet. she has been awarded a padma shri, india’s fourth highest civilian honour, for her distinguished contribution to art).

considering all she has done, i ask how she would describe herself. “to do that in a few sentences is impossible,” she chides me. “one can’t gauge what someone is like without spending time in that person’s company. i’ve been a member of the radio club for over 20 years and, in all that time, not one of the people here has had a conversation with me.”

the loss is theirs, entirely.

czech, please!

2010-03-12T19:20:00.009+05:30

a janitor at the railway station was my first guide. he was followed by a ticketing clerk, then a student from brazil i happened to chat with on the metro. together, they helped me find my hotel in a new part of town called vysehrad — allegedly the location of the first settlement that later became prague. it was no easy task, considering i had arrived at their beautiful city a little after 11 pm. armed with the english language (now spoken by approximately 1.8 billion), i stood dazed, luggage in hand, grappling with the west slavic czech spoken by just about 12 million. for the first time in years, i felt unarmed. the funny thing is, it also felt mildly liberating.

the russian owner of my hotel was the next surprise. as i staggered into his domain at midnight, he welcomed me with a shout. “indian friend, i thought you lost!” all i could do in the face of his exuberance, despite the awkward grammar, was smile and ask, as awkwardly, for a shot of vodka. a half hour later he was complaining to me about how corrupt politicians were ruining his country. i asked him, politely, to join the club.

over the coming days, the list of surprises grew. greeting people in basic czech got me smiles. i was stopped on the street by a couple of strangers who had questions about india. cobbled paths ended abruptly with views of the ancient river vltava, populated by swans. and, despite the fairly large number of tourists jostling for space at the more popular attractions, i still felt my jaw drop a few times at the sheer picture-postcard moments — featuring cathedrals, walled courtyards, and the odd tower tipped with gold — strewn liberally throughout the 1000-year old city.

in retrospect, i realize much of prague’s beauty came simply from the fact that, unlike many parts of europe, it was relatively undamaged by the violence of world war ii. the city centre managed to astonish tourists because it came across as an antique showpiece. it was like walking into a museum and being confronted by regular folk in homes that looked much like they did centuries ago. nowhere was this more obvious than at the prazsky hrad (prague castle) or the karluv most (charles bridge).

although the former was the city’s biggest attraction, it took me a while to locate. its spires were visible for miles, but the streets surrounding it held little information that could help. eventually, all i could do was follow a few tourists. currently the seat of the czech president, the castle was formerly home to the king and was supposedly europe’s oldest. it looked it, too.

even better, however, was the bridge — located a short picturesque walk from the castle. built in 1357 under the patronage of king charles iv, it finished crossing the vltava only by the beginning of the fifteenth century. lining either side of it were baroque statues of saints. the thing i found most interesting — leaving aside the structure’s history, and its stunning old town bridge tower — was a legend that maintained its sandstone was enriched with eggs to bind and make the stone blocks harder. apparently, recent laboratory tests had proved this to be true.

thanks to the humble egg, the bridge had survived massive floods (the last as early as 2002, which came close to destroying parts of prague), a 30-year war, horse carriage traffic, electric trams and modern vehicular traffic. now here it was, crawling with twentieth-century tourists, populated by souvenir-sellers, popping up in music videos for kanye west, and making appearances in hollywood blockbusters like mission: impossible. it was a rather strong argument for eggs.

on the day i was to leave, i walked through vaclavske namesti (wenceslas square), cultural heart of the city. named after the patron saint of czech lands, it was a spot much loved by locals. near a big statue of wenceslas on a horse is where a student called jan palach set himself ablaze in 1969, protesting the soviet occupation of czechoslovakia. it was a reminder of prague’s violent communist past. these days, the statue served as a meeting point. you could ask a friend to wait near the horse, apparently, or ‘pod ocasem’ — under its tail.

later that day, after slinging my bags over my shoulder, i walked out the hotel vysehrad. “come back soon,” my new russian friend shouted. i nodded vigorously.

her necklace of skulls

2010-02-09T15:29:00.003+05:30

“learn the craft; feelings are not enough.” that advice, from eunice de souza to those considering writing poetry, helps put into perspective her work of the past 30 years. it isn’t advice to be taken lightly either, as a surprisingly large number of graduates from mumbai’s st xavier’s college will attest to. for a few generations of them, de souza was not unlike a prophet — a powerful, sometimes-moody guide to the canon of english literature.

for as long as she taught, and well after she retired in 2000, de souza wrote poetry. she wasn’t sure it was poetry when she began, she says, because she would write ‘jagged pieces’ rather than ‘soft, sensuous and passionate lines.’ her 1979 debut, fix, addressed this in one of its poems: ‘my students think it funny / that daruwallas and de souzas / should write poetry. poetry is faery lands forlorn. women writers miss austen. only foreign men air their crotches.’ it is only 9 years later, after her second collection women in dutch painting appeared, that she started to feel like a poet.

it can’t have been an easy road, given the indifference that continues to surround any publication of poetry in india — as opposed to the buzz even the most awful novels written by iit graduates each year tend to generate. “poetry in english doesn’t get as much attention as even bad fiction in english,” de souza points out. “yet, there are more good poets than there are novelists.” sadly, most publishers haven’t noticed.

they now have solid proof though, with the publication of a necklace of skulls: a collection of all poetry de souza has published to date, including unpublished early and new poems. as a whole, it can still be described by what the australian poet a d hope said about her work, decades ago. what struck him about the poems, he wrote, was ‘their immediacy, their complete impact, their unguarded sense of statement.’

a necklace of skulls certainly is a powerful statement. it showcases a strong personality at work, and moves through a variety of themes, from love and family to the hypocrisy inherent in the roman catholic community — one the poet can comment upon by virtue of being born into it. what shines though it all is the empathy de souza brings. hers aren’t the detached comments of an outsider; they are clearly born of experience, perfected through her learning of the craft. another thing that stands out is the poet’s sense of humour. her art may indict, but with tongue firmly in cheek.

i ask if she thinks we have a tradition of literary criticism in india, when it comes to poetry. “it’s usually poets writing about other poets who write analyses worth reading,” she replies. “almost all the criticism by academics is clueless.”

in her preface to the collection, de souza states: ‘the creative process being what it is, i don’t really know where the poems came from. but i am endlessly grateful that they turned up.’ she’s not the only one.

fledgling (early unpublished poem)
i am grateful
the sparrows have made
my house their home.
all those months they stayed away
i waited for their return.
soon the fledgling will cling
wide-eyed, to the pelmet
as generations of wide-eyed fledglings
have done.
the mother scolds and chatters
forgetting
shadows which circle the sun.

home truths

2010-01-12T18:47:00.006+05:30

it all began with water. to be precise, an artesian well — groundwater flowing upward naturally, without the need for pumping. it flowed on a large floodplain of the river wien that trickled sluggishly through vienna. the year was 1548, and a man who owned the land (with, of course, the well) decided to raise a mansion above it. you’d do it too, if it were to save you plumbing costs. he called the mansion katterburg, and it was beautiful enough to attract attention; which is saying a lot considering this was old europe.

two decades later, it was purchased by holy roman emperor maximilian ii, who did what all holy people do: put up a fence. in the space within, he created fishponds, then released boar and pheasants, deer and peafowl. with passing decades, the aristocracy came to think of it as a popular hunting ground. one frequent visitor was eleonore gonzaga, queen of germany and second wife of ferdinand ii. she loved to hunt (hence the frequency of her visits), and was promptly gifted the land after her husband’s death. it was the year 1638 by now, and gonzaga soon succumbed to that primal need — to renovate. she added a palace to the mansion and, in 1643, schönbrunn was born. the name meant ‘beautiful well’.

366 years later, i stood before a mansion that had been shaped, and re-shaped, by successive personalities from the royal house of habsburg. these distinguished folk dated back to the year 1108, and were the origin of all formally elected holy roman emperors between 1452 and 1740. they also decided who was to rule austria, spain and a few other countries. in short, when it came to building palaces, they knew their way around better than most.

it was strange to think of schönbrunn palace as a home, although that was what it always was. it gave the term ‘house proud’ a whole new perspective — this creation of gardens and placement of statuary (there were 32, representing virtues and a few deities); this gilding of ceilings and landscaping of views.

apparently, when emperor leopold i came to power, he asked one of the most influential architects of the time, johann bernhard fischer von erlach, to come up with a new design. the latter had famous versailles in mind while drawing up the first set of blueprints. his second draft was, surprisingly, more down-to-earth. work on that version began in 1696 and ended in 1672. then, maria theresa, last representative of the house of habsburg, took charge of austria. she was given the palace as a gift by her father — princesses couldn’t be pacified by ponies, could they? — and promptly decided to turn it into a royal summer residence. obviously, the building had to be re-modelled.

it remained a favourite summer residence right through the following centuries. emperor franz josef i was born in it in the nineteenth, lived in its rooms for much of his life, and died there. naturally, during his six decade-long reign, it had to be given the now-mandatory makeover. given its rich history, it was treated as a complete work of art, and remodelled accordingly. this final version was the one i stood before, a twentieth-century traveller trying to figure out the design sense of kings and queens long gone.

around me were tourists, and the occasional guide. schönbrunn had been a major tourist attraction since the 1960s, but had suddenly jumped into newspapers with the announcement, not long before i visited, that a tribute to late pop star michael jackson was being planned on its grounds. by the time i stepped through its magnificent gates, the concert had been postponed by about a year, but there were still a few newsmagazines superimposing the visage of a departed king of pop against the backdrop of the royal residence.

what struck me most, at first glance, was how unassuming it looked. then, after walking up to where the emperor or queen may have stood to receive blue-blooded guests, i realized how magnificent a spectacle they must have created. before the palace stretched an enormous open space, gardens on either side, all of vienna up front. behind was a french garden containing a maze (television hadn’t been invented then), a botanical garden, the world’s oldest existing zoo (called the tiergarten) and a small hill crowned by a building called the gloriette. squirrels ran across the path, to the delight of foreign tourists who clearly hadn’t seen the little creatures before. from the top, the city looked much like it may have when old maria theresa puffed and wheezed her way up on summer evenings.

inside, the palace had everything one assumed a royal home could ask for. camera in my left hand, ipod in the right, i — an anachronism by a window — watched awestruck tourists walk past. so, this was what it felt like to be king.

kulbhushan who?

2009-12-17T15:49:00.002+05:30

a stöckli, for those who — like me — aren’t residents of switzerland, is an agricultural building. apparently, the name derives from the german term for a construction made of stone. so, if i were editor of the graphic novel anthology when kulbhushan met stockli, one of the first things i’d do would be to introduce a bit of basic grammar to the proceedings. but, that’s just me.

the current editor, someone called anindya roy, presumably landed the job because (a) he came up with the idea; (b) he was co-founder of phantomville, a ‘graphic novel company’. both possibilities render him incapable for the task at hand, for a number of reasons. firstly, we’re told, ‘there was no brief given, except this: avoid the simple travelogue style where one takes a camel ride, has diarrhoea, then gets pick-pocketed…instead, the authors were asked to look a layer deeper.’

when asked to look a layer deeper — whatever that means — writers and illustrators tend to stumble in the dark. some work turns out to be competent, because some contributors are professionals. a lot of it, sadly, falls between the cracks.

initiated and financed by the swiss arts council, this book aims to ‘open the psychic core of cities in switzerland and india’, thereby constructing ‘a conversation channel between the two’. what we end up with is a bunch of stories focusing either on cricket in delhi, the dreaded delhi belly, mehendi workers in delhi, or references to bollywood shoots on swiss mountainsides.

there is a certain amount of good work; not enough to warrant the destruction of more trees (a reprint), but enough to sacrifice some shrubbery to. swiss contributor christophe badoux (we aren’t told who he is, so one assumes he was found sketching outside the airport at delhi and asked to come on board) gives us an interesting opening story on, um, cricket and delhi. also interesting is orijit sen’s stories set in a corner of zurich. we aren’t told who he is either, but that may be rectified some day, by a more helpful editor.

the big failure, eventually, is this reduction of india to a few streets of our capital. the one fairly collaborative work, the black hole and other news, comes via samrat choudhury, esther banz, fahad faizal and sunaina coelho. using the epistolary format, the foursome exchange textual and visual notes. much of it may be lost in translation — will swiss readers understand the maharashtra navnirman sena when we, in india, haven’t? — but the work is interesting. also intriguing is the contribution by vishwajyoti ghosh. titled the lost ticket, he uses everything from sepia-tinted photographs to newspaper ads for escort services to create something unique. in the process, he helps create a genuine process of exploration, and is possibly the only contributor to ‘look a layer deeper’.

the aim of this collaboration, apparently, is to ‘generate interest in the graphic novel form in artists and readers in both countries.’ they’ll just have to try harder.

simply marry?

2009-12-07T15:51:00.006+05:30

meeta sethna and thibault gournay, both professionals from new york, were in love. considering they had been in that state of bliss for a few years already, the idea of tying the knot seemed like a good one. what they wanted, however, was that mythical event — a fairy-tale wedding. they wanted blue skies and green meadows, champagne and a sit-down dinner. and yes, raas garba in a french chateau.

neither of them were pop stars, nor was hollywood aware of their existence. and yet, with a little help from family and friends, they got what they wished for.

on august 23, 2008, meeta and thibault were married at the chateau d’ermenonville, france. gazing into each others’ eyes, they read out vows while being serenaded by classical musicians. above them were blue skies; behind, a medieval chateau. and surrounding them, dressed in their sunday best, were the people they loved. and while a hundred cameras flashed, with people going ‘oooh!’ and ‘aaaah!’ in accents both indian and french, there must have been one thought uppermost in the minds of the bride and groom: ‘how did we pull this off?’

to call it tricky would be an understatement. meeta’s family lived in new york; thibault’s, in france. somewhere in between lay a chateau — 40 kilometres from paris — that needed a little sprucing up, indian style. things most couples took for granted were, understandably, off-limits here. for one, how would french chefs create a four-course meal for guests who ate only indian vegetarian fare? where could one find a dj comfortable with switching from bollywood blockbusters to traditional garba? then there was the question of transportation, as guests were to arrive from india, america and france.

so, for six straight months, the families sethna and gournay worked their telephone lines. they fired up laptops on two continents, drawing up excel sheets. the food was taken care of by a chef from pondicherry now living in paris, although he spoke only french or tamil, which presented another set of challenges. the dj was found in london — if you can’t find an indian in england, where can you? — and asked to come over by train. relatives were assigned the task of bringing in snacks and decorative knick-knacks, while the good people at chateau d’ermenonville were given time to prepare for their first big, fat indian wedding.

they needed all the preparation they could get. after all, the town of ermenonville was home to just a few thousand souls (the 1999 census listed 838), none of whom were aware of the flurry of salwars, saris and sherwanis heading their way. what guaranteed a fairy-tale setting, however, was the chateau itself. it was built in the year 987, early enough to see joan of arc pass by in 1429 and greet louis xi in 1474. henri iv visited in 1590, queen marie-antoinette in 1783. others who had decided to stop by included king of sweden gustave iii, benjamin franklin, robespierre, and napoleon bonaparte.

the chateau’s fortunes had changed radically over the centuries. first, it was sold to a prince constantin radziwill in 1874, who was mysteriously assassinated in monte carlo a few decades later. during world war ii, enemy troops occupied the royal rooms. in 1945, italian automobile manufacturer ettore bugatti settled in, then promptly mortgaged the property to finance his research. by 1991, the particuliers hotels group had become the owner, transforming chateau d’ermenonville into a luxury hotel of 49 rooms. now here it was in 2008, host to the sethna-gournay nuptials.

right outside the chateau, spread across 16 hectares, was the parc jean-jacques rousseau, regarded as the first landscape garden in france and named after the writer who was buried there. rousseau had spent his last days at the chateau. he was buried on an isle of poplars, in an artificial lake at the park, until his remains were moved to the pantheon in paris. on the afternoon before the wedding, i walked through the garden. i came across a bench made for marie-antoinette, who had sat there to receive girls from the village on her visit a few centuries ago. there was also an unfinished building called the temple of philosophy, left in that state on purpose to symbolise the incompleteness of human knowledge.

and then it was time for the big event. in the meadow at the back of the chateau, seated by the side of a lake, we watched as meeta sethna and thibault gournay spoke of their love for each other. behind them stood their groomsmen, in formal coats and tails. there were hats and dupattas, staid blue suits and fiery red saris flashing in the breeze.

later, as we sipped pre-dinner cocktails and watched fireworks light up the sky above the lake, i thought about the argument for simple weddings. a court marriage and informal party was all very well, of course, but could it really beat a wedding at a chateau?

mostly mozart

2009-11-03T16:08:00.007+05:30

there’s that face again. it’s a recurring thought for anyone stepping into salzburg without knowing who wolfgang amadeus mozart was. for the millions who do claim awareness, the sudden appearance of his visage on a bottle of cherry liquor can still come as a surprise. in fact, to now think of salzburg without mozart is a lot like imagining agra without the presence of a certain white mausoleum.

there’s more to the fourth-largest city in austria, of course. primarily, that other never-ending tribute it continues to pay — to hollywood musical the sound of music. to paraphrase, then, salzburg now survives on two of its past rejections: a composer it failed to appreciate, and a movie it wasn’t really interested in.

and so, one takes tour guide recommendations related to the composer and musical with a large pinch of salt. incidentally, the name salzburg came from toll-paying barges carrying salt on the salzach river. its original roman name, juvavum, was changed by saint rupert of the frankish royal merovingian family.

as i strolled through its ancient streets though, the gorgeous alps standing tall in the backdrop, what struck me more than anything else was the all-encompassing presence of mozart. even the home he was born in — hagenauer house at getreidegasse 9, where the family lived from 1747 to 1773 — found itself on rows of refrigerator magnets lining the shelves of souvenir stalls. outside the building stood a few hundred tourists, huddled in a digital camera-driven frenzy usually reserved for someone performing on stage. inside were carefully preserved displays of his first violin, first clavichord, first handwritten score, even a few carefully preserved locks of hair. it was all a far cry from when the composer actually walked those wooden floors, when the city of his birth compelled him to look for fame and fortune in other parts of europe.

it didn’t start out as a tragic story. when johannes chrysostomus wolfgangus theophilus mozart was born (january 27, 1756), his father leopold was vice-provost of the court orchestra. struck by the obvious genius of his only son to survive birth (daughter maria anna was born five years before), leopold did what most fathers in an age of reality television would now choose to do more easily — put the prodigy on display. both children were schooled in music early, but mozart was clearly in a league all his own. by 6, he was playing his own compositions to an astonished audience.

for a while, it was great. there were successful concerts across the continent, duly impressed members of royalty, and enough money to convince leopold he had made the right decision. the young mozart was obviously pleased too, and responded by promptly composing his first sonatas. as a teenager he continued to tour, hobnobbed with the rich and famous, gathered new admirers, and eventually went one up on his father by landing the post of provost.

and then, salzburg turned its back on the man who would one day be blessed by its department of tourism. his relationship with his employer, the prince archbishop, deteriorated rapidly. he was forced to quit and move to neighbouring vienna, where he found love, became a father, and created some of his finest operas. the size of his audience began to shrink. he was eventually hired as a court musician by the imperial court of emperor joseph ii, but his financial position was precarious. touring again was the only option, until a sudden illness — rumours about this range from poison to a heart attack — claimed him on december 5, 1791, weeks before he turned 36. he was buried in a mass grave in vienna, far from home, with no crowds to mourn his passing.

here he was now, two centuries later — and more than 600 works to his name — smiling at a gaggle of tourists from coffee cups, lighters, ashtrays and umbrellas. jostling for space among these tasteful reminders of his prodigious talent were t-shirts bearing the name ‘wolfie’, mozart wine from langenlois, mozart sausages, and waffles filled with nougat and marzipan.

it all made me think of the mozart effect — research that indicates listening to his music may improve performance of some mental tasks. salzburg had obviously experienced it. the city no longer remembered mozart, the man. all it knew was a face; one to adorn a million souvenirs.

meeting tori amos — part ii

2009-10-18T15:24:00.002+05:30

and so, after this, finally, this. 25 hours of travel to prague, 5 hours of camping outside a tour bus, 6 hours of travel to vienna, 3 hours of waiting by the side of a busy street, and 15 minutes of pure happiness. i'm ready to do it all over again. and i will.

pulp painter

2009-09-10T18:54:00.002+05:30

he goes by the pseudonym shelle — a derivative of the hindi word for style. it was suggested by friends because his name, mustajab ahmed siddiqui, takes up too much room. for the people of north india, his work is more familiar than they think; they have had around 40 years to get acquainted with it.

his name accosts them when they walk into railway stations across the country. every bookstore they pass showcases his work boldly — the guns, women, blood. the covers of most action-packed hindi pulp novels have been painted by shelle. without his brush, best-selling hindi writers like anil mohan, ved prakash sharma and surender mohan pathak would have far poorer sales.

now, thanks to chennai-based blaft publications, shelle can find a new audience. for a meagre rs 295, we all have a chance to take a closer look at some of his marvellous cover art. heroes, gundas, vamps & good girls is a collection of 25 postcards — page after page of luscious lips, lecherous villains, shiny pistols — all promises of the horror lying in wait for those who pick up those fast-paced novels.

rakesh khanna, one of three directors at blaft, says the idea for a chronicle of shelle’s work came from a blogger called sudarshan purohit, following the release of the blaft anthology of tamil pulp fiction. purohit wanted someone to focus on hindi pulp fiction too, and agreed to translate a surender mohan pathak novel. what the publishers went gaga over, however, were the covers — most of which were done by shelle. “we wanted a similar cover for our translation, too,” says khanna. “so we went out to amroha, in uttar pradesh, to visit shelle in his studio. while he was showing us his huge collection —literally thousands of book covers — we came up with the idea for the postcard book too.”

the artist himself is used to people going gaga over his work. “writers and publishers always tell me how much they like it,” he says, the pleasure in his voice evident over a telephone line. siddiqui started out as an art teacher before finding extra work as a cover designer in 1971. since then, he has done over 4,000, and continues to find new work. when asked if he now finds it monotonous, he laughs. “i have never done the same kind of stuff,” he points out. “i experiment constantly, with water colours, poster colours, collages, even computer software.” currently working on a public exhibition of his work, he finally intends to do his own thing. “what i have done for years has been based on other people’s direction; i need to find my own expression.” from rs 25 per cover, the artist now commands thousands, taking around 3 days to finish an oil painting for a cover.

khanna says it’s too early to discuss sales, but initial indicators seem good. “i can imagine different kinds of people liking the book,” he says, “fans of pulp art in general, people who used to read hindi crime novels when younger and are nostalgic about them, or travellers who want to send fun cards home from their india trip.” the publishing house has a number of other unusual projects lined up, including a graphic novel, the blaft anthology of tamil pulp fiction vol. ii, and another novel by surender mohan pathak.

the latter will, of course, boast a brand new cover by the guy who does them better than the rest.

the man who spoke in pictures

2009-08-29T12:08:00.002+05:30

for a man sometimes referred to as a filmmaker’s filmmaker, it is intriguing that no record of bimal roy’s date of birth exists. for someone often described as a man of silence though, this makes perfect sense. why opt for paperwork when your body of work can speak forever instead?

a little over 100 years since roy’s demise on january 7, 1966, his daughter — journalist and filmmaker rinki roy bhattacharya — has helped draw facets of her reclusive father from the shadows into light. bimal roy: the man who spoke in pictures brings together essays, photographs, eulogies and anecdotes, not just from folk who knew the director best, but from some who never met him.

born in dhaka on july 12, 1909 — supposedly, of course — roy moved to post-independence india and started his career as an assistant cameraman. he would evolve, over the following two decades, into the auteur we now celebrate. eventually, with do bigha zameen in 1953, he helped carve a niche that would one day attract ray, ghatak and benegal.

so, does the book work? much of it does, if you ignore the sometimes shoddy prose. a number of contributions stand out almost at once, like one from writer nayantara sahgal. the latter had never seen a bimal roy film before being asked to talk about his work, so her essay of discovery is short, but interesting. what isn’t half as interesting is critic kishore chatterjee’s argument drawing comparisons between salil chowdhury’s song bichua — used by roy in his classic madhumati — and mozart’s ‘melodic rhythm’. i, for one, remain unconvinced.

there’s also a rather pedestrian essay by bhawana somaaya, on roy’s sensitive representation of women. the most interesting part of the collection focuses on how roy is perceived by the west — how the internet is used to discuss devdas, the politics of costumes in his films, and his mastery of the erotic. also touching are nutan’s recollections of working with the filmmaker. during the filming of bandini, she recollects, he found out she was expecting. when told the baby wasn’t due for seven months, he was relieved. ‘we will finish shooting long before that,’ he told her, ‘but try not to get too big!’

here’s something else to ponder: if it wasn’t for bimal roy, bollywood may not have taken to the idea of reincarnation the way it has. roy and ritwik ghatak — who wrote the screenplay — unleashed madhumati in 1958, setting in motion a series of remakes that would continue to our time. now, compare himesh reshammiya’s karzzzz with what roy originally did, and you may find a very good reason to go out and buy this book.

— bimal roy: the man who spoke in pictures. edited by rinki roy bhattacharya. penguin viking.

who will save the clowns?

2009-08-10T16:22:00.003+05:30

and so they jump, one following the other, abandoning a ship that began its slow descent to the depths a long time ago. soon, the interns alone will survive, accompanied by the incompetent, semi-literate yes-men-women. and lording it over the sorry bunch — dumbo the handkerchief-chewer and baldy, the college dropout coconut-seller from kerala.

together, the ten of them will rewrite stories culled from real news sites. together, they will churn out even poorer copy. together, they will create slideshows with titles like 'bollywood bombshells who look like elizabeth taylor' and 'bollywood bad boys who look good in swimwear.'

together, they will sit and wonder why the good people of america laugh at their newspaper. together, they will sit and wonder why no one wants to visit their ridiculous website anymore.

man in the mirror

2009-07-19T19:44:00.002+05:30

there are some things wikipedia may never know. like, for instance, how the refrain ‘billie jean is not my lover’ was always sung 27 times by back-up singers before michael jackson struck his iconic pose with a black fedora on stage.

there are other things most people will never know. like what doing the moonwalk right feels like, bathed in the glow of a spotlight, half-obscured by the smoke of fog machines, to the sound of wild applause.

these are things only a michael jackson impersonator knows.

i know because, between 1990 and 1996, i did what not many teenagers looking for a bigger allowance chose to do. i wore make-up, pulled on a white glove and danced across maharashtra and gujarat. my parents were, understandably, not sure what to make of that decision, but what i earned during those years helped pay for my textbooks. the income from dancing alone helped me get my masters’ degree. i could have opted for something simpler but, given a chance, i’d do it all over again.

for seven years, at schools, fairgrounds, ganeshotsav mandals, bollywood-themed events, college festivals, the odd birthday — even a wedding! — i wore that sequinned glove and danced to the hits of the king of pop. by the time i cut my waist-length hair and opted for a safer (if mundane) career, it seemed as if jackson’s streak of mega-stardom had run its course. over the next decade, that part of my life faded to the hazy place where memories go, and stayed there until a few weeks ago.

in the early hours of june 26, 2009, my life as a former impersonator came shrieking back to mind as the world’s news channels went haywire. jackson was no more, and nothing felt the same. for the next 48 hours, i stumbled through recollections of hours spent practicing his every move before the slim mirror of a steel godrej cupboard. with the pause button of a vcr as guide, i remembered pushing my body to do things jackson’s frame was built to do. i remembered those spotlights going on though, and crowds shrieking hysterically, making all that exhausting practice worthwhile.

how did this sub-culture of celebrity impersonators come into being anyway? i assumed one could lay the blame for much of it at the feet of elvis presley. even before he left the building in 1977, his look-alikes had started to appear across america. the idea of imitation was as old as time itself, but the sheer number of people attracted to it as a profession was new. from small town talent competitions to television appearances, the statistics increased with time, as if mirroring the rising status of their deceased original. 25 years after his death, some estimates placed the number of presley impersonators at a staggering 30,000 worldwide.

by the time i finally learnt to bust a move then, the idea of tribute artistes was fairly appealing. faced with the monotony of a regular job as an intern at some media firm, i picked bright lights and fog machines instead. in doing so, i opened the doors to a strange new world populated by folk dancers, ventriloquists, mimicry artistes, stuntmen, and the odd tightrope walker.

what do i remember of those times? primarily, dressing rooms. they were always the most interesting places to be, both before and after a show. some were large, with artistes given enough space to change or rehearse. others were mere cubby holes, with everyone taking turns to do their make-up. that was where the magicians showed off new tricks, where mimicry artistes used their own voices for a few rare moments, where johnny ‘the one man band’ carefully attached six different instruments to various parts of his body. i also remember how the smoke from fog machines always smelled like lemonade.

in a paper titled ‘the king of white trash culture: elvis presley and the aesthetics of excess,’ published in 1996, professor gael sweeney of syracuse university once described the cult of elvis impersonation as a ‘spectacle of the grotesque.’ she was partly right. she also put forth the notion that some impersonators believed they were ‘chosen’ by presley to continue his work. she argued that a number of them didn’t merely perform like elvis, but ‘lived elvis’ — not just dressing like him, but practicing ‘being him’ at all hours. in that context, jackson’s lyric for billie jean was strangely apt: ‘be careful what you do, because the lie becomes the truth.’

much of what i saw backstage, while working as an impersonator, could lend a small amount of credence to sweeney’s paper. the ease with which an amitabh bachchan impersonator could silence an audience of thousands, for example, made it easier to understand the power that true celebrity status conveyed on those whom fortune had smiled upon.

there were many pros to that choice of career, but also a few cons. edward moss, one of the more famous american impersonators of jackson, could vouch for that. he began by balancing a job at mcdonald’s with dancing on the side. eventually, he performed worldwide and scored a few film projects (scary movie, for one) as a stand-in for the star. not everyone was happy though. a number of jackson’s fans accused moss of mocking their idol, while some impersonators said he simply exploited the bad publicity jackson routinely attracted. clearly, be it stars or their impersonators, they couldn’t please everyone.

for now, i fail to grasp the idea of a world without michael jackson. what will his look-alikes do? who will the tabloids pick on? i look back at my years as an impersonator with great fondness. i look forward to new generations of fans dropping their jaws when exposed to archival footage of jackson dancing. most of all, i look forward to sitting beside these new converts and saying, “i used to do that.”

r.i.p. old friend

2009-06-26T15:17:00.000+05:30

michael joseph jackson (august 29, 1958 – june 25, 2009). i will, forever, blame the press.

why they call them hacks

2009-05-19T12:07:00.000+05:30

vir is a great example of everything that's wrong with journalism in india. he's loud, opinionated, a self-proclaimed expert on (in this order) fine dining, the travel and hospitality industry, indian politics, indian history. the surprise: he's qualified to comment on none of the above.

me back to my days at a certain dotcom: semi-literate clown as editor-in-chief, college dropout as editor, colleagues with degrees from dubious institutions, and not one man or woman qualified to cover an assigned beat. conversations with those fools are now, very, very happily, all in the murky past.

totally addicted to sin

2009-04-15T17:40:00.002+05:30

tori's tenth studio album arrives in little over a month. where have all the years gone? a distinct memory: lying in bed at the home i was born into, listening to le on cassette , a couple of years after utp, and struggling to come to terms with precious things. when she struts onto stage, and chamberlain begins his slow loop, i still get goosebumps. this time, i intend to be there in person.

no worst, there is none

2009-03-12T15:48:00.003+05:30

is there ever a good time g. m. hopkins? not really. when read at the crack of dawn, much of what he says appears luminous. when read by nightfall, much of what he says appears shot through with sorrow. for now, consider ‘no worst, there is none. pitched past pitch of grief':

no worst, there is none. pitched past pitch of grief,
more pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
comforter, where, where is your comforting?
mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
my cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
then lull, then leave off. fury had shrieked ‘no ling-
ering! let me be fell: force i must be brief’.

o the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. hold them cheap
may who ne’er hung there. nor does long our small
durance deal with that steep or deep. here! creep,
wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

— gerard manley hopkins (1844–89), poems, 1918.

for h

2009-02-25T17:15:00.001+05:30

when you are old and gray and full of sleep,
and nodding by the fire, take down this book,
and slowly read, and dream of the soft look
your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

how many loved your moments of glad grace,
and loved your beauty with love false or true;
but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
and loved the sorrows of your changing face.

and bending down beside the glowing bars
murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
and paced upon the mountains overhead
and hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

— when you are old, w b yeats (1865-1939)

the dotcom diaries - iv

2009-02-24T14:09:00.004+05:30

dumbo the elephant waddled across the office to chat up a woman. she, like all other females in the city and outside, politely declined to humour him. left with no choice, he waddled across to one of the men, and threw him a piece of trivia. 'do you know the great politician you share your birthday with?'

the man in question, a sallow youth from cochin who now shared a room in bhandup with five other sallow men, responded with a massive show of enthusiasm. 'a great politician? really? on my birthday?' dumbo nodded and chewed on his handkerchief for a few seconds. 'jawaharlal nehru,' he spat out, smiling benignly until his words were met with a gasp of delight. mission accomplished, he then waddled off to his desk in a corner, looking for an unchewed handkerchief portion to begin work on.

as he settled down to an afternoon of googling other celebrity birth dates, his chief flunkey waltzed in. flunkey was a man who had long mastered the art of sucking up to all positions of authority. the art had taken him two decades to master, the usual period for most college drop-outs without a brain. it was how he had managed to move from the post of 'talentless cricket commentator' to 'talentless cricket commentator-cum-editor'.

bowing a few more times, he breezed through the aisles, reminding everyone of the expensive perfume he could now finally afford after decades of rubbing himself with tender coconut by the backwaters.

outside the office, in other countries, professional journalists went about their business of news gathering. in india, of course, the journalists struggled with their poor grasp of the language, employing cliché after tired cliché — referring to each other, constantly, as ‘scribes’ — to fashion something of seeming importance.

dumbo didn't care. he simply went about his business the way he always had for much of his career. his task for the week was to pick, at random, an indian in america and label this unlucky sod 'person of the year'.

eyeing the eiffel

2009-01-28T17:48:00.004+05:30

the world’s tallest tower held that title from 1889 — the year it was finally finished — to 1930, when the chrysler building decided to pop its head up in new york. the funny thing is, the eiffel wasn’t even supposed to be around that long. it had a 20-year permit and was to be dismantled by 1909. its height came to its aid though, making it perfect for communication purposes. by the time two decades had rolled past, people were more than used to seeing it standing tall, so it was allowed to stay.

considering how proud the french now are of the tower, it’s hard to imagine how much they hated it when it first sprang up. citizens across the country wrote letters of complaint to newspapers, calling the eiffel an ‘eyesore’. one letter — signed by heavyweights like academic painter bouguereau and writer alexandre dumas, among others — cribbed about ‘the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates’. and yet, by 1996, 167664439 people had lined up to see the odious column in question.

a few fast facts: the eiffel stands tall at 1052 feet and weighs 7,000 tonnes. it consumes 50 tonnes of dark brown paint every 7 years. visitors can walk up 704 of its steps. the maximum it sways in a strong wind is 12 centimetres. it took 2 years, 2 months and 5 days — from january 1887 to march 1889 — to be constructed, and was inaugurated on march 31, 1889. it takes 2,500,000 rivets to keep the structure in place. on the tower are engraved the names of 72 french engineers, scientists and other notable folk.

merry christmas

2008-12-26T15:29:00.001+05:30

willie, with a thirst for gore,
nailed the baby to the door.
mother said, with humor quaint,
‘willie, dear, you'll mar the paint.’

little willie now is standing
on the golden shore,
for what he thought was h20
was h2so4.

— harry graham, ruthless rhymes for heartless homes.

they rest in peace

2008-11-20T14:40:00.007+05:30

to be, or not to be. how shakespeare distilled the essence of our being into that terse comment is the stuff doctoral theses are made of. flanked by silent tombstones at the père lachaise cemetery in paris, i realized it really was the question. i was simply lucky enough to be.

far from the bustle of traffic, i stopped among the graves to consider: why did we pay our respects to the dead anyway? did they, by ceasing to be, achieve sanctity denied them when alive? or did they serve merely to remind us of our eventual place in line? walking past epitaphs, it was also interesting to think about how we treated the dead. some cultures preferred leaving the dead on mountain tops, others used human remains to make jewellery. some were buried at sea, others donated to medical research.

we couldn’t even reach a consensus on how we personified death. hindu scripture had yama riding a black buffalo and carrying a lasso. the greek portrayed death either as a bearded man with wings, or a young boy called thanatos. in lithuania, death was giltinė, an ugly old woman with a blue nose. even swedish director ingmar bergman chipped in with his idea of what death looked like in 1957’s the seventh seal.

it all seemed like an awful fuss for what was simply the fact of life ceasing to be.eventually, putting aside thoughts of ending up below ground, i simply walked among those who had gone before me.

cimetière du père-lachaise
at 118 acres, this was the largest cemetery in the city of paris. it also held the dubious honour of being the world’s most-visited. thousands of visitors strolled through each year — some to pay tribute to famous folk, others presumably to figure out what the hype was about. i slotted myself somewhere in between.

established by napoleon i in 1804, the cemetery received its name from père françois de la chaise, confessor to louis xiv who once lived on the hillside. its distance from the heart of paris was explained by the fact that cemeteries inside the city had been banned as health hazards. considering it wasn’t a very ‘popular’ choice when it first opened, père lachaise went on to flourish. after administrators transferred the remains of poet jean de la fontaine and playwright molière here in 1804, others began clamouring for space alongside. from a few dozen to the 300,000 buried today — excluding remains in the columbarium, of those cremated — this was solid proof of how powerful even dead celebrities could be.

and there were a whole lot of dead celebrities, from novelist honoré de balzac to composer georges bizet. at another corner lay polish composer frédéric chopin, his heart entombed separately within a pillar at a church in warsaw. american dancer isadora duncan rested here, as did picasso’s rival amadeo modigliani. then there was french singer édith piaf, american author gertrude stein and intellectual marcel proust. even opera diva maria callas was here. her ashes had been stolen, recovered, then scattered off the coast of greece, but the empty urn still attracted the faithful.

the indisputable stars of père lachaise, however, were jim morrison and oscar wilde. for decades, both had drawn crowds and inspired normally quiet folk to acts of vandalism. legend has it that morrison visited the cemetery a little before he died and said he would like to be buried there, possibly because wilde was one of his literary heroes. brought together by a quirk of fate, the lead singer of the doors and the irish writer now lay a few metres from each other.

morrison’s original headstone, a bust of the singer, was sculpted by a fan and stolen by another in 1990. to protect the grave from the overenthusiastic — like those who used to hack pieces off the headstone as souvenirs — authorities had fenced it in. as for wilde, he suffered indignities of a more bearable kind. it was tradition, apparently, for admirers to kiss his monument while wearing lipstick. the modernist angel on the tomb originally had male genitals, which were allegedly broken off and kept as a paperweight by keepers of the cemetery.

making my way out a quiet hour later, another familiar name jumped out at me. jehangir ratanji dadabhoy tata. ‘bharat ratna,’ the headstone read. i broke into a smile.

cimetière de montparnasse
created, once again, on account of the banning of cemeteries in the city centre, montparnasse cemetery in the fourteenth arrondissement came into being by the joining of three farms in 1824. like père lachaise, it attracted tourists keen on paying respects, or standing alongside, the final resting place of a large number of long-gone intellectuals and artists.

foremost among these was charles baudelaire, nineteenth century french poet and critic who, incidentally, had once been sent by his father to calcutta in the hope of reforming his wild ways. it didn’t work. as one of literature’s bad boys, the grave attracted much attention from admirers who left behind flowers or sheets of awful verse.

also at montparnasse lay romanian playwright eugène ionesco, the sociologist émile durkheim, writer guy de maupassant, surrealist photographer man ray and american philosopher susan sontag. and right near the main entrance were famous philosophers jean-paul sartre and simone de beauvoir, who had carried on an open relationship for years, died six years apart, and were now destined to lie alongside together.

back among the living, it occurred to me that language — no matter how inadequate — was perhaps the only way of dealing with death. the book of ecclesiastes could maintain, therefore, that there was ‘a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die.’ somerset maugham could describe dying thus: ‘a very dull, dreary affair. my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.’ and then there was winston churchill: ‘i am ready to meet my maker. whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.’

for whom the bells toll

2008-10-13T13:49:00.003+05:30

“the real hunchbacks of notre dame.” that is how my guide referred to the anonymous folk who, for almost 200 years from 1163 to 1345, voluntarily devoted time to the building of a cathedral they knew they wouldn’t complete in their lifetimes. the statement — a playful reference to the classic novel by french writer victor hugo — was a poignant one. it brought to mind peasants toiling in all weather, using rudimentary man-powered contraptions to hoist massive blocks of stone into place.

centuries after its completion, i stood before the magnificent edifice, its legendary stone gargoyles silhouetted against the afternoon sun. it was hard to imagine how it was all put together at a time when the term ‘architect’ had yet to come into use. apparently, the first stone was laid by an anonymous master mason. that history had forgotten this visionary proved life wasn’t fair even in 1163.

the best thing about standing in a rather long line — sandwiched between camera-toting tourists representing all continents — was it compelled one to gaze upon facets of the cathedral that would otherwise be ignored in the rush to step in. and a rush it always is, when you realize the cathedral attracts between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors daily.

to my left, guides pointed out point zero to tourists herded into groups like placid cattle. a simple octagonal brass plate set in the ground, it marked the exact spot from which all distances from paris were measured. apparently, couples loved to kiss while standing on it, for luck. only in paris could something as mundane as a geographical marker acquire a tinge of romance.

to my right stood charlemagne, king of the franks, staring into the distance. created in 1886, the statue depicted the king on his horse, still ready to ride off into battle. in his shade sat american tourists, maps of the city in hand, possibly trying to figure out their way back to air-conditioned hotels they had left behind. eyes set on loftier goals, charlemagne ignored them.

i had the option of a loftier goal, too. 380 steps would have led me to the top of the tower — and an undeniably fabulous view of the river seine — but i decided instead to spend time on the hallowed ground inside. it wasn’t everyday, after all, that one could amble around one of the world’s first gothic cathedrals. according to my guide, notre dame de paris was also among the first buildings in the world to use flying buttresses, or arched exterior supports, to combat stress fractures on the thin walls. coming from a country where heritage buildings were often painted and cemented over with gay abandon, i almost wept at the beauty of this solution.

and then, i reached the entrance. standing before me was a statue of the virgin with child flanked by two angels, as well as adam and eve. this was ‘our lady’, notre dame, with 28 biblical kings of judah paying her obeisance. apparently, these 28 statues were often misrepresented as former kings of france, which led to their being mutilated as symbols of despotism.

inside, all was quiet, despite the few hundred tourists shuffling through. almost everywhere i looked were marble figures, set against stained glass windows. opposite the magnificent altar was a grand organ, made up of 7,800 pipes and finished in the 1700s. technology hadn’t let it slip into retirement; by 1992, the instrument had been fully computerized. still, the position of titular organist continued to be one of the france’s most prestigious posts.

the sense of calm i experienced within hadn’t come easy to notre dame. in 1548, huguenots rioted and damaged some of its features. more religious imagery was destroyed during the french revolution. in 1871, the cathedral missed being set alight. during world war ii, its windows were removed to protect them from german bombing. it reached such a state of disrepair by the nineteenth century, that authorities considered tearing it down. it was victor hugo’s the hunchback of notre dame that led to a campaign for funds and saved it.

so, why was the building revered? pondering before the altar, i assumed the first reason was its sheer physical presence. even those with no exposure to the tenets of architecture would find it hard to stay unmoved by this kind of beauty. for those with a religious bent of mind, notre dame was once home to the crown of thorns — placed here by st louis in 1239 — allegedly worn by jesus christ.

most importantly, for historians, were the astonishing events notre dame had been witness too. this was where henry vi of england was crowned king of france in 1431. the coronation of napoleon i and his wife josephine was held here in 1804. joan of arc was beatified here in 1909. the cathedral also saw a bit of the unusual. in 1450, for instance, a man-eating pack of wolves that killed 40 people was lured here and stoned to death before its gates.

as one of france’s most revered tourist destinations today, its future appeared to be safe. around me, the number of tourists continued to rise. they moved in throngs, walking past the stained glass, fading in and out from sunlight to darkness. the wall to my left carried a plaque that read: ‘in memory of soldiers from britain and india who fought in world war i, many of whom lie buried in france.’ suddenly touched, i thought of home, and made my way out.

r.i.p.

2008-09-15T16:05:00.001+05:30

david foster wallace.

a river runs through it

2008-09-08T16:39:00.003+05:30

i’m ashamed to say i stumbled upon it. the hudson river park, that is. living as i was on new york’s iconic 34th street, sharing pavement space with the empire state building, i had simply failed to walk down to the bright, sparkling body of water visible at one end of the street whenever traffic eased up.

so, when i finally came upon the waterside park — stretching from 59th street south to battery park in the borough of manhattan — i knew at once what idiots must feel like on a daily basis. how could i have missed this? why had no one mentioned it before?

to be fair, it must be hard for any traveller in new york city to stray from its iconic architecture and take time out to walk alongside a river. i wasn’t the first dolt either, considering the hudson valley was discovered by accident. in 1609, an englishman called (what else) henry hudson, was sailing along america’s north atlantic coast, looking for a quick passage to china. he thought he had found one when his ship, called the half moon, sailed into new york bay. only after travelling 150 miles up river did he realize it didn’t lead to the great wall. how could i — familiar as i was only with the sailing terms ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ — hope to do better?

stuffing cold, gloved hands into the deep pockets of my overcoat (it was january, not an ideal month for river-walking), i stared across the expanse of water to the garden state of jersey, and sympathised with the geographically-challenged sailor henry. behind me lay the many gems of manhattan, from battery park to the world trade center. alongside stood historic chelsea piers — once a passenger ship terminal destined to welcome the titanic, now a sports complex. before me were famous jersey towns like hoboken, fort lee and tenafly, their names as much a part of popular culture as frank sinatra, jay-z and yogi berra, all of whom had once called these places home.

at that moment — caught between two world-famous cities, the chilly air sweeping in across the waves — i had little to complain about. stopping by a railing, ignored by bored seagulls, i pulled out a little book on new york’s history. it told me that henry hudson had, interestingly, been hired by the dutch east india company.

who would have thought this place once inspired the writer washington irving to create the legend of sleepy hollow and rip van winkle? it was all a far cry from the landscaped gardens i was currently in, flanked by the concrete fortress of nyc. so, putting aside facts and figures, i simply walked.

only in america could one find an imposition of such order on what was once chaos. only in america could little streets look familiar to those who had never seen them before, except on big screens a few thousand miles away. only here could one step outside an apartment and brush past hollywood star christian slater, or find actress jessica lange looking for directions, or step out for coffee and run into colin firth shooting nonchalantly on the sidewalk.

by now, i was in donald trump territory, which brought a bit of a smile to my face. speaking about the real estate developer, the new yorker’s nancy franklin had once allegedly observed, ‘trump owns an estate in palm beach called mar-a-lago. perhaps his new development (18 buildings, 6,000 apartments, and 3,000 parking spaces) on the hudson river should have been called mar a city.’

as i strolled past the water, world-famous neighbourhoods unravelled alongside: midtown west (home to the rockefeller center and radio city music hall), chelsea (centre of the new york art scene), hell’s kitchen (once overrun by irish-american organized crime circles), the meatpacking district (former home to 250 slaughterhouses, now host to the hottest nightclubs), greenwich village (birthplace of the beat movement), and tribeca (abbreviated from ‘triangle below canal street’ and birthplace of the tribeca film festival).

my thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a massive luxury cruise liner on the river — another indication of how things had changed since the invention of the steamboat in 1807. by 1850, there were approximately 150 steamboats making their way up and down the hudson, carrying as many as a million passengers.

designated one of america’s heritage rivers in 1997, history was clearly alive and well on the hudson, the past blending neatly with the present. proof of this lay in the presence of a float transfer bridge i passed, now open to the public. once lining the riverbank, float bridges had enabled train cars loaded with animals and supplies to be transferred to and from train tracks on both sides of the river.

from humble beginnings like these, with the sound of fog horns and wail of livestock as a backdrop, arose the mighty united states. as the sun began to climb down, i reached the edge of the park. to my left lay lady liberty, a familiar silhouette standing tall in the watery distance. i took a deep breath and tasted what was, for millions, a sense of freedom.

jungle booked

2008-08-12T16:57:00.004+05:30

let me turn this on its head and start with what it taught me. a little after two days in the heart of taman negara, possibly the world’s oldest tropical rainforest, this is what i figured out: nothing in the jungle cares about who you are. above you, lemurs will shriek. beneath, scorpions may roam in tight circles. by 7 pm, all is black, and you can’t tell tree from sky. you are left to confront no one but yourself. in that moment of clarity, things as mundane as your career cease to matter.

these lessons were a surprise, considering they came to me a mere five hours from glittering kuala lumpur. i had stepped into this 130 million-year-old world via a 9 am boat-ride from kuala tembeling jetty, not far from the city centre. for three hours, the fragile boat had weaved through the tembeling river that was often smooth, sometimes furious. there were sharp turns, sandbanks, even sudden, shallow drops that compelled the boatmen to step off and push for deeper water. and through it all, on both sides, stood the ominous forest. it stretched into forever, covering over 4,343 square kilometres, trees by the riverbank stretching as high as 50 metres into the sky. according to one of the boatmen, there were more than 100 species crowding each hectare.

the boat finally stopped by a pier outside the mutiara resort, where a comfortable wooden chalet awaited me. on the narrow paved walkway leading to my room, a monitor lizard glared, obviously still annoyed by the intrusion of man into what had long been his domain.

taman negara, in the national language bahasa melayu, simply meant park (taman) of the nation (negara). it was a rather underwhelming name for a place so vibrant, so otherworldly. national park suggested tame shaded walkways where one could point at flamingos. this, on the other hand, was wild, untamed land, with fireback pheasants swooping above, while tapir, sambar deer and malayan wild dogs prowled below. safe in my chalet, i lay back and acclimatised my ears to the subtle cacophony of the forest. around 350 kinds of songbirds called this home, from the malayan pied hornbill to the blue-throated bee-eater. keeping them company were cicadas, a million other insects, and 53 fish species in the gurgling river i had left behind me.

early the next morning, my forest guide kadeeri told me about molly, a 30-year-old american woman who, six years before, had allegedly stepped into the rainforest one bright morning. traces of her had yet to be found. as kadeeri led me down a well-trodden path — pointing out some of the rarest orchids in the world, or the occasional scorpion — i couldn’t help but think of molly. the possibility of her being alive didn’t exist but, walking beneath those gentle green giants, i wanted to believe it did.

when darkness fell, we followed luminous fungi to a jungle hide. trying hard to stay still, kadeeri and i peered through slits cut into the walls, hoping for a peek of an endangered sumatran rhinoceros moving towards a waterhole below. “if you’re lucky, you can even spot an elephant,” kadeeri whispered, waiting for an accustomed gasp of surprise in reply. “elephants sometimes beg for money on the streets of my hometown mumbai,” i retorted, leaving him in some doubt about what animal to mention next.

i asked kadeeri if he lived at the resort staff quarters. he replied in the negative. most guides came from neighbouring villages, and were paid depending on the number of tourists they took around. it was the need to supplement an otherwise meagre monthly family income that compelled them to trek through forest all day, organise special night treks like the one we were on, or climb up mountains and set up camp. one of the more popular spots was malaysia’s highest peak, gunung tahan, although its summit could be reached only after a 7-day trek. why did people do it? because, for one, the view from the top had stayed much the same since the ice age.

citing the onset of arthritis, i dropped the option of a hike, and picked an easier amble across the park’s canopy walkway instead. stretching across 1,311 feet, at a height of 81 feet, this was supposed to be the world’s longest walkway. considering there was nothing but wood and rope keeping me from a frantic close-up with hard earth, i was understandably concerned at first. a few steps in, however, i simply began to feel what our primal ancestors must have, swinging as they had in a green world not unlike this one.

as the hours ticked on, my learning sessions with mother nature progressed. i learnt, for instance, that feeding fish could be therapeutic. not when there were two of them in a little bowl, but when 2000 arrived at once, thrashing about in unison, leaping out of water to swallow morsels strewn about. they came as i stood on the banks of the tembeling, thousands of them, each over a foot-long. these were the prized 20-pound kelah, popular among locals for their sweet flesh that was served steamed. feeding them for a few minutes, i felt like a minor deity. around me, the boatmen stood, watching in silence.

another thing i learnt was that monitor lizards have little that is therapeutic about them. at 8 am, they would lie on the riverbank, sunning themselves, huge animals with forked tongues testing the air before them. they were slow, until one decided to annoy them. given my history of infuriating people, i knew it was only a matter of time. the thai people ate them, according to kadeeri. i told him i’d pass.

around an hour into the jungle path, we arrived at lata berkoh, a popular — but dangerous, and supposedly bottomless — swimming spot. one of kadeeri’s tasks as a tourist was to bring me back alive. so, when informed of my questionable swimming experience in deep water, he threw me a rubber tube.

clinging on, i watched as a five-year old australian girl swam past like a little mermaid. i detected a smirk, but didn’t care. hours from civilisation, only molly and the jungle occupied my mind. watching me paddle was a slow-moving lemur, 25 metres above.

gods in the jungle

2008-07-04T15:31:00.003+05:30

the music grew louder with every step. accompanying it was the sucking sound made by wet earth, as i walked beneath massive trees on my way to the temple of ta prohm. as i turned a corner, the source of the music appeared through the mild drizzle. it was a group of ragged locals, sitting under a tent and creating a rhythmic, hypnotic rhythm. some were blind; others held percussive instruments between stubs that were once feet. victims of a 25-year old civil war, they were survivors. and, for a world that had forgotten them, they were creating music.

it was, with hindsight, the perfect setting for my first glimpse of ta prohm, a name derived from a dedication to lord brahma. like a dirge, the music created a backdrop against which the crumbling walls of the temple appeared. it was a view that had stayed the same for decades, the stone held firmly in place by the massive roots of silk cottonwood and strangler fig trees. it was a strange state of limbo for what in the late twelfth century was born rajavihara, the ‘royal temple’, built by the khmer king jayavarman vii.

begun in 1186 ad, this was to be a buddhist monastery and university. family was clearly important to the king, considering the temple’s main image was allegedly modelled on his mother, while smaller temples within the enclosure were dedicated to his elder brother and his teacher. those calm faces staring down for centuries, at visitors from foreign shores, were all that remained of what was once a powerful kingdom.

as i stepped into an enclosure of fallen columns and sunlight-dappled ground, it was hard to imagine what life here was like eight centuries ago. according to the guidebook the monuments of the angkor group, first published in 1944 by maurice glaize, this was once home to over 12,000 people, including 18 high priests and more than 600 dancers. 80,000 people living in villages nearby offered services and supplies. a full temple treasury enabled the complex to expand until the end of the thirteenth century.

and then, in the fifteenth century, the khmer empire collapsed. temples was abandoned everywhere, and the forest slowly closed in. while the world outside struggled with mundane issues like war and the clash of civilisations, ta prohm slept undisturbed. when it was eventually re-discovered early in the twentieth century, an unusual decision was made to leave it as it was. glaize says this was done only to ta prohm because it was the one temple that had ‘best merged with the jungle, but not yet to the point of becoming part of it.’

it was easy to see why ta prohm was among the most popular temples in the massive archaeological park that held angkor wat. it was all thanks to the trees. an ironic situation, considering they now held the temple in a vice-like grip that could no longer be broken. maurice glaize described, almost lovingly, their ‘long spreading skirts trailing the ground and their endless roots coiling more like reptiles than plants.’ the effect was eerie. it’s why hollywood wanted it as a backdrop, and got it for the angelina jolie-starrer tomb raider.

apart from the stunning architecture, what gave the ruins of angkor wat much of its character was its mysterious past. when king suryavarman — the predecessor of jayavarman vii — died, work on angkor stopped abruptly. the temples were sacked by enemies of the khmer people, the chams, and restored by jayavarman vii.

now, as tourists lined up beneath the strangling roots for photographs to send home, i thought about how this calm still seemed illusory. not many countries could boast a history as bloody as cambodia’s. after the nineteenth century came to a close, the twentieth saw the rise of the infamous khmer rouge. there was little damage to temple structures during that bloody reign, but a large number of statues were stolen or destroyed. the passage of time still refused to guarantee peace. riots erupted in cambodia’s capital phnom penh as late as 2003, after a false rumour spread, of a thai soap star claiming angkor belonged to thailand.

i walked through crumbling halls that must undoubtedly have once been grand, thinking about how the vietnam war had left cambodia with over six million landmines. one in every 236 cambodians had lost a limb due to a mine explosion. the music outside, barely discernable, was a reminder no one paid heed to. it was now a souvenir, available on cd for $10.

as i continued on my way out, the devatas on temple walls turned eyes of stone towards me and smiled calm, placid smiles. the world outside had changed irrevocably since they were carved into being. for them, however, our history was just a moment in time. as i stepped into the sunlight, the music played on.

sea worthy

2008-06-18T16:50:00.006+05:30

island paradise, sir. golden beach, sir. blue, blue water, sir. when and how did tour operators — and don’t you sometimes feel like thumping the nearest one — turn some of the world’s most stunning islands into cliché for their brochures?

i pondered the issue underwater, while a couple of small parrotfish swam past disinterestedly in search of food more exotic than i. it was an issue worth pondering. after all, here i was, somewhere off the coast of tioman island, in the south china sea off the east coast of malaysia, wondering how i would ever be able to describe this perfect moment to friends and neighbours back home. sure, images of parrotfish from a cheap vacuum-sealed disposal underwater camera could help in some way. but what words could i use to describe this, except the tired ‘island-paradise’? rubbing my chin in gravity-induced slow motion, i managed to scare away a jellyfish; a good thing, considering they could sometimes sting.

but let me rewind, to before i jumped in for an afternoon with parrotfish, to the crisp july morning on which i flew into tioman. i had arrived via a 45-minute berjaya air flight from kuala lumpur. the experience had been a little nerve-racking at first. minutes before take-off, smoke had poured rather suddenly from the overhead racks when the air-conditioning kicked in. this was no way to die, i had thought, panicking even as my co-passengers — and there weren’t that many in an airplane that seated 48 — read pulp fiction with studied nonchalance. when the smoke cleared, and things began to cool down, i settled in to watch tioman swoop into view in less time than it took to travel from one end of mumbai to another by train.

the locals called it pulau tioman. a tiny island just 39 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide, it had stayed the way it had simply because — unlike, say, goa — the place was still largely uninhabited. i was told this could change soon, considering the government was planning a marina project with a huge cargo jetty. for the time i was there though, the parrotfish swam undisturbed.

a short cab ride took me to the berjaya tioman beach golf & spa resort. sitting in the massive lobby, huge wooden beams high above, a cool drink before me, the sea stretching into blue nothingness on my right, i began to place tired adjectives in neat alphabetical rows in my head: astonishing, beautiful, charming, divine, exquisite, gorgeous…until the vodka did what vodka is wont to do, leaving me to simply sit and stare.

i could see why tioman had been used as a setting for the mythical island of bali hai in the 1958 hollywood film, south pacific. how did i find that out? easy: every second tourist brochure insisted on mentioning it. after a third local alluded to the film, i wouldn’t have been surprised to find dvds sold at kiosks across the island.

escorted to a mini-chalet allocated for my period of stay, i noticed palm trees everywhere. shrouded in fog that survived the force of the sea breeze, the island’s lush, tropical jungle rose in the distance. done almost entirely in wood, my room had two large windows that opened onto the beach. and, every five feet or so, lay wooden deckchairs in the sand, shielded by dried palm fronds. at that moment, reader, who could blame me for never wanting to leave?

lying on one of those deck chairs the next bright morning — and toting up the possible benefits of more vodka at 9 am — i thought about how all the world’s islands really were magical, paradisiacal places of wonder. or, at least they were until members of our species dropped in to visit.

though still breathtakingly lovely that morning, tioman must have been even more amazing at the time that famous dragon princess lived there. i was introduced to the tale of the latter by my guide, jamil, aboard a motorboat that jumped — literally, with little bunny hops — across the blue waters surrounding the island. we were on our way to a cluster of rocks somewhere out at sea, where the variety of fish was supposedly mind-boggling. as i struggled to stay on the boat, jamil yelled out the legend. apparently, tioman was the resting place of a dragon princess. she was beautiful, obviously — not many fairytales begin with the words ‘there was once an ugly hag …’ — and had been flying from china to singapore to visit her prince when the crystal-clear waters of the south china sea caught her attention and held it. charmed to bits, she decided to stay permanently, conveniently assuming the form of an island so she could offer comfort to passing travellers.

as i plunged into 40 feet of water and saw the rocks jamil had spoken of with a tone of near-reverence, i mouthed a word of thanks to the princess. you would, too, in that colourful, alien world. i didn’t know what any of the fish were called, of course. all i knew was the markets of mumbai had never held any like them. a notice board on the beach later informed me i had swum alongside shoals of fusiliers, golden striped trevally, napoleon wrasse and bumphead parrotfish, with staghorn corals and sculptured sea sponges staring up at me.

later that afternoon, we headed out again to one of several villages around the coastline. this one had more sights to offer underwater, and a large number of monitor lizards on shore. the lizards were pretty much everywhere on tioman, actually. some walked calmly across the berjaya resort golf course; other 2-metre-long monsters sunned themselves by little inlets; one even rushed me as i tried to retrieve a backpack i had left by a fallen log.

for three days, i plunged from one paradise on earth to another underwater. noticing the smile plastered on my face through all my waking hours, jamil promptly added that the island’s inland rainforest area (a strictly enforced nature reserve) was home to fauna as diverse as the black giant squirrel, brush-tailed porcupine, the frigatebird and something called the tioman walking catfish.

flying back to kuala lumpur eventually, i took a lingering look at what i leaving behind. if i were a dragon princess, prince be damned, i’d stay back too.

one phnom-enal city

2008-05-02T16:35:00.007+05:30

was this worth the trouble? the question first popped into my mind when i landed at siem reap-angkor international airport, cambodia — via a transit flight from bangkok — to find myself at the end of an admittedly short line for the immigration desk.

after twenty minutes of carefully thumbing through my passport — and satisfying himself, perhaps, that this was just a regular indian national with simple sight-seeing plans — the officer pointed me to another desk where an arrival tax of us$25 was being collected from every traveller. as my companion and i parted with a $50 fee we hadn’t been informed about earlier, the question began to make its presence felt in the form of a mild headache.

when we reached the baggage claim area, i was told my luggage had yet to leave bangkok. it did reach my hotel later that day, but by then the question had begun to pop up at half-hour intervals. was this worth the trouble?

my answer arrived the next morning. returning a customary bow from our extremely polite front desk staff, we were escorted by our extremely polite guide to our fairly run-down rented car. it was to take us to what we had travelled a few thousand miles to see: the ruins of angkor wat. a gentle, steady rain accompanied our drive. even as a weak sun struggled to push through the grey, i gazed upon the magnificent temple complex before me, and i knew. of course this was worth the trouble.

much has been written about angkor wat. thanks to its status as a world heritage site, most travellers seem to think it’s the only thing cambodia has to offer. yes, it’s fabulous, provided you pick a time before the french tourists arrive en masse (try late october). yes, you can pose alongside icons created in the twelfth century. yes, you can shop for all manner of things bearing the temple profile (like cans of angkor beer), eat for as little as us$2 (off the street, obviously), and examine classical khmer architecture until you feel a bit sick. no, you shouldn’t leave without spending time in phnom penh.

we had a number of options to reach the capital, but picked the most exciting: speedboat. leaving siem reap jetty at 8 am, our vessel swiftly cut through the tonle sap — south east asia’s largest freshwater lake — on a journey that took five hours. staring across that wide expanse, i noticed floating villages dotting the lake’s edges, along with floating shops, even floating schools! and then, rather suddenly, phnom penh was upon us.

we sailed into attractive sisowath quay, along the banks of the mekong and tonle sap. the city looked dusty. heading to the home of a friend, we were driven on a main road that appeared to be in good shape. the smaller lanes we passed were as pot-holed as the streets of mumbai though. this wasn't a surprise, considering the last four decades hadn’t been very kind to phnom penh. the bloody khmer rouge revolution had left millions dead, and a government with no funds to invest in infrastructure until the nineties. things were looking up now, but this was clearly a work in slow progress.

we had settled in by the next morning, and opted for a tour by tuk-tuk — motorcycles with cabins for passengers at the back — that charged between $1 and $2 per trip. that was a weird thing about cambodia — paying for everything in dollars. the national currency, the riel, had been re-introduced in 1980 (there was no monetary system for the five troubled years before), but didn't seem to be popular. then again, considering $1 was worth a little over 4,000 riel, it made sense to stick to the former.

stopping at a restaurant for lunch, my companion tried spicy fish amok, a traditional khmer dish of curried white fish wrapped in a banana leaf and served with rice. apparently, this is how we got the english word ‘amuck’ — ‘to rush about violently and out of control.’ i wasn’t sure about the veracity of that piece of information, but the source of the word was undoubtedly interesting. years after the demise of the khmer rouge, cambodia was still struggling to escape its shadow. according to unicef, the country still has the world’s third highest number of landmines. they have, since the seventies, taken over 60,000 civilian lives.

we couldn’t avoid the tuol sleng genocide museum at the heart of the city. once a school, it had been converted by the khmer rouge into a security prison where all who disagreed with the revolution were tortured before being executed. of the 14,200 prisoners who passed through those rusted gates, only seven survived. stopping at the little gift shop on our way out, we looked at the souvenirs on display: t-shirts bearing the words ‘danger! mines!’, and photocopied books — printed books were rare as most locals couldn’t afford to pay — on murderous khmer rouge leader pol pot. we bought nothing.

there were other places in phnom penh that occupied the rest of our week. i tried a khmer massage (us$10 for an hour) at one of many parlours but, despite claims made on a board outside, it didn't make me feel like a brand new person. we hired a boat for a cruise down the river (tip: carry a bottle of wine); visited the national museum (admission $3), with its prints of the epic poem reamker, based on the ramayan. we decided against a visit to the killing fields at cheoung ek, 17 kilometres from the city. we were also told about the famous stung meanchey garbage dump, where the very poor reportedly sifted through garbage for anything of value. apparently, it attracted tourists in search of an unusual, ‘authentic’ experience. but then, we had our own dharavi back home.

we also spent an afternoon at the royal palace, built by king norodom in 1866 on the banks of the mekong. looked upon as a sacred site by locals, photography wasn't allowed in all parts of the palace and we were told to dress decently. i left my shorts at home.

on the evening before we left, we stopped at the riverside cafe, a popular bar by the riverfront. we had been warned that phnom penh could shift from quiet to chaotic in an instant. we had been asked to carry no more than $30 while moving around after 7 pm. guns could be whipped out suddenly, we were told, and muggings weren’t uncommon.

yet, as we moved at 11 pm from the café to a restaurant nearby, heading back past midnight in a tuk-tuk, we found nothing but calm streets. to our left, the mekong flowed as it always had. to our right, moonlight glinted off the roof of the palace.

the dotcom diaries - iii

2008-04-07T11:15:00.001+05:30

to hide one's incompetence takes an inordinate amount of skill. there are tricks one can use, of course. screaming at co-workers, for one; remembering inane details like birth dates in the vain hope of impressing them, another. and then there's the inevitable 'i've been doing this for twenty years' rant, which never fails.

so the younger men and women cower, hoping they come out of this with some semblance of knowledge gained. and the older men and women mutter into their computer screens, aware of their position, powerless or in connivance.

and the years roll on, with no one calling the bluff. until the moron in question retires, or is finally asked to go away so someone with talent can take over. when that happens, there will be plaudits. and chocolate cake. a great con job, this. the joke that is journalism in india.

the dotcom diaries - ii

2008-03-14T11:47:00.002+05:30

who do we label experts? the question was posed, and answered daily, at the place where the brain-dead to begin that slow decline into retirement.

experts arose like sentinels, thrust into positions of authority by the man with the dim-witted daughter — the obese circus master. 'you are, today, the expert on russia,' he would proclaim, packing off an unresisting protestant for an assignment to, well, russia. the unresisting protestant would return with nothing of importance, just bad photographs to document her pointless journey.

'you are, today, the expert on indo-american relations,' he would proclaim, packing off another unresisting — they were largely unresisting, these — halfwit to washington, in return for more stories of no importance. 'you will, today, discuss fashion,' he would tell the balding conman from kerala, compelling him to make the switch from his usual 'pointless stories about cricket' to 'pointless stories about fashion week' for a day.

'i am, today, the expert on indo-chinese relations,' he would convince himself, setting off for shanghai in the hope of convincing his juniors that he could write stories of some intelligence. he would fail, of course.

and so it went, right through the year. the rise and fall of experts. meanwhile, the real experts moved to other companies. in other states.

the dotcom diaries

2008-02-18T18:27:00.001+05:30

it sat between sales and marketing, run by ageing men from the south, nurtured by migrant workers from the east, the offspring of dosawallas, used protestants and assorted deadweight.

the only thing forty of the fifty who assembled there had in common was this: they knew little about definite articles.

what did they do, these forty souls, exchanging their lives for purple prose? did they all go home to empty lives, tragic wives? did they survive merely to populate the bandwidth allocated to them, doing no more than paraphrasing reports already published by real journalists at other websites, other newspapers?

to stay was to die. i chose life.

echoing my sentiments

2008-01-29T15:47:00.000+05:30

the newsmagazine tehelka recently asked adman mohammed khan who, among the new lot of clowns in indian advertising, he liked. his reply: “today, there is no outstanding individual or agency that comes to mind...print has gone back fifty years. it really is deplorable. creative people are lazy. pushing buttons rather than using their hands. and, instead of creating an image, they get on the internet and search photobanks.'

copywriters in india should, ideally, now have two options to choose from: graduate (i assume not many have managed to sit through college, considering they rarely string sentences together correctly), or retire (a public service, this, saving us from a great deal of mediocrity).

tori in 2008

2008-01-17T10:37:00.000+05:30

considering her characters have long been as intriguing as they are, it makes perfect sense that they are to take shape in the form of a graphic novel. there's always that risk though, that the artists working on comic book tattoo will rewrite their interpretations into what they create to such an extent, that they alter the tone of the tracks for new listeners in future. maybe that's not such a bad thing though. new perspectives on the flying dutchman, sister janet, virginia and marianne are always more than welcome. i wait with bated breath.

single?

2007-12-04T17:21:00.000+05:30

um, no. not now, not ever.

more about his revolutions

2007-11-08T18:13:00.000+05:30

hari mohan nath kunzru has never had a problem speaking his mind. a great many people found that out on november 20, 2003, when his debut novel, the impressionist, won the £5,000 john llewellyn rhys award. as guests at the award ceremony waited for kunzru to show, his agent walked to the podium instead, to read a statement issued by the author.

kunzru rejected the award, claiming the daily mail and mail on sunday — newspapers that sponsor the prize — both pursued an ‘editorial policy of vilifying and demonising refugees and asylum-seekers.’

the last time a similar occurrence had taken place was 31 years ago, when john berger won the booker for his novel, g. while accepting, he criticized the sponsor too — in that case, food wholesaling company booker mcconnell — for its trading interests in the west indies, then announced he would donate half his cash award to the black panther party in britain, as part of his ‘political struggle’.

kunzru must have known he would get more than a few people hot under their collars, but persisted nonetheless. this refreshing candour, backed by genuine talent — the impressionist won him the betty trask prize and somerset maugham award, apart from making it to the short-lists of the guardian first book award, whitbread first novel award and british book awards author of the year award — got him on the list of granta magazine’s 20 ‘best of young british novelists.’

of mixed english and kashmiri pandit ancestry, kunzru grew up in essex and got into writing the old-fashioned way — via a degree in english from oxford. he followed this with a master’s in philosophy and literature, before kick-starting his career with short stories in magazines. he followed up the success of the impressionist — which got much attention in india for the alleged huge advance it got the author — with transmission (2004), and a short story collection titled noise, a year later.

given his history, kunzru is more than equipped to write my revolutions, his latest novel that is ostensibly set in the past, but has much to say about the unstable times we live in. documenting the life of student chris carver of the london school of economics, kunzru creates a fable many born in the sixties will easily come to grips with.

his head awash in political idealism, carver does it all — protests, communal living, marches, sit-ins, clashes with police, bombing, robbery, even terrorism — in his attempts to take on the state. through events real and imagined, kunzru creates a second life for carver that, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, threatens to come apart at the seams when someone from his colourful past decides to pay him a visit. excerpts from a conversation.

what's a day in the life of a successful young british novelist usually like?
novelists stay in a lot; it’s part of the job description. much of my day is spent staring out the window (i have a very typical london view of nineteenth-century town houses and little gardens) and tidying my desk. in between, there are bouts of frenzied typing.

in an interview a few years ago, you talked of how it is things like television show the kumars at no 42 that will do more to promote harmony than any amount of government speeches by tony blair. are things any different now, from the time you said that?
britain is in a very strange mental space at the moment. there’s a lot of talk about social breakdown, and irreconcilable differences between races and classes. there’s also a great deal of apocalyptic talk about everything from teenage alcoholism to the weather. however, most people seem perfectly happy as long as they’re shopping. in the midst of this, british asians continue to do well — and persuade the rest of the country to adopt indian styles and habits. the latest star, for instance, is a television chef called anjum anand.

issues of race tend to form the subtext of a fair amount of your writing. how much of that do you attribute to growing up in england?
it’s hard for indians to understand how fraught and complicated the history of britain makes this subject — race has all the complexities (and absurdities) of caste. it’s a perennial topic. in britain these days, indians and pakistanis are a familiar part of the cultural landscape. there are many prominent asian figures. there are newer immigrant groups who find themselves at the bottom of the pile — somalis, eastern europeans and sub-saharan africans.

transmission had insightful comments to make about the internet and far-reaching implications it can have for those who surf it. considering it grants an author intimate access to an audience, how do you spend most of your time online?
i am often researching, so i end up in some strange places. but i do what most people do — i follow a few mailing lists, watch weird videos on youtube. i am currently dipping my toe into the world of social networking sites. i’m not sure i like the idea that ‘friendship’ is a commodity.

the journey of pran nath — protagonist of the impressionist — was almost overshadowed by the attention your advance got instead. have literary critics grown up since then?
literary critics will never grow up. luckily for me, these days, people seem to be more interested in talking about my work than about money.

what are your views on the major literary awards of our time, like the man booker, that tend to play god with the careers of many commonwealth writers?
i think if you’re given an award, it appears to be the most logical, wise and definitive assessment of your cultural importance. if you’re not given one, then awards are illogical, arbitrary and frivolous. essentially they are useful marketing tools, but the assessment of literary value is a much longer-term process. i think we are just beginning to discern the important books of the seventies.

do you still stand by your decision to turn down the john llewellyn rhys prize?
absolutely. i was protesting against the sponsor — and what i’ve seen since then of the mail group’s journalistic practises has just confirmed my poor opinion of the paper.

revisiting a tragedy

2007-10-05T18:27:00.000+05:30

consider, if you will, a peculiar experiment. pick an advertising agency; any agency. walk to where the copywriters congregate, and gently whisper the name ‘indra sinha.’ then stand back and watch as feelings of inadequacy suddenly rush into the room.

there is a perfectly logical explanation for the reaction. for decades now, sinha has been making copywriters around the world feel inadequate and inspired in turns. being voted one of the top ten british copywriters of all time tends to give one that kind of power. back in the sixties, collett dickenson pearce & partners was known as britain’s most influential advertising agency, home to big names including sinha, sir frank lowe, lord david puttnam, sir alan parker and charles saatchi.

what has made sinha more interesting to non-advertising folk, however, is a battle he has helped wage for over a decade now -- his battle for bhopal.

thirteen years ago, when sinha decided to give up advertising for things he considered more important, his peers were in shock. what they didn’t know was that sinha had been visited a year earlier by a man called satyu sarangi. the latter wanted his help to raise funds for a free medical clinic that could make life less painful for the thousands who survived the early hours of december 3, 1984. it was the night a union carbide pesticide factory released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate, killing 3,000 people immediately and eventually claiming around 22,000.

with the help of a now-iconic photograph of a child’s burial by raghu rai, sinha created an advertisement for the bhopal medical appeal, kick-starting a movement that continues to serve thousands every year. between 1996 and now, a clinic set up through charitable funds has helped 20,000 people. sinha’s fight for justice in a country far from home -- he currently lives in southern france with his wife of 30 years and three children -- continues.

earlier last month, the world at large was given a third reason to pay attention to indra sinha. animal’s people, his second novel, made it to that spotlight-grabbing pedestal coveted by writers worldwide -- the man booker long list, 2007.

sinha’s writing career has been intriguing. he began with a translation (kama sutra) and followed it with an explanation of the tantric tradition (tantra: the cult of ecstasy), before winning acclaim with his rather frightening memoir on hours spent online in the early years of the internet, the cybergypsies. his first novel, the death of mr love, was based on a real-life murder in his hometown, mumbai.

animal’s people is set in a town called khaufpur which, interestingly, now has its own web site that documents its alleged history, has its own matrimonial (featuring a certain 19-year old called jaanvar), and even lists current events (dominique lapierre, author of city of joy, will apparently read from his new book at an upcoming open-air event)!

leaving aside the web site though, what makes animal’s people compelling is the bhopal disaster that resonates through its pages, as the protagonist -- called, simply, ‘animal’ -- shares his tale with an unnamed journalist, or ‘jarnaliss’.

whether sinha wins the booker or not is irrelevant. what is, is that his fiction will finally get the recognition it has long deserved. when that happens, maybe a lot more people will weigh in on his side of the fight against a big, bad, real-life kampani.

could she have won the booker?

2007-09-12T16:25:00.000+05:30

few indians will have a problem connecting with little rumika vasi. the child protagonist of nikita lalwani’s debut novel gifted, rumika — or rumi, as everyone calls her — has known since age 8 that mathematics is a world she has special access to. her life is divided evenly, in her mind, into neat fractals. the odds against her spending time with a boy she fancies are measured in precise percentages.

rumi’s father, mahesh, knows about his daughter’s gift. and he wants her to use it well, to get through the hallowed portals of oxford university. this need to excel, to put academia before all else, is why few indians will have a problem connecting with rumi vasi.

it is by naming her prodigy after a thirteenth century persian poet [jalal-ad-din muhammad rumi] that lalwani gives us an insight into the contrary world rumika inhabits — one at odds with her father’s. the world mahesh inhabits is, in turn, at odds with the one his wife shreene prefers to spend time in.

born in rajasthan and raised in cardiff, nikita lalwani’s early life began in much the same manner as rumi’s. she had a penchant for mathematics, went to oxford to study medicine, quit because she found english literature more exciting, and made television documentaries as an adult before setting aside the time to write. making it to the 2007 man booker awards long-list must have been a vindication of sorts for the woman who turned her back on oxford.

‘i think india represented an inherited and very romantic idea of a home-space,’ lalwani recently said in an interview. this space always exists in her novel, as a background against which members of the vasi family sink into eventual alienation from each other. rumi’s gift is, after a point, more of a curse for those she is closest to.

gifted is a funny novel. is it emotional and uncompromising in its portrayal of a quintessential migrant family, and raises questions about parental roles a lot of us would do well to pay heed to. it is a great debut.

in that, it is the author who is gifted.

your biographical note at penguin uk is little more than a line long. the note in the novel doesn’t add much either…
i was born in kota, rajasthan, and went to the united kingdom when i was 18 months old with my parents. i have returned regularly to india since then — every 3 or 4 years in the beginning and then from age 16 it has been every 2 years or every year. i suppose i have a close relationship with india, which is continually in flux.

making the move from medicine to literature can’t have been easy for anyone with roots in india. how did you convince your family of the viability of that decision? it was one of those fortuitous things that just happened to me — a great life decision that actually wasn't my decision at all. i spent most of my time at oxford writing for poetry magazines and trying to appear in dodgy student theatre, so it was no surprise when the discussion came up with my tutor as to whether or not i should continue in medicine. it was a painful break — oxford was the only place i'd known outside of my parents' home at that point — but the most liberating of my life, i suppose. it definitely changed the direction of my ambitions, my dreams. my parents were worried for me, because i was quite confused and vulnerable at that time, but they were very supportive. once i settled into english literature at bristol, they were very happy, probably because they could see i seemed to be immersing myself finally. there was a sense of relief all round.

what i connected with at once, as far as rumi is concerned, was this obsessive interest in academia that all indian children appear to have ingrained in them. did you feel that pressure to excel in school too? i don’t know about pressure, but there was definitely a desire to do well academically. i think for indian children like myself growing up in the uk, there may have been a sense back then that academia could provide you with some armour against the insecurities and wayward nature of the world around us. i'm sure that feeling came from parents wanting to protect us from being totally invisible or forgotten in this new country they had decided to inhabit. so i did want to do well, but more from a sense of competition, a feeling that this was a place where you could be visible — the academic arena of pure ‘nerd-dom’.

photograph: vik sharma

the strange tales of surgeon satwik

2007-08-02T17:55:00.000+05:30

ambarish satwik spends a considerable amount of time in a world of his own making.

it is, in part, a world awash in human effluents — which is understandable considering his vocation as a general surgeon, and the fact that his wife is a gynaecologist. “between us,” he says, “we handle all conceivable human effluents. and we deal with the perineum on a quotidian basis.”

we’ll get to the perineum in a minute. but first -- ah, quotidian. a word you and i would choose to substitute with, simply, ‘routine’. and that’s the other part of satwik’s world; one that delights in sheer verbosity.

if his literary debut -- a collection of short stories titled perineum: nether parts of the empire (penguin india) -- isn’t proof, his replies to my queries certainly are. they yield words not exactly in common usage where i come from, and certainly not – if my interaction with them over the years is anything to go by – bandied about on a quotidian basis among the medical fraternity.

following ‘quotidian’, satwik’s words come in a rush, compelling me to read slowly and hope for meaning — allohistory, provenance, felicity, sentient, deracinated, excoriated, eldritch. and yet, despite this verbosity, he manages to surprise. through his tales entrenched in the perineum — possibly the body's most intimate part, between the genitals and anus in both sexes — satwik presents an alternative, colourful history of british india.

not for him are mundane tales of robert clive’s idiosyncrasies or bahadur shah zafar’s isolation. satwik dwells instead on the circumcision of the former, and the bowel stimulating enemas of the latter. through thirteen stories, the reader is given a lesson in india’s history radically different from the many we’ve had before. he does it all with a straight face too, compelling you to wonder about that line between fact and fiction. “all the medical conditions are indeed factual,” satwik tells me, helpfully. “the stories are about real people, but the rest is hokum. my research was more in the realm of colonial history and not medical predicaments. most of the preliminary research was carried out at the national archives in delhi.”

born in 1976 in nagpur – his mother's hometown – satwik’s grandfather came to delhi in the 1940s and stayed on. he grew up in delhi but went back to maharashtra to study medicine, returning in 2002 to work as a general surgeon for the government. i ask if there was a particular historical event that prompted him to create these stories. “the nether parts have been my stock in trade,” the doctor replies. “but the book is as much as about the nether parts as about allohistory (‘what if’ conjectures). there is a certain order of fun in rogue historical revisionism, a desire to find a worm in every apple, not just to have salacious lapses, but to have salacity as the raison d'etre for a narrative.”

he does offer one related anecdote though. “the first story drafted (baker's scrotum) was about the conflict on raisina [hill, prime area in new delhi housing india's most important government buildings]. it owes its provenance to the perineal tribulations of an hiv positive jat constable who was under my care, whose testicles were subsequently transposed to his thighs because his scrotum ‘ceased to exist’.”that satwik is passionate about his profession is obvious – it jumps across in the way he lovingly describes everything from ‘a fistula of the hinder parts’ to ‘a torsion of the testis’. in his words, “there is nothing quite like the adventure of dissecting live tissues.” he is also honest about first reactions from new readers of his stories. “first time readers tend to be comprehensively excoriated,” he says, adding that there have been a few who have conferred a kind of ‘arbitrary profundity’ on the tales. “i am flattered by such responses, but these stories are not profound by any reckoning. this is excitable hokum.”

the hokum includes issues of race surrounding the black hole of calcutta episode (mongrel), the sexual life of sir henry and his wife honoria (vaginismus), waldemar haffkine’s questionable sexual preferences (bombay bubonic) and the siege of delhi during the months of the 1857 sepoy mutiny (the beresfords). “the prose is deliberately deracinated, weird sounding, old empire style, especially in the eighteenth century stories,” satwik explains. “but i will not apologize for it. the objective was to produce subversive and deeply immoral stories: dissolute, smutty historical fiction for general consumption. they are wicked, and would qualify as historical slander, but then writers of prose fiction should not bother with rectitude. if one were to bowdlerize these stories, one wouldn't have anything left. then there is also the agenda of the perineum, the politics of the perineum: the bogey about the perineum as historical agency, the perineum as related to consequence or causation.”

i point out that my poor knowledge of human anatomy keeps me from enjoying his tales a much as i ought to have. was any of it written with a particular audience in mind -- a bit of surgeon's humour, perhaps? “on the contrary, it is for general consumption,” satwik replies. “a brief tutorial on the perineum can be found on the opening pages. one needs to have a general idea about its topography, and then it’s like going down a rabbit's hole.”

perineum compels me to wonder if the limited margin of error satwik’s work as a surgeon allows contributes in any way to the precise tone of his writing. he tells me that is an indulgent question. “i don't think idiosyncrasies of the surgical discipline can be extrapolated to writing processes, but i largely see myself as a writer of short fiction and a steadfast adherent of kurt vonnegut's cardinal rule: start as close to the finish as possible. there is a certain tartness about narrative prose that comes swiftly to its point.”

finally, i ask ambarish satwik, tongue in cheek, if he intends to focus on other areas of the body in future work. he doesn’t say.

on the 5:26 borivli local

2007-07-13T16:07:00.000+05:30

as the 5.26 pulls away from churchgate, i look around at faces that have replaced faces from a year ago. it is an unusually moving moment. to think about those whose lives were so cruelly wrenched from them, to imagine their thoughts that rainy evening, is poignant. did they think of their children? or a hot bath? a cuddle with their wives?

the man beside me opens his copy of the mid-day, turning to a report about how bombs can now be made for a measly rs 200. i ask if this is his regular train. and if he knows how significant this particular commute is. he tells me the television crews at churchgate were a reminder. but, turning back to his newspaper, he informs me that life waits for no one.

28-year old rajiv shukla, who works with a bank at nariman point, sits across me and smiles as he hears our conversation. “there is nothing that can be done,” he says, compelled by violence to turn to philosophy in his youth.

not all explosions delight. when set off in trains, for instance, with little rivulets of blood as by-products, they elicit nothing like pleasure. when set off in buses, they compel people to prefer standing, while empty seats lose the sense of virtue they are usually born with.

explosions never really go away in a hurry. for weeks on end, they frighten citizens while they sleep. ears prick up. hearts flutter. palpitations commence. for weeks on end, stores selling fireworks sit still, their doors never darkened by customers in search of anything capable of holding a pinch of gunpowder.

when a bomb goes off in a city, the ripple of chaos it creates reverberates long after the shrieks have died out. bags are no longer innocent receptacles. packages are scrutinized from all sides. public modes of transport lose the air of friendly banter that – during non-peak hours – often surrounds them. there are no longer friendly smiles in crowded train compartments. no good-natured sharing of space. no helpful hands reaching for heavy suitcases that are then carried, like plastic rock stars, across rows of faces to overhead shelves.

when a bomb goes off in a city, it stuns that city’s soul into submission.

the first time a bomb went off, in my lifetime, i was a year shy of 20. the last time one went off, i was weeks away from 30. both events book-ended a gruesome chapter in the history of my beautiful city, mumbai; one that saw it lose its sense of vitality and move down the path to indifference – something many of the world’s amazing cities have long succumbed to.

i remember a particular journey by train my 20-year old self once took, from one junction in mumbai to another. the compartment was teeming, as usual. men of all ages swore under their breath, waiting for the train to move. when it finally jolted free, one man’s eyes went up to a suitcase that lay innocuously atop one of the shelves. ‘is it yours?’ he asked the person beside him. it wasn’t. as the train picked up speed, he kept checking, row by row, patience giving way to exasperation. when he received no answer, he pulled down the suitcase and pushed it out the window. mission accomplished, he sat back in satisfaction.

then came a loud shout from the nearest exit: ‘aehhhhhhhhh! kisne kiya yeh?’ it was the owner of the suitcase who, hidden from view, had not been questioned. while the rest of us laughed – mirth always seems exaggerated after moments of anxiety – our co-passenger was forced to step off at the next stop, and walk back in search of the suitcase.

in a simpler time, luggage would never warrant such attention.

a little after 6 pm a year ago, between bandra and khar, the heart of the first class compartment of the 5.26 local tore open, the light flooding in. as our train makes its way past this bloody point, things stay the same. my co-passengers read, doze, play cards, stare vacantly. we have been cursed with the ability to quickly forget.

how can one ever come to terms with what happened to those unfortunate people on july 11, 2006? did they know death waited in silent ambush, 45 minutes away? did the hearts of their loved ones skip a beat at that precise moment when they stopped breathing?

no, not all explosions delight. some change the face of cities, and all who choose to live out their lives in them. as the train rolls towards borivali at 6.20, the faces around me betray nothing. a few heads nod in sleep. it’s just another evening in mumbai. outside, a quiet rain begins to fall.

hits and misses

2007-07-03T16:02:00.000+05:30

welcome to bombay, city of plenty, pent-up masses and landed gentry. say goodbye to monotony, as you pick your way across our battered, erratically-paved streets. and keep your fingers crossed; for, if our city’s twisted god is in the mood, a fight could break out in front of you.

yes. out here, fights on the street are welcome.

two grown men baring their teeth at each other, warily running slow circles, abusing each other’s parents, screaming like ghouls – it’s what we call a good monday morning.

without fights on the street, see, there would only be the occasional accident to keep us occupied.

they start, as they often do, for the most ridiculous reasons known to man – or, in most such cases, two men. a teenager’s bicycle accidentally runs across a bearded man’s left foot. a skinny man picks just the watermelon his plump neighbour is reaching for. a cobbler refuses to accept anything but exact change. an old gentleman is gently brushed by a passing rickshaw, leaving his accompanying grandson frothing at the mouth.

and then, game time. the first shout, and an instant reciprocal one; the first slow circle; the first show of fists. and, like a sudden splash of paint on a wall, the first solid slap. thwack!

time quickly thuds to a stop on that corner of the street. like flies, the onlookers gather, hovering around the two men, squeezing in and out in search of the best angle, eyes wide open, refusing to blink. automobiles slow down, public transport crawls past, heads stick outside windows high above the circling figures. now picture, if you will, these miniature fistfights spread across pockets of the city. and add images of excited onlookers and crawling traffic. it is the story of how grid-lock first came to urban india.

as for me, i have walked past many such fights in the past. i have watched a great many, standing on toes to look over other men standing on their toes. i have nodded sympathetically at my curious neighbours. and, like them, i have never made more than a half-hearted attempt to stop a fight.

the last time i found myself before one, it was right at the juicy moment when the pummelling was about to begin. the air was heavy with expectation; the crowds, leaning forward slightly, holding each other up to create a small amphitheatre. this is what men have always done. imagine them crowding around two neanderthals in a cave, their roughly hewn clubs at the ready, while curious dinosaurs outside stop chewing wild grass to stare.

‘kuch karo yaar,’ said one of the guys standing next to me, at that last fight. ‘make them stop.’ we sneered at him. this, despite the fact that one of the two warring men was my oldest friend in the world. to make the guilt go away, then, i tapped one of the angry men. ‘anselm,’ i said. ‘let me hold your glasses. they may fall off during the fight.’

in conversation with mohsin hamid

2007-06-08T16:37:00.000+05:30

you wouldn’t -- irrespective of whether you are an american citizen or not -- want to sit down to dinner with changez. you would find him polite to a fault, of course, and possibly even enjoy having him guide you through the streets of lahore for a while. but sitting down to a meal with him would be a whole other issue. he would manage, rather glibly, to figure out where you came from, or what your purpose in his city was. he would bring with him a quiet sense of menace. and he could possibly cause you harm, even while explaining the rationale behind the act.

sole protagonist of mohsin hamid’s the reluctant fundamentalist — the follow up to his vibrant, edgy, 2000 debut moth smoke – changez is not the world’s greatest dinner companion. a meal with his creator, on the other hand, would be very nice indeed. to engage mohsin hamid in conversation is fabulous, because he comes across as a writer who really cares about his craft, and is more than happy to engage in a discussion about it.

we sit across each other, in the lobby of mumbai’s taj president, oblivious of a steady stream of guests, porters, bellhops and the usual band of people who appear to spend their lives in hotel lobbies, with no apparent purpose before them. this is hamid’s first trip to mumbai, and it can’t have begun in the best circumstances considering he spent a few hours registering himself at a police station – an unpleasant task made mandatory in a world now full of suspicious neighbours.

if the writer has taken it in stride, his formative years may have something to do with it. born 36 years ago in lahore, pakistan, he went on to study at princeton university and harvard law school, then worked in new york before moving to london, where he now spends most of his time. it is a kind of rootless existence that compels one to take a lot of things in stride.

“i have been subjected to multiple-hour searches and questioning at american airports,” hamid says, smiling grimly. “but i have also sat next to bearded men who wear money-belts underneath their kurtas on the london tube, and wondered if they were going to blow me up. we are all constantly engaged in racial profiling.” the important thing, he points out – particularly for those of us subjected to racial profiling – is to recognise our own instinct to do it. “it’s just that the power balance sometimes tips and the state backs one type of profiling over another, which is what we object to. even as we complain about that, we shouldn’t ignore our own implicit guilt.”

the reluctant fundamentalist will come as a surprise to readers familiar with hamid’s debut novel. while moth smoke took us straight to the heart of lahore, switching between its feudal lords and nouveau riche, the new novel is, by the author’s own admission, more focused on america. it raises questions of identity, at a time when a great many of the world’s people are questioning their own.

while moth smoke gave us that intriguing anti-hero darashikoh ‘daru’ shezad – who begins an affair with his best friend’s wife mumtaz and watches his life spiral out of control – the latest novel begins and ends in the first person, with changez alone doing all the talking. sitting across changez is an american denied a voice throughout the novel, apparently to reflect the one-sided nature of the media in the west, consistently denying one half of the world its voice.

“i self-consciously set out to do things differently,” says hamid. “i wanted to avoid certain themes that were very important to my last book.” i point out that a first person narrative sometimes risks coming across as stilted. changez -- despite his princeton education and familiarity with twentieth-century corporate america – often sinks into a tone that is almost obsequious, with cadences that belong more to translations of nineteenth century urdu than the crisp voice of a well-travelled former business executive. “i didn’t really consider the risk,” says the writer. “at the end of the day, you have to trust your ear. then, it’s up to the readers, and whether they feel it works.”

to be fair, there is a lot of the reluctant fundamentalist that works. for a novella, it manages to place across a table – with changez and the unnamed american on either side – a number of cogent arguments critiquing us foreign policy. it does what hamid wants it to do – stay in pakistan while focusing on america. he also manages, in an engaging manner, to reduce intricate links between america and the mujahideen, immigrants and the fourteenth century infantry units called janissaries, to banter over kebabs and warm rotis. in that, hamid has effectively used the novella to create a novel of ideas.

i ask hamid what i assume must be a common-enough query thrust at him – to what extent does he identify with changez’s worldview, if at all? “i choose settings and environments,” he replies. “the milieu is one i am intimately familiar with, both in the case of moth smoke and this novel. therefore, the impression of autobiography lingers over the books. there are resonances of me in all my characters, but it is more difficult for a writer than it is for a reader to determine how big the overlap is.”

i ask him about his tendency to delve on power structures. if, for instance, moth smoke explored the relationship between feudalism and the nouveau riche, the reluctant fundamentalist pits the east against the west. “that is probably accurate,” he admits, “but i tend to be much more specific. i tend to focus on people who are simultaneously insiders and outsiders. thanks to television, all of us know what it’s like to be a rich millionaire in beverly hills. we are like insiders, because we venture into that world all the time. and, obviously, we are not insiders. that dichotomy -- of somebody with a clear view of the inside, who is also a good mimic and can pretend to be inside, but isn’t -- is of great interest to me.”

it is an interesting analogy, made more pertinent when hamid draws parallels to it in his own life. “because i have drifted so much myself, i am now used to being this person who quickly picks up the social code of wherever he is; who can effectively function on the surface as an insider, but remains perpetually, internally, to a degree removed and on the outside.” he tells me that one of the responses to a cosmopolitan existence is to become a chameleon. even if a chameleon looks like a gecko, it knows it isn’t one.

another thing that makes mohsin hamid such a pleasure to talk to -- his evocative language aside – is the fact that he brings to us a perspective from the other side. voices from india’s friendly neighbour haven’t exactly been pouring in since independence. i tell him about how the los angeles times once referred to pakistan as ‘the mysterious country that both created the sophisticated benazir bhutto and hanged her father’. he laughs for a while, then tells me he usually shies away from descriptions of his country.

as our conversation moves towards a close, i ask him about the function of journalism in pakistan, and whether, like india, it has no history of critical evaluation, as far as anything written in english is concerned. “pakistani book reviews are certainly no better informed than indian book reviews,” he informs me. “but i have been reviewed all over the world, and most reviews are just like ours. most reviewers have no idea of historical context; they don’t deploy particularly sophisticated analysis, and they jump to early conclusions that are absurd. often, one is a beneficiary of this, because what comes out is a poorly thought-out review that is glowingly positive, and can be put on the back of one’s paperback.”

like he has done in the past, mohsin hamid may take up to seven years to give us his next novel. i, for one, have no problems with that. his work has, until now, always been worth the wait.

conman to the rescue

2007-05-25T22:17:00.000+05:30

venue: baghdad
mission: save the world, 1500 bucks at a time
in conversation with iraqi prime minister nouri al maliki

nou ri al maliki:welcome to my strife-torn country.
conman: strife is all in the mind. if you think calm and sunny, it is calm and sunny.
nouri al maliki: i don't understand.
conman: to understand would cost you. how does one convert 1500 indian rupees to your currency?
nouri al maliki: what do you suggest we do to end this warfare?
conman: breathe in slowly. breathe out slowly.
nouri al maliki: and?
conman: wait for my bill, my son.
nouri al maliki: why would i fall for something so blatantly ridiculous?
conman: why not? a few thousand losers in india already have.

the joke that is journalism

2007-05-15T16:09:00.000+05:30

journalism in india, scene one:
editor: 'can you write movie reviews?'
reporter: 'um, no. i'm not qualified to.'
editor: 'what does that mean?'
reporter: 'it means i haven't studied cinema, or claim to know the art form particularly well.'
editor: 'that's okay; none of us are experts. we need new perspectives.'
reporter: 'but aren't you being unfair to your readers? they expect an opinion that matters, don't they?'
editor: 'not really. there are no qualified movie critics in india. our readers don't expect intelligent reviewers. a qualified reviewer may even scare them away.'

journalism in india, scene two:
editor: 'you should cover page 3, the social scene.'
reporter: 'how can i? i don't belong to this city, how will i know who the people that matter are?'
editor: 'i don't understand.'
reporter: 'i come from delhi, where everyone's star-struck. how will i know who the real celebs are?'
editor: 'go with your gut. if a woman appears to be popular, she's probably a celebrity.'
reporter: 'but i come from delhi. we have no celebs, only politicians. how will i recognise what true glamour really is?'
editor: 'go with your gut. most of our starlets are non-bombayites; their bad accents give them away. if you find someone who can't speak english, that's the celeb you need to speak to.'
reporter: 'but i come from delhi, where the quality of education is so bad that none of us speak particularly well either.'
editor: 'this makes you more than qualified to recognise a kindred spirit. the wannabes always flock together.'

'poetry has lost its place'

2007-04-13T16:04:00.000+05:30

what is 31-year old tishani doshi like? there are no easy answers to that one.

this bewilderment springs from details of her life that i pick up from sundry sources. i learn that her father, vinod, is gujarati; her mother, eira, welsh. i know she was born in chennai, educated at queens college and john hopkins university in the us, and returned a few years ago to study dance under the late, legendary chandralekha.

i am aware of the fact that she writes powerful, evocative poetry. i know this not because she received an eric gregory award in 2001 or won the 2006 forward poetry prize for best first collection — the first indian to do so. i know it because poems from her collection, countries of the body (aark arts, 2006), refuse to budge from my mind, days after my turning to its first page.

‘the day we went to the sea,’ she writes, in a poem about the 2004 tsunami, ‘mothers in madras were mining the marina for missing children.’ rarely is anything so alliterative as eloquent.

at a time when journalists publish collections of verse and proclaim themselves poets, i find it refreshing that there are a great number of people conferring the title on doshi of their own volition. she has read alongside writers like margaret atwood and seamus heaney at the hay-on-wye festival, and alongside wole soyinka, dbc pierre and david mitchell in colombia. no ordinary honour, this.

from inns in cleveland, to convents in kerala, museums in sri lanka, back to the ever-present, raucous streets of chennai, doshi’s poetry shifts constantly from the local to the metaphysical. it is an exploration of boundaries, within and without. ‘these bodies of countries,’ she writes, in the poem that gives her collection its title, ‘they are our tracks of line and dirt, our own set of timeless days in the park.’

there are clues to what she aims for when one reads about her relationship with her teacher, chandralekha: ‘in a sense, chandra’s work wasn’t concerned with dance at all. it was a lifelong quest to know the body: to decipher its many beginnings and endings, to contextualise the body in terms of space and time, to recognise the body as a source of unlimited energy and to nurture it as a medium to connect with nature, society, the cosmos.’

this is poetry of questioning; of trying to get to the heart of an observation. there are motifs running through that lend the poems a cohesion many collections lack. when you turn the final page, then, it is with a sense of coming to the end of a journey, through birth, sex, death. for me, it also led to a sense of despair.

i am told tishani also writes fiction. i assume she must be good at that too, considering the uk-based publishing house bloomsbury intends to publish her debut, the pleasure seekers. she is also at work on a biography — of sri lankan cricketer, muthiah muralidharan.

so, yes, it really is hard to figure out what tishani doshi is like. i made an attempt, presenting her with a series of questions i thought would help. these are some of her replies...

you speak of dance affecting your writing in a very profound way. is there anything, apart from the sense of discipline it demands, that makes it so important to you?
when i speak of dance affecting my writing, i am actually referring to my specific relationship with chandralekha, which for me has been profound. i am not a dancer in the ordinary sense of the word. i have never harboured any secret aspirations to be one and have no formal training. so, when i moved back to chennai after several years abroad, it was entirely through a strange series of coincidences that i met chandra and that she invited me to join her group.
at the time, i already had a manuscript of poems and the vague sketches of a novel, but i was well aware of the perils of writing. i knew i could spend five years writing and have nothing come of it. so, in a sense, it was important to be able to engage with the world in other ways. chandra’s house and the theatre offered these possibilities.
it’s not just the physicality of dance that whittles away excesses and flab and forces a kind of tautness in every aspect of your life, it is also the idea of performance — going out alone on stage in front of hundreds, with only your body and breath, hours and hours of sweat and concentration, only the energy of the musicians and the audience and my partner that allowed me to go onto the dark nothingness of the stage and make my limbs do what they had been trained to do.

despite winning the forward prize, countries of the body has been largely unnoticed. if it weren't for a recent festival of literature in mumbai, for instance, i would have had to do quite a bit of searching to locate a copy. why do you think the indian media is so afraid of focusing on poetry? i think poetry has lost its place in contemporary society. poets, who have traditionally been the prophets, seekers, soothsayers, in societies all over the world, are now very much relegated to speaking from the margins. i don’t think this fall has much to do with the media, which i think reflects trends in society rather than frames them. especially in the case of poetry, i think the change has been within societies itself. somehow, we have arrived at an age where people seem to have no need for these traditional poetic distillations or visions of the world. and even if people are interested, the numbers are few. i think people have turned to other art forms — film, photography, music — and this is not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just the way things have moved. as poets, we have to ask ourselves how to make our work relevant again. the media will follow in due course, as it always does.

-- photograph: bandeep singh

what new york taught me

2007-03-13T15:08:00.000+05:30

pity. it surged through me as i prepared to leave america for india's only city worth living in, mumbai.

i pitied the thousands who come to my city each year, people i am only just beginning to understand. i pitied those who chose to stay on, against all odds, hoping a few thousand rupees at the end of every month, or the illusory sense of a 'career', would justify their leaving their lives and their youth behind.

three months may be too short a time to arrive at this conclusion, but let me elaborate.

my first surge of pity came from the fact that i am confronted with newcomers right through the year. every month they arrive, young men and women from all corners of india, hoping to make it big in mumbai, incidentally the only city that comes close to offering a new york-like experience.

the pity came from my three months in america, that taught me this: whether it's three months or three years, you can never, ever understand a city you weren't born in or grew up in. you can try your hardest – speak hindi like a bombayite or yell 'sup dude' in manhattan – but you will never have access to the essence of that city. its locals will acknowledge your presence and some may even become your friends, but you will never break the tight circles they weave around each other. i know because i have such circles too.

here's something else i fail to make sense of, no matter how hard i try. people tell me how they miss their cities, their families, their friends and neighbourhoods. and yet, they leave them all behind, hoping for a kind of success they will never achieve. what is success anyway? a bigger cheque? a badly-written 'coming-of-age' novel? despite the company of a great many friends in new york, i felt strangely anchorless without access to my immediate support group in india.

and yet, i can't blame these people for leaving everything behind. i saw the same dream reflected in the eyes of a hundred immigrants from india dragging themselves to america in the hope of finding fortune. all they find are marginally bigger salaries that they then spend on redecorating their living rooms. some are successful, of course. but many are not.

maybe a move to a new city is born of insecurity. new cities offer anonymity, after all. they let you escape prying eyes, and relentless questions. it somehow seems like the romantic thing to do, as far removed from reality as it may be. it absolves you from the need to prove yourself to neighbours and relatives. it enable your parents to say, 'oh, sunil works in bombay'. 'sunil works in washington'. 'sunil works in france'.

sunil probably sells samosas for a living, but meena aunty from karol bagh will never know.

i fear no such questions. i am back home, in the place i was born. it's why i know i will never understand america. i refuse to move elsewhere to 'find myself.' i have always known who i was.

in the still of the night

2007-02-20T20:41:00.000+05:30

dark thoughts are the best. they calm, calm, calm me. without them, the hours creep.

to some, this might seem like a curse. this need to sleep while the world wakes, to always fly from the light and seek out corners, to lie quiet in a box, thinking dark thoughts.

but, dark thoughts are the best. they paint no rosy pictures. they involve nothing as trivial as graduation days or clandestine romances, suave husbands or seductive wives. dark thoughts are born safe in knowledge that bright lights eventually must grow dim. graduation must lead to unrewarding toil; romance, to ugly husbands and frumpish wives.

late nights are when i shine. when you sleep, clumsily, vulnerable. when you dream light dreams, while i stalk the streets. when you curl up into a little ball while i step lightly, mallet in hand. to some, this too might seem like a curse. this need to beat, beat, beat to death.

they fail to see, how my dark thoughts set them free. until they do, i bide my time and quietly lie. my mallet sleeps beside me while i dream no dreams. soon now, it will be time. the dogs no longer bark. streetlights sputter and gasp. these limbs begin to wake, blood slowly shaking them from their stony silence.

sleep while you can, my pretty ones. let your late nights calm you, your dreams beguile you. pray that these late nights let me shine. smile and cuddle up, while clouds scatter across the skies above you. let this, what you might call a curse, come and set you free.

dark thoughts are the best. i push open the lid. i rise.

hotel chelsea

2007-01-19T02:47:00.000+05:30

on 23rd street, between seventh and eighth avenues. this is where sid vicious of the sex pistols may have stabbed girlfriend nancy spungen to death on october 12, 1978; where some survivors of the titanic stayed as it was close to pier 54, the ship's planned docking spot; where bob dylan wrote sad eyed lady of the lowlands.

this was, at some point or another, home to mark twain, dylan thomas, william s burroughs, leonard cohen, arthur miller, tennessee williams, allen ginsberg, jack kerouac, simone de beauvoir, jean-paul sartre, stanley kubrick, patti smith, janis joplin, jimi hendrix, frida kahlo, henri cartier-bresson and andy warhol. among others.

what's not to love?

soul man

2007-01-09T02:53:00.000+05:30

the b b king blues bar, at times square, where james joseph brown (may 3, 1933 – december 25, 2006), the godfather of soul, was scheduled to perform on new year's eve. sleep well.

a new york christmas

2007-01-04T04:04:00.000+05:30

festivals tend to spring into focus more when one is compelled to celebrate them without ties. this is when you are forced to look at them afresh, unencumbered by the laughter of family and friends. and so, for the first time in years, i found myself far from home, on what has always been my favourite day.

the morgan library and museum, madison avenue

there are a number of things that drag me to this place on christmas eve. the promise of fewer people, for one. there are three exhibits i have come to see. one on the hedonistic french artist jean-honore fragonard; another celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of wolfgang amadeus mozart; and a third on charles dickens.

the exhibits are worth my long walk to the museum. they are, in fact, worth a great many such walks.

i notice crowds on the first floor, and take the elevator for a peek. i am told they have gathered for 'bob dylan's american journey, 1956–1966', the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to dylan's early career.

mozart and fragonard on the ground floor, and they flock to look at schoolbook photographs of zimmerman. sigh.

maybe, then, the cultural differences between america and india aren’t that great. after all, in my country, the death of r k narayan gets a few paragraphs on page 4 of a leading daily. and rahul dravid becoming only the twentieth person to catch a ball so many times makes it to the front page.

times square, 42nd street

it's hard to say whether it's christmas eve or not, when one walks down here. it's lit right through the year, so a festival doesn't really change things.

i know this is a place i must avoid on new year's eve though. for, that is when a few million people will cram themselves into enclosures from noon onwards, waiting for a crystal ball to drop, telling them that another year of their lives has faded into oblivion.

it takes a lot more than bright lights to impress me. i come from mumbai, see? not delhi.

b b king blues club and grill, 42nd street

screaming on top is the neon sign: james brown live, new year's eve! on the street below, near the entrance, is a poster mourning the passing of the godfather of soul.

a man stands before it, holding a young boy in his arms. they stare at the poster. "who's that, daddy?" the boy asks his father, who says nothing, and simply shakes his head sadly before moving away.

words don't come easy when you realize that funk just died, on christmas morning.

st. patrick's cathedral, 49th street

it is a little past 6.00 pm, but you'd never know it without access to a wristwatch. winters in new york are dark, and the christmas lighting has taken over most streets.

outside the cathedral, chaos. officers of the nypd move back and forth, trying to keep in check the seething mass of humanity struggling to walk past the cathedral. thousands stop by the huge christmas tree at the rockefeller center, immortalized more by macaulay culkin in home alone 2 than anything else. the fact that britney spears was spotted here a week ago doesn’t help.

the only difference between this place and midnight mass at any of mumbai’s biggest churches is this -- the folks here wear warmer clothes.

all in all, a rather interesting christmas. and still my favourite time of year.

saying thanks

2006-12-20T03:51:00.000+05:30

everyone on earth in possession of a television set knows this: in the united states, thanksgiving is a big deal.

i knew it was going to be big too, when i saw, a week in advance, the crowds start to gather on 34th street, near and around macy’s: that giant of a department store. preparations for the annual parade were on, and everyone wanted photographs. bright lights – brighter than usual, that is - started to spring up everywhere, there was tinsel in shop windows, and four-letter words that made their presence felt at every turn i happened to take: sale.

for me, the more interesting thing was an invitation i received to a traditional thanksgiving dinner at glendale, new jersey. the invite came from an american i happened to meet in mumbai through a friend, not so long ago. ‘would you like to go to my sister’s place?’ he asked. and i nodded, curious about this all-american ritual. there were invites from indian-american friends too, but i wasn’t sure about another meal involving curry when confronted with the possibility of being part of something i would have no access to in india.

when it was all over and done with, i realized that thanksgiving simply acts as a fabulous excuse for family and friends to get together. just like diwali does. or id. or, for that matter, a cousin’s birthday. it was just as warm, the wine and turkey notwithstanding. relatives poured in, everyone helped in the kitchen, teenagers lounged in front of the tv, the men discussed american football in staggering detail, the women milled about in groups, and there were smiles all around. i loved every minute of it.

the day after thanksgiving is referred to as black friday. it’s when businesses that aren’t doing too well can move out of the red and into the black. on my way back to new york, a little before 5 a.m., i saw queues form outside department stores along the way.

the family dinners were all over with. shopping in earnest was about to begin.

stuck in a moment

2006-12-14T02:18:00.000+05:30

the world’s big cities are lonely places to be in. they look down upon you, all glass eyes and steel arms, complacent in their bright, shiny, silence. they say nothing, when you walk down their bustling streets, your heart quiet in its shell in the midst of the chaos outside.

"i wish i could be as calm as indians are," a middle-aged american man said to me, last night, at a pub called gaetana's in greenwich village -- an old italian place that, supposedly, was a hangout for gangsters years ago. also supposedly, it was a site for hits carried out by the mafia. last night, however, the place was unassuming; the mafia, nowhere in evidence.

"calm indians? are you sure?" i asked. could he mean the american indians? "no, people from india," he clarified. "you people are so quiet, so 'together', i wish i could be more like you."

that's when i began to think about big cities and what they do to you. the minute you leave home, and get to a place far, far from it, the cities take over. that's when you are confronted, for a period of time, with nothing and no one but yourself. when you lose the anchoring of friends and family, and have only your soul for company.

that's when you walk the streets at night, stop by brightly-lit stores, take in a few movies, eat alone at tables by restaurant windows, wake up and sigh, go home to an empty apartment, and switch on your television set, always hopeful that audio and video can compensate for a lack of human presence.

i don't know about other indians but, for now, that explains my being so quiet. shhhhhhhhhh.

make me laugh

2006-12-06T22:33:00.000+05:30

imagine, for a moment, the idea of a prehistoric man being invited to step into a comedy club. how would you describe it to him? what would you say – that this is where we civilized folk often gather, paying a price to laugh at something funny together?

the thought struck me a little after i stepped into gotham, on 23rd st, which describes itself as new york city’s 'most elegant, upscale comedy club, dedicated to keeping patrons laughing.' there were a lot of patrons that night, all ushered downstairs to the bar while waiting for the show to begin.

apart from the $20 entrance fee, the rule was every customer had to order a ‘two-drink minimum’ (yes, orange juice counted). three seconds after placing an order, i saw a little card saying that anything ordered at the bar didn’t exactly count as part of that ‘two-drink minimum’. maybe it was part of the act. i could see how other ‘patrons’ would find it funny.

but then, it was time for the stand-up comics. three of them. the last was a big name, tom papa, of the jay leno show and saturday night live. and yes, they were hilarious. really, really hilarious. the american president, habits of the english, racism, immigrants -- everything was fair game. when one member of the audience admitted to being australian, the comic on stage replied, “i’m sorry for your loss.” why? “because you guys have only one celebrity (steve irwin, crocodile hunter) and he just died.”

the thing i liked best was that everyone laughed. and laughed hardest when the joke was on them.

imagine, for a moment, the idea of a comedy club in india. at a place like – shudder – delhi, for instance. imagine the stand-up comic, comfortably enthusiastic in the knowledge that he possesses the power to make people giggle helplessly, taking a dig at politicians. or taking a dig at how religious habits go out the window the minute we leave our country. or a dig at our ridiculous attitudes towards sex on television. or how we tend to worship cricketers who consistently perform badly.

imagine that stand-up comic getting away with any of this.

i like the idea of being labeled an immigrant nuisance who can’t figure out how a laundromat works. i like the idea of dressing like a complete idiot and being refused entry at a swanky restaurant in new york’s meatpacking district. if someone points these things out to me, i intend to laugh.

i intend to learn how to laugh at myself, and take that ability back with me when i go home. if i manage, there’s a good lesson for life.

biting into the big apple

2006-11-17T22:07:00.000+05:30

'welcome to the united states.' it's rather bizarre how a sentence that simple can be so evocative for so many. as i get ready to step off the massive aircraft that has brought me to this country, i look around to see middle-aged women smile, young students look overawed, and elderly indian men scratch their beard in feigned nonchalance. all in response to the pilot's clipped welcome.

immigration, contrary to all i have been told, is a breeze. getting to the car park, 10 minutes from the terminal, isn't.

for a guy like me, born and bred in india's only exciting city, mumbai, the weather is a bit of a shock. it's like waking up from a long night's sleep to have your head dunked into a bucket of cold water. the air cuts through what i assumed was a warm jacket. it reaches under my arms and shakes me, as if laughing at what the jacket cost, knowing how ineffective its impressive price tag will be when confronting the new york elements.

and then, the car jumps into traffic, the manhattan skyline looms, and a great many sitcoms jump to life around me.

it is a tribute to the sheer power of american television that a whole new culture has been made so decipherable across continents. nothing surprises the first-time visitor -- not the ny taxicabs, not the delis strewn across every street, not street signs that read '43 w' and '24th st', not the blue nypd vehicles, not the hot-dog vendors, their carts smoking.

my apartment, in the heart of manhattan, has a concierge who gives me the once-over as i step across his line. there is the all-pervasive smell of indian cooking emanating from one of the studios on my floor. outside, the empire state building vanishes into fog, its twinkling lights playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. people of all colour walk the street, hands in their coat-pockets, dressed to the nines.

as the beatles said, way back in 1964 on their first trip here, 'so, this is america.'

from cambodia: wat's up

2006-10-27T15:50:00.000+05:30

that this is the largest religious structure in the world doesn't matter. what does matter is that it darkens and glistens in turn, the wind moaning quietly through its shadowy corridors, swirling around the feet of 1700 apsaras caught mid-step in stone. there is still life here.

from cambodia: still water

2006-10-27T15:48:00.000+05:30

the 'great lake' -- tonle sap. largest freshwater lake in south east asia, changing shape every year, now occupying 3000 square kilometres, now 16,000. somewhere to the right lies the mekong in wait, its river dolphins jumping up to greet the sky when you least expect them to.

from cambodia: genocide

2006-10-27T15:23:00.000+05:30

the street leading to the tuol sleng genocide museum in phnom penh is quiet. inside lies proof of a past too horrific to forget. outside, crippled men stand in shadow, hoping for charity. the photographs inside stand untouched, except for one of pol pot, scarred by a sharp object. anger doesn't just fade away.

from cambodia: the dreaming spires

2006-10-27T15:20:00.000+05:30

the rain pours. 9 am on a monday morning, and the temples of angkor refuse to yield their secrets. what, i wonder, could king suryavarman ii have been thinking when he first came up with his grand plan eight centuries ago? would he have liked having me -- camera in hand, khaki-clad -- wander down passages reserved for kings?

a kind of inheritance

2006-10-19T21:23:00.000+05:30

who your mother is makes a big difference to the way the world looks at you. kiran desai, who was born to author anita desai 34 years ago, knows the feeling. what she chose to do in life would, possibly, not attract as much attention if she were to have picked a different profession. what kiran wanted, however, was to write. and journalists of indian origin the world over sat up to take notice.

1998's hullabaloo in the guava orchard arrived with much promise. much was made of kiran desai's prose, and the fact that here was a writer with tremendous potential. and then, she disappeared. took the next seven years off, to resurface earlier this year with the inheritance of loss.

four years to write her first novel; seven for her second. it seems like a tremendous amount of time, until you begin to read it. that's when the care lavished on each of those sentences manifests itself. from descriptions of the landscape in the shadow of mount kanchenjunga, to the tenuous relations between different races in the cultural melting pot that is new york city -– desai chips away slowly, calmly, fashioning each character and chapter unhurriedly.

it is a commendable virtue any novelist ought to cultivate – patience.

what i took away from my reading of the inheritance of loss was a sense of despondency. a quiet melancholy about the lives we live. strangely, it was the kind of sadness i found an echo of in john banville's the sea, where he writes of the human condition: 'what a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark.'

this is a novel of memorable characters. the ageing, bitter judge who wants to forget his past but is betrayed at every step by a mind that refuses to forget. his granddaughter, the orphaned sai, who turns up as a child and grows up to fall in love with her nepali tutor. their cook, whose son biju in the us leads a life radically different from the picture of hope his father has painted for himself. it is events, in kalimpong and america, that shake these people out of their carefully constructed lives and lies to reveal truths that each of us, in our own particular stories, have access to.

the title of the book, then, is apt. it speaks off little failures, in a way, passed down from generation to generation. the failure to hold on to the purity of childhood, perhaps, or to maintain a sense of innocence in the face of brutal life, or the ability to hope knocked down bit by tiny bit, daily.

ultimately, the inheritance of loss is an impressive novel. and, in parts, a funny one. when i got in touch with kiran desai, then, it was with questions related to its making, as well as questions about the issues that appear to drive her writing. even her replies held little stories. here is a little of what she had to say...

you were born in india and educated here, in england and the united states. considering your formative years were spent abroad though, is there any particular reason both your books are set in india?
i left india when i was 15, but i have immediate family in delhi and return every year to the family home, so the connection was never broken. i think my first book was filled with all that i loved most about india and knew i was in the inevitable process of losing. it was also very much a book that came from the happiness of realising how much i loved to write. the second book isn't a book that is set entirely in india, but one that tries to capture what it means to live between east and west and what it means to be an immigrant.

on a deeper level, it explores what happens when a western element is introduced into a country that is not of the west, which is what happened, of course, during colonial times and is happening again with india's new relationship with the states.

i also wanted to write about what happens when you take people from a poor country and place them in a wealthy one. how does the imbalance between these two worlds change a person's thinking and feeling? how do these changes manifest themselves in a personal sphere, a political sphere, over time? these are old themes that continue to be relevant in today's world, the past informing the present, the present revealing the past.

i haven't been to kalimpong or darjeeling, but your descriptions of both places came across as extremely authentic. did you actually visit them? also, with reference to the nepali insurgence, what sort of research did that part of the book involve?
there is a parallel between the stories of nepali immigrants in india and indian immigrants in the states, all struggling with questions of what it means to be the cheap labour, with the questions of rights and identity.

the political information is accurate to my knowledge and based on my memories and the stories of everyone i know there. also, the details are accurate: gobbo the town thief with a relative in the police, the two old cobras living in the jhora ravine, a pair of afghan princesses, a swiss priest who ran a cheese making enterprise. i remember him with great affection along with the lovely sweet yoghurt and the chocolate cigars he sold from the dairy.

while writing this book, i wrote all the kalimpong bits in kalimpong, staying in a house lent to me during the rainy season. it was very wild and beautiful, rain hammering down, mist and fog. i lived alone and learned both the hard and the beautiful way what it means to be a writer.

you manage to raise pertinent questions related to the immigrant issue. the overwhelming tone that comes across is one of bitterness though, felt by most immigrants who leave their home country. would you agree with that?
i think there's always a degree of loss in being an immigrant. it feels as if one will never be able to tell an entire story ever again. there'll be an aspect of living half a life, having only half a story to tell. we tend to hope for a simplicity of truth, a wholeness which is rarely delivered us.

my book examines lives that are forced, because of circumstance, to be those of hypocrisy, of gaps and fears, or of truths that cannot be simply attained and added up into anything trustworthy. they conflict with other peoples' ideas of things, or they belong to times past and stories that are lost or forgotten.

people deal with situations like this differently. i've seen a lot of insistence on being as american as possible, which i think is something that often comes out of a sense of shame. i've seen a lot of cruelty in the process of leaving and breaking families apart. what frightens me most, though, is that while there's a lot of crowing about how we're the richest minority group, we tend to leave out the fact that the poorest people of india are also in the states, betrayed not only by the western world, but by the wealthier group of indian immigrants.

the divide that exists in india continues overseas. it is to the advantage of everyone on the more powerful side. there's never been an honest attempt in the united states to address the problem of illegal immigration. it suits them to have an underclass as much as it suits wealthier people in india to have a servant class.

there is a certain sympathy in your tone when you describe the desperation experienced by biju and thousands like him as they stand in line for a visa. what inspired you to come up with that particular aspect of the novel? have you spoken to people like biju in the u.s.?
i have stood in line myself at the american embassy many times over and witnessed the scene unfold. i think poverty is so extremely close to us that it's practically the closest thing in our lives although sometimes we refuse to see it.

it's every bite of food we eat that's been picked by someone poverty stricken and every item of clothing we wear. i've seen the efforts made on the indian side to leave india, i get requests for help in this matter every time i return. and in the states, in every restaurant and shop, in taxis all over manhattan, i've heard the story on the other side.

i used to live near a bakery like the queen of tarts (a restaurant mentioned in her novel) and talked to the people who worked there. and i lived with people from zanzibar in the neighbourhood that i describe, so that is also taken from real life.

as a writer, are you satisfied with the way your work has developed?
i think this book is better than the last, but certainly i don't think it's perfect. it's the hardest thing to write a perfect book. yet, of course, as a reader, i hunger for it. it's a constant desire and i know i'll write another book for that reason. each book is its own challenge and i find myself at exactly the same level of trepidation and doubt as when i began the last time around.

writing, for me, means humility. it's a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you're writing honestly. i imagine businessmen feel smug at least twice a day. writers? the moments are rare.

sleepless in my city

2006-09-26T17:50:00.000+05:30

for someone who describes bal thackeray as "the one man most directly responsible for ruining the city i grew up in," suketu mehta sips his white wine with surprising equanimity.

it is 11 pm at olive, a popular nightspot in mumbai where the rich and famous gather to do what the rich and famous do best. a party has been thrown to celebrate the publication of mehta's first book, maximum city: bombay lost and found. around me stroll the usual suspects -- pseudo intellectuals, largely illiterate socialites, a couple of bad actors. half of them don't know what the occasion is. the others believe it has something to do with a book.

what with some people either trying to kiss him or introduce him to friends and family, getting mehta to talk is a difficult task. i try nonetheless, holding him gently by the elbow, referring to the comment in question and asking him if he is worried about what it could do. "i'm not," he replies. "i did my research, and put out the facts. it was a lot of work. i met a lot of people. with reference to that particular passage, i wanted to concentrate more on what goes into the making of a rioter."

to his credit, even a cursory glance through the book reveals a whole lot of research. it is a well-written piece of investigative reporting, and those who've read it have been lavish with their praise. jhumpa lahiri, for instance, believes it is 'one of the most intimate and moving portraits of a place' she has read. nell freudenberger refers to mehta as 'the best kind of investigative reporter,' while amitav ghosh calls it a 'gripping, compellingly readable account of a love affair with a city.'

i remind mehta of the controversy over american historian james laine's book, shivaji -- a hindu king in islamic india. in january 2004, the nationalist congress party-dominated maharashtra government came down heavily on the author. an institute was ransacked, invaluable artefacts were destroyed, and the book was promptly banned. mehta shrugs. "that was a different issue," he says. "all i have done is try and talk about what makes this city what it is. the question of riots shouldn't even occur."

maybe it won't. after all, there's enough to entice readers even without any references to the sena chief. mehta ushers in a whole host of characters, from shiv sena members who boast of killing muslims in the 1992 riots, to hit men, a bar girl called monalisa, senior police officers, cross-dressing male dancers, ageing film stars, and even a gujarati multimillionaire who gives up his fabulous wealth in order to take up religion.

"do these people really exist?" i ask. mehta laughs. "no, i made them all up," he says, sarcastically. "of course they exist! even the multimillionaire does. i happen to be gujarati. i know these people. they give it all up and leave. it sounds unbelievable simply because you haven't seen it. but that doesn't mean these things and these people don't exist, does it?"

why focus only on the 'morally compromised,' i ask. what about the rest -- people like the ones currently surrounding the two of us at olive. don't they epitomise mumbai just as well? "i have spoken of a lot of everyday people too," the writer says. "there are all kinds of people that go into the making of a city. why focus only on the more colourful ones in the book?"

coming as he has after a 21-year absence, mehta has the luxury of an outsider's eye. born in kolkata, he lived in mumbai for nine years before moving to new york. a graduate of nyu and the iowa writers' workshop, he went on to write for the new york times magazine, granta, time and the village voice, picking up a number of awards along the way. and yes, he also co-wrote the screenplay for mission kashmir.

what reviewers have found appealing about maximum city is its ability to empathise and play the role of detached observer with equal poise. mehta may rave and rant about the bureaucracy, they point out, but he still maintains faith in indian democracy. in a fascinating study of sonia gandhi and her appeal to the nation's poor, he makes an interesting comment: 'this is the biggest difference between the world's two largest democracies. in india, the poor vote.'

now that this project -- and a tiring one it must have been -- is over and done with, i ask mehta about his next, a novel titled alphabet. "it is told from the point of view of a foetus," he says, and clams up. i also ask about the original screenplay he's been working on for the goddess, a merchant-ivory film starring tina turner. "it's going pretty well," he replies. "i have a first draft, and i have been hanging out with tina a lot."

the evening draws to a close. mehta is swallowed by newer entrants. there are filmmakers and journalists, models in branded wear, a few gay men in kitschy clothing. alcohol flows, and hors d'oeuvres make the rounds. standing quietly in a corner, i open the book these people are here to celebrate, and read: 'next year, bombay's population will top 27.5 million (greater than the continent of australia's); by 2014, it is likely to outrank tokyo as the world's most populated urban area. bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet. god help us.'

it is 1 am. all around me, the people of mumbai party on. there is more alcohol, more chatter, more artificial displays of affection. maybe the city is just too afraid to sleep.

smell that teen spirit

2006-09-08T17:32:00.000+05:30

so, suskind's tale about scent has finally been adapted for cinema. an extremely difficult proposition, of course, considering how much the prose relies on recreating the sense of smell. then again, if words work, a director can always argue about images being equally powerful triggers. for now, kurt cobain's take on the affair from 1993's in utero. boys and girls, scentless apprentice:

"like most babies smell like butter
his smell smelled like no other
he was born scentless and senseless
he was born a scentless apprentice

go away - get away, get a-way

every wet nurse refused to feed him
electrolytes smell like semen
i promise not to sell your perfumed secrets
there are countless formulas for pressing flowers

go away - get away, get a-way

i lie in the soll and fertilize mushrooms
leaking out gas fumes are made into perfume
you can't fire me because i quit!
throw me in the fire and i won't throw a fit

go away - get away, get away, get away, get a-way"

game boy

2006-08-11T15:30:00.000+05:30

vikram chandra is an easy man to hang around with. his hair is tousled; his demeanour, casual. it isn’t hard to imagine a gangster drawing out life stories for his perusal. which probably explains why a number of gangsters did -- as did a number of mumbai’s police officers -- when chandra went about doing research for his latest novel, sacred games.

with mumbai’s underworld as a backdrop, the book is, in a sense, about that timeless battle between good and evil. and yet, its characters – police detective sartaj singh versus gangster ganesh gaitonde – never really stick to the boundaries this battle necessitates. they exist almost constantly within a grey area, their motives crystal clear only to themselves. it’s a long ride, but a fast one, with a great deal of almost bollywood-inspired masala thrown in for good measure.

for now, the author and i are at the taj lands end hotel in suburban mumbai, sitting around a table at the business centre, surrounded by cups of coffee and bottles of water. vikram chandra has just flown in from delhi, and is feeling a bit under the weather. the weather itself is unrelenting, with grey skies and incessant rain making the hotel seem warmer and brighter than usual.

not so long ago, much was made of the million-dollar advance chandra obtained for sacred games, supposedly the highest ever paid to an indian writer. there was a bidding war for publishing rights, and penguin india has finally released the book, with translations in a few regional languages to follow. if the author is worried about the expectations riding on this 900-page novel, it doesn’t show.

much has happened since a younger chandra, determined to become a writer, moved to america, came across an autobiography of a nineteenth century soldier and made him the central character of his debut novel, red earth and pouring rain. he has since published an award-winning collection of short stories, worked as a computer programmer and consultant for clients as intriguing as the houston zoo, taught literature and writing at the university of california, and even co-written a hindi film.

it’s been a colourful life.

on this rainy evening, he appears to be quite at ease. the novel is out, and there’s nothing to do but wait for reactions. as we talk about his work, other facets of vikram chandra’s personality creep in. i learn that he likes the film l a confidential; he talks about sitting down to dinner with real-life gangsters and enjoying their brand of humour; and, yes, he even does a mean imitation of shashi kapoor from the film deewar, going “mere paas maa hain...” before laughing out loud.

as i said, definitely an easy person to hang around with...

stop all the clocks...

2006-08-02T21:27:00.000+05:30

“…the stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
for nothing now can ever come to any good.”

-- funeral blues, w h auden.

blood on the tracks

2006-07-13T16:41:00.000+05:30

after the crowds had come and gone, and the streets had quietened, and the skies had wept and the sun set, the limbs began to whisper.

pawar's finger, gupte's arm, chauhan's torso, zakir's foot.

in little nooks and corners across mumbai, the bodies they belonged to lay still. friends and relatives stepped over and about, tears falling to meet the blood-stained floors.

far from the noise, quiet in the night, pawar's finger, gupte's arm, chauhan's torso and zakir's foot lay side by side. they knew they were missed. for now, that was enough.

con hai yeh

2006-06-27T20:05:00.000+05:30

lecture at the office three days ago. moron steps up to the microphone to say: "i was a loser. my wife and children hated me. my job paid me next to nothing. then, i found the art of living. today, i’m still a loser. the wife still hates me. but, my breathing has improved."

in related news, the basic course now costs rupees 7500. that's 6000 more than what it used to cost in the early days when few had heard of shankar the bastard. the times of india hadn’t begun promoting him yet, see? maybe the effeminate fool needs new satin clothing, hence the price hike.

and yes, as of today, no followers of the art of living are welcome at my home. in fact, if you follow sri sri whatever, don't bother calling me. you’re out.

god's little soldier

2006-06-07T15:24:00.000+05:30

it is 4.30 pm at an apartment in south mumbai, and kiran nagarkar is persuading me to share a packet of biscuits with him. he apologises for offering me one that is broken. we are in the middle of a discussion on his work, and he is using the example of a pool of water to describe the kind of transparency he seeks in his writing. “it may be a pond; i don’t know what you call it,” he says, trying to find that elusive unbroken biscuit, “my vocabulary isn’t very good.”

what is one to make of this man? winner of the 2001 sahitya akademi award for the novel cuckold, author of the landmark marathi novel saat sakkam trechalis (published in english as seven sixes are forty three), creator of a controversial play based on the mahabharata called bedtime story – and here he is, rooting around for whole biscuits, criticising his own vocabulary.

like much of his work, nagarkar emerges in layers. there’s the affable layer, followed by the self-deprecating one, followed by the harder shell created after years of unwarranted criticism by people unable to fathom his work. it’s when you tap that shell that he lights up, going back to positions he has staunchly stood by for years now. and yet, there’s also an element of playfulness that runs through most of what he says. it makes any meeting with him, strangely, a lot like a reading of his work.

and what a body of work it is. from the vibrant and quintessentially mumbai novel ravan and eddie, to the irreverent seven sixes are forty-three, to that unimaginable mix of genres called cuckold, to bedtime story, performances of which were banned for 17 years by fundamentalist parties including the shiv sena. then there is his other work in theatre -- kabirache kay karayche and stranger amongst us -- and his screenplays -- the broken circle, the widow and her friends.

nagarkar, born in mumbai in 1942, has often spoken of his childhood, of how his grandfather was ostracized because he broke away from the vice-like grip of the chitpavan brahmins, about how the marathi people have never forgiven him for writing in english, and how his hybrid work has never been fully accepted. but it has been nine years since the author last stepped into the spotlight. years that have yielded his latest novel, god’s little soldier. it documents the life and times of zia khan – born with the belief that he is to be a waalee: the anointed one, destined to bring back to islam those who have strayed.

from bombay to cambridge, islam to christianity to hindu mysticism, zia’s path is as tortuous as it is colourful. it is an intriguing topic for a writer like nagarkar. and then again, maybe it isn’t, considering this is a man long inured to the rigours of intolerance. zia’s fate is linked with that of his brother, amanat, who chooses a quieter path. and nagarkar walks that fine line between both, never straying from his long-held worldview of tolerance.

while eating our way through that packet of biscuits, we talk of literary criticism, or the lack of it in india. we discuss shakespeare and the shiv sena, rabelais and fred astaire, opera and the tamasha, salman rushdie and ginger rogers. and through it all, kiran nagarkar is resolute. he knows quite clearly what it is he believes in, and stands by it. it’s what all soldiers do.

when it’s time for me to leave, he asks me to stop by again. “these are the hazards of coming to visit a third-rate author,” he laughs. i tell him this is unfair, that he shouldn’t be so self-deprecating. he nods. “that is true. is it also, ultimately, self-defeating.” then, he laughs again.

what is one to make of this man?

i am india's next godman

2006-05-08T17:42:00.000+05:30

it’s about time. the ways and means are in place. the time is ripe. the masses lie constantly in wait. so, yes, i think i will nominate myself for the post.

i owe it to myself to take this, the easy way out. i have spent years behind computers, correcting bad copy, conducting interviews with the articulate and the inarticulate. i have tried all manner of public transport and worked all hours in the desperate hope of being able to save enough for a decent music system.

but, no more. a change is in order. there’s a godman in me struggling to get out.

i have a hundred models to choose from. men and women who have crawled out of obscurity to now hold forth for hours on the aastha channel. i have seen the rise, and further rise, of men and women in saffron and white, their lives turned around. they have started out travelling on foot, and now hotfoot it from country to country by business class on a 747.

i have seen relatively rational folk budget spiritual needs into their monthly pay packets, allocating fixed sums for breathing exercises so a few schools can carry the name of their godman of choice. i have seen politicians and film stars – the two groups that stoop for no man or law – grovel at the feet of these saffron-clad messengers of god. maybe they beg forgiveness for their greed or stupidity, i know not which.

so, yes, my time has come.

it’s all a question of how carefully i play my cards. i could start by picking a religious treatise to revive. it’s fashionable, after all, to pick a vague scholarly text or practice, then tweak it a little before reintroducing it to a fawning public. a new breathing exercise, perhaps, or a stretching exercise to help you deal with arthritis. combined with a soft, slightly androgynous tone of voice, i could coerce millions into stretching their bodies, changing the shape of my bank balance while they’re at it.

maybe i could consult the ancient texts once more, turn to kautilya’s arthasastra and come up with new arguments for a benign dictatorship. or the manusmriti, perhaps, for new insights into the caste system. better still, maybe i could combine the wisdom of the two and add a stretching exercise to come up with a complete package i could then charge people to expound upon at weekly sessions.

rs. 1000 for a beginner’s course. 2000 for an intermediary. 5000 for a masters. and then, it’s all a question of sitting back and letting them spread the message of peace and love and all the stuff we’ve been discussing since time began. it’s all in the packaging, you disbeliever, you.

the next thing to do is rope in a couple of celebrities. there are always a few hanging around in the hope of getting a little spirituality into their systems. if i could hook a celebrity columnist or two, it would make my life even simpler. add a few business barons, and i’d be ready for take off.

there are other gimmicks i could pull, of course. a trademark handshake, perhaps. a good, solid handshake to all who come along for a darshan. i could be the handshaking godman, the spiritual leader who takes away your heartache with a well-meaning shake. i could have foreign tourists speak about how that handshake changed their lives, how they felt something pure and simple course through their palms and stir their souls. it could be done.

i understand the title is terribly important too. what i choose call myself will, after all, be the name adorning all those stickers defacing trains and public property. 'lindsay bapu' won’t swing it. they simply won’t buy it in rural areas where people simply aren’t taught to pronounce the name 'lindsay' correctly. i could try a few combinations, perhaps. 'maha yogi lin baba'? 'baba lin jogi yogi'? it’s a work in progress, that one.

the thing is, spirituality isn’t about one man’s conversation with his god anymore. spirituality, today, comes with a business plan. marketing, syndication rights, publishing rights, the works. do it well, and for long enough, and you could have a hundred centres of learning in 25 countries named after you. do it better, and you could win a nomination for a nobel peace prize. it’s all been done. trust me.

so, put out your hands and touch the screen. let my magic flow through you. let my inane words heal. let me take your simple lives and make them simpler with the wisdom of the ages now conveniently available at a cyber cafe near me. i have been blessed to be born in a country where fine, silken lines have always divided myth and religion. let me exploit that blessing for my benefit.

men and women of india, your next godman is on his way. get out your purses. and start praying.

hey, girlfriend

2006-04-26T15:40:00.000+05:30

shroffie is a bit of an enigma. she doesn't say much, preferring to stare into the distance as if negotiating battles on some distant island. but her smile – now that’s a revelation. it lifts her, almost physically, from the reticent to the gregarious, letting her bloom suddenly, making you wonder why she doesn’t smile as often. then again, maybe she shouldn’t. if one were to see a bright, red rose at every step, would that single, brilliant flower in a field of green be as tempting?

our original item girl

2006-04-20T20:56:00.000+05:30

it’s an intriguing image. that of a tallish, middle-aged man in glasses staying up into the late hours, watching movie after movie, eyes taking in every movement of a particular woman on screen. the woman in question shakes like a dervish, gliding across polished floors, bright dresses and fiery tassels glittering. at times, the men on screen call her lilly. at other times, she plays a kitty or suzie. what’s undeniable, however, is that the screen loves her. that and the fact that the men wooing her onscreen don’t have to act too hard.

and who can blame them? or the man in glasses, for that matter? once you get a peek at helen, eternal diva of the indian film industry, it’s hard to take your eyes off her.

jerry pinto, man in glasses, is the latest to kneel before helen and acknowledge her mastery over her art. he does it with his latest book, helen: the life and times of an h-bomb (penguin india) – an entertaining, yet thorough guide to the actress’ colourful oeuvre.

pinto’s role as chronicler is, in a sense, apt, given he is as much an outsider to bollywood as his subject once was. helen often served as a ready stereotype. she was usually present to depict the immorality of a western or, more often than not, a christian woman. is that what attracted you to her story, i ask him. “as a roman catholic boy who watched hindi cinema, i think i could always see that catholics of any description were seen as outsiders in commercial hindi cinema,” he replies. “in the book, i argue that this was simply a question of who went to see hindi cinema and who didn’t. while bollywood was willing to make secular gestures by representing muslims as positive characters, parsis and catholics could easily be caricatured because they were ‘westernised’ i.e. they did not watch hindi cinema. in that sense, therefore, yes, i felt i was an outsider looking at another outsider.”

like helen, pinto has taken a long, circuitous route to get to where he is today. from freelancing as a journalist to teaching mathematics and journalism, he has written tv scripts, edited a travel dotcom, dabbled in corporate communications, published a book of poems (asylum), written an entertaining book (surviving women), and is now executive editor of a magazine called man’s world.

see what i mean about a circuitous path?

interestingly, the book came about despite helen denying all requests for an interview. was she averse to the idea of someone telling her story? “i suspect helen has probably had enough of people asking her inane questions about her life and times,” says pinto. “if you think about it, there have been four films made on her. she did not participate in the last two. quite possibly, she simply did not feel that she had much to say. or perhaps she simply did not know who i was, where i was coming from and how i was going to write about her. so, in the end, i gave up. but not without a heartfelt sigh…”

so, he gamely plodded on, going through a career spanning little over 30 years with a fine-toothed comb. the fun part, says pinto, was watching the movies. “the difficult part was reading some 200,000 words of notes and trying to figure out what should stay and what should go. how does one sum up in a paragraph the huge grab-all narrative so as to contextualise helen?” it was a question that took him three years to answer.

the result is an extremely enjoyable book. it neither bores you with detailed analyses, nor does it lose its sense of playfulness – rare when compared to most ponderous works on hindi cinema hitting shelves these days. jerry pinto obviously adores helen, and his enthusiasm is contagious. i ask him about gauging the impact she had on the evolution of the film industry, and he points out that the best of hindi commercial cinema uses melodrama as its central theme. “she offered a range of dangerous women, effortlessly reinventing herself as dancer, gang moll, faithless lover, chinese spy, spanish countess. if there were no helen, we would have had to invent her.”

i tell him that, agreed, she was pretty and she could dance, but so could so many others. how did she succeed where so many failed? he believes that even though helen herself has attributed her success to a combination of good genes (french father, burmese mother, spanish grandfather) and discipline, it goes beyond that. “i think the reason can only be sought (and therefore never found) in the peculiar alchemy of the interaction between audience and actor that turns some into stars and allows others to fade.”

there’s more to it, of course. without helen playing a foil, and without her fall from grace in a majority of her films, the hero’s victory wouldn’t be half as convincing. pinto agrees. he says that, even when the comic comes courting, “and helen was wooed on screen by every joker from rajendranath to mehmood,” his questionable masculinity throws the hero’s virility into clearer focus. without helen, the heroine wouldn’t be as pure, or the hero as good.

“in no other cinema anywhere in the world has a dancer worked for 30 years, vamping three generations of hindi film stars,” pinto points out. “in general, it is the men who last long and the women who fade. here is the first woman who reversed that trend, who defied the gender bias.” he says he found it surprising that a large number of women were as fond of helen as men were. i ask him if anyone among the current crop of actors is capable of playing her, if her story ever makes it to film. “no,” says the writer.

as for the majestic helen, she says little these days, resting her feet after decades of shaking them in gay abandon. jerry pinto believes she has withdrawn a little from the world of cinema. “i believe the process of iconisation has happened without her consent or connivance. she just did what she did and left it to everyone else to figure it out…”

a 21st century pilgrim

2006-04-05T21:23:00.000+05:30

the 28-year old german man sitting before me looks nothing like a sadhu. he's supposed to be one, according to the press release accompanying his first book, return to la paz. but he simply doesn't look the part. "i'm thomas reissmann," he says, smiling, fingers playing carelessly with a string of beads around his neck. he refuses my offer of tea or coffee, asks for water, and says he's ready to answer any questions i might have.

and yes, i have questions. you would too, if you knew what i know about mr reissmann.

to begin with, there's that little detail about his growing up behind the berlin wall. when it collapsed, he decided to make up for lost time and see the world. he began with high school in california, followed it up with courses in tourism management in the uk and australia, then opted for a research assistantship in costa rica. and still, he travelled. to thailand, cambodia, new zealand, and india.

along the way, reissmann found himself in south america, indulged in shamanism and a drug called ayahuasca, and was briefly involved in the region's deadly drug trade. then, one morning, he decided to stop, catch his breath, and write about his extraordinary life. the result was return to la paz. a bizarre account, but a true one nonetheless.

now, wouldn't you have questions?

i start with the wall. put up to separate west berlin from east berlin and the surrounding territory of east germany, it existed from 1961 to 1989. to try and get across meant death. in all, 192 people were killed trying to cross over. more than 200 were seriously injured. thomas reissmann spent his first 13 years under the shadow of that imposing structure. "it was difficult," he tells me, slowly. "i remember looking over and seeing shiny cars, happy people. it was difficult knowing about this different world beyond, and not having access to it. when it finally fell, people partied for weeks. it was a symbol of the collapse of a repressive system. the funny thing is, i look at israel today, and it seems as if it's trying to do pretty much the same thing."

considering the value he sets on searching for a higher, personal truth, i find his choice of subject – tourism management – a little odd. "it fits in, actually," he says, "because there's always something spiritual about travel. it's always a pilgrimage of sorts."

reissmann claims to carry all his worldly possessions in his backpack. he has no fixed home or income, and works whenever and wherever he can in order to support his next trip. i point out that indians believe freedom comes from within. they need not travel to find it. he agrees, but only partly. "when i visit third world countries, i find extreme poverty and a complete lack of the distractions that enable westerners to escape. people here are compelled to look within themselves, simply because there is little potential for movement without."

looking for less weightier matters, i ask if sadhus have girlfriends. reissmann blushes. he does have one. she lives in the uk and meets him whenever they both have time. "it's always as if we are meeting for the first time," he says. "it's always a new experience."

leaving romance aside, i turn to something more practical, like his backpack. what's in it? "a lot of books, a laptop, video camera and mp3 player." i smile. reissmann smiles too. he knows there's something incongruous about what he has just described, but thinks of himself as "a 21st century pilgrim."

we decide to talk about the book a little. an interesting chapter involves the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca. called yagé in colombia, and ayahuasca in ecuador and peru, it is prepared from segments of a species of vine called banisteriopsis. "it is boiled for around eight hours," says reissmann, who admits to having spent at least one night under its influence. "when it cools, it's a thick, red-coloured concoction. a glass is enough to affect you for three to five hours. some people have visions, others throw up."

another book is already in place, in the manuscript stage. "it's called generation zen and is inspired by robert pirsig's zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. it is a philosophical discussion, but it's also a story of love."

i wonder about how long he can continue with this seemingly rootless existence. the only hint of semi-permanence comes from an interesting plan he has in the offing – combining his professional tourism training with ecology and spiritualism to launch what he calls 'eco-spiritual tourism'. yes, india definitely will be on the itinerary, he assures me.

what about regular things – family, children, pet dogs running around the backyard? "i think i'd like to have it all, at some point," says reissmann. "i'd also like to keep travelling and writing, and be able to support projects that are of some importance to me."

i have one last question before he leaves. as a spiritual being moving in capitalist circles, is there something he would like to tell the movers and shakers of corporate india? "i would like to ask them if they are happy with the way they are living," he says, suddenly serious. "if they genuinely are, i have no problems with that. i also think the men in suits have the potential to make a difference."

with that, reissmann is off, although he's not sure where to. "i don't make plans because they are pointless. they rarely work out, and they are boring." we part with a handshake. he turns towards the unfamiliar adventures of his world; i head for the staid familiarity of mine.

spot the conniving bastard

2006-03-13T17:08:00.000+05:30

hint: he's not the guy with the fake ph.d.

rage: when politics and fiction collide

2006-03-09T16:11:00.000+05:30

balaji venkateswaran is not a politician. he knows nothing about the personal lives of our political personalities, nor has he voted in his life. what he can do quite well though is sniff out material for a good story. rage, his debut novel, is solid proof.

i have, like most others, thought of political careers as tedious. there's money to be made, of course, but not everyone wants to wade through the all-encompassing murkiness to get to it. for venkateswaran, however, it is precisely this moral ambiguity surrounding the political milieu that generates drama. his is a novel about politicians. they crowd its pages and creep up on its protagonists. they plan, connive and manipulate.

and, at the centre of it all, stands a jayalalithaa-like figure called lakshmi.

rage documents her life through the many roles she is compelled to play – from abandoned child to professional dancer, politician-in-training to megalomaniac. did he actually set out to write about selvi j jayalalithaa, the current honourable chief minister of tamil nadu? venkateswaran isn't exactly forthcoming in his reply. "i began this as an attempt to understand the public actions of our politicians," he says. "i started writing in the fabulist style, as a sort of political and social parable. at the same time, my characters were tugging at me to ground them in reality. i had to select a milieu for the story and, even though i've hardly lived in tamil nadu, i felt i knew it better. hence, i began placing characters and events in what became increasingly recognisable as tamil nadu."

it is an understatement of sorts, considering the political scenario of tamil nadu permeates most of the novel. what makes lakshmi's story more interesting, however, are the smaller tales weaving in and out of her own. there's the story of her mother, banned from home after falling for a former actor. there's her teacher, sister cecilia and her marionettes inspired by characters of the sixteenth-century italian commedia dell'arte. there's lakshmi own adolescent affair, a secret that returns to haunt her years later. and there's the passive narrator, a former friend who is now a journalist, forced to watch her life unfold from a distance, powerless to change its course.

"the novel began as an attempt to understand why politicians are the way they are," says venkateswaran, "but it quickly became more of an exploration of lakshmi's inner and personal life, with politics being a device to explore the character." politics is only part of the narrative, he adds. "it is more about a woman's lifelong search for permanence in human relationships."

even though venkateswaran neatly sidesteps the issue, no one who reads rage can fail to draw parallels with political figures in real life. lakshmi is transformed after meeting with mutthu, an ageing tamil superstar who wants to be a politician. wooed into becoming his mistress, she is suddenly the centre of a new world of greed, power and over-the-top opulence.

"what i decided was to create amalgams of characters," the author explains. still, one can't ignore the almost palpable presence of m g ramachandran. think about mgr's death, jayalithaa's hesitant foray into politics, and her subsequent rise, and more connections crop up. there's also a pale, italian woman who controls her indian husband's business interests. even 'aranmalai', the palatial abode lakshmi builds for herself, brings 'vedanilayam' -- jayalalithaa's poes garden mansion -- to mind.

to his credit, given the plot's many twists and turns, venkateswaran manages it all like a master, at times resembling one of his characters – a puppeteer employed by lakshmi to veil social issues at electoral rallies. when it all starts to crumble, lakshmi is left with nothing but the old, familiar rage and her inability to forgive. "the novel is also an attempt to show that the line separating perpetrator from victim often blurs," venkateswaran explains. "lakshmi, after all, is as much a victim (of her demons) as are the others who face the consequences of her actions."

the writing is taut and, even though he sometimes slides into cliché (a cardboard cut-out of lakshmi falling onto a slum and killing people), venkateswaran usually manages to rescue himself almost immediately with a bit of verbal dexterity (lakshmi's visit to the slum leading to the accidental death of a boy). apart from his ability to simply carry a tale forward, the author also uses his narrative as a tool to make a number of comments – be it on the tricky relationship between society and the people that rule it or an analysis of how the caste system shapes impressions.

given his obvious talent as a writer, i find it strange that the novel has, by and large, been ignored by the media. venkateswaran believes it could be any number of things to blame – "the subject matter, or perhaps people are wary of misinterpreting its intent …" echoing what a number of first-time authors increasingly feel, he also believes it is hard to get attention unless there's a story surrounding the book, a huge advance involved, or someone pushing it diligently.

born in chennai 37 years ago, venkateswaran grew up in other parts of india, particularly pune and mumbai. he left for america to pursue a master's degree in computer engineering and is a software engineer by training and profession. he now lives in the san francisco bay area with his wife and two children. and no, rage isn't his first attempt at writing. he has done short stories and book reviews in the past, some of which have appeared in publications such as india west, indian review of books and weber studies. "i'm a writer by temperament," he tells me. and i believe him.

we discuss a few more things, such as his interest in politics ("i'm more interested in understanding how power dynamics play out in the world"), why he retained part of the dialogue in tamil ("it is impossible to capture faithfully in english the nuances of the languages these characters use, and their social and political connotations"), the possibility of rage being published in the west ("my agent is working on it") and his interest in dancing ("i spent a fair amount of time learning about bharatnatyam in order to write the novel"). he is now hard at work on his next novel, set in india and the u.s.

ultimately, whether or not one examines rage in the light of south indian politics is irrelevant. a good book is, after all, a good book. it's that ghostly presence of jayalalithaa that makes this just a little bit better.

25 things that will never happen in 2006

2006-02-21T14:52:00.000+05:30

1. amitabh bachchan will retire from the big and small screens to devote more time to gardening.

2. the board of control for cricket in india will decide to switch loyalties and promote neglected sports like football and hockey instead.

3. bappi lahiri and anu malik will both come up with stunning, original compositions that will garner them international praise.

4. raj and uddhav thackeray will plan a big party and invite common friends to dance the night away.

5. lalu prasad yadav will decide to give up politics and concentrate on animal husbandry.

6. sonia gandhi will release a book of poems in hindi and invite atal bihari vajyapee to the launch.

7. film critics and audiences will agree on hits and misses at the box-office.

8. natwar singh will drop politics and attempt to kick-start a career in television by resurrecting an old game show called tol mol ke bol. he will decide to play host.

9. the ramsay brothers will sign a joint venture with dev anand to produce more films, horrifying audiences across the country even before shooting begins.

10. the government of maharashtra will reintroduce the ban on plastic. this time, they will actually stick to it.

11. gujarat will break away from india and become america’s fifty-first state. it will also rename itself goojer rath.

12. the jana gana mana bootylicious-babydoll-06 remix will hit music stores after composers realize it’s the only classic they haven’t fiddled around with.

13. narendra modi will opt for conversion and start introducing himself to members of parliament as anthony d’costa.

14. prominent politicians will throw press conferences and explain, in detail, how they have managed to accumulate their wealth.

15. telecom companies, municipalities and road development authorities across india will begin working in tandem, to ensure roads in major cities are dug up just once a year.

16. the election commission will pass a new rule insisting on literate candidates for elections. 90 per cent of all members of parliament will resign in protest after failing to meet the minimum criteria.

17. macho male film stars will realize that singing is best left to professionals.

18. the mayor of mumbai will do something of importance.

19. telemarketing agents will stop calling to find out if our cell phones operate on pre-paid or billing schemes.

20. the long-pending women’s reservation bill will finally be passed, after male politicians realize that women really are better administrators.

21. david dhavan will give us an intelligent film.

22. delhi will be india’s new centre for art, culture and all things thought-provoking.

23. l k advani will decide to produce a film called jinnah: also rising and will ask aamir khan to play the lead.

24. aamir khan will accept l k advani’s offer.

25.sri sri ravi shankar will tell the world the truth about how he has been a conman for two decades. he will then shoot himself on national television, unleashing a month-long celebration among the world's literate.

why does kalam have a kalam?

2006-01-04T17:20:00.000+05:30

for the few still following his blazing trail across the fields of indian writing in english, our president has struck again. i was drawn to his latest masterpiece by curiosity. after all, its title, the life tree, was followed by the word ‘poems’. interesting, i thought. after vajpayee, another nominal figurehead dabbling in verse.

it didn't look terribly inviting. the sleeve promised readers "a walk, through anecdote and poetry, over the terrain of his life." and, to be fair, the anecdotes were many. pointless, but many. it was the poetry that was missing. "kalam's world is one of simplicity and beauty," the blurb continued, "in which nature figures prominently, as do human relationships and love for the country. there is also the constant, benign presence of god…" all true. the words 'creator', 'divine' and 'almighty' make their presence felt on every second page, as do the words 'bless', 'lamp' and 'knowledge'.

stifling the urge to shut it and run for cover, i swallowed, and turned to the first poem, song of youth:
"i am one of the citizens of the billion;
only the vision will ignite the billion souls.
it has entered into me…"

'billion' was, as i would soon find out, another of the president's favourite words. but what was he trying to say? what vision would ignite the aforementioned souls? what had entered into him? and why was he unleashing it on us, the unsuspecting billions?

in his foreword, atal bihari vajpayee believes "dr kalam shows a deep understanding of the problems of indian society, and attempts to find solutions to problems with compassion, detachment, forbearance and sympathy." he must know something i don't.

dr a. p. j. kalam was, at the last count, responsible for four books. he was project director of india's first indigenous satellite launch vehicle programme, chairman of the technology information, forecasting and assessment council, and recipient of the bharat ratna. i could be wrong, but i foresee few awards from the sahitya akademi.

back to the attempt at poetry. in dr kalam's special world, scansion does not exist. nor does prosody. the poem from which the book takes its title, the life tree, is solid proof:
"my little habitat, the star
where my race has lived billions of years
and will live billions of years more, till the sun shines."

i was taught that art ought to be mimetic. that it ought to teach us something about ourselves. that it ought to take the plain and reinvent it. in nature, kalam chooses to give us this instead:
"bright blue sky, at r.c.i. that day
my thoughts were soaring on freedom,
hope was their strand in radiance of peace,
hillocks were spotted in embracing clouds,
scientists were working, silently, heads down:"

the poem goes on to tell us how scientists prompted our president to search for god. he found the almighty, apparently, with the help of a robin on a bush somewhere. he ends -- yes, patient reader, it does end after a while -- with something called my national prayer:
"help all the leaders of my country to give strength
and bless the nation with peace and prosperity.
give strength to all my religious leaders to bring
unity of minds among all our billion people."

no art. no prosody. just the word 'billion' thrown about a billion times. and something every fourth 9-year-old has scribbled at some point for a school exam. would a publisher accept this if it were to come from someone else? would you or i stand a chance at getting something like this published or distributed by a big firm? being an able president is one thing; doing a bad job in an unrelated area, something else.

i turn to the cover sleeve one last time. "he always has time to spare," it tells me, "even in the midst of a busy schedule, to wonder at the beauty of god's creation."

i wish he had a little less time to spare.

on a more positive note, there's confronting love: poems, a pocket-sized anthology put together to "convey the myriad nuances of love." a lot of the poems here work, simply because they are written by accomplished men and women who have spent years honing their craft. the problems creep in with the few amateurs strewn across some of the pages. for these folk, poetry is a mix of abstraction and e. e. cummings.

the poets here that moved me -- vinay dharwadker (waking), agha shahid ali (leaving your city), tara patel (request), jayant mahapatra (of that love), jeet thayil (sailor's log), arundhathi subramaniam (vigil), ruth vanita (distance) and arun kolatkar (lice) -- were not the usual suspects. not for creators of love poems, that is.

i continue to hope that dr kalam will take a few notes from them. because, given the time he allocates to wondering at god's creation, something tells me he'll soon be back.

brave new words

2005-12-22T18:40:00.000+05:30

if you stop by rana dasgupta's web site, you will find a peculiar page with the words, 'disfigure this site.' if you pick up his first novel, tokyo cancelled, you will find a great many peculiar pages. both site and novel require you to suspend disbelief and plunge in.

when you emerge, slowly, closing the last page and switching off your night lamp, you will think two thoughts. one, indian writing in english is not dead; two, rana dasgupta could soon force a great many writers to reinvent their approach to the language.

the premise of tokyo cancelled – people stranded at an airport telling stories to kill time -- is as simple as it is timeless. within its vivid pages can be found traces of geoffrey chaucer's canterbury tales, giovanni boccaccio's decameron, fairy tales by the grimm brothers and even a hint of the arabian nights. knotted in an awkward circle, surrounded by silent suitcases, the 13 passengers waiting for their flight string out tales that shock you just by their imagination.

"i am deeply indebted, not only to chaucer and boccaccio, but to many other medieval storytellers," says dasgupta. "strangely enough, they provide a language that seems more appropriate to our age than the realist tradition of the nineteenth century, because we are also living in a time of magical transformations -- 'learn a language in two hours! become attractive to women!' -- and spiritual battles. and they (the medieval writers) offer us the 'story cycle', a form where the connections between parts are by theme, not by character. it is a form whose dispersed nature seems to work better with our scattered global geography than the novel's centred, all-seeing eye."

the phrase 'scattered global geography' is telling. dasgupta's tales may reach far beyond the commonplace, but they have extremely valid comments to make on our position in a shrinking, fractured world. the 33-year old is qualified to comment too, considering his years spent in various corners -- born in england, raised in cambridge, stints in france, kuala lumpur and new york, and currently living in delhi. the tellers of his tales reflect this life in transit, drawing all kinds of stories from the world's great cities.

in one night, then, dasgupta encapsulates the cultural topography of a planet.

i ask him what aspect of this literary landscape he would ascribe to living in india (he moved to delhi in 2001). "i think one of the things european societies have successfully done is suppress the deep contradictions between different forms of life beneath an apparent consensus," he replies. "living in india has made it much more difficult to believe in such generalisations. i've become much more interested in the amazing variety of ways by which people imagine the meaning of life."

and variety is what tokyo cancelled gives you in immense doses. there's the story of japanese businessman yukio, who falls obsessively in love with a doll he has created. there's robert de niro's son pavel and his girlfriend isabella, unhappy souls who suddenly find cookies that can transform matter. there's natalie, the ukrainian trader, who finds her lost lover with the help of a wingless bird born in his throat. a 'memory editor' hired to sift through people's memories and create software called 'mypast' for a generation forgetting its past. an insomniac indian billionaire who dares play with genetics for want of a child...

some may point out that the thread connecting these stories is flimsy. but that flimsiness, i would assume, is precisely the point. even the themes of the canterbury tales -- deceit, courtly love, greed -- varied greatly, as did the styles they were documented in. what they all had in common was the need to present the virtues and faults that define human nature.

while dasgupta's commentary on a fast-shrinking globe comes through clearly, his vision is far from positive. "you're right that there is a cynicism about the real meaning of our globalisation," he says. "and yet, the whole premise of my book is utopian: that diverse strangers in an airport might find a wonderful language to communicate with each other."

so, in that sterile space, a non-identifiable airport, these strangers sit and talk into the night, using their unimaginable stories to learn more about themselves and the world they live in. by the time you finish listening in, you learn something too. you learn how elusive the concept of globalisation really is, for example; how it appears to bring people closer, yet manages to maintain boundaries. it becomes clear, then, that the writer's use of a highly symbolic language is apt.

"this is simply how the world strikes me," he says. "it's also to do with the search for a language that can gather many contradictory things into itself." he also refers to his writing as film-like. "i like the idea of the 'cut' in film, the idea of stopping just when enough has been said and starting off again in a new direction. it makes for a concise language, and one full of gaps in which the reader's imagination does all the work."

that tokyo cancelled has struck a chord is evident, raising the possibility of dasgupta being labelled the next big thing in indian fiction. that promise is something only his next novel may fulfil. and yes, he has been working on it for some months now. if stray reports are anything to go by, it's about a modern-day prophet losing contact with his world.

despite rumours of a huge advance, dasgupta grumbles a little: "i was much better off before i gave up gainful employment to sit in a room and write books."

i'm glad he did though.

sari shopper

2005-12-01T20:40:00.000+05:30

she sounds a lot like my grandmother. that's the first thought i have whenever rupa bajwa picks up the phone. it's a quiet, world-weary 'hello' that comes across the line, all the way from amritsar, where she currently lives. "why do you sound so tired?" i ask, from the big bad world of mumbai. "that's how i am," she replies, in a tone implicating me in the role of noisy city-dweller.

the photograph she sends me is of a young woman with a look that can best be described as pensive. there's a faraway look about her, and a faint, extremely faint, hint of a smile. it is from this combination of grandmotherly voice and pensive visage that comes the quiet violence of ramchand, protagonist of bajwa's debut novel, the sari shop.

it is a debut that came as a surprise to me, more because i hadn't expected such rich textures – crisp bangladeshi cottons, dazzling kanjeevarams, soft chiffons, rustling crepes – or sudden streaks of violence when i first spoke to bajwa, a couple of months before the novel was to be released. she was quiet, still grandmotherly, giggling as we spoke of life, literature, and the merits and demerits of alcohol. when i finally read the sari shop, the thing that struck me most was the incongruity of such a novel from the quiet, giggling bajwa.

the novel documents the life and times of ramchand, an orphan working at a sari shop in old amritsar. unlike the people he works with, he knows, instinctively, that his life is devoid of some larger meaning. a trip to the posh parts of the city reiterates this, prompting him to try and better himself at once. studying english – with the help of, among other things, the complete oxford dictionary and complete letter writer – becomes the way out.

"he seemed to have appeared in my life on his own," says bajwa, when i ask her where the idea of a salesman at a sari shop came from. "i had written some short stories a few years ago, and one of them was about ramchand. the idea and character stayed with me. i could not write as quickly as i wanted to. i had to work towards taking some time off, saving money, and arranging other things. finally, i managed to take nine months off to complete it. as the protagonist of the novel, i really like ramchand very much."

it's difficult not to like ramchand very much. he's simple, charming, and terribly naïve. there is something about him we can all identify with, whether it is his sense of helplessness or the feeling of inadequacy he is so prone to experiencing. he lives alone, in a tiny, messy room, with no one but his thoughts and the odd sexual fantasy for company. companionship, for him, does not extend beyond gokul and hari, his colleagues at the shop. life outside is rarely more exciting than dinner at a dhaba, a glass of mosumbi juice, or re-runs at the local cinema. it's a sad life, and we learn to empathize.

bajwa has muted responses to questions about the actual writing process. where do you do most of it, i ask. "in different places," she replies. "every room i live in looks pretty much the same – lots of books, pens and paper, my alarm clock..." and what do you wear while writing? i persist, for no apparent reason but to annoy her. "shut up," she says, muttering about shabby nightgowns and laughing about my threat to print that.

a lot of people have grown to like the sari shop. some liked it so much that they nominated the book for the orange prize for 2004. while bajwa's presence on the long-list (andrea levy won for small island) was laudable, even better was the company she kept – margaret atwood (oryx and crake), monica ali (brick lane), rose tremain (the colour), and toni morrison (love).

there are two things about the sari shop that, to my mind, justified bajwa's inclusion. first, it is her immense gift for characterisation. ramchand, kamla, gopal, the kapoors, the guptas – they are all well-rounded, well-depicted folk, their idiosyncrasies intact. the author captures small-town life perfectly, from the products on display at grocery stores to dishes served at street stalls, the nuances of hindi detective fiction, translations of film songs, to the importance of saving face that drives the richer women of amritsar to collect crystal for its snob value.

did she consciously aim for that realism, or did she want a psychological novel or novel of ideas instead? "this was a first attempt," says bajwa. "i think no matter what the form or genre of writing, it's okay as long as the core is honest and makes sense to me. i like sense. i don't like nonsense, that's all."

she's not very comfortable discussing terms like third world literature either. i point out that a lot of writers of fiction in india today opt for the genre of magic realism. does economics play a role in this decision? does it imply that western audiences can swallow magic realism more easily than, say, a novel about grassroots reality? bajwa is non-committal. "someone asked me if i was 'pandering to western readers'. to be honest, i have no clue what my neighbour wants to read, let alone readers anywhere in the world. i mean, how am i supposed to know?"

she asks me to italicise the 'i' in that last statement, telling me it denotes her desperation at questions like these.

deciding to change track, wisely, i ask her if the novel's appearance on the orange prize long list came as a surprise, or if she expected the accolades. "i had heard about the booker, not the orange prize," she says, "so it took me a while to register. as for the accolades, i somehow don't see them like that. i don't take compliments or criticism to heart."

the second thing that i think justifies bajwa's success is her ability to depict the undercurrents that lie beneath india's seemingly chaotic reality. as ramchand goes about his dreary routine, things happen. situations reveal a reality radically different from what he has come to accept. he begins to realise, slowly, that all is not as it seems in quiet amritsar. there are echoes of a horrifying past, a past that comes in the shape of operation bluestar. then there is kamla, the wife of one of his colleagues, who takes on the town's elite, blaming them for her husband's unemployment and the eventual collapse of her marriage. the treatment meted out to kamla is swift, and shocking.

there is, for ramchand, a sudden loss of innocence. it devastates him, propelling him into the first act of rebellion he has ever committed.

the novel leaves me with further questions. i ask about kamla, and why she seems almost half-formed when compared to ramchand. "i wanted her story to be slightly off-stage all the time," says bajwa. "this was deliberate. even till the end, ramchand learns of her fate only through the other shop assistants; i don't describe what happens." i point to many female victorian writers who used violent female characters that gave voice to their repressed alter egos. are there parts of bajwa in kamla? "not really," she says. "and if there are, there would be equal parts in ramchand."

rupa spent the first 18 years of her life in amritsar, and began writing at 21. today, for a 28- year old, she hasn't done too badly. she is satisfied with the novel as a whole ("there is nothing i would have liked to add") and is hard at work on her next ("i would rather not talk about it.").

considering her gift for capturing the nuances of settings and space, i ask if she has ever experimented with poetry. "it is a very difficult thing to do well," she tells me. "i have never had an urge to try my hand at it. and i am sure that if i did, the results would be pretty ghastly."

rupa, my dear, i beg to disagree.

things to do

2005-11-29T14:13:00.000+05:30

go read nilita vachani's homespun. elaborate plot, crisp prose, and a cast of strong women characters that made me smile more than a couple of times. what i like best about books like vachani's is their ability to leap out at you when you approach them with no expectations. yes, the suketu mehta endorsement on the cover is rather pointless, but i suppose people who live outside mumbai will feel the need to pick it up precisely for that little comment he makes. they do look up to him, after all.

as for vachani, i hope she decides to write a second novel. given her familiarity with cinema, and that taste of first blood with homespun, it's a second attempt i intend to keep an eye out for.

the chagall connection

2005-11-28T20:47:00.000+05:30

"...eve incurs god’s displeasure.
passion.
odysseus and penelope,
ulysses and penelope,
the festival,
in hell.

in winter,
the winged painter,
the winged painter,
washington square --
let’s go see a day in may
from the winged painter."

-- tori amos, garlands, the beekeeper.

tales from the inquisition

2005-11-21T14:40:00.000+05:30

tiago zarco lies alone, in a dark cell, licking rainwater off the walls for a taste of freedom.

it is a compelling opening to a compelling novel -- guardian of the dawn, by richard zimler. this is the third instalment of the author's 'sephardic cycle' (following the best-selling last kabbalist of lisbon and hunting midnight), tracing jewish experiences of persecution through generations of one family. what makes it special for us is the setting: sixteenth century goa.

guardian of the dawn deserves to be read because it focuses on a period in history few of us are familiar with -- the inquisition in india.

'they'd arrest christ if he dared show his face in this wretched city,' writes zimler, referring to the paranoia of a colony living under a corrupt regime. by the time the sixteenth century drew to a close, goa was under portuguese rule. the catholic inquisition was on in full swing, and the practice of any other religion was forbidden. native hindus and immigrant jews were branded as 'sorcerers'. those who refused to give up their beliefs or betray those still practicing them were strangled or burnt alive in public autos-da-fe -- a word that means 'act of the faith' and refers to sessions of the court of inquisition.

into this setting made for the historical mystery novel, zimler introduces us to the zarco family.

after years of sticking to their portuguese-jewish roots, the zarcos are betrayed to the inquisition. father and son are imprisoned. tiago zarco's father is tortured by the portuguese, but chooses to kill himself rather than reveal the names of converts practicing judaism. eventually, tiago finds himself in the same cell once occupied by his father. resisting conversion, he escapes death but is exiled to lisbon. he uses this time to re-examine his childhood meticulously, trying to figure out who betrayed his father and him. following his release, tiago returns to india bent on revenge. when the source of betrayal is revealed, however, his plans change beyond recognition.

guardian of the dawn moves between prison and tiago's recollections of a happy childhood. it documents his drastic development from gentle, compassionate soul to a man consumed by murderous rage. zimler also uses his novel to document, effectively, the cruelty and fanaticism of the portuguese invaders.

he tells me that thousands of jews, muslims and hindus perished in the autos-da-fe. when i promptly question his sources, he replies: "there is a lot of information online. i also used a. k. priolkar's the goa inquisition. it says the inquisition played a prominent role both in bringing pressure on secular authorities to pass discriminatory legislation as well as enforcing those measures. it also documents the dates of public autos-da-fe -- like september 20, 1562, november 15, 1563 and june 27, 1563, etc. -- and says that there were 16,172 cases tried by the inquisition between 1561 and 1774. another useful book was romesh bhandari's goa. bhandari says by the end of the seventeenth century, it is estimated that out of a population of 250,000, only 20,000 were non-christians. these included large numbers of traders and visitors who were in goa temporarily."

richard zimler is an interesting man. he was born in new york, in 1956, to a secular jewish family. his grandparents came to america from poland at the turn of the century. though he didn't practice judaism, he grew up within the culture. he had regular tastes as a child -- sports, comic books -- and went on to study comparative religion and music at duke university. he played classical guitar for a while, then went to stanford university for a masters in journalism. after working as a journalist for eight years, he moved to portugal in 1990 and has taught journalism there since.

he has also, over the last decade, published more than 20 short stories and six novels that have appeared on bestseller lists in 11 countries. numerous awards have followed, including a 1998 herodotus award for best historical novel. the last kabbalist of lisbon was picked as 1998's book of the year by british critics, while hunting midnight has been nominated for the 2005 impac literary award.

interestingly, guardian of the dawn has just hit the bestseller list in india. it is, strangely, listed in the non-fiction category, but people have begun reading it, which is good.

while historical fiction often risks falling either into melodrama or the ponderous unearthing of facts, the novel avoids both pitfalls effortlessly. even better, zimler has the ability to infuse his lessons with flawless prose. when tiago thinks about the noble deeds his father would have liked him to do, for instance, he realises how far he is from that ideal: 'instead, i hoarded my bitterness and rage like a youthful midas, lying on my back on my cot and holding them up to the light so that i could see their shape and lustre, polishing them when alone, always impressed by their purposeful radiance.'

when he is not writing or teaching, zimler enjoys gardening. he is still surprised his books are published in places like poland and turkey, and can't get over the fact that he has had a chance to talk to readers there. "i've been very lucky," he tells me. given the hard work he puts into his work though, i think it's all rather well earned.

why the decision to write about the portuguese inquisition in goa, i ask, considering it must have been a whole other world for him to explore. "i have always been interested in writing about injustice and people whose voices were silenced," he emails in reply. "and i love writing about events most people would prefer to forget about. in a sense, guardian of the dawn became my revenge against religious fanatics. every time a reader opens the book, i consider that part of my revenge!"