in the winter of our disconnect

A few days back, a man called balasaheb thackeray, aging tiger and ailing supremo of the shiv sena made a few snarky comments against sachin tendulkar- cricketing god and all-round nice guy (actually that phrase is more aaccurate the other way round – “cricketing nice guy and all-round god”).  The issue was Sachin’s comment about how he played for India, and not for the state of Maharashtra, and how Mumbai, his city, was for all indians. 

Balasaheb’s patronising manner was criticised by the papers, and his condescension ridiculed.  Some papers used it as a chance to twist the knife in further after the recent humiliating election drubbing, some others pointed at the sena’s increasing disaffection with the pulse of the people.  “Marathi Manoos” has suddenly become a funny buzz word, to be used in cheeky jokes and trying-desperately-to-be-vernacular English newspapers.

Then the Sena struck back.  The office of one of the offending papers was attacked, the editor roughed up, the receptionist slapped.  Escaping journalists were grabbed by the shirts on their backs : buttons popped, fabric ripped.  The sena was triumphant in its admission.  Yes, it was us, they said to anyone who would care to listen, and this is a warning, so please note.

There was media outrage, predictably.  The press angrily demanded just retribution, and the chief minister cooed, and tried to soothe ruffled feathers.  The issue was not about the marathi manoos, he said, it was about vandalism and petty populism.  The attacks were heinous, the perpetrators dastardly.

Then two days later, the chief min raised the marathi manoos issue again in public.  People who are local should be given priority for jobs, he said.  I shall take the matter up with the railway minster, he promised a cheering and adoring audience.

And the media continued to sullenly fold its arms and pout in offended disaffection.

Something does not make sense here.  Hooliganism is one thing, but hooliganism and post- ‘ganism chest- thumping is not usually par for the course, especially when it is such a sensitive issue and involves the greatest sportsman in the land. 

Generally, when a political party owns up to something, you can be sure that that “something” resonates with the approval of a significant number of people, of a group that is on its way to being considered a ‘majority’.  When a political party owns up to vandalism and wilful attacks on media, involving (however obliquely) a national hero, you can be sure that there’s support, even approval.

The bottom line is this: If there was no public support for the entire “maharashtra for maharashtrians” polemic, then it wouldn’t be made, stridently, from every available political pedestal that an avaricious neta can clamber upon.  The very fact that political parties make it a point to defer to linguistic chauvinism to define their ideology means that it resonates with their voting public, as well as with swing voters, disaffected and undecided.

Anyone who has travelled in the dusty bylanes of rural maharashtra will know that there are only two things that penetrate into the heart of the impoverished state: politics and cinema.  While this is true for almost all of the vast rural hinterland in India, in Maharashtra, that other great Indian Arterial presence : The Indian Railways, is conspicuous in its absence.

Cinema is paradoxical, because it is hindi cinema that thrives in the boondocks,  from slick SRK starrers to slimy sordid skinfests.  It is hindi cinema, certainly, but the sensibility it represents (NOT its context – most hindi cinema is exaggerated vaudeville of Punjabi ritual) is something that people feel they can ostensibly connect to, and revel in.

Politics, though, is ubiquitous.  And while each of us purse our lips in exasperation when we see political antics, and their unfortunate consequence, we spare very little thought for the core demographic for whom that elaborate charade is meant.  How many of us have travelled across villages in the country, outside of our own provincial “native places”?  And I don’t mean 79 photographs set against the quaint prettiness of Fatehpur Sikri or Khajuraho, but really travelling through unremarkable shanty towns and rural homesteads, filled with hopeless dreams and the grimy effluent of cities?  When villages are mentioned, how many of us imagine a SRK-less “Swades” landscape, or an amir khan-less Champaran?

For all most of us know, rural India could be anything from an 18th century feudal fief to a idyllic pastoral-paradise filled with belles and moustachioed villains at every corner.

If there is anyone who bothers to visit, or even tries to understand what the hinterland thinks, it is the local candidate, anxious to please, geared to ingratiate.

It is this knowledge that emboldens our political parties, this invaluable understanding of the “grassroots”.  And if the Sena and the MaNSa are pushing the marathi manoos plank, then it is because it finds currency with a significant section of that grassroots.

I am not for one moment condoning the violence and the hoologanism. I am also not for one moment condemning it.  But I do think that with the horrified, faux cosmopolitan and pseudo- liberal reaction to the controversy, urban India and the English media have truly exposed the extent of their disconnect with perspectives that other parts of the country consider justified.  Its as if among the many Indias that coexist in the one great India, two groups of competing India stand, unable to understand the other’s stance or vision.

Truly, this is the winter of our disconnect.

 

things the indian people are doing – 2 :: the mumbai wall project, tulsi road ::

Letter to an ex- mumbaikar:

” see! brilliant idea of bee-emm-cee!
  see! hordes of dreamers descend on pipe road, tulsi!
( http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9822921861#/group.php?gid=9822921861 )
 
see! a row of dull gray transform into a wall of whimsy and wit!
see! lurid bollywood posters of “gair” & “aladin” plastered all over it!
 
(as amitabh glowers and snarls,  riteish plays the lover -
the ex- chief minister’s son, now returned to power)
 
see! righteous indignation galvanise sensitive bombay youth,
see  anger and disgust for publicity most uncouth.
( http://random.asfaq.com/less-than-24-hours-after-the-wallproject )
 
see striped-shirt man in far corner snigger,
(himself a much-maligned, cliched figure)
and whisper:
“yeh hai mumbai meri jaan!”
 
-     nirvana demon (2009)”

 

11 of october, 2009 :: things the indian people are doing – 1 ::

This column is inspired by the immensely popular “stuff white people like” [read http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/]

With significant differences, of course. I’m not white, for instance.  Neither am I christian (nor is my name Christian, for that matter). And most, importantly, Indians aren’t white.

Other attributes are also that they are not homogenous : scattered as they are across more than a couple millenia and a few thousand square kilometres in that faux-rhomboid subcontinent south of the himalayas and flanked by the seas. With a political identity that crystallised itself to its presentness only about 60 years back, (and with transplanted seeds scattered far and wide across the world: Jamaica, Durban, Mauritius, San Jose, Dubai, Toronto), Indianness is both an identity and a self-realisation… who is to say william dalrymple is not Indian, or that the swollen masses outside a soccer field in port au prince are…?

Yet there is a common thread that unites them all, and a common set of likely actions and predictable responses, a thread that broadly fits into the things that the indian people are doing…

Queuing

Its ironic, perhaps, that I begin this series with things Indians are not doing,  what they internalise not to do from a very young age, and what they eventually never learn to do until their dying day, where they would no doubt push and shove to get through the Pearly gates too (“me first! me first!! You bleddy Saint Peter, Do you know who my father is??”)

We were driving through the orderly streets of Durban’s downtown, and suddenly came to a chaotic junction where three cars converged on us, seemingly oblivious of the traffic lights… I turned to her and asked reflexly “Guess where the Indian part of town is!”  She rolled here eyes laterally towards the nearest samosa stall…

Indians hate queues. The fact that someone else should get ahead of me, merely because of having reached that part of the universe earlier, in that specific space-time continuum, is a fact that is abhorrent to every Indian. Queue after queue in front of ticket counters will be thrown into disarray by the one joker who barges up to the head, and tries to muscle his way to the head of the line. What adds insult to injury, of course, is how he will then proceed to turn and loudly berate the people behind him in the line “Why are you pushing me, yes? what-what is it that you are doing?”, or better still, the ones who turn with a sweet smile, and assure you that yes, this is just a small interruption, and he will be off once he is done with the small task of buying the ticket….

And as the snaking queue that stretches all the way to the main gate (and spilling into the road outside) shouts and screams at the interloper in one voice, he will react with equal fervour. His shameless persistence in the face of all berations or his baleful retreat in the face of insurmountable odds will determine his success in the larger Indian Rat Race, where a billion pushing, jostling, shoving mass will leave you behind, if you don’t struggle… to stay in the lead.

And his loud protestations will give a million reasons why he should be allowed to precede everyone else waiting patiently behind him: his urgency, his occupation, his dying grandmother, his broken-down car, his connections in the ruling party, his previous experience waiting in the same line, or, most importantly… his Father’s position in society… (jaanta nahin mera baap kaun hain?)

But that is the subject of another post.

 

 

2nd october 2009 :: Happy Birthday ::

Barack Obama just increased his fan base by another 100 million or so. Amid widespread american disaffection with what they see as selling out to the devil (read republican profligacy and heavy-handedness), this man is looking at other, more friendly shores for his re-election bid.

He should come to India, really. Considering the country’s future options are between a scion of the Nehru Royal family, (whose most notable asset is to be described as  ”well-meaning” and “sincere” by commentators getting their panties in a wad to give him a great review) and who-knows-whom from the beejaypee, the leader most likely to succeed advani’s inglorious and inevitable exit.

Anyway, Obama should know at least that this is one country where ure parents’ miscegenation is certainly something that qualifies you to aspire to the highest office in the country. Where else would he be able to find such an accomodating and broad-minded electorate?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/us/America-has-its-roots-in-India-of-Mahatma-Gandhi-Obama/articleshow/5079579.cms

is what Obama said, and as the article points out, if he could have dinner with anyone in the world, alive or dead, it would be The Mahatma. A man who was the single most important person to cause the ultimate dismantling of the British Empire, admired by a man who has succeeded one of the most vilified neo-imperialists of recent times.

Its not ironic, just interesting. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

On to other things: I had the most amazing weekend away from cold, misty and freezing-at-times Hilton last week. Drove to Coffee Bay, a beach resort in the Eastern Cape, beyond Mthatha. Coffee Bay is called that because sometime n the late 1800-s, a ship carrying coffee beans washed ashore on the beach and for a brief, crazy while, coffee plants grew along the eastern cape’s coast. The plants died soon enough, and the bay never got back to its coffee-growing ways, but the name has stuck.

The eastern cape is among the poorest areas in SA, a former homeland where poverty and neglect were allowed to run riot, where successive legislations like the Bantu Education Act 1953 created a large population bereft of skills or knowledge in a part of the country not particularly blessed with arable land or large natural harbours. It is also home to Nelson Mandela, a Xhosa who was brought up in a village outside Mthatha.

Indeed, Port St. John, north of Coffee Bay, and about one hour from Mthata, is the site of some of the best cannabis grown in SA. This weed was shipped in large numbers by the government and surreptitiously supplied to the Black workers in the mines in Gauteng (thats Johannesburg and its surrounding areas) so as to keep them perpetually dull and simple, giggling and drooling, staring at random events by the wayside, and laughing.

Kept apathetic and moribund by a willing government, the mind boggles to even imagine the incredible amount of insult and injury that must have been perpetuated in the notorious ‘hostels’ outside Jo’Burg. It also makes so much more sinister reading when you think of the number of women who may have been consuming alcohol and cannabis and tobacco through their pregnancy, and to imagine the number of children born with deficiencies.

The blacks who lived in the homelands were used as cheap labour, in homes and on mines. The steady stream of migrant labour created parentless homes and unsupervised children in the villages, and rampant promiscuity and breakdown of family structures in the mines and at workplaces. Add to that the AIDS epidemic, and this potent brew of patriarchal african value systems, insiduous white oppression, systematic neglect and marginalisation, poor health outcomes and internecine rivalry, and this powder keg of conflicting interests is just about ready to go ka-boom, like noone else’s business.

Still, Coffee bay is a stunningly beautiful part of the country, and along with its beautiful and more famous neighbour, Hole-in-the-Wall, it forms among the most beautiful natural rock formation on the seas that i have ever seen. We stayed at a place called coffee shack, across the river, on the beach.

http://www.coffeeshack.co.za/

 

The weekend we went was that of the Worldwide Earth day celebrations, and in 200 sites across the world, a trance party was being held to herald the world’s imminent descent into destruction. As stoned presenters greeted their happy audiences with “got some spliffs on u?”, trance music throbbed in the background and psychedelic colours glowered from the walls. We were in a cottage nearby, and 72 hours of pulsating techno accompanied our vacation at coffee bay. Sometime during Day2, Mr DJ decided that he would use his strange machine-like grunts to fill up the space between spliff-breaks. Having realised that he was onto a good thing, (or passing out next to the munchies in the back kitchen), the machine-groans continued for the next 12 hours. As I woke up, disoriented, at 3 in the AM, a washing machine was making its bizarre mating call to another. Some serious discussions later, a refrigerator had joined in the chorus, and all three were engaged in loudly addressing each other across the bar mouth.

I turned over, muttering angrily in my sleep. Save the world with lousy trance and inebriation. May work. All I know is that I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

All hail Jim Morrison, american poet, savant of the torpedoed masses!!!!!!!

 

22 july, 2009 :Global Warming and the Democratic Paradox:

Much of my attention of late has been directed towards the monumental waste of resources that I see around everyday, in Durban, with its first world cities (and third world villages – but thats the topc for another blog altogether), correlated with images from the US and the UK on my brief visits there in the past.

The amount of waste that is perpetrated by the developed world is staggering in the enormity of scale. Paper, electricity, water, petrol, diesel, edible food, the list is endless. It seems to me that being “developed” essentially means going to an incredible amount of discomfort in order to ensure comfort to yourself.

Maybe that is not exactly true, after all. The paradigms of reference vary, certainly. So while the discomfort is relative (the trouble of having to pay for purified drinking water- purified with an immense amount of energy expenditure and cost – just so that you can wash your clothes and flush it down ure drain), the comfort is a no-brainer, designed to make life simpler, easier, hassle-free, and predictable.

this perhaps explains why traffic rules work so well in the developed world, with drivers’ absolute willingness to stand in long queues behind capricious traffic lights just so that they may be able to travel at great speeds with the promise of increased safety.

This philosophy, however, does not seem to work for global warming. And herein lies the rub. the reality of our age is that global warming and large-scale environmental degradation are realities that are projected to take place in a foreseeable future, with largely uncertain effects. Yet, the irony is that their extent and actual impact are matters of projection, at best. The effects of environmental collapse can be only appreciated by a person who has spent sufficient time imagining the future, and who is able to have a very sophisticated understanding of the “if-then-else” loop of reasoning.

Simple though this reasoning may seem, it is sadly not very common.

Again, changes, if and when they come, would happen at a gradual pace – effecting a gradual erosion in our quality of life in a way and so as to allow for enough time for civilisation to adjust to it.

What this does mean is that in the case of environmental protection, people will very often be willing to disregard the long term deleterious effects of their actions if they imagine that the short term benefits are attractive enough.

It also makes the process of educating people difficult because all that you have by way of reasoning is the vague threat that things may slide into a dystopic future where matters will be out of hand, and that responsible behaviour will help you to live a vastly less profligate lifestyle for a longer time frame.

Maybe, if you’re lucky.

This is where systems of governments come into play. And where democracy tries so valiantly. And fails: so completely, so pathetically.

Democracy has the reputation of something of a sacred cow in the world we live in today. It is seen as the best system of governance, and countries have been invaded in its name. Regimes have been toppled, rulers deposed, and the will of many people squashed because of the modern  (essentially wetsern) belief that democracy will solve most of the nation’s worries.

I do not want to go into the relative merits or demerits of the system. That is the topic of another post.

But democracy, as we know it: a system of government consisting of proportional representation of the citizens of the country, who are assisted and guided by the executive and judiciary, is not a system that is known for its long-sightedness. One of the important aspects of democracy is the fact that governments have a finite lifetime, after which they have to seek the approval of the electorate again. It follows, therefore, that to retain the favour of the electorate, a government shall have to take popular decisions that shall ensure another term in office.

It is within the dictates of electoral compulsion, and onlycorrect within the mandates of a democratic election, that a group of elected representatives should strive to take the decisions that the majority would support.

Herein lies the rub. So while elected governments will see it as morally justified, even pertinent, that they safeguard the immediate interests of their citizens, the long-term decisions (that may be uncomfortable in the short term and may have questionable effects in the long term) may be put on the back burner.

And why not? Governments do not fret about the world that they are handing down to their successors, 20 years into the future. Hell, the incumbents don’t even bother about the poor gits who’re coming in after them in a month’s time! This is is entirely different from, say, a monarchy, where the king has a vested interest in preserving and nourishing the kingdom for future generations, since succession is most often lineal.

This does not in any way mean that I am suggesting that monarchy is better or worse than democracy.

In fact, it does not even mean that I am suggesting that democratically elected governments are incapable of saving the environment.

But it certainly means that there will need to be an incredible amount of vision and concerted effort, and a will to think beyond the next general elections, if a democratic government based on popular consensus is to have a realistic chance of making long-term decisions that improve conditions and forge a new way forward.

That takes courage, and maturity, and selflessness. Because after all the considered thought and concerted action, the opposition may just win at the hustings by trumpeting the obvious current shortcomings of the government. Charges which would be impossible to disown, without scare-mongering about a nebulous future.

This is the democratic paradox, and it will be interesting to see how we shall negotiate it in the years to come.

 

16 Jul 2009 : :the unbearable heaviness of being (indian) part 3

It has been a long time since I have written, and while that may not mean anything to you, o occasional reader, o itinerant wayfarer, to me it represents a great departure indeed, after months of indolence. The motivation to stretch and move, to coax my tired digits to clatter over the keys and beat out the tattoo of a new blog post, is one that does not come easily, which requires practice and regular effort.

Yet this is here, and I am in Durban, and the excitement of a new universe opening itself before my eyes like the petal pink folds of a nautilus shell, is one that has to be discussed, and shared, and written down for future perusal, and reflection.

Durban is a port city, and home to a fascinating mix of people: of Indian, African, European and Mixed descent. Indeed, one of the first things a Durbanite will enquire after referring to a person will be the appropriate racial box that you can check them under (like “…so this is your family friend? Her name’s Barbara? She’s white, eh?”)

The totally unselfconscious way in which these people seek to know the racial origins of everyone they interact with is disarming in its directness. To people used to the almost aseptic political correctness of the United States or the UK, it represents the conversational equivalent of a loud fart (with concomitant malodorous accompaniments) in a packed elevator. There is a sudden widening of the pupils, and an effort to keep the twitching facial muscles under check.

It is interesting for me to see this, coming from an Indian perspective, and watching the racism from within the view of the community that identifies itself as Indian.

The Indians in South Africa are different from the expatriate Indians in the US, or say, the UK. And while this can be said of Indians in almost any part of the world, the south African Indians are reportedly the second largest concentration of Indians in any place outside of India, (till recently, the largest).

This makes them a group certainly worthy of attention and study, and their difference from other expats is thus significant.

Yet, it is this terminology of being Indian that is problematic. Because of course, “Indian” is not a racial type exactly, and though there might be an overall way of behaving and of dress and culture and attitude that is prevalent among people from the subcontinent, it is sufficiently diverse as to render any common grouping fairly irrelevant.

To elaborate on my favourite thesis, India is like Europe, and to think that there is a commonality to all of Europe that manifests in ways besides the Euro and EU summits would be a little simplistic.

Anyway, all that is neither here nor there, because the Indians in South Africa came here when India was not the nation we now know, when it was a huge conglomerate of colonies administered by the British. So all people of South Asian origin, from present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh and even Sri Lanka, are identified as Indian. The majority of Indians came in the 1800’s, brought in by the british, as indentured labour to work on the plantations. Following this, they set up shop, as small businessmen and traders in the cities, and proliferated and grew.

There was also a smaller community who came about a century before, but the overwhelming majority today are the 1800-ers.

anyway, after 1948, the South African government banned the further immigration of Indians into the country, following which India also passed an embargo against them. It got messy, and there were situations where people who married women in India (as indians are wont to do, of course were not allowed to bring their brides into the country.

All this changed in 1994, when the country became a democracy, and equality was ensured by law. But not before ensuring that the primacy of racial identity was forever ingrained in the worldview of the south African Indians, without a commensurate level of contact with the subcontinent.

So we have here a situation where the India that the south africans were forced to identify with was a country that was carried forward in the collective consciousness in a group of immigrants, about 100 years before, and with all the resulting bastardizations of the process of migration and settling.

It created a fascinating mix, and thus we have the Indian community here, which barely speaks any Indian language fluently, and have not traveled to India in the past 2 generations at least. But a community which identifies fiercely with India, and what it sees as common Indian values and traditions.

 

(next post: marriage laws in pre-’94 South Africa)

 

17-02-09: (most of) what i know abt gaiman… a.k.a. authors i like to read (part 1):

there are people you love to read.  all the time.   any which way.   the regular stash run thru, you are reduced to digging out old forgotten books published in the early part of their careers and dismissed in their time as frivolous, or as strictly avoidable.

these are the authors whose books wou will end, close, and wish you had not read so that you can read it again, and hope that there will be occassion, at some point in the distant fuure, when you may have  forgotten the plot  enough to read it again.

these are authors whose characters or writings or stories stick with you for a lifetime, whose metaphors twist their way into your everyday moral measures, tipping the scales as you judge and evaluate.

i wish to make a list of such authors.  every one has different lists, and i am sure any list i rattle off the top of my head would be incomplete.  and miss out on some really good people.   yet, here is my first attempt:

of course, before we go on,  there are rules.   as always.   there are rules.

1. the book should not be an established religious text that has disputed authorship.  you cannot claim to love king james, or mathew, or whoever it is that you wish to attribute you corner of the bible to, but no it doesn’t work.
2. the writer should have attempted to be prolific.  that could mean anything depending on the resources availble at that point of time, like lao tzu’s writings, which definitely qualify for a whole body of work. yet one-time authors (like, say, siddharth sanghvi) in a post-printing press-era are not allowed.  so while there is certainly no doubt about considering someone as versatile as shakespeare (let’s just asume for the sake of this post that there was only one man, that it was a bargain that he had made with an extra terrestrial entity, who exacted his part of the bargain, or maybe didn’t   the works of kalidasa, or homer would certainly to be considered to be in the running,  too.
3. there has to be a book.  that you can hold.  in your hands.  it can be any format,   novel, essays, short stories, graphic novels, collage narratives, picture books, what have you.  but books.   no blogs, no online columns, no periodicals, no newspapers, no official correspondence (u cannot claim to love the bukke shahato, saying that Tokugawa leyasu is your favourite author)
4. group authors are ok, so long as they show cognisable evidence of having worked together.   (like lapierre and collins are perfectly ok, above the board, ekdum bindaas chun.)

but why am i saying all this in the second person, addressing it to you?  it is, obviously, dear reader, because you would have perhaps read so far, and have moved on to fantasising about you own list, so this is just a framework that you can use, to narrow ure search…

P G Wodehouse.

will certainly be the author to have influenced me the most, in so many different ways.  he has written books that i wished would never end, books that i thought were so hilarious, i have rolled around and laughed, tears streaming down my face.   contrary to most media representations, it is not the story of bertie and jeeves that interests me, tho i must confess a more than grudging respect for the entire line now, in retrospect.  my favourites were always situated in blanding’s castle, near market shropshire, with the butler Beach who enjoys his glass of port down by the pantry. and the pigman who keeps changing:  cyril wellbeloved was the most popular of them, elciting the approval of lord emsworth, anyway.  and when two variant characters and worlds collide, as in leave it to psmith which has psmith coming to blandings, and going thru that entire routine with baxter and the flowerpots, it adds a whole different level of hilarity.  “psmith leapt across the lawn like a long-legged mustang”.  i also thoroughly enjoyed monty bodkin (heavy weather “uncle woggly to his chicks: “hullo chikkabidies…” “) and other books here and there like meet mr mulliner, brinkley manor, and doctor sally (errmmm… ummmm personal tee hee and furious blushing moment).  spoken simply, or better, in evelyn waugh’s words, “…wodehouse’s idyllic world will never stale….(he has)  created a world for us to live in and delight in”.   if ever i should use terms like ‘blithe insouciance’ and still have a straight face it should be for describing wodehousian characters.  the man is genius, of course.   his language, his turn of phrase, his sharp wit, self deprecating comments only serve to romanticise the fate of the foppish nobility in the twenties, as these penniless young men waltz in and out of his books, their wits about them, their innocence intact, and their idyllic world never stale.  the women are cuteness, desirability, wit and charm all rolled into one.   the men are goofy and lovable, or suave and sophisticated.   either way, the result is confusion, charm and hilarity.

Goscinny and Uderzo

some of the best humour in graphic literature has come from both these guys, especially thru their immensely successful and hugely popular “asterix” series.   honestly, i think that the great divide (with its lead couple melodrama and histrionix) is one of the smartest, brightest, funniest books ever written.   as for sheer genius, it has to be  asterix and the roman agent featuring the indomitable tortuous convulvulus (they put him in the circus in rome, but the lions eat each other).   for sheer inventiveness, you have to note asterix and cleopatra, aand as for smart and biting european farce and comedy, i suppose asterix and the banquet, asterix and the magic cauldron would get my vote.   also, the great visits to foreign countries for these thrilling adventures : corsica, britain, belgium, scandinavia (great crossing), greece, india, the middle east (asterix and the black gold) and so on.  the ability to keep such hilarious names intact, even after the translation from the french and the ability to retain the humour in exchanges like “join the army, they said…. its a man’s life they said (muttering)” is what really astounds me.   and also the great cameo performances (like ‘dubbelosix’ in asterix and the black gold and the fly who is his carrier fly and is in love with him). clearly, goscinny and uderozo were humorists far ahead of their time, using humour to tell a self-deprecating story that makes light of the more glaring truth : that all of france was run roughshod over by the italians, who plundered and conquered and toyed with the french till the last blue-gummed dying days of their own lead-fuelled demise

…………….

Next post  : features christie, crompton

 

friday, 13th february, 2009 : sri ram sene and the slumdog millionaire :

well, today is friday the thirteenth.  wat sweet irony, tomorrow is valentine’s day.  and made ever more so (ironic, ie) by the flurry of pink panties, godless women and publess men, scary economy blues, lunar eclipses (ok so there was only one), scarier environment reds and the victory of likud with the spectacular rise of lieberman….

never before really has love had such a bad chance.  it has been amusing to see the amount of anger and righteous indignation that has poured out on to the indian streets over the last few weeks.   of course, in some cases , it has been just outrageous and tragic (sri ram sene dragging women out by their hair), in some cases dangerous and thought provoking ( a free and fair election in israel that threw up the anger that it did), in some cases eerily premonitory (the moon, that trusted friends of lovers everywhere, obscured by a shadow of the earth), and in some cases, just downright insulting and presumptuous (the widespread disapproval of slumdog millionaire for portraying the ugly india)

so let me dwell on two of these issues that i feel are related in some way, and which have animated our discussions, in the month past.

when slumdog millionaire was released, at first, there was the pleased smile of a nation that was charmed.   here was danny boyle, maker of the beach and trainspotting, making a movie on india, shooting in mumbai.  and all that had happened in the city over the last year would be laid to rest.

then there were the whispers that it showed india in a bad t, a throwback to the snake charmer-and-elephant days.  nooooooo……  a collective groan rose all over the country, not again, we don’t want to be branded as exotic pieces in a cornershop in colorado, oh no!

then a few days later the great B spoke, and said : ” if SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.”

oooohh. prickly, aren’t we?  protests went off across the nation.  said voices …this is not how we are: a bunch of dirty, impoverished, thieving schemers, flirting with disease and danger with easy nonchalance.   we are the new india. the one that grew up after shriman bakshi left, so thank you very much mr peter sellers, but we’ll be the judge of how funny your faux indian turn in the movie was.   and if you want to look at the new india, the real india, then for heaven’s sake get your nose out of the gutter and see the millions of young people who’re crouching in front of a “roadies” skinned orkut, sending sixteen scraps to suneeta and sunaina, sataak-se, like that!  we’re cool, really, and we listen to a r rahman’s remixed sufi tunes on our pink iPods while waiting to talk to business associates across the globe, shivering in a european winter..   wake up.   this is the new india…..

………………………..

the sri ram sene, on the 25th of december, dragged women out of a pub in mangalore, ironically named “amnesia”, and thrashed them in public, obliging eager videographers in the vicinity.   when confronted, the leader of the ram sene, muthalik, said that this was his duty, so to speak, he was just doing what the parents of these girls would want, and that this was the sene’s way of enforcing the dictates of indian culture.  this is not indian culture, all these women going to pubs, taking drugs and indulging in alcoholism, he said.   plus, we have reasonably certain information that some pubs are fronts for making blue films, and also for prostitution.

muthalik is a vandal, a publicity-hungry hound who will sell his own mother for a record price if the attention and sensation is worth it.   i shall not waste any time talking about him.   even as i write, a group of women have spearheaded a campaign to send him pink panties, and sanjukta, my friend (of www.sanjukta.wordpress.com  fame) is at the spearhead of a “hug karo pub bharo” cmpaign.   there are many women across india who want to join her, and many more who are pledging their support.   many men, too, and children.

my point is this: at a very basic level, wat is the difference between muthalik and the persons protesting the depiction of poor people in SLD? lete us refer to “persons protesting the depiction of poor people in SLD” henceforth as big B, since he has actually voiced it after all.   muthalik believes in a depiction of india that he defines narrowly within his limited understanding of what it is to be indian, and how one must behave.   having done so, he goes on to enforce it, using force to do so.   big B objects to a depiction of a slice of india  shown in an international film that’s gathering much acclaim because he believes its not the india he wants shown outside.   there are many other things here.   why don’t you write about them?   (pardon me for shuddering, but i cannot help but get  a deja vu of some idi amin-esque african dictator’s helpful advice to a visiting journalist: “there are many other things here.   why don’t you write about them?”)

yes.  the difference is the use of violence.  that’s right.

i don’t know if you have seen the movie.  i have, and i did not imagine that the movie depicted anything that was hyperbole in the extreme, nor did it show scenes of incredible squalor and deprivation.  if anything, it showed a smart, self-sufficient people, resourceful and ingenious, living in the massive slums of mumbai (itself housing a population that rivals that of many world cities) and leading their lives with dignity, not as wasted junkies living on dole and roadside crack.  the ugliness that we glimpse thru the movie too, is real, and boyle’s mistake is in perhaps making jamal’s life a generic collection of different situations that may eventually only occur independently to different people.  yet, the details are true.   if you don’t believe me, the proof is a short auto ride away.   your city has a slum too, you know, teeming with people who work in your garages, in your homes, on the fringes of your lives, keeping costs low and luxuries affordable.

yet the great B deems this as causing “pain and disgust” among patriots and nationalists.

wowow. lets stop for a minute here.   what if someone came up to you and told you that the india that you knew, the india that formed your daily existence, your everyday reality, that india (for india is simultaneously many indias rolled inside of one)  is not pretty enuff to swell the hearts of patriots, and showing it is in bad taste?  how would you feel?  what if someone came to you, mr big B-aka-millions-masquerading-as-one, wat if your world of forum malls and swank offices and smart plastic cards clipped on smooth pinstripe shirts  was not beautiful enuff for people to show in an english movie?

what then, mister big bee?

what, indeed?

as a matter of fact, if i have a complaint with SLD, it was the characterisation of anil kapoor as rude and derisive, heaping insult upon pejorative, and heckling a chai-wallah working in a call centre in mumbai.   is that how the west sees noveau rich india, how it imagines the perfumed plutocracy of this country to be, as shallow insensitive cads without a shred of conscience or a sliver of empathy: cold, crude and calculating, calmly calling the cops to carry out their corrupt bidding?

and if that is so, isn’t that wrong?   the great indan middle class cannot be like that!

after the uproar, i’m suddenly not so sure.

 

abdul rahiman and the mutilated breasts

the day was warm.  not sultry, just warm.  a maybe-a-little-too bright sun beat down on the cliff side.  the day was late january: the winter chill still in the water, while the fickle earth baked in the day.

we had been to daulatabad fort the previous day, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daulatabad ) and were a bit overwhelmed at the sight of formidable mughal power.  there is nothing like the sight of a conqueror’s fortress marked by his pillar to evoke ancient feelings of nervousness and disquiet.  daulatabad fort, much coveted and fought for, is set into the rock at deogiri.  and thrusting upwards with macho self assuredness is the chand minar, rising like a phallus of the foothills to survey the landscape around.

chand minar, looking out over the foothills of deogiri

the view from the top was majestic, and the sheer ingenuity of the custodians of the fort, not to mention their capacity for savagery was what we marvelled at.  this here was the fortress of a people fiercely victorious in a hobbesian hell, an age where caution was perennial, and nervous.

the labyrinth is excitedly pointed out to everyone, called “andheri” and reeking of bat shit and paraffin fumes.  then there are also the ruined halls, and the chini mahal, where the last king of golconda was held captive, and eventually died.

distant view of a minaret

the grandeur was hard to not get affected by, as also not to shudder at what might have passed here, in these lawns, what sordid tales of palace intrigue and foiled plans would they tell?  when enemy armies were cut down mercilessly, their numbers slaughtered, their ranks scattered, their few surviving members greeted with boiling oil and scalding water, what might have been the feeling in the denizens of the fort?  where might the head waiter have directed his concerns first?  supplies?  sustenance?  safety?  or self?

it was an exercise in harsh realities, reminding us of the mindless slaughter preceding our age, and remembering, with gladness, our own lives.

…………………… xxxx

so the day was warm. not sultry.  we were in ellora,  in verul, further down from deogiri, on the road to dhulia.  ellora is a UNESCO world heritage site, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellora_Caves ), and is a spectacular structure, its 34 caves dotting the hillside, set into the cool rock, and looking down on the land for 1300 years.  the structure was built by the rashtrakutas and possibly the chalukyas from the 5th to the 11th century AD, and has buddhist, hindu and jain caves built more or less in that order, as allegiances to the gods slipped and shifted and slipped some more.

the hindu caves show shaivites and vaishnavites in collaboration in the gigantic friezes on the walls, half of one hall given over to shiva, and the other half to vishnu.

the caves are spectacular because they are built out of a single rock, essentially.  that is, teams of workers sat in quiet perserverance on this cliffside for centuries to carve out, one by one, each of these caves.  the caves, in turn, house large temples, statues of elephants, stupas, intricately carved panels and pillars within them.  there are “living bridges”, namely bridges fashioned out of the rock as they were, the passages fashioned out of the rock, thus creating the bridge.  this in cotrast to the usual way when passages dictate the bridge.  the entire structure is one single rock, and voluptuous women smile at you from the ends of corridors, their presence witnessed by lissome caryatids on the side,supporting the smooth black rock.  churned out of the granite rock is an entire fantasyland of figures, dancing, preening, fighting, supplicating, copulating, frozen forever in mythological tableaux, locked in timeless urgency.

cave 21

the pinnacle of the caves, of course, is the much photographed cave no. 16, called “kailasa”. it is a spectacular cave, with an extensively carved temple complex in the centre flanked by massive halls, ostensibly for dance performances.  then there is much-photographed elephant with the broken trunk, a mutilation that nevertheless makes it as arresting as, if not more than, the elephant in cave 32.

the elephant with the broken trunk, kailasa.

the body is chipped, and the broken face is no longer the beautiful, kind yet haughty visage it must once have been, as young girls with lamps in their hands passed under its smooth belly, reaching out to touch its legs, and place their hands on their lidded eyes.  the temple, beautiful and old, is cracked in places, torn down with a vengeance and ferocity that seems almost insane.

elephant, indrasabha

cave 32, (also known as indra sabha – a historic misnomer) is a jain cave at the end of the road, about 3-4 kms to the north.  there are still many well-preserved pieces of sculpture here, with exquisitely carved inner sanctums, and the only other proudly standing elephant.  for a sense of size, think kailasa’s elephant the size of an african pachyderm, and the one in the indra sabha the size of an indian cow elephant.

the complexity is vast and gargantuan; the audacity of the work has to be seen to be believed.  there are passageways, chaitya halls, viharas, friezes of tirthankaras, stone benches for disciples and ribbed vaulted ceilings which were painstakingly conceived as wooden-ceiling mimics.  the scale and scope of the undertaking is staggering.  the entire structure lies before you, in splendidly detailed ruin, marred by deliberate vandalism and petty destruction, pages of poetry in stone torn apart by a petulant and spoilt child.  at corners, i stopped to wonder – who would order such a thing? which general would instruct his troops to deliberately destroy this extraordinary work of art, who could have done it with such careless nonchalance?  the thoroughness of the demolition is frightening.  the faces are almost all mutilated, beautiful lips and graceful cheekbones all broken off by rough swipes at the stone with blunt hand held instruments.  would the general have ordered that all statues be destroyed by the morning, and extra rations offered to those who broke off the most?  would he have set targets per regiment, punishing those that came back to camp with less mortar and booty?  the savagery of the marauders shocked me.  some had driven iron nails into the statues’ eyes and body, in a spiteful and desperate attempt to disfigure and mutilate.

why would they do so?  would any one of them have felt a remorse, a sadness, a sense of the immense consequence of their actions?  would at least some of them have stopped to admire the carvings, stopping to caress the stone’s rough hewn edges and smooth surfaces?  would they have felt heavy in the heart, for having destroyed such beauty?

the breasts are the most important.  across the caves, the female figures, blessed at birth with deliciously globular breasts and smooth bodies stare out at the world with almond-shaped eyes.  their sexy come-hither looks are marred, however, by the disconcerting effect of their breast-less visages.  their cleavages, once deep walleys of dark granite, are now craggy rocks of forlorn two-dimensionality.  it is the odd sculpture scattered across the caves that gives us a glimpse of the grandeur of those mammaries, 1500 years back, when they were hewn out of the rock.  systematically, someone has attacked the sculptures, and hacked off the breasts of the women.

the discomfort of these invaders with female sexuality is evident.  in the indra sabha, a jain cave of the digambar sect, naked tirthankaras stare at you from every wall. some of themhave their heads chopped off, their genitals still preserved, intact and forlornly southward-pointing.

the headless tirthankara

there has been very little concerted efforts to mutilate those genitals, the humiliation heaped upon the statues limited to the beheading and the occassional severance of torso from lower limb.

its almost as if these invaders wanted to prove a point, by their excessive savagery towards the female statues.

i exited the cave, musing.  kailasa is cave 16. lesser known, but no less fascinating is cave 15, with a long flight of steps leading up to it.  we walked up, and being the only people in the cave, engaged the man who was there for a short guided tour.  he took us around, and we were charmed by his poetic and skilful explanations of the sculpted frescoes.  he explained the shaivite and the vaishnavite parts of the wall, pointing out the different incarnations from the dasa avatar: there is matsya, here’s varaha, etc etc.  he explained in detail the popular ellora motif: ravan, in the arrogance of new-found power, tries to shake the mount kailasa.  shiva puts him in his place by flexing his great toe, meanwhile reassuring parvathy that the situation is under control.  it is a moment of infinity, pregnant with the possibility of action, and drama.  he took us all round, and showed us the ananthapadmanabhan, ie, the infinite vishnu with the lotus from his navel, and with brahma seated on the lotus.

we were done with the cave, and had caressed the smooth sensuous back of the enormous humped bull nandi in the middle of the hall with longing.  we were leaving, and turned to ask the man if he were a guide.  no, he said, he was a class 4 employee, there to sweep the floor of the cave, much less frequented than other caves because of the flight of steps and its proximity to more famous kailasa.

we asked him his name, and abdul rahiman was his name, as he told us.  as we left, having slipped a fifty into his pocket for his expertise and time, we looked back one last time and saw abdul standing in his courtyard, the two storeys of the cave rising behind him, the monkeys his only company as the sun beat down upon the granite around him, the sheer walls splashed with mutilated bodies and headless torsos.

abdul rahiman, the class 4 employee, archaeological survey of india.

vanars watching varaha : cave 15, ellora

 

january 5th, zero-nine : the lo-to-pha-gi :

They were not greek.  No, altho there was much insinuation made of that brand of love in the house. The dark, slightly damp corner of the room forever redolent of soft sighs, or (more often) of frantic urgings, would join in the discussions, often offering surprisingly imaginative suggestions for buggery.

There was a large game board in the middle of the room. This was the front room, the one that greeted every weary traveller who set foot in the house, greeted him before the inevitably empty bottle of water and the massively rolled joint.

The bottle was to be filled from the tap, the bong was to keep him company on his journey.

It does not matter what the game board was. Depending on which particular racial reality was being eked out in the room, or even, whichever reality was being played out that day in that common living space, the boards would change. Four heads in shared concentration would pore over the central table, their hair tousled, the skin over their foreheads thrown into deep furrows of intense thought. Sometimes it would be carrom, sometimes battleships, often a pack of cards and a flat surface

There would be assorted debris around the room, the flotsam and jetsam of the forever-itinerant-always-static life: assorted mobile chargers, crust-filled boxes of pizza, sandals, reed mats spread out against the far wall, newspapers folded neat and knife-like, pressing finely powdered cannabis in between their grimy leaves, two books by kafka, one assorted dvd of the x-men series and daredevil, and a fine sprinkling of ash coating the entire room, mingling with the dust and entering their lungs, to be wracked out a hours later, trapped in large globs of phlegm.

In an inside room, in a dank and furtive corner, someone wrapped in an oversize blanket would wave distractedly, his eyes intent on the foreign language film flickering on the screen in front of him, its eastern european heroines restricted to limited english lines of ‘yes’ and ‘harder’.  The dialogues would seem to be terse, and pithy, and the urgency of the actors evident in their insistent utterings.

Sometimes, there would be a tv in the corner, the channel forever tuned to Ftv, the cute gluteal folds of some brazilian ramp model ignored in the general interest over the evolving game.

The kitchen would be filthy, and largely unused, grease encrusted plates congealing near the sink while water dripped over the chipped white tile surface. Empty bottles would line the wall, and the fridge would be empty, save a half-empty bottle of flat pepsi and mouldy bread against the far corner.

On the counter, the cool earthern pot would store water, dark and refreshing.

The loo would be small, and often serviced by the only perrenial tap in the house, its lowly status as toilet-water-supply (kindly note the second hyphen) forgotten often when it is the only source of water in the house when the sun was high.

These are the lotus eaters, the carrom players, eternal drifters testing newton’s first law and proving it right every time, stopping only for a smoke or a roll, or reaching out for crumpled newspaper to wipe away the mess.

These are the Lotophagi.

“….How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other’s whisper’d speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap’d over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!”

–                               From “The Lotos Eaters” Lord Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892