tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-114111042024-03-24T15:12:00.461+05:30A simple desultory PhilippicMomentary lapses of reason?
Skating away?
Learning to fly?
Naaah ... just too old to rock'n'roll, too young to ...J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.comBlogger375125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-20401133454888559302023-10-29T10:35:00.001+05:302023-10-29T10:37:48.791+05:30Greek idyll<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I think of Zakynthos. </span></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The blue and the green, and all the flowers and colours in between. The quiet of the slow warm afternoon, sun-slanted paved alleys deserted during the siesta, a beige street punctuated with the colours of the shop-fronts, a lady dozing in a chair, a car purring past on the paved road, out of place like a leopard in a drawing room. As we passed the cross alleys, the green hillside behind Zante came and went from our view, the buildings of the Jewish <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;" tabindex="-1"></a></span>cemetery small between the trees. On the other side, swaying masts far away between the house fronts, accentuating the blue of the ocean behind them. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieYhXIkuQqRKIQ0VBqBRqhRvECw-P7mw-8J9IC-LokTHt794f01AHfJGibJlwVVnUdOzuNayis222yFCVvHZL7qzt5C8Vp2Zhp3C0_TOwceiMzpn9wHaNBqBLhGklMip8twJGsxwKWYvEvn12H_4y-4TCqikKd6UOZ0LuN-69kmFdugrhvKDmMiw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1455" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieYhXIkuQqRKIQ0VBqBRqhRvECw-P7mw-8J9IC-LokTHt794f01AHfJGibJlwVVnUdOzuNayis222yFCVvHZL7qzt5C8Vp2Zhp3C0_TOwceiMzpn9wHaNBqBLhGklMip8twJGsxwKWYvEvn12H_4y-4TCqikKd6UOZ0LuN-69kmFdugrhvKDmMiw" width="171" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieYhXIkuQqRKIQ0VBqBRqhRvECw-P7mw-8J9IC-LokTHt794f01AHfJGibJlwVVnUdOzuNayis222yFCVvHZL7qzt5C8Vp2Zhp3C0_TOwceiMzpn9wHaNBqBLhGklMip8twJGsxwKWYvEvn12H_4y-4TCqikKd6UOZ0LuN-69kmFdugrhvKDmMiw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEioF67aQ8N4jODVhAHkdhoOHiHRN8lTA-T5NjEtdMmukBxqTdM558I_jJFoJYgYuxADfRJQZQXZgYj0KtIZLXQExOL_R0VLCMBeFn3R7Tt_WRjoz1-YNXv02Z3m6tui5vWATlFK4N31d8NSCOl4CMBEK3B2AL3Ro8Qmnjibmh_E4PIzdKydLqEJsQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEioF67aQ8N4jODVhAHkdhoOHiHRN8lTA-T5NjEtdMmukBxqTdM558I_jJFoJYgYuxADfRJQZQXZgYj0KtIZLXQExOL_R0VLCMBeFn3R7Tt_WRjoz1-YNXv02Z3m6tui5vWATlFK4N31d8NSCOl4CMBEK3B2AL3Ro8Qmnjibmh_E4PIzdKydLqEJsQ" width="320" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEioF67aQ8N4jODVhAHkdhoOHiHRN8lTA-T5NjEtdMmukBxqTdM558I_jJFoJYgYuxADfRJQZQXZgYj0KtIZLXQExOL_R0VLCMBeFn3R7Tt_WRjoz1-YNXv02Z3m6tui5vWATlFK4N31d8NSCOl4CMBEK3B2AL3Ro8Qmnjibmh_E4PIzdKydLqEJsQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi69jqA5ymxwCjO3PMyOrgq88Tq7tQ5fQgnTRoGCEUd99ssGJwoI-RcvFfzFykcTlHl0nJLzARfTQctMsGgvK6X387hdW3BI8Aynb41VUAuIX7W0KehkJbSKhxoO0BvSEqY6SubsZEoZLbN5sRHRZTvyKX6PXuYnm4k3yfYpA07z8VI-DDm0W1MHw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi69jqA5ymxwCjO3PMyOrgq88Tq7tQ5fQgnTRoGCEUd99ssGJwoI-RcvFfzFykcTlHl0nJLzARfTQctMsGgvK6X387hdW3BI8Aynb41VUAuIX7W0KehkJbSKhxoO0BvSEqY6SubsZEoZLbN5sRHRZTvyKX6PXuYnm4k3yfYpA07z8VI-DDm0W1MHw" width="160" /></a></div></div></div><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Round a corner, tables and tourists spilled from a small taverna. Salads, souvenirs, selfies. Across the road from the taverna, a grey building with green wooden shutters turned out to be the supermarket we were looking for. Two young people at separate tables outside smoked as they talked on their phones.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisdSQmTgZ1P8nZgMolQaIAa68aCVLPXUgL3XLsTagew3ZyowATrMxOE1vRKwv8OQKPkfjAn-VuSUASBwUBzISeSjm0_F3BMwtoChjOy6FV-MfJU3dCgo-HHoDnySV9dsza_iSXxpmMuiI8i0-on0Golh2g3WDjiK3s-ZU0obAqz5zEMi-GnmI5ww" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1570" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisdSQmTgZ1P8nZgMolQaIAa68aCVLPXUgL3XLsTagew3ZyowATrMxOE1vRKwv8OQKPkfjAn-VuSUASBwUBzISeSjm0_F3BMwtoChjOy6FV-MfJU3dCgo-HHoDnySV9dsza_iSXxpmMuiI8i0-on0Golh2g3WDjiK3s-ZU0obAqz5zEMi-GnmI5ww" width="313" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisdSQmTgZ1P8nZgMolQaIAa68aCVLPXUgL3XLsTagew3ZyowATrMxOE1vRKwv8OQKPkfjAn-VuSUASBwUBzISeSjm0_F3BMwtoChjOy6FV-MfJU3dCgo-HHoDnySV9dsza_iSXxpmMuiI8i0-on0Golh2g3WDjiK3s-ZU0obAqz5zEMi-GnmI5ww" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhLNERgEI24QJxlOlZQ4G6DbPLfWOyLwnu7c-pXS2IspJ0kNP5lXA8y_L6sE3KewuJA4ScBhRqkJt79_f_vN44B2xgHRfY6LzSPaOrhOsYAyvaB3r-ODAKQZ7h0P4LTZRLreppsc0Wkcxb8Rs1KEJUEDbxRej9rdbOl-LPwR5hmRZ63tnFTX41zgA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1198" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhLNERgEI24QJxlOlZQ4G6DbPLfWOyLwnu7c-pXS2IspJ0kNP5lXA8y_L6sE3KewuJA4ScBhRqkJt79_f_vN44B2xgHRfY6LzSPaOrhOsYAyvaB3r-ODAKQZ7h0P4LTZRLreppsc0Wkcxb8Rs1KEJUEDbxRej9rdbOl-LPwR5hmRZ63tnFTX41zgA" width="140" /></a></div><br /></div><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Time seemed to swell in the soft sun, flow slow and languid while the breeze wandered through the leaves and the coloured flags. We bought knick-knacks we did not need, pastries we would not eat. Sauntered back towards the seafront, sat below a large white cross, a memorial that we could not decipher because we lack a classical education. Strange that the townspeople seemed mentally closer to us, people from a poorer eastern country, than to the Brits who had exalted their legacy across five hundred years until Anglo and Greco became culturally interwoven in colonies across the world. But the sun was mellow and the breeze was cool, and the mewing of the seagulls was too high and keen to allow much thought.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgs8RE3OKjsSeqmvHG0H9gVLqx6nZrcl-aXlhSiCn95savsLE4yUV5QvoVc-ZvSXF-FgsHn4J-hvl53abB3yJGIiuaJ8c7CkNxXzO9Ynu9s99uisEf8rOzKMcQECcg-AwEXX7N6__PhL4_mizb7A-3ayMk0wgfGUuEDpqgV4gDXYdDU2kgGCIik3Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgs8RE3OKjsSeqmvHG0H9gVLqx6nZrcl-aXlhSiCn95savsLE4yUV5QvoVc-ZvSXF-FgsHn4J-hvl53abB3yJGIiuaJ8c7CkNxXzO9Ynu9s99uisEf8rOzKMcQECcg-AwEXX7N6__PhL4_mizb7A-3ayMk0wgfGUuEDpqgV4gDXYdDU2kgGCIik3Q" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I think of Zakynthos. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And I yearn to go back, spend slow days and nights in the stream of time, fill my memories with scattered lights and the clop clop of trotting horses, savour strange food at leisure while watching sailboats skim the blue between sea and sky.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But when I try to work out why it is that I want to see Zakynthos again, and not the more strident rhythms of Rome or Athens, I wonder. Do I truly seek new milieus, environments? Or do I seek beauty? Nature? People, cultures? Peace and comfort … but then why would I leave my snug home cocooned in minor privilege?</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It struck me, then, that my second view of Greece (after Roger Lancelyn Green's "Legends of Greece and Rome") was the idyllic Corfu of the Durrell family. And when I dream of slow peaceful days amid the bougainvilleas and the sun-soaked patios, I actually seek a return to a mood, a yearning, from the books of my childhood. I want to lose myself inside a story that I loved.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhSnMCrqvThGxuxHtk1SuGwh9o6t0BStW5_NnM2ah9ZmQ_ih80JibjX1okTFVEhjVPvHBNd1haRKowDjLCb5G_KvzA-7yHbAQ64vk0IbfkPsdDkb_13LFkTfent_3_NqY-3wFFy7_uP5KinQKt8WUv1hEwbYg6KgICz8g2px8T-YFtztS2sBv_uQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhSnMCrqvThGxuxHtk1SuGwh9o6t0BStW5_NnM2ah9ZmQ_ih80JibjX1okTFVEhjVPvHBNd1haRKowDjLCb5G_KvzA-7yHbAQ64vk0IbfkPsdDkb_13LFkTfent_3_NqY-3wFFy7_uP5KinQKt8WUv1hEwbYg6KgICz8g2px8T-YFtztS2sBv_uQ" width="180" /></a></div><br /></div></div>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-8275254023420869022023-02-08T18:06:00.000+05:302023-02-08T18:06:04.500+05:30Idyll, idle<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">Somewhere to the west, behind me, a single-line
railway cuts across town from north to south. Late last evening, and again just
now after the sun has passed its zenith, the cracked two-tone moan of a diesel
loco rose behind the bungalows of the Civil Surgeons and the Additional
District Judges. Diffused by distance and the trees that surround this space,
it is a far lost lament circling towards the sun. In starkly contrasting mood,
a young <i>neem</i> tree in front of me sways and shimmers happily in
the afternoon sun and breeze. Roseate parakeets swoop and squawk between the
scattered trees. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">I look up into the branches of the guava tree, and a black-hooded oriole
chatters right above me. A wood-dove erupts from a mango tree on my right,
flies a pointless circle round the garden, then vanishes into the foliage fifty
yards away to my left. How pleasant it is that birdsong here is louder than the
traffic. How pleasant that even on a working day, my phone has not rung once in
the last hour, so I can use it to take photographs and record my musings. How
very pleasant to sit here in a green-gold mental haze, with “no deeds to do, no
promises to keep”. I sigh in pleasure, and settle myself even more comfortably
into my chair in the shade of the old guava tree.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFuW2KY1zpevCd8z8GPS-338zVg-gwSw49GL-Z9KLZBLCM5ffg8rRB5s5_dwMedObun___d4ZxlgBVGXsbYeY1odyQyrNLI4rInuCeQmYS4nXatf9-A-dKFZuFoEhRsNIMS6l5QVD9XG8MfGfULl4LhOW2fTh-9BG5o2Uy04ZvocKR_uYZU3I/s4000/20230206_155406.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFuW2KY1zpevCd8z8GPS-338zVg-gwSw49GL-Z9KLZBLCM5ffg8rRB5s5_dwMedObun___d4ZxlgBVGXsbYeY1odyQyrNLI4rInuCeQmYS4nXatf9-A-dKFZuFoEhRsNIMS6l5QVD9XG8MfGfULl4LhOW2fTh-9BG5o2Uy04ZvocKR_uYZU3I/s320/20230206_155406.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"> In the middle distance a furry dog shakes itself luxuriously, then
jumps up on a verandah ledge and drapes itself lengthwise for a siesta. A
flight of pigeons clatters up, then resumes its circling. From some green
hideaway, a coppersmith barbet briefly tolls its triple note, a sound that I
had hitherto associated only with the long hot afternoons of pre-monsoon
summer. Now, in the chill of a retreating northern winter, it seems strange as
a familiar tongue in a foreign clime. But still it lulls me further into this
pleasant trance, just being, observing, floating on the slow current of the
drifting day. Somewhere inside me the querulous voice of my weekday self rises
in familiar rhythms, only to be summarily swamped by the surge of idleness.
Which is also the voice of reason, for on this day, in this fairy-tale moment,
there is nothing that I have to do, nowhere that I have to go, nobody I have to
meet. A rare backwater on the stream of my unexciting life, where the absence
of obligation offers placid enjoyment. “I’m dappled and drowsy and
ready to sleep / Let the morning time drop all its petals on me …”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG7tTE2m-48bWvNBjWEinsgXxHIzJ8eS_f6K6HlFhxGuCNzz5aw37Ce-azbKQjW5NEziPFJxIwZAZ5C0IhIE37ZZgq2sBgaTbZIiZtSuavrUjT2EXy6JgYp3PyVKM6d-00YryUTO-pJOqkF9s8TDyex33nnXWWVWfQdvXB_kHGQa33Xd39WTA/s9072/20230206_130217.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3600" data-original-width="9072" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG7tTE2m-48bWvNBjWEinsgXxHIzJ8eS_f6K6HlFhxGuCNzz5aw37Ce-azbKQjW5NEziPFJxIwZAZ5C0IhIE37ZZgq2sBgaTbZIiZtSuavrUjT2EXy6JgYp3PyVKM6d-00YryUTO-pJOqkF9s8TDyex33nnXWWVWfQdvXB_kHGQa33Xd39WTA/s320/20230206_130217.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"> P------t, proper in his dark blue sweater and trousers, looking
faintly disoriented as is his wont, approaches with small measured steps. He
bears a tray with a cup of tea and a small bottle of mineral water, which he
sets down on the chair next to mine. He is about to enquire what else I need,
but I smile and thank him and wave him away. This moment, this mood, is not to
be spoiled by speech. The sun is slipping farther. The birds are still loud,
still insistent. The parakeets are the noisiest, spoilt children shrieking and
screeching as they zigzag between the trees. A pariah kite mews and cheeps as
it glides down into a nearby tree, giving away the location of its nest. A
smell of earth and wood-smoke rises behind the bungalows. <i>Chulhas</i> being
lit in preparation for tea, as working people find their way home? There is a
hint of sharpness on the breeze now as evening sidles in, an edge even in these
last days of a fading winter.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">Mynahs, grackles, finches, rollers, all tune up their parts against the
backdrop of the parakeets. A faster train approaches from the north, a higher
longer note indicating an electric loco, and Dopplers its way to the south.
More auto-rickshaws moan their electric threnody as office-goers ride
homewards. The long light laps against the Circuit House, washes the trees a
warmer shade, pours shadows over the grass, softens the edges of my vision's
frame. The shadows of paired kites pass over the sunlit grass, as their circles
descend with the fading of the day.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Five squirrels leap and circle and chatter in front of a cottage. The
dog has finished its siesta and descended from the ledge, stretching
luxuriously before shaking itself and trotting off on its evening rounds.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"> And now, as the birdsong subsides, as only the parakeets remain,
to perch on the top branches with loud chatter, the usual evening sense of
sadness settles like mist upon the vista. A nightjar strikes up in a far
corner. I sip my tea. A gentle giant, bespectacled, comes over to ask me to
move to the eastern lawn. That one is better maintained. The western side is
comparatively unkempt. I find it more attractive, but the undergrowth might
provide cover for snakes. Surely it's still too cold for them to emerge? But
why take chances .... I hoist my day-bag and cup and step forth for sunnier
climes. The open lawn on the other side of the House will bask in the setting
sun for nearly another hour, long after these trees have furled the western
grounds in soft shadow and frogs have taken over duties of the orchestra pit
from the birds.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq3AtQRp3bH-l4YX4q4-T5SyofgtOMmwaEmNOjuvM_ix9BTDrFAzQrxqqWsIBDj64DIaubDBhdymNRGUiFFE3fMHWQ0d3Ypb0OuNU9gJ8I6j-W7mKI8wLm0wbkSQgIRvG9vS022K8I2klWqh8Ta5J-4A4XWQJ3Ni3Of1Jfz5WPaop-tttyVw4/s9598/20230206_171824.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="9598" height="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq3AtQRp3bH-l4YX4q4-T5SyofgtOMmwaEmNOjuvM_ix9BTDrFAzQrxqqWsIBDj64DIaubDBhdymNRGUiFFE3fMHWQ0d3Ypb0OuNU9gJ8I6j-W7mKI8wLm0wbkSQgIRvG9vS022K8I2klWqh8Ta5J-4A4XWQJ3Ni3Of1Jfz5WPaop-tttyVw4/s320/20230206_171824.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;"> Epilogue:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">One gap remained, one sight unseen. Fourteen years ago I spent a month
in this faux-colonial edifice, in the room almost under the stairs. Morning and
evening I would walk or sit on the lawn, and every time I would see a family of
four Indian grey hornbills. Large ungainly birds, they would perch on the
higher branches, or hop about upon the thicker ones like a kindergartener who
needs the loo. Their flight was slow and clumsy, alternately flapping heavily
and gliding between one tree and another. They never perched on buildings or
poles.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh_K6KSeOwwm7CARUehAioLiEZj0vJf6fqEmW3fRw83sI1FiPGK-M60MiLIi_-L1x0sKLYTYLXcw8eyK6UZBtF0bC69SuUofgMe5pJCXI5-Z_cb4pCqAoFFsWF18MfrQHborZcH5D0WsSD6POPo2voERTydrIhjdGWNO208G3dasfFMLYszSk/s3456/20230205_174830.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2680" data-original-width="3456" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh_K6KSeOwwm7CARUehAioLiEZj0vJf6fqEmW3fRw83sI1FiPGK-M60MiLIi_-L1x0sKLYTYLXcw8eyK6UZBtF0bC69SuUofgMe5pJCXI5-Z_cb4pCqAoFFsWF18MfrQHborZcH5D0WsSD6POPo2voERTydrIhjdGWNO208G3dasfFMLYszSk/s320/20230205_174830.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">On this visit, I looked for them but caught only a brief glimpse of one
in silhouette, that too on a tree outside the huge grounds of the Circuit
House. Sitting in the gathering gloaming on the eastern lawn, I read up on grey
hornbills. Their life-span is thirty years or more, so the same family could
well be around. But nary a sight of them have I had so far.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">But wait! That repeated call from the depths of the banyan tree? Like a
large pariah kite trying to imitate a car horn? Surely ...</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">And in a moment of joy, first one and then a second hornbill bursts
forth from the behind the trailing roots of the banyan and flies away to the
east. A sighting. And a farewell.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;">Patiala has fulfilled a promise.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-indent: 36pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-60345161651633648482023-01-02T14:17:00.004+05:302023-01-02T14:18:24.525+05:30Equus!!<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Barrraaaa …
ter-raaatt!” </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sardar Karnail Singh bellowed across the paddock. And twenty
sad OTs, Officer Trainees, held on to the reins in quiet desperation as their
lives were speeded up an unwelcome notch. We had all been told to lightly spur
our horses upon Karnail Singh’s command, so they would move from a sedate trot
into a canter, the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">burra </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">trot. We all
took to heart the part about “lightly”, and barely brushed our heels against
our horses’ flanks. In hopes that they would miss the memo and stick to the
rather comfortable slower pace. No such luck. The horses were far better
trained than their riders, and after several seasons of Karnail Singh’s dulcet
tones echoing round their ears, they understood his orders thoroughly.
Wherefore the horses broke into a canter. And several OTs, I am sure, broke
into a sweat.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">For a brief spell, I was actually exhilarated by the
sensation. Fingers knotted in the reins, knees clamped tight around the horse,
I fondly imagined that I cut a fine figure. Or at the very least, a less sorry
figure than U---- S---, who on the very first day of riding class had fallen
off a stationary horse and broken his collar-bone. And as usually happens in
such circumstances, I became careless. My grip on the reins must have
slackened. The first I got to know of this was when my steed suddenly
harrumphed and broke into a full gallop. A gallop! With a rider who had mounted
on his own for the first time, only four days prior! What the … well, here
again, I must confess, the fault was largely mine.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There were a few horses in the stables that were
earmarked for the special category of plump, despairing, dewy-eyed lady
officers who almost broke into tears when they entered the paddock. These were
the placid, even-tempered steeds, usually no more than 11 to 12 hands high, who
seemed to maintain the same speed regardless of whether they walked, trotted or
cantered. Then there were what one might term the horses of the general pool.
We gentlemen officers were supposed to try our luck with these. And there were
three horses that were in a class of their own. Nobody, or almost nobody,
wanted anything to do with these. One was the strangely named Budstar, a white
army remount who was born to lead. She had impeccable manners and the general
air of a tolerant regimental colonel. The problem was, she stood more than 16
hands at the withers, and the ground seemed very very far away for a poor city
boy stranded astride her. (I can vouch for this, because eight years later I
was misguided enough to mount up on her for what was meant to be a gentle walk
around the suburbs of Dehra Doon but ended as a wild never-ending gallop across
ploughed fields, including some cauliflower crops that caused chaos in the
squadron.) A second unpopular horse was the aptly-named Touch-Me-Not. This
gelding combined all the loveable qualities of Thomas Silverstein of
Leavenworth and Freddy Krueger of Elm Street. On the first day itself he had
lashed out with a two-legged kick that narrowly failed to decapitate our friend
Tali Temjen Toy. But apparently even the most contrary horse can find a rider.
Rajesh Singh grew up riding horses around the Police Lines in Patna. He was
confident enough, and actually a good enough horseman, to adopt Touch-Me-Not as
his regular mount. And our resident vet from the Indian Foreign Service, Ramesh
Kumar - tall, gangly and experienced - quite liked surveying the horizon from
the exalted height of Budstar.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Which left the third horse that nobody wanted to ride.
Dara. A handsome muscular deceptive son of Belial with a coat like gleaming
milk chocolate and a twinkle in his eye that sometimes changed into the glint
of scheming evil. Guess who set his heart on riding this good-looking rogue? Oh
well. I was much younger then, but I was also much much more foolish, out of
all proportion to my youth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So it came to pass that I found myself astride several
hundred kilos of rocking horseflesh, accelerating rapidly but not quite
smoothly past the line of the other horses. I barely registered a look of
horrified surprise on the face of a fellow officer as we appeared at his elbow
and then vanished ahead of him. In those few seconds that seemed to last
forever, I squeezed my knees tighter and tighter until my entire lower half
seemed clenched in rigor. I pulled on the reins until I was sure my fingers
would be cut off. All to no avail. Dara thundered on. And I realised that my
situation was about to become more dire.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxxf_sSgpOEGTFqak_9UmoR8lwixbQURkB-d2tvpl0y3Sj1KOwWaOd09dnRqjO5aAs5Os7sfJ6aGjz6g08zT9Nrqj1n3NvoyFk9TWvQlH9vTaiNlOB0qX9389GWEE9YYdunipmWbidhzfmTHKNjkzf6-cfpUW60yZCdehaYvT8MTASGhhZorg/s631/paddock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="631" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxxf_sSgpOEGTFqak_9UmoR8lwixbQURkB-d2tvpl0y3Sj1KOwWaOd09dnRqjO5aAs5Os7sfJ6aGjz6g08zT9Nrqj1n3NvoyFk9TWvQlH9vTaiNlOB0qX9389GWEE9YYdunipmWbidhzfmTHKNjkzf6-cfpUW60yZCdehaYvT8MTASGhhZorg/s320/paddock.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The riding paddock at Charleville is set in a hollow
at the bottom of a hill. The gate from the road is on the only open side. The
other three sides are the natural enclosure formed by the hill slopes, but …
BUT! … buttressed in local granite to a height of twenty feet. And Dara, mad
bad Dara, completed the gallop down one side of the paddock, left the line of
the other horses far behind, turned around the shortest side … and headed
straight for the stone wall at a rate of knots! I was doomed. I knew it. Inside
my stalled brain I could hear a distant yammering. And still I kept up my
futile pull on the reins, and still I squeezed my knees tight until my
circulation gave up the fight. The stone wall seemed to jump closer. It came
into focus despite the bounce and rattle of Dara’s galloping, until I saw the
cracks and dimples made by the chisels, the little clumps of grass between the
edges, the line eight feet up where my head would probably be smashed open ….<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Until at the last moment Dara heeled over onto his
right, like a motorcycle banking into a tight turn, and the wall fell away on
my left. My mind went blank with the realisation that I was not going to die a
strange and horrible death between a horse and a hard place. The relief lasted
only for a split second. I realised two things simultaneously. First, that
while I would probably not die, I might be crippled. Because Dara was now
galloping along the outer wall, and so close as to crush my left leg or at
least my left knee against the stone. Second, that the distant yammering was
not just within my head. Sardar Karnail Singh, now in my field of vision, was
bellowing across the paddock <i>“Aise, sahib
… AISE !!”. </i> as he sawed his hands
alternately in front of him. Adrenaline lit up my brain. I realised that Dara
had literally got the bit between his teeth, and the only way to get it back
against the tender part of his mouth and re-establish control was to pull the
reins left and right alternately. Which I did. Immediately. With more strength
in my numb fingers and forearms and aching shoulders than I would have thought
possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It worked. The thunder faded. The rocking subsided.
Dara slowed, first to a canter, then to a trot. He ran off the circular sandy
track beaten by the hooves and finally stopped on a patch of wild grass and
weeds. Harrumphed, snorted long and loud, as if laughing at my discomfiture. I
swear he looked back at me, over his shoulder, and all but winked in glee
before he returned to cropping the grass. I was too dazed to even pull his head
up. From somewhere far away I could hear a friend calling “Good show!”. Karnail
Singh, with uncharacteristic kindness, shouted <i>“Saab, utar jaaiye”, </i>that I could dismount if I wanted to.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But I did not dismount immediately. Instead, I pulled
Dara’s head up, slapped him on the neck, tapped my heels into him, and walked
him slowly back to the corner where the <i>syces</i>
waited. Only then did I dismount, in style – first pulling off the riding hat,
then my little fingerless leather gloves, then making a great show of patting
and stroking and reprimanding Dara, before I finally swung off and dropped to
the ground. My apparent <i>savoir faire</i>
was the subject of my friends’ grudging admiration later. Even Karnail Singh
held off from his usual refrain of <i>“Sahab,
kya kar rahe ho, ghodey ko kharaab kar dogey!” </i>What are you doing, you’ll
ruin the horse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Only I knew the real reason for my apparent
nonchalance. My legs had been trembling so violently that I knew they would not
have supported me if I had tried to get off the horse immediately.<o:p></o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-80938960457645975322022-12-23T17:36:00.004+05:302022-12-23T17:44:29.430+05:30Shades of dusk<span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As the light fades across the western sky, I sit immersed in silence that is yet not quite silent. Home at an unusual hour, before the December day has dimmed entirely. I revel in the shadows and the peace. The silence is accentuated by a faint thrumming from the kitchen, the tiny scratching of claws in a cage, a bird indignant over some small avian disagreement.
Through the long windows the light laps at the feet of my living room furniture, washes over curtains and cushions, dresses the corners in long strokes of shadow, touches the everyday with the brush of fleeting mystery. In what passes for winter in my tropical town, smog has risen half-way up the sky and veiled the sun well above the horizon. So much for flaming sunsets. </span><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>“Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…”</i> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“While some people take the party with them wherever they go, Prufrock brings the loneliness.” But is that such a bad thing? Perhaps Prufrock only shows us the emptiness that sings within. Perhaps the party is a masque to cover up the quiet and the dark that wait and wait for the doors in our minds to open. Then again, must I be lonely when I am alone? In quality, in the richness of flavour, there is a difference between loneliness and solitude. The former brings pain, anomie. Solitude is the luxury of the free mind. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As the light fades further, the noise of traffic homeward bound frays the edges of the velvet silence. Small lights prick holes in the rising dark. My recliner seems to stretch out of its own volition. The smell of incense wraps me in memories – long evenings long ago, with the tinkling bell of my grandmother’s devotions, or my yawning room in Delhi back when I waited for my life to turn the corner. On cue, the neighbouring <i>muezzin</i> sings his melancholy notes. A kite floats past my balcony, late to her waiting nestlings. A pair of flying foxes, great Indian fruit bats, flap homeward to the fig tree in the ashram to the north. Now the French windows frame the last of the dusk, the room fades into softer dark, my subconscious seeks the strains of massed violins, my memory resurrects my great-aunt who loved me more than anybody else and her strong smooth fingers that stroked my head until I slept. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">From the dark vale that undulates softly between the light from my laptop screen and the salmon shades of evening, I seem to rise beyond the detritus of the working day and float into a great domed hall of silent solitude. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In these moments, I am free.</span></div>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-29305729649591533472022-12-22T15:23:00.006+05:302022-12-22T15:25:44.243+05:30The simple pleasures He retired from the Indian Navy many years ago. He says we last met in 2011, though I seem to recall meeting him later in my (then) office on the other side of the river. Be that as it may, he took the trouble to drive over from Fort William and spend some time just catching up. Such a delightful conversation, ranging from the basic principles of Shinto to the effect that the scent of cortisone secretion has on animals, and covering in between the translated version of Buddhadev Bose's <i>Raat Bhore Brishti</i> and the difference in the stroke timing in swimming for sprints and long distance.
Like books, some few people are also to be savoured at leisure. Or, as the Man (whose short stories also came up in the conversation) put it, <i>"Apnake toh cultivate kortey hocche moshai!"</i>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-3034609103959724602021-06-06T08:22:00.026+05:302021-06-06T10:03:49.638+05:30If a tree falls in the forest (Badosa, Bogdan - such names!)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">When I checked in the
morning, I found that Badosa had won. Ba. Do. Sa. The names provided one reason
to stay tuned to this minor match in the French Open. This girl from Italy, the
other from Romania. Bogdan. Bog. Dan.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">They belie the clunkiness
of their names. Both are lean, athletic, high-cheekboned. Muscular, even, with toned biceps that put to shame my own amorphous arms. Why did I watch the
match almost all the way through? Perhaps because, as I near the end of my
first career, I empathise ever more with the honest trier. Neither has the game
to win a Grand Slam. They will earn some money on the journeyman’s circuit,
grinding it out, occasionally hitting a great shot or playing a great point,
doing 15 min sets of shuttle runs every morning until their knees ache and
their lungs burn. They will never see greatness. After a few years, they will retire
from the circuit and look for other lives. The most obvious option would be
tennis coaching, or at least something to do with sports and fitness. They
could even try modelling. But who knows? Bogdan might be learning to play the
cello. Badosa may have a degree in films and communication. Their lives are not
limited to the red clay arena. Or perhaps they are. Who knows?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bKhzcXoBH4o/YLw6r9HoFsI/AAAAAAAA9bo/b_A-L5rsZ-sPYwnRqJJL0Q_CbFCabckhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1420/Ana_Bogdan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1420" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bKhzcXoBH4o/YLw6r9HoFsI/AAAAAAAA9bo/b_A-L5rsZ-sPYwnRqJJL0Q_CbFCabckhwCLcBGAsYHQ/w250-h320/Ana_Bogdan.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h1VbL7jgVfY/YLw6rqYYjdI/AAAAAAAA9bk/qoGYhyVvXSE5L2wSjS8ZKrUK2DWr_3WFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s300/Badosa.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h1VbL7jgVfY/YLw6rqYYjdI/AAAAAAAA9bk/qoGYhyVvXSE5L2wSjS8ZKrUK2DWr_3WFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Badosa.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The match went against
form for a while. Badosa is ranked 34 to Bogdan’s 102 (best – 59), she has
reached the 4<sup>th</sup> round at Roland Garros where Bogdan’s best is the
second round, she has earned twice as much money this year. And she is 5 years
younger than her opponent, who is 30. She also has one more singles title than
Bogdan. Who has none. Badosa obviously has the better game. More power,
accuracy. Better shot selection, too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">But all that forsook her
in the first set, where Bogdan played percentage tennis, with a more solid backhand.
In fact her backhand is her stronger side. Not one of her forehands had explosive
power or line-searing accuracy. A couple of Badosa’s shots showed class, but
she made too many unforced errors. She went down 6-2.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The second set see-sawed,
went to a tie-break. The cameras zoomed in on the women. Bogdan, all cheekbones
and eyelashes, was impassive. Only her bright grey eyes showed some emotion,
and once she shouted at herself. Badosa provided more drama. Chic black
wrap-around skirt occasionally flapping in the wind, the slim steel danglers in
her ears shimmering when she tilted her head, eyes determinedly averted from
her opponent when they sat court-side between games. She muttered, grimaced,
raised her arms skywards. And clawed back into the match, taking the tie-break
7-4. One set all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The third set was off-piste.
They held serve, then broke each other again and again. Each time Bogdan took
advantage of Badosa’s erraticism and ground her way to a game point on her own
serve, the Italian (born in the USA, she was born in the USA) produced a good
point, sometimes a great shot, and muscled back into the set. But again, Bogdan
ground close enough to seal some of the break points. Somewhere inside, I was
rooting for Bogdan because she is older, she has less time left, she is the
lower-ranked underdog. But I could see the writing on the wall. Bogdan was
tiring. She didn’t run around her backhand to finish off loose returns. Was she
unsure of her forehand? She did not go for the kill even when a flank was wide
open. Still playing the percentages, but they were no longer in her favour.
Because Badosa was back in her zone. Hitting deep, hard, wide. A couple of times
she left Bogdan standing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">It showed in the way she
walked back to her chair. Lithe, confident, almost feral. Like a cheetah on the
stalk, knowing that it will take just a last burst of speed to take the prey. And
it happened. Bogdan, subtly tired and just a little unsure after the
break-backs, tried too many drop-shots. Too slow. Too high. All in
the backhand net corner. Badosa ran them down, killed them. Then Bogdan put a
couple into the net herself. After 4 all, after 2 breaks apiece, after 4
deuces, Badosa held serve. And stalked to her deuce court to receive. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">I knew
what was coming. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 1cm;">I switched off the TV. The match vanished. The players faded.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="text-indent: 37.7953px;">I could not bear to see either of them lose. I am too invested in the pain of the journeyman. </span></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-31319444553750443882017-01-06T11:34:00.003+05:302017-01-06T11:35:46.843+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Death </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the first week of a new year, Om Puri is dead. At the age
of 66. I wonder what Naseeruddin Shah will have to say about him. Did they even
remain friends after the ’80s?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Two nights ago, a call from my one-time best friend. His
mother is dead, he has flown in from another city and he is almost at the
crematorium. For 3 years now, I had been thinking that I should visit his
parents. Many afternoons and evenings in my teens, much love and many rebukes
and many meals and books in that house. I never made it. Now she is gone, and
his father remains.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">And he did not think of me when he got the news, even though
I am the oldest friend he has in this city.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">My father occasionally speaks of death. His own death, too.
He is increasingly aware of the finite nature of life. I want to spend more
time with him. And I wonder what would happen to my daughter if I were to go
next.</span></div>
</div>
J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-42146438970408889482015-01-20T17:33:00.001+05:302015-01-20T17:33:20.114+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span class="g-60-b" style="float: left; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 60px; line-height: 53px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 2px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Wrote something after a long time, thanks entirely to The Griff (Thank you, Peter).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And he published it in Forbes. Yay!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">http://bit.ly/1GhQyzM</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-large;"><b>Kolkata Book Fair: <br />The city's love affair with literature</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-large;"><b><br /></b></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="padding: 0px 0px 2px;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Sadly enough, the most abiding memory is of the dust. And it’s not just me. Actor, photographer and honorary Kolkatan Ashish Vidyarthi, asked for his first impressions of the Kolkata Book Fair, responded: “Dust!” Books, crowds, queues, books, food, odours, PA speakers, heat, music, fish… but unto dust thou shalt return. Books may be centrestage at the Kolkata Book Fair, but the dust is more than background noise. Keep an eye on it: It comes back with a vengeance in Act IV.<br /><br />Book Fair. <em>Boi Mela</em>. Or in the more orotund Bengali of the apparatchiks: <em>Grontho Mela</em>. Forget, for a moment, about the numbers (we’ll look at those later too); try to ignore the Bengali emo-hype about its being part of the culture (or <em>kaalchaar</em>).<br /><br />The Kolkata Book Fair (KBF) is a phenomenon. Large. Crowded. Noisy. Intellectual. (Oh, very intellectual!) Musical. Gastronomic. Artistic. Controversial. Chaotic. Resilient. In its own way, it encapsulates the character of its city and its most visible tribe: The literary Bengali. Each year since 1976—bar one—it takes over the city for 12 days. Well, usually 12 days. The year it rained, it ran for 15. After the fire in 1997, it put itself back together in three, and ran for a total of 20 days. Did I mention “resilient”?<br /><br />Sure, the Frankfurt Book Fair displays more books, and arguably wheels more deals than any other. London has one too, and there’s BookExpo America, and so many others. But these are regulated. Staid. Predictable. And very different from the Kolkata Book Fair in one major aspect. These are trade fairs, meant for negotiations and transactions among those who run the commerce of reading. KBF is for the reader, the retail buyer, for those who revel in the proximity of books.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">When the young Turks of the Kolkata publishing fraternity mooted the idea in 1975, the reactions of the grey eminences were typically Bengali: “Will you now sell books like handicrafts?! Or vegetables?!” It took great tact and finesse for the new Publishers and Booksellers’ Guild (established September 1975) to soothe their ruffled sensibilities. Quite surprisingly for the day and age, the first Kolkata Book Fair materialised within a year of ideation, with 34 publishers setting up 56 stalls in the heart of the city, on a patch of land between the Victoria Memorial and the Academy of Fine Arts.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">That first year, the Book Fair started on March 9. Not the best season in Kolkata, with the mercury mounting and the threat of nor’westers. It was not till the fourth year of the Fair that the Guild resolved to hold it at the same time every year: Starting on the last Wednesday in January and running till the second Sunday of February, a total of 12 days, a schedule that has been maintained, as mentioned earlier, for the most part of 38 years.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Different generations have different memories of their first visit. Samrat Sengupta, corporate exec and quizzer, remembers that on his first visit in the 90s, he regarded the food stalls with the disapproval of the very young, and asked his parents “Why do these people come to eat at a book fair?” Satyaki Bhattacharya, green energy expert now exiled in Delhi, recalls the magic smell of new books, the sight of a little girl sitting on the grass furtively smelling her new comics; the smell of lost childhood. For Sugato Guha, creative director and lyrcist who wrote the theme song for the Book Fair in the noughties, it was a second home: His father, Ramen Guha, was one of the founder organisers, and Sugato had the run of the fairground even while it was being set up. This was in the early 80s, when the Fair was still held outside Victoria Memorial. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">I remember an even earlier phase, when the Fair was less crowded, more leisurely, before the huge queues outside the popular stalls (Ananda Publishers, Standard Literature, Vostok) and the all-pervasive smell of frying fish. My grandfather first took me to the Fair. I can no longer confirm the year from him, but I suspect that first visit was in its very first year. (By the time I entered college, it seemed the Book Fair had been held since the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.) I remember a child’s delight and wonder that there could be. So. Many. Books. All in one place! There was space, there was time to browse and to examine one’s newly-acquired hoard in the mellow winter sun.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">But like Topsy, the Kolkata Book Fair just grow’d. And grow’d. By the late 80s, it was evident that the crowds were too large and the demand for stalls too high for the Fair to stay next to Victoria Memorial. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">It moved to a corner of the Maidan, the huge green common that is Kolkata’s lung. The new site was even more central. It was at the corner of Park Street—then Kolkata’s most happening thoroughfare—and Outram Road, that ran through the Maidan. But it flattered to deceive. Tridib Chatterjee, in his brief monograph on the Book Fair, mentions how terrible the new site was; the neglected corner was uneven, weed-grown and used as an </span><em>ad hoc </em><span style="background-color: white;">public convenience. It lay next to a large pond or young lake that, a hundred years before, had been known as the General Tank, but had become a mass of water-chestnut and other weeds, breeding mosquitoes, trapping garbage. But it offered 23 acres of space, convenient public transport and loads of parking. It took an effort to clean, level, and drain the scrubland, but it was well worth it. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">The Maidan was and is an organic part of Kolkata’s winter. When the sun set through the haze on a January evening, the hubbub of the Fair would seem muted for a while. As dusk vanished and the lights came on, the hum would grow again to drown out the noise of traffic on Chowringhee and Park Street, until the bell rang at eight o’clock to signal the closing for the day. For the next 15 years, that corner was the home of the Book Fair.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Guha recalls how Satyajit Ray, giant both in form and in achievement, would come in early before the crowds massed, to stalk through the lanes between the stalls and browse with an unlit pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. Trina Mukherjee, now a journalist in Mumbai, remembers the shiny toys and the soap bubbles from the hawkers at the gates, and of course the sonorous PA system with its lost-and-found announcements. By then, street theatre, poetry readings, an artists’ corner (christened Montmartre) and musical performances had become part of the menu. Buddhadeb Guha would regale audiences with his </span><em>toppa</em><span style="background-color: white;"> singing and risqué jokes. Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shakti Chattopadhyay, enfants terrible even when they were acknowledged giants of the literary scene, would sip tea while reading poetry to a rapt audience. For a certain generation, Chattopadhyay’s voice, rough at the edges like his poetry, is part of their memories of the Fair. In the 90s and noughties, the harmoniums and Rabindra Sangeet shared the evening with guitars and folk rock.</span><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">The crusty old gentlemen, who decried the commercialisation of books back in the 70s, would be red-faced now, if any are still extant. The Book Fair is, in its own way, a celebration of Mammon. It offers the bargains of the year. Anywhere in Kolkata, a common greeting during the Fair fortnight is “What did you find at the Fair this year?” Aanton Mukherjee, brand executive, smiles at the thought of children being dragged away morosely from their stall of choice by their parents because better bargains were available elsewhere. Guha still has two books of original artwork by Ralph McGuirre, bought for the princely sum of Rs 35 each. Mukherjee’s treasure is a beautifully illustrated book of Chinese fables, bought for a pittance and preserved for nearly three decades. From the munificence of grandparents through the penury of youth, my heist from the Book Fair each year was a gleeful victory over a malign universe; even today the spoils lurk in the corners of my bookshelves.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">The other common memory from the 70s and 80s is the Russian stalls. It would appear that the highest-selling author at the Fair then (after Rabindranath, of course!) was Arkady Gaidar with When Daddy was a </span><em>Little Boy!</em><span style="background-color: white;"> The Vostok and 20th Century stalls, with their amazingly cheap offerings (including textbooks and books on science) are fondly remembered by every school and college student of the time. Of course we have all ended up buying books we didn’t like, but it was worth it for the heady feeling of getting on a bus with a bagful of books bought with a college student’s meagre resources. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">And there are the ‘little magazines’. Every Bengali intellectual has a book inside him, sometimes two, and until they get around to winning the Booker or the Sahitya Akademi award, they publish their work themselves. One corner of the Fair would be reserved for these little magazines. Not without reason: Most of the giants of Bengali literature have contributed to them in their youth. And some of them may have prowled the lanes of the Book Fair with their shoulder bags, sometimes giving away copies of their magazines to promising readers. I confess I used to walk a little faster to escape their attentions, but age has brought tolerance.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Where there are books, there must be booklifters. In Kolkata, they were censured, but almost indulgently so. One offender caught in the act explained that he had a terminally ill brother whose only solace was reading. A touching story, except that the salesman knew him and pointed out that he was an only child. (He was let off after doing 20 squats for atonement.) Two guilty schoolgirls, sweating and red-faced, got a look over half-moon spectacles, a dressing-down from the stall-owner… and a gift of a book each!</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">The Maidan idyll, alas, didn’t last. Remember the dust? In 2006, a public interest litigation (PIL) challenged the Fair’s being held on the Maidan. The day before the 2007 edition, the Kolkata High Court ruled that the Fair caused environmental damage, including damage to the Victoria Memorial from the dust and fumes. At short notice, KBF was rescheduled and moved 16 kilometres away to the grounds of the Salt Lake Stadium.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Where it was promptly flooded out by unseasonal rain.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Again, the Fair pulled itself back together at short notice, and ran for 15 days instead of 12. But the organisers’ travails were not over. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">In 2008, further PILs followed, and for the only time in 30-odd years, Kolkata went without its annual literary tryst. It was a huge gap in the cultural calendar. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">The Fair was no longer only about books; it celebrated music, art, theatre, all the things that make life pleasant. From the 80s, it has had a focus country each year (France, Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Cuba, Chile have all featured), and over the years, Richard Dawkins, Gunter Grass, Mulk Raj Anand, Paul Theroux and Alexander McCall Smith have been chief guests. (When Jacques Derrida was chief guest in 1997, the year of the fire, Annada Shankar Ray had quipped that he had taken deconstructionism too far.) </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">For the last three years, a literary festival has been held, first on the fringes and then, from last year, as part of the Fair itself. There is a children’s pavilion, there are seminars, book readings, plays; a smorgasbord of literary delectation. And everywhere there is food, glorious Kolkata street food: </span><em>Phuchkas</em><span style="background-color: white;">, rolls, ‘Mughlai’ </span><em>parathas, chaat</em><span style="background-color: white;">, all the food we were taught to avoid and which we have longed for all our lives. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Since 2009, the venue has been the new Trade Fair Complex on the eastern edge of the city. Sales touched Rs 18 crore on the Maidan and have remained at that level at the new venue. But only 14 acres are available instead of the earlier 23, and the footfalls that are Kolkata’s pride have dropped from an all-time high of 2.5 million visitors over 12 days to about 1.8 million last year. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Sad, until one realises that the Frankfurt Book Fair, acclaimed as the world’s largest, has, ahem, 300,000! Frankfurt may be the largest in terms of commerce, but this fair in Kolkata is the world’s largest celebration of books. </span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Gunter Grass, an outspoken critic of Kolkata, said that the Book Fair is a metaphor of life: A beautiful creation that, like the city itself, will fade, while the books will endure.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
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J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-90844720892759140322013-08-25T08:09:00.002+05:302013-08-25T08:12:27.433+05:30Surfacing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Past 7 in the morning and already so hot that the laptop
responds sluggishly. The world is full of horrible news – chemical attacks in Syria,
the Bombay rape, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chennai Express</i>
becoming the highest-grossing Hindi movie ever. And if that is trivialisation,
I really couldn’t be arsed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I’ve been stupid. Things have piled up until a 100 crore
scheme is only as important as trimming my nails. Prioritisation is the route
to sanity. But tasks raise their little bobbing heads and chitter in my
subconscious, fuelling fear, nibbling at the day, their noise adding up to a
half-heard refrain, “No time! No time!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">To make it worse, Terry Pratchett’s Alzheimer’s is
showing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dodger</i>, possibly the worst
thing he has ever written. Not to worry, Terry. We’ll be reading you for old
times’ sake, because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night Watch</i> is
one of the best things to never win an award.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">And finally, screw Twitter and Facebook. THIS is my space,
and if you don’t feel like dropping in for a chat, there's a cheaper edition of C Bhagat's <i>Revolution </i>waiting for you<i> </i>at your nearest traffic light.</span></div>
</div>
J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-89850123815398272052013-08-13T08:24:00.003+05:302013-08-13T08:27:58.361+05:30What goes around<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Douglas
Adams propounded a unique theory for heavier-than-air flight. Climb to a high
place and throw yourself off. And oh, try to miss the ground. Classic in its
simplicity, except for the obvious drawback – nobody seems to have made it
work. Somewhere in another dimension, perhaps doodling on a napkin in The
Restaurant at End of the Universe, Douglas Noel Adams may be working on an
upgrade.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">But
the theory is out there. Which leads to another possible scenario. Somewhere in
the Mid-Western United States, a devoted reader and fan of Douglas Adams’ work
decides to try out his theory of flight. With the expected result. Thereafter,
this thwarted aviation researcher – or rather more likely, his next-of-kin –
sue Douglas Adams’ estate and Pan Books for a zillion dollars because his
theory caused grievous injuries and / or death of a reader. How would you rule
in such a case, dear reader?</span></span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">What,
you think it’s far-fetched? Try this: the Mayor of San Diego is accused of
sexual harassment. His attorney places the blame squarely on the City of San
Diego. Because – wait for this! – the City never trained its officials on what
constitutes sexual harassment and how to avoid it. In other words, the attorney
claims that normal educated people need to be trained in how NOT to be
lecherous and insensitive. This is not just (in my humble opinion) a specious
defence. This is a symptom. There is a spectre haunting the liberal world
today, the spectre of transferred responsibility. The spectre of “it’s-not-MY-fault”.
The easy way out – blaming the system, the television, the corporation, just so
long as it’s somebody else.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The
USA, of course, revels in incredibly frivolous litigation. A couple sued
WalMart because their grocery bag split and caused “cracked and damaged
toenails”. No, really! It’s not just the USA. A lady in Israel sued a weather
station because they predicted sunny weather, she went out in a light dress
without an umbrella, it rained, she caught a cold. And a truly sad story – a
student in Texas (but of course!) died because she got drunk, drove her Honda
into Galveston Bay and drowned because she couldn’t unfasten her seat-belt. So
of course her parents are suing Honda because their seat-belts cannot be
unfastened by drunk drivers who also happen to be underwater. It’s sad that a
young girl died, but at some point, we have to accept that if you break the
law, you take the consequences. Not just the law of the land, but the laws of
rationality.</span></span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">There’s
an extension of this attitude in India as well. The attitude of “why doesn’t
the government fix it”. </span>The assumption that the common citizen is
entitled, but not responsible. A contradiction of every social construct from
Aristotle to John Crawls. It can't work. If we want the system to work for us,
we have to work for the system. If I want my daughter to be safe on the roads
after dark, it's also my duty to check why my nephew is taking his bike out
after midnight. If I want the conservancy to keep my city clean, it's my job to
take my trash over to the local dump instead of leaving it outside my gate. I
can't expect rewards without effort. There's no entitlement without
responsibility.</span></span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">And if we expect
such entitlement, we're stupid. As stupid as the man who says he broke the law
because his employer didn't teach him how to stay within it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-22804996042139486132013-06-10T14:06:00.002+05:302013-06-11T10:09:54.541+05:30The gift of laughter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
Some people are born
colour-blind. Some are born without a funny-bone. On balance, the latter group
is more to be pitied<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
Growing up, I disliked the boys
who were held up to me as examples. (No, I lie - I loathed them, I hated them
with a deep and abiding malice.) “He’s so serious about his work”, I’d be
told. “And an intolerably self-important little twit”, I’d think to myself.
That could be one of the reasons why today I mistrust “serious”. What does it
profit a man if he gains the world and loses his last belly-laugh? “Serious” is
over-rated. Schopenhauer? Pshaw! I’m a Marxist – of the Groucho persuasion.<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
“He was born with the
gift of laughter, and a sense that the world is mad.” That's the first line of
Rafael Sabatini's "Scaramouche", written nearly a hundred years ago.
One could scarcely find a better maxim to live one's life by. I hold that just
as there is no issue good or bad but thinking makes it so, there is no truth to
grief or mirth, it's all a point of view. Granted, it may not be politic to crack
Irish jokes when there's a bereavement in the family (especially if it's your
boss' family). You won't get the guffaws that indicate your delivery of the
punch-line was perfect. On the other hand, it can't hurt to raise a smile or
two. <br />
Humour, if leavened with sensitivity and compassion, lightens the burden
of sorrow. The Monty Python group read a hilarious speech at their comrade's
funeral. I can think of no better tribute to a man who brought happiness to
people<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
Sadly (pun intended) enough, we
as a nation tend to mistrust laughter. We persist in the belief that a sombre
demeanour is a sign of great intellect or efficiency, whereas if the truth were
told, it's far more likely to have been caused by colitis or tight underwear.
To be fair, humorists have a tough time anywhere. Around the world, a man who
lightens your mood is oft taken lightly. Remember P.G. Wodehouse's utterly
hilarious lament at being dubbed a "burbling pixie"? </div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
Humorists should rather be
placed on a pedestal, for they create something that defies analysis. IF I am
permitted another Wodehouse reference, it was said that criticising him was
like taking a spade to a souffle. Why devalue this rare gift?<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
In India, this wariness about laughter cannot be a
cultural relic. From Gopal BhNaar to Mullah Naseeruddin, Tenali Raman to Birbal
(why, even Narad), our jesters have been respected as men wise enough to
understand the world and present home-truths with a laugh. In more recent
times, Osho (with his famous treatise on the f-word) and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
among others have had huge followings even though (or because?) they have
encouraged their followers to laugh. <br />
Why, then, are we so insecure whenever somebody publicly pokes fun at our
idols? Obviously, laughter is anarchic. Especially in a democracy, where a
telling satire can finish a political career more surely than assassination.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
Perhaps that is the crux - we
fear being laughed at because there is no remedy for losing one's dignity. But
there is a defence. Prevention is better than cure. Pre-empt your satirists.
If we learn to laugh at ourselves, our critics can at best laugh with us, not
at us. And we might be happier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
</div>
J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-43752651290476588412013-05-28T06:50:00.001+05:302013-05-28T06:52:43.449+05:30A moment of Marvell?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Ten years ago I fell in love.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">It was a very sweet infatuation, with all the naivete and
wonder of puppy love, or perhaps the wilful delusion of an Indian summer. For a
few brief days I swooned over the object of my attentions, my passion all the
sweeter because I knew our time together would be short. Then we parted, but
for years afterwards I was firmly committed to her. None other could match her
charms, no other name evoked the same wistful smile. This, despite considerable
temptation; strange as it may seem, there were others who sought to seduce my
stolid middle-aged affections. Some were subtle, some brazen, some endearing in
their simplicity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">But none compared to Paris.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When I think back on it, my inexperience was a major reason
for my being so utterly besotted. It was my first visit to Europe. My first
encounter with the charm of history not just preserved, but kept alive. The
first time I strolled down cobbled streets at dawn, or savoured wine and a
cigar in a sidewalk cafe as the lights came on in the scented streets. My first
experience of a city lit up for beauty alone, or carefully tended flowerbeds
lining busy roads. Of a real van Gogh, a real poster by Toulose-Lautrec.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was as if a country bumpkin entered the
big city, and the first woman he met was Madame du Barry. No wonder I was lost.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The passion lasted some years. There was a yearning to
return. It faded. And I broke the faith.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I rejected the advances of Hong Kong, but I was led astray
by the brassy charm of Istanbul, lost in the strange intimacy of Prague,
grabbed bodily by the direct approach of Manhattan. Time passed, new booklets
were added to my passport. Memories blurred, ran into each other. The lights of
Aleppo morphed into the glimmer of Rio from the Pao de Acucar. But nothing
could erase the memory of a patch of green by the Champs Elysee, with spring’s first
lilacs in bloom.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Last week I visited her again. And the magic was gone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps it was because the first time I had visited had been
in February, with the streets comparatively deserted, whereas this May I had to
share her with a million other admirers. Perhaps it was because I was coming
off three months of hard grind, mentally drained and physically exhausted. Perhaps
it was age. Or perhaps it was just experience. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In the ten intervening years, I have seen too many cities,
savoured too many meals, shared stories with too many friendly strangers. Paris
is no longer a realm of wonder. This is not bragging; it is a lament. I have
lost the capacity for wonder. I have lost the innocence of the first-time
traveller. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">For two days I walked the streets of Paris, trying in vain to
recapture that first fine rapture. But the Ile de la Citie seemed smaller and
duller, the alleys on the Left Bank no longer beckoned. The sidewalk cafes were
full of tourists, teenagers and cigarette butts. The Centre Pompidou seemed
incongruous rather than witty. Even le quarter Marais seemed a little grumpy,
as if sulking at the weather on a weekday afternoon. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Then I retreated to my
room with a paper sack full of bread and sundry viands, opened a bottle of port
and gazed morosely out of the window. The sky darkened into the late late night
of northern summer. Lights came on in the house across the street. A snatch of
accordion music drifted up from the corner. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I knew the young chap in the apartment opposite would go to
sleep early because he left for work at 6 in the morning. That the accordion
player was not rubicund and beret-clad, but a fresh-faced single mother who
played gigs on the weekends. I knew that later in the evening the boys would
congregate at the side door of the “Irish” pub, ten paces round the corner, for
a smoke and a bit of a chat. That a little before 7 in the morning the garbage
truck would edge cautiously down the street, taking special care not to make a
noise around No. 26 or else Monsieur Everet would shout at them from his
first-floor window. I realised I knew the pulse of the neighbourhood. Even it
was for a very few days, I fitted in. I may no longer have the wonder of the
Trocadero under the evening sun, but I could down a pint with an oddity, a
Frenchman who preferred Guinness to Bordeaux. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with the epiphany, “peace came dropping
slow”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">No, I could no longer feel the keen thrill of novelty. But I
had in its place the comfort of familiarity, the pleasures of the everyday. The
cement that binds any lasting relationship.</span></div>
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J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-87215457690962499072013-05-04T19:46:00.002+05:302013-05-04T19:51:56.887+05:30Evolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
was a dinosaur.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Not,
alas, a snarling male-fantasy T-Rex, or even a velociraptor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
was a brontosaurus. Or perhaps a mastodon. Slow, ponderous, quite content to
wallow in turbid swamps as long as there was enough forage available. Not
succulent greens, but paper. More enticing, more delicious than the freshest
ambrosia. To wit, books.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Growing
up, the keenest pleasure I experienced came on every alternate Saturday. My
grandfather would take us to the British Council Library on Theatre Road, where
there was a whole section devoted to children’s books. (It no longer exists;
Attila the Hen cut down the funding for British missions worldwide, and the
children’s section was one of the first casualties.) My cousin and I would
fight tooth and nail over the library cards, gleefully raid the shelves and
then, on the ride home, finger the books lustfully, barely able to contain the
excitement, the anticipation, the sheer joy of having so many books to read.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Books.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Paper
and glue and printing ink, the texture of the old leather on the spine, the
crispness of the pages against the fingers, the unique smell – whether the
brash presence of a new book like the perfume of a parvenu, or the more muted,
musty, faintly apologetic miasma of old books – all adding up to the sheerest
magic. The FEEL of books as much as their content. The purest pleasure I have
known.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And
yet ... This morning I realised that it has been WEEKS since I read a book from
cover to cover. The long shelf facing the bathroom gathers dust. My last three
visits to bookstores were for book launches – where I did not pause to browse
the shelves. I have been seduced by e-books.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
the first week of January this year, the Wall Street Journal published a bout
of the sheerest havering, citing irrelevant statistics and using contradictory
arguments to argue that e-books are no threat to paper-and-ink publishing. A
year ago, this dinosaur would have thrown his weight behind this argument, but
not now. Not since I was bought over.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">First,
I moved from a laptop to a tablet. Then I discovered the seductive convenience
of reading a book that I can adjust to my own requirements. After years of
badly-bound paperbacks with barely legible fonts, I can now change the size of
the font and often the font itself to my convenience. I no longer have to prise
apart the book to read the ends of sentences that run into the spine. I don’t
even need a bookmark, since the e-book will automatically open to the point
where I left off reading the last time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After
such knowledge, what forgiveness?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There’s
more. A generous friend has shared with me his entire library of e-books. All.
Forty. Thousand. Of. Them! All of them put together take up a little part of a
hard drive which is itself no bigger than ONE old Bantam paperback. 40,000
books! To put this in perspective, my father and I have been at our combined
wits’ end to accommodate our collection of some 7000 books (not including his
treasured edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which always has its own
place next to his armchair!) No bookshelves, no cartons, no trunks too heavy to
be lifted. Just a hard drive and a tablet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And
the clinching argument – when I’m reading an e-book through the night, the page
is back-lit. Ergo, no need to keep the light on, and no squeals of complaint
from the Better Half!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now
I know why the dinosaurs vanished.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
</div>
J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-63566173223333725202011-12-01T13:49:00.007+05:302011-12-01T15:34:03.822+05:30Making friends. 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rise to the top, often by sticking close to more solid stuff that floats.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >I was in a little rowing boat, observing this phenomenon in a water body on the IIM Joka campus, when a half-brick splashed into the water a few feet away. A half-brick, not a pebble, not a stone. Two more followed. My friend and I were more concerned about getting brained than getting drenched, so we rapidly rowed to the other side of the pond. Got out, ran around to get the psychotic half-wit who was chucking the bricks. Of course, by the time our feet were on land again, the brick-chucker was a rapidly retreating blob in the middle distance.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >That was in 1986. I still don’t know WHY he threw those bricks at us. It’s quite possible even HE didn’t know. (Incidentally, his hair was not so curly then. But the rest of him was about the same shape as it is now.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Cut to 31<sup>st</sup> December 2002 (or was it 2003?). Calcutta had a new hotel and they’d thrown a party for the formal launch. I walked in late (as usual) and went to get a Coke for my wife. As I turned from the bar I saw … you know how some memories stay with you visually, like a freeze-frame? This was one of those moments, a mental photograph that has stayed with me. What I saw was this - about twenty feet away, the man-with-friends was keeling over to one side, one hand pressed to his jaw, obviously the effect of a close encounter with somebody’s fist. I confess I was actually happy that the guy had got his come-uppance (college hates tend to stay with you, don’t they?). I called to my wife – “***** **** just got punched in the face!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Five COMPLETE strangers in the vicinity turned towards me and practically chorused – “WHO is the guy who punched him?! I want to get him a drink!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Obviously the man-with-friends was as popular as he had been in our college days.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >****<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >So Mihir Sharma has spent a lot of time going through this <a href="http://on.fb.me/vP8175">awesome self-help (?) book</a>, then dissected it in some detail, and even published the resulting article in <b style=""><i style="">“Caravan”.</i></b> The article has almost “gone viral” on the Interwebs - it’s trended on Twitter, been discussed on Facebook, inspired blog-posts, telephone conversations, reminiscences (yes, I KNOW this post is in the same category!). In the process, it has ensured wide publicity for a book written by a man who believes that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Sort of winning a battle and losing a war, surely?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Why bother spending so much time on a person whom you obviously dislike, Mr. Sharma? You’re just giving him the kind of importance HE thinks he deserves. A self-defeating exercise. You’re surprised that he’s made a lot of money by sucking up to the right people? You still wonder at the levels of hypocrisy that famous people are capable of? You find it worthy of comment that people put up with each other in hopes of making money? You secretly believe that our public figures are the spiritual descendants of MK Gandhi, Gautama Buddha and the Good Samaritan? You were on an extended holiday to Mars when the Radia tapes became news?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Lose your naivete, Mr. Sharma. Your diatribe is not going to make an iota of difference to this man everybody seems to hate (whether secretly or openly). People associate with him <b style=""><i style="">despite</i></b><i style=""> </i>being told he is shallow, scheming, sociopathic, sycophantic (selectively?), grating and utterly obnoxious. Unless you can establish that associating with him will cause financial loss or imprisonment, a donkey’s amours will have more value to his associates than your article ever will.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Consider this. When, some years ago, IIPM was being generally loveable and altruistic to Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis, I spoke to the head honchos of both the major English newspapers in Calcutta about the reality behind IIPM’s claims (e.g. Stiglitz as visiting faculty). They nodded gravely, looked uneasy, then wandered away. The mainstream media never published the data that emerged, they mentioned the issue only in passing. Very strange. Of course, the fact that IIPM were India’s biggest advertisers in print media during those months of July and August was completely irrelevant. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >So wisen up, Mr. Sharma. You are an alumnus of a university that (creditably) states openly that one of the biggest gains from studying there is the social network. Yet you’re surprised that the object of your dislike has succeeded through networking? You will notice that I have not named the man here; I don’t want to face a civil suit filed in Dimapur or Jammu. I’m playing safe, while you have the guts to call a spade a bloody shovel several times over. All credit to <b style=""><i style="">Caravan</i></b> and to you for your honesty in publishing <a href="http://bit.ly/vhaHNB">an article</a> that could invite retribution. But sadly, your article won’t make any difference to its subject. He will still be available as a motor-mouth to make up the numbers for TV “debates”. He will remain on contract for an <a href="http://bit.ly/dKZSza">incredibly insensitive and stupid weekly agony column</a>. He will still be famous for being famous. And he will still make oodles of money as a front-man and lobbyist. 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New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><s><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Please get a life,</span></s><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" > </span><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Mr. Sharma. Don’t waste your intellect and talent on stupid trivialities. And oh - do try and write shorter sentences. It would make your point of view so much clearer to non-intellectuals like me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-26039648265437254812011-09-16T05:21:00.000+05:302011-09-16T05:22:43.400+05:30Existential. 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mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">5 in the morning. My TEETH ache with sleep. The laptop shirks, slows down, offers me irrelevant updates. Top of my inbox is a (believe this!) “state of the blogosphere” survey. The coffee seems to have suspicious clots. My innards refuse to co-operate with my plan of going for a run.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Let’s face it, I’m built for greed, not speed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">But we shall persevere.</span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-33601974049099861722011-08-30T09:23:00.001+05:302011-08-30T09:25:53.172+05:30Getting warmer<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 14"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 14"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CSECRET%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CSECRET%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CSECRET%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> 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mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Writing has become a bit of a … well, not a pain, not quite, since even a pain is a tangible state. More like mental constipation. One of the nicest guys I know has been asking me for a YEAR to write something for him. On one of my favourite subjects. And despite several attempts, I have produced nothing. Like a toddler who’s coaxed to sit upon the pot in hopes that SOMEthing will emerge, but fails to perform.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">As you can see, nothing but wind so far. Not even sound and fury. Just … nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">There was a blog I used to read because it was interesting. <a href="http://standingonthebox.blogspot.com/">The Bouncer’s Blog</a>. Then it palled upon me. But – and here’s the secret – the Bouncer summed up the only way to become a writer (and of course I’ve mentioned it before, when moaning in a similar vein). To read, then write. Then read and write some more. And then again. Eventually something will emerge that’s worth reading.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">John Steinbeck, for a while, worked as regular correspondent for the <i style="">San Francisco News.</i> The gentleman in the next cubicle – whose name, of course, I forget – recalled that Steinbeck would come in and spend an hour writing on foolscap paper with a pencil, then throw it away. When asked why, he said “Oh, those are just my warm-ups”. Warm-ups. The first thing that occurs to you, gentle reader, is of course the amount of money that could be made today if those warm-ups had been preserved. The next thought that comes to me is that writing, like any other sport, requires warm-ups.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The problem with being totally out of shape is that by the time one is warmed up, one is also utterly exhausted.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></p> J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-77814681169686914752011-02-28T09:06:00.001+05:302011-02-28T09:38:14.358+05:30Leave them alone ...<!--[endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" lang="EN-IN" >Long, long ago (which is another way of saying 1995 or thereabouts), there used to be people who took a conscious decision to drop out of society. They wanted to seek the ultimate truths in life, or maybe just hated the society of their fellow men. (There’s a third category of people who seem to disappear from normal society –engineering students. But they don’t really qualify because they eventually build their own worlds.) In India, this used to be a commonplace occurrence. Having led a full life, raised children and performed his duties towards his family and ancestors, the Indian man was expected to become a kind of sedate hippie and head for the hills to contemplate the eternal mysteries (such as, what is the right answer to a woman who asks “Does this make me look fat?” Have you noticed that there weren’t too many stories about women who pushed off for the Himalayas? Why should they, they’re the ones asking the questions, it’s the men who have to come up with answers!) This renunciation is not entirely unknown in modern India. Some men still close up their rooms, shave their heads, don the simplest robes and set out on the spiritual quest. Whereupon wise neighbours nod to each other and say “I knew his credit card bills were too high.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" lang="EN-IN" >The Western world has its share of recluses. Paradoxically, we only know about the ones who are famous, such as Greta Garbo who “just wanted to be left alone”. A recluse who is not already famous is by definition invisible, at least until he buys a 72-ton Abrams tank over the counter in, say, Wisconsin and goes on a shooting spree. Especially in the USA, some of the most famous authors have chosen to stay out of the public eye. J.D. Salinger, who died a year ago at the age of 91, had not allowed himself to be photographed or interviewed since the 1950s. He went even further in that he did not publish any of his works after 1953, though he continued writing throughout his life. In effect, he removed not only himself but also his defining talent from public view. This, I must confess, is entirely beyond my comprehension. A latter-day literary lion, Thomas Pynchon, also chooses to keep his life private, but at least he continues to publish novels. He has this option because his work is highly valued; a newly published author has to give up her anonymity during the book launch tour, the interviews, the Page 3 appearances. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" lang="EN-IN" >Fame can be a bitter addiction, but there are some very public examples of stars who went private. If Hollywood (or more correctly, New York, where she lived for 40 years) had Greta Garbo, Ballygunge Circular Road has its own mystery. Roma Dasgupta’s last screen appearance was <i style="">“Datta”</i> in 1976. Forty years on, her mystique obviously has not waned; all of Bengal’s media ran amuk when she was admitted to Woodlands in 2009 even though nobody outside her family really knows what she looks like now. Of course, inaccessibility makes a star’s aura more enduring. But let’s be clear about one thing – whether it’s Garbo or Salinger or Suchitra Sen, none of these celebrities has abjured modern civilisation or even the urban milieu. (Garbo, for example, was known to go shopping and take long walks in Central Park, safely hidden behind oversized sunglasses.) All they have done is severely limit their social interactions so as to protect their privacy. They are still islands in the stream, just very inaccessible islands.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" lang="EN-IN" >In fact, they reinforce John Donne’s most famous line. They cannot survive without the support systems of modern civilisation. It’s a question of economics, not philosophy. Getting away from it all is very tempting (No Rakhi Sawant! No ICC World Cup!) until you realise it also means doing without home delivery, pedicures and group mails. This brings out the difference between (a) recluses, who limit their social interactions e.g Howard Hughes, who spent most of his last years in a curtain-enclosed penthouse in Las Vegas (b) hermits, who go off into the wilds and survive on their own without a phone, laptop or ATM card (I’m not sure which of these two categories would include Bobby Fischer) and (c) exiles, who want to live in society but for some reason cannot, such as most women’s mothers-in-law or Robinson Crusoe. Boo Radley, the mysterious neighbour in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, is probably more of an exile, forced to withdraw from society. His creator, Harper Lee, is closer to being a recluse, since she did not choose to become a public figure despite the acknowledged brilliance of her only novel.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" lang="EN-IN" >We should also be clear that a recluse or a hermit is not always a misanthrope. They may not bear any hatred for the human race, just dislike its company. We all have days like that, when we’d rather be just left alone. Not because we want to wipe out the neighbourhood, but because we want to enjoy the weather. Or soak in some music. Or just spend the day with a book and a thermos of tea. The recluse just wants this state of affairs to last forever. This may seem strange at first, but remember within every extrovert there’s an introvert screaming to get out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-24987267901689102002011-02-22T08:40:00.000+05:302011-02-22T08:43:58.825+05:30The sincerest form of flattery<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I could start with Shakespeare, but frankly, it’s a lot more fun to pull out <i style="">“Tezaab”</i>. Remember 1988 and “<i style="">Ek do teen</i>”? Rake the ashes of your memory a little more and you’ll find Anil Kapoor as Munna, sitting at a plank table with his knife stuck into it. Did we find it unusual that he gestured with his left hand? He, along with a couple dozen other aspiring stars of the day, (some of whom still hover on the fringes of our TV screens – Sudesh Berry, Mukesh Khanna et al) spent his screen time delivering killer lines with slightly pursed lips, waving his left hand about, standing with his hands on his hips, dancing stiff-legged like a racehorse with stiff fetlocks. All punched out of one mould and torn apart by the critics for it. You can’t blame them; they grew up watching the “one-man industry”, the ultimate superstar, they didn’t know stardom could come in any other form. Their ultimate accolade was <i style="">“Tu toh Bachchan ban gaya!”</i><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">But here’s the rub. In 1982, a bootleg video from Pakistan did the rounds. It was called “Copy Cat” and it consisted of scenes featuring Yusuf Khan aka Dilip Kumar inter-cut with footage of … three guesses? Yes, got it in one – Amitabh Bachchan. The similarities were unmistakable. Dilip Kumar was to Bachchan as the Big B was to an entire generation. But Yusuf Saab was not the only “inspiration”. The 1971 cult film “Dirty Harry”, and Clint Eastwood’s gait as he walks towards the bank robbers to deliver the most famous line of the ‘70s. Very familiar, if you play it in split-screen with Vijay Kumar walking across a smoke-filled mining site, lighting dynamite fuses from his <i style="">beedi</i>. Yes, <i style="">“Trishul”.</i> Or even the inspired riff on Chaplin, talking to his mirror image after getting beaten up in <i style="">“Amar Akbar Anthony”.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">So do we dismiss the most enduring star of Indian cinema because he borrowed from all over? Or do we give him credit for a graceful synthesis of the most striking features he found? If we take the former view, the Big B is no more than a screen version of Kavya Vishwanathan. (Remember “Opal Mehta” in 2006, when we briefly basked in the reflected glory of an Indian origin girl not only getting into Harvard but writing a bestseller before she was 18? And the subsequent disappointment when she was labelled a plagiarist?) For that matter, Aamir Khan, now a byword for versatility, spent the first 12 years of his career subtly copying Rajesh Khanna. Who in turn blatantly copied Dev Anand. Who spent 30 years trying to be Gregory Peck …<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Where is the fine line between “inspiration” and “imitation”? Or, in the recorded arts, outright plagiarism? One of my favourite stories is the row that Vishwa Bharati University created over the tune of <i style="">“Chhnoo kar mere man ko”</i>, a Hindi song from a Hindi film where the song sequence was coincidentally shot in Calcutta. Of course it was a direct lift from <i style="">“Tomaar holo shuru”</i> and Vishwa Bharati, as the guardians of the tradition, went all huffy about it, even threatening to sue Rajesh Roshan. Only to be deflated by an interview where RD Burman ingenuously mentioned that the Great Bearded Bard had taken the tune from an old Scottish folk song.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">RDB knew what he was talking about. His genius lay not only in his creativity but in the way he hungrily devoured music from all over the world. Consider this eclectic list of songs that he copied or adapted from – <i style="">“Tera mujhse hai pahle ka nata koi”</i> from “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, <i style="">“Tum ho mere dil ki dhadkan”</i> from Procol Harum’s “A whiter shade of pale”, Sholay’s <i style="">“Mehbooba” </i><span style=""> </span>from a Greek hit by Dennis Rousso, the title song in <i style="">“Kasme Vaade” </i>from “Sesiya Hamba” by Ipi Ntombi. Would I then agree that that very modest musician Anu Malik is, as he claims, every bit as great as RD Burman? Excuse me while I die laughing! <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And now for the Bald Bard who recreated the English language. What’s common to “Love’s Labour Lost”, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest”? They are the only plays that Awld Will wrote <i style="">with his own original plots!</i> Every other one of his 37 plays – that means the other 33 – is based on someone else’s story. Shakespeare, after all, was writing the <i style="">jatra</i> of his day and milieu. He followed the same reasoning as Bollywood directors today – if you “adapt” something that’s already successful, you’re not guaranteed a hit, but you stand a better chance of making some money.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">There are some cases where perceived plagiarism may be no more than the persistence of memory. After all, given the 5000 years of recorded history, of musical traditions, of poetry and myth, the chances are low that we can come up with a creation that is altogether new. Why, even our beloved Guv’nor, Thomas Stearns Eliot, has been accused of lifting the refrain of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from a line by Madison Cawein (the “Keats of Kentucky”). Should we believe it? And if we do, where is the difference between TS Eliot and Kavya Vishwanathan (or for that matter Dan Brown)?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In the translation. In making something new from something familiar. In adding one’s own special bits of genius to a piece of gold until it sparkles like a solitaire. In the final analysis, have you added more than you’ve borrowed, have you given more than you took? The truth, my friends, lies in the telling.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-16582500202292039092011-02-07T10:27:00.001+05:302011-02-07T10:39:51.251+05:30The country of the blind<![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Some of my closest friends now hold dual citizenship. In every case, the second loyalty is to the third most populous demographic group in the world, one with more inhabitants than the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh or Russia and less than only China and India. I’ve visited this realm. Correction – I visit it. Quite often, if not regularly. It’s a strange and wondrous place; I’m yet to see tangerine trees and marmalade skies there (or, alas, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes), but it does have pink cows that give instant strawberry milk shake. It has its problems, such as the sudden and mysterious outbreaks of minor physical violence in the form of “pokes”, but all in all it is a peaceful place despite the apparent lack of productive economic activity. Its external relations are exemplary. Since it places no restrictions on citizenship or indeed on loyalty, its denizens also inhabit other countries of the same sort and they all seem to get along famously.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">The major problem, of course, is that the real world intrudes so often. Surely we’d all be so much happier if we lived forever after in the-world-that-Mark-built? Hours and days on end spent “liking” each other’s status messages, notes, comments, photographs. Sharing long-forgotten musical masterpieces by the likes of The Monkees or Anuradha Paudwal. Uploading photographs of our vacations, our families, friends, parties, pets, food, bowel movements. There must be enough economic production on Farmville and enough governance in the form of Mafia Wars. Surely this is the state of enlightenment the poet envisaged when he wrote “Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake”?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">In the beginning, of course, there was Orkut. Mr. Buyyukkokten’s (I kid you not, that is his name!) creation in the dim and distant past (2004) was very important because it started the social phenomenon of “fransip”. Before Orkut, young men – sensitive, caring, intelligent, young men of luminous charm with great social skills – had little opportunity to “mek fransip”. Their options were limited to circling on their motorbikes round women waiting at bus-stops. Or making, through pursed lips, sounds that could have come from a flatulent duck but were actually meant to indicate deep mental processes. Once they discovered Orkut, their great creativity and sensitivity found its rightful outlet. These young men could then demonstrate their intelligence and charm by repeatedly “scrapping” young women’s profiles and, as a follow-up, posting photographs of their own pelvic regions. Strangely enough, Orkut went into decline despite these wonderful features. (A quick tip for Facebook users who have migrated from Orkut – if a woman sends a man a “friend request”, said request does not have a sub-text that reads “I want to have your babies”. Seriously. Take my word on this.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Then, of course, the heavens shook, lightning flashed, John Williams composed his grandest music ever with bass notes that could make continents vibrate, and Facebook was created. (This scene was edited from “The Social Network”.) Mark Zuckerberg is undoubtedly one of the most influential men of the 21st century. After all, they didn’t make a movie about Mahatma Gandhi till 32 years after he died; Zuckerberg has a movie about him before he’s 32! And while it may not show very nice things about him, it has been nominated for the Oscars. There is absolutely no truth to the report that Mark sent copies of the issue of TIME magazine – the one with him on the cover - to David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg with a handwritten note that said “Nyaaah nyaaah nyaah!” Now if I could only figure out why I can’t upload clips from that film to my Facebook account …</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Before my friends on Facebook denounce me as a hypocrite, I would like to clarify that I have a Facebook account. With friends. And status updates. And even albums. In short, I am a citizen of Zucker-burgh. And I have no doubt that the very concept of Facebook is awesome in its simplicity. It is such a convenient means not only to keep in touch with one’s friends and relatives but also to build networks. To create fora for discussing matters of great importance and relevance. To mobilize opinion on issues that matter. For example, President Mubarak has made the first peace offering to the Tahrir Square protesters. Not only has he posted pictures of the gathering in his “Friends” album, he has even sent friend requests to the ones in the front rows. (For the first time, Facebook invites were delivered in person. By large policemen.) Besides, the team at Facebook are active on social issues. They now propose to set up Amber Alerts to help search for missing children. Only pessimists and Republicans would say that half those children wouldn’t have been missing if their parents had logged off from Facebook and spent more time with their children in the first place.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">In any case, social networks are here to stay. How will the world recognize the creator of the largest network? Hard to say, but we have one hint – the White House may soon announce the first virtual First Pet. In the meantime, wait for the inevitable merger of the larger social networks, viz. MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Coming soon – My Twit Face.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-49182181468886935752011-01-19T13:07:00.002+05:302011-01-19T13:16:31.263+05:30Mall-ady<i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">“I went down to the sacred store / where I’d heard the music years before / but the man there said the music wouldn’t play”</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. I guess that’s a pretty good indicator of my attitude. Lines from a 40-year-old song (“American Pie”, from the 1971 album “American Pie” by Don McLean and no, it was not originally a Madonna release!) most aptly sum up my nostalgia for the not-so-distant past. Yes, “dinosaur” seems an appropriate term. “Old coot” would be pretty close too. But you know what? I’m not the only one. Why is the music of RD Burman, who died 16 years ago, still the No. 1 choice for teeny-bopper parties?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">But let’s stick to what I started out on. The “sacred stores”. The old curiosity shops we used to find everywhere from Park Street to Palm Avenue and Putiari. Places we went, to buy books, bedsheets, buns. Places that are now replaced by aisles with fluorescent lighting and bright green signage that says things like “Home Furnishings”, “Bakery”, “Personal Care”. And I mourn their passing. Now we have malls. And retail chains. Even wannabe malls. Clean, comfortable, air-conditioned, efficient. And with about as much character as a styrofoam cup. Give me an earthen <i style="">bhNaar </i>any day. Or, as a sign of special favour, a four inch tall glass with ribbed sides. That was Pandit’s acknowledgement of regular customers. Pandit, who ran his little <i style="">paan</i>-cigarettes-tea-and-occasional-hash kiosk near the corner of Palm Avenue and Ballygunge Park Road, who took two years to grant me Most Favoured Customer status and who vanished some years ago. Now all we have is coffee shops and Chai Junction. Wonderful in their own way, but hey, would they open up the shop and make tea for us at midnight when we’re wandering home in our cups?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">These labelled counters, now. All very systematic, but why does the Wife prefer traipsing the hot sweaty aisles of Newmarket, popping into stores that have remained unchanged since before she was in school, wading through multiple layers of samples laid out on the counter, leaving and coming back three times before she makes a purchase? Why not pop into the nearest mall, read the signs, check the price-tags, bag the choice and step into the check-out line? One big reason is that malls don’t let you bargain. It’s something a woman needs. It’s her version of hunting-gathering, blood sport. Tracking, stalking, going for the kill. It’s all there in the bargaining process. (Including the disappointment of the one that got away.) You can’t do that in a mall. Not everybody has as much pizzazz as the protagonist of Anurag Mathur’s <i style="">“The Inscrutable Americans”</i>, who could haggle over the price of toothpaste in an American supermarket.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And there’s the personal touch. Oh yes, when malls were a novelty we loved rubber-necking at the glitz and the brands. Then it wore thin, and we trickled back to Newmarket and Russell Street and Gariahat. And so loved it when we were welcomed back like family, by store-owners who had seen us grow up, who had seen my wife graduate from buying school uniforms through party wear to saris . And now, school uniforms for our daughter. Even shop assistants who have been in the same place for 30 years, the ones who would offer my wife a soft drink when she dropped by from college (it was such a treat then!) and now have to be dissuaded from spoiling our daughter with caffeine-sugar fixes. Think about it. Do you see the same people manning the aisles at your local mall, two months running? Isn’t it nice to see a familiar face, more so when it’s somebody you’ve haggled and fought with for years on end? Because the same guy, after he has griped about how you’re cutting his throat and starving his family, will offer to keep your purchases behind the counter while you go shop some more. And then send them to your car. Try that at your check-out counter some time.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And then there are the personal icons. I love Kookie Jar, but the real jar comes from realizing they’re now 25 years old and no longer the new kids on the block. But for shortbread and cookies and above all plum cake, can we desert the eternal Nahoum’s? Shop No. F-20, Newmarket, all dark wood and old glass and the sweet sweet smell of baking, still lorded over by the venerable David Nahoum, third generation of his family to sit behind that counter. Or Kalman’s on Free School Street, where I buy my sausages. Not certified and hygienic behind glass, but made fresh in the back room while the ever-smiling Joy asks me whether I want my ham sliced thick as usual. Or even the dark cobwebby raftered thick-walled neighbourhood “homoeopathic dispensary” with a thousand tiny vials behind dirty glass in cupboards of carved mahogany 80 years old. Can they be replaced by gleaming steel-and-glass chemists’ shops?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">All summed up in another song from the dim and distant past – these are<span style=""> </span><i style="">“places I remember / All my life.</i></span><i style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Though some have changed /<br />Some forever, not for better / Some have gone and some remain”</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. The past is a different country, but sometimes the borders are blessedly blurred.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-72366697762259726662011-01-17T10:43:00.003+05:302011-01-17T10:54:23.454+05:30Speaking in tongues - variations on a theme<span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >A few weeks ago I was indiscreet. Presumptuous, even. Despite my semi-literate status, I ventured to criticise some aspects of formal education. And paid the price. My learned friends squashed me in no uncertain terms. They dismissed my criticism as no more than petulance at a system I had failed to master. No doubt they are right, and there is a deeper truth than I can comprehend to the practice of studying statistics for the purpose of <span style="font-weight:bold;">not</span> making causal correlations. But back in the day when I was struggling ineffectually to understand the mysteries of calculus, it struck me that even mathematics actually requires you to learn a new language. Before you can start applying numbers to advanced maths, you have to acquire a new vocabulary that incorporates bits of Latin, Greeek and sundry parts of the English alphabet.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >This was something I realised from my helpless struggles with trigonometry in school. In fact, Bangla college slang uses “tan” as a synonym for incomprehensibility. Our state of stunned incomprehension could well have given rise to conspiracy theories like the one so drolly presented by E.V. Rieu in that little-known gem, “Hall and Knight, OR, z+b+x=y+b+z”. (</span><a href="http://www.poemspoet.com/e.-v.-rieu/hall-and-knight"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >http://www.poemspoet.com/e.-v.-rieu/hall-and-knight</span></a><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >) One quatrain from this masterpiece will suffice to illustrate my point:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><i style=""><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >'How hard it is', said Mr Knight, 'to hide the fact from youth / That x and y are equal: it is such an obvious truth!' / 'It is', said Mr Hall, 'but if we gave a “b” to each, / We'd put the problem well beyond our little victims' reach.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Utterly delightful.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >In all fairness, the liberal arts take more pains to clothe themselves in robes of language rich and strange. In 2000, the University of Monash in Western Australia developed a computer program to generate essays on deconstructionism starting from a few phrases. The web-site categorically states that <i style="">“The essay (generated) is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator.</i>” I believe they had to take the program offline because their own students started using it for assignments. There was also a report of trouble in the groves of academe when this program fooled one of the foremost experts on deconstructionism.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >The rumour may well be true, because going by the experience of my very learned cousin, these learned treatises may actually be rarely read. This cousin was sending out a paper for peer review, and left the computer for a while. Whereupon her sister (also an academic) inserted the words “Bare Naked Ladies” randomly into the text. Sixteen times, once for each expert it was to be mailed to. My unsuspecting cousin mailed off the text and soon received puzzled queries from about 5 people about the strange phrase. What is more revealing, however, is that the other 11 learned reviewers sent back their opinions with no mention of the interpolation!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >It’s not just academics. Every kind of expert, whether anglers or astronauts, develop their own special language. It’s a kind of initiation rite. It’s most evident in that very bright and very self-assured breed, the management consultant. For more details on that, go <a href="http://bit.ly/eLgtv3">here.</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Here endeth ...</span><br /><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-8547141879741009822011-01-09T23:02:00.002+05:302011-01-09T23:09:53.585+05:30Looking back<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> 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font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2011 seems like a great year so far. No disasters reported, no coups, tsunamis, recessions or even a major scam. There has been at least one uplifting event already, so the year has started well. On the other hand, there are critics (well, at least one critic) of my opinion. And in this case, a sample size of one is also a majority of one, because the critic in question is married to me. The essence of her criticism – or what Bertie Wooster might call the <i style="">res</i>, gist or nub – is that one cannot pass judgement on the year at 9 a.m. on 1<sup>st</sup> January. In fine, it is too early. She also says, in no uncertain terms, that sausages-for-breakfast does not qualify as an uplifting event.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Oh well. Since higher authorities will not let me pass judgement on 2011, I must retreat to the dim and distant past. Specifically, to 2010. Which seems to have been a good year on the whole. Except perhaps for the Democratic Party in the USA. Or marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. And Ricky Ponting’s Umpire Education Policy. And Arun Nayar, who found that safety-pins cannot hold a marriage together. Or the Indian Railways in Uttar Pradesh, where 6 accidents were reported in January 2010 alone. And the General Post Office, Kolkata, where employees were taken to task at year-end because they could not achieve unreasonable targets (such as delivering letters on time, specifically a letter from the Home Minister of India). Further, this was not a good year for bond salesmen and stockbrokers in Greece, or for that matter in Iceland or Portugal. There was some talk of an economic crisis in Spain as well, but all calls to their Ministry of Finance yielded only a recorded message at about 98 decibels that went “OLEEEEEEEEE!!! GANAMOS!!!” (We won). Apart from these, 2010 seems to have gone off well. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">It was also a very moving year. The earth moved early and often (no, I am not referring to intimate experiences.) In January, an earthquake in Haiti touched 7.0 on the Richter Scale. In February, there was an earthquake in Chile that touched 8.8; since the Richter Scale is logarithmic, that means it was nearly 100 times as powerful as the Haiti earthquake. The earth wasn’t done yet – it moved again in April in Qinghai, China; in June off the Andamans; and in October off the coast of Sumatra. And these were only the major ones reported! As a result, People magazine and Times Now had to change their definitions of movers and shakers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2010 also saw major advances in scientific inquiry. Psychics and clairvoyants in Kolkata examined the possibility of grafting on six more arms apiece, but were baffled when informed that an octopus also has a beak. Later, conspiracy theorists had a field day when Paul the Octopus died. The most popular theory was that somebody had asked him to predict Rajinikanth’s death. In related news, Diego Maradona finally stopped throwing players off the team when it was pointed out to him that he had himself been thrown off the team. Elsewhere, scientists declared that they had developed a car that can run on water. As long as the water came from the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, some scientists expressed fears that if the oil spill got worse, we would have to start drilling for water. Unless the oil spill was diluted by melting ice caps, because global warming seemed a very real menace in 2010 (though trains tangoed in the fog in January and monkey-caps bloomed all over Calcutta in December). The issue had come to public notice much earlier, when almost-President-of-the-USA Al Gore won an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth”, the highest-grossing PowerPoint presentation in history. Unfortunately for him, that did not cause any significant change in US public policy, such as declaring him the President.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The year that saw the rescue of the Chilean miners ended with a different kind of digging out. Julian Assange caused consternation when Wikileaks spilled the dirt on many governments, but allegations of an entirely different kind of leak dumped the dirt on him.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">India has had its share of drama in 2010. The most heartening aspect was the spirit of innovation. Such as the provision of snakes in the Commonwealth Village, purportedly to make athletes from wilder climes feel at home (there is no truth in the rumour that the snakes story was really all about Gujarati catering). Or the proposal to solve one of India’s most contentious political issues by commissioning a temple-cum-mosque on the site – under the able stewardship of the CWG Organising Committee. Lalit Bhanot, poor man, caught some flak with his comment about Indian standards of hygiene; so much for speaking the truth. In related news, the External Affairs Ministry learnt of the existence of some countries only when these countries threatened to pull out of the Games.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">All in all, 2010 was a rich period of history. We must, of course, limit our scrutiny to those events reported in the mainstream media; as is well known, nothing can really have happened unless so reported. Which may mean that one Ms. Radia does not even exist. Ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned – we aren’t quite done with 2010 yet!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-15424275913063618002010-12-27T11:59:00.001+05:302010-12-27T12:03:55.044+05:30Yule like this<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A check-out line on Christmas Eve is a good introduction to the Theory of Relativity. You know what I mean? One acquires an entirely different perspective of time. 17,492 people ahead of me in line searched in their handbags for discount cards, argued with the counter clerk about free gifts, held up the billing to add a dozen disgustingly twee key-chains from the Point-of-Purchase display. I waited. In a parallel timeline, seasons changed, empires rose and fell, glaciers melted, mountains grew. Still I waited. And thought with wistful admiration of Oliver Cromwell’s Parliament that, in1647, banned the celebration of Christmas in England. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the Grinch who stole Christmas. I don’t even say “Bah! Humbug!” in the manner of Old Man Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol”. But standing in that check-out line and later, stuck in never-ending traffic, I contemplated emigrating to China. Or to <span style=""> </span>Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea or Algeria. Because they don’t have any Christmas holidays. (On second thoughts, emigrating there may not be a good idea. Reports indicate that ignoring Christmas is just part of their policy statement about “peace on earth and goodwill towards all men”.) The celebration of Christmas – like Diwali, Durga Pujo, Holi, Eid, Moharram, Yom Kippur and the Chinese New Year – may be less about religious belief and more about the celebration of community, identity. The defining symbol is no longer the cross or the holly. It is the credit card.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Let’s face it, Christmas in its present form never really was about the actual birth of the Saviour. For one thing, the Bible mentions that the Wise Men sought directions from shepherds in the fields when they sought the Child. Shepherds. In the fields. Does that sound like deep and dark December? The Bible itself mentions no date nor season of the year. Besides, it’s no coincidence that Christmastide coincides with the much older celebration of the winter solstice. This was when the Romans celebrated – wait for it – Saturnalia! Which, of course, was a festival noted for its sobriety, piety and atmosphere of restraint. Not! The Church did not approve of the excesses of the Saturnalia. Very interesting excesses they were, too. Those Romans knew a thing or two about debauchery and decadence. Well anyway, the consensus is that the Church, believed that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Around the 4<sup>th</sup> century of the Christian Era, they quietly took over the winter festival, stripped it of the … errr, youthful high spirits, and converted it into the Feast of the Nativity. So perhaps the Grinch was not the first to “steal Christmas”!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Christmas, of course, has its own set of traditions. It’s quite interesting to trace their origins. The mistletoe connection resonates with Norse fertility rites and the legend that Loki used it to slay Baldur. Wassailers and carol-singers were pre-dated by the Roman Mummers, who travelled from house to house singing and bearing gifts. The Mummers, alas, often quite regrettably neglected to clothe themselves, and were usually the worse for drink, but let’s just say it’s the thought that counts. And be grateful that in the present day we are not assailed by the spectacle of fat Uncle Percy in the altogether! The tradition of deforestation is comparatively new to most of the world. It was common in Germany to put up Christmas trees; it must have been a natural outcome of having to clear acres of primeval forest to keep the wolves away from the castle drawbridges. It was only when German nobility were imported into the bloodline of English royals, and perhaps as late as the 19<sup>th</sup> century, that the custom of ruining perfectly good forests became common. With the result that more than 20 million trees die every Christmas in the USA alone.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">It’s a little strange to note that Americans were originally a little chary of Christmas. They saw it as an English custom, and quite understandably Americans in the 1780s were not too fond of the English. Times changed. In 1822 Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem that we now know as <i style="">‘Twas the night before Christmas.</i> Apparently this popularized the custom of Yuletide gift-giving. In 1843 Sir Henry Cole commissioned the first set of Christmas cards. The flood-gates opened. Christmas moved from the church to the mall. Retail barons offer more deeply sincere thanks for Christmas than do many devout believers. And no matter how much they may try to enforce the First Amendment, America leads the world in Christmas commerce. Sometimes the emphasis on “the season for giving” seems a little contrived to me, even calculated.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And yet … The Wife and the Small Person were leaving Newmarket when a snot-nosed urchin tapped on the window to sell them safety-pins. Whereupon the Small Person piped up, “It’s Christmas, Ma. HE should get a gift too!” The Wife asked the waif what he really wanted. The child’s eyes lit up. He led them to the nearest toy store. And pointed to a little train. Now I, as far as possible eschew emotion. Impedes rationality and all that. The Wife was regrettably damp-eyed when she recounted this incident. And the urchin’s sheer delight when she actually handed over the train set. But when she told me of Small Person’s reaction – “Ma, this is all the Christmas present I need. Now I shan’t ask Santa for anything!” – I must confess that my self-imposed bar on sappiness creaked at the seams. Oh, bother! I’ll admit it, I felt good. And a little moist around the peepers. The spirit of giving? It’s still alive. Compliments of the season, readers, no matter whether you’re fellow cynics or dewy-eyed romantics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-65587278297241728732010-12-20T14:21:00.002+05:302010-12-20T14:25:29.053+05:30Learning process<span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >It’s wonderful to have a proper education. Unfortunately, school and college seem to get in the way. Most of us are so busy getting a degree, we never get around to getting an education. To quote the great sage Chuck Berry (better known for his views on women, drink and blues guitar), <i style="">“When I think back on all the ***p I learnt in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”</i> When I first heard that, I thought it was the wisdom of the ages. Somebody famous had just validated my decision not to study maths or science and my jettisoning of a Master’s degree as soon as I got a paying job. It sounded good. It made me feel great. But that was before I met calculus. Oh, AND statistics. Together. The academic equivalent of being tag-teamed by Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >This academic mauling occurred many years ago, when I made a misguided attempt at getting what I thought would be an advanced education. What that really means, of course, is that I tried to get another degree. Not in this country; I winged it to the land which claims to be the true defender of democracy, the most reliable bulwark of freedom and free speech. To be fair, in the first few weeks the classroom atmosphere did seem refreshingly open and liberal. One faculty member, a long languid Californian who specialised in <i style="">“kaampyutyshenul maahd’ling uv elactral trands”</i>, gave me an A+ for an assignment wherein I savaged everything he had taught us in three classes. I was awed; I’d expected a poor grade, on the lines of a teacher in my earlier alma mater who gave me a 0 on a test because (she said) I had answered the question with reference to the wrong chapter! (This, mind you, was in the third year of college.) I became friends with the faculty member, a great guy except for his terrible taste in beer. (I quickly learnt that even boutique microbreweries can produce quite awful beer. In hindsight, that was one of the most educative aspects of my sojourn.) The groves of academe seemed rather pleasant, at least for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Around the fourth week on campus, I asked myself whether I was learning anything. Statistics, a little bit. Calculus, maybe. But was I working towards a goal that held relevance for my job back home? A PhD doesn’t seem all that hot after you meet a girl who’s been working on one for <i style="">seven years</i>. With a thesis on – believe this! – “Sex Scandals and the American Presidency”. (She did have the grace to admit she’d left out JFK and WJC because either of them would have been enough for a thesis by themselves.) And how exactly would her thesis be of use? She shrugged. Not her business, she said. Her job was research; practical applications were not her look-out. This, I thought, was ethically one step away from Tom Lehrer’s satire – <i style="">“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.”</i> So what purpose did the research serve? With all this emphasis on statistical analysis, could we frame some rules? Make some predictions? Say, that a man who has been involved with more than three women and a washing-machine on one prom night is 67% more likely to get involved in a scandal if he is elected President? Nope. No way. Apparently every thesis had to mandatorily include (a) at least 120 pages of abstruse statistical analysis, followed by (b) a disclaimer that “No causal correlations are attempted”. Say what? We’re expected to get permanent migraines learning calculus and we can’t even use it to make a point?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >In sum, I found the post-graduate scenario strange because (1) the topics of research tended to be phenomenally arcane (2) there was no attempt to find practical applications of research findings and (3) there seemed to be far too much emphasis on quantitative methods, without any results to show for it. But was I the only man on campus who thought this way? Autumn rolled around and with it, our discipline’s annual national conference. (Held, of course, in balmy San Francisco while we shivered on the East Coast.) We followed it on the Internet (although live video feeds were jerky) and lo and behold, I was vindicated! Because the Annual Convention was picketed by masked demonstrators who were protesting against … yes, arcane research topics, lack of practical relevance and over-dependence on quantitative methods! I was not alone! But why were they masked? This is the creepy bit – the protesters were mostly junior faculty who feared that they would never get tenure if they were recognized on camera. Obviously, the land of the free didn’t quite live up to its name on campus.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >And obviously any system of education has its own rules, written and unwritten, that students are expected to follow. Systemic education may actually be an oxymoron. Perhaps the only real education comes from that rhyme that goes “I have six honest serving men / They taught me all I know / Their names are why and what and when / and who and where and how”. So is a formal education just a formality? I think we need to come back to this next week. Stay tuned.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p>J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11411104.post-76817411781901216162010-12-06T07:25:00.002+05:302010-12-06T07:32:59.443+05:30An old loveThe two events were a thousand kilometres apart. Not to mention a couple of centuries<br />.<br />In the autumn of 1983, I took a girl out to lunch.<br /><br />Two hundred years earlier, 1783 saw the start of a famine in Avadh that is said to have lasted a decade. (This much is certain. The rest of the story is not substantiated.) Asaf-ud-Daulah, Nawab of Avadh, started construction projects to provide employment to the hungry farmers. The first, the biggest and arguably the most beautiful was the Bara Imambara in Lucknow. Every morning an army of workmen and their families would assemble before dawn, to work till sunset. These were mouths to feed. Wherefore each evening huge pots were filled with layers of rice and meat, the lids sealed with dough, then lowered into pits where charcoal fires had been lit. They would remain upon the embers all night, thus providing, next morning, a slow-cooked breakfast for the army of workers. An awesome breakfast. Because this, of course, was the origin of <span style="font-style: italic;">dum pukht biryani</span>.<br /><br />What a wonderful story. But alas, unsubstantiated. By common consensus, <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>actually came to India many years before Asaf-ud-Daulah. The recipe probably came over the passes of Kandahar and Baluchistan in the 14th century, with the hordes led by one of the most fearsome names in history – Tamerlane. Timur the Terrible, Timur the Lame, Timur the Scourge of the Infidels. His sack of Delhi in 1398 was a thing of blood and horror, but some of my friends might say it was a small price to pay for the next six hundred years of <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>delectation. (Not, I hasten to add, my own point of view; my friends tend to have extreme opinions.) There may be more than a grain of truth in the Timur story, though; it is at least likely that the idea, the concept of <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>came to us from Persia. <span style="font-style: italic;">Birian </span>is the Farsi word for “fried when raw” or “fried without cooking”, which is a good description of the way the meat is sautéed for traditional <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani. </span>But what IS traditional <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani</span>?<br /><br />Depends on the tradition, of course. Hyderabadis will assert that their version of <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>is the older one, brought into the Deccan when Aurangzeb’s governor started the Asaf Jahi dynasty. This version is based in Paradise, or at least the earthly version that has now opened branches across the twin cities. One of the nicest things about buying from there is the sealed pack. Voila! <span style="font-style: italic;">Biryani </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">haleem </span>that one can stash carry on as cabin baggage!<br /><br />Another version that also claims its origin in Aurangzeb’s reign, by a similar process of osmosis-through-Nawab, is Arcot <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani</span>. This is even spicier than Hyderabadi and perhaps less well known for that very reason. After all, the taste of <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>should be very different from a spicy <span style="font-style: italic;">pulao</span>. Otherwise grand old Boman Kohinoor, lord and master of the legendary Café Britannia in Bombay’s Ballard Estate, could claim that his signature dish of Berry Pulao is actually <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>in Iranian disguise! There is even a Calicut <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>which is supposed to have come across the seas with the Arab traders.A footnote to the southern saga is the development of Tahiri <span style="font-style: italic;">Biryani, </span>supposedly for the Brahmins who supervised the Nawabs’ estates.<br /><br />The Hyderabadi tradition of <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>is pretty elaborate. Apparently there were 26 distinct variations in the Nizam’s kitchens. The most major point of differentiation was and is the <span style="font-style: italic;">kachchi / pakki</span> divide. In <span style="font-style: italic;">kachchi biryani, </span>the meat is only marinated before being placed between layers of rice in the <span style="font-style: italic;">deg</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">handi </span>for the slow cooking process. For <span style="font-style: italic;">pakki biryani, </span>the marinated meat is sautéed with spices before placing it between layers of cooked rice redolent with ghee and spices. The specific spices, the precise meat – whether goat mutton, venison, pigeon or beef (chicken is actually a late 19th century entrant at the very earliest) – are secondary issues of improvisation. But I must confess I can’t accept a dish as <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>if it’s seasoned with <span style="font-style: italic;">kari pata!</span><br /><br />The Calcutta variant of Avadhi <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>is a comparatively recent development, since Wajid Ali Shah’s retinue of <span style="font-style: italic;">bawarchis </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">masalchis </span>only settled in Metia Bruz in the 1850s. For Calcuttans, however, there IS no other. <span style="font-style: italic;">Biryani </span>is limited to the products of Shiraz or Aminia or Sabir’s or, for the hardier souls who can stomach cupfuls of ghee, from Royal on Chitpur Road. Or, more recently, Zeeshan and Arsalan. Straight up Avadhi <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani </span>fragrant with <span style="font-style: italic;">ghee </span>and spices, with the addition of a sautéed potato and – when it’s a plate of “special” – a boiled egg. Having been initiated into this most glorious tradition by the age of ten, I am definitely biased in favour of Calcutta <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani</span>. I’ve tried the others, I don’t deny that some of them are very good, but the real stuff? For that, give me a winter evening with a nip in the air and the woodsmoke from the little lanes back of Park Street. And a table shared with like-minded friends, to scoff down platesful of <span style="font-style: italic;">asli biryani</span> with f<span style="font-style: italic;">irni </span>and thick sweet “<span style="font-style: italic;">spesul chai” </span>to follow.<br /><br />And oh – that lunch date in 1983? It was my first <span style="font-style: italic;">biryani</span> at Shiraz. Also my first date with that girl. Who, despite the fact that she’s now married to me, still shares my enthusiasm for the real thing. After some 27 years of dining at Shiraz, we took our daughter there last month. She loved it. And the waiters smiled benignly as one more generation was introduced to tradition.J. Alfred Prufrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16446127543417759542noreply@blogger.com11