Pujo moods. (I hope)

It rained on Panchami afternoon. Any other time of the year I would have revelled in the particular melancholy of the pouring rain, the dripping trees, the caress of the rain-spray.
But on Panchami I worried about the traffic outside and the pandal getting muddy.
And our booking at Bhojohori Manna.

The long shadows of an autumn evening.
The approach to Singhi Park.

While (below) the last touches to Hindustan Boys'
(yes, OK, this was after a HUGE lunch at Bhojohori. And btw, the restaurant with the perfect music was at the Stadel the next day.)

Evening at Singhi Park, and some music.

Amader para'r Pujo

The crossing of Lake and Lake View;
Shomaj Shebi and Ballygunge Cultural.
Awaiting the storm.

You think he's reading her the Riot Act about last-minute shopping?

Dead end. At least at this hour of the morning.

Our local celebrity Pujo, morning and night

Somebody tell me this is a great photo. Please.

A blur of kaalchaar. Very Bangali.

The Charlie Brown Pujo incorporates
the Myth of the Great Pumpkin.

After the madding crowd ...


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Pujo'r baddi, pujo'r gaan

A rattle of drumbeats and one drum in orbit round the neck of a dhaaki who does an exuberant twirling leap. Just because he can.

Where have all the dhaakis gone? As little as five years ago, when I came back to Calcutta, I saw a procession of dhaakis the day before Mohaloy, a sort of mobile employment exchange parading before the assembled Pujo Committees. This year the first dhaak I heard was over at Shinghi Park on Panchami morning. And of all things, dhaak as piped music in a restaurant on Shoshthi. (Shoshthi’r diney hoshthi! Is that expression still au courant?)

I love this particular restaurant, not just because three of us polished off eleven, we counted, eleven pieces of ilish (and golda chingri and chhana’r dalna by the bucketful) on the buffet but also because they followed up the dhaak with the double-CD of Kishore Kumar’s Robindroshongeet. Music arranged by Hemonto Mukhopadhyay (known to the rest of India as Hemant Kumar, singer-composer for films like Jaal and Khamoshi), Kishore trained by Subinoy Ghosh, producing one of the best reflections of Bangali tradition that you can hope to come across. For those who sneer at the idea, a reminder – Satyajit Ray didn’t choose anybody from the Dokkhini tradition when he wanted Robindroshongeet in his films. And a challenge – show me one bar, dammit show me one note in one song where the Boss has not been true to the Shworobitaan.

Aamaar raat pohalo sharodo praatey. Aami tomaaey joto shuniyechhilem gaan (I haven’t heard this one recorded by anybody else). Ey din aaji kone ghorey go ... Which was the perfect note on which to exit.

Pujo now is also an unspoken war between the high and the low culture. Where earlier we had Nazia Hassan with Aap jaisa koi and Usha Uthup’s rich black velvet voice in Hari Om hari (an Eurhythmics ..err… ‘cover’), now we have shehnai. And I don’t know about you, but shehnai music all day depresses me from one end of my spine to the other.

What a contrast, really. From the late ’60s to the early ’80s, R.D. Burman road-tested all his tunes in his Bangla Pujo albums. At his best he gave us magic – Asha Bhonsle with Shondhya belaye, Moyna bolo tumi Krishno Radhey, Phool-ey gondho nei. Kishore Kumar’s Pujo releases included Noyono shoroshi keno, Ei je nodi and (a particularly mushy Pujo when I was 14) Aamaar dweep nebhano raatey. Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey, R.D. himself, all their voices are woven into my fabric of Pujo memories.

And what do we have today? Mostly barbaric remixes (painting the lily and gilding refined gold, good remixes are so very rare) or pretentious (and sub-standard) shehnai. Sad, because for all the oposhonskriti (‘bad culture’?), the loudspeakers at the Pujo mandaps provided our measure of which songs were hits each year. 1977 to ’81 was a particularly rich period – or do I just remember it better?

Oh well, we also have recorded dhaak tracks. I first heard them that Pujo when I was in exile in the ‘armpit of the United States’ and I’ve been grateful ever since. Baajiye jaao!

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Oyez, oyez!

Good my ladies and gentles, hear ye, hear ye!

Reliable sources inform us that Arnab (a.k.a. GreatBong Bongoshontaan) is in town. This town.
Presumably, so are a few other bloggers from other remote corners.

This is of course a vaindairflll aww-pr-chunaytee. We can brighten their lives by exposing them to civilisation and its pleasures, pleasures unknown in the arid climes of Virginia and Illinois, where the skies are dark with Bushisms and ragged wraiths battle over their last I-Pod Nanos.

So ... Calcutta Bloggers' Meet on Sunday (16th October) afternoon around half four.
Venue: T3, the Flury's thingy on Free School Street at the corner with Park Street,
next to Wonderland, diagonally opposite the original Flury's.

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Meet it is I set it down ...

IIPM. Planman. Arindam Chaudhuri. Reports of a Goebbelsian PR division. Wow. David versus Goliath again? Remains to be seen.
For those who came in late (like me), Rashmi Bansal posted an article in an e-zine, asking some questions about IIPM's claims. The article stated that few of the claims could be substantiated.

Now I don't hold a brief for either party here. Some points, however, indicate very imaginative techniques on the part of IIPM’s PR Division. Setting up blogs to counter a blog. The Goebellsian technique of the Big Lie (re: the purported Aaj Tak expose). The attempted character assassination (which only made me as envious as Falstaff – I mean, I’ve never yet been engaged in a peccadillo in a private dining-room, let alone a public rest-room). In short, the IIPM team have some innovative management techniques. Score 1 to them.

These techniques, of course, are not ethical. Does IIPM claim to be ethical? I didn’t notice it on their site. Compassionate, perhaps. Ethical, no. Score 2 to them for truth in advertising.

IIPM’s web-site (or is it Arindam Chaudhuri's page?) does have some stuff about ‘survival of the weakest’. Is that in keeping with their attacks upon Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis? IIPM, with its ad-spend of Rs. 5 crore in one month, is of course the David here against Rashmi’s Goliath. So the label fits, dunnit? Score 3?

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"My tablets! Meet it is I set it down
That a man may smile and smile ..."
Hamlet, Act I Sc III

I have a confession. Arindam Chaudhuri makes me uneasy. Nothing personal, just that anybody who wears a bright blue suit with a pink tie would make me uneasy in any case. (Sorry, you won’t see this on his site, dis wuz a close encounter uv de turd kind) But then, he’s a ‘management guru’, not a fashionista.

His ponytail makes me uneasy too. This may be subconscious envy, given the dormant state of my own follicles. On the other hand, if you want to ‘go a different road’ and be young and ‘khoo’ and ponytailed, why the suit?

And what really makes me want to puke - chunky rectangular glasses in Blue Plastic Frames. Ye gods and little fish. But then, you can be a management guru even if your dress sense makes other managers queasy. After all, the Entire Look could be part of ‘daring to look beyond’. Or whatever the terribly hip slogan is.

“Professor Chaudhuri did his B.A. with Honours in Economics, Honours Diploma in Industrial Engineering, M.A with Honours in Economics, Post Graduate Diploma in Planning and Management (MBA) and Fellowship of I.I.P.M.

Professor Chaudhuri has been amongst the toppers during his B.A. Economics, M.A. Economics and MBA. He was the recipient of the Academic Gold Medal while completing his Post Graduate Diploma in Planning and Management from IIPM.”

It is evident that Dr. (?) Arindam Chaudhuri, BA, MA, PGDM (or is it MBA), is an Essentially Modest and Objective Person. He only uses those titles or achievements that are independently verifiable. Like ‘management guru’ or ‘visionary’. He is most shy and retiring about the provenance of his various degrees. He is not so crude as to mention his rank in his BA Economics degree; after all, we are all winners here and with the right point of view, the person who is 32^nd in a class of 30 can also be “among the toppers”. But what is an ‘Honours Diploma’? And ‘M.A. with Honours’? I may be very ignorant – do we have Pass M.A.s now? I have so much still to learn. (Please note that his MBA is NOT from ‘Haas, UCLA’ …)

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I really have no locus standii to write about Arindam C and IIPM. After all, I’m not a student, a manager, a teacher or a guru. Therefore, if some things strike me as odd, it’s probably due to my insufficient knowledge. For example, the Wi-Fi enabled towers that house the IIPM schools? Why do the pictures on their web-site look like those ‘artist’s impressions’ in architects’ offices? (The 'Campus Tour' link didn't work ... "This page does not exist".) Of course I haven’t 'dared to look beyond' and see the Towers that Will Be.

Or the faculty from all over the world. Harvard, LBS, Insead, you name it, IIPM have poached from them. Obviously an HR operation of this magnitude requires stealth, discretion, security. Which is why the Faculty page on IIPM’s web-site gives minimal information about the faculty. Minimal as in nil. Nix. Zilch. (I believe they have a tie-up with the Federal Witness Protection Program). This of course applies to ALL their eminent faculty from the time IIPM was set up back in 1973. Twenty-two years of considerate secrecy.

One of my best friends is a PhD in Finance from Insead. When I asked him about teaching at IIPM he asked ‘Where?’. Poor ignorant soul. After Lowell, Insead, Harvard, Gothenborg and Monitor Consulting, all he needed to round off his CV was a stint on the faculty at IIPM. Now he doesn’t have a chance, they have such a rush of top brains beating on their doors to get in …

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The proof of the pudding…

Arindam Chaudhuri’s Planman Motion Pictures is the first Indian firm to take up film production with a business model. (No, sorry, YashRaj Films do NOT have a string of hits through professional production methods. In fact, YashRaj Films do NOT have any hits at all. And if they DO have hits, the films were hits by chance. Not that we’re admitting that they HAD hits. OR professional methods. Whereas WE at Planman …)

So Planman has already produced two (2) films since 2003. The first, Shaanjhbati’r Roopkothara (“Strokes and Sikhouettes”) was ‘selected for’ no less than 7 international film festivals. Awards? Well, PMP is too modest to mention them. No, it wasn’t MEANT to make money, you know, sometimes a business approach can have objectives other than mere money?

The other film, of course, was that mega-hit of 2004, Rok sako to rok lo, directed by no less than ... (ta-daaah!) ... Arindam Chaudhuri. You know, the super-duper mega-hit that put Bollywood back on the international scene, garnered several … umm… thousands (INR) in revenues, made international stars of its cast and won 87 Oscars (who says the AMPAAS doesn’t HAVE 87 categories of awards?!). You haven’t heard of it? What, don’t you read the papers? Not the reviews, stoopid – they took at least TWO full-page ads in every newspaper in India, don’t you SEE anything?

Of course, the bottom line was all that mattered to the hard-nosed business model of Planman Motion Pictures, so we haven’t heard of this epochal film. But legends have grown around their profit-sharing with everybody involved in the making of the film. (Another management first, in fact – bubble-gum scratch cards as performance bonus)

So if you’re talking about learning through doing, or teaching by example, Arindam Chaudhuri leads the way.

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No, guys, I don’t work for a hardware company. You’d have to talk to one Dr. Kalam if you want to chase me out of my job, he’s a really decent bloke and I wouldn’t want him to be worried … Besides, unlike Gaurav, I wouldn’t find another job. So have a heart, OK?

How about this …

I would like to assert that this entire post is motivated by my deep admiration for IIPM, Planman and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (though not for his glasses, ponytail or gentian suits). After all, I wouldn’t want them to burn laptops (presumably with my blog on the screen) in protest against my opinion. (Gaurav Sabnis is so naïve, did he really think they’d burn laptops they’d paid for? I’d love to see that happen!). Furthermore, I quake, I palpitate in fear of the day when I receive a ‘notarised e-mail’. (Threatening me with arrest, no less. What next? The Joo-Joo Man?)

So, in brief, IIPM sucks rocks.

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Update: Gawker sums it up; I laughed till I choked.

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Pujo Special - Aagomoni

You don’t realise it unless you wake up early enough. The sudden .. no, not a nip, but a pleasant coolness in the morning air. The change in the quality of the light. Perhaps that’s what woke you up in the first place? And strangely enough, you do start waking up early, about a week before it happens. To revel in .. well, to revel in something.

When it starts, you can’t quite admit it to yourself. Especially if you’re pushing 40 and all mature and respectable and too old to sing on the balcony. I feel like singing Robindro shongeet (Shumon Chattopadhyay, SHUT UP already about ‘Robindronather gaan’. It always has been and always will be Robindro shongeet) I know which one, too – Ey din aaji kone ghorey go khuley dilo dwaar. Not in the affected min-miney pursed-lips Dokkhinee style but the way Kishore Kumar sang it in 1982, full-throated, a chest full of song.

Because the sunlight is suddenly sharper and more mellow all at the same time, the morning air smells different, and is that .. yes that IS a stray banner of kaash phool in the corner of the park.

Kaash phool. I saw so much of it, growing up in Salt Lake in a time before the houses grew together like fungii. Somehow I didn’t associate it with Pujo then, because it appeared in the last months of the monsoon, before the rains cleared and the air smelt like crisp new cotton. Now we have to drive ten miles to see kaash phool. No, wait, there are waving expanses along the Rajarhat expressway, silver-tipped where the setting sun sparks off them. (That exhilarating sight is the only good thing about catching a 5 p.m. flight).

There was a sea of kaash phool around the 40-acre field in the Sainik School in P*. Lovely in the morning when the late sun slanted through the morning mist, the beauty heightened by the clean feeling at the end of a good run in fresh air. That is not really a Pujo memory, but all memories of cool air and crisp weather seem to be linked to Pujo because it signals the start of the travel season for Bangalis. I remember we were in Shimultola just after Pujo one year … “Aaji joto tara tobo aakaashey”, the first time I saw constellations spread out three layers deep.

And of course, the last of the kaash phool in the low sun of November.

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What IS it about Durga Pujo?

Digression – Puj-OH. ‘Puj-AH’ (or Puj-AHS’) is only used when we are all so propah and anglicized and taking a letter to our class-teacher asking for some extra leave because we have to rush to the bedside of an aged relative who may not be long for this world and tickets are just not available till the day after Doshomi .. And SHE knows and WE know that this is so much bumph, we’re all off to Rajasthan for Pujo’r chhuti, but we shall be civilized and dissimulate and ooh and aah and get it counter-signed by the Vice-Principal and if it's nice Mrs. D’ Souza, she will wait till January and then ask how our great-aunt is. With a smile hovering somewhere behind her misleading hatchet-face.

‘Puj-AH’ is also used when we have become terribly smart career people in suit and phitey deowa juto (as distinct from kaabli choppol) and must make small talk about how terribly primitive it is to have so many days off from work, when will we ever develop a work ethic, it’s so professional in our head office in Boston yadda yadda yadda. Can it, McDuff, try to swing a deal in Noo Yawk on 27^th December before you give us all this first world shit!

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On-off, sing-song, loud over the radio at 4 in the morning, “Joshong dehi, dhanang dehi” and the theatrical intonation of Birendra Krishna Bhadro. Unique, inimitable, the voice of Pujo, Durga’s herald long after he died in his 80s. All the years past curled up in the corners of the room as I snuggle back into bed and listen to the Mohaloy programme through a pleasant haze. Mohaloy. Pujo. Durga Pujo. Pujo eshe gechhe!

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Bassackwards

Swami Prajnananda on the sanitary habits of Indians ...

"They will jealously guard the privacy of their meals but have no compunctions about voiding their bowels in public view."

True enough. I daresay a lot of my country-men (and women) would be more blase if they were espied squatting behind a thorn-bush, than if they were caught sharing a thaali with a mlechcha.

It's not always about the availability of sanitation or running water, either. We've had this campaign for rural sanitation (instantly re-named the Potty Prokolpo) and I've seen newly-built sanitary privies used to house goats or store cowdung cakes.

One of our proselytising arguments was that sanitary privies also safeguard the modesty of the women of the household. Big deal. The women in question love their morning excursion, it's when they catch up with all the news, it's the big social occasion most days.
The men, who take over the hedgerows and fields once the women return, have much the same attitude. In rural Bengal (and indeed most of rural India) when you "say can you see by the dawn's early light", it's likely to be about Brojen Boiragi and Mehboob Miyaan chewing their neem daantoons and discussing harvesting strategies while they, um, multi-task.

The West has a long way to go before they can catch up on this, though I read somewhere that Lyndon Johnson used to de-brief (intended) his Secretary of State while he (LBJ) was enthroned.

And a priceless story that I couldn't use as part of our 'modesty' argument.
Noted Bangali litterateur had imbibed all night with his good friend who was at the time District Officer in the laal maati (red earth) belt. In the wee hours of the dawn, Writer informs Bureaucrat that he has this urge that cannot be denied. He MUST go see 'Gurudeb'. (For Bangalis, 'Gurudeb' = Robindronath Thakur. Though in my youth, Uttam Kumar's appearance on screen would also be greeted with ecstatic shouts of 'Guruuuuuu! Eshe gechhe'. But as usual, I digress ...)

So bureaucrat and bhodrolok were slumped in the back seat of a white Ambassador speeding towards Shantiniketan in the dark before dawn, when our man cocked a bleary eye over the window edge and saw the dim shapes of the morning gazette (first shift) in action. His defining comment was ... "For shame! THIS is how they waste their lovely backsides?"

I never claimed to be politically correct.

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Supply chain for surplus clothing

With yet another tantrum from Mother Nature, please do contact Goonj. They prove that when you take into account the dignity of the individual, you also increase efficiency in tackling human tragedy.

Oh, all right, I'll do it

Tagged by member of Kochi Shongshod, so 5th line of 23rd post ...
"The Byzantine generals who in 493 fought against the Isaurians were Apsikal, a Goth, and Sigizan and Zolban, commanders of the Hun auxiliaries."
Bet you choke on it.


Thanks to a friend of immeasurable gravitas for this link. Love it. (Though it doesn't address the question of the Spaghetti Version of the Eucharist)

The morning after the night before

J&B on Saturday night led to a certain malaise on Sunday. Which in turn reminded me of somebody else's story. Cheered me up no end to think that there are others who fare much worse than trying to do a two-step at two in the morning.

Like so ...

Text message, 12:43 a.m.

“If I haven’t told you this already, I love you … I love the weird part of my life that you’ve become … and I miss you when I don’t hear from you … and this is probably the most vocal that I’ve been in a long time so … yaaayyy for gin!”

e-mail, 10:07 a.m.

Horrified.

Because of what we read in this ugly little thing on our phone, called The Sent Folder (DAMN YOU technology!!). All ten of our toes curled when we read what we had written (WHERE were you, DAMNED DIGITS, when we were TYPING that message?!) so yes, we're assuming the same happened at your end. Perfectly justified.

What we're ATTEMPTING (unsuccessfully, so far) to do, is apologise most profusely.
Henceforth:
1. We shall NOT, under ANY conditions, mix alcohol with medication.
2. If, despite following the above commandment, we DO, even START feeling REMOTELY tipsy, we shall DEMAND that any devices of communication be taken away from us IMMEDIATELY.

We're sorry.
Honest, truly.

But we're hoping like hell you know that we didn't *mean* any of that.

We DO miss you when we don't hear from you but we did NOT mean it to sound so asinine and (eeuuuww!) lovelorn (DAMN YOU, endless gin and medication!!).

We are NOT psycho stalkers. PLEASE ignore the evidence.

Extremely Embarrassed,

Us.

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Heh! Given a choice, I'm fine with the hangover. (And no, I didn't get this story off eM - reads like her style though, dunnit?)

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NOTICE - of sorts, in the current post on my other blog. Grateful for help from kind souls.

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Corrigendum, not apologia

OK, I goofed.

I felt bad for an honest tryer, tried to write about the feeling and produced something that didn’t make much sense. It was bad communication. But it did provoke some responses. Nobody called me an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but the sub-text was clear. Where do you get off, you self-important bucket of industrial waste, implying that you are actually superior to others?

Owwww. Damn. That wasn’t what that was about.

It was about the feeling of watching somebody walk down the corridor with their undies showing and people sniggering about it. No wait, after Shefali Zariwala and Saif Ali Khan, that’s not a good example. Try again.

The feeling when some quiet kid says she’s going to try for the CAT and you know she’s hard-working, she’s a good kid but her chances of making it are practically non-existent. And you know that she’s going to try for it again and again until the disappointment shatters her confidence and she’s wasted three years of her life trying. And that shit about “at least she gave it a try” is all very well for authors of self-help books who grew up reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but it’s not going to make her rich or successful or happy, let alone give her back her three years.

Now – and here’s where the good doctor might listen up - she could have perfect pitch, she might be incredibly well co-ordinated physically, she might be a wizard with gizmos. But she can’t crack the CAT. The question is, why the dickens does she keep trying to crack the CAT when she could be excelling somewhere else? It doesn’t make sense to me. And I feel bad for her, because there are people who will dismiss her or categorise her as ‘that girl who keeps trying that exam every year’.

I know that there are things I just can’t do, things that I’m no good at. So her failure finds a resonance in my fear of my own failure. And I cringe for her.

I know that it’s not my place to tell her what’s wrong with her, I know I’ll never do it. Yet I look back, maybe I look inside, and think of all the times when I wanted somebody to tell me what I was doing wrong, but never had the guts to ask because I was afraid of ridicule. (Thanks, Quizman). So many contradictions. Simplest to just STFU. And look away.

So what I was trying to communicate was, how bad do you feel when you come across these honest failures, people who go on trying despite being really bad at what they’re trying for? How far do you empathise with them? Do you have a sudden insight of the Robert Burns kind, you know, “Wad some gift the giftie gi’ed us ..”? And is that empathy strong enough to make you physically wince, or shake your head and bury yourself in something else for a while?

Does it lead you to dig out the up-side of the downbeat, yet feel a twinge of shame for your own condition?

Tell me.

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Addenda

Ummm … this may be stupid, but after reading the comments, I want to say some things up front.

Why must people automatically assume that I regard them as inferior? I’m far more likely to think that any one of you is superior to me. Truly.

I have not passed any judgement on any particular blog.

I am not so insensitive or so egoistic as to tell anybody that his or her blog is bad. I haven’t done that.

And hey, I didn’t say anything about grammar in the previous post. Where did that come from?

Finally, why the f*** are any of you taking me seriously? I don’t take myself seriously, dammit.

Here endeth …

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... or reign in Hell?

So often these days, I read something and just sit back and wonder. At the writer's erudition, assimilation, imagery, precision, quality. Blogging has given me access to a quite surprising array of fine writing. I am humbled. And far too often, very envious. I hate feeling inferior.

And then one comes across blogs that try so hard but ....
Do you feel the same embarrassment? Do you wince as you think, "There but for the grace of God ... "
Do you wonder what you would do if s/he asked your opinion of something s/he'd written?

So which is more difficult?

See, blogs are like a community. All of us have chosen to put a little (or a lot) of ourselves out on the line, we're here by choice, we've given each other the right to pass judgement upon the aspect of ourselves that's put on view.
It's not the same as reading something in a book or magazine, where the writer is paid for bringing words into the world, where we can dismiss the work as tripe and pass on to the next article, essay, review, book, whatever. Because the reader is not so important there, just part of the inchoate, anonymous market that can't talk back. This is the forum. Here, anybody can leave a comment trashing your work. If not on your blog, then on her own.

So here, on this screen, where we hang out our frailties for applause, we come across great writing that reminds us of how far we still have to go.
And we come across losers. Trite, hackneyed, lacking words and rhythm, yet so earnest that we wince in empathy.
So which is more welcome? Or more unpleasant?

Furthermore, there's always something to learn from someone who's superior. (Humility, for starters?) What do you learn from someone whose work you can't respect?

Tell me.

Just a song at twilight shimmers ...

Her name is Giuditta Scorcelletti. Her singing voice, even in an alien tongue, was as serene as smooth old hands that stroked my head when I was sleepy, as sweet as memories of conch-shells and woodsmoke at twilight.

I came upon her just before twilight, walking over cobblestones into the setting sun as it mellowed in the horizon's haze. In an alleyway that led from one church to another, in a strange beautiful dreaming town atop a hill in Tuscany, I heard music. Like "cathedral bells / tripping down the alley-ways / as I walked on".

Was somebody playing a recording in the church, at evensong?

I peeped into first one doorway, then another and another.

Till there she was, sitting by the wall with her guitar and her music, "strumming my pain with her fingers", but I did not know the lives she sang with her song.
I stepped through the arched doorway, from the pouring gold of the sunset into the quiet shades of an art gallery.

I stood there, unsure of myself, embarrassed that I may be gawking, yet loth to leave that cave of music within a larger beauty. She sang on, unperturbed, until she sensed my awkwardness. And nodded gravely to set me at my ease, with a smile that lay more in her guile-less open face than any perceptible change in expression.

I leaned against the wall and looked around. In a corner lay a basket with a few CDs and some paper money. I wandered over and realised it was her recording. As I knelt down to pick up a CD, I looked back at her and caught a flicker of a smile and a little shrug, as if she spoke to me. Of our need for money to live and to sing, of a search for dignity that led to recorded CDs rather than a hatful of coins, of a love for the songs of childhood, of joy in finding a voice to sing with.

That was a year ago, when she had just recorded her first collection of Tuscan folk songs (playing here even as I type this). What prompted me to pull up her picture again today, after so many months? Strange, because apparently she will play in Vallombrosa tomorrow. I hope the learned members of the Browning Society will hearken to her music, the songs of a Tuscan girl, rather than the research material of “an anthropologist and folklorist” (which she is).

And I hope her music will bring to them the shades of twilight in San Gimignano, a town of sun-gilded stone upon a hilltop in Tuscany with van Gogh vineyards clustered in the plains below.

Good news

First, that the Gamesmaster has emerged from the clutches of sexually voracious older (presumably) women and set up shop at a new site. His harrowing experiences have also led him to muse upon the nature of sexual relations in general.
Welcome back, Ani.

Secondly, that according to Ian McEwan (as linked by Uma), novels have a predominantly female readership. In other words, we men can go back to making Messrs. Guccione and Heffner even richer, without any lingering guilt pangs. How nice.

Is this a dagger ...

This Wikipedia entry is too good to be true. Callooh! Callay!

Bored? Board.

A meeting of the bored looms large. Desultory musing is therefore limited to coffee breaks. And at home, there's this ...

That which we call a rose

Cricinfo sum up the importance of the current India - Zimbabwe series with the headline "Pathan leaves Bangladesh in tatters".

Yeah right. And between overs, he's thought up a plan for peace in the Middle East.
(Think Babel without the fish ... Ei pola da kee koitasey ga Musharraf Miyan?)

On a different note, are Bangladesh deemed such pushovers that they get ripped apart even when some other team is batting? I seem to recall a Bud Spencer gag on these lines. Trinity Bowls Again?

That's an 'A', not an 'E', Mr. President ...

Sax – Yes, we all know about William Jefferson Clinton and his technology innovations, but apparently a sax is also a small axe for cutting roof slates, with a point for making nail holes. From the Olde English seax, ‘knife’, of Germanic origin.

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“Change and decay in all around I see ..” Even the OED fails me sometimes. It’s all very well to know that SAYE is an acronym for “Save As You Earn”, but why the cryptic entry that SBS is “Sick Building Syndrome”?
Buildings can fall sick? If so, who treats them, doctors or architects? Is a sick building wheeled into some kind of vast amphitheatre, where a tall man in green overalls and mask pokes into its innards, all the while bullying a team of plumbers and masons and electricians into passing him the “No. 10 pliers, please” or “3/8 inch left threaded sprocket for outbound drain”?

Or does SBS refer to people getting sick of buildings? If so, there is only one place on earth the term could have originated – Chapin Apartments in the State University of New York at Stony Brook, known on campus (for obvious reasons) as the Peoples’ Republic of Chapin . Units in this lovely complex of semi-detached (you can’t always hear the couple in the next apartment fighting over birth control) town houses (grad students’ version, glorified slum) each with a view (see below!), are available at very reasonable rents ($650 for a shared apartment, out of a stipend of $1050 which is about $900 after taxes, how do we pay for the trips to the micro-brew?!).

The view, ah the view! Out of the window of my room, I had this scenic panorama. Of an overflowing garbage vat. Right outside our front door. Wunnerful!

And when we stepped out in the morning, we had this glorious view of the second ugliest building in the entire Northern Hemisphere (referred on appeal for the top ranking, the jury’s still out on that one), the Stony Brook University Hospital. Which started out as a standard ’60s style government building eyesore, till somewhere down the road the Flash Gordon crew butted in with a request for a “really really shit ugly space-port”. And THEN they had a ‘moment’ that may have inspired George Lucas for the Darth Vader look. And after that they chose the most treeless spot in 1800 acres to put it up.

Campus legend has it that when it was completed, the guy who was supposed to formally inaugurate it didn’t get a good look until he stepped outside for a photo-op. Whereupon he started saying something about “This truly modern facility tha …. aaaAWWWKKk!!!” And had a spectacular fit and became the first emergency patient in the UMC. Patients are blindfolded when they enter and leave the building …

Oh, check it out for yourselves.





NB: The cafeteria was kind of OK, though.

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Mistah Kurtz - he dead

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

This is not the way it was supposed to be.

The ballad built up to Ragnarok, to a mountain-breaking sky-shattering finale screaming with the thrusts of straining heroes. The earth lay dark, the air thrummed. A twilight of the gods?

No. A frickin' weather bulletin.

Thank you very much, Mr. Warne, but we fear the weather does not permit the staging of the final production. So nice of you to have dropped by, Mr. McGrath, such a pity we couldn’t do it today.

Damn it all, even Matt Hayden, that caricature of a troll on steroids, deserved better than this. These men have been heroes. Champions. Show-stoppers. They don’t deserve a hurried exit down dank corridors and out the back door; they deserve a dying scene before the aiudience with the full Mazoomba and a 100-piece orchestra. They should get to spill their guts on stage. They should have the chance to go back “with their shields or on them”.

Granted that Braveheart Freddie and his mates had seized the standard along with the first-innings lead. Granted that the afternoon belonged to that outrageously gifted boy (but how did he spill Chlorox on his hair?). The last evening of this English summer should still have been Kipling rather than Kingsley Amis. We should have “seen the knights in armour come / singin’ something about a Queen ..” Instead of which, we have Messrs. Koertzen and Bowden, all stuffed shirt-front and crooked finger, coming out to remove the bails. A bloody stock-exchange ticker instead of the last hurrah from tattered banners.

Perhaps that self-important old cloud of flatus, Sir Vidia See-the-sun’s-in-my-bunghole Naipaul, was right when he bollocked the Brits for losing their culture. No sense of drama at all, at all.

Blame it on the weather, then. They’ve been doing it for at least 939 years now.

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Unnatural abode

He moved in with her six months ago. Then, when she changed her room, he moved with her.

Seems a fairly non-interfering roomie, except for obsessively changing TV channels. And she says he’s gay, so no man-woman complications, but he craves attention.

She’s never seen him. How can she know so much about a ghost?

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Disclaimer - this didn't start out as micro-fiction. The lady in question lives in a hostel in central London and told me about her invisible room-mate in very matter-of-fact fashion. Perhaps she was having me on.

And perhaps she wasn't.

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Ain't no justice.

At least, none for THIS minority.

I learnt pretty fast that in the Blog-world, Bridget Jones becomes Belle du Jour (back to blogging after a book-writing break). The assumption was that blogs mirror, reveal, analyse, ridicule "real life" (and with luck, translate into mega-bucks book / column deals. Why else would I keep posting?!)

Now (actually last year) the Blonde Librarian's blog spills over into real life.
Tsk. Is nothing sacred? Candace Bushnell should sue for copyright violation.

Corollary (and I'm sorry if this sounds sexist) - the odds for a book deal are totally stacked in favour of angsty clever chick-lit. Especially if the writer is also photogenic.
The other (male) route is to be learned, incisive and impressive. 'Interesting' is often an optional extra. Hmmm. Too much like hard work, that.

So which should I buy first, a padded corset or a lovely soft blonde wig?

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Update: Nosing around for reviews of Belle's book on Amazon, I found that ..

"Customers who bought books by Anonymous also bought books by ...

• Charles Devereaux"

Devereaux! My literary idol back in Cls. VIII (and before you ask, children, NO you were prolly not born then!) when the hormones were just a-prancin' and a-pourin'.

I'd read a chapter a day (usually hiding under the bed) then recount it in the school bus on the way back home, This of course soon won me minor- idol-status among my peers, or at least those on the same bus.
Ummm ... Statutory Warning. We didn't revel in his work for the prose style. Perhaps our more literary friends might try a review?

Right, two coffee breaks in one morning is a bit much, back to work. But thanks for the memories, Charles.

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Why're you looking at me like that?

Plumpernickel (presumably blogging away furiously from the office) wonders why she is always in a minority.
Hey - so I'm not the only one? How reassuring.

(I'm not paranoid, it's just that everybody's out to get me ...)


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Stories at 55

Sibyl started this. Short stories in 55 words or less.

My attempts are on my other blog.
Critiques solicited. (You know who you are, I'm looking at you.)

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Update: It's a good idea to tag Phantasm, the Akhond of Swat, Rajesh Advani, Indian Writing and eleKtriKbLues on this.

And oh, Putu the Cat has finally reached escape velocity. The Kid is awesome!

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Sundays

A Sunday last September ...




On grass, eh?

Il Castello - Postern of Fate?

Castello Fountain

Love in the distance

Rella!

"A rococo hedgehog"?

Il Duomo - the nave

The old and the beautiful

Still love all ...

Tram in the distance (sorry, Paul!)

Dancing folk

From my window

... and THIS Sunday ....

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Static ..

.. the kind one gets on the radio.
Background noise that hisses and spits and just screws up normal communication.

Until it turns out that the static IS the communication.

New Orleans.
I had this grudging respect for the USA. They may have an unnaturally large percentage of morons, but they also have an unusually large percentage of sharp people and a respect for the system.
Now it turns out the morons have taken over.

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!

Back in the Dark Ages before Channel Nine and stump-vision, Western Australia had a bad day at the office. Their captain, leading the team onto the field to defend the awe-inspiring target of 83, said something on the lines of "Let's try and get as many wickets as possible". Upon which his young tearaway fast bowler glared at him and asked "What's wrong with f***ing winning?"
His name, of course, was Dennis Keith Lillee. He took 8 wickets that day. Western Australia won.

The Aussies.
You can hate them, you can bay for their blood, but by God you can't write them off.

Today, when Farmer Giles finally tapped that last ball through mid-wicket and Vaughan did a Saurav Ganguly leap, I actually felt sorry for the Aussies. For Warne, for Lee. Amazingly enough, even for Ponting.
Here is a team of heroes who are perilously close to their sell-by date, a team that's been written off even though they swept the first match of the series, a bunch of all-but-has-beens who were supposed to lie down and die, and they came so close to pulling off the impossible.

Louis L'Amour had this story about a Clinch Mountain Sackett who, every Saturday night, went over into town to fight the only man bigger than him. Every Saturday night, week after week, this man would whup him good. And every Saturday night, week after week, the Sackett would be back for more.
Till the other man just got so tired of the whole damn boiling, he upped and he packed his saddlebags and he rode out of town. That Sackett, you see, he didn't know he was losing, he just kept coming.

The Aussie teams over the last two decades (at least after that wuss Kim Hughes) have had this magnificent stupidity. They have never known when they were beaten.
Today, whenever the camera closed in on Hollywood or on Ponting, their eyes were measuring, probing, seeking. They were not the eyes of men on the brink of defeat. They were the eyes of men who were thinking 'This can be done, now here's how we do it ..."

Think about it. When all the openers had to do was play out the overs today, when any runs on the board would have been a bonus, when the Poms had more than five sessions of play to get 129 runs, Brett Lee kept steaming in. Until he knocked over that first wicket. And then another ...
Even before that, this overweight, philandering, self-indulgent bozo with the Popeye forearms had come on to bowl. And taken a wicket with his first ball.. A wicket-maiden, yet. Ohhhh, fanciful script.
Wait. First ball of his second over, he takes another wicket. Naaahh, nobody would believe that.

Welcome back to the arena, boys.
You want a piece of us? Come get it.
(If I ever do become a hard-bitten son-of-a-bitch, mate, THIS is the kind of sumbitch I want to be.)

In Richard Adams' Watership Down, there's a rabbit called General Woundwort who unexpectedly comes across a dog. As the other rabbits scatter, Woundwort can be heard screaming "Come back, you fools, dogs can be beaten!"
It can be done. Hell, we've SEEN a rabbit beat a dog, one glorious afternoon at the Eden Gardens just over four years ago. It can be done, if only you believe.
The greatness of this Aussie team is that they always believe. And for a couple of hours today, they made us all, every last Aussie-bashing exulting man-jack of us, quiten down and wonder...
When you've suddenly been knocked on your back at 57 for 4, 129 looks like a bloody high hill to climb.
They made us all believe.

This Aussie team may be in decline, but Dylan Thomas would have recognised their spirit.
"Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

We can hate them, we can exult in their come-uppance, but by God we can't write them off.

Rough-hew them how we will ...

"And then my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils!"

The Old Sheep of the Lakes has written SOME good stuff, but this was definitely not it. Trite, turgid, unimaginative.
Hence appropriate for the subject matter here, which is (mostly) a Certain Publication that has been described as TOI-late Paper.

Gather round, boys and girls, and let me tell you a pointless little story. Which is very appropriate, because it's all about a bunch of clueless little people.
Or at least one clueless little person.

I ask you - why would any journo do a general story on blogging now? Why, two months after Nilanjana Roy's piece in The Telegraph on Calcutta bloggers (which SHE said was 'hurriedly done') would somebody do a story on " aaah .. hrrrmm .. well, just bloggers, you know. In Calcutta"? Why would you cold-call a blogger and ask for his / her VIEWS on blogging?
What the f**k does anybody care about my views anyway, unless I can express them in writing and make them interesting? Why in fifteen different kinds of fornication would you talk to me about bloggers, without reading their blogs?!

In all fairness, he was a sweet kid. Sounded about eighteen (i.e. a couple of years older than The Duck), faintly apprehensive, a little unsure. My instinctive reaction was to say "No, thank you" and hang up but then he mentioned that he had been referred to me by a friend (Pandit-jee, actually). Noblesse oblige. I held my fire and played the (long-suffering) perfect gentleman to the hilt.

What topics do you write on?
Ummm ... nothing in particular.

So do you generally write about social issues?
Not quite (as Goldie Hawn memorably said in Protocol when the awld bitch knocked on the loo door and asked if she was coming)

Sports?
No, hardly ever.

So ... what do you write about? (Aaarrgghh .. get ON with it, infant!)
This and that, whatever comes to mind. Very often, a post on somebody else's blog inspires a response.
(Mental note - this question might come up again in the future, so I should work on some posts about (a) kinky sex (b) how to make money quickly ... yes, Mark's Fender and "the chicks for free" (c) decay in the social fabric (d) something involving Alicia Silverstone, a feather and a half-pound of melted chocolate)

The questions were a trifle halting, so I mentioned the bloggers' meet last Sunday. I slightly inflated the attendance figure from nine. Lo and behold, today he writes that "only 10 or 12 people turned up". As Kamu Mukherjee said in Shona'r Kella, "Take Indian porridge!"

Poor chap. He's probably been told that blogs are "cool" now. He had 10 column-inches to fill in 4 hours. Perhaps he doesn't have a Net connection, just a phone. He finds some leads, calls up some people and voila, he has a story on blogs. Good work, kid.

I only wish he'd write in English instead of translating from Bangla. This would rule out solecisms like "writes in the name of", obviously a literal take on "omuk naame lekhe". 'Goes by the name'? 'Uses the pseudonym'? Even 'writes as'? Nope, those wouldn't connect to his readership.

I really should shut up about TOI-late English. I was once disarmingly frank with one of their queen bees. My view was that if they can't find reporters who can write English, they should at least recruit some literate sub-editors instead of leaving the job to satta* pencillers. They've had a ban on me ever since.
A trifle ironic, then, that this young man now seeks my views; my request for anonymity should reduce the number of cuts in his copy.

And now, not only do I waste my time reading what he wrote, I waste more time writing about his writing. So who's the stoopid one here?
Coffee, I need lots of coffee.

* - satta is the numbers racket.

No contest?

Shoe Fiend came up with the idea of replacing her husband with a favourite book. Surprisingly, there IS another point of view. (Yes, I KNOW this is quite shameless self-advertisement. Now sneck up and go read it.)

So where's your bookmark, eh?

[Update: OK, I goofed, but both links should work now.]

... it tolls for thee

ElektrikBlues aka Dark Ale wags a finger at everybody in Bangladesh. Most of it is equally applicable to us on this side of the border. In fact it is, in its own way, a users’ guide to democracy.

(EB needs to watch out, his carefully constructed façade of being a good-time guy is slipping)