In the dark before the dawn

One Wednesday morning, 7 a.m.

There’s something I particularly love about this butter-yellow lamplight in the dark before the dawn. 7 o’ clock in a hotel room with the sounds of distant traffic near the Hauptbannhof and a cup of coffee seducing me with little swirls of steam. It’s going to be a cold day. The skies cleared last night and I can almost feel the wind through the glass, flags snapping, trees swaying while the moon side-steps the last scudding clouds. Overcoat day ahead.

Yesterday evening was very “Homeward Bound”. Dog-tired from a day in the Messe – miles between the halls, up and down stairs, fair office, designer’s office, participants’ demands – I found myself at the train station just after six. A bitter wind in the early dark and no idea how to get back to my hotel, not even clear which direction I should travel. A sharp-eyed Frau helped me out there, but she said I should travel two stations and not one. I played my hunch, got off at the first station and was immensely reassured to find myself outside the deli where I’d scoffed a sandwich in the morning.

I like shopping for food. Whole-wheat bread studded with nuts and seeds, butter, a “Mediterranean” cheese, some pate. Chocolate milk, soda and a tiny nip of “Chantre Weinbrand”, whatever that is – it smells like brandy but I really don’t give a damn, I want it as a sleeping pill. A leisurely meal in my room while MY music plays. Much better than another series of cabs and an over-priced array of under-cooked food.

It’s a little over half a mile from the train station to the hotel. My hat twitches in the wind as I cross the bridge over the rail tracks. The hat – Sunday night in Madrid a drunk teenager stopped his car, asked me for a light and said “Cool hat … it looks Australian but you look Asian … Indian?” So what was just a droopy roof has been promoted to bush-ranger headgear. At least it keeps my bald pate covered, I’d be sneezing all day otherwise.

I can’t recall being so alone in an urban landscape. There are cars, but I encounter only three pedestrians and a cyclist between station and hotel. Out to my left the new Frankfurt skyline poses in lit-up finery. Pshaw. Just another jagged horizon trying to ape Manhattan. Closer by, lighted windows signal homes, warmth, conversation. There should be stories here. Football games, sibling squabbles, a mother with her hands on her hips, a burly visitor who plies the husband with one too many beers. Comfortable stories, where the nastiest thing to happen is a missed excursion.

A story about a solitary man walking back to a hotel room down a lonely road, past vacant lots and a looming waterworks, is far more likely to end in pain and murder. Or a particularly nasty apparition.

I’ve just been shooed off a tram where I was the only rider. I find myself in a deserted back alley, walking between rows of parked cars with the wind whipping up my coat. A shiver creeps between my collar and my hat brim. The pools of lamplight are safe havens amid the shadows. I walk faster. At the corner, I take my direction from the waterworks, eerie in its dimly lit vastness and its silence, and turn right.

The road stretches past a rusting factory, a railway underpass gleaming with recent rain, a weed-grown track behind a sagging gate. I turn up my collar, pull down my hat and, keenly aware of the dollars in my hip pocket, try to look confident. Apart from the cars surging past there is not a soul in sight. This is an alien landscape. I fear I’m lost.

Then, just past a crossing, I see the big garage I passed in the morning. Like the shaded parts of a trick picture, the landscape falls into place. The Gothic wasteland morphs into curtained windows, lawns, the lights of an old peoples’ home. Just a couple of hundred metres to the hotel door.

My budget hotel suddenly seems very welcoming. With warmth and light and food on the table, even a hotel room can be a home for a night or two. And the bed is very comfortable.

Clear day outside my window now. A few pink clouds and jet contrails. Lights in the sky, airliners queued for the busiest airport in southern Europe. The sun will be out soon. I need some breakfast. Later.

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Disoriented

Remembering Madrid, slogging in Frankfurt, planning for Lisbon, longing for Cal while Billy J sings about Havana … in the split second between waking and wakefulness, “Where am I” morphs into “Who am I”.

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Madrid monologue

The Goo-roo is one of the most generous and hospitable men I have ever met. A sweetheart, as She Who Must Not be Named would say. Peace be upon her flocks too, and blessings upon her store, for introducing me to the Goo-roo over the Net. My stolen weekend in London was about to vanish and I was planning Madrid instead (quite unaware how bitter cold it can get even in this Iberian city). She (WMNBN, take that as read) promptly rubbed out all plans for a London blog-meet and imperiously wafted the Goo-roo and me together in cyber-space. We chatted. We messaged. We phoned. We liked. Madrid was on.

Not without hitches, though. As I checked in at Calcutta, I realized that my visa didn’t kick in until the day after I was scheduled to land in Europe. Would I be stopped at the barrier? Packed off on the next flight to nowhere? The worry could have ruined the pleasure of an upgrade, except that a Lufthansa upgrade isn’t much of an upgrade anyway. For the first time in my life, I grew wistful about British Airways. At least they have full reclining beds in the fancy classes. Lufthansa gave me a ‘calf-rest’. And Attitude, from large Teutonic Valkyries with Popeye forearms. I had to screw up my courage to ask for a second drink – they seemed so ready to smack me along the head and bundle me into the hold if I stepped out of line. After two glasses of bubbly and two vodka Camparis, I no longer gave a damn, but I could only sleep for three hours.

How does one while away 6 hours of a 9-hr. flight when Somnus goes AWOL? I marched up and down the aisle. I did surreptitious stretches in the space between the galley and the loo. Counted rows. A benediction upon Shahani, Queen of all her tribe, who took pity upon me and plied me with coffee and conversation, from the skies above Ashgabat till we began the long glide down into Frankfurt.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about the mistimed visa. Frankfurt immigration evidently couldn’t give a damn. And I never met immigration at Madrid.

The plain in Spain as espied from the plane. Those stippled patches are olive plantations.

Disembarking at Barajas, I followed an endless succession of signs that pointed to “Salle des equipajes” (an approximation, Senors et Senoras, a mere approximation) only to find myself miles away, possibly near the French border. As unshaven bandidos snapped their bandanas at the Banderas (sorry, that just came), I was informed that I was in the SpanAir luggage hall. In a different terminal! The long trudge back had its compensations. First I found the Goo-roo lounging (in an attitude at once alert yet morose, quite a feat) outside the Arrivals gate, then I found myself beside my suitcase and outside the barrier. Without ever passing through immigration. Voila! I was free!

So it came about that at midnight on a Saturday I found myself outside Café Patas and also outside a boatload of tapas, the latter conjured up by Gustavo who runs the “Juana la Loca”(1). Gustavo is Uruguayan. He wreaks his revenge upon the descendants of the colonists by alluring them with his viands and then pauperizing them with his demands. Myth has it that if he served meals instead of just tapas, two Michelin stars would be his for the asking.

The tapas bar was truly a revelation. (Vegetarians, please avert your eyes.) A 25-yr.-old white wine (good, but I’d reely druther hev a Pimms, thenk yew sow metch). Fish in a delicate butter sauce. Squid. Crusty bread with herb butter. Fried cod with a piquant dip. Oxtail that flaked apart when touched with a fork. Afterwards, an exquisite Tokaji – Tokay to you and me – that even a Philistine like me could appreciate, especially with a cigarillo that sneered at the Cuban genre. And just before we stepped out into the cold, a bill that would have housed and fed a family for a week. My insides curled into a ball and whimpered at the sight; the Goo-roo, cool investment banker that he is, took the tab and even left Gustavo a bribe for future delectation. (Such is wealth, but it does not always come with such spontaneous generosity.)

By this time I was light-headed from wine and fatigue, I had gone almost 48 hours with about 3 hours of sleep. There is, however, no performance at the Café Patas on Sunday evenings. Since I was to fly out on Monday, it was Saturday night or not at all if I wanted to catch some flamenco. So we walked a circuitous route through bright avenues – the Goo-roo is paranoid about getting mugged, also about expiry dates on food, but more of that later – until we reached the mouth of a little cobbled alley lined with brooding houses and curlicued balconies, like moustached Senoritas who suspected we wanted to ravish their infantas. Two doors from the mouth of the alley a small crowd smoked intently outside a brightly lit doorway. The Fundacion de Flamenco y Conservatorio de Café Patas.

More of which later, because I also need to work.

(1) The Goo-roo tells me that Juana of Castile was the last of her line. The Spanish equivalent of naming a Mughlai eatery "Bahadur Shah Zafar".

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Agony, abated

I had a steak for lunch today. With a huge boiled potato smothered in sour cream (don't the Teutons like butter?) and an unpretentious Pinot Grigio. Which was all right, except that as I cut into the steak I suddenly realized that it had about the same colour and texture as my face.

Agony, really. I’ve been up at 14,000 feet where the vast outdoors are one’s privy (don’t ask). I’ve been in Mussoorie and out in the boondocks when it was snowing. Then WHY does it happen that when it’s warmer in Frankfurt than in Delhi, my face gets all chapped and raw and spotty so that it hurts to even blink? Rank injustice.

Luckily our exhibit designer knows about these things and suggested “water-proof Vaseline”. (My Gaydar is not very reliable, but I think he is - no, I do NOT mean he is reliable - so I didn’t ask any further questions about Vaseline). As the young Macaulay^[1] once said, “The agony has somewhat abated.”

And now for the standard two degrees of separation story. Fellow blogger (Bong, of course, though now in Edinburgh) appears online. Learns I am in Frankfurt. Refers me to a couple in Frankfurt who are friends of her’s. Who turn out to be the daughter and son-in-law of my colleague and neighbour. Bangali chaaliye jaao!!

[1] Thomas Babington, 1st Baron Macaulay, 1800-1859. I loathe him for ruining Bangali enterprise through his avowed (and successful) intention of “creating a nation of Baboos” and for his dismissal of Oriental learning. On the other hand, he did draft the Indian Penal Code, which I consider great craftsmanship. Anyway, the story goes that when he was about three-and-a-bit, he was taken to visit some relatives. Where he spilt some hot coffee on his velveteen breeches. After the fuss had died down, he was asked whether it still hurt, to which he gravely replied “The agony is somewhat abated”. Zounds!

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Sailing to Byzantium

Some time early last Saturday ...


Flying westward ahead of the dawn, a losing race. After three hours of Campari-induced sleep (I was good, Ma, I only had two. Oh OK, AND some bubbly), I wake to a darkened passenger cabin. And the glow of the moon through the porthole. I lean over and peer out.

Magic. Below us is a landscape of whipped cream swirls and chocolate streaks, a maelstrom formation of snow-shouldered mountains that run together, flatten, roll, a vast frozen carouse of the ice-giants. All the way to the horizon, even from 38,000 feet. Under a crystal moon, light seems to hang in the air, drawing strength from the ice below, a dance of cold and whiteness.

I don’t need to pull out the little screen that tracks the plane across the world. Only one region in the world can look like this. The Pamir Knot. The roof of the world. Magnifique.

I take in the picture in great lungfuls. What luck to wake up at this moment. And yet there is a smidgin of guilt because I’m seeing this the easy way, from an airliner floating far above. Sven Hedin comes to mind, and Younghusband crossing the Hindu Kush. Somewhere down there and away to the left under the belly of the craft, surely, is the pass where young Francis had to tie strips of cloth over his shoes to cross an ice-field.

But hey, why should I feel guilty? He chose his own road. The intrepid explorer. Onward to glory and all that. Besides, he was just 24 at the time. Me, I’m old and past it. Hedonism over Hedinism every time for me. Young lady, if you will NOT serve breakfast just yet, could I please have another Campari? Squeeze of lime, dash of soda, two ice. Thanks.

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Blog thoughts, returning

I stopped posting on my blog in late September. I was changing jobs and that involved tying up a lot of loose ends, so I really didn’t have the time to write decent or at least entertaining posts. Now I’ve been in the new job for nearly three months, settled in all right, travelling a fair bit – I have both the material to write about and time in which to write about it. So I should go back on my blog, shouldn’t I?

But I’ve been thinking about my blogging. It started out as a search for affirmation. I hadn’t written for a long time and I needed to know whether I could write worth a damn. Now I know there are 30, maybe 40 people out there who like the way I write. Some of you are even kind enough to say so. And some of you are scathing, but funny. Of course it’s all about the comments. There’s this sense of community. People we know, cyber-presences we even like, without the need to be polite or to get dressed when you interact. People who are around without ever actually getting into each other’s space. Perfick, as Pop Larkin might say. Quite perfick.

Thanks for dropping by, folks. Getting to know you has been good.

What next?

I’d love to be a writer. A person who makes a living by writing. I’d love to write stuff that’s clever, put together words that can stir the reader, make him think, laugh, react. And at the end of it, earn his admiration. A good writer. A story-teller, a thinker.

That means work. Research. Thinking. Planning. Plotting. Writing. Reviewing. Re-writing. And the business side – finding an agent, a publisher, all that jazz. It’s a long process, it doesn’t happen overnight (unless you’re Siddhanth Dhanwant Shanghvi and get a good press for the most utter mush.)

Because after all, I want to be a successful writer. Of course, being read is itself a kind of success. But do I have the stomach to spend a year or two writing a book, getting it published, then watching it sell 1322 copies in three years? It would kill me. Because I’ve had things easy in life, I don’t know whether I have it in me to buckle down and go through the grind. There’s no fire in my gut, I don’t really want anything badly enough.

That’s the rub. To produce something good, something of value, you have to want it badly enough to give part of your life to it. If not your whole life. And I’m having too good a time in my life the way it is. Do I want to change my life? Do I want it badly enough? Only one way to find out, of course. Go out on a limb so that I have to write if I am to survive.

Difficult. My day job pays the bills, keeps me in a nice flat in a nice part of town, sends me to interesting places. Do I dare give that up on the off-chance that enough people will like my book to pay for it, pay me to write more? Nope. I do not dare. “Time to turn back and descend the stair / with a bald spot in the middle of his hair”.

Besides, I don’t even know what I’d write about. What moves me?

More than anything else, I like humour. The most under-rated genre of creation. Oh, it can pay well. Dave Barry probably makes far more money than, say, Julian Barnes. But we still have the entire “burbling pixie” syndrome. The Master was just about as good as it gets, but was he ever considered a writer? People have a sneaking guilt about laughing too much. Just because the world is mostly a pretty terrible place and human beings are quite vile, we feel that we should go all sombre and long-faced and stop laughing. Silly, because the only way to deal with a crazy world is to laugh at it. “Nothing is real / and nothing to get hung about”.

I love my city, but do I know enough to write about it? I don’t think so. Not enough about the geography, let alone the history. Going everywhere in a chauffeured car, I don’t feel the city. This is the right time of year to try that out, February onwards we’ll be back to sweat and B.O. It’s an idea. But who will overcome sloth to implement it?

Travel …. I just read two Pico Iyer interviews (thanks to the Griff) and Mr. Iyer says he plans his travel, does a lot of reading about it before he starts. He also says he takes copious notes and then “leaves them on the other side of the room” while he writes, now that sounds a lot like me. I had a week in Hong Kong last month, what have I written about it? Zilch. Nix. The same vast inertia.

So basically, I need to get off my ass and write. If I want to gain readership, I should write about Ibiza. Or Jessica Simpson. Or Greg Chappell. Just start writing. ANYthing.. Then keep adding to it whenever. The end result – if it ever ends – will appear to be cobbled together, but then I can only become a writer by writing. And by reading, as the Bouncer pointed out once.

So I guess that’s what I shall do. Set aside an hour every day to write. Anything. And perhaps in 2008, there will be more of me to read than there is on my blog.

Insh’allah.

Meantime, there’s always the Simple Desultory Philippic.

Have a good one in 2007, blog-folks.

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Hiatus

People should know better than to delete their blogs when they go away.

Everybody wants to come back SOME time.

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Plum Pie

"Blithe Spirits", the Calcutta chapter of the Wodehouse Wonderbar, holds its monthly meeting tomorrow.

Apparently they've been planning stuff but haven't got down to action. Some Wodehouse enthusiasts required to chip in and Do Things. Rupert Baxter and Ronald Eustace rather than Bertie, Uncle Fred rather than Lord Em. Get the drift? Please do come. Should be fun.

Flat 504, 4/2 Middleton Street, at half past eleven. That's 11:30 a.m. for the precision prissies. Don't turn up too early but on the other hand, do try to get there by 12 noon, please.

UPDATE - The meeting was fun. We have also Taken Decisions. A Humour Quiz in December, in Crossword (thank you, Mr. Sidharth Pansari), one of the QMs to be Monsieur Tintin. Followed, the next evening, by a reading of Plum's work and an interactive session. The Blithe Spirits need some energetic members. Roll up, roll up ...

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Arrested motion

My heroine of the week is Bina Ramani [1]. I have little idea why it is necessary to arrest a witness who is not charged as an accessory after the fact, but I totally love the idea of her staying cool with Chanel in the lock-up. Can we extend this to other areas of public life? Air fresheners in buses? Autos? The press room in Writers Buildings on any afternoon when the Assembly is not in session?

I’ve often wondered what would be the toughest part about being arrested. Given pen and paper, I think I could survive the other tribulations (except being beaten up, I never could get to accept that even though it happened often enough since Cls. 4, when I cheeked one of the Chinese seniors from technical school and got my glasses slapped half-way across the badminton court). You know what would give me grief? The loos. There is no way I can be happy if I have to use a dirty loo. Given the parsimonious outlook of jail administrators, it is a given that the loos won’t be clean. I hope I never get arrested.

[1] Link will follow when the Telegraph site is up again.

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Shellshocked

Disappointment yesterday evening. Lokkhoner Shoktishel at the Gyan Manch, a Sukumar Ray classic that I last saw performed almost 30 years ago. I remember it as side-splittingly hilarious. But then one was more easily amused at that age. In any case, it’s the kind of script that, if read well, can be played for a barrel of laughs. This time round, I thought there was just too much tweaking, it was just too referential and “I’m-so-khoo”. This play lies in the spoken lines and unfortunately some of the players were indistinct. Can’t afford to ignore the basics. Overall, “disappoooointmeeeent!” (whips out pistol and fires two shots into safe … how many of the Beavis and Butthead generation have seen “A Fish called Wanda”? Sublime Pythonisms.)

BUT but but .. having been rather nasty, I must say that SOME people impressed, including someone who (I'd hitherto thought) is too young to carry off a Little Black Dress. Another known face [2] lurked backstage but was cheered the most during the curtain call. The director did a rubber-jointed cameo in the first scene. This affected his voice projection but impressed the shit out of me, especially the bit where he stayed upside down for the longest while and Ram [1] addressed his upthrust posterior. Oh, and Hanuman (Ritam?) totally rocked in Circuit Warsi mode. That’s an idea .. how about Munnabhai meets the Mahabharat? (Or the Ramayana, as the case may be, but that’s not so alliterative).

Incidentally, we arrived far too early for the show and had to hang around (and perspire gently) in the lobby for a bit. Then we found the hall door open and drifted in to enjoy the air-con. Lo and behold, there was a rehearsal in progress. With show-time a mere half-hour away? I know the feeling. Before enlightenment (i.e., giving up all hope of academic excellence), I too used to have these last-moment mugga (= swot) sessions before term exams, as we walked up from the assembly hall to class. So there we were, enjoying the cliquey feeling of actually being in on the last rehearsal, occasionally waving back (nonchalantly) at certain theatre people who (incredulously) espied us in the seats (the hall lights were up). Until a suave young gentleman all in black came and threw us out into the sweaty wilderness again. I was most impressed by his persistence and panache. A pleasure being chucked out by you, Bikram (I think). We must do it again some time.

[1] The portrayal of Ram as an effete poseur was one of the things that appealed to me. I mean, how fake does a guy have to be before he ditches a wife who stuck with him through 14 years of shitty married life in the jungle, with a brother-in-law tagging along to put paid to their privacy, sundry vamps chasing after her husband and she doesn't know whether he's getting some on the side when he claims to be out slaying demons - and all for the sake of public opinion?
Besides, if Sita had to prove that she hadn't been romping with Ravana, what about Surpanakha, eh? What had Ram done anyway that made her so nuts about him? Double standards. And don't even get me started about Krishna!

[2] Damn, the child has shifted her blog and I can't find it. I know it's called "Opaline" now.

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Morons in the morning

Every day in every way the morons score higher and higher. This morning I waited outside the gym for half an hour. Because the guy who has the keys hadn’t turned up. Mind you, this is a franchise of a multi-national thingummy, with the flags of umpteen countries painted around its logo. At least four trainers hung around in their street clothes and made apologetic noises – but no guarantee that they’ll have the sense to keep a duplicate set of keys with the building security. Why didn’t they do that in the first place anyway? Because they’re morons, of course. And I’m another for bothering to ask.

It’s not very nice to drag myself out of bed at half five just so I can wake up enough to hit the gym at half six. It’s even worse when my morning outing resembles Wodehouse’s robbers who pull on their stocking masks and run up the steps of the bank, only to be foiled by a sign that says “Closed on Wednesdays and Sundays” (“… and all the tedious planning to do over again”) Especially when I need the elliptical trainer to exorcise the guilt from pasta prima vera for dinner ^[1]. So much for my low-carb diet. Stay fat, sucker!

Just so I had something to do, the lid came off my sipper inside my gym bag, soaking not only my clothes but also the newspaper. How do you dry a newspaper? Yeah right, put it in the oven on low. (I must try that some time … what would happen if I microwaved the morning papers? There’s this urban legend about the old biddy who gave her cat a bath and then put it in the microwave to dry out. It exploded. Eeewwww. I’ve come close – I once washed a pair of almost-new Nike running shoes and put them to dry in the OTG. And forgot about them. Moron myself.)

So – drying newspapers? One irons them, of course. In the St. James Hotel in London, it used to be standard practice to iron the newspapers before delivering them to the rooms. Do people still care about these tactile enhancements of pleasure? Apparently they used to iron currency notes as well before they were placed with the cashier.

[1] which tastes even better when doggy-bagged and eaten at breakfast, doused in herb-infused olive oil and more melted cheese

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Over the telegraph

Earlier, every colliery used to have one of the office watchmen on the Board of Directors. This durwan was very important. In those days, every time there was an accident in a mine, the Board of Directors was held responsible. So guess who was marched off to jail if the court ordered that a director should be arrested?
The collieries have been around for over a century. Now the CMD of the company that runs the Bhatdih mine says the accident was an eye-opener. Long nap so far.
And no directors have been arrested. Leck-kee durwans, no?

Malegaon sees a sad deterioration in servility. I cannot begin to imagine the grief of these parents. I'd say they were quite restrained. Pity.


Rudrangshu Mukherjee seems to agree with Raj Kumar Hirani. Coming soon (perhaps), a review of Lage Raho Munnabhai. Spoiler - I loved it!

And oh, an expat experiences the realities of indeterminate gender. Perhaps if he hadn't been a Glaswegian, he would have havered on about cultural epiphanies or tolerance. Since he is a Scot, he tells it like it is. Carry on, McDougall.

Mike Selvey quotes Betjeman, then ponders on an anachronism. Lovely lines, too ... "I composed those lines when a summer wind/Was blowing the elm leaves dry". I have a soft spot for the never-never land of the "idyllic English summer" (well yes, I am an Anglophile - tough luck, old fruit) . Apart from Betjeman, there are bits of Larkin, MacNeice, Housman, even the elegiac Brooke, that send me dreaming. Don't tell me that landscape never existed. I've even seen one of those summers, back in 2001 during the Big Dry. (The train lines warped in the heat because the Brits hadn't left expansion gaps. "Silly twits / those Brits.")
I suspect Falstaff, Veena, the Black Mamba (singly and collectively) and Neha would disapprove of my retro preferences. Sod them.

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The reading, where eet eej?

Where do you do your reading? Propped up on a pile of pillows in the dark, the lamp focused just off the page so you don’t get blinded by the light bounce? In an armchair, feet up on the table, with a glass or a bowl of munchies close to hand? Or on the pot, locked in from the world and undisturbed (until a Small Person starts banging on the door and asking, “Papa, WHAT are you doing”^[1])?

Different locations, different reading. Different times of day. One of the nicest feelings in the world is to wake up in the dark before dawn because I’m excited about a book. To light the lamp (and keep it shaded so I don’t wake up Certain Other People) and lie back against the pillows, turning the pages till first light filters through the curtains and the Resident Moron is kind enough to bring me my coffee. Such a thrill.

Somehow it’s more satisfying to start the day with a long read than to end it in bed with a book. Bedtime is our own time, after all. We’re supposed to read ourselves to sleep. Of course, I love that too. It’s a wrench when I realise that sleep cannot be denied any longer and I have to put the bookmark in, put the book away and switch off the light. The morning read, however, is pure indulgence. A hint of sin … avoiding the morning run, the gym, the planning of work for the day, all for the love affair with the printed word. Blissful. Last night and this morning it was Terry Pratchett, The Night Watch. These days, Sam Vimes is definitely who I want to be. (I flatter myself that we have little bits in common. No, I do not wear a helmet or smoke panatellas. Or elbow people in the nose. At least, not any more.)

The next stop is the Undisturbed (well, almost) Read. I do not subscribe to The Economist or the EPW, all I read is India Today and Outlook. (Those nauseating supplements on the world’s most expensive watches and what the designers eat for brunch? The Very Small Person reads those. When she really learns to read, I shall throw them off the balcony.) And oh, another retro publication. TIME magazine. Standard reading On the Pot.

The Throne has its own unique pleasures. In terms of reading, that is. But reading on the pot is like canapés. Bite-sized pieces. A novel or a treatise does not belong in The Room where Everybody Goes. Magazines are ideal. Articles fit into mouthfuls of time. Or languid books, books of rambles and anecdotes and musing and little bits of sniping. Currently, Auberon Waugh’s Way of the World and Peter Mayle’s Encore Provence.

An important question – are newspapers best savoured on the pot? Personally, I’d say no. The morning papers are best savoured lying in bed, the curtains opened so the morning light pours in, the supplements spread out around the coffee tray. The Throne is for “some few to be tasted”.

And where does one read books that require a little more application? My place is in my study, sprawled in my treadle chair (my feet up on my rocking footstool, such delight), perhaps with my pipe beside me for the tactile pleasure when I clean it and go back over something that needs thinking through. Rarely do I read novels there (one exception being Kostova’s The Historian, read through one long Saturday when I was alone at home). Right now? The Argumentative Indian. Heavy stuff. Our good doctor is, after all, an academic. The donnish style is rarely transmuted into the story-telling lucidity of John Ronald Ruel or Feynman.

One last refuge of pleasure. Some afternoons in office, when I’m fed up of meetings and negotiations and union demands, I switch on the “Busy” light, reach back over my left shoulder for something from the bookshelf and bid the world goodbye for a while. A book that I wouldn’t make time for otherwise (The Mammaries of the Welfare State, such a poor encore after English, August) or again, something I can dip into and mull over. (Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue, a delight when taken in small doses).

There is, of course, one more kind of reading that has increasingly eaten into my time. To the extent that I consciously limit it to twice a week.

Bloglines.

Oh well.

[1] In my college days, my room was up on the terrace. The bathroom had the Pot with the Smallest Hole in the World. When I was enthroned, my great-aunt (rest her soul) would come up to water her roses and INVARIABLY ask through the door “What are you doing in there?” Excuse me? What the hell do you think I’m doing in here? Building a robot? Negotiating peace in the Middle East? But people WILL ask. Gah!

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Gah!

First, the Great Bong tags me for a picture. Is he blind? No, he just doesn't read my blog. Gah! If you want titillation, Arnab ...



And this one's so you eat your heart out ...

(the outfit that Princess Leia was "forced" to wear when held prisoner by Jabba. Forced? Does that dude look like he can force an umbrella on a mocktail?)

Then I find Karthik has one of his virtual blog-meets and I. Have. A. NON-SPEAKING. Appearance. DOUBLE GAH!
I am neglected. Forlorn. I shall do the Keats thingy[1]. Like NOW.

Normal service may be resumed soon.
Or not.

[1] - drink, and leave the world unseen, / And with thee fade away into the forest dim

[2] - a footnote! A real live footnote! Ho there, Falstaff!

Corporate Strategy #583 - the Bullshit Bingo

This fairly comprehensive post reminded me of a minor skirmish with the corporate world.

We'd signed on McKinsey & Co. for a study of two sectors in the state. What they would call a major engagement - a team of six Bright Young Things working full-time out of our office for over a year, with a visiting Associate or Headless Honcho or Local Ringmeister or whatever they call it. Even an unsmiling Junior Partner who dropped by once in a while and "set up meetings" all over the place. Barrel-loads of corporate energy. All in all, a pleasant and productive experience working with sharp hard-working young people.

By the end of the first week I'd got used to e-mails and early morning phone calls that "set up team meetings". From my point of view (i.e., "where I was coming from"), this was Weirdissimus Grandoso. They were on the first floor, I was on the third. All they had to do was walk up and talk over a cup of coffee. (And chocolate biscuits. Parle "Hide & Seek". Very nice, except that three of the six were on the Atkins' Diet.) Just another aspect of their "professionalism".

I could not get used to their B-school jargon. For examples, check out Corporate Whore's post.
If they couldn't tell me what they meant in simple English, or Hindi or Bangla, if they had to invent a whole new language for it, the chances were very high that they didn't know what they wanted to say.

I told them so. They smiled in pitying fashion, as who should say, "These Gorment babus, educating them is half our job!"

Week Two. Team meeting set up in my room. I armed myself with strong ammunition. A sheet of paper with a 5x5 grid of large squares.
Explanation - this is the "Bullshit Bingo".* Every time they used one of their B-school catch-phrases - incentivise, leverage, take it out of the loop, closure, apples to apples - I would write it down in one of the squares. Position depended on who used the term; if it was somebody on my right, I filled in a right-hand square and so on.
They were mystified.
Until I explained.
As soon as I had filled five squares in a row in any direction - vertically, horizontally or diagonally - I would say "Bullshit! This meeting's over!"

That was a very brief meeting. It took them a week to manage their bruised egos and come back to me. But it worked. From then on, we spoke plain English.

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* - Link courtesy Dhoomketu

Sunday

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Epiphany

Discovered the significance of "French military defeat", "liar" and (above all) "asshole" as divined by the "I'm feeling lucky" button on Google.

Don't cry, baby, don't cry

There was a time when I was sixteen and my creative juices overflowed like nobody’s business
Which led to a high turnover in hankies, not to mention a certain dizziness
But more than groaning, more than spots, more than the tendency to turn red and make small yipping noises when my wife-to-be wore her corduroy pants,
More than the inability to actually appreciate anything other than doggerel such as Ogden Nash writing about the inner angst of industrious ants,
More than just about anything else, this embarrassing
Excess of hormonal productivity led to my harassing
Certain unfortunate classmates with poetry. Or what I called poetry because
I didn’t care to admit that as a poet I was a total loss.

Because I tried to Use Big Words and I tried to Sound Profound
Neither of which makes much sense when one is the most superficial sod around.
And I tried to be clever and I tried to be witty
And other stupid people encouraged me, more’s the pity.
So I spent five years or so doing very stupid things like entering for competitions in creative writing
When I should have been busy with healthy uncomplicated male things, like hitting a ball or scratching myself in public or just fighting.
This had several side-effects, all of them unfortunate.
Where I should have been comparatively carefree and occasionally (in my pleadings with ladies, for example) importunate,
I ended up with intellectual ambitions and an air of being constipatedly superior
Which did nobody any good and gave me the general demeanour of a sat-upon posterior

As time wore on I realised that I would never be a Nobel Prize contender
In fact I could not even aspire to be an Asian-Age-short-story-competition pretender
So, albeit reluctantly, I stopped mass-producing merde and switched to more productive things
Like exams, passing and job, getting (one may “pliss excoos” this lapse into rhyme-scheme, for the purpose of, words-backwards-putting)
For years thereafter I was this nice dull file-pusher and my life was comparatively placid.
Then I discovered the Internet and it was like a large injection of formic acid.
Quite apart from Google searches for … well, never mind,
And the subsequent subconscious guilt pangs and fears of going blind,
This business of surfing when I should have been working did not augur
Well. Ere long, literary longings re-surfaced and I became a blogger.

For two years now I have churned out post after post
And though I am nowhere near as prolific as most,
At least I don’t write my posts in SMS-ese or describe in detail my last trip through Sion-Koliwada
Or spend 2000 words describing the love-life of my puppies and finish the post with “yadda yadda”.
I am aware that my blog lacks the cachet of being erudite in any way or even faintly libertarian
I don’t link to The New Yorker. I don’t party at TC. I don’t have a PhD thesis. I’m far from being Uncut, in fact I’m more of a “no-hair-ian”.
I can’t hand out tips on picking up women, I’m not an erudite economist with comic-book panache,
I don’t know where I can pick up good weed, let alone post about sharing my stash.
I last read a book some years ago and I have no idea of the Booker short-list
I know little or nothing about world cinema though I do know that Hitchcock did not make “The Shootist”
In fact I can’t even hold forth on the filmography of Mithun Chakraborty so I am definitely not a cineaste
I don’t surf the Net enough to find weird or learned articles and even if I did I couldn’t make witty comments about them, all I can aspire to is cut-paste
I don’t have a secret identity as a call-girl, nor am I a leading literary critic
I can’t be a youthful investigative curry because when I make allegations I can’t make them stick.

I freely admit that my blog isn’t the biggest thing since Desibaba, it can’t even claim a wardrobe malfunction
But even so, it’s my blog and I love it even if it’s ugly and cross-eyed and I don’t want it to suffer from feelings of rejection
So when I find that it has not been shortlisted for the Best Indian Blog by the Asian Blog Awards I feel like a father whose child has been left out of the cast for the school play
And my first reaction is emotional and I mutter dark threats about suing them and making them pay.
After all with only a couple of million blogs from India they could well have emulated the Pharakgandh Screen and Telly Awards and created award categories to accommodate everyone
They should understand that this whole elitist approach of shortlisting less than a dozen blogs is Just Not Done.
Therefore I shall console my blog with the inalienable truth that we have known all along,
To wit, that it is the Best Blog ever written by this Sad Old Bong.

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Stupidity ...

... and Darrell Hair is not the only man guilty of it. He was just the first one, last Sunday, to set Stupid-Ball rolling (a Hair-ball, perhaps).

As a mere 784 different columnists and TV analysts have pointed out, there were 26 cameras covering that match and not one of them captured any footage that might suggest that the fielding team had tampered with the ball. Yet Doctrove suspected that the ball had been tampered with. Talked to Big Brother Darrell. And cricket had a bad hair day.

Consider Darrell’s options. He has a walkie-talkie which he can use to communicate with two other umpires AND the match referee. Does he call for back-up? For a second opinion? We don’t know, since they won’t say, but the evidence of the cameras suggests that he did not. Stupidity 1, Common Sense 0.

Does he talk to Inzamam and show him the ball’s surface, or ask him what caused the wear that might be considered suspicious. He does not. (This we know).

Does he walk over to the boundary, ringed with ad hoardings and concrete gutters, to check whether those might have scuffed the ball? He does not. Stupidity keeps scoring.

No, our man takes his decision alone and awards 5 runs to the Brits on grounds of ball-tampering. Mind you, he had not till that point seen fit to inform the captain of the fielding team that he considered them to be cheats and was taking action accordingly. It was only when Inzy shambled over and asked, that he was told what was going on. Stupidity, by this time, is so far ahead of the field that one would have thought it didn’t need any further help.

But wait. It gets better. Or worse, depending on how you look at it.

Our large sloth-bear of a Paki captain is rather like a road-roller on a downhill slope. It takes some time to build up speed, but after that it takes a lot of stopping. Inzy boiled until the tea-break, then fumed and decided to protest. Protest? I suspect the Pak team decided that enough was enough and they didn’t want to play any more. Rather like Gavaskar on that day in Melbourne in 1981, except that Pakistan didn’t have a Durrani on the spot to sort things out. By the time sanity – or conventional wisdom – returned, the umpires had been out to the middle, the fielding team had not turned up, the bails had been removed and the match had been forfeited.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s the rules, stupid. The rule-book does not say that the umpires have to come and cajole you to play. The Pak team took a decision. The team management should either have sent them out on the field immediately after tea, so that they did not forfeit the match, or they should have stuck by their guns and refused to take the field at all. By reversing their decision (which is what seems to have happened, Inzy’s story of “registering a protest through delay” is not very credible, nobody can be that stupid), they have lost some of the moral high ground. Pity. One would have expected better of the great Zed.

Oh, it gets even messier. Shahid Afridi – not exactly Mensa material even on a cricket field – goes on camera with revelations of how ball-tampering happens and how he believes that reverse swing is not possible without some tampering. Ye gods and little fishes!

But actually really truly deeply, the original stupidity can be traced to the ICC. This is a man who is regarded as racist or at the very least unfair to teams “of colour”. Was there no other umpire they could have appointed for this series? Or did they just want to prove that it’s their bailiwick and they can do what they damn well please? They may find themselves proven wrong. If Pakistan pull out alleging racism, India cannot afford to be seen siding with the likes of Speed and Hair. Things could get a lot worse before they start getting better.

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And oh, since we were talking about pig-headedness … The good news is that just about anybody can be a performing artist. Given sufficient strength in the trapezoids, erector spinnae and glutes, this is a surefire way to bring home the bacon. But wait, what if the single paying customer falls sick?

Perhaps they could offer to perform at the Oval for the fifth-day spectators.

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Fevered outpourings on a Sunday morning

Did the Government really give in to public opinion? Was Anna Hazare’s fast-unto-death the reason for the change of stance on the Right to Information Act, or was it just happenstance? We would like to think that the pressure of public opinion caused the change, but since I am a cynical old cuss, I have my doubts. In any case, all that the Government has said so far is that they will not push through the amendments without placing them for debate in the House. My fingers are still crossed.

Dilip D’Souza was the first to ask me what I thought about the proposed amendment to the RTI Act. The Government had apparently proposed that notings in files should not be revealed to the inquiring public. This was of course a Humphreyan master-stroke. I can just picture Nigel Hawthorne, eyebrows aquiver with indignation, explaining to Derek Fowlds that his views on transparency were “far from sound”, that revealing the origin of government decisions would herald the end of civilization as he knew it.

I, of course, have no views in the matter. As my friends and colleagues will testify (not!), I am totally faceless, colourless and void of opinions. If, however, I were so indiscreet as to venture an opinion, I might actually chortle with glee now that the proposed amendments have been put on hold. We have always been taught to write “speaking notes” (don’t ask me, it’s one of those phrases, probably a variation of the legal “speaking order”) that clearly explain the reasons for decisions. A lot of us still do that. In other words, what we write in file is meant to stand up to scrutiny. So how does it matter if the general public can see it? In my ‘umble opinion, the only ones who should feel insecure about this provision are the slack, the lazy and the ambiguous. Which would be a good thing, because then we have greater accountability and differentiation. But I’m preaching to the converted, Dilip …

One last thought on this issue. Our Course Director at Mussoorie, a Gujarat cadre officer with a sharp tongue and a firm backbone, held that we in the civil services are paid our salaries (such as they are) for one essential reason – to take the responsibility. To carry the can. To stop the buck. The RTI Act is merely an extension of that reasoning.

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Perhaps we should extend the provisions of the Act to the press. Make it obligatory for them to write sense. What does this – the first sentence in the Times of India today, lead story – mean … “The invisible hand that pulls the levers of government has moved once again, preventing a proposed amendment to the Right to Information Act to keep file notings out of the public domain and emasculating the core transparency that was needed.”

Forget the horrible mixed metaphor (emasculating transparency?). Excuse the confused jargon (“core competence” morphs into “core transparency”). Overlook the clumsy attempt to punch three sentences into one. (Strunk & White, Strunk & White .. Keep It Short!). They actually lost track of the relation between the subject and the conditional clause, changed “that would have emasculated” to “and emasculating” and thus totally reversed the meaning. As it now stands, the sentence means that the government’s present decision emasculates the Act

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In Mahim and Dadar, thousands rush to drink sewage. The Mithi Creek turns meetha (sweet). Next stop, Surat. Every day in every way the world corroborates my theory that 98% of the human race are morons.

Meanwhile, Barkha Dutt interviews Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan on weighty issues such as infidelity. No, not in their own beautiful relationship (good shot, Joy Orzoon), which has given us hour upon hour of wholesome cinematic rubbish that’s all about boring your family. They’re talking about marital infidelity. By the same reasoning, Anthony Quinn was an explosives expert and Russell Crowe a math wizard.

I must confess I’m not immune to a little infidelity myself. Despite my oft-declared devotion to Mallika Sarabai (NOT Sherawat!) and Salma Hayek, I have on occasion gazed long and lasciviously on Yana Gupta (in the manner of a Colonel Blimp who harrumphs “Fine young filly, eh?”). I am in fact undecided as to whether I should resent Vijay Mallya or Aftab Shivdasani more. At this moment, however, I am totally in love with another. Or rather, in leurrve. Vith Leo-leh Kwotty, Quayne ev Hay-urds, who iz zimbly veunderflll. Vott a vumman, no? I believe Channel V will soon release a “Best of Lola Kutty” package. Ay ken hay-urdlee vayte.

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Surf's up

Aching with a stupid fever, shying away from my study where my helpful colleagues (I so lurrvve them – sods!) have dumped a truckload of files, what can I do while I loll in bed like a particularly repulsive beached whale?

Surf, of course.

To find that life gets bleaker. Especially if you want to surf in the air. I can just imagine my more obsessive blogger friends weeping great hot tears up in the clouds. Wait, acid rain?

In other news, it is confirmed that the Aussies are crazy. And that Crocodile Dundee was a merman.

For those of us who keenly analyse the media, HT Online has a regular page of grave import. Poor things, they all look sad and malnourished.

But in the best find of the week, a couple of JUDE-eans share their linguistic ecstasy with the cyber-world. Hum je ki bhaabe bujhaayega era kitnaa mohot karjyo kora hai, jisko bolta hai shokh kaa praan Gorh ka math bon gaya.

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Devouring Faith

The western reaches of our country have been slightly damp over these last few weeks. This has earned the ire of our most popular Chief Minister who, as we all know (or should know), firmly believes in dry days. When reports last came in by messenger dolphin, he was busy being ignorant of an outpouring of popular sentiment that would set upon the South-Western Monsoon with burning tyres, Molotov cocktails and other assorted instruments of peaceful protest. The implementation of this non-plan has been slightly delayed while a group of concerned pseudo-intelligentsia search for a bakery in the clouds – bakeries being, as recent history has shown, the natural haunts of that virulently anti-national species, the pseudo-secularist.

Our Man of the Moment is not, however, idle during this waiting period. We are informed that he has served an ultimatum to the Govt. of India with regard to the structure hitherto known as the Taj Mahal. They are to publish the real history of the edifice and make known to the world at large that it was originally the tomb of Samudragupta (a seafarer and explorer of true India, known in his day for the discovery of the Black Sea which he named Kala Pani. When this water-body later migrated to the immediate west of the Indian sub-continent, probably due to a conspiracy among some anti-national forces, he was among the first to call for its excommunication from the Hindu pantheon). The structure will thereafter be known as Samudra Samsara Samadhi Samugam or ssss, an onomatoepic approximation of what the popular Chief Minister would like to do Bipan Chandra. Alternatively, the Govt. must allow it to be torn brick from brick by a group of altruistic volunteers who will not accept even their train fare from places as remote as Azamgarh, Balliya and Rae Bareilly.

While He has given the Govt. reasonable time to choose either of these eminently reasonable options, they must in any case immediately start painting it saffron.

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In Delhi, meanwhile, the Bearded One has convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council to debate the demand of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This sect has garnered adherents worldwide over the last two years and now demand for their Godhead runway space on Rajpath when S/He comes in to land on 1^st April. In a reasoned letter to the Prime Minister, they have pointed out that this is hardly an unreasonable request considering the fact that “a certain minority” are allowed to pray on public thoroughfares throughout the country at least twice a year, as also to play their calls to prayer over loudspeakers at about twice the permitted decibel level. (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster [or CFSM] is not at this point of time interested in other minutiae such as the right to marry several times [holding that the act is its own punishment] but are examining with interest the minority arrangements for divorce.)

The CSFM have informed the PMO that the landing arrangements are essential because on that date the Great FSM will reveal to true believers the nature of its landing gear, which may provide answers to theological mysteries like the Sex of the Great Monster and also Whether Meatballs are to be Soaked in Sauce or Added Dry. In the event that the Indian Government does not grant this reasonable request, they state, they fear that their God may release 570 billion gallons of meat sauce on South Block and also emit an enormous low-frequency sound while overflying Delhi. (The closest approximation of this sound in human experience is the Honourable Speaker calling for order on a Bad Day in Parliament. Multiplied to divine levels, it is likely to cause severe structural damage).

The meeting of the NSC will be held as soon as the PMO kitchen staff have perfected a working model of the Flying Spaghetti Monster complete with landing gear. This may take a few weeks as Many Bunker Fryer has opined that vegetarians cannot analyse this threat through soya-bean mock-ups and the post of Director NSA must henceforth be reserved for Punjabis or Nagas. Toilyo Byanjan Gas Banshee and Probe Bookerjee have thereafter filed a joint PIL alleging discrimination against fish-eating ethnic groups.

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Each to each ... [1]

“Why did you not tell me you are beautiful?” ^[2]

A hotel room high above the golf course. The picture window looks out over miles of treetops to a semi-circle of horizon. West by north-west, the eye travels from the bulk of the Meridien to the concrete outcrops around Connaught Place. In between, the domes of Rashtrapati Bhavan and the North Block muse serenely into the sky. Nearer me, a huge squared block of masonry, unrecognisable at first, suddenly comes into focus as India Gate in profile. On every side shades of green flow towards the horizon with barely a house-top breaking the surface. Far away to my right, the Purana Qila hunches its battered shoulders against the skyline. Two dazzling white domes break free of the concrete swarm somewhere beyond the railway station. Right in front of my window, a willow flirts with the breeze, swaying, changing colour in rippling sheets. And overarching all, a sky-full of monsoon greys and washed blue, highlighted by the occasional shaft of cloud-fallen light.

This is Delhi?!

The vista changed with the light, from the flat sharp lines of morning through the shadowed contrasts of high noon to the long soft gold of a summer evening. I hated having to leave that room. And driving from one meeting to another, I really looked at the wide leafy avenues of Lutyens’ city. Over the walls and the bamboo fences, through the screens of foliage, up above the flat roofs and the dish antennae to the cloud-washed blue of August. Dammit, this city is beautiful in parts.

Of course, only in parts. If one overlooks the eczema of rubbish heaps along the Yamuna, the rubble, the peeling houses, the hungry dogs, the scattered pipes when one leaves the Avenues of the Little Tin Gods.

But I didn’t mean to bitch about Delhi, I meant to pay it fulsome compliments.

Perhaps I’m a little jealous on behalf of my beloved Calcutta. I’ve never really thought about whether she’s beautiful, she’s just been more fun than any other place I know. Like a favourite aunt, or that friend who’s so vivacious that you never stop to think whether she’s actually hot. Now when I consider it dispassionately, I know that my city won’t make it on looks alone, not even if one considers only the prettier neighbourhoods. Not even the narrow sunlit lanes on a winter morning, or the lights across the Maidan as I drive home across the new Hooghly Bridge.. Delhi can take each of these and trump it with another vista far more stunning. And Bombay can afford to flash its Necklace and look away in quiet triumph.

Well, so what? I still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Or would I? The Better Half loved London. Said it’s like Calcutta all spruced and polished (this was one September, after the litter of the tourist season had been cleared up and the corners de-pissed). I loved Paris – like Catherine Deneuve, utterly irresistible, very gracious, but always a hint of coolness that says “After all, I am the world’s most desirable!” We both loved New York … a feisty broth of a city that’s somewhere between Bangaal fishwife, Irish colleen, Polish tramp and cold-eyed Dutch burgher, but somehow greater than the sum of all these parts. But would we live there? London, just maybe. None of the others, and certainly not in the arms of that archetypal whore-with-a-heart-of-gold who husks her seduction by the Arabian Sea.

But we were in Delhi … I came back to my room late in the evening and I …. well, sat by the window and watched the cars roll by (I do quote that song far too often. Whattodo, universally applicable line). Soft darkness lay in layers beyond the circle of the hotel lights, beyond the dazzling blue of the swimming pool and the muted lamps in the driveway. Far away the office blocks glimmered a little forbiddingly, like a space-port of the Sith Lords. A streak of light lay across the southern horizon - perhaps the airport, perhaps just another urban village. Lights winked through the trees below as traffic crowded the roads well after midnight. This city sleeps late.

There’s a special loneliness about a hotel room, part empty bed and silent phone, part impersonal luxury that you know will belong to someone else once you step out of the door. Especially when you wake from fitful sleep in the middle of the night and debate whether it’s too late to call a friend. The room is a surreal film-set in the half-light of the night-lamp, an alien environment that has suddenly invaded your space. I gave up on sleep and sat by my picture-window with a large mug of coffee and a packet of cigarettes. Musing. Upon the stories in that dark half-circle spread out on view below, that surprising face of beauty on a city that I have long disliked.

Who would have thought Delhi could be so beautiful?!

^[1] - Far from felicitous, not only because it's from one of Kipling's stiffer efforts but also because it's titled "To the City of Bombay"

^[2] - An Academic Friend dismissed “A Florentine Tragedy” as an “awful Jacobean pastiche”. I was most awf'ly impressed, but I still like those last two lines.

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