Persistence pays

Science advances. It has been determined that a physicist’s beard takes about 58.8 days to grow an inch. Assuming the physicist shaved at 7 a.m. on 1^st May, it would be 12 minutes past 2 in the morning on 20^th June before each hair in his beard was an inch long. Okay, maybe 11 minutes past 2. Such a long wait. Physicists have it tough (Tough? Enter stage left, the Gillette Mach III ..).

If this is true, we can also posit that a civil servant’s beard grows faster than a physicist’s. Now to collect the data.

I can foresee some fun with the tests, oh dear yes.

The writing on the ...

If you can read this site without laughing out loud, give me a shout and I'll send you a year's supply of laxatives, you obviously need them.

Heads-up - I got the links off blogs I check, but what with clicking off Bloglines and getting some lunch and taking 294 phone calls and checking on the despatch centre, I have NO idea which blogs they're off.

So if you posted them first or think you did, yo da man. Or, as the case may be, woman.

The pied crested cuckoo

I saw the fan-shaped cloud around half past 2 yesterday. A shadow of hope, up there in the vault of a blazing sky. So I asked the ‘gunman’ (because he was nearest, see?), ‘Looks like there’s a chance of rain, eh?”

To which his considered answer (after first clutching his gun tighter, in case the cloud was a security threat) was ‘That’s a cloud’.

Quite. Very helpful, with the temperature up in the mid-40s (that’s Celsius, Mr. Y Doodle) and the furnace breeze lifting lazy clouds of dust from the roadside. I was out from 7 in the morning to beat the heat. Fat chance. The sun was a hammer well before 9 o’clock, regardless of shades and hat and wet towel and regular sipping of water,. By the time I got back at 4 in the afternoon the back of my neck was throbbing and my skin felt like it had been toasted.

But that was yesterday. When I woke at a quarter to 6 this morning, the room was unusually dark. I ran (well, almost. Cut me some slack here) outside. Oh blessed day! Clouds from one side of the horizon to the other, shades of grey, birds quieter in the trees, that little hush that comes before it pelts down, and faint upon the air the smell of wet earth.

And the added pleasure of being proven right on my prediction yesterday, of knowing Things About Weather even though I'm a city slicker.

But only a faint drizzle so far, the kind that barely darkens the earth and leaves an inverted shadow of the trees upon the ground below where the diffident raindrops cannot reach. Bring it on, Rain Dude! Don’t give us a teaser and a no-show! Come ON!

Update: 24 hours later, it STILL hasn't rained. Haven't these guys heard of Truth in Advertising?

* The pied crested cuckoo is known in North India as the 'chaatak', which, according to Indian myth, sits with its mouth open waiting for rain to alke its thirst. Silly twit, but then, it IS a cuckoo. Me, I've discovered Red Bull with watermelon juice. And a spot of Old Monk.

In the belly of ...

The beast snorted, slewed sideways. It paused for a moment, dipped its head, then took the slope at the charge, a storm of dust spiralling from its tracks. Its roar filled the field as it topped out, then died to a rumble as it lurched forward over the ploughed earth. A cloud of chaff rose from the stubble of the harvest, whipped into our eyes with the wind of our passage. The horizon danced. Sunlight and hot air mingled with the tumult of our progress.

Sprawled on a blanket atop the beast, I held on to a convenient spike and pulled the trailing edge of the headcloth tight across my face.

*** ***

It weighs nearly 50 tons when fully loaded, carries more than a ton of fuel and almost a ton of ordnance. Scaly with armour round its bulbous head and shoulders, swollen with the racks of fuel tanks, bristling with guns and aerials and stippled with smoke grenades, the most obvious analogy is a modern dinosaur, a crouching T Rex that mangles the earth it passes over. These are seriously impressive machines. Those tons of metal are driven by a V- ** engine that generates close to 1000 HP with the turbo-charger, enabling the tank to take 30 degree gradients uphill and travel at up to 60 kmph on a paved surface. 50 tons at 60 kmph. Although braking distance is short on a tracked vehicle, think of the momentum.

Yet when I saw the row of garages waiting in the sun, the snout of a barrel poking out of each archway, I was most forcefully reminded of the stables in Mussoorie. Mounts eager for a morning gallop. Not for nothing are the old cavalry ranks still current in the Armoured Corp – enlisted men are still sawars and the JCOs are rissaldars. They have a similar relation with their machines, too. The young Major who took me around said that the same men are assigned to the same tanks throughout their time in the regiment. They had to abandon a couple of tanks recently – stuck in mud while fording a river during a field exercise – and the crews moped for weeks. The fresh-faced Lieutenant with us obviously loved his tank, too. On a couple of occasions when the Major was trying to get a gadget to work, the youngster could barely keep from showing his impatience, like a teen who can’t understand why his parents’ generation can’t handle a patch for the computer.

(I’ve been asked not to mention any details of the unit or the particular make of the tank. Security concerns. For the same reasons, no photographs.)

A tank regiment doesn’t have companies, they have squadrons of 12 to 14 tanks, backed by a HQ squadron that handles all the rest during active ops – supply, reconnaissance, repairs, the works. Every man in HQ squadron, the cooks, the clerks, the technicians, they’re all fighting men, only they don’t fight from tanks. They have some A-vehicles of their own, armoured personnel carriers that can carry a section of force apart from the 3-man crew, but a significant difference is that they carry carbines and SLRs. Tank crew carry only pistols. Simple reason – there’s no space inside a tank to stash a carbine, let alone swing it.

Space. Who would have thought that the innards of such a huge beast could be so cramped? When I managed to clamber down into the gunner’s seat I could barely turn around to look at the magazine behind me. The equipment is interesting – night vision scope, aiming screen, the actual gun controls like a submarine periscope – but any incautious movement brought me into contact with hard sharp surfaces. I tried to imagine the belly of the beast during desert ops. Outside temperature 50 Celsius, inside closer to 55. Noise level above 100 decibels, plus the report of the gun. Bouncing like dice in a shaker. And through it all, acquire target, select ammo, load, track and bear, range in, centre, fire. Rinse and repeat. While the tank commander next to you handles his radio, a machine-gun and directs the driver. Who sits in a separate compartment out front in the hull of the vehicle (commander and gunner in the turret). And this could go on for hours. 72 hours, says the Major. Three friggin’ DAYS in there. Whew. And I thought the definition of hell was an old jute mill on a night in June!

After the tour, the ride. My bald top was first encased in a headset, then came the swish part - getting to wear the black headdress. That thing is so uber-cool, even an old fat man looks kind of dude-ish in it. It isn’t swagger, though. Both headset and bandanna are essential to keep out the noise and dust. (Wonder what it was like 60-odd years ago, outside Alamein and Tobruk?) I offered to stand behind, but the Major smiled and firmly waved me up. I was placed atop the turret, a blanket under me for padding against the sharp edges of the body armour.

The giant started up with a snarling roar. As it moved forward over the cobbles, I still had no inkling of what was to come. Then we wheeled out of the garages and … out of focus! A lurch, a change of gear, a roar, a pivot. Thrown one way and then the other, holding on for dear life, I understood why standing behind would have been a Very Bad Idea. Down a muddy slope, up again onto an embankment, the barrel tracking left to stay clear of the hedges. I looked fearfully at the ditch beside our path and hoped the driver was competent. A fall in there would be bad enough without 40-odd tons of tank following me down to nestle lovingly between my shoulder-blades.

Despite the roar, once we were on the track our progress was almost peaceful. With the height and the occasional pitch and sway, it was like being in an elephant’s howdah. Babul branches whipped across us, a terrified buffalo calf ran mooing to its mother, the sun glinted off a pond. Then we went off-road, into the exercise area, and again the world fractured into a series of jerky frames. The Major, kind soul, offered me the chance to drive. I firmly declined. An 8-speed gearbox and 2 steering levers could be interesting, but not when a million dollars’ worth of machine is involved.

Back in the stables, I clambered down (stirred, not shaken), untied the headdress and whipped the thick layer of dust off my jeans. A bird trilled in the sudden silence after the clamour. More experiences lay ahead – trying out the gun simulator, seeing the various mechanical systems in tubular (stripped-down) versions, three sequences of shooting practice (9 mm. pistols, which I’m normally wary of, but by the 3^rd round I had a very nice grouping, yay!), checking out the maintenance vehicle – but for me the high point was that headlong rush through the countryside astride the roaring snarling pitching behemoth.

But I’m glad I never have to work within the belly of the beast.

Thirst for knowledge

Some things about Blogger that we haven’t worked out and want to know. Kind souls in the (sparse) audience will please put up their hands before they answer, volunteers will pass you the cordless mikes.
Does anybody else have this problem about Blogger rejecting formatted Word documents? I copy, paste, hit publish – then there’s an error message and about 5000 characters of code in the box before the real post starts. How do I get around this? It’s a pain highlighting and deleting every time.
The other thing – I shut off my blog for a while, made it by-invitation-only (and invited no-one - to the few blessed souls who actually asked for invites, I love you all and you can rest assured there was No Discrimination). SiteMeter showed zero hits. Fine.
But now, there’s this blog I read on Bloglines. And there was something I wanted to comment on, I clicked on the title link, and I get this message that I’m not invited. How does that sync with what happened on my blog? Because SiteMeter shows visits from feed-readers and there were none while my blog was fenced off. Or does SiteMeter only work for Google Reader? Will some wise soul please explain?

Travels with a voice recorder, Pt 1

Half past ten on a Friday night in Delhi. Just finished two helpings of soup – I was sick as a kitten in the afternoon – and crawled into bed atop a pile of pillows. I’ve been upgraded to a room in the corner, which means windows on two sides, and these two sides are like two different worlds. The front looks out on Sansad Marg, Parliament Street, and there’s a buzz and rumble of traffic on that side all through the day and most of the night. When I last parted the curtains the building opposite was lit up even at half past nine, floor after floor of neon-lit desks visible through the glass like those cut-away doll houses in museums. Must be either news or IT.

The other window … in the afternoon when I checked in, the sky was bronze turning to silver in the heat, the trees were washed-out skeletons in the glare and a group of kites wheeled in tight circles high high above the NDMC building, almost in a different dimension. When I woke from a healing sleep the fading sunlight struck through the branches of the jacaranda outside, creating an orange picture-frame on the wall above the bed. The lawns of the Jantar Mantar turned an unreal dark thirst-quenching green as the headlights came on in the traffic below. Now, late at night, the floodlit Samrat Yantra looks like a huge red shoe, the one where the old woman lived in the nursery rhyme.

A mile beyond the pool of light, a group of buildings stands against the night sky, transplanted from the Krypton landscape. All it needs is a hologram of Marlon Brando as Jor-El. The stairwells are lit up like fluorescent spines, but the huge neon sign on top of Le Meridien just reads “Le MeI”. Correction, if I tilt my head to the left I can see “Le Mer”. The sea? In THIS city? The building that blocks out the rest of the sign is also the darkest, so the illusion is (if not complete) pretty good. But the view palls after a while, especially when Al Pacino and Johnny Depp are waiting for me (you know which movie that was?). Good night.

* * *

I wake for a while around 3 a.m. and can’t see the lights any more, Le Meridien has switched off the neon sign, the buildings are a mass of Ice Giants against the night sky. A surreal moment when the blinking lights of an international flight glide down the sky and … vanish behind the dark mass. Sleep-fuddled, I count ONE thou-sand, TWO thou-sand, THREE thou, all the way up to seven before the lights appear again, closer to the tree-line, maybe only a minute from touch-down.

The dawn comes surprisingly early. Padding around in my bare feet (the hotel’s bathroom slippers are really slippery on the wooden floor), making coffee, popping things into the suitcase as I go to and fro, I haven’t really noticed when the sodium vapour lamps perched 60 feet high have faded. But morning has broken well before 6 and I can see a strong breeze bending the tree-tops. All except one tree that’s still bare like a candelabra, rooks’ nests in its armpits as it pushes out the first green shoots of the year. Stupid tree to wait till April when it’s pushing 40 Celsius, all your shoots of spring will soon turn from salad to crispy noodles. I can see more of the Jantar Mantar now, and a lanky man doing contortions on the grass.

Suddenly a flight of pigeons erupts like a puff of gunsmoke across my line of sight. Drawn to the window, I can see an avian promenade at eye-level. Even the kites from yesterday are stretching and doing warm-up flights below my window, making those ridiculous mewing sounds that no self-respecting bird of prey should admit to. Lazy bums, too. I saw a pair of seagulls in Barcelona make a light snack of a fat pigeon, and here these kites are like ineffectual traffic policemen elbowed aside by the bumbling streams of pigeons that all but crash into the mass of the NDMC building. I try for some shots of the fatties in flight, but of course they must choose this moment to sit on my window ledge and look smug. Well, I have news for you – I have a train to catch and you aren’t Aamir Khan, I can get shots of a zillion other pigeons. Time to call the front desk to have my bill ready.

Kicks ass too!

I found THIS today. I’m not sure how to categorise it, but it is the sheerest delight. Why didn’t this guy teach us history?!

Overheard in Delhi

Green Apple went down well, up on the terrace garden with four of us sprawled in wicker chairs inside a ring of green leafy things, but the Twist came later. The Punj way of life is known for a certain boisterousness, joie de vivre, changiya si, but I don’t think GK-II was quite ready for three off-key voices. In chorus. Loud chorus. VERY loud chorus. At a quarter to one on a week-night. Singing the “Blacksmith’s song” (you know the one? Long claimed as an IIT-K original, but “surprisingly” found in one of the books of Rugby Songs? “There was a woman with … ” Yes, THAT one.) With a sobbing urgency as they speeded up on “Round and round went the great wooden wheel”, pathos even, the note of true emotion that lifts performance to the level of art. Accompanied by foot-stomping and a cougar howl at the very end.

The Host was conspicuous by his lack of participation. He sat there with his head in one hand, morosely clicking at his Blackberry. Upon questioning, he said he was looking for the number of his realtor, since he expected to be evicted within the week. He was promised help in finding digs in Mahipalpur, but did not vocalize any appreciation of the offer.

We discussed a case study in innovative negotiation. Early ’80s, a well-known drugstore on Rashbehari Avenue opposite Triangular Park. Along came the Pujas and the local Mr. Fix-It rolled around for his chNada. Nix, nyet, nada, says the drug-store owner. Sad, says Fix-It, and vanishes. The owner pulls down the shutters on his store and trundles home to sleep the sleep of the just. Cometh the dawn. The store owner finds the locks on his shutters in a state of some ordure. Not to put too fine a point on it, they’d been crapped upon. After the obligatory fuming, the discussion of the finer points of the perpetrator’s genealogy and the sad lack of intellect among his lady loves, the store owner got around to rigging up a hose and cleaning the locks and opening the store some hours after the usual opening time. Only to be greeted by the same odoriferous situation the next day. And the next. Round about the fourth day, the penny dropped in more ways than one. A message was sent to Mr. Fix-It, a meeting arranged, crackling paper exchanged hands and the store owner basked in the new-found role of Local Philanthropist. Needless to say, the Phantom Shitter did not strike again.

Cut to Cape Town, South Africa, 2003. A*, one-time resident of Rashbehari Avenue, is now COO of __ Steel. His company is facing a singular problem. The exit from their stackyard at the docks is regularly locked by the containers of his rival steel company. Nothing blatantly illegal, just inconsiderate enough to hamper the movement of A’s consignments. The matter came up at a meeting of the board. After the formal discussion, melodious popping noises were heard and levels of froth were observed, At this stage of the proceedings, A’s memory threw up the Curious Case of the Crapper. He mentioned it, offhand, as a fitting response to the Inconsiderate Containers. Not possible in this country and on this scale, of course, just saying. That kind of mention.

The Chairman put down his beer. Slapped him on the shoulder. Effused. Mentioned innovation. Mentioned genius. Wherefore it came to pass that the honest toilers of __ Steel, yea, e’en a full hundred of them, were summoned by the COO to the dockside stackyard. One hundred of them feasted full well on all manner of good things, till they could eat no more. Several of them were Bantu and Shangaan and Shona, scions of races led by Shaka Zulu and M’zilikaze . Were they to be worsted by a bunch of gantry operators and fork-lift drivers? In the depths of the night did they sally forth to battle, a battle of strategy and stealth. And shit. One hundred large well-fed men can produce an awful lot of solid waste.

The container jam was not repeated.

Pumpin'

In my armchair, feet up on the table, morning sunlight through the lace curtains. And the hoarse drone of a pump.

A morning sound that reaches back through the years. A squat aggressive Kirloskar in its grooved casing, under the stairs in the first house I knew. A seemingly effete Tullu in its own barred alcove behind the kitchen in Salt Lake, the object of my father’s anxiety. A mysterious and temperamental machine in an outhouse in Purulia. And now this one that used to choke and hiccup like an asthmatic, till Mr. Handyman came round and transformed it into a boringly predictable monotone. Continuity made audible.

And oh ...

Did I mention that I loved “Luck by Chance”? No? Well let me tell you I loved “Luck by Chance”. Like just about every other person On The Blogs.

(Is there a distinct Blogger Sensibility? Is it a Mutant Gene? Perhaps one day the Alien Power that Rules The Universe from its Haunt in A Far Galaxy will trip a ginormous switch, and the Blogger Hordes will Emerge From Their Lairs, eyes glazed with fixity of purpose, laptops fraught with menace, perhaps even uniformed in pink chaddis. And some of them will be singing Joan Baez – you know the one I mean? Come from the shadows? – and of course there will be ONE who thinks she’s SUPER at Don’t cry for me Argentina and she’s sulking because she can’t get to sing it with all the grand gestures. Only it will not be a Dangerous Movement, because like all Blogger Movements, it will be peaceful and law-abiding and maybe even Libertarian, so after they have Saved the World in Five Easy Steps, all the bloggers will go home and tap out long earnest posts about the Importance of Participation.

And the next day they will find that all this Never Really Happened, because the Main-Stream Media will have Ignored It Completely.)

LbC isn’t the only recent movie I liked. Delhi 6 is pretty good too. In fact, I loved it. All but the last 20 minutes or so, which was … well, crappy. Sad. So few Hindi films can wrap it up nicely (LbC being an exception – nice wrap-up, no incredible happy ending that throws the film off-kilter). A review here doesn’t make much sense because both Baradwaj R and Pratim DG have reviewed it (and after ages, BR has a review I agree with! Jai ho!). Like they both said, the music and the screenplay and dialogues are superb, Abhishek Bacchan does a (surprisingly) good job, Sonam Kapoor sheds her blues, but a couple of points they missed. A “dream sequence” in a Hindi film that really has the almost-there, almost-rational quality of a dream. Great graphics, too, with Times Square in comic-book colour. And the other sequence I loved was the parkour interlude across the rooftops of Chandni Chowk. Fun came. But (spoiler alert here) they really should have killed off Roshan (Abhishek’s character). Would have driven home the “Message” much more forcefully.

In other film news, I was on a 1960s desert trip. Andalusian. Sergio Leone and the Dollar series. Some interesting sidelights. That the man who possibly made the most money from the first – A Fistful of Dollars (the ‘A’ isn’t there in the opening titles) – was one A. Kurosawa. Because Fistful is obviously based on Yojimbo, and he sued the pants off Sergio Leone. Which might seem like justice well served, except that Yojimbo itself was based on Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest without any acknowledgement. Reminded me of the time when Vishwa Bharati sued Rajesh Roshan for lifting the tune of ChhNoo kar mere man ko (Yaarana) from Tomaar holo shuru (music and lyrics, R. Tagore). They were chuffing along all self-righteous and indignant, guardians of Bangali kaalchaar, until one Burman, R.D., pointed out that Mr. Tagore himself had appropriated the tune from a Scottish folk song. Exit Kaalchaar Brigade, stage left, as if pursued by a bear.

Reading up on the Dollar series also threw up an interesting trivium about Roger Ebert. Back in 1966, when he reviewed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on its release, he only gave it 3 stars because he was young and pretentious. Later, when he had become rogerebert.com, he saw it again and gave it 4 stars. Quentin Tarantino, bless his determinedly unpretentious low-culture soul, said in 2002 that it was the greatest film ever made. I can’t entirely agree, but Yay all the same.

So then I went looking for More Sergio Stuff and found a little gem (thank you, Dhaka). Not so little either, it runs for close to 4 hours. But just think, Sergio Leone directing Robert de Niro in a gang epic. With Elizabeth McGovern looking lovely. And an appearance by a young(er) Joe Pesci, who has always been a personal favourite (if he could only have pulled in Jean Reno as well - what a waste of a casting coup with both of them in Home Alone). The usual lavish visual delight one associates with Leone. Dry-eyed hard-nosed depiction of the way morals are a dispensable luxury when one is poor. De Niro must have felt a bit of déjà vu, there are parallels to Godfather-II (so far the only sequel that equalled the original by winning the Oscar for Best Motion Picture) in the way it traces the back story of the hoods from childhood. I love it. And I’m rationing myself to half an hour at a time. In fact, time to get back to it now.

Once upon a time in America (1984). If you haven’t seen it already, go get it. now.

There but for the grace of ...

This is a totally chilling interview. (Link from Thejaswi Udupa)

Not because of the picture of Guantanamo. Not because of what it says of the subversion of justice by the US Govt. and army, not because at one time we still thought of the USA as a supporter of fair play.

But because the kind of torture mentioned here is child’s play compared to standard practice all over India. It makes us realise how inured we are to the reality in our own country.

Some of my colleagues used to make gentle fun of me because, on the occasions when I got involved in the process, I used to stop the “interrogation” from getting violent. On two occasions within my first few months of field service, I was able to get information by scaring the person/s being interrogated. Play-acting, hard-man-soft-man stuff that probably would invite censure in some countries, but at least the person on the other side of the table was not beaten up. I compare that to the stories from a man who used to be a very good friend. “F***er, do you have any idea how difficult it is to break a human bone?!” He broke his hand during one such interrogation. “That’s why the lathi is indispensable.” This from the man who used to lecture me on ethics in the days when we were mugging for the exams together.

Pvt. Neely in his interview speaks of slipping into alcoholism because he couldn’t cope with the guilt of what he had done. And I think of the reality in India. Of the 8 year old girl who was brutally beaten by a UP cop on suspicion of theft. Of a man who is now mentally and physically crippled because he was suspected of rape. And I wonder, do these people never think of how the man at the other end of the lathi feels as it swings into his stomach? Does it take a special kind of insensitivity to be able to hurt another human being in cold blood? And if it is so common, perhaps the insensitivity is the norm rather than the exception?

And I am very afraid.

Update: Another Kafkaesque story of persecution (link from Sanjay Anandram). This was posted on the Tehelka web-site, so I’d like to see some cross-checking. But I don’t remember any of the a-v media following up this story. If true, this is terrorism too. Are we going to do anything about it?

Like a blessing come from Heaven ...

"... for something like a second / I was healed / and my heart was at ease." An epiphany? The menu proudly states that the steaks are made “specially in our modern Electric Griller” (said menu having been largely unchanged in form or content for the last 45 years). The fish meuniere melts in the mouth at the precise moment one reads that line, the two stimulii catalysing a smile that must surely fit the popular concept of “beatific”. So I knelt there at the delta / at the alpha, at the omega / I knelt there like one who believes.

Suddenly, all the niggling irritations dwindle. The parts of the world that were out of focus fit together with a discreet click (imagine a Rolls Royce door shutting. Imagine, furthermore, that the man shutting it is Reginald Jeeves).The brow, suddenly realising that Life is Not Half Bad, that in fact it would be not entirely incorrect to claim that Life is (taking it by and large, seeing it unalloyed and seeing it whole) Quite a Good Thing, becomes rapidly unfurrowed. The wolf at the door and the ghoul on the shoulder slink away to pack their bags and consult their Bradshaws.

Good my ladies and gentles, for some months now I have been sore beset by life in general and by one Nazgul in particular. I have been foolish enough to let aforesaid Nazgul and his Dire Machinations prey upon my mind. But I have now triumphed over my woes (and foe) in much the same way that Truman won over his critics, to wit, by outliving them (outliving professionally, that is). It may be premature to say that I shall now step high, wide and plentiful, but my general outlook is now far closer to that of Frederick Altamont Cornwallis ( the Earl of Twistleton to the adoring populace Uncle Fred to his favourites) than to that of Marvin the Paranoid Android. My hat is quite distinctly cocked on the back of my head and I would, if I could, Scatter Largesse to the Multitude. Right. Time to cast the eye (now more measuring than beady) over what the world has been doing while we were not around to console it.

****

Roger certainly needs consolation. Poor mutt, he cried when he lost. Not Done, in my book, but I can see how Rafael Nadal-Parera can have that effect. Poetic justice in a way. FedEx now knows how Andrew Stephen Roddick must have felt for all those years when only one man stood between him and the title of best tennis player on Planet Earth. The sad part is that despite Nadal’s incredible athleticism and accuracy under pressure, Federer didn’t lose on the court. He lost in the mind. This was most evident at the French Open last year. It happened again in the fifth set at Melbourne. Federer cried out of frustration, not disappointment. Sweet Kerrist on a fibreglass kerrutch, how many times does one have to beat this man before he admits he’s beat? The problem is that Rafa never accepts that he’s beat. Not for a single point, dammit, not for a single shot. In the second set, he ran past his backhand corner to retrieve a Federer forehand that would have been a winner against any other tennis player in the world. Then he ran back to his forehand AND RETURNED the put-away from Federer. Fed had to play a third shot to win that point. That sums it up. Ole, Rafa!

****

In other news, I have narrowly escaped death or at least dismemberment by the simple expedient of never having been to Mangalore. I’m normally peace-loving, discreet and prudent to the point of cowardice. One thing that really irritates me, however, is women being hassled. If this gets to the point where they are physically assaulted, this mouse will roar. Fat lot of good that would do anybody, of course. I’m not the kind of chap who looks good wearing his undies outside (spandex) pants, so if I reacted in that kind of situation, all I’d achieve would be my own rapid spifflication. Still and all … I sadly fear that if Mangalorisation becomes a widespread phenomenon, Pureed Babu might be on the menu of some not-too-finicky canine. (I’d like to think I could take a couple of them down with me, but life rarely follows my story-lines)

(Update: apparently Mangalorisation happened today in Gangotri Bar in Madiwala, Bombay. The sweet smell of progress. Maybe in a few decades we’ll even grow to like it.)

(Data point: There’s a blog purportedly by Dr. V.S. Acharya, Home Minister of the State of Karnataka in the Union of India. This is the gentleman who reportedly said that the parents of the girls attacked should have been more careful. We could all express our regard and appreciation on his blog, but I fear his innate modesty might cause him to "moderate" our comments)

****

Some Indian bloggers have their knickers in a twist over a legal action that didn’t happen. (Does that make it a legal inaction or an illegal action?) Quite pointless, like a number of televised debates. So you think the TV channels shouldn’t have shown the security operations during the Bombay attacks? What were the security bosses doing, then? As I see it, with the possible exception of the NSG, EVERYbody - and this, let's face it, includes most of US - had their heads up their rectums to some extent (perhaps because the shit had hit the fan?) I think we all agree that some of our elected representatives were well past their own (presumably, respective) colons and may even have crossed their oesophagii. It’s not fair to single out Du-h Dutt for special criticism.

When all the channels were culpable to some extent, why do so many people love to hate Ms. Duh-tt? (When I last checked, there was no Facebook group titled “Can u please get Rajdeep Sardesai / Arnab Goswami / Srinivasan Iyer off air?”) Could it be because she was the only Managing Editor who rushed to the spot, planted herself in front of the camera and shoved her mike in the most places? Do they not realise that she leads from the front and cannot allow her juniors to go to dangerous places (like In Front of Guns or In Front of the Camera)? Could it be that, despite her acumen and her objectivity and her succinct analysis (“As you can see, there’s a person in white at that window on the 9^th floor” – would we ever have worked that out for ourselves?), despite her (gasp!) Padma Shri, there are some Indian television viewers who just don’t like her? Strange concept that, well-nigh unbelievable, of course EVERYbody loves her, but perhaps it’s worth investigating, psychos are everywhere, they could even be dangerous, one might be well-advised to get gag orders against them, it’s all in the interests of a free press and we know how much we need THAT.

One school of thought holds that the central character is more about the gag reflex than about gagging free speech, but what do I know. In any case, how many people in this country READ blogs anyway, let alone any single specific blog? You think it would make an iota of difference if ALL of us spewed venom about her? Get a life! What I can’t figure out is why she bothered. She should be serene in her superiority, knowing that her Padma Shri places her in the exalted company of Hans Raj Hans, Sania Mirza and of course Pa’s Favourite Girl.

Statutory warning

The light at the end of the tunnel will remain switched off until further notice.

The centre no longer holds

The din inside my head is yet to die down. I can’t bring myself to write about IT. Nothing else seems important, though. Most of the posts that show up on Bloglines seem irrelevant. Yet there always seems to be more information, more points of view to assimilate.

Meanwhile (off Gawker’s blog?) I found this Steven Colbert idea –

“If this is truly India’s 9/11 and they want to emulate America, they should go out and attack a totally unrelated country. Say, New Zealand.”

Cote d'Ivoire, be very afraid.

Good friend – middle-class Bombay professional, one of the sharpest and most well-informed – on the suddenly visible activism of the middle and upper classes –

“This will last till Wasabi opens again.”

Paper tiger?

I was disappointed when The White Tiger won, over a book I much preferred. Adiga has an idea, he has a scathing bluntness, but he is not half the storyteller that Amitav Ghosh is. Even if one penalises Sea of Poppies for the irksome dialects (especially the endless Anglo-Indian cant), it’s infinitely more informative, has far more empathy and several times the imagination, and is generally a far far better book. I’m not even going into the issue of better writing, because that’s a matter of taste (especially since Paddy Doyle). And what was the relevance of letters to a Chinese politician?

I’m slightly better disposed towards Aravind Adiga after reading this –

"Do you feel that the world ignores India's poor? Carol Davies, Cambridge

The truth is, India doesn't need the world's help in fixing its poverty. The money is present right here, the social workers are right here. The basic steps needed to lift the 400 million Indians who live in extreme poverty are known to everyone – a massive increase in government investment in primary schools, hospitals, and farming (most of the poor live in villages). What is lacking in India is the political will to make these investments – and to fight the pervasive corruption that erodes the effectiveness of the meager anti-poverty programmes currently in place."

Perhaps simple to the point of being trite, it’s just that I entirely agree with his prioritisation. I’d add one more point (which I have mentioned on this blog earlier) – the need to make all citizens stakeholders by making them taxpayers.

Good night, sweet prince

When they posed for the group photograph, he was way off to one side. Smiling, possibly happy, but already drifting out of the frame.

Even earlier, when Harbhajan leaped in joy at the last wicket and the rest of the team converged on the pitch, he was alone, jogging in from the outfield, a smile on his face but his eyes hidden by those glares. He had a hand held up to high-five his mates. The only guy he could find was the next-to-newest member, Amit Mishra. He still smiled.

Oh, they chaired him off the ground afterwards. And Mahi had already made a grand gesture of asking him to set the field for a while after the 8^th wicket fell. It’s a sign of the man’s enthusiasm for the game, or perhaps his love of being in charge, that he actually accepted the offer. I thought it was a trifle demeaning, he should have smiled and waved it off.

Then they left the ground. The curtain came down. He’ll come back to his home in Behala and then, perhaps, when we can’t see him, the smile will fade.

He may deny it, but there are regrets. Those last 15 runs that eluded him in the first innings. Hell, the 17 runs that were his for the asking in Taunton, 1999, if Azharuddin had not kept him from the strike for 14 balls in a row. And of course, closing the face of the bat too early to that wrong ’un from Krezja. But he was never a fairy-tale prince. Not for him the perfect climax or the unblemished record. Except for that first tour of England (where he didn’t get the third consecutive century on debut) or that ODI series against Pakistan in Canada in 1998, he’s always been the Prince of What-Might-Have-Been. Which may not put him up there in the pantheon, but damn, it makes a far better story. And he’s always given us the best stories.

It was never just about the cricket. There will be a few dozen articles and a couple thousand blog posts about how he gave Indian cricket Attitude, about his record as captain and his magic through the off-side. But for most of us, and especially in Calcutta, it wasn’t just about the cricket. There was the angle of the local boy making good. There was our glee at his in-your-face incidents. But what really endeared him to us was his fallibility. Hell, a Don or a Tendlya aren’t human. They are phenomena. THIS man fought against his own frailties, his lack of form, his failing reaction time, his leaden feet. He fought against perceptions, against half-truths, against his own hubris. He fell from eminence in a manner he hadn’t anticipated, he fought his way back, he toughed it out. And he found that just as panache couldn’t hold him on the pinnacle, not even performance could put him back afterwards.

He was never one to go gentle into that good night. But like they wrote on Cricinfo, after a while a man bears the marks of “every glove that laid him low, or cut him”, and it’s better to leave on your own terms.

It might be bathetic to label him our last tragic hero. Unlike his opening partner (Chhoto Babu to his Babumoshai) he was too human for deification. He was never larger than life, let alone large enough to be a superhero. Maybe he was even a loser in his last war. But then again, perhaps those lines spoken over the body of another loser might not be out of place – “This was a man … ”

Run away?

Too many books, too many movies. Well, actually only about a half dozen movies in three weeks, but that’s about 5 more than I would have watched in the normal course.

And some Conversations. Including one with The Mentor, long distance. I said I’m increasingly pessimistic about this country as a place to bring up my daughter, we should probably emigrate in 5 years. Which prompted a couple of choice expletives and a list of reasons for hope. Orissa, and some response by the Govt. to the issue of mayhem on grounds of religion. The arrests in the Malegaon bombing case, which may show that Muslims don’t hold a monopoly on senseless murder OR that the Indian State is impartial. The poor show by secessionists in every poll in Kashmir, indeed the very fact that polls are held in Kashmir. Instances of public outcry speeding up justice. The fact that despite the woolly-minded yearnings of a section of the Indian middle class, the armed forces have never even attempted to take over power in this country. Even in my own State, some response to the issue of air pollution.

Yes, well, that’s good. And the consideration that if one is to avoid corruption, the only viable option seems to be Scandinavia. Weighed against the suicide rate there (and the certainty of my being about a foot shorter than the average woman), it really wouldn’t make much sense.

About corruption. The Greatest Country in the World makes a lot of hoo-haa about the annual report on corruption. Some of our more “enlightened” countrymen then make despairing noises about “the state of this country”. Which is ridiculous when you consider that the Vice-President of the Greatest Country has an open deal with a firm called Halliburton. And that - coincidentally, of course – in 2006 Halliburton were awarded 45 BILLION dollars worth of contracts in Iraq without any process of tender. To put that in perspective, Indian government rules do not permit purchase of more than Rs. 20,000/- without quotations, and any transaction of Rs. 2 lakh or more requires a process of open tender. Even if you use Purchasing Power Parity instead of simple currency conversion, the difference is huge.

And let’s not even get into the question of fair elections. The Chief Executive is elected on a recount in a state where the highest government executive - in charge of running elections too – is his own brother. And when it comes to a recount, guess who’s in charge? A lady who was on his campaign team. Even after 8 years, the level of moronicity bothers me.

Something else that bothers me. The lack of an effective Opposition in my own state. The one person who has been the face of the Opposition for more than 10 years now has never articulated any agenda other than opposition. Even during a tenure as a Union Minister, she staged a sit-in in the well of Parliament. Opposition for its own sake? Seems to me the story of the Great Dane and the yellow Beetle ^[1] is sadly apt here.

There’s a slew of other things that bother me – reality shows, SMS greetings, taxis parked at corners, misplaced apostrophes, Shilpa Shetty’s grin – but I’d be the first to admit that they’re not good enough reasons to emigrate. I probably wouldn’t be able to avoid them even if I did emigrate. Hell, not even La Shetty’s grin.

[1] The story? Well, this suburban guy bought a bright yellow Beetle. First day he took it out of the driveway to get to office, the neighbour’s Great Dane jumped the hedge and chased the car all the way down the lane, barking loudly all the way. This happened the second day too. AND the day after.
On Day 4, the guy finally lost his patience. As the huge hound lolloped after him, he stepped on the brakes, screeched to a halt, rolled the window down an inch and shouted “OK, you’ve GOT it! What are you going to DO with it now?!” Result, one very sheepish Great Dane.

Separated at birth

Which used to be a regular feature in a magazine called Sunday (1973-1999)

Now am I the only one who thinks this way about THESE two?





















This one used his head to good effect recently

This one is a trifle Victorian in his outlook

The writing on the wall

The idyll is a little ragged at the edges right now. I haven’t read a book since Sunday. Seem to be all out of literary enthu. The days are punctuated by tonics, medicines, meals, the occasional movie. Besides, I feel irritable when my body gets slack, and I haven’t had ANY kind of exercise in 3 weeks. It’s been 17 days since I stepped out of the house. Cabin fever is a distinct possibility. Oh damn.

Meantime, all that happens, happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds. After the Singur imbroglio, “Dr.” M. Banerjee and the head of the Left Front agree on something. To wit, that the very basis of a democratic polity is endangered by the Election Commission’s ban on graffiti (better known in devout circles as “the writing on the wall”). Given a choice between, on the one hand, giving your consent and having your walls re-decorated in avant-garde mode, and on the other, NOT consenting and having your features re-arranged in Neanderthal mode, which would YOU choose? The democratic option, of course. The greatest good of the greatest number. It’s so heart-warming when our leaders agree on a matter in the public weal. Leaves me all saahgy wiv emoshun and teary-eyed.

On the other coast, there is a patriotic movement. No, not saffronised bowel movements (though those may be happening in Utkala Desh – more of that later). The Western movement seeks to intensify nationalist sentiments. Think global, act local types. If you start with beating up people who are “Not Us” (and not armed), you may eventually get good at beating up people who are REALLY Not Us AND shooting back at you. Practice makes perfect and all that. Score so far – 4 dead, a few dozen injured, vehicles burnt, man-days lost. All in the great tradition of democracy. I am loving it.

In Orissa, Diwali came some months early. There were bonfires and merriment, there was good religious sentiment which involved killing real people (so much more fun than burning effigies). This has led to Parliament making wise noises (not too loud, since A Particular Religion is still the Religion of the Majority). It has also led to friends (whom I had hitherto considered rational) sending out cyber-whoops on the lines of “THAT will laarn ’em!” Organised religion is such a sweet thing. It must be so comforting for all concerned to read Nice Things about Love Thy Neighbour, Humanity is the Ultimate Creed etc. and then, spiritually uplifted, go out to rape and kill and burn. I love Organised Religion. In my book, it is one of mankind’s finest experiences. You know, in terms of enrichment, somewhere between an acid enema and a boil on the scrotum.

Say after me – I Love My Country. I Love My Faith. I Love My Fellow Man (AND My Fellow Woman. ESPECIALLY My Fellow Woman). I Love Our Peaceful Tradition. And I Love Killing Anybody Who Disagrees.

By bread alone ... ?

Indian breads. A term that one sees on buffets in snooty hotels, next to a tired wicker basket of sullen black-faced naans and wilting phulkas. So very misleading, as I’ve found over the years. Indian cuisine is a melting pot with inputs from Portugal to Penang, from Isfahan to Istanbul, and if we look close there’s a variety of Indian bread from each region. I have been a bread freak right from my school-days - my rather well-leavened frame often prompted jibes of “double roti” - but I associated the term with buns, croissants, chewy brown bread, golden buttered toast, little realising that the luchi of Sunday breakfast and the paratha that encased my chicken roll were also breads. Even the neer dosa of Kerala and the thalipeeth of Maharashtra claim to be breads, though the former is not made from wheat and the latter is a little like a pancake.

Pucca sahibs­ would probably limit the term to food made from grain flour (usually wheat), leavened with yeast and baked in an oven. Fiddlesticks. Or rather, Ey Mamu! The majority of Indian breads are unleavened, some are fried or even roasted and many are made from rice gruel or even lentil pastes. The more the merrier, say I. Man does not live by bread alone, but (as anybody on the Atkins Diet will vouch) life is pretty bleak without it.

First, the Big Question. Is it bread if it’s not made from grain? Check out pashti from Arcot in Tamil Nadu, rice flour dumplings pan-fried in ghee and eaten with chutneys or spicy meat. Or pesarattu from Andhra Pradesh, which is made from moong daal and fried on a griddle. Or, indeed, the entire family of dosai and their variants, from Kerala’s appam to uttapam and neer dosa. If these are dismissed as more pancakes than bread, where would you place thalipeet? The dough for this Maharashtrian favourite may contain – among others - beans, wheat, rice, onion, jaggery, vegetables and spices. It’s kneaded and rolled, unlike a crepe or pancake, but it’s not baked and it isn’t wholly wheat. So is it bread?

Most Indian breads are flatbreads, rolled from dough and roasted over an open fire or baked in a tandoor. In the far north, we have the chewy Ladakhi cambir or khambiri, dabbed with butter and eaten with home-made apricot jam or with tea. Kashmiris, surprisingly, eat more rice but have a wide variety of breads. Tsot and tsochvoru are small round breads, topped with poppy and sesame seeds and traditionally washed down with salt tea. Lavas is a cream coloured unleavened bread, probably derived from the Armenian Lahvash or Armenian cracker bread, a soft, thin flatbread sometimes sprinkled with toasted sesame or poppy seeds.

In the heartland, the humble chapatti is part of Indian history. It was carried from village to village and used as a signal before the rising of 1857. It’s also comfort food for millions, especially when hot off the fire with a dab of butter melting in the middle. It has a number of variants, all round flat unleavened breads made from grains other than wheat. The bhakhri, made from jowar, bajra or even (in Karnataka) from rice flour, is a staple in the western states. The jolada rotti of Karnataka is made from sorghum. Both these variations keep well and are good travelling food, usually eaten with pulse curries (daal, jhunka) or with chutneys such as thecha, a paste of chillies that can set fire to paper at 50 paces. The rock star in this category (or bhangra rapper?) is makki di roti, Punjab’s answer to corn pone. Made from corn (makki) flour, it goes with sarson da saag the way Tristran goes with Ysolde. Or Dharam with Hema. Cardiac specialists owe large portions of their bank balances to the Punjabi habit of serving it with a “liddel” home-made butter, say, a fistful on each roti.

Fried breads are India’s curious celebration of cholesterol. The most common deep-fried bread is the ubiquitous puri, roundels of wheat flour dough rolled flat, moistened with oil and fried till they swell into spherical puffs. The Bengali version, luchi, is made with refined flour or maida and places an even greater premium on light fluffiness. The most decadent zamindars would eat only the papery top layer as a token of their refinement. I can certify that this evokes a general feeling of well-being which is utterly misleading since it is more likely to lead to heartburn and breathlessness. When stuffed with daal or matar paste, the puri / luchi becomes the daalpuri, radhabollobi or kachori (differentiated by the consistency and crispness of the fried dough).

Parathas are the big brothers of puris. They range from the comparatively innocuous ones that are just thick rotis with a gloss of ghee to the utterly sinful sheermal from Kashmir, where the dough is kneaded with ghee, sweetened, re-rolled and baked till it is a meal in itself. Shillong has its own version called the palmia, which is almost a Danish pastry. Another Kashmiri calorie bomb is the baqrkhani roti. More layered, flaky and unsweetened, this is the ideal staple for the Kashmiri wazwan or wedding feast, where the objective apparently is to ensure that the married couple receive an early inheritance. A lighter leavened version is the taftan, which is baked with a hint of saffron and cardamom. The stuffed prontha, heavy with butter and potatoes (or grated cauliflower or radish) is Punjab’s contribution to the Indian breakfast. The Malabari paratha or Kerala Porotta goes a step further – eggs are beaten into the dough and the roundels are stretched by hand and flipped, a little like classic pizza. (The Malaysian roti canai is similar in composition though it is made by rolling and not flipping the dough. Singapore’s roti prata is a standard paratha but made by flipping the dough, a sideshow in hundreds of street food joints.) Bengal has the Dhakai porota. Big, crisp, crunchy, flaky, this fast-vanishing variation is unusual in Bengali cuisine in that it is always accompanied by a vegetarian dish, usually chholaa’r daal.

Some North Indian breads are stand-alones, like the Gujarati khakra and mattha. Light, flaky, almost pastry-like, these are spiced and roasted rather than fried, giving them a long shelf-life and making ideal snacks. Rajasthan’s baati is richer. These baked dumplings are quick-fried for a crisp outer crust and most famously eaten with daal and churma. And of course gobs of ghee. The Bihari version, litthi, evokes nostalgia in a zillion engineering institutions and staff colleges.

Leavened sahib bread is not unknown, as the numerous bakeries in Bandra attest. The real legacy, however, is not English but Portuguese. The poder or traditional baker (though the term is also used for the delivery man) is a part of Goan tradition, his honking announcing the morning delivery of pao, soft square bread that fills the stomach and gladdens the palate. Pao, ideal for mopping up the last drops of tongue-tingling curry, is the accompaniment to spicy vindaloo and sorpotel. Mumbai’s pao bhaaji can only be a wan poor cousin! Pokshie and katre are other avatars of pao, distinguished by their shapes (pokshie is also more crusty). My Goan friends swear that the secret ingredient is the use of toddy instead of yeast for leavening. Poie or poee is Goan brown bread, fat, hollow and often “butterfly” shaped so that it can be broken by hand into four pieces. Generations of grandmothers swear that it is “ideal for diabetics”, an assertion supported by modern medical science.

Man does not live by bread alone? Enough already! Pass the butter.

Stranger than fiction

Some reports are so completely WTF, one can’t comment on them. Like the lead story in The Telegraph today.

Money quote - “She as an unchaste woman had defendant 1 (Tiwari) as her paramour even during the subsistence of her marriage...”

I laugh that I may not weep.

Update: Why is The Telegraph the only paper following this story? Not even the sensationalist TV channels have taken it up. Strange.

Bhairavi for my balcony

It’s still too early for the glow I’m looking for. But in the coolness before full sunrise, the air itself is green, cloaked with the washed-clean fragrance of our trees. I place the jar of biscuits on the balcony table, arrange the book and the phone and the ashtray, draw back the chair and freeze in sudden realisation.
I am becoming my father.
This is exactly what he does when he’s here. The deliberate arrangement of things on the table, placing the chair at a precise angle, one ankle hooked over the opposite knee as he waits for his tea. I’m even drinking tea these days instead of my usual dark fresh-brew. But my father drinks Darjeeling, just so. Not thick milky pau patti.
And he has never in his life worn psychedelic parachute-silk boxers.

On one branch of my krishnachura, the bark has acquired a metallic sheen, more bronze than gold. The sun is breaking free of the horizon’s haze. Seven shades of green come to life over the balcony railing. A tiny bird flutters out of the champa tree, confused by a falling leaf. The sunlight is papery, wrapping itself round the first wisps of smoke from the laundryman’s earthen stove in the next lane. The morning smells fresher, yet more languid than the soggy bouquet of the monsoons. Autumn in Calcutta.
The climbing sun glints into my eyes, batters on the morning coolness, warms my neck until a slow trickle of sweat signals the end of dawn. A bicycle bell drops into the pool of birdsong, I can almost see its ripples in slow motion. Then a rolled-up cylinder of newspapers arcs onto the balcony and lands with a satisfying thwack. My tea arrives.
The day holds promise.

regarding the world with a jaundiced eye?

Outside my window the autumn sun lights up the buildings in the next lane. A squadron of dragonflies does formation flights over the mango tree. Pujo weather, except that the Pujo has come and gone and I’ve spent it right here, flat on my back watching the light change on the trees, listening to the dhaak and the mantra paath in the mandap downstairs. Lots of commiseration from friends for missing the Pujo eats, but what I really missed is the adda in the old red-painted thakur dalan on Ekdalia Road. We sit there every year from shondhi pujo to shnidoor khela, catching up with friends and acquaintances, comparing notes on the year gone by, revelling in the entire milieu of laal paar and chunot kora dhuti and the flock of pretty women bustling to and fro on errands too abstruse to be comprehensible, grinning at the family banter, wondering at how the kids have grown with each passing year, just soaking in the atmosphere. For someone like me, who’s not very big on family ties, it’s an annual immersion in the clan and at the same time, an affirmation of the self.

So this year I’ve missed it. Or most of it. I did get one Sunday afternoon with friends and beer while the sound of knashor ghonta floated up and the ladies fluttered in sudden panic over being late for the pujo. The rest of the time, really, I was just too sick to care.

But being sick isn’t so bad. I can’t remember the last time I spent an entire week at home. One. Whole. Week. Haven’t even stepped out of the front door. How strange. No office, meetings, dinners, cocktails, gym, library. No Saturday-lunch-and-shopping, no let’s-try-that-new-place-for-dinner. No stopping-by-the-office-to-send-off-a-report. Nothing.

Instead … a succession of books. The Kite Runner. Sea of Poppies. A Dibdin. More fruits and fruit juice than I’ve tried in the last ten years – apples, pears, grapes (SUCH grapes!), papaya, grapefruit, custard apples, pomegranates. The Better Half, who normally never enters the kitchen, is cooking up a storm. Watching television – it’s been so damn long since I did that. Or just lying in bed watching the light change, hearing the cheep of sparrows as the sun climbs and the long cawing of rooks as twilight deepens. All sweetened by the additional sound track of VSP pitter-pattering about the house singing to herself, happy that Papa’s not “going to office” for the longest time.

I could get used to this. Far too easy.

The more things change

On this blog, I tend to stick to faff, and not just because I’m shallow, superficial and petulant. I (still) have a day job as a civil servant. My conditions of service include certain restrictions on speaking on public issues. But sometimes I just have to let off some steam.

I worked for six years in the industries department in West Bengal. This was on the cusp of the turn-around, when my smart-alec friends equated my department with the Swiss navy. It required a change in mind-set, more so because I was straight out of a district posting. But it was interesting. I spent the better part of two years traipsing around the state and the country with my bag of samples, holding my tongue and patience when faced with supercilious CEOs, putting together “data-sets”, making endless presentations, negotiating with brash investors (the kind who’ve suddenly made the transition from trader to industrialist). And I made a big mistake. I started believing in my work. Not wise for a career civil servant.

I was only a small part of a large team, but I felt good when the results started to show. For a while, we all believed in the change, in the new Bengal. Which is why the Singur fiasco hurts all the more.

The basic issue was the right to property. Can the State take away your private land for a public purpose if you don’t want to sell it? I’d say yes, up to a point. You may not agree with the purpose, but the State has to (theoretically) act for the greatest good of the greatest number. But as I said, only up to a point. And in any case, the compensation for taking away your property should be at least equal to market levels.

What constitutes public purpose? Building a highway (or an inter-galactic bypass – ask Arthur Dent), or a sanitised zone, or even an industrial estate. Is it public purpose if the industrial estate is to be privately owned and operated? On balance, no. The private entrepreneurs can negotiate and purchase their own land. The State should ensure speed and transparency, publish clear estimates of land value, speed up documentation and transfer.

There’s a catch. Once industry starts buying up land, prices shoot up. Fine, pay more – that’s the law of the market. But what if you buy 980 acres out of the 1000 you need, and then get stuck because of 20 acres right in the heart of the project area? Could be any reason – price negotiation, political pressure, sheer cussedness. It’s happened to me, a 200-acre project was stuck for months because of 9.47 acres. So does the State have a responsibility to step in and sort out these problems for a huge private project? In the Singur case, did the State do the right thing by being pro-active and acquiring land themselves?

Perhaps not. But right or wrong, the whole process could have been far more acceptable given greater transparency. Why didn’t the West Bengal government make public at least the broad terms of the agreement with the Tatas? If we can’t see it, we can’t trust it. So up to this point, Govt. acquisition for private use = negative marks and lack of transparency = negative marks. 2-0 against the Govt., so far.

Having made these mistakes, could they still have made the best of a bad deal? Most certainly. By offering compensation at market rates or better and publicising it. They could have recouped the extra expenditure from the Tatas, maybe called it a speed surcharge, development costs, whatever. In a project of this size, one can’t have full consensus. But the Govt. could have more effectively addressed the grievances of the unwilling land-losers. That would have reduced the opposition to the project and the political fall-out.

Now to the specifics. Once the Opposition had made their point about adequate compensation for land-losers, once the Governor had stepped in and brokered a compromise, why did the process fail? First, because of one woman’s insistence that 300 acres of land within the project area would have to be returned to farmers. Bloody ridiculous. Much more honest to come right out and say, take your project and sod off, we don’t want you here. Second, because the Govt. could not deal separately with the Opposition’s demands – a political issue – and their methods, which broke the law of the land. Perhaps a third reason too – despite the huge media criticism of the Trinamool actions, this Govt. has never had any clue of public relations or media management.

End result – the project is stalled, 1000 acres of land are now useless and a few thousand residents of Singur are bankrupt. In effect, the last two months have pi… washed away most of what we worked for in those years. Yet again, vindicates my decision about my last career move. But it still leaves a very bad taste.

Hack wok

(Just an example of what I do for pelf. Published under the imaginative title "Wok our way")

In the 1970s, a Calcutta lad moved to Bombay and ended up performing as a limbo dancer. He moved on to work as a chef in Geoffrey’s and eventually set up his own restaurant. Which became, to put it mildly, very popular. Because it took Indian Chinese upmarket. This, boys and girls, was long before you could add a handful of chopped coriander and a dash of turmeric to chicken broth and pass it off as fusion cuisine. The man in question was (of course) Nelson Wang, but his contribution to the culinary map goes beyond China Garden. Nelson Wang gave the world Chicken Manchurian.

Now Chicken Manchurian has nothing to do with Manchuria (and in some versions, sadly enough, precious little to do with chicken). Wang himself has said that he named this mongrel dish after the region of Manchao which is traditionally viewed as barbaric. But the simple expedient of soaking batter-fried chicken dumplings in a spicy chilli soy sauce opened the flood-gates for the million “Chinese” restaurants that now serve “Hakka noodles”, “golden fried prawns”, “sweet and sour chicken” and “four treasure vegetables”. And, of course, everything from chicken to cauliflower “Manchurian”.

This is the essence of what we proudly call “Calcutta Chinese” food – any faintly Chinese ingredients spiced up with large amounts of fresh garlic, ginger, and hot chillies, “like ramped-up curries minus the ground spices”, as New York’s Village Voice put it. It may not be Chinese, but boy, does it sell! And it originated in an eastern corner of Calcutta called Tangra, which is special because it is possibly India’s only Chinatown At least three Chinese eateries in New York named “Tangra” attest to the universal popularity of Tangra style food.

Purists like the formidable Ram Ray, one of Calcutta’s premier foodies, tend to look askance at this version. For them, authentic Chinese cuisine in Calcutta means either the Bengal Club, where the signature dish is the sesame prawn toast, or the Chinoiserie at the Taj. The Pan Asian at the ITC Sonar Bangla, as its name suggests, is not limited to China alone. Chefs Pramod and Harpavan recommend the sautéed jumbo prawns and pine seeds in hot garlic chilli sauce (xiang shong ren xia ren. What, you didn’t want to know?!) and the chien tzu, wok fried vegetables with rice wine and pepper.

The Chinoiserie prides itself on its authenticity – even the chillies for the chilli paste are flown in from China. Kim pao is the Shanghai style duck at the Chinoiserie, spicy and flavourful. They also serve an aromatic crispy duck, but the piece de resistance is the Beijing duck with Mandarin pancakes, served usually with sweet bean sauce but with goy sin sauce available on demand. If you can’t make it to Quan Ju De in Beijing itself, this comes pretty close. (Having tried both, I can vouch for it.) Chefs Lian and Srinivas wax lyrical about their dim sums. Having tasted these, I can see their point. Served wrapped in reed leaves in traditional Chinese fashion, these include the authentic glutinous rice with pork, the yang bao or rasin bread with mildly spiced lamb (which stays fresh and succulent inside the dough) and a real work of art, the hargao or Cantonese dumpling with a shell so thin it’s translucent and one can see the pink fresh shrimps inside.

A number of Taj personnel have struck out on their own, the best known being the Red Hot Chilli Pepper chain. Their fried rice was superb, mainly because they cooked the rice in stock and not water. Nowadays, however, they have had to adapt to the Indian palate rather than stick with authenticity. Perhaps authenticity is affordable at the Chinoiserie alone, where a meal for two would set you back by at least 3500 rupees.

Mainland China on Gurusaday Road also serves dim sums including hargao, but they are closer to the Bengali heart and palate (and pocket!). Their crackling spinach – ideally eaten with honey ginger sauce – is quite wonderful, but they pride themselves on the steamed fish in lemon soya sauce and the jumbo prawns in chilli bean sauce, both innovations by chef Rajesh Dubey. In other words, variations on a Chinese air, to suit the Bangali babus.

The premier fish dish, however, is served by Josephine Huang of Eu Chu. Tucked away on the first floor behind a petrol pump on Ganesh Chandra Avenue, this eatery, started in the 1910s by Mr. Huang’s grandmother, is a cult among Calcutta foodies. Josephine’s steamed soya fish is different from the usual Calcutta Chinese. A whole young bhetki is grilled in a sauce of rice wine and ginger with black beans, then served with scallions, chives and Chinese parsley. Her signature dish, Josephine noodles, is a mixed platter of pan-fried, slightly crisp noodles and mixed meat in an egg-based sauce with a hint of soya. Not found in China, perhaps, but very good indeed. Eu Chu (meaning Europe) is also one of the last bastions of a Calcutta favourite, chimney soup. This was most famously associated with How Hua on Mirza Ghalib Street (Free School Street as was), but that venerable institution, alas, has given up the ghost. So now Josephine Huang will serve your chimney soup made to order, with the unique flavour imparted by the charcoal grill in the centre.

The standard Tangra fare these days is more Shyambazar than Shanghai, more Patiala than Peking. The more popular eateries – Kafulok, Beijing, Golden Joy - are full of Bengali clans clamouring for what is essentially Bangali food with noodles added, spiced with cumin, coriander, and turmeric. Some dishes even feature yoghurt! Dishes are by default served with generous helpings of gravy, although they can also be ordered "dry" or "without gravy".

There’s a short-hand to interpreting the menus here. Chilli means hot and batter-fried, Manchurian dishes (even cabbage Manchurian!) come in a sweet and salty brown sauce, and Szechwan dishes come covered in a spicy red sauce. Large portions, strong on the palate, but not the taste of China. If you want that in Tangra, you have to seek out Kim Fa (The Old Man’s Place or Old Man Kim’s, though the ancient proprietor’s real name is Hsien). This little eatery serves beef belly in fermented lime with vegetables, or fried and served with rice wine – hot favourite with the local Chinese population. You can also get whole roast suckling pig, Chinese style, but this requires an order to be placed two days in advance. One day to marinate it, one day to cook it slow. I must make special mention of Auntie Chung and her husband, who don’t run a restaurant but cater a fabulous ten-course spread at Chinese weddings. Starting with roast pork, this gastronomical orgy also includes steamed chicken, authentic four treasure vegetables or chow ka tan, fried fish in a hot and sour sauce, seafood and meat dumplings with fried bread, sui mai, mushrooms with shark’s fin, and kwang, which is scallops with egg and carrots. Possibly a test of the newly-wed couple’s powers of endurance!

Calcutta’s Chinatown was earlier centred round Tiretti Bazaar in the heart of the trading district, and the Chinese breakfast there used to be the stuff of legend. These days it is a pale shadow, with a few straggling stalls set up in the early morning on the sidewalk behind Poddar Court. Most of them sell greasy fried abominations that are neither Chinese nor appetizing, but some still offer good sui mai (though I’d steer clear of the prawn), noodle soup, moon cakes or nyat biang, and variations of the Chinese fried bread, bao, best eaten with kongee or “rice soup”. Not haute cuisine, but substantial and very cheap – you can eat your fill for fifty rupees.

There used to be some family-run restaurants in this area too. I still remember the foo yung rice and kup tai mei foon (rice noodles with what I thought was pork liver, turned out to have kidneys and heart as well!) in Tai Wah on Synagogue Street, but it’s closed down now. Chin Wah in the next lane is still open, but it’s just a more wholesome version of the sidewalk stalls outside Writers’ Building that peddle “chow mein” during the lunch hour. In fact most of the Chinese eateries of the 70s and 80s are now closed or made over. Peiping on Park Street was the place to go to once upon a time. They served a wonderful breaded pork chop that, for strange reasons, was labeled “French” on the menu. Gone with the wind, alas, as is the quality food at Jimmy’s Kitchen near the Theatre Road corner which once claimed to have invented sweet and sour chicken. (The essential ingredient, of course, is pineapple chunks). Over on Central Avenue – sorry, C.R. Avenue now – the venerable Chung Wah still retains its unhurried charm and the same staff who served my father. Their Mandarin crab and chicken rice in oyster sauce are not only flavours of the past, they are also delectable examples of Calcutta Chinese cuisine.

Which only proves my basic point. Chinese food as she is ate in Calcutta may taste more of the Indian karhai than the classic wok, but it is still a unique culinary experience and well worth trying.