I drink only for medicinal purposes. Absolutely true. I don't drink to enjoy myself, and I never get drunk. I am what in Bengali is called a JMTT - jaate maataal taale thik. Which translates really roughly to mean someone who is drunk maybe but keeps his wits about him while in that inebriated state.
I graduated to Old Monk very soon after mother's milk had run its course. There was a short interregnum of cow's milk - actually no. During my childhood days, there was no such thing as cow's milk. We made do with adding milk powder to boiling water and drinking the proceeds. Whatever. After this brief period of ersatz cow's milk, I switched to Old Monk and have stayed with it since. And look what it has done to me. Kids I teach call me a cool dude, at least twice a year. The other day I was complimented for my roguish good looks. I can still fit into jeans I had bought some seven years ago. I still have most of my hair. I have lost my sylph-like figure, but my paunch looks like a dwarf pumpkin rather than a prize watermelon. And this because of, and not in spite of, Old Monk. The first time I tried the blessed brew, I was reassured by the picture of the wise old pious and religious figure pictured on the label of the bottle. I knew instinctively that this was the elixir of life that I had read about. I remembered having read that monks in India and elsewhere had been in the vanguard of brewing excellent stuff - witness the references to soma rasa and kaaran pani in our ancient literature. And we would do well to remember that the prince of champagnes is named after a monk too - Dom Perignon.
So when I read that the monks in ancient Scotland had invented and refined the art of distillation, I was confirmed in my suspicion that whisky must be a good thing, indeed as much one of the glories of human civilisation as Old Monk is. I have tried the various concoctions that masquerade under the garb of whisky - including the Irish heresies, the strange American brew called Bourbon (George MacDonald Fraser used a better word - "burboon" - to describe this undescribable arak), and of course the various brands of dishwater that are sold in India as whiskey under the banner IMFL (India Made Foreign Liquor). Somewhere in the course of my experiments, I encountered single malts, and I have been a better man since. You should have seen me then, turning over a new leaf, making resolutions which I have kept to much better than to New Year resolutions. The names of single malts courses through my brain like a 15-year-old Laphroaig. In my extensive research on the subject, I discovered that the word 'whisky' originates from a Gaelic phrase uisge beatha, a translation of aqua vitae, which literally means 'water of life.'
My son, at some point in time, wanted to study at the University of Aberdeen - I am full of encouragement in case he wishes to revive the idea. All he has to do is find the money, and he will find his old man a great friend, philosopher and guide who will show him his way around the various whiskys that Scotland still makes. A pretty fair deal I think.
I read in one of Fraser's works that a Scotsman believes that there is no health problem - short of a nasty stomach wound - which whisky can't cure. Friends from Goa say the same thing about feni. My first few encounters with feni were really fraught. The stuff I bought in shops was godawful. Would corrode a steel trunk, they would. Until a kindly soul in South Goa got me the real stuff from some friend of his, who knows a cousin, who knows the parish priest who knows the best feni chap in a 30 km radius around Varca. I never met the magician who made stuff. This is of a piece with all good feni. You never get to meet the head wizard; you always get to meet someone who knows someone who can get it for you. I am told that the parish priests are the key repository to such arcane knowledge. So we are back to where we started - all these good things of life have been brought to earth by men of religion, men of god.
Let's drink to the men of god - long may they thrive and prosper. And long may they keep the tradition of preserving the sacred knowledge of making and knowing of a good drink. Amen!
(first posted on sulekha.com on Mar 27 2007)
Friday, 22 April 2011
Mover and shaker
What with the underwhelming drama of the World Cup, I missed out on the arrival in Mumbai of the most important, certainly the most famous, mover and shaker in the world. A hint of this arrival came from the wife when she airily mentioned that Shakira was going to perform, which indeed she did last night. But it did not register - I have been too involved in trying to follow the intricate case of the murdered coach, as well as the not so intricate case of eleven gutless men. (Now, think about that! eleven men with black holes where we mere mortals sport our stomachs - may be there's an idea for a science fiction story in there!)
To get back to Shakira. She is a wonder who deserves to be studied by men (and women of course) of science around the world. I firmly believe that her hips disprove the Newtonian theories of mechanical motion, as well as negating all current knowledge of human anatomy; in particular, she challenges all that our doctors know of the construction of the pelvic region of the human body. She has been gifted by God to increase our knowledge of ourselves. It is a shame that our scientists are wasting their time sending rockets to the stars, whereas they should devote their intellects and energies towards furthering their knowledge and understanding of our own bodies.
Consider this. Once our scientists understand how Shakira's hips are built and what allows them to have their hitherto unimagined degrees of freedom, cure for hip problems is surely round the corner. A bit of tinkering around with stem cells, and voila! Just implant foetuses with the right stem cells, and soon we'll see a time when young people will be trained, with proper nutritional intakes, on how to make their hips more flexible. With proper attention and practise, hip problems will surely be a thing of the past by the time I hit my threescore and ten.
I must confess to a major gap in my knowledge about Shakira's hips. I have only seen her demonstrate her talents on MTV and other similar channels. I have long harboured the wish to study her hips in gyration mode from close quarters. However, I missed her show in Mumbai, and it appears highly unlikely that I will have the opportunity of getting up close and personal to her hips. In any event, if I did get such an opportunity, I have my wife who will surely veto my taking advantage of any such option.
But, for the good of humanity, there is a way out. The CSIR should invite Shakira to one of its labs, and there subject her hips to close scientific scrutiny.
I will be amply repaid for my efforts, if CSIR were to put my name on the scientific paper which will be the outcome of such an examination - for giving them this idea, perhaps they would invite me to the lab and attend their efforts, purely as a curious bystander.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Mar 26 2007)
To get back to Shakira. She is a wonder who deserves to be studied by men (and women of course) of science around the world. I firmly believe that her hips disprove the Newtonian theories of mechanical motion, as well as negating all current knowledge of human anatomy; in particular, she challenges all that our doctors know of the construction of the pelvic region of the human body. She has been gifted by God to increase our knowledge of ourselves. It is a shame that our scientists are wasting their time sending rockets to the stars, whereas they should devote their intellects and energies towards furthering their knowledge and understanding of our own bodies.
Consider this. Once our scientists understand how Shakira's hips are built and what allows them to have their hitherto unimagined degrees of freedom, cure for hip problems is surely round the corner. A bit of tinkering around with stem cells, and voila! Just implant foetuses with the right stem cells, and soon we'll see a time when young people will be trained, with proper nutritional intakes, on how to make their hips more flexible. With proper attention and practise, hip problems will surely be a thing of the past by the time I hit my threescore and ten.
I must confess to a major gap in my knowledge about Shakira's hips. I have only seen her demonstrate her talents on MTV and other similar channels. I have long harboured the wish to study her hips in gyration mode from close quarters. However, I missed her show in Mumbai, and it appears highly unlikely that I will have the opportunity of getting up close and personal to her hips. In any event, if I did get such an opportunity, I have my wife who will surely veto my taking advantage of any such option.
But, for the good of humanity, there is a way out. The CSIR should invite Shakira to one of its labs, and there subject her hips to close scientific scrutiny.
I will be amply repaid for my efforts, if CSIR were to put my name on the scientific paper which will be the outcome of such an examination - for giving them this idea, perhaps they would invite me to the lab and attend their efforts, purely as a curious bystander.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Mar 26 2007)
The death of a molar
Happens to everybody, doesn't it? Sometime, somewhere, one tooth will signal its unhappiness with the state of being. I normally ignore these early signals, and try to lull the tooth with false promises of the 'things will get better soon'and 'just a passing matter' types. When that doesn't appease the fellow, I go into Combiflam mode. This appears to pacify the fellow for a while, but just for a while. Then, the tooth lets me know in no uncertain terms that he (or she - I am not sure about the gender of the tooth) is, if not exactly disgruntled, far from gruntled. This makes a visit to the dentist necessary. Which I quite enjoy - at least to the dentist I have been visiting for two decades now.
Great fellow he is. A football freak - as much as I am. His TV plays football most of the time when I am there - interrupted by some world cup cricket nowadays. Having been trained in Germany, his fav team is Bayern - I have yet to meet a German who doesn't support Bayern; where are the supporters of Schalke, or Dortmund, or the other teams of the Bundesliga? Maybe they don't get expat assignments. My doc also believes in the medicinal efficacy of single malts, and Old Monk. Which makes him my soulmate.
He has other nice characteristics too. Very cheerful guy - he doesn't want to believe that toothaches can hurt that much. Pleas to use novocaine fall on deaf ears. He justifies the pain by saying that I am a grown up boy (boy!!) and tells me about tough patients he has seen, and the weaklings he has encountered - he seems to feel that I belong to the first category; lying on the patient's chair, I am convinced that I belong to the latter. But that doesn't cut any ice with him.
Throughout the entire procedure, he makes little squealing noises - reminds me of a squirrel digging through his winter hoard and finding some choice titbit in some unexpected corner. He also makes encouraging noises like 'just two more minutes', 'you can hit the Old Monk in another half hour', and 'I think I can save the tooth'.
Finally, after what appears to be a superhuman effort, he emerges from the cavernous space of my open mouth, holding up a trophy, much like Howard Carter must have done when he emerged from Tutankhamun's tomb. The pain and discomfort has ceased, and the promise of Old Monk lightens my heart. I reject offers of carrying the trophy home in triumph. And we plan to meet after a week so he can check how the wound is doing and what, if any, are the next steps. And then, back to the football game on TV, unless some rude patient is waiting outside clamouring for attention.
(first posted on Mar 27 2007)
Great fellow he is. A football freak - as much as I am. His TV plays football most of the time when I am there - interrupted by some world cup cricket nowadays. Having been trained in Germany, his fav team is Bayern - I have yet to meet a German who doesn't support Bayern; where are the supporters of Schalke, or Dortmund, or the other teams of the Bundesliga? Maybe they don't get expat assignments. My doc also believes in the medicinal efficacy of single malts, and Old Monk. Which makes him my soulmate.
He has other nice characteristics too. Very cheerful guy - he doesn't want to believe that toothaches can hurt that much. Pleas to use novocaine fall on deaf ears. He justifies the pain by saying that I am a grown up boy (boy!!) and tells me about tough patients he has seen, and the weaklings he has encountered - he seems to feel that I belong to the first category; lying on the patient's chair, I am convinced that I belong to the latter. But that doesn't cut any ice with him.
Throughout the entire procedure, he makes little squealing noises - reminds me of a squirrel digging through his winter hoard and finding some choice titbit in some unexpected corner. He also makes encouraging noises like 'just two more minutes', 'you can hit the Old Monk in another half hour', and 'I think I can save the tooth'.
Finally, after what appears to be a superhuman effort, he emerges from the cavernous space of my open mouth, holding up a trophy, much like Howard Carter must have done when he emerged from Tutankhamun's tomb. The pain and discomfort has ceased, and the promise of Old Monk lightens my heart. I reject offers of carrying the trophy home in triumph. And we plan to meet after a week so he can check how the wound is doing and what, if any, are the next steps. And then, back to the football game on TV, unless some rude patient is waiting outside clamouring for attention.
(first posted on Mar 27 2007)
Ecstasy and apostasy
I am really happy that India is out of the World Cup. Couldn't have been better. And now to go into hiding - a whole bunch of patriots will now burn me in effigy, and call for my head. ........
I am hoping that all the fire and brimstone has gone by for now, so I can carry on with this piece.
I am really truly glad that we got knocked out of the World Cup. First off the bat (no pun intended), my parents are both from what used to be called 'undivided India', and used to live in what is now Bangladesh before Partition. My wife is from West Bengal. Hence, we have this traditional battle at home of the Bangals versus the Ghotis - those from East Bengal vs those from West Bengal. Years ago, this battle used to come out in the open during East Bengal-Mohun Bagan matches. Over the years, though, the quality of football played by these teams has been so poor that my son and I have transferred our attention and indeed our affection to football in Europe - I am a Liverpool supporter, and my son follows the fortunes of AC Milan. My poor wife has not been able to make this leap of faith; hence the Sengupta household was divided during the India-Bangladesh match. My son and I were rooting for our 'homeland' team, and my wife was rooting for the team that lost. Suitably fueled by the stuff that cheers and inebriates, and my son's aggressive disparagement of Dravid, Sachin, Yuvaraj, Dhoni and gang, yours truly displayed some pariochial feelings which must have hurt the wife's sensibilities - there was no dinner that night, for me at least.
I am glad that India has been knocked out of the World Cup for another reason. For years, we have lionized our cricket stars. We have put them on the same pedestals on which we place our filmstars. We feature them in ad campaigns. We reward them in the same way that football stars are rewarded in England, Italy and Spain. We refuse to believe that they are not supermen; that there are, perhaps, other players from other countries who have a bigger fire in the belly than our lot have. We believe that the honour of wearing our country's colours is sufficient motivation to excel; we refuse to allow for the possibility that the lure of ad and sponsorship contracts may be a bigger motivation to excel - not in cricket, but in modelling, public appearances, etc. We refuse to consider the possibility that the ultimate aim for most of our cricketers might well be to become talking heads in TV shows, and even to venture into politics. We believe that at crunch time, our stars will deliver, like Michael Jordan in the NBA play-offs, like Kaif and Yuvaraj some years ago, like Steven Gerrard in the Champions League two years ago, like Steve Waugh countless number of times. We refuse to admit of the possibility that this may not really be true - that the commitment is not perhaps to pride, honour, and other such vague concepts - but to moolah, which is more here and now, and more tangible any way.
Our filmstars always seem to deliver - they take their chances with offbeat projects, like "Lagaan", "Black", "Rang de Basanti", et al, but they deliver. Therein lie the difference between these stars and our chocolate cream soldiers with bat and ball. The filmworld seem to understand their responsibility towards their paying public, even in the basic commercial equation - once the hits stop, the money stops too. Our cricketers believe that this equation doesn't apply in their case. Perhaps they have been right so far.
So, I am glad that we and our media have now woken up to the reality of our pampered overpaid bunch of slackers who wear India colours without pride or the stomach for a fight. Hopefully the next lot will understand the honour of representing our country, and behave accordingly.
To me, cricket is now at an end. Bob Woolmer's murder is also the death sentence of the sport. Most sports invite betting - in most countries this is perfectly acceptable and legally blessed behaviour. In many sports, matches are rigged - witness what happened in Italy last year about fixing referees in their football league. In some cases, players have paid with their lives for something that someone decided was unaccepted. Remember Escobar of Colombia being shot dead after scoring an own goal against the US in a World Cup match some years ago? But that was in Colombia, a country ruled by druglords and the local goons. Bob was murdered in his hotel room - perhaps by someone whom he knew. Perhaps because he knew too much about match fixing, drug abuse, the influence of the underworld in world cricket, etc. All speculation right now. But any sport where a murder can take place in an event that is the pinnacle of the sport is too dirty for me. Any sport where money can buy the players or the team or the officials at the showpiece event for the sport needs to take time out, investigate, purge and then come back into the limelight in a demonstrably new avatar, and periodically demonstrate that it remains clean. Cricket is not alone in this. Cycling, particularly the Tour de France, suffers from the same problem. And cricket will, hopefully, suffer from the same fate that the Tour is suffering from - flight of sponsors, flight of TV channels, and flight of prize money.
I hope this happens. I hope that after the cleansing, cricket comes back after a few years, particularly in India, as a sport where pride and guts and commitment is rewarded, and the demonstrated lack of these qualities is punished.
Now I can go back to watching my favourite DVD of the last few months - the Liverpool vs AC Milan Champions League final of 2005, where Gerrard and co demonstrated that even when you are down 3-0 at halftime, there is a way back. All it takes is belief, and total commitment to the colour of your shirt. Perhaps Sharad Pawar and his cohorts should show this DVD to our cricketers.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Mar 26 2007)
I am hoping that all the fire and brimstone has gone by for now, so I can carry on with this piece.
I am really truly glad that we got knocked out of the World Cup. First off the bat (no pun intended), my parents are both from what used to be called 'undivided India', and used to live in what is now Bangladesh before Partition. My wife is from West Bengal. Hence, we have this traditional battle at home of the Bangals versus the Ghotis - those from East Bengal vs those from West Bengal. Years ago, this battle used to come out in the open during East Bengal-Mohun Bagan matches. Over the years, though, the quality of football played by these teams has been so poor that my son and I have transferred our attention and indeed our affection to football in Europe - I am a Liverpool supporter, and my son follows the fortunes of AC Milan. My poor wife has not been able to make this leap of faith; hence the Sengupta household was divided during the India-Bangladesh match. My son and I were rooting for our 'homeland' team, and my wife was rooting for the team that lost. Suitably fueled by the stuff that cheers and inebriates, and my son's aggressive disparagement of Dravid, Sachin, Yuvaraj, Dhoni and gang, yours truly displayed some pariochial feelings which must have hurt the wife's sensibilities - there was no dinner that night, for me at least.
I am glad that India has been knocked out of the World Cup for another reason. For years, we have lionized our cricket stars. We have put them on the same pedestals on which we place our filmstars. We feature them in ad campaigns. We reward them in the same way that football stars are rewarded in England, Italy and Spain. We refuse to believe that they are not supermen; that there are, perhaps, other players from other countries who have a bigger fire in the belly than our lot have. We believe that the honour of wearing our country's colours is sufficient motivation to excel; we refuse to allow for the possibility that the lure of ad and sponsorship contracts may be a bigger motivation to excel - not in cricket, but in modelling, public appearances, etc. We refuse to consider the possibility that the ultimate aim for most of our cricketers might well be to become talking heads in TV shows, and even to venture into politics. We believe that at crunch time, our stars will deliver, like Michael Jordan in the NBA play-offs, like Kaif and Yuvaraj some years ago, like Steven Gerrard in the Champions League two years ago, like Steve Waugh countless number of times. We refuse to admit of the possibility that this may not really be true - that the commitment is not perhaps to pride, honour, and other such vague concepts - but to moolah, which is more here and now, and more tangible any way.
Our filmstars always seem to deliver - they take their chances with offbeat projects, like "Lagaan", "Black", "Rang de Basanti", et al, but they deliver. Therein lie the difference between these stars and our chocolate cream soldiers with bat and ball. The filmworld seem to understand their responsibility towards their paying public, even in the basic commercial equation - once the hits stop, the money stops too. Our cricketers believe that this equation doesn't apply in their case. Perhaps they have been right so far.
So, I am glad that we and our media have now woken up to the reality of our pampered overpaid bunch of slackers who wear India colours without pride or the stomach for a fight. Hopefully the next lot will understand the honour of representing our country, and behave accordingly.
To me, cricket is now at an end. Bob Woolmer's murder is also the death sentence of the sport. Most sports invite betting - in most countries this is perfectly acceptable and legally blessed behaviour. In many sports, matches are rigged - witness what happened in Italy last year about fixing referees in their football league. In some cases, players have paid with their lives for something that someone decided was unaccepted. Remember Escobar of Colombia being shot dead after scoring an own goal against the US in a World Cup match some years ago? But that was in Colombia, a country ruled by druglords and the local goons. Bob was murdered in his hotel room - perhaps by someone whom he knew. Perhaps because he knew too much about match fixing, drug abuse, the influence of the underworld in world cricket, etc. All speculation right now. But any sport where a murder can take place in an event that is the pinnacle of the sport is too dirty for me. Any sport where money can buy the players or the team or the officials at the showpiece event for the sport needs to take time out, investigate, purge and then come back into the limelight in a demonstrably new avatar, and periodically demonstrate that it remains clean. Cricket is not alone in this. Cycling, particularly the Tour de France, suffers from the same problem. And cricket will, hopefully, suffer from the same fate that the Tour is suffering from - flight of sponsors, flight of TV channels, and flight of prize money.
I hope this happens. I hope that after the cleansing, cricket comes back after a few years, particularly in India, as a sport where pride and guts and commitment is rewarded, and the demonstrated lack of these qualities is punished.
Now I can go back to watching my favourite DVD of the last few months - the Liverpool vs AC Milan Champions League final of 2005, where Gerrard and co demonstrated that even when you are down 3-0 at halftime, there is a way back. All it takes is belief, and total commitment to the colour of your shirt. Perhaps Sharad Pawar and his cohorts should show this DVD to our cricketers.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Mar 26 2007)
Reaffirmation
Some times some things happen, which makes you glad that these happened to you. They reconfirm things that you hold close to your heart, even though events indicate that these beliefs are obsolete, and perhaps even dysfunctional in today’s marketing driven world.
I am a passionate music lover, with a longstanding love for jazz, classic rock, classical music (Indian and Western) and indeed music from various genres and from various parts of the world. When I looked for something in common among all of these various genres and idioms therein, the only things I could find were, first, the ability and desire to take chances by the performers, and second, the ability to lay their hearts on the line. Jagger and Richards said it best:
If I could stick my pen in my heart
And spill it all over the stage …
If I could stick a knife in my heart
Suicide right on stage …
If I could dig down deep in my heart
Feelings would flood on the page
To me a musician, and indeed all artists, have been given the gift by God to commit suicide right on stage, in their albums, in their books, their paintings, their movies, whatever. That’s what makes them special.
One such divine spirit was Miles Davis. I particular love his second quintet, with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. In their live shows, they would take chances all the time. Stories about this band are legion – about how Miles would never rehearse with them, about how Miles would tell them not to play what they knew but to play what they didn’t know, about how they would figuratively jump off the cliff every show night and how Miles will show them how to get back to solid ground. Many other stories too. In their studio albums, Miles showcased the writing talents of his young wards, particularly Wayne, many of whose contributions are now part of the jazz standards book.
This band was a legend during its life. Miles was already a legend when the band was formed. The others became legends during their tenure with the band. Tony passed away some years ago, just on the wrong side of 50. Fortunately, the others are still going strong.
How strong was apparent when Herbie and Wayne played in Mumbai a few days back with the student band from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. The band was the showpiece – Herbie and Wayne were really the elder statesmen guesting with the kids. The band had obviously chosen Miles’ second quintet as their lodestone – in private conversations they said as much. Them kids were scary – they were so tight that you couldn’t slide a knife between them; they were so loose, when they wanted to, that they could stretch themselves way beyond whatever they had rehearsed; they were so responsive that one could pick up wherever the previous guy had left off and carry on – like a relay race; they were so big on ideas that over two nights I didn’t hear a single lick, let alone one repeated; they were so sharp that whatever you threw at them they could throw right back (not my words, but Herbie’s). This band could scare quite a few bunches of pros.
Herbie and Wayne – its difficult for me to express what I felt. I had heard Herbie live once before, when he came to India 11 years ago. I never thought I would be able to hear Wayne in person – let alone get to hear the two of them together live right in front of my eyes. What do you say when you are in the presence of demigods? I expected nothing – they have given me so much intellectual and emotional pleasure since I first heard them on a Miles album some 40 years ago, that I had no right to expect more. They had stuck their knives into their hearts so many times for me, without anything in return, that it was unfair for me to expect them to do it one more time. After nearly fifty years of letting their feelings flood the page of their composition book and their albums, they had earned the right to rest on their laurels.
But that’s exactly what they did not do, two nights in succession in Mumbai. They still took chances, jumped off the cliff, and took me on a roller coaster ride on their solos, and more to the point, succeeded in making the students do the same. Sometimes there were no safety nets. On Wayne’s “Footprints”, Wayne just called out the song, there had been no rehearsals, and the band went along with Wayne. For me, who prided in knowing the song well, it took me about half the performance before I could be sure that it was indeed “Footprints”. Post the show, the band members confessed that they had no idea how the performance would develop – they were happy to just follow wherever Wayne and Herbie decided to lead them, secure in the belief (not knowledge) that finally the two of them would reach them somewhere close to home. Faith inspired invention, curiosity inspired risk, risk inspired camaraderie, all of these inspired a miracle called jazz. In me, it inspired a renewal of faith, a reaffirmation of my belief in what Mick and Keith wrote, and what most jazz musicians, the greats and the journeymen, have practiced for over a century.
In an age informed by the likes of Britney Spears, JLo, boy bands, girl bands, etc, driven by marketing men, and producers who are experts in manufacturing ‘music’, it’s nice to know that there still are men (and women too) who create music by taking chances, by listening to their inner voices, and by wanting to tell a story without worrying about whether they’ll make millions out of it. And it’s also nice to know that there still are a few hundreds of thousands of us listeners who will wait to listen to their stories, see them taking chances, without worrying about whether the chances are going to come off or not – after all, they are doing that because we would love to do so with our lives, but don’t have the skills and the courage to do so ourselves.
I salute them all.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jan 21 2007)
I am a passionate music lover, with a longstanding love for jazz, classic rock, classical music (Indian and Western) and indeed music from various genres and from various parts of the world. When I looked for something in common among all of these various genres and idioms therein, the only things I could find were, first, the ability and desire to take chances by the performers, and second, the ability to lay their hearts on the line. Jagger and Richards said it best:
If I could stick my pen in my heart
And spill it all over the stage …
If I could stick a knife in my heart
Suicide right on stage …
If I could dig down deep in my heart
Feelings would flood on the page
To me a musician, and indeed all artists, have been given the gift by God to commit suicide right on stage, in their albums, in their books, their paintings, their movies, whatever. That’s what makes them special.
One such divine spirit was Miles Davis. I particular love his second quintet, with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. In their live shows, they would take chances all the time. Stories about this band are legion – about how Miles would never rehearse with them, about how Miles would tell them not to play what they knew but to play what they didn’t know, about how they would figuratively jump off the cliff every show night and how Miles will show them how to get back to solid ground. Many other stories too. In their studio albums, Miles showcased the writing talents of his young wards, particularly Wayne, many of whose contributions are now part of the jazz standards book.
This band was a legend during its life. Miles was already a legend when the band was formed. The others became legends during their tenure with the band. Tony passed away some years ago, just on the wrong side of 50. Fortunately, the others are still going strong.
How strong was apparent when Herbie and Wayne played in Mumbai a few days back with the student band from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. The band was the showpiece – Herbie and Wayne were really the elder statesmen guesting with the kids. The band had obviously chosen Miles’ second quintet as their lodestone – in private conversations they said as much. Them kids were scary – they were so tight that you couldn’t slide a knife between them; they were so loose, when they wanted to, that they could stretch themselves way beyond whatever they had rehearsed; they were so responsive that one could pick up wherever the previous guy had left off and carry on – like a relay race; they were so big on ideas that over two nights I didn’t hear a single lick, let alone one repeated; they were so sharp that whatever you threw at them they could throw right back (not my words, but Herbie’s). This band could scare quite a few bunches of pros.
Herbie and Wayne – its difficult for me to express what I felt. I had heard Herbie live once before, when he came to India 11 years ago. I never thought I would be able to hear Wayne in person – let alone get to hear the two of them together live right in front of my eyes. What do you say when you are in the presence of demigods? I expected nothing – they have given me so much intellectual and emotional pleasure since I first heard them on a Miles album some 40 years ago, that I had no right to expect more. They had stuck their knives into their hearts so many times for me, without anything in return, that it was unfair for me to expect them to do it one more time. After nearly fifty years of letting their feelings flood the page of their composition book and their albums, they had earned the right to rest on their laurels.
But that’s exactly what they did not do, two nights in succession in Mumbai. They still took chances, jumped off the cliff, and took me on a roller coaster ride on their solos, and more to the point, succeeded in making the students do the same. Sometimes there were no safety nets. On Wayne’s “Footprints”, Wayne just called out the song, there had been no rehearsals, and the band went along with Wayne. For me, who prided in knowing the song well, it took me about half the performance before I could be sure that it was indeed “Footprints”. Post the show, the band members confessed that they had no idea how the performance would develop – they were happy to just follow wherever Wayne and Herbie decided to lead them, secure in the belief (not knowledge) that finally the two of them would reach them somewhere close to home. Faith inspired invention, curiosity inspired risk, risk inspired camaraderie, all of these inspired a miracle called jazz. In me, it inspired a renewal of faith, a reaffirmation of my belief in what Mick and Keith wrote, and what most jazz musicians, the greats and the journeymen, have practiced for over a century.
In an age informed by the likes of Britney Spears, JLo, boy bands, girl bands, etc, driven by marketing men, and producers who are experts in manufacturing ‘music’, it’s nice to know that there still are men (and women too) who create music by taking chances, by listening to their inner voices, and by wanting to tell a story without worrying about whether they’ll make millions out of it. And it’s also nice to know that there still are a few hundreds of thousands of us listeners who will wait to listen to their stories, see them taking chances, without worrying about whether the chances are going to come off or not – after all, they are doing that because we would love to do so with our lives, but don’t have the skills and the courage to do so ourselves.
I salute them all.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jan 21 2007)
Now that the hangover’s gone – part the second
Actually, the hangover’s been gone a long time ago. What with a constant stream of visitors coming to pay their respects to my parents who are visiting me, reunions of friends one was in class with, et al, and of course, the tremendous amount of angst due to lack of tickets for the Herbie Hancock-Wayne Shorter concert in Mumbai on Jan 13, there’s been no time for hangovers.
What will the New Year bring, is the single most important question on everybody’s lips. Depending on the paper you read and the astrologer you follow, there are variations on a theme – but all seem solidly agreed that 2007 will be fantastic, fabulous, absolutely magnificent and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and only more so. Great faith in the stars that our astrologers have.
I think its gonna be a pretty good year too, without much help from the stars, planets, feng shui, vastu, whatever. No logic – just faith. Woke up the last few mornings, without the blues of any sort – that’s a good feeling in the pit of your stomach. So there!
However, I have a few suggestions which, if followed, will make 2007 a really fantastic, fabulous and the supercaliwhatever year every body is desperate to make it out to be. So here is my “wish they came true” list. I have no idea how these things can be made to happen – but I am sure there are enough enterprising men and women out there who have drive, initiative and the go-getting spirit to make these come true.
So, in no particular order, here goes:
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jan 12 2007)
What will the New Year bring, is the single most important question on everybody’s lips. Depending on the paper you read and the astrologer you follow, there are variations on a theme – but all seem solidly agreed that 2007 will be fantastic, fabulous, absolutely magnificent and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and only more so. Great faith in the stars that our astrologers have.
I think its gonna be a pretty good year too, without much help from the stars, planets, feng shui, vastu, whatever. No logic – just faith. Woke up the last few mornings, without the blues of any sort – that’s a good feeling in the pit of your stomach. So there!
However, I have a few suggestions which, if followed, will make 2007 a really fantastic, fabulous and the supercaliwhatever year every body is desperate to make it out to be. So here is my “wish they came true” list. I have no idea how these things can be made to happen – but I am sure there are enough enterprising men and women out there who have drive, initiative and the go-getting spirit to make these come true.
So, in no particular order, here goes:
- Remove Eva Longoria from the pages of all newspapers in India. She must have the best PR company in the world. Not a day passes without her pic and some story about her gracing the pages of the papers I encounter in Mumbai. Yes, I knew she’s cute and sexy, and Tony Parker is a really good basketball player – but I am currently suffering from a surfeit of Eva Longoria. Given the amount of publicity she gets, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony doesn’t end up feeling the same way: he’s practically a nonentity.
- Put Britney Spears on a course of religious instruction and hope she becomes a nun and vanishes from human consciousness
- Make Posh Spice go on a surprise diet so she bloats up to a comfortably permanent 145 pounds and has to shop for oversize dresses. That should be sufficient for her to vanish into Beckingham Palace and remain there far from the madding crowd
- Some American soccer team should offer a job to David Beckham so he can retire in Wyoming or Idaho and teach the local American football players how to bend a touchdown. [I believe that this particular wish coming true!! He’s been sacked from Real Madrid, and he’s soon on his way to California, earning as much or more than Kobe or Tim or any of the baseball or basketball stars.]. I'm going to miss him, though - he had an absolutely magical right foot, with hinges; his deadball stuff and from the right wing were just about the finest I have seen.
- A good doctor should treat Himesh Reshamiya so he gets he loses his nasal tone. This may be the only way to prevent him from inflicting more indignities in the name of pop songs on human ears.
- Isn’t it possible to sue George Bush and Tony Blair for genocide, premeditated murder, and other crimes against humanity? And arraign them side by side with Osama bin Laden, Dawood Ibrahim and other such types? Of course they deserve this – the question is how. If that can be done in 2007, it would make me really happy.
- I get to complete my second book and get a gullible publisher suckered into publishing it. Having got one out of the system, I have tasted blood; not a day passes without me getting the urge to launch another tome onto the unsuspecting public. So far I have restrained myself – but 2007 will see my next. For sure.
- I hope I get tickets for the Hancock-Shorter show day after tomorrow. Two of the greatest musicians who have ever graced our planet – and I may not be able to get to see them! The populace has risen in revolt for less – witness the French Revolution where the jacquerie rose just because the queen told them to eat cake instead of bread.
- I hope India gets out in the group stages or whatever in the cricket World Cup this year – at least early enough. I am sick of this mindless addiction to that ‘unprofitable parade of somnambulists’ (to use the immortal description of cricket by that pre-eminent cricket lover - P G Wodehouse). I am mindlessly addicted to that other sport where 22 men, breathing heavily, chase one innocent and harmless globule, eight inches in diameter, trying its best to escape attention.
- I get called a cool dude once more – by a suitably cool dudie. I thought I was getting there – the other day, a colleague of mine told me that his cousin (a female of some thirty summers) thinks that I am really the epitome of the tall, dark and handsome man of legend. I was pretty flattered – until I recalled that we had met only once, inside a car, at 9 in the evening, on a street where there were no lights, in the company of my colleague and his driver, and the only source of light was that from the car dashboard. On second thoughts, perhaps my colleague wants a raise.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jan 12 2007)
Now that the hangover’s gone – part the first
I am going to have to do this in two parts.
I am told by the Blog Writers’ Guild that it is de rigeur for any blogger to do a review of the year that was and a preview for the New Year. I have been remiss. And no excuses – I can’t bitch about lots of work, won’t wash with those who know my lazy ways. I can’t bitch about lots of parties either – I don’t get invited to the kind of parties I would like to go to, and those that I do get invited to are not worth going. Groucho Marx knew my views on such events – “I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” So, as I was saying, no parties either. Laziness is the real reason, for which I have already apologized to the afore-mentioned Guild.
So, now to work. I am informed that the review should consist of things that happened in 2006 which I consider the high points of the year, from my purely personal perspective. So here goes, in no particular order of importance:
Enough of this ramble, you say? Agree with you, you know. Not the kind of stuff to spring on strangers during a post New Year recuperative period. So, am taking your leave, chillun, and hope to see you again - soon.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jan 3 2007)
I am told by the Blog Writers’ Guild that it is de rigeur for any blogger to do a review of the year that was and a preview for the New Year. I have been remiss. And no excuses – I can’t bitch about lots of work, won’t wash with those who know my lazy ways. I can’t bitch about lots of parties either – I don’t get invited to the kind of parties I would like to go to, and those that I do get invited to are not worth going. Groucho Marx knew my views on such events – “I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” So, as I was saying, no parties either. Laziness is the real reason, for which I have already apologized to the afore-mentioned Guild.
So, now to work. I am informed that the review should consist of things that happened in 2006 which I consider the high points of the year, from my purely personal perspective. So here goes, in no particular order of importance:
- The launch of my book. Didn’t know there were so many people who really cared for me. Made my year. Also, it stopped pretty young women calling me ‘uncle’; they started calling me ‘sir’ instead. Don’t really know whether it’s a huge improvement though.
- The Zizou headbutt. A perfect piece of physical coordination, best seen in slo-mo replay. The wind-up, the short sharp action at point of contact like a Mohammed Ali jab, the follow through – exactly as described in all the best football manuals. Tough to do, mind you; as tough as the bicycle kick. But when you see a perfect head butt, it beats Rivaldo’s bicycle kick of about 5 years ago.
- The van Nistelrooy dive. The grace of a swan, the movement reminiscent of the perfect normal curve, the gentle lift-off, the way the body goes horizontal, the landing on the forearms followed by the body making a perfect three-point landing, then the all-important head swivel to the referee with an expectant look on the face. Greg Luganis, eat your heart out!
- The Floyd Landis “blink and its gone” Tour de France trophy. One day the champ, the next day a villain. I feel sorry for the man. Doping has been part and parcel of the Tour since it began – I seem to remember reading about a racer in the 1920s, who said that without cocaine nobody will last more than 4 days. Now with the WADA and other such spoilsports, no decent man can take a shot of the stuff that enables him to last through three weeks of torture. The Tour has got to be the toughest sport that human ingenuity has invented – I have been watching it every year for the last three, and I still can’t understand the psychology of anyone who would willingly undergo such unrefined torture. Every man who finishes is a winner. Except Floyd Landis, who had the misfortune to get caught.
- The Kavya copy-paste incident. Plagiarism they called it; they took the book back off the shelves. Did they take the advance royalty cheque back, I wonder. Anybody knows a good book I can copy-paste from? Twentyfive percent of the royalties I get – that’s a promise.
- The Cream reunion concert DVD. A whole host of memories from my youthful days flooded back in a rush. Overwhelming – the only word I can find to describe the show. Ignore the fact that Clapton, Bruce and Baker have aged. Ignore the fact that they are doing the old Cream songbook, not a single new song in the show. Who cares? The chemistry is back on full steam; Eric played like he hardly plays nowadays: my twenty year old son understands why Eric was called God in the late 1960s. The intensity of the performance was incendiary.
- The Cream farewell DVD. I saw if first last year, hence it gets mentioned out here. Again, overwhelming is the word. The whole film is cinema verite; and the music is just, well, incendiary. The farewell and the reunion shows made me feel 18 again. I am glad I started listening to music seriously when all this stuff was really happening.
- Me being called a cool dude. I have written about it before, so the readers (I am being optimistic in using the plural) of my posts know all about the feeling of euphoria it created. Made the last quarter of my year, it really did!
- Seeing Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, after nearly thirty years. Not one of his masterpieces, but who cares. My emotional favourite Kurosawa – the visual beauty is stunning; the casting is perfect, particularly the Siberian hunter; the film flows like a running brook; and isn’t there a bit of Kurosawa hidden at the end, where the hunter realizes that his hunting days are over? Made me cry when I first saw it; made me cry again when I saw it some two months ago.
- The death of James Brown. The hardest working man in show business, and probably the strongest influence in the kind of music that I love, not excluding Bob Dylan and Charlie Parker.
Enough of this ramble, you say? Agree with you, you know. Not the kind of stuff to spring on strangers during a post New Year recuperative period. So, am taking your leave, chillun, and hope to see you again - soon.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jan 3 2007)
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Miles still runs the voodoo down
The year was 1969. Walking down Park Street in Kolkata, I stopped at my favourite record shop and stared in through the window. The shopkeeper, who knew me well as a college kid with little money but who knew his music, smiled and called me in. He showed me this double album, with the strangest foldout cover art I had ever seen. It was a Miles Davis album – which was good enough for me. And it was called “Bitches Brew”. The cover looked really great, so I bought the album, took it home, played it, and it changed my world of music for ever.
1969 was annus mirabilis for me as far as music went. I heard “Sergeant Pepper’s”, Jimi, “Blonde on Blonde”, and of course “Bitches Brew”; I discovered Grateful Dead, Cream, and Jefferson Airplane: I read about Woodstock. Also, I heard Beethoven and Bach for the first time, and I heard Subbulakshmi perform for the first time. Quite a vintage year!
I had heard Miles’ music before – particularly his first great quintet with John Coltrane. I had heard “Kind of Blue” – but not with the attention that it deserved; later on, I have given it all my attention, at least thrice a year. But, “Bitches Brew” was, and still is amazing. Whereas the earlier Miles albums were linear, with a theme-solo-solo-solo-theme structure, “Bitches Brew” was anything but. Tracks like “Pharoah’s Dance” and others remind me of are a tapestry, in dark colours, with clear lines and patterns woven in gold and silver. The tapestry moves in the breeze, and the patterns change and suddenly, a new line and pattern emerges from the tapestry, something you had not paid attention to before. And the picture is different.
I had never heard anything like this before or since. On listening to Miles over the years, certain signs leading up to “Bitches Brew” were there in two albums prior to “Bitches Brew” – “In a silent way” had some of the same qualities, not as fully developed. Also, “Miles in the Sky” had a few things which got developed more fully in “Bitches Brew”.
Nearly forty years later, “Bitches Brew” still surprises and thrills me. I still marvel at the concept of the album, and how Miles and Teo Macero (the producer) must have spent hours going through miles and miles of tape, and editing them down to the tracks on the album. To me, the tour de force is “Miles runs the voodoo down”, a track he has performed many times in his live shows with the lost third quintet and other bands. The studio version is seminal – it reminds me of a world champion middleweight boxer, a Marvelous Marvin Hagler, swaggering into the room, reveling in his physical perfection and indeed in his sexuality, and blowing away the competition by just strutting around the room. Miles has rarely sounded so strong and physically irresistible than in his two solos on this track.
If you haven’t heard this album, and you are adventurous in your music, go and buy the 2 cd pack, and also buy the box set called the “Bitches Brew Sessions” – which contains other tracks recorded at that time, but released on other albums, or not released at all.
My love affair with the album continues apace – it’s like Cleopatra: age has not withered nor wisdom staled the infinity variety of the double album I first encountered nearly four decades ago.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Nov 25 2006)
1969 was annus mirabilis for me as far as music went. I heard “Sergeant Pepper’s”, Jimi, “Blonde on Blonde”, and of course “Bitches Brew”; I discovered Grateful Dead, Cream, and Jefferson Airplane: I read about Woodstock. Also, I heard Beethoven and Bach for the first time, and I heard Subbulakshmi perform for the first time. Quite a vintage year!
I had heard Miles’ music before – particularly his first great quintet with John Coltrane. I had heard “Kind of Blue” – but not with the attention that it deserved; later on, I have given it all my attention, at least thrice a year. But, “Bitches Brew” was, and still is amazing. Whereas the earlier Miles albums were linear, with a theme-solo-solo-solo-theme structure, “Bitches Brew” was anything but. Tracks like “Pharoah’s Dance” and others remind me of are a tapestry, in dark colours, with clear lines and patterns woven in gold and silver. The tapestry moves in the breeze, and the patterns change and suddenly, a new line and pattern emerges from the tapestry, something you had not paid attention to before. And the picture is different.
I had never heard anything like this before or since. On listening to Miles over the years, certain signs leading up to “Bitches Brew” were there in two albums prior to “Bitches Brew” – “In a silent way” had some of the same qualities, not as fully developed. Also, “Miles in the Sky” had a few things which got developed more fully in “Bitches Brew”.
Nearly forty years later, “Bitches Brew” still surprises and thrills me. I still marvel at the concept of the album, and how Miles and Teo Macero (the producer) must have spent hours going through miles and miles of tape, and editing them down to the tracks on the album. To me, the tour de force is “Miles runs the voodoo down”, a track he has performed many times in his live shows with the lost third quintet and other bands. The studio version is seminal – it reminds me of a world champion middleweight boxer, a Marvelous Marvin Hagler, swaggering into the room, reveling in his physical perfection and indeed in his sexuality, and blowing away the competition by just strutting around the room. Miles has rarely sounded so strong and physically irresistible than in his two solos on this track.
If you haven’t heard this album, and you are adventurous in your music, go and buy the 2 cd pack, and also buy the box set called the “Bitches Brew Sessions” – which contains other tracks recorded at that time, but released on other albums, or not released at all.
My love affair with the album continues apace – it’s like Cleopatra: age has not withered nor wisdom staled the infinity variety of the double album I first encountered nearly four decades ago.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Nov 25 2006)
And we did get fooled again! And again! And again!
I am listening to The Who – the deluxe edition of “Who’s Next” – and am rediscovering the joys and pangs of my youth, when the world was ours. I don’t mean that the world belonged to the youth; I mean that the world belonged to us idealists. And most of us had ideals, as far as I can recall.
I grew up in a family of idealists. My mother left home at the age of 16, in what became East Pakistan soon after she left. She came to Kolkata to study, the Partition happened, and she never saw her parents again. She became a cardholder of the CPI, and she shared their ideals of a fairer, more just, more equitable world. My father did no such adventurous thing – he couldn’t afford to. He lost his father at a young age, and started working at the age of 16 so that could support his mother, his sister and his two younger brothers. Then they met, fell in love, and got married, almost before they could support each other, let alone a baby who was soon on the way.
And they were both idealists. They had seen a colonial India change to an independent India over one tumultuous and euphoric night. They had seen and heard the great leaders of pre-Independence India – Gandhi, Nehru, Netaji, Acharya Kripalani, Maulana Azad, Ballabhbhai Patel, et al.
They had also lived through the traumatic days of riots in Bengal before, during and after Partition. While this did leave a scar, there was always the hope that things will improve, with time, and that they needed to be patient. They were patient, and yes, things did improve. There were food shortages, and food riots, and massive unemployment. But, there were new industries set up, new agricultural ventures like Amul, the Green Revolution, Operation Flood, etc. More and more people could get two square meals a day.
But they still felt betrayed. Corruption, which had been a part and parcel of Indian administration since time immemorial, became more pronounced. To get my birth certificate, they had to spend ten rupees in the early fifties, then a princely sum, and which they could ill afford. To get a ration card, they had to spend another ten. In the early sixties, a business tycoon called Dharma Teja was under criminal investigation, and he decamped to Costa Rica, and thereby placed himself beyond the reach of Indian justice. The story broke that he had the blessings of Nehru – the latter apparently told the senior bureaucrats to help Dharma Teja get what he wanted; Nehru’s words “usko thora kuchch de do” still rankles with my parents.
By the early mid sixties, I had evolved from sentience to consciousness and intelligence. To me, the biggest shock was the Emergency, and the ascension of Indira Gandhi to the political throne. To me, she was the worst thing that ever happened to India. She institutionalized corruption, favouritism, lack of equitability, and the rule of greed became the norm. Buying politicians, bureaucrats, members of the judiciary – all those whom in the past I trusted as being driven by the passion to improve the state of our nation and their fellow citizens – was possible, and indeed without buying them you could not get anything done.
Since then, we have become richer, more independent in the real economic sense, more self dependent in many areas, and we are now an ‘emerging market’ which will soon become a super power, if political and economic gurus are to be believed. But my parents and I still feel betrayed. Where, in this process of economic development, have our values and principles gone? Why did it become necessary for our judiciary to be activist? If the executive did its job as well as it was supposed to, the judiciary will naturally become a supportive pillar of our nation, working in synergy with the other two. Instead of this, our judiciary in many cases is in confrontation with our administration – thankfully; at the least the judiciary insists on a rule of law; the administration often acts contrary to the diktats of the courts.
Over the decades, we have given in to pressures of politics and created quotas of various kinds. Why didn’t we invest in infrastructure so that over time quotas would become unnecessary, and only merit would prevail? Why did we make it almost necessary for people in governments to take bribes? Why do we not protest when the largest political party in our country has been turned into the personal fiefdom of one family? Why do we not protest when the same political party has simplified the history of modern India into a linear sequence of personalities – Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, India Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and pretty soon Rahul Gandhi?
I grew up at a time when the Naxal movement ran rampant through many parts of West Bengal and when most students of Presidency College in Kolkata were Naxalites or sympathizers, when America escalated the Vietnam War every few months and when the students took to the streets of France and removed Charles de Gaulle from power. Their were voices of political conscience in other countries – Dylan, Lennon, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Regis Debray, the students who were shot down in Kent State University, and I am sure I am missing out on a whole list of others who stood up and fought against injustice, corruption, and lack of values and principals in polity.
Where are our Dylans and Chomskys? Where are our Kent State students? No point in asking me to be one – I don’t have the courage or the capability. They must be there somewhere – studying at one of the IIMs and soon to become investment bankers; or working in TCS or Infosys, and soon to be a software cat.
This is one long rant, sparked off by the live version of “We won’t get fooled again”. They began by marching in the streets, but ended by meeting the new boss, who was the same as the old boss. Plus ça change, mon amie, plus ce la meme chose!
Does that mean that I am pessimistic about India? No, I am not. I believe India will become a great place to live in, to work in, to enjoy life to the fullest. I believe that someday, all my countrymen will be able to get two square meals a day, they will not be subject to usury, and perhaps someday we will have honest politicians, honest bureaucrats, honest judges and lawyers, honest administrators, honest people in public life – who will put the welfare of their homeland and their brethren at par with their own well-being. But I don’t believe that this will not happen in my lifetime.
The above was written and posted on sulekha.com on Nov 25 2006. However in the last fortnight, something happened which makes me provisionally half-believe that it may indeed happen before I go onto my next avatar. Anna Hazare at Jantar Mantar happened, and a million or more Indians said that they will not stand to be fooled again.
We will need many more Annas, many more Jantar Mantars, and many hundreds of millions of Indians to change things. But I am glad that the first step has been taken, and that they are singing they won't get fooled again.
I grew up in a family of idealists. My mother left home at the age of 16, in what became East Pakistan soon after she left. She came to Kolkata to study, the Partition happened, and she never saw her parents again. She became a cardholder of the CPI, and she shared their ideals of a fairer, more just, more equitable world. My father did no such adventurous thing – he couldn’t afford to. He lost his father at a young age, and started working at the age of 16 so that could support his mother, his sister and his two younger brothers. Then they met, fell in love, and got married, almost before they could support each other, let alone a baby who was soon on the way.
And they were both idealists. They had seen a colonial India change to an independent India over one tumultuous and euphoric night. They had seen and heard the great leaders of pre-Independence India – Gandhi, Nehru, Netaji, Acharya Kripalani, Maulana Azad, Ballabhbhai Patel, et al.
They had also lived through the traumatic days of riots in Bengal before, during and after Partition. While this did leave a scar, there was always the hope that things will improve, with time, and that they needed to be patient. They were patient, and yes, things did improve. There were food shortages, and food riots, and massive unemployment. But, there were new industries set up, new agricultural ventures like Amul, the Green Revolution, Operation Flood, etc. More and more people could get two square meals a day.
But they still felt betrayed. Corruption, which had been a part and parcel of Indian administration since time immemorial, became more pronounced. To get my birth certificate, they had to spend ten rupees in the early fifties, then a princely sum, and which they could ill afford. To get a ration card, they had to spend another ten. In the early sixties, a business tycoon called Dharma Teja was under criminal investigation, and he decamped to Costa Rica, and thereby placed himself beyond the reach of Indian justice. The story broke that he had the blessings of Nehru – the latter apparently told the senior bureaucrats to help Dharma Teja get what he wanted; Nehru’s words “usko thora kuchch de do” still rankles with my parents.
By the early mid sixties, I had evolved from sentience to consciousness and intelligence. To me, the biggest shock was the Emergency, and the ascension of Indira Gandhi to the political throne. To me, she was the worst thing that ever happened to India. She institutionalized corruption, favouritism, lack of equitability, and the rule of greed became the norm. Buying politicians, bureaucrats, members of the judiciary – all those whom in the past I trusted as being driven by the passion to improve the state of our nation and their fellow citizens – was possible, and indeed without buying them you could not get anything done.
Since then, we have become richer, more independent in the real economic sense, more self dependent in many areas, and we are now an ‘emerging market’ which will soon become a super power, if political and economic gurus are to be believed. But my parents and I still feel betrayed. Where, in this process of economic development, have our values and principles gone? Why did it become necessary for our judiciary to be activist? If the executive did its job as well as it was supposed to, the judiciary will naturally become a supportive pillar of our nation, working in synergy with the other two. Instead of this, our judiciary in many cases is in confrontation with our administration – thankfully; at the least the judiciary insists on a rule of law; the administration often acts contrary to the diktats of the courts.
Over the decades, we have given in to pressures of politics and created quotas of various kinds. Why didn’t we invest in infrastructure so that over time quotas would become unnecessary, and only merit would prevail? Why did we make it almost necessary for people in governments to take bribes? Why do we not protest when the largest political party in our country has been turned into the personal fiefdom of one family? Why do we not protest when the same political party has simplified the history of modern India into a linear sequence of personalities – Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, India Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and pretty soon Rahul Gandhi?
I grew up at a time when the Naxal movement ran rampant through many parts of West Bengal and when most students of Presidency College in Kolkata were Naxalites or sympathizers, when America escalated the Vietnam War every few months and when the students took to the streets of France and removed Charles de Gaulle from power. Their were voices of political conscience in other countries – Dylan, Lennon, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Regis Debray, the students who were shot down in Kent State University, and I am sure I am missing out on a whole list of others who stood up and fought against injustice, corruption, and lack of values and principals in polity.
Where are our Dylans and Chomskys? Where are our Kent State students? No point in asking me to be one – I don’t have the courage or the capability. They must be there somewhere – studying at one of the IIMs and soon to become investment bankers; or working in TCS or Infosys, and soon to be a software cat.
This is one long rant, sparked off by the live version of “We won’t get fooled again”. They began by marching in the streets, but ended by meeting the new boss, who was the same as the old boss. Plus ça change, mon amie, plus ce la meme chose!
Does that mean that I am pessimistic about India? No, I am not. I believe India will become a great place to live in, to work in, to enjoy life to the fullest. I believe that someday, all my countrymen will be able to get two square meals a day, they will not be subject to usury, and perhaps someday we will have honest politicians, honest bureaucrats, honest judges and lawyers, honest administrators, honest people in public life – who will put the welfare of their homeland and their brethren at par with their own well-being. But I don’t believe that this will not happen in my lifetime.
The above was written and posted on sulekha.com on Nov 25 2006. However in the last fortnight, something happened which makes me provisionally half-believe that it may indeed happen before I go onto my next avatar. Anna Hazare at Jantar Mantar happened, and a million or more Indians said that they will not stand to be fooled again.
We will need many more Annas, many more Jantar Mantars, and many hundreds of millions of Indians to change things. But I am glad that the first step has been taken, and that they are singing they won't get fooled again.
Come on back home, Bob; all is forgiven.
I am writing this while listening to Bob Dylan’s latest album “Modern Times” for the nth time. And marvelling at the ability of the poet of our generation to reinvent himself and, at the same time, to retain his surrealist vision.
I grew up with Dylan. He said and sang what we wanted to but didn’t know how. He was our conscience in many ways, although I grew up in Kolkata and moved to Mumbai when I was 21 years old, and never left the shores of my country till I was 31 years old, and so didn’t experience any of the revolutionary events and pressures (except through media) which led Dylan and his contemporaries to create the most impressive body of popular music in history IMHO. That didn’t matter, though, to my friends and me. “Like a rolling stone”, “All along the watchtower”, “Visions of Johanna”, “Just like a woman”, and many other songs were and still are part of my being. I listen to “Shelter from the storm”, and I still remember the pain of being dumped while I was hearing this song for the very first time. I listen to “One more cup of coffee” and I still remember how I fell in love once again over a cup of coffee – this happened more than a quarter of a century ago, but the memory is still vivid.
But for all my worship of Dylan, there was a period of apostasy. I still don’t like parts of “Desire”, particularly “Sarah”, which I thought was hypocritical, and still do. I mean, how sincere can you be writing a love song to your wife who’s leaving you for your cheating ways? I still dislike almost all the albums beginning with “Hard Rain” for nearly 20 years. From “Hard Rain” to “Live in Budokan” to “Saved” to “Slow train coming”, etc – this period of Dylan is like a drunk stumbling from the pavement to the gutter to the garbage dump.
Then came redemption. First came “Time out of mind” and now “Modern Times”. And Dylan has gone back on to the pedestal that he used to occupy, as far as I am concerned. I am prepared to overlook his sinning ways from “Hard Rain” to “Oh Mercy”.
If words like “apostasy”, “sin”, “redemption” sound Jesuitical, I use them deliberately. To me, Bob Dylan is one of the handful of musicians, all singers (and the rest of them are all women), who make me feel that they suffered pain and experienced bad things in life, so that I didn’t have to. (For those interested, the others on this small list are Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Marianne Faithfull).
I am great bathroom singer; give me soap, a loofah, and a nice warm shower, and you got all the trappings of a solo concert to beat Luciano Pavarotti. What my family gets to hear most often, filtered through the bathroom door, I hasten to add, is “When I paint my masterpiece”.
“Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
”Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.”
The first time I went to Rome, I walked through the city streets filled with rubble, and I would have loved to have dated Botticelli’s niece. But then, she was long gone by then.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Nov 18 2006)
I grew up with Dylan. He said and sang what we wanted to but didn’t know how. He was our conscience in many ways, although I grew up in Kolkata and moved to Mumbai when I was 21 years old, and never left the shores of my country till I was 31 years old, and so didn’t experience any of the revolutionary events and pressures (except through media) which led Dylan and his contemporaries to create the most impressive body of popular music in history IMHO. That didn’t matter, though, to my friends and me. “Like a rolling stone”, “All along the watchtower”, “Visions of Johanna”, “Just like a woman”, and many other songs were and still are part of my being. I listen to “Shelter from the storm”, and I still remember the pain of being dumped while I was hearing this song for the very first time. I listen to “One more cup of coffee” and I still remember how I fell in love once again over a cup of coffee – this happened more than a quarter of a century ago, but the memory is still vivid.
But for all my worship of Dylan, there was a period of apostasy. I still don’t like parts of “Desire”, particularly “Sarah”, which I thought was hypocritical, and still do. I mean, how sincere can you be writing a love song to your wife who’s leaving you for your cheating ways? I still dislike almost all the albums beginning with “Hard Rain” for nearly 20 years. From “Hard Rain” to “Live in Budokan” to “Saved” to “Slow train coming”, etc – this period of Dylan is like a drunk stumbling from the pavement to the gutter to the garbage dump.
Then came redemption. First came “Time out of mind” and now “Modern Times”. And Dylan has gone back on to the pedestal that he used to occupy, as far as I am concerned. I am prepared to overlook his sinning ways from “Hard Rain” to “Oh Mercy”.
If words like “apostasy”, “sin”, “redemption” sound Jesuitical, I use them deliberately. To me, Bob Dylan is one of the handful of musicians, all singers (and the rest of them are all women), who make me feel that they suffered pain and experienced bad things in life, so that I didn’t have to. (For those interested, the others on this small list are Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Marianne Faithfull).
I am great bathroom singer; give me soap, a loofah, and a nice warm shower, and you got all the trappings of a solo concert to beat Luciano Pavarotti. What my family gets to hear most often, filtered through the bathroom door, I hasten to add, is “When I paint my masterpiece”.
“Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
”Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.”
The first time I went to Rome, I walked through the city streets filled with rubble, and I would have loved to have dated Botticelli’s niece. But then, she was long gone by then.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Nov 18 2006)
I am a “cool dude!”
The last few days, I had been teaching class at a b-school near Mumbai. I love it, and have been doing this off and on for 6 years now. I love those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters, with their smooth clean faces staring up at me, drinking in every word I speak. I love their questions, some of which are pretty tough to handle, make me wish I had really studied the topic more thoroughly. I loved the quizzical look on their faces, when their minds are trying to grapple with some abstruse idea, and the frown on their brows that tells me that the process of assimilation is still not complete.
I must have been like that some 30 odd summers back. I must have looked like one of these kids, with the same frown, the same fuzz on my cheeks, the same clear and smooth skin, the same bright eyes and the same bushy tail. The big difference, though, is that I was never pretty or ‘cool’; I was the proverbial middle class Bengali kid, with oil on my hair (I still got more hair on my head than most of my classmates, so there!), little pocket money, just discovering girls and no clue what to do with this newfound knowledge. Many of my classmates were like me; a few who were older took pity on us from time to time, and let us into what we thought were momentous secrets of life, the universe and everything. Most of these tips were useless, as I discovered after many failures.
I never became pretty. In the dim light, on a moonless night, seen from certain angles, particularly rear three quarters, where you don’t get to see much of my face, I am quite all right, especially if you are drunk. I am quite used to the idea of being someone you are not going to enjoy running into in a dark alleyway at midnight in one of the less frequented streets of Mumbai.
However, this morning something happened which has prompted me to put up my collar and strut about with my nose up in the air. One of the girls in the class called me a “cool dude”, and I know enough English to figure that she meant it as a compliment. I didn’t ask her about reasons why – intuition told me that would have been disastrous: she might have thought about it and taken it back. I let it lie and am now luxuriating in the thought that one pretty lass of 22 summers thinks I am a cool dude. My wife doesn’t count – now that we’ve been married more than two decades, it doesn’t matter whether she thinks I am cool, or even a dude, or not. Sometimes I think my son thinks I am cool, if not exactly a dude. To illustrate this point, let me share a couple of family stories. Some time ago, I decided that salt-and-pepper hair is boring, and dyeing my hair black is worse. So, I dyed my hair dark blue, really dark blue. When I got back home from the saloon, there was much drama and excitement – my wife hated it, and my son was ecstatic. I guess that’s when he starting to think that his dad is quite cool. This view got reaffirmed when my son shaved off the hair on his head. The wife threw a huge fit, I loved it – “status quo is boring” is what my son said, and I quite agree.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Nov 13 2006)
One million dollars in prizes to be won!
I think I should write a book. No, not the kind that I have already gotten published. That’s a book on brands and branding, and it’s like a jazz record. For those of who don’t know, there’s a little joke that explains this. The question goes “What’s the difference between a jazz musician and a pizza?” The answer: the pizza feeds a family of four. My published book is like the jazz musician – great for the ego, and wonderful for the self-actualisation bit out of Maslow, but no good in feeding family, creating nest egg for retirement and other such functional, albeit mundane, purposes. As one approaches one’s mid-fifties, thoughts about what the future will bring come upon us from time to time, particularly at 7 in the morning, when the rest of the family is asleep, and the writer is debating whether this is the right time to put on Blind Faith loud or should he be just get on with this piece.
Hardly a day passes without the papers writing about some callow youth picking up advance royalties for books yet unwritten, and the royalty cheques are large. They all seem to be in excess of US $ 250,000, each and every one of them, and when you multiply that by 45 or so to reach INR figures, the numbers are really staggering. I was never very good in maths, so the large numbers of zeros that follow the first couple of digits is scarifying. But, I feel jealous of the young men and women who are being paid such gigantic sums of monies to write books. And the question that haunts me is “Why not me?”
So, the die is cast, the decision taken. I shall write a novel – that’s the stuff that makes the real money, in spite of the success of the management gurus. The real moolah is in fiction. And it’s global moolah too – you may have it published in India, and then in NY, London, and before you know it, it’s in the Booker list or being nominated for some other prize. And then readers in NY, London and other points West are buying the book faster than hot cakes before Christmas.
This never happens with management books written by an Indian. In order to be in the big league among management gurus, it pays to be an American or a Brit, or a Japanese. If you are an Indian, you have to be part of some big time US University set up. Full stop.
The question of what to write I shall keep totally to myself. When the novel is unveiled to the wondering world, I expect that there should be universal joy and celebration; otherwise, I will go on TV and quote freely from the Bible, particularly that bit about pearls and the Gadarene swine. The dilemma is this: should I write a blockbuster, with lots of sex and violence, which will get turned into a Hollywood hit? Or should I target the prestige prizes, like the Whitbread or the Booker, and still sell millions, and get invited to the right parties, and become a talking head, but forget the ambition of getting my book into the movies? One has to choose, you know. I don’t know of any book that has made it to one of the big prizes, and also made it to Hollywood. Ok, there may be a few, but so few that they don’t matter.
The big problem is this: in my experience as a reader, books that win prizes are unreadable. Indeed, in a few cases, they are unwritable. If any one doubts this statement, let him or her wade through Salman Rushdie’s tomes or the efforts by V S Naipaul (always excepting “A house for Mr Biswas”). Excruciatingly painful they are. Every writer has to read his or her own stuff at some points in time, before and after sending it to the publisher. Most of us would cringe at the muck – masquerading as deathless prose – which Rushdie and Naipaul have written. I would refuse to write such rubbish. OK, for an extremely large fee, I would even write George W Bush and Tony Blair’s speeches, but it’s unlikely that the White House or 10 Downing Street suits are going to read my blog.
All things considered, I think I will say sayonara to the big prizes, and stay with the blockbuster. Now to get to work. I do have some ideas going through my head, and I should not be surprised if a few months from now, out will pop a 300 page gorilla making massive waves at the cash counters of bookstores.
You will surely excuse me while I go chase some big time rupees, which will be followed by dollars and euros. See you soon.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Oct 24 2006)
Hardly a day passes without the papers writing about some callow youth picking up advance royalties for books yet unwritten, and the royalty cheques are large. They all seem to be in excess of US $ 250,000, each and every one of them, and when you multiply that by 45 or so to reach INR figures, the numbers are really staggering. I was never very good in maths, so the large numbers of zeros that follow the first couple of digits is scarifying. But, I feel jealous of the young men and women who are being paid such gigantic sums of monies to write books. And the question that haunts me is “Why not me?”
So, the die is cast, the decision taken. I shall write a novel – that’s the stuff that makes the real money, in spite of the success of the management gurus. The real moolah is in fiction. And it’s global moolah too – you may have it published in India, and then in NY, London, and before you know it, it’s in the Booker list or being nominated for some other prize. And then readers in NY, London and other points West are buying the book faster than hot cakes before Christmas.
This never happens with management books written by an Indian. In order to be in the big league among management gurus, it pays to be an American or a Brit, or a Japanese. If you are an Indian, you have to be part of some big time US University set up. Full stop.
The question of what to write I shall keep totally to myself. When the novel is unveiled to the wondering world, I expect that there should be universal joy and celebration; otherwise, I will go on TV and quote freely from the Bible, particularly that bit about pearls and the Gadarene swine. The dilemma is this: should I write a blockbuster, with lots of sex and violence, which will get turned into a Hollywood hit? Or should I target the prestige prizes, like the Whitbread or the Booker, and still sell millions, and get invited to the right parties, and become a talking head, but forget the ambition of getting my book into the movies? One has to choose, you know. I don’t know of any book that has made it to one of the big prizes, and also made it to Hollywood. Ok, there may be a few, but so few that they don’t matter.
The big problem is this: in my experience as a reader, books that win prizes are unreadable. Indeed, in a few cases, they are unwritable. If any one doubts this statement, let him or her wade through Salman Rushdie’s tomes or the efforts by V S Naipaul (always excepting “A house for Mr Biswas”). Excruciatingly painful they are. Every writer has to read his or her own stuff at some points in time, before and after sending it to the publisher. Most of us would cringe at the muck – masquerading as deathless prose – which Rushdie and Naipaul have written. I would refuse to write such rubbish. OK, for an extremely large fee, I would even write George W Bush and Tony Blair’s speeches, but it’s unlikely that the White House or 10 Downing Street suits are going to read my blog.
All things considered, I think I will say sayonara to the big prizes, and stay with the blockbuster. Now to get to work. I do have some ideas going through my head, and I should not be surprised if a few months from now, out will pop a 300 page gorilla making massive waves at the cash counters of bookstores.
You will surely excuse me while I go chase some big time rupees, which will be followed by dollars and euros. See you soon.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Oct 24 2006)
Blogging is hard work
Here we are back again! When I started this blog, I had no idea that maintaining a blog was hard work; those who know me well also know that to me ‘work’ is a four-letter word. So there!
So what happens when you have a new love affair? You and the object of your desire are inseparable for the first days/weeks/months, whatever. The same thing happened with me when I started blogging. I wrote some 8 or 10 blog entries in some 2 months, which is a lot of work coming from me. Then after the World Cup in July, the passion kind of cooled off. The mind started to recognize that blogging is tough. Just like in an affair you figure out the object of your desire has warts, snores, has an irritating sniff early in the morning, makes a noise while drinking tea, and can’t pronounce Johan Cruyff right. So, bit-by-bit, reality hits. E’en so with blogging and me. The whole idea of having to think of an idea and then having to think of writing about it is a great thing until you figure that ideas don’t strike you every time you open up your blog space and stare at the empty comp screen.
There is something very intimidating about an empty comp screen, particularly when you have a deadline to catch. Even if it is a mental deadline for yourself – when the world will not come to end if you missed the deadline by a few miles, and even if the world did come to an end, good for it, and you hope it’s a good day for it. Blithe spirits like Douglas Adams may get by – he loved the sound of deadlines whoozing by, or so he said. But then he wrote Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Universe, didn’t he? After such a masterpiece, I am sure all the publishers in the world were waiting for the time when Adams will unleash the next bit of deathless prose from his pen or comp or Dictaphone, and they could bid for same deathless prose by flaunting millions of pounds under his eyes.
Not me. I don’t have a publisher – actually I do have one. He published my book and launched it on July 19, and its doing reasonably well, thank you very much – as well as it can do for a biz book not written by an American management guru. Also, I am a poor man – hence there ain’t much PR effort going behind promoting the book. Back to the publisher. He’s a decent guy – really good chap. So he sent me my royalty cheque, and the sales statement. But he knows that while my book may sell a few thousand copies over time, it’s never going to get into the kind of numbers that impress bank managers and publishers. So, there are no deadlines from him, thankfully!
But that does not mean I have no deadlines at all. There are work deadlines – proposals to go, projects to be completed, invoices to be raised, and most important of all: bills to be paid. For the last two, there are no problems – I am great at them. By the grace of God, I don’t owe money except to banks, and they have enough of their own not to bother me with the tiny sums (relatively speaking) that I owe them. The first two – proposals and project reports – those are the killers. Long documents, closely argued, without a break in logic, and of course, to be delivered by a specified time – these give me the willies. O for the day, when I will have minions churning out the stuff by the yard, and I will glance through these documents, and tell them how much better I could have done them, but that I don’t want to do their job, and how important its for them to learn to do them right, and so they must do it again and again till they get it right.
There’s another thing about blogging, which is still holding me back from baring my soul and innermost thoughts to those of you who wish to goggle at them. The worry is this: by baring my soul and innermost thoughts to the world and its uncle, do I lay myself open to blackmail, broken marriage, and other dire consequences? I mean, if I were to write in the blog that I am totally in love with Sushmita Sen, and that the very thought of Naomi Campbell gives my thoughts (and other parts of me) a rise which you wouldn’t believe – would my wife rush to the divorce lawyers? Or would she smile indulgently and say something on the lines of “boys will be boys” and carry on with her cooking, database management and other household chores? I don’t know, and I am worried about putting it to the test in order to find out. I used to be a very bad experimental scientist during my student days: while I studied physics in my B.Sc days, I was pretty OK in the theory parts, but I had to work backwards from the desired results in my practicals. My failure as an experimental scientist was due to my inability to take a risk, according to the physics lab demonstrator. An idiotic statement if ever there was one. Suppose I mixed the wrong stuff in beakers and things, and put the wrong kind of current through a wrong circuit, and whole bloody lab blew up in my face, and other faces too, I hasten to add? Would the demonstrator then had congratulated me in my ability to take risks, or taken the skin off my back for ruining the lab, not to mention a heritage building in Kolkata?
Let me take an hour or two to think this through and figure out the stuff for myself. If any of you readers (for those of you who are churlish enough to comment on the plural – remember that I am an optimist) wish to guide me on the legal point of view on the issue of being sued based on material published on the blog, I should be much obliged. Historically, one of the biggest problems facing mankind has been the inability to speak your mind in public, without running the risk of being open to action under the laws of libel and slander. I would be glad to know the legal standpoint, before I confess my innermost thoughts to the blog.
In the meantime, I shall be back very soon, but with my customary reticence and modesty. Cheers to one and all!
(first posted on sulekha.com on Oct 24 2006)
So what happens when you have a new love affair? You and the object of your desire are inseparable for the first days/weeks/months, whatever. The same thing happened with me when I started blogging. I wrote some 8 or 10 blog entries in some 2 months, which is a lot of work coming from me. Then after the World Cup in July, the passion kind of cooled off. The mind started to recognize that blogging is tough. Just like in an affair you figure out the object of your desire has warts, snores, has an irritating sniff early in the morning, makes a noise while drinking tea, and can’t pronounce Johan Cruyff right. So, bit-by-bit, reality hits. E’en so with blogging and me. The whole idea of having to think of an idea and then having to think of writing about it is a great thing until you figure that ideas don’t strike you every time you open up your blog space and stare at the empty comp screen.
There is something very intimidating about an empty comp screen, particularly when you have a deadline to catch. Even if it is a mental deadline for yourself – when the world will not come to end if you missed the deadline by a few miles, and even if the world did come to an end, good for it, and you hope it’s a good day for it. Blithe spirits like Douglas Adams may get by – he loved the sound of deadlines whoozing by, or so he said. But then he wrote Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Universe, didn’t he? After such a masterpiece, I am sure all the publishers in the world were waiting for the time when Adams will unleash the next bit of deathless prose from his pen or comp or Dictaphone, and they could bid for same deathless prose by flaunting millions of pounds under his eyes.
Not me. I don’t have a publisher – actually I do have one. He published my book and launched it on July 19, and its doing reasonably well, thank you very much – as well as it can do for a biz book not written by an American management guru. Also, I am a poor man – hence there ain’t much PR effort going behind promoting the book. Back to the publisher. He’s a decent guy – really good chap. So he sent me my royalty cheque, and the sales statement. But he knows that while my book may sell a few thousand copies over time, it’s never going to get into the kind of numbers that impress bank managers and publishers. So, there are no deadlines from him, thankfully!
But that does not mean I have no deadlines at all. There are work deadlines – proposals to go, projects to be completed, invoices to be raised, and most important of all: bills to be paid. For the last two, there are no problems – I am great at them. By the grace of God, I don’t owe money except to banks, and they have enough of their own not to bother me with the tiny sums (relatively speaking) that I owe them. The first two – proposals and project reports – those are the killers. Long documents, closely argued, without a break in logic, and of course, to be delivered by a specified time – these give me the willies. O for the day, when I will have minions churning out the stuff by the yard, and I will glance through these documents, and tell them how much better I could have done them, but that I don’t want to do their job, and how important its for them to learn to do them right, and so they must do it again and again till they get it right.
There’s another thing about blogging, which is still holding me back from baring my soul and innermost thoughts to those of you who wish to goggle at them. The worry is this: by baring my soul and innermost thoughts to the world and its uncle, do I lay myself open to blackmail, broken marriage, and other dire consequences? I mean, if I were to write in the blog that I am totally in love with Sushmita Sen, and that the very thought of Naomi Campbell gives my thoughts (and other parts of me) a rise which you wouldn’t believe – would my wife rush to the divorce lawyers? Or would she smile indulgently and say something on the lines of “boys will be boys” and carry on with her cooking, database management and other household chores? I don’t know, and I am worried about putting it to the test in order to find out. I used to be a very bad experimental scientist during my student days: while I studied physics in my B.Sc days, I was pretty OK in the theory parts, but I had to work backwards from the desired results in my practicals. My failure as an experimental scientist was due to my inability to take a risk, according to the physics lab demonstrator. An idiotic statement if ever there was one. Suppose I mixed the wrong stuff in beakers and things, and put the wrong kind of current through a wrong circuit, and whole bloody lab blew up in my face, and other faces too, I hasten to add? Would the demonstrator then had congratulated me in my ability to take risks, or taken the skin off my back for ruining the lab, not to mention a heritage building in Kolkata?
Let me take an hour or two to think this through and figure out the stuff for myself. If any of you readers (for those of you who are churlish enough to comment on the plural – remember that I am an optimist) wish to guide me on the legal point of view on the issue of being sued based on material published on the blog, I should be much obliged. Historically, one of the biggest problems facing mankind has been the inability to speak your mind in public, without running the risk of being open to action under the laws of libel and slander. I would be glad to know the legal standpoint, before I confess my innermost thoughts to the blog.
In the meantime, I shall be back very soon, but with my customary reticence and modesty. Cheers to one and all!
(first posted on sulekha.com on Oct 24 2006)
Now for a commercial break
Now for a shameless plug for self. After having bored you guys and dolls out of your skulls by my febrile and jejune attempts at keeping you awake, I am graduating to bigger and better crimes.
I have written a book - and you will recall that in the last seven days, Mumbaikars rioted and burst bombs on trains in their vain attempts to stop the book getting released. Unbloodied and unbowed, with the blood of the fighting Senguptas coursing through my veins, I am having it launched on July 19, 2006, at 7 pm at the Crossword Book Store, Kemps Corner, Mumbai.
All are welcome. There is, of course, the hope that I may be able to inveigle some of you to buy the book. Otherwise, I will have to take recourse to getting it prescribed as required reading in Maharashtra jails.
See you chaps!
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jul 13 2006)
I have written a book - and you will recall that in the last seven days, Mumbaikars rioted and burst bombs on trains in their vain attempts to stop the book getting released. Unbloodied and unbowed, with the blood of the fighting Senguptas coursing through my veins, I am having it launched on July 19, 2006, at 7 pm at the Crossword Book Store, Kemps Corner, Mumbai.
All are welcome. There is, of course, the hope that I may be able to inveigle some of you to buy the book. Otherwise, I will have to take recourse to getting it prescribed as required reading in Maharashtra jails.
See you chaps!
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jul 13 2006)
The Rossogolla Awards - 2006 World Cup (the real one!)
Hello boys and girls! Here am I back again!! (SFX of wild screams of terror, stampeding hordes, and CG of black mind-killing clouds gathering over a fleeing mob).
After 32 days, the world gets back to its usual schizophrenic self. After 32 days, the universe starts to move again. After 32 days, Mumbai is back to normal – the familiar sights of waterlogged streets, the familiar noise of the Shiv Sena lumpens hitting the roads and pavements, the familiar sound of blasting bombs, all of these are back after the hiatus of 32 days since the World Cup began.
Like all football fans and pundits, it is now time for us to examine, analyse and honour/chastise the various players, refs, etc who were involved in the spectacle. Since I am a Bong, what better way to do it than to institute the Rossogolla Awards? I hope that over time, these awards will reach the stature of the Golden Ball (Q – don’t World Cup footballers have two of them per capita??), the Oscars, and the Nobel. But, one must start somewhere. So here goes.
(Comments and suggestions on drawing up a set of parameters, rules and regs are welcome. The more contentious , the more welcome they are.)
The Pakagolla Award…
… goes to the youngest player in the World Cup with the brightest future in Hollywood or Bollywood. The winner, hands down, ladies and gentlemen!!! (roll of drums, orchestra breaks into “Also sprach Zarathustra”) IS… CRISTIANO RONALDO!!!!
He wins this award for his ability to crumple to the ground all of a heap whenever any opponent passes within two yards of his person. He has also invented the twisting fall whereby his body hits the ground straight while his head turns towards the referee before, during and after the moment of impact. This is a feat that I have not seen even Jackie Chan do. Cristiano Ronaldo promises a lot and is an early candidate for the Hall of Fame – I forgot to tell you that all winners of the Rossogolla Awards are candidates for the Rossogolla Hall of Fame that I propose to institute in about a decade.
The Vintage Rossogolla Award…
… goes to the World Cup equivalent of a 1961 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. And there is only one candidate. The official history of the Chateau estate has this to say about their wines: “The very fine 1955 year was evidence of the wine’s renewal, but the Bordeaux vineyard suffered terrible frosts in February of 1956 before producing a new cycle of exceptional vintages in 1959 and 1961.”
Just change the years, but don’t change the country and we have our winner. (A solo cornet playing “La Marseillaise”) ZINEDINE ZIDANE. Thank you Zizou for showing us that when even Brazil plays pragmatic football, you are not afraid to show us magic, sleights of hand, and vanishing tricks (now you see the ball, now you don’t). Thank you for bringing yourself and your team up from the pedestrian football of the group matches to the authoritative games against Spain, Portugal, and much of the time against Italy. We forgive you the headbutt and the red card – it just proves that after all you are not a god. Zizou, you are already in the Hall of Fame. I, at least, bow before you!
The Man of Clay Kanchagolla Award…
… goes to someone who had admittedly the best players of a generation with him, and managed to make them look as good as Mohun Bagan in the Kolkata rains. With players like Gerrard, Lampard, Joe Cole, Terry and Hargreaves, Sven Goran Eriksson achieved the unthinkable – he could have been an artiste who takes clay and fashions Durga idols; he took these proven match winners and converted them into mud.
A piece of advise to Sven Goran – stay with womanising; its simpler, there are many more opportunities, and since most of it is discreet, your failures don’t become public. Football is a spectator sport and you don’t deserve to be in the limelight. Anymore.
The PuppetMaster Award…
… goes to Carlos Alberto Parreira, who managed to make Ronaldinho look like a normal Sunday club player. The flamboyance had been curbed; the panache, the pizzazz were gone; and our favourite toothful one ended up playing deep down in midfield, anonymous most of the time, and played like a journeyman in a mid-table club.
That takes greatness in a coach – hence Parreira is another early candidate for my Rossogolla Hall of Fame.
The Fountain of Youth Award…
…goes to the French team. From a spavined bunch of no-hopers, this lot transformed themselves into almost world champs in a small matter of 7 matches. Was it their diet? Was it their Evian or Vichy waters? Was it some other, less mentionable, part of their daily consumption? Conspiracy theorists can have a field day on this matter. Whatever.
A small aside: Patrick Viera – could he perhaps send me an email about what is it that they took to make the transformation? I may consider taking up the distributorship for India.
The Nadugopal Award…
… goes to Sepp Blatter. The refs were under instructions re diving, appealing for cards and a whole bunch of other things. If they interpreted their instructions strictly, they got hammered. If they didn’t, they got hammered too. Why Blatter and the other fat men around him won’t look at technology to provide help to the refs, I have no idea. With video replays, Cristiano Ronaldo, most of the Portuguese, Robben, and quite a few of the Dutch and Italians would have been back home midway through the World Cup.
The Abar Khabo Award…
… goes collectively to the African teams. None of them made it beyond the group stage. But during their stay on the arena, were they fun to watch!! Their lack of knowledge, experience, and tactical sense were more than compensated by their joie de vivre, their physical presence, and their lack of respect for their better-known opponents.
All in all, one more World Cup, where one could say that one had seen better football (in 1982, 1986 and 1998), where one had seen worse (1990, 1994, 2002), where stars underperformed, etc. To me, in some ways, this World Cup has been unique:
So, like all good football fans, I am not fully satisfied. The next one will surely be better. Surely, another Pele, another Maradona, another Cruyff will burst onto the field and our consciousness and remind us that God does exist.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jul 12 2006)
After 32 days, the world gets back to its usual schizophrenic self. After 32 days, the universe starts to move again. After 32 days, Mumbai is back to normal – the familiar sights of waterlogged streets, the familiar noise of the Shiv Sena lumpens hitting the roads and pavements, the familiar sound of blasting bombs, all of these are back after the hiatus of 32 days since the World Cup began.
Like all football fans and pundits, it is now time for us to examine, analyse and honour/chastise the various players, refs, etc who were involved in the spectacle. Since I am a Bong, what better way to do it than to institute the Rossogolla Awards? I hope that over time, these awards will reach the stature of the Golden Ball (Q – don’t World Cup footballers have two of them per capita??), the Oscars, and the Nobel. But, one must start somewhere. So here goes.
(Comments and suggestions on drawing up a set of parameters, rules and regs are welcome. The more contentious , the more welcome they are.)
The Pakagolla Award…
… goes to the youngest player in the World Cup with the brightest future in Hollywood or Bollywood. The winner, hands down, ladies and gentlemen!!! (roll of drums, orchestra breaks into “Also sprach Zarathustra”) IS… CRISTIANO RONALDO!!!!
He wins this award for his ability to crumple to the ground all of a heap whenever any opponent passes within two yards of his person. He has also invented the twisting fall whereby his body hits the ground straight while his head turns towards the referee before, during and after the moment of impact. This is a feat that I have not seen even Jackie Chan do. Cristiano Ronaldo promises a lot and is an early candidate for the Hall of Fame – I forgot to tell you that all winners of the Rossogolla Awards are candidates for the Rossogolla Hall of Fame that I propose to institute in about a decade.
The Vintage Rossogolla Award…
… goes to the World Cup equivalent of a 1961 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. And there is only one candidate. The official history of the Chateau estate has this to say about their wines: “The very fine 1955 year was evidence of the wine’s renewal, but the Bordeaux vineyard suffered terrible frosts in February of 1956 before producing a new cycle of exceptional vintages in 1959 and 1961.”
Just change the years, but don’t change the country and we have our winner. (A solo cornet playing “La Marseillaise”) ZINEDINE ZIDANE. Thank you Zizou for showing us that when even Brazil plays pragmatic football, you are not afraid to show us magic, sleights of hand, and vanishing tricks (now you see the ball, now you don’t). Thank you for bringing yourself and your team up from the pedestrian football of the group matches to the authoritative games against Spain, Portugal, and much of the time against Italy. We forgive you the headbutt and the red card – it just proves that after all you are not a god. Zizou, you are already in the Hall of Fame. I, at least, bow before you!
The Man of Clay Kanchagolla Award…
… goes to someone who had admittedly the best players of a generation with him, and managed to make them look as good as Mohun Bagan in the Kolkata rains. With players like Gerrard, Lampard, Joe Cole, Terry and Hargreaves, Sven Goran Eriksson achieved the unthinkable – he could have been an artiste who takes clay and fashions Durga idols; he took these proven match winners and converted them into mud.
A piece of advise to Sven Goran – stay with womanising; its simpler, there are many more opportunities, and since most of it is discreet, your failures don’t become public. Football is a spectator sport and you don’t deserve to be in the limelight. Anymore.
The PuppetMaster Award…
… goes to Carlos Alberto Parreira, who managed to make Ronaldinho look like a normal Sunday club player. The flamboyance had been curbed; the panache, the pizzazz were gone; and our favourite toothful one ended up playing deep down in midfield, anonymous most of the time, and played like a journeyman in a mid-table club.
That takes greatness in a coach – hence Parreira is another early candidate for my Rossogolla Hall of Fame.
The Fountain of Youth Award…
…goes to the French team. From a spavined bunch of no-hopers, this lot transformed themselves into almost world champs in a small matter of 7 matches. Was it their diet? Was it their Evian or Vichy waters? Was it some other, less mentionable, part of their daily consumption? Conspiracy theorists can have a field day on this matter. Whatever.
A small aside: Patrick Viera – could he perhaps send me an email about what is it that they took to make the transformation? I may consider taking up the distributorship for India.
The Nadugopal Award…
… goes to Sepp Blatter. The refs were under instructions re diving, appealing for cards and a whole bunch of other things. If they interpreted their instructions strictly, they got hammered. If they didn’t, they got hammered too. Why Blatter and the other fat men around him won’t look at technology to provide help to the refs, I have no idea. With video replays, Cristiano Ronaldo, most of the Portuguese, Robben, and quite a few of the Dutch and Italians would have been back home midway through the World Cup.
The Abar Khabo Award…
… goes collectively to the African teams. None of them made it beyond the group stage. But during their stay on the arena, were they fun to watch!! Their lack of knowledge, experience, and tactical sense were more than compensated by their joie de vivre, their physical presence, and their lack of respect for their better-known opponents.
All in all, one more World Cup, where one could say that one had seen better football (in 1982, 1986 and 1998), where one had seen worse (1990, 1994, 2002), where stars underperformed, etc. To me, in some ways, this World Cup has been unique:
- No new stars swam into sight, for us to gaze at with wonder
- No upsets which challenged the established order
- No one individual who stamped his authority on the World Cup like Pele in 1958, or Maradona in 1986
So, like all good football fans, I am not fully satisfied. The next one will surely be better. Surely, another Pele, another Maradona, another Cruyff will burst onto the field and our consciousness and remind us that God does exist.
(first posted on sulekha.com on Jul 12 2006)
Friday, 15 April 2011
The world is just 8inches in diameter
Once in four years, my household comes to a standstill for a month. Just to clarify, my wife functions normally as always. She goes to work, bullies me, gets the kid off to college, hammers the maids, pays the local grocer, newspaperwallah, kabadiwallah, etc. She is immune to the virus that hits my son and me every four years.
On the ninth of June, our world (only my son’s and mine, I hasten to add) will be defined by the TeamGeist, the newest wonder of the world as created by Adidas. Our heroes will wear short pants, and multicoloured jerseys, and we shall be enthralled by the spectacle of twenty-two male adults chasing a sphere 8 inches in diameter, across a wide expanse of green, aided and abetted by tens of thousands of baying fans, and supervised (so to speak) by four gentlemen armed with whistles, notebooks and cards of two colours.
Of course, I am talking about the Football World Cup 2006 – not the abomination that Americans call football.
Every four years, my son and I will revisit our heroes from the past, and compare the current crop of footballers on display with the greats who graced the World Cup stage in the past. Is Zizou still the force he was in 1998? Will Beckham still bend it like he did in the past? Will Pavel Nedved show the form that won him the European Footballer of the Year Award? Will Rooney play at all? Will Gerrard once again demonstrate his passion and his ability to turn the game around single-handedly that he did in Istanbul last year, and during the FA Cup final last week?
Will Ballack be as good as Rummenigge? Who will show us the lazy grace and poise reminiscent of Valderrama? Who will show us the vision and the goalie-beating long chip of Hagi? Who will surprise us with the power and gumption like Roger Milla did in 1982 and again in 1990, at the age of 38? Will we discover a modern day Gerd Muller or Paolo Rossi? Will we find another graceful striker like Gary Lineker, who never got a yellow card, leave alone a red, in his life?
Will there be another stunner like Senegal beating France in the last World Cup, which had my son and I dance about the living room like two demented beings, much to the delight of our dhobi delivering his wares? Will be get to see brilliant teams, good for just one tournament, like Denmark in 1986 and Croatia in 1998?
Will we see the emergence of the next Zizou, the next Platini, the next Pele (some believe he is already here, and is called Ronaldinho), the next Maradona (the great one has, at various time, called Tevez and Messi as his successors – at earlier times, the sobriquet had been given to a number of others by the Great Diego himself)? Will Cesc Fabregas deliver the fruit of his promise that he showed during this year’s Champions League campaign with Arsenal? Will Cristiano Ronaldo show that he has finally finally mastered the art of the final ball?
Questions. Questions. We probably won’t get all the answers, but it surely will be huge deal of fun trying to find them for one full month. Hence, our household is now in a state of preparation. The match schedule has been downloaded both as an Excel file, and as an executable file driven by Java. Teamsheets have been downloaded and linked with the match schedule. The TV telecast is being eagerly awaited, and will be added to our planners as soon as it is published. Personal calendars have been marked off. Appointments are in the process of being rescheduled, even as I write this. Only friends who are football freaks have been told that they are welcome to our household. All evening invitations are off.
The household budget is about to be shot to bits. The wife’s only contribution has been to register a demand for a large flat-screen TV. This is more than a bit over the limit of affordability. But She Who Can’t be Denied (in John Mortimer’s immortal phrase) has spoken – and retribution awaits those who flout her wishes. I can see the look on my bank manager’s face when I meet him tomorrow for an extension on my overdraft. The son’s dreams for team jerseys have full firmly scotched, as has been his plea for a TeamGeist tournament ball. Rs 1500/- for a football, forsooth! Money doesn’t grow on trees, not in my household they don’t.
In short, all is in preparedness for the first whistle from the referee. If you want to see two couch potatoes in full action with analyses, comments, exhortations and imprecations, you are welcome to visit us at home. But remember, you are welcome to come before a match starts; any attempts at entry after that will not be entertained. Persistent attempts to break this rule will result in being forcibly expelled. Our building durwans are large, and have been well trained in getting rid of unwelcome salespersons.
(first posted on sulekha.com on May 18 2006)
“Dad, what do I do next?”
A few days ago, the newspaper DNA of Mumbai carried the following story:
“Honeymoon-bound Shayan Munshi held, freed on bail
“Model, film actor, and cookery show host Shayan Munshi, a key witness in the Jessica Lal murder … was arrested by the Kolkata police on Saturday.
“Munshi was allegedly leaving for Bangkok with his father without informing police…”
The attempt to flee, if such it was, or his turning hostile during the trial, were not the features of this news item that grabbed my attention. What did it for me was that he was taking his dad for his honeymoon – reports in other newspapers did mention that his wife was also going to the honeymoon. I can tell you that I was really relieved – a father-son honeymoon would have been too much to take in my advanced age.
What still intrigues me is why was Shayan taking his dad along for the honeymoon. I can understand that it was his dad who first explained the mysteries of the birds and the bees to the son – though, going by my experience with my son, the son would have done a better job of explaining this to the dad. But why do you need your dad on your honeymoon? Hasn’t he got to be the ultimate kabab-mein-haddi?
I can imagine the first night in the resort when the happy young couple are enjoying a romantic dinner – somewhat spoilt no doubt by the presence of the aged parent trying to become part of the décor, whenever the young swain started whispering sweet nothings into his bride’s shell-like. After the wonderful dinner, lubricated by vintage wines made from contented grapes, the young pair repairs to the bedroom. The door closes.
We cut to the bedroom scene. The wife has demurely draped herself in her sexiest nightwear; she reclines fetchingly on the bed, with a come-hither look in her smouldering eyes. The husband is torn between two desires – joining his wife on the bed and turning the lamp down low; and running to the door from time to time, and taking advice from his dad, who is dutifully crouched on the other side of the door, with a sheaf of notes in his left hand, and a ear-trumpet in his right.
One can almost overhear the conversation between father and son.
“Right, dad. We have been kissing each other and doing what you called… foreplay, right, got that word finally. So, we have been doing this foreplay thing for some time now. And now the time has come for the real thing.”
“Right, son. You have the condom with you?”
“Yes, dad. Now I have opened the pack, and I will put it on.”
“Make sure you put it on your… you know. Not on your thumb, like you did during your practise run in Kolkata. You got that?”
“Yeah, I think I got it on right? Ekbaar dekhbe naki? You wanna see it to check?”
“NO! You stupid fool! I just hope you have got it on at the right place – (stage whisper: I thought the young kids knew better than having to ask about that, and on their honeymoon too!)”
A period of silence follows, punctuated by amorous sounds from the bride. The dad has a look of relief on his face. Then, he hears a gentle knock on the door:
“Hey, dad! You there?”
“Now what?”
“Well, I got it in all right – she seems to know quite a bit about it you know, that really helped. What do I do next?
“Whaddaya mean, what do I do next??! How many times I have told you – remember what I told you about the car engine and the piston moving in the chamber? Well, that’s what you gotta do, you idiot!”
“Yeah, right – I completely forgot!”
What follows is guaranteed to make any fond father think lovingly of the virtues of human sacrifice.
“Vroom vroom! Vroooooooooooooooom! Vroom!” – accompanied by the sounds of a car changing gears, as done by a small kid.
Let us end our eavesdropping here. Let us draw a veil on the old man sitting on one side of the door of the honeymoon suite, with his head buried in his hands, and a look of dull despair on his face. Let us also draw another veil on the young bride, who sits on the bed looking in growing desperation at this creature that runs between the bed and the door on this most special of all nights. Let us draw one more veil on the young man who sits happily on the bed emulating the sounds of a Ferrari going round Monza during a Grand Prix.
We draw the curtain on this unhappy episode in the life of Shayan Munshi. We hope that after the delirious joys of his honeymoon, he will turn to his dad for more important help – that of telling the truth which would help in bringing justice to the late Jessica Lal.
(first posted on sulekha.com on May 18 2006)
Kaavya’s road to glory
This must be the umpteenth comment on Kaavya Subramaniam’s attempt to become rich and famous. All the commentators that I have read, have taken one of three basic strains in their published views:
- Plagiarising is BAD – she should be rapped on the knuckles with something hard and knobbly, and since she is a still a teenager, she should be given an imposition of writing 50,000 times that she won’t do it again.
- She was writing chick lit, which is next door to Mills and Boon stuff, and therefore almost rubbish anyway. You don’t read M&B and chick lit expecting great plots, dramatic flow, characterisations, etc. So, we are all wasting time getting into debate about the morals and so on of this escapade.
- Whichever you way you look at it, this spells tough days ahead for Indian writers plying their trade in the US.
I think they are all missing the point.
In one of the write-ups about this whole episode, I learnt two things.
First, an executive from a publishing company said that nowadays there is no time to build up an author’s readership; an author has to hit the bestseller list first time. In order to increase chances of this happening, the publishers do market research and provide inputs to the author.
Second, I discovered the existence of functionaries called “book packagers” – I understood that they are product development consultants. They will help the author develop plots, characters, dialogues; help the publisher in the market research; position the book for specific target audiences, and mayhap even help in marketing the book.
You would have noticed that in the previous paragraph I have used terminology that would be familiar to any marketing person. The way I understand this, and at least for popular literature in the US, producing and marketing a book appears to be no different from marketing chewing gum or potato crisps. A supermarket offers dozens of brands of either to choose from – any large bookshop offers us alternative titles in the chick lit and similar other genres. Companies use market research, product development, advertising, promotion, etc to create the next chewing gum or potato crisp. What they come out with are no different from their competitors. We don’t run about shouting, “Cheats! Cheats!” when some 73 brands of potato crisps look and taste just the same.
So, why are we shouting “plagiarist” at Kaavya? She has done what the product development guys at Kraft, Unilever and other companies do. She has created a product which has a more than passing resemblance to another – the same way that one of Kraft’s products may have a more than passing resemblance with one of P&G’s. Both the companies make millions of dollars from millions of happy munchers, and nobody talks of cheating, plagiarism, and other such disreputable activities. And all the product development and marketing guys are lauded and given their hefty annual bonuses for having made the company richer.
There is another older tradition. Many businesses that are legit today began with less than legal or ethical practices. Kaavya’s first attempt at a novel may be unethical, or even totally illegal, but she is following the precepts of many business barons from the past; her efforts may be the precursor to the creation of, and continued success, of a large global enterprise. “Copycats Inc.” as the name of this enterprise suggests itself. (I must warn Kaavya that I own the IPR for this name; I am happy to sell it to her, but I don’t come cheap).
So, Kaavya, ignore all this drama. Tension nahi lene ka! Go for it, kid! And remember, if you don’t like the corporate brand name I have suggested, I shall happily create alternatives after a fuller briefing and agreement of terms. Keep at it, and for every US$ 500,000 advance they give you for unwritten books, remember that when nobody stood by you, I was there. For a reasonable fee (say 25% of each advance), I will stand by you forever.
P.S. While writing the above, I got an idea for a novel. This would be set during the French Revolution, when aristocrats and disliked neighbours were taken to the guillotine on tumbrils. There is a French woman, tentatively called Lucy Manette, who falls in love with a member of a French noble family – let’s call him Charles Darnay, just for now. Charles doesn’t know that he is related to any French noble family, because he has been brought up in London. After much drama and tension, Charles Darnay is imprisoned in Paris and sentenced to death. A London lawyer (I have named him Sidney Carton – the name came to me in a flash, just like that!) who is a dead ringer for Darnay, is in love with Lucy. He goes to the prison where Darnay is being kept under lock and key; he changes clothes with the prisoner, and helps him get away. On the fateful morning of the execution, who do we see under the guillotine but our Sid, who sacrifices his life for his great love for Lucy thereby ensuring that she lives a happy life with Darnay, and that bucketloads of tears are shed at the end of the novel and its various movie adaptations. I thought of starting the book with the sentence “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I am pretty impressed with this – I think this can become a blockbuster. Steven Spielberg would come down to Mumbai himself to negotiate the movie rights.
P.P.S: The wife just peeked over my shoulder and attempted to throw cold water on my enthusiasm. She says that some chap called Charles Dickens has already written a book called “A Tale of Two Cities” with an identical plot, and even his characters have the same names I have given mine. Young Dickens better watch it – I am, even as I write, taking advise from my lawyers. I think action lies. So what he has written the book, while I have yet to start mine. What intrigues me is how he managed to steal my idea. Any way, he is in trouble and he will pay for his sins. The fact that he is dead has nothing to do with it. Death will not protect him from my wrath and retribution.
P.P.P.S: If any of the readers of this piece is a book packager, I am happy to talk to him or her. Please contact me offline and we can strike a deal.
(First posted on sulekha.com on May 3 2006)
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
In praise of the funny men
I have just finished rereading two books – one by Parasuram and the other by James Thurber. And, like every time over the last 3 decades, I am struck by the joy and laughter that some writers and filmmakers have the capacity to spread. Age has not withered nor wisdom staled their infinite variety; with every reading, there is something that I discover, a little nuance that I had missed, a little insight that adds to my knowledge of myself.
Hence this tribute to those men who have made me a richer person. The list is not very long – P G Wodehouse, Thurber, Parasuram (aka Rajshekhar Basu), Sukumar Ray (Satyajit’s father), Douglas Adams, Don Marquis, James Stephens, Charles Chaplin, Mel Brooks, Laurel & Hardy, and a few other notables. And not a single woman in the list so far! Perhaps the hands that rock the cradle, and of course rule the world, don’t have the time to make people laugh as well.
Each one created worlds complete in themselves, and each could draw me into these worlds, convinced of their reality. The people who lived in those worlds became personal friends; their follies and foibles were as familiar to me as those of my friends and relatives on Planet Earth. And if truth be told, in some ways, and in many cases, a lot more important than such mundane issues as the prices of petrol and foodstuff, the distressing habit that bais have of giving notice every four months, and the shortage of parking space in our cities.
I encountered Wodehouse when I was a snot-nosed youth of some 10 summers – thanks to my dad, and the then price of Penguin paperbacks, all of Rs 2.50 each. Ah me! Those were the days. Rucksack on my shoulders to school and back, football and gully cricket in the afternoons, homework in the evenings, and Wodehouse at night. I discovered the world of the country homes of England, populated by impecunious young men and women who were sometimes in love and always in search of money, well-bred birds, bees of the better class, mild mannered earls, not so mild mannered dukes, aunts, butlers who were the ultimate problem-solvers, and of course, such stalwarts like Uncle Fred, Roderick Glossop, Mr Mulliner, the Oldest Member, and the denizens of the Drones.
At about the same time, again thanks to my dad, I discovered the wonderful world of Giovanni Guareschi, his village in the Po valley in Italy, with two strong protagonists – the Communist mayor, Peppone, and the local priest, Don Camillo. Natural opponents, you say. True; but on issues that matter, the staunchest of allies. Written just after the Second World War, artists were engaged with themes of destruction, reconstruction, the plight and the victory of human dignity in the battle between the two great forces of democracy and communism, the Cold War, and the emerging crises in Asia (the Korean War and the war in Indo-China). In so many cases, the worldview of the artists was bleak – to quote just one example, witness Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”, published in 1946. Not surprising, when the world was just discovering the horrors of the Nazi death camps and of Stalinist Russia. In such a time, when others found little but unrelieved gloom, Guareschi found victory of the human spirit and sentiment. (Not my words – I have forgotten who wrote this.)
James Thurber’s world was perhaps influenced by his dad, a minor politician and periodic unemployed who had dreams of being an actor or lawyer, and his mother, a strong-minded woman with a penchant for practical jokes. While my parents were, and still are, quite different, I have dreams of becoming rich and famous, and I do have a turn for the leg-pull. Hence, for me to understand the world of Walter Mitty was easy. Also, the turbulences of our lives find resonance with such tragedies as the bed falling on Thurber’s father, the flooding of Columbus, the battles of his aunt with recalcitrant water taps and electric lights, and of course, the strange behaviour of household pets like wives and dogs. His finest insight of all was the sentence: "Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead."
“Don’t panic” must be the best known advice in the world. If it isn’t, it should be. After all, these words are printed in large friendly letters on the cover of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the essential guide to modern living, in this or any other planet. Adams’ handbook taught me the importance of knowing where my towel is, where to get the best pan-galactic gargle blasters, how to avoid a Vogon spaceship while hitch hiking across space, and the price of a meal at the restaurant at the end of the universe. I also know the answer to the fundamental question of life, the universe and everything (it is 42). Wherever he is now, Douglas Adams is doubtless trying to frame the question, which he couldn’t do during his time on this planet; surely, he is being aided and abetted in his efforts by Zaphod Beeblebrox, Majikthise, and perhaps also Eccentrica Galumbits. Hail to thee, Douglas; a blithe spirit if ever there was one.
Parasuram was another such blithe spirit. His fame as Rajshekhar Basu was by virtue of being the General Manager of a large pharmaceutical company. This is far outstripped by his fame under the nom de plume of Parasuram. His satire was incisive, without being malicious, which was refreshing. I encountered such wonders of the modern world as The Automatic Shree Durgagraph, and the way to make proteins for human consumption out of grass, using an old harmonium and a long piece of rubber tubing. His poking of fun at medical practitioners and godmen strike a chord even today, what with the plethora of religious channels and medical advice (I was about to add ‘of dubious value’) available in every newspaper and magazine. And of course, like for all great writers, you get to meet some of the most unforgettable characters you are likely to run into outside of the covers of Reader’s Digest. (A point to ponder – how many readers has the magazine digested till now?).
In an essay, Wodehouse wrote about a piece from the Talmud (or maybe it was the Torah). I don’t remember it verbatim, but the essence goes like this: at the time of the final reckoning, three persons were among the first to be allowed into the kingdom of heaven, because they had the ability to make people laugh and bring joy into their lives. So now we know where all the dead funny men go. Perhaps their admirers are allowed into the same space in the fullness of time.
(Posted on sulekha.com on Apr 21 2006)
The day of the non-descript brand ambassador
There’s hope for me still. By now, the handful of you who read this blog have figured that it is my abiding passion to get into page 3 – by hook, preferably, since I can’t afford the by crook bit. Now, at last, I see light at the end of the tunnel.
Today’s Business Standard (April 3, 2006, to be exact) carries a story that says that Omega, the famous brand of watches, will rope in not-so-famous faces as brand ambassadors. The president of the company stated that they will rely on the personality cult a bit less, and will look at people who may share the perceived qualities of the watches without necessarily being famous.
That’s the stuff. That’s exactly right. Finally, the company has understood the folly of its ways – there’s no point in wasting millions of dollars paying famous people so that the aam janta remember Cindy Crawford, without remembering Omega at the same time. They can spend a fraction of that kind of money hiring me – people who see the ads will remember Omega, without remembering me. That is, the charitable among them. The rest, of course, will wonder for a while why in hell has Omega wasting their money hiring me, while they could have hired even bigger non-entities. Ah well, the world is full of churls, carpers and cavillers. We shall not waste our time thinking of them.
I am a huge football freak, and have always wondered why Christian Vieri, the Italian no-hoper of a striker, was such a star. I have seen him miss a sitter from 3 yards in front of an open goal. I mean, even I could score from there, at my advanced age (to elucidate, I am at present a spritely fifty-four). Then I figured it out – nobody else in the world could have missed from such a close range, which is why Vieri is a star. If you succeed spectacularly, you are a star. Conversely, you can be a star if you fail equally spectacularly.
Let’s examine my credentials as a brand ambassador for Omega. What are the ‘perceived qualities’ of Omega? Expensive, rugged good looks, perfection, quality. That should do as a good list to begin with. Do I share them? Let’s see. Expensive – well, I am certainly not rich, but if Omega hires me as a brand ambassador, I should be reasonably well off in the near future. So, while I can’t buy a Porsche on the money they will pay me, I guess I can buy a Honda City. So I will call myself rich, though well within the dreams of avarice. Let’s move on to rugged good looks. Rugged yes. Good looks – I am a member of that rare breed of men described by P G Wodehouse as “the less you see of us, the better we look”. You don’t stare at a damn watch all the time, do you? So there! As long as you don’t stare at me all the time, I shall pass that test. Perfection, quality – that’s me all over. I am as close to perfection as you can get and still live. Remember James Stephens, who wrote, “Perfection is finality. Finality is death. Nothing is perfect.” And I am quality – in the same way as one of ESPN football pundits talk of Liverpool being able to beat West Ham because Liverpool has quality. You can’t really define this quality business, but I know I got it. So do my wife and my son, and indeed even my parents. I got what the sainted Wodehouse used to describe as ‘je ne sais quoi’.
What’s the competition like? The same newspaper article mentions that after wasting their money on the likes of Nicole Kidman, Ernie Els, Michael Schumacher et al, they have roped in Sonali Bendre. Phooey!! She has been described as ‘a one time Bollywood starlet, who flickered only in brief patches and has settled down to matrimony and occasional appearances in plays.’
I got her beat. I didn’t get to become a Bollywood starlet (can a middle-aged male with his own hair become a starlet? Is there any way of finding out?). I have never flickered. Even when my friends are blind drunk, they see two or even three of me, but they have never seen me flicker. I still have my own hair, most of it, so ‘patches’ don’t apply to me. I have also settled down to matrimony. I make constant appearances in plays that take place daily in my house. These are all experimental in nature – there are no pre-written scripts, we improvise them as we go along. One evening it could be about the advisability of writing blogs, anon it could be about how adding Rooh Afzah can kill the taste of vodka; from such simple beginnings to Shakespearian soliloquies about youth wasted on an undeserving husband are but simple steps.
I seriously think that Omega can find no better candidate than me for their new not-so-famous-faces ad campaign. Since I had spent a quarter of a century in advertising, they can even take advantage of my knowledge of that arcane art by hiring me as their brand ambassador. This is what we marketing men call a banded offer.
And when I become a brand ambassador for Omega, they will have to feature me in their ad and PR campaign, opening stores, cutting ribbons, admiring their latest additional to the line on my wrist (do brand ambassadors get free watches? The whole catalogue, I shouldn’t wonder). Naturally, I will have to be featured in page 3 of all the big newspapers; however much the editors may dislike having to do so, they cannot afford to displease Omega. That’ll learn them, that’ll show them that they can’t keep a good man off page 3 forever.
I know that after reading this, many of you will think of throwing your hat in the ring, and send off cvs and photos to Omega. I have stymied the lot of you by sending in my application early this morning.
Heh heh heh!!!
(Posted on sulekha.com on Apr 3 2006 )
Today’s Business Standard (April 3, 2006, to be exact) carries a story that says that Omega, the famous brand of watches, will rope in not-so-famous faces as brand ambassadors. The president of the company stated that they will rely on the personality cult a bit less, and will look at people who may share the perceived qualities of the watches without necessarily being famous.
That’s the stuff. That’s exactly right. Finally, the company has understood the folly of its ways – there’s no point in wasting millions of dollars paying famous people so that the aam janta remember Cindy Crawford, without remembering Omega at the same time. They can spend a fraction of that kind of money hiring me – people who see the ads will remember Omega, without remembering me. That is, the charitable among them. The rest, of course, will wonder for a while why in hell has Omega wasting their money hiring me, while they could have hired even bigger non-entities. Ah well, the world is full of churls, carpers and cavillers. We shall not waste our time thinking of them.
I am a huge football freak, and have always wondered why Christian Vieri, the Italian no-hoper of a striker, was such a star. I have seen him miss a sitter from 3 yards in front of an open goal. I mean, even I could score from there, at my advanced age (to elucidate, I am at present a spritely fifty-four). Then I figured it out – nobody else in the world could have missed from such a close range, which is why Vieri is a star. If you succeed spectacularly, you are a star. Conversely, you can be a star if you fail equally spectacularly.
Let’s examine my credentials as a brand ambassador for Omega. What are the ‘perceived qualities’ of Omega? Expensive, rugged good looks, perfection, quality. That should do as a good list to begin with. Do I share them? Let’s see. Expensive – well, I am certainly not rich, but if Omega hires me as a brand ambassador, I should be reasonably well off in the near future. So, while I can’t buy a Porsche on the money they will pay me, I guess I can buy a Honda City. So I will call myself rich, though well within the dreams of avarice. Let’s move on to rugged good looks. Rugged yes. Good looks – I am a member of that rare breed of men described by P G Wodehouse as “the less you see of us, the better we look”. You don’t stare at a damn watch all the time, do you? So there! As long as you don’t stare at me all the time, I shall pass that test. Perfection, quality – that’s me all over. I am as close to perfection as you can get and still live. Remember James Stephens, who wrote, “Perfection is finality. Finality is death. Nothing is perfect.” And I am quality – in the same way as one of ESPN football pundits talk of Liverpool being able to beat West Ham because Liverpool has quality. You can’t really define this quality business, but I know I got it. So do my wife and my son, and indeed even my parents. I got what the sainted Wodehouse used to describe as ‘je ne sais quoi’.
What’s the competition like? The same newspaper article mentions that after wasting their money on the likes of Nicole Kidman, Ernie Els, Michael Schumacher et al, they have roped in Sonali Bendre. Phooey!! She has been described as ‘a one time Bollywood starlet, who flickered only in brief patches and has settled down to matrimony and occasional appearances in plays.’
I got her beat. I didn’t get to become a Bollywood starlet (can a middle-aged male with his own hair become a starlet? Is there any way of finding out?). I have never flickered. Even when my friends are blind drunk, they see two or even three of me, but they have never seen me flicker. I still have my own hair, most of it, so ‘patches’ don’t apply to me. I have also settled down to matrimony. I make constant appearances in plays that take place daily in my house. These are all experimental in nature – there are no pre-written scripts, we improvise them as we go along. One evening it could be about the advisability of writing blogs, anon it could be about how adding Rooh Afzah can kill the taste of vodka; from such simple beginnings to Shakespearian soliloquies about youth wasted on an undeserving husband are but simple steps.
I seriously think that Omega can find no better candidate than me for their new not-so-famous-faces ad campaign. Since I had spent a quarter of a century in advertising, they can even take advantage of my knowledge of that arcane art by hiring me as their brand ambassador. This is what we marketing men call a banded offer.
And when I become a brand ambassador for Omega, they will have to feature me in their ad and PR campaign, opening stores, cutting ribbons, admiring their latest additional to the line on my wrist (do brand ambassadors get free watches? The whole catalogue, I shouldn’t wonder). Naturally, I will have to be featured in page 3 of all the big newspapers; however much the editors may dislike having to do so, they cannot afford to displease Omega. That’ll learn them, that’ll show them that they can’t keep a good man off page 3 forever.
I know that after reading this, many of you will think of throwing your hat in the ring, and send off cvs and photos to Omega. I have stymied the lot of you by sending in my application early this morning.
Heh heh heh!!!
(Posted on sulekha.com on Apr 3 2006 )
The malfunctioning of wardrobes
I write this with a lot of bitterness, not to mention sorrow.
Many years ago, I used to get invited to parties that I looked forward to going to. Nowadays, nobody asks me out to those kind of parties; and the parties I am invited out to, nobody, not even I would like to go to. The reasons are not far to see: I am not rich, I am far from being bright, and not even my wife would call me handsome. As a result, the chances of my ever getting into any page 3 of any newspaper in India are slim. And therein lies the rub.
Unless you are a page 3 number, you don’t get invited to fashion shows. I don’t mean any of the so-called fashion shows which take place in the local girls college, building society, etc – I mean the real thing, like the Lakme fashion week, and the big numbers where page 3 designers show off their creations.
And unless you get to these big shows, you don’t get to encounter the latest marketing strategy, the malfunctioning wardrobe. This really bugs me. For months, I was a dedicated student of the Lingerie Show on Fashion TV – until the local cable fellow took it off his menu, instigated by my wife and other ladies of our society. As part of my education, I think I have acquired the right balance of interest and dissimulation required to appreciate the virtues of malfunctioning wardrobes. But, to my sorrow, I am left out from the arena where I could have contributed so much.
There are some hypotheses, discussed in media, about the regularity of wardrobe malfunctions in the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai (March-April 2006). I present a few of them, which my friends, who feel similarly left out, and I have discussed:
- This is a strategy devised to drive off competition – defined as the fashion week going on simultaneously in New Delhi. When Mumbai promises that the assets of supermodels may be on display at any moment, why should anybody pay attention to New Delhi, which is not making a competitive brand promise?
- It is a strategy devised in conjunction with media, who have no news happening. Look at their predicament: Sonia Gandhi can’t resign every day; the office of profit issue is old hat; we have got used to the failure of the top order batting of our cricket team; and Sania Mirza’s stasis in the 40s of the ranking list is not exciting any more. So, how does media fill up space and time?
- One of the big TV channels is coming out with a new reality show – the pilot programme is being shot during the Lakme fashion show. The show is called “U got what it takes?”
- The big fashion labels are going in for a hefty price hike. This will be supported by a marketing strategy centred on the concept of “guaranteed wardrobe malfunction”. This is a globally winning strategy. Consider this: if you could promise your customer that each dress is guaranteed to malfunction, via remote control, thereby guaranteeing the customer lots of photo-ops for page 3s, why should said customer want to buy competition? Just wearing your designer label would guarantee that the customer becomes a page 3 number. No price is too high to pay for such eminence. You could throw in a 12-month guarantee period, a 3-year AMC (carry in, or onsite), and … All you marketing guys out there will find new and fabulous ideas to take this forward.
I love the last hypothesis myself, primarily since it is mine. I am open to offers from the large fashion houses. Of course, I am not cheap; but I will show some consideration, since this could by my passport to page 3.
Cheers, boys and girls; will tell you how this strategy pans out.
(Posted on sulekha.com on Apr 1 2006.)
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