Death Ends Fun

Song of the Dodo, Resident of the Moon

2020-09-26T11:59:00.003+05:30

So I just finished David Quammen’s The Song of the Dodo. An intricate, fascinating, sweeping book on many different levels that I highly recommend. My mother wrote a review of it years ago, and I made a mental note then to read it. Only, it’s been on my shelf the last 20+ years and I finally yanked it off only last month and read it.

There’s plenty in the book that resonated, particularly the long sections about Madagascar which brought back so many memories of the months I spent travelling there. But I wanted to share with you one sentence from the book. It’s in Indonesian (Bahasa), a language Quammen only knows bits and pieces of.

He visits a remote Indonesian island chain called Aru in search of a bird of paradise. Now there are many species of this bird, but the one he is in search of here is Paradisaea apoda, the greater bird of paradise, the lovely creature in the picture above.

There’s a whole story to be told about why he searches, and why Aru — all that, I’ll save for another time (better, please read the book). But it takes him, early one morning, across a stretch of mangroves and up a muddy slope to reach a particular tree.

And as he gets close to the tree, he hears a “chorus of squawking” like “a truckload of hysterical geese”. Even his otherwise cynical and laconic Indonesian guide Jimmy, writes Quammen, “seems thrilled” by the sound.

Jimmy says: “Suda, suara cenderawasih.”

“Already, the song of the cenderawasih.”

If you read the book and absorb all that Quammen discusses, you might agree with me that it is a deeply moving, hopeful, profound thing that Jimmy says. Not least because of where it appears in the book. (Yes, you should read it).

But for now, I wanted to share the delight that a special someone pointed me to in the line. For which, I need to tell you that “cenderawasih” is pronounced more or less as written except that the “c” is said “ch”, and that it is the Bahasa name for these utterly beautiful birds.

Knowing that much, look again at the line and its translation. What can you tell about those words? (OK, it helps to know a little Hindi).

(Photo from here)

Peculiar events in a lockdown

2020-05-24T17:37:00.003+05:30

Allow me to list here a few of the more peculiar events of the last several days. I mean, there have been many, and don’t get the idea that these are the most peculiar. I picked them out at random.

* A woman is desperate to get to her home in a distant corner of India. She has her father with her. She chooses her only option: to cycle home. 1200 km, with him riding pillion. You don’t need me to tell you that this is just one more wrenching story from this migrant tragedy that we have blundered into. You’ve seen and read about many many others like this pair.

But what happens with this one? A cycling federation announces that they will call her in for trials, once this lockdown lifts. Ivanka Trump (!) praises her “beautiful” love for her father and the federation’s announcement. Voila: one strand in this blanket of migrant misery has been successfully painted as a heartwarming story of guts and glory that — believe! Just do it! — may even bring India Olympic glory one day!

* PM Modi flew to West Bengal to get a first-hand look at the devastation caused by cyclone Amphan, a great natural disaster. As he should, of course.

PM Modi has also been flying all over the country to get a first-hand look at the devastation caused by the lockdown — the streams of desperate migrants on foot and in concrete mixers and being hosed down with bleach and more, of course — a great manmade disaster. As he should, of course.

But wait. Oops. My mistake. Only one of those flights actually happened.

* PM Modi flew to West Bengal to get a first-hand look at the devastation caused by cyclone Amphan, a great natural disaster. He was met at the airport by the state’s governor, one Jagdeep Dhankar. Two photos have emerged of that meeting and a subsequent one between the two men: this one and this one.

Take a look, for the governor’s posture in both says everything you need to know about him. And I need say no more.

* Out for walks last evening and this morning, I ran into a substantial crowd both times — on foot, scooters, cars, cycles — outside a particular store. I’m talking easily a hundred people, all male. Many without masks. Distancing? Forget it. The owner of the store must have been anticipating trouble, because standing outside the entrance were two hefty bouncers in deep blue shirts, wielding long sticks.

Curiously, the store itself was actually closed. Both times. Were these men waiting for it to open? Likely, but why so long? (Last evening the crowd was nearly unchanged twice that I passed during my walk, 45 minutes apart).

So what does this store sell? Liquor.

There’s a commentary buried in there, I suspect. (Full disclosure: I love my vodka and rum).

Turned to beggars, one by one

2020-05-18T23:10:00.001+05:30

My friend Nity walked with some migrants. So have some others. Through their accounts, I know second-hand what so many of my fellow-Indians are reduced to in this time of lockdown.

But I also know simply by looking out my window on any given evening, and these days I don’t even need to look, I just need to keep an ear peeled. First-hand knowledge, too. On any given evening, there are anywhere between 25 and 40 people scattered around the nearby junction, waiting for food. From a distance, the women sit like so many dhobi-bundles, the men stalk about like long-legged storks. There seem to be occasional random generous people who stop and hand out food, but there’s clearly also an organized effort by young men on scooters. Two on each, the pillion man facing backwards to make the hand out go more smoothly. I once stopped to ask them who they were: residents of the nearby fishing “village”, really a densely-populated collection of ramshackle and not-so-ramshackle houses. A slum pocket, really. “We just decided to bring food for these people daily,” a pillion rider told me. "These people and watchmen in all these buildings, some of them are not getting any food. Then his partner revved their scooter and they sped off to the south, off to offer food to some others who needed it.

My ear now knows too. Because every evening, a cop comes by on a gleaming Bullet mobike, stops in the middle of the junction and uses his horn liberally to scatter the small horde. Some evenings he goes on with this for a couple of hours: the people he shoos away seem to want to come back almost immediately. From my window, I can see some of them remonstrating with him.

Who are these people and what’s to become of them?

Then there’s our pal A who sells us vegetables at the same corner, and our pal G who operates a taxi and who waits for business at, yes, that same corner too. Both have come by in recent times to ask for a little cash, their shame and anguish at needing to ask evident even through their masks.

What’s to become of us if a lockdown turns too many of us into beggars? Beggars that cops must be deputed to disperse? Beggars who wait for food?

That awful moment of parity between the religions

2020-01-26T08:49:00.002+05:30

I've covered the ground in this essay before, but two things: 1) It bears repeating, it bears repeating, because the myth it seeks to debunk keeps getting regurgitated. 2) I thought I'd explain the actual mathematics behind the debunking.

So here you are. Myth: Muslims are soon going to outnumber Hindus in India. Debunking: below.

***

Myths need busting, and often over and over again. Often too, it’s a futile exercise, because to some, the myths are more seductive than any busting. Yet especially in this fog of accusations and hatred we’re living through right now in this country — the wrangle over the CAA and NRC, I mean — it’s especially important to keep on with the busting. I’m going to attempt just that in this column, but by using some of what this column is about: mathematics.

I’m repeatedly amazed at how much of the defence of the new Act is couched in terms of extreme hatred of Muslims. That by itself should be a red flag, a sign of something amiss. Yet the hatred keeps flowing. And too often, it finds expression in population numbers. Muslims are increasing their numbers, goes this argument, much faster than Hindus. Which means, goes this argument, that the time is just around the corner when Muslims will outnumber Hindus in India.

This is supposed to be a terrifying thought. One scare-monger spelled out his fears about this in an article, long before we had even heard of the CAA: “Non-Muslims now rarely venture into areas of India where Muslims are in large numbers, fearing unpredictable, irrational behaviour or violence directed at them.” Given that kind of fear, the prospect of Muslims actually outnumbering Hindus in this land, this man wanted his readers to believe, is self-evidently a horrible one for us all.

Well, it is indeed a horrible prospect, but not for the reason the haters like him hold tight to their puny chests. Let me explain, using numbers we actually have rather than empty rhetorical flourishes like “where Muslims are in large numbers”.

In August 2015, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner released population data by religion from India’s 2011 Census. Taken from there, consider the population growth of the various religions in the decade 2001-2011. The Hindu population increased by 16.8% in those ten years, Muslim by 24.6%, Christian 15.5%, Sikh 8.4%, Buddhist 6.1% and Jain 5.4%. The result, as of 2011, was that 79.8% of Indians were Hindu and 14.2% Muslim. Other faiths each accounted for far smaller fractions of our population, which the Census found was just over 1.2 billion.

That is, in 2011 we had about 958 million Hindus in India, and 170 million Muslims.

With me so far? Now if we assume the same growth rates persist (which we cannot, but I’ll return to that) — 16.8% per decade for Hindus, 24.6% for Muslims — we can project both populations to the time in the future when Muslim numbers will equal Hindus. When will that be?

To answer that, we need some relatively elementary, if a little involved, arithmetic. Bear with me as I explain.

Here’s the issue: the 958 million Hindus are growing at a rate of 16.8% every decade, and the 170 million Muslims at 24.6% every decade. One decade from now (or actually from 2011, but let’s not quibble), the two populations will have increased by these amounts:

Hindus: 958m x 16.8% = 161m
Muslims: 170m x 24.6% = 42m

That is, one decade from now the respective populations will be:

Hindus: 958m + 161m = 958m x 1.168 = 1.119 billion
Muslims: 170m + 42m = 170m x 1.246 = 212m

Since we assumed the growth rates don’t change, we can do just the same calculation for the decade that follows. The increments in those ten years will be:

Hindus: 1.119b x 16.8% = 188m
Muslims: 212m x 24.6% = 52m

And thus the respective populations two decades from now:

Hindus: 1.119b + 188m = 1.119b x 1.168 = 958m x 1.168² = 1.307b
Muslims: 212m + 52m = 212m x 1.246 = 170m x 1.246² = 264m

We could keep doing these laborious calculations for decade after decade, of course, searching after every iteration for the point when Muslim numbers will equal Hindus. But no doubt you recognize this growth as equivalent to the notion of compound interest — and we know how to calculate that. Thus, three decades from now, the populations will be:

Hindus: 958m x 1.168³
Muslims: 170m x 1.246³

And to generalize this, some number “n” decades from now, the populations will be:

Hindus: 958m x 1.168ⁿ
Muslims: 170m x 1.246ⁿ

So now we ask, for what value of n will these two be equal? That is, we want:

958m x 1.168ⁿ = 170m x 1.246ⁿ

Rearrange this equation:

958/170 = (1.246/1.168)ⁿ, or 5.635 = 1.067ⁿ

I wouldn’t hold it against you if your eyes are glazing over by now. Lots of calculations, I know. But we’re almost done. Your high-school mathematics memories will tell you that at this point, we use logarithms, and that gives us:

log 5.635 = n x log 1.067, or n = log 5.635 / log1.067 = 27.

There we have it. At those growth rates, it will take 27 decades, or 270 years, for the Muslim population to catch up to the Hindus.That is, the hate-mongers are quaking in their shabby boots — and asking us to do so as well — about something that will happen as we, or actually our descendants many generations over, close in on the 24th Century. Are you really going to worry about what might happen in the year 2290 AD?

But even if the haters do quake about that, let’s ask another question: assuming these growth rates, how many Hindus and Muslims will there be in India in 2290? In other words, what is 958m x 1.168²⁷?

Answer: 64 billion. 64 billion Hindus and 64 billion Muslims. Think of it. This, in a nation that today has a total of 1.3 billion Indians. This, meaning 100 Indians for every single Indian living today: 100 Indians crowding that spot where you sit reading this, 100 Indians jostling for the tiny standing space you occupy in the 8:27 Churchgate fast, 100 Indians sharing one seat to watch Deepika Padukone in a rerun of Chhapaak, just as they were going to do this week. This, and remember we have not accounted for Christians and Sikhs and Buddhists and other varieties of Indians, not forgetting other denizens of India such as cows and dogs, cars and bookshelves, trees and playgrounds.

This is the mirage-like prospect that a deep-seated hatred drives people to dream up and fear.

The truth should be apparent. The really horrible, fearful prospect is not that Muslims will outnumber Hindus. Instead, it’s that hundred-fold increase the calculations above suggest. If we are actually going to rack up numbers like those, we will have died out from overcrowding long before getting to that moment in 2290 AD, that dreadful prospect of Hindu-Muslim parity.

And here’s what makes that prospect even more mirage-like. The reality is that we cannot assume the same growth rates — Hindu 16.8%, Muslim 24.6% — will hold indefinitely. In the earlier decade, 1991-2001, Census 2001 figures showed that the Hindu and Muslim populations increased by 19.9% and 29.5%, respectively. Those numbers decreased to 16.8% and 24.6%, respectively. Obvious from those numbers is that growth rates are decreasing. There’s nothing unusual here; this is exactly what happens as a country develops. (Note too that the Muslim growth rate declined faster, decade to decade, than the Hindu growth rate). So since the country has continued to develop since the 2011 Census, the 2021 Census will certainly show further declines in these growth rates. That means even greater population projections than 64 billion, an even longer time to population parity than 270 years.

Welcome to the overcrowded wasteland of 25th Century India, perhaps. The pity is that the hatred in too many of us reduces us to such a wasteland right now.

Srinivasa Ramanujan: The 1729 Man

2019-01-25T06:57:00.002+05:30

A math column I wrote in December 2012 for Mint, reprised here.

***

What I've been doing all morning is, I've been trying to come up with some numerically interesting factoid about the number 125. It's what you get when you cube 5 (5 x 5 x 5, or 5^3), but that's kind of ordinary, no? Well, you can write it as the sum of two squares in two different ways:

2 x 2 + 11 x 11 = 4 + 121 = 125
5 x 5 + 10 x 10 = 25 + 100 = 125

Now that's promising. But is 125 the smallest number that can be so expressed? No, because 65 is the sum of the squares of 1 and 8, as well as the squares of 4 and 7.

Hmm. Maybe 125 is the smallest cube that can be written as the sum of two squares in two different ways? It certainly is! Now we're talking!

Yet what exactly are we talking? And why am I pursuing this pointless pastime?

Well, the great mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan would have been 125 tomorrow, December 22nd. Mathematicians all over India -- and indeed the world -- are celebrating his life. Delhi, for example, hosted a major international Ramanujan conference this week. And I suspect all who attended -- anyone, in fact, who knows something about Ramanujan -- will know the story about him that prompted my quest with 125.

This story: he was in hospital in Putney, England. In walked GH Hardy, his mentor and a fine mathematician in his own right. He told Ramanujan that he had come in a cab whose number, 1729, "seemed to me rather a dull one." (I get the feeling Hardy and Ramanujan rather liked playing around with numbers).

The sick Ramanujan disagreed. "Oh no, not at all!" he said. "It is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of two cubes in two different ways!"

Of course he was right. Here are the two ways:

1^3 + 12^3 = 1 + 1728 = 1729
9^3 + 10^3 = 729 + 1000 = 1729

And 1729 is indeed the smallest such number. And because of this incident, it is now known as the Ramanujan-Hardy number.

What touches me about this story is though Ramanujan was seriously ill that day, he was sharp enough to remember, and tell Hardy, this little nugget about a random number Hardy mentioned. And so, to mark his 125th birthday, I thought it only fitting to search for some nugget like that about 125. (Seeing as I've got other plans for his 1729th birthday).

Though I think I have to admit: 1729 is a more interesting number than 125.

Ramanujan's life-story is too well-known for me to spell it out here. Suffice it to say that when this clerk in Madras sent some of his homespun mathematical research to Hardy in 1913, Hardy saw genius in it and invited Ramanujan to work with him at Cambridge. What followed was an intensely productive five-year collaboration and friendship between these two remarkable men. For me, something of that relationship is captured in a famous tale about how Hardy rated his own and other mathematicians' raw talent for mathematics. On a scale of 0 to 100, Hardy awarded himself 25. And Ramanujan? 100.

But despite Hardy's respect, England took a toll on Ramanujan's health. In 1919, he returned to India. In April 1920, at just 32, he died.

I wouldn't presume to dissect Ramanujan's mathematical work here. The great majority of it ranges far beyond both my understanding and ability to explain. But what I do understand are his efforts to calculate the value of $π$ (pi) that intangible number that tells us the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Much like Roger Federer used to rack up Grand Slam tennis titles, Ramanujan churned out formulae (the better word is series) to calculate $π$ . One of them turns out to look like this:

1/ $π$ = 5/16 + 376/65536 + 19224/268435456 …

Take my word for it: those three terms alone give a value for $π$ accurate enough for most purposes you might imagine. Other Ramanujan formulae have been used to calculate $π$ to millions of digits after the decimal point.

All of which is fascinating and remarkable enough. Yet to a layabout like me, Ramanujan's real appeal lies in that story about 1729. Because in a quiet yet substantial way, it speaks for the way his mind worked. It speaks of his curiosity and passion for numbers and mathematics. It tells me that when you constantly search for and find wonder in the smallest things -- who would have thought, 1729? -- you prime yourself for greater things. And Ramanujan achieved some great things indeed.

That's the lesson I take from the life of this young genius from Kumbakonam.

As of last year, his birthday is observed as National Mathematics Day in India. So celebrate it tomorrow. Celebrate an exceptional mind. And if you stumble on something interesting about 125, please let me know.

The watch and the film star

2016-02-29T22:53:00.000+05:30

The question I have is, should I blame the film star? I played tennis with him this evening. Good session, apart from two things.

One, I can't get my mind to trust my right knee enough while running, even though I feel no pain in it. Hard to explain or understand, but there it is. So I can't get my footwork right, so I can't get my shots right. So that was frustrating.

Two, I served only double-faults. I'm not proud.

Session done, I walked back to the apartment. Looked at the time and noticed that my watch had a small film of water droplets inside the glass. Which sometimes happens if I have been sweating a lot. I usually put it under a table lamp for five or ten minutes and it clears. Trouble is, no table lamp in this apartment.

I looked for alternatives. Found a lamp on the wall that would do the job, except nowhere to place the watch near enough to it. So I hit on possibly the most brilliant idea I've had in my entire life to date: let's wrap the watch around the bulb.

Which I did, and went off to have a shower.

When I emerged, there was a slight but definite burning smell. I couldn't place it, so I put it down to my hyperactive imagination.

But then I remembered. Ran over to the lamp. Strap totally melted, some of it is still stuck firmly to the bulb. Watch partially melted and badly warped -- or in a word, destroyed. Stuck forever at 732. My favourite watch too, a bright blue face with a single big "2" on it.

Hard to comprehend just how stupid I was, doing this. But there you are. Watchless for the next couple of weeks. Brainless, always. And no, I can't blame him.

John and the phone scam

2015-06-23T14:17:00.001+05:30

My university buddy John wrote recently from the States. He has found an intriguing way to ... well, perhaps I'll just let him explain. Here is his mail, verbatim.

***

Hi Dilip,

There is a phone scam that has been going around in the US for a number of years. Someone calls (always from an Indian call center with a lot of noise in the background) saying they are from Microsoft, and they noticed that your PC is spewing out packets and harming the performance of the Internet. They then ask you to walk through a sequence of steps that if done would give someone the ability to completely control your Windows machine remotely and install all sorts of malware and what not.

The first time they called me I had been taking a nap, so I naively asked which of my machines was causing the problem, and told them I have Mac computers so it could not be me. After I hung up, I Googled to see what the exact scam entailed and it made sense.

Since then, I've had great fun toying with these guys, and there is a connection to you.

I pretend that I am following their commands, and they ask me to bring a command line prompt and tell them what I see. Then they ask me to type stuff and tell them what I see. At a certain point, I tell them "the screen says B H E N C H O D.... What does that mean?" They are astonished and asked me to read it back three or four times. Then they get really angry. I've been called a "bloody bastard" and more.

The connection is that you taught me this word and its meaning more than 30 years ago, and said that it is quite powerful. You were right!!! :-)

This just happened again on Friday. The caller denied knowing what the phrase meant, even though he was clearly rattled. I told him I would Google it "to see what this error message stood for". I then said "it says you are a sister f******". He then insisted that the "you" in the Google result referred to me and not him. I could barely contain myself, and pretended to Google it again, and said "no, it is saying that it refers to you" and he got even more upset.

This is a really sinister thing they are doing, so I don't mind wasting their time.

Thanks for teaching me that phrase! :-)

John

What if they gave a triple-century and noone came?

2015-06-19T23:44:00.000+05:30

The new issue of Wisden's quarterly of cricket essays and long-form writing, The Nightwatchman, is out. I have an essay in it, about watching the Ranji Trophy final at the Wankhede Stadium in Bombay last March.

Sadly, the issue is only available in print or e-book versions. You can buy it at their website, which I urge you to do. But I'm hoping you'd like to read my essay -- it is appended below.

Comments welcome!

***

What if they gave a triple-century and noone came?

The Ranji final in a time of the World Cup

When Karun Nair got to 300, late on the third day, I looked around and counted as best I could. It wasn’t hard. The great majority of cheering spectators was in the Sunil Gavaskar Stand alongside me, but a small, disproportionately vociferous lot was to our left in the Divecha Stand – between us and the pavilion, where the cricketers emerged from and disappeared into. But don’t be fooled by that phrase “great majority”: in a stadium that can seat something like 35,000, those present here numbered about… 125.

If Nair had scored two runs for each man – the audience was mostly male – who watched him reach his triple ton, he would not have reached it. Luckily he didn’t approach his task quite like that. But that count might just have summed up this match.

There were other ways the lack of interest in the 2015 Ranji Trophy final hit me. The first morning (8 March), for example, I arrived at the Wankhede Stadium at 9.15am – 15 minutes before the start. The gate was locked and a guard in a smart dark-blue uniform asked why I was there. “For the Ranji match,” I said. “Ah, but then you might as well go have some tea and take a nap,” he replied. “The match won’t start till about 10.30 or 11.” When I told him the scheduled start was 9.30, he looked disbelieving, but reluctantly opened the gate for me. I was the first fan in the Gavaskar Stand, though Divecha had an already voluble handful, waving green and gold flags.

Two days later, I arrived at the stadium ten minutes before the start. How many in the stadium, you think? Not just in my stand, but in the whole complete stadium. Including me, the count was – get this – one. Have you ever been the sole spectator in a massive stadium? It’s breathtaking. I urge you to try it. Maybe at next year’s Ranji final.

This dearth of fans has persisted at Ranji games despite tickets being free, which by itself says something about the state of long-form cricket in India. The Ranji final is effectively the Super Bowl of domestic cricket, but those who run Indian cricket know they cannot ask would-be attendees to cough up even a nominal amount – there’d be no attendees at all then. So it’s free, but the administrators are stingy about where they allow us freeloaders to sit: only in the east (Gavaskar) stand, subject to the fierce afternoon sun, and side-on to the pitch so there’s no way to get a sense of bowlers’ spin or swing.

Imagine the Wankhede as the face of a watch, with the pavilion at 9 o’clock. Throughout this match, the arc from 9 clockwise to 6 had absolutely nobody in it. The arc from 6 (where I sat) clockwise back to 9 had – at its most crowded – 150 spectators.

Thus did Karnataka and Tamil Nadu do battle for the Ranji Trophy. Which itself brought on one last niggle about those who run Indian cricket: why did they schedule this match at, of all places, a neutral venue like the Wankhede? Why not in Bangalore or Chennai, where home-team enthusiasm, if nothing else, might have swelled the crowd to – dream big, son! – 200?

***

It’s now commonplace to bemoan the steady sidelining of the Ranji Trophy. How is this sedate form of the game to compete with the razzmatazz of the IPL? (No free entry to IPL games, in case you were wondering.) Or with the World Cup, going on at the time in Australia and New Zealand?

The short answer has got to be: there really is no competition. I found that out for myself the night before the game started. A friend was over for dinner and I mentioned my cricket-watching plans. “Oh, so you’ll see all those cheerleaders, then?” she asked. (Let’s leave aside her cricket illiteracy on several counts.) When I explained there would be no cheerleaders, she wrinkled her nose and looked bewildered: “Why are you going, then?”

Was this a commentary on cricket: without cheerleaders, this match could hardly be much of a spectacle? Or was this a commentary on me: she could not believe I would make the effort to attend an event free of cheerleaders?

Either way, the point was made: the Ranji tournament – even the final – interests few. This is a difficult pill to swallow when I wallow, as I often do, in the nostalgia of too many days of my youth spent listening to cricket on the radio. All long-form then, of course. My Rajasthan college campus came to a standstill, I remember, for a few days in the mid-1970s when Delhi hosted Bombay in a Ranji final. I no longer recall who scored and who picked up wickets. I do remember several stellar names in both teams: Gavaskar, the Mankad brothers, Solkar, Gidwani, Bedi, the Amarnath brothers, Madan Lal. Bombay won a gripping, seesawing match in front of a full house whose baying we could hear, on our tinny medium-wave sets, all the way in Rajasthan. The match divided the campus right down the middle: the guy in the room behind me was a Delhi fanatic who yelled good-natured abuse at me in the middle of the night through the little grille that separated our rooms. Staunch Bombay fan that I was, I went one-up – I flung eggs through the same grille. Ah, the passions the Ranji Trophy aroused. Once.

Though both have impressive Ranji résumés, neither Bombay nor Delhi made it to the final in 2015. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, fierce southern rivals, did. Both teams were also stacked with stellar names: Murali Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, L Balaji, Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Robin Uthappa. If this had been the mid-1970s all over again, they’d have played in front of another baying full house. But when you have 150 or fewer, the baying is rather muted.

***

The elephant in the room – or at the Wankhede – was that the Ranji final happened smack in the middle of the World Cup. So the stands were empty not only because cricket fans have lost interest in the Ranji Trophy, but also because they were following goings-on – 50 overs at a time – in faraway Australia and New Zealand. So it was a wonder by itself that, during the World Cup, as many as 150 people turned up to watch a Ranji game. That wonder was what pulled me to the Wankhede.

Most of the much-anticipated league matches of the Cup – India–Pakistan, Australia–New Zealand, Australia–England – were done by the time the Ranji final came around. But there were still games every day, including an India game (against Ireland) on the third. I travelled to the Wankhede each morning feeling slightly sorry for these Karnataka and Tamil Nadu cricketers – some of whom had probably hoped to be playing for India, all of whom probably wanted to watch Cup games on TV. How were they going to focus instead on this match?

In the asking of that question lies the certainty that I’m not – could never have been – a professional cricketer. Cup or no Cup, these 22 men played out an intense match filled with superb batting, bowling and fielding performances, including a spectacular reflex catch at silly point that made me long for an instant replay. One-sided though the match was – a Karnataka victory seeming inevitable as early as the second day – there was verve and vigour on display throughout.

But if that described the players’ approach to the game, the audience cared significantly less. Day one passed with regular updates about the nearly simultaneous Australia–Sri Lanka game, an evidently more attractive proposition than either this match or New Zealand–Afghanistan, also that day. Amid the regular sharing of scores in the stands, a friend sent me a text: “Maxwell going berserk against SL!” My beeping phone caught the attention of a thick-set older man nearby. “What’s the score?” he asked, automatically assuming that if I was getting text messages while watching the cricket, they must be about the World Cup.

If Maxwell was going berserk somewhere in Australia that day, Vinay Kumar and his merry Karnataka men were running roughshod over Tamil Nadu. Wickets fell with depressing regularity. Normally that’s the kind of cricket I like – give me regular wickets any day over batsmen dominating the game. But perhaps my otherwise-dormant Tamil roots made this procession disheartening. Only their captain and opener, Mukund, showed any spunk. A curious inwardly-bent right knee is his initial movement as the ball leaves the bowler’s hand. Surely not what the coaches suggest? But he defended well – and stroked several boundaries too – on his way to 35. He must have been dismayed, though, as he watched teammate after teammate capitulate. Across the aisle from where I was sitting, three Tamil speakers who had travelled from Madras (they used their city’s old name) were reduced to glum automatons after a vocal and cheery start. They shook their heads in silence, despair mounting with each wicket. Tamil Nadu subsided to 134 – a barely adequate score in T20, let alone the five-day game. After this first-innings train-wreck, their hopes of winning the Trophy hung by a fingernail.

But Tamil Nadu perked up within the hour, as did the men who had travelled from Madras. Their fast bowler L Balaji – best known for his feats during India’s tour of Pakistan in 2004 – carved through Karnataka’s top order. It was probably his wide, ready smile that endeared him to our western neighbours: he was the most popular member of that team, “Balaji, Balaji” screamed by full-throated crowds at every Pakistani stadium. He had a reasonably good tour, but hasn’t played much for India since. Today, with his gentle run-up and explosion through the crease, he worked up some serious pace to take three wickets – his pacer partner Parameswaran took one – leaving Karnataka, at an overnight score 49 for 4, pondering the vicissitudes of cricket. One afternoon, you’re walking on cloud nine because you’ve gone through Tamil Nadu like a knife through hot butter. Not long after, Tamil Nadu returns the favour.

***

The next morning, though, things don’t start well. Not in the stands, not out in the field for Tamil Nadu. I reach the Wankhede as the first over of the day ends, turn to two young men fiddling with smartphones and ask: “Who bowled that over?”

One responds: “Kya maloom, sab toh kale dikhte hain!” (“Who knows, they all look black!”)

When I express some disgust at this, his friend rounds on me: “What, are you from Tamil Nadu? Who do you support?” There’s the implication that, being dark myself, I must back those darkies from TN. Whatever.

In the middle, Karun Nair and Abhimanyu Mithun, the nightwatchman, hold firm. The Tamil Nadu fielders clap each other’s efforts, urging their bowlers on to make inroads into Karnataka beyond 49 for 4. But the score chugs along smoothly, Mithun responsible for most of it.

About half an hour into the day, a large group of boys in school uniform appears behind me. “Who’s playing?” they ask of no one in particular. The skin-obsessives have a swift reply: “It’s India and Pakistan, playing a Test match.” Much backslapping and chortling that they have managed this snappy answer. The schoolboys mill around for a while, then turn and leave.

Soon after, a huge lbw appeal persuades the umpire to raise his finger, slow and studied, and Mithun walks off reluctantly. Replacing him is KL Rahul, who made a smooth century for India against Australia in the recent Test series. With pink highlights on his shoes, blue and pink gloves, and several fluorescent green patches on his bat, he is quite the vision: when Rahul runs, it’s like a small carnival of colour cavorting down the pitch.

And he runs a lot. For Rahul and Nair proceed to bat Tamil Nadu into submission. No more wickets fall that day, which ends with Karnataka at 323 for 5 – nearly 200 runs in front with centuries to both batsmen. It is a skilful display from the Karnataka pair – who never once look in trouble – but for this fan of bowling and wickets, it is a stultifying passage of play.

Soon after lunch the following day, as India battles Ireland over in Australia – amid more score-sharing – Tamil Nadu has their first wicket in over seven hours: they stop Rahul in full flow at 188. But by then Karnataka has 470 on the board, Nair has swept past 200, and there’s no doubt where the Trophy is going this year. Time to declare, surely? Yet much like an Energizer bunny, Karnataka just motors on and on and on. Even the few folks in attendance are baffled. One or two actually shout out loud: why are they batting on? The milestones drift past: Karnataka’s 500, 600, Nair’s 300. Time to declare? No. Nair is out for 328 the next morning. Now? No. Karnataka reaches 700, captain Vinay Kumar gets a century. Maybe now? No.

Tamil Nadu finally bowls Karnataka out for 762 – 628 runs in front. What was the point of piling on such a huge lead, except to keep Tamil Nadu toiling in the oppressive heat? Who really cares that – over the remaining day and a half – Tamil Nadu slashes their way to 411 and still loses by an innings and plenty?

Not too many in the thin audience, that’s for sure. A man, his wife and a kid — all in orange, oddly — walk past me and down to the bottom row. Their backs to the cricketing action, they take a number of selfies. In the middle of it all, she takes a call, nodding her head furiously, the other two looking impatient. Then they’re gone. Ah, the passions the Ranji Trophy arouses.

Your vote tomorrow

2014-04-23T18:01:00.001+05:30

A note I sent out to my friends in Bombay today, April 23 2014.

---

Dear friend and fellow-citizen of this vast fascinating maddening incredible city:

Tomorrow is the day we'll all vote. May I count on our years of friendship to be bold enough to say a few things about that?

1. First and above all, please vote.

2. You probably know my thoughts on this, but nevertheless: Yes, I hope you will not vote for a candidate whose victory will help Narendra Modi become our Prime Minister. At this late stage, I'm not going to burden you with reading material. Instead, just three points:

- 2a. This is a man who, in 2007, appointed a murderer (Maya Kodnani) as his Minister for Women's Development and Child Welfare. I realize Modi is speaking an inclusive, near-faultless language these days. But he's aiming for the nation's highest elected office: he knows better than us all the need to come across as inclusive, thus to speak this language. Therefore I judge him not on today's rhetoric, but on his record. Among much else in that record is his Kodnani appointment. There is no explanation for this that makes Modi look good.

- 2b. I realize we all see what we want to see in Gujarat. But that alone should tell us that the story of a state far better than every other in every respect has holes in it.

- 2c. What worries me most about a Modi government is not Modi himself, but the loose cannons his ascent will give legitimacy and voice to. We've already seen examples like Giriraj Singh, Praveen Togadia and Ramdas Kadam. When a major politician announces that (for example) those who oppose him must be sent to Pakistan -- well, that kind of attitude simply worries me.

3. Finally, I also realize that I may have stepped on a few toes with this mail. Still, I trust that whatever our different views of politics, we can and will remain friends. That's also my faith in democracy, that we have different views that we are unafraid to express. This country has seen too much that divides us. I believe you will go to vote with the same hopes for a better tomorrow as I do. If you finally choose a different route to that better place than I do, that's your prerogative and mine. But if we let that choice itself interfere in our relationships, we let the divides win. I don't plan to let that happen.

All good wishes tomorrow.

Your friend,
dilip.

(Comments intentionally disabled until after the vote).

Raptor Red

2014-02-22T15:03:00.000+05:30

Does it say something that my favourite book of 2013 is one I read for the second time? (The first? When it was released, in 1996). "Raptor Red" is a delightful novel -- but for me, not so much because it is an engrossing story, which it is, or beautifully written, which it isn't. Nor even because its dinosaur protagonists are so engaging.

What makes this book memorable is what it says about an unsung virtue of science: how scientists build edifices of reason from the tiniest scraps of evidence. After all, dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and all we know about them comes from the fossil record. Yet palaeontologist Robert Bakker wrote this book to support his thesis that they were "warm-blooded, active and social animals."

It positively warms the cockles of my heart that a scientist proposes this, and plausibly, after poring over rocks buried for aeons. Then he writes a beguiling novel. Wow.

Raptor Red by Robert T Bakker
Bantam Books, 1995

How Rahul Gandhi blew it

2013-01-19T12:13:00.001+05:30

My column in the Daily Beast is about the Gandhi family's reaction to the Delhi gangrape. Please do take a look: How Rahul Gandhi Blew the Indian Rape Crisis

Comments welcome, as always.

Know that

2013-01-17T22:42:00.002+05:30

(A series of tweets that went out earlier this evening. Collected as a single post here).

There's an open letter about Gujarat. There's a Vibrant Gujarat summit. And as always, there's plenty of hot-headed defence of Modi.

Also as always, his defenders sometimes seem baffled that there are actually some who are not enamoured of him. This is for them.

Know that your fellow Indians slaughtered about 1000 fellow Indians in Gujarat in '02. The families of the dead deserve justice.

Know that plenty of your fellow Indians don't believe all those families have found justice.

Know that plenty of us think justice is fundamental to the functioning of a society.

Know that good roads & efficient administration are fine - only what we expect from a government - but don't substitute for justice.

Know that victories in elections are also fine - and kudos to Modi for winning - but they don't substitute for justice either.

Know that plenty of us believe Modi, as CM, is ultimately responsible for the safety of his state's residents.

Know that we believe he failed that responsibility in 2002.

Know that we believe he must be held politically accountable for that failure in 2002.

Know that it mystifies us that you don't want to hold him politically accountable for that failure. That you instead applaud him.

Know that maybe it doesn't mystify us.

Know that we will keep the chorus for accountability going until it happens. We're patient.

Know that, finally, if you choose to be uncritical fans of Modi, it's not incumbent on the rest of us to be uncritical fans too.

Owaisi, Thackeray and 25 crore

2013-01-08T16:15:00.000+05:30

Speaking at Nirmal in Andhra Pradesh on December 24 2012, Akbaruddin Owaisi said this:

If the police are removed for just 15 minutes, 25 crore Muslims in the country will show they are mightier than 100 crore Hindus.

The mention of 25 crore (completely wrong, but never mind) rang a bell. Because on December 9 1992 -- twenty years earlier -- Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena used that same number. In an editorial in his party mouthpiece Saamna, he wrote:

Pakistan need not cross the borders and attack India. 25 crore Muslims in India will stage an armed insurrection. They form one of Pakistan's seven atomic bombs.

(Note that if 25 crore was wrong in 2012, it was a hell of a lot wronger in 1992, but never mind that as well).

Note the (completely justified) uproar over Owaisi's statement. Note how Thackeray was eulogized after his death.

And if you have any idea, please let me know which of those two statements, if any, should be treated as more offensive and why.

***

Postscript: For those who like to quibble, here's another Thackeray statement from twenty years ago yesterday. Just in case you don't remember -- or have chosen to forget -- both these were from the time of the carnage in Bombay, December 1992 and January 1993, that left some 1000 Indians dead.

In another editorial in Saamna (January 8 1993), Bal Thackeray wrote:

Muslims of Bhendi Bazar, Null Bazar, Dongri and Pydhonie, the areas we call Mini Pakistan ... must be shot on the spot.

Owaisi has been arrested, and faces charges of (among other things) sedition. What do you think happened to Thackeray? What do you think should have happened to Thackeray?

Help me support Ummeed

2013-01-07T18:38:00.003+05:30

I'm part of a fundraising effort for an organization called Ummeed. I'm doing this because I have a personal interest in this: our daughter (now nearly 9) is dyslexic and Ummeed has been a great help to us in diagnosis, treatment and advice. While I'm naturally anxious about how she will cope, Ummeed is the reason I'm confident that she will.

And this is why I think Ummeed's work is important. And yet they reach only a fraction of all the children in Bombay with developmental disabilities: the need, as ever, outstrips the capacity to serve it. And this is why I signed up to do this fundraiser for Ummeed.

Admittedly I'm no good at this. I've never done it before. I mean, I've never run/walked/biked/cartwheeled for a cause before, I've never asked for pledges/donations before, and I've never walked 55km on a beach in one day before. (About 45 km one day through the forests of Madagascar, but that's a story for another day).

But I'm doing all that now. With some 20-25 others, I'm going to walk up and down the 27km+ length of a Goa beach -- totalling about 55km -- on January 12 2013. (Five days away!)

So it's this simple: I need your support to help me complete that trek. I need your support to help Ummeed in its work. I'd be grateful for pledges/donations in any amount at all. And if you contribute, I promise to carry your name on a small label on my person. (I've stocked up on pins).

Contribution details:

Your contribution is tax-deductible.

In India: Please make your check out to Ummeed Child Development Center and mail it to Ummeed, 1-B, 1/62, Mantri Pride Building, N. M. Joshi Marg, Near Chinchpokli Station (W), Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 011. Alternatively, you can donate online here.

Elsewhere (e.g. USA): Please make your check out to Ummeed Child Development Fund and mail it to 218, Harvard Street, Quincy, MA 02170. Alternatively, donate online here.

Either way, let me know if you donate, either via a comment here or on Twitter (@DeathEndsFun).

Some details about Ummeed:

Ummeed was started by someone I've known since we were both teenagers, Vibha Krishnamurthy, to work with children with developmental disabilities (which is her specialization). In the past year Ummeed has provided direct services to over 1000 families of such children. Their goal has always been to create best practices, and also work on advocacy, research, and sharing their knowledge through training.

Some Ummeed highlights of the past year:

They established a brand new social work team to serve low-income families, including educating them about the rights of children with developmental disabilities and taking patient advocacy to another level.
They benefited thousands of children indirectly by training staff of eight organizations to work with children with developmental disabilities and their families through their Child Development Aide (CDA) program and Mental Health training program.
They also ran several shorter training programs for schools and NGOs working with children at risk for disabilities.

However, there are still so many children and families with little or no access to care. Ummeed remains committed to reaching out to them in different ways.

Talk about ethics

2012-09-12T12:13:00.000+05:30

I've been trying to leave this post as a comment at this post: All Facts: No Conjecture, but it has not made it through moderation there. Please read it first.

Now ...

Let's see what we have here. Halarnkar writes an article. Babu thinks it is "plagiarized". He tells Mishra. Mishra then dissects Halarnkar's article and finds parts of it are not attributed in place to Lappé (Lappé's name and a quote from her do appear later in Halarnkar's article).

Fine so far. I have no problem with anyone dissecting anyone's article.

First "hmm" moment: Mishra goes public with this dissection, in a post on his own site titled Samar Halarnkar and Ethics?. There's no attempt made to ask Halarnkar what he has to say, what explanation he might have, so that might at least form part of the post. Any excuse that Mishra did not know how to ask for a response ("how do I ask for a response" are his own words in a tweet today) is so much hogwash, because in the post is this sentence: "[Halarnkar] tweets at handle @samar11".

Second "hmm" moment: Niti Central then publishes this post on their site. Again, there's no attempt made to ask Halarnkar for an explanation.

Third "hmm" moment: On the Niti Central site, the post has a different title. It is now "Left liberal journalists and ethics". Whether on Mishra's site or on Niti Central, the post is about ONE journalist, but Mishra and Niti Central have decided that this gives them leverage to question the ethics of ALL "left-liberal" journalists, whoever those are. (Mishra probably telegraphs that intent with this line in his post: "[Halarnkar] is part of an endangered species of 'Indian liberals'").

Mishra and Niti Central want to discuss ethics? Tell me another one.

---

Postscript #1: Unlike Mishra's reluctance to ask Halarnkar for a response, I asked Mishra to correct this title. His response: "that is part of the story. It is not an error."

Postscript #2: As is also well-known by now, Niti Central also posted a piece about Aseem Trivedi that turned out to be taken from an earlier NDTV report. They have removed that now, leaving up only a note that speaks of a "regrettable error" by "an enthusiastic junior member of the editorial staff."

Funny: for Halarnkar, it's plagiarism. For this junior member, it's enthusiasm.

But funnier: I am yet to see anyone -- Mishra, Niti Central or anyone -- putting up a post dissecting that Aseem Trivedi article that copied from NDTV, and calling that post "Right-conservative journalists and ethics".

Yes, tell me about ethics.

Tenzin arrested

2012-03-31T15:38:00.002+05:30

Why was my friend Tenzin Tsundue arrested before the visit of Chinese Premier Hu? (Who?)

* Because ten years ago, he hung a "Free Tibet" flag from the 14th floor of the Oberoi (now Trident) hotel in Bombay, during the visit of Chinese Premier Zhu?

* Because seven years ago, he hung a "Free Tibet" flag from the top of a building at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, during the visit of Chinese Premier Wen?

* Because he might remind Chinese Premiers, and us, about the arrest and torture of three nuns?

* Because of muddle-headed mumbo-jumbo called "realpolitik"? For just two examples, I mean the stuff which advises that "India must refrain from going overboard in its support for the Tibetan protests lest this issue upset broader relations with China", and which also advises that "It is not in India's interests to antagonise China, a more powerful neighbouring state."

* Because … well, you take your pick.

We gave the Tibetans shelter when they fled from the excesses of China. Now we arrest them when Chinese premiers come visiting.

Seven years ago, I wrote more or less the following three paras. They seem to apply today.

Apparently, the equation is simple. China recognizes our annexure of Sikkim. In return we will be silent on Tibet. (What's the difference, I'd like to know, between them going into Tibet and us going into Sikkim?)

And sure enough, that's just what has happened. With a certain glee, our press reports that Wen brought with him a map acknowledging our claim on Sikkim. And in return for that measly crumb, we are craven enough to shut up on Tibet.

Fortunately, there are Tenzins out there who are neither as craven nor as willing to shut up, arrest or no arrest. Power to your flag, Tenzin. Know this much: you inspire.

Get to the top: About Kota

2012-03-31T11:03:00.003+05:30

I have an article in the April issue of Caravan that I've wanted to do for years: about coaching classes ('cram schools", they're sometimes called) in the city of Kota, in Rajasthan. I finally started thinking about it and planning it several months ago, though for various reasons it was only in January this year that I was able to make the trip to Kota.

Lots of things to think about there. Pink suits. Parenting Consultants. Graffiti on a temple wall. What we are doing to our kids.

Please take a look: Get to the Top.

And your comments, as always, welcome.

Where the roots are

2012-03-30T23:04:00.003+05:30

My "A Matter of Numbers" column is in today's (Fri Mar 30) edition of Mint. If I had to sum it up in a few words … well, I would have, instead of writing 800+ words. Never mind.

It starts with spitting in a bottle (you know who you are, you who told me about this). It goes on from there to discuss hopping about in space. (Yes Vandana, there's a connection). (I think).

Go take a look: Where the Roots are.

As always, any comments most welcome.

Poverty line(s)

2012-03-23T08:52:00.003+05:30

Today's Hindustan Times carries an article I did reacting to the most recent figures about poverty from our Planning Commission.

On re-reading it this morning, I'm concerned (always easy to be wiser in hindsight) that I didn't make clear enough my fundamental point: that while the definition of the poverty line had to change, what I'd like to see is how that affects previous estimates of poverty. Why? Because only then can we get an idea of what has really happened to poverty over the years.

Absent that, we're left to wonder about numbers like 27%, 37%, 29% and the like. Absent that, a decline from 37% to 29% is hard to comprehend, because earlier estimates were different.

I realize it is difficult to apply new methods to old data, but I'd still like to see some attempt to do so, purely so that we can understand poverty trends.

In any case, you can read the article here.

Comments welcome.

Taj Mahal Foxtrot: a review

2012-03-21T09:59:00.000+05:30

Naresh Fernandes's TajMahal Foxtrot is a delicious look at a time, at music, at a city. Fabulous photographs, crisp writing and even a CD.

I reviewed it for the January-February issue of Biblio. Available on that site for free, though you have to register.

Here's the review, appended below. Comments welome.

***
Someone asked: isn't it difficult to read a book about jazz when you don't like jazz? Someone knows me well: it's true, I've never cared for the music that the Marsalises and Monks produce. Yet without fully knowing the difference, I've also always liked the brassy sound of big-band, the riffs and improvisations of rocking blues, the infinite sexiness of trumpets and saxophones. No, it wasn't difficult to read this book, because maybe it's not really about jazz, and maybe that doesn't even matter. Yet (again!) sounds from a time that Indian jazz flowered seem somehow to leap off most of its pages (not just because it comes with a CD). This, despite Naresh Fernandes's forlorn observation that "only a pile of yellowing press clippings and faded programme notes remain to fuel our imaginations about what many of these jazz musicians actually sounded like."

And in so fuelling, via this book, they soak you in nostalgia.

Hard to stave that off. So you can see "Taj Mahal Foxtrot" as another Dr Seuss contraption, this one producing nostalgia on demand. The city Fernandes describes is a long-vanished Bombay, the stuff of memories that there are fewer and fewer people left to hold on to and flesh out. He mines those memories to etch a vivid, vibrant portrait of a city, a too-brief stretch of time, in detail that is loving and thorough.

But maybe it's not about nostalgia either. As I neared its end, I wondered about that. What is this book, really? History? Music? Anthropology? Journalism? The urban experience? The indulgence and exploration of a passion? All those?

But does it matter?

The quantity and quality of research on view here is staggering. Fernandes writes with easy familiarity about musical giants of a time gone by, as if they were walking into our homes to warble out a tune or three. Somewhat amazingly, some actually did just that: they walked into some homes in this city to exchange notes, literally and otherwise, with local musicians and fans. Example: Dave Brubeck, in the '60s. For fans of the man, that must have been a treat like none other. I'm trying to think of a parallel today. Here's one that twangs my chords: the Blasters (not jazz-men, and I'm unabashedly a fan) show up at my front door, and together we belt out "Barefoot Rock" and several more rockabilly classics. Man, what I wouldn't give …

It's a memorable feature of this time and place that Fernandes captures for us: at least in jazz, celebrity wasn't a thing made insufferable by ego. What it must have meant to striving young musicians to simply chat with the Gillespies, the Armstrongs, just as friends would.

And some of the photographs Fernandes has unearthed capture this mood. With Brubeck, again: in one shot, he's at the piano, pinky straight out as he plays, laughing heartily as the sitar player smiles in harmony. In another, he has his back to the piano and is hunched over, listening intently to a tabla player explain his craft -- I like to think that's what he's doing -- to a roomful of intent listeners. Yet neither photograph even hints that Brubeck is any kind of "outsider": the music and their palaver about it brings him inside in every sense.

In some ways, that really sums up "Taj Mahal Foxtrot." For a glorious generation or two, some of the world's most accomplished musicians -- Indians included -- brought their talents here and made music that wove strands into Bombay's story. These strands would later become inextricably a part of this city's own definitive creation: Bollywood, and its music in particular. The great value of this book, it seems to me, is that Fernandes underlines three features of this tale: one, that the music borrowed and incorporated influences from abroad; two, that this process of borrowing, and the intense creativity it stimulated, was Indian in the best way; three, that those are things to celebrate.

"For much of its history," Fernandes writes in his preface, "Bombay, like the music I love, encouraged everyone to find their own voices within the loose confines of a stated theme."

How do we reconcile that with the parochial bluster that too many celebrate instead today? The empty blowhards, for example, who want those who use the word "Bombay" to be "thrown out" of the city? What's to be said about people who, to beat a jazz cliche into the ground, blow their own trumpets (one of them actually used that phrase in an election rally as I wrote these words) but also insist that others play the same stultifying notes?

The real achievement of this book is that Fernandes manages to make jazz a metaphor for the city, for what it once was, what it could be. He does this despite caveats of various kinds. Like: isn't this just one more Western influence we can do without, that there's no reason to mourn losing? Or, this is a story of the Fernandeses and Correas: where are the Guptas and Bansals? Or, isn't this just more gush about folks who have the money and the leisure to devote to jazz, often at the Taj? That is, the elite?

That last occurred to Bill Coleman, a "trumpeter-memoirist" in Leon Abbey's visiting band of 1936. They played jazz, he wrote, "for a public that was mostly European -- a very wealthy and select clientele." Journalist Dosoo Karaka listened to the band at the Taj and then noted: "Outside … homeless loiterers of the night, beggar women with half-eaten breasts, poverty on the pavements. It makes me shudder." And in the early 1960s, the visiting American pianist Hampton Hawes realized that "I've never seen anybody as fucked up and pitiful as [in India] … [they] don't even know what a piece of bread is, let alone Stravinsky or Charlie Parker."

What's the meaning of jazz when it is surrounded by squalor, when it is a "passion of the privileged" that's indulged at a top-notch city hotel?

Questions worth pondering, no doubt. I don't have a better answer to that than to say, read the book. Don't just look at the pictures, read the text. To me, it makes a subtle case in defence of elitism. But a defence in the sense that the elite naturally influence the societies they live in: with their tastes, their intellectual pursuits, and in particular, their values. The joy of "Taj Mahal Foxtrot" is that it reminds us of a time when certain values meant something, when they spoke for a city.

To be sure, there are aspects of the book that grate. Half a paragraph is repeated here; over there, another half, or more, is missing. The footnotes are often a delight, but nearing the end of the book, they go haywire: like ghosts, several numbers appear in the text without corresponding notes attached. Photographs appear sometimes a baffling several pages before a reference to the characters in them. In at least one case the caption has no connection to the image, baffling again. The binding on my copy started coming apart ten pages into reading it. And this might be a good place for full disclosure: I'm in the "Acknowlegements" (sic).

At the end, I also wished there had been more of Fernandes himself in the book. That may be an odd thing to say, because this is a result of his years of research, a triumph of his dogged and yet impassioned journalism, and the book works because he lets the men and women of an era of jazz speak for themselves. In that sense, this is his style, his body of work.

Yet the occasional times when you hear his unvarnished voice only make you wish for more. Like the footnote -- go find it -- about a restaurant whose name stuck "despite it being at variance with the outcome of the conflict" it was named for. Like the way he paints the parallels between trends in jazz and other creative outpourings in India: poetry, literature, theatre, art. Like another footnote -- yep, go find it -- that tells a sparkling story about someone called Karla Pandit.

As anyone who has followed his writing knows, Fernandes seamlessly mixes humour, keen observation and an enviable way with words to produce always thought-provoking commentary.

Maybe I just wanted more of that commentary than there already is in this book. Consider the eloquent lines with which it ends:

"[I]n its heyday, in the three decades from 1935, jazz seemed to perfectly embody the spirit of Bombay, a slightly wild port city that knew that a tune sounded better when it made room for instruments of all timbres and tones; a city that could be really pretty when it took things slow but which gave you a thrill when it was working at double time; a city that forced you to make it up as you went along; a city that gave everyone the space to play their own melody the way they heard it. That era has passed."

It has indeed passed. But reminders, like this splendid book, are always welcome. Maybe we can be really pretty again.

No more reason

2012-03-11T01:40:00.001+05:30

For years now, the only reason I've had for making an effort to watch cricket on TV -- and it is an effort, because I have no TV -- has been Rahul Dravid. For a long time before that, there were two reasons: Brian Lara and Rahul Dravid.

Now there are none.

I've been wondering just what I found so attractive in these modern greats of an old game. I think (no surprise) it's the visual treat of their styles, the flashing elegance of their strokes.

No batsman I know of moved as swiftly and yet delicately on his feet as Lara did. He married that to a bat speed no other batsman could match. Suddenly the ball had rocketed over a despairing bowler's stretching fingers for a straight six, or past a man who'd still be in the act of turning to chase when the ball reached the boundary at cover. That slight crouch, then the precise steps, then the bat like Inigo Montoya's slashing sword, ending up over his right shoulder: as a pure spectacle of batsmanship, Lara had no equal.

Except, of course, for Dravid. Three strokes were his alone. The first, that precise pull, the wrists visibly rolling over at just the right instant, the ball seemingly tracing a path perfectly perpendicular to the pitch, all the way to the boundary. The second, that on-drive he played off his pads, leaning forward, his body and the bat and the ball's path, all straight lines. The third, and my favourite by a whisker, that fierce cut in which he seemed almost to be stepping backward as the bat made contact, the image again a splay of straight lines.

Lara the sure-footed destroyer. Dravid the master of pure, elegant lines. For me, there were no others.

But for me, what made Dravid in particular such a compelling cricketer was the way he put that elegance in the pot with a fistful of grit and a generous helping of grace. I certainly learned the virtues of hard work and determination much later in life than I should have (and too often I have to learn them again). But I know that if I want to teach them to my kids, I could hardly do better than offer them the example of Dravid. Of this man who visibly worked harder than any of his contemporaries at his game, at finding excellence in himself, at finding it anew when it inevitably would fade.

More accomplished cricket writers than me have been poetic about Dravid's various bursts of batting splendour: the 180 in Calcutta, the 148 at Leeds, the 233 and 72 in Adelaide, the two half centuries at Kingston and more. But for me his finest moment was last year's tour of England. Not for the runs, plenty though they were. But this was Dravid fighting tigerishly when not a single one of his team-mates seemed up for the fight; this was Dravid showing how much the team and the game mattered to him; this was Dravid painting a canvas of resolve and soul, heart and intellect. This was Dravid setting an example not just to his cricket colleagues, but to us all.

To every one of us who, faced with a large, difficult task, thinks "Ahh, I'll give it a shot tomorrow" -- that tomorrow that never comes -- this was Dravid showing that there's only one answer to such dilemmas: Just step forward and do it. No excuses, no dilly-dallying, no shying away, no hiding from yourself above all. None of that.

Just do it, that's all.

I have no particular interest in one-day cricket or this thing called T20. Power to those who do, and who do well at them. But I get intoxicated with Test cricket. That's because at its best, it ebbs and flows, it exposes, it redeems, it celebrates. It demands that its practitioners give of their best. It shows up the pretenders. It rewards depth and substance, grit and strength. It offers lessons for our own more mundane lives that nevertheless fling challenges at us time and time again.

It's for those reasons that Test cricket is so captivating. It's what made Dravid, for me, the consummate Test cricketer. For me, he is India's greatest Test cricketer. For me, that makes him, without doubt, India's greatest cricketer.

I can't claim to be a good friend of Dravid. But I have met him a few times -- a meal here, a coffee there -- and he released my book "Roadrunner" at a bookstore in Bangalore. Several days before that evening, in the middle of playing a Test at the Wankhede stadium, he called. "I'm really nervous about speaking at your book function," said this man who faced the fastest and wiliest bowlers in the world for a living.

It struck me: for him, this business of speaking about a new book was one more challenge to be faced and overcome. He could have simply shown up and mouthed some platitudes. Instead, he read my book, thought about it, got nervous about it, then came there and said some thoughtful things. That's the measure of this man. What more could an author ask for?

So here it is: it's more than the style in that fierce cut that made me want to watch Dravid bat. It's the grace and fibre he brought to the game, and indeed to everything he did.

And that's why I now have no reason to watch.

Jump for your life

2012-03-06T10:15:00.000+05:30

My fortnightly "A Matter of Numbers" column in Mint went on air last Friday, March 2.

This one discusses the antics of fleas, the musings of elephants, and even slips in some speculation about why my daughter is cleaner than me. All that, and it also warns you about the consequences of shivering uncontrollably.

With that introduction, I know you're just dying to read it. It's called "Jump for your life" and you'll find it here.

Comments, as ever, welcome.

#DDGujDiary #4, Ahmedabad camp

2012-03-06T10:12:00.000+05:30

A fourth installment of notes from my trip diary from Gujarat, 2002. These are from a visit to a camp for victims in Ahmedabad. (I tweeted them using the tag #DDGujDiary).

***
* In Ahmedabad, we stop outside a shopping complex that is burned down (maybe looted too?). Nobody else on the road stops. It's been burned, but life around it goes on.

* A sixty year-old in the camp used to be a watchman in a building. A mob of 5000, he thinks, surrounded the building and began throwing stones at it. He and his wife ran away.

* He shows me a "Rahat Chhavninoon Hangami" card that he says the Government gave him because of the violence. "What's it for?" he asks. I can't answer because I don't know what this means, or of this card distribution programme.

* Outside the camp, I notice this large banner: "Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Gujarat, At Your Service."

* Two women I speak to were driven by a mob from their homes in Guptanagar. They went back there to look, a couple of days later. All the houses in the area, including theirs, were burned down. "It doesn't look like a place to live", says one. "There were people standing there with lathis and swords," they tell me, "and they told us to get out."

* Later, the Army took the women and their families back again. This time, they were able to approach their once-homes. Where they could, they put locks on the doors. Then they came back to the camp.

* Kudratbano, 35, saw her brother, his wife and their six children burned alive in Naroda-Patia. The mob that did this "came from four sides", she says.

* Ishu, the son of her other brother, was hit with sticks and thrown on a garbage dump. He lived. He shows me the scars on his head.

* His two year-old brother [looks like I didn't record his name] was burned.

* Just outside this camp as we leave, a young man yells at us. "We don't want your peace committee!" -- and he and a few others start throwing stones at us. Small stones, but it's frightening anyway. "Take your peace nonsense [shanti bakwas is the phrase I remember clearly] to the RSS!" they shout, still throwing stones. In the distance, at the end of a long road we had walked down to get to the camp, I can see the stones have broken a few windows on our bus.

* I'm walking to the buses alongside a monk from our party, young man dressed in saffron robes. Young men point at him, pick up stones. I have no clue what to do, but there's only seconds to think about it, because ...

* ... a young woman on a scooter drives up beside us. "Get on behind me!" she orders the monk, quiet but urgent. "Get on right now! I'll take you out!"

* The monk sits sideways on her pillion seat. She revs her engine and zips him through the milling shouting crowds to the bus. I see him clambering in. I'm alone, but nobody is interested in me. I run to the bus. Getting on, I see her. There's time to shout: "What's your name?"

* I've said it silently and often in these ten years, and I'll say it here: Thank you, Mumtaz, for being brave. For being human. For being human in a time, in a place, where so many others weren't.

#DDGujDiary, #3: Dehlol

2012-03-03T12:19:00.000+05:30

Some more tweets from my #DDGujDiary sequence on Twitter (as @DeathEndsFun) over the last few days.

***
* On the road from Godhra to Baroda, we stop at a mosque that has been burned down. Inside we can see pieces of cloth strewn about, and a small flock of rather calm goats. There's a man standing outside; he says he knows nothing about what happened here. "Nothing?" we ask. "Nothing."

* Dehlol village has a burned and completely destroyed mosque. Inside we dan see monkeys running about. (Not goats). Outside, the residents of Dehlol watch us sullenly and silently.

* 37 Dehlol residents were pursued to this and killed there. A man tells us that then it was torched and its minaret toppled. Still sullen people still watch us.

* In Dehlol a photographer buddy and an old man from our group were surrounded by a mob who demanded their film. They refused. Started to get heated and ugly. A cop saved them.

* The cops tell us that the residents of Dehlol had complained, saying our group was harassing them and making them uncomfortable. I had to wonder, could we have said something similar, at least, about those 37 who were chased into a mosque and killed?

* A man in a sleeveless vest in Dehlol, glasses and running to flab, says this: "Pakistan attacks us on the border. Obviously we can't go to the border, so we hit back at them here."

* "See what Israel is doing to the Palestinians," the same man says admiringly. "That's the treatment we had to give them here."

* "For 50 years they have been doings things like Godhra, with many more train burnings. But the press never reports all this." Who's "them" and "they", I want to ask.

* (Still with the same man in a vest, running to flab. He's talking to a German blonde and me, standing in middle of Dehlol, large crowd around us.)

* "The days of that ch***ya Gandhi, with his turning the other cheek, are gone!" He turns his cheek to me in a way that -- I would never have guessed -- is shockingly crude.

* "When people enter our houses and torture us," he says, "we have to react!" The crowd nods. Who entered your home, I ask. Angry silence.

* The crowd disperses. We start walking. The same man suddenly says "Come have a soda at my shop." When we get there, he makes us a lime-based drink. Good stuff. But he takes no money, just shakes my hand.

* The blonde and I are walking out of Dehlol. It's a frightening, unnerving several minute. Large crowds watch us pass in complete silence, the women in it snickering behind us after we pass.

* For 10 years, I've wondered: someone killed 37 people in Dehlol. This flabby guy who wouldn't charge for soda, was he one of the killers?

#DDGujDiary, #2

2012-03-01T23:45:00.000+05:30

Continuing from the previous post, here are some more notes from my Gujarat 2002 diary. I tweeted these yesterday (as @DeathEndsFun, same Twitter tag #DDGujDiary).

***
* Fatma, 45, ran to the hills without footwear and hid there for three days without food and water. This is because mobs burned her house in Randikpur.

* After telling me this, Fatma is quiet, then says out of the blue: "It's a Rs 14 ticket from here [Godhra] to Randikpur."

* Yakub whom I met in a camp says: "We can't go back because they have destroyed our homes and turned the area into a maidan."

* Young girl says, the sarpanch hid us in a field, telling us we'd be protected. Then he went away. When he came back, he brought many people with him to kill us.

* The same girl saw a friend standing in front of her home, saying "My father will definitely come to save us!" Then she was cut down by a mob.

* She starts crying quietly as she tells me of that brief incident, and then she tells me three of her uncles were also killed.

* 22 yr-old Fatma (another Fatma) hid in the fields too. A mob came -- "there were ten people for each one of us" -- to kill them. She was hit by a lathi and a sword, she fell unconscious, they left.

* In Godhra camp alone, at least three different women told me about sarpanches who directed them to fields and then called a mob to attack them.

* Zohra, 23, hid with her husband in a cornfield. A mob set fire to the crop. They got up and ran. The mob caught her husband and killed him. She saw it happen.

* Bilkis of Randikpur had a three year-old child who was "cut and thrown away". Then twelve men raped her. She is pregnant.

* I should point out that I learned about Bilkis from her bua who was with her in camp. Bilkis herself was unable to speak.