The India Uncut Blog

Elephant in Kerala

Amit Varma — 2012-03-20T03:38:00+04:30

So it’s about 10.45pm, and we’re headed in a tourist taxi to Siena Village, a resort a few kilometres from Munnar. We’ve already driven about three hours from Kochi airport, I haven’t slept in 48 hours, the fast, winding journey through the ghats has made me feel a little sick, and I’m kind of testy. Our overly talkative driver tells me that road from Munnar to Siena winds through a hilly jungle, and ‘sometimes at night, elephants attack cars.’ We begin that leg of the journey.

Halfway through, we find that an autorickshaw and another car have stopped in the middle of the road, and the rickshaw guy is gesticulating wildly at us to stop. He babbles something in Malayalam, and I assume his auto has broken down and he wants help or suchlike. I’m desperate to get to the hotel and crash. ‘Just drive, dude,’ I tell my driver. ‘Let’s get going.’

‘We can’t go,’ he says. ‘There are elephants charging down the road.’

Along with the rickshaw and the other car, we park our car at a clearing at the side of the road. ‘So what do we do now?’ I ask. ‘Elephant, elephant,’ the driver mumbles, and jumps out of the car to join the others to peer down the road. I’m about to get off when he comes back, gets in the car, and drives about 30 meters back down the road, towards Munnar. There he stops and waits, as we turn around to see what’s happening. The other car also moves away. The rickshaw remains.

Then the elephant lumbers in.

This massive grey beast saunters down the road, stops at the clearing, and stares at the auto, right besides where we had been a minute ago. Then it goes over and gives us a masterclass of how to obliterate an autorickshaw in 40 seconds flat. It uses its trunk to swing it around in the air and bash it on the ground. It uses its legs. It uses its fury. In less than a minute, what was once a vehicle is now mangled bits of metal and plastic. Satisfied at a job well done, the elephant gets back on the road, and looks at us. Or rather, I am sure of it, at me. Our eyes meet.

All this time, our driver is telling us, ‘Take picture, take picture. Get off and take picture.’ We’ve already told him to get on back to Munnar, obviously we’ll find a hotel there for the night. But he doesn’t listen. ‘Take picture, take picture.’

‘Drive,’ I tell him again. ‘Let’s go to Munnar.’

He doesn’t budge. The elephant takes a step towards us. It maintains eye contact. I think it knows my name.

‘Drive!’

The driver doesn’t budge. The elephant does.

‘Drive boss, drive us back to fuckin’ Munnar, what are you waiting for?’

He snaps to life and starts driving. Then he says, ‘Sir, no need to be rude. I have studied engineering, you know.’

The simultaneous urges to sleep, puke and get away from an elephant have made me lose it by now. ‘So why are you driving a tourist taxi then?’ I ask.

‘Because this is Kerala.’

Update: The elephant’s name is Padiappa. It turns out that he had a traumatised childhood, and has killed eight people in the last few years. He’s undergoing ~~counselling~~ treatment, and was apparently given an injection three months ago after which he calmed down somewhat. However, he got restless again a couple of days ago. He destroyed some crops two nights ago, and then the auto last night.

All this was told to me by the Mallu driver Bipin, who is no longer mad at me. I can’t be sure about Padiappa, though, and am avoiding casual social encounters with him.

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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‘The Businessman Panicked’

Amit Varma — 2012-03-12T03:41:01+04:30

I don’t know why, but I find this kind of funny.

And what’s with the quote marks in that ToI headline? Succinct editorial comment, you think?

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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III = III + III

Amit Varma — 2012-03-10T02:22:00+04:30

Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired:

Here’s a brain teaser: Your task is to move a single line so that the false arithmetic statement below becomes true.

IV = III + III

Did you get it? In this case, the solution is rather obvious – you should move the first “I” to the right side of the “V,” so that the statement now reads: VI = III + III. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people (92 percent) quickly solve this problem, as it requires a standard problem-solving approach in which only the answer is altered. What’s perhaps a bit more surprising is that nearly 90 percent of patients with brain damage to the prefrontal lobes — this leaves them with severe attentional deficits, unable to control their mental spotlight — are also able to find the answer.

Here’s a much more challenging equation to fix:

III = III + III

In this case, only 43 percent of normal subjects were able to solve the problem. Most stared at the Roman numerals for a few minutes and then surrendered. The patients who couldn’t pay attention, however, had an 82 percent success rate. What accounts for this bizarre result?

The piece is titled ‘Why Being Sleepy and Drunk Are Great for Creativity’, and is about “the unexpected benefits of not being able to focus.” (The next time your loved one asks you to pay attention, just snap back at her that you’re busy being creative.) That might just explain absent-minded geniuses—their absent-mindedness is part of the reason they’re geniuses, and not some regrettable offshoot of their abilities.

Um, what was I saying?

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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‘An Offer They Could Not Refuse’

Amit Varma — 2012-03-10T02:06:01+04:30

So while everyone’s celebrating the arrival of Akhilesh Yadav and how he’s revitalised the Samajwadi Party and UP Politics, take a look at this news report, about how Mulayam Singh Yadav managed to persuade his party veterans to allow his son to be chief minister:

Earlier during the day, when Akhilesh’s name was thrown up for discussion at the informal meet, the response was overwhelming. Only a few feeble voices of dissent were raised.

But an astute Mulayam did not take much time to dilute these voices. Sources said that Mulayam managed to placate both his younger brother Shiv Pal Yadav and close confidante Azam Khan by making an offer that they could not refuse.

While Shiv Pal was assured the most lucrative of portfolios in the new cabinet, Khan was promised the prestigious slot of assembly speaker.

Note the phrasing: the most lucrative of portfolios. And that, in a nutshell, is politics in India. Bring in the new, long live the old…

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Good Old Dravid…

Amit Varma — 2012-03-10T01:37:00+04:30

... is done. The next time India walk out to play a Test match, my favourite sportsman of all time won’t be there, and I’m not even sure I’ll feel like watching. India with someone else at No. 3 will seem like Led Zeppelin without Jimmy Page—and yeah, so what if Robert Plant does get that 100th hundred?

As you’d expect, there have been quite a few moving tributes to him, and I think this wonderful piece by Sambit Bal captured the man’s essence really well. An excerpt:

When we spoke a couple of weeks ago, I asked if he regretted not having retired in England. His response was a further revelation of character. He would certainly have retired if he hadn’t had a good series, he said, but after doing so well, retiring would have been selfish. There was a series to be won in Australia, and he owed it to the team to make the trip. And no, there were no regrets. He would do it no other way, even if offered a second chance.

I’d written a bunch of pieces on Dravid back in my days as a cricket writer, the last of which, I think, was this: ‘Rahul Dravid: Transcending History’. Many of the pieces celebrating him today and yesterday, unfortunately, seek to reinforce a bunch of entirely untrue cliches about him. No, Dravid was not just a dour technician with loads of patience—he was a beautiful, attractive strokeplayer at his best, who combined elegance and grace with a sense of purpose. No, he was not a misfit in one-day cricket: for a period of maybe four years, he was possibly even the best ODI finisher in the world, batting at Nos. 5 and 6. And no, despite the debacle of the 2007 World Cup, he wasn’t a failed captain: he led us to memorable series victories outside the subcontinent, in West Indies and England, something we hadn’t managed for a decade before he took over.

Anyway, here a bunch of pieces about Dravid that I enjoyed reading, by Sharda Ugra, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (1 and 2), Rob Smyth, Patrick Kidd and Alex Massie.

Bloody hell, I’m going to hate cricket for the rest of this week. Sob.

Update: And here’s a fine piece by Mukul Kesavan: ‘Stylish in the Trenches’. The money quote:

It is a retirement freighted with more meaning than merely the end of an individual career. Rahul Dravid was an old-fashioned cricketer: he was a Test match batsman who was great without being glamorous, brave without being brash. He was, if you like, the polar opposite of Virat Kohli, Indian cricket’s new poster boy. When this honourable man called it a day, middle-aged fans across the subcontinent shivered: they felt a goose walk over Test cricket’s grave.

Update 2: Here’s a wonderful piece by Vijeeta Dravid on Rahul: ‘My Husband, the Perfectionist.’ I was touched by this bit:

When I began to understand the kind of politics there are in the game, he only said one thing: that this game has given me so much in life that I will never be bitter. There is so much to be thankful for, no matter what else happens, that never goes away.

Contrast that with some of the bitterness you see in some former and current cricketers.

Also, here’s a fine piece by Tanya Aldred.

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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Men, Listen Up

Amit Varma — 2012-02-14T06:54:00+04:30

According to the Times of India, the five things men need to do to attract women are 1] grow old, 2] hang around in a hot place, 3] get beaten up, 4] wear spectacles and 5] carry a plant around. Apparently, “it takes a patient, affectionate man to grow healthy plants.” Also,"experts say that if you can take care of your garden for only 30 minutes a week, it can improve your health and performance in bed.” Not just that, “fertile women are subconsciously drawn to men who are good at gardening.”

Well, ok, I made that last quote up. But would you be surprised if I hadn’t?

Heavy Fuel

Amit Varma — 2012-02-09T05:53:00+04:30

Mid Day reports:

In an attempt to prevent animal abuse, the state government has instructed petroleum giants Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum to not transport oil using animal power.

I’m blogging this only because of the delicious irony of Petroleum companies transporting their fuel in bullock carts. I have no comment to make on the animal rights angle here— though it’s not as bizarre as the report about the five killer whales in San Diego who “have been named in a slavery case that argues they should have the same constitutional rights as humans.” I mean, if whales have rights, it could be argued that chickens and cows do as well, and then your food could start suing you posthumously. If PETA ever sues me on behalf of a chicken that I ate the previous night, I will snap produce a legal document with an illegible scrawl on it, and say, “The chicken signed this waiver of its rights before I cooked it. Choke on that.”

Ok, lunchtime.

(Photo courtesy Mid Day.)

The Dalit Cartel

Amit Varma — 2012-02-08T08:53:00+04:30

Check out this piece by Shikha Dalmia on the role that market forces play in perpetuating the caste system. Quite fascinating; though I wish her editors had thought of a better headline…

Ban Nudity! Ban Nightlife!

Amit Varma — 2012-02-08T08:22:00+04:30

Our right-wing lunatics are so funny sometimes that it’s hard to hate them. Balbir Punj has a bizarre (but typical, so maybe not so bizarre) rant up on the New Indian Express about how Western values are ruining our country. His arguments are so priceless that you have the read the whole thing, I can’t just excerpt for WTFness. Among other things, he thinks that ‘nudity’ and ‘nightlife’ are “Western aberrations”, and rants against same-sex unions on the grounds that they only take place for ‘pleasure’, which, in his opinion, is a bad thing. Punj has it exactly the wrong way around: the rising divorce rates he rails against are, in my opinion, something to celebrate, and the decline of family values is a damn good thing.

Ooh, I can imagine Punj choking on his coffee if he reads this. But wait, coffee must surely also be a Western aberration, no?

City News

Amit Varma — 2012-02-08T07:17:01+04:30

Having resumed blogging, it was natural for me to head over to the ToI site for the potential double WTFness of 1. what’s happening and 2. what the ToI is reporting. Not much gratification there, though their ‘city’ section did provide some food for thought. Here are the four headlines on that section:

* * *

I actually clicked on one of them. Apparently Ayesha Takia complained on Twitter about Kingfisher Airlines, and Siddharth Mallya responded: “Not too sure who she is, an actor of some sorts?? [sic]” Well, I’m not sure who Siddharth Mallya is. Someone or the other’s son and boyfriend? Is there anything else he’s famous for?