Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind

Are We Not Forgetting Someone?

2009-07-03T21:19:47Z

Finally.

It is no longer a crime for a man to wear pink.

“Tu bhi gay mere sang gaye saara jahan gayeja gayeja gayeja”….

India finally made another tryst, that too peeche se angootha laga ke, with its destiny, not in a full measure but substantially with the decriminalization of homosexuality.

History will remember this not only as the occasion when Celina Jaitley, with her blogs on iTimes, galvanized the nation and unintentionally her career with her espousal of the “gay cause” but also when all religions in India provided an unified front. Christian, Muslim and Hindu religious figures put aside all their differences relating to who will go to heaven and who to hell and came together to express their disgust for this love of man for man (and for woman for woman), their combined sentiment appropriately summarized by The Great Yoga guru: “Homosexuals are sick people, they should be sent to hospitals for treatment“, (a precursor hopefully to his new CD “Samalinga-itya se mukti” where he will show how breathing in and out will cure you of asthma, diabetes and the desire to peek into the neighboring cubicle at an urinal).

However I have a question. While we are busy protecting the rights of our sexual minorities, have people forgotten those of the sexual majorities?

Who is to protest the criminalization of heterosexual activity, especially the kind that is engaged with oneself in a darkened room with a computer on, as the government of India in its wisdom bans the website Savitabhabhi?

Will all those cool and hep youngsters who came out onto the streets for same-sex couples, be willing to join a messiah in a “danda pakarke Danda March” in protest against the assault on our rishta with the most famous Bhabhi ever?

Will some celebrity in the fashion of Celina Jetley take up the “Save Savitha” cause —-Sherlyn Chopra are you listening?

Will the minority appeasing ruling classes tell us why oh why Savita Bhabhi, a patriot who has given her body for the national interest in one of her episodes, showed us that bra salesmen are people too and over the past year provided a depressed country ten seconds of release every night, is considered such a huge threat to the national security that she should be banned?

Tell me why do jholla-wallahs and the “socially conscious” candle-light people care for the human rights of terrorists but not for ours—the silent heterosexual majority?

I am waiting for the answer.

Indian Television’s Finest Hour

2009-07-02T05:45:46Z

As I watched the first two episodes of “Rakhi Ka Swayamvar”, I realized I was witnessing history—an aesthetic amalgam of Dali-ian surrealism and Dada-ist anti-conventionalism, a monument to the post-DD “India Shiney (Ahuja)” Youngistan socially and culturally conscious media, the kind of media that gives us news like this:

“There are two things that you notice instantly when you see Deepika Padukone. One is that she is pencil-thin; and, two, she has a love-bite on her neck that is still to fade away.”

Make no mistake. Rakhi Ka Swayamvar, now being shown on the appositely named NDTV Imagine is Indian television’s finest hour. In the past, we have been shocked by Tamas. We have been educated by “Bharat Ek Khoj”. We have danced to “Ek chidiya anek chidiya”. We have cried with Haveli Ram. We have dreamt with Mungerilal. We have flown with Shaktiman. We have become “Putrabati bhava” with Mahabharata. But never have we ever been as moved by anything as we have been by Rakhi ka Swayamvar, as classy as a circus freakshow and as spontaneous as Dick Cheney.

The show’s all-round grooviness stands primarily on the shoulders of the central protagonist, “divya roopi sundari nari” (as a contestant addresses her) Rakhi Sawant. A child of the 24/7 media, we have seen her life unfold itself in front of the camera. Whether it be heart-wrenchingly expressing the challenges in being an item girl (she told Prabhu Chawla: Kapde utaarna asaan naheen hain sirrrr) or being kissed by Mika or slapping her boyfriend Abhishek Awasthi as he apologizes to her on bended knee after a fight, Rakhi has lived her life in the public gaze (some people claim that she lives her life ONLY when she is in the public gaze) ever since her star turn as a chick with a dick in “Masti”.

So the fact that her choosing a husband would also be a public spectacle was inevitable. Of course as Rakhi and the show’s creators go to great pains to make us realize that this isnt a game show. This is life. Rakhi’s life. The life of a simple, shy, traditional middle-class Bharatiya naari with fake gazoombas, equally fake old-world demureness and ceaselessly fluttering eye-lids who needs all our help in finding the right match for her.

And I wont kid you. It’s not easy getting a husband for this lass. As she repeats throughout the show, in various ways, men only want her for her ethereal beauty and her fame but no one recognizes the simple lost girl behind the cantilevered lingerie, a lost little girl who just wants to settle down and put to rest her tortured past.

Now critics might call this show “a sham money-making exercise that appeals to the lowest common denominator” but I see it for what it is—– a searing monument to the institution of marriage and its enduring relevance even in today’s item number world.

Critics also might call the show “scripted” but hey, even our lives are scripted by the one above. If no one objects to that why should they be worried if a few humans script Rakhi’s considering it’s ultimately all “maya”.

Supporting Rakhi are a stellar support cast. There is an Udaipur palace. There are dancing women who dance as each of the prospective grooms arrive to the tunes of the same song from Om Shanti Om. There is Ram Kapoor (famous as “Mr. Jay Walia” from Kasamh Se) who I think tries desperately not to burst out into giggles during Rakhi’s earnest insights into her tortured soul. Finally there the man who is Rakhi’s surrogate brother, asking the hard questions and vetting the candidates—megastar Ravi Kishan from the land that has given us “Meri nayee payjamia phad di dehati rasiya” , who is the ideal person to get into the minds of the “small town” boys from Saharanpur and Kanpur and Mathura who form the majority of the suitors.

Which brings me to the show’s knockout assets—-the sixteen prospective grooms. It takes a special sub-species of homo-sapiens to want to marry Rakhi Sawant, the kind that can slide their balls on a razor’s edge and into a bowl of aftershave.

And what an unique species these mushtandas belong to.

A gabroo “God of Luv” named Luv Khanna (he announces his intentions with “Jaise Shree Raamji sadiyon se pahele Sita Maiyya ko swayamvar main jeeta tha , waisi hi is kaliyug main uska beta Luv aap ko jeet ke leke jayega”, an opening line that so impresses the traditional Rakhi that he wins the opening “first impressions” challenge).

An all-clad-in-white Gujrati NRI who drops hints that he is loaded (of course not that Rakhi cares for wealth—unrelated factoid is that he also won the “first impressions” challenge)

A gym instructor.

A dance master.

A comically flamboyant stunt coordinator.

A man with a hairstyle like a cat.

A policeman from Kashmir (a sure sign that infiltration is down in J&K is when a policeman from that state gets leave to marry Rakhi Sawant)

A Bihari boy who hands Rakhi a kangan that his mother has sent for her dulhan.

A bunch of struggling actors who speak as if their spontaneous words of love are rehearsed.

A friend of Rakhi’s ex-beau Abhishek who the lady claims has been pursuing her ever since childhood (reality show experts opine that this man is the hook through which Abhishek might make a surprise appearance later on in the season).

A chocolate-faced, unemployed student.

And my personal favorite—a man who claims he sits in temples thinking about Rakhi (”main ganaptiji ke mandir main baitha tha aap ke yaad main”). The man with the best story of all—who claims to have fallen in love with her after seeing her courage in the Mika incident and after seeing her dance in “Mohabbat hain mirchi”, a man who today just earns a few thousand rupees a month, sacrificing an easy career earning thousands of dollars/pounds in New Jersey and UK just because of his love for Rakhi, a love that made him learn acting and dancing.

Impressive.

Summing them up, if you thought Rakhi is a self-effacing ordinary woman who does not care for publicity or hesitates to use notoriety for career-advancement you haven’t seen the men lining up to put a mangalsutra on her. They are even better.

The main reason I personally so much love the show is that it provides me occasion to speculate about legendary Swayamvars in the past. Did Karna gift Draupadi a pink teddy bear? Did Dushashan offer Draupadi an alcoholic beverage to which she like Rakhi Sawant, with an expression of careful shock on her face, ticked him off for offering a Bharatiya naari “Bacardi” ? Did Arjuna suddenly break out into an impromptu ” bhootni ke” dance in front of Panchali to seduce her?

All this of course means that I shall keep watching “Rakhi Sawant ka Swaymvar”.

I accept.

I cannot take my eyes off it.

Because as the Aerosmith song goes “I don’t want to miss a thing.”

The ICC Hall of Infamy

2009-06-29T01:50:28Z

You gotta love the burra-sahibs at the ICC. Recently, following an article in the TOI I had a chance to look at their Hall of Fame (evidently only people who retired before 1995 being eligible for consideration) and their Hall contains twenty-two Englishmen, eleven Australian and fourteen West Indians and yes only three each of Indian and Pakistani players.

Not that ICC’s Hall of Fame matters a rat’s ass but it’s funny to see the “revenge” of the bura-sahibs who seek to bury their own obsolescence and the loss of colonial power (ever since the English and the Australians lost their veto power in the ICC) with a Hall of Fame that is so “oh those were the good days” nostalgic and so laughably biased that it isn’t funny.

Not that I do not understand the colonial angst. In a perfect world, cricket would be still be a game played by old chaps over a cup of tea and polite conversation and thoughts of the Queen while the brown natives would stand around holding the umbrella and the gin and the tonic, with their participation in the game being limited to fetching the ball from the boundary or fielding when a sahib got a “touch of the sun”.

Instead what do they have?

They have IPL, screaming crowds of thousands of sweaty “white man’s burdens”, humiliating defeats at the hands of the natives and worst of all, a total financial dependence on the old slaves to sustain the game. Everytime Michael Atherton or any of the British/Australian old fogeys abuse T20 and rue India’s influence in world cricket and tell us that the Ashes still remain the pinnacle of cricketing passion one is reminded of a fox and a bunch of grapes.

Coming to the Hall of Fame. Let us take the example of an inductee. Derek Underwood. An old chappie. In 86 Tests he took 297 wickets at an average of 25.83. Now let us consider another spinner who played in the same era (since some claim cricketers in different eras should not be compared). Bhagwath Chandrasekhar. In 58 Tests (28 Tests fewer than Underwood), he took 242 wickets at an average of 29.74. Statistically, there isn’t a whole lot to choose between them. But Chandrasekhar does not make the list. And one wonders why considering that nothing prevented both of them from being in the Hall of Fame.

One could argue that cricket isn’t just about numbers but more about style and class. True. But then how do you explain why Graham Gooch, another “he’s a jolly good fellow and so say all of us”, whose batting could put a room full of insomniacs to sleep makes the list while Zaheer Abbas, one of the most attractive batsmen of his generation, does not. And oh, the numbers—-Gooch’s career average is 42.58 and Zaheer Abbas’s is 44.79.

There are other examples—- Englishman Tom Graveney scored 11 centuries in 79 matches at an average of 44. Mohinder Amarnath scored 11 centuries in 10 Tests less (69 matches) at 42.50. Only one of them however is in the Hall of Fame. One could ask why Vijay Merchant, who had the second highest first class average after Bradman and a Test average of 47.72, is not there as well as several other similar embarassing questions but I think you get the point.

I started off by saying that the Hall of Fame does not matter. Well let me clarify that. It may not matter to me or you or perhaps even to superstar billionaires like Dhoni and Sachin but I am sure for cricketers like BS Chandrasekhar and Mohinder Amarnath, who derived very little financial benefit from the game (unlike their modern counterparts), some kind of official recognition for their contribution to the game, would definitely mean a lot. And they do deserve it.

But then again, we jolly well know that despite many changes the ICC still remains, at its heart, an old boy’s colonial country club. So nothing unexpected here.

The Greatest. Period.

2009-06-26T13:07:28Z

It was in 1984. I was sitting in front of the TV when the pre-Grammy awards program came on. In pre-MTV days, state-controlled Doordarshan had almost no Western pop/rock programming except some horrible Europop that acted as fillers.

So I had absolutely no idea as to what I was going to see. I did not even know what the Grammies were. Good Bengali boys were supposed to listen to Rabindrasangeet and not even think about the devil’s music.

And then I saw him.

I did not know his name. I neither understood the lyrics. Even if I did, I doubt whether as a seven year old I would have understood a song about an illegitimate child.

But I was blown away. By the man in the video. The tip-toe stand, the twirl, the way he moved his jacket. The walk. The beat. And the pavement glowing as he put his foot on it.

Who was this mystery man?

My maternal uncle (mama) had just come back from the US. He had a wondrous cassette player and a few cassettes. One of them was “Thriller”. It was then, over endless loops of that album, that I fell in love with what we then called “Western fast” music (as opposed to the slow Beethoven).

And I also fell in love with the man whose album it was. A man whose name I, and my generation,will never forget.

Michael Jackson.

There is a lot to say about MJ and it will be said much better by more serious students of music. They will explain to you why it is unlikely that Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, the largest selling album in the history of the world, will ever outsold. Historians will tell you that before Oprah and Obama, he was the first mega icon who transcended color in America. Pop culture experts will swear in a single voice that his music, his dance steps (the lock, the pop, the crotch-grab, the trouser pull, the shoulder pat, and of course the ” moonwalk”) , his videos (revolutionary in their style and execution), his styling (the red jacket, the white socks, the gloves, the hat), his persona, the iconic freeze-frames (the wind blowing up below him, arms outstretched and looking up), his concert performances have strongly influenced all public performers, no matter where they be in the world. Finally any Indian will tell you if there is one “foreign” music artist they know it is “Michael Jackson”.

So instead of all that, I shall just talk about the way Michael Jackson and his music has touched my life. In high school, my study time began at 6:30, rigorously enforced by mother. But from 5 to 6:30 was my own time. On rainy days when it was not possible to go out onto the streets to play cricket, my Sanio cassette player would blare out “Bad” and “Smooth Criminal” and “Who Is It” and “Dirty Diana” and of course “Thriller”, “Beat It” and “Billy Jean” while I, in my baniyan and shorts, would do my desperate imitation of MJ’s iconic steps with my feeble attempts to do the moonwalk exerting such pressure on the straps of the hawai chappal that they would, damn them, snap. In college, after a bad attack of hepatitis that required hospitalization, I announced my return to health with a frenetic sweaty pelvic rendition of the pulsating “I am Bad I am Bad” which alarmed my mother, considering how weak I was. But I did it and no other artist could have made me get up from bed. And even today whenever there is a dance party and the DJ stops playing bhangra and gives me a real dance number in the form of a Michael Jackson song, I invariably break out my embarassing Michael Jackson steps and when I do, you are advised to clear the dance floor. Else there will be, as the song goes, blood on it.

I am sure I am not alone in these personal remembrances. I am sure everyone has their Michael Jackson stories. Everyone. In every corner of the world. This is where MJ transcends his identity as a superstar and as a musical genius. Michael Jackson was a part of us. A part of our childhood memories. A strong influence in our choice of music. No make it a strong influence in our definition of music. And also of entertainment.

With his passing, something about us is also gone.

Or is it?

The thing that defines the true greats (and great is an overused word) is that their creations outlive and outlast their life-spans, giving these men a kind of immortality that us mere mortals merely strive for. From that perspective I suppose there is nothing to be sad about. However one cannot forget Michael Jackson’s isolation, his bankruptcy and the sadness that engulfed him in his last days and one wishes that his end could have been under happier personal circumstances, even more so as he seemed on the verge of a breakthrough with his final concert tour scheduled to start in July.

For now however the best tribute we can pay him is to watch and listen to him as he was, when he walked the earth at the height of his powers. And applaud Michael Jackson, who was without exaggeration the greatest performer of our generation.

Wherever you are, old friend, keep twirling those toes in the way only you can.

Pak A Punch Once Again

2009-06-24T01:18:12Z

Whether it be in claiming in their history books that they whipped the asses of India in all the wars that they fought against us ( including 1971 and Kargil) or whether it be in not giving up a match even when logic dictates otherwise, there is one thing that has characterized Pakistan—-their stubborn refusal to accept defeat.

If their pale surrender in the 2007 ODI World Cup and their final choking act in the 2007 T20 World Cup in front of the perennial losers India had tarnished this reputation, the 2009 T20 World Cup victory has asserted it once again.

With this victory, I hope, that the old Pakistan is back once again—-temperamental, nasty, supremely talented, the guys I grew up hating, loving and feeling jealous of.

Because with the colorless Kiwis and South Africans around and Australia looking a pale shadow of its old self, the cricket world needs some drama, some brilliance. The kind that only the men in green can provide.

Unlike most of the “politically correct” people in the press, I am not going to say that Pakistan deserved the trophy due to a cosmic scheme of fairness, a kind of compensation by fate for how their country has been at the receiving end of terrorism for the past few years and how its cricketing infrastructure has been ruined as a result. Frankly, terror is like perfume. One cannot spread it around without getting a few drops on oneself. So Pakistan’s present travails in the political sense are totally due to its policies and I have no desire to link their murderous politics with the fortunes of the cricket team. In any case, Pakistan is being well-rewarded for their bogus war on/of terror by a tripling of US aid and so no tears for them there.

No I am happy because of the potential revival of the old Pakistani spirit, their unique ability that made them be at their most dangerous when all looked lost.In the 80s, time and again, they would demonstrate this power of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, throwing up one hero after another at times of crises. Even men of moderate talent like Salim Yousuf, Manzoor Elahi, Zahid Fazal would be able to do a “carpe diem” in a way that left us Indian fans breathless and green with envy with the culmination of their Houdini act being the World Cup of 1992 when facing elimination, a sprightly lean man noone had ever heard of entered the pantheon of legends with a couple of the most spectacular “burning rubber” innings you would ever see, a man who would subsequently be known as Mr. Potato-head, who would lose his sprightliness but never his ability to entertain. It was a trait that one saw less and less off from Pakistan as the years went by as the men who stepped into the shoes of the Pakistani giants (and I am not just referring to Inzamam) never quite filled them up.

Well perhaps they now have. At least in spirit even if not so much in raw talent.

And yes I am happy for another reason. Or more precisely I am happy for another person. Shahid Peter Pan Afridi. The fact that he finally “came off age”, perhaps many years too late but better late than never. Doing justice to his enormous talent, he was finally able to see Pakistan home, something he was never able to do ever, with his most tragic failure being in the finals of the T20 World Cup where at the height of his form he dropped the ball for his team, and not for the first time in his life. In 2009, his personal battle was a microcosm of the larger struggle of Pakistan as a team as Afridi overcame a horrible slump in batting (he looked like he had gone totally blind) and a possible end to his career as an all-rounder to emerge as not only the single biggest star of the team but also the front runner as a future T20 captain.

Afridi is an old favorite of mine simply because he is the last representative of the archetypal Pakistani cricketer—supremely talented and totally in-your-face “I rule and you suck, you puny Indian”, the kind you loved to hate. Like Imran Khan who when he got hit for a four would stand and look at the batsman with an arrogant smirk on his face as if to say “I bet your wife makes love to you at night thinking it is me”. Like Javed Miandad who made every performance personal and derived so much unalloyed joy from rubbing India’s face in the ground that for many years he was a greater threat to the nation’s sanity than his samdhiji. Like Saeed Anwar, Ijaz the Kasai, Slimy Malik and Awesome Akram. This is a breed that has died out over the years with the Pakistani team consisting of nice guys like amiable Paddington bear Inzamam and smilingly benign Younis Khan (a true gentleman), non-entities like Shoaib Malik who get caught in an Indian marriage con and the “is he Yousuf Yohanna or is he Mohammed Yousuf or does he play for ICL or does he play for IPL” dude who is so lame that he allows himself to be pyschologically intimidated by,of all people, Anil Kumble.

Of the old school, there are just two left. Mr. “Thunder Down Under” is one. But he is still scratching his wounds and will be for some time. Which leaves us with “bad boy” Afridi from the devilish class of the 90s, the kind who is likely to say “Pahele tujhe six maroonga phir teri g*****” as he takes guard.

This T20 victory has given this charming man a fresh lease of life. As also to the team of Pakistan who with the return of Popeye the Sailor Man “spinach-eating“Razzaq and Imran Nazir from ICL and the emergence of Gul as a top notch bowler for the shorter versions of the game are beginning to look formidable again. Perhaps not 1990s strong but hopefully getting there.

And I am happy for that.

My Name Is Red

2009-06-22T04:40:53Z

[ Caption: “Ami Miss Calcutta 1976″ Ms. Sen—she is talking to a Maoist. With a red band on her head. Yes Ms. Sen, we may not know your “statistics” (Context: this Bangla song—ekhono to keu jaane na amar statistics) but we sure know how “independent” you are.]

Over the past three decades, the Left Front’s Red fortress in Bengal had acquired its aura of impregnability based on the Party’s absolute stranglehold over rural Bengal. While anti-incumbency, outrage at lack of development, atrocities like Bantala and Birati might have lead to the loss of a few seats in Kolkata and some impassioned editorials in Anandabazar from time to time, it remained so insignificant in the electoral scheme of things, that the Politburo Pilots merely shrugged them off as not something worth getting their tea cold over. This confidence stemmed from the strategic infiltration of the party into all the institutions of rural life —panchayats, police, business and district administration– all of whom could be expected to work synergistically to keep the rural populace “in line”.

And most importantly the confidence came from the strength of the Left Front’s cadre. Drawn initially from the “sarba-haras” (those who have nothing) and provided sustenance through aggressive land reforms achieved through a combination of legislative and extra-constitutional means (armies of landless laborers putting up red flags on the land they cultivated shouting slogans like “Langol jaar jomi taar” [The person who draws the plough owns the land]), the party apparatchik became the Left front’s eyes and ears on the ground as well as their muscle. A quick way to identify the party bosses: just look for the shiny new “pukka houses” and there you have them. Over the years, the old feudal order in the village was replaced by this cadre raj, many of whom had graduated from being peasants to “contractors”, who lorded over the population with their rule backed up by the legal immunity granted to them by the compliant state administration.

The recent incidents at Lalgarh should be seen primarily as a desperate attempt by those left outside the ambit of the Front’s largess to lash out at the oppression unleashed over the decades by the cadre-police combine. From its violent targetting of party offices and party “key men” to the insistence of the villagers for the SP to rub his nose in the ground in front of everyone their intent is obvious.

Payback.

Payback for the humiliation, the summary arrests and brutality.

This is of course not the first time that villagers have tried to revolt against the Party. But in 2009, with the twin blows of Nandigram and Singur, the consequent migration of a significant part of the Party’s strongarm to the Trinamool, the ceaseless attack on the party not only by its traditional opponents but also by its long-time intellectual support-base for whom Buddha-babu and his cavorting with capitalists has been socialistic anathema and finally a series of electoral setbacks , the Left government has been the weakest it has ever been in the last three decades. Add to that the steadily growing power of Maoists who have brought AK47s to a region where the cadre have traditionally fought with machettes, country-made revolvers and home-made bombs and the opportunistic support provided by the Trinamool and only then one begins to realize why the local population, manipulated by the Maoist leadership, have backed themselves to essentially declare a revolt against the state government and the party infrastructure, which some may argue is one and the same thing in Bengal.

In order to understand why the violence has been so sustained and brutal in Lalgarh, one has to look at the historical traditions of the district of Medinipur (now divided into two) of which Lalgarh is a part. From the times of Aurangzeb when the village of Tilkuti in Medinipur invited the Emperor’s wrath for constructing a Hindu temple in direct contravention to his decree through to the Chuar tribal revolt in the nineteenth century and the independent Tamluk government which effectively set up a parallel administration (the rebellion being voluntarily ended on Gandhi’s request) in parts of Medinipur in 1942 to Nandigram in 2007, Medinipurians have been known for their strong streak of independence and a healthy mistrust for centralized authority.

Given this context, it is no surprise that the strongest challenge to the Left government’s authority has come from this district. In the case of Lalgarh, the seeds of the present violence was laid when a high-powered landmine blast triggered by Maoists nearly assassinated Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at Shalboni near Lalgarh while he was returning after inaugurating the JSW Steel Plant in November 2008. With pressure to bring the culprits to book, the police then launched a repressive crackdown on the region detaining, humiliating and harassing the local population, many of whom were suspected of harboring Maoists or being active conspirators in the bomb blasts. This heavy-handedness provided the perfect fodder for local Maoists to inflame the local population and incite them to perpetrate violence against the local Left cadre. With the cadre in retreat, the Maoists then followed up with a chest-thumping “stop us if you can” march to Kolkata where the protesters brought to the city to a standstill and engaged in acts of vandalism.

The demands of the “people of Lalgarh” or more precisely the Maoists that are pulling the strings have been removal of police posts from the region and stopping of night-time raids, demands that have been met by the state government. In essence, what that has done is that it has further weakened the rule of law in the region, a region where a steel plant is to be constructed, and energized the Maoists whose recruitment in the region has by all accounts been stepped up as it seeks to entrench itself from Tirupati to Pashupati. The potential fallout of this on the state’s investment climate, especially after what transpired in Singur, is likely to be grave. Mamata Banerjee, whose contribution to making Bengal an attractive venue for investment is well known, is also caught in a quandary. Though she has endeavored to extract as much political capital out of Lalgarh as she possibly can, she has stopped short of walking shoulder to shoulder with Maoists, possibly because she realizes that should her dream of sitting on the Bengal throne be realized she would have to handle the consequences of absolute anarchy should the Maoists have their way. To her embarrassment, the agitators have called her bluff threatening her with boycott (i.e. no votes) unless she “breaks her silence”, with the accusation of staying silent being something Ms. Banerjee is usually not accustomed to hearing.

And so Lalgarh remains on boil caught in a ceaseless cycle of Maoist terror and retributive violence by state police with a part of the state spiraling down into anarchy in the near future looking to be a very real possibility.

Bengal bleeds as a result. It bleeds red. All shades of it.

But then again, what’s new?

Tik 20

2009-06-17T17:40:32Z

In 2007, I had hesitatingly “predicted” (perhaps too strong a word) India’s victory in the T20 World Cup. This was because I saw in them a shadow of our 1983 World Cup team—- underdogs, with little in the way of reputation and unsullied by expectation.

This time however I saw in them the team of 1987 i.e. mega-hyped pre-tournament favorites who dominate the tournament and then in a few moments of madness (not keeping men for Gooch’s sweep, Kapil Dev’s crazy slog-sweep) throw it all away.

I was wrong. The Indian team of 2009 World Cup, unlike their grand-daddys in 87, never really looked, at any point of time, capable of going the distance. In all the matches save against Ireland they rarely dominated with their tournament hopes being obliterated by losing to two of the weakest teams in the league of the Big Boys—the English and the West Indies. When they played for pride, they did even worse going down in a spineless, spiritless surrender to South Africa.

And the saddest thing about India’s debacle is that they looked like rabbits, genuinely outclassed by their opposition. Indian batsmen, in the throwback to the 70s and the 80s, were undone by short deliveries as they took their eyes of the ball, top-edged, dragged onto the stumps and in general got themselves into the most frightful of tangles. Watching the so-called “greatest Indian batting line up ever” struggle against well-directed but definitely far short of Marshall-Ambrose quality bowling on pitches that had no Perthian demons in them, was to, put it mildly, embarrassing. An embarrassment that was further exacerbated by their clueless hobble against the tepid spin of Botha and Van Der Meowwww.

If there is any silver lining in this drubbing, it is that hopefully the expectations from Dhoni’s men which had scaled stratospheric heights, on the back of some genuinely good performances and a lot of vacuous fizzle-pop in the private mujra known as the IPL will be brought down to realistic levels.

No dear Indian cricket fan. Neither passion nor junoon nor the “never-say-die-spirit” of Youngistan nor “whatever buzzword the admeisters cook up and fans then repeat like zombies” can consistently gloss over technical shortcomings and strategic ineptness.

The Indian war machine has looked invincible over the past few months based on the superlative form of their openers—Gambhir and Sehwag. The hammering they inflicted on the opposition alone and often in tandem simply papered over many of the team’s shortcomings. It was inevitable that the bubble, like the mortgage market, was going to burst some day. And once it did with Sehwag moping around, physically and emotionally wounded like an aged spinster and Gambhir in a scratchy trough, the stuffing came out in a “dudh ka dudh paani ka paani” way.

Rohit Sharma has more than a passing resemblance to Vinod Kambli and let me leave it at that. Yousuf Pathan is a batsman severely challenged in terms of ability. He can destroy attacks that consist of Laxmiratan Sukla and Ajit Agarkar (and by recent performance Ishant Sharma) but consistently struggles against the next rung up the quality ladder.

His success against decent opposition is predicated by the way he is used. Shane Warne is a master of this and through two seasons of IPL has reaped great success by floating Yousuf Pathan through the line-up and inserting him into the mix in a strategically calculated way. In the Indian lineup however, he is used unimaginatively as he stays cast in stone in his batting position thus exposing his fundamental frailty.

Which brings us to Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Ever since Misbah-ul-Haq had a “we all go crazy sometimes” pyscho moment in the finals of the 2007 T20 World Cup, Dhoni has led a charmed life. Everything he has touched has turned into gold. Government awards. A security detail consisting of women. Bihari virgins singing for a husband like him. A price-tag to die for in the IPL.

It was inevitable that his luck would run out. Some day.

A lot has been said about Dhoni’s arrogance of late especially after his not turning up at a presidential function, rebuffing Amitabh Bachchan, openly expressing his irritation at Sehwag in a press conference and then staging a hormonally-charged dramatic display of “anger” with a very unconvincing show of strength. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and Dhoni has been accused, of late, of being caught on the wrong side several times in the recent past.

I am not willing to put too much importance to that in the context of a post-mortem. Dhoni is what he is. If we were in the semi-finals each of these acts would be “waah-waahed” as Youngistan swagger, the signature of the “India Shining” (not to be confused with India “Shiny” which is a different kettle of fish altogether) team. So no use dissecting intangibles like Dhoni’s attitude as contributory factors for our loss. Pride may come before a fall but in this case it is rather simplistic, though emotionally satisfying (”Too big your boots eh”?) to blame pride as having caused the disaster.

What has caused the debacle has been his horrendous batting slump. Watching Dhoni bat like a fish washed onto shore fluttering his fins in impotence with his attempts at aggression (in the match against West Indies, his strike rate was 47.00) more reminiscent of Angshuman Gaekwad’s endeavors at slogging than of anything else has indeed been very painful. Again it is tempting to blame Dhoni’s conscious metamorphosis from a village-green slogger to a pusher-and-prodder for this loss of mojo, but the fact remains that when in form Dhoni is able to seamlessly move from the “steal-a-single-with-angled-bat-mode” to his “let me wield my 12 incher” mode. That he can no longer do so is a testament to the state of his mind more than the change in his batting philosophy.

Once Dhoni’s batting fell to pieces, his keeping followed suit. I dont know how many noticed this but I saw him regularly fluffing rather regulation takes behind the stumps, in a manner that would make even Deep Dasgupta smile wryly.

Where Dhoni’s total loss of form absolutely destroyed Team India was in the way it messed up his ability to lead. In an attempt to play himself into form against a so-called weak opposition, Dhoni almost gave the match to Bangladesh by going in at one drop, ahead of colleagues who were playing better, and wasting precious time. Some would say this was Dhoni putting himself before the team (something which one was led to believe was solely a prerogative of the Oldistan players) while some others would argue that he took a gamble of playing himself into form, a gamble that just didnt work out.

However what even his biggest fans would find tough to justify would be the decision to send Jadeja before Yuvraj in the match against England. With wickets falling fast to the bouncing delivery and with the next man to go in, here is your choice—

Batsman A: The best player of pace with a special fondness for bouncy pitches. In sparking form. Has a record of saving his best for England and has a psychological edge over a key opposition bowler, who he in the previous version of the tournament carted for six sixes.

Batsman B: A largely unknown quantity who has never been tested at the highest level and definitely not under the pressure of a must-win international situation. He is not even a batsman but more of a bits-and-pieces utility player.

Dhoni sends in Batsman B. Batsman B bats like my maternal aunty at the family picnic, flails his bat about with little effect and almost single-handedly derails the chase. Dhoni justifies his stunning decision by saying that at a time when wickets were falling, they wanted to protect Yuvraj Singh.

Protect the best batsman of the team (on current form) from what? Astounding totally astounding.

In passing, I would like to say that I am skeptical about Gary Kirsten’s whole “blame IPL” song. The reason is simple. For the T20 World Cup tournament, the IPL would have been the perfect practice ground providing as it does an ability to hone one’s skill in the company of some of the world’s best players. I am sure AB Villiers and Dilshan (who has gone on record saying that his scoop shot was extensively practices during the IPL) would agree with me since they have carried off their excellent IPL form into the T20 World Cup without any loss of intensity. On the other side of the coin, Australia’s disastrous performance was blamed among other things on the fact that most of their main players had no T20 practice having opted out of the IPL. And finally, Gambhir and Sehwag looked lack luster during the IPL itself and so nothing good can come from blaming the IPL for their sorry state.

Dhoni’s men have now come a full circle. In 2007, they started off as the “replacements” for a previous generation of heroes, popular underdogs with nothing to lose and everything to prove. They were on the offensive and they were aggressive.

In 2009, things had changed. They were no longer the “little guys”. They had now become the new “fat cats”, a part of the establishment, with everything to lose and nothing to prove. This made them so overtly defensive that they deemed it necessary to shield their best player at a time when they needed him the most.

In a way therefore, their defeat had become inevitable.

Whether Dhoni and his men are able come out stronger from this experience remains to be seen. If they can, then yes they still remain champions even though they might not have the trophy.

The Return Of Apu

2009-06-12T15:37:27Z

[Picture from this movie]

That’s Claudia Ciesla, the lady in the news recently. No that’s not why I posted the picture.

It’s seldom that in a picture with 2 ladies and that too when one of them is as fantabulous as Claudia that my eyes wonder over to the gentleman in the center, playing the role of a don.

But in this case, what else can one do?

Yes. When Thakurpo sung “Ami chini go chini tomare o bou-thakurani” many decades ago in Charulata who would have thought that the he was not being figurative about the bideshini? And who would have that when Mastermoshai was getting harassed by “Sir aapni kichu dekhen ni” in Atanka that he would give it as bad as he got.

Indeed who would have?

Of course not that the man was never bad-ass. He sometimes was as good as Bangali Bachchan in angst and anger , but in a very different way, as this scene with Bikas Ray from Baghini amply demonstrates.

Go Feluda go. Topse is a fish and Jotayu is a bird. You however are a legend. (The man’s next movie is interestingly called “Sugar Baby“)

We have and will always love you, no matter what avatar you be in.

And as to the marvelous Claudia all I can say to her is:

Samne ja dekhi jaani na se ki, ashol ki nokol sona.

[For non-Bengali readers, apologies for this very Bangla cinema post]

Baraah Na De

2009-06-11T05:43:30Z

[Photo courtesy Anirudh Bhatt]

Dhoni ki “baraah” inch dilayega Vishwacup. I have my doubts. Not so much about the Viswacup but about the “baraah” inch part. Though why he went from 1.5 feet to “baraah” inch I am struggling to understand. Maybe Sehwag’s mysterious “coming back home” may have something to do with the reduction.

To paraphrase John Donne “Any man’s muscle tear diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.”

Ladies Seat

2009-06-09T17:49:44Z

“We are ready,” the Samajwadi Party chief said, urging his counterparts in the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United) to block the bill if the government tried to push it down the House’s throat.“Laluji (Lalu Prasad) be ready. Sharadji (Sharad Yadav), you also be ready,” Mulayam said.

[Link]

Hai Taiyyar Hum.

Yes sir. Nothing gets the caste kings of India, cutting across party lines, as “ready” as reservations. Only this time they are opposing it, tooth and nail, since it is not directly for themselves.

Afraid that if the Womans Bill goes through, many of them will be found occupying a “ladies seat” and thus be forced to vacate it, our favorite politicians are on the warpath.

Mulayam said the bill was designed to drive out the senior leaders of every party, who had reached Parliament through “hard struggle”. “We will come to Rajya Sabha somehow. But what will happen to the majority of male members? The leaderships of Advani, Lalu, Sharad, Basudeb Acharya were not built in a day. They took decades to be what they are. Now you want to destroy them,” he said.

[Link]

Samajwadi Party on Monday opposed the proposed Women’s Reservation Bill, terming it as a “conspiracy” against the leaders who have reached the Lok Sabha through “hard struggles” and warned of people’s movement if the UPA pushes the legislation. SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party is supporting the government from outside, backed the contention of JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav that if the Bill was passed without a consensus, it would amount to giving “poison by force” by the ruling class to those opposed to the legislation as had been done to Greek philosopher Socrates.

[Link]
Could not agree more. It is positively criminal that all those people who have been elected to the highest decision making bodies of the land based on their own merit (forceful negotiation, briefcase full of notes, chargesheets ) and a life time of “hard struggles” should have their efforts undermined by something as unfair as “reservations”.

After all, it’s not as if MPs are non-OBC, non-SC/ST students. Those general category people, we all agree, should definitely be deprived of the seat that they deserve for the benefit of Sharad Yadav, Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Singh’s caste brothers. That is of course social justice. A woman’s quota in Parliament is however a conspiracy, something that is so frustrating that Sharad Yadav, who presided over students immolating themselves over Mandal in the 80s, wants to commit suicide.

Unless of course a slice of the pie may be carved out for OBCs, which has been a long-term demand of the messiahs of the depressed classes.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad today joined SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav in opposing women’s reservation bill in its present form, alleging that it was a “big conspiracy” to prevent the backward sections from coming up and to “finish” the regional parties.

Prasad, who was joined by former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, warned of a major movement if quotas for the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, OBCs and minorities was not included in the legislation.

[Link]

Mar jaanwa, mar jaanwa……

Some people don’t get why there is all this brouhaha. Surely our honorable Yadavs will be able to do what Laloo did and give their seats up to their wives and then be able to continue their “hard struggle”s from behind the scenes, thus ruling from behind—an art perfected in Indian politics by ironically a woman. So then oh Yadav men, why so serious?

Of course what these people do not understand that is that once this happens, then their wives might expect them to do some housework in return which I agree, as a husband who shirks from all kind of domestic chores, is akin to giving a philosopher hemlock.

The quota for women in Parliament is of course an awesome solution, in the best tradition of Indian democracy. We solved the problem of caste and historic lack of opportunity by giving out candy in the form of a permanent right to government jobs and educational seats for generations of SC/ST/OBCs in the process creating another class of Bramhins, born to privilege by virtue of last names. Likewise we will solve the problem of inequitable development for women not through education or through grassroots empowerment but by creating quotas for women in Parliament where the wives and daughters of politicians will have a by-gender entitlement to legislative seats in all perpetuity.

Super.