Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind

Fathers And Sons

2010-07-31T02:23:04Z

Son: Dad, I need some money.

Dad (not looking up from the newspaper): Why?

Son: You know I did not get through to a merit seat in engineering or medical. I need the money for capitation fees. You know none of this would not have happened if you had only managed to get a fake SC/ST certificate right? Or if our grandads had been like oppressed, depressed and suppressed like centuries ago?

Dad: Stop blaming me for everything. Its not my fault that your mother’s second cousin took our money claiming to have a jugaad in the Panchayat and ran away with all we paid him.

Son: She told me the guy who screwed you was her friend from college. I didn’t know she was her second cousin.

Dad: Well whatever. I dont have any money to give you soon. I am not Reddy uncle that gets crores a day from mining interests.

Son: What are your organs for Dad?

Dad: Sorry Son. I am saving my kidney for a Droid X. Your mother already used hers up for an iPhone. And she cannot even listen to all the calls her “second cousin” makes her as they keep getting dropped because of the position she holds the unit in. Serves her right….

Son: Well Dad what about my kidney?

Dad: Well what about it?

Son: Can’t we sell it for my education?

Dad: Oh I forgot to tell you. We sold that years ago—why exactly I cannot remember off-hand.

Son: That sucks.

Dad: Yes sorry son. We are flat broke. My dad raised money to send me to the Idiotic Institute of Pottery Management and you know how well that turned out. No job ever, just a bunch of soft skills and I have spent my life counting chickens and eggs. I am not going to make his mistake with respect to you, i.e. pay for a worthless education.

Son: But then what the hell am I going to do?

Dad: Here is an idea. Yes the more I think about it the better I think it is. Go into the jungles and become a Naxalite terrorist. Kill some cops, plant some bombs, spring some ambushes —it’s just like playing Counterstrike except in real life.

Son: You mean make money from extortion?

Dad: Well no I meant this great scheme the West Bengal government has announced for the rehabilitation of terrorists.

The West Bengal government on Wednesday announced a surrender-cum-rehabilitation policy for the Maoist guerrillas with immediate effect.

As per the package, based on guidelines formulated by the union home ministry, surrendering Maoists would get a monthly stipend of Rs.2,000 for a period of three years, while the state government would make a fixed deposit of Rs.1.5 lakh for three years for each.

Once the fixed deposit matures, the entire money would be handed over to the rebel if he shows good conduct for three years.

Son: You mean the government will pay me this amount of money for essentially promising to not be a criminal, after being one for a few years?

Dad: Absolutely son. Taxpayer’s money exists to bring “misguided” youth back into the mainstream, not for the well-guided youth who play by the rules.

Son: But why do I need to go to the jungles Dad? You know how much I hate big ants. Can’t I just do blow up a few schools here in the city and extort a few diamond merchants?

Dad: God, you are not too bright are you? Well I guess I should not have dropped you on your head when you were seven months old. The thing is that rural guerrilla warfare against corporations and the government is romantic. Doing the same thing in the cities is a law and order crisis. You won’t get any sympathy or rehab cash for that. Plus the international literati hasnt really taken up any urban violence cause yet as in they are not made out to be Robin Hoods as much as the jungle hoods are.

Son: Hey can’t I be someone like those people you once told me about, the champagne liberals who jet-set around the world, ink expensive book deals from corporate publishing houses, rail against corporations, US, Israel and India, and then try their best to get themselves to get arrested so that they ultimately get a Nobel prize? Honestly that sounds likes more fun than hiding in a bush full of ants holding a gun.

Dad: Well son, for that to happen, you need to be erudite. You however speak like a heavyweight boxer who has taken too many blows to the head. And neither would you be described in the press as “An explosion of curly black hair…showcases nearly childlike, saucer eyes and cheekbones that erupt the moment she talks or smiles“. The truth is that you look as pretty as a character from a Ram Gopal Verma creation, the kind that sits in the dark in a Sarkar film.

Son: What to do Dad? I am just a reflection of you.

Dad: Well knowing your mother, I am not too sure of that. Any case there are possibilities son if you adopt the path of violence. If after a few years you think the government stipend isnt to your liking and you would like to go for advanced study, you can go to the MIT for terrorism—Pakistan. Funding opportunities there are ample—-even if you cannot qualify for the billion-dollar Kerry-Lugar fellowships unwittingly paid for by US citizens, even the Ten-per-cent Zardari scholarships would go quite a way in a place like the Afghan border. Trust me son, there is no better place in the world for this kind of education. Once you get a training in Pakistan, you can go anywhere in the world and I have heard that if you are a top performer, they organize a boat trip to India as part of your terminal practical training (TPT).

Son: Just a question. This joining Naxals and then going to Pakistan—this does sound kind of risky. What if I like die?

Dad (Looking up from the newspaper): Dying is tough. But it happens to all of us ultimately. The best thing about dying as a terrorist is that people, trying to win a Nobel Peace Prize or appear exaltedly liberal to their friends, will mourn your death and make you out to be some kind of hero. For the rest of us, who will die in a train accident in Bengal or will have their lights extinguished while making way for a VIP’s vanity posse or will be murdered for not buying a birthday gift, there is not even the glory of a single tear drop. Better die loved and feted than cold and forgotten.

Son: I love you Dad. You are really the best.

Dad: Yes I know.

Murali and Bedi

2010-07-29T05:31:58Z

Bedi has been the quintessential angry old man on the park bench of Indian cricket, picking fights with anyone who walks down the gravel path when he is in a foul mood, which is almost always. In the process, he has become somewhat of a spectacle, the kind that makes sensible people take the long route around when they see him ensconced on his bench, shaking his walking stick at the sky. Whether all this bile comes from frustration at how his next generations have minted money while he has not or whether he just enjoys letting fly against all and sundry is a matter of conjecture. What however is beyond doubt is that no one takes him seriously.

One of the players who has consistently been at the end of Bedi’s stingers has been Murali, who has been called a javelin thrower by him for many years now. It has evidently riled Murali up so much that right after retiring he has fired back at Bedi, using rhetoric that Bedi would approve. [Link]

He (Bedi) did not have any variation,” Murali, who retired from Test cricket last week after taking 800 wickets, said. “He just bowled left-arm spin and the pitch did the variation for him. That is what he bowled.”

Now some people would say that Murali, being an all-time great, had no need to snap back at someone whose importance was at the best marginal and he would have been better served just taking the high road of silence or perhaps at the worst, merely blocking him like one of our Indian celebrities is famous for doing.

More than the fact that he reacted , what I found unbecoming of such a legend was the specific comment on Bishen Singh’s greatness or lack of it. To put it simply, there is no way Murali could have known what variations Bedi bowled, how he varied his pace or drift or the exact moment of release. Even assuming, for nothing but the pleasure of seeing how much Bedi sucked, Murali had sat through hours of archival footage of Bedi bowling (you have to remember Bedi bowled in the 70s) there is really no way of knowing, since deliveries were not analyzed with the kind of technology you have available today, the subtle variations Bedi was using. Plus honestly no one takes close to 260 wickets by letting the pitch do all the work. And because Murali’s accusation makes no cricketing sense, it is akin to simply saying “I am a better bowler than you, so shut up” , a particularly juvenile comeback which assumes that people can only criticize someone if he/she does that activity better than the person being criticized (the Ram Gopal Varma argument) [Some may say that calling Murali a chucker does not even need expertise in bowling but merely the ability to see].

My larger point of course is not whether Murali chucks or not but how criticism, even one that is extremely personal and appears quite motivated, needs to be handled by people in the public domain. While I do not subscribe to the notion that people, just because they are celebrities, do not have the right to respond to their critics (the high road argument), knee-jerk, anger-driven reactions like “You suck” [ Murali could just as well laughed Bedi off with a "Who cares what he says" and the dismissal of Bedi as a no-body would have drawn blood] or “You are a fossil” or a head-butt in a World Cup final serve no purpose but to reveal, in quite a blatant way, their own complexes.

Not that celebrities do not or should not have complexes, but I believe they are better kept hidden behind a sarcastic smirk and a cleverly constructed takedown. Else they too end up become marginalized men on park benches, screaming at anyone whom them they think is laughing at them.

[Picture courtesy DailyMail]

Back From Meeting A Legend

2010-07-28T14:43:54Z

While I was off the grid for the last few days in New York City, much seemed to have happened. Harbhajan Singh ultimately got a wicket, Mohammed Azharuddin flashed once again outside the off-stump with his stick and knocked the feathers of a shuttle-cock [Link] (obligatory Gunda reference: Azhar hain jurm se nafrat karney wala, garibon (match-fixers) ke liye jyoti, aur gundon ke liye jwala) , the Indian woman’s hockey coach was accused of doing too much of “Chak De” [Link], Arundhati Roy advanced yet another step towards her Nobel Peace Prize [Link] making it to the list of Forbes (evil capitalist alert) world’s most inspiring women and Wikileaks confirmed that the ship of government is the only ship that leaks from the top [Link].

As to the so-called classified information leak, while it may be big news in the US with Pakistan’s duplicity in the AfPak region being exposed for me it was more like “Tell me something I don’t know.” The day Wikileaks has the full Amar Singh transcripts [link] or the gory inconvenient truths behind all Al Gore globally warming shenanigans [link] or details of Zardari’s five female Turkish “guides” whose services were not compensated for by the Pakistanis [links], I would be mildly interested. But not now. For the present, what was infinitely more intriguing was attending an underground party in the Bronx, thrown in a warehouse, with a “macabro” theme, wherein along with retro erotica from the 1920s being projected on the walls, there were decks of old Tvs showing, in addition to ancient Japanese horror and psychedelic patches of color——hold your breath——Mithun-da’s “Disco Dancer” and Shahrukh Khan’s “Duplicate”.

This post is of course not about that. It’s intent is to share one of my life’s most memorable moments, wherein, as part of the workshop I had gone to NYC to attend, I was able to read sections of my book “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” to the legendary Alan Zweibel, one of the original writers for “Saturday Night Live”, multiple Emmy-winner and winner of the Thurber Prize for American humor, whose credits include hits like “Monk” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. The workshop was truly an educational experience and not just for the words of wisdom and encouragement from someone who has mastered the art of writing comedy. It was instructional in the sense of how Alan Zweibel truly encapsulated the epitome of the ancient ideal of the “Acharya” or the one who instructs through his own behavior ——-for someone so famous, he was so amazingly down-to-earth and friendly that none of us felt, even for a second, overawed or to use as an old SNL-ism “Farklempt”.

In all, an amazing experience.

Now back to the tedium of life.

Conceivation

2010-07-19T04:50:27Z

[You may want to avoid this post if you want to see "Inception" without knowing anything of the plot and its assumptions. Also a full understanding of this post would require having seen the movie since it has many "Inception" references. Else I believe it is quite spoiler-free. I would give the movie 8/10 and not 10/10 because my expectations were pegged a bit higher. Still it is quite a mind-bending ride.]

I was sitting in on the famous class on symbology and of course horny-othology offered by Robert Langda Don at the Lund University. I was mesmerized. In that I was not alone. It seemed that his class, consisting solely of nubile 40 year old aunties with chotis and the sequined short top and shorts of the kind I last saw during the “Girl Eats Girl” act in Ajanta Circus at the Park Circus Melaground, were also entirely taken in by him.

I of course had been dying to meet him ever since I read his world-famous adventures Da Vinci Da Gupt Katha and Pariyon aur Haiwanon . I felt ecstatic at being finally in his class, though how I got there I could not remember.

Today Langda Don was explaining the hidden messages inside the new Rupee symbol, by rotating it 45 degrees. What started as a discourse on symbolic isomorphism, soon became a fascinating exposition on how the Communist party forms the hidden basis of much of what is modern India (for example the Lal of Arun Lal) with its conspiratorial tentacles so deep that some of those perceived as its strongest critics like Mamata Banerjee are actually hard-core Communists. I of course was there to talk to him and since it was not possible in class, I waited till he had excused himself for a bathroom break with his famous “Chal phot chokri” call for class intermission.

Siding slowly into the adjacent cubicle and trying not to see first hand why he was known as Prabhuji, I introduced myself as a fan of his work. He grunted an acknowledgment. I then asked him about the latest Dhan Brown adventure “Khoya Chinh” and his stellar role in it.

The Langda Don was not happy.

“I am sick and tired of the same Dhan Brown plot. Honestly. Every novel starts out with some grand poobah getting killed or kidnapped and our hero being dramatically called in. Then a sinister conspiracy involving some secret society is introduced. In order to save the world from this evil plan, the hero embarks on a breathless journey accompanied by a female companion who just happens to be thrown in his way. His enemies are always—the ticking clock, the law and a crazed assassin, so weird, as to make Anupam Kher’s character with purple jacket and mohawk in Mast Kalandar appear normal. Even though the fate of the universe is in his hands, he always has time to give fundae like how Mayawati’s statues have Masonic motifs and how the messages of the Illuminati are hidden in the pages of Grihasobha. And most disappointingly at the end when the secret is ultimately revealed, it is never really one of the “Yeh andar ki baat hai” things the world has always wanted to know—-like what exactly transpired between Modi and Tharoor regarding the Cochi franchise and how Ravindra Jadeja manages to get selected, but instead something that makes readers say “Bus? Is that all?” And as a man who likes ladies I can tell you that’s not what you want to hear after going at her for 387 pages.”

I realized I had touched a raw nerve. Or rather a whole knotted collection of them. I looked nervously away from his cubicle.

The Langda Don continued.

“Now-a-days I am working on my a new project. It is called “Conceivation”. It is a technique wherein I insert myself into the dreams of women and plant a seed of an….emmm…idea in their subconscious without them being aware of it. When they wake up, they just go ape-shit crazy over me, singing under waterfalls or dancing thunk-a-thunk on green hills even though I am like four times older than they are. Yes that’s the secret of my animal magnetism. Let me tell you that this is a much more complicated thing to do than the proceedure of “Lootna” or Extraction which my colleague Professor Shakti K pioneered.”

I felt enlightened. For so many years I had never quite come to understand how every woman finds Prabhuji so irresistible despite everything. Now I knew.

“Yes I see you are understanding. I am sure you have wondered why in a Hindi movie when a woman, in the course of a seduction number, takes one item of clothing after another, each inner garment is shown to be even more covering than the outer. The paradox is resolved once you realize that clothes are like dreams. Both have hierarchies and just as there are clothes inside clothes there are dreams inside dreams, with time expanding as you go down down the dream hierarchy. What is ten seconds in a Level 1 dream is a few minutes in a Level 2 dream and then a few hours in….you get the drift…”

I shook my head.

“Aha…so a inch in a Level 1 attire translates to a foot in a Level 2 attire…..”

“Perfect. Here is another factoid. Did you know that the laws of physics are composed as one goes down the dreams hierarchy. For example, say you are in a Level 2 dream, having gone off to sleep in a Level 1 dream. Now if the car in which you are in the Level 1 dream swerves, the effect of its motion will be reflected through “composition” into the Level 2 dreamscape. Since Hindi movies are nothing but dreams layered upon another, this would explain for instance why the bullet follows the crazy path as it does in the last scene of Ravana….”

“Or how you can fly in the air and circle-kick ten baddies or how Dr. Rajni can rip space-time with a flip of his spectacles.”

“No that is a bit different. You see we, a very few like Dr. Rajni and Prof Garamendra are dream architects. We have the power to define the laws of physics and the curvature of the universes we create for our audience. So what to you appears to be “bakwaas” is actually the manifestations of our imaginations. Like Ooty.”

Something had been eating away at me for some time. I said it aloud.

“All these ideas sound suspiciously similar to those expressed in Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception….have you seen it?”

The moment these words left my mouth, I was already regretting having said them.

“Us Nolan ki naam ka kutta na paloon. He stole the whole idea from the song “Nayanon mein sapna, sapnon mein sajna, sajna pe dil aa gya”. If you remember that sequence with the thousands of matkes and Jeetendra’s white shoes, the exact same pair that the Rabbit who went down the hole in Alice in Wonderland wore, it had a very dream-like quality about it. Also note please the recursive nature of dreams alluded to in the song—the Sapna in “Nayanon mein Sapna” becoming the Sapna in “Sapnon Mein Sajna” with that Sajna in turn becoming the Sajna in “Sajna pe dil aa gya”. This concept was exactly what Nolan flicked for his flick. Also to note the whole theme of Sajna and Dil. Isn’t that what “Inception” was all about? A love story? Hah. Next you will be saying Nolan invented Nolan-Gur-er Sondesh. I curse some horrible fate to befall that man……”

Langda Don finished what he had been doing and turned towards me, still quite irritated.

“This conversation is over. If you will kindly excuse me, I have to get back to class to start the topic of subliminal messages hidden in Hindi movie songs like the “Teri * ki * “ present in “Yaaron mein pagal ho gya” from the movie Aflatoon and a comparison of the rhetorical devices used in Readers Digest and Human Digest. ”

With that, he turned. Right at that moment, an ear-piercing “Tera surroooooooor” pierced my ears and I realized I was falling, falling.

Presently I was in my living room. A small top was spinning on the seat handle, my very own totem, straight and proud. A song drifted into my ears. “Latoo Latooo Hui Main Lattoo”. Ghajini was playing on the TV.

Mortally scared of the fate of Memento befalling Inception, of a dream turned to a nightmare, brought about by Prabhuji’s curse, I started praying for the soul of Christoper Nolan.

Why I Oppose The Ban On The Veil

2010-07-14T20:42:59Z

During my graduate days at Stonybrook, once it happened that I opened the door to find a kindly- looking elderly gentleman in a nice suit standing outside. Since no one came to sell anything to poor desi graduate students, I was a bit surprised. Soon however his intent became clear—–somehow he had come to know that there was a bunch of heathens living in this corner of Long Island and he had taken upon himself to show us the way of Christ.I respectfully told him that I was not interested in what he was selling and was about to close the door when, with the smile stuck on his face like a Halloween mask, he said in a voice whose edge was unmistakable —-”Son, you don’t know it but you are going straight to Hell”. Fortunate enough to have had a comeback materialize instantly on the tip of my tongue, I barked “Good then I will see you there”, banged the door on his face and called the cops (since soliciting was prohibited on campus).

As an agnostic who does not believe in organized religion, I have always been uncomfortable with overtly-religious people. There would not be a problem as long as they kept their beliefs to themselves but more often than not, that simply does not happen. Soon they try to spread their “love” through overt acts of persuasion of the kind I experienced in Stonybrook or of the type Zakir Naik engages in. This typically consists of a two pronged strategy of endorsing their own product and concurrently disparaging their rivals. This kind of belief-pushing irritates me but I take it in the same vein that I take a Coke vs Pepsi or a Verizon vs AT&T knock-down copy and avoid these harvesters of the afterlife as I would an Amway salesman.

However the crisis starts when the people who define themselves by their religion, through threats and through acts of violence, start impinging on my basic rights of expression. Draw a picture and get your head cut off. Be disrespectful and you lose your hand. Be prepared to be physically assaulted or have your exhibition vandalized if you be deemed offensive. As if such extra-constitutional intimidation was not enough, there is also the government of India which, through the force of law, does its best to inhibit expressions of free opinion, be it a Satanic Verses or a book on Shivaji. The logic is simple: they are to be banned because they hurt “religious sentiments”.

I always thought that in a democracy, free speech needs to be guarded especially when it hurts someone’s sentiments; for benign statements that draw no blood, what is the need for the protection by the state? Evidently I was wrong.

On the same principle though, I am opposed to the French ban on the veil as I see it as an impingement by a secular progressive society on the right of an individual, in this case someone who is overtly religious, to express herself as she deems fit. The official reason for the ban is that the burkha is a symbol of female enslavement and that it has no place in civilized society. While I recognize the need for the state to intervene where freedom of practice goes against the most basic human rights, like the right to live (honor killings, widow burning) or the right to education, the issue of the veil is slightly different in that many people who wear it do so out of their own free will (as evidenced here). While the state should interfere if people are forced to cover themselves up, it has no right to prevent citizens from making what are essentially voluntary sartorial choices, specifically those that impact only the person making that choice and which lead to no deprivation for anyone, except again the person making the choice.

The retort to this is usually “Aha Muslim women have been conditioned by their religion to welcome their enslavement. So when they say they actually want to wear a veil, they really do not. Or should not.”Once we accept this as valid, we have started walking the slippery slope of majoritarianism wherein what the majority believes to be right, is sought to be imposed on a minority with control being exercised even on actions that are so intensely personal (like what people wear) that they really should not concern anyone else, far less the state.

Personally I do not understand why Muslim women would want to cover their faces up and found most of the reasons given here unconvincing. Veils, like any overt display of religiosity, makes me greatly uncomfortable. However I have no right to forcibly prevent someone from doing something that makes me uncomfortable—be it preaching, be it selling Coke between deliveries, or be it covering their face with a piece of cloth. I can protest it, I can call it retrograde and medieval but I have no moral right to stop it, either through might or through law.

If I started feeling that I had the right to impose my mistrust of all the manifestations of organized religion on others, I would be indistinguishable from religious conservatives who use this “We know better and you are offending my notion of right and wrong” stance to attack couples on Valentine’s Day or in front of a pub, thus preventing them from exercising their basic freedoms. In the case of the French ban on the veil, the fact that it is not a frenzied mob or a loony theocracy but a secular government, which is engaging in personal freedom-inhibiting behavior using secularism-feminism as its rationale, should not make it more acceptable.

Now of course the real reason why Sarkozy’s action is so popular in France and has gained such wide acceptance in Europe (considered to be more liberal than the US where paradoxically public opinion is against the French action) has nothing to do with concern about the freedom or lack thereof of Muslim women. The burkha is seen by many as a symbol of Islamic assertiveness, a symbol that Muslims do not seek to assimilate into European culture but instead want to make European culture Islamic, in roughly the same way that chhat puja is seen by many in Maharashtra as an expression of North Indian pride and of their intent to not be assimilated into Marathi culture.

Without going into whether this burkha-phobia is a valid fear or whether the government can really do anything about that, one has to accept that banning the garment is a knee-jerk reaction to Islamic influence, one that serves exactly the opposite purpose for which it is intended. It gives the radicals a genuine grievance to promote the miasma of Islamic “victimhood” , lends credence to the “Islam is under threat” slogan, pushes even moderates to the extremes of religious isolation and shows that sometimes even secularism can be as dogmatic and stifling as ultra-religious regimes on matters of personal choice and acceptance.

Football Fever?

2010-07-13T04:17:36Z

Maybe it’s true what they say about getting old—-you lose your short-term memory but retain your long, remembering things that happened years ago while forgetting where you kept your dentures six seconds back. Otherwise who can explain why the moment the word “World Cup” is mentioned, my mind fills up with images of the past.

Maradona, in his prime, cutting through the Belgian defense like knife through butter and then upping that against the English with another thrilling dash. Maradona at his uninspired best, totally dominated by the Brazilian markers throughout the match, suddenly unleashing a bit of twinkle-toed magic to send the long-haired comet Claudio Caniggia in the clear and Brazil out of the Cup. Zico, one of the greatest players of his era, missing a penalty and then his opponent Michel Platini, in the heat of the contest, consoling him in what would go onto become one of the all-time classics. Baggio’s missed penalty. Saeed Al-Owairan’s unbelievable run to goal. Roger Milla taking the ball from under the feet of that super clown Higuita. Valderama, Rincon and Asprilla making the defense dance with their triangle-passing game. Hassan Sas turning the Brazilians round and round with some amazing dribbling skills.

But surprisingly, none of the images of the present. Not to say that there were no memorable footballing moments this World Cup. There were some— like player of the tournament Diego Forlan(from a nation that gave us Francescoli and Sosa)’s last second cross-post kissing free-kick against Germany, some of Ghana’s games and some very attractive football from the side never mentioned in the same sentence as “beautiful”: Germany. But too few such vignettes for me to hope to see them dance in front of me, when I close my eyes ten years down the line.

Perhaps there was great football but I missed it totally. Maybe I was just too disappointed to see the “Joga Bonito” Brazil of Socrates, Zico and Ronaldo reduced to the charm of a group of accountants at the annual actuarial conference. Maybe it was just that all the hyped heroes turned out to be damp squibs—-scowling bag of hot wind Wayne Rooney (the Yousuf Pathan of football—hot in E(I)PL but a dud for the nation), the good-for-the-ladies Ronaldo, the under-weather Kaka, the off-color Torres, broken-arm Drogba and the perennially worried Messi. Maybe what blanked everything out was the terrible final, with a record number of cards, that resembled more a scrap in the mud between community gundas and local police organized as part of Calcutta Police’s outreach program, than the showpiece match of the tournament.

Wait. Maybe I am not saying this correctly.

I will remember something about World Cup 2010.

Just not the soccer.

I will remember it for one of the greatest boo-boos seen in goal. I will remember it for two games ruined by atrocious refereeing; one by a blatantly obvious off-side and aone by a disallowed goal where the ball had gone yards behind the white line. I will remember it for noisy vuvuzelas and for videos of the French team fighting among themselves.

I will remember it for Paul the Octopus, who depending on whom you asked, was either Octradamus or an incarnation of Clever Hans (though a month before the final, my God had already had called the winner, which shows that Paul has nothing on Chakraborty). I will remember it for Bejan Daruwala who prophecied that the final would be decided in the last eleven minutes. I will remember it for the lowest-common-denominator-based publicity-grubbing, matched by only this bit of genius social media strategy, from Paraguayan super-fan Larissa Riquelme, who possibly eclipsed Juan Roman Riquelme as the most famous person in football with that surname) by thrusting her two jabulanis or “celebrations” (possibly made of the same ethylene-vinyl acetate that gave the footballs too much bounce) to become a world wide celebrity, reminding us all how there is a Times of India inside the mind of every person and that sometimes World Cups are all about the cups.

And I will remember it for Bappi Lahiri’s eenternational heet “Football Feber” . Not just for its beautiful rhyme scheme “Argentina ya France, football se romance” but also because it had more originality than Shakira’s Waka Waka, which extensively sampled (more politically correct term for copied) this Cameroonian classic

Brazil plays like Belgium. Bappi-da is more original than Shakira.

It was that kind of a tournament.

[Errata: As pointed out by @rameshsrivats, the England goal happened before the Belgian goal.]

The Dawat

2010-07-05T19:05:00Z

[Opening bars of the Bhojpuri song: "Set kara di life he Baba Dhoni sangh hamaar ho" sung by a chorus of girls and Ravindra Jadeja]

Anchor: Welcome back to GBTV’s continual coverage of the Dhoni-Rawat marriage or as we call it The Dawat, perhaps the most significant media event after the Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai marriage, which again was the most significant media event after the Lord Rama-Sita wedding. In light of the gravity of the occasion, we have in our studios, cricket expert and part-time ramp model Rameez Sivaramakrishnan Lal, who has been our chief correspondent for all Dhoni-related news.

RSL: Thanks for having me here.

Anchor: So for our viewers please, set the context for this historical event.

RSL: Gladly. It has been well known for many years now, MSD’s success as a bachelor is matched only by his inability to pass it. He has been linked to Laxmi (who said among other things that Dhoni is affectionate ), Deepika, Asin and numerous other principally South Indian hotties. Not just that, there have been headlines like “Dhoni holidays with Rudra Pratap in Mussourie” (with Star News Hindi even carried a special news item about RP and Dhoni to the romantic lyrics of “Aja mein haowaon beethake le chaloon” [Must see video]) . Considering the fact that yet another Sri Lanka tour is coming up, a time that many Indian cricketers lapse into depression due to sheer boredom, it became imperative that MSD got hitched immediately.

Anchor: Interesting. So tell us more about Sakshi Singh Rawat, whose name many people have pointed out does contain “Rakhi Sawant” in it.

RSL: Well it is difficult to know something about someone who does not have a Twitter account nowadays since that’s basically where we source our news from. We did discover her Facebook profile and from that we know that she likes “Desperate Housewives” and “Likes” the Rahul Gandhi page. We know she has a cocker spaniel named Joey and that she has watched Robert Pattinson’s “Twilight” at least ten times…

Anchor: So since she likes vampires, I am sure she will fit right into the Indian cricket administrative community….

RSL: Well we do know for sure she is not much into cricket. Where things do get fuzzy is her age which is reported variously as twenty-three or twenty-one. This is very interesting as according to some versions……

Anchor: Sorry to interrupt you but we have breaking news that a Peshawar court (yes they exist !) has ruled that having intimate relation with Afridi will be statutory rape, since he is still below the legal age of consent.

RSL (irritated at being disturbed) As according to some versions, they fell in love with each other in high school. Considering Dhoni is 29 and she is 21, that would mean he played out a lot of dot balls in school.

Anchor: So what were the controversies? Who did not make the invitation list?

RSL: Well of course there was some heartburn regarding the invitations. For instance, Charu Sharma, under the impression that people even remembered who he was, expressed some personal sadness by saying “I have not been invited, but what I can say is that Ms Rawat is truly a lucky girl” [Link]. Yuvraj Singh was once again not selected for an invitation, reportedly because Dhoni was afraid he would over-eat and add two more inches to his waist, and Sehwag perhaps once again developed a shoulder injury at an appropriate time.

There was also some confusion in the media as to what color sherwani Dhoni wore. Some reported it as green [NDTV], some as blue [Economic Times] and some as black [Hindu]. There is conjecture that he wore all three sherwanis, none of which were yellow, to show different IPL franchises that he was available for a transfer out of Chennai. Some also speculated whether Raina’s dance at the wedding was the “Mere yaar ki shaadi hai” type or the “Raja ki aayegi baraat magan main nachoongi” type.

Anchor: Any feel good stories?

RSL: Well I would say this:

Ashish, the man who got the mare that Dhoni rode to the wedding, was ecstatic at having the Indian skipper as a client. Said he, “Dhoni asked me the name of the mare. I told him it had two names, Rani and Bobby. He liked the second better. At the end of the ride, he gave me Rs 5,001.”

What many dont know is that Ashish’s mare went “Neeeehhhraaaa” all throughout.

Anchor: Oh from the mention of the word “Bobby”, I was thinking of some other fast bowler.

Anchor: Finally, reactions from the man in the street?

RSL: Well, there has been the predictable “Why not me, Mahi” , a slogan originally used by Amit Mishra after his omission from the team, outcry from women all over, including perhaps from well-lighted areas where he is known to make stops.

My home is just a few kilometres away from Dhoni’s, but now he seems further away,” says Sumedha Sinha, a die-hard ‘lover’ from the cricketer’s hometown in Jharkhand. Her family is now ruing for “not sending the rishta on right time.” “Why her (Sakshi)? Oh God,” laments Sumedha. “Couldn’t Mahi have waited for some more time? Sakshi is 21, after all,” tweeted ManishaT.

This year I’ll no longer be sending him birthday wishes on Facebook, not to a married man, of course,” says DU student Shalini Raj. Incidentally, Dhoni will be celebrating his 29th birthday on Wednesday.

But there have been positive reactions like this wherein the art of keeping is related to the art of being a husband—–which makes sense because in both you are supposed to be patient and relaxed and most importantly, well-balanced. [Link]

Dhoni’s former Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) team captain and a serving official in the public sector, Adil Hussain, said, “He knows what system works for him. He keeps well behind the wickets. He will also do well as a husband

Anchor: Well it’s time for our commercial break. Before we go, we would like to thank RSL….any closing comments.

RSL: Well, some great captains first get married to someone from Kolkata and then try their luck down South. While some other great captains first try their luck down South and then get married to someone from Kolkata. But ultimately all that counts is the legacy they leave behind in the trophy cabinet.

Anchor: Err…..yes that’s very profound. Join us in a little while as we continue with our breaking news coverage of the Harbhajan Geeta Basra breakup and the exclusive Gibbs-Payal hook-up in our segment “You just dropped the World Cup”. Till then, India keep watching.

[Acknowledgments to @prempanicker and @sidvee and many others on twitter for giving me some of these links]

My Own Private Bigotry

2010-07-01T05:50:01Z

There was a time, in the pre-Internet days of the early 90s and late 80s, when I would sit at the library of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (my father was a professor there) and read, with a schoolboy’s sense of wonderment, issues of “Time” and “Newsweek”, marveling at everything from the quality of pictures to that of the reporting and of course the writing. The operative phrase here is There was a time because these magazines have changed markedly since then, teetering close to financial ruin [Newsweek magazine is on sale after multi-year massive losses and Time magazine by the end of 2009 had lost 35% of its readership from the previous year while Newsweek lost 41% (link)]. And nothing perhaps symbolizes the rot more than Time USA’s bigoted attempt at humor, Joel Stein’s [picture to left] “My Own Private India“, a piece that twenty years ago would surely not have made the final published cut.

Before we go to a discussion of Time and in general the state of the US media, it is worthwhile to stop a while and read through Joel Stein’s article (if you have not already done so). Anna at Sepia Mutiny has done an admirable job of savaging this bit of bigoted garbage and so I will not go over a deconstruction of this piece. In brief, it is a rant that expresses the author’s anguish at having his New Jersey neighborhood being taken over my cologne-drenched, vulgar, stupid Indians (India, according to Stein, is a poor country because its citizens are half-wits) who worship “gods (that) have multiple arms and an elephant nose”, which according to the author should have been the hatred-ossifying image for his friends rather than the bindi [The "dot busters" being a New Jersey gang in the late 80s who killed and injured people of Hindu origin in New Jersey. I mention the word "Hindu" because in their manifesto they specifically mentioned the word "Hindu" and not Indians]

A defense for Joel Stein will be that he was trying to do racy racial humor of the Borat kind, wherein by perpetuating offensive stereotypes about an ethnic minority he was ,reflexively, making fun of his own bigotry and that we stupid Indians should be smart enough to get it. Frankly, if that was the intent, most reasonable people missed it totally. Like for example Jun Choi, who was quoted in the article responded by saying he was “disappointed that the article turned out to be distasteful and offensive to both Indian Americans and my hometown of Edison”. If indeed, the motivation was humor and nothing else, the entire piece is such a comic misfire that the editors of Time should never have let it pass on the grounds of quality.

But they did. And the reason why they let it pass was not because it slipped through the cracks.

My theory is that they had their reasons.

In the US market, especially in the present Net-dominated landscape where traditional print and television media is hemorrhaging financially, anything that is published is examined through multiple lenses by not only legal departments but also by marketing and advertising in order to properly target the “base”. Time magazine let this execrable article pass through the net because this is exactly the kind of copy once-respectable media outlets, where increasingly marketing managers rather than journalists call the shots, have to carry in order to boost their circulation.

It is universally acknowledged in American media circles that with the popularity of the Internet, people no longer rely on print and television as the source for “primary news”—why wait till 6:30 in the evening for the day’s happenings when you get them live as they happen. All that they care for are opinions, and the more outrageous and polarizing they are—-the better. The world of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather and staid NYTimes editorials, the world of dispassionate news, is no longer financially viable.

One of the greatest media success stories of recent times has been that of Rush Limbaugh (for those who havent seen him—think of a 200 lb heavier Wayne Rooney), whose insanely successful independent radio show (which has flourished outside the framework of classical big media) has grown in size, influence and revenue because his brand of anti-minority and anti-immigrant hatred has a huge market in the US. The established media has followed the Rush route, hiring polarizing figures to do their prime-time programming —-from Left wing loons like Keith Olbermann [MSNBC] to right wing reactionaries like Hannity, OReilly [Fox News] and the worst of them all, Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs [CNN].

The print media, magazines and newspapers, have suffered the most in this paradigm shift. They are restricted on two axes—–due to the nature of the medium, their content producers are not able to depend on the verbal calisthenics and dramatic voice modulations of a Beck or a Rush to rouse the audience. On the other hand because of the nature of their finances, they have to do with second-rate talent like Joel Stein, occasional face on VH1’s “I love the 80s”, to write provocative pieces.

Of course when writing attention-grabbing pieces, two things have to be considered. First of all is there a market in peddling bigotry against the target group? In this case, there is a big market for anti-India rhetoric, comprising of the 25-40 educated elite, many of whom laid-off by the loss of high-tech jobs to India. For these people, any kind of brown-bashing is a lot of fun—from the Elephant Gods to the fact that the country has no flush toilets and that the river Ganga sounds like a disease [Glenn Beck on CNN], from the poor accent of Indian call center operators to the fact that H1B workers pay no income tax [a lie repeated endlessly by Lou Dobbs and also written in his book]. CNN, supposedly a liberal media organization, had the India-bashing segment of the market cornered with its gas-balloon Lou Dobbs till he overstepped the line, going after Barrack OBama through his espousal of the Birthers, a loony right-wing borderline group who claimed that Obama was not American, a cause so outrageous that CNN had to ease him out. There too, there was commerce——– virulent Obama-baiting is a place where Rush can go, because his demographic wants it. Not CNN’s however since it has many Democrat voters and African-American and Hispanic viewers.

The second thing to be considered is how much of an influence the target group has. In the US for example, African-Americans cannot be targeted by such “humor”—-they are too big a commercial market and too powerful politically.

A few years ago, Seinfield favorite Michael Richards had his career ruined after some similarly racist anti-African-American “edgy” stand-up routine of his was captured on camera-phone and uploaded on the Net[ No one as far as I remember used the "It's a joke. Get over it" in his defense] As yet another example, there was a huge outcry in the US media when KFC advertisements for cricket matches in Australia had West Indians being pacified by fried chicken—-because of an American “racist” assumption that African-Americans like friend chicken. To illustrate the point further, if Joel Stein had just replaced Indians with African-American in his piece, ruing over the fact that his white neighborhood had been taken over by Blacks, then Time would never ever, not in a thousand years, let that get to print.

Like African-Americans, Hispanics have their powerful backers. So do Jews. Muslims also have the very well-funded Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) who would give hell if such stuff were written about their co-religionists. And if Stein so far as got a bit off the line with his edgy humor and veered onto areas Muslims hold very dear, then not only Joel Stein but also Ben Stein would need police protection, just because they share a last name.

Indians/Hindus (I use Indians/Hindus since Stein is targeting people who worship Elephant Gods and Stein in his ignorance does not know that Indians arent just Hindus) are of course easy targets. They do not have political might nor a big organization behind them. Nor are they united —since sections will pat Klein and Time perhaps because they want to “fit in” into US society and they think that acting like Uncle Tom will help them assimilate into the mainstream and make them look “exalted” and “intellectual”.

The fact that this is packaged as humor will make it easy to say “Oh come on don’t be defensive. It’s just a joke”. That’s unfortunately the cover for bigotry. What is most important to remember is that the people who are coming to read this piece (this crock of a piece is now the most read page on the Time website), and Liking it on Facebook are not doing it because they understand the “reflexive” humor but because they are going “Yeah that’s the way to tell it to the piss-drinkers” [A note to Joel Stein: Poor research sir. You forgot that part where we drink urine and charm the snakes by blowing].

In other words, the reason this piece is appealing to most of its audience is not that they get the humor but because they do not.

And in an interesting sidelight, Time International (which has to sell to Indians in India and where the curry-hating demographic does not exist) did not carry this article—-if this was pure and simple humor of the intelligent sort, why was it kept out I wonder.

I am of course not suggesting that Hindus should treat bigotry with threats of violence or aggression or anything of the sort. But it also does no good to shut one’s eyes and mouth when a flagship media outlet like Time, an institution our generation grew up idolizing, carries something as repulsive as this, at the best out of lack of oversight and worst out of a desire to pander to the worst in its readership.

Immensely disappointing.

Twitterific

2010-06-29T04:09:42Z

Watching NDTV’s We the Tweeple was fun if not for anything else but because one got to see a few familiar faces, people I have met in real life (@samitbasu, [His latest book, from what I have heard and based on the sample chapter provided, is a must-read] and @nilanjanaroy) and also because one got to hear India’s most famous anchor, someone known to never take herself seriously, concluding the segment by saying that the lesson of Twitter was not to take ourselves seriously. I felt this was also as good a time as any to do a post on Twitter, one that I have been meaning to do for a while.

The question I have been asked the second most number of times during my book tour (the first one being of course “Do you give ipods for the first comment?) was why I do not follow anyone on Twitter.

When I joined twitter, I felt there were two options open to me with regards to my follow policy.

To be truly equitable, and to make the social interaction be based on “friendship” rather than the rather weird-sounding follower-followee (I am the only Prophet type) relationship, I figured I should follow back everyone who follows me. That however would simply flood my time-line leading me not be able to read most of what was coming on the stream.

The other option would be to do what most people do—–follow a selective few.

Given how “personally” people take the whole concept of “following” [much more than say subscribing or not subscribing to someone's blog feed], I figured that this selection would essentially make a very public distinction between two kinds of people—-those whose opinions I think I want to hear and those whose I do not want to (even though they want to hear mine). This I felt would be kind of impolite.

And so I decided to follow no one.

Unfortunately most people take that a show of arrogance and I have been told multiple times that the reason why many people don’t like me (one of course being because I am not “politically sound” i.e. “left liberal” ) is precisely because I do not follow anyone.( I still read people’s tweets but not through the act of “following”.)

Many months later, I was still struggling to handle this since visiting people’s twitter pages (which is what I do) is not an optimal solution. The reason I struggle is because the Indian Twitter-o-sphere confuses me, being a eco-pyramid of Amazonian complexity.

At the top there are the Olympian Gods—the Zeuses and the Heras. These consist of the uber holy cows —-political, sporting and cinematic mega-idols who use the medium to i) inform us about their latest release and how everyone on the sets of movie XYZ was like family and how @Mega-idol1 played a prank on @Mega-idol2 on the sets of said movie ii) tell us of their harrowing experience of being stuck in a toilet and tweeting their way out of it and iii) provide us intellectual nourishment of the kind “Muaah my darlings. Off to Cannes.” and “Back from Cannes. Too much work. Need a holiday.”

They can easily be recognized by the fact that they only follow other Olympian Gods. The only exceptions to that rule are international mega-mega Yoda celebrities like Dalai Lama and OBama [because they are cool], and literary giants like Paulo Coelho [because they are, ahem, intellectual]. The only other type they follow and converse with are the Grand Poobah Journalists (those who say things like “Is there space for space in today’s India?” and conduct analysis of the type “Germany defeated England because they are more multi-cultural ) and movie-reviewers (“This flick is for the masses and the classes). Why? Perhaps because even Gods need to keep their messengers in good humor.

Just below them, are the Angels Descended from Heaven. These are the lesser celebrities, who despite their extremely busy schedules (a fact that frequently tell us ), do want to keep in touch with their fans. Their tweets run the gamut from self-promotion (I will be on so-and-so show at 8 pm on Colors), to pithy intellectualisms (“Be the change” and “Politicians are our problem”) and cause-espousal (the fashionable ones only—like LGBT, PETA etc). They have conversations (as opposed to oracular pronouncements of the Olympian Gods) with those-with-some-influence either in the twitter world or in the newspaper one. They, however, only follow Olympian Gods, Grand Poobah-Journalists and even Little Poobah-Journalists and also other Angels.

Below them is the Noah’ s Ark of life, the unwashed masses—– celebrity junkies (those who keep on sending messages to Olympian Gods like devotees sending prayers), social media gurus (I have not the foggiest idea of what they do), echo chambers of friends/media people who have met through tweetups and who seem eager for more, politically conscious twits (those who send tweets to Grand Poobah Journalists applauding their pearly words of wisdom), Internet Hindus (they are the ones who use Sonia Gandhi’s maiden name and Arundhati Roy’s middle name when they refer to them), Internet Liberals (we know the type) and trolls (who favor direct abuse as a means of getting attention, taking advantage of the fact that blocking someone is a toothless gesture in Twitter ) and assorted other lifeforms.

Now my confusion was simply— whom to follow among all these. I am of course dreadfully interested in Priyanka Chopra’s broken toe-nail but for that I do not need to follow the Olympians—I merely read the newspapers, who have developed the fine art of twernalism (a neologism I claim to have coined) which entails taking a celebrity’s tweets and making it into a news report. That leaves me the truly mindboggling segment—-the ones at the bottom of the pyramid.

But after a year on Twitter, now I believe I have resolved the confusion. I am now going to follow. And the people who I am going to follow will be 1) those who make the medium of Twitter a form of expression, producing compelling content in one hundred forty characters (people like @rameshsrivats) 2) those who post intelligent links that I generally find interesting. The number will be small and it will have nothing to do with personal friendships (people who want to be friends are requested to add me on Facebook).

Thank you for letting me make this clarification (hopefully now I wont have to do any further explanations).

And now let us enjoy the offside goals.

Raavan—the Review

2010-06-23T12:36:56Z

“Bak Bak Bak….Cheeeki Cheeki Keech Keech”….a crazy looking man, caked in mud jumped out in front, dancing all around making silent growls.

“God you scared the living daylights out of me. For a second, I thought you were Raavan”, she gasped, putting on her best Oprah Winfrey-show-worthy accent.

“I am Raavan…..or as they say Veera Veera Veera….aur maine hamming se screen ko cheera”. His eyes opened wide.

“No I just meant that the way you sprung out from nowhere, I thought you were the dear-hunting, pavement-dweller-killing ex…..well never mind….but why are you jumping about, making faces like Crimemastergogo?”

“….I am Gilli Gilli Gilli……..Raavan…..paidaishi chor hoon aaya hoon to kuch leke jayoonga…chahe woh bicycle ho ya ek piece plastic”.

The director stepped out from behind the camera, an exasperated sound escaping his lips.

“Cut cut cut”

The man who called himself Raavan raised his hands in desperation.

“Come on wifey. Throw me a line here. I have been doing method acting, trying to get inside the head of a cross between Veerappan, Kobad Gandhy, Chattradhar Mahato and Ravana, caking myself with dung, haldi, mud, black paint, claiming to have jumped from the top of a ninety-foot gorge (while my stunt double does it) and you have to suddenly get all Pink Panther on us.”

She looked exasperated.

“So what? Even I am trying to channelize Ms. God-Of-All-Things here, trying to show the brigands of Lalgarh or LalMaati or whatever this place is called are bigger heroes than policemen. But you just freaked me out man with your “Hey Cheetah Get Banana Hey Monkey Get Funky” acting, even more so than you do everyday when you wear that hairband of yours. Now don’t push me too much ya, the only reason I have consented to being abducted by you is because you are my husband and I am among the few people who will act opposite you, considering the state of your career. To be honest, this is a fate even worse than an Agnipariksha and a Patalpravesh. God, to think I could be walking in an off-shoulder Bali creation in Cannes right now than be here stuck on this goddamn set.”

The director walked up standing right between the two.

“Come on guys. Stop fighting.”

She turned towards the director, the irritation sharp in her voice.

“Sir, I am sick and tired of being drenched in water everyday. If I had known this whole movie takes place under a shower and in a gigantic bathtub, I would have put on more water-resistant L’Ordeal makeup. You know I am totally worth it.”

The director already had taken enough. Now he too attacked.

“Listen you two. How about some gratitude here? I got the best script-writer I could get for this movie, the guy who almost wrote the Mithunda movie “Ravaanraaj”. For you Mr. anti-hero, I gave you the whole Prabhuji persona—–the anguished man whose sister has been “lamba kiya” by the villains. I gave you lines like “Chauda ghanta baad maregi” on the lines of “Tere maut ke date fix ki hai” and total originals like when you peek into the hero’s “tent” and say ——”Hum dekhe uske tamboo main kuch hain….photo” and “Raja ke tambu main rakshas ka phootoo” . And just to complete the picture, I also gave you a “cheel-chaal ke chakka” henchman.”

She asked “Forget Raavan. Where is the hero right now ? Shouldn’t he be like here?”

The director turned away ” He is playing Raavan in the Tamil version.”

The man playing Raavan in the Hindi version shouted “Hey I thought we were making some friggin high art here. ‘The fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air’ thing, the kind of movie that would make me look cerebral. But all you have are some fancy camera tricks and slow motion shots and nothing in terms of a story or acting or a novel treatment. Even I can realize that. For crying out loud, you are one of India’s most visionary directors, you made some of the best commercial movies of the last thirty years—what’s happened to you?”

At that moment the penny dropped. She knew the truth.

Screaming even higher than she had done in the entire movie, she let loose—-”Wait ….wait… that’s not the Director is it? Oh my God…….. it’s actually Mareech in disguise ! Oh no ! Ramu —-is that you?”

There was no response. Just the silence of an empty hall.