Puff & Pastry

Kitsch works

2005-11-04T17:01:00.000+04:00

I do not know what the scribes in Toronto did to provoke Indian actor John Abraham. He had reportedly rushed to defend Indian cinema (the new knight with what, reel-cups in hand?) and in doing so, became the darling of the Indian film press.
The model-turned-actor is India’s current pin-up favourite. He has replaced the metrosexual heroes on magazine covers, and has exactly one hit and a deadpan look, once infamously attributed to Jackie Shroff (closest in looks and attitude) as “wooden.”
Abraham was in Toronto at the screening of Water, the final of director Deepa Mehta’s Earth-Fire-Water trilogy, and took umbrage at the alleged condescending tone used by the scribes to describe Indian cinema.
As spokesperson of Toronto Film Festival’s opening film, he has the right to feel slighted, and as Indian, to be wounded. But he perhaps overlooked the fact that Water was Indian only in spirit — content, cast and crew that is — but not in its official credentials.
Imagine Abraham in front of the same scribes promoting his current festival release, Garam Masala, where he plays a skirt-chasing photojournalist. The film comes 40 years after its original – Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis’ Boeing Boeing.
That must have been the point the scribes were making.
Bollywood is Peter Pan-like – it fails to grow. It pushes the envelope with reluctance. It goes by formula and even as it tries to buck trends, it clings to stereotypes. There are exceptions, of course. What comes without?
But its staple fare is predictable kitsch — and the only way to go about is to take pride in its mediocrity, the formula, a la Big B and King Khan. They endorse Bollywood’s fixations because that is what they stand for, and have gained from.
In his entire many-decades old career, Big B’s self-acknowledged landmark cinema has been the song-less Black. Shah Rukh Khan’s first courting with international laurels thanks to a possible berth at the Oscars is an offbeat Paheli – grounded in India’s folklore tradition of songs and not plagiarized rock beats.
The cynicism towards Bollywood was recently also documented in BBC’s Talking Movies. Like the newest reporters in Dubai churning out stories on the creek and the city’s taxi drivers, the show’s host marvelled at all things old world and custom – the worn-out projectors and the theatre mangers who haven’t heard of Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Which film?” is how the man responds to the name).
It was like visiting India to explore its great clichés – you know, the “beggars, poverty and snake-charmers.” He, however, infers that Bollywood is moving on and that young blood is hitting hard. That, it is going global. Sadly, it isn’t across-the-spectrum.
Abraham’s outrage would have been in perspective if he can muster the strength to defend Garam Masala – vintage Bollywood fare, not Water. Otherwise it is best to accept Bollywood — for its sleaze, songs and melodrama — and take pride in its formula which entertains in an innocent, heartless sort of way.

- Nov. 4, 2005

Fu

2005-10-22T10:34:00.000+04:00

"Fu," say the Chinese, and welcome home happiness.
Fu is contentment of the highest order, where "with coarse rice to eat, only water to drink, and a bent arm for a pillow," you still smile at life.
The frugal abundance of Fu makes perfect therapy for after-vacation blues. The bank account emptied of whatever leave-salary riches, Fu makes an ideal companion, now, to wade along the depths of middle-class penury.
Over the years, life has informed me, without any subtlety, that the challenge of being is to outsmart relative poverty.
As a sub-editor trainee with a take-home package good enough, at current levels, to buy four Etisalat telephone cards, Fu seemed nobody's business.
His second choice kept the spirits up — water, coloured, a little "contaminated." After which, who needs the coarse rice? Or the pillow?
Later, when a refrigerator was a luxury in our rented shanty of a home — financial injection now worth "eight Etisalat telephone cards" — coarse rice would find indigenous ways to aid survival.
Trudging on, lamenting under the stars life's mean jokes played at your expense, ignoring the caressing cool breeze that ripples the river, and brushing off from you the rich white sand, now extinct from the banks, an escape route is chalked. Expatriation. Forced, self-imposed exile. A passport to luxury.
Relative poverty too takes a boarding card in your name. And manifests itself as the credit card bills, loan installments, telephone bills, grocer's dues, school tuition fees...(as they say, the list is inexhaustible).
Hair-line down, paunch up, a few dollars traded in at the money exchange house, homeward bound brims with joyous anticipation.
Somehow, however, departure day is like Friday, when the very fact that tomorrow is a working Saturday kills half the unbridled joy of unabashed relaxation.
The return-ticket stares at you, and you hope, like Calvin (of Hobbes fame), some conjured up dinosaur will chew down without making you feel guilty.
Kiss home-soil? Salute the air? Create a scene of sheer joy? The airport looks clumsy, the porters look lean, the onlookers that crowd the arrival lounge look envied green, the town is smaller, the cars are metal wrecks, pot-holes seem like ponds...Hey, you are home.
The rich, beaming, made-it has arrived.
Flash out your dirhams-heavy purse, forget words that clinch bargain deals, hand out allowances to any one who walks past you, impress them all — the cobwebs of worry aren't way behind.
Forced generosity, indeed, has its limits. Thousands shrink to hundreds, hundreds shrink to tens, and before the tens become coins of rejection, confirm your return ticket.
You would whip Calvin's dinosaur now. You need this piece of paper. You need to get out.
Draw an expat poverty line; you are among the teeming thousands.
It sure is bad economics. But doesn't this science of money too stress on "scarce" means?
So let's celebrate the poverty of the rich.
Say Fu.
Coarse rice, simple water, the elbow — who says I can't be happy?
Rent cheque, grocery bills, tuition fees — Fu!

Ways of heroes

2005-10-22T10:31:00.000+04:00

We grew up on the story of a die-hard fan of MG Ramachandran (MGR), the actor turned chief minister of the south Indian state, Tamil Nadu. In one of his films, the villain knocks off the sword from MGR’s hands. The hero is now caught between sure torture and more painful insults. That is when our fan strikes. He chucks a knife on to the screen and shouts: “Annai (bro), take this.”
I believe the story. Fans in Tamil Nadu have more or less surrendered their right to be ruled to film actors; they have died for the silver screen heroes; they fight for them; they stand by them. Some built a temple for an actress, whose gyrations could have caused tremors in the immediate vicinity.
We Keralites, of the neighbouring state, feasted on such stories with our vintage air of arrogance: Look at these guys, we would say, can’t they take a lesson or two from our own films, and no way, an actor is never going to be elected to power from Kerala. We booed our evergreen hero, when he showed an inclination to get sucked into politics.
Today, I am less cynical. Not only does Kerala have actors turned politicians and many out of work actors waiting in the wings, our cinema also apes the Tamil scene blindly. It wouldn’t have been a bad proposition at all if only our heroes could match the steps of "rubber-man" Prabhu Deva and our heroines were less flabby.
However, far more than the flagging fortunes of Malayalam cinema, today, I am less cynical of Tamil film buffs' die-hard loyalty to their pet heroes because I have a fair share of glimpses of the largesse of Tamil actors.
The other day a dhoti-clad man walked through the Dubai Airport lounge and crowds swelled before him. “That’s Vijayakanth,” someone muttered to an enquiring voice. The Tamil actor, who is called "Captain" by the industry, says he doles out Rs25 lakhs (approximately Dhs250,000) every year to educate unprivileged children, and another Rs25 lakhs on his birthday to enhance the welfare of the poor with clothes and meals. There are doctors, engineers, lawyers, police officers – all enjoying their current status of welfare thanks to the actor’s generosity.
In Tamil Nadu, however, Vijayakanth’s championing of the poor is easily matched or even overshadowed by the kind-heartedness of many other film folks — some serve biryanis every week; some give away wheel chairs for the handicapped, build homes, and lend financial aid for marriages; others distribute clothes and money. And not all of them are in the political limelight.
Are these actors buying public acceptance? Probably. But does it matter? If your reality of being is one of abject penury, starving children and the street for home, isn't a helping hand welcome? I trust Vijayakanth when he says his kindness has no strings attached.
I am sure one can spare a knife to save such knights in distress.

On familiar faces

2005-10-22T10:29:00.001+04:00

"Bliss Unlimited" could have been the end of the world. When we arrived, the hamlet, tucked away in the interiors of Assam in North East India, had gone into slumber.
Orange blooms scented the air. Dinner at my friend's house was boiled er... silkworms for starters, rice, meat, and oranges. We slept under the stars.
Morning, we dived into the river nearby. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. We watched the river, and feasted on freshly landed fish.
Then we had a visitor.
She lives in the village, teaches at the local school. She spoke the dialect, and dressed like the tribe. For me, she was one of them, until she turned and started off in chaste Malayalam.
A Keralite. Here at what is seemingly the end of civilisation, a Keralite. Add me, and it is two.
Another time. Another place.
It is Mokakchung, a hilly township in Nagaland. We are on another of those "pack-your-bags, let's-escape trips."
After an edgy morning watching a goat precariously perched on a hilltop before somehow it scampered back to safety; learning that there is no bus to Dimapur, the next big town; and finding ourselves stranded in the most fearsome of all circumstances — an empty pocket — do you deserve any prizes to guess where we spent our night eating hot doshas? Yes, Mokakchung had a Keralite (there are many more, we learn) who also managed a motel.
Again...
We are in a train chugging along West Bengal. A flashflood wipes off the track further ahead. We must either spend an indeterminable duration of time in the train or take the road to a distant town, and board another train to Kolkata on the same ticket. We venture out, and hitchhike a truck, driven by — yes, a Keralite.
We, Keralites, have ceased to surprise ourselves of our ubiquity.
We no longer relish debating whether one from among us did hawk a hot mug of tea to Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay atop Mt Everest, or whether Neil Armstrong had to put an abrupt stop to his "One small step for man..." cliche after he saw a placard of welcome thrust out by our compatriot.
As a price for our overt enthusiasm to "go places," we are often forced to rue on the — let's face it — "familiarity breeds contempt" dictum.
That is one reason why I find myself explaining that no, not all Nairs are blood-brothers, Nairs could be Nayars but all Nayyars are not necessarily Nairs, that McNair is not a rebranded Malayali Nair, and all Nairs are related as much as Shah Rukh Khan, Amir Khan and Salman Khan are.
I have one reason why Keralites excel at this chameleon-like assimilation.
I was touring Kerala, picking my eyes through wayside boards...
Apart from the Sharjah Fruit Shakes some stalls announced, I chanced upon Al Ain Grocery; Abu Dhabi Club; Fujairah Furniture; and believe it or not, a Modhesh Bakery.
We simply take home our loyalties.

Dream on

2005-10-22T10:29:00.000+04:00

If we all grew up to fulfil our childhood ambitions, the world would only have pilots, truck drivers, nurses and teachers. We would take turns to be at the bank counter, build houses, work on computers, lay roads, model on ramps, sing songs, act in films, edit newspapers, fight wars…
Some of us truck drivers would turn into motivational gurus and advise the pilots, nurses and teachers on how to make money. A few of us pilots would land on the Himalayas and emerge out as yoga practitioners. Some of us nurses would become etiquette consultants. A few teachers will help the rest of us write the perfect CV.
And the world will be back to square one. A cutthroat arena of IT geeks, maverick politicians, unhelpful bankers, grumpy salesmen, skinny models, goofy DJs, haughty actors, and great writers (I am enjoying this community panning…)
We will start dreaming again about “chasing our dreams” and realise that the biggest trouble is in deciding what to dream.
I had promised myself, even as I filled in the application form for the medical entrance examination, that once I graduate I will take my time out and serve the poor. Blessed are the poor. I never got to wear the white coat.
My dream went bust; a silent death. With it died my all-time ambition. I haven’t really found a reason to dream again. What would I, anyway? A Pulitzer? Or an “incentive” for “meritorious PR spin?” How do I strike a balance in my scale of achievements?
The trouble with ambition is that it packs within an agenda: It demands that you “arrive,” be seen, heard and regarded. A set of societal standards barometer your growth. What car do you own? Are you drawing a five-figure salary? Have you booked a place at The Palms? Does your child study for O levels? Which exotic island would you discover this summer?
I would rather align myself to a dreamer who taps into his creative reserves to continue dreaming than “arrive,” driving down ambition lane armed with petty accomplishments.
The trouble is that we hardly understand the “dreamers.” Their valuation of life is to a different set of standards. What you regard as essentials in “making it big” don’t fit in their context of conquests.
I laughed at him when a friend told me about his dream balloon. He would go up in the sky on it, stop it somewhere up there, and look down and study the earth rotate. Just as the earth below reaches New York, he would make his descent. Oh yes, it is a pipe-dream. But why burst the bubble of happiness with technicalities?
I believe we need a few more of these dreamers so we don’t become slaves to the demands imposed by “ambition.”
I would start my “dream on…” mission by scarping this question from our schools: “What do you want to grow up to be?”
And if ever my friend goes up on his balloon, I would readily give him company. I have some places in mind.

New heroes

2005-10-22T10:28:00.000+04:00

I do not know about real-life villains (and assuming that I am not one), I like to empathise with the heroes on-screen. I like the simplistic goodness that they represent. Life, for them, is a battle of good against bad, white against black. Even if they come in grey shades, they are eventually either white-washed or blacked out.
It used to be simpler. You could judge a film by its hero. Today, the equation is complicated. That applies to heroines too. Indian film heroines weren’t expected to tuck their skirts above a certain knee-length. More liberties rested with whom we called ‘vamps.’ Today, that distinction has ceased to be. Dress, or the lack of it, is no way to spot a heroine.
As for heroes, muscled men who commit all excesses are now to be emulated. A la Michael Corleone of The Godfather, conversion to “bad” is what is good for the box-office. Become con-men, cold-blooded murderers, nefarious activists and we will clap with you.
Traditional villains find their tribe decreasing. Gone are the days of the ‘bu-ha-ha’ laughter that proceeds shooting down one of the side-kicks, or the long lectures villains made giving enough time for heroes to escape. These days, ‘when they shoot, they shoot,’ and ‘when they talk, they talk.’
The worst sufferers are child artists. From having to learn the family anthem, which will come in handy as adults to be reunited with the parents, these days, they must belt out corny, adult jokes.
And what happens to the audience? As one who laughs with heroes and cries with them, as one who reacts instantaneously to any film without being remotely self-conscious (yes, I am the one who laughed up in the air, came down and broke that chair; I am the one who clapped while the hero bashed up the villain; and I am the one who booed when the film turned out to be a total disappointment), my loss is a little of heroic idealism.
I sensed myself, the hero, shrinking to a supporting character’s role, when I rang up home during Onam, which traditionally brings together the entire family. My parents were alone that festive day, all three of their children far away.
I have watched countless flicks that talk about old age, about children leaving behind their parents for ends and gains that are ultimately selfish. In those films, there would also be one wayward son, who will eventually come to the aid of the parents. Oh, how much I related to that black sheep, and how I swore to myself, I would be “that one.”
It isn’t just the woes of old age that I have compromised in life. And the sad fact is that, supporting actor or not, I have come to accept being the non-hero.
What I need is a new hero, who is hardly idealistic but easily compromising. He will stand for an increasing tribe of self-blaming, middle-aged dreamers who are fast losing out in the race to an ideal world.

Around the school ground (for 61 days)

2005-10-22T10:27:00.001+04:00

It is hot, the day is grey, and we have stepped out for a jog. She has been reveling in a summer of marathon-sleep, and since obesity looks like every body’s business, and physical inactivity is the root of all matters flab, I cajole the little one at home to get up “early” at 8 am and go round the neighbouring school ground, which has been teeming with joggers, summer or not.
The joggers, the morning walk-buffs, come in all kinds. Couples who seem to have taken their long-standing disputes out into the streets; others ready to break into one the moment they reach home. The truly obese; the skinnies. Lone walkers; stylish groups who bring in a dash of colour and music. Grand old ones; a few like our own little one.
For some, it is a quick stroll; a few rare ones pant and gasp as they sprint all the way; others are in a frantic rush; some are so relaxed they could be sleep-walking.
Every one’s battle seems set against the few extra pounds of flesh, and at the end of a regimen, would we all hang up our track suits that would be Obelix-size on an Asterix-make? Day after day we would walk, night after night we would dig into the junk food platter, and hour after hour we are reminded of the curse of the bulge.
I have met both the spectra of activists involved in the adipose issue, and have aligned myself to the obesity-acceptors who are ready to fight all temptations and live a healthy life but are not willing to scare their body off with wonder-drugs.
They are ready to run, eat healthy and stay fit but don’t, please don’t, they beg, hassle them with magic pills for a Ms World fit. They are not turning their back to the complexities that obesity brings along; they love themselves, accept the truth of their condition and work towards easing the strain.
Unlike the other group, who are on a perpetual scare run. For them, A is for adipose not apple. B is for bulge not burger. C is for cholesterol not chocolate or chips. D is for dreaded disease and drugs not dreamful sleep. E is for excruciating exercise not entertainment. O is for obesity not, well, oranges. And R is for run, not rest.
You can almost make out the followers of both cults on your every day morning walk. The latter demand that every step they make should yield a corresponding return. You can very well trace that painful calorie gleefully escaping out of their perennially grumpy face.
Then there are the former, those who walk, jog or run for the pleasure of it. They wear a few extra pounds alright but they enjoy being themselves. And it shows – in a pause to smile, a gleam of recognition, a word of greeting.
As for us, we have no plans to stretch our “around the school” project for more than 61 days. After that, the school reopens and the whole world would once again go spinning around you.

Ayn Rand and the art of cafeteria service

2005-10-22T10:27:00.000+04:00

I read Ayn Rand while at college, late already, and immediately joined the Objectivity Club her die-hard followers had founded. The club’s message, as I understood then: Be you, be sincere. I believed that I could change the world, my little world. Wrong. I make no difference. My world is one of compromises.
I live life on terms that do not necessarily suit me. I realise that I have no option but to egg on, with whatever I have picked up. I choose the wrong course at college and I complete it: My first compromise. I like a life of travel, unrestrained travel, through hills and valleys and forests and lakes. I don’t. I can’t: Compromise again.
In this journey of self-denials, I realise I am not alone. Virtually every one around me lives a life of convenient compromises. The difference is in the scale of sacrifices. Every one seems to want a different life; a better job, a bigger home, a heftier pay, a faster car, a smaller mobile…
Worry flags off the day; stress feeds it and weariness bogs it down. In between, you smile, you fight, you argue, you throw attitude, you ignore, you slight, you flatter, you please, you beg, you borrow, you hope, you plead… and you turn the leaf of life another day into tomorrow.
You travel in a taxi and the driver all but moans the tragedy of being. He fishes out fine bills, counts his nominal collection of the day, curses his superiors and his fate, and deftly blinks off the charge monitor and whisks off with the coins due. For the sympathetic ear that you lend so far, you utter expletives, and hope never to board his vehicle again.
When life is decidedly jaded, stale and boringly one-sided, armed against you, you walk into a cafeteria and witness it smiling at you, beaming, indeed, from the face of a wiry old man, who ought to wear a frown.
He walks to you, ushers you into a chair, serves the best tea ever made on earth, recommends a crisp of the evening, enquires on family, health and all back home, and rushes to the next customer repeating it all. Is it a put-on, the ever-cynical you wonder, but as he moves to the third before turning to you again, you realise that this man is living life.
He doesn’t nag on the unfairness of a Dhs600 salary; he doesn’t crib that in the twilight years of his life, he is still waiting on others; he doesn’t cry foul that next-door, a much younger guy makes Dhs1000…
He is from Life’s Objectivity Club that I miss being a member. I guess his membership fee is nothing but a chunk of sincerity. How I wish I could replicate that in every thing I do…
Ayn Rand wasn’t wrong, after all. The world is rich with individuals who value life for all its blessings. Guess, we are destined to miss their bus all the time…

Bad debt

2005-10-22T10:26:00.000+04:00

I owe Baleshwar 600 Indian rupees. Baleshwar is a migrant from Bihar, a state in India that struggles to push up its human development indices. He had moved into Assam, a neighbouring state, less in penury but on par in social unrest, his whole clan fanning out into Assam’s many villages.
Baleshwar managed to open a tea shop bang opposite our college. His aged father did little than smoke hand-rolled cigarettes as he took his vantage position in a weathered chair in front of the shop – he was a permanent fixture there. His mother was the “heart of the house.” She slogged in the kitchen, and somewhere inside the home-hotel, there also lived his grandparents, his wife, a brother and many kids.
The womenfolk seldom came to where the food was served to us outsiders, which was a makeshift arrangement that had to be abandoned when it rained. And it rained for many months in Assam. Then we would be accommodated inside the house, in the family’s little living room, where Baleshwar could somehow fit in three long tables and benches.
Baleshwar was generous towards us. We could open a ledger, eat on credit and pay later. It suited us, and we would sometimes drag our payments for months on – Baleshwar somehow was last on our priority list. And he never seemed to mind. His smile never lost its friendliness and if at all he was frustrated with us, all he would do is drop a few hints.
The arrangement lasted for four years until it was time for us to move on. We had graduated but had to stay back to finalise our papers, before a four-day journey home by train. There were little chances of a return.
Insurgency was now not a distant issue; it would happen right before us - a dangerous slogan on the university walls; a mild explosion in town. We were “outsiders” in our own country, and the threat was real.
I owed Baleshwar 600 rupees and I had no way to settle it. I suggested sending the money from home, and surprising me, he agreed without hesitation.
Home-coming follows a bout of laziness. I forgot all about Baleshwar until one day I woke up with the thought of the bad debt. I sent the money order until at least a month later the post man returned with the money: The addressee no longer exists.
It took many more months until I bumped into one of my lecturers who was attending a conference that I learnt Baleshwar had moved on. One night of arson had left his years of toil in ashes. He had fled with his family, the grandparents, the parents, the little children – did he go back to his village in Bihar? I will never know. I wouldn’t even recognise Baleshwar now.
He wouldn’t remember my 600 rupees anymore. He would have put it along with a long list of losses under the heading, “Fate.”
I remember Baleshwar because a tiny cafeteria, where I have an occasional tea, is shutting shop. No, I don’t owe them money. I owe them the comfort of a few evenings, when I sat back in the outlet’s uneasy chairs lost in my thoughts.
The cafeteria owner is yet to recover from the suddenness of the decision that has left him at a dead end. He too might have a list of losses to put under “Fate.” He too would find his bearings elsewhere.
It never changes…the world tests and tries the Baleshwars.

Art of begging

2005-10-22T10:25:00.000+04:00

It was the end of a four-day journey. Not a pleasant one by any means. There were no berths to sleep, no way to rest our tired limbs, and soon, we had sprawled ourselves on the floor of the messy compartment.
We took turns sleeping, ate very little, and relieved ourselves even less. We tried to sing songs, and irked irritated soldiers, whom, I presume, weren’t homeward bound.
In India (here, I generalise), travelling with soldiers on long-distance trains is a surefire ticket to total merriment or utter chaos. Merriment, if they are on their holiday. Then, their largesse would fetch you generous pourings of their rations. Chaotic, if the men are barrack-bound. They would be grumpy, and eager to break into fights.
We fought with them for flimsy reasons and devised ways to provoke them, confident that our “students” tag will fetch the rest of the commuters’ sympathy. Eventually, boredom took away even the fun of fighting.
The train chugged through dry lands. It had taken a detour following an accident, and one morning, we woke up to find ourselves at a dreadful railway station where all that seemed to be up for sale were knives.
A man came banging on the train’s metal with an iron rod to wake up every one for tea that was sold by one mongrel of a thin boy. The man appeared to have walked out straight from the villain’s camp of a Bollywood film. Scared, I suppose, we bought his tea that, surprisingly, tasted divine.
On the fourth day, it was time for good-byes. I was the last to go. The crowd had thinned but the compartment had run dry. There wasn’t a drop of water to freshen up.
Waiting for the night-bus that would take me home, I could feel dirt on every pore. I was deep into a magazine, sipping hot coffee, when I felt a tug at my sleeve. A frail, hassled-looking man was standing beside me. He thrust his dirty palm to my face. He needs money. I looked down. I felt the tug again. He hasn’t budged. I ignored him.
“Can you give me one rupee?” he asked in perfectly accented English that surprised me.
But irritation has the habit of overcoming every other emotion. I shook my head in the fashion only we Indians can do. Yes or no. Take your pick.
His next statement took me totally off-guard.
“It doesn’t take much to be on my side,” he spewed. And he turned and walked away.
I was shocked. Stunned. Here, I was, after a lousy journey, at the receiving end of a curse by a stranger to whom I did no apparent harm.
Wasn’t I superstitious! I dug deep into my pocket. Took out two rupees and rushed after him.
“Here, take this,” I said. “Can you also take back that wretched curse?”
He looked at me with pity. Took the money. Mumbled a “sorry” and walked away.
That night, I learnt the art of emotional blackmail.

Busy body

2005-10-22T10:24:00.001+04:00

I am desperately trying to appear busy. I walk briskly, cut short my telephone calls, tap away at my keyboard furiously, and generally try to give the impression that I have been born to work.
Allow me to work undisturbed, my body language screams. The advantage is that I can put all social niceties to rest. I can avoid calls, not return them, and not feel the least bothered about my indifference.
My friend owns a factory, has some one-hundred employees, and every time I say, “I am busy,” he laughs at me. His problem is that he isn’t busy. Even when he used to work at the grassroots, slogging hard to meet tough sales targets, he insists, he wasn’t busy.
He finds it even more amusing that his acquaintance, one who manages a string of retail outlets with many hundreds of employees, is never busy, unless he wills it.
His phone will ring, say four times, and even as he sits back doing nothing, he won’t pick it up.
“Don’t you want to take the call?”
“No, no, I have been waiting for this call,” he says.
“So why don’t you just pick it up?”
“If I grab it at one go, he will think I am not busy.”
Appearing busy is a business strategy for the man, and that explains the flip side to the tale. When he is genuinely “busy,” he makes sure that none of his clients are aware of it. “I have all the time in this world for you,” is his refrain.
Is he a bundle of contradictions? Is he trying to prove a point? Perhaps, he is. That, to my understanding, is that he is positioning himself, distancing himself from those who need him, and walking that extra mile to get closer to all whom he needs. That is his entrepreneurial streak - “a business-house version of love, where the closer you get the farther away you seem to be.”
I don’t know whether he picked this habit up from one of those motivational books. But I am sure that a particular manager, who has this irritating habit of making you repeat every unpleasant thing that you say, learnt the trick from a one-book-wonder guru. The rough edge in your voice evens out while repeating and he gets enough time to think of an explanation.
I am surprised at the amount of work some people claim to do. Every waking moment of theirs is clocked to a result-oriented work schedule. Every element of their life – from their mobile to e-mail inbox – is timed and tracked as part of a “busy” office day.
I have had my share of long work days; I have occasionally hung up on friends and my wife; I have been abrupt to strangers while on calls.
But busy? I don’t think I ever have been – in the strictest sense. I was merely making myself unavailable. Know why? To feign “busy-ness” is to feign power. Men of power aren’t supposed to idle.

Indian cinema isn’t Bollywood

2005-10-22T10:24:00.000+04:00

Amsterdam has marched into Dubai, I believe, for all the wrong reasons. The Indian film industry is taking its most visible and least evolved chunk, Bollywood, to Europe in the name of another of those countless award ceremonies hosted predominantly for “let’s pat ourselves” sessions. The International Indian Film Awards is as much international as its venue and a few obliging stars, and only marginally Indian - restricted to the caucus-driven Hindi film industry.
I can understand the logic of dolls like Aishwarya Rai latching on to ‘non-Indian’ international filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha to earn a little space on the Hollywood turf. I can validate the greed of Mallika Sherawat in falling all over Jackie Chan for those five minutes of international exposure via Cannes. I can appreciate Nandita Das, representing India, at the jury of Cannes. (Somehow, Cannes has become the referral point of India’s international film aspirations. And look what it gets!)
I can, however, never pardon the hijacking of Indian cinema by Bollywood – only because it is richer, mightier, glossier and far less meaningful. Hindi cinema isn’t Indian cinema, and Hindi cinema, for all the right reasons, has not crossed over one little league than what it hasn’t already reached.
Bollywood is as international as Shah Rukh having a few (oh yes, make it thousands) non-Indians fans in Durban, Europe or Dubai, or Amitabh Bachchan winning a retrospective in Cairo.
Beyond that, it is more non-resident Indians - with decades of ‘international’ exposure still ‘yours truly’ to Bollywood sensibilities - having more opportunities to watch more Hindi cinema than any meaningful acceptance of the cinema as an international showpiece. Even Chadha doesn’t call her cinema Indian; she might dread being branded a diaspora filmmaker. She is British, you see.
The Amsterdam edition of the International Indian Film Awards is pitching feverishly to attract non-resident Indians from the UAE to watch another round of the ‘Bollywood is one big international family’ tamasha. London, Malaysia, South Africa and Singapore didn’t need that external prop. Amsterdam sure would like some extra NRI help – and what other place than Dubai to fish it out?
It would come as no surprise if Bachchan, as promoter and patron of IIFA, would stand up to announce Dubai as the next IIFA venue – oh, it makes sense. Bollywood looks bigger in Dubai than Mumbai.
And I wish IIFA will rain down on Dubai as not another version of Bollywood posing as Indian, but as a true showcase of the actual expanse of the country’s cinema.
Let the Khans have their fun; let the Bachchans take home the trophies; let the Mukherjis laugh out with their laurels for unabashed caricaturing; let the Rais, Sens, Kapoors and Oberois exude oomph, glitz and red-carpet tantrums.
If only there was a little space to recognise Indian cinema as an intelligent artform too, and not merely the pedestrian spectacle of borrowed brilliance and outlandish melodrama that Bollywood professes… that turf doesn’t smell dollars. And obviously, that is anathema to Bollywood’s masters.

Clutter-zone

2005-10-22T10:22:00.001+04:00

A pampered youngest one got married and when she couldn’t take the pressure of marital discord, she took to “cleaning” with a vengeance. Cleaning her home was her outlet, her refuge, her solace somewhat like the Indian pop singer Usha Uthup, who is used to “ironing her worries away.”
We have long been neglecting the domestic chore of “cleaning” as a nuisance and it took a psychologist to drive home the point that it, after all, can be therapeutic. Having read somewhere, a long, long time ago that a cluttered desktop shows the clutter of your mind, I have been trying hard to keep my desktop (and hence my mind) clutter-free. It is a losing war that I wage.
But must this battle be confined to the desktop? What about the innards of the cupboards, the dumped away suitcases? Clutter-free zones are best achieved when they are largely cosmetic. Dig into the cupboards and what would tumble down are not old clothes alone but a whole lot of hoarded memories too.
Dumping takes effort. And costs money too. Have you heard the story of your neighbour who wanted to replace his small-sized cup-board and decided to give it away to the building’s watchman? The watchman won’t touch it. It’s rather new said your neighbour. No, sir, I don’t need it. How about anyone you know? No one will take it. So shall we dump it? Only in the night, sir. The neighbour pays the watchman to carry it down three-storeys and sees it lying by the waste until it is lifted off by someone who found a few dirhams worth in it.
Maybe that is the kind of experience, which prompts people to host garage sales and offer for sale every thing for home theatres to lingerie. To buy the latter on a garage sale is foolish, to offer it for sale is sheer greed.
There is something about expatriation, which makes you look at your material accumulations for its mere utility value. You learn not to stay attached. You also realise that it is easy to leave behind the furniture and not hoard your memories into the cupboards.
Hasn’t every home-shifting – that painful routine virtually every one goes through – been streamlining exercises where you dump more than what you transport to your new home? Haven’t you realised when you sift through the belongings how it all had added to the clutter that is your life?
And how much of what you have accumulated is truly worth it all? A small fire in the neighbourhood saw the flat’s residents rushing out with the children first, and then the brave elders braving it one more time inside to return with the family’s most intimate possessions. That was pretty little: Just a file of certificates, and what they randomly picked on their way out. The rest, they knew, could go. It would pain them but then they were all replacables.
Clutter is what is replaceable. That explains why an aggressive round of cleaning brings relief to the mind. It helps your prioritise, any day, your true possessions.
A helping hand anyone?

Drive? Go take a walk!

2005-10-22T10:22:00.000+04:00

It has taken five years but finally, I have met the man. One who is frank enough to admit that, like me, he is “petrified” of the roads. I have caught incredulous stares when I say, I have a “valid–whatever-that-means” driving licence but I don’t drive.
I don’t drive because I am scared. I don’t drive because I can catch up with my sleep or reading while someone else drives me around. I don’t drive because I am impatient. I don’t drive because I don’t want to be another of those road-selfish ones who no matter the traffic jam they create will not let go of the vantage position they have managed, to grab a parking place.
Haven’t you seen the beaming smile of victory that motorists flaunt when they clinch a place in the parking lot? They have left behind a trail of losers – all cursing their luck, swearing at the winner.
Driving around in your own car is just another habit you form – like the mobile phone – one you can as easily live without. Trust me on this. Try switching off the cell-phone and chucking it into the remotest corner of your cupboard. If you aren’t more relaxed than a Zen monk in less than one hour, call me. By evening, it is sheer bliss, and in 24 hours you feel you are vacationing. Don’t worry about the world. It would still be the same, a little saner, perhaps.
I don’t drive also because I hate to be intimidated by sweet little things in monstrous vehicles leaving me wondering what they are indeed setting out to prove. I guess there is an inherent waste of resources in huge vehicles – all that metal, all that man-hours that go into its making - does one individual need so much of eventual scrap, to be carried around?
As for motorist convenience, don’t even talk of that because I cover more distance inside the city on a Thursday evening not driving by myself than many I know who venture out on their vehicles. And I take sadistic delight (bu, ha, ha, as we say) in watching the sad and frustrated faces of motorists caught in serpentine queues.
On any typical weekend, a family goes shopping and the husband is left behind to “baby-sit” the car. Thanks but no thanks, I would rather not spend an evening staring at mannequins and bothering about the worst financial exigency you are about to be pushed into at the cash counter.
But best of all - an explanation that seems rather romantic – I don’t drive because I like to walk through the bylanes of Dubai. Call me immodest, I have trekked more into the heart of Deira and Bur Dubai than many long-time residents in the city. I have found more “stories” out there than at press conferences; not that I write them all.
In a way, those are not stories be written. Those are not to be written because in writing, they lose the essential: Timelessness; the faces become dated, the life becomes defined.
I have read of townships that celebrate “no cars” days. Imagine a day you see only bicycles and people walking down your streets. Surely, their smiles would be sunnier.
And if you see two kindred souls pedaling up Al Maktoum Bridge…one could be me. The other ought to be my new friend. But I hear he is “petrified” of cycling too.

Elephant bites

2005-10-22T10:20:00.001+04:00

A friend’s two-year-old son has returned from a long holiday in Kerala, where he had his first elephant ride. Clutching on to his father, the little one was rolling to the rhythm of the elephant strides when he suddenly burst into tears. He pointed to his leg, and with every look, his decibel level went up. The hassled father took him down the pachyderm.
After a few sweets and more cajoling, he revealed the cause of the entire ruckus:
“The elephant bit me.”
The parents burst out laughing. The boy had mistaken a mosquito bite and had connected the pain to the elephant. Many weeks have passed but show the boy the picture of an elephant, and he would say: “The elephant bit me.”
It could take many more months for the boy to convince himself that it wasn’t the elephant, after all, that spoiled the fun of his ride with a biting pain. And all the while, his parents would have their share of fun until some day when, maybe, my friend might lose his patience and decide that elephants do need a break from this wise guy’s ramblings.
Until then, elephants will continue biting the kid, and mosquitoes will roam scot-free.
At the risk of sounding pompously philosophical, let me say that we all make elephants out of mosquitoes. And it happens without reason.
I wake up one morning and discover that whatever I do goes wrong. I ring up an acquaintance; the otherwise friendly fellow sounds rude “in a meeting.” Appointment schedules go haywire; friends are non-obliging; the kid is throwing tantrums; the tea spills; the computer hangs; the mobile isn’t charged; and every one around is animated.
That is when I invent my elephants. I decide that my rude acquaintance actually is a thankless opportunist – wait till he gets back to me. Better still wait till I meet him in person. Then, I can say, “You’re too busy for me,” and walk away.
But then, I am bad at repartees. I have taken unkind cuts and taken them along to bed, tossing and shifting, as I schemed the best way to annihilate this “elephant” that bit me. I plot my little revenges knowing fully well that nothing is going to happen; I am never going to make that nasty swipe.
So at the next encounter, after the first few seconds of unpleasantness, I might welcome the elephant back and place him on the same pedestal of respect he had enjoyed before. That however is a momentous moment. The elephant suddenly becomes the mosquito. So what if it did bite me?
I have discovered that of all the battles I invariably have to fight within, the toughest is the one I wage against myself. I realise that the elephants I spawn in my mind are more than the actual mosquito bites I endure. Yet, I fancy the distressing elephants.
I fancy them because they somehow put me on a moral high ground, and allow me to scream out loud. That should fetch me some sweets and a little cajoling…

Icons unwanted

2005-10-22T10:20:00.000+04:00

For all practical purposes, the recent death of Appu the Elephant should have left no impression on me but for a twig of palm I lofted out to him less than a month ago. It was an innocuous gesture, instinctive if you may, to kind of reach out to a childhood icon.
We, the Indians, are largely brought up to celebrate the success of others – man or animal. We sort of need these excesses in hero-worship. We need icons, and just as we pick them up, we dump them unceremoniously the moment they sag in their sheen.
If Amitabh Bachchan looks like an exception, think again. Remember the days he tried to wear the politician’s garb and miserably failed? And what of the ABCL disaster – the troubled start to his adventure into building the Bachchan Corporate?
Kuttinarayanan, the 28-year-old pachyderm, was to be famously known as “Asiad Appu” for his resemblance with the lucky mascot Appu of the Asian Games, hosted by India just as the first television sets trickled into the richer homes of the country. My first memory of Appu is a news photograph – a cute, adorable little elephant being seen off by a state eager to be “represented” at the national level. Largely left out of the Indian independence struggle, hardly producing a leader of “national” caliber, and but for winning national awards lacking any true clout even in the film industry, the state seemed to put all its pride in Appu.
After the sports event, Appu returned – once again, like a hero – to his yard.
To ward off the “evil eye” is a superstition most Indians know well. At paddy fields, they do it with scare-crows. In Bollywood films, you have the mother running out to welcome the brat-son with a lit-lamp which she circles around his head and torso.
It is not recorded whether anyone did one of those stunts to Appu. The poor elephant, which took all the eyes of a nation of millions – let me drop in that cute little word here, cynosure (which somehow sounds like an enclosure, true if you think of being caught in the spotlight) - Appu alias Kuttinarayanan grew up to become one “eunuch” of an elephant. It did not become a ferocious tusker; well, it never could be a docile female. Appu, with his hardly awesome “tush,” I felt, was laughed at, as he grew up, culminating in a mighty fall that broke his leg.
He was limping, literally, back to normalcy when I saw him, in elephant, for the first time, three years back. He had recovered from the pain but looked gloomy, moody and grumpy the second (and last) time I saw him. A mahout said he could throw tantrums.
Surely, he is entitled to a little show-off - wasn’t he the darling of the nation? To me, he looked like another unwanted icon - fallen, sad and lost. He marked that universal truth: Heroes aren’t forever. Perhaps, we all need some scare-crows to guard our little triumphs...

Glib notes

2005-10-22T10:18:00.000+04:00

The wise men have said it before. And there is no use repeating it. You never know the reach of copyright laws. And believe me; I have walked through it – not once but twice. Well, I digress even before I begin. That is clear sign of an unready mind but eager fingers furiously typing in to beat the deadline.
As I was not saying, the wise men could be wrong too. Though editors are pretty stern about their deadlines. In this case, the wise men, and here men include women too, and women have come to insist that all generic usages like man and he should now on be repealed and one must use woman and she, instead, because as they rightly point out, man is in woman, and he is in she.
What was I saying? Yes, wise men getting it right. They have it bang on. Bull’s eye. Not the ones with eggs. They never get the eye right. It either breaks and flows over to coat the white or is fried flat in one thin excuse that can hardly take one scoop of the fork.
If hands have five fingers, why don’t all forks have five cuts too? Why are most forks happy with three toes, yes, toes, guess that is a better word than cuts… If you have a better one that would fit in here, you can substitute that… I can’t fetch a thesaurus now, and most of them are hard to explore. As I was saying before I digressed into the art of thesaurus, can forks be handicapped too? A few digits less? Now, here comes, digits. That should work.
But digits is also

Guilty? Prove it, buddy!

2005-10-22T10:15:00.000+04:00

Guilt as emotional blackmail – that was an idea mentioned in passing in a novel I was reading, and it hit me hard. I started to see my own many fragile relationships in a new light. I discovered the trace of guilt that lined some of the on-the-verge-of-collapse associations.
Guilt becomes the biggest liability in friendships. The biggest weapon too. One refrain that old acquaintances – those border cases who weren’t friends really – would never fail to toss at you is guilt-ridden: “You have changed a lot.”
It is a puffed up statement, which carries much ammunition. In your hurry to prove them wrong, you ready yourself to wear whatever mask you think will suit the moment, and discover it is a losing game. The “old you” that your acquaintances supposedly saw way back in time is lost forever. You can’t wish it back on you. You don’t wear old hats with new boots.
The test of true friendship is indeed to accept the changes that time bestows on every individual. And, recently, I discovered with a fleeting sense of pain that perhaps my own changes may not be acceptable for many whom I had regarded as thick pals. We had pledged to meet every year; we had believed that no matter where we would be in the world, we would need each other – to exchange the little nothings that so remarkably build camaraderie.
In a world that is connected through all possible means – mail, e-mail, cell phones, SMS – the human effort to connect has been taken for granted. You postpone every other courtesy call, you procrastinate every other e-mail note, because you know they, the friends, are all somewhere out there, in the immediate vicinity. You can reach out to them whenever you want… and that whenever, you realise, never happens.
And the worst tragedy all these gadgets and technology have imposed on you is the fact that you don’t remember telephone numbers any more. They are all in the machines, you see...
I have lost faith in the alumni get-togethers that force people out of their routine for a show of solidarity every one feels obliged to deliver. Guilt at work, again. The joy of meeting good old friends gives way to nonchalance, when, with time, they emerge as stranger soul-mates. You have forgotten the names of their spouses, you don’t know how many children they have, and you have little to share – workplace gossip doesn’t work, and old memories have been exhausted.
I want to be proved wrong. And I feel fortunate, indeed, when I pick up the phone today, after many months, call a college-mate of many moons back, and start off simply on any note, and yet feel we conversed only the other day. That instant rapport, which comes with no excess baggage, no pretensions, and certainly no guilt attached, is probably the essence of friendship.
You accuse me of being guilty of forgetfulness? Prove it, but don’t bring in the past please.

Heroes in life

2005-10-22T10:14:00.000+04:00

We grew up on the story of a die-hard fan of MG Ramachandran (MGR), the film actor turned chief minister of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In one of his films, the villain knocks off the sword from MGR’s hands. Caught between sure death and even painful insults he looks for an escape route. That is when our fan strikes. He chucks a knife on to the screen and shouts: “Annai (bro), take this.”
I believe the story. Fans in Tamil Nadu have more or less surrendered their right to be ruled to film actors; they have died for the silver screen heroes; they fight for them; they stand by them. Some even built a temple for an actress, whose gyrations could have caused minor tumults in the immediate vicinity. It is hero worship, unadulterated.
We Keralites, of the neighbouring state, feasted on such stories with our vintage air of arrogance: Look at these guys, we would say, can’t they take a lesson or two from our own films, and no way, an actor is never going to be elected from Kerala. We booed our evergreen hero, when he showed an inclination to be sucked into politics.
Today, I am less cynical. Not only does Kerala have actors turned politicians and many out-of-work actors waiting in the wings, our cinema also apes the Tamil scene blindly. It wouldn’t have been a bad proposition at all if only our heroes could match the steps of a Prabhu Deva, the “rubber man”, and our heroines were less flabby.
However, far more than the flagging fortunes of Malayalam cinema, today, I am less cynical of an average Tamil film buff’s die-hard loyalty to their pet heroes because I have a fair share of glimpses into the largesse of Tamil actors.
The other day a white dhoti-clad rotund man walked through the Dubai Airport lounge and crowds swelled. “That’s Vijayakanth,” someone muttered to an enquiring voice. The Tamil actor, who is called Captain by the industry, presumably following the success of his film, Captain Prabhakar, says he doles out Rs25 lakh (approximately Dhs250,000) every year to educate unprivileged children, and another Rs25 lakh on his birthday to enhance the welfare of the poor with clothes and meals.
He has founded an engineering college, which he claims charges lesser fees from students than other colleges in the same league, and he visits the college to welcome the freshers. There are doctors, engineers, lawyers, police officers – all enjoying their current welfare and position thanks to the actor’s generosity.
In Tamil Nadu, however, Vijayakanth’s championing of the poor is easily matched or even overshadowed by the kind heartedness of other film personnel – some serve biryanis every week; some give away wheel chairs for the handicapped; others distribute clothes and money. And they are not even in the political limelight.
Are these actors buying acceptance? Probably. But does it matter? If your children don’t starve, if your wife has a decent dress to wear, if you don’t hover in abject penury, and there is no one else you can turn to, isn’t any helping hand welcome? I trust Vijayakanth, when he says his charity comes no strings attached.
I am sure you can spare a knife to save such knights in distress.

How to win enemies and alienate people

2005-10-22T10:13:00.000+04:00

I won more enemies in the past one week than in the 1800-odd weeks I have lived so far. I don’t recall the first hundred plus nor do I have lasting impressions of the 700 or so that were spent catering to the whims of elders and parents. And to tell the truth, this week by week flash-back isn’t making me any happier…
The said enemies were born of an alleged “mis-communication,” which left me the ranting, blustering “victim.” Snobbish as it may sound, the bad after-taste of unwanted quarrel amounted to putting a full-length mirror right in front of my own ego – and I didn’t dislike much of what I saw.
However, I hated the realisation that I am an easy loser. I surrender. Fast. I don’t wage the war the full course, and give in because even if I am right, fights exhaust me. I sense the venom in every breathing inch, and unless there is an unconditional ceasefire, I carry the baggage in every waking minute. That is damaging to my psyche.
My respect for people who fight for causes – lost or not – has gone up in the last seven days. I admire their guts.
I also learnt that our happiness rests squarely on one word: Mis-communication. That perhaps explains why we have so many motivational gurus, who are veiled communication experts. I have met quite a handful, and, I daresay, few impressed me. Their diction, vocabulary and glib ease with words are fine, even admirable, but I harbour a suspicion that at heart, left to themselves, most of them are more fragile than us “un-self-realised” mortals.
We don’t tap into our sub-conscious mind, wherever that is; we don’t identify short-, medium- and long-term objectives and goals; we don’t have anecdotes about Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi to rattle out with ease. At best, we have some dirty jokes to toss among friends.
I saw a self-realised soul puffing hard at a cigarette after a press conference; he had returned from the mountains, he said, having discovered his inner spirit through intense meditation. Yet he needed that stress-buster to live out a rather docile media interaction.
Another came out from one of those quirky alternative therapy sessions and started pouring out his “grievances on the current rents.” A lady, also supposed to have been energised from the session, couldn’t wait to lose her temper with her son (you can’t blame her entirely).
Fights and miscommunication scenarios channel you into watching your own self react to the externalities. It took infinite patience to study my own reactions to the unfolding situation to finally close the issue, even though I emerged the ultimate loser. But I learnt that the essence of being is to be at peace with your (own) self. Only enemies teach you that.
Thus spake a noble man: To develop patience, you need someone who willfully hurts you. Such people give us the real opportunity to practise tolerance.
I rest my case.

Judge not…

2005-10-22T10:06:00.000+04:00

I am terribly miffed. Why must Hollywood Reporter have published the review of The Rising immediately after the Indian blockbuster was screened at Locarno International Film Festival? Why did Ray Bennett have to write that the film would “delight Bollywood fans but likely will fail to capture mainstream audiences with its melodramatic style and jarring combination of stirring action, brutality and musical numbers.”
Why must these Western critics pass their value judgment on films that are entirely removed from their remotest sensibilities? Why did Bennett have to slide his prejudices on to me and countless other Indians?
No, I am not one who will rush to watch The Rising first day, first show. Yes, I am a film buff but I hate the first day crowd, who would hoot and root and cheer and pan, and I would feel distracted. Monday nights or Saturday afternoons – that are my movie hours.
No, I am not an Aamir Khan fan. I tried thrice in vain to watch Lagaan, which took the actor to the Oscars. I couldn’t get past the first half hour. No, it had nothing to do with the film. In the same vein, I couldn’t get past 15 minutes of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, the longest running Hindi film that catapulted Shah Rukh Khan to stardom. Nor could I sit through the candy floss Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham, the mega hits of yesteryears. I still wouldn’t say they were bad films. Those films never matched my cinematic sensibilities. Yet, I am no art house film buff. Suffice to say that I have my prejudices and my tastes and my views.
But what irks me about Bennett and his Rising review is the fact that even after many years of Bollywood ruling UK and US box-offices, there still aren’t any reviewers who have a better understanding of how Indians perceive and make cinema. Our song, dance numbers are still condescended upon.
What then if Indian critics (and they are many) turn around and say Hollywood productions are bad because they don’t stage elaborate songs and dances, that they don’t whip up melodrama, that the actors don’t overact? How can they call theirs great cinema if they have none of the ingredients that one billion people on earth wholeheartedly endorse?
I would blame it the Indian filmmakers. Why are they so obsessed about having their films endorsed by foreign critics? What are they trying to prove? Who are they making films for? Why didn’t Aamir Khan show the guts to premiere his pro-Independence movement film in some tsunami-stricken village in India? Or in Kutch, where he shot his Lagaan? Or, better still, why not in the Indian parliament?
Why do filmmakers like Subhash Ghai try to squeeze in his productions into every international film festival? Fame? Money? What better fame could have Aamir Khan asked for than the whistle-calls that would have greeted his film at its first screening in India? Hasn’t he lost out on the sheer fun by staying obsequious to the foreign critics? Bollywood would never outgrow its limitations unless it realises that its true turf is in India. Not in crossing over to a foreign audience.

Look, no muscles

2005-10-22T10:05:00.000+04:00

Some people are not going to like this but then, I find it mildly amusing that people actually go to ridiculous extents to “build” their body. It is narcissism of the accepted kind. Nothing wrong being in love with your self, and by extension with your body, but the religious passion that body-builders give to the task at hand can be irritatingly hilarious.
My first memory of body-building starts at a way-side gym in our home-town, where well-oiled musclemen worked out their limbs. Most of them – was it a pre-condition? – wore a beard, and the whole of 100plus kilogrammes in tiny-weeny shorts made for many laughter moments in our otherwise boring school-bus journeys. But we respected these men, and every one in our monkey-jumping lot aspired to sculpt ourselves so. No wonder, arm-wrestling was the popular sport at school – and I was always the first to go.
A closer association with this self-imposed rigour came at home. An uncle, who stayed with us, lean as a drumstick (and still so) decided that the panacea to all his troubles was to drown raw eggs, lift the dumbbells (if it is not a typo, the result of my ignorance – I guess, there is a literary justice to the word, “dumb”-bells), and through sheer design turn out into one of those hunks he saw in the Hollywood films.
(The muscled Khans of Bollywood were yet to be potty-trained, and the closest he could associate in our vernacular cinema is the now-much-abused late hero, Jayan, who made it a point of wearing red netted t-shirts… Oh boy wasn’t he a hero!)
The trouble was my uncle had work to do by day, and films to watch by night. He could accommodate body-building only in the early mornings, and he was a habitual late-riser. The cold water he would “herbal-ise” with basil leaves the night before, thus, found its way into our intestinal systems. He bought the gym-wear - metres and metres of loin-clothe - and that is what remained of his Mission: Dream Body.
At college, my room-mate was the Mr University, and the late-sleeper that I was, I would toss in the bed in the early mornings as he would grunt and growl and make all weird noises - as his muscles grew. As a loyal room-mate, the least I could do was to compete for the Mr Skeleton competition at college and win the title. He seemed proud. It is not every day that the same room had the Mr University and the Mr Skeleton.
As body-builders go, their tribe is on the rise; their tales reverberate in crowded coffee shops, and film magazines have more skin show of the male variety than all the “item bombs” put together.
One, I guess, is destined to live with it all. And the least one could do is, perhaps, stay as such - lean and lanky - and give the “dumbbelled” narcissists reason enough to cheer. After all, don’t they need the leaner lot to match their muscles?

Imho*, it’s a shrinking world

2005-10-22T10:04:00.002+04:00

I wrote my first love-note, when I couldn’t spell romance. It was disaster. I was inspired by a film, worst of all. The girl decides that the letter is for the principal’s eyes. I beg her friend and save my hide promising that never ever in my life would I write a letter – love or not. I broke that, of course, in due time.
Then I sat through community reading sessions of others’ love notes – a common enough occurrence in boys’ hostels. Starting with Darlings to my loves to signing off with lots of love, and yours, yours only, the salutations that ooze from these letters would have made any parent cringe in horror at what their little one had come to.
While I would any day vote for a hand-written note of love, I am not sure whether SMS has indeed killed the art of writing. It has shrunk the world, honey, and if brevity isn’t the soul of wit, wat is?
I am no expert in the sign language, and it is with great difficulty that I manage even a smile with the strokes of a semi-colon and bracket. I guess it is the challenge of deciphering what the other person tries to convey with his seemingly undecipherable scribble that makes SMS a hugely popular artform, and who knows an evolving form of literature.
They already have an on-line dictionary, and I am sure some geek has started penning the first SMS novel, which should be hardly the length of this column. If you would like to sample one, for starters, here’s how the evergreen story of Little Red Riding Hood would start:
“Bbfn mom, I’m off 2 c gr&ma now...”
That is: “Bye, bye for now, I am of to see grandmother now.”
It doesn’t take much skill to write one. All you need are oodles of imagination, patience and a sense of humour that will help you appreciate the fact that a KISS is not a kiss but “Keep it simple, stupid.”
The effort shows when it comes to usages like Mhoty, which is in fact a word of appreciation: “My hats off to you,” though it takes time to shrug away the possibilities of any hidden puns.
Aamof, as a matter of fact, this can b pretty addictive. It saves the trouble of spell-checks, and does away with the computer’s own effort at auto-correct. What would a machine that is programmed to read tabla as table the moment you move the space key, make out of Ttfn? And all it means is Tata for now.
After stealing a march over words, the SMS people have indeed done the final kill by making its own language for people, and William Shakespeare is not exempted. He is identified as 2BI^2B, not that SMS users have much use for 2BI^2B.
But what if, one fine day, they decide that Hamlet reads best in SMs, and set about the task of transcribing all the classics into their lingo? And the rhymes and the novels and the stories and the plays and the philosophies…?
For all the disservice they do to the world of letters, they sure would conserve a fine stretch of forests from landing up as the Dhs5 still-none-to-pick classics of our book shops.
The greens would say Mhoty.

(* Imho: In my humble opinion)

Imho*, it’s a shrinking world

2005-10-22T10:04:00.001+04:00

I wish…

2005-10-22T10:04:00.000+04:00

Make a wish. Simple as it sounds, a wish in your mid-thirties is a rather complicated affair. You no longer have the absurd innocence of childhood, the immature idealism of youth nor are you wiser with age.
My thoughts fumbled when someone asked me to make a wish, one thread of his bracelet all set to bring me luck. In that split second, a few wish-images gushed through and then, the moment passed. I wished nothing, and ended up like the fairytale heroes: The first wish made them rich, the second made them greedy, and the third restored status quo.
But then, even if you are ready with three surefire clinchers, which will make you rich and healthy, wise and famous, and …well, I assure you it’s only three… fairies are like raffle draws. They skip you. In all my life, all I have won is a Dhs10 calculator. My wife says I blew the chance to own a BMW. Scratch and win, they say. Scratch, scratch and scratch, we do.
Once upon a time, I guess, making wishes were easier. Those were the days when the weekly horoscope matched your next seven days to the T.
“Romance will bloom…” Sure enough, you are there at the university square where the bus drops off the girls. “You’ll clearly see where the shortfalls lie…” Oh yes, I do see them. “Everybody needs to pull together…” Why don’t my friends insist I pocket the canteen bill? “Having delegated tedious responsibilities, you can leave the mundane…” Sure, must remember to photocopy the notes of the classes bunked. “You are being silly to imagine that nobody loves you.” Thanks man. I needed that assurance. Now, if only this could convince her too. “You may have been ahead of your time…” The examiner doesn’t agree. “Cosmic energies are providing the impulse and impetus at random...” Is this good news?
Those days, you could streamline your luck, your stars, to perfect needs, ideal wishes. Things aren’t that easy now. The horoscope columns don’t fascinate me anymore. I hardly read them, and if at all, I do it to prove them wrong.
“The sun’s conjunction with Mercury puts your foot on the accelerator…” Oh God, and where is the brake? “Before Venus gets into Virgo (some dog eat dog world this one) you will go through a phase of exuberance…” Ah, give me a break. “Be ready to go for the bold look…” and risk your wife closing the door on your face? “With Mercury riding high in the heavens, you are in a creative frame of mind…” And I am stuck with this story. “Finance inflow will be sluggish…” There you speak.
In your mid-thirties, you are no longer sure where you are headed to. You hope this is the right direction, and you are too late to change lanes. The young brigade would smash you to pulp.
“Miles to go…?” But I can’t keep walking... All I need is six hours of peaceful sleep every night.

Musings on a windy morning

2005-10-22T10:03:00.000+04:00

Words, like music, weave images. Flutter, when heard in the right pensive setting, transports me to a non-descript railway station in India. Alone in my compartment, I have a book and “flutter” for company.
Ficus trees line the station, and every time the wind passes through its branches, the leaves shake and shiver all over and laugh out – it’s a flutter that warms my heart. I cast aside the book and listen to the leaves. If solitude brings about absolute bliss, this moment is it.
I see the same uninhibited, unrestrained laughter in the neem trees. The date-palms laugh but they aren’t very forthcoming in gay abandon. It takes one mighty wind to shake it all up. By then the neem tree would be falling all over the place, its branches swinging and swaying, very much like a man laughing on his stomach.
It is the resultant laughter of the leaves that endear me to the winds. The wind starts off on a gentle note. The tree smiles coyly. The wind is bolder now, and the tree responds with greater warmth. Sometimes the tree dips low, trying to escape the touch of the wind. The wind retreats and without warning comes at it again, and this time, the two laugh out in absolute mirth. I see no better parallel to this innocent joy in human life than in the peals of laughter of infants. Tickle, smile. Tickle, smile.
The bamboo groves play an eerie note though. Spikes strewn around to keep away trespassers, its community staying aloof in stately grace, the bamboos improvise on the notations that the wind provides. They store it one extra second more in their bosom, and then, as if tearing open their heart, they break into whispers that can be spooky. Every time I hear the bamboo, I feel its cry. And every time, the cry becomes a painful howl, I close my ears in dread.
Further close to the ground, the wind choreographs the paddy fields. The paddy’s loyalty to the wind is binding and absolute. Sway to the left…yes, we will. Swing to the right…yes sir, we already have. The wind can’t ask for a suppler student.
The rains envy it, and thrash down the paddy stems in rash punishment. The wind is helpless, sometimes forced to play the reluctant accomplice. It can’t lift the fallen lot so it tries to comfort them with a sweeping breeze. In the helplessness of destruction, the wind comes as a soothing caress. Is there any irony, therefore, that the wind in fits of fury pulls down the oak, and spares the reed?
Of all its flirtations, I love the wind’s symphony of flutter on the ficus trees. The ficus leaves need little reason to laugh. They would laugh through sunshine; they would laugh through the rains. All they need is a little breeze.
I find it irresistible that any one, any thing, could smile so much, so often, for apparently so little a reason.

Love in the time of (borrowed) mobiles

2005-10-22T10:02:00.000+04:00

My mistake was in flaunting my mobile phone. The ambush came from a 20-plus fellow, who had that wicked, menacing look most male models sport. Worst of all, he was spitting all around. He needed my mobile, no any “please, excuse me,” for making a call.
I should have refused. I didn’t. Generosity, I forgot, shouldn’t extend to cell phones. What if he makes a dreaded phone call, my friend later chided me. But before the reprimand came sheer repulsion.
While, I, the master of my own mobile, had not yet explored the instrument fully, this perfect stranger to my machine didn’t pause for a second punching numbers and getting connected. I was impressed.
By the way, haven’t you wondered how “lost” mobile phones immediately go “switched off?” How does the supposedly first-time user identify how to operate the gadget especially with the market flooded with mobiles of all makes? Even with a manual, I admit, I would be lost.
The guy had started shouting:
“But why can’t I come up? I am down here at the bus stop.”
Spit… spit…
“Your sister…? What’s her problem?”
Spit…spit…
I study my mobile. Is it drenched by now?
Time ticked away and the guy, apparently having a lover’s tiff, is showing no signs of stopping.
I interrupt embarrassedly. “There isn’t enough money in it…” I suggest.
“Yeah…but it’s my card,” says the fellow.
“Your card? It’s my phone.” I shout.
“Yeah…my card. I am using a calling card.”
How could I be so feeble-hearted as to allow him to continue? I do, and he goes back to his quarrel with a vengeance. In between his animated spits, I gather that the boy adores a girl living somewhere nearby. He wants to visit her. And her sister - I secretly wish that she too - dislikes him. She doesn’t want him anywhere near the vicinity, and I hope, she has pulled down all the curtains, closed all windows, and sealed all doors lest this spit-monster somehow manages to convince the poor damsel in acute distress, and gain access.
After what seemed like three-hot-Gulf-summers in a row, he hands me over the phone reluctantly. I pocket it with dread, wipe it thoroughly without the least bit of discretion, and stand a few steps back, when the guy decides that I should now be his audience.
“Girls, man, girls…,” he starts. “They are silly, ridiculous. I don’t know what her problem is man…. She is scared of her sister.”
I offer no comment. Not even a nod of encouragement. I am terrified that he will ask for my mobile phone again for another try at a patch-up. I have already framed an excuse. And why doesn’t this guy stop spitting?
The truth dawned on me.
The girl’s sister knew best.
What sort of a girl would fall for a guy who doesn’t even own a mobile?
Ha, the sheer agony of depravation.

Name game

2005-10-22T10:01:00.000+04:00

I wasn’t Rajeev Nair a few years back. There was no caste in my S Rajeev. The Nair was tagged on to me in the Gulf, when my earlier editor decided that bye-lines ought to be punchier, and S somehow meant nothing.
S is easy enough to explain but since S sounds yes, S Rajeev often followed a “yes, yes Rajeev…and what is the surname?” Back in school, I was Rajeev S, and I wondered what that would have meant to the surname-seekers. An outside examiner, who was to lead my viva voce, the last step to graduation, wasn’t amused with the S.
“What’s your name?
“Rajeev S, sir.”
“Yes….”
“S…sir, it stands for my father’s name.”
“I am sure your father’s name is not Yes…,” he said rather crossly.
“No sir, S…”
“Yes, yes…”
“S sir, S as in south sir.”
“Oh yes…”
And it went on till he decided to grill me with questions I couldn’t have answered even with an answer book wide open before me.
A little one at home is thoroughly amused to learn that Rajeev means lotus, and she hasn’t hidden what I take to be a snigger ever since. Lucky I wasn’t called the entire Rajeevanayanan (the one with eyes resembling a lotus flower) and she might have got the notions about the flower all wrong.
I hadn’t liked my name, particularly, in childhood.
I wanted to be called Prem Rajeev, somewhat like the reigning Malayalam film superstar of my childhood days, Prem Nazir; then, Rajeev Bachchan during the days we all combed our hair from the centre and shot mock guns at each other with our left hand a la Amitabh Bachchan. I even considered adding an alias as a constant feature:
“What’s your name?
“Rajeev Alias Gomez Alias Robert…followed by a hollow laughter, bu..ha..ha..”
Somehow, it all sounded heavier than a meek Rajeev S.
When the bye-lines first started appearing in print, this time as S Rajeev, following the time-honoured research book tradition of identifying your name last, it hardly sounded impressive. I toyed with many alternatives, even the last resort of tagging the name of my little town, and had nightmares imagining being called so.
The biggest problem of being Rajeev was at the practical examinations in university. In a batch of 100 students, R started at 81. And there was a Raj Bordoloi, Raj Kakoti, and only then a Rajeev S, but thankfully before a Rajiv Saikia…
It is sheer trauma to wait for your turn while the Anils, Anupams, Bobbys, Bennys, and Kurians complete their exams first, frustrate you with their freedom, and distraught you with the terror that awaits you…The end-result: Stammering speech, shivering hands, and repeat examinations.
I am not sure if names shape your character but they sure can fail you in examinations.
I owe a “Thank you” to Bessie, a friend, who triggered off an interesting feature idea on names. Bessie is Bleselda, Blessed Mama Mary, the name a thanksgiving by her mother. Now, that is what I call a blessed name.

Existential dilemma

2005-10-22T10:00:00.001+04:00

I am unaffected by the “US/UK/SA educated” requirement in recruitment ads, which despite being against UAE Labour Law, continues unabated. Not because I am one. After all, it is easy to circumvent the clause if you spend a few hundred dollars and get a US qualification on-line. However, there would still remain existential issues you cannot so easily overcome unless you decide to try out beauty treatments and name-change ads.
My biggest regret in the UAE job market is that I am not known as say, Roy Nystrom or Roger Norman. I envy some girls. They marry dashing Frenchmen or thoroughbred British gentlemen and assume impressive surnames that you would die for: Auden, Chatwin, Baeauvoir, Proust, Mackintosh-Smith… Like fusion music, their Vidya, Lakshmi, Nirmala first names would then exude an air of enigma that they can employ to impress HR consultants.
The other option before the ordinary mortals would be to twist their name to sound exotic. I return to the importance of having the “right name” because I spotted a recruitment ad which said the firm was looking for sales personnel – “from Bombay or Delhi.”
I can understand the discriminatory fixations sunken deep in the US/UK education clause. At least, the criterion – if only in the surface – is still education. But to start segregating job candidates on the basis of their geographic roots comes as a stunner that shocks.
This HR manager who penned the line; the HR consultant who went to press with the copy; and the client who uttered the brief have all side-stepped what should be the essential considerations in job recruitment: Educational qualification, work experience, orientation, attitude…
Whatever be the demographic balance they seek to achieve with this lopsided recruitment drive, they have compromised on the most vital consideration: Is this man fit for the job? Do you recruit him simply because he belongs to Delhi, Mumbai or for that matter Manila, London, Sydney or Johannesburg?
The accent that lay on education in the US/UK educated tag has thus been replaced by utterly parochial concerns. That hurts not only the company in question but also the society which is ever ready to attribute stereotypical notions on communities.
I think people from the south Indian states have taken the brunt of such ridicule the most. Perhaps that explains why there are at least three distinct genres of south Indians in the UAE:
One: The thoroughbreds, who are happy to eat with their fingers, love their regional songs and speak their language without effort.
Two: The Mumbai/Gulf-bred-south Indians, who prefer to speak Hindi or Hinglish, eat doshas with a fork and drown it with spoon-fed sambhar, and generally look down on the rest of their creed with contempt.
Three: Oh, these have assimilated into different global communities or are perpetually eyeing US and Canada immigration. You won’t get an “aiyo” (the regional equivalent of ouch) from them, even in their sleep.
Sadly, none of the three can respond to the said ad. And there are no quick-fix solutions in sight…

Night and the city

2005-10-22T10:00:00.000+04:00

Slumbering cities have a surreal charm. More so, if it is drenched in a day’s shower. When fully awake, the city is a clamour of footsteps, a cacophony of vehicle-horns, and if you have nowhere to go and nothing to do, you stand aside to wonder: “Where do all these people go, why are they all busy, how did they all get in here...”
At night, again, nothing to do, nowhere in particular to go, the city, under its neon lights, silent but for the retreating voices of the last revelers, makes you wonder: “Where did all those people go…?”
My pacts with most cities are ordained by the nights, and it isn’t the cloistered, tipsy, cigarette-smelling nightlife that I mean. I love or hate cities for the nights I walked through their arteries, listening to their snoring heartbeats.
Whatever it does and bears during day, I can never come to hate a certain city, a big township of expatriates actually, where I spent much of my youth. In being the nerve-centre for all practical administrative affairs, the city had long been an abode of ‘outsiders,’ who adopt it as home, but forge no sense of belonging. Now, I understand them better.
Night in that city has the smell of jasmine flowers, fresh ones loaded out of lorries. I carry that rich waft with me as I walk down the streets… It is a heady association: Silence and the scent of jasmine; neon lights and their pearly reflections in the rain puddles; the long streets and their loneliness.
One city remains a nightmare. Pushed out of a crowded train by unruly military men, a friend and I had found ourselves in a North East Indian city, where, we recalled, an acquaintance lived. We did the dreadful mistake of checking out his place. Caught unaware in the midst of scatter-brained junkies, we ran for the little money we had through the streets, panting to a stop back at the railway station… I don’t remember seeing a neon light. The city, forever in my mind, is clouded in the darkness of fear.
In bigger cities, strolling down the streets by night, I watch lights go off in the flats that we are forced to call - for lack of any other name – home. I wonder if we all here can “fall to sleep with the memory of some last pleasant sensation in our mind.”
Spanish writer and Nobel Prize laureate, Camilo Jose Cela lists some that you could take to sleep: “A stork flying past, a child splashing in the backwater of a stream, a bee sucking the flowers on a thorn bush, a young woman walking in the first heat of the summer with arms bare and hair loose on her shoulders…” (From the Henares to the Tajuna).
By day, I see birds, bees and sprightly young children, but I take to my sleep little of them. Cities, large and forever growing, by force of habit, lend out more nightmares than dreams.

Nothing does matter

2005-10-22T09:59:00.001+04:00

John Cage, the late American composer of the “silent-piece,” writes about walking through a rocky beach and a sandy stretch to reach a miniature island. As he rested on a bed of flowers he overheard other visitors say: “You come all this way and then when you get there, there’s nothing to see.” (Journeys: An Anthology, edited by Robyn Davidson)
In 1952, at the Maverick Concert Hall, New York, when young pianist David Tudor played 4’33”, Cage’s “silent-piece,” the audience felt the same way. They felt “infuriated,” because “nothing happened” apart from “the sound of wind on the trees and rain pattering on the roof” for a full four minutes and 33 seconds. (The Sounds of Silence: John Cage and 4’33” by Larry J. Solomon)
Nothing, perhaps, is much of what life is all about, and yet, we are so ungrateful to it. Are you thankful, every new morning that Nothing was by your side as you slept? Nothing, like a good soldier, guarded you over the fits and fancies of a dreamful or dreamless sleep, as the case may be.
When every step can falter, when every moment can be defining – for better or bad - “Nothing” ensures that nothing gets worse. Nothing is status quo. Nothing is about constant. Nothing is meditation.
In a world of increasing uncertainties, Nothing is perhaps the best news you can hope for. Nothing is then about peace. Nothing does not demand stress; Nothing doesn’t need your strain. Nothing walks along in total peace.
And the downside to Nothing is that it is also about inertia. If Nothing is all there to life, where is the laughter, the tears, the joy, the pain? Where are life’s twists and turns if Nothing holds on to you?
When you beat the “rocky beaches and sandy stretches” of life to “rest on a bed of flowers” you do not need Nothing. You pay money for the Maverick concert; you do not want to hear Nothing.
Was Cage wrong all along? He felt he had occupied “the best seats of an intimate theatre” to watch the world around him. Others saw nothing. The sound of wind in the trees and the music of raindrops pattering on roofs were nothing to the audience. It was an “absence of sound” to Cage. That was not Nothing.
The difference between the world and Cage was when they heard Nothing, he realised that Nothing can still be something.
This could perhaps be one of the finest lessons in life – a search for something in every little Nothing.
A quest for absolute contentment in your “What’s happening? Nothing,” life. An ability to understand that there is a larger picture to our everyday Nothings. A realization that from your vantage position at “nature’s intimate theatre,” the Nothing around you is deceptively devoid of emptiness.
Only you must learn to see through Nothing and appreciate that, after all, life has laid out a bed of flowers for you to rest upon…and dream.
Nothing matters. Learn it from Cage.

Numb!

2005-10-22T09:59:00.000+04:00

It is futile to look for messages in tragedies. The greater the tragedies are, the more you are realise how insignificant you are in the overall scheme of things.
But every disaster leaves behind images that cling to your being. You take them with you, you sleep over it, and you wake up to discover, after those two seconds of no-man’s turf between sleep and waking, that they have stayed put.
BBC’s John Simpson writes of a horrifying scene he had reported: “Close by, my eyes met those of a small child lying on her back where her mother had dropped her as she herself fell dead. Afterwards, I couldn’t get her face out of my head. The dead, open eyes still held mine when I tried to sleep. I only wish I could forget it, even now…”
He has written elsewhere how writing “of terrible things seemed to exorcise them,” but no matter the cathartic relief of the moment, some visuals stay on.
There are three singularly touching images that I carry with me of Tsunami-hit South Asia. All are from Chennai, India, and was it coincidental the three had to have the same little girl? She is hardly ten, dressed in a maroon top, and white trousers with floral prints by the knees. She wears a necklace of red beads; her eyes closed, her hair wet from the water that took her life.
It was probably the third photograph of the tragedy I saw: A close-up of the girl in the hands of a rescue team. The caption said little, not whether she was a survivor. A second picture shook me up, when I saw her again, in a long shot, lying over the shoulder of a man, a spray of water thrashed up to show his urgency of movement. Is she a survivor?
Later in the night, surfing through more photographs, I saw the third picture that has stayed with me ever since: She lies along with many other children, at the top-corner of the photograph, which had focused obviously on the toddler in the front.
When one dies, you write obituaries; when thousands die, they die anonymous. We do not read their names; probably, we hear about villages, whole towns, and the dead are simply the residents.
As a three-month-old trainee-reporter, I was to cover an accident that charred to death 40 people, children including. I wasn’t particularly useful and prayed for the veterans to turn up to get a hand on things. I had rushed to the hospital where the wounded were, and almost accompanied a nurse, who had requested for blood: I was held back by one of my seniors. He reminded me of my priorities; was my action professionally right but ethically wrong, I still don’t know.
It was a sad, hectic night yet the next morning, after a disturbing body-count at the morgue, I still accompanied my seniors for breakfast. Today, I choke on photographs from distant lands. Is this about growing old? The veterans should know.

Joyful idling

2005-10-22T09:58:00.001+04:00

One misty morning, my friend and I travelled on the top of a bus from Kalimpong, a little hill station in West Bengal, India, to Gangtok. It was a reckless journey. The bus brimmed with people, and the overflow –we included – had scrambled up to find a place. There was no sense waiting. The next bus would be no better.
It was bitterly cold, and the road, taking sharp twists and turns, was a relentless agony. I wasn’t taking in the nature unfold its pristine best although I registered amidst the chaos all, a beverage factory, which my co-travellers shouted belonged to a Bollywood star.
I didn’t expect to make it to Gangtok, and I clutched hard to whatever metal hold, and tried to laugh with my friend - a veteran in this game. After all, he has lived in Kalimpong all his life. He, Pradhan, grows orchids and cacti; it has been his family vocation.
Kalimpong had been a nice experience. There was the imposing Kanchengunga mountain range, a lot of pretty flowers, a festive air, long nights of card-games, Pradhan’s huge family – who took me in as a member, and an eerie bungalow upon which Pradhan had woven enough stories to scare any one out of his wits.
We had slept there one night, and I am sure that the slap I got on my cheek in the middle of the night was a nasty prank by my friend though he denies it vehemently. He attributes it to some long-dead British man who had built the house. Oh yes, he was foul-tempered and had died a terrible death. As horror stories go, it was perfect thriller material, but the slap was particularly painful, and I decided not to read into the episode further.
Next morning, we were on the Gangtok bus. I don’t remember much of the sleepy town, except for the flowing robes of monks and a huge walled building, which Pradhan said belonged to the king.
I, however, remember eating delicious dim sums, and walking down the main street at night. That was sheer idling. And I have never experienced the same feeling of total peace – with yourself and with the world around you – ever after.
That joy of idling hit me the other day in Dubai making me realise that idling isn’t laziness. It isn’t escapism. It isn’t resting. And it does not need a Gangtok street to be discovered.
I see the joy every day, on the faces of those chess players who sit by the Deira taxi-stand - day in and day out. Do they have no other work to do? I see it in the old men who sit by the shops in Bur Dubai souk; in the dhow crew as they stare into the creek from the wayside café.
In this very minute of sheer idling, they are not going to break their heads on the utter mundane-ness of the work schedules that wait them. They would idle now; the worries can come later.

Party time

2005-10-22T09:58:00.000+04:00

Their smiles are faked and the camaraderie is mock. What is real is the slight twist of the head, cheek or forehead resting on the partner’s face to form a perfect lock – that is but a moment carefully created for a split second.
They must flash their teeth because the photographer wants them to; they must throw a ‘thumbs up,’ point a finger at the camera and look jovial because they must play the part. Aren’t they the quintessential party animals? The must-be-seens in the party circuit?
Most wouldn’t remember the happiness of the moment, least of all on which shoulder they had wrapped their hands around. But they wouldn’t forget to jot it down somewhere into their soaked memory chip that “it is going to come the next Thursday.”
They are going to be on the papers. They must buy a copy. They must rush past Iraq, the bombs, the floods and the visa rules and rent hikes to that one page beaming with smiles, faces, loads of attitude and little of sartorial grace. It is party-time folks and isn’t the world, out here, celebrating?
In one of the most exasperating imitations of the Western media, we have been sucked up into a pathetic “page 3” groove. It is still a nascent phenomenon, perhaps two to three years old, in this part of the world. And the media believes that “it sells.” Magazines devote chunks of glossy “rainforests” to showcase what is just another night of wild partying that is nobody’s business.
There is always a reason, they argue: There is a new DJ in town and if he hasn’t already messed up with popular music he will be scratching it down further tonight. Y is throwing a summer party; Z has turned 18; A is a dad; B has won a client; C has bought a place for himself; D company has launched a mobile; E an improved car; F has returned from vacation; G is going on one…
Why are these essentially private functions thrust upon the public? Why must you read what A wore to C’s party and B didn’t to D’s? Why must you be fed with F’s fascination for her blue, sequined silk sari and G’s crumpled cotton wear? And why suffer the sight of all those faces with empty smiles and vacant looks…
Who cares if you were spotted by a shutterbug who must be cursing under his breath for having been assigned another Page 3 function? Know for sure that they don’t take too much delight in going around noting your names, gathering your business cards, and getting you to smile at the camera. They are simply earning their daily bread.
Perhaps the popularity of Page 3 has something to do with the “love to hate” factor. It is sheer feel-good to pore over the faces, mutter a curse, and toss the sheet of paper into the dustbin. It makes for a good start to another day in Party Land.

Grandpa, it’s a he

2005-10-22T09:57:00.001+04:00

I am not into pets but I respect the right of pet-owners to keep their dogs and cats in crammed flats, take them out for walks and rides, and I resist the urge to think: “People don’t have space to live; how do they put up their pets?” It is their life. It is their pets. What do I care…?
My brush with pets starts and ends with a Pomeranian dog called Don in an aunt’s place. It was fashionable then to own these white fluffy creatures, and Don had the look of sadness - almost philosophical, and pet owners would know what I mean.
He wasn’t aggressive except when forced into a bath, and he would return all blue – a very layman effort by my aunt’s daughter at “whitening” him using a last splash of indigo water. It was one hilarious sight – a wet Don standing right in the middle of the living room, shaking off the water and looking all blue. Somehow the blue gelled with his overall mood.
If you haven’t already noticed, Don has been referred to as “he” and not the customary “it.” That is what happens with pets. Somehow the distant “it” you attribute to all things non-human takes a personal twist. Dogs become distinct identities; cats get “family status…”
And that is something you accept only when you own a pet. The grandparents who never had one, thus, cannot be blamed when they called the high school girl’s dog, a dog. That was the beginning of the end.
“A dog, how dare you call him a dog?” she screamed. As with all grandparents who take the first signs of protest with amusement – the-little-one-you-saw-in-pampers-suddenly- talking-big syndrome – they laughed. “Isn’t it a dog?”
“Yes, he is. But you can’t call him a dog.”
Now that is the sort of flawed argument no grandparent is ever going to take. If a “rose is” multiplied by many “rose is,” is still a rose, a dog whatever you call “it,” is always a dog and every grandparent feels they have the right to call it a dog, an it, and nothing more. And that has little to do with generation gap.
Grandparents, as they are wont to be and ought to be, don’t let go. They have the strange habit of rubbing it in, which we as parents too acquire over time. What we regarded to be undiluted nagging as children come binding on you as a parent. “Don’t watch TV, read story books, why are you not studying, all you do is play, how come the clothes are scattered on the bed, is this where you keep your shoes, some great friends you have, let daddy come home….”
Grandparents, if you go by the logic of life as a perfect circle where the oldest and youngest behave in one and same way, would probably equal teenagers in tantrum-throwing. This is why you see as many grandparents in Internet chat rooms as youngsters posing as 21MDubai to the ASL queries when they are fifty years older, M still, and nowhere close to Dubai.
As pets go, there is no way you can rein in grandparents who call dogs by their common name. The best bet would be to gift them one.

‘Poor men with money’

2005-10-22T09:57:00.000+04:00

They are coming back. Recharged. Reinvigorated. Flabbier. Their pockets emptied. They are returning to their routine and if some magazine would ask them to please jot down ‘A day in the life of…,” it could be like: 6 am - wake up; 6.15 – to work; 9 am – still on the highway; 11 am – reached office; 12 – client meeting; 2 pm – back to office; 3 pm – client meeting; 4 pm – on Garhoud Bridge; 5 pm – still there; 6 pm – back to office; 9 pm – on the way home; 11 pm – reached destination; 12 am – hunting for parking spot; 1 am - hit the sack.
Wistful tales of rains, greenery and home, sweet home might enliven offices for a few more days before everyone gets back to sheer work, weekend stage shows and cricket matches.
The banks were kind enough to waive off loan repayment during vacation months; they will get to you with reinforced vigour. Credit cards are to the brim; time for a fresh one; rents haven’t dipped so moneybags are to be tapped – oh, oh, why must every one rue about dwindling financial resources, isn’t the sand and sun out there? Enjoy. Recall for a moment Fyodor Dostoevsky’s observation: “Man is fond of counting his troubles but he does not count his joys.”
Counting the joys comes with a sizing up of one’s own fortunes, setting up a relative scale of poverty. Why must that boy, not too long ago seen in his diapers, own a flat, ride a Hyundai, get a fat pay cheque – all back home, when me, the object of his adulation, still drive a Mark 4 Ambassador? But, as a colleague observed, these young ones, who earn in mini-millions, have lost the joy in the sheer “sense of possession.” They buy because they feel like.
A refrain by Indian expatriates, especially those fresh from their vacation, is that “every one is happy” back home. Their benchmarks are sometimes laughably simplistic: The wayside labourer who heads with his day’s earning straight to the pub waving a Rs500 note; the young IT buffs who switch cars virtually every other day; the air of confidence that prevails among whatever category of workers you meet – journalists who speak of boom-time in Mumbai, bankers who just can’t stop smiling, government employees who discuss how a year passed with 141 days of strike apart from the holidays…
The ease with which money is flaunted makes any NRI dread. Psyched up by the reverse conversion factor (making a shirt’s price come with three zeroes instead of the one (or two) zero expats are used to) they hold on to the petrodollars, which as bottom lines go, had helped build the land.
Indian expats can easily wear the Uncle Leo XII complex (from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera): “I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing…”
They aren’t being miserly. Just scared. That is what they all are - scared of the future.

Rent check

2005-10-22T09:56:00.000+04:00

Many theories are being floated on the alarming truth about rising rents, and I am not going to add one more. If you have noticed, the operative word here is “theory,” which implies a certain element of concoction, conspiracy that goes into its making.
Rents, we strongly believe, have long ceased to be a perfect response to the demand-supply curve. This should explain why real estate agents can be an impatient lot.
“I am happy to inform you that your contract period ends in Dec. and your rent has been hiked by another Dhs10000,” a phone call would announce.
“But….”
“But…? You said but? My manager won’t tolerate such impertinence. We want only decent clients. Do you know? People are queuing up to own a place… Please, hand over the keys…”
End of discussion.
And if you are searching for a place, courtesy and respect flies out of the window the moment you spell out your realistic take of a practical “how much…”
Smooth talk has lost its finesse. Facts hit you bluntly.
“You say the rent is high? I will take this statement just once, don’t repeat it. Don’t you realise that the building is just opposite the mall?”
“But there is the highway in between, and no traffic signals…” you dare to mutter.
“Come on, there is such a traffic jam all the time, you can easily cross the road.”
Well, well…
Watchmen, we realise, have pushed their boundaries of professional responsibilities. Some still help the tenants with routine maintenance, scrub floors and clean cars. Others have a more rewarding job to do.
You pause before a building, say to rest your legs but more so to discover a To Let sign, and a voice would boom: “No flats…”
“For family?” the kindest of the lot would perhaps enquire. “We have one: A three-bedroom flat but only for one small family…no sharing…”
Sharing. That word is the joke of the season. You can share if you are an executive bachelor, non-cooking, non-washing, non-smoking, non-talking…You can share if the couple is decent, working, non-cooking, non-washing, and no kids please. You can share my entire rent if you like, but please, can you stay elsewhere?
Parochialism is bred in the ‘Accommodation Sharing’ columns of the Classifieds. And guess it is time the word “decent” is banned from them.
“I can’t give you the flat. You are not decent…” How’s that?
Like the “lady-driven” car that does its rounds, “decent” is a decent lie – which the landlords employ to suit their whims.
To rent a flat has now become a trade off between cost and quality. The choice is yours.
Amidst this din, it somehow makes sense to hear of a project conceived by two UAE youngsters of a live-in boat. Build one and get sailing. Sleep on the seas. Your meeting is in Jumeirah. Sail to the nearest beach. Ajman next? Get sailing again. No traffic jams. No rent cheques either. That must be what they call “sailing on smooth waters.”

Sania!

2005-10-22T09:55:00.000+04:00

Sania Mirza should not fall on court. Her fall will be snapped up by the lens-eye. Sania shouldn’t fail in games. Her failure will wreck a nation’s heart. Finally, India has someone to worship other than gloomy cricket players and jaded film actors.
Did some one say PT Usha? Did the wise add, Nirupama Vaidyanathan Sanjeev? How could you forget Rajyavardhan Rathore already? And what happened to Viswanathan Anand?
Now, that’s unfair. Usha, Nirupama, Rathore and Anand had their moment of glory. India saluted them, and gave them their fair share of product endorsements – the country’s ultimate mark of success.
The more brands you get to endorse, the more successful you are, so what if you happen to promote digestive tablets and rich milk chocolates in the same vein, and colas and vaccination drops with the same joviality… Oh, aren’t you just performers? Unless you want to go a step further like one superstar and say, you don’t drink water – just cola. Does it imply your rice is cooked in cola too?
Oh, oh, yes, that’s a cheap shot. Thoroughly unfair too. After all, don’t heroes simply happen? The media can seed heroes but certainly not sustain them without reason. Which explains many of Indian cinema’s fallen stars – one-film-wonders who despite their back-up are instantly forgotten. No, let’s not take names.
The Indian media, however, likes to push its (vested) heroes to ridiculous extends – to the point of celebrating unverified claims. To drop a few hints, here are the key words – Oscars, India, Rai… It is “media plant” of the wrong order - carving role models for an impressionable generation desperately seeking new idols.
There is no letting go of those powerful backing strings. In India, former Miss Beauty Pageants who promised to serve the poor and dedicate their life to umpteen causes, last seen, were uncrossing legs and busy stripping before the camera. For that, they win awards – even for villainy.
Sania Mirza comes with no false claims. She cannot lie in her powerful aces. She cannot deceive in her split-second reflexes. Her celebrity status is a win-win situation. She likes the crowd and they drive her to win – as she proved in her match against World No 6, Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova. Would your rooting make Aishwarya Rai a better actress?
In India’s tabloid-like intellectual press, Sania also makes headlines for the wrong reasons. For them, her cultural background matters. Her belief-system is open to dissection. Her dress code is scrutinized. Her nose-studs and ear-rings are commented upon. And then, the lopsided inferences are drawn out to generalise on a community’s aspirations. Even pseudo-intellectualism has its limits…
Sania seems unaffected. That is a good sign. Let her have her share of endorsements. Let her have her headlines and life-size posters. But as long as Sania believes that ‘it is nice to be important but more important to be nice,’ and practises it – on court, winning or not – the awe in the faces that greet her seem justified.
Rooting for her, somehow, makes sense.

Come on, disgorge the venom

2005-10-22T09:54:00.001+04:00

It’s almost official, and it is only a matter of time, before all well-wishers and the not-so well-wishers, will be intimated of the launch of the most happening thing in Dubai, if not the world. It has already been endorsed by an illustrious group of intellectuals, who have all agreed to be part of this worthy cause, who praise it as the idea of the twenty-first century, the one brainwave that is going to change the course of future, the one brilliant stroke of human genius that will make the world a happier and peaceful place to live…
We, the founders, are relishing every minute of the sheer ingenuity of our grand master plan, firstly, because it needs no investment, and as a corollary, no chances in the future of our foes trying to link up our genesis to foreign and suspect hands…We are totally on our own feet, and all that we have to do anything with any outside body, is simple technological dependence, and we already have many alternate strategies in place. But then, that is a risk we must take as in any business proposition worth a future.
I can already sense the success of our enterprise in your shifty moods. Admit it. You are impatient. You are envious. You simply must know what we are up to. Admit it, at least grudgingly.
Our project report needs no clearance; we can operate from a virtual infrastructure; our office is paperless, though we do provide recycle paper where needed; and our manpower requirement comes pro bono. Our needs have been restricted to a telephone; a cell-phone will do because most of our work is expected to be done by people who are caught in the Dubai-Sharjah traffic-jam. They can drive to work and at the same time put to productive use time they spend cussing.
And the master-stroke of our idea is that indeed they aren’t expected to do anything different, even as they work for us. They are expected to curse even more, clear out all their negative energies, flush out the debris that have been accumulating in their mind with even more debris, so that by the time they reach the workplace, they are charged, ready and productive. And their mind is free and pure like good old aqua.
Apart from a strategically placed ad in the GT Classifieds, we will have little other overheads. A virtual chain of emails will propagate our idea to the world, and soon, we will have the world calling on us.
They will call us because we offer them what none other can. We offer them a listening ear: A trusted ear to which, they can spew out all their innermost venom. Give us all the slander, give us all your venom, give us your spite, give us the stories, the songs of the little birds, feed us with the grapevine, we will take it all – for a fee, of course…
Yes, we are opening the world’s first Gossip Hotline.

Beware! I am writing a story

2005-10-22T09:54:00.000+04:00

My friend finds it amusing that reporters call their “reports,” stories. “Do you concoct them,” he asks, and I find it hard to explain that a “story” means a report but a “story” is not a story. He can be excused. Don’t we stuff our “stories” with frills and freckles?
Well, I have decided to write a story. That, I am learning, is no easy task. It needs a lot of unlearning, and a lot more of learning, particularly reading. I have often felt that journalism is a superficial job – an observation stemming up possibly from my limited experience. Ten years on the job are hardly enough to pass expert judgment.
But I, for sure, can write – as can any journalist - about superconductivity, nuclear fission, rocket technology, whatever, in the same vein as a report on the utterly mundane aspects of living. That is a habit you acquire. As it is, don’t you have the Internet to fall back on? However, it does not make me a superconductivity expert just as writing about a film actor makes me no expert on films.
While on films, I have always wondered why every other upstart journalist starts his career writing film reviews. After five years of doing so, I definitely feel I am wrong – on many counts.
I know hardly anything about films. My exposure to the classics is limited. All that I have as a supposed quality to judge films is a history of bunking classes and scooting to the theatre halls during college days and sustaining the interest in films.
Does that qualify me to be a film critic? At best, I can write a film appreciation but then, appreciation based on what standards? Isn’t there an inherent film appreciation sensitivity involved that is a byproduct of your roots, your culture, and your exposure?
After all these years, despite all the hits that Bollywood churns out, I still watch Hindi films with absolute cynicism. I simply feel they are inferior to the Indian regional films, and I am not always wrong. That prejudiced view makes me a bad critic of Bollywood because I do not understand its sensibilities. They are alien to me.
Films are like books. The more you go into it, the faster you outgrow them. For all who grew up on the Sydney Sheldons and Frederick Forysths, and then graduated to more poignant reading, do you believe there is a return to utterly pulp fiction?
I have been turning to the veterans in creative writing for advice. A power-packed intro, as in reporting, is not a must. Tales must be simple. A reporting style is allowed; that is in style. Try to chip in philosophy - it gives the story depth.
So, here I am struggling with a story-line and thinking what philosophy to inject into it. I also need another name to go with the “By” tag. I dread an old friend who is bound to laugh derisively…he is my biggest worry.

The right to be happy

2005-10-22T09:52:00.002+04:00

I recall a faded blue calico-bound book by Bertrand Russell, which I read at college. It was titled “The Secret of Happiness,” or “The Conquest of Happiness,” and like most books I have read, I have forgotten what was written. I was happy reading it and Russell’s words soothed the sores of some unhappy moments I lived through then.
Unhappy moments? Oh, just ignore them. Those are puppy-love issues; mine took a twist when that ravishing girl took the Amul chocolate (A gift for someone you love) from me with love, and gifted it to her fiancé with even greater love. He was apparently sitting inside her house as I was mustering all my courage to spell out those magical three words…
Russell and his treatise on happiness flashed-back through my mind while reading an interview with a US rapper, and again watching the film adaptation of a Graham Greene novel. The essence of what Greene and the rapper said was the same: Happiness is boring. There is no story in happiness; hate, revenge, jealousy – they give the twists and turns to writing and living. Not happiness.
The rapper and Greene share what perhaps can be interpreted as “common wisdom.” While on rappers, have you observed that the most frequently used word in English songs is “babe?” The singers take out its vowels and consonants to croon “bab….,” “ba…,” or “b….,” to mean the same. Okay, I digress, but you must realise that I am seeking happiness, and it comes with the digressions we take.
The single most important obstacle to happiness during my “formative” years was a J Krishnamurthi quote: “The moment you think you are happy, you lose your happiness.”
How that plagued my psyche! One moment, I am laughing and suddenly, I remember that I am happy, and rue myself. It took a while to get over with it.
Then came the era of pretensions, which I haven’t outlived. That meant turning my back to the more popular entertainment avenues: If the masses accepted anything – a cinema, a novel a song – we, a team of think-tanks at college, of which I was only in the periphery, condemned it.
It took many more years to overcome that, and it was triggered in a small way by my friend’s father, a retired professor who had a chunk of scientific journals to his credit. His pastime was watching old Western flicks and out-and-out commercial potboilers in Hindi and Tamil. Seven songs, umpteen fights, car chases and all that we believed to be silly were mandatory for his joy. We watched the films with him and saw it in a different light. Suddenly, in their meaninglessness, we discovered a meaning.
He was demonstrating to us that being happy is simply the right one must accord to oneself to be happy. Happiness is unconditional; it is the joy of this moment. It is a tough catch and the least we can do is to try seizing it…

Assignments anyone?

2005-10-22T09:52:00.001+04:00

You can do many things in twenty-four hours. As a six-year-old, you can complete an 80-page notebook of holiday homework, and conclude your summer vacation on this note of aggressive warming-up for school.
That lesson was to put me in good stead on many further occasions. At college, entire projects have rolled out in one night, critical debts repaid by coaxing out further loans from other creditors in one day, and examinations scarped through with a 24-hour study.
History repeats. In one day, a little one at home completed a project on the Solar System after we let her squander 60 days on television, films and mall-hopping. While the 80-page composition was entirely my problem, the Solar System is not merely her responsibility. Thus I relearn that Pluto is 500 times lighter than the Earth, and Jupiter weighs 318 times more but despite the size is a fast spinner.
The Internet feeds us prompt pearls of wisdom. However, there isn’t one website that has truly understood the demands of the teachers in Dubai. The Web could take you in circles, feed you peripheral information but not the one you are searching – say, for example, the history of the national animal of India. All searches end in the Royal Bengal Tiger but the teacher wants the children to dig up which animal had preceded the RBT in bagging the honour. What for, don’t ask.
In my student days, the best gift one could ask for was the entire lot of notebooks of a senior, preferably the school-topper. Bookings begin months in advance, and the notes are copied down ditto. Rumour has it that mosquitoes have been killed and pasted in the exact four-lines for authentic replication and out of senior-student loyalty.
For a little luck too. Abraham Varghese got the first rank, junior students whispered, because he sacrificed “mosquito blood” on the altar of every subject that is his note-books. Varghese hasn’t confirmed or denied the mosquito connection.
As a Grade 10 student, my big worry was a project on Automation. There was only one book in the Public Library that followed our index of topics, and it had fallen in the hands of our classroom “Reggie.” The snob won’t pass it around. I had to copy it all down in one night, from a friend’s only friend of Reggie, and he insisted that I skip a few words here and there to maintain manuscript originality.
I begged him to let me suffix Henry with a Ford. He didn’t budge, and so, for me, it was Henry F who took the honour for whatever he did. Not sure what, and you have to blame Reggie for my ignorance.
What odds we had to fight! Today’s kids have the Internet, parents willing to be serfs and…now, a hired writer.
I have been commissioned by my wife’s colleague to write a thesis for her nine-year-old son, who is happily vacationing in India. I can’t reveal the topic lest the poor boy get a raw deal.
Next year, I propose to put up an ad: For vacation assignments, please call …. Reasonable rates. Prompt delivery.

Assignments anyone?

2005-10-22T09:52:00.000+04:00

Waiting on the stars

2005-10-22T09:51:00.000+04:00

A full-page ad announced their arrival. Punctuality, never a virtue, but a fashionable vice, won’t help, and so, dot on time, we marched in. The lady organiser, standing lamely by the vacant room, looked at us with a snide smile. And muttered: “You are early.”
“No, on time,” we argued.
“Well, the stars are late; they will come only after 45 minutes. Flight delayed, you see…”
We saw it too clearly. Another set of stars. Another group of perennial late-runners. And another hour of sheer misery for us…
Over the 45 minutes promised by the lady, it took another 45 minutes before the stars trooped in, and as if challenging us all for their delay, their flight’s trouble, daring us to question them, they rattled out empty apologies.
Further afield, the star of stars is to make his appearance. Dumping the lesser stars, we rush. This turf is star-stuff. The venue is packed. To find your way in, to hopefully obtain access to the star, nothing works but attitude. We throw it around to quarrel with the organiser who doesn’t believe that all media are equal; some are more equal if you happen to own the venue.
Little ones clutch autograph books; cameras do trial shots; mobile phone cameras pan on the crowd from innumerable hands. Children have clambered on top of their parents’ shoulders; mothers have started complaining about how heavy the kids are; smoke fills the room and there is no sign of the star.
A security man doesn’t find the crowd amusing and makes sure whoever catches his eyes also takes a piece of his mind. That is not something you would want to take home, not on a working day. You look aside.
You look aside and you see men patiently waiting. Two hours have slipped by, there is the inevitable fidgeting, yet, they wait.
But why? Why do we wait on the stars? Why are the stars late every time they have to make an appearance? Forget the stars of stars, forgive them, for aren’t they big, too big for the audiences who made them? But what of the smaller ones, the starlets? What makes them too regard as normal to let others wait, not the 15-minute traffic hassle, but hours on?
A man, who has expertise drawing out shooting schedules of the Indian Hindi film industry biggies, has an answer: “They don’t respect the masses.”
Stars mouth about how fans humble them with adulation and yet, they somehow seem to give no value to their time. And we, the masses, get pushed and shoved, shouldered and bruised, stamped on and kicked around, mocked at and jeered, to wait upon a man, men and women, who simply don’t care.
Perhaps, they are taking it out on you, for all the time they waited on producers, directors and financiers. Pay, all you dumb masses, pay for my success. Pay for my triumph with your time.
Stars, for sure, don’t teach you self-respect. They take away a little of yours.

We, the dreamers

2005-10-22T09:50:00.000+04:00

Enough. Enough of those early morning wake-up alarms that set in motion the rest of a day of stifled yawns. Enough. Enough of those maddening dashes to keep an appointment, meet a deadline…
Enough of the traffic woes, the long queues wherever you go. Enough of the arrogance of the ‘Me, the master of this turf’ security guards, the nonchalance of the “service(?)” staff, the haughtiness of otherwise pretty secretaries, the oh-why-do-you-disturb-me impatience of otherwise stunning receptionists…
Enough of dashing PR girls, who lure you into media events to enhance their head count, and once there, turn away to humour the “sponors…” Enough of “sponsors” who seem to say: “You miserable creatures, why are you born, amn’t I enough to cover the world…”
Enough of celebrities whose airs make you throw up in disgust…; enough of people who sell me Feng Shui; enough of motivators who fleece your money selling empty words that are forgotten soon after…
Enough.
I am retiring to my farmhouse. The one I will own as soon as I win the big raffle, and what about that 120 kg of gold, should I rather look for a locker facility? I will have all the money in the world to pay all the bills but then, I will live with just my loved ones so far away the bills won’t reach me.
I will not take phone calls; I will not return missed calls. I don’t need cable but I need all the DVDs of all the films I have always loved. I need lots of music and lot of sheep that will graze in my green pastures and I will watch them reading Calvin and Hobbes and nothing else…
I will watch the rains, write a novel, read it myself, write another one and burn it all in a bonfire and gaze at the stars. I won’t allow strangers into my farmland; I will set up observation towers. I will farm – that is exercise too, I need to keep fit, but then I am going to be healthy and hale, anyway.
My wife might still have to cook but she will soon start to love it because the plates come clean automatically and I am lavishing her with praises on what a great cook she is.
I won’t bother to wash clothes; I will dig out new ones from my well-stocked basement. There is enough down there for many generations to live and everything is beyond expiry.
So I have nothing to do, no deadlines to meet, no queues to live with, no traffic to beat, except vegetate, and so I get up one fine morning, shut down the farmhouse, walk down to the distant bus-station, rush to my little flat in Dubai, wind up the clock, and wake up to the early morning alarms that will set in motion the rest of a day of stifled yawns…
We live to dream.
(Afterthought: I would still like to keep the gold, and the farmhouse, and the...)

Word Power

2005-10-22T09:49:00.000+04:00

As stories of human trauma pour in from New Orleans, I am fazed by the uncanny resemblance of these real-life incidents with that of the fictionalised content in Portuguese writer Jose Saramago’s Blindness.
In the Nobel laureate’s novel, blindness – a milky patch of white – catches up with the entire residents of a country. The ones affected initially are quarantined in a mental asylum with the guards given strict orders to shoot any one who wanders outside. Food is served once a day but things go out of hand when the number of the blind swells uncontrollably. There is looting for food, molestation, death and murder. Some blind men form a cartel to plunder the allotted food resources; the weak comply until there is more mayhem, dead bodies, and more guards firing upon the distressed innocent.
Stories from Louisiana’s Superdome looked no different. The men weren’t blind in the strict sense of the word. They could have been blind to the larger concerns of others. In the blindness that prevailed, everything happened that shouldn’t have. The healing would never be total.
I know a tsunami survivor, who cannot think of returning to the Andamans where her husband still camps hoping to get the promised tsunami relief. She remembers the earthquake that preceded the killer wave. The first one washed away household equipment. A larger one that followed then took away those who had ran out to the reclining seabed to reclaim their belongings. She was in a hospital, having delivered a baby girl just a day earlier. She had to put up there with just a shoestring staff until the dead and injured started arriving. She was safe but the trauma lingers on.
No amount of telling images on television can convey the true plight of individuals who are battered by calamities – natural or man-made. Between television and your vision is a space of “living room” comfort that robs a little of the sting from third-party agony.
With written words it is a different ballgame altogether. Reading Blindness, I had visualised a stretch of blind humanity, strutting on their own waste, sauntering on untold obstacles, dying miserably. However, what was overwhelming about the masterpiece was that despite the utter hopelessness of the situation, you are still prompted to believe in hope – in the “victory of civilised values over evil.”
Isn’t that the missing element in the New Orleans disaster stories? Isn’t there a sense of total resignation in the story of that boy who cried out for his dog and collapsed vomiting? In the harrowing plight of women who had to watch their girls being snatched away? In the surrender of men who couldn’t protect their womenfolk, let alone money and food?
This isn’t fiction; this isn’t cinema. These all raise disturbing questions – those that have started circulating in chain e-mails comparing the flashfloods in Mumbai with Katrina in New Orleans. As suffering endures, the bottom line becomes less murky: The invincible had woken up a trifle too late in protecting its own turf.

Yeah, I Know

2005-10-22T09:48:00.001+04:00

I know what you are talking about... I know exactly what George Bush is thinking this very minute, I know all about the Iraqi elections, I know what caused the tsunami, I know that global warming or not, turtles are going to stay put, I know what Susie said to Tommy, I know they are in love, I know Tommy too well to believe it…
I know that Prabhakaran is alive, I knew Lleyton Hewitt was to lose at the finals – such attitude – and I knew he would have proposed to Bec, oh yes, I know she is a Cartwright, I know all about Feng Shui, and gems, well…don’t you know, they are good if you wear the right one, but diamonds…well, ultimately, it is carbon, you see…Gold, you said gold? Yes, yes, the prices are shooting up, I know. But it makes good investment. Real estate is an option but where do you invest? Well, Bangalore is good, and we have New Dubai, anyway…
No, he was just plain lucky to win the raffle, I know, he has never won before. But do you know what Marquez has said about luck? Never mind, he knows what he is saying, I know. That is not the case with Shakespeare you see, well, they say he never lived but I know that is all propaganda…
You should learn to see the truth; after all, I have been seeing this thing for long. No, no, Shah Rukh wasn’t lying, he did say “hi” to Salman Khan, I saw it, you know. Do you know why Amitabh didn’t turn up for the Gifa, oh yes, he was right here in Dubai…
Yes, I have heard that, Shabana Azmi will head the Indian national commission for women, but you know it wasn’t an easy decision. What will she do anyway? She is a good actress…but Oscar material, no, I don’t think so. Will Kate Winslet win? I know, she was good but Hillary Swank is superb, oh you didn’t see Million Dollar Baby? Well, man, Morgan Freeman is a riot, he is amazing…
You haven’t heard about Gary V, oh boy, he is playing in Dubai, and guess what, Vina Morales is a guest too, what, you have never been to a Filipino concert? You should check it out, man…
I hear prices of vanilla are shooting, I knew it all along, but rubber is always safe…no, no, you got it wrong, AT&T shares are up, but then all is not rosy about the international money markets, you see, there are these after-effects of the tsunami…
Tsunami was impending, you know… but I hear that it is the result of an underwater nuclear explosion… and you know who is behind it all. I know, I know, you can’t beat fate…
The man wasn’t lying: We the Malayalis, the citizens of the world, who happen to represent a tiny state in India, which they call Kerala, we, know it all… I know….

Yeah, I Know

2005-10-22T09:48:00.000+04:00

Yours Formally...

2005-10-22T09:47:00.001+04:00

Formalwear stifles me, as I guess, it does a lot of other kindred souls. I dread the knot, single, double, multiple, whatever, that is nothing less than a loop which you force round your neck willingly. I sweat inside the coat – striped, black, blue, whatever… And worst of all, I go colour blind matching the two with a shirt – white, blue, collared, buttoned-down, whatever…
I don’t know whether to be a Roman in that age-old cliché means to dress like one when you are in Rome, but I am sure that in New Dubai, to be a New Dubai-ite, you better stitch a few coats, buy a few neck-ties, and suffer silently in it all.
Though, in Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck did spell out a dress code (and style statement thereof) of formalwear for journalists abroad, the media had largely been exempt of the trouble of a dress sense and could get away with anything short of nightwear – well, you get that too at late-night parties.
Those casual days of easy comfort seems like history. Much before the Dubai Media City housed its horde of PR companies and magazine-bounty, you could make out the true news guys from the marketing and PR chaps at press conferences. The “shabby” ones, the ones without overcoats, the ones wrapped in shawls, the ones who looked so much at home, were the “true” ones. The others stood out, and that did it for them.
Today, media events are more couture riotous, confusing, orchestrated and so much polished that they have become PR shows than press interactions: Which is why a bunch of giggling girls can shout out to Bollywood heartthrob Saif Ali Khan, at a press conference, “We love you,” and get away with it; Which is why a bunch of howling, bawling youngsters can laugh every time another Khan, of the Salman kind, opens his mouth, and convert the press horde into an easy fan club; which is why marketing wizards can sit in the front rows and shout to Shah Rukh, the other Khan, that he is worshipped in Morocco, and leave the scribes in muted mirth.
But as long as more is the merrier for the PR firms, press conferences are doomed to be showpiece events to impress clients. With the utter frivolousness of the whole business, you surely don’t expect the press corps not be part of the fun, and so they too turn up in their best overcoats, look under the reception desk for hidden gifts, eat sumptuous dinners, shake the gift-wrapped ‘with compliments,’ and dump those fancy crystals with the huge company logo at the first dust-bin. If only the reporters showed more solidarity, they could have opened a showroom for “mugs, t-shirts, caps, mouse pads and key chains” on Sheikh Zayed Road. Well, you mustn’t forget the privileged class: Their showroom will be stocked with perfumes, lip-sticks, mascaras, and a few old mobile phones.
We are a wee bit proud to say it to your face: But PR managers, please, don’t ridicule the media tribe with your innovative gift ideas, and we hear it is going to be safety-pins, needles and paper-clips…
And we can stuff that all in our over-coats; it has more pockets than needed to fit in a notepad and pen. Perhaps, that explains the formality…

Yours Formally...

2005-10-22T09:47:00.000+04:00