ravings, cravings, shavings & leavings...

Darjeeling

2009-04-23T13:28:00.004+05:30

Twenty years later, and the charm remains. Darjeeling really is the queen of the hills.

Journalists, I realise, need to create controversy to keep their presses rolling, their satellites humming. They have intentionally maligned not just the place, but the people who live there by making us who live in the plains paranoid about unrest and agitation. They have quite blatantly gone about making Gorkhaland the issue. Gorkhaland is not an issue. It is political machination at its worst. Small conversations with local people and this truth is quite apparent.

Let's be quite clear about one thing: Darjeeling is first and foremost a place for tourists. The tea industry comes next in terms of importance. But I seem to be guilty of the very thing that I am bemoaning. So I will correct myself: Darjeeling is first and foremost about its people and its vibrant admixture of cultures. This is the second reason for its once bustling tourism. The first reason is because of its climate. In one or two words: wonderful, glorious, rejuvenating, enthralling, ecstatic, inspiring... So its more than two words. You could find even more to describe it when you visit.

The British used India to experiment with. To experiment with politics and military, with wile and guile. Yet they also experimented with their adventurous spirit, their skills, their learning and their determination to forge ahead with new developments and pioneering ways. It is this second experiment which has left us a legacy worth wanting and keeping. The first has merely multiplied the disastrous methods independent India has worked out for itself which is reflected in our governance and policy making.

Darjeeling is a consequence of one of those second legacies. And it will soon become a ruined victim, a result of the first legacy of political wile and guile, if it hasn't already. British engineers and other skilled types made the road up from the plains to this once presumably forlorn village belonging to the Sikkim royals. They made the fantastic metre-gauge railway hug the curves of the verdant mountains and turned it into what I feel is a mobile work of art. They set up tea plantations to give us our morning/afternoon/evening and in-between cuppas. And to maintain it all, they did the next obvious thing of wile and guile

Obviously, it all came at tremendous cost, but I don't have any figures for it, so I can only guess. The original inhabitants would have been the prime sufferers. Ousted and deprived of land and property, they would have joined the ranks of labourers building British edifices on the very land they may have been removed from, and perhaps hustled into serving the ruling class as domestics and guards. Finally these folk would have had to stand by and see people from other parts come in, settle down, and make more money from their labours than they ever would or did. A very plausible scenario since it was more or less the same in other parts of British ruled India.

But to return to the present day and pleasurable aspects of this hill station, Darjeeling, I like to believe has a healing air to it. It was recommended by our family doctor when I was 8 or 9 years old and an extremely sickly child, to be removed to Darjeeling for school. The doctor was confident that the fine climate up here near the Himalayas would cure me of various illnesses which were otherwise surely leading me to an early death. He was right. I'm still around to write of it!

Every day of the five days we were there, I walked and walked and walked. At night when I slept, it was from a healthy exhaustion, and not the kind of burned-out unconsciousness that one calls sleep in the city. I ate much more than I normally do in Calcutta, and was able to digest it all without problem. Like all mountainous regions I have ever visited, I want to live here.

Life happens at its own pace here. You can't come to Darjeeling from urban despair and hope to change it around to what you're used to. I bump into Karma near the Mall, a young Nepali I know from work we did together in Calcutta. His parents live here and he's taking a break as well. He tells me he cannot ever come back to make a life in Darjeeling. Then there's Uttam, another Nepali with a well-located restaurant on the Chowrasta, who after having tried to study law, decided to return, “as there's no place better than Darjeeling”. Karma is young and has got a lot of life to go through before he gets to Uttam's way of thinking. Me? I'm with Uttam.

Just one hazy glimpse of the majesty of the Kanchendzonga peak and the eastern Himalyan ranges is enough to make me absolutely reluctant to return to the plains. I got just one day of “snow view” as they call it, but that was greater than anything I might have wanted here. I watched a lazy plume of what looked like smoke blowing off the peak of the world's 3rd highest peak. It of course was not smoke, but a snowstorm, whcih eventually affected the climate for the next 3 days of my stay in Darjeeling. I never saw the peaks again after that, but we did get the other kind of fanciful weather. Mist-shrouded walks down roads edged with pine trees, a light but persistent rain resulting in a 5 degree drop in temperature in under 2 hours, and the stray sunshine that warmed the cockles of my heart.

I will return to Darjeeling of course. Soon and very soon. There are ideas i have discussed with Uttam and others and perhaps one can work out a way of living that will give one urban convenience and the mountain plenty.
*******

For more of my pictures of Darjeeling, go here.

Darjeeling, Dylan, Dalrymple

2009-04-23T13:18:00.007+05:30

The last week or so has me indulging in these three. Darjeeling, the queen of the hill stations, I returned to after 20 years, but that's another blog. This blog is about Anjan Dutt's film, Chowrasta – Crossroads of Love, based in Darjeeling but... Dylan I listen to often and then I saw the film I'm Not There last evening. William Dalrymple's first book, In Xanadu, is what I'm reading now.

All three are stories of travels. Travels through life. Observation, imagination, fascination.

By saying that, I'm being kind to Anjan Dutt's film Chowrasta. First of all, the story, or the small stories which he recounts in his movie, could have been based anywhere else but Darjeeling. It has nothing specific to do with the place other than lending itself as a picturesque location. The town's centre point, the Mall or Chowrasta, is used as a metaphor for the interconnection of the small stories. A very forced metaphor, adolescent and immature in its approach. Quite putrid in fact. The film being dedicated to the people of Darjeeling then makes two of the main characters who are presumably Nepali and hence Darjeeling wallahs, into bumbling villains. The Bengalis in the film are the good guys of course: one who is supposed to be an eccentric tea planter but is really quite insane; the other who's a Bengali language teacher in a prestigious English medium school; the third who is a fading actress; and the last two who you keep forgetting about until they reappear or are interjected many frames later ever so randomly.

My only question here is: Why is this man – Anjan Dutt - being allowed to make film after film?

*****

Then I saw I'm Not There. Directed by Todd Haynes, it is a film inspired by the life and words of Bob Dylan whose name is never mentioned and does not feature at all in the film except as a recognisable face in the end, and the occasional and original voice of the songs that are used to link the stories. The film is about five of the many personas Dylan showed himself to be, and the way his music reflected the changes in each personality. A wonderful film overall, it also unnecessarily mythologizes the man, Bob Dylan. And it really helps if you're a Dylan fan and have followed his music from the 60s till now. For someone who didn't know much about the man (like my daughter who watched the film with me) it didn't make too much sense. Her only comment was that Cate Blanchett did a good job!

*****

In Xanadu by William Dalrymple is an account of an attempt to retrace the route that Marco Polo took to get to China, specifically Shangdu, (aka Xanadu by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), from Jerusalem. An amusing travelogue, it is full of neat observations and historical references to satisfy any armchair traveller.

We're all searching for our Xanadu. I try to find it in the mountains and the things I prefer to do. The idyllic, beautiful place remains ever out of our grasp. Perhaps that is how it should be. This vision of Xanadu that we have in our heads is probably what inspires us, motivates us to go on living and making the best of our lives. Trying to make sense of the insensible.

Baul-Fakir Utsav 2009: An Appreciation

2009-01-12T16:06:00.006+05:30

Saturday and Sunday the Bauls and Fakirs were in town. In Jadavpur town, which just happens to fall slightly outside Calcutta city's municipal limits, although the post office codes it in greater Calcutta.

Never mind the geography, here's my appreciation...

This is the fourth year that a dedicated bunch of people have organised this unique celebration of Bengal's folk music. They make no profits from this show, voluntarily work very hard to make it a success, and somehow keep it going every year through donations and measly sponsorships.

When I first went for this show two years ago, my initial reaction was to think of an alternative venue. Now, I appreciate the underlying thinking of the organisers at keeping it where they have been holding it for these 4 years, depending on the largesse of music lovers to sustain their annual event. Were it to go out of the area, it will either become too big to handle, or it will die a slow death.

Why could it become too big to handle? Because big sponsors are self-centred and think only of the mileage they can get from the money they spend. They will want slick publicity, large air-conditioned venues, high-priced entry tickets, maximised advertising opportunities, saturation media coverage especially by television, and celebrity attendees among other demands. When this happens, mediocrity steps in. Mediocrity has to be sold through hype since there's no other attraction. Mediocrity will make itself felt through the ruling parties' interference in due course. Suddenly there will be security checks, shallow glamour and cunning artifice, and authentic folk music will be forced into the realm, and worse still, the control of the glitterati.

That's when the slow death thing will begin.

Right now, the musicians themselves have begun to accord this event the importance and significance it deserves despite the much older and more prestigious events at Santiniketan's Pous Mela and the Joydeb Mela at Kenduli. This is probably one of the only events where Bauls and Fakirs share the same stage. While their music has common ground and roots, there is a distinct philosophical difference in their way of thinking. In social and economic terms, both groups of musicians again have similarities. They live on the fringes of accepted/acceptable social circumstances, almost outcasts, many of them subsisting on less than what we might spend on cigarettes or movies at the mall in a month. Yet, their commitment to their art and lifestyle, and the conviction of their philosophy keeps them going when perhaps many greater 'secular' artists from the city, faced with this way of life, would have committed suicide out of depression, or at the very least, looked for alternative means of livelihood. For all intents and purposes, sold out.

I cannot claim to even begin to understand the philosophy behind the music and art of the Bauls and Fakirs even as I appreciate it. Their music moves me to levels of conscious and subconscious awareness that few other genres of music can do for me; blues and jazz being the notable exceptions. And I consider the similarities between baul-fakir, blues and jazz to be eerie but significant. The roots of all three genres are poverty, disadvantaged circumstances.

I think of it simplistically. These musicians keep going at their art, constantly honing their skills, widening their knowledge base, never too sure of where and when their next meal will come from, how tomorrow will fare for them. I wish I had the guts to do the same. So I do the next best thing. I help them in small ways, encourage their earnings through their art alone.

And the Shaktigarh Baul-Fakir Utsav must continue where it began. How refreshing to not have to tolerate ignorant bag and body searches, walk through metal-detector gates, stand in line for tickets, buy only pre-packaged food and drink of some American corporation, and be separated from the musicians by a high proscenium and bored police that effectively walls you off from enjoying the music utterly. The walls and roof of the “auditorium” are of sack cloth and tarpaulin, the structure of bamboo.

The floor is covered with dry rushes and hay strewn here and there with large cotton mats for you to sit on. A handful of chairs are provided for senior citizens or those with arthritis and rheumatism. As you are about to enter, a small counter with a box for donations is visible for you to give what you can. Another stall sells CDs of past concerts at ridiculous prices.

The open field where this event takes place is bang in the centre of a middle-class residential locality. On other days, youngsters use it as a playing field. Residents of the area, their friends, relatives and well-wishers, all chip in with whatever assistance they can offer. The local club and residents offer space to accommodate the musicians and their families for three or four days at no cost. The food you can buy is home-made and tastes as good - simple, cheap and nutritious. If you are inclined to partake of alcohol and marijuana to heighten your listening pleasure, you can do so quite openly with no one making a fuss, as long as you don't. The first night, some random party cadre tried to object to the open drinking and smoking going on. He was picked up by the scruff of his neck and pitched out of the place. That was it. Peace and calm after that. As it was before. And of course, the great music continued.

Children were all over the place, as were the elderly, all sharing the same space to indulge themselves in music that touches your soul, tugs at your heartstrings, melts your self into a nothing that is not more important than the music.

For the musicians, this place offers a return to an enthusiastic, unbiased audience. People come here for the music alone, and the music provides a rare opportunity for personal, social interaction which is warm, friendly and inspiring. Basically: a lovely atmosphere, great ambience. Going by the crowd this time, as well as the various other nationalities present, this Utsav cannot be allowed to become some corporate hegemony. The organisers of this event have so far managed to strike a precarious, and I might add, a precious balance between art and commerce, more in favour of the art thankfully. They have come together from all walks of life with a shared vision and the enthusiastic spirit to genuinely promote art and creativity without overt concern for profit or personal gain.

We need more such people in this world.

*************

You can see some more photos of the musicians here.

Mumbai November 2008

2008-11-30T10:14:00.002+05:30

I am unable to come to an understanding of what and how I feel about the “War on Mumbai”.

Maybe I'm just intellectualising things without giving way to basic emotions, instinctual reactions. Maybe I'm trying to find meaning in an obvious and apparent situation.

I'm wondering whether my grief in collective public display with its many innovations in this digital networking age will be of benefit to anyone other to stroke my ego.

Should the energy that goes into my grief be perhaps better directed to individual and collective action? What is it that I can do? How do I support and bolster the security of my country without going up and shaking a policeman's hand, without lighting candles at the Gateway, without giving vent to communal hatred, without taking vigilante action, without getting overcome by the base feelings that television awakens in us, without cynicism, without being partisan, or indifferent?

I'm sure the last thing our security forces need right now are interfering, meddling, and bumbling citizens with a panicked zeal. Nor do they need our criticism, armed with our imperfect wisdom and solutions. They just need the space to do their job. If they need us, they'll ask us.

So where then is our power? Our power is in our hands as citizens. As tax-payers, as voters, as proud of being Indian as the folks who we voted to represent us and govern on our behalf. We have the collective power and authority to generate a widely spread and momentous pressure on all politicians regardless of the colour of their persuasion.

We need to get together as citizens and put united public pressure on them to take many different actions, enact laws, and work at strengthening the defenses of our country. There can be no one solution. We need many to work in synergy. Our pressure has to be exerted through collective and united opinions and voices in popular mass media, the digital ways, through awareness campaigns in public spaces, and to make sure the joint political entity of India do what we want.

That's all I have to say.

Thoughts on music in Calcutta and Bertie da Silva in Concert

2008-11-22T13:14:00.006+05:30

Indians write in English and have readers all over the world. Indians make films in the English language and get international audiences. Indian artists receive global recognition. Indians create software that is operated internationally. Indian academicians are renowned in almost every corner of the earth.

But when it comes to Indian musicians making music in English, frowns appear, subjective criticism is so vehement, it could almost be mistaken for poetry. WTF? Yet you will find many of these hypercritics energetically wagging their heads to rock, folk, country, hip-hop, or whatever music, which has originated in the Occident. Music with words in English must, it seems, be only from where this tongue is the dominant and primary means of communication.

In 1979, we had considered this anomaly in our vague, post-adolescent angst. It resulted in Blues in the Basement – a concert of original music in English that is still talked about today for reasons that range from nostalgic remembrance to awe. But that was a one-off show, a concert that was never repeated in its format by us, or anyone else. At least not in Calcutta.

A bit of history you thought you knew

Over the decades, a generation or three emerged as good musicians in their own right, composing English songs and tunes of quality with dedication and a strong belief in their abilities. At the same time, popular music in Indian languages, mainly Hindi, began to rob elements of this second-class “English music” and to happily integrate these into their melodies and rhythms, and even in the lyrics. Naturally, it gained an immense popularity that spanned language and cultural barriers across the nation. Such music generated so much demand that it gave the ruling Hindi film soundtrack songs tough competition. This resulted then in producers wanting the non-film musicians to sing and perform in their movies. And a whole genre of crossover popular music was born. Suddenly, the role of Indian musical elements was reversed in this music which was essentially rock and pop from the West.

This then led to the advent of fusion music. It’s not that this form hadn’t been tried in earlier years. From Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin to The Beatles and others who followed, Eastern and Western fusion music had straddled popular imagination. In fact, if Indian and Western fusion music had a beginning, it was in the early Hindi movies. S D and his son R D Burman were pioneers. But the fusion music of more recent times was inspired by global trends in listening. ‘World music’ became a genre in itself. This was a lot of different kinds of music from varied cultural origins attempting to musically come together in an often contrived manner, leading it to be sardonically termed ‘con-fusion’. Indian musicians did not lag behind in adopting this trend.

Over the years, a regional bias had crept into everything, including music. Back in Calcutta, the live performance of original Western music had become almost non-existent. The musicians who played this stuff had been transposed to performing English cover songs at pubs, college fests, and parties. DJs with their electronic and digital gadgetry and their shoddy, unschooled, amateur and eclectic tastes and sensibilities were now catering to the lowest common denominator. Individuals who composed original music banded together to play gigs which insisted on cover songs and tunes so that they could make a living. In any case, making a living from playing original ‘English’ music was next to impossible. Some drifted off into the fusion genre which seemed to have potential and others re-discovered their ethnicity to do Bangla “band music”. Many did it all at various convenient moments.

Once again, everyone robbed randomly from ‘English’ music to add that additional, familiar texture to their songs which echoed their influences and exposed a whole gamut of mediocrity. But no one was complaining – neither the audiences nor the musicians. The Bangla band or rock variety has now become so universally accepted that when one tells an avid fan that some tune or the other was originally from an English song, one is greeted with incredulity.

Within this scenario, there were still musicians trying to do their original English music. Therefore, it was not unusual to find these musicians getting frustrated, jaded, bitter and cynical about their creative efforts. Worse, it began to tell on their music. They now no longer played music for a wider audience. In fact, it seemed like they were almost playing for themselves and a small core group of fans and friends who gave moral support if nothing else, and that too out of a sense of loyalty.

The way it is today

The state of confusion had just exploded. Now, if you were doing original music, (and it didn’t matter whether it was English or fusion), you had no place to perform other than college fests, pubs, and special nights at the various clubs. The one pub that revived live English music performances a decade and a half ago frowned upon fusion, didn’t really care for original lyrics, and only wanted local musicians to make familiar popular music by chart toppers from the West so that their bar business was brisk. All this “original-shoriginal” stuff could be performed by guest bands from other parts brought in for one-night-only gigs at costs that usually equaled two weeks or more payment to local musicians. In fact, this unnamed but obvious pub has been more responsible for the detriment of quality music by local talent than anyone or anything else. But they have their bottom lines all worked out, and nothing will make them change their minds now.

Concerts in auditoriums and similar venues in Calcutta had ceased long ago, especially for English rock music. There were no sponsors keen enough, no promoters willing to take the risk, and they all said there really was no audience. You see, the massive popularity of what is commonly called ‘Indipop’ has given a different tack to brand marketing strategy. In Calcutta, Bangla rock is granted second place, not because the music is of superior quality, but due to the kicking in of a regional bias vis-à-vis the way the sponsoring brand is marketed. Unable to make a decent living from music they would much rather play, talented and creative musicians depend on the whims of unaware or badly informed audiences, equally ignorant sponsors and promoters to make a few bucks more by playing what such crucial elements in their income-earning opportunities want. Apart from a sense of ennui, the cynicism and bitterness also pours through.

The courage of his convictions

Into this disquieting world of modern music in Calcutta, one man has the courage of his convictions to take a deep plunge into not just the unknown, but to do the unheard of.

Having voluntarily removed himself from the scene described above as it was developing, twenty years later, he decides he is ready to not just give it a shot once more, but to either make or break with it. Fatalistic? Not at all. Maturity. Confidence. Conviction. All of that, yes. And knowing that you gave it your best and your all.

In 1979 I saw that light in his eyes, and we did Blues in the Basement together. In 2008, that light was once again evident, and we did Bertie da Silva in Concert together. Both times our gamble paid off. We realized that the audience did not actually know what they wanted to hear. And if it was music very well performed, they would like it for its originality even more. And we were right.

The audience does want stock favourites, but they also want the music we gave them. This much was evident in both years. Sold–out shows, packed venues and a clamour for more proved our point very satisfactorily. It can be compared to eating “chowmin” from street stalls and considering it value for money till you are treated to an authentic meal at a Chinese home. All at once the bar that defined taste has been notched up quite a bit higher.

I am not going to actually do a review of the concert by Bertie da Silva on the 18^th of November. I can’t. It would be biased, since I was so much a part of it. And to set any doubts you may have at rest, we have been self-critical, but that is rather a private reckoning and has no relevance to you reading this. Suffice to say we have learned from mistakes and know what to do/not to do next time. Yes, there is certainly going to be a next time. Actually, many more next times.

Doing concerts like this puts a whole lot of responsibility on musicians to offer up much more and better. Concerts like this expect audiences to come for the music alone, so if your music does not meet expectations of the audience you should be ready for the brickbats. And to work harder at your music.

That’s the space we want to carve out. A space for musicians who will be able to perform their original creative efforts for ignorant and unaware listeners and turn them around to their way of thinking. And yet make money from it. This is “alternative” at another level. A collaborative way of working so that new listeners emerge, new opportunities open up, and we can put the cynicism and bitterness to rest.

We may as well give it a shot. We have nothing to lose.

And the music never died

2008-10-26T17:37:00.006+05:30

The lizard scampers away across the wall as I wait for the liftman to return from his namaaz and pull a brass lever which will elevate me up to the 5th floor. Its one of those typical old buildings of Central Calcutta, a relic of British times, but fairly well maintained, plumb in the middle of Chandni Chowk. It mostly houses a hotel and a bar which has live music every evening. Appropriate perhaps, considering that three floors up from the bar, intense rehearsals are on for a different kind of live music to be performed in a month's time.

The live music playing in the bar on the first floor is so at odds with what is being rehearsed up here that they might as well be from another planet. I have never actually been to this bar, but every evening I hear the music blaring into the stairwell in the many keys of off that the keyboard player can conjure up, as the digital drum machine whacks out a beat that seems to have nothing to do with the tempo of the song. It is a lot of amplified noise with a disjointed melody sneaking through. The songs are sung by a surprisingly good female voice who just sings away, sounding like she's ignoring the band backing her. I'm pretty sure the male-only patrons of the bar watching her with alcohol-ridden lust in their eyes, are not particularly bothered about the quality of the music. The music is only as good as its familiarity with them, and also perhaps the associations they carry from the Hindi films they originate from.

Maybe I'm being a little unkind to these professional musicians. Perhaps I think too highly of the music my friend Bertie Da Silva is playing three floors up. Neither Bertie or I would ever dream about doing a daily gig in a down-market bar. Forget down market. The reason Bertie and I decided to return to doing a concert in an auditorium like in our old days is because we were (and are) pretty disillusioned about performing background music for a social evening at an upmarket pub or club. Not strangely, both kinds of market establishments promote their facilities on the basis of the live music. Bertie and band don't even have the ostensible advantage of a sexy woman in slinky clothes vamping it up frontstage with a microphone in her hand!

Are we “English music” aficionados snobbish and snooty about the music we prefer to hear live or otherwise? Is it because it has no mass appeal here, unlike the music being performed downstairs, so that our inverted snobbery is like a defence mechanism for a rarefied clique? Do we justify our stance by the “quality” of music we listen to, and the intellectual and aesthetic attractions, not forgetting the nostalgic sentiments, it holds for us? And what about the reputation of the performers?

Could be. Who knows? All I know now is that we are committed to doing our show in less than a month's time. Such questions could be distracting to what we want to achieve in our 'other' world. In my mind I wish the musicians in the bar all the best as the liftman swings open the collapsible iron gates for me at the fifth floor. From outside the door to Cyrus' home I hear Willy doing his bass solo in La Dolce Vita. With him, Jonathan's keys and Amlanjyoti's soft drums fill up this space I am now standing in, a world away from what's happening three floors down. And of course the tale the song tells is a true one, like many of Bertie's songs. It has the added flavour of my having been present during what he sings about, a slice of life that happened in an upmarket lounge bar where live music is also used to bring in customers. As an aside, the jazz inflections endear it to me as well.

I sit down quietly and watch Bertie and the band rehearse the 18th November concert material. They've been at it for more than two months now and I see it's only getting better. It should be. Because he planned it that way. Hand-picking the musicians, initially rehearsing with them in separate sessions, then bringing them together as a band just about twenty days ago, and now working hard at it so that everything falls into place. And it's surely looking like that, the way things are going.

We all have a suppressed excitement about the show. This really is Bertie's comeback concert. There are two reasons why I discount last year's reunion show with Mel and Fuzz at Princeton, and the two or three collaborative gigs he did with Pink Noise later in the year, as his comeback shows. Firstly, the one with Mel and Fuzz was a one-off, a sentimental get-together resulting from Fuzz's visit to Calcutta after almost 10 years, and a keen sense of nostalgia which naturally occurred. I'm sure the three of them would love to do another, properly rehearsed concert together, but it requires a major commitment level and relocation for Fuzz which presently seems impossible.

Secondly, the gigs with Pink Noise were good to hear since those guys are such experienced and talented musicians who perform and practice regularly, but their commitments beyond Bertie were not helping him to take his music exactly where he wanted to go with it. The inevitable was what he now has put together. A band playing exclusively with him, dedicating huge chunks of their time everyday to the music because they love it so much.

That's the other thing. His admirers and fans, very often students he has taught or still teaches English to. I'm constantly amazed at how quickly and easily they respond and volunteer to do any little thing to make this show by “Sir” a resounding success. Some of them are influential, some are not, yet the individual and collective, genuine admiration spans quite a few years and even a generation or so. In fact, both Jonathan and Anindya are ex-students of his and they along with Amlanjyoti who is the son of old friend Victor, have brought a youthful energy and drive, as well as fresh ideas to the entire sound. Nice!
Willy, a contemporary of Bertie's and mine, provides the been-there, done-that backing a band like this requires, but not at all in a cynical, jaded way. A neat, and you could even say optimal mix, to the music. Ever the one with a piquant, Anglo-Indian sense of humour, Willy is discussing with Bertie about a bass run that he needs to do in a song, which musicians call “doing a walk”, when he remembers a tale from long ago. A musician of Goan ethnicity who played upright acoustic bass was unfamiliar with the 'walking' term. When he was told to “do a walk” in a particular song, the other band members were surprised to find him pick up his huge and heavy instrument and start to walk around. Fortunately, this happened at a practice session and not on stage! We all have a good laugh. Then Cyrus brings in the tea and everyone takes five. Willy and Cyrus also go back a long way, and it's nice sometimes to hear them exchange memories. I really must start documenting these musician stories soon.
It's a pity Cyrus won't be able to play this gig. His reasons are solidly valid, but personally speaking I'll miss him being on stage after three decades or so. I remember being very blown away at a High concert when he played lead guitar with them. However, things are open with him for the next gig, which we must do soon, at least within the first three months of next year. I do want to hear him play live once again.

Post-rehearsal, Bertie and I go back to his house and sup on kati rolls and tea. We are tense with the thoughts of what the future will bring. Maybe trepidation is a better word. But we are optimistic. Things seem to be slowly falling into place, both musically and otherwise. The lack of a lead guitar is no longer noticeable after Bertie has tweaked and rearranged some of the tracks which would have used the part. People are already talking about the show even outside Calcutta, especially Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Tickets to the show are being sought, and though we have no sponsors yet, we are not unduly worried. The way things are moving, that too will happen. We have a very strong verbal commitment from a leading city newspaper and a FM radio station to write and talk about Bertie, this concert, and a whole lot besides.

We talk of the concert and the things still left to do. We are looking at this as a stepping stone to bigger and better. More shows in Calcutta and away. More shows with other musicians, organised specially for them, not necessarily featuring Bertie every time. All these shows will have one dominating criterion. They will feature original music performed by the musicians. Music that is never really given a fighting chance by the big labels, the music stores and the airwaves because it cannot be classified, set into little boxes which are convenient for sales. Live concerts are the only option left open to such dedicated musicians, and even there sponsors can be mean and stingy. These musicians pour their heart and soul into their music, often sacrificing much and compromising with too much to play what they want. And make you like it enough to want more.

The music never died. It never even faded away. It just orbited out of our ambit for awhile. Maybe we'll be able to bring it back to a space where you will come to listen to music for its sake alone.

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Bertie Da Silva and the band perform in concert on Tuesday 18th November 2008 at G D Birla Sabhagar, Calcutta, from 7 to 9 pm. The first set will feature Bertie in a solo performance. After a short intermission, he will perform with the band, who are: Willy Walters on bass guitars, Jonathan Ramgopal on keyboards, Amlanjyoti Singh on drums and Anindya Sundar Paul on backing vocals. Yours truly will also be doing backing vocals for three songs when I'm not running around the premises acting frightfully busy.

A BRIDGE TO HOWRAH

2008-10-17T21:59:00.011+05:30

The layers of this city run thick and deep. A renaming to Kolkata does not reveal much. It merely creates another layer instead, another mystery.

This city takes you beyond loving it and hating it. Words seem inadequate, often superfluous when I try to write of it. Images, both moving and still, seem better suited to express things about Calcutta/Kolkata. Love and hate for a city is possible when certain aspects can be taken for granted. Things are that are standard, universal, fit the norm, are comparable.

Is Cal/Kol really in a time warp as the critics say? As if static, unchanging, unable to catch up with preconceived notions of “the times”? Yet when you turn to look again, there's been a shift in perspective, a subtle transformation, the inexorable tread of progress. The people of course. They are the cause and effect of it all. The hum of this city. The disturbing blurring of the senses when your perceptions and information systems are overloaded.

And then when you come from foreign shores with certain ideas, particular information, even impressions from an earlier visit, you could find distinct, deliberate changes have taken place since. As a medium for information, interpretation and expression, documentary films are hard to beat. You can adapt, adjust, if necessary compromise with your story line for such changes that will invariably occur. Calcutta/Kolkata will always give you more than enough footage for your needs.

York Street Productions from Hamburg in Germany came to shoot a 'city portrait' of Kolkata. At the outset it seemed simple enough. An earlier visit had given an idea of the way things worked here, happened here. They were prepared for many eventualities, having widened the scope of the film to encompass them. They had found that films about Kolkata shown in Europe were, broadly speaking, stories of a city that was dying, somehow on the brink of existence, mainly because of Mother Teresa and her legacy. Stephan the director, knew there was a positive side to Kolkata, a viewpoint that might reflect the promise and hope the city held.

The York Street team arrived as Mamata Banerjee was at the height of her Tata Nano-Singur agitation; a major constituent of the Left Front government of Bengal was withholding the license to operate from Metro Cash & Carry, the giant German wholesaler; bomb blasts in Delhi and other places were making their effects felt in Kolkata; the downslide in international financial markets that would certainly have its repercussions here, had just begun. What promise and hope? This was a question citizens were asking in distress and cynicism.

At the micro level, important permissions for their shoot were still pending. Appointments with some industry spokespersons were awaited. It was raining every now and then, enough to cause a nagging worry. But the IFA Derby match shoot at Salt Lake stadium was sanctioned, and despite it all, in spite of the mediocre football, about 80,000 fans of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan filled the stands and a good few hours of videotape. The local television channel which holds the exclusive rights for all IFA matches refused permission to shoot the game itself. They did not realise that the imagery got from the stands was worth more than the actual game.

The inevitable happened as I knew it would from past experience. Things began to fall into place. However, an unknown factor to me as their production coordinator was Howrah. They were to film in quite a few locations across the river and I am quite ignorant of the place. The bulk of my knowledge about Howrah is centred around its location as a railway station. Plus we were to shoot in areas dominated by a community feeling targeted and vilified because of current happenings in India, across the borders and globally. While no untoward incidents took place, and though I was pretty sure they would not, nevertheless they were anticipated.

But I, along with Ankit who was assisting, felt the resentment and the anger in the scathing remarks and snide comments directed at us two Indians in the crew. We had to remain non-committal and beyond conflict as we were accused of selling out to the sada chamra, the white skin, who in turn would sell their images for good money while the people being filmed lost out as usual. The bitterness and partial truth hurt and I questioned things once again.

Is there a right way and a wrong way of showing poverty? Does it have to be filmed at all? But the bare facts already surround you, we live side by side with it. As reasonably aware and informed citizens we know quite a bit of the sordid reality. But how much does it affect us, move us to action? What works? Charity? Rehabilitation? Can the two be differentiated? How do intervening factors like bureaucracy, corruption, violence, politics find their niche in the scheme of things? And become an integral part of the system? If we must show some of it, how much is no more? Will it all change with big factories, globalized business with local addresses, shopping malls and real estate development? Will it get better? Or is the rich-poor divide getting wider? Is the divide itself now fodder for international entertainment television, reality TV?

I have yet to find any satisfactory answers. I know I must live with these questions and deal with it the best I can, in as equal terms as I can. Or be insensitive, impervious, completely uncaring. Live within my insulated bubble, my comfort zone of creative arts and expression. Intellectual masturbation perhaps?

India is a hot topic in the West. The Germans I know, from personal interaction in the past, are fascinated by Kolkata as well. Their previous Cullkoota has become Kolkata, until they arrive to find that Calcutta coexists, as does Cull-katta, and “north Cal”, “south Cal”, “central Cal”...plus all the layers between. And flowing right through it all is the river with the bridge that spans it in more ways than one.

Howrah Bridge, the first one, the prime visual symbol of the city in tourism tracts, sounds like a difficult task. Especially if you have already experienced belligerent policemen when you tried to use your tiny digital camera at the bridge. I also know any official paperwork holds sway over almost all aspects of life here. And an infinite store of patience will help you get it at a very, very reasonable cost. Legally, officially. Permission to film the bridge all of two days was granted.

This bridge, Rabindra Setu, is grander, lovelier and livelier than the second Hooghly bridge, the Vivekananda Setu because people use it. And they use it more than vehicles. The constant, surging flow (like the river below) of people walking at all hours, changes the dimensions of this steel structure to such an extent that it feels totally natural, the way it should be. This is Calcutta, not Kolkata.

The Vivekananda bridge does not allow pedestrian traffic. Seen from Mullick Ghat beside the Flower Market, Howrah Bridge (who other than officialdom calls it Rabindra Setu?), is a pulsating, living thing. In a boat on the river underneath, the bridge has a strange auditory experience, like a rumbling bass voice in the distance with intermittent highs. You feel like talking to it, like a child to a father. I'm sure it has much to say.

There are many opinions about Calcutta/Kolkata that its citizens have. Vibrant is a much used term. Fascinating, lively, colourful are other adjectives that readily come to mind. In the madness and chaos, the poverty and the extremes, the Germans see smiling faces, ready laughter, unbridled curiosity, and an innate politeness and hospitality whichever way they look. Locals are surprised by this observation till they themselves leave their shells and see the truth of it. It is as though there is a silent, mutual conspiracy among all its citizens to not just say good about their city, but to also feel good, even as they are full of woe and cynical of current events and history. I like to believe this is a very Calcutta phenomena.

Kolkata as a global business destination is not surprising at all. Calcutta was - till politics and circumstances altered that. A feel-good factor holds forth, as interviews with a cross-section of people from the IT Minister to a football coach, from industrialists to a leasehold farmer on the city's eastern fringes, from a historian to a musician, and a film director to a social worker reveals. If much is artificial, PR-speak, fear of political reprisal, or sheer diplomacy one cannot say, but the overall attitude is positive.

That people live, work and play here, and make the best of prevailing circumstances while still retaining hope, is a fitting response to those in other parts who shun and denigrate the city. Maybe Calcutta/Kolkata requires a tougher breed of people than those who do not stay here. Which urban agglomeration has no difficulties? It's the manner in which you acknowledge and deal with it that makes you stand apart. Foreigners who live and work here, and were interviewed during the filming had much the same thing to say. Why should this be? It's not necessary for them to do so. As it is not necessary for its natural citizens. Yet we say so and mean it.

Calcutta/Kolkata is between the awareness and understanding of it. Which, by the way, is never complete. The more you understand the less you know. The more you know the less the appreciation. And the more the awareness the more the mystery. Or is it the mystical? That too.

The documentary, A Bridge to Howrah, may never be seen publicly in the city of its filming. In any case it is not being made for audiences here but for European ones. Who will probably enjoy it quite whole-heartedly. Many of them will possibly donate money and goodwill to a project initiated by a German doctor currently working with child labour in Howrah. In fact, that project will be the fulcrum of the story that York Street Productions will attempt to tell. Their telling of it will be one version. Their captured imagery on the other hand may form many more versions in other minds. My own observations during the shooting of it has definitely created another version. A bridge to Howrah can only return me to Calcutta/Kolkata.

I wonder if Calcutta/Kolkata is beyond documentary films made on it; beyond words written about it? I wonder if there is some sort of inner communal, tribal sense of pace and strategy its citizens share which dictates our attitudes and moves? The Tata's small-car big-factory exit from Bengal on the eve of Durga Puja didn't do much to dampen spirits. The possibility of rain ruining celebrations was more worrying. Media interpretations of who we are, what we do and why we do so are infinite and versionary and will leave little or no impact on Calcutta/Kolkata and its citizens. Whatever happens as a consequence of such media exhibits will be grains of sand on a beach, drops of water in monsoon floods.

The layers pulled back reveal more layers. Perhaps there is an insularity that is at once self-absorbed as it is open. Maybe it is 'open source' where you may tinker with the original code to make a better version but you cannot take undue credit for something that is not originally yours.

Calcutta/Kolkata is not yours or mine to claim. Except the version you make of it. For better or worse.
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Go here for my pictures of "The Making of Bridge to Howrah".

OK TATA BYE BYE

2008-10-17T21:27:00.003+05:30

The theme of a Durga Puja pandal this year in the Sealdah area. It featured the facades of two factories - one old and the other new, garlanded by a huge chain and lock, and the "Nata Mano" - "the short man"? Now I wonder who that is?

The reason the Tata Nano car project has opted out of Bengal's Singur is ostensibly, as the Scion put it, “the agitation by Mamata Banerjee”. Okay. Fair enough. Her brand of disruptive, constantly 'opposing' vis-a-vis Opposition politics is not really favoured by most people. Her single-minded agenda to somehow grab the headlines and stay within sight (and sound) of the electorate who can, as she well knows, easily trash her sooner than she likes, has caused what one newspaper screamed, was the “death of hope”, a “bullet into Bengal's soul”.
Really?

Does it mean the other 'lesser' industrialists, entrepreneurs, and assorted capitalists who have invested heavily here are not to be considered as contributing to the over-all development and progress of Bengal? When did Tata suddenly become the sole saviour of this state's “resurgence”? How is it that the ruling majority political party, who not too long ago, intentionally created conditions that ensured the withdrawal of big industry and business from Bengal, are now being appreciated for “the support that the government gave us and the facilitation that they provided”? Quote unquote, Ratan Tata. Joke mara kya?

The same newspaper mentioned above also fears that “West Bengal will continue to sink into the quicksand [sic] into which the state's politicians put it way back in the Sixties”. Nevertheless, and you have to hand it to Mamata Banerjee that despite her dense intellectual abilities and obvious lack of any game plan (other than headline grabbing), she has instinctively understood that much more is afoot than one sees on the surface. Although I do believe I am being kind to her.

Even today, the Communists who rule Bengal are a house divided. While Tata is feted, other big investors are discouraged or subjected to prolonged delays. Then again small businesses, farmers, fisher-folk, workers, and a huge populace of ordinary citizens have been displaced, abandoned, ignored, mistreated, threatened, and generally dealt badly with by these very same Communists over three decades. However, their mutual objective despite their many shades, has been to gain a complete stranglehold of absolute power through any means possible, usually by terrorising, and when they feel munificent, through agitation.

So I have my own vision of a future scenario, or two.

One. The next general elections are a mere two years away. And like always, and in keeping with their favourite colour, the Communists must then come up smelling roses. Their initial land reforms policy from which some good did come, mainly from their legalisation of the bargadar system and their revolutionary land redistribution methods, also created a very efficient and monstrous system of corruption at all levels. Over the years this has actually caused the ruin of farmers and small land-holders, and once again re-vested power (and valuable resources) in the hands of the few and the wealthy. With the Communists no longer able to deliver anything other than empty promises in rural, agricultural Bengal, they have no option but to now push for “industrialisation” and what must necessarily be a shift to urbanisation. In fact, their public relations machinery has even coined a motto that succinctly reflects this new, 'progressive', 'resurgent' thinking: “Farming is our legacy, industry is our future”.

The Tata Nano car project would have been the biggest industrial project to come up in Bengal since the Reds came to power in 1977. I have no doubt that it would have led to a better socio-economic situation for us citizens in some ways. However, the recent Singur affair or fiasco where none of the interested parties backed off or compromised, and endlessly manipulated common folk who have lost the most, seems to me to be a very clearly thought out, long-term strategic move.

Imagine the official PR machinery of the rulers going to town in a few days with dejection and despondency and the humble attitude of “we did our best, what more could we have done?”. The Industries Minister has started the ball rolling by saying, “I don't feel like living in Bengal”. Mainline media have already identified scapegoats to lynch so that they can justify plunging advertising revenues they would have certainly, and optimistically forecast for themselves a year ago.

Imagine a huge section of urban voters, traditionally anti-Left, instantly swing back to vote Red in sympathy and empathy. Imagine a large section of rural voters who had the courage to oppose the Commies in the recent Panchayat elections find that their land has no value once again, revert to vote for the Left. And you have the perfect formula for another staggering win for the Communists at the hustings in two years!

If you feel like extending your imagination a little further, imagine that the Opposition is very much a cog in the well-oiled wheel of corruption whereby they are encouraged and incentivised by the Reds to maintain their opposing stance and allow the humble Left to once again emerge victorious in the polls. And when this eventually happens, the Tatas return to Bengal with new terms and favours. From what looks like a lose-lose situation currently, it becomes a win-win situation for all.

Alternative scenario: (This is played in fast forward mode compared to the above scenario.) Public opinion is swayed by the despondency and dejection being enacted on live television and hot-off-the-press dailies as the Tatas and their ancillary units begin to pack and move. Not a very happy, shubho Puja for all. Mamata sulks and retreats to a corner as usual. Opportunities seen in capitalist dreams of the proletariat are bursting like soap bubbles. In any case, the forcibly acquired, meagrely compensated, and disputed land in question at Singur is useless for agriculture any more as it has been completely covered with fly ash to facilitate the Nano factory construction. The Red rulers once again appeal to Tata with the added voice of “public opinion”. Mr Tata does a magnanimous about-turn and returns to renegotiate. (In fact, the way things are going in Sanand, the alternative Nano factory may not happen there either.) The Left having learned a bit of a lesson (not too much), deal more maturely this time keeping the coming elections in mind. All of a sudden, things are looking up again.

One cannot ignore the fact that if the Nano is to be a successful small and cheap ($2000) car it has to be first in the market with the ability to flood it in the next year or so. The Tata's competitors are not exactly sitting back and wondering how things will be. They are certainly working on their own versions. All the alternative manufacturing sites available to the Tatas either do not have adequate infrastructure or require huge new investments and longer time periods so production cannot start so fast. The bare fact is that Singur is already there and already heavily invested in by them.

I believe the Tatas are not yet ready with their Nano. They are also not equipped with the necessary environment and other clearances they need to sell the car in foreign markets, especially Europe where there is much dismay and strong opposition to the Nano which is viewed as a potential hazard. They have conveniently used Mamata's stupid agitation to gain time and save face. This time, the Opposition is granted the victory of some more rural seats in the general elections so they can crow about how farmer-friendly they are and at the same time save face too. Again, win-win for all.

We live in interesting times, don't we?

Responsibility? My arse!

2008-09-06T11:52:00.006+05:30

This is quoted from Calcutta's The Telegraph newspaper of Friday September 5, 2008:

"[Ratan] Tata also told The New York Times that he thought farmers genuinely wanted a different way of life, using new skills in new jobs.

'As each generation develops, the children of the rural economy must decide whether they want to continue to work on the farms', he said."

Great, Mr Tata! And what should we eat then, the Nano? the Indica? the cellphone and Internet bandwidth? steel?

I'm amazed that the scion of one of India's most respected industrial families can make such irresponsible statements. This is also not the first time he's said something like this. Earlier this year, at the Auto Expo in New Delhi he made a similar statement about people in Bengal needing to decide whether they want development or agriculture.

Actually, I'm not amazed. I'm sick of these industrialists who believe that their profit-making, pollution-creating devices are signs of "development".

Witness one more instance where the Tatas have gloriously fucked up. Greenpeace has been waging a very real protest against the Tata's Dhamra port project.

“The TATAs have demonstrated concern over their brand image, but not about the impacts their port construction will have on the turtles and their habitat. They do not seem to care that close to one lakh TATA customers have asked that the port be shifted, or that over 200 national and international scientists and academics, including over 30 turtle experts, have called for the port to be stopped. They are not bothered about the fact that fisher forums, representing the interests of thousands of fishermen in Orissa have called for the port to be halted” said Ashish Fernandes, Oceans Campaigner, Greenpeace India.

Read all about it here.

And the less said about their broadband and Internet services, the less you'll have to read my rant.

So here we are with India's premier industrial behemoth and their so called corporate, social and environmental responsibility. As I said before, my arse!

I think we also need to add our voices to things like this apart from crying out for non-violence and peace in our lives.

Who are these people?

2008-08-14T13:49:00.003+05:30

Who are we? Who are we, who question established precepts, argue the considered opinion of mass media, and as someone rather unfairly put it, are intellectual wankers?

But then who are we, we who are confident of our identities, our capabilities, our place in the scheme of things even if not endorsed by official authority? Who are we who observe, experience, digest, process, understand (or not) the onrushing ocean of text, images, sound, smell, touch, feelings, emotions, and still not drown?

Why is it that the artistic, the creative, the truly innovative affects us more than the money that can, or may not, be generated from it? That we mostly choose the art, and not the money, and are happier for it?

Who are we who question our own ideals, as we also find wanting the ideals of others? And if we leave aside political, economic, military and religious ideals, then there really isn't much to make a choice from other than the creative spirit.

Why do we from across countries and continents, rivers and oceans, mountains and forests, connect at a common point where our skills and abilities, our wealth and means, our status in society, our origins and backgrounds, are of no consequence? They say 'birds of a feather', 'like minds'... They are right.

But they are not us, even as they acknowledge us. And even as they do, they would rather ignore us, in many places thwart us, certainly laugh at us, even eliminate us. And the many who do this, are they who are family, community, colleagues, neighbours. We who will not go to war with them, run the rat race with them. We who will not avenge ourselves but seek to resolve conflict, find common ground, make peace.

I don't know who we are, but I am finding more of us. Are we a marginalised, widely dispersed, loosely coalesced, thinly populated conglomeration of not just thinkers but actively involved individuals who are there to balance, and on occasion, even tip the scales?

Who are these people, we who live right there among you?

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I see people who are supposed to know better standin' around like furniture.

There's a wall between you and what you want and you got to leap it,

Tonight you got the power to take it, tomorrow you won't have the power to keep it.

- From The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar by Bob Dylan in Shot of Love (1981)

A Death In Mizoram (and other reflections on life)

2008-08-12T13:27:00.009+05:30

RAVI ADVANI: November 1, 1966 - August 6, 2008

Written: August 7, 2008

Ravi Advani died yesterday. The fourth of my contemporaries, one more of my closest friends, who went well before his time. But what is this time that we have an illusion of? What is this concept of time we have, where it is not quantified by mere numbers, but as an undefined period or space between birth and death?

I don't know. I'll leave such querying to more scholarly minds. Yet I cannot but help contemplating this aspect of our lives. We accord time such value, such importance. And then when our pre-conceived notions of life do not fit into this 'time' we believe is allocated to us, we are at a loss.

Still, Ravi, 9 years younger than me, has passed on. He died of many complications which wrecked his body over the years, finally resulting in a multiple-organ failure that ended his life. Of course he neglected himself. Of course he chose to consume alcohol in excess. Of course he lived life with the sure knowledge that he had plenty of time.

It was this last mentioned guarantee which he gifted himself that determined the way he wanted to live his life. He lived life to the full. Once more, another indeterminate and vague concept. The fullness of one's life is bound or controlled by individual circumstances. Ravi enjoyed his life in the best possible way he could. He used humour to buttress his weaknesses and failures, of which he had plenty. He bore no ill-will or grudges for any length of time. This too ensured that people took advantage of his warm heart, a generosity of pocket he could least afford, and his status as a bachelor without family of any kind. He gave in easily to others' whimsy and overbearing attitudes.

So when the time came for the truth of friendship to be put to the test, these so-called 'others' were found to be sadly lacking.

It was his destiny to have come to Aizawl in Mizoram and find his place on earth ten years ago. Before this move, he lived in Calcutta, the city of his birth, where we met. Just a few months before his migrating, he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and was in a very bad way in the hospital. My late parents insisted on bringing him home to our house where they cared for him, nourished him, and ensured his recovery, just as they would have done for their own children.

Having lost his own parents at a very young age, Ravi had no real family of his own. There were relatives scattered here and there, but he never talked of them much, and certainly not in a special manner as many of us tend to do. He claimed me and my family as his own and yet he suddenly disappeared without notice and we lost touch for more than 5 years.

And then in Aizawl he found another family, another set of true friends. Makuka and his family, and the good doctors Jane and Zothan. They were the only people he talked of regularly, animatedly, and with all the emotion one comes to bear upon when talking of people one loves and who love you back. Unconditionally.

It hardly mattered that there was no blood connection. The last ten days of his life spent in a hospital was when, once again, this Mizo family of his did what blood relatives should normally do. They arranged for expensive medicines and bottles of blood, paid his bills (he was stone broke), sent him meals thrice a day, took it in turns to stay nights with him, and constantly kept me and my sister updated with his progress, or lack of it.

It was at their urging that I eventually decided to come see this friend of mine, someone I'd known for 20 years. Nearly half his life. Despite my not wanting to see him in the condition he was in, I realised we were brothers and it was the least I could do. I flew to Aizawl with a bad gut feeling and a heavy heart. He called me in the morning yesterday telling me that my flight was as per schedule, and that I should get him some fruits unavailable in Aizawl and the new book by Jhumpa Lahiri. At Lengpui, Aizawl's airport, I sent a text informing him I'd arrived and that Makuka was driving me up to my hotel. His last communication with me was a text in reply to tell Makuka that he wanted freshly boiled country chicken (a Mizo speciality) for dinner that night. I later learned he died an hour and fifteen minutes after that. The time I must have entered my hotel room.

Once again, his Mizo family showed what it means to be considered as such. Makuka brought Ravi's body to his own house, where his sister and others laid his body for people to pay their last respects. The entire neighbourhood and community, more than a hundred people, gathered to keep vigil till late at night with us. Most of them did not know Ravi, or had a nodding acquaintance with him. Yet they and the YMA, the Young Mizo Association, organised everything. From making and serving tea and food for all visitors, making his coffin, transporting it to the Chanmari cemetery, digging his grave, and today, to sealing his final resting place. The graveyard is on a hillside, and it is rocky, and at the end there were some 80 people who made sure the mandatory six feet was dug so that his burial could happen that very night itself.

I had been using his mobile phone to inform all the people in his contacts list about his demise. What I was really trying to do was somehow connect with a blood relative so that someone from his family would know. But I was not successful. Instead I received a call from an obstreperous, uncouth, arrogant man from Delhi who claimed to be Ravi's friend for four years (4 years!), who actually had the unmitigated gall to question our decision to bury him and not cremate him, since, he said, Ravi was a Hindu and had apparently told him sometime in the past that he had wanted this.

I think I knew Ravi better than anyone. We spoke almost every day once we renewed contact some 5 years ago, often merely enquiring about my normal, daily routine. He shared many of his thoughts with me. One thing I knew for certain was that Ravi was not religious. In fact he avoided such people and places as much as he could. At the end, it was the people who looked after him and who, as Ravi was keenly aware, were real family, who took the decision to inter his remains rather than burn them.

The horrible man from Delhi, a certain Vicky Chauhan, did not even know that Ravi was in hospital until he got my text informing him of his death. Who are such people who suddenly want to make decisions about what to do with a dead Ravi when they least cared for him when he lived? All they were, were good-time buddies. They used Ravi's position as the manager of an airline agency to get confirmed air travel during peak periods, on the assurance of gifting him a bottle or two of whisky, a valued commodity in Mizoram where prohibition is law. In fact, they would also help consume that whisky gift. I feel excessively violent as I think of these scum of the earth, and I would have no regrets if someone cremated them alive.

My third visit to Mizoram, though in extreme contrast to my earlier two, has again been a valuable learning experience for me. I am completely enamoured of this place and its people. I consider myself an honorary Mizo, not because they conferred it on me, but because I am honoured to consider myself as such. It is due to Ravi that such a feeling overwhelms me about this treasure-house of a people in the north east of India.

We in urban, urbane, globalised India have much to learn from them. Or perhaps re-learn. We need to once again absorb what I fondly term the tribal traditions that keep them together and strong in times of need and stress, and in times of joy and happiness. Basically, at all times.

In the cities of the plains, we are self-centred, self-absorbed and selfish, doing things more for their social acceptability and trumpeted acknowledgement rather than for the sake of doing it. This intangible, precious quality of doing good for others without question or motive reposes only in a handful. In Mizoram, it is the quality of its people completely.

The death in Mizoram of my dear friend Ravi Advani is not an end. For me, it is a beginning. I have found true friends who have easily inducted me into their families. I have also been witness to the true Christian spirit in action, something that for so long has been theoretical, perhaps liturgical knowledge for me. I saw it in my parents and a few others which I took for granted, rightly assuming it to be their nature. Now I'm happy to know that such a spirit exists in an entire community and people.

In contrast, there is Ravi's employer of eight years. The man minced no words to publicly denounce Ravi's philandering ways at his wake, and over the next two days when I met him again to pack and collect Ravi's personal effects. Neither was he sparing in the self-praise and congratulations he awarded himself as he told me and others of the 'lakhs and lakhs of rupees' he had spent on Ravi's medical treatment over the years. Yet he never had one good thing to say about Ravi whom he had kept questionably employed for 8 years, other than to be slightly impressed by his PR skills.

Of course the man is a non-Mizo, even worse, a Bengali, a person of my 'exalted' community. To some, that itself would be a moot point, as his origins are not of Bengal. In the three times I have visited Aizawl, I was made acutely aware of the regard non-Mizos have for Mizos. They are vile in their vituperation and slick with their abuse and slander. This feeling is especially strong among the Army in their avatar as the Assam Rifles. This same attitude is perpetuated by the non-Mizo businessmen and traders who profit tremendously from doing what they do in Mizoram. (Some of them have even married Mizo women...)

In all the Mizos I have met over the years (and I have met a great number), I saw no such reciprocal tendency of attitude. In fact I sensed, and empathised with the alienation which has been forced upon them. I see this alienation mirrored in the advertisements that litter the pretty mountain sides in which handsome Indians (non-Mizos) pose to seek the necessary custom of Mizos for cellphone services, cars, TVs, et al. Why, when these companies are anyway spending millions to advertise, can't they find Mizo models to do the same, and not further perpetuate this alienating attitude? It would, to my reasonably long experience, make good marketing sense. There has been strife and bitterness in the past between Mizos and non-Mizos, but the present generation have left those memories behind and are making sincere efforts to integrate with the mainstream Indian identity. The media too have made no real contribution to furthering such ties. Other than creating special shows, pages and such which mostly examine political happenings with immense erudition and nothing else, mainline newspapers, periodicals and TV channels have miserably failed in their purpose of also being a unifying factor in our lives.

Ravi's death in Mizoram has opened doors and windows for me. I shall be eternally grateful to him for doing this, not by dying, but by having chosen to make that place his home eventually. And giving me pleasant and worthwhile insight and understanding. The more I look at these, the more I appreciate that we are not separate communities, or races of people with fixed identities, creeds and morals.

We are, finally, human beings, and that is all we shall be able to take with us when we too die.

A 'Wonder-ful' Jazz Chord!

2008-07-19T22:21:00.005+05:30

Stevie Wonder is playing his first gig in Hong Kong and the place is absolutely packed to the rafters. In a bid to break the ice with his new audience he asks if anyone would like him to play a request.
A little old Chinese man jumps out of his seat in the first row and shouts at the top of his voice 'Play a Jazz chord! Play a jazz chord!'. Amazed that this guy knows about the jazz influences in Stevie's varied career, the blind impresario starts to play an E minor scale and then goes into a difficult jazz melody for about 10 minutes. When he finishes the whole place goes wild.
The little old man jumps up again and shouts 'No, no, play a Jazz chord, play a Jazz chord!' A bit annoyed by this, Stevie, being the professional that he is, dives straight into a jazz improvisation with his band around the B flat minor chord and really tears the place apart. The crowd goes wild with this impromptu show of his technical expertise.
The little old man jumps up again. 'No, no! Play a Jazz chord, play a jazz chord!'.
Well and truly annoyed that this little guy doesn't seem to appreciate his playing ability, Stevie says to him from the stage 'OK, smart ass. You get up here and do it!'
The little old man climbs up onto the stage, takes hold of the mike and starts to sing... 'A jazz chord, to say, I love you, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart..'

______________

Thanks to Tubby for the forward!

The Anglo In Me

2008-07-15T11:24:00.000+05:30

As far as everybody else was concerned I was an Anglo-Indian. A “tesuwa” - a derogatory term for Anglos which has origins in older Hindusthani and Bengali.
My non-Christian friends and acquaintances were hard pressed to believe that a name like “Patrick” coupled with the distinctly Bengali surname “Ghose”, who had a father named Sydney Ghose and a sister, Sharon Ghose, were in truth, not Anglos. In fact, even today, there are many ignorants who believe that an Indian with a Christian sounding name who professes Christianity must, by default, be an Anglo-Indian.
Those who believed and accepted this so-called anomaly in nomenclature became my close friends, while the rest stayed and strayed on the fringes of my attention span. So I grew up in a khichuri – a kedgeree – of cultures; a background as diverse as it was holistic. In later life, I can sincerely claim that I am a 'pure' Indian, as opposed to being a Bengali, a Punjabi, a Marwari, a Gujarati, and so on, ad infinitum.
Since I was mostly unidentifiable by way of culture, and my mother tongue Bangla was as easy on my tongue as was English and Hindi, I soon realised I had attained a freedom that others perhaps strived for, stuck as they were in the box of community and cultural identity. This of course chagrined my mother no end as she attempted to thwart such insidious thoughts by teaching us advanced Bangla, and insisted on my being tutored in Hindustani classical music and Rabindrasangeet vocals while I also actively participated in the church choir, even as my sister was sent for Bharatnatyam dance classes and learned Bach and Chopin too on the hired piano.
The building, and area we lived in contributed greatly to the sense of cosmopolitanism. Our apartment building, 'Palace Court', was owned by a Muslim. In this imposing old complex of sixty spacious two-bedroomed flats, lived families originating from the entire spectrum of ethnicity from all the states in India, as well as members of the Armenian, Chinese, Jewish, and Parsi communities, not least of all being the Anglo-Indians. I also remember one or two of the flats were usually occupied by foreigners working in some concern or the other based in Calcutta.
It was Calcutta then. Not Kolkata. An insensitive re-naming the city does not deserve. Calling it Kolkata does no justice to the others who have also made this city what it is, what it was, and what it will be. Kolkata is only what the Bangla language names it. Just as Hindi speakers call it “Cull-cuth-ta”. An occasional south Indian lapse would say “Cullkoota”. Everyone else called it Calcutta. Besides, there was never a Kolkata in history.
Early years of a Protestant Christian upbringing within a home that was always proud of its Bengaliness, yet broadly accepting of all cultures, communities and creeds, gave me a sense of what being really Indian could be. Our home life was liberal, but well disciplined. It straddled with ease our dual ethnicity, core moral values, and a tacit acknowledgement of rebelliousness that went back a few generations on both my mother and father's side. Quality education, often mistakenly referred to as 'extra-curricular' by others, was given equal importance: music, the fine arts, a quest for knowledge and better understanding, a love for the mysterious and unknown in both the natural and supernatural realms of life, the need to serve the community without gain or profit, the joy of a deep-rooted, unconditional love, all these made me and my sister what we are today. I have every expectation that my daughter too will show similar signs of upbringing.
That was written with no intention of contesting or being in conflict with the ways my friends, and others I have made the acquaintance of since, were raised. Even when I see the differences and don't care for it. Because my upbringing was also about tolerance. Perhaps I sound smug and conceited, but again, that is not true. I was also taught to love the life that one had, regardless of spiritual promises, in all its fullness. Depression, doubt, anxiety, sorrow, were but temporary phases that needed to be gone through to experience what the better stuff was really all about. The only sure thing was death. Everything else was what you made of it.
And this last point is where the Anglo in me comes to the fore. I have always thought this community of people exemplary in the way they lived for today, for the moment. As if genetically imbued with the clarity that comes from certain extinction. They were already a dying race of people, a sub-race if one wants to quibble, even as they were born into the history and culture of the Indian subcontinent, to which they contributed in no mean way. They wanted to achieve immediately, tomorrow was too late. I learned too from those who could be considered exceptions to this rule.
They were, even in those days for me, a community programmed to self-destruct. Those who stayed on in India from choice were already achievers of the highest order and therefore found no good reason to immigrate. Today, having merged into mainstream Indian life and ways, they are hardly distinguishable from anyone else but for their Christian names and their achievements, and their proud but largely ignored proclamation of being Anglo-Indian. Self-destruction as a community unit.
Those who emigrated for whatever reason have absorbed and inculcated the desired ways and life of the country they chose to make a new life in. Once again, self-destruction for the Anglo-Indian identity. They are also the ones who perpetuate nostalgia but ignore ground reality.
And the ground reality are those left behind with no choices, or few and far between. Abandoned without pride in identity, marginalised from mainstream India, with nothing left to look forward to but irregular charity from Church and overseas philanthropy, these Anglo-Indians are going to destruct anyway.
But that was not what fascinated me. That was more like a back-of-the-mind awareness. What really fascinated me was their love for the good life. The good life was not what might today be associated solely with the accumulation of wealth for its sake. The good life was the love of good food, music, good clothes, good times, whatever was affordable within their means. And the means was not always in concurrence with the reality of their bank account! This again sounds very superficial and you may say does not do justice to the Anglo-Indian, but to me they seemed to be having a better time with less than many I knew who wailed about not having a good time because they did not have more.
I remember Horace, a purveyor of fairly good, illegal narcotics, who told me one day, in a drawling voice made husky by cannabis, 'They keep giving birth to Christ and killing him off every year so that they have an excuse to feed me and my kids for free with rice and dawl, men! So why should I change my name to Harish?' This was said in response to a stoned enquiry from a non-Anglo who was impressed by Horace's fluently spoken Hindi and Bangla and had asked him why he didn't change his name. And Horace answered me knowing my first name, thereby enveloping me in a mutual and common identity. In any case, non-Anglos in the area and many of his clientèle, would refer to Horace as Harish. Identity was useful and useless, depending on where you sat. A dualism even had advantages if you played it right. But being marginalised was not what the Anglo-Indian wanted.
In church was where they came into their element. It boosted their sense of identity which was intrinsically woven into the religion. The church, charity work, teaching and nursing as vocations and not as mere sources of income, the performance of music, community work, tithing, all these things made them memorable not as fulfilling of duty, but as doing it for the love of it. That though was for the advantaged. The disadvantaged benefited from this, and often took undue advantage. And that is how it is everywhere.
It was while participating in church activities, and often in school, when I realised what it felt like to be marginalised. It was a dim awareness, but a significant one nevertheless. I would understand its implications much later in life. In church, when political undertones and overtones, especially during diocesan elections or committee discussions to organise group activities happened, I witnessed how the majority of the non-Anglo congregation would intentionally start creating ethnic groups – AIs vs non-AIs - to gain power and influence opinion. Despite all things being equal in the eyes of God, very few of the Anglos had the wealth, social position, or a wider political influence to make a difference in the way things happened or were done, even if they had a solid argument for it. It was not that the Anglos were above and beyond politicking with equal fervour and passion, it was just that their numbers did not give them the edge.
In school too, a similar scenario was enacted in multiplicity all over the playing field, the classrooms, and I now know, the staff rooms and quarters. We began to have less and less AI students and teachers. Their voices and presence were diminishing and none of us actually noticed too much.
In all these situations, I was pretty close to my Anglo-Indian friends and so I got a picture of the other side. Many of their parents and relatives were deeply affected by the trauma and agony of their marginalisation. The talk of immigration to Australia, the UK, Canada was avidly intensifying, and did lead to large-scale exodus in the 60s and 70s. To an outsider all this may seem so petty or insignificant, but church was a small community within the larger population spectrum, and it was important for every member to keep it that way. It was a sense of common identity, a shared conviction. Among some Anglos, the threat of 'Bong' (read Hindu) domination was a form of extreme paranoia. Many were convinced that the Bengali members, the majority of whom had no Christian names, were really Hindus, wolves in sheep clothing, who wanted to “take over”.
Down the years, I see that their paranoia seems to be partially justified, except for the fact that religion played no important role in it, other than to be paid lip service. Many of those Bengalis and non-Bengalis but not Anglo-Indians, gave scant regard to either Christian or Hindu tenets and core philosophy, and simply became political animals who wanted power and the potential accumulation of wealth through loopholes in the system and outright corruption. Not very different from our countrymen who were not Christian churchgoers, yet who also claimed an indemnity within their own religious beliefs and sects.
Yet there were still fairly large numbers who remained. These Anglos have slowly become what their forebears would not have wanted: integrated into the mainstream. It seems to be a natural sort of justice brought to the rough British experiment with genetics in the 17th and 18th centuries. The same can be said to be true of children of Anglo-Indians who emigrated and were born in the adopted country of their parents. This subsequent generations, without much knowledge or feeling for India other than a second-hand nostalgia of their parents and grandparents, have also become integrated members of the communities and citizenry of their country of birth.
It is also important to note that today many Indians (here I am distinguishing them from Anglo-Indians for the purpose of this commentary), do not any longer prioritise ethnicity, community, caste, or creed in our daily lives. Other class distinctions have arisen, mainly brought about by the consumer culture of globalisation but that is not of importance in this context. An essential “Indian” identity has begun to come about. My argument is that this “Indian” identity is the natural successor of the cosmopolitanism of early independent India which was prevalent in cities like Calcutta (not Kolkata).
Perhaps the evolving of my “Indianness” took a different route and employed a different method. I do know that apart from the upbringing my parents gave me, the Anglo-Indian community was intrinsically responsible for such an acute understanding of my identity. And from the Anglos who remained behind, I have learned to seek and find satisfaction in my life in India, never looking for it on foreign shores, as others who were not of Anglo-Indian heritage from earlier generations did, as did my peer group and subsequently thereafter, but who were never really marginalised like the Anglos were.
Perhaps the Anglo in me is the Indian in me. Perhaps there is no difference.

Of murder, music, football and...

2008-07-15T10:14:00.008+05:30

(This entire piece was written about a month ago. Because of the lackadaisical attitude and the utter incompetence of our very own global, multinational, corporate behemoth - the Tatas, access to their internet service was disrupted for more than 15 days. So it is being blogged now.)

The news is full of murder. People murdering others by violent means. Lovers killing lovers, parents killing offspring, partners killing business associates, rivals killing competitors. Over the last few months, newspapers and television channels have revelled in the gory details. The newspaper which claims to be the largest circulated one in the whole wide world took 'balanced view' to its extreme. A few days ago they were quite clear that it was the dentist father who killed his adolescent daughter and the manservant. Not even 3 days after that, they quite unashamedly absolved that very same father of the accusations they had piled on him by revealing his cellphone records which they now said proved his innocence! Cellphone service providers too it seems, are not above rising to the occasion to grab some of the newsworthiness such crime stories have.
Why do we have this fascination about crime as if it were some sport? TV, print, street gossip are all rife with rumour, suggestions, allegations, and of course, the solutions - all depending on how you look at it. It's all a matter of perspective.
The only thing more murderous than the weapon or motive is the indifference. Take the husband/father in another recent case who chose to remain incommunicado with his wife and daughter for several years as they were mentally ill, yet lived in the same apartment with them. The two women were served food by the cook in the room they stayed confined to. If it hadn't been for the employees of a shop below who complained about the smell, the husband would not have noticed that his wife had died, attributing the decaying smell to uneaten food rotting in the room which apparently was usual, according to the statement he gave the police. Indifference was the weapon here.
As you can see, I too have fallen into the attitude I criticise as I passed judgement back there. Our urban, urbane, uber-sophisticated indifference, couched in cynicism, the ability to differentiate in logical, rational terms will be (has been?) the undoing of a generation that grew up in the 60s and came of age in the 70s.
*******

The History Channel showed an hour-long documentary on Jimi Hendrix and his last album: the seminal, the wonderful, Electric Ladyland. (THC showed an acetate copy label of the pre-release record reading 'Electric Landlady'! Jimi was really pissed.)

I heard Jimi first when I was a pimply-faced, just-turned teenager. Are You Experienced changed my taste for music forever and my continuing fascination for Hendrix and intense love of his music has persisted to this day. I knew instinctively back then (as did millions of others), that Jimi was way beyond the rock music that we were listening to. So it surprised me to hear in this documentary, that he was actually unnerved about asking Steve Winwood to play on Electric Ladyland, quite sure Steve would not want to do so. And Winwood of course, who did play on the album, had only unstinting praise for My Man.
In my post-adolescent years when my love for jazz began to overpower my interest in rock music, I was pleasantly surprised to find Hendrix mentioned in detail, and in glowing terms in thick learned volumes on the history of jazz. He spanned all the genres it would seem, even after he was dead. Miles Davis had even made a public statement that he would have loved to do an album with Jimi. Apparently, there are bootleg recordings of the two jamming in some late-night jazz joint, something Hendrix was wont to do with many musicians from the jazz, blues and rock worlds.
The new genre of World Music has lost a major influence on their style with the untimely death of this genius. Or perhaps not. Eddie Kramer, his long-time recording engineer said in the documentary that Jimi's music would last, at least, for the next 100 to 200 years. Winwood rated his music as classical, meaning everlasting, and if anyone, he's more than qualified to make such a statement.
I often use Jimi's music as a wellness pill, a panacea, a restorative, a mood-upper or mellower, and I have friends who do the same. For me, listening to Hendrix nowadays is a private thing. I don't normally play his music in general company, other than by request. Not everyone I know who loves music likes Hendrix with the same intensity that I do. On rare occasions, when one or two like-minded friends get together, we have a long session of Musique Hendrix, preferring it continuously over other favourites of ours. More than any other dead musician I love and respect, the void that Jimi Hendrix left behind is one that I too regret deeply.
It is not just the music that could have happened that I miss. It is how he would have further influenced lifestyles, thinking and opinion. He is certainly an unpublished author, and had he been alive there would have been a book or two by him; he would have made films (he did the music for Rainbow Bridge), and he would have pre-empted current digital music capabilities easily, and far more convincingly. His experimentations with the available technology of those days itself was pathbreaking. In fact, his tinkering has led to much of the new technology used for performing and recording music these days.
James Marshall Hendrix, Jr. May he live on. And on!
*******
Football. Quite a game. 90 minutes of hard kicks, fancy footwork, streaming sweat, tears of rage, grief and joy, and quite often, a bit of blood. I'm watching UEFA 2008 on TV and I'm Lovin' It, as one of the sponsors of the championship puts it. Never having been a major cricket fan, and usually, not a fan at all, I am ignoring some cricket championship happening right now somewhere in which India seems to be doing extremely well. I know, because the same channel telecasting the football is also doing it for the cricket.
In fact, I'm glad India does not ever qualify to compete in international football tournaments. We don't have the mental attitude to be fast and furious. We are a people given to intellectuality. We need to strategise, plot and plan in painstaking detail, use our famed mental abilities to win. Football, while requiring a fair amount of strategising and a politicking bent of mind, also requires the capability to instantly revert to sheer brute force when the situation demands it. And that is very often on a playing field.
We Indians can't really do that. Our psyche is born and bred of deep thoughts and theories. Brute force will use up too much energy required by the brain. So we can't attain any sort of international standards in the game of football. On the other hand, while doing quite well in field hockey in several encounters, we must remember everyone on the field is armed with a long, hard stick, and can hit back. The Geneva Convention somehow applies to this sport, so brute force is well contained here with diplomacy holding sway. Anyway, that's my theory.
*******
And what else? I need to write on four items here. No, not by demand of some editor breathing down my neck, but just a little clause I have inserted into my agreement with myself as a writer. There are some who can write every day on almost any subject, regardless of how mundane, implausible, convoluted, or simply unreadable and boring their writings are. They are the little children constantly jumping around in the classroom putting their hands up for every question, usually the hyperactive ones suffering from attention deficit disorder. The ones desperately seeking attention. Their understanding is that if the mountain is there, it should be climbed.
However, reaching such heights is quite another thing. Because if a blog exists, does it have to be written? Must heights always be scaled? Should we always be seen to be doing?
I write because something moves me and urges pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. I may also write trash and bore, but I at least spare you a daily diatribe.

Pop Psycho

2008-05-01T10:46:00.001+05:30

He wrestled with Wisdom. As they come, Wisdom had the proportions of an overweight Sumo wrestler, overwhelming with his presence. Wisdom moved ponderously, as if scrutinising exactly why each and every molecule in his being functioned. It could be boring to watch Wisdom move, and as he wrestled he felt a sleepiness overcome him.
He shook his head vigorously to stay awake. He was Experience after all was said and done, a distinguished product from the Hands-On Learning Institute. Wisdom pondered Experience's head shake. This movement told him many things.
One, that perhaps his hold on Experience had jarred some nerves, which suitably agitated caused a shaking of his head. Two, that Experience was falling asleep watching him move and had shaken his head to stay awake. Three, Experience was trying some sort of deflective manoeuvre to distract him, Wisdom, from the intensity of his grip. This thought resulted in Wisdom doing a bit of head shaking himself.
Four. Wisdom couldn't actually think of a fourth reason, but he knew it would come. It always did. Patience was Wisdom's mother after all. Besides, he ate Experience and his ilk for breakfast and supper, preferring a healthy snack of published words for a midday repast. Wisdom always gained from experience. It didn't help much with his weight problem, but then that too was alright.
Experience, armed with his qualifications from the HOLI, and with the agility and energy of youth on his side, began a series of intricate moves which would allow him to escape Wisdom's hold. He was part summer lightning, part monsoon thunder, part desert wind. Sudden, ferocious, fast.
Wisdom released his hold. He would get Experience in the end, and he knew that. It was the Way of Things. Experience would be made to share, to not keep for himself alone what he had learnt.
Experience, flush with a Pyrrhic victory, steps back to review the situation. Wisdom stands immobile, dark,beady eyes watching the younger opponent, bent from the waist, palms resting on thighs. Experience squats on his haunches a distance away, taking deep breaths. He realises Wisdom is an ocean of many experiences, much knowledge and the constant, random processing of it all. He himself is a mere pond of specific experience and particular learning, with instinct as the big fish swimming in it.
Yet he knows his victory will be short-lived if he does not work out a new strategy. Experience wants to be the major say in matters. He wants that hands-on learning be of better advantage than accumulated wisdom. How he will manage such a win is still to be seen. Experience stands up again, stands tall. He knows his renewability is a tremendous force he controls. By comparison, Wisdom is ancient, creaky in his bones, and pain possibly lasts longer for him.
Experience, in full swing again, rushes in. It's a sudden tactic, executed for surprise. Wisdom has seen it coming, and takes a small step aside. Experience rushes headlong into a nothingness which, a moment ago, was something, specifically a solid portion of Wisdom which could be harmed. As he flounders past, Wisdom in his inimitably imponderable style, grabs Experience by the scruff of his collar and hauls back, arresting his flight into the void.
In his ears, warm breath scented by clove and mint, Wisdom whispers: “Life sucks and then you die, till then, enjoy!”
In the blink of an eye, Experience is transmogrified within Wisdom's digestive system. Experience adds to Wisdom's bulk before he even realises it. Experience becomes an iota of Wisdom and of course, learns his final lesson. Wisdom also knows there will be more like Experience coming his way, pretenders to the crown. He will wait as he has always done. A wise hunter is never greedy and waits for his prey to come to him.

Everything Falls Into Place

2008-03-15T01:42:00.008+05:30

It's not often that I get the opportunity to work on a project which flows gracefully and easily like a piece of good music. Literally.

And its never happened that I was part of a project that had music, specifically jazz, as the hinge, perhaps the pivot the entire project was created on.

Christopher Dell, a jazz and contemporary music vibraphone player from Berlin, visited Calcutta in December at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan. A visiting faculty of architecture theory at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, Christopher was fascinated by how public spaces were being utilised in this much-loved, much-abused city of mine, with particular reference to the hawkers and street vendors. The so-called informal sector.

For a first-time visitor, Calcutta/Kolkata's crowds, traffic, noise, dust, and the apparent chaos can be frighteningly overwhelming. A lot of this can be resisted sufficiently if you're just passing through, or are here on work which necessarily insulates you from 'real-time' Calcutta/Kolkata. What you get is a temporal sensation which slips one's mind the moment you're out of the city, and if it does register for longer, it soon seems like television blur, white noise.

But from within this first layer of sensory cityscape, Christopher expresses a desire to perform music in some of the public spaces of C/K he has visited during his short stay in December. He will be back in February for a month as an artist-in-residence. We both concur to take this project forward as what is already beginning to emerge as a pretty wacky exercise in documentation, also having a basis in some research and interviews.

Christopher arrives in the last days of January and we walk around the city with Ranu Ghosh, who will handle the cinematography. We mutually agree upon ten different locations where Christopher will perform with a borrowed vibraphone on a rickety, home-made stand. The instrument has been graciously loaned by Anto Menezes, one of Calcutta's (and here it's definitely Calcutta, not Kolkata) early generation of wonderful jazz musicians, people who made the city swing then. Today age and infirmity no longer permit him to perform, and the vibraphone, gifted to him even more years ago by Victor Feldman, is a tacit reminder of those “good old days”.

Which then brings me to the next layer, the tacit one, of this strange project. The presence of hawkers occupying valuable space on the city's pavements is a tacit one. Officially, they are illegal by C/K's municipal laws. Yet, a National Policy from 2004 states that such street commerce must be included in state and city governance and urban planning. A tacit acceptance of the 'informal' sector. At the same time, a deeper understanding of political approbation and unmentioned corruption becomes a tacit issue. The often surprising opinions, facts and figures we gain from the interviews we conduct with hawkers and office bearers of their joint action forum, the police, the municipal authorities, an architect and a city-centric NGO, as well as what we glean from the press and other learned published writings is an enlightening process for me, even though I am born and raised here in Calcutta/Kolkata.

Even when Christopher performs in the public street locations; even when we intervene with two cameras, two boom microphones, a crew of ten occupying public space temporarily with our ideas and physical presence; even then people tacitly accept us – with numerous questions no doubt – but certainly no hostility and definite enjoyment.

What is the purpose of this? A question that repeats itself constantly during our 3-day shoot like a refrain in a song which has forgotten to go back to the 'one'. A favourite reply of mine asked a question in response: Did you like it? Every answer I got was a 'yes'. In which case, I would then say, our purpose has been served. Perhaps I sounded a tad smug, but as Christopher pointed out, the very fact that questions were being asked is enough to say that the interventions worked.

Yes, questions did come hard and fast from the temporary audiences, as did the questions that confronted us. And the answers were not always forthcoming; and if they were, not always easy or comfortable. The hawkers of the streets are not a problem that has some cut and dried solution. They need enablement. Urban public space is not something to be paved and barricaded for the exclusive use of some. It is as much organic as it is made of cement and mortar.

Shopping malls of international and ultimate design, housing expensive global brands sold to a minority, occupy a monstrous amount of square feet which is woefully underutilised. Secondly, the potential of such icons of globalisation as employers and income generators is pitifully low compared to their capacity to generate waste and dispose plastic, and also as compared to the same happening in a larger area dominated by street hawkers and vendors. These hawkers are an essential link in a chain that provides licit opportunity and income to a wide hinterland of semi-urban and rural workers and cottage industries.

This same chain then extends the other way to serve a huge clientèle who not only cannot afford the goods on display at the malls, but do not even want to consider the wares on offer at such places.

Christopher's interventions are not meant to identify black and white zones. There are none. Nor is his music announced with a label that defines it, puts it in a box. He intervenes temporarily (we all do) like the hawkers he performs amongst. His free jazz improvisations on that resonating instrument use the environment and ambience as a catalyst. He responds and reacts to the physical attributes of each place, to the noise, the smells, the colours, the flavours which assault every sensory nerve. These then superimpose a layer on to the music, as if underlining the primary layer of the city itself, as it shifts and changes every second like the living organism it really is.

The audience crowding about him on all sides, reluctantly making way for our cameras and microphones, have never seen such an instrument nor heard this sort of music before. A sahib, a white-skinned foreigner dances with his four mallets to a rhythm all his own derived from the energy he feels around him. And the people respond and react and stare and wonder with easy acceptance. Which then moves it from the tacit to the fully acknowledged, and appreciated. This shift brings the layers closer, perhaps moving one above the other, blurring differences, changing priorities, raising questions.

I keep wondering how such a project would have worked in any other Indian city, and whether it would have worked at all as it has in Calcutta/Kolkata. Christopher is certain it would not make the slightest dent in transitory life in Germany and most of Europe's streets.

And here's another realisation for me. Jazz is of instant appeal to every one. Actually music is.

The persons on the streets, not weighed down by definitions of genre and style, listen with pleasure. They instantly allow these musical interventions into the collective realm of their immediate sensory perceptions. The 3 to 5 minute performances touch a chord in them, peeling back some layers they normally blanket themselves with to deal with day to day life. For a brief moment musician, audience and environment become a seamless whole. I can sense, we all can, that the project has acquired dimensions in its making which we had not contemplated during our pre-shoot scouting and discussions.

Christopher must have also heard horror tales of India and more especially Kolkata's reputed inefficiency and lethargy, before arriving. In the beginning, he was never completely confident that his and our shared ideas were ever going to get off the ground. His precise German psyche was affronted daily by situations and conditions that caused tremendous uncertainty and heartburn, the epitome of which was the year's first bandh or general shut-down suddenly announced the evening before our last shooting day. Nevertheless, things didn't turn out as expected, and surprised us all with everything falling into place, even if a day late.

Christopher Dell's vibraphone interventions were accompanied by simultaneous interventions of two cameras and microphones. He reasoned that I too, in my capacity as the project coordinator, intervened by 'appropriating' public space temporarily. The audiences who surrounded him as he played free jazz improvisations were acutely aware of us and our recording equipment, probably following our doings with as much interest as they did Christopher.

Their acceptance of our intrusions into 'their' space, and conversely, their temporary interventions into the documentation of our ideas, created a channel of constantly flowing energy that worked for us all. I had become, we had all become, an integral part of that transitory public space as we simultaneously became onlooker and performer.

Even in a private-public space like the pavement outside the City Centre shopping mall where the lack of energy was perceptibly evident and people kept a wide margin between themselves and us, we felt ourselves turn into observers as the audience, consciously unaware, performed for our cameras. Like the young man who came in front of the camera and slicked back his coiffure with a few rapid runs of his fingers through his hair before peering over a shoulder to watch the show. Or the three young women who showed only passing interest in our goings-on but keenly looked at another young man standing there. And some who looked up to the skies to watch a passing jet plane and follow its flight path with all the enthusiasm of small children.

Finally the question that crept up on us was not why we were doing this, but what were we achieving? Does art have to achieve? Must a process of documentation, no matter how irregular, have to achieve anything? Should everything have a purpose? A means to an end? Isn't just creating awareness, or the mere dissemination of knowledge, achievement enough? Must an understanding also be conveyed?

While we achieved our basic purpose of documenting the interventions in public spaces, we perhaps also managed to transform the space we were temporarily occupying into a microcosm of the total public space we all occupied. This resulted in people questioning our intentions, and often our sanity in a jocular way. These questions must have led them to in turn question their own presence in those spaces.

All of a sudden each intervened space, for a brief moment, became a motile carving in bas-relief on the rock of humanity that surged through and temporarily occupied that public space. The music, the jazz on vibraphone, sucked up the energy built up, responding to the shifting environment and becoming the sculptor of that carving. In fact, the entire making of this film was approached like a piece of jazz music: we improvised constantly, yet always remembering that there was a definite structure we had to adhere to.

From what was initially conceived as a mere documentation on film which would accompany more substantial text, we ended up with a documentary film that complements the book, Tacit Urbanism (yet to be published). The 36-minute film, Kolkata Monodosis: Temporary Interventions in Public Spaces is a collaborative effort that tries to look at the issue of urban public space in a light-hearted manner, without ignoring the serious nature of the issue. The book, broadly speaking, examines the use of urban public space, the culture it spawns, and the underlying questions of economics, politics, globalisation, capitalism, society and law. The two together hope to raise questions in the reader/viewer's mind by offering an alternative perspective to what has already been tacitly acknowledged and openly portrayed, and yet may still not be entirely acceptable, or palatable.

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For video clips of the film, visit the Goethe-Institut webpage.

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For more pictures on the filming of Kolkata Monodosis, go here.

Another Aizawl Diary: Sunday - Tuesday: Part 2

2007-10-24T14:33:00.002+05:30

SUNDAY
Seilen Haokip is the spokesperson for the Kuki National Organisation. The Kuki are a minority tribe in this region dominated by the Meitei, Mizo and Naga tribes. All three tribes geographically exist in the region of present day Manipur, northern Myanmar, north eastern Bangladesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. The Kuki occupy most of the mountainous lands of Manipur, which is almost 90% of the state, and the balance in the plains is taken up by the Meitei, the political masters of the state.

Historically, the Kuki have been maligned, betrayed, and generally sinned against. It began from British times and continued by India. It is only of late that the central government has negotiated an understanding with the KNO, and this should soon reach public awareness. Seilen, an articulate academician, is a Kuki himself, and I can see the fervour in his eyes. He is troubled by many things he has learned and has to deal with. Yet, he speaks for many of us when he says they want a comprehensive understanding of their situation and that peace and amity can only be achieved within the framework of the Constitution of India. Their stated objective is statehood and not secessionism. They want to be given the right to administer themselves. We already have examples of similar political demands in Jharkhand and Uttaranchal, though the latter is more administrative rather than political.

There are plenty of separatist, militant organisations in this region with the UNLF, a Meitei group, and the NSCIM, a Naga group, most radical in their demands. The Kuki also have their own, but these groups demands are from the government of Myanmar. The KNO are not considering any others than those Kuki who are already legally resident in India, mostly in Manipur.

I learned a little bit more about India once more. There's so much of these areas that we are blissfully uninformed about. I recall a call from a friend in Calcutta on my first day here who expressed genuine surprise that I had chosen this particular destination for my vacation. His parting words to me were to be careful I didn't get caught in a presumed crossfire between militants and security forces. Many in mainland India believe the north eastern lands to be constantly in a state of strife with no peace or security at all. My only question to them is how do they think most of the citizens of these areas survive quite happily and successfully day to day? We have serious strife and turmoil in the mainland as well, never forget. And these issues are about identity too. Identity relating to community, belief systems, and the constantly burning issue of the rich-poor divide.

What's different here? Probably the media and vested interests making more of the separatist and secessionist demands of the extremists than is actually warranted. And not adequately acknowledging peaceful and reasonable movements like the KNO who want to work within the Indian polity. This is more significant and important, despite the aura and fascination that extreme activism holds for some sections of the youth.

Seilen must return to the family. It's his son's fourth month today and understandably wants to be home with them after our long chat. I put him in touch on the phone with my dear friend and senior journalist, Paranjoy. They plan to meet in Delhi next week to see what can be done for the right and proper media coverage.
*******

Jane and Zo have a castle in the skies. Literally. I can see their house from the balcony of my hotel room. It perches at the edge of a hill just below the Aizawl Theological College at Durtlang. (Dur means cloudy and Tlang means hill in Mizo, by the way). Its location offers a wide-angle view of Aizawl city sprawled across seven hills. Absolutely amazing, and when viewed at night as I did, very charming too.

A long staircase goes straight down to the roof of their house from the private carport. Zo calls it his “Stairway to Heaven”, an obvious reference to the Led Zeppelin anthem of our musical yesteryears. It's the first time I'm entering a house top down. Well, second time, when you count last year's visit.

They are a well-informed, urbane, and delightful couple with two very well brought up sons. It was a pleasure meeting them the first time, and it is equally a pleasure this time. Over whisky and dalmoth bought at a BSF canteen, we exchanged notes and talked of this, that, and the other. Jane's home cooked Mizo meal was worth all the many helpings I took. Bai – a most wondrous dish that is like a soup flavoured with pork pickle, the Mizo chilli, and cubed portions of the stem of a cousin of the banana tree! There was also a tasty beef curry, dal made with local saag, a fish curry, boiled and salted river snails, boiled squash, and a green salad which featured the roots of the onion plant, and of course sticky, reddish Mizo rice. Too much!

Jane joked that maybe Ravi needed to get married to a Mizo girl so that I could have more such meals. Ravi called the suggestion, “Food for thought”. I think he sounded serious.

MONDAY
I start receiving Bijoya greetings through SMS from Calcutta early in the morning. The Pujas have passed me by and I didn't even miss it!

Ravi comes over to the hotel and we spend a lazy morning chatting, listening to music and demolishing a healthy portion of a bottle of whisky. The hotel kitchen today has also cooked Bai and we ask for it. This is different from what we had last night. It is more like a thick soup made with the leaves of the kochu plant. It has a smoky flavour and is absolutely delicious with the Mizo rice. Later we walk down to the bazar and I buy a kilo of Mizo rice to take back with me. I have this fascination of buying the local rice from wherever I visit and it is the best souvenir I can think of. Also bought latkhora – the flavoursome juice of a lemon that is widely available here. It goes well with vodka!

TUESDAY
The last day here but I don't feel sad. I know I'll return. It's not goodbye, but see you soon. The Bengali has a nice way of saying it when they part company, “Ashi - I'll be back”. A sense of continuity is important for the human spirit. The last two days here in Aizawl have had picture perfect weather. The air sparkles with the sunshine of incoming winter through the moisture of the rain that still seems to be hanging around. It is bracing and invigorating. We down a quick one for the road and set out downhill to Lengpui.

At a small village bazar near the airport I decide to buy some local produce. The papayas look healthy. There are fresh bamboo shoots and ginger on the stalk. There's ginger flowers, the latkhora and its juice in reused bottles, herbs of various kinds, the dried and sliced peel of the latkhora which can be used for flavouring dal and curries, even tiny river crabs in small palm-leaf containers.

Airports anywhere are the same in their boring drudgery of security rituals. We've got more than a hour before the flight arrives from Imphal. Coffee, cigarettes outside in the car park, and hi-hello to people who Ravi knows helps pass the time. And then, in a short while I'm airborne and winging my way back to Calcutta. We fly way up high over Bangladesh, knowing that from the height we are at. Can't make out much, what looks like a wide winding river which at one point forms an oxbow lake. Airline food is always bad.
******
Calcutta is in the process of dismantlement. As I drive back from the airport, Puja pandals everywhere are being stripped down to their bamboo frameworks. This seems to be the eternal state that the city is in. A process of disrepair, a breaking down, and then quick-fix repairs to last a season at the most.

Yes, there is great art in the Pujas, but why is it so temporal? Is this a reflection of the Bengali psyche? Where we can only create beauty for a moment because we know it cannot last? Or is it that we do not attempt to create something that will stand the test of time? Are we shallow beings eventually? All the Bengalis, and the only ones who have left lasting impressions are pictures in a history book, just names of roads and institutions.

The solidity of the mountains and its peoples is a source of strength and inspiration for me. It renews my faith in the simple goodness that unspoilt nature offers you. This is why I must always go back to the mountains.

And Mizoram will always be a preferred destination.
___________

For more of my pictures of Aizawl, click on the picture below.

Mizoram Oct2007

Another Aizawl Diary: Thursday - Saturday: Part 1

2007-10-24T13:56:00.000+05:30

THURSDAY
I have once again run away from the mass hysteria of Calcutta during the Pujas. And for the second time running, opted to be instead in Mizoram, Aizawl more precisely. Apart from having my good friend Ravi here, I have become quite fond of this place and its people. Plus of course the chance, and the second one this year, to be up in the mountains.Okay, the mountains of Mizoram are not the Himalayas or even close to it, but they are mountains, and it's where I always prefer to be for some quiet time. It's why I'm here. Quiet time. Well, I have brought some work with me, but I already know I'm unlikely to complete it. Maybe I don't intend to?

The monsoon never wants to let go. It wanes, and just when you begin to look forward to the dry, slightly cold spell that we deign to call a winter in Calcutta which will surely follow the monsoon season, the rain returns with a vengeful fury. That's how I took off from Calcutta. In blinding rain. And then we popped through the clouds to stunning sunlight. But we rode over thick, roiling clouds for the good part of an hour all the way to Imphal.

Taking off from Imphal for Lengpui airport of Mizoram was uneventful since it wasn't raining there. But just as we approached Lengpui, the captain announced that we may have to abandon landing there as visibility was bad and the instrumentation down at air traffic control had some technical problems. The aircraft cabin groaned in unison and there was nothing to be done. But land we did. And that was such a good feeling. I really hate flying in planes. I don't have a fear of flying. I just don't care for it.

(But some time in my life I need to experience a ride on a hot-air balloon. And some paragliding.)

Here I must make mention of a couple of notable incidents that occurred prior to my departure to Lengpui in Calcutta airport. The first was at the Indian Airlines, now Air India, counter. I had a discounted ticket and the Economy fare counters were brimming with passengers, most of whom were re-confirming cancelled flights from the day before. A baggage handler came up and asked me my flight details and then took me to the Golden Edge, the frequent flyer counter, which already had a passenger checking in before me. The lady at the counter seeing me wait redirected me to the empty Executive Class desk. I was checked in without any hassle. Not only that, the baggage handler at this counter wrote out my cabin baggage tag with my name and destination in beautiful calligraphic handwriting!

The second incident was at departures security. I had a matchbox and cigarette lighter in my hand baggage and no one removed them. So much for anti-terrorist measures!

Ravi of course greeted me on my landing and took care of my Inner Line Permit formalities. I have no idea why the government carries on with this. The ILP is mandatory for any non-Mizo. You fill in a couple of forms with the usual trivia about yourself, cough up a hundred and a half, and you are permitted to stay there for 15 days, or 7 days, or whatever. No verification of any sort is done by the police personnel stationed at the airport for this purpose. I'm not sure if foreigners or non-Indian passport holders are treated differently.
**********
The Chaltlang Tourist Lodge of the Mizoram government remains in the same state of partial disrepair as I left it the last time last year. I've even been given the same room overlooking the graveyard, with the balcony facing the eastern hills. Ravi and I stand there giving ourselves a Manali buzz and I spot that beautiful house up on the hill opposite my room where I had been a guest for a couple of hours during my last visit.

I enquire with Ravi about my warm hosts from that evening and he immediately calls up Jane who's driving back from work. She tells me Zo, Zothan, her husband is at the Tourist Lodge at that very moment making reservations for an upcoming seminar. Ravi gets hold of him and we sit and have a few drinks from one of the bottles I have brought in from Calcutta in my room. Jane and Zo are both doctors independently in charge of a couple of important units of the Mizoram government's health department. He has to go, and leaves us with an open invite to his house one of these days before I return.

FRIDAY
The next day Ravi and I catch up for lunch after his work. We walk quite a bit and I take in the sights and smells from Chanmari to the Burra Bazar area to Treasury Square and Secretariat, the main government areas, and finally to the 23 Assam Rifles HQ in Khatla. Probably 4 kilometres.The Indian lunch at the Ritz Hotel was more than a disappointment. It was a disaster. Both the dishes looked and tasted the same despite having different names and meats. And the less I talk of the taste, the less of phantom indigestion will I suffer. Anyway...

Around the corner from the hotel we come across a blind lady singing a Mizo song karaoke style. She has a PA setup run on a scooter battery and she does have a nice voice. I feel generous. But we walk a bit and see another blind man with a similar setup. A few paces later there's a third blind karaoke singer. My generosity has its limits.

We briefly go to a couple of offices to meet people Ravi has work with. He knows a lot of folks in this town. We also meet up with Ronnie, my cousin's brother in-law who owns 'Hustler', a gift shop in Burra Bazar, and we plan to down a few together one of these evenings. The Burra Bazar has a different look, feel and smell than its eponymous cousin in Calcutta. Aizawl's BB is crowded but surprisingly clean. Its nice to walk past small shops, many with entire families manning them, rather than vaguely glide past plastic-and-steel 'outlets' in shopping malls. A shopping mall has come up here – Millennium Centre – but it did not seem to be one. It had the look and air of an office building where all the employees were absconding to watch a cricket match on TV at the neighbourhood electronics shop window.

We drop in on Jane in her office. She gives us black tea and biscuits and some pleasant conversation. We then walk on to the Assam Rifles HQ to meet with another pal of Ravi's, Major Aman Puri.
*********
The Army and civilian worlds exist in parallel. And ne'er the twain shall meet. Except when you need booze in this one of three Indian states that have prohibition. Alcohol is one of the staples of Army life, and its perennial availability in military canteens is the meeting point for civilians who have the privilege of accessing that fertile source of intoxicating spirits. Purposeful? Could be.

The Army has its own agenda as to its large, and more than obvious presence here. It is unnerving and not quite everything it is cut out to be. But I shall reserve further comment. Let's just say I wish it wasn't so overbearing.

Aman himself is an astute, articulate young officer destined to go places. Both he and his wife come from a couple of generations of military backgrounds, so he's a natural defence personnel. He's clear that there is antagonism among Mizos for non-Mizos and the military. He deals with it by being high-handed when requests for the military alcohol quota come in. He wins his Pyrrhic victory and everyone's happy.

(An afterword: there is partial prohibition in Manipur, I'm not clear how. It is commonly known that the supply of illicit liquor is run by one of the hardcore groups supporting the state government from the outside to finance their operations. Prohibition in Mizoram and Nagaland is Church driven and influenced. And we all know why they have it in Gujarat, Gandhi's land. Ha, ha.)
*********
At this time of the year, the monsoon season, clouds are a wispy, overwhelming presence. You wake up to bright sunshine and look forward to a clear day, when without notice, the sun is wiped out by thick cumulo-nimbus monsters. You see them approaching up the valley seemingly at snail's pace, and then in a couple of blinks, they are floating mistily around the hotel and my room. A smell precedes them, and then pervades the immediate environment.

It is not an unpleasant odour. It is like smoke coming off the burning embers of some light wood. It is also damp, leaving moisture on my skin. At one point, with enough gathered, a suffocating sensation overcomes me.
For an hour or so, the clouds waft about, and then depart lazily up the mountain sides to congregate on the tops, giving the city a loose turban of dirty white. Rain is an inevitable feature and it brings a chill to the weather. Even when the sun is let free of its prison of vaporous fleece to shine down on us soaked creatures, the chill factor remains. You know now winter will begin to trudge its heavy way into your life in the next couple of weeks.

SATURDAY
Beraw Tlang is up another mountain that lies opposite Aizawl. It is a picturesque place and the right location for a tourist lodge. Ravi and I get there when it is raining but that soon stops. We sit out on the open terrace and I imagine the wonderful potential and possibilities for a place like this.

The approach to tourism here is one of relaxed basics. The goods on offer are simple enough to give pleasant memories but somehow I think more value can be added. Mizoram is a place for nature tourism. Thankfully, it has no religious spots because that brings with it quite a different breed of tourists who are demanding, careless of local sentiments, and uncaring for all but their selfish creature comforts while they make the journey to commune with their gods.

Mizoram's natural beauty is the grace reflected in its peoples. Strange I don't see many birds here. Of the feathered variety, that is. The women of Mizoram though, have an Oriental beauty that is delightful. No matter how overtly Western their way of presentation, strong elements of their own culture and traditions adorn their dress sense, their mannerisms, and their outlook.
********
Tourism is as much about the land as it is of her people. Ravi, perhaps because of the position he is in and also because he is a very amiable guy, knows many interesting people. I have never usually been disappointed with the people he has introduced me to. I've already mentioned Zo and Jane, and will say more about them a little later. Then the last time I visited there was the ex-Chief Minister, the charismatic Mr Lalthanhawla, who unfortunately is away in Delhi for medical reasons, so I miss meeting him this time.

This time I met Makuka, one of 7 brothers and a sister and their respective families who all live together in what they call a “colony”. It's a large, joint family property, a tribal thing, and I absolutely love the concept. The nuclearisation of family life in the cities has its own problems even as you cite the advantages. Such “colony” life is a stronghold against urbanisation in many ways.

Makuka is a musician first and foremost and a man after my own heart. He gave up a fairly prosperous business as a contractor to do his own thing some years ago. Which is music. He has trained himself to be a better drummer through correspondence material for 10 long years and continues to do so waiting for the right moment to do a public performance, even though he was already a reputed drummer in the music scene of the North East. Right now he represents music equipment manufacturers like Yamaha, Behringer and so on, selling, installing and training the buyers in their uses.

His son, Boom, is a guitar player with his own band, Boomarang.
They are now considered one of the top rock bands in this part of the country, and have gone on to win some fame and fortune in mainland India as well. While I'm not too crazy about the sort of music they play, at least they're composing their own stuff, and considering the background he comes from, Boom will eventually turn out to be a big name one day.

We talked of many things: music, politics, religion. The adda of Calcutta's Pujas was taking place in faraway Mizoram as well! We agreed that music competitions on TV shows were sad and of no real musical consequence. If such great singers are being generated every year, where is the scope for these competition winners to progress in their musical careers, find their own niche, and not have to depend entirely on the vagaries of a blatantly commercial recording and distribution industry that is only keen on Number One pop hits?

Makuka was just back from a bereavement in the family in Belgaum down in Karnataka. He was thoroughly moved by the way he was treated there and he was emotional. We discussed what being Indian meant for us. I propounded my own theory of secularism which I say is the implicit acknowledgement of separate communities, and hence the divisions that exist within the fabric of our nation. What secularism for India should actually mean is the existence of peace and understanding among all communities and peoples, regardless of their faith and culture. This can be unique only to India with our rich variety and diversity that becomes interwoven with a tacit Indianness. One of Makuka's brothers, David, is a Congress MLA. It looks like the essence of the true Congress spirit exists in places like Mizoram rather than in mainland India where it has been severely eroded.

Makuka is also very Christian in his lifestyle. No, he is not a Bible thumper. He just lives the life and doesn't need to advertise it. Praise and worship for him is through music and sincerely keeping the faith. He and his family have adopted the child of an ex-prisoner and is educating and caring for his well-being. They have taken in a woman of slight mental retardation who works as a domestic help in his house along with another woman who was a prostitute. They are not servants. They are part of the family, and I am introduced to them accordingly.

...continued Sunday - Tuesday:Part 2

Mizoram Oct2007

Pratchettisms

2007-10-24T12:31:00.000+05:30

They are witticisms, puns, often sage and home-spun wisdom cloaked in humour or satire, but they are all an impressive use of the English language which leaves you gasping for more. They are what I like to call “pratchettisms”.

If you have never heard or read Terry Pratchett – the creator of Discworld – well, all I can suggest is that you go on over to your nearest book store or library and get hold of any one of the 100-odd books written by him, and prepare to be massively entertained. For those who know him, I can imagine you grin as you recollect the recent Pratchett you have read.

A word to the wise for the uninitiated: this is a ripe broth of British humour slow-cooked over a fire of satire that Americans are incapable of perpetrating, and published Indian writers in English sorely lack in attempt. If you have ever enjoyed PG Wodehouse, Spike Milligan, JP Donleavy, Nick Hornby, Joe Orton, the late, great Punch magazine and its many writers and cartoonists, all of whom are a sprinkling in the star field of British writing that uses humour and satire as the medium of expression, so to speak, then you will absolutely love Terry Pratchett.

Another wise word: Pratchett is addictive. You may find yourself out-of-pocket quite soon!

So what follows is my growing collection of Pratchettisms. It is no particular order. It is not necessarily complete, and it is my interpretation. If you wish, you're welcome to add to this list, or create your very own.

Pratchettissimo.
----
From MOVING PICTURES

“You don't keep mines”, said one of the dwarfs. “Mines keep you. You take the treasure out. You don't put it in. That's fundamental to the whole mine business.”
Analogies bubbled to the surface like soggy croutons.
The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out of yourself from the clues. And you never, never get a chance to stay in your seat for a second chance.

(I started this listing while close to the end of Moving Pictures but had a deadline to return the book to the library, so I never did manage to make this a complete list. I will some day!)

From SOUL MUSIC

Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of man. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice. It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and it doesn't take long.
It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit.
The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving the wrong way up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.
...[He] himself had the musical talent of a blocked nostril.
[He] did not have too many brain cells, and they often had to wave to attract one another's attention,...
...I know you to be a man who seeks to understand the universe. Here's an important rule: never give a monkey the key to the banana plantation.
...you had to allow his wandering mind to get into the same vicinity as his tongue.
Something that had been knocking on [her] attention for the past ten minutes finally used it's boots.

And that's just from TWO of his innumerable books!

Cock-a-Doodle-do!

2007-10-06T19:45:00.000+05:30

There's something called a Global Mobile Project which, in their words: "...is a filmmaking challenge. Bring together eight international filmmakers to tell a story in under three minutes on the theme of food. Give them complete freedom to interpret the theme within their own cultural context as broadly or narrowly as they wish."

Well, one of the film makers - Amlan - is someone I know briefly and he's from Calcutta. What is of more interest to me here is that Bertie has done the music and song for the film, "Cock-a-Doodle-do". It's the first time he's done something like this, and he says it was a great learning experience. Check it out here, it's streaming video. I liked it. And if you do register on the site, don't forget to rate the film highly!

The development of content for mobile phones is a growing industry and with India poised as probably the largest consumer of the cellular waves, it's not going to be a surprise that Indians will soon enough probably dominate this scene. Well, one can hope so...! We have too many talented people.

The other films are also quite nice to watch. So check them out.

Dreamtime

2007-10-04T18:17:00.000+05:30

Can I please? Can I please quote: "To sleep, perchance to dream..." Yaaaay! I said it!

I've usually managed to slime out of all the tagging that Pretty Eyes with the Sunny disposition sends my way. Every time I get tagged I feel sort of embarrassed, shy. It's like when I was in school, and at the periodic school socials, I had the advantage of dancing with Nafisa Ali, who also happened to be my sister's classmate. There were these hungry eyes which would follow me all over the dance floor for the mandatory first dance. Then before the song could properly end, those hungry eyes would suddenly sprout arms and legs, and a body with a gruff voice would harshly whisper in my ear, "You're tagged pal!" For some strange reason I would really feel shy that I was dancing with Nafisa, and would quickly, apologetically, disengage. Only to go back to my place beside the dance floor and notice the other hundreds of hungry eyes, some I'm glad to say in retrospect, looking enviously at me.

That was no dream, but it sure feels like one in the re-telling of it.

So now you also know why I've decided to stay tagged by Sunny. But Sunny, I'm not taking this forward okay?

I enjoy dreams. Having them, discussing them, loosely interpreting them... but somehow I can't seem to remember them. When I wake up most days, I'm not even sure I dreamt! Still and all, here's my take on dreams.

I remember dreams in adolescence. I would be walking, or running, and would keep falling into holes and deep pits. When, standard issue - I'd wake up. I read somewhere that this sort of dream is common to most people and signifies insecurity. I don't know what they say about not remembering dreams at all. Sunny, consider your palm crossed with my silver... tongue! (Did that sound right? ;D)

I'm very fascinated by the 'Dreamtime' of the native Australians. "Aboriginal myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who wandered across the country in the Dreamtime . . . singing the world into existence" - Bruce Chatwin.

"Singing the world into existence." How fantastic! That's a dream of mine. No, not singing the world into existence, but being that much more involved in music than I currently am. I dream of being a musician, very skilfully and competently able to play my favourite kind of music on a variety of instruments.

Do I also dream the mundane, common, garden-variety dreams, like Peter O'Toole singing The Man of La Mancha theme song "The Impossible Dream'? Or Martin Luther King's kind of dream? Of course I do! I would describe them to you if I could only remember them...

Like you can see my dreams, or my unknown dreams, seem to centre on music. The Dream of The Blue Turtles by Sting, one of my most favourite musicians, is also one of my most favourite music albums.

And ultimately, all I can say is that I don't know much about dreams, and am not very particular about knowing them either. It's just that we all dream, and we need to keep doing so. Dreams give us hope and aspiration.

And just as a by the way, did you notice music and dreams are somehow connected?

My Generation

2007-09-13T21:33:00.000+05:30

My Generation. The name of the hit song by the British band The Who from sometime in the 60s. Never did like the song that much, but am not averse to using it as the title for this posting of mine.

In my estimation 'My Generation', apart from the fact that it sounds cliched like hell, are the folks born between the mid 50s and the early 60s. Like me. We were not Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children', born a decade before. We were not historical in that sense even if we were born in historical times. But then again, which times are not historical? History is everyone's interpretation, version, of their times. This is mine.

We were raised and parented by a generation born before Independence who were torn between the attractions of the era they were born in and the new, uncertain, yet promising era of when they were becoming increasingly aware of a changing world around them. And perhaps not being able to come to terms with it. We - my generation - grew up in their shadow. Greatly influenced by their thoughts and deeds, and still wantonly rebellious of it because of the times we were growing up in.

My generation was growing up at a time when the world was trying to forget the 2nd World War. But not quite well enough. It's called Post-Modernism these days. We grew up when the USA decided to wage wars on other peoples because of the conviction of their rulers that America was the natural ruler of the world. (Not that they don't so still.)

We grew up at a time when Communism, especially the versions espoused by the Latin Americans like Che and Castro, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Mao in China, not forgetting our home-grown Naxalite movement, influenced so much of our lives, directly and indirectly, more so if you happened to be in Bengal's Calcutta at the time.

We grew up at a time when quite a large section of us were pleasantly surprised by the responses and reactions of some Western thinkers, writers, musicians and artists to the way their governments were handling the inevitable relinquishing and devolvement of western (read: White) supremacy. But not quite. (Perhaps not ever?)

My generation's times too were full of expectancy, naivete and confusion in newly independent India. Our own multiple cultures and sub-cultures were on edge and in varying stages of mutual discovery at that time. Western impaction and a burgeoning Indianness clashed within our sensibilities. I believe at that time, globally, a similar situation prevailed. So much was being learned and discussed, discovered and disseminated, reviewed and re-envisioned all over the world that within the perceptible chaos kernels of similitude evolved.

There were some of my generation who took sides one way or another. Like those who preferred Western thinking and lifestyles to abandon the confusing but evolving Indianness and emigrated. Others caught up in being more Indian, in causes and issues, becoming what we liked to term 'inverted snobs'. And multitudes like me, an ignored minority nevertheless, not swayed by either one or the other, opting to live in a conscious state of indetermination, of no immediate identity, subconsciously in a sphere of no ambition, of no particular political or ethnic leaning, paying heed only to our instincts and impulses, our often self-conscious desires and ideation. We wanted to be rebels without causes, even hippies, anti-establishmentarian. A lot of us achieved this. Most didn't, and didn't want to.

And those who didn't want to are those who are the decision makers and influencers of opinion today. They are those who are trying to re-live and rebuild our parents' dreams and hopes, whatever that is worth. They are the ones, who while currently making significant changes mainly in the economic and political arenas, have not yet been entirely successful in evaluating and determining social change. And so are doomed to repeat the errors of the previous generation. Maybe generations.

I qualified a paragraph ago, (a deliberate distinction), that there were some who didn't want to, and some who didn't succeed in attempting to achieve a state of rebelliousness. Even without a cause it has been a preferred condition for me (although I personally didn't achieve it), but I wonder at others of 'my generation' who have since discarded, even disowned such thinking.

All this raving has come about from the anniversary occasion dated today - September 13 - the Founder's Day of our school. I have no nostalgia for the school other than I made friends for life who continue to think the way I do, or just empathise with the way I think. Yes, the school has contributed immensely to our upbringing and education but it has not been as significant as others see it, despite the many years we spent there. If for some reason their lives have not been more interesting beyond schooldays then I see them as losers in life. Dead before their times.

My generation, in our heydays, believed itself liberal, changemakers, contrary, and convinced. Today I see them as never really having learned from history despite their education and learning. Today I accuse them of being culpable in raising an elite educated, but unlearned next generation. A generation raised to be extraordinarily selfish and demanding. A new generation seeking facile solutions in a superficial globalisation that is more colonial and fiscally motivated than it has ever been. A generation absorbed in the novelty of technological innovation that seeks to destroy cultural sensitivity and replace it with a boring sameness of plastic, virtual reality.

But of course there are exceptions. It is grand that we are human after all; thinking, egoistic animals. And so 'my generation' is divisive; in some way keeping to our early commonality of learning and upbringing. In some way fulfilling the expectations we shared. And with this we have progressed in ways not positively identifiable currently, yet influencing changes to come.

I have hope. I am not completely disillusioned or depressed. There is a path of chaotic change that can, must, and will be traversed. A path that will break the boundaries of tradition and norms. There will be a way that will cross barriers of distinction and ignore established ideology.

'My Generation' will live on in some. And may that tribe increase.

ZAWINUL - R.I.P

2007-09-11T20:30:00.000+05:30

Joe Zawinul has died. Only 4 hours ago in his homeland of Austria. When a musician I love passes away, it's like a piece of me also goes.

For those who were adventurous with their music listening in the 70s and 80s in India, and had moved beyond The Beatles, rock'n'roll, Southern rock et al, jazz was the sound you were getting to know.

Zawinul, Pastorius, Acuna, Shorter, Badrena: Weather Report

Weather Report was certainly a band you would have heard. I know I did. Their 1974 album - Mysterious Traveller was the first recording I ever heard of theirs, and they barged into my heart and my spirit was inflamed. They became, and have remained, one of my favourite bands of all time, regardless of the genre they were reputed to represent. With the likes of Wayne Shorter on sax and the incomparable Jaco Pastorius on bass, as well as Alex Acuna nd Manolo Badrena on drums and percussion, it was no wonder that downbeat magazine of that era called WR the best jazz band in the world. On their break-up in the late 80s, I was saddened, as much as I was sad when The Beatles broke up. And then with the vagaries of international music distribution, such as it was in this country, especially for new and modern jazz, I lost touch with Zawinul as a solo artist and didn't even know he had a band called Zawinul Syndicate. Until the mid-90s when New Delhi, my home then, hosted an EC Jazzfest.

The European Community Jazz Fest was held at Pragati Maidan in the Hamsadhwani open air amphitheatre and featured some wonderful musicians from the continent, including some I was hearing for the first time like Britain's Django Bates and his incredible piece - Food for Plankton. The last day featured the greatest - who else? Joe Zawinul and the Zawinul Syndicate!

The previous two or three days of that Fest is overshadowed by my memory of ZS. Here was my musical icon playing live for me, surrounded by his keyboards, and of course his mind-blowing band. Because of the friends I had in the press who had access to the best seats in the house, and a backstage pass for after the show, I was so thrilled to be in the presence of greatness that I was struck dumb! For me that was a concert to die for. Towards the end when Zakir Hussain came on for some impromptu jamming, I was breathless. His tabla trading beats and rhythm with Manolo Badrena's Latin percussion and Zawinul's keyboard licks were like musical heaven on earth, a fitting finale that I, and all the audience didn't want.

I know I sound like a fluffy teenager as I re-read what I've written, but it's what I felt and even now, that feeling though quite dissipated, is still somewhere in me, in my head and my heart. In my soul.

I've just finished listening to Zawinul on Miles' album In A Silent Way, and now I'm going to listen to my entire Weather Report collection, as I wait to download a double CD called Brown Street from 2006 which is Zawinul Syndicate recorded live in Vienna. I'm downloading this from a torrent site and I am eternally grateful to all the powers-that-be for the invention of this facility to do so.

Weather Report in performance in 1978

What made Zawinul an icon in the music world? He wasn't so just for me, but for all music fans who love jazz, and not what my good friend David Mac calls plink-plonk! Zawinul introduced the sound of the electric piano and subsequently the synthesizer into jazz while playing with Miles Davis. But he went beyond jazz, or should I say he epitomised what jazz began to mean to many of us from other cultures. It was no longer the domain of the Americans. It became "world music" as we term it today. The line-ups of Weather Report, and later Zawinul Syndicate itself are indicative: American, European, Latin American, African, Indian, other Asians. He brought back to jazz (perhaps not single-handedly) what it was always meant to be - a melange, a melding, a melting pot of musics and sounds from all over the world, which when played together by like-minded musicians assumed an identity of its own, becoming a living, breathing thing we can only call... JAZZ. In that sense "world music" is a misnomer. Jazz was it before we began to split hairs.

So in honour of Zawinul, and others who have gone before him, and the yet-others who are still around doing their musical bit to bring the world truly together with peace and love through melody and harmony, this posting is my small contribution to the cause they espouse.

What Makes You Happy?

2007-09-02T12:10:00.000+05:30

Alfred E Neuman's smile made me happy when I was young... and still does!

David McMahon wrote in the linked blog asking us to write about what makes us happy. To start with, having known Dave since age 6 or thereabouts is quite a happy feeling! And strangely enough, I don't have him on my Blogger blogroll even though he is linked on my Yahoo 360. So I'm making amends now...

Quite a lot of things make me happy. Just being happy tops the list. I mean, haven't you sometimes felt happy for no reason at all? But here's my happy list:

2. When my daughter tells me about her day. (Actually my daughter makes me happy any way!)
3. People who smile at me, especially children and strangers.
4. Listening to my kind of music when I'm down and blue... and even when I'm not.
5. When friends tell me they love my optimism...even when I'm not.
6. The woman I love... and for several other reasons that are too intimate to get into now!
7. Remembering snippets of the past - the happy past.
8. Imagining, (or should it be foreseeing?), a happy future!
9. Just happy to have had the parents I did.
10. Sunrises... sunsets... especially in the mountains.
11. Thinking about what makes me happy... just happy to be alive and still kicking!

60 and running...still!

2007-08-24T13:41:00.000+05:30

Ten years to go to hit 60 years. But this is my 60th post. No, I'm not trying to make an issue of it, just been thinking of it and thought I may as well write stuff down, blog it you know?

Random thoughts bring me to friends. Who are friends? How do they fit into my scheme of things, my life? One gets all these rotten emails telling me to forward it to other friends I have, including the one who sent it to me, failing which I shall not have the luck and/or fortune that is predicted in those emails. The folks who send me such mails are really way down in my list of friends. They are people I can do without. They are the people I can cadge a drink or meal off every few years or so, laugh about the silliness we may have experienced together some time in the past and then move on.

I can see friends, the really good ones, including those I've never met, but are in touch with on the mail, are the ones who want to genuinely share with me. They want to share my joys and sorrows, my mundane news or my important things, and do it all without judgement. I'm lucky to have such friends. Because that's the way I share with them as well.

Being friends seems to be a political thing to me these days. Somehow there's an ulterior motive to "being friends" with someone. I have friends, not many, just a few, with whom I can spend hours very comfortably, and not have more than ten sentences of conversation with them. There are others who claim friendship, and it's only later that I realise they have used me for some gain from which I never benefited. Which of course includes this real friendship that I'm talking about. Like there's this "friend" who got me to do a voice-over for a film he was making on his own money. Yet the instant he got himself a big sponsor, a Japanese television company no less, he began to avoid me, and now I hear he's finished editing it and still no word from him.

Or take the other guy who needed me to work with him on an advertising-cum-marketing deal. In fact after our first meeting with the client, he even went so far as to tell me that the client expressed interest in giving him the business because of my off-the-cuff presentation and my knowledge of computers and the internet and how all that fitted in with the client's requirement. After many such meetings, discussions and brainstorming sessions, I asked him whether it would be possible to get some money for the time I'd spent on this, (not the entire money he was willing to give me once he got paid by the client), but just a bit so that I would not feel frustrated or demotivated. Since then he's not even bothered to call me, someone who would earlier speak to me almost 3 or 4 times a day. I hear he's got the business now but somehow I haven't fitted into his scheme of things.

But it's okay. All these years have given me an insight into the human psyche which I'm consciously aware of, and yet, even though I fall for sob stories quite sure of their inevitable result, I still go ahead and do it. If for no money, at least to keep my mind stimulated, and to keep motivating myself that I have the wherewithal to continue in the direction I have given myself.

So friends... who are they really? I know I have some, and I'm happy with them.