And the music never died

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

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

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!

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?

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)

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!

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

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...

(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

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.