Would you accept any of these bets? Which one(s)? Why? Which would you be least inclined to take? Why?
January 31, 2008
You bet
You're at a party, one of twenty-five guests. You're the betting sort. One of the other guests walks up to you and offers you three possible bets:
That you share your birthday with someone else at the party.
That you share your birthday with her.
That at least two people at the party share a birthday.
Would you accept any of these bets? Which one(s)? Why? Which would you be least inclined to take? Why?
Would you accept any of these bets? Which one(s)? Why? Which would you be least inclined to take? Why?
Pappu meets a brother (re-reprise)
As mentioned in this space before, I think about this essay most years on or about January 30. Yes, it has appeared in this space before. Here it is again.
Postscript (February 1): Had a couple of email messages asking, who wrote this? Sorry, I guess it wasn't clear. Answer: I did.
***
Not long ago, Pappu Sinha, cook from Patna who wants to be a film star, dropped in on a man who died 60 years ago yesterday. Here's Pappu's recording of their conversation.
Pappu: Pleased to meet you, saheb! May I call you Mohan-bhai?
Mohan-bhai: Certainly Pappu! And what brings you here today?
Pappu: Mohan-bhai, something's been bothering me. My school books described you as a brave man. But you know what? Lots of my friends say you were a meek coward. They say that non-violence stuff brought India to its knees. I find it hard to argue, Mohan-bhai. So why did they call you brave anyway?
Mohan-bhai: Well, Pappu, maybe courage isn't what it used to be! Those were different days. I did things because I thought they were right, and would have a certain effect. I did them because I had to do them. I didn't do them because they would show how brave I was. And I would have done them even if I had known your friends would call me a coward one day. Can you see that, my brother?
Pappu: Yes, but what's this about being meek?
Mohan-bhai: You see, Pappu, I chose non-violence as a political tool. What's more, against an enemy armed with every possible modern weapon, non-violence was the most powerful weapon available to me. I like to think it became more powerful than anything they had, more effective above all.
Possibly people have forgotten just how powerful, how effective it was. So they think ahimsa meant just taking the abuse the British threw at us. Well, that must be cowardice then!
But I know: the men and women who stood up to British lathis -- my friend Lala Lajpat Rai even died from them in Lahore -- were the bravest souls in the world. I don't need to broadcast their courage: it's there for all to see. So if today they're called meek, who am I to argue? Maybe the time for their kind of courage is over.
Pappu: A weapon! I never thought of that. But look Mohan-bhai, the British you fought? They committed atrocities. They killed us, put us in jail for flimsy reasons. They stole our wealth, divided us. All true?
Mohan-bhai: Right, my brother. Go on.
Pappu: Well, today too we can get jailed for no reason. Our leaders make us hate each other, they goad us to kill each other. They are corrupt. In your time, it was the British and you drove them out. Now, they are Indian. But what's the difference? How do we fight injustice when it's Indian? Where will we drive these people to?
Mohan-bhai: You have a point, Pappu. But what do you want from me, a plan to get rid of the oppressors?
Pappu: Oh yes, Mohan-bhai! Tell me!
Mohan-bhai: Sorry, I can't give you that, Pappu! I can only say, you have to find your political tool. Your weapon. It may not be non-violence -- I trust it won't be bombs! -- but you have to find it yourself. ahimsa worked for us because we chose it as a deliberate strategy. And we believed in it. You have to do the same.
Pappu: But that's hardly an answer!
Mohan-bhai: But it's all I have, and actually it is an answer. Look, what's one major issue in India that worries you?
Pappu: Well, there's this friction between Hindus and Muslims. OK, there was that trouble at Partition. But it does not affect me today, I know that, and I was born long after Partition anyway. Yet why do I hate Muslims? Why do I feel they are hostile towards me? Why do our leaders keep this hostility alive?
Mohan-bhai: I think you should start by looking at yourself, Pappu. Leaders can keep hatred going as long as you keep it in your mind. Of course they will fan it, that's what politicians do. But if you question the hatred, they will fail. Ask yourself why you hate Muslims, little brother. I think you are already doing that. There need not be love between you and your Muslim neighbour, but you can learn to live together.
Pappu: I think I understand, Mohan-bhai. But where's the political tool?
Mohan-bhai: But that's the political tool! When you ask questions of yourself, you will automatically ask them of your leaders. When you question the hatred, you automatically weaken them. That was the reason for ahimsa, that was the lesson from it. It undermined the British, and that destroyed their rule.
Pappu: Hmmm. You've got something there, Mohan-bhai. You mean to say that if I set a standard for myself, that becomes my weapon?
Mohan-bhai: Exactly, Pappu!
Pappu: Very good, Mohan-bhai! Well, I've got to go. See you when I'm next in the neighbourhood. But just what is this nice place called, anyway?
Mohan-bhai: Oh, we call it "The Looking Glass." Go well, my brother.
Postscript (February 1): Had a couple of email messages asking, who wrote this? Sorry, I guess it wasn't clear. Answer: I did.
Not long ago, Pappu Sinha, cook from Patna who wants to be a film star, dropped in on a man who died 60 years ago yesterday. Here's Pappu's recording of their conversation.
Pappu: Pleased to meet you, saheb! May I call you Mohan-bhai?
Mohan-bhai: Certainly Pappu! And what brings you here today?
Pappu: Mohan-bhai, something's been bothering me. My school books described you as a brave man. But you know what? Lots of my friends say you were a meek coward. They say that non-violence stuff brought India to its knees. I find it hard to argue, Mohan-bhai. So why did they call you brave anyway?
Mohan-bhai: Well, Pappu, maybe courage isn't what it used to be! Those were different days. I did things because I thought they were right, and would have a certain effect. I did them because I had to do them. I didn't do them because they would show how brave I was. And I would have done them even if I had known your friends would call me a coward one day. Can you see that, my brother?
Pappu: Yes, but what's this about being meek?
Mohan-bhai: You see, Pappu, I chose non-violence as a political tool. What's more, against an enemy armed with every possible modern weapon, non-violence was the most powerful weapon available to me. I like to think it became more powerful than anything they had, more effective above all.
Possibly people have forgotten just how powerful, how effective it was. So they think ahimsa meant just taking the abuse the British threw at us. Well, that must be cowardice then!
But I know: the men and women who stood up to British lathis -- my friend Lala Lajpat Rai even died from them in Lahore -- were the bravest souls in the world. I don't need to broadcast their courage: it's there for all to see. So if today they're called meek, who am I to argue? Maybe the time for their kind of courage is over.
Pappu: A weapon! I never thought of that. But look Mohan-bhai, the British you fought? They committed atrocities. They killed us, put us in jail for flimsy reasons. They stole our wealth, divided us. All true?
Mohan-bhai: Right, my brother. Go on.
Pappu: Well, today too we can get jailed for no reason. Our leaders make us hate each other, they goad us to kill each other. They are corrupt. In your time, it was the British and you drove them out. Now, they are Indian. But what's the difference? How do we fight injustice when it's Indian? Where will we drive these people to?
Mohan-bhai: You have a point, Pappu. But what do you want from me, a plan to get rid of the oppressors?
Pappu: Oh yes, Mohan-bhai! Tell me!
Mohan-bhai: Sorry, I can't give you that, Pappu! I can only say, you have to find your political tool. Your weapon. It may not be non-violence -- I trust it won't be bombs! -- but you have to find it yourself. ahimsa worked for us because we chose it as a deliberate strategy. And we believed in it. You have to do the same.
Pappu: But that's hardly an answer!
Mohan-bhai: But it's all I have, and actually it is an answer. Look, what's one major issue in India that worries you?
Pappu: Well, there's this friction between Hindus and Muslims. OK, there was that trouble at Partition. But it does not affect me today, I know that, and I was born long after Partition anyway. Yet why do I hate Muslims? Why do I feel they are hostile towards me? Why do our leaders keep this hostility alive?
Mohan-bhai: I think you should start by looking at yourself, Pappu. Leaders can keep hatred going as long as you keep it in your mind. Of course they will fan it, that's what politicians do. But if you question the hatred, they will fail. Ask yourself why you hate Muslims, little brother. I think you are already doing that. There need not be love between you and your Muslim neighbour, but you can learn to live together.
Pappu: I think I understand, Mohan-bhai. But where's the political tool?
Mohan-bhai: But that's the political tool! When you ask questions of yourself, you will automatically ask them of your leaders. When you question the hatred, you automatically weaken them. That was the reason for ahimsa, that was the lesson from it. It undermined the British, and that destroyed their rule.
Pappu: Hmmm. You've got something there, Mohan-bhai. You mean to say that if I set a standard for myself, that becomes my weapon?
Mohan-bhai: Exactly, Pappu!
Pappu: Very good, Mohan-bhai! Well, I've got to go. See you when I'm next in the neighbourhood. But just what is this nice place called, anyway?
Mohan-bhai: Oh, we call it "The Looking Glass." Go well, my brother.
January 29, 2008
House in a Slum? You Can't Afford It
Last Sunday (January 27), the "Outlook" section of the Washington Post carried this article I wrote, under the title "House in a Slum? You Can't Afford It". Online, it seems to be behind a subscription wall, though I'm making efforts to scale it.
Comments welcome.
***
Madhukar Gurav welcomed me to his apartment, airy and bright. Its 225 square feet house a family of four. Yet this modest home is several levels up from where he lived before, and not just because it is on the top floor of the building. Until Gurav scraped together the half-million rupees, or $12,500, to buy this flat two years ago, he lived in a Mumbai slum in a shack made of plywood and tarp.
But Gurav's new quarters are also in a slum - the most famous in Mumbai, in fact - which he shares with about one million other people. In a typically Indian paradox, his neighborhood of Dharavi, notoriously known as "Asia's largest slum," has turned suddenly desirable. Builders, developers and politicians all eye the square mile of prime real estate that it occupies and hatch plans to put it to use.
And it's no wonder. With 16 million people squeezed into 240 square miles, Mumbai is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Housing, in perennially short supply, is wildly expensive. I am by no means rich, yet my suburban 1,100-square foot flat was recently appraised at 32.5 million rupees, or about $800,000. I own it only because I inherited it from an uncle; I could not have afforded to buy it when he died in 1998, and I could not afford it today. Like Gurav's apartment, mine is pleasant
but not particularly sumptuous. It's an ordinary Mumbai flat built in the 1970s, but it has made me almost a millionaire.
Because housing is so expensive, about two-thirds of Mumbai's population live in slums or on the streets. This has been true for decades and, yes, it remains true in ready-for-boom-time India. Indian politicians have concocted countless schemes over the years to "redevelop" slums, which they consider eyesores. For a variety of reasons, they've never managed to deliver on their promises. But one idea that took off decades ago still fuels the construction boom in Dharavi and throughout the dizzying, maddening city of Mumbai.
The concept, called "cross-subsidy," is simple. The government invites developers to build flats to be sold to slum-dwellers at subsidized prices. In return for their participation, the government loosens zoning regulations, usually in the same area, so that the developers can build other larger and plusher apartments to sell to middle- and upper-class people at the market rate. The profit developers make on these sales will pay for the subsidized units - a nice marriage between government policy
and private profit-making. Or so the theory goes.
Take the cross-subsidy principle to its logical conclusion, and you have free housing for slum-dwellers. In 1995, a new government rolled into power in the state of Maharashtra promising just that: free homes for 4 million slum-dwellers in Mumbai, the state capital, over its five years in office.
Consider the arithmetic. Divide 4 million by five. That's 800,000 homes, assuming five people live in each one. Divide by five once more. That's 160,000 subsidized flats to be built in each year of the government's term.
Quick calculations showed that, given construction costs in the 1990s, profits made from the market-rate sale of 560 apartments would finance 1,000 free homes for slum-dwellers. So, to give away 160,000 homes, developers would have to sell almost 90,000 full-price homes. In total, they would have to build 250,000 each year. (The numbers have changed since then, but the reasoning hasn't.)
These figures are clearly unattainable. As the government report that established this policy noted in 1995, developers were building only 40,000 housing units per year, not including the units for the cross-subsidy deal. Today, that number is up to about 60,000, but it remains well short of the annual demand.
Like everything, the price of housing follows supply and demand. Say builders manage to build 90,000 additional for-profit units in a single year. What will that do to a market already fat on a supply of 40,000?
Easy. Prices will go into free-fall. The foundation of the cross-subsidy plan implodes.
Not surprisingly, the scheme was a spectacular failure. By 1997, slum-dwellers should have moved into 320,000 free flats. That year, I asked the Urban Development Department how many homes had actually been built.
The answer: 1,146.
It's a Catch-22. Mumbai's soaring real estate prices made this idea conceivable. The execution made it impossible.
Today, back in Dharavi, the cross-subsidy theory drives the transformation of the neighborhood's tenements into apartment buildings. Developers are frenetically building middle- and upper-class homes there and across the city, while millions of slum and lower-class residents continue living without proper housing.
That's where people like Gurav enter the picture. In one scenario, a group of slum residents band together and invite a builder to raze their shacks and build new apartments, some to turn over to them and some to sell at the market rate. There are now several such buildings in Dharavi and elsewhere in Mumbai.
The interesting thing about Gurav is that he didn't belong to such a group. He hoarded his money and bought his flat from the original owner, who knew its value and couldn't resist the temptation to sell. The man kept the money from the sale and moved back to a shack, Gurav explained to me during our visit. "In that slum over there," his daughter piped up, pointing out the window at an expanse of rooftops like so many matchboxes in the distance.
And that's one more twist in the cross-subsidy tale.
If you build at the rate the housing crisis - or an election promise - demands, the market crashes, making a cross-subsidy unworkable. Therefore, you build slowly, so that housing prices remain high. But when prices remain high, some of the former slum-dwellers will sell their flats and move back to the slum. Sometimes that was their plan all along.
I have a vicarious personal interest in this whole tangle. Among other interesting jobs he held in the Indian bureaucracy, my late father was Mumbai's municipal commissioner - the equivalent of a mayor - from 1969 to 1970. Low-cost housing was always his great interest, and for the last 14 years of his life, he ran a low-cost project in Mumbai's northern suburbs founded on the cross-subsidy principle. It has about 5,000 subsidized flats, plus about 1,100 others and commercial space for sale at market rates.
My father died last September, but the project goes on. Why does it work? Because the subsidy is small, so residents pay close to market rates for their little flats, and because it has taken so long to complete - nearly 25 years. The slow progress troubled my father and his colleagues greatly. But they understood that in the convoluted world of Mumbai, this remains the only workable way to provide livable, sustainable housing for the poor. And yet the dilemma remains that those who are worst off can't afford even the subsidized flats.
As I downed a cup of tea with Gurav and his family in Dharavi, I found myself reflecting on the final, yet perhaps simplest, lesson in all of this. Anyone seeking to solve Mumbai's housing crisis must recognize the enormity of the problem and proceed accordingly. Ponderously, even. Anything else is a band aid. Just ask Madhukar Gurav. Two years after he bought it, his flat is worth more than twice what he paid. Naturally, he thinks he might sell and move. Where to? "To another slum," he says and smiles. "Where else?"
Comments welcome.
Madhukar Gurav welcomed me to his apartment, airy and bright. Its 225 square feet house a family of four. Yet this modest home is several levels up from where he lived before, and not just because it is on the top floor of the building. Until Gurav scraped together the half-million rupees, or $12,500, to buy this flat two years ago, he lived in a Mumbai slum in a shack made of plywood and tarp.
But Gurav's new quarters are also in a slum - the most famous in Mumbai, in fact - which he shares with about one million other people. In a typically Indian paradox, his neighborhood of Dharavi, notoriously known as "Asia's largest slum," has turned suddenly desirable. Builders, developers and politicians all eye the square mile of prime real estate that it occupies and hatch plans to put it to use.
And it's no wonder. With 16 million people squeezed into 240 square miles, Mumbai is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Housing, in perennially short supply, is wildly expensive. I am by no means rich, yet my suburban 1,100-square foot flat was recently appraised at 32.5 million rupees, or about $800,000. I own it only because I inherited it from an uncle; I could not have afforded to buy it when he died in 1998, and I could not afford it today. Like Gurav's apartment, mine is pleasant
but not particularly sumptuous. It's an ordinary Mumbai flat built in the 1970s, but it has made me almost a millionaire.
Because housing is so expensive, about two-thirds of Mumbai's population live in slums or on the streets. This has been true for decades and, yes, it remains true in ready-for-boom-time India. Indian politicians have concocted countless schemes over the years to "redevelop" slums, which they consider eyesores. For a variety of reasons, they've never managed to deliver on their promises. But one idea that took off decades ago still fuels the construction boom in Dharavi and throughout the dizzying, maddening city of Mumbai.
The concept, called "cross-subsidy," is simple. The government invites developers to build flats to be sold to slum-dwellers at subsidized prices. In return for their participation, the government loosens zoning regulations, usually in the same area, so that the developers can build other larger and plusher apartments to sell to middle- and upper-class people at the market rate. The profit developers make on these sales will pay for the subsidized units - a nice marriage between government policy
and private profit-making. Or so the theory goes.
Take the cross-subsidy principle to its logical conclusion, and you have free housing for slum-dwellers. In 1995, a new government rolled into power in the state of Maharashtra promising just that: free homes for 4 million slum-dwellers in Mumbai, the state capital, over its five years in office.
Consider the arithmetic. Divide 4 million by five. That's 800,000 homes, assuming five people live in each one. Divide by five once more. That's 160,000 subsidized flats to be built in each year of the government's term.
Quick calculations showed that, given construction costs in the 1990s, profits made from the market-rate sale of 560 apartments would finance 1,000 free homes for slum-dwellers. So, to give away 160,000 homes, developers would have to sell almost 90,000 full-price homes. In total, they would have to build 250,000 each year. (The numbers have changed since then, but the reasoning hasn't.)
These figures are clearly unattainable. As the government report that established this policy noted in 1995, developers were building only 40,000 housing units per year, not including the units for the cross-subsidy deal. Today, that number is up to about 60,000, but it remains well short of the annual demand.
Like everything, the price of housing follows supply and demand. Say builders manage to build 90,000 additional for-profit units in a single year. What will that do to a market already fat on a supply of 40,000?
Easy. Prices will go into free-fall. The foundation of the cross-subsidy plan implodes.
Not surprisingly, the scheme was a spectacular failure. By 1997, slum-dwellers should have moved into 320,000 free flats. That year, I asked the Urban Development Department how many homes had actually been built.
The answer: 1,146.
It's a Catch-22. Mumbai's soaring real estate prices made this idea conceivable. The execution made it impossible.
Today, back in Dharavi, the cross-subsidy theory drives the transformation of the neighborhood's tenements into apartment buildings. Developers are frenetically building middle- and upper-class homes there and across the city, while millions of slum and lower-class residents continue living without proper housing.
That's where people like Gurav enter the picture. In one scenario, a group of slum residents band together and invite a builder to raze their shacks and build new apartments, some to turn over to them and some to sell at the market rate. There are now several such buildings in Dharavi and elsewhere in Mumbai.
The interesting thing about Gurav is that he didn't belong to such a group. He hoarded his money and bought his flat from the original owner, who knew its value and couldn't resist the temptation to sell. The man kept the money from the sale and moved back to a shack, Gurav explained to me during our visit. "In that slum over there," his daughter piped up, pointing out the window at an expanse of rooftops like so many matchboxes in the distance.
And that's one more twist in the cross-subsidy tale.
If you build at the rate the housing crisis - or an election promise - demands, the market crashes, making a cross-subsidy unworkable. Therefore, you build slowly, so that housing prices remain high. But when prices remain high, some of the former slum-dwellers will sell their flats and move back to the slum. Sometimes that was their plan all along.
I have a vicarious personal interest in this whole tangle. Among other interesting jobs he held in the Indian bureaucracy, my late father was Mumbai's municipal commissioner - the equivalent of a mayor - from 1969 to 1970. Low-cost housing was always his great interest, and for the last 14 years of his life, he ran a low-cost project in Mumbai's northern suburbs founded on the cross-subsidy principle. It has about 5,000 subsidized flats, plus about 1,100 others and commercial space for sale at market rates.
My father died last September, but the project goes on. Why does it work? Because the subsidy is small, so residents pay close to market rates for their little flats, and because it has taken so long to complete - nearly 25 years. The slow progress troubled my father and his colleagues greatly. But they understood that in the convoluted world of Mumbai, this remains the only workable way to provide livable, sustainable housing for the poor. And yet the dilemma remains that those who are worst off can't afford even the subsidized flats.
As I downed a cup of tea with Gurav and his family in Dharavi, I found myself reflecting on the final, yet perhaps simplest, lesson in all of this. Anyone seeking to solve Mumbai's housing crisis must recognize the enormity of the problem and proceed accordingly. Ponderously, even. Anything else is a band aid. Just ask Madhukar Gurav. Two years after he bought it, his flat is worth more than twice what he paid. Naturally, he thinks he might sell and move. Where to? "To another slum," he says and smiles. "Where else?"
January 26, 2008
Agony of the feet
Republic Day, as I write this. May my country have many more.
I've been thinking, this is as good a day as any to give some thought to one Prakash Kumar Thakur. Described as a "social worker", this man filed a case against tennis star Sania Mirza three weeks ago. Why? Because she "disrespected the national tricolour by sitting in a manner so that her feet pointed at the flag, which he felt was derogatory and had hurt him." He concluded this when he saw a photograph in the press.
This, felt Thakur, amounted to an offence under the Prevention of Insult to National Honour Act.
A Bhopal court admitted the case and has issued a summons to Sania Mirza.
So yes, I think this day on which we honour our country is a good day to think about the social worker Thakur. To think, too, about what truly insults the National Honour: Sania Mirza photographed with her feet pointed at the flag? Or a man who claims this hurts him? Or a summons that's issued based on this claim? Or the idea that there's something dishonourable about our feet?
Take your pick.
I've been thinking, this is as good a day as any to give some thought to one Prakash Kumar Thakur. Described as a "social worker", this man filed a case against tennis star Sania Mirza three weeks ago. Why? Because she "disrespected the national tricolour by sitting in a manner so that her feet pointed at the flag, which he felt was derogatory and had hurt him." He concluded this when he saw a photograph in the press.
This, felt Thakur, amounted to an offence under the Prevention of Insult to National Honour Act.
A Bhopal court admitted the case and has issued a summons to Sania Mirza.
So yes, I think this day on which we honour our country is a good day to think about the social worker Thakur. To think, too, about what truly insults the National Honour: Sania Mirza photographed with her feet pointed at the flag? Or a man who claims this hurts him? Or a summons that's issued based on this claim? Or the idea that there's something dishonourable about our feet?
Take your pick.
Water for the dog
Rest area on the Texas/New Mexico border, I'm tempted because after several hours on the road, I need to stretch limbs and mind, clear the cobwebs. I pull in, park and walk about aimlessly for a while. Notice in passing that the vending machine that will sell you M&M chocolates or a bag of chips can also dispense toothpaste and shaving gear.
Makes some cosmic sense, actually.
Inside the building, they have wi-fi. Who's the idiot, I ask myself, who would pull off the highway at this particular spot and check email?
An idiot, I answer myself, like me.
I also check the tennis scores. Federer marching along, just the usual.
Half an hour and I'm ready to drive on. Before moving off, I pull out my map and chalk out my route for the next few hours. As I'm doing so, there's a knock on my window. It's a slender man about 30, backpack and a sleeveless jacket.
"I need to get to LA," he says. "Don't know how. Can you help me?"
Well, what do you need, I ask, though I suspect I know the answer.
"Just a map," he says. "D'you have a map I can use?"
Actually, I do have a map of the southwestern US, and that should meet his needs. I dig it out from my bag and give it to him.
"Thanks," he says. "Gotta take a bus, but I don't got no money. And they don't let me in the motels, account of my dog." He points down, to a small dog on a leash.
I look at him. I knew this was coming. I feel just slightly annoyed. Then I think, what the hell. Here's five bucks, I say, yanking a note from my shirt pocket. I hope it helps.
"It sure will, pal. Thanks and god bless. Where you from?"
Bombay, I say. India.
"Drive safe, OK?"
I put the car in reverse and pull out. As I drive off, I catch a last glimpse of the man. He's walked over to the water fountain. He's holding his dog so it can drink from the stream.
Makes some cosmic sense, actually.
Inside the building, they have wi-fi. Who's the idiot, I ask myself, who would pull off the highway at this particular spot and check email?
An idiot, I answer myself, like me.
I also check the tennis scores. Federer marching along, just the usual.
Half an hour and I'm ready to drive on. Before moving off, I pull out my map and chalk out my route for the next few hours. As I'm doing so, there's a knock on my window. It's a slender man about 30, backpack and a sleeveless jacket.
"I need to get to LA," he says. "Don't know how. Can you help me?"
Well, what do you need, I ask, though I suspect I know the answer.
"Just a map," he says. "D'you have a map I can use?"
Actually, I do have a map of the southwestern US, and that should meet his needs. I dig it out from my bag and give it to him.
"Thanks," he says. "Gotta take a bus, but I don't got no money. And they don't let me in the motels, account of my dog." He points down, to a small dog on a leash.
I look at him. I knew this was coming. I feel just slightly annoyed. Then I think, what the hell. Here's five bucks, I say, yanking a note from my shirt pocket. I hope it helps.
"It sure will, pal. Thanks and god bless. Where you from?"
Bombay, I say. India.
"Drive safe, OK?"
I put the car in reverse and pull out. As I drive off, I catch a last glimpse of the man. He's walked over to the water fountain. He's holding his dog so it can drink from the stream.
January 23, 2008
Chess moves
In the shared kitchen at the hot springs resort near the Texas/Mexico border, I'm pottering around fixing my soup. Campbell's Chunky Chicken Vegetable and some very spicy Thai noodle stuff: mixed together that's going to be my dinner.
Also in the kitchen are a young couple eating already, but mostly leaning over a book in which they are both drawing things. I catch a quick glimpse and it looks like a bird, so I ask them, are you drawing pictures of the birds you've seen here? A little embarrassed, he holds up his book and shakes his head. "No, it's just a drawing," he says. It's an elaborate and actually very beautifully drawn fantasy creature -- one of those ugly but not really frightening monster thingies.
Nearer me is another young woman, also pottering around getting stuff together to cook. That is, she's working on something a little more ambitious than just making soup, which is my horizon for tonight.
Suddenly she turns and approaches me. Holds out a bottle and says, "Could you open this please? It's too hard for me." It's an innocent enough request, and that's all she says. But the way she says those few words, the way she stands there, her body language, I could swear she's flirting.
But anyway, I take the bottle, brace myself to battle to unscrew a stubborn lid, grit my teeth and ... it opens easy as pie. In a flash.
It was already open.
I'm puzzled, but what's to say? I hand the bottle back to her. With a too-cute smile and a swing of her hips, but without a word, she turns and sashays off.
Later, her boyfriend enters and seats himself almost regally at one of the tables. Watches her finish cooking, watches as she ladles food onto two plates, watches as she brings them over to the table, watches as she returns for two glasses of water.
Watching all this, he also talks to me, mainly about chess and the new world champion in the sport, Vishwanathan Anand. "How do you pronounce that?" he asks, "An-AAnd?"
Nope, I reply. It's "AA-nand."
"Gotcha." And every time he mentions the name after that, he says "An-AAnd". He doesn't ask about "Vishwanathan", which he pronounces "Wish-VAN-a-ton".
"I'm kinda glad," he says, "that there's finally a world champion who isn't from Russia."
There was Bobby Fischer, I offer.
"Oh sure, but that was 35 years ago!" he exclaims.
They eat. They hardly talk to each other. She, I notice, has changed considerably from her sashaying self of half an hour ago. Now, I could swear there's a sad air about her. There's some unhappiness between the two, some distress that floats across the room like a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
Soup finished, I get up and wash my dishes, then say goodnight and walk over to my tent. They sit in silence, eating.
A week later, Bobby Fischer is dead.
Also in the kitchen are a young couple eating already, but mostly leaning over a book in which they are both drawing things. I catch a quick glimpse and it looks like a bird, so I ask them, are you drawing pictures of the birds you've seen here? A little embarrassed, he holds up his book and shakes his head. "No, it's just a drawing," he says. It's an elaborate and actually very beautifully drawn fantasy creature -- one of those ugly but not really frightening monster thingies.
Nearer me is another young woman, also pottering around getting stuff together to cook. That is, she's working on something a little more ambitious than just making soup, which is my horizon for tonight.
Suddenly she turns and approaches me. Holds out a bottle and says, "Could you open this please? It's too hard for me." It's an innocent enough request, and that's all she says. But the way she says those few words, the way she stands there, her body language, I could swear she's flirting.
But anyway, I take the bottle, brace myself to battle to unscrew a stubborn lid, grit my teeth and ... it opens easy as pie. In a flash.
It was already open.
I'm puzzled, but what's to say? I hand the bottle back to her. With a too-cute smile and a swing of her hips, but without a word, she turns and sashays off.
Later, her boyfriend enters and seats himself almost regally at one of the tables. Watches her finish cooking, watches as she ladles food onto two plates, watches as she brings them over to the table, watches as she returns for two glasses of water.
Watching all this, he also talks to me, mainly about chess and the new world champion in the sport, Vishwanathan Anand. "How do you pronounce that?" he asks, "An-AAnd?"
Nope, I reply. It's "AA-nand."
"Gotcha." And every time he mentions the name after that, he says "An-AAnd". He doesn't ask about "Vishwanathan", which he pronounces "Wish-VAN-a-ton".
"I'm kinda glad," he says, "that there's finally a world champion who isn't from Russia."
There was Bobby Fischer, I offer.
"Oh sure, but that was 35 years ago!" he exclaims.
They eat. They hardly talk to each other. She, I notice, has changed considerably from her sashaying self of half an hour ago. Now, I could swear there's a sad air about her. There's some unhappiness between the two, some distress that floats across the room like a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
Soup finished, I get up and wash my dishes, then say goodnight and walk over to my tent. They sit in silence, eating.
A week later, Bobby Fischer is dead.
January 22, 2008
Daddy took the Malibu away
Mike is his name. When I enter PT's bar in Winslow, there are only six or seven people there, and the lone empty barstool is between him and a young woman. So I take it. Mike pays no attention through the subsequent exchange, which goes like this.
The bartender sidles over (I always feel bartenders sidle, is that true?). Asks me what I want. I think, then say I'd like a minute to decide. "A Miller Lite? OK!" says the bartender. I say, no, not a Miller Lite, I want a minute to decide. A MINUTE TO DECIDE! No effect on him. He sidles off to the bar, saying almost to himself, "One Miller Lite coming right up!", yanking out a glass and starting to pull down on a lever for draft ... I'm trying to stop him, but he is not listening. Then the girl next to me calls to the bartender: "Sam, Sam, he doesn't want a Miller Lite! He wants to think about it!"
That stops Sam the bartender. I turn to her to say thanks, but she has her back to me and is looking at something off in the distance there.
Mike on my left has been silent through all this. Next time the bartender sidles by, I tell him, give me a beer and a Sprite, I want to make myself a shandy. I forget to specify that I want just Sprite. So when he delivers it to me, it is a huge glass filled as full as possible with cubes of ice, and Sprite sprayed into it. So what I really have is a glass of Sprite flavoured ice-cubes.
When I mix it with the beer, two things happen. The first is that I produce something that can by no means be called shandy. Anyway, at least it takes the edge off the beer taste, which is what I want. The second is that Mike is looking on incredulously. "I've never seen anyone drink beer like that," he says finally.
It's the only way I can consume beer, I tell him. Straight up, I can't stand the taste.
That's our ice-breaker. From there, he and I have a long conversation about everything from religion to religion in politics to cars to the brutality in the Bible to elections to his move here from Seattle.
"You've heard of the Old Testament?" he asks. Somebody went into the Temple of Jericho and killed everybody there, women and kids too. Fire and brimstone, vengeance, that sort of thing. "We don't live like that now. But people who do those things today," he says, leaning closer, "they scare me. When people take their religion that seriously, they scare me."
Me too, I say. Me too.
The chit chat moves on to guns and old cars. Mike says he once took away some guy's girlfriend. Didn't want to confront the guy because he was "way bigger'n me, y'know?" But at the time, he had a '66 Chevy Malibu and a gun in the glovebox. Had he used the gun, he says, the guy would be dead and he would be in jail. Instead, he just outran the guy in that '66 Chevy. (Boyfriend had a Dodge). When Mike's dad found out, he took away the gun and the car.
Silence. So I had to ask: "And what happened to the girlfriend?"
"Think she went back to him," he said, laughing uproariously.
So let me get this straight, Mike, I say. All you got from this little exchange was the satisfaction of your Chevy outrunning the man's Dodge?
Mike laughs some more. "Sure! But it felt good!"
Mention of a Malibu has perked up the ears of Tony, a big shambling guy with a belly and a straggly beard, sitting on the other side of Mike. He asks about the car, and then a conversation ensues, largely between them, about the glory days of the American muscle car. "You remember the Pontiac something-or-the-other?" asks Tony. "Shee-it, that baby could move! You could take a curve and accelerate out of it, shoooom, she's gone!" (He claps his hands and extends the right, indicating the bat out of hell he has in mind). (I think of Jan and Dean's harmony-laden classic, "Dead Man's Curve").
When I get a chance, I ask Tony, so what car do you drive today?
He looks at me sheepishly. "You won't believe it," he says. "It's a Nissan pickup with a hardtop." He has the apologetic air of a man admitting to a serious let-down after all this talk of muscle cars.
Which, come to think of it, a Nissan pickup probably is.
The bartender sidles over (I always feel bartenders sidle, is that true?). Asks me what I want. I think, then say I'd like a minute to decide. "A Miller Lite? OK!" says the bartender. I say, no, not a Miller Lite, I want a minute to decide. A MINUTE TO DECIDE! No effect on him. He sidles off to the bar, saying almost to himself, "One Miller Lite coming right up!", yanking out a glass and starting to pull down on a lever for draft ... I'm trying to stop him, but he is not listening. Then the girl next to me calls to the bartender: "Sam, Sam, he doesn't want a Miller Lite! He wants to think about it!"
That stops Sam the bartender. I turn to her to say thanks, but she has her back to me and is looking at something off in the distance there.
Mike on my left has been silent through all this. Next time the bartender sidles by, I tell him, give me a beer and a Sprite, I want to make myself a shandy. I forget to specify that I want just Sprite. So when he delivers it to me, it is a huge glass filled as full as possible with cubes of ice, and Sprite sprayed into it. So what I really have is a glass of Sprite flavoured ice-cubes.
When I mix it with the beer, two things happen. The first is that I produce something that can by no means be called shandy. Anyway, at least it takes the edge off the beer taste, which is what I want. The second is that Mike is looking on incredulously. "I've never seen anyone drink beer like that," he says finally.
It's the only way I can consume beer, I tell him. Straight up, I can't stand the taste.
That's our ice-breaker. From there, he and I have a long conversation about everything from religion to religion in politics to cars to the brutality in the Bible to elections to his move here from Seattle.
"You've heard of the Old Testament?" he asks. Somebody went into the Temple of Jericho and killed everybody there, women and kids too. Fire and brimstone, vengeance, that sort of thing. "We don't live like that now. But people who do those things today," he says, leaning closer, "they scare me. When people take their religion that seriously, they scare me."
Me too, I say. Me too.
The chit chat moves on to guns and old cars. Mike says he once took away some guy's girlfriend. Didn't want to confront the guy because he was "way bigger'n me, y'know?" But at the time, he had a '66 Chevy Malibu and a gun in the glovebox. Had he used the gun, he says, the guy would be dead and he would be in jail. Instead, he just outran the guy in that '66 Chevy. (Boyfriend had a Dodge). When Mike's dad found out, he took away the gun and the car.
Silence. So I had to ask: "And what happened to the girlfriend?"
"Think she went back to him," he said, laughing uproariously.
So let me get this straight, Mike, I say. All you got from this little exchange was the satisfaction of your Chevy outrunning the man's Dodge?
Mike laughs some more. "Sure! But it felt good!"
Mention of a Malibu has perked up the ears of Tony, a big shambling guy with a belly and a straggly beard, sitting on the other side of Mike. He asks about the car, and then a conversation ensues, largely between them, about the glory days of the American muscle car. "You remember the Pontiac something-or-the-other?" asks Tony. "Shee-it, that baby could move! You could take a curve and accelerate out of it, shoooom, she's gone!" (He claps his hands and extends the right, indicating the bat out of hell he has in mind). (I think of Jan and Dean's harmony-laden classic, "Dead Man's Curve").
When I get a chance, I ask Tony, so what car do you drive today?
He looks at me sheepishly. "You won't believe it," he says. "It's a Nissan pickup with a hardtop." He has the apologetic air of a man admitting to a serious let-down after all this talk of muscle cars.
Which, come to think of it, a Nissan pickup probably is.
January 21, 2008
Real Indians
My post "Mother" generated this comment a little while ago. The text below, without comment:
- Dear Dcubed,
You are a Catholic, you are NOT a real Indian.
That is why you will not be outraged at the treatment meted out to Harbhajan, you will focus on some inanity.
Its OK, we Indians (the real Indians) understand.
January 19, 2008
Pay to type
The woman I'm at this cafe to meet is certainly popular. As we speak, several people wave, or say hi, or interrupt to say a few words. One slender man in a straggly beard taps her on the shoulder, waits for her to turn around, and wraps his arms around her in an impressive hug. Later, he comes over again and asks if he can sit and listen to our conversation. She says no, we're in a meeting, but he sits down next to us anyway.
She's an attractive woman. Tall and rangy, shoulder-length wavy brown hair, clear frameless glasses, a checked plaid jacket, black sweater, pink striped T, black skirt, orange striped leggings, tall silver boots: and somehow it all fits together. Eclectic is the word, attractive too. He's clearly much younger than her. He's clearly also nursing an enormous crush on her. Looking like a disconsolate puppy, he keeps stealing glances at her.
She pays no attention. I feel slightly sorry for him.
***
Driving through the southern stretches of Arizona, I notice several vehicles that are used to advertise things. A truck trailer calls attention to "VERMALAND", mentioning vermaland.com which produces very little on my screen. Another calls attention to SAHARA, mentioning sahara1.com. Clearly sahara.com was taken.
And there's a London double-decker bus, wrapped in dull red something but identifiable as one of those buses anyway, that advertises Sierrita Restaurant.
Later on the same drive, I pass under Three Slashes Road. Later still, Sore Finger Road. Later still more, the Kashmiri friend at whose house I will spend the coming night calls, to ask where I am and give me directions. I pull off the road to talk. When we are done, I look up. I am stopped under a sign that says "Kashmir Road". I am not making this up.
***
Young man in rural Texas tried to persuade me to go stay at a fancy old hotel nearby. Two of his reasons were:
"You're a writer? You hafta check this out. They have a real typewriter, you know those old things with those keys you press and a lever flies up and all? And you can pay and use it."
"They have one of those old record players and some records too! Just great! You can check out the player and pick out some records, and you can sit in your room and play it."
I see his point. And this was friendly advice. So I didn't let on that I have a record player and a few hundred records, so the novelty factor would be kind of wasted on me there. And let's be frank, typing on a typewriter? Not something I want to pay to do.
She's an attractive woman. Tall and rangy, shoulder-length wavy brown hair, clear frameless glasses, a checked plaid jacket, black sweater, pink striped T, black skirt, orange striped leggings, tall silver boots: and somehow it all fits together. Eclectic is the word, attractive too. He's clearly much younger than her. He's clearly also nursing an enormous crush on her. Looking like a disconsolate puppy, he keeps stealing glances at her.
She pays no attention. I feel slightly sorry for him.
Driving through the southern stretches of Arizona, I notice several vehicles that are used to advertise things. A truck trailer calls attention to "VERMALAND", mentioning vermaland.com which produces very little on my screen. Another calls attention to SAHARA, mentioning sahara1.com. Clearly sahara.com was taken.
And there's a London double-decker bus, wrapped in dull red something but identifiable as one of those buses anyway, that advertises Sierrita Restaurant.
Later on the same drive, I pass under Three Slashes Road. Later still, Sore Finger Road. Later still more, the Kashmiri friend at whose house I will spend the coming night calls, to ask where I am and give me directions. I pull off the road to talk. When we are done, I look up. I am stopped under a sign that says "Kashmir Road". I am not making this up.
Young man in rural Texas tried to persuade me to go stay at a fancy old hotel nearby. Two of his reasons were:
I see his point. And this was friendly advice. So I didn't let on that I have a record player and a few hundred records, so the novelty factor would be kind of wasted on me there. And let's be frank, typing on a typewriter? Not something I want to pay to do.
Towards winning
Cricket: I write this just as a sixth Australian wicket has fallen -- Gilchrist. I don't know yet if India will win this terrific Test match, but it looks like they will. I certainly hope they do.
And if they do, I'll feel like the team responded to the Sydney mess in the best way possible: play hard and win.
No peculiar wriggles, no whining, no burning effigies and threatening to pull out of a tour and going on about national honour.
Just play hard and win. Honour, right there.
And a seventh wicket! On the doorstep.
***
And they're through that door!
And if they do, I'll feel like the team responded to the Sydney mess in the best way possible: play hard and win.
No peculiar wriggles, no whining, no burning effigies and threatening to pull out of a tour and going on about national honour.
Just play hard and win. Honour, right there.
And a seventh wicket! On the doorstep.
And they're through that door!
Not Mumbai Beach
At over two hundred feet below sea level, without any diving apparatus, not even wearing a swimsuit, what's a man to do?
Me, I stopped and watched the birds -- seagulls, lapwings, some kind of swifts. Wrote two postcards to people in Bombay, which I simply had to do. Spoke to a woman who runs a store and a man who is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Community Center. Took a photograph of a young couple and their pitbull, she leaning her head against his shoulder. Wandered amid a Dali-like scene of long-abandoned structures.
All of which you can do too, in Bombay Beach. (Now you know why I had to write those postcards). Sunbaked town on the shore of the Salton Sea, a large inland lake in southern California, 200-something feet below sea level. I mean, I saw this name on the map and I knew I had to visit.
And while there, I asked person after person, why the name? Only the girl with the pitbull offered an answer: "It was bombed in the war."
Really? Which war?
"You know, the World War. Air Force used to bomb this place."
I look around incredulously. Bombed? The town looks like it has seen better days and probably will never see them again, but bombed? And why? I turn back to her, but with a toss of her long blond hair, she, boyfriend and dog have resumed their stroll.
Frank at the community center, 81 years old and a stud in his left ear, is happy to talk about the town. It was developed by a real estate man just after the war, as a fishing resort. Had a marina too. He laid out the street grid, built the first few houses, and sold them. It was a "nice community", says Frank wistfully, for years. "I learned to waterski out there!"
Then the Salton Sea rose, flooding an entire section of the town. Those residents had to leave, and later a dike was built. Now the Sea level has fallen, and the town is trying to recover -- "but it's too late for us", says Frank, still wistful. Apparently the lake is polluted and so does not attract the watersport enthusiasts any more. Though the town is considering various measures to clean it up, a population of a few hundred seems like no kind of base to raise the funds to do something as massive as that.
The community center has a poster for the movie "The Salton Sea". Also four boards with names listed on small brown plaques, all titled "In Memory of our Friends."
Outside and beyond the dike, it gets surreal. Beams and tyres and assorted other junk stuck in seriously salt-encrusted mud, some still identifiable as once-houses. There's an abandoned trailer, I think, and inside a rusting, crumbling oven. Hanging from the beam of another structure is the shell of some rectangular electronic device, wires and chips dangling in the breeze.
And with this as a backdrop, a young couple and their pitbull.
Bombay Beach. Yes, I had to visit.
Me, I stopped and watched the birds -- seagulls, lapwings, some kind of swifts. Wrote two postcards to people in Bombay, which I simply had to do. Spoke to a woman who runs a store and a man who is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Community Center. Took a photograph of a young couple and their pitbull, she leaning her head against his shoulder. Wandered amid a Dali-like scene of long-abandoned structures.
All of which you can do too, in Bombay Beach. (Now you know why I had to write those postcards). Sunbaked town on the shore of the Salton Sea, a large inland lake in southern California, 200-something feet below sea level. I mean, I saw this name on the map and I knew I had to visit.
And while there, I asked person after person, why the name? Only the girl with the pitbull offered an answer: "It was bombed in the war."
Really? Which war?
"You know, the World War. Air Force used to bomb this place."
I look around incredulously. Bombed? The town looks like it has seen better days and probably will never see them again, but bombed? And why? I turn back to her, but with a toss of her long blond hair, she, boyfriend and dog have resumed their stroll.
Frank at the community center, 81 years old and a stud in his left ear, is happy to talk about the town. It was developed by a real estate man just after the war, as a fishing resort. Had a marina too. He laid out the street grid, built the first few houses, and sold them. It was a "nice community", says Frank wistfully, for years. "I learned to waterski out there!"
Then the Salton Sea rose, flooding an entire section of the town. Those residents had to leave, and later a dike was built. Now the Sea level has fallen, and the town is trying to recover -- "but it's too late for us", says Frank, still wistful. Apparently the lake is polluted and so does not attract the watersport enthusiasts any more. Though the town is considering various measures to clean it up, a population of a few hundred seems like no kind of base to raise the funds to do something as massive as that.
The community center has a poster for the movie "The Salton Sea". Also four boards with names listed on small brown plaques, all titled "In Memory of our Friends."
Outside and beyond the dike, it gets surreal. Beams and tyres and assorted other junk stuck in seriously salt-encrusted mud, some still identifiable as once-houses. There's an abandoned trailer, I think, and inside a rusting, crumbling oven. Hanging from the beam of another structure is the shell of some rectangular electronic device, wires and chips dangling in the breeze.
And with this as a backdrop, a young couple and their pitbull.
Bombay Beach. Yes, I had to visit.
January 15, 2008
Meanwhile in Marfa
Over by the courthouse, they're starting to unwind ...
Actually what I see near the Marfa courthouse is a huge bus with a small car tethered behind. The back of the bus has the US, UK and EU flags painted on, with "Chris and Karen's Mystery Tour" also there. Two people I presume are Chris and Karen are in earnest conversation with two smart Texas police officers, the police cruisers parked nearby. It doesn't look like a serious conversation, no arrests or anything, just a relaxed chat. Which is why the line pops into my head.
I roll down my window and ask one of the officers the way to my B&B, which I was told was near the courthouse. He doesn't know, but directs me to the other side of the wedding cake-like building. "Must be over there," he says.
And indeed it is, just a block from the opposite corner of the courthouse. I pile all my stuff into the room and leave quickly, to manage a walk around Marfa while the light is still good. Only ten minutes after I first saw it, the bus is now parked behind the courthouse, neither of its occupants nor the police officers anywhere in evidence. Nor do I see Chris and Karen in my wandering through Marfa over the next couple of hours. I wanted to find out what the Mystery in their Tour was. Too bad.
Maybe the mystery is that they disappear so quickly.
Just about sunset, I drive out to the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Platform, where I'm one of four or five people already waiting to see these famous lights. Immediately, I can see a red light blinking steadily, stuck at the base of a distant low hill. It blinks just like that, steadily, for the two-and-a-half hours I spend there getting slowly frozen. Must be a warning light on a pole. Above it, along the crest of the hill and the adjoining ridge, there's an occasional white light that appears, and spends about ten minutes moving to the right and gradually lower, until it disappears. Clearly, those are car headlights along the highway there, that I myself drove earlier today, to get to Marfa.
And that's it. Apart from the fingernail moon and the emerging stars, there are no unexplained lights.
More people show up, through the 2.5 hours. It is now completely dark, so you can't see the hill outlined against a lighter sky. A troop of completely drunk men stagger onto the platform, and ask me through fumes of beer, "Where's the lights? Huh?" When I say I haven't seen them yet, that's clearly not good enough an answer. "What about those, dude?" they ask, pointing in turn at the blinking red light, a slowly moving car headlight, a house way to the left and a bright star. I say again, those are not the lights. They shake their heads in mock disgust and shuffle off.
They stop beside a couple to my left, and ask them the same questions. In a distinct English accent, the man says: "See that blinking red light? It's been moving up, down, left, right, every which way. And those white lights above it? I don't know what they are, but they move pretty strangely too!" The woman backs him up. "Yes, and look them now. That red one is drifting upward, look!"
I realize what's happening. Because the skyline is no longer visible, you look at these lights in relation to each other, and it's easy to be fooled by the motion of the white ones into believing that the stationary red one is moving. I try feebly to explain this, but quickly give up. All these people are sure they're looking at the Marfa lights, and who am I to try to sway that belief?
More lines pop into my head: "Over on the corner, there's a happy noise/People come from all around to watch the magic boy."
But that English accent. I ask the woman, are you the guys in that big bus? She looks oddly at me. You know, I say, there's this big bus parked near the courthouse, I was just wondering whose it was. She says, "We came in a bus, yes." In a firm stop to our conversation, she turns back to pointing out the moving red light to the others around.
The accent registers with one of the drunk men, eventually. He asks the man, "So which part of Texas are you guys from? Australia?"
The man from England shoots back: "Devon, England."
Half an hour later, I leave for my B&B, disappointed that I haven't seen these mysterious lights. Still watching are several others, exultant that they have.
Maybe that's the Mystery of Marfa.
Actually what I see near the Marfa courthouse is a huge bus with a small car tethered behind. The back of the bus has the US, UK and EU flags painted on, with "Chris and Karen's Mystery Tour" also there. Two people I presume are Chris and Karen are in earnest conversation with two smart Texas police officers, the police cruisers parked nearby. It doesn't look like a serious conversation, no arrests or anything, just a relaxed chat. Which is why the line pops into my head.
I roll down my window and ask one of the officers the way to my B&B, which I was told was near the courthouse. He doesn't know, but directs me to the other side of the wedding cake-like building. "Must be over there," he says.
And indeed it is, just a block from the opposite corner of the courthouse. I pile all my stuff into the room and leave quickly, to manage a walk around Marfa while the light is still good. Only ten minutes after I first saw it, the bus is now parked behind the courthouse, neither of its occupants nor the police officers anywhere in evidence. Nor do I see Chris and Karen in my wandering through Marfa over the next couple of hours. I wanted to find out what the Mystery in their Tour was. Too bad.
Maybe the mystery is that they disappear so quickly.
Just about sunset, I drive out to the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Platform, where I'm one of four or five people already waiting to see these famous lights. Immediately, I can see a red light blinking steadily, stuck at the base of a distant low hill. It blinks just like that, steadily, for the two-and-a-half hours I spend there getting slowly frozen. Must be a warning light on a pole. Above it, along the crest of the hill and the adjoining ridge, there's an occasional white light that appears, and spends about ten minutes moving to the right and gradually lower, until it disappears. Clearly, those are car headlights along the highway there, that I myself drove earlier today, to get to Marfa.
And that's it. Apart from the fingernail moon and the emerging stars, there are no unexplained lights.
More people show up, through the 2.5 hours. It is now completely dark, so you can't see the hill outlined against a lighter sky. A troop of completely drunk men stagger onto the platform, and ask me through fumes of beer, "Where's the lights? Huh?" When I say I haven't seen them yet, that's clearly not good enough an answer. "What about those, dude?" they ask, pointing in turn at the blinking red light, a slowly moving car headlight, a house way to the left and a bright star. I say again, those are not the lights. They shake their heads in mock disgust and shuffle off.
They stop beside a couple to my left, and ask them the same questions. In a distinct English accent, the man says: "See that blinking red light? It's been moving up, down, left, right, every which way. And those white lights above it? I don't know what they are, but they move pretty strangely too!" The woman backs him up. "Yes, and look them now. That red one is drifting upward, look!"
I realize what's happening. Because the skyline is no longer visible, you look at these lights in relation to each other, and it's easy to be fooled by the motion of the white ones into believing that the stationary red one is moving. I try feebly to explain this, but quickly give up. All these people are sure they're looking at the Marfa lights, and who am I to try to sway that belief?
More lines pop into my head: "Over on the corner, there's a happy noise/People come from all around to watch the magic boy."
But that English accent. I ask the woman, are you the guys in that big bus? She looks oddly at me. You know, I say, there's this big bus parked near the courthouse, I was just wondering whose it was. She says, "We came in a bus, yes." In a firm stop to our conversation, she turns back to pointing out the moving red light to the others around.
The accent registers with one of the drunk men, eventually. He asks the man, "So which part of Texas are you guys from? Australia?"
The man from England shoots back: "Devon, England."
Half an hour later, I leave for my B&B, disappointed that I haven't seen these mysterious lights. Still watching are several others, exultant that they have.
Maybe that's the Mystery of Marfa.
Grey and white
The area before us is covered with plump bodies. Grey, white. Oddly, there's very little overlap. What's white is white, what's grey is grey, and the twain meet only in the occasional grey that picks its way through the whites. Stalking through on long legs.
Early morning, well below freezing and despite gloves and cap and thick socks and shoes and many layers of clothing, my fingers and toes are beginning to hurt, it's that cold. But before us, it's time for a chorus of chattering and muttering as the bodies wake, louder and louder. The stray grey takes off, or a few at a time, legs down till they get up speed, then straight behind as they skim the currents. The occasional one wheels and flies directly overhead, a sleek and swift vision as it passes.
The whites are still asleep, though again, an occasional one takes off. Much more flapping than their grey sleep partners, showing off black wingtips. From elsewhere where alarm clocks must be set earlier, skeins of their colleagues sail overhead, quickly into the middle distance where they look like so many threads flung carelessly into the air.
The exodus grows: now there are regular departures by seven or eight at a time. Then suddenly, with a great chorus of frantic chattering, all the remaining greys lift off and disappear. Suddenly, it's only white left before us.
Until they, too, lift off in a fluttering cloud of white and black and sound. They wheel about and then many just as suddenly return.
Sandhill cranes and snow geese at Bosque National Wildlife Refuge.
I had never seen, or heard, a flock lift off like that. That I did, this time, is something I owe to Vandana and her husband Krishnan. Don't miss her photographs.
Early morning, well below freezing and despite gloves and cap and thick socks and shoes and many layers of clothing, my fingers and toes are beginning to hurt, it's that cold. But before us, it's time for a chorus of chattering and muttering as the bodies wake, louder and louder. The stray grey takes off, or a few at a time, legs down till they get up speed, then straight behind as they skim the currents. The occasional one wheels and flies directly overhead, a sleek and swift vision as it passes.
The whites are still asleep, though again, an occasional one takes off. Much more flapping than their grey sleep partners, showing off black wingtips. From elsewhere where alarm clocks must be set earlier, skeins of their colleagues sail overhead, quickly into the middle distance where they look like so many threads flung carelessly into the air.
The exodus grows: now there are regular departures by seven or eight at a time. Then suddenly, with a great chorus of frantic chattering, all the remaining greys lift off and disappear. Suddenly, it's only white left before us.
Until they, too, lift off in a fluttering cloud of white and black and sound. They wheel about and then many just as suddenly return.
Sandhill cranes and snow geese at Bosque National Wildlife Refuge.
I had never seen, or heard, a flock lift off like that. That I did, this time, is something I owe to Vandana and her husband Krishnan. Don't miss her photographs.
January 14, 2008
West suggests
Done with my enormous meal, I waddle up to the counter to pay. A young man with freckles, sitting to one side of the counter and eating his own meal, spins off his seat and appears at my side.
"Farscape?" he asks. Just like that. One word, a question by itself.
There must be a deal of bewilderment on my face, because he quickly asks another question.
"Firefly, then?"
And, just as rapidfire, a third.
"Maybe stargate?
When I manage to splutter that I have no idea what he's talking about, he says: "You don't watch much TV, do you?"
I confess that I don't, that I don't even possess a TV.
"Ah. Those are all TV shows, you know. I saw you and thought, 'He's a Farscaper!'"
The woman behind the counter, listening to us, asks: "But why?
"Well, it's always worth asking," says the young man. "Besides, it's those glasses!" (Mine). "I saw them and thought, 'Geek!' Geeks love those shows."
Then he turns to me.
"But you're not a geek. And I mean that as a compliment."
That cheerful young man was Monty West, all of 14. And as I turned to gather my things, he had this:
"But Stargate, that show really rocks! You have to see it."
OK, I say, I'll check it out.
"Yeah. You do that," says Monty. Then a pause, a chuckle, and: "Monty West suggests!"
Before I left, I fired one back.
Are you a secondlifer, I ask.
"What's that?" Monty looks as bewildered as I must have.
Got you, I say. But anyway, secondlife.com? Not that I'm on there, but you've not heard of it?
"Oh right," says Monty. "But my mother doesn't let me use the internet much."
***
And that incident reminded me of a wedding I went to, many years ago.
At dinner, one of the bride's friends, a pretty young woman with long curly hair, was across the table from me. We had been introduced, but had not said much to each other since.
Out of the blue, she leaned across and said: "February, right?"
I must have looked bewildered, much like with Monty. She went on: "Or late January?"
Still bewildered. So she said: "Just say yes or no, that's all."
Yes, I said. (I have a birthday in either late January or February).
She gave a whoop of delight and turned to the groom, pumping her fist. Turned out that she prided herself on her ability to guess people's zodiac signs. So she had made a bet with the groom that she would divine mine before dinner was done.
I had no snappy comeback.
"Farscape?" he asks. Just like that. One word, a question by itself.
There must be a deal of bewilderment on my face, because he quickly asks another question.
"Firefly, then?"
And, just as rapidfire, a third.
"Maybe stargate?
When I manage to splutter that I have no idea what he's talking about, he says: "You don't watch much TV, do you?"
I confess that I don't, that I don't even possess a TV.
"Ah. Those are all TV shows, you know. I saw you and thought, 'He's a Farscaper!'"
The woman behind the counter, listening to us, asks: "But why?
"Well, it's always worth asking," says the young man. "Besides, it's those glasses!" (Mine). "I saw them and thought, 'Geek!' Geeks love those shows."
Then he turns to me.
"But you're not a geek. And I mean that as a compliment."
That cheerful young man was Monty West, all of 14. And as I turned to gather my things, he had this:
"But Stargate, that show really rocks! You have to see it."
OK, I say, I'll check it out.
"Yeah. You do that," says Monty. Then a pause, a chuckle, and: "Monty West suggests!"
Before I left, I fired one back.
Are you a secondlifer, I ask.
"What's that?" Monty looks as bewildered as I must have.
Got you, I say. But anyway, secondlife.com? Not that I'm on there, but you've not heard of it?
"Oh right," says Monty. "But my mother doesn't let me use the internet much."
And that incident reminded me of a wedding I went to, many years ago.
At dinner, one of the bride's friends, a pretty young woman with long curly hair, was across the table from me. We had been introduced, but had not said much to each other since.
Out of the blue, she leaned across and said: "February, right?"
I must have looked bewildered, much like with Monty. She went on: "Or late January?"
Still bewildered. So she said: "Just say yes or no, that's all."
Yes, I said. (I have a birthday in either late January or February).
She gave a whoop of delight and turned to the groom, pumping her fist. Turned out that she prided herself on her ability to guess people's zodiac signs. So she had made a bet with the groom that she would divine mine before dinner was done.
I had no snappy comeback.
Mother
- Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh's racial abuse case appears to have taken a new twist with claims that Aussie all-rounder Andrew Symonds had possibly misinterpreted a derogatory Punjabi phrase which sounded like 'monkey'.
The Indian team is now expected to argue at Singh's appeal hearing that he called Symonds a Maa Ki... (a derogatory word for abusing one's mother) in his native tongue.
This is the defence Harbhajan will put forward? That he didn't say "monkey", so it wasn't a racist comment, but that he did say something that would have offended any Indian; and in translation, would have offended anyone in the world?
I am not that concerned about Harbhajan actually saying that on the field: while offensive, it's what the intense heat of competition sometimes brings out in sportsmen. (Check the Sarwan-McGrath blowup).
But I am concerned about this astonishing wriggle, only to evade the racism charge. Is it our case that saying "monkey" would have been somehow worse than saying "maa ki ..."? If so, why the parallel effort to show that "monkey" is not offensive in India anyway? And is this what the "honour" of "every Indian", that the BCCI referred to in its official statement, depends on?
On Foot, My Foot
This essay I wrote is on the oped page of the Hindustan Times (Monday January 14).
As always, your comments welcome.
***
In Santa Fe with an evening free, I ran across the heavily trafficked street -- itself a thing hardly anybody does -- from my motel to watch a film. It ended a couple of hours later, and I had to return to my grubby motel and its too-charming front desk dude the way I came -- on foot. And as I did, I found myself thinking of Juhu.
That may be a measure of the how memorable the film was, of course. But why Juhu? Because after the ghastly way two women there were molested on New Year's Day, not by one or two men, but by dozens, a "senior police officer" had this to say about the victims: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the hotel on foot in that way but these people come from a different culture due to which they did and the incident occurred."
This is, of course, after another senior police officer urged the media not to make a mountain out of this molesting molehill, for "such little things happen in every society."
So you see, here I am in this land -- the USA -- that one officer was alluding to when he mentioned a "different culture", also a land where I'm sure the other officer believes "such little things" also happen -- and I'm returning from a late film. I'm leaving the theatre on foot, but get this: not one other person is doing so. Must have been a couple of hundred people watching the film with me, and every one of them is outside piling into cars. It's a cold night, yes, and no doubt most of these people don't have to simply cross a busy street to get home. But having been to many films in this country, I know it is no unusual occurrence that I'm the only one walking.
I made it back to the hotel OK. But if I had been run over by a car while crossing, would the police officer who showed up on the scene have said this to the press: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the theatre on foot in that way but this man comes from a different culture due to which he did and the incident occurred"?
There's some odd logic in that hypothetical statement, if you think about it. In my case, it was underlined by me being the only walker. You can imagine somebody looking curiously at me and, with a chuckle, saying to her husband in the passenger seat: "Ahh, these crazy foreigners!" Because in her experience, it's only foreigners, with their "different culture", whom you'd see walking across a street like this.
So if our hypothetical cop does say that in the US, what should we make of culture? Which culture, whose culture, what culture? After all, on foot here in the US, I am the exception. Yet the officer in my home city wants to suggest that people on foot there, the ones visiting from the USA, are the exception.
And never mind that the majority of Indians you'd find in Juhu, upscale though it might be, are going to be on foot anyway. That's still the nature of things in India.
Certainly much has changed in India. There's plenty of new wealth, lots of malls and multiplexes and movie-star glamour; that last was the reason these people were in the Juhu hotel. There are also plenty of cars, with newer models showing up, it seems, nearly every day. I've often thought that we in India must have the youngest and flashiest collection of cars in the world.
Yet with all those cars and change, there's still one truth about India; it hasn't changed in years, and I bet it won't for years more. This is the truth I mean: when the majority of our people move about, they don't do so in cars. Instead, they are in trains, buses, rickshaws and taxis -- or simply walking. Yes, with all the new cars, it's easy to be seduced into believing that most of the country is in them. But go out on the road yourself and count 'em: on any given street in India, at any given time, there are less people in cars than people using other means of getting around. And crowded as the suburban trains are, they are still the quickest way to get anywhere, as several million daily riders will attest. And look at what those millions do when they get off at their stations. Hordes walk the last fifteen minutes to office or home; most of the rest take buses or rickshaws.
No doubt our roads are choked with cars, no doubt that they are by far the largest fraction of the vehicles on the road. Doesn't mean that they are carrying a similar fraction of the travellers.
All of which makes the police officer's comment even more baffling.
So really, what is this culture that Juhu cop was drawing a distinction from? Is it one where people who merely walk out of a hotel must assume they are unsafe? Is it one in which people who leave their homes -- to visit, for example, a hotel on New Years' day -- must necessarily use cars? Or let me be serious now: is it a culture in which we must try everything we can to explain away and trivialize horrible incidents?
Because it seems to me that's what's going on here. These things happen in all societies; these guys who were tormented are from some alien culture, even if it is a peculiar impression of that culture; they should not have been walking in the first place.
Well, let's say it with the cops. Yes, these things happen in all societies. Yes, they should not have been walking. And yes, they are from that alien culture, whatever it is. So? None of that excuses what happened to those women. None of that should have prevented the police from catching the creeps right there, right then.
And none of that can hide the ugliness that women face every day on our streets.
Not just on New Year's Day, not just in Juhu, not just when they are walking, and not just women who visit from a "different culture." Don't believe me? Ask a random nearby woman whom you don't know. If you're a man, here's a tip: please try to do it without giving her the idea that you're just one more creep.
As always, your comments welcome.
In Santa Fe with an evening free, I ran across the heavily trafficked street -- itself a thing hardly anybody does -- from my motel to watch a film. It ended a couple of hours later, and I had to return to my grubby motel and its too-charming front desk dude the way I came -- on foot. And as I did, I found myself thinking of Juhu.
That may be a measure of the how memorable the film was, of course. But why Juhu? Because after the ghastly way two women there were molested on New Year's Day, not by one or two men, but by dozens, a "senior police officer" had this to say about the victims: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the hotel on foot in that way but these people come from a different culture due to which they did and the incident occurred."
This is, of course, after another senior police officer urged the media not to make a mountain out of this molesting molehill, for "such little things happen in every society."
So you see, here I am in this land -- the USA -- that one officer was alluding to when he mentioned a "different culture", also a land where I'm sure the other officer believes "such little things" also happen -- and I'm returning from a late film. I'm leaving the theatre on foot, but get this: not one other person is doing so. Must have been a couple of hundred people watching the film with me, and every one of them is outside piling into cars. It's a cold night, yes, and no doubt most of these people don't have to simply cross a busy street to get home. But having been to many films in this country, I know it is no unusual occurrence that I'm the only one walking.
I made it back to the hotel OK. But if I had been run over by a car while crossing, would the police officer who showed up on the scene have said this to the press: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the theatre on foot in that way but this man comes from a different culture due to which he did and the incident occurred"?
There's some odd logic in that hypothetical statement, if you think about it. In my case, it was underlined by me being the only walker. You can imagine somebody looking curiously at me and, with a chuckle, saying to her husband in the passenger seat: "Ahh, these crazy foreigners!" Because in her experience, it's only foreigners, with their "different culture", whom you'd see walking across a street like this.
So if our hypothetical cop does say that in the US, what should we make of culture? Which culture, whose culture, what culture? After all, on foot here in the US, I am the exception. Yet the officer in my home city wants to suggest that people on foot there, the ones visiting from the USA, are the exception.
And never mind that the majority of Indians you'd find in Juhu, upscale though it might be, are going to be on foot anyway. That's still the nature of things in India.
Certainly much has changed in India. There's plenty of new wealth, lots of malls and multiplexes and movie-star glamour; that last was the reason these people were in the Juhu hotel. There are also plenty of cars, with newer models showing up, it seems, nearly every day. I've often thought that we in India must have the youngest and flashiest collection of cars in the world.
Yet with all those cars and change, there's still one truth about India; it hasn't changed in years, and I bet it won't for years more. This is the truth I mean: when the majority of our people move about, they don't do so in cars. Instead, they are in trains, buses, rickshaws and taxis -- or simply walking. Yes, with all the new cars, it's easy to be seduced into believing that most of the country is in them. But go out on the road yourself and count 'em: on any given street in India, at any given time, there are less people in cars than people using other means of getting around. And crowded as the suburban trains are, they are still the quickest way to get anywhere, as several million daily riders will attest. And look at what those millions do when they get off at their stations. Hordes walk the last fifteen minutes to office or home; most of the rest take buses or rickshaws.
No doubt our roads are choked with cars, no doubt that they are by far the largest fraction of the vehicles on the road. Doesn't mean that they are carrying a similar fraction of the travellers.
All of which makes the police officer's comment even more baffling.
So really, what is this culture that Juhu cop was drawing a distinction from? Is it one where people who merely walk out of a hotel must assume they are unsafe? Is it one in which people who leave their homes -- to visit, for example, a hotel on New Years' day -- must necessarily use cars? Or let me be serious now: is it a culture in which we must try everything we can to explain away and trivialize horrible incidents?
Because it seems to me that's what's going on here. These things happen in all societies; these guys who were tormented are from some alien culture, even if it is a peculiar impression of that culture; they should not have been walking in the first place.
Well, let's say it with the cops. Yes, these things happen in all societies. Yes, they should not have been walking. And yes, they are from that alien culture, whatever it is. So? None of that excuses what happened to those women. None of that should have prevented the police from catching the creeps right there, right then.
And none of that can hide the ugliness that women face every day on our streets.
Not just on New Year's Day, not just in Juhu, not just when they are walking, and not just women who visit from a "different culture." Don't believe me? Ask a random nearby woman whom you don't know. If you're a man, here's a tip: please try to do it without giving her the idea that you're just one more creep.
January 13, 2008
Third cartridge, and knives
My collection of used cartridge cases from guns is now up to three. Found one on the side of a road in Texas. I mean, a lonely road with nobody in sight and no other cars passing for long minutes on end. I have stopped to stretch my legs, and I have stopped right next to this crumpled brass case, lying there on the tarmac. I pick it up and look around cautiously. Anyone about to fire at me? Anything at all that looks like the source of this thing? Anything at all that looks like it may have caused it to be fired?
No. All around me are giant yucca cacti common in this area, body and big prickly green ball for a head with a pale-flowering stalk erupting from the top, some 15 or 20 feet tall. It's like being in the midst of a gathering of Dr Seuss characters. It's unlikely, though far from impossible, that one of them fired the bullet that's left behind this casing.
***
Prada Marfa is a ... what? A roadside glass-fronted boutique with handbags and high-heeled shoes on display: gold, black, red, brown, white, black with silver lining, etc. But if a boutique is what it looks like, a boutique is not what it is. In fact, a plaque next to it says it "will never function as a place of commerce, the door cannot be opened."
Nope, this is a (still quoting from the plaque) "site specific, permanent land art project by artists Elmgreen and Dragset modeled after a Prada boutique." The site it is specific to is on the southern verge of highway 90, west of the dusty one-road town of Valentine. I stand in front of it with my camera ready for a full 20 minutes, waiting for a car to pass on the highway so I can get a photograph of the whole affair with that car reflected in the glass. No luck. That's how busy this highway is. That's where this land art project has landed.
One of the large plates of glass has a palm-sized circle of damage, as if someone flung a stone at it.
Or maybe shot a bullet, leaving casings. I suppose somebody, I mean somebody, wanted those shoes badly enough.
There's commentary too. I nearly miss it, because it is spray-painted graffiti on the edge of the road and I drive past almost without noticing. Put the car into reverse -- still no other car for miles behind -- and back up till I can read the large letters: "Please Redeem A Dying America".
***
I browse through a gift shop that has prominently displayed yellow printed signs. They say: "Please Do Not Bounce, Kick or Throw the Merchandise."
The signs are not for sale.
On a fridge in a community kitchen at a spot where I camp, someone has arranged little word magnets in a line, to form a sentence. At least, I think it is a sentence. It says: "gorgeous blue blood above the smooth wind when winter rose from purple rain like sordid mist said worship elaborate sun vision."
It was all going pretty intriguingly, till that "worship."
***
At a rest stop near Pyote, I get out to stretch. Immediately behind me is a tall Indian man bending over his car's engine, fiddling with something inside. He straightens and turns, and sees me. I immediately start in recognition, because he looks like a cross between the actor Om Puri and a friendly motel owner I met in Montgomery, Alabama. He looks questioningly at me, so I explain: "You look like someone I met in Montgomery, Alabama."
"No," he says, reaching out to shake hands. "I'm John. From LA. We don't know each other, but we can get to know each other here!"
With that, he turns back to his engine with renewed vigour. A couple of minutes later, he shuts the hood, leaps into the car and vanishes.
From the bathroom emerges another Indian, this one unshaven and tiny. Almost petite. He walks lightly over to his vehicle, climbs in, starts it up and rumbles off.
An enormous 18-wheeler truck.
***
On the outskirts of Amarillo, a large sign says:
No. All around me are giant yucca cacti common in this area, body and big prickly green ball for a head with a pale-flowering stalk erupting from the top, some 15 or 20 feet tall. It's like being in the midst of a gathering of Dr Seuss characters. It's unlikely, though far from impossible, that one of them fired the bullet that's left behind this casing.
Prada Marfa is a ... what? A roadside glass-fronted boutique with handbags and high-heeled shoes on display: gold, black, red, brown, white, black with silver lining, etc. But if a boutique is what it looks like, a boutique is not what it is. In fact, a plaque next to it says it "will never function as a place of commerce, the door cannot be opened."
Nope, this is a (still quoting from the plaque) "site specific, permanent land art project by artists Elmgreen and Dragset modeled after a Prada boutique." The site it is specific to is on the southern verge of highway 90, west of the dusty one-road town of Valentine. I stand in front of it with my camera ready for a full 20 minutes, waiting for a car to pass on the highway so I can get a photograph of the whole affair with that car reflected in the glass. No luck. That's how busy this highway is. That's where this land art project has landed.
One of the large plates of glass has a palm-sized circle of damage, as if someone flung a stone at it.
Or maybe shot a bullet, leaving casings. I suppose somebody, I mean somebody, wanted those shoes badly enough.
There's commentary too. I nearly miss it, because it is spray-painted graffiti on the edge of the road and I drive past almost without noticing. Put the car into reverse -- still no other car for miles behind -- and back up till I can read the large letters: "Please Redeem A Dying America".
I browse through a gift shop that has prominently displayed yellow printed signs. They say: "Please Do Not Bounce, Kick or Throw the Merchandise."
The signs are not for sale.
On a fridge in a community kitchen at a spot where I camp, someone has arranged little word magnets in a line, to form a sentence. At least, I think it is a sentence. It says: "gorgeous blue blood above the smooth wind when winter rose from purple rain like sordid mist said worship elaborate sun vision."
It was all going pretty intriguingly, till that "worship."
At a rest stop near Pyote, I get out to stretch. Immediately behind me is a tall Indian man bending over his car's engine, fiddling with something inside. He straightens and turns, and sees me. I immediately start in recognition, because he looks like a cross between the actor Om Puri and a friendly motel owner I met in Montgomery, Alabama. He looks questioningly at me, so I explain: "You look like someone I met in Montgomery, Alabama."
"No," he says, reaching out to shake hands. "I'm John. From LA. We don't know each other, but we can get to know each other here!"
With that, he turns back to his engine with renewed vigour. A couple of minutes later, he shuts the hood, leaps into the car and vanishes.
From the bathroom emerges another Indian, this one unshaven and tiny. Almost petite. He walks lightly over to his vehicle, climbs in, starts it up and rumbles off.
An enormous 18-wheeler truck.
On the outskirts of Amarillo, a large sign says:
- Bates Motel. Each Room With a Shower. Taxidermy Ahead.
- Bates Motel. Each Room With a Shower. Knives Sharpened.
January 12, 2008
Salil Agrawal
One of my closest buddies from college, Salil Agrawal, died in New Delhi on Thursday. I got the news in a remote spot I had found my way to on my travels, and I sat there under a tree with tears welling in my eyes. I've not been able to stop thinking about him since.
In his early 30s, Salil found he had a serious heart problem, and some years ago even had a stroke. But he coped admirably with it all, and while taking the dietary and physical precautions he needed to, he continued working and living a perfectly normal life. His wife Poonam has been a strong and courageous support over the years. It was always a joy to visit them in Delhi. We had our political differences, Salil and I, but he taught me an important lesson: it didn't interfere with the bond we shared.
All of us who knew Salil remember him as always quick-witted and mischievous, but with never a hint of malice. (Another lesson). There was always some prank he was getting up to, some new way to pull people's legs. And while thinking about all that, I also thought: sure it's sad to lose a buddy like him. But knowing him, if he could see all of us, his friends, grieving over him, he would laugh at us. And so I thought I'd remember him by sharing two small memories of him.
This was the man who, when I was once standing in an outside corridors of one of our college buildings, between the wide pillars and thus right next to a 3-foot drop to the ground -- this man came up from behind me, grabbed my arm and nearly pushed me over. Nearly gave me a heart attack. And as he nearly gave me that heart attack, he shouted loudly "Bach gaya!" ("Saved you!")
It later became a favourite gag.
If you actually did fall down, got a scrape or bruise, and if Salil was in the vicinity, you'd be sure that he'd be the first by your side. With a look of deep concern in his face, but with that always-present twinkle, he'd ask: "Kam to nahin lagi?" ("Hope you're not hurt too little?")
This last is something I inflict on my eight-year-old, and he knows Salil that way. In seriousness, it teaches him to ignore the minor injuries and carry on.
And as I finish typing these words, I have Salil's grin in my mind, the same youthful face and laugh from even the last time we met, not so long ago. (Still, too long). And even with the lump that catches in my throat, it makes me smile too. Cut from the best cloth, my good friend Salil.
In his early 30s, Salil found he had a serious heart problem, and some years ago even had a stroke. But he coped admirably with it all, and while taking the dietary and physical precautions he needed to, he continued working and living a perfectly normal life. His wife Poonam has been a strong and courageous support over the years. It was always a joy to visit them in Delhi. We had our political differences, Salil and I, but he taught me an important lesson: it didn't interfere with the bond we shared.
All of us who knew Salil remember him as always quick-witted and mischievous, but with never a hint of malice. (Another lesson). There was always some prank he was getting up to, some new way to pull people's legs. And while thinking about all that, I also thought: sure it's sad to lose a buddy like him. But knowing him, if he could see all of us, his friends, grieving over him, he would laugh at us. And so I thought I'd remember him by sharing two small memories of him.
It later became a favourite gag.
This last is something I inflict on my eight-year-old, and he knows Salil that way. In seriousness, it teaches him to ignore the minor injuries and carry on.
And as I finish typing these words, I have Salil's grin in my mind, the same youthful face and laugh from even the last time we met, not so long ago. (Still, too long). And even with the lump that catches in my throat, it makes me smile too. Cut from the best cloth, my good friend Salil.
January 10, 2008
Wine and copper
All I've ever known Marfa for is the lights. Never seen them, but always wanted to see for myself what it's all about. So since I was going to be in this part of the world, I put it on the itinerary -- and in fact I hope to go make an attempt to see the lights tonight.
But as I drive into Marfa, there's an irresistible sight. From a bridge on the highway, I see to my right a young couple sitting at a table in an open lot next to a building, drinking wine in the brilliant mid-afternoon sun. What on earth?
Irresistible. So I turn in past the building -- it has a huge blue sign outside saying, simply, "Cu" -- and around the back to where the couple is looking questioningly at me as I drive up. I open my window and say, I was passing and I saw you guys sitting like this and I had to come ask what this is about. Mind if I take a picture?
Big smiles. Her name is Rebecca, and his is Kent. After the picture, she says, well come in and take a look at the building, and have a glass of wine! It's from a local winery I had passed a few miles out of town. Not bad, as far as this not-quite-wine-expert can judge. Just inside the doorway, rock music blares from an extremely stylish portable CD player -- why do I never find ones like this?
Rebecca walks me through the building. It's a property that's been in her family for a while, and her uncle used to run some kind of restaurant here that closed down. Now she has moved here from Key West, Florida -- quite a commute, that -- to remodel this place and try to set up an eatery of sorts here. Coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches.
Really? Here in Marfa? Will she get enough of a clientele?
Kent, who's actually from nearby Alpine, answers that one. Oh yeah, he says. This has become a sort of art destination now. There's the Chinati Foundation Museum that's quite well known, but also lots of other galleries and studios. Why Marfa? One of those imponderables, I suppose. Warmth, desert climate, blue skies, maybe those are reasons enough.
So now Rebecca wants to cater to those arty visitors, and to people like me.
And while she's showing me around, she says she has these copper paintings by her uncle that she will mount on the wall, and this room will be the Copper Kitchen, and that one the Copper Something Else ... I interrupt to tell her of Bombay's well-known "Copper Chimney". She smiles, and points to her own chimney. We got that one, she says.
And then the (copper) penny drops. The blue sign outside. Yes.
Maybe when they get this place off the ground, Rebecca and Kent should spend a judicious couple of hours every day sitting in the sun and drinking wine at a table, in convenient view of the highway.
But as I drive into Marfa, there's an irresistible sight. From a bridge on the highway, I see to my right a young couple sitting at a table in an open lot next to a building, drinking wine in the brilliant mid-afternoon sun. What on earth?
Irresistible. So I turn in past the building -- it has a huge blue sign outside saying, simply, "Cu" -- and around the back to where the couple is looking questioningly at me as I drive up. I open my window and say, I was passing and I saw you guys sitting like this and I had to come ask what this is about. Mind if I take a picture?
Big smiles. Her name is Rebecca, and his is Kent. After the picture, she says, well come in and take a look at the building, and have a glass of wine! It's from a local winery I had passed a few miles out of town. Not bad, as far as this not-quite-wine-expert can judge. Just inside the doorway, rock music blares from an extremely stylish portable CD player -- why do I never find ones like this?
Rebecca walks me through the building. It's a property that's been in her family for a while, and her uncle used to run some kind of restaurant here that closed down. Now she has moved here from Key West, Florida -- quite a commute, that -- to remodel this place and try to set up an eatery of sorts here. Coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches.
Really? Here in Marfa? Will she get enough of a clientele?
Kent, who's actually from nearby Alpine, answers that one. Oh yeah, he says. This has become a sort of art destination now. There's the Chinati Foundation Museum that's quite well known, but also lots of other galleries and studios. Why Marfa? One of those imponderables, I suppose. Warmth, desert climate, blue skies, maybe those are reasons enough.
So now Rebecca wants to cater to those arty visitors, and to people like me.
And while she's showing me around, she says she has these copper paintings by her uncle that she will mount on the wall, and this room will be the Copper Kitchen, and that one the Copper Something Else ... I interrupt to tell her of Bombay's well-known "Copper Chimney". She smiles, and points to her own chimney. We got that one, she says.
And then the (copper) penny drops. The blue sign outside. Yes.
Maybe when they get this place off the ground, Rebecca and Kent should spend a judicious couple of hours every day sitting in the sun and drinking wine at a table, in convenient view of the highway.
No Similar Values
I have this essay in the latest (January) issue of Seminar.
(Thanks to Rahul for his remarks and suggestions to tighten this up).
***
In August 1991, I was on a long driving trip through the southern states of the US. I had the radio on, and that's how I heard the big news. In the USSR, communist die-hards -- unmindful of the pace at which history was passing them by, alarmed by the years of perestroika and glasnost -- had staged a last-gasp attempt to regain power. It was during this coup attempt, to remind you, that Boris Yeltsin stood dramatically on the hood of a tank in a photograph seen the world over, intent on fighting the coup leaders.
And yes, it was a last gasp. Laden down as it was with the weight of its own contradictions, not even these once-powerful men could hold the USSR together; and oddly enough, their very attempt to do so only hastened what happened afterwards. Only days later, the coup, such as it was, collapsed. Only months later, the USSR imploded spectacularly, leaving a slew of what the American humorist Dave Barry memorably described as "throat-lozenge-sized independent republics with names like Huzzubegonia, whose primary military activity is knocking over statues of Lenin". And today we can even look back in wonder -- did that enormous improbable experiment actually happen? And exist for seven decades? Or did we imagine it?
But I remember listening to the radio in those frenetic days, and I remember most of all a particular curious turn of phrase. Routinely, the reports described leaders of the coup as "conservative". Curious, because especially after ten years lived in the United States, I had grown used to the broad notion that "liberal" equaled "left-leaning", usually meaning the Democratic Party; "conservative" equaled "rightist", and usually referred to the Republicans. In retrospect, this was a thoroughly simplistic view of the political spectrum, but there you are.
Now here were these arch-Communists in Moscow, arch-leftists, being referred to as "conservatives".
Of course, at the time and in the years since, I grew to understand two things.
One, that "conservative" as used in those reports really means "reactionary", or perhaps "addicted to the old ways." Applied to the men of the coup, it meant that they were fearful of change, of losing power and pelf and privilege, anxious most of all to return to the way the USSR used to be.
Two, that the "spectrum" from right to left, from conservative to liberal, is not really the straight line you might imagine it is. It's better described as a circle; perhaps even better as a two-dimensional chart. In any case, if you trudge along that line, you will eventually run into fellow-travellers you might have thought were off at the other end. Left meets right, east meets west, whatever you like: the further left you go, the better the chance you'll end up in a never-never land also frequented by people who have tramped to the far right and beyond. And vice versa.
And when leaders trudge that far, ideology falls somewhere by the wayside. Left or right, what drives them instead is the seduction of power, the yearning for the old tyrannies and certainties. That's what happened in the old USSR during that momentous August of 1991.
Oddly enough, it is these lessons, those radio reports, that have been on my mind as I read about a place called Nandigram.
For what, after all, is the ideology of a person who sees power through the barrel of a gun, or at the end of a wielded sword?
***
The facts of Nandigram are not my concern here; they have been discussed at length elsewhere. There's this to say, though: Nandigram in West Bengal is emblematic of battles that I think India has seen plenty of and will have to endure plenty more of, as we pursue what is called "development."
Note: I said "development" and not "globalization". Meaning, the sentiments in Nandigram are not new ones we've never encountered before. Through the years, the way we have developed has set off resentment and fierce opposition. By now, it has raised hard questions about what "development" itself means. So let me put down here, to start, one thought about development.
Writing my book about dams on the Narmada River ("The Narmada Dammed", Penguin 2002) made me understand something fundamental about that rancorous issue. The reason to object to the Sardar Sarovar dam is not shoddy relief and rehabilitation, nor lip service to environmental issues, nor something else along those lines. Though there's enough wrong in each of those areas, there's actually something worse. If you read the Government's own literature about the project, you reach an inescapable conclusion: the Government has no intention of delivering on its stated promise. And that's the real reason to oppose this dam. (In other words, the best case against the dam is made not by its opponents, but by those who are building it).
The promise was that water from the Narmada would be delivered to the thirstiest parts of Gujarat, perennially drought-stricken Kutch and Saurashtra. Yet a few years ago, we had the much photographed sight of the long-dry Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad, filled to the brim with Narmada water.
A pretty sight, sure. But the Sabarmati flowing again does nothing to help Kutch and Saurashtra. Ahmedabad doesn't need water like those districts do. No plans that I know of called for the Sabarmati to be filled from the Narmada. Yet that's what happened.
In other words, this was just a picturesque stunt, deliberately staged in the big city to shore up political support. It had nothing to do with the great promise of the Narmada, but everything to do with politics.
And too often, that's what development has meant to us in India: it has fallen some way short of promise, and it invariably has political overtones.
So you could make the argument that the Government's plans for Nandigram did not find favour in Nandigram because people remember the failures of other "development" projects. That holds lessons for the future.
***
But you could also make another argument. In the CPI(M) using Nandigram to attack political opponents; in the effort to tar an entire half of the political spectrum with the blood and shame of Nandigram; in the litmus test it inevitably has become: in these things, you know that Nandigram is about politics.
Indeed, I believe Nandigram is just the latest in a string of wrangles that have emerged from the pattern of our development for decades now. If today it is a SEZ there, earlier it was SEZs elsewhere, or those dams on the Narmada, or a profoundly mistaken power agreement with Enron in coastal Maharashtra. Looked at that way, Nandigram is no different from those other issues.
So why the fuss, then? After all, nobody pays much attention to what's happening in the Narmada Valley any more, even though (or perhaps because) affected people shout about their troubles just as they have for years. Nobody pays much attention to the Enron plant either, because Enron dissolved so completely a few years ago. Yet Nandigram makes people sit up and take notice.
I believe the reason is this: on the face of it, Nandigram represents the failure of the left to practice what it preaches. There's talk on the left about democracy and people's participation and the attention to the poor: yet in Nandigram, all those were treated as so much garbage. That perceived failure causes heartbreak among those who lean ideologically left, for such disdain is what the left usually accuses the right of. What must we make of a "left" party indulging, on the face of it, in the same chicanery?
To answer that, let me tell you about an open letter circulated towards the end of November. It is a response to a short statement on Nandigram issued by a few well-known US-based academics and writers: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Vijay Prashad (the sole Indian) and some others. In fact, the letter is actually addressed to Tariq Ali, whom the writer, Kunal Chattopadhyay of Jadavpur University, says he has admired for a long time.
The Chomsky/Zinn/Ali/et al statement tries to walk a tighrope between what it suggests are two sides of the "left". "It would be impetuous to split the left", it warns, and "this is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist."
As often happens with such attempts, it ends up saying very little of any note, and that's putting it kindly. After all, and for just one thing, why this prescription that the left must stick together, think alike? Whatever happened to dissent and independent thinking, the great strength of a liberal outlook?
One sentence in the letter turns into something of a red flag to Chattopadhyay. It reads thus: "We are concerned about ... what appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values." This prompts Chattopadhyay to ask Ali point blank: "Who are these people who share similar values? Just what do you know about the values shared by those in governmental authority in West Bengal?"
He goes on to describe how CPI(M) leader Benoy Konar urged women in the party "to show Medha Patkar their buttocks" as an indication of what they thought of Patkar's concern for Nandigram. "When Medha tried to go to Nandigram," he writes, some "supporters of the CPI(M) indeed followed Konar's advice and showed Medha their buttocks."
Chattopadhyay then suggests to Tariq Ali and his colleagues: "I dare you ... to come forward and assert that you share similar values as these people."
And that's the point of it all, right there. Some years ago members of the Shiv Sena stripped to their chaddis outside the film star Dilip Kumar's Bombay home, protesting an award he got from Pakistan. How the chaddi-show amounted to anything but perversion, I don't know. But here we have the CPI(M) going one better, or worse. Just what values are there to be found in such people, let alone "similar values" to those who signed that statement?
The truth is that such people know nothing about values; in fact, values are not even any kind of consideration for them. So really, there is no "split" here, no two sides of the left. There is the left, and there are the fellows who have trudged so far beyond that they occupy only that never-never land where power is the end and the means. No ideology, no values, no principles, no left, no right. Only power. And underwear and buttocks.
And given that, I don't see why there should be any hand-wringing or agonizing over any particular "failure" of the left here. The thugs of Nandigram are no more representative of the left than they are of the right; what's more, they are no more representative of the left than the thugs of Gujarat '02 were representative of the right. Every sensible, responsible rightist thinker or leader would have been repulsed by the killing in Gujarat, and so it is absurd to tar the whole right with the bloody brush of 2002. In exactly the same way, sensible, responsible leftist thinkers and leaders have been repulsed by what has happened in Nandigram. They cannot be tarred with that brush. This was no "failure of the left", this was just crime.
***
Yet like with other such crimes, there was the usual slew of "Where's your outrage over Nandigram?" demands. About some ghastly crimes -- though not Nandigram -- I first get news from one of innumerable outrage-mongers out there. To me, it looks like they hear about the ghastly crime and their earliest thought is not "how can I donate blood?", or "anyone I know who's been hurt?", things like that. Instead, they think: "Let's write an article, or send a message, or call, demanding of these guys we don't like why they haven't yet expressed outrage."
Not that this needs reacting to. It's hardly that I plan to draw up a list of appropriately outraged reactions to, and condemnations of, the Nandigram violence. Doing so is meaningless, not least because it falls into the trap laid by the outrage-mongers. For you know: however long that list is, it is never long enough, nor outraged enough, for them. And when the next crime comes along, as it inevitably does, it's as if the list never was. Back to square one: why haven't you condemned this yet?
No, this game interests me not in the slightest.
But even so, this kind of response to Nandigram makes me wonder: are we in a time of competitive outrage? Do such incidents amount only to a pretext for some of us to demonstrate our particular righteous horror, to demand to know why others aren't as horrified?
Yet consider. Walking down the street, you and I, utter strangers, witness a brutal murder. What would you assume about me? That I must be unaffected by this crime, callous to it? Or at any rate, that my reaction to it must depend on my particular ideological slant, which, if different from yours, must therefore mean that I feel zero outrage? Would you turn to denounce me because I haven't yet shown outrage over the murder?
My feeling is, you're reading these questions in bemused wonder. Who would stop to think in these terms? Would you even notice me on the street? Wouldn't you rush to help, or call the police, or something?
"She doesn't think like me. Therefore this murder must make her happy": why do we reduce our shared humanity to this small-minded, twisted state?
There was a simple assumption all of us made, perhaps unconsciously, as we grew up: when something horrible happens, my fellow human being is appalled by it as I myself am. Doesn't matter which side of which ideological debate she haunts, she's appalled. Period. Why does Nandigram instead become a litmus test of ideological leanings?
***
"It would be impetuous to split the left," says the Chomsky/Zinn/Ali letter. Yet keeping your distance from thugs hardly amounts to "splitting the left" (or the right, for that matter). What's impetuous, and perhaps dangerously naive, is to fall into the trap of assuming a split along these lines at all. Because in that direction lies the wasteland of political mud-slinging.
The real split that Nandigram stands for -- and the "left" is certainly strong enough to recognize and point it out -- is between governance, or justice, and their absence. Between those who stand for justice, and those who spit on it.
In that sense, it may tell us something about our Indian future. Just as a last-gasp coup in the USSR said things about that country's future.
(Thanks to Rahul for his remarks and suggestions to tighten this up).
In August 1991, I was on a long driving trip through the southern states of the US. I had the radio on, and that's how I heard the big news. In the USSR, communist die-hards -- unmindful of the pace at which history was passing them by, alarmed by the years of perestroika and glasnost -- had staged a last-gasp attempt to regain power. It was during this coup attempt, to remind you, that Boris Yeltsin stood dramatically on the hood of a tank in a photograph seen the world over, intent on fighting the coup leaders.
And yes, it was a last gasp. Laden down as it was with the weight of its own contradictions, not even these once-powerful men could hold the USSR together; and oddly enough, their very attempt to do so only hastened what happened afterwards. Only days later, the coup, such as it was, collapsed. Only months later, the USSR imploded spectacularly, leaving a slew of what the American humorist Dave Barry memorably described as "throat-lozenge-sized independent republics with names like Huzzubegonia, whose primary military activity is knocking over statues of Lenin". And today we can even look back in wonder -- did that enormous improbable experiment actually happen? And exist for seven decades? Or did we imagine it?
But I remember listening to the radio in those frenetic days, and I remember most of all a particular curious turn of phrase. Routinely, the reports described leaders of the coup as "conservative". Curious, because especially after ten years lived in the United States, I had grown used to the broad notion that "liberal" equaled "left-leaning", usually meaning the Democratic Party; "conservative" equaled "rightist", and usually referred to the Republicans. In retrospect, this was a thoroughly simplistic view of the political spectrum, but there you are.
Now here were these arch-Communists in Moscow, arch-leftists, being referred to as "conservatives".
Of course, at the time and in the years since, I grew to understand two things.
One, that "conservative" as used in those reports really means "reactionary", or perhaps "addicted to the old ways." Applied to the men of the coup, it meant that they were fearful of change, of losing power and pelf and privilege, anxious most of all to return to the way the USSR used to be.
Two, that the "spectrum" from right to left, from conservative to liberal, is not really the straight line you might imagine it is. It's better described as a circle; perhaps even better as a two-dimensional chart. In any case, if you trudge along that line, you will eventually run into fellow-travellers you might have thought were off at the other end. Left meets right, east meets west, whatever you like: the further left you go, the better the chance you'll end up in a never-never land also frequented by people who have tramped to the far right and beyond. And vice versa.
And when leaders trudge that far, ideology falls somewhere by the wayside. Left or right, what drives them instead is the seduction of power, the yearning for the old tyrannies and certainties. That's what happened in the old USSR during that momentous August of 1991.
Oddly enough, it is these lessons, those radio reports, that have been on my mind as I read about a place called Nandigram.
For what, after all, is the ideology of a person who sees power through the barrel of a gun, or at the end of a wielded sword?
***
The facts of Nandigram are not my concern here; they have been discussed at length elsewhere. There's this to say, though: Nandigram in West Bengal is emblematic of battles that I think India has seen plenty of and will have to endure plenty more of, as we pursue what is called "development."
Note: I said "development" and not "globalization". Meaning, the sentiments in Nandigram are not new ones we've never encountered before. Through the years, the way we have developed has set off resentment and fierce opposition. By now, it has raised hard questions about what "development" itself means. So let me put down here, to start, one thought about development.
Writing my book about dams on the Narmada River ("The Narmada Dammed", Penguin 2002) made me understand something fundamental about that rancorous issue. The reason to object to the Sardar Sarovar dam is not shoddy relief and rehabilitation, nor lip service to environmental issues, nor something else along those lines. Though there's enough wrong in each of those areas, there's actually something worse. If you read the Government's own literature about the project, you reach an inescapable conclusion: the Government has no intention of delivering on its stated promise. And that's the real reason to oppose this dam. (In other words, the best case against the dam is made not by its opponents, but by those who are building it).
The promise was that water from the Narmada would be delivered to the thirstiest parts of Gujarat, perennially drought-stricken Kutch and Saurashtra. Yet a few years ago, we had the much photographed sight of the long-dry Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad, filled to the brim with Narmada water.
A pretty sight, sure. But the Sabarmati flowing again does nothing to help Kutch and Saurashtra. Ahmedabad doesn't need water like those districts do. No plans that I know of called for the Sabarmati to be filled from the Narmada. Yet that's what happened.
In other words, this was just a picturesque stunt, deliberately staged in the big city to shore up political support. It had nothing to do with the great promise of the Narmada, but everything to do with politics.
And too often, that's what development has meant to us in India: it has fallen some way short of promise, and it invariably has political overtones.
So you could make the argument that the Government's plans for Nandigram did not find favour in Nandigram because people remember the failures of other "development" projects. That holds lessons for the future.
***
But you could also make another argument. In the CPI(M) using Nandigram to attack political opponents; in the effort to tar an entire half of the political spectrum with the blood and shame of Nandigram; in the litmus test it inevitably has become: in these things, you know that Nandigram is about politics.
Indeed, I believe Nandigram is just the latest in a string of wrangles that have emerged from the pattern of our development for decades now. If today it is a SEZ there, earlier it was SEZs elsewhere, or those dams on the Narmada, or a profoundly mistaken power agreement with Enron in coastal Maharashtra. Looked at that way, Nandigram is no different from those other issues.
So why the fuss, then? After all, nobody pays much attention to what's happening in the Narmada Valley any more, even though (or perhaps because) affected people shout about their troubles just as they have for years. Nobody pays much attention to the Enron plant either, because Enron dissolved so completely a few years ago. Yet Nandigram makes people sit up and take notice.
I believe the reason is this: on the face of it, Nandigram represents the failure of the left to practice what it preaches. There's talk on the left about democracy and people's participation and the attention to the poor: yet in Nandigram, all those were treated as so much garbage. That perceived failure causes heartbreak among those who lean ideologically left, for such disdain is what the left usually accuses the right of. What must we make of a "left" party indulging, on the face of it, in the same chicanery?
To answer that, let me tell you about an open letter circulated towards the end of November. It is a response to a short statement on Nandigram issued by a few well-known US-based academics and writers: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Vijay Prashad (the sole Indian) and some others. In fact, the letter is actually addressed to Tariq Ali, whom the writer, Kunal Chattopadhyay of Jadavpur University, says he has admired for a long time.
The Chomsky/Zinn/Ali/et al statement tries to walk a tighrope between what it suggests are two sides of the "left". "It would be impetuous to split the left", it warns, and "this is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist."
As often happens with such attempts, it ends up saying very little of any note, and that's putting it kindly. After all, and for just one thing, why this prescription that the left must stick together, think alike? Whatever happened to dissent and independent thinking, the great strength of a liberal outlook?
One sentence in the letter turns into something of a red flag to Chattopadhyay. It reads thus: "We are concerned about ... what appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values." This prompts Chattopadhyay to ask Ali point blank: "Who are these people who share similar values? Just what do you know about the values shared by those in governmental authority in West Bengal?"
He goes on to describe how CPI(M) leader Benoy Konar urged women in the party "to show Medha Patkar their buttocks" as an indication of what they thought of Patkar's concern for Nandigram. "When Medha tried to go to Nandigram," he writes, some "supporters of the CPI(M) indeed followed Konar's advice and showed Medha their buttocks."
Chattopadhyay then suggests to Tariq Ali and his colleagues: "I dare you ... to come forward and assert that you share similar values as these people."
And that's the point of it all, right there. Some years ago members of the Shiv Sena stripped to their chaddis outside the film star Dilip Kumar's Bombay home, protesting an award he got from Pakistan. How the chaddi-show amounted to anything but perversion, I don't know. But here we have the CPI(M) going one better, or worse. Just what values are there to be found in such people, let alone "similar values" to those who signed that statement?
The truth is that such people know nothing about values; in fact, values are not even any kind of consideration for them. So really, there is no "split" here, no two sides of the left. There is the left, and there are the fellows who have trudged so far beyond that they occupy only that never-never land where power is the end and the means. No ideology, no values, no principles, no left, no right. Only power. And underwear and buttocks.
And given that, I don't see why there should be any hand-wringing or agonizing over any particular "failure" of the left here. The thugs of Nandigram are no more representative of the left than they are of the right; what's more, they are no more representative of the left than the thugs of Gujarat '02 were representative of the right. Every sensible, responsible rightist thinker or leader would have been repulsed by the killing in Gujarat, and so it is absurd to tar the whole right with the bloody brush of 2002. In exactly the same way, sensible, responsible leftist thinkers and leaders have been repulsed by what has happened in Nandigram. They cannot be tarred with that brush. This was no "failure of the left", this was just crime.
***
Yet like with other such crimes, there was the usual slew of "Where's your outrage over Nandigram?" demands. About some ghastly crimes -- though not Nandigram -- I first get news from one of innumerable outrage-mongers out there. To me, it looks like they hear about the ghastly crime and their earliest thought is not "how can I donate blood?", or "anyone I know who's been hurt?", things like that. Instead, they think: "Let's write an article, or send a message, or call, demanding of these guys we don't like why they haven't yet expressed outrage."
Not that this needs reacting to. It's hardly that I plan to draw up a list of appropriately outraged reactions to, and condemnations of, the Nandigram violence. Doing so is meaningless, not least because it falls into the trap laid by the outrage-mongers. For you know: however long that list is, it is never long enough, nor outraged enough, for them. And when the next crime comes along, as it inevitably does, it's as if the list never was. Back to square one: why haven't you condemned this yet?
No, this game interests me not in the slightest.
But even so, this kind of response to Nandigram makes me wonder: are we in a time of competitive outrage? Do such incidents amount only to a pretext for some of us to demonstrate our particular righteous horror, to demand to know why others aren't as horrified?
Yet consider. Walking down the street, you and I, utter strangers, witness a brutal murder. What would you assume about me? That I must be unaffected by this crime, callous to it? Or at any rate, that my reaction to it must depend on my particular ideological slant, which, if different from yours, must therefore mean that I feel zero outrage? Would you turn to denounce me because I haven't yet shown outrage over the murder?
My feeling is, you're reading these questions in bemused wonder. Who would stop to think in these terms? Would you even notice me on the street? Wouldn't you rush to help, or call the police, or something?
"She doesn't think like me. Therefore this murder must make her happy": why do we reduce our shared humanity to this small-minded, twisted state?
There was a simple assumption all of us made, perhaps unconsciously, as we grew up: when something horrible happens, my fellow human being is appalled by it as I myself am. Doesn't matter which side of which ideological debate she haunts, she's appalled. Period. Why does Nandigram instead become a litmus test of ideological leanings?
***
"It would be impetuous to split the left," says the Chomsky/Zinn/Ali letter. Yet keeping your distance from thugs hardly amounts to "splitting the left" (or the right, for that matter). What's impetuous, and perhaps dangerously naive, is to fall into the trap of assuming a split along these lines at all. Because in that direction lies the wasteland of political mud-slinging.
The real split that Nandigram stands for -- and the "left" is certainly strong enough to recognize and point it out -- is between governance, or justice, and their absence. Between those who stand for justice, and those who spit on it.
In that sense, it may tell us something about our Indian future. Just as a last-gasp coup in the USSR said things about that country's future.
Hot spring evening
The drive, if rugged and beautiful, began to seem interminable. 15 miles on pretty much rubble, up and down through canyons and valleys and across hills. I watched the sun with trepidation, desperate to get to where I was going before dark so I could set up my tent. The previous 35 miles were smooth and quick, but the road suddenly turned into this boulder-strewn path. So long along it that I began to wonder if I had missed a turning, and if so what would I do? Or if I had a puncture here, what would I do? No cellphone signal in this far-off part of south Texas, unless there was something from across the Mexican border, and that wasn't likely either. No reasonable town anywhere for miles.
Then I passed, first, a roadrunner on a big stone next to the road. Just sat there watching me, arm's length from my passenger window. Second, a donkey munching placidly by the side of the road. Somehow, the two animals lifted my spirits, and in fact I got here only ten minutes past the donkey.
And I had enough light to put up the tent, then to go soak in a tub fed by one of the hot springs. 110 degrees, the man warned me. Just like I like it.
And now I sit here on a swing under the darkening sky, a clear sky that holds the promise of many stars. A fingernail moon is in the west, just above the shadowy hills.
A guest who has arrived after me stumbles past in the darkness, but then sees me and asks "Hey, that wireless?" I say yes, and he turns to his girlfriend stumbling behind him and says "Hey, they have wireless here!" And she says "Yayyyyy!" and dances a little jig. I tell her that was my reaction. Minus the jig. There's no cellphone signal, but I can use the wireless signal to call anywhere in the world from this back of beyond spot.
I think Fiji is first on the list. Why not?
Then I passed, first, a roadrunner on a big stone next to the road. Just sat there watching me, arm's length from my passenger window. Second, a donkey munching placidly by the side of the road. Somehow, the two animals lifted my spirits, and in fact I got here only ten minutes past the donkey.
And I had enough light to put up the tent, then to go soak in a tub fed by one of the hot springs. 110 degrees, the man warned me. Just like I like it.
And now I sit here on a swing under the darkening sky, a clear sky that holds the promise of many stars. A fingernail moon is in the west, just above the shadowy hills.
A guest who has arrived after me stumbles past in the darkness, but then sees me and asks "Hey, that wireless?" I say yes, and he turns to his girlfriend stumbling behind him and says "Hey, they have wireless here!" And she says "Yayyyyy!" and dances a little jig. I tell her that was my reaction. Minus the jig. There's no cellphone signal, but I can use the wireless signal to call anywhere in the world from this back of beyond spot.
I think Fiji is first on the list. Why not?
January 09, 2008
Oil well blues
Driving in west Texas, I come over a gentle rise in the long straight road I'm on, and what do I see before me? Oil wells. This peculiar apparatus that moves partly round and round, partly up and down, row after row of it, and I drive past them for easily the next 100 miles.
Many are motionless. But many are working. On top, a big arm with an oval "head" moves up and down, like that famous toy with the two long-necked birds that alternate trying to dip into a glass of water. Nearer ground level, two separate smaller arms, also with oval heads, go in circles. That circular motion is translated, piston-like, into the up-down motion of the arm above.
The ones that are moving are strangely, well, moving, though perhaps its my frame of mind. There's a gentle deliberateness to the motion, I imagine almost hypnotic were I not driving past. The lower arms, from one angle and at the point in their motion where their heads are at the top of the circle they describe, look startlingly like a young kid wearing a stetson, or a sombrero. And with the upper arm rising and falling, the whole effect is very like a fond father, bending low to pick up and swing his small child, again and again, using both his arms, never fully straightening up.
I've seen fathers like that. I remember a father like that.
Many are motionless. But many are working. On top, a big arm with an oval "head" moves up and down, like that famous toy with the two long-necked birds that alternate trying to dip into a glass of water. Nearer ground level, two separate smaller arms, also with oval heads, go in circles. That circular motion is translated, piston-like, into the up-down motion of the arm above.
The ones that are moving are strangely, well, moving, though perhaps its my frame of mind. There's a gentle deliberateness to the motion, I imagine almost hypnotic were I not driving past. The lower arms, from one angle and at the point in their motion where their heads are at the top of the circle they describe, look startlingly like a young kid wearing a stetson, or a sombrero. And with the upper arm rising and falling, the whole effect is very like a fond father, bending low to pick up and swing his small child, again and again, using both his arms, never fully straightening up.
I've seen fathers like that. I remember a father like that.
I'm just sittin' here watching the cranes
"The birds are best viewed at dawn or dusk". A little truth I've always known, and that was reinforced in whatever I read about Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge. I made fanciful plans to wake well before dawn and race across the vast Texas plains to make it there by about the time the sun chose to rise.
As these things seem to go with me, the plans remained fanciful. I couldn't get going in the morning, partly because of a late night, and by the time I got on the road, the sun shone bright. Resigned to seeing just a few birds, or none, I drove the two hours to the refuge on ruled-straight roads, keeping pace with a long freight train much of the way.
Muleshoe? In the winter, these 5000+ acres offer a home to migratory sandhill cranes, thigh-high grey creatures on long legs. They come in their tens of thousands, wintering here between October and April, and the best time to see them is in January and February. (Unusually for me, I'm actually in the vicinity of one of these places at the right time of year). February of 1981 was particularly memorable: 250,000 of these cranes turned up then.
But: during the day they fly off to nearby fields to forage for food.
Driving on one of the refuge roads, I find a coyote running along on the verge beside me, not fifteen feet away. Wary of the car, but not enough to flee far. I slow to a stop, and he does too, standing there in the sunlight looking around bemusedly. Then he takes off half-heartedly after something that scurries for cover, amid a little flutter of yipping in the distance. That's when I notice: prairie dogs. Furry rodents, actually, standing atop their burrows all over the area around me. Dozens: some watching me, some watching the fox, some just sunning. Three run to the same mound and settle behind some kind of lip there to watch me, only their snouts visible.
The lady at the office says they counted 55,000 cranes this morning, but they have probably all gone foraging by now. Still, she says, you might want to go watch for a while. Sometimes some of them come back in the middle of the day.
So that's what I do. When I reach the spot beside a small lake, there's a small flock of the birds out in the middle, perhaps 200 metres away. Through my binoculars, I can see them bunched up, I would guess a few hundred at most. But they are calling loud enough for me to hear, a sort of musical throaty croaking sound that seems to reverberate all around me.
Then I notice a few more dropping out of the sky. With the binocs, it's clear: they circle around, getting lower and lower in the sky. Perhaps 20-30 feet up, they stick their legs out and sink more rapidly before going into a stall, and with much flapping of their wings, they land and join their already landed colleagues. Like odd little stick figures with outspread wings, coming in to land. The performance reminds me of the "stacking" of planes at a busy airport, how each one circles around waiting for the lower ones to land before sinking lower themselves. Two land across the lake from the rest, stalk across the water to get home.
And as I watch these few doing this little routine, more come in. And then I raise my binocs and follow the trail of birds, skeins of them trailing higher and higher in the sky, I tilt my head further and further back until I'm looking straight up: birds all the way! Sometimes there are just two in the field of view, sometimes hundreds. And all of them doing that lilting croaking sound, it's no wonder it seems to come from all around.
Then another sound overhead. I tilt my head back again and search for it. Bah! Just a jet far overhead, heading for distant places at 37000 feet.
I sit for 45 minutes, and all through that time there are birds sinking out of the sky to join the flock on the ground. I can't see where they come from: they just seem to appear at a point high above, and circle and drop, circle and drop, till they land. The croaking getting louder and louder. I try some quick sample counting to estimate how many there are, but it's hard, because wherever I look to select a sample, there are more dropping in. Still, at the end of 45 minutes I am willing to bet there are 20,000 birds there on the ground.
And suddenly, no more in the sky. Just as suddenly, utter silence.
As these things seem to go with me, the plans remained fanciful. I couldn't get going in the morning, partly because of a late night, and by the time I got on the road, the sun shone bright. Resigned to seeing just a few birds, or none, I drove the two hours to the refuge on ruled-straight roads, keeping pace with a long freight train much of the way.
Muleshoe? In the winter, these 5000+ acres offer a home to migratory sandhill cranes, thigh-high grey creatures on long legs. They come in their tens of thousands, wintering here between October and April, and the best time to see them is in January and February. (Unusually for me, I'm actually in the vicinity of one of these places at the right time of year). February of 1981 was particularly memorable: 250,000 of these cranes turned up then.
But: during the day they fly off to nearby fields to forage for food.
Driving on one of the refuge roads, I find a coyote running along on the verge beside me, not fifteen feet away. Wary of the car, but not enough to flee far. I slow to a stop, and he does too, standing there in the sunlight looking around bemusedly. Then he takes off half-heartedly after something that scurries for cover, amid a little flutter of yipping in the distance. That's when I notice: prairie dogs. Furry rodents, actually, standing atop their burrows all over the area around me. Dozens: some watching me, some watching the fox, some just sunning. Three run to the same mound and settle behind some kind of lip there to watch me, only their snouts visible.
The lady at the office says they counted 55,000 cranes this morning, but they have probably all gone foraging by now. Still, she says, you might want to go watch for a while. Sometimes some of them come back in the middle of the day.
So that's what I do. When I reach the spot beside a small lake, there's a small flock of the birds out in the middle, perhaps 200 metres away. Through my binoculars, I can see them bunched up, I would guess a few hundred at most. But they are calling loud enough for me to hear, a sort of musical throaty croaking sound that seems to reverberate all around me.
Then I notice a few more dropping out of the sky. With the binocs, it's clear: they circle around, getting lower and lower in the sky. Perhaps 20-30 feet up, they stick their legs out and sink more rapidly before going into a stall, and with much flapping of their wings, they land and join their already landed colleagues. Like odd little stick figures with outspread wings, coming in to land. The performance reminds me of the "stacking" of planes at a busy airport, how each one circles around waiting for the lower ones to land before sinking lower themselves. Two land across the lake from the rest, stalk across the water to get home.
And as I watch these few doing this little routine, more come in. And then I raise my binocs and follow the trail of birds, skeins of them trailing higher and higher in the sky, I tilt my head further and further back until I'm looking straight up: birds all the way! Sometimes there are just two in the field of view, sometimes hundreds. And all of them doing that lilting croaking sound, it's no wonder it seems to come from all around.
Then another sound overhead. I tilt my head back again and search for it. Bah! Just a jet far overhead, heading for distant places at 37000 feet.
I sit for 45 minutes, and all through that time there are birds sinking out of the sky to join the flock on the ground. I can't see where they come from: they just seem to appear at a point high above, and circle and drop, circle and drop, till they land. The croaking getting louder and louder. I try some quick sample counting to estimate how many there are, but it's hard, because wherever I look to select a sample, there are more dropping in. Still, at the end of 45 minutes I am willing to bet there are 20,000 birds there on the ground.
And suddenly, no more in the sky. Just as suddenly, utter silence.
January 08, 2008
Juhu and Sydney
Of two recent incidents -- women molested in Juhu on New Year's Day, Sydney Test mess -- which one stimulated more press coverage? More public effigy-burning? More angry pronouncements about Indian self-respect, about an insult to national honour?
If you have any idea, please let me know.
If you have any idea, please let me know.
January 07, 2008
Testing times
Time for a little sanity. Or something.
If Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly had not been given out to atrocious decisions, India would probably have drawn the Test. Dravid's catch wasn't a catch, period. Ganguly's catch was impossible for an on-field umpire to have seen properly, but the reason it was an atrocious decision was not that the catch was iffy -- plenty of catches are -- but that umpire Benson chose to ask Ricky Ponting what he thought, and based his decision on that. I'm not conversant enough with rules for umpires, but it seems to me that there's a general principle: when there's a doubt, the benefit goes to the batsman. If Mark Benson had doubts about the catch, his immediate decision should have been "not out".
If Andrew Symonds, in particular, had been declared out to a catch behind the stumps, India would have probably won the match. (This simple metric is one indication: the number of runs Symonds went on to score after that is about the margin of victory).
For this cricket fan, these are the only incidents that had bearing on the match, and these are the ones that deserve protesting. Therefore, I think it is right to ask that Bucknor step down from umpiring the next Test.
As for the rest:
If Harbhajan made those remarks, he deserves the consequent punishment. There is an appeals process, and it can and must be followed. But if he made them, and gets a fair hearing, and is determined to have done so by the people concerned, I have no quarrel with the punishment. (And no quarrel with him being let off, if in the appeal it is decided he did not make the remarks).
There is precedent: the Australian batsman Darren Lehmann was similarly banned, for five matches, for his racist remarks in Sri Lanka in 2003.
Yet I am somewhat bewildered at the reactions to this that I've run into in about an hour of surfing and newspaper-scanning. This is a matter of our national honour, people say; the BCCI statement indicates it is a slur on every Indian. There have been calls to remind Australia of that old chestnut, their "convict past". Etc.
Why? In what sense is it a slur on me, or on other Indians? When a given Indian shouts abuse at someone else -- something that happens every minute of every day, I'm sure -- and is pulled up for it, why on earth should I feel offended? Or you? What national honour is involved here?
And what bearing does the "convict past" have on this? Does it lessen Harbhajan's punishment? Increase his chances of getting off? Make his remarks any more acceptable or palatable?
The only aspect of this episode that I find sad is that the Australian players chose to take it to the so-called "higher authorities". This is something that Ponting, Kumble, Symonds and Harbhajan should have sat down and talked about, acrimoniously if necessary, and settled. Sportsmen get angry and heated on the field, and say and do things they probably regret later (as Lehmann regretted his remarks). Those things should be resolved among themselves.
Go on to Perth, would be my advice. If this Test showed anything, it showed that this Indian team has the heart and ability to come back from a pitiful loss (the first Test) and not just compete, but come close to winning. Go to Perth, play hard, and win. That's the best possible comeback to this dismal fiasco.
For this cricket fan, these are the only incidents that had bearing on the match, and these are the ones that deserve protesting. Therefore, I think it is right to ask that Bucknor step down from umpiring the next Test.
As for the rest:
If Harbhajan made those remarks, he deserves the consequent punishment. There is an appeals process, and it can and must be followed. But if he made them, and gets a fair hearing, and is determined to have done so by the people concerned, I have no quarrel with the punishment. (And no quarrel with him being let off, if in the appeal it is decided he did not make the remarks).
There is precedent: the Australian batsman Darren Lehmann was similarly banned, for five matches, for his racist remarks in Sri Lanka in 2003.
Yet I am somewhat bewildered at the reactions to this that I've run into in about an hour of surfing and newspaper-scanning. This is a matter of our national honour, people say; the BCCI statement indicates it is a slur on every Indian. There have been calls to remind Australia of that old chestnut, their "convict past". Etc.
Why? In what sense is it a slur on me, or on other Indians? When a given Indian shouts abuse at someone else -- something that happens every minute of every day, I'm sure -- and is pulled up for it, why on earth should I feel offended? Or you? What national honour is involved here?
And what bearing does the "convict past" have on this? Does it lessen Harbhajan's punishment? Increase his chances of getting off? Make his remarks any more acceptable or palatable?
The only aspect of this episode that I find sad is that the Australian players chose to take it to the so-called "higher authorities". This is something that Ponting, Kumble, Symonds and Harbhajan should have sat down and talked about, acrimoniously if necessary, and settled. Sportsmen get angry and heated on the field, and say and do things they probably regret later (as Lehmann regretted his remarks). Those things should be resolved among themselves.
Go on to Perth, would be my advice. If this Test showed anything, it showed that this Indian team has the heart and ability to come back from a pitiful loss (the first Test) and not just compete, but come close to winning. Go to Perth, play hard, and win. That's the best possible comeback to this dismal fiasco.
And the planes all went down
Check this picture. Go ahead, I'll wait ...
... Done?
Those are hundreds of obsolete US military aircraft, laid out in rows at the David-Monthan AFB in Tucson. This is one of several aircraft "graveyards" across the desert southwest. Earlier we saw one in mojave, home to some 40 or so civilian planes. That place, we could not get close to. But in Tucson, the road we take drives alongside the base's fence, and a short stone's throw away are the planes. (Not that we tried to throw stones, you do understand).
I mean, big transport craft. Bombers. What I think are F16s, or Phantoms (are they the same?). An odd little trainer jet, with a bulbous nose and a short body and a periscope-looking thingie jutting out from the nose. Laid out in nice, precise rows that cover the space from here to what seems like forever. All in the low late evening sun, tinged with gold.
I mean, they could outfit some serious air forces with just the hardware that's mothballed here. "Here you go", I imagine some official saying, "A couple hundred planes for you, another couple hundred for you over there."
Why not do it? Maybe it's cheaper to let them sit here. For me, that's good, because I've never seen anything like this.
Though what happens to India's old military aircraft?
... Done?
Those are hundreds of obsolete US military aircraft, laid out in rows at the David-Monthan AFB in Tucson. This is one of several aircraft "graveyards" across the desert southwest. Earlier we saw one in mojave, home to some 40 or so civilian planes. That place, we could not get close to. But in Tucson, the road we take drives alongside the base's fence, and a short stone's throw away are the planes. (Not that we tried to throw stones, you do understand).
I mean, big transport craft. Bombers. What I think are F16s, or Phantoms (are they the same?). An odd little trainer jet, with a bulbous nose and a short body and a periscope-looking thingie jutting out from the nose. Laid out in nice, precise rows that cover the space from here to what seems like forever. All in the low late evening sun, tinged with gold.
I mean, they could outfit some serious air forces with just the hardware that's mothballed here. "Here you go", I imagine some official saying, "A couple hundred planes for you, another couple hundred for you over there."
Why not do it? Maybe it's cheaper to let them sit here. For me, that's good, because I've never seen anything like this.
Though what happens to India's old military aircraft?
On foot in car-land
Woke up this morning and took a walk. (Needed the exercise). (Probably need much more). Down the road from where I am is a car museum, and I decided to walk there. Some random observations follow.
On the back of the big traffic signs ("JCT 40", for example) are tiny printed notices that I had never noticed before. Among other things, they warn the reader that: "Defacing or theft of this sign is a crime".
For some reason I don't fully fathom, I spent a few minutes speculating on what would happen if the font sizes of the two sides were reversed. "JCT 40" in tiny black font you have to get up close and personal with; the warning in huge luminous letters.
There are two abandoned gas stations, next to each other. Fading paint, peeling plywood on the doors, rusting beams and pipes, these are the signs of abandonment. But there's also a fading wooden sign painted with "Mastercharge" and "BankAmericard"; as far as I know, both names vanished years ago. There are also the pumps. The display says "Cents per Gallon", with three tiny windows showing "6", "9" and "9/10", respectively. Like those clocks that stop at the precise moment of an earthquake, here's a time marker in its own right. Of a time when gas was 69.9 cents to the gallon (I don't have any idea when that was); a time when it was not even conceivable that gas might need a fourth tiny window to tell you its price. When "Dollars per Gallon" was still a fantasy. (These Americans had it good).
Oil prices touched $100 a barrel this past week, an event that has been commented on by everyone from news jockeys to radio talk show hosts to Hillary Clinton. It seems somehow fitting that I should run across these time-warped pumps right now.
A large yard has several cars for sale. Vehicles, I should say. An old US Mail jeep, two fire trucks, a crumbling Cadillac Fleetwood wagon from the glory days of car excess, a Buick Special Dynaflow with a magnificently curved body and a forest of chrome in front, a tractor, an ancient tow truck without an engine ... who's going to buy these?
Answer lies across the street, the car museum.
30+ "classic" cars, beautifully restored, some for sale. A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner ($38,000). 1931 Auburn ($45,000, "purrs!"). Dazzling red 1963 Chevy Corvette, 4 speed, license plate says "2FAST4U". Barge-like 1950s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. 1956 Chevy Hydramatic pickup truck, two trophies in the back (both for the 2006 Run to the Pines Show, 1st place in the pre-1949 Street Rod Trucks sponsored by Bob's Bang Room, and Mayor's Trophy sponsored by Town of Pinetop-Lakeside. I'm still trying to figure how a 1956 model won the pre-1949 segment of the show). 1978 Nissan 280Z, 5 speed ($7,500). 1956 Lincoln Mark II, V8 ($45,000). '57 Chevy, lime-green, license plate says "1FINE57". T10 Chevy 4 speed, among other things it has "Hose of Koler Tangelo Pearl Paint", which is clearly a synonym for "bilious orange paint". A 1940s Chevy Special Deluxe with a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower on the front seat (I highly recommend his earlier In the Heart of the Sea).
And several editions of the car I once lusted after, the Ford Mustang -- two 1965s, a 1967, a 1972. None for sale.
Walking back, the wind has picked up to gusts of 30-40 mph, and it's uphill a lot of the way, so I'm straining against the wind. I certainly get my exercise. What I'm puzzled about is the clanking sound inside each of the lamp-posts as I pass.
One more point: there and back, over a mile each way, I'm the only person on foot. The owner of the museum even remarks on this -- "I noticed you walking," she says in wonder. "You walked all that way to get here? And you'll walk back? Wow!"
And that reminds me of the remark by a police officer that I quoted here: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the hotel on foot in that way but these people come from a different culture due to which they did and the incident occurred."
On the back of the big traffic signs ("JCT 40", for example) are tiny printed notices that I had never noticed before. Among other things, they warn the reader that: "Defacing or theft of this sign is a crime".
For some reason I don't fully fathom, I spent a few minutes speculating on what would happen if the font sizes of the two sides were reversed. "JCT 40" in tiny black font you have to get up close and personal with; the warning in huge luminous letters.
There are two abandoned gas stations, next to each other. Fading paint, peeling plywood on the doors, rusting beams and pipes, these are the signs of abandonment. But there's also a fading wooden sign painted with "Mastercharge" and "BankAmericard"; as far as I know, both names vanished years ago. There are also the pumps. The display says "Cents per Gallon", with three tiny windows showing "6", "9" and "9/10", respectively. Like those clocks that stop at the precise moment of an earthquake, here's a time marker in its own right. Of a time when gas was 69.9 cents to the gallon (I don't have any idea when that was); a time when it was not even conceivable that gas might need a fourth tiny window to tell you its price. When "Dollars per Gallon" was still a fantasy. (These Americans had it good).
Oil prices touched $100 a barrel this past week, an event that has been commented on by everyone from news jockeys to radio talk show hosts to Hillary Clinton. It seems somehow fitting that I should run across these time-warped pumps right now.
A large yard has several cars for sale. Vehicles, I should say. An old US Mail jeep, two fire trucks, a crumbling Cadillac Fleetwood wagon from the glory days of car excess, a Buick Special Dynaflow with a magnificently curved body and a forest of chrome in front, a tractor, an ancient tow truck without an engine ... who's going to buy these?
Answer lies across the street, the car museum.
30+ "classic" cars, beautifully restored, some for sale. A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner ($38,000). 1931 Auburn ($45,000, "purrs!"). Dazzling red 1963 Chevy Corvette, 4 speed, license plate says "2FAST4U". Barge-like 1950s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. 1956 Chevy Hydramatic pickup truck, two trophies in the back (both for the 2006 Run to the Pines Show, 1st place in the pre-1949 Street Rod Trucks sponsored by Bob's Bang Room, and Mayor's Trophy sponsored by Town of Pinetop-Lakeside. I'm still trying to figure how a 1956 model won the pre-1949 segment of the show). 1978 Nissan 280Z, 5 speed ($7,500). 1956 Lincoln Mark II, V8 ($45,000). '57 Chevy, lime-green, license plate says "1FINE57". T10 Chevy 4 speed, among other things it has "Hose of Koler Tangelo Pearl Paint", which is clearly a synonym for "bilious orange paint". A 1940s Chevy Special Deluxe with a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower on the front seat (I highly recommend his earlier In the Heart of the Sea).
And several editions of the car I once lusted after, the Ford Mustang -- two 1965s, a 1967, a 1972. None for sale.
Walking back, the wind has picked up to gusts of 30-40 mph, and it's uphill a lot of the way, so I'm straining against the wind. I certainly get my exercise. What I'm puzzled about is the clanking sound inside each of the lamp-posts as I pass.
One more point: there and back, over a mile each way, I'm the only person on foot. The owner of the museum even remarks on this -- "I noticed you walking," she says in wonder. "You walked all that way to get here? And you'll walk back? Wow!"
And that reminds me of the remark by a police officer that I quoted here: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the hotel on foot in that way but these people come from a different culture due to which they did and the incident occurred."
To the best
In March of '07, I listened to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton speak in Selma, Alabama (here and here).
Those were still early days in the interminable American political process, a time when the knives were hardly sharp as they are now, as the real business -- getting votes -- gets under way.
But even then, Obama struck me as a strong, serious candidate. This is the line I used at the time: At first blush -- and that's all this was, I would certainly not base a decision to vote on this one speech -- at first blush, this is an impressive candidate for President of the US.
Ten months later, Obama has won the Iowa caucus, and on TV yesterday he appeared with the three other Democratic candidates -- Clinton, Richardson and Edwards -- in a sometimes testy debate. This, as the candidates head into the New Hampshire primary. (Please don't ask about caucus vs primary: I have only the vaguest idea and it hardly seems to matter anyway: Obama won Iowa, that's all). Through the debate, Obama seemed uninterested in flinging barbs at the others, genuinely interested in recognizing their contributions and worth, while also acknowledging differences. Sometimes what seemed shades to me, but acknowledging them anyway.
I think it is this quality that has struck a chord in so many. In a time when every politician -- and not just in the USA -- seems only to want to throw mud at opponents, here's a man who seems genuinely to want to steer clear of that. In a time when there are so many divides, and vile rhetoric flung across those divides, here's a man who seems genuinely to want to heal. Not just to make political capital, but because he seems genuinely to believe that this is what he must do.
No doubt it's still early days in the Presidential selection process, and there's still a lot to learn about this man. Even so, he is already drawing support for his message.
"This was the moment," he said after the Iowa victory, "when we finally beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism; the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment."
It's that kind of message I heard ten months ago in Selma, and it's the message Obama is taking to the other states in this union. It's a message that has even cynical political commentators wonderstruck. David Brooks writes that the Iowa victory is "one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance"; Obama, he thinks, is "more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation." Bob Herbert writes that Obama "appeal[s] openly and consistently to the best, rather than the worst, in us."
And as always, that makes me think about my own country, and the myriad divisions we have. Most times I can't for the life of me see how we'll bridge them, and especially so when I consider the abuse and vicious rhetoric on every side. (I've flung my share). How do you reconcile people who've called each other "credulous cretin", or "terrorist-lover", or "fascist thug"? How do you reconcile people who bring out the worst in each other?
Where is our leader who will appeal "openly and consistently to the best in us"?
Those were still early days in the interminable American political process, a time when the knives were hardly sharp as they are now, as the real business -- getting votes -- gets under way.
But even then, Obama struck me as a strong, serious candidate. This is the line I used at the time: At first blush -- and that's all this was, I would certainly not base a decision to vote on this one speech -- at first blush, this is an impressive candidate for President of the US.
Ten months later, Obama has won the Iowa caucus, and on TV yesterday he appeared with the three other Democratic candidates -- Clinton, Richardson and Edwards -- in a sometimes testy debate. This, as the candidates head into the New Hampshire primary. (Please don't ask about caucus vs primary: I have only the vaguest idea and it hardly seems to matter anyway: Obama won Iowa, that's all). Through the debate, Obama seemed uninterested in flinging barbs at the others, genuinely interested in recognizing their contributions and worth, while also acknowledging differences. Sometimes what seemed shades to me, but acknowledging them anyway.
I think it is this quality that has struck a chord in so many. In a time when every politician -- and not just in the USA -- seems only to want to throw mud at opponents, here's a man who seems genuinely to want to steer clear of that. In a time when there are so many divides, and vile rhetoric flung across those divides, here's a man who seems genuinely to want to heal. Not just to make political capital, but because he seems genuinely to believe that this is what he must do.
No doubt it's still early days in the Presidential selection process, and there's still a lot to learn about this man. Even so, he is already drawing support for his message.
"This was the moment," he said after the Iowa victory, "when we finally beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism; the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment."
It's that kind of message I heard ten months ago in Selma, and it's the message Obama is taking to the other states in this union. It's a message that has even cynical political commentators wonderstruck. David Brooks writes that the Iowa victory is "one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance"; Obama, he thinks, is "more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation." Bob Herbert writes that Obama "appeal[s] openly and consistently to the best, rather than the worst, in us."
And as always, that makes me think about my own country, and the myriad divisions we have. Most times I can't for the life of me see how we'll bridge them, and especially so when I consider the abuse and vicious rhetoric on every side. (I've flung my share). How do you reconcile people who've called each other "credulous cretin", or "terrorist-lover", or "fascist thug"? How do you reconcile people who bring out the worst in each other?
Where is our leader who will appeal "openly and consistently to the best in us"?
January 06, 2008
Sixteenth
Running ahead of the snowstorm that's struck the American West, I've just spent several hours "watching" most of the last day's play in the Sydney Test. Three wickets to the unlikely Michael Clarke (well, given an earlier performance against India, maybe not so unlikely) turned a probably nailbiting draw into a resounding win for Australia. (Yeah, yeah, the 16th in a row. Tell me another one).
So here's my opinion, for what it's worth, and given that I've been staring at this computer screen so long, I feel like I should inflict it on you:
So here's my opinion, for what it's worth, and given that I've been staring at this computer screen so long, I feel like I should inflict it on you:
- Drop Yuvraj Singh right away.
- Bring back Dinesh Karthik to open with Wasim Jaffer: they were working well together, feeding off each other, and a few failures for Karthik should not have been allowed to change that. Similarly, a few failures for Jaffer now should not get him dropped.
- Send Dravid back to his most comfortable spot, #3. That displaces the wondrous Laxman from there, and Laxman likes that position. But overall, I think Dravid's claim to that spot is a mite weightier.
- Dhoni should be feeling the pressure. I hope he is. I hope he hasn't been overtaken by the complacency that I think consumed Sehwag. In my mind, he's borderline right now.
- Fly out Murali Kartik, and make it clear to Harbhajan that even though he scored a fine 70+, and even though he has that nice bunny named Ponting, what he's in the side for is wickets in match-winning style, and it's been a while since he last produced that.
January 04, 2008
Two more questions
After some attacks on Christian churches in the Dangs district of Gujarat some years ago, then PM Vajpayee paid a visit there and announced that there should be a "national debate" on conversions.
Whatever the merits of this -- full disclosure: I criticized it in a column -- I don't recall any such debate happening in the years since. But now there have been more attacks on Christian churches, this time in Orissa. And some of the people involved have spoken about conversions, blaming them for the attacks in Orissa.
So I write here, to try starting such a debate in at least this small space.
What is it about conversions? Why do they threaten and anger so many people?
Same rules apply as here: These are serious, sincere questions. If you're willing to answer them in that same spirit, please leave a comment. In your own words, explained as you understand it and you'd like others to understand it: simply, clearly.
Responses like that will be appreciated. (And will, in turn, get responses from me in the same spirit). I promise not to criticize them.
Abuse, if any, will be ignored.
Thank you.
Whatever the merits of this -- full disclosure: I criticized it in a column -- I don't recall any such debate happening in the years since. But now there have been more attacks on Christian churches, this time in Orissa. And some of the people involved have spoken about conversions, blaming them for the attacks in Orissa.
So I write here, to try starting such a debate in at least this small space.
What is it about conversions? Why do they threaten and anger so many people?
Same rules apply as here: These are serious, sincere questions. If you're willing to answer them in that same spirit, please leave a comment. In your own words, explained as you understand it and you'd like others to understand it: simply, clearly.
Responses like that will be appreciated. (And will, in turn, get responses from me in the same spirit). I promise not to criticize them.
Abuse, if any, will be ignored.
Thank you.
Two crowds
A earplug, please, and that house
Odds and ends from some days on the road:
Found a copy of the China Post lying around somewhere. It had one of those features that newspapers run once a week, a "News Quiz" designed to test how closely you have read the news.
One question was:
***
On the highway somewhere south of Santa Cruz, California, signs warn drivers: "Speed enforced by aircraft". Soon after I see one of those, I also see a small plane taking off from a local airport, climbing sharply. Is it on speed-enforcement duty?
But then there's the sign saying "Seat Belt Law Enforced." Is the plane on seat belt-enforcement duty? If I unbuckle my belt, am I likely to see it suddenly flying alongside my speeding Kia, pilot gesturing sternly at me?
***
Seventeen Mile Drive, north of Carmel, is a spectacular ride along the coast, and past some obviously very pricey real estate. Just for fun, I note down the realtor's number at one of the for-sale houses. I really want to call him, ask the price, and say: "Cool. I'll take it. Would you prefer cash or a credit card?"
One of these days.
Then again, it may be one of those things: if you want to know the price, it ain't for you.
I did this Drive twice in the '80s, with friends. I remember that each time we stopped at a vista point, we were the only Indians. This time, there are at least three or four other cars with Indians at each stop. One has a young couple. At one scenic spot, she grabs the camera and he poses for a picture. Not, as I might have imagined, with his back to the sea, or the scenery. He stands next to the large cans that say "Litter".
Say cheese, somebody.
***
A morning walk in cold but lovely Ojai ends with a descent through thick bushes. We've been warned about poison oak in these parts, so I hold my hands -- apart from my face, my only patches of bare skin -- high as I push through the vegetation. Right at the bottom of the slope, stuck in the bushes, there lies ... of all things, a large headless dog made out of yellow foam. His head is on the ground a few feet away. (That's why he's headless).
When we realize what the flat, partly tarred space in front is, that's when we understand. It's a trap-shooting range. Belongs to a local school. The dog was a target, I suppose until it lost its head.
On the bulletin board are some fading photographs of proud teenagers holding rifles, or aiming them at targets. One sheet of paper lists scores: Sondra Oxley got 10, Hector Villanueva 19, Sarah Boneysteele 3, Sarina Patel 4, Emmo Gates 21. In trap shooting, is a higher score better, or a lower one?
I don't know, but I'm delighted to read the adjacent sheet, titled "Personal Ear Plugs". "Sign up for personally fitted earplugs," it says. "Ms Linda Louder, of Ear Plugs USA, will visit ... and provide this valuable service."
I'm delighted because it's good the notice is up there on the board. If it had been read out to the students, they may not have heard.
***
The space behind the platform where the targets are placed is also overrun with bushes. And unidentifiable litter on the ground. Then I look at it more closely. It's the debris from shooting: bits of clay, bits of plastic, and several large cylindrical cartridge cases.
Days later, I find another discarded cartridge case on the ground, this one a small copper-coloured thing. It's lying on the ground outside a gas station where I stop to fill up. I don't want to know what it's doing there.
Found a copy of the China Post lying around somewhere. It had one of those features that newspapers run once a week, a "News Quiz" designed to test how closely you have read the news.
One question was:
- Why should we eat oysters for Christmas, according to the article?
- Oysters are vermin of the sea.
- Why not stuff our stockings with high-tech gadgets?
- Such behaviour is religiously unrighteous.
On the highway somewhere south of Santa Cruz, California, signs warn drivers: "Speed enforced by aircraft". Soon after I see one of those, I also see a small plane taking off from a local airport, climbing sharply. Is it on speed-enforcement duty?
But then there's the sign saying "Seat Belt Law Enforced." Is the plane on seat belt-enforcement duty? If I unbuckle my belt, am I likely to see it suddenly flying alongside my speeding Kia, pilot gesturing sternly at me?
Seventeen Mile Drive, north of Carmel, is a spectacular ride along the coast, and past some obviously very pricey real estate. Just for fun, I note down the realtor's number at one of the for-sale houses. I really want to call him, ask the price, and say: "Cool. I'll take it. Would you prefer cash or a credit card?"
One of these days.
Then again, it may be one of those things: if you want to know the price, it ain't for you.
I did this Drive twice in the '80s, with friends. I remember that each time we stopped at a vista point, we were the only Indians. This time, there are at least three or four other cars with Indians at each stop. One has a young couple. At one scenic spot, she grabs the camera and he poses for a picture. Not, as I might have imagined, with his back to the sea, or the scenery. He stands next to the large cans that say "Litter".
Say cheese, somebody.
A morning walk in cold but lovely Ojai ends with a descent through thick bushes. We've been warned about poison oak in these parts, so I hold my hands -- apart from my face, my only patches of bare skin -- high as I push through the vegetation. Right at the bottom of the slope, stuck in the bushes, there lies ... of all things, a large headless dog made out of yellow foam. His head is on the ground a few feet away. (That's why he's headless).
When we realize what the flat, partly tarred space in front is, that's when we understand. It's a trap-shooting range. Belongs to a local school. The dog was a target, I suppose until it lost its head.
On the bulletin board are some fading photographs of proud teenagers holding rifles, or aiming them at targets. One sheet of paper lists scores: Sondra Oxley got 10, Hector Villanueva 19, Sarah Boneysteele 3, Sarina Patel 4, Emmo Gates 21. In trap shooting, is a higher score better, or a lower one?
I don't know, but I'm delighted to read the adjacent sheet, titled "Personal Ear Plugs". "Sign up for personally fitted earplugs," it says. "Ms Linda Louder, of Ear Plugs USA, will visit ... and provide this valuable service."
I'm delighted because it's good the notice is up there on the board. If it had been read out to the students, they may not have heard.
The space behind the platform where the targets are placed is also overrun with bushes. And unidentifiable litter on the ground. Then I look at it more closely. It's the debris from shooting: bits of clay, bits of plastic, and several large cylindrical cartridge cases.
Days later, I find another discarded cartridge case on the ground, this one a small copper-coloured thing. It's lying on the ground outside a gas station where I stop to fill up. I don't want to know what it's doing there.
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