One murali

One murali has been busy for the last couple of hours leaving comments on various posts in this blog. Plenty so far, probably more in the works. Since I certainly wouldn't want his keen thoughts to go unnoticed, I am doing for him what I've done for others like him in the past: put his comments in one place, as a post.

Here you are. Please appreciate his efforts. And if any more come my way, rest assured that they will show up here too.

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Dilip,
Yaar dont waste your time on civilising Hindoos with socio economic sermons.Pratap Naik SJ wants Konkani in Roman script to be the official language of Goa. Go and support your fellow catholics to bring civilisation to the Devil Worshipping Hindoos.The Society of Jesus needs believers like you.The work of your ancestors-the Portuguese Inquisitors is only half completed.

***

Dileep,Have you joined 'Rev' Naik of the paedophile,homosexual terrorist organisation headquartered at Vatican which preaches the virtues of the Roman bastard.

The previous Terror Chief wants volunteers to harvest souls in heathen hindoo india. You worship the corpse nailed on a cross.

***

Its wrong to talk ill of the dead.I am sorry but your father showed where his loyalty lay with the Abrahamics,christists,mahounds.His hatred for India and Hindus was transparent. his loyalty lay with muslims(people of the 'book' and revealed his hatred of India and Hindoos.

In muhammadan language-Namak haram,can undestand why you are what you are.

No wonder,you his son is a traitor.

***

Your dad was dead right.Hindoos are anti-national.No wonder you support Mandal to put Hindoos in their place.Muslims are most patriotic.Advani is Satan the guy who tempted your ancestors(THE BIBLE-HOLY 'BOOK' OF Roman Church says so)

***

Bain was a christian soul.He was the gift of 'Virgin' Mary.Our Lord Jesus,Vatican,St.Xavier(Please pray for us),John Paul II,Portuguese to India.He was more than Bharat Ratna.He was Mahatma Gandhi,JL Nehru,Sardar Patel and Netaji rolled into one.

He had so much compassion for the heathen that He so 'loved' India that he gave his begotten son Dileep so that the heathen have faith in Dilip and be saved from the Hell of Hinduism and Perfidy.

He was brave like the heathen Arjuna,honest like the heathen Harishchandra etc.

He was a beacon light among the corrupt,mean,dirty,scheming hindoo brahmins who are liars and are cheating and harassing the poor dalits and shoodras.He was a christian soul of mercy amidst the dark heathen.

Dileep,
I love so much for your christian mercy and compassion.Let Our Lord Jesus be with You always.Let the Lord Jesus protect You through His Chosen disciples the goras of US/UK.

***

Can see so many Johns,peters,nazeems,mathew,zaheer and yes hindu chicks too.

Saare,Enjoy maadi.

***

Boss,
you 'honorary' whites are lucky.because you are christists,free vacation in US and day job paid by gora masters for denigrating hindoos and perks too-frolicking in catholic 'ashrams'-Ha,Ha we know what you do with nanha girls in confessionals.You are lucky devils until karma catches up.Karma is one bad b1atch.

***

Saar,
you missed one comment.

It is extremely mean to talk ill of the dead.

Your father was a decent man,by all accounts.Not right to talk about someone not alive.

I stand by what I have written.

Gracefully

I had never heard of this person. Until last night, when a friend who came for dinner mentioned going to his funeral/memorial service in Bangalore last week. He was her brother's close friend. Her description of the sad way he went brought back, incongruously, memories of many uneasy moments while hiking in Madagascar several years ago (like this one that I could later laugh at).

In that way that an unusual name or event sometimes crops up again, this morning a friend in Washington sent a long note after several months, filling me in on various things in his life. To my surprise, he mentioned the same tragedy: turns out the young man was one of his oldest friends too. (Later, it wasn't so surprising -- the ages and hometowns, backgrounds and life experiences, are a broad match).

So then I did a little googling, and found this moving tribute to the man, with some gripping photographs.

And for no reason I can pinpoint, I stopped short at one quote in there, unable for a while to read any more. Joseph Olapally, wrote the girl he was with in Thailand, "fell gracefully."

Roadrunner in the Indian Express

Meena Kandasamy reviewed my Roadrunner for the Indian Express several days ago (I think April 19). She liked the book overall -- she calls it "one of the most authentic accounts of America and India - an engaging narrative that combines penetrating insight and a pedestrian's point of view." On the other hand, she really objects to my "conversational and chatty teenager tone".

Take a look (sorry, I couldn't find it elsewhere online). Any thoughts welcome.

Wallowing

I'll say this, the use of the word "slumdog" itself does not bother me much. Since THAT film, it's really become just another term.

What annoys me, though, is the tone in the passages where the word is used, and the implications of those passages. Slumdogs, we learn, are "wallowing in illiteracy, poverty and ignorance".

"Wallowing"? Has the author of these words been to a slum? If s/he goes expecting to stumble on such wallowers, I suspect s/he will come home rather surprised. Yes, there's poverty in our slums (though often matched with intense enterprise), but there are plenty of literate folks who are by no means ignorant.

It's the assumption that slums are filled with these wallowers that gets me.

And it's the implicit acknowledgement in the words: that despite our billionaires and the world's 4.673-highest valued sports league and millions of cars, this is a country where too many people live hardscrabble lives. It's not an admission easily made these days, but it emerges unwittingly in words like these. Assumptions like these.

I refer, all through, to this report.

Conversations, #8

We took a week's break, Beena and I. Then the eighth installment of our ongoing conversation went up: Clap with both hands.

Please do give us your thoughts. I mean it. That's an order.

For various reasons, unfortunately there will be another week's break before the next installment.

Our previous efforts: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7.

It's the gait

Many years ago I won a one-year fellowship to do some writing on denotified (or ex-"criminal") tribes in this country. Big eye-opener in lots of ways, that year. It resulted in several articles, an award for my writing and eventually my first book, Branded by Law (Penguin India, 2001).

Apart from the travel I did to meet members of these tribes that year, I spent long hours in the Asiatic Library in Bombay, digging through old journals and books for material about the tribes. And I got plenty.

Today, it's gratifying to find that some of what I wrote (both that I found in those journals and that I wrote off the top of my head) gets quoted every now and then.

For example, there's last year's Section 377 judgement (PDF 400K), which on page 42 quotes my mention of something Jawaharlal Nehru said.

And there's the intriguing phrase I ran across in Volume XII of the 1880 Bombay Presidency Gazette. Of Phase Pardhis, one of these denotified tribes, the Gazette writer wrote that they are "nearly always ragged and dirty, walking with a sneaking gait."

Not a bad example of prejudice in the mind, I always thought, to accuse an entire community of "walking with a sneaking gait."

Anyway, since I first used it in one of my fellowship articles, in December 1998, that phrase seems to have caught the imagination of others too. For example, it's on a Wikipedia page. And a couple of days ago, it appeared in an article in the Economist (thanks, N and S, for the alerts).

I hope the Economist article helps put the spotlight on the burden of prejudice these people carry, still exemplified by that 130 year-old comment.

Finally, if I had the fellowship today instead of those years ago, I may not need to go hunting in the Asiatic Society. Maybe I could have simply done some digging on the Web.

Question: Would I have found a OCRed version of the 1880 Gazette online?

Answer: Yes. Do a search for "sneaking" to locate the phrase. Read some of what's on the page to understand why I might go to the Asiatic anyway. Pliis.

And you're right: I only wrote this post to pat myself on the back.

On reflection

I'm all for professional cricketers getting big money for their skills, like NBA/MLB/NFL/AFL/EPL/tennis/etc players get big money. (Though I do wish other sports played in India were able to attract similar bounty). I'm all for free enterprise and business acumen. I'm all for pointing out the hypocrisies of politicians across the spectrum, and I'm definitely, no definitely, all for cheerleaders.

I mention all that because Amulya Ganguli -- whose writing I've found thought-provoking for years -- mentions it all in his recent article about the ongoing IPL drama. (It's now appeared in plenty of places, including in the Economic Times, where for some odd reason it is not attributed).

There's plenty I agree with in that essay. And yet something about it leaves me troubled. I think it is this: the pronouncement that the IPL "reflects young, emerging India".

Now no doubt "young, emerging India" enjoys the frenetic entertainment the IPL offers. Also the free enterprise and so forth that's in that first paragraph above.

But on the evidence of the last several front-page days, the IPL also offers kickbacks, opacity, overweening arrogance, politicking, murky financing and plenty more. All of which is why the Economic Times itself, just a few days ago, referred to the IPL as a "slippery world of cricket politics", an "unholy mix of cricket, money and corruption".

Do these phrases reflect "young, emerging India"? Do the youth of this country really want themselves characterized like this? And if so, should we all wonder just what kind of India is actually "emerging"?

The irony is that Ganguli himself refers to all this: he writes of the IPL's "fall from grace", the "scam-tainted atmosphere enveloping IPL" and about "bringing greater transparency" to it. He demands, and rightly: "clean up IPL".

But does this "scam-tainted atmosphere enveloping IPL" also reflect "young, emerging India"? Should we ask whether it is possible at all to disassociate the glamour, the entertainment, the big money, from the "scam-tainted atmosphere"?

Ganguli ends by saying, again rightly, that "nationalising" the IPL, as some politicians have demanded, "will be disastrous". But what does he suggest instead? "There is no alternative, therefore, for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), whose brainchild the IPL is, to take matters into its own hands."

Yes, the BCCI. The body that's not exactly covered itself with glory in its years of administering cricket in this country. The body whose brainchild grew fat on that excellent free enterprise strategy: "ban" the competition.

Is that a reflection of our youth too?

I have no idea what should be done with the IPL (I'm not sure I care, either). But would you ask Al Capone to clean up his Chicago mafia?

***
Postscript: Immediately after posting this, I opened my copy of today's DNA to find that Amulya Ganguli's article appears on page 5.

Four pages later in the same paper is a full page feature titled "Wanted: a Board of Control to Control the BCCI". It refers to the attempts of a lawyer called Rahul Mehra to bring accountability to the BCCI. It speaks of the "rotten core of the BCCI ... how skullduggery and political intrigue are par for the course". And Mehra suggests that "reforms won't come from within the BCCI; the government has to step in to clean up the act."

Take a look.

Fawny business

OK, I've got some grey in my hair, but sure, I'm not a blonde, nor even bleached. Even so, I'm mad.

This evening some people I know needed a taxi. I went to the nearby stand from where we get taxis so often, most of the waiting drivers know us and greet us. Today, a guy in white said he'd take the job, and stood listening as I explained where he had to go to pick up his fares, and where they wanted to go ...

... until, in mid-sentence or maybe even mid-word (I am not making this up), he suddenly turned and ran over to a pale-coloured woman from one of those Western countries, hair nicely bleached blonde, who was walking towards the stand. She hadn't even indicated she wanted a taxi. To him, her trending in this direction was enough. At her side, he actually bowed to her and directed her to his cab.

When I got over my astonishment at being so summarily abandoned, I shouted across at him, what are you doing? He waved a hand at me in some irritation, then said there were plenty of other drivers available.

You're right, Mr Fawn-Over-the-Expat Taxi Driver, there are plenty of other drivers available. But that's not why you never get my business again. Ever.

Lose the jacket

All right, I'm looking to start a zydeco band. Bass and lead guitar, have people in mind. Vocals, harmonica -- me. (I'm not necessarily looking for an audience). So all I need is an accordion player. Anyone interested, or shall I go with this guy, providing he leaves his jacket at home?

Parking lots and silky low ends

The automobile comes to India, in great number and variety over the last 15 years or so. To anyone who has spent a little while in auto-obsessed nations elsewhere in the world, it's no surprise that a number of other things follow:

* Parking lots (!) as both the acme of human ingenuity and the centerpiece of a city's attractions, for example one in Connaught Place. Last night, I parked in one such here in Bombay, a soulless monstrosity whose distinguishing features were two: the outrageous rate I got charged to use it (I had no choice), and the view of what looks like its steroid-stuffed twin, another parking lot coming up alongside.

* The perpetual promise of an end to traffic hassles via yet one more new facility -- sealink, flyover, wider roads, parking lots, whatever. Promise, but it's never sought to be tempered with the reality that said hassles never ease. Never.

Take the famous Bandra-Worli sealink, sold to us as the solution to this city's traffic problems. Yet in this recent slideshow feature on those problems, we read that the sealink has "added to the traffic woes" at the Haji Ali junction. Go to slide #2 to read a double whammy. One, that the nearby Cadbury junction is a "nightmare for motorists" that "will only worsen" if the sealink is extended. Two, the demand for more new facility for cars -- the Pedder Road flyover or "additional lanes" -- in the continued (forlorn?) hope of an end to the problems the same cars cause.

And consider the evidence, too, that the sealink is not being used to capacity anyway. (Thanks, S).

(And also compare the numbers there, in the slideshow from the earlier para, and in my post But how many carts?).

* The mushrooming of all kinds of auto accessories -- from the pointless spoiler I saw last night that pushed the rear of a little Zen down for no reason, to some kind of moisturizing cream to apply on my dashboard. I mean, every time I stop for petrol at a particular nearby station, some guy comes sidling up to me and asks in a conspiratorial whisper if I want to try this cream. Yanks out a grubby cloth and offers to show me its effect on a corner of my dash. It's all I can do to dissuade him. I mean, let's get this sraight: my dashboard is about the last thing I am interested in keeping supple and smooth like a baby's skin.

* The rise of that curious trade: auto journalism. You know, the flood of articles that pretend to be an "analysis" of a car, or a "comparison" between similar cars, but read like manufacturer handouts instead. Praise is gushing and embarrassing, criticism is of meaningless trivialities and invariably papered over anyway.

Recent examples? A single article about an overpriced and rather bloated European car has all these phrases: "looks brilliant in the flesh"; "drool factor is significant"; "muscular, sinuous character"; "fantastic ride quality"; "ride comfort is phenomenal"; "seats are very comfortable"; "insides have a very modern and contemporary feel … classy and very up-to-date"; "high-grade trim and quality are top class"; "easy to get enthralled by the silky low end [of the engine], the huge midrange punch and willingness to rev"; "diesel clatter is incredibly well suppressed"; "body control and grip are phenomenal"; "optional rear-wheel steering works wonders".

Embarrassing.

To balance that, I found precisely two (2) bouts of criticism: "Some amount of inconsistency [in the steering] and I wish it would give more feedback", and "Miss the super-precise and quick steering of the old [model of the car]." Immediately watered down with the above-mentioned "body control and grip are phenomenal".

Indeed, here in India we are in firmly in the auto age. The drool factor is definitely significant.

Inform Martin soonest

Don't have much of an opinion about the article here, but Martin's comment on the article is spot on. Really.

Poor, with beauty

Fabulous photos of something fierce and fantastic here (best seen by clicking where it says "FULL SCREEN").

But I also like the last four words: "We’re poor, with beauty."

MV Rajadhyaksha

Mangesh Vitthal Rajadhyaksha, long-time English professor and respected Marathi writer, died yesterday, aged 97. I only met him, if I remember right, twice. Yet even those brief encounters underlined the thoughtfulness, dignity and erudition people who knew him better always said he had in great measure.

My thoughts are with his family: wife Vijaya, daughters Mukta and Radha, and son Niranjan. Go well, sir. You will be remembered.

***
My insensitive mistake above corrected. Thank you, Raj.

Unholy mix

I know next to nothing about the IPL. Through three editions, I've probably seen a total of about half an hour of TV coverage of IPL matches, and that because I've been in a shop or somewhere else that has a TV on, showing a match.

Part of the reason for all this is that I have no TV.

Part is that the IPL's attitude towards the ICL always struck me as perverse and indefensible. When it arm-twisted cricket boards around the world into "banning" players who signed with the ICL, it lost me forever. (One of several posts I've had expressing my feelings about this: Me saint, you rebel). Yet this "banning" somehow never interfered with the notion some had, that the IPL was the coming of the free market to cricket.

Part is the attitude of the IPL's Grand Vizier, Lalit Modi. There's a smugness in his remarks that leaves me glad that I have never met the man, let alone deal with him. Besides, it amazes me that the glitz of the IPL seems enough to stifle any questions about the time he was charged with drug trafficking, assault inflicting serious injury and conspiracy to kidnap. Enough said.

And now the IPL has claimed a minister: Shashi Tharoor. Everything about the affair is too fresh and well-known for me to need to run through it all. But I think Tharoor brought to Indian politics a taste of openness and frankness that it has not had in living memory.

It dismays me that we have lost that. But it dismays me more that we lost it on account of what the Economic Times called an "unholy mix of cricket, money and corruption".

If it ain't broak ...

On a recent trip into the hills that involved a fair amount of road travel, several Ambassadors scuttled past us. Usually some kind of official cars, these. You know: mostly (but not always) white, those peculiar visors above the windscreen, often with an upward-pointing arrow that begins the registration number. And, most of the time, this written on the back: "Power Break".

Now you know that's supposed to be "Power Brake".

So I got to wondering.

* What are power brakes, how do they differ from regular brakes, and why do cars have them?

* Why do they need to announce to the world that they have said power brakes? Is my safety somehow compromised if a car with these things shoots past, to the extent that I need this warning?

* Most crucial of all, how did the mutation happen from "brake" to "break"? Think about it. As a spoken word, "brake" is known to all. Still, there are guys who don't know the written words apart -- the painters of these Ambassador warnings would appear to be such guys. Yet it seems likely to me that even these guys would know that "break" is further, phonetically, from the sound of the word than "brake" is. No?

If that's the case, why is "Power Break" apparently muscling out "Power Brake"?

My feeling is that the phrase is the 21st Century "Horn OK Please", a meme that caught on. Painting the words on Ambassadors, some poor sod misspelled it as "break" once; others saw it (maybe liked it) and copied it, and the rest is history.

Yeah, but give me a brake.

Dressed as prisoners

I want to know which prisoners dress like this and then I want to go visit.

Conversations, #7

Seventh installment of Beena Sarwar's ongoing conversation with me, here: Frankly, my dear, let's give a damn.

Please ply me, or this page, with comments.

Previous installments are: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6.

The wars we forgot

I called it "Sounds like a synonym", in print it is titled "The wars we forgot". Either way, my essay about mud, 250 km distances and a massacre is in the Hindustan Times today. Please take a look.

As ever, your comments welcome.

PS: I'm not responsible for that "pezzzzzzzzzach".

Landscape art

Sand dunes, throwing up on one of which I could have turned into an art form; freedom murals; a canyon I stepped across: all in my article on Namibia in today's Mint (Lounge section) -- Landscape art.

Do enjoy. Do let me know what you think.

Conversations, #6

The sixth installment of the ongoing conversation Beena Sarwar and I are having by email, here: Push for peace parks.

As always, comments welcome. May I take a moment to say thank you to all of you who have commented on previous installments; I hope they have given each of you things to think about. (I know your comments have given me things to think about).

Speaking of previous installments, here they are: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5.

Roadrunner: Interview in the Hindu

Today (Sunday April 4) the Hindu carries an interview Ronita Torcato did with me over email, regarding my book Roadrunner. Please take a look.

The original interview was much longer. If you'd like to read it, it's appended below. If you'd rather not read it, it's still appended below.

Postscript Apr 9At Ronita's request, I've removed the full interview from this post. I'm travelling, so more about this and other posts when I return to Bombay on Monday 12th.

Too much to handle

Open magazine carries my review of the twice Booker Prize winner Peter Carey's new book, Parrot and Olivier in America. They called it "Too Much to Handle".

Your comments welcome.

Incidentally, Carey is the man who finds anonymous mention in the third line of this post.

60 years later, a beginning

By some estimates, over half of India's children -- something approaching 80 million kids -- are malnourished, the highest number in the world. While reading about this several years ago for something I had to put together, I found a UNICEF report from the early '90s, The Progress of Nations, that did some eye-opening for me.

It said that the routine explanations for this scale of malnourishment -- poverty, low per capita food production, inequality in incomes, even vegetarian diets -- don't hold up to scrutiny. For Africa shows up significantly worse than India on some of these counts, but only about a third of its children are malnourished. Even in Mauritania, the worst African country in this respect, only 48% of the children are malnourished.

So what is the reason for malnutrition on the scale we see in India?

There are several the UNICEF report cited. They add up to what it called "the quality of child care." A mother may love her children a great deal, but "it is all but impossible for her to provide high quality child care if she herself is poor and oppressed, illiterate and uninformed." It is vital that Indian women be given greater freedoms, rights and opportunities -- and access to education. In fact, the report said the education of girls is the "key of keys" to fighting widespread malnutrition. This alone will make them more likely to exercise their rights, take a share in decision-making inside and outside the home and raise healthy children who will themselves attend school.

Others have come to similar conclusions. In World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins point out that overpopulation, lack of food and land to grow it on are not the real causes of hunger. Instead, it is a "scarcity of democracy". Amartya Sen has often and famously written that famines rarely happen in democratic countries. If a country has no elections and no free press, its rulers are not accountable and need not face the political consequences of failing to prevent a famine. In Hunger and Public Action, Sen and Jean Dreze argue that to eliminate malnourishment, health care and basic education must be promoted. Of course, educated people buy food and medicines in a more informed way. What's more, educated people demand services and their rights, whether health care, electricity or adequate resettlement measures if they are displaced by development projects. And the educated are better able to hold rulers politically accountable for their failures.

None of all this is new, I know. Nor is it glamorous front-page headlines involving six-hitting IPL superstars. Besides, it's been said before and will be said again.

Yet this is something of a context in which to understand what was indeed news yesterday. Sixty years ago, our Constitution put in place a Directive Principle of State Policy that said India should "endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, for free and compulsory education for children up to fourteen years of age."

Half a century on, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act has become law.

About time, but never mind. And if we now start making up for sixty wasted years, may this country finally fulfil its true human potential.