Green channel

A fan's note on Indian cricket

2012-01-29T00:27:00.002+05:30

I don’t remember when exactly I began to have this fear, but the specter of an Indian team shorn of its extraordinary fortune (there’s no other way to describe how so many great batsmen turned up at the same time) numbed my pleasure as a fan for a long time. For many years this team achieved less than it was capable of, and so, if it won when it wasn’t supposed to, I believed that things had come together for one long moment. But a losing team that starts winning is a strange thing: many of its fans celebrate, but some, like me, are left deeply uneasy. Not much has changed, so how did we start winning?

When I look back now, I see the comfort we found in constant underachievement. We were anchored to our failures, of which we were very aware. They hung around, reminding us of what needed to be done before we could set sail. But we slipped away by choosing the lubrication of good fortune over the struggle of creation. Well, here we are, finally run aground on a reef of We-told-you-so’s.

Now that our luck has left us, I feel oddly reassured. What remains is not actions but words that expose the hollowness of this team’s spirit. It is built on revenge, on the mistaken belief that they will show us, and we will be converts once more. They talk in the abstraction of numbers, they remind us of the good times, they tell us we need to stand behind them. There has been hubris, not humility; they speak not of remedying themselves but of doctoring pitches. Here they are, cold, frightened, and utterly lost. Orphans.

And from afar, from the man in exile, come solutions the length of an SMS. This, that, that too, and don’t forget this. Obvious solutions, old solutions - all put forward half a decade ago, and then discarded by him. He did not see luck as an opportunity to buy more time and create his own. Instead, he set about taking control and creating wealth. But those values were on paper, and ultimately they hinge on how the sport is played. Which he largely ignored. The funny money paid for those crazy Indian broadcast deals? Those weren’t for Indian cricket, they were for Indian cricket’s superstars. Now some of India’s greatest batsmen will leave and what happens next should be fun.

Here’s what we have. We are left with a team, or the remains of a team, that has fewer spinners than England does. Putting it mildly, we now regard Harbhajan Singh with something like fondness. The board talks about avoiding whitewashes. Dravid says there is no hurry to decide on his retirement. Laxman says nothing. Sachin waits, and we wait with him. This is as it was. These are the failures we were anchored to a decade ago. And here they are again. Except that the greatest batting lineup ever is now behind us, as is the finest Indian spinner.

The promise of this team lies in men who haven’t announced themselves yet. So I know I will wait for them to come along, as they have always done, and remind us that Indian cricket is alive once more. But again, and I have to keep reminding myself of this, it will be our fortune that takes us forward.

This time, though, the specter of good fortune deserting us can be some other fan’s private nightmare. I’ve seen this once; it’s all I can take, frankly.

Beautiful words from a beautiful book

2011-08-11T16:16:00.002+05:30

"When you write a book, you willingly step into the public arena, no longer reporter but being reported upon, no longer jotting down notes on the debate but joining in it. You should welcome to conflict with journalists, scholars, critics, and others who will read your work and challenge your version of reality with their own. That kind of disputation is healthy for a society and it will keep your talents sharp. Never be afraid to defend the vision of the world that you have committed to the page. But make sure you can defend it, because every charlatan in our midst undermines the credibility of us all."

Source: Letters to a Young Journalist.

The half-way point

2011-06-09T08:49:00.000+05:30

Bear with me a moment. I'm trying to explore the nature of something.

I've found that when it comes to memories, there is an inevitable point when what you know and what you feel and what you feel about what you felt back then all come together to create the perfect storm of nostalgia. This is long after the actual event. This often happens naturally, but can also be forced out of myself by creating the conditions necessary for a deep longing. It's been a while since she died, but I recall my mother when I enter the room she died in. I recreate the last sounds that came out of her, pull out the look on the doctor's face when he stopped pumping her heart, and then my sister making a phone call I could never have made.

The idea is not to mourn, or grieve, but to remember. And not just remember a moment, but a moment filled with feeling.

But there comes a half-way point when the bubbling in the water starts to subside before it cools and, finally, becomes still. My instinct then is to remember what I can dispassionately, and fall back on photographs, videos, and the recollections of other people. Through these things I can reconstruct, in a Frankensteinian way, the life of people I knew. This happens after the half-way point.

At this stage, truly unreliable narratives are formed. The kind that can't always be verified because they could be true, or just might not.

Just thinking aloud.

The Dubai-returns

2011-06-07T07:53:00.003+05:30

To me, a memory is a story whose cast and lines change imperceptibly with each recollection. Seen from other angles, memories become a kind of hazy witness report. Put together, they overlap to form some kind of truth. Three years ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I began to write a long, flawed memory of our life in Dubai. It is by no means accurate, but I had hoped to capture what I remember of this family before it became entirely fiction. This urge to record was always there, but it became more urgent when an uncle threw out a trove of old letters, photographs and documents because he needed the trunk for storage. I suddenly realized how much I wanted to read those letters, and see those photographs.

(A note. This was meant to be much longer, but I reasoned that a series of stories would allow me to delve into this history in greater detail, so I chopped it off abruptly.)

***

Not long after its independence, my elders landed on Dubai’s shores. They came by ship, one after another, heeding the trunk calls from other relatives in the desert. Come here, life is good here, get a job here. Here was the place to be. Between here and where they were, this was not a difficult choice to make. The Seventies were swinging elsewhere, and leaving India couldn’t have been easier. So they came, as others from India and its neighbors had, without a job, their confidence built on the rickety rumors of better prospects. They came with eight dollars in cargo class (because that is what India allowed them to carry outside) stopped at Karachi a while, and arrived here, unbathed and unshaved, five days later.

On arrival they walked to their new home under a burning sun. Word would spread. Another one had arrived. That evening the clan would converge, happy to have grown in number. I was not there then, but they would have danced, as they always did. Their arms jolting rhythmically and convulsing bodies following, their eyes closed, forefingers up, as if to say ‘bear with this for a minute’; the dance of men who could not groove. Wives and sisters, newly acquainted, sat on carpets with the air conditioning turned up, and talked about things the men had no time for.

Photographs show them before the wrinkles appeared, before the desert took its due. They look beautiful in their saris and pants, with the lady from Bombay in her short hair, and the new entrant from Indore in plaits, her eyes wide open. In hindsight, those years were lean but uncomplicated. Decades later, when they finally had the money they wanted, the simplicity would be gone.

For all it signifies, Dubai remains a small city. Along the way, its planners were galvanized by the idea of a greater destiny. The first attempts at greatness were classical: the world’s longest cake, the world’s biggest clock. Sharjah, the emirate next door, had the world’s third-largest fountain. These were diligently reported in the Khaleej Times, our local paper. Supportive letters were sent to the editor. Relatives gathered every week to discuss these achievements in earnestness. If anyone missed these drunken meetings, as an uncle who ran a photo store did, he would be heckled by the mob. “Note-chaap,” they would say to his face. Money-printer. And then rib his sons who had stayed behind.

Every now and then, a cousin would down a few drinks and claim to have seen the blueprint for Dubai’s growth. It involved breathtaking road layouts and supreme architecture. It was a great conversation stopper. For a moment the family would pause to consider how plausible this was. It was entirely plausible. Only fifteen years ago there had been nothing here but houses in the sand and a creek. Now there were malls and central air conditioning. Even then, it was implausible. The idiot had drunk too much. They would continue discussions over Amstel and Planters cheese balls. It was not a place or a time for introspection. One arbitrary ruling by the royal family, would have meant we’d be back in Indore. So the future, for many people, was of course filled with unknowns, but it held no promise, only the dread of tomorrow. They otherwise earned and lived well, better than they would have elsewhere, but many of them lived from day to day.  

The cousin would not tell us how he knew. You only need to see a picture of modern Dubai to know he was right. There will be trains in the sky, it will be a city of skyscrapers and huge attractions and ten million visitors each year. You could see pictures of the same place, year by year from 1972, and understand that this advance was inevitable. But in 1990, which falls halfway between 1972 and 2007, we had simply no idea. Dubai was Dubai, it stood for nothing else. People made money there, but that was all. It would be a decade before it was compared with Monaco, giant islands were built off shore, and the Burj shone like a jewel in the Dubai skyline. But I missed this breathless growth. In 1996 I left to start my own life.  

Breathless activity has its downsides. Where I used to live is now unsympathetically called old Dubai. Twenty years old and it’s known as old Dubai. The beating heart of the city has shifted twenty kilometers outward, and so planned was the approach that for a while the city had a downtown filled with cranes and construction workers and not a finished building in sight. Before modern Dubai, a place like it existed only in Sim City 2000.

But downtown came later. This was a quiet town once, before the desert was swept back. At the time, a single low aerial snap could capture every building in town. A creek slunk through its center, splitting the population in two; Deira with its electronics stores on one side, and Bur Dubai’s south Asian textile shops on the other. The place couldn’t have been closer to heaven for immigrants from India, of whom there were multitudes. They lived a life radically different from anything their own countries could afford. Dubai offered wealth and familiar food and entertainment. Of course rules had to be followed, the first among them being unofficial - that the Arab always took preference over all else. It was a wisdom that held true, as people learnt from the unfortunate experiences of others. Deportations and jail terms were common. But such were the benefits of staying in line and keeping your head down that the city, at least as the papers reported it, experienced virtually no incident or crime.

Back home in India, people argued that they lived in a democracy. In Hindi movies the term ‘Dubai-return’ was coined to describe a peculiar comically stylish breed of sunglass-wearing Indian. The city came to be renowned as the den of smugglers and thieves whose motive was to destabilize India. Those were naïve times, although the truth is that the Indians who stayed behind lived an unforgiving life. There was violence and corruption and taxes and an uncooperative bureaucratic regime and a list of wrongs as lengthy as history.

The view in Dubai was of course different. To them, the freedoms of an authoritarian country were not as taxing as those of the democracy left behind. Naturally dissent was unacceptable, but they were here for work and the good life, not trouble. It did not matter whether internationally wanted men moved among them for the city was content and promised lasting peace. And peace was kept, despite the immigrant population consisting largely of Indians and Pakistanis afflicted by Partition’s festering wounds. Their recent history had brimmed with injustices that often boiled over into wars, but the immigrants here had long ago decided that nationalism did not buy a new car. Besides, Dubai offered only one chance.

They took that chance to build businesses that thrived for decades. Movie theaters and drive-ins, jewelry stores, supermarkets, photo studios, music stores, restaurants – the small businesses sprouted everywhere, making it like a sanitized version of home. This happened by strength in numbers. The photo studio I sat at was bracketed by an Indian fast food restaurant and a tailoring shop – one run by a sikh, the other by a South Indian. Down the street small and identical music stores did business, and flourished. Which was befuddling, because everyone sold the same video and audio cassettes. Indian textiles flooded the market. Hindi was adopted by Arabs, and they spoke a broken version of it: “Ek minute. Hum aati.” The Indian hand was everywhere. And so, given the evidence of their culture flourishing, each day convinced the immigrants further that the land was their own, even if they couldn’t buy it.

Perhaps they overestimated their supposed stake, because one morning the exodus began. The day’s papers mentioned a new ruling that forced workers below a certain income to leave Dubai immediately. As days went by the reports of departures nurtured an old insecurity. Our family meetings were more politically inclined. ‘Who knows what they’ll come up with next?’ some would ask in anger. It was true. Rulings came with no prior warning, and had a nasty way of forcing upheaval upon large swathes of the population. The children, my cousins, who had so far been unaware of the impact of new legislation, were now old enough to latch on to catchphrases. “Who knows what they’ll come up with next,” a cousin parroted and was immediately shushed up. My parents would wait until the last guest had left before holding me to never repeat conversations at home. The reigning Indian policy of no confrontation had worked for them, and they wished for us too to become invisible in some ways. The local populace, we understood, had to be respected and feared. An Arab was always - always - connected to someone who could alter the course of your life. Proof of this was not required. When enough people speak about a thing, it becomes true. Dubai was not the kind of place where you learnt from your own mistakes.

The theory of cooperation and respect was tested during the first Gulf War, when the city swarmed with marines. I’d spend time with my uncle at his photo studio in Bur Dubai where a cash register swallowed green bills with a frequency unimaginable to us. The volume of work had overwhelmed the small staff. He needed an extra hand. I’d help with feeding the negative into the processor, cutting it in to strips and slipping them into plastic sheaths. Then the photos would come out of the machine, one every half minute or so, with these alien white faces doing strange things. They were big and had blond hair and freckles. They dressed differently, and wore shirts untucked. Sometimes they were bare-chested. Sometimes the women wore almost nothing. My uncle would look at every picture, replacing bad prints with a reprint, not stopping to linger on any one a little longer. He betrayed no curiosity. Racy pictures were destined, like all others, for a drawer under the register filled with envelopes marked for customers. I think back now, remembering his glasses perched half-way up his broad nose under his thick Sindhi eyebrows, skipping through these prints quickly. The faster he did this, the more he earned.
Ever so often a local walked in to the crowded shop. Experience had taught them that Arabs will get attention, so nothing need be said or demanded. My uncle stopped what he was doing and would speak with him directly, bypassing the customers who arrived before. The others waited testily, but said nothing. Americans looked at things differently.

The pianist

2011-04-26T09:46:00.006+05:30

The pianist, a quiet man from Washington, contemplated what he would do after he gave up what he was born to do. Greying, slowing, he no longer relegated tasks to the future, when he would be greyer, slower. He was born to old parents who gave him the opportunity to be still and read, and through these books he learned that men a thousand years ago were no different from those today. In time, after he was alone a long while, and after his professional ambitions began to fade, he saw the dreams his passions had obscured. The pianist took to travel, looking for answers to questions that were never clear. He traversed the quietest parts of this country, moving between places where people found enlightenment, hoping to be inspired. There had been no inspiration so far, only a faint realization that his life was enviable, even as it came to a close. Men who helped him get around told him so, and he began to see the walls that separated these men from the lives they could lead. The force of this desire made him reconsider what he was doing, and how he was doing it.

But there's still the future to think of, he said, lighting up a cigarette on a musty morning in Goa. There are things he wants to do, but these are tempered by things he has to do. Right now, he has to play the piano.

Then he shrugged, and smiled, and did what men a thousand years ago did: he filed the dilemma for later.

Why they left

2011-04-12T10:45:00.003+05:30

Last Sunday, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Samanth Subramanian, and I caught up.

As an aside, one of the things I'm irrationally proud of - don't ask why - is that Samanth edited the first article of my professional writing life. He had been at Cricinfo a while, and I was three days old there. He went through it at the speed the web demands, adding a word here, removing one there, rejigging a couple of paragraphs, before reaching the last line. Here he paused, reading it again and again, before writing this over it in one thirty-second burst:

Farhat's dismissal brought Inzamam-ul-Haq to the crease, and he scored a quickfire 25 in his 300th one-day international to set the tone for the late-innings savagery. Youhana's 53-ball 64 and Razzaq's 34 off just 16 balls merely drove the nails more thunderously into the coffin of this depleted New Zealand outfit.

I don't remember what I had written, but the way he wrote these lines did. After he was done, he felt compelled to say something about good beginnings and satisfying endings. This was my first taste of the uncluttered thinking that added to Cricinfo's aura. In time I'd come to learn of Tim de Lisle's legendary stylebook - 'colour is good', I think he wrote - why adjectives were discouraged, and other things I can't remember, but which live on in the writing style of nearly everyone who moved on from Cricinfo (except for Rahul Bhattacharya, who came and went with his own style).

But ten days after I joined, Samanth left and, by dint of being present, I became a full employee. I was thankful for the job, but didn't really bother finding out why he left. In the years since then, while I worked there, I knew that Chandrahas left to explore a wider world, while Amit wanted to focus on blogging. It's difficult to explain how seismic this was. Sure, we talked about how there were more distractions for Indians today, and yes, a casual survey did tell us that football was more popular in city schools than cricket, and that is why people were stepping away from the game. These reasons explained dwindling audiences, they explained falling ratings. But now, when I think about it, these were probably things we felt by ourselves. That the more frequent games became, the lesser was the anticipation. The more they marketed each game, the less we listened to the personal rhythms that connect sport lovers spread over continents. Cricket thrived, and still does, but I'd argue that it is no longer the medium for its writers' passions that it once was. Siddhartha Vidyanathan continues to write about the sport beautifully, but he does this outside the fold. No Zimbabwe versus Bangladesh matches for him. Rahul has turned to exploring quieter worlds. Amit, who brings scary intensity to everything he does, now challenges himself in other ways.

All this is connected to Sunday. When the discussion veered to cricket writing, Samanth said he left because - and I'm phrasing this very loosely - he didn't want to hate the game. Now, writing this, I realize he felt it change before most of us did. Like the writers who came after him, he left it because he loved the idea of it too much. It would be funny if it wasn't true.

Why this post, why now? I guess I'm grappling with something new - the idea that writing seriously in India requires sacrifice and a degree of risk-taking. Looking at Cricinfo and its writers helps. They put themselves in a new place because they couldn't completely believe in the old one. I can't think of a better reason to leap.

The phantom leap

2011-04-11T22:02:00.004+05:30

Eight days short of six years ago, when there was time for internal dialogue, I wrote this. Many things have changed since, but the conflicts present in the last paragraph have remained. There have been growing responsibilities, and a greater awareness of the consequences of each choice. And yet the conflicts don't go away. Even after six years of learning, of working toward something, of hopefully becoming a slightly better writer. That phantom leap still lingers, waiting for me to decide. Each choice is brave and yet cowardly; the secure path leads to a warm life, and the one I haven't taken could be miserable.

But I live and breathe my stories in a way I can't explain. Not to you, or my bosses, or my family, or even myself. The last story I explored and wrote with passion - even if it doesn't come across - was the longest I had ever written and, I asked myself after a month: "Still not one comment?" The story took three weeks to research, and a week to write. Then came another story, about the Oscar Library, which I wrote because I had to fill a weekly deadline. I wrote it in an hour. I spent the next two days in a terrible funk, because it was terrible. And I'm still surprised how many people liked it.

So at what point does one take that leap? I'm still grappling with it. When I wrote 25, 35, 45, I genuinely didn't know how life would turn out. At 31, the answer is no clearer, but the choices, and their consequences, certainly are.

I guess knowing how you're going to be screwed is a kind of progress.

The spirit of inquiry

2011-01-27T23:45:00.004+05:30

Reading The Emperor of All Maladies today, I came by a passage whose sentiment I found familiar .

"Basic research," [Vannevar] Bush wrote, "is performed without thought of practical ends. It results in general knowledge and an understanding of nature and its laws. This general knowledge provides the means of answering a large number of important practical problems, though it may not give a complete specific answer to any one of them...."

Bush argued that the the spirit of inquiry was central to scientific progress, and that "programmatic" science, which favoured a regimented, goal-based approach, would stifle innovation.

But as I mentioned, Bush's words felt familiar because writing often felt like this. Especially at the start, and especially at times like now, when I want to stop doing whatever I'm doing and focus on defining my present limits. These boundaries keep changing, and with these boundaries the 'laws' change too. The "general knowledge" it results in is of the personal kind; I discover a little more about myself. These discoveries, in turn, take me someplace else. When the spirit of inquiry is alive, we chart new territory.

Airtel and me, the media.

2010-11-23T15:15:00.002+05:30

It was a pretty calm and unexciting day when the phone rang, as it always did, quite suddenly.

Voice: Hello. I'm calling from IMRB on behalf of Airtel broadband to check customer satisfaction. Could you spare five minutes of your time to answer some questions?

Me: Yes!

(Background: My broadband had been behaving like MTNL's dialup for three months. I would call regularly to complain, and they would respond that an engineer had come by and everything was wonderful. It was like Middle Eastern propaganda. I nearly forgot what a 4mbps connection looked like. Just the other day a guy at the call center blew up at me for being unprofessional when I called the connection "shit". His awesome response: "The shit connection, sir, is because we have server trouble." Server trouble is like the Indian online version of dog ate my homework. Big-ass faceless entity that's safe to shake a fist at. Like a picture of god.)

Voice: Is any member of your family in the media?

Me: Yes.

Voice: Who?

Me: Me.

(Silence.)

Voice: Thank you for your time. We're not looking for feedback from the media today.

And then she hung up to go find some non-media person. Today it's us media folk. Next come the bloggers. Then the ones on Twitter.

You know where this is headed.

Voice: Sorry sir, Airtel broadband's not looking for customer feedback from anyone using the internet.

Another place, another plane, another time, another space

2010-10-25T20:42:00.001+05:30

There are nine screws above me. Nine white dome-shaped heads pierced through the wings of the fan. Two hanging lights bracket this fan, and they all swing this way and that when a strong breeze rushes through. One glass shell contains tungsten, and the other is lit up by halogen. These are all stuck to a false white ceiling with tiny blotches, like dried rainwater in a school notebook. The fan’s tails are dusty and greasy, and someone would clean it if they noticed it the way I do. They would clean it if it bothered them the way it does me, because it feels like seeing through smudged spectacles. But for them to notice it would require them to look at the ceiling and nothing else. They would have to stare at it for thirty days and nights, the way I have, watching moths and their dramatic shadows flutter by and die, watching passing flies chase and flee, watching vampire insects float by malnourished and float away red and full and content. This is to go on for a week more, doctors say. Stay on your back. Don’t get up. And whatever you do, don’t die of boredom.

A slowdown is a heavy, heavy weight. It presses down hard, forcing you still. At first the body rebels, brimming with energies that need something, anything, to do. These turn to embers that die eventually. And then you lie there, waiting for something to happen. Until these thoughts die too. Then there is nothing. There is you, the fan, the stupid lights, a bunch of moths, flies in a hurry, and vampire mosquitoes. Like I said, nothing extraordinary.

But there’s something funny about all this. Night and day make no difference. You are neither active nor tired. There is nothing to be excited about. I stop reading the papers. For hours I lie here, staring straight ahead, listening to life go on outside. People are doing something. Insects and animals are doing something. It feels like holding life’s wrist and feeling its pulse. This always needed more than time. It needed me to clear the real estate in my head.

When a body goes on a general strike, it behaves like West Bengal. It begins on Monday and ends whenever. But there’s time to smell the flowers again, to dig into culture, to discover stories that slipped by. It is another place, another plane, another time, another space.

Next month I will have to come out and face the human race. They will stop by for a moment and perhaps see something faintly familiar when we meet. I will look at them and wonder about this. I might think about the house I’d like one day. The mountain home I see in daydreams sometimes. They might see this in my face, in my gait. But as I live among them once again, the slowdown will slowly end. The heaviness of that slowdown will be gone, replaced with something even heavier.

Amitabh Bachchan's cough work

2010-06-29T17:14:00.004+05:30

Even by the breathtakingly atrocious standard of film reporting at Bombay Times, this story is incredible. An excerpt:

Amitabh Bachchan gave a funny dialogue of a South Indian film, "I will hit you so hard even Google will not be able to find you", out on a social networking site.

It became an instant hit amongst the net community, getting repeated, used as status messages and updates across the net. Of course, no one bothered to give credit to the person who set it all in motion. ... We speak about IPR rights in a country where even AB’s work is passed off by the general public as their own!

AB's work?

The wives who stayed behind

2010-06-21T15:58:00.001+05:30

Rajni George has written a lovely story about women whose husbands live and work in the Middle East. Towards the end of her piece, George delves on the classic conflicts immigrants grapple with in a beautiful paragraph:

In [a book titled] Kerala’s Gulf Connection, ... loneliness is cited as the most serious problem Gulf wives face, followed by the burden of being the chief person responsible when a member of the household needs medical care or other help. How does one weigh this kind of loneliness against the other kind that both Amisha and Rasiya say they want to avoid, the loneliness of being in a foreign country without a social support system? Every immigrant life is shaped according to how they respond to this essential conflict. The question they are unwittingly responding to, of course, is what makes them happy and how?

I'm going to take a sentence out of context because it reminded me of something. The immigrant experience is inextricably linked to the region's story. When they left these shores to pursue a dream, they gambled that their fortunes would rise and fall with those of their host. Until three years ago they had good times, sailing through the greenest of green stretches life can provide. Until this happened, they could afford to not look at the strides being taken at home. Now the immigrant looks at home from a distance and sees it changed. The classic loneliness of being in a foreign country is slightly altered: It is also the loneliness of knowing that the home left behind has forgotten his absence.

I had the good fortune to meet Rajni, a writer and editor with The Caravan, during a recent trip to Dubai. I was surprised at how she felt about the city and its immigrants from a story-potential perspective. Surprised because I had naively assumed that my decades in Dubai had left me with a unique perspective, and that I could see stories that others couldn't. After meeting her, I wasn't so sure.

I do know one thing. If she decides to write a book on the place, it'll be far better than any literature on the subject so far.

Sabotaging bad movies

2010-06-21T13:46:00.000+05:30

Reading a story today about the new old Bollywood meme of rumor and gossip being used to sink movies, I wondered why the firmament isn't called out more often on this lie. When a star becomes part of a movie unit, he goes public with his choices. I'm curious about what drives these decisions. What makes a movie like Kites seem like a good idea? Who sells it? What does he say to make a star buy it? What does the star see? Who does he consult? How does his existence inside this space lead him to believe that a failed movie was not undone simply by its badness? That it was sabotage?

What I'd give to be inside this bubble. Can you imagine the delusion?

The story

2010-06-21T10:53:00.001+05:30

When I see a forgotten thing, of whose significance only I know, there’s a tightening in my chest and I think to myself that this forgetting and this discovery are a story. When the excitement fades, I remember that all this is a very old story, and that forgetting happens for a reason. Once the reasoning is over and the time to feel comes, I look at the forgotten thing from a distance, reconstructing the history that surrounded it and my place in it, and I remember that some things are most keenly felt by me only. Words only serve to lighten their meaning.

Guidance

2010-05-26T17:20:00.002+05:30

This poor kid needs a little luck going his way. First the transfer problem, then his terrible tour, and now he suffers the indignity of a leaked mail:

"I regret that the board has sent me a notice for the incident in the West Indies, and please accept my apology," Jadeja wrote. "I had gone to the restaurant (pub) along with other Indian team members. Some other guests, which I presume were Indian origins of the USA, also came to the restaurant and on seeing us they started abusing us, this may be because they were unhappy with our poor performance. We requested them not to abuse us but they did not stop inspite of our repeated request. No way was I involved in any ugly brawl and I went to the pub only to have dinner with my team-mates."

Unless the board didn't leak it.

Whatever happened that day, there's no denying that Indian cricket fans - the only kind I'm familiar with - can be thoughtless and quite unkind. The chants at Wankhede and the thrown bottles and stones still resonate. I've seen this before in living rooms and locker rooms, two places where the filter between the mind and mouth disappears. Players shouldn't be dropped, they should be "kicked out". A captain isn't having a bad day, "he's just useless". I'm generalizing, but most of us have heard these words and uttered them too. I think we tend to forget that passion needs the constraints of civility. Without that, we can't be fans.

The vehicle

2010-05-26T16:02:00.003+05:30

Watching Kites the other night, there were times I felt so embarrassed, exposed, and squeamish that I couldn’t bear to look at the screen. I had nothing at stake with this movie, not the investment of emotional interest, not even mild curiosity. This was because of my unshakable belief before the movie’s release that Kites was destined to fail. So my reactions confused me. Bad movies are usually enjoyable. What was so different about this one? Until I began writing this short piece, I had no idea.

My certainty about the movie’s fate grew with each round fired by the pre-release publicity. When Hrithik Roshan danced to an audience in one song, they were amazed by his moves. When he jumped up and lingered there, the background went white with blazing flashbulbs. His open shirt fluttered in the wind, revealing a body that has been exposed a hundred times before. I came away with nothing but the message its makers wanted to convey: Kites had a story, and that story was Roshan.

Most of us have our vehicles. A good gig. A profitable association. The things we ride on in life. But a movie as a vehicle doesn’t sit easy with me, especially a movie meant to be a vehicle into Hollywood. From Roshan’s first mumble to his final heartbroken leap, Kites’ purpose was to enshrine what was most beautiful about him. Whether men died around him, or true love struck, the camera remained on his face in a way parents making baby videos will recognize. In this way Kites was like a father’s message to the world: Here is my son. Take good care of him.

Well, that’s how I would have seen it if it rang true. This was a vehicle. I felt squeamish because there was nothing I could say or do. This wasn’t a movie. It was nothing. It was a modeling portfolio. It was lazy and assumed so much.

Roshan said that Indian audiences were “putting it down” instead of “nurturing this new passion that has conquered so many new markets”. He said that Kites was like pasta to biryani-fed Indians. What does this talk remind you of? To me he sounds eerily similar to men who explain markets through trends and buzzwords, men who have a reason for everything.

Does this talk come easily because actors sit at this intersection of art and commerce? I don’t know. I excused myself from a job interview once soon after my interviewer, an editor, spoke to me about the publication’s brand perception and its verticals. I know these things are important, but I’m conflicted. I walked out because I wanted to write.

Does Roshan want to act? I don’t know.

Looking through windows

2010-02-09T23:34:00.002+05:30

A dusty new yellow skywalk winds from Bandra station, past IMG, and across the bumpy Western highway before turning abruptly and terminating in the lap of Matoshree. Before the wide path swings by the glass tower of the event management agency, and the swamp and endless asphalt that follow, it presents a rare opportunity to stop and look through windows.

At the bottom of a building constructed entirely of curling planks of plywood and nails, preparations are on for a shop's opening. Directly above it, on a wooden ledge on more than two feet wide, a perched carpenter accepts a hammer and nails from his adviser, currently balancing himself on a white paint-stained ladder. The carpenter places a rust colored corrugated iron sheet on the ledge, and discovers it isn't the right size. A measuring tape is brought out, the ledge is measured, and a discussion commences. The helper descends gingerly and disappears inside the shop. The carpenter is still now, apart from the odd sniffle. After a while he wipes his leaky nose on his right sleeve. With his left, he holds on to a wooden plank at the base of a window where two attentive young boys keep his hammer handy. A third child emerges from behind a yellow curtain and asks to hold the hammer in exchange for a screwdriver. The request is denied.

The next store is empty, but for a single telephone orphaned on a desk and the balding proprietor behind it. Above them, tattered floral prints sway gently to reveal and conceal tailors and their sewing machines sitting on the floor. One tailor's mouth is swollen with tobacco, and he communicates with expressive head shakes, never quite unsealing his lips.

Now the carpenter climbs through the window, and tiny heads bob up to evaluate his work. In seconds they are bored of this. One chokes the other, and the victim falls down dead. Immediately two hands clad in bangles close around the boys' ears and drag them in to deliver instant justice. The yellow curtain pauses a moment to take in their absence before settling down.

Beyond the building is an MNS flag nailed to the side of a ramshackle kitchen on the second floor of a firetrap. And even further is another flagpole holding up what looks like a giant rubber horn.

Watching Avatar

2009-12-24T13:54:00.002+05:30

(Spoilers here, but you’ll thank me.)

There are many beautiful things about Avatar: plants in danger zip themselves shut, trees share knowledge, forests light up at night, the animals. But there is gift wrapping, and then there’s the gift within. Remember Pushpak?

The gift within, as it were, is the story and dialogue. The movie begins with interesting circumstances - a paraplegic finds his feet in another body. He is sent to the natives as a spy, and his loyalties slowly shift. This journey into his new life is narrated leisurely, and it feels suitably meditative. Almost Eastern, in a way.

But then it remembers Hollywood. Like an Indian copy editor pressed for time, it puts an end to the journey arbitrarily, and the result is brutal. A war follows, in which copters and flying beasts go at each other. I could not believe my ears when the protagonist screamed for war at the end. It stereotyped the stereotype. For a moment I saw Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe do their thing. Perhaps that is how battles are fought and how leaders inspire. Perhaps. But I think not. Imagine Marlon Brando going “YEAH!” and doing a fist pump during his monologue in Apocalypse Now. Weird there, weird here. There’s quiet leadership, and there’s Hollywood leadership.

There were references to Miyazaki’s work and the gargantuan machines so necessary in futuristic war video games. All this has been seen before in one form or another. Even the detailing, striking for a movie, is something I found underwhelming. I mean, once you’ve played MGS4, ‘graphics’ don’t stand a chance.

But the new thing that excited me about Avatar was the way the camera used 3D. It barely ever stood steady, with the result that you felt part of it. I can’t wait to see how that evolves in the years to come.

As for the rest, meh.

Ps. The wife put it well. "$280 million on the movie. How much on the script?"

A visit to the CA

2009-11-21T12:31:00.003+05:30

Years of dealing with negligent and ignorant advertising professionals have helped my CA perfect a dialect that consists solely of euphemisms. When we last spoke he asked for a particular document that was necessary "to avoid things we are not interested in".

On daydreaming

2009-11-21T12:20:00.003+05:30

Earlier today, when the sun was bright and the air was cool and crisp, I felt happy about something that might happen a year later. A car honked, and then another, and I remembered where I was. I'm still happy. What I did then was daydream. What I feel now, I think, is a result of untouched optimism.

Sketch - Who was that masked man?

2009-11-10T21:23:00.002+05:30

Alright. So I'm scared to do faces. Sue me.

Sketch - face practice

2009-11-02T10:37:00.001+05:30

I'm practicing faces. The profile is probably the easiest angle to get, but this took me half a day.

Sketch: Bird on rod

2009-09-20T17:38:00.003+05:30

From memory. On the iPhone.

Update: Tuesday, 22 September: How much of an improvement this version is, I can't tell yet.

Open Magazine feature: Foleys

2009-08-31T13:47:00.000+05:30

There are men who enjoy recreating the sounds of everyday life. The best ones are good listeners. They know that a walk is never just a walk, that a splash is hardly just a splash. These men have been around for two decades now, applying their observations to film, adding realism to absolute turkeys. They are sonic anthropologists. The film industry calls them Foley artists.

“Watch this,” Sajjan Chouwdhry, a Foley artist at Aradhana Studio said, picking up a pair of tattered shoes from a messy pile of worn-out footwear that carpeted the studio floor. Scattered around him were props to create sounds that end up on film: a cage fan, a creaky leather sofa, a rusty car bonnet, glass bottles, a fake door with a knob and latches, wicker baskets, a cupboard of jewellery and bangles. Putting them on, he stood still beside a microphone wrapped in cloth on a surface of ageing wooden planks. “Ready,” he said. A moment later, a large screen came alive with Gulshan Grover, dressed formally, strolling down a boardwalk. Chouwdhry walked in place, in step with Grover, tapping his feet hard to create the cold, formal beat of a corporate man’s shoes. As Grover slowed down, so did Chouwdhry, finally turning with his soles scraping the floor as Grover turned to sit down. “The extra sound”— a regular swish—“is because I’m wearing pants,” Chouwdhry said, implying that he walks for movies without his pants. Which is just as well, for Foleys can be found in the farthest reaches of recording studios, where they are left alone to pursue an ambition considered unsexy. They are happiest there, among musty props and familiar recording equipment, grounding characters; away from unwanted attention.

Karnail Singh, a large and genial man who works with Chouwdhry, has done this since 1986. He is now considered a master. “If I tell you to put down a phone, you’ll put it right down. But we look at the character. Is he pensive about the call? If he is, his hand will search for the cradle. The phone cord will pull and jar on the desk’s edge. That’s the difference between a good Foley artist and someone who’s in it for the money.”

Until recently Singh was called a sound effects specialist, but then, somehow, people started calling him a Foley. “Even I didn’t know what it meant,” he says. The word is a tribute to Jack Foley, who spent a lifetime squeezing sounds out of props for movies. An uncredited article about Foley has his technique described by George Pal, an Oscar nominee seven times over for his cartoons: ‘Jack’s technique was to record all the effects for a reel at one time… Jack added the footsteps, the movement, the sound of various props, all in one track. He used a cane as an adjunct to his own footsteps. With that cane, he could make the footsteps of two to three people. He kept a large cloth in his pocket which could be used to simulate movement.’ (The sound created by rubbing two bits of cloth mimics the sound of human motion, of arms and legs flexing or relaxing.)

Foley art arrived in India in 1971 at Prasad Labs in Chennai, when a mandolin player and a studio assistant were assigned by the sound engineer of Sigappu Rojakkal to recreate the sound of birds (using bamboo strips) and sea waves (with mustard seeds on thick paper). They were paid Rs 250 for their efforts. But this was at Prasad Labs. In the Hindi film industry, sound effects were the work of amateurs and the disinterested. “All attention was paid to music, background music and photography, which is not surprising. The sound recorder’s work we heard at mixing time,” says Raj Sippy, who began directing in 1977. This meant anybody could pass off anything as sound effects. Dishoom, for example, is believed to be the work of a fight master who used the sound informally to guide actors. “I cannot believe how people took to the sound back then,” Sippy says. He once snuck a recording device into Excelsior to record the punches in a Charles Bronson movie. He then gave the tape to his filmmaker friends.

“I was not very happy with how my seniors did things,” says Singh, “but they were my seniors, so I had to keep quiet. They did things the wrong way. The director was focused on the hero and the dialogue. Between dialogues there was nothing, just empty space.”

After landing a permanent gig at Aradhana, they worked on Discovery of India. They were then roped in for Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parinda. Arun Patil, a sound effects man who specialised in explosions, came to them with a problem: create sounds for a South Indian swing that creaked and had bells attached. “That was the toughest thing we ever did,” Singh says. Chouwdhry nods. Now, they say, nothing puzzles them. One scene in Vikram Bhatt’s horror flick 1920, showed a cat being eaten. To get the right amount of crunchiness, Chouwdhry ordered a roast chicken for the sound session. Chouwdhry, the brawnier of the two, says he’s more suited for “macho sounds”, such as a man’s walk, a thump, a punch, a fall. Singh, he says, is fine with “lady sounds”: the tinkle of an earring, bangles, sandals. Singh smiles and says nothing.

Since the community of Foley artists in India is small—between 10 and 15 in Mumbai—there’s no shortage of assignments. But Nitin Chandy, the sound engineer at Blue Frog’s recording studios, says they will have to evolve. He believes that the advent of digital sound, which included digital libraries, transformed the landscape for sound designers. To pull out a sound earlier meant destructive editing—cutting from tape. “Foleys were in trouble when it became non-destructive.” Now every designer has access to libraries. “Now it’s a dying art.”

Foleys disagree, of course. A freelance Foley who worked for Ram Gopal Varma says digital libraries aren’t everything. Singh and Chouwdhry think about it for a moment before declaring that there’s more than enough work. They turn to a silent screen playing Varma’s next film. The protagonists run through the jungle, and all you hear is the crunch of leaves and the splash of water. Then it ends, promising a sequel. Varma alone could keep Foleys in business.

Open Magazine feature: The superstar problem

2009-08-31T13:44:00.001+05:30

The modern filmmaker who strives to walk on a path of his own making asks for too much. He requires money, a commodity that is at once everywhere and nowhere in Bollywood. He discovers that the future of his tightly bound baby depends not on the firmness of the script nor on the probable cost of production. If his film is ever made while he stays true to himself, he will attribute it to hard work and luck. Mostly to luck. And to praying, with all his might, that no one asks who the star is.

The star is at the heart of everything. This we know now, again. In the middle of this decade a theory found favour in Mumbai. Like so many others, this too sprung from naivete. Cinema, it seemed, would finally be true to itself, and be free from the tyranny of stars. Finally good stories would be told, finally intelligence would be rewarded. Movies such as Black Friday, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Socha Na Tha, My Brother Nikhil, Manorama Six Feet Under and Johnny Gaddar revealed themselves at multiplexes. The last of these movies came two years ago but it seems an age. All were starless. We now know that stars are a necessity because stars are a condition; too many people can’t quite do without them. We know that with stars comes notice, and baggage too—more than a director needs.

And what happens, when that first starless movie by an idealistic filmmaker is done and dusted, and acclaim has come his way? Why, doors open. He telephones to say, “Hey, this is Navdeep Singh, the director of Manorama Six Feet Under”, and the big men invite him in. They know a finely directed movie when they see one, but pity about the box office. They tell him about their romantic comedy and ask him to direct it the way he did his own murder mystery. He emerges from meetings wondering what just happened. They tell Raj Kumar Gupta, the man behind Aamir, that they have a movie just like Aamir for him to direct (Who says man writes his own destiny?). It’s enough to make a director interrogate himself unreasonably. Is there something wrong in his approach, is he a misfit, or worse? He considers a life not in Indian cinema, but in Bollywood. He considers taking refuge in compromise.

Compromise. The word whose meaning every filmmaker wrestles with at least once. Two years after Manorama, Singh lights up one stick of Classic Mild after another outside a Juhu coffee shop and talks about how this consideration manifests itself. “There’s a strong temptation… I mean, that’s where the money lies, that’s where the success lies. I’ll admit I feel a little jealous of the people I know. They drive BMWs, have a 7 crore flat. It’s actually less work to make those kind of films. It’s a different kind of work, I suppose, but I think it’s less work because the costume person is handling costumes, not the director.” He chuckles in wonder of it all. “Same goes for the music. It works pretty independently. You’ve got to be able to enjoy that way of working. Unfortunately the kind of films I make would not necessarily attract the kind of money my children would appreciate.”

Some encounters leave small filmmakers wondering. When a popular mainstream actress heard how many songs a director’s new movie had, she called it an art film. “Not one more,” the director recalled her saying. “I’ve just done three.” One of the three—as mainstream as it gets—was arty to her because the lead had changed his facial appearance. “The definition of mainstream in India is still very narrow,” he says. “Anything outside it is not even considered hatke. It’s considered arty.”

“It’s not that we won’t work with stars,” says Raj Kumar Gupta, “In Hollywood, big stars care about the script. They don’t care if you’re a first-time filmmaker or a second timer. Over here not many stars will be interested, unless you have the backing of a big filmmaker/producer.” Gupta recalls producers being excited by a script he had written. “One producer said he would fund it if I had a star. But the story was about eight losers. The first thing a star would have asked me is, ‘Am I a loser? Why the fuck have you come to me if I’m a loser?’”

Stars are part of the overarching, all-consuming belief that every element in a movie has a value attached. And that the sum of those values must result in a profit. “A producer will say ‘Okay, I can get Abhay Deol’. He will get out a calculator. Thak-thak-thak. ‘Achcha, second lead mein Irfan dal sakte hain. Sab mila ke budget itna hai.’” For an idealist filmmaker, the ones with reputations for being difficult, the belief is understandable but alien. “For me it’s got to be about something more than money,” Singh says.
It should be, but rarely is in this city.

Mazhar Kamran, a director of photography for Satya and Kaun, is nervous about his first directional venture. Mohan Das, about an over achiever who slips into ruin after losing his identity, has no stars. It features Nakul Vaid and Sonali Kulkarni. Kamran found a financier willing to bear the low cost of production.

With that he imagined that his struggles were over. But Kamran found distribution a challenge instead. Distributors refused to buy the film—on the basis that there were no stars. “That’s what the whole thing comes down to. You will find people who back you, who fund you, but you will find it difficult to get into theatres. That’s the barrier. But the market works like this. How do you break that?” Kamran’s next movie will be produced by Venus. “They will want a star,” he says like a child who knows his summer vacation will soon be over.

The answer to this impasse, with the wannabe and the producer/exhibitor staring at each other across a table, is slight deception. “The only way you can sell something in this town,” says Singh, “is by giving your movie a genre. Call it an action thriller. You cheat a bit. You stress the more commercial aspects of it. You call it a rom-com and then sneak in the things you want.”

Producers can’t be blamed though, according to Singh. Not for their demanding stars, and not for their “lip service to better scripts”. They, and everybody else, are hostage to audience tastes. “ Viewers want new stories, but at the same time are looking for stars. Look at Chak De. You need a Shah Rukh Khan driving it. You could replicate it frame by frame, but can’t put in a Kay Kay Menon.”

In this, entertainment is a cog in life, with our expectations of local life translating to cinema. “I don’t see [the star system] changing soon. That’s how our politics is. Everything is about individuals and stars. That’s exactly how entertainment works. That’s how we expect everything to function. Look at the police. There’s one superstar cop. Everyone expects him to deliver. It’s like no other system exists.”

So the small filmmaker’s struggle isn’t against an industry but a culture, a way of being. Money isn’t the driving motivation, and it isn’t fame either. “That’s where the awards go, the money goes, the public adulation goes,” Singh says of the commercial cinema scene. “So the only person you’re doing different stuff for is yourself. My wife says I’m the most selfish bastard she knows.”

Open Magazine feature: Bob Christo has a brownie

2009-08-31T11:00:00.002+05:30

When Bob Christo visited Brio for coffee and a brownie one morning, he triggered a reaction reserved for a certain kind of fame. This celebrity is neither a superstar nor entirely forgotten. He hovers on the edge of memory, forever linked to a particular time, like a yellowing love letter rediscovered. So, when Christo strolled in, a young man put down his screenplay, and squinted as if to trace a distant thought, and customers turned to look and slowly smile. At the height of Christo’s powers, film-makers asked mostly two things of him—being evil, and laughing evilly. This he did in nearly a hundred movies.

Christo began life in India as Sanjay Khan’s bodyguard, and soon entered Bollywood with Abdullah. Raj N Sippy, who directed him in Mr Bond, says he was struck by Christo’s size. “He looked scary. He was also the only guy around who could pop open a bottle with his thumb.”

Now seventy, Christo gently pressed a fork sideways into what he hoped was a veg brownie—the result of a minor miscommunication with a bewildered waiter—but was, in fact, a fudge brownie. He had kept the beard but was no longer barrel-chested; his legs were thin and ended in white sneakers. Spinal stenosis took hold in 2006, and he could no longer teach yoga in Bangalore. Eventually he concluded that his vastly colourful life needed recounting. “This is my book,” he said, pulling out a flat brown envelope folded into a square. “Every word is on this CD.”

For three hours the story came in disjointed chapters. It was spread over five continents and ten countries, and contained many children.

“I’m an adventurer,” Christo began. After a successful career as a civil engineer in Australia, Christo’s first wife died, and he fell apart. He moved to Vietnam as an engineer.

“All three kids were taken by my friends. But I was in Vietnam, and I wanted to get out before we were shot. When we were evacuated by plane, people clung on to the fuselage, hoping to escape. I had had enough. I moved to Hong Kong.” He visited government auctions and refurbished Jaguars. Here he met a “lovely girl who kept telling me to live in Samoa because her brothers would love me, and I asked her to move in with me”. Christo could not, because of a complicated love at whose center lay Marie.

Marie Antoinette Francesco. Three decades on, Christo says, he pines for what they shared in the Philippines.

“She calls me one day, saying she is pregnant by me. But I knew marriage would not be possible because I was leaving to locate a top-secret CIA spy ship that had sunk in the Mediterranean.” Suspecting Libya’s hand, Christo and a friend decided they needed money and weapons. So he arranged a meeting with Marie and her childhood sweetheart, and got them married.

He took a breather. Sipped water. Ordered another cappuccino.

In 1987, Christo appeared in the movie of the year, Mr India. Directed by Shekhar Kapur, Christo caricatured himself. Kapur says, “He was strange in the way that he was always drifting. It was a very Australian thing—to travel everywhere and then find a reason to settle down in one place.”

Christo now struggles to recall his travels. After Vietnam, a search for his karate teacher, whom he called Oshiro, led him to the Philippines and then Taiwan. “He was on drugs. The triads wanted to kill him off because he knew that their people had killed Bruce Lee,” says Christo. “I would sit on his shoulders and he would do 1,000 squats a day,” Christo continued. Christo demonstrated squats in the restaurant. “‘Remember how we used to do things?’ I asked him, and he would say ‘Yes Bob!’ Eventually he was okay.”

Then came Rhodesia. The search for guns and money led him to work for Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, and his work involved sinking Russian ships and ferreting out terrorists.

Sippy doesn’t know about his past, but swears by Christo anyway: “He’s not a bullshitter. He doesn’t add on garbage. He’s a good bloke, an honest guy.” Kapur says he vaguely remembers Christo being with “some kind of armed force”, but can’t recall details.

Christo left Rhodesia after he was paid in Zimbabwean dollars; it was nowhere near enough. He traveled to Muscat for restoration work, and soon arrived in Bombay for a vacation. Here he met Parveen Babi, and worked in films with a dedication his directors found wonderful. He stopped just as suddenly. “After 25 years in the business, I had enough. It was time for a change.”

And so Christo seeks a publisher. He digs deep for memories of his enjoyable life. “Sometimes I forget things,” he says, “But when I’m writing, it all comes back.”

Headache hadippa!

2009-08-30T20:28:00.003+05:30

I'm going nuts. A relative keeps singing the lyrics of every damn song in Dil Bole Hadippa! She's doing this to irritate me. I reckon this is as low as life will ever get. But no, she pulls out the cd sleeve to show me the giant turban hung over the stage for some insipid song. I swear, just thinking of YashRaj these days gives me a migraine.

But wait, don't go just yet. Here are some lyrics:
1) Duniya firangi syappa hai, fikar hi gum ka papa hai.
2) Nach karenge, touch karenge, bach le ve yaara, ajj toh hum too much karenge, bach le ve yaara.
3) ...what you doing I liking...

This entire company has a serious midlife crisis.

Open Magazine feature: The Curious Case of Shobhalal vs Shobhalal

2009-08-27T14:43:00.001+05:30

The first time police knocked on Shobhalal’s door to arrest him for getting drunk and being a nuisance, he was taken aback. It couldn’t have been him, he said.

Was he Shobhalal, baap ka naam (father's name) Rampratap, they asked. Yes, he said, but he wasn’t the man they wanted. They beat him anyway on principle and threw him in jail for a bit.

They came again, for drunken brawling. Then again, for some other offense. He didn’t argue when they returned. Nor did he resist. Not because it was futile to protest, to resist the police, but because he was by then aware there was some truth to the allegations. Shobhalal had been drunk; Shobhalal had fought; Shobhalal had misbehaved - only it wasn’t him.

Out there was a man with his name, his job, his money, and his life. A man whose wife had the same name as his own. He knew all this, but who would believe him?

Shobhalal’s story was ripe for fictional adaptation, and that is where it gained fame. He first turned up as Mohandas in the writer Uday Prakash’s book of the same name; a man floundering in a hellish limbo. Now, in an adaptation just as sunny, Mohandas will appear on film. There is no hope for him, no permanent respite. The appearance of happiness usually presages a cruel joke. In Shobhalal’s case the last twenty years have been one cosmic prank.

Shobhalal’s troubles really began when his father pulled him out of school. His ancestors had lived in Gunwaari peacefully for over 200 years, and he wasn’t the kind to rock that boat. No, he liked things steady. The familiarity of this village - on the eastern edge of Madhya Pradesh - was comforting. Not much happened here - good or bad. Things would remain as they had been. That was how Shobhalal saw it.

He still doesn’t know why his father, Rampratap, an educated man, sent him to the family fields. He wasn’t curious. Tilling land and waiting for rain gave him peace. When it rained the field grew dhaan, a grain that is at once rice and roti and dal to farmers. There was little else a son could do around Gunwaari. The public works department paid a pittance. The region’s open cast mines, rich in coal, hired men like it was a lottery. Of course, in the eighties a job at the local colliery paid handsomely, and most men would jump to it if they were offered an assignment there. So he borrowed a few hundred rupees and signed up as a candidate. But Shobhalal was also happy in his fields, and if there was no response he would not have bothered.

Gunwaari men aspired to work for open cast mines in the neighborhood at the time. A mining assignment made such a stark difference to their lives that it became a destination - few men looked beyond the region. Even today, connected by a web of roads, villagers refer to the nearby town of Anuppur, only 25 kilometers away, as ‘over there’ and ‘outside’. So in 1988, shortly before his life turned on its head, Shobhalal’s world was here, in the village he understood, on lanes that turned to gushing rivers of mud when God was generous.

Early on a Saturday morning in May 1988, Shobhalal, a slim and square-jawed man with large eyes and an attractive smile, took a bus to the Jamuna colliery. He was, by his own rough estimate, 28 years old. Dressed in a white shirt, he held an interview letter inviting him to the colliery. He found that the interview consisted of few words. After a picture taken against a cloth drape, Shobhalal was directed to the business end of the interview; namely, hoisting a 50-kilo load of coal on his shoulders and carrying it a certain distance. He readied himself. He bent forward and lifted the weight with one jerk. The momentum of the weight, coupled with his poor stance, sent him staggering backward wide-eyed, and he landed with a terrible crash. Concerned men rushed to him. “I’m fine,” he brushed them away. “That was heavy!” His interviewers gave him one more try, but he refused, saying it was impossible. Shobhalal returned to life in quiet Gunwaari, where things had always been the same.

The regional coal mine employment department threw him a second chance the following year. He was summoned for another interview for a laborer’s job to Dhanpuri. This time he managed to lift the weight and keep his balance. He went home happy. A joining letter arrived soon after. Shobhalal did not know what it said, but he knew the letter would change his life, and so he carried it gingerly into a dark inner room and kept it on a mud shelf. He planned to take it to the regional office to understand fully the letter’s contents in a few days. The celebration at home went on for long.

***

Shobhalal is 49 now, with a weathered face and small eyes that crinkle at the edges when he talks. His pencil mustache from the photograph has become a peppery beard. He never left Gunwaari because the joining letter disappeared. He doesn’t know how, or when. He last saw it on the shelf.

In 1990, a year after the letter disappeared, he decided to pay his nephew a social visit. Twelve years younger then Shobhalal, Loknath left school after his job letter came through. He was posted at Sanjay Nagar, a colliery 40 kilometers from Gunwaari. Shobhalal heard that Loknath had a large house and a salary of Rs 5678, and he wanted to see, first-hand, how his nephew was doing. So he rode out on his bicycle, dodging trucks and cows on his way past the court at Anuppur town, past the police station, and past the home of the lawyer who would soon come to mean so much to him.

Sanjay Nagar’s quarters were typical for colliery housing; rectangular and blockish. But the colony impressed Shobhalal. He began to feel the dull ache of a missed opportunity.

He asked around for Loknath, but no one had heard of him. Then he saw him, and happily called out his name. ‘Oh, him?’ a man said. ‘His name is Shobhalal.’

Loknath saw Shobhalal’s expression transform. He sensed trouble.

***

“I said nothing to him that day.” Shobhalal spoke softly, slowly, to keep himself from crying. We sat on a bed in a dark room, in a house he should have been far from. “I ate my dinner and left the next morning. He told me not to discuss it.” His thoughts were a jumble. All he knew was that a nephew he trusted stole his papers. “I let him into my house. I knew he stole corn and kheer, but this…

“I didn’t know about it for a year. Had I not gone there, I would not have known.” His voice began to waver. “I spoke to his father, my cousin. All he said was ‘a cow’s milk is not only for its calf, others also drink it’.”

The job is your right, Loknath’s father told Shobhalal, but you’re not in a position to exercise your right. You’re like that calf.

Shobhalal began to pull together evidence - a job number here, a school certificate there, a confirmation from the village sarpanch - that would prove his identity beyond doubt. He hauled steel lock boxes home to keep his papers secure. Then he visited the police, who told him that a minor payment, say, Rs 10,000, would ensure the job was his. He visited the tehsildar, and the district collector. All of them promised inquiries, none of them materialized. The years passed.

In 1996, a year after an upcoming young lawyer named Vijendra Soni took on his case for free, the Anuppur court admitted the curious case of Shobhalal versus Shobhalal.

Soni, a short, squat man given to sitting over standing, is a bit of a celebrity in Anuppur. He hosts parties at Hotel Govindam, and is recognized as a man of influence. That’s because, besides fighting cases, he’s also a member of the Communist Party of India. Soni joined the party in 1983 as a student looking for direction. Practicing law left him with enough time for politics, and it supported the family. “I had no real passion for it,” he said, slumped in his chair below a large sketch of Vladimir Lenin.

He brought instant steel to Shobhalal’s case. Immediately, colliery officials saw trouble on the horizon. “They instituted their own inquiry, and found that Shobhalal took Loknath to the mine,” Soni said. “Loknath got the job, and he started work as Shobhalal. They decided that Loknath had not stolen Shobhalal’s papers. The whole report was a hypothesis! The fact is, the mine’s management team never tallied the employment numbers.”

Pressed by Soni, the court began investigating the incident by 2000. Officials panicked. Shobhalal says Loknath offered him Rs 1.5 lakh to keep him quiet. “‘Why should I take that money?’ I asked him.”

That year officials dismissed Loknath from his job as a dump truck driver (the job pays Rs 25-30000 a month, Soni says). When he thinks about it, Shobhalal can barely contain his glee. He hasn’t won anything, but Loknath has lost. He thanks his gods profusely. “Now when Loknath passes by, he looks at me like he will kill me. I always told his father that one day God would see to him.” He counts the arrests as mere inconveniences.

Now he wants his job. But he has a long wait. The court will get around to it after the evidence hearings are over and a judgement has been passed on this case.

***

There’s a man named Shobhalal in Sanjay Nagar. His wife’s name is Sonia. His father’s name, Rampratap. Men in the colony referred to his ganja habit, and said he didn’t work much. From time to time they saw him drive a rickshaw. His wife made ‘good-luck-pots’ - spherical clay pots with slits for coins. She didn’t know where he was. “He left today morning, and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

In the dark passageway were piles of pots she will soon sell for next to nothing. She blamed the uncle for all this. “He wanted this job,” she said, and mounted a defense of her husband. “His bosses said he was political at work. That he tried to unionize the workforce. They dismissed him saying he was trouble. But everyone should wait and see. We’ll show them once this case is over.”

Their savings frittered away in the years after his dismissal. Only nine years have passed but they seem a lifetime away. Their other house was bigger, she said. It had two floors, and was much nicer. Now she felt the loss sharply, almost bitterly. The neighbors had turned away. They couldn’t afford even mosquito repellent. “What can I do, babu?” she said with a smile that conveyed no joy. “You tell me. What can I do?”

In which he lays down his fork and weeps

2009-07-01T17:05:00.003+05:30

Finally, success! Everything came together last night. The asparagus shoots, the lump of butter, button mushrooms, dried mushrooms (morels), dried mushroom water, cream, and a heap of tarragon. I forgot to take a picture last night, but maybe next time.

It looked like this (without the nasty peas):

Recipe: Failed tomato soup

2009-06-29T10:03:00.003+05:30

The tomato soup I prepared last night should have been good. After all, I had followed The Minimalist's advice fairly accurately. First heat some olive oil, add chopped garlic and onions, and wait for the aroma. Add some fresh black pepper and salt. I use rock salt, so I threw in a few more pinches. Seven minutes later, in went three cups of chopped tomatoes and two cups of vegetable stock. I tore up some french bread and tossed it in. Within minutes everything except the tomatoes turned to sludge. Those stayed chunky in a nice soft way. Then the mixture began to boil, and the bread began to shine. Shine? This was not part of the recipe. Anyway, I put two basil leaves for decoration. It was like putting a tie on a pig.

A sip later I realized there was too much olive oil. The evidence was in my bowl. The tomato chunks had settled at the bottom with the garlic and onion, under a thick layer of olive oil. My Nepali cook - because of who I am forced to do these things - looked at it curiously and said nothing, which made matters worse, for he has an armchair opinion on all food.

Nevertheless, failure on soup is unacceptable, and it will be attempted again. But tonight's experiment is more complex: asparagus with tarragon and morels. Wish me luck.

Friday night commute

2009-06-26T20:59:00.002+05:30

A trudge, a trudge,
traffic doesn't budge,
Colaba to Andheri
is always scary.

(Scrap 'scary'. Replace with 'dreary').

A trudge, a trudge,
traffic doesn't budge,
Colaba to Andheri
is forever dreary.

Open Magazine feature: The Bandra-Worli Sea Link

2009-06-18T15:40:00.001+05:30

Enjoyed this.

On the sea link that will soon connect Bandra to Worli, fifteen men swept, tarred, and patted a stretch no longer than five meters with uncommon urgency. Noxious tar, fresh off a machine that rolled forward, steamed beneath their feet. A vast expanse of concrete ready to be layered with tar loomed ahead, stretching out to a distant point. Spurred by a deadline already gone by, they pressed on without a break from their grueling work. Like them, other teams were at work in a hurry on the bridge. Above everyone, and everything, including the giant launch trusses that lift segments of the bridge into place for alignment, rose the main towers of the sea link, each made of four thick concrete legs that converged at a point 125 meters above the roadway. And behind them, higher than the towers, stood a crane. Ten years after it was commissioned, the bridge was yet to be finished.

The world was a different place when the bridge was a gleam in a politician’s eye in 1999. The Bombay stock exchange had crossed 4000 then, and Mohammad Azharuddin was still captain. The announcement came that year: a cable-stay bridge would be built across the mouth of the toxic Mithi creek. A regular beam bridge would have done just as well, but the requirement was specific; a cable-stay, with its single tower and cables fanning out, serves as a shimmering focal point. So a city bereft of modern icons commissioned the construction of an iconic structure for Rs 665.81 crore.

Since then, the bridge has been discussed for its utility. Mumbai is an up-down city, and the existing roads that connect the city’s northern suburbs to the south are no longer enough for traffic to flow smoothly. On days when roadwork, errant pedestrians and malfunctioning signals come together, a 30km trip from the northern suburb of Andheri to South Mumbai stretches to three hours. On good days, an average speed of 15km an hour is considered lucky. The makers of the bridge have said it will cut down travel time by 30 minutes, calculating that it takes 35 minutes to traverse from Worli to Bandra on existing roads. The minimum speed permitted is 80 kmph, and motorcycles will be denied entry at the tollbooths. The bridge is part of the Western Freeway, which will eventually run from Bandra or Versova to Nariman Point.

Ten years later, in early June, two senior structural engineers with no relation to the project sat across a table piled with vellum scrolls in their office, analyzing costs on a calculator. Both were renowned in Mumbai’s architecture circles for their thoroughness. “Let’s see,” one said. “You’re saying the bridge is 4.7km long, and has two carriageways roughly 13 meters wide?” With the cost over Rs 1800 crores, one engineer tapped in the numbers to come up with a figure of Rs 15 lakh per square meter. “Fifteen lakhs?” They looked at each other and smiled. “Seems a little high. Say, how much was the bridge at Dadar? Wasn’t it around 1.5 lakhs per meter?”

Of course the difference between a sea bridge and one on land is obvious. The bridge that stands today bears only slight resemblance to what was originally planned. There was to be one carriageway, and one tower at the main span. Now there are two carriageways and two towers. The Worli bridge went from arch bridge to a smaller cable-stay. “The bridge design changed by 85%,” says an HCC spokesperson. “We had nothing to do with it. They [MSRDC] just gave it to us.” Sverdrup, the original consultants, were replaced by Dar Consultants, whose managing director, S Srinivasan, is renowned for his bridge designs. According to a scathing Comptroller Auditor General report, Dar lay down the condition that the bridge design needed to change if MSRDC wanted it on board the project. This pushed up costs significantly: over Rs 55 crore to change the single tower to a twin tower, according to the CAG report. Asked why the design change was necessary, a Dar spokesperson replied, “Ask the MSRDC. Ask the chief minister”.

In any case, the bridge is already iconic. Lovers on a nearby promenade have a focal point. Lovers park cars on roads not yet linked to the bridge. A rickshaw driver’s family emerges from the three-wheeler for an outing that consists primarily of gazing at the bridge. “There’s no question about it,” says Professor Akhtar Chauhan, the dean of Rizvi School of Architecture, “It’s an iconic structure.” Chauhan believes the bridge’s design would stand out in any city. “It’s possible to have a more poetic design,” he says, laughing, “I would have focused on protection during the monsoons with, say, a series of shell-like structures, but it’s by no means an ugly structure.”

Architects, with naturally strong opinions over what constitutes good architecture, expressed their excitement about the bridge. Chauhan says he looks forward to driving across it to take in the view – rough sea on one side, tough city on the other. Rahul More, whose firm, _opolis architects, specializes in eco-design, says he’s as expectant as his children. He plans to jog to Worli from his home in Bandra East. But pedestrians aren’t allowed on, HCC officials say. And there’s the rub. The bridge gives its users a new perspective of Mumbai. It takes them away from the city’s grind, on a joyful tour above the chaotic cluster they came from, before plunging them right back into it. The people who need it most, those deprived of space, will find it hardest to see this city from a distance.

What they will miss is an unremarkable skyline made of tall and small buildings, ramshackle huts of tin and aluminum, and communications towers. They will miss the glass twin towers mounted with triangles at Prabhadevi. Over Worli, the morning railway scene of men and women squatting and exhibiting their bottoms to passersby will repeat itself at the fisherman’s colony. To be on the bridge is to step outside city life and examine what it all means.

The sea link approach road curves into Worli, first passing under the enormous tower with four concrete legs (each about 80sq ft thick) and white cables that stretch out in a fan. Further down is the next cable-stay tower, a smaller, but no less intimidating structure. It resembles less a bridge than two razors angling in. The road then splits, with an artery winding smack on to Worli’s sea face, whose residents are somewhat annoyed by the obstruction of their view and the potential noise.

More, who visits Worli regularly, says, “These are things we needed. But the problem is that there’s no equal distribution of traffic. If the bridge led all the way to Nariman point with arteries connecting to Worli and Haji Ali it would have been fine. Right now it’s going to be a disaster. There will be some choke point because the same level of traffic is heading to one point anyway.”

The next phase of the bridge, which will deposit cars all the way to Haji Ali, near the iconic mosque, will soon begin. At the same time, work between the mosque and Nariman Point will commence. For another few years, Mumbai will be in turmoil. But these aren’t likely to take as long as the first phase, when the government agency rushed headlong into its task and found itself wrapped up in objections that resulted in years of delays.

At the time, fishermen and environmentalists argued that the bridge would affect the Mithi’s flow as well as fishing areas. The agency, an HCC spokesperson said, was now going to make sure all objections were cleared before starting the project. This didn’t stop one environmentalist from insisting that the bridge’s effect on fishermen’s catches would be seen only a decade later. And no matter what, it won’t stop the residents of Shivaji Park claiming that the spate of dead dolphins appearing on beaches is due to the structure’s foundations. This is one troubled bridge.

Open Magazine Feature: Dubai

2009-06-18T15:14:00.003+05:30

This story required 8-10 days of reporting, and a month to write. This was extreme, even for me - a slow writer - but I kept starting, tearing up everything, and then did nothing for days. I always thought writing about Dubai would be easy; I knew it, and so I had an edge. What I didn't count on was how strange writing about people there would be. So much of what I saw went against what I knew of the place. So I wrote it down as I saw it, and put in some observations from memory to highlight how the city had changed.

On a cold night by the sea, a peculiar pretense played out in Dubai. A crowd of construction workers stood outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel as beautiful women streamed past, ignoring them. The women were ushered into Premier, a popular nightclub inside, bypassing the queue of men. Ten years ago the club opened its doors to ‘young adults’. Now the entire neighborhood was no place for a young adult to be seen.

Under purple and orange lights, women danced to Akon in groups; Lebanese, Ethiopian, Central Asian. Men stood at the bar, watching them, and making up their minds. A gray-haired Iranian man walked up to one nervously. She was the prettiest girl in the room, and she knew it. It helped that her denim shirt was unbuttoned to her navel. She paid him no attention. He extended a hand. She smiled, he smiled, he high-fived her. Aw yeah. Then he did it again. And again. And again. And again. Finally she stopped. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?” she asked. He looked at her once more before taking the plunge. “How much for me and my friend?” he stuttered.

The Iranian left with her soon after. Elsewhere in the club, perfect strangers held each other like lovers, smiling, murmuring; inches apart, doing everything but kissing, never kissing, and you could read why: someone might be watching us. Here’s the thing. On the streets of Dubai you can buy love, but you can’t kiss.

Past midnight, the line at the club inside the hotel had grown longer, oblivious to the danger outside. A policeman stopped his car across the street, turned on the beacon and marched toward the Hyatt. At the hotel’s entrance, two Russians hookers in tank tops and short skirts froze. The customer picking them up froze. The cop walked past the driver to two parked cars, tore them fines for improper parking, and returned to his vehicle. Here was confirmation for many who had heard it before: On the streets of Dubai you can buy love in sight of the police, but you can’t linger in the no-waiting zone.

Dubai is a trading place. Every manner of trade goes on here. It is a port, a go-between, a facilitator. Everything is temporary. It offers almost all residents no citizenship for services and loyalty, but promises good money and safety. That is how it has been since the country gained independence from Britain in 1971. At the beginning, these lures, combined with the country’s proximity to license-heavy India, induced many Indians to take up jobs in Dubai and its surrounding Emirates. They arrived and lived years quietly, mostly without incident. The rules were simple: be productive in exchange for moderate riches, no taxes, and a comfortable life. Along the way they grew too used to their way of life, forgetting that Dubai is a trading place, that if it were a person it would be a social climber, always trading in one version of itself for the next. When the USSR dissolved and the first planeload of prostitutes arrived, Dubai shipped them back out. But with time it let them linger for longer and longer, realizing that sex was a parallel economy.

This set off quite a reaction. More people came. More money came. Dubai was seen as habitable. Companies came. Crazy projects came. Fame came. Everything came quickly, some would say too quickly. Rents rose. Inflation was ridiculous. The dynamics changed. The old world residents didn’t know what hit them. They adapted reluctantly. Some adapted instantly, discovering their inner hustler.

“Wait till you see the women at Radisson,” B, a creative professional told me over a beer at a mall. B was a typical Dubai success story. A living embodiment of the local belief that in Dubai your life could change instantly. He was fat and bald from job stress, and on the verge of deportation in 2003. But he knew the right people, and licenses were arranged, his visa was renewed, and by the next year, B’s new design firm had billings of over a million Dirhams (approx Rs 1.3 crore). He traded in his old jeep for a Merc. Now, as he examined women at the Madinat, that life was far behind. “You know, if you’re here for a while, I can take you to the Radisson. My treat, brother.” B said his wife “thinks I earn about Dh75-80000 a month (approx Rs 10 lakh). She doesn’t know that I make Dh125,000 (Rs 16 lakh). I have to have my fun, man.”

Tracy, all of 20, was new to the sex trade. She was assigned to a busy road outside the York Hotel, where business was roaring. It was one of the few busy hotels in a town where occupancy had fallen by 60%, according to taxi drivers who worked the night shift. This was her first month in the city. “Someone asked if I wanted to travel and make money, and next thing I knew, here I was. Now I have to pay off $15,000 before I can move on.” She lived in tiny studio apartment near the Hyatt with two others, and they all worked and slept there. “I don’t really like doing this, but I asked for it.” I just feel sorry for men who think I’ll show them a good time. I’m doing my best to not let that happen.” For the first time during our conversation, she laughed. “After this I’m going to get away and study.”

Many visitors see Dubai as the region’s sex HQ, a descriptor the city prefers to not have. It would like to be the Monaco and Las Vegas of the Middle East, or even a ski destination (a range of ski slopes is planned). Up next is an amusement park as big as Dubai, an inland archipelago, and a tower taller than the 180-story Burj Dubai. It already has a marina, a Sports City, the World – an offshore, man-made collection of inhabitable islands shaped like the earth, all for sale – three giant palm-shaped islands. An Equestrian City is on the way. A perfectly plausible route from home to work would see a driver passing Old Dubai, Heritage Village, The Marina, Internet City, and Media City on his way to Education City. This is a place carved up into microcities where everything is a representation of something else. A New York architect whose firm, Gruzen Samton, developed a waterfront for Dubai, said the city was viewed by architects as something of a novelty.

And yet, Dubai is not a place for people of letters and art. Always, the residents remember, commerce has played the largest role. “To live here, you need to earn at least Dh40,000 a month, (approx Rs 5 lakh)” Vipul Meisheri, a senior executive at a legal firm said. Residents know their numbers. They can tell you, offhand, the price of land in the Business Bay area, the price of a Nissan Maxima, the average cost of a driving test, and how many cars crashed in the last great highway pileup. Numbers excite them. Numbers bring life and scale to a place that has lost all sense of either. People feel and judge through numbers. These help them stay rooted even as the city spins further out of reality’s orbit.

I asked one resident to take me somewhere exciting. The choice offered was between malls. In Dubai, you can go out and eat or drink. You can go for a drive. You can go for a concert. Or you can go to the mall. Every mall has the same stores, the USP is the side attractions. The Festival City mall, whose size qualifies as a suburb, has a canal running through it. Mall of the Emirates houses an indoor ski slope with manufactured snow. We ended up going to City Centre, the largest mall for a time, and now piddly in comparison to the others. As we window-shopped on the top floor, a frantic security guard shouted into a walkie-talkie. He cordoned off a spot and worriedly radioed for an emergency crew. Someone had spilt M&M’s. Of course, soon peace would return. Dubai was nothing if not resilient.

Truer resilience was more evident at the driving grounds of Ghusais, where expats do what they can to get a license, and examiners do whatever they want to deny them one. More than skill, it requires luck. And so, obtaining a license has, over the years, become a reason to celebrate. The fewer tests it takes, the greater the celebration; the process costs anywhere from Dh2000-10,000 (Rs 25,000-128,000) A learner waited for his turn on the testing ground, watching cars, buses, and trailer trucks navigate the circuit. He looked around and muttered, “The motto is, ‘squeeze hard and for as long as possible’.” Then he braced himself and got into a nearby car to try his luck.

The driving school was an arm of government, but it still resembled a school. Emiratis played teacher, and everyone else was on detention. South Asians stood in lines quietly, smiling at Arabs passing by. One didn’t know which line to stand in. He was from Trivandrum, and was on test for a truck license. “I failed three tests. God knows what I did wrong. They didn’t tell me,” he said, shrugging, half-smiling. He said truckers didn’t pass until they did four tests. “That is if you’re lucky. I’ve already spent Dh7000 (Rs 90,000).”

Gulf News, a local newspaper, until recently had a property section three times the size of the rest of the newspaper. But by December the extra sections were slimmer. Property’s rise as an explosive revenue stream had attracted money and talent, but with the game finally up, and the threat of jail terms for unpaid loans on the horizon, immigrants scampered. Now, in the city’s downtown, tower after tower was bathed in attractive external lighting, but the homes inside remained dark. I met Bikram Vohra, a former editor of Khaleej Times, at his large villa near the city’s new designated downtown. Vohra once wrote a popular weekly column about his family; now, several jumps later, he was considering a health magazine. “This place needs it, don’t you think?” he said with an impish smile. I asked if he considered Dubai’s recent excesses a bubble. He disagreed vehemently with the idea of Dubai as unreal. “I don’t get people who say Dubai’s just a bubble. What do they mean? How do they know this is a bubble? These people come here to earn a living, and when that’s done they trash it. This is a real place.” The emphasis on real was intended as finality; for the Dubai resident, to question the idea of Dubai was to doubt one’s own purpose in life. The editor knew, as others did, that Dubai’s breathtaking growth had led it down some pretty strange paths; the world’s tallest tower (with a spire that can be made taller, just in case), an amusement park the size of a large city, and a coastline that increasingly resembles a frozen fireworks display. This is Dr Moreau’s island of man-made wonders. That’s why real is an ambiguous word here. Nothing feels truly natural in Dubai.

If Dubai is an extension of India, Bur Dubai is the state capital. This portion of the city is predominantly Indian, and it comes closest to the bustle of a subcontinental market. Red-mouthed Sindhi and Gujaratis traders at Meena Bazaar sold textiles here. Sweet and cheap electronics shops dotted the neighborhood. Some sold fireworks on the sly before Diwali. With its unpaved alleys, leaky window units and cheap food, Bur Dubai previously had a wet, organic feel. Now Dubai’s love of fresh paint and numbers showed everywhere. Every path, however remote, was paved with red brick. The noisy lanes and old buildings of that market were gone. Neon signs and standardized store fronts ruled. Dubai had upgraded everything.

“It’s not the same, you know,” a Pakistani cobbler who had occupied one spot in a Bur Dubai alley since 1979 told me. His informal stall was now a licensed, numbered steel and plastic shack big enough only to sit in. Rubber soles were stacked along one wall. He thought the structure unnecessary, in part because he was asked to pay for it. “The authorities asked me to build a shack because they wanted the place to look clean. That’s okay, but the fun isn’t there anymore. Theek hai, it’s better than Pakistan, but earlier there was no tension. Now there’s too much. They want money for everything.”

Here is a problem unique to Dubai. A job here pays its residents more than they would earn back home, but costs have risen quickly enough to make any salary increase redundant. Change overwhelmed them. But not everyone sees it that way.

“The world’s economic principles do not apply to Dubai,” an Indian real estate adviser told me. He sat behind an enormous oak desk in his office near Dubai airport. “When people say there’s a downturn, I’m like ‘what downturn?’ I just sold a building for Dh 45 million (Rs 57.6 crore) late December. The local rental authority just registered transactions of Dh 2.3 billion (approx Rs 3000 crore). Go figure. Where is the slowdown?” He clucked like a man in on a secret, and described the dry market as a temporary setback. “Unfortunately people have more opinions than facts, and so we’re witnessing this selling.” He recommended buying. “Ah, there was low-cost housing here. You’ve heard of International City? Well, that was low-cost alright. The first buildings sold for Dh225 a square foot (Rs 2900) in 2006. Now the asking rate is Dh1350 (Rs17,000).”

What drove prices up? There’s one reason most people agree on: speculation. The Dubai boom was advertised as the triumph of man over his conditions. Tourism projections were insane. Every official chart showed Dubai’s population increasing exponentially. It was actually the triumph of optimism. Buildings were sold in clusters of flats over a day or two, and the price rose with every round of sales. Many believed that there were genuine buyers who would come to make the city their home. Others knew better. Buyers found they could earn a third of their investment within a few months. So began the process of flipping. Entire buildings were sold on the first day. “People would stand in line for two days to buy property,” the adviser said.

By December, real estate companies messaged their employees telling them not to come in. Residents stopped making payments, maxed out their credit cards, left their on-loan cars at the airport, and left for home. Some stayed behind, and the scale of folly was evident in one letter to the editor, dated December 26, 2008: “Banks have truly tightened the reins on lending. I am looking for a loan to pay off my Dh 8 million villa (Rs 10.2 crore) and have been unable to acquire one at a reasonable rate.”

For now, though, the general consensus is that economic principles do apply to Dubai. The city’s many grand projects have come to a halt. The kilometer-high tower (building cost: Dh38 billion, or Rs 4860 crore), the Falcon City of Wonders and a rotating tower are among the Dh76 billion (Rs 9720 crore) projects stopped.

The demolitions of old quarters to make way for nicer-looking towers have also stopped. Satwa, a locality known for relatively cheap housing was being bulldozed when finance suddenly dried up. A Pakistani truck driver who lived one street away from the demolition line said it was like “when American planes drop bombs in Pakistan. You never know if your time is up”. He knew why the demolitions were taking place. Pointing to the skyscrapers a couple hundred meters away, he said, “That’s why. We don’t look pretty from up there.” Then he looked at three sleepy young men who emerged from a room in their taxi driver uniforms. “Still, they come from my village. I tell them life is hard here but they don’t believe me. Because they see advertisements about Dubai on television, they see the girls on the beach, and they think that I am having fun here.”

Open Magazine conversation: Resul Pookutty

2009-06-18T15:00:00.003+05:30

Interviewing Resul was exciting because he knew sound, and I wanted to know as much as possible about sound. The story brief was limited to Resul's sound library, but we digressed a fair bit, and this worked out well for me. I've had many rewarding conversations with people who don't mind going off topic and talk for hours. Transcribing can be a pain, though.

Before I finished my film school, I decided I wanted to create India's own sound library. In FTII, they insist that you don't use the library. You can hear the sound samples, but don't use them. You had to go out and record your own library because every film needs its own sounds. That's what makes each film different.

So when I was going through their library, I realized that India did not have an extensive sound library. When Indian films need sound, we either license it from BBC, Hollywood Edge, or Lucas Films, which are not India's sounds. Imagine a London city sound for a Bombay street shot. It won't sound the same. I started working on it in 1997. Amitabh Bachchan was the first person to bring a sound library to India, during Khuda Gawah. It came through an actor. They used to take part so much in the process of cinema. We technicians never had access to those libraries. We were pretty much recording most of it, so people had their own personal libraries. There was nothing codified and available in the market.

When I started this project, ABCL was willing to produce my idea commercially. The project went ahead, I had a decent budget. When their first film failed, they struck off all the unviable - so they thought - projects. They struck off mine too. I still had to do it, though. With a friend of mine, we did it with our own money. That was a time when stereo recording was just coming up in India. So I used a friend's stereo recording gear for months. I traveled almost all of Bombay and Pune and villages and all that. Then I realized that the entire sound spectrum in India is so huge, so vast, that it's mindboggling. It's like the language, the food, or the costumes of India.

Every part of India has a different dialect, and the sounds are different. Every culture has its own sound. Sound pieces for religion from the north to the south of India will give you a hundred albums. I thought it was like a cobweb. I could not get out of it. My idea was to give usable stereo sounds recorded neatly, cleanly, as sound effects for use in films and theatre. You need clean ambiances, clean effects. It's a huge effort to categorize it.

I was lucky in that there was no software at the time. Now you can sit in a bathroom and use Pro Tools. My first album I edited on SADiE, which worked on a PC platform. I called it Essential Indian Sound Effects, Vol. 1. I was doing everything. We managed to put in 60-70 clips on each CD. I tried to give loopable sounds, so that even if it was two minutes long, you could loop it.
Also, we used to think in analog.

It was impossible for just one person to categorize and decide what is usable. We were looking at a musical album. We put it in music stores so that people could buy it. 600 bucks for a pack of three CDs. It was mastered in such a way that it could be used as analog elements. I even learned coding in order to number tracks. It's been a huge learning experience. The challenging bit was categorizing the sounds. I had village sounds, religious sounds, public places. A south Indian railway station is so different from a Maharashtra railway station.

I'm not just concentrating on creating a library. I'm a film person. I created a platform in the beginning. So I thought I'd take it to the next level. So every film I do, I carry my sound recorder and keep recording the sounds. We, who work on sound in film, are constantly looking for how sounds affect our lives. That's what we emotionally play with. For me, sound and cinema is a temporal element. If the visual is spatial, you're making something that is intangible tangible with sound. For example, when you go to a valley, you feel completely quiet. At the sea, you feel calmer. This is because you're hearing longer expressions of sound. Valley birds have long calls. Sea waves are...wavy... but they are long in nature. Sound is stretched horizontally. In the city we have short bursts, or expressions, of sound. That makes you restless. It’s a cacophony. For me to capture a city, I have to understand all this. So for me, recording ambiances on one level is understanding it, and on the other hand transferring what I feel to the audiences.

I was very young when I started this. There was huge learning. If you see my album no.1 and compare it with no 2 and no 3, I think the third is my best work. I was learning how to record. I had a gut feeling that this is wanted to do. Nothing could stop me. I remember nights and nights when I was roaming in Pune and faraway villages. I was just moving around with my recorder. I wanted to give professional quality sound. Technically I wanted to be perfect.

I thought I'd give city sounds as one element, village sounds as another, as well as household sounds, and clips from religious and public places. I started thinking in terms of what are the public places you generally see in a film. You see bus stations, railways, airports. I started thinking filmically. With religion I had to incorporate Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims. Aartis and Azaans. An evening aarti in Pune is completely different from an evening aarti in Bombay. It's like dialect. The nature changes. If I want to be anthropologically specific, I can go into minute detail. I don't think any other country has so much diversity. It's so huge I don't know how to explore it. So I just keep building my library. I can boast of one of the biggest libraries. I'm also sharing it with my friends abroad so that I get something from them. Two terabytes of sound is nothing. I'm going to have a tie-up with one of the biggest s/fx guys in Hollywood. Like a cameraman who carries a still camera, I carry my recorder.

When I am recording a sound, I know if it is perfect or not. When you record sounds, it gives you an emotional clue. When it emotionally stimulates you, you know you have the right sound.

I generally go into as much detail as I can. Not just a creak of a chair, but everything possible that you can hear. When you slap your hand down on a table, it makes a sound. But If I add a metallic sound to it, you immediately know that this man is affluent, he’s wearing a ring. I’m going into what this man is. That’s what I mean by detail.

Open Magazine feature: Total Ten

2009-06-18T14:35:00.002+05:30

It didn't take long to understand that the movie was a farce. Starring an ambitious young unknown who tried hard to remain decent about the subject, the production was a spoof of itself. The movie will soon be unleashed.

Not long after the night of November 26, several filmmakers had a wholly original thought. Why not make a disaster movie out of this?

And so, as the filming of Total Ten commenced at Film City in Goregaon, questions of taste and correctness were far from the minds of its actors and producers. There was, however, certain hesitation over the sensitivity of the subject, which roughly translates to: “will somebody kill me for doing this?” One actor asked another if the script had an anti-Muslim or anti-Pakistan stance, and got a shrug in response. Neither had seen the script.

Rajan Varma, who plays Ajmal Kasab, was in a pink polka dot shirt and tight denims. His thumbs hovered over his phone’s keypad while unit boys prepared the set. Tonight Kasab and Ismail would sneak past Cama Hospital and fire upon a police van. While the actors waited, a short man ambled up from the set to say hello to Varma. He bowed his head slightly at the other actors, who did the same. After he left, Homi Wadia, who played Hemant Karkare, asked who he was. “Oh,” Varma said, “He’s the director.”

It was that sort of movie. The actors expressed hope that there would be controversy. “Internet pe dekho, sir. Film ne aag laga li hai, aag!” Varma told them confidently. When asked about this, they replied that it wasn’t about the controversy, that the film had a message: terrorism does not pay. They tried hard to put a positive spin on the enterprise. But Varma took pride in publicity, irrespective of the sentiment behind it. A month ago, he says, two men attacked his car. “They had a weapon, sir!” although he wasn’t sure. In half an hour India TV and the others put him on television.

In any event, Varma and the rest were informed that the set was nearly ready. While Kasab and Karkare changed into recognizable outfits, Ashok Kulkarni, a ringer for Ashok Kamte, slouched on a bed. Varma styled his own hair and decided that since tonight’s scene was about action, he needed a lighter backpack. This was his own, and he removed a ceramic hair straightener and a hair dryer. “Iss mein bombs hain,” he said, weighing the bag mentally. Satisfied with the bag’s weight, he then pulled out a deodorant named ‘Havoc’ and sprayed himself with it.

Outside, the action director explained the sequence to Varma. His energy was manic. He swept his hands like a bird to indicate the swooping camera, and shouted ‘KHAD-KHAD-KHAD!’ when he meant automatic weapons. “The national anthem will play when they die,” Varma said. “Shaheed huey hain.” He laughed. “This is all the fight and edit department’s job,” he said later. “To show who the heroes are, and how deadly the villain is.”

While this went on, one unit hand told another that he got a discount on the blasts. Instead of six blasts in six songs, there would now be six blasts in one patriotic song. Elsewhere, the director shouted for the mike, and was informed respectfully that it did not work. There was another problem. Ismail, Kasab’s partner, had turned up without a black jacket. “Kahin se jugaad laga le,” an assistant was told.

Eventually the jacket was unnecessary, and the mike was fixed. A coconut was broken, and the shoot began. Kasab and Ismail emerged from the shadows, ran to a corner of the hospital, peeked out, and ran off screen. The director told them to do it again. Faster. Again, and even faster. “Come faster. What the fuck? Does he think he’s in a garden?! Soon all was to the director’s liking.

Varma came by and sat beside the director. Sweat dripped off his face. They talked about movies and titles. “Night Riders,” the director smiled. “Kaisi lagi? Title mere paas hai. That MTV guy Ranvijay can be in it. Filled with bikes.”

“At night!” Varma added.

“At night,” the director mused.

“I got new pants,” Varma said, pinching his cargoes. “The other one was heavy.”

As the next scene began, the actors playing Kamte and Karkare sat nearby, discussing how they wanted the film to create dialogue among the public. Not controversy. The two were senior actors, and had reputations. They were less enthusiastic than Varma, who relished this major role. As they grew less wary of each other, one actor admitted that he hadn’t told anyone he was doing this movie. “But now that I’m here,” he said, looking at the set, “it isn’t so bad. I might decide to tell people.” They were interrupted when someone shouted “mood!” a sign that actors should step into character.

Wadia looked amused. “Mood? Why do they shout mood? Do they think the actor is not in the mood?” In the distance, Kasab and Ismail stood at the staircase leading up to Cama Hospital, scowling at the production staff. In a beat, one actor looking at them said, “This movie should come and go quickly.”

A few nights later, at Ghodbunder, the crew prepared to shoot the boat hijack sequence. Two boats that belonged to local sand dealers were hired. The director realized that both boats were steered by two drunks. As the vessels began moving, he also realized that he couldn’t be heard over the sound of the generator. To add to his misery, the other boat had a generator as well. Neither his technical staff nor his actors could hear him. He yelled to get their attention, but the extras stood on the other boat, exchanging ring tones. “Where did you get me these donkeys from?” he asked an assistant director.

In one scene, Kasab would stand on deck, holding a gun to the captain’s head while his aides stood by. The boats would float by. That was the plan. For this sequence, the director asked his crew to duck inside the cabin of his ship. When Kasab’s boat eventually floated past, the director noticed that the other terrorists were missing. A frantic search ensued, and the actors were found asleep on the director’s boat, along with some of the crew. “That’s it,” the director said, looking at them. “I’m going home.”

The director returned for a dramatic shot at Chowpatty after a few days. This is where Kasab was captured, and where constable Omble was killed. Now media arrived in force to watch the shoot, to the director’s irritation. “Who called you guys up, man?” he asked a photographer. “Your PR guy,” the man responded. Elsewhere on the set a fight broke out between two Punjabis. When it ended, one ripped off his own shirt, threw it to the ground, and shouted at an extra dressed in police uniform, “You’re just standing there like an asshole, and the rest of you are eunuchs.”

The morbid sequence of Kasab’s capture and Ombale’s bravery was then filmed in one take. Only shots of Ombale gasping for breath were now required. The actor playing him, Adi Irani, rolled about for a while. Then, quite suddenly, he halted the proceedings to ask the director, “Should I say ‘Jai Maharashtra’ after I say ‘Jai Hind’? Or should I just say ‘Jai Maharashtra’”?

Open Magazine feature: The Bollywood strike

2009-06-02T13:09:00.002+05:30

This story had to be turned around quickly. In three days contacts had to be formed, and context had to be found. Sometimes the pressure works, although the story might not reflect it. Every assignment comes with distinct challenges, and I measure my own growth with what I've been able to do that's new (for me). Eventually, I think, everything I've learned will come together to create a good story. In this story I came by a transporter of film reels and, although our conversation was short, I think it gave a story about money light context.

Nupur Asthana directs a television mini-series these days. This wasn’t what she envisioned herself doing a year ago. For most would-be directors, the holy grail is to direct a film, which is what Asthana was on the verge of being signed up for by a large corporate house. “They then started saying things like ‘oh, we must meet’. That meant the film was on hold. It was a small movie, the kind producers slot as a multiplex film.” She attributes this to the drying up of finance. “I’m okay,” she says, “It’s not like I could stand at a signal and shout ‘Hey! I’ve got Shah Rukh Khan’ and producers would hand me everything. I take everything with a pinch of salt. Besides, it’s happening to everyone.”

Since last year, say people involved at every level with India’s film industry, the lavish budgets and huge numbers have disappeared, replaced by a more conservative thinking. This has had a direct impact on the business of production, distribution, and exhibition. Producers have stopped producing. Distributors have stopped distributing. And exhibitors have decided to cut back costs by shutting down screens or renting them to theater groups. If all this wasn’t bad enough, there is also the ongoing strike to contend with. For nine weeks multiplexes and producers have struggled to reach a solution over revenue-sharing. Producers say the share isn’t enough; multiplexes argue that films are too inconsistent. And so, since the beginning of this impasse there have been few new movies released in multiple-screen theaters.

As a result, work has dried up for the thousands of technicians and support staff who perform the tasks required to ensure the business runs smoothly. The proprietor of A Grade Samosas, who provides samosas and fizzy drinks to over 30 cinemas in Mumbai and Thane, has seen business drop by over 50%. He has seen this only once before, many years ago, during a similar strike.

But the proprietor is fortunate, for he still has business. A carter of film reels, a man named Prabhakar, sits in his office all day with three other employees for there is no work he can do. Prabhakar’s father was a eon with Warner Brothers. His brother is a peon with Paramount. He only transports reels from here to there. The strike has hit him so hard, he estimates he can go on for two months before he runs out of cash. “I have eight people to support. I have three boys to pay salaries to. Where am I going to make money from?” Prabhakar charges anywhere from Rs50-300 to transport reels across the country. Everyday, from his office at CST, he sent out 5-10 reels. He packs them into a trunk, seals it with a ten Rupee lock, and sends it on its way. The strike has denied him two months’ earnings, approximately Rs10,000 in total. “What can I tell you,” he says bitterly, asked when he thinks the strike will end. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“I’d rather not call it a strike,” says Pramod Arora, group president of PVR Ltd. “These are partners working together to find a solution both can be happy with.” It’s unlikely that any solution would benefit men such as Prabhakar.

“You can’t really cut off your nose to spite your face,” says Aditya Shastri, whose company, People Pictures, decided they could wait no longer for a resolution to the dispute, and released their first movie, 99, in multiplexes. “If things weren’t bad enough, this strike has affected carters, processing labs, stock suppliers, cinemas, billboard guys, railway station advertisers, and even the guys who print DVD covers. Datta Samant did the same thing with mill workers.”

Shastri’s company researched audiences for a year and a half before starting production, which took an additional year. He says his movie could not be held back any further. “We were on the precipice. We couldn’t take another breath.” Twice he delayed his movie’s release date, only to find that the standoff had been extended further. “We had serious financial pressures, and I owed it to my company and the people who had worked on this movie to do the right thing.”

He described the current climate as “difficult” for business. “A year ago, Studio 18, Eros, and Ashtavinayak were buying movies for distribution. Today they just aren’t. Nobody bought us. We had to go out and sell our movie. Of course it required a different set of skills.”

Between the Friday it released and the Sunday that followed, attendance for 99 quadrupled. Upscale cinemas saw 23-25%. The movie played at 495 screens across India. “I’m ecstatic now,” Shastri says. “But I know I’m sticking my neck out. I’m sure the implications of what I’ve done [vis-à-vis the producers association] will sink in soon enough.”

Kamal Gianchandani, head of distribution at Big Films, says that distributors have tried to adjust to the change in revenue streams. “Advertising revenue dependent formats have certainly been affected,” he says, “Which means selling a film for television doesn’t earn as much as it used to.” This is exacerbated by the rising cost of funding because entertainment is perceived to be risky.

A more low-key transformation is also taking place. Since funds are harder to come by, men such as Gianchandani are under more scrutiny for their decisions. This is vital, because while data is studied to approve film selection, it often comes down to gut feeling. “Because it deals with creativity. Unfortunately, that’s how it is. This makes it difficult to justify your decisions.”

The strike, the tightening of credit, the choosiness of exhibitors and distributors: What does all this mean to a business where no one knows what truly works? Going by the evidence, there’s more reliance on data (Which, as everyone knows, has its limits). Sidhartha Jain, who last year quit Adlabs to begin Irock, a production company, with Manmohan Shetty, is developing “India’s first horror comedy. “It’s a zombie comedy. We’re also doing India’s first space adventure and the first vampire feature. We don’t have huge amounts in development,” he says. “Earlier, we had plans to produce five films. Now we’ll do just two, and we’ll start with the big budget films later.”

Shetty says he’s being more conservative in his approach. “Since the overall recoveries and revenue potential for films have been affected, many large distributors and outright buyers have become inactive. Consequently many producers are left with no option but to release the films themselves and take the entire risk.” His advice is to keep things simple: “In times of trouble, the best approach is to stick to basics. I hope the industry does well to focus on good scripts, strong pre-production, and right-sizing of budgets.” He doesn’t see anyone benefiting from the recession, though. “… Everyone in the value chain suffers in one way or the other, except maybe lawyers who are busy redrafting agreements.”

Shastri says the strike is the more immediate problem. “You have no idea what six more weeks of not playing movies will do. People are going to just stop going.”

Another producer, however, is cynical about why the strike took place. “Who would want to release a movie during the IPL anyway? You watch. Magically, around the time of the IPL final, an agreement will be reached and everyone will be happy. Temporarily. Because there are only 52 weeks in a year. And the producers have missed out on nine due to themselves. So movie releases will be compressed, and the only beneficiaries will be multiplexes. I shudder to think of what’s going to happen.”

How to write about people

2009-05-28T14:33:00.003+05:30

Dan Baum has some reporting advice:

I look for stories with interesting people in them, and one of the tricks that I’m always trying to impress upon young writers is that when you’re interviewing somebody, like if I was interviewing the chief solar engineer at Masdar, a big mistake people make is talking to that guy only about solar engineering. You have to throw in questions that have nothing to do with the subject. How many siblings do you have and what number are you? What do you read? What are your hobbies? Are you married? How many kids do you have? Have you ever been divorced? You’ve got to get them talking about themselves. I’m asking these questions that are just none of my business, really personal questions, and I’ll just keep getting in closer and closer and closer.

I’ll ask, What do you earn? And you’ll see this kind of shock of recognition on the person’s face. Sometimes people say “Well, that’s none of your business,” but rarely. I can barely think of a time that’s happened to me. Usually you see the shock of recognition when the person goes, “Oh, that’s the level we’re talking on.”

People like it, when you get them talking about themselves and unrelated stuff. You need time for this, and it’s a hard thing to do on the phone. But when you’re getting all of that then you know this person as a whole person, and then you can fit them into the story in a way that you’re still writing about Masdar and solar engineering, but you can just throw in a few licks to just make that person real.

It’s kind of a New Yorker trick. When you read about people in The New Yorker, they are somehow more three-dimensional than sources in other magazines. They’re not just a font of quotes, or a representative of a point of view — they’re people.

The rest of it is useful too.

Terrors

2009-05-28T14:20:00.002+05:30

Oriana Fallaci reminds me of Spider Jerusalem. I know I'm late on this.

Abusing election symbols

2009-05-16T22:05:00.001+05:30

Nitish Kumar, resident prose writer:

''The lantern [RJD's election symbol] has broken and the oil that was spilt set on fire the bungalow [LJP] as the arrow [JD-U] was right on target.

Isn't it telling that they still use arrows?

The first time

2009-05-16T20:29:00.001+05:30

Not too long ago, Rhea saw a swimming pool. Her eyes widened as gray, green, blue, and white clashed and dissolved in an endless sequence of silent violence. All manner of forces worked against each other to create movement. Seeing this, she presumed it was alive, and talked to the swimming pool for a while. Rhea is 66 days old.

Sometimes, when no one else is in sight, she giggles and talks to the fan like old friends. She sees the fan respond with another revolution.

The green silk embroidered curtains that bloat and flutter when it's windy transform into something suspicious. At first they stand somewhat still, disguised as a breathing block of color, moving only slightly. Then suddenly they puff up and advance from below, floating towards her on the bed, snapping and twisting and levitating a few feet away from her. She stares at them, eyes wide open, doing nothing else, because she has not been introduced to fear.

She stares at a wall the shade of ripe mangoes. There is nothing on it. To her, this must be masterful.

Birds. Skyscrapers. Motorcyclists. People at windows. A woman's long hair. The breeze.

Nothing compares to the drama life offers at the very beginning.

The party on television

2009-05-16T11:23:00.003+05:30

Right now, on another screen, anchors and reporters are hosting panel discussions. Party mouthpieces are there too. And everyone's happy, like 'hey, what a great party this is', right? They're laughing and joking, and saying clever things, like how journalists think they could be better politicians, and politicians thinking they could make for more competent journalists. Everyone laughs.

I can't remember the last time I saw a smackdown on television. These guys are too safe.

Update: Actually, I do remember a very satisfying television argument. Udayan Mukherjee vs Kamal Nath. If only they did this more often.

On writing, on living

2009-05-16T11:15:00.002+05:30

Neil Gaiman explains to an unreasonable fan what it is that writers do when they aren't writing:

And sometimes, and it's as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to give a talk half-way around the world five years ago, and suddenly you realise that that talk is due now. Your last book comes out and the critics vociferously hated it and now you simply don't feel like writing another. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are deer in the apple orchard. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well...

This is such a lovely bit of writing. Too bad his explanation doesn't apply to magazine writing, with its deadlines and what not. Which explains the absence.

Let Gayle be

2009-05-13T16:48:00.002+05:30

Clive Lloyd is wrong.

Chris Gayle's declaration that there is more to life than Test cricket is refreshing. People wait for captaincy. People plot for captaincy. He did neither. He understood the responsibilities brought on by a captaincy thrust upon him and attempted to change his very nature to accommodate the burden. It is difficult for a man to change his natural inclinations. And he did so when no one else was available. If my reading of Gayle is right, his teammates would have known him well enough to understand his views on life, captaincy and everything. And so, no, "this is" not "bound to have an effect on the whole spirit of the team", as Lloyd put it. If anything, Gayle will be himself, and this can only be good for his team. Let him resign without fuss, and let a more willing man take over. It isn't the end of the world.

Busy day

2009-05-13T16:27:00.001+05:30

Blogging comes later. An infuriating interview with an actor needs to be transformed into something coherent.

A lie

2009-05-12T23:21:00.000+05:30

Later, as I replayed a recording of an interview, I seemed to catch a lie. A momentary slip that contradicted everything the confessor had said before. Taken in isolation, it was a miserable lie that I missed during the interview. But my wife heard the lie, and heard what came before, and she asked if he wasn't just a man hiding from himself. His life so far was spent in hiding from himself, after all. Perhaps it wasn't a lie meant for me, she suggested. Perhaps she's right.

Getting fired from the New Yorker, and Twitter

2009-05-12T11:34:00.004+05:30

Dan Baum is twittering how he got fired from the New Yorker.

Susan Orlean, also on Twitter, takes exception to one of Baum's tweets:

Contrary to @danielsbaum, I don't think The New Yorker office is a creepy place, nor is the atmosphere "strained". He seems WAY off to me.

Much fun.

A photo as substitute

2009-05-12T10:51:00.004+05:30

A link on The Times of India website promises to show readers their election coverage of the last fifty years. Hungry for ToI writing from when it was a readable paper, I visited the page, only to find a photo gallery of front pages from past elections.

Technically it is 'coverage', but still. I wonder what their website would look like if the good people at Cricinfo managed all that content.

An excerpt from a Resul Pookutty interview

2009-05-12T08:59:00.003+05:30

When the opportunity to interview Resul Pookutty arose, I gave no thought to bartering a story with a colleague in order to do so. It's not his Oscar that excited me. I wanted to have a conversation about his craft and understand how sound works.

He explained the effects of sounds on the senses. Everyday sounds are what tell us where we are. The disjointed, short, cacophonic sounds of the city have no rhythm and so you feel restless. Sounds outside the city are quieter, stretched longer, and hence more peaceful. The job of a sound designer is to create an invisible environment, the one we can't see, but which adds to our understanding of where the protagonists are.

Once Open runs the story I will post it here. In the meantime, a brief explanation of what he does, in his own words, from the interview:

"Any sound in a film is not accidental. It is there for a particular feeling, to add texture. In a film if we use 400 tracks of sound, it means we've listened to more than a million files of sound. Not just once. It's far more tedious work than a composer's. When you write a characterization in film, I'm doing the same thing with sound. In sound, if its not real, the audience will reject it. Unless it's a larger-than-life movie. Ghajini was [that kind of movie], and the objective was that the audience shouldn't move from their seat. At the same time, Ghajini had a great emotional line. So I could be as violent as I could. But we decided to restrict ourselves. It's all about killing the girl, right, how brutally you can kill her to create sympathy. We could create brutal sounds. But the audience is a family audience, so if you're brutal, they'll be like "ew". So what we did is, one minute into the film, we brought in metal sounds. You hear soft metal sounds. Every sound we created was metallic. You hear a multitude of metallic sounds. Then we bring the sounds back in reel no.9, where the police inspector narrates the story of how she was killed. So on reel no.1, we started working on the audience's mind with metal sounds, and then we slapped it. The audience accepted it. For me it was a great artistic decision."

This was a brief excerpt; the actual interview is longer and more detailed. It was fun. There's nothing like interviewing a person who loves what he does, and shows you how he does it. Also, I couldn't take my eyes off his magnificent digital recoder. I wanted to go to there.

He told me that she told him that they told her...

2009-05-11T23:09:00.003+05:30

In a sensational waste of kilobytes, a newspaper quotes a source who quotes another source about a sensational incident. If all this sensation is too much, read no further because the report's last line, the money line, is next:

There is also a tell-all blog on team's activities, adding to [sic] insult to its injuries, although the authenticity of the blog is still in doubt.

Good lord. Something's not right here.

Rushdie in The New Yorker

2009-05-11T17:51:00.003+05:30

Salman Rushdie's in fine form with his short story for The New Yorker this week. It makes me long for my relative youth already.

Senior endured the multiple health problems of the very old, the daily penances of bowel and urethra, of back and knee, the milkiness climbing in his eyes, the breathing troubles, the nightmares, the slow failing of the soft machine. His days emptied out into tedious inaction. Once, he had given lessons in mathematics, singing, and the Vedas to pass the time. But his pupils had all gone away. There remained the wife with the wooden leg, the blurry television set, and Junior. It was not, by a long chalk, enough. Each morning he regretted that he had not died in the night.

Go on, read it.

Open Magazine: Why election symbols are weird

2009-05-11T16:14:00.004+05:30

Among the 59 symbols released by the Election Commission for this year’s elections were a batsman, a frock, a shuttlecock, a fork, and a doli. The EC does not create symbols, it only approves and standardizes their appearance. For unregistered parties and independents late to file their nominations, it offers this list of free symbols. “These symbols were created a long time ago,” says KF Wilfred, the secretary. “They were done by someone who knew drawing.”

While the exact source of these symbols is unknown, Wilfred says the EC has a large number of images to choose from – the result of over a thousand candidates filing their papers during a 1989 Tamil Nadu election. Over a thousand symbols were created. “We’ve trimmed that list significantly to make it more relevant,” Wilfred says. “If one guy wanted one glass, another wanted two glasses. If one wanted a mango for his Mango Party, another wanted an apple because it confused voters. There was also a cycle and a motorcycle.” Also removed were symbols that made sense only in one state.

The EC now has a list of approximately 200 to choose from (The choices are also rather limited. Which could lead to interesting combinations, such as an alliance between the parties with the frying pan, the gas stove, and the gas cylinder).

The list is an example of political correctness taken to extremes; nobody could claim to be offended by any symbol without sounding silly. How to be annoyed by a diesel pump or a comb, or a road roller? And this, when the EC releases symbols, is the body’s mandate. “A symbol should not have religious connotations,” said Wilfred. “It should not depict violence, nor should it have animals and birds.” The body took a call on animals and birds in 1990 after petitioners complained that parties were using dead parrots and doves on a string during their campaigns. “Nearly everybody with an animal symbols agreed to use a new one, but you still see the elephant and the lion around.”

South Park. Here. Time to migrate.

2009-05-11T08:40:00.005+05:30

South Park is now in India. I know this because my peaceful early morning ride was cut short when I noticed a giant hoarding of Kyle's behind. This has to be among the darkest days ever.

Open Magazine feature: Shahrukh's throne

2009-05-11T08:28:00.004+05:30

Alright, so this story isn't exactly journalism. Khan didn't want any part of it. His acquaintances said they needed his permission. That left his rivals, industry neutrals, and professionals on the periphery. Rivals will say all sorts of things without evidence, so we didn't go there. Neutrals provide small but revealing insights, so we included some of their thoughts. But the professionals really shaped this story. Their criticism was even, they were fine with being quoted, and they made a distinction between the actor and the brand. One reader asked what was new about this story, and I found myself agreeing with him in part. The idea, however, was to take what was being said and create a solid narrative. I'd like to think that we managed that, although I'd remove lines such as "This isn't Raj's time anymore". That line sounds so whiny it's not funny.

By Rahul Bhatia and Madhavankutty Pillai, with inputs from Manju Sara Rajan and Rubina A Khan.

On December 12, 2008, a day when most visitors to the cinema had a Shahrukh Khan movie on their mind, an inspired marketing idea reminded them of a forthcoming Aamir Khan release. Behind the counters, passing out tickets for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, were cinema staff with military haircuts and a shaved parting identical to Aamir’s appearance in Ghajini, out a fortnight later. Anywhere else this would be seen as shrewd marketing. But not in Bollywood, where the idea caused grave offense. Shahrukh used the incident to point out, "I think it is a good strategy. You take the biggest brand in the country that is SRK and then use that platform to publicise yourself. I think Aamir rocks. The problem is that I cannot use any another brand because there is no one bigger than me".

Lately, Shahrukh has found it necessary to repeatedly inform readers and watchers that he is the country’s top actor. Not by the time-tested method of performing in a series of hit films or pushing the boundaries of his art, but by saying it out loud, over and over. His declarations are reported faithfully, with all possible meaning extracted and magnified by the media. Taken in isolation, he sounds like a mouthy upstart boxer: say it, and it shall be. But he isn’t. His proclamations sound as strange as a doctor insisting he’s number one (“I am the biggest, meanest, pediatrician in the country”). And so, each new announcement makes the case curiouser and curiouser: why does a man who has achieved so much have to reiterate this? What started it? Is this insecurity? Why does he sound like he is No.2? Is he?

Shahrukh, friends and acquaintances will tell you, was a star the first time they saw him. He was sharp and ambitious and willing, and said he would be a star; and in that respect, not much has changed. He listens intently, he watches carefully, and he sums up people quickly. When he enters a room, people say, he energises it. A cluster of strangers will soon be friends. He can make a journalist feel special. He’s open, and he’s witty. He remembers faces, if not names. In short, there’s something oddly Clintonesque about him.

Whatever he does, his people believe in him. Who are his people? Anyone, absolutely anyone, whom Shahrukh has touched. His employees are paid well, his assistant directors are charmed by his spontaneity and attention, and his sponsors adore his commitment. These are grown men and women who know that life outside Shahrukh’s sphere of influence isn’t pretty, and they love him for it. Speak to them and they all say the man’s a game changer. On the sets he isn’t a star. He’s an evolved version of you and me; a father, a mother, a friend, and a councilor. He treasures loyalty and repays it. Juniors say he looks out for them. They eat out of his hand. They feel for him something that borders on genuine love. Not for his work, which can be cheesy, but for the man. If you know how love works, you’ll appreciate how stunning the achievement is.

Therefore, a conversation today with his assistants about him feels like a conversation about two people. The man they love, and the guy they don’t understand in print. The pattern is a familiar one of denial (that he uttered the words), followed by rationalising (he said he’s No.1 because he has every right to. Because he is). When it comes to it, they’re as beaten as anyone else. Why would Shahrukh keep insisting on it? Well, there’s a theory.

A journalist recalled a conversation where he once mentioned to Shahrukh how good Hritik Roshan looked in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai. “He only did it for a second, but he recoiled physically. It’s the only time I saw him react that way.” The theory goes like this: competition makes Shahrukh Khan behave unusually. “SRK has always been a very insecure person despite his phenomenal success in the business,” says a person who has interacted with him. “His desire to monopolise the number one spot is almost megalomaniacal. But as much as he is a shrewd player, he is also a very sensitive and thoughtful person to those he loves, having given them apartments and cars and many such expensive gifts in the past or done cameos without charging his superstar fees.”

His supporters say the allegation of insecurity is nonsense. Wouldn’t anyone behave this way? But what makes it strange is that in his highly image-conscious profession, Shahrukh seems to have forgotten a basic tenet: stay on message. The CEO of a sports and celebrity management company, who requested anonymity, says that there was a time when Shahrukh used to come across as someone very humble. His appeal was, in marketspeak, reliability, friendliness and accessibility, and it had reach. Aamir had trust, but not reach. This is image, the thing we react to internally, well before it is manifested in our conscious opinion. In our minds, Aamir was the better actor but the more reserved one – unlike Shahrukh, who acted out mad fantasies with abandon. This, the CEO believes, began to change two years ago when two things happened. “One, everything became about Shahrukh the celebrity. It began with Kaun Banega Crorepati. Meanwhile, Aamir’s steady run continued. He opened up to the media. He became more likeable, and because he chose his films selectively, he came across as being more credible. And his reach increased.” People began seeing more of Aamir because he let them. And with every passing snipe or defence of his territory, they saw more of Shahrukh than they wanted to. “He forgot that the guy they liked was not SRK the megacorporation, but SRK the individual, the Raj they all knew.”

The Eternal Raj

Raj. Every Raj and Rahul comes to understand this fact early in life: his name is not his alone because Shahrukh appropriated it a long time ago. In small towns the names are an implication of romantic love. In large cities they imply filmi love. Shah Rukh holds on to the two as a man holds on to his youth. In Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi he was Raj Kapoor, a smooth operator serenading his unsuspecting wife. It was the 14th instance in his 65-movie career where he played a character with either name. This is hardly a coincidence. Fourteen years ago he performed his most famous role, as the romantic Raj Malhotra who wouldn’t elope without parental consent. Critics say he hasn’t left Punjab since, even as Aamir has taken greater risks and exposed himself to new challenges.

While Shahrukh took on simple romances that allowed him to be Shahrukh, Aamir re-invented the tapori, and played a cop in a smart thriller (before two absolute turkeys). Then Lagaan happened. It was first offered to Shahrukh. He declined, Aamir took it, and then came the Oscar nomination. Ever since, Aamir was typecast as experimental, while Shahrukh was himself; safe on familiar ground. But in the invisible side of cinema, the business side, Shahrukh was a fascinating innovator. He foresaw the possibility of a man becoming an industry. On the screen, however, he was becoming a cliché, a ghost from the past. So unexpected were his turns as a scientist and a hockey coach in Swades and Chak De India that fans aren’t sure what to make of him. One said he didn’t know which Shahrukh was the real one, and that is a revealing comment. He isn’t seen as an actor. He’s a good guy, a friendly guy, who made it big. A film like Swades throws off people because they’re trained to see Shahrukh the personality, not judge his skills. That is why Chak De was remarkable; it became bigger than its main actor and told a story. It seemed the kind of role Aamir would take on.

“That there is competition between the Khans is no secret. Both Shahrukh and Aamir are great strategisers when it comes to making their movies succeed,” says a producer who went with a script to both actors. It was an unconventional role. Aamir didn’t bother to get back but Shahrukh called the man over for a meeting which stretched half a day. After a couple more interactions on the phone, Shahrukh backed out. “Possibly because the character was just too unconventional for him,” says the producer.

Many industry people don’t agree with the notion that he plays safe. They say Shahrukh’s daring lies not in his roles (although his choices here aren’t too shabby they say, pointing to Paheli and Rab Ne…), but in his decisions. He produces movies with his own money, they say, unlike Aamir, whose productions are in large part financed by PVR, the cinema chain. “He puts his money where his mouth is,” a producer and friend of Shahrukh says. “Now that’s risk-taking. Now he runs a sports franchise. Of course he’s No. 1.”

What is a Brand?

The curious incident of the dog on Aamir’s blog now feels like a strangely silly chapter, despite Aamir’s protestations of innocence. However, people close to the matter say he was taking the mickey. That he’d had enough with Shahrukh, and decided to give it back. Shahrukh responded, and Aamir escalated the jibes. They read like the kind of entertainingly inane argument siblings have (“Your elbow’s on my side”). These statements were made only in part jest. After one lob and parry, Aamir complained that Shahrukh had lost his sense of humor. The bone of contention was over who could claim the number one status. Aamir’s supporters had a line of four straight hits to back them, while Shahrukh, even with only three hits in 17 releases (including special appearances), mystifyingly insisted on being called number one.

But then he isn’t just a movie star. He does introduce himself as a film maker. So there’s some logic, however skewed, at work. Perhaps for Shahrukh, he’s No.1 in an empirical sense. King of everything. Which fits in nicely with the ‘megalomaniac’ tag that seems to go everywhere he does. A trade analyst says, “He was a very calculating man from the beginning. The diversification into IPL is a sign of that. He’s even started making television serials now. He’s got a Marwari brain. People say he takes Rs 30 - 40 crore, but no one really knows what he takes. He’s always been a very reasonable man. Only in the last 3 to 4 years has he hiked his price. Otherwise till then he was charging Rs 2 to 3 crore, when he could have taken much more. Nowadays, he takes some percentage of the profits. He’s the only actor who reads the financial newspapers daily. You can’t fool him.”

A producer says, “You’re looking at Ghajini. Tell me how much it made. 280 crore? 290 crore? (None of these numbers, readers have to note, have been confirmed.) Well, what was the film’s budget? Look at the return on investment. Rab Ne had a greater return on investment than Ghajini. Why do you think people want to work with him? He gives you everything. He wants to be completely involved. And your film is guaranteed to make money! Of course he’s No. 1.” No room for doubt, then?

Just when you think they’re about the acting, they tell you, no, it comes down to money. Of course. “Shahrukh first tasted blood with Main Hoon Na. He had produced movies before, but nothing had worked like this,” an acquaintance says. “Only then did he decide to go full tilt with Om Shanti Om.” Perhaps that’s what Shah Rukh means when he says he’s No.1. Everything he touches turns to gold. It explains the gold on his team uniform.

Advertisers say he’s the biggest brand by far. A creative head who worked with Shahrukh says, “I think SRK is still the biggest name for brands. The reason is that SRK’s stardom is a self-propagating machine. And it has an accumulated effect on his stardom and fame. He’s sheer eye candy. Aamir Khan makes you think, SRK makes you watch. He has what we in advertising call the ‘screensaver syndrome’, it doesn’t mean much, he’s there and you’ll keep looking at it.

“The great difference between Aamir Khan and SRK, and the reason why SRK is the bigger brand is that, SRK’s fame is not derived from his movies. He’s gone beyond that. AK is very strongly associated with his movies. Aamir’s standing with the audience and their desire to emulate him draws directly from the success of his films. I don’t think that holds true for SRK. He’s beyond the stardom machine. Like Sachin’s fame is no longer associated with how he played his last innings, the brand SRK is no longer associated with how his movies do.”

But is branding about money? When you take money out of the equation, and include the many intangibles of art, suddenly Aamir seems to have no equal. That is why a photojournalist who covers Bollywood says that Aamir is clearly up there. In his mind, Shahrukh has some distance to cover. “It has to do with success and the kind of movies which he makes successful. Take a role like Taare Zameen Pe, in which he enters the film just before the interval. Which actor in Bollywood would possibly agree to such a role? And yet, because of Aamir the movie went on to become a superhit. Whenever Shahrukh has tried to do any sort of offbeat roles, he has inevitably flopped.”

There is comfort in familiarity because managing your own image is easier when you are in familiar hands, hands that belong to friends and people you’ve known for a long time; they’re as good as family. They know what he can do, and know what he isn’t capable of. They know what makes Shahrukh unique. The actor, otherwise resistant to a change in his acting technique, relaxes. He’s in familiar territory. He can be himself with friends. This is where Aamir scores over his rival. The only image he needs to maintain is his own -- as India’s most experimental actor.
And that’s why there’s a gradual change in perception.

Some Stars Fade

Ask yourself a few questions. Why do you visit the movies? Would you watch a movie for its star? Would you watch a movie without a star? It isn’t much of a choice, but you know the answer. Now rewind to fifteen years ago and ask yourself the same questions. That’s why Shahrukh doesn’t make you feel the way you used to. This isn’t Raj’s time anymore. There’s more to life than love, which is why Swades and Chak De worked for so many people in cities (Audiences in NY and London don’t count; they’re still living in 1994). There’s autism, and hockey, and anterograde amnesia (not to be confused with retrograde amnesia, which a bump on the head in the 1970s gave you). That is why, as the public image guy put it, “This disconnect between who Shahrukh is and who he was hasn’t yet spread outside the cities. But if he keeps this up, it will.”

The small circle he works with keeps his image intact, but that image, a result of his obsession, hasn’t kept up with the times. The circle is claustrophobic. In fact, few movies could compare with the intense suffocation of Rab Ne, which revolved around chiefly three characters. It feels like a miscalculation. Audiences don’t expect you to declare yourself numero uno. Not with the run he’s been having. It feels misplaced, like he’s holding on to something slipping away. Audiences know. They just know.

If Aamir is No. 1 today, and there’s no dearth of support in that corner, it’s partly due to Shahrukh’s unwillingness to come to terms with a basic truth. There’s a point when spontaneity on tap is no longer spontaneity. There’s a point where every exuberant wave feels practised. There’s a point where you say so much more when you aren’t being witty. His subordinates love him because they know him, and they know he’s a great guy. That’s because he’s natural with them. But with educated audiences – people who live in a complex world - he gives them unnatural simplicity, a forced youthfulness, a tight t-shirt and orange pants, all in the name of the grand entertainer. There’s no formula. It’s common sense. You expect an adult to act his age, so what if he’s a star?

Open Magazine feature: Struggling scriptwriters

2009-05-10T22:54:00.002+05:30

Yes, it's been done a thousand times before, but I tried to approach this story differently. What if it wasn't a vignette, or a few short portraits of watchmen and drivers trying to make it? What if it was about one man? That way the struggle could be magnified. I'd like to think I nailed it thanks to Vishwas, who gave me one heck of a story. So much of meeting the right people for a story comes down to dumb luck.

Debobrata Vishwas, a tiny, nondescript man with a bounce in his step and a script in his satchel, came to the Film Writers Association one morning to hang around. Every writer with aspirations to film has to visit the dowdy, lightless office of the association. Here, writers meet others like them. Many are here to insure themselves against outright intellectual theft. Some are here to chat and catch up, hoping to pick up leads. The association is decorated with pictures of dead greats and the nearly there. It is administered by middle-age men in white kurtas and safari suits who begin sentences with “Kabhi Kabhi…” in their free time, and point out application form errors with the severity of government employees. Scripts and lyrics, once officially registered with a round stamp, are returned to the strugglers.

Vishwas was beyond all that. He became a card-carrying member seven years ago, and he knows the drill well: Don’t show your script until it’s been registered. And even then. He has no pull. No vasta. He’s just a driver. Like Vishwas, there are others, among them watchmen and building painters, with ambitions to film. There’s too much competition, he says, surveying the crowd in the corridor. The greatest threat to Vishwas is people like him.

Vishwas was 12 when he decided to run away from Bengal with two friends. No place looked more adventurous to them than Bombay. But the plan, like all schemes hatched by sincere twelve-year olds, had its share of logistical errors. The five-rupee budget for Bombay evaporated before he reached Howrah Station. His friends disembarked in Calcutta, forgetting him.

At Victoria Terminus, Vishwas was amazed by Bombay’s bustle. He wandered in his half-pants outside the station like a truant schoolboy until a concerned Bihari asked about him in rudimentary Bengali, the only language Vishwas understood. The Bihari threw Vishwas a lifeline and the boy began work in a tea stall. Everyday he rose before the birds and slept after midnight for 200 rupees a month. As he grew more comfortable with the local language, Vishwas started communicating with customers the best way he could: he told them stories. Of kings and queens, and ghosts and myths. Something told him they loved his stories.

He soon left for a hotel on Mohammad Ali road, where life began to look up. In the day he washed plates. At night, Vishwas slept under a street lamp beside one of the many unhappy goats that live there, often straddling one to read a newspaper. He was helped by men who ran neighborhood stalls in the day and shared the pavement after dark. He began writing stories, slowly at first, but kept at it. With a pen and notebook Vishwas would sit at Hanging Gardens, where regulars would later come to ask him, “So, Vishwas, aaj kya likha hai?” They heard his stories, and told him he would go far.

One day, as he washed plates and rattled off another story in a hotel at Girgaum, a buddy in the kitchen asked, “Oye, you tell us these stories, and they’re good, no doubt. Why don’t you make a script out of one? I’ll tell you what. Write one, and I’ll show it to my friends. Mera Film City mein connection hai.” Patriotism ran high at the time, and the story, about ordinary people and terrorists in Kashmir – with some masala thrown in – was titled ‘Awaaz’. “Khatarnaak tha. I read it today and cannot believe I wrote it. Even my friends cannot believe it. Bhayanak tha.”

Nothing came of it, but Vishwas anyway took off for Film City when he could, Awaaz neatly wrapped in a bag, where he found no producers or directors, only jaded production staff who told him: “Big deal. Thousands like you.” This he heard in practically every exchange, and it broke his heart. In this despondent and lifeless state, Vishwas met his first vulture.

The man told Vishwas that he was Mani Ratnam’s khaas man. That he was with Maniji everyday, and that, incidentally, Maniji needed a script. Vishwas wrote a love story with some violence thrown in, for he knew Ratnam made movies about love with violence thrown in. It is not clear whether Ratnam saw the script. Vishwas doesn’t think so because the khaas man disappeared.

“This is a dhokebaaz line,” Vishwas says. “But what else can you do? You have to trust people. You have to believe they will be good to you, because if there’s no faith, nothing will work for you here.” Vishwas learned two things: butter up the middle man and the people around your target, but only give the target your script.

When we meet in early December, Vishwas looks preoccupied, not to mention glum. The week before, he resigned his job to pursue his interest. A small tailoring enterprise at Bhindi Bazaar (cuffs, collars, buttons) saw to the costs of living, but there’s nothing like good solid work, he thinks.

Soon after, his luck turned. Deepika Padukone’s driver, who Vishwas happened to know, alerted him to an opening that could change his life. Vishwas clinched the job. When I called, he all but screamed, “I got my big break! I’m Kunal Kohli’s driver!” Kohli, who gave the world Hum Tum, Fanaa, and Thoda Pyaar, Thoda Magic, asked Vishwas to work for his father.

Kohli’s father – an experienced hand – heard Vishwas’ latest story. He worked out an informal deal with Vishwas about an idea that needed developing. If what results is of an acceptable standard, the senior Kohli will show it to his son. Vishwas was taken, and dove into the masala romance when he wasn’t driving. Then, one morning, Kohli’s father was hospitalised. Vishwas thought he was a goner. “It takes years for something to come up, and only one moment for everything to disappear.” Luckily for Vishwas, the father recovered.

There are experienced writers, like Vishwas, whose hopes are tinged with cynicism; men and women who have seen too much to blindly trust anybody. They hope and believe not because they want to, but because it is all they have. Then there are the naïve ones, fresh off the boat, the Vishwases of 16 years ago.

One morning outside the FWA, Vishwas and a writer from Bihar got talking. “Hum geet likhte hain,” the writer declared.

“Achcha,” Vishwas said, “Aap writer hain.”

“Ji nahi!” the man thundered. “Hum geetkaar hain! Anyone can be a writer,” he said, eyeing both of us. “I write Bhojpuri lyrics.”

“Whatever it is that you do, you need help in Bambai,” Vishwas said. “You need someone who knows people.”

“I need nobody. I have to forge my own path.”

“Good luck with that.”

For all the talk of modernity, the film business remains a feudal and interconnected place where one phone call does more than years of waiting outside offices. This has not deterred thousands of would-be writers outside the industry whose belief in their own ideas is unshakeable. They are convinced that doors will open if they’re given one hearing. That the unseen gears of fortune will turn when a producer – any producer – asks for their story or lyrics. There’s the excise inspector from Allahabad who can’t figure out why Prasoon Joshi hasn’t called back yet, and is pitching reality show concepts to Sony and Star Plus (with revenue stream ideas). There’s the realist with bit roles in Mixed Doubles and Raghu Romeo who continues his impossible and damaging fight for a stolen script. Otherwise sensible, otherwise real about their prospects in any other sphere of life, they put logic aside when it comes to film writing because, hey, it’s film. You never know.

Another afternoon around the FWA, I met a man who had watched too many Dev Anand films. His hand fluttered as he spoke, with his head tilted in style as he drank tea. He talked in monologues.

“My name is Avinash. Yes, I write scripts but I enjoy writing lyrics. Wahi mera maqsad hai. I write only at night, in the dark, because that is when this bottle cap in my head opens and the words pour out. Well, har roz toh nahi hota hai. Kabhi ek shabd, kabhi ek mukhda. But only at night, because this is my dream. My real job is as a painter of buildings, mazdoori karta hoon. Jo zindagi ne diya hai, usey kheech kar chalana padta hai.”

Avinash grew up in Kerala, but moved to Bihar to earn. Two years ago, he moved to Mumbai. “Two things brought me here. The construction, of which there is a lot, and Hindi films. I will work there someday.” Madhumati, by Bimal Roy, brought Avinash alive to the possibilities of language. “People spoke of actors and directors and all that, but I saw through it; in films, the writer wields greater power. Everybody else is a puppet who dances to the writer’s tune.” He began to write songs and plays, and in time gained a good reputation back home. Here he hoped to pen love songs.

If Vishwas was an example of the fortunate struggler, how could a rank newcomer make it? His smile was beatific. “That’s how you think, and it shows who you are. When I came here, I gained strength from the people around me. When I look around me at what you call competition, I see my brothers and sisters struggling for the same thing. Look at how many of us there are. Surely one of us will make it? Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to be off. I have an important meeting.” The man was a star.

Sandeep Shrivastava, who wrote the screenplay for Shimit Amin’s 2004 encounter classic Ab Tak Chappan, chimed in on the outsider’s dilemma. “Who will meet you?” he asks. Even if the script is gold, which producer or director will make time for a driver, or a waiter, or a painter of buildings? “That’s what they don’t understand. It’s sad, but they’re asking for trouble. Even today I find people taking credit for some of my work.” He doesn’t know what to tell the building watchman who stops him every so often, offering Shrivastava a story. He doesn’t know what to tell the chacha outside a friend’s home who has a new story for him every time. How many success stories have we heard of, Shrivastava asks. How many true-blue rags-to-riches have we heard of in Indian cinema? We think for a while. Not one.

Elsewhere, Kohli has a driver who writes at night, waiting for his moment. Elsewhere, Avinash is one of many laborers on a construction site. Elsewhere, storytellers work as waiters and beauticians and watchmen. It’s like LA, but without the hope. Just don’t tell them that.

locopopo

2009-05-10T22:32:00.003+05:30

Lokesh Karekar's work always blows me away.

Sexy action video game babes etc.

2009-05-10T22:17:00.002+05:30

When editorial meetings come up with nothing, this is what happens:

"These hot bods have made many action video games hotsellers by not just their sex appeal, but by their impeccable action skills and heroism."

Back where we belong

2009-05-10T18:31:00.000+05:30

Last year, confused with html, I moved this blog from here to a wordpress platform at www.grch.wordpress.com. But it never quite felt right. Shortening a name that served me well seemed to make less and less sense over time and, in an irrational way, it never truly felt mine. So here it is, back where it belongs, where the vibrations feel right.

Much has changed since last year. Writing has become less intimidating, if not easier. I've discovered armchair opinion like never before. A few things have helped. For one, the narrow focus of my life widened from writing to include other creative pursuits, such as creating music. Soon I'll put up a sample or two. There's a short screenplay I wrote, currently being revised. There's another on the way.

Working on many projects simultaneously has helped focus my attention, for the limited time I can give them each day is all I can manage before the mind wanders. More importantly, and surely I've jinxed myself now, the last half year has been tremendous fun. This blog will reflect the change. I hope you'll keep visiting.

This channel's on a different frequency

2008-02-09T10:58:00.001+05:30

I'm moving to www.grch.wordpress.com. That's over here. See you.

Woohoo

2008-02-01T11:01:00.000+05:30

Juno gets in. Yep, there's no stopping them now.

Harder than arabic

2008-01-30T21:59:00.000+05:30

HTML wasn't a tough language to learn, from what I recall. Typical of a school subject to fail you when you need it most. I give up modifying this template.

Ps. The white bar on the right? It's not by design.

Red channel

2008-01-30T20:41:00.000+05:30

Starting today, this very moment, I've decided to have an on-and-off column right here for all the interesting news and innuendo heard in conversations, but can't use. It won't be regular, and I'll make full use of this format. And since being sued isn't much fun, the language will be indirect at times (This writing style will be familiar to readers of this blog, who wander in to read about things like clouds and the futility of driving).

Adam Gilchrist's retirement makes me sad. It was all so sudden, and just after a few disappointing Tests. But at least the timing's great, right? Because isn't the BCCI about to enforce a ruling that retiring players can't participate in the IPL for at least two years?

Absolutely sinister news dept: Is Lalit Modi's little monster, the IPL, about to affect the international cricket calendar? Word is, yes. We can't verify whether the West Indies Cricket Board has been approached (and whether other boards have been contacted) to not schedule any cricket between March/April and May/June from this year onward after their existing cricketing commitments are met. The ICC's looking more and more like the damn UN.

Boots pic by Dragass on Flickr

Truth in journalism

2008-01-30T19:23:00.000+05:30

Lately I've had the sort of rough time I didn't quite anticipate. At Mint, when a story had to be written by the end of the day, I presented everyone's view - in cable operator versus broadcaster stories the views were diametrically opposite - and moved on to the conflicts between the two. Partly why I left the paper was because publishing everyone's views in a story doesn't qualify as the truth. And the satisfaction at having handed in a story is offset by the usefulness of the piece. In fact, as I'm finding out these days while I do my own research, a whole bunch of views are just lies told to journalists who should have found the time to do more.

The problem is, I now have the time, and it still isn't getting any better. The lying has reached new dimensions, because the stakes are higher due to the fact that a journalist has more time on his hands. As a result, I'm going to go mad by the time 2009 comes along.

A cricket historian digs up the past

2008-01-17T08:07:00.000+05:30

And what results ain't pretty.

In a classy denunciation, Gideon Haigh sticks it to Sunil Gavaskar for his divisive column, in which Gavaskar breezily surmised that since Sachin Tendulkar's version of events had not convinced the match referee, his reputation was in doubt. First the provocation:

"This is what has incensed the millions of Indians who are flabbergasted that the word of one of the greatest players in the history of the game, Sachin Tendulkar, was not accepted. In effect, Tendulkar has been branded a liar by the match referee."

And Haigh's response:

"Again with the "millions of Indians"! It's not me folks - it's those "millions of Indians". In fact, this debating point is a much less impressive notion that it seems. India has a population of 1.13 billion. There's probably at least a few million who believe in flying saucers. Should we really pay them serious heed?"

The part of his response I've posted isn't the best bit, but it highlights Gavaskar's manner of presenting his opinions and biases. It's something I've noticed about Gavaskar on television - he says things you've heard before, things that are safe, things that fit in with the sensibilities of a majority. Case in point, the first day's play at Perth, and Sehwag on strike. Gavaskar: "There's no footwork there." Heck, I'm a half-assed cricket writer and even I could tell you that Sehwag doesn't have footwork in the traditional sense, but then, surely, we could be told how exactly he plays. But no, don't expect much insight, because for that a commentator needs to think about commentary and put some work in to it. The last time I spoke to them, the folks at ESPN-Star weren't happy with Gavaskar's work ethic.

Anyway. Haigh goes on to say, quite rightly, that Gavaskar's role as a columnist is at odds with his post as an administrator for the ICC. He also picks up a few passages from a book by Gavaskar to illustrate the man's own thoughts on race. Here's one bit:

"To call the crowd a 'crowd' in Jamaica is a misnomer. It should be called a 'mob'. The way they shrieked and howled every time Holding bowled was positively horrible. They encouraged him with shouts of 'Kill him, Maaaan!' 'Hit im Maan!', 'Knock his head off Mike!' All this proved beyond a shadow of doubt that these people still belonged to the jungles and forests, instead of a civilised country.... "

Read the whole thing. It's excellent. Reasoned, well-researched cricket writing like this is pretty rare today - is there anyone but him and Guha? - and, additionally, this particular piece is more satisfying because it delves on an issue Indian administrators studiously ignore: precisely what value does Gavaskar bring to the administration and growth of cricket?

A note on the reader comments in Haigh's article. What is it about Indian comment posters? You'd imagine that these are the "millions of Indians" Gavaskar talks about - a witless mob led by a crank. Haigh'll probably cry himself to sleep beside Trumper after reading the comments, because it's all so pointless in these message boards.

Sigh

2008-01-12T19:32:00.000+05:30

Slow, quiet evening. Crap on the radio. I miss Dubai. (Photo from here.)

Away from it all

2008-01-08T10:03:00.000+05:30

Elsewhere, on this calm morning, India have gone to the beach. After days of fury, it's comforting to know that they're by the sea. There are others making noise for them, burning effigies, posturing, and drawing boundaries. News channels are pulling out old footage to show us that obnoxiousness is an old Australian trait. Historians are apoplectic to the point of madness. Our news anchors look grave and ask questions that are pointed only in appearance. Rajiv Shukla, a politician, defends 'our players'. A great bowler returns to say Australians play hard and fair. Everywhere there is affront and offence. Everywhere there is patriotism of some kind.

A wasteful bowler, the man at the center, becomes a 'Sikh warrior'. Australia's cricketers are called wild dogs, besides much else. What does this say of our ability to transform normal men in to something else? Every flaw has disappeared, and these are either men undone or a pack of dogs.

The umpires too are not spared. A cricketing nation rages around them, trying to have them sacked, demoted, or disappear. Flaws are charming, it says, but not so many. But we cannot have technology doing the job either. So good luck to these umpires, who get 96% of their decisions right, and let us hope for them that god is on their side whenever India plays.

I can think of several people who'd be well-served by a trip to the beach during high tide.

Boria for president

2008-01-06T23:07:00.000+05:30

The highlight of this fabulous day was Boria Majumdar blowing a gasket on Times Now. Here was the angriest man on television demanding that the board back its players to the hilt. "What use our economic strength, our clout," he spat in to the phone, "if you don't support your players?" (He said something like it.) Pity these orphans - abandoned by the match referee, the umpires, and all Australians. Speaking of which, Boria was pretty certain Australia were given a fair hearing and India weren't. It's great to see an intellectual giant like him contribute to all this in a meaningful way. And he wasn't done yet, by the way. He dusted off the old administration for show. Remember 2001, he said, when the board didn't go through official channels, and used its clout to have its way. That was legendary. 'And all this board can say', he spluttered - turning red - 'is no comment?!' Boria, if nothing else, we love the way you scream on television.

Waffling around

2007-12-26T09:47:00.000+05:30

I wrote this piece for Mint to coincide with the Boxing Day Test today. Two ideas: balls haven't changed much over the course of the game; second, these measures to have day-night Tests and pink balls and whatnot are just diversions from where cricket might actually be headed - the league format.

Go beyond repackaging

India is due to start its cricket campaign against Australia today. Test cricket’s audience has dropped for years. Could day-night Tests be the answer?

They could be a brilliant spectacle and will attract a larger audience, as Cricket Australia officials recently explained. The opposition from cricketers and most media has been intense. The fear: Test cricket is about to lose its sanctity by being tied to commercial needs.

But is it? For years, Tests, as we know them, have evolved from even, balanced competitions to encounters where batsmen celebrate on flat pitches. Bats have evolved, bouncers have been checked, but the science of cricket balls, around which the game revolves, has not advanced beyond minute tinkering. This, in effect, makes it a batsman’s game, with the bowler severely disadvantaged (Is there any other sport where the balance between contestants is so unequal?).

Whether due to boring encounters or other choices on television and in life, people have steadily trickled away from Test cricket. One-day cricket, while still popular in India, is saturated elsewhere. Cricket’s response to this has been Twenty20, and we all know how that’s gone. But cricket is headed somewhere else, somewhere obvious, and these innovations seem like bells and whistles. A prototype of its future lies in leagues such as the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and Indian Premier League (IPL).

When players aren’t represented by countries, the market gets to work. It chooses players from everywhere, whether a Canadian batting talent or a freakish leg-spinner from Chad. Where the player comes from becomes irrelevant because he isn’t held back by the limitations of his national side. Had market forces been at work, a very capable bunch of Zimbabweans and Kenyans would have had extended careers and more games to play. And would anyone recommend Brian Lara continue playing for West Indies instead of a Galacticos equivalent? Would there be no takers for Mark Ramprakash? It would also be ruthless. Great players in poor form would be dropped with fewer reservations.

Right now, all cricket is doing in the name of progress is playing with uniform colours, and timing and scheduling—apart from Twenty20, which has so far been as much a bowler’s game as a batsman’s.

Administrators hold on to their territories with a vice grip, ignoring the fact that cricket’s growth requires something more meaningful than playing in Disneyland or Abu Dhabi. Unless local talents are involved extensively, cricket, as it is now run, remains open to the whimsies of local administrations and political imbroglios, such as the Zimbabwe situation. Private leagues remove regionalism. They actually make things fairer.

Zee’s ICL venture was less than successful, but it set in motion a concept Lalit Modi had only spoken about for a while. The IPL was a reaction to this threat, but it was inevitable. The cricketing world is only so big. And its largest audience, India, finds its attention drawn to more diverse things every day. Cricket could survive without changing, and probably remain healthy, but it cannot grow without proliferating and entering the vocabulary of newer, more diverse, audiences.

If day-night Tests take off, we’d do well to remember that it’s only a repackaging served to the same audiences. Compared with where cricket could be, it’s actually quite traditional.

Garbage Unlimited

2007-12-23T17:34:00.000+05:30

Vic Marks, in the Guardian:

"On this tour only Alastair Cook scored more Test runs but Bell has received the most criticism. So he must be a good player. The problem is that he has seldom changed the course of a match throughout his Test career. One consolation for Bell: they used to say the same about Sachin Tendulkar."

With a few nifty jabs, Marks manages to appear sympathetic to Bell while relating him to Tendulkar's predicament without being offensive to either. He's being thoroughly dishonest, and very slithery about it. "They used to say..."? Oh, come on.

Marks' piece, by the way, isn't a particularly good bit of writing. The chief criticism about Tendulkar is that he hasn't won enough matches for India single-handed. This is what I think Marks actually means. Even then, the assumption is simply incorrect. The image of the hero in sport is of a single person battling or blazing away to victory, etc. Is this what Marks subscribes to? When we talk of a batsman winning it, in our minds he has finished the job or nearly completed it. This involves the batsman being present in the second innings, where Tendulkar has been less good (avg: 42.98) than in first innings, where he averages 61.75. Surely Marks knows that to define a batsman by his being there at the end is to shortchange him considerably. What about the set-up, which Tendulkar has done many times? Or snatching the initiative, which is a characteristic attributed to men such as Gilchrist and Sehwag now, and Tendulkar earlier? Statsguru shows us that Tendulkar was often in the middle of India's larger first-innings scores, and often the only person between a decent score and a bad one.

What about presence and averting embarassment? Tendulkar, at a time, made a difference by simply being there.

In first innings where no one else scored a hundred, Tendulkar averages 121.63. The average team score is 322.75. This is against meaningful opposition. Dravid, in comparison, averages 179.83. The avg team score for Dravid's sole-hundred innings is 456.

But take a look at this. In each of these innings (there are six in all), each of Dravid's ten teammates have averaged: 23.3, 20.8, 22.8, 24.7. 30.1, 26.1.

In Tendulkar's eight innings, this is what his mates have averaged: 13.5, 10.7, 22.6, 10.5, 34.8, 17.3, 20.3, 16.9. (Where does Bell fit in here?)

The extras scene is revealing too. In Dravid's case, there are nearly 30 extras per innings added to the Indian total, which tells me the bowlers weren't exactly all there to begin with, or that Dravid drove them to distraction. In Tendulkar's case, the fielding side would concede less than 18 runs on average, which tells us that bowlers kept things quite tight.

Anyway, I meander. I could keep looking at stats all day but there's other work to be done. So Mr Marks, in a nutshell, the damn comparison's all wrong. I'd love to go on but I'd go bankrupt if I kept this up. Thank you for wasting half my day because of one half-wit paragraph.

The fiction in travel writing

2007-12-16T15:51:00.000+05:30

Given a chance, a travel writer is capable of misreading entire cultures. But this genre of writing is not journalism, and so the rigorous standards of journalism do not apply. You only have the writer’s piece as proof. Ask anyone what they expect of travel writing and you will receive many answers, but most will demand accuracy and an interesting story. But is travel writing seriously read for its accuracy? I don’t think so. To be a travel writer is to allow yourself to be taken in by the stream of events around you, like a twig in a river of raging currents. You speed by actual happenings, capturing only their echoes. Try this: sit in a speeding vehicle and, staring at one spot ahead of you, describe the countryside. This is what writing about a place can be like.

Our times require precise information quickly, and travel writing unfortunately cannot be entirely accurate nor on demand. The result would be equivalent to: “8.15am: Woke up. Brushed teeth.” It is a loose form of non-fiction and fiction: It is likely, in an extreme case, to contain imaginary incidents and conversations that could have happened. These things are difficult to verify for all you have is the writer’s word. We know this and, as we do with all single sources, accept their word with a little skepticism. The instinct to not be fooled is strong in many of us, but I suspect deep down we’re wired to like good tales. That is what travel writing is, and will remain at its height. It cannot influence international events, and cannot change the course of history anymore. Once, people who brought news of foreign lands were, in all likelihood, travel writers. There is no need for them anymore. Reporters specialize, travel writers generalize. This is Paul Theroux from The Great Railway Bazaar:

The Singhalese…turned on the fan, sat on one of his crates, and began eating a stinking meal out of a piece of newspaper – the smell of his rotten onions and mildewed rice was to stay in the compartment for the remainder of the journey.

A fact-checker for the New Yorker would have quite a task with this: Was he Singhalese, did he turn on the fan, was he on a crate, did it stink, were the onions rotten, was the rice mildewed, and did the smell really stay for the rest of the journey? I lived with a Korean in New York who stank up the fridge, but the smell was offensive only to me. He ate his food without fuss.

This is Camilo Jose Cela, in Journey to the Alcarria:

The girls are young, very young; but they already seem to have in their eyes that special patient sorrow that one sees in hired animals, dragged hither and yon by bad luck and evil intentions.

This is precisely the kind of matter that suits travel or fiction. A journalist or historian looking for the feeling of the times will find value in the sentence.

William Dalrymple’s books contain the right kind of dialogue in the right kind of places. From an “unshaven, shambolic and friendly” tailor in In Xanadu:

“We live here under an undeclared apartheid.”

The last lines of the book, featuring a Chinese communist party official:

He grunted something in Mongol. Then he translated it for us: “Bonkers,” he said. “English people, Very, very bonkers.”

This is unreal. The comments are perfectly placed, the words strikingly lucid. There’s no reason to doubt Dalrymple’s conversational skills, but who can ascertain whether these things were really said to him, or whether these are recollections of broken conversations which, when remembered, the mind makes complete?

And yet there is an audience for this stuff because good travel writing takes you somewhere, as good fiction does. The truth cannot be completely sacrificed, but it can be subverted to make the story better. This is not to excuse writers who aren’t truthful. I have my doubts about a number of travel writers. But given the distance from editors, and the fact that travel is a very personal experience, it is possible to bend the truth. It’s why we don’t take travel writing seriously anymore. Our perceptions of it have changed. We don't want it to inform, just evoke. The genre has found a new place for itself.

Sisyphus - right arm fast-medium

2007-12-14T22:30:00.000+05:30

The gods have got nothing on today's cricket administrators. First, the free hits. Then cancel reverse-swing. At the same time, refuse to change the ball's dimensions, which would allow it to bounce or swing more. Now, day-night Tests.

Do bowlers need a union?

Numb to niceness

2007-12-14T00:30:00.000+05:30

To drive in Mumbai is to become numb to niceness. From the first hesitant laps onwards, drivers quickly learn that it is better to snatch from others, for others will snatch from you too. If you choose to not snatch, it is assumed that you have parked the car. But this niceness, when it arrives, is so strange and unfamiliar that drivers will be momentarily stunned. The giver is preening; his magnanimous gesture elevates him beyond the classless masses. The recepient is taken aback by this generosity. How should he react? Is it some kind of trick? Today a recepient stood still, even as this driver furiously gestured to him to come forward and complete his U-turn - that the offer was genuine. He didn't buy in to the niceness. He inched forward with trepidation, wondering when I'd fuse my car with his. I waited. He waited. He came forward and stopped. I waved at him. His girlfriend looked at my fender with fear. He looked concerned. Two blocked lanes of cars began to honk. He advanced and stopped, still unable to believe his destiny. I gave up and drove by. No more generosity. It slows down everything.

Bearable happiness

2007-12-13T17:46:00.000+05:30

There are some kinds of happiness I can deal with, and others I can't. My own happiness is easy to comprehend. The happiness of others is another case. This isn't against people being happy; I'm all for the joyous. This is about the kind of happy state that leaves me completely clueless, and I wonder what the hell's going on. I'll sketch out the meaning for you. When a happiness can't be related to, or there is a fundamental disconnect between the reason for joy and the response, it's confusing.

A kid with connections

2007-12-13T13:35:00.000+05:30

Freaking hell.

Delhi nights

2007-12-01T22:58:00.000+05:30

Everything is dark at six. People have returned home, industries have shut down for the day. The cold pricks my knuckles and neck. I inhale something sharp and odorless. Bombay's air carries a hint of where it came from. This stuff is cold and unfamiliar. I like Khan Market because there is human activity. Somewhere inside there are warm bookshops, elsewhere there is steam rising from dinner. A bright place in what is otherwise a damn quiet place. Is it any wonder that everyone's trying to be part of one club or another in this city?

A rickshaw driver asks where and the extortion begins. It is late, roads are empty, so who cares how much? On the way there are beautiful parks without people. Intricate and firmly shut gates. Clean and high walls. Beggars ask only once.

Excuse the mess

2007-11-14T16:13:00.000+05:30

Sorry about the way all this looks. It'll be fixed soon.

The Rest is Rubbish

2007-11-13T15:15:00.000+05:30

After much haranguing, Landmark finally gave up and got me a copy of Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise, a delightful book about 20th century classical music. The first few pages have been pure oxygen. The language is so light and lyrical. I've needed this. My daily reading has otherwise constituted of sentences such as:

"The Central Government may specify penalties to be imposed, including suspension or revocation of licence, permission or registration, for violation of various terms and conditions as may be specified under section 3, subject to the condition that amount of a pecuniary penalty shall not exceed one crore rupees..."

Yet again The New Yorker and its writers come to my rescue. I truly dread reality in the form of government documents.

Falling out of love with a love song

2007-11-12T12:59:00.000+05:30

When I first heard Mitwa, on the Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna album, I listened to it over and over again to understand why it was so haunting. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy had last constructed songs so meaningful many years ago with Dil Chahta Hai, so this was a seriously welcome return to music that lasted. The song's opening, a delicate strum, wasn't new for the instrument - you hear beautiful guitar openings so often these days, few more evocative than Thakshak's Khamosh Raat - but the rise and fall in key as a musician barely plucked at strings slowly and deliberately, conveyed the message that matters of love can indeed be quite delicate. A female chorus rose then, singing in the voice of angels, "Love will find a way..."

I understood this much later, for upon hearing this song for the very first time, the words that registered in my head were, "Love me. Find a way..." I fell for these words more than the song, taking them to be a lover's plea to choose her over the other until a hunger had been sated. Frankly, it was magnificent. It was one man's wife telling another man to love her, and she didn't care how he did it. Alas, this impression of the lyrics was crushed one morning, and I was left with "love will find a way...", which is good advice for those without a plan, but not very encouraging for the realistic.

Update: Wife says "until a hunger had been sated" reads like a terrible line from M&B. I am inclined to agree, as all good husbands do.

Pearl, Kaplan, Packer, Wright, and Khaitan

2007-11-02T19:29:00.000+05:30

Earlier today I watched A Mighty Heart, sharing an entire hall with eight others. I walked away a little shaken, for I had a back story to Daniel Pearl's drive to uncover links between the ISI and Al-Qaeda. As I have, anyone who has ever read The Journalist and the Terrorist, Robert Sam Anson's moving story in the August Vanity Fair issue the year Pearl was murdered is unlikely to forget. We learn that Pearl may have been spurred on by the irrational motivation journalists use to justify their doings. That his stories not making it to the front page may have added to it.

I came home and stared at my books, at Lawrence Wright's Looming Tower, at The Assassins Gate by George Packer, and remembered Robert D Kaplan's book where he hung out with militants. It's hard to describe the feeling. Not just an overwhelming sadness, or an admiration for what these guys do. A bit of a mix, you know? Ashish Khaitan has great courage, but the Tehelka investigation for me lacked something more lasting, something that carries on week after week, pummeling the rioters and instigators. Something that explains in detail what happened and when, and all the characters involved. Above all, something that has balance.

I'm afraid this has been one big ramble, but I guess what I'm trying to say is this: when you put your life at risk as a journalist, do you seek instant sensation, or do you, in your own little way, change the world you live in? Pearl, had he succeeded, would have certainly made it the the first page in a different way, by proving what people will say they already knew. But it would have changed people's positions slightly, now that they had proof. Khaitan has a wife and child too, and he probably knew of the danger he was and still is in. The outcome of his investigation has had its effect, but now what? Now what?

Secret Dubai

2007-11-01T10:25:00.000+05:30

From Secret Dubai, a very serious blog about life in the UAE.

"Hooray! Streets in the sandlands are finally getting names. No more endless driving around obscure areas of Jumeirah 2 looking for 19c street, only to realise that you actually need 19c street in Umm Seqeim 3, and it leads off 2 and 4b street before the junction with 12.75q street, rather than 19a street, which is actually somewhere in Al Quoz.

Does this mean streets will finally get interesting, evocative names? Such as "Old Camel Street", "Red Desert Road", "Palm Oasis Avenue" and "Stinking Fish Lane, Karama"? Or will we be stuck with several thousand more "Sheikh Ibn bin Khalid bin Al Waleed bin Talal Al Ziyad al Zayed"-type roads, all mispelt in every possible configuration on every map and road sign, with the result that most people end up in Abu Dhabi before they finally find anywhere?"

Ps. Also provided elsewhere on the blog, a UAE press release generator.

Why, Dubai?

2007-11-01T08:47:00.000+05:30

This, in the New York Times:

"The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he, his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier."

And this, a corresponding report in the Dubai-based Khaleej Times:

"The Dubai Court of First Instance yesterday started the trial hearings of three UAE nationals, I.M. (15), A.A. (35), and A.G. (19), who allegedly kidnapped and raped a 15-year-old boy and French national, APC, in July this year.

The victim and his friend had left a beach café in Dubai to find a taxi. However, I.M. who was in the vicinity and who knew the victim greeted him and offered them a ide. After about 15 minutes, I.M. called the two other suspects who told the victim they have to go to some other place before they will drop him. They then drove towards Ibn Batutta mall.

However, APC whose suspicions were aroused called 999. I.M. and the two other accused who heard him talking to the police snatched the mobile phone and abused and threatened the French teenager. The three accused then drove to a deserted area in Al Barsha and APC’s friend to step out. They then threatened APC at knife-point and raped him.

Later, I.M. called his cousin to come to help pull out the car that had got stuck in loose sand. APC was to hide inside the car and not to raise any kind of alarm. APC was later dropped near the Beach Hotel in Jumeirah and immediately called his friend to inform him of what had happened.

During yesterday court hearing the Public Prosecution requested the court to sentence all three suspects to death. However, all three accused have pleaded not guilty on both counts of kidnapping and rape."

Half tickets and lousy movies

2007-10-31T12:17:00.000+05:30

Patrons of movie theatres who have seen what I have seen in recent times must also wish what I have wished in recent times: screw the whole ticketing system, and lets pay for the movie half that we want to watch.

Hitchens and a soldier

2007-10-24T19:31:00.000+05:30

On the 15th of January last, he was on patrol and noticed that the Humvee
in front of him was not properly "up-armored" against I.E.D.'s. He insisted on
changing places and taking a lead position in his own Humvee, and was shortly
afterward hit by an enormous buried mine that packed a charge of some 1,500
pounds of high explosive. Yes, that's right. He, and the three other American
soldiers and Iraqi interpreter who perished with him, went to war with the army
we had. It's some consolation to John and Linda Daily, and to Mark's brother and
two sisters, and to his widow (who had been married to him for just 18 months)
to know that he couldn't have felt anything.

Paprika

2007-10-07T10:53:00.000+05:30

A few months ago I unwrapped one of those four-in-one dvds loaded with feature-length anime movies. I had heard of none of the movies before, but among them were Castle in the Sky and Kiki's Delivery Service, which turned out to be fine movies by a director named Hayao Miyazaki. People familiar with anime know that Miyazaki has been around for over two decades, but I didn't, and Spirited Away, the first movie I watched on that DVD, was an experience I'm not sure I've shaken off. His movies are about worlds only a step away from our own, with soundtracks that you can't help but feel you know a version of. In Spirited Away, Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl, and her parents stumble upon ruins after taking a wrong turn. They walk through the abandoned building into bright sunshine and green meadows, and a deserted carnival where steam rises from food that has only just been prepared. Have the carnival's visitors scampered, or are they yet to arrive? And who prepared all the food?

There are beautiful empty landscapes where nothing happens for ages, and scenes that invoke dreams; a train glides silently across the surface of an endless calm blue sea without a ripple. It's a haunting shot, and it's one of many here. I've replayed the scene many times in my head, and the happy feeling it gives me is inexplicable. I feel I've seen it and felt it somewhere before, but there's something incomplete about the thought. It's like knowing the answer to a question you can't remember.

"But what about the rest of it?"

In Paprika, which I picked up in Dubai recently, a scientific experiment has unexpected effects on people undergoing it, making some of them delusional and believers in their immortality, while others find their dreams and reality merging. A cop troubled by incomplete dreams takes up the case to find out why ordinary citizens with normal mental histories either run out of high-rise windows or go on unprovoked hitting sprees, or else suddenly begin to talk in the gibberish language of dreams. The man's dream remains the same - he's chasing someone he can't see, and the man eventually gets away, but not before he kills someone. The ground beneath his feet warps and a voice echoes through the dream, "But what about the rest of it?" He wakes up in a sweat.

In reviews Paprika has been likened to the Matrix trilogy, and many say that it isn't even the director's best work. Does it matter? The noisy soundtrack where instruments clash with each other, the nonsensical visuals that are too busy to be identifiable, the disjointed dialogue - they all combine to create the experience of a dream that has come to life. It takes on the meaning of cinema, literally, when a dream crashes through the screen in a cinema hall. Paprika isn't just about dreams, but their various interpretations.

But what about the rest of it? The line loops through the movie, and everytime the cop hears it he is in despair. Later we find out why, and it makes perfect sense. But the funny thing is, it stays with me. Yes indeed, what about the rest of it? What about the rest of what you're working on? What about the rest of a career? What comes next?

It's a question we've all asked of ourselves at one time or another, in one form or another.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

2007-10-06T16:40:00.000+05:30

See image.

I have to tell myself that this is only a video game, that death has no meaning. But the phantom fish who swarm around nibbling at me make it difficult, as well as the fiends intent on slicing me open. I could stand here and fight, or unleash explosive arrows as I jump over their heads. There are too many ways to do this, to kill. Am I a one-man army? At times, yes. But sometimes I feel absolutely inadequate. My enemies have their laser cannons and copters that drop large bombs from the sky. Ther legions include ninjas, armoured guards, super-constructed soldiers with machine guns for arms, large tanks, ghosts, bats, beasts with blazing hair, beetles that pin me to the ground and eat, and various forms of the devil. As for me, well, I have a selection of swords, and something that looks like a large oar. Regardless, a tutorial explains that square, square, triangle, triangle, triangle unleashes the Kick of Thunder or something like it, but the battle is thick with things of murderous intent and there's really no distinction between any button. Press them all, press anything, and see what happens. If it becomes tougher, and the enemies are more numerous, press the buttons harder. Something has to happen. But it's hard to see because bodies are flying every which way and nothing makes sense. There are explosions, monsters flying at me and then sent the other way, fireballs that knock me down but I'm up instantly. One electric sweep could do them in, and a final series of furious cut-thrust-and-kick moves kills the rest. They evaporate, leaving little traces of energy to be absorbed.

A notion of Dubai

2007-09-11T11:20:00.000+05:30

Now, when I think about my own memories, and how different they are from the reportage of visitors from that country, it occurs to me that I’ve held on to a strange notion of my desert home. Back then, the city could not be described as fast, or modern, although purposeful people hurried in cars and the latest things were available. I wonder now: Was it even a city then? The world there was a small place, and I believed that even if everyone didn’t know everyone else, they soon would. Wasn’t that how we played cricket with a different group of boys from the same colony when friends did not turn up? By the end of the game we made plans for the next day.

I was twelve when we found bigger and better accommodation. The kitchen was nearly as large as our previous living room. I knew then that this clearly meant progress. But it also meant that a generation’s worth of friends had been left behind. We were twenty minutes away, but with that move, Dubai had grown in size. We all felt it, and reached out even more to the large family that had left India together. There would be drinking and Sindhi dancing, which is very different from the accepted idea of dance, with men huddled on one side and women on the other, and their kids up to no good elsewhere in the apartment. This was where the latest government ruling was discussed, analyzed and applied in theory. It always affected somebody.

But there was something else – every now and then, a cousin would down a few drinks and claim to have seen the blueprint for Dubai’s growth. It involved breathtaking road layouts and supreme architecture. It was a great conversation stopper. For a moment the family would pause to consider how plausible this was. Only fifteen years ago there had been nothing here but sand and a creek. Even then, implausible. The idiot had drunk too much. The family was a mob with drinks and snacks with each other’s company at home. I wonder how they saw themselves in this world. Indians were, after all, second-grade citizens, and one little ruling by the royal family would have meant we’d be back in Indore. So the future, for many people, was of course filled with unknowns, but it held no promise, only the dread of tomorrow. They otherwise earned and lived well, better than they would have elsewhere, but many of them lived from day to day.

The cousin would not tell us how he knew. You only need to see a picture of modern Dubai to know he was right. There will be trains in the sky, it will be a city of skyscrapers and huge attractions and ten million visitors each year. You could see pictures of the same place, year by year from 1972, and understand that this advance was inevitable. But in 1990, which falls halfway between 1972 and 2007, we had simply no idea. Dubai was Dubai, it stood for nothing else. People made money there, but that was all. It would be a decade before it was compared with Monaco, and giant islands were built off shore, and American universities opened branches here. In 1996 I left to start my own life, and saw what was to follow only briefly.

You feel a little let down by relentless progress. Breathless activity allows no time to reflect. It barely lets you feel an achievement fully. It goes against what Dubai now stands for – onwards, upwards. Where I used to live is now called old Dubai. Seventeen years old and it’s known as old Dubai. The heart of the city has shifted twenty kilometers outward, and so planned was the approach that for a while the city had a downtown filled with cranes and construction workers and not a finished building in sight. Before Dubai, a place like Dubai existed only in Sim City 2000.

The feeling that Dubai had moved on lasted a few years. Then, quite recently, a visiting cousin mentioned the spate of robberies and murders. Another spoke of seeing beggars for the first time. The city had poverty, it had crime, labor unrest, the traffic situation was incredibly bad – these were real problems and the newspapers were reporting them. This, ten or even five years ago, was unthinkable. They didn’t exist. Zero-crime place, we told everybody. But what to tell them now? That it is a city with real problems? In a funny way, this is rather satisfying. The city has overtaken everybody, its planners included, and is now something else. Now the fun begins. Now concerts will be chaotic, now social norms will change, now its pristine image will lose some shine, now classes of people will be more distinct and there will be markets for each of them. It will produce art and literature and all kinds of creativity. This is immensely exciting. It'll be a real city.

I’m heading there on Thursday for two weeks to do nothing in particular, and for the first time in a long while, I’m excited about being home. I’ll be blogging regularly from there with observations on the city, which I know like no other.

Aftermint

2007-08-29T11:53:00.000+05:30

I've left Mint (not The Mint, as it has inexplicably come to be known), after nine months on the job. Last November, a good three months before the newspaper's launch date - a date we did not know of then - I took up the offer to become a media correspondent for this newspaper. The promise, and the lure, was that our analysis and story length would distinguish us, and that we would not be normal. If we were a channel, normal would allude to television in general. But with newspapers, it had to be Economic Times. The endeavor was worthy enough, the editors were good, and hierarchy would not be a problem. I hopped on, glad to be in the middle of the kind of competition that now expected journalists to keep their dignity, and which sent salaries soaring.

As our launch approached, the competitors geared up. 'We want feature stories, we want feature stories,' one employee mimicked his editor in the presence of a friend who he knew worked here. Leave was apparently cancelled, strings were pulled, the machine rumbled in anticipation. And then, very quietly, Mint appeared. I recall the morning of its launch when, in my own private excitement, I wiped one newsstand off all Mint's copies. The walked around the mostly empty train compartment, scanning people at every station to see if anyone was reading it.

If everyone was like me, we wouldn't have had an issue the next day. It was spent in a trance, smiling at nothing in particular. The Mumbai bureau had the happy air of a man who has silently detonated something. "What next, Mr Tata?" What a headline!

Among journalism's many merits is that once a job is done, it is done. It is a profession in which the footsoldiers find it difficult to take work home. They revel in this aspect of it. Indeed, their job is to report, not always to question. There is no time for questions. Many people are clearly meant for this.

So here I am, writing from a net cafe in Chennai, bloody homesick, speaking a language I cannot understand. One eye is on the limited budget behind me for this project, the other on the possibilities. The feeling never changes - there's always some fear and some degree of elation. I reckon it's the promise of asking questions you've never asked before that's at the heart of past adventures, and the same can be said of this.

I'll be blogging a lot more now, perhaps with a theme in mind.

Federer's uterus

2007-08-29T11:50:00.000+05:30

The kid, who was standing next to his mother, was maybe thirteen, with a
Dutch-boy haircut and braces, and, as Federer took his bows, the boy called out,
“I love you, Roger! I want to have your baby! I wish you had a uterus!”

The New Yorker's new US Open blog is terrific, full of analysis, history, personal recollections, and what Cricinfo calls roving reportage.

Taking sidhu seriously

2007-08-26T11:30:00.000+05:30

NDTV has a credibility problem. It's most apparent on their inane cricket show when Sidhu leans forward, closes his eyes, raises a hand or two, and his lips part. The drama begins even before the words emerge, and he knows it. Last Sunday, Sidhu reached out through the cameras, stressing to people that the cricketers who left the BCCI did it for money. Since he is the channel's go-to guy, their in-house spokesperson on cricket, it's fair to assume the channel agrees with his excited views.

But the man's an empty shell, carried this way and that by the stronger wave that moment. This hurts NDTV, but they believe it's a hurt they can bear. They get the theatre they want at the expense of truth, and so they raise him, this magnet for attention, and by association lend his other endeavours a certain approval. I can't wait for the day he blows up.

Atul Gawande's Better

2007-07-15T11:49:00.000+05:30

My review of Atul Gawande's latest medical book appeared in Lounge on May 14.

An inexact science

The one science we expect certainty from, in which doubt would ideally have no place, is as likely to be applied with solid judgment as with a feeling, a guess, or an ordinary whim. This is medicine, practiced by people whose failings include arrogance, insecurity, and not washing their hands clean. And it is to this flawed, inconsistent, and yet often amazing world that people hand their bodies over in Atul Gawande’s books.

Gawande’s first book, Complications, arose from true incidents during his training in general surgery. It explained why students operated on patients, why doctors switched off suddenly and, in a famous chapter, why one man’s enormous hunger refused to subside. The idea that medicine had layers rich with complications was brought alive in these stories, where narrative storytelling was buttressed by facts and clinical observations. People want progress in clearly defined terms, Gawande wrote then, “but of course it rarely is. Every new treatment has gaping unknowns – for both patients and society – and it can be hard to decide what to do about them.” Medicine’s usual state was uncertainty, and this is what made being a patient or a doctor so difficult.

In the five years since his last book, Gawande has, in his job as a general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, focused on reducing surgical injuries and improving the quality of care. It is the dominant theme of his latest book, Better, which begins with a chapter on why few medical staff wash their hands, and concludes with an essay on doing things better.

Gawande highlights the simple, yet astonishing, fact that while there are big budgets and incessant demands for new innovations in medicine, doing existing things well, which saves more lives sooner, is an underutilized concept. But it is possible to be better, he says, and it does not take genius. “It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.”

Gawande takes up diligence in a chapter based in India, where he watches a collection of doctors and volunteers attempt to limit a poliovirus (one word, Sanjukta) outbreak. He describes it as an unambitious, relentless, and somewhat limited goal, but transforms its very meaning by setting it against the outbreak. Only by being relentless can an impossible task be achieved. And yet he remains wary of the impressive declarations by global do-gooders. “International organizations are fond of grand-sounding pledges to rid the planet of this or that menace. They nearly always fail, however. The world is too vast and too various to submit to dictates from on high.”

The grand announcements overlook what Gawande is all too familiar with: the complexities that arise from individual choices at the ground level. So varied are their choices and the effects that follow. In one episode in Complications, Gawande draws a ‘decision tree’ with possible outcomes to a surgical procedure. Like in any other profession, he writes, decisions in medical science compound themselves. When he accounts for all possible outcomes, “my tree looked more like a bush”.

Given the complications involved, how much should a surgeon make? The question is put to Gawande after his training is complete, and he quickly understands that his salary is not connected with his abilities. It involves frequent run-ins with insurance agents, doing very un-doctorlike things. He calls for an overhaul of the American healthcare system. (For the record, though, the average salary for general surgeons is $264,375.) In India, where the problems are systemic, he instead focuses on individual drive and dedication, and describes how physicians and surgeons have adapted to the lack of proper medical equipment, and have invented, in some cases, surgical operations thought impossible.

Gawande’s writings have appeared in The New Yorker and on Slate, as well as in medical journals. By his own account, his writings are more important to him, and it is remarkable to note that he began writing relatively late. His language is direct, often delicately balanced, and pretty persuasive. The episodes read as thrillers would, with periods of action interrupted by interludes of data and context. They conclude mostly with the problem resolved, a life saved, and therefore, a happy ending. This is a surgeon writing, but the words could just as well have been from a writer who explores the medical profession as a new world filled with flawed but frequently dazzling things.

I'll leave you with a few pieces I've enjoyed. This one's on how we age now. I particularly enjoyed the one on how much medical practitioners should earn, and there's always more fun stuff to read at Slate.

Writers in a dream

2007-07-05T11:05:00.000+05:30

We're in a quaint bookshop, and David Remnick is behind the cash counter. He's reading something. On either side before the register are two square pillars with shelves attached. They're filled with books I've never seen before. R, the wife, browses through cookbooks with faint interest. But this is something else, with books I've never heard of, and I jump them. The spine on one hardcover looks familiar. It's edited by Remnick, and part of the series which includes "Wonderful Town" and "Fierce Pajamas". He looks up as I pull it out, smiles, and returns to his work. It's an anthology of flight, and it's got Calvin Trillin! Gopnik! Remnick! And for whatever reason, Atul Gawande! There's a slot on my shelf at home right next to the other books from the series. It'll be a squeeze, but this will fit. I turn to R, and she asks, "Another book?" Yes, but it's a New Yorker.

There's another thing. There's a book I want, a book on playing the guitar. It's the best book there ever was on the subject, and like all other best books on their subjects, this one is a lesson in how to write well. I call for help finding the book. A man emerges from behind the pillar. Julian Barnes listens patiently, and says that the store has it. He returns a while later, dusting it off. He says that the store keeps guitars, would I like to have a look? They're beautiful. I want one, but it seems a little selfish so I buy it for R, and give her the book too. In my mind it's like giving your wife a Playstation for her birthday. It will eventually come around.

Maybe I'm reading too much of the New Yorker these days.

Shriek

2007-06-25T21:08:00.000+05:30

The Wall Street Journal guesses why the third parts of three big franchises fared less than well:

May's big blockbuster "threequels" -- "Spider-Man 3," "Shrek the Third" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" -- are all expected to fall short of the last installments in those series at the domestic box office... The domestic performance of the films may be a sign that audiences are growing fatigued with overly familiar offerings.

I've got a theory: it's not the familiarity, it's the lack of newness.

Review: India's Unending Journey, by Mark Tully

2007-06-16T01:18:00.001+05:30

This piece appears in Mint's Lounge today.

Mark Tully explores the nature of his spiritual beliefs in his latest book, in which India lies at the centre. In India’s Unending Journey, Tully advises readers to believe in doubt. He writes that uncertainty, the middle road, and doubt contain no absolutes and so are effective in balancing extremes. He espouses humility as a way of living in peace. To wander from this path would mean shutting the door on truth.

For this Tully seeks religious figures and accomplished academic experts who explain religion, culture, and economics – the issues that keep modern India occupied. He encourages readers to understand India’s journey because it “is the journey of us all, towards a future in which we must draw deeply upon our spiritual and material resources, and strive to find a balance in the face of uncertainty”.

Balance is everything to Tully. Recollecting his school days in a chapter titled ‘Marlborough: An education in absolutes’, he says that humility counted for very little. “Rather,” he writes about his education there, “it taught me that life was all about striving to be ‘a damn fine fellow’ and lift myself up without help from anybody else.” It bothers him that academic and athletic successes were attributed to effort, and did not take into account God-given gifts, circumstance, and earlier education. Entrenched in reason, Marlborough did not encourage questioning, Tully writes. This deviation from the Bible’s definition of a life lived well – “to ‘humble myself in the sight of the Lord’, or to be confident that ‘He shall lift you up’ ” – clouded his thoughts for years after school. Men are never truly independent, he implies, and to deny the existence of a creator or ‘sustainer’ is to give too much importance to human success alone.

The writer’s opinions on balance lead him to conclude from a friendly conversation that the pursuit of success leads people to do anything:

“Rich boys think they can do anything they like. They have absolutely no humility.’
‘Isn’t this part of the whole modern business of worshipping success?’ I wondered. ‘Because their fathers are revered for being rich and successful, the boys think they have the right to do whatever they like?’
‘You know,’ Richard sighed, ‘I think it also comes back to what we have often talked about in the past – competition and the school going in for this unwholesome encouragement of success.’”

The book is littered with similar instances of unsuspecting causes welded to effects by Tully. His quest for balance leads him up familiar avenues – disparity in wealth, the hollowness of consumerism, and even gyms versus yoga – but the arguments are unconvincing. Tully visits a Dalit familiar to him in Uttar Pradesh who is as rooted in poverty as he was ten years ago, and concludes: “Advocates of growth as the panacea for countries like India maintain that the wealth generated will trickle down to the poor, but it was quite clear that little or no wealth had trickled into the pocket of Budh Ram…” The existence of poverty is seen as a failing of capitalism. Yet, only a few paragraphs later, Budh Ram explains how government schemes meant to help the poor are misused.

There are passages of superb journalism, among them an encounter with Dr. Manmohan Singh, which lasts two paragraphs. He explains the prime minister’s challenge in making capitalism work for India, “introducing reform gradually; taking a step, watching and waiting, before taking the next step, in the same way that trade in the rupee has gradually been liberalized”. Note the breaks in the sentence, with each comma depicting a decision but not an ending.

Tully’s tone in this book is gentle, wise, and is filled with empathy for his subjects. His connection with this country is visibly strong, and he seeks to understand the things that drive its. His voice encourages conciliation and mediation, and is one of peace. But what does this mean? Ending a chapter on globalization, his writing exudes his message of peace, that the middle path is the best path of all – most chapters end on a somewhat similar note – but it is the nature of the middle path that it sometimes leaves us less close to a resolution than a firm stand would: “So…how can globalization be made to work? The answers may lie in keeping the correct balance between decision made at the global and the national levels, in strengthening the international organizations, in ensuring that the market doesn’t lead us by the nose, and in keeping the role of the market and the government in balance.” What will a reader looking for answers derive from the approach prescribed?

Laxman's song

2007-06-16T01:14:00.000+05:30

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan owes his employment to an insatiable hunger. It accepts both taste and tasteless, colorful and drab, and inventive as well as ordinary. If it was not for today and this time, the richness of his voice would remain unknown, unless his sense of commentary took a sudden swerve skywards. But that is unlikely to happen, so the voice alone is to be marveled.

Is there anybody in sports broadcasting with a voice as melodious as Laxman’s? The man makes great shots out of normal ones, but he sings along and this is the difference. It is the way he employs it, conjuring from deep within the voice of a presenter on fight night in Nevada, a cartoon character, or perhaps only what he considers a parody of commentary. At times it seems he is reading aloud from a play manuscript he has only just come by. Sometimes he internalizes the manuscript but tries too hard. Whatever it is, there is nobody better at it.

Old people

2007-05-21T20:45:00.000+05:30

It's like they've zapped all the old people, a friend recently said of Andheri, where I live. It's somewhat true. Where are they? It's an unsettling thought. Older people - the sight of them - gives a place age, as if it has been there for a while, as if what it is built on is strong and lasting. Here there is the furious activity associated with making money, but there is nobody to say "we've seen this before". Of course they're around somewhere, doing something. But they're not outdoors, on the streets, where they can be. This place unsettles me. I'll be old someday. Will that be it, then?

Three words that strike fear in to the heart of this journalist

2007-05-21T20:42:00.000+05:30

Track ongoing developments.

Why I love Stardust

2007-05-10T10:32:00.000+05:30

Two lines from an interview:

Interviewer: What's your take on one-night stands?
Gul Panag: It depends on where you stand.

Mystery from the deep

2007-05-01T10:39:00.001+05:30

When a road is dug up, and left in that very state for months, two questions arise: when will it be re-laid, and why is it taking so long? Had we a single road on which to linger, perhaps an answer would be easy to find. This place, though, has no easy answers. Everywhere something is being dug up, like competing excavation projects, slowing down time. Why this happens is shrouded in mystery, but for a hunch: The digs involve pipes and cables. What else could they be? To speed up a service or one medium of transportation, another must be brought to a grinding halt. This is a city of limited bandwidth.

I have to know this strange thing built under Bombay, the thing below tearing up the land above as the price of renewal.

300 guys

2007-03-18T11:29:00.001+05:30

Some time ago I came by 300, a Frank Miller graphic novel with a
striking cover. The starkness of the book's colour palette seemed to me
to balance the absence of words. It is of course what graphic novels
do, but I was struck then by how little dialogue was needed to depict
war. As 300 Spartans held back Asia's relentless hordes, this book
plunged into the war, weaving between its characters like a movie
camera in a battlefield. Part of the book's mastery was in its power to
suggest something - a slash or a thrust - and have us imagine the
violent follow through. So words counted for little in this novel even
though the book itself was a retelling of the battle. It was classy war
pornography.

With this in mind, I braced myself in seat K2 of a dark hall yesterday,
armed with popcorn and a coke. The theatre brimmed with a horde of
young men, some clearly years away from admittance to an 'A' certified
movie. They came prepared like spectators at the Colliseum. The first
moments, where a baby is dangled over a ravine containing skeletons of
other babies, hint at what's to follow. They put in place a tenuous
prehistory to what is the main event. What this director, Zack Snyder,
really wants to show you is that main event. He's as eager for war as
the Spartans are. Every so often his characters assault women, jump
into orgies, and consult a fetching oracle. I like comic books, and
enjoy the stereotype of the fan they play up to ("likes muscular
bodies, big guns, large hybrid beasts and spandex") but this was too
heavyhanded for my taste. These incidents are held by a slender thread,
and just as they are on the verge of snapping, on comes another battle.

The war scenes by themselves are surreal in their effect, as the
director changes angles, colour, and slows down the pace before raising
the tempo again. There are two particularly delicious fights inspired
by video games. One is when a Spartan breaks out of his cordon and cuts
through a rush of enemies with his sword and deflects others with his
shield. The camera runs with him at the screen's centre, making him and
his enemies two-dimensional. Gamers will know what that's about. The
other fight is a trick we've witnessed in kung-fu flicks as well as the
second Matrix movie, but here we know they're fighting a losing battle,
that this bravery has its price - two Spartans, back-to-back, overcome
dozens coming at them from every conceivable angle, materialising out
of the mist. I'm in the market for this movie's conceptual art.

A few hours later I couldn't help but wonder: its weakest moments were
its overwrought dialogue. In this manner, I though, it continued to
evolve the language of earlier Arnold and Stallone guy movies, of
comebacks and dramatic declarations interspersed with the universal
language of guns and bombs. Then came Gladiator and its close relation,
The Mummy. After which came Kingdom of Heaven, Alexander, and Troy, all
in a short span. Now this. Of all the things it could have become, it
chose to be a guy movie.

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Demand

2007-02-14T13:21:00.000+05:30

You could dress up in light bulbs, but they'll pretend they haven't seen you. They'll look the other way. Put a hand out and see. They rocket by you, taking it with them on their way to Ghatkopar or Film City or some other distant place. Skeeters.

Oh, the scorn! If they acknowledge you, forget telling them where you want to go - ask them where they'd like to go. Then you'll see that rare thing: a happy rickshaw driver. Anywhere, his face will say, as long as it's far away. Go to hell, then.

If it isn't you, there's always somebody else who'll travel to the distant edges of the suburb. Huge demand for his kind outside the train station at 7pm.

I travel late for the fun. A few hours later I get off the train at a near empty station, walk down past the drunk and the newspaper vendor closing shop, and step outside to just stand between a whole lot of them. They're sitting there, revving their engines, turning on radios, strutting around like male pigeons. They look hopeful. They look like touts.

All in it together

2007-01-30T23:58:00.000+05:30

The ride home is long for this time of the night. Again, traffic. Does it affect the city in installments? One day, here, at noon. Another day, there, at midnight. A wrong corner turned and that's where you are stuck for the next hour, surrounded by the same cars with the same desperate drivers. How to get out of this? Which lane is faster - this one or the middle? But they end up going nowhere. It becomes apparent that no one will make way. Some abandon their cars and walk by, tapping windows and scraping doors as they go, unaware that those left are now abandoned too.

There we sit in sadness. Inside a metal case with a gray smog lurking outside the window. How could it be that so many people are here at this hour? Had they decided to wait until the rush hour was over before they left for home? They make me miserable, just as I make them unhappy. Why are they here now? They talk to each other, at peace with this mess. There's one, singing with the radio, I think. They've given up completely. Time could be fought for, with a swerve here and a few honks there, but it's just too late in the day for this. Being normal can wait till tomorrow.