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.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Aftermint
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.
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
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.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Taking sidhu seriously
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.
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.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Atul Gawande's Better
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.
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.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Writers in a dream
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.
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.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Shriek
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.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Review: India's Unending Journey, by Mark Tully
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:
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?
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
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.
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.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Old people
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?
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Why I love Stardust
Two lines from an interview:
Interviewer: What's your take on one-night stands?
Gul Panag: It depends on where you stand.
Interviewer: What's your take on one-night stands?
Gul Panag: It depends on where you stand.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Mystery from the deep
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.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
300 guys
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.
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.
____________________________________________________________________________________
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Demand
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
All in it together
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
What about Hritik Roshan?
Oh critics may love Helen Mirren's depiction of the Queen, but have they watched Dhoom 2, the most frickin devastating use of three hours in which Roshan plays the Queen (and fools her security entourage even though the mask he's wearing is clearly from the Yashraj Halloween props department) , a bearded guy, and, to top it all, is the duniya ka sabse cool chor, aur uske "saath khelne mein bahut maza aayega"?
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Our growing field
The first cricket game I recall playing took place in a space seven feet wide and fifteen feet long with a stairwell on one side, so balls frequently bounced off the railings all the way down to the ground floor, at which time my neighbour's younger brother, who stuck his neck through the aluminum barrier to watch the falling ball, announced 'akha neechey'. The unfairness of this predicament struck us early. The open stairwell was neither player's fault. Parents were irrelevant to this, so they could not be blamed. Who retrieved the ball from two flights down was a decision left to a tossed coin. Our games were dominated by batsmen and bowlers, for our heroes were of that kind. Jonty Rhodes was still six years away.
Even now, when I visit that space, the smell of the field reminds me of our uncomplicated games. We created stumps out of chalk, plucked rules out of the air. Our understanding of the game then was entirely personal, and since nothing confused us as much as leg-before appeals, we wisely did away with that mode of dismissal. Who could stop us except the passing of time? Nothing lies behind his door anymore, for a series of mishaps persuaded his family that ghosts were at work.
Before we drifted apart, our field grew larger and more competetive. Downstairs, in the middle of an enormous parking lot, we were tested by aggressive Pakistani batting and violent Pakistani bowling. The civility of our personal encounters became history with the first bouncer either of us faced. I was hit on the head while, if memory can be trusted, he swung one with a sweet tock! over the terrace of a nearby building. The ball was wrapped with electric tape - a device that at once made the ball swing, bounce, and scurry off the crusty tar surface. How he played it that well I'll never know.
The games then were rigidly communal, with international games the trigger for local violence. But it came to nothing more than pushing and swearing. Grandstanding, I think - we were taking up the positions we were historically meant to. The pride of our nation depended on us, and whoever blinked first gave up Siachen, Kashmir, you name it. But we met the enemy over the supermarket counter, at the doctor's clinic, heck, they even taught us. What choice did we have but to blink and give them a glacier?
Speaking of land, the field grew ever larger. Leather balls, damp helmets, the vibration of an unstroked bat. We encountered all these things. So what, you're thinking. So this: try it in 45 degree weather, humidity over 90%, on a concrete pitch in the middle of a large pebble and sand-strewn ground. And then dive to save a boundary. One day, in the middle of a school-level tournament, we came up against a team more unfortunate than our own. A collection of suicides, they were. I imagine them now, grown men laughing over a beating they cried about that day, that windy day when sand rose in golden swirls and stung our eyes, that day when someone - cough - took three wickets for nothing with spin and went home that night and revealed his career plan to horrified parents. He's a journalist now, on a field so vast that he can't make out its edges. And fetching balls from boundaries always made him uneasy.
Even now, when I visit that space, the smell of the field reminds me of our uncomplicated games. We created stumps out of chalk, plucked rules out of the air. Our understanding of the game then was entirely personal, and since nothing confused us as much as leg-before appeals, we wisely did away with that mode of dismissal. Who could stop us except the passing of time? Nothing lies behind his door anymore, for a series of mishaps persuaded his family that ghosts were at work.
Before we drifted apart, our field grew larger and more competetive. Downstairs, in the middle of an enormous parking lot, we were tested by aggressive Pakistani batting and violent Pakistani bowling. The civility of our personal encounters became history with the first bouncer either of us faced. I was hit on the head while, if memory can be trusted, he swung one with a sweet tock! over the terrace of a nearby building. The ball was wrapped with electric tape - a device that at once made the ball swing, bounce, and scurry off the crusty tar surface. How he played it that well I'll never know.
The games then were rigidly communal, with international games the trigger for local violence. But it came to nothing more than pushing and swearing. Grandstanding, I think - we were taking up the positions we were historically meant to. The pride of our nation depended on us, and whoever blinked first gave up Siachen, Kashmir, you name it. But we met the enemy over the supermarket counter, at the doctor's clinic, heck, they even taught us. What choice did we have but to blink and give them a glacier?
Speaking of land, the field grew ever larger. Leather balls, damp helmets, the vibration of an unstroked bat. We encountered all these things. So what, you're thinking. So this: try it in 45 degree weather, humidity over 90%, on a concrete pitch in the middle of a large pebble and sand-strewn ground. And then dive to save a boundary. One day, in the middle of a school-level tournament, we came up against a team more unfortunate than our own. A collection of suicides, they were. I imagine them now, grown men laughing over a beating they cried about that day, that windy day when sand rose in golden swirls and stung our eyes, that day when someone - cough - took three wickets for nothing with spin and went home that night and revealed his career plan to horrified parents. He's a journalist now, on a field so vast that he can't make out its edges. And fetching balls from boundaries always made him uneasy.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Human desire
The prestige is the final flourish, the act that creates disbelief as a show concludes. The Prestige features three magicians' obsession with retribution. Watch them burn, watch them burning. Each is a saboteur of the other's plans to become the greatest magician in England - a drive so filling that it leaves no room for humanity. Their arts become darker. Having exhausted the possibilities of magic, they reach toward science, finding in it their final act, their prestige. What a prestige it is. All but the faintest spark of love remains in the final act, with warm feeling making way for machine-cold as the age of magic fades away. Death returns their colour, and emotion flows like blood from a deep wound. The prestige is about reputation, and about the deep desire to show the crowds something new. And that is at the movie's heart: the need to be creative and surprise and delight - it's about the stunned faces in the instant before the applause.
Friday, December 01, 2006
The rejuvenation of Zaheer Khan
Until February 19, 2006, Zaheer Khan had been given enough rope to hang the whole team. He claimed thirteen wickets in his last ten games at an average of 33. He leaked 4.9 runs an over. Nine of his thirteen came in three matches against a ragtag Africa XI alliance which was recognized officially but dismissed as pointless. Of the four remaining wickets, two were tailenders. In competitive games (the other seven) on average he conceded 55 runs. And then he ran out of rope.
The lack of news it made showed us one thing: we often complain about perceived gaps when there is nothing to fill them. But out went Khan and in his place came Sreesanth, Munaf, the Singhs. Isn'’t competition beautiful?
Dropping players in poor form makes even more sense when you see what they transform into. In the last fortnight Khan has been accurate, skillful, and has bowled with thought. His approach to Graeme Smith was superb in its execution. After starting the first game with two wides, he has made batsmen awkward regularly. The third one-dayer, in which he dismissed Smith and Kallis in three balls, was especially significant because he harassed them repeatedly. This wasn'’t Khan. Not the bad old Khan. Would this transformation have come about if he knew that a place in the team came cheaply and to those with reputations? This is a guy who depressed fitness trainers.
It's possible that Virender Sehwag requires a similar approach. How long can you keep a bad thing going?
The lack of news it made showed us one thing: we often complain about perceived gaps when there is nothing to fill them. But out went Khan and in his place came Sreesanth, Munaf, the Singhs. Isn'’t competition beautiful?
Dropping players in poor form makes even more sense when you see what they transform into. In the last fortnight Khan has been accurate, skillful, and has bowled with thought. His approach to Graeme Smith was superb in its execution. After starting the first game with two wides, he has made batsmen awkward regularly. The third one-dayer, in which he dismissed Smith and Kallis in three balls, was especially significant because he harassed them repeatedly. This wasn'’t Khan. Not the bad old Khan. Would this transformation have come about if he knew that a place in the team came cheaply and to those with reputations? This is a guy who depressed fitness trainers.
It's possible that Virender Sehwag requires a similar approach. How long can you keep a bad thing going?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)