Why do we Indians wake up so late? Now that Mahatma Gandhi’s personal belongings are to be auctioned in the US, we have got into a tizzy. Did anyone bother to reclaim them earlier?
This is clearly a political move. We need Gandhi at all odd hours of the day and night to make some stupid point, including non-violence, this occasionally by trishul-wielding blokes.
Anyway, I am not a big one to get back our belongings. What do we do with all those swords and funny-looking outsize clothes of former kings?
Haven’t we seen enough of the steel-rimmed spectacles and lavatory sandals? I have seen them in quite a few museums, which makes one wonder how many pairs he had. Also, every public service campaign will draw an outline of those glasses and they have come to symbolise the man; the message is as hazy as it always was.
A report talks about an “action plan” to get all those precious items back:
...the government has devised a three-pronged strategy. “We are approaching the owners not to auction these articles and requesting to offer them to the government,’’ the official said.
If that doesn’t work, the second option is to prevail on the auctioneers to take these items off the auction to enable the government purchase them on a reasonable negotiated price. The third option is to request an NRI or the local India-American association to participate in the auction, purchase the items and donate them to the Indian government, he said.
Re. Plan A: The government of India is going to be indebted to someone out to make money. Will they add a little footnote ‘Donated by Mr. X, resident of Cincinnati’?
Re. Plan B: The Indian authorities want to shamelessly bargain for what they claim is their national asset? We name every damn road after the Mahatma, build expensive statues, and we are talking about reasonable price?
Re. Plan C: Oho, I can imagine all those NRIs going around with a hat. Let me guess. Not one of those big-shot guys will pay up because Gandhi is not going to get her/him anything concrete, not even a well-publicised wedding mandap. But they will convene at some charity dinner, get some singer/tabalchi to perform, donors will ‘buy’ a table for their tandoori night out…then they will reclaim Gandhi for us. What happens next? The government will have to do some ‘sopping’ for the grand gesture on the part of those who feel so much for our heritage.
No one has talked about Plan D. But one of these days some local industrialist will jump in to save these item numbers and become the messiah who brought back Gandhi where he belongs.
It’s been a tough, and rather unsettling, month. Four hospital visits…no, five…have got on the computer after the last blog post. How does one react, behave? What does one do when one’s mother has to go through this?
I had told one of the doctors that they should have trauma care for the immediate family. Just the other day I was telling someone about the experiences and she wondered whether I would write about them.
I wanted to, but we were back…sitting in the cramped ICU I realised that there was only one way to look - and that is up. Either in prayer, or at the limitless expanse or with optimism. So, I would talk, laugh, and share people’s stories.
Each life waiting to be lived. Again and again.
I won’t have time to reply to comments right now, but I will later, and thank you for always adding to my posts with more insights.
And thanks for missing me…I have missed myself too. One day soon I hope to find her, she that has only one identity today: Patient’s attendant.
It is also for the first time I feel that I am a satellite around someone far, far superior to me in every way.
The other day I put my head on her stomach, the stomach that had ballooned when I was in her womb. It felt strange how fragile I must have been then and how flaky my skin as I came out with her blood. She must have done all she could to make me strong, to walk and talk…
My skin does not flake anymore, my own blood oozes out and I can look things in the eye without flinching. The stomach my head is on belonged to someone who is now fragile, but I can see the steel in her eyes. The eyes that looked at me today and said that I should apply lipstick because I have become so pale. I had a gloss in my purse…it shone on my lips and lit up asmile I have been faking for so many days.
It’s done it. I did not expect it not to. A bunch of slum kids in tuxedos being made to play to the gallery of vogue.
As I have already stated before, the problem with and about Slumdog Millionaire was not its capitalising on Indian poverty. We are a poor nation and someone asked me whether the portrayal of beggars was sensationalised. It is not. This and even worse is done.
However, I did not like the film. Except for the weaving of the quiz contest format with real vignettes, which was clever, it was quite a tacky attempt. It lacked subtlety and the in-your-face aspect was much like the pile of shit young Jamal jumps into to meet his icon, Amitabh Bachchan. (An aside: Could it be that Mr. B was rattled by the film for this reason – that his hand happily takes a photograph from the slum kid’s excrement-covered fingers and signs on it?!)
What Danny Boyle has tried to do is pack in every little hope-rope trick – slums, communalism, the underworld, gang tussles, prostitution, child exploitation, call centres, the real estate boom, tour guides, touts, Bollywood, the local trains, sibling rivalry, rags-to-riches, love, with a slight nod at globalised India. The weird part about the last is that the characters speak in un-Indian accents, and we are not talking about those at the call centres.
Even stranger is the manner in which aspirational India is seen through purely a westernized prism, the motif being the dollar bill and the rather patronising view that a poor blind beggar would know the man on it to be Benjamin Franklin. This is all so pat.
There is no doubt that many slum kids are extremely savvy, but it is a street smartness that does not depend on general knowledge. A hawker or paanwallah will hold forth on politics quite easily because it affects his daily life. It is quite ridiculous to assume that they would know about The Three Musketeers.
“Kiss me,” says the so-called heroine. This is a girl who has been rendered homeless and orphaned, goes through the motions of being sold in the flesh trade and becomes the mistress cum sandwich maker of the local dada. It is a bit odd that she’d speak like this, something you do not even see lower middle-class girls do.
There has been a lot of talk about hope and struggle. No one seems to realise that Jemal hopes for little other than to save Latika; he goes zombie-like through every stage in life. It is his brother who is the go-getter who finally saves his ass and manages to get him together with his love. Even as a contestant on a winning streak, there is no spark; it is the determination of someone who has a memory.
The idea of portraying the anchor of the show as being envious of Jemal just does not manage to convey any psychological dimension. If he has a similar history of deprivation and rising from it, it would be plausible for him to resent his ‘position’ as the rare phoenix-from-the-ashes being toppled, but his motives remain hazy.
The Surdas blinding sequence was extremely stagey. A bhajan by the blind poet saint is used to dramatise how beggars are blinded. A man who runs such a racket is hardly going into the nuances of such things. Neither are those the beggar boy will try to get a few coins from.
This brings us to the bhajan. Pottering around a bit with the tune does not make the music composer a genius. I am afraid, A. R. Rahman’s score for this film is utterly lacking in soul. What the hell is that Jai Ho song all about? It appears at the end with the main characters doing an ensemble dance that lacks the chutzpah of what is so characteristically Mumbai with dhin-chaak-dhin joie de vivre. If this was supposed to be a ‘tribute’ to mainstream Hindi films, it falls flat. Farah Khan manages a better job of filming the credits with cast and crew.
At best Slumdog is a celluloid version of the kitschy Bombay Dreams. Only outsiders would get excited about the content, that too because they are at a safe distance. Some of us, even the elite, who have spent time working among these very people know the reality a bit more closely than what we see from our windows.
Do you recall all those beauty contest winners who would not stand a chance in hell (except the first two) and suddenly India was on the world map? It was to beguile the over 250 million middle class buyers of cosmetics.
Now we will be inundated with ‘images’ of our country by ‘objective’ eyes. Thanks, but no thanks. We have a billion pairs of eyes right here that can see darned well what is happening.
I did not watch the Oscars ceremony, but I read a bit about the speeches. Rahman harked back to the “Mere paas ma hai” line andResul Pookuttybrought in Om, the “universal sound” of our civilisation. Since when and how? And if he is so proud of our special sound why does getting the Academy award mean “history being handed over”? What is the history of the award? Okayyy. We have our contemporary maharajahs and snake charmers.
And Rahman is becoming just another marketing genius. The simple religious fellow who works at night with new voices and sounds. Bloody hell, you better do…but give us another background score like Bombay and the brilliant Dil Se.
Danny bhai can rest happy that he did a nice helicopter version of struggle and hope. Next time he might like to hang on to one aspect and embellish it with some detailing. This is merely a filmic tourist brochure of the other side of India.
Our poor film-makers won’t even be able to plagiarise the stuff. After all, it is a clear case of meri billi mujhse meow…
Why do we take certain pictures, capture certain moments?
I was outside this seafood restaurant in Delhi in December. It was nippy, but not cold. I looked up at the sky, as I often do, and my eyes panned the expanse. The trees seemed to be on fire. It was a bright yellow light in the distance that gave night a sunset look.
After the meal, it looked different. As though the sky had mellowed. The blue lights in the foreground seemed more prominent…and that light looked almost like the moon.
“Your flight has been rescheduled,” was the text message. It was followed by a voicemail. I read and heard both these the next day. My phone was in silent mode.
The messages were not for me. It was for a person with a very long name travelling on an international carrier from a far-off land. Why did he have a Mumbai number? Probably a businessman.
Today, it happened again. He was flying between cities. His flight was delayed. I called up the Indian private airline. These guys talk real smartly. I told him about the error and could he please update the information so that the real person gets the message?
“Oh sure, ma’am. I will need your name.”
“Why is my name important? I am giving you details about the passenger, and you should be concerned about his information.”
“But I will need to tell the department who called.”
“Tell them Helen of Troy.”
“Huh? Sorry, I did not get you?”
“Yeah, you won’t. Just do what you have to. Here are the flight details, the gentleman’s full name. Feed it into your system.”
“See, why don’t you call the reservations department, they might be able to help.”
“I do not need help. And I do not have the time. It is your job, you do it.”
Trrring, trring…cellphone rings. An automated voice informs me about my flight delay. I want to scream.
Yet, somewhere, I am thinking about Mr Long Name. Christian from Kerala. I can imagine him working his ass off in some Gulf country, returning to India, going to different cities to sell adream he has sleepless nights over.
He must have reached the airport early, picked up a quarrel with the check-in staff…and shrugged. He, in all likelihood, did not expect them to inform him. He does not know that the number he gave them is not his number. It is mine.
He is probably travelling well, but even in Executive Class he will be with a plastic carry bag, usually from some department store. Something will poke out. He will say, “Side pliss,” as he tries to haul it up in the overhead luggage bin after the flight attendant has told him that he cannot keep it near his seat as it is inconvenient and not advisable during emergencies. He has travelled so many times, yet he will repeat the performance, jut his tongue out to indicate his mistake, roll his large eyes, and maybe look over his reading glasses.
Then he will sit down, ask for the newspaper that is already in the seat pocket, and wipe his face, neck, arms with the wet towel. When the drinks are passed around, he will first touch the glass of juice, then the fresh lime and finally pick up the Coke. He will spread the newspaper to its full broadsheet size.
He will change channels of the in-flight entertainment till he has watched two minutes of each. He will have the full meal on board, ask for extra milk in his coffee, then recline his seat all the way back and start looking around. After a few minutes he will get up and start walking down the aisle to confirm whether he needs to visit the loo. When he is certain, he will pull up his trousers and go towards the toilet. When he is done and comes out, his hand will be on his zipper. Just like that.
Back at his seat, he will ring for the attendant. He will ask for "magsin” and pick up a serious news mag and look at the ads.
Once the flight has landed, he will switch on his mobile and start punching numbers. When the aircraft door is opened he will pull out his plastic bag and his strolley and his laptop, carry the paper and mag with him and try and rush to the exit. He will make a call saying he is late for a meeting.
Right now, as I type this, he must be on that flight from Bangalore to my city. He does not know me. But for the airline staff I am him.
“There’s no country in the world where constitutional head of government was reduced to this level. Actually, what we have is not Manmohan Raj but Sonia Raj.”
Before taking on Manmohan Singh – and most of us do realise that he has been answerable to Sonia Gandhi – L.K.Advani should do a bit of mirror watching.
During the tenure of Atal Behari Vajpayee, it was pretty obvious that strings were being pulled from elsewhere, the most obviously blatant example being the Agra Summit and the numerous instances where Vajpayee was propped up as the ‘moderate’ while the real dirty work was being quietly done from behind with kingmaker Advani’s active or covert participation.
“If BJP, India wins,” he said.
Wins against what? Where was the victory when the NDA was in power?
Counting the failures of the UPA, Advani said price hike had reached record high during the five-year rule, compelling farmers to commit suicide. Gujarat was a model where every body, irrespective of caste and creed, was living in happiness. The per capita income of Muslims in Gujarat was highest in the country, he said.
Gujarat has become a showcase. Let us be clear: Whatever the state has achieved is because of the people, an enterprising trading community. Narendra Modi is incidental.
And before crowing so much, our PM-in-waiting should have read the report which says that the Gujarat riots toll will rise to 1,180. Here it is:
Ahmedabad: Seven years after the chilling Gujarat riots following the Godhra train coach burning, the official death toll is set to rise above 1,000. Reports filed at various police stations suggest that 228 persons are still unaccounted for. However, on February 28, when the stipulated seven years after their disappearance end, these missing persons will be deemed dead and the official toll of 952 will be revised to 1,180.
“The question of the government presuming a missing person to be dead arises when rights are attached to the dead. Relatives of the missing people will have to inform a competent government authority, like the revenue department, about their status. But the real issue—because these people went missing in the rioting—is that they are presumed murdered. The bigger question is not of compensation but investigation of these murders,’’ said Gujarat high court lawyer Mukul Sinha. (emphasis mine)
That should be Mr. Advani’s priority and not hitting out at an opponent in the electoral stakes. These are old men and should be wise enough to not go around like teens competing for some elocution prize. Does Lal Krishnaji have anything to say about the Gujarat riot figures? Will he promise to investigate into the murders and if no progress is made within a stipulated timeframe offer to quit?
If that happens, we can talk about India’s victory. Until then, go on and on, you losers.
Sometimes it is a line; sometimes the holding back of a line…taken over by a rhythm like a pulse beat.
I can think of several songs, and I know it is a cheesy thing to do today, but I feel like it. Perhaps I have already shared the words in bits and pieces. Perhaps, I have bared many words in bits and pieces.
There are several faces and phases of love.
Here are two subtle ones…
The beginning of the first one is both profound and playful, “Pyaar par bas to nahin hai mera lekin phir bhi tu bataa de ke tujhe pyaar karoon ya na karoon” (I have no control over my love, even so you tell me whether I ought to love you or not.)
And the lines that grab me:
poochh kar apni nigaahon se bataa de mujhko
meri raaton ke muqaddar mein sehar hai ke nahin
A beautiful aspect of this one are the visuals of long shadows, curtains, light falling and creating patterns. The woman can only hear his voice and in that there is stillness as she enters the house and moves towards the stairs, framed at one point climbing them – there is a tantalising building up of expectation that may never see fruition, as though moving willingly towards imprisonment. Even when she first sees him in the course of the song, only his back is visible. How much we suppress…
For those acquainted with Hindi literature she is carrying a copy of Kalidasa’s Meghdoot (The Cloud Messenger). So much darkness with promise of rain…
As I have said often. I don’t think anything can surpass this simple expression:
dil bahal to jaayega is khayaal se
haal mil gayaa tumhara apne haal se
It has been over two years. And all that we get in the Nithari killings case is one conviction where the suave and educated feudal lord of NOIDA raped, murdered, dismembered and put the parts of a 14-year-old girl in a drain inside his farmhouse. Moninder Singh Pandher is a pervert. Do the parents of the other kids have to wait for another so many years each?
There are several such cases committed by this sick man; skeletons were found in the drains in his house. His accomplice was his servant, Surinder Koli. In the present case he has been convicted for attempted rape instead of rape. He was known to be a necrophiliac and used the bodies after his master was done with them and dumped them cruelly with his help. At that time the media used to give graphic accounts about making human flesh kebabs.
If they are through with the repast, they should now push the courts to act. What the hell is one conviction? The man is powerful and in NOIDA, which even Uttar Pradesh treats like the back of beyond, you can sense that it would be easy for such men to do as they please.
Politicians can stay out of this as they have done in these past so many months. They don’t have to wake up and make electoral capital of it. But the police and human rights organisations must insist. And TV channels who were walking around with cameras and microphones then should now insist on the fast-track justice they demanded for other high-powered cases.
The victims here are unfortunately poor and unknown villagers and the only reason it caught the national media eye was due to the sheer voyeuristic delight it offered. Now, instead of those details, they can concentrate on getting serious panels made up of legal brains to expose this case.
The master and the servant had a convenient alliance, each a power play. Both need to be given the most stringent punishment, without delay. What more evidence is required? There is something called precedence, which the courts have convicted him of. They can clearly see the pattern.
I am against capital punishment, and castration is silly. Besides being put in solitary confinement and made to do hard labour for the rest of their lives, Pandher will have to provide for all the families of the girls he raped and killed. And unfortunate as it may sound, his son – although in no way involved and probably ignorant of his father’s actions – will have to continue to bear the expenses of providing for them should the father run out of resources. I say this because the son was in court. People like the senior Pandher are not fit enough to have any support system or families.
They debilitate society. It isn’t a question of making him into an example, but baring the face of this prime example before it is too late and others think they can get away with it. We have suffered enough and worse goes on in the interiors and rural areas. Time to start somewhere. And now.
- - -
Updated on Feb 16:
Nithari killings put to shame even pre-civilisation era: Judge (Report from The Hindu)
Ghaziabad (PTI): Following are the highlights of the 59-page judgment delivered by Judge Rama Jain while sentencing businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surinder Koli to death in connection with the rape and murder of 14-year-old girl Rimpa Haldar.
"In the said case, a helpless, poor girl has been raped by the two accused who resorted to extremely barbaric, inhuman and unkind act which has no precedence. The manner in which the horrendous act has been carried out even puts the era into shame when there was no civilisation."
This crime is against womanhood and a blot on society. The manner in which the crime has been done, death sentence can be the only justice because there was not an iota of sign that their character will change in the future.
Rejecting the CBI's contention of Pandher being away in Australia when the crime was committed, the Judge said the investigating officer of the agency cannot derive a conclusion on the basis of his passport and the immigration stamp affixed on the travel document.
The recovery of the saw, which was used to chop bodies, when Pandher and Koli were taken to Nithari house was a convincing proof that the businessman was also involved.
This is probably par for the course as pop culture goes, but must it be given any academic or even social legitimacy?
In a report titled White House Fantasy - Women dream of sex with prez that appeared in the New York Times News Service, Judith Warner, after a couple of chance anecdotes about dreams of the President, including her own, decided this could be national trend. After sending out emails, she came to the hey, presto! conclusion that it was indeed a trend. People were dreaming about O-ing with Obama, and it included degrees of guilt regarding his wife Michelle. (Dreams have morals?)
It is a bit intriguing that no one had dreams about sex with Bill Clinton when he was in office. This sort of reeks of a dumbing down of the Presidential candidate. Do not forget there were several analyses about how women dreamed about pop singer Madonna. That was Barbie-in-hardware-store-stopping-by-for-some-sublimity-stuff.
The Obama fantasy is a bit more uptown girl trying to be do-gooder. It’s a trip down the yo mamma denial in full play. I do not agree with the writer’s further analysis:
I understood perfectly where these cozy dreams of easy familiarity came from. It was that sense so many people share of having a very immediate connection to Barack Obama, whether they’re black or biracial, or children of single parents or self-made strivers; or they’re lawyers or community organizers or Ivy League graduates.
Isn’t easy familiarity more likely with those that truly changed either the course of events or were doing ornery things? How many people are involved in community work, are lawyers and have studied at Ivy League Universities? Did anyone ever hear about dreams of Abe Lincoln, who did a lot to free the slaves, or Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer, or at a ‘green’ pinch, Al Gore? (If identification and an element of the Stockholm Syndrome prevail, then why not Thomas Jefferson for his nubile slave girl-mistress Sally Hemmings?)
Why are the underdogs left out of the dream machine? This is about power and the belief that they, the dreamers, have given it to him.
Take this example of a 62-year-old’s dream recounted by her daughter:
“Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady.”
See? He cannot be too much of a star. They clothed the emperor and now Obama should be grateful that they let him create history or else he’d continue being a backroom idealist like Martin Luther King to be brought out for the fiery speeches and civil rights talk.
The other advantage is that the Obamas do not do what are atypically Black things. They fall in the safe zone of mainstream stereotypes. No one will dream about walking with Barack hand in hand down Harlem, will they?
Is this change or a ‘be our kind of man’ challenge? Wonder if anyone would sleep over this...
With their “purity quotient” not matching the fancies of priests, 450 Dalit households of Tiloli village in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district were subjected to ignominy by being told to have cow urine and dung for purification to be able to participate in a yajna ceremony.
This is 2009. We win laurels for scientific endeavours, reach space, but are still caught in a time warp.
Often such news does not go beyond making us cringe, that too over the reference to excrement. We get more bothered about how to deal with terrorism, how to fight, how to score points, how to snivel before the superpowers…
The crime mentioned in the report is in many ways worse, because it kills the souls of people, it creates deeper fissures in society and it demeans our own citizens.
India has progressed at many levels, but why can we not solve these entrenched outdated values from being discarded? What great leaps can we claim to make when we falter at every step in our own backyard?
Part of the problem is the unholy hold of religion in society. Even the Dalits, who were outcastes and made themselves acceptable by embracing the all-encompassing Dalit identity, want to be a part of the parent religion and participate in the rituals that even earlier discriminated against them.
We can blame human prejudice, but many of the differences are there in the scriptures; they may have been there to merely highlight certain cultural aspects but, as we know, religious texts get interpreted to suit whoever runs the show at a given time.
A cow that must have spent time in filth is more acceptable than a human of an economically disadvantaged group. This cow’s urine and dung is going to purify the Dalits, because the cow is worshipped. Suppose one was to go along, would this temporary purity take away the inherent low status of these people?
I know that priests in temples urinate and defecate in the patch of green behind the temples. Do they not defile the place? What about impure acts and thoughts of high-caste worshippers?
The problem is that all of us have become immune to these acts. It is as though we now accept that ‘Dalit’ is only a politically correct word to use; the attitude towards them has not changed and never will.
If that were so, then instead of the Dalits asking to participate in the yagna, they would have filed a report in the police station and the cops would have been forced to act and arrest the priests.
