Manna Dey gets an award or a token?

Why does everyone feel so humble? Is this a sign of true greatness always? If I were Manna Dey, I’d either sit quietly with a glass of honeyed water and keep doing my riyaz, as he indeed does, or tell those blokes who decide on giving national awards to go stuff it.

A man has sung over 3000 songs, is over 90 years old and some politicians and bureaucrats decide they need to give him something he can die peacefully with? What nonsense. This has been happening for years and these awards have become just a plaything for some people. Who knows? Some babu must have been sitting with his cheap rum at a sidey club and heard the strains of some Mannada song, maybe “Ai meri zohra jabeen” and his wife blushed thinking he looked so happy and hummed along for her, this tubby hubby of hers who spends time pushing files away from his desk and looking for every opportunity to show his power.

So, she is smiling and saying, “O ji, such a lhuuvly song. Reminds me of old days…” even if those old days were as exciting as parathas on the tawaa. Husband realises in his slightly tipsy state that there is this singer and he should propose his name for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. And they all gather and say, “Haan ji…”

These are mostly such haan ji moments.

To say that Manna De deserved it would be reducing him.

I cannot say I like everything he sang and I find that number from Zanjeer, "Yaari hai imaan mera, yaar meri zindagi" execrable. I also do not like his rendition of "Pyaar hua, iqraar hua, pyaar se phir kyon darta hai dil”. This is an out and out Shanker-Jaikishen triumph.

His range was in the songs, not the voice (the exception being "Eik chatur naar" from Padosan). And I say was because of his old songs. "Poochcho na kaise maine raen bitayee" and "Sur na saje kya gaaoon main" have very strong memories. They were sung at our house since I was a child, a state so pure that it recognises purity and ensures it retains.

I personally like this one because it is so quiet…like a pin in the haystack. It can still hurt. And make you ache…

Ye kooche ye neelaamghar - Manna Dey

Ask the vexpert - 20

Question: I am a 24-year-old man and I will be getting married soon. I have the following questions: a) When does a man wear a condom — before or after getting an erection? b) Of what use are flavoured and dotted condoms? c) Are there female condoms? If so, how are they worn? d) If one masturbates everyday, can he still experience night fall?

Sexpert: a) A man wears a condom after getting an erection. Buy a packet and read the instructions on the pack. b) Flavoured condoms are used for oral sex. There is no need of using them with a trusted partner. Other kinds of condoms help heighten pleasure. c) Female condoms have been recently made available in India. They are inserted in the vagina and cover the vulva area d) Why the compulsive habit? I suggest you undergo premarital counselling along with your partner.

Me:

• a) A man must wear a condom before an erection so he knows how much area to fill up. It is an exercise in upward mobility.
• b) Flavoured condoms are like fragrances and give the penis a distinct identity so that it becomes identifiable. It will tell the woman whether you are a fruity person or a spicy one; the dotted ones just add an extra dimension as garments do. All this talk about giving extra pleasure to a woman is mere talk. Why would any woman get excited seeing little pimples?
• c) The female condom is not meant to be worn. It is kept aside to send a message to the man that she is not interested in his babies.
• d) You can see all the sunrises you want – will that stop you from looking at the moon?

Who do I tell?

Burn, burn in love and such wait it is that you cannot tell anyone about it. Sublime. Ashes.

Jaloon tere pyaar mein karoon intezar tera
kisi se kahaa jaaye na

Saanwre tore bina joya jaaye na - Ustaad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

RDX? Catch a Kashmiri...

A cricketer from Kashmir was arrested at the T20 Tournament in Bangalore. Why?

The drama started early in the morning when the private agency tasked with security at the stadium reported that a detector was beeping, indicating explosives within 300 metres. Alerted, the Karnataka anti-terrorism squad moved in at 6.30 am and narrowed their search to the rooms in the Karnataka State Cricket Association Club House on the eastern side of the stadium. The J&K under-22 team had checked in on Friday night for a match in the C K Nayudu tournament from October 21.

The cops were led by sniffer dogs to room 105, occupied by Pervez Rasool and Mehrajuddin. The detectors went off in the room and the cops zeroed in on Rasool’s kit bag, which they suspected had traces of explosives. Immediately Rasool was taken in for questioning. Mehrajuddin was asked to accompany him.

Some questions:

• Do the security agencies run a check of the grounds everyday? These matches are to begin on the 21st.
• What else was within the 300 metre radius?
• What does ‘suspected the kit of containing traces of RDX’ mean?
• Later, it is reported, the stadium was sanitised. Why was the stadium sanitised if the RDX traces were only in the kit?

This was deemed a terror scare, and these things are not unlikely anywhere. But here is what happened later:

M R Pujar, additional commissioner in charge of law & order and security in Bangalore, said: “A young man was taken for questioning by police but he has subsequently been released without charge. Police and security experts have checked the stadium twice, as well as the suspicious bag, but nothing of concern has been found.’’

So, is one to assume that traces of RDX are not of any concern anymore? Why was the player released? What is the idea behind sending the kit to the forensic lab if you have let him off and the cops say there is no evidence? Isn’t there a possibility that someone will tamper with that kit now that they have been proved wrong and all their terror dreams have come to naught?

What? It is rare to see a J&K team, and it is important that they are playing.

We have had instances of match fixing and other dubious deals in the past even as betting for high stakes continues. That seems to have become legitimate. You need some terror threat at any given time to make things interesting. And what better than a Kashmiri.

Gubernatorially Yours

It really seemed as much of a big deal as any sort of feedback. Or as small as any pesky spam.

So, when one fine day I got an email from the ambassador of a certain country my first reaction was 'troll'. He had talked about an exchange of ideas, had given his personal email address and phone number.

I did what protocol demands and wrote back to say thank you and blah. But, remember, ideas had to be exchanged? I waited it out. What was the worst that could happen if I called? Someone would have a good laugh? I'd like that. For anyone to go to such trouble just for a little laughter would tell me a lot about the state of that mind. But I digress.

I dialled the number and it was a foreign accent. I relaxed a bit. Caution did not leave, though.

"Who am I speaking to?" I asked uncharacteristically and impolitely.

"Er...who would you like to speak to?"

"Ok. It's like this. I got a letter from someone saying he wants an exchange of ideas. "

"Oh..." (How was he to remember that?)

"So, do you?"

"One moment. Who do you wish to speak to?"

"My name is FV. Are you...hmm...excellen..." Damn. I was supposed to say "Your" but the PA who had sent the attached note had said "His". So, my tongue was in this conflict zone between His and Yours and how can he be your?

"Yes," he said simply. "My name is X. Now I recall."

"Yes. But you know how it is. I thought you were some crank," I said with a straight face he could not see.

"I perfectly understand. Even in our profession we have to be careful. "

"I was not worried, just wanted to be sure. What ideas do you want to exchange?"

"I read you but want to understand the mind. We must open all channels. I have worked in Y country and know it is important."

"Let me be honest. I write only what I want to. But I can exchange ideas. "

"Exactly. You tell me when."

"Yes. Your Excel..."

"Excellent!"

(The initials used here are fictitious and any resemblance to characters with similar initials is purely fictitious.)

Sunday ka Funda

This is supposed to be a sign whose message has gone askew, one of those blubbering idiot things that makes us smile.

Yet, from the point of view of the sign, the arrow is pointing in the right direction. For us it may be wrong. So, how do we decide what is right? Where we are or where we are going or where we are directed to?

Venky’s Chicken

He is obviously doing more than going through his emails. In today’s Times of India he has reacted to the reactions to his reaction about the woes of his inbox. He has apologised for “inadvertently” hurting people.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was quite candid as I mentioned in the earlier post. He talked about people bothering him. So, what is this?

I want to make it clear that I was delighted to hear from scientific colleagues and students whom I had met personally in India and elsewhere, as well as close friends with whom I had lost touch. Unlike real celebrities like movie stars, we scientists generally lead a quiet life, and are not psychologically equipped to handle publicity. So I found the barrage of emails from people whom I didn’t know or whom I only knew slightly almost 40 years ago (nearly all from India) difficult to deal with.

And he was psychologically savvy enough to hit out? Did he know the Nobel Committee? And did he not say he congratulated the person who called to inform him about the prize for his Swedish accent, assuming it was a crank call? So, if he can answer phone calls from strangers, he is going to get emails from strangers.

People have also taken offence at my comment about nationality being an accident of birth. However, they don’t seem to notice the first part of the sentence: We are all human beings.

I noticed the whole comment and reproduced it. Being human beings is an obvious fact and even those who go into space don’t cease being human beings. I wish he had the courage of his convictions and stood up for what he had said instead of this rubbish:

Accident or not, I remain grateful to all the dedicated teachers I had. Others have said I have disowned my roots. Since 2002, I have come almost every year to India. In these visits, I have spent time on institute campuses giving lectures or talking to colleagues and students, and stayed in the campus guest house. I have not spent my time staying in fancy hotels and going sightseeing.

Roots are not about giving lectures and staying at campuses. By going sightseeing you do not become less of an Indian. He is coming here on work in his professional capacity and has the audacity to talk about it as maintaining connections with his roots. He could have been going on lecture tours to Jalalabad, for all we care.

Finally, at a personal level, although I am westernized, many aspects of culture like a love for classical Indian music or South Indian or Gujarati food are simply a part of me.

So? I know westerners who love our cuisine and music and culture. What is he trying to prove? He has even given an interview about riding bicycles and all those wonderful memories. Why did he not think about them before shooting off his mouth about some professor making tall claims? Did these memories not seem important then?

Some of us had taken what he said in the right spirit, respecting his privacy and right to be not an Indian. He has, unfortunately, decided to do a 360 degree turn and come across as extremely patronising:

I am personally not that important. If I hadn’t existed, this work would still have been done. It is the work that is important, and that should be what excites people. Finally, there are many excellent scientists in India and elsewhere who will never win a Nobel. But their work is no less interesting and people should find out about what they do. My visits to India confirm that it has great potential and bright young students. A little less nationalistic hero worship will go a long way to fulfil that potential.

We know there is potential. While there are a few of us who do not believe in blind nationalistic worship, there are others who do so. That is why we have Gandhi and Nehru cults. How will less hero worship tap potential? He says he was excited about Gellman’s work and it did not matter what his nationality was. True. So, Indians also worship Michael Jackson and Angelina Jolie. What potential will they be fulfilling? And will anyone take him on about the “less nationalistic” advice? No. Because we are idiots. We will throw stones at our own when they point out certain hard facts, but not at this man.

Is it only about his inbox? If all this was unimportant, he would not be writing this defensive little piece. He would have gone on with his work instead of telling us about how we must look for potential and learn from his work, his roots notwithstanding. Fine. As I said, people will move on. He should too. And I hope he has the good sense now to let go and get into his quiet life and further tap his potential. The Nobel is not the end of the world, as he has so self-deprecatingly implied. Now all he has to do is stop holding forth on India, although the adulation will certainly be hugely appealing.

We are happy for him in his heavenly abode – the West.