Sounds

In the interval from one beat to another, as the sound touches nadir and there is just the past echo, just our bodies reverberating, even in that interval when as if my soul is suspended and I have no consciousness of going anywhere, of being anyone, of living, even then you touch me, pull me into life, kiss me to warmth-- and love.

Lands

Colors. I wonder, auroras, rangolis, blue painted houses, white Greece, the confluence of colors in Kanyakumari. Drab, drab world: where the sky above is grey, and the world below is in suits of black, or white, or somewhere in between. Bright, bright happiness, jumping out of every thread and sign and bustle: people's faces, not simply the sindoor or the jasmine, not the hibiscus or the blue and green mosque, not just the red flag proudly fluttering for all its small triangular size and not just the calendars fluttering in quiet shops with yawning owners and weary business: no, but life itself. Life, life, every shade, every subtlety, every truth.

Holland beats England, T20 WC 2009

It's 13 years now since I have loved the Dutch cricket team: since the time I first saw a bespectacled Bas Zuiderent playing like a bookworm quietly settles in his corner and reads, just getting sucked in the book, the trees, the atmosphere, a Roland Lefevbre, one of the most economical bowlers in one day cricket and one of the best on view in that World Cup, since that time I fell in love with the Dutch team. And they were different from other amateurs: they quietly, wearily but sweetly went about their task as if a teacher gave them a very tough homework and instead of asking another student or cheating or finding out how others did it, they just are plodding along being within themselves, that one day their hard work will bring them out with colors. And it has!

Hats off for a remarkable, deserving victory, their first significant in the highest arena, to the Netherlands; it might be over England, a poor limited-overs specialist, and might be in T20, a great leveller, but nothing can take away from that they won because of their hunger to win. It could lead to recognition for some players, could make the players and the country cricket board more cash rich, and most importantly it could lead to Holland being finally accepted into the English county structure.

Andy is the Coach

You don't average 50 in Tests playing for a team such as Zimbabwe without a core of steel and you don't make a public stand against a murderous dictator ... without a bit of ticker, a broader view of the world - and a one-way plane ticket out. -- Mike Atherton

English cricket is finally in good hands. Andy Flower has just been announced as Team Director. Another Ashes win might be a little far-fetched, since England has been in bit of a shambles; but if Flower stays put, I wouldn't discount an Ashes in Australia itself in two years' time. What even Fletcher couldn't do, Andy will do.

First of firsts, Andy must do what he wants. He's a shy man, a man committed to perfection and expecting silently the same of others, but here he has to be assertive; he has to look widely, not even Ireland but even as far as South Africa and Namibia to recruit talent for England. Since the country cricket is only throwing up fat under-performing players, at the best only capable of playing T20, and Flintoff is aging, Strauss the captain is aging, and even the bowling doesn't have anybody real good and young. England basically need right now three things: (1) KP learns self-discipline and importance of putting team first without losing his arrogant flamboyance; (2) a good wicketkeeper-batsman (which I believe Foster can be) and a good wrist spinner; (3) Cook matures and learns patience and stamina, even after the half-centuries. It's Cook England will have to build around in the coming years; after seven years, he will be the veteran and star. Andy must recognise that and Cook, already once his Essex team-mate, should now blossom.

What Andy brings to the table needs no mention: what the players should not forget that here is the opportunity to really learn. KP might be a good adventurous player of spin, but he still is not a good player; he has the chance of going further up as a batsman with his coach now being the best ever player of spin. It's a supercharged time for England, a busy 11 weeks looming: recriminations are already ready to pop out, but most are waiting with bated breath for mistakes to creep out, for failures to slink in; for most people, expending their precious breath is more important than really thinking what's been ailing with English cricket since almost a quarter of a century. I like this England set-up: the quiet and mentally strong and perfectionist Andy Flower with a methodical and sweet captain Andy Strauss with one of the best batsmen the mercurial KP and the finest allrounder England ever produced Andrew Flintoff; throw in bravehearts Paul Collingwood and James Anderson, and you've got a good, promising stew!

White Suits: The Nexus

If the Tuskegee runners could be CDC, then there's nothing left to surprise in the US-led medical system: except that now and then we do get the glimpse of a horrible truth, a sick megaprofit industry lying behind, through films like The Constant Gardener or The Verdict, or through such reports: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-medical-madoff-anesthestesiologist-faked-data

The problems are manifold, and they start with the unholy nexus between practitioners, pharma companies and researchers. From the ground level, a medical rep knows who is prescribing what and in that proportions the reward is given. In India, it could be cartels of wine, a holiday at Bangkok with 'girls', and so on; the same holiday-makers are respectable wise-looking men in white suits, who you think as God. Problems go deeper in the Western world: because of a show of concern for accountability. Hospitals could be church-run ones, or important components of medical colleges: even if something wrong is found out, the argument is why to lose years of credibility, why let the trust get eroded over 'one small thing'? After all, they easily persuade themselves, by remaining quiet we're only doing a larger good: and the perpetrator is just given a silent rap on the knuckles. One is caught, the other thousands are not.

The problem with Scott Reuben kind of fraud is that a token measure like that of Johns Hopkins (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aIvIUq6pvKS8&refer=healthcare) won't really help: Reuben hasn't taken any gift, he was just on 'research grants', paid directly to him. Payment through institution would simply mean a more rampant corruption, nothing else. What would help is that medical institutions stop the race for new breakthroughs, newer and more effective and more fast-working medicines, and stop keep getting in news and publications: there is not that much research needed.

Almost everyone does a PhD now. Research on a myriad of irrelevant topics. Of course then they come up with strange conclusions: with a motley group of 20, they even conclude that "bondage sex is good for you" or "your heart", whatever. Newspapers of a certain bias and tabloids who think everything is on a frivolous par in this world pounce upon such news items: and along with the WAG who bared it all, the pop singer who again has a paedophilia hearing, the sportstar who hit a goal yesterday, and the social worker who brought out a rally in support of some displaced community and an actress who turned vegetarian, we also have a researcher who finally brought on the benefits of some kinky activity. What kind of research are we paying funds for? What kind of education system is it that teaches men to publish, regardless of whether there's trash inside or gold, better if trash?

A problem lies also outside of the immediate medical framework: the publishing world. Publishers want anything: anything which libraries lap up, and which is written by someone cited a lot, and with a very good 'About the Author' to write on the blurb. As long as that need is getting served, they will take anything. To fool you into believing that they are conscientious guardians of information, they will set up an elaborate peer review system. A blind process. They will find out through contacts or just a Google search (horrible!) some names who seem to have worked or know something about that particular stream, and contact those with offers of reviewing. Very few reviewers do their job: for others, it's simply different things. From as bad as maybe greedy even about the honorarium payment, to reading greedily the manuscripts so that they can 'learn' of latest advances and pinch later for their own dream manuscripts, to simply feeling good about themselves without thinking are they really qualified or not, knowledgeable enough or not. Why was Scott Reuben's false data not caught in peer review? Or maybe someone did question, but the publisher just wants a minimum number of favourable peer reviews, doesn't it? And then it can go gung-ho.

The whole problem is that we laid down frameworks and systems and policies so that we can use them as checklists and be right: we can come to each position and then check against those and see oh whether we are safe. But what is really happening is this: we start by ticking off the items in the checklist. We start with "can we be safe here?" and then we just somehow manipulate the thing to be safe on the checklist: the checklist has become the god. Because we're no longer interested in what we started for, why we started for, we have forgotten our burning ideals of youth and childhood and everything: we just want more impact factor, more citations, more awards, more honor, more medicines, more billions of dollars that help elect in more and more presidents, more big brands and bigger diseases!

Irish cricket goes ahead

Eoin Morgan's call-up for England duty sets not a bad, but a good example: well, judging previous ones like Joyce, not a precedent of course. Yes, Ireland's loss, that too in the midst of the World Cup qualifiers, but Ireland is anyway going to win the tournament, as long as they have the O'Brien brothers. What's good is that England is more and more looking Ireland as the goldmine: and this gives a superb incentive for players in Ireland to not remain amateurish but to improve their game; once on the international firmament, there's no limit to the money and fame they would enjoy, not to speak of some quality games they would experience. And this slowly leads us to a team full of good players: England can't and won't take all, so slowly Ireland comes into its own and sooner than later becomes a full Test-playing nation in its own right (which it anyway should have done much ahead of Bangladesh, but unfortunately it's the crowds in B'desh which bring in the money).

To compare it with Zimbabwe would be amiss: Zimbabwe couldn't benefit from similar poachings mainly because of two issues. One, Zimbabwe was not the '19th county' for England: it didn't have any kind of development system in place, and still doesn't have. To have someone like the Flower brothers still come out was more fluke rather than any credit to the country's cricket board. Two, there was always the issue of 'home': most in Zimbabwe stayed there and loved the land, loved their country, some the old Rhodesia, some the new Zimbabwe, but anyhow for them playing for England was unthinkable, and of course not at all an incentive.

Even if it soon becomes the most boring and dustbin-consigned format in cricket, what T20 is sure to do is one thing: bring the best from anywhere in the world on one podium, reward them, and in short bring cricket more towards being a club game than one played between nations most times on dead pitches.

England must curb Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen is proving to be more mercurial than Brian Charles Lara ever did, and even a more destructive influence on his team. A fine talent, ruined by his own inordinate ambitions! Cricket can even tolerate that combination, but not with selfishness combined that Pietersen has shown more than once: not the best of times to raise an outcry of fatigue while eager to become captain of Bangalore.

What English cricket admins must do now is to nip the flower in the bud: else they could have the same problems on their hands that West Indies suffered under all those years with Lara. Flintoff will retire soon, and England must begin a culture of disciplined high-performance cricket: not whims and fancies of talented individuals. Cricket is a team sport, and while it still depends largely on individual performances, but what matters more is the team morale and spirit. An influence like Pietersen can only be described as corrosive: he would do well to take a leaf from, if no one else, Flintoff: humble and quietly being a vital part of England rather than talking big, delivering little and in fits.

The rest is silence

Cold, empty roads filled with warm sodium vapor lamp. There are two policemen who scream, "Halt! Who goes?" I thrill with delight; since never I heard such stirring cries. A pack of yelping dogs stand in wait: each with sharp teeth and lean stomach, each with dignity of tearing me to pieces. When the morning will come, I will see those policemen accepting pithy bribes, the dogs sleeping disgracefully on some doorstep, and the roads burning with men rushing to make up the numbers. But I won't mind: I have seen how it transforms into beauty when dawn is still a couple of hours waited for.

Of me and my Rainbow

One appears in the middle of the night. I recognise it first as a nightmare. It grips me in its fascinating fear, till I am suffocating and on the verge of realisation. Sweet water flows down my throat. I gulp my own saliva along with it. It takes on hues of violet moon casting shapes of my books on my walls. When I touch them, they feel wet, oozing with something. Definitely not blood, not cum. I only brush against a sticky indigo ointment tube which seems to have a gaping hole, there where I was expected to plug it. My blue quilt covers me snugly, and I try to feel the warmth of my body. I know now I am playing with myself, yet there's a green flashlight within me which somehow reveals the oxidised copper, and which expects me to start lemoning it right then and there. I know the night is warm and long, and I am alone: there might be a city full of orange neon signs outside, but what matters is that finally I am with her. It's a red singing voice of the angel who came to save me. The angel who will keep me for all time.

A love of films, a love of narratives...I

No, I won't talk to you of the blockbusters, or if I do forgive me my accidental propensities of liking the same things that everyone likes. Because I don't like or dislike things based on what others did or are likely to do: free from such mind-crunching mental calculations, I simply like or dislike things. I am not going to talk here of LOTR or Matrix or even how vulnerable and desirable Jessica Lange looked in the palm of King Kong: because not only did Lange failed to excite me, but even the King Kong seemed a little pointless, and already a harbinger of all those dinosaurs, sharks and goblins that Hollywood was going to unleash in full force from the late 1980s.

It was a hot afternoon many, many years ago, and there was a little boy glued and simply fascinated by the story of a girl who could transform into a flowering tree at her will: Girish Karnad's Cheluvi was my best fairy tale. Because it was also sad. And I felt it not to be a fairy world: set in the Gersoppa, it told me that anything can happen in this world, and there is no need to imagine a world hanging with tinsel stars for that.

Today, when the boy meets the girl, it is not just about the sex they will have at the first closed-door opportunity, it is more about the sex they already sold their lives for earlier and now meet as sad drifters, wearing masks, removing masks, and finally wearing one of death. Or it could be mon amour in hiroshima, when the mask is that of grief, deliberate, of love itself, because to be in mourning protects you and then you need not go out to the world, you need not remind yourself of the distinct unglamorous possibilities that lie behind: a japanese married man who never met her before? maybe, one should get tired of it all and just hallucinate 81/2 dreams, and finally masturbate himself to death?

Keaton tried to do everything to get a good camera reel: but he could never do it. Why Buster always outwitted Charlie? The answer is as moot or as easy to find as the explanation behind Gish's terror: was it really the wind or was it the men's brutality or was it something still to be explained? By whom? The cameraman has already showed the sparse landscape even better than johnny belinda could have seen, the actress has already again outwitted Charlie, and the scripts and the directors are not going to be found anywhere near a nikita, would they be?

So I searched for an answer: I thought that mon oncle would really provide me that, but that proved to be a repetitive show with m. hulot getting stuck like a gramophone record in his vacances. I crashed through the undergrowth like c.ra.z.y but my answers were perhaps more likely whistled on the bridge on the river kwai or told by a lonely candle's watch watched only by zhivago and me. There are times when all this witticism doesn't help: when I wanted to see how the women could form a panchayat and get a school and a new sanshodhan could happen in some dirty power politics; when I thought I would have seen all the films since the postman rang twice on marital infidelity, yet i was caught by surprise one day to see a maria conchita alonso do the role with more aplomb than ava gardner could have done even after a night with the iguana; maybe if there could be a man who overcomes all odds--his own personal weaknesses--to win a medical negligence verdict against a missionary institution and big hospital, there could also be children of a lesser god who run on koyla and remain in khamoshi and are never talked about. Maybe one should just turn on the gaslight...

Western Ghats: Focus Berijem

Not the foreign traveller getting condescendingly bemused by habits of another nationality, I have a distinct advantage in wandering with a pair of eyes reserved for better uses. How snide observations have come to dominate travelogues is another story though; pepping it up is regarded as a good story, even though it does not enlighten. I did nothing more than book a bus ride to Kodai; in hindsight the only thing better I would have done is to write to the forest officers, get appropriate permissions, and learn basic Tamil phrases. Or hire a jeep after having got the permissions. Though as long as you can gesture, language isn’t much of a barrier. Neither is lack of transport.

I first saw Kodaikanal in a completely fog-enveloped November afternoon in the year 1989, when I was a mere child filled with the most bloated curiosity in this world. We had drove down from Palani, where waiting under hot sun for winches that would take us to Lord Subrahmanya and tender coconuts that never seemed to exhaust of water or malai had already made us eager for the cooler climes of Kodai. And we didn’t stay long, except to make me realize that if there is anything in this world that the Amazon forests would be like, then that is the Western Ghats. I have always had a great difficulty in explaining to tourist agents and to hotel staff, that sir, I have not come to see any particular tourist spots, I don’t want to go yet again to any suicide point, and I would much prefer soaking up the wet stillness in your hotel room rather than staring deep into the Devil’s Kitchen. Or that I would like to go to once again explore the Munnar-Kodaikanal shola grasslands.

I fell in love with Munnar the first time I saw it more than a decade back, just as I had disliked Ooty the very first time I saw it. It’s just instinct: nothing I guess about the places themselves. I still remember how excitedly we clambered out of the bus, took a very small room in a hotel right atop the town square, and clambered back out to find a tea shop whose owner used to run a tourist information centre with his daughter, and with his hand-drawn maps, just because he really loved Munnar. That evening, I was in an auto-rickshaw, dragging itself up the sholas of Eravikulam National Park. I don’t really know if I did glimpse a Nilgiri tahr or not, but at least I persuaded myself firmly that yes I did. Which is enough, at least just short of the animal appearing only a couple of feet before you in full pristine glory. A couple of days later, I was at Top Station, the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. A tribal passed on to a narrow hill path, and he told me that I could go to Kodaikanal if I wanted to. From what I could understand of him, he offered me his company, but fearful of nights and animals in a forest, I declined the offer. How stupid of me! Was a boring school and college life where people are more interested in appearing in campus interviews going to teach me more?

A week ago, I entered the magical world of Berijam forest! A tourist agent got the permission for me first, since it’s a reserve forest area. It’s not about the air which makes as much noise there as a boiler room, or the dew drops continually dripping as if it’s raining, or the fog rising up like factories coughing up smoke columns, or the Capsfly where caps thrown to the precipice defy gravity and come back laughing to your faces--well or sometimes get too thrilled, come back, and get stuck in the tree branches--it’s about the regeneration I felt, the world that I have been systematically taught to be afraid of, to ignore, to kill, to forget, to love only in films with special effects, to only talk about by years of stupid education, cowardly people, and a weak spirit.

Located 21 km southwest of Kodaikanal, there was once upon a time a road that connected Munnar and Kodaikanal directly through this magical forest. Through the Top Station. There was also once upon a time a ropeway and a railway line for tea transportation from the Top Station to Munnar (where Lower Station was), via the Middle Station. Now, corrupt officials have ensured that nothing’s there, and the Tamil Nadu authorities have even ensured that the road is in a state of disrepair, so that either one treks in a group and keeps a wary eye on bisons and leopards, or one goes till the Berijam lake and returns with dreams in his eyes just as I have done. Mathikettan Shola was nearby, where a man never returns after having once entered: due to some rare herb’s effect. I wished to enter it: why would I want to return? A little further north, and I would cross into Eravikulam, the sholas in which I marvelled and ran as a teenager more than ten years back; a little more desperation and a little more of my native spirit would soon prompt me there: and discover all the connections.

The Western Ghats never cease to amaze. Yercaud has the warmth of a tea glass and steep narrow paths still unused to tourists, while Coorg the warmth one feels under an umbrella and dangerous river ravines. Ooty has a bitter medicine’s after effect, while the Gersoppa has wild vegetation fiercely flaunting its derring-do just as Queen Chennamma did against the British. Ranipuram lulls you into sweet leech-filled trills of water flowing alongside fear of encountering a viper, Courtallam greets you with roar of water and sight of a massive wall of white sheet of water thundering down, and Vazhachal entices you to step on its slippery rocks, making you forget that you exist!

There are stories waiting at each corner, always! Tenkasi had a burnt temple which was strangely ghostly, and Chalakudy had an abundance of bakery shops! Kodaikanal has a tiny unkempt shop called “The A to Z and the Pin to Plane Shop” on Anna Salai, and on the way to Igatpuri through Kasara Ghats you would find strange little deserted hotels on crags, as if waiting to hurl tourists down the ghats! Tomato chutneys and idlis on the Munnar town square, the gay abandon with which students of Kodaikanal International School roam the town, a continuous procession of trucks crisscrossing Chalakudy on one of the busiest highways I’ve seen, the still to be seen Wayanad and Hassan, each tap of the woodpecker, each silence that echoes in those forests of eucalyptuses and pines and myrtles, trees easily more than 150 feet high...and the romance continues...

There are some photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ankyuk/tags/kodaikanal/

Blood Wall

There was the empty space. There was the wall. There was the wide blue of the sea. There was a tiny speck. There was a fly squashed carelessly on the wall, sticking with bent legs crushed in stunning reprise. There was an emerald green island dotting the ocean.

Eyes to notice. Eyes to forget. Apprehend the meaning and then move on. To a bigger black spot. Till the stain grows out of your soul like white boiling milk left to run over. And then one day it's your turn to be swatted. Your blood, whether red or blue or dark, it does not matter: it forms another stain on another wall.

Forget? Why? What? Beauty? Do you have it that much, that you want to forget it? Why are you so arrogant? Don't you think it does matter.

Yes, it does.

Blessing in disguise for English cricket?

The two Andrews for the time being together--both men who have more brains and more guts than some of their counterparts who have had natural flairs but quite a serious lack of grit for fight. Andrew Flower and Andrew Strauss!

What a combination it already feels. Strauss would probably have been always the first choice skipper, had not the English selectors continued with their mystifying ways of selecting bits-and-pieces players ahead of him. They too often forget a good Test batsman is a good batsman anywhere. It's interesting what kind of bonding the two Andys develop, especially if they continue on with their roles after the WI tour: since both have been mentally strong players, both have been very strong square of the wicket, and how do young spinners like Adil Rashid come up with this set-up. Next year's Ashes seems to be another humdinger, especially with it being set in England, with the Aussies not at all what they were but not yet the team easily beaten, and with the English lions starting to roar: Pietersen might want to now look at the game a little more unselfishly and hence more soberly and thinking of the team at least at some time and with a little less arrogance; Flintoff's golden autumn should be ending on a high note barring injury; and Stuart Broad and Adil Rashid should give some real all-rounders to follow in the footsteps of Freddie for the time to come. Captaincy would bring the best of Strauss to fore, I think, in terms of batting: he already would be a very shrewd captain.

The only thing left to do: even though Matt Prior is going strong, England should look towards the future now, and blood James Foster. Flower should increase his weightage, and look to get in his former Essex mate in; the courage young Foster showed on a tough India tour under Nasser Hussain was something which foretold a lot about him.

rainbow & sprout

where were you running
the last time i saw you?
the floor checkerboards
hadn't subsided yet, and
ants were peeing in the cracks
barely begun, big black ones,
and now you say you were going?

no, we need to fill the concrete
and the black sky overhead
needs a sun, a moon, and some stars,
some sandpaper to make them dull
so that the house doesn't burn
for how much dazzle can it take?
Stoke the fire, the sprouts are withering.

paint the sky, paint the roof!
there, see the window? see that
old woman, gasping, red
trying to throw in the garbage,
while we were busy painting the whole
night and day, making our home;
keep the ears open, keep the eyes open.

People are so crazy, and so sad,
and we have become so miserable, we feel
helpless, and then we love each other:
show the world the seven-colored
shining rainbow, and we know now
everybody has to come home:
even that sleeping god.

Trick-or-treat?

This day
we had thought of cycling.
I was sure to
remain there till now.
Stay. But I folded
long back. And now
today has arrived once
more, as all the days. In suite.
Will I ever
bag the trick,
game and life?