Drop Of Ether

Cookie and the new way

2011-08-19T09:26:00.007+05:30

The sheep don't know what's happened. - Alastair Cook

To someone who hasn't been aware of the quiet process of rebuilding that has been happening in the English setup since the Hussain-Fletcher days, the budding talk of English dominance in cricket looks a very jaunty and flashy bit of sunshine in an English summer of rain, but it is one that threatens to continue: for, yet again, cricket brings in its own inimitable way the sort of incorruptibility that makes it the only great sport to watch and follow. One would have thought that Twenty20 and the greedy Indians and Australians have already done away with the game, that utter reflection of life itself, Test cricket; and behold, there it is, though this time in the guise of a humiliating flagellation given to a team (India) that has never boasted of much gamesmanship.

In many ways, Cook epitomises all that's [great] about cricket: his unflappability is much different from that of Jonathan Trott, cool in cricketing terms as they both are. While Trott is much like Kallis, or even a bit more attractive but less solid version of Dravid, a bricklayer, Cook is the craftsman looking for perfection: each ball to him has an attribute about it and he thinks of each ball as the end in itself, just as for the craftsman each thread has its own colour and story to tell. While Trott sees the bricks in their entirety, Cook is in love with the bricks and his ability to understand each brick; curiously, often both Cook and Trott give the same impression to those who don't understand cricket much or to those who just want to get the building done as fast as possible, who cares how that is done, so they can have all the fancy brackets and doorknobs to fit somewhere.

What will now be the litmus test for Cook is that how well he manages the twin responsibilites of being Cook in Tests and being the English one-day captain: he must not let mix the two. A craftsman, at least as a batsman, has no role to play in one-day cricket; Cook will have to rather enjoy his captaincy and bat with a mixture of sturdiness and swish, but build a stronger team than himself around him. And when he goes back to the Tests, he needs to again play the music. This is the next challenge not only for Cook but also for England. Central to it would also be Eoin Morgan: he is too good a player to not finally become a very good Test player, even if his credentials to some seem more like that of a shorter-format player. I don't see Pietersen lasting more than a couple of years, and Morgan it is then who could have the talent and devastating effect that Pietersen promised often but delivered rarely: Morgan though seems to have a much more balanced head on his shoulders.

As a side otherwise, the only other weak spot that England has is that they lack any other excellent spinner than Swann. They need to find another wicket-taking spinner soon, and maybe also need to have a relook at Panesar and encourage him to take wickets even if he goes for runs. Someone like Irish George Dockrell or Dutch Pieter Sielaar could be great, as they are quite attacking and also very young, if they could qualify for England (though I wish Ireland start the procedure to get Test status; they are much better than West Indies, Zimbabwe or Bangladesh any day). In the present team, Ravi Bopara is the last remnant of those English teams of the past composed of players who could hardly bat or bowl and yet were selected year after year: those horrible years of Blackwell, Shah and Snape. Not to forget the bit earlier times of able but unwilling players like Stewart, Fairbrother and Lamb: all in their cocoons. Soon, Bopara has to make way for great youngsters coming through the England Lions setup and directly from the county teams: mental strength is a must in cricket, and in fact in most sports; the highly talented failure Vinod Kambli is one of the best examples of that.

The one thing that England must always remember is that good cricket makes for good memories. And that is what it is exactly for: not for riches from mindless games played for mindless people in search of fast food.

untitled

2011-08-10T16:53:00.002+05:30

blue air resides often where i stand, watching from under the hazy spires of Bonn. clocks run, watches are timed, and in a matter of minutes people are lined outside the gents' toilet. outside we make sense of nonsense and chip away at the nose of Donatello. amidst flying colours and spread words, in the patch of humanity melts and touches arms. like gum and gold, the sequinned wear sparkles from where you look at but has no consistency.
amidst the languages, i will stamp my hand in the red soil, i will brand it on the wall of a house, my home?, and i will look scorningly at the sun. life is here. come down, you, get off your high horse. in every smile and tear, in the rolled up pants.
home is where my foot crosses, river and ford, jungle and terrace. Tea and berries.

Love that defines

2011-05-25T10:54:00.005+05:30

It is a rare feat, one I've almost never come across, to be able to capture India, or a corner of it: for the whole magnitude of it is merely impossible. It is further rarefied to be able to tell everything in a matter of minutes and leave countless stories untold: to go deep into one man's consciousness and show him what he is composed of, amidst the flying accusations and erudite theories, of what all he was and still is, of how the Marina sparkles as I sit for hours on its wide expanse of sand looking at the stormy Bay of Bengal for hours on end, feeling the humid Madras sun. It is all that the latest "Royal Enfield: Handcrafted in Chennai" ad manages to do, another ad that proves how India excels head and shoulders above the rest in the advertising world, but also that goes so much beyond.

My love for Tamil Nadu is synonymous with my love for life; both commenced very early. Even though I do not know Tamil, and there are many more things that I, the uninitiated, do not know, it has never bothered me: when I am there, I know from inside that I am there. The soil, the air, the sun, the smell. Every being inside me cries with delight, and every me is moved to beauty, to the contemplation of beauty. What tells me I am there? All modern scientific theories seem so ridiculous besides that knowing: I pity them; they will be always at a loss to know the worth knowing.

Tamil Nadu, on overt looks, is a land of men and women very simply clad, especially men: checked shirts not inserted in the pants, and of course lungis. A land where both religion and atheism has its rigid rituals and many men and women are bound by them: to sway the populace to the latter, a leader would strike a deity with a chappal and laugh, and ask did something happen to me? The land where films with strange pyrotechnical fights and dances rule the hearts, and the actors are more dearly loved than gods, because the latter are feared more than loved.

But Tamil Nadu is so much more to me. It is liberty itself; the sense of vastness and an open earth and open seas is everywhere. In the luckier days, you could have gone to Tharangambadi and felt man as an outpost of nature: behind, the desolate Danish mansions of the first missionaries to India, and ahead beautiful ruins of a temple or two. Besides, a honest face who is trying to make sense of the world and an intelligent mind, selling you conch shells picked early morning. And yourself: in a world which is not uniform, which does not apportion you theories to follow and isms to join and sophies to debate about, but which directly enters your heart and makes you understand all its beauty. The world where religion is completely absent, unless you call the unflinching humidity everywhere except in the mountains by that name. Architectural marvels rise here as commonplace as every stone's throw, and every road of Mylapore rings with music: from temples equally as from vocalists practising and learning. In the harmony is that disharmony brought by the British - ideas of nation and state, ideas of career and English; and yes, the Enfield - but India has the unique ability to dissolve everything in itself but not to lose itself. And thus to create only more of richer nuances and novel ways of expression. The people are too many, the diversity is too great and the minds are too intelligent; how would you make a robot, whether mechanical or intelligent word spewing one, out of a Hindu?

Tourism ads are meant to please, and nowadays one is pleased when things are adapted for them; thereby, those ads automatically go against the grain of India. Hence, it is not an accident that the ad had to be that of a motorcycle, Royal Enfield - the oldest continuing motorcycle brand of the world. I would simply say that the ad is flawless and I thank the maker for it. Love of the earth, for when you love, it is always there: forgetting the receiving, you have to give, and it is in you and with you, it never takes you for a ride. It is the truest for every day comes with a new sun and a new storm, and every day must you woo.

You may watch the ad, if you have not already done so, here: http://www.royalenfield.com/community/handcrafted-in-chennai.aspx or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goOu4aNsOKU

Seeking a way out

2011-05-04T06:10:00.005+05:30

The evils of a capitalist society are quite well-known and yet are often overlooked, maybe because what we’ve come up with in the last two or three centuries as panacea has been much worse: the same emphasis on capital in a different guise. We talk feminist theories and try to prove that everywhere a prejudice has always existed; we keep on focusing on the rich-poor divide and then only worsen it. And yet the unnamed monster has always been that we measure humans: in terms of their productive abilities. As long as you are productive in the sense of not creating a poem but a bushel of wheat, you can live; when you stop being productive, then there are many options: you can be killed, you can be relegated, you can be called a burden upon the society, you will get a proportion of society’s sum because you will be replaced by some others in the same position. Man does not remain free, for he has to produce to remain alive; he becomes the slave of his labour rather than his labour leading him to self-realization. The more he produces the thing considered more desirable in that particular epoch, the more “better off” he is: the problem with communism was that it never got itself rid of the prejudices for capital, and thus its start line was the acceptance that yes, more material goods is being better off. And then the fight for being better off started. Similarly with feminists, who forgot to question the basic premise of the society on which we function. It is very much like if politician A starts eating into the state’s funds, politician B starts rather quarreling as to why he also shouldn’t have a slice in the pie, too!

It is not that we haven’t ever tried a system not based on capital. The much-reviled Hindu system of caste was one such system which instead had the objective of placing the emphasis on knowledge and creation (in the sense of poem, yes). It of course had to denigrate, for people soon made it a matter of inheritance, but before trying to see why did it become so, let me take a mild digression.

Emotions are something that somehow science thought till recently “in the way of reason”: so even if they studied where in the brain they are being produced, they were always thought of as “those little inhibitors” or at best as stimuli. It is only now that the realization is seeping through across the scientific community that the emotional richness shown by the human species makes it the most intelligent species till date discovered: emotions are cues! Because of emotions we are able to take decisions, for better or for worse, related to our future; we have a “happy” memory or a sadness associated with a particular experience and which guides us in our future conduct. Think of emotions as “labels,” but as interactive labels: the ability to have, store and process them is what makes the humans able to manipulate time and space, and to construct huge projects out of thin air, to dream and to believe. And yet all along we have discounted these very emotions when we have seen man as a mere machine, as just another species of being who can be more productive than a bullock because he also has got a “brain.”

The ancient Hindus did try to break the deadlock by having instead a system wherein they defined classes based on the kind of work (and work was not defined by the money it produced) they do. So a knowledge-seeker was free to seek it, explore it; he was not constrained by having to produce. Knowledge was given the utmost importance and thus the Brahmin was on top of the social scale (instead of the rich) and he wandered about, living off food from others, who considered it a privilege, an honour to be able to give him food. Of course, the explicit hierarchy established brought very soon into being the attendant evils of this system, but here at least was an attempt to define man as more than a machine: the West often considers it another form of “division of labour” but it forgets that the Brahmin is not doing any labour in the capitalist (and thus always Western) sense of the word. It was more an attempt to free men from seeing themselves as hunter-gatherers, and use the rich resources with them to further explore truth. The problem with the Hindu system of caste lay in the confusion between atma/purusha and jivatma: I will not attempt to translate the words because the West has no such concept.

Hindus posited the system of caste on birth: thus a Brahmin’s son was automatically a Brahmin. I do not have any idea when they started doing so, because here they have got themselves confused about the theory of karma (which again is grossly misunderstood in the West, import as it is). Out of a million-odd forms of life, including that of amoeba, if you are born in the household of a Brahmin, it was considered obviously as the best chance to further try to understand universe, as you are being born to parents who already presumably know a lot and moving in a similar society: thus, if you had a good karma, your birth could be there. However, chance does not mean anything else than a chance: someone with wealth has more means to do something, but how many times have you seen it happen? By way of good karma, in its quest for self-realization, the atma will be reborn as a higher form of life; however, one must remember that man’s consciousness is jivatma, and man is completely unconscious of his atma. It is the atma that uses different life forms as tools in order to self-realize, not the other way round. What man can tap into (what in the West is called as soul) is his jivatma, his living consciousness. This jivatma dies with the man; it does not get reborn or transferred. A Brahmin's son could be as bad as anyone; karma has placed him there, but it is now up to his present karma so that the atma that thrives on his jivatma advances further on or not. It is hard to tell when the confusion between jivatma and atma arose in the Hindu thought and how; probably it was with many of the Brahmins themselves who started to seek power instead of knowledge, and thus mixing up the concepts is one of the best ways to hold power. Also, with the prevailing of Jainism all over India, Hindu cults had to spring up, and a cult inevitably means sacrifice of knowledge for power. Both Jainism and Buddhism of course themselves are nothing but cults: offshoots from Hinduism to seek power. Ignorance of one has been always the source of power for the other.

I do not know what the answer is in the present day; we don’t have an aristocracy anymore, and the illusion of freedom that democracy gives, while actually antithetical to the idea all the time, is an evil hard to fight. Because everyone loves freedom in theory, and now that we have already divided not only society into fragments of individuals but also individuals themselves into fragments of selves, the more urgent question is how to make one self conscious of the other. Our different selves are becoming our hidden, many jivatmas, which are running in parallel to each other, manifesting a terrifying lack of unity. At the back, still, of course, is our urge to seek that unity, but when society forces us to think of ourselves as labourer-gatherers, and to live accordingly, the clockwork can only become worse. For we have become clocks from humans.

Another sad day for cricket & English, Zimbabwean and Bangla cricket ahead

2011-04-05T15:25:00.005+05:30

How to kill the goose that lays golden eggs?

Is a lesson that can be learnt very well at many places, but in the precints of ICC, one has also the chance to learn how to mistake a hen for a goose. Ireland’s banishment from the next World Cup is not only shameful and disgusting, but it also defies all logic from even a monetary point of view: India does not invite Bangladesh for Test matches nor even for bilateral one-day series, simply because of the wide gulf between India and Bangladesh for any longer-term format of cricket; and yet, as Ireland showed on the subcontinent soil itself, if tomorrow there were to be an India-Ireland bilateral series, it could go very close and the spectators would be fully recompensed. Granted that Bangladesh has a government that provides public holidays on every match day and the people think themselves world-beaters on the basis of a fluke win and the next day, in the illusions that no one has a right to beat world-beaters, violently hurl missiles at the teams they lose to (or their own team; for that was the bizarre cover-up by a Bangladesh administrator) - thus effectively a very populous market - yet it is the strength of the game finally that generates interest and excitement. It was Ireland that provided the excitement in 2007 World Cup and yet again in this World Cup - not Bangladesh, who couldn’t even manage a team total of 100 runs on two different occasions, and certainly not Zimbabwe, who are right now only becoming more and more addled and just besotted with making the right noises to gain Test status.

Maybe, it is the art of making right noises that Ireland lack. Or, that England is not supporting their case. Bangladesh has the powerful India at its backing and Zimbabwe the only worthwhile cricket-playing African nation, South Africa: given this, it is certain that ICC would pull out all stops to prevent these two countries from being excluded out. And today, if there were a league to be held between Ireland, West Indies, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Canada, Zimbabwe, Scotland and Afghanistan, and that league were to be held anywhere apart from the pitches of Bangladesh, then it would be highly doubtful if both Bangladesh and Zimbabwe would qualify: out of those eight teams, the four best on present form are Ireland, West Indies, the Netherlands, and Afghanistan. It is hard to fathom by what logic Ireland have been ousted; it is further hard to understand that what kind of motivations will be in front of the other associates, especially the bravehearts Afghanistan, if the top associate, Ireland, is in itself meted out this kind of treatment. And how come Zimbabwe gets to not only retain its place in the next World Cup but also is soon likely to get Test status completely browbeats everyone who follows cricket in the least.

Reviewing the English World Cup campaign, a tired unit did much better than expectations, and it augurs quite well for the English cricket ahead. Stuart Broad’s injury was a terrible blow post my previous write-up, and it also meant that England lost to Bangladesh, which subsequently meant that England had to face Sri Lanka on Lankan soil in the knockout game. The squad England ended up with was only half of the original selections, plus Anderson and Bresnan being burnouts, and yet the never-say-die spirit shown by England in the 50-over game was a welcome relief. England nearly lost to the Netherlands (if only Strauss had failed in that game) and managed to lose to Ireland and Bangladesh from winning positions, but apart from the knockout game, it didn’t lose against any top side. It didn’t even lose to India on Indian soil, a magnificent achievement. That could very well be the summary of things to come in the next eight-nine years: the battle of supremacy between India and England. While England have a slight edge in Tests, in the shorter formats India has a clear lead. What courageous decisions does Andy Flower take will now steer the course of English cricket: Collingwood must be trusted in again, players like Bell have no place in shorter formats, and players like Luke Wright should be given enough self-belief that they see someone like Shane Watson as their inspiration. Prior has to make way for others: I believe Foster in the Tests (whom somehow Andy is very reluctant to pick) and someone else in the shorter formats (trial and error being the possible method there). It is also important that England find a really good spinner soon: Swann wouldn’t manage to go on for ever, and a spinner could suddenly turn overnight from lethal to innocuous. Blood an exciting talent before it gets too late; and get a few Irish imports, especially now that Irish players have hardly a chance of a big stage before them. Both Dockrell and Sielaar, the Irish and Dutch main spinners, were highly impressive, and it would be a shame if their game is not looked at.

Zimbabwe have to unearth fast bowlers from somewhere, at least decent ones. They have pathetic ones right now. Get Chigumbura out of captaincy, and give it to Taylor; and avoid politics like the non-selection of Hamilton Masakadza. Taibu, even after years of cricket behind him, is completely immature about his batting; he still plays the same predetermined shots. Even I can predict what shot he is going to play next, forget the bowler. He must go. Craig Ervine, Taylor, Regis Chakabva and Sean Williams should form the linchpin of the Zimbabwe batting in the next couple of years or more to come: they are good enough; all they need is confidence and a couple of good innings each in the middle against good opposition.

As regarding Bangladesh, their problem is internal strife (cricketwise, Bangladesh needs maturity and temperament; and again good fast bowlers): captain Shakib al-Hasan is a coward, even if he’s a fine player both in skills and temperament, and the other captain in absentia, Mashrafe al-Mortaza, could only very skilfully demonstrate the malaise affecting Bangladesh cricket: he almost engineered his selection back into the Bangladesh squad by using media as a potent tool to manipulate public opinion. As Dhoni said, you don’t play for the public, you play for the team; when the public (helped by an irresponsible media) starts to have a say in everything (democratically elected cricket teams?), by direct or indirect influence, the cause is doomed. If Dhoni, one of the wisest minds I’ve seen in a long time (not just cricket), had listened to the public, India would not be the world champions right now.

(It is another story if a country like Bangladesh should be hosting flood-lit cricket matches and glittering World Cup ceremonies [a much richer nation like England rarely chooses to hold day-nighters and it had a very frugal ceremony for the World Cup in 1999; not that the ceremony was any less boring], when there are far more pressing needs to look to, and when they are not even likely to get much sporting recognition, for they are still much behind other cricketing nations: add to that the non-sporting behaviour of Bangla fans, and it would be hard to think of positives.)

Oh, that old moon, that yellow, yellow moon

2011-03-21T21:04:00.006+05:30

For a word from you,
I will wait a few centuries. Not loiter,
but stand in queues of men at petrol bunks
at visa consulates, and those who chatter ceaselessly,
they use grand words, love and man, freedom and some ism,
they are all ismists, or ists. Something, some label. Human?

The trees will gather snow, and inside, my heart
will be the everything making fire; you said
you picked me from star dust
and I, the dust, hallowed to skies-
to your lips; does it matter that silence reigns
on the cold night I shiver, that even those frozen drips
dare not answer a simple question: how sweet the bells ring?

I grew up learning of the Grand Rapids; of Zeppelin
of water, water everywhere: and I grew up
learning miracles. I believed myself a miracle,
for a being and a human, what less am I?
No, I do not judge; but I believe-
I think everyone must know they are miracle-
and the obstinate innocence cries out to be slapped.

Truth, I knew in concept, but you taught me
the word and the feeling. I felt pure
for the first time, I felt noble; I understood
to see the colours of the world. That yellow moon
I always saw, I always wanted to kiss
was now a world where inhabited a maiden
with unruly hair, unironed clothes
who peeped out, to know what could the sea be doing now.

The universe:
sunlight fills the door, wooden tables rough-hewn stand,
cats mewl in the corner, and a song is sung by a girl of ten,
while yet the wind is strong outside, and the oak trees
flail their branches with little tosses; oh,
and you have got another picture! Oh, the cards
will never finish, exchanging our pictures?
Life shines in all its avatars: sing me a song, tell me a story,
say you love me.

World Cup 2011, and English strategies going ahead

2011-03-08T09:58:00.007+05:30

Keven Pietersen's injury and subsequent exit from the tournament could very well prove a blessing in disguise for England; as an England supporter, I am in fact much more excited by Eoin Morgan's re-entry than doused by KP's probable end to one-day career. Pietersen is someone who is self-destructive, and all the talent that he has doesn't save him from that, rather only propels him further to his own annihilation: what it means in a team game and a psychological game like cricket is that it also influences the team. While Strauss's level-headed captaincy and Andy Flower's clear goals have done a lot to stymie that feeling of going-nowhere which often originates from destructive tendencies, England is best served, I believe, by complete absence of Pietersen from the dressing room. Not to speak of what is coming in as replacement - the world's best one-day player, Morgan!

Given the unusual role that KP had been assigned in this tournament, that of an opener, England does seem to be beseiged by new selection issues. Morgan, if indeed fit, is an automatic choice for no. 5 or 6 slot; but who will open with Strauss? Can England afford to weaken their middle order, given that the lower middle hasn't been performing at all (though maybe with Morgan now there, it will start to provide some of its own fireworks), and move up a man from the middle order to the opener's position? KP was performing the role of a sacrifical goat fine so far, so that later on Strauss could build big partnerships with Bell and Trott, but the question is who is up for sacrifice now?

I would say, Collingwood. He has been dropped because of his continued lack of form, but for me, with his courage and never say die, he is not one who should be overlooked. He can bowl as fine as or better than Yardy, and in addition could be the partner for Strauss for the first few overs against most oppositions (except Tait and co.). If he scores runs, better; if he gets his eye in, much better; if he is out first ball, fine: he will still do better than what Yardy can do any day. More runs made, less runs conceded. Isn't that what cricket is all about, in essence?

Four strategies seem to be on the cards for England, and it would be interesting to see with what England go; it is important that they settle on one of them successfully right now, because with their win over South Africa, the next two games appear slightly easier, before the knockouts loom. England should easily win over Bangladesh, and as far as West Indies goes, whether they even want to win or not will depend then on who might be their likely opponent in the quarters depending on those two points.

1. The conservative strategy, which England is most likely to follow and I like the least: Strauss and Bell to open, Morgan in for KP and batting at five or six, Yardy keeps his place.
This is a strategy I might go with against Australia (if England do face the Aussies any time in the knockouts), because Australia won't play Yardy well, but that's about it.

2. The overtly-attacking strategy, which could backfire dangerously: Strauss to open with Luke Wright as a pinch-hitter opener (and thus Wright in place of Yardy), Morgan in for KP.
Heavy risk in giving the ball to Wright for more than three or four overs; against any good opposition, he will be belted around. I also don't have much faith in his batting abilities except hitting an occasional boundary.

3. The defensive strategy, which to me is the wisest presently: Get back Collingwood (in place of Yardy); he is your most experienced one-day player and his guts to stick it out are legendary. Morgan in for KP at five or six.
Even if he doesn't score, the oppositions going forward will be teams like West Indies and probably Sri Lanka or Australia in the knockouts: his wicket-to-wicket line will trouble all those three teams. Get back him as opener; with Strauss playing so well, he will have the time to stick around, and with the new ball even his edges will flow to boundaries. Once he gets some confidence, the old Collingwood with tight singles run will resurface, and England will start looking formidable.

4. The confused strategy, which is always the most foolish: Prior opening with Strauss.
Whoever else is selected and is wherever, how many games do you think Prior can fire in the opening position? I see Prior succeeding neither against Brett Lee nor against Malinga.

What England must ensure is to keep Trott, Bopara and Morgan in the middle order, no matter what. Also, if a wicket falls after the 35-over mark, England must send Morgan in and not wait till the death overs start; Morgan is not hit-and-miss batsman but also technically good, and he will need ten-twenty deliveries to get in. Bopara's position should be fluid and he could be even sent in at four, ahead of Bell and after Trott. I am liking the combination of Trott and Bopara at the crease together, and as minimal the separation between the two, the better it is.

What England must also ensure is to oversee how they are using their bowlers. Swann or Collingwood (if he's there) can bowl a couple of overs right at the beginning with Anderson, then Broad to take over, maybe continuing with Collingwood/Yardy (whoever's selected). It's important to keep Anderson's overs for that 30-34 over time (as Strauss did so well against SA), and Bresnan's overs for all of the 38-50 over mark. I would underuse Bresnan till the time slog overs come into effect. It is important to remember that teams can not only explode in slog overs but also implode: as was so remarkably demonstrated in that nerve-wracking India-England thriller, where both teams chose the latter route and virtually tried everything to lose from winning positions.

According to me, England and India are the strongest contenders for the World Cup this time, but England have a slight edge now with Morgan's coming back in. Dhoni's captaincy has been impressive but he really lacks bowlers and it's difficult to see India not losing an important knockout match with the kind of bowlers they have. Australia is dangerous, especially with Michael Hussey's coming back: the problem with the Aussies is their lack of adaptability to all conditions. Aussies can win against Indians and Springboks, but they will have their work cut out against the English and Sri Lankans. Pakistan is a dangerous side, but their batting is too brittle to last for three knockouts.

To have a look at the other teams, Bangladesh has been terribly disappointing, but their main enemy has been their own complacency. New Zealand is a team out for walloping, and having whitewashed them just before the World Cup, Bangladesh thought that it belongs to the big league: they forgot discipline and character, the mainstays of cricket. Captain Shakib al-Hasan hasn't been too bright either with his toss calls, team selection or bowling changes: in the India game, he came across to me as a coward; he was protecting himself and his reputation rather than taking any risks. I don't see Bangladesh reaching knockouts, and should they do so, they will just be easy meat for the opposition.
It is Ireland for whom the Cup will be remembered: they yet have a potential win over Holland remaining, and if they could upset West Indies or South Africa, we have the possibility of Ireland making to the knockouts! And, even if they don't have Morgan which they should have had, the Irish can go as far as any other team in this tournament: they have good players, they have discipline and maturity, they gel very well as a team, and they play bravely.
West Indies could be dangerous but Dwayne Bravo has to fire: they could then even reach to the finals, with the help of a Gayle-storm or two.

I think England is going to take the Cup.

Matchstick

2011-02-09T05:27:00.003+05:30

A little yellow stick, the soft wood in my hand is like the voice never heard. Chatter of magpies, rush of blood in the popping athlete's vein, mother singing song to her long-sleeping child at two in the night. The world sleeps, and when the sulfur burns, like a prayer the soul burns. The supplication and the sword. Then I wonder.

About the dog's lair, about the earthworm's mansion, and about the coal mines. First rays of sun or searcher, in the hole. Like day is brought to me. Like day is carried and transported and made exclusive for me. If I will cry or I will sing, it will not matter, for my voice will never be heard: this is my freedom and this is my perch.

I will taste earth, the sweet and sticky earth, with lecherousness. Then I will know myself: my memories will come, and I will imagine where people are laughing and where there never was darkness. How the sky is blue and pure, and how I have heard that when you touch the sky, there are ripples in it, and then you kiss the shades.

I hold for too long, and my finger and thumb get burnt. I lick them and I laugh. Light is worth a thousand burnings to me, if only I had a thousand sticks. Now there is none, but there is a newcomer in the dark. The smell of my flesh is subtle but speaks an unknown language; I will know the alphabet one day.

the watermelon

2011-02-01T21:14:00.003+05:30

Red pearl drops
and the moon reflects blood
all night, bears gnaw

in a dream, the child wakes to red curtains.

How we understand the billion destinies, to shut out the billion-and-oneth

2011-01-16T18:49:00.005+05:30

Or: the seemingly endless process of creating a repository, yet at the very start of which we set parameters for what shall be entered into it?

I could start with simple, reductionist analogies: the world is obsessed with digital and MP3. Yet the first one only means greater control (as of yet), not the richness of an analog content; the second one only means less hogging of memory resources, again not the richness of a WAV file. A computer programmer often creates a look-up table when instead of a binary logic applying to things, there is a particular case for a particular instance: the programming is only done for when and how to access the lookup table, and whether it's a dynamic or static table; whether it may grow or not; and when it grows, what will be the maximum limit before you start removing something, having an overrun? The last question is a crucial question: because every human being is a new story with the richness of his and her world; my experience is not yours, and if you have simulated mine, then you still haven't simulated as yet my daughter's. Or the one that I have not yet experienced.

What is thirst?

I have often grappled with the question and so have many. How to define it? By the words, that you feel parched? By coming up with magic Orwellian words that will tell everyone what does it mean: I wonder what will the thousand words for "love" will be if it comes to that stage of lingual foliation? By the exact knowledge of what chemicals get produced where and which impulses do those chemicals "fire"? Or, dismiss the question saying that it is merely a play-acting, a dream, that no real thirst exists, that it is either a figment of my imagination or Brahma's dream, that I know thirst by imagining it to be real and thus I know thirst - the advaita oneness? Do I? I do not want to define the sensations: I want to know what's that feeling, which if I am thirsty only then I may know (and if in my imagination, then how in my imagination that particular feeling: can I imagine how does a dog feel thirsty?). Objectifying thirst yes does give me great knowledge: knowledge that may help me preventing thirst in someone, that may help me inducing thirst in someone else, that may help me varying its degrees, that may help me play with it just as I can use my computer without understanding the bus cables in it. Will knowing all the signals be actually the knowledge, and thus make it redundant whether I experience thirst or not in life?

Daniel Dennett says, yes. Mary is the omniscient being. Or, RoboMary is the omniscient "someone." She knows what happens to other robots when they see red and thus she knows what will happen to her, by which I assume that she already has perfect knowledge of herself is what Dennett is implying. Or, rather, she doesn't need to know: her brain's simulation acts like a controlled input A and seeing red is another input B (again controlled, because she knows the results on other robots); however, the output is as yet unknown - she will only "know" it once the simulations of her brain and seeing red are run. The following questions arise:

1. The omniscient being is someone who already knows everything. RoboMary can only know about her reaction on seeing red after doing the equivalent of seeing red - running a red-seeing simulation. She cannot anticipate it; she has no way of knowing beforehand what will it be on encountering red. Doesn't contact with red give knowledge hitherto hidden to RoboMary?

2. Imagine Mary whose brain is implanted with RoboMary. Without ever encountering red, if she somehow can imagine red, she will then have the emotions of experiencing red. The crucial question is how will she imagine red? RoboMary will simply process the wavelength info of red color and thus without even knowing what red looks like, Mary may have a gamut of emotions that she would have experienced on actually seeing red with Mary's brain.

Right? Or, is there a catch? RoboMary does run simulations based on Mary's brain but the other input is all the reactions of all other people/robots. Is the output actually reflectant of Mary's brain? If 100 people did this and that with such and such elements in their brains with the red color, Mary with her particular brain should experience all this. The question is: how many people will be the deciding factor? 1000? One crore? One billion?

What Dennett does is to discount the possibility of a wider template than whatever is the number of robots RoboMary is feeding upon: or can humans with new combinations of chemicals and post-modifications of those chemicals given conditions, surroundings, etc., be not born? A billion human beings may be recorded, but who is to say that the billion-and-oneth will not have any element new (and then who is to determine if that information might not have been crucial to determining Mary's state on seeing red?); in a blind race to objectify experience, and human experience, why are we forgetting that we never created the world (even if a Creator didn't) and that we do not know what life is, what thirst is? The billion-and-oneth might yet be different: but, ah, yes, given the growing controls on me, it will be much more difficult to produce anything but my clone or my neighbour's clone.

Move on, Berni!

days of colds

2011-01-12T19:15:00.004+05:30

Today was slow. Sometimes I become slow. Everything gets blocked with mucus and the air beats me as it does every other object. Amidst the discussions, the laughter, the zeal to do something, amidst it all there are moments when I feel the earth has become a map. I wonder if I were to say this to anyone, would I be looked at as if I'm crazy? But it does feel so. The finger moves to trace the Arctic Circumpolar and in a moment all the people struggling with identities, love, recognition, the meaning of life, a great sorrow, a sharp event, a prolonged circumstance, the people elated after winning applause, having scored well, something to look forward to, the people busy in spinning stories, teaching new mysteries, researching new methods of saving lives, trying to solve an obscure village's very real problems, and those people who roam about in guises but do nothing, who want to do so much but cannot be true, who will even destroy life rather than create even a mere clay statue: in prairies and meadows, in mountains where snow falls for the whole winter, sitting and watching from windows of havelis where the road marches by every day but their lives don't move on, in aeroplanes where live moves on so fast that it has become again stationary, and in thoughts that fly faster, that connect and spring from books and music, that immortalise because they cross the time. But then this is the world that my heart beats for, the world of good and bad, true and false, of reason and unreason, of rationality and irrationality, of kiss and slap, of procreation and murder. And the world becomes a map, a sheet of paper on which I dream, my elbows dream.

What's tangible? Whom to believe? Where to rest? What to achieve? Then I remember the hound that roamed the moors. Then I recall how sharply etched in my mind are the silent smoke curls going up in the air of the unseen silhouette of the thief prowling on the roof. I remember how people not just fight for honour and ethics, but rather there is more to life: I remember there is love. I remember there is the instinct of love and goodness, like when the man tries to save a little dog just when the firing practice is to take place and he loses his sight as a result. He does save the dog. I also remember that modern science will try to explain away his action as if it's something not otherwise acceptable at all; I of course know humanity doesn't save dogs and lose eye sights and hence it's a thing worth investigation. I remember the lakes that shimmer in glinting winter sunlight and give joy to a child's heart. I remember belief and the childlike joy in it and how the grasshopper sits on blank white walls every night and the child looks on with wonder and fear and fascination, as if the grasshopper is the god. He's still to learn the god by name, because that is the role of the world to teach him that and to then make him obey a thousand things (or to disobey); but he's already known God for once, the green lanky insect with an antenna like a fisherman's rod to someone who has not seen fishing.

I am slow today. I can't even remember what's spit in French. Outside there is a world that is debating vehemently about unemployment figures and for hours they are debating and for hours they are. They look at me; either they want another wise opinion or they want me to make myself scarce. I want neither; I don't want them. But, there is my map spread out on the table, and there are these people also in it. Some make music, draw paintings, write books, and play a new part; but mostly all they do is just make noises, noises. Noises tire me; I love silences. Or dialogues. Sometimes when I fold the paper, it crackles: everyone has a world, so rich a world. Why do they have to make noises, I realise? I don't know, probably will never. It doesn't always matter, not when I am not slow. I have loved, and I may live. Sometimes remembering the shiver that that hound sent down my spine; isn't that the thrill of life and the love I have loved with?

untitled

2011-01-06T23:43:00.002+05:30

What was it
you remembered, today?
The wisp of moon, the feather of my soul
or the red, shiny tomatoes that reflect my joy?

Let them make merry

2011-01-04T19:29:00.000+05:30

I went through gnarled walnut trees
eaten by care and worry, with useless fight
to survive; when I sang to them, they wept.

A Christmas gift

2010-12-25T21:54:00.002+05:30

the wooden sparrow
will fall and break
into pieces.
and then you will cry,
but the hands that made one
will make another.
the tree of life,

can it die? can it rot?

what matters: do you want to buy another?
the new carving, the new wood,
another smell; a story of nights spent dreaming of you
and yet you be the unknown; but you are the mind
my soul, the woodartist's goddess
and the human he has sought to know always;

and sometimes, all the toys will come
with labels and stickers, with price tags
and yet where is that wooden device which was made for tales
which wants warm hands, and does not want to be bought;
yes, it will be difficult to find it,
and yes, you will want to touch it, you will want to touch the wood

from the tree of life.

Ashes 2010-11: Preview

2010-11-20T20:12:00.005+05:30

England not only have their best chance of finally winning an away Ashes after more than two decades of wait, but they also have a chance of being ruthless: modern sport is not an amateur's pleasure, and for the English cricket team to attain supremacy over the next five-odd years, it is important that it starts stamping its authority on a pathetic Australian team right now. A much more stiff challenge would come whenever it meets India; and there's no better way to prepare for it than to relegate the Aussies to somewhere midway in the Test teams' table.

I have no idea from where will Austalia produce a win: at the most it can hope for inclement weather, poor umpiring decisions, and draws. The biggest thorn in their flesh will be Graeme Swann: also, this time England are not carrying any baggages who only flatter to deceive; rather than the likes of Harmison and Hoggard, England have a well-rounded pace attack without stars: Anderson to swing and zip it, Broad to pepper it short, and Finn and Tremlett as able seam backups. It is important that Broad doesn't get carried away and gets mature: he should start mixing full-length deliveries with his short ones, the stock ones for him. To reiterate, Aussie batting is in doldrums, and I don't see the likes of Katich filling an opener's role beyond making a slow, scratchy half-century at times. Ponting and Clarke are completely out of sorts, while Hussey's been found out now since some time in the international arena; Australia will have to depend on quick runs by Watson at top of the order and a fightback by the lower order. But those are not ideal situations to have: it's the middle order, numbers 3 to 6, that are vital for winning a Test match. It would have been wise for Australia to bring in Cameron White in place of Marcus North; he is a much better batsman, attacks more, plus a genuine spinner compared to North's colorless bowling. But, nowadays, Australian selectors behave more like the English selectors of the last decade, and vice versa.

On the other hand, England's biggest problem ahead of the series looks only to be the enigmatic Pietersen; I don't think he will like that adjective, and he shouldn't. Geniuses like to prove themselves in tough conditions, and that is what he will love to do. However, if England have the series early in their bag, then I will still be tempted to replace him or Trott (whoever's not doing too well) with Eoin Morgan, even if Morgan hasn't played a single warm-up game so far; Pietersen and Trott are around thirty, and it's the mid-twenties' Morgan who is the future for England. He's courageous, and he takes the game to the opposition. He's a mature lad, unlike Bell, who in my books is a far greater worry than Pietersen or Cook. The rest of the English batting lineup is solid: Strauss as always is very reliable, Collingwood is in good nick, and the English lower order led by Swann and Broad know how to knock off quick runs.

The key to this series, and the difference between the two sides, is bowling. Australia haven't got any decent spinner at all, while England have got Swann, the best spinner right now in world cricket. Plus, none of the Australian fast bowlers have any huge kit of unplayable deliveries: Hilfenhaus is honest but one can keep watching him carefully and that's all; Johnson and Siddle are wild and erratic, and I don't see them getting wickets unless the batsmen get overexuberant; while Bollinger can be a little dangerous at the start of a fresh day's spell or at the end of a day, but thereafter, for lack of variety and incision, he is simply not international class. On the other hand, though the English bowling attack is not at the heyday of 2005 (Harmison, Flintoff, and Simon Jones), the present one sticks to its guns and loves to tweedle out the batsmen more by precision than by sheer bluster.

I would love England to whitewash Australia: a fair justice for being at the same receiving end last Ashes in Australia. But is that possible? Yes, I say so, if England start well, and keep the intensity going. They must keep their fielding tight and go for correct reviews. In any case, England should at least win by 3-0 or 4-0, if not more. As I said, I don't see the other column giving any work to the scorer; I just don't see how can Australia win a game!

The Ashes won in Australia will also be a lovely final reply (not that he needs any now, after having inspired England so beautifully over the last year or so) for Andy Flower to all his who-now-say-they-never-said-so detractors. (That being said, the World Cup could be the last remaining dream; England has never won the 50-over one.) Mental strength is the best pedigree, especially in cricket, as has proved Flower, Strauss, and Collingwood: three men whose play and strategies are more marked by pugnacity and audacious determination than desires to bloom only when spring comes.

Your Moment Is Waiting

2010-10-29T11:44:00.003+05:30

The highly impressive "Your Moment Is Waiting" ad for Kerala Tourism (watch the ad on keralatourism.org) raises several questions when it comes to documenting something, when an ad purports to recreate an authentic feeling or emotion: how justified is a filmmaker?

The ad in question is probably the only tourism ad worth its salt I've seen in all my existence till now for any part of the world: it pushes the boundaries of both film as art and film as spectacle, and it resonates with a traveller's emotions, his/her seeking of merging with an unknown. It also manages to give glimpses of Kerala to some extent, though trying to understand, comprehend, portray, and learn India can be an extremely difficult task. It is worth mentioning that instead of a local music score, director Prakash Varma has gone for a Senegalese composer's mystery-evoking piece, and of course the lead model, Miriam Llorah, blends in beautifully: she looks a discoverer at the same time as in harmony with her surroundings. In sum, it's one of those rare beautiful ads which come once in many years.

However, Kerala is not at all lonely: it is the unloneliest spot, even when you are in the thickest of forests and for miles there is no one, of India. There is something so bustling in the air itself, there is such a sense of life having explored every nook of this place, that, except probably to some extent for the Ananthapura lava plains, where man feels lonely in terms of free and floating in the sky rather than drifting, that feeling of lonely searching which the ad evokes is not there at all. Rather, Kerala represents a paradox of one feeling connected with oneself and yet being participatory in the world: one connects with oneself as part of the world, not as the individual detached from it, and yet the connection is the only thing that stresses and implies the individuality. From a director's work viewpoint, the film is stunning in that it is highly consistent, too: the exact shade of the sunlight while Miriam is floating on the Alapuzha backwaters is not only just so reminiscient and authentic, but also brings on again that feeling of searching; yet, Kerala makes you open the doors to the world and your heart registers every beat and every drop of water, and it is that openness that I miss in the ad. It's a wonderful ad, yet it is not Kerala: the international gloss added should not deprive something of its spirit. In India's and Kerala's case particularly, it is the happiness and the oneness with which an Indian lives, a resolution of everything. To come to India, and to Kerala, is to be liberated: and find all the missing connections.

untitled

2010-10-28T22:52:00.003+05:30

soon the birds fly away
and settle on branches, everywhere on the island
their raucous cries, their steady perches
and how they are slotted; to be a bird,
the definition is have wings and build nest.
and keep flapping those wings.

Grant Flower returns

2010-10-07T21:16:00.004+05:30

Grant Flower's shock return to playing international cricket means even more than those times when Zimbabwe and South Africa were finding their feet in cricket in the late 1980s and early 1990s; I still remember an old Clive Rice struggling, another old John Traicos struggling even more. Thirty-nine-year-old Flower might or might not struggle, though I don't think he will with either bat or ball (and I believe he could be a handful with the ball in T20 cricket), but what he brings to the team is not leadership but the charisma of the halcyon days of Zimbabwe cricket - a team that had everything in the world, including their penchant of playing a game for the game, for the love of it, and not for making and grinding careers out, and yet a team that did not have a home.

What happened six or seven years ago is now painful history, but today a fresh breath is blowing in. T20 is bringing in never heard of money into the game of cricket, which would be good for the youngsters playing the game in the Caribbean and the African countries. There are options other than football, rugby and baseball. For a tall, strapping lad, basketball might not be the only avenue; he might still become a fast bowler. Because with the rise of T20, Test cricket will also rise, I believe: it is the 50-over one-day game that should suffer. I also see the United States entering the game in the next five years, of course only the T20s: that moment, especially whenever the US wins its first game, should be as pivotal a moment for cricket as was India's World Cup win in 1983. It will also be good as the power center will not remain one: earlier England, now India; rather US and India, two focal points of the game, with Australia an ambitious third.

The infusion of old and new blood in Zimbabwe cricket is not coincidental; a person like Andy Blignaut, why would he want to be a part of the team again (though not selected this time)? Coaches are pouring in for the Zimbabwean domestic teams from the world over, including someone of the stature and of the honesty of Allan Donald; they are even getting sponsors. What is important now is that the coaches play their roles: it is only encouragement that one needs in sport, especially in cricket which is completely a game of mental strength, guts and strategy. Masakadza especially is someone who is supremely talented: Flower must groom him. From somewhere, Zimbabwe needs to find a couple of good fast bowlers; they already have decent spinners. The bowling attack was the problem with Zimbabwe even when it was at its strongest; that is the first thing it must target now. I also think Zimbabwe must blood in a new keeper now: Taibu, though big of heart, has been given enough chances, and he is still not mature enough for the game. If possible, somehow, get Sean Ervine back from Australia (or wherever he is now!) and, the wildest of dreams, Doug Marillier. The most wild of dreams would of course be that in a couple of years while Zimbabwe rebuilds itself slowly and steadily, Andy Flower finishes his assignment with England's coaching position and returns to his home: now the challenge will be the sweetest, the toughest, and when has Andy shied from life's hardships? He loves truth; he will return.

The Story & The Idea

2010-10-03T09:23:00.002+05:30

You asked me, isn't a novel an idea carried through its whole span using fictional characters? Yes; I ask you in return, isn't the expression of a man in itself always the venting forth of their ideas that they have carried all throughout life, that somehow they want to understand through the written word? Doesn't, when one expresses, isn't it without object at first? Don't I sing to myself? And when I write, it is as if something that I was not able to concentrate upon, something I was missing, by those words that will queue up in my brain and get written on the paper; as if something external to me resides in me, and is actually not external, and yet with whom I often remain unacquainted. But should the expression seek an object - in which case I call it propaganda; when a singer's sole objective is to give a concert, I equate it to a propaganda, but when she can give a concert and yet each time lose herself in the beauty she is creating, yes she's singing - or should the expression burst forth because it had to, because there is no reason except survival, except shrieking in the deep woods? Shouldn't the expression be free, carefree? So, everything is an idea carried forth, each expression: but when tempered by the discipline so that that expression is intelligible, that the shriek becomes a voice, the freedom becomes liberty, the idea becomes more than that: a work of art.

I don't agree with a lot of what Rand says, so maybe I could be biased; so I will take an author I love: Dostoyevsky. His novels were always not quite "well-structured," as he had a lot to say, his primary objective was his ideas, carried through diverse characters; in fact, just as with many other authors (including Rand's), most of his characters are kind of repetitions, though in Dostyoevsky's case sometimes the gradations are steep: Stavrogin is a horrific form of (pre-Sonya) Raskolnikov, with Ivan Karamazov somewhere in the middle in that evolutionary period. If ideas were the only criteria, then "The Devils" would be the best Dostoyevskyan novel for me: and not just ideas, but characters like those of Stavrogin and Shatov are strongly etched on my mind for ever. The former is a brilliantly conceived precursor of all that was to come to the world in the twentieth centuty: the fragmented, anarchist man. Stavrogin can rape a girl and yet not feel any guilt about it; the reason is not a mere "he's cruel," maybe he's not that - it's that things have become meaningless to him; ideas, beliefs, the world, the people. Everything's "egal" to him: c'est egal. Things are meaningless, he's tired, and he tries to live with the games he could indulge in. He's intelligent, sharp, brilliant - and he's tired. Ivan is still one step behind: things are becoming meaningless to him, because is there an answer to his question why an eight-year-old girl is shut by her mother in the middle of a winter night in a latrine for bedwetting? The "middle", the "winter", even the "latrine", and even the "shut" are in fact just peripheral, sensational details: the question is the reaction to the bedwetting. And, yet, as he cannot understand Alyosha and his love - and yet Alyosha is also searching for meanings, he also has none, he also is tired, but probably the only difference is that he's not lost hope to find them, or that they even exist - as he cannot understand that, he's still a step behind.

But, "The Devils" is a mass of brilliant ideas, that Dostoyevsky has desperately tried to fashion into a novel, but has miserably failed. For me, it remains one of my favorite novels, but that does not mean I can recommend it as a novel to anyone else. Can everything be a collage? The characters, the plot - they also mean as much, and more; suspension of belief is fine, but the alternative world in which now we're existing - because a complete suspension is never possible; I think, I exist - should also be believable. I wonder if you've seen any of the artwork by Salvador Dali, or his films: they're brilliant, I am in awe of the genius of the man, and yet they horrify me as much as Stavrogin did. Of course, you can put it all down to my old mad belief in meanings, that they exist, and my continual striving for them; but, if even the music is mathematical, and every single leaf in nature, even after all the mutations, has a pattern to it behind, how can I deny those meanings? I wouldn't even go so far: I ask you, if the other can touch you, how can meanings not exist? Meanings are maybe gained and lost, but as regarding existence, they do exist for me.

untitled

2010-09-10T19:02:00.002+05:30

I also feel hunger. I also become angry. I also want love. I need not be strong, if the absence of all these needs is strength. I am not. I also want to get wet in the rain with you and eat something hot. I also want someone to trust me, to want me. Just like the world, am I. Like you, like the world - not so frozen, not so cruel, not so arrogant, not so lost. The leaves keep falling, rain comes every evening.

Protectionism on rise in the United States

2010-08-09T21:29:00.005+05:30

The strength of America is the infrastructure it provides, which enables more research to happen there, more creation. But in a fast-changing and globalizing world, America by taking more and more protectionist measures is going back on everything its post-independence heritage stood for: it is now becoming a closed economy, which does not reward talent, does not provide equal opportunity, does not even claim to do so.

Imposing heavy duties on imports from China wasn't just a one-off measure from the Obama administration. This has continued, and the latest is a bid to increase the fees for H1-B visas (meant for skilled worker entry and working permit) by some astronomical amount - so that, as the senators present the new proposal to the American public in an attempt to win their votes, firms from China, India, and other countries hire American workers instead of sending their nationals for temporary periods of time. How stupid!

The implications are manifold. One, and the most immediately self-defeating, is that once you put these hikes in place, the price of services increases. That is to say, a firm like Infosys would of course have to ask more for its services from the American company which had contracted some work to it. This would mean greater costs for that American company, and where would be the most reasonable place to save on expenses? Cut some more local jobs!

Two, which is more hurting in the long run, faced with increasing costs of work done onshore, more work that was being done onshore will now move offshore: rather than asking skilled people to come and work in America, that work is contracted to be done elsewhere. This will not be something just short-term: you're giving a chance to the people of other countries to develop those infrastructures which they have been neglecting all along, to do more top-draw stuff and come out of their shells. It's of course good for the so-called developing countries, but that's strange to find something good from America in the interests of any other country, even if blindly.

In times of reversal of economic momentum in the West, and an equally steady growth in the economy supported by a young demographics for the future in the East, it is imperative for America to realize its existing weaknesses and rather work on curbing the consumerism which had acted like a bubble and which it used brilliantly to make itself the most powerful nation in the world, but which had to burst: and take a different tack, keeping the economy open. Otherwise, time does not forgive: it will fall by the wayside for newer powers to emerge.

wet days

2010-07-31T19:14:00.003+05:30

Flames: how they dance! What are you thinking, feeling, tasting? I wonder if I should have ever tried to learn knitting: to learn seems very heavy, but I might love it if I could learn it without investing time in it. For an hour when it's raining outside, I would like to knit absent-mindedly, thinking of things and thinking of songs and thinking of the night moon and thinking of what all am I and thinking of how there are yet thousands of steps to be taken and thinking of how I would love to take each step even if difficult or even if easy but all for me for that is life, and thinking of times that slide into each other when nothing happens but those other times when things seem to happen, and yet I wonder isn't something happening always?

They say let go. They say hold on. Crazy. I don't know why people are so full of advises. Let me live, let me love. I am not anyone else, I am myself. I love because I love, and I live because I love. Why do they want meaning to my life, to my every word, to my acts, to anything? No success matters, no failure matters; there is the myself that is precious. Yes I love; and that is sacred. Not preserved, mummified sacred. But my day-to-day life, my every morning, my wonder, my breathless excitement. My every achievement and every failure - each something, not because of how they see me, of how they talk of me - but simply because each an expression, a discovery, a knowledge. Of me, of you, of life.

today

2010-07-09T22:57:00.002+05:30

The day started rainy, muddy, wrapped up in laziness, asking for hot tea. By the time it was noon, the sun was pouring in and the buses were dry and empty; the heat had become scorching. And when the turn came for late afternoon, once again the clouds had canopied the sky from rim to rim, and after a blast of ten minutes of heavy rain, once again all was rainy, muddy, and asking for a long walk where I can soil my trousers, make them frayed with all hues of dirt, count the number of needle like rain drops still left in the breeze entering my hair, touching my face, wanting to know me.

Long exposures

2010-06-07T23:41:00.001+05:30

The clouds are everywhere; it is like a rippled, pockmarked sky. Bright teeth, dark eyes. In sheets the rain comes and goes, the umbrellas fly about, the red and golden ring breathes some fog on the glass. I dream of a beautiful shy girl with lipstick, in a demure drawing room, waiting for her lover to come (he's supposed to be in a car), and the wet afternoon dulling itself into a gilded evening. With what? Maybe a comfortable dinner on his knees, a tight sleep in his arms. I laugh to myself, and drive further on: there is only paddy and paddy around me, and there is this thin long road, going up into the sea. It feels that all are waiting for me, everybody is silent so I can come up, and then they burst up into applause, into drums and cymbals. I think of her rainwashed hair and dream of a tea shop: a German tourist lands up there, and a bit awed, a bit afraid, a bit adventurous, she asks for cigarettes. The shopkeeper stares, there is only one another dog there, who sleeps there and prowls there; the woman brings up the warmth in her, makes her arms close together, and an impression registers in her brain. She would remember the tea shop on this rainy evening all her life. There is something about it she didn't know about life: the simplicity of it all, the beauty in it. The cigarette glows like embers. And now the wipers go a little awry, and I have to reach out my hands, and swear to myself. All will be flooded soon, and I must be on my way, on my way. I reach her: like wind, she touches you and yet is not yours; like the sea, she comes again and again, but yet keeps a soul to herself, her own silences and sounds. I can only kiss her, and she can only kiss me; we may only love.

untitled - short

2010-03-24T17:43:00.002+05:30

the bird of chalk arrives
sits on the statue in the center square
all round the sky falls, the leaves die.

Cricket formats and future; Afghan and English cricket

2010-02-23T21:18:00.003+05:30

Test matches were always exciting, but not as often as they have lately become. The flip side is that there's not much of that Ambrose v. Steve Waugh contest, or the 153 that Lara made to single-handedly take Windies across the line; the quality is low, as evinced by the recent Ashes, though the scoreline might suggest otherwise. A loss of character however might be permanent; what's interesting is that with the advent of Twenty20, which seems here to stay, would the Tests reduce or bow out, or will it be the one-dayers that are cramped for space? Sooner or later, USA will enter the fray, and even if they play a poor team, the huge market that it is will whet the Twenty20 into another sphere; and then what remains of the future of the other formats? And even if they remain, who will play them?

What a Twenty20 does bring into reckoning is a place in the sun for all: sometimes short-lived, and sometimes not; but a jitter could be down the throat any time. Afghanistan has proudly entered the World Twenty20, and they've been winning not just limited formats, but as I write this even chased down 494 against Canada in a four-day match, which is a monumental effort from a team that has simply inspiration and ambition to choose from, nothing else. Now drawn in a tough group, it will still be an education: and who knows if on a bad day for the opposing team, another dream story in the Afghan script. Pakistan being a no-man's land, it is India and Bangladesh who must ensure Afghanis to get proper exposure of cricket in the years to come; rather than inviting English counties, it would be much more exciting as well as futuristic to invite the Afghan national team in Indian domestic tournaments.

England as always has been taking one step forward and two steps backward. A player like Eoin Morgan is not even considered for Tests; in one-dayers he is sent so late that he can hardly establish an innings. Of course, most of the English top order is so fragile that sometimes he does get the prospect of a long stay, only to realise that the English lower middle order and tail are also not ready to oblige. Trott is fast becoming another Dravid, with his momentum-breaking abilities contributing more to losses than his runs to wins. And the saga of bits-and-pieces inexplicables like Luke Wright and Denly go on and on; a Cook would be better than Denly any day, in any format, how can they not get that? Or find someone new and young. And please, in spite of all those match-saving innings, don't get back Bell in! Get in Morgan! At 5 in Tests, at 4 in one-dayers (with Pietersen at 3), at 3 in Twenty20s. Get Foster in Tests, Prior in one-dayers, and just anybody who dons gloves but can hit in Twenty20s.

India blasts fascism out; a nation poised on greatness

2010-02-13T01:38:00.006+05:30

When a people become mature, the man whose business is to evoke hatred digs his own grave. The British divided India into unfulfilled scraps of religions and languages, this to a nation which already had a stew of castes and multiple rituals. The post-independence, partitioned India continued to see this profitable politics, with southern India especially at the forefront, as even today. But methods have to change as the times change.

The sheer diversity of India, unparalleled in human experience, and yet the unity of the oldest civilisation and the oldest religion of the world running through it, make it simply impossible for the country's people to become fascists, fundamentalists. The British might well have given a democratic superstructure to India, but well before that India was always democratic from heart: every warring and unwarring clan and kingdom and population of earth was and has been welcome here, from the invading Aryans and Alexander's Greeks, to the Slavs, to the Mongols (Mughals), from the refugee Persians (Parsis) to the modern-day Bangla refugees. Islam wasn't that of other lands here till Aurangzeb happened: Kabir and Sufi saints had created a beautiful synthesis of Islam and Hinduism, which only taught love among people, sans rituals, sans rigidites. And unmindful of the heart of India, now a few politicians think they can create even more ghettoes? Hinduism's very core is plurality: the day it's finished, it has become a religion from a tradition, another rigid discipline that would spawn untold number of terrorists.

My Name Is Khan might be an ordinary film, but the spectacular slap that Shahrukh Khan single-handedly, without any support from the film fraternity at all, has given through sticking to an upright stance and that the Mumbaikars have given in going to watch him through all the commotions and fears is a complete rejection of the fascist element that swept in a restless India in the last decade, a time when India was yet developing slowly and people were dissatisfied with lives and needed bones to pick. Not so the India of today, as very evident by what happened to BJP after Gujarat: from being the ruling power of India to a party that is on the verge of extinction. The Indian voter remembers; it will remember Thackeray this time, and the strong Indian media will keep them reminded of it. A stunning reprisal from the man on the street, bringing memories of the one time earlier when people rebelled - the VP Singh's Mandal crimes - a fresh hope is born today; it's truly a time when India can be heady.

All Rainbows Mine

2009-08-31T19:29:00.002+05:30

In lost pieces of checker, I danced and jumped, and every tadpole on this earth looked at me with envy and pity. Isn't that the perfect mixture? Of sentiments? The matrix was glue somewhere, paint somewhere; it tempted, it repulsed. Now in white washes of the sky falling everywhere, the blue is only left where I see, where I stretch hands, and where the mangoes dare to fall.

Reading poetry

2009-08-12T12:24:00.003+05:30

Most poetry I read nowadays tends to "third-manize" everything: considering the overwhelming output, it seems involuntary. Through centuries of Western materialism, we have been keeping ourselves more and more aloof, sinning in our privacy and then making the sin an art piece, so that we then also advertise the privacy which we think we deeply guard. Privacy? Or an inability to love someone else outside of oneself?

Too much of narrative poetry flows down the pages today, where no attempt is made by the writer to link him/herself to the poem. Only a pungent satire smokes the room in which we read it, or some doles handed out (in self-glorification? so that's the link?). True, you don't need to be a first-person narrator; you could be as far removed on a vantage as Frost in The Death of the Hired Man. And yet Frost's poem punctuates, stabs your heart with a thousand pauses, guilts; and thus it establishes a link to the writer, to the readers. It's not some story hung glazed on a wall; it's an exploration of not human emotions even, but human conditions. An exotic mix of places, words, and circumstances does not hold worth; what does is feeling what you are narrating.

Poetry written in abstract doesn't fare much better mostly. While narratives nowadays tend to emphasize "this thing happened to that woman," the abstracts overly use "the man," "the woman" as some general specimen type: the "one." Both alienate: so if someone writes a poem on despair, he makes me feel not just that he's in despair, not even the times when I was in despair, but he tries to forcibly make me feel I should be in despair, since his poem harps on either one should be in despair or one is in despair always, perennially, at least till the writer thinks fit to remove the spell and get into gaiety. I know after a bit of education everyone suffers from the illusion that they have something to say and from the delusion that people will hear them, but it's extremely difficult for someone who doesn't like systematic ways to bear the brunt of so many preaching pulpits, accentuated since most don't have even good orators (though this should be counted a virtue; imagine better orators, and I getting swept up by any of them?).

Disregard to human traits while accounting?

2009-07-09T12:02:00.002+05:30

Sometimes, I am not able to understand the standards of accounting at all! The place where I used to learn French was non-profit, but still I believe they do look at minimizing losses (since of course language institutes can never run at profit!). They used to charge extremely low, and if I compare it with a similar non-profit which used to charge at least three times to students learning German, located in the same city, then it really moves me to pity sometimes. An argument can be put forth, that if the fees were higher, it would be a turnoff for students (besides being harsh on someone who really wants to learn the language). I know that many who even complete all their levels are really not passionate about the language; they just drift. But then there are some who find it so tough and are at least that honest to themselves that rather than drift meaninglessly they drop out, and I think it is this student crowd that the institute must charge higher, because otherwise the libraries remain more poorly stocked, there are fewer film screenings, and fewer lights glowing somewhere.

Now what I've seen over the years is that the advanced levels have higher fees! And that's true even if they have teachers competent to teach at any level, so it's not a matter of having more expensive teachers for higher levels. And even if an institute follows the policy of paying a teacher a surcharge if she takes a higher-level course, then also I believe that this surcharge must be accrued from the fees of lower-level students, rather than that of higher-level ones. Simply because at the initial two levels, and especially the first, if there is a batch of 30 students, 20 or more are simply there because it's fashionable to learn French. They will drop out now or by the second level! The other 10 might suffer at this stage, but rather than keeping the fees low at all levels or spiking fees at higher levels, the costs should be covered here, since an institute also has a duty to see to that it is running and that the students who really want to learn are better served.

Ashes 2009: Preview

2009-07-08T10:13:00.004+05:30

While I went horribly wrong in my preview two years back, England went similarly on a wrong path, not playing Monty Panesar in the first Test, and giving all the initiative to Aussies. The onus of poor selection policy this time though seems to be on Australia: a single set of openers both of whom look likely to fail, no all-rounder, and an extremely poor spin option. On the other hand, England, even after a wretched winter and a summer of success against a poor West Indian Test side, look strong: for one, Aussies are weak against spin, and England have an option of plenty after decades, with Graeme Swann certain to give headaches to Aussies and Panesar and Adil Rashid fighting out for the other slots.

Batting well may decide the series fate, since though England seems to have a better attack on paper, they haven't too much in their arsenal should conjectures remain conjectures and speculations remain speculations. Flintoff should last the whole series, Anderson must be the matchwinner he's expected to be, Swann shouldn't become nervous and should hold ascendancy, and Onions and Harmison, whenever played, should at least be taking pressure off from the tired spearheads. These are all ifs and could horribly backfire against a middle order of Ponting, Michael Clarke, and Michael Hussey. I don't have high hopes from Katich, who at the most will last for a scratchy 30, and the new opener, barring an innings or two, and neither from Brad Haddin. Having said that, England must guard against their inability sometimes to take tailenders out quickly, especially with Australia having Mitchell Johnson, who bats better than he bowls!

Ricky Ponting's poor captaincy will be another decisive factor, and one of the things being Johnson's use itself: how much and when he is bowled, and when he is sent in the batting order. If I were Ponting I would send him even above Haddin, since he can be a genuine all-rounder and an extremely destructive one. What strategy does Australia employ against an unflappable Swann will be again crucial: if Flintoff remains fit, they can't afford to remain quiet at both ends. Ponting's own batting form might be crucial: he is a bunny to spinners, and it will be interesting to see what does Strauss do when he comes to crease. Strauss is an inventive captain, and I hope the pressure of Ashes doesn't get to him that he doesn't remain one; he showed against West Indies that he isn't averse to surprise the opposition, and this would be more than handy against Australia under Ponting.

England start as favorites this time. I think the openers Cook and Strauss will be a success, and while a lot has been said that Bopara is going to come unstuck at no. 3 position versus Australia, I think quite the opposite. If Bell is to come back into the team, it should be at the cost of Collingwood, though I would hate a coward taking the place of such a courageous man and I cannot see foresee Bell ever really doing anything other than disservice to England. KP, if he remains fit, should fire really really well: this might be his series! If he and Flintoff remain fit, then Aussies are not going to win even a single match. If problems arise there, then it will become interesting: how well Broad takes up the responsibilities both in batting and bowling departments, and does England show the courage to go to Foster in the latter part of the series, especially if the upper order is clicking well and the bowling needs more support from the wicketkeeper? A forgotten interesting cog is Collingwood himself: I think Flintoff's not going to do anything with the bat this time round, so the middle order relies heavily on KP and Collingwood, and how well Collingwood and Broad can combine and produce partnerships (not to forget Swann as we start entering the lower order, since he's a handy bat too). I don't have any worries about English bowling: Anderson and Swann are enough for the Aussies, and if Flintoff adds to trouble, I don't foresee much there.

My prediction? 2-1 in favour of England, or even 3-1, with one game certainly likely to be a draw, most probably the first one at Cardiff. Hope I am wrong, since who loves draws? :)

Sounds

2009-06-19T13:17:00.003+05:30

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

2009-06-09T21:29:00.002+05:30

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

2009-06-06T07:52:00.005+05:30

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

2009-04-15T18:20:00.003+05:30

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

2009-04-09T22:22:00.003+05:30

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

2009-04-07T21:54:00.003+05:30

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

2009-04-03T22:54:00.003+05:30

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

2009-03-31T23:35:00.004+05:30

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

2009-03-15T23:16:00.000+05:30

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

2009-03-06T20:46:00.006+05:30

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

2009-02-26T22:38:00.002+05:30

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

2009-01-27T23:04:00.003+05:30

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?

2009-01-16T23:36:00.002+05:30

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

2009-01-16T00:23:00.002+05:30

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?

2008-12-08T17:37:00.000+05:30

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?

Fighting my desire

2008-11-24T12:51:00.002+05:30

The smoke hid it all:
there was neither the girl
neither the woods
and neither the man.
The billows, clouds, columns
ranting, raving, shrieking
crying, fighting, dying
and yes that was all.

There was only smoke:
people came, leaped, and vanished,
i was left a bystander
to the prancing of whim.

Going South

2008-09-07T13:15:00.001+05:30

Prosaic today.
Voluble, but not in terms of
yellow sky, the sky-roof opened
not the men working, bending
quietly in paddy fields, the hot
coolness of mandapams
once you step on the baking courtyards
of those vast stone monoliths. Not
the Brihadeeswar whose galleries
still resound with shrieks of delight,
mine. Not the way of life
where you open a plantain, spread rice,
and wear just a shirt over trousers,
and think of better things.
Not the cardamom in air as I cross
the border, and enter into tea gardens
split from hill to hill, and then I
realise why I am prosaic today.
I am going south.

Tehelka: Obsessed with framing

2008-09-06T23:59:00.002+05:30

After many years, today I bought a magazine: if you exclude the Gujarati magazine Safari (knowledge-based), I have now not read an Indian magazine for quite many years now. None at all on politics, business, “current affairs”, sports, fashion, photography, travel, food, bikes, computers, gizmos, cars, and whatever else is there! I bought the Tehelka. Apart from the premium put on sensationalism at every moment right from the cover itself, the shoddy production values, and the lack of any depth in the case of any article (worse than India Today, if it is still today as it was many years back), I was stunned by the extraordinary amount of what I call “situating”. I am referring to the September issue (Vol. 5, issue 36).

The first interesting bit starts from the cover photo of a boy, a boy burnt in the tension simmering in Orissa between Hindus and Christians. Designed to sell? Yes, maybe, considering that we’ve got an ad for NCR region’s tallest towers having “apartments with plunge pools” at the back cover. What a juxtaposition! On top of the cover, instead of reading a headline for a news, for something that has happened, I see a headline “Bihar overrun: A government-aided national calamity”, is the emphasis on the calamity and doing something about it, or on pointing fingers at the government? Or rather, just pointing fingers? At anybody, just point them. Yes, the journalist serves to bring out the truth, to bring out the nonchalant attitude of the officials involved in the rescue effort. But specifics don’t make generalities, first of all. Maybe, the article inside has just a bad writing style, after all it’s very current throughout the world. Take a specific example and imply that this is what is happening everywhere (because you know that people infer too easily a specific example to be a typical example). The article mildly fingers, gives the usual data regarding number of boats, displaced, marooned, dead and missing, villages, days, whatever: I thought that newspapers must have already done that in a better way. Ok, but you need to place things in context, or even in perspective? That’s why the figures? Great. So, where is the rest. A specific example, sweeping statement, and some figures: and the article is done within 2 pages. Who reads it? Does the reader then feel very great that he has done something for the Bihari flood-stricken? Or does he discuss the marooned and debate the correct figure with his colleague over lunch? Or does he assume himself supremely intelligent, since he ‘knows all’ and ‘can see through all’? Is that so? Maybe, that’s true. The last possibility. Yes, sometimes. But what’s important? To sieve things and get at the bottom of them drinking coffee in your armchair, or do something, change the face of world, its attitude? No, I don’t mean rallies, protests, strikes, mass campaigns. Maybe, they help. But I mean real thinking, tactful thinking on what to do, and then doing it. Not “I won’t stand this”, get together and bear some brunt, and feel good. No. Did it serve the purpose? What did you do actually? Better, change the media first of all. Why do people read a Tehelka? Change people, ask them about reading, why do they read it? They want information? Ok, we will give you better. You don’t want it too complicated. Ok, we will give it you slimmed, toned-down (but slip in something somewhere). And, most importantly, don’t “situate”.

Most intellectuals, the so-called ones, do a lot of it. So they align with causes they know nothing about. And then they situate to make themselves look better, make world look horrible, and thus actually make things more horrible. Maybe, the world is horrible. But holding a mirror isn’t going to give any confidence. No. Hold a false mirror. So that it sees a beautiful reflection and gets inspired. After all, truth is nothing but imagination, isn’t it? Look at the photos of the magazine. Why do they need to show undue stress where there is none? Why to horrify? And whom? The coffee-table readers who are going to spend fifteen rupees or more to buy you? Look at the photo on page 30, the cover story photo. Of course, the photographer doesn’t know how to make an impact, that’s another story. He should have focussed upon the bell, and keep the people in blur. That would have been really impactful. But I don’t agree with the slightly un-straight photo, the amount of burnt property shown in the foreground (of course, considering the caption, “… ruins of a church”), the font of the title caption superimposed on the image “In the name of God”. No. Pure sensationalism. By the way, the photo nowhere seems to show me “ruins” of any building. The people are clearly situated. Some are looking at the camera, they couldn’t resist it. But since all have been asked to look pondering, thinking about future, and don’t look at the camera, there are some who do that, but unfortunately are not good actors. Since after all once the cameraman goes, finding a good story with good shots to boot, they do have to think about future and how to live. Why to live. The next page’s photo is even worse, and caption is simply difficult to understand (“Ashes to ashes”!). No need to comment on the photo on p. 38 at all, completely tasteless, strainingly related. Of course, if you are situating, you should know how to pretend. All the photos in article “Undercover watchdogs” (starting on p. 44) seem to be that of models more to me than real men. Which is why, when you take a photo, it already gets determined: since you decide some instant when you want to take a photo, and you decide the instant when you do take the photo. So, it’s never reality, it’s always “framed”. Unfortunately, even with the best of photographers, it’s also “situated”: the photographed also is determined. Could be anything: his pose, his location in the photo, how much he will be in focus or out of it, how much in blur or out of it, his expression, and the very fact of his being “suitable” for the subject on which the photographer is working. That’s real unfortunate!

Last of the Valiants

2008-09-05T23:57:00.002+05:30

Graeme Hick retires! An era ends.

The last of the Rhodesians, the valiants, the cricketers who played the game has retired. Now, there's no more.

Why did Hick leave Zimbabwe? Yes, he has the county records. But no international lustre. With him and Andy Flower, Zimbabwe could have taken those last steps as well, since it was always the only weak point of Zim. Would also have sent Hick to better immortality than being just Ray Illingworth's undeserved, most rashly selected victim-in-chief.

Notes from Delhi

2008-06-15T22:08:00.000+05:30

I was at the other end of the auto which several people share with their perspiration, frustrations, and dreams. They also stare at the girls squeezing them. So, as I was saying, I was at the other end than the car which stopped besides my auto in the traffic. On the backseat, there was a woman. She was a middle-aged woman, obviously married. I thought, she is staring at the boy sitting on the other end of the auto as if she would really like him to fuck her, and I wondered whether the husband knew of such glances from his wife. Then I looked for the husband in the car, but could find none. There were two kids sandwiched against a man who only looked a younger brother or some kind of a vague cousin; the car was being driven by hired labour. Oh, so that's why she can probably indulge in her fancies … still the woman's look seemed to me too strong for this fleeting moment. I wondered, how dissatisfied she must be, but she looked very composed, very much the model housewife, so then I wondered were there skeletons right from the start? Then, just as the auto again started to move, I thought of looking at the object of this gory attention. And then I understood why the gaze was so virulent. The woman had been staring at a girl, thinking who would like to penetrate that girl!

Love

2008-05-06T00:30:00.001+05:30

(Inspired by the beauty of Maj-Britt Nilsson)

Pearls dived for from deep
Glitter on her neck, when
she wears them on a black dress
of wool, serge, and satin.

The woman is bronze, her mien is
Heroic
Equestrians look puny, and the
drawing room is small.

Knightly suitors, suave businessmen
all throng round her
She favours each with her radiant smile,
And each gets the manna from Heaven.

A coachman waits for the night to get over
so he can take her home to rest,
But she is the life of the soirée
and rooks don't caw at night.

Riot is not in the homes which sleep
peacefully
But in the bells which shake gnawingly
when the horse stamps his foot in the snow
impatiently.

Years of sunlight pass, and the coachman has long since frozen.
The thread that bound the pearls has broken, and one last pearl remains.
Again comes a dappled sky, and again comes the youthful wish.
For once, the snowman melts, and meets the thin air.

Guilt

2008-04-29T20:56:00.002+05:30

(Inspired from Ingmar Bergman's film "Summer Interlude")

The old woman was dressed in black; her scarf had a rim of navy blue, but it was now too much faded in the surrounding black. I was only crossing my way to the infirmary. I was engrossed in my thoughts, and never realised her presence, till she was suddenly in front of me, immediately facing me side-on. She looked at me strangely, her witch-like nose sniffed up the air, she looked at me with hate from the corner of her eyes, and then proceeded on.

I told her then in my dream the following night, "Why did you not speak to me? You know you are beautiful." She laughed cruelly, "Yes, everybody says so, up here. Tell me, what should I've spoken to you? Were you in a mood to listen to me? Now that you think you are nearer to me, at this time, you say so, but that time you only thought me a witch. Tell me, tell me I'm right."
I said, "I cannot recall what I thought of you, but how could it have been anything else? Here, let me take a picture of you, with that black crow behind you, on the tree. Ask him to shriek for me. I would love his open beak." She laughed again, "I do not have power over him, rather he has over me. Why, do you still think animals as dumb as you used to?"

The bell clashed, I woke up. Sunlight was pouring in, the sheets were all removed, and the doctor had come to replace my plaster. I looked around with disbelief. In the next bed I found a man. Yes, I thought, I had seen him before. Yes, he had told me he was a watchman, of what I forget. A young man with family to look after. Then I suddenly heard a loud wail from the next bed. Before I could hear it, I had already listened for it and knew it. It was a young, healthy baby crying for his milk. A lusty cry.

legs, lait, laid, laisse, laisser

2008-03-29T07:28:00.006+05:30

(Inspired from Jacques Derrida’s Post Card)

legs means legacy; old French had the pronounciation same as one would pronounce “lais”, old French for "leave (v.)" (laisser today). The legacy which one leaves; to whom? What is the legacy? The money one earned, and for which the heirs are going to fight and make their lives laides? Does one know what one is leaving behind? We leave the quelque chose, but we don’t know what that quelque chose is? And if we die intestate, maybe not even the quelqu’un to whom we lais we don’t know what. When we don’t even know the quelqu’un, why are we always so worried about our legacy? Are we so narcissistic? Are we ourselves the legs that we want laisser to the world, the whole world as quelqu’un. Certainly in the case of artists, certainly in the case of dictators. Doesn’t laisser then become intransitive then? It is only the case of je laisse, nothing more after all. I am more concerned with leaving; in fact, it’s more a case of je me laisse. Isn’t all laisser in the sense of legs then se laisser?

When I fuck a girl, I might leave a small imprint of myself in that girl. So, it’s really that je me lais. But, in the age of contraceptives, I might only je lais, intransitively. Why am I so eager pour me laisser? Why do I make myself so cheap so as to lais myself to n’importe qui? And why have I started to enjoy laisser more than legs? The woman gives all her lait to the child; isn’t it transitive on the part of woman but intransitive on the part of child? The child’s instinct says to drink it, to put his lips there, but not intent. Can I equate instinct with intent? Isn’t instinct Nature’s intent? So, here it’s a transitive action on the part of the third party, the Nature? (see my early post, envoyer, s’envoyer, ...)

When I laisse quelque chose, do I also put on a laisse (noun: "leash") on myself? Or on others through my legs? Do I want to guide the legs of everyone that follows as I wanted mine to and couldn’t? And, more importantly, why do they accept the legs that binds their legs?

envoyer, s'envoyer, vois, voix

2008-03-29T07:20:00.003+05:30

(Inspired by Jacques Derrida's Post Card)

When I send a letter to someone, it might not reach its intended destination. It might fall into 'wrong hands', into 'unknown hands', it might be just blown by wind and caught up in nettles, to become a fluttering, torn fragment of desires, of all that I felt. It might reach its destination but might not be opened for many days or many years even after. The destined person might not be that eager as I anticipate him to be. So how much is it a completed action when I send someone something? Does my sending imply the receiving? Then why do I feel so much pleasure in sending it, just in sending it? Why don't I feel the illusory transitivity of "envoyer quelque chose à quelqu’un”?

Why don’t I send myself, in that case? Even if I cannot avoid the chance of the recipient, at least the object is intact, it cannot be torn, and it will have some reason on its head, it can redirect itself to the quelqu’un. Why don’t je m’envoyer, or why does not one s’envoyer? Isn’t it possible?

When I say “I love you” to a girl, I give myself, for acceptance or rejection, to the girl; I send myself, whole and as I am, in the envelope that I have chosen to be in in front of her or as an open post card; yes, I send myself. But I might not strike the heart, I might never reach her, I might never convince her, or I might arrive late. It might be that late that by the time she recognises my marks on her, I would already have me suis envoyé to countless others in that long, tepid wait. By the time her voix does give utterance to what I waited for, the effort and the process might have become meaning much more to me than her final oui, and I may not vois her the same.

s'envoyer is also a slang to give oneself for sex. Why the intransitive usage? Since when you give yourself to someone for sex, you do it only for the pleasure of fucking, and don’t care to whom you are giving yourself? Can there be a legacy that can be left without leaving it? An intransitive laisser? Yes, je me laisse aller is possible, but when I let myself go, who guides me? In case there’s a destiny, it does not remain as intransitive; it’s only that I don’t know the quelque chose reserved for me. And in case there’s no destiny? The objects are random, desire’s random, nothing is planned. But still don’t I let myself go “on something”? Is the whole intransitivity concerned with intent, you mean to say? Yes, it rains, and the rain is not concerned with where it’s going to land; it does without intent, without thought, it just rains. But at the end of the day, isn’t there something that it is going to rain on? So, it’s intransitive for the principal actor/s and transitive for the third party observer? Anything?

Teri Chhoti Si Ek Bhul

2008-02-21T23:07:00.001+05:30

We was always amused by the incongruity of it all. Why was we looked at like so? When we thought about myself, we couldn't find anything that was interesting, or that we had done wrong. When I went to the wall to merge into it, to get whitewashed, the same fabric as all, we found that somehow the brush never brushed us. How strange! Though I forced myself to stick as close to the wall as possible, we never found a particle sticking to me. I saw a girl and all of us love her, but it's so strange that while each gets his measure, I never do. I told you, it won't work, but it was you who goaded me to her. Now who will bear the blame? Not I, all of you can, not I. And I will continue to love her.
We wonder when is that we am getting the sun as all of you get, we wonder when is that we am going new places of which all of you tire of so soon, we wonder when is that this earth is inherited by me and not you, no not you...

The girl who made me look at myself and changed me

2008-01-05T18:58:00.000+05:30

She was playing around that yard without a care in the world. The sunbeams fell upon her hair and burnished them; the beautiful blue riband seemed to match with the blue mountains yonder; the serenity did not proceed from the bright morning sun of 11'o clock, from the grass upland on which the small house was situated, from a lone horse that was drinking water from a trough in the yard, from the yard itself enclosed by wooden planks and occasional wire fencing, but from the girl - only handsome to look at, her charm was when she moved, flitted around, played with things, dared to take the sun, or sweated into an unlooked for smile.

A child's story

2007-11-08T16:14:00.000+05:30

There was a boy once: all he wanted was a loaf, a loaf of bread. He had no care in the world: the loaf was the world to him. The azure of the sky when it met the sea in his boat meant nothing to him. The pink of the tulips that abounded in his farm meant nothing to him. The cold breeze coming from another world meant nothing to him. All he wanted was the loaf.

And yet, he never knew where to find it. He searched in the sunbeams that finally broke through and fixed his boat in their trance, and he did not find it. He searched in the drop of dew which came sliding to his palm as he fingered the tulip in his quest, and he did not find it. He searched in the moisture that came laden on the breeze, and it certainly seemed so pregnant with meaning, and yet he did not find it.

The boy was now a marked boy. Everybody knew what he was searching for, though nobody knew why he was searching for it. They were all generous souls there, they would have sacrificed their last loaves for him, the bonny boy. But no, the boy was intent on only his loaf, loaf no one knew where it was. All tried to help him, but they looked in the granaries, and cellars, and hot ovens, and locked shops. Then they whispered that the boy looked for the loaf at strange places; why would he paddle off the boat in the middle of the sea and sit there, brooding always, looking up in the sky with the light of phosphorescence above in his eyes? Why would he roam away from all boys, go with a lonely goat to a hillock, and look keen-eyed from there? Why would he look so expectant when the storm came along, as if the beating rain and sleet was going to bring him his loaf as well? And then, they whispered, it's a charmed loaf, a loaf that would bring curse upon the town, a loaf that would give its possessor strange power over rain and hail and sea and sun and mountains and clouds and day and night; they asked then whose boy it was? They found that he was no one's - they couldn't remember when did he come in their midst, from where? Was he born there, or was he a gypsy? Why had they grown to love him and look for his loaf - that was certainly a charm used by the boy on them. And then, they decided to take the matter in their hands.

When the child was sleeping in his boat, and the storm was heavy, they cut loose the anchor, and let the boy adrift in the sea. The boy was never to be seen. The next day, they were afraid a little, they remained quiet among themselves, the town tried to show its usual bustle but was very quiet. But as the sun kept on shining as before and the storms continued battering as before, there was relief, then forgetfulness, then callousness.

Nobody knows what happened of the boy? And if he is still there on the sea today, is he still searching for the loaf? Or is that loaf the same as the baker's loaf that he rejects - but how could a mere boy, a boy frail and hair slouching over his eyes and with persistent cold, how could a mere boy still be on the seas if he is not really after his loaf? No, I think, the boy is still there, and his loaf is certainly there, and lost, and he will find it, any moment...

A troubled soul

2007-08-26T08:29:00.000+05:30

The road merges into blue, I don't know where. It's already a bluish road, I don't know why. It's a tar road, yet it has more the asphalt than the coke; on both sides is the barren landscape, a wheatishly barren landscape, and it is only I who's whizzing by.
No idea whether I am stationary or I am whizzing by. No idea whether this is the road that I was directed to, when I asked that man, just a while ago. I don't know what's begun happening to my memory - I distinctly remember him as a pock-marked man, with a sly leer on his face, I especially hated his mannerism of wiping his wet lips with his shirt cuff, a cuff bedraggled, open and soiled at the edges, a button loosely dangling. A gold button, that I hated the instant my gaze fell on it - the whole time that man gave me directions so civilly, I felt that I was talking to the button, as if that piece of pretentious gold was ordering me what to do with my life, with my roads, with myself, how to dispose of myself. What right had that button to govern me - after all, wasn't it a lifeless thing? How can I even ask that? It was a lifeless thing, yes, it was - yes, but then, why was it that all the time it was that button, that cuff button, who was talking to me, instead of that man.

Oh, I hate this road going on. Why does it go on? Why does it not end; it doesn't seem to go anywhere - who constructed it? why, I cannot imagine. There's not even a pothole that they have left somewhere - it's always the same. In fact, it has always been the same. I do seem to remember though that there will come some sort of a turn, or some sort of a bridge to cross - there will be then some mud to look over, some relief, when I cross it over. But then, there would be another one like this. It has always been like this.

Sometimes, I have dreams. Yes, since there is no one else, I can afford to dream, without any rashness involved. Yes, I do dream sometimes. Though, I don't always like to. They are always of people like me, who also are on the roads. But they always seem to enjoy it, laugh, and they even stop and urinate and cool their radiators. I don't seem to remember doing this even in a dream - I don't think I have ever stopped. And they are never lonely - but then, they are only dreams. I know very well that it is only I here - there's no one else. I can see to the horizon, and I know that I have covered all the ground to the other pole - there was no one that I met. No, there's no chance that I did miss anyone. No! I don't think that even while dreaming I would have missed anyone. So, it's only me. There is, after all, no one else.

But, you see, I am now weary. Though there is no one, it doesn't matter to me as much. Once upon a time, it used to - I loved to speed up, I used to love the open space, I used to love no forbiddings. But, I now don't want to be myself - I now want to be my dream. I don't want to have this real existence - I would want to become someone's dream, if I could then stop and look at the sunrise, I could look at the metallic shine on the hood, I could urinate and look at the sunshine piercing through the curved bow.

She makes his coffee

2007-08-05T06:38:00.000+05:30

Why does she do it? Not for love always, not for desperation always, not for masochistic pleasure certainly, then why? To me, it's the most cruel sight on earth - the flower herself bearing the brunt of routine, chore, drudgery, drill, and contempt.

It's a woman's nature, too often, to bear slights from her man, to worship her man as the highest ideal on this earth even though he might be a drunkard and wifebeater, to run through his bruises and her life with a sigh and not with a complaint (complaint to whom?), to love only once and romanticise everything connected to that man even if he be a blackguard; yet, modern education, exposure to pleasures which only men used to anticipate, greater independent upbringing, a diversity of ideals and idols to follow, and increasing ways of access to that attribute, power, which a woman is so fond of - all that is changing the very nature of a woman. But, is the nature getting only subverted to a certain degree, retaining yet the same elements?

Throughout my life, I have been amazed by the strength required of a woman to perform some of the roles expected of her - wife, mother, prostitute. Even to elope with someone just on his word, or to jilt one for another - so much mental calculations in most cases, or a wanton abandonment to one's instincts in others. Yet, such a mental strength! When you don't care for the world, for anybody's word except what you think is right. There's no room for anyone else in that photoframe. Either the woman is in that frame, or the glass lies shattered. The strength of sacrifice, even! And, herein lies sometimes my thread of thought - though the sight of sacrifice by a woman is somehow very difficult to bear, is that strength itself ebbing away now from women? Is only the physical now the difference between a man and a woman?

Kariya, I Love You

2007-07-15T20:09:00.000+05:30

A fresh breath of air, and the journey continues on that. The sun smiles again, and my will waits for the moon yet again. I can pack my trunks now much more relaxed - the weary baggage is hidden out of sight, and much of it is tarnished beyond recognition. Again, the desire burns to kiss a girl; again, new hues, that I had always missed, are found. The question of "for how long?" is banished for the time being into oblivion - fearlessness is new, and no ground is left for old moulds to fume.
The gray cells pop up again - with a vengeance they ask me, why had you forsaken us? There's no answer - there's no reason. Cowardliness? Yes, but why? How come in a rebel? And of whom? But all such questions, even as they come, are brushed aside - I am too busy building castles in air to brush the cobwebs off. And for once they look to be of substance - at least, now. For once, there is the smell of past burns - and the anger to turn away from it. For once, there is disdain - to all the world; and for once, there is love - to all the world.

There are desires now - other than death, far removed from death, not of death. There is the world now - my possession.

Atticus - III

2007-03-19T13:33:00.000+05:30

The words, the sentiments, the emotions were always there, somewhere lurking at the back of the mind. But, in today's distracting world, it is difficult to reach out to things you love the most - words, feelings, memories, life in having the sense of 'being'. I was caught on in a bit of the cricket World Cup, especially among two of my favourite cricket teams - England and Ireland. My predictions coming right in World Cups continues - Ireland does indeed beat Pakistan, for almost all people a bolt from the blue, not for me.

There's not a greater pleasure in this life, when you pick up a book and you get a solid hunch that this is going to be a great book. And most of the great books have it, just as most of the great films have that in their teasers and trailers. But, the hunch of a book goes subtler, and often I am at great pains to discover the connection. Sometimes, the binding, the paper used in the book, the font style and size, the margins and indentations, everything so much jells in with the book itself - and then you not only love a book, but you love the book itself. You cannot read that same novel or story now in any other version - that book has become a part of the atmosphere of the story in that book. Everything! Right from the author's foreword to the critics' comments to the notes at the end of the book - everything only serves to make a perfect whole, to attain the apex.

Though I have had never a wrong hunch, I have had no positive hunches sometimes. A case in point - To Kill A Mockingbird. I still remember buying it from a small bookshop that I sometimes used to go to in Vashi (Navi Mumbai). I have spent most of my life honing myself on the classics - it was time to get out in the open, and have a worldview, to experiment, to rebel. The twentieth century's Mockingbird was a beginning. I only started with it because I had seen the trailer of the film based on it - and it looked very, very interesting. More than the Atticus himself, who of course interested me a great deal and is of course one of the real heroes for me, it interested me to get at how Lee did succeed in bringing a character such as Atticus out. It's so difficult!

The man does not have a tragic backdrop to his life! He's a man who has left off guns, without any style, cannot play football, is a regular office-goer kinda fellow, and he just sticks to his guns, and that's in fact all the story in the book. How does a man keep on sticking to his guns, holding his head high or low with shame - depending on what era's reader you are (for, in today's politically correct world, most readers would root for the former, but it would have been a much changed scenario a hundred years back). And yet, in some way, the story turns magical.

I attribute it to the children, especially Scout. Atticus himself is strongly brought about, whenever so, only through his interactions with the children. Since Atticus is not at all the type of a man who would say much for himself, it is only through what he advises or admonishes Scout and Jem time to time, the distant hints given to his character whenever he talks to Miss Maudy or Calpurnia, or episodes like the mad dog or Miss Dubose one, where the children, and the readers, have a sudden spurt of information about Atticus through others (Heck Tate, Maudy, Cal) or through the sentiments that they feel their father is generating through his actions all throughout. Scout still does not understand why Mr. Cunningham backed out with the mob when she recognised him, but she will in future, and Jem half does now only. For Dill, it's just witness to a hallowed scene and company! Although it's Cal who admonishes Scout to let the boy eat even the tablecloth if he wants to since he's the guest, it feels that it's Atticus - you have his way of living right there, in front of you. It brings about his focus on his tolerance, very sharply. The man would not hurt anyone deliberately, but he won't let anyone be at the same time, when it comes under his purview - he persistently defends Tim Robinson. And the point is that he himself is under no illusions of winning the specific case - but he knows that fighting the case in itself is a building a case for the future Robinsons, for a world where strange things like a man's way of living or his color of living do not form the criteria, for an Arthur Radley to live as he wants to, for a world of respect to each other, and to oneself. You can't fight the teacher and the new order of things - it's not worth it - but you can secretly contravene the system; Scout can keep on reading 'the wrong way'. You don't care if the whole of the world thinks you as wrong, but when to hold up your head it's important to do something, you have got to do it. A life led one's own way is any day better than a living death.

I will not contine now with Atticus in the near future here. I said, I will talk about the film as well, but something says me to stop for a while, and better think about him more. But, otherwise, my diligence with blogging this month will continue.

Atticus - II

2007-03-08T23:24:00.000+05:30

Spoken word, written word - why is it so powerful? The visual word - have the moviemakers not come yet, or is it that the shape becomes more definite, the playground of imagination becomes bounded, and instead of the simple story told beautifully, it becomes a story of cutting, layering, framing, pre- and post-production, the sound, the make-up, the tricks and the cheats, a science in short instead of a story. I still remember Johnny Belinda, as if I have seen it yesterday - and it's many years. A simple story, beautifully told, simply told - not much wit, not much action, just the silent sighing of the trees and vast American expanses.
But in the written/spoken word, does the honest effort always work, if it is not garnished anywhere? Judging from the success of Robinson Crusoe and Scarlet Letter, maybe yes. But, then, Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, The Brothers Karamazov, or Great Expectations are not less powerful for their rich tapestries - they bring different flavours, they have varied my day, my life, my afternoons.
From that hot, sultry afternoon when Dantes incites Caderousse's greed with the diamond, to the golden, soft one when Hans and Gretel are skating, to the ones when so many of Dickens' boys are trudging to London, all grimy, weary, innocent, and ready to be influenced. The afternoon, a bit cold in the cell, in the monastery, and yet warm with the tension simmering all underneath, when Zosima touches Mitya's feet, to the one where white men are scouring the countryside for a black man whom they can impose their collective guilt upon. And the afternoons become magical. In school, it used to be the kites flying outside, with their shrill cries, looking for peace. The rustling of trees outside in the strong air. The sense of leisure and power, magically combined, that I feel, and yet an energy to do anything in this world. The bonds, that we benchmates, share as children, as the ones who trust implicitly, who revel in things unheard of by those who became old all too soon, who dread the math tables and love a good story. In college, it was the sense of harnessing all that invisible power - magnetic flux lines making work something, all the things? Who would have thought of that you simply have to cut the flux lines, and viola! The vast labs, and high ceilings, suddenly from the outside heat to the dry coldness inside which only a well-ventilated, well-sunlighted, high-ceilinged vast hall can have; the joy of starting up the motors by the three-point starter and the bonding of working in a team - and a team for what? One for just holding up the tachometer to the motor, the other feeling the king with the stopwatch in his hand, the couple of girls getting all high and mighty and thinking they are getting the cream of the job by noting the ammeter and voltmeter readings, and some fringe player, roped in for biting off the insulation with his teeth, making sure of all the loose connections, and still getting the worst of teacher's attention even after such thankless jobs. By the way, I used to love sliding the rheostats, especially the four-barrelled ones, and also adjusting the variable load resistor, or the VLR. And then, the travels. The red soil and the palms shaming even the sunset sky on a very narrow shortcut from Tiruchendur to Kanyakumari (which most people don't know of), to the bleachingly hot afternoons at the Crocodile Bank near Chennai. The afternoons, which never looked so, and by the time they did, the sun had set behind the trees, and a couple of idli hawkers would have set up their fledgling business, with a red tomato chutney, in the center of the small market square of, yes you guessed it right, Munnar. The afternoons which somehow make the Ganga look more sublime at Haridwar - it somehow becomes a pedestal for the pacy, vast river, and even the floating oil lamps in leaves and flowers all over the Ganga at night are nothing against that quiet, breezy, serene, and ingraspable afternoon.
Will continue.

Atticus - I

2007-03-07T22:59:00.000+05:30

Writing, blogging diligently - now diligence is something that I've found the most hard to practise in this life. An esteemed friend is going to do precisely this this month - and I still remember her advice to me, as an aspiring and struggling writer, to write everyday, no matter there is 'something' or not, no matter you write good or bad on a day.
I have still not been able to gauge the soundness of the advice, as applied to me, for I have a mercurial nature (of course, most people knowing me would be surprised on hearing this, and would most probably attribute this only to part self-conceit, part ill notions, and remaining a lack of worldly judgement). Anyway, I rarely discuss myself - so what do I write about then?
Clint Eastwood's westerns? Some of the best Indian ads (and they are, oh, so numerous, and so good)? The air, the ennui, the meter of the people in some of the Indian places and regions, diverse fantastically? No, rather not. They can wait. Let me talk about Atticus - how Lee has brought out him, how Peck has acted out him, and what does Atticus mean in real life, in the present world? Is he relevant still? Or is the relevance immortal?

In my childhood, if my school notebook seemed to get lost and I was in real danger of being rebuked by the teacher, I used to remember Abbe Faria or Edmond Dantes - I used to think, with all said and done, I will still be better off than them, and what a relief it always was! Then came the contrasting characters of Caroline and Shirley, both of with whom I was in love with terribly mad, and one day I used to brag that oh, you know what, I like girls of the Shirley type, and the other day I was back supporting Caroline. Even today, the dilemma between Shirley and Caroline continues. And then, the white whale! Sea had fascinated me early enough through Alan Breck Stewart and Xury, but the whole science of whaling, the hidden and yet overt fight of retribution versus guilt, of white that is blightingly, glaringly, white, the one that makes you blink with fear and disbelief, versus the white that goes by the name of white, that is painted on the walls, that becomes the bow-tie of a spotless man, a white man, the white that everyone keeps as an ideal, for it will be easy to sully it, or to make it look so. I was torn apart; why Jean Valjean is not even the latter white, when he should have been the former one? Why and how can there be a story like Valjean's? As if Dantes and Tess were not enough, I have to now torture myself through Valjean - the loaf, the child, the sewers, the lonely death? And yet, I hated when he was respectable somewhere in between - I wanted him to rise and rise up, higher and higher up, shame even the Christ for a living crucifixion, and yet be one of the blacks. No, no whiteness attached to him. The anger of this swept me through my adolescence to Marx, Zola, Tolstoi, and finally Dostoyevsky. The passion of Therese Raquin still beats in me; nobody calls it white, but I do, for the purity of passion and lust are there. So has Gervais, so has Levin. The finely pomaded air of the salons which Anna and Vronsky used to frequent, jarred me out of the world of white and black I was living in, and introduced me to shades, ephemeral, fleeting, phantasmagorical - and it ended in Ivan's simple question that where is God if an eight-year-old girl cries out in the middle of a night for help and forgiveness, shut up in a latrine by her mother for bedwetting. Where is it? The ruin of an ambitious life - Dantes? The waste of an active life - Crusoe? In succumbing to passion - Tess? In not succumbing to passion - Madame Arnoux?

I will continue.

England Cricket, World Cup 2007, And Other Things

2007-02-18T19:07:00.000+05:30

The reserve days kept for each of the matches say it all - the rain's the extra slice of unpredictability this World Cup. While I have never been a big fan of the one-day format, and especially the World Cup, it still does succeed in giving me a kick on sometimes - for the sake of my teams. So, while 1999 was the year I was hooked for Zimbabwe (and the year when all my predictions used to be true - Zim beat Ind and SA, got beaten by Eng, Geoff Allott of NZ was the leading wicket-taker of the World Cup, and India didn't qualify for the semis, Neil Johnson was one of the stars of the World Cup), this time it is England - of course, never now with the same intensity.

This World Cup has even a better format than the 1992 World Cup held in Australasia - and sadly, this one also seems to be marred by rains. Cricket is a game, which can be totally ruined by rain - it breaks the rhythm of whosoever is coming into rhythm, and gives the down-and-out opposition a sneaking chance, not of their creation, of not only coming right back into the game but winning it. And that's what breaks the heart, really. Not a dropped catch or a missed runout, not a wrong umpiring decision cutting up a blooming batsman's innings, not an overthrow releasing the pressure which was beginning to build up with five previous dot balls, not a slip absent or standing way back (worse!) or trying to be second as well as third slips (worst!) and sometimes even the third man combined as well (and when the captain is in such a pitiable state of mind, he expects the wicketkeeper to triple up as the first slip and the leg slip as well), not a superb spell's pressure at one end broken by a flood of runs at the other end, not a straight drive deflected onto the stumps of the non-striker leading to his runout (with probably the non-striker in the form of his life, and the striker on say 3 in 26 balls) - no, but rain, which is not a bit in anyone's hands, pouring, and changing the match position, targets, rhythm, confidence, mood, pitch and air conditions, toss decisions, team decisions, everything. Though, very, very rarely, rain does liven up the match in fact, and makes a slow jog a canter, a coasting-to-win into a mad rush and late charge, with accompanying excitement, a test of temperament and nerves of steel and gentlemanly behaviour (after all, isn't cricket all about this? not Sreesanth's shameful antics but Flintoff and Lee's respect and friendship for each other) - and just when you had begun to doze off in those consolidating overs, you are woken up directly into a mayhem, about which you have no clue about - either its origin or its destiny.

Let me begin with England, then the World Cup will take care of itself. For though Australia is still the favorite for me (even after now four straight losses, and five in six games), my guts go out to England. After all, they have the Barmy Army with them!

Fine, fine fettle! Pietersen is definitely back - and that was all the missing link. Even if half of the others on the injury list - Vaughan, Anderson, Jon Lewis - remain on the list, there should not be any problems with England's bid for their first World Cup. The Caribbean will not assist swing much, unless moisture comes into the picture - and here lies the sudden strength that England has acquired now. Monty and Dalrymple are sure to excel in the bowling department for England in the World Cup - and if a pace bowler misfires, there's the support of Bopara, Vaughan, and Pietersen. A couple of overs from each of them, supplemented by Collingwood's intelligent bowling, should surely make up 10, if not 20, overs. All the pace bowlers of England are in great form, and if England is captained by Vaughan (and if unavailable, then please Strauss rather than Flintoff - will raise the game of Strauss as well as Flintoff), then, for me, England is a certainty till the semi-final of the World Cup. (After that, its luck, off days, and temperament.) Now, the bit of concern is batting for England - Vaughan might or might not be there, and the skipper is anyway not much of a great one-day player. The opening three or four is a bit of concern - Ed Joyce is a great find, but who's to partner him? Bell is maturing fast, but goes into a shell time and again. Strauss has been terribly unlucky throughout the Australian summer, and could have his confidence and form dented. So, now the real game is up to the solid, powerful, and explosive middle order of Collingwood, Pietersen, and Flintoff. England's decisions will be key here. What if Vaughan is not playing? In such a case, Pietersen at no. 5 is too low down for me in my opinion - better would be then Joyce and Bell opening, followed by Collingwood, Pietersen, Strauss, and Flintoff. I don't know why I have this feeling, but I always get it - that Flintoff and Strauss could make a great no. 5-no. 6 partnership in the history of the game. And if Vaughan is not there, we could have Bopara and Dalrymple at nos. 7 and 8 (but selecting Bopara would then mean to select only one specialist pace bowler - this might be a good move only if Flintoff is finding the Carribean to his especial liking). Or Bopara even higher up, depending on match situation and who is in what form and are the spinners or pacemen in operation. Battingwise, another concern for England is that none of their tailenders know much of batting - and also, the wicketkeeper Nixon also doesn't look much of a bat. The problem with England is the problem of plenty right now - with both Vaughan and Pietersen, who would they keep out? They cannot afford to drop Joyce or Bell - then who, Strauss? But, Strauss himself is captaincy material - Vaughan might not play all the matches, and I would not prefer Flintoff captaining. Also, Strauss is supremely talented - it is only that somehow he has still not come in his own in the one-day arena (a case similar to Matt Hayden's?). Slow bowlers are a must on West Indian pitches - so Dalrymple is an automatic selection, even though Monty is already there. Then, would they pick only one specialist pacer, either of Plunkett or Lewis or Anderson? If Anderson is fit, my vote will be for him - otherwise, any of the other two. Mahmood, I think, even though he is maturing fast, might find himself out of the World Cup team, if all other pace bowlers are fit.

How does England grapple with the problem of plenty, what decisions it takes for team selection as well during the matches, does rain play a role, and with how much momentum and rhythm can they begin the Super Eight - the key for England. The ability, the sportsmanship, the talent, the joy of playing - no doubt about these things in this England team (and, mind you, for all other teams, including Australia, these issues are there - for some, small, for other, big). And this World Cup does provide every team a wonderful chance to acclimatise, to get into playing rhythm, to get into the hot of the things hot. The warm-up matches at the start of the tournament can be called as the warm-ups of the warm-ups (interestingly, Eng play Aus in the warm-ups, which could also be the final itself). Then comes the group stage, and since the Super Eight match schedules are not at all affected by who tops the group and who comes second, the matches of the Super Eight could be held pretty much decided (that is, who plays whom, where, when). It would only take an upset in the group stage to mar the great organising and marketing ploy of not considering the group topper - and I don't think there's going to be one. Though, of course, you can never say if West Indies would like to produce an upset or so (they are also up against some better minnow teams - Zimbabwe and Ireland). Actually, only Ireland gives me slight jitters about an upset - it could upset any of its group partners, both Pak and WI being also the likeliest to oblige at any time. Otherwise, there's not much to analyse in this World Cup about the match-ups - since every team has to play all the other powerful teams, barring the one it played against in the group stage. And this, coincidentally, has made it a little tough for most of the teams.

Let me first say, that West Indian pitches are most of the times 220-230 pitches, with 250-260 being a real good total. Slow bowlers will dominate; yet, if the batsman has the patience and the zest to get his eye in, and is not befooled by bowlers of the type of Gayle and Dalrymple, the totals could also go up to 280 region. But the norm of the game would be 225 region in the Super Eight. So, now, life will be difficult for the teams who don't have any good slow bowlers. South Africa and Pakistan are the candidates here. Especially the former - for not only SA has any good slow bowlers, but it also plays the slow bowling terribly. So, for me, this is not at all South Africa's cup. Also, it would not have been anywhere else, given their racial policies of selection (with Kevin Pietersen the biggest visible slap on their face, the laughing stock that South Africa and South African cricket has become). Australia is also another team who doesn't have a good slow bowler if Michael Clarke stays unfit - but still, Aussies will manage at least in the Super Eight. Now, Aus won't have to play SA, India won't have to play SL, Eng won't have to play NZ, and WI won't have to play Pak in the Super Eight stage. And, I think, Aus, Ind, and Pak would have been better served if they would have got these matches in the Super Eight (so, its easy to see, that, for me here Aus winning over SA, Ind over SL, and Pak over WI are pretty much foregones). They would have got one easier match out of the six they would have to play in the Eight. Only, Eng v NZ is too hard to call - and its good for both the teams that they don't have to bother with each other in the Super Eight.

I like the sequence for England in the Eight. Their toughest matches will be in the right middle of the Eight and the World Cup - the ones versus Australia and India. And their last match - which could be a crunch encounter, even if they have qualified, to decide who meets them in the semis - is against West Indies, a team which I believe they can defeat very, very easily (and have the luxury to lose to them willingly or win slowly (the thing that Aussies did against WI in the 1999 World Cup - decried as dirty all over, though I didn't see the dirtiness ever), if the situation demands it.)

Just looking at all the other sequences, I think that India's is the toughest. For India, the Super Eight is all toughies, maybe except the game against Pak - first four real ones - Aus, NZ, SA, and Eng. And the crunch for India could be again WI - but India don't do too well against them. The Super Eight sequence is comfortable for both SA and SL. Interestingly, their first Eight game could be against each other - and each would feel a chance against the other, but if rain is not in the picture and Jayasuria is fit, then SL, I think, could have a clear edge here. West Indies, I think, has the toughest sequence of the match-ups, and, per me, they might be able to win only against one (India, possibly) or two teams (that is, if Ireland have not already edged them into oblivion!). Pakistan is another team who doesn't fire me at all - the only glimmer I get for them is Sri Lanka, their last, and maybe by then inconsequential (at least for them) encounter.

Rains, umpires, upset wins, scheduling, factors that can never be prophesied - so many things could make all the above go awry. But still, I think that the following teams will not make to the semis, at any cost: the host (West Indies) and Pakistan. I cannot predict more regarding the semifinalists. The World Cup this time looks to be won by any of Australia, India, England, or New Zealand (in order of their being favorites for me). I would wish England, for English cricket's sake; my dream would be an Australia-India semifinal, England-New Zealand semifinal, and India-England final, won by England.

Valjean's lament

2007-02-18T19:04:00.000+05:30

It is a long time that I wrote this small poem - my first in my beloved language. I am too dry, sandy a man to talk in poetry, to patiently sift through the cells lining the beehive, to let it come to me. Instead, I mistakenly rush many a times, and the haste only leads me to be satisfied and happy with small - I crow with pride and delight over my one droplet of undistilled honey, when I could have had the combful of one. There are reasons that I understand, and which I seek to remedy, and there are reasons that will always be out of my reach to either understand or approach. But, let me share with you till the time this droplet, which was inspired one hot, equally dry afternoon, when I was, more than the usual, thinking about Jean Valjean. And since, it was not the Thenardier or Fantine's deserter who had excited me with wasteful fury as much as Cosette herself, I wrote this:

She has sprung from my loins
She has drunk,

oh my, so charmingly,

All my sap and my first tenderness
All the love

that ever was strained of me

Has been at her command,

useful or not I wot not

And yet

she derides me, she pains me

She lives in a world of her own
Where I am unbidden and unwelcome
She falls and she falls

but she forbids love to help her

She loves me not
And it is not that I complain
It is only that I lament.

BDSM: An Increasing Visibility in India

2007-02-16T22:58:00.000+05:30

Is it only something that I am sensing, or is it that a subvert wave is there, trying to bring out in the open and legitimize the trappings and roles and vices associated with sex life in India? I'm talking about the increasing BDSM hints in the visual medium in India - most of them are too subtle to shock many, and yet they are the most likely ones to be fertile, to get ingrained into the minds of a sex-starved, sex-obsessed nation. Right from the Mallika Sherawat dance (at a New Year's party), which was in fact talked about, to hints of heavy chains suddenly coming in supposed-to-be romantic songs in Hindi films - what's the meaning? While the role of a woman has not been much to speak of in almost all Hindi or Hollywood films, yet there used to be a naivety in Hindi films always when it used to come to romance. Now, with the supposed liberalisation and awareness of the West and, what's more important, a social acceptance (though, maybe, sometimes, in a rebelling style) of "un-Indian" ethos, that naivety has given way to, no, not maturity, but vulgarity, the usual, or knowledge, the best (that "we also know").
And so, an Abhishek Bachhan becomes hot property, though to my mind the only thing that he has ever done is to lie sprawling mid-frame, with a dozen girls in different strange tastes of dresses and undresses, ready to be his slave (see, the shot is not even drooling over him, but it is purely slavic). Or probably, that is the thing to do. The chorus of the songs, that used to seem in the films not so long ago some half-mind cronies and fawners of the hero and heroine dancing for simply the hero and heroine (since the film itself made everything project that the whole earth and all the creatures are only for their pleasure - interestingly, the hero and heroine never looked for each other, which could have been a better choice), now seems to be a lot of same or opposite sex hell-bent on pleasing the hero or heroine - sexually.
There was a time when a furore was raised over a Milind Soman-Madhu Sapre ad of Tuffs shoes, with a snake wrapping their nude bodies in a tight grip. While all the furore was over a snake only covering them, I used to be amused that what was something likely to be a disturbing question was and is never asked. The only disturbing thing there for me was the snake itself - and not if it was wrapping covered or uncovered bodies. It was a rope, it was a chain, it was the bondage - the concepts of power and subjugation were in the play in that print ad. While, of course, it could be argued that since both the bodies were bound by the snake, it was not that much of a BDSM situation - someone could even argue that take it in a symbolic manner, and take it that both are bound in their lust and love together (by the way, why does everyone get keen on either mixing up the two or differentiating the two?). But, I think that the whole concept of helplessness, the sadistic enjoyment of the helplessness of one, is BDSM. And that's why the python was there - for people love seeing helplessness. Not for nothing are so many children abused, not for nothing so many rape scenes are included in the films, and not for nothing stilettos are worn - all symbols of power, and exercise of it.
There's always an element of power in sex. No, I am not ruing the fact. It's a sublime game - as many things to variegate it the better - but only when it does not become the continual pick-up scene. Only when you love whom you sex. You love the person, you automatically are respecting, venerating, adoring that person - how can you think of subjugating that person? How can you enjoy seeing that person being made cruelly helpless? All such roleplays are simply the fucking magazine ways of "how to bring zest in your sex life" - a person who needs such a tip, is already a sexless person for me, the tips don't matter.
Finally, let me only clear a bit of air. It is something, which is again like any other thing in this world - there are no rules ever. Countless possibilities of having sex and enjoying it - so there's nothing censured. The only thing that I am against is the sort-of propagation, the inculcation, systematically, of a sort of values. Also, where a thing lodges in the subconscious and modifies your tastes, you never know (especially the adolescents).
I don't know where it's related, but somehow it is. I had been just seeing half an hour of the film Hotel Rwanda. The acting was great, and the film was OK. But always, I start thinking, why can't the hotel manager be a woman - I mean in just one film, at least. Though, for a change, I did get to see The Constant Gardener, some days back. Why not more of Rachel Weisz's? (And actually, there are a few other Hollywood films where I did get to see a woman who is living her life - Helen Hunt's Twister and As Good As It Gets; Patricia Neal's The Subject Was Roses; many Bette Davis movies (probably, because MGM had almost all the star male actors!); Young Bess; Children Of A Lesser God - but yes, I have to think hard, real hard.)

Green Afternoon

2007-01-18T23:15:00.000+05:30

Dark masses rest on my shoulders
I do not

know of it

and yet I carry the heavy burden

Fusillade of leaves and

chips and twigs and

cries of birds, yet
the body moves
unknowing of its slouch

its droop, its collapse nigh.

Why? The answer is not in

the air but

in the heart, unheeded.

Light which shimmered at

the far end

has gone, the clouds
roll has stopped, it is a
death
everywhere

but for a moment

when an eagle's shrill cry

brings the soul home

and

lends weight to my burden

The earth smells

of its vapors

Grudgingly as it gives

release to my oppression

The drab monotony
of grey clouds and

black skies

liberates
and it is then I

know of the weight I carry

A thousand murmurs
Rippling brooks, running rivulets
Muted rooks, swishing leaves
Blades of grass

taking all my weight

Life is alive,

is kicking,

The light is not far

was never far

It was only

the fear of the grey

But now I bathe in it

I take a step to

embrace it

And

it does not flinch

But takes two steps

to meet me halfway

I realize 'tis a green afternoon.

Ashes 2006-07: Review

2007-01-14T19:09:00.000+05:30

There's nothing much left to say. England had lost before the start of the series itself - in its own mind. When a team can think of Ashley Giles as a batsman, it indicates how woe begone is the team. Right through the series, Flintoff's captaincy was defensive and pathetic, to say the least. Wrong field placings for Monty so many times, wrong bowling selections at the wrong time, strange team selections (starting from the squad itself), and careless profligacy from many batsmen.
Strauss - it's time he, the great player he is, matures himself, curbs his tendency to slash outside the off stump everytime, and takes up the responsibility of being an opener. Bell - he cannot afford to go into his shell every now and then; the game is to score runs, not to simply stay there, boringly. Cook - the only one who didn't used to get out in a profligate manner, and showed maturity always. He has to work on his game when it comes to the corridor of uncertainty. Collingwood - is maturing, and playing beyond his abilities. So, cannot find fault with him. Pietersen - he was easily the best batsman and player for England in this Ashes, but he is a god. Don't think gods are expected to make 70s and 80s. Flintoff - the big let-down both with bat and ball, and captaincy. He bowled well, but didn't get enough support from other end, and luck from above. And battingwise, I thought he lacked some match practice, and that in Australia, he and Collingwood should have swapped their batting numbers. Geraint Jones and Chris Read - both the wicketkeepers - were dismal. The bowling was only good in patches, with Hoggard and Monty shining occasionally. Australia didn't have to do much except play their natural hard, aggressive game, and they were the winners. Besides Ponting, Hussey and Stuart Clark were the stars for them - and future matchwinners.
Hats off to Australia for winning it 5-0!

Ashes 2006-07: The Preview

2006-11-22T23:36:00.000+05:30

The Ashes this time has got harder to predict, and ironically it is because both the teams have, in my opinion, become weaker. I am less worried about the absence of Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick; the real thorn in England's side is the bowling - these are not the English pitches, and Hoggard might have to return empty-handed, Flintoff is coming back from injury and will have to pick up momentum, especially in the bowling department, and, most importantly, there's no Simon Jones. But, yes, there's Monty, that is if England pick him.

The only real threat to the Aussies could be Harmison and Monty, and possibly Flintoff from maybe the third Test onwards. England could be in a serious boil if they do decide to pick Giles over Monty - you have to be aggressive against Australia, you have to go for the kill, and picking Giles just for his some severely limited batting abilities is never going to bail you out. After all, do you think that Giles' batting would be the difference between England and Australia?

No, it will be much more, and the difference in the results could be much narrower. The numero uno will remain that how does England tackle Warney, the second for me will be the middle-order England batting (especially Flintoff and Pietersen), and the third is can England remain fit till the end of the series. Let me shed a little more light on each of these questions, and why I think they could determine the fate of the series. Australia is a severely depleted side now as far as bowling is concerned, and all its fast bowlers could be very well shut out from the game from the first day itself if England start their job with aplomb. And that's why it all boils down to Warney. He was the one who valiantly fought in the last Ashes, lone-handedly, and he could be again the one. Not only with the ball, but even with the bat. And once he gets down to his business, then all others also come into the picture with their pieces of cake - McGrath, Lee, and Clark. I think that the English middle order of Flintoff, Collingwood, and Pietersen shouldn't have any grave problems in dealing with him, but the suspects would be Strauss and Cook, the top order batsmen. And, after doing all the hard work against the faster bowlers, if you are going to be Warne's bunnies straightaway, then even one extra wicket of any of the middle-order batsmen could lead to a poor or just a decent-enough score. And England did manage with decent scores in the last Ashes, since it had the great quartet of Hoggie, Freddie, Harmison, and Jones that time. But, this time, the onus might very well rest on Harmison being the strike bowler, Flintoff being the stock bowler, and Monty the breakthrough provider. If of course everything would be according to plans, then I would say that England would win a closely fought series, maybe 3-1. Since, even though people do not want to look foolish in saying it, to me, on paper, the English team is superior. Australia is too aged, some of their players have even the fire missing now, the bowlers have not any "X" factor except Warne, and the batsmen are more arrogant than really good. Of course, English batsmen are also not the most talented on earth, but they are steady sorts, disciplined, and they also have the exceptional, but sadly mercurial, brilliance of Pietersen.

As I said earlier, Pietersen and rest of the English middle order will actually hold the key to the series. If it does not crumble, England, if it cannot win, cannot lose the series also. Bell and Cook have to keep their heads down and always play the role of anchors, Collingwood has to counter the spinners effectively, and the trio of Flintoff, Pietersen, and Jones have to blaze their ways to glory whenever the opportunity permits. Wishfully and wistfully thinking, Geraint Jones could find this as his best tour, as far as batting is concerned. He is a player in a cross-batted mould, and so if he plays without thinking he will find himself getting out very, very soon on the Australian pitches, for he will then perish of his own penchant. But, if he even a little sensible-minded, he can make use of these pitches and Australia's poor bowling attack and make a name for himself, and let his poor glovework forgotten for a while at least.

Even though I am an England supporter, I have to review now the enemy camp also to be a little more reasonable. Australia's arrogance cannot be simply dismissed, as it is the thing that brings victory to them so often though they be lesser talented. But, interestingly, it could also be the thing that could lead to their downfall, as did happen the last time. If somehow England doesn't get afraid of Warne, then I don't think that Australia's bowling has anything to make you afraid, unless weather and toss combine some day to make a heady cocktail. But, how do you get their batsmen out? This time, players brimming with newly found confidence like Hussey and Watson (thankfully, not in the first Test) are around, and wouldn't be victims very easily to a limited English attack. Attacking field placements and catches not dropped can be an answer, but dropping catches has become a habit for this team, and with the poor glovework of Geraint Jones sure to come into play sooner rather than later, the Australian batting could very well run amok. And, maybe here, Monty is something fresh - Aussies won't like him at all, they will also try to bludgeon him, they would be definitely found wanting in technique against him, and it could well depend on how much confidence the skipper (Flintoff) reposes in Monty. Also, can England's support bowlers be interesting (Anderson and Mahmood)? Can they provide at least one breakthrough in an innings when it's needed?

England has to remain fit, otherwise Aussies can even win 4-0 or 5-0. But if England do manage to remain fit, and out of the thin air if we might even see Vaughan from the third or fourth test onwards, then England is in with a definite chance - 3-1 or 3-2. The series is too close to call for me right now; maybe, only after the first two tests, I (and many other people) would be prophesy something definite. Australia start as favorites, even for me, but the tag of favorites at least can change for me even tomorrow. For the most important thing is that I want to see the spirit with which England enter the field tomorrow, and the team selection.
The men to watch out for me would be Flintoff, Pietersen, Cook, Harmison, and Monty (from England) and Ponting, Hussey, Gilchrist, Shane Watson, and Warne (from Australia). As an anti-climax, I think that the Ashes this time might not be as great as last time, in terms of last-minute hearbeat stops. But, the quality of batting might be better this time from both sides (and I hope catching!).

My verdict, putting my foot in the mouth: England wins Ashes 2006-07 3-2.

Smug

2006-11-13T22:21:00.000+05:30

The kettle is on the boil
The grate is alive and crackling
It is a raw winter morning
But only to the boys playing cricket in the yard.

Their voices reassure me
Give me something to think and forget
I can immerse myself in my oblivion
The window panes are thick between me and the world.

It is not a Boyg that can be seen or heard
It might be puny, it might be a giant
You never know
when it started to suck upon you.

I touched his hem first
when I met her
But it was only a fleeting sense
I could not even grasp it
and it had flown away.

As the days went by
and my love grew stronger
I began to have
my rest broken.
I knew now the devil I had nursed
My own creation, yet whom I canst not disown
The painful struggle commenced
To love her or to slay him.

To search for a reason is futile now
I do not want to know the damage
I only want
to fight him lustily unto death.

The victory shall be mine
For it is not I alone who fight
I have her by my side.
I am no gallant champion
of my lady
if I do not heed her exhortation.

It is not only in her words
not only in her eyes
But even in the proud arch of her neck
It is the mien with which she carries herself
that quickens my heart
and yet strikes home
when I think of the fallacies my life has bore.

She marches with me to the field
and yet it is I who must raise the arms
But the heaviest of arms
turn into a feather in my hands
when I know that there is someone who
is willing to uphold my banner.

The Loss of Awe

2006-09-20T21:45:00.000+05:30

I hate sometimes these kind of essays - does writing them arrest some phenomenon, some trend, how much impact can an essay (I consider it as a much weak medium compared to other forms of writing) have on anybody's psyche and how long-lasting, even if we assume that it's a well-written thing, and lastly, and most importantly probably, how much of deploring over something does lead us to change ourselves, to change the lens through which we see the world, to change that something which we are talking about. For I hate coffee-table talk, by which I of course mean discussing all the topics under the sun and maybe quite effectively, and just discussing, not bothering to do something.
What I meant by the title of this entry is of course very simple - how much awe does a modern child experience when he sees an elephant for the first time in his life? I don't think too much - too much insensitization has already occurred in most of the cases due to access to television, internet, and the whole gamut of information that comes along, streams along with everything in today's world. Any person has become much more knowledgeable in general, much more aware of himself or herself, of his or her surroundings, of the world in general, compared to a yesteryear's typical person, which of course is quite a desired thing when seen from many aspects. But, on the flip and a terribly flippy side, man is losing some of the key aspects which have shaped man's intelligence uptil now - the sense of mystery, wonder, the imagination itself. Of course, I am probably wrong to generalise, it might not be such a bleak scenario, but for many it is - and I hate to see a person who is becoming slave of something he is supposed to be the master of.
He has already heard about Africa to the last detail and even seen it many times on the wildlife channels; without missing a beat, and in fact munching his burger, he is seeing all the great animals and the great landscapes - what's left? And, even more depressingly, now you know what a place is exactly like - there are no manufacturings in your mind, no improvisations, no leaps of imagination on hearing only some wild stories. No, now there are no wild stories. Everything is bathed in the cold, stern waters of reasoning, of fact, of truth, probably. And hence, you cannot arrive at a greater truth. Only the thrill of novelty remains to greet you now when you actually go to Africa, when you actually see the elephant. Otherwise, everything looks so old, so been-there-done-that, so tired, so diseased. Of course, the scope of this entry is much lesser, but if I may just venture to step further a little, the same thing's been happening with human emotions. And, here, the easy access to books, the well-readedness, is one more culprit. I am talking about the human emotions - before a boy can experience a real sexual thrill on seeing a girl/woman, he has actually got already a simulated thrill many times, since he already knows what is expected of a man and a woman, has seen them do it, and all his expected pleasures itself expect to conform to those rules shown on the TV. Maybe, he will even make love to a woman in all those styles and poses which he has seen or read about, or which he imagines what other people do. The only sad thing is that he might never experience the thrill, he might never get the kick, and thus he might also never know what a woman is all about. Of course, he will have very well-read views, he will be vehement about women's liberation, he will respect the women to society's standards, but the only issue here with me is that all that stuff will be only due to the political correctness of the modern society and his choice to conform to such a society. The innate does not matter, it even doesn't exist, except maybe lurking somewhere and coming out in strange manifestations, and the substance is killed.
And, to be politically correct myself, I apologise if I wrote most of above from a "he's" perspective; I meant no disrespect; and lest the feminists now whoop with joy that the above was something typical of the male gender or something like that, I am quick to point out that women are also not exempt - I would not exempt even a chimpanzee who is being made to watch a TV set for the sake of some obscure, expensive, hi-fi research.

A Journey through Northern Kerala

2006-09-13T22:02:00.000+05:30

The image of Kerala of course evokes all the palms, all the lagoons, and all the oil massages that one can think of or dream of - not only as to their plenty, but also their ability to spring upon you from nowhere, to jut at unexpected corners, to elbow you into a premature dusk when for the rest of the world it is meridian.
Yet, it differs so much. Having been to Kerala often, maybe, has helped. The southern Kerala is so different - more humid and hotter, more drenched in the commercial spirit that is more evident in neighbouring cities of Tamil Nadu, more worldlywise, and yet veritably acting as a doorway to the Kerala beyond. As you move up from Alwaye–Kottayam region the things pick up momentum. The vast lagoons call you to get submerged in water, water everywhere, the paddy fields remind you that the escape is nowhere, and the overcast skies put the final stamp upon the only element which seems to be nourishing life. It all does sound so clichéd, so romantic - ducks being shepherded on the water, government boats plying school students cheaply on the stagnant water dying with weeds, spotless white 'lungis' with sprightly steps on the boat jetties - but then what is a better praise, a better temptation, for a place to lay claim to than to bear clichés justifiably and proudly.
Yes, I know the last word is somehow wrong, at least to me, 'proudly'. Kerala never seems to be proud of its beauty, though Keralites themselves seem to be a proud race. It is maybe the numerous temples and churches that dot the smallest of towns, probably the number of lithe young men working as conductors, hotel boys, tea stall assistants, criers for buses, probably the drunkenness that sets in once the sun has already done so, or, simply speaking, probably the stark poverty all around, which always seems to point out to a broken spirit, to a heritage not proud of itself, to a country which seems to be touted as 'God's own country' more for the 'Christian humility' with which it keeps itself than the 'green thumb of Parasurama'.
Nowhere is this more evident than north Kerala - it's poorer, it's dirtier, and in some ways, more beautiful. Having seen much of south/south-central and east-southern Kerala previously, I went to the northernmost district of Kerala, Kasargod, bordering Mangalore in Karnataka. The following account, rather than a list of things to do, or an insincere effusive praise, which many tourists, especially the ones who write/show something, are prone to (maybe, to not to admit, that after all their time taken off, they were not successful in keeping it sincere and honest), is simply a record of my own experience, my emotions that I felt about the whole journey, in parts and in all.

I had gone expecting nothing, or rather a mixed bag - but the way to Kasargod itself turned me around. The route went through Madikeri–Jalsoor, and I don't think that I have ever been through a more wonderful experience in my life uptil now. Slow rain leading to everything dripping - the lonely bungalows sprawling on the lower tiers of the road, with barely proper gravelly ways leading to them (and yet all those steep paths were ending at a car parked in a porch), the plantations come to joyously, their joyous dripping prompting you to alight there and then, and to be lost in that oblivion, and the quietness of the life in general making you more unquiet, more ambitious, more eager to get the good things in life! In a way, it was a precursor to that transforming experience which was to come soon – that of Ranipuram. More of that later!

Kasargod is an extremely disappointing town - even though there's nothing being touted as ‘touristy’ there, yet every place has its own magic, its own charms; but, at least at first glance, it is difficult to pinpoint anything there. One arrives at a washed-out looking bus stand, with no hustle, everyone (including the buses) seeming to lag, a place which really is like the outpost of Kerala (and is, in fact) in every aspect, where people seem to live apologetically, as if the place is no fault of theirs. After the hills give you company right from Madikeri to the very edge of Kasargod, it is indeed a something stronger than disappointment. But, then, a tourist knows that he has heard about this place, he has heard about the fort of Bekal, and it's an unexplored country as yet, so he can always stumble upon something priceless, something which has the potential to become a memory for him, and that too a dear memory. To quote from Lemony Snicketts, "there is always something".

The sense of the beauty is somehow lost when you reach Bekal. Yes, if you say so, 'technically speaking' it is beautiful (for now when people's emotions are being tried to be read by computers, maybe places are not far behind). But, for me, it was a different emotion. The vast grounds of the fort, the sea lashing furiously at the fort, the simple, aesthetic fort itself (which, in fact, looks less a fort against the mighty landscape in which it is set) - all is unbridled freedom, and when did freedom not fail to frighten the man? Nature is challenging you to embrace it, and you are powerless - you don't want to simply go to it, see it, roam there, come back, but you want to be there only, always, learn about how the fort bears the hot sun and bears the constant drizzle, of how the moon peeps from the gun holes and how the sea turns crimson when the sun rises, of how every morning it must look as if you are the possessor of this earth and how every evening that you have lost one more day in probably a futile effort to possess this earth.

My base was Kanhangad, a better, and much more livelier, town than Kasargod. There I used to return before each evening, and explore its markets, its bus-stands, its eateries. It was again a poor-looking place, but being not the source or destination of any route was a happening place. Buses always going to north (Udma/Tellicherry) or south (Kannur) - the constant stream keeping you on the move always, bringing the world to you with minimal effort from your side, unawares taking you to places you would never have dreamed of.

Ranipuram was one such place - I had never decided on going there, and yet I was there. I did not go high up in the hills, as I was to return to my base in the evening, but the foothills were already a new love for me. The trek in those hills, the climb down the slopes to the rivulets there (probably, the manifold sources of the river Chandragiri), and the darkness enwrapping me all alone when rain became heavy - had I ever got all this before? Every leaf, every blade of the grass, every small and big rivulet and stream had to tell a story when that rain fell, me alone on the densely vegetated slopes of the hills, on the banks of the stormiest of the sources of the river - there was no other man in sight, and yet I was so much in company. Different ways lead you to different aspects of the life there - while some lead you to plantations, where you occasionally met a man, some led to quiet brooks, where you could easily wash your face and hands, with much pleasure and much quietitude. In between, higher up the hills, an occasional house was dotted, people who worked for the plantations, or kept a couple of cows. Salt was their constant source of comfort against leeches and snakes, and an umbrella against the intermittent rain.

I have seen so many shrines of so many faiths, big and small, in my life, at all sorts of places, in all sorts of designs. Yet, to describe the Ananthapura temple would be difficult. Suddenly, in the midst of the greenery come vast, black plains, as if encrusted lava all over. You reach out your neck, you crane you eyes, but to no avail, just long, winding, lonely roads amidst undulating black plains, with not much habitation in sight, not much life in sight. And yet, the air itself seems full of life - the air there is keener than the sea air of Bekal, it feels that as if you stay the night here you will come upon a wondrous adventure, you will come come upon that story of Hawthorne, where the culprit comes and goes silently from the fireside. The temple itself, set upon a pond, is somewhat unreal - combined with that place, you feel as if some witchcraft is going to be practised, and that you will like like to be a part of that ritual; you want to be an integral part of those plains, those people, that temple with its tank, its crocodile, and its weediness. The whole temple seems to be a 'swayambhu' - even its weedy vegetation and the dirty pond look to be springs of miracle in that dry place, and the magic wand really crosses your mind.

When I went there, it was 'Janmashtami', and much of the hamlet was assembled at the temple, with a mike and accompanying music, a singing competition being held in the main (and only) 'mandapam' of the temple, with songs devoted to God being sung (the competition was for, I think, children to tweens - most of them were terribly out of tune and had shrill voices); as I turned my back on the temple and the long, straight but sloping return road faced me, I could still feel the temple and its songs in my ears, in my bones - the quietness of the coming evening, the cheerfulness of the lonely plains, the sharp air, the hamlet's way of living, the solitary cyclists, calm bungalows further on the long road - all blended harmoniously, and drew my three-day tour of the Kasargod district of Kerala to a close.

The Struggle for Humour in the Visual Medium

2006-08-15T18:00:00.000+05:30

While travelling, uninvited thoughts often make an appearance, some of which you never might have thought of otherwise - for me, this is not an incidental advantage, but the real substance associated with travelling. While sitting on the Kasargod bus stop, with my short but substantial 3-day tour of the Kasargod district about to end, my mind simply wandered over to the state of humor in visual medium, especially cinema, and how it has evolved (if it has).
At one end of the spectrum is Groucho Marx - definitely slapstick, but intelligent nonetheless. You had to catch his point if you were to laugh, and the fun was that his point used to be a many-pointed one usually. The more points you catch, the more you enjoy him, and his brothers (of course, more grotesque humour there). At the other end is the TV shows with canned laughter - they already assume that the audiences going to watch them must be dumb (that's why they are watching them), so they prompt them, nay exhort them, to laugh wherever they should "technically" laugh. Witty sarcasms and crude humor abounds. And along the continuum, we have so many to vary our experience of the world. Don't be surprised that Chaplin hasn't got a mention yet - but for me, he is not the start of the spectrum. Chaplin is once again more crude; though Buster Keaton is very probably more slapstick, yet Chaplin is cruder, he has the more cruel gameplan to make people laugh. Watching Chaplin many of the times gets me angry instead of laughing (something definitely wrong with me in two things, first the reaction to Chaplin itself, and the second the effrontery to call Chaplin something else than great or classic) - hitting other people, paining other people is not fun for me, which is what keeps on happening most of the times in Chaplin films, unless he is tying some bootlaces together.
I've got the same problem with Tom & Jerry. Its great for an animator to learn squish and squash from it, but the whole gameplan is to keep characters chasing each other, colliding with each other, and burning/exploding each other, repetitively in every episode, and make people laugh at each hurt, at each explosion, at each thud into the earth from some unimaginable height. Doesn't anyone think that all this could actually be making people insensitized to pain, to hurt, to things which are behind some of the most basic to some of the most profound human emotions? Of course, because of a simple plot and action which even a toddler can grasp, the T&J cartoon is hugely popular and usually at some stage of the life has remained everyone's favourite. It used to be a favourite of mine, but in my case the reason was there used to be few cartoons available for viewing in those days when I was a child. At the other end of the spectrum is "2 Stupid Dogs" - by the same people, and yet so different. It isn't even slapstick, and that's why never became popular. But it's so funny, it has made me laugh the most in my life ever. The whole humor's not something which can be pointed to, not something which you can tell and expect that now the audiences are going to roar - many of the people will sleep, or simply change channels (what is the fate usually with today's audiences even when they are enjoying something - people love so much the feeling of power, that to manipulate the TV at will itself is corruptingly pleasant for them). Yes, this cartoon also has cruelty as one of its elements - but at least, it is more apparent, it is manifestly a dark side, the viewer need not be sidled into something, he may not imbibe unconsciously something negative from here.
I don't have any problems with Hitchcock's dark comedy "The Trouble with Harry" - the audiences know that it is a dark comedy. Audiences need to be told that what are they doing, what are they watching, what are they reading, what are they voting for - otherwise, they are simply brainless. I am here talking about the audiences in general. That's why, for me, democracy's only virtue is that no better political system exists in general - mind you, in general. An enlightened despot is always better than all the democracies of the world. So, once the audiences know Hitchcock, they are going to take all his darkness very lightly only, gathering all his meaning but skimming over the surface lightly, and thus actually letting all Hitchcock's powers be waste. But this problem was due to Hitchcock's already-established reputation. What would be my viewpoint if the same film would have been made by a debutante, and no promos were held as such, and the audiences would have gone unsuspectingly. Still, the audiences would have realised very easily that its an uncharted territory (because, for most of the audiences, "dark" is equivalent to "uncharted"); so no question of any large-scale influences on their psyches.
Humor is dying a silent death today. Neither there is subtle humor now, nor there is the slapstick one - all one has is crackling shows of humor, explosions, which hold only for a second and vanish not only from the scene but the viewer's mind as well, to be replaced with another one in the space of less than a minute, less than an hour, less than a day. The aesthetic senses have become like the cravings for food and sex - you fulfill them for some time, move on, fulfill them, move on, and keep on digesting and excreting. The subtle "Cactus Flower", due to subtler Ingrid Bergman who transforms the film (and salvages it) into a serious comedy, is panned since you don't have enough "laughing moments" and is remade into a typical horrendous Hindi blockbuster, a great superhit. Johnnie Walker is forgotten and Mehmood remembered. Charlie Chaplin lives on, and not many people even know who Buster Keaton was; Gene Kelly's great "The Three Musketeers" is said to be the worst film on the book ever made; "The Incredibles" doesn't get as much credit as did the predecessors "Ice Age" and "Shark Tale".

Do the good and bad exist?

2006-06-04T18:59:00.001+05:30

An earthquake or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and now, independently of my will. But whether their specificity as objects is constructed in terms of natural phenomena or expressions of the wrath of God depends upon the structuring of a discursive field (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985:108). Reading above took me in a natural course to something that I have often pondered over and never could find any solution, maybe because I also didn't want to think very deeply since after a while all the thoughts begin to swirl just in a circuit. Now, before anyone asks, that why I am worrying their heads off with something that I have myself not been able to determine, the answer is just that I am hoping that writing this would scratch some of the cobwebs off my mind and may elicit a response or two from aimless wanderers over the Internet, a medium that I respect highly for the scope that it provides to vagabonds. Now, what the above sentence means is something which somehow clashes with what I have held the essence of life until now. If I could determine exactly where is that "somehow," then maybe I could be nearer home, but no, not now. What the above sentence meant for me in a far-reaching manner was that there's no good or bad in this world unless there's someone to define it, or a definition somehow in any case. Otherwise, everything is just an event, having its cause and effect (I recollect David Hume here, who I think used to be on similar lines; forgive me, I don't like or read philosophy, too abstract for us fools of the earth).
Of course, traditions, rituals, and all other daily practices are given sanctimony through the definitions that are prevalent. So that if a woman in India (especially in northern India) is supposed to don a "bindi" on her forehead to indicate that she is married and the husband is living, it becomes a sort of binding rule in those parts, and no woman herself would even think that such a thing may not be done and yet her husband will continue to live. What the authors themselves have said above, that the falling of a brick may be the constructed in terms of natural phenomena or wrath of God, it is upto the society that is giving it definition. But does this hold for all the things in this world? In the Roman times, there used to be arenas where men and animals used to fight each other until one of them used to die. Not only the king but the whole population used to rejoice in these "bloodthirsty" spectacles; the collective conscience of today's world has marched a lot forward (or rather, backward) than those times. This used to be a sport. Now suppose there was no person then who saw anything condemnable in these sports. So, then, did the thing stop being despicable? Was it then the best of, the manliest of sports? Only, looking with today's eyes, was it barbarian? The question is simply how intrinsic is the good in good and the bad in bad? Is good and bad also dependent on definitions or can they exist independently? Of course, nothing can be independent in itself, but what I mean is the potential goodness of an act an object in itself with that act being the subject, or is that there has to be a definition to which the attribute of that act is subjected? Of course, if, say, there would be no man, no thinking animal, then there would be no such questions only, there would "really" be not any good or bad, for there would be no one to define them, no one for whom to define them. But, is such an abstract theory applicable to the human state of affairs? If there would be no life on earth, the sun would be wasted. So, the sun is as much dependent on the plant as the plant on the sun. But, then again, the sun being "wasted" is our conception, is our imagination. The sun itself doesn't feel that it's being wasted, and so there's no wastage. Or is there a wastage?

I think that of course there is a wastage, and that is why I say that all these are abstract theories, which actually do not fit well to the human society, the society that has evolved over time. When a revolutionary fights for his ideas, he fights for "his" ideas and he doesn't care about anyone else in this world. So, even if the whole world pronounces the opposite, he will fight for something that he thinks is right, for something that he shares in. He fights for a definition that is not there at all in the world, and so, maybe, he should not be fighting at all. For, outside of himself, there is no such definition what he has, and so according to this sort of philosophy, his definiton itself is unneeded, for the world is going on fine without him, for the world has already got the definitions of good and bad, and he doesn't fit the bill. If his theories have no existence out of himself, according to this philosophy, as I understand it, there is no concrete platform only on which he could stand. So, then, according to this philosophy, either he has to promulagate an existence outside of himself for his theories, by propagating them, by making followers of himself, by creating a large base who then begin to define the theory, or he has to die and fade out in the "natural course of action." And the world moves on. It is as simple a case of how anything is constructed; and based on the constructions, events happen, and the cycle goes on similarly. But the only answer that I don't get is how did the revolutionary got his idealism; from where? How and why does the construction of an event take a specific direction only, and not some other direction? Why is it that only some things have evolved to being classified as idealistic, while the others have not been? Is there something intrinsically good and bad to the thoughts and actions of man?

I have not taken any definite stand here. So, you can forget about me being egotistic. I hope that this would invite some cursory remarks at least.

Defending an Author

2005-11-20T22:30:00.000+05:30

Being sometimes urged on to write something, articles,stories,poetry , just for the sake of writing, I also wonder often that where does the urge come from. And then naturally follows the question , that why do authors write, is it only some form of escapism on their part and even if it is from some, then is it to be condoned or not ? Is it that they want to throw in the towel and simply sit upon something which has 'nothing to do' - churning thoughts, ideas and plots and keeping on moving the pen and typing on the computer. But I personally keep such uncharitable thoughts more for that unsavoury breed of idlers called as philosophers rather than the people who have given me priceless hours of delight, and joy, and adventure, and emotion.

To start with, of course I know that most of the authors have written and are writing for money, simply money. Even the greats have had to do it occasionally, and the lesser mortals by compulsion. What I hate though is the hype that is sometimes created around a third-rate author, though it is another matter that the author concerned himself/herself feels embarassed in private at the praise that the world is handing out to him/her. ( Once the hype is there, you can neatly divide the followers into two categories :- the enthusiasts, and the fools. Of course, there are those who are seeing money in justifying the hype, but then they are not followers but props upon which the whole flimsy and yet magnificient structure is standing upon)

So, I start with the more sincere breed among the authors - the ones who either write to simply say what they've got to say, or the others who write for propaganda in something which they believe in. In this latter category I can put people like Rand( for capitalism) or Gorky(for communism) or even Zola( he himself admitting that he his simply investigating the effects of heredity and environment). In fact, all of these latter people, the people who belong to the latter category , might themselves not be called very sincere. Rand and Gorky are themselves much muddle-headed in sorting out what they want to say and see, though probably for different reasons; Gorky simply because he was muddled up, and Rand because she dared not show the true teeth of herself and her capitalism, since not being things which could be publicly very appraised. Painfully I have to put Zola also in the somewhat insincere though he always built up the situations, the tensions, the characters so remarkably well, and in fact called up an image before the reader. But these only point to fine natural talents, honed by an acute observation and enhanced by a desire to write, to tell something to the world, to be immortal as only an artist can. But then why I call him insincere ? Maybe his lack of versatility is the spot on his shirt-collar. Why does he have to write always about the wretched, not only financially but also morally, why always a cold impassioned view of things, why nothing good shines through, why nothing which has not caught the rust of the society in which the protagonists are living. Even if there is someone who is meant to be heroic, there is always something tragic lurking about, clinging to that character. Why not somebody like a Mr. Crisparkle from Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood ? Dark tones are all very well, but even in a totally dark work there is something disturbing to the core of the heart, and that is only when you are producing something keeping a definite direction in mind, doing something worthwhile with the sincerity of your heart and soul, something which prevents your work from becoming simply a social commentary of the times, valued more maybe by sociologists and historians rather than discerning readers.

I say discerning readers, since readers often reject great works also. I have seen masses and the intelligentsia, both in agreement for once, reject something which is in fact quite excellent , which has always been very inexplicable to me, but more on that later on sometime. People have rejected Walter Scott for his rather tedious language, but I think that is more due to a lack of a feeling of romance rather than anything else. Or maybe because the SMS language is hip , and not the Scotty one. But I started out with something other than this to talk about, and I will not budge.

Zola reminds me of something which all authors do and have to do - pilfering. But then again, a question arises in my mind that is it pilfering or not ? I of course do not mean by pilfering the ages old issue that every artist takes something from all the artists that he has ever been introduced to, and possibly owes something to other artists as well since the world in which he is living has been shaped, guided, and moulded by them all along the way. But what I mean is pilfering from circumstances.
Taking the case of Zola by instance. Living himself in poverty of course gives him invaluable materials to use in his writing, but observing others dispassionately and to use their emotions, their details of life, their lifestyles in your work - is it pilfering or not ? Of course, an author cannot survive without setting some sort of background to his stories and without throwing in some details to make the setting credible to the reader, and I am not crying hoarse that an author shouldn't do this, of course he should, but I am only asking myself that how much right has a person to wring out of the intensity of the life that people around him are living the few pages of writing. Also sometimes harsh on the author him/herself. He has to act so many parts just like an actor, that just like an actor he could end up being totally dead of emotion, totally drained of emotion if has turned out to be a brilliant author/actor and while having lived the private lives of all the characters that he has acted out, he couldn't act his own ever, he couldn't live his life ever.
Does an author use his fellow-men and their emotions just as their more scientifically-inclined counterparts do so with rats and rabbits ? Or do only some, maybe more shallow in emotions like Shakespeare and Chekhov, do so ? ( Forgive my judgement, consider me a dolt, but then this is my blog) I think that the answer lies here. The answer lies again in gauging the sincerity of the writer. Authors like Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde (both maybe very witty on that account) look to me just the sort of people who would not stop from playing upon the feelings of anyone, who would not stop from prying, while on the other side of the spectrum are authors like Dostoyevsky who felt everything themselves and wrote, and maybe that is why not very versatile. In the middle are probably the best, the likes of Dickens, Scott and Ibsen, a little prying into the affairs, and a little sincerity, and combined entertainingly enough.

And now the question, that why does an author write ? After all, its his ideas, his imaginings, his stories. Why should I care about them. And in today's world, someone very irreverent enough might even ask that an author is simply a service provider to him/her, content to his taste is getting delivered to him/her and the author is getting paid for it, then why the hullaballoo , why regard the author greater than the games developer, the coder who is coding those wonderful artificial intelligence into the characters of my game , why ?

As for the first question, the answer which comes uppermost in mind that an author is simply an egotist, bent on imagining that what he writes is important and amusing to the world, is for the edification of the world in general , a lazy animal who has converted his pastime of writing beautifully into a money-making business for himself, a career for himself. But is it the right answer ? Yes , they are his stories, but he his not writing only because he has some inflated notions of their importance, but rather because he is living different lives through his characters, he is become the God , he has created men and animals and the world in which they all act as he chooses them to act ? Well, but not much different from a computer games developer, from a simulation game . Not much different ? Don't you spot it ? He has simply not created those characters, but he is living with them, inside them , he is living each of their lives himself, he has become the veritable God who has created man and yet is living in the heart of each man. And don't you see the challenge of it all - he has to become the developer, the psychiatrist, the actor, and the businessman all in one, and there lies the answer to the second question.

Of course, this blog is simply the work of an incorrigible egotist. And an enthusiast.

Ashes remembered

2005-10-12T15:41:00.000+05:30

The Ashes lived upto their promise fantastically - it was not for vain that I waited for two years how Australia would fare against a full-strength English team. And England has won hands down.

All the matches were very hard fought, and Australia ran England to the close in three of the five matches. It could have been easily 2-1 for the Aussies had not Kasprowicz run into a Flintoff bouncer, and could have been 3-1 for the Poms had not rain stifled out a certain English victory in the third Test match. So everything was always intriguingly poised. Yet I feel that England were and came out more superior than the results show.

Australia were without McGrath in two of the matches, two that they lost, and also McGrath probably not at the top of his pace in the third and fifth matches. But then McGrath is not getting younger, and its a worry now for arrogant Australians to find somebody quick quick. "Arrogant" I say here since not long ago Australians used to follow rotation policies in one-dayers, thus implying to other teams that their bench strength was also better than other teams playing elevens. The real trump for Aussies was Warney again , but more importantly not due much to his magic as to the psychological hold that he possesses over England, even though half the players of the English team were playing for the first time against Australia. The only magic that he could really bring into the game was occasional bowls to left-handers outside their off-stump with the ball pitching on the rough and zipping into the batsman almost at right angles, the ones that used to get Strauss out. Rest was all bluff, and pity that the English succumbed to it. And still they won! Whoa!

England's main problems were simply a how-did-he-come-in-the-side Ian Bell and the lack of zip from Harmison ( and Hoggard's slumbering form for much of the series). Bell was simply boring, frustrating, liable to get out any time, very slow and thus liable to break the momentum of all other batsmen (maybe not Hoggard) , and to top it all having no clues to any of the bowlers, least of all to Warne. In fact when he used to get out , I used to be happy mostly since otherwise I feared that he will break the momentum of others. If Butcher and Key were unavailable, maybe Solanki should have been tried instead of Bell or somebody young,raw and exciting from a county side.

To talk of others, Geraint Jones probably was the most abused of all, but his courageous batting was refreshing . Still will have to bat for a lot more time on the field to make up for his certain lapses on the field. Pietersen was too arrogant, and usually paid the price of it, but his batting's brilliant. Hope he remains level-headed and does not go too much the way of becoming a fashion icon( if he wants to, then he better look up Sharapova instead of Kournikova).

England has come out with a lot of positives out of this encounter, I feel. First, the confidence that they have after beating the Aussies will make them feel that they can do anything hereafter. And they can do it, provided they remain level-headed and most of the unit remains reasonably fit, especially Flintoff and Simon Jones. Talking of the latter, he is now maturing fast and in two years time could be the most dangerous bowler in contemporary cricket, provided of course he does not tread on balls and jump on boundary boards ( maybe not keep him standing near boundaries would be an option !!!) Strauss's game will improve much, especially after having coped with Warney against whom he was much at sea yet kept bravely trying to read and defy him. Flintoff continues to be par excellence , and Vaughan may come back into form after a very long time. Trescothick will have to learn keeping level-headed and not go to soft dismissals, and Harmison a little more of Flintoff's zest in everything on the field.

Lastly, if only Geraint Jones would improve his wicket-keeping skills...

Things I hate about Ayn Rand

2005-10-12T15:31:00.000+05:30

It feels like it would be better to get off the load of some things off my chest while starting to blog. And one of them is Ayn Rand. Of course her books look to me too silly to get to be a load , but the adulation and hype surrounding her seems to me too dangerous, and also quite puzzling. Knowing that most of the young people are not the ones to cause a July revolution, it becomes still more puzzling to me that what can attract them to Rand ? I can easily understand them being not attracted by Ibsen or Dickens and swearing by Sheldons and Agathas, but what hip do they find in Rand ?

So I come necessarily to the conclusion that to believe in Rand is fashionable for most and only serious for some, as many things are fated to be in this world, good or bad. A more comforting thought to me that people are not behind a Toohey en masse. Since that's what I see Rand as, through her writings she seems to me quite manipulative (and successful at that) and domineering, imposing her opinions on everyone else. Now for a more serious tone.

The first time I encountered her was reading The Fountainhead. I was very thrilled by Roark and dismayed by the fact that somebody as cruel and cold as Roark, Dominique , and Wynand were being put upon a pedestal. The whole novel is about a hate of incompetence , but leaving aside the first question that darts through the mind at this stage that how competent is the writer herself and who is she to judge others, the biggest question that arises is that whether incompetence is something evil ? For Rand has not simply despised incompetence, she has not merely showed the evil effects that incompetent people can have on earth but she has equated the incompetent with evil. I cannot, for the life of me, agree with this. What if I say that Roark and other heroes of the novel are themselves incompetent, incompetent socially, dysfunctional to an extreme degree - is incompetence limited to the sphere of one's profession only.

Of course, there are Tooheys, of course there are missionaries mostly because they have either been disillusioned of life or they had had never the illusion of life. So you will find many lifeless or cruel sort of people in theological activities, but Maugham tackles them better than Rand here. The shallow sincerity of most of the missionaries has always been brilliantly exposed by Maugham , but leaving him aside , Rand has really tackled the shrewd, public characters like Toohey and the hyped-up dummies like Keating or the female writer(I again forget her name too) very well. But what Rand conveys is that every missionary is like that, every person is in fact like that , everyone is selfish.

Of course that's true to me. A person who gives two pence to the beggar does not give them for the beggar's sake really, it is only that he is getting enjoyment out of his charity. Different people take pleasure in different ways, the charming child through caresses and the perverse,wilful child through more taunts being levelled at him, through more scorn being heaped upon him. Some people get a more enjoyment out of thinking of eternal life, so they keep washing themselves in holy waters and sacraments ; some like to think of themselves being remembered by posterity, so they keep trying to do great things ( great may not necessarily be good). But does it matter ? The point is simply that the real heroes are those whose selfish pleasures lie in doing good to others. I do not care that when a mother is sacrificing her only morsels to her unaware child she is doing so only for a selfish pleasure, I only care that it touches my heart. Of course, it is preposterous that anybody should do anything unselfishly, but it is not preposterous that a person, always selfish, yet does something for the other ( maybe due to his selfishness only). The problem with Rand is that she simply does not try to clear the misconception that people are unselfish, but she goes further on imply that no person can do anything for the other unless there is some ulterior, ugly actions or feelings of disillusionment or frustration behind those. It is as if she herself is now not believing in selfishness - why can't she simply believe that there are good actions done in this world for the sole purpose of goodness, that is for the sole selfish purpose of "easing of conscience" and a "feel good factor" for the do-gooder. The do-gooder need not be a Toohey.

As for characters like Roark, very thrilling, very strong mentally , but dismaying. He is cold, ruthless. He has only his assertions to back him that whatever he is making is the best, but should he not understand the types of people, their psychologies, and in what sort of a house would they want to live in. It is like that he's forcibly invading the privacy of people whose houses he is designing ( not simply Dominique's when living with Wynand). Although I admired in fact the astute mental makeup of the man who refuses to see anything beyond himself, yet I did not see the resulting ruthlessness as very admirable.

By the way, I then bought Atlas Shrugged and could read it only halfway through, too disgusting and not even a realistic story. Worse than The Fountainhead easily, strange that the former is more famous. But an interesting new element, brilliantly tackled, is Rearden's wife who looks her husband sort of dirty if he demands passion, who looks upon sex as only something to formalize completely and solemnize completely the rituals of marriage, and nothing more.Rand has always been very good at attacking some of society's conventionalities and ideals, its only that she writes with a propaganda , and no propagandist ever becomes a good writer.

Tragedy - simply coffee for some ?

2005-10-10T23:42:00.000+05:30

I was in fact struck forcibly by this when the tsunami happened. Eyewitness accounts started pouring out onto television and Net, instant fame was there to be earned by all and sundry, all sorts of people from all over the world started into discussions , mainly about advance warning systems and were the developed countries forewarned, and then about those "exciting" fresh statistics of number of dead and injured. People who had never heard of a tsunami before were very quick in bringing all sorts of rigmarole about nature's revenge and God's hand as the causes. In India it is usual to blame mankind's iniquities in the present age for everything tragic on a big scale , as if people used not to procreate in the past( going by the Indian logic that sex is something bad).

Well, I'm veering from my topic. The thing that struck me was that most of the people were so easily discussing it, seeing visuals of people bleeding and dying even as they were taking their breakfasts in front of a TV, discussing over coffee table all the facts, views and opinions that they gathered from news channels and newspapers - was it not sort of a cruel indifference ? People are dying and you enjoy that sight, you find it something exciting in the routine humdrum of life, the ratings of news channels shoot up(which means that many of the people, seeking some change from their daily soap operas, have now turned to these tragic soaps) - how can somebody enjoy this ? And is reporting of hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis also not voyeuristic by many channels - most want to show compelling scenes of damage done, of the power of the natural element , rather than transform the news into a simple, sober , matter-of-factly and humanitarian capsule.

Sensationalism , if not curbed by the channels and if the public itself is being carried away by it, should be curbed by then what, the government? A broadcasting policy, uniform for all ?

An Introduction

2005-10-10T22:38:00.000+05:30

Blogs, I sometimes read in the newspapers around, are partly vanity and partly an introvert's escape. While I do agree with the former, I do not think that the latter would apply to more than the usual quota of exceptions. I am now starting this blog, not to simply idiotically imagine that a million around the world would know me and would read my thoughts, would interpret my actions, and hence I would have a claim on the sympathy of a million, but simply as a means to offer a glimpse of the world that I live in.

"the world that I live in" doesn't mean of course the whole periphery of the globe - it is the world that surrounds me, it only means the well that is around this humble frog. The country in which I was born, in which I am living, the people around me, the climate which may affect my moods and mood swings, the books that I get to read, the close people among whom I share my warmth, the erotic photograph that excites me and more importantly,which fails to excite me, the films from which I do not want to get out, the indefinable "myself" , all this is the world that I live in. And to know of different people around the world, of different cities, of different climates , is so exciting.... that is why I ever presumed to trouble anybody with a blog.

Now for some introductions. I am an Indian, born and bred up in India and still there. Thankfully, this one country itself is such a mosiac that I can survive yet... My characteristic trait has always been to take off-beaten paths, something which I myself cannot exactly give a reason to. Presently I am a 3D animator beginning out, but I also continue to search for some avenue where I can write freelance articles, movie reviews, or short stories for newspapers/journals. But since I have not any journalist's degree I do not know that whether anybody would take me in (and what testimonials would I show the editor), and neither do I know any of intellectual property rules.

And with that, my blog starts. Also, if so far you have been with me, then see a companion blog (only for reviews by me of movies that I've seen - both contemporary and classics, from Hollywood and Indian cinema) on http://indmoviereview.blogspot.com