It’s been 31 years since this national integration video first showed up on Doordarshan. And it’s never been needed more. Happy Independence Day, India.
Oh, and meanwhile, we’ve done a fabulous job of keeping our promises to ourselves - or at least to some of us.
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALISTSECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this 26th day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.
Here's something worth coming out of hibernation for. If you're banging your head against the growing culture of intolerance and offence in India, please participate in #flashreads.
What is #flashreads? #flashreads is a simple way of registering your protest against the rising intolerance that has spread across India in the last few decades. At any time on February 14th—we suggest 3 pm, but pick a time of your convenience—go out with a friend or a group of friends and do a quick reading. Mail me for selected readings, or feel free to pick your favourite passage on free speech, or from the works of any writer who has faced sedition charges, a book ban or other forms of censorship.
Do you have to protest in this way? No, feel free to create your own way of protesting.
THE IDEA: To celebrate free speech and to protest book bans, censorship in the arts and curbs on free expression
WHY FEBRUARY 14TH? For two reasons. In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the death of Salman Rushdie for writing the Satanic Verses. In GB Shaw’’s words: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”
February 14th or Valentine’s Day has also become a flashpoint in India, a day when protests against “Western culture” by the Shiv Sena have become an annual feature. In Chandigarh, 51 Sena activists were arrested by the police after V-day protests turned violent in 2011. Our hope is to take back the day, and observe it as a day dedicated to the free flow of ideas, speech and expression.
Places where you might do public readings: subway and Metro stations, public parks, coffee shops, open areas in malls. If you’re talking about Flashreads on Twitter, please use the #flashreads hashtag.
If you have a blog, a tumblr or a website, an easy way to join in is to post Tagore’s poem, “Where the mind is without fear” on your site for a day, or choose any excerpt (posted below).
Location: Lodi Gardens, Bridge Over The Duck Pond, Amrita Shergill Marg entrance; or pick your own location, anywhere in your city.
In recent weeks, a particular playlist of favourite music that I've had on loop has brought back a flood of memories, vivid in my mind but softened by nostalgia. Like an out of body experience, the opening bars of particular songs transport me to a different time and place, and remind me of long-forgotten moments and the people (you know who you are) with whom I shared them.
So, people, since there's no earthly way to disassociate you from the music in my head, here's to you, and thanks for all the fish.
Comfortably Numb. Pre-ISC. Debdan, Dodo and I, who have been spending a lot of time "studying" together, are sitting at RadioVoice (in my memory, we're almost always at RadioVoice), across the road from home, waiting for notes to be photocopied. Doom is imminent, and we know it. Whatever happens next, we're hurtling towards some unfamiliar precipice, and life as we know it is over. Debdan perches on the edge of the table, and in an abandon-hope-all-ye kind of tone, sings Comfortably Numb at us (no, not to, at), while Dodo and I laugh uncomfortably.
Goin' Wild For You Baby. Skiving off college and hanging out at Park Circus, surfing a tidal wave of tea, cigarettes, hilarity and empathy, in the grip of a love affair that has crept up on me sneakily, while I wasn't looking. Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez interspersed with a rare pep talk from Bubu. I've been looking for the Bonnie Raitt version of this song ever since.
Kiss that Frog. Escaping from college to Tiru's to listen to music, drink tea and smoke on the sly on a balcony shaded by an enormous tree. Exploring his music collection while he pronounces my taste "quite good for a girl," a misogynistic slur that I forgive when I discover a wealth of music I don't have, including Peter Gabriel Live at Modena. It takes me a while to persuade him to loan it to me though.
Oh, Happy Day. Sunday morning, Park Circus, chai from Aashiq's stall, From Every Stage blasting from the windows. Such fond memories.
Wish You Were Here. Harmonising with Vittesh through the years, but most weirdly, in that little "literatura y artes" pub in Cusco, where we really were the best singers around!
Rhinestone Cowboy. Nigel as troubadour, bringing his guitar and voice. Singalongs. And eventually, singalongs at Sonai's kiddie camps, with a whole bunch of kids singing "Sundeep Jain's scooter has a puncture in the tyre." You can't make stuff like this up!
Theme For A Dream. Lawrence Hall during break, Tina, Sherene, Kavi. Singing our way through school. And then, continuing to sing this our way at all kinds of inappropriate places, in front of all kinds of inappropriate audiences, especially to the total mystification of guests at Sherene's wedding.
The Bear Necessities. Walking down Calcutta roads, arm in arm with Mona, singing and dancing, alternating on the Baloo and Mowgli parts, while our companions pretended not to know us. Happiness!
You've Got A Friend in Me: Toy Story at Nandan, with Sonai. The first of many treks to watch animated films followed by sandwiches at Atrium, or pizza at Rooftop. :)
The Phantom Of The Opera: Padma and I, in my 7th block home in Bangalore. Phantom on around the clock, while we attempted to hit those high notes, and much abuse and reluctant awe directed at Sarah Brightman each time we failed. Long nights of Russian coffee, conversation and calm. And the occasional Yahoo grin.
Fragile: Dodo introducing me to Sting, oh so many years ago! India A vs. India B, and "what's a differential equation?" on the eve of our ISC Maths exam. Ambling around the military camp, and the horns of Dodo's perpetual dilemma - should he take the Garia mini, or try his luck with the Gariahat-Howrah?
I'm off to listen to more favourites, and revel in some more nostalgia. But as a bonus for reading through this entirely personal post, here's Comfortably Numb to get you started on your own musical associations. Enjoy!
In an earlier post, I'd written about hoping for new things - change, excitement, and all that jazz. And looking back over the past year and a half, I can't quite believe the extent of change that I have, almost without thinking about it, orchestrated.
I quit my job - my stable, well-paying job - in the midst of growing recession! I left the US, and a life that I was beginning to loathe. I took a 4-month holiday, then moved to London, just about a year ago. And it's been an interesting year.
I've gone from having savings to having significantly less, but I've realised one of my travel-dreams - Machu Picchu. I came to London intending to work with the non-profit sector. I haven't done that, but I'm doing other things that are new, exciting, and super-interesting. I used to think it was insanity to work with family, but on evidence so far, I was wrong - and I'm relieved to admit it! For 4 years in the US, I thought of going back to learning Spanish, and never quite managed it - and now, finally, I'm doing it.
It all feels like baby steps in the right direction. I'm gradually getting used to this city, and while I still miss the madness of Bombay, and the semi-controlled chaos of my life in the US, I like the demarcated areas of peace and madness here.
None of this is about the long-term. I've stopped thinking in terms of the long-term, at least for the moment, and made my peace with it. But it's been a period of experimentation and discovery, and it's been fun! Multiple and diverse goals still plague me, but it's all good - let's see how many of these I can achieve in the next year. :)
In keeping with the season, here's a list of things I'm thankful for - both big and small, meaningful and mundane.
1. Agatha Christies in a lamplit glow on chill, thunderous evenings.
2. Mangsho - cooked the Bong way, super-jhal, with lots of alu.
3. Places to go, places to see!
4. Peppermint tea
5. The sheer random luck of being alive, here, today.
6. S and S, my rocks, the people I turn to for comfort and succour, or just to talk, for never failing to yank me out of the blues. And for making me laugh, whether intentionally or un.
7. PG Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, Tolkien, A.A. Milne, Jack London, Michael Crichton, Ruskin Bond, Roald Dahl, Saki - not necessarily in that order.
8. Coffee. You are my lifeline.
9. The Internet. Viva!
10. My family, for supporting my wildest decisions, encouraging me to take the road less travelled, being there when I need them. They're still learning how not to ask the wrong question at the wrong time, but they'll get there!
11. Dogs. And, in particular, Baloo, the joyous, the curious, the ever young-at-heart.
1. The Buddha walked into a pizza place and said, "Make me one with everything."
2. Why can't the Buddha vacuum in corners? Because he has no attachments.
3. How did Darth Vader know what Luke was getting for Christmas? Because he felt his presents.
4. An ethics question: If you cloned yourself, then took the clone up to the top of a tall building, stripped it, and pushed it off, would it be a. Murder? b. Suicide? or c. Just another obscene clone fall?
Being back in Kolkata is like walking in uber-slow-motion, neck-deep through molasses. Everything is so excruciatingly slow. Traffic inches along. People plod. Dust drips onto everything. The city sags in the April heat. Women sit in doorways near the local school, waiting for their children. Or plod, sweating flakes of talcum powder, to the local bank, where officials have, over years, mastered the art of making each transaction last decades. Customers wait, mute and uncomplaining. Everyone waits for everything. For CESC to deal with cable faults (apparently their monitoring systems don’t alert them to these – they find out only once irate customers start calling). For the cable company to deliver the channels it’s supposed to. For electricians, plumbers, carpenters, who arrive days after they were due. Because if you live in this city, you know the secret to survival here: acceptance of one central idea: "eikhaney tho erokom-i hoy" - this is the way things work here.
I didn't grow up in Kolkata, but in Calcutta, a less bonglicised, more cosmopolitan, livelier, more interesting scape. I went to the best school in the universe, had the coolest family on the planet, and spent all my time with the most fun friends ever, in this most astonishing of cities. Calcutta was the celebration of every festival - Diwali and Pujo, Christmas and Eid. Calcutta was the annual book fair, the Dover Lane music festival, English and vernacular theatre. Calcutta was Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Herbie Hancock, Kishore Kumar and Frank Sinatra. Calcutta was winter mornings at the zoo, and tea and contemplation in the monsoon. Calcutta was coffee houses and bars, jazz and blues, the enlightened, liberal left, a city of artists and writers, musicians and movement. Calcutta was the unquestioned cultural centre of the universe.
Of course, “this best of all possible worlds” perspective is easy to maintain in school, with relatively little direct interaction with the outside world. Through the last 14 years, as my connections with other cities have grown, and my time in Calcutta decreased, the fiction has been increasingly harder to maintain. Kolkata has steadily decayed, so that each time I turn around to take a look, it is just a little greyer, a little duller and more provincial, while cities I once abhorred as soul-less cultural vacuums – New Delhi springs to mind – have grown and greened and prospered. The Calcutta of my childhood has vanished, with neither bang nor whimper. Which makes me wonder, did it ever exist, except in my mind?
I left Calcutta in the summer of 1998. In 11 years, I’ve moved around a fair bit, and through it all, at some deeply-buried emotional core, I have always thought of it as “home” – the city I know so well that I could walk around blind-folded, the city I love so fiercely that it brings tears to my eyes. Then, earlier this year, I decided to take a sabbatical in Calcutta. Except that it was Kolkata. And it drove me up the effing wall.
It isn’t just the decay – after all, great cities decay and are reborn. Or the fact that pollution has actually caused weather change – Calcutta no longer sees the violent, refreshing norwesters for which I remember waiting excitedly. It’s so many things that I don’t even know where to begin. The steady un-greening of the city. The complete disdain for traffic rules by ALL SECs (justified by the entirely unreasonable explanation of “everyone does it, this is the only way to survive here”, and by the somewhat more offensive “you won’t understand, these foreign ideas don't work here"). The bottles, cans and plastic bags thrown carelessly from car windows onto streets. The apathy. The make-a-fast-buck mores on display in banners that urge ill-informed students who have failed class XII board exams to “save a year” by enrolling with some seedy college, unrecognized and unaccredited by anyone. The ludicrousness of a government that, attempting to ban the polluting, 2-stroke-engine auto-rickshaws, managed to “stop” only 60 of them, across the city, when autos remained running, in defiance of said rule.
But I think, more than all the physical manifestations, it is the perspective of Calcuttans that is the most worrying. In all civilizations comes a time when paths diverge around one word: change. Those that embrace change move on. Those that don’t, fall back. In Calcutta, change is a distinctly dirty word. Old is gold, none of your new-fangled rubbish for us, thank you very much. Couple with this, the peculiarly Calcuttan lip-curling sneer of disdain for other cities, supported by empty pride in the cultural achievements of previous generations. (And I cringe to think that I was once the poster-child for this kind of thinking.) The rallying cries of “Tagore” and “land reforms” (an achievement in itself, but subversive in the way it draws attention away from how little else has been achieved in three decades of uninterrupted rule by a single party) are alive and strong. And, worst of all, nobody seems to be interested in what goes on elsewhere. For too many people in Kolkata, so sure are they of their superiority that there is no elsewhere worth knowing about.
But all of Calcutta’s claims to fame are dead. Culture? Delhi has book fairs and music festivals. Bombay has Kala Ghoda. New York celebrates every damn thing on the planet. Cosmopolitanism? Count the non-Indian people in other cities, and then let’s talk. Industry? Sure, at one point in the dim past. But now, between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress, any hope of real economic development in the next 30 years has been successfully scotched. Congratulations, West Bengal, you just shot yourself in the foot.
I am a product of a particular Calcutta space-time, and proud of it. I grew up in the most fantastic city in the world. But – and I begin to realize this only now – perhaps that city was fantastic because it was fantasy, a child’s view of a gentle jailer, a fond mother’s insistence that her criminal child is better than anyone else. And even as this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine, there’s no getting around it: Calcutta, your day is done.
We had heard about someone who had a litter of Labrador puppies she was desperate to find homes for, and persuaded ourselves that we would only go to see them, nothing more. There was no question of us bringing home another dog - Bagheera (our rather ferocious and uneven-tempered Boxer) wouldn't stand for it.
And then, as we walked in to a room, this one puppy, pushed around by all the others, toddled up to us, looked up and smiled - and just like that, the decision was made.
That was the summer of 1996. We've had 13 years with the happiest, smiley-est, gentlest, most joyful of beings. And now, suddenly, she's gone.
We try to focus on the fact that she lived a full and joyous life, that she didn't suffer much or for too long at the end, that she went peacefully, in her own bed, that she was our best beloved. But there's a hole in our lives, an ache in our hearts, and the world feels darker, full of tears and untamable grief.
Over many years of reading, my taste in books has gone through distinct phases. At different periods of time, I have been addicted to thrillers, westerns, comic strips, biographies, math-and-science non-fiction, chick-lit, philosophy...
Regardless of literary phases, however, there are some books that I have been able to pick up and read over and over, anytime, anywhere. These are the books that have kept me up at night, engrossed and trapped in the story, no matter how many times I have read them before. These are the books that have traveled around with me wherever I've moved - a permanent piece of my baggage, an integral part of my sense of home.
Thank you, Michael Crichton, for all the great books - for Travels and Andromeda Strain and Terminal Man and Jurassic Park... but most of all, for Congo. For "Peter tickle tickle Amy, Amy good gorilla." For the book I've read about a hundred times since I was ten years old, each time without the two pages that our copy had lost (I've never read those two pages - I still have no idea what happens there, after twenty years of addiction to the story). For capturing my attention with the Mercator projection, changing my view of the world and firing my imagination.
It's a grey, glowering day in New Jersey as America goes to the polls to vote on the next four years. People across the country have been lining up since before dawn, in some places, waiting hours to exercise their vote. Arguing with election officials and volunteers at booths about their right to vote, waiting for their names to be found on the lists.
Meanwhile, some said analysts and journalists are writing articles like this one.
So in keeping with the story of the hour, and pushed to the end of my tether by this kind of writing, here's my take.
1. The US is the biggest debtor country in the world. Its economy has gone to pot, its financial system is falling apart thanks to at best negligent, at worst outright fraudulent rating of securities. Unemployment is on the rise. People are losing homes, jobs, healthcare. 2. The Iraq war has been a front for control of oil. Think about this for a moment: the invasion of a sovereign country for control of its resources. With the public being hoodwinked every step of the way. 3. And then kept in line, despite the systematic removal of individual freedoms, by an administration that thrives on fear and ringing cries of "never forget". 4. America's claim to moral superiority has been razed to the ground with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the invasion of Iraq, a sovereign nation (it was ludicrous to watch Cheney rebuke Russia for invading South Ossetia recently). 5. American "foreign policy" is a disgrace, the constant sabre-clanking with Iran and refusing to sit down across the table being just one example. 6. America uses more energy - and more oil - than any other country in the world. And yet, the US is not on board with international agreements re reducing carbon footprint, energy use, global warming impact, etc.
And yet, the issue to focus on, as per Peggy Noonan, is how Obama addresses abortion?
"You only want a medical practice to be rare when it isn't good. For Mr. Obama, whose mind tends, as intellectuals' minds do, toward the abstract, it all seems so . . . abstract. And cold. And rather suggestive of radical departures. "That's above my pay grade." Friend, that is your pay grade, that's where the presidency lives, in issues like that."
President Clinton once said that abortions need to be "safe, legal and rare". I agree on the first two points. Outlawing abortion will lead to a black market situation. Like the organ trade in Dirty Pretty Things, this would mean back rooms and coat hangers. (The same applies to prostitution: legalization empowers sex workers, gives them rights, protection, health.) On a side note, there is an interesting argument in Freakonomics, that talks the correlation between crime and unwanted babies - specifically, relating the drop in crime rates in the US to Roe V. Wade. It may not be provable, but it's a cogent, powerful argument, and a highly logical one.
In the final count, this is an issue that needs to be left to a woman and her doctor. And a decision that needs to be left to the woman. The government's involvement in issues of right and wrong should extend only to areas where there is a victim. Enough with the regulation of victimless crimes. Enough with stuffing one group's beliefs down the throats of another.
So what is the presidency about?
Enabling citizens to earn a better living. Building and maintaining strong, mutually beneficial trade and policy relationships with other countries and regimes. Creating opportunity and economic growth, reducing debt, showing fiscal prudence, creating necessary regulation and providing necessary oversight. Enabling access (in whatever way) to healthcare and education and sustainable livelihoods. Providing "common goods" - infrastructure, parks, clean air and water.
If I had a vote to cast in this election, it would have been Obama's without question. And this was true even before McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate - although that should have tipped the balance for any thinking person. I don't necessarily agree with Obama's policies on the economy - I'm all for the economic ideal of perfect competition. But I also see that an Obama presidency has the chance to make the world a slightly safer place. I like his foreign policy approach. I think it's high time America sat down at the negotiating table with other countries and sabre-clanking and fist-waving at the drop of a hat.
It is interesting that, in an era of nuclear proliferation, escalating terrorism and bloodshed, where no two warring parties will talk to each other, the potential leader of the only (but only just) super-power in the world is being evaluated by some people - people who matter, who are listened to, whose views are noted - not on his ability to impact the country's (and the world's) safety and peace, but on his approach to interfering with the personal domain of an individual.
1. In the first presidential debate and the first (and only) vice-presidential debate, it is interesting to see how candidates have to tap into specific terms. Sarah Palin's audience ratings climb when she repeatedly talked about "our freedoms." What freedoms, Governor? (Or should that be Governess?) Let's talk about the Patriot Act, why don't we? Let's talk about women's freedom to choose. Let's talk about gay people's right to marry (yes, marry, not have a civil union - although, to be fair, Biden doesn't support gay marriage either).
2. I don't get all the talk about women's preference for Palin. This is the woman who is not just personally "pro-life" (which, incidentally, is the most ridiculous term), but who wishes to inflict her beliefs, her CHOICES, on ALL women, to take away their right to choose for themselves. You could almost turn this issue into a mobius strip.
3. Palin talks about how America can't allow Iran (Eye-Ran) to develop "nucular" energy or weapons. I'm as alarmed about nuclear proliferation around the world as any sane person, but excuse me, who exactly is America (A-My-Ri-Ca?) to decide who can or can't do something? And by the way, while on the subject of foreign policy and diplomacy (or coercion, as the case may be), shouldn't American politicians - indeed, politicians around the world - be made to, at least, pronounce the names of the countries they talk about correctly?
4. It IS interesting (as Amit Verma pointed out in India Uncut) that a politician in America has to be, or at least pretend to be, a "believer". No atheists allowed here. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Pick up your faith at the door, however. (Aside: I suspect that in India, candidates' faith is not always explicitly investigated, but is none-the-less assumed. Perhaps this should be considered a factor in any study on the level of progress and democracy in a country: would the populace vote for a non-believer?)
5. Freudian slip by Palin in the last few minutes of the debate, while talking about McCain: "He is the man who needs to leave" (quickly ammended to "he is the man who needs to lead.") Well said, Governor, I couldn't have put it better myself.
6. I love Palin's self-congratulatory "we're the mavericks", as though she has been bucking trends her whole life instead of clinging to her guns and religion!
7. Why was this woman selected, again? Is this a sign of McCain's senile dementia?
Without going into grotty detail, here is the question: Having made one's bed a certain way (a way that makes one miserable, one now realises), should one grit one's teeth and bear up? Or should one say, the hell with it, life's too short, and move onto something that might be better - or might be equally bad?
In the context of, say, a job, to stay or to quit seems like a simple enough decision. Placed in the context of one's deeper beliefs, the question resounds with conflicting arguments that lead to the eternal questions - who am I? What do I believe? Must my actions reflect my beliefs? Should they?
Sitting at my dining table, looking dully out at a gloomy sky that glowers in at me, I sense I'm working myself into A Mood. The sonorous sound of Boots Randolph playing back to me the warm glow of my childhood makes me lonelier still. The year-end black funk seems to be beginning early this year.
The question stands. I'm not looking for answers (like hell I'm not), but feel free to write in if you want to offer opinions. As someone once wrote to me, I need a sign, a motif, something to show me the way.
To P - my sole remaining reader, the only person who still checks in with this blog from time to time and sends me anguished mail from time to time demanding new posts.
What could be nicer than driving down a highway on a luscious rainy day, listening to one's favourite music, getting off at a new exit to discover a new way home? Finding one's way home to make a mug of hot tea (ginger, pepper, no cardamom) while dancing to Kodachrome? The evening spreads out in front of me like an intriguingly lumpy present, waiting to be unwrapped. There are books to be read, a documentary to be watched, this week's Time and Economist still to open. There is new music (all of Queen, U2, Sting and The Beatles - thank you, R) to catalogue. There is a visit to S this weekend to be savoured.
Suddenly, each moment feels like a gift to treasure and celebrate and dance to, to capture and drink to the lees.
Thank you, P, for reminding me.
And in the spirit of things: it's always exciting to do something new - like go canoing. And if your canoe happens to capsize, so much the better - a little more excitement never hurt anyone, even if you did happen to leave one shoe lying full fathoms five and had to sacrifice a favourite watch to the gods of adventure! To life, to life, lechaim!
In keeping with ringing out the old and bringing in the new, and the mantra of "change" that presidential candidates in the US have been spouting, I will be signing on with a new company on Wednesday. Huzzah!
Meanwhile, I could make vows of regular blogging, etc. for the (Bengali) new year, but what the heck - I'll write when I write. Live with it!
Shubho nobo borsho, all. Here's to excitement and growth and new things to explore. Have a wonderful year - I know I will.
A Liberian taxi-driver told me today that my eyes looked Indian, but apart from that, he'd have put me down as a Mexican. Huzzah! How much more exotic can one get?
