randomsparkles

My Grandmothers Lakshmi Puja

2011-10-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

My Grandmothers Kojagori Lakshmi Pujo:

Today was Lakshmi Pujo, on the Kojagori Purnima, a peculiarly Bengali Hindu celebration and invocation of the goddess Lakshmi. Had I not been in Calcutta, it would have been just another high-pressure workday. Though it still was not a holiday for us, it was so, for most of the city, and the drive to office and back was pleasantly non-chaotic, often punctuated by the sound of the conch-shell, by a fleeting glimpse of colourful earthen deities of the goddess in small pandals, minus the hype and glitz of the themed Durga Pujas recently held.
This is a peculiarly domestic celebration, and revolves around the home. It is almost a coalescence of the weekly ritual of every Thursday when the giver of wealth is devoutly worshipped, with a reading of the “panchali” interspersed with more complicated paraphernalia of ritual and special food.
For me, memories of the Kojagori Lakhsmi Puja are always intricately inter-twined with my childhood. More specifically, with my “Dida”, my maternal grandmother who observed it with devotion and gusto. Her preparations began days in advance, and continued in full swing till the wee hours of the day itself.
Assembling and gathering together gleaming copper and brass votive vessels, polishing them with herbal rinses and pastes, adorning the “thakur ghar” with an array of bric-a-brac peculiar to this Puja such as the earthen plates or “shara”, the brightly coloured “tir kathi” fringing a clay quadrilateral where the deity would be placed, aesthetically mass-produced cane-work “kulos”; cutting and chopping the fruit and vegetables for the “bhog”; preparing the delicious “shinni” mix of jaggery and wheat flour, grinding the rice paste for the intricate “alpana” and then etching the traditional motifs on the floor of the prayer-room and all over the house, overseeing and fine-tuning all the arrangements for the cooking of the bhog, which had to be done over a separate wood oven, specially created for the purpose; and a myriad other varieties of tasks. She maintained her unflinching enthusiasm for these rituals right till her demise, and ironically she died on the morning of the puja, after completing all the preparations…

Yet never did she expect anything from us, except mild participation and spirituality, which meant-getting up early, bathing and getting dressed on time, not chattering during the hour-long ceremony, folding our hands in prayer and invoking the blessings of the goddess for peace, and not complaining too much about the exquisitely cooked but strictly “satvik” vegetarian food(which to us hardcore carnivores was a dramatic change from our daily fare!)
Never did Dida hector us about learning the rituals she so deftly carried out herself, nor did she demand our complete compliance to the ideologies of the celebration, which, years later, during my reading of feminist sociology, I understood as upholding a particular version of acceptable domesticity and the ideal femininity.
But what Dida did instil in us was a piety rooted in simple devotion, an act of belief for that moment of prayer, where accoutrements were present, but not fearful badges of religiosity, where the auspiciousness of the day was as much to do with hearty good cheer and a feeling of well-being as with the multiplicity of customs and routines inherent in the Puja.
And most importantly, that participation was open to all who wanted to attend, irrespective of caste, creed and social standing, so that the children of the maid and the family driver who happened to be Christian, sat along with us, during the celebrations , and partook of the offerings to the goddess after that. Tolerance was suffused into the core of a very sacred personal space, paradoxically inclusive of the macro-world outside the homely hearth sought to be protected by the power of the Goddess Lakshmi.
Today, we live in a milieu where surface religiosity overtakes spirituality, as the marketization and commercialisation of faith demands competitive ritualism. Deracinated “born-agains” wear their religion on their sleeve as a powerful determinant of their separateness and particularist selves.
Celebrity worshippers gush on 24/7 media channels about re-discovering faith and diligently pose for the frenzied camera-persons clicking their devotion into instant cameos for voyeuristic consumption. Identity is catalysed through the discourse of religious community, and “minorityism” and “majorityism” dictate the politics of the vote-banks, feeding an incessant parade of politicians as religious pretenders, in a constant and very public whirl of answering the call of Divinity on a media-driven tableaux.
As we move further and further away from the home-spun and private celebrations, where the purpose of piety was more important than the obsession of religious traditions being maintained through high-rituals, or the cult of religious identity and the massi-fication of celebrations overtaking the discovery of faith in the personal realm…,I remember my Dida and her celebrations of Kojagori Lakshmi Puja, by taking an evening walk after office, looking at the resplendence of the full-moon visible over the concrete and the smog and chanting “Esho Ma Lakshmi, Bosho Ghore” in the spirit of those pious and old-fashioned homely ceremonies of yore……

how many slanders must this nation tolerate...

2011-09-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

To see an honest and committed ex-I-Tax officer being hounded for a pittance,and that too when:
Numerous IAS officers commit open loot, by " voluntarily resigning", " taking time off for writing""re-building health" and then mysteriously re-surfacing as well-heeled corporate honchos in leading corporate houses, earning mega-salaries, doing the rounds of their ex-offices, fixing contracts for their new employers with the panache and swagger of those who have both sides of their bread buttered....
Various in-service colleagues of Arvind adeptly lick the boots of their political masters to land that juicy assignement, make that extra tranche of un-accounted for cash, get industrial houses to "sponsor" their five-star holidays, and if nothing else, quitely loot the humble citizen , by turning a blind eye to those lawyers, doctors, professionals, operating tax-free private businesses....
Sundry cops, engineers, surveyors, assessors blatantly take "cuts" for themselves , their bosses and the neta at the top of it all.....
When the political criminals and techno-crooks lodged in various high-security jails are soon released due to lack of "evidence"..
When there is loads and loads of the other colour stuff, loaded in Swiss banks,in a complex cornucopia of front companies, offshore deals, middlemen with exotic Latino names and the whole bizzare rigmarole of sleaze and slush money...
When election victories in certain spots are won by "slender" margins and lots of freebie gizmo distributions...
Do I honestly think that a certain department of the government is waking up after a four-year slumber-in a new found zeal to recover money which was never its in the first place....?

ten strata of media double-speak

2011-08-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

TEN STRATA OF MEDIA DOUBLE-SPEAK(WHICH MAKES GOEBBELS WRITHE IN ENVY)
There is only petty and minor corruption in this nation which is merely a price to pay for high growth statistics. Telcom liberalization was achieved by Raja in 3G, so why carp? And India did win the maximum number of medals in CWG 2010, we should be proud of this, instead of harping only on Kalmadi and Sheila Dixit.
Who is this rag-tag band called “civil society”? They are mere jholawallahs who cannot be taken seriously.
The middle class is frustrated and thus hitting the streets. The “aam admi” is content with things achieved by the UPA.
Parliament is supreme, no one else has a right to speak. It is only parliament which decides the good, bad and ugly.
The CAG has over-stepped his mandate.
Judicial over-reach is ruining the nation.
The poor of “Bharat” donot have time for urban activism of the elites.
The country is being de-stabilised by sinister forces which are undermining our growth story with chaos and unrest.
Some media channels are doing trial by media.
Irom Sharmila is being ignored and the abuse of human rights in Gujrat is being brushed under the carpet.
When is Rahul-baba taking over?The young want a dynamic leader like him.
The list is being added to constantly.
Just watch Barkha Dutt/Ndtv/Rajdeeep Sardesai/Cnn-Ibn/ and read the Telegraph/Business Standard/Hindustan Times to see the melding of UPA spokespersons diatribes into sophisticated columnists/tv anchor presentations!
( The ghost of Goebbels lives on in energetic and vibrant form in the “world’s largest democracy”)

ETERNAL DIVIDES:WILL LONDON ALWAYS BE A POWDER KEG OF CONTRADICTIONS

2011-08-09T01:08:00.001-07:00

ETERNAL DIVIDES? WILL LONDON ALWAYS BE A POWDER KEG OF CONTRADICTIONS?

Shock and horror perhaps, but not entire surprise to see large swathes of north and east London go up in flames- cars and buildings torched, looting and pillaging mobs, a disturbing undercurrent of racial tensions running through as many faces among the marauders were black, the police they were battling were white and the ghosts of 1985 and the early eighties-Brixton, Toxeth and inner-city Manchester returning to haunt a complacent post-Thatcher and post-New Labour Britain, too accustomed to seeing Islamic terror as the only villains to upset the fabric of social order with mindless violence.
I recall my own fleeting impressions of multi-cultural Britain now almost a decade and three years hazy, as I was only a pre 9/11 resident of London, much before the tide of East European migrations and the Blairite dream of Cool Brittania gone sour …
Staying in Kings Cross and in the heart of criminal prone Central London, my daily trek back and forth from university in genteel Bloomsbury would be scarred by a constant lurking fear of being mugged. The refrain of all and sundry used to be to “watch out”, as soon as one turned from leafy Brunswick Square into Judd street and Cromer street-with decaying Georgian fronted-terraces co-existing with ugly yet functional concrete blocks housing the council flats. Often one would break into a sprint, uncomfortably racing with some plastic supermarket bags containing the evening groceries; and anxiously looking over ones shoulder to note any odd-looking movements from behind. There were days when the fears would be put to rest- by the charming appearance of the first crocus and daffodil fringing the verge at the middle of the street crossing as one turned into Pentonville Road from Kings Cross; or the warbling of a thrush as one trekked deep into Islington from Liverpool Street tube station..London would then be an epitome of the sylvan and pastoral favoured by romantic poets, albeit among the smooth concrete and the finished facades of rows of housing. Then there would be an uncomfortable sighting of the mounted police of the Met, in swift pursuit of some unknown criminals, wielding menacing looking truncheons and on horseback, or an array of fierce looking police dogs accompanying them..and there would again be greater caution exercised, not to linger too long elsewhere and be back to Dinwiddy house student digs..or spend the paltry scholarship allowance to wing back in a stately no 73 double-decker bus which at least used to alight seconds away from the residence.
Cromer Street soon achieved the distinction among us daily pedestrians from Bloomsbury to Pentonville Road as the “ most dangerous” stretch of street to traverse. It had an odd jumble of shabbily elegant and decaying red-brick houses uncomfortably cheek- by-jowl with a huge council house block largely populated by Bangladeshi immigrants and Afro-Carribean s. The former contributed to the heavy footfalls in a small but immensely useful shop stocking everything sub-continental from green chillies to masoor dal to haldi powder. It used to be a frequent Hobsons choice to exercise-should one take danger street that was Cromer Street to manage a week’s supply of green chillies, far cheaper here than the bird’s eye Thai variety in Sainsburys or Safeways, or should one throw economy to the winds for the cause of safety and avoid being attacked?!
I never really analysed the statistics which maligned this otherwise modest stretch. Was it merely a prejudice deeply embedded by the rash of “search and stop” missions of the green- jacketed met police then reeling under the racism charges of the Steven Lawrence case? Or was there actually a flood of students being attacked by non-white occupants in the grim council blocks?
The same uncertainty about Kings Cross Tube Station and its unsavoury reputation-was it again an embedding of irrational bias because of the string of Afro-Carribean one pound shops/hair cutting salons/groups of gangsta-rap styled black youths; or did official crime figures actually bear out the tag of unsafe status?
Since yesterday, as newspaper and television headlines scream of burning houses and cars in Walthamstow, Enfield, Tottenham, Brixton and the edges of the swanky m etropolis that London is supposed to be, I wonder if the city has changed at all; not only from the grim Eighties of Thatcherite harshness, but also from the swinging London of New Labour excess when money was poured into council spending and a youthful prime minister had captured the public imagination with his clean-cut smiling face and the promises of a renewed greatness and regeneration.
Beneath the vast array of new jobs, lavish public spending and a reification of the culture of entitlements which New Labour brought for over a decade, what is it that never really changed in those dourly oppressive crumbling lanes and streets of Hackney Wick and Tottenham? Why is the underclass still as sullen and non-integrated as the poor working classes of Dickensian London, long after the Cockney Londoner of yore has been gentrified into the modern pop elites of rockstars and millionaire footballers peopling the pages of “Hello” magazine and feeding the Fleet Street tabloids with their circulation figures?
Has London remained the concatenation of poverty and aspirations, enormous wealth and grinding misery, class interspersed with race and nationality as a badge of those who belong to the “club” and those who donot, as it always was?
Long out of touch with the physical reality of the place, I am curious to know the truth behind those disturbing images of violence and mayhem, engulfing a world metropolis of the affluent West in the same flames as the chaotic, sharply divided and teeming cities of the India I call home…

the managed media

2010-11-21T02:31:00.000-08:00

the worst offenders in their planted news and pro-spectrum Raja articles/posts/edits are in my humble opinion:
The TELEGRAPH, CALCUTTA and the ABP stable in general:
This daily reads like a Trinamul congress mouthpiece over the last few years but now it seems to be an apologia for scamsters like Raja.
insiduous and poisonous plants against the CAG report, and defence of the tainted babus/departments/politicos are its diurnal fare. Sad to see this decline from its stellar days in the 1980s when under MJ Akbar it used to be a refreshing read.
NDTV 24X7
This channel on tv was always pro-establishment, but under a veneer of sophisticated and balanced opinion formation it has been defending the CWG crooks and now Raja.Again it is tragic to see the compromises made in the quest for advertisement revenues and favours.
Outlook magazine
thinly-veiled pro-government mouthpiece under the label of secularism and rational thinking.
These doyennes of committed journalism are beginning to make Rupert Murdochs stable look like chicken feed!

2010-11-21T00:38:00.000-08:00

more memories

2010-11-21T00:21:00.000-08:00

Calcutta- Before the” red “ takeover
Watching some old movies recently from the early 1970s, a rush of memories misted up my battle-hardened mid-life self, as I found myself transported back to a time when the city-scape was so different from the present grimy incarnation it now is. Populous it still was, perhaps as untidy as it is now, and with the same speckled bands of buses, rickshaws and streams of cards and droves of humanity,
Yet so much has simply faded away, and been blanked out of the world-view of today. Some vignettes remain in my minds-eye, signposts of a cosmopolitan and elegant city that was fast going to fade into oblivion….I recount some of these random snapshots before they slip into the eternity of amnesia.
Neon display signs in Esplanade. The one I remember was next to the Chowringhee crossing, there was a red teapot pouring out blue whirls of tea into two red cups, and amazingly the act was completed as soon as the signals turned green from red-so perfectly synchronized was the sequence. Of course there were no flyovers then, just a wide sweep of road and the impressive balustraded terrace of the grand old lady of the avenue-the Oberoi Grand…
New Market was still a treasure-trove for the un-initiated. Children like me used to be dazed by the cavalcade of shops gleaming with exotic wares, the well-lit interiors, the imposing cannon in the centre and of course the fashionable crowds, spiffily dressed, many of them pale-skinned and light-eyed, speaking and moving rather differently from the homely bazaars of Gariahat and Lake Market. We headed there for lots and lots of goodies-anything ranging from Nahoums cakes, biscuits and chicken patties to the ubiquitous boiled sweets and Kalimpong cheese-sold from a pokey little shop at the far-end and with its tiny shelves spilling out with the fanciest fare east of Fortnum and Mason!
A scary Chinese girl who trimmed my hair into the cutest fringe at “Eves” hairdressing salon. (they still called them that and not “beauty parlour”.) As she snipped away with a menacing dash of scissors I could hear the swish of chiffons and chintzy dresses belonging to the rows and rows of matronly ladies who settled in for their routines in front of huge boiler-like machines (later I understood these to be perm-machines and oversized versions of the latter-day natty blow-dryer). Some ladies sported a blue halo as they sat-the beginnings of then trendy “blue rinse perm” and others seemed to be growing nests out of their heads with elaborate bouffants and bee-hive hairstyles!
Meals out much looked forward to were at Park Street. There was a delicious and gooey ice-cream called tutti-frutti at Magnolia or “Mags”, light tea cakes with a swirl of pinkish cream or succulent sausage rolls at Flurys, a goblet containing a thick wedge of sauced up prawns called “Prawn Cocktail” at Skyroom. And there was chicken tetrazzini and steak Chateaubriand at Mocambo, plus a melt-in-the mouth lightly done noodles and sweet and sour chicken at “Peiping and Waldorf. On the days when the family budget was minimal (usually at the end of the month) there were some delectable thick paratha like rolls stuffed with chunks of meat and roundels of onion at Nizams and wrapped in a white band of paper which was greased with the dippings enough to be sucked dry once and roll finished! There was also an interesting pastry shop at the Great Eastern Hotel in what was still called Dalhousie and a clutch of interesting but un-assuming restaurants around Dharmatallah which did dainty savouries where grown-ups would rush us to after some hectic shopping at New Market.
The swish set: ladies wearing a lot of sleeveless blouses with sarees, and men sporting shiny polyester shirts with thick dark specs and long side-burns. Younger women wearing slacks, maxis and bell-bottom trousers and the men in flowery half-sleeved shirts left open at the collar wide enough for the hirsute chests to be admired! The women with bouffant, top-knots, bobs and fringe with a hair-band. Hoop ear-rings and deep kohl-lined eyes with a twirl at the eye-lid.
While the bands played “Tequila”, “Blueberry Hill” and sundry cha-cha/mambo/latinesque or Usha (still Iyer) sang in her bindis and kanjeevaram sarees couples twirled, twisted, jived and jammed on Park Street …
My grandfather, celebrated cinema critic NKG would often treat me to delectable fare from the Chinese kitchen at the Calcutta Club in a style of cooking which one rarely finds these days. He was an early and enthusiastic member and I would often wait in the car, as he stopped by for a few minutes, for those were strictly child-proof days and all that mites like me could do was to wait impatiently outside and gaze at the stately and gracious façade of the Club, conjuring up visions of what transpired inside !
Dredging up some stray memories: roads which were more tree-lined, cinema-halls with a grand sweep of marble and ornate wooden staircase and imposing portraits of Hollywood film stars, trams which glided along tracks fringed with lush green grass, less people living out their daily lives on the pavements, a great joyousness in the air around Christmas and New Year-revelry and frolic, carol singers and foo-foo bands, genuine Christmas pudding…Park Street and “south” of it was a landscape of hybrid sophistication.
But life got grimmer as one moved out of Park Street and South Calcutta’s l spacious avenues. There was another supposedly grotty part of town called “north” where some poor relatives crowded into drab two-storey houses cheek by jowl on narrow lanes. They had stoves in their bedroom where they cooked tasty food, and there were frequent sounds of staccato gunfire… I still remember my grandmother telling me to be very quiet as there were some dangerous men called “Naxals” on the prowl and our shiny Ambassador with uniformed chauffeur was an obvious target… there was a statue of an old man called Hemanta Basu garlanded in front of the lane-he had just been shot by those Naxals..
There was the odd wedding to attend to in that disturbed area, and amidst the clatter of brass pails heaped high with delectable mangsho jhol, rui maacher kaalia and various other goodies, served by “para” boys on banana leaves and relatives of the bride/ groom neatly attired in dhuti/panjabi a stray whisper of gunshots fatally wounding a rich businessman relative and some distant cousins who had been picked up in the still of the night for questioning and never heard of since then… (though an old aunt would murmur about their scholarly brilliance and industriousness)
Growing up in comfortably affluent Ballygunge, with gracious bungalows and mansions, sheltered in the Anglo-Indiana of Loreto House and wallowing in the last vestiges of the elegant decadence of colonial and cosmopolitan Calcutta, how would I know that the contradictions in the “north” and those wild Naxal boys who disappeared from their families and were never heard of again, would usher in a new era of a red citadel.. one which would leave my favourite home city to be robustly plebian, awash with mediocrity, insularity, tacky wealth and a new name of “Kolkata“- the butt of jokes in certain circles as a city of the dying….

Tailpiece: Childhood memories, much like poetic licence are notoriously politically incorrect, so, dear readers please bear with me!

whither morality

2010-11-21T00:15:00.000-08:00

For some of us in public service who make a living from catching scamsters, it’s an oddity that all of a sudden the nation seems to have woken up to what is a part of our daily professional parlance.
“Transparency, accountability, governance” or the elimination of corruption is nothing new to us. We encounter these as daily mottos, as the leit-motifs of what we look for in public institutional paradigms. Let’s say that we rarely find it, and even if we do, there is a quicksilver aspect to it, that it has been an individual driven process and will fade away as soon as its idealistic progenitor is shunted off, usually to a backwoods or insignificant assignment where he or she still chips away as a lone soldier.
So as the nation (or at least the “India”) part of it undergoes an epiphanic moment(or seems to, at least in messianic Television anchor statements) can we soul-search on these stray following thoughts:
1. Is this merely a big business /corporate discovery of an insidious phenomenon which has eaten apart the vitals of this nation, driven by the quest for TRP’s /circulation statistics? Is this influenced by some behind-the-scene manouevres which are shielded from us?
2. Or is it truly the beginnings of a middle-class revolution and activism where the media plays a crucial role as a crucible for naming and shaming the malfeasers? Presuming also of course that those tweeting/smsing/writing letters to the editors are real persons and not aliases for editorial staff of newspapers and Tv channels.
3. Are we serious as ordinary urban citizens, usually better-off than the “aam janta” about not compromising with the corrupt at any level, even if it means a long wait for that essential municipal service without paying a bribe, not getting a much-desired contract without greasing the palm of that sordid babu, indeed making do with less and even with discomfort, instead of pandering to the corrupt in public service?
4. Do we get the leaders we deserve? Do we really bother to vote for the right person who is relatively taint-free, or do we have pre-cast ideological moulds in our heads or perhaps not even make the effort to exercise franchise?
5. How short or long is our memory of the scams and scandals? Do we introspect at all or do we look selectively at phases in history and turn a blind eye to past misdeeds as it suits our present affinities and conveniences?
The cynic in me suspects that nothing at all has changed and never will. Since the days when the licence-permit raj and the breakdown of the Nehruvian consensus brought in a new nation doing business with grubby hands and breaking institutions down, many a time in the name of populist sloganeering….
The eternal dreamer in me hopes that there is some light at the end of the long and winding road; of the guilty being brought to book and not as a momentary lapse of the vaunted ‘gaddi” ;ready to spring back with the next election as soon as the media memory fades….

POSTSCRIPT: I notice that as befits our "managed media" significant sections of the media-notably NDTV,HT, TELEGRAPH, INX NEWS etc are mounting a subtle campaign to discredit the CAG report.Favoured devices include interviewing tainted officials under a scanner(notably Pradip Baijal of TRAI)some scribes proffering "independent"opinion, headlines and banners screaming how the CAG report exaggerated statistics.
It saddens me.As a public servant battling the malfeasers daily, when the media and its corporate stake-holders compromise on ethics in the guise of being "free" I lose faith in the ability of this nation to ever shake off the canker and moral rot of corruption.

Puri Beach, circa 2006(and shades of Blytonia)

2006-10-26T03:15:00.000-07:00

I was returning to Puri, the famous beachfront town of Orissa, after what seemed an eternity.The last time I was there seemed to be now in a previous life.It was then the mid-1970's, and I was still a child in the second standard.1975 was the beginning of Mrs Gandhi's Emergency, trains happened to be running dot on time and I remember my father, then a junior officer with the Indian Railways, always tense about work standards and punctuality being maintained by his underlings(he of course has always been a paragon of Puritan and Confucian work ethics, and not even a Damocles Sword of the Emergency could frighten him on a personal note).
Anyhow, going back to the lazy hazy and not so crazy days of fun-filled childhood, Puri then was an oasis of shimmering blue, with a golden sandy beach, and a vast sweep of coastal firmament, where all fantasies culled from Enid Blyton's memorable descriptions of beaches, seaside frolic, lip-smacking food, indeed the whole paraphernalia of trying to be a Famous Five or Five Find-Outer were lived to the hilt...
Days started early back the. A la Julian, Dick , George and Anne, my sister and I would gobble as many sausages and fried eggs as our stomachs would allow, courtesy, the B.N.R hotel, a very colonial mansion, replete with potted palms, rattan chairs, cummerbunded old bearers and all the paraphernalia of the British Raj.Then, we would be off to the beach, with our sun-shades, buckets and slippers to spend glorious hours alternating between jumping over waves, attempting a few brave swim-strokes and making odd little sand castles.We would be patiently watched over by mummy and grandmother, and somehow the whole day would race past, in a haze of delight, energetic abandon and the sheer release of being a child let loose on a grand and lovely beach...
And Puri, 2006?Well, this is a view formed through mature, cynical and adult eyes.Try as I might, I just couldnot ignore the mounds of rubbish on the beach, which made a walk through the sands hazardous in the extreme, the relegation of vast stretches of sand into a public toilet, the abandon with which all and sundry happened to defecate, piss and carry out all their daily ablutions at all times of the day with sang-froid.
On the flip-side, the mushrooming of barred and gated posh "resorts" all along the beach, where prosperous looking persons sat nonchalantly on beach chairs, sipping beer and being watched over by a posse of armed guards with a battery of guns and menacing expressions.
This time, no attempt to walk over to the side of the beach where the B.N.R hotel stood.For one thing, it was reputed to have finally laid the ghosts of the sahibs to rest.No more bacon and eggs terrain, it was now the remnant of a crumbling government hotel infrastructure, hanging on through invocations of its splendid past.of course, even trying to cross over to that side of the ebach would have meant splashing around in a drainage channel awash with sewage and filth as it disgorged into the sea.Back in 1976, I recall, I had tried to imitate yet another Enid Blyton character, in paddling in that channel, imagining it to be a stream rushing into the sea, bereft then, of loads of rubbish...
Where do I situate myself? Among the citizenry squatters of the great Indian public lavatory or the fat-cats giving custom to the men in khaki...Among the denizens of a brave new emerged superpower or the hopeless and haplessly unconcerned bold footsoldiers of the vibrant Indian democracy, no longer threatened by imperium in popular cloak......

Its an existential question I am still trying to come to grips with.Meanwhile, three cheers for Enid Blyton, who can still inspire me to make a sand castle on the beach, without thinking of the muck which goes into the grainy particles.....

Angling for the Angles!

2006-10-16T23:17:00.000-07:00

ANGLO-PHILES IN INDIA

An anonymous poster has raised two interesting points on my last post.
He/she says
1.Anglophiles in india are a dead tribe
2.They are basically a post-colonial creation
3.They may have been Francophiles too, given that Anglophilia is merely an obsession with an "Other"
4.They are basically doomed-as the society which created it has long disaapeared.
On this my retort would be:
1.Anglophiles in India are no mere post-colonial creatures.Though, physically so, their mental universe is steeped in a way of life harking back to the British Raj.
2.Therefore Anglophiles in India are bound by an organic link to the coloniser:the British, and not the French, Dutch et al(except of course in those terrains/enclaves where other European powers were the colonisers)
3.I donot think they are dead.They will exist till my generation-late baby-boomers coming of age in an India of the 1970's and 1980's , especially in erstwhile colonial bridgeheads like Calcutta, pass away.Yes, old boy(or girl) we are still alive and kicking
4.The conception of an "Other" is not post-colonial in entirety.It harks back to the assumptions, attractions, repulsions, mimicry and synthesis evolved by the experience of British Empire.
5.I should also think that the British themselves are not immune to this "special relationship"-given the obsession of the British media till the present day with anything South Asian?!
Admitted, the British also had colonies in Africa and the Carribean-where too, notions of Anglophilia in various permutations and combinations must be in existence.Since here, we discuss India and the Indian subcontinent, I keep my comments predominantly for this area, which I also speak of from my personal experience.
I suspect that a lot of the denial of Anglophilia as it exists in the present day is because the peculiar concatenation of imperial ideology, policies, mental constructs-indeed the whole Weltanschaung of British empire and "Britishness" in its original avatar, are unpopular and decried by the very society which created it.
In that sense, I do agree entirely with the anonymous writer that whether in India or in Britain, those of us who cling on to Anglophilia or the identity of a predominantly monocultural, white Britain are in a minority, in grave danger of appearing either as obsequious anti-patriots or if in Britain as reviled racists.
That doesnot however mean we give in to the tyranny of the majority and pretend we donot exist!!
P.S I cannot resist ending this with a quote from my late grandfather, who died three years ago at a ripe old age of 93.he used to say, he is passionately in love with his one and only mistress, though he also loved his wife, my grandmother.His mistress? He called her "the English language"!!

A tribe in danger of extinction(and much malignment by Kiran Desai)

2006-10-12T01:13:00.000-07:00

Anglophilia: A tribe in danger of extinction(and much malignment by Kiran Desai) :
The newspapers today are in triumphalist tone. Kiran Desai is the third Indian author to win the Booker prize after Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy.Her own mother Anita Desai had been a past Booker shortlisted author, albeit never a winner, and this victory of Kiran’s has a ring of sweet revenge for many . An excited Indian Prime Minister has been applauding the newest literary sensation on the block , not only is she of Indian origin, but a proudly proclaimed globalist, who negotiates multiple identities while remaining true to her Indian roots.
Amidst all this smug welter of self-praise by all and sundry, ranging from hacks to the highest in the land, I ponder an aspect of Kiran’s book, that I feel less comfortable with.
Kiran likes to see Anglophiles as those who ultimately self-destruct. By Anglophiles I trust she refers to that breed of persons sprouted by the British Empire in India, and so tellingly described by Macaulay , an aggressive espouser of 19th century imperial grandeur and immortality, as “brown”in skin colour but “English” in tastes, morals, opinions.
Kiran’s sub-text is of Anglophiles in India as hybrid caricatures of the true-blue Brits, poignantly grotesque in clinging on to antiquated lifestyles inspired by the long departed British imperialists, and weird , pathetic creatures stuck in a time-warp. This is the moral and message of her book, among the many other worthy causes and fashionable agendas her book negotiates. She personifies this theme in the character of an old retired judge(largely inspired she claims by those in her own family) .This is a strange old man who eats scones for tea, disdains those of the “lower orders”, represses his feelings including a failure to communicate with his young grand-daughter and overall clings on to those lost days of the British Raj, tucked away in a home where the ghosts of the sahibs cling on long after they have left.

Related assumption number two: Anglophiles are necessarily older generation Indians, born and coming of age in the days of the Raj, many of whom had also served the empire as civil servants, boxwallahs, humble clerical minions et al. Hence, they usually affect a mental construct of slavishness to the British rulers, extending into an obsession for the minutest detail of existence, ranging from styles of dress, affectations of speech, culinary patterns, indeed the whole wherewithal of upper-class and middle class British society which mostly ruled British India; and in whose self-image the obsequious natives remoulded themselves.
Frankly I have a problem with this ruthless and pathetic generic of an Anglophile. I suspect that Kiran is pandering here to an overall debunking of a proto-type which has severely gone out of fashion in a world which now adopts globalism, mulit-culturalism and celebration of difference, in a mould overtly and covertly influenced by the dominant ideal of American –style consumerist pop-culture. Britain itself has changed so dramatically, and new lexicons of multi-culturalism, political correctness, classlessness, uproot the core premises of old-world “Britishness” on which Anglophilia was based. This has co-incided with a deliberate amnesia /downright vituperative attacks within British society on anyone and everyone who dares to display a chagrin for the new models of group behaviour, steeped in a thorough pandering to racial and religious minorities
Of course, for many of us, who were not born under the British Raj, but in the heady freedom of a new country, being an Anglophile is not a pejorative. So Anglophiles are not always eighty ear old’s languishing in hill stations well past their prime, but baby-boomers and even post-baby boomers who prefer certain aspects of an older Anglo-India. For me, the British sense of humour, the classic frontiers of English literature, traditional cuisine of the stodgy, bland and pre Chicken Tikka Masala era of food, the turn of phrase and subtle wit of the starchy British upper-classes, the whole paraphernalia and baggage of a lost time and a now vanished society , still signify a graciousness, sophistication and elegance in-spite of the warts, dark underbelly and misdeeds of that whole generation of imperialists.
Agreed, at least some of this softness for the Brits of another age arises from an upbringing in the 1970’s in a city formerly called the Second City of the British empire. But it was not a deracinated and rootless lifestyle totally mired in a mimicry of the sahibs of old. It involved a successful synthesis of East and West, of the local Bengali Hindu bhadralok ethos combined with that of the departed British Raj.
Growing up in Calcutta in the nineteen seventies, even the early eighties, we listened to Bengali Rabindrasangeet and popular “adhunik” along with English music-hall comedy and show songs, liked to affect the spiritual and cultural exuberance of all Hindu festivals, while celebrating “Burra din” with a cake, spoke colloquial Bangla while emulating clipped accents of “Queen’s English, enjoyed “bhat aar macher jhol”while appreciating the finer points of a batter-fried fish or a roly-poly pudding. This was a rich, cosmopolitan and vibrant culture, parodied by increasingly chauvinistic strains of regional Bengali consciousness, but retaining in it a felicity of vision,an ability to critique the self, a tolerance of others and a famous receptiveness to things Occidental, dominated still by Britain, but not solely so.
And decades later, I am still not a fuddy-duddy in my eighties, languishing in a remote hill station well past its prime, but very much in the here-and now, of modern and contemporary India….yet retaining in me bits and pieces of that Anglo-philia which Kiran loves to shred. I love to watch Bollywood kitschy routines, enjoy a hearty Mughlai biryani, am not a dour malcontent who refuses to smile, celebrates Durga Puja with gusto, revels in a full-bodied Bangali “adda”, relates to younger people well….and still relishes the finer aspects of Anglo-philia.But I enjoy my afternoon tea with thin-crust cucumber sandwiches in a lace doily and soup and pudding for dinner; prefer a string of pearls to gaudy gold jewelry; and floral chintz cutains to the blingy flash of Punjabified India; tend to utter "splendid" and" dreadful" more often than the "dude" and "amazing" laden speech of young India.

I feel instantly at home with people who maynot be avid converts to the entire notion of a multi-cultural Britain.As a mature student in London, I remember feeling highly irritated at Camden Council Library, which stocked endless volumes of Bangla literature and Bangladeshi songs, but couldnot produce a single edition of William Blake's poetry or the music of Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson, Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Flanders and Swan and the entire gamut of British show songs from the inter-war decades. And I felt a twinge of the deepest sadness, when I couldnot trace marrow-spoons even in posh Kensington and Mayfair shops as a gift for my eighty five year old grandfather, a proud nationalist but one who considered the English language to be his "one and only mistress"......
The point I am trying to make: Anglophiles in India still exist, maybe a lot younger than what many believe, maybe elitist because of class bias rooted in caste and not merely as they prefer the Brits, may possess a thousand faults, but not of the atrophied and repressed kind solely attributed to Anglophilia. It is simply a choice of deportment, demeanour and turn of phrase, and not compulsively ageist and always slavish.
It typifies a yearning for a lost country, a disappeared way of existence and what I would say is a broader, and more liberal mental universe while at the same time being very, very rooted in one's own regional/pan-Indian universe. It is disingenuous to wish away Anglophiles in Bengal, indeed India as ridiculous, depraved and morally suspect entities simply because new mantras of fashionable social behaviour (especially those which win well-endowed literary prizes)dictate so.It is political correctness which represses and stifles a free thinking moral domain, not Anglophilia, which enshrines the truest liberal traditions of individuality and acceptance of divergent world-views.
Here’s to many many more of us, across the frontiers of time and space, for whom that corner of foreign soil will remain”forever England”, though England itself chooses to go multi-culturalist and pander to political correctness with a vengeance!! It’s an arcane tribe perhaps, but self-destructive?
Ah, bosh and nonsense, dear lady Kiran, though I daresay, that your little liberties with our ilk is certainly fetching you a wee bit more, to toodle along for a little longer perhaps?!!!

sounds of vinyl

2006-10-10T01:48:00.000-07:00

I spent a rare extra holiday(occasioned by a political party forcing us all to stay indoors!)pulling out old 78 and 45 rpm records from the attic; and resucsitating a decades old music -system which has the capacity to play records.it was not an experience I regretted.
It felt lovely to walk down memory lane, with Joe Loss and his orchestra, Acker Bilk, Bosanova beats from Brazil, the young Cliif Richard, early Mersey beat from Gerry and the Pacemakers, the throaty melodies of Shirley Bassey and many many more...
More than the music, which of course is delightful, the records recreated a lost world of my childhood.I was transported back to the early 1970's when Iwas a tiny tot, twisting and jigging to all these artists on the lunchtime Western music programmes on All India Radio.school was still a recent addition to life and hadnot assumed the binding constrictions of homework in later years."Lunchtime Variety"on air signalled return from day-school and dancing to "Baby Elephant walk" from Henry Mancini..
and Cliff's crooning meant one was in Eve's Chinese hairdresser in New Market, where sundry Chinese girls called Liz and Winnie would snip away the locks to create a fringe while humming"Summer Holiday" and "Lucky Lips"
and the bandleaders-Joe Loss, Mancini, Percy Faith would find faithful copiers in the Park Street Goan and Anglo-Indian maestros, who one would catch a glimpse of when given an occasional ice-cream "Tutti-frutti"treat by grandpa at "Mags" and "Trinca's"
While Shirley Bassey, Mersey Beats, Englebert, would reverberate from the "Big Hall" at Loreto House when our esteemed elders in class nine and ten would dance with the boys of St Xaviers , feeding and fuelling fantasies of five year-olds peeping from behind the enormous draped curtains of the french windows....
all this and so much more came back to me in a trice, melting the years away, as the vinyl turned on the turntables, scratchy, hollow, disturbed in sounds, but with so much more feel and emotion than all the slick productions in electronically perfect mediums as are available today.
a typical grouchy old woman's rant, this?!!
not really........

fate moves as it will

2006-08-02T01:16:00.000-07:00

i have been rather upset since last night. someone i never knew has met with a cruel and what seems to me senseless death.he was a brave police officer, honest, daring and devoted to his duty.a rising star, battling criminals of every kind, in a risky job, but doing what was required of him.
yet how did he die?not felled by bullets, or stabbed in the chest, or landmined out of existence-things which may well have arisen in the course of his job.
no, he died in a mundane and illogical fashion, as the car he and his associates were driving in, was crashed into by a tanker carrying lemons from a neighbouring state.his driver wasnot driving rash, or trying to speed, nor were they in a precipitous ravine or deep jungle, in pouring rain or at the crack of dawn, giving chase to wrong-doers.
his death is not a rarity.so many heroic people die in banal circumstances when one would think that God Almighty would at least let brave souls live on longer, simply because in their fearless courage, they are superior to those who are mediocre or awful human beings.but death respects noone, let alone swashbucklers.
it was in the twilight moment, on a regular highway, that a hero met his nemesis, reminding us all that the inexorable hand of fate moves with deathly and lethal force, striking when least expected and personifying a cruelty which ultimately makes mortals the mere creatures they are....

an ode to julian of the "famous five"

2006-05-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

well, here goes:

dear ole ju
i simply love you,
though its only on enid's pages you reign
cause you are jolly nice
smart and polite,
you exude class
of a bygone age
when to be proper was good
and decorum understood
to be the mark of a man
and not a toff also-ran,
you are decent and caring
sophisticated and daring,
you take charge and are not a wimp,
you dictate but ever so gently
and while mod women consider you junior col. blimp,
well, i shall always love you elegantly,
as a muse forever in sweet dreams
and blytonia evergreen.........

in defence of political incorrectness

2006-05-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

i hereby boldly state:
i am a creature of irrationality(occasional, especially when provoked by the boss, sundry relatives, rude tradespeople, phone spammers et al )
i have strong likes and dislikes,
i donot like being called ms, s/he, actor, weight-challenged, part-time home economist, etc
i am fond of the brits(in their old avatar pre-multi-racial)
am wary of yanks except for californians
think that eggs sunny side up, mutton rogan josh, mulligawtany soup, buttery marble cakes, prawn curry are a very good idea..
donot like prime time news television in india, punjabified bollywood song sequences, sequinned sarees, indo-westerns, italian food, use of dialogic inputs such as "like", "amazing", "cool dude","rocking" and all forms of hinglish, punjlish, benglish which have taken over speech patterns,
prefer non-use of "f" words especially when certain categories of noveau mistake them for queen's english,
want to live in a time- warp, preferably frozen in 1971(before the indo-bangla war and just after the best of the beatles was over....)
so long then.

flowers in a shade-garden

2006-04-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

three years ago, when i moved into a new job in a new house, i wanted to live the domestic dream to the hilt.and what better addendum to the quest for sparkling kitchens, homey living rooms and the collective dreams of earnest "homes and gardens" readers like me, than that patch of green turf with flowered shrubs, to soothe the soul and improve the eyesight on a daily basis!
this fantasy however proved harder to achieve than the average male wet-dream!i had no sun in that tiny space.i mean there was sun, that filtered in through towering coconut trees and a motley crew of desi mangoes, all belonging to jealous neighbours who refused to co-operate with my visions of floriculture. so the branches were deliberately allowed to grow longer and outlive their usefullness, till they desired to exact nature's revenge, and select the delicate blooms beneath to collapse onto!
nor did ma nature play ball.the "daabs" flung themselves with zest on my fragile gardenias and zinnias everytime there was a thunder-storm.when the fruit fall, can the shoots be left out?the branches of the coconut developed a magnetic fascination for hurling themselves on delicate hibiscus hybrids and gentle rose bushes planted with great hope.
and of course the birds were attracted less to the bees than to the tender fragrant white jasmine, yellow champak, the bengali "kamini", dolon chapa white lilies et al from the perfumed garden that never was...
naturally there were experiments galore which never worked apart from taking the measly purse.there was a whole row of lantana bushes which faded into oblivion within weeks of sowing.winter flowers mysteriously failed to take-off, inspite of scrupulous adherence to planting instructions.various strains of hill hibiscus bloomed gingerly, then decided they had had enough of this miserable world and bade goodbye.and to cap it all, a lovely blue lotus, collected from a distant nursery, opened itself up, then disappered into the twilight zone faster than the speed of light...
so i am proud to announce that weathering all the adversities, man-made, avian-pecked and non-sun-dappled, my tiny patch of green has actually flowered.if not with splashes of seasonal colour then with brilliant shades of annual hibiscus, scarlet poinsettia, desi gulab, yellow allamanda, the odd kalanchoe, bougainvillea, spider lily,even lemon grass, bamboo and some friendly kitchen herbs, capped by......hold your breath.....a sweet-smelling white champak tree.
how managed?american style i shall reveal all in my forthcoming book" how to woo flowers where the sun doesnot shine"....
WATCH THIS SPACE!

tim dalton as mr rochester

2006-03-30T20:38:00.000-08:00

I have to say i am still reeling from tim dalton as above!
its a bbc version available on dvd, which i watched late into last night.
absolutely marvellous!
his acting range, ability to emote, sheer sparkling screen prescence coupled with tremendous sense of diction and dialogue delivery; brought charlotte bronte's classic brooding character alive as few have....
hats off, tim!

a solitary blogger!

2006-03-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

i do confess i have been rather erratic of late with this pastime.
no good reasons-except that i have been weathering work crises, battling the heat, holding up the home fortress....and watching telly.
especially the oscar movies thanks to the local cable.
enjoyed 'good night and good luck", didnot much care for "walk the line" and liked the acting in"broke-back".
oh, have also gone back to blytonia in a big way.have discovered this lovely site called www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk
seems there are so many kindred souls who love to natter on julian, the saucepan-man, barney, fatty...the whole world of memory, harking-back to happier times of winsome cheer, when choosing between famous five and five find-outers was the crisis in decision-making!
so those of you lazy readers, who love to read this site(hopefully!) but are too slothful to post comments, and thereby give my blog the rare honour of being a "comment-free"zone(almost!), do move those idle fingers and tap out some nuggets on dear enid!

2006-02-22T03:02:00.000-08:00

The absolutely gorgeous Mr Fiennes
Sometimes, in a fit of visual desperation, I begin to wonder why they don’t make men anymore as they used to. As you flick TV channels and pore through popular magazines, there stares out at you a welter of assembly-line men made to order to suit your preferred label-Metrosexual, Retrosexual, New Age..you name it, they have it.
Pre-packaged hairstyles, wardrobe, designer accessories, fragrance, churned out by the gods who rule mass iconography. All looking so like each other; predictable, dolled up mannequins designed to please and with the individuality of a Macburger!
And then there is Ralph Fieness. A man like no other, holding my starry-eyed gaze in varying degrees of passionate longing, sheer viewing pleasure after a long day of boring routine.
The distinctive chin, those icy blue eyes, that manly gait, that perfect nose…
The way he smiles, lips curling into a sliver of delicious suggestion..
The way he holds his heroine in a hug that must necessarily bring on more..
The soft baritone with a hint of a “come-on”..
Oh Mr Fiennes, why don’t they make ‘em all more like you?
And why oh why do you not allow a thousand little pieces of yourself to float into the lives of countless women like me-self, who cry out for a little, nay, lots more Je Ne Sans quoi in the droves of tele-horrific males ruling our idiot box non-fantasies?....

A faint thread of the Empire where the sun never set..

2005-12-22T02:58:00.000-08:00

In my dull as ditchwater office a document called “Burma Government Mortality Return” jolts me out of a self-imposed mind on the blink.
It seems that there are a couple of old people with impossibly “bhadralok” names like Ranibala Debi, Surobala , Amiya, Khagenbabu, Parijatbabu, Professor Harachandra et al residing in drab suburban homes in Basirhat, Bongaon, Ranaghat, Barasat…who refuse to die and hold on to the last vestiges of Rule Brittania. They earn a pittance of a pension as the remnants of an Imperial Civil Service which once ruled Burma. They are an anachronism called “Burma Government Pensioners”…
While the sola topee and pith helmet wearing rednecks who earned George Owell’s ire in his low life Burmese days are long gone, their hapless collaborators, the Bengali Babus and their wives who governed colonial Burma live on in dusty small towns on the fringes of the erstwhile “Second City” of the grand British Empire.
And various arms of the sahib’s successors vie to “ascertain whether pension accounts are being inflated”, ‘ whether a database of Myanmar(erstwhile Burma)pensioners can be built”,” whether treasury officers can directly correspond or not with the department of pension, Yangon”…
But these last signposts of a vanished life continue to defy all bureaucratic calculations across the territorial divide and survive to draw their pathetic”Burma Pension’!

in praise of enid blyton

2005-11-26T22:54:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make.
On the verge of mid-life(and the crisis which is said to accompany it)I often sneak a visit to my local bookstore buying up armfuls of Enid Blyton books.I use the word "sneak" deliberately, as somewhere an adult voice tells me this is ludicrous, and the last thing i should be doing is valiantly hunting out the Five Find Outers and the Famous Five at the ripe old age of post -35.(actual figures remain deliberately vague!).
Ignoring some curious looks from kiddies thronging the corner I usually try and pass myself off as a harried parent looking dutifully at lists prepared by an imaginary child...!
Anyhow the long and the short of it is- I absolutely adore Mrs B's prose, much reviled as racist, xenophobic and badly written in an age of slick political correctness and the right label.
Let me say I soak into Julian and company's doings on moors and vales, wolfing potted meat sandwitches and tracking hidden streams gushing out of underground caves, when they are not running into unpleasant swarthy-looking "furriners", speaking in funny accents .
I read the Five Find-outers antics with Mr Goon and Fatty's imitation of lowly red-headed telegraph boys and blowsy balloon women with more gusto than with which I read the daily newspapers..
Sorry Ms Rowling, you may have the fattest royalties right now, and the world cheering on Master Potter with his sorcery, exotic Chinese girlfriend and penchant for striking out the dirty death -eaters from the face of the earth.
But at the end of a bad day at work, when the boss has proved to be a sheer Gulliver compared to a Lilliput called Uncle Quentin,when the traffic rolls mercilessly and the fumes gather faster than you can say"Jack Robinson", what better escapade of the mind than to gather Ye Blytonia, escape into cheery picnics on idyllic village greens, devouring scones, macaroons and sundry bites from the hamper.While Ern reads his 'pomes", Mr Goon finds his latest victim, Fatty dons his newest disguise, Philip picks another curious pet, Dinah shudders at animals, Suzie snoops , Snubby clowns,Anne plays "house-house', George scowls...
Gosh!Its not so bad after all.
And look!We've found the secret passage leading right from the panel on the cupboard of books leading into......
And blow!what a nasty place the world has become to encourage us forever to pretend we are grown-up when we really just want to be left in peace..
So lets get back to our hidey-hole in front of a strange blinking machine where we can write with a white board which looks better than one of Uncle Quentin's mad devices..
And lets talk about what we really are and want to do....
Smashing isnt it, Julian?!!

the wages of inequality

2005-11-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

in a more serious vein, a couple of articles set me thinking about social conditions.
1st there was the "economist" which in its latest edition deals with the recent violence in france.then there is the latest "newsweek" feature on disparities in asia, only rising with increasing affluence and globalisation.
seems to me that i only have to visit my local multiplex theatre to get a taste of india's poverty.rows of flashy cars, gangs of corpulent teenagers, kiosks doing brisk business in american sweetcorn, popcorn or trad-snacks like bhelpuri served dolled-up in clean paper baskets.brightness of neon, swishly dressed people, gleaming movie signboards, glittering shops with tantalizing wares...
just outside the nouvelle shade of the mall sit a stream of sullen faces.seated on their haunches or slumped village-style on makeshift mats, these are the paid drivers of the rich and not-so-rich whiling away their leisure hours in the playgrounds of corporate consumerist culture.they gather around a tin shack where they gulp a cup of sweet tea in true ethnic style with khari biscuits .not the faux rusticity of the malls"chai junction" haunted by droves of smart youngsters with their girlfriends ; where earthen "bhars"of tea make a style statement rather than a condition of reality.
asia's poor is getting poorer, says newsweek and india alone counts for the biggest drop in the upward curve of global prosperity.tell that to your average mall rat in urban india and they will lay the blame squarely at the door of spoilsport journalists or political rabble-rousers with several axes to grind.
and then we hear that the violence sweeping urban france is all about social exclusion....
thought to ponder:when will those drivers be able to cut across the thin red line between tin shack tea and "krazy korn"cuplets...and will the mall then be a neat, clean, sanitized space of comparative discipline, gloss and middle class "arrivistes"?
or will it descend into a spiral of crowded mayhem, garbage dumps, pavement squatters peddling low-grade wares, the unchecked squalor of the india that is "bharat' penetrating every pore.....

BEAUTY AMONG THE RUINS(or the advent of 'M"

2005-11-18T00:26:00.000-08:00

A chic socialite of yester-years walked in the other day into a crumbling room with by-gone era frills.
clad in faded silk but with an ensemble of glittering rocks she set the perfect tone for an ambience that had itself known better days..
she talked blithely of this and that, times past and present, people and events long vanished into a memory-scape...with a casual flick of finely pencilled eyebrows and just a hint of sadness in those subtlely rouged cheeks...
and all through, the gentle whirr of ancient fans, a dull gleam from now shabby Burma teak mirrors and the baleful silence of stilled chimes from a period grandfather clock, joined in an elegaic rhapsody of silent appreciation for the stately visitor ...
who belonged to them and yet didnot..

a day at the calcutta film festival

2005-11-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

in between the frantic tedium of work-filled days it was a few hours of release at the film festival.
winter sun speckled lazy sunday morning, a packed suburban auditorium, long-bearded jholawalas, tired housewives, ardent student lovers, run-of-the mill footsoldiers of marxist-raj..
a motley crew awaited the screening of "decalogues"by the polish master kiezlowski.
as the scratchy 1980s print rolled out one mesmerizing image after the other, it was our turn to marvel at the flourish of the master creator.
faith versus reason, a child's innocence beneath the mask of the dilettante, a woman who loves too many, a boy who learns how to romance and then lives to forget it, the murder that never was..
for those of you who dread film festival cinema, i beseech thee-go out and seek these cinematic gems with the same ardour and zest with which you throng those snaky queues at the local multiplex in quest of bollywood.

musings

2005-11-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

if i am over thirty
and cannot relate
to sms lingo, i-poding, speed-dating, crass bollywood comedy, gangsta rap acronyms
favour politeness, the gentle way of life, old fashioned letter-writing,
eating non-diet food, listening to pre-grunge music
am i hopelessly out of synch?!!