To Die or not to Die

To die or not to die. That’s the dilemma facing most people these days. Even young people die these days. There are some who die every week, some who die every month, some who die every few months. It comes in an array of colours: blonde, brown, dark brown, black, jet black, burgundy, even flaming red. So to die or not to die. I die because, as told by a rickshaw driver once, I have to maintain appearances in a workforce which is still young. So does a lot of innocents born in the heady days just after independence. My dad died. I die only black. I see these aging bald men die-ing their hair blonde and the funny result is a VIBGYOR or colours: a few blonde wisps a few black wisps mixed with a few white strands. Looks grotesquely ugly, especially in broad daylight. What say? And there is a dark-skinned man I know who dies his hair with the local barber. Being a lazy barber he dies the man’s scalp, too, a jet black. That makes him look uniformly black all over, as if, as if, oh forget it!

To die is a good thing. Honest. You look ten years younger when you die. That’s why women always die. They know it’s no longer that age when a woman’s strands of white were considered sexy. So Aishwarya dies and she says “you are worth it.” Worth what? Die? A woman is only worth the die?

To die is messy. I never seem to get the mixture right. Sometimes it oozes down my fingers, sometimes it oozes down my scalp making me look ghastly. But the result is I look younger, though I don’t look as young as A.K. Anthony, who I am sure dies. I use Godrej. Every Malayali worth his coconut oil does, I mean die, not use Godrej. Kuriachen Kuriakose too dies. He says man must die so that he can live. That if he doesn’t die, he will be dead. I don’t know how that can be, but I can guess. And my guess is:

Die (pun intended) or else die. 

Be Prepared to Be X-rayed, Stripped, Humiliated

Guess one has to live the life of an over-protected, under-privileged human being from now on. So shout it from the rooftops: “you will never be free to walk into a library, a railway station, a government office without being frisked, stared, x-rayed, in short, humiliated by musclemen who look like they haven’t slept all night thinking of their jobs. That’s all right with me, so long as I feel protected. The problem is I don’t.

I just returned from the American Centre library where my wallet, bag, and cellphone were x-rayed, and though my cellphone was on silent told in a sullen voice:

“Please switch it off sir.”

“But it is not silent. I do a job like you and I should be available twenty-four hours.”

“Switch it off, sir.” I didn’t hear “or else?” that was firmly and untactfully meant to all who might have listened.

x - x – x

Then I enter the library and borrow a book. The librarian on the mezzanine floor scans the book, hands me a slip, and when I try to exit with my book, the metal detectors go, somewhat like an infant who hasn’t been fed for an entire day:

“Pee... pee... pee...!”

Two burly security men jump to attention hands on their holsters. I am all agog, confused, which is an understatement. They barge in through the glass doors and short of pinning me down snatch the book from my hands and hand me over to the librarian, who, again look at me suspiciously and asks a few questions. Fear, naked fear courses through me. Will I be arrested as an enemy of the US? Sent to Guantanamo, or wherever they send such offenders? Extradited? Stripped?

Heart beating, pulse racing, I repeat the procedure I had followed and then she says rather sheepishly, “I guess the librarian (on the mezzanine floor) made a mistake.”

“So the mistake is yours?”

Nods.

“Why am I being held if it’s your mistake?”

The beefcakes leave my skinny little arms, now aching with the unceremonious contact with authority.

“M**** ****s” I say under my breath.

My erudite childhood friend Kuriachen Kuriakose says, “Nations should strengthen their intelligence not subject citizens to futile security checks.”

He believes in Marxism and, methinks, should learn to adapt. You know dialectic materialism, class struggle and all that used to be so hot when we were misguided youths?

My Interview in Webneetech. Hubris? Nah. Well deserved? Yes.

It feels nice to be interviewed for a change, though it took a long time coming. For most of my life I was at the wrong end of the mike or recorder, I now feel. Ah! But that’s just hubris, nah, it’s a well-deserved hubris, me thinks. After all, amn’t I one of those silent and unappreciated bloggers (unlike those celebrities, who took up blogging as an adjunct of their public personas) who have been silently pecking on my computer about issues of my concern since August 2003? So I am pleasantly and mightily pleased to see this interview featuring me (John P Matthew) in Webneetech.com. Read, comment (here or there online), transmit it virally, and share it on your favourite sites.

Mucho gracias, in advance. Bows!

Television, Movies, and a Lack of Indian-ness

I like to make these comparisons, now that my writing work can resume. The laptop has come back after repairs with a new keyboard, there’s a nip in the air, the dam where I go for a walk-cum-trot is chilly early in the morning, and I relish what little winter we get in Bombay.

This was then; when an idealistic nation doted on inspiring national figures, and movies (the India twentieth century pop art) used to be all about Raj Kapoor’s clowning philanthropist Raju, the brooding patriot Bharat played by Manoj Kumar, an idealistic Dilip Kumar playing Sagina Mahato, and even Balraj Sahni playing the role of a poor farmer in “ Do Bhiga Zameen” – which is one of the best Hindi films I have ever seen – is also a commentary on Indian society. Even Guru Dutt’s films were full of idealism and the national spirit a newly-born nation on the brink of great things, I don’t know what.

Where’s all those patriotism and idealism in movies gone? These days we ape the west with unoriginal movies like “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” (this is a refrain from an old Shashi Kapoor film, again, showing the lack of imagination on the part of the writer and director) and other Khan-capers turning ourselves into poor caricatures of our more worthy non-resident brethren. And television programs are either saas-bahu stuff, singathons, or stand-up comedy shows where the performers and judges try their utmost to be funny – in a nervous and edgy kind of way, you know. Sometimes I feel the "mind blowing", the "fantastic", the "fantabulous", "want to take you home" all said with smiles - as if their botox will come apart - are all scripted.

Sunday newspapers in those days discussed national issues, and featured literary oeuvres like short stories and poems. Debonair had a poetry double spread and Youth Times and Illustrated Weekly of India published poems. These days none, onnum illa, oru rakshayum illa (nothing, no escape), as my friend Kuriachen Kuriakose would say.

I was reminded of these and many more things when Christina Daniels asked me to fill in a questionnaire (which I gladly did) asking me about my identity as an Indian in the Doordarshan days and now.

What’s “Kachha” What’s “Pucca”, Gormint Decides!

It’s a shame that the Gormint discriminates when giving what it calls “relief” to flood-hit people of Northern Karnataka in the districts of Dharwad, Haveri, Gadag, Bijapur, Bagalkot and Belgaum. These districts have been badly affected by the recent floods and the press coverage shows a grim picture. According to this article in Outlook many lost their homes and the gormint, in what would seem straight out of a Dickensian novel is discriminating between “Kachha (roughly built with mud)” and “Pucca (concrete built)” houses. What they dole out is paltry by all extents (a mere Rs. 2,500 for the mud houses and Rs. 25,000 for the concrete house. What a shame!

Bloggers, Facebookers, Tweeters Rejoice - the Future Is User-generated Content

Bloggers, Facebookers, Tweeters rejoice, the future of the internet is user generated content – that too real time user generated - according to this article quoting Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Excerpt:

“It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.”

This blogger saw this coming, honest. Michael Jackson’s and Ranjan Das’ death came to him through Facebook, every few hour he checks for updates and somehow it all gels, what people and Tweet and what people Facebook (had to invent that term, you know).

How will Google rank them is the question. Already this blogger’s facebook page appears on a search of “John + Matthew” on Google. Trust Google to spring a surprise this time. (Hat Tips: Madhavan Narayanan)

Lest We Forget That Night...

He is a sad old man selling boiling gram on Azad Maidan. He does a day job somewhere and sqats opposite the Bombay Gymkhana facing the Municipal Corporation building across from the cricket pitches of Bombay’s landmark green area. He has eyes that weep, clothes that have not been washed for, maybe, weeks, he looks depressed, I can see the head droop, the listlessness of his movements as he parcels the gram to his customers. His eyes are lost, as when one hold memories of someone who is not quite there. On some days he isn’t there at the spot, the space is empty, and I walk past.

---

In the office we discuss the November 26 strike and I mention that our memories are short. We are more concerned with what happened on the way to work today than what happened only eleven months ago. Come to think of it, next month – November – the anniversary (some perverse anniversary this!) of the incident. What has changed? What have we learnt? The military guards at VT station are alert, expecting a strike any time. I know it from their looks. They are trained to kill, no mercy, no second thoughts. The railway protection forces’ commandos standing next to them loll and talk among themselves, awkwardly cradling their AK47s in their lap, shifting it here and there as if it is a toy. If terror strikes it will never be at VT station, don’t you think? I want to ask, but who am I?

---

It was sometime before I could muster courage to ask the old man what was wrong. Why was he always so glum, so self-absorbed, what happened? His friend (maybe, a fellow villager) explains to me, “His son was on duty at VT station when the terrorists struck.” He was a vendor at one of the food and knick-knack stalls that provide snacks to commuters. The shooting starts, he tries to climb over the counter to escape, the bullets rain death, one catches him in his side, he collapses into a heap of blood and dies, the gram vendor’s son. He knows nothing about the agenda for which his life was martyred.

---

Yes, we have a short memory, indeed, I tell my colleague. There may be a few candle-light vigils by concerned citizens at VT (which will be photographed, and then ignored), a few speeches by politicians (who will hog prime time), and then? How will we convince a recalcitrant and truculent generation that terrorism is not good? How can we teach their religious leaders that all religions preach peace and love and nobody’s virginal fantasies are fulfilled in heaven for killing fellow human beings?

“Jack and Jill” According to Indian Television

This is hilarious, really is. We all know how Indian television reporting goes in a circle, circumambulates, and returns to the very point it started from. While on the screen plays repeated clippings of the same video over and over, ad nauseum. You sit on the edge to catch every word (of some earth-shaking stuff that just happened), you crane your neck, you grit your teeth till your lips are half chewed off, then you sit back and mutter, “television.”

See this excellent parody in Paul Nixon’s words published on his blog.

Hat tips for the link: Max Babi.

An Open Letter to Kapil Sibal-ji

Dear Kapil Sibal-ji,

This missive is my humble appreciation of the efforts you are taking to improve the education system (which has been pulverised and prostituted by the education mafia) in this country. I also speak as a harried and harassed parent who has spent his entire savings (and that of his wife, a teacher [see the irony?]) on educating the only child he has.

It is good that some sense is coming into the holiest-than-thou system that is under your control. Do you know that to gain admission into a Kindergarten class these days you have to pay a bribe of from ten- to fifty-thousand rupees? And after gaining this admission, the teaching is so poor that our children have to be sent to private tutors at additional expenses?

Do you know that these same schools employ teachers on contract basis for Rupees three thousand a month, and sack them at will if they raise their voices? It worries me that teachers in some private non-government schools virtually work for free; just so because they don’t want to descend to decrepitude sitting at home? Just imagine how a badly-paid, badly-treated teacher would instil learning in students? Badly, no? Could you make it compulsory for teachers to be made permanent after three months? That way schools can’t fire teachers at will.

And this thing about cut off percentages for IIT is bothering me. Why have a high cut off percentage when it’s the talent of the candidate that’s in question. So, okay, agreed, if a candidate goofs at the board examination, couldn’t you give him a chance to make good in the IIT entrance, what say?

I think the grade system is good. It makes students become more creative instead of parroting his lines, and eases the tension in households, already burdened financially because child goes to school. But please, good sir, make it compulsory for teaching to be done in schools and not outside it. I mean let not the responsibility of teaching their wards (as you call them) rest upon the abovementioned parents and their private tutors (who are also a burden on the said harassed parents). Agreed, then? To put it simply (or, as my ilk are likely to say, “zimbly”: teaching to be done in schools by well paid teachers, and strict monitoring should be done by inspectors, without news of their visits reaching cane-wielding, thickly-glassed school managers (I know of certain schools that offer oily gourmet stuff to visiting education officers).

And one more thing, lastly, I might add, make all those exclusive corporate-ised, international-ised schools less elitist and make it compulsory for them to participate in local school events. After all, we aren’t breeding a superior race of students, are we?

Yours truly,

Humble blogger.

chandelier

Chandelier!