Drink in Moderation, hic, Don’t Drink at All!

A few things upset us today. It isn’t easy looking at a mother mourning the death of her child. It tugs at the heart. That’s exactly what we saw this morning returning from church. First, the bitch was standing on the road, licking the blood of the puppy, flat on the ground, apparently dead. Its situation was desperate, and we wondered if animals have thoughts, feelings, sadness, grief, like all of us have so abundantly. She was licking the blood that had splattered on the road after some careless driver had run over her puppy, her beloved child. She looked sad. Apparently she knew it was the blood that had to flow back into the baby if it was to be alive again. And she was all grief in the way she stood, bent over, not able to believe her child was dead. Oh God! Why can’t they drive a bit carefully, the road was wide enough, clean enough, a five star hotel stood across it, and the New Bombay police commissionerate was on the other side, its parade grounds resounding with the shouts of new recruits. What made these people in vehicles so desperate? They must have been drunk to do something so reckless.

A cousin brother of a dear relative is in the last stages. They see no hope. He is on ventilator and will die if they pull the plug. He is an excessive drinker, married off his daughters, had a decent enough life with his working wife, two incomes, smart children, all comforts of living, life wasn’t bad. When I would visit him, he would say only a few words, being silent for the most part, his face flushed with the intoxicants he had consumed. What makes men take to drinks with a vengeance? Well, ahem, obviously when they first drink it’s teenage rebellion, then youthful angst, and sooner than later, it becomes a habit and an obsession. We enjoy a drink once in a while and have liked the slow numbing effect as it takes hold of the brain and the faculties. But, excessive drinking? No, we threw up once and that was enough. Finito! An intoxicant is to be had slowly, relished rather than gulped, and when it makes ones head reel, one has to stop right there, or, one will have in excess and the devil will overcome. We know the liquor guys like Vijay M won't like this, but what can we say given the way he flaunts his ill-gotten wealth, all made from destroying someone's family and life.

We went around to our friends for quotes for this piece. Here’s what Anthonybhai (a drinker himself) recommends: drink in moderation, men, or don’t drink at all. It destroys lives and families, tell you men, solid men, it destroyed lives of a few friends of mine.

So It's Official; Indian Actors Don't Act; They Only Show Muscle!

So it’s official. I just heard it from the idiot box and therefore it must be official. So my mind unwillingly comes to the conclusion of a fact that has been worrying me for a long, long time. Ah, now I know it is official and can relax. I should have closed the television and done some writing instead. Such was my huge disappointment.

The interview happened a few minutes ago on Star Television. And the worthies being interviewed were Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. And the interviewer, a bearded chap asked them the following questions:

“Salman, as an actor, whose body is the best? Shahrukh’s, yours, Hritik’s?”

Can you believe he asked this stupid question? Can you spot the anomaly, the execrable truth hidden behind these word? “As an actor,” the worthy star is not being asked whose acting is best. He is being asked whose body is best.

Ahem!

And then there followed a long harangue from the actor about Hritik Roshan’s body and Salman Khan’s body. And then this question followed:

“Katrina, as an actor, whose body is the best? Shahrukh’s, Salman’s, Hritik’s?”

Ouch!

Can you believe he asked this question? Yes he did. Again an actor is not being asked “as an actor” whose acting is best but, whose body is best. I am now grinning with satisfaction at having got something to hack about on my blog tonight, something so incredulous I am grinning as I write this. I can’t control my face from twitching, my hands from trembling.

After all, it’s official. Indian actors can’t act, and don’t care about acting. They are only bothered about who spends time in the gym toning their bodies and who don’t.

And therefore it is official. Who says? I say so, Star TV says so. Indian actors aren’t on screen to show their acting skills, but the size of their pectoral and their bulging biceps.

Never Made It to the Yoonited States, Not Even Once!

Recently I visited the American Centre Library. Sorry, center, since the American spell it that way. It used to be an open place when I was in college, and most importantly, it used to be free. I read a lot of books then: novels, critiques, poems, etc. which got me firmly rooted in literature in those days. I read a lot about America in those days, thinking that if I am going there (those days America meant the Yoonited States), I better know a lot about it. Oh, poor me, I thought things were so easy in those naïve days. Ignorant me.

Now that I am working close to this library I walked in today to take a membership all over again and, surprise, was told it wasn’t free anymore. It had become some kind of a fortress, no, Alcatraz, is more like it. I am stopped at the gate by a woman behind a door of two-inch thick steel, who looks at me suspiciously (could I be looking like a terrorist in my office clothes and general look of distraction? I would be a sloppy terrorist, in that case.). Jokes aside, I am frisked, racially profiled, x-rayed, mobile-phone-deprived, watched by close-circuit television, by a host of uniformed beefcake security men and their equally endowed security women. Uniforms and security men are everywhere. Ironically, wonder how, despite all this security, terrorists barged into the US embassy in Iran in the world’s longest running hostage crisis where 52 U.S. diplomats were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981. But, so, sorry, they have their reasons and I shouldn’t short-circuit the system. So I go along.

Now I walk into the library, and see that a lot of things have changed since I visited the library last. Not only is it not free, but gone are the regulars, the bearded old men who snoozed on the newspapers, the copywriters who copied ideas from the magazines to replicate them in their ads, the shelves and shelves of books, the cute looking Parsee librarian in platform heels, with the hairdo like Diana Palmer. Oh, how I miss her cool efficiency that would make me go weak in the knee! Where is she? Is she dead? I saw her in Colaba a few years ago, but didn’t have the guts to talk to her.

And I receive a very warm welcome when I decide to pay the membership fee. There are hardly anyone around, and I must be one of their few valued customers, help pay the bills, eh? There were gangs of students in those days reading the magazines, referring the books, and listening to the video recordings of interviews of President Jimmy Carter, who had just become president. Seeing a video recording was a big thing then and I had to wait a few hours to get my turn, which the Parsee librarian in platform heels so efficiently and so kindly arranged.

That was around thirty years ago, before I graduated. Thirty years! Oh God! Thirty years just flew by in a jiffy. I was a shy and retiring youth of around 20 years then and now I am fifty, sporting grey hair, a bald patch and a paunch and, sad to say, I never made it to the Yoonited States, my dream country, the land of the free, not even once! I hope my son does!

No, Not the Sun, the Full Moon Rises over the Hills of Belapur!

The NYT Review of The White Tiger

The New York Times has come out with a mixed review of Booker-winning novel The White Tiger which we are reading now. Regular readers of this blog would know our skepticism towards outsourcing and the ambiguous nature of the "India Shining" and such like slogan which the media/film industry tries to thrust down our unwilling throats. We know that the truth lies elsewhere, but we go on as if believing it is what the future is all about.

"This grim world is far removed from the glossy images of Bollywood stars and technology entrepreneurs that have been displacing earlier (and equally clichéd) Indian stereotypes featuring yoga and spirituality. It is not a world that rich urban Indians like to see. Indeed, when Adiga’s book recently won the Man Booker Prize, some in India lambasted it as a Western conspiracy to deny the country’s economic progress. Yet Adiga isn’t impressed by such nationalistic fervor. In bare, unsentimental prose, he strips away the sheen of a self-congratulatory nation and reveals instead a country where the social compact is being stretched to the breaking point. There is much talk in this novel of revolution and insurrection: Balram even justifies his employer’s murder as an act of class warfare. Read the whole article."

The review ends with, "There is an absence of human complexity in “The White Tiger,” not just in its characters but, more problematically, in its depiction of a nation that is in reality caught somewhere between Adiga’s vision and the shinier version he so clearly — and fittingly — derides. Lacking this more balanced perspective, the novel feels simplistic: an effective polemic, perhaps, but an incomplete portrait of a nation and a people grappling with the ambiguities of modernity."

What "complexity" is the reviewer asking for? Perhaps the reviewer wanted a socio-economic and political treatise instead of a novel. A novelist can deal with two conflicting views as with Balram's and his boss Ashok's lives. If he were to try more than this we are sure it would make the book ineffective and confusing. Reading as we are Adiga's novel, we can say he is unconventional in that he espouses a truth that is today only the preserve of a few activists and fearless writers with a slant towards the poor. If anyone reading this travels by un-airconditioned bus or train in India one can see the poverty of the people like Balram, the crushing hopelessness of the "Darkness" that Adiga talks about. But the ones who are members of the new economy who always live in air-conditioned "eggs" and revel in their lopsided and convenient assumption that India is progressing and shining will not even admit there is a dark side to their shining selves. While our television and films are perpetrating this glittering myth to the world; in the interiors of India which Adiga calls "Darkness," people are being inducted into extremism of the worst kind - Naxalism, right extremism, and terrorism from across the borders.

Congrats Adiga for your achievement, your consistency of vision and the Booker, too, no mean achievement this!

Rush Hour at Victoria Terminus, Bombay

Shot at Victoria Terminus, a few days ago, during the morning rush hour. I stop by this kiosk and enjoy my morning cuppa and stare at the passing crowd of office goers in their rivettingly diverse moods. Some listen to music, some drink coffee, some have worried looks, some look as if they haven't slept, some are anxiously waiting for their boyfriends/girlfriends. Anyway, it's amazing how the five million people who commute by a a few trains reach their destinations, clinging, sitting on roofs, arguing and even fighting for a seat inside the trains.

My dear friend Poovannamnilkunnathil Mathaichettan says, "People of this city, er, er, have no sense. Why don't they go to Tekkadi and Munnar. That's the best place to settle down, er, er, in the peace and tranquility." But Mathaichettan misses the point as always.

Kem Cho, Obamabhai? What Say, Obamabhai?

At last, a black man in the White House

We write this with eyes misting. At last, Obama has won. A so called “black man” is in the “white house.” Never thought this would become possible only 143 years after the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. So, what if he is only half black? He is only four years younger than me and we can imagine the teasing, the snide remarks, the stabs on the ego with sharp comments, the ignoring, the discrimination he must have received. Just because he is black. Just because the colour of his skin happened to be black.

Well, he won and proved that skin colour has nothing to do with success as a politician, as it has nothing to do with anything else in this world. But would they be convinced, the ones who called those born with dark skin “kalia”, “sawla”, “karumban”, “baddu”, etc., stereotyping them for ever? Would those who would turn their faces away have imagined that this youth, this boy would grow up to be the president of the United States. What would his childhood have been like? Did he cry when he was insulted? Did he wish he had a white face like his mother’s and grandmother’s? Did he worry too much about why he looked the way he did? Did he wonder whether all dark-skinned people are stupid and should be dealt with contempt? Was he ever heartbroken? Did he ever cry into his pillow?

We have done all this because our skin colour was darker than the rest. And, yes, the discrimination came right from our siblings and – hold your breath – even parents. What could one say? It’s for no fault of ours that we were born dark skinned than the rest of the family. We would have avoided it if we could. India prides to be a classless and democratic country but people who have been discriminated know otherwise. It’s a brutally discriminating country, people just ignore you if you are dark-skinned, one even said, “we don’t discriminate, we only ignore.” A Jagjivan Ram may have become a minister, but if you are dark-skinned, like us, you will find yourself maligned, traumatised and called all sorts of names. Like we were in many organisations and literary groups, who were supposedly the liberal, free-minded, and non-discriminatory type – alas – only in name.

India is the original land of racism and what I, rather subversively, call “colourism.” Here the slightly fairer look down upon the darker and the darker you are the more collective rejections do you get. Look at our movies, advertisements, television serials; one would almost think India is peopled only by fair-skinned, rosy cheeked human beings. Why? Because the dark-skinned are carefully weeded out, and an advertising executive says to another, “Make sure all models you hire are fair skinned.” The girls who dance in our films should all be “rice-complexioned” or at least “wheatish-complexioned”, no, not “brinjal-complexioned”. No, that won’t do. We are deeply prejudiced against people with colour, though most of the gods we worship are dark skinned.

This is the land where a woman wouldn’t get a husband if she is dark-skinned. So, down south where almost everyone is dark-skinned, mothers persuade daughters to stay away from the sun and use “Fair and Lovely.” You won’t believe it when we say this, forgive us, but the blasted fairness cream is sold out within minutes of it arriving at medical and general stores and at some places the crowds have to be controlled and organised into queues to prevent a riot from breaking out to buy what we would term this “fairness deception.”

(Without doubt we are under spell cast by Arvind Adiga, whose book “White Tiger” is what we are reading on the train to work these days, so be merciful to us. The language we use is straight out of his novel, dear reader.)

Our friend Pragya Thakur (no, not this Pragya Thakur!) from the Yoonited States says in a recent chat “I am as euphoric as the rest of the world. It has been a while since such an inspiring person emerged on the political scene.” Is Pragya hopeful for the blacks and coloured people in general? Too soon to say.

Our wealth-enjoying-brother Dhansukhbhai who has been to the US several times says, “Thame soo khabar che, Obama tho maro manas che, pukka Gujjubhai. Oon kailu che thamne “Obamabhai” nam saru lagu che. America ma saru Gujjubhai Obamabhai-ma vote karva ma avee gaya che.” (What do you know, Obama is a real Gujjubhai. I say he must be named Obamabhai. All Gujjubhais in America voted for our Obamabhai.)

A New Glossy on the Block with Oodles of Oomph!

We were told about the launch of the glossy Henna by friend Pablo Ganguli, cultural impresario, and organiser of Kitab festivals in India (the next one is in Delhi, so Delhiites watch out!) and a slew of other festivals in other parts of the world including Russia, Argentina, and god alone knows where else. The people behind the cool looking glossy with a strikingly attractive front cover design are Pablo himself, Meena and Shim Khalid, the London-born Pakistani-origin publisher of the magazine.

Shim Khalid was born in London in the early 1970's. After leaving school at sixteen, he became a part of the family business alongside his brother Fukhera, helping it grow from a family grocery store in Leyton East London to a multi million pound cash and carry business.

In 2004, Shim moved into the licensing business and bought the infamous Kabaret Night club in London's Soho. Shim re-launched it as Kabaret's Prophecy, commissioned world renowned Interior Designer and architect David Collins to create a ground breaking interior, as well as enlisting the design talents of Jamie Hewlett (co- creator of Gorillaz) to design brand new characters exclusive to the club. In its first year, Kabaret's Prophecy won the accolade of World's Best Nightclub as voted by Wallpaper Magazine, UK's Cocktail Bar of the Year by the Independent Newspaper and was dubbed the ultimate luxury play den attracting the world's biggest celebrities and spenders alike.

The glossy looking Henna magazine, which has oodles of whatchamacallit “oomph,” affords us a peep into the minds of sexy Asian-origin models and celebrities. I don’t know names, but the first issue includes Supermodel Veronica Webb who features in a main fashion editorial together with a Q&A with NY designer Rachael Roy. Other highlights include Robert Thurman, father of Uma and a leading authority on Tibetan Buddhism, an interview with George Clooney, and Natasha Law talking about her first exhibition soon to open in Mumbai. Initially it was the idea of Shim's brother Fukhera but being the more fashion conscious of the two, the task fell to Shim to work up the initial concept of the magazine, appoint an editorial and design team and move things forward.

Shim's ultimate vision for the magazine is to produce a beautiful, coffee table style magazine with intelligent, sexy, thought provoking, and humorous content that would appeal to today's modern British Asians.

All the very best, Henna!

How Green Was My Valley! Belapur Was Green Once, Now It Has Lounge Bars and More Glitz!

The Frankenstein Myth

Everyone knows Frankenstein, and everyone has called the neighbourhood's disagreeable, pernickety uncle (who shoos away cricket playing children) a "Frankenstein" and a monster. No? We have. We have read the Classic Comic series on Frankenstein and know it is written by Mary Shelly, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelly, the poet. However, what we didn't know was that Percy had a hand in shaping the story Mary wrote. Now an effort is on by a certain Robinson who is hard at work stripping "Frankenstein" of Percy's edits and reconstructing and publishing the original book written by Mary. Excerpts from an article in chronicle.com by Jennifer Howard.

If, that is, you believe that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley really was the genius behind one of our most enduring tales of existential horror. Almost from the moment that it was published anonymously on New Year's Day 1818, Frankenstein had readers and critics arguing over its origins. Early rumor held that it wasn't Mary Shelley but her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who deserved the credit. (Or the blame; some early readers were outraged by the novel's idea that a man could play God and create life.) Even after the couple confirmed Mary's authorship and her name appeared on new editions in 1823 and 1831, some critics held on to the idea that Percy was the guiding spirit behind Frankenstein. Read the full story here