Here’s Looking at You, 2009 – Part III

The saga continues…. I don't know what 2009 had done to me to be so nostalgic, not wanting to let it go, not ominous, because I am not a superstitious type. Nah! So here goes my list of things that have changed, very droll, very self-serving cud-chewing type of thing, really. In a world of calloused sentiments that have turned into extremists warts, sour grapes of the un-fermentable variety, I am a softy with a core that refuses to develop a hard exterior, the hard kernel that I talked about in my first post, the one that started this "Here's looking at 2009" stuff. (Actually "here's looking at you kid" was spoken by Bogart's character Rick to Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca", a film I loved and consider a classic.)

What Has Changed

The markets aren't stable anymore, we can expect more shocks, wild swings (Disclosure: I was earlier in financial journalism). The huge financial bubbles that hung over the markets haven't been deflated, not yet, they are still full of hot air waiting to be blown, one day, soon.

The job situation has changed. No longer are companies hiring for the heck of it and putting recruits "on the bench" but they are making do with the downsized, dwarfed drones who helped them pull through the recession.

The mall culture has failed in India. Most mall projects are finding it hard to sustain, even, take off. Long live the street corner kirana store. They combine hard business acumen that malls can't replicate, however much they try.

Outsourcing is on the way out. Outsourcing means greed and it was meant to destroy young men's/women's careers. Most of the young people I know who took to outsourcing are out of it and learning things like underwater welding (yeah!) as a solid way to make a living.

What Hasn't Changed

People continue to be callous about global warming. "Yeh global warming kya hai," asks Marxist thinker Kuriachen Kuriakose. "Another publicity stunt by the imperialists hegemonies of the west? They need a firm whack on their behinds for spreading canards such as this."

Slums continue to grow in Bombay in spite of the slum re-development program of the government. These new slums are situated just outside the high-rise free-flats created by the government for the poor in exchange for their tin hovels. Take a train from Vashi to Victoria Terminus and look to your right before Mankhurd station and you can see the steady progress of slums – another Dharavi in the making.

The rich are growing richer and the poor, well, poorer. In the US the number of millionaires doubled between the nineteen nineties and two thousand, while in China the number of dollar millionaires is about to double. In India I am sure it is set to triple.

Enough griping for the day. More anon!

Here’s Looking at You 2009 – Part II

Yes, yesterday I nearly collapsed on my laptop writing the post that appears somewhere, ah, just below this one. It was about change and how it happens unannounced, how things change, how we grow old and how things change but they remain the same. I promised to expand this theme and here it is:

Things that Changed

In 2009 Bombay entered the terror map. Everywhere I turn there are armed policemen, their eyes alert, fearful, on edge. Will they fire on me, a crazy burst? One feels a bit insecure, a bit on the edge and wants to leave the city as soon as one can after finishing work; don't know if the Toyota Qualis coming from the opposite directions would contain the deadly barrel of a Kalashnikov pointed at one by "external terrorists". These agents of death are funny, they kill without reason, quite randomly at that. So, it's just a throw of dice or a game of Russian roulette. Bomb blasts, grenade blasts, AK47 fire, in a laidback trading town, which has never been conquered, pillaged, or desecrated, sounds odd, and for this suburban boy from the somnolent suburb of Chembur - a bit ingenuous at that - it is a difficult thing to digest.

It is also the year when the government thought about aerially attacking its own people in tribal areas it suspects are hideouts of what I call "internal terrorists". No, terror isn't good. It's the worst thing that happened to ever since the Afgan hoards invaded India. And to attack one's own people using bombs and firepower from the skies is like declaring war on its own people. Has anyone heard of discussing it with them sitting across the table? Has anyone found out why tribals in the hinterlands are taking to extremism? Anyone? We have a responsibility to be compassionate to our own citizens before dropping bombs on them, which only tinpot regimes contemplate doing.

It is also the year of two reality shows called "Rekha Sawant Ki Swayamvar" and "Flawless Bride" both of which touched nadirs in television content programming in India. Can you call these reality shows when everything is gaudily made up, and just about everything appears artificial and crassly vulgar? Give me a break. The "Tamashas" and "Lavnis" are more real in this respect.

Things that Haven't Changed

India continues to be bad to writers and their ilk. I am still unpublished, despite trying my best. Yes, I will go on being like this only, just to see where it leads. I am the eternal hopeful. What was hoped to be the great middle-class reading public is no longer extent. People listen to music while commuting, they don't even buy pirated low-cost books, forget the fancy priced ones. Homes don't feature book shelves they feature plasma television sets and home theatre.

Apart from a few print newspapers and magazines who ply their craft with diligence, the rest of the print media has been bought by business interests. It's the age of Rupert Murdoch, who I am not quite sure if he will be another Robert Maxwell, notice the similarity in names.

I have to go. More anon. Watch this space.

Here’s Looking at You 2009

A colleague remarked how the month had gone so fast, I said, month? I don’t remember how the year went, nay, how a quarter century went. Actually time passes at its own speed, the clock ticks quite smoothly and evenly, it’s our anxieties that make us feel time has passed quickly. The reason: we weren’t stopping and enjoying our moments. 1984 was the year I got married (we celebrated 25 years recently), that was also the year of the Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal, a tragedy that has still not been resolved, its victims compensated. A quarter century has passed since then, some have died, some have moved away, some have given up on getting whatever they were promised, some have lost the fight to bring the guilty to book.

Likewise some of my close relations have died, some have moved to foreign countries, some have given up, retired and have sought to live in friendlier environs. It makes me think that getting justice for the poor and deprived is too Herculean a task in India. They are easily intimidated, ostracised, marginalised, terrorised. The company responsible for so many deaths (20,000 dead and 5.7 lakh affected) still operates in India without any seeming compunction or guilt. It will go as one of the worst industrial disasters in the world. (Compared to it Chernobyl only affected 3,36,000 people.) We have become calloused and inured like a coconut kernel, like the hard exterior of a cashew nut, nature’s protection against hurt and dissipation. We don’t know who will dispense justice. Justice, ah, nice word, but not much of justice exists for the poor, does it?

That was 25 years ago, when I was full of expectations for the future, laid a lot of groundwork, wanting to do a lot of things, all at the same time. Now I am more restrained, but my life is still as hectic, the commute is still harrowing, the pain, all over, more evident. My friend Ganga is retiring after an illustrious career in advertising. He wants to devote his time to writing from now own. I am jealous of him. So he tells me a story narrated by Osho in his (Ganga’s) typical style: A man wants to retire; so he calls his accountant and asks him how much money and property he owns. The accountant adds up his assets, deducts his liabilities – as good accountants are wont to – and tells him that what he has will last for five generations. “Aila, then what will happen to my sixth generation?” and he again goes back to work.

Soon I will be in 2010, can you imagine? I can’t. I think it comes with age, we become so busy that seasons pass, winters come and go, children grow old (a small guy [my son] I had to look down upon, who used to hold my hand while crossing the road, now, I really have to crane my neck to look up to him), localities change (there’s an airport coming in the sleepy village where I was born), trains get crowded, there are more people everywhere, there aren’t the familiar Mallu faces on D.N. Road any more, they have been cleaned up by another Mallu (Johnny Joseph), revolutionaries have become prosperous bourgeoisies, so on and so forth.

There are things that haven’t changed. Among them: Bollywood scripts haven’t stopped meandering, Dev Anand hasn’t given up making movies, Asrani hasn’t stopped acting, Amitabh is still our greatest star, books and book writers continue to be ignored by the mainstream media, television continues to meander through its reportage, and policemen still round up suspects and give them the third degree (which they couldn’t do to Kasab, because he is a high-profile guy, you see).

Enough meandering, my eyelids are heavy, I will reserve the rest of this rant for another day and another blogpost.

The Poet and His Poetry; Excuse the Pretentiousness

 

Borrowed this from Aditi Machado's Blog. Since poetry is the soul of literature, just as the mind (or, whatever is in the centre of the body) is the soul of the human consciousness, the following definition of poetry fits well into the vast amounts of drivel poets (and pretenders, like me) have to sift through to arrive at the few lines which pass off as poetry.

Poets on Poetry: Han Dong

" The direction of poetry goes from bottom to top. Poetry is something dimly discernible in the sky which descends to the human world thanks to the productive force of the writer's waiting and yearning. Poetry is not an excavation down into the depths; it is not coal. Writers are not labourers — they must set aside the attitude that writing poetry requires some form of exertion."

That said, I can't, just can't write poetry to a deadline. I tried it recently for a Poetry Slam and came a cropper. That may be the reason I don't participate in writing exercises which state a theme and encourages you to work hard. If I did that, not only would it turn out bad, I will be like a shirking schoolboy, hating his homework. Because poetry as Han Dong says, cannot be dug out by hard work, it has to descend from the sky, shape into a few pithy words, transcend obstacles (bad grammar, bad figures of speech, worse pretentiousness), and then sit on the poet's finger tips burning to be put on paper or into pixels.

Dear Teacher, Your Questions Are Mistaken!

A colleague brings me a second-standard-child's homework. He is flummoxed. His child can't answer it because it seems too profound. Neither can he, though he is almost, not exactly, literate. He sees me as somebody erudite, which impression I maintain by looking distracted and being a bit weird at times. And he knows I write so I could possibly have the answers. But he doesn't know I write perverse and anarchic things, things that are never read (especially this blog). He shows me the homework teacher has given his six-year-old. Oh! I exclaim this is weird, as weird can get. I don't know the answers myself. I guess I will fail a second standard test of these days. The questions (verbatim):

• What is population?
  
• What are responsible for growth?
  
• Is this growth has positive effect and how?
  

(There are more questions along these lines, but I am ashamed to go any further.)

God! Imagine a six-year-old being asked such deeply, mentally-taxing, econo-socio-centric questions! I ask him: "Who is the teacher who has set these questions? I would like to meet him or her."

He senses my agitation and withdraws the paper, feeling contrite, as if he has really offended me.

I am confused, really am. I don't know what or who is at fault: the educational system, the poorly paid teachers, the abysmal anarchy of the questions, the overbearing dictatorial tone, the self-righteousness of it all. Apart from the language, lack of basic understanding of a child's intellectual powers, what boggles is the associations one makes with the teacher's mental state. Is that person an ogre who preys on the minds of small children? In this open letter to Kapil Sibal, I had raised some issues about the level of education in the country. Why are our children treated to such homework by such malicious teachers when they should actually be playing and enjoying themselves?

Or are we turning into a super-illiterate country, unable to grasp even the basics of language and primary education? I guess I should withdraw the request to Minister-ji it because it may have gone beyond the permissible remediable limit.

The US’s Chinese Obsession. Can Manmohan Undo the Damage?

Regarding the recent shift in US's allegiance to China, Fareed Zakaria writes in The Newsweek, "Obama must keep in mind that South Asia is a tar pit filled with failed and dysfunctional states, save for one long-established democracy of 1.2 billion people that is the second-fastest-growing major economy in the world, a check on China's rising ambitions, and a natural ally of the United States. The prize is the relationship with India. The booby prize is governing Afghanistan."

How true! US have a propensity for playing with fire before being fired upon itself. China is exerting its economic might over the US and the US is turning a blind eye towards it and now this! Says this article, "Last week, China's pool of reserves passed the $1 trillion mark, making it the largest lake of money in the world." And it is said it is adding dollar reserves at $ 30 million per hour.

Is a shift in allegiance in order for the US, as Fareed argues? Can Manmohan (now on a trip to the US) undo the damage?

A Brave Wife's Account: Vinita Kamte's Book "To the Last Bullet"

Vinita Kamte, wife of Ashok Kamte, who was killed in the encounter with terrorists on November 26, 2008 (the anniversary is tomorrow) has alleged in a book titled To the Last Bullet, co-authored by journalist Vinita Deshmukh, several lapses by the Bombay police. In this article in rediff.com, she alleges that there wasn’t a back up team to support the top cops Hemant Karkare, her husband, and Vijay Salaskar who died in the incident, in spite of a request being made for it.

Imagine this: terrorists enter and kill around 50 people in Victoria Terminus, walk into Cama Hospital and walk out coolly, all taking all the time from 10 p.m. till 11 p.m. or thereabouts and there aren’t any police teams available to surround the affected areas. Meanwhile watch the following footage of the horror at Victoria Terminus.

How Credible Is Our Media?

In this blog I had decried the vested interests that manage the media these days. According to commonly available information, editorial freedom and integrity that are vital to the survival and credibility of newspapers seem to have been compromised and quite irretrievably lost. In my profession, which involves buying of various media: newspapers, radio, outdoor, etc., I know that some newspapers (leading ones, at that) actually compromise in editorial integrity for monetary objectives and to push an advertiser's point of view.

I didn't know how prevalent in televison, which was glaring made apparent in a recent encounter with a leading channel the other day. Whoa! Here the stakes are higher. This one was about panel discussions in the business section of the channel. They needed sponsors for the discussion which you presume are objective and purely of academic interest. Not so. The sponsor can send one representative to the discussion to plug their point of view, and the associate sponsor can send one person to augment their corporate image. So, in effect that mean you can have your publicity and visibility if you are able to pay for it, and they quite blatantly mention this in their pitch. Credibility, did you say? The cost, which I wouldn't mention, is no trifling matter either and would run into eight figures. Whoa, again!

Writing a Novel Is Tough, Really Tough!

Writing a novel is a tough, difficult job. Apart from plotting there are the characterizations, the settings, the subject, the voice, the tone, the foreshadowing, the explication of ordinary things you understand but others do not, the picking up of the tempo, the organizing of the work, everything takes so much time. The most difficult part is organizing the work on your computer so that files don't get over written by the wrong versions and the one you open and edit is not the wrong one. If the latter, you undo all you have done in the past several days. I don't know why I have embarked on such a journey when I can sit back and watch television, or, spend more time on Facebook. No work needed for all this. I had committed myself to doing this and I guess I am right, if I have the will, and so on….

The market for the novel is drying up. So the last bastion of publishing (as we know it) is crumbling. Poetry is already dead, because nobody reads poetry, and publishers and literary clearly state, "We don't accept poetry," as if it is a pariah dog. If poetry – the most sacred of written arts, the most sublime of thoughts sifted through the sieve of experience – is given such shabby treatment, then what's the future of literature? Will it survive the onslaught of a mindless media – television – or a sea of irrelevant information – the Internet? I don't know the answers. Only time can suggest some answers.

New York Times Gives Blogs, Online Networks Their Due

While on the subject of New York Times (NYT) I am amazed to see that the articles centre around people's experiences in online forums like Facebook, Orkut,

Myspace, Twitter and such like. Is NYT following a future trend before it has arrived? Will newspapers in future follow blogs for opinions or vice versa? I must admit that I do follow newspapers for news and information, as of now. Or, is it with a view to gain popularity of these online networks. I am a bit confused because I don't see the trend here. Also most articles have at least one reference to bloggers, or, blogs, giving them more than their due in India. One steady and consistent Twitter user is the President Barack Obama himself. His latest tweet: The senate has unveiled an excellent health reform bill. Call your senators and ask them to move forward: http://bit.ly/8Ar4yG #hc09.

Perhaps, this is only a conjecture, over here most people aren't as familiar with online networks as they are in the U.S. And when Shashi Tharoor wrote some micro blogs on Twitter there was a lot of tittering in media circles. Are we a bit out of sync here?

(I am testing this upload on Word 2007, so the picture is insert to see if it really appears.)