Another Weekend: Sujit Nair's Story

Just another weekend and we thought we would share some things on this blog, our own sacred space, our own world we inhabit.

We have got a job after a long time in a small advertising agency started by our friends and former colleagues. We are there as the copy person, so we can work at home and only go out for meetings. That suits our working style though our novel may be delayed.

Also, we are working in advertising which pays rather well. Our friend Sujit was one such, a ponytailed copywriter with our agency of the time. We envied his ponytail, which was thick and lustrous. He told us he drew a salary of Rs 4 lakh a month. We were incredulous. How can it be possible? With that kind of money he might be having a dream life.

No, all wasn't hunky dory in his life. He lived in an upscale area which cost a bomb, his wife and daughter left him because of his drinking problem. Yes, he drank. He invited us several times for a drink and we told him that drinking is not good for him, as we ourselves had given up the habit.

But habits die hard. Very soon he was in trouble and had to be admitted to hospital. The man who admitted him was his agency head, not his wife or his father. At hospital he made progress and soon was discharged with the admonition that he should give up drinking, which was spoling his liver.

He came to our office for meetings looking pale and emaciated. He jokingly called us "Jesus Christ," for whatever reasons we don't know. Being Mallus we shared a few Mallu jokes (or jocks as a Mallu would say). He was a fountain of jokes and sayings and we loved all of them.

Then his agency head called us one day to announce the death of Sujit. He had started drinking again and this time the drinks took him. We were shocked. How can it be? It can't be, surely he was there somewhere and this must be some kind of prank.

But truth was, he was dead. Though highly paid he had an unhappy life. One of his last jokes went thusly:

An ad man after dying went to heaven. God gave him the choice of heaven or hell. St. Paul showed him heaven and Satan showed him hell. In heaven he was shown a few men in white with some angels playing the harp. Then Devil took him to hell where men in white had scotch in their hands and the angels were playing hard rock.

So the ad man chose hell, seeing as how he loved drinking. But when he was led deep into hell he saw fire, icy mountains, and weird creatures. Drinks were not available, not even water.

"This is not what you showed me," he told Satan.

"Oh, that was just the advertising and marketing, this is the truth."

Rest in peace Sujit, my friend.

India's Population Will Cross 1.5 Billion by 2100

Just read something shocking, and the accompanying graph (Sorry couldn't upload the graph as it was some other file type. However, it is available on the link above.) was still more awe-inducing to our queasy heart. See the graph herein. It says that in 2030 India's population will overtake that of China's and, horrors, will be 1.5 billion in 2100. 

Hm. Haw. Heck, that's worrisome to us. And to think that most of the 1.5 billion will live in cities, without water supply and sewerage. Son, what a world have we given you to inherit? While the population of U.S. and European countries will plateau (as many dying as being born) India and Nigeria would boom with people. What is fueling this reproductive frenzy, is it the climate change, is it the movies? Well, we don't know, we can't answer that.

But we can answer this: should population be curbed, controlled? Yes, yes, yes. Do something right away.

On the Subject of Treyvon Martin

This makes us sick, really. We thought the U.S. to be a decent country where people of colour were respected. Seems Lester Chambers, a blues singer was assaulted on stage during a show. Well, we thought racism was done in the country and only the remnants existed in red-neck country of the south. No, it seems. Treyvon Martin is another victim in the long line of victims who were lynched or beaten to death in this great country professing equality of all people. A teenager, he was walking back to his house after visiting a store when the gun-wielding George Zimmerman shot him, in cold blood. He has done the right thing according to supremacists across the world, but we chafe, we cry for these crimes of utter human hopelessness. Zimmerman was acquitted as there weren't any eye witnesses to the incident, or, were they chicken to come out?  Are all black teenagers wearing hoodies criminals? We simmer with anguish, but we don't know how to protest this atrocity on humanity. Will justice be done, if at all? Who elected a white jury to try the murderer of a back teenager?

After black man Rodney King was beaten by policemen in a similar incident, he asked, "Can we all get along?" No. It seems the answer is no. The U.S., an assylum of contentment and opportunity for many is not a safe place for dark-skinned people. Blacks constitute 13 per cent of the U.S. population while whites are 77 per cent. So they are a majority and even if only half of them are racists they outnumber the blacks. Does it help that the president of the country is half black?

 The shooting of Treyvon Martin opens a can of worms, all well-fed and bigger than rats. To what extent people will go to prove that they are superior to others. A matter of skin collour (which we battle with in my novel Mr. Bandookwala, MBA, Harvard) is the biggest bane of humanity and will take it down the path of perdition, or, something near it, we are sure. The roots of this discrimination lies deeper than the thick skin of centuries slave traders and racial oppressors.

Life Goes On....

Since it has become a habit with us, we take our big brolly and go for a walk in the residential community of Artist Village. There aren't many artist living here except a Marathi novelist, female, who is said by the residents to have gone slightly mental. They revel in euphemisms here. We see her stop in the middle of the street to sing a song like a Bollywood heroine, also we have seen her sit on the parapet of the terrace, a quite risky place to sit. The few artists, calligraphers, movie extras, and directors who lived here have left, few of them commiting suicide, so it is learnt, from local folklore. The only movie director we know has directed Bhojpuri movies. He has good ideas about making films but now is unemployed and roams around with a camera taking pictures.

They stare at this strange gent in his heavy jacket, his potbelly, his air of partial renunciation. An artist is a strange being even in Artist Village. Now that hurts a bit. We have not been materially rewarded by life, we don't own a fancy car, though most of our neighbours have bought theirs in crazy show of oneupmanship. Now they are fighting over where to park them. We don't take part in their bitter fights. We do try to mediate when we are in the mood. But that's the profile of an artist, down a wee bit but not completely out. We forget about the lack of appreciation an artist gets, and walk, and walk. We walk alone or with a companion on sundays. A not exactly starving artist, but an artist who could have done with some more appreciation. An artist ignored by the world at large. We have invested in our better half and child and both are gainfully employed. Wifey, she amazes us. We made her do a bachelor in education and she has risen through the ranks to be principal of the school where she works. Now how a village girl has done that, we don't know. Son is drawing a salary close to what we drew at the height of our career. Which, to say the least, is life.

Ho hum. Life gives one shocks and it makes us recover. Most things we plan don't work out the way we want. We get something which is totally out of the way, we get deflected from our main purpose, either out of laziness or lack of drive. Most days we are in front of the television or online: surfing, facebooking, twittering, tinkering with our guitar, and blogging. Imagine what life would have been like in the eighties when we didn't even have a computer. Corporate life is out for us, no, we will not go there anymore. It's a bitch world full of fast-talking people who don't know what they are talking about. We didn't have one decent boss in all our years of corporate life. Except a kind Goan boss - who gave us our first foreign trip - who employed us three times when we were without a job.

Life is a saga that goes one. It's a walk, a never ending walk at that. All this we are writing after we come back energised from a walk.

Rest in Peace Chris Dickerson, He of the Movie Star, Rock Star Looks

He was a playwright, who had written plays that were performed on Broadway, no less. He was also a writer, a poet, a performer, a kind and caring human being. Many are the one-man protests he has conceptualised and done, standing all alone holding a placard which spelled out his message.

He was only an online friend and, yet, his updates were the ones we have looked forward to all the time. He became a friend through another online friend Marisa. And, he was the one man whom we wanted to meet, wherever he was when we went to the U.S., if at all. He was a great admirer of Peter O'Toole, as we were.

He had the looks of a movie star, a rock star, combined into one, uncannily resembling Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Marlon Brando, and the old-school movie stars. We like old-school stars and their movies, very much, thank you.

This is a short elegy to a man whom I knew only briefly through Facebook but now that he is no more I feel the loss. His son posted on his facebook page that he was no more and also said that he was flawed. Yes, flawed, like all the rest of us on this planet, which is also very flawed.

Rest in peace Chris Dickerson, wherever you are now, rest in peace!

The Nigella Lawson- Charles Saatchi Affair

Something about the Nigella Lawson-Charles Saatchi (he, of the agency Saatchi and Saatchi) issue disturbed us. Here are two celebrities (within their own rights) having a fight in public as if nobody is watching. How often has this happened? In reversal of roles, a friend's brother - recently married (at that time) - was slapped in public by his wife and this ended in divorce. The issue is not of domestic violence as much as our ability to go out of control in today's circumstances. That the incident has ended in divorce is also worrisome. Why didn't she go for a divorce earlier? What was keeping her from going to the police?

We saw her cookery shows and the somehow forced smile on her face as she dished out fares we could only salivate over. We could detect a patina of melancholy on her face. She is attractive, plump in a pleasant way and a millionairess (whatever). Why should she stick with a man who, we don't know, may be a brute who would think nothing of strangling her in public? Yes, why? It bothers us.

Domestic violence is not only an issue between husband and wife. We hear it is rampant in India. A man wants control and when he doesn't get any, he goes berserk. We need to rethink why domestic violence occurs and whether there is a solution. Surely, women are reporting more incidents these days than before. But what about women who are totally under the control of the husband's extended family, as it happens in India?

Never Ever Give Up - the Story of the Farmer

We thought of sharing a little story we read just now. Goes this way: God appeared to a weak and poor farmer and asks him to push as a big rock right in front of his cabin. So every day for one year the farmer would push at the stone from the break of dawn till evening. His body ached, his crops died, yet he kept on pushing at the rock. Then one day Satan appeared and teased him, "Why are you doing this when you haven't got anything in return? Give it up. Don't be a fool, give up."

So he decided to talk to God about it. That night he prayed, "God what shall I do? I have pushed with all my might for one year and nothing has happened. Should I give up?" 

God replied, "I only asked you to push. You did that. See your arms which are muscled and twice as strong, see your shoulders they are broad and well toned. Now work on your field and you will reap twice as you reaped earlier."

So the farmer worked on his fields and lo and behold, his take away was twice as it was in earlier years. He also became a prosperous and strong member of his community. 

Sometimes, that's how God works. 

As we work on our novel (as you are doing on your own project) we have wondered many times whether we should give up seeing as nothing great is being paid back. But God has a plan for us that we should carry on the fight and never give up. The novel will take some more time, but, surely, it will come out in print.

So, for the time being, we admire our writing muscles and really take pride in our blog. God bless!

Strange Ways of Bollywood

We saw some great movies on Zee Classics this week. Back to back. One was Rajesh Khanna's Prem Nagar, which, though a hit, was made during the waning of his charisma. We had missed this movie earlier in our life. He has turned out a "classic" performance, pardon our misuse of the word. His intensity is what held us in thrall in those days. Add to that his charisma, the mannerisms. For us kids he was the only superstar, ever. Well, that was an era, a zeitgeist, a hero-worshipping time when we all wanted to be like him and combed our hair like him (over the ears, turned in with round combs at the back). It was a time of wanting to be something unique and great and we liked the idea of an idealistic lover. Today it may be Amitabh, Shahrukh, Aamir, or, Salman. I don't know. Even Amitabh with his intense eyes doesn't have his intensity and style, according to us. How different were their careers: one from superstardom to flopdom and the other from obscurity to stardom.

The ways of the movie world are quaint indeed, one of sharp contrasts. Recently I saw "Sweety" of the serial "Hum Panch" fame hawking some dubious weight-loss products on television. She was a craze in that serial of some vintage and everyone loved her, she had an all-India fan following. In the same serial was a studious, leave-me-alone girl, who didn't say much, who was always reading a book, and god forbid, wore glasses. She was Vidya Balan, a Chembur person like us. Vidya went to become a top-selling star in Bollywood and "Sweety" is selling products on telebrands. Imagine the irony of it all.

Stardom comes at a price, as we have seen in Jiah Khan's suicide. At one time she had everything, was a leading lady and then came the fall. Some commit suicide, some become mad. We attribute this to life itself in Bombay rather than the peculiarities of Bollywood.

We have seen some good Malayalam movies of late. Now, we are not boasting, these movies have good stories, written by talented writers. Which goes for Tamil movies also. That's why when Bollywood runs out of ideas it copies from Malayalam and Tamil movies. What we are waffling toward is the need for films to have good stories. Unfortunately, Hindi film stories are written on the sets. Kya?

Season of Mangoes

Our walking companion Henry with a box of mangoes. Alas, the season of the king of fruits is drawing to a close.

India - A Disaster Waiting to Happen

With the media frenzy over the BCCI dying out, there's this thing about environmental disasters. Uttarakhand is badly affected and we have always maintained that India is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The problem is that what environmentalists have been shouting reaches our potentates through a long hall as a distant echo. Hm. Forests are torn down or burnt, buildings are constructed with scant regard for the trees and rivers that form the eco-system in which we live. On our recent trip to Kerala we found garbage dumped all over roads in Ernakulam, Kerala's premium city. When we asked our brother we were informed that the city has no waste disposal system and they they pay to have their garbage taken away. Well, whoever imagined. Whoever imagined "God's Own Country" didn't have a waste disposal system. That too, in the premier city of the state. No wonder there are outbreaks of malaria, dengue, and chikengunia (hope I got the name right).

What are the reasons, the causes for such massive floods and landslides. Is it only the environment? True with global warming more clouds form and they have to come down as rain. That could be one of the specious arguments (we researched this online and found no creditable correlation).

We need to slow this mad scramble for development. We need to pause our crazy obsession for unhindered development and ask ourselves, "is this the way we should be going?" Have we gone horribly wrong somewhere, let's think, let's talk. If the environment has gone wrong we can still alter it, provided things aren't too far gone out of control. Today we read about the plan to mine the entire stretch of the Western Ghats and have learnt that it has been stopped by howls of protest. 

We dig up and exploit our earth, for what? Then what? Environmental disasters like the ones we are witnessing?

We saw this beautiful sight of our soldiers lying down in line to let some children pass over a river. We were touched. We always call upon the army for help during calamities and they oblige. Thank almighty we have such dedicated men defending our country. Really, it's shameful how we think selfishly of our own comforts when those men in uniform are there out in the rain, cold, and heat defending us, our country.

Bravo, Jawans!