Missed Call

For today, a short note on impetuousness. I have seldom managed to be so, being a rehabilitating control freak, but the other day did manage to succumb to its spur-of-the-moment attraction, with very pleasing results.

Had gone into the local Planet M to pick up Bruce Springsteen's Magic and was told that it had still not arrived. On my forlorn way out, glancing about, my attention was caught for some reason by the cover of a VCD- 'Missed Call'- an Indie movie, featuring someone I had never heard of and directed by someone I had heard of even less. Not letting recallability get in the way, I picked it up and watched it yesterday on Boxing Day, with wonderful results. I could not think how better I could have spent Boxing Day, except of course if I was actually at the Melbourne Cricket Ground where India was playing Australia.

The British food critic A.A. Gill had once said, somewhat disparagingly of his own kind, that "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem—they know how it is done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they are unable to do it themselves". So I will not attempt to review/ critique the film, except to say that it is one of those rare ones which, watched under the right circumstances and at the right time, have the power to alter some lives or at least to revise the content and direction of those lives. A few years back it might have altered mine too!

So for the New Year, resolve to be impetuous- you never know when you might get a Missed Call!!

The Art of Food

Yes, it's That Time Of The Year Again! And in this blessed holiday season, my friend Rupkamal has taken a major leap of faith! He has gone and done something which has been an unspoken fantasy of mine- he has opened a restaurant!! He is still holding on to his day job but, very bravely, he has also acknowledged that life also holds more than the 9 to 5 routine and that something needs to be done to reaffirm this fact! The name is 'Dimsum' and it is located in Koramangala, B'lore. Rup claims that the momos are the best this side of the McMohan line and, even factoring in personal bias, it still remains an impressive claim.

And part of my annual winter rituals is this other friend Biswaroop coming over to my house, spending a couple of days and cooking up a storm in the process! When Biswa is in the kitchen he can swing either of two ways- when he is good, he is a master chef and when he is not then, well, he is not a master chef! This time he decided to be good and the results were memorable!

But more than the food itself, the process of cooking got me thinking about something. Looking at the spread of colors (Exhibit A- the snap with this post), it seemed to me that there is not too much difference between art and food, or not too much difference in the process of creation of the two. There is a line of thought http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2007/05/food_can_be_artistic_but_it_ca.html

which holds that food can be artistic, but it can never be ‘art’, but I hold differently. If lack of freedom of artistic expression, having to cook to order, is the only argument extended against assigning the status of art to cooking, then it is no argument at all. One only has to travel the length of the country to understand the glorious and diverse ways in which something as humble as the chicken tikka masala finds artistic expression!

In fact it is my belief that food is in fact more of an art form than ‘art’ itself. Art caters either to the visual senses or the auditory senses. Only sometimes you get a combination of both that is worthy of being called art. Food on the other hand caters to almost all senses- the sense of taste, of touch, of smell and, in some glorious examples, even the sense of sight! And when the elements are balanced perfectly, when each sense is pampered just so, the product is nothing but the most exalted piece of art!

For the moment, I need to find my way to Dimsum !

"In my Opinion..."

Vinod Mehta wrote something in his column in the last issue of Outlook which I found quite interesting. What he was writing about was the essential boisterous nature of a democracy which is comparatively young and in which the realization of what all democracy entails is even younger in its constituents, the people who make up this democracy. Without his permission, I feel some of what he wrote bears reproduction: ‘A healthy and vibrant democracy of necessity is loud, messy, chaotic, confused, abusive and disputatious. Because we live in a free and open society, each citizen is entitled to his or her opinion and point of view. Quite often it seems there exist 1.1. billion opinions in the country, all vigorously articulated……I don’t wish to sound like a totalitarian aesthete, but frequently the decibel level of our democracy reaches ear shattering levels. Everything from road rage to Taslima Nasreen to Dilip Vengsarkar becomes “vital” and “critical”. ‘

I could not agree more with Mr. Mehta. We have had a democracy for quite a while now, but the urgency and insistence on articulation of points of view, the desire to opine on something that we may be related to only obliquely at best, is something new. And the unfortunate problem is that more often that not this articulation is not always lucid or coherent. Or even fair. This brings up the question of what has changed recently to bring about this change? Have we, as a democracy matured? Has the democratic spirit finally woken up and is now demanding to be heard? The answer, I think, lies in something more prosaic - The birth of the Hydra Headed Media.

It would be naïve and condescending to assume that when our democracy was younger, there were no points of view to be articulated or there were no opinions to be voiced. Possibly there were more, given that the pace of things somehow seemed to be slower, allowing more time for ideas to germinate. It is just that, often, the conduit to channelise the articulations seemed to be a lot more localized, the target audience restricted to the few gathered around that paanwala in Chandni Chowk, the patrons in that coffee house on Park Street, the regulars at the arrack joint in some southern state or, at worst, the people you had invited for dinner sitting at your table. For the more adroit there were Letters to the Editor, the efficacy of which was again limited. To reach a wider audience you had to be someone of ‘consequence’, something that not everyone could manage to be.

The arrival of 24x7 news channels has changed all that. Along with other less notable feats, what these channels have achieved is Democratisation of Voices. Say something, anything on an issue that is even slightly topical, back it up with some more people saying the same thing, preferably in loud voices, and you are guaranteed airtime on at least one of the million and one news channels which have sprouted. Everyone now seems to have an opinion, because everyone now seems to be accorded importance. The fact that this importance is only created and assigned because of the necessity of generating TRPs is of course an inconvenient truth. And the fact that this artifical importance is fleeting and temporal, till the next set of voices are heard, is something that is chosen to be ignored- a bit like ersatz coffee if you please; the first sip is often the only drinkable one! Therefore, as a consequence, we have the unique and hitherto unknown privilege of watching grimacing faces on our TV screens postulating about how some line from a song in Madhuri Dixits’ new film has hurt their sentiments, about how the dancers in a song from Bhool Bhulaiya were disrespectful to something or the other- in short, endless cacophony ad nauseam ad infinitum.

One of the most interesting news channels to watch is India TV, not because of the journalistic quality of its reporting but because of the lack thereof. Sundays are usually reserved for one main news item, which consists largely of about two minutes footage, a few photos of the people involved and a few quotes from assorted people. That they manage to sustain their entire Sunday programming on something so thin is extraordinary and praiseworthy. Today it was the Moon Das episode, about her ‘lover’ killing himself and some of her family in the process. The same two minutes footage formula was applied, with this nasal voice-over pointing out ‘facts’ and raising ‘questions’, all of which seemed to suggest that, as far as India TV was concerned, it was Moon Das herself who was to blame. Without getting into the veracity of it, the only issue to really consider is whether this is fair? Whether India TV has any business to pre judge an issue based on largely nothing? Until these questions are answered, and I am sure they will never be, we will just have to suffer these misbegotten products of our vibrant democracy, the necessary evils of our belief in Free Speech.

And that is my opinion!

Truth of War

Had also visited the War Memorial at Tawang, built after the war with China in 1962. It was as most war memorials are, somber, dignified and a little confused as to what exactly is its function...to serve as a memorial to the people who died in the war or, in the process, just simply remind one of the war that killed them. So you had the names of the twenty four thousand soldiers who died, as also black and white photos of the war itself and the aftermath.

But unlike what most other memorials would do, it actually admitted that we lost the war. And, more graciously, it even had this plaque which listed out the reasons we had lost it. The causes were the expected ones- poor infrastructure, obsolete weaponry etc. But the last reason on the list was what caught the eye- 'The magnanimity of Pandit Nehru'! It took me a while to believe that this was actually written. Without getting into the veracity of it, whether it is actually right or wrong (it probably is), what was surprising was the candor and the bluntness displayed, things not usually associated with anything remotely governmental or official. This frankness was refreshing to say the least. Though i suspect that the people who put it there decided to take a chance, keeping in mind the remoteness of the location, assuming that no one important would ever visit it to take umbrage! Nonetheless, such forthrightness is to be treasured and maybe the Memorial can perform a dual memorial function- one for the war itself and one for honesty too!

"Who goes there?"

I had visited Tawang by road sometime back. For those of you who slept through geography, it is in Arunachal Pradesh, formerly known as North Eastern Frontier Agency. It was an apt name that, with particular stress on the 'frontier' part. To indulge in a clique, the beauty that was spread all around was of the rugged kind. As befits a region that is as far east as you can get in this country. Serpentine roads, taking forever to take you anywhere, were common. As were aching joints and shaky insides. But what made the never ending car rides bearable was the panoramic vistas spread out all over the place. However, I was preoccupied with something else. I was busy looking at number plates!

When a vehicle overtook us, I would feel compelled to look at its number plate, when one passed us I would again feel the same obligatory need. Not to look at who might be inside that vehicle, or even bother about what vehicle was it, but just to look at the number plate and register the number there! Try as I might, I could not help but look! This is a character flaw that I have carried around with me for a long time now and I felt that I was doomed to a life of peering at muddy plates! Only after a point I realized I was not alone. The other male in the car, my friend next to me, confessed at one point to being driven by the same undeniable need. While the women in the car did what you are supposed to do on a drive, which is look at the scenery, the men looked at number plates. The reasons could be as arcane as the predicament itself. But I think it comes down to a basic need, maybe more in men than in women, to identify and categorize.

We feel this need to neatly slot whoever we meet in life, strangers more than acquaintances, into categories and profiles. Somehow we feel more comfortable in having done this, as if we now know that person better and are therefore more confident of dealing with him. This process of profiling/slotting starts with something as basic as the name, which at least in this country, would give you an idea of ethnicity and origin. It may then go on to profession etc, thereby giving us some tangible lodestones with which to wrap the image of the person with in our minds. The fear of the unknown, and the evils inherent therein, is possibly what drives us to transfer people into the realm of concrete generalization so that we feel a little more secure. Looking at the number plates of the vehicles gives us an idea of where the vehicles are from, and therefore by extension, gives us an idea, albeit theoretical and vague, of where the occupants of the vehicle are from. We feel comfortable at some unfathomable level with having this knowledge. What we miss in the process, the sights and the sounds of the road, is of course something else altogether!

Beginnings and Endings

My good friend, Leemondee, became a father yesterday. Proud father of something pink and small, which he claims will one day transmutate into his fishing partner! When he called me yesterday with the news, the brand new father's happiness could be clearly felt, even over the static of the phone line. And why should it not be so? Even if the true colour of the happiness that he must have been feeling could only be understood by those who have been there themselves. They say it changes something in people, this miracle of birth. They say it makes you grow up irreversibly. And that is what made me a little sad.

To clarify, I could not have been more thrilled at my friend's happiness and i wish I was there, if for nothing else but simply for the pleasure of seeing him hyperventilate outside the labor room! But along with this happiness, there was also a certain sense of loss, a slight ache for something that has gone for ever.

Fact is that with the birth of Leemondee's son, all of us, the few who spent school and college together, we have become men. Most of us have gotten married these last couple of years and the rest will do so in the next couple. But in spite of this, there was a sort of sub-conscious pretence at work in all of us, which would not allow anyone to leave Neverland or to let go of the illusion that we were still young and therefore, by extension, permitted to be wild. A reflection of this was the fact that inspite of straddling three continents, all would be aware if one had had a rough time the previous night! But now, all of that may have to change. The baby, his pink softness and his inevitable demands, will ensure that. We have become fathers and it is our sons now who will have the luxury of being young.

I guess this is what they call the circle of life…round and round. Just wish the circle could have been a little bigger, with more time before the full loop is completed. Anyways, am off now. Got to go and buy a loud rattle!

God Speed

Staying with cricket, there is a bit of a storm brewing about Shoaib Malik’s comments at the post match award ceremony after “The Match’. He said something to the effect that he and his team are sorry and extend apologies to Muslims all over the world for losing the match! Even giving him the benefit of doubt (the language he was speaking in not being his own and therefore there being a gap between intent and expression), there still seemed to be something mildly incongruous about the statement. I am not a chest-thumping secularist (in fact am not a chest-thumping anything), but it just seemed to me that there is no room for such public exhibitions of xenophobic jingoism in the pluralistic world of today. Private ideologies are one thing, but a public space, especially one which is concerned with a world far removed from religion, should not be the stage to articulate such constricted thoughts.

I think my friend Nikhil Mehra best summed it all in an e mail of his. Am reproducing the same below without his permission, but hey…its Mehra…the Understanding and Forgiving Soul!

"Did anyone else feel that Shoaib Malik's apology to the entire Muslim world was utterly and defenselessly preposterous?? This isn't like some chapter of the South-Asian crusades where the Hindu kafir defeated the righteous Muslims. Plus I dont think Indian muslims need an apology from him. Man, I thought this was behind us now that Inzi - the man who reads half the Quran before he answers a sentence - has been ousted. I thought the whole point behind Malik's appointment was to strip the Pak squad of this God Squad image.

He was naive. I dont think he's a fanatic but its reflective of the culture of the team where such a statement would be seen as normal. The blame for this pathetic Us against Them mentality that Shoaib has based on mere religion may also be rightly placed at the feet of the chimp that currently occupies the White House. He will never know the effect he has had.”

Need I say more. Me thinks not!

Of Cups and Towns

The other big event these past few days was the victory of the men in blue over Pakistan in the finals of the 20:20 cup. A very real feeling had been brewing for some time, that the color blue had actually turned a slight faded shade in recent times. The sight of portly men, hopelessly chasing cricket balls over the fields of England, just served to strengthen that suspicion. The team was beginning to seem like the Jewels of the Nizam...resplendent in their individual values, but fit only for a museum!

Fresh air was needed and what we got was a gale! A beautiful storm, full and confident, pulsating with the vibrancy of youth, running for large parts only on the impatience of a generation that has had nothing to call its own. Realms have already been written, and more will be, on how it was done, what it felt like and what this holds for the future. But leaving all this aside, I would like to talk about towns.

The small towns of this country is where the future of the country lies. And this is not restricted to cricket alone. Maybe this is nowhere better reflected, nowhere better articulated, than in the persona of Dhoni. More than Dhoni the cricketer, perhaps it lies with Dhoni the ‘Idea’. The idea of a boy from the back of beyond, leading the country, head priest at the altar of its one true religion. The great masses love Dhoni for his cricket; that is a given. But more than that, I think they love what he represents. Nasser Hussain summed it beautifully a few months back- “they love him because they see a bit of themselves in him”. The desire to be relevant is conceivably one of the most primal desires in man and the person-from-nowhere would love nothing better than to be considered so, on a stage greater than what his circumstances may offer. The fact that Dhoni has achieved it is a cause for celebration for them, a beacon of fearless hope if you like.

Mukul Kesavan calls this breed the ‘Mofussil Man’, one who is hungry and eager to be part of the tectonic changes which he perceives yet seldom understands. The great attraction of ‘Bunty aur Babli’ was again in the promise it held for the Mofussil Man, much as the great attraction of cricket lies in the hope of upward mobility and acknowledged significance it offers him.

There is of course a risk in overanalyzing too much. So therefore, maybe I should simply relax, enjoy the ride and get the mofussil theories stored in the bag. Bring on the Aussies…the boys are hungry!!

First Posts and Last Songs

I thought that a good way to start this blog would be put in my two pence worth on something that has achieved almost mythical proportions in the hearts of the people of my home town Shillong. To call this an 'event' would be to trivialize it, but to call it a sort of 'social churning' (as some have suggested) would be attributing too much importance to what is or was merely an articulation of relevance by the people of Shillong.

What is being referred to is of course Indian Idol 3 and the boy who almost won it- Amit Paul. To try and document the kind of support he enjoyed in Shillong, swinging from adulation to worship and bordering on hysteria, would be a redundant exercise on my part. The stories are too many and the space here is too small. Then to try and comprehend the sense of grief at his loss would again be impossible. How does one begin to understand why so many cried that night or how does one even begin to explain how grown adults of reason and logic felt a lump in their throats and a heaviness in their hearts? I will attempt none of this. My point is a little more obtuse.

The reason I think that Amit deserved the adulation he received was not just because he was a good singer. There have and will be better ones. It is simply because he made Shillong smile for a while. He made a small town feel happy, the sort of happiness that comes from sharing a common bond, a common thread.

There could be other familiar points of interface for this town, like cricket to name the most obvious example, but none which is so immediate or none which is so close to home. It was almost like the success of Amit had the opportunity of being a physical presence in the lives of people, something that could be grasped, touched, stroked, tasted and smelt. When a drama is enacted, the proximity of the actors to the audience often determines the connection that is set up between the two. In this case, as often happens in small towns, everyone seemed to ‘know’ Amit and therefore everyone rejoiced when he succeeded.

His success lies not in reaching the last stage of the contest. His true success lies in making people forget the constants that define their largely uneventful lives and offering them a chance to feel part of something bigger, something happier. No one knows what is to become of him in the future. What we do know is what he did to our present for a while. For that, Thank You Amit!!