Dev's Walden Pond

The intersection of memories... and a stolen bag

2011-10-26T19:54:00.004+05:30

Copenhagen Airport evokes powerful memories. It's an intersection, as all airports are, an intersection of incoming and outgoing flights and memories. Just last year, same time, I was at the Starbucks cafe, chatting with Jens, with the Indonesian team (several Olympic and world champions: Taufik, Kido, Setiawan, etc) sitting around playing cards, when someone stole my bag. All my clothes and all the gifts I'd received. The Indonesians were startled, and even Taufik, usually sage-like in his indifference, looked troubled.
It's a year now. It feels like yesterday. I'm at the airport, headed again for Dubai, from where I'll catch a flight to Bangalore. I look around... it feels the same. Hendra Setiawan, the Olympic champion, is alongside -- he was on the same bus from Odense to the airport. 'Remember me?' I ask, and he smiles. He remembers. I recall that long chat with Markis Kido, his partner, who told me he loved Bollywood films and Shah Rukh Khan. "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai," Kido told me, unsure what any of those words meant.
October 2010 morphs into the October of 2011. Jens is here again. He's a sweet old man, but not as old as you might think, for he still bikes in the mountains. The last time, when I lost my luggage, he drove me into Copenhagen and checked me into a hotel. The next morning, Lars, our media guide at the tournament, came to visit me and secretly paid the hotel bill. I offered to repay him this time but he wouldn't hear of it.
Taufik is the same off-court as he is on court. He reacts to everything with slightly raised eyebrows, as if he is mildly surprised but doesn't care. He doesn't speak much, even to teammates, but that day he was playing cards with the rest of them. Copenhagen airport was packed. Barcelona were flying in to play FC Copenhagen, and there were hundreds of fans sporting Barca attire. They were all dying to catch a glimpse of Messi.
I wondered at the difference then between badminton and football. Here was a living legend, Taufik Hidayat, sublime in his skills, an Olympic, world and Asian Games champion, sitting in plain sight, in Denmark, and yet nobody recognised him. Messi, in any case, escaped with the rest of the team without coming out of the departure gates. I think a bus picked them up directly from the flight.
That was October 2010. I remember the hotel, the seedy streets around it, the cold, the blanketed strangers shuffling in the shadows, and some peep shows around. It was a scene straight out of a dark graphic novel, no humour at all.

Rafiq’s sinking – and the world’s a morose place

2011-10-04T21:06:00.003+05:30

-Dev SS

Right through our conversation, I thought those were slices of raw fish there, placed in water on a plate, flies hovering around it. Later I realized it was a beetroot. Rafiq’s been eating raw beetroot.

The man I spent so much time with, partly wishing I had inherited so many of his remarkable skills, is sinking. It’s a horrible time to be him, a free spirit in a body becoming fast dysfunctional, memories playing tricks, abandoned by his wife, robbed of his fond possessions, his works of art, and having to depend on the charity of neighbours for food.

The last time I saw him, at the South Zone Climbing Championships, I had a hint of the trouble he was in. His voice was slurring badly, and he was moving with difficulty. He was invited to the dais along with his contemporaries – three or four senior climbers – and when he spoke he broke down, briefly, as he wished them luck. I had never seen Rafiq breaking down.

Rafiq was a character. I’d heard something of him, that he kept a snake at home and that he was a maverick artist, but the sight of him startled me. The first thought in my head was that his maker had put random things together and constructed him. His bulging eyes were set in the middle of his face; his hair and French beard, all spiky, seemed nailed for good on a face that was leathery and weather-beaten. Tufts of hair exploded from his ears and eyebrows, and that on a head with no neck. He had a generous midriff, cloaked in a sleeveless jacket in which he had all sorts of things. And he rode a Bajaj Bobby – a sort of daschund among bikes -- that had become extinct in the Eighties. The overall effect was of watching some character right out of a comic book.

But what a character! Rafiq was the most carefree person in the world. You could drop by at his place any time of the day or night, and he would talk – of animals, birds, insects, bike engines, snakes, mountains, grasslands, hills, boulders, photography. He was your outdoors man. He knew every insect, every plant, every bird and every reptile – their Latin names, the calls they made, the games they played. He could distinguish male bird calls from the female, tell you whether it was a mating call or something else. Where he could store these voluminous lists of Latin names, I do not know, for Rafiq was not an academic. He had learnt everything himself.

Similarly, his talents at art were self-developed and just as remarkable. He would do murals from deal wood, which was then considered just packing material. He told me he’d learnt it after seeing a documentary on TV. He would take a plank of wood, study its grains, and see something in his mind’s eye: Cleopatra; a herd of horses; various forms of (his favourite) Ganesha. He was just as good an artist of junk. He would go to the scrap yards, pick up some piece of metal – a discarded engine, a handlebar, a shock absorber – and weld it all into some magical piece: an armoured knight; a praying mantis.

He had made an owl out of dealwood. It was something between a mural and a sculpture, an owl on top of a pier.
“You know, that’s because owls have no more place in the cities,” he told me. “This is an owl at the edge of its existence. The pier is its last place on land… our cities have made it impossible for birds like this to survive.” He had made the mural after the plague in Surat, which he blamed on the extinction of natural predators of plague-carrying rats.

I’ve spent days and nights with him, listening to his tales of the Himalayas; of rock climbing in Ramnagaram or Savandurga or Turhalli; of the names they gave those rocks based on the difficulty of climbing; of how he once had a monkey named Jango and what a hit it was with the girls; of how snakes belong to the wild, they can never be domesticated. (He once told me of the time he tried to carry a cobra in a train; he had put it in a bag, and soon the thing starting wriggling and scared the wits out of everybody.) We used to sit in his office next to his house. He called it his ‘machan’ – which it was, because you had to climb into it through a narrow ladder, and he kept all sorts of things there, including his sand boa.

With Rafiq, all of the outdoors came alive; it was not just facts or interesting information – it was lived knowledge, something that came with deep love and personal experience. What made it all so special was that he was like a sage of the wild, always cheerful and ready with another wilderness story. Somehow, with such a man, you’d never expect anything to go wrong.

Of course, there was his fondness for pan masala (tobacco). I remember one conversation vividly. I knew a guy named Riki Krishnan who was an expert on bats, so one day I took Rafiq to meet Riki and they hit it off well. Apart from their common interests in other living things, they shared a love for pan masala. I’d heard horrible stories about it, so I asked them if they shouldn’t be dumping the habit.

Riki grinned, and said, yeah, I know all about it, how it causes fibrosis, how it screws your mouth and taste buds so you can’t eat anything else, but you know, once you’re hooked on to it, you can’t do without it. And Rafiq nodded.

Riki’s dead. I saw his blog – he’d been diagnosed with cancer.

Rafiq’s barely able to speak. He says it’s due to a stroke he had after his studio, with all its equipment, was burgled. But he’s barely able to open his mouth, and his words are slurring, so I guess the pan masala must have something to do with it.

I think the burglary of his studio broke him. He had some expensive equipment there, and once that was gone, there was nothing to fall back upon. He told me he’d lost all his prized photo slides as well. He had some excellent collections – of insects, birds, reptiles – that he would show school children during camps. Rafiq was so good with kids. He was like a Santa Claus of the wild, and he had a fund of stories and a booming laugh that made them all love him.

Once he told me, long ago, that he had had such an adventurous life, he wouldn’t mind it if he “kicked the bucket right now”. But right now he’s a shadow of that brave old self. His words are slurring, he doesn’t have food to eat, and he weeps at every other thought.

“Life’s a funny thing,” he told me today. After a while he asked me: “What’s your name again?”

PUC – the lost years

2011-05-06T15:41:00.000+05:30

On some mornings, far fewer than I’d like, I jog at the Aiyappa Park in Jalahalli. On most days I find young men kicking a tennis ball around, or playing some form of modified cricket. They’re from a nearby college, bunking class and having fun. They prefer the joys of the park to the enforced boredom of class – but they all know it’s a dead end. Your future is in the class. Playing in the park is just a temporary respite.
I know. I used to be like them.

When I look back, I remember my PUC days as the most wasted of my academic years. I didn’t know what I was doing there, and I didn’t want to be there. Everybody talked of the 2nd PUC exams, and we all sensed it with foreboding. Killing time in the park was a valve from the pressures of solving trigonometric equations, or trying to memorise structures of molecules that one wasn’t ever likely to encounter in real life.

Those boys playing football or cricket during college hours – the college principal must’ve written them off as wastrels, unlikely to ever make good in life. Their parents too must’ve given up on them. In all likelihood, they would’ve given up on themselves; reconciling themselves to being ‘bad’ students for whom the academic and career path would never shine bright.

What a tragedy.

Looking back, it’s the PUC years that kill every aspect of you, the non-academic aspects. From your 10th standard on, you’re expected to ‘grow up’, expected to shock yourself into the real world, the world of excellence in studies that would pave the way to a seat in a good college, following which you could ensure yourself a good job. This path was set in stone; any deviation was disastrous.

So from the tenth standard on you were expected to sacrifice every passion. You were told that playing was inimical to studies; that that time was better spent mugging up abstract formulae and equations. You gave up on the things you enjoyed as a kid – sketching, painting, and especially, playing.

But the tenth standard was nothing compared to the 2nd PUC, which made or broke you. And so it was a relentless programme of tuitions and homework, while the more frolicsome part of us had to be killed. The sportsman in every one of us dies at that age. Nearly every promising sportsman gives up his passion during the PUC years. Those who defy these pressures are few, very few.

Any coach will confirm it’s the teenage years that are most crucial to build a sportsman – it’s when you are blossoming into your peak fitness. Our colleges have succeeded in stunting entire generations of potential sportspeople. Children are enrolled into summer camps, and that’s where most of them are initiated into sport. (In earlier days of course, there were no summer camps, just playing with the kids in the neighbourhood.) Hundreds of kids are enrolled into summer camps. Why then are there so few competitive athletes?
The answer is that the numbers are filtered out by the academic system. Parents are fond of kids who perform at sport – as long as it does not harm their studies. But the 10th standard, and later, 2nd PUC, are considered non-negotiable years.

A child who shows great sporting promise is thus taken off training the higher he progresses in school. Coaches are therefore unsure of how much to invest in any kid – for it all seems a waste of energy if the kid is going to give up the programme anyway.

And so we turn out professionals who are such physical misfits. The fitter specimens are out there, but they have been socially ostracized, for there is no system to take advantage of their fondness for physical activity. A visionary national sports policy will have to take into account the ‘PUC years’ which represent a deathly phase for our sportier side. The question of why a nation of over a billion can produce only one Olympic gold medal is easier to answer when seen from this perspective.

Roads that tell the story of Bangalore

2011-05-06T15:38:00.002+05:30

Cities evolve in fascinating ways. Like people, they show the scars and tumult of evolution. Some countries – particularly those in Europe – take pride in displaying the signs of their infancy, preserving cities and townships that are hundreds of years old. At Aarhus in Denmark, you may find an entire village called Den Gamble By re-created from older destroyed townships – a sort of walk-through museum where you find shops of tailors, carpenters, smithies and other trades not currently associated with modern Europe. Den Gamble By, built in 1914, is the world’s first open-air museum, and is one of Aarhus’s claims to fame. The most arresting feature of Den Gamble By is its celebration of the ‘everydayness’ of life, giving visitors a glimpse into how people lived earlier.

Asia, on the other hand, tends to be embarrassed about its everyday history. The Asians – Indians in particular -- try hard to present themselves in the Western image – history here is meant only for the museum, fitting a grand narrative that seeks to present the past as idealistically as possible. The sense of everyday history is missing.

That’s a shame, for nowhere else in the world does the past sit so effortlessly and seamlessly as it does in India. We tend to overlook the importance of this, and seek to constantly tear down reminders of our past to rebuild our cities in a more ‘modern’ image. In this image, a marketplace would essentially be a mall, where one can shop for various things within an air-conditioned enclosure; avoid the dust and grime and mess, and come out feeling heady from an apparently ‘great’ shopping experience.

Luckily, though, some pockets in our cities have escaped the attentions of our urban planners. These pockets are far more fascinating than any modern shopping arcade; they open you up to several, multi-layered experiences. Consider the stretch in Malleswaram that runs parallel to Sampige Road (to its east), and between 16th cross and 4th cross. Clustered, dense with traffic and people, a walk through this stretch presents an opportunity to delve into a sub-altern perspective of history and culture.

To its north is the Kadu Malleswara temple, from which Malleswaram gets its name. There is a rock inscription by the temple, which declares that the Maratha warrior Shivaji’s brother Ekkoji granted the surrounding village to the temple. Ekkoji had stumbled upon the place during a hunt, and imagined a ‘Shivalinga’ on a rock, which inspired him to build a temple there.

Bang opposite the temple is a smaller Jain shrine, the Shri Nageshwar Parshwanath Jain Shwetambar Mandir. There are two more temples next to these, one dedicated to Nandi.

A further walk will reveal small trades that have nearly disappeared from Bangalore’s newer areas – a ladies’ tailor, a watch repairer, a junk yard, several small eateries, an Iyengar bakery, and a sugarcane juice outlet that also serves excellent coffee. Close by is Moodala Mane, which serves ethnic Karnataka delicacies such as the ‘obbattu’ and ‘kajaya’; the restaurant is made to look like one of those typically village hotels that dot the countryside. At the end of this stretch is Kodial, which serves Dakshina Kannada cuisine; the ambience is heightened by posters of Yakshagana artistes, Karnataka’s Jnanapith award winners, and pots and wooden artefacts that almost evoke the thick monsoons of that district. At Kodial you can buy homemade pickles and squashes made of cocum or brahmi, apart from various kinds of chutney powders.

Such then are some of the treasures of this one stretch. You could even make a detailed study of the architecture of the place, and it will reveal veritably the evolution of Bangalore, like the layers within a sedimentary rock formation that will tell you the history of the earth. Several reminders of the past co-exist with modern buildings that house financial advisors or diagnostic labs. ‘Modernity’ should indicate our higher state of evolution rather than just some glitzy knick-knacks. A new urban plan for Bangalore should take into account its roots and identity, rather than just the hopeless prospect of making it another Singapore.

The rediscovery of Hampi

2011-02-09T19:28:00.004+05:30

Dev S Sukumar

It’s late morning, and there’s a misty haze over Hampi. You can see the ruins from up on Rishimukh. It’s tranquil all around – but down there it must be a rabble of tourists, touts and worshippers.

We are atop a rocky hillock in Virupapura Gadde – north of the ruins of the old fortified city, the ‘other’ side of the river. For those with the inclination, the allure of the rocks is more inspiring than the attractions below. But the remnants of that ancient civilization do lend something to the expanse of rocks here.
As the sun climbs higher, one can spot bare-chested Westerners – long blonde hair, usually dreadlocked, tight muscled – trudging among the rocks, sometimes alone, other times with a friend or two. It is no mere accident that drives these pilgrims to pay a different kind of homage to Hampi – for it is one of the Meccas of rock climbing in the world.

***

The ‘season’ in Hampi begins in October and extends to February, reaching a peak during the Christmas/ New Year period. During this time hundreds of Western tourists arrive – most in diverse pursuits (Hinduism, yoga, history, general interest); a small, but steadily increasing presence, is of climbers. The trend began some 15 or so years ago, but the numbers shot up after 2003, after the release of a video called ‘Pilgrimage’, shot by the acclaimed climber Chris Sharma. Sharma, who enjoys rock-star like status for his astonishing skills and exquisitely shot videos, changed everything for Hampi; ‘Pilgrimage’ touched on the mythology and history of the place, and the surreal challenges posed by the rocks. Hampi suddenly opened up a whole new world for climbing.

There is rocky terrain all over the world of course, and across India, but climbers sense something special about Hampi. It comes out in a conversation with veteran climber Nick Russell. Russell, an Englishman, was born in a family of climbers; he’s spent much of his 45 years climbing all over the world. India beckoned rather late, but this is his fourth visit in five years and he can’t seem to have enough of it. Why Hampi, you ask, and he struggles to answer:

“Peacefulness,” he says finally. “You get a real sense of... without seeing much, there are ruins where you get a real sense of an older civilisation. If you stand on top of the hill and you think of how important it was in Indian history, you get a sense of spiritual importance, and also historical importance and social importance. You look at the landscape, it's unique in the world. I know the legend of the rocks and Hanuman, and you see some of the rocks, you could almost believe it... you almost want to believe it. It feels too special to have happened by accident. If ever I wanted to believe in grand design, it would be this place.”

***

Miles and miles of granite boulders, a veritable other-world, a climber’s nirvana. Chris Sharma’s presence still lingers, in the names of some of the ‘problems’ he has discovered and solved. A ‘problem’ is a certain route to the top of a boulder, graded according to the level of difficulty, and to be climbed without any aid. Those who frequent this place know all about them – the ‘Sleeping Buddha’, ‘Cosmic Cave’, ‘The Katie Brown Problem’, ‘Sleeping Baba’, ‘Double Arete’. Perhaps some of the mysticism that’s associated with Hampi’s climbing scene comes from Sharma himself – son of white, hippy parents whose guide was a Hindu mystic, Sharma was a child prodigy whose philosophy transcended the aim of just climbing rocks. For one of his early successes in California, he named the problem ‘The Mandala’.

Among those inspired by ‘Pilgrimage’ was Rob Lenfestey, who says he comes from a “magical part of the southern Appalachian mountains, with a secret abundance of boulders”. Lenfestey had been climbing for a year, when he saw Pilgrimage and was entranced. “I was… goggling at the amazing featureless rock they were climbing, and the monkeys and the palm trees, and the ruins... since then it has been a pipe dream to come here.”

Lenfestey is one of the many colourful characters one comes across in the climbing world. Friends say he calls himself a ‘hippy’, 30 years past its date, but like Sharma, he senses a deeper connection with climbing than just the sporty high of conquering a rock. “I just love the people, the community,” he says, “This place is special too, because we can live comfortably here, and we're on the edge of an expanse of bouldering, incredible amount of rock that's never been climbed before. It’s a huge opportunity for adventure and exploration and treasure hunt... looking for that golden route, that golden problem that's never been (solved)... that's hiding somewhere in this multitude…”

Hampi has hosted some of the world’s best climbers. Apart from Chris Sharma, climbers such as ‘Spiderman’ Alain Robert, Sonnie Trotter, Alex Chabbot and Chloe Grafthiaux have spent time here, revitalizing the Indian climbing scene in imperceptible ways. Although Indian competitive climbing has stagnated, adventure climbing has seen a revolution. Adventure is now a profession, and several Indian climbers are making their livelihood as guides and outdoor instructors. Many of the trends in the Indian adventure scene can be traced to Hampi. The first bungee jump in India, for instance, happened because Bangalore climber ‘Nipha’ Venkatesh struck a conversation with a French bungee jump master called Pascal at Hampi.

There is now a profusion of arts, alien as yet to the mainstream – like fire poi, juggling and slack-lining -- that are popular among climbers, both Indian and foreign.

***

Hampi means different things to different people – some are in it just for the climbing, some have wider interests, like travel and history. Although it’s not immediately apparent, one senses a connection between the generation of the Sixties and Seventies that discovered India through the prism of yoga, transcendental meditation and the rest of it, and the current generation that’s ahead of that game. The password, of course, is freedom. “Among the most free people I know are rock climbers,” says Nick Russell. “People who choose not to have families, hate thoughts of responsibilities… in that sense they’re similar to the hippies.”

There’s a nice fit between the climbing fraternity and Hampi. Like Goa does for the beach bums, Hampi lends itself to the culture of climbing. There’s still a non-materialism to these parts that’s still charming, and hopefully it will remain that way. Ultimately, you realize the true adventurer is a global citizen who is not bound by geography. As PV Ramana, who owns one of the guest houses in these parts, says: “Our visitors are perhaps more concerned about our surroundings than we are… what is this about the outsider? If you don’t draw a boundary, where is the question of an outsider?”

Games close, but this is the beginning

2010-10-14T23:44:00.001+05:30

Dev S Sukumar. New Delhi

So... were the Rs 70,000 crore worth it?
How does one weigh the scales? How does one measure, in monetary terms, the incredible sights that one witnessed? How much money would you pay to watch 60,000 people rising to salute hitherto unknown Indian athletes?

On the other hand.... what of the human cost of the Games? What of the labourers who were seriously injured in the collapse of the footbridge before the event started? What of the blow to national dignity when newspapers around the world splashed pictures of the filth of the Games village -- before an emergency meeting convened by the Prime Minister attempted to salvage a Games slipping fast out of control?

No statement or balance sheet can be made on the success or failure of these Games. The Rs 70,000 crore still seems a criminal waste of public money -- an astronomical sum that would have been better spent on building hospitals and schools. But that stock-taking is for later. What the Games achieved was to go further than any Indian had estimated, for how could one measure pride and confidence and the thrill of accomplishment that these Games have given the Indian athlete?

Whatever the costs, the Games achieved things that no Indian could have foreseen. For the first time since the 1982 Asian Games, Indian sportsmen were feted, their efforts applauded by massive crowds. The nation followed them. That is something they were owed. For too long they have remained in obscurity, their sacrifices doomed to become personal narratives of loss rather than happiness. The Games were relevant for this one reason, that at long last the Indian sportsman was in the centre of it all. People across all classes, ages and preferences followed them. Wherever a TV played, at a hotel lobby or at any hole-in-the-wall shop, an Indian sportsman was on it. Barring cricket, this has never happened in the history of Indian sport. Hotel waiters and managers, security guards, shopkeepers, and bands of young men who would otherwise have whiled their time away kept their eyes hooked on the TV. The atmosphere was breathtaking at venues. Events such as table tennis and badminton, sports that hardly attract a hundred or so spectators at domestic events, were packed through the last week, people screaming their lungs out whenever an Indian was in action.

For all the talk about poor infrastructure and preparation, most events went on well-oiled wheels. Indian athletes, inspired by the crowds, performed in dream-like fashion. Runners outsprinted rivals from Jamaica and Trinidad; shooters, boxers and wrestlers outpointed their opponents; an Indian gymnast even won two medals. The Indian athlete had given every spectator his money's worth.

For the record, India, with 38 gold, 27 silver and 36 bronze, finished No.2 behind Australia and just ahead of England. The contest for No.2 played until the very last event of the Games -- the badminton women's singles match featuring Saina Nehwal, who was within a point of losing and thereby conceding that place. But this was India's Games, and this was a time of magical possibilities. Saina won, India took second place.
These Games have been a revelation. India is no more a one-sport country.

In Austin Town, watching Argentina play

2010-06-13T22:39:00.003+05:30

Dev S Sukumar. Bangalore

So far so good – the 15x15ft tenement in Austin Town, whose tiled roof is propped up by new bamboo poles, is holding up to the rains. The last time it rained heavily, the front wall of Nirmal Kumar’s house collapsed and the place was flooded.

But the repair has worked, thankfully, and ten young men are huddled in the tenement watching their favourite team Argentina play. The footage on the small TV screen is grainy, and all are quiet as they watch, breaking into celebration only when Argentina go 1-0 up.

“We have to build a Maradona statue,” contemplates Nirmal as he is reminded of the Pele statue in Gowtampura, which is entirely pro-Brazil. Austin Town, on the other hand, is crazy about Argentina, and Nirmal and his friends went around the area painted in blue-and-white, banging on drums. Everybody understands. Nearly every household in the lower middle-class locality has a football player. For this World Cup, they ordered 20 Argentina jerseys from someone in Calcutta.

Of the many Indian internationals Austin Town has produced, none can stand taller than Nirmal’s grandfather S Raman, a member of the 1956 Olympic team that reached the semifinals. “I remember him – I was five when he died,” says Nirmal. “He had diabetes and they had cut off his left leg. My father too became a drunkard. That’s why we were never able to afford a decent house.” Nirmal, eldest of three brothers, plays on contract for BEML; his two brothers too are footballers in the local league. One works night shifts as a waiter; the other is a painter.

Austin Town has a long history of producing footballers, much like the other areas close to the British Cantonment. The tradition continues, although the number of top-class players are not nearly as much as in the old days. “Austin Town became pro-Argentina after they won the 1986 World Cup,” says one of the bunch. “Before that, we didn’t even know of Argentina.”

Just then, the versatile midfielder J Murali comes by. Murali, a former junior international who turned professional with stints in Salgaocar and ONGC, is one of those who has ‘made it’. His pro football career rewards him well, while he also runs a car business on the side.

Murali looks around the tiled roof and bamboo poles. “You know, I used to live in such a house,” he says. “My father was a driver, and when it rained he used to hold up vessels to catch the water leaking from the roof. Football saved me. I decided to go professional and play with Salgaocar. Now things are fine, and we are comfortable. Whatever I’m today is because of football.”

Nirmal listens intently. Football might yet give him a chance.

On Naxalism and government violence

2010-05-25T14:46:00.001+05:30

I’ve been tempted for a while now to write on the continuing cycle of violence in North India, especially the attacks and counter-attacks between the Maoists and government forces, with the ‘common man’ caught in between.

I’ve desisted because we are far removed, both geographically and psychologically, from whatever’s going on there. Doubtless only people who are closest to the violence can comment with any degree of accuracy. Perhaps the rest of us have no moral authority to speak on a subject that we know only through media reports.

Yet, I’m tempted to comment on the essays and intellectual discourses that have come out on the issue. Many of the arguments, it seems to me, take an either-or stand. Thus, Arundhati Roy’s Outlook essay is unapologetically pro-Maoist, while Swapan Dasgupta’s takes the extreme other view. (Not that I consider Swapan Dasgupta worth taking seriously.)

While I defend Arundhati’s right to speak her opinion, I fear her politics is cut in stone, allowing for no flexibility, and there are serious flaws in such a position. She has for long railed against the excesses of government forces, whether in Kashmir or in Dantewada, and seems to defend the right of the Maoists to counter with violence. But has she confused the right of the tribals with that of the Maoists? Do the Maoists represent the will of all tribals? Are they one and the same?

And when you justify attacks on the CRPF, for instance, are you sure it is unambiguously an evil force? Aren’t SPOs (Special Police Officers) men too, with families, and every policeman killed leaves behind a destitute family? Isn’t the SPO a victim too? Has he chosen to be in Dantewada or Kashmir? Is every SPO a rapist or human rights violator?

If the army is completely an evil force, as Arundhati indicates time and again, what are we to make of its relief efforts during natural and man-made calamities? And let’s not even get to the point about defending the country against foreign attacks. The Indian soldier lays his life on the line, mostly for a just cause (i.e., for the larger good of the people), and sometimes for misguided ones (is it the same to die for one’s country, and to die for the State?) Corporate interests now govern State interests – so who does the soldier die for, really – country or company? Even assuming that some wars are fought for corporate/ state interests, the soldier is still a victim.

The point is, the Maoists might believe the only good soldier is a dead soldier, but they have cut down the wrong enemy. The State can afford many soldiers – it can even recruit them from tribal lands. If the Maoists are really ‘pro-people’, they should at least get their real enemy. To say that all uniformed men are fair game is dreadful logic. The politics of the bomb is a dangerous politics – the bomb always hurts more than its intended targets. At least the army doesn’t go around planting landmines and IEDs.

Now to take the extreme other view – that government will must prevail in each case, without any armed resistance. I don’t think non-violent resistance works in all cases, especially when the stakes are high. You cannot kick a people out of their homeland and ask them to starve in protest outside the Raj Bhavan or wherever. It’s up to them to choose their method of resistance. The mighty Indian State can be deaf and blind to local struggles and aspirations, and you might well be wasting what’s left of your life in protesting against it.

The State can be a tormentor too, and the so-called ‘laws of the land’ will only be selectively applied. Its violence is no less than the violence of the Maoist. In fact, this constitutes a bigger problem because it’s the maintainer of law that has become a renegade – and thus there’s no one left to address the wrong.

But the fact that you disagree with government policy does not mean you sympathise with Naxal/ Maoist violence, or ignore their victims. The case often made out is that the Naxal has been left with no choice but to blow up army trucks. I’ve heard only deadening silence about the victims of the last few attacks. It isn’t politically correct in ‘liberal’ circles to even discuss what happens to maimed soldiers, or civilians who were traveling with them, or their families. How are we to distinguish between the pain of a slain soldier’s family and that of a slain villager’s?

Ittefaq. Ittemad. Qurbani

2010-05-05T14:41:00.003+05:30

OR: The Sanskritisation of our Armed Forces

When the revolutionary army of Azad Hind (INA), initially set up by Mohan Singh and Rash Behari, and later revitalised by Subhas Bose, was formed, they borrowed much of their terminology from Hindustani/ Urdu. The very name of the force (Azad Hind Fauj), its gallantry awards (Sher-e-Hind; Tamgha-e-Bahaduri; Sardar-e-Jung; Sanad-e-Bahaduri); and even its motto (Ittefaq (Unity) Ittemad (Faith) Qurbani (Sacrifice)) were all borrowed from Hindustani. These were probably terms inspired by the Mughal army, which was the single biggest Indian resistance force to the British before the INA came about.

The Indian army, on the other hand, those who were the inheritors of the British Indian Army, inexplicably seems to have ignored Mughal terms and gone all the way back to the pre-Muslim period. The army is Bharatiya Sena (rather than 'fauj'), missiles are called Prithvi and Agni (in obeisance to the Vedic gods); gallantry awards (Param Vir Chakra), and important days (Vijay Diwas)... all these are explicitly Sanskritic/ Hindu. I even noticed one motto near an army division which said, in Sanskrit, 'Truth alone triumphs', or some such absurdity.

I wouldn't say the army is communal, or that this Sankritisation is deliberate. The army is one of the few non-communal institutions in India. Perhaps those who coined these terms were just deferring sub-consciously to a mythical Golden Age. But I wonder what this does to a Muslim soldier in the Indian army -- the language and the idiom are not his. Does he feel alienated a result? I wonder if his legacy -- the legacy of the Muslim effort in Indian independence -- had been accorded any place in the Indian army or other defence forces.

Meanwhile, to those who question the INA's contributions to Indian independence, it would do them good to remember that our national hallelujah 'Jai Hind' was coined by Bose's secretary Abid Hassan in Germany (how this will rankle the Hindu right-wingers!), and that our current version of the national anthem was in fact composed at Bose's insistence, again in Germany.

The peaceniks have turned

2010-05-02T16:24:00.003+05:30

There’s growing consensus over the futility of non-violent protest. Arundhati Roy’s long piece in Outlook articulated a long-felt frustration over the inability of non-violent, ‘Gandhian’ protest to confront and change government policy.
What strikes me is that this indicates a major shift. Roy might have well been called a ‘peacenik’ – in the tradition of the non-violent protesters of Vietnam. The whole NBA movement took its inspiration from Gandhian forms of protest… but now I wonder…
Does this show that Gandhian, non-violent protest is ineffective? More to the point – has it ever been effective? Was the ideology as lofty as has been made out? The Congress view of Indian independence has predominated --- that all the credit for achieving independence was due to one form of protest only, a 'moral' form.
As a fan of Subhas Bose, this view has always irritated me. There was no mention of the INA, the naval mutinies at Bombay and Karachi, the Red Fort trials that were the immediate precursors to Indian independence. Instead, all we got was the Gandhian halo that spread beatifically to the British – who, in a fit of remorse, handed over India to the Indians.
Now, pitted against the might of the Indian State, activists are beginning to see how puerile this view can be. What was to say that British administration took non-violent protest any more seriously than the Indian government of today? Among activist circles there is definitely an acknowledgement that Maoism is perhaps the only form of protest that is likely to make the State acknowledge the rights of the dispossessed.
In other words, the peaceniks have turned. I wonder what kind of moral turbulence they're going through.
The State has become indistinguishable from a business conglomerate. Look at the way it handled the IPL. Why did it require three years for it to figure out that there might have been massive swindling going on? What motivated them to act after Tharoor quit – the love of transparency, or a demonstration of government might? Their tax raids and telephone tappings show that the State is interested not in maintaining the law, but in keeping alive the interests of its constituents. The instruments of State are used to blackmail those that won't fall in line.
There won’t be a follow-up of the IPL tax raids. People like Shibu Soren, an alleged murderer, will continue to head state governments. Mining lords can ransack entire towns and forests, and the State will look on indulgently. Poor Irom Sharmila has spent a lifetime fasting, and there's nothing to show that the State takes her seriously.
It has always been cool for activists to talk of Gandhi, and uncool to even mention Bose. The next five years will tell.

For whom the bell tolls

2010-01-18T10:10:00.001+05:30

Coach J Sreedharan, who dedicated his life to teaching the art of boxing, now lies immobile from a paralytic stroke. His students wonder if there is any fight left in the man who taught them to box

Dev S Sukumar/ DNA

Pain was an inherent part of J Sreedharan's philosophy. He always told his disciples to love pain. That was the only way they could survive as boxers – to embrace pain, cherish the taste of blood in one's mouth. For pain was inevitable in boxing at any level, and no one was exempt from it.

Courage, spirit, defiance… like pain, mere words would never do. Words had to be transmuted into will… and destinies changed. For boxers like the South Zone champion K Rajkumar, who was born in a slum and growing up into a street thug, Sreedharan was the one who showed him the way to a gym instead, showed him there was a science and art to fighting.

And now Sreedharan needs, more than anyone else, to believe. It has been three years and four months since he was felled by a stroke that took mobility away from him. For three years he has been lying, nearly still, able only to move his left hand. He can nod, he can smile, but he can't speak. His disciples come by sometimes. Some tell him the same lessons that he taught them – to fight, to not give in, to keep the faith against the odds. But can he do it – pull of a final victory with his own body ranged against himself?

As a coach with the Sports Authority of India, Sreedharan earned a reputation for being an astute and scientific coach. He scouted for talent, especially among lower income neighbourhoods, and spent his own money liberally on the boys. He was respected on the circuit, and turned Karnataka into a formidable team. Many of his boxers, such as Dheeraj Singh, Vinod Kumar and Rehman Hussain became national medallists, and one of them, Sudhakar Rao, even became an Asian medallist. "He was one of the finest coaches around, one of the most scientific," says Dheeraj Singh, who was selected to be part of an Olympic camp. "Karnataka was taken lightly earlier, but after he took over, other teams began to fear us."

The coach cut a distinctive figure – he idolised Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, and modelled himself after them. In his younger days his dark colour, and Afro hairdo, went well with his chosen profession – and he was passionate about boxing. Having come through the domestic ranks, he passed out of National Institute of Sport (NIS), Patiala, and had a stint with Military School, Belgaum, before returning to Bangalore.

Somewhere down the line he would develop an unusual lifestyle choice – an insistence on a fruit-only diet, eschewing all the other dietary requirements of animal protein that boxers were supposed to thrive on. "The younger boxers blame me for that," says Dheeraj Singh. "We were travelling for a tournament when I showed him a book of the Buddha. After reading it, he immediately turned vegetarian. Shortly after that, he went on a fruit-only diet. That was so different from what he was earlier – he used to eat everything. At SAI Kengeri, he and Santosh, another boxer, used to hunt for snakes to catch and eat!"

So steadfast was he with his new diet that he imposed strict vegetarianism on all his boxers. He was trying to impart a deeper, calmer philosophy of living.
"To most of us, these things were unheard of," says Sai Sathish, Sreedharan's protege and now Secretary of the state association. "He was questioning some basic assumptions. He would ask why we needed to fill our bodies with dead matter, like meat. He wouldn't even eat cooked food, not even chapattis. Most of us couldn't sustain on that diet, we would help ourselves to other food when he wasn't around. But he taught us so many things. He made us what we are. If we are doing well today, it's because of him."

The stroke happened on 9th October, 2006. He was admitted to hospital, but then, to the consternation of the doctors, insisted on continuing with his fruit-only diet. He wouldn't concede even to have rice or chapattis. His condition steadily got worse, despite hopping several hospitals, and various kinds of treatment.
What's perplexing is his insistence on that diet. His students believe he can be cured, or at least will give himself a chance to be cured, if he accommodates other kinds of food. "But he will not give in," says Sathish, who has been by his side ever since the stroke happened. "He still believes in the natural healing power of fruits."

It's a kind of superhuman stubbornness, in the face of the greatest challenges, to believe in something that has offered no evidence to the contrary. For even the Buddha, whose book converted him to a radical vegan, advocated the use of meat in treatment.

… And so he stays immobile on a bed, in the house he grew up in, a small tenement with shelves full of his trophies, and a Sharp television from another era. Most of the boxers, except for Sathish and a couple of others, have stopped coming around. His 83-year-old mother tends to him; she makes it look like business as usual, talks of his father and his own younger days, how he reformed his youngest brother through boxing. He still smiles beatifically, and offers something to his guests. It's a steel cup with slices of coconut inside.

Dantewada...

2010-01-08T23:30:00.000+05:30

Life Behind The Iron Curtain

http://tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne160110life_behind.asp

The hounding of activist Himanshu Kumar is a parable about the war and
panic in Chhattisgarh and the complete blackout of information,
reports TUSHA MITTAL in Tehelka

HIMANSHU KUMAR is shaving his moustache to become more unrecognisable.
Instead of the usual white kurta, he’s wearing a red shirt and jeans.
The lights in his two-room rented house have been turned off. If you
chanced upon him on a winter night in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh,
speaking in hushed whispers about jumping off the back wall and
disappearing into the darkness, you might have mistaken this Gandhian
activist for a fugitive.

For the last 18 years, Himanshu has been trudging through the jungles
of rural Chhattisgarh, empowering tribals, teaching them how to vote
and bringing them access to food and healthcare through his Vanvasi
Chetna Ashram (VCA). When his wife first joined him, he told her to
replace her make-up kit with medicines. Despite living in this
Maoist-dominated conflict zone for nearly two decades, despite its
many intimidations, Kumar has never felt the urge to flee. Until now
that is – when the might of the State is upon him.

Trouble first began to escalate in 2005 when the infamous Salwa Judum
was launched. The VCA filed at least 600 complaints against human
rights violations by the State and fake encounters by the police.
Himanshu Kumar was transformed in the State’s eyes from trusted aide
to adversary. In May 2009, his ashram was brutally demolished by the
police. Now suddenly, the Gandhian activist has lost his liberty. He
lives in a free country, but does not have the freedom to walk out
through the front door of his own house.

“Should I get arrested and become a martyr or should I leave before
they catch me?” Himanshu Kumar wonders out loud on the morning of
January 4. He knows what happened to Binayak Sen. He knows he could be
next. “I’m worried the police will implicate me in a false case. They
could arrest me anytime now,” he says.

This is not misplaced paranoia. Himanshu’s makeshift ashram is under
constant police surveillance. On January 3, his car was stopped by the
police as it sped from Dantewada to Raipur carrying Sodi Shambo, 28, a
tribal woman with a fractured leg held together by a metal rod.
Shambo’s husband was tilling the fields on the morning of October 1,
2009, when Salwa Judum SPOs barged into Goompad village. One bullet
from their guns split open her leg. Her children leapt towards her,
covering her body. That could be why she is still alive. Nine others
were killed during combing operations. Most were those who could not
run away — Madvi Yankaiya, 50; Madvi Bajaar 50 and his wife Madvi
Subhi, 45; their daughters Madvi Kanama, 20 and eight-year-old Madvi
Mooti; and a newly married couple Soyam Subaiya, 20 and Soyam Subhi,
18. Another 2-year-old boy was found with his fingers missing. The
Dantewada SP announced that nine Naxalites had been killed in an
encounter in Goompad village. This is the tale the outside world would
have believed, had Himanshu not met Shambo during a regular public
hearing in the forest. She told him about the massacre she had
witnessed; he ensured she filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court.
The court accepted her petition and directed the state to file a
response.

Had Shambo reached Delhi, where she was headed for medical treatment,
she could have become a major embarrassment for the Chhattisgarh
government. This is why Himanshu and Shambo were suddenly surrounded
by police on the highway and detained at Kanker police station. There
was an order from the Dantewada SP that Shambo be produced in the
police station to record her statement on the Goompad killings. Shambo
had been living openly in Himanshu’s ashram in Dantewada for the last
two months but the police had not approached her for a statement. “We
did not know where she was. We were trying to find her,” says SP
Amaresh Mishra ingenuously. “I found out through an Internet forum
that Himanshu was taking her to Raipur. I also got a letter from
Shambo’s masi two days ago accusing Himanshu of vanishing Shambo all
this while.” This was a patently concocted assertion given that
Himanshu had presented Shambo to the media at a big press conference
in Delhi in October. Clearly, a false case of abduction against Kumar
was in the works. According to Colin Gonsalves, a senior advocate who
has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on the Shambo case,
it’s actually the other way around. “This amounts to illegal abduction
by the police. Shambo is not an accused. She cannot be forced to go
anywhere,” said he.

On January 4, Shambo was sent to Maharani Hospital in Jagdalpur for
further treatment under police “security.” Sudhir Thakhur, the doctor
responsible, admitted the hospital did not have the required medical
facility to perform Shambo’s surgery. TEHELKAwas not allowed to speak
to Shambo at the hospital, despite a guarantee from the Dantewada SP
that she was not being kept in confinement. Even after the director of
the hospital gave permission, police personnel guarding Shambo’s bed
refused to let us near her. When we tried to talk to the ward nurse,
the police ensured they overheard the conversation.

As Himanshu shaves off his moustache in the darkness, it is almost as
if he is at a tipping point. Caught in a pool of quicksand, he must
leap out immediately or sink. “My faith is not shaken. I’m just
feeling trapped inside a web. To break this perhaps it is necessary
for me to go fight from a new place. I am not running away. I just
need to change my location.”

THE BATTLE between the State and Maoists is well known. But in
Chhattisgarh, another battle has been fast gathering steam — between
the State and civil society, between a policed existence and the idea
of democracy, between a coerced media and free speech. Himanshu Kumar
is now at the centre of that battle. Over the years, he had become one
of the few bridges that link the rest of India to the remote jungles
of Chhattisgarh. Given the national media’s neglect, and the absence
of a robust local press, he was perhaps the only disseminator of an
alternate reality. Without him and a few other activists working in
the area, there would be only one version — that of the State. This is
what the Chhattisgarh government is now trying to create. Every few
days there is news of an encounter — six killed in Jagargunda, another
six killed in Gumyipal. No one knows if these are Naxals or ordinary
tribals. The State doesn’t seem to want anyone to find out.

At a recent press conference in Raipur, Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan
told journalists on record that there could be police action against
them if they wrote in favour of Naxalites. Two weeks ago in Dantewada,
DIG SR Kalluri called journalists into his office for one-on-one
sessions. “He told us not to write in favour of the Naxals (euphemism
for not writing anything against the State) and said the police have
their eyes on us,” says NRK Pillai, vice-president of the Chhattisgarh
Working Journalists Union. “The atmosphere isn’t conducive. There’s no
one really to back us. Press owners will not stand by us. There’s
always the fear of what will happen to our families.”

In the last two months, as Operation Green Hunt has got underway, the
Chhattisgarh government has upped the ante in its efforts to squash
any space for dissent and democratic protest. Stories from the jungles
are not being allowed out; neutral outsiders are not being allowed in.

On December 29, 2009, Delhi University professor of sociology Nandini
Sundar and political science professor Ujjwal Kumar Singh arrived in
Bastar to undertake an independent survey of the situation. They found
all the hotel rooms in the small towns of Dantewada and Sukma
mysteriously full, out of bounds for them. The professors had to spend
the night in a jeep, before they got accommodation at a boys’ hostel.
There too, seven armed SPOs barged into Sundar’s room, then spent the
night patrolling the grounds outside. The next day two jeeps of armed
SPOs followed the professors around until they left Chhattisgarh,
ensuring they could make no neutral enquiries from villagers about
what was happening on the ground.

TEHELKA was meted the same treatment. On January 4, we were denied the
right to stay at Madhuban Lodge, the only hotel in Dantewada. The
receptionist opened rooms for us at first, but suddenly changed his
mind when he got a call from his manager. The manager said the hotel
had orders from the police not to give rooms to journalists without a
“proper enquiry.” Dantewada ASP Rajendra Jaiswal denied that any such
order exists but refused to call the hotel to clarify this. “Why
should I help a stranger?” he told TEHELKA. Later, the hotel owner
said all the rooms were needed for a family function.

On January 6, a band of activists, including Medha Patkar and
Magsaysay award winner Sandeep Pandey, were assaulted with stones and
eggs as they marched to the SP’s office in Dantewada for some answers.
The police looked on.

Though there is little clarity on whether the offensive against the
Naxals – Operation Green Hunt – has officially begun, another kind of
assault certainly has. So far, Himanshu Kumar has certainly borne the
brunt of it.

On December 14, 2009, a mob several hundred-strong surrounded
Himanshu’s ashram, shouting slogans like “Himanshu Bhagao, Bastar
Bachao”. They were protesting a padyatra he was about to undertake to
engage with the tribals. Such an expedition would boost the morale of
the Maoists and dampen that of the security forces, they alleged.
According to Himanshu, the mob consisted of SPOs and tribals lifted
from Salwa Judum camps to stage a demonstration. The padyatra was to
be followed by a satyagraha to protest police excesses and a jan
sunvai (public hearing) to take stock of ground realities post the
declaration of Operation Green Hunt. In what was being perceived as a
sign of positive intent, Home Minister P Chidam baram had agreed to
attend the public hearing. Human rights groups from across the country
were scheduled to participate. But that came crashing down when the
State decided it would not allow anyone to explore its territory.

HIMANSHU RECEIVED a notice from Reena Kangale, the Dantewada
collector, prohibiting him from initiating any public assembly.
“Section 144 was imposed because of municipal elections,” says
Kangale. “I denied permission for a padyatra and issued a prohibitory
order stating the police can take action if any public meetings happen
without my consent.” On December 13, an all-women fact-finding team
was stopped at several points enroute to Dantewada and not allowed
access inside. The Chhattisgarh Governor advised Chidambaram not to
attend the jan sunvayi for safety reasons. The Home Minister stayed
put.

The mob attack from “tribals” was also used as a pretext to send a
jeep of armed SPOs as security for Himanshu. “There is a threat to his
life. The tribals are unhappy with him. We are giving him police
protection,” Dantewada SP Amaresh Mishra told TEHELKA. That Himanshu
himself has written to the SP stating he does not want this protection
is irrelevant.

The police “protection” has successfully hampered Himanshu’s work. He
is unable to visit villages on fact-finding missions. Any complaints
from tribals against the State bring instant reprisals. There have
been other intimidations. Under pressure, Himanshu’s current landlord,
an employee of the local district council, asked him to vacate the
house in a few weeks.

To disable Himanshu further, his key aide Kopa Kunjam was arrested on
December 10 on charges of murdering a former sarpanch, Punem Honga.
Honga was abducted by Maoists along with another sarpanch who had been
traveling with Kopa on his bike on July 2, 2009. According to VCA, the
night before he was arrested, Kopa was offered Rs 25,000 to quit
working with Himanshu and warned of dire consequences if he continues.
Kopa refused the money. Sukhdev, another backbone of the VCA, was
threatened with a similar fate after Kopa’s arrest. He quit. Lingu,
another aide who also quit, confirmed to TEHELKA that he was with Kopa
at the Dantewada police station the day before Kopa’s arrest, and was
present when the police tried to convince Kopa to take up “other more
meaningful work”.

The Maoists are not willing to talk, and the State is clearly not
allowing any other dialogue. Himanshu’s struggle becomes more poignant
in the backdrop of the violence being unleashed all around it. The
Maoists continue to fell trees, block trains, abduct and kill. The
Salwa Judum continues to rape women, burn houses, loot and kill. Amid
all the chaos, as the year ended, one man sat in a white kurta, under
a sprawling tree, spooling a loom of thread. He had not been allowed a
padyatra or a satyagraha or a jan sunvai, so he was fasting to protest
State atrocities. But events over the last two days have forced the
man in the white kurta to shave his moustache and turn into a man in
red shirt and jeans — a reminder of an original freedom struggle,
being scuttled all over again.

Eclipse

2009-11-20T15:18:00.002+05:30

Kanteerava Stadium, Nov 20, 2009
Photo: Dev S Sukumar
Edited by: Nishant Ratnakar

Grooving to a different beat

2009-10-06T11:56:00.004+05:30

Disc-O-Deewane was formed of a group of adventure sportsmen. Playing Ultimate Frisbee is just one more of their interesting vocations

Dev S Sukumar. Chennai

Ultimate Frisbee was once considered a counter-culture activity, and it is no accident that Disc-O-Deewane, the Bangalore team at the Chennai Heat tournament, should have taken to the sport. The team was built around a group of rock climbers, some of who pioneered adventure as a sport in Bangalore. Even as adventure sport itself became mainstream, the team, and their extended family, have acted as conduits for activities that exist at a sub-terranean level in India.

All of this happened because of the exchange of ideas and philosophies at places like Hampi and Badami, popular hang-outs for climbers from across the world. It was at Hampi that 'Nipha' Venkatesh, one of the early generation of rock climbers in Bangalore, who was a founding partner in the adventure company Ozone, met a Frenchman named Pascal. Pascal was also a bungee jump master, and soon Ozone organised India's first ever commercial bungee jump event at Bangalore in 1999. Soon after, adventure sport went a dramatic transformation, from being confined to a hobby to a more serious pursuit.

Disc-O-Deewane's team is comprised of adventure professionals -- either those who have adventure companies, or those who work as freelance instructors. Frisbee playing was something they indulged in after climbing sessions on Sundays at the rocks in Turhalli, on the outskirts of Bangalore. It was Nipha again who discovered that there was an organised sport called Ultimate, researched the rules online, and introduced it to Bangalore. The city now has two teams -- apart from Disc-O-Deewane, another team, called Learning to Fly, was built around a group that played the disc at BMS College.

Other hobbies that are popular among the climbers include slacklining, Poi and unicycling. Slacklining, the art of walking/ performing stunts on a thin strip of nylon webbing stretched above the ground, is still at a nascent stage in India, but Europeans and Americans have taken it to extreme levels, sometimes even performing on a line stretched betweeen two mountains without being anchored by a safety device. Poi, on the other hand, is much safer, a performing art indigenous to the Maori people of New Zealand. A length of flexible material, with balls or feathers at each end, is swung artistically, requiring the same kind of skill as a juggler. Some performers do Fire Poi, an art that looks exquisite at night. Rakshit Kuttappa, an adventure guide who is in Bangalore when not backpacking elsewhere, is a skilled Poi performer, and was even invited for an act at IIM Ahmedabad.

"We keep hearing of these new things when we meet climbers from across the world," says SR Balaji, former national climbing champion and Disc-O-Deewane team member. "We have plenty of free time during camps, so we indulge in these things." Balaji has put up a slackline at the adventure site he runs, and is even planning to host the next Ultimate tournament in Bangalore.

There are more extreme activities, like parkour and buildering, that are not yet popular in India. One can almost bet that it will be one of the adventure community who will be their pioneer in India.

'Spiderman' looks for a rope

2009-09-08T13:34:00.009+05:30

Dev S Sukumar. Bangalore/ Sept 7.2009

ON MONDAY, ‘Monkey King’ aka 'The Indian Spiderman' Jyoti Raju came to Bangalore hoping to meet the state sports minister and ask him for money to buy a climbing rope. The minister wasn’t in his chamber, and Raju drifted to the climbing wall at Sree Kanteerava Stadium, where he stopped by before taking the night bus to his home, the fort town of Chitradurga.

Raju is an internet celebrity, but he doesn’t know it – or doesn’t realise what it means. Over the last three years, the illiterate labourer has been interviewed by some 30 TV channels – national and international – who’ve featured his impressive skills on the fort walls and boulders of Chitradurga. One clip shows him scaling a wall, only to stop half-way and, using his palm as a pivot, flip his body around. Another shows him dangling off a cross-beam some 30 feet high with one arm – all without being secured by a rope, or any safety aid.
These exhibitions roughly come under the ambit of new-age sports like sport-climbing, buildering and parkour. With all three enjoying high visibility online, Jyoti Raju’s internet clips have elevated him to near-cult status – page views from around the world exceed 500,000, with viewers exalting his spectacular abilities.

But all of that has done little for him materially. He lives in a one-room home near the fort and works as a casual labourer on construction sites, spending his free time climbing at the fort. Half the money he earns he spends on feeding monkeys at the fort. His acrobatics, and his relationship with the monkeys (“there are 161 monkeys at the fort,” he says. “They come to me whenever I call.”) have earned him the name ‘Kothi’ (monkey) Raju. On YouTube he is celebrated as the ‘Monkey King’ and ‘The Indian Spiderman’.

**

RAJU’S climbing career, if it might be called that, began five years ago when – hurt by a family that had adopted him – he decided to commit suicide at the fort. “That was the first time I’d gone to the fort. I climbed up a boulder, went up some 50 feet,” he said. “Then I looked down and decided I had to climb higher, because if I jumped from 50 feet I would only break my bones.”
He then climbed up to a higher perch, and just as he was about to leap off the edge, noticed that a huge group of people were cheering for him. “It was a matter of two seconds,” he says. “They were all shouting and clapping for me, so I felt better. The next day I returned to the fort and saw a monkey climbing a boulder, and I thought – if he can do it, so can I. And so I started climbing the boulders and fort walls.”

Until then, Jyoti’s had been a story that had replicated itself in hundreds of Indian families. He’d left his home in Madurai when he was seven – he’d beaten up a classmate and was terrified that his parents would whip him. So he ran away to Bagalkot, where he spent a few years working in a sweet shop. He left because the owners were abusive. “I wanted to go home,” he said. “So I started walking. I was famished. Occasionally I would raid honey bee hives and sugarcane farms. Finally I reached Chitradurga, where this family adopted me. I was their errand boy and watchman.”

One day a small tiff caused him great anguish. His adoptive family accused him of taking Rs 100 from an errand they’d sent him on. Depressed, he walked to the fort to kill himself.

**

RAJU’S skills, however impressive they may seem, aren’t good enough to fetch him a place in the state climbing team. For one, competitive climbing differs from scaling boulders for fun. Besides, Karnataka has the best sport climbers in India, and during the last state championships, he came fifth. He has trained on and off at a wall in Davanagere, but Chitradurga neither has a wall, nor can he afford a rope or other equipment. While everybody acknowledges his skills, he is still some way below the best.

“He’s used to the rocks of Chitradurga, and he isn’t able to adapt to the wall,” says Praveen CM, national champion. “He could get better if he spends some time training for competition.”

National coach Keerthi Pais, who has produced many of India’s best climbers, acknowledges that Jyoti is a skilled climber, but reserves his opinion on how far he can go. “Unfortunately, he hasn’t made the Karnataka team because there are so many good climbers here. But if he’s able to participate at the nationals, he could do well. He can get better if he trains regularly, and on a nutritive diet. I will send a recommendation to the minister for some equipment for him. ”

Both Keerthi and Praveen, however, insist that Jyoti’s ropeless antics are too dangerous. “The TV channels have made him look like a joker,” says Keerthi. “They’ve exploited him, but given him nothing in return. I will never allow him to climb without a rope – it’s just too dangerous. The last thing you want is children imitating him.”

But maybe Death doesn’t scare him. Risking his neck is no big deal, for he has already been at a point when he rejected life. He has been to the edge – it holds no terrors.

In the climbing world, there are two concurrent philosophies. Competitive climbers prefer to use safety equipment. Then there is the other world of ‘solo’ climbers, who rarely compete, but go off to clamber up cliffs and skyscrapers using nothing but a chalk bag. Many suffer crippling injuries; some die; but the best among this world attain cult status in the climbing circuit and – in the YouTube age – around the world.

As it turned out, the media coverage had one effect – his parents found out about him and turned up at Chitradurga. When he returned he was given a grand reception. “But I couldn’t stay there at all,” he said. “There was nothing in Madurai for me, so I returned to Chitradurga. I keep in touch with my parents, however.”

Jyoti Raju is India’s first online climbing celebrity. The celebritydom – however temporary or ephemeral it might be – is because of his acrobatics without safety aids, and that qualifies him as part of the brotherhood. If he had climbed the fort with a rope, the online videos might not have merited a second glance. Without his ropeless antics, Jyoti Raju would have been a nobody, just another illiterate labourer from an abusive childhood who is eking out a living.
“I need a rope,” he says aloud. “If only I had the right equipment, I could show what I am capable of.”

To be like water, formless

2009-07-13T10:19:00.006+05:30

I've been thinking of setting up an alternate, anonymous blog. When you have a blog that a lot of friends follow, you start to sub-consciously filter what you really want to say. One becomes a prisoner of one's 'image'.
But that's also what I wanted to explore, questions of free will. Free Will not in terms of going where you want or buying what you want, but in being free at all levels. We're all prisoners of society and biology.
I discovered that I was tailoring a lot of my thoughts to fit this blog because there was the question of political correctness. When one has liberal friends -- those who identify themselves as liberals politically -- one is expected to conform to the political ideas that are currently in fashion.
This blog will still be functional, of course. Not that I've been prolific on this.

Meanwhile, I wrote this note on my Facebook page:

Communists
The problem with Indian communist parties is they think they have a copyright over communism. Kerala CM Achutanandan may or may not be a good communist, but by punishing him for 'acting against party interests' (rather than ethical interests), the CPM behaves exactly like the entities it is ideologically opposed to -- structured religions. The Party has become a citadel, like the Vatican, with the general secretary acting like the Pope. At least the Vatican has some moral codes to live by.
Look at The Hindu, look at how it toes the Party position. Today there was an edit piece by a Chinese 'journalist' stating that the violence in China's Urumqi, the site of clashes between the Hans and the Uighurs, was the work of 'external' forces. The communists have long revelled in the pleasure of crediting all disturbances to their governance to an external bogeyman. The newspaper dutifully carries the Party position (the Party in this case being the entity to which all dutiful communists genuflect to -- the Chinese government), forgetting its role as a newspaper that's supposed to at least air both sides of the story.
I like the scene in that beautiful movie, Arabikatha, where old-world communist 'Cuba' Mukundan, having given away his life's savings to a Chinese girl, says: 'He who lives for the needy -- he is the true communist.'
The true communist is not required to subscribe to stupid Party positions -- he is above that. He follows a higher calling.
Prakash Karat should go get himself a... a... haircut.

GUTS: The 14th edition

2009-07-03T10:39:00.002+05:30

Open publication - Free publishing - More sudirman cup

'You call this a democracy'

2009-06-03T17:43:00.001+05:30

...The determination of the State to stamp out democratic dissent. They refuse to leave any space for it. You call that a democracy? Arre, we are asking for justice within your system, we are not picking up the gun. We are writing you letters, petitioning your offices, holding jan sunwais. And that rouses the State’s ire? Are they going to leave room only for the Naxals and a violent brand of protest? When the adivasis go to register complaints, the police lock them up in jail. There are hundreds of adivasis in jail on false charges or killed in false encounters, branded as Naxals when all they were doing was collecting wood in the forest or grazing goats. The Supreme Court had ordered the State to set up committees to assess damage and examine all the atrocities by the Salwa Judum and pay compensation. Not one committee has been set up till date. And they talk of destroying Naxals through a military operation? If they want to take over this land and give it to corporations to extract minerals, there is a Constitutional way of going about it. Why this war waged by subterfuge?
- Activist Himanshu Kumar, in Tehelka

Poofball democracy

2009-04-15T14:29:00.001+05:30

The present system of representative democracy in India is based on the notion that people in a particular geographical locality share common concerns. This precludes the possibility of having a representative in Parliament for issues outside geographical/ community-based considerations. I do not see the meaning of a democracy as purely a system to build roads or drains in my area -- I need it to address the concerns of the marginalised: the disabled, for instance. Their numbers are vast enough to form a small state, but they are distributed throughout the country. Why should not a minister represent them in Parliament? Why should 'constituencies' mean land only?

Out of China

2009-03-24T13:16:00.003+05:30

Pi Hongyan, world no.4 and top seed for the India Open that begins today, reminisces about the famed Chinese system that's a conveyor belt for champions

Dev S Sukumar.Hyderabad

Pi Hongyan, the world's fourth-best badminton player, cried on the flight to India. She was watching a movie and the visuals of children born into slums were too disturbing. This is a top-ten player who deals with on-court pressure better than most people on the planet. "But what I liked was the hope that the boy had," she said.

Hope has always been her most precious commodity. Back in her teens (she's now 30), when she was at the national centre in Beijing (for juniors), training eight hours a day, six days a week, for two years straight, the only thing that kept her going was hope -- hope that she would someday break into the national squad. That was the meaning of life for her and her classmates.

"The training was hard," she says, relaxing at a hotel in Hyderabad. The India Open begins on Tuesday and she's the top seed. "We had one free hour a day. I was staying away from home, couldn't meet my parents often. Initially it was difficult, but then I got used to it. Did I get bored? No, because I loved the game. And when you have hope, when you dream of playing for the country, you don't get bored."

Hongyan is often referred to as the 'French player of Chinese origin'. She's among the early generation of promising Chinese players -- Germany's Xu Huaiwen is another -- who left their homeland to play for other countries -- a practise initially frowned upon by Chinese authorities. Top-level women's singles has long been dominated by Asians -- with just a few guest appearances by Europeans such as Camilla Martin and now Tine Rasmussen. Hongyan's decision to move to France was seen as the beginning of a migration of second-rung Chinese players to talent-starved Europe. The migration never happened in significant numbers, however.

Hongyan was part of the junior national programme for two years. Among her classmates were some who went on to become world and Olympic champions. But Hongyan could never reach the top-8 and was told she wouldn't be good enough to crack the senior team. That's when she decided to move. She played for a club in Denmark for two years before shifting to France in 2002, and the move paid off with her breaking into the top ten. She's now one of the most consistent players on the circuit. Much of her success, of course, is due to the rigorous training of her early years. "In China, if a coach tells you to do something, you do it, no questions. In France, a coach asks you to do something and then enquires about how you feel. But you can't produce champions that way. I'd prefer a middle path, taking the best of both systems, with hard training and concern for the well-being of players. I think even the Chinese coaches these days are taking into account modern methods, but I'm not sure. I was there nine years ago, it's a long time back."

With the Chinese sweeping all five events at the 2009 All England, the world has wondered awe-struck at the system they have in place. Most critics however refer to the downside of their system -- the high incidence of injuries and mental trauma that isn't known to the outside world, and which would make that system unacceptable in democratic societies. "I know," she says. "My best friend had to drop out because of an injury. And she was better than me."

I asked her if she, as a teen, ever wondered if all the hard work was worth it, whether playing for the national squad was worth the years away from home, the risk of injury and the pressure of having to prove herself in a mass of potential world champions. She never understood the question. The prize of playing for the country, and the meaning of all the hard work, was an ideal (of real or purported value) that the Chinese system needed -- to justify itself. That she was touched by the Slumdog story makes one wonder if it in some way connected with her own story: the need for hope, with escape as the metaphor.

Lessons from Pakistan...

2009-03-16T12:44:00.003+05:30

MJ Akbar spent the last three Sundays (via his column in ToI) smirking over the failure of Pakistan's democracy wrt India.
Well, I wonder if anybody in India would've had the courage to take to the streets in the face of terror like the Pakistanis did. Braving potential bombs, police crackdowns, and uncertainty of every kind, they showed the kind of moral backbone that we haven't in a long, long time.

Rahman.

2009-03-02T00:31:00.002+05:30

I felt good when Rahman, Pookutty, and the others won. Kinda like the Olympics, where I kept my fingers crossed when Abhinav Bindra was on his last shot – and then I leapt up when he got a 10.9 and the gold.
Yes, of course, the Oscars are different from the Olympics, but in terms of its profile and viewership and the impact it could have, they’re comparable.
So I’ve been reading a bit about Rahman. I like the guy. He’s not succumbed to Page-3 like many of his contemporaries, and he keeps his counsel and seems to be a pious, decent sort who gives us great music. Whether he is a ‘genius’ or a clever sound engineer I cannot comment, but it’s curious that you cannot remember the lyrics of most of his numbers (I can’t). Vairamuthu, the lyricist who collaborated with him on his early projects, says that Rahman fits the lyrics to suit the music, unlike earlier Tamil composers who worked the music around the lyrics. I’m not a follower of music, but I doubt if Rahman has bettered his work in Roja.
Apart from Roja and Bombay, most of his early films (Kadhalan, Gentleman) have nonsense lyrics – they’re chiefly remembered for his foot-stomping rhythms and Prabhu Deva’s spectacular dances.
But Rahman seems to have a finger on the pulse, as it were… and I like the stylishness of Pathshala in Rang de Basanti and two of his numbers in Delhi-6. I think he has brought in new sounds into film music, and he has especially brought in rock music cadences, especially the Anglicised accent of the lead singer.
Not many have referred to the only Malayalam film he’s done, Yodha. One of these numbers is extremely un-Rahmanlike – it’s a hilarious exchange set to temple music. A couple of the other songs too are brilliant.
In any case, I think we should stop analysing the success of Slumdog Millionaire and just feel good for all the Indians who won. There’s no need to get hysterical or suspicious (“It must be a Capitalist conspiracy!”). What’s this about poverty porn? Is it shameful to make a movie on a slum -- or to force people to live in one? From when has fantasy become more despicable than reality?
One of the things the coverage of Slumdog’s cast can do is to force people to examine if slum people are really any ‘different’ from the rest of us. To see slum children confidently walk on the Oscar red carpet must have forced many of us to wonder if the difference just lay in the clothes we wear, or the language we speak. These are acquired skills or habits. I hope a few lives at least will change after this. I read somewhere that people were expressing interest in adopting slum kids.
I also hope Rahman can provoke interest in Sufism. I can see Outlook or Tehelka doing a cover story on Sufism (The Sunday issue of our favourite newspaper will feature another mind-numbing Bollywood idiot suddenly 'discovering' Sufism.) The best thing about Rahman is that he has, in his quiet way, brought attention to a great tradition in a religion that is under attack in India and elsewhere. Even Aamir Khan, for all the space he occupies in our media, has never been able to initiate a dialogue on Islam.
Rahman can become some kind of an icon for the best traditions of Islam. He already is, I guess.

**
I watched Delhi-6 on Saturday... the first Hindi film I've seen in years. I think Rakeysh Mehra had some great material, but he blew it. He got carried away by something that should've been a sub-plot. At the end we were clutching on to shadows. But it had its bright moments, and some memorable numbers. AR again.

Art versus State

2009-02-22T16:36:00.008+05:30

Kind of liked the energy at today's gathering. This was called in protest of State medical education minister Ramachandra Gowda's abusive behaviour towards artists during the opening of the National Gallery of Modern Art.

There seems to be a lot of protest activity happening these days, and it's no coincidence that it began with the right-wing BJP coming to power in Karnataka. The state has lurched from one crisis to another, and the comments of the minister are merely the latest (and perhaps mildest) indication of how the government views Indian culture, art, religion, nationality, civil liberties, and sex.

I didn't expect a big gathering today, and I was surprised. There were around 200 people, and this was a Sunday morning. It was a good example of how a protest can be orchestrated, and how its impact can be maximised. Usually protesters shout to themselves; there is no audience. But today whatever was being said had a patient audience, and many passers-by stopped to listen. The use of space is critical to protest, and this one (the steps of the Town Hall) was ideal.

The other thing that impressed me was that several of the speakers were senior artists/ theatre people, and they were fearless in their criticism. This is not as usual as one would expect, for artists depend upon state patronage, and it was heartening to see them dismiss the state so vehemently. As Ki Ram Nagaraj said: "The minister accused us of being pseudo-intellectuals... but this is a pseudo government. Let's remind him that he is not the government; people are the government."

I also liked the collective statement that everybody signed. It was a huge canvas, with each artist marking his disapproval, and what came out was a slap on the government's face. This is the sort of direction the Art community needs to take in the face of Fascism and government repression. I'm glad that they're filing a defamation case against the minister as well.

We are in particularly troubled times (as Bhanu says: "We'be been debating new things ever since the BJP came to power.") There is also a sense of general dissent, across various groups and communities. People are debating, on micro and macro levels. Whether this is will lead to a larger political consciousness is hard to say. I don't know. As Bhanu said, one tends to think of religious and communal issues and ways to counter them only when these issues are brought up. That's happening all the time now.

And although the resistance will never have the numbers that the Fascists can summon, it will throw up a few young people who will be committed to unravelling the Right.
That much we can hope for.

Feeling like a porcupine

2009-02-15T13:01:00.007+05:30

Still trying to figure out if yesterday's protests were a 'success' or a 'failure'. There were four or five groups -- some with political leanings, others apolitical -- that turned up... but the majority of people seemed indifferent; it looked like just another Sunday afternoon. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Was the indifference good because it meant Muthalik was a nobody? Was it bad because it meant the protesters were nobodies?

When I first saw the turnout, I thought it was a laugh and a half.

C. said not to expect anything better, that these sort of rallies will never have more people.

But even the groups with whom we were co-ordinating didn't come around... many protested by drinking beer at pubs. I've heard of many kinds of protest, but this was a new one.

Abhigyan and I video-recorded stuff all afternoon, talking to people, talking to the free hugs campaigners, long-haired techies, passers-by...

There is something about protest that I just discovered. A protest does things to the protester that others are not even aware of... new people, new ideas... a form of self-expression, more than the guarantee of creating change.

I don' t mind the ones who are totally indifferent to all this, as most Indians are. They're the ones who'll outlast us; they're the ones who don't carry the baggage of anger in them; and they're the ones who seem to subscribe, if unintentionally, to an eternal scheme of things -- that this too shall pass. Fifty years later neither Muthalik nor Modi will be around, and hopefully neither will their legacy.

The ones I mind are the numbskulls who ask questions about protest -- whether it works; whether just 20 people 'are going to make a difference', and so on. I wish they would first participate and then get cynical, rather than pontificate without any first-hand experience. You aren't telling me anything I don't know when you question the meaning of protest. I wish to know what you are doing about your anger. You need to go through it; not stay wise by remaining outside it (if you feel strongly about it). Otherwise you can slink in your rathole and keep complaining.

--
* There are typically two kinds of people who protest (social/ envt/ communal issues): those who are affected, and those who protest on their behalf, whom we may loosely call the 'liberals'. Now, if the turnout of the liberals at any protest is few (in number), does it mean most people are unaffected? The liberals are the only ones who will turn up -- when churches are burnt, when mosques are attacked, when dalits are killed.

This 'protesting on someone else's behalf' is the question I'd like to examine.

... we're always fighting a rearguard action. The 'Other' (that is: the Sangh/ the terrorists/ the Capitalists/ the land-caste mafia) is setting the pace, we then turn up dutifully to protest.

That's what will happen when the next series of communal riots happen. There will be stunned silence for a while, and then a rearguard action: some prominent liberals will condemn it, question our collective lethargy, and eventually we'll turn up at MG Road or wherever, and submit petitions.

... if communal rioting or communalisation is the biggest threat of our times, those likely to be affected should move their butts NOW and engage or confront their potential attackers, possibly with the help of the liberals. The time to do it is not after the attack, but before. There has to be imagination and new strategies to counter The Other. That's why I brought in the question of the identity of the protesters. I also wonder how come Muslim groups didn't turn up alongside Christians protesting against the church attacks, and vice versa. To me, that has been our biggest failure -- the inability to protest alongside groups and communities as affected as ours. After all, the enemy was the same. The Ram Sene/ Shiv Sena's attack against Valentine's Day was not just an attack against 'Western' values and 'pub-going citizens', it was fundamentally an attack on democracy and civil liberties -- and that's why dalit groups have as much a duty to turn out in protest as urban middle-class women and men. Conversely, this also means urban men and women have a duty to protest when dalits are attacked.

The liberals can only offer rearguard resistance; that's never good enough. This time, much as they would hate to admit it, the one man that made the difference was Agni Sridhar, a former mafia don. By threatening to beat Muthalik and his boys "like dogs on the street", he took away the one weapon the rag-tag vandals had. The liberals look like losers when they complain about vigilante violence, and it took Sridhar to confront Muthalik on his own terms for civil society to rally around, helped of course by the 'Pink Chaddi' campaign of Nisha Susan.

I doubt, however, if all those who sent pink chaddis to Muthalik would have done the same to Bal Thackeray, who is the patron saint of the Ram Sene and similar outfits. Or even if the campaign would have worked against the Shiv Sena, which has a longer and more efficient record at breaking people's bones. The campaign worked because the Ram Sene is seen as a fringe group and Muthalik a retarded idiot; but the Shiv Sena is a different proposition altogether.

Harnessing a rally

2009-02-12T07:15:00.002+05:30

I wrote out this mail to the group... hopefully we can take this forward:

A couple of thoughts that struck me, and which might be of use on 14th.

I suppose there are those who wonder what will eventually come of the planned rallies on Feb 14th -- whether it will make a difference and so on. Also, whether there is a follow-up to the protests of 14th.

Personally, I think the protest itself is a statement that need not necessarily have any follow-up action. However, there are a couple of small things we can do to broaden our impact and to address those people who are unsure of our stand or are against it. Also, this will help address issues outside the immediate question of Valentine's Day and the pub attacks.

- It would be great if we could come up with a five-point 'Citizens' Charter' that we could print on a flyer or leaflet -- we can then print thousands of these and distribute it to everybody on the streets on 14th. Since at least a few hundred people are expected, that would give us a ready audience. We could sit down immediately and decide what the basic points should be. Of course, a more detailed 'Citizens' Charter' can be discussed and put up on a website, and the flyer can give the web address, so that people who receive the flyer might return to the webpage to learn more.

One of the things that could be there on the flyer (as a basic point) could be something like this: "We, the citizens of India, unilaterally condemn the attempt by certain parties to hijack the national agenda by reviving the claim to rebuild the (mythical) Ram temple at Ayodhya. Many of us in this campaign are Hindus, and we reject the position that building the Ram temple will further our national cause in any meaningful way. We refuse to let political parties take up religious causes; and we recognise that there are greater tasks at hand than be obsessed with the building of a temple that has already fractured our society."

On the religious issue, perhaps something like: "We reject the convenient division of our complex society into Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, etc. Our concerns transcend the boundaries circumscribed by religious texts or injunctions; our most common concerns are peace and well-being. We are all affronted by the attacks on churches in Kandhamal in Orissa and Davanagere in Karnataka and elsewhere, and we see it as a common threat, irrespective our our personal religious practises."

Some of the other basic points could be a comment on the Karnataka government's Vision 2020 document, the larger question of protection of women (with reference to the acid attacks), the nationalisation of mines, and so on.

- Another thing of concern is that while there has been plenty of debate in online discussions forums and otherwise, I fear that we are debating these issues with the already-converted. That is, those of us concerned about the current political climate and talking about it are already the ones agreed upon its dangers. What we need to do is engage those who DO NOT agree with us. The rally can be a good opportunity to do this. We could have a large desk or booth near the main protest site, inviting doubters to a debate. The booth could have a banner saying: "Do you have a question?" or something like that. I'm sure there are many people who are doubtful of the meaning of the protest, about why we are protesting against the right-wingers (I'm sure not many will even understand the difference in ideology between the Right and the Left).. and so on. If some 10 of us, those among us who are conversant with these issues, could sit at the booth for an hour, and address maybe 20 or 30 people, that will at least help engage those who have had no access to alternative streams of thought.

---

Work on the internet TV channel has stalled. V. had the flu for a couple of days, and he's now snowed under by other work.

This morning it struck me that, as a counter to violent groups who use mainstream media effectively, we could use live streaming internet for the protest. If we have our channel up by the 14th, we could carry a laptop, camera, and record the protest and conversations and upload it immediately. We could beforehand get the channel embedded in blogs all over the world - so you could have a live 'telecast' all over the world.

Then there is Twitter and several other media. The instruments are there. We just need to show urgency. And stop this ridiculous questioning of whether some concerns are more 'elitist' than others. That upper/middle class women protest pub attacks does not mean they are insensitive to dalit rights; that they protest at all affords a fantastic opportunity for dalit workers to engage them in their concerns as well. In India, there is only a small minority that will protest on someone else's behalf, and they come from the ranks of the urban middle class.

Mullah Muthalik, The State and the Resistance

2009-02-08T10:04:00.007+05:30

So... the attackers of Shruthi*, daughter of a CPM MLA, claim they are now DYFI activists (ie. members of the CPM Youth Wing). I couldn't help but laugh when Times Now aired the news faithfully, followed by another clip of the Karnataka CM darkly hinting at a 'conspiracy' to malign his (dysfunctional and rabid) government. Apart from everything, the state has earned its credentials of being a pathological liar.

There have been several troubling questions ever since the BJP came to power in Karnataka. We will return in a minute to these, but the immediate question is: how can a TV channel legitimise the claims of a few masked men? The DYFI is another retarded youth party, but it's absurd to even entertain the notion that they would slap around a girl and assault her because she was talking to a Muslim. That is the prerogative of the Sangh Parivar and its militant outfits, including the Ram Sene.

The more important question concerns the judiciary. How could they let off the Ram Sene activists after they flaunted, on TV, their cowardly assault on defenceless women in a pub? Granted that the state and its police cannot be expected to behave better, but the judiciary has completely failed us. This becomes even more apparent when the BJP MLA, Y Sampangi, was caught red-handed accepting a bribe. 'Red-handed' is not a figure of speech, but the literal truth, for the bribe money was dusted with potassium permanganate by vigilance officers, and when his hands were soaked in water, it turned red. Sampangi immediately complained of 'chest pain' and spent two days in hospital, after which he was granted bail. Again, the role of the judiciary comes into question.

So we basically have a state that is inherently corrupt; encourages violence against women, Muslims, Christians, and other minorities, uses the police to terrorise those who dissent, and a judiciary that does everything short of wearing a saffron robe instead of a black one.

What's even more disappointing is the lack of clarity in the media about the attack. Articles have denounced the 'moral policing' of the Ram Sene, but they haven't investigated the common origins and the ideology of the Sene and its Sangh patriarchs. There is no depth to the coverage, just angry declamations that one can wear and do whatever one wants. There has been no investigation of the systematic crimes against minorities in Karnataka's coastal belt and elsewhere, and the dropping of charges against serial offenders like Muthalik. The media even toes the official line that many of the 'incidents' have been stage-managed to 'malign' the government. Like the coverage of Gaza, the media is concerned about political game-play rather than civil rights.

Now we come to the Resistance. We cannot place the 'internet-activists', those who mail their protests, or sign online petitions, because there has been no tangible result. Those who take to the streets to protest are few -- the biggest rally numbered around 400, but most middle-class people prefer to sit at home or office and wonder what difference '20 or 30 people' can make, not even wondering at the irony of the situation. If they were to turn up and bring along a dozen friends, the numbers would dramatically increase. A very, very small minority does real activism -- protest, follow-up in courts, making legal challenges, and so on. Apart from the last group, none of the others presents a formidable enough challenge to the government, because the numbers are too few.

Those who do threaten the government are the Maoists, Naxalites and terrorists. It is perhaps the saddest thing about India today that these violent groups do not articulate the aspirations of the average liberal Indian; their methods are too often illogical, mindless and brutal. The naxals are caught up in waging their own class war, killing small-time constables and land-holders, when bigger thieves are strutting around unharmed. The terrorists are busy blowing up public places and brutalising common lives, in apparent retaliation to real or imagined wrongs, whose perpetrators are at the head of states and governments. When a vendor or a small-time businessman is maimed by a terrorist bomb, he is a victim twice over -- from a barbaric state, and an equally barbaric 'resistance' fighter. The terrorist is as cowardly as the state, for he does not fight with his equal -- he plants a bomb and slinks away, as though that can address the wrongs of the past, and as though the eventual victim had anything to do with the pogrom that inspired him in the first place. If he has the balls he should deal with the original perpetrators. If the Maoist has a problem with the right-wing, he should deal directly with them, instead of burning a bus or killing a villager on charges of being a 'police informer'. It is revealing that in the last decade we've not had targetted political assassinations; rather, the dissenter chooses to attack soft targets who can have no palpable effect on his cause. I think the terrorist and the state have come to need each other to sustain themselves.

Then there are the violent vandal agitators, like the Rakshana Vedike or the MNS... who have taken over the public protest space. We have lost our public spaces to them. It is no surprise that Karnataka has shown early signs of becoming a Taliban regime -- with its clamp-down upon night parties, music and dance. The streets have been taken over. The Huns have arrived. Muthalik is Mullah Omar in a saffron robe.

*
PS: Shruthi was attacked on the evening of Feb 6, 2009. She was travelling in a bus with a Muslim boy, brother of a friend, when the bus was stopped by four men who slapped her and beat up the boy. It's interesting that the coverage in papers has revolved around her assault, with little mention of the boy. This was not just an attack by misogynists, it was obviously of a communal nature. Why has it not merited equal coverage? Because the assault on a Hindu uppper/middle class girl merits more attention than on a Muslim boy?

Today's ToI had some stuff about the dichotomy of Hindu sexuality -- expression and repression -- making it look like the Mangalore attack was the work of sexually repressed men. (That's open to debate, but the issue here is of a communal nature.)

Splintered liberals

2009-02-06T08:32:00.004+05:30

We've been trying to get some kind of a rally going as a protest against the right-wing rabid groups. What should have been a simple matter of a whole bunch of people getting out to protest an outrageous attack on women has now turned into a class issue. Basically, there have been protests, of various sizes, of the Ram Sene's attack. But when the Sene chief Muthalik pronounced his edict that there would be no celebration of Valentine's Day, it was at last a great opportunity for everybody to come together -- and they were assured of the participation of the usually apolitical, disinterested mass: thousands of college students and teenagers, who are furious at the constant curbing of their freedoms.
But we've begun to hear doubts of whether a protest on Valentine's would constitute an 'urban, upper/middle-class concern' and not that of the lower classes (meaning: NGOs working on labour issues, women's welfare, Dalits, etc).

--
Is it any wonder that a dozen thugs can beat up anybody they want, in daylight and in front of TV cameras, and get away with it? There's too much dissonance within the liberal ranks, just too many chickenshit issues that they crib about when it's time to get together. The Ram Sene is the logical outcome of this lack of unity of the liberals, and a lack of moral courage as well. We perhaps deserve no better.

A nation that can't protect its women

2009-01-28T10:06:00.003+05:30

It shouldn't have been a surprise, I guess, that a bunch of thugs attacked women at a pub in Mangalore protesting a perceived affront to 'Hindu culture'. Something like this was in the offing. A right-wing government is in power at the state, but none of the others too would've been any different. The centre is led by the namby-pamby Manmohan Singh, whose miserable protestations of every atrocity make him ineligible for anything. Man-mohan? Really! What were they thinking when they named him?

After all, when a party of obscure Muslim fundamentalists attacked Taslima Nasrin in Hyderabad, the Centre hounded her out and put her under house arrest in Delhi, instead of acting against the perpetrators. A nation that seeks to be in the Security Council can't protect one woman. That's all that needs to be said of the character of people who rule this nation.

This is the pattern that has established in this country. Whether it is the ruffian elements of the Shiv Sena, the MNS, the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, or now the Ram Sene, the state acts against the victims, not the violent low-life. A few women will get their heads busted, but so what? Our government, our state, this whole country, continues to live its charmed life. A nation that cannot protect its women is no nation.

And so we had the usual circus playing out -- the Karnataka CM alleging a 'political conspiracy' to defame his government. Goodness, why would anyone seek to defame something that is infamous in the first place! When a man has no character or self-respect, he has nothing left to lose.

Whether it is about the attacks on Christians in Orissa and Karnataka, or the rampaging mobs of the language and regional chauvinists in Maharashtra and Karnataka (MNS, Shiv Sena, KRV), one thing is clear -- non-violent protest has no place any more. And those who think it isn't their problem had better realise that it will be their turn next.

I wrote these two mails over the last two days, detailing what I thought of the problem:

what we see is the coming-together of seemingly diverse groups (anti-Muslim, anti-North Indian, anti-'Western',) into an entity that is beyond reproach or even legal redress. The problem is especially acute in Karnataka and Maharashtra, since these groups claim to work for local sentiment and local interests. The Karnataka Rakshana Vedike has been frequently found to use these intimidating tactics (they busted up a party at Kanakpura a couple of months ago and did the same perverse things the Ram Sene did), but they cannot be touched because they claim to represent the will of Kannadigas.That makes them beyond reproach from liberal commentators like Ananthamurthy, who otherwise is scathing in his attack against the Hindutva outfits. But the Rakshana Vedike steers clear of religious debate; by claiming to further Kannada interests, they have made themselves immune.

Our liberals -- united in their stand against right-wing Hindutva -- have not yet reacted to violent groups like the Rakshana Vedike, and that makes them so much more dangerous. But if you observe the iconography of the Rakshana Vedike, it's no different from extreme-right Hindutva -- the Kannada State as a 'goddess', indistinct from Lakshmi or Saraswathi or the others of the Hindu pantheon. It is no coincidence that such attacks have been happening in the coastal belt which is in the grip of Hindutva mania right now.

Nobody talks against groups like the Vedike because it's politically incorrect. I think common cause has to be found with other liberal and advocacy groups to counter these fascists.

Yesterday there was a protest rally. I sent this mail after attending it:

I attended the protest rally today. A couple of thoughts I'd like to share…

A friend I called along sounded cynical, he said it wouldn't make a difference, and so on… that the rally would be attended by the 'usual people'. I tried to convince him otherwise, telling him that the public protest space should not be ceded to violent groups, and that a protest vacuum would be bad for every one with liberal aspirations.

I was surprised by the turnout – there were around 50-60 people. A couple of things were disconcerting, however. I didn't like the whole 'controlled' protest atmosphere – with the cops standing around, the protesters shouting slogans for the TV cameras, and some others socialising and catching up on news. This is the way protest rallies go, from the few I've seen. Don't get me wrong. This isn't criticism – just observation. I also acknowledge that it can't possibly be any other way. However, I think we need to introspect and see if it's leading anywhere.

I think a protest is important not just as a symbol of discontent, but for protest's sake, and is worthwhile even if it is only for the TV cameras. If violent groups can use media, why not peaceful protesters? Having said that, I think we are falling into an 'acceptable' manner of staging protest – acceptable for the protesters, and acceptable for those we are protesting against. Why stick to what the government deems acceptable – staying in a safe 'zone' around Gandhi's statue? It almost looks like protest is part of the package.

Also, the protest energy was missing because everybody had falled into their pre-determined roles. There was slogan-shouting, but it lacked anger against the incident that the rally was called to protest against. Everybody looked happy with the slogan-shouting! Everybody did their piece, the cops watched comfortably, and then everyone went home.

I'm not claiming to be an activist. Also, I think the real victories that have been won recently (Clifton was telling me of a court ruling on the church attacks) have been won through ground-level painstaking work, away from the cameras – and that is real activism. I haven't been part of any of that, and I have tremendous respect for those who work like that.

But having access to how the public views and reacts to such rallies, we need to wonder if we have to try different modes of protest. Possibly the whole gathering could have moved down MG Road and distributed pamphlets or fliers, involving so many others, and explaining the politics behind the attack at Mangalore, and warning of more to come. Then we would have moved outside the boundaries of protest defined by the state. I know that one needs 'permission' to protest (otherwise our lives will be taken over by even more rogue elements than there are now), but perhaps we can be more inventive. Adbusters.org has an interesting post on the kinds of spontaneous protests we may make, and yet leave the govt clueless!

Having been part of a couple of Blank Noise interventions (protesting sexual harassment), I must say Blank Noise does experiment with various kinds of protest. There is a constant challenging of the boundaries of protest. I don't think we can protest if we are restricted to a certain zone – the idea is for the spirit of protest to permeate common consciousness. Some techniques may be borrowed from Blank Noise. I'm not saying we should try something arty or gimmicky that nobody understands – just that we should challenge more people to think.

Thieves in tuxedos

2009-01-08T10:32:00.005+05:30

A 7,000-crore scam. That's what our best financial journalists and market analysts were celebrating all these years as the story of Incredible India Inc. That's the price of the lie that everybody was sold. And in the aftermath of Satyam's crash, there is surprisingly little self-recrimination in our financial newspapers. Of course Ramalinga Raju is guilty of a grand theft, but why were our reporters participants in the crime, why did they parrot out its incredible figures all these years, misleading small investors? The truth is that when a thief arrives in a tuxedo, they call him a visionary.

Some six or seven years ago, when I first got to know Clifton, who works on civil rights, he talked about the IT corridor in Bangalore, how it was dispossessing small farmers of their land holdings, and how the 'IT revolution' was actually hiding an elaborate land scam. I alerted my friends in the newspapers then, but nothing came of it. Most reporters would look at Clifton's story as nothing more than the rhetoric of 'leftist losers', people who were fundamentally opposed to 'growth' and 'development', and would be left in the wake of Shining India's inexorable march towards Capitalist paradise.

Most of India's middle class, and indeed the media, were left dizzy by the million- and billion dollar figures routinely thrown about by its big corporates. They didn't stop to examine if this made sense; if this was sustainable, and at whose expense. I have next to no knowledge of market economics, but even I did better -- in my suspicion -- than the best financial wizards of this country. Now it turns out that -- in line with Clifton's analysis -- Satyam's chief business was land acquisition. A ToI feature even fleetingly mentioned a naxalite who said that the land Satyam owned could've solved the Telengana problem. Of course, at the time, nobody in the media would've given a fuck to what a naxalite said.

... and just as Israel will get away with its mass murder in Gaza, Ramalinga Raju will get away with his 7,000-crore theft. The principle is not to be small fry: if you want to kill, kill a few thousand or a million. It's criminal to rob or kill to save your stomach. If you want to steal, steal not a fiver or a tenner, but a crore or a thousand crore. That makes you untouchable. And that's why the biggest scamsters and the biggest criminals of this country have gone unpunished: Bal Thackeray, Narendra Modi, Harshad Mehta, Jagdish Tytler, Dawood Ibrahim.... all cut from the same cloth, more or less.

And from the carnage in Gaza and Rwanda and elsewhere it is apparent that 'poetic justice' is just another pretty term.

History as present

2009-01-07T15:20:00.000+05:30

HAVING clawed our way past a particularly violent century, perhaps we should pin our hopes on a younger generation of South Asians less conditioned or brainwashed by the nineteenth-century European worldview and its obsessive preoccupation with the state. This newer lot will, I am confident, look at the organizational principles of their societies less blinkered by nineteenth-century Western scholarship, and rediscover that South Asian societies are woven not around the state but around plural cultures and pluri-cultural identities. They will also discover, if I might use that paradoxical expression for a region not yet massified, the grandeur of the humble and everyday lives of their peoples and their little cultures. It is unlikely that I shall live to see that day, but I am consoled by the thought that I belong to a generation of South Asian scholars whose demise can only hasten the end of the present phase of self-hatred, of our ridiculous attempts to live our some other culture’s history.
- Ashis Nandy, Time Treks

Rogue states

2009-01-05T10:40:00.002+05:30

I don't think any statement can sum up the current global political climate as Nietzche's: "Insanity is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

Israel's killing of 500 people (so far) in apparent retaliation to a two-bit rocket attack is one of the most murderous assaults on a people; what astonishes is the flippancy with which the media talks about it. "Israeli retaliation", "rocket strikes", "bombings" as though these were events without any human action or human cost involved. It's as if the bombings are happening on Mars. We watch the spectacle of a 'target' bursting into flames -- as if it's happening in a video game, as if there weren't people there, getting fried by the heat and the destructive power of the bombs. And the world watches. And passes resolutions calling for 'restraint'.

Humankind has learned nothing. Mass slaughters happen in front of TV cameras, and we discuss strategy. We put individual murderers on death row and allow nations to tote up the corpses.

... and nation-states are no better than psychopathic killers, although they claim to be represented by the best of their people. And all the world's scientists, philosophers, geniuses -- who represent the best of human civilisation -- can do nothing to stop the wilful carnage of one state by another, in Palestine, in Iraq... and a hundred flawed colonial policies that are still extracting their blood-toll around the globe... in Sudan, in Lanka, in India-Pakistan, in Palestine.

And the world is busy babbling when people are getting killed.... whether in terrorist strikes in India or Iraq or elsewhere; people infatuated with the sound of their own voices. What do all the advancements of humankind amount to then? We still see the continuation of hostilities decades and centuries old. It's as if we are programmed to kill our own, having eliminated the last of the natural threats. In T-2, Terminator watches two kids playing with guns and tells John Connor: "It is in your nature to kill yourselves."

GUTS, November

2008-12-11T10:12:00.000+05:30

Get your own - Open publication

Letters on Islam-2

2008-12-08T20:23:00.004+05:30

More Q&A with N., who's doing a PhD thesis on Islam at Amsterdam University:

ME: Are Islamic societies particularly amenable to autocratic/ theocratic governments? Of course, when I say 'Islamic society' I'm aware that I'm bunching together what is essentially very complex; still, looking all over the world, most Islamic countries happen to be non-democratic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Turkey is probably the only healthy democracy. Indonesia, Egypt and Malaysia? Not so sure. We know that the jihadists abhor democracy; they see democracy as inherently flawed and anti-Islamic. Now, is this view significant? Is there something about the structure of (contemporary) Islam that makes it a useful tool for military dictators and autocrats? (Meaning: in contemporary Islamic societies we don't see internal dissent on religious issues. Does the structure of such a society make it convenient for dictators?)

N: I think to ask if "Islam" and "democracy" is compatible is a misguided question. There is nothing in Islam, or for that matter in any religion, that makes it particularly suitable or unsuitable to democracy. Consider European history. The growth of democracy in Europe was the result of struggles by various social movements (working class, women's, anti-racist etc.) against organised religion and aristocracy. It was not the charity of Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, that made Europe democratic. In fact, the Church was dead against it until recently. My point is simply that because one religion (anyone, not just Islam) dominates a society it does not make that society a particularly fertile or unfertile ground for democracy. After all, what is there in "Hinduism", with its profoundly anti-democratic caste hierarchies, that makes India, a predominantly Hindu country, stay democratic? Is India democratic because it is "Hindu"? You know the history of Indian democracy. I don't want to repeat it. And, look at the paradox in the modern middle east, it is the Islamist groups who fight for democracy and freedom in countries like Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood), whereas the secular, U.S.-supported government is undemocratic to its very core. The situation in Palestine with Hamas is no different. In Turkey, it is the Islamist party in power which is pushing for the country's entry into the E.U. and conforming to European values of human rights and justice. It is the secular, military establishment that is opposed to more democracy and openness in Turkish society because, for them (ironically), the Islamists will destroy Turkey. If ordinary people turn to such Islamist parties, can you blame them? There are indigenous factors (most of them very mundane issues of governance, corruption, accountability etc.) that make them do it. Their choice cannot be explained by using the Quran as much as Hindu support for the BJP cannot be explained by turning to the Bhagavad Gita.
Iran is much more complex. A vibrant society, it is not as undemocratic as any other middle eastern country is. Moreover, it has many active social movements (especially, women's) which constantly pressure the state. And we have talks of making the country more democratic coming from within the ruling ulema themselves. The former president Khatami is an excellent example of that. Of course, there is resistance. But that goes to show how complex things are. There is no inherent and essential link between "Islam" and "autocracy" and "theocracy". If Islam had been "inherently" undemocratic, these movements should be only talking about reestablishing the "caliphate". That obviously is not the case. Moreover, the use of such terminology alone does not help us understand what they mean by it. Meanings change, put simply. The same word means different things to different people. To make sense we have to look at concrete practices in concrete historical, political and social conditions. One can constantly talk about democracy and human rights and undermine it (the US is the best example). Similarly, by invoking "caliphate" the Islamist groups need not necessarily mean bringing back the Ummayads or the Abbasids to power.
And, moreover, is there just one model of democracy? Democracy, as I understand, is basically a social, political and legal structure that ensures accountability of those in power to the people (what I would call, on old Marxist lines, "formal democracy"). There is no one way to do that. Of course, the Western model is well-established and generally accepted as the "right" one. But that need not be the case. Other, ways of ensuring popular control can and will evolve from various indigenous contexts.

ME: Agreed that Islam has undergone evolution, and differs by time and place. How do you see modern-day jihad? I mean, I can understand that an illiterate labourer such as Kasab in Faridkot can get carried away by jihadi propaganda. But what about Haneef, the doctor who tried to run his car into Glasgow airport? Surely he wasn't fighting a battle for local, territorial issues like Kashmir?

N. Yes, the Glasgow guys and the London bombers were well-educated. But, I don't really get your point, what are you trying to say? That it proves something about "Islam" (assuming, for a while, that there is something like that)? Nothing, I think. Another instance from European history: When the Nazis came to power, Germany was the pinnacle of Western civilisation. Philosophy, sociology, music, you name it, you had to turn to Germans to make sense of it (to this day, in many ways, it remains the case). But, you know, from those heights it was a slide downhill - unimaginable atrocities and crimes and the majority of Germans collaborated, or turned a blind eye to it. What does that say about Germans? I haven't heard anybody saying that something was "inherently wrong" with Germans or their culture that led to the Nazis. We use historical, social and political factors to explain it, don't we? Religion, Islam especially, need not be an exception to that trend. Again, to repeat myself, we need to understand religion as a social reality, not some abstract, other-worldly idea (of course, that aspect is there, but that is not only it).

ME: How do you see the Taliban problem? I mean, what explains its spread and growth? How can we disconnect the Taliban from its Islamic support base? The idolator issue has always been a pinprick in Hindu-Muslim relations. Although several historians point out to the purely political nature of temple desecration, this issue remains as historical baggage. Some of the early Islamic invaders did see their invasion of India as a religious mission against idolators (although the empire-builders later on didn't carry this mission forward). We saw that more recently with the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Now, is there some early thread against idolatry that the Taliban was carrying on?
N. Taliban, again, is to be understood in the concrete, historical, contexts of Afghanistani and South Asian history. You know well, how can you separate their rise and growth from the "secular" US' support they received during the anti-Soviet war? And also from the support they received from Zia's fundamentalist regime? Now they have turned against each other. But, again you know well, the reasons for that lie in history. Am not saying that there are no religious differences between the Taliban and, say, the much more moderate Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan. There are, plenty. But there are also other political and economic rivalries involved. My point is simple: Islam understood as a few texts and theology does not explain everything about Taliban. Sure, we cannot separate the Taliban from its "Islamic support base". Can we disconnect Hindutva, or Christian fundamentalism in the US from their Hindu and Christian support bases? As regards "idolatry" and Taliban, I told you, Quran speaks against idolatry. The Taliban cites them to justify their actions. But the Quran also prohibits violence, as I told before. Muslims who oppose the Taliban (and there are innumerable such Muslims, you know) cite the latter verses. I don't see any major earth-shaking event happening here. It all goes back to the whole issue of interpretation.

Letters on Islam

2008-12-07T18:53:00.004+05:30

The last week has been a period of long conversations and e-mails on the terror attack. Inevitably, we come to religion and I discover that my own opinion changes every day. Prejudices are deep-seated and difficult to overcome, and talk on religion usually gets emotional, not logical. The popular media has much to do with this; they seem totally divorced from historical narratives.
Here is an excerpt from a mail that N. sent me. He's a scholar on Islamic studies in Amsterdam, and every time he comes to India, this is one thing we have long arguments about! But this piece of dialogue clarifies a whole lot of issues. Will add more to show you the progress of the dialogue:

Here's what N. has to say:
That the "basic form" (am not exactly sure what you mean by this expression, but I assume you have the core ideas of the religion as the prayers, the zakat, the hajj etc.) of Islam may have been decided in the seventh century is just a speculation or, at best, theology or salvation history (the official version that Islamic scholars say). This idea is open to dispute, for research (especially the works of the late John Wansbrough and his students Patricia Crone, Michael Cook and G.R. Hawting) suggests that the Quranic text itself was not fixed until well into the late ninth century and, to add, the current standard version of the text was compiled from various styles of recitation in the 1920s (!) by the Al Azhar university in Egypt - so much for the idea that "Islam" was decided in the seventh century. Also disputed has been the view that Islam arose in a society of polytheists battling against the latter, as the official sources say. Islam may have evolved from a nascent tendency of militant Jewish sectarian monotheism which stood against other Jewish monotheist tendencies (Wansbrough calls it the "sectarian milieu"). So it is not suprising that the religion as we understand it today took centuries to develop. And there are thousands of interpretations of the Quran and Hadith which have tried to make sense of the texts in thousand different ways in different geographical and temporal contexts. It cannot be otherwise because religion is a social phenomenon. By definition, anything social changes and is changeable. Islam too has changed, for sure. It is beyond dispute. I think to believe that the "basic form" of Islam was decided in the seventh century is to fall into the fallacy that Islam is what Muslims say it is. At least to my view, based on reading brilliant, sophisticated research on early Islamic history, it is not the case.
I don't think you are right about the notions the "other" in Islam (I assume you mean the Quran here). Am stating the obvious here, but the Quran is a complex text, often at odds with itself. If it sanctions violence against non-believers (it does, I don't dispute that), it also says that "there should be no compulsion in religion". Elsewhere it says: "Call thou to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and admonition, and dispute with them in the better way". That definitely is not a call to violence; it is a glorification of the best practices of modern democracy - debate and rational argumentation. And, you know well, the Jewish people, who have suffered the worst forms of discrimination and genocide in world history, have enjoyed relatively better living status under Muslim rulers. In early Islam, non-Muslims were conferred the status of dhimmis once they accepted the political authority of Muslim rulers and payed special taxes (jaziya). In fact, Hawting's research suggests that conversion to Islam was difficult and not encouraged in the early days of Islam. Of course, am not denying that forced conversions have not occurred. Am just pointing out the complexity of reality (which you also suggest when you mention "most practising Muslims"). Most important, as I have repeatedly pointed out, I don't think there is an "Islam", a monolithic, essential reality. Texts have not, and do not simply determine and define the lived reality of Islam. Texts are negotiated, interpreted and adapted to concrete, historical conditions. Again, am saying the obvious, the sheer diversity of Islamic life in the world is an excellent testimony for that.

And while we're at it...

2008-12-06T17:04:00.002+05:30

... let's remember, Pakistan too bleeds. A minute's silence for the tragedy.

CCar bomb devastates Peshawar market

PESHAWAR, Dec 5: At least 22 people were killed and over 90 others injured when a car bomb ripped through a congested locality of Kocha Risaldar near Qissa Khwani Bazaar on Friday evening.

The explosion was followed by a fire that engulfed scores of buildings in the narrow streets, making it difficult for rescue workers to move the injured and bodies trapped inside.

Hospital sources said the death toll might rise because some of the injured were in critical condition.

People started running around in panic amid groans of the injured and wails of ambulance sirens. A large number of people rushed to rescue the injured and pull bodies from devastated buildings.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, a spokesman for the NWFP government, and provincial police chief Malik Mohammad Naveed said the explosion had probably been caused by a car bomb. However, the city police chief said it was not clear whether it was a car bomb blast or suicide bombing. The cause can be ascertained once the area is cleared and the fire is extinguished.

He said police and volunteers had begun evacuating the victims and a rescue operation was in progress. Forensic evidence would be studied afterwards. He said the explosion might have taken place in a hotel or a vehicle.

The victims, among them women and children, were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital. Most of the bodies were mutilated, some charred beyond recognition.

Correspondence on terror

2008-12-05T00:01:00.007+05:30

I was surprised to see so many responses to the piece I wrote on Indian Muslims and the questions that are raised on their identity. The provocation for writing the piece was an SMS that sought to ask why Sadhvi Pragya Singh was being harassed while Afzal Guru hadn't yet been hanged, and so on... basically right-wing rhetoric. So I wrote whatever was on my mind; it was more an act of getting the stuff out than hoping to convince the recipient of my line of thought.

Some of my friends replied immediately; Vinayak said he'd mailed it to everyone on his mailing list. I began to get apprehensive then because the piece was basically an email response, and although the arguments are based on authentic readings of history, people can pick a hole or two. It wasn't meant to be a newspaper column... anyway, let's see where it goes. I've published the entire text here.

I called GR yesterday and as usual he was delightful. Unlike the average 'liberal', he doesn't seek to be politically correct, or afraid to air his views on religion, and he's basically sceptical of every religion, and especially of those who think their scriptures to be true above all else. Besides, given his scholarship on the Rig Veda, he can hold his own against any pundit. I kept laughing uncontrollably when he talked of the right-wing's pet hate object -- Mahmud of Ghazni, who pillaged the Somanatha temple 16 times and carried the wealth back to Afghanistan. "You see, the right wing keeps bringing it up as though it is a matter of pride," GR chuckled. "But they should be ashamed... how is it possible that someone can ransack the same place 16 times? I can understand they were taken by surprise the first time, but isn't it astounding that they kept on stacking valuables in the temple every time after a pillage?" Perhaps the local kings should have saved Mahmud the trouble of travelling the distance and sent the valuables to him instead.

It's fun listening to GR. He always treats history and religion and politics with levity, but without trivialising it. I went into another burst of laughter when he talked of the Bhagavad Gita: "Many people accuse me of being anti-Hindu when I raise this, but if the Gita can justify killing thousands in the name of Dharma, how can you blame the Maoists? After all, they're trying to implement their version of Dharma."

A similar case can perhaps be made of Islam as well. I haven't read the Quran, but I've heard there are verses that advocate the elimination of kafirs or unbelievers. This is seen as an inspiration for jihadi terrorists, and thus one of the causes of Islamophobia. Now, apart from the question of how many practising Muslims take this injunction literally, there is the question of defending Islam as a 'religion of peace'. There is a contradiction here, between what is explicitly stated in the text, and the claims of its defenders. My view is that there is no need to defend its position; one must view all religious texts in the context of the historical period in which they were composed. At the time of its composition, the seventh century, a time of warring tribes in the Arab land, the revelations to the Prophet were obviously a solution to the immediate problems of the day. Perhaps the other tribes were steeped in perversions, and there was a need for radical reform. It's no surprise that polygamy was advocated, for there must have been a number of war widows. The Gita too must be seen in its historical context, a time when warring tribes were striving for supremacy.

I think the Sikhs are a good model for any religious community. Although they are a martial religion, and exhibit their martial legacy, they show an astonishing ability to adapt to new circumstances and get on with life. The terrible pogrom of 1984, and the military excesses in the Punjab scarred them for sure, but they have bounced back and are among the prosperous communities of India. They are well travelled, educated and open about their religion and culture; indeed, their culture has made an impact completely disproportionate to their numbers. Bhangra and Bollywood have become popular culture today, and so has their cuisine, with all the parathas and paneer and the rest of it. The fears of the other communities, such as modernisation affecting community participation, doesn't seem to hamper them as much. And to think that they were the severest victims of Partition! How they have rebuilt their lives, and how they carry no historical baggage! With any other community, the injustices of Partition and State tyranny would have been festering wounds, but the Sikhs and other Punjabis have only emerged stronger with time.

Anyway, here's the piece I wrote:

On Religion
Dear Mr Mani,
I received your SMS recently -- the one about the vilification of the 'sadhvi' (Pragya Singh), how come she has been 'targetted', while Afzal Guru has not yet been hanged, and so on. From this SMS and from previous emails, I've come to know that you seem to view Indian Muslims with suspicion, if not hatred. You seem to belong to a fairly large number of Indians who seem to view Muslims as 'anti-national', prone to terrorist and violent activity, and belonging to a philosophy which has always been anti-Hindu and anti-Indian. I believe I must address some of these views, because some of these are based on some false premises. Let me assure you that I have no political affiliation -- I have equal distaste for the Congress, the BJP, the Communists, and all others who are part of the political spectrum. However, I have some interest in history, and it hurts me to see completely distorted facts being used to project Indian Muslims as villainous.

Let me begin by questioning one basic assumption Hindus have about Muslims: that the early Muslim invaders were the first to destroy or desecrate Hindu temples, and from then on, Islam has always been contradictory to Hinduism. From historical evidence, we know that temple desecrations begin not with Islamic invasions, but were widespread even in pre-Islamic India. Shaivites and Vaishnavites were busy ransacking each other's temples -- I can even show you one Vishnu temple in Belthur, near Hassan, which was destroyed by Lingayats (Shaivites), and the Vishnu deity thrown into a ditch!

Temple desecration was a political policy, not a religious one. All the 'Hindu' empires of pre-Islamic South India -- such as the Cholas, the Pallavas, the Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas have indulged in it. Why? We need to understand the purpose of temple-building. Most temples commissioned by royal families had images of the king alongside icons of the gods -- an attempt to confer divinity upon the king, and hence aid his rule. It was an implicit act to deify the king -- that is, grant him divine status. The first act of an invading army, therefore, was to destroy temples built by him. You can still find a dwarapalaka of Badami at Gangaikondacholapuram in Tamil Nadu-- a looted image from a Chalukya temple. Further, not just were the palaces ransacked, sometimes the entire city was burnt -- the city of Badami burned for nine months after the Chalukyas under Pulakeshi lost to the invading Cholas.

Now we come to the Islamic invaders. There is little doubt that some of them were iconoclasts and believed in defacing images at temples. But this was not restricted to HIndu temples, it even happened at mosques. As recently as 1802, the Saud family, which had taken to the conservative form of Islam called Wah'habism, attacked Karbala. There, according to a Wahhabi chronicler, Wahhabis "scaled the walls, entered the city ... and killed the majority of its people in the markets and in their homes." They "destroyed the dome placed over the grave of al-Husayn" and took "whatever they found inside the dome and its surroundings. .... the grille surrounding the tomb which was encrusted with emeralds, rubies, and other jewels. .... different types of property, weapons, clothing, carpets, gold, silver, precious copies of the Qur'an." [Wikipedia]

In ancient India, most destroyed temples were in the line of military activity. Once the empire was taken, the other temples were immediately granted protection by the new ruler. It may surprise you that even Aurangzeb has issued an edict for the protection of one temple. Tipu Sultan's grant to Sringeri is well known. So it is a myth that all Islamic rulers pillaged all Hindu temples, and was thus antagonistic to Hinduism from the very start. Going purely by historic evidence, not more than 80 temples were desecrated during Muslim rule. I raise this because it has such a deep impact on the country's politics. Since 1992 the country has seen one tragedy after another, beginning with the demolition of Babri Masjid. Is it relevant to us today that a temple be built at that site? Aren't there any number of temples to which we can go? Should we avenge something that apparently happened 600 or 700 years ago? How can we be sure of anything that happened so long back? Shouldn't we be concerned with more serious issues? If somebody claims there was a small temple where Vidhana Soudha now stands, does it make any sense to demolish Vidhana Soudha and rebuild that temple?

Now we come to contemporary politics. Why is there a suspicion that the Indian Muslim is an 'outsider' and 'anti-national'? The first Islamic invaders came in the 8th century - which means the faith in India is at least 1,200 years old! What more does a man need to do to 'belong'? And this notion that the Hindus were the 'original' inhabitants -- what do we mean by Hinduism? The Vedic religion? But the Rig Veda describes the land around the Indus river! It doesn't matter if the Aryans were migrants or not. The evidence suggests they were, because the Rig Veda shows no knowledge of peninsular India. Hinduism, as we know it, is an agglomeration of the Vedic, folk, tribal and various other cults. It is so even today. The point I'm making is that it's hard to pinpoint who the 'original' inhabitants were, and whether they had a religion that bears any resemblance to what we now call Hinduism. Not that it matters anyway. India has been home to successive waves of migrations. So the Muslims are as Indian as anybody else, and we should be ashamed of questioning their Indianness. If some of them, like Afzal Guru, happen to be anti-Indian -- sure, hang him. The fact that Afzal Guru is guilty does not mean Pragya Singh is not guilty.

You sent me one mail that said: "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims." Really? Is the LTTE an Islamic force? The ULFA in Assam? The IRA in Ireland? And what about the perpetrators of the Malegaon blasts? Your last SMS seemed to absolve Sadhvi Pragya of being a terrorist even though you haven't any idea on the evidence presented. Why? Why do you assume a Hindu can't be a terrorist? Mind you, the ATS which nailed Pragya and her associates was led by Karkare. I don't assume you can question his patriotism, given that he died at the hands of an (Islamic) terrorist. But the question I seek to ask is: why is it so hard to believe a Hindu can be a terrorist? We have all heard of riots in Bombay and Gujarat initiated by Hindu mobs... more recently, Hindu mobs rioted at Kandhamal in Orissa and some places in Karnataka. One of the perpetrators of Gujarat, Baba Bajrangi, was filmed on secret camera saying he had pulled out the foetus from a pregnant Muslim woman's womb. Can there be greater terrorist activity than this?

I do not seek to 'justify' one terrorist activity with another. The people who killed Hindu pilgrims at Godhra are as evil as those who participated in the riots. But it's criminal to assume only one religious community can indulge in this. We cannot deny Islamic Jihad that has affected our country so badly. But let not put the blame on 'Muslims' -- as though all of them are equally guilty.

When this happens, as is happening in India, we needlessly demonise one community. We have ghettoised them, pushed them to the fringes. We blame all madrassas as factories of evil, forgetting that many madrassas offer free education to poor Muslim students, and run computer centres, arts and crafts, self-employment workshops, and so forth. What is the government investment in education in Muslim dominated areas? In the absence of state education, how can we blame them if they go to madrassas? A recent study suggests only 3% of Muslim children go to madrassas, the rest don't study or go to badly-run government schools. The best weapon against terrorism is to increase investment in education across the country, and maybe even sponsor a few schools in Pakistan's tribal districts!

It is the responsibility of people like you and me to avoid creating this climate of fear by blaming Muslims for everything. As it is, they live in fear. Consider the number of riots in which they have suffered, beginning with Bombay in 1993. Why were common Muslims targetted for something that a few criminals had done? There have been several riots, but no justice. Have the perpetrators of the Bombay or Gujarat riots been brought to book? No. How do you expect the average Muslim to believe in this system? I heard one guest at an NDTV talk show saying he had heard the Shiv Sena and MNS were talking about 'safai' -- that is, 'cleaning up' Mumbai of Muslims. I couldn't sleep yesterday -- hasn't this country had enough of violence? How many people more need to be killed in the name of religion?

Let us keep politics out of this, shall we? Let us punish all terrorists and all criminals, irrespective of whether they are Hindu or Muslim or Christian, irrespective of whether it is a Pragya Singh or an Afzal Guru. But let us not indulge in sweeping generalisations. Let us remember that the Taliban owes its origins to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and that all Muslims do not subscribe to the Wah'habi brand of Islam that the Taliban preaches. How can we ever forget the grand contributions of Islam to India -- in Hindustani music, in poetry, in language (Hindi and Urdu), cuisine, and just about everything, including the religious philosophy of the Sufis? Indeed, how can we assume that Hinduism itself did not benefit from Islam? Some historians argue that the concept of a unified Hinduism itself began after Islam made its entry.

The problem about raising these communal issues is that it diverts attention from issues that really need solving -- like India's appalling record on child education, child abuse, farmer suicide, literacy, violence against Dalits, and so on. Those are the really serious issues we should be debating, for they are the ones that are really indicative of a nation's progress.

Bang for the buck

2008-12-04T09:53:00.004+05:30

Arrested Lashkar terrorist Amjad Amir, a resident of the small village of Faridkot in the Okara district of Pakistan’s Punjab province... told interrogators that he was born to a landless peasant family and his brother works as a cart-puller in Lahore. He dropped out of school after fourth class. According to Kamaal’s testimony, top Lashkar commander Zakir-ur-Rehman promised to pay his family Rs.1.5 lakh for participating in the fidayeen attack.

I've been in a frenzy of reading articles on the terror attack, an attempt to understand it. After a while, most of the stuff written about it falls into predictable categories. Most Western papers analyse this as a Jihadi-inspired Al-Qaeda operation, sponsored by Pakistan-based Lashkar, which they trace to the ill-feeling caused by the Indian government's ill-treatment of Muslims in Kashmir, and so on, usually ending with the threat of an Indo-Pak war. Of particular concern is that last threat that addresses the question: "What's in it for us?" The answer given, in terrified fascination, is a nuclear conflagration. The two countries are like misbehaving, if dangerous, children, who must be kept in good humour if all of us are to continue with our charmed lives.

Most Indian liberals, on the other hand, seek the cause of anger in the BJP's pogroms of Gujarat and Bombay, and even the situation in Kashmir – as if any of the victims had anything to do with Kashmir or the army. I even saw one absurd article claiming that the whole attack was 'stage-managed' by the Hindu right-wing.

It all feels so tiresome. The human tragedy just doesn't seem to have gotten through. Already internet discussion forums are full of accusations and counter-accusations. Many Pakistanis even believe that the attack was carried out by the Indian government "to give Pakistan a bad name". This is about as bad as Indian TV channels focussing exclusively on the victims at the Taj, forgetting that a tragedy of similar magnitude was committed at CST and Cama Hospital. But obviously, the lower/ middle classes of CST don't matter.

I’m appalled by those who seek to connect the Mumbai violence to a previous event – like Gujarat 2002 or Bombay 1993. The problem with tracing every violent act to previous injustice just isn't logical, because there is no end to how far back you can go. There were instances of British brutality in our pre-independence years -- does that mean we should harbour that grudge and bomb British tourists? The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in Manipur has created great resentment in Manipur, and the government will have to take a call on it. But if a Manipuri were to come to Mumbai and kill a 100 people and claim that he was provoked by Army excesses, wouldn’t that be stupid and dangerous logic - a line of thinking that should not even be entertained?

The nation-state, much as we like to abuse it, has some responsibilities in the sphere of national security. Islamic fundamentalism is a reality we have to accept, and something that we have to act against. It might not be politically correct to talk about it, but this reluctance to deal with it will lead to an explosion of violence in which a lot of innocents will suffer. We under-equip and under-pay and politicise our police and intelligence forces, and when they do catch somebody, the Congress or the BJP or the Samajwadi Party will jump to their rescue, claiming that the cops are acting under political pressure. We have pussy-footed on vital issues of anti-terrorism, soft-pedalled on both Islamic and Hindutva terrorists for seeking the sympathies of a mythical vote bank.

If there is police action in a Muslim-dominated area, why is there a ruckus on religious persecution? The Batla House encounter, for instance -- it does seem like the ATS got the right guys. The same goes for state prevarication on the Bajrang Dal. There was plenty of evidence when Bajrang Dal activists were blown up while making bombs, so why didn't the state prosecute the case? The state is a bungling agent, which gets some things right and most things wrong, and when it does get it right there are several groups who can claim that it is acting out its own religious agenda.

There are various possible responses to terror. Most liberals advocate the 'winning of hearts and minds' to any aggressive action, holding that we must look at the 'larger picture', of the reasons behind terror attacks, that we must do our own soul-searching and question state-sponsored violence in Gujarat and Orissa and elsewhere. Now this points to an endless regression. As I've mentioned before, this is an endless trail -- the immediate problem has not been addressed. How far are we to go back? Back to the failed promise of a plebiscite in Kashmir? Back to Partition? Back to the Sepoy Mutiny? The state-sponsored progrom in Gujarat must be punished, but that is a different issue; how can we make the terrorist Kasab become a spokesman for humanity?

The liberal dream of addressing every possible historical thread to terror can never be met. It's an impossible dream. It's all very well to link the Taliban to the Americans, but how does that meet the immediate problem of terrorists functioning out of Pakistani soil? Are we to go back in time and censure the CIA? And how come most liberals don't blame Soviet expansionism for the Taliban problem? Being a 'left-liberal' is a bit of an embarassment in this case, isn't it? There are arguments blaming the Mumbai terror attack to the CIA policies of the 1980s... I think it's idiotic. We can then never solve any incident, we will forever be going backwards in time to find the 'original cause'. We might as well blame Columbus for discovering America.

I'd attended a conference on media a few years ago. One session was on the increasing interference in our everyday lives, especially by means of CCTVs. The speaker talked eloquently of how modern life would become like the Jim Carrey-starrer, The Truman Show. More recently, when the British government made it mandatory to compile biometric data (fingerprints, etc) while filing visa applications, there was a huge outcry. Most civil rights groups made it sound like harassment. I was apprehensive when I applied for a British visa last year, but then I found the recording of 'biometric' data took just three minutes! Where was all the harassment the groups had promised? And now the government wants to give biometric cards to all British citizens -- what is the problem with that? Where is the question of harassment? Doesn't the government have a right to ensure that only legal citizens can live in its country?

There are CCTVs all over the place in London. On an average day, a person is recorded by at least 500 cameras or so. Again there were protests of 'personal freedoms' being violated! Absurd! CCTVs do not help prevent crime, but they are crucial in establishing patterns and evidence, and preventing the same agents from committing crime. The only video footage we have of the terrorists at CST came from the CCTVs installed there. If we had more, in the market places of Jaipur and Bangalore and other places which have suffered terror attacks, wouldn't we be sure of the identity of those who planted the bombs, and thus aided investigations? Would police release terrible 'eye-witness' sketches of the alleged perpetrators -- sketches that sometimes bear passing resemblance with early humanoids? I raised this issue on the website kafila.org, which sometimes gets into predictable positions on these issues. The 'state' is their biggest enemy, and they attribute all crimes to it. The government, muddle-headed and bumbling as it were, is even more confused by these arguments.

It's all well to 'win hearts and minds', but that will never happen. In realpolitik, posture is as important as intent. Why has it taken so long for the government of India -- a so-called superpower -- to pick off Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed? How difficult is it to get snipers to cut them down? When Israeli helicopters bombed the Hamas ideologue Yasin, Hamas made several loud noises about creating an earthquake for Israel, but all that turned out to be empty talk. Why is India behaving like a child whose candy has been stolen by the class bully? If Hafiz Saeed or any other loose cannon terrorist is active in Pakistan, use covert agencies to get him. He should be waking up one morning in a cell in Delhi and pinching himself to see if he's dreaming -- is that so difficult for our agencies? Why ask Pakistan for permission? Why hasn't Dawood been brought to book despite his crimes against humanity?

It's hardly a surprise that we are sitting ducks for terror.

And I wonder what will come of this new pressure on the coast guard and the BSF. Will they catch more fishermen and stray villagers and put them in jail, which is to compound an existing tragedy with a greater one? Will more terrorists seek to avenge real and imagined injustices and kill people who have nothing to do with them or their ideology? And will our ‘war on terror’ be well-thought out and executed, rather than just adding to more unmarked graves in Kashmir and elsewhere? But why blame the army too -- a bunch of guys in the wrong place at the wrong time, confused and desperate, people from dust bowls who are forced to serve in sub-zero conditions with the thought that every civilian carries a bomb under his shawl?

And our 'liberals' too, safe in their ivory towers, talk of solving the problem by granting independence to Kashmir. What a heaven-sent opportunity that would be for all the radicals in every country -- affirmation that their brand of religious violence has at last worked, and must be pursued with renewed zeal! The terror attack is part of a larger programme, and Kashmir is obviously being used by jihadi groups as a South Asian version of Palestine. But that is their game, and we don’t need to subscribe to it.

Kashmir should get used to the idea that it is always going to be Indian territory; what is the point in talking about the plebiscite that wasn't held? How long are they going to remain stuck in history? Haven’t the Sikhs moved on from the Eighties, from their demands for Khalistan? An 'azad' Kashmir will go the way of PoK or Pakistan's other tribal areas -- there is nothing to suggest it will become a healthy democracy. And will a 'free' Kashmir be a happier Kashmir -- or trigger a three-way race between China, Pakistan and India, not to mention assorted other violent groups, for dominance? The 64% turnout in the recent elections suggests that the separatists got it all wrong, that the mass might actually be in favour of Indian democracy. For sure all the border areas of India, like Kashmir, Assam and Manipur, have had problems with the Indian nation-state, but I fail to see how they can solve it outside the democratic process.

Whatever the rhetoric -- Western, Pakistani, liberal, right-wing or average Indian -- the common citizen has been at the receiving end of it all. But the common citizen, the victim, also is sometimes a participant in violence...
We are to have a higher dialogue.

Waiting...

2008-11-29T15:49:00.002+05:30

How much longer, and how many more to the sacrifice? If it's war, let's have a full-fledged war, we will fight like men, not shoot retreating people in the back.

I keep wondering why the latest attack/ invasion/ terror strike hurts more than anything else that has happened before -- even though, in terms of scale and casualties, other events have been as grave. The tsunami was bad, and so was Gujarat 2002 and Bombay 1993 and Babri Masjid and every natural and man-made calamity.
But Bombay 2008... there's something about it that's especially eerie. I think it began with the first visuals of the gunmen, who, as reports said, "calmly fitted their magazines into their guns and started firing into the crowd". What does it take for a man to do that? What sort of man can do that? What sort of propaganda, what sort of training, what sort of motivation? If the city was numbed, it was because of this -- that anybody could do such a thing. There's a sense that war has been declared on us, and we are doing nothing but offering target practise.
We hear of school shootouts in the US; usually by madmen or social recluses or someone with a grudge. But the men who struck Bombay were not mad; they were chillingly sane and efficient. They got more than they bargained for, with the deaths of Karkare and Kamte, brave and competent -- a rare breed among police officers. Why them?
I think the first visuals destroyed some of our notions of what human beings are supposed to be, notions of the basic decency of human beings. We believed violence was usually the result of something else, some previous injustice, in some cases a result of temporary madness. We've seen movies of remorseless criminals acknowledge their guilt in some way. I have in my mind a rebel commander in the movie Blood Diamond, he says: "You think I'm a devil, but that's because I've lived in hell."
But nobody, not even the world's worst pervert, could walk into a crowded train station and calmly mow away people who had nothing to do with him or his ideology. I'm not sure those two guys had any ideology -- they were killer machines.
Something's snapped in our collective will. How much longer, and how many more to the sacrifice? If it's war, let's have a full-fledged war, we will fight like men, not shoot retreating people in the back.
How much cowardice! How many unnecessary deaths! How many destroyed homes and families! For what? For the pride of an outrageous strike at India? For a perverted religious ideology? Or for just plain commerce -- a million dollars for a successful 'operation'?
There are those who seek to find explanations for this violence by invoking Gujarat 2002 or Bombay 1993, and I think they should save their breath. The terrorists who attacked us weren't avenging any real or imagined wrong; they were given a job and they accomplished it.
And poor, bleeding Bombay... which takes it all. A hundred thousand unkind cuts. And the India of our dreams -- a fair India, not the nation-state that rides rough over justice and equality, but an India of myth and fable, an India that is within us all -- how much more can it take? An attack like this, the nation-state was humbled, sure, but greater damage was done to that India within all of us, and each of us died a little. And this was the real tragedy of Bombay 2008, that it left us more bitter, more angry, more helpless, more cynical. It hardened our souls a little bit more. As if there weren't other issues for the nation to confront, as if we hadn't had enough of pogroms and regional violence and cyclones and earthquakes; the helplessness of being saddled with leaders who could only feather their own nests. The ones who got killed were those who dared get into the line of fire, and meanwhile our Prime Minister squeaks incoherently. Mighty Mouse, that's what I think.

Bombay, forever

2008-11-29T11:02:00.000+05:30

A Response

2008-11-12T13:39:00.002+05:30

I RECEIVED the following comment for my post on the violence in Maharashtra. The comment treads into familiar territory, but I felt it deserved a response, for it represents some common views we all have about identity.

This is the comment I got, from ‘Milind’: “Stupid and brainless post. It’s very easy to generalise and take high moral ground. I don’t know if it's your ignorance or you are born stupid or you are just faking it to malign the image of Maharashtrians.
No business or community would have thrived in Maharashtra if all the Maharashtrians were so parochial. You can find Raj and Bal types in almost every community. Germany produced Hitler, does that make every German a ruthless killer. Even your own Kannadiga community has these type of morons so should we brand every Kannada in the same league.
The answer is NO!! Grow up kid. Don’t abuse an entire community because of the actions of a few.”

My response:
Dear ‘Milind’: Thanks for your comment – my blog doesn’t receive many, so it was a surprise. Your views are not unique. In fact, Bal Thackeray himself raved against ‘Hindi TV channels’ for making it look like the Marathis had all run amok, and were beating all the north Indians. To clarify – I’m not stupid enough to think that the actions of the MNS or the Shiv Sena represent the will of all Marathis. When I talked about the ‘Marathi manoos’, I was using the term appropriated by the Shiv Sena and lately the MNS. In this context, my conclusions are inescapable: The Shiv Sena and similar organizations espouse basically (upper-caste) Hindutva aspirations, using the idea of nativity to further their political base. Otherwise, the Shiv Sena would be unrecognizable from the other elements of the Sangh Parivar. Thus the Sena derives its political strength by apparently catering to the so-called Marathi ‘manoos’, or son-of-the-soil.

Now, the question is – does the violent action of the Shiv Sena represent, at least partially, the will of Marathis? To take the parallel example, does the hooliganism of the Hindutva hordes in Orissa against churches represent the will of all Hindus? Of course not. But then, what is the will of all Hindus? How are we to establish it? In my previous post, I mentioned Shashi Tharoor having said that the violence was committed by ‘fringe’ elements. But what is the fringe, and what is the mainstream? In the absence of any popular retaliation against the perpetrators of this violence, does not the violence have popular approval, if not participation? You saw that in Gujarat, the Hindu middle and lower classes participated in the violence. We thought then that the elections would prove that the common citizen disapproved of the violence. But it did not – the elections proved that the violence had mass approval! Silence might not indicate consent, but the electoral process does give us an approximation.

Are you absolutely sure that the Maharashtrian ethos has no place for a Bal Thackeray? How then is the Sena such a powerful political force? How do you know your apparently liberal voice constitutes the voice of Maharashtra? The Sena and like-minded organizations might be using rough-house tactics to remain in power, but there is no doubt that it articulates and represents at least one dominant strain of Marathi aspiration. There are raving fanatics everywhere, but only a few become icons. How did Thackeray become one? You mention Germany and Hitler. As if Germany had nothing to do with Hitler – as if Hitler emerged from the woodwork! Like Bal Thackeray, Hitler articulated and represented at least one dominant strain of German aspiration. How else do you think he could have run a country into war? Maharashtra cannot absolve itself of the actions of the Shiv Sena/ MNS, just as Germany cannot absolve itself of the actions of the Nazis.

We easily dismiss all violence as ‘the actions of the few’ – as you call them. That’s exactly what chief minister Naveen Patnaik said of the violence in Orissa. Does not violence by ‘a few’ constitute violence? What is important is the scale of violence, and not the numbers participating in it. If a handful of thugs can bring a whole state to a standstill, it obviously is serious enough. Criticism of the violence does not mean (as you wrongly imagine) that the whole community is being ‘maligned’.

Much as we all like our (Maharashtrian/ Kannada/ Tamil) society to be called fair-minded and tolerant, there are dominant sections within that take recourse to violence. This does not mean that the whole of that particular society is violent; consequently, it also does not mean that it is non-violent. If Maharashtra can claim the intellectual legacy of a Vijay Tendulkar, it also has to accept the violent legacy of a Bal Thackeray.

I’m certainly not interested in ‘maligning’ (as you so colourfully put it) the Maharashtrian community. I’m afraid I can’t do that even if I wanted to. What I referred to in my last post was the amusing aspect of the ‘manoos’ (the Shiv Sena’s ideal citizen) having run out of enemies! In the Seventies the Enemy was the South Indian; by the Nineties the Enemy was the Muslim, and now, it is the North Indian. Going by the Sena worldview, nearly everybody is an outsider and hence a threat to Marathi culture, and thus needs to be shown his place or driven away. This threat works by stereotyping: Bengalis are stereotyped as arrogant; Punjabis are stereotyped as brash; Malayalis are stereotyped as parochial. Once you’ve given the dog a bad name, it isn’t so difficult to get people to beat it to death.

I think the threat of local cultures losing their identity is real, and of concern. But this process is far more complex than any of us can imagine. If the Bihari is required to clean Mumbai’s sewers, he has to live in Mumbai, not Patna, and he cannot be expected to learn Marathi. Regional chauvinists like to pin all the blame on ‘outsiders’, not realizing that the presence of the outsider is a phenomenon that is a result of a greater dynamic. If the Sena really wanted a long-term solution, it could have worked on legislation. (Coorg district in Karnataka has a legislation that prevents outsiders from buying land – just like Kashmir.) Instead, all it seems to be doing is identifying some threat to its mythical and pristine culture – and you can rest assured that they will never run out of these threats.

To answer a couple of your other statements:
‘No business or community would have thrived in Maharashtra if all the Maharashtrians were so parochial’: You could say the same of every other major Indian city. Tamilians are perceived to be parochial – do you mean that there are no businesses being run by ‘outsiders’ in Tamil Nadu? One of its biggest private industries, MRF, is run by a Malayali family! The Chennai film industry accommodates artistes and technical personnel from all over the South and the rest of India. Tamil Nadu’s biggest icons – Rajnikant, MGR and Jayalalitha – hail from Karnataka/ Kerala. That Bombay emerged as a commercial hub has more to do with geographical location than any accommodative or entrepreneurial spirit of Marathis – who are, for better or worse, no different from Indians elsewhere.

- ‘You can find Raj and Bal types in almost every community’. Not really, although some are trying hard enough. Vatal Nagaraj in Bangalore has been espousing similar causes, but he has never been taken seriously. Indeed, in the last elections, he lost his assembly seat. Besides, thankfully, Vatal never touched upon religious issues. Maharashtra, and indeed all of India, should wonder how, every few years, a new mythical Enemy arises.

The problem for the Marathi manoos

2008-10-25T07:32:00.003+05:30

IN the aftermath of the violence against North Indian 'outsiders' in Bombay, have you noticed the Marathi 'manoos' (or son-of-the-soil)...
- Hates Biharis, UP-ites and North Indians in general for taking away their jobs
- Drove away South Indians in the Seventies under the same pretext... which means he hates South Indians as well
- No doubt hates Gujaratis for being in the upper tier of society, and Punjabis for taking over Bollywood
- Hates Bengalis because he cannot stand Bengali self-confidence
- Hates young people in love, which explains his anger against Valentine's Day
- Hates the 'West' for propagating such ideas
- Hates Muslims for conquering India several centuries ago
- Hates Christians for converting Hindus
In fact, come to think of it, the Marathi manoos now has nobody left to hate but himself! The ideological extreme of this son-of-the-soil argument is to leave the land to the monkeys, who had settled there before any of the manoos thought of it.

The only good that has come out of this violence against North Indians is that it probably signals the death of the Sangh Parivar. The Parivar's ideological base and mass presence has always been in the cow-belt, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat. With the Shiv Sena/ MNS doing everything to drive away everybody from Bombay, I can see a wave of resentment against the figureheads of the Parivar, of which Bal Thackeray is an important icon. Probably one reason the right-wingers took so long to form a government in the South was that South Indians always imagined the BJP and its allies to represent a very North Indian-brahminical worldview (* to the average South Indian, anybody upwards of the Vindhyas is considered 'north Indian').
The BJP cleverly blamed the violence in Bombay on the Congress and, as usual, the Congress was too timid and muddle-headed to respond. This was actually a fantastic opportunity for the Congress and Left to decimate the Parivar. What political position can, for example, a BJP leader campaigning in Patna take for the proximity of his party to the Shiv Sena?

The politics of violence

2008-10-12T06:48:00.007+05:30

AS a nation, we have the cheek to claim a legacy of non-violence, when we are among the most violent nations in the world. The kind of mass violence that happens here is unthinkable in any democracy, and yet we routinely talk of the 'tolerant' and 'secular' nature of our country and its religious majority, the Hindus. I fear though, that our political discourse on these issues border on uncontested facts.
Shashi Tharoor wrote a recent column in which he dismissed the violence in Orissa as the handiwork of 'fringe' elements, goons who were instigated into terrorising the minority Christian community. Tharoor goes on to say the goons don't represent Hinduism, that they have no claim to being Hindus.
But are those who indulge in mass violence 'fringe' elements?

The problem with Tharoor's argument is that the 'Hindu fundamentalist' who engages in arson can turn it around and accuse Tharoor of being the fringe element. And he can easily prove himself right. For if numbers are what distinguish the majority opinion from the fringe, the complete lack of mass opposition to the violence in Orissa (and Gujarat) proves that violence has mass endorsement, not Tharoor's brand of 'tolerant' Hinduism.

Gujarat proved that even the Hindu middle class -- so far hailed as the apostles of non-violence and tolerance -- could engage in mass slaughter and robbery. I've never been more ashamed of being a Hindu; I don't suppose I'm one now.

It seems the Indian nation is largely a peaceful state -- but this is the peace of the status-quo, not the peace of an inherently contented and confident people. We are at peace as long as our community isn’t affected. Why haven’t people – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists -- taken to the streets and proclaimed their support for their Christian brethren? After all, they take to the streets regularly to protest some imagined hurt or the other – the ‘vulgarity’ of a painting; the title of a film; the clothes of a tennis player. When the Tamil actress Khushboo spoke about pre-marital sex, all the guardians of morality descended on her house and made a racket, forcing her to apologise – but it doesn’t strike these people that a real crime is being committed in Orissa, one that requires a demonstration of protest and support for the victims. The current attitude has been to let the Christians stew in the boiler, but each group should know that sooner or later, it will be their turn to be assaulted, and then there will be nobody to speak up for them.

In the violence of the Right and far-Left, you can, of course, include Islamic fundamentalism and Naxal violence. Now these are strange animals. Our liberals are reluctant to discuss this -- and this reluctance to discuss it is by itself violence, for it orphans those who have fallen prey to it. I haven't heard of any rights groups talking of those who have been destroyed by the recent series of bomb blasts. They instead seek to justify this violence in the name of Kashmir or Gujarat. If you're a liberal, it becomes politically correct to denounce only some acts of violence, not all of them. So the politics of violence is more important that the act of violence.

Can't we see a bomb blast as an act of extreme violence -- without having to invoke Gujarat or Kashmir? Retribution is understandable if it is directed against the agents of the original act, but a bomb that takes pride in random destruction? I have many 'liberal' friends, and I appreciate the work they do, but their opinions on this disappoint me. For sure Hindu fundamentalism is as malevolent as Islamic fundamentalism -- and sometimes there's no way to tell one from the other. If historical anger were to be invoked for every violent act, our Dalits would be justified if they were to set fire to everything in sight, destroying all the agencies of state and society.

After the recent riots in Kandhamal, the average Hindu opinion seemed to be that the 'conversions' were the immediate cause of the riots. It didn't strike them that -- (a.) mass violence is no justification for anything (b.) that if people want to convert to another religion, god bless them (c.) that the provocation of 'conversion' was raised by the aggressor. That is -- we were letting the aggressors define the issue, and from then on we were playing their game. The media happily played along, too thick-headed to see that 'provocations' for mass violence are usually excuses for aggressively asserting your dominance. The most bizarre case of mass violence was in Nepal in 2001 when people went on a rampage apparently because Hrithik Roshan said something derogatory about the country. Two or three people were killed... for what? Once the provocation was defined, the violence wasn't questioned... and that has long been the case in our country, and most of South Asia. As a race, we are a mob, many heads and no brains.

What we needed at this hour of crisis -- Nandigram (the violence of the Left) and Kandhamal (the violence of the Right) -- was a strong gesture from the Prime Minister. And yet, at the critical moment, the Prime Minister squeaked like a rat instead of roaring like a lion. I heard he has a squeaky-clean image -- now I know where that came from.

Land and water

2008-09-14T13:42:00.007+05:30

BACK in Palakkad. This time it's raining, it's Onam, and everything is fresh and chirpy and lively.
Last evening I was at a relative's, and the women of the neigbourhood had gotten together and were performing the kaikottikali -- a slow, rhythmmic dance punctuated with claps of the hand. They weren't dancers; they were housewives, but they'd decided to organise this because, as one old woman told me, they're worried the smaller girls don't know anything of their old traditions, and something needed to be done. I watched it till 9 at night... it was beautiful.
Most dances of Kerala, including the Kathakali, the Mohiniattam and the Chakyar Koothu, have some common elements. The slow rhythms, the swaying, the elegance, the songs that invoke a different time and place... these are characteristic of the dances. I recall a conference where one speaker said it wasn't surprising that Kerala's dances have so much swaying because "it is there in the movement of the coconut trees, and the languid movement of the elephants".
I come here with a sentiment that's different, I suppose, from general concerns. People have their upper-middle-class aspirations and are happy to satisfy them. These days, all the talk is of land... how so-and-so owns these many acres, how much land value has shot up and so on.
When I hear such talk, there is almost an involuntary contraction within, a deep distaste for what this means.
I seem to connect to something else that these people have long forgotten... what I connect with is a certain culture that's fast receding, one whose loss will make us all impoverished in the soul. That culture is tied in with the land, with the ponds, with the plants all around...
...And I do not mean a mythical 'golden' past, nor do I seek it...
What frustrates me about these people is their constant looking up to a lifestyle that's so alien to the native ethos, to something that's worked well for them all along. Kids are made to learn 'film dances' to earn points in their schools' cultural festivals, but it doesn't strike them that Kathakali or Mohiniattam are worth pursuing or at least endorsing. (I saw a neighbourhood cultural 'show' yesterday where eight of the nine dances had loud Tamil/ Hindi film numbers). I've seen several talk shows on fitness on Malayalam television, and yet have not heard a single doctor talking of the benefits of kalaripayattu. Why shouldn't kalari be a lifestyle choice? An art so rooted and so proven doesn't have middle class endorsement. Kalari is used in tourist brochures, but not as a daily regimen that's better than any other health/ fitness system. You could also include architecture in this worldview. The Gulf-returned Mal and his minions rush into investing in enclaves with swimming pools, while the temple ponds are all overgrown with weeds.
Most of the ponds here are built near temples. The temples themselves are small shrines, low roofed, and with a spacious courtyard where one might sit and hear the breeze. The aggressive and loud Brahminism of North India are alien to the culture of the temples here. Dieties here are extremely human, occupying a hierarchy below the great pantheon of Hindu gods. Worship is a close and intimate affair, without elaborate rituals.
Of late, however, there is an instinctive deferring to the Pan-Indian idea of what culture means. There has lately been a great economy in temple reconstruction -- and the most fabulous of the old temples have been demolished to make way for something that's strange and bewildering. Anybody who has been in a Kerala temple of sufficient vintage will testify to its charms, and yet the Keralite doesn't find it alluring enough. He must mess with it, must seek to reconstruct it according to another fashion promoted by television. I visited a temple recently, one that was reconstructed after Tipu's men apparently demolished a part -- and was struck by its unique architecture. The sanctum is in the form of a tower, mounted on a circular platform. Now, what does the Malayalee do, but seek to reconstruct it in some other image, for apparently water has been getting into the sanctum, and that cannot be auspicious! Oh no! I wish those who promoted these queer ideas would have their noses chopped off for having the cold.
I'm attracted instinctively to land here -- not as 'investment', but as an aesthetic. I wish people wouldn't trade in it -- it corrupts it, for land is best when it is open and free. The business of real estate has made housing inconceivable for people with lesser means -- while those with the money keep adding to their own surplus.
This relentless drive to 'own' -- and the glorification of this business -- is so fucking characteristic of us, isn't it?
Land is as much a commons resource as a pond, a river and a mountain... and if only we would rework our economy to fit this logic, things would be simpler, for nearly each of the big conflicts today is about land -- Kashmir, Singur, Nandigram, etc. In all the debates about Singur, I'm surprised nobody has proposed that the farmers be made stakeholders to the Nano project -- that they be given a share of the profits made from the sale of the car. Paying a so-called 'market rate' for land just isn't a sustainable option. In the same way, I'm surprised that those whose land was taken away for highway or other road projects haven't been offered a percentage of the toll fee.
More later.

Mind-bloggling

2008-09-09T08:19:00.002+05:30

Sometimes I feel a great urge to blog -- but when I sit at the computer and try to 'intellectualise' what I want to say, I waver. I've also been considering a site to put up all that I've written on... I'm starting with a 'badminton blog'. It's online at www.badmintonmania.wordpress.com
I'm posting the latest post here too because it might be interesting to those who haven't experienced the 'behind-the-scenes' aspects of competitive sport:

TOM
SATURDAY morning, so the courts were empty. Ruth was sitting by with headphones and I struck up a chat with her, she said she was about to leave for New Zealand.
Soon, Tom John and Prakash Jolly come by. Tom’s planned some shadow exercises for them today. “You’ll be doing 30 sets of shadow with incomplete rest,” Tom says. “During a match you’ll be getting just 5 or 10 seconds of rest between each point, so we’ll try to do the same here.”
Tom’s got a fast style of talking, never pauses for breath. He looks a rather unlikely character for a badminton coach, but each of his trainees swear by him… he pushes them beyond limits they never thought possible. It’s that consistent pushing of personal barriers that results in a champion.
“…The top players do one hour of shadow, incomplete rest, yeah? There are different kinds of fitness — Pakistani, Sri Lankan… to win the New Zealand tournament you need to be Indian fit, 30 sets of shadow.”
He looks at Prakash Jolly, who’s a promising state player, not yet ready at the national level. Prakash’s looking down, rather like a schoolboy who hasn’t completed his homework. “You think you’re fit — and then you lose to some stupid New Zealander who runs all over the place. If you reach the quarters or semis you’ve done your job, but if you lose before that you’re going to get a danda. “
Tom looks at Ruth, he’s still talking about Jolly. “He used to be able to do 30 sets, but he’s been fooling around lately.”
He addresses both: “Do you have your water? No. Don’t expect me to get it during a tournament. Simon Archer (British doubles player, reputedly with the hardest smash in the world) once came with two shoes, each of a different pair; both for the right foot. I told him sorry, I’m not going to run around for him.”
Tom’s the quintessential pro. He won’t tolerate excuses or a lack of preparation. Turning up for a match is no different from turning up for the IIT entrance exam — you don’t go in without a pen, pencil, eraser, and the rest of it. You don’t turn up at the exam hall and ask other people to lend you their stuff.
The shadows have started. A ’shadow’ is about mimicking the play during a match, without having to hit a shuttle — you imagine the opponent’s return. Each set of shadow is a minute or more, and it’s a minute of pushing your body through a burst of movement — lunges, jumps, crouches. The player has to go the way the coach directs, and Tom has a rapid-fire style of directing, his words shooting out as quickly as the imaginary opponent’s returns:
“Push, down, c’mon push, jump — quick! I want you to come here, yeah?” he points to the service line. “Down, push, jump up, in — quick!”
Ruth’s flagging, and he pulls her up. “You’re no exception, my dear. You think you’re an exception, but you’re not. Get that into your head.”
Off again: “C’mon, c’mon! walking like a soldier, not tired! We agree on that? Good. Down, down! Now off you go.”
These practise sessions are where champions are made. It’s away from the romance of the lights, away from hundreds of fans, that steel is made, out of the furnace of this torture. After the first ten sets of shadow, a player operates purely on will and desire. Here, ‘talent’ is an ephemeral word. Many people wonder why ‘talent’ is hard to come by, imagining that pretty strokes and ’stamina’ are all a champion is made of. Talent is a common commodity in the world of sport. Hunger is not.
“C’mon!” Tom yells. “Walk like a soldier! If you move slowly someone will shoot you down! It’s a battlefield. C’mon, be tough, c’mon, push, up to the net, go go go.”
I’m wondering what kind of shadows the Chinese do. Maybe 50 sets. Maybe more. Maybe they’ve gone beyond the limits so often that they’re numbed to pain. Xie Xingfang, the world no.1, said she felt tired when not practising.
Jolly’s punching his fist when he completes each set. In his mind he’s playing a match, and possibly the third set, last few points. That’s when desire counts, and the last dregs of energy you can summon. That’s what these practise sessions help achieve — to summon from deep down those last reserves of energy often enough. You’ve to make it accessible to the will.
“With a smile!” Tom’s saying. “Because it’s a happy player that wins!”
And then he shouts a long winning scream! “Eeeeeiiiiiiiiyyyyaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Like that! How do you scream when you win a point? How do you push yourself? Scream so those New Zealand birds in the jungles will go wild!”
It’s entertaining, just listening to him.
Later, he tells us he’s even done some DJ-ing so he could make money when he was a student in London.

The latest!

2008-08-09T18:19:00.002+05:30

Here's the latest issue of the badminton magazine I do in my spare time.
GUTS started off as a stray thought. We were at a junior badminton tournament and I happened to mention to Thomas, badminton fanatic and Secretary of ECA Club, that we needed a newsletter to cover the local badminton scene. He took the suggestion seriously and we brought out a four-page newsletter within a week. We published 1,000 copies and distributed them free, at tournaments and sports stores.
Since then, GUTS has grown. It now offers an Indian perspective of international badminton. In my first editorial, I'd promised nothing -- not even the possibility that this could survive beyond a few issues. The promise still holds, for we are dependent on several variables. But it has taught us a lot of things so far, and I daresay the latest issue is the best we've done so far. Let's see where it goes...

Get your own - Open publication

The farmer and the mall

2008-05-24T08:38:00.003+05:30

I had the privilege of listening to Akshara's talk yesterday. This is the report I filed:

PLAYWRIGHT KV Akshara lit up what could potentially have been a dull afternoon panel discussion on globalisation and regional theatre, with a brilliant delineation that showed the problem in sharp focus. The discussion was the opening programme of a Bengali theatre festival at Ranga Shankara on May 23. The discussion and theatre festival were organised by mukhOsh, a group of theatre enthusiasts from Indian Institute of Science. Akshara, as director of the non-urban theatre heartland Ninasam, had some sharp insights to offer.

While the topic ‘Globalisation and Regional Indian Theatre – A Camouflaged Threat’ drew standard responses from the other panellists (critic Samik Bandyopadhyay, theatre veterans Jagdish Raja and Sohag Sen), Akshara cut up the topic, and then constructed an argument that was hard to contest. “I would change the subject a little,” he began, “because ‘globalisation’, ‘regional’ and ‘threat’ and words that globalisation itself uses. I would instead like to talk about ‘The challenges that my kind of theatre faces today’. The second thing is – I would avoid falling into this trap of (being) either optimistic or pessimistic. We need to first understand the nature of the problem.

“Globalisation means different things to different people. In Bangalore, it might mean malls; in my village, globalisation means the difficulties of being a farmer. These inequalities are reflected in the body of a community or body of an individual.”

Akshara noted three ‘pathologies’ that derived out of globalisation’s effect on Kannada theatre: the marginalisation of the body; the trivialisation of text, and the commodification of design. The avenue for the influence of global capital over local culture was television, which had affected local culture in insidious ways. He illustrated the first problem by noting that television had so restricted the performer that only his face was of value; his body had lost its full expressive function because the frame was so tight. It had come to such a pass that one of his theatre students, who was doing some TV work, had told him: “TV requires only my face, my body is irrelevant… I carry my body along only because I can’t leave it behind.”

Even those of the stature of Naseeruddin Shah and Girish Karnad, Akshara noted, had been unable to keep the restrictive influence of television out of their work. “Naseeruddin Shah has stopped using his body, he depends on his voice and his facial expressions, obviously due to his on-screen work… Karnad’s Odakalu Bimba begins on an ambitious scale… it begins as a play, but ends up as a serial. If this can happen to such personalities, what about lesser people?”

The ‘trivialisation of text’ had come about with the triumph of soap psychology, with the dominant theme being those shown on TV soaps: marriage, divorce and counselling. “The poignancy of any moment – like the wife leaving the husband -- has been trivialised.” The third pathology was the commodification of design, where theatre sets had become more efficient and incorporated the glitter of TV sets. TV had taken over the aesthetic of theatre design, to the extent that one did not know what one was buying – whether it was the product or the packaging.

Akshara had not just announced the problem, he had shown the various ways in which it worked. There could be no one response to this problem – the very fact that some groups had stuck to theatre instead of going to television indicated that the resistance was on. “The threat that culture faces is the same that agriculture faces,” Akshara said. “So theatre people can look to farmers to see how they are resisting. That doesn’t mean, of course, that they too should start committing suicide.”
That last remark drew a chuckle from the audience, but Akshara himself was dead serious.

**
I kept thinking of what Akshara had said... the language of globalisation. He obviously sees the TV as a medium that propagates it... but then again, as he said: What is 'global'? What is 'regional'? What sort of value do we confer upon something when we say it is global? When we call something 'regional', as in theatre, do we mean it is not 'global' enough?
I include here excerpts from two interviews, one of Al Gore, and another of a theatre practitioner and TV actor named Kishore Acharya. Their views on TV are interesting:

Most senior theatre personalities believe television has hurt theatre. Being a part of both worlds, how would you look at television?
Kishore: I’ve been doing theatre for nine years, and from what I know, you can’t make a sustainable income from theatre. It’s very difficult, it’s at an amateur level. There are a couple of professional groups who’re doing it full time, but even they’re only able to make ends meet. Even if you get full houses, you will just break even. So in order to sustain the passion, you get into a job. For me, I wanted to do something related to this, instead of going into something totally different.
I don’t know if TV has spoiled theatre, but – from my point of view -- it has given something more for theatre actors. I don’t know how many could’ve made ends meet otherwise.

Is there something about the TV medium that’s anti-theatre, in terms of dulling the taste of the audience?
Kishore: If over a period of time you watch something that’s not so great, you end up enjoying it. Yeah, TV’s been crucial in that sense. It was bound to happen. But TV is not anti-anything. It is just one form of entertainment which reaches people’s homes. You can’t just blame television… We should concentrate more on protecting theatre than blaming TV for it. What can you do to TV? It’s very quick, it’s amazingly spontaneous. If tomorrow theatre clicks, TV will start recording theatre. The only thing that matters to them is that people should watch it.

**
Beppe Severgnini: Some say television is becoming less important.
Al Gore: In the United States we have gone in two generations from zero television-watching to where the average person watches television for four-and-a-half hours every day. What other activity, apart from sleeping, occupies so many hours a day?

What don't you like about television?
It's mainly made by a small group of people. It does not at present have the democratising effect that the print revolution had. That's why I believe in Current TV. It lets people communicate through the most powerful medium over a network that is the most open. I think that it can breathe new life into the democratic process. Too much American television is driven by the lowest common denominator: to simply command a mass audience without paying sufficient attention to the nature and quality of the programmes.

You said that television channels have a morbid obsession with a drunk-driving pop star who hangs out in fashionable clubs, at a time when the issue is climate change and entire populations are still being tortured. True. But isn't it the public that wants to know everything about drunken pop stars, and not very much about torture?
There's no question that there's a serial obsession in Western culture with celebrity news. In the United States, one of the most grotesque examples was the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's autopsy. I think it's a system that feeds on itself. The missing ingredient is to open the windows and doors. Let individuals come in and make more interesting material.

What are we going to see on Current TV?
I don't know By definition, I don't know. It will come from them.

Recently, you pointed out that three-quarters of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and this justified the military intervention in Iraq.
The change in information ecology is responsible for this. Where does the information come from? How is it processed? How is it distributed? Who has a hand in the process? How open is the process? When the printing press was introduced, it began a revolution in access to information that had been controlled by elites. With broadcasting that hasn't happened yet. In the United States, 80 per cent of the campaign-spending goes to 30-second commercials. Is that a coincidence?

Bring On the Recession

2008-05-11T10:58:00.002+05:30

By George Monbiot

I am about to break the last of the universal taboos. I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises…

On Sunday I visited the only UN biosphere reserve in Wales: the Dyfi estuary. As is usual at weekends, several hundred people had come to enjoy its beauty and tranquility and, as is usual, two or three people on jet skis were spoiling it for everyone else. Most economists will tell us that human welfare is best served by multiplying the number of jet skis. If there are two in the estuary today, there should be four there by this time next year and eight the year after. Because the estuary’s beauty and tranquility don’t figure in the national accounts (no one pays to watch the sunset) and because the sale and use of jet skis does, this is deemed an improvement in human welfare…

I now live in one of the poorest places in Britain. The teenagers here have expensive haircuts, fashionable clothes and mobile phones. Most of those who are old enough have cars, which they drive incessantly and write off every few weeks. Their fuel and insurance bills must be astronomical. They have been liberated from the horrible poverty their grandparents suffered, and this is something we should celebrate and must never forget. But with one major exception, can anyone argue that the basic needs of everyone in the rich nations cannot now be met?
…
Is there anything which could sensibly be described as welfare that the rich can now gain? A month ago the Financial Times ran a feature on how department stores are trying to cater for “the consumer who has Arrived”. But the unspoken theme of the article is that no one arrives - the destination keeps shifting. The problem, an executive from Chanel explained, is that luxury has been “over-democratised.” The rich are having to spend more and more to distinguish themselves from the herd: in the US the market in goods and services designed for this purpose is worth £720bn a year. To ensure that you cannot be mistaken for a lesser being, you can now buy gold and diamond saucepans from Harrods. Without conscious irony, the article was illustrated with a photograph of a coffin. It turns out to be a replica of Lord Nelson’s coffin, carved from wood taken from the ship on which he died, and yours for a fortune in a new, hyper-luxury department of Selfridges. Sacrificing your health and happiness to earn the money to buy this junk looks like a sign of advanced mental illness.

Full story: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/10/09/bring-on-the-recession/

Pavlov’s dogs

2008-04-30T09:52:00.002+05:30

My remaining thoughts on the IPL – which has invaded our space so much that it’s impossible to ignore. I hope to avoid further comment on this distasteful subject

SOME of my friends were surprised at my dismissal of the IPL. “But it’s entertaining,” one said.

I’m known to be a spoilsport, a loser and a party-pooper. Yet my disdain for the IPL is not so much because I’m a spoilsport, as that I’m wary of anything that the mass unequivocally endorses.

Doubtless that the IPL is a revolution in cricket history; doubtless too that the sport will never be the same again. I don’t think it will kill Test cricket. I don’t have a problem with the league, or with the players earning lots of money, or even with the cheerleaders.

Speaking from a purely cricketing point of view, I don’t think Twenty20 qualifies to be cricket. It has none of the subtler elements of the sport that are unique to it. Cricket is possibly the one game that can be called a microcosm of life – and that’s because the five-day game carries within it so many elements and possibilities that are absent in most other sports. Time is a Test cricketer.
Where in the Twenty20 game is there any relevance for Time?

When I was in college, a friend invented a game called anti-chess. It was a crazy game – the rule was that the pieces would move like in the traditional game, but instead of plotting to kill, you had to offer yourself for the kill. Meaning that, my goal would be to place every piece in such a position that it was open to attack – and the opponent is not allowed to refuse the offer. The player with the lesser number of pieces on the board would be the winner.
The game resembled a massacre, with each player desperate to offer as many of his pieces for the kill, and would get over in about 10 minutes.

Twenty20 reminds me of that. It is the equivalent of having a football World Cup on penalties only; or a boxing contest between a lightweight and a heavyweight (“It’s entertaining!”). The comparison is not misplaced, for the bowler in a T20 match is much like the lightweight who runs into the heavyweight, with all the doors locked.

But coming to my earlier complaint, about the mass. “People love it!” is another declamation I heard in the IPL’s defence. As if the people, to speak of the mass, have been known to have any intelligent taste.

The problem I have with the IPL is that TV and commercial viability are allowed to decide what’s good and what’s bad; it was almost as if the slick marketing had hypnotized people into believing it was good.

But what’s so good about an IPL match? The conditions are heavily in favour of the batsman – the boundaries are so close that every lofted shot becomes a six. When Brendon McCullum played a savage innings in the first match, everybody hailed it as a masterpiece – but then, within the next fortnight, at least six batsmen had played similar innings. Someone like Yusuf Pathan, who isn’t good enough to be in the ODI team, had scored his 50 in 23 balls. It was absurd – but that’s what the format did – making the batsmen look better than they were.

People had decided the IPL was good because they were told so by Shah Rukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. Essentially, that means that they bought into the hype; they found the IPL interesting not because the cricket was good, but because, after a decade and a half of buying things that Shah Rukh Khan and Tendulkar have been peddling, they found their hard-sell impossible to resist. The comparison with Pavlov’s dog is not out of place. Everybody was talking of how the IPL was good – for the players, for the sponsors, for TV. But this ‘goodness’ is just TRP.

My problem is that this nonsense has become inescapable; it’s on every TV show and on the front page of every paper. Again, commerce has been allowed to determine what’s ‘good’. I have no problem with treating the IPL as just another event, and to leave it at that, but of course then it will not be ‘good’ enough. Its ‘goodness’ accrues from the fact that it’s sellable, and it’s sellable because Bollywood and industry have decided to hitch their wagons to it.

And when they do that, they try to squeeze every drop out of it. Asianet, for instance, has a hit show called ‘Idea Star Singer’, which is a local version of American Idol, the difference being that the judges are musicians/ accomplished singers and can dissect a performer on his musical merit. The show was good enough, and was making plenty of money, but then Asianet got into this vulgar habit of getting the participants to invite their parents on stage and bawling into each other’s shoulders when they lost the contest, etc. They were behaving as if they were diagnosed with cancer or something – and all they had lost was a chance to progress into the next stage. The cameras would show us close-ups of tears in their eyes. It was hideous. The show was sellable on its own terms, but the producers wanted more – they wanted to turn viewers into voyeurs. The Malayalee viewer, who has degraded in his tastes ever since television came into his living room, behaved exactly as the producers wanted him to behave.

The show has become a money-spinner for Asianet. Any marketing chap will look at me strangely if I speak my mind about it… but that’s what’s become of television. The position that “it gives the people what they want” or that “the show is good because it makes money” doesn’t cut it with me. That’s your worldview. I don’t subscribe to it, and I think anyone who subscribes to it is morally sick.

Lalit Modi, the BCCI chap who conceived the IPL, said in an interview that, despite all the peripheral attractions, it was still cricket – that the cricket had not been encroached upon.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Cricket has been encroached upon. There are so many ads in between each over that you wonder if you’re watching a cricket match or a series of ads with some cricket in between.

We keep comparing the IPL to the English Premier League, but we cannot even hope to match the class with which they telecast EPL matches. Ads don’t come up every time the ball goes over the sideline, or when a goal is scored. If it were left to us Indians, that’s how we’d have marketed it And yet the EPL is one of the richest sports leagues in the world. Can’t we conduct the IPL similarly – have the ads, but don’t make them harangue you endlessly?

It’s this relentless bludgeoning of ads, on the back of the IPL, that’s disconcerting. The sport side of IPL, the Twenty20, is nothing to be alarmed by – it’s an extension of the sport we used to play as kids. All of us played Sixteen16.

The IPL is 20 parts cricket and 80 parts pimping -- or ‘advertising’, as they like to call it. And to those who say: “But it’s entertaining”, I can only say: “That’s what the hookers say, too.”

T20 and the prostitution of cricket

2008-04-19T10:46:00.004+05:30

I watched the first Indian Premier League (IPL) match in Bangalore yesterday – a match supposed to be a ‘historic’ event in Indian sport.

The madness has been on for a while. The IPL has created an industry around it, with publications, ad agencies, agents, TV people, and just about everybody getting on the wagon. Yesterday I picked up the Times of India and there it was – a half-page ad neatly butting into the two lead stories.

I wondered whether it was the ad riding piggyback on the lead, or the other way round. It left me with a vague feeling of uneasiness…

I’m not one of those who dismissed the IPL. So many sports in India suffer from a lack of enterprise, and you wonder if they could do with a dose of cricket-style marketing. Nor has cricket been pristine. The prostitution of cricket began with the One Day Internationals, and the T20 is just an extension of that. But something else was playing on my mind…

I missed the glitzy opening ceremony but made it in time for the first ball. The match made absolutely no impression on me… There were plenty of sixes and fours and wickets, and undoubtedly there was skill in each, but the uneasiness was about something else…

It was hollow. That’s what I felt. They were just selling a big lemon to everybody. All this talk about ‘karmayudh’, and all the music videos and TV debates and profound columns later, you wondered… is this all?

A lot of comparisons are made with the English Premier League, but I don’t think this comes close. The EPL – or any other top football league – is the real deal. Despite all the hype, it is still football. But the IPL is not even about cricket… it is a stupid corrupted version of the real thing.

What everybody was selling was the ad spots. They'd wondered where to put all this money, and then they found they could create this Twenty20 thing, and all of them pitched their money on it. The money came first; the sport later. The players were just bit actors in this spectacle, a bunch of clotheshorses around whom some tag had to be put for a price. I was bored out of my wits and left some time before the end, and then I switched on the TV today and they said the match had “rocked the city”. TV had created its own world, and that was unrecognisable from the world I had experienced.

And then it struck me – this could have happened only in India. Nowhere else can so many people be fooled by so few for so little. Whenever there’s money to be made in this country, all the hideous little hustlers close in on the game. We’ve subverted everything – we’ve taken democracy and subverted it; we’ve taken world music and subverted it; we’ve taken cricket and subverted it.

News is officially gossip; half-wits like Navjot Singh Sindhu are allowed to cackle endlessly at prime time; a neandrathal named Denzel O'Connell, who stumbled out of his Ice Age sleep and walked into a TV channel, is allowed to anchor a show. How did we come to this pass? Sure, news has to be cutting edge, but how have we allowed this garbage to substitute news?

You wonder if news follows an event, or creates it. The IPL is every marketer's dream come true, we will now have news that's no different from an ad campaign. Indeed, now an ad campaign is itself news.

I’d attended an international badminton tournament in Europe recently, a sport that has not yet seen the corruption that cricket has. I was delighted at the dignity with which they conducted everything. That was sport at its best, without all the chest-thumping and ridiculous notions of patriotism that are shouted out here. Nations pale before Sport – what is a petty Nation compared to Sport? Why can’t India be mature about its cricket and its movies and its music?

In an age when Shah Rukh (‘Buy Me! I’m for Sale!’) Khan is made out to be a national icon, it’s not surprising that our national pride comes from winning a phony cricket match.

Thoughts…

2008-04-03T19:56:00.004+05:30

The dominant colour of Kerala is white-and-gold. You see it everywhere – most prominently in the attire of Mohini Attam dancers. Gold chains shimmer around the sweaty necks of Panchavadyam drummers, contrasting keenly with the spotless white of their mundus. The elderly matriarch, the white of her dress indistinguishable from the white of her hair, lights the lamp each evening, the glow from the flame shimmering off its polished bronze.

I remember a long interview with MF Husain. He was surprisingly chatty, and I asked him to compare his series of paintings in Rajasthan with that of Kerala.
“They’re opposites,” he said. “In Rajasthan, the landscape is so barren, but the people are so fully dressed you can barely make out their features. Their clothes are brilliantly lit up with colour. In Kerala, the landscape is so lush, but the people are all dressed in white, and the men don’t even cover their torsos. Look at the brown of the skin that contrasts so well with the green background.”

This colour scheme was captured brilliantly in Malayalam movies between the mid-Eighties to the mid-Nineties. Dress wasn’t a distinguishable factor for the protagonist. Mohanlal’s best work, for instance, has come as the average next-door bum, dressed as casually and as unremarkably as any unemployed neighbourhood guy. He had no need to dress differently to stand out as the hero. That was accomplished by dialogue, characterisation, etc.

It all changed in the late Nineties. To track Mohanlal is to track the Kerala male of the last 20 years. He suddenly acquired heroic abilities. The clothes became more pan-Indian, the colours louder. From the neighbourhood bum he became the cash-rich don who returns home to seek revenge.

The colours of Kerala had changed.

When I attended my cousin’s wedding last year, I was surprised to see the kind of sarees the women wore. All of us went to the nearby temple in white, but when they got ready to attend the ceremony, they put on their Kanchi silk sarees. Colour has never disappointed me as much.

The attire of the young has changed. I’ve been in football matches where players have all turned up in mundus. One is hardly likely to find that now.

Look at any of the serials on TV, and the mundu is a rare sight, restricted to only exaggerated versions of folk stories or mythologicals. The visuals TV depict could be of any Indian home. There is nothing to suggest that this is Kerala.

For a long time the charm of Kerala was its bareness, its proximity to the historical age. Nature is mostly as uninterrupted now as it must have been. Clothing styles have only just begun to change. No garment can remain as primordial as the mundu – it is just a length of white cloth. That’s why it’s easier to shoot a historical or mythological movie in Kerala than any other part of India.

The nature of the mundu is such that it absolves identity. Consider, for instance, the Arab attire. There is nothing to suggest in the dress, unless it is expensively embroidered, that one man is rich and the other poor. It hides all physical inadequacies. That is the case, to some extent, with the mundu as well. A clean, starched mundu hides your true identity, because there is nothing to measure you by. I suspect that this absolving of identity is why young people don’t wear it any more – it kills style. Style is identity.

But that is also why it is liberating to wear it.

Where I come from

2008-03-27T17:25:00.005+05:30

Summer. People talk of the old days and the cool climes of Bangalore, but I was never enamoured of the city. Bangalore meant busywork, the tyranny of school, and I was happy to get out. There was one place always beckoning – we called it ‘native place’, which was where our parents came from. One doesn’t hear the term anymore.

Peruvemba is an obscure place in the district of Palakkad, Kerala. It is a nothing place, really, and nothing ever happens there except an annual temple festival. The summers are searingly hot. The air carries with it the devil’s breath. Everything is still except for the occasional breeze. But we loved it all.

When we were little the place did not even have electricity. I remember the kerosene lanterns; the quietness that stole in after sunset; the winds that rustled among the bamboo groves. It was scary, fascinating. You could step out of the house and look around for miles. There was nothing but fields all around, fields and coconut groves, and a railway track in the distance. Some distance away was an abandoned house, and one always imagined sounds inside.

The days were wet with sweat. Grandpa would narrate stories from the Ramayana or Mahabharata, stories that didn’t seem so fantasy-like because you could relate to them somehow, because you had nothing to do in the afternoons but lie on the verandah and look into the open fields and watch the clouds and imagine there was another world beyond what we saw. Mythology wasn’t mythology; it was the story of the land. The ponds and trees had stories woven around them, and people said even the well in our yard had spirits inside that came out at night.

It was a place we longed to visit each summer.

And then Grandpa died and we moved out.

But I still return as often as I can.

And when I do there’s a strange yearning inside.

And I wonder what kids do these days in summer, because they don’t talk about where they come from anymore. They’ve seen more of the world, more of Bangkok and Pattaya and Singapore, and that’s not a bad thing. But have they felt the same tingle of revisiting a place that they came from; village elders asking you about stories of the city; neighbours ushering you into their homes and treating you to lunch or dinner just because they were once playmates of your folks.

Marking Time by the hoot of the distant train; sleeping on trees; catching fish in towels; feeling the first flush of dawn; long days watching the lone farmer in the field (no teachers, thankfully, to talk of homework); listening to the wind whistle through bamboo groves.

There’s more to a place than the sights.

On the wing of a dream

2008-02-18T15:49:00.002+05:30

FOUR thousand feet up in the air and a bird’s eye-view of Nandi Hills. It can’t get any weirder than this.

There’s the fort wall, and there’s Tipu Drop. It all looks so… so tame from up here. So does the hill; the cliffs don’t look as awe-inspiring.

There’s a dream-like quality to all of this; and I’m not sure I’m out of the dream yet. I was hanging in mid-air, more than 4,000 ft above the ground, yawing under a canopy. ‘Paragliding’, they call it, and one’s expected to whoop when one talks about it.

Sure, it’s fun, and slightly scary, but it’s all in the realm of the possible. These are things one can do for a price. One can do almost anything for a price… and paragliding around Nandi Hills has novelty to it, but it’s novelty that can be bought.

Except that there are memories. Long ago, when I was somebody else, a kid of 15, and standing close to Tipu Drop, wondering what lay beyond. You get that feeling while standing at the edge of a cliff. What if you could take off in the air and watch the hill from there?

I was telling Kiran, my pilot who was strapped behind me, about that day. Kiran was the one managing to keep the paraglider afloat on the back of wind currents and thermals, and he said, yes, now you’re living that dream.

The view isn’t spectacular. The terrain has a dusty-brown nondescriptness to it; the only variables being the hillside where trees and thorny bushes have managed to thrive. The plains below are uniformly devoid of tree cover, but you can spot a few eucalyptus groves and a couple of muddy ponds. To the right is Kalavara Betta, and that brings back memories again, of a trek in the night and freezing on a rock as thick winds blew all night. Kalavara Betta, where one may find the remains of a fort.

The paraglider took off from the North-West face. The pilot waits for a strong headwind before running into it and taking off. You clear the cliff in five seconds, you feel panic; and then as you lift off it feels faintly normal. You hang in the air and watch the hill, and then you realise it’s not as easy as it seems; the pilot is fighting to maintain control, using the strings in his left and right hand to manipulate direction and lift. We swing towards the hill – for a moment I’m wondering if we will run into the electric cables, but we lift well clear of it while people below holler at us.

Kiran manages to find a thermal and we start rising. The hill gradually moves away, further and further off, until I can barely make out the fort walls. We’re sitting in mid-air some 4,000 ft above the ground, absolutely still. This is the closest you can get to flying; the simplest contraption there is to fly. In a plane you’re distanced from the action. Here you’re part of it all, part of the landscape, feeling the wind and the sun, and yet you feel strangely detached, like some stray spirit, like some memory from a dream that refuses to go away.

It’s all tied in with the memories. The fascination with a historical monument is that you realise that, 400 or 500 or even a 1,000 years ago, some character – a king, a conqueror – stood at the very place that you do, and you wonder what went through his mind. With Tipu, especially, there is that element of tragedy and betrayal. A warrior caught between an overwhelming enemy and doubts about his own army, helpless as he watched his kingdom fall. You wonder what he saw. It must have all been so different. The land below must have been dense jungle. Now it’s all arid brown. The ancients were luckier when it came to Nature and Beauty. But not even Tipu could have had this view of his fort.

We navigate away from the hill. We’re above the fields, now all bare after the cropping. A woman walks through. Three children play cricket, and shout at us. We circle while Kiran chooses his landing spot, and then we cruise in, and again it’s briefly scary, but we land well. A few village kids are already running to us. Minutes later, a crowd gathers. “You flew down from the top of the hill?” asks a man. “How was it?”

What could I say? Just that, long, long ago a 15-year-old wondered at something, and now that curiosity has been satisfied.

Shoot

2008-02-10T21:44:00.000+05:30

I don't know what it was about me that made Asif suggest I act in his 3-minute film. I reckon it had to do with me looking rather wild and dishevelled. I'm not much of an actor-type, but I have great respect for Asif, and as he said there would be no dialogues, only me looking like a desperado, I didn't hesitate. Hell, he will be a well known filmmaker in a couple of years, and then I can tell everybody I acted in his film.
The shoot turned out pretty crazy. I was in Bombay for two days, and I met Asif the evening of the first. I thought a 3-min film couldn't take more than a couple of hours. The shoot started around 3 the second day, and then it was going to be a battle against fading light, and my own fears of how I was going to catch the flight back to Bangalore the next day. The flight was at 8, which meant I had to leave Arch's house at 6... well, we shot in three different locations. First, Asif's place at Nerul, but he didn't have a fridge and almirah, so we went to Chembur. The light there was insufficient, so we had to shoot at Arch's house in Vashi. We reached around 10, I guess, and somehow managed to wrap things by 1.30. I barely had enough time to sleep. The next morning was equally crazy. The Washi Bridge had the biggest jam I've seen in a long time; we were stuck for nearly an hour, but the driver somehow got me to the airport at 7.30.
Anyway, here's the film. Copy-paste it into your browser. And don't send any nasty comments.

http://www.filmaka.in/newmessage.asp?id=2009&Page=2&Keyword=

Btw, Asif had made another film, starring Arch and Dinu. Here it is:
http://www.filmaka.in/premiumshorts.asp?contestid=17&id=1899&Keyword=

The politics of Identity

2008-01-25T18:19:00.000+05:30

I met Prof S Settar last week. Courteous, dignified man... a delight to meet a scholar as accommodating as him. I got William, our photographer, to shoot from this angle because shots of scholars and intellectuals are usually in a study, with books in the background.

Excerpts from our conversation:

It has been ten years since the Indian Council of Historical Research regional centre in Bangalore was set up. Do you feel it has achieved its objectives?
I have mixed feelings. One of the reasons we brought ICHR to Bangalore was to see that activity and scholarship in south India receive more attention. Similarly another unit was taken by me to Guwahati, to see that north-eastern scholars there get special attention. But I’m not sure how far the goal with which it was started is being fulfilled now. The ICHR council which is the basic policy-making body is still lopsided in its constitution. There are more people in and around Delhi, and those who come from obvious centres such as Calcutta, Patna, and one or two from the south.

What are the reasons for this disparity?
In electing experts to the council, I do not think the ministry exercises serious thought. It appears as if the scholars are hand-picked. That is not representation. Representation should strictly be on the basis of scholarship. From this point of view, I’m not happy... The regional centres should not be mere outposts. There should be some kind of involvement. We do get some activities, but they are of a minor nature. I do not think the regional centres are meaningfully structured.

Is this why the south has been poorly represented in narratives of Indian history?
Well, that brings in another question, of synthesis of history. This is bequeathed to us by the colonial writers. After all, writing the history of an entire country is new to us. When an attempt was made to write on the history of India, what got place in it was interesting – many of them were accidental. For example, when you stumble upon a body of sources for the first time, importance was given to them. And what was near and familiar to us – like the Mughals -- got prominence. Not Vijayanagar history, simply because of proximity of place and time. These are the accidents that happen in the creation of history.
Secondly, when national history was written, events that promoted the national idea attracted attention. So Jallianwala Bagh and 1857 are important, and for the nationalists immediate history, such as the occupation by the British or French became more important than occupation by the Mughals, or Turks, or Afghans.
The south presented several challenges; among these were the languages. Prakrit and Sanskrit could be understood all over the country. When it comes to south, if you don’t know ancient Tamil, you can’t write about Tamil Nadu.

At the seminar you wondered at the phenomenon by which local history, as that of Bengal, becoming the history of India…
During the national movement, Bengalis played an important role. But it was one-way traffic, it never got reversed. Even today, what goes into Bengali language from outside is very little, while what comes out is enormous.
Secondly, the advantage they had – they were lucky to be identified with the national milieu, and whatever they wrote about themselves became a matter of importance to everyone. When a Bengali writes about his local history, like Partition in 1905, it becomes the history of the country. When Raja Ram Mohun Roy argues against Sati, it becomes social reform movement of the country – and that’s not true, because Sati was certainly not prevalent across the country! So when they write the history of their region, it becomes national history, but when I write on my region, it’s considered local history!

Our mainstream media does not seem to have an idea of history beyond the Amar Chitra Katha style – as seen in the popular mythological serials on TV. There seems to be no historical context.
It disturbs me immensely. Our movies and serials have no relevance to the context.
I saw one film on the Kadambas… the first thing that was repulsive was the palace of the Kadambas… They bring in pillars of the Wodeyars and these pillars do not fit in there. And the king wears shoes which are Maratha in origin, which came into popular usage only in the 15th or 16th century. No research was done.
We would like to crown everybody who is a figure of authority, forgetting that all of them did not wear a crown. For example, the kings of Vijayanagar never wore crowns. They had a conical cap, because they believed the crown was the privilege of the god Pampa.

Is this an a-historical generation? Students are mostly looking at an IT career and are hardly interested in history or culture.
If you take the modern generation, it appears as if they’re completely uprooted from their culture, that they’re not even conscious of who their ancestors were. That happens at certain stages in society.
But what happens with the NRIs is quite different. They are eager to discover. You can fool the NRIs with a pill of culture, because they’re in need of it.
My own children who were uprooted from that tree, my daughter is feeling bad about it. They don’t have an answer when their children ask them about Deepavali. When you’re alienated, you start exploring your identity.

‘No difference between writing accounts and poetry’

2008-01-21T18:07:00.000+05:30

Ninasam, Karnataka’s prized theatre institute, has fascinated theatre enthusiasts not just for its productions or theatrical expertise. Ninasam was an extension of its founder and Magsaysay award winner KV Subbanna’s philosophy of finding the world in one’s village – the result is a theatre institute that ranks among the finest in India, at the end of a long road from Heggodu in Sagar taluk. Akshara, acclaimed writer and Subbanna’s son, is the Director of Ninasam. A bearded, smiling figure fond of his betel leaves and arecanut, Akshara opens up to Dev S Sukumar on his world and his father’s influence on it:

Coming from an urban milieu, this looks like such an idyllic world. Is the model perfect? Or are there problems even within this idyllic world?
It cannot be perfect in any sense. It looks idyllic to you because there are forests here, greenery, the population is less… so it seems idyllic. But whatever problems are elsewhere, can also be found here.

But Ninasam is a cultural centre. Doesn’t the cultural ambience negate the possibility of social problems?
No, not at all. Problems cannot be solved like that. The relative absence of poverty here has helped culture flourish. But this is not a strong analysis. When we tour Karnataka, we have the highest number of shows in the most economically backward districts, like Raichur and Bijapur. In the economically well-developed regions of Chikmagalur or Hassan, we have fewer shows. So you cannot make a 1:1 equation. Broadly speaking, whatever economic problems you find across the state, you find here as well.

Doesn’t theatre offer solutions to social problems?
Theatre cannot be a direct solution. Theatre or any art can only sensitise people to problems.

So are people here more sensitive to social problems than elsewhere?
You cannot make a broad statement like that – perhaps relatively they are more sensitive. There are very few theatre or music groups relative to the population. In the last 20 years, after the introduction of television, it has reversed all the gains of theatre.

You must have had an unusual childhood, being Subbanna’s son…
It was a normal childhood. Nothing extraordinary. We were a bit fortunate because we were fairly well off. I was the only child, and my memories… I was introverted, the result of being by myself; I would think more than talk.

Having so many intellectuals visiting your home, did you mature earlier than your friends? Was there a danger of losing your childhood?
I think that happened to a small extent. I didn’t analyse myself that much. All sorts of people would come home, and listening to them no doubt influenced me. I started reading books when I was very young.

Did you face any pressure of being Subbanna’s son, of having to live up to the reputation he built?
The pressure was of people recognising me as his son, irrespective of whatever I did. But whether or not your father is a famous name, it’s difficult for any son to come out of his influence. In extraordinary cases, you are faced with special circumstances, like what happened to me. I chose various ways to counter it.

Especially after you became a writer, would people compare your work with his?
That comparison didn’t happen because I worked with him on many projects in the beginning. I collaborated with him in the early days, so the transition was smoother. There was no break. In my case, with the exception of a four-year period, I was with him throughout. There was no generation gap. As a writer, it is not possible to delineate our work because we travelled together. In some sense, I have done things even he has not done. You cannot draw a balance sheet between his work and mine.

What are the challenges in running Ninasam?
The challenges Ninasam faces are the same that our society faces. Consumerism, the tendency to measure everything in terms of money, is growing now. Or the intolerance to people of other castes or religions, that’s another recent development, you see that in these regions as well; or the destruction of the natural environment, pollution… these are the challenges of Ninasam.

-- but the day-to-day administration of Ninasam, like funding --
No, all of that is included in these everyday challenges. Now, slowly, funding of art has shifted from government to private bodies. For Ninasam that’s a challenge. We have to depend on government funding, because we cannot be big enough for a private company. They don’t have the mass market here. So we have to look at philanthropic organisations.

Is the Ninasam model self-sustaining?
You cannot survive if you are not self-sustaining. On one level, we have tried to be self-sustaining. But to what extent? If you want a theatre group only for your village, you can be self-sustaining. But if you want to have a theatre training centre, you cannot. In that sense, no centre can be self-sustaining. No high school in Karnataka can survive by itself. No primary school, or engineering college, no medical college. In Sagar taluk there are 20 high schools, none are self-sustaining. So why is a theatre training centre expected to be self-sustaining? All training institutes run on subsidies, so why is a theatre centre expected to depend on itself? People do not think of this at all. When you run a training centre, you have to pay salaries and run the course for a year, and you cannot charge students high fees.
Ninasam has two kinds of activities. The Tirugaata (repertory) and its theatre training centre comprise one half – both are professional activities, where it’s not possible to be 100 per cent self-sustaining. The other half – like the culture course, art workshops, for that we use our own resources.
To compare -- a year’s budget for National School of Drama is Rs 18 crore. Our budget is Rs 18 lakh. We have able to run our programme at a hundredth of the budget of NSD. We have tried to minimise our dependence on external funding.

What’s the next step in theatre, for you?
I talked of sensitisation. We have to conduct continuous workshops for undergraduate students. One area of concern is the cultural vacuum of PUC and undergraduate students, and that’s a formative stage in a person’s life. In the last four-five years, we have addressed this group. We need to intensify those projects. We have done around 150 workshops, across the state.

What has your experience been with these workshops?
There is a great hunger for art and literature in that age group, but we have given them only TV for entertainment. Most of our current problems are due to TV, whether it is consumerism or communalism.

As Director of Ninasam, you must have quite a lot on your plate. How do you manage to balance your writing and administrative duties?
I treat it on a day-to-day basis. I complete whatever is urgent. I don’t schedule anything. During the culture course, I set aside all my books and spend all my time writing correspondence and phone calls.

Does administration get on your nerves?
If you consider it enjoyment, you can take pleasure out of it. There is no difference between writing your accounts and writing poetry.

Vinayaka to Ganesha

2007-12-27T10:04:00.000+05:30

“The current image of Ganesha as the ‘remover of obstacles’ is actually a complete transformation which evolved over eight centuries from his earlier image, under the epithet of Vighnaraja or Vinayaka, as the ‘creator of obstacles’! From the fifth century BC until the third century AD, Vinayaka is actually depicted in mythology as a malevolent spirit, part of a pantheon needing to be pacified in order to avoid personal ills. As historian of religion GS Ghurye states, ‘this last problem (i.e. transformation) defies a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation’. I think the explanation may be quite simple, however. In earlier times, the wild elephant would have been a threat to human life and to crops over most of the subcontinent; the Gajasastra, for instance, describes the ravages of elephants in the kingdom of Anga. With the gradual elimination of wild elephants over the Indo-Gangetic basin by Aryan settlers, and the growing significance of elephants in armies or simply as beasts of burden, there was no further need to consider elephants as evil spirits; in fact, the very opposite would now have been true. Vinayaka, the malevolent elephant-headed spirit and creator of obstacles was, therefore, transformed into Ganesha, the benevolent elephant-headed deity who had the power to remove all obstacles. It is interesting to note that the worship of the benevolent Ganesha arose among the elite, who were the least likely to suffer from elephant depredation, and was only grudgingly accepted by the common people, many of whom, at the interface of jungle and cultivation, would have faced a threat from the elephants.”

From
Elephant Days and Nights
Ten Years With the Indian Elephant
by Raman Sukumar

The Reluctant Indian

2007-12-15T08:46:00.000+05:30

I haven't been getting newspapers at home the last two months. Why should I make my mind a sewer where rats like Deve Gowda and Narendra Modi and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee scurry around? It was too mentally taxing to read of all the atrocities in this country early every morning. I don't believe I have missed anything of value.

Newspapers try to make things cheery. They print brave stories of 'people changing the world', of the Sensex touching this figure or that; of a brave new India. The Times of India has this finger on the pulse -- it addresses our anger, our pride. It exploits our need as Indians to be reasssured; it takes on the task of asking questions to public officials on our behalf. Still, I get the feeling ToI is a product of retarded minds -- it is the incessant babble of the unintelligent.

And I refuse to make my mind a gutter.

...

I keep a diary in which I railed recently against all that was happening in India. I had titled it 'Why I'm reluctant to call myself an Indian', and among various things, had written about India being "an abject failure, a broken nation and a failed state"... due to, among other things, "the everyday molestation, the everyday rape, the everyday humiliations to the physically and mentally handicapped... We have made India unlivable for everyone but the physically and mentally and economically sound, the middle and upper classes. Those who defend India are from this class. The others just trudge on."

It went on in this fashion. The item was written after Nandigram, and I was so pissed I wrote hoping BB and NM would be arrested in Saudi Arabia for deviant sexual behaviour, and sentenced to 100 lashes on their naked bums, and that they could kiss each other's ass in jail to relieve the pain.

But Jesus! We live in a police state, and if this entry is ever found out, I'll be the one given this sentence. This is not as remote as it seems, for a manager with a bank was raided at midnight by 'intelligence' officers for (apparently) posting something derogatory about a Maratha warrior. He spent 20 days in jail without even knowing what he had done, and then they set him free because they realised they had got his IP address wrong.

You get the point. The state spends its energies pursuing two-bit internet idiots, while mass murderers are on the loose planting bombs everywhere.

So I've given up this illusion of India being a failed state and all that, and have decided that it's the best place in the world. I'm all for democracy, for Deve Gowda. How bad can he get? In a nation dominated by hustlers and whore-mongers, he must have the Right Stuff to have become Prime Minister and the chief whiz plotting the destiny of a state. All rise.

Global village

2007-11-21T18:59:00.000+05:30

A thick mist hangs over Ninasam.

The trees are just ghostly shapes in this haze.

Yesterday the Yakshagana performance went late into the night. We couldn’t handle it any longer, so we returned to our room and crashed like dead wood. The show must’ve gotten over this morning.

A tiring day yesterday. Setting off from Bangalore three hours past schedule, driving all day, braving a bombed-out 20km stretch before Shimoga, reaching Ninasam by night, and hearing people talk in that laid back, oldworldly drawl you don’t get to hear anymore.

The darkness was just descending and the lights had begun to pop up. At the verandah of the office, six or seven men and a couple of women sat with legs folded on bamboo benches, listening to the latest arrival from Bangalore.

It was homecoming for Ekbal Ahamed. It was here that he was introduced to theatre, by his guru, Magsaysay Award winner KV Subbanna. After his graduation he drove an autorickshaw for a livelihood, and did theatre in his spare time. That was nearly 30 years ago. Now he is considered Kannada theatre’s most inventive director.

Ekbal was due to address a Yakshagana conference at an ‘alternative’ school called Hongirana, some 3km from here, and he was supposed to talk about modern approaches to theatre. The talk was scheduled at 3pm yesterday, which meant we had to leave Bangalore latest by 5 in the morning. We did leave, but at 8, and by then Ekbal was steaming from his ears. “I kept telling you guys,” he kept saying. “What made you so late?”

But that is another story.

Of Rama and contemporary politics

2007-11-14T21:02:00.000+05:30

I just read a brief ethnography of the Ramayana. I’ve never been pro-temple at the ‘disputed’ site… as my friend Kunal says, maybe they should just build a public toilet there. To destroy a historical monument for a mythological character is criminal.

The political debate around Rama has descended into the absurd. Consider the DMK, who see Rama as a representative of Aryan supremacy over the Dravidian people... they used to hold public events where they garlanded a picture of Rama with slippers!

Also, a friend who likes to call Rama “a bastard – for ditching his wife” might find something of interest here. :)

What the Right and Left like to propagate is a homogenous view of history and culture, which is dangerous. The more you look around, the more you realise history is a messy affair, hard to consolidate into one unified narrative. Hindus are often vulnerable to anti-Islam rhetoric because the early Muslim invaders had desecrated their temples; but look even further back and you will see the Shaivaites and Vaishnavites were desecrating each other’s temples.
So here are some points to ponder about the Ramayana:

- There is no ONE Ramayana. The Valmiki Ramayana is essentially derived from earlier folk narratives, the common elements of which might be called the Ramakatha. Each of the folk narratives might individually be called a Ramayana.
- Even the Valmiki Ramayana consisted probably of sections (‘kandas’) II to VI, the rest being later additions.
- In Buddhist literature, episodes of the Ramayana may be found in Jataka stories in different form.
- In the Dasharatha Jataka, Rama and Sita are brother and sister who marry after they return from exile!
- In the Sambula Jataka, the hero suffers from leprosy and exiles himself. His wife is kidnapped by a demon but saved by Indra. She cures him of leprosy but her fidelity is suspected.
- In the Anamaka Jataka, the princess is kidnapped by a Naga. The prince, assisted by a bird and some monkeys, builds a bridge to the island and rescues her. She undergoes a test by fire to prove her chastity.
- In the Jain text Padmacharitam, Rama and Ravana are zealous Jains. The Vanaras are a tribe of men with a monkey totem.
- The contention that Ramayana propagates Aryan (North Indian) domination over the Dravidian (South Indian) culture (as Karunanidhi’s DMK is proud to state) is ridiculous. “The concentration of the rakshasa in the Vindhyan region would perhaps identify them archaeologically with the Chalcolithic cultures and the Black-and-red ware people of the second and early first millennium BC.”

Some conclusions of the author (RT):
- “There is an efflorescence in the composition of the Ramayana during this (first millennium AD) period. Many of these composed at the end of the first millennium carry a strong stamp of Vaishnava sectarian positions. They reflect the deep influence of the avatara theory and the deification of Rama as Vishnu’s avatara.”
- “An apparent anomaly in the text relates to the question of sudra ascetics. In the Ayodhya-kanda we are told that the young ascetic whom Dasharatha had shot by mistake and whose blind parents then cursed him, was a sudra… yet, in the Uttara-kanda Rama goes out of his way to kill a sudra ascetic because of his audacity at daring to be an ascetic…”
- “… the cults of the mountain and forest gods and the fertility goddesses were subordinated to the deities of the kingdom.”
- “One wonders whether the description of the fabulous city of Lanka was in any way a vague folk memory of the rich cities of the Bronze Age past.”
- “The historical theme of the Ramayana is that of the triumph of the kingdom over the forest or the condition of exile.”

Why did an Indian epic become a sacred text? After all, in Greece the Illiad or Odyssey never became one.

India, dying

2007-11-10T18:29:00.000+05:30

Any country in which this happens is dying. We are a country of rapists and perverts. We should just stop this farce of talking about the nation and culture and development and Sensex and the rest of it… and just bury ourselves. We’d be doing everyone a big favour.

You see the signs everywhere. There was a conspiracy of silence when the Tehelka story broke on the Gujarat administration working its genocide. And no, the Left shouldn’t feel so morally upbeat – it is presiding over its own genocide in Nandigram.

The Goddess of Rubbish

2007-10-24T21:33:00.000+05:30

Gadi Mari: A diety for all the rubbish in village homes; venerated with brooms and old clothes, taken outside the village each year and left by the roadside.
Thoreau talks of a tradition among (American) Indian villages where they burn all the stuff in their homes every year -- a form of renewal.
I heard of something like this in my village too.
Is this our remembered heritage?

Conversations

2007-10-12T21:47:00.000+05:30

Being a features writer enables you the privilege of meeting great minds. As a born hero-worshipper, I’m more susceptible to be impressed than my more cynical peers, but still…

T Prasanna: “Have we thought of cultural ecology? There is an ecological process in culture also. If all live performers are taken by television, what will happen to culture?”
(Prasanna is founder of the left-wing theatre movement Samudaya)

Sunu Abraham, Mr India 1987: “I keep telling my trainees – the gym is a medium through which you’re going to understand your body and master your mind. I left the physical aspects of this long ago. Now it’s about attaining a pure mental state, about focussing on what you’re doing right now.”

CR Simha: “Kailasam’s life had become legend. He was an eccentric genius. There were so many anecdotes and legends about him… you wonder at the man – a man like him existed in Bangalore?!
"He was a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society. And he was the son of the Chief Justice of the High Court. A man like that, and he left his house, wife and two daughters, and chose the life of a vagabond, staying with other people, living in a garage, in Bombay, in Mysore… writing plays, giving shows, lecturing… He could’ve lived like a prince, but left in pursuit of what made him happy.
"He was the original Bohemian, the original Hippie, but he was rooted in his culture, tradition, but as a person he chose to be rootless.”
(Simha is best known for Typical TP Kailasam, his one-man show on the genius playwright Kailasam

Arvind Bhat, international badminton player: If I tell myself ‘cool, cool’, it happens. It’s an ongoing process. So even when I’m going to a shop, I need to keep telling myself to relax, not to hurry things up. If I hurry things up, it never works. I think I’ve found the right balance between being cool and aggressive.

Dr HS Gopal Rao, epigraphist: “The verse declares that the subject is none other than Madhava (Lord Krishna). If you deconstruct Pulakeshi’s name, Poley stands for poley-mane, or birth-room, and keshi stands for Keshava. That is, the one who was born as Keshava (Krishna). You see, Pulakeshi, like Krishna, had murdered his uncle before taking the throne.”
(On his controversial interpretation of an inscription of Badami, which (he says) refers to Karnataka’s most renowned king, Pulakeshi-II)

The Forever Bike

2007-09-27T23:04:00.000+05:30

Jawas and Yezdis have almost become extinct after Japanese competition wiped them out. But Dev S Sukumar discovers that a community of riders has grown around the legend

ONE SUNDAY in July, a group of 11 bikers attempted to keep a dying Socialist legacy alive by riding from Bangalore to Nandi Hills and back. They hung around for a while near the parking lot, sharing cigarettes and old tales, and then they rode back. It was World Jawa-Yezdi Day, 8 July 2007. The bikers were from the Yezdi Jawa Owners Club of India.

"Man, you'll never find a mention of the Jawa in any American literature on bikes," said one of the bikers over his beer after the ride.
"Why?"
"Because it comes from Czechoslovakia. Communist country, you know?"
"Man, those f***ing Americans."

They'd gotten together early that morning outside Windsor Pub on Thimmaiah Road for a ride to commemorate the love of their lives. Jawa riders all over the planet were celebrating more spectacularly, but in India the scene was muted because the Jawa and its more recent avatar, the Yezdi... well, have you seen one of those lately?

THE PROBLEM with owning a Jawa or Yezdi, of course, is that their maker, the Ideal Jawa (India) Ltd, stopped production in 1995, before shutting down in 2003. When the company began operations in Mysore in 1961, it was the largest production project outside Czechoslovakia. The 'Jawa' brand was produced until 1968, when the collaboration agreement expired. Since then, the company started rolling out the 'Yezdi' brand. 'Yezdi' was a transcription of the Czech word 'jezdi', which meant 'going, or running' -- a word commonly uttered by mechanics after they'd finished testing the bikes. During its best years in the 60s and 70s, the company rolled out an average 30,000 vehicles a year.

The market for Yezdi (‘Forever Bike, Forever Value’) plummeted after Japanese companies such as Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki entered the market in the 80s. The new bikes were sleeker, lighter, and offered three times the mileage of the Yezdi and Bullet. As petrol prices soared, the only takers for the heavier bikes were biking enthusiasts.

Nevertheless, these very issues have bred a close bond among the bikers. There is an unstated respect for another man who rides a Yezdi. He is one of the tribe -- a tribe that will gradually become extinct. A Yezdi rider will check out another Yezdi rider on the road... for they must necessarily share a few qualities, like their indifference to the low mileage and their regard for a primordial machine.

But there are things about the bike nobody will put into words... a mixture of emotions, nostalgia, rhythm, feel. It has to do with things you can't explain... like your first cigarette.

THE RIDERS of the club are a small, loosely-knit bunch. They have met at garages and been on long rides together, sharing a love for the road and for automobiles. Although there are several biking clubs in the country, the Yezdi club is perhaps the only one that has no divisions, no breakaway groups. The Bangalore chapter has allied itself to the national club, and nearly all of its members are part of the online community.

The online forum was started in August 2001 in Bombay, which has an active biking population, but the number of Yezdis is greater down south, particularly in Bangalore, Mysore and Kerala. Several Bangalore riders were part of the forum, but things got going only after a meet was called at Cubbon Park in October 2002. Two runs were organised -- one to Nandi Hills, and another to Coorg. Then Venkat (‘Wanky’) Ramana, one of those responsible for the Cubbon Park meet, got a job in Bombay and met up with the crowd there. Soon after, the first all-India meet ('Endurance-2004') was called. Held in Goa, it attracted 15 riders; the Bombay group took three days to ride through pouring rain to reach their destination; the meet was on the beach, and then they took three more days to ride back. The next all-India meet, E-2005, was to Leh; they chose a route that had never been traversed by bikes.

The Bangalore chapter meets for rides occasionally; a ride is never announced until a couple of days before the day. "There is a feeling in the club that if we plan a ride, it won't happen," says Wanky. "So we call everybody a day or two before the event... but then, we are unlike the Bullet clubs, which plan each event in detail. As a club, we don't have too many rules and regulations. We believe in freedom."

The Brotherhood. "We're such a close community, you could go to Kerala and call up the Yezdi guys there, and they'll help out," says Lateef Rameez, who owns a Roadking. When Wanky got a job in Bombay, he mailed the club and when he landed (looking gentlemanly in a suit), there was a cavalcade of Jawas and Yezdis waiting for him at the airport, all the brothers in riding jackets. When a brother in Bombay got married, the couple's car was followed by a full escort of 20 riders.

This cordiality has seen the online forum become a community that, as Wanky proudly says, needs no moderator. And since the medium of communication is e-mail, their identities have morphed into something else... there are some colourful ones... Venkat Ramana is Wankster/ Wanky; Mandar Sukhtankar is Chief Big Bull; Abhilash Pananghat is Happy; Oniel Coutinho is Totem Pole. Then there are Laughin Tree (Ajai Fernando), Big Wind from South (Praveen Benny), Wily Coyote (Arjun AR) and English Nurse.

Members of the tribe meet at garages whose mechanics are Yezdi specialists. There are around ten such garages in Bangalore, all of them are listed online. Most of the riders relate to each other as biking buddies and rarely meet outside a run, but they share a common sentiment about books and movies. Robert Pirsig's cult book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a universal favourite among bikers, and the Yezdi club is no different. The other favourite is Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries.

The Yezdi club is loosely structured, but there are several others that have plenty of conditions if you want to sign up. This phenomenon, of bike clubs turning into cults, is a recent one in India. The cult requires at least one basic parameter for qualification as a member; it is a way of distinguishing yourself from everybody else, and in the larger entity of the club, each individual seeks to establish his identity. Other bike clubs have a problem of restricting membership, but in the Jawa/ Yezdi society, there is no fear of attracting a disproportionate number of new members. The closure of the company has ensured that.

OUT ON the six-lane Devanahalli Road, David Nikuri's opening up. The throaty rumble of his Yezdi Roadking catches on, there's nothing like it on these roads. He's a bike afficionado, he's got 11 Jawas and Yezdis and can't seem to get enough of those, too. As he says: "You'll find me only in two places -- at work or in the garage."

David's been on these rides for a while now, he was one of the earliest members of the Bangalore chapter of the Yezdi club. Bikers generally fall into one of three categories -- the speed freaks, the commuters and the distance riders. The Enfield Bullet is the vehicle of choice for most long-distance riders, not just because its 350-cc engine is the most powerful of all Indian bikes, but it has a big, macho image to go with it. Bullet riders also don't have to scrounge for spares. I ask David why he prefers the Yezdi to the Bullet.

"They're different," he shouts above the roar of the wind and his Roadking. "I had a Bullet, but I gifted it to my dad. The Bullet is more powerful, it has a 350-cc engine; the Yezdi's is only 250-cc. But riding is not about power, you know. It's about feel. No other bike gives you the same feel as a Yezdi."

He falls silent for a while, even as the fields flash by. "The engine is outdated, you know. It cannot beat the new Japanese bikes on the straights, but no other bike can beat it in the mountains. The Yezdi was built for the mountains. And it'll never give you a problem. I've done 6 lakh kilometres on my Roadking. It's never let me down."

I heard that one a lot. Ask around and they’ll tell you there are things about the bike they’d never trade for anything else -- its all-chrome look, its grip on the road, the incredibly simple engine and gearbox that makes it easy to fix… and there are those touching emotional stories as well, such as the one Rameez told me: his father had sold his Jawa to fund his education, and the first thing Rameez did after he got a job was to buy an old Jawa and soup it up and gift it to his father…

At the foot of the hills, a Jawa develops a problem. As a mechanic works it over, David and John Samuel saunter over to a shop for a smoke. "Dwarak is a crazy rider, he guns off for 300 km at a stretch," says David to Sam. "There are lots of crazy buggers like that. They'll ride miles just for a chai."

"We used to do that a lot. One day I had a scrap at home. I took my bike and went to Shivajinagar for a chai. I stopped for fuel. I'd just received my salary, so filled up the tank and took off to Hyderabad. I was still in my sleepers and pyjamas. I had a drink at Hyderabad and came back."

We ride on to the top of the hill. The others have stopped close to the parking lot, sharing cigarettes and old stories. There's Vikrant ('Vikky') Hegde's 1959 Jawa, looking splendid in its silvery armour; Rameez's Roadking looking like it came off the conveyor belt yesterday, and an assortment of other Jawas and Roadkings of various colours.

AFTER THE ride, the bikers got back to Windsor Pub and were treating each other to old stories. RV, who likes to call himself ‘Hellfire Jazzman’, was in good form, and so was Vikky, they were grooving over the bike like there was no tomorrow…
“Have you ever seen another bike with the curves of a Jawa,” asked Vikky. “No wires sticking out, such a smooth shape from end to end?”
“No other bike has the simplicity of a Jawa,” said Hellfire. “Heck, they were the ones who invented the auto clutch. Now every company uses that technology. And which other bike has the same lever for the auto clutch, starter and the gear shift?”
“I went to my mechanic and told him I need my Roadking to beat the Yamaha 350 in a race,” said Vikky. He’s another Jawa freak, he’s got ten machines at home. He also does competitive racing. “But my mechanic said, why bother? He said the Roadking has proved itself against the Yamaha 350, and those who know that don’t need to be reassured.”
“I’m a very careful rider,” said Hellfire. “My dad used to tell me: ‘It’s not how good you are, it’s how bad the other guy is’. Once I was racing a Maruti and my engine seized. I must have been doing 110. The bike slid from under me, and I could see it in the headlight of the Maruti, sliding on the road in front of me. When that sort of thing happens to you, you don’t want to test your luck any more.”

And so the talk went on into late afternoon, until it was time to say good-bye, and promises of hitting the road again on another long, long run.

Photographs courtesy: John Samuel

Cop to King

2007-09-07T17:14:00.000+05:30

A police sub-inspector donning the role of a mythological king manages to bring an old legend alive

Dev S Sukumar

A FESTIVAL of mythologicals. Twenty-five plays in five days. Yet another opportunity for Kabaddi Ramachandra to slip into myth and legend and long stirring dialogues.

That’s right up his alley. He might be in the police force – he is an Assistant Sub-Inspector, after all – but the heart is in theatre. After all, there is something about the mythological – its grandness, its purity of dialogue, its Morality, its indifference to all the contemporary bullshit – that makes it irresistible. And so Kabaddi Ramachandra donned the paint, wore the vestments and squared his shoulders for the formidable rendering of the mythological king Daksha Brahma in the play Daksha Yagna, part of the competition at the Dayanand Sagar Memorial Cultural Festival at Town Hall in mid-July.

There aren’t many like him, to be sure. But his father was a harmonium player with a theatre group in Bhadravathi, and Ramachandra first stepped on the stage when he was seven. He was also a good kabaddi player, and that got him a job in the police, but he has always kept room for theatre. He’s never had formal training, but he’s sure he’s as good as any of the professionals. It’s tough getting leave from work, but he manages somehow. He started his own group (Kalavidhara Balaga) six years ago, and it specialises in historical and mythological plays. They’ve done many of the popular ones – Harishchandra, Bhakta Prahalada, Kurukshetra.

Now it’s going to be Daksha Brahma, the king who takes offence at Lord Shiva’s indifference to his petitions, and vows to conduct a ‘maha yagna’ without inviting Shiva. As Shiva’s father-in-law, Daksha assumes he has right over the Lord; the yagna is set and the other gods are invited. Daksha’s daughter sacrifices herself after being refused entry to the yagna by her father; an incensed Shiva sends forth his messenger of death (Veerabhadra) who makes quick work of Daksha and beheads him. The play ends with Shiva granting life to the king, but replaces his head with a goat’s.

It’s an old story – Kalidasa has mentioned it in his Kumarasambhava – and the lessons of Good over Evil are trumpeted again and again. Thus becomes the fate of the unbeliever, seems to be the moral of the story.

But there is a line in the play that is remarkable for the challenge it throws – Daksha, confronted by the gods who ask him who he would consecrate his yagna to in the absence of Shiva, replies: “I will consecrate the yagna to my own self-belief and confidence.”

But in a narrative that can only accommodate unquestioning servility to all the gods, Daksha is made to look foolhardy and arrogant, and in his slaying, is made an example of. Perhaps those who study the puranas – from where this story is taken – might see a case of the priesthood of that time warning people of the dangers of questioning godhood.

In any case, Kabaddi Ramachandra becomes Daksha. In his deep voice, in his regal carriage, in his rendering of mouthfuls of Sanskritised Kannada, Ramachandra pulled off the job so well that the audience applauded each time he said his piece.

The day before the performance, I asked him if he was nervous, considering that he was still fluffing his lines during the rehearsal. “No tension at all,” he replied. “Come tomorrow. You will see how we will bring this play alive.”

I asked him if, instead of falling to Shiva’s messenger Veerabhadra, Daksha had managed to kill him, it would have been a great strike for individual confidence and ability.

“No, that cannot happen,” Ramachandra said. “This is a mythological. We cannot tamper with it. Evil has to fall before Good. Daksha was impertinent enough to challenge Lord Shiva. He had to be punished.”

A pity, for Ramachandra – or rather, Daksha – in his impertinence, dares the ultimate dare in taking on the gods.

Real Kerala, imagined Kerala

2007-09-03T16:06:00.000+05:30

By K V Subbanna
Translated from Kannada
by S R Ramakrishna

Some years ago, I had crossed the Chandragiri river, and toured your charming land—but only till Kozhikode—and returned. I have now come for the second time. I could have come several times and toured all of Kerala. It isn't all that far. Before I can reach Karnataka's northernmost city of Bidar, I can reach your southern city of Thiruvananthapuram. Also, my friends in Kerala have often warmly invited me to visit them. When my friend U R Ananthamurthy was the vice-chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University here, he had asked me over. I couldn't make use of those opportunities for some reason or the other.

I have no great regret that I couldn't visit Kerala either. When I say that, I should not be mistaken to be dismissing the many glories of Kerala. I have, of course, seen vignettes of your land in paintings and films. Besides, I have some grasp, from other sources, of both the apparent and hidden riches of your land. Where else in India would you find such a little paradise in which earth and sea, blue and green, play so intimately with each other? Where else would you see anything like your sea which takes the form of little brooks, streams and rivers and weaves in and out of your land? Where else would you find this perennial love play of nature? The green of your land, swaying and peering at itself in the mirror of the canals, enchants the young and the old. Yet, if I have felt no eagerness to visit you, it is because a microstructure of your magic land lives in my consciousness, and the Kerala of my imagination is no less beautiful than the Kerala of your lives.

I cannot describe the Kerala of my imagination as I have described the Kerala land, with its ups and downs, caves and shrubs, and hills and streams. After all, it is an abstract Kerala. I may say that one horizon of my Kerala is illuminated by the brilliance of Acharya Sankara, who hails from your Kaladi. Tradition has it that my caste comes under the discipleship of Sankara. In those days, when India was going through many upheavals because of its rich diversity, it was Sankara who created a new centre of balance that did not reject diversity. The entire sub-continent respected him as a great guru. Yet, the fragrance in his stotras, especially in his great work Soundaryalahari, is the fragrance of Kerala.

Taniyamsam pamsum tavacaranapankeruthbhavam janani
Vinnchihi sancinwan viracayati lokanavikalam
Vahatyenam shorthi kathamapi sahasrena sirsam
Haraha sankhudvainam bhajiti besitoddhulanavidhim

(Mother, Brahma picks up a speak of dust from your lotus feet and creates several beautiful worlds; Visnu manages to carry it on his thousand heads. Siva burns it and completes his ash-wearing ritual.)

This brilliant, complex and panoramic metaphor cannot be from Kashmir, Karnataka or Utkala. It is from Kerala alone. Narayana Guru is one of the main builders of modern Kerala. Isn't he proof enough that Kerala has protected this Sankara stora for over a thousand years?

There are frequent references to Kerala in Kannada epic poetry. Our poet Pampa of the 10th century praises himself as Keralaviti kati sutrarurajana. That is, he had the friendship of maidens from Kerala, Malaya and Andhra. In the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, the author of our poetics classic Kavirajamarga, Pampa, and the Shivasharanas built up the Kannada language, its grammar, prosody, mythology and poetry; they truly laid the foundations for the dharma, society and politics of the Kannada people through language.

Around the same time, our sculptors carved Gommata as a grand image for the Kannada mind. I have not read the poetry of your first poet Ezhutachchan. But I understand that he singlehandedly laid the foundation, in the 17th century, for the Malayalam community and state, much like what our Kannada poets and artistes had done three centuries before his time. By Ezhutachchan's time, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French and the English had already entered India.

The English reign was a time of great churning, not just of the ancient and the modern but of the East and the West as well. That was a time when our cultural life had become a turbulent ocean. Not losing their sense of direction in such turbulent times, your kings Swati Tirunal and Ravi Varma created a harmonious blend of the East and the West in music and painting. These became models for the whole country, they became tradition makers.

When we talk of Malayalam literature, the list of writers grows tall — Kumaran Asan, Vallathol, Ullur, Sankara Kurup, Balamaniyamma, Madhaviamma, Potteckat, Takazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer, M T Vasudevan Nair, Aiyyappa Pannikar, Sukumara Azhikode, Kadamanitta Ramakrishnan, Sugata Kumari, Vinayachandra, Satchidanandan, Valaya Vasudevan… These aren't mere names. Although I have not read them all in detail, they appear to me like dear members of the family of Kannada writers. I had seen, and been overwhelmed by, Ramu Kariat's delightfully simple and touching film Chammeen, produced before the new wave was inaugurated in south Indian cinema, and before the work of Adoor Goplalakrishnan, Aravindan and John Abraham had won national and international acclaim for Malayalam cinema.

Ancient glories, which have not survived elsewhere in India, live on unspoilt here, thanks to the preservative powers of Kerala's salt crystals. Authentic elements of our ancient theatre live on, nurtured by your koothus, Kudiyattam, Krishnattam, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam and such other forms. Also, Sanskrit learning and ayurveda have made Kerala a treasure house of ancient knowledge. Kavalam Narayana Pannikar has attracted the attention of all of India by creating a new theatre form from what he found relevant and fascinating among the treasures of the old theatre. The late Sankara Pillai did much to initiate your theatre into modern training methods.

When we talk of the quality of your salt to preserve the old, we cannot forget the breeze that comes from other lands and renews the old. They say the Christian faith came to your land the very century it was born. Before that, the Jewish faith had entered your shores. By the 5th and 6th centuries, the Arabs and had already set foot here. From then till now, several world faiths have come and settled in the cool of your land; they have gradually learnt to live and interact with each other. A place such as this, where the Hindu, Muslim and Christian religions blend harmoniously and live together, is rare in India. Muslims in most places in India, with the exception of Bengal, think of Urdu-Hindustani as their mother tongue. But your Muslims believe Malayalam is their mother tongue.

When we look at your poets, writers, thinkers, politicians and social workers, we see a balance of various religions, castes, sub-castes, and as many women as men: perhaps this is difficult to find in other parts of India. This could explain how coalition governments came to be formed here for the first time in India. They worked well; and co-operative societies have thrived as well.

I have never seen your EMS Namboodripad. I have read his writing in translation. You must have heard of our extraordinary leader and socialist friend Gopala Gowda; you may also have read Avasthe, a novel by Ananthamurthy which explores a character like him. Alongside the late Gopala Gowda, I hold EMS dear to my heart. EMS is one of the best leaders of this country. Modern Kerala, influenced equally by spirituality and advaita on the one hand and egalitarianism of the other, has acquired the wisdom to stand in the place of a guru to the other states in India. When I think of modern Kerala, I see both Narayana Guru and Namboodripad shining in separate brilliance.

Jain families, which have come to your Wayanad and settled here and whose home language is Kannada to this day, have been a bridge between you and us. I am reminded of Veerendra Kumar, a popular member of the Karnataka-Kerala socialist fraternity and now a union minister.

Thirty years ago I built a house. The workers who built it were from Kerala. Many of your craftsmen have come to Karnataka and made a name for themselves. I must also tell you about my own umbilical connection. One of my uncles started tracing our family origins and discovered that a branch had come down and settled in Kerala. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I had come down, spoken to the family and returned.

On the whole, the Kerala of my imagination has been created from a confluence of these memories. I will not go on about them, but will try to look at the strengths of Kerala with the help of some images.

One: The craftsman who bows to the earth, picks up its wood and soil with the familiarity of a son taking things from his mother, and builds comfortable houses.

Two: The Chakyar who sits on the Kothambalam stage with the light of the lamp in his eyes, creating myths, legends and entire worlds.

Three: The Kerala woman in unplaited hair and in white, who, whatever her age, appears like a mother and bride, brimming with affection and charm.

Four: The youthful guru Dakshinamurthy, sitting in silence under a plentiful coconut tree in the midst of old disciples.

And so on.

But why just Kerala, my community has taught me to create, within myself, a whole world, even a universe.

I was born and brought up on the upper fringes of the Western Ghats, in a sparsely populated region with abundant rainfall, lush greenery and hills and mountains everywhere. Our community is called Havyaka, and we are a brahmin sub-caste. Now, of course, everything has changed beyond recognition; it has changed so much that it is difficult to believe things were all that different. Our people would find valleys, cultivate arecanut and live in small villages made up of three or four houses. Many of these people lived like frogs in a well, never straying beyond ten or twenty miles of their village. We know of the indigenous people of Africa; these people were just like them. But because they had a remote Vedic background, they had acquired a treasure of remembered knowledge about the Vedas, and history, poetry and the puranas, as also about the seas, rivers, mountains and pilgrim centres of the sub-continent. They could take a simple song of just four lines from this treasure and create an expansively wonderful world for themselves. The Yakshagana theatre was a major medium for such creativity.

I have been observing the possibilities of creating Ayodhyas, Hastinapuras and Nandagokulas in our places and communities and even in the backyards of our homes. Our Mookambike of Kollur is the favourite deity of several people in Kerala. Similarly, your god Anantashayana was a favourite of an old woman in our village. She had no inkling of geography, she knew nothing about where the temple was located or how to get there. She would get someone to read the panchanga and tell her when the Anantashayana Swamy lamp festival would be held. She would fast on that day and create the shrine in the heart of her home.

Not just my community, but communities at all times and in all places have created their own emotional outlines of the world and thrived on its richness. By doing so, they have transcended their little physical boundaries and reached the home of humaneness. Contrastingly, modern civilization, which has grown in the West in recent centuries and has now come into our lives, seems to have set out with the stubborn conviction that human proximity can be achieved on the physical level alone.

It is against this background that we attach so much significance to the media, tourism and such other realms. The yearning to fix wheels to our feet, fasten wings to our bodies, and fly across vast distances to visit every corner of the world, is growing among us. We believe means of communication must grow and grow and make the entire globe a little village, hoping that then all of humanity will live in love and intimacy like a village community.

It would become clear, if we looked back at the history of modern civilisation, that this is just an illusion. In Europe, where communication media grew amazingly, two great wars were fought within just 25 years, and for the first time in world history.

I look at myself. Given my limited life span, and the limitations of my time, ability and resources, how much would I be able to travel? How much would I be able to comprehend with the help of the media? How much would I smell, touch and wear in my hair? To what extent would I want to widen my knowledge this way? To this day I don't know what is in which box in our kitchen. It is no great loss that I don't either. What do I achieve by cramming all the particulars of the world in my head?

Somerset Maugham once hired a plane, flew down to India, conducted a study and a survey at a place in Kerala, and wrote a novel. Maugham's novel did not become a great work. Similarly, news journals, which we read once and put aside, take great pains and collect information from the spot.

As a contrast, I think of Meghadoota. Kalidasa's Yaksha, cursed, comes tumbling down from the heights of the Himalayas to the foot of Ramagiri in the Vindhyas. How could he have noticed what was on the way when he was in that sorrowful, anxious and forgetful rush? For about a year he remains "in waters in which Janaka's daughter bathed, in cool shaded courtyards/ in the punyashramas of Ramagiri", and recreates the long, beautiful 'Alaka route' which weaves through Ujjaini. The fire of love awakens memories within him, and through it he becomes a citizen of the world, a lover of the world. Doesn't Meghamarga, the route among the clouds — which he conjured up, and with the help of which he brilliantly created an India of the imagination — invigorate our minds 1,500 years after he wrote his play? We are unlikely to get such an intense experience even if we travel all the way from Ramagiri to the Himalayas and back.

Buddha lived in a little province of the Sakya province 2,500 years ago. At that time, Magadha was trying to gobble up the smaller states in its neighbourhood and planning to establish a huge empire. Buddha was in favour of the little republics; he was, in all likelihood, opposed to imperial expansion. Yet he had created a universe for himself in his imagination and lived in it.

On the one hand is the friendly, understanding view that we live here by breathing in the world and breathing out what is within us. On the other is the belligerent view that we must attack everything different and bring it under our ownership. It is because of modern civilisation's belligerent view that we have fallen victim to such travel mania, publicity mania and megalomania. It is certainly impossible to achieve human bonding with such an attitude. Here, travel is reduced to promiscuity. Communication results in invasion and dominance.

We must think about the relations among our linguistic communities against these divergent points of view. Our artistes, writers and thinkers are saying today, in enthusiasm and excitement, that the relations among our linguistic states, and between our languages, theatres and art forms, should grow at a faster pace. They feel writers and artistes should travel extensively in other states and improve their contacts, that works in our languages must be translated extensively, and that a huge battalion of translators should be trained in each state to take up huge projects. But I fear and suspect this excessive enthusiasm for fast, big-scale activity could have emerged from the intoxication brought about by modern civilisation.

Look at our history of two thousand years. Our provinces always had a healthy give and take in philosophy, language, poetry and the arts. Our religions, philosophies, thoughts, cultures and the arts had not remained closed, as many think. Rather, they have travelled across the subcontinent, and given and received. The techniques and styles of Ajanta Ellora are found again in Mamallapuram. The uniqueness of the prosody and rhythm of south India find expert use in poet Jayadeva of the north. When the pundits of poetics were discussing dhawani in Kashmir, our Kavirajamarga poet was enthusiastically recording his views on it. The Kannada Sivasaranas lived like one family, but if you look at their roots, you will find some who came from the Saiva sects of Tamil Nadu and Kashmir and the tantric sects of middle India. Acharya Sankara's great journey across India is well known. Besides, our mainstream religions have gone to the little communities in all nooks and corners of the country, confronted native beliefs, influenced them and been influenced by them. On the whole, no community in any corner of this country has remained untouched by other communities.

You have just watched our Ninasam troupe's play Hosa Samsara (New family). The man who wrote it is our great poet Ambikatanayadatta (Da Ra Bendre). He strove to build a new Karnataka family — a new Karnataka of the imagination — by blending various epochs, religions, and castes; he was a true state builder. Such building of human relations comes with perseverance and compassion, with contemplation and mutual understanding, and not with the big racket of global travel and public relations.

I don't believe in projects that involve travel by thousands of writers and artists, and translation of thousands of books. I would think of them as a huge waste of money. Moreover, when we think we are creating a free, big highway, it soon gets transformed into an open route to the oppression of minority languages by the majority ones, to enslave, hegemonise and exploit. In the beginning of this century, when a similar — but less intense — zeal was seen, Hindi established its hegemony over many languages and dialects such as Rajasthani; Bengali established its authority over Assamese, Manipuri, Oriya and many other languages in the region.

Our thinkers and writers denounce neo-colonialism, commercial invasion, consumer culture and environmental degradation in one voice. But like awestruck boys they endorse, at another level, all the dangerous beliefs of modern civilisation which lie at the root of all this. This is neither muddled thinking nor clever insincerity. Modern education has prepared our minds like that.

In the course of my speech, you may have felt that I have been ignoring the advances of modern civilisation and spoken like an old-timer. That's because I am aware that the seeds of tragedy sown by modern civilisation in India, in Karnataka and Kerala — in Kerala more than in Karnataka — are sprouting.

Six or eight years ago I visited Manipur. If yours is a south-western little heaven, Manipur is a north-eastern one. Although at first it seems that the people and their ways are very different from ours, we gradually feel they are exactly like us. They don't have streams and oceans as you do. They have hills, mountains, clouds and rains, as we do. I was astonished and delighted to see the way they served food: a heap of rice on a banana leaf, with our own kesuvina palya and kalile pickle. I watched their Ras dance in a temple courtyard. I noticed college students in the audience shed their fears as they watched the Radha-Krishna episodes. A friend of ours in Manipur has a son of their age. The poor boy was enmeshed in some international drug smuggling network. He was in jail, and our friend was disturbed.

When I look at the dangerous face of modernism, I am not overwhelmed by the cataclysmic fear that the world is coming to an end. I have the confidence that we can avert destruction even if we retain a drop of the primordial human essence. That is why my attention is focused more on the primordial essence that can save humankind than on the tragedy confronting us. I give a small, light, comic example for what I call the primordial essence.

Last year (1996), the central Sahitya Akademi had organised a symposium in Bangalore. Our chief minister J H Patel was hosting a dinner at the Windsor Manor for writers who had arrived from all over India. Writers who came to the lounge that evening soon started withering under the pressure of five-star etiquette, feeling more and more dwarfed and thinking all this had to be endured as a matter of duty. There was total, hideous silence, but for some whispers and distant, false smiles. It was then that your M T Vasudevan Nair made his entry. As soon as he came into the lounge he lifted and tied up his panche, pulled out a beedi from his pocket and lit it up. Saying "Hyalo" to everyone — pronouncing the la more like a la — he sat comfortably on the edge of the elegant sofa, as though he was sitting on a plank at home. In a moment the unhealthy assembly returned to natural health and became a truly human meeting. In a single moment, the corpse-like burden of the arrogantly formal and destructive five-star culture had crashed to the ground and shattered into fragments.

Friends, I feel very happy that I stand here in your little heaven chatting with you. But I don't feel a great desire to come here again and again and be with you. I cannot forget the distance to Kerala and my own limitations. I have my house built by your mestri Chellappan and carpenter Govindan. At times, when I open and shut the door, I hear whispers in Malayalam. Whenever I feel like seeing all of you, I will conjure you up before my eyes and continue talking to you. Namaskara.

(Transcript of talks at Trishoor and Kottayam, April 1997)

God is Culture

2007-08-11T20:47:00.000+05:30

Megalithic Burial Site/ early temple, Circa 2 AD
Nelamangala
This is a burial site, evidenced by the port-hole at the front (it's not a doorway). But the superstructure indicates it is a (primitive) temple; that's why it resembles the garba-griha.
Dr Gopal Rao, Epigraphist: "This is good evidence for my thesis that many of the early temples evolved from burial sites."

I see dead rivers everywhere

2007-06-30T14:52:00.000+05:30

There was a time, not long ago, when I thought I could chuck this whole rotten city thing and retire to my native village. It is so remote, so godforsaken, I assumed nobody would be interested in it.

Not anymore. There's no place to run, no place to hide.

The Developer pimps are everywhere, man. They're bleeding this country dry.

Everytime I see a new road, a new building, a new whatever being built, I think of a river that's dying. Those who have never spent time by a river will never understand. They will never have heard its quietness, its sighs, its gurgles. They will never have seen fishermen who live by its side wake up early every morning to set out on their boats and communicate with the river in their own silent way.

I was stunned when a friend -- a very environment-conscious one -- asked me "Sand mining? What's that?"

Have you seen a river die? Have you ever spent time in a pond, a lake? It's the sand at the bottom that keeps it alive, keeps a river flowing, keeps a pond from becoming a slush pit. Every time a new building or construction project is commissioned, sand is taken off from some water body. While returning from Sakleshpur last month I was heart-broken to see not less than 30 trucks carrying river sand -- sand that was still dripping water.

Aren't things sacrosanct any longer? Haven't we sold off enough things already, without having to sell off our rivers and mountains and hills and ponds? What is the price one has to pay?

Even the resistance is dead, man.

The High Court is building a parking lot in Cubbon Park and we organised a protest. I sent 20 SMSes but none of them turned up. Some 30 of us participated, we walked through the park with placards and stood by Chinnaswamy Stadium for half-an-hour. Later, I met C, whom I respect greatly, and asked him why he hadn't come. He told me he had a problem with some of the protesters -- apparently, they were right-wingers.

It's so ironical, man. The Developer pimps don't have any such ideological hang-ups.

They're everywhere. They're like God, omnipotent, omnipresent. I used to think Tumkur and Magadi would be safe. That's why I keep running off to these places, to the hills and forts and old ruined temples. Seek solace in history, think of a time when land was land, not Real Estate.

Fat chance, man. Now they're talking of making Ramanagaram Bangalore South. All those beautiful rock faces will be history. You will have apartments with names like 'Hill View'. I hear they're making a road through Devarayanadurga State Forest. I remember the last time I rode through that forest -- it had rained and the sunlight was flashing off the raindrops. I was riding pillion and A. was shouting like a madman.

So they're going to level every hill for granite. They're going to fill up every pond, every lake, that comes in their way. Every historical relic is going to become broken stone that will pave some road. Did you know that there are Megalithic burial sites in Tumkur? No? Oh well, what does it matter. Fuck the past. If you didn't come for a 30-minute protest for Cubbon Park, what do you care about somebody who croaked 2,000 years ago?

I'm surprised when people speak glowingly of this country. I'm even more surprised that people have faith and hope in it. Levine, another of those whom I admire, told me in shock: "But things have improved, don't you think? You must agree that Nitish Kumar is a better Chief Minister than Laloo Prasad!" I didn't have the heart to discourage him, so I let it go. But to take India seriously as a political entity? Jesus. A half-witted woman who claims to have communicated with a dead man is soon going to be President, but even that wouldn't have been astounding if it were not for the Left supporting her. The Left in this country defines itself by how opposed it is to the Right, and, as it so happens, the two extremes have begun to resemble each other. If the BJP's Presidential candidate had said half as much as Prathibha Patil (she had blamed the Mughals for the purdah system, and claimed to have spoken to a dead godman), the Left would have gotten hysterical. But they're content to oppose whatever the Right is up to, even if it means having an Animated Doll in office.

But what else can be expected of a Left Front that diligently accepts whatever the Oracles of Beijing throw up? As for the national newspaper that acts as its mouthpiece, the less said the better. For all its pretensions on liberalism, it doesn't even have the balls to tell us the truth about Tibet. No! Beijing cannot be faulted!

We're so caught up with the Global, we've forgotten the Local. When was the last time you heard a human being -- and not an MP3 player -- sing? When was the last time you heard something that came from your own ethos? I like to listen to folk because it is so refreshingly earthy -- it has not been processed by music software. How can you get that sort of earthiness from a rock band?

And Hollywood -- why must we religiously subscribe to it? As my knowledgeable friend K said: "Hollywood has not moved an inch since Citizen Kane!"

You could find the world in your village, as Subbanna so richly demonstrated. You could find the same energy in a folk song as in a rock show, and greater sense. If you have to see new lands, go as a traveller, not a tourist. I once assumed that tourism was good because it would lead to a greater appreciation of other cultures. I now know better. Tourism has only led to a vandalisation of our most precious resources.

'Environment' is not just another issue; it is life. I'm not an activist, but I try to lessen the mess I make. The vegetable waste from my plate goes to the kitchen garden -- not the waste basket. I use paper scraps instead of whole sheets. I take a bag to the neighbourhood store. I avoid shopping malls, because I'm all for the mom-and-pop stores, and malls generate huge waste and require vast amounts of electricity. I've never gone shopping at a mall. I marched in protest over the Iraq War. That's when I also realised that one of the ways of protest is economic -- boycott brands. I use Indian-made toothpaste and soap. Perhaps those companies are just as corrupt as global corporates, but I know for a fact that global brands finance all sorts of shady operations. I avoid companies with bad reputations, like Reliance. I don't buy Eveready battery because it comes from Union Carbide, and they caused the Bhopal tragedy. I avoid buying aata; I'd rather buy wheat and get it ground at the mill. I don't buy packaged coconut oil; I instead get it from the mill. I have saved thousands of litres of water by knocking on strangers' doors and telling them their tanks were overflowing. I have saved the state electricity board thousands of rupees by switching off street lights that were still on after sunrise.

I'm not even going to take the trouble of answering people who'll ask me if all this will make a difference. Thoreau was the only one in Concord to protest the Mexican War, and he knew he was already in a majority of one.

I'm not doing any of this out of ideological reasons -- I'm doing it because it is right.

I suppose the one question everyone will ask is that if the economy hadn't been liberalised, we wouldn't have got jobs, so isn't this the price we necessarily have to pay?

Really? I don't think so. At least earlier we used to live like human beings; now we’re scurrying around like rats. When you are commuted to spending four hours in mind-numbing traffic every day, you'll understand. We really didn't need all this extra housing, all these malls. It's not just that there was demand, this demand was created as a lifestyle and investment thing. People were contented enough in rented homes, but now they can't have enough of three or four or five houses, even if it means murdering whatever was there earlier.

Our top corporates are a farce -- Clifton, who's investigating their antecedents, pointed out how much stake they have in Real Estate, and they're throwing small farmers off their land. The new airport apparently has acquired land that's three times the size of Heathrow. The government is nothing but a chief pimp, facilitating this sell-off. This treatment of land like a commodity has killed everything that was worth living for. You might not have had a job, but at least you could seek solace in the parks and boulevards of Bangalore. For a hundred bucks you could go to the Western Ghats and replenish yourself. Now people go to replenish themselves in Thailand and Singapore.

We are not surprised anymore when people declare assets of 50 or 100 or even 200 crore. Goodness, where did all that money come from? 200 crore? When I was growing up, the villain in movies was the 'lakhpati' -- a chap who must have had a couple of lakhs. In the 80s, we heard of the 'crorepatis'. A crore is still unfathomable -- it seems sufficient for a five generations. But people cannot have enough of that too.

I will never understand this development index thing. We were told this extra money was good for us, for the economy. We were given money, and then we discovered that the money was not sufficient to even buy a house because the 'new economy' also meant housing had sky-rocketed. You can't even walk to a store because the 'new economy' has given us so much traffic, you need oxygen masks on the streets. You can't play because the 'new economy' has made land so prohibitively expensive that there are no playgrounds left. And did you ever think of swimming in a river or pond? Ha.

The only things you can do with your extra money is to go to malls and buy perfumes and i-Pods and such things. So the meaning of being a human being today is to be paid to go to a shopping mall and buy things you really don't need? Jesus.

With foreign investment in infrastructure coming up, you can bet that we are going to lose every resource we have. The Western Ghats will become pockets of trees, the rivers will become puddles. At some places a few hundred acres will be cordoned off for the really wealthy. They can invite their friends for a 'Western Ghats experience'. I'm talking of the next five years, not some distant future. Most mountains will be quarried, because there is huge money coming in from overseas for 'development'. I've seen magnificent mangrove forests off the Cochin coast being cleared for a container yard and entertainment parlours and waterfront hotels.

Entertainment. It's like we are such a bunch of mentally unbalanced people, we need to be given something to keep us from mischief. Have you ever spent time inside a mangrove forest? Have you ever seen how much those trees give? We clear off pristine forests without a second thought. The day Vellarpadam island, off Cochin, got a bridge from the mainland was the day of its doom. Land prices have shot up, and now the island will just become another strip. All the wealthy fat cats need their entertainment. Who will ever tell them that once there were fishermen there who kept pace with the moods of the river and the sea, who observed the moon and the swells?

As for this country, the only way of retaliation is violence. Whether we agree to it or not, that's going to be the way. If only the Naxals weren't into killing small-time cops and blowing up public buses, they would have been more admirable. I laughed uncontrollably yesterday when my conscientious teacher friend, Krishna, told me he'd be happy if at least one of his students became a Naxal instead of a techie.
The Naxals are still caught up in class-war; they haven't pronounced anything on environment yet. But they will realise that environment destruction hurts those at the bottom rung of the class and caste order most -- a river or pond is a 'commons' resource and provides for everybody. The rich can always arrange for piped water, or private tankers.

But there's going to be violence, because there are plenty of dangerously unhinged lives out there. Our land, our rivers, our hills were once sacrosanct, and that sanctity has been violated.

Blogging and badminton

2007-05-16T19:19:00.000+05:30

There's an ugly situation going on in Indian badminton, and I'm surprised by how little faith people have in the instrument of public protest. "What difference will it make?" is a sort of one-size-fits-all argument.

But the fact is that the debate about the current crisis seems confined to badminton circles, and not many in the fraternity see the importance of a more public way to express themselves, apart from giving statements in the press, which flicker for a while in the sports pages. The Op-Ed pages concern themselves with More Important Things, such as Mayawati or cricket. Or even Mayawati Playing Cricket.

We could profitably pick a point or two from other examples, where the protester is outmatched in size, but chooses to express his protest by some means, however miniscule. That's why I'm such a fan of Blank Noise, which has elevated protest into an artistic medium.

I was talking to a fellow badminton reporter this morning, and he asked me if all the protest would eventually amount to nothing, considering the immunity of BAI (and other Indian sports associations) to any kind of opposition.
I told him protest was a victory in itself, no matter what the size of the resistance, or even the outcome.

Of the mechanisms of protest, the internet offers a subterranean, underground channel which helps the message reach public consciousness. A blog, or even a mail, constitutes protest. There's currently a blog about the arrest of the MS University student... that nothing might eventually come of it is not its fault. As one senior journalist told me, "Our job as reporters is not to change things, it's to report things."

I wish people were more interested in badminton, but then, I would expect an energy reporter to say the same about the energy crisis in Russia. The difference between sports and energy is that sport influences national morale. Every country knows this. Sport has replaced war as the instrument for declaring bravado, and how good you are at digging others' noses in the dirt.

So if people have a right to expect an Olympic medal, they also have a duty to at least keep themselves aware of what's going on in Indian sport. Because we are not a race of losers. Race or culture has nothing to do with it. It's the politics of sport, and if we are a nation of sporting non-achievers, it's because we are a nation of chickenshit compromisers. We put up with anything, because we are scared that if we protest we will be the only ones, and the others would have moused into the darkness. And the bitterness from being let down doesn't seem worth consorting with, even if we have to endure hustlers who find their way into Indian sports administration.

So it doesn't seem ridiculous that people protest Richard Gere's kiss or kill people over an opinion poll... but how come a public protest against our sports administrators never takes place?

Peruvemba

2007-05-04T11:24:00.000+05:30

There’s nothing like this stillness anywhere in the world. It’s like Time decided to take it easy here, not a soul in sight, just the crickets and the cry of an overhead eagle. The fields are all still. Even the trees are such silent sentinels.

Peruvemba, land of a hundred ponds and a hundred shrines.

I was at the temple festival last evening, the event complete with a Panchavadyam and the oracle.

He’s grown old. When I was a kid I was scared of him. The air was thick then, thick with the smell of burning castor oil from the lamps, which threw shadows all around. The oracle, the goddess and the shattering music from the drums, the horns and the cymbals always evoked images of a world beyond, spirits that lived in trees and ponds, which needed to be appeased with the blood of goats or cocks.

Electricity wasn’t then what it is now. There wasn’t much to light up the place. Darkness was an entity, it owned the nights. The ponds and trees were entirely its domain, which is why people never messed with them.

The next three days are reserved for the songs of the goddess, of the spirits she has tamed. The last time I was here, the oracle performed a ‘cock dance’ in the morning, finally slicing off its neck, the fallen head indicating what was in store for the village.

The oracle looks like a tired old man now. His father was something else; when he was possessed he would carve up his own head with the long sickle that he brandished. Everybody remembers him, old Kuppandi.

Did you know...

2007-04-23T18:18:00.000+05:30

...that Yellamma, worshipped all over Karnataka, and assumed to be a village/folk goddess appropriated by Hinduism, is actually a Yakshi in Jain mythology?

...that Pulakeshi of Badami, who routed Harsha Vardhana of Ujjain, was in turn defeated by a petty ruler, Narasimha Varman? Badami is supposed to have burned for nine months after the defeat.

Freaking out the squares

2007-03-09T22:10:00.000+05:30

Kunal and I were asked about a dozen times yesterday why we, as guys, were part of Blank Noise. I suppose the interviewers expected an answer on the lines of : "When I was 14 I saw a girl being... and that snapped something inside me, and I resolved, never, ever to..."

Well, nothing of the sort happened. I'm not driven by any lofty ambition as far as gender equality is concerned. I'm not an activist. I certainly don't have the commitment, the stamina or even the moral fibre to claim to be one. The way I see it, I like to be left alone and I don't see why women -- or anyone else for that matter -- shouldn't be, too. I would get mad if every other idiot in the bus or on the sidewalk thought it was his right to comment about me, or stare at me, and infringe on my personal space... and I believe Blank Noise is doing something about it, and I'm glad to be able to chip in.

I admire the style, the zest, with which the Blank Noise volunteers went about the event yesterday. Personally, I'm still... squeamish about the deliberate laughing-in-public bit, or even blowing the whistles, because that tends to put off even women who might otherwise be part of Blank Noise... but then, hey, if the girls have the guts to put themselves on the line with it, why not? Just because I'm too cowardly to do something like that doesn't mean everybody else shouldn't.

And who says there's just one way (A Seminar on Women's Rights; A Film Festival on Gender Sensitivity) to address these issues?

Caught for ‘eve-teasing’

2007-03-09T22:05:00.000+05:30

I have witnessed very few incidents of 'eve-teasing'. Maybe it's because I haven't kept my eyes open enough -- or maybe it's because I've never been in the 'right' places at the right time.

One incident happened more than a decade ago. We were playing a cricket match: I PUC Science vs I PUC Arts. My team, Science, was fielding first. Apart from the batsmen, the others in the Arts team were sitting around, some near a bus-stop close by.

We had a short break before taking our turn to chase the total. Suddenly, a woman charged towards us, a girl holding her head by her side, and started screaming at us. "Do you guys come here to play cricket or to throw stones at girls?" she screamed. It was then I figured that the girl's head had opened up, and she was looking stunned, trying to stem the flow of blood from the gash on her head.

I had no clue why she was taking all this out on us, but then I vaguely remembered having heard some animated conversation among the batting team while we were fielding. A bus had stopped, a few girls had gotten off, and after a while, the guys sitting at the bus-stop were involved in some intense discussion. All this came to me in retrospect.

In any case, the Arts team, having found their strength in numbers, confronted the woman and started shouting back at her. Some of the Science guys, wanting nothing to do with the scene, retired to a short distance away. There was no way to quell the shouting match on either side. I heard the woman threaten to call the police, to which a guy named Dharnendra replied: "Go ahead. You think only you have influence with the police? Even we do."

We were about to start our run chase when three constables arrived, on foot. They started rounding us up. There was a dramatic change in behaviour. The guys started pleading. No, they had nothing to do with it, they said. They were just good boys playing cricket. There were three other guys sitting at the bus-stop, and they had thrown the stone and run away.

The constables were unimpressed. "Come to the police station, and you can narrate all that to the inspector."

We cycled to the police station. One of the constables sat pillion on my cycle.

At the police station, there was an even more dramatic exhibition from the very guys who had spoken so aggressively to the woman. There were plenty of "sirs"... "no sir, we are too decent. We don't even look at girls, sir. It was somebody else..."

The inspector shrugged. "Look, if something happens to the girl, I will have to take action. You write down your names and addresses here and leave."

So we wrote our names and addresses in the register. The guys started getting jittery. "If a cop comes home, don't go alone. Call at least one friend. If you go by yourself, they will belt you black and blue and force you to sign a statement that you threw the stone."

Ha, said I. I haven't done anything. I have nothing to fear. I was just dying to get back to the game. Those chimpanzees had nearly ruined the day and the only thing to do was finish the game before the sun set.

But even as we reached the ground, everybody started chickening out... and they seemed to think it was all my fault, for suggesting that we get ahead with the game. Some even accused me of taking the issue lightly. "Are you crazy?" asked one. "Your name is in the police register. Do you know what will happen? You will be taken to jail! Your photo will be published in the papers! And all you can think of is cricket! I'm going home. My dad knows somebody in the police. I better tell him to be prepared."

So not only had a perfectly good day been destroyed, I was now accused of spoiling the mood for everybody, and with the additional possibilty of being jailed and photographed for a crime I had not even committed. For something I had not even seen.

But something else rankled. I hadn't seen the prime suspect, Dharnendra, at the police station. After all that aggressive talk to the woman, after all that he'd said about having 'influence with the police', he'd escaped on the way. He'd got us all in trouble and vanished.

The rat.

Fishing in the dark

2007-02-12T20:47:00.000+05:30

Long drive today through rubber estates and palmoil plantations... the mountains. It's funny, yesterday I was sitting by the sea and today I'm on a mountain.
The stream in the mountains is shallow and cool and gurgling between the rocks... and yesterday I was by the estuary, by the river, and it was dusk and the river is deep and the gentle waves were lapping against the embankment. Someone was operating a Chinese fishing net some way off into the water. He'd fixed a light bulb to the centre of the net to attract the fishes. Off on another island a temple festival was on, and the boom of the firecrackers was scaring the birds -- you could hear the startled flapping of wings in the trees.
Whew... the river is so damn calm. A fisherman came up and looked enquiringly at me. He doesn't want a nutcase suicidal maniac falling off into the water near his house. I sort of calmed him down, said I'd come to watch the water.
They'll start taking out their canoes a couple of days later. There was no moon last night.

What I did, and why

2007-01-02T21:13:00.000+05:30

It’s been a year since the book was published. It’s a good time to wonder – what was all that about?

Many of my friends – justifiably – were miffed that I was publishing it myself. It just didn’t make sense. I’d spent two years researching it, so what point was there in throwing away all that effort to fund what might be a complete dud?

I’ve thought about that many times. All along, I believed it had to do with instinct, gut feel – that sort of thing. But last week it hit me when I read a movie review on an Edward Norton starrer – indie. Yes, that was it: the indie effort. (Short for independent, but indie means a way of looking at things, of life, outside the mainstream.)

My defence was: if the book’s good, it will do well. Why depend on a publisher?
But there was more to it than that. Why play the same old game? Compromise after compromise after compromise. Compromise at your job: work hours even when you don’t feel like it; sub stories even if they are third-rate English… I guess I didn’t want to compromise any more. I could imagine the debate with the editor: this goes, this can’t, why don’t you spice it up a bit here…

Not that all this took courage, or anything of the sort… although god knows I had a couple of sleepless nights… but the possibilities. Now that was something: the possibility that I could pull this off without the backing of a big-name publisher. Then there was the Internet – in the age of Linux and Open Source, I couldn’t help feeling optimistic about my chances.

But after a year, I’ll admit – I’ve been licked. Without a big-name publisher, there are lots of disadvantages. But do I regret what I did?

Are you kidding?

No way, and I’d do the same thing all over again if I had the chance. I’d probably tackle the media a bit differently – which I ought to do now. Maybe plug the book on the Internet, maybe plug it at tournaments. I’ve done a bit of that, but only one tournament organiser – ECA in Bangalore – came up and said: okay, we’ll buy 60 books as souvenirs.

So maybe the game’s not played out as yet. It’s gonna be tough to plug last year’s book…. but I’ll give it a shot. Otherwise, I’ll just pretend to be in the exalted company of Henry David Thoreau, who published Walden… and had to wonder what he’d do with the stacks of unsold copies at his home. “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself,” was what he said.

My sales figures are slightly better. :)

Taufik Hidayat vs Lin Dan - match 3

2006-12-16T23:11:00.000+05:30

Third match between Lin Dan and Taufik Hidayat, and I’m not expecting a different result. Taufik’s looked good, but he hasn’t seemed capable of pulling off a win.
He’s pushing Lin, but you get the feeling Lin is enjoying the challenge and playing along. He knows Taufik is the crowd favourite – he’s gonna play the pretty shots and do every conceivable thing to beat him, but Taufik’s not got that one thing he needs to beat Lin. Stamina. Everybody knows it.

Lin’s like the boxer who taunts his rival, like Ali who allowed Foreman to throw his best punches. And he knows, he knows he can outlast him. He knows he’s gonna win.

But Lin is not Ali, and Taufik is not Foreman.

The two are meeting today for the gold medal. I’d like to see Taufik win – who doesn’t? – but logic says it’s impossible. I saw Taufik after the first match – he was sitting in the training hall with a faraway look in his eyes. It was the look of a defeated man.

--
Taufik 10-6. He’s just returned three of Lin’s bullets. He’s crafting each point patiently. Lin’s looking vaguely unsettled. Taufik’s maintaining a brilliant dribble. The shuttle spins over the tape and dies down, and there’s no way anyone can return that. It’s like his control extends over an object even though it is not materially connected to him.

Taufik 11-6. T. looks like he wants it today. He’s cut down on the errors… when he makes one, it’s such an aberration, a missing note in a melody.

Taufik 16-10. It is something to catch Lin on the wrong foot. T. just did.

Taufik 21-15. First set to Taufik Hidayat.

It’s been an incredible show so far. Nearly each of Lin’s points have been gifts by Taufik – at times he looks undecided about what shot to choose – so rich is his arsenal.

But this is just the first set. Lin must still be confident. After all, Taufik is always strong early on. It’s only when the lactic acid starts working on his muscles will he slowly give way, his speed will get marginally reduced, and Lin will start hammering his smashes.

Whatever. This has been an exhibition. Taufik just put on a grand show for everybody. It doesn’t really matter who the opponent is – the only question is Taufik’s mood. When he’s in the mood he can really turn it on… a game of feathers and strings turns musical when Taufik remembers to bring his magic wand along.

The second game has started. Taufik leads 7-5. Now it’s 9-5. Lin is really looking out of sorts – or is the Indonesian making him look out of sorts? Is all the pressure catching up with the Chinese? He’s expected to win. He’s won both their contests at the Asian Games, but this is the big one, the men’s singles gold.

Taufik just made an error on the dribble. His first poor shot at the net. Lin is 8-9. Now’s his chance.

Lin 12-11. He leads for the first time. Is this the big moment?
Lin 15-11. Lin’s starting to find the range of his smashes. Taufik is looking sluggish. Must be the lactic acid. The pace must be killing him. Lin is suddenly looking dangerous. The swagger is back and the Chinese have found their voice.

Lin 19-16. Has Taufik played all his cards? Does he have any left? Two points, and Lin will take the set. Nobody has any illusions about Taufik’s fitness. He can’t survive a third.

Taufik 17-19. Lin just misjudged a shuttle, it fell on the sideline.

Lin 20-17. Set point. What can Taufik do?

Taufik 18-20. One saved. Lin’s error at the net.
Taufik 19-20. One more point, man, one more point.
Taufik 20-20. He’s done it! Has the pressure caught up with Lin Dan? He just made an incredibly weak return into the net. This is not the Lin Dan who won the World Championships this year, and the All England, and every other important tournament!

Taufik 21-20. Taufik’s at match point! He’s pulled it off!

Taufik 22-20! Incredible! Taufik Hidayat has beaten Lin Dan, the world champion!

All I can remember now is the Indonesian journalist turning around and shouting above the crowd’s roar: “I told you! I told you – if Taufik says he will win, he will!”

Taufik Hidayat vs Lin Dan - match 2

2006-12-12T21:28:00.000+05:30

Doha, 4 December:
China entered the final of the team badminton championships of the Asian Games in both the men’s and women’s events yesterday. In the semifinals, the Chinese men dismissed the challenge of Indonesia, while their women had even less trouble against South Korea. The Chinese men will face South Korea in the final, while the women will take on Japan.

There was an air of inevitability about it all. Even the result of the premier match of the day – between world no.1 Lin Dan and Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat – seemed a foregone conclusion, for such has been the aura surrounding the Chinese.

As it turned out, Taufik did enough to trouble the world No.1 but not enough to knock him out; the doubles combination struck an important win to level at one-all, but China had no problems wrapping up the second singles and doubles.

The story of the day was actually South Korea’s win over Malaysia – who have in their ranks world no.2 Lee Chong Wei and world no.10 Hafiz Hashim. The Koreans made it past the Malaysians after a first strike by Lee Hyun Il, who surprised Lee Chong Wei in straight games.

The top two singles matches were played on adjacent courts. Taufik took on Lin Dan for the second time in three days, but he seemed to have left his magic wand at home. There was no inspiration to his game – it was as though he had reconciled himself to the inevitability of the loss. Taufik’s diffidence, strangely enough, seemed to rub off on Lin Dan too, and the result was a series of errors from both sides early on.

Still, at times one got to see glimpses of the Indonesian’s abundant talent – his returns to the blinding smashes, his chess-like manoevring of Lin Dan, and his amazing variety of strokes.

But Lin Dan is secure in the belief that no matter how much Taufik can move him around, he can retrieve anything the Indonesian can throw at him. And so, even as Taufik went ahead 16-12, Lin calmly worked his way back. A 22-20 result gave him the first game, but it wasn’t as close as the score suggested.

Meanwhile, Lee Hyun Il had won the first game of his match against Lee Chong Wei. The Malaysian seemed to be undecided about the best method of playing the Korean – an attacking player, he was constantly going for the longer rallies and getting caught by the steep smashes of the left-handed Hyun Il.

Taufik took the second game rather easily, but it looked like the world no.1 was just saving his energies for the third. And then he gave the Indonesian no chance as he fired in winner after winner. He had challenged his closest rival to throw his best punches, and he had parried them all. Taufik had nothing left to give.

Returning to the other semifinal – Lee Hyun Il completed the formalities in rather easy style, and the Korean doubles pair consolidated the lead. Malaysia pulled one back in the second singles, but then again Korea’s second doubles team rose to the occasion and ensured their place in the final.

(Pic shows Indonesian doubles legend and coach Christian Hadinata with Taufik, despondently awaiting the result of the second doubles.)

Taufik Hidayat vs Lin Dan – match 1

2006-12-11T01:32:00.000+05:30

What West Indies is to cricket, or Brazil to football, Indonesia is to badminton. Badminton is not a sport with Indonesia – it is a celebration. A badminton match is Life in microcosm to them – and they rejoice or mourn collectively. Not for them the stoic acceptance of the Chinese.

One man represents the best that Indonesia has to offer to the badminton world – Taufik Hidayat. Nobody who has seen him at his best is likely to forget the spectacle. Taufik, when he’s playing in the ‘zone’, can have only one rival – Lin Dan, the Chinese world champion, who has had a good record against him of late. Lin Dan’s jump smash must be the most feared weapon in the game today.

Taufik Hidayat and Lin Dan clashed in the first match of the group encounter at the Asian Games. Lin Dan walked away with the match and set the tie up for the Chinese, but it was Taufik who mesmerised the audience.

Like a maestro who conducts a symphony, Taufik dictated the play. Lin Dan played second fiddle as the master craftsman stood in the centre of his court and made the shuttle do his bidding. The Chinese has a ferocious jump smash; but the Indonesian hardly gave him the opportunity to use it. Taufik's racquet produced an extraordinary variety -- the high tosses, alternating with the slow drops and net dribbles, forced the world No.1 to keep running around the court.

It’s 12-all. Taufik is returning Lin’s thunderbolts with the calmness of a Buddhist monk. Lin rears up for his smash, there’s a crack, but Taufik’s racquet is already meeting the missile.

The Indonesian is weaving magic … he’s making Lin run around the court like a puppet. On adjacent courts, it’s Hafiz against Ng Wei and Salakjit against Jiang Yi. There’s a noisy Thai band behind Salakjit, and they’re tooting horns… it’s a freaking carnival in here.

Lin has gone 15-10 up. Taufik draws level at 17.

The Chinese can compensate for his lack of grace with his athleticism, and he kept retrieving from impossible positions, and nailing winners with his huge jump smashes. At 17-all, Taufik made three errors and that's all Lin Dan needed to take the set.

It’s 5-2 Lin Dan. Taufik is suddenly looking out of sorts.

The question now was whether the Indonesian had the temperament to stick in. Twice this year, against the same opponent, the Indonesian had betrayed a strange side to his character -- even walking out of one match after claiming that the line judge was biased against him.

But perhaps this match was too crucial, for he stuck on despite going 2-5 down. At 6-all came a moment of pure brilliance. Caught off-position, Taufik lunged, took the shuttle at ground level, and sent it across diagonally across the net to leave the Chinese befuddled.

6-6 Taufik. Lin’s turn to make errors, but can Taufik last the distance?
Lin 13-10. Lin’s own moment of brilliance. Taufik smashes to his backhand, but Lin returns, incredibly, and jumps up for the return. Crack. There’s something awesome about Lin’s jump smash.

Taufik 13-14. Can he last?
Taufik 14-14. Again orchestrates a masterly point, alternating flat drives with high tosses, making Lin run, finishing with a backhand cross-court drive.
Taufik 16-14 The stadium has come alive.
Taufik 20-16 Lin had netted his half-smash.
Taufik 21-17. Second game to Taufik Hidayat. ]

3rd set.
Taufik 5-2. Set up by the high, deep clears to the back court and the sudden half-smash.
Lin 5-5. Lin is returning incredibly today. So much has been said about his attack, but his defence too is impenetrable – and he can run down anything. It’s so damn hard to get a point against him.
Taufik 13-13.
Lin 18-15. Is this it? Does Taufik have enough fuel?
Taufik 16-18. Taufik wins the critical point by pouncing at the net. No room now for the errors of genius.
Lin 20-16. Match point. The pace suddenly went slow, tosses and drops. Taufik makes the error.
Lin 21-16.Lin Dan has won with a smash. The crowd goes silent, but not completely. They’re still cheering for Taufik.

Humans and gymnasts

2006-12-06T03:46:00.000+05:30

(My first-ever report on gymnastics, and I had the opportunity of watching the World Champion, Yang Wei.)

Dev SS
There is a certain change in the atmosphere when Yang Wei performs. Perhaps it has to do with his being World Champion, for every other activity in the large hall is ignored and attention turns to the Chinese. As he pushes himself through the routine, it is as though his body were a part of some other ordered universe, so precise is its functioning. When he dismounts there’s not a stumble, not a step out of place. In those little details are decided the difference between gold, silver and the rest.

The difficulty of being Kuan Beng Hong

2006-12-01T19:46:00.000+05:30

Dev S Sukumar

KUAN Beng Hong is not a well-known name outside badminton circles. Even within the badminton world, he was not one of the readily-recognised names. Not until May 6 of this year, in any case.

With Malaysia and Denmark drawn 2-all in the semifinals of the Thomas Cup – the world men's team championships – the tie was down to the fifth and last match. Denmark fielded a relative newcomer, Joachim Persson, while Malaysia sent forth Kuan Beng Hong.

The Dane prevailed in a tight finish 21-12, 21-19 to send one of the pre-tournament favourites packing out of the Thomas Cup.

Since then, Kuan has had a rough time. Internet discussion forums have vilified him for being chicken and not being able to handle the pressure. The Malaysian media went hammer and tongs at the team, and particularly at him. The Badminton Association of Malaysia changed his coach; while he was earlier with Misbun Sidek, the association asked him to train under Li Mao.
And suddenly, the promising player – who in 2005 was runner-up at the Asian Badminton Confederation championships in Hyderabad -- seemed to dig a deep hole for himself. Kuan's confidence shattered, he lost in the first round of four tournaments, losing to opponents ranked legions below him.

It was a surprise, therefore, when Malaysia named him as their third singles player for the Asian Games. This had more to do with national coach Misbun Sidek's belief in his ability than anything else, and Misbun himself has had to face plenty of criticism for picking Kuan.
The game is ruthless, and Kuan knows it. Players lose all the time and it goes unnoticed; but you lose the critical rubber of a Thomas Cup semifinal and you're suddenly a villain.

"The pressure…" Kuan says, shaking his head. "I went blank. I was down. Every tournament I was blank. I kept thinking of that match."

"I pressured myself because I was ranked higher than him and I was expected to win. And a lot of important people came from Malaysia to see that match. It was tough… I didn't have the confidence after that. I kept losing."

The Chinese have set the gold standard in the game, and the Malaysians can only hope to be second-best in Asia. But the Asian Games have give them a great opportunity, and Kuan will be called into action sooner or later. "I first need to think of Korea," Kuan smiles at the possible semifinal between the two. "But to play Chinese I must have more confidence."

Every match won now is a lifeline for Kuan Beng Hong. "Ï'm recovering," he says. There was a time during this year when he was so down on himself he couldn't beat even the journeymen of the game; but he managed to reach the pre-quarters of the last two events -- the World Championships and the China Open. Not great results, but Kuan Beng Hong has already seen the worst the game can offer, and maybe he's been so deep in the pits the only way is up.

Manic mail

2006-11-21T00:41:00.000+05:30

First day: Depressing flight. Bleak scenery... sand and buildings. In the afternoon I was in my room feeling claustrophobic and nauseous, and the only relief was the memories of Bombay.
Sort of recovered by evening because some of the Bangalore journos who're based here had organised a get-together.

(Pic shows Mike playing Simon and Garfunkel)
Yesterday I wandered around after dinner and lost my way. It was cold and deserted. The only shops open were, incredibly, the hair saloons. More attendants than customers.
A video game. That's exactly how it feels, one of those car racing games where there are no people or animals on the streets but only cars and more cars, all incredibly soundless and smokeless, and the buildings are neat and geometric.
An old song from the day before:
Hello darkness my old friend... I've come to talk with you again
... a vision softly creeping... left its seeds while I was sleeping
...And the... vision that was planted in my brain.... still remains
Within the Sounds of Silence
Kept forgetting the lines.

Man in the Iron Mask

2006-11-13T02:09:00.000+05:30

Dev S Sukumar

There was a time when Morten Frost-Hansen was the best badminton player in the world.

That was when he was known as ‘Mr Badminton’, when he dominated the world stage, winning tournament after tournament after tournament. That period – the eighties – saw him win four All England titles out of eight final appearances, and nearly every title in Europe and Asia. In a manner demonstrated only by the rarest of the rare, such as a Lance Armstrong or a Bjorn Borg, Morten defied the ‘glorious uncertainty’ of sport, running undefeated for months at a stretch.

That was also when he convinced others that he was a machine. A machine that would never hurt, never tire, never falter. And to do that meant never, ever relinquishing control – on and off the court.

There’s a story of how he once went holidaying in Spain with his contemporary, the English international Steve Baddeley. They did the touristy things, swimming and surfing and playing around. Sometimes they would stay up late, too many beers, but the next day, on court, Morten would never give Baddeley an inch. There was no way he was going to lose even if he was sick and his head felt like it was going to explode. And many years later, ten years or so, Baddeley told him: “That was the worst holiday of my life – I hated every minute of it. There was no human being in you. You just wanted to win every time we got on court.”

Ahhh... memories, memories. And Morten Frost was in Bangalore, more than two decades after all that. He was wide-eyed at all the attention he was getting, people thronging the KBA stadium for his match against old rival and friend Prakash Padukone, and he was marvelling at the wonderment of it all. Such love and warmth. And that was making him think of all the things beyond winning, the simple pleasure of playing for the sake of playing, and not just to win. But then... he’s so popular because he kept winning, isn’t he?

There were always two Mortens -- the Public Morten and the Private Morten. Public Morten was what everybody saw – the mask, the man who would not hurt. To preserve the mask he had to become this relentless human machine, pushing himself on and on and on, in season and out of season, during training and during matches, through the tournament days and through the holidays. There was no real holiday during the decade-and-half when he was the world’s best. He would take his running shoes wherever he went. He would push himself every time beyond his own limits... when he ran with his trainer, at the point of exhaustion he would imagine a tree in the distance, and tell himself he would stop when he came to that tree. And when he reached that spot he would imagine another tree further away, and run to that.

And when he played, he carried the same image: never letting an opponent beat him even in practice, never even giving them the hint that he was human and beatable. If only they knew how he felt. They always thought he was playing at half-pace because they saw nothing on his face, and that killed them because they could feel their own hearts popping out. But they saw only the mask; Morten never showed his own hurt.

But there were times when the Public Morten was jolted out of that routine, and the Private Morten would surface – the guy who longed to be free of all the pressure and not have to look over his shoulder each time.

The first was when he was coming up fast on the international scene. He was beating some of the world’s best players even as a 19-year-old, and getting invited to tournaments all over. His parents would ask him to come over for the weekend, but he was too busy. Even when he was in Copenhagen – his home was an hour and a half from the Danish capital – he felt he had no time to even pop in for dinner. After all, he was the brightest prospect on the international horizon.

And then his mother died.

The second was when Prakash Padukone – his closest friend on the international circuit – invited him to Bangalore in 1980 for some exhibition matches to raise money for a badminton hall. That was the best trip Morten had ever been on. Prakash and his friends and family treated Morten to a grand time; they went sight-seeing, they played basketball, and they went to Bannerghatta national park, when they made him sit on an elephant and he turned red because he’d never even seen an elephant before.

And so, twenty-six years after that trip, Morten was invited again to Bangalore, this time by the Karnataka Badminton Association, for a three-day coaches’ clinic and an exhibition match between him and Padukone. The event was ‘house-full’ -- unprecedented by contemporary Indian badminton standards. And then he was taken to Prakash Courts that he had helped fund, and he was moved to see that his visit in 1980 had resulted in something that had lasted a quarter of a century.

So, when he’s asked if he had to pay a price – the price of human relationship -- for the ‘tough-guy’ routine, and if he felt he could have enjoyed his playing days better, he confides: “It’s funny you say that. I never thought I would come to a situation where I had to admit it, but yes, I think so. But when at the time it happened, it was not intentional. It was just... a way of life, a way of seeing things, doing things. But as you grow older, as your horizon opens up, you think – how could I say that, do that? And you know.... even being here is an enormous eye-opener. Because Prakash and I had this rivalry, and today you can see how much we’re alike, and how much fun and enjoyment we could’ve had out of a more social relationship. That we never had, because we had a rivalry on court as well.”

When his mother died it was like... “you think of all the things you wanted to say and wanted to do... and everything you took for granted, and it’s a complete eye-opener for you. But you don’t see it at the time. And then it hits you, and you start reflecting on it. And... I think there are two sayings I’m in favour of. One is what a Danish philosopher said: ‘You live life forwards and you understand it backwards’. That’s how I feel standing here today, that I understand what we had at the time, but we never really appreciated before it was gone.

“And the other saying is: ‘Youth is just wasted on the youth.’”

Morten laughs. He understands the irony, but like every top-level competitor, he had to make a compromise. Perhaps it’s impossible to be a winner over a decade without having to put your art and craft above your relationships. That’s perhaps why a Lance Armstrong or a Bjorn Borg appears to be ‘cold’.

But Morten is now comfortable with both his selves. His public self appears when he talks to the coaches and players – while he’s exhorting them to never, ever give up, when he’s asking them to cultivate an image that can never be dented. But then the private, more introspective self too appears at times, and he tells the players he understands how they must feel, and how it’s lonely out there on the circuit for a badminton player, and that they can trust him... because there are times when you want to vomit it all out because you are so lonely.

After years of living behind a mask, the real Morten Frost-Hansen is showing up.

More on the renaming

2006-11-06T02:20:00.000+05:30

I need to retract one statement -- that foreigners' opinions on Bangalore don't matter. But why shouldn't they? Why do we assume that any place belongs to a particular group of people -- who we call 'locals'? Why believe that a foreigner won't be hurt by a change in identity? Why assume that 'foreigners' have no stake in India? My Singaporean friend Adri, for instance, has seen much more of India than I have, and she has an equal appreciation of the country.
... this business of naming and renaming to suit chauvinistic tendencies is indicative of our desire to possess the land, and that's what's ruining the world. The earth has neither labels nor neatly-drawn markers. Appeasing so-called local sentiment is nothing but a desire to cover up political failure.

... Funny, we want foreign capital but we don't want foreign sentiment. We want to call Bangalore an 'international destination', an 'IT city', but we want to remain mired in regionalism. We want their money but we don't want to have anything to do with them.

... Personally, I'd rather see a confluence of the global and the local... but what's happening here is sheery hypocrisy. The chief minister claims to be a 'son of the soil' and whips up parochial passions, but his son gets drunk at unearthly hours and beats up hotel staff.

... UR Ananthamurthy, who first raised the renaming issue a year ago, appeared on TV to say that this would mean a slight shift from English to Kannada, apparently to reclaim some lost territory! He even hoped all 'outsiders' in Bangalore would learn the local language!
And this is a person who has been awarded India's highest literary award.
Stunning. To think that there has been no critical debate on such a critical issue. To think that, like everything else, the country's academia maintains a conspiracy of silence...

Thoughts on renaming

2006-11-02T12:57:00.000+05:30

- If Bangalore should be renamed Bengaluru, should India be renamed Bharat? Or Hindustan?
Or Aryavarta?

- Why mess with memories? Bengaluru isn't the same as Bangalore. I don't care what foreigners think of the new name... The Times of India keeps wondering whether foreigners will find the new name a tongue-twister. But what about personal memories?

- While our call centre folks need to Westernise their names, the city seeks to indigenise its name.

'Twinkle Toes' in Bangalore

2006-10-24T23:33:00.001+05:30

I'd always admired Morten, but it was only during this visit I got to appreciate the depth of his accomplishments. Great player, greater human being.
(Pic by Arvind Bhat)

Story of my life

2006-10-16T20:32:00.000+05:30

By Rajneesh Kapoor