Death Ends Fun

Tenzin arrested

2012-03-31T15:38:00.002+05:30

Why was my friend Tenzin Tsundue arrested before the visit of Chinese Premier Hu? (Who?)

* Because ten years ago, he hung a "Free Tibet" flag from the 14th floor of the Oberoi (now Trident) hotel in Bombay, during the visit of Chinese Premier Zhu?

* Because seven years ago, he hung a "Free Tibet" flag from the top of a building at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, during the visit of Chinese Premier Wen?

* Because he might remind Chinese Premiers, and us, about the arrest and torture of three nuns?

* Because of muddle-headed mumbo-jumbo called "realpolitik"? For just two examples, I mean the stuff which advises that "India must refrain from going overboard in its support for the Tibetan protests lest this issue upset broader relations with China", and which also advises that "It is not in India's interests to antagonise China, a more powerful neighbouring state."

* Because … well, you take your pick.

We gave the Tibetans shelter when they fled from the excesses of China. Now we arrest them when Chinese premiers come visiting.

Seven years ago, I wrote more or less the following three paras. They seem to apply today.

Apparently, the equation is simple. China recognizes our annexure of Sikkim. In return we will be silent on Tibet. (What's the difference, I'd like to know, between them going into Tibet and us going into Sikkim?)

And sure enough, that's just what has happened. With a certain glee, our press reports that Wen brought with him a map acknowledging our claim on Sikkim. And in return for that measly crumb, we are craven enough to shut up on Tibet.

Fortunately, there are Tenzins out there who are neither as craven nor as willing to shut up, arrest or no arrest. Power to your flag, Tenzin. Know this much: you inspire.

Get to the top: About Kota

2012-03-31T11:03:00.003+05:30

I have an article in the April issue of Caravan that I've wanted to do for years: about coaching classes ('cram schools", they're sometimes called) in the city of Kota, in Rajasthan. I finally started thinking about it and planning it several months ago, though for various reasons it was only in January this year that I was able to make the trip to Kota.

Lots of things to think about there. Pink suits. Parenting Consultants. Graffiti on a temple wall. What we are doing to our kids.

Please take a look: Get to the Top.

And your comments, as always, welcome.

Where the roots are

2012-03-30T23:04:00.003+05:30

My "A Matter of Numbers" column is in today's (Fri Mar 30) edition of Mint. If I had to sum it up in a few words … well, I would have, instead of writing 800+ words. Never mind.

It starts with spitting in a bottle (you know who you are, you who told me about this). It goes on from there to discuss hopping about in space. (Yes Vandana, there's a connection). (I think).

Go take a look: Where the Roots are.

As always, any comments most welcome.

Poverty line(s)

2012-03-23T08:52:00.003+05:30

Today's Hindustan Times carries an article I did reacting to the most recent figures about poverty from our Planning Commission.

On re-reading it this morning, I'm concerned (always easy to be wiser in hindsight) that I didn't make clear enough my fundamental point: that while the definition of the poverty line had to change, what I'd like to see is how that affects previous estimates of poverty. Why? Because only then can we get an idea of what has really happened to poverty over the years.

Absent that, we're left to wonder about numbers like 27%, 37%, 29% and the like. Absent that, a decline from 37% to 29% is hard to comprehend, because earlier estimates were different.

I realize it is difficult to apply new methods to old data, but I'd still like to see some attempt to do so, purely so that we can understand poverty trends.

In any case, you can read the article here.

Comments welcome.

Taj Mahal Foxtrot: a review

2012-03-21T09:59:00.000+05:30

Naresh Fernandes's TajMahal Foxtrot is a delicious look at a time, at music, at a city. Fabulous photographs, crisp writing and even a CD.

I reviewed it for the January-February issue of Biblio. Available on that site for free, though you have to register.

Here's the review, appended below. Comments welome.

***
Someone asked: isn't it difficult to read a book about jazz when you don't like jazz? Someone knows me well: it's true, I've never cared for the music that the Marsalises and Monks produce. Yet without fully knowing the difference, I've also always liked the brassy sound of big-band, the riffs and improvisations of rocking blues, the infinite sexiness of trumpets and saxophones. No, it wasn't difficult to read this book, because maybe it's not really about jazz, and maybe that doesn't even matter. Yet (again!) sounds from a time that Indian jazz flowered seem somehow to leap off most of its pages (not just because it comes with a CD). This, despite Naresh Fernandes's forlorn observation that "only a pile of yellowing press clippings and faded programme notes remain to fuel our imaginations about what many of these jazz musicians actually sounded like."

And in so fuelling, via this book, they soak you in nostalgia.

Hard to stave that off. So you can see "Taj Mahal Foxtrot" as another Dr Seuss contraption, this one producing nostalgia on demand. The city Fernandes describes is a long-vanished Bombay, the stuff of memories that there are fewer and fewer people left to hold on to and flesh out. He mines those memories to etch a vivid, vibrant portrait of a city, a too-brief stretch of time, in detail that is loving and thorough.

But maybe it's not about nostalgia either. As I neared its end, I wondered about that. What is this book, really? History? Music? Anthropology? Journalism? The urban experience? The indulgence and exploration of a passion? All those?

But does it matter?

The quantity and quality of research on view here is staggering. Fernandes writes with easy familiarity about musical giants of a time gone by, as if they were walking into our homes to warble out a tune or three. Somewhat amazingly, some actually did just that: they walked into some homes in this city to exchange notes, literally and otherwise, with local musicians and fans. Example: Dave Brubeck, in the '60s. For fans of the man, that must have been a treat like none other. I'm trying to think of a parallel today. Here's one that twangs my chords: the Blasters (not jazz-men, and I'm unabashedly a fan) show up at my front door, and together we belt out "Barefoot Rock" and several more rockabilly classics. Man, what I wouldn't give …

It's a memorable feature of this time and place that Fernandes captures for us: at least in jazz, celebrity wasn't a thing made insufferable by ego. What it must have meant to striving young musicians to simply chat with the Gillespies, the Armstrongs, just as friends would.

And some of the photographs Fernandes has unearthed capture this mood. With Brubeck, again: in one shot, he's at the piano, pinky straight out as he plays, laughing heartily as the sitar player smiles in harmony. In another, he has his back to the piano and is hunched over, listening intently to a tabla player explain his craft -- I like to think that's what he's doing -- to a roomful of intent listeners. Yet neither photograph even hints that Brubeck is any kind of "outsider": the music and their palaver about it brings him inside in every sense.

In some ways, that really sums up "Taj Mahal Foxtrot." For a glorious generation or two, some of the world's most accomplished musicians -- Indians included -- brought their talents here and made music that wove strands into Bombay's story. These strands would later become inextricably a part of this city's own definitive creation: Bollywood, and its music in particular. The great value of this book, it seems to me, is that Fernandes underlines three features of this tale: one, that the music borrowed and incorporated influences from abroad; two, that this process of borrowing, and the intense creativity it stimulated, was Indian in the best way; three, that those are things to celebrate.

"For much of its history," Fernandes writes in his preface, "Bombay, like the music I love, encouraged everyone to find their own voices within the loose confines of a stated theme."

How do we reconcile that with the parochial bluster that too many celebrate instead today? The empty blowhards, for example, who want those who use the word "Bombay" to be "thrown out" of the city? What's to be said about people who, to beat a jazz cliche into the ground, blow their own trumpets (one of them actually used that phrase in an election rally as I wrote these words) but also insist that others play the same stultifying notes?

The real achievement of this book is that Fernandes manages to make jazz a metaphor for the city, for what it once was, what it could be. He does this despite caveats of various kinds. Like: isn't this just one more Western influence we can do without, that there's no reason to mourn losing? Or, this is a story of the Fernandeses and Correas: where are the Guptas and Bansals? Or, isn't this just more gush about folks who have the money and the leisure to devote to jazz, often at the Taj? That is, the elite?

That last occurred to Bill Coleman, a "trumpeter-memoirist" in Leon Abbey's visiting band of 1936. They played jazz, he wrote, "for a public that was mostly European -- a very wealthy and select clientele." Journalist Dosoo Karaka listened to the band at the Taj and then noted: "Outside … homeless loiterers of the night, beggar women with half-eaten breasts, poverty on the pavements. It makes me shudder." And in the early 1960s, the visiting American pianist Hampton Hawes realized that "I've never seen anybody as fucked up and pitiful as [in India] … [they] don't even know what a piece of bread is, let alone Stravinsky or Charlie Parker."

What's the meaning of jazz when it is surrounded by squalor, when it is a "passion of the privileged" that's indulged at a top-notch city hotel?

Questions worth pondering, no doubt. I don't have a better answer to that than to say, read the book. Don't just look at the pictures, read the text. To me, it makes a subtle case in defence of elitism. But a defence in the sense that the elite naturally influence the societies they live in: with their tastes, their intellectual pursuits, and in particular, their values. The joy of "Taj Mahal Foxtrot" is that it reminds us of a time when certain values meant something, when they spoke for a city.

To be sure, there are aspects of the book that grate. Half a paragraph is repeated here; over there, another half, or more, is missing. The footnotes are often a delight, but nearing the end of the book, they go haywire: like ghosts, several numbers appear in the text without corresponding notes attached. Photographs appear sometimes a baffling several pages before a reference to the characters in them. In at least one case the caption has no connection to the image, baffling again. The binding on my copy started coming apart ten pages into reading it. And this might be a good place for full disclosure: I'm in the "Acknowlegements" (sic).

At the end, I also wished there had been more of Fernandes himself in the book. That may be an odd thing to say, because this is a result of his years of research, a triumph of his dogged and yet impassioned journalism, and the book works because he lets the men and women of an era of jazz speak for themselves. In that sense, this is his style, his body of work.

Yet the occasional times when you hear his unvarnished voice only make you wish for more. Like the footnote -- go find it -- about a restaurant whose name stuck "despite it being at variance with the outcome of the conflict" it was named for. Like the way he paints the parallels between trends in jazz and other creative outpourings in India: poetry, literature, theatre, art. Like another footnote -- yep, go find it -- that tells a sparkling story about someone called Karla Pandit.

As anyone who has followed his writing knows, Fernandes seamlessly mixes humour, keen observation and an enviable way with words to produce always thought-provoking commentary.

Maybe I just wanted more of that commentary than there already is in this book. Consider the eloquent lines with which it ends:

"[I]n its heyday, in the three decades from 1935, jazz seemed to perfectly embody the spirit of Bombay, a slightly wild port city that knew that a tune sounded better when it made room for instruments of all timbres and tones; a city that could be really pretty when it took things slow but which gave you a thrill when it was working at double time; a city that forced you to make it up as you went along; a city that gave everyone the space to play their own melody the way they heard it. That era has passed."

It has indeed passed. But reminders, like this splendid book, are always welcome. Maybe we can be really pretty again.

No more reason

2012-03-11T01:40:00.001+05:30

For years now, the only reason I've had for making an effort to watch cricket on TV -- and it is an effort, because I have no TV -- has been Rahul Dravid. For a long time before that, there were two reasons: Brian Lara and Rahul Dravid.

Now there are none.

I've been wondering just what I found so attractive in these modern greats of an old game. I think (no surprise) it's the visual treat of their styles, the flashing elegance of their strokes.

No batsman I know of moved as swiftly and yet delicately on his feet as Lara did. He married that to a bat speed no other batsman could match. Suddenly the ball had rocketed over a despairing bowler's stretching fingers for a straight six, or past a man who'd still be in the act of turning to chase when the ball reached the boundary at cover. That slight crouch, then the precise steps, then the bat like Inigo Montoya's slashing sword, ending up over his right shoulder: as a pure spectacle of batsmanship, Lara had no equal.

Except, of course, for Dravid. Three strokes were his alone. The first, that precise pull, the wrists visibly rolling over at just the right instant, the ball seemingly tracing a path perfectly perpendicular to the pitch, all the way to the boundary. The second, that on-drive he played off his pads, leaning forward, his body and the bat and the ball's path, all straight lines. The third, and my favourite by a whisker, that fierce cut in which he seemed almost to be stepping backward as the bat made contact, the image again a splay of straight lines.

Lara the sure-footed destroyer. Dravid the master of pure, elegant lines. For me, there were no others.

But for me, what made Dravid in particular such a compelling cricketer was the way he put that elegance in the pot with a fistful of grit and a generous helping of grace. I certainly learned the virtues of hard work and determination much later in life than I should have (and too often I have to learn them again). But I know that if I want to teach them to my kids, I could hardly do better than offer them the example of Dravid. Of this man who visibly worked harder than any of his contemporaries at his game, at finding excellence in himself, at finding it anew when it inevitably would fade.

More accomplished cricket writers than me have been poetic about Dravid's various bursts of batting splendour: the 180 in Calcutta, the 148 at Leeds, the 233 and 72 in Adelaide, the two half centuries at Kingston and more. But for me his finest moment was last year's tour of England. Not for the runs, plenty though they were. But this was Dravid fighting tigerishly when not a single one of his team-mates seemed up for the fight; this was Dravid showing how much the team and the game mattered to him; this was Dravid painting a canvas of resolve and soul, heart and intellect. This was Dravid setting an example not just to his cricket colleagues, but to us all.

To every one of us who, faced with a large, difficult task, thinks "Ahh, I'll give it a shot tomorrow" -- that tomorrow that never comes -- this was Dravid showing that there's only one answer to such dilemmas: Just step forward and do it. No excuses, no dilly-dallying, no shying away, no hiding from yourself above all. None of that.

Just do it, that's all.

I have no particular interest in one-day cricket or this thing called T20. Power to those who do, and who do well at them. But I get intoxicated with Test cricket. That's because at its best, it ebbs and flows, it exposes, it redeems, it celebrates. It demands that its practitioners give of their best. It shows up the pretenders. It rewards depth and substance, grit and strength. It offers lessons for our own more mundane lives that nevertheless fling challenges at us time and time again.

It's for those reasons that Test cricket is so captivating. It's what made Dravid, for me, the consummate Test cricketer. For me, he is India's greatest Test cricketer. For me, that makes him, without doubt, India's greatest cricketer.

I can't claim to be a good friend of Dravid. But I have met him a few times -- a meal here, a coffee there -- and he released my book "Roadrunner" at a bookstore in Bangalore. Several days before that evening, in the middle of playing a Test at the Wankhede stadium, he called. "I'm really nervous about speaking at your book function," said this man who faced the fastest and wiliest bowlers in the world for a living.

It struck me: for him, this business of speaking about a new book was one more challenge to be faced and overcome. He could have simply shown up and mouthed some platitudes. Instead, he read my book, thought about it, got nervous about it, then came there and said some thoughtful things. That's the measure of this man. What more could an author ask for?

So here it is: it's more than the style in that fierce cut that made me want to watch Dravid bat. It's the grace and fibre he brought to the game, and indeed to everything he did.

And that's why I now have no reason to watch.

Jump for your life

2012-03-06T10:15:00.000+05:30

My fortnightly "A Matter of Numbers" column in Mint went on air last Friday, March 2.

This one discusses the antics of fleas, the musings of elephants, and even slips in some speculation about why my daughter is cleaner than me. All that, and it also warns you about the consequences of shivering uncontrollably.

With that introduction, I know you're just dying to read it. It's called "Jump for your life" and you'll find it here.

Comments, as ever, welcome.

#DDGujDiary #4, Ahmedabad camp

2012-03-06T10:12:00.000+05:30

A fourth installment of notes from my trip diary from Gujarat, 2002. These are from a visit to a camp for victims in Ahmedabad. (I tweeted them using the tag #DDGujDiary).

***
* In Ahmedabad, we stop outside a shopping complex that is burned down (maybe looted too?). Nobody else on the road stops. It's been burned, but life around it goes on.

* A sixty year-old in the camp used to be a watchman in a building. A mob of 5000, he thinks, surrounded the building and began throwing stones at it. He and his wife ran away.

* He shows me a "Rahat Chhavninoon Hangami" card that he says the Government gave him because of the violence. "What's it for?" he asks. I can't answer because I don't know what this means, or of this card distribution programme.

* Outside the camp, I notice this large banner: "Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Gujarat, At Your Service."

* Two women I speak to were driven by a mob from their homes in Guptanagar. They went back there to look, a couple of days later. All the houses in the area, including theirs, were burned down. "It doesn't look like a place to live", says one. "There were people standing there with lathis and swords," they tell me, "and they told us to get out."

* Later, the Army took the women and their families back again. This time, they were able to approach their once-homes. Where they could, they put locks on the doors. Then they came back to the camp.

* Kudratbano, 35, saw her brother, his wife and their six children burned alive in Naroda-Patia. The mob that did this "came from four sides", she says.

* Ishu, the son of her other brother, was hit with sticks and thrown on a garbage dump. He lived. He shows me the scars on his head.

* His two year-old brother [looks like I didn't record his name] was burned.

* Just outside this camp as we leave, a young man yells at us. "We don't want your peace committee!" -- and he and a few others start throwing stones at us. Small stones, but it's frightening anyway. "Take your peace nonsense [shanti bakwas is the phrase I remember clearly] to the RSS!" they shout, still throwing stones. In the distance, at the end of a long road we had walked down to get to the camp, I can see the stones have broken a few windows on our bus.

* I'm walking to the buses alongside a monk from our party, young man dressed in saffron robes. Young men point at him, pick up stones. I have no clue what to do, but there's only seconds to think about it, because ...

* ... a young woman on a scooter drives up beside us. "Get on behind me!" she orders the monk, quiet but urgent. "Get on right now! I'll take you out!"

* The monk sits sideways on her pillion seat. She revs her engine and zips him through the milling shouting crowds to the bus. I see him clambering in. I'm alone, but nobody is interested in me. I run to the bus. Getting on, I see her. There's time to shout: "What's your name?"

* I've said it silently and often in these ten years, and I'll say it here: Thank you, Mumtaz, for being brave. For being human. For being human in a time, in a place, where so many others weren't.

#DDGujDiary, #3: Dehlol

2012-03-03T12:19:00.000+05:30

Some more tweets from my #DDGujDiary sequence on Twitter (as @DeathEndsFun) over the last few days.

***
* On the road from Godhra to Baroda, we stop at a mosque that has been burned down. Inside we can see pieces of cloth strewn about, and a small flock of rather calm goats. There's a man standing outside; he says he knows nothing about what happened here. "Nothing?" we ask. "Nothing."

* Dehlol village has a burned and completely destroyed mosque. Inside we dan see monkeys running about. (Not goats). Outside, the residents of Dehlol watch us sullenly and silently.

* 37 Dehlol residents were pursued to this and killed there. A man tells us that then it was torched and its minaret toppled. Still sullen people still watch us.

* In Dehlol a photographer buddy and an old man from our group were surrounded by a mob who demanded their film. They refused. Started to get heated and ugly. A cop saved them.

* The cops tell us that the residents of Dehlol had complained, saying our group was harassing them and making them uncomfortable. I had to wonder, could we have said something similar, at least, about those 37 who were chased into a mosque and killed?

* A man in a sleeveless vest in Dehlol, glasses and running to flab, says this: "Pakistan attacks us on the border. Obviously we can't go to the border, so we hit back at them here."

* "See what Israel is doing to the Palestinians," the same man says admiringly. "That's the treatment we had to give them here."

* "For 50 years they have been doings things like Godhra, with many more train burnings. But the press never reports all this." Who's "them" and "they", I want to ask.

* (Still with the same man in a vest, running to flab. He's talking to a German blonde and me, standing in middle of Dehlol, large crowd around us.)

* "The days of that ch***ya Gandhi, with his turning the other cheek, are gone!" He turns his cheek to me in a way that -- I would never have guessed -- is shockingly crude.

* "When people enter our houses and torture us," he says, "we have to react!" The crowd nods. Who entered your home, I ask. Angry silence.

* The crowd disperses. We start walking. The same man suddenly says "Come have a soda at my shop." When we get there, he makes us a lime-based drink. Good stuff. But he takes no money, just shakes my hand.

* The blonde and I are walking out of Dehlol. It's a frightening, unnerving several minute. Large crowds watch us pass in complete silence, the women in it snickering behind us after we pass.

* For 10 years, I've wondered: someone killed 37 people in Dehlol. This flabby guy who wouldn't charge for soda, was he one of the killers?

#DDGujDiary, #2

2012-03-01T23:45:00.000+05:30

Continuing from the previous post, here are some more notes from my Gujarat 2002 diary. I tweeted these yesterday (as @DeathEndsFun, same Twitter tag #DDGujDiary).

***
* Fatma, 45, ran to the hills without footwear and hid there for three days without food and water. This is because mobs burned her house in Randikpur.

* After telling me this, Fatma is quiet, then says out of the blue: "It's a Rs 14 ticket from here [Godhra] to Randikpur."

* Yakub whom I met in a camp says: "We can't go back because they have destroyed our homes and turned the area into a maidan."

* Young girl says, the sarpanch hid us in a field, telling us we'd be protected. Then he went away. When he came back, he brought many people with him to kill us.

* The same girl saw a friend standing in front of her home, saying "My father will definitely come to save us!" Then she was cut down by a mob.

* She starts crying quietly as she tells me of that brief incident, and then she tells me three of her uncles were also killed.

* 22 yr-old Fatma (another Fatma) hid in the fields too. A mob came -- "there were ten people for each one of us" -- to kill them. She was hit by a lathi and a sword, she fell unconscious, they left.

* In Godhra camp alone, at least three different women told me about sarpanches who directed them to fields and then called a mob to attack them.

* Zohra, 23, hid with her husband in a cornfield. A mob set fire to the crop. They got up and ran. The mob caught her husband and killed him. She saw it happen.

* Bilkis of Randikpur had a three year-old child who was "cut and thrown away". Then twelve men raped her. She is pregnant.

* I should point out that I learned about Bilkis from her bua who was with her in camp. Bilkis herself was unable to speak.

#DDGujDiary

2012-02-29T12:44:00.000+05:30

In 2002, not long after violence erupted across Gujarat, I joined a group of people on a trip through that state, what some of them thought was a journey of compassion. While I believe in compassion, I was admittedly cynical about it applying among people who had done a series of unspeakable things. I went thinking of myself as an observer -- both of what had happened, as well as what kind of reception this idea of compassion would get.

We started in Godhra, and went on to Baroda and Ahmedabad, with plenty of stops at smaller villages and towns on the way, and several visits to camps for the victims of the violence. It was a raw, disturbing, nerve-wracking and soul-deadening trip, among the most depressing several days of my life.

To remember, ten years on, here are some notes from my diary of those days when I travelled through a massacre-wracked Gujarat. (As @DeathEndsFun, I tweeted these using the tag #DDGujDiary. They are here as they appeared on Twitter, except for expanding any abbreviation necessitated by the 140 character limit).

***
* In Dehlol, we pass a trishul which has an unexpected object fluttering from it: a bra.

* Huge hoarding in Godhra, with a portrait of Narendra Modi and these words -- "Gujarat measures 9.9 on the recovery scale."

* Met a man called Siraj Patel who had watched three people being killed on the road that runs from Limkheda to Baria to Antala (sp? Can't tell). One of them was his 10th standard son.

* Inside the carriage -- that carriage -- at the railway station in Godhra, of all things I notice grains of rice strewn all over the floor.

* Also seen on the floor of the carriage in Godhra: shoes, jeans, socks, bottles, twisted metal, pictures of the filmstar Govinda, a metal cup.

* The inside of the carriage looks like the barracks in Auschwitz or Dachau. There and here, how could anyone hope to survive?

* (Picked up a small handful of ashes in that carriage. They're on my lap now, wrapped in plastic. Ten years on, ashes fly in the breeze).

* A half-burnt kid's exercise book at my feet inside the carriage. Its first legible page has these pencilled Hindi words in a careful schoolkid hand: "baal kaan haath gaal naak maathi". Who wrote all that?

* Also found in the carriage: several booklets called "Ayodhya", with a picture on the back of the Babri Masjid with people on top of its domes.

* Also found in the carriage: Several books printed in Hindi, carrying this title in English: "Ayodhya Guide."

* Man in Gurgaon whom I speak to a few days later on the phone, his eldest brother and wife (kids too? I can't tell) died in the fire. "I'm afraid to come to Gujarat", he tells me.

* Among the people in our band is a theatre group from Delhi called "Nishant". At the carriage in Godhra, they gather outside and sing.

* In a camp in Godhra, Yusufbhai from Kuwajar village says the mob that drove him and several others from his home was shouting "Maro, kaapo, maal loot lo" (kill, cut, steal).

* Yusufbhai says the police did nothing to stop the mob. Instead, they told Yusufbhai and the others with him, "save yourself and run".

* In a village near Dahod, 70 houses were burned down. In the camp, I met a man from there, his wife and their four kids. They had to run from the village, they stayed in the "jungle" for 3 days without food and water.

* He also says 14 members of his family were raped and/or killed.

* In the same camp is a 20 year-old girl from Kesharpur. She had a 2 year-old child who was killed. She doesn't know where her husband is.

* Salambhai's house in Kuwajar village was burned by a mob. "What is the fault of us villagers," he asks me, "in what happened in Godhra?"

* Met two teachers in the camp. One says "We believe in this sarva dharma sambhav; but the people who watched their kids being burned, how will they believe?"

* A woman in Godhra camp says the police told her: "You had better run away, or the swords will be used on you!"

* Siraj (another Siraj? can't tell) watched three men he knew being burned alive. He tells me how it was done: "They tied branches on them and set them on fire."

* Amina's son was "made into 3 pieces" (what I was told was, "unka teen tukde banaye"). A man with him was shot dead. Another man with him was tied up and burned alive.

* A ten year-old girl shows me a gash on her back from a sword. She saw her father being attacked and ran to save him; that's when someone slashed at her. She is alive. He is alive.

* She tells me about another ten year-old who told the mob "Kill me, but spare my sisters!" Her father was killed with a blow to his head.

Truth, ten years on

2012-02-27T16:57:00.002+05:30

Yes, like in South Africa emerging from apartheid, let's have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Gujarat, 2002. Why not?

For that matter, let's have a T&RC for Bombay, 1992-93; for Kashmir 1989+; for Delhi, 1984; for Laxmanpur-Bathe, 1997; etc -- but this is a tenth anniversary of Gujarat we're marking, so let's discuss just that for now.

The important part of that is that first word, "Truth". Meaning we need to see the perpetrators of ghastly murders come out and tell the truth about what they did. It's called making a clean breast, and there's no substitute for that.

Meaning: No rhetoric that we've "moved on", or "much water has flowed down the Sabarmati", or "what's the point of re-opening old wounds that have healed?" No resort to invoking 300-year histories of communal violence. No pointing fingers at previous despicable Congress governments. None of that stuff. Just fronting up to the truth.

There's a reason it hasn't happened yet. Making a clean breast of things needs great courage. Far more courage than you need when you're in a mob setting fire to a train, or chopping up defenceless women, even pregnant women. Because you have to look in the mirror, and be true to yourself. Hard to at the best of times, infinitely harder when you've got blood on your hands, or when you're trying to cover up or explain away the blood on your friends' hands.

Nevertheless, it's possible, that truth and reconciliation. Let's start with the truth. Right now.

Ten years

2012-02-24T15:17:00.002+05:30

Coming up to ten years since what I think is one of the worst crimes in Indian history; as also one of the worst breakdowns in law and order in our history. The massacres across Gujarat, of course.

There's so much that's already been said about those godawful weeks and months, so much that I don't even want to try finding something new to say. But these few points:

* To those who say there should be an end to "raking" up the past, there's just this to say: If there had been some kind of justice for everything that happened then, nobody would be raking up anything. Since there hasn't been that kind of justice, please don't expect silence. The country you live in is itself a testament to the spirit of folks who would not keep silent and who kept raking up injustice.

* To those who say we should "move on", there's just this to say: I'm set to meet someone who lost, say, a young son to the violence, who will say "It's true, we should move on." On the contrary: some of these people are the most dogged I've ever knowm, in their pursuit of justice.

* To those who speak easily and angrily about the "demonization" of the CM of Gujarat, there's just this to say: This man presided over a collapse of law and order across his state on a nearly unprecedented scale. If it had been any other state, this man's own party would have been leading the calls, and rightly so, for that state's CM to own moral responsibility for this collapse and resign. (Consider, after all, that the CM of Maharashtra lost his job after the terror attacks of November 26, 2008). But in this case, any criticism at all is immediately painted as an insult to a state, the demonization of a man. Both of which charges are nonsense. Understandable nonsense from those who want to sweep a massacre under a carpet, but nonsense nevertheless.

* To those who talk of "development" and the "efficiency" of Gujarat's government, there's just this to say: How do those things change the reality that 1000+ people were slaughtered in 2002? But more than that, what is the "efficiency" in failing to prevent those 1000+ being killed?

* To those who say "but are you aware of the ground realities in that state, then and now?", there's just this to say: I travelled Gujarat while some of the violence was still happening. I got a pretty good sense of some ground reality, thank you. It was this: 1000+ people had been slaughtered, and those wounds were still raw. That reality has not changed, and does not change because of other claims.

* To those who say "but why does nobody speak about these other horrific massacres in state X, under leader Y of party Z?", there's just this to say: Plenty of people speak about those other massacres too; if you choose not to listen for your own reasons, that's nobody's fault but yours. More important, the fact that you make these equations/comparisons is an admission that you know just how horrific Gujarat was, that you know there's been no accounting for it. Face up to yourself, for once.

* Finally, to those who say of Gujarat that it was "unfortunate", or "shit happens", or the like, there's just this to say: when a thousand and more Indians are killed, that's not unfortunate shit happening, that's a massacre. Equivocation doesn't change that.

Ten years on, I want justice for Indians slaughtered in Godhra, Ahmedabad, Dehlol, Halol, Baroda, and plenty of other places across Gujarat. I think you do too.

Shame on you, CNR Rao

2012-02-24T14:06:00.000+05:30

Plagiarism is a continuing bane. Young novelists with a Harvard pedigree do it, newspapers do it; sometimes newspapers plagiarize themselves with hilarious results. (If you catch them at it, that is).

Cricket-related examples that I ran into a few years ago: You left out dazzling, and Congratulations, Virender Sehwag.

The latest example to hit the news has nothing to do with cricket. It's from a paper co-authored by the eminent scientist CNR Rao. There's plenty of coverage in the press, and comment elsewhere by far more informed folks than me, so I won't try to duplicate it. (For example, see Abi's two posts The Rao Row and Prof Rao responds, and Rahul's three posts on his blog).

I'm only writing this to vent some steam: I'm just appalled by CNR Rao's reaction to this episode. If he had said nothing, it would have blown over as a relatively minor transgression that even the journal concerned was essentially willing to overlook. But instead, Rao chose to speak to PTI about it. And he says, first of all:

"This should not be really considered as plagiarism, but an instance of copying of a few sentences in the text."

Just what does that mean? In my dictionary, the word is defined as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." How does copying of a few sentences from another paper evade this description?

But if CNR did not quite cover himself with glory with that remark, he digs himself further in the mire with these:

"I myself had written to the Editor that it was best to withdraw the paper … I did not directly produce the manuscript which I normally do."

CNR is implying here that he didn't read the paper that carries his name on it (first), and that when he apparently did read it, he himself thought it wasn't worthy of publication. Both of which reflect extremely poorly on an eminent scientist.

But CNR sinks below mire, and into despicability, with one final remark. The "copying", he said, happened "because of X" (X being the student whose name appears on the paper). Instead of having the courage and decency to take the blame himself, CNR chooses to blame, by name, the student: thus likely leaving a permanent black mark on a young scientist's career.

Shame on you, CNR Rao. I can only hope you are the exception in Indian science, not the rule.

Stop the world and let me off

2012-02-24T13:37:00.000+05:30

What I like about astronomy is not just the beauty of the night sky, but also the clear mathematical reasoning that underlies predictions of so many cosmic phenomena. Some of that spirit is what I'm trying to get at in my latest "A Matter of Numbers" column for Mint, in the paper last Friday (in that sentence alone, an indication of how much I've neglected this blog). It discusses something we can't hope to see, but we're pretty sure exists.

No, I don't mean Lady Gaga.

Give me a shout if you recognize the novel mentioned in the last line. That way, I'll know you read the whole thing, and I'll also get a good handle on your age.

(No, you won't skip straight to the last line. Right?)

Take a look: Stop the world and let me off.

And as always, comments welcome.

Past laurels

2012-01-12T17:18:00.004+05:30

Seventeen years ago, India played Sri Lanka in a cricket Test in Bangalore. Sri Lanka crumbled to a heavy defeat by an innings and plenty, but that was hardly the story of this match.

In their second innings, chasing 310 just to make India bat again, Sri Lanka had subsided to 179 for the loss of seven wickets at the end of the third day. When play began on the fourth day, India's captain, Mohammed Azharuddin, asked his premier spinner, young Anil Kumble with his stellar career still in front of him, to "bowl wide of the stumps".

Kumble had taken two wickets already. Against this team that "seemed to want to get the match over as soon as possible", victory was in sight. There were only Sri Lankan tailenders to remove. Why did Azharuddin tell Kumble to bowl like that?

Because another bowler on the team was chasing a record: the (then) highest haul of Test wickets. On that fourth morning, the equation was simple: this bowler needed three more wickets to break the record, there were three more Sri Lankan wickets to winkle out, and all three were tailenders. Thus it was that Kumble got his instructions to bowl wide.

Unfortunately, Kumble didn't fully follow the script, because he took the first wicket to fall that morning, at 188. Now the best that the record-chasing bowler could hope for was to equal the record, not beat it. No doubt the instructions were delivered to Kumble again, more sternly this time.

He must have complied this time. 27 lustily-hit tailender runs later, the last two tailenders had fallen to the record-chaser, India had won, and he had equalled the record. "He broke down as the emotions of the moment overwhelmed him." Azharuddin was awarded the Man-of-the-Match award, but handed it to him.

Of course, what this meant was that the record-chaser needed one more Test to actually break the record. That came a little over a week later, in Ahmedabad, also against Sri Lanka. "The [first] morning had been reserved for the wicket" he needed to get there. He took it in his 8th over, "sparking off a long round of celebrations". Having reached his record, he bowled only one more over in that innings (a measure of the faith his captain had in his abilities, really), only five in Sri Lanka's second innings, and didn't take another wicket as Sri Lanka lost heavily again.

But Kapil Dev had his record.

No matter that he took exactly 50 percent more Tests to reach the mark than Richard Hadlee had taken to set it. (Hadlee, 86 Tests. Dev, 129 Tests).

No matter that he had limped to it in a fashion that was a painful embarrassment to the stellar performer he once had been for India. (Kumble aiming outside the stumps? Please! Makes you cringe. Should have made him cringe.) In his last 20 Tests, he took 54 wickets (2.7 per Test); in his last 10, 20 (2 per Test) -- a clear indication of decline in his once magnificent skills. More evidence of this decline: compare to the 240 wickets he took in his first 60 Tests (4 per Test).

But Kapil Dev had his record.

So when this man tells us, referring to the current Indian team, that "past laurels shouldn't help you retain a berth" in the team, about what happens if "you are not performing" … well, you'll forgive me if this stuff sticks in my craw.

Big time. Record or no record.

***
I've written in similar vein about Kapil Dev before: Have to move one. Also about Kumble himself (and Kapil again) -- Aditya in comments below, please note -- here: Ten but tarnished.

Back to the frontest

2012-01-12T16:05:00.000+05:30

And, to round off this short crop of my published writing ... the January issue of Caravan carries a short essay I did about riding Bombay's double-deckers. (A vanishing breed).

Here you are: Back to the frontest.

Comments welcome.

Domino Theories

2012-01-12T15:31:00.000+05:30

My "A Matter of Numbers" column for Mint continued last Friday January 6th with an essay about what I see as mathematical thinking, even if prompted by a rather simple example or two.

Paying attention to a cacophony of demands, I managed to work in a mention of the famous Maharaja of Gaipajama. Yes, another pat on the back to those of you who can tell me who that is and why he's famous.

Take a look: Domino Theories.

All comments welcome.

Don't cry for me Ranji-ana

2012-01-12T15:28:00.000+05:30

I'm doing a column on my city, "City-Crity", for FirstPost.com. For my second effort, I did a pile of hard-nosed journalism: I sat through the final day of a Ranji trophy cricket match. (Our premier domestic cricket tournament, for those who don't know or have, shame on them, forgotten). It turned out to be a fascinating day in many ways.

Take a look at what resulted - Don't cry for me, Ranji-ana.

If you don't understand Hindi, some possibly loose, possibly literal, translations:

* "Jeetega bhai jeetega, Mumbai jeetega" - Mumbai's gonna win!

* "Arre Jaffer-bhai, timepass mat kar!" - Hey Bro Jaffer, don't waste time!

* "Tea break mein masala chai pi ke aa!" - Go drink some spicy tea during the break!

* "Oye paape!" - Hey you [typically Punjabi] dude!

Incidentally, I need to tell you that I was delighted that the headline for this article attracted the attention of the good folks at Cricinfo, who noted its grave-turning possibilities.

This is therefore a good time to proclaim that this title that I have - that is to say, which is mine - is mine.

(Yes, a pat on the back if you recognize something there).

Beyond Anna

2012-01-05T18:18:00.001+05:30

The January 2012 issue of Seminar is their usual year-in-review number, looking back on 2011. I have an essay in it about the Anna Hazare phenomenon that so dominated politics and palaver last year. The website lists the article, but doesn't have the text. Here it is, appended below.

Comments welcome.

***
Beyond Anna: Complacent, Complicit and Yet Hopeful

Incident #1: At Raipur station in September, I stood in a long line to buy a ticket to Bilaspur. The lines are always long there, but this was a particularly bad day because there had been several days of incessant rains. The roads were flooded and if you wanted to travel out of Raipur, as my friend and I did, your only option was the train.

When I got to the window and said "Bilaspur", the man at the counter mentioned that there was a superfast about to roll in. If I wanted, he said, he could sell me a ticket for it, at a significantly higher price than if I took the more plebeian mail train that was scheduled for a half-hour later.

"Only thing is," he said, "you'll have to board the train, then speak to the ticket collector to allot you a seat, and pay him."

That's fine, I said. I can do that. But I'll get a receipt, right?

"Receipt or no receipt," said the man, "is up to the TC."

Incident #2: A bachelor uncle lived for many years in a nondescript building on a nondescript street in one of Bombay's more desirable suburbs. At one point, he began noticing that he was getting inordinately high electricity bills, well over double what he was used to paying. He couldn't understand what was happening. He had bought no new electrical appliances for the house, and it wasn't as if he suddenly had his geyser on 24/7. Why the excess charges?

A few months of these puzzlingly high bills, with no explanation, were slowly driving my uncle round the bend. After many phone calls, a technician from the power company visited, and promptly found the problem. One of the other residents in the building had disconnected the wires from his own electrical meter and connected them to my uncle's meter. So my uncle had been paying for his consumption too.

Believe me, there are more incidents where those came from. What's more, I suspect that as you read them, you were reminded of others in your own experience.

Which is not such a wild guess. I don't know about other countries, but in this one, we all grow up and grow inured to stories like these. We all do the "small" cheating and bribing and underhand dealing that these two are examples of. We do it to the extent that sometimes it's not even clear there's something wrong -- in some sense -- going on.

Why mention this in an article that tries to look beyond Anna? Because for me, this is the context in which to consider the phenomenon of Anna Hazare. This is the soil in which his efforts take root, that has nurtured his pursuit of a Lokpal Bill. In the end, there's no getting away from context. In this case, what the context does is fill me with cynicism and pessimism about what will come of Hazare's effort.

Yes, we might give ourselves a new law, a new institution, to address corruption. But will that by itself rid us of corruption, as so many of us seem convinced it will?

***

But more about the "small" stuff later. For now, the thing about context is this: when you start thinking about it you find it spreading fingers, raising questions, in all kinds of directions.

One of the first of those questions is, or should be, just who is Anna Hazare? I wanted to ask this of the person who, when Hazare first went on a fast last April, wrote these ecstatic words to me: "A revolution is happening in front of my eyes. Grandparents r taking children to see the Gandhi of this generation. Here too they r calling it a second Satyagrah." (sms-style lingo in the original).

This, from someone who had not even heard of Hazare until days before she wrote that note. This, in a message that did not so much as mention what Hazare was fasting for. His cause was secondary to the rush to glorify this man, turn him into "the Gandhi of this generation". Really, nobody should be expected to fill boots that big. But because Hazare was willing to put his beliefs where his mouth was with his intent to fast, and without even doing him the courtesy of getting to know the man -- this man, plenty of us were immediately willing to put on a pedestal.

None of this is meant to suggest that Hazare is not a "good man" in some way, that he is instead insincere and shallow. Not at all. The point is that his worth as a human being is something that the cause enjoins each of his supporters to learn for themselves. Have I satisfied myself that the man leading this effort I support so wholeheartedly is able to lead, that he has a track record that makes him worthy of my respect? Or am I satisfied to take someone else's word for it, because I myself have never heard of Hazare?

Which of those questions speaks of a greater respect for Hazare and what he seeks to achieve?

For me, this point about context, and the worth of the man, is best made by a curious little tale that has roots in the mid-90s.

While Hazare may have been unknown to a lot of Indians before 2011, plenty of residents of his home state, Maharashtra, have heard about him for many years. His home village of Ralegan-Siddhi, of course, is now famous for the way he coaxed it into cleanliness and efficiency after his time in the Army. But apart from that, he has undertaken other protests and fasts -- the earliest I remember was in May 1994 -- in attempting to punish errant public officials. In 1996, he went on a fast to demand action against two members of the then BJP-Shiv Sena state government, Shashikant Sutar, minister for agriculture, and Mahadeo Shivankar, minister for irrigation. Two years later, he went on a fast to demand action against the same government's minister for social welfare, Babanrao Gholap.

Like Diwali rockets, these latter two fasts produced their own little trails of sparks before vanishing, as they have, into the mists of fading public memory.

Gholap reacted to Hazare's 1998 fast by turning around and filing a defamation suit against Hazare. This case moved at what can only be called -- given the glacial pace of most court goings-on -- the speed of greased lightning. In less than a year, Hazare was found guilty of defaming Gholap and sentenced to three months in jail. Luckily, a sessions court later overturned this conviction. But more tellingly, another few months after that, the police named Gholap for receiving a Rs 40-lakh kickback in an embezzlement case. That case is, as far as I know, now dead in some legal backwater.

The 1996 fast, against Sutar and Shivankar, had an even more intriguing fallout, and then had echoes in 2011 too. Naturally, nothing happened to the two men then. But their government's self-appointed "remote control", Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, was "perturbed" enough by Hazare's fast to pronounce that Hazare should "clean his own backyard" of Ralegan Siddhi before going after Ministers in his government. In response to that, an "agitated Hazare was quick to demand the same against Thackeray, targeting his real estate investments." This prompted Thackeray's son, Uddhav, to speak up. "Let anybody investigate our assets," he said. "But then there should be an investigation into the assets of everyone making these allegations." (Quotes from Outlook, issue dated December 11 1996).

Also, Bal Thackeray "called the much-revered Magsaysay award winner 'mad'". (Outlook, issue dated December 25 1996).

And speaking of the mists of fading public memory … With this much as background, cue to August 2011. Hazare is on fast in Delhi, fighting corruption on a larger canvas than he had in the '90s. Bal Thackeray writes him a letter in which he "recalled that Anna Hazare met him at his Bandra residence on October 4 1996". At that meeting, said Thackeray, the two men "had discussed ways to combat corruption." After the meeting, said Thackeray, Hazare "told reporters that the Sena chief is the only ray of hope and only he can dare crush corruption." (Quotes from Economic Times, issue dated August 24 2011).

Fifteen years on, Hazare's demand for an investigation into Thackeray's assets, and Thackeray's use of the word "mad" for Hazare, have, in Thackeray's mind, morphed into Hazare saying Thackeray "is the only ray of hope and only he can dare crush corruption."

Why? Because nobody, least of all Thackeray, is above using the sudden rise to prominence of Anna Hazare and his cause to score a few political points.

Public memory? Of what? But context: it's everything.

***

The somewhat disturbing thing about writing this essay is that every time I've sat down to do so, there's been a burst of news involving one more of Hazare's close associates. Each time, I've said to myself, "best to wait till the dust settles", but each time one more dust storm has erupted. I am writing now while simultaneously holding my breath, wondering what will spring upon us next; wondering, too, how much of what I write here will be overwhelmed by fresher embarrassments by the time this sees print.

Quick recap since mid-October: First there was the attack on Prashant Bhushan, for his remarks on Kashmir. Then there was the news of Kiran Bedi's flight tickets. That was followed by Arvind Kejriwal's unpaid dues to the government. Most recently it's Hazare's blogger, the journalist Raju Parulekar, under fire for telling the world that all this uproar had persuaded Hazare to contemplate changes in his "core team". When Hazare questioned this claim, Parulekar not only produced Hazare's hand-written letter that said as much, he also lashed out at Bedi and Kejriwal, calling them "fascist". Meanwhile Kejriwal didn't approve of Bedi's deeds with the tickets, and Bedi didn't approve of Kejriwal's disapproval.

It's hard to know what to make of all this. Of course there are legitimate explanations for both Bedi's and Kejriwal's behaviour. Yet there's something to be said, when you're fighting such a thing as corruption, for being meticulously above board yourself. I deliberately use the word "meticulously" there, rather than, say, "scrupulously". That's because I believe few of us don't have skeletons in our cupboards that will, inevitably, tumble out when we take a public stand on something. Meaning, few of us can claim to have been scrupulously above board all through our lives -- a theme I will return to -- and starting now won't change that past. But meticulous we certainly can be, in cleaning up past messes. So I think that Bedi, for example, should certainly have aired and dealt with her particular skeleton of tickets before embarking on this Lokpal voyage. Better, always, to head off the questions than have them asked.

Still, the most disturbing episode among all these is what happened to Bhushan. That, not because of what he said. Not even because he was attacked. While it was brutal and alarming, it really is a product of a certain mindset that's taken firm root in India, and it goes like this. Don't like a certain opinion, especially one that's to do with Kashmir? No problem: go bash the man who expresses it.

There's not much of a price to pay in doing this. In an excess of perversity, such attackers get called patriots -- when instead we should call them what they are, garden-variety thugs -- and the man attacked is referred to as "anti-national". Oh yes, there'll be the usual "naam-ke-vaaste" platitudes on the lines of "we condemn all violence", but the notion that the thug is really a patriot remains entrenched.

That's the part that's disturbing. Because it rests on the assumption that there is a singular view on Kashmir that we must all subscribe to. If you differ, you're a traitor and you're liable to attack from a self-proclaimed patriot who apparently believes the singular view is so weak and shaky, it must be defended from contrarians, and he must defend it with his meaty fists.

Remember what Bhushan said: "We should try to take the people of Kashmir with us. If even after that the people of Kashmir don't want to be with us, if they feel like they want to be separate, we should hold a plebiscite there and if they then choose to be separate, we should let that happen." (Translation of his words at a Lucknow event mine).

This is hardly the place to debate the emotional impact of such words on the psyches of purebred pseudo-patriots. Instead, let's remember what our first Prime Minister, a man who fought for Indian freedom all his life, said in a radio broadcast in early November 1947, not even three months after India won freedom:

"We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharaja has supported it, not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and law and order have been established to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations. We want it to be a fair and just reference to the people and we shall accept their verdict. I can imagine no fairer and juster offer."

Caveats: It is worth remembering that the promise of a referendum in Kashmir, as eventually spelled out by the United Nations, was predicated on preconditions that had to be met, that have not been met in over 60 years. (First among them being the withdrawal of Pakistani forces). Besides, it is now an easy thing to spit on the memory and legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru.

But none of that diminishes the spirit and substance of the pledge India made in 1947, in the voice of a man who had earned his patriotism -- unlike garden-variety thugs who have to claim it -- by fighting for a free India. Let's be clear and honest about it: "Ultimately", we promised in the year of our freedom, "the people of Kashmir" will decide their fate and "we shall accept their verdict."

In what way are Nehru's words, and that Indian pledge, different from what Bhushan said?

Yet after Bhushan was attacked, Anna Hazare himself refused to stand by him. He "didn't like" Bhushan's statement, said Hazare. "The points [Bhushan] has made are not good."

What's "not good"? For let's ask again, in what way are Bhushan's words different from Nehru's words? Is it that Hazare "didn't like" what Nehru said, too?

Let's ask as well: does such reaction not simply fuel more thugs to undertake more violence in the name of pseudo-patriotism?

This episode gets to the heart of my concern about a movement that focuses on one issue -- even as substantial an issue as corruption -- and therefore attracts widespread support. Inevitably, its protagonists will have views on other issues. Inevitably, these views will see the light of day, because that's the nature of being in the public eye. Inevitably, some of us will find it hard to agree with some of these views. What happens then?

Is it feasible, or reasonable, that a movement against corruption remains disengaged from other problems that this country faces? Is it reasonable that Anna Hazare chooses to shut off debate about a question that is rooted in our earliest days as a free nation, that touches at the very heart of being Indian?

***

But with all that said, there remains another set of rocks on which I worry that Hazare's movement will founder. It's true we have lost substantial faith in the institutions we have set up to administer our laws and dispense justice. But is that dilemma solved by setting up yet another institution? After all, from where will we find people to staff a Lokpal, this national ombudsman authority if you will, if not from among the same pool of fellow-citizens that have been unable to prevent every other Indian institution from crumbling away? What's to prevent it from becoming, as an American friend warned the day before I started this essay, another J Edgar Hoover-run FBI, a Big Brother, a law unto itself and almost impossible to halt in its sinister tracks?

For the real implication of that loss of faith I mentioned is, again, context. Corruption is not the exclusive preserve of men we elect to rule us, or men they appoint to police us. If it was that way, if the rest of us were honest lily-white souls in every aspect of our lives, it would be easy to rid ourselves of corruption: fling out the corrupt at the next election and put in place men of strength and integrity.

Yet of course it is not, and has never been, that easy.

To me, it's not easy because corruption is not something that happens only with our MPs, but something each of us do every day.

Do I greet the cop who pulls me over for running through a red light by putting out a hand that holds a hundred rupee note? Do I run through the red light anyway, if I don't see a cop nearby? Do I choose to pay my doctor his bill in cash, without asking for a bill? Do I fill his prescription at the pharmacy without insisting on a bill? Do I buy Euros for my trip to Finland at the "official" rate my nearby foreign exchange dealer quotes, or at the "unofficial" rate -- about a rupee less per Euro -- he also quotes? Do I ever pay any attention to the "No Entry" sign at the entrance to the lane where I live?

You get the drift. I could go on. I could come up with more examples like those, as could you. If they seem familiar, that's the context I have been harping on. If your nose wrinkles at the piffling nature of such "offences", if you wonder what they have to do with Hazare's campaign and thus why they appear in this essay, that too is the context I keep harping on.

To me, the real achievement of this struggle for a Lokpal Bill is not the Bill itself, if and when it is born. Instead, it is the mirror it holds up to us all. Because it's when we look in that mirror, openly and without denial, that we will start defeating corruption in this country.

Is that some kind of tiresome moral prescription? I don't know. But I do know that ridding ourselves of corruption is an exercise that extends far beyond Anna Hazare.

Beyond, meaning all the way to where you and I stand: complacent, complicit, yet somehow hopeful.

11.22.63

2011-12-31T12:41:00.002+05:30

Last week, I finished a 750 page book that at times I could barely stand putting down. Not that it didn't have its sagging moments, its occasional tedium of detail -- which book that long can avoid those things? But I don't recall a book which kept me wondering so long about so many threads, about how the author would resolve each of them.

Probably because I've never been much interested in fantasy and horror -- give me the real stuff, I say -- I've never read Stephen King. And yet I also know that he has written more than just horror; a novella he wrote, for example, was turned into what I consider the most magnificent film I've ever seen, "The Shawshank Redemption." I started on 11.22.63 perhaps only because it is about the assassination of JFK. Even if you don't buy the myriad conspiracy theories, it is fascinating to speculate about all the mystery and questions around the event. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? What was he like? Who was Jack Ruby? What made him shoot Oswald? What if he hadn't? What if Oswald had missed?

And this book takes you into that thicket of questions. Quite literally so, via that time-tested fiction device: time travel. What happens if you can change the past? What happens if it is a relatively small event you're changing, one with few wider implications? What happens if it is, well, the murder of an American President? Is one of these more difficult to achieve than the other? What happens when you return to the present? What happens when you return to the past after returning to the present?

It's not that nobody has tackled such themes before; and more than that, it's not that none of us have ever thought about them. But King explores them in different ways. Of which, surprisingly, the most telling is a love story. Not the assassination itself, not the travel through time itself, but a love story.

How else can a relationship across the barrier of time play out except as heartbreak? And yet King manages to find believable hope for his story. You can't change the past, but if you want, it can make you whole.

What ifs are fine as far as they go. The what nows are infinitely more interesting.

Small miracle in a river

2011-12-31T11:58:00.000+05:30

Late one downpouring September night in the village of Lakhanpur in Chhattisgarh, Sarita felt something. Then again. "It's the baby!" she shouted to her husband, Bhanu. He ran to get the village health worker, and together they helped give birth to Bhanu and Sarita's first-born, a healthy little boy.

Only, there was no time to celebrate. Sarita was pregnant with twins, and the second baby would not emerge. The health worker phoned the doctor. "Get her across the river!", he said. "I'll have a jeep waiting on the other side to bring her in to the hospital."

With the heaviest rain in many years, the river Maniyari was full, fast and furious: about 60-80 metres wide, the water shoulder high. But there was no bridge across it, no other road. The only way to cross, from Sarita's village, was through the water.

It was now close to midnight, completely dark and still raining heavily. Fifteen villagers gathered. Sarita lay on a cot. They put her baby beside her. They picked up the cot and carried it the two km to the river.

When they reached the other side, they put Sarita in the jeep and it sped over bumpy roads, an hour-and-a-half to the hospital. Not long after, her second baby was born. Another healthy little boy.

But to reach the other side … Bhanu and the villagers walked into the water and strung themselves out. Through and across that fast-flowing river, in the darkness, in the rain, they passed the cot, with Sarita and her newborn and her yet-to-be-born lying on it, hand over hand over shoulder overhead.

And so for 2012, I wish you peace, happiness, the company of good friends and any number of small miracles.

Andheri murders

2011-11-08T20:39:00.001+05:30

Last night I got a call asking me to be on a NDTV "We The People" panel, with Barkha Dutt, to discuss the horrific murders in Andheri about three weeks ago. The family was there, along with several eloquent people and an alert audience.

I've just heard that it will be broadcast tonight (Tuesday Nov 8) 10pm on NDTV 24x7. Please watch. Thoughts welcome.

***
My laziness has prompted a commenter to dig up and post, in his comment, the link to the show on the NDTV site.

When you have an hour to spare, here's the page: The Keenan-Reuben murders: We The Indifferent?

Mr Tendulkar's Neighbourhood

2011-10-30T12:12:00.000+05:30

One day while Sachin Tendulkar was building his new home opposite where I live, there was an effort to move many tons of marble.

I know you want to know about that.

Check my essay in the November issue of Caravan: Mr Tendulkar's Neighbourhood: Living next door to Sachin.

Comments always welcome.

Your public key, please

2011-10-30T12:10:00.000+05:30

Question: where oh where can you read about large primes and the "p" language in the same essay?

Answer: My new Mint column. On air last Friday October 28.

I need to tell you that reliable sources tell me that this is the first piece of writing in human history that makes mention of Skipjack, Ramdulari and Shamir. A fact of which I am inordinately proud.

On that dubious note ... Check Your Public Key, Please.

And as ever, your comments welcome.