Death Ends Fun

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.

Walking the Freedom Trail

2011-10-16T23:16:00.000+05:30

The October-November 2011 issue of Conde Nast Traveller is an "India Special". Nevertheless, it carries an essay I wrote after a visit to South Africa last May, perhaps because it includes some musing I did on connections to India in Cape Town's beautiful Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

I haven't figured out if the article is online, so the text is below. They called it "Walking the Freedom Trail", different from the title I gave it.

And yes, your comments welcome.

***
Trail to Somewhere

It's a grainy black-and-white photograph, one that practically screams "1960s". No really identifiable face in it, just human forms. Most are in a large crowd, a few off to the side by themselves. In my imagination, one of those figures by himself has his arm up, hand in a fist, shouting something stirring and passionate that, these years later, isn't really identifiable either.

It's in Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum, the photograph. The caption says it was taken at a Cape Town rally, tens of thousands strong. Dating from March 1960, this was one of the early demonstrations against apartheid's perverse pass laws, the mood also fanned that morning by the infamous Sharpeville massacre of a few days before. It was led by Philip Kgosana, then a young student-activist with the Pan African Congress, who lived in a teeming shantytown outside Cape Town. After some hard-nosed negotiation, the police told him that the "Justice" Minister, FC Erasmus, had agreed to meet a small delegation.

"This was an exciting moment," Kgosana would write years later. "Never in the history of South Africa had an 'agitator' forced a racist minister to succumb to an undesirable appointment." Of course, when Kgosana and his colleagues arrived to meet Erasmus, he didn't show up. So much for "justice". Instead, the police arrested them and put them on trial for incitement to public violence.

Days after I saw the photograph, I waited in a convenience store in Pretoria, idly wondering if this was the first time I would meet a figure from a museum exhibit. Kgosana walked in right on time, a stocky man with gentle eyes. Nobody paid him any attention. "Hey guys," I wanted to shout at the shoppers desultorily examining biltong and wafer packets, "this man is in your Apartheid Museum! He's one reason you're here today!"

I held my tongue.

It must be a sign of how far South Africa has come that Kgosana lives today not in a shantytown, but in a comfortable bungalow in a once-whites-only suburb of the city that, more than every other in the country, personified white domination over black. But it's also a sign of that long journey that this figure from the resistance to white rule is now just another 70-something year-old, anonymous in this place. And if people warn you about violent crime in South Africa in these post-apartheid times, the reality also is that this is the continent's most dynamic economy, a vibrant nation with a host of attractions for every kind of tourist.

How far removed from protests against apartheid.

As Kgosana drove me home, I thought: a country subsides into a long night of oppression and brutality. It takes decades of struggle to emerge from that darkness. The guides on the way are heroes large and not-so-large: the Mandelas, but the Kgosanas too. There's an eruption of euphoria in 1994, at journey's end. But inevitably the ordinariness of daily life returns. Which is as it should be.

And that's how Kgosana saw his country. "Sure there's crime in South Africa," he said as we spoke in his comfortable living room, echoing other conversations in other living rooms. "Of course it bothers me. But where did we come from? You can't forget that."

True. After convulsions like South Africa has seen, there will necessarily be a time of uncertainty and unrest. You don't emerge from darkness directly into utopia. Yet if some heroes return to obscurity, as Kgosana has, perhaps that is itself a sign of some normalcy.

Speaking of normalcy and utopias, we visited the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

I'll say this: give me one botanical garden, you've given me them all. Oh sure, this expanse of verdant vegetation outside Cape Town is picture-perfect gorgeous. There are elegant bird of paradise flowers (Strelitzia) in dazzling colours, enormous trees, an aroma garden with plant smells familiar and otherwise, and plenty more to gladden a horticulturist's heart. All very impressive, but not quite the place I might have visited on my own.

Then again, that's because I did not know, ahead of time, about the Braille Trail.

Across from the aroma garden, marked by ropes, the Braille Trail meanders into the trees and out again. Just another walk, unless you get into the spirit and use it as it was designed to be used. The name is, of course, the giveaway. This is a self-guided tour designed specifically for the blind. They hold the rope and walk, stopping at regular boards in Braille and English (for those who can't handle Braille). This way, they learn about the trees among which they stroll, the arboreal scents and surfaces that surround them. They get some idea of what fellow-tourists, the sighted ones, experience.

My 11 year-old and I decided to give it a shot.

We grabbed the rope, shut our eyes tight and started walking. For the first few minutes, it was surprisingly hard to keep my eyes closed, to actually trust that I'd be fine without sight, with just the rope to guide me. So I kept opening then, though just slits, unable to shake the silly thought that somebody was watching to see if I cheated. But when I settled into the experience, the eyes stayed closed, it wasn't silly, and I was astonished by just how sensory and fulfilling it was. The 11 year-old, just as charmed.

Without sight, my ears tuned in even faint sounds. My skin registered the gentle breeze. My nose, a series of forest smells. My fingers, the curving strands of rope, the roughness of tree trunks. Twice, I felt my way to a bench for a sit-down, then back to the trail. Simple things when I look back, but they left me refreshed and curiously humbled by this small taste of what it is to be blind.

But more than that, too. All through, words that Nelson Mandela made famous coursed, maybe incongruously, through my mind. Mine was no long walk, but something about this trail had me musing, maybe incongruously, about the one he wrote about:

"I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter … I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended."

Mandela: always thought-provoking. At trail's end, I paid silent tribute to whoever designed this walk, amazed by their singular thoughtfulness. Did they realize it would be so meaningful for the sighted too? After all, walking it with my eyes shut had me contemplating themes and metaphors like darkness and light, new ways of seeing, concern for your fellow human, going bravely into the great unknown. All in about 45 minutes. Long walk, for sure.

And for an Indian, such themes resonate. For they must have meant something, over a century ago, to an Indian whose insight and fibre were forged here. Here, in apartheid South Africa, decades before it woke to freedom and hope.

They remember Gandhi in this country too.

Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, now home to the country's highest court, used to be the site of a notorious prison. The cell where Gandhi was once detained is now a memorial to the man. A serene place to remember him, it has photographs, accounts of his arrests and meetings with various leaders, his writings and even a BBC interview from some months before he died, playing over the buzz of construction next door. This must be one of the few places in the world where you can actually hear Gandhi's thin voice.

From here, Gandhi crossed the ocean to a land yearning for freedom. With a unique cocktail of courage, morality, political savvy and empathy, and with a unprecedented cast of giants among men, he guided India to a new dawn in 1947. Darkness to light, you might say. Our own Braille Trail.

"I can't promise you sunlight and roses," I imagine Philip Kgosana saying that day to the gathered thousands in Cape Town, perhaps to his country itself. "But walk the trail with me. Stay the course. I can promise you hope."

For new dawns, on either side of an ocean, perhaps hope is all you need.

Silence in the places of men

2011-10-16T23:09:00.000+05:30

The current issue of Himal magazine (October-November 2011) is titled "Dust of the road: Trips, travel and journeys". It carries an essay I did based on a road trip through Karnataka, and then a stay in Shillong.

Take a look: Silence in the places of men.

And of course, comments always welcome.

The Primes keep rolling on

2011-10-16T22:52:00.000+05:30

Days and long nights on the road escorting 80 spirited kids around the sights of Agra and Delhi, and I'm tired even 5 days after our return. Minimal time for and access to the Web means this blog has been neglected for some time now. Let's see if I can pick up the pieces.

First, some writing that's on air.

My Mint mathematics column went live on Friday, October 14. In deference to vociferous demand, it manages to mention both Arshanapalayam and Dumbledore. There's a passing reference to Euclid thrown in, too.

See The primes keep rolling on.

Comments welcome.

And in case the link doesn't work, the text of the essay is below.

***
The primes keep rolling on

A possibly strange beast featured in my last column. No, I don't mean kitties named Aziz or Cleo. They aren't strange. What I'm referring to is the factorial. To jog your memory, the factorial of a positive number is what you get when you multiply all the numbers between 1 and itself.

Thus 4! ("four factorial") = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 = 24.

Writing that, I can visualize eyes glazing over. Sure, I used this in the last column as an example of what recursion does well, but maybe you're wondering, why? Of what possible use is it to multiply numbers in this crazy way? Why subject us to this stuff?

Good question. We should all keep mathematicians, and those who try to write about mathematics, on their toes, especially when they try to foist evidently obscure operations on us. So yes, what is this factorial business?

Actually, it isn't that obscure.

Imagine you have four framed photographs of different relatives -- Arshanapalayam, Bob, Cherukuri and Dumbledore -- that you want to put in a row on your wall. You worry, because they are all fussy and prone to taking offence about where in the row they appear. My advice, of course, would be to fling all the photos out: equal opportunity offence. But that's not practical. Besides, it doesn't lend itself easily to mathematical intervention. So you decide that each day, you'll shuffle the positions of the photos. How many days before you must repeat an arrangement?

In other words, in how many different ways can you order the photographs on the wall?

Start with the first place. Any of the four photographs -- A, B, C or D -- can go there, meaning there are four ways of filling it. Once you've done so, let's say with C, go to the second spot. For which -- since you've used up C -- you have three frames available (A, B, D). That is, for each way of choosing a frame for the first spot, there are three ways of filling the second. Thus 4 x 3, or 12 ways of filling both the first two. Say you choose A for the second spot. You have two frames left (B, D), and either can occupy the third spot. So for each of the 12 ways of filling the first 2 slots, there are 2 ways to fill the third. Thus 4 x 3 x 2, or 24 ways, to fill those three. In our case, say you choose D for spot 3. Which leaves you with just B for the last slot -- or, only one way to fill it.

Thus your answer: there are 4 x 3 x 2 x 1, or 4!, or 24 ways to order the photographs. One of those, CADB, is what we chose above.

How many of the 24 will offend which of your relatives is also not a question that lends itself easily to mathematical intervention. But what you do have is 24 days of fresh arrangements, before you repeat.

If you had 5 framed photographs -- cousin Ekalavya joins the grumpy gang of four -- you'd have 120 arrangements.

Not much to write home about, even if it buys peace with fussy relatives? Then consider how the great Greek mathematician Euclid used factorials to prove that there is no such thing as a largest prime number.

Primes, remember, are numbers that have no factors other than 1 and themselves. For example, 3, 7, 19 and 31 are primes. Whereas 21 (3 x 7) and 10 (2 x 5) are not -- they are products of other primes.

So is there a largest such number?

Let's assume there is one. Amazingly enough, Euclid showed that this assumption undermines itself -- that there is no largest prime.

For simplicity, let's say the largest prime is 5. Consider, said Euclid, the number 5! + 1 = (1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5) + 1 = 121. Is 121 prime?

Well, you can't divide it by a prime less than the largest -- 5 -- because you get a remainder of 1 each time (try it). Thus either 121 is itself prime, or it is divisible by a prime larger than 5. Whichever it is, we've found a prime larger than 5. (In fact, 121 is the square of 11, a prime). And since the identical reasoning works with any prime, not just 5, this proves that there is no largest prime. Our initial assumption, that there is one, is wrong.

In other words, there is an infinite number of primes.

(As an aside, this mechanism of making an assumption and showing it is wrong is a favourite mathematical proof technique, called "reductio ad absurdum").

Such an elegant use of factorials, I always thought. Intuitive and understandable. Why can't life itself be like that? Instead, we worry about arranging and rearranging photos.

Recursively Yours

2011-09-30T15:51:00.000+05:30

Yours to read, my new Mint column, Recursively Yours to read, my new Mint column, Recursively Yours to read, my new Mint column ... here.

(I called it "To Recurse, Perchance to Dream", Mint preferred "Recursively Yours").

In case the link does not work, the text is below. Comments, as always, welcome.

***
Our kittens have never stepped out of our flat. So I'm wondering about teaching them a foolproof method, call it the CatOut method, to find their way downstairs for a stroll. Now I'm sure they understand human-speak -- all right, I'm overly fond of felines -- so here's what I might whisper in their furry ears: "CatOut starts by checking if you're already on the ground floor. If so, you're done: race out to the road. If not, walk down one flight of stairs and do the CatOut from there."

Simple, right? So what happens when Aziz and Cleo do the CatOut at our fourth floor flat? They'll check: are we on the ground floor? No. Therefore, walk down one flight, to the third floor. Apply CatOut there. Meaning, they'll check: are we on the ground floor? No. Therefore, walk down one flight, to the second floor. Etc. In minutes, they'll shoot joyously out of the building, onto the road.

Look at it like this: We've defined their trip from a given floor in terms of the same trip from the floor below. We've defined it in a way that every computer science student will recognize: recursively.

Recursion is a profound and powerful idea. If you do it right, it works like a dream. But for me, its real appeal is that it's like saying: "You want to do this? Just go do it."

Or: "You want to learn how to swim? Jump in and start swimming." Best way to learn.

Because sometimes when you have a problem, detailed instructions get intense and complicated. Far better to just attempt a solution to a smaller but related problem, learning as you go. The power of recursion is precisely that it defines a task in terms of a simpler version of itself. By a clever bit of self-reference that, finally, reduces a daunting problem to a series of easy ones.

You specify an endpoint in which the task becomes trivial: if on the ground floor, run for the road. You specify a recursive case that reduces the task -- descend a flight of stairs -- because apart from the reduction the procedure is then identical: make the trip, but from one floor below.

Do this repeatedly, and CatOut becomes just a series of descents, one flight at a time. This way, you know Aziz and Cleo can reach the road from the ground floor, from the 10,679th floor, or even from the top of a building with an infinity of floors. (Though after descending a few million flights, you may hear a few yowls of protest. You have been warned.)

So yes, computer science students learn recursion, though not through the good offices of Aziz and Cleo. Instead, it works well, for example, for one of the earliest programming problems they tackle: calculating the factorial of a positive number.

The factorial, written with an exclamation mark, is what you get when you multiply all the numbers between 1 and the original number.

Thus 5! (read "five factorial") = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 = 120.

And 100! = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x … x 97 x 98 x 99 x 100 = a number so large, I feel tired even trying to contemplate it, leave alone calculate it.

But while factorials quickly get large, you can tell a computer -- a stupid machine that can multiply two numbers, but no more -- how to calculate them via a short recursive procedure.

Note only that 5! = 5 x 4!, or 100! = 100 x 99! = 100 x 99 x 98!, etc -- you can break those down further. In English, the procedure looks like this: to calculate the factorial of a number, check -- is it 1? If so, the answer is 1 (the trivial case) and you're done. If greater than 1, the answer is the product of the number itself and the factorial of the number immediately below (the recursive step).

Do this repeatedly, and instead of an intimidating factorial calculation, the computer is left to do what it can: multiply pairs of numbers, a series of pairs. The power of recursion.

In my computer science days, my colleagues and I obsessed about writing what we called "elegant" software. We didn't always succeed, and it wasn't always clear what qualified as elegant in a particular situation. Yet we all recognized that it usually is clear, innovative and has a satisfying dash of panache.

And some of the most satisfyingly elegant stuff came from using this thing called recursion. Because if you get it right, recursion can substitute for chunks of clumsy programming.

"To recurse is divine", said the legendary computer scientist L Peter Deutsch. Me, I like learning by breaking things down, by doing, by simply getting going. That's what recursion's about, for me. Don't know much about divinity, but I'll take elegance every time.

My presence expected

2011-09-28T00:08:00.000+05:30

A recent bit of email has me feeling privileged and delighted. That's because it is an invitation to an upcoming conference. And it has these excellent features.

* It contains the acronyms IPR, R&D, HRM, CEO, NKC, ICT, OM and possibly a few more I missed, of which I know the full forms of just three.

* It informs me that the organizers are "happy" that they have got, as an "active partner", a company or organization or something that I have never heard of.

* It "solicits my suggestions" to make the conference a "purposeful event", even though I am hard pressed to come up with any suggestions apart from "you probably don't want me there".

* It "expects my presence" on all three days of the conference.

* It asks me to "take active part" in the conference "by paying an appropriate registration fee."

* It invites me "as a respected Technology Management professional worldwide", which I didn't know I was. In fact I suspect they don't know either that I am that respected TMpw, because the letter is addressed to "Dear Sir/Madam".

Fifth from the bottom

2011-09-27T23:49:00.001+05:30

When I was there two weeks ago, someone mentioned Bilaspur's position in some recent quality of life ranking of 200 Indian cities. It was fifth from the bottom, he told me.

This surprised me. Why wasn't it ranked at the bottom?

And since it wasn't, what kind of hellholes languish below Bilaspur?

I mean, what a ghastly place this second-largest city in Chhattisgarh is. For anyone who says Chhattisgarh is a well-run state, I can only say, visit Bilaspur. If this is the Pride of Chhattisgarh, I shudder.

Some thoughts, stream-of-consciousness style.

When it's not raining, there's dust everywhere from the endless construction. When it is raining there's mud and slush everywhere, great huge expanses of mud. There's a flyover under construction over a railway crossing: the ramps from both sides seem complete, but the flyover remains unfinished. Been that way for 7-8 years, I'm told, and certainly it hasn't progressed by so much as a laid brick since my first visit, 18 months ago. Thus the heavy traffic on that road -- both directions -- has to crawl for half a km along a narrow road and over the tracks. The state this road is in beggars description. It is simply a long series of craters. It runs alongside a huge pool of stagnant rainwater into which we saw, one evening as we waited at the level crossing, several men peeing, taking turns. Another evening, a truck mired in the mud, its driver standing knee deep in the water we had seen people peeing in, and scratching his head.

But the road beggars description only until you see other roads in the city. One has even deeper craters over an even longer stretch. As we careened over them in a rickshaw one night, the person beside me said, resignedly, it's been like this for three years.

In an upscale residential neighbourhood -- judging by the houses there -- once-new sewage pipes have simply been left on the side of the road. Also there at least 18 months. Beside them is the open drain, in which you can almost see mosquitoes breeding with abandon.

Piles of sand and rubble everywhere. Some sprawl across three-fourths of the road. Invisible at night, you wonder how people don't drive smack into them. The garbage that's simply lying around. A "ring road" that's been laid in concrete, but not completed, so suddenly the concrete gives way to mud, and getting onto it from feeder roads means traversing a ramp of packed mud, and when it rains that ramp is worn away so you have to drive up and over a one-foot height difference between the surfaces … the traffic, the impossibility of taking a simple walk in any direction that's more than a minute long because you run into mud, or traffic, or construction …

In this chaos and anarchy, this post-post-modern vision of what all of India's cities might one day be, people travel and sell and buy and fight and take out processions. They live. I don't know how.

Nawab of Pataudi

2011-09-22T19:20:00.000+05:30

To remember a man today, these few words.

Who wrote that he had "never forgotten the spectacle of my Oxford contemporary, the Nawab of Pataudi (one of India's greatest cricketers, even after losing one eye) fielding for the university and throwing the ball with devastating speed and accuracy at the wicket"?

Go well, Mr Khan.

Uncertainly yours, the cat

2011-09-16T10:49:00.002+05:30

My new math/science effort for Mint is in the paper today: Uncertainly Yours, The Cat.

It's about Lajwanti the cat, errant electrons and a mirror too. I tried my usual -- work in the gratuitous mention of Lady Gaga -- but yet again, I wasn't able to manage it. So the count of Gaga mentions in my columns remains stuck at one, more's the pity.

And as usual, in case the link doesn't work, the text is below.

Your thoughts always welcome.

***
Postscript: Please read Rahul Siddharthan's debunking of my article, here. Live and learn.

***
With two cats at home, it's always a delight when they compete to rub themselves against my shin. So I sometimes wonder, why would anyone dream up a cat? "DD's lost it", you're thinking. But I would submit that the world's best-known cat, at least among physicists, is an imaginary one.

And get this: she never lived, but people say she's both dead and alive.

This feline was the creation of the great German physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who died 50 years ago. Seeking to understand Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, fundamental to modern physics, he thought of a cat. I mean, the last thing I expected to hear about in college was a purely hypothetical cat. Yet generations of students the world over know this one well.

Absent mathematical jargon, the Uncertainty Principle says something simple: the act of measuring something affects that measurement. For example, it is impossible to determine both the location of an electron and the speed at which it moves. If you measure its speed accurately, this process of measurement itself makes its location hard to pin down, and vice versa. The uncertainty in one measurement, Heisenberg tells us, depends on the uncertainty in the other.

Looked at another way, measurement decides the state of the electron.

This is not such a mysterious idea. Imagine an anthropologist visiting a tribal village to study its inhabitants. His very presence will disturb the state of the village: we all behave differently when strangers come visiting. By observing, the anthropologist affects what he wants to observe. He never gets a "true" picture of the village.

Sure, but why is this important? Traditionally, physics nurtured the idea that nature's laws tell us the past and future. If we can fully describe the state of the universe right now, for example, we can deduce its state at any other time. Heisenberg shattered this romantic notion. Not only is there uncertainty in the properties of things, the act of measuring properties itself increases uncertainty. You cannot determine the state of the universe at a given time; life is not predictable.

Now this is fine with tiny particles like electrons that nobody can see anyway. What about ordinary objects?

What about, say, cats?

That very question occured to Schrödinger. His famous thought experiment went something like this. Put Lajwanti the cat into a box. Also put in a device that, when turned on, might or might not emit a single electron. That is, over a minute, the chances are exactly 50-50 that it emits an electron. If it does, it also releases a poisonous spray, goodbye Lajwanti. If it doesn't, she lives to fight another minute.

Seal the box and put it far enough away that you can't tell what's going on inside. Turn on the device for exactly one minute. What happens to the cat?

Trivial question, right? The answer: we don't know. The Uncertainty Principle reminds us that we can't predict the behaviour of the device: even if we pinpoint the location of its every electron, we have no idea about their motions, no way to determine their behaviour during that minute, no way to tell if one will be emitted. Thus we don't know if Lajwanti is alive or dead.

Until, of course, we walk over to the box and open it to hear -- let's hope -- the loud miaow of a bewildered cat. Only then do we actually know that she survived her uncertain ordeal.

With the box sealed, we know only that Lajwanti is either alive or dead. This must seem blindingly mundane. But it is entirely consistent with the laws of physics to think of her, before opening the box, as simultaneously alive and dead. Here's the crucial idea: the act of opening the box and looking in on Lajwanti -- taking a measurement, in other words -- is what puts her definitely into one of those two states: alive, we hope.

What's the point? What's so profound about a cat shut into a box?

Well, there's the effect of measurement, the idea of uncertainty, and more. But perhaps the deepest yet simplest point is this: reality takes shape only when we observe it.

We know an electron is emitted only when we detect it. The anthropologist learns something about tribal customs only when he actually observes a tribe, even if that affects their behaviour. We find out poor Lajwanti's fate only when we open Schrödinger's box.

Haven't we all wondered on these lines before? If I turn my back to the mirror, is my image really there? If there's nobody to hear, does a tree that falls in a forest make a sound?

Is there reality without observation, existence without consciousness?

Schrödinger's cat shows that the laws of physics might answer those questions with "no". That may be too extreme for people who believe reality surrounds them without needing to be looked at.

Then again, Lajwanti herself isn't real.

Ink Salon

2011-09-16T10:44:00.000+05:30

I'll be speaking at INK Salon Mumbai this evening (Friday September 16).

Can't tell you yet what I will say, except that it's about a cot. If that's enough of a temptation for you, be there. Or be elsewhere.

Beating someone

2011-09-09T23:31:00.002+05:30

Serious shouting and screaming from somewhere close by, an hour or two ago. Sounded like people were angry enough to kill each other. I walked over to see if there was something I could do to prevent sudden murder. It's a bungalow behind a high wall, can't see anything but the shouting is getting louder and fiercer. Then three people emerge from a gate, walking backward, gesticulating, shouting and being shouted at. A slender young woman, a young man who is probably her husband, and an older man who must be his father.

Four people. The woman is carrying a small baby.

The young man shouts in desperation at the father, a mixture of Marathi and Hindi: "Baba, start your scooter! Let's go!"

Father yells and shakes his fist at whoever is inside. Something wondering about the caste of those inside, and pronouncing his own. Young man shouts at him again, "Get on your scooter! NOW!" Father won't stop yelling.

Eventually the woman starts walking toward me, which seems to prompt the father to get on his scooter. She says as she comes closer, cradling her baby, "They are beating our bahu in there."

The father and son draw alongside on their scooters. The father shouts in my face, "They are beating my bahu! Would you be able to tolerate it? I can't! My bahu!"

The woman settles herself on the seat behind her husband and the two scooters roar off down the road, with the father still shouting.

And I'm left scratching my head. Who were they talking about?

postAnna, #3

2011-09-09T23:11:00.000+05:30

Third in the occasional series.

At Raipur station yesterday, long lines to buy tickets. Crowds even more than usual because incessant rains have flooded several roads. When I get to the window, I ask for a ticket to my destination. The man at the counter says there's a superfast about to come in, and I can buy a ticket for it and board. "Only thing is," he says, "you'll have to speak to the ticket checker to allot you a seat, and pay him."

"I'll get a receipt, right?" I ask.

"Receipt or no receipt is up to him," says the man.

***
Previous: postAnna, #1, postAnna, #2.

postAnna, #2

2011-09-05T12:33:00.001+05:30

The second in an occasional series.

Seen today on a narrow but car-heavy one way street: a grey Honda Civic, driving at high speed the wrong way.

Also today: somebody I know called a foreign exchange dealer to ask about buying some said exchange for an upcoming trip abroad. The dealer said: if you want it officially, X is the price, bring a copy of your passport and ticket and I'll give you a bill. But if you want it unofficially, Y (about a rupee less than X) is the price. No bill.

***
Previous: postAnna, #1.

Not necessarily a century

2011-09-04T22:21:00.000+05:30

I've been writing a column in Housecalls magazine for over a year now. The September-October issue carries "Not Necessarily a Century". It's readable online, but it's probably easier read below.

Comments welcome.

***
These words, soon after the end of a cricket Test at Lords. In which, perhaps you'll remember, England hammered India by a huge margin. And in cricket, as it often happens, there are some life lessons.

The result of the match, you'd think, would be the primary concern of Indian fans when it started five days earlier. You'd think Indian fans would be urging the team, silently or otherwise, to play to win, first and above all. I'm sure there were some fans like that. Except that if you read and heard all the pre-match hoopla about the game, you'd be forgiven for thinking that victory wasn't on too many people's radars. What was, instead, was a certain cricketer's personal milestone.

Sachin Tendulkar's 100th international century, of course. Ah, what poetry if he scored it here at Lords, the venerable home of cricket, where he has never done well. What joy if he got his name on the famous honours board at Lords. What perfect number magic, if in this 100th Test between India and England, in this 2000th Test match of all time, he managed to score his own 100th hundred.

Yet I don't remember seeing in any of this breathless adulation one simple thought: what if we won? What if Tendulkar scored a century while crafting a famous Indian victory? For surely that's what teams play the game for, to win. Surely not to provide a vehicle for one player to achieve greater heights than he already has.

Our obsession with such heights, I believe, encourages us to lose sight of what's important. Like, in this case, winning a Test match.

Now I can hardly suggest that the Indian team itself was similarly obsessed with Tendulkar's records and lost the Test right there. After all, there are plenty of exemplary cricketers in that team -- Dravid, Raina, Kumar, Sharma -- who fought hard all the way. But there's something to be said about this adulation of a man for his individual records, mighty though they are, in a team game.

In fact, there's something larger to be said.

If you merely look around, much of our country's landscape is dotted with adulation like this. Think of giant cutouts of whoever the current Chief Minister is in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka; think of how that cutout culture is spreading elsewhere. Think of the enormous statues of Mayawati in a new park on the outskirts of Lucknow. Think of the crowds that collect outside Amitabh Bacchhan's home every day, jostling for a glimpse of the man. Think of the obsequious reverence with which we greet the rich, famous and powerful: whether Anil Ambani or Bal Thackeray or, yes, Sachin Tendulkar. Think of men tattooing "JJ" on their bodies to mark Jayalalitha's birthday, enough tattoos to match the lady's age.

Because they reach a certain place in life, we turn these people into figures on a pedestal, give them flowery titles, worship and adore them. Thus Tendulkar is "God", and at least one book about him actually puts that word in its title. Jayalalitha is "Puratchi Thalaivi", or "Revolutionary Leader". Anil Ambani is MTV's "Youth Icon."

Yet perhaps we must remember that these are just more men and women, with qualities and foibles and failings like all men and women possess. Just people, really. What do we do to them, to us, when we turn from respect to worship?

Take Anna Hazare, for example, and the number of times he's been compared to Gandhi. ("Grandparents are taking children to see the Gandhi of this generation", said one ecstatic bit of mail someone forwarded to me when he was on his Jantar Mantar fast last April, a message that did not so much as mention what Hazare was fasting for). Why should he have to fill those oversized boots? And if we keep expecting him to fill them, should we be surprised when he fails, as he inevitably will? When we regularly mention both names in the same breath, in a mistaken excess of respect, we lay a burden on Hazare that nobody should have to carry. The comparison is unfair, above all, to Hazare.

But if we've all heard plenty of times about the dangers of putting people on pedestals, there's a subtler point here that worries me more. With a not-even subliminal parallel to Gandhi in place, our focus shifts: from the effort Hazare is making, to the man's character and moral stature, especially because he is stacked up against Gandhi. From the Lokpal Bill and how we can improve it, to what kind of man he is and what he did or did not do, prior to this moment in history, in Ralegaon-Siddhi and the Army.

The point, and it's a crucial one, is that Hazare does not have be "the Gandhi of this generation", or even to measure up to Gandhi in any sense, to make a difference to this country. His single-minded pursuit of the Lokpal Bill stands on its own, and can be judged on its own, certainly for the debate it has generated on the evils of corruption. I realize that we're unlikely to see grandparents taking children to see the Lokpal Bill. Yet if it comes to fruition and is able to curb corruption in this land, that's the achievement that will mark Hazare's place in Indian history. In exactly the same way, plenty of us now question the character of Gandhi and his colleagues from our freedom struggle. But what those men achieved speaks for itself.

Freedom is like that. Freedom from corruption might be like that too.

Back with cricket. Something I read on the morning of the last day of the Lords' Test summed up what I'm trying to say here. You will remember that India started that last day facing a long struggle even to save the game, let alone win. Tendulkar had been ill for most of the previous two days, and thus off the field. According to the rules, therefore, he could not come in to bat until nearing lunch time.

So that morning, someone wrote a short article titled "Why you don't want to see Sachin come out to bat". Since he would only be able to bat later in the day, it said, he would have "little time to get his 100th century even if he gets going." And therefore, "with India in a tight spot and battling to stay in the Test, this may well be one time that Indian fans could end up praying for Sachin to not come on the pitch at all."

Funny: with India in a tight spot and battling, one Indian fan -- me -- yearned for Tendulkar to bat us to safety, period. Yet going by this article, mine was by no means a universal yearning. Evidently there are people who would prefer that Tendulkar bailed out of trying to save the Test, because batting in such circumstances might interfere with his chances of scoring that century.

And so after England finished administering its Lords hammering, I wondered if these people were disappointed (as I was), and if so why. Because Tendulkar came out to bat after all? Because he get nowhere close to scoring a century?

Or because India lost?

Surrounded by a sea of mediocrity, of what most of us perceive as half-men and women, it's natural to long for heroes. That's fine as far as it goes. But it's worth remembering that what makes them heroes is what they do for those around them.

That may not necessarily include a 100th hundred.

The number of things

2011-09-02T02:02:00.001+05:30

My current effort for my "A Matter of Numbers" column in Mint is titled "The Number of Things". Just in case you were curious, the answer is yes: the essay does mention svelte figures, though perhaps not quite the ones you're thinking of.

There's also a mention of "the beginning of this month, less than three weeks ago" -- which applied when I was writing the essay, but I overlooked the fact that it would be published in September. So if your brow furrows at that, put it down to my own clumsiness with numbers, which is exactly what I'm going on about anyway.

You'll find it here.

Though if you have difficulty with the link, the text is below (with the September mixup fixed).

Some clarifications for those of you who might not know a few references in here: a crore is 10 million. The Mauryan Empire ruled over much of India between about 325 BC and 180 BC. Antilla is the massive mansion India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has built for himself in Bombay. The Commonwealth Games were staged in Delhi last year, and turns out to have been one enormous cesspool of corruption.

Comments welcome!

***
A lady I knew well was warm, well-read and knowledgeable: an all-round sweetheart. Sadly, she also suffered from a far too common affliction. She was a near-total innumerate. She went blank when faced with bank statements. Despite showing her that her investments brought her an income considerably greater than mine, she was convinced she was a pauper.

"I can't understand all these numbers!" she'd say with a helpless smile.

Many of us know about illiteracy, but how many are concerned about widespread innumeracy -- the inability to deal easily with numbers? (The mathematician John Allen Paulos made the term famous with his 1989 book, "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences"). Think of how often you've heard people saying "I hated maths in school!" Or "I'm a people person, not a numbers person!"

I'm just wondering, do we as easily talk up our difficulties with words? Have you heard people say, echoing the lady I knew, "I can't understand all these letters!"

And yet numbers are everywhere, all the time. Whether in the latest budget, or the latest gigantic scam, or the results from the last Census: numbers surround us, often with plenty of zeroes attached. If we don't understand them, we don't understand their impact. We don't fully understand issues that affect our lives every day.

But fear not! If you merely leap aboard a number wagon with me, we'll look more closely at some svelte figures -- ok, bad adjective -- we've heard of lately.

The Commonwealth Games mess, remember that? One report quoted an official thus: "The total CWG misappropriation may touch Rs 8000 crore, which is quite huge and alarming." Sure, but how huge? Well, let's say a CWG scamster was spiriting money away at the rate of one rupee per second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Pretty rapid misappropriation, I'd say. So how long would he take to fill his pockets with 8000 crore?

The answer: more than 2500 years. That is, to be done today, this rupee-a-second scamster would have had to start nearly two centuries before the Mauryan Empire.

Puts 8000 crore in perspective, no?

Rolling right along: In February, Pranab Mukherjee announced a "provision of Rs 1,64,415 crore" for defence services in this year's budget. "Needless to say," our Finance Minister continued, "any further requirement for the country's defence would be met." No doubt this set off the same applause in Parliament that previous Ministers have received for statements like "we will not compromise on national security!"

Applause is good, but what does that figure really mean? What is our military costing you and me?

For each Indian man, woman and child -- all 1.2 billion of us -- we will spend nearly Rs 1400 on defence this year. Compare to the allocation for education Mukherjee also announced: Rs 52,057 crore, or about Rs 430 for each of us. Break it down like that, and it's easier to see that not compromising on security costs our Central Government over three times as much as the imperative to educate you does.

Or try this. All through 2011, we will spend Rs 52,000 per second on defence. Going at that rate, our friend the CWG misappropriater need not have started his spiriting before the Maurya Empire. Nope: the second week of August, less than three weeks ago, would have sufficed, thank you.

And speaking of 1.2 billion of us. That's a whole lot of us, sure. But how many Indians, really, in terms we can understand?

Suppose you are sitting on a stool at the entrance to Bombay's Azad Maidan. Everyone in the country has been asked to file past you into the Maidan and it's your job to count them. Let's say you're ten times as efficient as the misappropriater: in every second that he spirits away a rupee, ten Indians pass and you count them.

If you started today, you'd be sitting on that stool counting Indians trudging past till June 2015. (Give or take a few bathroom breaks). That's how many Indians.

And why are they filing into Azad Maidan? This thought experiment further asks you to imagine building a wall around the ground. The idea is to cram Indians every which way into the resulting enclosure: cheek to fleshy cheek, layer upon bony layer. How high would the wall have to be to accommodate every single person in this country? A metre? Ten metres? Fifty?

The correct answer is -- drum roll please -- about 3 kilometres. There are a lot of us, you know.

And by the time the last Indian -- that's you, finally free of your stool -- leaps onto the quivering pile of fellow-citizens, we'd have built a structure even taller than Ambani's Antilla. About 20 times taller, in fact.

And from somewhere inside that quivering pile, you might just hear the lady I knew: "All right, I understand 1.2 billion! Too damned well! Now let me out!"

postAnna, #1

2011-09-02T01:54:00.001+05:30

So maybe this will be the first in an occasional series, post Anna.

Seen today at a traffic signal about 5pm -- 2 taxis, 3 motorbikes with 2 riders apiece, 3 private cars and a small truck. All of which paid no attention to the red light.

A fax about Anna

2011-08-31T12:30:00.000+05:30

Struggling to put together all my thoughts during the recent Lokpal agitation led by Anna Hazare, I thought of -- of all things -- fax machines.

Here's why.

Comments welcome.

Mass graves

2011-08-29T00:00:00.000+05:30

I'm trying to think of a country in this world where an official report announces over 2000 unidentified bodies found in mass graves, and this news occasions close to no protest. Where in fact this news occasions remarks like: "Missing person goes abroad, learns how to use gun, comes back, gets a taste of bullets while fighting with forces and dies. These are the missing person graves."

Which country? Syria? Rwanda? Libya? India?

Answer: India. Bodies found in graves in Kashmir, India.

Admittedly Anna Hazare is a huge news story, has dominated the news in the last couple of weeks. And yet I wonder: is news about Hazare really bigger than news about the massacre of thousands?

But scratch that: I'm really not even interested in an answer, in any comparison. I'm just amazed and dismayed that this does not seem to have bothered too many in this country. Are we that indifferent to what happens in Kashmir? Or that indifferent to unexplained killing? Or do we think the killing is justified, maybe it's even in some noble cause like the territorial integrity of the nation?

I don't know, it seems to me that when ordinary Indians are killed and their families torn apart, noble causes suddenly seem pretty ignoble, nauseous. What will it take for us to feel that nausea, again?

I don't know what will stop killing like this in Kashmir. But I do know that every shameful, horrific episode like this reminds me why I wrote this essay four years ago.

Morphing into hope

2011-08-26T17:03:00.005+05:30

Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena has recently "recalled that Anna Hazare met him at his Bandra residence on October 4, 1996." He has just written a letter to Hazare mentioning this memory. At that 1996 meeting, wrote Thackeray, the two men "had discussed ways to combat corruption."

Apparently Thackeray also wrote these words in the letter: "You later told reporters that the Sena chief is the only ray of hope and only he can dare crush corruption."

I learned all this from this article in the Economic Times (August 24 2011).

Now if Bal Thackeray is "the only ray of hope", I think that's something worth finding out more about. So I went digging a bit.

In 1996, Thackeray was the self-proclaimed "remote control" behind the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government that had come to power in the state. That year, Anna Hazare went on a fast demanding action against two of the ministers in that government, Shashikant Sutar, minister for agriculture, and Mahadeo Shivankar, minister for irrigation. Hazare claimed they were corrupt.

Naturally nothing happened to these ministers, but that's hardly the interesting thing about this episode.

In response to the fast, a "perturbed Thackeray asked Hazare to first clean his own backyard" of Ralegaon Siddhi.

In response to that, an "agitated Hazare ... was quick to demand the same against Thackeray, targeting his real estate investments."

In response to that, Bal Thackeray's son Uddhav said: "Let anybody investigate our assets. But then there should be an investigation into the assets of everyone making these allegations."

I learned all this from this article in Outlook, issue dated December 11 1996.

Two weeks later, Outlook (i.e. issue dated December 25 1996) carried another article (full disclosure: I'm quoted in it). In it, I learned that "when Hazare sought the resignation of [Sutar and Shivankar] on charges of corruption, [Thackeray] called the much-revered Magsaysay award winner 'mad'".

Hmm. In 1996, Hazare demands an investigation into Thackeray's assets, and Thackeray uses the word "mad" for Hazare. Fifteen years later, those two pronouncements have merged and morphed, according to the Thackerays themselves -- into Hazare saying Thackeray "is the only ray of hope and only he can dare crush corruption."

Margins of a theorem

2011-08-19T23:57:00.000+05:30

Mint carries today (Friday August 19) my "A Matter of Numbers" column. It was prompted by the birthday two days ago of a man called Pierre de Fermat, famous for once scribbling in the margin of a text. (I tried that once and I didn't get famous. Odd, that).

I called it "Marginal at Best"; in print it appears as Margins of a Theorem. For anyone who may not know, "Shri" is the Indian "Mr".

Comments welcome, as usual.

Just like a waving

2011-08-15T14:27:00.002+05:30

Rising up from the nearby park as I write this are the sounds of the twice-a-year flag-hoisting function. I've been there several times with the family. This time I decided to stay away from the tired words about recalling the qurbani of past heroes, and how there's so much to do and … please, after more than 60 years, aren't there more imaginative ways of speaking of the significance of this day, and then necessarily ending with "Jai Hind, Jai Maharashtra"?

Rising up from the park are the sounds of today's function. I caught stray words and phrases: "kyon ham bhrastachar [something]" and "unke qurbani ki yaad [something else] and some more.

No more tired words. So we flipped open a laptop, typed a few letters into a browser and, with what appeared on the screen, had our own private commemoration of this day.

We watched the future of this country speak in an impossibly eloquent silence.

This is what appeared on the screen.

Spend a few minutes watching. It left us all in tears. But this was not sadness.

So on a country's 64th birthday, I wish for you and me:

* that we feel again the spirit in those kids' eyes.

* that we know again, like they do, why each word in that anthem is in there, from "Punjab" to "Ganga" to "tiranga".

* that we let those words stand for others that are not in there: take your pick.

* that we remember that freedom means you and me and the guy who might need help with his salute.

Let a million hands wave. Just like a waving flag.

Hello Bastar: a review

2011-08-15T12:40:00.000+05:30

Yesterday's Sunday Guardian (August 14 2011) carries my review of Rahul Pandita's new book, Hello Bastar.

For various reasons, I was thoroughly looking forward to reading the book; for various reasons again, I was left mildly disappointed.

The review is here.

Any comments welcome.

Gandhi Out of Africa

2011-08-15T12:37:00.000+05:30

The current issue of Forbes India has an essay I wrote after a recent trip to South Africa, and it's nice that on that page they've called it their "Top Story".

Take a look: Gandhi Out of Africa.

Comments welcome, as always.

Salt-shaking isn't a tradition

2011-08-12T22:34:00.001+05:30

A few years ago, someone got into an argument with me. He lived outside India, and something about my being here while he was there (wherever) annoyed him. "All right," he said suddenly. "What the hell are you doing for India in India?"

Naturally, given an opening like that, I rattled off a whole series of activities: navel-gazing, table-mat-picking-up, salt-shaking, rum-bottle-emptying ... somehow, inexplicably, each one only seemed to get him more annoyed.

So to put him out of his misery, if that's what it was, I eventually asked him: "All right, and what are you doing for India outside India?"

He drew himself up, puffed out his chest, and said: "Do you know, I teach Indian children who live nearby about our culture and traditions?"

He waited for applause. Instead, I said "And?"

Got him still more annoyed. Haven't heard from him since.

But in the years since, I've sometimes wondered: why is teaching Indian culture and traditions to Indian kids abroad considered a virtue (this guy saw it that way, for sure)? Why do it?

Can anyone take a serious stab at an answer? This is a serious question.

***
Postscript: And if that's a serious question, there is also this cartoon.

Lost he have

2011-08-12T22:10:00.000+05:30

Flimsy pink sheet's been pasted on the wall next to our lift, on the ground floor. It's from the Deputy Commissioner of Police, and it's titled: "Alert Citizen Jagrut Mumbaikar". It's a list of "Precautions to be taken when suspected devices (bomb) is found". Or two lists: Dos and Don'ts.

The Don'ts are first, and it's a fairly routine list. "Do not open the package." "Do not puncture package." "Do not accept identification marks on its face value." "Do not bring suspected device in security control room or police station."

Things like that.

Until the last entry in the list, which reads like this, and I swear this is verbatim:

"Don't be a dead-hero. you can reconstruct a building or soul which house but you cannot recreate a lost he have."

I'm baffled by this point. What does it mean, well, that's one puzzle. But what happened to the man who composed the otherwise ordinary lines on this sheet, when he got to this point? Did he have a sudden and hefty swig of vodka?

I saw cell phones

2011-08-05T10:18:00.000+05:30

When bombs went off in Bombay on the evening of July 13, I took a train down to Dadar's Kabutarkhana (where one of the bombs had been placed). Later, I wrote a short essay for Khabar magazine on some of what I found there.

The essay is in their current (August) issue. Take a look: I saw cell phones.

Comments always welcome.

As many holes as you want

2011-08-05T02:51:00.000+05:30

Seems I have potholes on the brain. Just got back from a very late night drive where long stretches of major roads were no more than long stretches of potholes.

My latest essay for my Mint "A Matter of Numbers" column is on the air (today Friday Aug 5). It's about potholes, and it finds a way to relate them to both Benoît Mandelbrot and a (large) tablecloth.

Take a look: As many holes as you want.

Comments welcome, as always.

Test driving away

2011-08-03T17:36:00.000+05:30

Our trusty little red Indica is over seven years old, with not a whole lot of miles on it, still runs perfectly, never given us problems. The ride is noticeably bumpier than before, and there are quite a few more creaks, is all. Both of which we can probably fix. Still, our one complaint remains the space for luggage, which is really minimal. Especially on the long drives we like to do -- MP, Delhi, Coorg, Kodaikanal, Goa, etc -- it gets a little tight. Forces us to pack light, which is good, but tight.

So while we're in no hurry to buy, we've been test-driving a few cars. And so we're getting an up-close and personal look at the methods of car salesmen. I'd forgotten how much fun that is. Some notes:

* One young man started by asking how we will use the car. Almost before I had started to reply, he was saying: "Perfect! Then this car will be ideal for you!" I said, we feel our current car's trunk is small. "Perfect! Then this car will be ideal for you!" I said, we like going out of town. "Perfect! Then this car will be ideal for you!"

Your car sucks, I wanted to say. Just to see if he would reply: "Perfect! Then this car will be ideal for you!"

* I've been asking each guy who shows up, do you have a model without power windows and central locking? I always feel those are more things to go wrong in a car. Memories of the downpour of July 26 2005, when plenty died because they could not get their power windows, now without power, open. I also like the small mental stimulation of making sure the windows are up and the doors are locked, without a button push doing the job.

Hearing this request, one man wrinkled his nose and said, we have manual windows and locking on our "J" model -- "but don't take that, sir!" Why not, I asked. "It is our lowest model, and usme prestige nahin hai sir!" ("There's no prestige in it.").

Prestige being, I shall presume, an option like every other option.

* Another man chose to reply to this query about manual windows by email. I can do no better than quote his message here, in full: "There is no such variant of [our brand] with manual windows setting. Although you have provisions to break the glass in case of any emergency."

Well, that's a relief. Heartfelt gratitude to this particular manufacturer for providing this particular "provision" in their cars.

* This same man also said they were temporarily out of stock of the particular model we test-drove. "When it comes in, sir, I'll call you." OK I said, and was about to hang up. "In the meantime, sir, you can please feel free to buy from our competition." You mean other dealers of your brand? I asked. "No sir, I mean other brands."

The not-so-subtle implication: "Look, we want to give the impression that our cars are in great demand, and therefore we don't really need your business. Thus be prepared for no negotiation on the price."

I replied by email. I will certainly look at the competition, I said. Especially because I'm in absolutely no hurry to buy, but even more so given your proclivity for silly games.

Name for a river

2011-08-03T15:54:00.000+05:30

Early one morning two or three years ago, I found myself on the bank of the Ganga with nothing much to do. It was a ghat, a relatively small one as it happens, at a spot where the river, flowing right to left before me, was so wide I could not see the other side. I found myself a place to sit under a tree, pulled out a book and began to read. I must have spent three hours there, and actually I didn't get much read.

What was far more interesting was watching the people who visited the ghat.

To my right there was a ceremony in progress for someone who had died, the body lying on a bed of flowers in the midst of much quiet chanting and whispering. Fairly early, two young boys arrived at the waterline, unfurled long strings with something attached at the end, whirled it about their heads and cast it into the water. Magnets, with which they were trawling the river for metallic objects. People brought flowers. One man stood near me with folded hands, eyes closed and lips murmuring a prayer. Several man lowered themselves into the water and bathed.

In most respects it was a languid, peaceful three hours that I thoroughly enjoyed.

There were moments I didn't enjoy quite as much. Several men hawked and spat into the river, one of them producing long streaks of paan-coloured spittle. Every now and then, somebody brought a bag filled with trash and emptied it into the river. One didn't bother emptying the bag: he cocked his arm and flung it as far as he could. Four or five men brushed their teeth, rinsing their mouths with the same river water. At least two men walked past me, turned right, edged along the lowest step of the ghat about 20 metres, then stood and peed into the river. At least two men did the same edging, then squatted and defecated into the river.

So yes: I'm sitting there on the bank of the river, and I am trying to get used to the idea that there's sputum, garbage, toothpaste saliva, urine and shit going past me in this river. That there are men bathing in this murky concoction.

And when someone in Australia uses words like "junkyard" and "shithole" to describe India and this river, I cannot help remember the morning I spent on the banks of this river.

At least at that spot where I sat, he was right.

Now if there are those who feel like the river purifies itself and therefore it is clean, that's fine with me. They are welcome to their belief. In exactly the same way, they should allow others their revulsion at what they see happening to the same river. To call it what they think it is.

Potholes, and counting

2011-08-02T09:27:00.001+05:30

Last Sunday (July 31), the Hindustan Times carried an article I wrote about potholes. It's something I've been thinking about of late, and there might be more in the pipeline (words, not potholes).

I can't find it online, somehow, except as this e-paper version: Potholes, and counting.

Comments welcome.

***
Actually, potholes are not something I've been thinking about only recently, and in fact are by no means a recent Bombay phenomenon. I recently re-read something I wrote six years ago about potholes and wondered, how much or how little would I need to change that article to publish it again today?

You tell me: Western Stretch of Potholes.

Oafish boy

2011-07-29T18:38:00.000+05:30

A 78 year-old woman I know recently made a trip to a Government department. The department had sent her housing society a letter. It was in Marathi, but in Marathi so high-flown that even native speakers in the building could not understand and showed no interest in trying to understand. So they gave it to her, a native Tamil speaker, to decipher.

Upshot of asking various people for help was this understanding of the letter: the department wanted the 40 year-old society to explain why it had taken longer than two years, 40 years ago, to erect the building. Now nearly all the original members of the society have passed on. None of the younger, current members of the society were willing to go figure out what this was all about. So it was left to this woman and another, about 65 and herself a Marathi-speaker, to make the trip.

Perhaps you can tell that while having it recounted to me, I was already incensed by this point in the story. The letter, the language, the society folks, a crazy demand for 40 year-old details ... But there was more to come.

When the two women found their way to the office, they met someone I can only describe, from descriptions provided to me, as an oaf. He showed no interest in trying to seat either of the women, so they stood while he sat in his seat and spoke. He insisted in speaking in Marathi. The 65 year-old understood him, of course. But he could tell that the 78 year-old only understood little bits. That was no concern of his. He told them they would have to write a letter to the department, and it would have to be in Marathi as well. Then he said they'd have to wait to sign something, and turned to some other work. They stood there for 20 minutes, until somebody else in the room suggested they could go to the waiting room next door and sit there.

They sat there for one-and-a-half hours. Eventually the 78 year-old suggested to the 65 year-old that she go tell the oaf that she (78) was feeling faint and unwell, and needed to get home. On hearing this, he told them to sign in a book that had been lying there all along, and they were free to leave.

They could have signed it 90 minutes earlier. Make that 110 minutes earlier.

We've all heard stories like this. What produces this kind of crassness? If this is the result of years of insisting on jobs for sons of the soil, of protecting local culture, what culture is served by making two grandmothers stand and wait endlessly?

And I also wonder: what will ever put an end to behaviour as crude and nauseating as this? A Lokpal Bill? Something else? What?

Notes to myself

2011-07-22T13:10:00.000+05:30

My new effort for my "A Matter of Numbers" column in Mint is up and running. It talks about Hertz (but not Avis), rubber bands and holding tight to a small dream.

Take a look: Notes to Myself.

Any comments welcome, as always

Rectifying anomalies in barbers

2011-07-22T00:22:00.000+05:30

Notes from a recent trip through the South:

How terminology varies is fascinating, always. Like, you call them signals, but in South Africa, they're known as robots. Just as well that somebody told me that ("Turn right at the second robot") before I ran into the word painted in large letters across the street. "Robot Ahead", now that might prove somewhat unsettling.

Just as fascinating is a word they use in Tamil Nadu. I've known them as roundabouts, and possibly there are other names too. In TN, the word is "roundana". I first heard it from the back of the car I was driving one evening, as part of the directions to where we were going ("Turn right at the next roundana"). The next morning, I saw it on a spiffy road sign, pointing to the said roundana.

Later discussion suggested that it comes from "round thana", though one spirited lady (you know who you are) put forward a case for "round turner". Either way, I like the evolved word. Nice ring to it (no pun intended), roundana.

***
Speaking of etymology and evolution, Chennai has a "Barber's Bridge", I learned on this trip. The story goes that when built in British times, it was called "Hamilton Bridge" after some engineer or official. Why is it called "Barber's" now?

Story goes too that Tamil-speakers pronounced "Hamilton" as something approximating "Ambilton", and that got corrupted to "ambattan", the Tamil word for "barber". And much later, some English-speaking official asked for a translation of this Tamil-sounding word, and thus did Barber's Bridge make its appearance.

All of which reminds me of how Panaji got transformed to Panjim (in particular, the pronunciation as "pan-gym"), and also how "Puduseri" mutated into "Pondicherry". Those stories, another time.

***
Then of course I must list the things I learned while travelling in an impossibly crowded bus to the railway station.

* A large wall of a school-building had these two words painted in giant blue letters: "Washing Water". I tried for a while to figure how you might wash water, then gave up.

* A nondescript building had this sign out front: "Garments Holdall Making Training Unit". I seriously considered alighting and signing up for the training course on the spot, but then realized my Rs 4 bus ticket would go waste.

* Truck on the side of the road had these words on the side: "Love Earth or Leave Earth". Kind of mildly apocalyptic.

* "Don't Take Eatables From Strangers They May Be Drugged." Enough said.

***
Wandering a college campus, I ran across a series of grey electrical junction boxes.

The first said: "BORN MAX (1882-1970) Founder of Quantum Theory in Physics."

The second said: "BOYLE ROBERT (1627-1691) Founder of Boyle's Law."

The third said: "ARCHIMEDES Founder of Archimedean Principle."

The fourth said: "THOMAS ALVA EDISON Inventor of the Incandescent Lamp and 1093 Discoveries."

Question: Where was I wandering?

***
Another railway station had enormous cutouts of a man in shirt and dhoti, with these words: "M Raghavaiah, GS NFIR and President, SRES. Our Hearty Welcome to Architect of VI CPC in Indian Railwaymen (payment of HPCA, NDA NHP MACI) and the only leader of all VI CPC anomalies should be rectified."

That's about as many acronyms as I can handle on a given day. Can someone explain to me what it all means?

The same station also had two large stone plaques set into the side of a building, commemorating the inauguration of the "stop pages" of certain trains.

I had no idea that stoppages of trains were marked by plaques. Learn something every day.

***
On the platform, waiting for my train, I found what I've been searching all my life for: the Crew Booking Lobby. I sneaked a peak inside. What do they do in crew booking lobbies, I wonder?

On a glass partition just inside the door I found some kind of answer: "Momentary Carelessness May Cause Valuable Lives."

Yup, I couldn't agree more.

Two boys and an old man

2011-07-21T23:04:00.000+05:30

From a friend, earlier tonight, this Bandra story.

Sent to me because I tweeted this: "Tragedy happens 100m from the room where you are. Would you run out to see if you can help? Twice now I know of people who didn't. Why?" Sent to me to remind me that there are a lot of fine folks out there, and that I can learn things from 7th standard kids.

Some minor edits, among which names are initialized to protect something or the other.

***
This evening R was going down ZigZag road on the scooter when he saw an old man lying on the side of the road clutching his chest and frothing at the mouth. He went to him. The guy had medicines in his pocket and indicated to R to give him one. As R did this, lots of people stopped. One brought water.

Then two little boys in a car with their driver stopped to ask what happened. These were small hipcat Pali Hill boys, 7th standard. They insisted that R put the old guy in the car and take him to the nearby Holy Family Hospital.

Once there they acted far more mature for their age than we give kids credit for. One went to get the man's reports. Held the old man's hand. Asked him if he wanted to eat something. They refused to leave (the boy whose car it was had already called his mum). They even bought R a cheese sandwich (R had no money on him).

Turns out the old man had lost his daughter in an accident yesterday and had come to Bandra to ask a friend for money. The guy was not home so this 70 year-old was going back to Thana, to his home at a construction site.

I dropped some cash off with R for hospital etc and then the boys dug into their pockets and gave the old guy the 300 bucks they'd been given to spend at candies.

R said he won't be cynical anymore. He will of course. But those boys are lovely!

On China: Kissinger

2011-07-18T23:22:00.000+05:30

The Sunday Guardian (July 17 2011) carries my review of Henry Kissinger's recent book, On China. If you read it (or, preferably, the book), you'll learn about Mao searching for advantage in a swimming pool.

Therefore, please do.

A banner

2011-07-15T08:06:00.000+05:30

This banner came up not far from where I live yesterday, the day after three bomb blasts killed about 20 and injured about 100 people in Bombay.

Genuine question: Have you ever seen a similar banner with "Hinduism" on it instead of "Islam"? Why or why not?

Trash-flinging continues

2011-07-14T01:39:00.000+05:30

On the train to Dadar, a painfully thin man wearing a silver and grey Adidas jacket plays the harmonica. Quite beautifully, too, though I don't know any of the tunes. It's one of those instruments with stops too, like one I have. When he's done our eyes meet and I give him a thumbs up. He comes over and I tell him, you played well. We get talking about music and I mention that I play too.

His eyes light up and he pulls the instrument out of his pocket. "Play something", he says. I launch into "Jaaneman jaaneman", from "Chhoti Si Baat". People are watching, listening.

And I'm feeling sadder and sadder with this song from a much simpler, more naive time. Who would have thought, in those balmy years of the mid-70s, there's random terror in our future?

I get off at Dadar and find my way through the rain to Kabutarkhana, where a bomb went off about 90 minutes earlier. The police have cordoned off the area, so nobody can get closer to the spot than about 50 metres. Several Toyota Innovas with dishes on top are present, thick cables from these vehicles snake underfoot, knots of people form here and there. The knots, I realize, are made up of spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of a TV correspondent as he files his report, and perhaps stick their faces into the broadcast. This may be why the knots, in this time of tragedy, seem filled with cheery, bantering, laughing, joking young men. The incongruity is something fierce.

Beyond the rope that holds us back, a troop of khaki-clad policemen, one carrying a long gun, suddenly turn on their heel and march away, towards the other side of the cordoned-off area. Beside me, a man points to a bus-stop there. "That's where it happened," he says in Marathi. "9 dead, they say, I'm sure it's double that." Then, inexplicably, he asks me what happened here. A few others turn their heads to listen to what I might have to say. By virtue of having been here 15 minutes longer than him, I'm an expert. He's carrying a large umbrella with a portrait of Bal Thackeray on it, and the way he holds it, it keeps the rain off my head too. I answer him politely enough and then excuse myself. I don't want shelter from the rain under a picture of Thackeray.

At the Innova belonging to Network 18, the knot of men is particularly boisterous. "Shiv Sena Zindabad", someone shouts from within it, but gets no answer. He shouts it again, a little softer this time.

Suddenly there's a small commotion from within the knot, and calls to clear a path through it. "Close umbrellas!" someone shouts this time. Inadvertently part of whatever's going on, I feel like I'm part of a reception line for royalty that will emerge from within the knot. But it's only the correspondent and his cameraman who walk past, all the way to the cordon where he positions himself to file a report. Behind them walk two young spectators, cellphones held aloft, capturing the movements of this correspondent on video.

One of the young men lowers his cellphone, turns and walks off, reviewing his film clip as he goes. On the other side of the police barrier, another painfully thin man berates us: "You want to know what happened here? Blast, blast, Mumbai!"

Half an hour later I am in the lobby of a friend's building nearby for a quick visit. Oblivious to the world, two boys are in a corner, playing chess. Still later, on the way back to Kabutarkhana, a woman walks past carrying a bulging plastic bag. She goes to a roadside garbage dump -- just the usual, trash overflowing onto the road and pavement, muck underfoot -- and carefully flings her bag onto the road too.

Blast or not, chess continues. Trash-flinging continues.

Short answer: 22

2011-07-08T11:37:00.000+05:30

My "A Matter of Numbers" column in Mint is on air today (July 8). It talks about a recent fuss over 823, as also what one consequence of my having 37 fingers might be.

Take a look. Short Answer: 22.

Comments welcome.

My foundation, my family

2011-07-06T11:18:00.000+05:30

"Fans of different races, castes, ethnicities and religions who together celebrate their diversity by uniting for a common national cause. They are my foundation, they are my family. I will play my cricket for them. Their spirit is the true spirit of cricket. With me are all my people. I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan."

The last few words spoken yesterday at Lords' by a man of clearly uncommon substance: Kumar Sangakkara. Read his whole Spirit of Cricket Colin Cowdrey lecture.

Is there an Indian cricketer who will speak like this?

823 and counting

2011-07-04T01:28:00.000+05:30

What is it about the peculiar appeal of any random "numerological" claim to do with the calendar? The latest is here, a bit of flim-flam that's also making the sms and twitter rounds (and who knows, FB and blog rounds too).

Goes like this: There are five weekends (defined as Fri-Sat-Sun) this month. This is a once-in-823 years occurrence. Astrologers and numerologists and Feng Shui experts are being quoted left, right and centre about this wondrously rare event. One, a Ajay Bhambi, has it that this is a "mathematical rarity in the calendar". Another, a Sanjay Jumani, uses this as an opportunity to trumpet what he had "predicted": "This year … has been expensive right from the beginning. It will be expensive even till the end."

(Does anyone take these guys seriously? Really, anyone?)

What do you say about this stuff? I have to confess being nearly speechless on reading this 823 news. I mean, July 2005 had five weekends. July 2016 will be the same. 823 years? Where did they get that number from, this nonsense from? Why does triviality like this get gasped at and passed on in wonder?

All it takes is a little reflection, really, to know how routine a five-weekend month is. It can only happen in a month with 31 days (less than that, and you won't have three days all occurring five times in the month). There are seven such months in a year. For such a month to have five weekends, it must begin on a Friday (in which case the five weekends are 1st-2nd-3rd, 8th-9th-10th, 15th-16th-17th, 22nd-23rd-24th, 29th-30th-31st). There are seven days in a week. So it's a good bet that one of those seven 31-day months in the year will start on a Friday and will thus have five weekends.

In other words, it's a good bet that one month every year will have five weekends.

(Given the way the calendar is structured, the probabilities are not quite so straightforward, but the analysis is close enough).

And this is borne out, if you look at your calendar. In 2011, July has five weekends. In 2012, no month does. 2013: March. 2014: August. 2015: May. 2016: January AND July. 2017: December.

What was that about 823 years?

What really should happen only once every 823 years is any attention paid to astrologers and numerologists. Preferably, make that 8230 years.

Meanwhile, I have this to offer: this year has been 2011 right from the beginning. It will be 2011 even till the end.

Enemy in our hands

2011-07-03T23:29:00.000+05:30

The newspaper Mint has a Saturday "Lounge" section. Yesterday (July 2), I had an article there about driving through the Karoo desert in South Africa.

I need to tell you that the essay mentions a stolid cat.

Please do take a look: The Enemy in Our Hands.

All comments welcome.

Doppler (and a Renault Logan)

2011-06-28T15:10:00.000+05:30

I've really fallen so behind on the attention this blog needs. The other day I ran across a pledge someone made: one post a day on their blog. Maybe it's something I can start (or re-start) with.

In the meantime, please do take a look at my latest "A Matter of Numbers" column in Mint, which was published last Friday June 24: Of Galaxies' Doppler shift.

Comments welcome.

About nonchalant claims

2011-06-23T12:52:00.003+05:30

One morning exactly 21 years ago, I walked up the stairs to a travel agency near my home in Bombay. At short notice, I had to make a trip to Madras (what Chennai was then called) and Visakhapatnam. There wasn't enough time to reserve train tickets, and I didn't have the time for train travel anyway. So I asked the lady at the agency to get me air tickets.

At the time, air travel within India meant Indian Airlines. (If you can imagine). There was also no convenient web, so she had to call Indian Airlines to reserve seats for me on the three flights: Bombay to Madras in four days, Madras to Vizag about three days later, Vizag to Bombay another three days after that.

That evening, she had my tickets for me. I remember exactly what I paid because for some reason I preserved her bill for years. For all three flights, a total of Rs 1365.

It was a fun trip, and included both a near-accident with a APSRTC bus and a demand by its bus driver that I expose the film in my camera. Those stories, another time. Also, food of sorts was served on all three flights.

This morning something reminded me of that trip. Idly, I decided to check what it would cost me to do it today, in this era of e-tickets and "discount" or "low-cost" airlines. Same constraints: fly four days from now to Chennai, three days after that to Vizag, another three days after that back here to Bombay. I punched in all these details into my nearest online booking engine and selected the cheapest option (of dozens offered) each time.

The flights it gave me: Bombay to Chennai on Air India Express. Chennai to Vizag on Kingfisher Red. Vizag to Bombay on Jet Konnect. "Discount" airlines all.

The total for all three flights: Rs 12182.

In 21 years, the cost for this three-flight trip has risen from Rs 1365 to Rs 12182, a factor of 8.92.

Of course there has been inflation all through that time. Does inflation account for this rise in the cost of flight tickets? Well, on this page, I learn that between 1969 and 2010, "the average inflation rate in India was 7.99 percent." Apply 21 years of that rate to Rs 1365, you get Rs 6858.

Today's ticket price, Rs 12182, is nearly twice that amount.

Ah, you say, but 7.99 is the average since 1969. Perhaps inflation has been generally higher than that in the years since 1990? Well, that's a fair assumption. On this page, I found a table listing year-by-year inflation rates from 1980. Take the numbers from 1990 onwards and apply them to Rs 1365: you get Rs 9500.

Today's ticket price, Rs 12182, is nearly Rs 2700 greater than that amount.

Every time I hear one of those nonchalant claims about how the cost of air travel in India has dropped since the coming of competition for Indian Airlines, yes every time, I think of numbers like these: Rs 1365, Rs 6858, Rs 9500, Rs 12182.

And then I know just what those nonchalant claims are worth.

***
As an aside, for Rs 1365 to rise to Rs 12182 in 21 years, inflation would have had to be just under 11 percent in every one of those years.

As another aside, I have not included in the Rs 12182 the amounts I'd have to pay for food of sorts on those flights today, compared to zero in 1990.

As a third aside, if your reaction to this is "So you want to return to the days of lousy IA service?" please spare me. That's not the point here.

Digging holes

2011-06-14T23:44:00.000+05:30

Phirturam has what looks like a credit card in his hand. It has his photo, a magnetic strip on the back, electrical contacts of some kind, and a series of digits at the bottom. It also says "Dena Bank" on top. But this is not a credit card. It is the key to accessing his wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. The money is credited to this account in Dena Bank, and he can use this card in an ATM to withdraw money from the account.

Only, there's no ATM in his village, Kamtha in Chhattisgarh.

Still, he can trek to Dalli, about 6-7 km distant, and use the card at one of the ATMs there; probably no Dena Bank, but it doesn't matter.

Tomorrow is the last day this year that Phirturam will work under the employment guarantee scheme. He has been digging out a tank near Kamtha. Every day he has to dig a 12ft by 12ft square, 1 foot deep. For this, he gets paid Rs 122. But no more for the rest of the year.

What happens now, what kind of work will you do? I ask him.

Farm work, he says, tersely.

You have your own land? I ask.

No, I'll work as labour on somebody else's land. Some farmer in the village, needs some work done, he'll call me.

And what will you get paid? I ask.

Rs 50 or 60 a day.

And you'll work every day? I ask.

He laughs. No, not every day. Two, maybe three days a week.

In his home, the only other earning member is Phirturam's brother, who also works like this. So between them, they'll bring home something like Rs 350 a week. Call it Rs 1400 a month. I'm struck by that figure, because just before I graduated from my engineering college, I struggled through a campus interview and was offered a job by the company.

They offered me Rs 1100 a month.

Thirty years later, two men together earn just a little more than that and it has to take care of half a dozen people in the family, including Phirturam's 11 year-old son who is just getting over a fourth bout of malaria.

Yes, I too might go dig holes for the Government, to pocket a few dozen daily pay packets of Rs 122.

On lathi charging

2011-06-12T15:04:00.000+05:30

What happens when the police wade into people staging some kind of protest or demonstration, waving their lathis? We all heard about one such police advance from the Ramlila grounds in Delhi: but what happened to the people at the receiving end of the police action?

This piece I wrote for Kafila might give you some idea: On Lathi-charging a satyagraha.

Cicadas: ready for prime time

2011-06-12T14:59:00.000+05:30

Last Friday (June 10 2011), Mint carried my next "A Matter of Numbers" essay. It's about cicadas and pleading with editors.

Do take a look: Cicadas: ready for prime time.

Comments welcome!

N8 on trial

2011-06-08T00:03:00.002+05:30

Out of the blue, from out of thin air, I get an offer: wanna use a Nokia phone for 2 weeks, for free? I tell you, this must be the age of the web.

So I said yes, and one thing led to another and then to a phone being dispatched from London and it showed up on my doorstep yesterday. It's the Nokia N8, which is, according to Paul at WOMWorld, Nokia's "flagship". Sleek grey-black thing with a camera protuberance on the back and all manner of keys and slots and buttons on the sides. And the front? Just an expanse of glass.

Using it for a call feels rather like putting to your ear one of those darkened pieces of glass you use to look up at eclipses: you think, shouldn't I be looking through this thing?

I really am a smartphonephobe, if there is such a beast. The cellphone I used till yesterday is a Nokia too, though it's at least 7 years old. It's been fine for my needs, even with the now occasionally sticky key. Fine, because I've never been interested in getting my email on the bus, or reading the New York Review of Books while driving to Murud. The same for various other capabilities of the N8. Maybe the idea with smartphones and Luddites like me is that that they will turn around that disinterest. Maybe.

Still, there are some nice things I've found in the phone, sure.

For one, a top-notch camera. Though I've always preferred the feel and methods and feeling of control over my shots that I get with SLRs in entirely manual mode -- I like that creativity -- and thus this one does little for me.

For another, the N8 easily located and latched onto my home wireless signal, and I was able to wade into the Web before I had a 3G service in place. Still trying to get used to browsing like this, though.

And yet, and yet … I know it's only been a day, sure. Yet I cannot say the phone has bowled me over. Typing on the screen with a couple of fingers and clumsy thumbs is not something I feel comfortable doing. (Yet?) Dialing a number no longer happens as quickly as I used to manage, not even with speed dial assignments. I used to dial a certain lady I know with two button pushes. Now I need three. I used to be able to starting tapping out a SMS with one button push. Now I need two.

Small things, a button push here or there, right? But when you've had a gadget for long enough that you feel like you're making efficient, productive use of it, the small things in a new gadget stand out. No doubt I'll get used to them, and eventually feel like I'm making efficient use of the N8. Right now it feels like that might take another 7 years, and I doubt WOMWorld will let me have this sleek thing on trial for quite that long. (Well, Paul?)

But for now, I'm happy to keep using the thing, see how many of its multifarious capabilities I can exercise in the next several days.

And rest content, I'll be sure to file a report in this space when I finally learn how to make it cook an omelette.

Baba stuff

2011-06-05T15:03:00.000+05:30

I got my dose of Baba-stuff some years ago in Delhi. Found an ad for one of them in a newspaper, touting all kinds of wondrous things he could do for you, physically and mentally, with words like "pranayam" and "asana" sprinkled about liberally. It was all just a bit too good to be true, and I was just a bit younger than I am today and intent on some leg-pulling, so I found a phone and called.

Man answered.

"Is that Baba XYZ?" I asked.

"Ji", said the man.

"You are a fake", I said.

Came the response, without missing a beat: "You are a bahenchod."

Now admittedly I had been provocative. Admittedly I have no way to tell if all Babas are like this. But this incident only bolstered the total scepticism I have for Babas and godmen of all stripes.

This one who went on a "fast", no exception.

I mean, this is a guy who wants a law that prescribes death for the corrupt. This is a guy who has never, to my knowledge, said a single thing about the slide in ethics among us all. This is a guy who wears a woman's clothes and hides among women to evade the cops. This is a guy who thinks corruption is manifest in currency notes. This is a guy who claims that breathing techniques will cure for the world's most intractable diseases. This is a guy who abhors homosexuals. This is a guy who sees excellence in a CM who presided over one of the worst massacres in our history. This is a guy who undermines his own faithful by promising the government, without their knowledge, that he will give up his fast within hours of starting.

I mean, I am incensed and horrified by the corruption that's all around us -- from CWG to telecom to Adarsh. I am sick of a government that chooses only to wink at it. I am repelled by the guys waiting in the wings who cannot rise above their obsession with … yes, a temple.

And yet it is possibly more horrifying that we see a saviour from all this in a man whose every antic and utterance smack of the most superficial half-heartedness, and that's the kindest way I can describe his behaviour.

Do we really want to end corruption in this country? Let's get used to a few truths (there are many more) then.

* It won't happen with fasts.

* It won't happen if we cannot see a CM's failure to do his constitutional duty to protect his citizens for what it is: corruption as well.

* It won't happen if we see corruption only in our governments, and not in the corporate world, not among us in our ordinary everyday lives.

* It won't happen as long as we seek heroes in half-men and charlatans.

And there are times when I worry that:

* It won't happen, ever.

Find the teer

2011-06-04T14:34:00.002+05:30

The friend wrote from across the country, "find the teer". I had visions of going up to Shillong residents to ask "Where's the teer?" -- and have them give me suspicious glances and edge swiftly away. But it didn't turn out that way. The first person I asked knew what I meant and gave us directions.

"Teer": arrow. Every afternoon, a couple of dozen archers gather on a nondescript ground in Shillong and shoot arrows at a target, two different spells of ten minutes each. A few hundred people, mostly men, gather to watch. That day, we joined them.

We got there just after the first spell was over. Waiting for the second, we watched a few men line up to throw arrows -- yes, throw them, not shoot -- at a small straw target several dozen feet away. One arm cocked behind the ear, the other pointing at the target, take a step forward and, in one swift smooth blur of the cocked arm, throw. Amazing how many of the long slender bamboo missiles struck home.

But this was merely a teaser. Half an hour later, several men who had been tending lovingly to their arrows suddenly rise and position themselves along a curved shooting gallery. They have a much larger target, a straw cylinder on a stick, to aim for, also several dozen feet away across the ground. At a quiet signal, arrows begin slicing through the air in their hundreds. Absolute silence, except for the twanging of bow-strings and gentle thwacks as the arrows either hit home or hit the ground beyond.

Ten minutes like this and a man raises a tarp: time's up. Crowd surges forth. Men peer curiously at the now pincushion-like target. Officials gather the successful arrows, sit in a row. They count. They stuff the arrows, ten by ten, into square holes. Crowd waits, still in absolute silence.

Finally, an official announces "Four hundred and twenty!" But he also has a bunch of arrows in his fist. Walks ostentatiously toward the crowd, throws arrows from the bunch into the ground. One, two, three -- now the crowd counts -- "four, five, six!"

Breaths are released. A hubbub ensues. The crowd disperses to various tables to collect their winnings. 426 arrows hit the target today; drop the "4" and you have today's winning number -- 26.

Thus does Shillong gamble. Find the teer.

Baubles, but no trouble

2011-05-31T16:18:00.000+05:30

Notes from a sojourn in South Africa, drawn at random. Maybe more to come.

For a town with a huge hole in its middle, Kimberley does a fine job of keeping it hidden. Wherever we drove, we'd run into signs that said "Big Hole 2km" with an arrow. And we'd follow that arrow to the next sign that said the same thing, though one time the "2" had morphed into "3". Finally we rolled down the passenger-side window and asked a slender man on the pavement.

"Two kilometres that way", he said, pointing to our right.

All right, I made that up. He said to go to the next "robot" -- the common way to refer to a set of lights in this country -- and turn right, and there it would be.

There it indeed was. But first we were waved into a parking lot by a woman in a blue uniform whose only work appeared to be such waving. Then we were waved into a parking spot by a man in a blue uniform whose only work appeared to be such waving. Then we were asked to pay what seemed an unseemly sum to merely peer into a hole. Then we walked up a ramp, and there it was.

The world's largest man-made hole. Evidence of humankind's inexplicable appetite for eminently useless shiny baubles. You know, those things called diamonds.

Me, I prefer the baubles I nearly snagged in New Orleans once, recounted here, not least for the lead up to nearly snagging them.

***
Driving out of Cape Town in our Daihatsu (yes, the make is relevant to this story), we stopped by the side of the highway to take a picture I wanted. It was an overcast, windy day, thus pretty cold outside. I didn't feel like exiting the car, so I rolled the window down and aimed the camera.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a car zipping past us, a little too close, and then coming to a stop about 50m ahead of us. A cop? But it had no lights on top. I ignored it and went back to my camera.

Then a man in blue shirtsleeves emerged from it and, visibly shivering, started running back towards us. As he did so, I noticed that the car was also a Daihatsu, and in fact had "Imperial Daihatsu" painted on the back. He arrived at my window and asked, "Is everything all right? Are you in trouble?"

Yes, I said, in surprise. Why do you ask?

"Oh, you know we never see Daihatsus stopped on the roadside, so I saw you and just thought I'd stop to ask if you were OK. I'm with the company."

An amazingly thoughtful gesture, and also excellent PR for Daihatsu. I thanked him, we shook hands and he ran back, still shivering, to his car. So if I ever have to buy a car, and if Daihatsus are then available in India, this one incident alone will make me seriously consider their models.

Collective complexity

2011-05-27T01:56:00.000+05:30

Been on the road so much here in South Africa that I've not had time to keep my usual trip diary up to date, let alone blog about the experience. Perhaps I'll catch up once I'm back in India next week. That's a threat.

But meantime, my column on mathematical thingamajigs in Mint is on air for this fortnight, and it speaks of cormorants in Cape Town. Take a look: Collective complexity.

Comments, as always, welcome.

Indian abroad

2011-05-22T10:35:00.004+05:30

Many more Indians on this sojourn in South Africa than I've seen on previous trips to other places. I don't mean the local Indians, most of whom are from Durban. I mean the Indian tourist, now appearing in tourist destinations everywhere.

Thus it was that I heard the distinctive twang of Goan Konkani on top of Table Mountain in Cape Town, and then in other places around the city. A whole group of Goans, on a package tour. Another group spoke Gujarati as they raced camera-first through the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Another still warbled among themselves in Hindi.

A middle-aged couple got talking to us at the lighthouse on Cape Point. "Where have you come from?" they asked.

Bombay, I said.

"Bombay?!" they exclaimed, noticeably excited by the mention of the name. Then: "Which tour agency?"

On our own, I said, which set off some quick worried muttering in Tamil. When I interjected something in the language, they grew noticeably even more excited. "From Matunga?" she asked.

At Kirstenbosch, that group of Indians -- kids to grandparents, it looked like -- followed a guide about. But only one or two seemed to be paying any attention to what he was saying. The rest were gambolling along, bouncing off on and off steps, getting photographed against a railing, looking everywhere except at the plants and flowers.

No, but it's really, really good to see so many Indians out touring the world. For all kinds of reasons.

Though not always so good. Also at Cape Point was a large family: apparently most of the wives of six brothers, assorted kids and a few of the six brothers too. They had a guide who was valiantly explaining various things. Like at Kirstenbosch, nobody paid him much mind. Maybe because of the rush their trip was: they had been at Table Mountain in the morning, and were now here at the Cape by 230pm. Took our breath away: each of those two had been an entire day's outing for us.

Done with their visit, the family started piling into their big Volvo bus. Two kids, a fat one about 17 and a thin one about 9, loitered about near me. The younger one took something from his mouth, rolled it into a handful of paper and started looking around for somewhere to fling the whole mess.

Came the loud instructions from their father, halfway to the bus and anxious to round everyone up. "Garden mein pheko," he said, pointing to a patch of green lined elegantly with flowers. "Chalo, chalo, garden mein pheko!" ("Come on, throw it in the garden!")

And the older kid lined up to fling whatever it was into the garden.

I had to say something. "Please, yahan itne saare dustbin hain! Usme kyon nahin?"

The father gave me a long black look, then silently directed his son to the closest dustbin. Not six paces from where they stood.

Good hope

2011-05-21T11:10:00.003+05:30

So we arrive at the Cape of Good Hope two days ago. There's a wooden sign there, English and Afrikaans, telling you where we are. (At the Cape of GH, in case you're not paying attention). We emerge from the car, get our jackets on, gasp at the deep blue sea. Seconds behind us are a couple of enormous tour buses that disgorge hordes of Korean or Malaysian or Japanese folks. They are enormously excited and leap about with whoops of delight.

Then they all run to the wooden sign and line up behind it, some stretching their arms out in what I surmise is relief. ("Hoo boy! that bus journey from Seoul has got me exhausted!")

Someone produces a long banner which they drape over the sign so completely that you can no longer see where you are. The sign says "2010 Supremacy Summit Excellence Award". A woman braces to take a photograph of the gang. I notice that nearly all the women, but nearly none of the men, are wearing sunglasses.

Three thoughts occur to me. No, four. No, five.

* 2010 is over.

* If a "Supremacy Summit Excellence" is 5 months late with its date, how excellent is it anyway?

* What is a Supremacy Summit?

* Someday these Supremacy Summit guys are going to look at this photo and say to themselves: "Hey, where the hell were we when we took this shot?" That's when they'll remember the benefits of not covering up signposts.

* What's with the gender divided sunglasses?

Incidentally, it's not just one photo. I notice that the photographer is festooned with cameras, must be easily two dozen around her neck with more in her hands. Clearly, every single member of the Supremacy Summit has given her her/his camera to shoot the scene. (The usual bane of the digital camera age).

She looks a mite bent over, so much so that I fear she might topple on her face. But bravely, she soldiers on, taking photo after photo of the whooping Supremacy gang. Pretty soon, I understand that it is going to be a long time, possibly weeks, before she is finished and the sign is removed and the world can once more read the wooden sign to know what this particular spot is. So we give up our hopes for such a shot and set out on a trek to the top of the craggy hills behind.

Half an hour later we stop to catch our breath and take in the magnificent view. Far below, like frantic ants, the Supremacy Summit folks are still whooping and waving from behind the banner-obscured "C of GH" sign.

A few good doctors: Ink

2011-05-14T11:34:00.001+05:30

Ink is a new magazine that will showcase long-format journalism. That's something that I find immediately attractive, because I'm always searching for ways to write at greater length, to explore a theme to greater depths, than an oped article allows.

The inaugural issue (May 2011) is out. The cover story is an essay I wrote. Its impact is immeasurably enhanced by photographs my good friend Tom Pietrasik took. This was on a trip we did together to Chhattisgarh.

It being early days still, the magazine is not yet widely available on the stands. But you can see the e-version here. The essay is called "A Few Good Doctors". Note Tom's photograph on the cover and navigate to page 24 to read it and see his other photographs.

Room at the Lodge

2011-05-14T11:31:00.000+05:30

I have just started a new fortnightly column for Mint, titled "A Matter of Numbers". This is a place where I hope to explore the wonders of mathematics and science. It will be a challenge to write, but a challenge I thoroughly look forward to. It should be a whole lot of fun.

The column will run on alternate Fridays. Given that it has to do with numbers, I'm absolutely delighted that it kicked off yesterday, Friday the 13th.

Take a look: Room at the Lodge.

What is strange

2011-05-09T16:01:00.001+05:30

The Supreme Court has just stayed the Allahabad High Court Ayodhya verdict from last September, calling it "a strange and surprising order".

Wonder if LK Advani will agree. Rhetorical question, I realize.

Like the Judges of the Supreme Court, I thought it was a strange verdict as well. Here are some lines from what the judges on that Allahabad bench wrote that make me think so.

* "[T]he court has 'to uphold a faith which continued for time immemorial' … 'belief' and 'supposition' are perfectly legal and acceptable states." [Justice S. Agarwal]

* "The only thing which can be guessed … is that a very large area was considered to be the birthplace of Lord Ram by general Hindus." [Justice S.U. Khan]

* "[F]or a very long time till the construction of the mosque it was believed by Hindus that somewhere in [the] premises in dispute is [the] birth place of Lord Ram. … [B]efore 1855 Ram Chabutra and Seeta Rasoi had come into existence and Hindus were worshipping [there]. … [I]nside the boundary wall and compound of the mosque Hindu religious places ... were actually being worshipped along with offerings of Namaz by Muslims in the mosque. … [I]n view of the above ... both the parties Muslims as well as Hindus are held to be in joint possession of the entire premises in dispute." [Justice Khan]

* "The disputed site is the birth place of Lord Ram. Place of birth is a juristic person and is a deity. It is personified as the spirit of divine worshipped as birth place of Lord Rama as a child." [Justice D.V. Sharma]

* "It is declared that the area covered by the central dome ... being the deity of Bhagwan Ram Janamsthan and place of birth of Lord Rama as per faith and belief of the Hindus, belong to [the Hindu] plaintiffs." [Justice Agarwal]

* "The whole world knows that Lord Ram was born in Ayodhya where the temple Ram Janama Bhumi stands." [Justice Sharma]

In case it is not clear, I have no argument with these observations. They only repeat what I know already: that it is the faith and belief of a lot of Hindus that Ram was born there.

My problem with these excerpts is instead this: that this faith and belief was used to decide a court case.

That is strange.

On self-deception

2011-05-05T23:04:00.003+05:30

On another post about the death of Osama, I got a comment which is excerpted here:

Drawing false equivalences between India and Pakistan to appease them is part of the routine. If you are bad, we are also bad. If you have extremists we also have extremists. If you kill people we also kill people. If you have Shahid Afridi, we have Gautam Gambhir. Nothing wrong with your Islam at all, our Hinduism is worse. And so on the charade goes. The point of the game is not to talk blunt and deliver a reality check to our darling estranged brothers and sisters but to force the idea that they are just "people like us" down *our* throats. D'Souza deserves to be commended for not yet scaling the heights of of discussing "shared" cultural attributes like butter naan and sufi music, but he cannot be accused of not trying to push the envelope.

Pakistan is so far down the road of self-deception that this make-believe is superfluous. They don't need our assurance that their state and society are not particularly evil. Join the game if it makes you feel virtuous to claim that we are the ones who are equally evil.

I wrote a response as a comment there, but on some reflection it seemed to me this little exchange deserved to be a post by itself. So here we are. My response is in the following paragraphs.

The self-deception, it seems to me, is in those who are content in trying to show that India is superior to Pakistan, and who bristle at anything that frays that effort.

That bristling alone tells its tale.

I couldn't care less who is "superior". But I know some truths about Indians and India, some offered at random below:

* Gambhir's remark, off-the-cuff as it might have been, was offensive by itself.

* There are people I have visited in this country, without any huge effort to go to especially remote areas, who cannot buy rice at the government programme's price of Rs 3/kg; this has prompted the government to institute a sub-programme to sell them rice at Rs 1/kg.

* Pretty much the same number of people were slaughtered in Delhi in November 1984 as were slaughtered in NYC in September 2011. Ten years later, a measure of justice caught up with Osama. 27 years later, no measure of justice has caught up with any of those who led the Delhi slaughter.

* There are news reports of dishonour (forgive me, I will not use the word "honour") killings in different parts of India all the time (about three every day according to this report).

* The amount of money mentioned in our 2G corruption scam (Rs 60000 crore) is pretty much the GDP of Iceland ($12bn).

To those who draw conclusions about the state of Pakistan's "state and society" and their "self-deception" from various truths from Pakistan, I'd like to ask: what conclusions do you draw about India's "state and society" and our "self-deception" from truths like the ones listed here?

Knows the breed

2011-05-04T23:54:00.000+05:30

Whirlwind trip to Raipur, arranged at nearly the last minute, to meet and chat with one of the country's better-known faces. First see him when I stand outside a gate garded by barking but friendly-looking dogs (you can tell when they're friendly), and suddenly he looks out from under a low roof, then comes to open the gate. He looks tired and a little stooped, but otherwise healthy.

We sit on a nearby parapet and talk for a few minutes. Then we walk over to a nearby building under construction and climb a rickety bamboo ladder onto its roof. Apparently a crack has developed up there and he wants to take a look at it. The roof is an arch, covered with tiles. We walk along it to a man who's on his haunches, and there's the crack, it stretches right across the structure. The two men discuss repairs for a few minutes, then we climb back down the rickety ladder.

Back to the parapet, then he suggests coffee and toast inside the house. We enter and he sits me down, then toasts two large brown slices and makes me a cup of absurdly strong coffee. His wife produces some cheese to go with the toast. I pick out one of several squares of Amul and am about to peel off the foil wrap when he points to a triangle that's also in the container. "Try that," he says, "it's softer and tastes better."

He's right.

We talk some more, over this breakfast. When we finish, he takes my plate and cup and washes them with his, refusing point-blank to let me do it, or even to help. I say, "I'm good at washing dishes," a fact those who know me may or may not agree with. He says, "So am I," and carries on washing.

"I used to have a dog too," I say.

"What kind?" he asks.

"Rhodesian Ridgeback," I say, getting ready to describe this relatively less-known dog as I usually have to. But not this time. He nods in recognition; he knows the breed.

Later in the day, he will make two more cups of coffee for me. We chat over lunch, then he clears a bed so I can take a nap -- I had three hours of sleep last night before a 630am flight to get here, so I'm fading fast after lunch. We chat some more in the evening. This time, I take notes.

There are occasional interruptions in our conversation, once for nearly ten minutes that he has to attend to someone visiting. But each time, he returns to the room and immediately to the precise point in our conversation where we were interrupted, the place I remember only because I'm taking notes. Him, it seems effortless.

When I leave for the airport for my flight back, one of the country's better-known faces stands on the landing as I descend the two flights, waving slowly, almost shyly.

At the airport, my flight is inordinately delayed. While we wait, the woman beside me and I strike up a conversation. She works for a NGO that works in education in a rural part of this state.

She asks me why I'm here. I mention the better-known face, assuming she'll know the name.

"Who?" she asks. She's never heard of him. So much for assumptions.

Unbearded

2011-05-02T11:05:00.000+05:30

About now (the morning of May 2 2011) might be a good time to inflict this on you. It's something I wrote as an entry to a "flash fiction" (I think that's the name) contest, one of those things in which you have to write a story in exactly 50 words.

That's how long this story is, exactly 50 words. I wrote it when a certain President visited India, late last year. I changed one word before posting it here: pat on the back to the person who guesses which that word is.

Enjoy, or not.

PS: It won me nothing.

***
Unbearded

One letter separates your names, said the acolytes, but you must become him. Practicing in my Pakistani hideaway, I perfected every mannerism, that thousand-watt smile. Today they dance to welcome me, these fatuous, intoxicated Indians. Not even this Michelle, elegant beside me, knows. Wise the advice to shave my beard!

... and the Big Questions

2011-05-01T07:57:00.000+05:30

Caravan carries an article I wrote after the Supreme Court granted bail to Binayak Sen a couple of weeks ago. Take a look: Binayak and the Big Questions.

Comments welcome.

One crime, and another

2011-04-25T11:56:00.000+05:30

The truth of what Modi did or did not say at a meeting on February 27 2002 is, as far as I'm concerned, always going to be what it is now: a hotly contested matter of "I was there and I heard him say XYZ" and "He was not there and Modi never said XYZ."

Those whose politics lean towards Modi's will believe the second statement. Those who think he is responsible for, at a minimum, failing to protect lives in 2002 will believe the first. And so it will go.

So until this gets resolved, if ever, I prefer to focus on something else.

On February 27 2002, a mob burned and killed 56 Indians in Godhra. Several people were accused of this crime, chargesheeted and tried. In March this year -- just about nine years after the atrocity -- 20 were given life imprisonment and 11 were sentenced to death.

The day after that atrocity in Godhra, a mob burned and killed 69 Indians in Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad. To date -- over nine years since it happened -- nobody accused of this crime has been sentenced to anything.

Why is this discrepancy A-OK with so many of us? Or ask this: how many even consider it a discrepancy, or one worth paying attention to?

Cannonball tree

2011-04-24T23:34:00.000+05:30

Any tree lovers out there? One that I know rather well has sent me this query that I don't know much about. If you have any answers, please let me know.

The cannonball tree is fairly well known in Bombay. It is also known as Nagalingam in Tamil and Maheshwar or Kailaspati in Marathi.

Its botanical name is Couroupita guianensis which indicates its origins in Guiana.

The tree sends out woody tendrils on its main trunk, say about three or four feet above ground and continuing upwards till beore the branches. In our building compound we have some of these trees that were planted roughly around 1969 and they continue to grow and flourish.

In the last couple of years or so I have noticed that the woody tendrils are now apppearing above the branches and along the trunk, and they bear flowers. But there are flowers along the branches too now, and the flowering seems to be climbing upwards. Another nearby cannonball tree also has flowers blooming way up!

Is there a reason for this? Are there knowledgeable tree lovers who could explain this phenomenon?

Bail for Sen, time to think

2011-04-20T12:31:00.000+05:30

I have an essay on Kafila, musing after bail for Binayak Sen. Please take a look.

Comments welcome.

Vasanta Subramanian, once more

2011-04-20T12:29:00.000+05:30

My tribute to a school teacher, Vasanta Subramanian, was in this space a couple months ago. A modified version is in Tehelka this week, here.

Yes, comments welcome again.

Num8er My5teries

2011-04-20T12:27:00.001+05:30

Really, that's the name of the book: Num8er My5teries. I'm still looking for creative ways to pronounce it. The Sunday Guardian asked me to review it, and they published what I came up with ten days ago, here.

Comments welcome.

To thinking

2011-04-15T11:50:00.001+05:30

Update: Not long after I posted what's below, the Supreme Court granted bail to Binayak Sen. It has also said the evidence on record proves no charge of sedition against Sen. And the bench made this observation: "Symphatising with Maoists is no ground for Sen's arrest [and] possession of literature is no proof of Maoist involvement."

Read what's below in that light.

***
The Supreme Court will hear today (April 15), barring yet another adjournment sought by the Government of Chhattisgarh, the appeal for bail for Binayak Sen.

Right off the bat, there's this comment (Hindi) to remember from the Home Minister of Chhattisgarh, Nankiram Kanwar: that since some doctors in Ganiyari, he thinks, are working for Sen's bail, they have "Naxal connections". With the reasonable assumption that doctors in Ganiyari are in no way privileged over the rest of us, we may assume from Shri Kanwar's reasoning that anyone who works for Sen's bail has "Naxal connections."

Therefore Shri Kanwar must believe that the lawyers arguing the bail appeal today in the Supreme Court have Naxal connections. He must believe that the innumerable groups and individuals all over India, indeed all over the world, who have asked for Sen's release all have Naxal connections. He must believe that the 20-plus Nobel prize winners who have asked for Sen's release have Naxal connections.

Perhaps this is a farce that I should not be taking seriously. But I cannot help wondering, how is it that Sen's detractors -- and there are plenty of those -- are unable to see the case against him for what it is: a tissue of whisper and insinuation that on even the most cursory examination holds no water? In other words, a farce.

I mean, think of it: if a Home Minister -- a Home Minister! -- is this oblivious of the working of law and justice, what does that say about his government's case against this man?

But you don't even have to read that news report to wonder on these lines. The case is full of stuff that should give any reasonable Indian enough questions to ask.

Two examples:

* One chargesheet against Sen starts by saying he met Naxals "accused of murder", "looting", "kidnapping", and "he has been meeting Narayan Sanyal repeatedly." (Sanyal, of course is the 70+ year-old imprisoned man whose meetings with Binayak Sen are the basis of this case). All of which may be true, but where's the crime in meeting such men? It may offend you, but where's the crime? Even Sen's detractors, surely, must wonder about the legitimacy of guilt by association?

* Next, the same chargesheet has a couple of paragraphs near the start that talk of a Maoist magazine seized from another accused in this case, Piyush Guha. The paragraphs tell us that this magazine talks of boycotting the Lok Sabha elections, "strengthening the guerrilla Army", etc. No mention of Sen anywhere. Then there's one sentence I'll spell out in a bit. Then there's a list of Maoist crimes: they destroy schools and bridges, they are dangerous, they are creating terror around the country, they battle CRPF personnel in Dantewada, etc. Still no mention of Sen.

No, but the sole mention of Sen in all this is in that sentence right in the middle: "Like this accused Piyush Guha together with Dr. Binayak Sen with directions from Narayan Sanyal was working for the Maoist organization."

Nice, no? Mention a magazine owned by an accused. Mention what it contains. Fill half a page listing Maoist crimes. Somewhere in the middle, toss in a mention of Binayak Sen and his co-accused.

This is not even guilt by association. This is guilt by the hope that when you stumble across names stuck in the middle of a critique of Maoists, you will just assume those names are Maoist too.

There is just plenty more of this stuff, too much for a mere blog post. Riding on such tissue, a man has been sentenced to life in prison.

To me, Sen's case raises plenty of questions about us, for us. But maybe it raises this one above all: why is it that as soon as a government mentions the word "Maoist", so many of us willingly give up thinking?

Charged to someone else

2011-04-10T19:14:00.000+05:30

* Good friends of ours, god-fearing religious-institution-visiting couple, had us over for dinner one evening some years ago. Told us with satisfaction that they can make unlimited calls from their MTNL phone within India and outside, because of a deal they have just made with their MTNL lineman, paying him Rs 100 a month.

"So who actually pays for the calls?" we asked.

"Oh we don't know," they said. "He told us the calls just get charged to someone else. If you want the same facility we can tell him to come meet you."

This used to be common. With the coming of mobiles and cheap long-distance calls, it probably doesn't happen much any more. But it used to be common.

* A bachelor uncle lived for many years in a smallish building in one of Bombay's more desirable suburbs. At one point, he began noticing that he was getting inordinately high electricity bills, over double what he was used to paying. He couldn't understand it: there were no new electrical appliances in the house, it wasn't as if he suddenly had his geyser on 24/7.

Months of puzzlingly high bills with no explanation, driving my uncle round the bend. Eventually, a technician from the power company found the problem. One of his neighbours had disconnected the wires from his own electrical meter and connected them to my uncle's meter.

* Driving home this afternoon, came up to a red light. A few cars stopped; the rest barreled straight through the red light. When it turned to green, those of us who had stopped, started moving. But the cross traffic now showed no sign of stopping. Nerve-wracking few seconds getting through the junction.

* Website I visited that had some discussion about Anna Hazare's fast also had a poll: "Who would you like to see as India's next Prime Minister?" Perhaps ten names were listed.

77 per cent of nearly 1000 respondents (when I visited) had chosen the first name on the list, Narendra Modi.

* For a brief and largely sticker-shocked period, my wife and I went house-hunting in Bombay. We visited one poky little flat that was half-way decent, so we asked about the price. After getting the usual sticker shock, we asked our usual question anyway: "will you take a cheque?"

The owner looked strangely at us. "Why?" he asked. "You're from some church group or something?"

* Builder we know of once told the story of how he provides water to the buildings he builds. "The Municipality supplies water for a fixed period every day, and they require pipes x inches in diameter." (I don't remember what x was, sorry). "So when I put up a building, I pay off the Municipality and use pipes 1.5x inches in diameter. So my customers get more water." That last, said with pride for his dedication to his customers.

"What about the other buildings in the area, wont' they get less water then?" someone asked.

"Not my problem," said the man.

(I can't vouch for the veracity of whether 1.5x diameter pipes for one building actually mean more water for that building).

These anecdotes make up just a few of the reasons I'm pessimistic that even a new law will be able to fight corruption and the slide in values so many bemoan.

Some of my concerns

2011-04-09T15:08:00.000+05:30

I have enormous respect for the people in this whole India Against Corruption effort: Anna Hazare, Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and many other names, some of whom I know personally. I have great respect for the cause itself: the corruption that's such an apparently indelible part of Indian governance will, I worry nearly every day, destroy us all. I don't say that lightly.

So given all that, why am I less than ecstatic about this victory after Anna Hazare's fast?

There are some reasons that others before me have expressed far more lucidly than I can manage (e.g. Gautam Patel, Shuddabrata Sengupta), so I won't repeat those. As an aside, given some of the comments on the TV coverage of the last few days, I'm glad -- yet again -- that I don't possess a TV.

Here are some of my concerns. There may be more.

* Half of this country does not care to go vote at election time. There is anecdotal (my own, among others) and other evidence to suggest that an even greater fraction of the urban middle- and upper-classes stay away from the ballot box. Yes, we need some way to tackle corruption. But it seems to me that any such method can only languish in the face of electoral apathy on such a scale. After all, if more of us had cared to vote all along, and therefore demonstrate our engagement with democracy, it's likely corruption would not have the vice-like grip on India it does today.

* There's a difference between making the best use of what we have and reaching out for something new. It's not always clear to me that we've made the best use of what we have before, in our frustration, reaching for something new. This applies to flashy bridges across the sea just as surely as it does to tough-sounding laws. (Think: traffic planning, public transport, implement existing laws).

* I'm a big fan of the Web, of blogs and Twitter (though less of Facebook). But I am not convinced that these tools, marvellous as they are, can substitute for active engagement with our democratic system. I worry that this victory by Hazare will subtly persuade people that these tools can indeed be such a substitute.

* Perhaps my greatest worry: where are the clean people who will root out corruption? The notion that all's well with us except that we are ruled by a rotting political mafia makes no sense to me. Face it: Politics reflects the rest of our society.

I wish the newly set-up committee good luck in drafting this new bill, and more than that, in addressing the concerns a lot of us have.

But you'll forgive me if I cannot shake a certain pessimism, even through today's euphoria, about ridding ourselves of corruption.

Man of steel

2011-04-06T18:40:00.000+05:30

Drove out of town this past weekend, yes, far enough away from the World Cup tamasha that we entirely missed it. Not even the sound of blaring horns overwhelmed the sounds where we were, the cowbells, the chirrups of birds, the waves.

We went to do something that's been in the works for a long time. Early in his IAS career, my father, JB D'Souza, was Collector in Kolaba district (now called Raigad), across the harbour south of Bombay. He loved his time there, the work, the swims in the sea, the walks on the beaches, the beauty of the land, the work. When he died in September 2007, we cremated him and decided we'd like to immerse some of his ashes in this stretch of sea that he had grown so fond of.

It took us nearly four years, but this past weekend, that's what we made our way into Raigad district to do. This being the age it is, on Sunday morning we got onto two jetskis and bounced and roared over the unusually large waves till we got a couple hundred metres from the shore.

There, we spent a few quiet moments immersing his ashes.

It may not have been the placid Ganga. But it meant something to us. JB was never much given to symbolism. But I think he would have liked the idea of being one with that coast. I'm glad we finally fulfilled that little dream.

***
A couple of weeks ago, the Afternoon had this generous tribute to JB: Man of Steel.

Dhanga Baiga

2011-04-05T19:26:00.004+05:30

In March 2010, I spent a week at the Jan Swasthya Sahyog, a health clinic in the village of Ganiyari, Chhattisgarh. My photographer buddy Tom was along too. We spent a fascinating few days watching the doctors at the clinic cope with the load of patients, speaking to some of the patients. It was an eye-opening time, one that, for various unfortunate reasons not entirely under my control, I have not written about enough.

JSS has an active outreach programme. What this means is that they train health workers in villages where there is little or no health care, and these people are able to cope with simple issues. Once a week, a JSS team runs outreach clinics. Residents of various nearby villages can come to these day-long clinics and meet JSS doctors about concerns the health workers cannot handle.

One outreach clinic runs every Tuesday, in a village called Bamhni that's about 60 km from Ganiyari. When Tom and I got there with the JSS team, several dozen people people from the area were waiting patiently to see Dr Yogesh Jain, the JSS doctor who had come that day.

Among them was Dhanga Baiga, a man whom it was sad and difficult to even look at. I'd have guessed he was 55, though it was hard to say for sure. He must have been close to 6 feet tall, and had legs and arms like proverbial sticks. He was suffering from TB, endemic in such corners of the country.

I remember Yogesh sitting in his room attending to a stream of patients, and then Dhanga walked in slowly, haltingly. I don't like being a voyeur with doctors and their patients. But I could not help looking in a few times as Yogesh and Dhanga sat there, for all the world like a father wasting away and his son trying to reassure him. It was in the soft, calm tone Yogesh used, in the resigned air Dhanga had, in the gentle hand I saw Yogesh put on Dhanga's knee.

Something in the quiet bond between these two men touched me somewhere deep.

A few minutes later, Dhanga walked unsteadily to a blue weighing machine. Even as he stepped onto it, I feared he would fall. But he didn't, and the machine duly recorded his weight: 28.9 kg.

Nearly my height, older than me, Dhanga Baiga weighed ten kg less than my ten year-old son. A JSS report from later in 2010 has Tom's picture of Dhanga weighing himself on its cover, with this comment inside: "Dhanga Baiga, 55 years old, suffering from tuberculosis and chronic hunger. Weighs 28 kilos. Body Mass Index 10.9, considered too low to be compatible with life."

Those last few words were prophetic. I was in Bamhni again on a Tuesday two weeks ago. Dhanga wasn't there, and I met Yogesh in the Ganiyari clinic that evening. "We just heard," he told me. "Dhanga died last night."

***
Tom has his account of this sad story, with some of his pictures from our week there (including the one from the weighing machine) on his blog here: The Sad Story of Dhanga Baiga.

Soothing the pain

2011-04-05T11:09:00.000+05:30

So Shahid Afridi's got on a lot of people's nerves, after he returned home? Yes, mine too; in that sense rather reminiscent of Shoaib Malik apologizing to Muslims across the globe after losing the T20 World Cup final to India in '07.

But let's make a shortlist of things Afridi may have had in mind, why not?

* "Once he gives the aadesh, who can flout it?" -- a Shiv Sena leader tells us last February that his leader will "decide" whether Pakistan can play in Mumbai if they reach the final.

* "randee key bachay u give full toss to javed" and other choice abuse directed at Chetan Sharma. Part of one of the comments on this clip, of an event that happened a quarter century (!) ago. (i.e. it's even odds that the commenter wasn't even born when the event happened).

* That same event from a quarter century ago described as a "collective traumatic wound".

* The Indians who buzzed around my neighbourhood late into the night after India beat Pakistan in the semifinals, shouting "Pakistan ke maa ki chut!"

* Remarks such as "you fuck afridi have biggest heart for terrorist extremist rapist", besides plenty more.

* Gautam Gambhir being asked if beating Pakistan "will soothe the pain" of the victims of 26/11, and replying "I am sure the win against Pakistan would have helped."

* Gambhir is told: "whatever we do, whoever we play, we should never lose to Pakistan".

Some of this is just the usual paranoia about Pakistan too many Indians seem unable to shake.

I wonder though, about cricket "fans" who seem uninterested in who else the Indian team loses to, so long as we "never lose to Pakistan". My hope is that someday we will tell Gambhir: go play your heart out and win every time, whether your opponent is Australia or Pakistan or Zimbabwe or Fiji. We're not obsessed merely with beating Pakistan.

I also wonder how beating Pakistan helps "soothe the pain" of the 26/11 victims. Leave aside the "it's just a game" (it never is) rhetoric. What is the connection between the murderous scum who came ashore to kill Indians in November 2008 and Afridi's team?

The scum and the team are all Pakistani, you say?

Then consider this: what is the connection between the murderous scum who killed 3000 Indians in Delhi in 1984 and Dhoni's team? Those scum and the team are all Indian, right? So how would you react if someone said that beating the Indian team will help "soothe the pain" of the 3000 victims of the 1984 massacre? How would you react if someone said our loss to South Africa in the league stage of the World Cup had helped "soothe the pain" of the victims of the 1984 massacre?

I know how I'd react: with revulsion and nausea. The absurdity of such a suggestion is matched only by the absurdity of Gambhir's suggestion about 26/11. Yet not only was Gambhir not asked questions about this absurdity, the headline on that news item is "I play for India, I play for people of my country."

I've seen some baffled comment about Afridi, saying that since he was applauded for his remarks in Pakistan, the middle class there must agree with him, they must have similar attitudes towards India. Well, what should we make of the reaction in India to Gambhir's remark, as also to the other remarks I've quoted above? Do we agree with Gambhir's remark?

Be outraged over Afridi, sure. (I am). But there may be something to be learned from the friendly neighbourhood mirror.

Fixed, or as it was meant to be?

2011-04-03T15:50:00.002+05:30

Two memories from this cricket World Cup.

The first was in the Delhi Metro, the day India crumbled against South Africa. I was waiting for a train at some station or the other, with no real idea of the score -- the last I heard, India was cruising.

But something catastrophic had evidently occured, because a tubby gent stalked up to me and barked in my face, "It's all fixed! Dawood's put 2500 crore into this match! Each of those *$!@#! Indian players has been paid 100 crore to lose!"

I tried remonstrating, not least because I didn't know this guy from Adam and wasn't thrilled that he was barking at me. But it was futile. He was serious and angry and would not be deterred, carrying on almost as if he thought I was responsible. "How else can you explain six wickets gone for 25 runs? Can you? Hmm?"

Inside the train minutes later, everyone in the packed car, and I mean everyone, was going on in much the same vein. I found a seat and listened, astonished at the inventiveness that was being passed off as cricketing wisdom. Some snatches: "Dawood … 100 crore … Sachin never wins the match … what do you mean, how can you blame Sachin? … I'm just saying, he scores centuries, but how often do we win the match? … fixing is easy, just show these !*!@#* cricketers some money … they'll never win anything."

Weeks later, I have no way of finding out, but I'd love to hear what those same men have to say today. Today, after India has won the Cup.

The second memory is from a petrol station in Panvel. During the afternoon yesterday, we drove out of Bombay to where I'm writing this from, on the coast several hours south, for a long-postponed family moment.

Our first stop yesterday was for petrol in Panvel, and the match commentary was blaring through large loudspeakers. The man who filled my tank told me the score -- Lanka was then at something like 73 for 3, I think -- adding: "It's a good score for India!"

As I was paying just minutes later, I heard a cheer and a round of applause from the attendants at the station. I hadn't been paying attention to the commentary, so I asked one of them, what happened?

"Four by Sri Lanka!" he said, smiling.

And I smiled too, and thought to myself: cricket as it was meant to be.

The manjutis, maybe

2011-03-30T10:15:00.000+05:30

It's just a match after all. Therefore, here's a shortlist of things to do during the afternoon/evening today, while Pakistan plays India in a World Cup semifinal, because it's just another cricket match.

* Visit the lady in the neighbourhood who owns a Rhodesian Ridgeback, because you once had one of those and he was a handsome, spirited member of the family for years and you have fond memories of him.

* Hold a "Numbers are fun" session for the kids and their friends, aimed at ridding them of their wariness of mathematics, getting them excited about the joy of numbers.

* Go see a film, secure in the knowledge that tickets for pretty much any film will be available by the bucketful today.

* Take a walk on the seaside promenade; if it's low tide, walk out to sea on the rocks. It's a good bet that even the lovelorn couples usually found cooing on those rocks will be home today, convinced that cricket comes before kisses.

* Bike through the local fishing villages, where you can sometimes still catch glimpses of Bombay as it once must have been.

* Get out on the tennis court and hit some balls. By yourself if there's nobody else to hit with (as is likely) -- after all, your serve can always use some practice. Plenty of practice.

* Take the kids on a trip collecting manjutis, the small round red seeds.

* Get down to that practice session that you've been postponing for days, with the harmonica or piano or sitar or other musical instrument of your choice.

* Watch the parrots. And the crows. And the kites. And the sparrows. And the barbets. And the stints above the waves. Maybe the flamingos. And the mynahs. And the innumerable other feathered charmers out there.

It's just another match. Believe it.

Thinking of rodents

2011-03-21T16:39:00.000+05:30

The road we take this morning leads past, on the right, an enormous grain warehouse. Only there is no warehouse. There are just hundreds and thousands of sacks of grain, stacked into high piles, lying in the open. Some piles have a tarp on top, flapping in the breeze. Most do not. It's dry now, but I wonder, as I wondered the last few times I wandered past here, what happens in the rains. Or for that matter, what happens even now, are there not nefarious rodents and insects who have designs on these piles of rodent- and insect-food? The last few times I wandered past were a year ago, and there's been absolutely no change since then. The sacks are in the open just as they were then.

I mean, less than a kilometre down the road, on the left this time, an enormous CRPF camp is under construction. Any number of barracks and other buildings, with a long wall all around. When I was last in these parts, a year ago, there was only a large open expanse here. Good the camp has made so much progress. But how can I avoid thinking, if they can so diligently build this camp, why is there absolutely no move to build some kind of shelter for those sacks of grain?

Another ten minutes and we turn into the health clinic. Speaking of rodents, a rat has died in one of the rooms and the stench is something fierce. Takes a while to locate the corpse and get rid of it.

Soon after, a young man and his grandfather bring a whimpering young boy, black shorts and orange shirt, into the OPD section. The family went to work in their field. While they worked, the boy played, and stumbled on a discarded 1-litre can of pesticide. He opened it and licked the inside of the lid. He vomited a bit. Panicked, the young man, the grandpa and the boy got on the young man's motorbike, gathered the leaflet that came with the can, and drove the 11 km to the clinic.

Luckily he had actually ingested only a little bit of the chemical. Luckily too, it was Koranda 505 (Chlorpyriphos), not one of the more potent pesticides. The boy soon gave up his whimpering and began traipsing happily all around the clinic. Meanwhile, the grandfather took off his glasses and showed me his left eye: watering and smaller than the right. This has been going on for 15 years, he told me. I had to go to Bhilai for treatment, he told me, and none of my sons helped me with the payments.

As often seems to happen, the old man seemed just to want someone to listen. So I listened. After a while he fell silent. Then got up and went searching for his grandson.

It's a slow day, being the day after Holi. Not because there were fewer potential patients on Holi, but because in this state, there's no public transport and all the private buses took yesterday and this morning off from running services. So most potential patients could not actually make their way here.

So it goes. Driving back, we pass the sacks of grain again. I think of rodents. And pesticide.

The kulfi as well

2011-03-19T23:21:00.000+05:30

I'm not one for going on about the ghastliness of towns I visit, though I've been in some ghastly armpits. Still, this one I'm in right now takes the cake.

There's dust everywhere, like a haze. Construction everywhere. Piles of rubble. Unlaid concrete pipes. Piles of mud. Open drains flowing with some dark-grey stuff you don't want to look at. Piles of filthy trash -- bottles, plastic bags, tetrapacks, whatnot -- dredged from the drains from time to time so that the dark-grey stuff can flow. Mosquitoes large enough that you feel the impact of colliding with them as they seek their next blood meal. Construction unfinished for months and years, metal bars sticking out of bricks and concrete. Not a pavement in sight.

The part of town we are staying in is, I'm told, a relatively upscale colony. Mostly standalone houses, the gates all have little yellow signs saying "HIG", "MIG", "LIG" or "SMIG". Why the need to identify the income group of each owner, I'm not sure. (I'm also not sure what "SMIG" is). I also wonder just how low someone's income is if they can at least afford one of these little houses. We passed one such gate whose owner was on the inside, locking himself in with a large padlock, glancing incuriously at us as we passed. Along the top of his high wall, barbed wire. But only on one of the four sides. What's it, they expect bandits only from that side?

One open drain runs down the middle of a small open area with a few decrepit concrete kids' slides. That's where I saw the pile of dredged trash, just left there. Adjoining this playground of sorts is a Saibaba temple. Why don't its faithful take an interest in keeping this ground clean and usable by their kids?

One street away from the ground, we step carefully over another open drain and walk along the porch that fronts a strip of shops, now closed. At the end is a tiny shrine against the base of a tree trunk, with several candles and a woman kneeling in front, paying her respects. I cannot help noticing, it sits not even two feet above the drain with its noisome flow.

Preparations for Holi are on. Walking back tonight, several women in excellent finery are gathered on the road, a red car making a U-turn in front of them and kicking up a cloud of dust that settles nicely on their finery. The front door of the next-door flat is elaborately decorated, complete with a set of blinking coloured lights. These get power via a long cord, stretched tight against the wall to plug into a communal plug near the stairwell. Why would this family not feed this cord that lights up their own door into their own flat?

I was told that there's a ranking of 200 Indian towns in which this one figures 4th from the bottom. Not hard to believe. I'm not one for going on about the ghastliness of towns I visit. Really.

But this one really does take the cake. And the pudding and the kulfi as well. Happy Holi, all.

Banal, inexplicable

2011-03-12T00:35:00.000+05:30

Yesterday's Hindustan Times (March 11) carried an edit-page essay I wrote about some of what has gone into the case against Binayak Sen. It involves "Mahila Kosh" and an appeal.

You can read it here: Banal, inexplicable. Note that HT inadvertently inserted a hyphen in the URL mentioned in the essay. Remove it and it will work fine (i.e. it will take you here).

Comments welcome. Far as I'm concerned it's more than just banal and inexplicable.

Responding to calamity.

2011-03-08T15:41:00.000+05:30

Himal asked me to write an essay for their issue on Disasters (March). You can read it here: Responding to Calamity.

Comments welcome.

The Sly Company ... : a review

2011-03-08T15:36:00.000+05:30

While I'm too distracted to blog in this space steadily, please bear with me as I point you to some of my other writing as it pops up here and there ...

Rahul Bhattacharya's first book was Pundits from Pakistan, an absorbing account of the Indian cricket team's tour of Pakistan in 2004. For his second book, he turned to fiction. It is a novel, The Sly Company of People Who Care. Tehelka asked me to read it; my review appears in the magazine here: This book is pure narcissism.

Where the tomatoes cross

2011-03-08T11:42:00.000+05:30

The current issue of Forbes India (dated March 11) carries an article I wrote for their "Recliner" section. It's about Major Habib, who returned home to Kapurthala after 62 years to meet his friend from his youth, Rattan Chand Ahluwalia.

Take a look: Major Habib Ahmed's Journey From Pakistan to India. (My original title was "Where the Tomatoes Cross").

The coda that's not in the article: Rattan Chand died last year, just short of his 95th birthday.

The rest

2011-03-02T09:26:00.000+05:30

Eleven people were sentenced to death yesterday, and another 20 given life sentences. This was for their roles in the great crime of February 27, 2002: the torching by a mob of a coach on a train in Godhra that killed 59 people.

The judge called this crime the "rarest of the rare", that formulation that is used to decide on the appropriateness of the death sentence.

The next day -- February 28, 2002 -- yes, the very next day, a mob attacked Gulberg society in Ahmedabad. They set the building on fire, pulled some of its residents out and hacked them to death. They killed 69 people.

Was this also a crime that could be described as the "rarest of the rare"? I don't know and I don't much care, really. But ask yourself this: has anyone been punished for that great crime, as 31 people have been sentenced for the great crime from the day before?

There's more. But hey, You Fill in the Rest -- that's my guest post on Kafila.

India: A Traveller's Literary Companion - a review

2011-03-01T10:10:00.000+05:30

Mint asked me to review the new book edited by Chandrahas Choudhury, India: A Traveller's Literary Companion.

Chandrahas and I once spent an evening together at a loud mall; even with the need to shout above the crowd I enjoyed our conversation. This book, though, left me disappointed.

Read my review to find out why: The 'unfathomable' India. (Not my title).

East of the Sun: a review

2011-02-25T17:09:00.000+05:30

Three books by (relatively) young Indian writers that I've reviewed in recent weeks. One is in print, the others will be in a day or two.

The first is Siddhartha Sarma's East of the Sun, which I reviewed for Biblio (current issue, i.e. Jan-Feb 2011). It's available for free on the site, but you have to sign up and so forth. So you can read it below. Comments welcome.

***
East of the Sun
A Nearly Stoned Walk Down the Road in a Different Land
"Please don't", says a Manipuri sign that Siddhartha Sarma finds near Imphal, "throw bombs inside the petrol pump." It all comes together right there. The bizarre climate in the places he writes about. The plaintive quality of the sign, and presumably of the man who put it up. The futility of such a plea in the first place -- I mean, which potential bomb-thrower would read this note, regretfully pack away his bomb and move on to the next possible spot to make his throw? And of course, there's the quirkiness of a writer who would notice such a sign and tell us about it.

There's all that in "East of the Sun". Sarma writes about a stretch of India too few Indians know much about, let alone travel much in. Which is why I sometimes wonder, what makes both me and the guy from Manipur Indian, apart from the little blue books we might both possess with "Republic of India" stamped on the cover? I wonder too, what's life like in those parts, the food, the travel, the music, the way its people are?

And some of that is why I looked forward so much to reading "East of the Sun": I wanted to find answers to some of my wondering. Does Sarma provide any? Yes, but it's a qualified yes.

I'll say this to start: no book I know of has taken me on a trip through every one of those states in quite the rock-n-roll, grin-and-bear-it style that Sarma uses. I mean this as a compliment, and actually this is in some ways the core of the book. This is not a heavy-handed, ponderous tome. He gives us glimpses of history, culture, music and religion. But more than that, he gives us travel the way we all usually experience it: filled with vivid images, serendipitous, finding meaning in the ordinary and extraordinary, sometimes ominous, sometimes frivolous. Writing every one of those phrases I can recall episodes from the book to match it.

For example, if there's the hint of unease and violence in that petrol pump sign, there's the daily good cheer and hope of a quick buck in watching "teer" in Shillong. This last was especially delightful because only a month before reading Sarma's book, I spent a happy evening doing just that myself. In a small arena in Shillong, dozens of archers gathered to fire hundreds of arrows at a straw target with plenty of spectators like me watching -- and the whole endeavour aimed (pardon the pun) at producing the winning number for the day. A lottery, really, but who came up with the splendid idea of conducting it with bow and arrow?

In Kohima, Sarma says he has to switch languages rapidly to make himself understood -- Hindi, English, Assamese, Nagamese (a polyglot spoken in those parts), but none of them really work too well. Then he asks his interlocutors which language they would prefer to use. They say "English" and speak it, but he still can't understand because "they use it their way." It reminded me of a joke played on an American TV star at a hoity-toity party while he attended Wimbledon: someone came up and began mouthing what sounded like stiff upper lip British-speak, but was really just gibberish. In Kohima, speaking of Wimbledon, Sarma finds the metaphor that both describes his plight and touches on the essential absurdity of it all: "I feel like a tennis player against an especially crafty opponent, having to switch the racquet hand as fast as the shots are placed."

From Mizoram, we hear about how the separatist Mizo National Front had its roots in, of all things, rats. Yes, rats that, going back to the '50s, "invade the homes of the luckless Mizos and raid their rice stores." Dismaying this is, no doubt. It is also farcical, comical, though how it evolved into an insurgency, you should read the book to find out. But consider: which revolutionary movement anywhere can make a similar claim about rats? And this is just the kind of nugget that fits comfortably in this book, that I grew to expect from Sarma.

It's that kind of book.

Yet towards the end, things happen that are not farcical at all. In Manipur, young armed militants take Sarma -- the lone non-Manipuri -- off a bus and one hits him with a gun before asking him questions. Here's an unwelcome sidelight of travel in this often troubled part of India, and it's not that Sarma takes it in his stride. You can feel, with him, "my right [side] bruising and my insides jarring." And he confesses that he is "afraid [of] being shot in the rain. I suppose you would think less of me now."

There's another encounter soon afterwards, with a mob armed with stones, torches of the flaming kind, and guns. Again, I'll leave readers to find out about that. But I want to say, I don't think less of you, Siddhartha. These were terrifying episodes, and only people inclined to foolish bravado would make out that they were not frightened by them. Thank you for not being that kind of person, for being true to yourself on your travels and in this book.

But -- you knew there had to be a "but" coming -- for all this that I admired in the book, there were also a few too many times that my teeth grated. And this has to do with that same rock-n-roll, grin-and-bear-it style that Sarma uses.

For one thing, he starts the book with this sentence: "This is not a tourist guide." Admirable, because travel writing really should not turn into a tourist guide. Yet there are plenty of times when Sarma slips into tourist-guide mode. On page 57: "There are tonnes of waterfalls and lakes all over Meghalaya, and quite a few archaelogical digs." Page 73: "Cabs and such are also available for hire from Guwahati to any part of Assam." Page 200: "There is simply an abundance of rivers and streams [in Mizoram] with all kinds of fish … the view [at one river] is spectacular, the fish plenty and the breeze constant."

Small things, sure, but when bits of advice like these dot the book, you wonder if Sarma was really sure about what kind of book he wanted to write.

But perhaps my major complaint is the style itself. Like confetti, web lingo is littered across the book -- "imho", "lol", "erm", "rofl", "thassall" and the like. Too many things are "dadgum" things. Every now and then, there's the use of initials, like this: "[B]lockades are a bit of a cottage industry in the North-east, and nowhere more than in Manipur, where virtually everything extra-constitutional is a c.i." (Got that?) At least here it's in the same sentence; in another place, the abbreviation ("o.c. with the r.") comes nine sentences and most of a page after the full form, and it's an annoying backward scramble to figure out what Sarma means.

No wait, there's more. Sarma is prone to making claims that he then will undermine by saying something like "for some reason I can't be bothered to look up [the evidence for it] at the mo." (Got that?) Between page 88 and 121, I got the feeling that Sarma had worked himself into a frenzy of such indifference -- there are at least five examples and maybe more that I missed but for some reason I can't be bothered to go back and look them up at the mo.

And then Sarma uses -- yes, again more than once -- this too-cutesy technique of introducing a question about something he has just written: "Ahh, I see a hand raised there, at the back. You want me to explain [xyz]? You want me to explain that? Okay." Or like this: "Guwahati now looks like your city (and yours too, ma'am, over there, thanks for asking)".

Maybe I'm carping. Maybe I'm not with it, or I'm over-the-hill, or something, who knows. But all this ends up being just too much of a distraction from the meat -- and there's plenty of meat -- of Sarma's book. More than that, it weighs the book down. No doubt that's an odd thing to say now about the same style that I earlier commended for sparing us a "heavy-handed, ponderous tome." Sad thing is, it's true.

I don't believe Sarma needs to have given up his irreverent eye while travelling. I think it serves him very well. I admire the way it complements his courage and his observing skills. But in the writing, I think he has tripped himself up by taking the irreverence and casualness too far. By the end, Sarma has piled up so much of this here dadgum stuff, imho, that it has effectively messed with the impact the book has on your mind. Thassall. Thassapity.

Nevertheless, I am pretty damned sure that when I go to Manipur, I will not throw bombs inside the petrol pump.

Mouse embryo, bandaid, etc

2011-02-25T16:51:00.000+05:30

Take six minutes to watch the images here. They are stunning and awe-inspiring. I particularly like the mouse embryo (about 4:45), but there isn't a false note here. Not even the used bandaid, which is like an Eliot Porter photograph.

Science. Always a marvel.

Vasanta Subramanian

2011-02-24T15:52:00.002+05:30

It was a small gesture, but for a shy 10 year-old student still new to the class -- he had joined the school only a few months before -- it meant a lot. They had done a math test a few days before. The teacher, a tall Tamil lady always ready with a smile, brought in the corrected papers.

"Who do you think," she asked the class, "got the highest marks in the test?"

Several guesses from the kids. Was it this chap, known even then as good at science and math? No. All right, perhaps this young lady, the diligent bright spark? No. Was it this guy, good at everything he touched? No. Was it her, already known for both her athleticism and her good grades? Not her. Or this fellow (click on "Promoters"), always sharp and funny? No.

A few more guesses, a few more "Nos". Through it all, the shy 10 year-old sat in his last row, silent. He knew he had done well in the test, and today he knew, somehow, that the teacher meant him when she asked her question.

Which, it turns out, she did. Suddenly, she announced his name to the startled class, called him to the front of the room and handed him his paper: 96/100, easily the best. The kids actually applauded. He stood there, shy but proud. Grateful for this little recognition, but grateful already, and always after that, for making numbers fascinating.

He remembers that as the moment he started feeling like he belonged in this group of kids.

She taught in the school only that year, but she had a lasting impact on him. Through college and other visits to Bombay, he'd make it a point to call on her in her spare government flat. She was always welcoming, cheery and curious about his life. Years later, he wrote a book, and another one. She came to the launch events, sitting in the audience with that same gentle smile. For his third book, he tried to call to invite her -- but the number she had given him no longer worked.

Vasanta Subramanian died two days ago. She must have had legions of students who remember her with respect and affection. Me, I know one of them well: for that day with the math papers, it was my name that she announced. A small thing, maybe, but I remember. And so when I saw the obit in the Times of India this morning, I couldn't help the sudden tears in my eyes.

Not the king's house

2011-02-22T13:35:00.001+05:30

So by now you've seen, I have no doubt, the email that's making the rounds that has photographs of Spectrum Raja's house? The one that says "Think Before You Vote" and "Forward as a True Indian Citizen"?

And perhaps you, certainly a true Indian citizen, did your duty and forwarded it? Perhaps you even went a step ahead and posted it here, there and who knows where else?

Perhaps you made a mental note to think before you next vote?

Well, it seems to me the thing to think about is really this: why on earth are we so gullible?

I know nothing about Raja. I hope he will face justice -- and not evade it -- for everything he is accused of. And he is accused of some pretty serious crimes involving some pretty enormous amounts of money.

Given the enormity of those crimes, I'm bewildered that someone would seek to further damn Raja by circulating a hoax about him. More than that, I'm bewildered that enough of us would forward this hoax without a thought, or a shred of doubt.

Yes, it is a hoax. The house in the pictures is actually located in Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara. It was built by the California designer Steve Hermann. It was featured in the design and architecture journal Contemporist last June. It is listed for sale here (for just under $24 million). Go see the pictures for yourself.

(Thanks to Erin & Dave at Contemporist for the information).

So are you a true Indian citizen? Think before you forward.

To Scholastic

2011-02-20T08:18:00.002+05:30

Below is a letter written ten years ago, a copy of which I recently came across.

***
[Home address]

The General Maneger [sic]
Scholastic India
[Address]

26-DEC-2K.

DEAR SIR.

SUBJECT: TO ORDER TWO OF YOUR BOOKS.

I would like to buy 2 of your books - CRY WOLF & MOON BRIDGE, Which I saw at your Exhibition at RAJGHAT BESANT SCHOOL, VARANASI. Kindly send to me by VPP at the address give above. Please endure [sic] your bill.

THANKS.

YOURS SINCERELY

[name]

***
Question: Why do you think I have posted this letter here for you to read? This is a serious question with a serious answer.

***
The answer: This is a letter written by one of Binayak Sen's daughters. It was on the computer Chhattisgarh police seized from their home after he was arrested in 2007. It was presented in court to support their case against Sen.

I am not making this up.

Just how it supports the case I have no idea. What the police found incriminating or suspicious in this letter, I have no idea.

There is plenty more like this.

Would be good

2011-02-12T01:32:00.003+05:30

I really would like to know how many people in Egypt tonight (February 11) are as grim-faced as this bloke, Omar Suleiman is in this hilarious little clip. Though you can't blame him: this is how you would look too, if you watched your cozy certainties, your cozy certainties for 30 years, crumble around you.

I mean, consider it this way: pretty much half of Egypt wasn't born when Hosni Mubarak took office. And absent the revolution of the last three weeks, Mubarak would have clung to power for many more years, perhaps until death tore him from his seat. No ruler should cling to power that long; no ruler can cling to power that long without, by definition, alienating his people. You'd think Mubarak would have learned that lesson from the Duvaliers and Shahs and Mobutus, but apparently not.

One thing about this Egyptian revolution is the lesson it holds for governments in the West, though it's not clear the lesson will strike home. This lesson: If you prop up unpopular leaders in the name of "stability" and other fine-sounding words, what you get is instability. Resentment. Hostility. Alienation.

Revolution.

Now I wonder how far the Egypt message will spread. We've seen unprecedented things happening in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen. How many more?

And now I wonder too, is it possible that the 1 billion-plus of us Indians will ever reach a consensus, as Egypt seems to have done, about rejecting those who have governed us, or misgoverned us, over the last 30 years? Deliberately, I won't name names. Because I know there are political favourites out there, and that's just why I wonder about that consensus. (Personally, I cannot think of one party, or leader, in this country in the last 30 years who has delivered governance. Possible exception: Nitish Kumar).

Would be good, though.

Small matter

2011-02-07T23:22:00.000+05:30

Isn't Chhoti Si Baat the perfect Bombay movie? We saw it at the Museum here in Bombay yesterday, as part of the ongoing Kala Ghoda Festival. It packs in double-decker buses (don't miss the trailer buses, familiar to a certain vintage among us) and the Samovar Cafe in the Jehangir Art Gallery, Flora Restaurant and Elphinstone College. It's a reminder of a time when we were generally car-free and thus maybe even carefree: the broad empty roads are a visual treat.

But with all that, it also captures that young infatuation in the city feeling that all of us must have gone through. You feel for that apparition who takes the bus with you, but you're just too tongue-tied to say something, anything. Oh yeah. Tragedy at the time, but nostalgia in hindsight.

And I've not even totted up the other delights in this film: the table-tennis ball that gets chewed; Julius Nagendranath Wilfred Singh; a time when if you held something to your ear it was a pocket radio tuned to the commentary; and perhaps above all, "Chicken a la Poos" (served, naturally, by D'Souza).

Chhoti Si Baat was a perfect start to a Sunday at the crowded Festival. On the way out of the Museum, I stopped at the Name on Rice dude and asked him to paint, on one grain of rice, "Arshanapalayam Srinivasa Raghava Sanjay Sampat Iyengar". He took a while, but he did it expertly and readably, not that I had any doubts. After all, he once painted "Kanakadurga Tirthraj Govindarajulu" on a grain of rice.

All right. No more fooling around. Next time, Hanif -- that's his name -- gets Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushanta Joseph Chaminda Vaas.

Hardly anyone knows about it, but if you do go to the Festival, you're less than five minutes walk from these guys. My favourite Bombay tourist attraction, in a shed behind Elphinstone College: now go find them.

Climbing a mountain

2011-02-01T13:53:00.000+05:30

"I believe the citizens of our country are left with very few things to have faith in. The past year has been one of scams and we are now reeling under double-digit inflation. Getting a child admitted to school is like climbing a mountain; Delhi is called the rape capital. Religion is still being used to push political agendas and then we have our quota of natural mishaps. Amidst all this if cricket can provide some respite, we'd have done our job."

Gautam Gambhir, speaking to the Hindustan Times.

No lift to our spirits

2011-01-28T10:02:00.001+05:30

The edit page of today's Hindustan Times (Jan 28) carries an article I actually wrote over two weeks ago. It was a reaction to news about the death of several labourers when the "temporary" lift they were riding in, in an under-construction building, collapsed.

Read the epaper version of the article here: No lift to our spirits.

Or, since epaper versions seem to vanish after a while, my original text is below. (I called it "Tale of two photos").

Comments welcome.

***
Tale of two photos

The photograph is stark, and tells a story all its own. A 22-storey building called La Sonarisa in Matunga, I read on the front page of the Hindustan Times (January 10), has two so-called "passenger elevators". On page 5 of the same newspaper is another report, with a photograph of what's scribbled on the door of one of these elevators: "LABOURS NO ARE ALLOWED" (sic).

That is, those passenger elevators are meant only for the residents of the building. So since there was still construction going on at La Sonarisa, and since the labourers doing the construction were not allowed to use the passenger elevators, they had to use a "temporary elevator rigged up in a shaft" to go about their labours. This elevator was in a "dilapidated condition" and "shouldn't have been there", according to municipal officials quoted in the news reports. The PWD even said it doesn't "recognize" such lifts as lifts at all, because they are only "used for ferrying goods." It never issued "permission" for this one to operate.

Permission or not, on Sunday morning the temporary elevator in La Sonarisa plummeted down that shaft from several floors up. It was not ferrying goods. It was carrying people. Labourer people. When it hit the ground, the impact killed five labourers; a sixth died in hospital a day later.

I wonder if the builders and residents of La Sonarisa have stopped to think about their policy, scrawled on the face of their recognized elevators, that forced labourers to use an unsafe elevator that authorities would not even recognize as one. I wonder if they have thought about the implications of dividing people in their building into two classes, with considerations of safety being an unimportant triviality for one of them.

Of course such division is by no means a new phenomenon, nor is it unknown to those of us who live in multi-storeyed buildings. In fact, there's a range of ways people consider these devices that ferry us up and down.

In a building I know of, one resident induced a deal of resentment among her neighbours because the kids who came to her for music lessons would use the lift to go up to her 9th-floor home. In another, vegetable and fruit vendors are barred from using the lift, even though all who live there buy from these vendors on their doorsteps anyway. In a third, residents were annoyed with "outsiders" who cause "wear-and-tear" to their lift, holding to the eccentric notion that their own use of it causes no such wear-and-tear. In a fourth, I once found a sign on the ground floor that said, and I quote, "servants and dogs are not allowed to use the lift."

And now I know about La Sonarisa where labourers cannot use the lift. Yes, that photograph says a lot.

On the edit page of the Hindustan Times (January 11), Anil Dharker finds that another photograph altogether says a lot to him. This one is of Graeme Smith and MS Dhoni, after the recent Test series ended. Dharker tells us that Dhoni's look in the shot is not one of "an upstart who is delighted to be in august company", but "one of confidence, just a bit short of arrogance." A lot to read into one smiling cricketer's face, but that's what Dharker does.

But he uses that smile to expound at length on a theme I keep thinking folks must be tiring of -- but no. Dharker says our cricketers' performance these days reflects new attitudes in India itself. Our "increasing prosperity and [our] rise as an economic power", claims Dharker, is the reason Dhoni has "the confidence of one who belongs … on the world stage." We must love hearing this stuff, given how many people speak like this.

And naturally, this is a contrast to days gone by, when our teams were "beaten before they started." In fact, Dharker tells us, in the 1970s and 1980s "Indians were embarrassed to be Indians". We're having none of that now. These days, he writes, "embarrassment has given way to pride."

As always when I hear this rhetoric, I wonder: just who are these Indians that Dharker is talking about? I lived through the 1970s and 1980s myself, here and abroad, and I know this much: I don't recall once feeling embarrassed to be Indian. I don't recall any of my Indian friends and colleagues feeling embarrassed to be Indian. In those years when we were young, many of those friends and colleagues began successful careers at the world's best-known universities, or high-powered research labs, or widely-admired corporations. Some started immensely successful businesses on their own. Embarrassed is not what comes to mind, thinking of them.

But if Anil Dharker was embarrassed to be Indian in those years, he should speak for himself. Not for hordes of other Indians. Not for me.

But apart from that, if we can divine all this meaning about India from one routine photograph of a cricket star, I wonder what meaning we should read into the photograph I mentioned to start this essay. What does that sign on the Matunga lift, "LABOURS NO ARE ALLOWED", say about India?

Does it speak of a "new-found swagger [that] suits the new India"? Or is it a reminder of an old India that refuses to go away?

Takeaways

2011-01-26T13:26:00.001+05:30

So here's the thing. Some months ago, I posted here about takeaways that I, well, took away from an ad for the Chate International Academy. These were important takeaways, because they involved both 720 kilometres and insects that went in circles and dazzling capabilities (of which I clearly have none, because otherwise I might have caught the error in using that word "both").

Well, I'm glad I had those takeaways. Because today's news is that there are going to be some other takeaways from that very same Chate International Academy. Specifically, the one I mean is that the Academy has been fined Rs 500,000 for "misleading students by using the national emblem on its advertisement."

Sort of fitting, in more ways than one, that this news comes to us on January 26.