Postcards From The Edge

When Country Comes First

2010-08-15T23:58:00.011+05:30

Days like August 15 and January 26 are stock taking days for journalists. You take stock of the Indian polity. Depending on your take on things, you can celebrate the diversity and plurality of India, write about India's double-digit growth rate. Or lament about an infant mortality rate that is as high as that of sub-Saharan Africa, or reflect upon a nation bedeviled by a hundred insurgencies.

For me August 15 has always been about doffing my cap to the men in olive greens, men who lead very unsafe lives to keep my country safe.

It was the summer of 1969 -- I must have been five years old -- when I decided to join the Indian armed forces. Indian Navy, to be precise.

I was born and brought up in Port Blair in the picturesque Andaman and Nicobar islands, off the eastern coast of India. Port Blair was an important naval base, where INS Vikrant, for many years India's only aircraft carrier, would often berth. My father was posted there as a bureaucrat and a lot of his close friends were in the Navy.

Traveling on a ship from Port Blair to Calcutta, I remember INS Vikrant for the first time from the porthole of my cabin. I rushed to the deck as my father called me to catch a glimpse of what was at that point of time in my life the most magnificent sight I had ever seen.

As Vikrant swept past us regally, and I watched smartly dressed Navy men go about their tasks, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to join the Indian Navy.

I don't know if it was the sight of those big guns (more cannons than guns really) on the deck of INS Vikrant, or the starched white uniforms of the naval officers or simply the snap with which the men in the Indian Navy carried themselves or if it was a combination of all those reasons, that made me want to join the Navy.

Ironically, it was a man from the Indian Navy, a family friend who unwittingly turned me into an Army man. He plied me with issues of Commando comics, which carried stories of World War Two battles. Soon, I turned into a Commando addict. In my mind's eye I saw myself as a crack Infantry man, deftly dodging enemy bullets even as I inflicted heavy casualties upon the enemy.

In 1971, as war clouds loomed over the Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) crisis, I ditched the Army in favour of the Air Force. When I visited Calcutta for Durga Puja holidays in September 1971, every day I could time when the IAF fighters would exactly take off from the nearby Dundum airport. You could hear the screaming sound of the jets before you saw them overhead, sometimes coming out of the clouds against the backdrop of an azure blue sky, passing by altogether too quickly.

The idea of becoming an Air Force pilot took hold of me like something fierce. I could close my eyes and picture myself in the cockpit of a Gnat, the pride of the IAF in the India-Pakistan war in 1971. It was a vision that would enthrall me well into my adolescence.

However, when I was in my early teens, And already a veteran of many air battles in my mind, reality kicked in with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. A serious discussion among fellow adolescents about career choices resulted in a friend pointing out rather gleefully that since I had a squint in my left eye and also had flatfoot, there was absolutely no chance, not even the slimmest of chances, of my joining the armed forces.

The news made me feel physically sick. The life I had envisioned for myself was now being cruelly denied to me. I felt depressed, saw myself as a victim of a grand conspiracy, and the deliverer of bad news, that boy with the gleeful smile, as an enemy agent. Even though I tried to put up a brave face (after all, a war veteran, an ace pilot, couldn't cry in front of others, could he?), deep inside me I knew there was little point in leading a life where I couldn't be part of the armed forces.

I can't quite remember exactly how long I remained depressed like that. My school friends insist it was after my first visit to the imposing Eden Gardens clubhouse, where I had gone to watch India play England, that I rather reluctantly agreed to swap my military fatigues for the starched whites of a cricketer. Suddenly a weight seemed to have been lifted from my young shoulders. Of course it had been replaced by another weight of expectations -- after all, representing India in cricket was going to be no easy task!

Now at the ripe old age of 46, pot-bellied and bald-headed, when I look back upon all those years, I can't help but wonder how different life would have been had it not been for the squint or the darned flatfoot.

I wonder if the armed forces have the same appeal among today's youth that it had for me and for my generation. I read somewhere that currently there are 11,000 vacancies at the officer level in the Indian army. I am told the Army is not only struggling to find young men who are ready to serve as officers, but is also finding it difficult to keep those officers in its fold who have done their short service commission and are now keen to move on to the private sector for better career options.

A retired army colonel, a friend of my Dad's, puts the whole issue in perspective. "You can't look at the army, or for that matter the navy or air force, as simply a career option as banking or teaching or a job at a call centre," says Colonel Kapoor. "For, no other job profile requires you may have to lay down your life as part of the job."

I ask him why he joined the Army. "I came from a farming family in Punjab. It was 1963. The whole country was smarting from the defeat against China in 1962. When I told my folks that I wanted to join the army, my father was so happy that he invited all his friends and family for dinner. Practically the whole village came to see me off at the railway station when I went off for my training."

"Those days, we had a certain jasba, a certain josh. Now a days things have changed. People don't even rise from their seats when the national anthem is played. These days the national anthem isn't played at all, " laments Colonel Kapoor.

Surely the country has changed, and over the years, with it its army too has changed. A journalist friend of mine, who is married to an army officer, says the Army has become more inclusive over the years. "Earlier you had certain pockets in the country where almost every family had at least one member in the army. Now they are coming from all over, making the Army more representative of the entire nation."

After two decades in journalism (oh yes, cricket's loss proved to be journalism's gain!) after watching more than my share of violence and gore, after watching man kill man for the flimsiest of reasons, and more often than not for no reason at all, I am an unequivocal pacifist today.

Yet, I am completely convinced every country needs a strong armed force to protect itself from the threat of external aggression. There are only a handful of countries in the world which have fought three wars, and came perilously close to a fourth one, over the past sixty years. India happens to be one of them.

Not far from where I live, a retired Colonel, Colonel VN Thapar, runs a gas station. The colonel is a man of few words, always has a smile for his customers, and stays mainly inside his office, Often you can catch him looking out of the glass window of his office at the picture of his son, Captain Vijayant Thapar, whose large poster adorns one side of the gas station.

Young Vijayant Thapar, all of twenty two years old, laid down his life at Kargil in June 1999 after leading his platoon to victory at the critical battle of Tololing.

Shortly before embarking on what proved to be his last mission, Captain Thapar had written a letter to his family."By the time you get this letter I will be observing you all from the skies enjoying the hospitality of the apsaras. I have no regret; in fact if I am reborn as a human again, I will join the Army and fight for the nation," he wrote.

As I read the letter, I felt so moved, and yes rather re-assured. I wanted to call Colonel Kapoor and tell him that there are still men in this country who have that jasba, that josh, that junoon.

Fact is, we sleep at night peacefully, because some young men, unafraid to die and put their life on the line for us every single day, men like Captain Vijayant Thapar, choose to keep a vigil at our borders, and choose to join the army, instead of joining a call centre!

An Imperfect End...

2010-01-03T23:56:00.002+05:30

I wanted a perfect ending.

Now I've learned,

the hard way,

that some poems don't rhyme,

and some stories don't

have a clear beginning,

middle and end.

My Rajesh Khanna Moment

2009-12-31T16:32:00.003+05:30

This blog post is a birthday gift for a very special person, who many many moons ago was swept up by the Rajesh Khanna hysteria. Mala Di, this one is for you.

My Rajesh Khanna moment, this. In 1991 when he contested Lok Sabha elections, Rajesh Khanna came to Delhi and stayed in Hotel Holiday Inn, whch was owned by Lalit Suri, who also happened to own the paper I was working for at that time, the Delhi Mid Day.

I was asked to interview Mr. Khanna who was contesting on a Congress party ticket. I had a clear mandate -- to make the man look good in the story. The cameraman had gone on another assignment, so I was wielding the camera as well.

He looked nice in spotless white khadi churidaar and kurta and black glasses. The interview was uneventful, if not downright boring. The man gave monosyllabic answers to the easiest questions. He was evidently clueless about Delhi politics. I was already worried -- how was I going to turn this into an interesting story.

The Rajesh Khanna moment, of course, happened after the interview was over. I picked up the camera after the interview was over and told him that I would take a few pictures of him , to go with the story And this is where it happened. My priceless Rajesh Khanna moment.

The moment I mentioned the word "picture", the man suddenly jumped up and stood in front of me, with a sideways pose, one hand in his waist, another over his head, the head tilted oddly, the famous Rajesh Khanna grin on his face. And then he said : "Ab click kar lo."

I was trying to suppress a laugh that was starting from deep within my belly. Among other things, I knew I could possibly lose my job if things didn't go right. My instinct for self preservation came a poor second that day, and I laughed out loud and laughed for long.

As I finally controlled my laughter, the man still stood in that pose in the middle of the room, and looked genuinely surprised, rather than offended. He asked me very sincerely: "Ye pose theek nahi hai kya?"

As far as I was concerned, that was it, the last straw. I realized another bout of laughter would surely cost me my job, if this one hadn't already. I politely told Mr. Khanna that the pose was fine, but I was a terrible photographer (and there is some truth in that too) and that I would shortly send over a professional photographer. Fortunately, by the time I returned to my office, our photographer had come back.

Next morning, I got phone calls from a few friends. "Nice story, Rajan, and nice pictures too."

Please Forgive Us, We Are The No. 1 Test Team

2009-12-09T15:14:00.002+05:30

It has been three days since India won the Mumbai Test against Sri Lanka and climbed atop the Test team rankings. Since then much has been written on the subject. Lot of eminent Indian cricket writers have argued why much should not be read in this success. Others have predicted, this success may be short-lived, and still some others have questioned the validity of a rankings system that puts India at the top of Test playing nations.

You can argue till cows come home which is the best Test side right now. Fact is, no side is dominating the game like the West Indians did for over a decade beginning in the mid-seventies, or the Australians did for a long spell under the leadership of Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and the first part of Ricky Ponting's reign until Warne and Co. decided to hang up their boots.

India's climb to the top of ICC Test team rankings has been preceded by a qualitative improvement in India's results not just in the Test arena, but in the shorter versions of the game as well.

The number one ranked team is not necessarily the best side, but it is perhaps the most consistent side for the period the rankings take into account. And consistent India has been, of late.

This consistency is reflected in the fact that Indian batsmen, for the first time, occupy the number one position in ICC rankings for Tests as well as one-dayers. Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been the top ranked batsman in ODI's for almost a year now, and Gautam Gambhir, who has scored seven Test centuries in last nine Tests, heads the rankings for Test batsmen. Two of the five top ranked Test players, and three among the top ten in one-dayers are Indians.

If over the past decade, India's win-loss ratio in Tests has gone up considerably, it has improved even more over the past couple of years, following the 2007 World Cup. During MS Dhoni's captaincy, stretching over 10 Tests and four series, India has quite comprehensively beaten Australia, England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, without losing a single match. During the same period, the Australians won a contentious series at home against India (remember Sydneygate?), were then soundly beaten by India in India, lost the Ashes in England and were beaten 2-0 at home by South Africa. Their only series win in this period, a victory against the complacent South Africans.

The current failures of the Australian side are defended on the grounds that they have lost a clutch of world class performers in recent times as Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Gilchrist. Indians have also lost Sourav Ganguly, their most successful Test skipper, and Anil Kumble, who arguably won more matches for India than any other player.

Others like Sehwag, Gambhir, and India's leading fast bowler, Zaheer Khan have been unavailable or absent at crucial times, because of some reason or the other. Every time the seniors have been injured or absent, the new incumbents have put up their hands, and stood to be counted.

Last year against Australia, and more recently in the last Test against Sri Lanka, Murali Vijay, made light of Gambhir's absence and gave the side excellent starts in the company of Sehwag. India went on to win both the matches. Again, last year when Kumble was out due to a hand injury Amit Mishra made his debut in Mohali and promptly took seven wickets against Australia (another match that India won), indicating India's burgeoning bench strength.

Indian selectors too must be credited for India's improved performance. After an insipid performance in the first Test against Sri Lanka, they decided to drop Ishant Sharma and Amit Mishra, two key performers last year. The replacements, Sreesanth and off spinner Pragyan Ojha delivered the goods in the next two Tests.

Cricket commentators agree India has a powerful batting line up. But it is more than just powerful, it is one of the best ever line ups to have played the game, comparable to Don Bradman's 1948-mark Invincibles or the West Indians of the late 70's, which had Gordon Grenidge and Des Haynes opening, followed by Viv Richards, Alvin Kalicharan and Clive Lloyd. Jeff Dujon was the wicket keeper-batsman, and the weakest link in that line up was the otherwise-prolific Larry Gomes.

The current Indian line up is just as good, if not better.. Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir are two of the three best opening batsmen India has ever produced. At number three and four, you have two batsmen, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, who would walk into most world elevens, followed by the silken VVS Laxman at number five. Dhoni has been prolific at number seven ever since he took over as skipper -- like Sehwag at the top, he scores heavily and he scores quickly.

Much has been written about the Australian way of batting, how under Mark Taylor, Australian batsmen came up with the strategy of scoring at four runs an over, allowing their bowlers lot of time to pick up 20 wiickets. Well, Sehwag has now introduced an Indian scoring rate. Indians now score at a furious pace. Till the time he was at the crease in both Kanpur and Mumbai, Indians were scoring at a scorching 5.5 per runs per over.

It augurs well for India that the weakest link in this side is the hugely talented Yurvaj Singh. The day Yuvraj finds his grove as a Test batsman, God save the bowlers for he can match Sehwag and Dhoni, stroke for scintillating stroke.

Not just the mighty Indian batting, even the much-maligned bowling has delivered too at crucial times. In the absence of Kumble, Zaheer Khan has been a revelation with the old ball, and right now is possibly the best exponent of reverse swing in international cricket. Ishant Sharma has often bowled quicker than any other Indian bowler you can think of. Considering he is just 20, the future is bright for him as well as Indian cricket. Sreesanth, India's hero at Kanpur against Sri Lanka, holds the seam so perfectly than Allan Donald shows videos of Sreesanth's bowling to aspiring fast bowlers.

I can't think of too many sides in world cricket who would prepare greentops if Zaheer, Ishant and Sreesanth were in the Indian side. Sreesanth in Johannesburg and Ishant Sharma in Perth have already exposed the folly of such a move.

Since 2000, India more than any other Test playing nation has slugged it out toe-to-toe with Australia, making India-Australia series the marquee contest in Test cricket in recent times. True, this Indian side hasn't won a series in Australia. In 2004, they came pretty close, almost spoiling Steve Waugh's farewell party. On the last day of the last Test at Sydney India was in with a chance, but a typical rearguard action from Steve Waugh saved the day for Australia, and the home side was lucky to have ended the series 1-1. The last series was even closer, and most neutral observers agree that India would have prevailed in Sydney, had some unusually poor umpiring bloomers, aided and abetted by boorish pressure tactics employed by the Australians, not denied India a deserved victory.

If evidence is required, more can be provided to prove why India is the most consistent, if not the best Test side in international cricket. What bothers me, saddens me, is the muted celebration of this achievement by the Indian cricket writing fraternity.

It is a malaise of Indian writers that they launch into lengthy post mortems of India’s losses and are singularly reluctant to celebrate India’s victories.

For as long as I have watched cricket we have judged Indian batsmen’s performance on quicker wickets as the benchmark of their success. Yet we don’t subject visiting South African, English or Australian batsmen to similar scrutiny. A Tendulkar or Dravid or a Laxman has a far better record on faster, bouncier wickets at Perth and Brisbane, than Ricky Ponting has on the turning dustbowls in India. But just try questioning Ponting’s class to someone like Peter Roebuck or Ian Chappell.

Most of Shane Warne’s victims were from South Africa, England and New Zealand, countries not known to produce batsmen who are quality players of spin. Warne’s record against India is rather ordinary. I can’t remember reading anywhere in the Australian media that Warne is perhaps not such a great bowler, because he has not done too well against Indian batsmen, traditionally known to be the best players of spin.

I am not blaming the Australians. In fact, I think there is a lesson -- an important one, at that -- to be learnt here for us.

Until we learn to celebrate our successes, warts and all, no one else will.

And this achievement, that of becoming the number one Test playing nation, is not an insignificant one. After all, India is only the third Test playing nation which has achieved this distinction, since the rankings system was first introduced.

Beautiful Lines That Mirror My Life's Philosophy

2009-02-21T00:00:00.006+05:30

There's them as plan, and them as chance

And them as rather walk, than dance

There's them as never leaves the shore

But me, I've always seized an oar

A mate or two on either side

To set our backs against the tide

Not knowing where our prow might touch

Not turning round, not caring much

FELIX DENNIS

A Toast To Friends

2009-02-18T23:48:00.004+05:30

Here's a toast for all my buddies who have fallen victims to the usual tragedies: careers, marriage, mortgages and children. May your fun to life ration always be neon-lit!!

- borrowed from a NYT blog

A Valentine's Day Rant

2009-02-15T23:59:00.017+05:30

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

Excuse my French, but that’s such BS!

Methinks, this whole concept of Martian men and Venus women was dreamt up to make it easy for the six-billion-odd gullible Earthlings to swallow the differences between the two genders and live unhappily everafter.

While Hollywood has made the odd movie delving into the life of Martian men, contemporary sci-fi has been singularly silent about women from Venus. Unless one takes Rahul Pandey's words that on the sidewalks of Delhi streets, peddlers of porn have over the years sold books which have had a scantily-clad Venus on cover. Pandey vouches for the quality of writing in these books and a wistful smile creases his expressive face every time you mention the women from Venus.

Lets not digress, though. Fact is, on current evidence, we have little information on, or evidence of, women from Venus. Which, of course, frees us to imagine how the Venus women would have been, if they had been -- so to say.

They, the women from Venus, would be bright and intelligent and witty. They would be tall and sinuous, and would move around with a certain languorous grace. They would be white and some dark skinned too. None of them would be from the Indian sub-continent. Oh well, may be a few from Sri Lanka, Sinhalese women, that is, not Tamils.

V-Day is as good a day as any to remember all the lovely women one has ever met. A friend few years ago listed his favourite top ten women. in a rather public forum. In what was a most honest, and uncharacteristically brave, exercise, he had listed his wife at number nine. His mother and a couple of ex girlfriends, even a colleague found places at the top of the list. Needless to say, by the end of the year he was divorced.

My friend insists that it was his wife who prompted him to prepare the list. It took him and us a while to figure out she had been looking for a reason to get a divorce. We all have a list, I guess, and keep it handy for a rainy day.

That friend's wife and some other women one has met are quite, quite manipulative. Women have been manipulative since Eve first conned Adam to bite into that forbidden apple. But what about men?

Sighhhh….

To be honest the less said about them, the better. They are patheic.

Young men who grew up fantasizing about voluptuous “boudis” (if you thought boudibaaji was just a Bengali phenomenon, then you clearly haven’t heard of Mrs. Robinson or haven’t seen The Graduate) are now middle-aged and lusting over younger girls. Life has come a full, sad, circle for them. Ahem, err, us.

For a generation that grew up on love and fresh air, I have to confess that both -- love as well as fresh air -- have become well nigh unrecognizable from our initial encounters with them a lifetime ago.

I can put a date on when fresh air became unavailable. It was when I left my zero-pollution habitat of Andaman and Nicobar islands and moved to Delhi, ironically, in search of a better quality life.

It is more difficult to remember the exact date when one gave up on love. It was the day one gave up passion and settled for an arrangement. Or let practicality sodomize true feelings. Remember the day they said, "This is the time to concentrate on your career, son. If she really loves you she would wait for you.”

But she didn’t, right? She possibly couldn’t have, for she had another set of loving people telling her : “Time you settled down, girl. Look at that guy you are waiting for. If he truly loved you, he would be here, asking for your hand, but he is busy making a career.”

You would think the two sets of parents had rehearsed the whole thing. The bitch of it is, they were naturals. “Ye shaadi hargeez nahi hogi, Madanlal” is not something you have seen or heard just in Bollywood movies. Lot of us have lived through different versions of that one line.

Today fresh air is available in neatly marked cylinders and boxes, for a price, of course. Love too is offered in equally neat packages. Marriage bureaus to new-age gurus offer , nay guarantee, love -- and such incidentals as sex and compatibility -- on a platter.

Looking back at love (more prudent, I am told, than looking forward to it), from its purest teenage form -- when a casual sidewards glance, or an unexpected glimpse of a pair of lovely legs, or on your lucky day the sight of a gorgeous cleavage sent the heart on a tailspin that only the Sensex manages these days – it has come a long way.

College years were the best years of loving and being loved. One agreed with Karen Carpenter and mostly felt on top of the world. You fell in love every Monday morning on the Youth Special to Delhi University. Sometimes she was nameless, other times her face partially, rather tantalisingly, covered by a chunni, on other occasions she smiled at you from the movie screen, but every single time she took your breath away. Now, when that happens, you usually call for an ambulance.

At some point of time the business of love overtook love itself. You couldn’t convey love through those three magical words anymore. Love had to be expressed through an Archies card, enhanced by a treat at the Nirula’s, and best accompanied by the gift of an oversized bear ,called Fluffy. And you would spend disconsolate evenings wondering if you would ever get as close to her as the bear has.

I don't know about others, but Archies combined with Nirula's to deal a body blow to my romantic aspirations. The economics of love transcended, even overpowered the act, the feeling, the phenomenon of LOVE -- that mother of all four-letter words. As love became hostage to the wallet, somehow the fun, and a bit of the good, old fashioned romance went out of the window.

Two decades on, love is being held hostage again, this time by some cultural goons. And I find myself in the unlikely role of the defender of Fluffy. These days men in khaki nikkars and women in pink chaddis are ready to offer their rather varied takes on love. As someone who doesn't wear either (that is, khaki nikkers or pink chaddis), it becomes difficult to take sides sartorially, though politically I have always been opposed to the nikkardharis.

I am an optimist, though. A steadfast believer of love, a believer in love. A keeper of the faith, notwithstanding the prepositions.

I don’t believe the cynics when they say love is dead or that no one bothers about love anymore.

Every time I read about a 17-year-old boy stabbing a classmate for the affections of his 16-year-old neighbour, I know love is alive and stabbing, err, kicking.

Every time a jilted lover hangs herself by a rope, you know Archies and Hallmark have taken a beating in their attempt to market love as a cute fluffy thing that you can purchase from their shop window.

You are reassured that love is still a matter of life and death, as it was meant to be.

Mind Games – How the Australians Play It And We Don’t!

2008-10-04T07:48:00.008+05:30

Sourav Ganguly is known to dish out as hard as he gets

In 1993, when Graham Gooch led the English side for a three-Test series in India, in the only warm-up fixture before the first Test at Calcutta, two North Zone batsmen Navjyot Siddhu and Ajay Sharma went after the two frontline English spinners in the touring party, Phil Edmonds and John Emburey.

The experienced duo of Emburey and Edmonds were savagely taken apart by Siddhu and Sharma. The attack was so brutal that a nervous English management drafted into the squad at the last minute, Ian Salisbury, a rookie leg spinner who plied his trade in the county circuit.

The day before the first Test began in Calcutta’s hallowed Eden Gardens, was one of the most special days of my life. I was covering a Test match for the first time in my life. After I managed to file the curtain-raiser to the Test, as my somewhat jangled nerves were beginning to calm, I found two veteran English cricket writers approach Sunny Gavaskar and ask his comments on the inclusion of Salisbury.

Gavaskar sagely explained: “The move to include Salisbury is a brilliant one. It has taken the Indians completely by surprise. He is an unknown quantity for them, and by the time this series is over, he could well be their trump card.” As I heard those words, my heart sank. Just an hour before Gavaskar spoke those words, I had sent my first despatch from a cricket ground in which I had stated, rather unequivocally, that the move to include Salisbury betrayed the panic in the English camp.

I quickly visualised how the words spoken by Gavaskar would make headlines the next day across the cricketing world, even as the readers of my newspaper would be appalled by the observations of this newbie cricket writer. I had half a mind to call my editor and request him to stop the publication of my piece.

I nervously walked up to Gavaskar, a man with whom I had never spoken before that day, a man whose game I had worshipped since my childhood. Understandably nervous, I was at my inarticulate best as I explained to a most patient and very polite Gavaskar about what I had written and what I just heard him say.

He nodded a few times as I spoke, then suddenly his face broke into an impish grin. He put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me away out of the earshot of others in the press box. Then he whispered in my ears : “Apna Sachin us se (Salisbury) achha ball karta hai, yaar.” (Our Sachin bowls better than Salisbury, my friend.)

“But..but…but…you just told those two English journalists that Salisbury could well be their trump card”, I spluttered, now thoroughly confused.

The wicked grin was back on the great man’s face. And then seeing my nervous state, he explained : “What I said there, to the two journalists, was part of the mind games that go on during a series like this. Cricket, he went on, is played as much on the cricket ground, as off it.

Mental games aren’t new to cricket. Former Aussie skipper Steve Waugh, who always played his cricket hard but square, used to call it “mental disintegration”. You launch an assault against your opponents well before the first ball is bowled. Carefully made comments to the media by the side’s top players or even ex-players are all part of a cleverly-designed strategy to destabilise the opposition.

That is why, before the beginning of any series the great Glen McGrath would inevitably announce in the media, that he was targeting the opposition’s best batsman. That is why, Shane Warne, not exactly known for his restraint to get in a word or two against his opponents, told the Aussie media before the Indian tour to Australia in 2004, that the Indians should get ready to face some “chin music”.

Warne was referring to the known Indian weakness against the short ball. Specifically the then Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly was being targeted. It was not the most well kept secret in international cricket that the man once described by his team mate Rahul Dravid as the ‘God of offside’ didn’t exactly relish the short pitched stuff.

When it comes to mental games, Ganguly of course is no pilgrim himself and is known to dish out his own version of mental disintegration. He got under Steve Waugh’s skin when the Australians toured India in 2001 by making the Aussie skipper wait out in the middle during the toss. Ganguly knew Waugh didn’t like to be kept waiting, so he would inevitably show up late for the toss.

Also Warne’s “chin music” threat against Ganguly backfired spectacularly. In the opening Test of the series, on a lively Brisbane track Ganguly put the Aussie bowling attack to the sword. His swashbuckling knock set the tone for perhaps the finest Indian batting display in a series outside India. All the top Indian batsmen, Sehwag, Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar, scored heavily and by the end of the series which was Steve Waugh’s swansong, the Australians were relieved to have escaped with a drawn series.

As far as this series is concerned though, the first round in the mental battle, it appears, has gone the Australians’ way.

They arrived in India a week before the scheduled start of the series to get a hang of the Indian conditions. To the chagrin of many, including a few officials of the Indian cricket board, world class facilities at the Rajasthan Cricket Academy were put at the service of the Australians. This, after the Indians in their last tour to Australia in more than one venue had struggled to find local bowlers to bowl to them at the nets.

What has galled the Indians even more was the sight of the Australians strutting around with Greg Chappell, India’s erstwhile coach. Chappell isn’t the most popular cricketing figure in this country, the pain he inflicted upon Indian cricket is still fresh in the minds of many. A number of cricket writers have commented how Chappell might pass on secrets about the Indian team to the Australians.

To be honest, though, I personally think it is not such a bad idea that Guru Greg is advising the Aussies. He is undoubtedly one of the best batsmen the game has ever seen, the same can’t be said about the man’s coaching abilities though. I would rather have Chappell coaching the Aussies, than be on the side of the Indians.

Far more than Chappell’s presence in the Australian camp, what might hurt Indians seriously is the choice of venues for this series, which has been somewhat baffling to say the least. Given the visitors’ known weakness against slow bowling, you would think the Indians would have opted for Test centres which are known to be spin-friendly. Instead, Indians kick off the series in Bangalore where they have a dismal record. The second Test is to be played in Mohali, which sports one of the more livelier tracks in India.

You mention Nagpur, the venue for the last Test of the series, to the Indians in general and Sourav Ganguly in particular, and you would get to hear some very interesting things, interspersed with several invectives. The last time the Australians toured India, the curator at Nagpur prepared a green top. Despite the request by the Indian team management to shave off the grass, the curator refused. An angry Sourav Ganguly walked off from the match in a huff, citing a non-existent injury. On what the curator claimed was a sporting wicket, the Australian pace battery demolished India and recorded a famous, and rare, Test series victory in India.

The official explanation for the choice of venues is the rotation policy followed by the Indian cricket board in choosing venues. It is a policy mired in board politics and devised to keep voting state units happy. It is a policy that has little cricketing logic.

India has lost six (two of them to Australia) of the last eight Test matches they have played in Bangalore. The last time India won a Test match in Bangalore was against New Zealand, way back in 1995 – that is, even before either Sourav Ganguly or Rahul Dravid had made their Test debuts. Dravid and VVS Laxman average in 20s on this ground. Yet this is the venue chosen by the mandarins of Indian cricket to take on the world’s best Test side for the first Test.

Off hand, it is difficult to think of a more generous way of squandering the home advantage.

A Little Bit of Diplomacy With A Lot of Style

2008-09-26T17:11:00.003+05:30

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in a recent session of the United Nations General Assembly that made the world community smile.

A representative from India began: 'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named.

When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, "What a good opportunity to have a bath." He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.

After a long, leisurely bath, when he got out of the water and looked around for his clothes, he found they had vanished.

At this point, the Indian delegate paused, for dramatic effect, and then as a rapt audience of international diplomats waited to hear what happened to the missing clothes, he added, straightfaced : "You see, a Pakistani had stolen the clothes."

Understandably furious at this allegation, the Pakistani representative jumped up and said angrily, "What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren't there in Kashmir then."

The Indian representative smiled, almost grinned, and then said, "And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech."

The Khairlanji Verdict

2008-09-25T13:04:00.004+05:30

The eagerly-awaited verdict on the Khairlanji case is out. The fast track court trying the most notorious case of caste violence in recent memory has sentenced six persons to death, and two have been given life sentence.

The verdict has been hailed as a landmark judgement on account of two things. First, in a nation not exactly known for speedy trials, the verdict has come less than two years after the crime was committed. Second, by awarding six death sentences among eight accussed, the judge has sent a tough message.

Having said that, a number of activists who have been following the Khairlanji case for a while now are deeply upset that the judge has not charged the accused under The Prevention of Atrocities Act.

In 1989, the Government of India passed the Prevention of Atrocities Act (POA), which delineates specific crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as “atrocities,” and describes strategies and prescribes punishments to counter these acts. The Act attempts to curb and punish violence against Dalits through three broad means.

Firstly, it identifies what acts constitute “atrocities.” These include both particular incidents of harm and humiliation such as the forced consumption of noxious substances, as well as the systemic violence still faced by many Dalits, especially in rural areas. Such systemic violence includes forced labor, denial of access to water and other public amenities, and sexual abuse of Dalit women.

Secondly, the Act calls upon all the states to convert an existing sessions court in each district into a Special Court to try cases registered under the POA.

Thirdly, the Act creates provisions for states to declare areas with high levels of caste violence to be “atrocity-prone” and to appoint qualified officers to monitor and maintain law and order.

One reason why the Khairlanji case attracted such a lot of media attention was because all those killed were Dalits. Even the fast-track court was set up by the Maharashtra government to assuage the Dalits who were angry over the initial inaction by the authorities even three days after the Khairlanji massacre.

If ever there was a crime that should have been tried under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, then it should have been the Khairlanji case.

For those not familiar with the case, on September 29, 2006, a group of villagers in Khairlanji village in Bhandara district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra forcibly entered into the house of one of the residents, Bhaiya Lal Bhotmange. Bhotmange wasn't at home at that time. The crowd dragged Bhotmange's wife, his teenaged daughter and his two sons out of the house, beat them with stones, iron rods and anything else that they could get hold of.

The four members of the Bhotmange family were dragged into an open area about 50 yards from their house. Bhotmange's wife and daughter were stripped naked and gangraped by the villagers until they died. His two sons were beaten and stabbed, their bodies repeatedly thrown up in the air and, according to eyewitnesses, the lynch mob cheered as the bodies crashed on the hard ground. It went on until both the boys were dead.

The Bhotmanges were among four Dalit Buddhist families who lived in Khairlanji, a village dominated by OBC (Other Backward Classes) families. Unlike most Dalits in the area, the Bhtomange family was comparatively well off. The two sons worked with their parents on their land and daughter Priyanka was in her final year of school.

Over the years, there had been several run-ins between the upper caste members of the village and the Bhotmanges. Once the standing crop of the Bhotmanges was destroyed. On another occasion, an attempt was made to forcibly carve a road through the Bhotmange land. What upset the upper caste villagers most was the pride, and the lack of subservience, with which the Dalit family conducted their life.

Matters came to a head when a family friend of the Bhotmanges was beaten up by a group of villagers, and Bhotmange's wife and his daughter identified nine men as the culprits. Later, when they were released on bail, these men led the angry mob which attacked and brutally killed four members of the Bhotmange family.

Curiously, the judge trying the Khairlanji case has ignored the history of animosity that existed between the upper caste villagers of Khairlanji and the Bhotmange family. In his judgement, he described the incident as "revenge killings", thus absolving the accused of the caste violence charge.

A few NGOs are also upset that of the 48 people initially arrested and tried for the case, only eight were eventually found guilty by the judge. This, despite the fact that almost every eyewitness called to testify in the trial, deposed before the court that a mob of at least fifty people had attacked and killed the Bhotmanges.

An Interesting Take On The US Economy

2008-09-18T23:10:00.004+05:30

Dr. Marc Faber, the celebrated contrary investment guru, concluded his monthly bulletin with the following observation:

''The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've been doing my part ."

A Marriage Bureau for HIV Positive People

2008-09-17T10:07:00.006+05:30

"I have come here because I want to get married. I am HIV positive," says Rasik Bhai, a 31-year-old diamond polisher.

"We are a marriage bureau. You have to give us some details about you, about your family background, about yourself, " replies Daksha Patel, with a pleasant smile.

It is a typical day at work for the woman who runs India's first marriage bureau for HIV positive people. art of an non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with HIV-positive people in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the bureau has so far helped seven couples to get married.

Among those looking for a bride is Rasik Bhai. He has to convince the bureau he is capable of taking care of his wife.

Daksha asks him how much he earns.

"My income is 3,000 rupees," he replies.

"You will have to look after yourself and your wife - you are both HIV positive, maybe you will have to spend on medicines," says a concerned Daksha.

"Will you be able to manage all this with your income?"

A steady stream of people move in and out of the modest one-room office of the marriage bureau. A prospective bride-seeker insists the bureau should find a match from his caste only. Another tall man looks aghast when told that no girl presently registered with the bureau wants to marry someone of his height.

I ask Daksha Patel what prompted her to start the bureau.

"The idea of starting a marriage bureau came when I began to work with the NGO here. "I came across a number of men who were HIV positive, also lot of women, some of them young widows. "They all had one question - should they get married?"

She adds: "Besides, there was a lot of social pressure on most of these people - pressure from their family to get married."

"I am married myself. A few months after my marriage I found out I was HIV positive. I have been living happily with my husband all these years - without problems, so why can't these people get married?"

Over the past few months, the number of people who have registered with the bureau has steadily increased. Not surprising in a town like Surat, where more than 2,500 people have tested positive for HIV. The city of 2.4m people is the headquarters of India's diamond cutting and polishing centre and has a large population of migrant workers.

Kamlesh Patel, a diamond polisher, got married last December after registering with Daksha's marriage bureau. "I was not very keen for marriage. There was pressure from home," he said. "I saw my wife on several occasions at the support group meetings. I never thought she would marry me," says Kamlesh.

"Daksha asked me if I wanted to marry - but I repeatedly refused. Then last November - during the festival of Navratri - we used to meet in the evenings. Then I decided to get married."

Now Kamlesh is a part-time counsellor with the bureau. He says his association with the NGO that runs the marriage bureau has been a life-changing experience for him.

"It seems a new life has begun for me after coming here. Earlier my weight had gone down considerably, now my health has improved," says an evidently-happy Kamlesh. "When I am under some stress I come here - a few meetings and I am fresh again."

Kamlesh's wife, Nimisha had been married previously. Her former husband abandoned her after she tested positive for HIV during her pregnancy. She says she had a harrowing time in her earlier marriage. She learnt about the marriage bureau from a doctor who had been treating her.

"I had read about this organization which worked with HIV positive people and ran a marriage bureau. I had come to find out more about the bureau - for the purpose of marriage only," says Nimisha.

"I did not want a very handsome person, or a very rich person. I just wanted a husband who can understand me - and who can provide for three square meals a day." From the broad smile on her face, it is not difficult to gauge Nimisha has found that man in Kamlesh.

The fledgling bureau has a problem though. The bride-seekers out-number bridegroom-seekers almost ten to one. Of the 70 people presently registered with the bureau, only eight are women.

In India, few women can afford to come in the open about their HIV status, because of the stigma attached to Aids. Daksha is full of praise for the women who have come forward and registered with the bureau.

Indian authorities draw solace from the fact that India is still behind South Africa as the country with the largest population of HIV positive people.

A lot of NGOs, however, see India as an Aids ticking time bomb.

As the authorities and NGOs quibble over Aids statistics, and the ways and means to combat the proliferation of the dreaded virus, both agree that initiatives such as the marriage bureau for people living with HIV are a step in the right direction.

What is so Hot about Lutyens' Delhi?

2008-09-15T20:01:00.005+05:30

From Comrade Somnath Chatterjee to the messiah of the Muslims, Mulayam Singh Yadav. From our videshi icon, Sonia Gandhi to his swadeshi bete noire LK Advani. From the technocrat Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the rustic Laloo Yadav.They all reside in this cosy comfort zone of colonial bungalows with lush green manicured lawns and servant quarters bigger than the average Delhi apartment. I am talking about that oasis of tranquility, surrounded on all sides by a city bursting at the seams, which answers to the name of Lutyens Delhi.

Nowhere in the world, from Comrade Carat's beloved communist China to the imperialist United States of America, from the impoverished nations of sub-Saharan Africa to the prosperous Western Europe, is there such an exclusive residential district for the country's politicians and bureaucrats. The upkeep and maintenance of which is paid for by you and me.

As Delhi grows vertically (simply because there is no empty space any more to expand horizontally), any building activity remains prohibited in Lutyen's Delhi. Ostensibly to maintain the aesthetic nature of that area.

Dearly departed Rajiv Gandhi, another man with exemplary asthetic taste, actually got a law passed that decreed the sanctity of the Lutyens bungalow zone must be maintained. The poor fellow was cut down in his prime. Methinks if he had been around longer, he would have surely built a multiplex on Shahjahan Road. So much more convenient for Rahul baba to get his Hollywood fix. Even Vajpayeeji could have seen his favourite Hindi movies there, without stepping out of his comfort, oops I mean bungalow zone.

Hey, but what about us? The Chakravartys and Chaddhas who spent a small fortune to buy flats and houses in different parts of a Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s, a Delhi that was until then unspoilt by the mindless building boom that has overtaken it since? What about maintaining the asthetic sense of the place I live in? What about my private slice of sunlight whose entry into my bedroom window has been blocked by the monstrosity that has come up next door, simply because I happened to live in a house that wasn't located in Lutyen's Delhi?

Have you ever heard a squeak from any member of the Indian Left, the self appointed champion of India's toiling masses, about this den of inequity? You would think an anti-imperialist party like the CPI(M) would have nothing to do with something as steeped in colonial history as the Lutyens Bungalow Zone. The left parties protest about the docking of USS Nimitz in Chennai, they cry hoarse about atrocities in Nicaragua, and they shed tears for the hungry in Sudan. But nary a word about the prime piece of real estate on which the India's ruling elite reside.

And, honestly, why pick on just the Left? The Manmohan Singh government makes all the right noises about ushering in a market economy and doing away with subsidies. Most members of that government live off water and electricity supplied at highly subsidized rates in Lutyen's Delhi. Most importantly, the supply of both is uninterrupted , 24 x 7. Phone lines are never down in this land of plenty.

Despite that subsidy, unrealised water and electricity bills from India's political elite run into crores of rupees. The dubious list of defaulters reads like the Who's Who of Indian politics. And such is the love for life in this beautiful part of India's capital city, that several occupants of these colonial mansions simply refuse to vacate the premises even when they have lost in the elections and thereby lost the right to live there.

And now as if free water, electricity and telephones were not enough, to ease the miserable life of our country's first citizens, the New Delhi Municipal Council has decided to subsidize internet connectivity in the area. An NDMC team is visiting Bangalore to meet up with Infosys honchos and discuss ways to make Lutyens Delhi a wifi zone. I checked with a friend in the Delhi government if entire Delhi could be converted into a wifi zone. He gave me a look which suggested he was deeply concerned about my mental well being.

Lutyens Delhi is not by the far the only or even the worst den of inequity. But it is more in-your-face than others, you pass by it, you read about its residents in newspapers and watch them on TV preach and pontificate us ad nauseum about the life we should lead, and then lead the life they lead. You drive through Lutyens Delhi, look at those bungalows and idly wonder: "Tumhara ghar mere ghar se zyada safed kyon hai?" To me it is a bit like what Bastille was to the average Frenchman during the times of Luis XVIth, a constant reminder of a life beyond his reach.

I invite the socialist, secular democratic rulers of India to step out of that cocoon of comfort and see how the lesser mortals live. May be live in a flat in Rajouri Garden or a house in Lajpat Nagar. Face electricity shortages in South Delhi and deal with water shortages in west and north Delhi and have a nodding acquaintance with the unfortunate neighbour whose son or daughter became the latest victim of Blueline rage.

Many many years ago, an Indian prince stepped out of his royal palace and witnessed firsthand the lives of the common people. The experience proved to be life altering for him. May be modern India's rulers need to borrow a leaf out of that book.

And who knows, come election time next time round, when they don their starched khadis, fold their hands and oh-so-humbly tell us how they are one of us, I just might buy that story without choking on my food!

Kashmiri Right To Self Determination

2008-09-07T23:20:00.006+05:30

I was more disturbed than I cared to admit when a close friend of mine recently took

citizenship. I had been cool with his decision to move to the

United States

some ten years ago. But the taking of

citizenship to me constituted an official abandonment of

India

. It was his private decision, but one that left me rather peeved.

I may not wear my patriotism on my sleeve and I am admittedly extremely wary of the jingoism that goes on in the name of nationalism these days, and you will not see me as part of candle-lit vigils at India Gate, be it for world peace or justice for Jessica Lal.

Make no mistake, though, I take the business of my being Indian most seriously. The blood that runs through my thin, diabetes-affected veins is as much Indian as it is B Positive.

So I was more than upset when I had to witness first hand a group of angry youth first trampling all over the Indian flag and then setting it afire. That, too, on Independence Day.

It is very difficult to remain oh-so-professional at moments like that and calmly film the goings-on. On our way back to the hotel that morning, and on many occasions since then, the flag-burning scene has played and re-played in my mind, forcing me to face the question where do I stand on the vexed issue of self determination of the Kashmiri people.

Like any answer to the complex Kashmir issue, this one isn’t simple either.

In Diglipur, in Andamans, there were no newspapers. My earliest memories of Diglipur are of my father fiddling with the old Murphy radio, trying to tune in to the BBC World Service, and on other occasions, to Binaca Geet Mala, broadcast those days by Radio Ceylon.

My first memories of a newspaper are in Delhi when every morning as I left for school I would see my grandmother reading the newspaper to my near-blind grandfather. As I would get ready for school I would hear stories of American B-52 bombers bombing the North Vietnamese countryside.

Methinks my first political thoughts were shaped by what I heard my grandmother read out to my grandfather. In my eight-year-old mind, I pictured North Vietnamese peasants with their bamboo hats, hiding with their children, amidst the tall grass of their lush green fields as B-52 bombers screamed overhead and dropped napalms. I was in no doubt that the Americans were the bad guys and my sympathies, as those of my grandparents, lay solidly with the Viet Cong.

Later on, in my teens, when I first read books like Exodus and Mila 18 by Leon Uris, and read more about the Holocaust, a part of me almost overnight became a Jew. I couldn’t quite fathom how the world could forgive a Germany that had gassed six million Jews during the Second World War.

Still later as I learnt about the Palestinian freedom movement, I had to re-examine my loyalty towards the Jews. I realised rather sadly that the victims of Germany had turned into oppressors of Palestine, and Yasser Arafat and the PLO became my new heroes.

Point is, I grew up supporting the underdog. Hell, I even rooted for Ivan Lendl to win the Wimbledon.

Under the circumstances, the unsavoury sight of the trampling of the Indian flag, notwithstanding, how does one not support the Kashmiri right for self-determination? A few months ago, I completely identified with the Tibetan cause. I can’t see what is good for Tibet, why can't it be good enough for Kashmir too?

And the demand for this right for self-determination is not being mouthed by AK-47 wielding militants, or Pakistan-backed terror groups, but by 13, 14, 15-year-old boys who aren’t armed with anything more sinister than stones and bricks. Worryingly for the Indian authorities, these school boys are also armed with a fierce determination that bullets wouldn’t be able to quell.

Significantly, during the agitation in the Kashmir valley over the past couple of months, not a single member of the security forces has been killed. The restraint is both a reflection of the maturity of the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as well as a change of tactics by the Hurriyat leadership which now has come round to the view that an armed struggle against the might of the Indian military might not be the most prudent way to get azadi.

At the same time, on the streets of Srinagar, and in other towns across the Kashmir valley, there is a new determination among the common people – they want azadi. It is not just the old demand for what Pandit Nehru once promised and then reneged – the right to self determination of the Kashmiri people. There is fair a degree of unanimity among the people of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. They demand quite unequivocally azadi from India.

As far as I am concerned, this is not even an issue of right or wrong. For too long the whole Kashmir issue has remained a foreign policy debate, and different sides have played verbal ping pong with not just the emotions, but even lives of ordinary Kashmiris. It is not for us to debate whether Kashmiris should get independence, or whether it is in India’s strategic interests to grant even a degree of autonomy to Kashmir.

I simply think it is the birth right of every Kashmiri to exercise his or her right to self-determination. The rest of us should just respect the verdict of that referendum, whatever it happens to be, and ensure its honest implementation.

Anatomy of An Anarchist -- A Kashmiri Tragedy

2008-08-29T10:35:00.009+05:30

On the first day I landed in Srinagar, I read in the flight about Tahir Wani, a 13-year-old boy who had been hit by a teargas shell in his abdomen and died. I wanted to meet his family, find out how he had become part of the agitation, how he had even been allowed by his family to venture out on the street when there was a curfew on.

Where I come from, 13-year-olds are usually preoccupied with Play Stations and are so sheltered that they would not be allowed to go to the nearby park to play if there was so much as even a hint of a thundershower.

I sought the help of a local journalist to locate the boy’s family and find out more about his background. I was told Tahir’s family lived in “downtown” Srinagar, where the situation was fairly “tense”.

Over the next couple of days, I found out that Tahir’s father had been picked up the security forces in 1996, ostensibly for “questioning”, and never returned home. Three years later, Tahir’s elder brother had crossed the Line Of Control and went to Pakistan-administered Kashmir to join the Mujahideen. The family has no information whether he is dead or alive.

Even before I had met the family, one question had been answered. With a background like that, it wasn’t difficult to fathom why Tahir was out on the street, braving the curfew.

Tahir is survived by his mother and two sisters. On the day I was supposed to meet Tahir’s family, we found out that his grandparents have thrown out his mother and two sisters from their home. Tahir’s grandparents said the mother and her two daughters were “ill omen for the family as they were responsible for the disappearance and death of the men folk in the family”. In Kashmir, as in any other conflict-zone, the women were the worst sufferers.

The three women had left for Baramullah, 60 km from Srinagar, where Tahir’s maternal uncle lived. Eventually logistical issues ensured that we couldn’t go to Baramullah to meet Tahir’s mother and his two sisters.

But in the ten days that I was in Kashmir I met number of young boys, boys like Tahir, who were at the centre of the agitation against the transfer of land over the Amarnath Yatra, and the subsequent economic blocade of the Kashmir valley.

In Srinagar’s SMRH Hospital, choc-a-bloc with bullet-injury patients (bullets that security forces claim they have never fired), we met another young boy, who had been shot in the leg. I don’t remember his name. Through clenched teeth (he said he was still in considerable pain), he assured us that as soon as he was back on his two feet, he would join the struggle for azadi (independence).

A majority of the agitators on the streeets of Srinagar and other towns of Kashmir valley are young teenagers, most of them born in the turbulent 90’s, when things first spiralled out of control in Kashmir. Young in age, they are surprisingly articulate, and rather disturbingly for Indian authorities, have a simple single-point agenda – they want azadi (independence), independence from India.

These boys haven’t seen normal life for as long as they have lived. “They have not known what a beautiful place Kashmir once used to be,” says a sad Shazia Sheikh, who works for an NGO which works with women and children who have been displaced because of violence in Kashmir.

She said: “Caught in the vortex of violence they have lost their innocence, their youth. You might think they are brave or fearless. In reality their life is an unmitigated tragedy.”

On a day when the curfew was eased and we finished early with our work, I went on a drive through Srinagar with a young, very bright Kashmiri journalist. He said : “Srinagar is like a war zone, like Palestine and Lebanon.” As we drove through a long street of closed shops, with groups of young men sitting at street corners, he said : “This is Gaza for us. On this street there have been many pitched battles between the local people and the security forces”. Little later as he took me on a tour of downtown Srinagar, he announced grandly, “Now you are in West Bank.”

Most observers in Kashmir draw a parallel between the separatist movement which grew in the valley in the early 90s with the current agitation. There is one significant difference though. In the 1990s, the movement was driven by the Hurriyat and militant elements in the valley.

There is a subtle but important shift in the ground situation now. Though the Huriyat leadership remains at the helm of the agitation, at the heart of the present unrest are thousands of young boys, angry determined teenagers who were born and have lived through most testing times. They are no strangers to night curfews, shoot-at-sight orders, or teargassing. They are fearless boys like Tahir Wani with a single-point agenda – azadi.

Thousands of miles away from the melting pot that is Kashmir, as political mandarins in New Delhi try to work out "a Kashmir solution”, few of them realise they have to contend with a changed demographic, a new, powerful phenomenon in the valley. The thirteen-year-old agitator, next door.

Strident Call for 'Azadi' in Kashmir

2008-08-19T10:15:00.005+05:30

Huriyat rallies have witnessed large crowds

Srinagar, curfew-bound and politically tense at that, is an unusual place to observe India’s Independence Day. But then that is where I was this 15th of August.

Ever since my childhood one always read, and believed, Kashmir to be an integral part of India. It was a belief that wasn’t shaken, despite what I saw or heard during my several visits to Kashmir during the twenty years of unrest in the region.

More than once I felt uncomfortable about the highhandedness of the Indian security forces in Kashmir, I have been outraged by their excesses and shared the anger of the local people who regard the Indian army as an “occupation force”. I felt equally angry when grenades thrown by militants killed innocent tourists. I also thought much of the unrest in the valley was fomented by separatists, who were aided and abetted by Pakistan.

Crucially, I believed that a solution to the Kashmir problem lay within the framework of the Indian constitution. If the central government gave up its ham-handed approach in dealing with Kashmiri affairs and if the more sensible voices in the valley were allowed to have a say about how the valley should be governed, I always hoped the rather complex problem could be solved.

After my recent trip to the valley, I am no longer sure of that.

This time I detected a difference in the call for azadi or independence. For one thing, the call for azadi might have come from the Huriyat leadership, but it has found resonance among the masses. People on the street speak freely and without fear about their demand for azadi, about freedom from India.

On earlier occasions when I had visited the valley, the people talked about the right for self-determination. They spoke about the promise of plebiscite that Pandit Nehru had made in the United Nations and then reneged on it. In that right all the three options existed – Kashmiris could choose to remain with and in India or they could go with Pakistan, or they could choose to be independent either from India or Pakistan.

Now the demand is more strident, people quite categorically say that they do not want to be part of India. “It is not a question of good governance or bad governance. We just want the right to govern ourselves, we don’t India to do it any more”, says Sajid Lone, a young lawyer in Pampore where an impressive number of people, in hundreds of thousands, had gathered peacefully following a call by the Huriyat.

One couldn’t help but feel it would be foolish to ignore both the voice of the common people as well as the Huriyat’s ability to put so many people on the strret at such short notice. Their mobilisation, and the ability to keep such a large crowd peaceful, suggested that the Huriyat leadership enjoyed a popularity that the Indian authorities have always been unwilling to concede.

At one point of time, elements of the Huriyat were involved in the militancy in the valley. Common people were often coerced to take the streets, following calls for strike by the Huriyat leadership.

This time, though, following the land transfer controversy and the subsequent economic blocade, there has been a spontaneous outpouring of anger from the masses, and people have been more than willing to come out on the streets in support of the Huriyat.

It hasn’t helped matters that the common man in the Kashmir valley feels completely let down by the mainstream political parties (which have agreed in principle to work within the framework of the Indian Constitution) in the valley.

The Congress Party is still viewed with suspicion – as an “Indian party which first looks after India’s interests” and then the region’s. Gulam Nabi Azad, who recently resigned as chief minister, has no mass following in the valley, and is seen, not without good reason, as a pawn of the central government. No other Congress leader commands respect or following in the valley.

Nor does Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party have any credibility among the people in the valley. Kashmiris realise it was the PDP which first precipitated the current crisis over the issue of transfer of land to the Amarnath shrine board. First the PDP agreed to the transfer, and once it was formalised, it backed out of the deal and eventually withdrew support to the Congress-led government in the state.

As for the National Conference, Omar Abdullah doesn’t have either his grandfather Sheikh Abdullah’s legendary popularity or his father Farooq Abdullah’s charm. Most Kashmiris see the youngest Abdullah as a central stooge, as someone who has let down the valley’s interests at critical times.

In the absence of a credible political party in the region, the mantle of political leadership has been taken over by the multi-party Huriyat Conference. The hardline faction led by Syed Ali Shah Gilani and the moderates led by Mirwaiz Farooq have tried to forge an united front and present a common face to their followers in the valley. That unity is at best fragile, but both Gilani and Mirwaiz Farooq realise a common front is the need of the hour.

Governments in Delhi have on several occasions been loathe to do business with Huriyat leaders, sometimes not without reason. Several Huriyat leaders have had a chequered past, with allegations of involvement in militant activities. Besides, at one point of time, the Huriyat propagated a blatantly pro-Pakistan line.

Now there is a change of tack, a change of strategy, if not a change of heart among the Huriyat leadership. The controversy over the land transfer and the subsequent economic blocade of the Kashmir has handed the Huriyat an issue on a platter. As I sat in the office of Mirwaiz Farooq’s office, waiting to interview him, one of his aides confided : “This time the Indian authorities have done something which Pakistan’s ISI hasn’t been able to do all these years – given us an issue that has angered and united all the people in the valley.”

Over the years, Kashmir economy has traditionally been dependent on two things – tourism and apples. Years of unrest in the valley has drastically reduced the earnings through tourism, increasing the state’s reliance on the apple trade as the major source of income.

More than the land transfer controversy, the subsequent economic blocade has hit the Kashmiris where it hurts most. As the apple season is peaking, Kasmir’s bounty lies unplucked from trees, and rotting in Sopore and other markets.

Every August about 200 trucks loaded with apples leave the wholesale apple market in Sopore every day, heading for different destinations all over India. Until August 20, only a handful of trucks would everyday venture out on the highway and brave the blocade. I interviewed the driver of one such truck in a hospital in Srinagar where he was being treated for severe burns. As his apple-laden truck crossed over from Kashmir to Jammu, two men on a motorcycle threw a petrol bomb inside his vehicle.

About 80 perecent of apple growers in the valley are marginal farmers, working on small tracts of land. Most of them have borrowed money to plant their crop, and now have no clue how to return that money.

We went to the farm of Gulam Ahmed Wani, an apple orchard owner in Sopore. Apples remained unplucked on trees in Wani’s farm, others were rotting in the baskets in which they had been packed. “I am facing financial ruin”, said a bitter Wani. “My family would be finished if I can’t get my apples to the market soon,” said the apple orchard owner who has borrowed Rs. 10 lakhs (25,000 US$) from a local bank.

In the nearby market in Sopore, said to be the second largest apple market in Asia, many farmers like Wani look for trucks that would take their produce to the market. “Our drivers are getting beaten up across the border every day. It is difficult to get people to drive our trucks,” says an offcial of the Sopore Apple Market.

As the apple trade suffers, and anger mounts on the streets of Srinagar and other areas of the Kashmir valley, the Huriyat is pressing the Indian government to open up the road to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “We don’t want to be held to ransom again, if and when someone decides to block the National Highway, the only road link that connects the Kashmir valley with the rest of India,” says Mirwaiz Farooq.

Besides, Mirwaiz Farooq points out that Kashmir had been part of the old Silk Route and has had social and trade links for centuries with Pakistan. The opening of the road to Muzaffarabad would open trading opportunities for the Kashmiris, he said.

The Indian government’s response to this demand has been characteristically ambiguous. A spokesman for the ruling Congress party at the centre said: “We are open to the idea of opening of trade routes, but if someone thinks that one can hold a gun to our head and make us do this, then they are mistaken.” Which means what, someone please explain.

As of now, the land transfer controversy which sparked off the unrest is history, and the Indian government claims the economic blocade has been lifted. In the valley, though, the people remain angry and the air is thick with calls for azadi.

In the past, Indian authorities have been accused of political myopia regarding Kashmir. New Delhi can still carry on with its short-sighted Kashmir policy. This time though the price it might have to pay could be unusually heavy.

The Unbearables -- A Kashmir Diary

2008-08-12T05:47:00.002+05:30

Last Man Boarding
Two days after I had come back from Srinagar, I was heading back to Kashmir. The provocation – a senior Huriyat Conference leader leading a group of demonstrators had been shot dead by the police. The next day in sporadic incidents of violence 15 people had been shot dead in different areas of the Kashmir valley. The administration had imposed curfew in Srinagar and a few other trouble spots in the valley. As news of the violence poured in, we planned to go to Srinagar the next day.

The Huriyat Conference has over the years led the separatist movement in the Kashmir valley. Despite claims to the contrary by the Indian government, the Huriyat leadership has a mass following in the valley. Just how much of a following I was going to find out first hand over the next ten days.

For me to do that though I had to first board my flight to Srinagar, which as I sat in my car in a long traffic jam looked increasingly improbable. My driver calmly informed me that right-wing Hindu activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were preventing vehicles from entering Delhi. I tried another road to sneak into the city and quickly realised I had been out thought by the VHP.

After three hours in that jam, during which I had booked myself into a later flight to Srinagar, news came in that the hoods in saffron had relented. I duly informed Kingfisher Airlines staff that I was running seriously late, they in turn informed me the flight was delayed by 30 minutes. My colleagues had checked me in, the only problem was I could just take one hand baggage. I packed quickly in the car, trading off the laptop for four shirts. The only pair of trousers I had was the one I was wearing.

After a dash through the security, during which my name was announced twice on the public address system (“This is the last call for Mr. Rajan Chakravarty”), as I made it to the bus carrying the passengers, my colleagues, Todd Baer and Maruya Gautam clapped.

The Unbearables

Remember The Untouchables? Nooo, not Mayawati, silly. Remember the movie with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Andy Garcia? Like that, we were The Unbearables.

Behind every great story is a great television crew. Behind the stories that have now passed into the realms of television legend, was us, The Unbearables.

The name, The Unbearables, is inspired by the part American, part Lebanese (and who I now believe is for a large part a Martian), Todd Baer, correspondent extraordinaire. It also had more than a little to do with the beer drinking abilities of the trio – Todd, Maurya and yours truly.

In curfew-bound Srinagar, our lovely hotel which looked down on the Dal Lake had few occupants. On most evenings we three were the only ones in the hotel bar. But we drank enough beers and ate enough finger-licking Roganjosh and Yakhnis to leave a lasting impression. At least, so we thought…

I Accept!

Though it was my second trip to Srinagar in three days, this time round the tension was palpable. We were given our curfew passes at the airport. The driver was watchful as we drove into the city. He warned, despite the curfew and patrolling by security forces, angry mobs had been roaming the streets and over the last few days, some members of the media had been thrashed by mobs.

We progressed uneventfully for the first 20 minutes, and then Maruya, our ace cameraman spotted a slogan shouting crowd behind us. “I need a few shots, Rajan”, he said, as he asked the driver to stop. I eyed the flak jackets warily as the crowd came closer. They were on the other side of the road. Maruya took his shots, Todd scribbled notes, as the crowd raised anti Indian slogans. As the group passed us by, and we heaved a sigh of relief, another group came towards us from the other side. We quickly hopped inside our SUV.

Soon the mob had surrounded the car. Some of them angrily beat on the bonet of the vehicle, others said we should “go back to India”. We tried to explain we were from Al Jazeera, and that we had been covering the events in the valley since the recent unrest began over the Amarnath Yatra land transfer controversy. The crowd was unyielding, even as we argued our case, interspersing everything we were saying with “Al Jazeera”, hoping that enough of them had watched the channel in the valley, and would let us through.

And then one of the young men looked at us, broke into a smile, and roared, “I Accept”. Suddenly the mob made way for our vehicle to pass, many among the crowd shouted “Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera”, and smiled at us. “Get us out of here, fast”, I barked to the driver.

Later in the hotel over a glass of cold beer Todd, Maurya and me discussed the significance of the “I Accept” remark. In another world, it would have simply meant, “I let you live.”
Phew, weren’t we grateful!

That Summer of Kapil's Devilry

2008-06-25T08:18:00.008+05:30

Shifting house can by all accounts be a chaotic and rather demanding experience. I have been so caught up in the process that I almost forgot what day it was.

June 25.

Turn back the clock by twenty five years, to this day. And if you still can't remember what I am referring to, you ought to be shot for treason. It is the definitive sepia-tinged moment of our cricketing lives, the day we won the World Cup of cricket.

Please note the "we". It is significant, for on this day, and from this day onwards, an entire nation appropriated the successes achieved by eleven good men. And from this day on, we have (don't know about you, but at least I surely have) lived and died by the achievements of our cricket team.

All of us have indulged in countless discussions about who is the greatest cricketer India has ever produced. We all have our favourites. In my mind there is no doubt that it is Kapil Dev. Anil Kumble may have already taken more wickets than Kapil, and batsmen like Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar would walk into most world elevens of any period, but there is only one Kapil Dev. As Gavaskar once said: "He (Kapil) has scored half as many runs as I have, but more significantly has taken a lot more wickets than I have".

More than the runs he scored or wickets he took, it was the way he played his game, even where he came from. He bowled quick, used his bat like a broadsword, whacking the ball with awesome power, and fielded magnificently. Before Kapil, the bigger players always came from cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata or Chennai.

The arrival of Kapil Dev Nikhanj from Haryana changed all that. He spoke English with an endearing accent, often spoke his mind with the sort of fearlessness he waded into the opposition bowling, and sat on Indian cricket's high table with as much confidence as some of the Maharajas for whom the game was first devised in this land. And in the process, he, more than anyone else, turned the gentleman's game into a national obsession.

By the time the 1983 World Cup was played, I had been watching international cricket for about ten years. My Dad had taken me to Delhi's Feroze Shah Kotla in 1974 when Clive Lloyd's West Indians were touring India. It was a good time to get initiated into cricket for that series proved to be one of the most engrossing Test series of all times.

Until then, that is the summer of 1983, most of the cricket that I had ever watched or followed through newspapers, had a single dominant side -- the all-conquering West Indians. Ever since Lloyd decided in 1975 on a four-pronged pace attack, the West Indians had swept all opposition before them. By 1983, when the third edition of the World Cup began, the West Indians were at the peak of their powers and appeared well-nigh invincible in both forms of the game, Tests as well as one-dayers.

Fearsome as their pace attack was, with Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall, four of the quickest and best fast bowlers to have ever played the game, the batsmen were no pushovers either. Gordon Grenidge and Desmond Haynes opened the batting, you could take your pick who was the more destructive of the two.

The middle order had Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, two of the all-time greats, and in Jeff Dujon the West Indians had a wicket keeper-batsman whose twin capabilities were to be only bettered by the incomparable Adam Gilchrist. I use these names of the past, and their justifiable reputation, only to emphasize just how dominant the West Indian were at that point of time.

In the years that followed India's World Cup triumph in 1983, lot of people have used lot of words to describe that historical moment and what it meant for them.

For me, more than anything else, it meant the end of that aura of invincibility. It also meant we, we Indians, could do anything, it was a defiance of far greater odds than the 66:1 chance that London bookies had given the Indian side to win the World Cup.

As far as I am concerned, Kapil Dev and his men added a hint of a swagger to our steps, to the steps of an entire nation, me included. The magic wrought by eleven men in flannels had touched nearly a billion of us.

I was all of nineteen then, on June 25, 1983. Twenty five years on, pot bellied and bald, that swagger is still intact. All thanks to Kapil's Devils.

My Brother, My Friend!

2008-06-20T23:52:00.003+05:30

Given the amount I usually put in relationships to make them work, I am amazed how easily, how without any effort, this one worked. Right from day one. I can't quite remember the first time we ever met or what we said to each other.

My earliest recollection of us is in Calcutta in our maternal grandpa's house, both of us lying on the bed, facing each other, with an open book in between. I couldn't have been more than eight, he was two years older. He was reading one page, and me another. The trick was we had to read at the same pace, so that one could turn the page without inconveniencing the other. The name of the book was 'Dubojahajer Urro Koyedi' (U Boat's Pilot Prisoner), a Bangla book, which was a translation from English.

It was a World War II story, about an Allied pilot who was a prisoner on a German U-boat. I have never been able to remember who was the author, or any other details about the book. But I remember very clearly, both of us read the book at a breathless pace, skipping baths, finishing meals quickly, not paying any attention to whatever was going around us, until we finished it.

From that day onwards, two things remained constant between us -- his bucktoothed smile and our passion for books. Both of us started out with Deb Sahitya Kutir's translations, and graduated to more exotic stuff. We were both voracious readers, and every summer vacation when I landed up in Calcutta, we would compare notes on what we had read over the year -- a habit that lasted both of us a lifetime.

When I was in Class XIth, I recommended him John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Next time when we met, we discussed the character of Cathy for hours. Until then she was quite the most fascinating woman character we had ever encountered, in fiction or in real life.

Next year, he introduced me to Drishti Prodip, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's classic tale of two brothers and a sister. During our college years and later, I became his window to English literature, and he was my guide to everything good in Bengali -- from books to theatre to food.

He was always a man of few words. A smile here, a gesture there, would be all that was forthcoming to show he cared. One day he showed up in my house in Calcutta with two tickets for Jogonnath, one of the most memorable plays I have ever seen. Another day, as I packed my bags for Delhi, he casually handed over a book to me. "Got this one for you, I know you will like this." It was Shesher Kobita (The Last Poem) by Tagore. Till today I can't turn a page of that book without remembering him.

In 1975, he came to Delhi to visit me. We both were seriously into table tennis then. World Cup Table Tennis had just got over and a Hungarian had won it. We played our own World Cup -- me, him and few of my friends. We even made a cardboard cup. He took the cup to Calcutta after he beat all of us. The highlight of the stay was watching Sholaay. We were both most distressed by Jai's death, and over the years discussed several alternative endings. Now I can't ever think of him, without thinking about alternative endings.

One summer afternoon in Calcutta, I was in Class XIIth and he was in his first year of Engineering, we browsed books on College Street, had the mandatory coffee in Coffee House, then saw a movie (can't remember the name), but both of us wanted something more. After we had checked we had enough money between us, we decided to have some beer. The only hitch was what if someone we knew saw us. We knew we were in an area which was frequented by the elders in the family.

So, drawing upon our considerable combined wisdom, we decided to don sunglasses and walk confidently into a pub. The plan was breathtakingly simple -- even if someone saw us, we would be unrecognizable because of our dark glasses. We were already so charged with the task on hand, the beer hardly hit us, and we came back home, thrilled to bits, mission accomplished.

About a week later, we had just finished our evening smoke, when our youngest maternal uncle, Tomal Mama, materialized out of nowhere, put his hands on our shoulders, looked into our eyes and said in his deep gravelly voice : "Ki re, kalo choshma porey beer khele kauke aar chena jayena na? (If you wear dark glasses and drink beer, you think no one will recognize you?)"

We stood speechless, our bad karma having finally caught up with us. Then Tomal Mama's face creased into a huge grin, and he said : "Theek aachhe, ghlabrash na, etai to boyesh beer teer khabar (Don't worry, after all this is the age to drink beer)," and then the frozen blood in my veins thawed again.

That was the first of several more memorable binges over the years. None more funnier than the time I had landed in Calcutta after getting my first job with The Statesman. I had to meet a friend at the National Library at 11 a.m. who eventually didn't show up, and on a working day I was left with nothing to do. I phoned him up (a year ago he had joined as a junior engineer with a private sector company in the city), asked him if he could meet me. There was a moment of hesitation at the other end, and then he said: "Give me 30 minutes".

I waited on the curb across the National Library, in front of the Calcutta Zoo. He showed up exactly after 30 minutes, with his bucktoothed grin in place : "Tor jonney mone hoi amar chakri ta jabe (Because of you I think I am going to lose my job)." I asked him what was the Plan of Action. He lit a cigarette, smiled at me enigmatically and said : "Just wait patiently."

He had barely finished speaking when a taxi came to a halt right where we were standing, and the eldest of our cousin brothers got down. Another brother had produced another enterprising excuse to get out of office on a working day. What followed was some serious daytime drinking, of all the places, in Calcutta Zoo. The zoo had a bar on its premises and my brothers were in no mood to waste any time, going to a pub which was some distance away. Not that I was opposed to the idea.

I realise the futility of trying to capture a relationship of a lifetime in few hundred or even a few thousand words. Which is what I had been trying to do until now. To share with you all, my memories of someone very special, very dear to me. They are good memories, great memories of growing up together.

They are my own Wonder Years. I horde these memories, when I am alone I often count them as if it were a currency, and check and re-check the tally againt the last such count. You become like that, a little obsessive, when all you are left of an association of four decades are just memories.

I have been like that, a little obsessive, the past six years. For six years ago, on this day, the man, who was not just my brother but as close a friend as one is ever likely to have, died.

This blog is about someone who made my life great by just being part of it, and left an aching hole in my heart that time can't even come close to healing. If there was Internet in the sky, I would like him to read this piece and know just how much that bucktoothed grin is missed.

A Midsummer Day's Dream

2008-06-14T00:02:00.002+05:30

Life in a hospital's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) can be pretty exciting. The care IS very intensive -- nurses poke you with all kinds of needles at periodic intervals, thermometers are stuck up different orifices, medicines of different colours, shapes and sizes fed to you during, before and after meals and doctors with smiles as fake as Pamela Anderson's breasts tell you not to worry about a thing and then cheerfully reel off some very worrisome facts about your body.

Why am I rambling?

It is a pleasant 40 degrees in the shade. Brave (and, I thought, a bit foolish too) young men are playing cricket in this lovely weather. And yet I can't string together a coherent thought, let alone a sentence. Heat gets to me. Always has. Among my several serious reservations about self, the biggest one undoubtedly is my inability to relocate myself from a city that I have hated with some passion over three decades now. At one point of time I used to gripe about the people of this city, but for a long time, a very long time now, I haven't enjoyed living in this city because of its terrible weather. Not that life in the decidedly more humid Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai will be any cooler.

But this, the Delhi heat, is a different sort of beast. It works on you from the beginning of February, gets its claws into you in March and April, overwhelms you in May and June, saps your energy in July and August and by October end, you are so beat you think the coolness of November, December and January is just a figment of your meteorologically deluded mind. And then its February once again, the beginning of the nine-month summer season. More than anything else, it is the length of the Delhi summer that gets to you.

I once read somewhere how the author, a political prisoner in an Indian jail, would tell stories to young children, who were staying in the jail premises along with their prisoner mothers, about dogs and cats. And then she would notice the blank look on their faces and realise most of them had never set foot out of the four walls of the jail and had never seen a cat or a dog.

Similarly I fear Ritwik would never know spring or autumn, easily the two most beautiful seasons of my childhood and adolescence, if he grows up in Delhi. In this city, one day you go to the laundry and hand your sweaters and coats for dry cleaning and then come back and don your bermudas. In Delhi, the transition from winter to summer is terribly abrupt.

On top of it, this is a city without a major waterbody in and around it. You call Yamuna a waterbody and the river itself would rise from the mire of silt and from under the city's refuse and sue you for defamation. The water in Yamuna is as much of a chimera as the mythical Saraswati is. You knew there was water there once.

Damn, I am rambling again.

Point is, I am spoilt, both in terms of plentiful water and good weather. I grew up in Andamans, in the towns of Port Blair and Diglipur, when the population was sparse and the forest cover, at a conservative estimate, anything between 90 and 97 per cent, and anytime of the day and anytime of the year, you could feel the sea breeze on your back. In Port Blair, the front of our house faced the road. But the back of the house opened into sand and you could walk straight on to the beach and then to the water. From every room in my house, I could see the sea. And now from every room in my apartment in Delhi... ohh nevermind!

Long after I left Andamans, the islands became a refuge from my physical and emotional troubles. I would transport my mind to Port Blair or Diglipur and shut myself off from everything else. These days when I get depressed, I think a lot about the ten days I spent last year in the ICU. Both, I guess, are clumsy attempts at coping.

Right now, even as I write this, beer is emerging as a serious option. That is, as an attempt at coping.

In my mind's eye, as I wipe the dust off the years, I can see a big tub with chunks of ice, and countless bottles of beer buried in between the ice. The air conditioning on at full blast killing the afternoon heat. A bunch of old friends who can communicate even by passing a cigarette butt, an old seventies movie (could be Angoor or Golmaal or Chupke Chupke, take your pick) on the DVD in a semi-dark room with blinds drawn. Someone almost unobtrusively passing on plates of non vegetarian snacks at regular intervals. Mmmmmm.

Gosh, more rambling.

But I like the train of thought ...

Welcome To The "Token" Republic

2008-05-18T15:00:00.008+05:30

For over a week now, India has been exercised over the issue of the (s)election of its First Citizen. Now it is fairly certain, barring cross-voting at a rather large scale, that the next Supreme Commander of the Indian armed forces is going to be a woman.

A woman called Pratibha Patil.

The Indian media has had a field day asking, "Pratibha Who?" After her recent not-the-most-politically-correct conmment about Hindu women in Rajasthan using the veil to protect their honour from Muslim rulers, questions have been asked about her suitability for a post that may be ceremonial but it is a job that, on occasions, calls upon its incumbent to display considerable political wisdom.

At the heart of the controversy over Pratibha Patil's choice lies the fact that she was not by a long shot the first choice of the ruling United Progressive Alliance goverment. A slew of names, from Shivraj Patil to Pranab Mukherjee to Arjun Singh to Sushil Kumar Shinde had been considered, debated over and then cast aside.

The current Home minister, Shivraj Patil had the blessings of Sonia Gandhi, but Comrade Carat, oops Karat, and his band of merry communists chose to play spoilsport. They argued Patil was not secular enough and too much of a political lightweight for the august post of the President of India.

It is a specious argument in itself because it implies the Left Front is okay with a non-secular home minister in a government that it supports but would not support the same man for the President of India's job. One would have thought given the nature of his job, a home minister would have to be more hands on with secular issues, and as the President his job would be more ceremonial, as enshrined in the Indian Constitution itself. But logic has not often been the Left's strongest suit.

After Madam Patil's history lesson on the veil, though, the Left might have similar worries about the secular credentials of the Patil they chose to back over the Patil they didn't. But now the Left Front would have to dwell on those thoughts in private, and Comrade Karat, in all likelihood would have five long years to mull over what they have brought upon themselves and the rest of the country, because the matter of election of the next President of India has already moved significantly forward.

Soon after Sonia Gandhi sprang the surprise candidature of the woman who was until recently the governor of Rajasthan, Congress spin doctors were quick to highlight the "progressive" decision to opt for a woman Presidential candidate. A happy picture was quickly painted of the largest democracy of the world with its First Citizen a woman and what such a move would do for woman's emancipation in this country and so on and so forth.

Now, we all know, THAT is such bullshit. Understandably, members of the media have reacted sharply to such a spin. Columnists like Shobha De have stridently protested against the sham symbolism of linking Pratibha Patil's candidature to women's emancipation. Others have rubbished the move as "blatant tokenism", the real purpose of which is to have a rubber stamp President, sympathetic to the interests of the ruling UPA government.

And so it is. Blatant tokenism it is, but all the same a shrewd move (albeit one she was forced to make) by Sonia Gandhi after the Left forced her hand. Honestly what were you and me and the rest were expecting other than blatant tokenism ?

We are, after all, a nation of, for the lack of a better word if I am allowed to coin one, "tokenists". We are most well versed in the intricacies of tokenism, better than anyone else I can think of. We can't stomach hard facts, whether in the political arena or on a sports field. We always prefer symbolism over more harder options.

We pay token tribute to secularism. In this non-violent land of Mahatma Gandhi, Hindus kill Muslims, Muslims kill Hindus, every now and then a Church gets burnt, and the odd nun gets raped -- a veritable plurality of killings in this plural society. And remarkably no one gets punished for these orgies of violence. No Hindu, no Sikh, or no Muslim has been sent to the gallows in this nation over communal violence. Perhaps that is our notion of secularism.

We pay token tribute to socialism. All the parties are committed to pro-poor policies, their election manifestos utopian. Yet, as the sensex is on a long bull run, Fortune 500 companies head India's way and we talk of a resurgent, new India with a double digit growth rate, in another India, farmer suicides continue unabated, and unemployment continues to rise alarmingly. As rich India waxes eloquent on socialism, poor India starves.

We pay token respect to our elders. We scorn the west for their old-age homes, and gloat over our ancient family values and then abandon our old parents. Younger men and women jostle past, push around their elders in public places, in buses and metros.

In our cities we build the world's finest hospitals, manned by worldclass doctors. Yet within a 250 km radius of all major cities in this country, you can find public health care centres which languish in abject neglect, the poor denied even basic health care. People from the US and western European countries fly down to India for top quality medical care. Yet even today women die in labour by thousands in this country not too far from these centres of medical excellence. And we talk of free health care for the poor. More tokenism.

And we pay token tribute to our women. We rape them in our cities, starve them in our villages, abort them in their foetuses, burn them for dowry and say "Nari hamari Ma hai (woman is our Mother)."

Why are we so surprised then about the latest tokenism, blatant or otherwise, of the selection of Pratibha Patil as a Presidential candidate? The list of tokenisms is very very long and makes for rather sorry, and unsavoury, reading. Poor Pratibha Tai is only the latest in a long line of tokenisms.

It will be a delicious irony of sorts if the fears of Madam Patil's detractors were to prove true and she indeed went on to become a token President of a token secular, a token socialist, and a token democratic republic.

Last, but by no means the least, I am not averse to the Tai's presence in Rashtrapati Bhavan for an entirely different reason. In case Hillary Clinton makes it to the White House, we can always tell the Americans that we put a woman in the President's office before they did!

Southern Comfort -- A Chennai Diary

2008-05-15T23:51:00.006+05:30

The Marina Beach is my favourite destination in Chennai

Oh,The Heat!

The airhostess on the Kingfisher flight had already warned that the temperature outside was 40 degrees. What she forgot to mention was the nearly hundred per cent humidity. Even as I stepped down to the tarmac, I was soaked with sweat. Hello Chennai, I murmured to myself. Combine the dry Delhi heat with Mumbai's humidity, and you have the nightmarish weather of Chennai in May.

Don't get me wrong though. I might have just trashed the Chennai weather here, but this remains one of my favourite cities, from the days it used to be called Madras.

For one thing I love the food here. No, not the idli-dosa-sambar routine. No veggie me, despite the clogged arteries. I am talking about the mouth-watering spicey fish and prawn curries, mmmm. Apart from the excellent food, I have met some really wonderful people in this city -- something I can't say about most other places I travel to.

Fisherman’s Cove

Chennai has one of my two most favourite hotels, Fisherman's Cove, the Taj property on the road to Pondicherry, the other one being Brunton’s Boatyard in Cochin ( let me not get started on that one, that will require an entire blog by itself).

Fisherman’s Cove offers an excellent view of the sea from most of its rooms, and serves the best beach barbeque you can have anywhere. This time I have business in the city, so I wouldn't be able to stay at Fisherman's Cove, but surely time can be found for a lunch or a dinner there. Despite the sweltering heat, I was in a happy frame of mind as I made my way into the airport, daydreaming about the possibility of a beach barbeque, accompanied by a very chilled glass (more likely, several bottles) of beer.

The Business of Kidney Selling

I am in Chennai as the pointsman for a BBC Scotland documentary team which is hoping to interview a few people who have sold their kidneys. Though the government of India has banned the sale of kidneys, it is a fairly well known fact in the murky world of organ trade that Chennai is the place to come to, if you are planning to buy a kidney.

Five years ago, I had come to Chennai on a similar story and stumbled upon an entire residential colony in downtown Chennai where more than 300 people had sold their kidneys. In his piece to camera, the BBC correspondent had referred to the place as “Kidneypuram”.

I intend to visit Kidneypuram over the next few days and locate few people who have recently sold their kidneys and persuade them to be interviewed on television.

Shouldn’t be tough. I have done it before. I do this for a living. As do the people who sell their kidneys, often for a final price that is far lower than what was originally promised. More about that, later.

Water Bodies

Methinks there should be a law which would allow all people born with water signs to stay close to water bodies. I am a Piscean who spent the first few years of my life blissfully close to water, living in a house practically on the edge of the beach in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar islands. After more than thirty years in Delhi, I have come to terms with that city of nine months of summer, but I sorely miss not living close to the sea.

I don't know about others, but in my case surely proximity to water sooothes me, calms my jangled nerves. It is my third evening in Chennai and so far I have managed to visit the Marina Beach every morning before setting out for work.

The Marina beach is the second largest beach in the world, inside city limits, that is. It is 12 kilometeres in length and at its widest point is 437 metres long.

About one hundred people died on Marina beach when Tsunami struck this beach and other coastal areas on December 26, 2004. The toll would have been much higher had the Tsunami hit in the evening instead of morning. Every evening thousands come to this beach, and on Sundays the crowds swell even more.

Me, I just love the peace and quiet of this beach in the mornings. One can just sit on the sand and watch the waves for hours. When I go back to Delhi, I think I will miss my daily trips to Marina beach the most.

Jags and Anwar

I am going to modify what I said earlier about Chennai. You don’t even have to be in Chennai to meet nice folks from there. A few (light)years ago, I met one sitting right in the BBC Delhi office. L Jagdeeshan aka Jags aka Jaggu Dada. Jags is one hell of a journalist, and an even better human being. BBC Tamil Service sent Jags to Delhi to give a sharper edge to its political coverage. He did all that and a lot more – he regaled us with his collection of Chennai jokes (some very politically incorrect ones about “Amma”).

I can’t remember the countless number of stories he has helped me with. Every time I prepared to visit Chennai, or for that matter anywhere south of the Vindhyas, he would have some valuable (and always useful) advice for me.

One of the best things Jags ever did was to introduce me to Anwar, a friend, photographer – and as I discovered this time -- a historian. Last evening I met Anwar over dinner. We talked about diverse subjects, from how politics is getting increasingly polarised on religious lines to a certain common friend’s fascination during his younger days for a leftist politician of the opposite sex. And then Anwar very casually informed me that he had been chosen to write on the Islamic history of Madras for a gazetteer on the city which was going to be published in a couple of months’ time.

Anwar is an interesting conversationalist, but very rarely – if ever – talks about his own accomplishments. So it was only after sustained and skillful interrogation on my part, he let out that a number of experts had been invited to write for the gazette, and he was among the chosen few. That was when I discovered for the first time that our man dabbled in history too.

DVD Treasure Trove

This is my last evening in Chennai. Must say it has been a most fruitful trip. Not just because I found the kidney sellers I was looking for, but because today I found a shop with the most amazing DVD collection. Hollywood, Bollywood, old classics, European stuff, Iranian movies – you name it and the fellow has it. Each DVD costs just Rs.50. Yep, just fifty bucks. Woohoo, and what a collection!

After I greedily sifted through the collection, I bought well beyond what any realistic DVD buying budget would allow. The best buy is undoubtedly two full seasons of MASH that I could lay my hands on. The miracle man (the shop owner, that is) has promised the rest of the seasons of MASH as well.

My wife is going to kill me when she finds out how much I have spent on the DVDs. If I have seen all the movies that I have bought, then I am going to die a happy man though.

India's Village of Identical Twins

2008-05-10T17:12:00.004+05:30

Almost adjacent to the civilian airport in Allahabad, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is the village of Mohammad Pur Umri. As you drive into Umri, it doesn't look any different than scores of other such villages in the area. Once inside though as you look at the faces staring back at you, one may be forgiven for thinking that you have stepped into the sets of a sci-fi film on cloning.

For one in ten births in this village of eight hundred odd people involves twins, most of them identical, thus making it the highest concentration of identical twins anywhere in the world.

For the past few months, scientists from around the world are flocking to Umri to try to find out why an extraordinarily large number of identical twins are being born there. Ever since a local daily carried the story about the unusually high incidence of identical twins in Umri, scientists and members of the international media have descended upon this sleepy hamlet.

Globally, the odds of a woman giving birth to identical twins is one in 300.

Over the last 10-15 years, the number of twin births has gone up significantly," Netaji, a village headman who has lived in Umri for over 70 years, told me. "There would have been many more, but infant mortality has claimed many lives," he added.

Among the visitors has been a team of DNA experts from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad. They have been busy collecting blood samples from the residents of Umri, which is viewed as a "genetic gold mine" in the scientific community.

Identical twins emerge from a single fertilised egg, while non-identical twins are born if a woman carrying two eggs has both fertilised simultaneously. But scientists remain unsure if twinning is entirely a chance phenomenon.

DNA experts hope the blood samples of Umri's residents will provide a clue to whether there is a genetic basis for it, and if DNA rearrangement during the embryonic development is responsible.

One theory put forward has been that the high numbers of twins is due to the high number of marriages between relatives, which, in this predominantly Muslim village, are encouraged.There are not many takers for this theory, though.

While villagers admit that marriages between relatives are not infrequent, they dismiss the theory that inbreeding is the reason for the unusually high number of identical twins. According to them, marriages between relatives take place in other Muslim-dominated villages too - yet these places do not have as many twins as Umri.

"We believe these twins are a gift from God, and nothing else," village leader Netaji said. "The land of this area, between the two great rivers, Ganges and Yamuna, is very fertile. That is why this phenomenon occurs.Whether it's sugar cane or twin children, this land has always been very fertile," Netaji tells me with an unmistakable air of pride.

While scientists may beg to differ with this interesting explanation, many of the other villagers are quick to agree with their village headman.

Netaji introduces me to Abu Saad, a 20-year-old who has two pairs of twin sisters among his eight siblings. As we walk towards his house to meet his siblings, Saad explains to me : "This phenomenon is partly a gift of nature, and partly a gift of the land of this village. There's something in the soil that produces so many identical twins." Experts at CCMB claim that two pairs of identical twins in the same family is "an extremely rare occurrance".

The most celebrated twins in the village are the oldest surviving ones, Guddu and Munnu. Guddu said that even his wife occasionally gets confused between the two - one of a great number of stories of confusion involving the twins throughout the village.

"Once my brother had a quarrel with someone in the neighbourhood," Gudu recalled. "When I saw him being taken away by the police, I followed, trying to find out what had happened.

"As I approached a policeman, he angrily asked me to accompany him to the station. I told them I wasn't the person they'd first held - I was wearing a white suit, my brother was dressed differently. "But they wouldn't listen. I was only let out when the confusion cleared, a few hours later."

The young twins of Umri attract a lot of attention at a nearby madrasa, or Islamic school. A very Indian custom of dressing up identical twins in the same clothes has only made matters worse for the teachers, who find it hard at the best of times to differentiate between the children. The scope for confusion, and the odd mischief, is endless. Meanwhile scientists in hi-tech labs thousands of miles away from the dust bowl of Umri will continue to peer down their microscopes and try to match DNA strains, seeking an answer to one of the more baffling genetic puzzles of our times.

Jarawas Living On Borrowed Time

2008-05-08T21:53:00.004+05:30

Exactly six years after the Supreme Court of India ordered its closure, the government of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in direct defiance of the order of the highest court of the land, continues to keep the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) open.

The controversial 340-km-long road goes right through the habitat of the Jarawas, one of the oldest hunter-gatherer communities in the world. Only two hundred and fifty odd Jarawas survive today. And the closure of the road is considered to be critical to the survival of the Jarawas.

London-based Survival International, an international organisation which fights for tribal rights, has declared the Jarawas among the “three most endangered tribes” in the world. Over the past several years, Survival International, along with several other organisations based in Andamans, have repeatedly called upon the authorities in Andaman and Nicobar islands to close the ATR, as per the Supreme Court orders of 2002.

The Jarawas live on Middle Andaman Island, in territory they have inhabited for thousands of years. In 1957, the government of India created a reserve of 700 square kilometres, surrounded by police posts and manned by a 400-strong force. Ostensibly the idea was to protect the Jarawas from outside incursions, but in reality the reserve was built to contain the Jarawas within that area.

And, almost overnight, the erstwhile lord and masters of the Andaman Sea found themselves confined to a limited piece of real estate. A piece of real estate, through which in 1969, the government of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in its infinite wisdom, decided to construct a major inter-island road.

From 1970 to 1989, when the Andaman Trunk Road was being constructed, the Jarawas on several occasions attacked the construction workers, thereby expressing their objection to the construction of the road in no uncertain manner. Anthropologists and environmental groups working in the Andaman islands had for long warned against the wisdom of constructing a road that goes right through the middle of the Jarawa reserve.

The authorities persisted with the construction of the road that links Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in south Andamans, with Diglipur in north Andamans. In the 1970s, when I was a schoolboy, it used to take more than a day and a half on a steam ship to travel from Port Blair to Diglipur. Now the same journey can be made by road in less than twelve hours, thanks to the ATR..

But the construction of the ATR brought in its wake not just settlers, but poachers who eyed the rich tree cover of the Jarawa reserve. As incidents of poaching increased, and tension among the Jarawas and the settlers who lived around the ATR mounted, environmentalists and anthropologists were convinced that Jarawas would in the not-so-distant future become extinct if the ATR was not closed down.

Acting on a petition filed by local environmental groups, prominently among them SANE (Save Andaman and Nicobar Ecology) and backed by Survival International, the Supreme Court in May 2002 had ordered the closure of the Andaman Trunk Road. An order that lies unimplemented even after six years of its passing.

As we drive down the gleaming tarmaced road starting from Port Blair, a top environmentalist who has battled the Andaman administration for several years, tells me : “Each day this road remains open, it brings the Jarawas closer to extinction.”

About 15 kilometres down the road, bang on the middle, sits a huge, abandoned road roller – perhaps the most poignant symbol of the insensitivity with which the authorities in Andamans have tried to steamroll the opposition to the construction of this road.

As we move into Baratang in Middle Andamans, the heart of the Jarawa reserve, one can see makeshift straw shelters on roadsides which act as police pickets. Policemen can be seen lounging idly, their backs against the straw shelters, puffing away at cigarettes. Cigarettes that, my environmentalist friend tells me, find their way to the Jarawas.

In order to ensure the road remains closed, the Andaman government had set up police pickets at different intervals along the Andaman Trunk Road. Apart from the human and vehicular traffic on the road, today the single biggest threat to the survival of the Jarawas is posed by the policemen manning these pickets.

Though authorities in Port Blair claim otherwise, the policemen appear hardly sensitized to handle the delicate issue that they have been asked to oversee. Not only there have been reports of growing addiction to tobacco among the Jarawas, as a direct result of easy access to cigarettes through the police personnel on duty, there has been the odd case of policemen trying to sexually exploit the Jarawa women.

The contact of outsiders travelling on this road exposes the Jarawas to all kind of medical diseases that these people may be carrying with them. There have been several earlier instances of large numbers of tribals dying following contact with members of the outside world.

Worse, outside contact is exposing the Jarawas to a lifestyle that they can ill afford to adopt. My friend showed me a photo of a Jarawa woman being given a packet of biscuits by a passenger in a bus.

On my second morning in Baratang, at about ten in the morning, I spot a bus carrying settlers entering Baratang. You can see on the roof of the bus, a group of Jarawas who have decided to hitch a ride into town. They purposefully make their way into shops, often buying stuff in exchange of honey they have collected from the forest.

Among them is a boy no more than 15 or 16, wearing a worn out Calvin Kline tee shirt. My environmentalist friend points out to the sight and comments ruefully : “Calvin Kline meets Stone Age, huh?”

I speak to some of the shopkeepers who deal with Jarawas on a daily basis. They are the settlers who have built houses along the ATR, set up shops there. They are unanimous in their contempt for the Jarawas. "These people are uncivilized. For them this road is not important. For us it is a lifeline," says one.

A number of them have been settled there by the Andaman administration, others have moved on their own. Now they add up to a sizeable vote bank that no political party in Andamans is willing to antagonize.

Manoranjan Bhakta, solitary representative of the Andaman islands in the Indian Parliament, calls for a holistic approach to the whole issue. He says the Andaman government remains committed to protect the interests of the Jarawas. But Bhakta says the Andaman administration cannot overlook the interests of people it has brought from different parts of mainland India and settled them around Andaman Trunk Road.

Politicians have their own compulsions. They need votes. And in electoral terms, the two hundred and fifty odd Jarawas don’t matter at all, in comparison to the 12,000-strong settler votes. Any politician worth his salt would tell you, that is a bit of a no-contest.

Problem is, if only the Jarawa could articulate an important piece of anthropological arithmetic, he would tell you that three decades of settlers’ existence in Andamans weighed against a civilization as old as perhaps mankind itself, is also a bit of a no-contest.

Western Media Majors Eye India

2008-05-07T18:41:00.002+05:30

As newspaper readership stagnates in the US and Europe, India's newspapers are enjoying the kind of golden age the US saw at the end of the 19th century. These prospects are luring in international groups to India. Rupert Murdoch announced plans to launch The Wall Street Journal in India within a month of agreeing to acquire the paper.

That is unlikely to be his last venture in the subcontinent. There have been rumours all year that News Corporation is gearing up to launch a version of The Sun. Three other dailies, Mint, DNA and Mumbai Mirror, have all hit the news-stands in the past two years.

Timmy Kandhari, head of the entertainment and media practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mumbai, says: "There's going to be 12 to 15 per cent annual growth in the market going forward, and I think our prediction is conservative."

His study earlier this year predicted that the print industry would almost double in size between 2006 and 2011, from $3.3bn (1.7bn) in 2006 to $6bn in 2011.

The Economist aims to triple its Indian readership from 18,000 to 50,000 by the end of 2009, investing $20m in a concerted marketing push starting next month.

Mr Kandhari says PwC has fielded several enquiries from magazine groups looking to acquire Indian titles. The attractions are obvious. "The demographics in terms of the potential are just off the scale," says an executive connected with the Mail Today launch. "There are lots of people who are going to be entering working age over the next decade and they're increasingly interested in news. Plus, there's a big retail boom and retailers want to advertise their products."

In the past six months alone, advertising rates in India have risen by 30 to 40 per cent.

But the only international newspaper to actually to publish in India is the International Herald Tribune, which began printing in collaboration with Hyderabad's Deccan Chronicle in 2004. Pearson made its first strategic acquisition in the market in the same year, when it bought a stake in Business Standard, a business paper. Independent News & Media took a different tack a year later, opting to invest in the faster-growing Indian-language media. It now has a 20.8 per cent stake in Jagran Prakashan, which publishes Dainik Jagran, India's leading Hindi-language newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal was heavily involved in the launch of Mint, a business paper promoted by India's Hindustan Times Group, although it has taken no equity in the project.

Raju Narisetti, Mint's editor, points out: "Last year, all of India's papers added 12 million new readers. That is equivalent to five Wall Street Journals. There are 360 million Indians who can read and write and don't read a paper. In a country where the government is making no initiatives to talk about population control, I see very healthy growth."

But, as is often the case in India, promising demographics do not mean guaranteed profits. For a start, there are still onerous regulatory barriers limiting international involvement in the Indian press. Magazines can be 100 per cent foreign owned, but foreign investment in news publications is limited to 26 per cent.

In 2004, Independent News & Media proposed to launch an edition of The Independent in India, in collaboration with Jagran Prakashan. However, Indian editions of international newspapers, with the exception of the International Herald Tribune, have not so far been permitted. In the days before its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal signed a joint venture with The Times of India's publishers, Bennett, Coleman & Co. But its Indian edition never launched.

The Economist gets around the restrictions by bringing in copies printed in Hong Kong and Singapore a practice that only makes sense for a magazine that retails at Rs200 (2.50), roughly 10 times the price of India's current affairs magazines.

Mint's Mr Narisetti says: "For Indian newspapers, the laws on direct foreign investment are really archaic, and it's unfortunate, because the industry in India take Bajaj scooters, Maruti cars, you name it they've all benefited from foreign competition."

India's newspaper industry is also fairly lively already. The Times of India has the highest circulation of any English-language newspaper in the world, but it doesn't even make the top five of 200 newspapers in its home market.

Ravi Dharimal, chief executive of Bennett, Coleman & Co, is sceptical about the prospects for international newspaper groups in the country. "I would be very surprised if they have a big role in the Indian media," he says. "I don't see how they can bring too much innovation. I see newspapers as primarily a local business."

A new entrant in the market is Mail Today, a collaboration between India's India Today group and Daily Mail, one of the most popular tabloids in England. Many in India's media establishment write off Mail Today as too lightweight. Paresh Nath, a magazine publisher and deputy president of the Indian Newspaper Society, says: "Things like this do not last very long, because the advertiser doesn't take kindly to a publication which is flipped through and thrown away. The advertiser wants a story to be serious so that the reader is stuck to it."

But this view may simply reflect the innate conservatism that could give international groups an edge. Mail Today believes it is doing something new. "There isn't a paper out there that caters to the middle-class woman," says the executive who helped with the paper's launch. "Look back to the 1970s that was the path that the [Daily] Mail took and it was very successful with it."

PwC's Mr Kandhari argues that Bennett, Coleman & Co's launch of the Mumbai Mirror shows that they see a threat from tabloids. "With the Mumbai Mirror, The Times of India has been trying to protect its flank," he says.

At the other end of the market, Mint has succeeded by offering readers a clearer, more balanced and certainly more accurate take on Indian business. Launching in February last year, it has now reached a circulation of some 120,000, making it the second most-read business paper in Mumbai and Delhi. But the paper's editor, Mr Narisetti, admits it could be three years before it breaks even. "Advertising has been slow there's no two ways about it," he says. "When you're a new paper it takes a while to convince advertisers. A new newspaper in India won't make money for two to three years, and that's the same with us as well."

He believes some of the newspapers and magazines launching today will not survive. "What we've seen in 2007 and maybe [will in] 2008 is probably the peak of this boom. I think in 2008-09 you'll see a fair amount of consolidation. People forget that in this business you burn money very quickly."

But even if the market falls short of PwC's bullish predictions and the latest figures from the Indian Readership Survey suggest a slowdown its prospects will still outshine other markets enough to hold the interest of the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

Good One, This! (From Anand Bazar Patrika)

2008-05-03T23:44:00.005+05:30

Umm... did you know the Bangla word for "cheerleader"?

'Tis Ullasnetri...

Double The Punch Of T20

2008-04-29T23:06:00.002+05:30

"Twenty20 with twice the balls."

The tagline of the new hard-hitting campaign to promote Pro40 matches, the 40-overs-a-side competition which is part of the English county cricket.

Akbar, Tansen, Shashi Kapoor and Me ...

2008-04-28T23:57:00.005+05:30

Dad has this theory. For Tansen to perform the way he did, he needed the patronage of Akbar. As one of the nine jewels in Emperor Akbar's court, Tansen didn't have to worry about earning money and he happily immersed himself in music. In my years of mispent youth (and even during years well past my youth) as I chased my share of improbable dreams, Dad left me in no doubt that I could do so only because he played the benevolent Akbar.

Over the years, though I benefited considerably from Dad's somewhat patronising patronage, it is not the Akbar-Tansen model that has enthused, even inspired, me as much as the Shashi Kapoor school of creativity.

The man with that famous bucktoothed smile made pots of money by acting in the crassest of Bollywood films, and then spent that money in financing and producing cinematic gems like Junoon, 36 Chauranghee Lane and Kalyug.

In an interview to an English daily in London sometime ago, the suavest member of Bollywood's first family said it had not been easy to juggle his priorities between mainstream Bollywood films in which he acted and the films that he produced. And then there was his first love, theatre. Kapoor has admitted more than once while films earned him wealth and success, it was theatre which taught him his craft.

Not that I didn't enjoy Shashi Kapoor's acting in mainstream Hindi movies. I loved him in Kabhi Kabhie. I thought he was very nice in Kala Pathhar, where his offer to the baddies to try daalmooth with Limca still stands out in my memory. He was eminently watchable in Deewar, where he had that unforgettable "Mere paas Maa hai" dialogue.

The man had more than Maa going for him. He had the redoubtable Jennifer Kendall as his wife and oodles of common sense and creative energy with which he not only re-started Prithvi Theatre, but also made some of the finest movies one ever saw.

As a freelance journalist, I have tried -- with varying degrees of success and on a very small scale -- to do the same with my own life. I have done projects which would make me money in the hope that the same money would allow me to do projects that are close to my heart. There have been occasions when such endeavours have met with considerable success and I can also remember moments when my plans came unstuck rather spectacularly.

More than once I have lain sleepless on my bed, wondering where the next pay cheque is going to come from. But there have been moments -- more than one, too -- when I have been deliriously happy and not a little proud of the work I have been able to produce. At the end of the day, and I so hope the end is still some distance away, I would be happy with that on my epitaph.

Right now as I mull over my latest project, I am glad "Mere paas Shashi Kapoor hai" for inspiration.

Tashan, My Ass!

2008-04-26T00:10:00.003+05:30

Now I am no anarchist. I have always been quick to condemn random acts of violence, irrespective of who it has been directed at or what purpose it set out to achieve. Yet yesterday when I learnt that a group of irate film-goers in a Mumbai cinema hall tore apart seats and vandalised the place, I actually felt mighty pleased.

Apparently a group of people who had gone to watch Tashan, this year's most awaited Bollywood release, got so upset by the fare that was dished that they vandalised the cinema hall.

If you are not familiar with the word Tashan, it means in coloquial Hindi, lot of style combined with lot of attitude. Don't blame me then when I went inside the cinema hall, after procuring tickets at a premium price, I was expecting great things from the film. After all, it was tomtomed as the year's biggest movie by the redoubtable Yash Raj productions. What I ended up watching was a terrible, terrible film.

For a while now, the fizz has been missing from the Yash Chopra stable of movies. Last year could have been disastrous, had Chak De not saved their blushes. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom was an astonishingly bad film and to no one's surprise bombed spectacularly, Tara Rum Pum disappointed deeply and Aja Nachle, otherwise not such a bad film, was marketed so poorly that it had a lukewarm response at the box office.

This year Tashan had been billed as the big movie of the summer. It had everything going for it -- a new look Saif Ali Khan, gorgeous Kareena Kappor in a two-piece bikini and that man with the midas touch at the box office, Akshay Kumar. In the end, all of them plus Anil Kapoor failed to save what was essentially, for the lack of a better word, a remarkably stupid film.

The really sad part of the whole thing is that as a teen when I first got hooked to movies, it was Yash Chopra's movies that showed me what Tashan was all about. For me, and I am sure for thousands of others, too, Tashan was when Amitabh Bachchan, with a beedi between his lips and his eyes all brooding, locks the godown door in Deewar, throws the keys to Peter, and says : "Ye chabi tere hi jeb se nikalunga, Peter." Now, that was Tashan, that gave you goose pimples.

Again, Tashan was when Shatrughan Sinha asks a group of baddies in Kala Paththar, "Dhanna, is ladki ko to mai bacha loonga, par is bhari jungle mein, tum sab ko mujhse kaun bachayega?" Now, Kala Paththar was all about Tashan. Even that Shashi Kapoor one-liner, "Tumne kabhi soda ke saath dalmuth khaya hai kya?", was sooo classy, I mean tashni.

And then there is this Tashan.

For me the defining, even defiling, moment of the film was when the three protagonists Akshay, Saif and Kareena are travelling in the back of a truck. Kareena takes a pair of scissors and begins to slice off her pair of jeans at her thighs, until she turns it into a rather short denim shorts. As the cameraman focuses on Kareena's bare thighs, an apparently naive, and needless to say, terribly shocked Akshay says : "Ye kya kar rahe ho? (what are you doing?)" Kareena giggles dumbly and says, "Kuchh nahi, bas Tashan (nothing, just Tashan)"

I thought from that point on the film was irredeemable. If Aditya Chopra thinks he can lure thousands into cinema halls by promising them a tantalising glimpse of Kareena Kapoor's upper thighs then I think it is time he considers alternative career options. For God's sake, these are not Ram Teri Ganga Maili days of Raj Kapoor. Porn is available at the click of a mouse all over the internet. Surely a little bit of flesh display isn't going to pull in the crowds.

Me and the entire hall groaned, not entirely inaudibly either. Oh Bebo, sweertheart, honeybunch, I wanted to cry out aloud, that ain't Tashan. I mean if you really think that's Tashan, I guess then, in Anil Kapoorese, I would have to say, "Tashan, mera gadha", which crudely translates into Tashan, my ass.

A Nice Line, An Interesting Thought!

2008-04-24T23:42:00.004+05:30

It isn't time that is passing by, it is you and me ...

Light, Camera, Action...

2008-04-23T09:12:00.005+05:30

Cricket's billion dollar baby is a week old. And defying predictions of an early demise by the purists (more a wishful thinking than based on any realistic assessment of the ground realities), it is chugging along at a fair, if not frenetic, pace.

In Hyderabad, the response might have been a tad tepid, and on the first day in Mohali there were a few empty seats. But elsewhere -- at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, in Mumbai and Bangalore, Jaipur and Chennai -- the stands have been packed.

As fours and sixes have rained, leggy blonde cheerleaders, from countries which have had little or no truck with cricket, have balle-balle'ed to Daler Mahendi in Chandigarh and to Shivamani in Chennai, the crowds have enjoyed the action both on and off the ground.

These are early days yet. But after one week and nine matches, few of them riveting, others one-sided, the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League appears to be a phenomenal success.

It is the subject of lunchtime conversations in office and come eight in the evening, at least for past one week, pubs with giant size TV screens have been seriously populated with cricket lovers.

A large part of the success is because of the stupendous viewership ratings the live coverage of the IPL matches have garnered. In modern day sports, television is king, and IPL is no exception. As viewership ratings have soared and corporate houses queued up to get their ads aired, the smile on IPL czar Lalit Modi's face has been almost beatific. It remains to be seen though if spectator interest and viewership ratings last through the length of 59 matches.

The League could not have asked for a more explosive or more entertaining start than the first match between Kolkata Knight Riders and the Bangalore Tigers. Kiwi wicket keeper Brandon McCullam, opening the innings for the Knight Readers played an innings of astonishing savagery, scoring 154 runs off just 85 deliveries. Even by T20 standards, it was an awesome display.

To no one's surprise, and to the spectators' delight, the bat held sway over the ball in most matches. McCullam's hundred was followed by an equally hardhitting knock by Aussie southpaw Michael Hussey. Already a name to reckon with in Tests and one-dayers, Hussey showed good cricketing skills are as essential for success in the game's shortest version too.

And despite the run glut, bowlers did enough to suggest during the first week of the tournament that they were not there merely as cannon fodder for batsmen. Glen McGrath still made the ball jump just short of good length on that off stump corridor and his erstwhile compatriot Shane Warne managed to get wicked turn from the pitch.

There are still 50 more matches to be played before the inaugural edition of the IPL draws to a close. One thing is pretty much certain -- by the time the last ball is bowled and the final run is scored, the grammar of cricket, as we have known it over the years, is likely to be significantly re-written.

Shots that would find place in no coaching manual would have become passe. Already the scoop over the shoulder, played fine and over the keeper, is being perfected to an art form by enterprising batsmen the world over. Frugal bowlers are proving to worth their weight in gold as economy rates have become as important as wickets.

As for me, I have told the wifey, till June 1, no dinner engagements please with anyone who is not into cricket. Every evening I join my parents in front of the television set and watch the match till the last ball.

I decided fairly early on I was a Kolkata Knight Riders fan, my Dad's not so sure -- he can't make up his mind between Delhi Daredevils or Kolkata Knight Riders.

My Ma has no such loyalty issues. Her loyalties remain unwaveringly with Sourav -- she would happily support Belize, if Dada were to captain that country's national side.

Truer Words Were Never Said...

2008-04-19T22:31:00.002+05:30

If this be your destiny to be this a laborer called a writer, you know you got to go to work everyday. But you also know that you are not going to get it everyday.

- Leonard Cohen

A Toast For Free Tibet

2008-04-17T23:48:00.009+05:30

Tibetan monks taking part in anti-Chinese rally

I marched for the Tibetan cause today...

Let me explain. I was on duty, but I walked the length of the march and walked next to the marchers.

‘Tis true that I walked about five kilometres in the baking Delhi sun, covering the Tibetan march against the official Chinese Olympic torch relay. But I did it for my love for the greenbucks. I was part of a Canadian news team which is in India to cover the Olympic torch relay story. I was paid to do it, just as Amir Khan was paid by Coke and Saif by Lenovo to run with the official Olympic torch.

Having said that, I was quite happy to do it. Happy to be part of the Tibetan rally, that is. Between the Chinese and Tibetans, it is not too difficult (at least for me and a very large number of people) to choose sides.

Can’t say if Amir or Saif were as happy to run with the Olympic torch. On the other hand, they -- the two Khans, that is -- do earn heaps of money from Coke and Lenovo. So, who knows, may be the Khans were quite happy, the heat (political and otherwise) notwithstanding, to take part in the torch relay.

It has been fun watching the Indian government’s reaction to, and handling of, the torch relay issue. Every time the official spokesman has opened his mouth on the subject, you got the impression that he knew he was between a rock and a hard place.

The Indian government knows any overt support for the Tibetans would piss off the only country India is seriously scared of. Besides there is always the fear of the Chinese beating India with the Kashmir stick, in retaliation.

On the other hand, the authorities here are painfully aware how idiotic their attempt to appear politically correct (the Tibet issue is an internal matter of the Chinese) looks in the eyes of the Tibetan people in particular, and the international community, in general.

The last couple of days, the Indian foreign ministry has tried its best to pass off the issue as a sports event. It washed its hands off (at least, officially) the torch relay and instead asked the Indian Olympic Association to organize the whole event.

Even as the Indian authorities walked a diplomatic tightrope and made extravagant security arrangements to ensure there were no untoward incidents during the Olympic torch relay, the Tibetan anti-torch rally was a smashing success. It got serious international media coverage, it’s the only torch relay that the people of Delhi got to see. The official one was open to a very select group of invitees.

India’s Tibet policy was framed during the time of Pundit Nehru and the days of Non Alignment. Nehru has been dead for a while, and so has the Non-Alignment movement. And even before he died, India’s first prime minister did witness China’s less than lukewarm response to his offers of friendship. Much before the Chinese attacked India in 1962, Nehru had been described by the Chinese as “a running dog of British imperialism.”

May be, it is time we allowed the older foreign policy towards China (and Tibet) to die a natural death and take a fresh look at the whole issue.

Chairman Mao once said power flows from the barrel of a gun. Well, so does diplomacy. There is little point in conducting it from a point of weakness. China has seldom bothered about India's stand on several issues, including Tibet and done pretty much as it pleases, as befits its stature as the region's number one bully.

At periodic intervals, it has made claims on territory that legitimately belongs to India. It gave up claims on Sikkim one day only to lay claims on large parts of Arunachal Pradesh. Even today China continues to hold on to large chunks of Indian territory it occupied in 1962.

Irrespective of India's stand on Tibet (or the lack of it), China would rake up the Kashmir issue as and when it feels the need to do so. In recent years as the US has shown some reluctance to supply arms to Pakistan, China has been quick to step in and offer offer vast military aid to Pakistan.

Under the circumstances, one can't help but feel Indian government's spineless response on Tibet is going to be as successful in placating the Chinese as the Hindi Chini bhai bhai slogan was in preventing the 1962 war.

Tibetans are by and large a bunch of rather friendly people (even if they were not, they still have a right to be free). My earliest, and rather limited, interaction with them was in my Delhi University days when I would often land up at the Tibetan settlement near the University campus with my friends to have chhang or rice beer. The beer packed a nice kick and crucially was dirt cheap.

As we sipped the chhang and ate our momos in a restaurant strangely named as Monastery, we would often get into discussions about life in Tibet, about the Chinese occupation (yes, Mr. Karat it IS occupation) of Tibet. We got to hear horror stories of illegal detentions, suppression of the most basic human rights. On occasions we met a few Tibetans who had fled Chinese rule and escaped to India. Each one had a different story to tell, yet each story was achingly, painfully similar.

Our generation is lucky enough to live in a free land. Perhaps we don't fully appreciate the value of this freedom. I often saw that value in the eyes of Tibetan men and women I chatted with.

Living in a shabby ghetto thousands of miles away from their homeland, you could see in their eyes both despair and hope. I don't know about my other friends, but I remember as I sat there I felt more than a little guilty about living a life of freedom.

Facebook, the social networking site that I believe is now a rage among Martians too, is hosting several online campaigns and protests against Chinese rule of Tibet. On the day the Beijing Olympics begin, Facebook is trying to get at least one hundred million people to light candles in support of the Tibetans.

I haven't yet made up my mind what I should do. May be, I will drive up to that area near the Delhi University campus where Tibetans live, get high on chhang and abuse the Chinese to my heart's content.

An Ode To Friends

2008-04-11T13:49:00.002+05:30

In 1998-99, several of my good friends, most of them in academics and a few into software, suddenly upped and left for American shores. Life wasn't easy alone in Delhi, bereft of the support structure one had got used to. Internet became the preferred medium of communications and some interesting letters were exchanged during that period, most of which, sadly, I no longer have.

Among the few that I do, is a mail I got from my good friend Sangeeta Mediratta. Medirats, now Dr. (ahem) Mediratta, loves to listen to music, reads anything from classics to comics, and when not riled can dazzle you with her grin. Last heard she was masquerading as a professor of English Literature in one of those Ivy League institutions. The following is a mail she sent to me sometime in 2001... I think one of her friends had forwarded it to her and she forwarded it to me.

Enjoy it...

Main Aur mere roommates
Aksar Yeh Baatain Karte Hain
Ghar saaf hota to kaisa hota
Main kitchen saaf karta,tum bathrooom dhote
Main hall saaf karta, tum balcony dekhte
Log is baat pe hairaan hote
Aur us baat pe haste
Main aur mere roommates
Aksar Yeh Baatain Karte Hain
Yeh hara bhara sink hai
Ya bartanon ki jang chidi hui hai
Yeh colour full kitchen hai
Ya masalon se holi kheli hai
Hai farsh ki nayi design
Ya doodh,beer se dhuli hui hain
Yeh cellphone hai ya dhakkan
Sleeping bag ya kisika aanchal,
Ye airfreshner ka naya flavour hai,
Ya trash bag se aati badboo
Yeh pattiyon ki hai sarsarahut
Ke heater phirse kharab hua hai
Yeh sonchta hain roommate kab se gum sum
Ke jab ke usko bhi yeh khabar hai
Ke machar nahi hai, kaheen nahi hai
Magar uska dil hai ke kah raha hai
Machar yaheen hai, yaheen kaheen hai
Peth ki ye haalat, meri bhi hai, uski bhi,
Dil mein ek tasvir idhar bhi hai, udhar bhi
Karne ko bohot kuch hai magar kab kare hum
Kab tak yoon hi is tarah rahe hum
Dil kahta hai HomeDepot se koi vaccum cleaner la de
Ye carpet jo jine ko zoonz raha hai, fikwa
Hum saaf rahe sakte hai, logon ko bata dain,
Haan hum roommates hai - roommates hai - roommates hai
Ab dil main yehi baat, idhar bhi hai udhar bhi......

Trout Curry, Vodka And A Dash Of Lime

2008-04-08T23:33:00.003+05:30

No Einstein, me. But right now I feel I am in the same league, having discovered an equation which is of no less importance to mankind than the one the old man had figured out.

Mine is considerably simpler than Einstein's E is equal to MC square. It reads :
Heaven = Trout curry, vodka, lime and a slice of green chillies.

And if you figure out the right location, as I have (thanks to a friend, with whom I guess I will have to share the Nobel. The Swedish Academy has decided on the prize, they are just quibbling about the category, I'm told), then this could well be a lifechanging experience for one.

Let me elaborate...

To begin at the beginning, on Thursday a friend of mine called up from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, inviting me to spend a few days in the hills. I have itchy feet anyways. Besides his logic was impeccable -- this time of the year the weather is so good in the hills, it is silly to waste it on Delhi.

So, yesterday I took the morning flight to Kullu. My friend, Sudripto, a senior official with the Himachal Pradesh government picked me up from the small picturesque Bhuntar airport. I thought we were going to Mandi, but Sudripto had other plans. We crossed the bridge over the Beas river and went into Parvati valley. "Let me take you to a place called Kasol," he said, as he drove on.

We had been driving for an hour on this mountain road, with dense forest on either side of the road. Across the forest there was a mountain river. We couldn't see it, but by God, we could hear it alright. Increasingly it was difficult for us to hear each other above the noise of the river. And, then suddenly, my friend braked, stopped the vehicle in the middle of nowhere. He got down from the vehicle and, without a word of explanation, waded inside the forest to our left. I had no choice but to follow him. I had no clue where we were going, but I knew we were getting closer to the river.

After about five minutes of walking, he said : "Now close your eyes, and hold my hand and walk." And then my eyes closed and holding his hand, we walked for ten, may be fifteen minutes. "Ok, stop," he said, "now open your eyes."

And I saw heaven on earth.

Where we were standing, to my left, about five hundred metres away was that mountain river, in full spate. To the right, was the forest through which we had driven and then walked. We were on this grassy valley. Ahead of me, in the distance was a mountain that looked like a giant Christmas tree, the green leaves and white snow was so evenly distributed. What held my attention was neither the mountain river, nor the Himalayan version of the Christmas tree.

My eyes were locked on a beautiful two-storeyed grey building, sitting in the middle of this picture postcard location. "It is a Swiss chalet," my friend whispered in my ears. "Th-this is heaven", I found myself muttering.

Over the years, I have travelled a lot, and been fortunate to see many wonderful places. But this was something else. The scenery, the serenity of the place, it took your breath away. The air was so fresh, so crisp you could feel it, even hear it softly hitting your cheeks. During my first few moments, I didn't utter a word, moved around quietly, tiptoeing on the soft grass under my feet. One felt like an intruder who had walked in through the gates of heaven. A jarring movement, any loud noise, you feared, would break the spell, and you will once again find yourself in a Rajouri Garden mall.

And then a tall dark man, with a hint of a stoop, came out of the doors of the chalet and walked towards us. He greeted my friend and smiled at me. The spell was broken. But thankfully I had not been transported to the aforementioned mall.

"This is Sanjoy... He owns this place," Sudripto said. Sanjoy smiled again, and made a gesture with his hand, and a minion materialized. Sudripto directed him to bring our bags from the jeep. It was about 11.30 in the morning, and i felt hungry enough to eat a horse.

Sudripto went to the chalet. Sanjoy guided me to the riverside. Up close the river looked rather wide, I sat on the cool grass on the banks of the river. Sanjoy leaned against a boulder, then reached in the crevice between that boulder and the next one, and came up with a bottle of Smirnoff, and two glasses. I sat there, making a mental note to search other boulders later. He dipped the glasses in the river, filled half of the glasses with crystalclear water and then poured a generous measure of vodka. Another minion, as if on cue, showed up with a plate of sliced lime and sliced green chillies, which were duely added to our vodka.

Sanjoy handed me a glass held up his own, using the sliced chilly as a stirrer, and then said, "Cheers, Rajan", his first words after we had reached Kasaul. As I looked around, there was not a human being in sight. "The nearest village is three kilometres up that road you drove down," explained Sanjoy, who said it was the "middle of nowhere" look of the place which first attracted him to build the chalet here.

Sudripto joined us a little later, a drink in hand. A simple but yummy lunch followed a little later on the river bank. Deliciously spiecey trout curry and piping hot rice. "We get the trout from the river here", said Sanjoy. But, of course.

Later in the day, after I had woken up from a lazy afternoon nap, as dusk was slowly descending upon Kasaul, Happy Singh visited us. The tall strapping Sardar was as loud as this place was quiet. He had a trout farm not too far away. He obviously knew his way around, and quickly poured himslf a peg that would have had the Patiala peg squirming in acute inferiority complex, and then made himself comfortable next to me. He smiled at me, then pointed to Sudripto, and said : "Sir's friend, my friend."

A little later, he expertly rolled a perfect joint and handed it to me. I lit it and blew a lazy smoke ring, then after two wholesome puffs offered it to Happy. He politely declined, "I don't smoke. I am a Sikh," he explained, a fact that evidently didn't prevent him from either procuring the stuff or rolling it with such expertise. A few, nay a lot, more drinks into the night, Happy Singh departed but promised a la Doug MacArthur that he would return.

That was yesterday.

This morning I woke up to the noise of children playing. I looked out of the window of my first floor room. Sanjoy and Sudripto, half a dozen young children, presumably from a nearby village, and three white men were playing an enthusiastic, if raucous, game of soccer. The time on my watch showed eight. Another picture postcard moment, I said to myself.

The white men were staying at the chalet. I met two of them at breakfast. One was an Italian writer who had booked an apartment for three months. He had come to finish his book here and was going to be in Kasaul till December end. Another was an English musician, who was most excited about the cookies he planned to bake later. This was his second trip to the chalet. He had come here in 2005 and fell in love with the place.

Breakfast was followed by a tour of the chalet. The two floors are divided in four two-room apartments. You can rent an apartment for a minimum of fifteen days. And though there is no official policy, Sanjoy did admit that writers, artists or musicians were preferred as boarders. The rooms are fitted with large screen TV and Bose audio system. There is internet connectivity but no telephones. Sanjoy said: "I never advertise this chalet. I get my customers through word of mouth publicity." Considering that he is booked till early 2009, I guess he isn't doing too badly.

In the basement, one half houses a bakery, where from bread to cookies to pastries, everything is baked to order. "I encourage the guests to bake," Sanjoy said. He added, there is no fixed menu card. Trout and jungle fowl, both found in plenty nearabouts, are the main attractions, fresh vegetables are purchased from the nearest village. And now and then, somone like Happy Singh would show up wth a wild boar, and there would be a bonfire and a feast.

It was the second half of the basement which caught my eye. It was loaded with books. English, fiction and non fiction, French, German, Spanish even Bengali books. What impressed me was the breadth of the collection --from travelogues to thrillers to biographies. There was enough to house a library and more. And then there were the DVDs. Hollywood classics, European cinema, Iranian films, and of course plenty from Bollywood and a surprising number of documentaries. "Everytime I go to Delhi or Calcutta, I pick up books and DVDs," said Sanjoy, who, Sudripto said, was an M Phil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in Calcutta.

I write this blog post on my laptop, sitting on the boulder which doubles up as Sanjoy's outdoor bar. It is past three in the afternoon. Riverwater smashes on the rocks and splashes on my feet, and the sun feels lovely on my back.

There is murder on my mind. Ever since I came here yesterday, a thought has crossed my mind more than once -- to bump off Sanjoy, take over this property and the rest of his life and never return to Delhi.

No Naxals in Wall Street

2008-04-04T06:30:00.005+05:30

"We are like those insects that come out only after rains. You will find us only where there is poverty, injustice. You want to get rid of us, get rid of poverty, get rid of injustice, get rid of hunger. And we will go away," explains Samar Mukherjee, formerly a school teacher and now a senior leader of Naxals, the militant Left movement that now has its footprint over a third of India.

We are sitting in a rather large tin shed (Mukherjee's temporary quarters) in one of the abandoned tea estates in north Bengal, in the eastern Himalayan foothills. My host tells me we are not very far from Naxalbari, the village from which the movement borrows its name.

It is April, and not surprisingly raining heavily. The rain drums down on the tin roof as Mukherjee uses a stick to draw an imaginary map on the ground. "See, from Nepal, to north Bengal to Jharkhand and parts of Bihar, down to Orissa, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh, Left groups are active in areas where the poorest live," he elaborates. Suddenly he looks up at me, his face creased in a grin, "You will not find us on Wall Street".

Later I meet Mukherjee's lieutenants, young men and women who form bulk of the cadre of Left groups like Naxals. Most are dressed in green fatigues and almost all of them are carrying guns. Save for their guns and fatigues, they would be indistinguishable from other young men and women from that part of the world.

Most of them had lived in extreme poverty, struggled to manage two square meals a day, some of them had been victims of social injustice. "We have never had any problem recruiting. When we march through a region, hundreds approach us, wanting to join our movement. For some it is a way out of the miserable life they lead. Others want to fight, take revenge against their oppressors," says Mukherjee.

Tea gradens, like the one we are in, have been fertile recruitment grounds for Naxals for years. The workers in these gardens survive on paltry wages, their families often denied basic education or proper health facilities.

Several of Mukherjee's comrades are tea garden workers or children of tea garden workers. Most of the gardens are in secluded areas and not the easiest places to reach, thus they make ideal hiding places.

"Darjeeling tea is world famous. Those who sit in their fancy homes and offices and sip Darjeeling tea are hardly aware of the inhuman conditions in which tea garden workers lead their lives. For hundred years their lives have remained the same," says an almost angry Mukheree, for a moment losing his schoolteacher composure.

He goes quiet after the little outburst. Fiddles with his glasses, lights a Wills Navycut (I thought the cigarette had gone out of production, I felt as happy seeing it as one does when meeting an old friend after a long time), then takes a sip of the rum we had been drinking the past two hours.

And then the poise and the schoolteacher voice are back as suddenly as they had disappeared. "You see, Mr. Chakravarty, this is not about ideology. A lot of these people don't know anything about Marx or Mao. For generations, people here have led a life without basic amenities, a life without without dignity. We try to tell them they have as much right to this nation's resources as the next man.You have a right to education, right to health, and most importantly a right to life with dignity."

I ask him why follow the path of violence. "You can't get dignity or equality through the ballot box," says Mukherjee. "There is a system, a very effective one at that, in place which ensures that the poorest sections of the society remain poor. You need to completely uproot this system, it is not enough to introduce mild internal changes."

"We use violence sparingly, only when it is entirely unavoidable," he goes on to add. "You only get to hear about our violent acts. Any popular movement can't survive on terror."

Even government agencies reluctantly acknowledge the rapid spread of the Naxal movement. Several meetings have identified the "Naxal problem" as the number one threat to India's internal security.

In the tea gardens of Bengal and the villages beyond, the Naxal movement has gathered momentum and found new supporters because of the work they do with the common people. In a number of villages, Naxal activists run health care centres and schools, as is the case in states like Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and Andhra Pradesh.

There is a conflict in perception. What the government agencies view, or at least publicly acknowledge, as a law and order problem is viewed by Mukherjee and his followers as a just battle against years of denial of basic rights and amenities. It is difficult, if not well-nigh impossible, to find fault with the latter view.

Over the years, I have travelled extensively through the so-called "Naxal belts. These are also areas which house India's poorest. People who go to sleep every night half fed. People who find themselves at the recieving end of inhuman treatment in the name of caste. People who live miles away from the nearest hospital or school, and a world away from you and me.

For years they have not had a voice. And now they have picked up a gun. The question we must ponder is what other choice do they have? What would I do, what would you have done in their position?

I don't know about you. For me the answer is easy.

Bhery Phunny!

2008-03-28T23:02:00.001+05:30

Jo and Woh were two very good friends. And then one day, Jo got scared. And Woh died.

Guess why?

Arey baba, simple...

Jo Dar Gaya Woh Mar Gaya

Rana, Rum and Rhythm

2008-03-23T23:00:00.012+05:30

Indian Ocean -- Asheem, Sushmit, Amit and Rahul

Boss, I have a great story, says the hack. Asks the editor, what is the provocation? News is all about timing.

Try doing a story about Obama's chances in 2006 and try doing it now. On the other hand, if it was Osama in 2001, it's Obama in 2008 (may be, therein -- in the name, that is -- lies the reason why methinks Hillary is going to eventually prevail. Americans are ready to forgive a Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and rest of the warts and all, rather than a name that rhymes alarmingly similar to the most hated name in the western world.)

Poor bloke, that Shakespeare, he got it all wrong, about the Rose by any other name being a Rose thingy. Names matter. Or so at least one of, if not both, the Clintons think (as per prevalent Patel Nagar wisdom). Besides, it's not fair to hold Obama responsible for Osama. To confuse Obama with Osama would be as unfair as confusing Hillary Clinton with Fellatio.

Heck, this is not about Clinton or Obama. Or even about fellatio. Far from it.

This is about stories and wrong timings. Or lets say about there being no timings for at least some stories. Some things are about instinct. And this one is about instinct, alright. You go with the flow, just as I am doing right now.

In my two decades in journalism, I have written about politics, done food reviews, film reviews and even the odd book review. But I have -- to my credit -- a single music review that I wrote sometime in 1991. Lack of opportunity combined splendidly with lack of knowledge of music to ensure my infinite wisdom on music remained limited to a solitary piece on what was then a young music group. I am referring to Indian Ocean.

An ode after a gap of almost two decades follows an hour on my newly acquired I-pod of listening to Indian Ocean's best works over the past decade and a half. The rum and coke were perfect accompaniments.

Not just perfect, even faithful. First time I ever went to Rana's house, and witnessed first hand the magic that the man weaves with his guitar, I distinctly remember the rum was there that night too. At some point of time we ran out of coke, but there was enough rum and music to make that evening rather special.

Rana is Sushmit. Sushmit Sen. A friend, a serious rum drinker and a guitarist extraordinaire. When we first met, he was already a famous rum drinker, and his reputation as a guitarist of considerable talent was only growing. Now his impressive CV has another highlight -- a friend of yours truly for almost close to two decades.

That first evening at his house in Mayur Vihar, he first fiddled with, then fine tuned his guitar as we settled down with rather generous measures of Old Monk. As he started playing a few compositions, conversation ceased, and for the next hour or so, all those lucky to be there were transported to a world of Melancholic Ecstasy. Melancholic Ecstasy is one of the earliest compositions of Indian Ocean, it remains among one of their finest.

During the period I have known Sushmit and his group, Indian Ocean has become a household name in India amidst the more discerning music lovers, and a name to reckon with in the western music world. Sadly though, rum-soaked nights have become increasingly rare, the addas unfortunately held hostage by Indian Ocean's hectic international schedule.

All through these years, and the success they have brought, Sushmit has not changed much.He remains as bashful as ever, still preferring his guitar (he is notoriously reluctant to lend his vocals to any of the songs) to do his talking for him. He still remains more lucid at 11 pm than he is at 11 am.

Impressive as he is, Sushmit is just one of the four excellent reasons why one likes, nay loves, Indian Ocean. The other three being (not necessarily in that order) Asheem Chakravarty, Rahul Ram and Amit Kilam .The beauty of Indian Ocean's music is, and has always been, that the sum of these parts is far greater than the impressive individual parts.

I don't quite remember what exactly I had written all those years ago in that piece I had penned for Delhi Mid Day on Indian Ocean. I do remember quite clearly though that i had stated it is difficult to define, or label, a music that seduces your ears, charms your senses and then goes on to stir your soul. To the lasting credit of Indian Ocean, they continue to do the same even today.

As I listen to Maa Reva, I can't help but think how, like good rum, the music of Indian Ocean makes you feel much better at the end of each composition than you did at the beginning.

How do you describe Indian Ocean's music? When I don my music reviwer's hat, I come up with profound expressions like "when genius meets sublime". But a description closer to my heart, and one that I suspect would meet the approval of Sushmit and his band members, would be "when rum meets rhythm".

Cinema Paradiso

2008-03-22T23:57:00.004+05:30

Why do you go to the movies? I do, because I have been in love with them, this whole movie-viewing, movie-anticipating (oh, the thrill of the Friday, first show!), movie-dissecting (imagine, Ramesh Sippy, the guy who made Sholaay also made Bhrashtachaar?) experience for as long as I can remember.

I have loved going to the movies since I first watched Manoj Kumar’s Shaheed on a crowded ground in Diglipur. For a few years after that, I thought Manoj Kumar was Bhagat Singh.

Later, I skipped school with friends to watch the oh-so-adult Lacemaker and Gypsy Camp Vanishes Into the Blue, dubbed famously – and screened in Delhi’s Regal theatre on morning shows– as Banjaron Ki Basti Neel Mein Kho Gayi.

First Satyakaam and then Anand and Mili convinced me cancer was serious business. I seriously fell in love with Jessica Lange after watching Tootsie. Movies had seamlessly become part of one’s life.

Some scenes are etched in your memory for ever. I have a feeling if I ever suffer from memory loss, I will wake up the next morning and still remember the train fight sequence in Sholaay.

Or that Amitabh one-liner in Gabbar’s lair : “Kisine hilne ki koshish ki to bhun ke rakh doonga.” All through adolescence and even college days, every time I mouthed that dialogue, it would seem to usher in bodily changes – I felt I had grown taller, adding several inches to my five-foot, three-inch frame.

If school years were all about Amitabh Bachchan and RD Burman and Kishore Kumar, then college was all about Woody Allen. In my second year in college, I was persuaded by my friends to go and watch a movie called Manhattan. When I walked inside the hall, I didn’t even know who Woody Allen was. I came out two hours later, a fan of his for life. Twenty years on I am still mesmerized by the man’s writing and film making skills.

Over the years, there have been many many great (and I dare say, several terrible, crappy ones!) films that one has seen. Too many to list here. Too many different reasons too why I liked the movies that I have. Some for their music (Teri Kasam), some for the action (remember James Coburn in that knife throwing sequence in The Magnificent Seven?), some for the photography (A Walk in the Clouds) and others simply because they were such great movies.

But I guess if I had to choose one reason, one solitary reason, why I like the movies so much, then it has to be the dialogue. Those lovely, lovely lines that my favourite screen personalities mouth, the one liners that “make your day.” My sentimental favourite are the opening and closing lines of Annie Hall, regarded by many as Woody Allen's finest movie .

Opening lines of ANNIE HALL :

Alvy Singer : [addressing the camera] There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.

Closing lines of ANNIE HALL :

Alvy Singer : [narrating] After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs.

The following is a collection of some of my favourites, and I bet yours too. Have fun…

Receptionist : How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall : I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.

- AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Isaac Davis : I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion.

- MANHATTAN

Hawkeye : No wonder they execute people at dawn. Who wants to live at six A.M.?

- M*A*S*H

John McClane : Hey, Carmine, let me ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first? The lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?
[under his breath]

- DIE HARD 2

Harry : Had my dream again where I'm making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I'd nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount.

- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

Gareth : I've got a new theory about marriage. Two people are in love, they live together, and then suddenly one day, they run out of conversation.
Charles : Uh-huh.
Gareth : Totally. I mean they can't think of a single thing to say to each other. That's it: panic! Then suddenly it-it occurs to the chap that there is a way out of the deadlock.
Charles : Which is?
Gareth : He'll ask her to marry him.
Charles : Brilliant! Brilliant!
Gareth : Suddenly they've got something to talk about for the rest of their lives.
Charles : Basically you're saying marriage is just a way of getting out of an embarrassing pause in conversation.
Gareth : The definitive icebreaker.

- FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

[after learning Mickey is infertile]
Hannah : Could you have ruined yourself somehow?
Mickey : How could I ruin myself?
Hannah : I don't know. Excessive masturbation?
Mickey : You gonna start knockin' my hobbies?

- HANNAH AND HER SISTERS

Alvy Singer : Hey, Harvard makes mistakes too! Kissinger taught there!

- ANNIE HALL

Melvin Udall : People who talk in metaphors oughta shampoo my crotch.

- AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Mary Wilke : Don't psychoanalyze me. I pay a doctor for that.
Isaac Davis : Hey, you call that guy that you talk to a doctor? I mean, you don't get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone?
Mary Wilke : All right, so he's unorthodox. He's a highly qualified doctor.
Isac Davis : He's done a great job on you, y'know. Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's.

- MANHATTAN

[Sgt. Zale, drunk, has broken his hand]
B.J. : Congratulations, Sergeant. You've just turned your right hand into a maraca. Once I set it, you can sit in with the relief band.
Zale : How come I don't feel no pain?
B.J. : It's swimming upstream against the bourbon.

- M*A*S*H

Melvin Udall : Never, never, interrupt me, okay? Not if there's a fire, not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home and one week later there's a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you're going to faint. Even then, don't come knocking. Or, if it's election night, and you're excited and you wanna celebrate because some fudgepacker that you date has been elected the first queer president of the United States and he's going to have you down to Camp David, and you want someone to share the moment with. Even then, don't knock. Not on this door. Not for ANY reason. Do you get me, sweetheart?
Simon Bishop: [clears his throat] Uhm, yes. It's not a... subtle point that you're making.
Melvin Udall : Okay then.
Shuts door in Simon's face

- AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Jess : Marriages don't break up on account of infidelity. It's just a symptom that something else is wrong.
Harry Burns : Oh really? Well, that "symptom" is fucking my wife.

- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

Hawkeye : Frank, you are 10 of the most boring people I know.

- M*A*S*H

Melvin Udall : Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.

- AS GOOD AS IT GETS

[Harry and Sally discussing orgasms]
Sally : Most women at one time or another have faked it.
Harry : Well, they haven't faked it with me.
Sally : How do you know?
Harry : Because I know.
Sally : Oh. Right. Thats right. I forgot. Youre a man.
Harry : What was that supposed to mean?
Sally : Nothing. Its just that all men are sure it never happened to them and all women at one time or other have done it so you do the math.

- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

Melvin Udall : What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good.

- AS GOOD AS IT GETS

The Monk Who Gave Up Murighonto

2008-03-21T23:59:00.003+05:30

You can give up booze. Or quit smoking. Forget the kosha mnagsho. You can live in serious self denial. You can turn vegetarian and author the cult classic among veggie foodies, called The Monk Who Gave Up Murighonto. You can do yoga and become Baba Rajon Dev. But still there is no saving you unless you can handle stress.

About this time, a couple of years ago, I had got official confirmation that my heart was under serious attack. I was told my heart functions were down to ten percent, two arteries were blocked, hundred per cent and that 15 per cent of my heart was damaged beyond redemption (I swear there have been moments in my life when I had thought the percentage was far higher than fifteen, but hell, I wasn't going to quibble with a little bit of good news coming my way!). And that I had survived to tell the tale was due to a rare combination of good fortune and solid medical skill.

Recent figures show a high number of Indian professionals suffering from heart diseases and other stress-related ailments compared to their western counterparts, who share the same work space. One tried to figure out why and this is what one found: From Monday morning onwards till about Friday evening, the Indian professional and his western colleague follow the same lifestyle. They work in the same office, deal with similar problems, more or less the same set of people, handle the same amount of stress. On Friday evening everything changes.

The western colleague's wife or girl friend shows up in office, they leave together for a long drive to may be Rishikesh. Pitch their tent on the bank of The Ganges. Have a can of cold beer (yes, you Bajrang Dal morons, you get beer in Rishikesh) and make wild love under a starlit sky. After two more days he shows up in office on Monday morning, refreshed and ready to tackle whatever life can think up to throw at him.

What about his Indian colleague? Let us now take a sneak peek into his awesome weekend. Friday evening as he parks his car outside his home, a cheery phone call from the wifey : "Sorry, forgot to tell you, the Kapoors are coming for dinner.” For the sake of general bonhomie and domestic peace, let the Indian colleague be known as Sandeep. Sandeep and Amit had once worked in the same organization and now kept in touch because their children go to the same school.

Sandeep quickly visualized the evening that lay ahead him. The teetotaller Amit will regale you with his inside take on the furious corporate battle in his office for the post of executive vice-president and how he has managed to stay one step ahead of the competition. Meanwhile, his wife will not-so-discretely show off her new diamond ring and you try not to squirm as your wife fixes you with an accusatory look. The deal is, as the evening wears on, if you can keep a straight face and look suitably impressed, you are allowed a fantasy. You are allowed to fantasize who should you kill first -- your guests, for doing this to you on a Friday evening, or your wife, who should have known better. That particular fantasy, I am told, is therapeutic.

Saturday mornings can be charming, if you don't mind fraternizing with electricians and plumbers. The almirah door that practically came off the hinges, the leaky faucet that floods your bathroom, the electric iron that could stand trial on attempt-to-elctrocute charges -- they have been patiently waiting for your personal intervention on this balmy Saturday morning.

The evenings can be oh-so-much-fun. Just after your child takes a break from watching cartoons and an hour before Ekta Kapoor enters your life, voila, the TV is all yours. If you are lucky, you can catch a few overs of a cricket match not featuring India (BIG stress issue that, watching India get thrashed, any cardiologist worth his salt would tell you).

Sundays, one is spoilt for choices. You could either drive down to the airport to pick up your aunt and go for a leisurely lunch with parents, wife, child and the newly arrived aunt. Or, may be, go over and say hello to your in-laws. Of course, the good nephew that you are, ideally you would take her for some shopping in the evening, which the rest of the family would so much enjoy too. After all, these spanking new shopping malls need to be patronised too. And since you are into movies, you can catch a movie at the nearby multiplex. Once again you are spoilt for choice. You could go for The Motorcycle Diaries or the arty but trendy Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. You wisely settle for Salaam-e-Ishq ("darun music" your mother says, "it has Salman Khan", wife beams, and then the clincher, "the little one will love it").

After that rocking weekend, as you meet up with your white colleague, brush a tuft of the Rishikesh grass off his shirt collar, you fight a murderous urge to throttle the next man who uttered the word "S T R E S S".

The lesson in all this ? SIMPLE. You can't combine a western week with an Indian weekend or vice versa.

The jury is still out on who is winning the battle between me and stress. But I am glad to observe others are faring decidedly better. There is a friend in Punjab who has hit upon this splendid vacation idea -- he is sending his wife and son on a forty-day paid holiday to the United States. He meanwhile will chill out at his modest 1000-acre farm, doing all those things that millionaire farmers do when their wife and child holiday abroad. Last I heard, the jolly Sikhs in the Doaba area of Punjab were readying themselves for The Mother of All Binges.

Now THAT is one way to take care of stress.

Marlboro Musings

2008-03-19T23:59:00.007+05:30

I haven’t yet written the novel that I think I have in my mind. But every time I have pictured myself writing that novel, I have, in my mind’s eye, seen a polished mahogany table and a wine coloured wooden chair. The table and the chair are placed against a big glass window, from where one has a spectacular view of the ocean.

On the uncharacteristically neatly arranged table, apart from the Toshiba laptop (the one gifted by Sanjay) there is a tall glass of dark rum, an wooden ashtray and a pack of Marlboro Lights. Both the glass of rum (and never a glass of vodka, which is my preferred poison) and the pack of cigarettes are no props. They are writing tools as much as the laptop is.

Which is a bit odd. Because, while I have always more than enjoyed my drinks, I haven’t ever been a serious smoker. I started out in school because I wanted to belong to the “gang” which smoked. It wasn’t until college someone pointed out that I was merely puffing and not inhaling. Even today the Marlboro Lights are only an accompaniment to the Smirnoff.

The Marloboro Musings come to you, thanks to a wonderful film I watched last night. Front Page, starring Jack Lemon and Walter Matheau. There were several engaging moments in the film, which one related to because it was about the business of news. But what really touched a button, and made these words flow, was an otherwise innocuous line from Jack Lemon. As he furiously hammers on the typewriter’s keys, frowning in concentration, he almost absent-mindedly says to Walther Matheau, without even looking at his direction: “Cigarette me.”

The crusty Matheau, otherwise never short of a word, just does what he is asked. He quietly lights a cigarette and places it between Jack Lemon’s grateful lips, even as Lemon types away without skipping a beat, and without so much as a thank you.

Cigarette me. That one line of just two words, that nonchalant demand for the cigarette, brought a thousand memories flooding back. If you have ever been a journalist and a smoker and been lucky enough to have worked in those happy days when newsrooms would have as much smoke as any popular pub during peak business hour, you would know what I am talking about.

Sleeves rolled up, trying to beat the deadline, as you penned your masterpiece, sometimes you would ask to be cigaretted, on other occasions just casually raise a hand, and someone surely would light a cigarette and place it either between your fingers or between your lips.

In return you don't say thanks. Partly because that word appears inadequate as an acknowledgement. You just keep an eye out when a fellow hack is trying to beat the deadline, his hands hammering away on those unfortunate keys. You do what Matheau does. Light up and put the cigarette between his fingers or his lips.

There were those who didn’t need a cigarette even at moments like these. Between 10.30 and 11.30 every morning, for one hour and sometimes a bit more, John Dayal, the finest journalist I have ever worked with, would sit in the news pit of Mid Day, in front of a computer, and type away furiously. Mostly he would re-write the main leads, and often – depending on the quality of English or the lack of it -- he would even end up translating.

During that one hour he wouldn’t take phone calls, and you had to be either very desperate or completely daft to interrupt him. Most of us were rookies, in our first jobs. With three years behind me, I was a veteran. When John was at his work station, we all sensed something special was happening. People would speak in hushed whispers, reporters on the phone with their contacts usually kept their voices low.

At the end of that hour John would straighten his hunched shoulders in an effort to get the blood flowing back again, reach out for a cup of tea that would be waiting for him, then get up from his seat and smile at all of us. The smile was a cue for resumption of normal business, and the big hall would suddenly come back to life.

Though I have had my moments, I am not half the journalist on a good day that John ever was on his worst. In Mid Day, Thursday mornings killed me. It was the day we brought out a three-paged Sports Extra. Theoretically, inside pages were locked the evening before. But because I was often the sole writer (and some nasty folks said the sole reader too) on those sports pages, I had the rare luxury to finish my writing and make the pages on Thursday morning.

So, on Thursday mornings I would usually be the first into the office, and quickly get on with the task at hand. As the minutes ticked by, I would pound the keys on my computer, sleeves rolled, eyes glued to the screen, mind away on distant tennis courts and cricket pitches. At that moment my entire being was focussed on writing.

The only thing, the single thing I wanted, my whole being cried out for, was a cigarette. But I wouldn’t dream of stopping my typing, of locating a cigarette, and lighting it. The entire process was too time consuming, too much of a distraction.

Yet, every Thursday morning, magically, even miraculously, a colleague or a friend would almost inevitably place that lit cigarette between my lips. I can’t for the life of me, remember ever asking for that cigarette. The timing would be uncanny, the understanding perfect, as Rahul, Deepankar, Arun, Gautam or Bobby would “cigarette” me.

Sometimes as you typed you could hear the sound of a match being lit. That sound was almost as intoxicating as the first drag. All you did was reach out your hand over your shoulder and someone would deftly place the lit cigarette in the gap between your two fingers.

I spent some of my happiest years -- my first few in journalism, being cigaretted and I guess had my share of cigaretting friends and colleagues. Today after I finish this blog, I might just light up one in the memory of those good old days.

The Condom Man

2008-03-17T23:24:00.004+05:30

When I ventured into blogspace the first time, one of the few promises I had made to myself was I will try to keep the blog as diverse as possible, and not repeat myself. That doesn't seem to be quite working right now, as I am back to talking about condoms.

The provocation this time is a news item in which the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) chief Sujatha Rao has said that India needed to find someone like the Thailand cabinet minister Mechai Viravaidya, famous for getting Thais to talk about sex, condoms and AIDS. Despite high incidence of AIDS, India suffers from chronic low usage of condoms.

"We are serious about finding India's very own Mr Condom," Rao was quoted as saying after visiting Thailand to study its dramatic increase in condom use over the past decade, which contributed to a sharp fall in new HIV infections.

"He has to feel passionately about the cause as Mechai does. He should have a dynamic personality to change both government policy and public perceptions about HIV/AIDS, sex and condoms," Rao said.

I thought of lending Ms Rao a helping hand in her noble venture of finding India's own Condom Man, and went through a shortlist that came to my mind.

I began with the nation's politicos. A lot of them are engaging conversationalists, can start discussions on any subject. And despite allegations to the contrary, a few of them do have the nation's best interests close to their hearts. So why not one of them?

Rahul Gandhi? He could encash on the family image to start discussions on the subject. Besides, after the drubbing in Uttar Pradesh, he does desperately need an issue to catch the public eye. The Condom Man could just be his ticket to greater fame. Though the jury is still out on whether he is engaging enough to start and keep a national discussion going, he could well be the right man for this job. Also if he says 'aye', momma is going to ensure the entire state machinery was used to make the campaign a success.

If you wanted a more earthy appeal, one could always go for the colourful Indian railway minister Laloo Yadav. There is hardly a more engaging conversationalist in the public domain than the former chief minister of Bhar. But you don't want to push a man who has fathered a dozen odd children as the nation's Condom Man. Apart from that solitary tick against him, I can't think of any other reason why the man can't do the job Ms Rao wants our Condom Man to do.

I thought of a lot of other names, before discarding them quickly for one reason or the other. Some were just too old, others you thought wouldn't look quite convincing while promoting condom usage on television or other public forums.

Once I moved away from politicians, the first two names that immediately came to my mind were, of course, Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan. Between the two of them, King Khan and Big B have endorsed most things available on God's earth, except for nuclear weapons and condoms. You can get either, even better, both of them to endorse different condom brands. They could talk about condoms on TV, preach the message of their usage in their films. Or Ms Rao can even get them to take turns to host a show on the lines of KBC. Instead of a quiz of general knowledge, this time the focus could be on condoms. We could have a KPC, Kaun Pahenega Condom (Who Will Wear A Condom) instead of a KBC.

So my first choice is bit of an either-or choice. It could be Bachchan Senior. And it very well could be Shahrukh. If not them, then....

... How about Rajnikant? Can you visualise him, exhorting viewers to have a little chitchat about condoms just before the start of every screening of Shivaji, his latest blockbuster? What if he were to announce that everyone purchasing a ticket for the movie would have to purchase a condom too? Can you imagine the spurt in condom sales? The campaign would be a stupendous success, given Rajni's phenomenal fan following in the south India.

If you are looking for a similar impact in the eastern part of the country, then the best bet would be Sourav Ganguly. The former Indian cricket captain could wax eloquent on how important it is for a batsman to have the right rubber on the bat handle. If Dada says he uses condoms, a large part of Kolkata, and Bengal, might suddenly become more condom-friendly.

But, nothing like Bollywood biggies to drive home the message though. Apart from Big B and King Khan, there is Karan Johar. Seriously, guys, what do you think about Karan Johar as a condom ambassador?

We could have a chat show like Kondom with Karan, a la Koffee with Karan. And Karan asking Bollywood studs Salman Khan or Sunjay Dutt probling questions like "So, when did you first use a condom?" Oh, the mouthwatering prospect of a whole nation glued to their TV sets waiting to hear the answer to that one. And the piece de resistance at the end of the programme -- a condom hamper for the participant. Not just condom sales, I can visualise the TRP ratings going through the roof.

And once condoms are spelt with a K on Karan Johar's show, I'm sure even Ekta Kapoor may be persuaded to support the Kondom campaign. She might start a new soap. And who knows one day, Mera Kondom, Sirf Mera Hai on Star Plus may compete with Mujhe Mere Kondoms Lauta Do on Zee Network. Oh it's such a pity Ms. Kapoor is a woman, she would have been a top contender for the job. But the job profile in this case demands the candidate to be only a male.

Abhishek Bachchan? Fellow's got newly married. A perfect candidate to talk about condom usage you would think. Honestly though he doesn't exactly grab you as a national condom icon, does he?

If you look away from Bollywood, how about our Kapil Paaji (brother)? The man who appeared on our TV screens allthose years ago and said with such style, Palmolive da jawab nahin. I can close my eyes and picture him saying just as easily : Kohinoor da jawab nahin. I mean why not? He's as macho as they come and has a terrific following in Jatland. For the Haryanvis the message would be loud and clear -- if a son of the soil like Kapil Paaji can use a condom, then why not them.

Looking beyond Bollywood and cricket, there's the adman Suhel Seth. Since you are looking for someone who can talk about condoms, get a discussion going on the subject, then who better than Suhel? Over the past few years, I can't remember a television discussion that didn't feature him. From Indo-US nuclear deal to rise in sex crimes in the national capital to gay marriages to price rise, the man can talk endlessly till the cows go home. Or he can talk till you decide to become a condom user. Only if it is to shut him up.

So, you see, a myriad of possibilities. An interesting list of people to choose from and I am sure Ms. Rao would be considering a clutch of other names, too.

May the best man win. Amen.

Straight From Her Heart ...

2008-03-11T08:01:00.008+05:30

I had been thinking of writing a meaningful blog on the occasion of The International Women's Day. Thought I would reflect on the women I have known, even write about someone whom I have found inspirational. And then I chanced upon this. Random thoughts that had escaped her mind (or was it her heart?) Once I read what she wrote, I felt a tad foolish about what I had been planning to write. She happens to be my better (by a long way) half...

At times you don't know what to write but you still feel an urge to say things. Nothing in particular, probably just to convince yourself there is still something happening in your life except the mundane daily chores of getting up in the morning, not quite relishing your cup of bed tea (as there is always a backlog of work bothering your mind so much that a cup of tea means a criminal act of wasting those precious five minutes!), then taking a (not so) luxurious two-and-a-half minute bubble bath.

Then the vigorous exercise of waking up the little one, who secretly -- and sometimes not-so-secretly -- wishes every morning the day to be declared a holiday, giving him a minute-long bath and then a never ending argument with him about his attire (I never quite understood why they don't have school uniforms at the nursery level!). In winters he refuses to be stuffed with multiple-layered woolens, according to him, it makes him look fat and un-smart. And in the summers the luxury of an air-conditioned room doesn't let him leave the bed. So, you see, he can't be blamed for reaching school just a minute before the main gate is closed.

Me leaving the house with hair uncombed, carrying my son's yellow coloured Pokemon's school bag, two office leather bags and a bowl containing a boiled egg (that's my breakfast every morning). Needless to say, I detest having it, but don't have the energy to bother my mind to decide on a more convenient and an easier thing to carry which I can munch while driving and dropping my son to school and realizing I am late as always for office.

All I can do is pray I don't get a maddening traffic like I did the day before, and, of course, my prayers are never answered. The 16-kilometer stretch has made me a make-up expert, as at one traffic intersection I apply a kaajal (my eyes look sad without it, someone once told me and I guess I have taken it too seriously!), at the next intersection a lip gloss (which reminds me I need to change this one, as it must be a year old) and at the next one, I comb my hair.

I get a call from my boss, who despite being a sweetheart, calculates the working man hours better than any mathematician would. I tell him I am in the parking lot trying to find a space which can somehow accommodate my charming grey Santro Zing (my favourite possession which tolerates all kinds of tortures inflicted by me, in terms of maintenance). The minute-long walk from the parking lot to the office is killing, as i know there is a mail in my inbox, saying : "Meenu, you are doing a great job, but you need to work on your morning arrival. I wonder who invented this term "but", as it completely leaves the part of the statement before it insignificant.

Work begins at 10 and ends at 6 and it is time to start preparing MIS for 11 girls, editing, sending mailers, saying that the same mistake is repeated and is unacceptable if this happens every day. Does that sound like a warning at all? I don't simply hate man management but even dread it, as it is something I need to work on. I have been trying to improve my man management skills since i don't remember when.

By the time I reach home, I hope to relax and enjoy watching some television, or listening to some good, even soulful, music. But as I drag my weary body through the door, I find -- to my dismay -- on one television set a Bengali woman sobbing hysterically after she discovers she has been cheated by her husband. On the other TV, Popeye has finally got an opportunity to smooch his gal and my son's eyes are glued to the screen as if he is one of the characters of the cartoon series.

Equidistant from the two television sets, my husband has this huge pair of earphones clamped on his ears, in a desperate attempt to avoid the sobbing woman and the love-struck Popeye, and there is a loooong gap between the "hi" and "how was the day". I wish the answer was any different any day.

And, sitting here in my office, I secretly wish to myself, Happy Women's Day !!!

RSS And The Business Of Pleasure

2008-03-10T23:45:00.002+05:30

Oh, the poor, poor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. For the boys in khaki, life has been on a downward spiral since those heady days of the Gujarat riots of 2002 when the Moslems were taught that M-O-D-I wasn't just a four-letter word. Since then, though, the successes have been few and far in between, and the list of failures is growing.

Recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party has had trouble finding a leader who can lead the party in the next general elections. Their best bet for the job, old pro Atal Behari Vajepayee's is not keeping very good health. The current party president Rajnath Singh isn't taken too seriously within his own party circles. Which ensured the selection of an aging LK Advani for the job.

As if the party's leadership issues were not bothersome enough, now the fornicating billion (It is logical, silly, you have to fornicate and fornicate a lot to get to a billion and more) are upto their nasty tricks. Thankfully nothing eludes the hawkeyed boys in khaki. So they eventually caught up with the dastardly act of mixing the business of sex with a lot of pleasure.

I am referring to the issue of vibrating condoms, that has stirred the nation and shaken the Swayamsevak rank and file.

Apparently, the pack of three condoms, branded as Crezendo, contains a battery-operated ring-like device. Once the battery is switched on, the device works pretty much like a vibrator. A promotional message from the company, Hindustan Latex Limited, describes Crezendo as a product that "provides ultimate pleasure by producing strong vibrations."

The company had launched Crezendo three months ago. At that time no one said anything about the vibrating ring. But now the truth is in the open. We know now that the vibrating condom is in fact a vibrator and a condom, thanks to the alertness of a Sangh loyalist in the Madhya Pradesh government, Kailash Vijayvargiya.

An angry Vijayvargiya told the BBC recently, "The government's job is to promote family planning and population control measures, rather than market products for sexual pleasure." Subsequently, a company spokesman for Hindustan Latex Limited has confessed the vibrating ring was "a pleasure enhancer", but insisted it was not a "sex toy".

Naughty, that. Sex is ok, according to the RSS, and even according to the Indian government. But pleasure? We all know, that's not on. It is only for a good reason that sex toys are banned in India.

As redfaced HLL officials go blue in the face explaining the finer differences between a sex toy and a pleasure enhancer, the good Sanghi, Vijayvargiya has dashed off a letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh, warning that the sale of sex toys in India would have "severe consequences in society".

Many years ago, and only after much deliberations at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, it was decided to okay the use of condoms. But not without reservations, for the Sangh has never looked favourably upon any sexual act that doesn't lead to procreation, and the condom is specifically meant to prevent procreation.

However, one thing helped swing the vote in favour of the condoms. Almost all its users had unequivocally stressed that it lowered the pleasure level during intercourse. Now that mightily pleased the RSS bosses. They knew what pleasure could do. For one thing, it could make people happy. Happy people are inclined to think independently and have been historically known to fight firecely for the independence of their thought process. If allowed to be happy, who knows what they might think of the RSS tomorrow, reasoned the reasonable men of RSS. So, they, in principle, okayed the use of condom.

But this vbirating condom is clearly a bit of a much. Expecting the RSS to do nothing about it is stretching the Sangh generosity beyond a level even a condom maker can't guarantee its highest quality rubber to do.

Though sex toys are officially banned in this country, in Delhi's underground market (a physical fact, not to be mistaken as a metaphor) Palika Bazar, one can buy a range of vibrators. Other toys like strapon dildos and customised sex dolls can be discretely supplied if one so desired.

I asked one of the suppliers if the business wasn't fraught with risks and if he feared a backlash from the RSS or other custodians of Indian culture. His response was rather interesting. "Nahi (no) sir, it is because of their continued hostility the government can't officially allow the import of sex toys. Which is good for our business." The demand is always high and the margins are very good, he said with a grin. The inflated dolls, I gathered, are sold at rather inflated prices.

Meanwhile, my own investigations into the offending, I mean vibrating, condom has reached a cul de sac of sorts. I checked with my friendly neighbourhood chemist and he said he had run out of the vibrating condoms. All the controversy was very good for the business. "They just vanished off my shelves," he said. Elsewhere, HLL is understood to have taken the confoms off the shelves after being made aware of their erring ways by Mr. Vijayvargiya.

So, for now, the hardworking Swayamsevaks can heave a sigh of relief. If the much-venerated RSS mouthpiece, The Organiser was anything like a Times of India or a Hindustan Times, the next issue might even have carried the story of the successful campaign against vibrating condoms, with RSS IMPACT printed in bold.

I have this naughty naughty friend who is into these inflated dolls and first told me about their availability in Palika Bazar. Clearly a heathen himself, he has no understanding at all about the workings of the RSS. He is worried if the boys in khaki, emboldened by the stunning success of the campaign against vibrating condoms might muscle into influencing other areas of sexual behaviour. I asked him, like what? Like the RSS leadership doesn't have anything else on its mind.

But that is beyond the comprehension of lesser mortals like him. So he continued to pester me with his unending queries : "Umm, what if the RSS tomorrow said masturbation was bad too and banned it. I mean that too gives you pleasure and doesn't contribute in any way to procreation."

Admittedly, he had a point there. There was the issue of pleasure involved and also no connection with procreation. And then my clarity of thought, my wisdom, honed for years by the Sangh's way of thinking, returned.

Silly fellow, I told him, how can any organisation with swayam seva (self help) as its central theme be ever opposed to masturbation? Now, THAT shut up the thick head for good.

Sukumar Ray Didn't Pen This One

2008-03-06T20:48:00.003+05:30

I don't know who wrote this one. Had a laugh reading it. Hope you will have a good time, reading this...

Through the jongole I am went

On shooting Tiger I am bent

Boshtaard Tiger has eaten wife

No doubt I will avenge poor darling's life

Too much quiet, snakes and leeches

But I not fear these sons of beeches

Hearing loud noise I am jumping with start

But noise is coming from damn fool's heart

Taking care not to be fright

I am clutching rifle tight with eye to sight

Should Tiger come I will shoot and fall him down

Then like hero return to native town

Then through trees I am espying one cave

I am telling self - "Bannerjee be brave"

I am now proceeding with too much care

From far I smell this Tiger's lair

My leg shaking, sweat coming, I start to pray

I think I will shoot Tiger some other day

Turning round I am going to flee

But Tiger giving bloody roar spotting this Bengalee

He bounding from cave like football player Pele

I run shouting

"Kali Ma tumi kothay gele"

Through the jongole I am running

With Tiger on my tail closer looming

I am a telling that never in life

I will risk again for my damn fool wife!!!!

Indians Thunder Down Under

2008-03-05T19:44:00.003+05:30

Ishant Sharma : India's first genuine fast bowler

Finally, a one-day series win in Australia, on the back of a terrific Test series that not just Indian cricket fans believe, had all things (or may be just the umpiring) remained equal, would have gone India's way. Every time this Indian side has won in Australia, it has only driven home the unfairness at Sydney.

Lot of water has passed under the bridge since Sydney, though. India has had the measure of their hosts and more fancied opponents in both Tests as well as one-dayers, and in the process has emerged as a tough-as-nails Test unit and a combative, exciting one-day side.

There is much to celebrate. Sachin Tendulkar's return to prime batting form in both Tests as well as one-dayers. The emergence of Anil Kumble and Mahendra Singh Dhoni as two top draw captains for Test matches and the more fast and furious versions of cricket.

But perhaps the biggest cause of celebration is the emergence of Ishant Sharma as a genuine fast bowler. For the first time in the history of Indian cricket, there is a fast bowler who has crossed the 150km speed barrier. During this series, for the first time we saw an Indian fast bowler make top batsmen duck and weave with the bounce he was getting and the speed he was generating.

The high point in a series that saw many highs was surely the spell young Ishant bowled to Australian skipper Ricky Ponting on the fifth day of the Perth Test. Indians were looking for a win, and knew there was going to be no victory as long as Ponting was out in the middle. At a crucial moment of the match, Indian skipper hurled the ball to Ishant Sharma.

For the next one hour and a little more, the rookie made the master look like a novice. An inswinger cut Ponting in half, the next ball pitched at the same spot as the previous delivery, but swung the other way, beating Ponting comprehensively. Finally at the end of a nine-over long mesmerizing spell, another perfectly pitched outswinger took the edge of the Australian skipper's bat and ended Ponting's misery. India not only went on to record a famous victory, from that moment on there was a clear shift in momentum for the rest of the series.

Starting the Australia series as a rookie, Ishant Sharma ended it a couple of months later as India's new pace bowling spearhead. Once the two injured quick bowlers Zaheer Khan and RP Singh are back to their fitness, it would be interesting to see how a full strength Indian attack would fare against opposition batsmen.

If the bowling department has a healthy look about it, with the likes of Irfan Pathan, Sreesanth and Munaf Patel, the batting looks equally formidable. After a well earned rest following the tough Test series, the trio of Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman are ready to join their illustrious colleague Sachin Tendulkar in the Indian middle order as India readies to face off against South Africa at home. Now with the attacking Virender Sehwag once again restored at the top of the order, the Indian Test batting line up against most teams and on most wickets appears to be almost intimidating.

It is only in the fitness of things that Sachin Tendulkar is back as numero uno in ICC one-day rankings. He batted wonderfully during the Tests, then seemed to lose his way as the one day series began, and then in the first final at Sydney scored a classy matchwinning hundred. His well-crafted 91 set up the second win in Brisbane.

The ICC rankings for Test matches currently has Tendulkar in the 12th spot. But anyone who saw him bat in Australia recently would not question his position as the world's best batsman right now.

Following the success of the youthful Indian side in the one-day triangular series in Australia, the curtain seems to have been rung down on the one-day careers of Dravid and Ganguly. There is no stopping Tendulkar though. He remains the batting mainstay of a young Indian one-day side which can only get better with time.

The younger batsmen like Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa and Rohit Sharma may not inspire the sort of awe that the Indian Test batting line up does, but the young tyros did enough throughout the long one-day series to give Dhoni the confidence to drop the experienced Virender Sehwag and go with five specialist bowlers.

Gautam Gambhir finished as the top scorer in the triangular series, which included some of the world's finest batsmen -- Tendulkar, Ponting, Hayden, Symonds, Hussey, Jaywardane, and Sanghakara. Uthappa showed in the finals that he could play patiently too, giving fine starts in both Sydney and Brisbane. Earlier, on a few occasions, coming down the order he smashed the bowling all round the park.

Over the years, India has been reluctant to have different captain for one-dayers and Test matches. Now, more by accident and less by design, India has stumbled on to this winning combination of two astute skippers for Tests and one-dayers. If Anil Kumble was rather impressive first against Pakistan, and then in the tough tour of Australia, the younger Mahendra Singh Dhoni as India's young new one-day captain has shown a maturity in his batting and captaincy that belies his years.

In the process, India has concocted may be a winning recipe for success. These days cricket is played round the year. There is no concept of an off-season anymore. And the amount of cricket that is being played will only increase with the beginning of the new Twenty20 Indian Premier League from next month. With India now playing almost two different sides for Tests and one-dayers, India can have the rare luxury of fielding well-rested players for both versions of the game.

Only Tendulkar and Dhoni are regulars in both Tests as well as one dayers. Suddenly the Indian bench strength looks most impressive. There are enough fast bowlers to cover for the injured ones and there is healthy competition for the batting slots.

An Australian tour is usually a bruising experience for visiting players, both on and off the field. Indians have done very well to turn this experience to their advantage. The jury is still out on whether this series will mark the beginning of the decline of a cricketing superpower or the rise of another -- though there are some signs of both -- one thing is clear though. There is no contest in contemporary cricket quite like the India Australia rivalry.

'Tis Time For A Little Bit of Intolerance Against Lot of Intolerance

2008-03-04T05:07:00.009+05:30

My Friday, First Show reputation is in tatters. It has been weeks since I have landed to watch a movie on a Friday afternoon. And though I was really keen to watch Jodhaa Akbar on the opening day, it took me a while (last evening, to be precise) before I could finally see the film.

Jodhaa Akbar is a damn good yarn, told rather stylishly by Ashutosh Gowariker, one of the better film makers in our country. Long before Gowariker made a reputation for himself first with Lagaan and then Swades, I had thoroughly enjoyed watching Baazi, starring Gowariker favourite Aamir Khan.

Over the past few days I had been impatient to view Gowariker's latest cinematic offering after all the controversy surrounding "historical inaccuracies". Rajput groups have protested against what they view as "distortion of facts". They are upset that the film portrays Jodha Bai as Emperor Akbar's wife, while they insist she is in fact Emperor Jahangir's wife.

Gowariker has said more than once he is ready to stick to his version of history which he insists is "well-researched". Historically, there appear to be two conflicting schools of thought -- one claiming Akbar was married to Jodha Bai , another insisting she was Emperor Jahangir's wife. I honestly don't know if Akbar or Jahangir was Jodha Bai's husband. Frankly I don't care, and I don't think, as far as the film is concerned, it matters one way or the other.

Jodhaa Akbar is a mainstream Bollywood film, not a documentary. Gowariker has made a love story, a damn good one at that, if you ask me. He has tried to stick to facts as much and as far as he can. My point is, you don't like what he has shown, then stay home or watch other Bollywood releases, which, mind you, aren't usually strong on facts.

But violent demonstrations and bans are a bit of a much. They just give lie to our tall claims of being a tolerant society. Methinks it is high time this society showed some serious intolerance towards such acts of intolerance.

It will be interesting to examine the role of the media -- particularly India's television channels -- in stirring the so-called Rajput pride. When forty channels beam ad nauseum fifty protestors demonstrating outside a movie hall, the viewer often gets the impression of a far bigger agitation happening than what it really is.

Not for the first time, short of ideas and perfectly willing to fuel an otherwise unnecessary controversy, Indian television channels have taken the cheapest route to TRP ratings by highlighting the issue of "hurt Rajput pride" and have given momentum to an agitation that didn't initially appear to have a leg to stand on.

Demonstrations and agitations against films are not new. What is new is the phenomenal publicity these fringe agitations garner, thanks to their indiscriminate coverage by Indian television channels. It is time someone looked more closely into limiting the free publicity these fringe groups manage to get.

As for me, as I sat through the three and a half hour long film, watching the gradual unfolding of a love story between a Mughal emperor and a Rajput princess, narrated rather grandly but at a deliciously sedate pace, I wondered what was the fuss all about.

Even when the film was being made, there were reports that Akbar has never looked as handsome and Jodha Bai never as beautiful as they look in Gowariker's Jodhaa Akbar. Hrithik Roshan looks very good, and acts brilliantly, as Emperor Akbar. And Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is quite stunning as Jodha Bai.

The Rajput princess in Gowariker's tale holds more than her own against Akbar. It has been a while since I last turned the pages of my history books, and my memory isn't what it used to be. But I remember rather distinctly that the history books I read never quite gave Jodhaa Bai the sort of prominence that Gowariker bestows upon her.

If anything, I thought, it might be the more rabid Maulavis who might be cross with Gowariker for his depiction of an almost-feminist Akbar. In almost every face-off with the Rajput princess, it is the Mughal emperor who appears to come off second best.

If you ask me, the only person who might, or even should, have any problems with the film is Abhishek Bachchan. Bachchan Junior was reportedly unhappy with his wife Aishwarya Rai's liplock with Hritik Roshan in Dhoom 2. Later, the kiss was deleted by the producer. Though there is no such steamy scene in Jodhaa Akbar, there is an undeniable chemistry between the lead pair. The ice maiden not just thaws, even sizzles, in the company of Hrithik Roshan.

Film trade papers have declared the movie a countrywide smash hit and critics have had nice things to say about Jodhaa Akbar. New York Times and Daily Telegraph have lavished praise on Gowariker, comparing his grand style of film making with Cecile De Mille. The film is doing brisk business, and can do well without the agitations and subsequent ban imposed on its screening.

With elections not too far away, various state governments have not been shy of courting controversy. Governments in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh quickly banned the screening of the film. Following a directive by the Supreme Court of India, the ban has been temporarily lifted (until March 14) when the matter comes up for hearing again.

It is curious how state governments ban such a harmless film like Jodhaa Akbar on the spurious ground that the controversy over it may endanger communal harmony, yet both the state government in Maharashtra and the Indian government idly watch the Thackeray clan spread their campaign of hate, unchecked.

It is rather ironical, you would think, that those who are so keen to hand out history lessons are actually so reluctant to learn any lesson at all from history.

That Fine Art Called Sledging

2008-02-27T22:21:00.003+05:30

Sreesanth and Hayden, cricket's bad boys

The dust had barely settled on Monkeygate, before another (two, if you include the spat between Ishant Sharma and Andrew Symonds) potential row has threatened to disrupt what has been one of the more evenly contested cricket series in recent memory.

Looking at the controversy, there are two indisputable facts. One, that no team sledges more (and you have to admit, more effectively too) than the Australians. It is equally true that Indians have been reported more times (and not just in Australia) for reasons of indiscipline than players from any other side playing the game.

Depending on your nationality, one can take a stand on Harbhajan Singh politely inquiring about Mrs. Symonds’ private parts (I honestly think there is something seriously wrong with the game if that is more acceptable than a cricketer calling a fellow player a monkey).

Or you can get morally uppity about Matt Hayden calling Harbhajan “a poisonous weed”, which considering it wasn’t said in the heat of battle was perhaps not the nicest of things to say.

So, do Australians sledge? Or, are Indians regularly reported on issues of misconduct? The truth might lie, as it often does, somewhere between those two doggedly, even adamantly, held positions.

Gavaskar is being a bit naïve when he says he wants to get sledging banned from international cricket. It isn’t as if sledging thrives because it is a part of some official ICC statute. Repeat offenders like Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh, or for that matter, Mathew Hayden aren’t exactly choirboys waiting for an official ICC ban on sledging to zip their mouths.

Most cricketers who have played international cricket would tell you that there are essentially two kinds of sledging. One happens when the contests run close, as they have in the ongoing series between India and Australia. In the heat of battle, and often even as part of strategy, players go in for sledging.

It has been known when players discuss strategies in team meetings, names of some players come up who are perceived to be vulnerable to sledging. You give the batsman a verbal work over, and see if he gets distracted enough to give the bowlers a chance. Similarly, you engage a bowler in a verbal spat, and see if you can throw him off his line and length.

That sort of sledging, though part of no ICC code, is acceptable among most cricketers.

The part that is unacceptable is when someone like Hayden shoots his mouth off in a radio show, knowing fully well his words will be repeated, even lapped up by both Indian and Australian media. Once players use the media to take pot shots at each other, there is no telling how far it can go, or how ugly it can get.

Even the Australians know better than to sledge against an old pro like Tendulkar. He is not known to give it back verbally, but uses his broad bat to cause considerable damage. Shane Warne, who always had a thing or two to say from his position in the slips, has admitted on more than one occasion there was simply no percentage in sledging against Tendulkar. “There would be no discernible reaction from the maestro, he would just take it out on the bowling,” observed Warne.

While some players like Tendulkar are impervious to sledging, others like former India captain Sourav Ganguly clearly enjoy giving it back. Ganguly once said the idea was not to hurl abuse at the opposing player, it was to get under his skin, may be throw him off his normal game to gain a cricketing advantage. During the now famous 2001-02 Test series, Ganguly would often delay his arrival on the ground for the toss, making the opposing skipper Steve Waugh wait. At that time Waugh said he found Ganguly “rather irritating”, which Ganguly took as high praise from a man who pioneered the concept of “mental disintegration”.

As part of that concept, every time a visiting side arrived in Australia, one of the lead Australian bowlers (unusually it was Glen McGrath) would announce in the media that the main batsman of the visitors was his bunny. The idea was to score a quick mental point. Sometimes it worked, on other occasions as in the case of Sourav Ganguly in 2003-04, it backfired spectacularly.

Post-retirement, writing in his autobiography, Waugh lavished praise on Ganguly as “a tough cricketer and a tougher captain”. The praise was hard-earned. Ganguly first captained an Indian side that scripted a memorable Test victory at Eden Gardens in 2001, and then went on to win the series.

Two years later in Australia, threatened with “chin music”, Ganguly decided to fight fire with fire and scored a fine attacking hundred against the Aussie fast bowlers in the first Test at Brisbane. India not only drew the series 1-1, but had the Australians on the ropes in the last Test at Sydney before Steve Waugh, playing his last Test match, produced a typical rearguard action that saved Australia’s blushes.

Australians have learnt the hard way the pointlessness of riling players like Tendulkar or Ganguly.

Contemporary cricket is both physically gruelling and mentally tough, a far cry from the gentleman’s game played by the likes of WG Grace. The game is played harder, both on and off the ground. There is no point getting squeamish about sledging.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian one-day captain, has put the issue in right perspective when he said sledging is an art, and that the Australians have turned sledging into an art form and Indians have some catching up to do in this regard.

Dhoni’s statement has just the right blend of caution, common sense and aggression – like his best one-day knocks. You can take it at face value and say Dhoni was complimenting, albeit backhandedly, the Australians for their sledging skills. Or you can read in his straight faced response an implied threat – that Indians plan to sledge just as good and as hard in the coming days.

The Baywatch Bounce

2008-02-25T19:19:00.003+05:30

This MCG wicket has more bounce than a Baywatch beach sprint.

Former Australian fast bowler DAMIEN FLEMING commentating on ABC Radio

No Country For Old Men

2008-02-25T17:31:00.013+05:30

Me and the Oscars have often disagreed over our choices. Not this year. My favourite film of the year, No Country For Old Men, was the big winner on Academy Awards night, with four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.

This year, we even agreed on the Best Actor award. Daniel Day Lewis was simply fabulous in There Will Be Blood. I had picked No Country and There Will Be Blood as this year's front runners. I would have been disappointed if Atonement would have made it. The adaptation of Ian McEwan's book is eminently watchable but I wouldn't go as far as to say it is the best film of 2007.

My personal list of favourites (not in any particular order) for the year that has gone by are:

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham
Director: Ken Loach

Named after an Irish ballad written by Robert Dwyer Joyce, it is among my favourite films of the year. The performances are terrific and the photography unforgettable. Veteran director Ken Loach copped a lot of flak in the English press for what they described as an unfair portrayal of English soldiers in this film. Tim Luckhurst of The Times called the movie a "poisonously anti-British corruption of the history of the war of Irish independence". The jury at Cannes clearly thought otherwise, and bestowed upon the film the festival's highest honour, the Palme D'Or. After watching the film, I tended to agree more with the Cannes jury than Luckhurst.

REIGN OVER ME

Cast: Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle
Director: Mike Binder

I like Mike Binder's films. I had enjoyed The Upside of Anger and Man About Town. But I simply loved Reign Over Me, a tale of two friends who were once room mates in college, and then they meet up post 9/11. Cheadle is his usual restrained self. But it is Sandler who steals the show with a heart-tugging performance, as the man who is trying to come to terms with the loss of his wife and three daughters.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bordem, Josh Brolin
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

The Coen brothers thoroughly deserved the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. In Anton Chigurh, played exceptionally by Javier Bordem, they have created a character as evil and menacing as Hannibal Lecter. The random violence, the moody build up and excellent acting all around combine to make No Country a modern-day classic.

ONCE

Cast: Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova
Director: John Carney

A friend had presented me the DVD of this film months ago, but I hadn't seen it until recently because I am not terribly fond of musicals. I loved it when I watched this modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs that tell their love story. Made with almost documentary realism on the streets of Dublin, the film was shot in just 15 days with two DV cameras. John Carney has both written and directed this film.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM

Cast : Matt Damon, Julia Stiles
Director: Paul Greengrass

I don't like sequels, per se. But this one, the third and the latest in Bourne trilogy, is my favourite of the three and would possibly go down as my favourite action movie of 2007. The action never flags, and the story doesn't bore you at any point as Bourne tries to find out more about his past and finally come back home. There is nothing new about the story but the execution is sleek, and Damon is good.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Cast: Dannel Day Lewis
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Essaying a written-for-Oscar role, Daniel Day Lewis comes up with an astonishing performance in this film about a turn-of-the-century oil prospector who moves to California in the early days of the business. Equally brilliant as Daniel Day Lewis is Paul Dano. Director Paul Anderson is just 38 but is considered as a master of his craft, and has already made such eminently watchable films as Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love.

WAITRESS

Cast: Keri Russell
Director: Adrienne Shelly

Keri Russell looks lovely and acts beautifully as the pie-baking, unhappily married waitress with a heart of gold. You just want good things to happen to her. I am rather sentimental about this movie, not just because it is very good. But also because its director Adrienne Shelly died even before Waitress was commercially released. Shelly's death was first considered a suicide. Days later, a 19-year-old Eucadorian illegal immigrant and construction worker confessed to killing the actress, whom he left hanging by a bedsheet from a shower rod in the bathroom of her Manhattan office / apartment.

DEDICATION

Cast: Billy Crudup, Mandy Moore
Director: Justin Theroux

Director Justin Theroux is the nephew of the famous Paul Theroux, not that it matters. My favourite romantic movie of the year, Dedication is different than most mushy Hollywood movies. Once his long time collaborator and only friend dies, Billy Crudup, a children's book author, is forced to work with a female illustrator. Crudup is brilliant as a cranky, misogynist author who slowly but surely falls for the pretty illustrator. Like all good films, this one has a terrific script, with lot of witty lines. Sample this one:

Lucy : Do you just genuinely dislike me, Henry?

Henry: You know accuse of whatever you want, I'm probably guilty of it... contributing to global warming, killing a squirrel once, and using the word retard, and occasionally misinterpreted bigotry, but don't, don't... don't don't don't accuse of not liking you. Ok?

Of Burned Bodies and Scarred Survivors

2008-02-22T23:01:00.006+05:30

Ever been inside a burns ward in a hospital? It is not a pleasant sight, worse, the smell gets to you, and remains with you. Most doctors advice you to tie a kerchief over your mouth and nose as you enter the ward. It is as much for the safety of the patient as it is for the well-being for the visitor. Most first timers complain of nausea and end up puking after their maiden trip.

Many years ago I remember going to Charkhi Dadri, the site of the worst air accident the world has ever seen. 349 people charred to death in a matter of minutes. The debris of the two aircrafts was spread over a 7 km area. As I drove late in the evening to find the crash site, one of the locals suggested helpfully : "Just follow the smell of burning flesh, you will find the main spot."

The smell of burning flesh lingers on for a long time after it is supposed to have receded. That night in Charkhi Dadri was not nice. Years later in Tamil Nadu, in south India, I was to encounter smell of burning flesh all over again. I was covering a different story not too far and was one of the first persons to reach the spot. This time 25 people had been charred to death in a mental hospital. The scale of the tragedy was comparatively much smaller, yet I was seriously disturbed by what I saw.

Charred bodies chained to bed posts, worse, even trees. Helpless inmates trapped in the fire, unable to flee because they had been chained. I didn't know anyone of them. Even if I had, I wouldn't have recognized anyone from what was left of them.

As a colleague next to me discussed, even haggled, with another colleague thousands of miles away about how many minutes and seconds should be spent on telling this tale of 25 deaths I played out in my mind the exact sequence of events that ended with the end of 25 lives. I wondered where they were from, for how many years were they in this institution, how they must have squirmed and twisted and screamed to get out of the way of the approaching flames. A video played out in my mind, in graphic detail, and I was about as successful in putting out the imagery from my mind as the chained inmates had been with the fire.

Cricket's Billion Dollar Baby Is Here!

2008-02-21T19:45:00.009+05:30

In 1977, when he announced the breakaway cricket league, the Australian TV moghul Kerry Packer did not only play havoc with the existing international cricket order, he also made a super selector of sorts out of me.

All of 13-years old then, I used to doodle in my notebooks names of international players who squared off in dream teams selected entirely by me. I made the teams as balanced and evenly matched as I could, in the hope that they could produce rousing contests.

I thought ahead of Packer. For me there were no national boundaries, issues like Apartheid took a backseat as the lost generation of South Africa's golden greats -- Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Mike Procter and Garth Le Roux -- were part of my teams.

Thus, Sunil Gavaskar and Gordon Grenidge opened for one side, and Barry Richards and Des Haynes opened for the rivals. One team had Viv Richards in the middle order, the rivals had Greg Chappell. One was skippered by Clive Lloyd, the opposing team was led by Ian Chappell. Team A had David Gower, so Team B had to have Graeme Pollock.

And then there were the mouthwatering all-round talents of Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev to choose from. Dennis Lillee led one side's pace attack, the opponents relied on the liquid pace of Michael Holding.

Oh if only they had played against each other. What amazing contests they would have been, between sides selected on the basis of cricketing merit alone.

I am no longer 13, nor do I doodle names of cricketers any more. But my adolescent dream is about to come true, in a rather dramatic way. Next month on, world's best cricketers would take part in what promises to be the most glamorous cricket league in the world.

The big names have been gobbled up. But the eight teams in the fray still have to opt for their mandatory four under-19 signings, also choose players from their catchment areas.

Following the players' auction, the most powerful sides to me appear to be Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandigarh and Kolkata.

Hyderabad is led by the charismatic VVS Laxman. Ironically the man so regularly overlooked for the shorter version of the game by India, would now lead a side of powerpacked hitters like Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi, Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs. Add the Kiwi Scott Styris and Laxman himself, and the young Indian tyro Rohit Sharma to that mix, and you have the most explosive batting line-up in the inaugural IPL.

The Hyderabad side would excel in the field too with the likes of Symonds, Gibbs and Afrid being rated among the best fielders in the world. Compared to batting and fielding, the side looks a wee bit short in bowling riches. Among the big names is only the old pro Chaminda Vaas.

Another IPL side that looks impressive is the Chanigarh side led by the mercurial Yuvraj Singh. The side has signed on the redoubtable Sri Lankan duo of Kumar Sanghakara and Mahela Jayawardane, apart from West Indian Ram Naresh Sarwan and Australian Simon Katich. Though overlooked by his national side, Katich has been in prime form in domestic cricket in Australia.

The bowling too looks rather impressive in the form of the classy Brett Lee, all-rounder Irfan Pathan and S Sreesanth. Romesh Powar and the young leggie Piyush Chawla provide the spinning options.

As powerful a side as any in the IPL is the Chennai team with the iconic MS Dhoni leading a team that can rely on the firepower of the big Matt Hayden and Jacob Oram, apart from the stylish Stephen Flemming, and the equally classy Mike Hussey. It is backed by the bighitting option of South African Albie Morkel and the homegrown talents of lefthander Suresh Raina and keeper Parthiv Patel.

Also in the Chennai ranks is a gent answering to the name of Muttiah Muralitharan. Makhaya Ntini is the premier fast bowling option, then there is the utility player, Joginder Sharma who did his reputation no harm in the T20 World Cup in South Africa.

The Kolkata squad has roped in John Buchanan as their high profile coach. The big question is can Buchanan turn the likes of Sourav Ganguly and Shoaib Akhtar into sprightly fielders. In a game that is as much about fitness as about cricketing skills, it remains to be seen how well players like Ganguly and Shoaib adapt to the new format.

The side's batting looks impressive with Ganguly, Australian captain Ricky Ponting, the explosive Windies opener Chris Gayle, the fiery Kiwi wicketkeeper batsman, Brandon McCullum and Australian David Hussey. A possible opening batting combination of Gayle and McCullum is a mouthwatering prospect.

Indian speedster Ishant Sharma, so impressive in Australia, would lead the bowling with senior pro Ajit Agarkar. An important signing is Umar Gul, who was the pick of the bowlers in South Africa during the T20 World Cup.

If the players' auction that took place in Mumbai yesterday is anything to go by, one thing is certain we are in for interesting times. That Mahedra Singh Dhoni, one of the finest one-day cricketers of our generation and the skipper of the inuaugural T20 World Championship winning side, would be the most sought after and thus most expensive player in the auction of international players for the Indian Players' League came as no surprise to anyone.

But some signing amounts did raise a few eyebrows. Dinesh Karthick commanding a higher price than Ricky Ponting, or Ishant Sharma (the young lad is very good, mind you) selling as the most expensive bowler in international cricket is a bit of a much, if you ask moi.

Needless to say, the inaugural edition of the Indian Players' League is going to be more about hype than about substance. And the players' auction, despite the megabucks and some hardnosed businessmen involved, was part of that hype. Not all signings made business sense or cricketing logic.

One hopes though once the tournament starts and the focus is back on cricket, sanity will return to the proceedings. And you can bet, before the next season begins, the wheat would have been separated from the chaff and the bidders would have realized the merits of choosing a Michael Hussey over a Manoj Tewary.

As for me, I have got myself a box seat in front of my television set, poured two perfectly shaped ice cubes in my Smirnoff, and am waiting for my first look at a scorecard that could very well read :

CHRIS GAYLE caught KUMAR SANGHAKARA bowled BRETT LEE