Pontiff's Corner

Genius has a new addy!

2008-01-01T19:51:00.000-08:00

When I first started to blog, at least two friends -- one in the US and the other one in Dilli -- were seriously sceptical about how long I would continue to blog. It took about two months to silence the doubters, and then six more to prove that their original misgivings were not entirely unfounded.

In the meanwhile, I had a ball. Between April 18 and October 29, I thoroughly enjoyed posting my opinions on all kinds of issues. I enjoyed the responses almost as much I enjoyed my posts. And then the last two months happened. Matters beyond my control combined with an uncharacteristic unwillingness to pontificate to ensure that Pontiff wasn't in his favourite corner.

Now I am afraid I think it is time to move on. I enjoy blogging way too much to stop. But I am moving to a new address. I don't know how many of my friends ever drop in here any longer. But if and when you do, look me up at the new addy, which is :

www.rajanchakravarty.blogspot.com

The blog is called Postcards From The Edge.

Bhery Phunny!

2007-10-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

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

Hopefully There Is A Method In This Madness

2007-10-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

So, The Wall has been breached. Not by a wily opposition, but by five wise men who were once rather eloquently described by Mohinder Amarnath as "a bunch of jokers".

Not that Rahul Dravid, one of only six international cricketers to have scored more than 10,000 one-day runs, would find anything remotely funny in the recent turn of events that finds him out of the Indian cricket side after just one poor series -- that, too, against the world's best cricket team.

For the past couple of seasons, Dravid has increasingly played as the floater in the Indian one-day batting line up. While Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly have both clearly stated their preference to open the innings, Dravid had taken upon himself the tough role of a finisher.

During the last series against Australia, it appeared that the new Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni preferred the hardhitting Robin Uthappa as the side's designated finisher. For the first time in a long and distinguished career, Dravid looked out of sorts in a line up that had the senior pros Tendulkar and Ganguly as openers, the prolific Yuvraj Singh as the new middle-order pivot and Dhoni and Uthappa as finishers.

If such a line up is the blueprint for future, with Ganguly making way for a young tyro somewhere along the future, then there is nothing wrong in axing Dravid. As long as someone in the Indian cricket board had the courtesy to explain in advance to Dravid, the reasons behind his non-selection.

If the dropping, or resting if you may please, of India's most reliable batsman, has anything to do with one bad series against the Australians (and I suspect it being a case of the latter rather than the former) then it is just another sad example of the knee-jerk reaction of a selection comittee that appears even more confused than its predecessor.

The Chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar not for the first time contradicted himself when he first said that Dravid has been "rested" for the first two one-dayers against Pakistan and then said the senior pro would have to prove his "form and fitness" if he hoped to come back to the Indian team.

Dravid has never been known to be fleet of foot on the field, but he is perhaps India's best slips fielder in both Tests (along with VVS Laxman) and one-dayers. It is difficult to imagine how his agility on the field or his catching in a four-day match for Karnataka is going to help him to return to the Indian one-day side.

If Dravid's ouster from the side raised a few eyebrows, then the decision to bring back Virender Sehwag, not by a long shot in prime form, baffled even more people.

Sehwag was up and down during the Twenty20 World Cup and then again in the recently concluded Challenger series. Every solid performance was followed by a failure, not exactly the sign of a man in form. Having said that, he is just one innings away from his best form is a cricketing adage that fits no one better than Sehwag.

Sehwag's inclusion makes sense only if you are ready to view him as a batting allrounder and utilize the offspin bowling option that he provides. If the Indian team management decide to go in with four specialist bowling options, plus Sehwag, then it does allow the side to play an additional specialist batsman -- either Gautam Gambhir or Rohit Sharma.

Many moons ago, Sourav Ganguly had come up with the inspired decision to ask Dravid to keep wickets. In the bargain, India had got a world class batsman at the number seven slot. In case, Sehwag is groomed as a batting allrounder, it would allow the Indian side to take the field with additional batting firepower.

My ideal eleven for the first one-dayer against Pakistan would be : Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Robin Uthappa, Irfan Pathan, Murali Karthik, Zaheer Khan and S Sreesanth.

Though I daresay the Indian management would play safe and go in with five specialist bowlers. In place of Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh would come in. Gambhir is in the form of his life (and you can't say the same about Bhajji) and it would be a pity if he was confined to the dressing room. It is difficult to imagine though that the selectors would select Sehwag and not play him in the eleven.

Given the fact that Pakistan is arriving with their first-choice bowling attack -- Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif and Umar Gul -- in a long long time, it remains to be seen how the Indian selectors go about their job, not just in the first two matches, but during the rest of the series as well.

As India look for a winning combination that would serve the side well, leading up to the next World Cup, Dhoni and Co could experiment with Irfan Pathan as a new ball bowler. In his heydays Pathan used to be a handful with the new white ball.

Now that Pathan is once again back in the side as a regular, Dhoni could toss the new ball to the erstwhile Sultan of Swing and see whether he can still bring the new white ball back into right handed batsmen with the same devastating effect.

Also in the Indian squad are the young Mumbai middle order bat Rohit Sharma who made such an impressive debut in the Twenty20 World Cup, and rookie all-rounder Praveen Kumar. The tall, well built Kumar is nowhere near express but can be quite nippy on his day and has a happy knack of picking wickets, as he showed during the recently-concluded Challenger Series.

Add to that his ability to wield the long handle, one is not surprised why the selectors, despairing the lack of all-rounders,have so promptly drafted him into the squad. It, however, remains to be seen if Kumar has the ability to deliver the goods at the highest level, or more importantly whether he would even get the opportunity to display his skills.

Some compliment, this!

2007-10-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

If India has six better Test batsmen than the Hyderabadi, then my name is Virender.

PETER ROEBUCK on VVS Laxman

Sukumar Ray Didn't Pen This One...

2007-10-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

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!!!!

Aashchhe Bochhor Abar Hobe

2007-10-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Much as I love blogging, spending Nobomi morning hunched over my laptop wasn't part of the original plan. But things have come to such a pass, with wife and son both down with viral fever, and lovingly returning my favour of tending to them by passing on their infection to me, this is the best on-the-spur-of-the-moment Plan B I could come up with.

Not that Plan A was likely to be any different than other years. Deemer Devil in Kaalibari, Kosha Mangsho in Chittoranjan Park, downing vodkas till late in the night, listening to Mone Podey Ruby Rai blaring as you enter the Rajender Nagar mandap -- that's been pretty much Pujo in Delhi the past few years.

I am more of a Probashi (non-resident) Baangali than a true-blue Delhi Bong. As a bona fide Delhi Bong, one should have ideally been a student of Raisinha Bengali School, one should have spent some, if not considerable, part of one's misspent youth in Chittaranjan Park, and one should be able to speak incorrect Baangla with a certain degree of confidence.

I can't rightfully lay claims to none of the above. And while my command over Baangla is not what it used to be, you still wouldn't catch me introducing myself, a la lot of Delhi Bongs, as : "Ami Baangali hochhi". Years ago, when I first heard that, I couldn't help but retort : "Aato din ki chhili, bhai?"

This Pujo I had made grand plans of spending it with my odd assortment of cousins and uncles in Kolkata. The idea was to indulge in a serious food fest, now that the days of drinking binges are sadly behind me, thanks to those darned clogged arteries. On good days, I romanticize the arteries being filled with vodka and orange juice and butter chicken. On bad days I know better -- it is those bad marriage days that have clogged them arteries.

Anyway, back to my joyous plans for the City of Joy. I would kick off the food fest with Naan and Kosha Mangsho, washed down with a glass (or may be a few bottles?) of beer, on Shoshthi evening at Amber with Partho, more a brother than a brother in law, and Jhili.

Another option was Mutton Biriyani and Kebabs at Zeeshan's, opposite Partho's house in Park Circus. Legend has it there is more oil in Zeeshan's Kosha Mangsho than in entire Saudi Arabia. If he sees me eating there, Sanjay Mittal, my cardiologist, would have a cardiac arrest. On second thoughts Zeeshan is avoidable.

Shoptomi morning, lazing in the bed, may be even catch a movie on HBO or Star Movies. Or may be a shopping expedition to Rashbehari Aveneue to buy a Punjabi (Did I ever tell you about the chaos -- and consternation -- caused aboard Rajdhani Express many moons ago when a train attendant, in an unmistakably Bengali accent that Pronob Babu would have been mighty proud of, announced: "A Punjabi has been found in the bathroom, owner may collect.") One of those Baatik designed kurtas that you would never find at Fab India.

How about Shoptomi evening with Bappa Da, sampling the culinary delights of Park Street?

My favourite Park Street restaurant used to be Skyroom, which shut down years ago. Then it was Waldrof. I used to love the Peking duck at Waldrof. After closing down in 2003, the restaurant relocated on Russell Street, but the food wasn't the same, and worse, the old charm was gone for ever. Today there's no Skyroom, no Waldrof, no Blue Fox. But you can still have that tall glass of Tom Colins in Mocambo. And then try some Chelo Kabab at the slightly rundown Peter Cat.

But don't fret. Nostalgia may take a beating on the newlook Park Street, but Kolkata still offers as many gastronomical choices as Calcutta did. When he heard I was coming down for Pujo, Borokaku had promised a grand Oshtomi dinner at Mainland China, the restaurant that keeps the Chinese flag flying in Kolkata.

Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men! Instead, I had paaurooti (Bengali for bread) dipped in lemon coriander chicken soup from East Patel Nagar's pride, the Baithak restaurant.

BOO-FRIGGIN-HOO.

Twelve hours and a sleepless night later, we are into the aforementioned Nobomi morning, with yours truly hunched over the laptop.

Aashchhe Bochhor Abar Hobe? No way, Baapi!

I am ashamed of being a Bengali, How about You?

2007-10-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

I have often asked myself who am I? And while it is easy to say I am an Indian, a bloody proud Indian at that, and every now and then I see myself as a world citizen too. I am not sure if I am a Hindu, not that I am least bit inclined to join any other religion. Truth be told though I am, and have been all my life, an unabashed Bengali.

Everytime I have had the opportunity to do so, I have unequivocally stated "Ami Baangali".

Over the years I have celebrated everything Bengali. I have been rather impressed about the manner we appropriated Jose Barreto from Brazil, Mother Teresa from Albania and Kanchenjungha from Sikkim. "Shala Indira (Gandhi) puro Sikkim niye nilo, aar amra aakta Kanchenjungha nilei joto dosh", a friend of mine had once reasoned. I am not going to translate that, but try arguing with that logic!

Apart from pride, I have felt a certain degree of comfort in being a Bengali. Some of the finest books I have ever read are in Bengali. I dare say there are few better writers in any language than Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay or Sukumar Ray. I simply relish Bangla food -- from luchi aar kosha mangsho to murighonto to shutki maachh to muger daler peethe. I have no doubt at all that Sourav Ganguly has been India's best cricket captain ever.

More than anything else though I have enjoyed being a Bengali because it gives you a certain liberal aura, a secular credential, which is good for your peace of mind. Today I am most miffed, nay deeply upset, because for the first time I find my identity a burden, a shame.

To be sure, when a predominantly Bhadralok crowd lynches a poor pickpocket to death, I feel terrible. When crowds misbehave in Eden Gardens, my blatantly Bengali heart bleeds too. I have cringed when someone tells me that Bengal has the highest number of custodial deaths in the country. First Singur and then Nandigram left me shaken as well as stirred. But I have always believed -- even defended -- such acts as part of deviant behaviour for which you can't hold an entire state responsible.

Last few weeks though, my belief as a Bengali, and my faith in Bengal has taken an unprecedented battering. It is bad enough that the coldblooded killing of Rizwanur, a 3o-year-old graphics teacher who had dared to marry the Hindu daughter of a powerful business tycoon, is being passed off as suicide at a time when there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that if even he wasn't physically pushed in front of a train, he was definitely pressurised and pushed to take that drastic step.

More than the government's response, what is far more difficult to stomach is the state of denial people of Bengal choose to live in. Bengalis are known to issue or deny certificates on secularism to the rest of the world, appoint themselves custodians against imperialism, comment on incidents in Vietnam and Venezuela. And now they allow a Rizwanur to sit easy on their collective conscience.

For those who don't know about Rizwanur, these are the bare facts of the case.

Rizwanur Rahman was a 30-year old computer graphics teacher from Kolkata. He was also a Muslim who fell in love with and married a Hindu girl Priyanka Todi, who happened to be the daughter of Ashok Todi, a member of the Todi multimillion dollar Lux hosiery brand. Priyanka eloped and married Rizwanur on August 18, but her family lodged a missing persons report and eventually an abduction complaint against Rizwanur. The Kolkata police started harassing him to return his wife back to her family.

Priyanka did not want to go back to her family, but was told by the cops that her father was seriously ill. On September 8th, Rizwanur and Priyanka relented and she went back to live with her family for a week. The family however did not allow Priyanka to return back to Rizwanur.

On September 16, Rizwanur, realising that his wife would not be returned to him, sought help from the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, a human rights organisation. In a written complaint to APDR, he stated that he wasn’t getting any help from the cops - in fact he was being harassed and pressurised by them.

Five days later, on September 21, Rizwanur Rahman was found dead, lying on the railway tracks between Dum Dum and Bidhannagar stations. Within literally minutes, the Kolkata police chief Prasun Bannerjee had declared Rizwanur had committed suicide.

This is not the first time in our secular socialist republic, a Hindu-Muslim marriage has resulted in death. Caste panchayats in large chunks of north India have -- regularly and with impunity -- ordered killings of young men and women who have married outside their castes or religion.

Bengal, you thought, was different. Who can forget the face of the man who lost his family in the Gujarat riots and was given a job and shelter in West Bengal? Now that face has been replaced in my mind and memory by that of Rizwanur Rahman.

There have been protests by members of the intelligentsia and odd articles in the media. But there has to be, there should have been, a bigger display of anger, a more sustained agitation against the West Bengal government's stand on the Rizwanur case. Isn't this after all a state where people take to the streets over a soccer match?

When I visited Ahmedabad during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots what bothered me was the promptness with which the Hindus I spoke to, dissociated themselves from the violence around them. "We don't know what was going on", "We didn't kill any Muslims", was always the stock response. As if their lack of knowledge or complicity somehow made the killings more acceptable.

Hungarian-born Gitta Sereny spent ten years in post-Second World War Germany and interviewed over 10,000 Germans, trying to find their guilt in the events leading up to the deaths of six million Jews. "Not a single person was willing to take even moral or emotional responsibility for what had happened," wrote a very perturbed Sereny. According to her, that attitude was as much to blame as Hitler's policies for the genocide.

Bengal can't afford a similar stand on Rizwanur. It can't hide behind the fig leaf of "It was suicide, and not murder". It doesn't matter if a frustrated Rizwanur threw himself before a train. You have to look at -- take a VERY HARD look -- the situation which prompted Rizwanur to take such a step. Not many years ago, another young man, a brother of mine, had chosen to end his life on the railway track. I know first hand the trauma, the turmoil that prompts one to take a step like that.

Earlier today, the West Bengal chief minister, facing flak from the media and under pressure from his own allies, ordered the transfer of the Calcutta police commissioner and four other police officials. For me, it is too less too late. Transfers are merely symbolic, and simply a politically expedient move. Albeit a step in the right direction, much more (read exemplary punishment) needs to be done, before Bengal or the West Bengal government can hold its head high.

About a hundred years ago, Rabindranath Tagore had returned his knighthood in protest, against the then Partition of Bengal. I have no fancy titles or medals to return to anyone. But if the West Bengal chief minister doesn't take prompt remedial action or if my beloved Bengal continues to live in denial on the Rizwanur issue, I might just give up something as dear to me as my life. My identity as a Baangali.

It is time Buddhababu and rest of Bengal realise that the difference between Modi and Todi should be more than just a letter in the English language.

Indian Village of Identical Twins Pose DNA Puzzle

2007-10-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Akbar, Tansen, Shashi Kapoor and Me

2007-10-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

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 -- a ghost written book on medical tourism for an American client -- I am glad "Mere paas Shashi Kapoor hai" for inspiration.

Trout curry, Vodka and a Slice of Green Chilly

2007-10-07T03:55:00.000-07:00

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.

A Little Bit of Insanity Wouldn't be Out of Place ...

2007-10-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

Khairlanji disturbs me, bothers me, at many levels.

Perhaps more than the killings in Khairlanji, it is the response to the violence, or the lack of it, that bothers me more. More than 24 hours after the incident no FIR was registered. Despite eyewitness accounts that the women were raped till they died and even after their death they were raped, the government dropped rape charges against the accused because of "lack of evidence".

There is no need to use words like "sensational" or "brutal" to describe what happened in Khairlanji. You can see all those adjectives and more in the eyes of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange.

Bhaiyalal's eyes still haunt me. As he talks to you, you can see his eyes replaying the events leading up to the killings. Everytime he rcounts the incident in a court or in front of the media, his wife and daughter get raped again, his sons get killed again.

I can't forget the look of terror on the face of the Dalit eyewitness who has to stand in an open court and testify against some of the most powerful men in his village -- a village where his entire family lives. More than once, he and his family have been threatened. After all the threats, the act of standing in that courtroom requires courage that you and me might find difficult to even imagine.

It is not just those eleven incarcerated men whose presence in the court scares the eyewitness. It is the entire village of uppercaste families, which has just three Dalit Buddhist families. Heavy police presence in the area has prevented any untoward incidents so far. But the police wouldn't be there indefinitely. Once the police leave, fear NGO activists in Bhandara and Nagpur, all those who have dared to depose before the court will have to bear the brunt of uppercaste wrath.

Today, entire Khairlanji suffers from collective amnesia. None of the residents can throw any light on how the entire Bhotmange family perished. No one in the village heard the screams of the Bhotmange boys when their legs were broken, or the cries of Surekha Bhotmange and her daughter Priyanka when they were raped.

It is difficult to calmly report from a place like Khairlanji, it is difficult to maintain objectivity. Having said that, it would be criminal to report calmly from Khairlanji. Your blood should boil by what you see. I think for far too long far too many of us have remained calm. We have calmly reported Khairlanjis, we have calmly debated over Khairlanjis and then we have calmly gone to sleep, to wake up next morning and calmly move on to perhaps other Khairlanjis.

Khairlanji sorely tempts you to take recourse to other means, means that go against the laws of the land. It provokes the latent arsonist in me. I want to jolt some people out of their calmness. I want to ask some people how calmly they would react to agricultural implements being shoved up the private parts of women in their families. I want to torch a few courthouses which go slow on such cases.

The sorriest, most sordid thing about Khairlanji is what happened there is NOT out of the ordinary as far as crimes against Dalit go. Over the past twenty years I have worked with, and known, some of the finest men and women who have produced top quality journalism in the most trying circumstances. I am a very proud member of this much-reviled Fourth Estate. But Indian mainstream journalism will have to collectively bear the cross of not reporting either the frequency or the savagery of anti Dalit violence.

As a journalist, I wouldn't describe myself of being either scoop-hungry or click-happy. But when I look back upon the past couple of decades, I have to confess there were times when I had been a silent spectator to acts of barbarism. While largely it is my fault, it is partly because of our training as a journalist to faithfully recount, to report what has happened and then de-involve oneself. That training is meant to ensure that one retains one's sanity even as one reports on the madness all around.

But Khairlanji, and other such incidents, do raise an important issue -- after seeing all this, what kind of a human being would, or even should, remain sane?

Of Dadu, Thakuma and B-52 bombers

2007-09-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

One winter afternoon sometime in the early 90's, my then boss and only guru in journalism, John Dayal asked me to accompany him to a funeral. An uncle of his had passed away. As the congregation broke up after the funeral and we headed back to our car, John had his hand on my shoulder and said : "Rajan, when you are in your thirties and forties one of the worst things you have to come to terms with is the deaths of people you have grown up with."

I was all of twenty six then, full of life, and didn't quite grasp the full import of what the man was saying. Over the past decade and a half, many things that John ever told me have come true. At funerals, at cremation grounds, at mortuaries, as people whose presence in my life I had always taken for granted left, there have been many occasions -- far too many for my liking, if you ask me -- when John's words echoed in my ears.

As a journalist I have learnt to report deaths with a detachment I am not terribly proud of. Yet there have been moments in my personal life when I have been glad that I have had that training (that is, if you can ever be trained for such a thing), for it has helped me to cope.

Today, sitting in my writing den, as I randomly flipped through my diary of memories, a date looked back at me. September 29th. No, no one close to me died on this day. In fact, it happens to be my grandfather's (my dad's dad) birthday. One of the first losses in life I had to cope with was that of my grandfather's.

Had been around today, he would have been 107 years old. He was born in 1900, my grandmother used to tell me. She said it in a manner as if it somehow made him special. Born a century later, he could have been a millenium baby, and Barkha Dut would have possibly interviewed my great grandparents on NDTV.

A bit special he was though, say those who knew him. He was a towering figure not just physically -- he was close to six foot tall (every generation we have been losing four inches). He was a poet, he was a writer, he was a playwright, he was a journalist and from what I have heard from my Dad and my uncles he was a great cook (I am told, he cooked a mean mutton).

He spent more than five years in jail in three different stints during India's freedom struggle. He was a senior functionary of the Congress party when Bengal was still undivided and even included Assam in its fold. The Britishers charged just two journalists under the Sedition Act. One was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who published Swaraj. And the other was my grandfather, Binod Bihari Chakraborty, who edited Janashakti. Oldtimers still talk about the tough line that Janashakti took against the British.

My first ten years of life coincided with his last ten. By then Partition, penury and Parkinson's Disease -- in that order -- had shrunk the once tall frame. His voice trembled when he spoke, his hands shook when he tried to hold something, he spoke slowly as if weighing his words carefully. But as I listened to him, even as an eight year old I realised I was on to a special thing.

He was the first, and until now one of the finest, storytellers I ever met. He told me stories of our native place, Sylhet. Of his childhood there, of the fresh air and plentiful fish in Surma river. He told me about books and food and politics. He told me about the time Gandhi and Nehru visited Sylhet. There was a twinkle in his eyes as he described Subhash Chandra Bose's visit to our native home in Sylhet. On other occasions, he would tell me stories of my father and my uncles, how precocious they were.

He rarely spoke about his life in Calcutta. But I remember, quite distinctly, 'Ami Boro Hobo' and 'Dakinir Chawr', two books that he mentioned and even bought for me. Speaking haltingly he told me how he had written the scripts for both the novels, but they were eventually published under the names of more famous authors. He never told me how that came about.

But even now I can sense the injustice he must have felt. He had written the scripts at a time when he was financially down. The books would have helped him and his family financially, but more than all that he had the look of a man who had been swindled. After all those years, the hurt was still there. And after all these years, it still bothers me.

One of these days, I would dearly love to sort out all his work and publish an anthalogy.

Great though my grandfather was-- as a storyteller and as a human being, he wasn't my first hero. That was my grandmother, my thakuma. As short as he was tall, she was every bit as tough as him and more. As a teenage sister to two brothers who were armed revolutionaries, my thakuma proved her toughness (and her loyalty to their cause) by spending a night alone in the local cremation ground.

"My brothers and their friends often hid their weapons at the cremation ground and me and a few other friends of mine were asked to look after the cache", she would tell me nonchalantly. I sat there, all of nine years old and wide-eyed, picturing my thakuma in the dead of the night , in a cremation ground, holding a revolver in her hand. I felt so excited as if I was the one who was holding the pistol.

After her marraige to my grandfather, she converted to the cause of Gandhi and non-violence. She took part in the non-co-operation movement against the British and was jailed for over six months. First in Sylhet, when my grandfather was incarcerated and then in post-partition Calcutta, she showed a lot of guts and held her nerve in very tough times to keep her flock of young children together.

If you ask me what is the most remarkably romantic thing I have ever seen in my life, it has to be my thakuma learning English in her later years so that she could read out loud the newspaper to my grandfather, whose failing eyesight deprived him of his biggest pleasure, reading. I remember going to school in the early seventies, as my grandparents sat on the verandah in the morning sun, my grandmother reading out stories of American B-52 bombers bombing Vietnam.

Those days there were fewer newspapers around, but somehow their worldview appeared far broader than what it is today. The front page of Hindustan Times often had the Vietnam War as the lead story. Happily, those were days when the importance of the story prevailed over its geographical location.

Those were some of the best years of my childhood, when my grandfather told me ghost stories and my grandmother made the yummiest most lipsmacking chholar daal with a dash of coconut. During those days had I been a journalist, I would not have had to be defensive, explaining to someone why the killing of a South Delhi couple was necessarily front page news, and the story of 15 people hacked to death by Ranbir Sena near Gaya deserved just three paragraphs on page 13.

I guess the world, and not just newspapers, was a lot less insular. And I was a nine year old without care in the world. I had not met John Dayal yet, and the loss that tormented me most was Jai's death in Sholaay.

Some fairytales Just Continue...

2007-09-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

If the one-day cricket World Cup was a sponsors' nightmare, then the inuagural Twenty20 World Cup was surely dreamt up in the heaven for cricket fans. A fortnight of exciting matches later, an India Pakistan summit clash. Cricket's version of Brazil versus Germany or Federer versus Nadal.

Does it get any better? Can it possibly get any better?

But it does. The fairytale continues. Brazil, oops, India wins. In the final over the tournament. With just three balls to go. And one scoring stroke separating the winner from the loser. On second thoughts, this one was possibly dreamt up in a bookies' heaven.

And what a fairytale it has been for India, twice on the brink of elimination. Done in by the weather against Scotland, then a tie against Pakistan. And then after a narrow loss against New Zealand, once again faced with early exit. Then four wins, including back to back ones against South Africa and Australia, ending in the title triumph against Pakistan. Add to that mix Dhoni's captaincy and his coolness, Yuvraj's six hitting, Pathan's comeback, RP Singh's bowling, Rohit Sharma's debut, and you are tempted to look for a stronger word than fairytale.

Purists, eat your heart out. Twenty20 is not just here to stay, but for ICC bosses, worried over dwinding revenues from the game save for the Indian sub-continent, it is a blessing from the Gods. And as the packed stadia in South Africa showed, the viwers simply love the newest and zanniest form of the game.

From the first ball, which the irrepressible Chris Gayle smashed to the fence, to the last which went up into the sky, and then was willed by a billion prayers into the hands of a gleeful Sreesanth, this tournament has had success written all over it.

The ads have kept coming and ESPN is laughing all the way to the bank. At Durban, at Johannesburg and Cape Town, the crowds kept coming in, music blared, cheer girls danced, beer flowed and sixes rained. Even after the home team crashed out, you couldn't wipe the smiles off the faces of the South African cricket officials -- they knew they were on to a good thing here.

Thirty years after what one day cricket did to Test cricket, the game's shorterst format is all set to do the same to cricket's shorter version. Contrary to the fears of many purists then, one-day cricket has, over the years, given the viewers a more exciting brand of the game. It has not killed Test cricket, in fact it has had a salutory effect on the most traditional form of cricket. Fielding has inmproved out of sight, as have scoring rates, in Test matches, and dreary draws have gone out of the window, reviving spectator interest.

And now Twenty20 is likely to do a similar favour to one-day cricket and even Test matches. Over the past two weeks, we have seen some great fielding, canny bowling in a format that so obviously favours batsmen, and of course clean and spectacular hitting.

Throughout the tournament, India has been electrifying in the field -- plucking catches out of thin air, effecting run outs with direct hits. It bears little resemblance to the side that less than a month ago appeared to be writing a coaching manual on how to grass sitters.

Look at Pakistan. The game's most temperamental side has been oh-so-cool. Shoaib Malik's young side has added considerable purpose to their innate panache. The result has been spectacular. Though Pakistan may mourn that they were just one scoring stroke away from the World Cup, they have already done enough to exorcise the demons that have haunted Pakistan cricket for almost a year now.

Some, if not a lot, of these skills that have been on display in South Africa are bound to be carried over to the other formats of the game as well.

The inaugural Twenty20 World Cup has already added to the game's lexicon a new cricketing term, the Ashraful, the scoop behind the wicket that the Bangladesh skipper, Mohammad Ashraful seems to have perfected. In fact, the Ashraful turned out to the tournament's last -- and possibly the most decisive -- shot, as Pakistan's Misbah-ul-Haq, who had done little wrong until then, attempted to play it but failed to clear fine leg, posted within the 30 yard circle.

Haq, Pakistan's find for the tournament, might rue the moment he chose to play that shot. But you can bet that in the days and months to come, in the galis and bylanes of Rawalpindi and Baroda, in cricket academies in Perth and Colombo, young men will try hard to perfect the Ashraful.

Simply because that is the way of this game. And there in lies the beauty of cricket.

Once India's Grain Basket, now a Basket Case

2007-09-21T02:35:00.000-07:00

"You stand on the highway here... and stop the next fifty young men who are travelling on that road. Ask them what do they want to do in life, and they'll all tell you : 'Hamara visa lagwa do' (please get us a visa)," says the village headman in Chhauni, on the outskirts of Hoshiarpur.

Punjab is losing its young men at an alarming rate. After one generation was wiped out by violence, another generation has packed its bags and is queuing up outside the visa offices. Canada is the preferred destination. The US and UK will do too. Thousands have applied to go to Australia and New Zealand as well.

The joke goes, when Neil Armstrong took his first tentative steps on Moon, he was a happy man. He was after all the first human being to reach Moon. And then he met Banta Singh. A surprised Armstrong asked : "When did you come here, Banta?" Banta, who was a cabbie, calmly replied : "Mai to partition de baad hi aa gaya si (I came here right after Partition)"

Point is, the Sikhs have been always known as enterprising travellers. But now they have been afflicted by a serious travel bug. As you go from cities to towns to mofussils to villages, one can witness this desire to move, to get out of India.

In the Doaba region, in Ludhiana, in Jalandhar, in Hoshiarpur, in town after town after town in Punjab, people are spending small fortunes to get out India. They want to leave India any which way they can. Travel agencies have mushroomed like a cottage industry in these towns, and there are numerous instances of gullible immigrants taken for a ride by fly-by-night operators.

In Punjab villages, most afternoons you see the strange sight of young men and women practising singing and dancing in open fields. They are members of the local bhangra (popular dance form) club, whose sole objective of existence is to garner an invite to perform in a foreign land.

There have been several instances of Bhangra clubs travelling to some cultural festival in Canada and England, and then some members of the troupe never come back. As the Punjab police investigate what is believed to be a rather elaborate network which is involved in human trafficking, many such Bhangra clubs are being investigated too.

Then few years ago there was the case of Jassi, a rather enterprising Sikh lady based in England, who would come to Punjab every few months and get married to a Sikh boy who was keen to settle outside. By the time she was caught, she had duped fourteen such men. A journalist friend who was covering the story later told me, most of the fourteen husbands were more concerned about their missed opportunity to live in England, than having their hearts broken by their much married spouse.

Ten years after the Malta boat tragedy, when a boat carrying hundreds of South Asian immigrants (almost half of them young men from Punjab) sank off the coast of Malta, peeple are still willing to risk life and limb to get out of the state. What worries you are the reasons why these people are so desperate to leave.

No big industry is coming up in the state. Unemployment rate is alarmingly high. School dropouts have gone up over the years. And what is not good news for the society at large is that a large number of the youth is on drugs.

From drugs sold across the counter to the more serious stuff perocured illegally, drug consumption is rather high in Punjab. "For some, availability of easy money (through foreign remittances from family members) is diriving them to drugs. Others are battling with stagnation and reaching out for drugs," explains a health worker in a de-addiction centre in Chandigarh.

The drug problem in Punjab is so serious that a few years ago the state juidiciary ordered that all heroin and other drugs confiscated by the Punjab police and kept in police warehouses as evidence should, in fact, be burnt. It is believed that the court feared some of the drugs stored in police warehouses were being sold in the open market.

"No one wants to stay here and farm and till his land," laments my farmer-turned-journalist friend. The brutal truth in the home of Green Revolution is that agriculture is not the most sought-after means of earning livelihood. Though many farmers benefitted financially from the Green Revolution, the prosperity affected the next generation in a different way.

The rich children of the hardworking farmers who ushered in a revolution in agriculture don't want to break their back, tilling the land. You can see the Green Revolution's Gen Next, dressed in Levi's and Reeboks and driving SUVs. It is evident they find agriculture unsexy. So, hired labour has moved into the state in lakhs over the past couple of decades to work in the fields.

The disease profile in this state has changed. Punjab now has diseases which were not there in the state even thirty years ago, says a senior doctor in Chandigarh. The exodus from the state has been matched by the influx of agricultural labour into the state from Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa. These people have brought with them diseases that were not heard of in Punjab earlier.

"Quality of life here (in Punjab) has declined over the years," explains my friend Khushwant, over drinks in the evening. "Though less than what it should be, money is still coming from agriculture, and the high volume of remittances from the state's large NRI population presents a picture of affluence. Truth is, the situation is rather dismal," he adds.

I ask him to elaborate. "Punjab has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country," he goes on. Over the past couple of decades, industrial development in the state never kept pace with agriculture. And now with agriculture in the decline, and the industry in doldrums, things are not looking good.

As successive state governments, both Congress and Akali, have played footsie with the masses, you can see why the state once known as India's grain basket has slowly and sadly been transformed into a basket case.

Dravid quits as Indian captain

2007-09-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Rahul Dravid has resigned as the Indian cricket captain. He has communicated to the Indian cricket board that he would like to be relieved, with immediate effect, from his responsibilities as the captain of both the Indian Test and one-day side. If he has cited any reasons for his resignation, neither him nor the cricket board has so far shared that information with the media.

For the past months without a cricket coach, the Indian team is now without a captain too. Thus Indian cricket is a bit, to borrow the recent controversial phrase of Ronen Sen, the Indian ambassador to the United States, like "a headless chicken".

For a man known for his impeccable timing, the timing of Dravid's latest decision has raised more than a few eyebrows. Less than three weeks from now, the world's best cricket team arrives in India for a seven-match one-day tour, which kicks off one of India's busiest cricketing seasons. Over the next few months , India host traditional rivals Pakistan for a Test series and a series of one-day matches, then leave for Australia for a full tour.

There were rumours after the early exit from the World Cup, and after Greg Chappell resigned, that Dravid may quit. But he stuck it out at a time when cricketer-bashing, with active encouragement from a frenzied Indian television media, had turned into a national pastime. He gutsed it out and led India to a rare Test series victory in England.

Dravid is percieved in certain quarters as "too soft". It is percieved that he allowed Greg Chappell to run roughshod over his team members. That he failed to carry the rest of his team with him, or even back them against Chappell. It is a perception that is bound to grow, given his sudden decision to quit.

Mind you though, the man has shown in the past he is unafraid of taking tough decisions. He calmly decided to declare the innings in Pakistan when Sachin Tendulkar was just six short of a memorable double hundred-- not an act you would associate with faint-hearted mortals. Luckily Indians went on to win the match, and not much was heard of the matter.

He also stuck by the beleagured Virender Sehwag through a troubled tour of South Africa. A lot of ex-players, a few selectors and even the chairman of the Indian selection committee Dilip Vengsarkar openly favoured Sehwag should be dropped from the Indian side. Dravid insisted oherwise, and persisted with the out-of-form Sehwag in all the matches.

Those who know Dravid say he is no softie. You don't get a nickname like "The Wall" by being soft, either as player or as a man.

But now The Wall says he has had enough and wants to concentrate on what he does best -- his batting. By his own lofty standards he has had two poor Test series, first against South Africa and now against England. Many say after three eminently successful seasons, this lean trot is how the law of averages catches up with you. Others insist, Dravid's captaincy worries are taking a toll on his batting.

As Dravid remains quiet about his reasons for quitting, speculation is rife. Those in the know of things claim that the methodical Dravid has been disillusioned by the lack of method in India cricket. In coach Greg Chappell, a man who believed as much in putting processes in place as Dravid, the latter had found an ally who shared his vision. But by the time India made an early exit from the World Cup and that much talked about vision for the future of Indian cricket lay in tatters, amidst allegations and counter- allegations between coach Chappell and a section of the Indian cricket team, Dravid is understood to have confided in the BCCI president Sharad Pawar that he wanted to quit.

He was persuaded otherwise by a very public endorsement of his captaincy. Clearly not for long, as his latest decision indicates.

More than the busy season ahead, what would worry the Indian cricket establishment is that there is no apparent sucessor to Dravid. No one you can immediately think of who can take up the high pressure job. For that reason alone, Sanjay Manjrekar, former Indian cricketer and now a commentator, has urged the chairman of selectors Dilip Vengsarkar to have a word with Dravid and ask him to reconsider his decision.

Though Dravid's letter hasn't yet been officially accepted by the Board, sources in the Indian cricket establishment indicated that Dravid is unlikely to change his mind. And the best option lay in looking for a new person or persons (in case of a split captaincy for Test and one-dayers) for the job.

There are the usual suspects, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.

Elevated to vice-captaincy before the World Cup amidst speculations that he was once again eyeing the top job in Indian cricket, Tendulkar might be the person the Indian cricket board turns to, to at least lead the Indian Test side. Tendulkar has been captain twice before, but neither times he appeared entirely comfortable in his role as skipper. Who knows, a more mature Tendulkar, in the autumn of his career, might surprise us pleasantly if given a chance.

One doubts though if he would be interested in captaining the one-day side. In an intervew to The Times, London, Tendulkar recently said that one-dayers were taking a toll on his body. An interview that quickly sparked off rumours that the great man might be contemplating retuirement from one-day cricket to prolong his Test career. Though in close to his best form in the one-day series against England, Tendulkar, now 34, appears unlikely to be around when the next World Cup takes place in 2011.

Ditto for his long time one-day opening partner Sourav Ganguly. Though in fine form in Tests as well as one-dayers, Ganguly, also 34, appears unlikely to be around when India play the next World Cup. Having said that, few would argue his credentials as captain. He is after all India's most successful Test captain ever. recent poll by a leading Indian television channel found 57 percent of the respondents voting for Ganguly as the next Indian skipper.

Despite a rather controversial end to his tenure as skipper, Ganguly in his early days showed both flair and spirit to extricate Indian cricket out of the matchfixing quagmire it had found itself in. He beat Australia at home in 2001 in one of the most memorable Test series in modern times, then for the first time led India to victory against Pakistan in Pakistan. He backed a bunch of young players, like Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh and turned them into match-winners. His bold gambits paid off as he turned Sehwag, until then a middle order batsman, into one of the most destructive opening batsmen in international cricket. Persuading Dravid to don the wicket keeping gloves in one dayers was another inspirational move. Suddenly India had a world class batsman at the crucial number seven slot.

But as his own batting form dipped, Ganguly struggled with his captaincy too. An ugly, very public spat with coach Greg Chappell led to his ouster from the side.

Since he fashioned a most memorable comeback last year against South Africa, he has been in fine form in both Tests as well as one-dayers. Now that Indian cricket again finds itself at crossroads, the Indian cricket board might turn to its most successful captain. But at 34, like Tendulkar, his best cricketing days are behind Ganguly.Many feel it will be a retrograde step to turn back to him for captaincy.

Two other players, touted as potential skippers in recent times, find themselves currently out of favour. Yuvraj Singh has found it difficult to command a place in the Indian middle order in Tests. And Virender Sehwag, on a comeback trail in the ongoing Twenty20 World Cup, is presently out of both the Indian Test and one-day sides.

Which leaves -- or, should we say, leads us to -- Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He has already been trusted with the captaincy of the Indian Twenty20 side. And could very well be the selectors' choice as the new captain for the Indian one-day squad. A dashing batsman, and one of the hardest hitters of the cricket ball, the wicket keeper from Jharkhand is known to have a mature head on his young shoulders. He can, and has tempered his explosive batting skills as per the demands of the situation.

Dhoni's selection as skipper of the Indian one-day side in the home series against Australia allows the selectors a breather before they have to decide on the Indian Test captain.

If Dhoni does well against the Australians, the selectors might hand him over the Test captaincy too. In case he doesn't, they would then have the option of choosing either Tendulkar or Ganguly. Or they might dip into their selectors' hat and come up with an entirely new name.

Which would be completely par for course, given the goings-on in Indian cricket.

Jarawas on a Road that Might Spell their Doom

2007-08-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

A Beach in an Uninhabited Island in Andamans

2007-08-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

A Slice of Paradise -- Where I Grew Up

2007-08-20T20:16:00.000-07:00

Radhanagar Beach in Havelock Island

2007-08-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

Sunrise in Katchal Island in Nicobar

2007-08-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

Chak De India

2007-08-18T20:43:00.001-07:00

On field, we have the Indian cricket team back to its winning ways. And on screen, we have an Indian women's hockey team making waves. These are good times indeed. When two of my major passions, cricket and Bollywood, are in such fine form, what else can you say but Chak De India?

After the overseas one-day win against the powerful South Africans, India was rather impressive in notching up a Test series victory against England. And please let's not quible over the margin of victory or the inexperience in English bowling ranks. You can only play against the side that is fielded against you, and not those who would have made the squad if they were not recuperating from injuries.

We must learn to celebrate our successes, and not find reasons to dilute our achievements. I can't ever remember reading a post-mortem of an Australian victory in which it was said that the Australian success was any less because it was achieved against a side that was perhaps not as strong as the Australians.

In an ideal world, Indian armchair cricket analysts would prefer we prepare greentops at home, and then beat the visitors, who, on account of either lack of form or owing to injury, should not be missing anyone of their star players. Later on we should visit other countries who would prepare pitches to suit the home side, and again under those circumstances, Indians would win. And then, and only then, we would celebrate our victory.

It is simple. A win is a win, just as a loss is a loss. Just as the hammering we took in the 2003 World Cup finals doesn't become any less palatable if you concede that a young Zaheer Khan was feeling nervous in the biggest match of his life, similarly you can't take away the success of an Indian side which made it to the finals after notching up eight successive wins.

Ok, enough about cricket. Now on to hockey, our sadly neglected national game, that is now the flavour of the month in Bollywood, thanks to the eminently watchable Chak De India.

I am not a great fan of Shahrukh Khan, yet I must confess his performance in Chak De was very, very good -- almost as good as he was in Swades. Very restrained, not at all over the top, and very effective.

I watched the movie with my 73-year-old Dad and 3-year old son for company. It was a first of sorts -- three generations of Chakravartys at the movies. Dad thought it was a bit too long and my son liked it the most. On 15th August, when my mother was explaning to Ritwik the three colours of the Indian flag, he gave her a wide grin and said "Chak De India". Pop patriotism is clearly here to stay and explains, to a great extent, why the movie has caught the public imagination.

I am sure everyone in the YashRaj camp would heave a huge sigh of relief with the production house's first big hit of the year, and even as Shahrukh Khan's performance earns him rave reviews, I think not enough credit for the film's success is being given to its young director Shamit Amin. He impressed everyone earlier with Ab Tak Chhappan. And Chak De just confirms we have another young, very talented director in our midst.

And while we are in the Chak De spirit, I think it's high time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just chucks out the Left. Congress may find itself short of majority in the Parliament if the nuclear deal issue came to a vote and may even lose power. But it is as good a time as any to call the Left bluff and seek the voters' mandate from a moral high ground. Methinks Congress would come back with a thumping majority and would not have do deal with the daily dose of Left blackmail.

For that to happen though Manmohan Singh would have to bite the bullet and go where no Congress leader has gone before. That is, give up on power that his party is only tenuously holding on to, and seek greater glory through the ballot box.

In 2004, still regarded by many as an "outsider", Sonia Gandhi took the smart decision of opting out of the prime ministerial race and immediately earned the nation's sympathy and approbation. The Indian prime minister, who enjoys serious goodwill as a man of integrity, can take a leaf out of that book, and call for fresh elections. I dare say he will find more supporters than he thinks he has.

For all his posturing, we all know Comrade Carat loathes elections almost as much as General Musharraf. The Left's expertise lies in post-poll manoeuvering and during elections the central leadership is overly dependent on Bengal to provide the numbers in the Parliament. This time the Bengal Left leadership, may not be as willing to toe the party line -- a difference of opinion that could cost the party at the hustings.

In any case, if we do have elections anytime soon, Messrs. Yechury and Karat can mull over the combine it would choose to support -- either the rightwing Hindutva forces led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the motley group which calls itself the Third Front, the only grouping which is perhaps even more opportunistic and politically irresponsible than the Left.

More I think of these mouthwatering combinations, more I see myself as a prospective Congress voter.

C'mmon Manmohan, Chuck De Left nu.

A Disturbing, Disconcerting Journey

2007-08-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

Finally I am back from a rather long, gruelling, educating, and in the end, humbling shoot.

Three weeks of criscrossing India, three weeks of Delhi belly, three weeks of conning yourself to believe today is going to be less hot and humid than yesterday. Three weeks of asking myself there must be another, even easier, way of making a living. Three weeks of bonding between three people that will hopefully last a lifetime or at least another such shoot.

Three weeks of watching and chronicling, from rather close quarters, the inequities of Indian caste system, an evil that is so difficult to uproot simply because it is so widespread.

They were also three most memorable weeks of meeting some awesome people working in the most awful conditions. Paul, Arun, Wilson, Manjula, Satish, Indira, Durgam and many, many others. Meeting any one of them is a very special experience. Meeting all of them in a span of three weeks was rather overwhelming.

At the end of such an experience, it is difficult to measure -- or even choose -- what are you taking home with you. For me, and I suspect with my two friends as well, it will be a pair of eyes that belong to a seven-year-old boy we met in Patna.

A boy who has my father's name and reminded me of my son the moment I set my eyes upon him. A boy who was locked up in a dark, stinking toilet for a whole day by his own school teacher because he, son of a musahar (rat eater), had dared to use the school toilet!

His innocent, haunting, traumatised eyes have followed me the past few weeks. Until someone somewhere finds an answer to the unasked questions those eyes haven't yet quite articulated, I would be ashamed to use words like "great" or "modern" to describe a nation that still condemns, simply by virtue of their birth, 160 million of its citizens to a life of untouchability.

Beedih Jalai Le....

2007-07-31T23:50:00.001-07:00

Bloggers' Bloc? Naahh....

2007-07-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

Though i wish it was. Or something sexy like Blogger Fatigue.

Truth is, between playing Florence Nightingale at home, with half my family -- and critically, the maid -- down with viral fever, and trying to set up a complicated shoot about an even more complicated, but nonetheless, very interesting subject (changing face of Dalits in India), I am often finding myself sleep deprived, and worse alcohol deprived. The latter seriously messes me up. I mean the lack of it, just in case you get the wrong idea.

I meant to keep this short and sweet. But just before I go, will leave any unsuspecting visitors to this blog and the usual suspects with these cheerful scraps of info I have been working with.

Every four hours a crime is committed against a Dalit in this country. Of every four gangrape victims, three are Dalits. The school dropout rate among Dalits is as high as 70 per cent. And simply because they happen to be at the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder, even those crimes which specifically don't target Dalits, end up hurting them the most.

This is not something a Dalit with a raging Ambedkar complex dreamt up. These are government of India statistics. I have never felt great about, or given any importance to, me being a Brahmin. Right now, though, I feel downright ashamed that I was born one.

On that cheery note, my dearest private yet so puiblic diary, I am off and will see you when I see you.

What's so hot about Lutyens Delhi

2007-07-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

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!

A Nice Line, An Interesting Thought...

2007-07-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

Bollywood is Praying for a Bull Run

2007-07-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

2006 would always have been a tough act to follow. A year when the box office sizzled with mega hits and a bunch of young, talented, new age film makers promised to take Bollywood where it had never gone before.

A year when Rakesh Roshan gave Indians their first superhero in Kkrishh and Karan Johar gave us his take on adultery in Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna. A year when Munnabhai met the Mahatma and Omkara met Othello, and Rahul Bose met a fully-clothed Malika Sherawat. A year that began with Rang De Basanti and ended with Dhoom 2. A year when the usually reclusive Aamir Khan had two releases, both superhits, and Farhan Akhtar let Shahrukh Khan mouth that memorable line : "Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin bhi hai."A year when Bollywood laughed all the way to the bank.

After a year like that, 2007 clearly had its task cut out. Yet there was an optimism in the air, after two happy years of box office business. But things haven't followed the script this year. As flops have piled up, hits have been few and far in between, with the notable exception of Guru, Namaste London, Shootout in Lokhandwala and Life in a Metro, and the sleeper hit, Bheja Fry.

The year started badly with Nikhil Advani's Salaam-e-Ishq bombing spectacularly at the box office. Then Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Eklavya won ciritcal acclaim, but was cold shouldered by the masses. And now Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, touted as YashRaj Films' showpiece of the year, has sunk without a trace. Shaad Ali who gave us Saathiya and Bunty Aur Babli, tried to be too cute with his new film, and ended up being acute.

Ram Gopal Verma's Nishabd floundered with Jia Khan looked sultry, but also terribly miscast as Amitabh Bachchan's love interest. Cheeni Kum came a couple of months later and proved the audience was ready top accept Big B wooing women half his age provided the movie was well directed. Tabu looked simply fabulous and acted even better.

Yet through this maze of hits and misses, few indicators have emerged that point the way towards the future of Indian showbiz. Spiderman 3 has been a whopping success across the country. Dubbed in Hindi, Tamil, Telegu and yes Bhojpuri, the friendly neigbourhood Spidey has done roaring business not just in the big metros but even in mofussil India. Shrek 3 is having a good run at the Indian box office too.

And the biggest moneyspinner of the year so far has been Shivaji, starring Rajnikant. In India alone the movie has so far done Rs. 95 crore worth business. The movie could well earn over Rs. 200 crores.

When you are in the business of selling dreams, optimism is often the only way forward. So after -- and despite -- a summer of discontent, Bollywood is looking towards a handful of movies slated for release during the second half of this year to shore up its bottomline.

Leading the biggies are Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya and Ashutosh Gowrikar's Jodhaa Akbar. Both are big budget extravaganzas in true Bollywood ishtyle.

Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh's son Ranbeer and Anil Kapoor's daughter, Sonam are being launched as romantic leads in Saawariya. Bhansali's lucky mascot, Salman Khan and Rani Mukherji also star in what is being touted as the year's biggest movie. The movie is scheduled for a Diwali release.

Hrithik Roshan and Aisharya Rai, who set the screen alight last year in Dhoom 2, come together in Gowariker's historical epic, Jodhaa Akbar. It remains to be seen if they can reproduce the same chemistry in a movie that Gowariker has described as a historical with a romantic angle.

Bollywood's biggest production house, Yash Raj films has three films slated for release this year -- Chak De India, starring the bankable Sharukh Khan, Aja Nach Le, the comeback vehicle of Madhuri Dixit and Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, starring Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukherji, Konkona Sen Sharma and Kunal Kapoor.

Chak De India, directed by Shamit Amin who impressed with Ab Tak Chhappan, is loosely based on the real life story of former Indian hockey goalkeeper Mir Ranjan Negi who let in seven goals as India went down to its arch rival Pakistan, 1-7 in the 1982 Asian Games. Negi never played for India again, but redeemed himself twenty years later as the coach of the Indian women's hockey team which went on to win the gold in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games.

Laaga Chunari Mein Daag is director Pradeep Sarkar's second movie after his critically acclaimed debut, Parineeta. The film is a remake of a 70s Rajesh Khanna-Mumtaz starrer, Aina. Rani and Konkona play daughters of Jaya Bachchan and Anupam Kher. It is the story of two sisters who move from their small town home to big bad Mumbai.

Like Pradeep Sarkar, choreographer Farah Khan is coming with her second film as director, Om Shanti Om, which pairs the stunning Deepika Padukone, daughter of former Badminton ace Prakash Padukone opposite King Khan. The story revolves round a reincarnated Shahrukh Khan.

Then there is David Dhawan's Partner, starring Salman Khan and Govinda. Katrina Kaif and Lara Dutta (two gorgeous women and two very good reasons why I should watch this, first day, first show) provide the eye candy. Govinda is confident that his off-screen partnership with director and long time friend David Dhawan and his on screen chemistry with Salman Khan will ensure the move is a big hit.

But the movies I am most looking forward to are Taare Zammen Paar, Gandhi, My Father and Blue Umbrella.

The story of a dyslexic child, Taare Zameen Par marks the debut of Aamir Khan as a director. It is co-directed by Aamir and Amol Gupte who has written the film's story. After Lagaan, Taare... is Aamir's second home production. It is the reclusive actor's only release this year.

Actor Anil Kapoor is launching his production house with Gandhi, My Father, a film about Mahatma Gandhi's personal life, his relationship with his eldest son Harilal Gandhi, played by Akshaye Khanna. The buzz is Khanna has come up with a performance of a lifetime.

The movie, directed by Feroz Abbas Khan, veteran theatre director, is perhaps the first one to look closely into Mahatma Gandhi's personal life. I have been a great fan of the director ever since I watched his Tumhari Amrita, an unforgettable theatrical experience. It remains to be seen whether he proves as adept at handling films as he is with theatre.

Rounding off the list of my favourite films is Blue Umbrella. The movie has already done the festival circuit, winning critical acclaim for director Vishal Bhardawaj and is now slated for commercial release in the latter half of this year. Also known as Chatri Chor, the film is a heart-warming adaptation of a novella of the same name by Ruskin Bond. It stars old Bhardwaj favourite, Pankaj Kapur, in a lead role.

The fare for the next six months promises to be interesting, a potpourri of comedies, period dramas, remakes and typical Bollywood extravaganzas. Only a crystalball gazer could predict their fate at the box office. Lesser mortals like me will just faithfully queue up, Friday, first show.

Search for India's Condom Man

2007-06-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

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.

When She Speaks, I Want to Listen ...

2007-06-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

I hadn't read this interview when it was first published. Then, a while ago, while randomly surfing the net, I came across this interview of Arundhati Roy in Tehelka. An interview from December 2005. I have never quite fathomed what Arundhati Roy's politics is. I have been part of discussions on the same subject, at times even contributed to those discussions, without knowing much about what I was talking about. That is something journalism teaches you anyway. The ability to BS in an engaging manner. But this interview of Ms. Roy, I found interesting and at places, like her prose, almost mesmerising. Posted below are excerpts from that freewheeling interview.

....In India we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between corporate capitalism and feudalism — it’s a deadly cocktail. We see it unfolding before our eyes. Sometimes it looks as though the result of all this will be a twisted implementation of the rural employment guarantee act. Half the population will become Naxalites and the other half will join the security forces and what Bush said will come true. Everyone will have to choose whether they’re with “us” or with the “terrorists”. We will live in an elaborately administered tyranny....

...Those who understand and disagree with the repressive machinery of the State are more or less divided between the Gandhians and the Maoists. Sometimes — quite often — the same people who are capable of a radical questioning of, say, economic neo-liberalism or the role of the state, are deeply conservative socially — about women, marriage, sexuality, our so-called ‘family values’ — sometimes they’re so doctrinaire that you don’t know where the establishment stops and the resistance begins. For example, how many Gandhian/Maoist/ Marxist Brahmins or upper caste Hindus would be happy if their children married Dalits or Muslims, or declared themselves to be gay? Quite often, the people whose side you’re on, politically, have absolutely no place for a person like you in their social, cultural or religious imagination. That’s a knotty problem… politically radical people can come at you with the most breathtakingly conservative social views and make nonsense of the way in which you have ordered your world and your way of thinking about it… and you have to find a way of accommodating these contradictions within your worldview...

...In India, the political anti-establishment can be socially very conservative (Bring on the gay Gandhians!) and can put a lot of pressure on you to become something which may not necessarily be what you want to be: they want you to dress in a particular way, be virtuous, be sacrificing, it’s a sort of imaginary and quite often faulty extrapolation of what the middle class assumes the ‘people’, the ‘masses’ want and expect. It can be maddening, and I want to say like Bunty in Bunty aur Babli, ‘Mujhe yeh izzat aur sharafat ki zindagi se bachao…’ There are all kinds of things that work to dull, leaden your soul…to weigh you down…

RSS and the Business of Pleasure

2007-06-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

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 had its nose bloodied at the hustings in Uttar Pradesh. And even within the party, the blame was laid at the door of the posterboy of the Sangh, Rajnath Singh, the pracharak (campaigner) who had made it to the highest party office in the BJP.

As if the flak over the UP debacle wasn't 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.

Welcome to the "Token" Republic

2007-06-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

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!

My Brother, My Friend ...

2007-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

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 rcommended 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 blood once again began to move through my veins.

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 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, and for, 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 five years. For five 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 a 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.

Trouble Down This Road

2007-06-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

Last month, I had posted a blog here about how the Jarawas, a Stone Age tribe, of whom just 250 survive today, are facing extinction in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, off the eastern coast of India. The Jarawas have been declared as one of the three most endangered tribes in the world by Survival International, a London-based tribal rights group. A road built through the land earmarked for the Jarawas is forcing human contact on the Jarawas, exposing them to a lifestyle they are not used to and not trained to cope with. A contact that anthropologists fear would eventually lead to the extinction of one of the oldest tribes in the world. Now, a top official of the government of India has echoed similar fears in an article in The Hindu, one of the leading Indian newspapers. Meena Gupta was till recently, Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India and was recently appointed as Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests. Here's what she has written :

THE deprivation of a name, the loss of a homeland, the extinction of a tribe — this seems to be the ominous progression of one of the oldest extant hunter-gatherer tribes in India, indeed, possibly, in the whole world. ‘Ang’ is what they call themselves, but the world knows them as the Jarawa, the Palaeolithic tribe that lives deep in the jungles of the Andaman Islands.

The word ‘Jarawa’, in the language of the Great Andamanese (another Stone Age tribe of the Andamans) means ‘the stranger’ or ‘the outsider’. To the Andamanese, the Jarawa were outsiders; a different people, albeit of the same Negrito stock and inhabiting the same islands. It is unfortunate that this name — rather than Ang meaning ‘humans’, which the Jarawa use for themselves — should become the name by which we know them.

Total isolation

The Jarawa are one of the five Stone Age tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which have lived in almost total isolation in the dense tropical forests of the islands, and have survived virtually unchanged up to modern times. They are hunter-gatherers, who do not practise even rudimentary agriculture, wear no clothes, shun contact with outsiders, and are fiercely independent. Their physical appearance — dark, almost ebony skin, closely curled woolly hair, and negrito features — are quite distinct from the population that originates from the Indian mainland and mark them as a race apart.

Because of their small numbers (240 persons as per the 2001 census, 317 persons as reported by the Andaman administration in 2007) and their being nomadic deep forest dwellers, they are virtually unknown as a community to the rest of India and are only a name even to the inhabitants of the islands.

The plight of the Jarawa has, in recent years, generated a lot of interest because of an almost sudden change in their behaviour in the late 1990s — from avoiding all contact with the outsider to actively seeking such contact. This change, which began in 1997, has heightened their vulnerability and threatened their way of life.

The single activity that has had the most significant, and adverse, impact on the lives of the Jarawa is the construction of the Andaman Trunk Road. Running in a south-north direction from Port Blair, the administrative headquarters in South Andaman to Maya Bunder in the north, the ATR was started in 1958 with the very laudable intention of linking Port Blair with the several settlements scattered in the middle and north of the Andaman Islands.

These settlements, which consisted entirely of people who migrated from the mainland (refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan, other people who had migrated in search of better opportunities, descendants of convicts and jailors brought by the British) were either consciously established by the administration or, more rarely, had sprung up on their own.

Established at great human and financial cost, they are now flourishing habitations, with the people conscious and vociferous about their rights. Before the construction of the Andaman Trunk Road, these habitations were connected to Port Blair (and to the mainland) only by sea routes. With the completion of the ATR (an endeavour that took approximately 40 years), a direct and unimaginably convenient land link was established between the settlements and Port Blair.

The trouble was that the ATR sliced right through territory that was, until then, the exclusive and undisturbed preserve of the Stone Age, hunter-gatherer Jarawa tribe. In fact it was because this territory was, by and large, undisturbed that the Jarawa had been able to survive with their way of life almost unchanged over centuries. The incursion into their territory, through the means of the ATR, exposed them to modern civilisation and its baneful influences like tobacco, alcohol, unfamiliar foods and diseases against which they had no immunity, which could together take them to the brink of extinction. What was a boon for the settlers, therefore, could very easily sound the death knell for the Jarawa.

Alarm bells about the impact of the ATR on the Jarawa should have started ringing long ago. When the road first started, sensibilities about the environment and human rights and the different rights of tribals were low. Therefore creating a road through someone else’s homeland, destroying virgin forests was not a matter of great concern.

Opposition

But over the 40 years or so it took to construct the ATR, consciousness of environmental issues and human rights has grown by leaps and bounds. However when the rights of a tiny group of people clashes with those of a much larger one, it is usually the more clamorous and stronger voice that is heard. And that is what has happened in the case of the ATR.

There was certainly no dearth of opposition from the Jarawa. Starting with the killing of the labourers building the road, to shooting with bow and arrows at buses and other vehicles when they started to ply on the road, the Jarawa made their objection to the violation of their homeland and space quite clear. That the administration continued with their efforts could be seen as an act of valour and determination in the face of odds or callousness and insensitivity towards the rights of weaker people depending on the point of view.

The Jarawa became the subject of a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Calcutta High Court in the 1990s with the High Court issuing an order to frame a policy for the Jarawa. The Jarawa Policy was prepared as a consequence, in consultation with a number of experts, and was adopted on December 21, 2004.

The Jarawa Policy dwells not inconsiderably on the ATR and its impact on the Jarawa. It recommends, among other things, that the traffic on the road be restricted to essential purposes (which have been specified) and allowed to move only during restricted hours and in convoys. It repeatedly stresses that all manner of interaction between the Jarawa and the travellers, particularly tourists, be prevented. Very importantly, the policy talks of encouraging and strengthening facilities for travel by boat and ship. The policy also talks of removing encroachments in the Jarawa territory on priority basis, and ensuring that no such encroachment of non-tribals take place.

No implementation

In the two and a half years since the Jarawa policy has come into being, little has been done to implement its recommendations, particularly the more difficult ones. In defence of the administration, it must be pointed out that the inaction was not, perhaps, deliberate. The Jarawa policy was adopted on December 21, 2004. Just five days later, on December 26, the devastating tsunami struck the islands. The Jarawa were not affected by the tsunami, so the administration, whose entire attention got diverted to the affected areas, had little time to think of the Jarawa, apart from verifying that they had not suffered any loss.

The Jarawa policy has thus remained, by and large unimplemented. No attempt has been made to explore alternate sea routes to link the places that the ATR goes to. Little effort has been made to curtail the number of vehicles plying on the road. The average number of vehicles plying on the ATR annually shows a steep increase from 17,179 in 2001 to 35,798 in 2006. The number is poised to exceed 40,000 in 2007.

Convoys of vehicles leave eight times a day from Jirkatang and Middle Strait — the two opposite ends of the portion of the ATR that runs through the Jarawa reserve — with an average of 120 vehicles per day. And despite explicit stipulations of no contact with the Jarawa, vehicles conveniently break down or stop on one pretext or the other on the portion of the road inside the Jarawa reserve to allow tourists to see and sometimes interact with the Jarawa.

The subject of the Jarawa was again studied by a sub-group of experts and officials, set up in January, 2006 by the National Advisory Council, to examine inter alia institutional arrangements for protecting the Jarawa and to suggest various measures to ensure greater protection. By January 2006, the Jarawa policy adopted in December 2004 had not had a fair chance at implementation. Just a year had passed, and the tsunami and its aftermath had grabbed all attention and resources. The sub-group studied various aspects including the notified Jarawa policy and its implementation and made several recommendations.

Regarding the ATR, it has suggested that the portion that runs through the Jarawa reserve eventually be closed, after alternate arrangements for transportation by sea or air were put in place. This means a further delay since very little action has been taken to explore other arrangements. Unless a firm decision to close the ATR (i.e. the portion inside the Jarawa reserve) is taken, the administration will continue to drag its feet on alternate routes.

Other alternatives

Despite the Supreme Court having taken such a decision in 2002, the administration has filed a review petition, which is yet to be finalised. It is easily forgotten that before the completion of the ATR (which is fairly recent), sea routes were the only alternative.

Even today, for all other islands, e.g. Car Nicobar, Havelock, Great Nicobar, other islands of the Nicobar group, Little Andaman and many others, transportation is only by boat or ship and, very occasionally, by helicopter. Therefore the people living in North and Middle Andaman can hardly claim that they will be specially inconvenienced.

Almost all the officials who work or have worked closely with the Jarawa, whether of the Andaman administration or the Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti, a registered society set up to look after matters relating to primitive tribes, privately aver that closure of the ATR is essential to reduce contact with the Jarawa and protect them from abrupt induction into the 21st century.

However, other officials strongly claim that closure of the ATR, even a portion of it, is impossible since it is a lifeline for the northern settlements. The attitude of these latter officials is understandable, but unsupportable, if one keeps the future of the Jarawa in mind. It is apparent they are thinking not of the Jarawa but of the other inhabitants. For these inhabitants, other alternatives are, or can be, made available.

For the Jarawa, who virtually have their backs against the wall, there is no alternative, and time is fast running out.

More egg on the BCCI face!

2007-06-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, a friend of mine had likened the goings-on in the Indian cricket board to a drunken couple performing a waltz -- one step forward, two steps backward. We have just seen another stand out performance from the BCCI, to take the dancing metaphor a step forward, now that Ford has refused to tango.

That Ford fellow is rather smart. He sussed up the situation pretty quickly during his brief stay in India on Saturday and his instinct for self-preservation must have prevailed over the lure of, despite its obvious pressures and considerable distractions, taking up what must be one of the hottest jobs in international cricket today.

On the face of it, Ford had seemed an excellent choice for the job. His record was second only to the Australian John Buchanan, among post-1999 coaches. He was a low-key person, something of a welcome quality in Indian cricket right now, after the departure of the oh-so-media-saavy Greg Chapell. But all that's water under the bridge now. For, as Sunil Gavaskar said yesterday, the Board is back to square one.

Ford's refusal to take up the Indian coaching job, less than 48 hours after the dramatic announcement of his appointment by the BCCI, is only the latest in a series of eminently avoidable situations the Indian cricket board finds itself. Ford's snub comes in the wake of Nimbus walking out of a deal to cover the Afro-Asian cricket series and Zee Network's decision to cancel the contract to telecast offshore cricket matches involving India.

Then Kapil Dev, honorary director of the National Cricket Academy, and Kiran More, the last chief selector of Indian cricket, have embarrassed the BCCI by associating openly with TV moghul Subhash Chandra's proposed cricket league. More who was not too long ago accused of seeking bribe to select a player rather bluntly told a TV channel the other day : "Even the petrol I use to drive to the Mahrashtra Cricket Association's office is paid by me." Not very haqppy days for the Indian cricket board, eh?

A potentially embarrassing, if not downright explosive, situation could still emerge out of the protracted contracts negotiations. Though the Board is understood to have offered more money to the players in the form of higher television revenue share, the players are almost unanimously opposed to the cap on endorsements -- a decision that was taken in the first place without much reason and more as a populist step to convince the Indian cricketing public and the Board's eventual paymasters that the BCCI could act tough with non-performing players.

There is also the little matter of protecting the interest of the Board's official sponsors as opposed to the sponsors of individual players. Adidas has already taken Nike to court over a sponsorship row involving Sachin Tendulkar. Surely the last hasn't been heard on that matter. An ineffective BCCI would in the days to come be open to more such litigations as sponsor interests clash. Not surprisingly the Adidas case, I'm told, is being watched with considerable interest in the Indian corporate world.

Meanwhile, my friend who had come up with the drunken couple performing a waltz one liner came up with yet another gem last night to describe the Ford fiasco.

He said, more egg on the face wouldn't bother the Indian cricket mandarins. He said : "I am sure one of these days someone like Lalit Modi, the current Mr. Moneybags of Indian cricket, would grandly announce that with so much of egg around, the Indian cricket board has decided to get into the poultry business!"

A Midsummer Day's Dream

2007-06-11T03:06:00.000-07:00

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 ...

In Defence of the Self and More!

2007-06-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Anonymous,

I liked Cheeni Kum "just because". I am 43, remarkably superficial, a journalist by design if not training, so I am conditioned not to look at things too deeply.

And no I didn't think the movie to be "psychologically realistic" or "shockingly refreshing" or "morally complex". I just liked the movie, yaar.

I grew up watching some really terrible movies, countless number of them, in fact. And for years went to movies with very little expectations. I sat in dark theatres and wished for good photography, slick editing, witty dialogues, oh and the occasional nice story.

I found a bit of all that in Cheeni Kum which is what got me excited. I remember watching Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum and smiling most contentedly at one point when Kajol asks Shahrukh "Aaj jaldi ghar aa jana" and Shahrukh enquires "kyon?". Kajol has this lovely smile on her face and says "Aiwayi". That dialogue made my day, redeemed the movie in my eyes. As I said it takes little things to make me happy about a Hindi movie.

Ditto for Cheeni Kum.

All I see in a movie like Cheeni Kum which I like is that the gap between Indian movies and Hollywood is narrowing. It’s good entertainment for two and a half hours. And ,speaking a tad more personally, I am not exactly averse to the idea of seeing older men woo women far younger than them. It DOES give me hope.

As for older women and younger men. In self defence, all I can say is I watched 'Notes on a Scandal', quite loved the movie, and couldn't find any moral outrage within me about a teacher falling for a fifteen year student.
Looking back, I also quite enjoyed watching The Graduate and The Summer of 42. And please don't hold it against me that I was in my teens when I watched both the movies.

A film maker likes nothing more than a viewer identifying with the movie's protagonist. With someone like me that has happened over the years. I remember watching Sholaay as a eleven year old with a brother two years older than me. When Amitabh dies, and Veeru enters Gabbar's den, shooting down his henchmen on sight, my cousin broke into spontaneous applause and said : "Shabash Veeru, aur maaro".

From mid seventies to early eighties, I WAS Vijay. In Shaan, I was the one who smashed open the door to the villains' den and said : "Mai hamesha apne dushmano ko ghar me ghus ke marta hoo". And in Kabhi Kabhie I was the one who sang "Mai pal do pal ka shayar hoon".

It was also easier to identify as a young man with both The Graduate and The Summer of 42. I found the idea of a young man seduced by an older woman quite "hot". I can't quite honestly say I find the idea as appealing today.

On the other hand, one does get this nice feeling watching Bachchan wooing Tabu. Having said that, I must insist, plausibility plays an important role here. Bachchan and Tabu look good sharing screen space. There is a certain chemistry between the two.

Thus the real issue here, according to me, is not of the appeal of an older man falling for a younger woman, or vice versa. Point is, whether you can carry it off on screen. In Nishabad, the same premise took a beating, yet for me it works in Cheeni Kum.

Of Ghalib and review of a review of Cheeni Kum

2007-06-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

Mat pooch ke kya haal hai mera tere peechhe,

Tu dekh ke kya rang hai tera mere agey,

Baazi chahe atfaal duniya mere agey,

Hota hai shabboroz tamasha mere agey...

Someone whom I haven't seen for a few blue moons sent me the above lines. Now, I usually need an interpreter for Ghalib. I have one local interpreter and another I call up in New York. These lines reached me without any help, though. I guess that's why some of my more sensible friends swear on the genius of the fellow. Today he made me smile and write about a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed watching ten-odd days ago.

I almost didn't see Chini Kum. I was so discouraged by Khalid Mohammad's review of the movie. And then my fondness for movies got the better of me. Thank God for that! I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie. Along with Metro, it happens to be my favourite movie of the year so far.

I am no critic and finer points of movie-making escape me regularly. But I found the setting interesting, the story plausible and the acting of Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu (particularly the latter) very very good. All of which made for a most entertaining two and a half hours.

Khalid Mohammad in his review exhorts Amitabh Bachchan to act his age and give up on his 'Sexy Sam' (obvious reference to his character in Kabhi Alvida Na Kahna) image. Sixtyfour year olds cavorting with women half their age stretches viewers' credulity, avers Mohammad. Personally I thought it somehow offended Mr. Mohammad's sensibility.

At some point in the movie, Amitabh tells Paresh Rawal : "You are jealous of me. You cannot imagine someone my age can be happy, can be looking forward to new things in his life. You had me slotted in a particular image and now you are upset that you had presumed wrongly." Bachchan could have been talking to Khalid Mohammad.

I thought Big B and Tabu looked rather good on screen. Two mature inelligent people who made mature intelligent conversation. They looked far better than, for instance, the pairing of Dharmendra and Nafisa Ali in Metro.

Cheeni Kum is very different from Nishabd. In both the films Big B is seen being attracted to women far younger than him. But that's where the similarities end.

Admittedly Jia Khan and the Big B looked a complete mismatch in Nishabd. But that was not just due to their age gap. The difference between Tabu and Jia is not just in their years, but also in their histrionic abilities. Tabu is a classy actress and methinks one of the most under-rated actress of our times. She has two national awards in her kitty -- for Chandni Bar and Astitva, should have won another for Maqbool, if you ask moi.

I liked Cheeni Kum because of the dialogues. I am sucker for intelligent dialogues and there were a fair number of them in this movie. I loved it when the chef remarked to his colleague: "Tere aur Maya ke beech koi hai. Tere daant." And thoroughly enjoyed Tabu sending Amitabh on a jog, after he had held her hand.

Now I remember the connection between Ghalib's lines and Cheeni Kum. Both made me smile.

A Global Sikh!

2007-05-31T05:15:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2003, I was commissioned by BBC Radio to do a couple of stories out of Punjab. After the obligatory interview in Chandigarh with the state's political bosses, a friend suggested I meet a rather resourceful Keenu farmer in Hoshiarpur, who was also writing for The Times of India. My interest was piqued -- a farmer and a journalist.

On a dusty summer afternoon as I drove into the sprawling Keenu farm, I was greeted by this genteel, soft spoken, young man. We introduced ourselves. He said, with a smile, "I am Khushwant... Khushwant Singh." And then quickly added, "No kin of my more famous namesake."

He went to the kitchen and got me a tall cool glass of fruit juice. And then very seriously proceeded to guide me who should I speak to for my story. He was most generous with his contacts, and arranged for me to stay the night in his lovely farmhouse.

That evening I made acquaintance with a different Khushwant. He was more jovial, cracked one bad joke after the other, started slowly with his whiskey and then by the end of a long evening had drunk me under the table. Late that week as I drove back to Delhi, I realised Khushwant was most unlike any farmer I had met, and even more unlike any journalist I had known.

After that first meeting, we often spoke on the phone. We would discuss stories, discuss the relative decline in recent years of the states we came from, Bengal and Punjab. He spoke about Punjab agriculture and Punjab journalism with equal passion and considerable knowledge. We spoke about Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh. And for good measure, we discussed at length how exotic Punjabans and Bangalans were. Conversations with Khushwant have always been as varied as the man is.

Over the past four years as he has grown to be one of my better friends, I have met him many times and almost each time I have seen a different side, a new facet of the man. I have seen him upset, even angry about farmer suicides and female foeticides. He fumes about the rising drug consumption in the state and the high unemployment rate. I have seen him covering Jassi, the serial wife from London who duped a dozen odd men into marrying her, and breaking into laughter as he lapsed into Punjabi : "O mainu gaaliya kad rahi si (she was abusing me)".

Then one day he called me from Hoshiarpur and made this grand announcement, "Oye puttarr, I have decided to write a book." He paused, let the news sink in and then added : "A book on Sikhs." Now, I have been a journalist for some years and have heard a few book-writing announcements in my time. In a good year, I myself am overcome, at least a couple of times, to finally pen that masterpiece which I know is churning inside me.

So I didn't take this threat very seriously. Even though, there were a few conversations after that in which he outlined how he planned to travel to different parts of the world and meet members of the Sikh community who had gone on to make a difference to the lives of the people they have lived amongst. As I learnt about the ambitious travel plans, I grew more sceptical about the literary enterprise.

That is, until one day I had this urge to spend a few days in the hills, and called Khushwant seeking his company. "But I am off to UK on Saturday," he said. "I have these interviews lined up for the book," he said over the phone. Suddenly I realised the sardar was serious about the book.

Rest, as they say, is history. I have been privy over animated phone calls and excited face-to-face conversations how interesting Fauja Singh was, and how difficult it was to initially meet Gurinder Chaddha. Over the past year and a half, the man has lived and breathed his book. Last year, I went to Hoshiarpur to watch the World Cup soccer finals together on TV, this year disconsolate over India's early exit from the World Cup I called him up, looking for emtional support. On both occasions, all he wanted to do was discuss his damned book.

And there have been times when I have spotted a mistake or two in one of the chapters he had sent me and I called him up to discuss it. From the other end, an excited voice asked "Dhoom 2 dekhi hai? Both Ash and Bipasha look hot, yaar."

Oh well, that's Khushwant Singh for you. Farmer and journalist. And now a writer. Its still early days to comment on the book, but if it is anything like its author, it should be one heck of a read.

Go smell the coffee, Rahul!

2007-05-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

Seriously, guys, I have often wondered, more than once, if I missed my true calling by not becoming a sports journalist. My first article in journalism was a profile of the stylish New Zealand batsman Martin Crowe, just before the 1987 World Cup of cricket.

There was both opportunity and more-than-occasional desire to write more on one of my more favourite subjects, but I chose not to do anything with those opportunities. There is a lot going for a career spent chasing cricket stories and watching interesting matches all over the cricketing globe. A career that could so easily have been, but, alas, never was!

On the other hand, given the passions that the game rouses in me, it is just as well that I didn't go onto become a cricket scribe. Or else, the most frequently mentioned medical event of this blogspace-- the cardiac arrest of yours truely that happened last year -- would pehaps have happened a tad earlier.

It is just not the cricketing actions of the Boys in Blue that cause such turmoil in my heart, though it must be said that the side's oft-demonstrated ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of near-certain victory does play havoc with one's cardiovascular system and would perhaps even be behind the odd ulcer that might be insidiously growing inside me.

Methinks the more serious damage to my health, over the years, has definitely been caused by the way the game is run (or not) in this country. Baffling team selections, inexplicable persistence with some players while the more deserving were cast aside, often impacted on my bloodstream with serious consequence.

As I sit to pen this, not everything feels as it should inside me, and my heart can be caught casting an accusatory glance at the TV set, where India has just bashed the living daylights out of Test cricket's favourite punching bag, Bangladesh.

You would think my latest lament about how things are in Indian cricket is rather poorly timed, coming as it does after the somewhat spectacular performance by the B-in-B (only the first instance in the history of Test cricket where the top four batsmen have gone on to score hundreds) in what is surely a revenge series if there ever was one.

I just can't help but feel a great opportunity to rebuild has been lost. After the much-publicised and not-entirely-unexpected (that is, if you go strictly by cricketing form and not hype) early exit from theWorld Cup, the Bangladesh tour provided an ideal opportunity to put the Indian cricket house in order.

Indian skipper Rahul Dravid's decision to go in with five specialist bowlers, and thereby restricting the number of specialist batsmen to five, has evidently worked. But the success of this strategy or for that matter Tendulkar's 36th and 37th Test hundreds or Zaheer Khan's first five wicket haul in four years has to be seen in proper perspective. That these successes have been achieved against a side that has notched just a solitary Test win in 44 matches.

Given the fact that far more sterner test lies in wait, playing England in England and then hosting Pakistan, the five-batsmen strategy makes little sense.It is at best a temporary strategy that can only be tried against a weak side like Bangladesh. I can't imagine India playing in Lord's with just five specialist batsmen plus Dhoni, or for that matter, taking the field against Pakistan without six specialist batsmen.

Even the best cricket team inthe world, Australia plays with six specialist batsmen, this despite the redoubtable Adam Gilchrist at the number seven spot. As Steve Waugh once said, Gilchrist would perhaps be as effective at the number six slot, but the sight of him walking in at number seven often breaks the bowling side's morale.

Ditto for Clive Lloyd's strategy of the four-man pace attack. You would think Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall, between them, would dsmantle most batting sides, but Lloyd always wanted the extra firepower of the big bird Joel Garner, in addition to Roberts, Holding and Marshall. Chetan Chauhan, long time opening partner of Sunil Gavaskar, once told me, after one has faced a hostile opening spell from Roberts and Holding, then handled the liquid pace of Marshall, one of the most discouraging and hearbreaking sights for a batsman was to see the big Joel Garner loosening up at deep fine leg, preparing to bowl.

More recently, Sourav Ganguly's decision to use Dravid as a wicket keeper in one-dayers allowed India to go in with seven batsmen. Not many bowlers in the world enjoy the prospect of bowling against a side where the redoubtable Dravid comes in as the seventh batsman. After that famous 326-run-chase at Lord's in 2003, the then English captain Nasser Hussain said : "This Indian side is packed with batsmen, they just keep coming at you."

That is the whole idea. To keep coming at you. Ask the Australians and they would tell you, it intimidates most opposition on most days.

Instead, India opts for the extra cushion of a fifth specialist bowler against Bangladesh. What should be a matter of serious concern for India is if five bowlers are needed to bowl out Bangladesh, how are four expected to deliver the goods against far better batting line-ups? Logically, wouldn't it be a better idea to practice taking 20 wickets with four spcialist bowlers against Bangladesh, than one fine day asking the bowlers to do the same against England, South Africa or Australia?

Even more worryingly, Dravid's much-touted five-batsman strategy ensures one of India's finest Test batsmen VVS Laxman remains benched, and devoid of crucial match practice before the more important business against England begins. Also one gets the feeling, more than just strategic thinking was behind Laxman being dropped (unlike a Tendulkar or a Ganguly, he doesn't even get to hide behind the fig leaf of being "rested") from the side against Bangladesh.

A cricket board that has perfected the art of taking symbolic stands rather than taking any concrete measures, had earlier "rested" the senior pros Tendulkar and Ganguly in the one-dayers against Bangladesh. Though it was oficially denied, the move was seen by many as a slap on the wrists of the duo who allgedly didn't pull their weight in the disastrous World Cup campaign.

As Greg Chapell quit and Dravid appeared unwilling to lead the side, the Indian cricket board made a characteristically symbolic gesture of mollifying an angry Dravid by making Tendulkar and Ganguly sit out the Bangladesh one-dayers.

Howver, both had to be restored to the Test side quickly to dispell any talk of a witch hunt. As the Indian criket board continued to play footsie with the game, the easiest way to restore status quo was to keep Laxman out of the side, though it can be argued even in a five-batsman Test team, the very very stylish Hyderbadi commands a place on the basis of his past performance. I hope no one seriously thinks that despite his promise and pluck, Dinesh Kartik deserves a place in the side ahead of Laxman.

Laxman's problem is his ability to negotiate boardroom politics doesn't quite match his exquisite onside play. Thus, forever the first batsman to be axed out of a one-day side, he finds it increasingly difficult to make it to the Test eleven.

Remember Jawagal Srniath?

The most successful quick bowler in Indian cricket after Kapil Dev. The fellow would have picked up 100or even perhaps 150 more Test wickets had he played more often for India when he was younger and a yard or two quicker. Instead Srinath cooled his heels in the sidelines, as the once great Kapil Dev lumbered onto his Test record haul.

Some cricketers are more expendable than others. Srinath was one of them, so is Laxman.

Equally baffling as Laxman's absence from the Test side are a few other selections. Virender Sehwag, in the midst of batting horrors, finds a place in the one-day side against Bangladesh, but not in the Test team. Even a cursory glance at his record would tell you, Sehwag has been a world class prformer in Test matches, while his one-day batting, though occasionally explosive, has seldom been consistent. Yet after really one poor Test series against South Africa, he is out of the Test side, but continues to retain his place as an opener in one-dayers, despite the extended run of failures.

The story gets curiouser with Sourav Ganguly, whose career record is exactly opposite of Sehwag's. However, the man with over 10,000 one-day runs and India's man of the series against Sri Lanka in the last one day series before the World Cup and India's highest run-getter in theWorld Cup, is rested in one-dayers, and then waltzes into the Indian Test team ahead of the likes of VVS Laxman and India's best young middle order hope, Yuvraj Singh.

First the recently departed (that is, from Indian cricket) Greg Chapell spoke about "the process". Now it is the Indian captain Rahul Dravid's favourite buzz word. I am trying so very hard here to understand "the process" that allows for such decisions which fly in the face of common cricketing logic. If there is a method, oops, sorrryyy, a process, behind this madness, can someone care to elaborate?

Oh the wise Indian captain, we, the blue billion, wait in delicious suspense.

Ritwiks, a Bookshop Bar by the Sea

2007-05-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

During the first years of their marriage, my parents lived in the picturesque Nancouri island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands off the eastern coast of India. Nancouri has a natural horse-shoe shaped harbour and is located in the more secluded Nicobar part of the island chain, which is why the Indian government did, at some point of time, toy with the idea of turning it into an international free port.

Thankfully, the Indian navy shot down the idea, and another island paradise, and the local population, was saved -- at least temporarily -- from commercial sodomy, oops, exploitation (this is a family blog, Rajan, he chided himself).

Coming back to the days my parents spent in Nancouri, my mother tells me a story which, among the many from that part of the world, is one of my favourites.

The Nicobaris are a very friendly lot. Everytime you make eye contact with one, he is most likely going to smile back at you. My father, who spent a few years in Nicobar, says the Nicobaris would always be laughing, as if there was a private joke that was going on between them.

In Nancouri a few of the Nicobaris worked as domestic helps at the homes of government officials like my father. As domestic helps, they were very clean hygienically and very honest, recalls my mother. They would rarely quibble about the amount they would charge as salary or complain about the amount of work they had to do.

The young man who used to be in the employ of my parents was very friendly and very hardworking, says Ma. Often his friends would come and visit him and it is the custom among Nicobaris to always see off your visitor to the door. So, my mother says, it wasn't unusual for him to disappear for a few minutes as he would bid goodbye to his friends.

However, one morning when he had gone to leave another of his friends, he didn't come back. My mother grew increasingly worried, wondering both about his well being as well as the household chores that needed to be done. Later in the day she informed my Dad, that the young Nicobari help had been gone almost the whole day. My Dad made a few enquiries about his whereabouts, but couldn't find him.

Over the next few days, there was no news of him. My parents were worried if he was alright. They were also contemplating whether they should hire a new help. Then, as suddenly as he had disappeared, he reappeared one fine morning. A familiar smiling face peeped in through the kitchen window and asked : "Naukri hai?"

My mother was initially anxious if he was ok, then her concern gave way to anger, when she realised he was fine and wasn't about to explain or apologize for his prolonged absence. All he said was he had gone fishing with his friends and was now back.

Usually slow to rouse to anger, my Ma was hopping mad that morning and she waded into him, all guns blazing. She told him, how worried they had been about his well being. She asked him why he hadn't informed her before leaving. She told him how unprofessional his conduct had been. It was a tongue lashing that would have left most ordinary mortals quaking in their boots. Not this man though.

He heard my mother through patiently, with a faintly amused expression on his face. Then, without a care or worry in the world, a huge smile on his face which suggested that my mother's plea in the name of professionalism had clearly missed its mark, he repeated the query he had made from the kitchen window -- "Naukri hai?"

It was a reaction that left my mother spluttering, the wind completely taken out of her sail, she was at a loss for words. As my mother stood there speechless, our man coolly walked into the kitchen and took his position.

I have a friend in Delhi who, after working for a year at a stretch, quits his job and goes on a (for the lack of a more apt word) "walkabout". I have seen him follow this almost-annual routine for the past fifteen odd years. For as long as the money that he has saved lasts, he does not come back. He holes up somewhere, or just travels to some new place (he is known to be partial to the hills). Then he comes back to Delhi, only when he absolutely has to, knocks on the doors of prospective employers with a "Naukri hai?" query.

Oh, I want to do that, too. But somehow never manage to. Never have the courage to. I am too attached to my worldly comforts, the sense of responsibility (in the broader, social sense that we know it) too deeply ingrained to take a step that would just make you happy. Such a silly thing that, anyway, chasing happiness. Not the most practical or worldly wise thing to do.

Fo those of us unable (perhaps even disabled) to go on these "walkabouts", because in my friend's words, "You people have raised the stakes yourselves", all I can say is it is up to us really to lower those stakes. I can't do it on an annual basis, but I will be damned if I don't have a long-term plan.

Many years ago, I was sure how I wanted to spend the later years of my life. I wanted a two-floor wooden building with glass windows at the edge of a beach , with a book shop on the ground floor and a small eatery on the floor above, selling seafood and wine. I saw myself as a serious consumer on both the floors. It was 1986, to be precise, when I had just completed my post-graduation and was travelling through Andamans. I was all by myself on a lovely lonely beach and I dreamed with my eyes wide open of this seaside bookshop and bar.

Twenty years on, as i am much closer to the aforementioned later years, the dream is still intact. As lot of things which were once important to me slip from my grip, I hold on to it, this dream, with a determination that is often uncharacteristically fierce. On good days, the dream makes me incredibly happy. On bad days, the dream just appears a lot more distant than what it should be.

The only thing that's perhaps changed in my mind over the years is the name of the bookshop-bar. Instead of Rajan's, I think i will settle for Ritwik's.

Writing as a therapy...

2007-05-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I had written to a friend who wasn't too well that writing can be, and often is, therapeutic. This is what he wrote back:

I wrote a few pages during the last week. Wasn't worth the paper it was written on. My ailment ain't worth of this therapy.

Ghalib said that a hundred years ago...

Dard minnat-kashe dava naa hua,
Main naa atchha hua, bura naa hua.

Just how good does this get?

2007-05-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

My blog turns one month old today. I had originally thought I would observe the completion of the first month with something interesting posting here.

No such luck though. After a long day, tired and immodest, all I can think of is a little pat on my back for finally starting to write, after several false starts. While I have always had a lot of things in my mind that I wanted to put down in words, whenever I tried to pen the same words I didn't find the task very easy. So it has taken a certain amount of effort and a lot of good, old-fashioned prodding by several good friends to get me going.

Happily for me, there have been days in the past month when I have woken up energised and rather excited about the writing that awaited me. Whether the words that followed should have been inflicted upon unsuspecting blog readers is another matter altogether.

What should be of more concern to the same unsuspecting readers is that something tells me that I am going to be blogging for sometime to come now.

Don't tell me now, you haven't been warned!

On that alarming note, I retire tonight, with a MacAruthur like "I shall return" promise.

Did Ye Know...

2007-05-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

... In the year of 1977, when the Janata Party came to power unseating Congress for the first time since Independence, and Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister, Prohibition was clamped in Delhi.

Overnight, the Delhi Administration's department of Excise, entrusted with the task of organising and monitoring the sale of liquor in Delhi, was disbanded. Instead, a new department, the deprtment of Prohibition, was created.

Prohibition was a subject close to Morarji Bhai's heart and the department of prohibition went about its business of discouraging the sale and consumption of liquor in Delhi with a great degree of seriousness. In 1980, when Mrs. G won the elections and came back to power again, things changed once again.

Prohibition was lifted, and the department of Excise was resurrected to carry on with its old business. Mrs. G' s advisors told her it would be politically incorrect to be seen as a government that was completely against Prohibition. So, it was decided that the department of Prohibition, downsized considerably, would however still carry out the occasional anti-alcohol campaign.

Now THIS is the really interesting part of the story...

For reasons best known to themselves, and reasons that have never been quite explained since, the Delhi government, in its infinite wisdom, created the joint post of Commissioner of Excise and Director of Prohibition. Thus, in effect, the same man who was entrusted with the task of encouraging and promoting the sale of liquor in Delhi was also given the job of discouraging the sale and consumption of alcohol in the Indian capital.

For thirteen long years, this administrative anomaly continued and Delhi's Excise Commissioner was also the director of Prohibition. A succession of brave officials, to their credit, held the dual post, without ever officially communicating they had any difficulty in managing such contradictory chores.

I had the pleasure of meeting one of the last incumbents of this unique office. On record he refused to comment on the rather interesting nature of his job, except for once mumbling under his breath that officials much senior than him had created the dual post and it wasn't the job of lesser mortals like him to question the wisdom behind such a major administrative initiative.

Off the record, the man did admit that someone with a multiple personality disorder would have been ideal to do justice to the dual posting.

When Calvin Klein meets Stone Age

2007-05-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

Exactly five 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.

On Tuesday, May 8, Survival International again called upon the authorities in Andaman and Nicobar islands to close the ATR, as per the Supreme Court orders of five years ago.

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 five 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 Baratng 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. There is a picture of a Jarawa woman being given a packet of biscuits by a passenger in a bus. As a bus carrying settlers enters 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 knew his 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.

Cinema Paradiso

2007-05-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

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 Anand and then 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 shot 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

Mama, where is my Chhatrella?

2007-05-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

The moment of truth, the hour of reckoning, is here.

Ever since his birth, from the time he fixed us with a toothless grin, a grin that transcended with effortless ease every other joy that we had ever singly or collectively experienced, to the first tentative steps he took after several tumbles on the carpeted floor, to the first garbled word that he uttered -- everything that had happened in his three and a half year old existence was leading up to this big moment.

You see, folks, my son, Ritwik, is all set to go to school.

I am told by my parents that the first language I picked up as a child was Hindi. Growing up in the very cosmopolitan Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, we lived in a neighbourhood which was populated almost in equal numbers by Bengalis, Tamils, and Keralites. The prevailing lingua franca was a gender-bending Hindi that I have never heard spoken anywhere else.

My parents never fussed very much about the first school I went to because in Diglipur (North Andamans), my father’s next posting after Port Blair, one wasn’t exactly spoilt for choices. One day a man had walked up to my father, seeking permission to start a primary school in the island. My father wasn’t very impressed by the academic credentials of the man who had come up with the idea, for he carried with him documents which to my father’s untrained eye looked forged. But he relented, because at that time the island didn’t have any primary school.

Dad was no crystal ball gazer. So, he had no clue that one day his own son would be a student of that hallowed institution he had helped start under somewhat dubious circumstances. Among my few memories of that school is the headmaster walking with a bamboo stalk as tall as me, which he used with fair degree of regularity on the backs of several of my classmates but never once on the son of his benefactor.

I have no complaints about my first school. The medium of instruction was Bengali. Thank God for that! I can read and write in Bangla, my mother tongue. Though English was taught only from the fourth grade, my mother taught me at home, which kept me in good stead in later years.

I have often asked my parents why they ever left the beautiful Andamans and moved to this godforsaken city of nine months of summer. Their answer? Better schooling for me.

So, you see, it is in my genes -- this quest for better schooling. And now my parents and the other parent of my son have joined forces to ensure the best possible education is not denied to the youngest Chakravarty.

The Great Debate in the Chakravarty household for sometime now has raged around which school should Ritwik go to. The three major participants in this debate are clear that they want to have a significant say in Ritwik’s schooling and with good reason too. My father has always seen himself as the patriarch of the Charavartys and in most matters (including this one) he is quietly confident that he knows what is best. My mother was a school teacher for thirty years and is of the opinion that she has an inside track on how school admissions work. My wife... well, she’s the mother of Ritwik and who else can know what is best for the child?

As the relative merits of Springdales (“it is not too far from where we live”) are weighed against that of Delhi Public School ("oh it is a nice school, but do we really want our child to grow up and send dirty MMS of his classmates?”) in heated discussions on the dinner table, there is a general unanimity on two counts.

First, that the best school is easily St. Columbus. “Arun Jaitley is from there”, says my BJP-very friendly dad, and my wife adds happily: “Shah Rukh Khan is from Columbus too.” (Now, to me, they are two reasons as good as any why Ritwik should NOT go to Columbus.)

And, second, Ritwik needs to be proficent in English. Konwledge of the language is an absolute must, if one has to study in Columbus or any of the other sainted institutions.

I don’t remember a lot of my life in Diglipur. One of the few things I do remember, was a pleasant Sunday morning when my mother was busy packing our stuff. A month before that, my father had received transfer orders to Delhi. As soon as the orders arrived, my mother immediately started on my English lessons, worried that my lack of proficiency in the language could hold me back during admission. Since she left for work early in the morning, the task fell upon my Dad to give me a crash course in English.

On this morning , as my Ma guided the team of packers, she smiled at me and asked how were my English lessons with my father going. I said they were going just fine. She asked me what all I had picked up. I stood up, walked to the middle of the room, and beckoned my mother to join me. She was slightly surprised, then came and stood next to me. I smiled at her and said “I go.” And then moved to the door, where I told her, “You go.”

She clapped her hands and said “very good… now what else have you learnt?”. I looked a bit lost, and said “But this is all Dad has been teaching me over the past month.” She looked at me incredulously and said, “You expect me to believe that? That for one month your Dad has just done this.. this ‘I go, you go’ routine and nothing else?”

It became suddenly crystal clear to me that Dad’s teaching efforts had fallen way short of my mother’s expectations. I stood there and shrugged helplessly, feeling vaguely defensive about my Dad’s English teaching skills.

As I filled in my mother about my recently-acquired knowledge of English, my father quietly sat in the verandah and sipped another cup of tea, blissfully unaware of the woes that were about to visit him. I watched from the window, he took the tongue-lashing that followed rather manfully. He sipped the last of his tea, folded the newspaper neatly and kept it on the table before him, looked at my mother with a dead pan expression and said “I go”, as he walked out of the house.

A few hours later I could hear his jaunty footsteps return. I looked out of the window of my room. He stood there on the porch, looking at peace with himself, secure in the knowledge that the storm had blown over. At that moment, I felt immensely happy that this man was my father and I was his son.

Almost four decades later, history is about to be repeated in the Chakravarty household. Another mother is spending sleepless nights about her son’s proficiency in English and how that could be central to his admission in a school of our choice. I am Bengali, my wife is Sindhi. To Ritwik’s credit he has picked up a bit of both the languages. But he feels most comfortable in Hindi. He understands English, but other than occasional monosyllabic responses, prefers to speak only in Hindi – a situation that my family is desperately trying to remedy.

As he is bombarded with English words, poems, lyrics and songs, poor Ritwik is very confused. For, most words, immediately after they have been spoken, are almost immediately translated in triplicate, and often at a pace that is bewildering for a three year old mind. Thus, a chhaata (Bengali) becomes chhatri (Hindi) and then quickly is described as umbrella (English). The level of Ritwik’s confusion is evident in his response.

So, as it rained on Wednesday afternoon, bringing the mercury down, and my son wanted to go to the nearby park, he almost stepped out into the rain, then backed off and somewhat breathlessly asked his mother : “Mama, where is my Chhatrella?”

My parents looked devastated, my wife looked stricken, the dreams of a St. Columbus school admission melting away quickly.

As for me, I tried my best to imitate the calm look on my father’s face on that balmy Sunday Diglipur afternoon many many years ago.

(Watch this space for more Ritwikese)

There's Nothing Gentle About These Men

2007-04-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

I first went to a cricket ground in 1974 when my father took me to the Feroze Shah Kotla. Clive Lloyd’s West Indians were touring

India

in what was the debut series of one Isac Vivian Richards. My abiding memory of that match is of Lloyd, patrolling the covers, bending down nonchalantly and scooping up a Vishwanath scorcher inches from the ground.

Indian fielding (as different from close-in catching – which was quite, quite brilliant with Eknath Solkar leading the way, and others like Wadekar, Venkatraghavan and Abid Ali were very good) standards in the seventies were still in the Dark Ages and Lloyd’s brilliant reflex catch left me and rest of the Kotla crowd gasping.

I remember Andy Roberts led the bowling attack, Lance Gibbs bowled his looping off spinners, but the trio of Keith Boyce, Bernard Julien and Vanerbun Holder were not really of express pace. Indians still banked on their ace spinning options – Bishen Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and the maverick leggie, B Chandrashekhar. And me, all of ten years old, was hooked to this game for life.

Those days, Lloyd hadn’t yet decided to unleash his four-man liquid pace attack on the cricketing world. And cricket – played, as yet, only over five days and at a serene, sedate pace -- was still a gentleman’s game.

There was nothing remotely gentle though in the manner Adam Gilchrist chose to dismember what had been touted as the World Cup’s best bowling attack on Saturday. In fact, come to think of it, for quite sometime now there has not been anything close to “gentle” (a few silken Michael Clarke drives, notwithstanding) that can be associated with Australian cricket.

Now, a lot of old timers would tell you, Australian cricketers haven’t been accused of gentlemanly conduct even by their worst critics. They are known to play their cricket hard but fair. But the brand of cricket that Ponting’s boys have played over and over again, both in the Test arena and on day cricket, and most recently during the World Cup, goes beyond the characteristic ruthlessness that has been associated with Australian cricket for long.

There’s an edge to their game, a lack of give when batting, bowling or fielding, a fierce determination to dominate and not just simply win that seems to have extended the boundaries of the game, even re-shaped it, to the extent that it is difficult to recognize it as the same game I first went to watch as a ten-year-old, a few light years ago.

Every now and then you can see a sublime touch in the batting of Clarke or skipper Ricky Ponting, just as you could in the batting of the recently retired Damien Martyn or Mark Waugh before them. But at the slightest hint of doubt or trouble, the Australians drop the surgical precision of a Clarke in favour of the brutal power of a Mathew Hayden and Andrew Symonds, who bring in the subtlety of a sledgehammer to their game.

I have always had a sneaking suspicion that Symonds and Hayden (and perhaps, even Nathan Bracken) are all rughby quarterback rejects who came to cricket quite by accident. I mean they don’t look like cricketers, do they? Or, perhaps, this is how cricketers are going to look like in days and months and years to come? Make them stand next to the likes of Ajit Agarkar and Irfan Pathan and you realise what a mismatch it is – not just in sheer cricketing ability but in muscle quotient too.

You can easily visualize Symonds dressed as a gladiator in a Ridley Scott movie. Bowlers all over the world have little doubt in their minds anyway that the bat he (or, for that matter, Mathew Hayden) wields in his hands is actually a scimitar and often has the same effect on a bowler as it did on a rival when wielded by a medieval warrior.

Gilchrist, not quite in the Hayden or Symonds mould, is as effective – and destructive -- with the bat, as he proved in the World Cup final. He is actually quite a gentleman in the sense that he is one of the few players in international cricket who “walks” when he thinks he is out, without waiting for the umpire’s decision. He is perhaps the only player in the current Australian squad whose name you are going to pencil in without any hesitation in an all time World Eleven for both Tests as well as one-day cricket.

Then there is Ricky Ponting, the captain of this remarkable side. Playing the game at the same time as Brian Lara an Sachin Tendulkar, Ponting is now regarded as good as either of them and by the time he ends his career, may even find a position for himself which is higher than that of Lara and Tendulkar in the pecking order of cricketing gods.

As impressive as their cricket has been their bench strength. The retirement of Damien Martyn, the unavailability of Shane Warne and the injury to Brett Lee didn’t matter. The replacements were as good, if not better. If the old master Glen McGrath walked into the sunset with his third World Cup and a man of the tournament award to boot, the rookie Shaun Tait showed he is every bit as fast and as effective as the man he replaced.

On hindsight, perhaps the Kiwis did a great disfavour to the cricketing world by beating their tans-Tasman rivals so comprehensively, shortly before the World Cup. It took care of any semblance of complacency that the Australians might have suffered from.

Comparisons have been drawn between this side and the all-conquering West Indian sides led by Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards. This Australian side is not the first team that has dominated the game so emphatically and for such a length of time. But what makes it different, and far more frightening, from the teams of the past is the way this success has been achieved and is likely to be sustained.

You look at this team and you know a system has been put into place – from the development of junior cricket to an uncompromising fitness regimen to a strong domestic format of just six state teams – which is most likely to throw up another generation of beefcakes who would bash the living daylights out of another World Cup opponent four, eight, hell, even twenty years from now.

Chew on that thought as the Australians catch up with the beer, the beaches and the babes.

Truer Words Were Never Said...

2007-04-27T01:06:00.000-07:00

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

The Che and Cho in Us

2007-04-26T00:12:00.000-07:00

The past fortnight, two men in far-off, foreign lands have had a profound impact on my life.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and Cho Seung-Hui.Two men from two different worlds, two different eras, with two distinct agendas. Two men who died so young.

As I sat on the banks of the magnificent Brahmaputra, watching the sun set on the horizon, I often wondered about the contrasting lives – and possible motivations which prompted them to lead the life they eventually did – of two men who picked up the gun to make such contrasting statements.

Two men who chose to converge on my life at a time when, to the casual eye, I had elevated river-gazing to an art form. But in reality I would spend hours staring hard into the Brahmaputra waters, willing the river bed to come up with answers to several questions that had troubled me for long.

On my first night in Guwahati, the skies opened up to remind me of what a genuine “torrential downpour” looked like, as different from the fake article sold to me and other gullible Delhi-ites by Mother Nature. Thunder and lightning flashed through the window sills and illuminated the toothy grin on my host’s face. “Rajon Da, this is the ideal setting for watching Motorcycle Diaries.” We had rum and coke for company (as if there is any other way to watch Motorcycle Diaries! But, yes. Khichuri and Ilish maach bhaja were sorely missed.)

I had known Che the revolutionary for long. A life-sized poster had adorned my bedroom for the better part of my college days. But Che, the traveler, was a newer, and rather engaging, acquaintance. As I watched the movie, I wondered how much does travel shape revolutionary thought...

I had read the book earlier but the movie was a joy to watch. A quick decision was made, a pact soaked in rum -- Patagonia has to be visited. Che and Chatwin had already been there, now the place was crying out for Chaks and Chaki. Besides, we needed to see the Inca civilization close up, not through anyone else’s lenses.

That night I slept the sleep of a child. My restive, semi-schizo mind held at bay by happy dreams of me on this big bike with Deborshi (the other half of the famous traveling duo), traveling through strange lands, meeting wonderful people.

Next morning, I met Cho. I had groggily pressed the remote button to catch up with the World Cup match that we had missed on account of Motorcycle Diaries and instead found myself face to face with a television reporter pretending to be on top of a rather complicated story of a man who without any apparent provocation had mowed down 32 people and then shot himself dead. The reporter looked at the camera and asked : “God knows what prompted the 23-year-old to kill 32 strangers, who had never done him any harm, in cold blood”. Try answering that one!

Really, what prompts a man to commit an act like that? In the days that have gone by since the Virginia Tech massacre, roommates of Cho have described him as shy, a loner but not one of them said he looked like a mass murderer.

What does a mass murderer look like anyway? Hitler had a maniacal gleam in his eyes that was a dead give away that everything wasn't quite there as it should have been, up in his mind. Closer home, with someone like Narendra Modi, it is more difficult to tell. I mean, you know that there is something wrong but at times it is difficult to put a finger on it. And then he opens his mouth, and you know you were right.

People who knew Cho said he kept to himself but they said they had no idea what was going on in his mind. That’s tough. Understanding what goes on in someone else’s mind. I mean, I struggle (and I guess, so do several others) trying to understand, trying to come to terms with what goes on in my mind. Imagine it. Understanding everything about another human being. Each thought, each memory, each detail of every experience.

Your head would explode. Cho’s must have, too, when he picked up that gun. Or may be it had exploded a lot earlier… who knows!

It is easy to condemn Cho and not for a moment am I condoning him for bringing upon such violence on his unsuspecting victims. But I am not going to be so quick to dub what he did as “mindless”. For, the same reports in the media that described the violence unleashed by Cho as “mindless” also took great pains to point out that Cho had a lot going on in his rather disturbed mind. So here wasn't someone who was mindless or even had less of a mind, but someone whose mind had unraveled in a very unfortunate manner.

I guess there is a bit of Che and Cho in all of us. Right now, I am not complaining, as Che seems to be winning. But truth be told, there have been moments in the not-so-distant past when I can distinctly recall Cho playing around with the inherent chemical imbalance in my mind.

An Ode To Friends

2007-04-22T01:41:00.001-07:00

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......

The Monk Who Gave Up Murighonto

2007-04-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

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 year 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.