She writes...

On Every Street

2011-12-13T02:08:00.000-08:00

This post is unique for two reasons: I don't usually write (or read, or twitch, or scratch, or doodle) whilst listening to music. It demands my full attention - if it's music of my own choosing, of course - and any less would be sacrilegious (which, while it oughtn't bother this a-religious [not irreligious; there's a world of difference] bum too much, well, does, because it's music, goddamnit). Today, I'm trying to write as On Every Street (the song, not the album) plays in the background. The second reason is that I'm giving myself only two listenings (10 minutes and 8 seconds) to get this done with. If I don't keep myself amused, who will?

What brought this post on, to get back to the point I never made in the first place, come to think of it (this is like the debate on whether the Rukhmabai case of 1884 was for a 'restitution' of conjugal rights or an 'institution' of them in the first place - hah - who says history doesn't move in mysterious ways?), is this - I think this song has one of the finest build-ups I've ever heard. It ranks way, way up there, alongside Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Take a Pebble, Part 1 of The Wall and possibly Brothers in Arms in terms of the way these numbers draw you in, and when you think you've got them sussed out, gobsmack you into tomorrow with a build-up that actually takes you/them to a plane you wouldn't have imagined possible. The dynamics of Knopfler's playing - and I say this having heard most everything DS has ever done, a lot of his solo stuff, and having seenheard him live - blow me away; in his hands, the guitar becomes more eloquent than, than - Martin Luther King, I tell you! His attack, his tone, the finger-picking style? Of course, the musicians he plays with - bloody brilliant each one -help some; the way they play 'together' is testament to their genius, sure, but also how keenly they feel each rise, swell, drop in the riff at hand, in the movement, in the music of their/his creation.

Ok. I cheated, but only by a minute. I'll end here and post this before I change my mind. More in another piece sometime? Of course, it'd have been smarter to pick the epic Shine On (13 minutes and counting) to exercise (exorcise, even?) this little idea. What can I say? Knopfler hath mee (in keeping with the Keatsian conceit) in thrall.

Jazz is gossip.

2011-12-09T01:47:00.000-08:00

Jazz is gossip.

There. As always, I spent it on the title. I’m wondering if I should sully the obvious (insert self-congratulatory slap on the back here) truth of that line by giving it an entire post – surely it would work better as a stand-alone, tightly-condensed little aphoristic gem? (Yes – this is more of that obnoxious self-congratulatory behaviour on display, but cut me some slack – is it a gorgeous formulation or what? I’ve been so pleased with myself ever since I hit upon it, I can’t stop smiling. Widely. Rather stupidly – there. That’s your recompense.)

It came to me when I was driving home one night, listening (as I often do), to that seminal album Time-Out (1959), by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It features the extraordinary Blue Rondo a la Turk, Kathy’s Waltz, the seminal (and therefore only song most people have heard by these splendid musicians) Take Five, Pick Up Sticks, Three to Get Ready, Strange Meadow Lark and this rather stunning little thing called Everybody’s Jumpin’. It’s this last that got me thinking, and in the fond hope that it might have the same effect on some others, I’m (ever so helpfully) attaching a link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3aqw0RY384

It started out like this. As ever, I was humming the ‘home riff’ or point of departure (and by virtue of being aforementioned departure, also, importantly, point of re-entry into the song proper) when it dawned on me that I was in a curious space; an interstitial one pregnant with possibility, where it felt (in keeping with this metaphor) that something was being born. In my head, since I can only thinkreadwritedreamsee in text, I called it a phrase. Once established, by virtue of all the musicians consenting that this indeed *is* ‘home’, each one started venturing out by way of soloing; there began the game of Chinese Whispers. It became obvious that what informed the soloing was the acknowledgement – sometimes the merest hint of it sufficed – of this starting point, from where it cast further and further afield; the home phrase took on a cultural afterlife all its own, before, inevitably winding back to the source, but only to elaborately take it into another space.

Consider now, reader dearest, how the informal ‘web’ that underpins culture works. You hear something. In repeating it, you add/subtract/explicate/repudiate/play with it, to make for a ‘better story’ (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), and before you know it, it has become something else. Rumour or ‘hearsay’ is thus born. Circulate it – in a perambulator, if you must, for it is an infant yet – and you’re staring at the beginnings of that most monumental of all things – gossip.

Can classical music be equated thus? My head says no, my gut quite the opposite. Perhaps it is a more codified exit-point, but isn’t any form of improvisation essentially, structurally, a deviation from an established norm? To me, it is gossip yet, but perhaps the kind of thing you’d hear in the corridors of power – the Rajya Sabha, the Assembly. It hasn’t the playfulness, the levity, the vivaciousness of office gossip – the valued information exchanged over the coffee dispenser. The knowing look you give the boss you’ve just heard about, as you slide into place to dash off yet another infernal reportarticlelecture (insert output of labour of choice here). No. For that you want some jazz. Of course you do. Everybody’s jumpin’, after all.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues*

2011-09-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard tell that distance can induce psychosis of a sort.

That you can feel bipolarly giddy with excitement one moment;

Decidedly devastated the next.

This really is a tango for one not two;

like a complex arrangement rendered for solo guitar

The other stands no chance

For how do you 'hear'

when a word is merely seen?

Things do not always 'se repondent'; not always can you see

the collapsing of categories

long known,

long held

to correspond.

And this

in a love which speaks different tongues.

Sweet, languorous ecstasy.

Something meant,

Something heard.

Something pierced

Out of turn.

These are the perils of a love

faceless, nameless, sometimes woebegone.

* This title comes from the work of an author I love much, Tom Robbins. Anything else isn't his fault.

I told you so

2011-08-05T03:39:00.000-07:00

I've been telling anyone who will listen that Ahmedabad is not a safe city for women; not by a long shot. Most don't believe me, putting down my 'rants' to paranoia or arguing that other cities are 'worse' - what sort of lame-ass logic is that? Unsafe is unsafe, whichever fucking way you look at it. Am I supposed to feel better because the odds of my being molested are higher somewhere else than here? That these odds exist at all is worrisome enough in my opinion. That's all there is to it as far as I'm concerned.

That there's been something sick - brought on, no doubt, by the repressive attitude "conservative" Gujarati society has towards sex and sexuality - rearing its ugly head in the male gaze that looks, judges and thinks it can possess any female form it finds not corresponding to the 'norm' (their definition/imposition, not mine) has been obvious for some time. I've been followed/chased/harassed variously when out with friends on two-wheelers and in my car. I've been groped (when I was 15, in broad daylight, in the middle of this motherfucking city), pinched and otherwise abused in most ways you can think of, but there's a difference between those days and these, and that difference is in the outrageous blatancy with which the Ahmedabadi/Gujarati male (lowest of the low, fucking cretinous vermin) now feels he can think/look/touch/do what he will with a sense that nears entitlement! He's always been a pervert, this bastard, but at least he looked suitably embarrassed if you caught him out while he was staring at your breasts - not so anymore.

The latest in a long, long line of incidents (which, as you might have guessed) has brought on this post is this: I am a musician. Our band gigs regularly at a lovely place in Gandhinagar - we've been playing there for 11 years - and it's surrounded by a bunch of schools (NID, NIFT, DA-IICT), which means we've always had a lovely audience. Now, a woman musician in this 'ere city is a rarity, so I'm used to having a lot of cameras shoved in my face, week after week, month after month, year after year, even when the other guys are soloing. Most times, I just gesture to the wielder to get the cam out of my face. Which he (90% of the time it's a 'he') grudgingly, but mostly, does. The other night however, I had a drunk motherfucker come and try sticking a camera up my dress! I was sitting on stage, playing, when I noticed this son of a bitch bend real low and try to shoot up my legs. Charming, nein? I swore at him on the mic, and Antoine came and pushed him out of the way, after which the guys in my band swooped in and pushed him clear out of the area, but the nerve of this man amazes me - *this* is that sense of entitlement I'm talking about.

This would have been unthinkable here a few years ago; in a public place, on stage, and I'm *still* not safe? The audience tried to kick the shit out of him, but my band-mates managed to push him out, hand him to security and save his ass from being whooped by all present. I heard someone even grabbed his phone and smashed it to pieces. I'd have loved to've punched his fucking lights out.

Whence this brazenness? Where are these slime-balls coming from and who in God's name gave them to believe they could get away with being such dipshits?

En bref, listen to me when I say that Ahmedabad is getting to be (and has been, for most of my life anyway) a nightmare for women.

This time, it really gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say 'I told you so'.

Isn't it a pity?

2011-07-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCKvCL93hw

Isn't it a pity? Isn't it a shame?

Two years on, and we're back. Down on our knees. As emasculated, impotent and pointless as ever we were. So 'they' have had a go at Bombay again. There is more 'rage' among the masses this time. Channelised where, you ask rightly? Towards whom? Well, Chidambaram, in this instance it would appear. Of course, how he could have done anything differently or averted this tragedy we don't know. Neither do the masses agitating against him, but such is life.

As Chavan said, we're probably better equipped to "respond to" and therefore limit the extent of the carnage this time round, but we're clearly not in a position to ensure it doesn't transpire at all. Having said that, is anyone? Is any place truly secure? What sort of state infringement and machinery would it take to make that happen, and is such an accost (for it would most decidedly be one) to our person and space (read: additional security at airports, stations, cinema halls and how this will translate into more detailed searches, longer security checks etc.) going to be readily acceptable to us in the name of a nebulous 'greater good' which, while we may fuzzily aspire to it, isn't exactly or immediately experiential or palpable?

There are fewer casualties this time. AND, they didn't attack the Taj, that symbol of all things Bombay (I'll never forget the time this ridiculous woman reporter waxed eloquent about everything the hotel/building stood for in Bombay's scheme of things even as people were still being hacked to pieces inside it. She made me lose much more than just respect for television journalists; she made me despise their very fucking creed). I wonder how long it will be before they start talking about the Opera House. I also wonder whether they'll remember that people dying - even nondescript, everyday ones like you and I -is slightly more worrisome than the damaging of even the most iconic structure.

The Indian Mujahideen this time. The LeT the last. And still we don't, as a nation state, wake up to the factiousness being caused by our treatment of large swathes of our own population? I lost a lot of faith in the justice of our political/state machinery after we caused a civil war-like situation with our inept and completely fascist handling of the so-called Reds; the Maoists. There appears to be no room for the tribal, the other, the minority/ies in our monolithic conception of what comprises 'development'. This is costing us. Dearly.

Do not for a moment read this as an apology for violence - of any which kind - perpetrated either against the state or by it. Recognise the anguish that underlies it, informs and perpetuates it.

Sailing in full light

2011-04-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever

do you want to;

do you know you can sail in full light?

The moon is a fine thing

as image and metaphor goes,

but have you ever

do you want to;

did you know you could sail in

full light?

Now the water beckons;

no rock or albatross here:

The sea. The white. The siren

and you.

She says their song is a plea for help:

"Only you; only you can save me"

It works every time.

Now do you want to?

Now that you know you can?

Now that you know

you know you can sail

full light.

Full

Light?

Hallelujah (or what She does when She doesn't write)

2011-03-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

Sleep-writing

2011-03-07T13:32:00.001-08:00

This is an exercise in...what, Harmony? Well, something. I'll see if I can conjure up a suitable answer ere this post ends. I've spent this day - all of it - in the Dreaming. Yes. THE Dreaming. Land of Morpheus, Oneiros, he whom I love madly. I've been awake - or so I think/believe/am given to understand - the whole time, but it certainly hasn't felt like anything I've known before.

Today, I have sleep-driven, sleep-walked, sleep-talked, sleep-eaten, sleep-dra/u/nk, sleep-messaged, sleep-chatted, and am now in the process of sleep-writing/typing (this last to satisfy the purist in me who likens writing only to pen {ink [black] of course} and paper).

Aside: on why it must be ink. Ink on my fingers reminds me of the physicality of the act of writing. It plays with me, and I with it. It is the war wound I wear - proudly - after having toiled to create. It reminds me also that I have a hand. And fingers that extend from it. It forces me to reckon with my own corporeality, and in so doing, reminds me that this hand can touch. Or feel, even. There is a sensuousness inherent to the materiality of pen and paper. A sensuousness that cannot be conjured; that I cannot muster, whilst tapping on this 'ere keyboard, and seeing letter follow letter as this sentence slowly, achingly, flashes into being on my monitor. There. See? It was almost poetry. Till I got to the word monitor. It hasn't the magic of paper. Of pen. Of ink. Of ink on my fingers.

As ever, with me, the entree turns into the main. Dommage? I think not. Ca coule, non?

And now I must leave you, cher lecteur, to see if I can sleep-sleep; the only thing I haven't tried yet.

Of forked tongues and other miscellanies

2011-02-23T23:22:00.000-08:00

I like the title of this post. It is suitably obscure, but sounds like it ought to mean something pretty worthwhile if you take the time to 'stop, traveller', and unravel it. It probably doesn't, but you've got to admit it's pretty effective - you're reading this, aren't you?

And thus ends her first exercise at consciously "grabbing eyeballs" (aside - journalistic/marketing jargon is pretty bloody inane, quite apart from being ridiculously violent, non? {H gives herself a pat on the back at this point for being neither a journalist nor a market, well, er?} anywho,)

Today, she will speak to you of translation. Of tongues having been forked, of writers straddling cultures or falling between stools. Read Bhabha and Rushdie if you like these gorgeous (borrowed) metaphors.

It all started when my ridiculously intelligent friend and erstwhile office-mate Adrienne Shaw who has a Ph.D. in video-game narratives and can be read at http://goodonsalad.wordpress.com/ asked me if I could think of a Hindi equivalent for 'game' and 'gamers'. I could only come up with 'Khel' and 'Khiladi', but said that there was an inherent physicality associated with these terms, in that Khel-as-Play was more aligned to Sport than to the realm of fantasy, which is, as she explained, something of a key-stone in the gaming pantheon.

It got more interesting and political yet when I posed the same question to Antoine. I asked what the French terms for game/gaming/gamers were, since I couldn't think of any (What with having learnt French just to read Baudelaire and everything. I know. Sue me.). The best I could do was 'jeux' for game, but it carried to my mind the same connotations as Khel. His answer surprised me some. He says the French - a race so ridiculously pleased with their patrimoine, of which language I'm sure bears the heaviest burden - actually just refer to these concepts using their standard English terms. Sacre Bleu and other such exclamations. (Notice how I *don't* use an exclamation point there. It's in the little things, I tell you.) My first reaction was to think that this was because of the obvious fact of the sub-culture in question being one borrowed and 'imported' into their semiosphere, but here I was proved wrong. Instead of this being a recognition by one West that here was a construct/creation of another West, taken on in total, it turns out that the usage of the English forms was the proverbial middle finger being shoved in the face of the man, the machine, the academie. Mainly, because they try to expurgate (in a display of blatant anal-ness and much to the general hilarity of onlookers) their language of any "outside/uncouth" influences, evinced also in near-draconian legislations like the Toubon Law.

The use of one language, so, in the mouths of those accustomed to not speaking it (and this is not language-as-a-marker-of-mobility or 'upwardness', mind), becomes a weapon of subversion-assertion-signification. If you concede that your mouth/tongue (And this is beautiful, really: 'langue' doubles up as tongue and language in French, a fact I've been enamoured with {and how many 'facts' can you be enamoured with, I ask you?} since the day I learnt it) moves in different ways when you speak a different language, and assume the world-view that comes as the legacy of it, then you begin to realise the import of language on identity and its formationcreationappropriation.

Translation is a difficult proposition - the eye that sees, the ear that hears and the mouth that enunciates are involved in a process to render the unfamiliar unfamiliar yet, but not alien. Literal translations are a lost cause because they can't "say" what the original does in an altered world-view. Signifiers are lost because this isn't the semantic system they stem from. Oh, it's hard work. I have much respect for the anthropologist-translators (and all translators need necessarily be anthropologists) that I know. In homage, I give them (and you, lecteur), my little (very) labour of love. My first and only translation to date.

Correspondences

Nature is a temple whose living pillars

Sometimes transmit perplexing messages;

It is these forests of symbols man traverses,

And they observe him with a familiar gaze.

Like distant echoes which, travelling from afar, are confused

Into a several yet profound unity,

As vast as the night, but with day’s clarity,

Smells, colours and sounds correspond.

These are smells as fresh as the flesh of an infant;

Soft like an oboe, green like the prairie,

- While others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,

Possess of the infinite

As do amber, musk, benjamin and incense

- They sing of the transcending of soul and sense.

And for those of you who read French, here is the incomparable original. By the man who made me want to...

learn French (you're filthy animals for thinking it was going anywhere else)

Correspondances

- Charles Baudelaire

La nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers

Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;

L’homme y passe a travers des forets de symboles

Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme des longs echos qui de loin se confondent

Dans une tenebreuse et profonde unite,

Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarte,

Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent.

Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants,

Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,

- Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies,

Comme l’ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l’encens,

Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens.

Where she laments

2011-02-10T03:12:00.000-08:00

http://kafila.org/2011/01/09/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-binayak-sen-judgement/

To put things into perspective, I have to preface this post by stating that I am not prone to displays of outrage brought on by any contact with visuality in its manifest forms. I don't cry out loud or rage against any machine when I watch the news (hah) or documentaries or films. There's been just one exception to this rule. I saw Parzania. Alone. Late one night. I shouted, screamed, pulled my hair near-out of my head and couldn't bear to finish the movie. This is because it rang too close to the truth; too close to home, for comfort. I lived through 2002, you know.

Today, upon hearing that Binayak Sen's bail petition has been denied, I was on http://kafila.org looking for Shiv Visvanathan's open letter to Manmohan Singh so that I could re-post it in a bid to stoke that all too pernicious thing we call public memory. I found, instead, this little animated film on his extra-legal arrest and a reconstruction of the events that led to it.

I now want to cry again.

I want to rave, rant and shout out loud that what is being done to Binayak Sen is a travesty.

But I'm not stupid. I know it will do no good. I've been emasculated-castrated, and I don't even have balls, me, except metaphorical ones. How on earth did it come to this?

I'm too shaken up to write anything cogent or witty or even half-way articulate. It's all I can do to finish this post here and go simmer in the dissent that is my only consolation as a member of a civil society which is not civil (or civilised, even) proof of which comes from its mournful silence and apathy in the face of this - and every other - siege on the democratic right to a life of dignity.

Fevered musings of a Saturday afternoon; or the G(u)ilt of Gilt; or Her on her Best Religious Behaviour

2011-02-07T02:55:00.000-08:00

Any Saturday - all Saturdays, even - are splendid. This is a priori, and not for us mere mortals to question. The one I'm thinking about in particular was no different, except that instead of seeing me at home, in bed for most of the day before I go sing for my supper all evening, this one saw me in Koh Samui, sitting in the shade of a giant Buddha, surrounded by a sea so green, it made my heart ache with longing. Thinking. Writing. Playing.

Here are a few scribblings, in no particular order.

We take turns

you and I

playing at the air

to each other's sea.

The religious is the secular here; the everyday.

Consider this Big Buddha:

I consumed and meditated at his feet.

Of the two states of being,

I have a little white dress to show for the former.

Lists of a Saturday afternoon

Worship comes in many shapes:

bowing

kowtowing

ringing, singing, throwing, clicking

with a smile

a laugh

a grimace

fervent ardour

noise

silence

writing

givingcaringsharing.

What do gold, pink, yellow, blue, orange, red and maroon have in common?

Colours apart, the tones build, come together to create the aspect of the Buddha.

All religions need bells, colour; sound and light

to bedazzle - dare I say it - bewitch.

As religions go, this is a happy one -

Throw things at the deity, and he won't smite you with a bolt of lightning.

At least not immediately.

Isn't that saying a lot?

Theirs is not an angry God; not one born of the desert.

His are aqueous transmissions.

It seems fitting

to write

on yellow here.

Gilt~G(u)ilt~Y as charged, m'lord.

Of Sound

Some ring but half-heartedly.

Is it better than not ringing at all?

All the ostentation serves to evoke is its lack:

If every binary only works in conjunction,

This opulence evokes starkness, non-being, non-time.

After all, faith,

that most deadly of all things,

is g(u)ilt-laden.

Is it wrong to catch someone's eye in a temple?

What does it mean to be asked to "dress respectfully" whilst the heroes of yore

ride their murals and tigers topless?

What is the connection between my legs - bare - and how I feel about the Buddha?

If it is so as to not distract the monks,

Why, let them look the other way, I say.

As always

As always,

It is in the aspect of the fingers:

They point~arch above and away.

Palms close differently, hands join differently

everywhere.

Thailand is big on its hands:

This avatar's perspective is broken by his outsized one -

It is held straight, forward, palm-first, up and out,

bidding you 'stop', traveller

bidding you peace

harmony.

These statues are modern-day P(eace)-olicemen.

An observation

Does one approach him wide-eyed, hair amiss, dress askew?

Or does he like his devotees well-coiffed and contoured?

By all means, comb your hair

In the shade of the Buddha

Pose for your picture

Against the sea;

Why, it's sunny today, and the islands look stunning.

Comb your hair

in the shade of this giant Buddha.

Just don't say you did it for him.

In Praise of the Step-mother

2011-01-19T22:55:00.000-08:00

I've loved Llosa for as long as I can remember. Two people I love more, however, are this bizarre mother-daughter jodi who go by the 'tags' Hazel and Dio (rock enthusiasts will be pleased to know that Dio is, indeed, named after Ronnie James Dio, before we realised that DioN might have been more appropriate {although infinitely less rock 'n' roll} given that SHE was a, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a SHE.)

Someone threw Dio away. They put her into a plastic bag when she was barely a couple of days old, and threw her into a waste-bin. The person cleaning it out found her, bawling, I'll wager, and called Dhun and Hazel, knowing that if anyone in this city so sickeningly apathetic could help, it was these guys. And that person was right. They took Dio in. They nursed her to health - slowly, painstakingly - waking up on the hour, every hour, to feed her when she couldn't feed herself. It was hard work, but Dio turned Hazel into a veritable mother-figure. THE mother-figure.

Complications abounded. Dio cannot really see or hear - she has only about 10% vision and hearing - but she's a little fighter. She's hung in there, and many many scratches, bruises and bites later, so has my Hazel!

This, therefore, is a little tribute; my little tribute, in praise of this step-mother. Would that all mothers were as devoted, unflinchingly caring and full of gumption as you :)

PS. Did I mention that Dio was a cat? Would this story have bothered you less if you'd known that from the start? Shocking. Like I said, we live in apathetic times.

The Politics of Representation

2010-10-11T04:52:00.001-07:00

Yes, you've heard this before, and yes, you say (well, go with the conceit {aside, literary or metaphysical conceits are plays of thought or word and have very little to do with arrogance [or wait, writers do it to showcase to you their sparkling wit, so hold that thought], which is the meaning we've ascribed to 'conceit' today} for now, won't you? THERE - three different brackets - and correctly used, I might add - in one sentence. Who's your daddy? Rhetorical question. Promise.) you've thought about whether that subaltern - yes, that one - can speak. But have you thought about questioning the questioner posing you that loaded query?

What is it that 'empowers' one set of people - caste-class-religious markers - and renders others so mute, they become silent spectators bearing witness to theorising about them, not 'from' them? It is vital to ask - who speaks, for whom, to what end? of every piece of communication we come across. What entitles me to speak of the Rathwas and how they're coming to terms with the invasion of the 21st century in the form of mobile towers and the notion of 'connectivity'? What, for that matter, entitles me to speak about any 'other'? Can 'intent' be enough? Isn't it a shade loaded, given the history of 'voicing' we have to contend with?

Having said that, need I be a woman to write women? Need I be a Dalit-Minority-OBC to write about injustice? Isn't the idea overarching enough to give me an entry-point into it by the sheer virtue of belonging to the same species as the people I speak of? And whilst speaking about them, isn't there a parallel narrative playing itself out here, in the act of my speaking about them - what does this act *tell* you about me, in other words? Framing within framing, and spinning and spinning in that godforsaken widening gyre.

Why am I thinking about this today? Because we discussed it in a class I taught, tout simplement. My students think it is the prerogative of the artiste to speak. They don't see yet that the silences - those peopled by the aphasia forced on a community - are more eloquent than the words which bespeak the losses of these people; their pain. That silence is a tapestry, woven rich and true by generations of sufferers. Generations who grow up thinking there is no elsewhere. And perhaps there isn't. Perhaps theirs is the poetics of the mime. And mine the lot of *not* giving voice to it. Just indicating that there is a silence-shaped hole where it ought to have been.

Modest yearnings

2010-09-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Are seldom just that.

Take for instance the other night.
I aimed for the moon
And got three feet above my head.

I inhaled deeper, blew harder,
the smoke - no rings - got to four.

I then stood up and gained a solid six feet
over my previous attempt.

It wasn't the moon,
But I got somewhere.
I got up.

On the road

2010-09-27T02:04:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Kerouac. Him of the Jack variety. And it struck me that I've never taken a 'road-trip'. I've travelled *by* road, been *on the road*, driven down *roads* that have taken me where I must be, but I have never *taken* a road-trip. I've never hitch-hiked, headed out on my own down a road I don't know the *end* of, (and I've only just discovered how much I love the mighty asterisk) with never so much as a penny (not a Penny - how I'd fit one into my pocket is beyond me) to my name.

And I'm thinking, this poses a serious crisis of credentials, when one has spent most of one's life thinking she's a gypsy. A neo-gypsy, so? A gypsy of the mind? The, dare I say it, soul? Is this enough? I mean, I'm not being chased out of France or anything (at least not that I know of), so does this mean I'm doing something drastically wrong?

Or, and I turn my once-Greek-now-Roman-broken-Parsi-beak/nose {insert correct option here: the light, the day, the angle determine it} up in disdain at the mere thought of it, am I just another mundane, prosaic soul constantly feeding herself the fallacy that there could be an elsewhere - or three or seven - for her, should she but choose to *act*? Have I the gumption to give up a job-a-home-a-life to start afresh-anew-again? Do I have to, seeing as Faerie is not an option (I tried applying for a visa {nasty freakin' selection process too - they said my ears weren't cat-like enough} but no cigars were handed out on that occasion. Of course, what cigars have to do with emigration is anyone's guess) for me?

Sonalee and I have been talking about "hitting (and hard) the road" for ages now. Perhaps we will, soon. I need to know. I *need* to know. I need to *know*.

And today, ladies and gentlemen

2010-09-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

She will talk to you about her city. She believes now that there is truth in the adage 'ignorance is bliss'. Most of us live as unthinkingly as we die. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you've stopped to think about the 'place' you are from as being more than an immediate, physical entity laid out afore you. Have you felt for its pulse? Have you grappled with its inane oxymorons? Explored its beautiful and disgusting paradoxes? Odds are you haven't. I know I hadn't. Not until I started writing about it. Not until, as it happens, someone asked.

This someone has become a dear, dear friend. He's been co-opted into my little world and has a multiple-entry visa into the ivory tower I call home. His name is Mayank Chhaya (http://southasia.typepad.com/south_asia_daily/) and he is a bloody prolific writer. He makes me feel - keenly - how much of a wastrel I am, and chides me to write more, better, faster. He's writing a book about Ahmedabad right now, and it was with regard to this that he looked up yours truly while in the city. He interviewed me for a 'biography' about the city, due out to commemorate its 600th year of 'being' in 2011. He asked me some poignant questions, and I had to dig deep to find some rather uncomfortable answers.

So here's what I think about Ahmedabad.

The reason I've lived in this city for as long as I have is that, and this is fast becoming my favourite phrase to describe it, Ahmedabad has always been conducive to the building of ivory towers. From what I know of the mad times my parents and their friends-relatives-peers have spent in the city; and from growing up here myself, the sense I’ve imbibed is that one can find the room, if one doesn’t mind living on the periphery of what passes for the ‘centre’ (real or imagined), to be who one wants to be, do what one wants to do, and live the way one wants to live.

However, what I am beginning to see as the increasingly myopic, stunted and stunting, insularity creeping into the new Ahmedabad; in other words, the passing of that opportune liminality I speak of above, is enough to make me, if not flee, at least seriously reconsider what I’m doing here and whether I can, in good faith, stay on indefinitely.

On whether She (think about it - this is *not* random capitalisation) thinks Ahmedabad has a core personality:

Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to suggest that there isn’t one Ahmedabad – there are as many Ahmedabads ‘of the mind’, to borrow from Rushdie, as there are people living here, so a ‘core’ personality is probably something of a chimera.

That said, there do appear to be a number of ‘core’ impulses which drive the gigantic machinery of the city. High on that list appears to be a yen for what in short-hand is known as ‘development’ – when really all that is implied by this term the way it is used here is ‘infrastructure’; roads, electricity – we’ve got those sorted alright, but this is nowhere near holistic in conception.

Another core trait is the lack of ‘civic’ sense – we’re interested in getting somewhere (we’ll be hanged if we know where that somewhere is), and we want to get there now. Or ten minutes ago. The furtherance and ‘delivery’ of ourselves, at top velocity, and often with express disregard for any fellow ‘traveller’ is a definite identity-marker.

On Ahmedabad’s sense of a-historicity:

This is probably because we’ve been faced with a radical bid to re-write who we are, as a city, and where we’ve come from. Any ‘re-writing’ of history necessitates perfunctorily a disconnection from the world-as-it-has-been-written, and takes many guises: from bids to rename the city ‘Karnavati’, to pronouncing it the de-Islamicised ‘Amdavad’, instead of ‘Ahmed-abad’.

There seems too, I would imagine for some people, post the Godhra riots, a need to distance themselves from the burden of memory. This can take on the form of a near-obsessive compulsion to engage with the ‘future’, even at the cost of deracinating the present and rendering obscure the past.

Ahmedabad and/in the world:

Globalisation has affected Ahmedabad in myriad ways; some more obvious or blatant than others. There is a lot of money here – perhaps there has always been – but the way it is on display today is what is new. Ostentation is no distant cousin to crass capitalism and materialism, and today, there is an unapologetic flaunting of it, since it is no longer fettered by the quasi spiritual-religious moorings of societies bygone.

How my generation reads the city:

I’m going to have to say they don’t. It’s that simple. They probably hold (as I once did) that any place is what you make of it, and it has been, especially in the past, possible to make a fine life for oneself here. But that says nothing about the city itself. It’s a series of transactions – here’s what we want to do, and here’s how we’re going to go about doing it.

The city is never foregrounded; it is, in fact, the background score upon which our lives play themselves out. When it does decide to ‘intervene’ though (riots, floods, disasters), it’s almost always with the anguish of a spectator sidelined and abused too long. As Yeats prophesied, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’.

On 2002:

The riots of 2002 were the ‘coming of age’ from hell. It was the moment at which I realised that things could never be the same again; that we were mere pawns in the hands of bloody skilled players, and that we, as a city, had been done in. The gore-fest, the looting, the raping and pillaging were all witness to the fact that we’re only ever a razor’s edge away from death and destruction; that we might don the mantles of ‘secularism’ and ‘equality’, but that in reality, these are sad, shrivelled signifiers divorced many times over from the meaning they have been ascribed. Rhetoric. Jargon.

And worst of all, we became aware of the deafening silence of a civil society, an ‘intelligentsia’ caught unawares, unprepared to make sense of what had befallen us.

I'm hoping to goodness that The Who got it right, and that 'we won't get fooled again'. I'd raise my hat to that. Wouldn't you?

What Gandhi did to me.

2010-09-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

The man is an imp, I tell you. He weasles himself into your brain, your heart, your soul (if you haven't struck any deals with a certain charmer in red at a crossroad near you) and does things to them all. He challenges the certainty of your vision; the way you make sense of this crazy little thing we call the 'world' in shorthand, and you come out...I want to say better, but I'll settle for 'different', for the experience. Here's a little note I wrote, applying for an advanced school on the life and thought of Gandhi at that splendid place I once called home (in a past life, as a Viceroy/Vicereine, possibly), the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla (www.iias.org). I was there last year, for the 'beginners' thoughtshop, and it was the most stimulating 2 weeks of my life in academia. Without further ado, I give you 'why' I must-need/have-to go back:

"I’ve been living with the idea of writing this note for the past month-and-a-half; struggling with it from the very day I received word from the Institute that it was making good the promise it made us about arranging an ‘advanced course’ on the life and thought of Gandhi as a follow-up to the Autumn School we were fortunate enough to have attended last year.

The reason I begin this note like so is that I need to establish just how much the experience of December past has meant to me. I want to say it changed my life – in fact, I will – it did change my life; in the subtlest of ways. A small example is that I’ve started thinking twice before I shine my high-beam onto a car which has not shown me the same courtesy. This act might sound like a trifle, but the first time I did it, it got me thinking about a larger ‘change’ being set in motion somewhere inside me. I finally understood that instead of merely doing unto others as they were doing unto me, it was more difficult to do unto them exactly what they were NOT doing unto me – showing consideration even in the face of apathy or wanton disregard. This, I learnt from Gandhi’s doggedness and unwillingness to back down and recourse to anything which might yield an end, but not satisfy his insistence on the purity of means.

I am both, a Ph.D. student working on the 19^th century, as well as an educator in the field of Culture and Communication. Since working alongside the likes of Tridip Suhrud, Thomas Weber and Sudhir Chandra last year – all people who shared very generously of their time and knowledge – I’ve been grappling with the idea of constructing a course on Gandhi and the way he used-forged-disseminated what we today call ‘mass communication’. He was a brilliant semiotician – anyone who understood and deployed the everyday acts of ‘walking’ or ‘spinning’ with the efficacy that he did had to be – and the way he found and used symbols to elucidate for the larger public his ‘experiments’ with the nature and bounds of truth, make for fascinating study. I’ve wanted to work on this further, and see where we can find room for a questioning of this sort in contemporary Communications curricula and theory. This, I hope to do if I can return to the IIAS.

My research, as I mentioned, is also firmly focused on the changing dialectic of the language of social reform in the late 19^th century. What the course on Gandhi last fall did for my understanding of the charged playing-field that was late 19^th-century India is unparalleled; it taught me to question the age on and in its own terms, and gave me an entry-point into reconstructing the shared semiosphere those who lived and breathed in it had access to. Any retrospective understanding of what contemporary India is or has become is impossible without first understanding where we’ve come from, the seeds of which are sown, to my mind, most closely in the upheavals – social, legal, political – of the 19^th century. A furthering of this understanding; seeing what Gandhi did, and recognising how it was a departure (or continuation, in some cases) from where the country-movement-people was/were at before he came to the forefront is precisely the grounding I need to better understand his forebears, the social reformers, politicians, journalists and writers of yore, who enunciated ‘nation’ and ‘freedom’ as ideas for the first time.

The opportunity to return to the IIAS and work on some of these issues anew would undoubtedly benefit my research and my teaching. Most importantly though, musing about Gandhi afresh would also re-validate my decision to drive with my headlights on low-beam. Or just maybe, walk instead."

Would you allow me back if I sent you this?

All you have to do is ask

2010-09-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

I can't get enough of Neil Gaiman. That's all there is to it. His writing insinuates itself into my head, creating havoc with all the randomness which peoples aforementioned storage compartment, and then proceeds to take it apart. Little by little. Re-creating endlessly.

He's got me dreaming wolves of the were variety, living with the Endless (creating the rather disturbing issue of incestuous leanings - I'd explain, but it would distract me from this...well...it can wait, so here goes - I'm in love with Morpheus. But I *am* his sister Death {Though I'm still stealing Pratchett's horse. Binky is mine. Hands/paws/mitts off, suckers}. This poses, as you can imagine, certain ethical dilemmas. Oh well. Such is life. Or whatever it is that anthropomorphic personifications call the passage of time - 'being', perhaps?), seeking opportunities to work with the 'Adjuster', and longing for my homeland, Faerie.

Last night, I was introduced to a sucker for bargains. A man of temperance in every other respect, but, as I said, a sucker for bargains. Peter Pinter wanted to 'dispose off' a Casanova-like figure from the accounting department, who was doing the business with his 'intended' (Aside: What is with inane pre/conjugal terminology? Intended? As a noun? I mean, really? And what does it mean when someone says they're "engaged"? That the idiot on the other line forgot to hang up? Ah, me). The people he contacts tell him they can get the job done for 500 quid. BUT. They have a special offer - 2 for 475, or 10 for less! Then of course, there's the 'wholesale' rate. 1000 people for a quid each. Something about how human life comes cheap springs to mind, but quickly sees what else it's sharing liminal mindspace with, and scampers back from whence it came. Next, he finds that for the princely sum of 4,000 pounds, he can get rid of the 14-million-odd people who stand between him and the throne of England (a cousin of his was married to a minor lordling). He's tempted, but suspects there's an even better deal he just might be passing up.

So he asks.
"How much for the world?"
"The world, Sir? Why, that would cost nothing. We've been prepared for aeons. It's just that we needed to be asked first."
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, the world ends.

It's that simple. All you have to do is ask.

This is a mighty long preamble, even for a meandering minstrel (no, I'm not, and yes, I only did it for the alliteration) like me {three points}. So, instead of giving you what I thought I would, I'll let the prologue double up as *the* thing itself. Notice how I avoid naming these rambling-wandering-treatises, even as I name them.

This one came out of Hazel asking me to write today. I said I'd consider it.
She did ask, after all.

On why she doesn't write.

2010-08-17T02:18:00.001-07:00

Do you find you don't rhyme because you're scared?

When you read as much as I do, it's a wonder one ever winds up putting pen to paper at all, because the 'anxiety of authorship' (and the fact that I know what it is in the first place) rests heavy on what feel like increasingly fragile shoulders.

I'm scared that nothing I ever write will be a fraction as fine as some of the things I've read. And since I'm afraid of laying bare my soul, for I can't do it as eloquently as I'd like, I write very little verse. And when I do, most times, it is in French. To make it even less accessible than any poetry, by virtue of being a window into your own personal semiosphere, already is.

I'm just a scared little girl, me.

But I like Warhol's golden heels.

I will wear them diamond dust shoes.

Colonial Hangovers

2010-08-09T01:57:00.000-07:00

I've come to a conclusion. It mightn't be radical, but appears sufficiently *true* even as I play with it in my head, coming at it from as many angles as I can think of. You know how students out West, especially in England, take a 'gap-year' between high-school and university? It's a trend that's fast catching on, so I'm going to assume you know what I'm on about. Well, the amazing alacrity with which they wander the world, thinking that it IS, in very deed (I love 'New Grub Street' for this phrase alone) their ruddy insert-shell-fish-of-choice-here:compute- oyster, has a distinct forebear.

These are the children of Empire. The sons and daughters of ethnographers, historians, naturalists, adventurers, buccaneers, mercenaries, merchants and administrators past. The number of them who show up in India every year is pretty damn high - heck, it used to be the starting point of most conversations, when people used to try and chat up your 'umble writer in her student/bar-maid-at-a-pub-in-ye-olde-Blighty avatar: "Where are you from, love? India? Really? I LOVE INDIA! I spent most of my gap-year there, smoking some really good shit in Goa before moving on to Kerala, Delhi and Bombay!"all the while playing Indiana Jones, looking to 'rediscover' the jewel in the crown that once was. Just like the scores who came out before them, during the high-noon of the Raj.

These are the kids to the colonial hangover born. Consider the *authority* which informs most social history/travel writing from the 19th century onwards. See the writings of even a Liberal like Gladstone, for example. Or CA Kincaid. Or Colonel Todd; en bref, my point is this: These were people for whom the world was laid out, on the great A'Tuin's gigantic back if you like, to explore and make sense of as they would. They constructed their own realities, and in so doing, their histories, historiographies, geographies, sociologies, anthropologies and nations.

Our present-day breed of 'gap-year' backpackers haven't the same advantage of Empire that their ancestors did. They *do*, however, still have the same maverick spirit of exploration and the money (I'm tempted to add 'pilfered from the East over centuries', but I won't. Oh wait. I just did) to feed this yen to 'travel'. There are differences too, mind you. Unlike the Orientalists of yore, who came here to see/hear/experience/feel India in their bones, a lot of the newcomers are content to visit hackneyed places on the tourist map, where they can kick up their feet, smoke good weed for very little money, meet and spend time *exclusively* with other tourists (White-Caucasian-uninterested-in-immersing-themselves-in-the-sounds-colours-and-lives-here) bitch about how "awful these Indians are" and what harrowing trials they've had to undergo in that crowded bazaar in Pushkar, go back home in a few months, and chat up another (not so) hapless Indian chick in a student pub near Uni.

Oh well.

On truth(s); momentary and otherwise

2010-08-06T02:00:00.000-07:00

I saw something on TV the other day which sickened me to the gut. Much that is sordid-lurid-despicable is on air currently, purporting to reflect who we are as a people and what it is those benign assholes who pass off for channel ideators/producers *think* (that's me showcasing my much vaunted 'generosity of spirit') we want to see. This wasn't just that. This was horrendously hurtful, not to mention more than a little harmful to one's general well-being. Notice how I slipped in the 3-point alliteration without diluting/distorting the import of what I was trying to say. Nicely done, H. Smooth. Yes, I *write* to myself. Someone has to.

The travesty I'm on about is 'The Moment of Truth', where people are paid money - and a hell of a lot of it too - to answer painfully personal questions 'truthfully'. On national television. A lie-detector determines whether they're being honest or not. Each of the relatively simple questions in the beginning of the show give the contestant increments of 5000$, then jumping on to 10s of thousands of dollars, before doubling and trebling the amounts in question, ending at something like 5,00,000$ for, what is it, 20 questions? If this sounds too good to be true, it is. Like most things.

I'm sure a lot of us think of ourselves as being *good* or *honest* people, no less righteous than the next person. While this is all very well, we often discount the fact that being honest does not equate exactly with telling someone every gory detail about what we feel for them at any given time. Consider this: we love our families, for the most part. But how many of you can honestly say you haven't had an uncharitable thought about how this cousin can be a real retard, or that aunt a bitch who could put Hitler to shame? Does this, however, affect your ability to carry on living life as best you can, or *being* a family? Consider now what would happen if you went onto national television and told each of these people what you really thought about them. Sure, you could walk away up to 5,00,000 $ richer, but at what cost? Does anyone know what new families are going for on the market these days?

Our lives are meticulously constructed, based as they are on how we function and build relationships - personal, social, professional and otherwise. It is poignant omissions and occasional white lies which allow this edifice to keep from crumbling; crashing and burning everything in its wake. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating lying. Far from it. I *am*, however, suggesting that telling someone you're about to marry that you still fantasise about your ex is not something you ought to get paid for. It's also not the best idea in the world to do it on national TV. Give them a cuppa tea spiked with brandy, sit them down and have this chat if you must. It's kinder. Really.

I guess this rant is about recognising fallacy for what it is. A convenient, important part of the glue that holds societies-extended families-lives together. Denigrate it another day. Today, sing paeans to it instead.

Oh, the horror of it all

2010-07-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

I saw 'Khatta Meetha' last night - by accident, as it happens. For those of you familiar with my hemming-and-hawing style, you've got to have picked up on the fact that something is very wrong. H does *not* cut to the chase like this. Unless she's spending it all on the title - remember that Delhi piece? It remains my favourite one to-date. Anyhow, it was the only movie we could get tickets for on a Tuesday night which saw 89.56% of the population of Ahmedabad struggle to fit into 3 cinema halls. True story.

I didn't want to see it, but we were already there, it was beginning to rain; let's just say we thought we could do worse than to sit in a movie hall and watch what we naively presumed would be just another mindless flick.

It wasn't. It was the head-fuck from hell. I can *do* mindless - I don't have a chip on my elegant Parsi shoulder about that; but this was just wrong. The moral axis of the movie's semiosphere was so skewed, it was bloody horizontal. A flat-line; no heartbeat. Whether it's the hero's "lovable hooligan" of a side-kick staring in on an unsuspecting woman bathing, or the hero slapping the love of his life because she ignored his diktat to boycott their college exam, this movie affords innumerable examples of everything that we know to be wrong, even as it holds up the mirror to a society which winks, nudges, and condones these 'slights'. I could barely breathe in there; that is how angry this movie made me.

What exacerbated things, of course, was seeing the full-to-capacity theatre wet itself laughing at inanities so over-the-top/phy-sic(k)al-slap-sticky/done-to-death/racist-sexist-classist, that even my pet toad, had I one, would have sickened at the sight/sound of it. I despair (it *can* be used as a verb. Shut up). And fear.

To echo my-10-minute-ago-self, Oh, the horror of it all.

And...

2010-07-26T01:29:00.003-07:00

No longer paranoid about proliferation (nuclear, literary or otherwise),
Consumed as always by the anxiety of authorship, she writes.
Again.

Yes, it's been a while. I still read too much to write often; no, I won't let that always stop me, and yes, these might indeed be (in)famous last words.

It isn't like I've had nothing to say - there've been thingspeopleplaces I've donebeenwithseen. But. Such is the life of a procrastinator who puts off indefinitely that which she doesn't, absolutely, have to *do* right this instant. It is, therefore, now or pretty certainly never. The strange thing is, this hasn't been one of those days when to write was not an option. It's just another gray (the only spelling the Americans ever got right - so much prettier than grey, IMHO) afternoon, and there is much that is beautiful about my lush environs. I'm in town, at work, whiling away my time instead of reading (what is admittedly a darn fine history book) 'The Flaws in the Jewel', which divides the British Raj into four rather audaciously labelled phases: "Greed, Scorn, Fear, Indifference". Dismiss these terms as facile at your own risk - they're rather handy and contain more than a grain of truth.

The bit that interests me most is 'Indifference'. Remember we're not talking about boots you no longer use or a coat you no longer wear. We're talking about a realm. About millions of people. About a historical course which can never double back to that which it was before the *event* under discussion distorted it irretrievably. Indifference. What a loaded, destructive, beautiful word. A 'terrible beauty', to borrow from one of my favourite paradoxes.

I'd take this somewhere, I would, but I'm going to go watch Salt instead.

Hold this thought. Muse (Calliope, please) over it. Savour it like a swig of Cointreau which burns your innards on its way down, and revel in the oppressive heat it generates in you.

I'll probably be back.

Paranoid Proliferation?

2009-09-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Bajeezzus - some people I know are SO prolific, they've almost managed to scare me away from this, my first post in, well...I don't know - a while? Excuse the illiterate (it's an ellision of 'by' and 'Jesus', of course) and immodest outburst. It was brought on by this, my first "signing in" in a few weeks. The "Blogs I Follow" screen threw me a little off guard, what with showing me the million and five posts (by all of 6 people, mind you) I need to 'follow' up on.

Right, that out of the way, hello! My name is Harmony and - what the hell; we've done this bit already if you've found your way here, nein? Moving quickly on then, I thought I'd write today because a curious epidemic seems about ready to engorge a lot of musicians I know. I fear for their safety and well-being. It's a certain little thing called, popularly, I'm given to understand, megalomania. A certain Trent Reznor (the creative force behind Nine Inch Nails) suffers from it. Roger Waters fell prey to it too, aeons ago. What got me thinking about this was the mass exodus 'real' music seems to be facing today - scores of musicians I know (and ruddy good ones at that) are trouping and trekking en masse into the realms of electronica, leaving behind the virtuosity they brought to their guitars, their drums, their vocals. WHY, I've often wondered, is this happening? Learning how to play an instrument was, in some ways, akin to spinning, in terms of Gandhian symbolism - it is your own personal (and beautifully secular) prayer. Why take the 'easier' way out? Because it's there? I mean, is it the easy availability of sounds you can't generate from 'traditional' instruments; tonality which you can play with and tweak to create new soundscapes? The urge to move, therefore, beyond normative sound and structure? But then, do you use this IN something, or does this soundscape BECOME the 'thing'? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

Or is this a different problem altogether; one which raises wider socio-cultural questions and points to circulating and effective hegemonies which require a different kind of theorising? Is it easy access (by way of Fruity Loops, Garage Band and a host of other media) to what can be (and so often IS) musical megalomania? Does it stem out of the inability we seem to face, increasingly, to communicate that which is 'on the inside' to people (a band) on the outside, who haven't got access to our internal soundscapes? If you need everything to sound 'just so', and only YOU can translate what you hear in your head, (and since you can't play all the instruments there are - unless you're bloody talented and have a lot of time on your hands), it's obvious you're going to shun live musicians and find a friend in your computer instead...

Think about it - Reznor refuses to play with a steady line-up, lest anyone try and 'contribute' their own 'thing' to his sound. Waters became increasingly incorrigible too; near impossible to work with. These guys turned into musical dictators, stifling what cannot exist but for light, freedom and improvisation.
Whatever the reason/s may be, we're in a precarious position here. I don't want to sound like Yeats in 'Easter, 1914', but my litany is almost as long. How many more (as Crosby sings in 'Ohio')? How many will we lose, and for what dubious gain? "A terrible beauty is born, " the poet wrote. I hope he proves to be more poetic than prophetic.

‘GEZ’ing at a better future: A quest for alternative imaginaries

2009-07-08T03:07:00.000-07:00

This is a piece I wrote for Tehelka recently. I wasn't thrilled with the way it was edited, so here's the 'original' version. The idea is a bloody brilliant one, mind you - GEZ away, say I...

The much-bandied and obscurantised term ‘development’ has never been an innocent one. In its wake has followed displacement and disinheritance, especially when it has come to be regarded as separate from and inorganic to the cultures of the lands it purports to ‘change’.

As a response to what they perceive as the brutality inherent to the highly popular ‘Special Economic Zone’ model, which has for its basis crass economic commercialisation, the Adivasi communities of Gujarat have formulated a novel counterpoint; an idea they call the ‘Green Economic Zone’, shortened to ‘GEZ’, which, since it sounds like ‘gaze’, is a play on the idea that they have a clear vision for the future.

“Any form of development which does not have for its foundation the concepts of sustainability, ecological sensitivity and an ingrained understanding of the cultural roots of a people is genocidal by definition,” says well-known tribal activist, author, literary critic and founder-director of the seminal Adivasi Academy at Tejgarh, Dr Ganesh Devy. It is to address these ‘wants’ in the SEZ model that the Adivasis are proposing GEZ in its stead.

It has been almost a decade now since Adivasis in 1200 villages across the south and south-eastern belt of Gujarat started working “quietly, but purposively”, as Dr Devy puts it, to create a massive network of micro-credit federations. “Similarly they have been setting up their own food-grain banks, water harvesting cooperatives, organic agriculture practices, and have set up and run informal centres of learning. All this work began when a group of young Adivasis met at Tejgarh in 2000 and resolved to make their villages free of hunger, indebtedness, exploitation arising out of illiteracy, and migration arising out of helplessness,” he explains.

This team of dedicated ‘karyakartas’ has now decided to create several Green Economic Zones, eventually covering some 2200 villages which fall between the Tapti river in the south and the Mahi in the north, with the Narmada flowing in between. What is striking about the GEZs is that, unlike their namesakes, they seek to court neither foreign investment nor exploit natural resources. “We have, over the years, collected the seed capital we need to launch this initiative, and since the idea is to respect and integrate local custom and resource at every step of the way and create 100% employment for the people who live and work in these GEZs, it would be against our credo to treat the issue of investment otherwise,” says Dr Devy.

This massive initiative was launched at the Academy in Tejgarh on June 5th, from where the assembled group of community workers, students and faculty of the Adivasi Academy, joined in their efforts by human rights activists, villagers, educationists, writers, theatre artists and other ‘green-development’ sympathisers from all walks of life started on a week long march over the course of which they covered some 175+ villages, spread over an area of 3000 sq. kms, spanning the region between Tejgarh and Vedchi, Rajpipla and Vankoda, Naroda and Rangpur. This march, lasting from June 5-12, was named the “Vivekshil Vikas Mate No Pravas” (A march for judicious or wise and ‘sound’ development). Including all those who joined the Pravas at various stages, the group numbered around 1800 people, a number culled from across the country and abroad.

At each stop along the route, the volunteer workers were split into teams which covered the given district on foot, engaging the villagers, Sarpanches and local Panchayats in discussion, every step of the way. After initiating them into the ideas behind the GEZ philosophy and how it would translate into employment and uplift for their communities, the teams would then rendezvous late in the evening and go over the day’s developments, sifting through the information gathered and enlisting people for the execution of the tasks ahead.

The atmosphere at the academy in Tejgarh on June 5, before the march began, was electric to say the least. The morning was spent going over the entire idea’s raison d’être – the whys wherefores and burgeoning necessity for GEZ to find room in the popular imagination. The day began on a high-note as the Sarpanch of Tejgarh came forward to pledge that the country’s first GEZ would be established in and around his village, quickly followed by news that Palia would follow suite; and this even before the Pravas had officially begun. At the end of this initiative, the number stands at 129 villages. They have each now signed a declaration saying that they would like to have Green Zones created in their villages.

Present as key-speakers on the occasion were, among others, Mahasweta Devi, the venerable doyenne of Indian letters and social activism, who said, “All my life I have searched for the ‘genuine’; that sentiment of selfless service which manifests itself in only a handful. In Ganesh and the people at the Adivasi Academy, I stand vindicated. We are at a crossroads in space and time – there is anticipation in the air; it is as if we know that something big is either about to pass or give way disastrously. This is history in the making. West Bengal needs the GEZ idea as much as, if not more than, Gujarat does – you are all familiar with what has happened in Singur and Nandigram. These are the outcomes of a world which has lost sight of what is truly important. Seize this moment and win the day.” With these rousing words, containing all the sonority of a battle-cry, Mahasweta Devi addressed the assembled karyakartas, just before they set forth on what could perhaps, given time, prove to be the veritable turning-point in the history of ‘development’. The moment when a people long dispossessed set out to reclaim their world, and in so doing gave it a new lease on life.

Bang-galore (hah!) Blues

2009-05-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this doesn't even merit the usual exultation, "Whoopee! 3-point alliteration - she scores", but it is apt. If only jjust. It's funny how some people (read:ME, except, since facebook's idea of a Rorschach Test has diagnosed yours (all of us) truly as being decidedly Schizophrenic, 'we're' never sure who you - yes you, all of you, if you prefer {see how many syntactical problems this poses?} - will be hearing from at any given moment, I/we/she/that other one we call 'the other one' decided to give the First Person personal pronoun the skip, in as much as is possible) tend to work more when they're on 'holiday', ostensibly, than when they're sitting in an office (yes, even we academic-type things have little coves full of books and blather that can vaguely be called 'offices', before you conjure visions of 'cubicles' and computers at aforementioned utterance), again, ostensibly, to DO that "work". In this case, I've (sparing you the I've/We've/She has and c., see?) been in Bangalore for a week, and have made more headway on editing a manuscript for publication than I've been able to make in 2 months of working on the bloody thing. Maybe it's just that the weather is kinder here; maybe all this Andhra food agrees with me; then again, it could merely be that I've been waking up earlier here (so that Jayawant can drop me off to Yelahanka before he makes that long, winding, tedious, godawful trek to Whitefields {aside: WHY is it called White-FIELDS if it's full of buildings and malls, with ne'er so much as a tree in sight, leave alone fields of gold/white or otherwise? Curiouser and curiouser this gets, as a certain Alice we all know would doubtlessly say}) than I ever have back 'home', where my kind Ph.D. guide allows me to loll around and haul ass to campus only by midday. I don't know. Either way, doing all this work while I'm meant to be chillaxing the fuck out is bothering me. Hence the title. At least there's Woodstock by CSN playing in the background (and NO. It isn't CSN & Y - I know what I'm - at least one of 'us' does, anyway - on about).

I guess where this rather pointless exercise in keeping track of punctuation and syntactical changes is going is...well...help us out, won't you? We tend to meander - this we have in common.

On another note, I saw Kryptos again last night, and they were splendid. They are, without a doubt, THE best Metal band in the country right now. They were playing at a Maiden Tribute gig yesterday, in anticipation of the release of 'Flight 666' today - review, duly, will be posted here soon enough. They were easily the best band last night - oooohhh! Wooden Ships just came on - DANG, I love that song! - and had the crowd eating out of the palms of their hands. Gig in Mysore on Saturday, which Mel, Hazel and I are tagging along for. I think what makes them such a treat for me to watch/hear is that they're clearly passionate about their music - no half-way measures. They give it their all every last time. Catch them if they come play anywhere near you, and you'll see what I'm (it might appear to some, needlessly) carping on about. The reason this rather obvious 'fact' hits me that much harder is because I have, necessarily, to play covers, not all of which I'm kicked about. To see someone stay true to their creed is rather pretty, in my humble opinion. *jaded/faded/wistful grin* (big and toothy, all the same)

Anywhoo, the weather cheered me up enough to write this essterday, when Aditinath Sarkar sent me some gorgeous poetry (VERY Ramanujanesque):

On a close and pregnant summer's day,

My heart, it leapt with joy -

I wished for rondelles and enjambements;

New whims for old toys.

The 'Great Game': being her entry into the murky realm of 'political' writing (A Trilogy in Four Parts)

2009-04-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

I feel awful about not having written in so long. Here, in a nutshell, is why - I got stung by bees, went out of town (a bunch of times), fell ill while away, have been worrying/working myself to the (admittedly still a few mm away) bone, getting what I hope will read like a literate and erudite Ph.D. proposal together. I wrote this little blurb-type rant to "incite" people (the 'youth' in particular; whoever they are and wherever they be) to vote a few weeks ago. Haven't had the time to post it yet, alors, tiens - better-late-than-never-and-other-abounding-cliches...

So get this: It isn’t, not by any stretch of even the most fertile imagination, alright to affect apathy about the state of your country. It’s even less alright to kid yourself by thinking you can’t make a difference because you’re up against (this much-mythicised beast) ‘the system’, and that one vote can’t alter the course of history. This isn’t completely untrue. You’re right, for the most part. But if everyone, ever, thought this way, we’d probably still be living in caves, swinging off trees and fending big lizards off with sticks. While this idyllic existence isn’t exactly to be knocked – it sounds like fun! – I, for one, can’t live without my iPod, so thank you very much, I don’t want to be a Luddite today if it’s all the same to you.

If I sound flippant, it’s on purpose. Let not the style, however, distract you from the high-seriousness of the content. We’re getting to that time of year/life/world again when we play out pre-assigned ‘roles’ in the dance-drama of democracy, the ultimate performance piece we call ‘elections’. Ostensibly, the people we’re meant to vote for come ‘from’ us (kind of like in the Theatre of the Oppressed, come to think of it), but increasingly, there seems to be a disconnect between ‘real’ people and ‘politicians’, the third gender; the fifth species, seventh element; whatever you want to call them.

It’s a vicious cycle – if you look at the candidates most parties field, and think of them as an aggregate ‘mean’ symbolising or standing in for a nation, a sort of microcosm of all the humanity this great subcontinent is home to, the results are shocking. Is this who we are? Are these the leaders we choose to ‘represent’ us? One of the most standard arguments I’ve heard raised against the idea of voting is that people feel the parties let them down by not giving them people “worth voting for”. The point is that you won’t get them – not until the message that fielding just anyone won’t do goes out to the powers that be, very loudly and clearly. Even so, to do this requires you to vote. Vote for the least of the evils, vote for a pretty symbol – do what you will to make peace with yourself, but vote!

Change and Hope are infectious words. If enough of us start believing in them, to quote an erudite source, “What better place than here, what better time than now” to start making a difference? The Times, too, Are a’ Changin’ and it might be a Long Time Coming, but we’ll get there. By and Bye. IF you, yes you, care enough to make a difference. Care enough to vote.

Sin-shmin

2009-02-25T00:33:00.000-08:00

Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned (sin-shmin - they say Zoroaster or Zarathushtra, if you like, came up with the concept of 'guilt', and therefore, as a by-product, sin). It has been four weeks since my last confession/rant. I've known what I want to write about for ages now, but things have been tight - what with my peripatetic life getting in the way of this virtual(ly) reality shabang - with one 'incident' following closely on the heels of another till this poor, addled brain of mine was rendered incapable of deciding what I wanted to 'say' next.
I planned, originally, to talk about how disgusting the concert-going public in Ahmedabad is. IIM-A had their annual noise fest, Chaos, last month, and there was a 'rock competition' (sadly, there weren't any large {rolling or otherwise} stones around, which I could hurl at the excuses which pass off for musicians these days, but that's another kettle of miscellaneous creepy-crawlies, as the inimitable Terry Pratchett would say) at the RJMCEI, running late into the night. Bands from all over the place came down 'like wolves on the fold, and their cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold' (not really, they weren't, but I like that Byron chap).
The lousy local bands got the crowd going with their 'OC's which sounded like much-pilfered tunes, but when the Bombay and Delhi bands came on, they were booed off stage, with the audience chanting something to the effect of 'bandh karo ye atyachaar', 'get off stage, Madarchod!' and my favourite, 'WE DON'T WANT ORIGINALS! PLAY SOME FUCKIN' COVERS, YAAR!'. Nowhere in the world, apart from here, is this particular war cry used to lay low a creative artist. I was indignant and furious initially, and wanted to yell back at this disgusting crowd to go back to fucking their mothers, since that's about all they seem equipped to do, but I realised that one (ok, two, maybe - Jasdeep would've joined in) against 400 isn't exactly the best odds in the world.
I could go on about this, but other, more important news has reached these ears. Friends of mine in B'lore - two friends, in seperate incidents - have had a really harrowing time lately. One had her car followed, spat upon and hit by a stone (before the dumb ch** on the bike tried to punch her in the face, all the while calling her names in Kannada), and the other saw his friends get bashed up when they tried to stop a bunch of goons from hittting (NOT just hitting on) their female friends outside a pub. What the hell is this all about? We live in factious times, this much we know, but this is surreal and disgusting beyond belief.
It's almost as if we're living under siege - and it isn't 'terror' of the kind that played itself out in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Jaipur and Delhi either. The danger lies in extremes. Of any, every and all kinds. I can sound as jingoistic about secularism as my neighbour in Karnataka can about the righteousness and need for the Ram Sene. Moderation is what is called for. Temperance in all we say and do. Otherwise, 'they' will be as justified in sending 'us' saffron flags as 'we' were in sending 'them' pink chaddis. It's tough to walk this talk, but we can try to live and let live, can't we, even though we'd much rather live and let die?
What scares me senseless is the everydayness of the attackers - it's the people on the street - people like you and me! Can you imagine the horrors of living in a city where you don't know where the next attack is coming from? The rickshawallah? The paanwallah? That car-load of dicks who just drove past you, hooting? And what are we meant to do to make it go away? I think that school of ancient Greek philosophers was onto something - they held that the world disappeared if you closed your eyes. It came back into existence when you opened them. I'm keeping mine closed for a while - wake me up when this is over, yeah?

Lutyen’s Delhi is a schizophrenic city, so drunk on its sense of power, it teeters on unstable heels (high, golden ones)

2009-01-26T04:02:00.000-08:00

There. I’ve gone and spent it all on the title. I’m told this isn’t done, especially if I intend people to read the rest of my piece, but I’m going to impose upon the benign goodness of my readers and assume that since you’ve already ‘hit’ this page, you’ll finish what is going to be yet another rant (it seems to be all I do these days, but if you found yourself in the same situation as I’ve been in, and didn’t act prissy too, well, then you, my son, are a better man than I {I went with ‘son’, instead of the more gender-neutral ‘child’ because it’s just easier to then leave Kipling’s next line untouched, instead of adding the correct, but more clumsy qualification ‘man/woman than I’, even, say, if the latter were technically more accurate in this case}).

Back to Delhi, then, customary hemming-and-hawing done with. You can see it everywhere – in the scale, in the choice of automobiles, in the architecture – the almost manic geometry of the layout, in, inevitably therefore, the people. Their accents (a posher-part-of-London-meets-hardcore-Ludhiana-via-Chandigarh or a Gujarati-goes-to-New York-returns-to-Ahmedabad-and-then-heads-to-London type of thing – you know what I mean) and constructions (a marvellous study for any fledgling linguist/ gatekeeper-custodian-historian of language).

Shiv tells me that the same concerns are still being voiced by the same academicians, at the same kind of conferences, thirty-odd years down the line. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. Or, if I were to say it another way, this doesn’t surprise one. One what? One who? One why? ‘One’ has, in the past been guilty of using the third person two (sorry – I just couldn’t resist this numerical aside), but get over oneself, one wants to say to these other ones. Hmm.

(Aside: How is it that people discussing S&T Policy don’t know how to turn a cordless microphone on? It amuses me much that of all these scientists, this musician is the only one who is mic-savvy)
Ah well - these were the fevered musings of a conference I was at a couple of weeks ago. I 'found' it just today. Blame the 15-odd speakers I was meant to 'report' about for why I couldn't continue the rant which started (IMHO) so very promisingly. *Or thank them, if you'd rather, for they are the ones responsible for this - my shortest post yet.

The Unclear Conundrum

2009-01-17T04:23:00.000-08:00

I wonder how this will help my cause any, but here goes anyway. I'm very annoyed with my paper at the moment. I was away for ten days covering the European Knowledge Commission debates across the country, and dutiful journalist that I am, was sending in pieces from all over in real-time. Now, the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom (I'm just oozing generosity of spirit this evening), did not carry the articles when they were sent in, because the head honcho was away. They are now dated, but the paper still says it "wants to run them". Today, my desk-head called and said they wanted to carry an edit piece on the proceedings, without first grounding it in the news it seeks to comment on. The guy they approached to write this editorial is one of the most brilliant men I've met yet (and no, it isn't because he's luminous - backlit by some halogens or anything), and the reason I was taken along to cover these conferences in the first place. Genius that he is, he said we'd send in something in 5 minutes.

No prizes for guessing what happens next - we tweak one of my articles, and turn it into an edit in 30 seconds flat.

It irks me that we had to, but c'est la vie and all that shaata (Thank you, Jj - I can't imagine life without this handy little cus word now).

The piece I turned in was about one of the best public debates I've ever attended. It was on the Nuclear Energy issue (Yes, I know - you thought books, music, places and movies were all I wrote about, and I would have had to agree, prior to January 10, but...there we are. The blog IS called 'She Writes' - in my defence, I never once specified what about!).

Without further ado, since there's always so bloody much of it wherever I'm concerned, ladies and gentlemen, I give you 'The Unclear Conundrum'

Return of nuclear power: Old problems, changed contexts

The nuclear story as it is told in India is distinctly incomplete. While the debate around it is age-old, this story has always suffered from our society's inability to give voice to those pathways of innovation the choice of nuclear energy rendered non-options, pushing them ever closer to obsolescence. A new kind of imagination is called for if we are to tell this tale allowing for the plurality inherent to storytelling.

What brings about this musing is a continuation of the ‘Knowledge Society’ debates which recently took place in the country. The STEPS Centre University of Sussex, and civil society groups in Bangalore, organised a public discussion on the nuclear energy debate, exploring how its current resurgence, while posited with the same problems of yesteryears, today requires a new terms of engagement, since the context in which it is playing itself out is a charged one.

While concerns relating to nuclear weapons have dominated debates in India for the past few decades, the talk of nuclear power expansion has traditionally been justified by saying that it is the only way India can meet its growing energy needs. Likewise, in Europe, many governments and policy makers are encouraging the propagation of this form of energy as a response to climate change and environmental concerns. But even as these contexts play out within the ambit of local politics, the old problems with nuclear energy – those of high costs, safety concerns, radioactive waste and security risks – have not been addressed to-date.

The Princeton scientist MV Ramanna has made an astute case for what he calls ‘the propaganda of scarcity’, saying that agendas so shrill and heightened that they are close to proclaiming we’ll have no electricity if we don’t ‘go nuclear’ are pure rhetoric. Starting with Amulya Reddy in the late 1980s, there has been a lobby firmly stating that alternatives to the nuclear path exist – it’s time we took them seriously.

SPRU Policy Scientist Andy Stirling holds that it is imperative we know why we’re sceptical of nuclear energy – so-called ‘facts’ can be made to read in different ways. Right at the outset we need to recognise that there is literature which says that this form of energy is safe, cheap and reliable. The question then, is that of parameters and supposedly apriori assumptions, such as the most common one of them all: that nuclear power is cheap.

The other argument made for it is its alleged environment friendliness – how can this go unchallenged? And as for the risk of energy dependence, we would do well to question whether this isn’t simply a case of moving from one form of dependence (gas) to another (thorium/uranium). This is not merely a technical debate. The facets underlying it are very political, and we would do well to engage with it at top priority.

Scientist Vishnu Kamath maintains that it would be incorrect to view this question in the light of an ‘either/or’ parameter. It shouldn’t be about pitching one form of energy against another – it would be reductionist to say ‘if not nuclear energy, we should try thermal or hydal power’. What is called for is an examination of the developmental paradigm our country subscribes to – any developmental work undertaken needs necessarily to cater to the multitudes of have-nots, and in a direct manner. Again, if this sort of democratic, all-inclusive form is what we’re looking for, nuclear energy isn’t the answer.

We cannot fall prey to the amnesia that seems to underwrite any discussion of the nuclear question in India. I come to this question from the vantage point not of science, but of the social sciences, and I ask myself, what does ‘being nuclear’ mean to our Indian middle-class imagination? Science was to be the language of the Indian Nation-State, with different forms of energy reading as metaphors for it. We overlooked bio-mass, and with this crucial exclusion, failed to speak of the scores of people living with and in nature.

There followed a systematic disengagement from indigenous knowledges, even as liberalisation broke down our body politic. Our defeated ‘traditional’ knowledges therefore remained dialects, never allowed to turn into full-fledged languages. To dissent against the nuclear was to call into question all of officialdom, and in so doing, the sovereignty of the nation; yet another instance of the suspension of democracy being officialised.

Gypsy Caravan - When the road bends...

2008-12-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

"You cannot walk straight
When the road bends..."
- A Romany-Gypsy proverb

This piece could very easily turn into one of a number of things. I recently discovered that, while the people it refers to are ancient, the term 'gypsy' itself is of relatively recent (late 18th-early 19th century) coinage, and is derived from the dark, laden term 'Egypt' (which, by the bye, is NOT what that Egyptians call it). While this is undoubtedly fascinating in and of itself, it isn't what I want to write about right (ARGH! That ghost of internal rhyme still hath me in thrall!) now.

I could also, perhaps, trundle off into stories about how I've always seen myself as something of a gypsy - how the wanderlust in me, I've always wishfully ascribed to some wild-eyed, dark-haired, wandering minstrel of an ancestor. On second thoughts, that description fits me more accurately than any ancestor of mine - perhaps I should leave them poor souls out of this. Hmm.

Anywhoo, I'm focusing for a minute to tell you what I DO want to write about - this afternoon I saw what is possibly one of the finest music documentaries ever made - and this isn't one of those "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" type of hyperboles either. Jasmine Dellal's 'Gypsy Caravan' is, in a word, splendid, and should be compulsory viewing for any musician or music aficionado. While I'm being didactic and prescriptive, another thing that is "compulsory" for this breed of weirdos, of which I am a loud and proud part, is the reading of Pratchett's 'Soul Music' - just take my word on this one; don't argue - read!

Meandering done with, back to this Caravan, then. What I love about this documentary is that it doesn't dwell on how misunderstood this race has always been - something it could justifiably and easily have done. Instead, it celebrates them in all their glory. And since nothing to do with the gypsy 'way of life' would be complete without their music, so much the better for this avid viewer/listenHer (another of Jayawant's 'jjems'). The World Music Institute arranged for a group of gypsy musicians from Macedonia, Romania, Spain and India (don't look askance at this inclusion - Gypsies originated from the tribe of 'Roms' who migrated westwards from North India in ages bygone), to tour across America, Canada and a host of other countries, a few years ago. Alongside them on this 6-week journey was this intrepid filmmaker, Dellal.

To me, this documentary is an ode to the beauty of exchanged acquiring. The musicians from these countries start out wary of each other, but end on a carnivalesque (can it be otherwise, with this particular group of performers?) and suitably 'emancipated' note, which sees a Rajasthani folk singer plaintively croon, 'is duniya mein kitna hai gam', to the strains of a classical Spanish guitar and a flamenco dancer giving form to his grief.

Esma, the Macedonian diva, in one of her early interviews stresses on how she is against "assimilation", and has stuck to the purity of her form. This same chanteuse - one of the best I've ever heard - ends the documentary singing with a troupe of Romanian gypsies, 'Taraf de Haidouks' (which literally translates to 'Band of Brigands': this troupe 'runs' their village on their earnings). Nikolai Neascu, the lead violinist, is one of the most expressive musicians I've heard yet, and his protege, Caliu, one of the fastest. Nikolai dies before the end of the tour, and the music his Brigands play at the wake is as extraordinarily moving as only music, when every other form of expression (beginning with language, first off) fails one, can be.

I've got more to say about the documentary itself, but I won't. As you walk away (I had the fortune of attending a special screening for just 5 people), what stays with you is how easy music makes the task of communicating - there are 30-odd musicians here, most of whom do not share a language in common, at least ostensibly. This is until the first note is struck - the first 'stance' taken. Then, everything falls into place. Juana, with her pack-of-cigars-and-crate-of-whisky-a-day-for-fifty-five-years voice, sings her 'lament'. As does Esma. That I don't know what it is they sing about, and probably never will, suddenly ceases to matter. I share their grief, as I know you will too.

Wadings, waitings, weddings - whatever

2008-12-16T02:14:00.000-08:00

Four-point alliteration done with, I'm going to talk today (goddamn this ghost! Yikes!) of a phenomenon I like to call the 'It's not my wedding, so I don't have to attend all the functions in it Blues'.
Now, I'm not 'for' weddings, but I believe, equally, that if I've taken the trouble to go attend one (and not just anyone's either - the one I'm talking about saw two very dear friends tie the 'Knuptial Knot' {that's one of Jayawant's - I can't take credit for it} as it were), then I owe it to them to at least, well, stick around long enough to see them "do" the phera thing and be pronounced man and woman (Erm, I don't like the sound of 'man and wife' - you mean he gets to stay whatever it was he started out as, but she changed from being her own person to being a 'wife'? What is that? A fourth gender?).
Anywhoo, so a bunch of us were at this wedding and we had a blast. So where's my grouse? Only in that just a handful of us stayed put for the actual puja and pheras, which happened, admittedly, really late into the night. We also 'accompanied' (kicking and screaming) the newly-weds to their hotel room, where we proceeded to annoy the living daylights out of them till the wee hours of the following morning. This, I like to think, they will remember. As will we.
I guess what this rant is about is something I've heard called 'group dynamics'. It's perfectly possible for people you know in their individual capacity to be very intelligent and fun, to metamorphose in the blink of an eye into mindless airheads, all about finding that next drink/party, whatever; to turn into, in other words, a gaggle of geese. Don't for a moment think I'm excluding myself from this gaggle - I squawked (or whatever it is that geese do) as loudly as the next person - but I did realise that this is not good news.
It leads me to draw one of two possible conclusions. Either I need to lighten the f*** up and not have such a chip on my shoulder about mindlessness, or, and this is the harder of the two to accept, I need to realise that people, as they grow older, tend to drift apart - we have less in common than we did in middle school, when our needle-work teacher Ludvina (bless her soul) whacked us all on the knuckles and we hated her equally, for example.
It would seem that this piece has taken on something of a life of its own - I didn't mean it to go quite this way, but as it is, it reads like a eulogy for the leopard which changed its shorts (Go read Pratchett, I say!). Hmm.

'Harmony in Germany':Politically correct racism

2008-11-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

In this day and age, when borders seem to be forever shrinking in the face of the new language everyone in the world seems to want to learn – capitalism – it is harder to be overtly racist than it used to be.

It isn’t as if racism was de rigueur in times bygone, but no one would have looked askance a decade ago at, say, a bus driver in a sleepy English town not taking the bus fare from the hands of an Indian girl, or a Frenchwoman doing likewise when aforesaid woman tries to buy a book on Van Gogh at the Louvre (in the year 2000). Just for example.

Now, however, what with ‘political correctness’ taking centre-stage in our scheme of things (and how can it not, when migrants form such a large percentage of any place’s population?), one complaint to the right people and the bus driver and shop assistant would be out of a job.

Does this mean, then, that racism has vanished altogether? That we’ve managed to beat down this ugly monster and relegate it to the realms of nothingness? Far from it. All that we’ve managed to achieve, with this superficial propagation of that which is PC, is to force racism into a new shape; make it necessary for it to assume a new form.

Cut to 2008. Frankfurt airport. I’m flying Lufthansa, and arrive at the counter, ready to check in. The woman at the counter asks me to weigh my cabin baggage too, for some reason. Having stowed my laptop in there, it was a little above the stipulated 8 kilos. I told her as much. She turned her sweetest smile upon me and said, “Well, feel free to throw it away then.” I thought she hadn’t heard me, and repeated that it was overweight because I had my laptop, which I was allowed to carry as a separate piece anyway, in there. She smiled and said, “You heard me – I said ‘feel free to throw it away’. You could do that, for example.”

For example. This is when it dawned on me that I’d stumbled across someone who was very au courant – a la mode, culturally, to the tee, what was being used upon this unsuspecting country cousin was the ‘latest’ form of racism – metamorphosed into this sickly sweet politeness, chilling by virtue of how it uses the smile – that ultimate leveller which speaks to something in us all, regardless of what language we speak or where we’re from – and disconnects it from what we associate it with most; the ability to empathise or ‘connect’ with another human being.

I stepped out of the queue, and attempted to “throw away” whatever I possibly could – the casualties were the posters, newspapers, calendars and other literature I’d picked up at the music festival I’d gone to Germany to cover. It was that, or the laptop. This done, she made me queue up again. I didn’t mind. I watched her fawn over the people ahead of me (with bigger, heavier bags too, mind you), and help them out as best she could. When it came to my turn again, that smile didn’t wither, but the light in her eyes that accompanied it did. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Paying the (exorbitant) ‘excess baggage’ sum she said I owed the airline, I did.

'Harmony in Germany': Cologne and the Cathedral

2008-11-28T04:34:00.000-08:00

I left Berlin reluctantly. In spite of the prospect of meeting/ hearing some mouth-wateringly brilliant bands and musicians in Cologne, at the music festival I had ostensibly gone to Germany for, I kept thinking there was much more to Berlin than I’d been able to get my head around in the week that I was there. The place truly had me in thrall, and I was a minion to its dictates.

Such being my état d’être, I got on board the train to Cologne wishing I didn’t have to leave just yet. The three hours this cross-country journey took, complete with stunning panoramas and rollicking glades on display, made me make some sort of peace with my situation.

Pacified some, I trudged out of Cologne station, and the sight that met my eyes (in a very clichéd fashion) made my jaw, bags, and reservations drop. And how. There in front of me was Cologne’s pride and joy, the most visited heritage site in Germany; Cologne’s central Cathedral.

If Berlin's ‘human-sized’ scale had placated me into a false sense of security apropos my own importance in the universe’s scheme of things, Cologne Cathedral decidedly put me in my place. To call this awe-inspiring, humongous building an architectural marvel wouldn’t even be scratching at its surface. Cologne Cathedral merely ‘is’.

The cathedral was a ‘gift’ to the city from a grateful medieval Pope, helped out in his time of need by the city’s army. During World War II, the city knew the cathedral would come under attack, and cleverly dismantled its gorgeous stained-glass mosaics, storing them in the cellars till such time as it was safe to have them out on display again. Wise thinking, as the events which transpired were to prove.

This ‘Northern-most tip of Italy’, as Cologne likes to think of itself (it was founded by the Romans), is a place where history lives. It breathes in every citizen (proud, and rightfully so) of this beautiful, ever-so-European haven. Divided into two by the Rhine which meanders through the heart of it, Cologne, as any of her people will tell you, has always been a ‘very important’ city – first on the pilgrim trail, and then as a trade capital.

Today, the city is just as important on another pilgrim trail – that of the new-age-electronica-lover – and is home to some of the most cutting-edge electronic musicians in Germany.

And did I mention the traditional rivalry between the Cologners and Berliners? The mere mention of Berlin is enough to make them look at you circumspectly – could you actually, perish the thought, for a second, be suggesting that Cologne is not the centre of all that is finest in art, culture, music and well, living? Berlin, they feel, is jaded. Cologne, feel the Berliners, is so caught up in where it’s from, that it can’t see where it’s going.

Instead of attempting to solve this age-old debate, I’ll take the easy way out. I’ll take both, please.

'Harmony in Germany': Nameless Now in Berlin

2008-11-28T04:31:00.000-08:00

One doesn’t ‘adopt’ Berlin; the city adopts you. If you’re lucky. It’s just one of those things.

The city did just that for a group of wandering musician-gypsy-festival organisers from India recently. In Germany as a panel of ‘music experts’ from the region, the group was in Berlin and then Cologne in August as part of an initiative undertaken by the Goethe Institute in conjunction with the well-known electronic music festival/professional music fair, C/O Pop.

As is wont to happen when a group of dynamic individuals all working towards the same end, albeit in different, if complementary fields, comes together, this group wasn’t content to sit back and merely watch proceedings unfold, talking to festival organisers from across Europe and c. to see what could materialise by way of collaborative enterprise between European (German, more pertinently) and South Asian musicians/event organisers/record labels. They wanted to perform. And perform they did.

Archana Prasad, an artist from Bangalore who ‘plays’ with ‘Lounge Piranha’ in the capacity of a visual artist (or ‘VJ’) had something to do with this. An independent local art gallery, ‘PutiKlub’ in the uber-trendy Western area of Kreuzsberg had exhibited Prasad’s work when she was in Germany earlier this year. She contacted them again, saying she was back as part of a group of musicians and artists who wanted to organise an audio-visual installation/presentation while they were in Berlin. Manolo, the owner of the gallery, jumped at the idea.

Thus was born ‘Nameless Now’, which saw electronic musicians Samrat Bharadwaj, Varun Desai and Prashant Pallemoni from India, RnB singer Randhir Witana from Sri Lanka and mandolin player Faisal Gill from Pakistan come together to lay down and create a musical score onto which Prasad, projecting onto a wall of the gallery converted into a gigantic screen, ‘played’ with images “suggested by the music these guys created”.

Jamming with each other – letting the one and then the other take centre-stage – the act’s main protagonists did their thing, wowing the assembled Berliners (and a motley crew they were as well – Turks, Mexicans, Middle-Easterners and Spaniards, among others, rubbed shoulders with the more indigenous members of the audience), as only they knew how.

This example, so typical of the city, serves to highlight the openness of Berlin’s attitude; its assimilative state of mind – everything that constitutes the city’s cultural consciousness, which consists of so many, many parts, each one generously embraced.

Berlin is living proof of the veracity of Calvino’s claim: Here is a city that constantly reinvents, rewrites, and in so doing, reiterates itself. This it does by dint of its unique ability to not simply make room for the ‘other’ to its norm, but by suspending with the very idea of a norm, thus abolishing in the same fell swoop the need for a creation of the ‘other’.

'Harmony in Germany': Another small-scale reflection on a decidedly human-sized city

2008-11-28T04:22:00.000-08:00

If this piece sounds like an ode to Berlin, so much the better: that’s exactly what it is meant to be; a paean to a city which celebrates ‘humanity’ in its many facets, most notably in its architecture.

Where the imposing (undeniably beautiful, nevertheless) gothic cathedrals of Cologne, Angers, Paris or Tours are meant to dwarf; leaving one with no delusions of aggrandisement to labour under, the scale of buildings in Berlin is decidedly human – it fits us well, and doesn’t make people feel like immaterial specks of dust to be trodden rough-shod over by a whimsical higher force.

In this, perhaps, lies the city’s singularity. It places the human being at the ‘centre’ of its ontology, and derives an exquisite pleasure from letting its inhabitants know as much. This physical scale isn’t, however, to be confused with a smallness in the scope of Berlin’s undertakings: ‘Charité’, one of the biggest hospitals in Europe is housed here, and has long been recognised as one of the leading lights in the progress of medicine; the awe-inspiring Bode and Hamburger Contemporary Art museums (the latter housing some brilliant Warhols – but that is another story waiting to be told) are food for some of the most spectacular thoughts one can possibly hope to, well, think.

The focal point here is that these institutions don’t confound because of their size; they don’t overwhelm or make one long for the surety that only a 10X10 room provides, to make us feel ‘relevant’ in this world and in our own skins. It feels as though the thought that went behind these constructions was one which sought to reinstate our faith in ourselves, since it used the normal human being as the model in its determining of the scale of the structure at hand.

The religion that Berlin is founded upon, therefore, is clearly that of humanism.

This fact is also borne out in the ‘walkability’ quotient of the city. There are several cities and towns in Germany considerably smaller than Berlin, and yet one can’t help but walk while in Berlin. Or cycle, of course. Taking a cab, the (super-efficient, but then almost all things German [save their national railway] tend to be) tube or a bus just doesn’t allow for the same familiarity as walking the streets of Berlin does.

The Wall might well have come down in ’89, but the psychological barriers which were its attendants persist yet: people are ‘Easterners’ or ‘Westerners’ first, and ‘Berliners’ next. A city poised on this wildly interesting precipice, the surest way to come to terms with the diversity and ‘many-headed monster’, to borrow from Rushdie, that is Berlin, is to walk. And it isn’t difficult when the city’s streets and very architecture call out to you to do just that.

'Harmony in Germany': Small-scale reflections on large-scale windows

2008-11-28T04:11:00.000-08:00

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about Berlin, it is that this city is big on reflections. It likes to see, be seen and be seen seeing. The fabulous windows in my room which run from ceiling to floor, looking out onto the drama that is Oranienburger Strasse by night or day allow, equally, for the Berliners waking past on the aforementioned Strasse to look into my hotel room and see whatever it is I intend them to.

And this doesn’t hold true just for living spaces either. The brilliant jazz clubs lining the market place off Friedrich Strasse also have enormous glass fronts looking out onto the street – a way to draw people in, clearly, but it also means that the fabulous music on display can be enjoyed even by those unwilling or unable to pay the steep (relatively) entry fee that most of these places command.

This idea of individual space not necessarily having to equate with the inability of others to look into that which is ‘ours’ is the interesting thing here. The fact that someone else can look into my hotel room from across the street doesn’t make it any less ‘mine’, because, for the most part, this gaze isn’t an intrusive one.

Whilst still preoccupied with this notion, I found myself at the Holocaust Memorial in the heart of town, next to the Brandenburger Tor, one of the better-known symbols of Berlin. The memorial is unprepossessing in appearance – it comprises a series of concrete slabs of varying height and size, laid out in a symmetry which chills by virtue of its total and complete precision. In every direction, the Memorial gives out onto parks and solid new constructions, visible from any point within its confines.

Underfoot is gravel, and thousands of small, tar squares, which put one in mind of the ruthlessly methodical, clinical fashion in which the events the Memorial marks took place. The concrete slabs get higher, reaching almost twice a person’s height the closer one gets to the centre.

The irony, driven home impeccably by the Memorial, is that the victims of the regime, like the visitors to the monument, could see, clearly, that there was an elsewhere – an outside world – it’s just that they weren’t going to be allowed to be part of it.

The murkiness of Germany’s history, therefore, to my mind, goes a long way towards explaining its people’s newly-found insistence on transparency in every way shape and form: in governance and its procedures, in accountability at the work place, and, as it happens, in windows as well.

Bombing the Bay

2008-11-28T03:08:00.000-08:00

I can’t do what I’m meant to today – it’s like living a sham. I can’t sit here and write about some art exhibition, no matter how good, when I feel physically sickened by all that has happened in Bombay. As Jayawant said yesterday, it’s a macabre analogy – the Gateway of India, erstwhile port to royalty and, to our system of meaning what the Statue of Liberty is to New York, has been turned into an entry point of a very different kind. By depositing their ‘cargo’ at the Gateway, these terrorists have made a mockery of us.

Gandhi once said that the English were only here because we let them stay; that if every Indian so much as spit, the (phlegmy) tidal wave generated thus would wash them (well) out of the country. He was right – we’re easily paralysed. Life is all too cheap here – there are so many of us, what’s a few hundred lost? The verity of his words, too often prophetic for my comfort, is also borne out here, by what’s been happening over the last couple of days. Why and how is it possible that a handful of fearless (in that they don’t give a flying f*** whether they live or die) fidayeens can bring a city the size, scope and scale of Bombay dithering to its knees?

And it only gets worse before it gets better. Is it possible that we (the media) have become precisely that we’ve been accusing these ‘militants’ of being? Ruthless, professional and heartless; cold as ice? Take for instance the ramblings of this woman on a news channel late last night. Word had just come in that more hostages had been killed at the Taj, and that another fire had broken out – a bad one – and we didn't know how it started. In the same breath as we speak about the hostages, she has the gall to say, “It’s a sad moment for any Mumbaikar – heart wrenching! To see this building burn! It’s such a huge part of our lives; our mental and emotional makeup – a reflection of our aspirations, a part of our legacy” and so on and so forth. THIS little eulogy, or ode to a partially-burnt building, WHILE there are people being butchered inside it? Help me understand how this is ethical; how this is right. You bleed for a building, metaphorically, while blood is spilt, literally, on the inside?

But this is the tragedy of India. We feel, we hurt, we rant and rage, impotent as we are to actually make a difference, now, as ever. So, I’m told it is in my best interest to show some of that fabled ‘Bombay-style resilience’ which sees the city bounce back to its feet no matter how hard the knock it’s received, and go back to writing about the ‘Joy of an Era’ collection of tribal Rathwa art.

I might be a mere outsider looking in, but from where I stand, this much-touted resilience and ‘will to move on’ looks curiously like nonchalance. Sure people are getting ready to go back to work or school or wherever it is they need to go! But these are not the people who’ve lost loved ones to the mindless carnage. It’s easy to say “we must move on” when you’ve lost nothing and your life can (and bloody well will) continue along the trajectory it always has.

It takes more, not less, to stop. To reflect. To empathise. To share the grief, the gut-wrenching pain and agony of all those left behind – of the father whose son and daughter-in-law still haven’t made it out of the Trident, nearly 48 hours later; of the family whose 19-year-old management trainee son’s body was handed over to them after the siege at the Taj came to an end. Take the day off. Feel sick – you should.

That’s it. I can’t write any more…