Random Harvest

Viva Voce - a weekly novel

2012-01-23T00:13:00.000-08:00

STARTING 3RD FEBRUARY 2012 at thefridaynovel.blogspot.com and one other location. watch this space

Spring clean your Marriage

2012-01-02T19:29:00.000-08:00

Just about everyone spring cleans their homes, at least once a year. In the West it’s during spring – when carpets can be aired, winter clothes put away, junk thrown out, windows opened to let out stale winter air and let in the freshness of spring. Here in India the cleaning fever grips us before our festivals, and the more tidy amongst us will spring clean at least once a month. We do it, not as a chore, but as a chance to run our eye and our duster over all our possessions - cleaning, mending, discarding, replacing, rediscovering. Lurking pests and fungus are shown the door, and now we’re sure that nothing scary is going to jump out at us. It’s a great feeling. Once we’re done, we have the satisfaction of knowing how things stand in every nook and corner of our home. Every area – the parts that are visible and in regular use, as well as tucked away unseen areas – have been examined and blessed with our attention and efforts. And we’re all set, or one should say reset, to enjoy the joys of being a householder.
It’s the same with our cars – servicing, regular petrol filling, maintaining tyre pressure, cleaning inside and out, listening out for any odd noises. How well and how routinely we manage all this.
Many of us do a fairly good job of maintaining our bodies too. And if we don’t, the ill-effects show up soon enough and quite obviously so, in the form of weight gain or illness - so we’re forced to take stock of our habits and make some quick and sustainable changes.
With our careers too, we see to it that things remain on track. Our own ambitions and the demands of corporate life demand that we remain focused, skillful, flexible and forward-moving; and that we learn to manage our relationships at work.
So there it is, then: our homes, our cars, our bodies, our jobs – all of them routinely get their share of attention and care.
However, the most important relationships in our lives - the ones that will outlive our homes and cars and jobs and even our bodies - we treat as if they’re completely weather-proof, Teflon-coated, maintenance-free, unbreakable and come with a lift-time warranty. We leave them out in the rain, we scratch them, we provide them little nourishment, we toss them around, making big dents and small ones.
How come?
It’s usually because our relationships are ‘expected’ to take the wear and tear. Marriage is one such relationship. The definition itself, in every culture, says ‘for better or for worse’, ‘till death do us part’, etc. But many of us don’t seem to read the fine print – or the fine print is not pointed out to us – it says: ‘highly inflammable; not to be loose shunted.’
Which means that when we enter marriage, we’re undertaking something, like all high-energy projects, with tremendous and powerful potential. And for this power to work for us, we need to handle it with care and follow certain protocols for maintenance and troubleshooting:

Fuel efficiency and body work: Tired, underfed or overfed, unkempt bodies are a serious marital-energy sapper. Don’t ignore the early warning signs that come from your mirror and from gentle jokes made by your spouse. Commit to staying fit and reasonably slim, for yourself as well as for each other. Work, kids, ‘i’ll do it if you do it’ – none of these excuses are valid. What’s the fuss really? Make small but sustainable changes in your eating habits. Don’t wait for a gym to open up nearby or the weather to change or for the right shoes. All you need is enough space to stretch, a walking track or a quiet lane or even the corridor of your building, and 30 minutes. It’s bound to rust-proof your marriage.

Odd noises: Listen to yourself speak to your spouse. So many couples complain that “he/she talks so sweetly to the rest of the world and is so careless/nasty with me”. And no, that is not a sign that you’re ‘comfortable’ with one another and being formal with the rest of the world. If this is the case, you need to rethink your definition of what communication with your spouse means. All that warmth and good cheer that you reserve for even the neighbour who irritates you – do redirect some of it homewards. And it doesn’t always have to be Words. It can be completely non-verbal, and yet caring and intimate, respectful and warm, in public as well as private.

Tyre rotation and retreading: The worst marital skids take place when we let the interesting grooves and grids of our personalities wear out. We married in the first place because we liked certain facets of each other’s personalities. Over just a few years, those seem to vanish, or are reserved only for the outside world. While the marriage itself runs on bald, featureless tyres. Redefine your grooves and patterns, evolve – on your own and with your spouse – and you’ll continue to have a great grip on the bylanes as well as the highways of marital life.

Pest control: Parasites, pests and fungi find their way into every marriage in the form of well-meaning meddlers and malicious manipulators – these could be some of your friends, family, even spiritual/financial/psychological advisers. They usually thrive on discord and your intimate secrets. Keep them firmly out. If they have crept in, take a joint decision on the best way to get rid of them. Remember, however, not to use toxic methods that could be hazardous to your marriage. Humour and a gentle nudge should do the trick. Most importantly, you have to agree with each other about who the real pests are and how best they can be thrown out.

Planned shutdowns and timeouts: Every system needs a break – a genuine one. Hectic holidays, expensive dinners, major partying – they create the illusion of relaxation. They’re usually a source of much stress, as we’ve all experienced. The airports are overflowing with bored looking couples looking in two different directions, ‘holidaying together’. Find what you really enjoy doing as a couple. Also find what you like to do alone and go do it, without guilt. It’s completely ok to seek and give each other time on your own – whether to read, stare into space, walk, play a game or go out with friends.

Safety features: Put them in place. Wear a helmet to protect yourselves from falling financial/health/emotional equipment. Wear seatbelts of restraint so that neither of you hurt yourselves and each other with sudden shocks. Install a smoke detector – so that you’re not just running from a fire or consumed by it.

Discard and upgrade: Throw out outmoded attitudes and grudges. Forgiveness, that much-touted and much-misunderstood word, is the key. All marriages have had their teething troubles – don’t cling to these and hold them up like a penalty card at each other for years later. Change, and appreciate change in the other.

Focus on core competencies: Whether it’s parenting, financial management, looking after elders, a career, hospitality…everyone has their speciality – that they’re good at and do with ease. Find it and focus on it. And do try to stop berating each other for what you are not. In this exercise, you’ll find that you’ll do away with much dust and rust and many of the original facets for which you loved each other will emerge.

So many people, when faced with the task of spring cleaning and overhauling their marriages, feel most resentful and say: “If I can’t be comfortable around my own house and spouse – what’s the point.” Comfort is one thing, and neglect and sloth is quite another. And let’s learn to make that distinction! Many relationships are comfortable – ‘like an old shoe’, as people say. But do remember, that an old shoe becomes comfortable because you’ve used it well, you didn’t drag it through muck or leave it neglected under a whole pile of things, you repaired it when required…and you chose good material to begin with. It’s something like that with a marriage – it can flourish on comfort, but it just cannot thrive on neglect and abuse.

There’s a saying in hindi – chalti ka naam gaadi. Loosely translated, this means, if it runs, it’s a car. Don’t let your marriage be one of those. Inertia never got anyone anywhere !

(appears in marathi translation in this year's Kalnirnay calendar!)

2011-10-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

Recently stumbled upon an artist, Arundhati Vartak. I'm no art critic, so I don't have the real words for what she does, so I will simply burble on about how beautiful her portraits are - of indian trees, flora, fauna. I began to google her work, and found a little of it (Kalpana Desai, Director, Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, describes Arundhati Vartak as "one of the few artists who combines in her works a perception of the miniaturist and the technique of a modern artist.") Here are some images from my google search. Yesterday I went to her studio and saw some of her work. The parijatak with a lowering slate sky at the back, the flowers fallen around, some a day old, some fresh, some just dropping off the tree. The neem, the thick majestic tamarind...and somewhere a bird, a cat, a goat...Felt privelged to also see a few sketches that Arundhati makes, of the particular way a stem looks, or a bird sits, or a flower droopw... which she then later refines to put into one of her paintings. it reminded me of a singer or player polishing up a little phrase to insert into his larger raga, or a writer scribbling three keywords to use later in her writing. i have a growing list of 'ratnas' that shine in this city...i add arundhati vartak to my list, with much pleasure. how i love artists and writers and musicians and runners and a hundred other real achievers, who aren't constantly 'out there' working the phones and seducing the networking sites. their reticence conserves their energy to create stunning work.

Mumbai's Dabbawala

2011-08-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

OMO BOOKS
is pleased to invite you to the launch of

the English edition of Shobha Bondre’s book
Mumbai’s Dabbawala – The Uncommon Story of the Common Man

Actor and writer Dilip Prabhavalkar will release the book
the author, the translator, and the publisher will be in conversation
and read excerpts from this uncommon story

There will be chai-coffee-biskut and discounts too!

on Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 6.00 pm
Venue: Crossword Bookstores
ICC Towers, Senapati Bapat Road
Pune

The Mumbai launch is on 13th September at the Press Club of India, VT/CST - invitation to follow

Phone: Madhavi Chitnis 9823215233
Email: omobooks@gmail.com

Everyday Terrorism

2011-07-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

Gunmen and bombers are shocking sudden evil. But not any more or less than the chaps in India who scam the public health system, the food system, the banking system, the stockmarkets, and kill their fellowmen slowly in a hundred other different and diabolic ways. But somehow the victims of these people never make it to the headlines.

The Goof is dealing with it

2011-04-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

Nov 2010
The full-grown dorky dog who used to follow his mother around in the last lane, has changed suddenly into a sober fellow. His mother was a low-slung white creature I’ve seen for the last 12 years. Spunky, really her own person. The dorky son was one of the last of many of her litters over the years. He was a bit thick/daft, and kind of never left the nest. He hung around her even when fully grown. He had none of the charm and chutzpah of his mother. Bow legged, rat-tailed, gawky, the duffer would be hanging with that gormless look, somewhere around her, while she busily got food, staved off trespassing dogs, and did ten other bustly things that she had done all her life.
Some days back I saw him, not looking goofy anymore. And I knew at once, from his entire demeanour, that his mom had gone – she must have easily been 13 or 14 yrs old, his mom. It was her time to go. The Goof was now suddenly too aggressive, watching his back, running about guarding the lane ferociously, looking what could have been comical, but I didn’t feel like smiling. The Goof is, I think, experiencing the thing that happens when a parent goes. Suddenly, a layer is gone, between you and the hard sunlight, between you and the darkening sky, between you and the wolf at the door. You have to do it all yourself, now, and no amount of hanging around that efficient parent of yours has prepared you to do it on your own.
I must be looking a lot like Goof on some days, with my bustly old Dad gone – especially when I enter the bank, when I sit blank-minded across the table at the accountant’s, when I listen dully to the plumber telling me what needs to be done. And like Goof, I too either cave without a whimper, or take needlessly belligerent stances.
Our mums and dads have gone and we’re going to have to hack it alone. I’ve been married, independent, living away, and thought of myself as the one who’s looking after him for a while now, and not vice versa…same with my mum. And yet, when they’re gone, you’re out there, watching your back, tilting at windmills, perhaps making a silly goof of yourself as you guard your lane from god knows what.

Kimaya the Miracle

2011-04-10T07:14:00.001-07:00

Surely one is allowed to wordlessly post a picture - this be the deemed granddaughter
g

Ik bangla baney nyara / sakhiya wah ghar sabse nyara

2011-04-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

I love that word, nyara - in the joyous words of the saigal song and in the more spiritual sense of the kabir/kumar gandharva song sakhiya...
so this is where Tatsat and I are building Nyara, our 'it's different' home.
watch this space - hopefully work begins this month. the eternal optimist tatsat never uses 'hopefully' and 'inshallah' etc - he says, 'it will begin'. hari om tatsat to that!

Light on Water or Afternoon Raaga

2011-04-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

A short story that Verve magazine solicited for Valentine's Day 2011. I said I cant do chocolates and hearts - the Ed said I'm not asking for chocolates and hearts.

Afternoon raga
or
Light on water

“Someone’s walking over your grave,” Sister Marblis in Oru’s school would say grimly, when anyone felt one of those sudden inexplicable shivers. And the thought that there was a place already marked for the earth to receive you, and that right then someone was casually stepping all over the spot, sent some more shivers down some more spines. Cross your heart and hope to not die, someone would whisper soberly.
The Hindi teacher had a different take on it. The word for that shiver she used was ‘sarsarahat’ – like a small breeze going through the leaves. It is a delicious frisson, this sarsarahat, she said, that could be set off by a variety of things, but least of all as an intimation of anyone’s death. There was too much living to be done, according to her, to preoccupy yourself with dying; and anyway you’re not going to be buried, most of you, she added briskly, so what grave-shave? Different things will give you that sarsarahat going through you, as you grow, she told them once…the sound of your father’s car horn when he’s brought back ice-cream on a searing summer day; or the first talks of your marriage; or the feel of your first salary maybe…then the sight of your first grandchild, or just the news of your daughter expecting a baby, that could give you that lovely stirring. “Right now, some of you have the sarsarahat thing, I know. From that little circle of light dancing behind me on the blackboard from the mirror that those silly boys’ school lafangas are flashing from the opposite building. And each one of you thinks it’s a message just for her, like every gopi thought Krishna was dancing only with her. Perhaps it’s for good old me, that this disc is dancing around, she said, turning around grabbing at the moving oval of light on the blackboard, to their delight. So you see, it’s about many things, this sarsarahat,” she had said. They were 15, then.
Finely tuned to the ways of the Internet as she has now become, so many years on, Oru feels that frisson sometimes and thinks, not grim things like someone’s walking over my grave, or not sublime things like Krishna’s asking me to dance, but: someone’s Googling my name.
Alone in the ‘boat of herself’ as her husband calls her two-month retreat to coastal Dabhol, she is immersed in continuous stream-of-consciousness of music on the Internet. She has taken leave of him, her grown daughters, her friends and colleagues, and of all those people who rang her doorbell relentlessly for the last 20 years.
There will be no transactions here, she says to herself in great satisfaction, as she occupies a room in the house of Musa Ibrahim on the curved rock front of the Dabhol harbour. A room that can be accessed by its own staircase, once you jump off the boat and walk down the long jetty. Musa and his wife and the neighbours understand that she is not to be disturbed – and believe she is working (the laptop) or pursuing god (the aloneness) in some form, her husband tells her as he leaves. And are you going to tell people back in Mumbai that too, Ranjan, she asks him, and he says “yes, easier that way”. Ranjan works hard and Ranjan pursues god; he is learning from a guru to be in saakshi bhaav - ‘witness’ mode. And so he is the detached observer - he is not upset with her; he is not trying to understand either. He is just being his old solid-brick self, and attempting to be her enabler, as he calls it.
On her 51st birthday, he had asked her what she wants, and had to then cover up his hurt when she asks for leave of absence from their marriage, their unit. “Nothing personal,” she had added, as a half-joke, and made it a bit worse.
Now she watches his dark grey head duck under the bar of the jetty as he steps into the dhow that brought them here, and will take him back, alone, to the mainland and back to Mumbai.
She can hear the lapping of the Dabhol bay water at the foundations of Musa’s home as the tide slinks in beneath her window. The boatmen at the jetty are making the most of the last few days of fishing and of plying people. The monsoon rumbles-mumbles over the water, but only teases; the dark cloud holds back, not ready to let itself go as yet.
At a small table that she pushes to the window, she plugs in her laptop, inserts the data card, and begins her first step in going where the music will take her, on the Internet. She types the words Megh, and an old recording of Ustad Ameer Khan washes over her. There is no video on Youtube for this recording, but some devotee-enthusiast has uploaded pictures of the monsoon’s foreplay with the west coast of India, as the deep old voice sings with all the gravitas and appeal of thunder clouds in the afternoon. She leaves a comment at the bottom of the video when it’s done. “Thunder, darkening afternoon, light rippling on water, and Ustadji’s Megh – sigh!” – oru2011@gmail.com. It is her freshly minted, brand new email id for the new year, and only to be used for drifting on the music ocean of the Net.
Afternoons are her favourite time. It feels like nothing can take away the afternoon. Not anything that happened before and anything that is to still reveal itself. This moment remains unassaulted; no jagged edges, no need to be nimble-footed. At least not while the afternoon raga plays and the breeze ripples over the water. She taps out these thoughts on a site devoted to afternoon ragas, where Sarangs and Bhimpalasis, and Madhuwantis are waiting to be heard.

There’s mail for her one day. “Perhaps it is because you are in the dopahar of your life, that you love dopahar so much? The doubt-filled, struggling mornings are gone; the unknown evening hasn’t come. Only an assured here-and-nowness… And you seem to be at some enviable location?” bystander@yahoo.com

She ignores the mail. It’s someone trying to figure how old she is and where she is, and it’s none of his business. But yes, she is in the dopahar of her life, true.

One day she types in ‘Balraj Sahani’, her favourite afternoon man, and finds a frozen shot of him looking on at Nutan singing. When she clicks on it, the video begins just a little before the song itself. There she is, Nutan, breathing fire, smashing medicine vials angrily against a window, using a line from the song to emphasize and punctuate her rage. Mana mohana, mohana, mohana, she spits out as she throws one bottle and then another and then another. Balraj ignores the tantrum and courteously invites her to sing the song. Taken aback, and then becalmed, she sits down with a tanpura, and a sweet Jaijaiwanti pours forth from her - Mana mohana, badey jhutey…haar kay haar nahi maanay. (My mind/Mohan, is such a liar, he won’t accept defeat even when clearly he’s lost the game.)

The tide comes in and out, and Oru catches herself thinking: oh am I so glad that I have to do nothing for this tide to do its thing. It is its own master. Nothing depends on me – I don’t have to write it a cheque, call out to it to get back in, or remind it to leave on time, switch it on or off, wonder if it will come today or not…I don’t have to wonder what it brings in and what it takes away. It leaves its salty signature on the stilts of Musa’s house, and even that is not my problem! She laughs, and trawls the Net looking for music that will reflect her unfettering. But she doesn’t find anything appropriate. She finds plenty on how it’s important to unfetter, to let go of maya, to soar, or to submit. There are the songs of the poet-saint Janabai talking about how her god does her hard daily chores for her. Oru listens, and leaves a comment “It’s very sweet music and words, but I feel she’s utterly chained, and has decided that the best way to deal with it is convincing herself it’s god’s work …and that her Master is a good guy.”

The second mail from bystander@yahoo.com says, “You don’t get it, lady, about the Bhakti Movement to which Janabai belongs. You so don’t get it.” A PS follows: And I’m willing to bet that you’re not Getting Any either :P. Ok peace, peace. I couldn’t help making that crack – bystander@yahoo.com

She writes him a crisp mail:
Hello Bystander, or whatever you’re pretending to be.
Does everything have to be in reference to whether a person is Getting Any or not? And I know many people who’re utterly happy without Getting Any, and people who are Getting Plenty and are thoroughly miserable. So I don’t know what you’re on about. I hope we’re talking about the same thing here – It’s about not Getting Sex, right? And not about food or medicines or kindness or love or some of those ‘useless’ things?
O

What was she doing engaging, she asks herself. Why is she writing to this random man? But there it is now, that sarsarahat, the little tetter of apprehension that runs through her, when she is sure Bystander is reading her mail at that very moment, or replying to her, or leaving a comment on some music site where she has been.
And there it is again, the sarsarahat, when she switches on her computer in the morning, wondering if he is going to get nasty about her mail. He has chosen to say nothing in response to her rap-on-the-knuckles. His email contains the urls of two pieces of music. One is John Denver’s On the Road…ok, so she has a fix on his age, now – late 50s, maybe early 60s. Her ears pick up on the musing quality of the voice and lyrics. “…Go home, said the man in the moon go home, because it’s getting kind of late!” This one she may have heard before, perhaps long back in some mixed tape that Ranjan had. The other is from more familiar territory: Kumar Gandharva singing robustly Aisana taisan barasata barakha. (The rain falls hard, this way and that…)
“Knew you wouldn’t delete without checking out the music, Ms O,” – says a mail that slips into her inbox as she wanders down the fantastically divergent avenues – John Denver and Kumar Gandharva - that open out for her.
Cheeky bugger is trying to freak me out, she thinks, but she feels a long-forgotten under-tow, that is not from the tide going out below her window. She lies across the bed, as the monsoon clouds discharge themselves noisily and Kumar Gandharva touches the high notes, now complaining about the monsoon …bahu din sey, chipp gayo surajawa. (You’ve hidden the sun for too many days, now).
That night there is mail: “You referred to me as ‘Bystander or whoever I’m pretending to be’. Ms O, when I can be so utterly myself here, why would I want to be other people? I’m being someone else in the real world all the time - father and husband and co-worker and dutiful son and all that jazz most of my week, you know. So here’s the only place I can be myself, the cool harami that no one sees, and what’re you going to do about it?” – Bystander.
PS: If I get just a couple of co-ordinates, I’m sure I could Google-map you down to the house you’re occupying right now. I already guessed it’s the west coast of India, it’s not a city. I also figured you probably have a pretty great bod under that lyrical mind wafting so abstractedly and academically in the music universe.
She reads it once, and she reads it again. Now the under-tow threatens to become a rip tide. Could this audacious aadmi really just find her, and why was the thought not as alarming as it should have been.
She clicks on the video of Asha Bhonsale singing to a captivated Marathi audience in San Jose – an old song, her voice dripping with thinly-veiled oomph: Aaj pahate shriranganay, mazala puratay, lootalay ga….At dawn, my lover looted me, utterly and completely.
She copies the url and forwards it to Bystander. I’m no prude-aunty, let the presumptuous fellow know. And if doesn’t understand Marathi, I will even translate this one for him, what the heck, every innuendo-dripping word of the song. And I’ll throw in a couple of old Bengali poets singing decorously about having the hots for someone too, maybe.
Oru has stopped paddling in the shallows, she is on the high seas, now. And she is on her own. Ranjan, she thinks. Ranjan... I’m sorry, or no, not sorry…whatever. She checks her new mail box three times. She stands naked in front of the narrow mirror and allows herself a ‘not bad’ rating.
Late into the night she listens and watches Dharmendra wooing Tanuja, so charged, so very romantic, Aap kay haseen rukh sey aaj naya noor hai…on to Shammi and Sharmila, Raat kay, humsafar, and Kishore’s throbbing O mere dil kay chaiin. Then Begum Akhtar and Mehdi Hasan sing Daag and Firaaq and Ghalib as the tide below her room swells.
The next day dawns sunny, the monsoon is on a break after weeks. There is light bouncing off the water, right up to the horizon. A few boats appear. Oru doesn’t allow herself to turn on the computer. She reads her book this morning, determined not to check any mail-shail. At high noon, she looks up at her wall, and sees a disc of light, flashing, dancing, left to right, leaping up, down. A school-days sursurahat runs through her. She goes to the window to see where the flash is coming from, it can’t be just the light from the water.
Down by the jetty she sees him, flashing a little mirror, and then he’s up the stairs and inside the room.
He has what they call her ‘eyebrows and mucchi mirror’ in his hand. “I don’t want to be a bystander anymore, Oru,” Rajan whispers urgently into her hair. “To hell with this witness mode. Will that bod of yours take this bod of mine again?”
The tide romps in and the spray leaps high.
Gouri Dange

Artful Dodgers

2011-03-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Artful dodgers

Artistic ways to avoid praising the artist
(first published in Reading Habit Feb 2011)

Time was, when you were expected to show up at your friends’ weddings, their children’s birthdays, graduation, weddings, and then at your friends’ 25th anniversary celebration or sometimes even a 50th. So easy. You may have groaned about what to wear and what to gift, but that was about it. Now there’s a new rite in many of our social lives.
Everyone, just about everyone, is writing a book/showing paintings/recording music/making a film/having a sale of exclusive dupattas. Art exhibitions, book launches, music performances, CD releases, play-openings, movie screenings … friends and family have to be there, clap, buy, praise and promote. It’s a modern-day friendship ritual.
But what if you don’t like your friend’s etchings/sculpture/embroidery/docu film. What then? Surely you can’t be a churl and say it out loud, not on opening day, and usually not on any other day either, given the wafer-thin nature of creative people’s skins. If your artist pal is happy for feedback of any kind, you’re lucky, and you can speak your mind. But either ways, not on The Day.
I’ve been on this side of the table and that side of it too, so here are some coping strategies or stratagems, rather. These have been gleaned from my people-watching and from some smart decoding by other writers/artists. These can be used at the Event, or when you meet the person again and feel that some feedback is expected of you.
When the paintings look to you like bits of the wall in your house that is in urgent need of repairs, you can play the ‘middle class moron’ and say (if you can’t sidle away after drinking the wine) with a self-effacing pretend-sheepish grin: “All this abstract stuff is lost on me; you know me, I only understand scene-scenery.” (You do know the word landscape, but by cleverly using scene-scenery, you’re let off the hook by appearing an irredeemable hick/philistine.)
When you’ve not read the new book and meet your writer-friend, you can a) say you’ve kept it to read on your long flight b) pretend you’re in the middle of it, and smartly throw in a character’s name, and say I’m waiting to see what happens to her. If it’s non-fiction you can safely say things like “Hmm, fascinating premise”.
If you’ve read the book and disliked it up to page 53 and then abandoned it altogether, you could say this to your friend, in private. Or if it’s music that didn’t work for you, you perhaps could be truthful if your friend can take it on the chin. But if you’re not into that brutal honesty thing, there are many deft devices when you meet the writer/artist/musician. Ask her “So what are you working on next?” A neat side-step. Or ask him micro-details like where he buys his paints/clay; what the cost per square foot of canvas is, and other such trade stuff, smartly steering clear of the creative part of it.
The film industry (Bollywood) has a ploy that I love to watch. After a screening of a film, people will give the director/actor/scriptwriter the thumbs-up sign from afar and skid off, or if they have to come face-to-face, they will engulf him in a huge bear hug and boom “Pappayy!” or “Brrrotherrrr!” (pronounced brether). Thereby simply avoiding talking about the impending box office disaster he has made.
Praising the venue and or the snacks is another good ploy. A singer friend had a performance, and while many people said many nice things after the program, he tells me that one of his acquaintances came to him smacking his lips and said “Nice chivda.” From then on, between some of us creative types, nice chivda has become a kind of code-word for half-hearted or pretend-praise.
But like so many creative people say, all of this is counterbalanced by those who genuinely like what we do. Out of the ether comes that mail telling you seriously wonderful things about your book; at a show you spot a face that appears wherever and whenever your paintings are up; there’s that someone in the audience whose eyes moisten as your raga develops – these are the high points of every artist’s thin-skinned existence! (add)
I have friends/acquaintances who pointedly ask me when I’m going to write a book about my dogs. I might have taken this as a sign of how versatile they think I am. But the question usually comes from people who I suspect don’t particularly like my novels; and to my trained ear, it sounds like they’re saying your human characters suck, but perhaps your dogs may have a better bite.

Dead pan

2011-03-16T04:50:00.000-07:00

Something unreal and theatrical, about a cobra visiting at 12 on MahaShivratri night.

The last time it was a viper, and the raat-rani creeper had to go; for long I’d laughed it off as an old wives’ tale – this belief that sserpents ssavour ssweet sscents.

This time, the giant paan creeper would have to go. There’s a belief that its hood-like leaves attract the cobra. This time I stopped laughing and called for the axe.

Here’s the thing about this vigorous vine. It grows out of nowhere. I have paved over it once, but that seemed to only encourage it more.

From a crack in the cement, it burgeons, it’s massive stalk snaking up to the top floor, giving out leaves that could feed a hundred betel addicts for a hundred days.

It houses two nests in the winter, and whose they were was a closely guarded secret between it and its tenants. If you stood below it, you’d think it was the leaves that were twittering.

But now it would simply have to be silenced. Hosting birds is one thing, enticing snakes is quite another, I said firmly to it without looking it in the eye.

Every night it haunted me now, as I imagined it sending out come-hither vibes to naags and nagins. It peeped into my bathroom windows, downstairs, upstairs.

It has always done that – what I thought of before as shy peeping. Now it seems like some triffid growth, looking in only to assess what it should grab at next, in its upward march.

Random men examined it and promised to return with an axe and a ladder and bags to take away the betel leaves in. Nobody came.

It’s not easy to pull out something that grasps at your house firmly for 30 feet up with its many tentacles. So I did the thing that comes easiest for someone short and unable to wield an axe.

I simply sawed away across its hard stalk, at a height that was convenient to me. Which would be at about 4 feet or thereabouts.

Nothing happened. Only I knew that there had been a serious severance; that I had gone for its jugular.

In a couple of hours, the shiny green heart leaves began to look tired.

At night, the leaves that peeped in now hung away, and I wondered if they were whispering, parched, ‘paani-paani’; I shut the window tight.

For a day and more I didn’t go to the back of the house. It’s ok, I said, cold and hard, remembering that I was responsible for other living beings too, who didn’t need to confront any more asps and adders.

This afternoon though, I heard a rattle, just outside my kitchen window. No… not another one, I said out loud to no one.

It wasn’t an ominous rattle though. It was the hot summer breeze running through a wall of dead betel leaves that can no more entice anyone, human or otherwise.

***

Sahela Re!

2011-03-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

(appeared first in Outlook Feb 28 2011)

Sahela Re!

For a music universe that is still coming to terms with the demise of its adored and venerated Banyan, Bhimsen Joshi, a two-day festival of music, ‘Sahela Re’, could not have come at a better time. It was a banquet that lifted spirits and celebrated the 80th birthday of another great, Kishori Amonkar. (Sahela Re is her composition that mesmerized even ‘non-classical types’ when she first sang it in her prime, and the ‘LP’ hit music stores.)

The act of simply getting into a plane, train or bus to perform in tribute to someone is not unusual. It is seen as a privilege by most musicians. What turned this event into something of a magnificent Maha Yagna as someone called it, was the coming together of musicians from so many gharanas from across the country. And they came bearing gifts as ephemeral but priceless as that one special taan, a mesmeric tabla bol, a Carnatic composition with the name Kishori woven into it, or that quicksilver phrase or jageh that showers her with stardust.

The Indian classical music world is overburdened with stories, real and imagined, of rivalry and brinkmanship among various gharanas down the ages. To the evolved and eager listener (as distinct from the groupie), these are differences to be celebrated, and not affinities and loyalties to be hotly and pointlessly debated. However, the musicians who come to perform at such a festival, have to achieve a fine balance. Firstly, to make that jump from competing to cooperating. And secondly, to hold their own while performing, yet merge and coalesce in ways that contribute sparkling facets to the ensemble performance.

Magically, the audience saw that happen in Pune on the 12th and 13th of February. The different treatment of a single raga by vocalists or players sharing a stage brought alive something that Kishori had once wishfully talked about in a documentary clip. She had mused about why15 people from different gharanas couldn’t one day simply assemble and sing Yaman, bringing their varied approaches to the raga. Film-maker Amol Palekar and his wife Sandhya Gokhale decided to make it happen. This is what led to many confluences at Sahela Re: north-met-south; old-met-young; unknown-met-well-known; reticent-met-flamboyant…

Unfettered by dictates of seniority and protocol, the musician breaks loose in delightful ways at such a programme. So while a Rakesh Chaurasia’s pedigree is top-drawer, his youngness would perhaps normally mean that he doesn’t ‘interrupt’ while the elders are playing. Here, though, the very format invited him to not only play his piece, but to also come up with charming additions and asides on his bansuri, when the more senior player was doing his thing. Incredibly, most of the ‘trios’ that performed – of instrumentalists, women singers and men singers – had not rehearsed together, and had only actually come together that afternoon.

One of the biggest windfalls of a programme that pulls in distinct musical elements from across the country is that the listener stumbles upon a voice or a style or an instrument that one is up until then unfamiliar with, or is not in one’s upper consciousness. The frisson that ran through the 2000-strong audience when the young sarangiya Sabir Khan played just a trial phrase during mike-checks for the percussion finale, is a case in point. The audience-sigh, or ‘Hai’, as Begum Akhtar would have called it, led tabla maestro Zakir Hussain to look up in happy surprise and kid with the audience: “Hey we’re all playing something to test the mikes, but you guys are blown away by just a few notes from this guy’s sarangi?’

As wave upon wave of sur and taal hits the audience at experiments of this kind, the feeling is unmistakable: the Indian music ocean is vast, our listener-boats have happily sprung a leak; and nobody wants to stay dry or be saved.

Percussionists are the people with cartloads of mojo. Some liken them to the mathematicians of the scientific community – captivatingly madder than the rest. The foot-stomping finale of Saleha Re, with the likes of Zakir, Viku Vinayakam and sons, and Bhavanishankar, had not just the audience, but the birthday girl too virtually levitating! Earlier in the evening, she had spoken about music needing to touch souls and not merely ‘entertain’. She had also made graceful reference to accepting the march of time. But as tabla, pakhawaj, khanjira and ghatam thundered their way to a crescendo, Kishoritai looked all of 18, face turned up to the stage, eyes sparkling, hair framing her face, breath baited for that one last, massive, unified beat, the sama.
Amjad Ali Khan said at the beginning, ‘Bhimsenji bina, Poona suna lag raha hai’. He played the sober-sweet Jhinjoti as elegy for Bhimanna’s passing into godhood, and a paean to Kishoritai’s 80 glorious years.

Gouri Dange

Pushkar Lele's homage to Kumar Gandharva

2011-01-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

Once in a while, in this city that has left me wondering nowadays what I’m doing here at all …comes an evening that reaffirms your faith in Pune, its denizens, its relationship with its past, and its vibrant present. S M Joshi auditorium, tucked away in the heart of Pune, saw an unprecedented phenomenon on the 12th of Jan, Kumar Gandharva’s death anniversary. There was a veritable stampede of listeners, who had waited patiently in a serpentine queue that simply kept growing! When the doors were opened, people literally poured into the hall, found seats, or finally just settled down in the aisles, up the stairs to the dais, and some were accommodated even on the dais itself! There were easily 40 people who simply had to, and resolutely did, stand right through the next 3 mesmeric hours! Another horde of people who came a little late, simply had to be turned away, since there was literally no room for a single more person, after a point.
Singer Pushkar Lele, and musicologist and harmonium player Chaitanya Kunte presented Kumar Darshan – a programme of music, narration and audio visuals that took us on a journey through the life and times and musical-spiritual journeys of Kumar Gandharva. To tell more about this programme would be to give away details of this perfectly conceptualized and executed homage to Kumarji, that simply has to be experienced by anyone fascinated by this blazing meteor of the Indian music firmament. To say that Pushkar did justice to his subject would be a gross understatement – the smiles, nods, claps, and shouts of approval, and even tears that his singing elicited, were testimony to the fact that Pushkar is the next big thing that has happened to Hindustani music. Whatever city you live in, India or out of India, get this travelling programme to come visit, and you’ll fall into that place where regret at the passing of greats like Kumarji, is replaced by a soaring pride and joy at the fact that his legacy is alive and well, not just in the archives and public memory, but in the hands of singers and Kumar devotees of the caliber of Pushkar Lele. His voice has that rare quality of being sweet and yet robust.
I ‘stumbled on’ Pushkar through the dear departed World Space Radio which used to run 24/7 in my home. I woke up very late one night to his voice – which I had never heard before. I was sure it was some old stalwart singer who I had never encountered before. The unique quality of his voice woke me up fully, and I sat listening well into the night. I wrote to the Gandharva channel, asking them who it was that they had featured that particular night. Pushkar Lele, they said. I googled him, and whadyouknow, he lived right here, in Pune – and what a shame I hadn’t heard him up until then. Anyway, I am fast making up for that by attending anything that he does and buying anything in the market out there by him. My find for this week is a CD with a reposeful, imposing and substantial collection of 6 ragas by Pushkar – Kalyan, Kedar, Suhana Kanada, Khamaj, Des and Madhukouns. Pick it up by calling 020 24346506 or email rainbow_music_company@yahoo.co.in.
Pushkar is performing at the Kabir festival in Kalina, Mumbai, on 21st Jan at 5 pm. In the meanwhile catch him on Youtube too.

Dogs, moms, dads, lanes...

2010-11-13T17:18:00.000-08:00

to be read for content that i wanted to put down - the literary merit/form is a bit inchoate

Nov 2010
The full-grown dorky dog who used to follow his mother around in the last lane, has changed. His mother was a low-slung white creature I’ve seen for the last 12 years. Spunky, really her own person. The dorky son is one of the last of many of her litters. He was a bit thick, and kind of never left the nest. He had none of the charm and chutzpah of his mother. Bow legged, rat-tailed, gawky, the duffer would be hanging with that gormless look, somewhere around her, while she busily got food, staved off trespassing dogs, and did ten other bustly things that she had done all her life.
Some days back I saw him, not looking goofy anymore. And I knew at once, from his entire demeanour, that his mom had gone – she must have easily been 13 or 14 yrs old, his mom. The Goof was now suddenly too aggressive, watching his back, running about guarding the lane ferociously, looking what could have been comical, but I didn’t feel like smiling. The Goof is, I think, experiencing the thing that happens when a parent goes. Suddenly, a layer is gone, between you and the hard sunlight, between you and the darkening sky, between you and the wolf at the door. You have to do it all yourself, now, and no amount of hanging around that efficient parent of yours has prepared you to do it on your own.
I must be looking a lot like Goof on some days, with my bustly old Da gone – especially when I enter the bank, when I sit blank-minded across the table at the accountant’s, when I listen dully to the plumber telling me what needs to be done. And like Goof, I too either cave without a whimper, or take needlessly belligerent stances.
Our mums and dads have gone and we’re going to have to hack it alone. I’ve been married, independent, living away, and thought of myself as the one who’s looking after him for a while now, and not vice versa…same with my mum. And yet, when they’re gone, you’re out there, watching your back, tilting at windmills, perhaps making a silly goof of yourself as you guard your lane from god knows what.

2010-10-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

Anyone heard a rendition of a Jasrangi Jugalbandi? It is a mind-altering experience. Both singers, I realised while listening, have to be absolutely immovable from their own individual focus, and yet flexible enough to intertwine when needed....2 different ragas, plus one person's Ma swar is the other person's Sa....Go figure that one out! Don't miss it, music lovers, if you get to listen to it anywhere. I heard Ashwini Bhide and Sanjeev Abhyankar. They sang lalit and puriya dhanashree; and then abhogi and kalawati. And as Sanjeev Abhyankar explained, there is a lot of intellect and mathematics involved, but mostly there is heart and soul involved in choosing which 2 ragas and pitches to be joined in this way.
It was Kojagiri Poornima night, and though I missed the masala milk session, this was a celestial experience in itself.

Go here to watch me on ndtv-hindu

2010-09-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUCIkjpMWf8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7hnV427tY4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hesgarcT-s

Ghar nyara

2010-08-17T22:02:00.000-07:00

This morning I had a house concert. Straight from a singer’s house to my house. Junuka Deshpande, singer, artist, writer, blogger….treated me to a one-on-one recital, over Skype. She sang 3 Kabir compositions…the first one in Bibhas conjured up temple bells….but of course, like all of Kabir and all of Kumar Gandharva (who sings him), her rendition too took me beyond the temple plane and into that place where, as another of his compositions sung by Kumar G says…there is no night, day, light, dark, structures, nothing. The Deshkar and Khamaj compositions were lilting, lifting….so visual too in their words and Junuka’s treatment. Junuka sang with abandon, grace and an understanding that made her the song itself. What a treat! She has put me on a track this morning, and I am youtubing away….and from more kumar g…I have happily lurched on….and am currently at bhuvanesh komkali singing aijaiyo saware…. I have extracted a promise of a night recital from junuka (we live on opposite sides of the globe so she was singing at 10 in the night for my this morning’s listening)….
While I was listening, I thought of how my dad would have marveled at her singing and at the technology that brought her into my house and me into her house, this morning! I thought of my mother, looking in that wry way of hers from her photograph, and I only had a brief moment of WHERE ARE YOU, COME BACK. Because they never go away, your parents, if they have been able to give you this, the ability to make friends across continents, respond to music that comes down from centuries and decades and is flowing into the future via a young woman like Junuka…
One more Kabir composition that she pointed me to, just as we were getting off skype: Kumar Gandharva singing in bhairavi… talks about ‘that house’ being ‘sabase nyara’ – jahan puraan purush hamara – (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sho8H8HSEfg&p=2CA56E6127DBC49A&playnext=1&index=2)
Listening to it makes me think that my parents (and so many other people, and all of us in the futre) are inhabiting that nyara house…jahan nahi such-dukh, saacha-jhuta nahi, paapan-punya pasara…bina jyoti ujaala. My brother has gone down that same road to that same ghar nyara too I hope, where pursuer, pursuit, pursued, all ends and merges…perhaps. And if this Kabir song is all just a construct, a human mind-construct, to feel better…then so be it. That’s ok too.
Jiyo, gaao, Junuka!

Do come, Mumbaiwallahs

2010-08-14T19:15:00.001-07:00

I don’t do joyless and sterile anymore or Why I decided to go it alone

2010-08-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

(Carried as a personal essay in Open magazine August 2010)g

-Gouri Dange

Being published by a big publisher can be a lot like going to an upscale hospital to have your baby. There you are, all aglow at being admitted, only to be told brusquely to go deliver in a ditch, because more upmarket babies are being born and, as it happens, the doctors all suffer from ADHD. My first novel 3 Zakia Mansion was a bit of a ditch-delivery, in that sense.

And so, sometime in February of this year, ready with my second novel, The Counsel of Strangers, I decided to give the usual suspects in the Indian English language publishing industry a miss. This meant that I would be putting out my second novel all on my own, without the benefit of...err... the benefit of what exactly?

I'm not being facetious. I really can’t seem to recall the benefits of my first novel 3 Zakia Mansion being published by a well-known publisher a couple of years ago. The magic-mystic figure of Rs 30k as advance and the little shavings of royalty - can't call that a big plus, slice it any way you like. Interactions unmarked by even a single warm, communicative, or god forbid, spontaneous, mail or phone call from the publisher - gosh no, that's not something I'm going to miss either.

The book launches in Mumbai and Pune were buzzing, well-attended events, but in spite of my publishers, not because of them. Rather hilariously in retrospect, I found myself staring at a scheduling disaster. Someone up there clearly didn’t know or didn’t care that June was a month in which Mumbaikars traded in their cars for lifeboats and paddles and had a hard time making it to office, leave alone a book launch. I was also informed that I would have to stalk and capture a celebrity for the event. Fortunately, two special people saved me from the ignominy of playing big-game hunter. Hitching up their sarees above rising water levels, they showed up and did their bit - despite the fact that the publisher didn’t even extend them the courtesy of an official invitation till 3 days before the launch dates, and that after I made several panicky, polite and pleading calls. As for my other guests, not a single one can be accused of showing up just for the cocktails and canapes - there weren’t any. When I tentatively asked earlier about simple refreshments for upstream-swimming guests, I was told, in the marketing lady's words, “there is no food and beverage component in your book budget”. Big words, for chai-biskoot.

No travel budget either. When Sunil Sethi, who presents the TV programme Just Books, called up my publisher to ask if he could interview me, he was told “there is no budget to get her to Delhi”. (No, I don’t live in the North Pole). Happily, he and I met in a serendipitous way, I went on his show and we had a great time. Perhaps my publishers noticed or perhaps they didn’t. Whatever.

3 Zakia Mansion clambered on to some bookstore shelves and stayed there for a while, but I routinely got calls from friends and well-wishers complaining that it was not available at well-frequented stores in cities where I was already known, as a columnist and blogger-visitor. As for the places where nobody had heard of me, well it remained that way. Launches in the southern cities were "not possible" I was told summarily. Bewildered and bruised by all this neglect, there was a moment I recall when I regressed gloriously into thoughts like: “If my mummy was here, she would have shown you people.”

I’m not cheesed off anymore; it’s a waste of emotion. But I (and many writers like me) am still baffled about one thing: why do these people sign on writers and books that they don’t give a toss about? Why keep a stable of mumbling-grumbling unknown horses when you’re only going to back Winning Streak and other Derby Darlings?

It's not just me. A slew of writers published by big ticket publishers find themselves running around doing just about everything, right down to organising paper and red ribbon to wrap the book on launch day. I haven't made the last bit up - Vikram Sampath, who wrote the wonderful ‘My name is Gauhar Jaan’, had to do just that. He also gamely and single-handedly (at his own cost) organised a 9-city tour for his book, because he believed in it.

It’s not about the money – well it is about the money, given that publishers and distributors and booksellers together keep nearly 90 per cent of the price of a writer’s book. But it’s not just about the money. For me, it was also about the sheer joylessness and sterility of the interactions at every step.

And so I decided that I wouldn’t do joyless and sterile anymore. Friends advised me to show my next book, The Counsel of Strangers, to other publishing houses, where ‘things are different’. I did take a stab at that, but when I saw early signs of the same torpor laced with smugness, I decided to go it alone, and formed OMO Books with a partner, to publish and distribute this book and future work. At least I had signed myself out of another round of absurdity and non sequiturs.

It’s been uphill of course - not the writing of the book, silly, that's the easiest part, I am told; I mean putting out a book. But the creative, scheduling, financial and dignity control that it gives me makes it completely worth my while. Last year I watched Photographer David deSouza (Itinerants, Mumbai’s Nomads) take the same route, for a host of similar reasons. And he hasn’t looked back. Like him, I shopped carefully but joyously and found everything that a book needs once it’s written: an imaginative designer, an efficient printer, a focused web person, a sharp-as-a-pin intern who came to assist, pro-active bookstores, reviewers and editors who know their job and won’t just paraphrase the blurb, launch venues, enthusiastic and discerning readers who speak their mind...and all the various midwives of a book birthing.

A friend who works deep in the innards of the publishing world cautioned me when 3 Zakia Mansion was bought by a publisher: “Be prepared, it will be treated by your publisher with as much interest as a sausage machine takes in its sausages.” Well, The Counsel of Strangers comes, like most books, with its own fate. It will do what it’s meant to do and stay as long as it is meant to stay. But it will never be a sausage.

Gouri Dange

Gouri Dange is the author of 3 Zakia Mansion, ABCs of Parenting, and The Counsel of Strangers (available in stores and on online stores). All three books are also being translated into other languages – thanks to her bumping into switched-on regional language publishers and frenchmen at her favourite dosa places

At the Pune reading of The Counsel of Strangers

2010-07-25T21:39:00.001-07:00

So who's launching your book?

2010-07-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

)
(This piece first appeared in the Times of India, Mumbai, 25 July 2010)

“If you want the media to show up, you must have a celebrity inaugurate it.” Seasoned boutique and jewellery store owners have always known this.
Someone innocent once asked, “Why? Do the media buy a lot of clothes and jewellery?”
“No, dummy, the media come marching like a row of ants to a lump of sugar when the celebrity shows up, then buyers come to gawk at who the media is gawking at, and this is how people come to your store,” the seasoned merchant explains.
And the same thing applies to selling books too, now. Books, baubles, blouses...same difference. Beautiful people have to launch them, more beautiful people have to write about them, and only then is a book officially born. Writers may kid themselves, like I once did (albeit briefly), and say “Hello, I am the celebrity at my own launch, aren’t I?” But that attitude just won’t get the three-ringed circus going. So get with the program, you writers, musicians and artists who think your job’s done once the creation is done.
Where and how does one find a willing celebrity? Well some people went to school with someone who then became a big noise. That helps, if the big noise has remained your friend. Some people tackle it from the other end of the tunnel. They first identify a celebrity and become his groupie. Then they go home and write (it’s usually poetry) for the soul/sole purpose of having the celeb launch their book. Once that evening is done and friends have been bludgeoned on FB with pictures of the event, the poetasters swoon in satisfaction and (unfortunately) begin to think of their next outpouring for yet another diva or dude to launch.
Then there are writers who refuse to be drawn into the melee. Meera Godbole Krishnamurthy (debut novel Balancing Act) called two respected but not Page 3 people, “who are both celebrities in my eyes” as she puts it. Meera says, “When I wrote the book, I never expected that I would have to "sell" the book too. In the currently celebrity-obsessed India, you can't sell anything without a famous - and in Mumbai that usually means Bollywood - face. I was shocked by the book launches that were happening all over the country where the celebrity - and not the author - was the focus of the evening. I was lucky enough to find two wonderful women for my book launch who valued the book and graciously made the event about the book and not about themselves.”
I too have three such people. They’re friend-celebs who also like my writing (or are kind enough to say it), and so the whole thing is not stressful and fake. This time round, for my second novel The Counsel of Strangers, I thought I would get 6 friends to read little excerpts (there are 6 characters in the book) at my launches in this city and that. I may still do it, but I’ll have to hedge my bets by throwing in some celeb power too, the bookstores tell me firmly. It’s like that, this whole launch business.
Manu Joseph, who recently launched Serious Men, says he didn’t have any celeb at his launch because he didn’t know any. If he knew Kareena he would have called her, he clarified! (Come on, Manu – you’re a big draw yourself, I am told.)
Vikram Sampath (recently launched, already in reprint My Name is Gauhar Jaan) planned a multi-city tour. He was very clear that he needed celebrities to be there. His process of sifting through names, contacting them, hearing a no, or being asked for fantasmagoric ‘appearance fees’, detailed instructions on how they would need to be received with pomp and splendour – everything short of 21-gun salutes – when they arrived at the launch venue, and other such demands, would make a riotously funny story in itself. But sometimes Vikram struck gold, and found veteran musicians or seriously senior government people, who were secure, generous human beings, who arrived without a fuss, spoke eloquently about the book or read beautifully from it.
That’s the other thing. I call people to read, sure, for the attention it gets, but also so that it’s not me yammering on about the book at my own launches. Already you’ve been writing the book in your head, then crafting-drafting on your comp or on paper, then reading proofs...so sometimes it’s nice to hear it being read out in another (far better) voice!
This whole business is not easy on some celebrities either – especially the ones who are on high rotation at book launches because they have that perfect combo of being from the entertainment industry but seen as ‘thoda intellectual-sa’ as they say in Bollywood. I know a few who groan to their seccys: “Please, not one more book launch.” But there are many others who would love to acquire that ‘intellectual-sa’ wash, and I’m thinking, as I write, that perhaps someone needs to start a kind of agency that matches celeb with book. Imagine the call (translate into Hindi in your mind) from middleman to the celeb: “Madamji, there’s a book launch to be done, it’s perfect for you, something on Partition-wartition...Your connection with history and tragedy can be shown if you launch this book. No, no, don’t worry, you don’t have to read the book. Writer will write down your lines for you.”
Then he will call the anxious writer: “Got it, got it sir, ekdum perfect personality. Tragedy-expressions are very good of this lady. Date is not free, so you can change your launch date, but guaranteed newspaper and TV channels will come.”
And you thought books were about readers.
Gouri Dange
The writer is a columnist and novelist. Her second novel The Counsel of Strangers is on a 6-city tour with or without celebrities.
This piece first appeared in the Times of India, Mumbai, 25 July 2010

The Counsel of Strangers - is here!

2010-07-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone

I'm holding a copy of my new novel The Counsel of Strangers in my hand, hot off the press-oven. It's looking good. I would really like you to read it. It will be in stores, but it will be equally easily available in India off the OMO Books site, www.omobooks.com. For those who are wary and chary of the Net, I assure you it's easy - and there are options whereby you dont do the paying on the Net. So do go to the site and order it from there. If you are particularly averse to doing that, you can simply email me at my id or to omobooks@gmail.com and ask for the book and it will come to you in 3 days. We'll figure how to take the Rs 250 from you in the way most convenient to you.
I am attaching the covers, from which you can read the blurb and take a look at the front image.
There's going to be launches - two in Pune, and one in Mumbai, Bangalore, later Delhi, Chennai, Goa.
It's going to be in stores - already is, in Pune, in Crossword stores and in Twist n Tales and Popular and Book World. We're in the process of tying up with all the other biggies and smallies, but store sales is not what we're aiming at exclusively. Too many books out there.
I hope you enjoy the book.
For those of you outside of India, it would be easier if you ordered it from authorhouse or from amazon, etc.

Go read

2010-06-25T03:56:00.000-07:00

http://
Being randomly slow, I havent got how to link someone's blog with mine - so for the time being, just this will do - go read a blog called Table for One - it's at poojavir.wordpress.com
g

Playback time

2010-06-25T03:54:00.000-07:00

mann atakeya beparwa de naal.... my deemed daughter jaya just mailed me this qawwali of nusrat that she and i listened to like mad when she came to stay as a kid. we used to go mad clapping and jerking our heads - mad trance!
i love it when this kind of playback happens- when stuff you 'sunowed' your kids, they listen to it and remind you of it 20 years later. till my dad's last days in feb i was doing that too - unearthing old old songs that he used to sing or play and that i loved too, and i would find youtube versions to his extreme fascination!
g

To the exclusion of all else

2010-06-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

Friendships and relationships

Why is it that many people simply drop their friendships or ‘push them to the back of the cupboard’ once they get married or enter a man-woman relationship? It often happens, that when a boyfriend comes into the picture, young women quite routinely neglect or even dump their girl friends. And worse, they may dig out these friends suddenly, only when the boyfriend is unavailable for any reason, or if the relationship breaks up.
This narrow vision of things is not restricted to only the young. Mature, grown men and women too tend to let many special friendships and affections simply lapse and fall by the wayside, once they have a partner. And only when the spouse is out of town or busy, are the friends remembered.
To some extent this is natural – your time with your friends is reduced, as you choose to spend more time exclusively with your partner. However, it seems to be such a pity that many of us assume that the two are almost mutually exclusive: either you can have a relationship, or you can have friends! This need not be so at all, and in fact is a rather restricted way of relating to the world around you.
In fact, concentrating wholly and over-focusing on a relationship, to the exclusion of all other relationships, can be emotionally unhealthy for both people concerned. When a woman cuts out the casual ease and special charm of spending time with her girl/woman friends and family, she tends to want far too much to come out of the one relationship that she concentrates on: that with her boyfriend or spouse. Obviously, this puts a great strain on the relationship, since now the expectations become unrealistic – she wants to shop, dine, chat, plan, study, travel, watch films…and take part in a host of activities only with one person, for which he has to be available to her. Moreover, she expects him, and now only him, to understand her every mood, her anxieties, her hopes. She also expects him to be, at all times, the happy ‘recipient’ of all her love and affection, and for him to ‘be there’ for her in the same single-minded fashion.
Surely this is an unrealistic expectation, and one that is bound to not be met fully. He may be busy at times, or interested in other activities, or may simply not want to be in this constantly one-on-one mode with the girlfriend/spouse. When that happens, she wrongly identifies it as: “he doesn’t love me” or “he’s not giving enough”. Many men too take this stance, expecting the woman in their lives to simply drop all other friendships and family ties or to give them minimal attention.
While this may seem very cozy and loving in the beginning of a relationship, it is far healthier to have a broad band of relationships, which touch upon different aspect of your personality and your social and emotional needs. This way, you can be sure that you don’t put an unnecessary and unrealistic burden on your spouse or partner and also continue to cherish and nurture your relationships with other loved ones.
Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut's words sum it up perfectly:
“Let us talk about divorce …when we do it we will very likely wrangle and wail and weep formlessly about money and sex, about treachery, about outgrowing one another, about how close love is to hate, and so on. Nobody ever gets anywhere near close to the truth: the nuclear family doesn’t provide nearly enough companionship. …
“….I am going to write a play about the breakup of a marriage. And at the end of the play I am going to have a character say what people should say to each other in real life at the end of a marriage: Im sorry, you being human, need a hundred affectionate and like-minded companions. Im only one person. I tried, but I could never be a hundred people to you. You’ve tried but you could never be a hundered people to me. Too bad. Good bye.
“….Marriage is collapsing because our families are too small. A man cannot be a whole society to a woman, and a woman cannot be a whole society to a man. We try, but it is scarcely surprising that so many of us go to pieces. So I recommend that everybody join all sorts of organisations, no matter how ridiculous, simply to get more people in his or her life.

GOURI DANGE
THE WRITER IS A PRACTISING FAMILY COUNSELLOR and author of 3 Zakia Mansion and ABCs of Parenting and The Counsel of Strangers

Don't pay, and park

2010-06-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

Any writer (who is not an axe murderer) having a reading or launch in pune and whose publisher will not put him/her up in a hotel for the day or night, is welcome to stay at my place. i will take them to their launch and bring them back too if i can. and i will mail people about his/her launch/reading so that there is a good turn out of real readers.
please convey this to anyone that you think needs to know this, young and old. i find quite a few writers come, and then make the tiring and not altogether safe journey at night right back to Mumbai. or they come into pune and dont have anywhere really to take a small break and freshen up before their launch.
I would be happy to save anyone that trouble/awkwardness if they need a place to park briefly for a day, a night.
I have dogs, though. friendly ones, but dogs - shedding fur, fetching spitty toys, occupying the best seats, etc. there is also the danger of us telling endless dog stories to the writer-visitor and hoping these stories will be immortalized in print. (no just kidding - will whip the curs and lock them up and not mention them).
cheers
gouri

debu chaudhuri's kaunshi kanhara/kannada at last!

2010-05-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

I had put out a CD-hunt for this celestial piece of music - and drawn a blank all around, even with the musician himself. With the wrapping up of World Space Radio, this absolutely amazing piece of music vanished into the ether."(see my post http://gouridange.blogspot.com/2010/01/from-ether-back-into-ether.html) Then suddenly, out of literally nowhere, comes an old CD to me from a music buff. I cannot describe the feeling...as if one has gone through the process of grieving for a departed person, and then the person just manifests again, on your doorstep!
I am listening to it all - alap, jod, jhala and gat as I write this. Anyone wanting to listen to this is invited over for a 51 minute transportation into literally another universe. I have written about this piece of music - it has the quality of making you feel like it comes from some eternal place and speaks of things you cannot fathom in your normal course of things. actually words are inadequate cliches. you have to hear it. it raises questions, it replies. it leaves some unanswered.

Books In My Boot

2010-05-04T04:29:00.000-07:00

My friend David D'Souza started doing it, and I coined the phrase, Books in My Boot. So we both own the phrase in a way. Go read about David's cool and joyous (as opposed to hot-bothered and joyless with most traditional publishing) self-publishing journey at http://ddesouza.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/self-publishing-monographs-photo-books-yes-you-can-do-it-easily/.
No he doesnt sell books solely out of the boot of his van, but yes, he always has a few there and makes a decent sale from that retail outlet too! It is inspiring and liberating, to say the least. So there are copies of my 3 Zakia Mansion and my ABCSs of Parenting in the boot of my car too. And for sure, there will be copies of The Counsel of Strangers in the boot - Dickey/dicky/dikki of the car, for those who dont use the word boot. but you can see the temptation to alliterate with book and boot. somehow book and dicky sound naah.
Anyway, OMO Books is all incorporated and getting marinated and incubated (choose your own metaphor) and The Counsel of Strangers is in its final stages before going irrevocably into the print process.
A Mumbai launch on June 4 and 5, and a Pune one a little later, and perhaps Bangalore after that. Delhi in better weather. Other places depending on whether the car with its boot-full-of-books can get there.

Preadings Pre-readings - The Counsel of Strangers

2010-04-08T03:12:00.000-07:00

What's a preading?
Readers and book-buyers have always been curious and intrigued about the writing process and the writer's relationship with her/his work. The concept of the 'preading' or a pre-launch reading, gives them an early peek into a forthcoming work from a published writer. It is an intimate and interactive event, that is ‘cosier’ than a book launch. At a preading, the writer, after her/his lonely and quiet journey of writing, re-writing, drafting and crafting, can look forward to showing (reading) parts of her completed work, as well as to sharing some of the ups and downs of the writing process for that particular work. The reader enjoys a preading like a ‘soup-starter’ before the main course, and his appetite is whetted for more. For the host of the preading - either a book store, a club, a college or any institution, the event draws potential customers and clients, press and other interested agencies to the venue. For the publisher of the work, it is a way to tell people, ‘look what we’re getting ready for you’!
I just did a preading at Open Space in Pune. The group was small but the discussion was layered and fun and threw up so many questions and answers.
Here are the dates and places for 3 more preadings of The Counsel of Strangers:
15 April, Crossword, Residency Road, Bangalore
17 April, Crossword, ICC Towers, Senapati Bapat Rd, Pune
7 May, Crossword, Linking Road, Bandra W, Mumbai

all in 2010, of course. The book will be out in July 2010 and available in stores and online and out of the boot of my car too. Books in my Boot. A whole new movement in publishing!
So do come for the preadings, saha-kutumb, saha-pariwar! Will be interactive and fun.

The Mafia chills

2010-04-07T03:42:00.000-07:00

My friend and organiser of various august assemblies like the BYOFF in Puri (Bring Your Own Film Festival) Gurpal ‘Jugaad’ Singh mailed me some weeks ago. He was manufacturing new mazza (or majja as we call it in these parts), this time named MAFIA (Musicians, Artists, Filmmakers, Interesting loag...Ajaao). And so about 15 of us trickled down to an undisclosed location for a two and a half day Mafia gathering. A 360 degree horizon, two dogs, a few spirited kids, a well-stocked fridge...we had the beginnings of a family holiday here... But there was work to do. My kind of hard work. We had to first go down to the river pool and drink beer and watch the kids and dogs gambol in the clean water. As the sun set we had to meander back and someone fired up the BBQ; the guitars, keyboard and jambe, tun-tunna, kalimba and other instruments were tuned up, and the stars were marshalled in fantastic numbers. The bar was declared open. Our city-shrunk eyes and traffic-numbed ears opened wide. Initial reticence and reserve (yep, even the Mafiosi can be shy sometimes) began to evaporate. Tipu, Manoj, Kaamod, Pankaj, Sudarshan...wove one of those magic spells in which one song leads to another and then another – utter stream of consciousness and free-association....jumping across eras and styles and regions - RD to Rehman, folk to classical, Himachali love songs to Koli geet. Junior-artistes like me sang in the background, bolstered by the sounds of great voices and magic instruments. Ankit’s (him of the 20 words per day quota) camera rolled softly.
The night turned gun-metal cold (ok, I had to sneak in a Mafia-type metaphor) and various people’s resolve to sleep out in the open quietly dissolved. While we bunked down in warm rooms, some people did stretch out on the terrace. The next day dawned crisp. Much tea, bhurji, fruit appeared out of nowhere (thanks to our host Rajan Anand’s people) and we settled down to watch films that people had brought along. Err...where’s the DVD player? While it made its way to us along with more Mafia members by noon, I read bits and pieces from my forthcoming book, The Counsel of Strangers. I also narrated to the Mafia about some of the indignities and absurdities of being published in India. The Great Indian School Show is what we saw post lunch (which also magically appeared in front of us) – Avinash Deshpande’s film about a CCTV-obsessed school where Big Brother is watching you, and how! Evening saw us rolling newspapers exactly in the way that one rolls the other thing – it was Sudarshan’s lec-dem on making fantastic things with just newspaper and fevicol. Sujata’s bad back eased up and she braved it down to the water in the evening with us.
This soporific, unstructured, chill time was punctuated by a highly agenda-driven dog named Spice. Ankit and I were her victims, as she stalked us, tracked us down, harangued us and clouted us smartly on the head if we didn’t play with her. You had to throw stones, no rocks... no, boulders, for this feisty (polite word for criminally insane) animal. Surabhi’s films I didn’t get to see, as I had to get back home. But her brief telling of the Mirs’ predicament remains with me (count me in when you put those funds together, Surabhi). The other thing that I couldn’t be in on was investigative journalist and filmmaker Saif’s anecdotes and insights; as also Avinash’s film on farmer suicides. I believe there was an active and nuanced discussion there. Ashish Tyagi, painter and filmmaker had not brought any of his work to share.. .he was just chilling out.. likewise for his wife payal...the candle maker and their little toddler Nihal, who was amazingly unfazed by the two large and boisterous dogs.
When you step off your usual path and go someplace like this, you come home with your mind pictures and sounds changed, re-set. For me, the abiding sense-impressions are of city kids Sana and Rishab splashing in a clean flowing pool, Sudarshan’s hypnotic kalimba-plucking, Manoj’s Jagjit Singh, Pankaj’s Himachali songs; Tipu’s drumming, Kaamod’s haunting ‘Raavi kay us paar, sajanwa’ and perhaps George’s big soft laugh. And of course Gurpal’s piquant word play.
Does hanging loose with artists across genres work as some kind of ‘osmosis’ process? Certainly, in several ways. One, simply the act of taking your work and holding it up in front of people from other genres, gives you a sidelight on your own processes. Then, watching and listening to other people’s work and their take on various issues and emotions, created surprising and delightful little bridges between our different worlds. For those some hours, we all became more than our work, schedules, deadlines, plans and frustrations. This then, were the gentle meanderings of the first MAFIA meet.

Preadings

2010-03-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

Heard of 'preadings'? It's when a writer reads from her/his work before the actual launch of a book. It's a small early peek into the book for readers. I love the idea. Will be doing some in Pune and Bangalore and Mumbai. Will keep everyone posted on when where.
Artist designer and singer Junuka Deshpande is going to do the book cover - she's currently working on it. Yayyy.
This is for the second novel, The Counsel of Strangers. It's a book in 6 voices, is all I can say now.
And this is the opening quote to the book:
"There are no strangers here; only friends you haven't yet met.” - ascribed to W.B. Yeats

Stand up, sit down

2010-03-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

I've been silent for a bit. Quiet time. Have been putting the finishing touches on my second novel.
I'm experimenting with stand-up comedy. Did some 'gigs' (is that an impossibly wannabe young word, i wonder) here and there. Wondering what to name my act. Thought of Angina Monologues, given that I turned 50 recently.
Never a dearth of material for stand-up. A prime source of funny absurdity currently comes from my interactions with Indian publishers, especially those residing north of the Vindhyas. I've been on a hilarious roll with them from last May. More about them in my next gig.
Suffice it to say that when you encounter a Young Indian publisher (YIP) with your manuscript, you feel you should stop writing, and when you meet normal people with your writings - readers, bloggers, other writers, listeners - you feel that you should do nothing but write. The non sequitur conversations and emails that I have exchanged over the last some time with the YIP, as well as the sepulchral silences between me and the YIP would have been frustrating and joyless, if they were not so wildly absurd. Rich fodder for the stand-up.
My first stand-up I did sitting down. Yes. I felt that it was a bit much expecting people to watch you pacing like that hapless shark in the Tardeo aquarium tank. However, everyone was of the opinion later that I simply should have stood up. Which then gave me an opportunity to go check out nice soft-soled shoes that wouldnt go click-clack tok-tok while I stood up and shuffled around. I bought several pairs.
April 1 is my next gig (someone thought it was a good thing to do on All Fools Day).
This is not quite the right moment to say this, but I've been quiet on the blog a while because my brother passed away and a couple of months later my old Da too. The Reaper's cut quite a swathe through my family, and there's now just my sister and me. The oddest feeling. Tomorrow will be a month since my father's passing. Fortunately not in a hospital, but peacefully at home. My dad had a loud ringing laugh and the angel-voice of K.L. Saigal. It is barely bearable that we won't hear it again.

Tower of Babel!

2010-02-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

It is too funny, don't news channels get it, that our hands are on our remote, so if in their opinion programs, 5 guests and 1 anchor speak at the same time, especially the anchors using the machine gun approach, we SKIP THEIR PROGRAM. on we move, to cartoon network.
it's too hilarious, that once they're out of time, the anchor sums up what she/he wants us to think has emerged from this idiotic talkathon of six: "WE'RE CLEAN OUT OF TIME, THANKYOU AND SO IT PROVES THAT WHAT WE SAY IS RIGHT AND OUR CHANNEL IS THE BEST AND WE GOT IT TO YOU FIRST, REMEMBER THAT. GOOD NIGHT AND SEE YOU TOMORROW WHERE WE WILL BRING 6 NEW PEOPLE TO TALK SIMULTANEOUSLY AND LOUDLY AND PRETEND THAT WE'RE HAVING AN INTELLIGENT DEBATE"

From the ether, back into the ether

2010-01-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

Requiem for World Space Radio
It was that fantastically faceted thing – many things to many people. My friend Subbu had it tuned to the Carnatic music channel Shruti. Mr Reddy next door had Spandana channel pipe in Telugu music. Rabindra Sangeet, Natyasangeet, Pop, Jazz, love songs... no one was left out of its ambit.
My friend Meenal had it installed in her kitchen – she said she completed the daily chore of cooking in a haze of happiness because of the music.
I had it fixed at Gandharv, with occasional forays into the Western Classical and the Hindi film song channel Farishta and the Marathi channel.
From all these channels poured forth (WITHOUT ADVERTISEMENTS – I MEAN IN THIS DAY AND AGE, THAT ITSELF DESERVES A STANDING OVATION) music of every hue, to gladden the hearts of every kind of music lover, from the esoteric to the mainstream.
Within channels too, the range and depth was fantastic. Gandharv alone, which played Hindustani Classical, would bring you, within a 24-hour cycle, the old gravelly masters, the middle order stalwarts, and the young and restlessly experimenting newbies. Long, uninterrupted interviews would allow you to feel as if you had visited Gangubai Hangal in (what would turn out to be) her last weeks of inhabiting this earth before she re-joined the celestial singers. Shrinkhla, Gaurav...a few other names – passionate, dulcet-voiced RJs of the channel, introduced you to music without burbling foolishly like FM radio types. When they interviewed musicians, they asked nuanced, difficult and demanding questions, that gave the musician a chance to search inward for an honest answer and to reveal himself and herself in an enlightening, introspective way. It was such a soothing counterpoint to the shouting show off fest that passes off for TV journalism and interviewing and entertainment. Why talk about them in the same breath, actually!
For me, the journey was all the more wonderous because World Space Radio’s Gandharv channel introduced me to musicians who I had never heard of. Not because they were obscure, but because the Hindustani ocean is vast, and my little boat is small. I had only gone that far out in it, and thought that I had heard a good representation of it all, from when I was 12. Turns out that there were oceans and then some more oceans. Ustaads and Pandits and Vidushis singing and playing their hearts out, weaving a magic spell of tradition interlaced with maverick energy. I loved it. I would leave it running through the night, and the yamans and the malkaus and the jaijawantis and the darbaris would wash over my conscious and unconscious self, working their way into my dreams, my REM, conveying me deliciously into dawn with Bhairavis and Bhoopalis. I am a sound sleeper, and yet the music entered my soul and sinews and senses. On quiet working afternoons, Kumar Gandharva would sing a Bhimpalas, followed by a very young Pushkar Lele’s Madhmad Sarang perhaps. A sombre sweet Patdeep would pour forth, as you cracked your knuckles and contemplated coffee. Deep sometime at 3 am (my friends and family know that it is usually impossible for me to be awake or awakened at that hour), Debu Chaudhuri’s sitar would render a Kaushi Kanada that is nothing short of heaven itself. Not heavenly, but heaven itself. It would wake me up, bolt awake, and take me on a trip – visual, mental, emotional, philosophical – that was like actually visiting another dimension. That piece of music actually gave me a hangover the next morning – not the headachy kind, but an abiding feeling that you have visited or been visited by something from outside of the physical world.
Even one of my dogs was hooked to the music. He would quietly let himself into my room, settle on the bed at listening level, and sigh. I kid you not. Sigh, contented. His only request was no Shehnai and no couple of women singers – who I would promptly switch off because I agreed with him on that. And the Debu sitar piece would have him restless and transported, just like me.
And then there was the mail in the in-box – the American owners or whoever had filed for bankruptcy, and India would not feature in their plans even if they regrouped. Which left me muttering: Unless of course they re-grouped into a mall company or a cosmetic or lingerie-brand, I suppose – oh then India would feature alright. 31 December, the World Space Radio Receiver went quiet. ‘No signal’ said the display.
However prepared you may be for ‘things change’, I must admit I was not prepared for it at all. I spent a week in a daze of deprivation. I have now pulled out my MP3s and CDs, but it’s no fun to choose your own music, from your gang of usual suspects, and put it predictably on. However, we are making do. Jugnu my dog came in today and did the sigh, and fell asleep, and then did that running in his dreams thing that dogs do, to the rhythm of Hariprasad’s Bageshri gat in madhyalaya. But intriguing and unknown (to me till Gandharv brought them into my house) names and compositions have gone back into the ether. And I am so much poorer.

Shock and awe at Kavdi, Pune!

2010-01-08T04:24:00.000-08:00

Google the word Kavdi, and you're bound to get all the co-ordinates for getting to this 'spectacular birding spot' - and 'bird-watcher's paradise'. There are plenty of blogs from people, some as recent as late December of 09, telling you all about the birds that they saw. Amazingly, no one mentions, that the water, the bridge, and the shore of this water body, are one giant SEWER. While you may see birds, no doubt, you will see much more: tattered plastic bags stuck to the struts of the bridge, tonnes of styrofoam packing material gone yellow-brown, slimey green water, flowing sluggishly, sadly, an evil, putrid smell, straw, toys, and god knows what else. Is this a special Indian trait, that we really think that all the rivers and lakes and seas around us will swallow our garbage and like magic make it all disappear?
And is our bird-watching community so focused on just the birds, (a la Arjuna focusing on the eye of the fish) that no one thinks they need to mention in their blogs and glowing recommendations, that you will also see garbage of every species and every colour, bobbing around the place? Migratory garbage, like migratory birds, it has found its way to this once pristine spot, and unfortunately, it will not migrate back to where it came from.
It was one of the most depressing birding outings that I have done. I was once fortunate enough to be allowed inside the CME campus (College of Military Engineering), a month or so ago. And I found all the birds that Kavdi has to offer.
Let us observe 2 minutes silence for Kavdi, and for all the other water bodies and hill slopes and forests that we are choking, felling, burning to death. And then we can go to the nearest mutiplex, mall, or food bazaar, and get our fill of 'food, fun, frolic' and declare India shining again.
I dont know who built that solid and elegant stone causeway at Kavdi, decades ago. It was obviously someone who thought it a worthy place. May his soul too rest in peace - possibly some old Brit who it is unfashionable to praise anyway.

Not the Pune Mirror column

2010-01-05T02:44:00.001-08:00

For those who've been following my Pune Mirror column, a word in your ear: the column has been taken off by the editor; my Friday column is now the editor's column. And more power to his pen and all that.
So here's what we'll do. I'll keep doing the column, and people can read it here.
It won't have an accompanying picture with an unintelligible caption, the way it appeared every Friday, but guys, you have to make do without some of the good things of life.

So here goes:

Countless Idiots, and counting
or
That's right, Blame it on the Three Idiots

We've been for a while now in an atmosphere where film makers, writers, painters, musicians, thinkers and just about everyone actually, is subjected to policing and censoring by people who dont have the brains or the inclination to really understand what the artist is trying to depict or say. Critical rigour is stamped out by the necessity to be politically correct and commercially viable. the two death-knells of creativity. In our over-grown baby civilization, looking inward, or standing there and taking criticism on the chin, is simply not on - the 'aggrieved party' will immediately blow spit bubbles and burn books/buses/libraries/offices.
Our infantile response to grown-up satire and depictions is reaching its zenith, now.
The latest to now come 'under the scanner' is the film 3 Idiots. The script is going to be re-examined, the newspapers say, to see if it instigated, wittingly or unwittingly, an adolescent to commit suicide and a bunch of medicos to rag their juniors, 'inspired' from the film.
At this rate, we really wont be able to depict anything except cotton-woolly romances, happy endings, college campuses on which shah rukh and rani or whatshername and whatshisface - oh ok priyanka and john or some such - cavort, weep, laugh and then marry.
Anything more 'real' will be seen as causing grievous harm to our psyches/traditions/culture yada yada yada.
By not looking at the deeper causes and prompts that end in suicides or homicides or brutal ragging, rapes, etc, and by daftly and always pointing fingers at the depiction of this stuff, we can continue to delude ourselves. After all it's a nation of many idiots.

Everyone's writing a novel

2009-11-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

Simply uncorking your memories does not mean that you’re a story-teller

My uncle, his neighbour and his neighbour’s sister and her brother-in-law and their Cocker Spaniel – they’re all writing a novel, it looks like. Ever since Arundhati wrote about ordinary things happening in ordinary places and their far-reaching impact, all of us Indians have come uncorked with our stories. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no snob who believes that English fiction writing is the exclusive turf of the chi-chi haw-haw strata. Or that fiction has to come from the deep tortured insides of a writer. I don’t care about the distinction between high brow and low brow and middle brow and no brow. Everything is narration.
What I find (as a reader and as a book editor who reads the works of hundreds of hopefuls) is that too many aspiring Indian writers in English are totally mired in autobiographical material. Again, nothing terribly wrong with that, all writers ‘mine’ their minds and lives. Why, however, a lot of it is unreadable is that many writers are simply unable to take what happened to them and universalize it in any way. The autobiographical never makes the jump to the kind of writing/narration to which other people can relate and in which they can hear echoes.
If the memories and incidents from the past came with any kind of emotional/social/intellectual insights, these stories might have held some interest and become publishable. This is not the case. There is nothing touching or instructive or engrossing or revealing in any of the strings of episodes that a lot of people choose to simply prattle on about.
So much unpublished guy writing (called lad-lit, like chick-lit) is about life in school or college hostel, and monotonously tells you about the adolescent crush on another boy, or the English teacher, the smoking/drinking experiment, or goes into excruciating and baffling detail about the physics lecture. It often boils down to nothing more than those ‘hey remember when we were in college...” kind of reminiscences that are ok when you’re sitting around with four friends, but does not make the cross-over to being readable literature, frankly. It’s the same with a lot of young (and old) women writers, who are putting in a lot of hard work, no doubt, in telling stories that no one wants to hear. That’s because, again, the stories simply don’t ‘travel’ – from the writer’s life, to touch the life of the reader.
The minute you say this kind of thing (as kindly as possible) to a person who wants to be published, sadly, the response is something like: “Oh everyone can’t be a Rushdie.” But I’m not talking Rushdie here at all. I’m not talking about ‘classes’ versus ‘masses’ kind of distinctions. I’m all for more easily accessible writing, but if you’re writing fiction (and not just your autobiography), it has to grow horns, a tail or two, some sharp nails, some moments and nuances in the content as well as in the way you tell it. Or else it’s just canteen (or kitty-party or chai tapri or board-room) chit-chat trying to pass off as fiction.
Sometimes, people write down stories or incidents/anecdotes from their life to better understand the past and its impact on the present. It is therapeutic, perhaps, this exercise. And I’m all for it. However, this does not necessarily automatically transform it into a piece of writing that is accessible and/or of interest to anyone else. For this kind of self-examination to turn into fiction of any kind of wider appeal, much more would need to go into it. The art and craft of writing is definitely more demanding businesss than simply uncorking your memories and theories, is what I’m trying to say here to all of you (us) working so hard and hoping so fervently to be published. Self-absorption and contemplating your navel rarely are the right tools to become a good writer, frankly.
There are so many avenues for people wanting to talk about their pasts or their presents, without having to do the complicated hard work of fictionalizing and universalizing the story. There are blogs, and chats or diaries or amateur, informal writers’ forums.
There is a Marathi sentence that I always find very touching when people use it: “Mala kahi sangaychay” – ‘I have something to tell’. This is a universal impulse – but that doesn’t necessarily make it literature. Hemingway put it wonderfully: "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that it all happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." If you can do that, you are a writer.

Am I dreaming or...

2009-11-30T17:20:00.000-08:00

We’ve all laughed and cursed plenty at the famous, traditional crustiness of Pune’s shopkeepers. You know, the old jokes about how they dismissively say “too expensive for you” when you ask them to show you something in the shop. Or how they slam the door in your face as soon as it’s lunch time. I have personally experienced this – where I entered the shop as the shutter was to come down, and found my body almost sliced into two halves by the briskly descending shutter that the man kept pulling down though he had spotted me walking through the entrance. And I was caught in the classical Catch-22: because I was half out, I would not be served (“come back after 4pm”), and because I was half in, I could not exit from the entrance; I was marched to the back of the shop to exit in quite another lane from which I had entered. My crime: asking to be served at 1.02 pm.
Well, guess what, quite a bit of it is changing. And it’s not just the newer more savvy shopkeepers who are showing customers a friendlier face. Last Sunday I saw it everywhere, in all my old haunts. Took me by surprise, I can tell you. I had to rearrange my features - to return smiles, nods, welcoming salutations and thank yous. It was quite something. Put it to recession, to competition, to maturation, or to the coming of the next generation. Take the little shop opposite Mandai where I buy little frames and get things framed. The dour man who never showed me even a flicker of recognition all these years, was replaced by his daughter. The young girl chatted, showed me a bunch of choices to select from, and then cheerfully and expertly attached hooks to the backs of my little frames. Next stop, the guy who buys thinned out brass vessels off you. Again, two young boys weighed, paid up, and spread out a lovely choice of things that I could buy to replace the brass vessel that I sadly let go. Onward to the fellow who keeps yummy esoteric foods like ‘matki papad’ and ‘lissa sakhar’. Normally it would take me a whole 5 minutes at least to get noticed and heard by this gent. Even if there was no one else in the shop! And then another 10 minutes to elicit a grumpy “don’t have it”. This time round, he nodded me in, began to immediately pull out the things that I asked for and actually picked up the phone to ask when the dried onion flakes would arrive, and regretfully told me that it would take another week. When I said never mind, I’ll come back, he said “sorry I know you come from so far”. I jumped out of my skin, and wondered if I had heard that right. In this previous avatar he would have, if you dared to sigh about having come from a far-flung suburb all the way to their shop, shrugged or curled the top corner of one lip. As if to say “Who told you to live in the boonies?”
The same mellow mood was apparent at the cold-pressed oil merchant’s shop. I was on the earlier Pune shopping mode - when it got close to 1 pm, you had to simply give up on the idea of finishing your chores and shopping list in time. Now as I approached his shop and saw the wooden shutters being unfurled for a full shut-down, I thought I would save myself the indignity of being shooed away, and simply stopped on the pavement. The young man (possibly third generation there) who saw me, and the elderly shop assistant, smiled and reopened the doors (believe me, I am not making this up). On top of it, where earlier you were expected to bring your own little cans and bottles, or else go home without your fragrant cold-pressed til and coconut and groundnut oils, this time they pouched it for me. Customer convenience, smiles, consideration and mellow conversations...you better believe it, it’s the softer face of the third-gen Pune shopowner.
Now whether it was this sweetness and light that put me in a good mood, or whether things all around me are getting a little, little bit gentler, I don’t know. But I get the feeling that there is also an increasing tribe of polite drivers on the road too. Suddenly it feels as if I’m not the only one giving way, waving other cars on when they’re stuck at a U-turn, and slowing down or halting completely for pedestrians. I’ve been encountering quite a few others who will do that too, on the road. Somebody pinch me!

FriendsOfBooks is a terrific idea - dunno how they do it!

2009-11-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

I stumbled on this great service - an online lending library FriendOfBooks. The person who runs it, Arti Jain, and I got talking, and she's put both my books into her library, and I believe they're being borrowed! The service is available in several cities, Pune included. Do check it out. I think it's the perfect answer to wanting to read stuff but not necessarily adding it to your bookshelf (and floorspace)and dusting cleaning chores.
It must be quite an operation to manage, and salaams to the people who keep it up and running. You can buy or borrow books at http://www.friendsofbooks.com
Check it out here

Music-possessed

2009-10-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

World Space Radio plays this deep into the night on Gandharva channel sometimes. It is a piece of music that is haunting me - last 5 months, and i've been searching everywhere for it. The internet mysteriously has references to it, but when I get to the sites, it talks of everything else but that piece.
It's sitar player debu chaudhuri's kaushi kanhara (alap, jod, jhala, vilambit gat and drut gat). It is the most magical piece of music I have heard in a long time - and I've heard much magical music. There is love, patience, restlessness, complaint, understanding, resolution, all kinds of things in this masterful piece. The raag is a lovely one, but he's brought so much complexity and nuance to it that it stands in a class of its own, his rendition.
HMV brought it out and i think has not gone CD with it.
I will cook and serve a gourmet meal to anyone who finds this for me. And of course pay you whatever it cost you to acquire the music, guys!
look, look, please look.
I'm trying to see if pandit debu himself has it in his own recordings...but that's a long shot.

people get famous, i just get anonymous

2009-10-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

this thing that i published somewhere once, and put up on my blog, is doing the rounds on the Net. and magically, my name has vanished from the end of this piece. so, for the record, i wrote this, it got published here and there, it is up on my blog.
it didnt just write itself, you know!
g

"Array…. maraychay kay?"

All the characters here are entirely real, and resemblance to anyone you know is not a coincidence at all - of course, with the rider that there are honourable exceptions to every stereotype. . .

Most entrances to homes greet you with a 'Welcome' mat, or maybe a pair of plaster hands in Namaste pose, or even a sticker proclaiming "Guest is God". The Maharashtrian' s front door, however, will greet you with the terse suggestion: "Slippers here"….(Note the economy of words - Lesser mortals would have wordily said: "Kindly remove your slippers here"). Other such injunctions include: "Ring the bell, and WAIT" or (of course in Pune: "Salespeople and hawkers will be handed over to the police". )

Once you've run that gauntlet, and been allowed entry - but only after a good, long two-minute inspection from the peep-hole - chances are that you'll be left to find a place to sit, while the family disappears inside to wear shirts and pull on trousers over their banyans and striped boxer shorts - the "Kulkarni Bermudas". That done, it is not unusual for them to announce, "We just had tea." And that is that. Don't take it personally. We are like that only. If you had visions of chai andpakodas, you're in the wrong part of India. The Rest of India may waste time and money on hospitality. We have better things to do.

The Maharashtrian shopkeeper extends this rather dim view of visitors to his customers too. Just because circumstances have placed him in a position to have to soil his hands with the degrading task of selling things, that doesn’t mean you take undue advantage of him, enter his shop, and rub it in, by actually asking for merchandise and service, dammit. They've got their strategy worked out. While one may greet you with a "We don't stock it," another may helpfully point you towards some more enterprising shopkeeper (who is dismissively referred to as 'non-Maharashtrian' ) where you can take your custom. And if you still foolishly insist on being told the price of something in his shop, he'll put you in your place by saying: "It's expensive." While the other crass and shameless pursuers of business open up yards of cloth and waterfalls of saris for you to choose from, the Maharashtrian shopkeeper will indicate a tightly packed stack and ask you to make your choice quickly. No "Aiye bhenji, kya piyengi?" obsequiousness from him. If it was legal and didn't cost money, he'd hire someone to stand there with a big stick so that you don’t annoy him by entering in the first place. Many shops carry a stern warning on a little blackboard right at the threshold: "No pointless ("phaltu") enquiries". This includes asking for directions or for change for a hundred rupees, asking what time it is, asking for water to drink or for the price of anything in the shop.

But here's the thing: We've had women doctors and writers and thinkers for over two centuries now. We're big on education and reform. We'll change trains, take buses and walk to lectures on the most esoteric of topics. We'll come out in full strength, ages ranging from 9 to 90, to fill the classical music halls to capacity, delighting musicians from all over the country with our discerning ear.

Quite contrary to the rest of our famously brittle, black-or-white character, we Maharashtrians are sensitive and responsive music listeners. We may not like everything we hear, but we will rarely reject anyone outright. We attend music programmes round the year in gratifyingly large numbers, to listen to the rising stars as well as to applaud setting suns.

For decades now, Maharashtra’s Hindustani music listeners have been a performer’s delight. Many a singer/player has said that it is always rewarding to perform here. And if not rewarding, it is highly revealing, because the audience usually has a discerning ear, which has heard a lot of music, and will make its pleasure and displeasure known, gently but firmly. A musician is able to get a good measure of his skills from the audience reaction in Maharashtra.

A false note struck by the artist will get a murmur of - not quite disapproval -but something like discomfort, or sometimes even sympathy, particularly if it is a young up-coming performer or an ageing, much loved ustaad/pandit.

Experiments will not necessarily be frowned upon. When a musician first reveals a variation that he has introduced, our ears are on high-alert, while we consult our music-souls - and our encyclopaedic knowledge - about whether it feels and sounds right. The second time that the unusual note appears, this new spot, or jagah as it is called, it will be received either with small smiles, nods, clicks of the tongue and sometimes with an out-and-out “Wah-wah!” If we don’t like what we hear, the performer will hear the stony (the Marathi word for it is makkha) silence, see us looking away uneasily, and get the message. We won’t be rude at the performance, but it is possible that on our way home one of us will ask: “What was he doing treating the raag like a dombari (street acrobat)?”

How we dress for a performance is also something quite unique. Simply put, we just don’t dress up. Unlike in other parts of India, music performances here are rarely or never ‘dos’ at which we must be seen. So what we wear is immaterial. We will not turn up in tussar silks and diamonds - more likely it'll be sensible synthetics and flat-heeled sandals, even those plain-jane corduroy black slip-on shoes that are so practical when it comes to running for that last bus after the programme…And while on the topic of dressing: if it rains, while the rest of India cowers under trees or buys fashionable rainwear, we are known to keep our heads dry by simply wearing a plastic bag on it. Sartorial fussiness is for the prissy Rest of India.

Ostentation and excess of any kind we disdain. So Bollywood leaves most of us cold. Having a film star for a neighbour is more than likely to really annoy us, "because he and his friends use the lift too much, till all odd hours of the night". We might hang around a cricketer's home to catch a glimpse or have our kids photographed with him, but film stars…..naaah - or "shyaa" as we like to say, when at our dismissive best. Hindi not being our strong point, we might say peevishly to the rikshaw driver who slows down to gawk at a passing film star: "Arre, amchya paas Sachin hay, tarr iss bandar ko kyon baghnayka?"

While Marathi is our mother tongue, sarcasm is our second language. We learn it at our granny's knee. Other kids are complimented with a "What a sweet child you are," when they behave. The Maharshtrian child is rewarded with: "Wah….today you're giving your stupidity a rest?" So we're caustic….even when we're being helpful. The first Marathi words that outsiders quickly learn from the bus conductors is: "Array…. maraychay kay?" ("Hey…want to die?") It's just the warm Marathi way of telling you to come to the front of the bus and not risk your life on the crowded footboard.

'Abrupt' is our middle name. No elaborate, formal, polite conversations for us. Displaying affection, paying and accepting compliments, making small talk….we just can't do it. Greet one of us with a hug, and we're likely to go stiff and subtly ward you off with a rigid palms-outward pre-emptive move. If you step back and say "You're looking lovely," we'll look away and mumble or make some silly joke and change the subject fast. Don't expect a simple 'thank you', and furthermore, don’t ever expect to be complimented in return. We wouldn't know how.

Now go read something else. It's our lunch time.

The Marathi Oxford Dictionary

As we say in Marathi….
Just like the Oxford English Dictionary periodically absorbs words of Indian origin, and in that way acknowledges that they are now in such common use that they have become part of English vocabulary, it’s time for an update of the Marathi dictionaries too. There are some English words and phrases that we Puneris love so much, and use so effectively while speaking Marathi, that future generations won’t recognize them as non-Marathi words at all. Whether they’ve become so popular and easily absorbed into everyday Marathi because they perform a role that the original Marathi word cannot, or whether it’s just our way of shining marna (see below), is the stuff of debate between linguists, sociologists, and psychologists, far beyond the humble scope of this column. Here we will only attempt to list the Top Twenty of these imports and show you how they’re correctly pronounced and used in Marathi – by the man on the street and by characters in Marathi serials.

Actchually: We love actchually. It is used soto voce, when we want to tell you an inside secret, as in: Actchually, they are not married. Or we may use it for emphasis, like: Actchually (which means - believe it or not), he drove over the divider. (A common occurrence in Pune.)
Aadmit zalay: Anyone who is hospitalized, is admit zalay. Not pronounced in some clipped angrezi ‘udmit’ way – but as ‘aadmit’. Once a person has been declared aadmit, then all his relatives are free to take leave from work, no questions asked, to watch if he is going to off zalay (as in leave for heavenly abode).
As A: Used in the sense of ‘in the capacity of’. Somebody’s husband is transferred to Head Office ‘As A general manager’. The ‘A’ is pronounced as in age. You may be asked, if you inform someone that you work, say in a newspaper office: “As A?” Then you reply: sub-editor, writer, reporter, general manager…etc.
Cansull: No doubt there is a Marathi word for this, but we take great pleasure in announcing “Cansull” – if someone asks – what happened to the meeting, why is not being held? Or what happened to the 10.15 bus? Cansull has a blunt finality to it which we love. Rolls of our tongue so well.
Chappterr: No, not as in chapter of a book or chapter of an association, and other such ordinary chapters. This one means ‘a real character’, an eccentric. Next time you meet some crazy uncle of yours, go home muttering to yourself “What a Chappterr”. And you’ll get the flavour of how we use it in Marathi.
Deesh: When we hold a reception, and we distribute dry-as-bone chiwda and laadu sliding about on a paper dish, we will be at our hospitable best as you’re leaving, and ask you: “Have you taken deesh?” Not plate, remember; it’s deesh. And once you’ve eaten the contents of our deesh, our duty towards you as hosts has been solemnly discharged. And you can go home.
Doctor ni hopes sodlay: Said with a somber expression – this signals that the person you’re talking about has gone beyond the pale of medical assistance. Remember, hopes sodlay, is only ever about terminal illness; not about any general feeling of hopelessness, or disappointment, or having slim chances of winning the lottery, and such like. It’s about nearing the end, signaled by the doctor abandoning hope.
Ejjucated: This word we love to masticate and spit out at each other. As in: If you ejjucated people talk like this, then really…or… You may be highly ejjucated, but haven’t you learnt any manners?
Faiu: Somehow, we love our faiu. Even when we can say paach, we say faiu. And if we’ve called someone up many times, we’ll say with some irritation – that we had to call faiu-faiu times.
Imphrovise: Reading spiritual literature helps us to imphrovise ourselves. It’s got nothing to do with improvise as in invent or concoct. It’s us, improving ourselves. See how we iron out the silly inconsistencies of the English language. Why the heck should improve and improvise mean totally different things? Real chappterr these English people are.
Juuust: It means ‘hardly a few seconds ago’. As in: The bus has juuust left; or the person you called up was juuust talking about you. For further emphasis, we may say juuust atta.
Moodoff: When something really puts us off, when we lose our enthusiasm, we become really moodoff. And you shouldn’t mess with us then. Give us faiu minutes to recover our mood.
Neglect: The way we use it, it has nothing to do with abandonment or desertion. If our kid is throwing a tantrum, we’ll caution you against paying him any attention in one word: “Neglect!” If your mother-in-law is bugging you, we have one word of advise: “Neglect!” Somehow, we don’t like ‘ignore’. Possibly because it doesn’t have all those lovely hard consonants that the word neglect has.
Nervhus: This covers a range of emotional states. From exam jitters, to awkwardness to shyness and on to anxiety. Don’t be nervhus, we say kindly, when we want to put you at ease.
Nonsance: Any irritating theory, bad product, silly behaviour, unreasonable, childish demand, or plain stupidity is summed up and dismissed by the final verdict: Nonsance!
Norrmal: When we want someone who’s nervhus to calm down, we may ask them to become norrmal. Also, if you’re not your usual self, we may look sharply at you and ask you why you’re not norrmal. There’s no abnormality hinted at here. It’s just our way to check if you’re upsait (see below).
Shining: To do shining, is to show off. You can do this in your new car, a new outfit, a new job…just do shining and make everyone else jaylous.
Tenshun: A person who gets nervhus is also prone to tenshun. We get tenshun at the drop of a hat. Tenshun ala – we say, if you show up late, or stare at us, or worse, give us a compliment. And don’t take tenshun, we tell you, when we want you to relax about something.
Thaankyou: We have an uneasy relationship with this word (it’s one word, in Marathi). It makes us hugely awkward, if you thank us. We get all curly and say oh, We only, Your thankyou. Or we say angrily, What thank you, don’t say thank you. And we ourselves say thankkkyou to someone only when we want to be huffy and are dripping sarcasm.
Upsait: This is serious stuff. To be upsait means to be in a prolonged state of moodoff. Tears and diprayshun could be involved.
Uselace: A real four-letter word for us. Doesn’t mean something that is without use. It’s much more than that. It is a dismissive, nasty name that we can call you, if you give us too much tenshun.
gouri dange

That most appealing assortment

2009-10-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

The charmingly mismatched melange in a farmhouse lend it that cosy, undemanding atmosphere

Come Diwali, and I want to run away somewhere. Dog, stock, and barrel. Somewhere I can’t smell chaklis frying and hear money exploding. Nearing New Year’s too, I would love to slope off to some place where the New Year is not a party zone (read drunk-driving track). For this very purpose, I’ve always wanted my very own ‘country home’ or ‘farmhouse’. But for the last some years, I’ve got something better instead. Nice friends who have their own country home or farmhouse. I haven’t cultivated these friends for their country homes (honest, really). Like the story of the ant and the grasshopper, these ant-like friends were way smarter and more industrious than me. I, ever the grasshopper, did sweet nothing. But the story takes on such a lovely turn, when the ants turn out to be hard working and generous too! So, to cut a short story shorter, and mercilessly mix my metaphors, I’m the grasshopper that’s got its cake and is eating it too.
Before you think that I’m one of those plain-living-high-thinking freeloaders, a word in my defence: I am an exquisitely well-behaved farm-house guest. I break or take nothing. My dogs do not gnaw furniture, and in fact help to reduce the mouse population. I volunteer to get the well cleaned, the rain gutters cleared, and other such good-guestly duties. I don’t strew plastic around the place, and I add to my host’s library of well-worn books and linen cupboard of old comfy sheets, when I leave.
Which brings me to what I love best about my friends’ farmhouses. The interiors are usually made up of the leftovers and extra stuff from their primary, main homes. The decor is, as a consequence, a cheerful and unsnobby medley of things from their city life. All the stuff that they outgrew (fashion-wise, or family-wise, or utility-wise) finds its way to the farmhouse. For instance, the cutlery and crockery tells its own story. Mismatched mugs and plates have come from the chunky-clunky studio pottery phase, or the slim and overpractical melamine phase. Curvy-curly spoons and forks have found their way here, from some ancestor’s ‘English’ phase; with a few thrown in from quite another time and place: the got-em-free-with-the-instant-coffee spoons and the freebie beer mugs from the corner daruwala. Utensils in the farm-house kitchen are usually dented and/or charred chai bartans, a temperamental cooker that can be coaxed to work, some giant degchis from an era when a great cook catered to massive house-parties. An inelegant but serviceable gas stove and a peeling, softly groaning fridge complete the kitchen ensemble.
It’s the same with the furniture. Bunk beds, from a time when the family’s kids fit into them, find themselves packed off to the farm-house (here I have to admit that my dogs do clamber on and sleep on both levels). There are diwans with carved legs from the family’s flirtation with antique furniture, dressing tables from when women used Afghan Snow and Lacto-calamine Lotion, medicine cabinets that once held Sloane’s Linament and such-like. Sofas from the overstuffed, foam phase sit around comfortably, with no plans to go on a diet. Mismatched but clean and soft bed sheets, pillow covers and other linen add to the jumble-sale-chic look and feel of these places.
Over time these varied objects get most comfortable with each other. They form a new community of their own. No more identified as outcasts and rejects of city life, they are most self-assured in their assorted-ness. They have had plenty of time to get acquainted, and hang well together. If the home-owner or a misguided guest suddenly introduces a brand new and complete set of anything – crockery, cutlery, furniture, linen – there is bound to be sharp looks, nudging and muttering from the old lot. The newbies will simply never fit in.
The bookshelf in my friends’ farmhouses is a treasure-trove. No, not leather-bound classics or anything, but a fantastic mix from which could emerge anything, from silly joke books to sublime sagas by writers one had never encountered before. Or vintage Reader’s Digests, most appropriately lined up in a shelf on the bathroom wall for people who need to read to digest. Well-thumbed gardening books and food-stained cookbooks provide me with that lovely feeling that someone sometime worked hard and joyfully in garden and kitchen. I, however, love to read them reclining on a generously curved armchair from which it is a big effort to get off, or in a gently swaying hammock tied around two rustling trees through which the wind susurates (there, I got to use that word – there’s a Hindi one that means the same too: sarsaraahat).
The inside of an urban family’s rural home is indeed a documentation, a chronicle, of the life and times of its owners (and its happy-to-visit friends).
***

Let the plane fly itself (or not) while we slug it out

2009-10-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

We’ve heard it all now, really. The pilots of a Sharjah-Delhi flight got into a major scuffle with two other crew members. A full-fledged punch-up. What were these people thinking, when they brawled in front of passengers, endangering everyone and making thorough idiots of themselves? What were they thinking? If reports are to be believed, incredibly, the spark was something about who didn’t wish who ‘properly’. Oh lord, save us from this lethal Indian combination: we are pompous and reckless.
We’ve seen it on our roads of course – that dirty dance of the pompous and the reckless. Now, come, see it playing itself out in the air. Pay fancy air-fares to be taken on a flight that drifts along, while the vahan-chalaks slug it out.
Nothing really new about it. Being so completely into yourself that you don’t care about what happens to anyone besides you is quite the standard ‘shining’ urban Indian thing to do. It’s evident in the way we talk, we walk, we drive, we eat, we spit, we hoard when there is any kind of shortage...it’s all about me, myself, and at the most my munni and my pappu. The rest of the world can go fly a kite. There is never, in most of us, a sense of being part of a larger, responsible set of people, citizenry. Most importantly, there are no Consequences. How can there be any awareness of consequences if all I need to do is look out for myself, and all I need to do if I endanger someone else’s well-being, is bribe the right person?
And so we are free to, like very little children, never defer or postpone our own needs, or contain our frustration, for the larger good. And hence, it has now come to this, that even men in charge of an entire aircraft up in the air, have to settle some stupid scores right there and then, and passenger safety be damned. And decorum? What’s that? Sorry, not in our dictionary. Used to be, but we deleted it as a useless word with no takers.
Safety, in our minds, is for some lily-livered, fussy people. Possibly for the old and feeble. Not for able-bodied thriving Indians elbowing each other out of the way to get exactly where they want and what they want. That’s why we have stampedes, and ferry tragedies and a hundred other grotesque ‘accidents’ every year with unfailing regularity. Because no one is overly impressed by the words safety, caution, precaution.
In fact, why call these tragic events accidents, at all, really. These are all a result of consciously and blatantly flouting rules, again and again, with complete impunity. I looked up the word ‘accident’ in various dictionaries, real and virtual, and none of the definitions fit the various disasters that we routinely manufacture, with our public behaviour. One dictionary tells us, that an accident is an unfortunate mishap; especially one causing damage or injury. Another one says that an accident is anything that happens suddenly or by chance without an apparent cause. Somewhere else I read that an accident is an unexpected, unusual and unintended external action; an undesigned, sudden, and unexpected event.
Now let’s see how most of our ‘accidents’ cannot, by this description, be called accidents at all. Tell me, how is cramming people into a ferry way beyond its capacity, an ‘undesigned’ event? How is not having life-saving equipment on that ferry and so drowning your passengers, a ‘sudden action without an apparent cause’? How is having a slug-fest and manhandling a woman colleague while you’re supposed to be flying the damned plane an ‘unintended’ action?
Sure, we can hold seminars and jet around the world to talk about loss prevention, trauma-free cities, secure borders, and good policing. But who will save us from our underdeveloped minds and overdeveloped egos?

Another novel -

2009-09-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

I'm done writing my second novel. This time round, I think I'll bypass the Indian Publisher route. Not for me, to cut a long and not-worth-talking-about story short.
Watch this space for more information about it. I can't complete the blog because the electricity has gone. and my broadband stuff is connected to the wall switch yada yada yada.
Someone said james thurber wrote and drew so prolicically, while being mired in mind-numbing domesticity. i wonder if that is true...
poor poor man

UnReliance Rotten

2009-09-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

i've said this before, Pune branches of big-ticket companies - food stores, couriers, clothing stores, bookstores - turn into particularly dumb, dense and dirty avataars of their parent company.

the sus (pune) reliance fresh store (and im sure others, but this one in particular) front is a story in itself. hygiene hazard, you can slip and fall on the muck, the delite (non veg section) next door stinks and is filthy. outside, along the entire store length, is open garbage, rotting veggies, fallen plastic, massive garbage bags overflowing, soapy water sludge, and plenty of flies. wet soggy cartons are stacked man-high right there - all this is at the main entrance, along a good 30 ft-long frontage. inside, there is plastic and nameless rubbish lying on the floor. against the once-pretty glass front, is stacked quintals and quintals of stuff in sacks. its as if the whole store is working inside out - all the rot, and the stored stuff and the stuff to be disposed of sits upfront! wonder what the situation is in the backyard.
on top of it, along this stinking messy frontage, a dosa machine is operated, with some filthy old plastic wrappers held together as a 'chajja' over it. here, out in the open, a man fills plastic bags with the dosa batter - which is open for any kind of creature to sit on it. amazing!
i wonder why no one from the Pune Municipal Corp or even residents of the area shopping there dont bother?
when i spoke to the supervisor, he just looked away embarrassed.
when i spoke to his supervisor he told me he came here just 3 weeks ago
when i spoke to HIS supervisor, he said he was sent here just 7 days ago from bombay.
i told them that i have noticed this state of affairs for over a month now.
so the buck passes on.
i asked them how they could afford to be so filthy when there is an epidemic in the city and when there is a recession too!
i'm sure other Reliance Rotten stores will also make for not-so-pretty pictures. the one in Bavdhan near my home is bad news too.
i have the names and numbers and email ids of the 3 guys that i spoke to.
i want to also draw the larger company's attention to this - will figure out how, soon.

The other virus

2009-08-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

Pune is of little interest anymore to the news channels all suffering from attention deficit disorder. So we've been left to rot as far as they are concerned. The city has the bad news-sense to go on having an epidemic even after its news value is over - that's the city's problem. From 'chalo Pune', the media is now in a 'Maro, Pune' mode. As is the administration, which has not had the guts or wisdom or the responsiveness to issue any directive or advisory about massing at ganesh or at ramzan festivals. Why would they take on religious nuts of all persuasions by getting the festival off the road - so what if theres a flu epidemic - they too must be saying "Maro, yaar".

Meanwhile, the kids are back in school, and supposedly safe from the epidemic. But wait a minute, there are many other hazards that you’re exposing them to every day that you march them off to school. This was brought home to me even more clearly, last some days when the school buses, school riks and school-dropping moms and pops were off the road, and the children were safe at home.
What are some of those hazards that your kids are being exposed to every day – they come from a virus that is much more long-lasting, invidious and deadly than any passing epidemic. It’s called Whocareforanyonelsesitis – and its spreading rapidly in the city of Pune. Particularly virulent during school opening and closing hours
A) The short-cut takers - rikshawallah/mummy/chauffeur/school bus driver. These are the people who drive your kids to school every day, and every day they run along some stretch of road in the opposite direction, to avoid looping around the legitimate way. They’re much smarter than the rest of us law-abiding idiots, you see, so they think that nipping along at break-neck speed on the wrong way or into a no-entry or up the down flyover is the real smart thing to do.
B) The zig-zaggers – these are 2 as well as 4 wheeler drivers that cant drive straight. They weave through the traffic, and your crossing school children and/or their grandparents dropping them to their bus stops can and do get mowed down.
C) The overstuffed rikshaws – they routinely cram 20 kids and their bags, water bottles and dabbas, all stuffed together, the whole overloaded contraption listing and groaning up and down curves and slopes, to spill its contents anytime any other driver on the road makes a false move. The Whocaresitis bug seems to have bitten the parents too, or they wouldn’t have spent their hard-earned on putting their kids in this chamber of horrors on a daily basis. Now there are lovingly and protectively masked kids piled high into these riks.
D) The bug has bitten the traffic lights too. So they’re not turned on (and of course there is no policeman) early in the morning , not even till 8 am on many days. This means your kids are thrown in the way of chaotic traffic at junctions like the University, or near Sancheti, or at hundreds of treacherous intersections all over the city. Out-of-town buses racing to the depot, overloaded trucks, schoolbuses in a hurry, and an entire population of Whocaresforanyonelsesitis bitten people are crisscrossing each other at break-neck speed.
E) The glorious RTO of Pune, who get all their neck exercise by always looking the other way and finger exercises by counting the bribes – they have been bitten by the bug for long now, and spread the virus every time that they stamp and issue licences and distribute them like prasad to anyone who has the money.
F) And while you, dear parents, panicked and buy up masks and meds and vitamins and eucalyptus oil to protect yourself and your kids from H1N1, all the while the Whocaresforanyonelsesitis burgeons, unchecked. It thrives and claims lives and mutates, each time that you speed, jump lights, use the wrong road, don’t bother to track your child’s rickshawallah’s or driver’s acrobatic techniques, and bribe the traffic cop.
Note: this is not to trivialize the H1N1 issue. It is to raise the alarm on other dangerous and active silent viruses for which there are no shots, no tablets, no hospitals and no quarantine procedures.

******
On a different note, can someone tell me why a bunch of dead horses are flogging another long dead horse in the capital of this country? I mean it’s all very well for academics and historians to dodder around and debate endlessly about what exactly did or did not happen circa 1945 or something – but people who are supposedly serving the country in the capacity of leaders and ministers and whatnot, isn’t there a lot of work to be done for the alive as well as barely alive here-and-now population of their matrubhoomi? I find it grotesque that mythical characters and long-dead personalities can command so much footage and newsprint when there is just so much real work to be done, and not enough people to do it. Of course, our TV news channels report all this gibberish with so much glee and over and over again, because they too seem to not have noticed that there is really much more to talk about, good as well as bad, than a bunch of superannuated men having a dog fight.
Gouri Dange

Self-promoters of the world unite...you have nothing to lose but a little belly fat, laughing

2009-08-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

This time, last year!

30 May 2008
Know that fable about the old man the boy and the donkey…? Half the people scolded the boy for sitting on the donkey while his Da walked alongside. And when they switched, the other half admonished the father for sitting on the donkey while the little boy walked. And there they went on their weary way, never knowing what was the right thing to do. (Luckily they didn’t get badgered into carrying the donkey or something.)

Ok – so that’s a little how I felt a few weeks ago, when various people said great, you’ve ARRIVED, your book’s being published by an actual publisher, and not some self-publishing stunt. Mid-way between my taking an immodest bow, a whole lot of people said quite the opposite thing: hey, you wrote some story, good for you – now get started on the real work: PROMOTING it. Publishers are like parents, I am told – they can push you out there in the world, but then you got to make a mark all on your own. And how are you going to do that if no one knows you and your book exist, haan?

So fired with this fear, that the book (hereinafter referred to as 3, Zakia Mansion, and further hereinafter referred to as 3ZM) would come, be celebrated and bought by near and dear ones – amounting to a total of 120 people – and then gather dust and find its way in big stacks to the raddiwalla, I made some serious stabs at PUBLICITY AND PROMOTION all on my own.

One thing is for sure: The next time I hear about someone successfully and ruthlessly pushing their own book/child/performing dog/paintings/musicCD, I will definitely not snigger and look superior. Because now I know that while they smile and bow and sign autographs and dance to the bank and all, they must have got there only after some rather ignominious and absurd private moments on that road to being rich and famous.

So while I’m still poor and unknown, and have no stake in appearing like I was born to fame and fortune, I have to document some of my forays into promoting Self and 3ZM.

First, I decide to do some ‘inner work’. I practice looking at pictures of ethereal Jhumpa and otherworldly Arundhati and not say to myself – “gosh, no wonder my publisher didn’t ask for my picture for the back of the book”. I conjure up the dictums delivered unconvincingly by my mother when I was 15: “Beauty is as Beauty Does.” And other such words of encouragement trademarked by Maharashtrian mothers (MMs). Talk about grounding your kids in reality. MM’s bury you in the stuff. All of us daughters of MMs are Anarkalis entombed in reality, I tell you.
Ok, so inner work shakily in place, I skip off to a small bookstore in a leafy lane. The big chains my Publisher will look after, is my logic. The small ones, I must ‘work’. Note, I don’t at this time, actually have a copy of 3ZM in hand yet. I walk into the store, and half way through the enterprise, but too late to retract, it occurs to me, that this is like selling agarbattis in a train. Only, worse, without the jhola filled with agarbattis. This is fast turning into a waking version of one of those nightmares in which you walk into your class wearing just the essentials and the school tie – you’ve forgotten to put on your school uniform. Anyway, now it’s too late, as the nice lady in the small shop looks at me and smiles. I utter the words and hear them echoing foolishly in my head: “Hi, I’m a writer. My book is coming out soon.” It’s early May, very hot, and the lady may have pushed the chair towards me and poured me a glass of water quite naturally – or then, maybe she thought all odd people who walk in out of the street and make such dubious declarations, need to be calmed, humoured, and sent kindly off on their zigzag way. Which is what she did. As I zigzagged home, I told myself that I have to do this again only when I have an advance copy of 3ZM in my hand and photographic proof (passport, licence or PAN card) that I am the writer. Otherwise I would continue to get the maaf karo agay jao reserved for the agarbatti seller and that too one without agargbattis in hand.
****

4 June 08
And so onward. Copies of the book (hereinafter referred to as 3 Zakia Mansion, pyar se log usko 3ZM pukartay hai) come to me from my publisher. Now I am at least an agarbatti salesman with the actual agarbattis in the jhola to sell. In the interim, more people have admonished me to take matters in my own hands, as no bookstore anywhere, metros, second metros, it seems, has even heard of the book yet, my friends report to me. Leave alone standing at the door with their tongues hanging out waiting for large consignments of 3ZM, bookstore owners urge other books on to my friends. ‘Other’ writers have multiple launches in simultaneous locations, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai for good measure. As for 3ZM, informal reports pour in: they haven’t heard of it, Gouri. Sure you’ve written it? some friends ask kindly. When they hear my anxious silence on the phone line or on gmail chat, one of them hurriedly adds, god bless her soul: “I’ll ask again and again. So they’ll remember the name. And when the book is out, I’ll gift a copy of it for everyone’s birthday that comes up in the next year.”
Ah, really, where would I be without my friends. Serious. love you for that, Anjali.
Meanwhile, I hear from a smart, fearless young couple, that I simply have to take this show on the road myself. The laugh themselves sick when I tell them I am going to leafy lane bookstores and introducing myself. They advise me to get a manager, m-a-n-a-g-e-r they spell out helpfully. One last sweet bookstore that I have a personal connection with, I bargain with them, and then I’ll do everything that you suggest.
I take myself and new-born 3ZM on a small car trip into the city. I park and gently unstrap 3ZM from the baby chair, and stand at the signals waiting to cross. I fight back the image in my head of myself as a vagrant at the signal waiting with her baby and hoping to catch the eye of passersby. This kind of beggarly-thinking wont do, man, I tell myself. I visualize Oprah saying “You go, girl!” to me. And begin to stride across the road. The effect is a little spoilt by a two-wheeler fellow trying to run me down because I come in the way of his red-light jump. I have to scurry and skitter, dandling new-born on my hip. Which brings me rather quickly to the steps of another old institution, a 30 year old book shop whose owner I went to college with. He isn’t there, but that doesn’t stop me from plonking 3ZM on a table, where two assistant women are working quietly. I start with, “umm…do you hold book readings here?” I think people sell dirty pictures and drugs with more panache and confidence. They both look at me blank, and say, ‘book readings?’ I swallow hard. Not only are they not all agog, I am going to have to repeat my question, and possibly annotate and footnote my query, possibly mime out the book reading thing, so they get what I’m asking, in that choked dry-lipped way. But before I can do any of that, the phone rings in this small shop, and the errand boy picks it up, and passes it on to one of the ladies, announcing loudly, sure of its horrific effect on them: “Mr Hagawne cha phone.” For those of you who don’t speak Marathi (how dare you not? Want to be sent back where you came from? Huh?), you may not be aware of the awfully scatological last names that exist in this part of the country. Anyway, loosely (god the puns just happen) translated, Mr Hagawne means something like: Mr Shitter. I swear, I am not making this up.
I take 3ZM protectively off the table, and wander into one of the little aisles, and end up picking up 3 other people’s books. This seems to be going well as a promotional visit, I think.
The lady speaks into the phone to Mr H, and I can see from the corner of my eye that she is savagely fighting down the giggles. Her younger assistant succumbs to them, and quickly runs out of the shop. I see her standing on the pavement laughing uncontrollably into her hanky. This sets me off a little and I grin at the lady who manages to finish off the convo with Mr H without laughing. Her face is doing her in, though. And as soon as she catches my eye, she comes completely undone. We both burst out into huge lung fulls of laughter. She tries to say sorry madam, to me, and recompose her face. But she’s totally gone. She swats the errand boy with a book and says: “He always does this, whenever this man calls. Announces his name loudly and clearly, for all to hear.” The errand boy grins and says, “You tell him to change his name to something like Mr Joshi. So much cleaner.” This makes us bellow more, and the woman who was trying to finish off her laughing outside on the pavement, enters the shop, eyes streaming. Ah, why don’t such people change their names, really, I manage to ask. The shop lady leans weakly against a shelf and says softly to me….oh madam, you don’t know, there’s another distributor who calls, and his name is…She cant finish her sentence. She goes to her desk and pulls out a card to show me, laughing and jabbing helplessly at the name. It says: ‘Mr Sanjay Boob’.
Now with this kind of exciting time at this shop, somehow it didn’t seem the right time to show them 3ZM and extol its virtues or explain what a book-reading is, no? Thank you Mr H and Mr B for that priceless laugh with strangers - but if 3ZM remains unknown to the reading public in the Deccan area, it’s all your fault.

15 June 2008
A little visibility at last

Ok - the new born 3 Zakia Mansion (pyar se usko log 3ZM kehetey hai) is not so invisible anymore. From Shantiniketan (how cool is that!) Keya Sarkar, who owns a bookstore and library and lifestyle store writes to me, saying she has got a catalogue in which my book features and she has ordered copies. 3ZM, like all newborns, needed that little smack on the bottom that the Obgyn gives, to start its journey into the real world (Note my smooth transition to americanisms like Obgyn, and not gynac or gynae in good old Indian-English). And the smack has been delivered by Keya. Thank you! (And from here on, I will rest this parallel of 3ZM and newborn baby. It's not a metaphor to grind for too long.)
Then my publisher sends me rapid and wonderfully multisyllabic emails, getting set to tie down dates for A LAUNCH. yes, a real one. With celebs reading from the book and all. And people air-kissing each other before and after.
On top of it, my friend Phillip George from Thiruvananthapuram writes saying there's a smart poster of my book cover in a bookstore there. I am strewing roses from my hat with delight hearing this.
Niece 1 calls most thrilled that the book is in her hands. She regretfully tells me that the fancy paper that she works for "does not carry reviews of Indian writers". Get this: this is a paper that has the word India in its masthead. Go figure.
Almost as absurd as the lady in The Library in Pune who I went to see about holding a reading there. "Is there a UK connection in the book?" she asks. When I look down and mumble, no miss, or sorry teacher, she looks politely at me and calls the convo to a halt. "Then we cant do anything. There are many bookstores you can approach." (ya like i didnt know, lady). Later I thought, one of the characters in 3ZM travels from Chicago to Mumbai. He must have had a London stopover. Dang and Drat! So why didnt I tell the lady there was in fact a UK connection in my book, after all. Shya...silly me.
But never mind. Tomorrow I will set out looking for Friends in High Places in the Media.
Some are born pushy, others cultivate pushiness, and some have pushiness thrust upon them. Me - the third of the above categories.
Meanwhile, one media person casually asks me: "Is your book potentially controversial? Do you bash anyone, or is there some shocking child abuse, or some such stuff? Kuch halla hoga kya, over this book? Besmirched some historical figures?"
I'm afraid the answer to that is no.
*****

June 19 2008
Ok so bite me, I want my book to be written about. But hold-on, always be careful about what you ask for....because you can be blessed with gobbledygook like this: (I wont mention the paper or the writer, because I have nothing personal against either, but I do have a problem with the state of Indian journalism, editors, editing desks, writers, the whole caboodle....moreover, this is so ironic, because this is the kind of writing I teach people NOT to indulge in. And here I sit, being written at in this way!) Hold your breath. Just a few excerpts, but it's going to be a rocky road. And I quote:

"Framing characters that have been a quarry of emotional abandonment, Gouri Dange's maiden venture in fiction writing 3, Zakia Mansion recounts the journey of maturing.
Writers can delve out the most unobtrusive of the emotional panoply felt or forgotten, spy the most understated of the peculiar human conditions, and phrase it so incisively as to leave you stunned that they can resonate your inner being like they have been an observer and cohort for life. "
......
To intuit the finer elemental experiences of a marooned mind that has fallen off the sound growth routine, it is given that a perspicacious, objective and thorough insight into the tumultuous scenario is required. But to Dange it comes relatively easy, given her surrogate profession of a family counsellor.
....
Her advice to aspirants of penmanship is that you should indulge in uninhibited writing and allow yourself to explore , refraining from taking a cavilling view of your writing. "
....
! had enough?

This confirms one theory, that the word vocabulary, has an Indian origin: Voh-kya-boli-rey?

All this sent him running to his dictionary, one of my friends told me, not to look up words, but to pick up the largest one and hurl it at the people concerned.

The Universe is telling me: You want Press? Here Press this! ImPressed? DePressed?
Now I remembered why I was a recluse in the first place. Too late, now.

Please step aside, Ma'am

2009-08-21T04:39:00.000-07:00

Good for Shah Rukh K-K-Khan - he clarifies that he was embarrassed and inconvenienced, but not angry at being detained and questioned at Newark airport.
I’m impressed with the NRI community in that country for not rioting and burning buses and trains because their Shah Rukh had not been recognised as god. However, perhaps I should be impressed with the much-maligned US authorities, who would not have brooked any such property and people-damaging show of displeasure by anyone. Unlike in our own backyard here, where going on a rampage and destroying property is quite the shortcut to everything. Railways property worth Rs 3 crore was destroyed because someone got upset with something someone else did recently in Bihar. Why single out Bihar – in Maharashtra and elsewhere too, we Indians, particularly the ‘boys’ of Mumbai, routinely attack public property.
But to come back to being questioned at US airports. I am not Shah Rukh Khan, but I have a detainment story to tell too. And like him, I too was not angry, just puzzled and then amused, and I understood that the American girl who questioned me closely was just doing her job, particularly post 9/11.

My little brush with the immigration people at San Francisco airport began with my being asked to step aside, please. This was my third visit and I had a multiple entry visa, so I was a bit surprised. Then I was led down several sterile corridors that reminded me horribly of hospitals and I wondered if I was going to be given an MRI - out of some The Matrix type mix-up, was I in some other dimension?
No, nothing so interesting. I was called into a room, and politely but very coldly asked about the purpose of my visit. When I said to meet friends and family, they asked me to name 3 cities of the US of A. Huh? But this was fun; I wondered if I was suddenly on the sets of a Millionaire show. I toyed with asking the lady if I could use a lifeline and phone-a-friend. But my inner guide told me that this was not a good time to joke.
Next she asked me to open my bags, which had magically arrived in the room through a hatch. I opened them, and she pounced on my sitar notation book, and a folder with some of my papers. The sitar notation book she looked at closely, and asked me what code this was. I said no code, just music notes (from our faiu-thousand year tradition, I should have added). She asked me why the folder said Yoga Institute, Santa Cruz, Mumbai. First I had to explain to her that there was a Santa Cruz in Mumbai too. She looked totally unbelieving. This was when she decided to take the phone-a-friend option and called in another woman. This woman too looked like one of those check-out girl at a big US food store counter – same level of intelligence, but a little scarier in the black uniform.
Picking my folder (which just happened to be a nice sturdy folder that I used to keep my travel insurance policy and papers to show that I had property in India, for just this kind of encounter) and my poor sitar book, she said: “Are you going to use these to teach seetar and yoguh and earn dollars in the US?” I had to control my grin – I just said, “Lady, if you heard me play and saw my stiff attempts at touching my toes, you wouldn’t have asked me this.”
Then one of them pounced on something in my bag. I had taken for an American friend, a steel masala dabba – the one with the 7 little compartments. She opened it, peered into it, took out the sections, and asked me what this was for. I was so sorely tempted to say – oh we pack this with gunpowder and dynamite and then hurl it at buildings. But of course I said no such thing. When I told them what it was, one of them gave me a small smile, and said ‘Neat’!
Aapla masalyacha dabba had suddenly disarmed these girls so much, that I thought we were going to all three get cosy and start playing house-house right there.
Anyway, they decided that I was harmless. I was waved through to my waiting friends.

Carrots and Kababs

2009-08-17T03:41:00.001-07:00

You say Carrot, I say Kabab

The human animal makes bewildering food choices indeed.

In matters of food, you thought that humanity was divided into veggies and non-veggies. It's not as simple as that. Not by a long stalk of celery. There is a baffling range of species and sub-species and mutants.

There are the "pure veggies"; there are depends-on-the-day-of-the-week veggies, there are occasional non-veggies - or "maukatarians" as a friend calls them (mauka dekh key khatay hai): if the non-veg spread looks good, then they'll hit on the chicken. If the paneer's more fetching, they'll make moves on it. There are born-again veggies, who have had a brief affair with meat, and now refuse to look a pomfret in the eye. There are those who say they'll "eat anything that moves" (One is tempted to invite them to dinner pre-monsoon…when anything that moves is doing a kamikaze at my light bulb); there are the vegans, the fishitarians, the river fish onlys, the closet kabab addicts - who'll grab a few rounds at Bade Miyan before reaching home to a chaste meal. You name it.

And to complicate life, these various species meet, mate and set up house. That's when things get really intricate. Take Bhaskar for instance. Grew up in a home where his mother would not even use the word 'egg' - the only time she had to use the word, when he was about to leave his Matrubhoomi, she said: "I suppose you will end up having to eat that round white thing - in that country of barbarians. But try not to eat the mother of the round white thing…"

Bhaskar ultimately became a committed fan of Kentucky mother of the round white thing. But he met and married a girl who 'never touched' (our very own Indian term for 'totally vegetarian' or for a 'complete teetotaler'). So how did they sort that out? Love and fresh air. No to meat in the house… but yes to barbecues out in the backyard, as long as the meat comes in from the back and leaves from there too. After a party they simply give away what's left. If he craves a sizzler, they'll go to an open-air restaurant, where Mita doesn't end up having, as she describes it, "her clothes and hair smelling of that stuff". Seems kind of do-able.

Then there's Ninad and Ketki. When they pass the Mumbai suburban fish market, his Malwani genes jump about, pulling and tugging at the leash and whining piteously…but if it's Bengali week, he's out of luck. They're headed to Ketki's favourite river-fish market at Vikhroli - and she's not going to sully the trip with sea fish - she's seeing hilsa and tangda dancing in front of her eyes. Sunday lunch is all mustard and hilsa, while Ninad has to wait his turn for next Sunday, when surmai will swim in coconut gravy. And his biggest grouse: "She buys those guys, and stores them whole in the freezer. You reach for some ice cubes….and these gaping mouths and staring eyes leap out at you….yukk. I prefer my fish all cut and sliced and marinated and put away in the freezer. Not this Sea World look, man. Well they're still sorting things out….kind of. Their daughter, when she's old enough, they hope will simply love it all. What they dread is her turning veggie on them. That they really wouldn’t know how to handle.

Veronica has a slightly different problem. Brought up in a meat eating home, she is married to a person from the same background. But she can't stand the stuff. Her ma-in-law makes the best sorpatel and vindaloo this side of anywhere, and she believes that vegetables are for old and ailing people who god is severely punishing for past sins. She greets most of the veggies which Veronica buys from the station, on her way home, with a curious and suspicious glare, muttering "never seen that before". Veronica claims that the old lady recognizes only potatoes, peas and tomatoes, and that too because they are willing to be friends with meat. Anything else is fodder really. Veronica and Big Mama aren’t doing too well. Other members of the family indulge in dinner diplomacy - "Hmm superb roast, Ma. Yes, Ver, I would like more of that palak"….etc - and keep carefully out of the debate.

This is how Rajani-kaki and Ved-Kaka have it figured: She's 70. Her husband's 75. Vegetarians all their lives. In the last couple of years, however, he's discovered sausages and eggs. Ate them with a friend at a restaurant. Came home and declared he must have them at least once a week….and to hell with cholesterol-pholesterol. She comes from a generation that will not say…."then fix them yerself, pal". Her weekly ritual is indeed a lesson in physics, acrobatics, sociology, theology….This is how it goes: At 7 am on every Saturday, she first turns the little idols in her devghar to face away - to turn a blind eye for a while. She climbs up on a chair, and pulls down from a shelf high up, kept well away from defiling other kitchenware, a little frying pan, a spatula, a plate and a fork. She's got a blacksmith to attach an extra-long handle - a good 18 inches long, to the frying pan. The spatula too is a really long one. The local shop then delivers six sausages and two eggs. She then lights the stove, proceeds to wear two milk bags over her hands, a plastic apron over her nine-yard saree, and stands way, way out of the range of the spluttering oil, and deftly tosses in the eggs and the sausages. Once they're done, she places them on the plate, mops up the extra grease with a couple of pieces of bread, and calls out to Kaka. She refuses to watch when he begins eating; "Chall…you also try some," he says. She makes a face. That's part of the ritual too.

And so it goes on. The human animal doing what it knows best to do: muddling along and trying to figure how to deal with the medley of bewildering choices that its Maker has heaped on its plate.

Helpful or daft?

2009-08-16T23:43:00.000-07:00

I've never liked the big bookstores whose staff knows nothing about their books, and whose gardening section has weird books about growing plants in Arizona, but NOTHING on indian plants and gardening or trees!
Now they're got into the music scene too, and only because I cant find this CD in the smaller stores, I called up Landmark in Pune to ask if they have Debu Chaudhuri's sitar recordings. I didnt want to tax their intelligence by specifying which raga, so I just mentioned his name. First I was put on hold, and then disconnected (standard operating procedure). I called again, was handed over to several different people, each asking "yes ma'am?" and then passing the phone on. The last guy who took it asked me the name twice, and then said, "It must be Debashish Bhattacharya". I said, er, no, Debu Chaudhuri. Earlier I would have lammed into him and said whadyoumean it must be debashish bhattacharya...you think they're all one and the same? im saying d-e-b-u c-h-a-u-d-h-u-r-i. But now i know better, and save my breath. Because this guy who took the phone was probably selling jeans or soemthing at some Mall before he joined this place. Jeez.
Anyway, while on the subject, on to much pleasanter things: do do listen to debu chaudhuri's kaunsi-kanhra if you can lay hands on it. one of the purest and most celestial pieces of music i have heard on the sitar.

Hannibal will get you

2009-07-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

Most great actors manage to do the chameleon thing. Even when one role leaves a lasting impression on you, you can watch them do something totally different, and convincingly, at that.
However, sometimes this doesnt work. Either the actor has become so big and larger than life, that you see him or her rather than the character. Or, there is such a massive hangover of a previous role, that that one keeps hovering overhead.
Yesterday I was watching one of my favourite actors, Anthony Hopkins. I had seen Remains of the Day a while ago; I watched it again yesterday. But in the interim somewhere, I had also seen Hopkins as Hannibal.
And that was my undoing. Because now, when I watched the self-effacing, overcautious and emotions-in-check butler, I kept thinking, oh-oh, he's going to chop up his employer at night. Oh oh, Emma Thompson he's going to have for breakfast.
Where before I saw him superbly portraying, as the butler, a painfully reserved man letting life pass him by, now, Hannibal's shadows played in Hopkins's eyes, and I expected him to do that horrible thing with his tongue and voice.
There is a brilliant scene in which his employer calls him in, and one of his guests bombards him with complex political questions (just to prove his point that democracy puts power in the hands of the 'dull-witted underclass' who dont have the information or brains to choose wisely). Anthony Hopkins does a superb job of holding on to his dignity and politely saying again and again 'I will not be able to say anything about that sir' (or words to that effect). Part of you wants him to be not so butler-ish and thwack the guest on the head. This was before I saw Hannibal. Now, in this viewing of Remains of the Day, a chill ran up my spine. I found myself thinking, ah, this guest at this country home is going to get separated from his liver very soon, though I watched Anthony Hopkins replying ever-so-correctly and staying totally in character of a slightly beaten man. And when Emma Thompson teases him a little and also scoffs at him slightly, you fear for her life!
It's a little like the other Anthony - Perkins from Psycho. He couldnt get work because the shadow of Psycho followed him everywhere. Luckily Hannibal was not Hopkins's first role.

Swar-vihar; the pool of music

2009-07-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Before casettes, CDs, MP3s i-pods and youtube and a hundred other smart sources that bring music to you at your fingertips, on demand, we had in Pune, right here on FC Road, bang opposite Vaishali, the mother-lode of music. Swar-vihar. An Alladin's cave of treasures for the hindi film song lovers amongst us who didnt stay at home and had no access to music except a transistor radio owned by perhaps one or two people.
After an 80paisa masala dosa at Vaishali (followed by a 50p wada-sambar if you were feeling rich as well as greedy), we would amble across (yes, FC was something like the Shimla Mall Road - you could amble down and not be mowed down by some moron on a mobike), and for the princely sum of 25p a song, we would have the quiet owner enclose us in a booth in which 6 people would barely fit, and have him play us songs of our choosing.
For half an hour before this, we would argue and wrangle about what we were going to listen to, who would pay how much, who got to listen to what,etc. If it was someone's birthday, she got to listen to all her favourites that evening. Generously, the birthday girl would throw in songs that everyone liked too, so while most of us would groan at Mukesh doing Saranga teri yaad mein, one of us got to listen to the song and moon about some ex-beau called Sarang. (Mukesh fans, calm down, today I love the Saranga song; in those days it sounded like someone was baying nasally at the moon.) Or I got to whistle along with the last bars of Hemant Kumar's 'Tum, pukarlo; tumhara intazaar hai'.
Swar-vihar was a tiny unobtrusive little establishment (where perhaps there is a juice bar now?), but it was the nerve centre for the music lover, the love lorn and the nostalgically inclined. Stacked and packed from floor to ceiling with records, this tiny place would close for the night only after the owner had politely requested, and then ordered us out of there.
Occasionally we would be joined by Some Boys. This would change the atmosphere in the 6-people cubicle dramatically, since invariably one of the Boys would be interested in one of the Girls, and would insist on playing songs that sent across messages, subtle and not-so-subtle.
Once we crammed ourselves into that space, any other visitor to Swar-vihar would wag his head in despair and push off, knowing that we would have at least 16 songs lined up, and would not leave till FC hostel gate closing time.
When we were virtually thrown out of the place, we would float off back to the girls hostel, in a haze of music, awash in it, and already planning what we would listen to the next evening. We would walk up the lane leading towards the hostel, fragrant in September with the flower-fall of 8 stately cork-trees, that seemed to air-condition and perfume the whole area.
Today I have everything including the song videos at my fingertips. As I write this, I'm listening and watching from Heer-Ranjah, 'Meri duniya mey tum aayee kya kya apnay saath liye....tannn ki chandi, mann ka sona...sapno waali raat liye'. And I can from there move on to the next song that takes my fancy. And I dont have to stop listening at 9pm.
So I dont miss Swar-vihar itself, but that whole time and place, when every spending choice and decision - music or medu wada? - was such a delicious one.
gouri dange

They're playing our song

2009-06-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

there is a song i sing for yoyo in the car; i first used to sing it to jaya when she was little. and she later magnanimously let me sing it to yoyo, like giving him her old teddy bear, she says.
this ustaad dog, goes into soft paroxysms when i sing it to him in the car. when not in the car he just looks surprised and not so pleased if i sing it. today i played it on youtube, the original, and i swear to god, he looked straight into my eyes, shocked - hey they're playing our song, types.
same when neighbour began to sing it softly to him some days ago to see his reaction; he ignored her but fixed me with that piercing gaze of his - so much the Westy trait - and couldnt fathom how the song was coming without me moving my lips. he didnt like it at all. the song has to be in the car bubble which includes only him and me.
must post a picture.
the song is Chhukar mere mann ko, kiya tunay kya ishara. i always thought it is a song sung to a kid - the music and words are like that; very loving nursery/lullaby sense to it. was shocked to see bachchan and neetu singh cavorting to this song, on youtube. didnt like.

The ads say it all!

2009-06-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

Noticed how sort of relevant ads pop up alongside your mail, because some smart machine is reading your mail and crunching it up and producing keywords. I keep meaning to list some fantastically inappropriate ones - or perhaps they are appropriate, after all.
For instance. In recent times I've been writing about the funny fracas with the publishers of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. Me and some of the other writers involved who have been in touch about these publishers and their strange ways, have been having a lot of fun with the word Chicken, as you can imagine. the metaphors flew fast and thick over our mail, for a while there. And look what the ads on the side offered, amongst other things like Chicken Mesh, Manure, etc...:
Books on Raising Chickens
Books, Free Information for Farmers & Vets on Raising Chickens
WireMesh baskets,container,shelving animal cages manufacturer exporter
Land for sale Kentucky. Poultry Farm Listings
and last but definitely not the least:

Poultry Slaughter lines for sale

Some of my best friends are teenagers

2009-06-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

(This is what I wrote for Westland India's proposed book, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. I subsequently took back my piece as I found the publisher and their representatives a tad un-nourishing (see earlier blogs). It has been now carried in various places, so no loss, none at all.)

I have always liked teenagers. When I was little, a bunch of them swarmed around me to pinch my cheeks; then when I was a little older, a gawky adolescent, I watched with shock and awe as my teenaged sister and her friends laughed, cried, and fought their way through their teens. When I was a teenager myself, of course there was no one better to hang loose with than my own herd, doing things that ranged from the sublime to the absurd to the downright dangerous. In my mid-20s, just a few jumps away from teenage, it was teen colleagues who expertly clued me in to the computers that overnight appeared in our office. That's the thing about teenagers; they're afraid of nothing. While I would jab in fear at the keyboard (having only ever 'driven' a typewriter before that), and watch with dismay as entire screens of my work would vanish, there would always be a teenager at hand who would saunter down to my desk, ask me to take a chill-pill, and make it all come back.

In my 30s I have often come home to the treasured sight of a teenaged baby-sitter curled up on the sofa with my dog and six-year-old child - fed, walked, entertained and safe. So you see, I find it hard to agree when people use labels like "irresponsible, selfish, rude, careless" about teenagers. I've seen plenty of them study, volunteer, bring smiles to their grandma's face, handle their own heartbreaks, and have loads of fun – all in one day. How many of us can claim to do that!

Now, in my 40s, I have many teenaged friends – some of them started out being godchildren, but today 'my friends' is the more appropriate word for them. Because, while I may hold their hand through a crisis or two, they bring their robust and resilient minds and bodies to sort out the ups and downs of my life too.

They come, these friends of mine, from all kinds of places. There's a couple of them from rural India…a bunch of them are urban teens, children of friends…another handful are students from the US. Widely varying backgrounds, but with so many endearing teenage traits in common. A ready grin that can quickly turn into a delightful belly-laugh. An ability to feel and express genuine sadness, anger, hurt – and to help you deal with some of it too. An insistence on living in the here-and-now.

They have huge appetites coupled with honest reactions. So one day your lasagna will get a standing ovation, and the next day your attempts at making chicken biryani will be met with a: "err…next time let's order this take-away"! They can rescue you from your hair and wardrobe rut by marching you down to the right places and ordering you to try on new cuts and colours. They can badger you to take that lipid-profile test. They show you how to angle your foot correctly so that you come down from a hill-climb without careening down in a silly heap. They know lots of useful stuff, these teenagers.

Of course they leave things half-eaten and uncovered in the fridge; of course they can frustrate your attempts at bird-watching by laughing and talking loud enough to startle every bird in a one-mile radius. Of course they can change your cell-phone language to Chinese 'just-for-fun'. Of course they drop and spill and mop up in the most casual way. And of course they go away, sometimes, to some deep inaccessible place inside of themselves, where all you can get from them is a weary-sounding 'Whatever'.

But most times, there's nothing quite like the teenager's sheer energy, irreverence, buoyancy and can-do take on life. One of my favourite moments with my teenaged friends? When I retire to bed and fall asleep to the sound of their chatter downstairs – it's nearing midnight, way past my bedtime…but their night is still young.

Fishy Fowl

2009-06-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

As someone has rightly pointed out in a comment to my 'Fowl play no more' entry, the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul saga does not end there. Too boring to go into details here, but I decided not to take up their so-called renewed and more reasonable offer. The whole thing smells fishy. so that's it for me.
Watch this space for the entry that i pulled out. I mean the piece on teenagers that had got 'accepted' by the Chicken gang.
It's called Some of My Best Friends are Teenagers. I'm feeling lazy to find and upload. Will do it soon.
Blogging is so freeing. No contracts to read carefully, no commissioning editors to put up with and no phaltu launches and what-not. I'm very very tempted, again, to blog-publish my second novel on a weekly basis.

3 kids, a dog and a doll's house

2009-06-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

sometimes words are a waste and inadequate. was left speechless some days ago when the Bertie kids (see 'Less is definitely more; Pune Mirror columns in this blog) made a small new 'model' hut to show me some technique they use in the village to make a water proof hut. this one was large enough for 3 kids, or 2 kids 1 dog. and they LAVISHED their love and design sense on it (the interior had even a kitchen area, a godrej cupboard from a flat long carton stood on its side, a sleeping area.) oh it was so cosy. and they were waiting to test its strength and mettle in the rains.
was left equally speechless when today it was gone, and they said that the boss-man (lackey of the owner of the land they live on on which their dad is a watchman) came to make salary payment and asked them to remove it, as it was 'kachra'. when i went to visit, it was gone, and they were part philosophical and part smouldering and part in tears. the older kids, to make the younger (chief architect) feel ok, showed me proudly how they had engineered the roof in such a way (grass, plastic layer, sticks and bamboos and bits of iron rods) that if they had to move it, it would stay in one piece. so they had laid the whole knocked-down unit neatly aside near their own home (a mere lean-to itself), and plan to put it up somewhere less visible.
i know people lose their entire homes in arbit moves, but this felt even sadder. like someone stomped on all their brio. i tried to say to myself that ultimately it is the loss of that silly man to not recognize a piece of wonderment from a kid's magical mind...but such constructs are cold comfort, no?
this is the hut. not good pics. vague camera, vaguer cameraperson and battery was dying. but still..

Fowl Play no more...I think

2009-05-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

An update: After 8 or 9 of the contributors to this proposed anthology, Chicken Soup for the Indian Teenager's Soul had given up hope of anyone sensible from the publisher's side taking any professional and logical steps, and taken recourse to contacting the parent companies and the press, someone did in fact contact us. At last, possibly taking cognisance of the utter disgust, anger and amusement that had built up openly, this person did not come at us talking 'take it or leave it' and 'we'll find better writers' etc. He calmly spoke to us individually, actually understood the questions we were asking, instead of behaving like we were some starving snapping creatures, and hallelujha! Westland has got back to us with an amended, more reasonable contract, and Rs 1000 instead of Rs 500 (not princely, but at least an acknowledgement that Rs 500 was laughable); and promises to pay again if the book does well beyond a point.
We're now inclined to sign, most of us. Some of us may say thanks but no thanks. But at least it will end on a non-bitter note.
Meanwhile, anyone to whom I had forwarded Raksha Bharadia's email soliciting contributions to a proposed Chicken Soup for the Indian Army Soul (or some such title), please note that I had passed it on assuming she was authorized to ask for these contributions. However, the person at Westland (the reasonable person) who spoke to me told me in as many words that she has absolutely no mandate to solicit things for any such book. I hope you guys are reading this - sorry if I passed on her mail, without realising that this was one big mess that I may get you into!

Moral of the story: always read the fine print, keep asking questions, and don’t behave as if a publisher is God himself/herself. Many of them are just muddling around, like any other organisation. And some of them will try to shout you down or sneer you down when they don’t know better.

Chicken Feed for the Writer's Soul

2009-05-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

An amazingly bizarre bunch of interactions over the last some months proves one more of my favourite points. We Indians are our own worst enemies. We can shout ourselves sick about how the white man exploited/exploits us - but put a certain type of Indian in a position of even a little bit of power and he will try to dabaav anyone he can.
Let me start at the beginning - over 2 years ago, a whole bunch of us writers (many of us published) were asked by representatives of Westland Publishing India (related in some way to the Tata Group and Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing LLC.) to contribute a story or piece for a proposed book Chicken Soup for the Indian Teenager’s Soul. For free! Yes, I kid you not, these women representatives of this Indian wing of chicken, asked for the stories for free. Just like that. Plain begging. I swatted them off saying no way. After a while, one of them writes again, saying pretty please, with sugar on top, can you do one for us...ok we will give you Rs 500. Now I’m not good at being firm with beggars, and since the offer was sweetened slightly by a) allowing me to use the piece elsewhere too b) the writer’s name and email ids appearing at the end of the book (which could mean that other publishers or nice people may contact you by the millions, since the book promised to sell by the millions) – I said ok – here’s a piece.
I got a grand little email saying Dear Ms Dange your piece has been accepted...etc. After that, utter and complete silence for almost 2 years. Whenever I saw one of these women online, I would ask her what happened, and she would make a saddy-waddy face (the opposite of the smiley face) – in lieu of any explanation. So I just let it go at that.
One fine day, all of us get this breezy email asking for contributions for ANOTHER book – Chicken Soup for the Indian Army, or some such. That’s when some of us saw red.
One of the writers sent a mass mail to all the writers of Teenage Chicken, or whatever that first one is supposed to be, and to the publishers, saying what the hell, guys. When and where is our book? In reply to this, he got some airy and most unapologetic reply from one of the women, including a rap on the knuckles for ‘invading the privacy’ of the other writers. That’s when quite a few of us descended on these morons, and told them what was what. In all this, please note, neither the mother nor the father company whoever they are, have ever bothered to intervene. I wonder if they even know what is going on.
Anyway, a few days later, Westland India nonchalantly sends us all a contract to sign. In that contract, for the Chicken sh** amount of Rs 500 that they were going to give us, they wanted us to sign off every right under the sun, inter-galactic rights and possibly our mothers thrown in too for free. It was a hilariously exploitative contract, seriously. We were to gift them rights to this edition, foreign editions, TV rights, film rights, translation in all Indian language rights and the right to use our bathrooms whenever they wanted, or some such thing.
Of course some of us said Arrey? To which there was no response from them, and then the offer to only amend the contract very slightly, which didn’t change its exploitative and comprehensive nature at all.
Many of us have seen many contracts in the publishing world before – and this one takes the cake. The representatives of course keep claiming that it is a most ‘common’ and ‘standard’ contract. Well if nothing else, they have a good sense of humour, these women at Westland India.

Now some of the writers who contributed were not at all keen to take any panga, as they were very very keen to see their name in print, bobbing around in all that chicken soup. Understandable, but dangerous and unprofessional. And begging to be exploited again and again. (Maybe then there will be a Chicken Soup for the Exploited Writer’s Soul). As one of the smart people amongst us pointed out, by signing that document, we would not only by giving away a lot for nothing, but opening ourselves out for all kinds of future liabilities.
Anyway, to cut a long story very short, expectedly, Westland simply ignored all our mails about behaving more professional and fair, and proposes to simply go ahead and publish this book without our pieces.
Some of us have withdrawn our stories, and that’s that – happy not to scratch around in the dirt like silly chicken. However, a word of warning to anyone who gets carried away looking at the big ticket publisher name, if they ever contact you for your writing. Stay away. The Indian Westland people seem to be a law unto themselves – they will not honour what on the Chicken Soup site is clearly written: $200 for your contribution and 10 copies of the book (we were offered one, yes one copy of the book - I get more copies of books that I edit!). And they will be rude, sarcastic, go to sleep for many months, and finally do what they please. Seeing your name in print is always good, and I’m sure the book will be launched with much hoopla, but you really don’t have to be so needy as to pick up the crumbs that publishers like this throw in your direction.

You dont need ghosts to scare you

2009-05-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

Don’t you get scared to live in that rattling old huge house with its garden whose limits you cannot see whose walls panthers, marauding monkeys, intruders, snakes and other threats can easily scale?
And out back, that muslim cemetery facing the plot? does that not give you the shivers?
This i am asked about staying for many weeks in a friend’s old house in mahabaleshwar.
But let me tell you, what gives me the creeps. And this is not just me being funny-cute-antisocial.
It really does thoroughly chill me to hear suddenly in the night or day, a resigned jingle-clop-jingle-clop-jingle-clop on the forest road. No, not dancing ghosts. But the sound of 2 luckless camels – whose fates got tangled with a human being. Who thought it great sport (and a good source of income of course) to export these camels so far away from their place of origin, high up here, to entertain holidaying humans up here in the hills.
Even the monkeys have stopped exclaiming at this unlikely animal’s presence, so far from its habitat; the monkeys stop their chatter and clatter in the branches, and fall silent, as if in deference to the walking dead, when these two camels pass jingle-clop-jingle-clop up and down the slopes with glum been-there-done-that children bouncing sullenly on their backs.
And another thing that creeps me out more than any potential panther or python, is the inability of guests in the hotel next door, to be. They must be served – and the once clean night air is testimony to this – their curries and kababs, and addressed as ladies and gentleman over a PA system, and serenaded by some singer (who like the camels has been imported here from god knows where), who desperately sings rafi, then mukesh, and then taking account of the meagre applause, breaks out into a last ditch Jai Ho. So that his supper is sung for.

Frankenstein Franchisees

2009-04-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

A franchisee of one of Bombay’s oldest chains, now in Aundh Pune, shocked our tastebuds. It achieved the feat of serving up a piece of chicken that seems to belong to 3 different birds – one old and tough, one frozen solid, and one in a state of decomposition. The first bite is tough and chewy, and you’re considering calling the waiter; but your hungry niece takes one bite and says the part she’s chewing into is quite tender, so you subside, thankful that you don’t have to yet again take panga. Meanwhile you try to rescue some French fries from the mud-slide of nameless sauce that they have got buried under. They feel slimey and soggy against your tongue, but you tell yourself to let it be. You make a jab at some green beans, thinking healthy thoughts, and what you get is uncooked and unstrung pharasbi.
Meanwhile, the restaurant is filling up with techies from next door, and they’re digging in and wolfing it down, without any complaint. So you decide you’re getting old and fussy, and heading far too early towards that place where you eat only food cooked by your own hands. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, so you determinedly soldier on with your ‘sizzler’. Your next bite you get a slightly tender piece, and are about to relax into your meal, when your niece puts her hand to her mouth and makes that involuntary gulp that you’ve seen her make 18 years ago when she was very little and got a teeny-tiny piece of malai in her milk. That’s not a good face, because you remember it usually ended in you trying to get the smell of vomit off a dhurrie. Vomit is a horrible word, that makes many people, well…vomit. So let’s go with ‘upchuck’ as one of our teachers used to delicately say. “Don’t eat too fast, or you may upchuck.”
Well, my niece’s eyes watered, and she did the scary pre-upchucking gag thing, but having grown up, she didn’t, thank god. She carefully, and I must say quite stylishly, removed the contents of her mouth into a paper napkin, and even managed to wipe the inside of her mouth with another napkin quite elegantly. Given that the restaurant in question is all glass fronted, and passersby have the pleasure of watching your every move as you eat, I’m rather glad for everyone around that she held it all together. “Smelly” is all that she managed to say to me.
By this time we had eaten about a third of the stringy beans, sodden fries and leathery floret of cauliflower that were masquerading as sautéed vegetables. So technically, we were well into our meal; we’d made inroads into that sizzler. It seemed so cheap to now call out to the manager and complain. And it was one of those days when neither of us were feeling like making a scene.
But somehow I couldn’t let it go. Memories of outstanding sizzlers eaten circa 1979 in Bombay at the mother joint came floating back, and a little upchuck of resentment built up inside my soul, and I called, first, the waiter. I decided to keep it soft, gentle and civilized, having used up my week’s supply of screechy, rough and uncouth on the MSEB guy just the day before.
“The chicken is a little…umm…perhaps not good,” I said, doing my gentlest best.
My niece looked doubtfully at me, obviously making a mental note in support of her theory that I am getting old and boringly mellow.
The waiter looked at our half eaten portion, and narrowed his eyes.
“It was ok in some parts,” I bleated, sheepishly.
At this point, he picked up a knife and tried to cut through the piece. (Obviously in this place, the customer is not always right, and her opinion has to be checked out under her nose.)
Luckily for us, the chicken piece behaved like one of those rubber-toys that you get for your dog, and kind of bounced around and refused to yield to the jab of his knife.
“Why don’t you also smell it,” my niece suggested coldly to him.
I hastily said “No, please don’t,” afraid there would surely be an upchucking incident now.
The waiter removed the plate and hurried inside, looking quite disturbed. Ahh, so he too realizes there is something wrong.
But instead of him emerging from the kitchen with a fresh piece or an apology or a suggestion that we have something else, out came a smooth-looking young man, the maitre d or whatever fancy name he goes by in such joints.
“Any problem madam?” this stripling asks.
“Yes, your chicken was old and smelly,” my niece says, seeing that I was in a mood to be polite and might have said something waffly like “Err, the chicken was a trifle…resilient…shall we say?”
Smooth Stripling simply smiled superiorly. He was in Pune, you see, and us Puneris obviously had never eaten a sizzler before, so he said kindly and helpfully: “Madam, that is barbecued, you see.”
I thought he would spell it out b-a-r-b-e-c-u-e for us.
This is when I said, re-gathering some of my usual irritability: “We barbecue meats too, you know. Your meat was just tough and awful.”
Smoothy just smiled some more as if I had complimented him in Swahili, and asked silkily: “Any desserts madam?”
No desserts for us boy, but you’ll get your just deserts soon, I hope, I wanted to say. But I didn’t.
Within 15 seconds, the bill arrived – we had been charged fully for the Carcass Sizzler.
I paid up and left, vowing never to go there again. But that’s a lame thought, given that the place is being swarmed by youngsters with better teeth, better stomachs, better appetites, and noses and tastebuds completely blunted by air-conditioning and pollution.
****
Franchisees of bigger-city restaurants, salad bars, supermarkets & fast food places, courier companies, bookstores…you name it…most are doing such a fantastically bad job in Pune. I wonder how the franchiser doesn’t care about his name, goodwill and investment built over decades, being poured freely down the drain at the Pune end of things.
A few examples will suffice…I’m sure readers will have many of their own. A well known food store opens a franchise here. Their cold storage section, after the first few clean and virtuous weeks, is a sight that the PMC might want to examine. No ventilation, badly functioning refrigeration and air-conditioning, rivulets of melted ice and blood (of fish and fowl) running across the floor, and a welcome dance by 16 shapely flies. On top of it, when you invoke the name of the famous food store that is their Father Franchiser, the man inside this disaster zone says brashly: “Flies are everywhere ma’am; and the floor will get cleaned in the afternoon.”
I walk into a big clothes store, frachisee of another biggy from a big city. Same story. Not flies and yukky floors here, but empty shelves, gum chewing staff that is busy talking to each other, stopping only to shout gaily to you: “Out of stock ma’am!”
And so it is with the bookstores (whose staff was till yesterday maybe working at the clothes store) where you draw blank looks if you ask for anything beyond an ageing diva’s books. Unawareness and who-cares-ness rules here too.
Courier companies, bless their confused hearts and souls, simply don’t reach their destination at the Pune end. They don’t think its part of the job. And if you follow this up to its bitter end, you’re likely to hear: there was no one in your house, or your address is very difficult. If you ask why they couldn’t call you from the phone number on your packet, they shout out loudly, laughingly, to someone else in the room in Marathi or Hindi, the rough translation being: “Hey somebody take the phone and talk to this ill-tempered aunty who’s asking all these questions.” The person at the other end laughs riotously back and advises: “Array rakh dey na phone nichay, idiot.”
I kid you not, these are all franchises of huge national and international brand name companies.
I didn’t go to B-school and I don’t come from a business family, so maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but isn’t franchising a system of marketing and distribution in which an independent businessperson, for a fee, is granted the right to market the goods or services of the franchisor according to the established, successful standards and practices of the franchisor? Ideally, I am told, the franchise system forms the perfect marriage between big business and the small businessperson. The franchisor obtains new sources of expansion capital, new distribution markets, and self-motivated vendors of its products, while the franchisee acquires the products, expertise, stability, and marketing savvy usually available only to larger enterprises. “Both franchisor and franchisee have a strong vested interest in the success of the brand and keeping their customers happy,” I read somewhere.
Kuch gadbad hai. Maybe it’s the steep climb up the Ghats, but something seems to be falling by the wayside. High time the big ticket franchisors made their way up to Pune and took a look at what their franchisees are really up to, don’t you think?

Settling, breathing a little easy

2009-04-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

An old friend writes after moving almost randomly to Oslo (after years of being unhappy and unsettled somewhere else, then coming to india and hating what it had become, thoroughly):

"Until about two days ago, there were no leaves on the trees. It rained slightly for two nights and lo behold, today the trees have lush green leaves! It is amazing to see this sudden change in nature. Everyone here is commenting about how suddenly Oslo changes, turns green and stays green until the fall. For about a week or so I have seen lots of tulips, daffodils and roses blooming, but this sudden return of leaves on the trees is an absolutely beautiful sight.

"This wonderful and almost perfect mix of natural beauty, peace and urban sophistication here has done something wonderful to my psyche. Now all I wish is that there was a pill I could swallow and become proficient in Norwegian."

I dont know why, but his description touched me so - felt for a moment like I too had been transported there to experience what he did. As for the part about beauty, peace and urban sophistication - I am plain envious! Anyone reading this, feel happy for this unknown soldier!

Morons, marriages, money and Mahabaleshwar

2009-04-27T01:38:00.000-07:00

And the forest be damned

No, it’s not very much cooler here than in Pune, and guess what? It’s not quieter either. Forgetting my usual strong allergy to any tourist spot in holiday season, I rolled up here to what is perhaps one of the prettiest spots in these hills. Sitting on the porch of a friend’s 50 year old house, I see only hills and lush green cauliflower vegetation all around me, 360 degrees. But within a couple of hours, the shape of things to come becomes clear to me. A resort next door, Brightlands (manned and owned by possibly not so bright people), lets loose the sickening thud-bhud-boom-dhoom of the giant speakers getting ready to belt it out on unsuspecting souls like me – yes the kind of speakers with which we praise our lord Ganapati on the streets of Pune? Yes those ones.
I look over the wall of the resort, and to my horror find a wedding reception preparation in full swing. Large women, overfed kids and waddly men dressed to the nines are milling around near the pool. Good for them, no problem there. Problem is, that for the next 3 hours of the afternoon and evening, an electronic band belts it out into the quiet and unsuspecting forest: Om namah shivay, om namaaah shivay, it screeches reverentially, followed by pardesiya yeh suchhh hai piyaaa, feverishly followed by jayjay shiv Shankar, and then ooooom shanty ooooooom, from 3 to 6 in the evening. See, the bride is getting ready, and she can’t dress up properly unless the band is playing. And her groom doesn’t feel welcomed properly unless the band is blasting.
Why did they choose to come to Mahabaleshwar? Only they and their god knows. What about other holiday makers in the resort, and poor fools like me? Who cares – that’s not the shaadi-party’s problem. The paid money to be in Brightlands and blast the birds, butterflies, monkeys and squirrels out of the trees, and that’s what they’re going to do for the next 48 hours. (By the way, didn’t someone recently say that the Mahabaleshwar hotel owners have got together to keep the place clean? Come look at the slopes here, and admire the many-splendoured charms of empty Kurkure and Bingo and Lays wrappers, Bisleri bottles and wafer thin plastic bags left behind by platoons of happy tourists. Not a dustbin or sign in sight. But I digress.)
Come evening, and the electronic band takes a break (pity the ghodi, and believe it or not, two hapless camels brought from god knows where, in the middle of all this). Giant speakers are fired up, so that the ancient hills get a taste of modern man’s music and machine lung power. This goes on till 11 in the night. I make several calls and am told politely, madam, only a few minutes more. Item song after item song is blared out over the hills, while munni, pappu, rita and teena gyrate and matka-jhatka at didi’s wedding. And how dare you complain about the celebrations of an Indian shaadi – don’t you know, we human beings come first, and Indian baraatis come even more first. Shut up about wildlife and forest laws and all that blah, lady.
Next morning arrives, and with it the sound of a hundred little birds. But not for long. The refreshed baraatis now go from Gate 1 of Brightlands Hotel to Gate 2 of Brightlands Hotel, electronic band screaming afresh. Now the newly wed couple has to be serenaded in deafening decibels while they proceed for breakfast or a puja or something. This time, since the band doesn’t say it loudly enough, there are crackers. Yes, crackers, I kid you not, in the forested area – birds rush out of the trees in shock – but who cares. The puja (that hilariously and ironically venerates earth, fire, water and all the creatures of this earth) has to be screamed out loud, so that eagles soaring in the skies can plummet down into the valley in shock.
Then it’s time for another religious ritual: antakshari. Every ghisa pitta romantic song is croaked and screeched into the PA system. Because the birds and bees and blooms must be ordered: baharon phool barsaon mera mehboob aya hai.

I wonder dully a) whether to fish around for some forest official’s number b) why the loudspeaker or the firecracker should be even allowed to these places c) whether I should migrate to Norway.

We’re into the next day’s festivities, and as Jai ho!!! is blasted into the evening air, I wonder: where oh where are those slinky Sahyadri panthers who are known to sneak up on people and drag them away in these hills? Gone deaf or dead, most probably. Or migrated to Norway. Or worse, singing Jai ho in the jungle and eating paneer tikka masala.

2009-04-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it time we began talking about ‘safe and unsafe’ behaviour, when incidents like the rape of the girl from TISS take place? Of course the heinous crime of rape shocks and angers us all, and the perpetrators deserve the strictest of punishments. And of course eve-teasers (the boys in this case were known eve-teasers back in their home towns) should be dealt with severely, and boys must be brought up to respect girls and not assume that girls are up for grabs if they come out for a drink. So for those who will jump on my throat and say: are you suggesting the talibanization of our girl’s lives, etc, right at the outset, let me say: I believe girls should have the freedom to come and go as they please, meet who they like, and dress as they want.
I am also well aware that in some places, women in perfectly ‘safe’ times of the day, and perhaps right in their own safe neighbourhoods, wearing ordinary unremarkable clothing, are raped. Having said that, however, is it not equally important for girls and women to have a ‘danger/threat perception’ in place when they choose to go out with someone to some place? The girl in the TISS case, seemed to have a shocking absence of these ‘filters’ in place. This newspaper carried her statement, so I won’t go into the details, but it distressed me deeply to hear that this girl sat around with boys who kept egging her on to drink (first red flag), then wouldn’t let her leave when she wanted to (second red flag), kept drinking and rolling joints themselves (third red flag), decided that they would drop her to the next place that she wanted to go to at well past 1 am (fourth red flag). She then gets into a rikshaw with some of them, with others trailing behind, and agrees to a detour to some unknown place to someone’s house (many more red flags). My blood ran cold reading this, wondering if it was that easy to get a girl to pawn her common sense these days, in exchange of some so-called fun?
Without dragging gender and women’s rights issues into this matter, I really think it’s about common sense. And no, having to exercise my common sense doesn’t always mean I have lost my freedom. For instance, I wish I could live without door and car locks, but common sense tells me I can’t. I must use them. It also tells me and also any man too, that I don’t walk on a lonely road late at night with a bag full of cash. It tells me not to sit in a car with a drunk driver. Common sense also tells me whether the people I’m hanging out with are good guys or dodgy creeps. And it’s not an age-related thing. Kids and young girls too know how to exercise that common sense which teaches them safe behaviour. It’s not about teaching young girls to be scared and ill-confident and dress up in gunny sacks and never look at boys. It’s about teaching them discernment – the ability to know what to wear where, who to go out with at what time, and when to cut out of an evening that is obviously not going well.
And no, for those who want to jump to conclusions and twist my words, please note: I am not saying about the TISS girl - ‘she deserved it’. I am saying, in a case like this, she could have avoided it, but tragically didn’t read the road signs that seemed to have popped up loud and clear at several junctures on that fateful night – this was evident in her own telling of the events that lead up to her waking up to a living nightmare.
After the incident, some newspapers screamed: ‘Is Mumbai safe for women?’ This is an important and recurring question. But I’m afraid, that in this case, no city can be safe – not if a girl decides to hand over her sense of safety into the hands of 6 drunk sickos.

Gouri Dange

Less is definitely more

2009-04-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

Photo: the 'Bertie gang' with their home made from nothings

People much better qualified than me (Prof Arvind Gupta is one of them) to comment on this have said this before, but it bears repetition: giving kids too many things to play with simply makes them blasé, bored, and bozo-like. Out of the window goes imagination and resourcefulness. At the risk of being told that I am looking at poverty and deprivation with rose tinted glasses, I will say this: today when I see kids surrounded by Lego, and model cars and ramps and trains and gameboy or whatever its latest version, I see passive consumers, and not happy kids, and definitely not creative people in-the-making. On top of everything, many kids over-blessed with toys hang around endlessly waiting for some adult to come and look into a manual or a booklet, and show them how to play or play with them.
Does anyone remember a time, when as kids we played with a limited bunch of toys, but with cartloads of inventiveness, and our parents did not need to get involved at all? But forget that ‘when we were kids’ thing. Just take a look at kids today outside the ‘charmed’ circle. You don’t have to go deep into the hinterland at all – just go look at your maid’s kids or kids at a construction site. Now before someone comes at me to spear me with a javelin, let me make it clear that I don’t think they live in ideal childhood conditions, not by a long chalk – but when I look at their ability to self-generate hours of hands-on fun for themselves, sometimes literally out of nothing, I feel there are some superb lessons hidden in there that bypass our better off kids completely. For which we then send them to creativity classes and leadership camps and such like.
Some months ago, I got nicely bound up with some kids who live on the outskirts, on a big dry plot in a tin shed. We kind of share a dog, Bertie (but that’s another story). Their dad is the watchman of the place, their mom looks after them, and the three of them go to a PMC school where they are taught amongst other things, English from a hilariously meaningless and irrelevant textbook which has poems in it with titles like “The Bionic Man” – which I did not understand one word of, so you can imagine what these kids are dealing with. So I teach them English that they could use when they are not talking to a Bionic Man (but again that’s another story). Point is, the youngest of the three – the nine year old and his cousin, who are berated off and on by their families for not doing well at school, not paying attention in class, not learning tables, etc...blew us all away with the truly fantastic mock model-houses that they have begun to build. These kids own literally no toys or paints or craft paper of modelling clay or building blocks or anything. But take a look at one of their models, and you will see, believe it or not: a two-storey house with walls, a roof, a tiled porch, a garage, a garden with a swimming pool and a dance floor with a mike. The whole complex is fenced in by what appears to be a neat bamboo compound wall. Each and every building material used is something that they have mopped up from the side of the road on their way home after enduring six hours of school. The ‘bamboo’ fencing comes from leftover phataka rolls that they found. The mike and flood lights for the dance floor come from some piece of electronic junk that they found – bits of circuitry and stuff. The ‘trees’ are the trimmed tops of palms from thrown away bouquets. The garden plants come from bits of sprouted potato pushed into the ground. Thermacol, cardboard, wet mud, rods, sticks, plastic food tubs (for a swimming pool)...all go into the making of this fantastic complex. At first when I saw it all, my urban instinct was to run out and get them Lego, and building blocks and mecano sets. Then I thought the better of it, and hand them odds-and-ends
from my house - things that I know they will incorporate imaginatively into their next grand scheme. What I am sneaking in, though, is sometimes a stray comment or idea that may prompt them to connect up with this: that learning arithmetic, science and languages will one day dovetail with their passion for building, and then they can perhaps grow up to become good masons and also great architects and town planners.

Food, that wonderfully casual diplomat

2009-04-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this for Namaskaar mag and it appeared a year or so ago)-gd

Food has this wonderfully blithe way of completely ignoring borders, protocol, and political divides. It simply strides across continents, easily leaps over canals and oceans, and forms its very own alignments, accords and axis. Over the centuries, while kings and generals, viceroys and residents planned conquests and coups, while rebels and freedom-fighters plotted mutinies, food simply ignored the grand schemes and became a strong and vibrant link between the very people who were meant to be on two different sides!

And so it is with Raj cuisine. While the telling of history, of how it was between India and Britain, is a matter of place and perspective, the culinary chronicles have their very own story to tell. Well before ‘the British officially arrived’ in India (with the coming of emissaries of the British East India Company in 1600), several Englishmen had come through these parts. Travelers and merchant-ambassadors had been received in various Mughal courts from the early 16th century, had been wined and dined, and had lived to tell the tale! As for Sir Thomas Roe, who stayed from 1615-1619 at the court of Emperor Jehangir, he is believed to have been so captivated by Indian food, that he insisted on having a British cook and an Indian one as well. The emperor regularly sent him ‘meat of the chase’ – including wild boar – along with the polite request that the tusks be returned.

Food is what assaulted the senses of every traveler who came by. Rev Samuel Purchas, writing about the dishes that he tasted in India, wrote with obvious and deep relish: “They have not many roast or baked meats, but stew most of their flesh. Among many dishes of this kind, I will take notice but of one they call deu pario (do-piyaza), made of venison cut in slices, to which they put onions and herbs, some roots, with a little spice and butter: the most savoury meat I ever tasted…”

When the first Englishmen came to India, the spices that they encountered were not completely alien to them. Since Elizabethan times, kitchens of the wealthy had already been introduced to, and subsequently addicted to, the spices of the East. So well-entrenched was their taste for spice, that they were later to wrestle with the Dutch over the spice trade.

Once the British arrived and settled firmly in India to establish garrisons and churches, the stage was set for a fascinating and complex association between the two countries. While at the political level, the relationship quickly turned into one of ruler and ruled, the basic, day-to-day equation between the British and the Indians was an intricate and far from black-and-white one. Besides a web of new socio-cultural imperatives, the relationship generated a unique cuisine that came to be known as Raj cooking. It was indeed a fascinating synthesis. Most recipes involved one part practicality and one part experimentation - what we can call ‘fusion food’ (decades before the term was even coined!). Perhaps this one label, on a tin of curry powder, says it all: ‘Tipoo Saib’s Indian curry powder - Made in London.’ What a complex twist to the original set of historical events! There was the flesh-and-blood Tipoo, chased and vanquished by the British. And here was a curry powder, fondly named after that very same Tipoo.

The intriguing intertwining of fates – of India and Britain – is nowhere more evident than in Raj cooking, in just about every dish. For instance, nobody can say with any certainty, whether Scotch eggs – a boiled egg encased in mince meat, and the whole making a massive cutlet – came first, or the almost identical Nargisi kofta came first. Which one was inspired by which? Beyond a point, nobody really cares to come up with any definitive answer, since no one really wants to spoil the fun and unravel the intriguing braid of Indo-British gastronomic history!

‘Curry’ was, and is, by far the most popular, well-known and enduring representative of Raj cuisine. ‘Curry powder’ was created during the British Raj as a distillation of Indian flavours – it was the perfect ‘bridge’ ingredient that soothed the shock of ‘hard core’ Indian cooking and yet gently conveyed the Englishman’s palate a little much further away from English food and closer to what was at hand in India. Curry powder has no fixed combination of ingredients, so there are many blends that vary in flavor and pungency. The mildly hot Madras Curry Powder (of course, hopefully, never ever to be re-christened Chennai Curry Powder!), became by far the most popular. And today, quite plainly, British curry has overtaken fish-and-chips as the nation’s favourite meal. (In a quite delightfully ironic twist, fish-and-chips as we eat it here in India, a legacy from the British, is a huge favourite with most Indians who are in a mood to eat ‘Continental’! On top of it all, if we go to England and eat it there, we look disappointed and say: “not as nice as Our Bombay (again, not Mumbai) fish-n-chips”! Our Indian palettes are a little too fond of pomfret and surmai of the Arabian Sea to be able to accept bass and flounder from the …But then that’s another story.

Raj cuisine came into its own really once the ladies ‘came out to India’. They didn’t quite take to the curries, which had become something of a staple. They joined forces with their bobachees (bawarchi, cook) and khanasamahs (butler), to come up with an array of nutritious and palatable meals. Faced with an alien kitchen, strange ingredients, unfamiliar vessels and cooking methods, the intrepid Memsahib, it seems, remained quite unfazed. She simply rolled up her sleeves and went to work, cutting a new path through the bewildering array of new condiments and cookware that she had to contend with. She first familiarized herself with and used ingredients from the Indian kitchen, and then recontextualized them. In the process, she trained her cook to side-step all that was too greasy, too sweet or too spicy for the British palate. And so a number of hybrid dishes were conjured up by this rather successful team in the kitchen.

The other important kitchen-help in this enterprise was the khitmutgar (bearer), who worked under the khansamah. He was in charge of laying the table immaculately and waiting at table during the meal. This meant maintaining the plates in a spotless condition, learning to fold and lay napkins, mastering the intricacies of the correct use of crockery and cutlery, and cultivating an attentive but near-invisible presence. He too played his part in recreating the ambience of an English family at table back home.

And so, while her husband/son/brother/father deliberated issues of empire and pushed ahead with Britain’s Imperial designs, the English Memsahib wrestled with many domestic issues that were, on a day-to-day level, far more important and demanding! Problems with language, communicating with staff, sorting out misunderstandings and complex inter-staff rivalries and class and caste issues, getting used to the local creepy-crawlies, enduring the weather, and producing meals with whatever was at hand. It was a tall order indeed. And she rose to the occasion.

'Making do' or 'making the best of it' would have been her duty and her agenda at first, but gradually the Memsahib learned, over the decades, not just to utilize but to enjoy the meats, fruits and vegetables of India, to ‘bend’ them to English tastes, and in turn, to appreciate and enjoy their distinctive flavours. Gradually, the khansamah too learned to adapt the recipes of the Memsahibs to his own way of cooking, and in return he taught the latter-day Memsahib how to use spices, masalas, chutneys, and various produce that was unfamiliar to her.
Charged with the common cause of avoiding both, the spiciness of Indian food and the blandness of English cookery, the Memsahib and the khansamah came up with various quintessentially Indo-British productions. Some were ambitious in their scope, like Country Captain and Fish Molee, and some were meant for humble home-eating, like the nursery favourite Pish-pash and the ever-popular Mulligatawny Soup. It was invented to satisfy the English taste for soups, but in keeping with the mood and tone of the sub-continent, it was vividly coloured and quite full of flavour. Most importantly, it used the Indian staple source of protein: dal. It could be rustled up with leftovers too - lack of refrigeration, a hot and humid climate, meant that leftovers needed to be re-incarnated, and fast! Also, prevailing socio-medical theories laid much emphasis on the purgative qualities of spices like pepper and red chilli powder. And thus was born Mulligatawny Soup.
The word mulligatawny comes from the Tamil words molegoo (pepper) and tanni (water). It was originally a vegetarian 'sauce', but the British added meat and various other ingredients to create Mulligatawny. The basic peppered lentil-water was flavoured with various ingredients, then the soup would be served with side bowls of cooked rice, lime wedges, grated coconut, snippets of fried bacon, quartered hard-boiled eggs and sliced chillies. You helped yourself to what you wanted - a meal in itself.
Other successful and popular hybrids included the Burdwan Stew, Patna Rice, Fish Kedgree, and the renowned Byculla soufflé. Even today, in some circles, you could set off a heated debate, much nodding and clicking of the tongue, and then some sighs steeped deep in nostalgia, when you mention Byculla soufflé. Who made the best version (the Byculla Club first concocted it, and every cook worth his or her name aspired and claimed to have mastered it), how skillfully the liqueurs - kümmel, chartreuse, orange curaçao and Benedictine are blended; whether it must be left to set for 3 hours or 5…
Fish kedgeree is another Raj invention that has stood the test of time. Its ‘homely fame’ traveled quickly, and it was welcomed in England too, because it was at once novel, savory, digestible, and inexpensive to make. Wyvern's Indian Cookery Book describes Kedgeree of the English type as composed of boiled rice, chopped hard-boiled egg, cold minced fish, and a lump of fresh butter: these are all tossed together in the pan, flavoured with pepper, salt, and any minced garden herb - cress, parsley, or marjoram, and served in a hot dish. The classic kedgeree is still made exactly this way, except that smoked fish (usually haddock) is now generally preferred to plain.
Murgh Jalfrezi was and continues to be another Raj invention that abides. It is a dish of diced chicken (murgh) stir fried hot (jalfrezi) with fresh green chillies, shredded onions and capsicum and a touch of lemon.

Another of the Raj's most celebrated dishes is Chicken Country Captain, named after remote area British Army Captains. Diced barbecued chicken is sauteed in aromatic spices with onions, chillies, almonds and raisins. Interestingly, this dish jumped continents at some stage, to make itself rather comfortable in the southern cuisine of the USA!

Railway Lamb Curry
This lamb dish is named after the version served by the Railways – at that time, literally the Raj on Wheels - during journeys. Make it, eat it with your eyes closed, and you’ll instantly be transported to the inside of a long-ago railway compartment, where all is gentility and white linen, while the train cuts across the hot flat plains of north India, or chugs up the slopes of a southern hill station!

Lamb bones
2-inch ginger
½ tsp salt
6 red chillies, chopped
7 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tbsp coriander seeds
½ tsp turmeric powder
3 tbsp ghee
1 large onion, chopped
a few curry leaves
500 gm tender, lean lamb, cut into cubes
2 potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
¾ cup coconut milk
4 tbsp tamarind juice
1 tsp salt

Prepare stock by boiling bones with 1-inch ginger and salt. Reduce the stock to one cup.

Grind remaining ginger, garlic and chillies, cumin, coriander and turmeric. Sauté onions in ghee with the curry leaves until soft. Add spice paste and stir until mellow. Now add the stock and bring to boil. Add potatoes, meat and coconut milk. Simmer under low heat until meat is tender. Finally add the tamarind juice and salt. Serve with rice.
Shepherd’s pie
This once-typical English dish, was Indianized somewhere along the way, to become probably one of the most representative dishes of the Raj at table. Great versions are available in homes and restaurants in India and Britain too.

2 tbsp oil
1 large onion, diced
1 large red capsicum, de-seed and dice
1 clove garlic, chopped
½ kg lean ground meat
1 tsp cumin powder
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp red chilli powder
½ tsp pepper powder
½ tsp salt
4 cups chopped tomatoes
12 black olives, pitted and chopped
Grated rind of half a lemon
4 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tbsp butter
½ cup milk
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp white pepper powder
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp sesame seeds

Sauté until soft, the onion and capsicum in oil. Drain and remove. Sauté garlic. Crumble the ground meat and add to pan. Add spices and salt. Cook for two minutes. Add tomatoes and stir for five minutes. Now add olives, lemon rind, and the onion and capsicum from Step 1.

Simmer until done. Pre-heat an oven (375°F, 190°C, gas mark 5). Boil potatoes for 15 minutes. Drain. Mash the potatoes and add butter, milk, salt and pepper. Beat until fluffy. Fold in the egg and blend well.

Turn the meat mixture into a casserole. Spread the potato mixture on top. Sprinkle sesame seeds and bake in oven for 30 minutes or until top is brown. Serve after 10 minutes.
(Recipes from the table of hosts and innkeepers Daphne and Pesi Virjee, who, in a hill-station in the Western Ghats, have fed many a traveller with tea, sympathy and more!)
Several cookbooks were written at the time, dispensing advise, tips and words of caution to the English home-maker in India. Interestingly, there were two sharply divergent schools of thought when it came to cooking in India. One lot of books made it all sound like a first-aid and survival kit – the dislike and mistrust of all things ‘native’ quite prominent. The greatly popular Isabella Beeton’s tome Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, (1861) had a 15-page section on Indian cookery. Her distaste is evident! The other very popular Indian Housekeeper and Cook (1898), by Flora Annie Steel, is at best dismissive and condescending! But there were several other outstanding tomes, which demonstrated a curiosity, empathy and out-and-out fondness for Indian food and the servants who helped prepare it. Wyvern’s Culinary Jottings from Madras is one such; the other cookbook that robustly acknowledged the delights of Raj cookery, was the anonymous Indian Cookery Book (written by ‘a thirty-five year resident’). It was first published in 1877, and went into several reprints for 70 years after. Besides good recipes and other information, it has practical, realistic advise on the managing of human resources too! “Never quarrel with a good cook if his only fault be that of eating from your kitchen; all cooks will do so, and a good one will eat no more than a bad one.”
And then there is Hobson-Jobson – not a cookbook, but as it calls itself: “The Anglo-Indian Dictionary, a spice-box of etymological curiosites and colourful expressions”. The hugely popular compilation, first published in 1886, accurately and amusingly explains the unique vocabulary that came into being as a result of the Indo-British connection.

Almost 60 years after the Raj finally bowed out of the India Theatre, Raj cuisine is alive and well. Not just in the nostalgic minds of old ‘India hands’ and their families, but thriving in the clubs and restaurants of India; in Parsi and Anglo-Indian homes and in the homes of erstwhile Indian princes; in the Officers Mess of the Indian armed forces; in boarding schools all over the country run by ‘matrons’ whose mothers cooked for British Officers in Burma. And likewise, it flourishes in England too. With delightfully anecdotal cookbooks and TV programs being brought out every now and then, Raj cooking draws more and more people to its fascinating origins and to its many charms. Its never-diminishing popularity re-iterates the fact that it was not just a cuisine of convenience and making do. It emerged from the difficult, complex and yet felicitous coming together of two worlds that were unimaginably different from each other. Raj cuisine is, in this sense, a true synthesis. Historians, sociologists, linguists and political analysts have often wondered what things would have been like if the British had never come to India, and the two great worlds had never intersected. However, epicures and gastronomes in both countries, and in the rest of the world too, have little time and patience with hypothetical constructs of this kind. They’re too busy stirring up, perhaps, the perfect Madras Club Korma or wolfing down the flakiest of Curry Puffs - and thanking their Maker for the twists of fate that entwined these two great nations together.
Gouri Dange

Never fall into the Whirlpool!

2009-04-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to get service on a fridge within its warranty peroid, from November 2008. Too boring to put in all my mail to them, but I'm planting this one here, to basically caution anyone reading this, to avoid stepping into the Whirlpool that sucks you down down down!
This Uppal person, btw, is the MD. He has never replied to my mails. But his people in Pune tell me he has got them. When you treat customers shabbily, and that too during a recession, you deserve to got to you know where!
I'm involving the consumer guidance society of india - let's see where that leads.
It's all very disgusting, dealing with companies like this.

Hello Mr Uppal
Perhaps you couldnt care less what happens to me as your unfortunate customer. However, as I am going to follow this up with the consumer guidance people, you should know where I stand vis a vis your company.
On 31 March, your people finally promised me that in 10 days they would have my 340 L Whirlpool fridge repaired (note: i am under warranty, and i have been chasing, begging and following up this matter since 2 November 2007).
Today, facing summer, a house full of guests, and a tiny highly inadequate replacement fridge for the last one full month, I called up Mr Rajesh Verma, Mr Ganesh Rao - Mr Rao said to me, at 12 in the afternoon, that he could offer that I pay Rs 7-8000 and get a new 340 litre Whirlpool fridge. He said he would get back to me with a firm offer on this, and in the meanwhile I should check out the models at any dealer.
I proceeded to do this, but to my surprise I found that the 340 litre fridge is now 72 inches tall. The one I had was 67 inches, and anything taller does not fit in the slot in my kitchen. What does fit, is your new 405 litre fridge. Also, the 310 litre fridge fits, but we cannot do with reduced capacity. My husband called Mr Rao and told him that this was a problem. Mr Rao promised to call back to tell us how much price difference we should pay.
Another option for us was to take back our malfunctioning fridge, and simply live with its problems.
Of course there was no call from Mr Rao. At 7 pm, I called Mr Rao again - he told me he still had no idea about the prices etc, and had not been able to check. By this time, we had got so very fed up of this whole sickening interaction with Whirlpool, that we told him, ok, return our malfunctioning fridnge. And let us put an end to this. Upon which we were told that 'it would take 2 more days' because the person Rajest Verma, at whose house the fridge is, is away.
I tried to call Mr Pradyut to ask him why the fridge was in someones house, but Mr Pradyut, holding up the flag of your company, told me basically to shut up and put the phone down. His words were: "No, Im not in a position to help you - Mr Rao is handling the matter. Do what you like."
You really are a bunch of inefficent and rude people, arent you?
What can I do about the fact that a) 5 months and my fridge saga has continued b) you have made no quick and solid amends by giving me a new piece - for which I am supposed to pay extra money c) now even my malfunctioning fridge is locked up in someones house and not available to me, my 4 person family, and my guests.
While I will take the help of the Consumer Guidance Society of India, in the meanwhile, I will put my experience with you people on the internet - on my blog spot, and on any consumer sites that are visible and well-read. I am going on a personal campaign to warn anyone and everyone, not to touch your products and not to get stuck with your rude and utterly useless 'service' and inability and unwillingness to support the customer.
One of the reasons I am happy that I am not taking a replacement fridge from you is that at least I wont be forced into a continued relationship with your company. Fortunately there are many better and more committed players in the market, and I will be happy to spend my money on their products, as also share my negative experience with Whirlpool with them. By the way, anyway, I have avoided your company whilst buying all other appliances.
However, I do want my fridge back, as I dont think I want to give up and give in so easily - not when a company behaves like this.

Time is relative

2009-03-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

While I have whined and ranted at various points in the last 5 years: "who moved my pune" - about the changed look, feel, attitude, air, and priorities of this city, one thing has remained the same, and i am full of sheer gratitude and joy about it.
Pune time is vastly different from Mumbai time. In Mumbai, you wake up, and before you know it, without having done anything at all, it's 11 am. somehow.
in pune, you wake up, walk the dogs, jaw with the neighbour, potter around in your straggly garden, make a cheese cake and a fire-roasted bell pepper dip (i love to say fire-roasted), drink a cup of something, feed the dogs, and you look at the clock and it's 9 am. the whole day is ahead of you and you've already done many fun things. i suspect it's like that in all the second metros? i dont know. i hope it is.

Book tasting

2009-03-22T18:36:00.000-07:00

started a book-tasting at my place. the first book-tasting got off to a lovely start, with a varied list of books to taste. just like a wine-tasting, we sipped, we swilled, and we got a tad high on these books (and on chaas). a book-tasting is not a discussion heavy book club. people just bring a book they like, introduce it briefly, read a representative extract and in this way in one session you get to hear about a whole lot of books you wouldn't perhaps encounter on your own.
here's what we tasted:

Jayant brought 'The Japanese in the Andamans' - an account of the little known fact that the Japanese came into the Andamans and stayed there for 3 years, till they surrendered (in typical orderly emotionless fashion, from what Jayant tells us). The extracts read gave us a small glimpse of the sociological mix in the Andamans, some slices and nuggets of history, and a feel for the place. The writer's preferred title was Red Sun over Black Water....but his publisher decided to be unadventurous (and dont get me started on that topic) and stuck to the more prosaic title. More and more I see of them, I find publishers are like the olden days Brahmins - the good ones open out the world to you, the bad ones sit on top of everything and keep you where you are.

The author of this book is Jayant Dasgupta, himself.

Madhavi brought a Marathi book, intriguingly titled (now there's a better publisher): Idli, Orchid, ani Me. by Vitthal Kamat, the restaurateur and entrepreneur. An account of the derring-do (if you're Brit) and sheer moxy (if your American) and solid himmat (if you're Indian) of a man who literally turned every problem into an opportunity. She read out a part which narrated the almost audacious and cheeky strategy of 'bussing' hungry travellers from Mumbai airport to the Kamat eatery and back in time to catch their flight. I think the book is available in English too...will someone check?

Abha brought Alexander Macaull Smith's The World According to Bertie, fourth volume in the series of his “44 Scotland Street” novels. Interestingly, this and some of the others were written serially for an Edinburgh newspaper. The book takes your through the lives and minds of all the inhabitants of this set of apartments - Smith is funny, observant, kind, never despairing, and yet a serious observer of humans (and dogs like Cyril). The writer explores people and their lives in philosophically whimsical ways. Bertie is one of the characters, a highly gifted child with a pushy, intellectual mother. The extract read out was one that showed us the six-year-old Bertie at the recieving end of his mothers well-intentioned but annoying psychobabble.

Aparna brought Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. The novel's thirteen chapters each represent one month -- from January 1982 through January 1983 -- in the life of 13-year-old Jason . The novel is written from the perspective of the boy. While when you first hear about it you wonder if it's a bit like Adrian Mole, it seemed from Aparna's reading, that it was a much more 'interior' book, which achieved that most difficult thing - of writing from inside the head of a 13 year old, bringing out quite tangentially, subtly, the mine-field of growing up with a disability and of dealing with a family splitting up. Probably an amusing as well as heart-wrenching read.

Mini brought a tiny little gem of a children's book, which like all good children's books, appeals deeply to adults too. With its superbly emotional water colour illustrations, the book tells an apparently straight story of mice working hard to put away food for the winter, and one of them working equally hard to put away the intangibles - sunlight, and colour, and joy, for when just food and warmth is not good enough. As Mini pointed out, the story makes out a case for the place of poets, artists and dreamers in our over-industrious society. The writer is Leo Lionni, and the book is called Frederick. I looked him up - do check out http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/lionni/books/. The book cover also had the word Middlehauve on it - I cant figure out what that is - the illustrations are by Lionni himself. So who or what is Middlehauve, is not clear from the Net either.

Sunil brought Notes to Myself by Hugh Prater. Hugely popular book, like all good self-help books it does not claim to tell you any Secret, or tell you about Cheese, or give you any kind of instruction manual otr gyaan. The writer's jottings set off a chain of thoughts in the reader, encouraging you to read things in your own context, or in how they apply to you and your life. The fragment read out by Sunil illustrated this perfectly.

Gouri brought Sheila Dhar's Here's Someone I'd Like You to Meet - tales of innocents, musicians and bureaucrats. A sparkling book, full of anecdotes that are thoughtful, perceptive and very funny too. The extracts she read from 'Playing to the Flowers' about the child-like sarangi great Bundu Khan, showed the innocence, purity, as well as eventual pathos in the life of this revered musician. From playing Bahar lying in a flower bed to the sweetpeas blooming around him, to being forced to trail after his family to Pakistan in his later years, the story of this musician, like all the other stories in this book, is told with so much love, compassion and respect.

Two more books that I mentioned but did not bring (they are on my must-read list) are Priscilla Cogan's Winona's Web; and Michael Doty's The Dog Years. The first is about a psychotherapist who gets as a patient, a native american healer who is dying; somewhere along the way the roles subtly switch, with the western preoccupation with living at any cost, rubbing up against the older culture’s better understanding of death. The Dog book is not just a caper/funny book about owning dogs. I believe it is a meditative, philosophical and passionate book about them.

*****

The Interrogative Indian

2009-03-09T18:28:00.001-07:00

Questions, questions and then some more...but kindness too

There was a time when going on a long distance train journey meant that you simply had to submit yourself to relentless questions from the women around you, and from some of the men too. The minute the ‘adjustment’ of seats, berths, luggage space etc was done with, your co-passengers would begin to debrief you and each other. The preliminaries were usually name, last name, region/ mother tongue, marital status, whether you had children, how many, if not, then why (all gynac details to be revealed), father’s occupation and salary. This would be followed by the interrogator providing you full and complete disclosure about herself, leaving out no detail howsoever slight, as Hercule Poirot used to say.

At first it was irritating, and then you grew up a bit about it, and gamely answered their questions without feeling too intruded upon. Sometimes you even threw in some inventive details if you were in the mood. These were usually ‘aunties’ and ‘bens’ and ‘behenjis’ who questioned you closely in this manner and usually on long train or bus journeys.

Today the Interrogative Indian is everywhere. They come in every shape, size , age and location. People think nothing of asking you close questions about how much precisely your profession gets you, how much tax you pay, what the going rate for your apartment is today (in per square foot terms), how much you spent on your kitchen counter, and of course the exact state of your body in terms of whether you are pre peri or post menopausal, and other such sublime questions.

If you are in hospital, you can be sure that at least three different visitors will ask you how many rooms the hospital has, who are the funders, is it one Mangeshkar sister or both, does it have tie ups with any foreign hospitals...what does your room cost, and of course the qualifications of your doctor, his mother and his mother’s dog.

I am often tempted to ask back: how will the answers to any of this change anything in your life? But being a wuss, I tend to cough up the answers obediently, sometimes in an abrupt dismissive tone, which is however totally lost on the interrogator.

The interrogators are now getting younger and younger. I was recently closely cross-examined by a 6-year-old girl. She strode into my hospital room without a knock, and asked me first off in Marathi: where’s your baby? Before I could say anything she looked narrowly at me and asked: still in your stomach? She then quickly offered me some personal and important details from her own life: my mother had a baby today and there’s one more and it is stuck inside.

She then proceeded to look appraisingly at my hospital room and said: this is a good room; I like your room. Why do you need such a big room? Give this room to my mother and me and my father and the baby and the other baby who won’t come out . We need a big room like yours. Why do you need such a big room?

She then noticed that I was holding a small swab of cotton at the spot where some blood had been taken. In the same self-assured vein this astonishingly clued in child continued with her grilling: you gave blood or you were given blood? Obviously the little creature had been spending far too much time in the hospital, dropping in on everyone on the floor and questioning them very closely.

She then suddenly said peremptorily: show me the swab. I complied obediently. She then said kindly: see there’s no blood now – now go throw away that cotton, it’s become ok now. And there it was. It struck me that like most other interrogative Indians, this pesky one too was irritating and interfering, but strangely and touchingly, reassuring too. At the risk of sounding horribly sentimental, I must admit that after this little ball of question marks left the room, I did feel a bit bereft. Come back, come back and ask me more questions, I wanted to say to her. One should not underestimate the hidden warmth and involvement behind all that interrogating.

My Interview with Sunil Sethi - Just Books - NDTV Profit

2009-02-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

Itinerants - "the India that dances, lives, moves and dies on the street"

2009-02-12T22:02:00.000-08:00

These are friends, Charmayne and David D'Souza, whose book is just out. I missed the launch at the Kala Ghoda Festival. I'm dying to see the book. I've just seen some pages. The quirky but deeply felt images and text make this book. I wish I could reproduce the intro here, but it wont be fair - go buy the book! their number: 022 22832875.

Television is that exhausting hyper child

2009-02-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

Someone once said: the best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure. Oh well. I watched television recently for long hours out of a hospital bed (enforced leisure), and now I am in a dilemma. Chicken and egg kind of dilemma. Does my watching television as leisure activity signal my lack of intelligence or did that tele reach out and extinguish my intelligence, whatever little there was of it?
Because now I'm walking around in a daze of altered reality. For instance, I can't watch a bird on a tree any more and relax into the moment, because, fresh from my tv-watching stint, I'm expecting it to look up and chirp and trill: "back after this leeetle break" or "kahi pey matt jaiyega, miltay hai break key baad!" And if earlier I could identify this bird, now I dully wonder if it's a Parizaad or Shruti, or a Prachi, or an Arnav or a Rajdeep or a Barkha or some such. I'm also looking at the bottom of my window to see if there are meaningless headlines crawling right to left while the main frame has the bird doing its thing.
This is because watching television has forced me to function in the jargon, the time-slots and the sound-bytes of tv-land. The overwhelming features of TV seem to be advertisements repeated till you are seriously sick, promos of other programs, and a hundred other interruptions to what you want to watch. I have whined piteously about this before, but I have to say it again. Somewhere along the way TV has taken away your dignified right not to be shouted at, not to be interrupted, and not to be told-sold the same thing again and again, all in the span of half an hour. I mean, even the heart-in-the-right place ads asking youngsters to vote...even those are repeated so heavily that instead of taking their advice and voting, I feel like going off somewhere and banging my head dully on a wall till elections come and go.
Only on TV. No other medium is that presumptuous. Imagine a newspaper trying to chop up a report or a feature with a print ad popping up in the reader's eyes at every other paragraph – would you not immediately throw such a publication away, stop subscribing to it, or keep it only to wrap dirty things in? If newspapers can have ads bunched in the Classifieds or specific pages, where those interested can go and browse, while the rest of us can avoid having things sold to us, then why not TV? Guys, bunch your ads at the beginning or end of the program so there is a chance that people will go look at them. People like me are learning to duck your ads by getting smarter and more dexterous with the remote; as for myself specifically, I'm glad to be out of my hospital bed and back to real life where I'm not stuck with my least favourite form of entertainment and information.
One last thing. Noticed how those shouty-screechy channels, especially the English ones, have suddenly cultivated a more sober, quieter tone? Less like children having a blue fit and more like adults having a conversation. All much more sophisticated and 'responsible' sounding than the pre and during 26/11 manic hysteria that they were all free to luxuriate in. Something has happened. While these channels and their star yellers did behave for a while as if anyone criticizing them for the way they covered the attacks and aftermath was committing high treason, they seem to have realised that they need to come down off their high and sober up. How was this change effected overnight is an interesting speculation. Lobotomy? Daily dose of tranquilisers? Or perhaps a crash course in voice correction and modulation to look and sound less like avenging ghouls and more like humans. But it's all part of the act of acting out the news. My grandfather, when TV first came here, was appalled to see newsreaders smiling at the end of the newscast. He thought it was terribly insolent of them to smile at viewers. Deliver us the news and disappear, was how he and people of his generation liked it. What would he make of all the chatting, shouting and acting out of the news today, I wonder.

scattering and regathering

2009-01-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

i wish i could say hello guys, i'm back from my fabulous vacation/sabbatical with the tigers of kumaon/scholarly holiday in the US/gastronomic enquiry of southeast asia/doing good works in the back alleys of bombay and have written my second novel too in the meanwhile.
But no. none of the above. i just got scattered into parts of this household - dogs, maids, food, fathers, visiting friends and relatives, bread-butter work, changing over to laptop (disgusting), negotiating bills, ducking taxes legally, and attending to late (very late) 40s health hazards. in short the minutiae and mundanities of mankind.
but hell, i'm learning not to bitch and moan about those. at least i'm alive and well to attend to them, unlike people stopped in their tracks by terrorists, speeding cars, galloping diseases, depression and a hundred other grotesque things that can separate you from your life as you knew it and complained incessantly about.
i'm sporadically writing my second novel. and here's my dilemma - which i will lob into public space and hope will get me some advice. i am thoda through with publishers and agents. or perhaps i am through with one particular publisher and one particular agent who seems to be trying hard. i dont know. i only know, that publishing 3 zakia mansion was a bit of a non sequiter (if thats how its spelt), and i dont want to repeat the same little story of running around doing my own publicity, and not getting called to any literary fairs because perhaps i dont look the part, or no one has bothered to put up my name, or because oh well maybe 3 zakia m is not that good a book...i dont know. so, to cut a long story short, i am so tempted not to go to any publisher with the second book, but to serialize it on my blog over 52 weeks. a chapter for every week. it would be so much more interactive, and not as dead and sterile a process as publishing in india has been for me.
idea che? or no?

In a huff…over the puff

2008-11-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

So at last, with its ban on smoking in public places, the government has done it for me. Allowed me to exhale. I've inhaled enough, I can tell you. What with having key women in my life – dear friends, close colleagues, and favourite aunts – smoking at me over the last 20 years. At last, their wings are clipped, good and proper.

And why in my gloating do I single out the women smokers? Well because, and here I'm going to come right out and say it, after years of behaving politically correct and staying diplomatically silent on the subject: women (us urban types) have always been far more inconsiderate smokers than most men. Men can be glared at, sneezed upon and coughed over, and they are more than likely to apologetically stub their ciggy or remove themselves from your vicinity. And many men, over the years, have got used to putting themselves in the dog-house, on their own, once they light up. This they do by simply stepping right out of the house or going on a little walk, or massing with other smokers in some corner, when they need to smoke. Without being told to do it.

But most women smokers will just narrow their eyes and give you a withering look if you dare to ask them to desist, and will simply keep smoking superciliously. At the most they may point you resentfully in the direction of the balcony door – go there for some fresh air, is the indication. And I doubt if any man has ever asked a woman to stub out her ciggy because it irritates his eyes and his sinuses. He would possibly not live to tell the tale, if he did.

The thing I want to submit, m'lord, at the risk of being lynched by women smokers in general and my many dear friends, colleagues and aunts in particular, is that at one time, a lot of women had gone and confused the 'right' to smoke with other rights – up their with the hard-won right to vote, to have control on contraception, a place in the workforce and equal wages. The 'You've come a long way baby' type ads simply re-inforced the smoking-equals-having-arrived imagery. So there was a time (that lasted far too long, if you ask me) when you simply had scorn and derision heaped on you if you told a woman to give you a break from her smoke. And being part of that whole atmosphere, where as women we were all inhaling happy lung-fulls of freedom from various things, this too was seen as part of the 'spirit of freedom' – in fact a cigarette brand used those very words to advertise its sticks, if I remember right. So with all this 'celebrate your freedom' kind of smokescreen surrounding the act of women smoking, I kind of never pushed the point about smoke being bothersome, especially not with my women friends. At that time I called it being tolerant and making allowances for the sisterhood, and all that jazz. Today I call it being a wuss.

So in my wuss sisterhood days, I have eaten many a delicious masala dosa ruined by a woman friend's smoke blowing and curling all over my plate – while most of the men in the tiny Udipi joint would not dream of lighting up in the place. My woman friend was either making a point, or was so full of herself that she didn't see what the problem was. I have had the subtle fragrance of gossamer-thin momos overpowered completely by my lunch companion's smoke swirls. I have had borrowed sweaters and silk saris returned sprinkled liberally with ash holes (ya, ya, it sounds like I'm swearing, but that's what they are: holes made by ciggy ash). I have cleaned out tea cups in which some woman friend has stubbed out her sutta. I have aired my guest room by putting everything in it (including the dog, whose fur begins to smell like a tobacco processing unit) in the sun for 8 hours.

And of course I have inhaled passively massively. Or massively passively. Same thing. In less 'aware' times, I have at times been in an average-sized Mumbai sitting room in which 12 women have smoked together and continuously, like their life depended on it, stopping only to once in a while yell at their kids to stay out of the room. Not a pretty picture.
Somehow this didn't quite look like those divas from Hollywood 1930s films who made it look all so delicious and chic and prompted us in college to practice smoking in front of a mirror with three panels, so that you saw how you looked from the front, profile, and three-fourths! Bothered more about how we looked smoking than how it tasted or felt, some of us were fortunate enough to simply savour the thrill for a few days and move on.

But many of us did get hooked – to the nicotine as well as to the posture. Hooked so hard, that even today, in a house where the hosts clearly indicate that you just cannot smoke in there, and there are a couple of wheezy 80 plus year olds present, there will be one woman who will just simply light up, or spend a sulky three-fourths of the evening pointedly standing near the lift shaft and making a big smokey point of it all.

True, I am not one of those anti-smoking terrorists who bans smoking in my vicinity (no friends, this is not a signal for you to stampede down to my home and light up in large groups). I know the horrible stuff that smoking does to the smoker's as well as my insides, and yet I have never been one of those anti-smoking crusaders. But finally, it is the crusaders, especially women like Monamma Kokkad, who have put an end to the puffing in public spaces and helped people like me stop silently huffing over other people's puffing.

Us and Them just got uglier

2008-11-08T03:29:00.000-08:00

We sorted our differences quite well, thank you; now suddenly it’s war.

So one more axis of hate has been created. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree or not, whether it makes legal and constitutional sense or not, there’s a new ‘them’ and ‘us’. The ugly shenanigans of the last some weeks have created new fears new anger, new divides. And now the heat is on us. Suddenly, Maharashtrians are looked at with suspicion and dislike. In Delhi, the Maharahtra Sadan was attacked. Literally, out of nowhere, we’ve become an issue. Congratulations to the person who has single-handedly sponsored the tarnishing of our image as pluralistic, intelligent, easy-to-mix, forward-looking, reformist, and Maha in many quiet ways.
This is the thing about caste-community-language chauvinism and politics. It manufactures enmity out of thin air. And no one is spared. If you thought it wouldn’t touch you, you were wrong. When you thought it’s about ‘Madrasis’, not us in the 70s, for most of us it was just fine. We perhaps wouldn’t actually go do something bad to a ‘Madrasi’, but many, many amongst us were quite content to watch. In later decades, many of us thought it’s about Muslims, not us, and again, while we didn’t maybe actually hate-monger, we didn’t feel any sense of disquiet about what was going on. Along came terrorism and we were even able to lump everyone together and say ‘these people are like that only’. It’s the turn of the Christians in some places, now. And right here, in our backyard, the North Indians are under attack.
The awful thing about all this is that when the issue is not politicized, we co-existed in a much more real way, taking into account and taking in our stride, each other’s ‘community traits’. All us Indians, under the surface do have less-than-perfect relationships with each other’s communities. But we dealt with it in our own way. Either by ignoring those traits, laughing them off, or sometimes addressing the differences. A young man recently told me that when an influx of people from the the North came into their neighbourhood, the incidence of eve-teasing increased. The local women handled it by stopping a few of the teasers and warning them that this was simply not on. Taken aback at by the strong but reasonable tone of these women, they backed off. Yes, some of the women even told them, to drive their point home – we’ll tie you rakhis and make you brothers, or we’ll give you bangles and make your our sisters! It worked. The fellows of course backed off.
Now, after the dogs of hate have been officially let loose, some macho boys of the area went and beat up the ex eve teasers. Just for fun. To ‘assert’ their Maharashtrian-ness the way their ‘leader’ has now taught them. Suddenly, from nuisance that was handled, the new-comers in the area have been re-cast as ‘menace that has to be stamped out’.
And this is my point – why are so many of us sitting pretty in our jobs and homes, now feeling free to say: “these fellows need to have been taught a lesson”? And does that justify killing some poor labourer returning home for Diwali? Nothing adds up. And tell me, havent many of us have quite clearly experienced directly the inability/unwillingness of our local labour to work hard, or to show up at work at all? At that time it’s ok to get in Oriya plumber and Rajasthani carpenter and UP mason, and Andhra drivers, right? And not to forget the Gujarati/Marwari shopkeeper without whom it is unlikely that we would have got provisions from 7 am ato 11 pm. Many of our domestic workers, bais, are cleaning up after us in our homes because their useless husbands couldn’t be bothered to hold a job. Suddenly, just because Mandrake gestures hypnotically, now we believe that ‘these north Indians’ have ‘grabbed’ their jobs? Comeon. Go tell it to the mountain. Let’s not get carried away.
It’s the same thing with the hordes of Indians working in foreign countries. They got those jobs because others wouldn’t do them and they do them well. Tomorrow if the locals start to beat them and put them on planes to come home, we’ll be the first to wail and gnash our teeth at ‘first world arrogance’ etc. What a bunch of double-standards we have in our little armoury.
Today Maharashtra Sadan was attacked in Delhi and the Marathis told to go ‘home’. It was going to happen. Isn’t it sad that increasingly, home cannot be defined as the place you choose to live peacefully and meaningfully in? You leave your place of origin in search of better prospects and make a home for yourself wherever your work takes you. A perfectly human impulse. But then we’re all becoming less than human.

Retarded Reviewers

2008-10-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

i'm not being writerly thin-skinned here guys, but do check out the 'review' below of my non-fiction book on parenting - ABCs of Parenting, Jaico Books.
i just dont get it - i mean how could i be advising the same advice on 40 different subjects? weird allegation. and the reviewer talks about cheaper books - Rs 175/- is expensive? do these reviewers read anything, or do they just go by whether they like you or not, or worse, is their nastiness and dismissiveness in direct proportion to their envy about anyone who gets published? sounds like that to me. dont get me wrong, i dont think my work is above and beyond reproach and critical review and all that, but when morons in a bad mood pass judgement on work that is well-recieved by real parents, real readers, real counsellees, real teachers, then you just wonder at this whole reviewing business.
Earlier I bitched and moaned about a positive review (see my blog So You want Press, huh? - under the label Hit and Run, 28 May 2008; http://gouridange.blogspot.com/2008/05/so-you-want-press-huh.html) of my novel, but written so badly, that it was hilariously stupid.
In short, stupidity abounds, both ends of the reviewing spectrum.
ps: do note below the use of the word 'wards' by this reviewer. i'm writing about flesh-and-blood parents and their children, not some legal entities!

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081024/jsp/opinion/story_10006190.jsp
ABCs of Parenting (Jaico, Rs 175) by Gouri Dange offers a guideline for parents to manage their wards. The alphabetically arranged chapters take up issues that frequently cause furrows on parents' foreheads. The problem here is that 'A for apologies' has more or less the same advice to offer as 'Z for zombies' and the rest of the chapters. And it provides no additional insight from what other, cheaper, books on the subject do.

People of Pune, we have to do this:

2008-10-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

Just as I was beginning to eye countries like Norway to migrate to (that too only if they will have me and my dogs), only and only because of the utter degradation of grace, civility and beauty in this city, came this email. Do respond, anyone who has a more than monetary stake in this city:

DEAR ALL - PLEASE COME FOR THIS DP PUBLIC MEETING IN LARGE NUMBERS AND PLEASE FORWARD IT TO AS MANY

YOUR PARTICIPATION AS A CITIZEN WILL SAVE YOUR CITY

Are you fed up of the utter chaos around you?

Do you want a good quality life, with playgrounds and gardens around you?

Do you want to leave behind a livable city for your children?

Do you want your hills intact so that our Pune remains cool and pleasant?

If so:
Then, you need to:
· Come in large numbers to file objections to the DP of Baner-Balewadi
· Last date: December 2

Here are 10 reasons why, you as a citizen,
should object Baner-Balewadi DP

· A major road of 4 kms length shifted into the hill area, which will result in major cutting of the hill. This area will be used for residential construction
· Primary school and High school reservations modified for other purpose
· Area earmarked for hospital given for other purpose
· Civic amenities and facilites like Fire brigade, construction material yard and `Otta' markets deleted for residential construction
· Rehabilitation Centre for Differently Challenged Children (Spastics and Handicapped) not included in the DP although promised
· Areas reserved for gardens converted for residential construction
· Areas reserved for playgrounds converted for residential construction
· Crematoriums have been pushed into the river
· Area for bio-tech and agricultural zone deleted and turned into residential zone

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WHAT IS BANER BALEWADI DO
and
TO KICK OF THE OBJECTION LETTER CAMPAIGN

ATTEND THE PUBLIC MEETING
ON OCTOBER 17
Venue: Bhave High School,
near Peru Gate Police chowkey,
Sadashiv Peth
Time: 5.30 p m

COME ONE, COME ALL.

GREEN PUNE MOVEMENT
304, Narayan Peth
Call: 24441666/2444177 or emai: vinitapune@gmail.com,dp@gmailcom

Not dressed to kill

2008-10-03T01:35:00.000-07:00

We’ve all met or seen plenty of best-dressed women. At any given time, there’s always at least one in your immediate circle and at least one who is the icon of your neighbourhood/city/country. Remember in nursery school, when you somehow always had that one sock (and undies too) with the elastic gone slack? (Yes, that’s right, blame it on your mummy). And there was always at least one little girl with some beauteous name like Bela whose socks sat snugly, whose panties never threatened to give up, and whose school-uniform pleats covered her cute little tush just perfectly. She got off the school-bus looking neat and pretty, and she got back on to it after 4 hours of crayons, clay modeling, PT, napping and lunch, looking just the same. She definitely went on to join the ranks of the best-dressed – whether she was power-lunching somewhere, dropping her equally well-dressed kids to school, celebrating something, sweating it out elegantly in the gym, or vacationing in the Bahamas. The kind whose tasteful and always appropriate wardrobe, make-up and hair colour updates itself imperceptibly as she ages. They make elegant corpses too, on their last day here, and go on to pick just the right things from that Great Wardrobe in the Sky, for eternity.

Then there’s also the woman at the other end of the spectrum. The worst-dressed. You know her – in kindergarten, her compass box, tiffin box and water bottle were impossibly gaudy; she wore lurid, florid prints and love-in-tokyo beads on free-dress day; she wore the ghastliest sari to the farewell dinner, and she went on to be featured in various newspapers and magazines wearing dhoti-pants, high-heels and nau-vaaris with hair done up in a bouffant, and suchlike, smiling gauchely into the camera, with glitter on her teeth, for godsake. Ageing does not impact her dressing at all. She just keeps adding on more jingling stuff for every wrinkle that she acquires. And on her last day, people look upon her lying there overdressed and overpainted, and wag their heads fondly.

I may laugh at her, snigger and look skywards, but here’s the truth:

I envy them both. The best-turned out beauty as well as the worst-dressed weird one. You see, while they seem to be at two ends of the spectrum, they have at least one sterling quality in common. Both kinds of women know what they want to wear, spend good time, energy and money on their wardrobes, and most importantly, they’re happy women. Totally comfortable in their own shoes – Gucci or Gauche.

And then there’s us. A sizeable population of shrinkers and shirkers, that has a wardrobe full of clothes so indistinguishable from one another, that I wonder why we bother. Look into our cupboards, and you’ll see, that our guiding principle seems to be: quick, hide, don’t get noticed. So we have 6 trousers in the same cut in black, blacker, blackest, and variations on this theme. This is the result of reading somewhere that dark colours make some body parts invisible. For the upper body, when we think we’re on to a good, safe thing, we buy in multiple shades – so our wardrobe contains a small pile of kurtis in khaki, olive, army, moss, henna green, and on a daring day, lime. We pride ourselves on our sobriety and quiet taste, but those are kind words for yawn-makingly-boring. A whole slew of clothing choices we reject, because certain embargos and injunctions have stuck in our anxious little heads: ‘too busy’, ‘too young’, ‘too old’, ‘too wannabe’ ‘too giddy’ ‘too loud’…

Oddly, all wound up with our guiding principle of ‘hide, don’t get noticed’, is the need to make at least some sort of ‘fashion statement’. Here’s when the scarf/stole comes to our rescue. We own alarming numbers of this accessory, which hides the neck (or absence thereof), interrupts the khaki and black combo, and signals to the world (or at least we believe) that we too are a little sophisticated and dashing rolled into one. Only other scarf/stole wearers know that this obliging piece of cloth hides more than it reveals about us. Nora Ephron’s written a book titled ‘I Feel Bad about my Neck’. I bought it instantly. She’s definitely one of us.

This is how we function. I was recently invited to be on TV. Sundry stylish nieces instantly warned me not to show up there in t-shirt and track pants. As if I would. I pulled out my best black trousers and olive kurti, and went out shopping for yet another scarf/stole. However, once I sat opposite the interviewer, and noticed cameras at angles that hit below the chin (much worse than being hit below the belt), I asked if I could go change into a shirt with a large button up collar (a la Dev Anand, god bless him), plus the stole, plus some decoy chain and pendant. A friend watching on suggested with a straight face that she could run out and buy me a burkha, or I could wear a well-cut paper bag over myself. Oh, how I wish. Finally, I went through the interview with a nice tall collar shielding my neck from the camera behind me, and a pendant as big as a plate firmly distracting the camera in front of me. However, in a fit of flamboyance, I wore beige, yes beige pants. You only live once.

It was all very taxing, though. Now I’m safely back home, planning even better camouflage. Perhaps a line of clothing with paw prints all over it, so that I merge with the flooring, sofas and dhurries of my three-dog home. You’d only know I was there if I chose to blink.

But sometimes, a little exuberance crawls out from under the weight of all this solemnity, and makes itself known to the world - in the form of turquoise blue chappals, gold-chilli earrings, a crimson watch, a tangerine shirt, a beetroot hand-bag - not all worn at the same time, of course.

(this has been published in the latest issue of Verve - September 2008)

A fresh catch from the Net

2008-09-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, it pays to switch off reality and get well and truly lost in cyberspace

Enough, enough of writing about traffic, intolerance, corruption, consumerism, power outages and other human horribleness. Once in a few weeks, even the chronic cynic comes up for air and happens upon something that is also utterly human and thoroughly good. There are many such things, different things on different days. One of them happened to me today. Many old-Hindi-film-song fans must have experienced it. You wake up with song in your head. If you don’t have the song as part of your collection (or the door of your CD player refuses to open and it simply cussedly says open-close-open-close, signaling that you have to take it to the dealer who omitted to tell you that that particular system does not merit a ‘home visit’ from the repair guys, and you have to lug the piece, warranty and all, to somewhere in the boondocks, jumping over half-done bridges and burrowing through half-finished underpasses…oops I almost started talking about roads and traffic again), you get on to the internet (oh lucky day, electricity and broadband working at one and the same time – Pune shining!), you google the song. And not only do you get to hear the song, sometimes YouTube plays the clip for you. After watching mesmerized, you are then pulled down several deliciously dizzying option-avenues. The tune or the lyrics or the movie or the stars remind you of another song, and that one of yet another song, and another, till you are fully and enjoyable lost in the byways of Hindi film music.
Take for instance, my song this morning. I woke up with O mere sanam O mere sanam from Sangam playing in my head. I had to hear it – urgently. It’s like that with good music. A sense of urgency-emergency that you simply have to have to access it right away. Shooing sundry dogs out of the way, I put on the computer and in seconds had the song as well as the scene playing out in front of me. Raj Kapoor’s blue-green eyes flashing fire and ice at Vaijyayantimala’s distressed, luminous ones looking pleadingly at him. And the haunting song playing out the protagonists’ predicament. Magic.
From here the haunting melody opened up so many avenues for me. Idhar jauun ya udhar jauun? Should I pursue more songs in this haunting raga, Shivranjani? Or should I look at more Sangam songs? Or should I go down the lane that promises more Lata-Mukesh songs? Or explore which one of our now great sitar-players rendered those sitar pieces in the song?
It’s all available just a click or two away…and I voluntarily get drawn into one part of this sweet maze. I go for the raga angle. More Shivranjani songs pour forth: Laagi na mora jiya – Asha Parekh looking vulnerable and at the same time accusing, in black and white. (And then I remember my mother singing this song rather, rather well, reading the words from her purple song lyrics diary, in which she painstakingly and rapidly wrote down the words as the song played on the radio….but that’s again another lane to visit.) Onward on the Shivranjani track: Shammi Kapoor and someone (Kalpana?...another bylane to explore) searching, seeking, singing: Aawaz dey kay, hamay tum bulao – Mohmmad Rafi’s voice echoes from the depths of the Kashmir Valley. From here, I’m drawn into the ghostly Kahi deep jale kahi dil…and deliciously spine-tingling memories of Vividh Bharati eerily and appropriately playing the song at 9.30 pm…just like in the movie! There are at least 15 more superb songs that I listen to and watch in this exploration, one leading to the other, the other leading to the other, and a few detours on the way, not to do with the raga I was exploring, but maybe a movie or a face or a lyricist…for instance, I found myself gazing at more gorgeous Kashmir views in the song Ek tu na mila…sari duniya mile bhi toa kya hai…Sheer magic.
A note of caution, particularly for Pune readers: this is not an encyclopaedic piece, so I urge you not to spend time pointing out which songs I ‘failed to mention’ from the Shivranjani-inspired film songs. Go on your own stream-of-consciousness music exploration. It’s like putting together a wonderful, musical jig-saw puzzle of your own.
And look…I managed to spend over an hour without talking about bad roads, demented drivers, intolerance….even Kashmir, poor Kashmir, appears in this column today, not as an ‘issue’ but as the jannat it is/was.
Gouri Dange

Get out of my face, 'nagar sevak'

2008-09-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

It’s so routine, that it seems naive to talk about it anymore. Come festival time, and shopkeepers are forced to cough up money to an array of dubious mandals – goons and louts turn up and blatantly extort, and have the gall to say things like: “Array, kuch toa acha kaam karo, pura saal itna kamatay tum log.” A friend recently asked one such goon twisting our grocer’s arm: “Aur tum kya karta hai pura saal?” His answer came out pat: “Nagar –seva”. Hmm, I believe you, she said, sardonically. The shopkeeper, used to this stuff every year, gently told her not to tangle with the lout. And coughed up Rs 1111 (we may extort, but see, we extort in auspicious figures; we may be goons, but we are devout goons, no?) for the tenth time that week.

With the money amassed from hapless hardworking shopkeepers and homeowners around the city, these devotees and sevaks proceed to assault us for 10 continuous days, with sound raised to a volume beyond human endurance. And oh ya, before that, they dig deep holes into the city’s already pock-marked roads to support pandals, and then proceed to block half the road with these ‘devotional structures’. And who are you to object? Once the word ‘sarvajanik’ is uttered with a sanctimonious look, then you’re labeled elitist as well as irreligious, if you don’t play along.

On top of it, go past any of these pandals in the middle of the day, and there isn’t a single ‘devotee’ around. What happened to the old practice that you never left the Ganpati idol alone? In our childhood, the standing instruction was that someone must always be in the room with the idol. There we would sit, sometimes staring into those benevolent, playful eyes, or mugging up our 13-times table in Ganpatti Bappa’s presence, secure that as dukh-harta, he would deflect the wrath of the scary lady who taught us maths.

In public places today, however, what He has as company is ‘music’ – songs blasted at him, involving dils, ishq, dhak-dhaks, matkas and jhatkas, with kaantas and chhatiyas thrown in for good measure. Well, we encourage our kids to gyrate to Bollywood songs on Teacher’s Day too. So why would we spare our gods…but that’s another story.

People may be able to chest-thumpingly encroach on roads, blast the daylights out of the populace with their loudspeakers, install an idol, even hold prayers. But there’s a very large chance, that their god will give this place the total avoid, and quietly visit the homes of true devotees.

That’s why I simply did not go into the city at all this year, ‘Ganpati baghayla’. I visited the homes of friends who install the idol with true fondness and devotion, without getting in anyone’s way, and without, for sure, endangering lives and consuming huge greedy amounts of electricity and blasting our eardrums. And when the traffic situation didn’t allow me to do even that, I said to myself, like Begum Akhtar: Wahi pey mera Kaaba jahan pey mai sarr jhuka doon.

This year a lout-goon sevak of the nagar came to my doorstep too, asking for money for the festival. At one time I would have quietly coughed up, just so as not to ‘take panga’. This time I smilingly told him to get out of my face while I worship in the way I know, not in the way he insists. Because today my head may bow in front of my tiny amber Ganesh; tomorrow it will bow to a child’s drawing of Haji Malang; the day after it will bow to an ageing dog; and on another day to the white signature of egrets flying in a monsoon sky; and next week to the tiny cross a friend has brought me with all her faith from Lourdes.
And I will not have assaulted anyone’s ears or dug up anyone’s road, or cut anyone’s pocket under the name of my devotion.

GOURI DANGE

Parenting

2008-09-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

My other book that was in the making - non-fiction - is out. It's part of a series based on my counselling and parenting columns. Take a look. It's priced at Rs 175. Note how modestly my books are priced - 3 ZM is Rs 200. Note my modest halo growing.

Anyway, it's dedicated to

Jaya
Siddharth
Ruku
who taught me parenting and
godparenting
and continue to do so.

(Pune Mirror column): Moist-eyed about Parliament!

2008-09-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been much of a follower of the political scene. Voting for me is sheer agony, each time – always, the name missing from the voters’ list, then chasing after local thugs, goons and hoodlums to have your name in place (same story Mumbai, same story Pune). Putting up with their over-paliness since it’s pre-election time, and they’re desperately pretending that they are your humble servants, etc.
On top of it, I’m part of that middle class who - election analysts talk about us, wagging their heads sadly - is becoming increasingly indifferent to voting. No, it’s not that I’m part of the shining Indian middle class that couldn’t be bothered to vote because I’m busy spending money in hyper-malls and infesting Southeast Asian tourist destinations. It’s just that I’m never sure who to vote for. Sometimes I’m doing ini-mini-mina-mo all the way to the voting station. The original ini-mini has other words. Mine goes something like this on voting day, with my 2 minutes of power in my hand: ini mini mina mo, catch a goonda by his toe; if he cries, let him go, ini mini mina mo.
So what I’m saying is, I’m not that most evolved of voters. I’m not your die-hard supporter of any party. I’m always choosing between the lesser of several evils. The dilemma doesn’t end even as I enter the polling booth. Vote for the corrupt but claiming to be non-communal? Or the blatantly communal but claiming to be clean? Or do I vote for the (so far) clean, non-communal but desperately out-of-date? Or end up using up my vote on the naïve-squeaky-clean independent who will never make it? So many options, so little belief or interest – is my problem.
This detached observer kind of mode of mine (elegant phrase for being a cynic and a not terribly bright one) also means that I rarely or never watch political debates on smart channels, and the Lok Sabha on its very own channel. One, because the charms of watching people shouting each other down and one moderator bleating for all to please be quiet are kind of lost on me. Some people watch it all with rapt attention that I reserve only for the stand up comic programs. Not me. Already a cynic, I become a panicky and upset cynic when I watch Parliament or political debates. I begin to feel a) if someone can’t stop shouting, and talking right over the other person (who is doing the same), he/she is no better than a tantruming toddler. And we all agree on one thing – tantruming toddlers can’t/shouldn’t run nations. b) should people like me have maybe joined this jamboree at some stage, and ‘made a difference’? Both options a and b throw me into a deep funk, and I quickly switch channels to soothing programs like World’s Most Amazing Police Videos and suchlike.
So, to come to my point, usually I would not have watched the trust vote proceedings in Parliament from beginning to end on TV. No. I would have perhaps watched occasional news flashes on the subject, and like I do with cricket, only asked for the end result, if at all – India harli ka jinkli? As it happened, I was in someone’s home at the time, and they were following it closely, ball by ball, MP by MP. The old panic rose within me, as I watched men in high places having to be told repeatedly not to wander around, not to shout, not to approach the Speaker, not to interrupt, to let people speak. Then there was the bundles of rupees brandishing side-show, that almost became the main show. I kept my nose in my book, and looked up only occasionally. How do these guys get anything done? I asked myself for the hundredth time. Just in this way, at the cost of us all, I replied to myself, for the hundredth time.
But, once it was all done, the last 2 minutes of the entire circus made up for it all. An old, lively instrumental version of Vande Mataram was played, and suddenly, like magic, all those avaricious grasping faces turned inward and quiet. The large pompous bodies softened and heads became bowed. Where all this while they were facing in different directions, waving their arms, stamping about angrily, suddenly there was everyone faced in one direction, standing still, with that gorgeous rendition of the song washing over them all, and us all. All of Parliament looked like little kids, good humans, suddenly. We cynics have our sentimental moments too, I suppose.

(Pune Mirror column): In a sea of Empty Boats

2008-09-03T18:48:00.000-07:00

I had promised myself and sundry friends that I would no more talk about Pune’s traffic and how people behave on the road surrounded by their big cars=egos. Now I’m sort of breaking that promise, but only a bit. I write with a Solution. An internal solution. Not an external one, though there are plenty of those too – like exchanging Pune and Mumbai cops. Give the Mumbai traffic chaps a change and send them to Pune to straighten us out here, like they’ve straightened out, long back, Mumbai’s red-light jumpers, the lane-changers, the up-the-down-flyover-takers, the signal-non-givers, cell-phone kissers and … now even that most dull-witted species, the drunk drivers. And send our Pune traffic boys to shape up in Mumbai. Take a look at what it is to really control traffic. Not sit in the shade on their motorcycles and chit-chat or extract ‘fines’ after the crime has been committed.
But no, those are external solutions. I’m talking straightaway Zen Buddhism solution. Nothing less. I will name it the Empty Vehicle Attitude. It’s borrowed from Zen Master Chuang Tzu’s Empty Boat concept, which is something like this: A man is plying his boat on the seas. He spots a boat coming towards him, being steered in a rather haphazard and dangerous manner. It seems to be heading straight for him. At first he’s scared and tries to signal to the other boatman to steer clear, straighten his course. But the boat is recklessly on a collision course. Soon our boatman gets really angry and begins to shout things and shake his fist at the rogue boatman. Rogue boat continues to come at him. Finally, our boatman decides this is not a rogue, but an ace idiot, and changes his direction, steering his own boat quickly out of the way, looking pityingly towards the other boat, thinking it must be terrible to be an idiot on the high seas. As the rogue/idiot boatman’s boat passes him, dangerously close, our boatman realizes that the boat is empty. There is no boatman in there, there never was. No rogue, no idiot. Just an empty boat. Adrift. All his anger dissolves and he steers on.
Now, here is the key solution, for all good, obedient and cautious drivers, who rave and rant at what we think are rogues or idiots on the road. Those motorists and scooterists and motorcyclists and rickshawallahs and bus drivers - who do all those Pune traffic things that make your blood run cold first and then very hot later: simply see them as Empty Boats. Don’t be angry when they endanger your lives, definitely don’t chase them down or block their way, as they have shown themselves capable of beating you up or using ugly demented words. Don’t pity them for their idiot-minds. Many of us have been taught to drive ‘like everyone else is an idiot on the road’. Simply understand that there is nothing/no-one there. No rogue, no idiot. A total absence of humans and humanness in those vehicles. Adrift. Steer clear of them, is all you can and must do.
So Repeat after me: ‘These are all Empty Boats’. ‘Loose cannons’ is another word for them, but I like the peaceful concept of the empty boat even better. Get into your vehicle with this new attitude, and you will find yourself beautifully, without rancour or rage, simply moving out of their direction-less paths, and getting to your destination without collisions or without losing your cool.
To take Chuang Tzu’s concept further (as explained by Osho), the next step is to become Empty Boats ourselves on Pune’s roads. No, I don’t mean that we drive around like loose cannons without direction or volition or control. It just means that after recognizing that the Other is an empty boat, the next stage is to stop feeling all puffed up with pride for being more ‘present’ and ‘aware’ and thus a ‘full boat’. That only makes you feel like an alien among all those empty boats. So best to leave our egos out of our vehicles, is what I’m saying. Well maybe I’m stretching the concept a bit too much without understanding it fully. But you get the point.
On a more mundane level: Another person (no name, internet story) treats all other angry and badly driven vehicles as he would a passing garbage truck. He will not yell at them, try to teach them a lesson, engage with them in any way. Just like we give the garbage truck with its stench and falling bits or rubbish a wide berth, he gives all awful drivers the right of way, and waves them ahead with a smile, happy to put as much distance between him and the garbage on wheels as possible. Personally, I think there is even more peace in seeing them as Empty Boats rather than moving garbage. But you can choose your own metaphor, and drive on in peace.
Gouri Dange

moronic media

2008-08-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

The Indian media - yes the same ones who were dropped on their collective heads by their collective mothers - are at it again. First wrenching someone's words out of all context, and then baying for that person's blood. It's Shabana Azmi's turn again. The details are too moronic to repeat here, but I have just one thing to say.
Not because Shabana is a friend, but because I hate idiot newspapers that do so-called 'stings' with only half of their bird-brains in place. And cause so much damage to the national fiber and fabric.
First, her remarks (available on cnn-ibn live) have been deliberately misunderstood, and then some retarded hack has 'precis-written' them so that everyone who wants to prove some half-assed theory about Shabana's take on Muslims, immediately sits back and says, "Ah, there she goes."
On top of it, based on this demented interpretation of what she said, today's paper tells us that they oh-so cleverly carried out a 'sting' operation to prove that in fact it is not at all difficult for Muslims to buy a house in Mumbai. And what did this sting involve: Two reporters assuming Muslim names called up builders and brokers, asking to buy a house. These builders and brokers were oh-so sweet, and did not baulk at the names and were happy to show them homes, as long as they had the money ready. Well Duh! and Duh again, guys. Of course they dont have a problem selling to anyone and will spout non-communal words or wisdom.
If you were journalists/reporters in any real sense of the term, you would have taken this to the Building Society level, and seen how blatantly and clearly many societies simply will not give an NOC to the seller who has a Muslim buyer. This has been going on for the last 10 years at least, across class lines. I know this from personal experience. My then husband (a Muslim) and I went through 96 flats before we could buy the one we finally did. Everywhere it was: "Sorry, society is not going to give permission to sell to you." Finally, the one we did buy, was bought on my name, I dealt with everyone concerned, and my Muslim husband was kept a dark secret, till we moved in and then decided to 'come out'. And of course no broker or builder gave us this treatment. It was the actual people living in actual building societies who did this.
So media-morons, when will you stop having theories, and then going out gathering evidence to fit your theories? What you end up doing is unleashing the latant misplaced anger of thousands of bakri readers, who are immediately swayed and begin to bleat their 'protest'. And you do truth, fairness, and national integration absolutely no justice. But then maybe you just dont want to know or deal with the truth, do you? Too boring, right?

err...popat

2008-08-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

hmm - life's absurdities continue. many of you hung around the tv at 6.30 pm on sunday (those who didnt see the 11 am saturday telecast) to watch me on tv. but inexplicably, some bearded Deutsche bloke (no doubt Very Important to someone) yammered on about the indian economy and my poor friends and family and colleagues and who-all who-all had to sit there waiting, while the program Just Books just didnt get aired for its repeat telecast. It is scheduled for Monday 18th 6 am if you please. WTF?

Anyway. Someone sweetly (Sonia) recorded it, and I hope to put it up here. See, this is the thing about techie girls. They are smart, AND they offer to do clever stuff for you, and then they do what they say they will. Unlike most techie boys, who are as smart (maybe), but are butt-lazy, most times. They know the theory of how it is to be done, and are likely to shout enthu-ly down the phone to you - "put this cord in that thing and output the input and reset the whatsit and there, you'll be able to record it yourself" - they tell you. If you bleat that your tv is upstairs and computer is downstairs they say ohhh, so take one or the other up or down, no. Lazy, non-doers. Kind of Bertie Wooster with computer skills, is what they are. So thank god for Sonia and her ilk.

Old Dog, New Dog

2008-08-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

Minerva Moment

It’s made up of just one or two beats, a Minerva Moment. When the whole world and its noise recedes into nothingness, and there’s just you, and a fleeting but absolute understanding, leached and bleached of all doubts and questions. I like to capture such beats, frame them in words. Like this one:

I sit down with my sitar. After many days.

Older dog settles down, reading the situation correctly. He knows his place in the scheme of things for the next hour; he has a good idea about the various sounds that will come forth. He shuts his eyes and flattens out with a contented sigh. Secure, happy.

Younger dog, only 6 months old and 2 months in my life, perceives it a little differently. He’s seen and heard me and my sitar a few times before. At first he simply would not stand for the fact that I could sit on the floor and not be interested at all in playing with him and his assorted toys. Or that I would not put up with my hand being gnawed, or him putting two paws on my shoulders from the back and chewing at my hair. I had batted him off, and he learnt for the first time that, sometimes, he was not the centre of the universe.

Today, he approaches, watching and cocking his head in exaggerated curiosity at the deep rumble of the kharaj pancham while I tune-up. He keeps his distance, but watches my face, a little anxious about his place in the scheme of things now.

He passes very close, brushing past my right hand, toying with the idea of a little nip – but changes his mind. He climbs on to my bed, sitting with his face at my eye level, resting his chin on the footboard. The picture of newly-learnt patience.

I play pieces, I play scales, I try out 2 Beatles songs that seem to dovetail with the raga that I’m playing.

Older dog relaxes further, now flat out. Younger dog, forehead in furrows, bats at me gently from the bed, stretching out one paw. I nod at him to tell him, I see you, younger dog. He sits down again, sighing, wondering.

Ten minutes later I stop and place my sitar on the floor. He jumps down softly, and ever so subtly inserts himself between me and the sitar, facing away from me, but looking back at my face as I sing out the notes of Bhimpalas; his eyes hold my eyes. He catches fleetingly what older dog knows – I am happy and humming, and this does not exclude him at all. He continues to be a fixed point in my Universe, and I in his. The music doesn’t take me away, it only expands my capacity to love him more. Younger dog can understand this Truth only a little at a time, in a small brief moment, like right now. We are both having a Minerva Moment.

Then his youngness and his need come crowding back in. He gets me his most favourite toy; and waiting gravely only for as long as it takes me to put away the sitar, rushes to me with all the haq of someone who is restored to being at the centre of the universe again.

ps: old dog (in the pic) has since passed on, new dog is now the cool one, and the 2 new infiltrators are the young dogs.

me me, on tvee

2008-08-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

I was interviewed for a small segment on a program called Just Books, by Sunil Sethi. Which will be aired on NDTV Profit at 11 am this Saturday, 16th August, and 6.30 pm on Sunday 17th August. It's about 3 Zakia Mansion.

Please see - I am tempted to be horribly stupid and warn you all that I'm possibily looking like a large, friendly strawberry, but I will be more dignified than that and tell you simply to watch.
cheers

(Pune Mirror column): The sweet smell of bad news

2008-08-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

We have become a neurotic as well as paranoid society, for sure. We thrive on bad news. We love it, standing there in our homes, remote in hand, jaws hanging open, eyes fixed in fascination, backing away from the TV towards the couch (stepping on the dog’s tail en route), letting out a series of oh nos and what-has-this-world-come-tos. After we watch our fill of footage involving blood, gore and more, we re-live it by calling up friends and talking about it all over again. How we blossom and bloom, with all this doom-gloom. (And how we love bad rhyme too).

What’s the chance then, in this smugly pessimistic world-view of ours, of any really normal, nice, good news to filter through? Very little chance. Snowflake-in-hell type of chance.

No wonder, then, that there were no takers for a story-idea that I SMSed to some journo friends. In the thick of the board exam results, I heard from the parents of a 15-year-old girl who got 93 % in the Xth CBSC. No tuitions, no aggro for and from the parents over the year, no war-footing preparations, nothing. Just a happy, well-adjusted family with a child who excelled. And enjoyed herself while excelling. Would anyone like to interview this sunny, well-adjusted kid and her smiling parents?

My SMS text drew total silence, from print, TV, Net. Nothing, nada. I could almost hear Homer Simpson type voices saying: BORRRINGGG.

Now, as that Hindi stand-up comic says: “Abhi ulta socho.” Suppose, I had sent quite the opposite SMS out to my friends in the media, that went something like this: "Teenager gets 93 %; attempts to slit wrists because she didn't get 98%. Mother in ICU after glugging poision, father lies down on railway tracks after massive drinking orgy" or variations on this theme, you get the point. What if I had sent this kind of message out there? I tell you, the media, particularly news channels, would have descended on this family in stampeding droves. Stories would have been filed; continuous coverage of the front door of their apartment; interviews with the colony watchman (and his dog Tommy); a grandmother would have been unearthed from somewhere to talk about it all. The large neighbour who stopped the girl in the nick of time would be interviewed, lodged tightly in the narrow staircase of the building. A few serviceable shrinks and sociologists would talk sadly into the cameras. Everyone would have their five seconds of fame, for sure.

Our screens would then gladly give us live and breaking information, on the hour every hour, 24/7, din-bhar, baar baar lagataar.

We would be shown the exact spot (red blinking arrow graphic) where the mother passed out; the blade with which the girl tried to slash her wrists; the razor with which the father shaved inside which was the blade with which the girl slashed her wrists, the washbasin stand on which stood the razor in which was the blade, with which…you get the idea?

So what then, is the moral of my story, or the burden of my song, as they say? That not many people today want to watch good news, well-adjusted families, or positive forecasts anymore. It's doomsday prophets and anxiety-mongerers who rule.

But like American journo Charles Kuralt once said: "It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, and that there are people in the world besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals."

To my mind, the kid with the 93 per cent who did it without mind-numbing 9-hour long tuition classes all year round, is the real news story. And that red-blinking arrow on the TV screen should point to her out there, wolfing down a pizza and then pau bhaji, like any happy 15 year old. But then what do I know. I’m just a good-news junky.

In a sea of Empty Boats

2008-08-08T02:56:00.000-07:00

I had promised myself and sundry friends that I would no more talk about Pune’s traffic and how people behave on the road surrounded by their big cars=egos. Now I’m sort of breaking that promise, but only a bit. I write with a Solution. An internal solution. Not an external one, though there are plenty of those too – like exchanging Pune and Mumbai cops. Give the Mumbai traffic chaps a change and send them to Pune to straighten us out here, like they’ve straightened out, long back, Mumbai’s red-light jumpers, the lane-changers, the up-the-down-flyover-takers, the signal-non-givers, cell-phone kissers and … now even that most dull-witted species, the drunk drivers. And send our Pune traffic boys to shape up in Mumbai. Take a look at what it is to really control traffic. Not sit in the shade on their motorcycles and chit-chat or extract ‘fines’ after the crime has been committed.

But no, those are external solutions. I’m talking straightaway Zen Buddhism solution. Nothing less. I will name it the Empty Vehicle Attitude. It’s borrowed from Zen Master Chuang Tzu’s Empty Boat concept, which is something like this: A man is plying his boat on the seas. He spots a boat coming towards him, being steered in a rather haphazard and dangerous manner. It seems to be heading straight for him. At first he’s scared and tries to signal to the other boatman to steer clear, straighten his course. But the boat is recklessly on a collision course. Soon our boatman gets really angry and begins to shout things and shake his fist at the rogue boatman. Rogue boat continues to come at him. Finally, our boatman decides this is not a rogue, but an ace idiot, and changes his direction, steering his own boat quickly out of the way, looking pityingly towards the other boat, thinking it must be terrible to be an idiot on the high seas. As the rogue/idiot boatman’s boat passes him, dangerously close, our boatman realizes that the boat is empty. There is no boatman in there, there never was. No rogue, no idiot. Just an empty boat. Adrift. All his anger dissolves and he steers on.

Now, here is the key solution, for all good, obedient and cautious drivers, who rave and rant at what we think are rogues or idiots on the road. Those motorists and scooterists and motorcyclists and rickshawallahs and bus drivers - who do all those Pune traffic things that make your blood run cold first and then very hot later: simply see them as Empty Boats. Don’t be angry when they endanger your lives, definitely don’t chase them down or block their way, as they have shown themselves capable of beating you up or using ugly demented words. Don’t pity them for their idiot-minds. Many of us have been taught to drive ‘like everyone else is an idiot on the road’. Simply understand that there is nothing/no-one there. No rogue, no idiot. A total absence of humans and humanness in those vehicles. Adrift. Steer clear of them, is all you can and must do.
So Repeat after me: ‘These are all Empty Boats’. ‘Loose cannons’ is another word for them, but I like the peaceful concept of the empty boat even better. Get into your vehicle with this new attitude, and you will find yourself beautifully, without rancour or rage, simply moving out of their direction-less paths, and getting to your destination without collisions or without losing your cool.

To take Chuang Tzu’s concept further (as explained by Osho), the next step is to become Empty Boats ourselves on Pune’s roads. No, I don’t mean that we drive around like loose cannons without direction or volition or control. It just means that after recognizing that the Other is an empty boat, the next stage is to stop feeling all puffed up with pride for being more ‘present’ and ‘aware’ and thus a ‘full boat’. That only makes you feel like an alien among all those empty boats. So best to leave our egos out of our vehicles, is what I’m saying. Well maybe I’m stretching the concept a bit too much without understanding it fully. But you get the point.
On a more mundane level: Another person (no name, internet story) treats all other angry and badly driven vehicles as he would a passing garbage truck. He will not yell at them, try to teach them a lesson, engage with them in any way. Just like we give the garbage truck with its stench and falling bits or rubbish a wide berth, he gives all awful drivers the right of way, and waves them ahead with a smile, happy to put as much distance between him and the garbage on wheels as possible. Personally, I think there is even more peace in seeing them as Empty Boats rather than moving garbage. But you can choose your own metaphor, and drive on in peace.

Whose safety is it anyway?

2008-08-07T03:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve always wondered about ‘safety features’ added to cars. How come, they get added to upscale cars only? I mean the higher you go up the fancy-shmancy ladder, the more idiot-proof and protective become the car’s features. Let’s start from the simple rear window wiper. In the lower end, you don’t have this feature. You have to buy the slightly upper-market version (sorry I cant take names – this would be so much simpler if I said the brand name of the cars involved) for the wiper to be in place. So that means what? For my money, I am not allowed to have a better view of what is looming menacingly close to me at the back on a dark rainy day? Only if I cough up more, is this simple safety and clarity feature going to be given to me? And get this: I can’t even add on this feature later by perhaps selling one of my dogs and having more disposable income (as if anyone will want to buy). It’s not technically possible, I am told, to add on a rear wiper, because then there will be so much wiring, that we could be fried to crisps inside the car. Our rear window will be clear, but we won’t be alive to see it – so what’s the point.)

Next – the fancy pffuff air-bag that comes out of some cars upon impact. Why can’t I or Pappu from next door have it? In fact, given that the rich and the famous usually have stable drivers, or move around in their own jet anyway, why this nice bag for them? Shouldn’t a feature of this sort be for all us Indians who are running out buying cars without having obtained a licence, and continue to drive them with no benefit of training? We’re the ones more likely to have sudden impacts, no?

Then there’s a delicious feature I saw in a really fancy big car – the name of this car starts with a B and ends with a W and there are only 3 alphabets in the name. The feature is this: It gives you little pips and beeps and kind whispers to help you park. Yes, I kid you not. It has a built in mummy-daddy-nanny, this car. When you’re trying to park in a tight spot between two cars, it tells you you’re too close to the curb, or a little light flashes on your dashboard to say you’ve got a whole foot more and you can keep reversing, etc….you get the point. Now I ask you, isn’t this wasted on the rich, successful guy inside this car who became that way because he has a good spatial sense in the first place. As opposed to most of us who are just this side of dyslexic when it comes to parking our cars?

I was watching a television program that confirmed my theory that safety features in cars are meant only for the already safe and secure fat-cats. Swishy cars have a little chip that discerns whether you’re falling asleep at the wheel. How does it do this? Well, when you’re alert and driving, even on a long uninterrupted road (woh kya hota hai?), usually you’re making minor adjustments to the steering wheel to stay on course. When you get sleepy, you stop making these adjustments and drive in a more approximate way. The chip picks this up and beeps loudly so that you wake up. I’m sure there is someone in some lab taking this a step further, whereby the car then automatically brews you some coffee, caresses your tired face and shoulders, and gets you alert again.

Us mere mortals, meanwhile, can blunder along. The only safety feature we get is demented renditions of happy-birthday-to-you or here-comes-the-bride, while we’re reversing. And who pays attention to those, anyway.

The tyranny of the terminally cheerful

2008-08-07T03:25:00.000-07:00

Interestingly, as for all strange fads, obsessions and trends that float down to us from the West, the strongest and most convincing criticisms and rejections of these happen to come from the West too. And so here we are - at last; someone has said it: Enough already with the positivity and positive attitude business. There’s only so much that good cheer and smiles can do when you’re having a rough time. Psychologist Barbara Held, author of Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching (seriously, this is what she has titled her book), believes that “there is no one right way to cope with all the pain of living. ... If we are prevented from coping in our own way, be it 'positive' or 'negative,' we function less well."

We have forever been hearing about how the power of positive thinking is the only way that will take us to being happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. Of course the positive thinking jag has a role to play, but sometimes I suspect that in our 21st century bid to look at the bright side of everything, we tend simply not to listen to friends in real emotional trouble, or to ourselves in trouble.

To put it very simply: everyone has different temperaments, and sometimes, all that your friends need when they come to you feeling awful, is not an over-bright, brassy lecture on ‘look at the positive side’, but just the space and permission to feel lousy for a while. Someone needs to tell us, that feeling weighed-down at times and not upbeat 24/7 is perfectly ok and understandable. And for us to know that feeling bad is not automatically the same as being mentally ill. Taking a leaf from the West, we’ve become, here in urban India, a little too quick to label even a bad-hair day as Depression. As Barbara Held says rather simply: “Some of my one-session "cures" have come from reminding people that life can be difficult, and it's OK if we're not happy all of the time.
What a relief to hear that. I mean, enough with this chronic cheerfulness. Sometimes it just gets you nowhere. Seriously. For instance, picture this scenario: you’re forward-planning something, looking a little worried about whether to travel on X date to Mumbai, anxious about avoiding some nut-job group that is going to stop the trains and tear up the tracks (or worried that the monsoon is going to flood the drains). Around you is one of those think-positive people, who asks with a bright smile: “But why don’t you think on the positive side?” Array? I’m not thinking positively here, because by thinking ‘negatively’ I can reduce the number of variables that will make my visit a total wash-out, that’s why. So the point is, while you’re really not supposed to sweat the small stuff, you need to at times plan out worst-case scenarios, so that you’re not caught with your pants…in the washing machine, if you know what I mean. No point being inappropriately optimistic and ill-informed, in the haste to be smiley-cheerful all the time.

On a more serious note, Randy Pausch, battling with cancer, also echoes this mistrust of the positive-attitude-as-panacea business in his book The Last Lecture. He talks about the double-whammy burden on patients who are constantly told by friends and family that they need to be positive. With this, patients who are having a tough day healthwise, feel worse because they’re made to feel that somehow they’re not grinning their way to good health. Barbara Held puts it nicely: “First you feel bad about whatever's getting you down, then you feel guilty or defective if you can't smile and look on the bright side. And I'm not even sure there always is a bright side to look on.”

That Pune special something

2008-08-07T03:24:00.000-07:00

Remember the time when most of us used the word ‘government outfit’ to explain why any place ran like it has Rip Van Winkle as CEO? Especially the khadi bhandars, and the state handicraft emporia, and suchlike. Today, for various reasons, it is not at all a given that a government-run place will give customer service the ignore. Many of them do a great job in sourcing things, displaying them, and selling them with a smile. The new perpetrators of crimes against customers are, at the Pune end of things at least, most franchises. Oh, not only is the customer here not king (or queen), he (or she) is treated most times as an annoying nuisance to be either discouraged from buying anything or served shoddy merchandise/sloppy food/half-hearted services.
When I first encountered this (at a well-known eatery franchise of a famous Mumbai steak house), I was rather shocked and wrote off hotly here and there. Three years down the line, I have become much older and way wiser. Franchisees of bigger-city restaurants, salad bars, supermarkets & fast food places, courier companies, bookstores…you name it…most are doing such a fantastically bad job in our city. I wonder how the franchiser doesn’t care about his name, goodwill and investment built over decades, being poured freely down the drain at the Pune end of things.
A few examples will suffice…I’m sure readers will have many of their own. A well known food store opens a franchise here. Their cold storage section, after the first few clean and virtuous weeks, is a sight that the PMC might want to examine. No ventilation, badly functioning refrigeration and air-conditioning, rivulets of melted ice and blood (of fish and fowl) running across the floor, and a welcome dance by 16 shapely flies. On top of it, when you invoke the name of the famous food store that is their Father Franchiser, the man inside this disaster zone says brashly: “Flies are everywhere ma’am; and the floor will get cleaned in the afternoon.”
I walk into a big clothes store, frachisee of another biggy from a big city. Same story. Not flies and yukky floors here, but empty shelves, gum chewing staff that is busy talking to each other, stopping only to shout gaily to you: “Out of stock ma’am!”
And so it is with the bookstores (whose staff was till yesterday maybe working at the clothes store) where you draw blank looks if you ask for anything beyond an ageing diva’s books. Unawareness and who-cares-ness rules here too.
Courier companies, bless their confused hearts and souls, simply don’t reach their destination at the Pune end. They don’t think its part of the job. And if you follow this up to its bitter end, you’re likely to hear: there was no one in your house, or your address is very difficult. If you ask why they couldn’t call you from the phone number on your packet, they shout out loudly, laughingly, to someone else in the room in Marathi or Hindi, the rough translation being: “Hey somebody take the phone and talk to this ill-tempered aunty who’s asking all these questions.” The person at the other end laughs riotously back and advises: “Array rakh dey na phone nichay, idiot.”
I kid you not, these are all franchises of huge national and international brand name companies.
I didn’t go to B-school and I don’t come from a business family, so maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but isn’t franchising a system of marketing and distribution in which an independent businessperson, for a fee, is granted the right to market the goods or services of the franchisor according to the established, successful standards and practices of the franchisor? Ideally, I am told, the franchise system forms the perfect marriage between big business and the small businessperson. The franchisor obtains new sources of expansion capital, new distribution markets, and self-motivated vendors of its products, while the franchisee acquires the products, expertise, stability, and marketing savvy usually available only to larger enterprises. “Both franchisor and franchisee have a strong vested interest in the success of the brand and keeping their customers happy,” I read somewhere.
Kuch gadbad hai. Maybe it’s the steep climb up the Ghats, but something seems to be falling by the wayside. High time the big ticket franchisors made their way up to Pune and took a look at what their franchisees are really up to, don’t you think?

decently off and famous

2008-08-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

Having given merciless self-promotion a rest for a bit, here's another bit. I'm appearing on Sunil Sethi's Just Books on NDTV-Profit on 17 Aug 6.30 pm (will confirm this date closer to the time). Watch this space. We talked about 3 Zakia Mansion, the writing of fiction and non-fiction, etc. And in another bid at merciless self-promotion, here's a pic of the mumbai launch.

Two hours with Raghu Rai

2008-07-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

I was in Mumbai last week, and went into that gorgeous place, the NGMA opposite Regal, as I had 2 hours to kill between things. First I had a dilemma – I have two hours in this area – should I rush off to Churchgate and eat the gossamer chicken puffs (sans masala, just peppery, soft chicken filling and flakiest crust) at Gaylord, or should I go buy the amazing junk jewellery at the head of Colaba Causeway (lovely steely grey pearls at a fraction of the cost of real ones)…or should I take my friend Bonnie’s advise and go see Raghu Rai’s pictures at the NGMA. Good old triangular dilemma – feed the stomach, the vanity, or the soul? Soul won, thankfully this time, poor neglected soul.
Entered the NGMA on a Wednesday afternoon, which was smart. Not a soul in there. And I love the absence of odours and noise. The place is almost a vacuum. So there’s just you and the artist’s work. Not being very big on visual art, I began to float past Raghu Rai’s pictures, eyeing the lovely soft wood bench to sit on. But I was arrested, soon enough. People have said it before, it seems as if life lies in wait for RR to happen to it. Rather than the other way round! He catches moments, expressions, motion, stillness for us. His very first picture, a patient, sweet donkey, from the front – makes a slim line of a picture. I’ve always loved that creature, the donkey. Never known it from close, though. Not even a nodding or braying acquaintance, or a kicking one either.

There was one striking pic of sparrows on the ground, with one lone mynah amongst them. There were pictures at Benaras (a place that leaves me cold), which I drifted past.

Where I stood transfixed, and with sudden tears in my eyes, was his pictures of musicians – some of our greats. He has caught them and portrayed them in that state where they are looking so completely lost in their own world. It was like they were in the act of giving birth, I tell you, or being birthed themselves. This sense is particularly heightened with the almost clinical and humbly non-invasive side-presence of disciples or accompanists or instruments like tanpuras - looking like mid-wives and attendants and instruments all quietly focused on the act of assisting birth. There was Mallikarjun Mansur, sitting crosslegged, looking up to the sky, totally immersed. Surrounded by disciples. There was Kishori, in a state of near agony, only her tanpura stem showing. There was Bhimsen, almost wailing, that face that I love so much just barely in the frame. There was Vilayat, hugging his sitar. MS Subbalaxmi, delivering her music up to divinity. Stunning stuff.

On the topmost level were some quirky pics, that made you smile, stand back, wonder at the moment. The topmost level is an odd place, acoustically. It’s like the Gol Gumbaz gallery (which I visited every year as a kid – my great-grand-mother lived in Bijapur). Your every step echoes 7 times. Takak..kak-kak-kak-kak-kak-kak. I would have tried to whisper to see if that too carried to the other end of the dome, a la Gol Gumbaz. But there was no one to do it with. Couldn’t ask the bored looking guard to be my accomplice in that experiment, could I? Maybe I could have. He would have been less bored, then.
****

Scribbling in Books

2008-07-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Inverting the myth that all good readers keep books in a pristine, antiseptic and haloed condition.

Most of us have been brought up to respect books. Or better still, Respect Books. This includes, not just respecting the knowledge/information/understanding contained in a book, but also treating the actual object with much reverence, particularly never touching a book with your feet, a uniquely Indian and great concept. Of course, in those times, one must remember, you didn’t have books that you wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, forget with your feet!

The other injunctions about books that we grew up with: never ever mark on a book with a pencil or pen, never fold corners of pages, always use a bookmark, never lay the book face down, never read while eating…So ingrained were these warnings and lessons, that when you borrowed a book from the library and found someone had underlined sentences, or put little exclamation marks on the side, or scribbled in the book, and obviously not used a bookmark, you thought to yourself, with great disapproval (and in the school-marmish jargon your teachers brought you up on): “Speaks of this person’s Character”.

Books that one borrowed from circulating libraries sometimes had all kinds of things boldly scrawled on them. A favourite was: ‘Want to know my name? Go to page 9’. On page 9, you were sent ahead on this search to page 23, and so on and so forth. Till on the last mentioned page, this wag ended with: ‘Mind Your Own Business’ – the ultimate put-down of the ‘seventies.

The first time that I encountered this, it was as heady as (later) meeting someone who smoked more than nicotine sitting right there in Vaishali. Here was a total rebel - scribbling with sketch pen on a Book, and drawing you into a treasure hunt that ended in a smart slap in the face. Subversion couldn’t get better than this, at the age of 12. It had to be tried out. On the next Nancy Drew book that we borrowed from the school library, three conspirators got together and pulled the same lark – only, writing in pencil, simply not daring enough to work with pen. As for the final ‘Mind Your Own Business’, we wrote it in the tiniest of tiny handwriting, so that the reader had to squint hard and hold the page to the light to decipher the words. It created major ripples and became a Topic for Assembly. The perpetrators were labeled Uncouth, Disrespectful and Most Likely to Fail in Life. We arranged our faces to look suitably shocked too. It was the year of living dangerously. We never repeated that lark again, and after a while it seemed a fairly silly and sick thing to do.

Having said that, however, many books and many years later, a case has to be made, in fact, for scribbling in books – your own books, that is. Sometimes you read a great book, the kind which makes you stop mid-read and take a long walk, or take many long breaths, the kind which gives you an ahaa moment, the kind that opens doors, touches chords. That is when I am sorely tempted to mark a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, scribble some of my reactions to it, and if there’s no bookmark at hand, turn in the corner of the page, so that I can return to that part of the book some hours, days, weeks, even years later. And this is in no way disrespectful of the book, its contents or its author, I have come to the conclusion. It is, for me, a celebration of a literary moment – when writer and reader connect, across centuries, across continents, in a recognition of some universal truth. (Go read my blog titled 'Book club babes' under the label Hit and Run)

Now freed from the notion that people who mark books are enemies of various goddesses of learning, I love borrowing and reading books that are well-thumbed and similarly marked by other people. It gives you pause to think and wonder at what struck the previous reader, drawing one more person into your relationship with the book, a kind of silent and virtual book club.

A note of caution, though: I recently met a rather opinionated person who talked loudly about a famous 19th century psychologist, dismissing his entire body of work, saying: “He’d got it all wrong, he completely missed the point. He knew nothing about human behaviour. And I have written this in my book.” “You’ve written these opinions about him in a book?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. And striding to his bookshelf, he pulled out the autobiography of the great man, opened it to a page he’d marked (by turning in the corner) and jabbed at the margin. Here he had scribbled in red pen: “He is ignorant and wrong!!”

That’s not quite what one means by writing in your book!

However, I would still strongly defend and support the impulse to scribble on (your own) books. While you may have been brought up to believe that it is a heinous crime to make any mark on a printed book, do try it the next time you read something that touches you deeply and you want to frame the feeling that the words set off in you. Even a faint little line in the margin is a good starting point. From there, you can graduate to underlining parts, and thence to scribbling little keywords, phrases, that record your specific reaction to the passage that you have read. Believe me, the writer, dead or alive, will be honoured to know that somewhere, a reader is connecting so well with his/her work.

Whatever you were brought up to believe, putting markings on a book is really not the same thing as scratching a heart and an arrow and Rahul loves Shweta on the Taj Mahal (the monument, not the hotel).

book club babes!

2008-07-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

i dont know if they'll like being called babes - but by way of explanation, i must say that it's a term of endearment with me. i call my nieces babes, i refer to my mother as a very funny and smart babe (may she rest in peace as well as fiesty joy!). so, girls of the juhu book club. for me the word babe is someone who is funny, smart, has much to say for herself and is totally comfortable in her shoes, and is full of grace too. mrs sheth (senior) was the leading babe, i tell you. soft spoken, focused, graceful, and articulate (and she loved my book!).
3 ZM was the book-of-the-month at this book club based in jvpd, mumbai. and i was invited to go chat with them on the 22nd of July. what was wonderful for me as the writer about this 2 hour session (punctuated by outstanding banana and walnut cake and sandwiches) was the sheer energy in that room. they had read the book, marked passages (go read my piece called Scribbling in Books - Under the Isnt it Odd label), were quoting from it, arguing about characters and situations, open about their admiration and quite open about what didnt work for them too. while no doubt, as geeta sehgal who first contacted me, said that it's a great experience to have the author of the book present to interact with, for me, it was hugely illuminating for me to hear so many well-read and articulate voices saying so much about 3 Zakia Mansion.
thanks babes!

My buddy Tanvi

2008-07-11T00:27:00.000-07:00

Wanted to read this out at my book launch in Pune where she came to read, but it was not the time and place (after all, that was all about ME ME ME and ZM ZM ZM). So here it is. Those of you who dont know her, get to know her a little here; those of you who like her already, like her some more, now. This first appeared in a magazine called Man's World (page: Company of Women).
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"Isn't that Tanvi Azmi?"
When I tell Tanvi that Man's World wants to feature her in their July issue - and can she please stop wandering around and sit down in one place and talk to me - she pulls a panic face. When I tell her they're sending someone to photograph her, she groans something like "Mummy" and buries her head in a cushion. Then she busies herself with a 3000-piece jig-saw spread out in front of us. It's a black-and-white Escher illustration - Tanvi's favourite kind of challenge. "A real sadist has thought up this jig-saw," she mutters happily as we pore over our two separate corners.

She looks up briefly at me and mumbles: "Write na whatever you can think of."

I can think of heaps.

Tanvi and I have spent the last 15 years talking non-stop, laughing recklessly, eating too much, observing mercilessly, arguing gently, crossword solving furiously, weeping occasionally, ranting full-throatedly, and exchanging the deepest of secrets - to the exclusion of anyone else - husbands, etc too. A tarot reader recently declared us soul-sisters. We didn't need her to tell us that. We kind of suspected it the day we met in a tiny laundry in Juhu, circa 1987.

Say Tanvi's name out loud, and most people, men and women, will light up and say - hey what happened to her - why don’t we see more of her. In the eighties she made waves playing a young widow in Vijaya Mehta's Raosaheb; she was much loved by 9 o'clock TV audiences as Dr Madhuri in Lifeline and as Ghalib's wife opposite Naseeruddin Shah. Several small but significant roles in films followed. More recently she's been the sweet-funny woman with three improbably hulking kids in the TV serial Family No.1. The ultimate compliment from audiences: There are suddenly a whole lot of little girls named Tanvi in the world.

Even for films that bombed, audiences and critics have always had something good to say about her - and often they'll say: what was she doing in a film like that. What indeed. Here then, possibly, is Tanvi's fatal flaw: an exasperating lack of ambition; an inability-unwillingness to move in for the kill. There's been a long phase when she's taken the path of least resistance - avoiding out and out duds, but taking up many roles by default. I'm tempted to say she has also indulged in a Garbo-like evasion of the Press - but she'll just guffaw at the comparison.

Whether she likes it or not, Tanvi's in the news again. She's just back from a frantically-paced shoot of a Mira Nair film in which she plays the mother of an American-Muslim boy who disappears on 9/11. Mira Nair has gone on record to say that Tanvi is a hugely talented actor who submits to the director without a trace of any ego or vanity. Typically, she has returned from the shoot without a single picture of herself - not a still or a polaroid, when 100s of pictures were generated every day. Her cinematographer husband Baba Azmi, just smiles at this, not surprised at all. I want to whopp her on the head, though. Why, damn it, I ask her. She tries to get away with "I hate going around saying 'hey look look'. Finally it's my work that should speak…." You're a pathological underplayer, I say.

She can't help it; she's got it from both sides of the family. Her mother Usha Kiron, once a reigning star of Hindi and Marathi films, is known to have lent a helping hand even in the costume department on the sets of a film in which she was the heroine! As Usha Kiron says in her autobiography: "It just did not occur to me to make a fuss on the sets. The work had to get done, that's all there was to it."

Tanvi's father, Dr. Manohar Kher, once Dean of Sion Hospital and a quiet, tireless social worker, routinely deflects any attempt to honour him or his work. The dapper, handsome 'man in white' will simply give you an inscrutable smile if you try to draw him out. Tanvi's brother Adwait Kher, a man of many parts - restauranteur, model, athlete, antique collector, music buff - is happiest puttering around the old bazaars of Nashik. The only big noise that the extended family of professionals makes is when they get together to play Pictionary. Then all hell breaks loose. That's when no one's modest, quiet or reserved. It usually ends in pistols at dawn.

The phone rings and Tanvi's reminded that she has work to do. "I just havetohaveto watch this by this evening," she says - and we settle down to watch Bergman's Autumn Sonata. A Mumbai stage director hopes to cast her in an English stage version of the film. How we watch the film is completely representative of how we are. We are both deeply affected and depressed by the film and its performances and especially its ending. Both of us hear huge echoes within. However, from the first or second frame, Tanvi reaches out for her box of tissues, the tears pouring, face a deep red, sniffing hugely. As for me, not a tear manifests itself - a Siberian winter sets into my body. When it's over we call up for some ice cream - the only logical thing to do.

Tanvi has always been extremely chary of doing theatre. Her favourite imitation of herself is one of her scenes in the Marathi play Purush. She was meant to stride on to stage, point accusingly at the villain and shout threateningly: "Gulabrao!" The way she tells it, she shuffled in on knocking knees, broke out into a cold sweat and put out a shaking hand that promptly locked in the accusing gesture and refused to unlock. Along with this, her tongue went dry and defiant and refused to say 'Gulabrao'…it came out something like "Wuaabaaow"!

But none of this is in evidence when she's shooting for a film. On the sets she is focused, absorbing, thinking and has the fantastic ability to watch herself from the outside - a director's delight. Most film units - cast and crew - fall a little in love with her. She is never in prima donna mode and makes friends easily up and down the hierarchy. Several years ago, shooting in South India, an elegant producer-director team took a terribly dim view of her wandering off on a girls' outing to buy glass bangles and chappals with a "mere third assistant director for godsake." Of course, the third AD and Tanvi continue to be great friends. The cast and crew of Mira Nair's film too, going by the hugely affectionate things they have scrawled on a book that they gifted her - fell in love a lot.

On Nair's shoot in May she had several whammies to deal with. Her father-in-law, Kaifi Azmi, with whom she had an extremely loving relationship, had passed away the day before. She was running a temperature of a 103 degrees. She was jet-lagging. She knew it was a highly-concentrated 5-day shoot. She was more-than-aware that the world would soon watch this performance. Her character was a woman knotted in grief and hope and anger. The family on whom the story is based was present on the sets. Tanvi was constantly aware that she was playing out emotions that they actually go through every day of their lives. For a completely non-manipulative person and actor, that's a huge onus.

The only time Tanvi's been "so clever" - as her sister-in-law Shabana Azmi likes to point out - is in a photo that's from 1969. There's Lata Mangeshkar looking indulgently at her - and there's Tanvi, who's rearranged her smile ever so neatly, to cover up the fact that there are two front teeth missing. (Tanvi and Shabana share a relationship that ranges from messing around in the kitchen to singing Faiz together - rather well, at that.)

Back in Mumbai, Tanvi indulges in her favourite pastime of ducking the Press; she simply rolls up her sleeves and gets on with life. My theory - that most beautiful women are languidly used to having the world attend upon them - has suffered a dent since I met her. If there's no able-bodied watchman to do it, I have seen her routinely do things like hoist a 20 litre can of mineral water off the ground, turn it over in mid-air and place it deftly over its dispenser. At such times I gape. And she grins: "I'm very strong, ya."

Tanvi, most incongruously, weeps while watching films like Abyss or Cliffhanger - while I laugh, scoff, yawn. But for weeks she sat by the dying Kaifi Azmi's bedside and kept up the chatter and the smiles, keeping the tears firmly at bay. She'd hold his frail old hand and they'd mock arm-wrestle with each other. And she'd let him win. She's very strong, ya.
c. Gouri Dange

Filmography:

Films
Pyari Behena; Bapu
Raosaheb; Vijaya Mehta
Tera Naam Mera Naam; Ramesh Talwar
Darr; Yash Chopra
Akele Hum Akele Tum; Mansoor Khan
Dushman; Tanuja Chandra
Rajo Ko Rani Sey Pyar Ho Gaya; Rajiv Kumar
Mela; Dharmesh Darshan
Dhai Akshar Prem Kay; Raj Kanwar
Vidheyan; Adoor Gopalkrishnan
English, August; Dev Benegal
Saatwan Aasmaan; Mahesh Bhatt
Aks; Rakesh Mehra

TV Serials
Lifeline; Vijaya Mehta
Mirza Ghalib; Gulzar
Lohit Kinare; Kalpana Lajmi
Zameen Aasman; Tanjua Chandra
Satya-wa-ti; Prathamesh Sawant
Family No 1; Sameer Kulkarni