Snip-pop-pets

* There are fewer sights in cricket that has the purists' eyes playing pinball and causing technical-minded coaches to cover the eyes of their pupils (side-dish: if one of the pupils was called "Iris" and she had a humourous disposition, the optician would be even more pleased) than that of Shivnarine Chanderpaul facing André Nel. But both have had reasonable successes of varying degrees showing that not everyone needs to stick to a mould to get to the highest level.

* Randomly riding the channel waves yesterday, I paused to see the curious sight of even the outtakes at the end of a dubbed film having Hindi voiceovers. That's a complete job by the dubbing people. Well done.

* The skies darkened, the wind picked up, leaves danced. Rain pattered in, impromptu pools formed. Still something was missing. The pre-monsoon showers were a little incomplete in their effect. Then in answer, a transformer blew and the lights went out. Ah! The monsoon is knocking at the gates.

The Corpses of Roads

There is something rotten about the roads of Pune.

Quite a lot actually. And despite repeatedly lamenting the state of the city (indeed, all our cities), the mind is not sated. Complaining doesn't help, but atleast it quietens the frustration for a while.

Riding through Bombay two weeks ago was an exercise in going to the trenches. I hope there will be a "better tomorrow" and all this inconvenience will be worth something. As soon as I was back in Pune, the trenches had gone, but there was quicksand in place. A highly viscous mass, choking and choked with guttural sounds to show. I didn't know why this last year has seemed more vicious than preceding years in feeling the strangulation of traffic on the roads, but I am a traffic-asthmatic now. The open roads induce a serious claustrophobia; almost every inch is packed with motor vehicles; each inch that has escaped annexation will lose that status the next moment.

A statistic appeared in the newspaper that may explain this: apparently, the population of vehicles in this city has gone up by 35%. The booming second-hand car market, the rise in affordability of vehicles, the availability of more (larger and powerful) models and the continuance of a lack of any mass transport alternative have ganged up together. For several people, it is a great ambition to possess a car, something their fathers would never have been able to contemplate so easily. But with bigger paypackets, loans and "special offers", purchasing a car is within grasp. One can hardly blame anyone for doing so and why should they be prevented? So anyone who wants to buy a car today can do so and any director/ad-film-maker/actor who cherishes a dream of working with Amitabh Bachchan can get him on board. Truly, it is the time for fulfilling fantasies.

We do have a significant number of vehicles on the streets. I'm willing to guess that most middle-class families in Pune have more than one vehicle in their name. A count of vehicles in my own apartment revealed that there are 6 cars and 10 two-wheelers for 7 flats. I can hardly blame anyone else; we ourselves have > 1 vehicle. Pune has always been a two-wheeler city and almost everyone who has to leave the house daily for work or studies uses or expects to use their own vehicle. This could directly be related to the poor standard of buses and also the relatively short distances one has to travel. Hence it becomes more convenient to employ one's own vehicle. If I had to take advantage of "flexi-time" at work, I would have to use my own gaaDi; plus there is just one bus (possessing an indifferent frequency) plying that route.

Since none of us will shy away from purchasing vehicles just because the per capita road space dwindles everyday and parking spots don't expand infinitely, we will sacrifice long-term for short-term. It is tough to start via individuals - why should I sacrifice when others won't? It is the price for the city's success and it's hard to leave the party.

There were many noises months back when Pune Municipal Corporation members wanted to mimic the great advances made in Bogota, Colombia where a professor-turned-mayor turned things around there. "If it can happen in that drug-cartel infested city where the respect for law is thought to be minimal, why not here?" is the feeling. However, the mayorship there has a greater concentration of powers and it lacked only the will. Here, the responsiblities are so divided among the executive & the political authorities, not to mention infighting & publicity hungry MPs, that both the will & wisdom is hard to find.

Nor do ordinary people care much if they can achieve their small goals of going from place A to B irrespective of the means. My veins & arteries are going to pop one day from the routine mania of the traffic violations; the behaviour is downright criminal.

I think I am a fool to feel so wretchedly about all this while others nonchalantly breeze through. Every trip through the killing fields scrapes my confidence a little; the roses of my brow are replaced by pessimistic thorns just on setting wheel to tarmac. There are three large buildings coming up on the road where my place of work is - that stretch of road used to be among the best in the city. It is impossible to imagine exactly how bad things are going to be when the thousands of residents/office workers of those buildings will start to pour in. Perhaps it will be like drowning amidst the salty ocean after the scuba gear starts to go phut. My empty rant's genesis is mostly from impotent rage and from a sense of having lent a hand to the massacre.

To bear or not to bear, that is the question.

Blogstars

I remain surprised that there seem to be no bloggers among "celebrities" (not bloggers who are celebrities, but noted people who blog :-) ). I'm sure if the likes of Rahul Dravid or Harsha Bhogle or Ruskin Bond or Upamanyu Chatterjee or even the juniors Deora/Pilot were to blog, they would find their blogs being subscribed to in large numbers.

Why would their blogs be instantly successful? Because readers are thirsty for inside information, backroom insights, perhaps even mundane trivial peeks into their worlds. In fact anyone who provides these tidbits (for which the mainstream press wouldn't be able to spare column inches) would find a large audience. I'm sure the likes of Amit Varma and his fellow Cricinfo bloggers notice a surge in their page views whenever they're covering a cricket match live or are in a position to talk about the game from much closer. (Which is a good time to ask: why has the Cricinfo blog never returned from vacation?)

Some of these celebs have columns or are interviewed often. Those are usually along set lines. Many columns, especially the sports ones, are obviously ghost-written (imagine Javed Miandad using all those fancy words) and run-of-the-mill, so those have lost both credibility & ability to interest. The agents of some of the more articulate ones may well point them in the direction of the blog. Blogs are less polished and raw which works in their favour.

Two issues: quality and credibility. Blogs need to be updated at a consistent frequency and must not seem to be contrived or even too politically correct. The content also has to offer novelty and issues that aren't in the forefront of mainstream media. I'm sure these "celeb" bloggers would make money from selling adspace on their blogs.

Of course, the online world is notorious for attracting riff-raff (just look at the comments left behind on online articles in major portals). But it represents a unprecedented opportunity to get close to fans and others by pushing content instead of the regular media extracting it from them.

I haven't checked it in ages, but Bob Woolmer's site used to have a semi-blog like page where he'd post notes on the Pakistan team. I am really surprised no big name has actually plunged into this space (I don't know of anyone famous doing so in other parts of the world as well) This would be a little different that say a "News" page on their personal websites or an occasional entry. It has to be frequent, informative and from the heart.

Perhaps these people would prefer the relative security and safety (not to mention the better returns) of a newspaper/website column. I don't say that the blogging community needs such people to raise the profile of blogging in general or that their type is sorely missed. It's just that as I said at the beginning, I'm surprised no one seems to plunged into it yet. Or perhaps they have done so (even anonymously) and I haven't realised yet!

Comic. Strip?

I saw the Rituparno Ghosh directed (and authored ;-) ) Raincoat this weekend. Quite a decent film and I think George's review of the film perfectly summarises it.

I am no Aishwarya Rai fan. I don't hate her or something, but I have yet to be dazzled by her acting skills. I admit to getting a little hot under the collar when people went gaga the week she turned 30. What I'm about to write here is a little unlike me, but I'm sure many of you will recognise the pragmatism in these words.

Ms. Rai is never going to hit it big in the acting registers. She has had her innings for over 5 years now. She has had several major acting roles, opportunities that have been seldom offered to better actresses. Mainly, she has been incapable of being even average, barring very, very few sparks. Just look at the mess she made of a reasonably decent role in Raincoat. So objectively speaking, she is unlikely to grow into a better actress.

OTOH, Ms. Rai's agent has been successful in hoisting her onto the leading US talk shows. This is obviously a well-thought out strategy to project her in Hollywood. But Ms. Rai's disinclinations towards making a spectacle of herself (if you know what I mean) seem to be a crippling roadblock. The problem is that no casting director is going to hire her on the basis of her histrionic skills (especially if s/he saw Devdas). So what's left is the "Joey" tactic: take it off.

I'm not being s3xist or anything. Frankly, she is not going to make it otherwise. Perhaps she should cast an eye homewards, at the careers of sundry Koppikars, Aroras and Dhupias. She was lucky enough to not have to require such steps at home, but if one takes a hard look, Hollywood's not all that different.

Surely, it's none of my business, but I'm really getting tired of these endless promotions. They hardly lead anywhere. I wish the lady would decide how ambitious she really is. One way or the other, please put a lid on these "Cannes" ooh-la-lahs.

Bean Talk

A glaring hole in my TV timetable was pointed out by a visiting niece and I have done much to rectify that in the last couple of weeks. Mr. Bean shows up every night on weekdays at 8:30 pm (preceded by one of those candid camera shows called Just For Gags, a Quebecois show). All this on POGO, a channel that didn't show up earlier on my radar.

The thing about the Mr. Bean series apart from the brilliant acting and the situations is how the writers never lose grip on the characterisation. Mr. Bean isn't all an imbecile, he just has a radically different way of approaching things and the writers always keep him true to his illogic. They don't try and wrench sympathy from the viewers as may have been the easy way by showing him as an idiot. Mr. Bean is selfish, sometimes mean, not above ripping off the head of his only friend, the emaciated teddy, to make a paintbrush and is easily tempted into cheating.

For anyone who would find it hard to believe that Rowan Atkinson is capable of playing anything else (such is his body language), I recommend the equally brilliant Blackadder series. The first Blackadder is a little like Mr. Bean, but later versions become this suave, cynical, canny character, far removed from Mr. Bean.

The team of Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Howard Goodall have had a tremendous influence on some of the popular English films in the last 15 years. Especially the Curtis brand of romantic comedies. However stereotypical, they never disappoint.

Gift horses

Last evening, there was no doubt that Manchester United were robbed of the F.A. Cup by Arsenal. The problem was that Manchester United opened the doors & windows, threw the keys away and thought they were living in a place like Shani Singnapur.

Groundhog Day

Today's Indian Express reports that soon we may have direct air links between Iceland and India. That gladdens me because I have a strange fascination for Iceland.

The direct, single cause for this fascination was a spy thriller called Running Blind by Desmond Bagley. This book was set among the lava lumps of Iceland and the description of the landscape (which isn't always covered by snow contrary to popular perception), the geysirs, the desolation and how all of this has shaped the people of the land somehow attracted me to Iceland. I have always nurtured a secret desire to visit that country and perhaps a direct air link would come in useful :-)

This Icelandic interest had one amusing consequence. The book describes how many Icelanders followed the "Germanic" system of naming where a suffix is added to the father's name to produce the last name of a person. For instance, if Magnus had a son named Gunnar, the son's name would become Magnus Gunnarsson Gunnar Magnusson. In turn if Gunnar had a daughter called Elin, she would be called Elin Magnusdottir Elin Gunnarsdottir.

Apparently, this was quite common among the Scandinavian people and would cause a lot of headaches in managing records, for a single dynastic surname helps as seen in other countries. From what I learnt, countries like Sweden actually offered people incentives to abstain from this practice and stick to a single surname.

I happened to write in to Wordsmith during a week when the theme to their Daily Word was "patronyms" (names derived from the name of a father, ancestor or a family name). One reader, Willie Velloso, an 84 year old Brazilian from Florida mistakenly thought I was an Icelander and told me of his own interests in that land. He'd never been there himself, and was giving up all hope of doing so now.

In closing he mentioned it was unusually cold there, 4°C and asked me not to laugh at these "high" temperatures. I shivered just reading that!

More analogies

I don't know why I have the urge to compare key figures from English football and Indian cricket, but after the last one, here's another: Wayne Rooney and Virender Sehwag.

Perhaps it is their attitudes to their respective games that is identical. Both go hard at the ball and have the powers to come up with outrageous results. Temperamentally, they are poles apart with Rooney being so much more combustible. But they have set themselves up as the key men to provide victories to their respective teams.

I had occasion to compare English football and Indian cricket about 4 to 5 years ago when both teams hired foreign coaches and also had captains at the helm who were both always criticised for being both special-and-limited: Beckham's prowess from the deadball and also drawing flak for being a one-foot wonder, while Ganguly's fluid timing and lack of onside ability. Fill in the other details about temparament and affairs.

Not sure Dada has "Dona" mispelled in English on his arm though.

CD Conservation

Is the whole dangling-CD-in-vehicle a very Indian phenomenon? Is it because we have an innate inclination to recycle? I can't think that any other place in the world would see a compact disc serving as a festoon after it's finished spinning in the drive and been cast out.

Does anything become obsolete in the Indian ecology? (Apart from cheetahs and seemingly tigers of course.)

Jolly good fellow

Members from the paternal side of my family have always had a rich store of anecdotes to narrate. So when uncles come visiting and strike up old memories, there is a lot of merriment to be gained.

One of father's cousins, a former Professor of English and someone with a fleeting involvement in local politics, provided this real-life tale:

Many years ago, a constituency in the Nagercoil area came up for elections. The two usual suspects, both lawyers, were up against each other. Let's call one Raman and the other Krishnan. Krishnan's supporters were quick to begin campaigning, and overnight a large sign appeared on a wall in the main town square. It read:

Should you vote for that drunkard Raman?

The night-time inclinations of Lawyer Raman weren't hidden from the townsfolk as he was an old local. But what was ironic was that everyone knew Krishnan was no saint either. The staff of Raman scratched their heads over an appropriate response: merely defacing the sign was a sure provocation to cause fighting in the streets and wasn't considered an equal riposte. At last someone had a brainwave.

Next day, an equally large sign appeared right below the previous one. It read:

Why not vote for the other drunkard then?

The old professor also told us another one, an American joke I hadn't heard before.

A man was filling out an application. He raced through the Name, Gender, Age, Address fields before hitting a section about his parents' details. He wrote down his Father's name and paused at "Age (if alive)". Thinking it over, he carefully wrote: 128. For that's what his papa would've been if he was still alive.

CCCLXV diem: annus blogus - III

I lopped off part of the right margin, but the text can be extrapolated. The last word on the 2nd last line is "paper" :-) Note to graphologists: I'm not sure if this is a proper sample of my handwriting given that I didn't write this in ideal conditions.

Previous annual commemorations

* 2004 - the Nadsat Post
* 2003 - the Boustrophedon Post
* - and for historical reasons, the début post

Coach Coach Hota Hai

Question? Answer.

BTW, who is the unfortunate coach of the Railways Ranji Team? Think of the possible ribbing he must be getting by being a railway coach. (or has this been pointed out before?)

Foucault's Code and the Da Vinci Pendulum

Finally managed to get this post up.

Good Heavens

If you thought only mere mortals suffered the mundaneness of the ritual called "appraisals", Nikhil shows you that it's all not hunky dory up in the celestial realms as well. Read A Celestial Appraisal (Note: Nikhil writes mainly in Marathi).

Animal

It is cruel to ask people to come back to work full tilt after a three day weekend. We need atleast a half-day to ease back in - like dipping a shivering toe in an Arctic lake prior to the plunge. [This last statement doesn't apply to Vinayak - he just spends his vacations diving into them.]

Love in the time of the Emergency

I watched Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi with about 30 other people in a cinema theatre meant for about 100. The rest of the potential cinema population was presumably watching Kaal and I hope that film was as interesting as the Sudhir Mishra one was to me.

The way an ordinary person of my profile in India learns about history is by chance. Perhaps you will meet someone knowledgeable about the past. Or you will stumble by a book or even a film that fills in areas of the canvas you didn't even know existed. For instance, I got to learn some of the most basic facts about the events of 1947 from Freedom at Midnight. The events of the Emergency of 1975 may be as remote to me as say the Mughal era; in fact I may know more about the latter. So it isn't surprising that a film like Hazaaron... won't set box office registers ringing, but it did set my mind aflutter.

The film is essentially a love story (however trite that may sound) set before & during the Emergency. Mishra doesn't go about analysing and dissecting the tumult of the times, but simply chooses to explore how all that affects his characters. Siddharth (Kay Kay), a radical from a wealthy family, Geeta (Chitrangada Singh), educated abroad and quietly worshipful of Siddharth, and Vikram (Shiny Ahuja), openly in love with Geeta and who "wants a way in". Into the power structure that is.

Threading through a Naxalite group in Bihar, commercialisation of palaces, venality, crime, supplication - the usual stuff of politics, then and now - we follow these three for about 8 years and get a sense of how it all must have been (and perhaps is). It is far removed from my current reality, but who's to say?

The story isn't of a kind that has a definite beginning and end, but describes a phase. No loss-of-innocence fable as well; almost of all the players know the score and feel the need for survival very strongly.

I was a little puzzled at the ending though, mainly with the abrupt transformation of Siddharth, for which I didn't see any adequate explanation. Sudhir Mishra wants to show a certain loss of morals in some as well as a contradictory strengthening of it among others simultaneously, so perhaps why the film ended the way it did. There is however, a sense of closure with what happens to Geeta & Vikram. The cynical & caustic imprint begins right at the opening lines of the film where the filmmaker follows a stock shot of the "tryst with destiny" speech by mentioning the technical fact that not the whole world was asleep when India woke to light and freedom - it was 2:30 pm in parts of America.

The performances are first-rate, and the meatiest parts are gobbled by Shiny Ahuja & Chitrangada Singh. Some of my friends didn't want to watch this film because of Ahuja after they apparently walked out of a screening of Sins (their explanation for being there was that they "strayed into it") in 15 minutes after watching him. If that was the case, well, he has paid for those and recovered his name here. Chitrangada Singh's uncanny resemblance to Smita Patil has already found mention in many places, and it is to her credit that her acting stands up to those levels of quality. Several good cameos including ones by Sandeep Kulkarni & Saurabh Shukla add ballast. This film could've only succeeded by such good actors supporting the storyline.

Much appreciated also was the score by Shantanu Moitra, especially with man yeh baa.nwraa. Trivia notes existed: the dedication to Mishra's former wife, the late Renu Saluja, a tiny appearance by Mishra himself and two fleeting references to "Ahuja" and "Tarneja" in the film being the most noteworthy.

The film is believably "Indian", respecting the diverse nature of players in such stories. There are no concessions to help you understand some of the subtleties, which helps the elasticity of this two hour film. All in all, quite recommended if you have the inclinations for such stories.

Drop out

It is a sign of the times that when I'm watching a film where the heroine has just opened the taps at full blast in preparation to take a bath, all I can think of is does she really need to use so much water? Especially, when the scene cuts and I realise that no one has turned the tap off. (In case your imagination is getting a little "steamy", it was My Fair Lady and quite a chaste scene, I'm afraid).

It also wasn't the best day to look expectantly at the dripping tap after having just had a haircut. Later in the day, noting the further deterioration of several roads in the areas I was visiting after a while was saddening and maddening.

Bijlii, SaDak, Paani for us too.