Every incident is a colour, and adds colour to your life too. In that sense, every day of your life is colourful, some you like, others you don't and yet others you don't fancy.
My days are either full of events or eventful or sometimes both. Today was both. I read a bluegreen mail from a deep purple person first thing in the morning, and was led, almost instinctively in response, to write a deep aquamarine one. Then up popped a soft yellow boy, who always tells me what he calls black humour laced tales, but I invariably find them wildly turquoise.
Post a quick chat with a sky coloured almost twin over the phone over some selfish business, I received a sms from this exquisitely soft chocolate boy that there is a music concert happening at another part of the town. Yet another sms, this time from a solidly grey friend enquiring if we could catch up, I had to respond negatively for I was already on my way to the concert.
I am right now afflicted by the sleepy, smoky, silvery grey turning towards nothingly black. Tomorrow morning will begin with the egg yolky yellow of course.
I have not written on academic issues on my blog till date. That is for the simple reason that I do not want my blog to remain academic, that is, irrelevant. Professional academics, particularly social scientists, have a tendency to take themselves too seriously, conveniently glossing over the fact that that too few people actually read their works. They get fat salaries and perks, attend fancy conferences and fetishize a concept called peer review. I call it conceit of expertise.
Good works, I strongly believe, communicates to a range of readers. I shall try to illustrate this point with an example of two ideas on, and of, history prevalent in Bengal in early twentieth century. One of them was eventually taken up by the academia and glorified as more desirable and the other, although subsequently discarded to some extent, has again been picked up, mercifully, in recent times by the academics.
Let us begin with the one that has been championed by the mainstream academia for the better part of the twentieth century. You find a most lucid exposition of this method in Nirad Chaudhury's autobiography. This is the classical liberal method which assumes that the subject of history should ideally be political in the statist sense of the term such as the rise and fall of colonialism and nationalism. Second, methodologically, it assumes as though the writer of history actually stands outside history, like an observer walking by a river and watching the ebb and tide of time flow, without himself being influenced by the currents in any way whatsoever. Third, it focuses on the exceptional, and the definitive, at the cost of the uneventful and the everyday. Finally, it takes the truth claim of history very seriously, hoping that if the historian can, hypothetically speaking, leave all her biases out, the truth about the past can be reconstructed in an authentic manner.
I was under the impression that this positivist notion of history was perhaps the only one available in early twentieth century Bengal. It so turns out that I was horribly wrong. Advaita Mallabarman, the author of Titas Ekti Nadir Naam (A river called Titas) operated with a very different idea of history, one that is very close to what we call social history today. It is so powerful that I am tempted to translate the whole paragraph.
" Titas is a rather commonplace rivulet. It finds mention in no book of history, nor in any account of the rise and fall of dynasties. The blood of two warring parties has never tainted the calm waters of Titas. But is it really true that Titas has no history?
Titas indeed provides no material for treatises that swells one's chest in pride. However, many histories of maternal affection,fraternal warmth and the love of womenfolks, remain buried along its banks. Some of us are aware of these histories, most are not. Yet these histories are true. Titas' banks have seen many tales of humanity and inhumanity unfold along their length. The traces of these histories have lost themselves in the sands of time, superseded perhaps by new waves of stories piled up by Titas herself. The old tales, however, remain dormant within the deeper recesses of Titas. She may or may not decide to open them up for public display. The public may not even want to see them open up. But remain they do. They cannot be inscribed on banana leaves or papers, but remain engraved on a far more durable register. These histories are eternal, as secret as the truth but as sensitive as the wind. Who says the banks of Titas are bereft of history?"
I am not capable of bringing out even half of the force with which Mallabarman articulates a whole new notion of social history in this paragraph. Ritwik Ghatak, the filmmaker, made a whole movie based on the book and you'll do well to see it for yourself. The lyricism of the work is not even my focus here. I rather want to draw your attention to the kind of histories Mallabarman is talking about. Histories of affection, of fraternity, of love and of everyday life, of the people who do not take part in wars and stay far away from the fields of war and politics. Histories of emotion, in other words, and histories buried in layers, waiting to be dug out, heard out, not with institutional knowledge but with empathy and sensitivity of a friend, or a brother, or lover or a son.
The difference between these two ideas of history, and of doing history, could not have been atarker. Interesting isn't it, this process of these two entirely opposite versions of history vying for the attention of the informed Bengali mind in the early twentieth century and eventually one of them taking over the institutionalized academia, and the other being discarded for good? The positivist has clearly pushed the empathetic out of the professional academia that certifies what history, and history writing, is all about.
I do not have the knowledge nor the space to present a comprehensive account of this process. However, the end result has been there for all of us to see. We academics have turned ourselves into retailers of historical truths. I am ashamed of this painful legacy. Thankfully during the last few years some of my seniors have realized this and are trying to return to the empathetic. In doing so, however, they tend to uncritically discard the positivist and the factual altogether. I wonder whether we do not need a more balanced negotiation between the empathetic and the positivist. Let us wait and see how, and to what extent, they learn to live with each other.
Rukun Advani is the most unsung prose stylist in India. A few months ago I had said this to one of my most favourite teachers, who is also a good friend of Rukun Advani, and it is time I said this in public. It took me many years to get hold of a copy of Beethoven among the cows, but I have alsways followed his column Loose Cannon, thanks to the delightful chance that I was living in South India those days. To all those to whom Rukun Advani sounds like a rather unfamiliar name, I suggest go get hold of a copy of Betthoven among the cows or come borrow it from me, and then I am sure there will not remain much to disagree. This is a most delightfully all over the place kind of a novel, one that celebrates the autonomy and rootedness of the human mind at the same time. I am in no mood to write a review of the book for I started this post for a very different reason.
I have lately come to know he published a small book called History from Above and Below, taking uproariously funny potshots at some of the high priests of the postmodern and postcolonial school of thought in relation to history of India in colonial times, who incidenatlly also happen to be mostly Bengali, and generally based in the US of A. This is one book I want to read right now. If any one of you out there have a copy or know anybody who does, please let me know at the earliest, as they say. If you suggest I go to a bookshop first, let me confess that that has not yielded any positive result, yet. I am ceratinly dumb, but not totally. So, all out there, help me get hold of the book please.
Today is a perfectly cold day here in Delhi. The kind of day that forces you to stay indoors and go out only for works you can no longer put off. As is my wont, I finished some paperworks for which today was the last possible day. Mercifully, people at my center and school know my nerdy ways well enough to tolerate my tantrums, so much so that they now laugh at it, more than I do myself. It is for these compassionate men and women that I still survive in this perfectly systematic world with my systematically unsystematized character and conducts, and I cannot thank them enough. You must meet the staff at my perfectly filmi center and you'll wonder how these people can be so efficient and still smile so much, and why they have not yet kicked me out for good.
We are made to stand in a queue only once in six months. A pity because it is in the queue today that I met Mr. Sujit Bose. Mr. Bose has a spine disorder of some kind, making him unable to keep standing for long. Surprisingly, nobody noticed his difficulty and he kept fidgeting but not even once asked or tried to break the queue. Gallery player that I am, I decided to hold his hand and take him right up to the fees counter, asking the prettily dressed girls to make way for him to clear his dues, which to their credit, they did. The clerks, too, cooperated, and Mr. Bose's job was done in a minute and he was free to go. On his way back, Mr. Bose pressed my hand warmly and thanked, but I forgot to ask him for his phone number. In the bargain, I almost missed a chance to make a new friend and demand to be called over for lunch, for I love my food more than anything else. Mercifully though, I have seen, in his papers, the address of his home and rest assured I am going to drop uninvited one of these days. You see I have no other option to tap him anyway, and I don't much care for manners. This self trumpeting is not so much to advertise my public spiritedness, but to ask everyone else to call me over for lunch. Now what is so wrong with that? I can't cook well, so I beg to be treated with good food, and am even ready to pay for it. By the time you all become disgusted with my relentless requests, I'll have learnt to cook, I promise.
Two more such incidents followed, one after another. I had a look at Times of India, and came across a most heartwarming piece of news. The residents of a village called Tajnagar near Gurgaon has bulit, entirely at their own expense, a whole railway station. They failed to persuade the railways authorities to install a station and had to walk or cycle six long miles to reach the nearest railway station. Two years ago they decided enough is enough and these humble agriculturists pulled in as much as 21 lakhs of Rupess and it took two years to build this new monument of love for themselves. The railways most readily agreed to halt seven trains to and fro at this new station with effect from next week.
I was deeply moved by the story, and am glad that Times of India is highlighting these achievements of ordinary men and women. We in India have a tendency to blame everything that is wrong with us to the government and politicians and do nothing for ourselves. The welfare state is a great idea and it must deliver. However, we just cannot wait for the state to do everything for those who can jolly well do it themselves. There is a word for it-entrepreneurship as also enterprise. This model does not pick a fight with the state, nor does it spare it relevant criticism. However, it is also ready to share the state's burden, and it is high time the more enlightened and enterprising among us start emulating the example of these humble farmers. They have much more to teach us in humility and enterprise than our schools and colleges and friends and so on. They teach us common sense and doabilty. They teach us to have faith in ourselves. I plan to visit Tajnagar shortly and those of you who are interested please join me. We owe these men and women a warm tribute.
Finally, in the evening I discovered a wonderfully calm and exciting song from the 1971 Hindi movie Anubhav-Koi Chup ke aake sapna shulake mujhko jaagaake bole main aa raha hoon. Geeta Dutt, Gulzaar, Kanu Ray-a combination that most of us have not heard much about but then it is never too late to get to know good things, isn't it? The song captures-let me borrow from Naipaul-an enigma of arrival, in a very different sense of course. It is melodious, soft, silken, exceedingly nostalgic and yet full of anticipation, promise yet somewhere very firmly controlled and regulated according to a rhyme and rhythm that I cannot fully comprehend but only sense from a distance, transfixed. The tune is relaxed, slow but but not sloth, and intensely sensual, and I have only rarely come across such self assured, relaxed sensuality, something that openly avows desire yet knows that desire for its own sake can also be a lovely desire, without its necessary culmination into the possession of the desired objective. It's this celebration of the desire of the moment, this unbridled longing for the lost and the promised at the same time, that I find nobody voices better than Geeta Dutt. With Asha Bhosle it is unabashed joy, and with Lata Mangeshkar it is pure serenity, but neither gives me the complexity that Geeta Dutt's voice does. I wonder why Guru and Geeta Dutt could not pull together. To me they look like a match made in heaven!
I'll now tell you why. Heaven only makes matches, we make them work here on earth. Be that as it may, I wonder what links up these three sublime experiences of mine today. One, they gave me joy and taught me that we can do many things that we never thought we are capable of, if and when the situation so demands. We are all essentially extraordinary people, we can build railway stations and sing into being experiences and emotions that sometimes the best and the most famous in the business cannot. They teach me to celebrate being myself. I say they made it such a warm day today.
In India, truth, lie, justice and so much besides is decided at the instance of the urban, upper middle class, English speaking opinion makers who run the media industry, both print and electronic. This class of articulates consider it their natural right to teach us everything, including manners. In other words, they deem it their divinely ordained mission to civilize us lesser mortals who, evidently for them, do not know how to behave. They have a model before them that they swear by, and every other model of human behavior they consider not only unacceptable, but downright disgraceful.
This morning I read a column by Vir Sanghvi, where he describes the behavior of the makers of Three Idiots, the hugely successfulrecent Hindi movie as disgraceful. These men had happened to mention the name of Chetan Bhagat, the writer whose book they have adapted for the screenplay, at the very end of the credits. Traditionally, says, Sanghvi, Hollywood movies mention the name of the writer at the beginning of the credits. Since India is going to be a superpower in the foreseeable future, and Hindi movie industry some kind of a successor of Hollywood, producers, directors and actors must emulate the Hollywood paradigm of grace and class.
I beg to disagree. Sanghvi fails to distinguish between form and content. He forecasts that in content of the Hindi movies are going to replace the global leadereship of Hollywood, perhaps in terms of viewership preference etc. It may or may not come true. I say it may not for the simple reason that these movies are not made in English and this point is self-explanatory.
But he wants the leaders of the Hindi movie industry to behave as gracefully as the heavyweights of Holloywood, as exemplified in the practice of naming the writer in the beginning of the credits, in case of adaptations, irrespective of the degree of sameness or variance from the original novel. If the name of the author comes at the end, says Sangvi, it reeks of pettiness. In other words, in form he would like the Hindi movie mandarins to emulate their Hollywood counterparts.
Let me declare, like Sanghvi, that I hold no brief for either of the parties involved in the controversy. As befitting a nobody, I have never met or spoken to the parties involved in the controversy. I have, however, read the book and found it rather ordinary and seen the movie, finding it reasonably above the ordinary but nothing remotely approaching greatness.
However, if you follow the message the movie seeks to send out, I find the behavior of its makers completely in sync with the spirit of the movie. The movie, as I read it, wishes to make the simple point that it is not necessary to follow a set of prescribed rules that has delivered success and wealth to many. The idea of what is the right way success and wealth is at the heart of all contention in the movie. The core tension that sustains the movie is between a way of learning that collapses learning with pleasure, and one that collapses learning with pain, to put it in a nutshell. Unfortunately, the book, no matter what it is worth and how popular it has become, has not much to say on that very fundamental debate, although it does say much about the pitfalls of the latter. It does of course deal in detail with the human side of the lives of IIT students, with great compassion and sensitivity. It says that they are also ordinary human beings like most of us.
Paradoxically, it is the very success of this book that allowed Bhagat to quit his job as a banker and devote himself completely to writing. In a way, then, it has been a cathartic experience for Bhagat as an individual, setting him free to do what he really wanted to do all his life. I suggest the movie probably draws more from Bhagat's own life than from his book, and I am not talking about details and settings here. I am talking about more fundamental issues.
I have nothing to say about the extent of fidelity or deviation from the novel for that is not the issue here. It is about the nature of deviation. I suggest that that the spirit of the movie isnot indebted to the book. It does talk about life at IIT (or Imperial College of Engineering, note the name please) but it talks much more, and more essentially, about an alternative that sets you free.
Likewise, Hindi movie industry, if it is to ever, even hypothetically, take over the mantle of the leading movie making industry in the world, it will have to do so on the basis of its difference, and not similarity, with Hollywood. This difference must not confine itself to content alone, but embrace form as well, or rewrite the content of the form. I suggest Hindi movie industry start a new practice, one where the position of the author's name in the credits shall be decided on the basis of the spiritual, and not physical, similarity with the book. This can be done, as Sangvi rightly observes, without prejudice to the copyright laws. It need not involve prior consent of the author as long as his copyright privileges are not violated.
3 Idiots is after all about redefining the content of the word idiot. Sanghvi, interestingly, reverts to the conventional meaning of the word in the last sentence of his piece. This is not an accident. I suggest we request him to agree to allow us the content of words like grace or class as well. There has to be other models of graceful or classy behavior than calling others nitwits in print, which Sanghvi does so gleefully. As far as his report of Chopra's misbehavior is concerned, he says Chopra had publicly asked a journalist to shut up, challenging him whether he had read the book. The concerned journalist may be a lady too, for all I know, due to my lack of regular attention to television news. I leave it to the rest of you to wonder whether an instance of bad behavior is best responded to by a counter instance of equally bad behavior. Incidentally, Sanghvi waxes so eloquent about Hollywood people like Danny Boyle becoming magnanimous on his Oscar night and so on. Interestingly, this spirit has not rubbed off on Sanghvi as he sat down to deliver a verdict on grace, class or lack thereof in the characters of the three key people behind the movie. Journalists in India do not like anyone else to sit down on judgement about their grace or lack thereof. After all, they are out there to civilize us and tell us what is good for us and our country. How dare a non journalist raise his voice? So what if he has made a good, popular movie? It is alright if journalists judge movies and movie makers, but how dare a movie maker goes ahead to judge the credentials of a journalist?
It is not about grace at all, it is about the media's right to decide my life for me, and your life for you. Do you know for whom the bell tolls now?
Rhymania is an old affliction with me. I am told told we learn to rhyme much before we manage to deliver sophisticated prose. There is no good reason to disbelieve the axiom, if I were to go by personal example. With yet another calender year approaching, and the prospects of my becoming famous or notorious remaining equally dim, I propose to inflict you with some more self-indulgence, as if you are not saturated already. Here goes an eight line summary of my life and attitude. Happy new year in advance everyone. May you all make yourselves happy and smiling the way you want others to make you happy and smiling.
Here's another song in my clumsy translation. This one is slighltly more untranslatable than the earlier two. That is for the simple reason that this is a Chandrabindu song. I have been living out of Bengal for far too long to sense properly their popularity but I must confess right away that these guys write great lyrics. All their lyrics are witty and sensitive at the same time, a combination I started to feel the Bengalis had lost forever before I came across Chandrabindu a year and a half ago. In terms of tunes alone, they are not the best thing to have happened to Bengali music in the last century. When it comes to lyrics,however, they are right up there with the very best. This particular piece is a soft, lilting ballad called Eita Tomar Gaan or This is your song. You will get many versions of this song all over the net. Therefore, I have not bothered to attach a link. The following is my translated version. As usual, I'll feel good if you like it. If you don't, I'll try again or wait for your translation. Better still, we'll both enjoy the lyrics anyway.
Your song
This one’s for you dear, you skim in Like moonbeams during power cuts, in the din, like dollops of sunny rays bathing my room I open windows, just out of a fever, you loom.
Waters deep down, crystal clear, of the lake over there, Reflecting the happy rays, On lazy Holidays, sparkles so calming, I gift you this soft, little leaf, Wrapped so tenderly by this red sheaf, This scrapbook of mine, here.
This one’s for you, you the tender Ache on lips only just unlocked, you are The lone little bird, lost in thought, Before the deep-unfurling waters, caught Unawares; Let me gift you the warmth Of caressing this romance of leisure
This is your song, for I send you mate smell of your sari whipping the rainlashes wet, thirsty cloudlets suckling in pleasure, I stand satiated, no more tunes to set.
Tagore is therapeutic to most Bengalis and I am no exception. I have been listening to many Tagore songs lately, and they help me cope in general. This particular one, and I am attaching the link below, I have been very carefully listening for the past few days and trying to understand. Needless to say, each session is opening out new heights and depths. I think this is the best possible version of the song and I suppose you'd like it too, in case you have not heard this version already.
As has become my wont in recent months, I diffidently attempted a translation. There are a few versions available on the net but they are all uniformly verbose. I am aware of the Sahitya Academy trnslations but have not read them. I am sure they are going to be less syrupy than these amateur versions on the net. Anyway, here goes my version. Read if you like. Or skip if it does not interest you. I had fun doing it and that is good enough for me.
Shudhu Jaoa Asa
Merely keeping to the flow, Back and forth, Day and night, In happiness and sorrow.
Merely a glance, Or a caress, a warm embrace, That last, craving look, Eyes moist, that trance, Then lets off the hook More daring wishes, Leaving by the wayside, This one little chance.
Dreams so many, but with wings Clipped, even sincere efforts see ends undercut. A broken, lone, boat Amid the vast sea float, Emotions voices seek, attempt, struggle, turn meek.
Hearts, with tales still untold, The tryst not climaxed yet, Grope, in fear and anticipation old, For hope; love only in half they get.
I must begin with a disaclaimer. Searing honsety and absolute fealty to truth under all circuamstances are not my forte. I go by the axiom that rules must be followed unless you see others breaking them blantantly, and truth must be ahhered to unless it seriously impedes a positive and desirable outcome, individually as well as collectively. That is why I find myself somewhat uncomfortable with the moral position, far too often taken in public debates, that you cannot criticize anyone if you yourself have once committed anologous mistakes. I think this is a hideously arrogant ploy on the part of opinion leaders to maintain their monopoly, and deny new, more robust voices an adequate platform. Therefore, I begin with thanking the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who once famously said that every saint has a past and every sinner a future. The following is a story of an encounter between me and a couple of other men I met yesterday at New Delhi Railway station. I begin with a description of the circumstances under which we met and then proceed to raise some questions and conclude with a reaffirmation of my faith in the system. I believe that if the system has not worked to our satisfaction, it his because we have failed to make it work. Correspondingly, if it is to work successfully, it is us who must come forward and contribute our bit, faithfully and regularly.
I had to drop a friend to the New Delhi station in time for him to board the Howrah Rajdhani express which leaves at five in the evening. We left campus at three thrity and by regular standrads would have reached the station by fifteen past four. I know these calculations well because I have myself boarded this particular train several times in the recent past.
Yesterday, however, turned out to be an irregular day. It was the birthday of Indira Gandhi, one of our former Prime Ministers, and since the party to which she belonged is in power now, many of her devotees who also happen to be important minsiters, fanned out in all directions to garland her statues and sing her praises in public all over the city. These leaders must not be faulted, for the constutitution of almost all political parties in India is such that if they don't do this, they stand to lose their power and authority. Now since these eminences cannot travel alone as their lives as ministers are deemed more valuable than yours or mine. They are therefore protected round the clock by a mighty entourage of vehicles and armed personnel of various levels of competence. A solitary entourage of this sort is good enough to block the traffic of all the roads it travels through for several minutes and yesterday we have had several of them on the road, all along the day, non stop. Together, they nearly brought the city to halt, and kept it that way.
If that was not bad enough, some other political leaders, ones who belong to other parties, had chosen to organize their own party. They had felt that the present government has not been doing much to improve the lot of peasants, especially the sugarcane farmers. They called upon the sugarcane farmers from various corners of the country to descend upon the streets of the capital and shout slogans, in order possibly to make their resentments pierce the eardrums of the deaf government. It is appropriate, these opposition leaders worked out, that such a grand show of their strength is staged on the birth anniversary of the second tallest leader ever of the ruling party.
There we ordinary mortals were then, sandwitched between the devil and the deep sea. Mercifully, we had hired the services of a most spirited youthful autorickshaw driver. He said he had been driving autos for the past twelve years, ever since he wrote his school final examinations at fifteen, and swore that he would somehow take us to the station by five. He moved in and out of several alleys and bylanes, braved at least eight roadblocks, and somehow made it to the station with exactly five minutes to spare.
Now Howrah Rajdhani departs from platform number eleven and the heroic autorickshaw driver had dropped us at the entrance of the Ajmeri Gate side of the station. Those familiar with the architecture of the station would know that we still had at least three to four minutes of full fledged running ahead of us, apart from the climb up the stairs. This was, in short, an emergency, and between three of us, we had to carry four reasonably heavy suitcases and travelbags.
We did make it to the right compartment, with only about twenty odd seconds left for the train to whistle off. It is on our way back that we, that is, a junior and I, were intercepted by these two gentlemen. More on the meeting will follow.
This is going to be a note partly on popular history and partly on popular politics. Let me correct myself at the outset and replace the term popular with populist. I shall present an incident that has happened yesterday and present, through making some observations on its coverage in the media, a critique of both populist history and populist politics in as practiced in india today. Broadly speaking, it is also a commentary on the irresponsibility of the media, both print and electronic.
Earlier this morning I had been listening to a programme in the most popular FM radio channel in New Delhi. This programme, to give the devil his due, generally airs good songs, interspersed by mostly mindless remarks by its two presenters. It so happened today that they flew into a rage about the hijacking of a Delhi bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani express by a band of bow and arrow wielding traibals near Jhargram in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, admittedly a stronghold of Maoists.
They compared this episode with the Kakory conspiracy case, where Bhagat Singh and his associates waylaid a train carrying huge amounts of money collected from people as revenues to the state, and made off with a few iron chests conatining substantial cash. They said that this latter act was one of great patriotism and must not be confused with the dastardly conduct of these unpatriotic tribals who persecute their own people. They kept harping on this diffrenece, invoking 'nationalism' and 'patriotism' to sanctify and distinguish one robbery from another. I was struck by this simple equation of nationalism and patriotism. Even in Hindi they have two separate words for these two terms-jatiyatawad/rashtriyatawad and deshbhakti respectively. I know for a fact that practically all decent schoolteachers do spell out the conceptual difference between them with care. May be you go to a different school to become the most popular deejays in Delhi. I wonder how you can annoint Gandhi the father of your nation and in the same breath rationalize a violent train robbery. More importantly, how do you call one train robbery a protest and another a robbery, especially when both are admittedly targetted against the perceived atrocities of an arguably arbitrary state? Is the so called analytical difference then tethered only to the seats of power and authority? If you happen to belong to the ruling class, then protesters are train robbers and if you do not belong to the ruling class, then train robbers are protesters. Are we going to ask our people to consume this simple a potion?
This is a rhetorical question, but one whose time has come. My question therefore is how we are going to resolve this central methodological contradiction of Indian nation state sponsored nationalism. It appears as though this debate has already been decided by everyone except yokels like yours truly. Don't just think about it, the preachers appear to scream, aren't we paid to teach you the right thing after all?
The deejays then proceeded, I think rightly so, to an impromptu quiz question, asking the audience to name the place where this great train robbery took place. As a clue, they said that a certain kind of kebabs are named after this place. I was very closely attending to their intersting chitchats, and trying to follow the kind of popular nationalist narrative that they were evidently trying to construct and wanted their their listeners to consume.
What is this narrative like? It implies, to exapnd on the point I made above, that robbing a train is good if it is carrying money to be used for the benefit of foreigners in a narrowly ethnic sense. Correspondigly, it demands that no means of public transport, least of all Rajdhani expresses and aeroplanes, may be halted for any reason whatsoever as long as it carries people belonging to the same nation-state as the protesters.
It is time to spoil this juvenile party now. What exactly does this uncritical and uninformed celebration of ethnic nationalism mean to communicate to its peddlers and consumers? This idea of nationalism is precisely what the ruling classes of the post independence Indian nation state wish its 'citizens' to obey without question. Do please read Indivar Kamtekar's wonderfully penetrating piece 'the Fables of Nationalism' if you want to know more. I have neither his elegant language nor his disarming candour and so would stop short of giving you a summary unless you have failed to locate the piece.
To everyone who bothers to read nonsensewares, I have a simple request. Please take some time out to think about this issue. It is an issue that has profound implications on the ongoing debate about the role of history in our life and conduct. Of late I have been observing an alrming trend among our youths to pay no heed to history. They think history is a chain with which we are handcuffed, as Salman Rushdie memorably wrote long ago. In this confusion some clerver people and commentators have spotted an opportunity to make quick bucks, posing as readymade retailers of populist history. The two smart rjays are probably unwitting victims of this lifestyle disease but its more glamourous victims include some of the most famous and readable contemporary non fiction prose writers in this country. These latter write more often for popular media, dishing out wonderfully uncomplicated versions of what they ordain as history. They can afford to do so, for they write lucid prose, lit up by smart metaphors and even smarter turns of phrase.I admire their prose, spellbound by its ironic blend of linguistic mastery and average scholarship. In this day and age of packaging, substance has been forced to take a backseat, if not altogether unseated. I live with the hope that this too shall pass, and I shall live to see a brighter tomorrow.
Anger and hatred do not come to me very easily. This is one of the major reasons of whatever little good I have done in life and also of the failures that I have successfully accomplished. I believe anger makes one lose one's sense of proportion and commit mistakes. Since I cannot handle anger, I normally stay away from it.
Anger, like atom bomb, is more effective when it is a potential. Others must somehow be made to see that you might just get angry someday. It is the threat that even a quiet chap can sometime fly off the handle that brings people around. But this resource must not be abused, and used very very sparingly. What is the need to burst up in flames when a firm stare or a wave of hand can do?
It worked today. A senior who normally works under another senior got a chance to officiate for a while. This officiting senior promptly got down to showing everybody who the new boss is, for the time being, that is. I was instructed, in the name of a very senior official, to carry out a task that is normally reserved for some other, specific, individuals, none of whom was absent. In response, I tried to reason but was repreatedly told that the instruction came from this other senior person.
Now till a year or two ago I used to take all this lying down since I had this fear of losing such as losing money, losing face and so on. These days I have stopped bothering about such profound things since I know that these things are only partly determined by my actions, no matter how much sincerity I invest in performing them.
Things have changed since. Once I saw that reasoning with this person won't take me very far, I decided to the next logical thing. This was a bit of a bold decision because this other senior is pretty high up in the pecking order. Fortunately, I had no problem in reching this senior's office and securing an appointment. This was in itself a matter of some chance but the lady luck was in my favour this time. On being asked politely whether my senior was directed by by him to ask me to do someone else's job, he flatly replied that he had no knowldge of this fiat and that he would be fine if I continued doing the jobs normally allotted to me. He was in fact generous enough to offer to give my immediate senior a piece of his mind on this issue. But I had no intention to pick up a fight with anyone, least of all with an immediate senior.
Clear in my head and no longer angry at receiving an arbitrary order from someone who I think does not know how to handle authority very well, I politely approached the colleagues who normally handle the job concerened, suggesting them to conitnue with the present arrangemnt till further orders from above.
I strongly feel my immediate senior should not have dragged this super senior official into such a small affair as asking a junior to do a job that's slightly unfit for him. Does this mean that this senior actually knew that the idea was not exactly above board? May be that is why it was felt necessary to invoke the authority of a super senior, to preempt any protest from my side, that is. I am not writing this to show the public my fiery conscience and all that. Rubbish. I know who I am and I don't want public support or opprobrium, thank you very much. But I liked the way I was able to channelize my anger into the something not so deplorable, if not constructive. I have to thank my immediate colleagues who sensed at once that I was getting disoriented and took me out for a cup of tea and spoke to me softly, quietining me down. They have never seen me angry and they did not like what they saw. I know only too well that I cannot manage anger. That is why I just dread it. It unsettles you majorly. Today, however, I learnt a crucial lesson. If people around you offer a little help and you are able to channelize it into the right directions, anger often proves productive in very interesting ways.
A good friend of mine, who researches sports culture, had been asking me, for the past few weeks, to translate a rather famous Bengali song for him. He intends to use the translated version in one of his forthcoming papers. This is one friend who has known me since I was a lanky middle school student in the very late eighties and very early nineties, barring a gap of about eight years in between. Therefore, he is fully aware of my procrastinating nature and patiently persisted with me. The idea of translating this small lyric into English remained in my mind, as all ideas I work with do, waiting for the right moment to push other ideas to the background and shove itself forward, so as to get itself an appropriate expression at an appropriate moment. It so turned out that this morning I suddenly felt an urge to complete this pending task. I am satisfied with the end product to the extent I should be. Students of translation would know that it is not an easy job. I am not given to self trumpeting as a matter of course but do like to share my work those whose opinion I value. Since I know for sure that very few actually read this blog and I personally know most of them, I do not mind submitting this little piece to their judgement. Do please read the Bengali original first and then my translation that will follow. The song is far too well known to the Bengalis for me to introduce it to them again. The non-Bengalis, on the other hand, should first read the translation without any introduction. If the translation is good, they will certainly sense the cultural capital invested into this particular song and will themselves find out more about it. Read on.
Bangalir Football
Gnutognuti Rugby noi, Taas Bidi Kheye Somoy Katano noi,
E Khelai nei gynarakol,
Sob Khelar Sera Bangalir Tumi Football!
Aha Ki Modhu ache oi tomar namete bawa Football!
Aha Ki Modhu ache oi tomar namete aha Football!
Tomake lathai roj boot pora koto pa,
Eto lathi khao tobu mukhe kichu bolo na,
Pude maro roddure, kaadaa maakho boroshai,
Tobu phule phnepe thaako awbichawl,
Sob khelar sera Bangalir tumi Football,
Jibone Marane paye paye achho football.
Adhaisho Bochhorer jamidari Ghuche giye
desh chhere paliyeche ingrej,
nokh daant bhanga ek briddho singho se je,
nei tar jari juri nei tej,
tobu maante to badha nei, sei to sekhalo ei football,
tari daulate naam amar hoeyeche Mohun Bagan East Bengal.
Aha ki modhu ache oi tomar namete bawa football!
Aha ki Modhu ache oi tomar namete aha Football!
Sob khelar sera Bangalir tumi Football.
Jaar goal e jao tumi tar buke pore baaj,
Jaar hoye goal koro se je hoi moharaaj,
Rock-e rock-e jhawgra, ghore ghore divorce,
Ilishe ghoti-te Rosatol,
Sob khelar sera Bangalir tumi Football.
The Bengali’s Football
Not brawling as in Rugby,
nor wasting time as in cards or smoking,
There’s no baseness involved in this noble sport,
in this real thing.
Oh the lord of all sports, you the Bengali’s Football,
How your very name spreads sweetness to one and all!
So many booted legs kick you around,
so hard, everyday,
Such heavy pain you suffer, duty bound,
Without having a say.
Comes heat in summer, and slush in the rains,
Yet you remain the same, rolly polly, oh dear Football!
At the legs of life and death, you stand, the Bengali’s Football.
Two hundred and fifty years’ zamindari over, the English,
Left this land for good, an old lion, its roar and tricks all gone,
No harm admitting today that they taught us football, taught this
Mighty sport that made immortal East Bengal and Mohun Bagan.
Calamity strikes the one who happens to concede a goal,
And the one who scores runs the world as a whole!!
Passion runs wild as the Bengali sits down to talk about you,
Husbands divorce wife, fight in your name like children do.
Ghotis and Bangals bring the earth down, emotion their wherewithall,
Your, dear, the lord of all sports, you the Bengali’s football.
Thank you, dear reader, for your attention and patience. You may not know but this is my first successful attempt at translation. My lack of focus always comes in the way of persisting with things. But these days I realize that things have to be done, and it does not matter when you begin. For instance, I started participating in debates only last week and had great fun doing it. I will post that speech the next time. The secret of doing things, I now realize, is in having fun, in enjoying them, without bothering about consequences. You would be surprised to know that this approach often results in excellence as well.
If there is one place in India which has made me what I am, it is Bangalore. Period. I never wanted to go there, did not know till about a week before I landed that I was actually going and I am not going to settle there for it has no future to offer to my kind of professionals. Ironically though, I am certain that I would be a far lesser person and professional had I not spent half a decade in Bangalore. Bangalore has a way of bringing out the best in you, and letting you go fully secure in the belief that you are going to keep coming back. This is what mentoring is all about.
I don't even have to close my eyes, to recall what I looked like twenty years ago; my mother will always tell me it was nice, in all fairness, I probably looked so and so.
But if you were to ask me how she looked then, and how she does now, I see someone tired, somewhat relieved, but very unfit and uncertain, having done so much, having run so very hard.
She's taking a bow, tomorrow. A string of ailments, sacrifices galore, often in vein, happiness always elusive, depleting resources in tow, dear mom, you've been nice, time to pass the rein.
We'll follow up the exclusion story some other time. For some time now, I have been feeling that the less we talk about exclusion, the better. And I have been feeling nostalgic, missing many people and many pasts. Am I getting old, or just bold enough to admit it in public? These things do not really matter, for I realize at the same time that I have never felt so bullish about myself. This lovely feeling that it does not matter comes at a price, often a rather steep one. I daresay I rather like it. Let's hear from Gurudeb:
Ache Dukkho Ache Mrityu, biraho dahana lage/tobuo shanti, tobu anonodo, tobu ananta jage/Tobu prana Nitya dhra, ase surjo Chandra tara/Basanta nikunje ase bichitro rage/ Taranga milaye jai, taranga uthe/Kusum Jhariya pade, Kusuma phute/ Nakhi Khya, nahi sesha, nahi nahi Doinyo Besha/sei Purnotaaro paye mono sthano Maange.
I am sorry, dear reader, if you are not a Bengali. Even otherwise you must be familiar with that famous verse of Ishoponishada--Purnamada Purnamidam....--which I am sure at least partly inspired Tagore when he had been working on this particular piece. You'll clrealy see much from the Geeta and various Upanishadas walking into the song in a rather seamless process. There is a wonderful collection of the Upanishadas by Dr. Radhakrishnan in English for you to begin with and to keep going back to, like many of us. Do listen to this Tagore song nonetheless, especially in Debabrata Biswas' voice. I have tremendous, boundless joy everytime I listen to this track, especially when I am down for one reason or another. No not the rapturous, orgasmic kind of eruptive joy, although that is no less significant, but a rather calm, accepting kind of a reassuring joy that I get to learn so much everyday. I do not know if I belive in God but I am grateful, and do hereby offer my shraddha (respects) to whoever or whatever it is that orders us all, one way or another. Interesting isn't it, the spelling in Sanskrit (and thereby Hindi and many oher Indian languages) for respect and funerary ceremonies (Shraddha again) is the same, that is, they are homonyms? It's only this exchange of place between aa and oo (as in the sound) that makes all the difference. Frankly, I do not think it is a matter of phonetics alone. It is only after you ceremonially get rid of your own self that you respect others. Trust me it is true. Try it and you'll realize. May Goddess Durga bless you all. May you all get what you really want.
PS-I hope you see, dear reader, that I am referring merely to the question of transcription, and not even moving as far up as translation. Fact is we cannot ever understand each other completely, but that is no reason why we should not try. Even a partial understanding is better than no understanding. Now if you were to suggest that no understanding is better than misunderstanding, I would listen and introspect and keep quiet. These verbal juggleries no longer move me that much for I firmly believe in communication. It's just that we have to work out the right medium. Such as silence.
In PVR Priya they think well dressed young women cannot be suicide bombers and modestly dressed slightly older young men can. The other day I went to watch this new movie there with my laptop bag slung on my shoulder. I was promptly advised to leave my bag out of the auditorium premises. Appreciting their keen attention to the security of the patrons, I asked them where they have the baggage counter where you deposit your bags for the duration of the show and get it back after you walk out of the auditorium. This is a common practice and a desirable one too. I am familar with it, especially when I visit libraries and shops of various descrirptions, institutions that put in place such mechanisms to keep kelptomanics at bay.
But I was wrong in this case. It is not kleptomaniacs but potential suicide bombers that these plush seats of entertainment worry about. Therefore, they just don't want your bags to be around in the first place. I was directed to a paan bidi shop nearby, the owner of which had been doing precisely what I expected the PVR authorities to do--keeping your bags for the duration of the show, at a price of course.
In other words, PVR authorities are devoted only to the secutiry of their own premises and and to yours too only when you are physically within their premises. The physical bit is taken very literally, for if you happen to carry a bag and a laptop, it will be assumed to be potential bomb and you will be forced to deposit it with that upwardly mobile paanwala. The uniformed secutiry men did not heed my repeated requests to subject the bag to a metal detector test and, if found harmless, let me carry it in. Only purse, they as well as their boss, an older young man like me but slightly better bulit and 'tie'd, said like robots, is allowed in. I will return to matters relating to their idea of purse later. In the meantime, I tried to reason, then demanded to meet the manager who I was told was too big a shot to meet an occassional oddball and then, proceeded to the ticket counter and asked for a refund since I was no longer in a mood to enjoy their hospitality. These sites of entertainment of course do not entertain any concept of refund. I was free to sell my ticket to any interested customer but the chap at the box office dismissive stared at me as if I was a beggar who has to bother about the measly sum of 75 Rs. His gaze having fixed me as a beggar of a certain kind, my middle class instincts prompted me to behave like one and and I went over to the paanwala and deposited my bag with him. No I was not carrying my laptop on that given morning.
It's here that the twist in the tale comes in. But I am going to bring that in tomorrow or whenever I am going to return gain.
